Better Living Through Chemistry (or Why Julia was Deluded!)

It's very rare when you can say that Julia Child was flat-out wrong^†. It's even more wondrous to say that not only was Julia wrong but that Escoffier was wrong^‡ too. It's almost downright iconoclastic to say that not only were they wrong but that they were wrong in that most classical of French techniques — stock making.

And yet they were.

Welcome to the modern world of technology and chemistry!

The first crack in the facade is that you frequently hear them talking about "refreshing the stock". You need to keep adding in spices, etc. to "freshen" the stock. Why would you need to do so? Shouldn't the stock already be fresh? Shouldn't the spices already be there?

The answer as many of you might know is that what we think of as taste is really smell and spices consist of volatile molecules that dissipate in the air. Particularly when they are boiled.

Classical stock making consists of boiling the living daylights out of a standard flavor mixture. The short version is that it consists of vegetables plus meat plus aromatics. First the vegetables are fried, then the meat and aromatics added. Then a ton of water and the whole thing is brought to a simmer. The oil allows the oil-soluble volatile compounds to get transferred to the water and you must skim off the fat that comes to the surface. When the meat and vegetables have given up all their goodness to the water, you have stock.

Classical stock makes the house smell good^§. That's another way of saying that the volatile compounds are dissipating in the air and you will need to find a way to "refresh" them later because they are being lost.

The trick consists of not losing the volatile molecules in the first place. This is not a particularly original idea. It was first suggested by Heston Blumenthal a while ago and given more modern credence by Nathan Myhrvold in his epic Modernist Cuisine.

However, you must own a pressure cooker.

The fundamentals of stock making remain in play. The onions and vegetables must be fried. That's Maillard for you. The meat must be roasted (if making brown stock). That's also Maillard. However, instead of boiling it, you pressure cook for a much shorter time (at a higher temperature) and you filter it after it cools back to room temperature.

Your stock will be amazingly concentrated and you will have done it in half the time.

Given the absurdly cold weather, the CC had sourced some organic beef shin bones and went about making a classical "brown stock" in order to make French Onion Soup. The recipes for both follow below.

Here are a few tricks that you might not have heard of. They are actually quite common among chefs but the CC never sees any of these "dark arts" being published in the literature. (Why would they give their secrets away?)

1. Toss in 2-3 pods of star anise into the broth when you are making it. Star anise contains anethole which is a polyphenol. It's both distinctly sweeter than sugar and also will react with sulfur in the onions to turn into the wonderful aromatics characteristic of the Maillard reaction. This intensifies the "meatiness" of the broth. If used in moderation, you will not smell the characteristic "anise smell" in the broth. (Consider this as the Vietnamese contribution to classical French cooking!)
2. Toss in a handful of dried shiitake mushrooms. Alternatively, if you are feeling flush in cash, toss in some dried porcini mushrooms. The mushrooms amp up the existing umami from the vegetables and the meat by adding their own guanylates to the mix. (On a side note, chefs frequently "amp" up commercial beef broth by just tossing in a handful of the cheap dried shiitake mushrooms, boiling for a bit and filtering. Yes, it is that effective!)
3. When roasting the meat, it's traditionally tossed with flour which will brown a bit. Toss it with condensed milk instead. Once more, this is Maestro Maillard riding to the rescue. The condensed milk just has more of the proteins in a concentrated framework.

And here are some of the tricks to really impress your chef friends:

1. After cooking the stock in the pressure cooker ("no skimming, no hard work"), all the fat will be on the surface. This is the magic of high-heat, no boiling. You can just skim it off with a ladle. Then pass the broth through three layers of folded cheese cloth. Do not press the cloth but it's fine to let it drip dry. The volume will reduce drastically. This is clarification by filtration. Chill immediately in an ice bath. This is important.
2. If you want to clarify it further, chill overnight, scrape the fat off the top, reheat without boiling, and do process [1] again. Your chef friends will be absolutely amazed at your consommé and you will have done it for a tenth of the classical effort which involves egg whites. (Incidentally, the egg whites are just a less efficient version of the same filtration described above AND they cause substantial loss of the volatile flavor molecules which is what we want in the first place!)

---

† To be fair to Julia, she did explore the idea even back then. However, the pressure cooking technology of her time kinda sucked. Modern pressure cookers are much more precise so she wasn't really wrong. At least, for her time. But times change and technology evolves.

‡ Just too early really.

§ There are many practitioners of "modernist cuisine" that think that the kitchen must have no smells whatsoever. They do have an excellent point but this is practically impossible for most of us so we must live with reasonable compromises while pursuing that flighty temptress, perfection.

---

Brown Stock

Ingredients

2 beef shin bones
1 large onion
1 large carrot
2-3 cloves garlic

2-3 pods star-anise
4 dried shiitake mushrooms

rosemary
black pepper
salt

Recipe

First, roast the bones at 450°F for about 40 minutes. They will give off a lot of fat. Discard or use for other purposes. They should be lightly browned.

Fry the onions, garlic and the carrot in the pressure cooker. Add the bones and fry some more. Add all the ingredients, cover to the top with water and let pressure cook for at least two hours. You will need to fiddle with the heat so that there is no hissing at all. (No losses!)

Let the pressure cooker cool down naturally which will take the better part of an hour.

If you do this right, when the broth cools almost all of the fat will be on the surface. Another advantage of using a pressure cooker. Using a ladle you can just skim the fat right off.

On a coolness note, you can hear the bones crack inside the pressure cooker at some point. Not to worry. The goodness is being extracted.

You should chill the broth overnight and skim the fat that will accumulate at the top. You can freeze the broth at this point if you like.



French Onion Soup

Ingredients

16 large onions (yes!)
6 cups beef broth

1 tbsp flour

butter
olive oil

stale bread (read below!)
1/3 cup grated gruyère
1/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

At least, for this the CC is happy to report, there's no bettering classical technique so you'll just have to get down to it.

Cut the onions into semi-circles.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pot. If you follow Julia, it should be all butter but the CC has found that the mixture works better. Add the onions to the pot. Turn the heat onto medium-high and let cook for an hour. Stir every 20 minutes. Towards the end you will probably need to stir every 5 minutes or so.

The onions will turn into a rich dark color. It may take longer depending on the moisture content.

Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the broth and bring to a boil. Let cook for about 25 minutes on medium-low heat.

You will need stale bread that is preferably naturally leavened and let it dry out. Cover the piece with the grated cheese and stick it under the broiler for about 3 minutes. Be very careful. This has a tendency to burn. 30 seconds the wrong way and you will have a burnt mess. Best to keep checking.

Ladle the soup over the bread-cheese combo. Slurp.

Going Pork Crazy!

In the National Palace Museum in Taipei, there's a rather famous sculpture of a meat-shaped stone (肉形石).

From the catalog:

At first glance, this meat-shaped piece of stone looks like a luscious, mouth-watering piece of "Tung-p'o meat". Made from banded jasper, it is a naturally occurring stone that accumulates in layers over many years. With time, different impurities will result in the production of various colors and hues to the layers. The craftsman who made this meat-shaped stone took the rich natural resources of this stone and carved it with great precision, and then the skin was stained. This process resulted in the appearance of skin and lean and fatty layers of meat, the veining and hair follicles making the piece appear even more realistic.

Peeling and Cutting Butternut Squash

Someone once remarked that the best way to peel a butternut squash is to use a lathe.

The CC fully concurs.

However since most of us don't have a spare lathe sitting around — those of you that do can leave now! — here's how to cut it open in ten easy steps without cutting anything else open.

1. Slice off the top and bottom so that it can sit flat on a surface.
2. Put it on its side. Roll it around to see where it is most stable and using the chef's knife, make a length-wise incision. Press down. Let gravity do the work.
3. You will NOT be able to cut it into a half (most likely, sometimes it works.)
4. In that case, stand it up vertically. (This is where cutting the top and bottom works.) Now slice down vertically using the above incision as a guide. Again, let gravity do the work.
5. Congratulations. You have two halves. Start scooping out the stringly innards and the seeds.
6. Lay down the two flat halves face-down on a surface, and cut downwards with the knife letting gravity do the work.
7. This is the tricky part. You will have four quarters. They tend to be relatively stable when the triangular sections are facing upwards. Cut gently into eighths using the ridge as a guide again letting gravity do the work.
8. With a sharp vegetable peeler, cut the outer skin away from each of the eighths. This is straightforward since each one can be easily grasped. It's a lot of boring work but as they say, "Better boring than ER."
9. Wash, slice and dice.
10. Be thankful you don't run a restaurant.

