Tales from the Kitchen Table

(Mostly) Around The House Stuffed Peppers

2012-01-06T02:54:00.006Z

I've wanted to make stuffed peppers for a while now, haven't made them in years. As usual, I don't have everything that I need, but I put together what I had from around my kitchen- mostly. I say mostly because I did go and buy the peppers and the chopped meat especially for this dish.

You will need:

several teaspoons salt
several teaspoons pepper
1 cup white rice (I use Basmati)
several tablespoons of butter
water
6 bell peppers (traditionally green, I used a mix of green and yellow because they only had two green left.)
1 small onion
1 clove garlic (I used a clove of smoked garlic, which was all I had)
1 tiny can of tomato paste
~1.5 pounds of chopped beef
oregano (about a teaspoon, dried)
basil (about a teaspoon, dried)
1 egg
Worcestershire sauce

First thing's first. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Have a large casserole dish (large enough to fit all of your peppers upright inside) on hand. Put a fairly large (6 quart) pot of salt water on the stove to heat. Note that this should be fairly lightly salted, you don't want it to be salty like you make pasta in- it will turn your pepper into pimento if you do that.

I recently figured out a trick when it comes to rice. I hate washing rice. It's not that its hard, but it takes forever, your hands get pruney, and you're never quite certain that you've gotten all the starch washed off. Here's the trick. Get a large, deep mixing bowl. Deep is important. You don't want one of those shallow but large ones. Just a big, classic deep mixing bowl. Put one cup of rice in the bowl. Stick the mixing bowl in your sink, under the faucet. Aim the faucet into the middle of the rice and turn the faucet on, hot. Why hot? Because starch is more soluble in hot water than cold. What *should* happen (and you will need to shift the bowl/faucet around) is the water will hit in the middle of the bowl and spread out and come up the sides. A current will be set up so that the rice will flow with the water in a cycle, constantly rinsing it, no need to stick your hands in. After a few minutes, the water should run clear. Bam, you're done.

Wash 1 cup of rice and drain. Add it to 1 1/2 cups (there will still be a little water left in the rice, which is why I don't say 1 3/4 cup) water and a tablespoon of butter in a medium saucepan and put on a high heat until boiling. On boiling, turn the heat down very low so it just simmers and cover tightly. After 10-15 minutes, it should be dry. Fluff with a fork and set aside.

While the rice is cooking, cut the tops off of the bell peppers, putting the edible parts of the tops aside, and clean the insides of membrane and seeds. Once all six are done, place them into the pot of water. Hopefully you didn't take too long about this, so the water should still be pretty cool. This will be brought to a boil and allowed to boil for five minutes. However, this much water takes a long time to get to a boil, so by the time the peppers are ready to be fished out, you should be ready to use them.

Take the edible parts of the top of the peppers and chop them up. Also chop the small onion, and the single clove of garlic (chop this fine but no need to mince it, or you can crush it if you like). In a frying pan, melt two tablespoons of butter. Add the peppers, onion and garlic and stir them a little to make sure everything is nicely coated and cook for five minutes until tender. Add the tiny can of tomato paste, re-fill the can with water and add the water to the frying pan. Stir until the tomato paste is evenly incorporated into the vegetables. Add a teaspoon salt, teaspoon pepper, the oregano and basil and stir. Let that sit with an occasional stir for 5 minutes or so- you want it to be thick, but not play-doh thick. Like a good tomato sauce in thickness.

In another mixing bowl, whip the egg until fluffy. Add 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper and whisk it together. You want to add the Worcestershire sauce now. How much? I add a tablespoon or two- but I have low sodium, so if you have regular you may want to add less. Just use a few generous dashes, you should be fine. Add the chopped meat and the rice (should be finished cooking by now). Use a lean chopped meat, you don't want lots of fat oozing through the peppers, making it greasy. Add half of the tomato-mixture from the frying pan. Mix by hand. As with all chopped meat, you don't want to over-mix it, but you want it fairly homogeneous. It won't take too long.

Fish the peppers out of the water and put them upright in the casserole dish. Fill them with the meat mixture by hand- you can add it in without touching the pepper if the pepper is still really hot. Top with rest of the tomato mixture.

Pop into your hot over for an hour, then take out and let cool. Eat and enjoy! Hands down best stuffed peppers I've ever had. And the yellow peppers? I'm never going back to green again, much sweeter and more flavorful!

Maple Ice Cream

2011-12-17T17:59:00.003Z

I had some maple syrup sitting around from the last time I was in Vermont- Fancy grade, naturally. I don't use it all that often, but it is just so lovely to have. So I figured, I'm goign to be going back soon enough, time to use some. How? Maple Ice Cream.

There is NO cooking involved here.

Ingredients:

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cup maple syrup

2 1/2 cups heavy cream

1/4 cup milk 9full fat. You try this with skim? Fuck you)

Whisk the eggs until fluffy, then whisk in the maple syrup. It's a lot, because the maple is both a flavor as well as a sweetener, replacing the sugar which would normally be used. Once the maple is incorporated, add the heavy cream and then the milk. Place into the ice cream maker of your choice. Feel free to add chopped walnuts for maple walnut ice cream.

Note that because of the amount of maple, you get a strong maple flavor but a very sweet ice cream. The result is an ice cream that you will want 1-2 scoops and no more. But that scoop or two is just maple goodness.

General Goldberg's Chicken

2011-12-06T04:28:00.003Z

So I came home tonight a little after 10. I had an exhausted hour to cook dinner +lunch for tomorrow for my wife and myself, four boneless, skinless chicken breasts and little else in the cupboards. All this coupled with a growing loathing of chicken breasts in all the ways I normally make it.

