Disjointed thoughts brought together
This is a nice soup with great color, flavor, and texture. It would probably work both hot or cold, but I enjoy this hot. The soup is simple and can be made vegan. I enjoy this with some goat cheese and fresh baguette.
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This recipe is for home-made pizza with prosciutto and arugula. I first had a prosciutto and arugula pizza on a date in SOHO. We were at this great little Italian place that had a brick oven for really good pizza. It’s one of my favorites.
This recipe is based on the basic bread dough recipe from Ratio by Michael Ruhlman, with the variations for pizza dough. His recipe makes enough for two 12 inch pizzas with a reasonably thick crust (not too thin, not deep dish). I also follow some of the technique instructions from The Professional Chef, which is the official textbook of the Culinary Institute of America. I didn’t bother to make the pizza sauce today, but you can find recipes for pizza sauce online easily enough. Do a google search. It’s no harder than making pasta sauce. In fact, I’ve used pasta sauce before. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s almost too good to be true. Part of my mind has still not accepted it and probably won’t accept it until the delivery arrives. FreshDirect extended their delivery area to our neighborhood. I can now have quality groceries delivered again. Believe me, this is a big thing. The grocery stores around here are not very good. They carry no almost no seafood, almost no organic ingredients, and the produce is both limited and low quality. The only time we get good produce around here is at the green market on the weekend (assuming we wake up early enough to beat the old Asian ladies to the spot).
I’m using this new and welcome development as motivation for putting Monica and I back on a menu. I think of it as being on a budget, except in this case we plan what we’ll eat rather than what we’ll spend. Of course, this is just our dinners and not every meal, but I still think this is a better way to live. I have two reasons supporting this position. First, it provides an opportunity for creative thinking. Just like everyone else, I look too see what food items are on sale, available, and in season. From there, I begin figuring out interesting ways to use those starting items. Sometimes I rely on old favorites but I also try to include variations or entirely new recipes. The second reason is health. Too often in the last few months, Monica and I have had this phone conversation:
“So, have you thought about dinner?”
“No, not really. Any ideas?”
“No. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
I’m sure we’re not the only couple that has this conversation. For folks like us who believe in having our dinner together/as a family, this kind of indecision can lead to expensive or less healthy eating options like dining out, fast food, or take-out food. For us, take-out usually involves fried chicken from the local Chinese place. I don’t know how they do it, but their fried chicken is fantastic.
Planning a weekly menu in advance allows us to ensure variation and nutritional balance. It also allows us to make our purchases when we have time to think about the type (organic?) or quality of ingredients we intend to use in our dishes. When you shop last minute, after work during a busy week, you are often at the mercy of what’s convenient. Planning ahead can also make sure that any ingredients you purchase in large quantity (cilantro, anyone?) can be put to multiple uses, making sure they are fully consumed before they rot in the fridge.
Of course, putting yourself on a menu takes some work and some dedication. You don’t want to skip a planned meal when you’ve already purchased the ingredients. It can be tempting to do that on a really busy day when you just want to relax instead of cook. But for all the time we waste in our lives watching television or surfing the internet, there’s no excuse not to have the time or energy to cook. As Ruhlman says, the food doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should be home made.
Planning also takes some work. You need to think about what you are going to do. Surf Epicurious.com for recipes. Break out the cookbooks or the latest issue of Saveur and try that new thing. And in our household, it often means a trip to the Asian market to find that odd spice, strange vegetable, or unique sauce that you cannot find any other place. But I have to admit that, in retrospect, the effort is almost always worth the result.
Several people have expressed to me over the past few years the difficulty in cooking rice. This surprised me a bit until Monica and I moved into this apartment and immediately started having problems. My issue is heat control. The burners on our stove run very hot. Low temperature is high enough to cause a simmering product to boil over or burn.
Rice seems like the most simple thing. However, as with most simple things, it can be the most difficult part of a meal. Since it’s the starch base for many more complicated dishes, it’s also the thing that, done wrong, can make a good meal go bad.
I guess people who have a rice cooker don’t have this problem. Monica owns a rice cooker that she sometimes uses. It’s old and and a little clunky and the directions for use are either missing or written entirely in Chinese, so I cannot use it. Monica tried to instruct me once but, like martial arts or shooting hoops, it’s something you can only explain to a point. After that, you just have to go on feel.