Thanksgiving

Champagne with Pomegranates
♥ Bruschetta with Spicy Roasted Squash, Onion Jam & Feta ♣ Roasted Lamb with Rosemary, Caramelized Lemons & Black Pepper  ♦
Pear, Oyster Mushroom, Pomegranate, Pinenut & Prosciutto Stuffing
♦
Fingerling Potatoes with Figs & Thyme
♦
Cheese Course ♦ Chocolate

Things that make you go hmmm ...

Have you ever read a recipe in a cookbook and said to yourself, "There's no fuckin' way that can work!"?

Happens to the CC all the time. He then ends up yelling at the book which classifies him as one of the crazies but that's him, isn't it?

It comes with experience to all cooks even if you are not familiar with the cuisine in question. It's frequently just a matter of timings which have clearly not been tested and/or are more than a touch speculative. The amount of the sizes could also be all bollocksed to high heaven (tablespoons instead of teaspoons is all too common), or the proportions could be upsized and upchuck-worthy. (4 cups of water in 1 cup of flour will not yield a dough — it will yield a liquid mess!)

Here's a classic blooper from Lathika George's "The Kerala Kitchen".

(In the parlance of our time, this bitch be smokin' some serious crack!)

It's a classic egg curry found all over India. You hard-boil some eggs and separately make a curry. At the end, you cut the eggs length-wise and mix with the curry, re-heat and serve. Hardly complicated.

The trick that makes this specific recipe work is the same trick that makes classic French Onion Soup work. It requires a mass of onions to be browned and then a whole ton of spices and tomatoes are added to it. This turns into a dry curry.

The recipe in the book calls for the onions to be fried for 2-3 minutes and after that, the tomatoes to be cooked for two minutes.

In your fuckin' dreams, lady!

Even twenty minutes is too little for this to work. The last time the CC made a French Onion Soup, it took more than an hour for the onions to do their magic.

This is the principle of IST (Indian Stretchable Time) applied to cooking where five minutes really means fifty. (A lot of cultures have this principle encoded as a joke. There is even the concept of NST used by the "suitable in-crowd" and the CC will not translate that particular one.)

Now admittedly, this stuff is cooked at medium-high heat instead of the relatively gentle burble of the onions for the soup and the soup calls for a vastly larger number of onions but still. There is absolutely no fuckin' way in hell a mass of onions plus tomatoes is going to give up all that moisture in a total of five minutes. Incidentally, that's what frying really is — a precise way to remove moisture.

A significant fraction of this can squarely be blamed not on the author but on the editors. You needn't look towards the travesty of Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee. They are just the logical culmination of something that has been going on since Edouard de Pomiane in La Cuisine en dix minutes, ou l'Adaptation au rythme moderne.

We like speed. We like convenience. Cooking can be a chore even for the most committed amongst us. We are, alas, all too human.

Except that Pomiane was a genius. He clearly states what can and can't be hurried up and his entirely elegant solution for "hurrying up" is that if a recipe can't be hurried up, you shouldn't make it or serve it to your guests on a weeknight. Genius!

Pomiane's book is hands-down a work of a master and someone deeply steeped in the art of cooking. You will learn better from him how to make a classic sauce hollandaise than from all the textbooks and French chef's of the world. He has idiot-proofed something that is considered a "junior chef's challenge". (Science is why his technique works and since he was a physician and microbiologist, chances are that he understood in detail what he was doing.)

Editors, listen up! There is no shame in saying that something takes thirty minutes instead of three. There's no fuckin' shame in explaining in simple terms the science behind a recipe. People are smarter than you think and those that are likely to buy an obscure cookbook are much more likely to spend thirty minutes than three.

So don't try and push it. Not only do you get a travesty of a recipe but also you get an inedible fuckin' mess!

Isn't this entirely obvious?

So here's the classic egg curry from Kerala reworked for your benefit.

(And yes, the CC used a timer to time it as opposed to the gormless Ms. George who clearly did not test worth the proverbial Indian dam!)

Egg Curry

Ingredients

6 eggs (hard-boiled)

3-4 cups onions (very thinly sliced)
2 tomatoes (finely diced)

12 curry leaves
1 tbsp ginger (chopped into very thin slivers)
4 cloves garlic (sliced thin)
3-4 chillies slit lengthwise

1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chilli powder (or to taste)
4 tbsp black pepper
salt

Recipe

First make the eggs. Cover them in cold water. Bring them to a boil and turn the heat to low. Cook for 8 minutes. Remove and immediately dunk into an ice-bath to cool off.

You will get perfectly hard-boiled eggs without the yolk turning chalky and none of the green sulfurous ring around them.

Peel them and set aside.

Combine the turmeric, salt, chilli powder and black pepper with a few tablespoons of water to make a thick paste. Don't add too much water.

Heat up some oil and when heated (7 mins) dump in the mass of onions. Let fry on a medium-high heat until they change color but are not blackened. Roughly 17 minutes.

Twenty-four minutes and counting.

Dump in the curry leaves, ginger, garlic slit chillies, and let fry for a bit (3 minutes.)

Add the tomatoes and spice paste. You may need to add some water to make sure it doesn't burn. Let cook at a low heat for about 8 minutes until the tomatoes turn saucy.

We're up to 35 minutes now, you clueless bitch!

Cut the eggs length-wise into halves and add them yolk-side up and let them gently heat up to the sauce. About 3 minutes. Serve.

So nearly 40 minutes not counting the time to make the hard-boiled eggs.

Tomato-Flavored What Now?

We haven't had a good rant around these parts in a while so presenting ... tomato-flavored vodka.

The CC couldn't think past the obvious "bloody mary" but supposedly, it will "inspire" ideas.

Inspire away in the comments section!

Pepper Jelly

We love audience participation on this blog so the CC presents (a lightly edited) version of reader Marcus' post about preserving an excess of peppers in the South.

Recently, I sent a photo of some peppers to the CC. Upon seeing the cornucopia, he asked me to write a guest post. About what I wasn't sure but since my original email included mention of peppers and jelly, I thought I would write about the Southern tradition that is pepper jelly! 

Here in Arkansas, pepper plants grow from March until the end of October (our first freeze was last night). I start my peppers in January indoors and transplant them in late March or early April depending on the weather. Peppers produce fruit relatively quickly, so you can get a LOT of peppers from a single plant through the year, which makes food preservation a necessity (waste not, want not). The first photo is about 1/3rd of the peppers in my garden on the day these where picked, about a week ago. I measured 6.4 kg total. This is an assortment of cayenne, serrano, jalapeno, anaheim, poblano, bell, and a variety of other sweet peppers. 

Pepper jelly is one of those rare items I have never seen for sale (or maybe just never looked for) in a grocery store but with which I've been acquainted all my life as with eating certain wild game. We were given some wonderful pepper jelly last year — that's where it always comes from, you see, someone gives it to you — and were thus inspired to try our hand at making some. Neither the wife nor I had ever made the sweet concoction, so it was a first for us both. The second photo is a shot of the final product. This photo is actually all the jars from two batches. 

Last night while filling jars from the second batch, I had the forethought to pull some off for later. It can take two weeks for jelly to set but I wanted to try a bite sooner. I put the small portion on my eggs this morning. It's quite a bit hotter than most people would make, but I like the heat. Very delicious! My 1-year old insisted on having some on her eggs as well (she refuses to be left out of anything). She would take a bite, cough, drink some milk, then take another bite! 

(Edit from the wife) Because this recipe is high on the heat factor, the recipe card is now labeled "Hot Pepper Jelly", instead of Pepper Jelly. In future batches, I may deseed the peppers or select fewer of the hot varieties so we have options on the shelf, similar to mild, medium and hot salsa.
 