I decided to explore my fridge and cabinets for ingredients, and made a sort-of General Tso's Chicken from things laying around.

Put up a pot of rice to serve the food over while you cook.

Cut the breasts into cubes and saute them with some olive oil.

Meanwhile in a small sauce pan, heat a small amount of water- 1/3-1/2 cup. If you are like me, your brown sugar is a solid lump. Break off a few pieces and drop them into the water, stir to dissolve.

Add the following to the sauce pan:

ketchup

red pepper flakes

rice wine vinegar (don't be scared- rice wine vinegar is extremely mild)

some lemon juice

juice of that one naval orange sitting in the fruit drawer in the fridge.

Bring back to a boil. Add a cup and a half or so of water and bring to a boil again. Taste it. Even with that water added, it should be fairly thin but flavorful. Don't worry about the thinness, we'll get to that.

Drain the chicken and put back into the pan. Pour the sauce over it. separately mix some flour and water and add it to thicken the sauce, stirring it in. Add a jigger or two of some cheap scotch (I had White Horse) and let simmer for a minute or two. Add a can of peas and some corn. Bring back to simmer, still stirring. It should be thick, tasty, and smell awesome. Serve over rice.

Wienerpunsch

2011-11-12T15:35:00.004Z

Some years ago, my extended family invited me to go with them on a trip to Vienna. Why? Just to be nice. We were there for Thanksgiving, and the Weinachtmarkts (Christmas Markets- like at Union Square, but EVERYWHERE) were open in full swing. Everywhere were hanging meats, chestnuts roasting in big kettles, small chachkas and gewgaws. It was cold, unbelievably cold for mid-November. It felt more like February. One thing I noticed to my surprise was the frequncy of men wearing hats- real hats, not baseball caps. That and furs. Women everywhere wore furs, real ones. But naturally, nothing quite warms like real fur, but here in the states, people either wear fake fur coats, or very rarely wear real ones because of the stigma against real fur. Which is stupid, in my opinion. I eat the meat, why not wear the skin? In fact, it seems a bit of a waste, but whatever.

Of course, I've always wanted to club my own baby seal, but that's just me.

In any case, one of my favorite things to do was wander the streets of Vienna, gradually growing colder. When I got cold enough, I would just stop at a nearby Punsch stand and buy a mug of Punsch, then be warmed up and walk on a little further. Punsch is punch, of course, but they had dozens of flavors and varieties, all of it hot, refreshing, and nicely alcoholic. I finally asked what went into making them, and I was told that they used a nice red wine, some tea, and fruit juice. Hunh, thought I. Not what I expected.

I miss Punsch, so I decided that tonight I'm going to make some. My recipe will be as follows, although possibly halved. When you drink it, think of the beautiful city of Vienna, where I smoked in the Natural History Museum.

12 cups red wine
4 cups of black tea
2/3 cup of Austrian rum (80vol% alcohol), if you have to use carribean rum, take 1 1/3 cup
6 cups fresh orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 sticks of cinnamon, a few cloves
some orange peel

Put everything into a big pot and gently heat but do not boil. Remember that alcohol boils at 79 degrees C, so if you heat it too much, you'll drive off all the lovely alcohol.

Edit: The verdict is in- both Kirsten and I think it tastes exactly like what we had in Vienna. I made up the black tea (Lipton's) and set it aside to steep. Once it had, that went into an enamelled cast iron pot. Still ery hot, but nowhere near boiling. Heat was turned on underneath and ~ 2 liters of a red cabernet was added (an inexpensive box wine). I dumped in a fifth of Bacardi silver (200 mL). I was running low on space by that point, so I only added ~2 cups or so of orange juice (poured in without measuring). 1/2 cup sugar was on the money, 2 short but fat cinnamon sticks and 5-6 cloves were added as well as the zest of one orange. Because the tea was so hot, this required very little heating to get it where it was going, and it was greatly enjoyed by all on such a cold night as this. I will definately be making it again in the future!

Mayonnaise - in praise of the Real Hellmans

2011-09-24T00:23:00.001+01:00

Oh lord, I'm down to the last 2 tablespoons of Hellman's Mayonnaise - real honest to goodness, New York bought Hellman's mayonnaise.

One of the horrors of "localisation" of brand foods is what is done to Hellman's Mayonnaise in the UK. Obviously it's what the company believes is preferred by British consumers. But as I'm not, I find the UK product completely alien. I've been lucky in recent years to have visiting family and friends haul over jars of Hellman's when they visit. But now I'm running on fumes so I'll have to make homemade American recipe mayo now.

Btw: Commercial mayonnaise sold in jars originated in New York City, in Manhattan's Upper West Side. In 1905, the first ready-made mayonnaise was sold by a family from Vetschau, Germany, at Richard Hellmann's delicatessen on Columbus Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets. In 1912, Mrs. Hellmann's mayonnaise was mass marketed and called Hellmann's Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise.

Here's the basic recipe. Details to follow after I make a batch tomorrow with my stick mixer (immersion mixer) and document the process.

2 large egg yolks
1 Tbs. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. salt
pinch of white pepper
1 cup oil - this should be a "tasteless" oil like sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, or canola (rapeseed)

Important: All ingredients must be at room temperature before you start this recipe.

Traditional way to make mayo:

Add first 4 ingredients to a bowl and whisk until combined and light.

Whisking vigorously add the oil 1 drop at a time, whisking after each drop until it disappears into the mixture (about 8 strokes/2 seconds).