The solution I’ve discovered for making great rice without a rice cooker is inspired by Michael Ruhlman’s technique for making chicken stock at home. When making stock, you need to cook the bones in liquid at a very very low simmer for a longer period of time. This can be tricky on the stove top (especially one like mine) but can be very easily done in the oven. You just need a pot that can be heated safely in the oven (as in, the handles won’t become dangerously hot or melt off). Thanks to my parents, I am the proud owner of some really old school stainless steel cookware. It’s about as sexy as Martha Stewart but can be used to cook anything, fashion arrowheads from stone, crack open coconuts, and beat back an angry hoard of vikings.
If you have that, the rice cooking protocol is simple. You need about between 1.5 and 1.75 cups of water per cup of rice (more for brown, less for white). I will season my rice with salt or ginger or cilantro and occasionally add some oil to the water). Put everything in your pot and bring it up to a boil. While waiting for the boil, preheat your oven to between 210 and 220 degrees. Once your water boils, turn off the stove and stick the pot (covered) in the oven. Set a timer for 20 to 30 minutes (more for brown rice, less for white rice). When it’s done, take it out (carefully) and check it. Sometimes I ‘finish’ the rice on the stove top if it’s still a bit wet.
Tonight we enjoyed brown rice with Monica’s MaPo Tofu. Soooooo good. And even though I didn’t employ any special equipment, the rice was perfect.
I got a present in the mail today: a 4 oz. package of lavender from Penzeys spices. Four ounces of lavender is a enormous amount. All together, it’s over a cup of whole lavender spice that is incredibly potent.
Because I’m impatient, I immediately went to the store and purchased some of the items I’ll need to create my snack mix: walnuts, dried blueberries, banana chips, and crystalized ginger. I forgot to purchase coconut flakes, but I already had some sweetened coconut flakes at home, so I thought I would be okay.
The lavendar comes as little pellets that look like grains of wild rice. For this mix, I very very finely minced 1/8 of a teaspoon until I had a fine powder. If the spice has a strong aroma when whole, it’s a whole other level of strong when it’s chopped up – even this small quantity. The lavender was added to the following:
I mixed all these items in a plastic container with a lid that seals tightly. Once all the ingredients were in, I shook it vigorously to distribute the spices and the honey.
I probably should have put the mix onto a tray to allow the honey to dry, but I was in a hurry. I’ve been eager to try this so I simply stuck my hand into the sticky mix and tried it. My impatience was rewarded. My worries about the strength of the lavender were mostly unfounded. It was nicely balanced by the ginger, honey, vanilla, and pepper. The pepper might have been a bit stronger than in the packaged product sold by Sahale. The mix had a spicy bite to it; good thing I like spice.
Next time, I’ll need to be more patient. Alton Brown has some ideas on how to make snack mixes with nuts, and I should look at how he dries out the mixture so it isn’t super sticky. But I’m definitely on the right track. The real challenge is what to do with all of that lavender.
I have an obsession to admit to: Sahale Snacks‘ Dauphine snack blend. I posted about this product a while back (see the link) and since then, Sahale has discontinued the product. At first, I thought it was just hard to find. I searched everywhere. I tried to order from Amazon. I tried to order it from OrganicDirect. I walked around to all the little grocery stores in all the upscale neighborhoods. I tried supermarkets in other towns when I was traveling. No luck. Eventually, my fiancee wrote to the company and learned that they stopped making it. Mention of it has been taken from their website.
The Dauphine blend is a fascinating mix: walnuts mixed with banana chips, coconut, ginger, blueberries, lavendar, and white pepper. From Amazon, where the product is still listed (though unavailable) I was able to grab the actual ingredient information from the packaging:
Walnuts, Dried Blueberries (Blueberries, Apple Juice Concentrate, Sunflower Dill), Banana Chips (Unsweetened Bananas, Coconut Oil), Coconut Flakes (Unsulphured), Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Dried Ginger (Unsulphured Ginger Root, Sugar), Spice, Sea Salt, Natural Vanilla Extract.
Okay, so I now know what’s in it. How hard can it be to duplicate it? Not for retail purposes, of course. It’s for personal use. Like I said, I’m hooked.
Most of the ingredients can be easily purchased. Walnuts are easy. I can get those at the supermarket. Dried blueberries, while expensive, are the kind of thing that Whole Foods will carry. Banana chips are inexpensive and sold in many places. Coconut flakes – as opposed to the sticky sweet stuff people bake with – it a little less common but can still be found at Whole Foods or other natural markets. Dried ginger (especially crystalized ginger) has become pretty common. My dad mixes it into his ice cream. How about cane juice and tapioca syrup?