For the record, the CC has only one thing to add, "Go, go, go, little baby!" (for the heat-loving factor.)

On the Love of Specialized Instruments

The CC owns something called a "bird beak paring knife". It's a paring knife with a curved beak (presumably like that of a bird.)

Mostly it's used for carving stuff - you know, edible roses and stuffed cherry tomatoes. The kinda fussy stuff which the CC generally doesn't get to very often.

It originally came in a package set and has been gathering dust ever since.

The CC has finally found a very good use for it. It's perfect for de-seeding and de-pithing the inside of a bitter melon when you want to stuff it.

The stuffing for this recipe is from Kashmir. Specifically, it seems to be a relatively modern vegetarian adaptation of what must inevitably originally have been a Mughal meat dish.

That it is a vegetarian response to the original marriage of Mongol and Persian traditions to Indian spices can hardly be in doubt. That it happens to feature the altogether New World potato means that it can be no more than 250-300 years old (long enough for the potato not only to cross the shores but enter into a routine upper middle-class vocabulary.) There's a variant that uses paneer which may be marginally older. (And then there are hybrids which are just the normal evolution of any dish.)

Even if you don't end up stuffing bitter melons, do make this recipe. It would be amazing stuffed in just about anything - peppers, tomatoes, zuccini, squash. It's all about the spices.

Several versions are presented below. Feel free to pick from any of them because the magic is in the texture and the spices. In fact, the CC guarantees that you will have to stop yourself from stuffing yourself just from the stuffing.

Just for full disclosure, this recipe is definitely "fussy" and time-consuming. Its origins clearly lie when emperors had armies of cooks from whence it filtered down into homes with cooks from whence it filtered down into regular homes where the wives stayed at home all day and were bored. It's not going to jive well with modern sensibilities but it made a lot of sense when the CC was cooped in all-day after a pesky little hurricane.

Q: What does he do when he's bored?
A: He stuffs fuckin' karela's.
E: Nice!

For the modern-day readers' convenience, short-cuts are suggested but you will definitely miss out on some of the textural element in the dish.

Ingredients

8 bitter melons (prepared - read below)

Stuffing

1 large red onion
4 green chillies (finely diced)

Meat or Potatoes

3 large potatoes
or
2 potatoes
1 cup crumbled paneer
or
2 cups minced meat

Spice Mix 1 (Whole)

1 tbsp fennel seeds
2 tbsp nigella
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp dried ginger (substitute by fresh)
3 tbsp amchur (dried green mango powder)

Spice Mix 2 (Ground fine)

2 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp garam masala
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds

Recipe

First prepare the bitter melons. You need to scrape them clean till they are pale green and look like naked dead skinned green mole rats. Using a very sharp paring knife, cut them length-wise gently making sure that you don't slice them down the middle. This is harder than you think because every once in a while you will encounter a hard seed. Have no fears! Jump over the seed and continue. The problem will fix itself.

Gently with your fingers separate it along the edges. Be careful of both ends. They have a tendency to break. Using the bird-beak knife (or your fingers), gently reach inside and start scraping away at the seeds and the pith. This will take a few tries but as it does you will notice that it becomes easier and easier. (This was a surprise to the CC!)

There are pesky seeds at either end of the length of the bitter melon every once in a while. It's quite tough but you can do it! They must be removed.

You will have eight stuffable bitter melons which you need to thoroughly rinse and set aside until they dry.

When dry, thoroughly salt the inside and the outside of the bitter melon. Set aside in a colander for at least an hour. At the end of the hour, you will notice that the bitter melon has turned very very soft and flexible because the salt has changed its celullar structure and drawn out quite a bit of the bitterness. Thoroughly wash the melons both inside and outside one more time and set aside until they are dry.

Meanwhile, while the bitter melons are salting, prepare the stuffing.

The potato needs to be diced into what the French would call a small dice. You could do a brunoise but then you would really have to be extraordinarily bored. (Crumble the paneer with your hands into tiny irregular pieces.)

Hurrah, meat-eaters! You have something over the granola's after all. You don't need to do anything. All the prep above is doing is simulating the texture of ground meat.

The onion also needs to be diced really fine. So the meat-eaters can't really escape from the prep after all. Welcome to the jungle, my friends!

(Since the CC promised short-cuts, you can just dice the potatoes and do a quick mash with a potato masher in the pot and let cook for an additional 6-7 minutes. However, not the same. Be aware, be strong!)

In a large shallow pot with a lid, fry the onions and green chillies till the onions are translucent. Add the first set of whole spices, and fry for about 30 seconds. Add the potatoes (or meat) and fry for about 6-7 minutes till it changes color. Add water and cover.

Let cook until done. It's different for different versions. At least 15 minutes for either one, and possibly a tad more for the vegetarian versions.

Uncover and let cook till it's relatively dry. Toss in the second set of spices and mix thoroughly.

Let the stuffed mixture cool down.

Stuff the bitter melons. (Try not to eat all the stuffing. You will attempt anyway. You will be hunted down like the animals that you are by your own families so beware!)

You can pre-prep this recipe upto this point and let the stuffed vegetables sit in your refrigerator for a few days.

In a shallow skillet with a lid that can hold all the bitter melons, heat up some oil. When it is shimmering add the stuffed bitter melons gently face-down and let them fry for about 7 minutes at medium-high heat. Turn them over gently with a pair of tongs and let them fry for an additional 4-5 minutes. Gently add about a cup of water and cover the lid. Let cook for about 10 minutes on a very low flame till they are completely tender.

Serve with some parathas and some raita.

What a Wonderfully Odd Fact!

Sometimes the best part of an article is a throwaway sentence that illuminates so much.

The process of sun-drying shrimp was introduced to Louisiana over a hundred years ago by Chinese and Filipino immigrants who saw the shrimp-rich region as an opportunity for export.
 

How wonderfully amazing!

And then local cooks started incorporating the concentrated flavors of the dried shrimp into their gumbo!

Food Storm

Apparently, we're stormed in.

However, the CC had two food shopping trips organized on Friday and Saturday. Long before he had heard of this pesky little problem that seems to be imminent.

Friday consisted of some wonderful shopping at the Indian and Korean markets in Jackson Heights.

Saturday consisted of some wonderful shopping at the Greek markets in Astoria.

The latter was followed up by some wonderful Japanese ramen in Astoria. (Those Japanese hipsters! They can't quite resist those cheap rents, can they?)

This (storm) too shall pass.

Improptu Dinner Party

Shishito Peppers with Sea Salt
♦
Zebra Tomatoes with Arbequina Olive Oil and Sea Salt
♦
Autumn Mac-n-Cheese with Vegetables
♦
Cheese Course (with Duck-Fat Ciabatta)
♦
Chocolate

You Always Think It'll Happen To Other People

This summer, for the first time, the CC has finally OD'd on tomatoes!

Would You Rather Be a Fruit or a Vegetable?

Humans are a fairly omnivorous species.

We eat roots and tubers, stems and stalks, leaves, flowers, seaweeds, and fungii and call them all vegetables.

We also eat fruits.

Most interestingly, we eat some fruits and call them vegetables^†.

A substantial reason for this is the United States Supreme Court decision from 1893 in the matter of Nix v. Hedden. And like all momentous events in the United States, it all comes down to a matter of taxation.

The Tariff Act of 1883 required a tax to be paid on imported vegetables but not fruit. The "intuitive" notion, which of course is not the botanical notion, was that fruits were sweet and were "mostly eaten as is" and vegetables were not and were "cooked".

It all came down to a matter of dueling dictionaries.

Common parlance^‡ won and the tomato "became" a vegetable!

† tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, chillis, tomatillo, squashes, cucumber, legumes, peas, avocado, corn, okra and olives.

‡ If you really want to freak your vegetarian friends out, when you're eating fruit, be sure to say loudly, "Mmmmmmmmmm ... tasty ripe ovaries!" (because that's what they actually are!)

Flatbread with Dandelion Greens

There are recipes that are old friends. The years go by, and you keep perfecting them (and there's always something to be perfected, isn't there?)

This one is an oldie. The CC got it from a friend's magazine (Seriously! The CC wouldn't be caught dead buying those magazines.)