After you have added about 1/3 of the cup of oil, and the mixture has thickened a lot, start adding the rest of the oil in a slow very thin stream.

When all the oil has been added and the mix is thickened - taste and add additional lemon juice and seasoning to taste, whisking it in smoothly.

You can add crushed/mashed garlic to the mayo to create aioli or minced tarragon or other hebs. The add-ins are endless.

My way to make mayo (quick and easy)

I use a stick mixer and a narrow cylindrical container to make mayo in under 30 seconds.
I'll add details and photos tomorrow afternoon.

And..in later news...my daughter has generously offered me her last jar of US Hellmans Mayo which I will eagerly collect tomorrow.

Labor Day Limeaide

2011-09-03T17:49:00.002+01:00

I know, I know. It's frigging limeaide, how hard is that to do? Well, judging how how terrible some of the stuff I've swilled down over the years, very.

In all seriousness, there is this particular ratio in limeaide and lemonaide that if you get just a little bit off, it tastes wrong. It's too watery, too sweet, too sour, whatever. So, today being Saturday of the Unofficial Last Weekend Of The Summer, I went food shopping, and lemons and limes were on sale. I always promise myself that I'm going to make limeaide, but as tonight is gaming night, I thought it would be a really nice treat to have some icy cold, handmade limeaide on hand.

Oh yea- commercial stuff always sucks. Something about simple syrup tastes weird to my tongue. And commercial stuff always has the taste of the zest. I like candied orange, lemon and lime peels. But not in my lemon/limeaide.

You need a ~ 2 liter pitcher, preferably one with demarkations on the side. I rolled and squeezed 8 limes, which gave me just a hair under 500 mL. Yes, we're doing this metric. Deal with it. Add three tablespoons white sugar, stir with wooden spoon. It should readily dissolve. Add 1.5 L water so it hits the 2L mark. Taste. I thought it was still a bit too sharp, so I added one more tablespoon sugar. I add the last sugar at the end, because I prefer to be wary of how I flavor the end product. But 0.5 L lime juice, 1.5 L water, 4 tablespoons sugar? Fantastic. It's in the fridge chilling right now.

I'm not going to lie, I'm writing this up here more so that I can refer to it in the future than for you folks.

Apple Strudel

2011-08-10T01:49:00.000+01:00

I give up on bakeries in London. They claim to sell Apple Strudel but the product you get is not Apple Strudel as we know it. Certainly not as New Yorkers know it.

So, I finally gave up and decided to make it myself. I've made apple strudel for many years when I couldn't buy the real stuff at a good Jewish/German bakery but never tried in London as the apples in the UK are nothing to write home about. They're great for cider and make very tasty apple sauce but they just aren't pie apples being the wrong texture and generally insipid. However, yesterday a neighbour stopped by with a bag of apples she had just picked from an old tree on her allotment garden. They looked gorgeous and the flavour - wow, spicy and sweetly tart, yum! Strudel and pie - here we come!

So, here's the recipe. If you are in the US, try using Winesap apples or similar spicy, strongly flavoured firm apples.

Ingredients for the filling:
800g/1lb 12oz cooking apples, peeled, cored, cut into small chunks
50g/2oz unsalted butter
100ml/3 fl oz water
100g/3½ oz caster sugar (granulated sugar in the US) - cane sugar, please!
1/2 to 1 tsp ground cinnamon - to taste
large handful of fresh breadcrumbs (you must use fresh, not bought dried stuff)
Optional: 3 Tbsp raisins soaked in rum or OJ to plump them (I'm a purist and omit these.)

For the pastry:
50g/2oz unsalted butter, melted
5 sheets filo pastry
fresh breadcrumbs
icing/confectioners sugar, for dusting
Greaseproof/baking parchment paper

Preparation method
1. If you are going to use raisins, soak them in a bit of rum or OJ before starting.
2. Peel, core, and cut apples into small chunks.
3. Cook the apples in a pan with the butter, water and sugar for 5
minutes, or until the apples have softened slightly, but still retain their
shape and are al dente.
4. Remove the pan from the heat, add the cinnamon, raisins (if you're using them)
and the breadcrumbs and stir to combine (the breadcrumbs will bind
everything together). Set aside to cool.
5. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
6. For the pastry, cut a piece of greaseproof paper a little larger than your
baking sheet to assemble the strudel on. This will also help you to roll it into
the assembled shape. Unroll the filo dough sheets and cover with a dish
towel to prevent it drying out. Spread out one sheet of filo on the paper,
and brush with the melted butter. Lightly scatter with a bit of the breadcrumbs
and a bit of sugar. Repeat the process with all four sheets, placing
them on top of each other, brushing with melted butter each time and
scattering a bit of bread crumbs and sugar on each.
7. Spoon the apple mixture along the long side of the pastry about an inch from
the edge and roll up, longest side first, into a parcel, seam-side down. If you
have too much apple mix, just hold that aside. You can either roll the finished parcel
onto the baking sheet and discard the paper or trim the paper a bit and use that to
lift the parcel onto the baking sheet and let it bake on the paper.
Press down the ends of the parcel gently to seal in the filling.
8. Brush all over with the remaining butter and bake in the oven for 25 -30 minutes,
or until the top is crisp and golden-brown. (Check the strudel after 15 minutes;
if it is browning too quickly, reduce the heat a little. )
9. Remove from oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet. When cooled, carefully
slide the strudel onto a platter or cutting board and dust with icing/confectioners sugar.