By asking the oracle and poking around a few different websites, I am finding that evaporated cane juice and sugar are not all that different. The differences are in the amount of processing and the results of that lack of processing (more molassas, varying levels of fructose and glucose, trace nutrients, etc.) on the end product. I could probably use a good organic Turbinado sugar and not have to go find some exotic sweetener. Likewise, tapioca syrup appears to be another sweetener alternative for persons or producers who don’t want to use corn syrup or who are looking for a neutrally flavored sweetener that is produced in a manner consistent with vegan food rules. One website I visited suggested that tapioca syrup could be used as a substitute for honey or maple syrup, so I could conceivably sub the other way. I have honey in my pantry and maple syrup in my fridge. No need for another sweetener.
The tricky ingredient in the list is “spice”; this word could cover a multitude of sins. The packaging for the product says that lavender and white pepper are included, so I have that to go on. White pepper is often used in my kitchen. Lavender? Not so much, no.
My fiancee and I received some wonderful spices from good friends as a Christmas gift. They are from Penzeys, and I have enjoyed using them. Since they’re a name I know, I gave their website a try. Sure enough, a search for lavender yielded this: Lavender, 40z. bag, $8.95. It’s not cheap. Reminds me of buying saffron (another spice from flowers). But this is the one tricky ingredient separating me from my Dauphine. Time to order some flowers.
Rolled fondant is one of those things that separates your typical home cook/baker from both the professional baker/confectioner (the kind of person I’ll pay to make my wedding cake) and the emotionally unbalanced artists you see creating 6ft tall, sugar-coated edifices on the Food Network. It turns a simple dessert into something that is both food and art – at once elevating the aesthetic and sacrificing some of the gastronomic quality. It’s what makes people say “ooooooo!”.
It’s that last reaction I was most interested in. Sure, the adventure of it was an attraction. I’m constantly on the lookout for the next culinary challenge, and rolled fondant is nothing if not a challenge. But, in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, what I wanted most was to create something for my fiancee that would elicit a little bit of awe – that look that says “I can’t believe you did that!”
Curiously, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day coincide this year. Therefore my creation would be most successful if I were able to marry the two themes into one great looking cake. I went to the Oracle seeking inspiration and the oracle did not disappoint.
Cake
Yellow cake is the vanilla ice cream of cake. Plain, generic, but filled with potential. It can be paired with many things. It’s a good foundation. Best Recipe has a yellow cake recipe that is decent. It requires a significant quantity of butter and eggs, so the recipe is expensive and not entirely healthy (no matter what Bill Cosby might say). Because my fiancee is not a fan of really sweet desserts, I cut back on the sugar and used rum instead of vanilla for flavoring.
Filling
For the Chinese New Year aspect, I wanted to find a filling for the cake that would evoke a typical chinese dessert. Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I wanted something red. I settled on sweet red bean paste. This is something I’ve had before in things like steamed buns and other dim sum-style desserts. It was a good flavor match with the subtle yellow cake and reminded me of something I might have at an upscale Chinese restaurant.
Red bean paste is made very simply. Dried azuki beans (small and red, looking like a cross between a mini kidney bean and a black-eyed pea) are boiled in water until soft. Sugar and a little salt is added. Cooking continues until the paste has absorbed the sugar. For a smooth paste, the mixture can be pureed and the bean skins removed by straining. I preferred an unprocessed, chunky paste for texture. To fill my cake, I mixed a bit of the chunky paste with heavy cream and covered the top of the first cake layer with a thick coating. I then placed the second layer on top of the paste and pressed firmly to make sure the paste would hold the two layers together.
Fondant
A couple of websites recommended making rolled fondant out of marshmellows. According to these sites, this creates a fondant that is much tastier than a traditional, purchased fondant. While this is a good thing, the marshmellow-based fondant suffers from two drawbacks: first, it’s very very sticky, making it difficult to work with. Second, it’s basically a combination of powdered sugar (1.5 to 2 pounds!) and marshmellows, making it extremely sweet. This can completely overwhelm the flavors of a subtle cake (like the red bean cake I made).
Making rolled fondant is like making a lean dough. In this case, the flour is replaced with powdered sugar. Playing the role of the yeast/water mixture is a warm mix of water and melted mini-marshmellows. A significant amount of powdered sugar is added to the melted marshmellow and the mixture is kneaded until it stiffens into an elastic ball that can be rolled out. The initial mixture is a bit like wet rubber cement. It gets on your hands and is impossible to remove. You just have to keep trying to incorporate more powdered sugar. Eventually, it begins to firm up and you can shape it into a ball that can be kneaded like a dough. While kneading, you can add food coloring. I added red color and did not fully incorporate it. The result was a marbled pink and white surface for my cake that was very attractive.