Over the years, it's been rationalized and made much much more scientific. It's been through the paces more than a few times. More spices have been added and tweaks made but the basic ideas remain the same. You, my good friends, are the beneficiaries of the CC's hard work.

It's an idea as old as time. Bread topped with tasty stuff topped with cheese. If you're thinking "pizza" then that's what it resembles, of course.

What makes it interesting is what the "stuff" is and how the "bread" is constructed.

It's basically a very classic long-fermented dough topped with dark leafy slightly-bitter greens with tomatoes and Indian spices topped with salty feta. A Greek friend mentioned that it very strongly resembles what they call "Arabic Pie".

It's truly a wondrous recipe. So make this one. It takes a little effort but it has a rock-your-world kinda taste. It will certainly rock your party!


Ingredients

Dough

1/4 cup rye flour
2 cups whole wheat flour (sifted)
3/4 cup dark rye flour
1/2 tsp dried yeast
2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups water
cilantro (chopped fine)
rosemary (chopped fine)
1 tbsp ground pepper

Topping

1 large red onion (very finely diced)

3" ginger
5 garlic cloves
2-3 Thai green chillies (or 1 serrano)

1 stick cinnamon
2 tsp whole coriander
1 tsp whole cumin
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tbsp fennel

3-4 cardamom pods

1 cup tomato sauce
6 cups chopped dandelion greens

olive oil
salt

crumbled feta

Recipe

Dough

Just a few notes about commercial yeast. It is built to reproduce fast but that doesn't allow flavor to build so you need to retard it. The standard way is just to stick it in the refrigerator and give it much much longer times to do its thing. This recipe was made last week when Fall made its way. The house was extraordinarily cool which is functionally the same thing as a refrigerator. The CC trudged off to the NYFF while the dough did its thing.

You want a cool long fermentation process not a fast one. Otherwise, the dough which is part of the magic will have no taste. 

You need to prepare this dough early in the day for consumption at night.

In a very roomy glass bowl, add 1/4 cup of rye flour with the dried yeast and mix with about 1/2 cup of luke-warm water. Err on the cooler side. Hot water will definitely kill the yeast. Let it sit for about 20 minutes.

This is an old baker's trick. Rye flour is like crack-cocaine for yeast. They will reproduce and go crazy. It's called a poolish (French) or biga (Italian).

After 20 minutes, the sludge will be all foamy. (If not, your yeast is dead. Discard and try again.)

Add the sifted whole-wheat flour, rye flour, cilantro, rosemary, salt, black pepper. Add water slowly and knead until you get a solid but pliable ball. (This really depends on the weather and humidity. The CC just adds water slowly until he gets it right.)

Cover the bowl tightly and let it sit for at least 8 hours.

After 8 hours, you will notice that the dough is a lot more "flowy". The yeast have eaten away the sugars and left the gluten behind. Deflate the dough.

Form a ball one more time. If it's very wet, you may need to add a little bit more flour.

Cover and let it sit for a 2-3 hours. It will rise a lot faster the second time around.

Topping

Roast the spices in a dry skillet. Make sure they don't burn. Set aside and grind in a clean coffee grinder.

Pound the ginger, green chillies and garlic to a paste. Set aside.

Heat up some olive oil. Fry the onions for about 4 minutes. Add the paste above and fry for a while. Add the tomato sauce. Let it cook for about 6 minutes.

Add the greens with some salt. They will give off a lot of water. Let them cook at a medium-low heat until almost all the water is gone.

Add the ground spices, mix and set aside.

Assembly

Cover a large rectangular 9"x16" pizza tray with aluminum foil. This makes cleanup easy.

Pour some olive oil and spread all over. This ensures that the dough doesn't stick. Deflate the dough gently with your hands. Dump it in the tray, flatten it gently with your fingers so that it assumes the rectangular shape of the tray. The dough will be quite "doughy" so this step is quite easy.

Top with the greens mixture from above. Add crumbled feta on top.

Pre-heat the oven to 450°F.

The CC lets the tray sit near the oven while it pre-heats for about 20-25 minutes. Consider this as the third rising of the dough. (It rises really rapidly.)

Bake for about 14 minutes. (You will need to check because the feta can easily burn.)

Let it rest for about 7 minutes. (Yes, this is important. It's still cooking even though you've pulled it out of the oven.)

Slice and devour!

The Haul

Shishito peppers (so late!), flat beans, zebra tomatoes (again, so late!), dandelion greens, rosemary.

Already, the brassicaceae are out in full force but the weather being a little too warm means it was a little early for the CC. In any case, there will enough of them all winter.

The End of Summer

This is it. Summer is gone.

Tomatoes, last of the cherry tomatoes, last of the eggplants, chives, onions.

Saw cauliflower for the first time. Fall is here.

Okra

Most people have a love/hate affair with the vegetable. The CC naturally loves it.

When he was but a little child, he adored it beyond reason. (Clearly, the CC had advanced tastes even back then.)

The trick with okra that makes it "slimy" is that if it's wet, it has a tendency to leak slime. Cellular-wall decomposition and all that. It needs to be pan-fried at a high-heat and it's absolutely necessary that the okra not be wet. You will get spectacular reaults if you just ensure this simple rule.

You must dry it thoroughly with a piece of cloth or if you are lazy, pop it in a pre-heated oven at very low heat (without allowing it to cook.) Either way, the okra must be bone-dry.

The recipe below is a classic Bengali Recipe. As you might guess, there are similar recipes with variations in the spices all over India with much discussion about which is the "best".

The CC refuses to get into that particular Vietnam. He likes them all and the topic is a bit of a snooze-fest anyway.

This one is quite lovely (particularly because of the fennel and nigella) but why quibble over relative greatness?

Dharosh Chorchori

Ingredients

15 pods okra
1 large onion (sliced into thin quarter-moons)

1 1/2 tsp turmeric
1 green chilli (diced fine)

3-4 fresh green chillies

2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp panch phoran

salt (to taste)

Recipe

Slice of the stem and tip of the okra. Make a couple of length-wise gashes on the body of the vegetable.

Slit the 3-4 green chillies length-wise with a gash.

Pound the turmeric and finely diced chillies with a tablespoon of water and grind to a fine paste.

Heat the oil in a wok. Add panch phoran and cook till the spluttering stops. Add the okra. Stir-fry for about 6 minutes. Add salt, the masala paste, the sliced onions and the green chillies.

Stir-fry for about 2-3 minutes. Add about half a cup of water. Simmer till the pan is nearly dry.

(Note: This is a "dry dish". It would normally be served with rice, a "wet dish" and a daal.)

Panch Phoran

It's a classic Bengali spice-mixture. Literally means five-spices (although different from the Chinese five-spice mix.)

It consists of equal parts of cumin, fennel, fenugreek, nigella and radhuni.

The latter may be hard to get but it's necessary.

Although they ask you to substitute by mustard seeds, radhuni tastes nothing like mustard. It's closer in spirit to celery seeds than anything else.

Late Summer Harvest

Pole beans, purple beans, cranberry beans, tomatoes (heirloom and not-so-heirloom), onions, zucchini, pattypan-squash, chives, basil, rosemary.

Not in the least bit over-the-top. No sirree!

Yellow Nails

The CC was expecting it. Any moment the question would be asked.

It was asked today.

"Why are your nails yellow? You don't smoke!

The CC laughed. He has been the beneficiary of fresh turmeric and has been cooking a lot with it recently (recipes and pictures to follow.)

Turmeric stains your hands and your nails. Alas, good food has consequences.

The stains shall fade but the food will live on in the blogs!

Clams in Dry Masala

Every week a local fisherman comes to the farmers' market. They have whatever they catch the previous day.

This being the East Coast, they always have clams which the CC never fully appreciated before living out here. Now, they are the most purchased weekly item (after tomatoes, of course!)

There are two classics that the CC makes often — spaghetti with clams and asari gohan (あさりご飯).

This recipe is from the Konkan region in India. It's quite straightforward, and it's in the sukke style (as in it's a dry dish.)