Ribsticker

2011-07-13T02:22:00.002+01:00

I came home tonight with defrosted chicken breasts and very little else to craft a dinner from. So, I made a Ribsticker, which is what I call my throwing shit together to make something healthy, tasty, and filling.

Prep certain ingredients first. I had three enormous chicken breasts which I sliced into cubes, as well as one very large onion that I gave a rough chop to.

In a large, high-walled pan, add some olive oil. This recipe makes a fair amount of food, so don't be too scared to add a few tablespoons. Crush ~8 cloves of garlic and allow to simmer in the oil. Once they start to brown, immediately add the onions and allow those to simmer for a few minutes. Add the chicken and stir it around for another 4 minutes or so. Add some frozen corn and frozen peas, leave for a few more minutes. While doing do, add salt, pepper, and some paprika. Add one can of (low sodium) chicken stock, and another can worth of water. Stir in roughly a cup of breadcrumbs. Myself, I had Italian style, but decided to use some panko I had laying around. It would thicken the liquid without adding any kind of a flowery flavor or anything. Turn heat to high until the mixture reaches boiling, then turn heat down to a simmer. Cover and leave for ten minutes.

No, it's nothing fancy. But it's cheap, tasty, easy to make, and stick to your ribs. I'm getting to the point where I have very little food in the house (need to do shopping soon) so it's at this time in the month when I start making things like this.

A City Dweller's Pulled Pork

2011-07-12T00:48:00.003+01:00

I should start by saying that I never had pulled pork in my life up until maybe 3 years ago. Understand that it's not something New Yorkers, let alone Jews, make with great frequency. Too, we rarely went out to dinner. When we did, it was to various restaurants, but never BBQ- I can't recall any particular barbeque places in New York when I was a kid, though there are plenty here now. Steak restaurants, sure, but not BBQ. When we drove to Florida or some such, we stopped off at Chatanooga for Choo Choo's BBQ. I'm damned if I remember what I would order- probably steak or a burger- I loved those, and hated ribs.

Come to that, I never had a rib that I enjoyed until about 5 years ago, when I was introduced to beef spare ribs. Ribs with actual meat on them, not just pure fat on a bone? My world was well and truly rocked. Grilling we did plenty of in the summer. Back then, nobody (again, in New York) put sauces on the meat you put on the grill. I don't know if it occured to anyone. Then in the mid-90's, A1 steak sauce had a series of commercials where they suggested putting the steak sauce on the steak before grilling it. Steak sauce on the steak...before you grill it? It sounded just crazy enough to try. We did, thought it was okay, tried it another time or two, then decided that we liked our steaks grilled regular, thanks, with the steak sauce afterwards.

In any case, as I got older, I tried things like carnival chicken, which had barbeque sauce put on before it was cooked. I hated it- as far as I could see, the stuff just burned and made the entire chicken taste like burned garbage. I couldn't see the point of it, and I wished they wouldn't do it. But I keep an open eye for new things. As time passed, more and more BBQ places opened around New York, and I had my chance to sample them. My impression is that they are generally terrible, and that New Yorkers don't know dick about good barbeque.

There's a place up by Columbia called Dinosaur BBQ. With a name like that, it brings to mind The Flintstones, with the giant ribs that make the car fall over. And didn't we all wish we could have those ribs just once? I heard from so many damn people about how amazing it was, I couldn't wait to try it. It was awful. Understand, I tried a combination plate which gave be several different meats, plus I tried what everyone else ordered. Dino's could make some tasty sauce. But the meat was utterly flavorless. It tasted like something from a cafeteria. The texture would be fine, but the meat itself somehow had no flavor, I couldn't figure it out. I still can't. I guess they must have realized this, because they drowned the meat in sauce. To my mind, a sauce is always meant to compliment the flavor of the food it is on, not attempt to mask or drown it out.

Yes, I am aware that my pearl onions tend to drown in my cream sauce. That's because I always make too much cream sauce, never buy enough pearl onions, and I've found that people fucking love to put the cream sauce on their mashed potatoes.

Anyway, have you ever had a taste in your mind that you know that something can or should be? Well, I knew what pulled pork should taste like. The taste, texture, everything. I found a place in New York that will make it, but they are hellishly expensive. Plus, as near as I can tell, that's the only thing that they can make right.

Now, I live in an apartment. Though I have a balcony, I am not allowed to barbeque on it (except with my electric grill) and smoking food is just right out. How then could I make something like pulled pork? Well, one of the things I asked for when I got married was a slow cooker, as I know just how great they are to have for some things. Could I pull off a pulled pork with one?

Well, what did I have? Traditionally, you use pork shoulder, tough and fatty and cheap. Well, it's a meal based on not having much money, naturally. So, what meat did I have? I pretty much only buy meat that's on sale, so it'll have to do. What I had was pork loin. Not tenderloin, but the entire loin. Well, the pork loin in cross section is essentially a large oval of meat with a thick bottom layer of meat, like a mushroom cap on a fat stem. Not exactly right, but hell, it's what I have. I had bought the entire loin for about 13 bucks, brought it home and sliced it into sections of about 3.5-5 pounds each and shoved most of them in the freezer. This one was fully defrosted when I used it.

At night, I coated the pork loin in paprika, sea salt, pepper, and onion powder. Be generous. The loin then went into a ziplock bag and had the air mostly removed, then was shoved in the fridge overnight. In the morning before heading to work, I took the loin out and put it into the slow cooker, crushed a few cloves of garlic over the top, set it on slow cook, and went to work.