Construction
My layered cake was cut into a simple heart shape. I made buttercream icing (search for “Cake” in this blog to find my icing recipe) and coated the cake to create a sticky surface for the fondant. I’m not sure this step is completely necessary. That, or perhaps I used too much. A small amount of icing would probably have worked. The rolled fondant, maybe 1/8 inch thick, was very heavy and easily stayed in place when spread out over the cake. The benefit of the icing is that is smoothed out the rough corners of my shaped cake and enhanced the heart shape. Trimming the fondant to the bottom edge of the cake was a challenge. This is likely due to the shape. If I had made a perfectly round or square cake, this would have been easier. However, once the fondant was spread over the cake, it was flexible enough to smooth it over the iced surface and create the professional look I was hoping for.
Result
The cake was a success. My adventure was a mixed bag. The fondant recipe is excessive. I may have discarded more fondant than I used, and I didn’t even make a full recipe. It was more like a 2/3 or 3/4 recipe. And while it did elevate the cake from a simple desert to something special, fondant totally throws off the flavor balance. I don’t usually favor appearance over flavor. While it was okay for this occasion, I wouldn’t normally make that choice.
The red bean mixture was simple and effective. I liked it plain, and it was very tasty when mixed with the heavy cream. Azuki beans are easily purchased near my home as I live in close proximity to many Chinese markets.
I’m very glad to have experienced cake-making with rolled fondant. I was a time- and resource-consuming adventure, but and experience that is worthwhile. I feel like a I took a step forward with confectionery, even if it was a step in a direction I’m not likely to follow.
Several years ago, when I was moving into an apartment of my own, my good friend Margot send me a wonderful housewarming gift: a molcajete. Go on, take a minute and look that up.
If you’ve ever been to a fancy (or very authentic) mexican restaurant you may have been served guacamole in one of these stone mortars. Most of the time a restaurant will do this in an attempt to justify the price of the dish you’re enjoying or perhaps make the meal feel more exotic. However, a molcajete does allow a person to prepare certain food items in a particular way, and this way (coarse grinding) is particularly good for guacamole.
A good molcajete is nearly impossible to wash. It’s a bit like a cast iron griddle or a really nice wok. You never really clean it. You season it and then you rinse it off after every use. Seasoning a molcajete takes a bit of muscle as you are required to grind various items into the porous inner surface. Once you’ve done it, you’re good to go.
Griding the ingredients in a guacamole helps to release the various flavors and makes for an outstanding final product. My guac tends to be very strongly flavored and slighly acidic but guacamole can be anything. It’s a little like salsa: its a food item that conforms to some basic rules but can be prepared in many different ways using various ingredients. Whatever you like. Here’s what I like:
A molcajete allows you to mash the garlic. You could also use a garlic press, I suppose. Mash together the garlic, onion, tomato, and jalapeño. Doing this first will allow the flavors (and heat) to be evenly spread through the guacamole instead of clumping up in spots. Next, scoop the meat out of the avocados and add it to the mix along with the cilantro. Mash some more. Guacamole doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth, so don’t over-process. Finally, add the salt, cumin, and lime juice. At this point I sometimes use a spatula for mixing since the lime juice tends to thin out the mixture.
Be careful with your garlic. I use two cloves but I don’t mind my mouth tasting like garlic later. Thankfully, my fiancee doesn’t mind either. Also, be careful with the jalapeño. If you’re sensitive to heat, take the seeds out of the pepper before you mince it.
I usually have my guac with quesadillas. They’re incredibly easy to prepare. All you need is Jack cheese, flour tortillas, and leftovers: cooked meat, chili, some canned corn or cooked beans… get creative. Heat them up on a hot skillet or in the base of a flat-bottomed wok coated with a brushing of olive oil. Works perfectly.
This weekend’s adventure is whole roast chicken and chicken stock. The chicken is an organic chicken from Whole Foods. The price per pound is very reasonable: $2.99. While at the store I also purchased vegetables and herbs for stock-making: onion, celery, carrot, and thyme. I already have garlic, whole peppercorn, and bay leaf.
Chicken is a bit easier to roast than turkey in part because of the reduced size. My chicken is a very good size at 5 lbs. According to Best Recipe, this should take about and hour and a half to fully cook (about 45 minutes for 3 lbs, just over an hour for 4 lbs). Also, they recommend you not truss the bird so that the meat on the inside of the thigh can receive more heat. Preparation was therefore simple: rinse, dry, rub with olive oil, season, and place a few cloves of garlic in the cavity.
The lighter weight also makes it easier to turn the bird while it cooks, evenly distributing the heat and moisture. The chicken will cook 15 minutes each side and then breast-side up for the remainder of the time. As I write this, I am enjoying the aroma of the Taiwanese pepper-salt that I used to season the outside.