Ingredients

2 dozen clams
1 small onion (diced fine)
1 sprig curry leaves
1/2 cup fresh/frozen coconut
2-3 pieces of tamarind

1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chilli powder (or more)

oil
salt

Recipe

First soak the tamarind pieces in 1/2 cup of boiling water. Set aside for 15 minutes or so. When done, mash the tamarind with your hands (the water should've cooled down.) Pass through a fine sieve and retain the liquid. Toss in the turmeric, chilli powder and salt into the liquid and mix thoroughly. Make sure you don't get lumps of turmeric and/or chilli powder. You need to make sure they mix thoroughly.

In a small pot, heat the oil. When it shimmers, fry the onions until they are translucent. Add the curry leaves and fry for a bit. Add the coconut and fry for a minute. Add the clams and fry for a bit. Toss in the tamarind liquid (which has the spices mixed in.)

Cook uncovered until the clams open. Serve immediately with rice.

Zucchini Burgers

These babies never go out of style!


Recipe link.

Tortang Talong (Eggplant Omelette)

Summer means eggplant, and there's no better way to start off a Sunday than with this sublime combination of smoky eggplants and eggs.

Incidentally, the Filipino world is divided into those that add ground pork as a topping, and those that don't. The CC refuses to take sides in this particular debate. De gustibus ..., etc.



Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 eggplants
2 eggs

1 tbsp patis (substitute with salt)
oil

Recipe

Grill the eggplants until the skin is charred. If you don't have a grill (like the CC), stick them directly on top of the flame of the burner. Keep turning until it is nicely charred. Set aside.

When cool, the skin will peel off quite easily.

Gently smash the eggplant with a fork into a flat roundish shape (like the picture above.) Try not to puncture it. (If you do, don't worry too much. The eggs will seal it.)

In a separate bowl, crack the eggs. Add the patis and whip till blended.

Each eggplant will be dipped in this mixture and pan-fried.

Heat some oil in a skillet. When shimmering, add the egg-dipped eggplant. As the egg sets, you will need to gently wrap it around the eggplant.

Serve hot. (The topping above is Sriracha, of course!)

Panzanella

Been craving it for a month. Finally got it.

The CC is in a tomato-haze.

Cucina di povera never goes wrong when the cravings hit.

Tomato Heaven

The CC's freezer is filled with homemade "tomato paste" and a large amount of "tomato sauce".

The house smells divine.

Some of the "tomato sauce" will be for present consumption. Some more might be made depending on the weather.

Bring it on, February!

The Return of Tomato Man!

Today at the farmers' market, the CC was grabbing tomatoes to make tomato sauce and tomato paste to freeze.

The farmer said, "Grab them while you can, Tomato Man. Fall is coming. I can see the fear in your eyes!"

Raita with Cherry Tomatoes & Chives

Authenticity be damned, the CC damn near ate the entire thing while tasting it!

(It's not that far removed from a classic onion and tomato raita. So there!)

Ingredients

1 cup Greek yogurt
12 red cherry tomatoes
12 yellow cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped chives
salt
black pepper

Recipe

Quarter the tomatoes. Toss everything together. You may need to add a few tablespoons of water to get the desired smooth consistency.

Ginisang Ampalaya (Sautéed Bitter-Melons with Egg)

This one is for the bitter melon lovers out there. (You know who you are.)

It's a straightforward Filipino breakfast dish. You sautée some bitter melon rounds with onions, patis (fish sauce), garlic, black pepper and eggs.

You can add ground pork, or not. You can add bell peppers, or not. You can add tomatoes, or not.

There's a lot of that "or not" in Filipino cooking.

Only constant here seem to be that it wouldn't make any sense to have a sautéed bitter melon dish without bitter melons, would it now?

Also, the eggs are key. They act as counterpoint.

The eggs were lightly scrambled because that's the way the CC rolls.

You may want to roll differently, or not.

Tomato Risotto with Oregano, Fennel & Feta

This recipe was originally by Diane Kochilas — a Greek adaptation of the Italian risotto — and it had the risotto cooked in Ouzo. (Can you hear the howls from Italy already?)

Anise tends to have an overpowering smell (at least to the CC) so he toned it down by using fresh fennel instead of Ouzo or Pernod.

Incidentally, fresh fennel is still plenty potent.

The feta does add a wonderfully creamy element, and the recipe tends towards the richer side because of the overpowering smell from the fennel and umami from the summer tomatoes.



Ingredients

8 ripe tomatoes
1 bulb fennel (finely chopped)
1 shallot (finely minced)
4 cloves garlic (finely minced)
2 cups carnaroli rice
4 cups broth.

2 tbsp fresh oregano (chopped)
1 tbsp lemon zest (optional)
olive oil
salt
black pepper

2/3 cup feta

Recipe

The original recipe has the tomatoes grated over a box grater but with summer tomatoes, it was easy enough to just pass them through a food mill.

Sautée the shallots, fennel and garlic in olive oil. Keep the broth on a simmer in a separate vessel near by.

Add the rice and fry making sure that each rice grain is covered in the oil.

Add the broth and the tomatoes alternately. Keep stirring the risotto until it absorbs all the broth. Make sure it's not over cooked. It should still have a bite (al dente) and the mixture should just be slightly on the wet side.

Stir in the feta, oregano and lemon zest at the end right before serving.

Roasted Tomato & Eggplant Soup

This soup is a high-octane summer dish.

Those of you who own grills are probably going to be happier because the heat would dissipate outdoors. Those of you who will be forced to use a broiler are probably not going to be happy campers but it's summer so you takes your amazing veggie dishes where you get them.

The dish doesn't take a lot of work and the results are wildly out of proportion to the simplicity. (Maestro Maillard strikes again!)



Roasted Tomato & Eggplant Soup

2 large eggplants
6-8 garlic cloves
4-6 ripe summer tomatoes
1 large onion
1 sprig rosemary
4 cups broth

olive oil
salt
black pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds (ground fine)

2 oz goat cheese (or feta)

Recipe

Halve the eggplant along its length. Halve the onion. Peel the garlic cloves but leave them whole. Halve the tomatoes horizontally.

In a large pan, place all of the above with the cut surfaces facing upwards towards the broiler, and broil them for about 7 minutes. The CC had to do this in batches (eggplants, onions, garlic in the first; tomatoes in the second.)

If you grill them, the cut surfaces should be facing downwards (DUH!)

Cut up the grilled onion into chunks. Don't work too hard. It will not matter.

In a large pot, sautée the onions with some olive oil. Chop up the eggplants and garlic, and fry for about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, broth, ground coriander, salt and black pepper, and let simmer for about 20-25 minutes.

Purée the mixture.

Top with the goat cheese right before serving.

The Sufferings of Summer

The CC went to the farmers' market this weekend, and then his friend's mother gave him a "small" helping of the vegetables from her garden. Her version of "small" is enough to feed a small city!

The CC's kitchen overfloweth.

White House Beer

Whatever your political inclination, enjoy the beer!

Tomato-Fest

Heirloom Tomatoes with "Arbequina" Olive Oil & Sea-Salt
♦
Cherry-Tomato Skewers with Truffled Cheese
♦
Roasted Tomato and Eggplant Soup
♦
Tomato Water Shots
◊
Pasta with Tomato Sauce
♦
Tomato, Tarragon, Lime & Jalapeño Granita

End of Hiatus

The CC has been missing for a while. Good and interesting things have been happening. Let's just call it Summer Siesta and be done with it.

However, he has been cooking up a storm, and reading like crazy. Expect some good material over the upcoming weeks.

Sardinian Pasta with Bottarga

Bottarga is the roe pouch of mullet (sometimes tuna) that is dried and cured in sea salt.

It's an extreme delicacy in the Mediterranean and also in Japan where it goes by the name of karasumi.

Since it's dried, it's generally served either grated or shaved into thin slices.

It makes for a wonderful dish with tomatoes that are bursting in flavor. The potent combination of umami from the bottarga, tomatoes and cheese make for an unforgettable combination.



Ingredients

1/2 lb dried pasta

2 cloves garlic (minced)
1 dried red chilly pepper
3/4 cup quartered cherry tomatoes

1/2 lobe bottarga (grated fine)
1/2 cup Pecorino Sardo (grated - substitute by parmigiano-reggiano)

1/2 cup chopped chives
olive oil

Recipe

Note: The bottarga and the cheese contain plenty of salt. Please do not add any more or you risk the dish becoming overly salty. You can always taste and add in a little towards the end but the CC seriously doubts that you will need to.

Sautée the garlic, chilly peppers in some olive oil. Add the tomatoes and a little black pepper, and let cook until the tomatoes are softened.

Meanwhile cook the pasta until al dente.

While the pasta and sauce are cooking, grate the bottarga fine using either a box grater or a microplane in a mixing bowl.

Toss the pasta, sauce, bottarga, chives and cheese together, and serve.

A Summer Filipino Meal

The classic signature dish of Filipino cooking is the adobo.

In the great spirit of free-wheeling language that the Philippines subscribes to, and the fact that English loves verbalizing nouns, you can "adobo" anything!

Traditionally, it's been used for meats and seafoods but it extends to vegetables and all and sundry. It's one of the great meta-recipes of all time!

As with all classic dishes, if you query three people, you'd probably get thirty recipes so to invoke a broad generalization, you are looking at a cooked sauce of soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves and black peppercorns reduced to various degrees depending on the dish.

Filipinos from the Bicol region even add coconut milk but this is considered "strange". A friend's father once stage whispered to the CC, "'Some' people even add coconut milk!"

Some people indeed do! Some strange people indeed!

As the Japanese say, 十人十色 (ten people, ten colors — different strokes for different folks!)

The salt (from the soy sauce) and vinegar betray the tropical origins of the dish. An acidic dish like that can be stored without any refrigeration because bacteria cannot grow in that environment.

You might think that the vinegar would give it a really sharp taste but cooking the vinegar gives it this smooth rounded mellow taste that's hard to describe but entirely brilliant. It sets your taste buds alive without that mouth-puckering taste that a tart vinaigrette might invoke.

For this summer meal, since the CC has access to really fresh seafood, a squid adobo was made. The sauce is finished off with the ink which gives it an iodine-y edge of the sea. (All of this is extraordinarily traditional.)

The side salad is another classic accompaniment - radishes, tomatoes and roasted dried anchovies in a slightly spicy sour sauce.

They definitely do love their souring agents!



Radish Salad with Anchovies (Dilis)

Ingredients

4 red radishes (or 1 small daikon)
2 tomatoes
4-6 tbsp vinegar (to taste)
2 tbsp patis (Filipino fish sauce)
4 green chillies (minced)
2 tbsp minced ginger
black pepper

1/2 cup dried anchovies

Recipe

Cut the radishes really fine. A mandoline helps here. Chop the tomatoes.

Mix together everything but the anchovies. This stuff can be prepared ahead of time. Be warned that the mixture will leach water as time goes by. (Yes, this is desirable.)

(The CC keeps the above mixture in the fridge for ready access. He loves this dish beyond reason. It makes the perfect "no-cook" nutritionally-complete dish for summer with umami out the wazoo.)

Roast the dried anchovies on a skillet. They will burn really quickly since they are really really flat and small so you need to be careful. Set aside.

Right before serving, mix the dried anchovies with the mixture above including the liquid. Serve right away.

Adobong Pusit (Squid Adobo)

(Source: Burnt Lumpia.)

Ingredients

1 lb squid (squid ink separated)
1 large red onion, sliced
6 cloves garlic
2 green chillies
1 tbsp minced ginger

1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup cane vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup water
8-12 black peppercorns

squid ink

Recipe

Clean the squid and separate the ink from the ink-sac. This is a messy process so proceed carefully. Cut the squid into rings and set aside.

(In a chicken adobo which doesn't have the blackness of the squid ink, the black peppercorns are kept whole but for a dish like this, you're better off grinding the peppercorns.)

In a pan, heat the oil. Fry the onions, garlic, and green chillies for a bit. Add the soy sauce, vinegar, water, black peppercorns and bay leaves. Let reduce for a bit.

(Your nose will tell you when the vinegar no longer has that sharp vinegary taste. There is a very very characteristic "adobo smell", and only experience can teach you this one at least until the CC invents Smell-O-Vision™!)

Bring to a boil. Take off the heat.

Toss in the squid, and squid ink. The heat will cook the squid just enough to be ready.

Apologia

As you well know, this summer has been a scorcher. The herbs have died in the heat, and as for cooking, forget about it.

There have been a lot of cold salads in the CC's repertoire lately!

So posts will be resuming shortly just as it cools off a little.

Indonesian Crackers

The Indonesians have an entire world of fried crackers - krupuk - quite possibly the most variety in the world.

One that particularly stand out are called rempeyek. They are made with rice flour, coconut milk, spices and an extra ingredient.

The CC has seen the "extra" in the following variations - dried anchovies, peanuts, moong beans. Also, combinations of the afore-mentioned.

They are insanely addictive and not to be missed if you can find a local Indonesian market.

Julia was Right!

Turns out that butter is just better!

Particularly for sautéeing scallops.

And most of the fat just stays behind in the pan anyway, and you can drain them. They are rendered sweet and juicy just the way they were meant to be.

Of course, it matters that you get fresh scallops not frozen ones.

Miso-Glazed Cod

This is one of the simplest recipes that the CC has ever provided. It's basically a "shake-n-bake" with fancier ingredients, and definitely what you want in summer time when it's too hot to cook.

The only caveat is that you must prep it a day before.

Prepare a small side-salad (also cold) and you have a simple summer meal.

Ingredients

2 cod fillets

1/3 cup sake
1/3 cup mirin
4 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce

Recipe

Mix the ingredients together to a paste, and let the cod fillets marinate in it overnight in the refrigerator. (The CC just puts them all in a plastic bag.)

Turn the broiler on. Broil the fillets for 4 minutes.

(If you like you can reduce the marinade in a skillet over high heat and pour over the broiled fillets. This "pan sauce" is amazing!)

Mercado de San Miguel

In Madrid. Foodie's dream come true.

Prawn Curry with Eggplants, Long Beans & Soy

A Classical Keralan Lunch

A blast from the past but fun to remember nevertheless!


(Counter-clockwise) Spicy fish curry, papaddum, avial,
fried prawns, red lentils with coconut, rosematta rice

Bilimbi

They are called bilimbi in India or kamias in the Philippines. In fact, they are almost unheard of outside the tropical countries. They are used as a souring agent because of their tart taste.

They are just awesome either cooked or eaten raw with salt and spice. (Link.)

Cashew Curry

This recipe really really rocks!

(Source: S. H. Fernando with some help from Peter Kuruvita.)


Cashew Curry

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups raw cashews
1/2 tsp turmeric

1 onion (diced fine)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
2" piece ginger (minced)
2" stalk lemongrass
3-5 green chillies
1 sprig curry leaves

1 tbsp Maldive fish flakes

1 tbsp coriander powder
1 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup cilantro (diced fine)
salt to taste

Recipe

Soak the cashews in water overnight. Yes, this is important.

Boil the cashews along with the turmeric until tender roughly 10-12 minutes. The CC used fresh turmeric but feel free to use the powdered stuff. Drain and set aside.

In a pan, heat some oil. When shimmering, add the curry leaves. Be careful since they tend to splatter. Add the onions, green chillies, garlic, lemongrass, ginger and fish flakes and fry for a bit till the onions are soft but not so much that they caramelize.

Add the cashews and the coconut milk, and bring to a boil on low heat. Add the coriander powder and let cook for about 6-7 minutes at a very low heat.

Sprinkle the cilantro just before serving.

Rice

Ingredients

1 cup basmati rice
6 pods cardamom
1 leaf pandanus (optional)

1 3/4 cups water.

Recipe

Fry the whole cardamoms in some oil until fragrant. Add the rice and the pandanus leaf and fry till well coated. Add the water and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and let cook covered until done (roughly 10 minutes.)

Dinner chez le CC

Mizuna Salad
Broiled Hake with miso, mirin and shoyu

♥

Roasted Garlic and Duck-fat Ciabatta
New York Cheddar

♥

Strawberries

Summer Sizzle

The city has gone from cold and rainy to muggy and stifling in the blink of an eye! Even eating is hard to do let alone contemplate slaving over a hot stove for hours.

In that spirit, here's a terrific recipe for a marinade for fish.

Two tablespoons white miso, 4 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsp sake.

Marinade the fish.

Put in a broil-proof pan, add more of the marinade on top and broil for four minutes.

Serve with a cool salad.

Cooking Myths (Part 3)

There seems to be pervasive myth that if you remove the seeds from a green chilli then it loses its heat.

Except that all the heat of a chilli is in the skin not the seeds.

Remove them for aesthetic reasons but don't be under any delusion that you are reducting the heat quotient!

Dancing Fish Flakes

One of the spookiest presentation tricks used in Japanese pub food (izakaya) is topping hot food like takoyaki (fried octopus balls) with very thin shavings of katsuobushi.

The heat rising from the freshly fried food makes the thin shavings vibrate to and fro like seaweed.

It's both spectacular and creepy at the same time!

Drunken Noodles with Shiitake & Cashews

Every time the CC reads one of those ridiculous vegan recipes written by a chick – and yes! it's always a chick – even when the flavor pairings are quite attractive, he realizes that they have absolutely no idea of what actually makes the recipe tick at either a deep scientific or cultural level.

This is one of those recipes.

So the CC being the CC went back and reworked the recipe back to what it should've been in the first place. The integrity of the recipe has been preserved (still the same flavor combinations), and it's still vegan!

At the heart of it, the recipe is a classic Japanese dashi-laden broth with udon noodles except that the broth has been infused with classic Indian flavors. Textural variation is added by the addition of cashews (definitely not Japanese since they are New World!) The mushrooms add the umami-oomph as explained here, and there are carrots for color and nutrition.

The recipe is terrific! (The CC's version not the zombie vegan chick's version which is positively upchuck-worthy!)

May technique and culture win over mindless zombie cultists! (Not terribly likely but one can only hope.)


Ingredients

4 cups dashi
1" ginger (chopped coarsely)
4-6 green chillies

1 pack udon noodles

1/2 cup shiitake mushrooms
1/4 cup carrots (cut into fine sticks)
1/2 cup cashews

2 tbsp shoyu (soy sauce)
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp sugar
salt

1/4 cup cilantro (finely chopped)
1 scallion (cut at a steep diagonal)

Recipe

Roast the cashews in the oven at 375°F for about 15 minutes. Be careful since they have a tendency to burn.

Meanwhile make the dashi. You can make it vegan by making it shōjin ryōri style by just using konbu.

Then add the ginger, green chillies, soy sauce, mirin, salt and sugar to it and let it stew gently for about 15 minutes. Strain, and toss the ginger and green chillies.

Toss in the shiitake mushrooms and carrots and set aside.

Taste. It should have a strong bite but be balanced in its flavor. Adjust as necessary.

Cook the udon noodles. Drain and pour them into individual bowls.

Top with the broth, cashews, scallions and cilantro.

Ras-el-Hanout

The name translates to "top-of-the-house" meaning the best spice blend that the spice house has to sell.

Each Moroccan spice house tries to outdo the other in the exoticism of their ingredients. This is just good advertising and product differentiation at play.

Given below is the CC's version which is adapted from Paula Wolfert and Mourad Lahlou.

It's also correctly "scaled-down" as explained here because most books give industrial-sized versions which rather than goad the CC into pawing his way to the kitchen make him contemplate on the elegance of takeout.

Ingredients

1 nutmeg
2 blades of mace
1 cinnamon stick (or cassia)
6 cloves
12 peppercorns
1 dried red pepper
1 small piece dried galangal
6 green cardamoms
1 black cardamom

1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp lavender
1/2 tsp grains of paradise
1/4 tsp cumin
1 tsp dried ginger powder
1/2 tsp aniseed (or fennel)

10 dried rose buds
large pinch of saffron

Spring is Here

That means asparagus!

Also procured at the markets today — mizuna, parsley, cod, clams.

Still a little early for vegetables because of the cool weather we're having lately.

Maldive Fish Flakes

They are fish flakes that are made from skipjack tuna which is the same fish that the Japanese use to make katsuobushi.

The difference is that while the Japanese process involves smoked drying followed by a precise fermentation and sun-drying, the Sri Lankan process involves just sun-drying the lean parts of the fish.

They "dissolve" in the dish and lend it a deep umami flavor, and it's absolutely indispensible to Sri Lankan food.

Good Morning, Oysters!

Eggs Benedict w/ Fried Oysters

Oyster Po-Boy

Oysters!

In the immortal words of Mae West, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!"

New Orleans

Oysters and gumbo and beignets, oh my!

Trip to New Orleans

The CC departs for New Orleans tomorrow.

He will leave with a Mark Twain quote:

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

Oysters, ahoy!

Rolled Anchovies with Capers

These are anchovy fillets that are rolled around a caper. Eaten as an antipasto with some toasted bread or a cracker, it's like a rush of umami to the mouth.

How come the CC had never experienced them before?

They should be marketed as adult candy!

Pea-Broth Risotto

(Recipe: link.)

The Triumphant Return

The CC is back! Or at least the CC's computer is back from the dead.

Shopping trip in Astoria today.

Spanakopita, feta, salted anchovies, anchovies with capers, seafood salad, tarasamolata, baklava.

Happiness is a great grocery store!

Pasta with Cauliflower, Anchovies, Green Olives & Capers

Computer Crash

The CC has had a catastrophic hard-drive crash. Luckily, he's a big believer in backups so it should be fine.

The blog will be on hiatus for a week or so till he can get stuff up back and running.

Pasta with Anchovies, Greens & Beans

The Tuscans really really love their beans. They are mocked as being mangiafagioli (= bean-eaters) but they understand the glory of the bean.

This is a simple straightforward dish that has really deep complex flavors. It's umami-laden and nutritionally complete and costs almost nothing.

The frugal Tuscans know a few things!



Ingredients

1 1/2 cup rigatoni (substitute by penne)

1/2 cup borlotti beans (fresh or dried, read below)
6 anchovies
3 cups wild greens (e.g. wild arugula, dandelion greens, etc.)

2 cloves garlic (chopped fine)
olive oil
parmigiano-reggiano (grated)
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

First, cook the beans in salt water. If they are fresh, they will take less than 15 minutes to cook. If dried, about an hour. Separate but reserve the water.

Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a rolling boil. Toss in the pasta and cook until al dente (roughly 12 minutes.)

Meanwhile, fry the garlic in some olive oil. When golden, toss in the anchovies, and the beans. Sauté for a while. Add the beans and fry for about a minute. Toss in the water reserved above. Toss in the greens and cook for about 2 minutes.

Toss with the pasta, and serve with the parmesan and plenty of fresh black pepper.

Fada ni Khichdi

Documentary evidence has it that when the Emperor Shah Jahan (of Taj Mahal fame) finally conquered what is modern-day Gujarat, he was so enamored of the extraordinarily humble khichdi (a traditional rice and lentils dish) that he insisted that the royal chef make it regularly!

The chef, used to making much fanciful stuff, was more than a little peeved at making something so pedestrian. The royal chef fancified it a bit (but not too much) and a compromise was reached of making it at most "once in a while" which translated to "weekly" since Emperors can insist on pretty much get away with anything that they desire!

That this is not just some legend comes down to us in the form of the royal chef's cookbook/notes which have survived intact.

What this tells you is that even Emperors get tired of the same ol', same ol' no matter how fancy it is. Novelty is the name of the game, and even a peasant dish from a newly conquered territory can fascinate the Emperor and from there on, be elevated to finer culinary standards.

It should be noted that this is a trend among most high-end restaurants today which are busy trampling all over themselves to turn offal and lentils into new dishes, both substances being the cheapest of the cheap, and thus the provenance of the peasant not the gourmand.

The dish below is a traditional variation on the Gujarati khichdi that uses cracked wheat instead of rice (again variation and novelty, and it's even "traditional".)

The idea works on the same principle as a risotto but the mixture tends towards the soft and chewy but not mushy. The vegetables add color, nutrition and texture.