Now, one thing troubled me, and I'm still not 100% sure if I made the right decision. There is a thick layer of fat on one side, while the other side shows just meat. Do I put the meat fat side down or not? Well, I dind't want the meat to dry out, so the more indirect heat through the fat seemed wise. Plus, it would help to render the fat and have the pork sit in the juice and fat. On the other hand, if I put it meat side down, as the fat cooked it might work its way down the meat to keep it juicy. But then the meat touching the bottom might be dried out.

In the end, I put the fat side down. On returning home, I found that the juices had cooked out of the meat, and it was half submerged in them. I removed the loin with a couple of forks to a cutting board. The fat easily scraped off of the bottom of the meat and was discarded. The meat was- well, it's a bit dry, though not terribly so. I tasted a piece, and it was certainly flavorful, and wasn't tough or anything. At that point, it had been slow cooking for 9 1/2 hours, then kept warm for about another hour. That's because my slow cooker only goes to a max of 9.5 hours. In any case, you can feel free to try doing it for less time, whatever you like- I have a long workday, so I don't have much choice. That, and the cut of meat is tricky to keep completely moist.

I shredded the pork with a pair of forks, then added them back to the broth in the slow cooker. If you don't have much liquid, feel free to add a cup of broth. While that sat there, I made up a batch of my Awesomesauce (see recipe earlier, but essentially it is roughly 1/3rd honey, 2/3rds Heinz ketchup, and a bit of wasabi, cooked together until smooth). I made roughly 2-2 1/2 cups, and dumped that into the slow cooker as well. The food was stirred a little with a wooden spoon. The slow cooker was then set for another 2 hours and left to sit. It's there right now, so I don't know how it'll come out, but I'll edit in a little bit and let you know how it goes.

So, yes, the purists out there will scream and cry. But pulled pork is a meal about poor people taking what is on hand and doing what they can with it. That describes me pretty damn well, and it's about all one can do in an apartment. If you tried this and liked it, or have your own varients, I'd love to hear 'em!

Edit: Well, I am pleased. Not as good as I'd hoped, better than I expected. The taste is great, the pork is tender and flavorful. It's not melt-in-your-mouth the way true pulled pork is, but it's still very pleasant indeed. The only thing I would change is the liquid. The sauce ended up being a touch thin. It coats the pork beautifully, but it's just a touch too thin. I guess I could add a little flour or something, but it's not that big of a deal- I use a slotted spoon to take out the pork, but it's still thick enough to travel with the pork. Maybe it's just fine, but I should have shredded the pork a little bit more, or maybe made a little more pork, I dunno. In any case, it's a damn good start. The flavor is mostly that of the sauce, but there is still a touch of the flavors from the spices on the pork meat, enough that you get just a nice little tingle.

Still, I'd like to try it with proper pork shoulder at some point- see if the meat would be more flavorful. The barbeque sauce does admittedly mostly drown out the flavor of the pork- between the sweetness of the honey, the slight vinegar from the ketchup, and the flowery spiciness of the wasabi, it's hard to find the spiced pork in there. Maybe next time, I'll add less of the sauce, but it's a first attempt.

That said, it's still a damned tasty first attempt, especially on some kaiser rolls.

BBQ Sauce

2011-06-19T19:33:00.001+01:00

You'd think I'd be too busy to post with all of my work on the Bletchley Everest Challenge but I just realised that I haven't shared my BBQ Sauce recipe. This is an approximate recipe because the strength of your vinegar or ginger may vary so please taste and adjust! Stir as you go along so the flavours blend properly.

To cover 2 racks of ribs or 2 steaks

1/2 cup tomato ketchup - don't use the cheap stuff!
1/4 cup soft brown sugar (the darker the better)
2-3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 - 2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon dried ginger
1 teaspoon Worcester sauce
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce

Stir and taste. You'll probably need more sugar but it's better to add after you taste. Maybe add some old rum or something if you want to dilute it a little.

I usually marinade my meat in this for 24 hours before cooking. This is good for the oven and the grill.

Eating on Mt Everest

2011-06-16T02:10:00.001+01:00

As a fund-raiser for Bletchly Park ( http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ ); the historic site of secret British codebreaking activities during WWII and birthplace of the modern computer, my daughter Astrid will be climbing to Mt Everest's Base Camp this August. Now Astrid is not a mountain climber nor a tekking sort in real life, but she is a serious supporter of Bletchly Park and thought it would be an exciting personal challenge as well as a great way to help raise funds to supper Bletchly Park.

So - hint, hint - please consider a donation to help her efforts. Funds can be donated through Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/Astrid-Byro (And if your company does corporate donations she's open to promo stunts, contact her for details.)

Astrid has a Mt Everest Base Camp Trek blog at http://abc-ebc.blogspot.com

Anyway the main food the Trek company says they'll be eating on the climb is LENTILS. Lots and lots of lentils. And garlic and onions and cabbage. Hmmmm...

If you know more about foods eaten on Mt Everest treks, please let us know. We're considering what recipes we could make for Astrid to bring along.

French Fingerling Potato Salad

2011-05-20T01:38:00.002+01:00

Contrary to what you may think, (hell, what *I* may think) my father, when he wants, can make the best potato salad I've ever tasted.

The funny thing is that it took me ten years to convince him to make it again. See, my father likes to experiment with his cooking, as do we all. He would find something new, try adding it to something he loves, and if it works, was happy. If it didn't work, he would leave it in and try something else. The potato salad started with something simple and flavorful, the potatoes nicely cooked, not too much mayo, a delicious aromatic quality from the red onions he would use, and some salt and pepper. That was about it. It was simple and delicious. But as the years and the experiments went on, it changed. Finally, I refused to eat it anymore, and I know it hurt him. I genuinely did not want to upset him. But the potato salad had devolved to become a sludge of egg yolk and onion in mayonaisse with bits of green onion and very little potato. I prevailed on him to, just one time, make the potato salad the way he had ten years before. To humor me, he made it. And to his astonishment, he admitted to me that it was delicious and much better than what he'd been making for so long.