The breast meat reached 160℉ after an hour and 15 minutes of cooking time. Unfortunately, the chicken also made a terrible mess of the oven. Oil used to coat the chicken dripped into the pan and heated to the smoke point. Then, moisture from the meat dripped into the oil and exploded everywhere. It never occurred to me to turn on the hood fans while using the oven, but I had to in this case to keep the smoke alarm from going off. Taking the chicken out of the oven was a tricky task. I had to wait until the water and oil stopped splattering, quickly hoist the whole pan onto a trivet, and then cover it with aluminum foil to keep it from continuing to splash while the meat was resting. I took all of the necessary precautions and kept myself from being burned by hot oil and hot water.
The meat is moist, tasty, and cooked almost to perfection. It could have used another 15 minutes to make sure that everything was cooked all of the way, but we’re planning to reheat and recook the chicken in other dishes so it’s not a concern. The skin was crispy and tasty on the top but a bit soggy and greasy on the bottom where the oil and water settled. It occurs to me that coating the chicken in oil might not even be necessary. Perhaps I need to use less oil. Regardless, the task of dismantling the chicken was an enjoyable one as we munched while we separated the meat from the bones. Here’s the results:
4 pounds, 14 ounces whole chicken yields
1 pounds, 2 ounces scraps for chicken stock and
1 pounds, 14 ounces. meat
The remaining weight is accounted for by rendered fat, evaporated moisture, giblets, discarded skin, and all the stuff we ate while cleaning the carcass (more than a few ounces; even the cat got several bites). The chicken cost $14.65, or roughly $7 per cooked pound. In addition, I hope the scraps (bones, left over meat, a little skin) will yield at least 4 cups of stock (I got 8 from a 10.5 pound turkey). Normally, 4 cups of organic chicken stock from the supermarket will cost $4.
Quite a bit of the meat we pulled went into a Japanese curry for dinner. We get the curry in little cubes at the Asian market and make a sauce with it. In addition to chicken, the dish includes carrot, onion, and potato. This time we added some celery (we have so much, we need to use it for something). Japanese curry is one of my favorite regular meals. It’s rich, slightly spicy, and very satisfying.
The stock is prepared the way Michael Ruhlman recommends: put the carcass in a pot, cover it with water, bring to a boil, and then stick it in the oven and forget about it. I forgot it for about 3 hours. Then I chopped carrot, celery, onion; mashed some garlic, and added bay leaf, peppercorns, and fresh thyme. After mixing it all in and bringing the liquid back to a boil, I stuck it in the oven again and forgot it for another 2 hours or so. Playing Quake Live makes the time vanish.
I strained the stock twice: once through a sieve and then once through cheesecloth. Like my turkey stock, it tastes a little flat because I did not add any salt. I’ll add salt when I prepare something. It does convey the essence of chicken flavor, which is what it should do. And I was lucky. I think I got about 8 cups total. That should be enough stock for two different applications.
I may have consumed quite a bit of chicken, but the chicken consumed the majority of my day. When you include shopping time and clean-up (and there was much cleaning to be done), dealing with the chicken and stock took up quite a bit of time and required significant effort. I think it was worth it, though. I don’t know that I’ll do this every weekend (making stock and baking bread at the same time would require two ovens) but I’ll definitely make stock more often.
Before the next time, however, I need to purchase a proper roasting pan.
I still remember my first carrot cake revelation. I’ve always liked carrot cake, but there is one moment I can point to and say “that’s when it became my favorite.” It actually became more than my favorite. It became a pursuit. A passion. I was going to own carrot cake. I was going to refine the process and produce the apotheosis of carrot cake.
It was a party with friends on the day following Thanksgiving. A holiday tradition among mis amigos. A holiday recovery. Everyone brought a food item to share – sometimes a leftover from the Thanksgiving feast, sometimes drinks. Someone had brought a carrot cake. It was sweet and moist like carrot cake should be, but it was also spicy. I was stunned. Cayenne pepper in a cake? The roof of my head came off and the light shined in.
That was about a decade ago. Since then, I’ve studied numerous carrot cake recipes. I’ve made at least one or two carrot cakes every year and never duplicated a recipe. I’ve taken notes. I once made a vegan carrot cake using ground flax seeds to replace eggs. I’ve made icing, bought icing (not recommended), drizzled a cake with caramel sauce (heaven) and topped one with pineapple slices. I’ve added everything from organic carrot juice to five spice powder.
For dessert this Christmas Eve, I made another carrot cake. It received very favorable reviews. I think it compares well to my previous efforts and is worthy of sharing with others. So, in the spirit of the season, here is my recipe and thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »