Fish Stock

The art of making stock has always been tied with the art of frugality. This is true in cultures across the globe — everything from French and Italian to Japanese. It's the art of actually extracting the maximum amount of goodness from the spare parts so as to not waste them.

This is particularly true in the case of fish stock since it has an exceptionally short shelf-life. Ideally, fish stock is best made fresh and consumed quickly.

Fish stock has always been made from the "unwanted" parts that still preserve a strong amount of both fish flavor and the proteins.

Classic dashi is basically a precise fish stock but the CC has talked about that extensively so we'll skip it this time and talk about the more classical French version.

If you look online, they talk about making fish stock with cod or monkfish. Have you seen the price of any of these lately?

These people are not just foolish; they are positively retarded!

Fish stock is made with any non-oily fish with the spare parts if you will. The heads, the tails, and everything else. (Incidentally, you can preserve these things in the freezer if you don't plan to make it right away. The CC almost always has prawn shells in his freezer.)

Here's a short list of things that make amazing fish stock:

• Fish heads and tails.
• Prawn shells.
• Lobster shells.
• Dried anchovies.
• Dried niboshi (煮干し).
• Dried shrimp.
• Maldive fish flakes (basically same as katsuobushi.)
• Clam juice and clam muscles.
• Scallop muscles (finely chopped.)

The short version is waste-not-want-not. The only detail is that dried fish should be boiled for no more than roughly 8-10 minutes before the stock turns bitter. (You can reduce the stock a second time later if you want a more concentrated stock.)

The recipe below is "generic". You can add different spices if you like. For example, the CC frequently adds fresh parsley which since it comes from the carrot family tends to accentuate the sweet carrot flavors. Also, a judicious addition of fennel is a nice touch. However, these are all details to the basic skill that you need to know. So here goes...

Ingredients

1 onion
1 stalk celery
1 large carrot

olive oil
black peppercorns
salt

"fish" (from above)

Recipe

Dice the onions, celery, carrots really fine. Fry in some olive oil they are soft. About 8 minutes. Add the peppercorns and salt and fry for a bit. Add water.

Bring to a boil and let it cook for about 20 minutes. Skim as the oil and impurities come to the top.

Add the "fish" and let cook for no more than 8-10 minutes. You will need to skim one more time.

Pass the mixture through a sieve lined with a cheesecloth.

Yogurt Updates

No post seems to have generated the sheer amount of comments and updates as the yogurt post just a few days ago.

Speaking of which, ladies and gentlemen, could you please post your comments publicly so that everyone can share?

You know who you are. Don't make the CC shame you.

Here's the best of the list:

[1] 2% organic milk works best.

CC: Experimentally verified and confirmed!

[2] If you have a pizza stone, pre-heat the oven to about 200°F for about 2-3 hours. If the stone is on a different shelf than the container, it will ensure that the oven stays warm at the desired even temperature of 180°F even in the coldest winter.

CC: DUH!!! Simplicity itself. How obvious in retrospect.

[3] If you want a thicker yogurt without the fat, add in some milk powder when boiling the milk.

CC: Not tried but makes complete sense.

[4] If you want "Greek yogurt", you must drain the fresh yogurt in a cheese cloth for about 6-8 hours.

CC: Yep! and the drained whey is muy muy delicioso! Do not waste.

Chestnut Risotto

Simplicity of effect often takes considerable complication of means.

A chestnut risotto is basically starch over starch. Admittedly chestnust does have protein content but the mouth-feel is that of a chewy starchy product.

In order to not bore the palate with a monotonous texture, you must break it up.

The recipe consists of three parts — preparing the chestnuts, preparing a chestnut broth and making the actual risotto.

The complications make for a dish that is both rich in taste and texture.




Ingredients

2 lbs raw chestnuts

1/2 cup shallots (finely chopped)
1 cup carnaroli rice
3 cups broth (use dashi otherwise)

1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

olive oil
4 tbsp rosemary (finely chopped)

sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Please note the simplicity of the ingredients. The complexity comes in how they are manipulated.

Score the chestnuts with a knife with an X mark. Roast in an oven heated to 350°F for about 15 minutes.

While they are still warm, you must peel them. It's hard sweaty work and they don't peel as well when they cool down so your fingers are likely to feel the burn.

Inevitably, some of them will  be moldy. You must discard these.

Separate the chestnuts into whole ones and partial ones. Cut the whole ones into quarters and set aside.

Blend the partially broken ones with the broth. You may need to add some whole ones if there are not enough partial ones. Don't worry about blending them fine. Strain the broth from the now broken pieces.

These broken pieces act as the uneven textural interest. Put them away to let dry for a bit. (They need to be dry since they will get pan-fried later.)

Now, we prepare a standard risotto. Keep the chestnut broth just under boiling on a separate heater.

Fry the shallots in the olive oil. When limp (about 8 minutes), add the rice and let it fry for a bit. When the rice is translucent and coated with oil, you will be able to see the white rice kernels. Add he broken chestnut pieces and sautée for a bit (about 3-4 minutes.)

Add the whole chestnut pieces and the rosemary.

Now make the risotto. Alternately add the warm chestnut broth, and keep stirring till all the broth is used up and you get a creamy textured wet risotto.

Add the parmigiano-reggiano and serve at once with tons of black pepper.

Sansai Soba (山菜そば)

It's relatively easy to make this when you can source the mountain vegetables in winter.

They are found the fresh section but they come packed in relatively alkaline water. They must be thoroughly washed multiple times before they can be used. The above set up may sound horrible but the CC was shockingly surprised at the excellence of the vegetables. They maintained their textural crispness which was quite amazing.