This is not to say that one should not experiment with recipes. That makes cooking dull. It also isn't to say that only simple recipes are good. This has been the big wave in cooking in the last twenty years or so, very simple dishes of 5 or fewer ingredients used to highlight one particular ingredient. I enjoy and appreciate this trend, but I also do not think that it necessarily is better or superior to food with many ingredients delicately combined and layered to provide a unique flavor and texture experience. This is all just my way of saying that though I tease my father about his cooking, he can actually make decent food. When he listens to me, anyway.

And that's my segue into today's recipe. I was making dinner tonight, simple cheeseburgers and fries, and I thought that it might be nice to do something different. I was thinking of throwing a Rapture BBQ this weekend, and wouldn't it be nice if I could try something out tonight for then? Well, I looked around for what I had. I could make a potato salad. Then I had an idea- why not a fingerling potato salad? Fingerling potatoes are small, waxy, delicate little potatoes, and it might be a chance to make a lighter version of the classic. Well, what the hell, why not give it a try?

Slice the potatoes into small pieces, then throw into a pot of boiling water. boil 4 eggs as well. I chopped a half of a large red onion pretty small (note- using the entire onion might not have been a bad idea). An equal amount of celery chopped delicately. I wanted to try using a piece of cucumber, but my cucumber was....weird. I just happened to have snatched a piece before adding it to the bowl, and it's lucky that I did. The cucumber tasted as though it had been dipped in a toxic waste barrel. My mouth burned, I shit you not. Out that went. But it would have been nice to peel the cuke, remove the seeds, then rough chop and add. Add the potatoes. Slice the eggs into 4 slices along the lattitude, then one long slice along the longitude. Add the eggs. Add equal measures of mayo and sour cream. No, this is not for any kind of health thing. I wanted it to be light and delicate, and sour cream is that. Plus, if you add too much mayo, it is nasty, but if you add too much sour cream, no biggie. Neither my wife nor I noticed the change.

Ideally, let sit in a sealed container overnight in your fridge.

Recipe's Forthcoming

2011-03-30T01:56:00.002+01:00

I know I haven't posted here for a while, but I do plan to soon. Not much cooking lately, because there's pretty much no food in the apartment. Why? Because I've worn through 5 shopping carts in the last 6 months, and I'm going nuts. So, out of desperation, I went and bought a 400 pound capacity steel garden cart. It arrives thursday, so I hope to do shopping this weekend. Among other things, I get to test out my new cookware- like my new griddle, so stay tuned!

-Andrew

Blue Cheese Salad Dressing

2011-03-27T00:34:00.000Z

This most American of salad dressings is probably my favourite. So, of course it is almost impossible to find in the UK. (True, you can occasionally find a bottle on a supermarket shelf - and I do mean "a" bottle and I have bought them. Don't. Really! They always turn out to be a horrible rank watery concoction with a long list of strange and often unidentifiable ingredients. I've never been able to detect any sort of blue cheese taste to them.)

Anyway, the weather has been almost spring-like, almost sunny, almost warm. To celebrate, we decided to have a chef's salad for supper. This required, nay demanded, a luscious creamy blue cheese dressing - preferably Roquefort cheese salad dressing. So I made it myself. It's really easy.

4 oz/ 100 ml Roquefort (or Blue) cheese
1 really large or 2 medium garlic cloves - smashed and finely minced
1/2 medium onion - about 3 tablespoons finely diced
8 oz/250 ml creme fraiche or American sour cream like Breakstone's or Axelrod's
About 4 big spoonfuls Hellman's mayonnaise
1/2 large lemon - freshly squeezed juice
1 T sugar
Pepper - freshly ground - I use 15 or so grinds of the mill
Sea Salt - I use about 5 or 6 turns of the mill

Ingredients notes:
1. In the UK use full fat creme fraiche (Tesco's Finest Creme Fraiche Isigny AOC). Do NOT use whatever it is they sell in the UK called Sour Cream - it's not sour cream as we know it, believe me!
2. The American Hellman's is best. The UK version of Hellman's will do but they use a localised formula so the taste and texture is different and I don't like it. If you can get fresh mayo at Waitrose, I'd use that. Best of all is to get American family or friends to bring you the US stuff when they visit.
3. Rather than a bowl, I tend to mix this up in a plastic ice cream tub with a tight fitting lid. That way you can mix and store in the same container. Since you need to let the dressing sit for a few hours to allow the flavour to develop, this works really well.

Method:
1. Finely dice the onion and put in bowl. Smash the garlic clove to remove the skin, finely mince and crush and put into the bowl. Add sugar
2. Crumble or chop up the cheese and dump that into the bowl then add the lemon juice and give it a stir.
3. Add the creme fraiche/sour cream. Stir well.
4. Add the mayo, pepper, and salt. Stir well.
5. Taste and adjust by adding a bit more lemon juice if needed. (It won't taste very cheesy yet.)
6. Cover tightly with lid or plastic wrap. Put in the refrigerator for 6 hours, or overnight if preferred, to let the flavours mix and develop. You must allow this resting time!
7. Stir and taste before serving. You might want to adjust pepper and salt, go easy on it if you do.