Ingredients

1 cup yellow moong daal (split yellow daal)
3/4 cup bulgur wheat #3 (coarsest grind)

1 cup potatoes (diced into cubes)
1 cup green peas
1 cup green beans (diced)
1 cup cauliflower florets
1 cup carrots (diced into cubes)

1 cup onions (diced fine)
2 tbsp ginger + green-chilli paste

1/2 tsp turmeric
sea salt (to taste)

1 stick cinnamon
3 cloves
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp black peppercorns
asafoetida

3 tbsp ghee

Recipe

Soak the moong daal and the cracked wheat in ice cold water separately for at least 30 minutes.

Remove, and dry thoroughly.

(To be blunt, this last part is painful because it's hard to get enough surface area to get the stuff to dry thoroughly. Do the best you can but remember, the drier it gets after soaking, the greater your chances of making the dish "memorable".)

In a seperate vessel, bring roughly 4 cups of water to a simmer. Keep warm.

Bring the ghee to a simmer. Toss in the cinnamon and fry for a bit. When fragrant, toss in the cumin, cloves, black peppercorns and asafoetida. Fry for a bit. Add the onions and fry languidly for 3-4 minutes until limp but not colored. Add the turmeric and ginger-green chilly paste and fry for a while.

Fry the potatoes for a bit.

Then fry the daal and the cracked wheat for a bit. Add 3 cups of water, and let cook at a low simmer for about 8 minutes. Add more hot water if it gets dry.

Towards the end, add the rest of the vegetables and let cook together. (Yes, this is a little tricky since you need to time everything exactly.)

Kinoko Gohan

The Japanese are great mushroom lovers. Even the Japanese word for "mushroom" has a wonderful etymology. It's comes from 木 (ki =tree) and 子(ko derived from kodomo =child.) It means "child of tree" since mushrooms grow under trees.

This is a mushroom lovers' dish. It's a basic every day dish in the same vein as asari gohan except that it uses mushrooms instead of clams.

There is a trick here though.

A variety of mushrooms all of varying textures are first cooked in umami-laden dashi, and then separated. The rice is then cooked in the doubly umami-laden mushroom broth.

There is a synergistic effect from the glutamate ions in the dashi and the 5'-ribonucleotide guanosine monophospate that is found in mushrooms. When foods rich in glutamate are combined with ingredients that have ribonucleotides, the resulting intensity of taste is far far higher than the sum thereof!

Completing the experience, you have a textural addition of seaweed and scallions.


Ingredients

1 3/4 cup japonica rice

1 package shimeji mushrooms
8 shiitake mushrooms
3 eringii mushrooms
1/2 cup oyster mushrooms
1/2 cup maitake mushrooms
1/2 cup enoki mushrooms

1 piece aburaage (fried tofu)

1 piece ginger (julienned as fine as you can)
1 cup dashi
2 tbsp shoyu (soy sauce)
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
2 tsp sugar
salt

1 bunch scallions (sliced at a steep diagonal)
nori (julienne strips)

Recipe

Wash and "polish" the rice in cold water until the surface starch is eliminated and the water runs clear. Takes between 4-6 washings. Drain and let sit wet for at least 30 minutes.

Soak the aburaage in boiling water to remove the oily part. Remove after 10 minutes, and cut up.

Boil the mushrooms and aburaage with the dashi, ginger, soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar and salt for just 3-4 minutes. The mushrooms should still have a bite.

Separate the mushroom broth from the mushrooms.

Cook the rice in this broth till done. Top with the mushrooms, cover the lid and let sit for 7-8 minutes.

Top each portion with the sliced nori and scallions.

The Thermodynamics of Tagines

Tagines work like closed nuclear cooling towers. The purpose of the hyperboloid cover is to cool the evaporating liquid and recycle it back slowly into the cooking pot thus allowing it to cook at a low temperature in the barest of liquid.

This also has the advantage of having the meat, vegetables or fish cook in their own broth. The broth is extracted from the underlying ingredients, turned into steam which condenses and drops back down. You get an intensely brothy liquid since the entire system is "sealed" for all practical purposes.

The heat supply from the flame is kept intentionally low. This is basically a very efficient braise with the heat coming from below rather than all around. It's very heat efficient compared to a traditional braise since you are not wasting time heating an oven where air is actually a very poor conductor of heat. Important for a culture where fuel was traditionally a very large expense.

Ancient science figured out empirically but actually quite amazing!

Greek Salad

A Korean Meal in K-Town

Watermelon juice and soju, grilled octopus, and why yes! that's spam in the last picture! Memories of the Americans, and indigenizing rations to make them more appetizing. (The Philippines has a similar concept too.)

Shrimp Shells

If you buy fresh shrimp, save the shells. Boil in water for about 10-12 minutes, and it will make an amazing umami-laden shellfish broth.

Cod with Stir-Fried Pea Shoots, Beluga Lentils & Carrots

Medieval Recipes for Spring Fever

Almost every civilization has a system by which they link food with bodily "humors" and attempt to control it.

The Romans had one, and India has one. China has a very elaborate one.

The "humors" (= dosha) in the Indian Ayurvedic system are called vāta (wind), pitta (bile) and kapha (phlegm.)

While the system dates back to the second millenium BCE, there is a particularly intriguing book written by a royal physician in the 16th century.

Ksemakuthuhalam was written by one Ksemasarma (clearly an attributive name rather than a real one since ksema means "welfare".)

Let's get right off the bat to the one of the best recommendations:

During spring season, one should overcome the buildup of vāta, pitta and kapha by respectively embracing, kissing and enjoying intercourse with a damsel in the middle of her youth, moon-faced, lotus-eyed and made-up for the occasion.

The CC wonders what he recommends for a damsel with the buildup of vāta, pitta, etc. Perhaps a moon-faced, lotus-eyed, etc. young man? Or a moon-faced, etc. damsel?

In any case, spring is here and the CC, quite clearly, has all of his dosha's completely and utterly out of sync. It's time to overcome all this buildup of vāta, pitta, etc.

Let's get medieval!

A Sensational Woman in a Man's World

Anne Vallayer-Coster may very well be forgotten now but it's important to know that she was recognized as a progidy in her time. Her precocious talent was recognized, and rewarded at the French court particularly by Marie Antoinette.




What ended her career was the French revolution and the guillotine. Still she managed to maneuver her way by painting for Napoleon and died at a ripe old age.

Her masterpiece is the Still Life with Lobster.

In order to understand why it must, absolutely must be a lobster, you must read this.

Chickpeas & Cod & Clams - Oh My!

A Medieval Evening

The CC is making a lamb tagine with apricots, dates and almonds.

He just made his own ras el hanout and the house smells like a garden.

Pictures and recipes to follow.

Polenta

Let's get the obvious out of the way first.

Polenta is delicious but it's a pain to make. Thankfully, it's not difficult, it just requires a Zen attitude where you do nothing but stir. Patiently. (Bring a book and learn how to read it with the other hand!)

The discovery of the New World is what made corn popular in Europe. It transformed ancient food patterns into new ones with the discovery of a "cheaper" cereal.

Polenta is finely ground corn meal that is cooked slowly with water, salt and spices. It needs to be stirred frequently to prevent it from sticking, and this is boring. Also, towards the tail end it has a tendency to splatter so one must be careful.

Traditionally, it was made in a copper kettle that was hung over the fire with the kettle being whirled while the housewife walked back and forth doing her chores. The "mush" was poured out from the spigot and nobody asked too many questions.

Today alas, we have to stir it manually in an open pot over the stove. At least the non-stick coatings make this a relatively straightforward job!

There are multiple ways to enjoy it afterwards.

One is as a wet mush which is served as an accompaniment to meats, gravies, etc.

Another is to cook it and then pour it into a dish (and sometimes baked) where it will solidify into a "cake" which you can then cut up and serve with meats, gravies, etc.

Third is to take the solidified version and fry it again in olive oil or butter and some herbs to amp up the flavor. If you mentally thought that this is how you reheat it in older times in the absence of a microwave, give yourself a gold star.

The CC frequently makes it with dashi instead of plain water to give it a bit of an umami oomph.

Like all dishes that have multiple incarnations, preferences abound. The CC's is for the solider version.