Japanese cuisine seems to be intimidating but like any other codified cuisine, it relies in practice on a standard set of tricks. These tricks are so general that you can use them to elevate your Italian, Indian or Thai cuisine to the next level once you understand the thrust of the tricks.

This leads up to a fairly general point. In order to get "inside" a different cuisine, you must master its internal grammar. And there is always an internal grammar. You have to use your powers of empathy to enter into an entirely foreign mindset. What lies there will frequently revolutionize your thinking because it will cause you to unlearn all the accreted prejudices of your own life so far.

Enough philosophizing, O CC! How about the recipe, eh?

This is a classic winter one-stop shop. It relies on the precision of individual execution but it's completely straightforward.

The vegetables and the fishcake are simmered in the dashi. (We've talked about dashi being the foundation of Japanese cuisine here.) The soba are cooked until al dente. The whole thing is combined in a bowl with some nori (seen on the right hand side to give textural interest) and many Japanese would happily top it with furikake (although the CC didn't do it.)

Also, this is a relatively more "purist" recipe. The soba means that you are looking for a more "clean" taste. Had the CC been using the relatively prosaic udon, he would've happily added in some miso to get more of that umami. Tradition dictates a cleaner taste for the spare soba.



Ingredients

4 cups dashi
2 tbsp mirin
3 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tbsp rice vinegar

2 cups mountain vegetables
soba
6 sheets of nori
1 kamaboko (fish cake)

Recipe

Cut the fish cake diagonally into elliptical disks.

Simmer the fish cake and vegetable in the dashi with the mirin, vinegear and the soy sauce.

Meanwhile, separately cook the soba until al dente. It must have a bite. Drain immediately and cool in an ice bath.

Add the soba to individual bowls. Top with the dashi, vegetables and fish cake. Serve on the side with the nori sheets cut into triangles.

Making Yogurt

Making yogurt is so straightforward that the CC is surprised it's not more commonly known. When the CC was making it, two separate people commented on the fact the milk will get "spoilt".

Well, DUH!

Yogurt is spoiled milk. So is cheese for that matter. So are miso, kimchi, and all other sour pickles. It's the precision of the spoilage that matters not the fact that it's "spoilt."

Good grief.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, yogurt doesn't come from the supermarket. It's spoilt milk and it's important that it be "spoilt" in the right way.

Over millenia, we as a species are symbiotic with a class of bacteria known collectively as lactobacilli. (Literally, milk-bacteria.)

We co-exist and they do wonderful things for us in our guts. That's why antibiotics make you feel so queasy at the end of the dose. They wipe out all the bacteria in our body and we can no longer digest anything that well. (Incidentally, a lot of what we consider "digestion" is being done by the bacteria in our gut not by humans but's that for a different post.)

Anyway, making yogurt is dead straightforward. The only hard part in winter is setting it in a warm enough place.

Ingredients

4 cups milk
1/2 cup active yogurt

Recipe

Heat the milk in a non-reactive pan until it comes to just under a boil. You are both killing all the other bacteria present in the milk and changing the proteins to be more receptive to making yogurt.

Cool the milk down to about 110°F (just above human temperature.) The old wives' method is to see if a finger inserted in the milk is comfortable or not. Above this temperature, you will kill all the bacteria introduced later.

Add the yogurt and whisk it into the milk. You are basically doing a precise "spoilage".

Let it sit in a warm spot for about 8 hours. It takes less time in summer and a little longer in winter.

Refrigerate and repeat.

Comeback

Every blog needs a comeback and now that the CC is back, he's shelling ten pounds of peas that he bought.

Beans, Good Ol' Beans

Everyone here knows that the CC is crazy about them (both fresh and dried) and that he adores them with a passion only rivalling his love for anchovies.

However, how many know that the famous Roman surnames are actually derived from beans? (Possibly, their families made their fortunes in the bean agricultural trade.)

Cicero is derived from chickpeas (modern-day Italian: cece/ceci.) Fabius refers to fava beans (modern-day Italian: fava/fave.)

Lentulus should be self-evident, and Piso refers to peas (pisello/piselli.)

Little Cute Brussel Sprouts

"They were ready for their closeup!"

What's Good for the Goose!

From Johann Jacob Wecker's Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art of Nature (1660) comes a most unusual recipe.

It's how to roast a goose alive and eat it in that condition.

The last line of the recipe is the pièce de resistance!

(Hint: the character ſ is the modern day "s".)

Source: Link.

To roſt a Gooſe alive 

Let it be a Duck or Gooſe, or ſome ſuch lively Creature, but a Gooſe iſ beſt of all for thiſ purpoſe, leaving hiſ neck, pull of all the Feather from hiſ body, then make a fire round about him, not too wide, for that will not roſt him: within the place ſet here and there ſmall potſ full of water, with ſalt and Honey mixed therewith, and let there be diſheſ ſet full of roſted Appleſ, and cut in pieceſ in the diſh, and let the Gooſe be baſted with Butter all over, and Larded to make him better meat, and he may roſt the better, put fire to it; do not make too much haſte, when he beginſ to roſt, walking about, and ſtriving to fly away, the fire ſtopſ him in, and he will fall to drink water to quench hiſ thirſt; thiſ will cool hiſ heart and the other partſ of hiſ body, and by thiſ medicament he looſneth hiſ belly, and growſ empty. And when he roſteth and conſumeſ inwardly, alwayeſ wet hiſ head and heart with a wet ſponge: but when you ſee him run madding and ſtumble, hiſ heart wantſ moyſture, take him away, ſet him before your Gueſtſ, and he will cry aſ you cut off any part from him and will be almoſt eaten up before he be dead, it iſ very pleaſant to behold.

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