New England Clam Chowder

2011-03-11T16:54:00.003Z

How can a country that is an ISLAND not have clams for sale?
I mean seriously!
Alan and I had a craving for New England Clam Chowder so I stopped by the fish market while he was at the dentist today and bought a sack of Malden little rock clams. (Who knows, that's what the guy at the fish market called them.) Anyway, I obviously needed some extra clam both on hand for the chowder so I checked Tesco. Never heard of it. And they don't carry canned clams.

Phooey!
No wonder I never can find any fried clams in the frozen food section.

Anyway, I made New England Clam Chowder for dinner Saturday.
The recipe below is very traditional, in the style of "The Phillips-Byro Passover" tradition.

All amounts listed are approximate - I do not measure stuff for soup.
This recipe serves 2 for a main meal or 4 as a starter. There's usually a little leftover for the cook's next day lunch.

Fresh clams - lots, a net bag full. OR - 2 cups canned minced clams, drained, juice reserved
clam broth - the clams will produce this when you steam them. If you use canned clams, they will be packed in it. . If not enough, try to get a bottle of it (easy in the US, lotsa luck in the UK)
1 medium yellow or white onion - diced
1 largish potato - about a cup chopped into 1/2 inch dice
1 stalk celery - diced
1 carrot - chopped into tiny dice
butter
white wine - I used a really good white wine we hadn't finished the night before, about 8 oz or so. Ignore vigorous protests from spouse or partner that it is still good to drink.
1 Tb corn starch (UK: corn flour)
600 ml single cream - US: a pint
150 ml double cream - US: 4 oz or more, always nice
freshly ground black pepper
a tiny pinch thyme
salt
Soup pot (sauce pan) with fitting lid.

This soup is made in 3 stages.

First prepare the clams:
Rinse the clams well under cold running water, examining each one to make sure it's tightly closed. Discard any that are open. This is important .
Put clams into your soup pot. Pour in the white wine. Cover pot.
Bring the pot to a boil over a medium high flame - you want to heat it quickly.
Watch and as soon as the liquid starts to boil, lower the heat to medium.
It only takes 5 minutes to steam the clams. Then remove the pot from the heat.
Pour off the liquid, which is a very fragrant mix of clam juices and wine, into a tall measuring cup.
The shells will be open and you should be able to slide each clam out into a bowl with just a nudge of your finger.
If you used small clams, you can use them whole as they are little and tender. If needed, chop clams to bite size bits.
Wash out the pot. Relax a bit.Ignore spouse still banging on about the waste of perfectly good wine.

Second stage:
Assemble all ingredients to hand, prep the veg, dissolve the corn starch in a little cold water in a tea cup
Over medium heat, put about 3 tablespoons butter in your soup pot and let melt.
Add the chopped onions and let them become translucent, NOT BROWN! Turn down the heat if needed.
When the onions are mostly translucent, add the celery and cook for a few more minutes.
Then add in the potatoes and carrot. Stir to cover everything in a sheen of butter and let cook a couple more minutes.
Now slowly pour in the reserved clam juices. WARNING - there will probably be some grit at the bottom of the cup, so pour the liquid into the soup pot very slowly, watching carefully and STOP before the grit gets to the edge. If you are careful, you will only have about a tablespoon or so of liquid left with a bit of grit - throw this out.
Bring the pot to a boil, cover pot, lower heat to just enough to maintain a simmer.
Let the soup simmer gently covered for about 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, check that the potatoes and carrot are cooked through. Poke a knife into them or taste a sample. If needed, recover and let simmer an extra 5 min.
Uncover the pot for the next stage.

Third stage:
Give the corn starch/water mix a stir.
With the pot still simmering on the heat, start stirring it with a large cooking spoon.
Drizzle in the corn starch stirring constantly - soup will start to thicken immediately. Let cook for a minute.
The soup will thicken up more than you expect - which is good because next...
Still stirring, slowly pour in the single cream.
Add a tiny pinch of thyme and grind in black pepper - start with about 5 or 6 grinds.
TASTE THE SOUP! See if you need more black pepper. Add to taste. You might also need a bit more salt especially if you used fresh clams. If you add salt, do it sparingly!
Now add the double cream, stirring as you pour it in.
Add the clams.
Reduce the heat to low
Cook until heated through. Do not boil!
Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve hot!

It actually took me about 30 minutes start to finish - but I've been tossing this soup together for years.
For fish chowder - just replace the clams with some nice fish like cod and haddock or salmon.

Quickie pork chops

2011-02-01T02:56:00.002Z

Being the lazy bum that I am, I don't go shopping for food nearly as often as I should. So I found myself tonight with some beautiful pork chops I had thawed, and damn little else.

Time to improvise. Before you suggest changes or additions in the comments, as I said, I had little else. Had I had a full larder, rest assured that this recipe would be different. But that said, to my astonishment, these were some of the tastiest pork chops I have ever eaten in my life.

And no one was as astonished by this as me.

What I had on hand (aka ingredients)

8 beautiful boneless pork chops, center cut.

a block of some old parmesan cheese.

matzoh meal.

sea salt

pepper

dried crushed garlic and parsely mix.

olive oil

I did not pat the pork chops dry with a paper towel, because i had no paper towels, and was hoarding the napkins I have for later.

Shave the parmesan and mix with matzoh meal. Mix in salt and pepper. No, I have no amounts, I just did this extemporaneously. Dredge the pork chops, and coat those bad boys well. Meanwhile, in a large, high-rimmed pan, put enough olive oil in to come up to a third to a half of the pork chops. Heat, and add in the dried and crushed garlic and parsely mix. This will flavor the oil somewhat. Immediately add your pork chops. Cook for five minutes, then flip. Cook another five minutes. Check temp with a meat thermometer and let it cook an additional minute if needed. Remove pork chops (I did this in 2 batches, 4 at a time) and place on plate with paper napkins to soak up the oil. After a few minutes, plate and eat.

Optionally, drizzle a little lemon juice on top. It helps cut the oil a little, and is a nice contrast in flavor to the salty, savory pork chops, but it really is optional.

Profiteroles ( Choux pastry)

2011-01-03T01:02:00.001Z

Choux pastry is a very useful and adaptable recipe for both sweet and savoury treats. Once you are proficient at making it, you can quickly and easily use it to produce profiteroles, cream puffs, gougeres, party canapés, appetisers, eclairs, etc. It works up very quickly, needs little equipment to produce, impresses the hell out of everyone. Your secret weapon to entertaining success.

The ingredients amounts suggested make up a batch of about 40 profiteroles. Bearing in mind that these are small puffs, that's a reasonable amount for dessert for a dinner party of 6 - 8 people. Excess (Ha! Not likely!), may be sealed in a zip lock bag and frozen. You can freeze them empty or filled with ice cream; I don't recommend freezing any other filling. From frozen, you can take them out shortly before serving and let them defrost slightly while you make chocolate sauce or any other of your choosing. They won't be as crisp as fresh but they are still marvellous.

Ingredients:

1 cup (250 ml) water
1 stick butter (4 oz/125 grams)
pinch of salt (literally, just grab a big pinch of salt between thumb and finger)
1 tsp sugar
1 cup plain flour (strong flour can also be used. Must be white flour whichever you choose!)
4 large eggs
4 oz chocolate - Belgian dark chocolate suggested, make sure it's 60 % or higher
1 cup double cream (whipping cream) or ice cream for the filling
sugar - for the whipped cream, to taste

NOTE - You MUST measure out all ingredients (except the chocolate and the cream) before starting this recipe and have them ready to hand.

Tools:
1 saucepan - medium size
1 sturdy wooden mixing spoon
flat baking sheets
parchment or greaseproof kitchen paper
pastry (piping) bag and plain tip (optional)
Whisk or electric mixer

Method:

1. Place water, butter cut up, salt, and sugar in saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the butter melts.
2. Add the flour all at once, stir it in and then beat the mixture with a wooden spoon until it comes away from the sides of the pan and forms a smooth paste without any lumps in it.
3. Set the saucepan aside to cool for a few minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 200C - make sure racks are spaced apart to allow heat to circulate.
5.  Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring quickly to make sure the eggs don’t ‘cook.’ The batter will first appear lumpy, but after a minute or so of vigorous beating, it will smooth out and become shiny and silky looking.
6. Line a baking sheet with parchment/greaseproof paper
7  Scoop the choux pastry into a piping bag and pipe out small dollops of it spaced about 1 1/2 inches apart. Alternatively, you can just use 2 teaspoons to scoop up the dough and plop it onto the sheet, which is what I do. If you do use a pastry bag you will need to wet your finger with cold water and lightly flatten the peaks on top of the dollops.
8. Put the tray into the oven and cook them for 30 minutes. Do not open the oven door for the first 20 minutes! Then you can take a peek to see how they are browning. Depending on your oven, they may be ready or need the full time to become completely golden brown.
9. Remove the sheet from the oven, pierce the side of each hot puff with a small sharp knife to release the steam from the hollow inside and allow the choux puffs to cool for 2 - 3 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
10. When the buns are completely cold, it's time to make your filling. Put the double cream and the sugar into a large bowl and whisk it until it has become stiff and will hold its shape. (If you are using ice cream just take it out of the freezer and make sure it's scoopable.
11. If you have a pastry bag (cleaned or with a new disposable bag) put the whipped cream in it. Fill the puffs by inserting the tip into the hole you pierced in the side of the puff. If you don't have a pastry bag, just slice open the puffs part way along the side and spoon in the whipped cream - which is what I do.
12. Melt the chocolate either in a bowl over a pot of simmering water or (what I do) put the chocolate in a pyrex measuring cup and microwave it. Make sure to break the chocolate up into pieces and set the microwave for 20 or 30 seconds. When it pings, check to see if the chocolate is melting. It's ok if it has some lumps left, they will stir out. You can microwave the chocolate for an additional 30 seconds as needed. Stir the chocolate gently to make sure it's smooth. Pour the chocolate into a serving jug.
13. Pile the filled puffs onto a serving plate and if you wish, drizzle some of the chocolate on top.
14. Serve the filled puffs, passing the jug of chocolate alongside so people can take as much sauce as they please.
Optional alternative fillings - pastry custard, cannoli cream, chocolate mousse, sliced strawberries (I add them with the whipped cream)

Spaghetti with Clam Sauce

2011-01-01T21:28:00.003Z

So mom and Alan are coming over tomorrow for lunch. I don't really feel up to heading out to the shops so I'll be cooking from supplies. Therefore, I will be making spaghetti with clam sauce. Life doesn't really get much easier than this.

Serves 2-4 depending

Ingredients;

1 large chopped onion

1 or 2 crushed garlic cloves

olive oil

salt pepper

1 or 2 cans of baby clams

chopped parsley (not essential)

healthy glug of white wine (4-8oz.?)

2 tbsp butter

spaghetti

while cooking spaghetti...

saute onions and garlic until soft. add some salt and pepper then add the clams and white wine and continue to simmer until the sauce looks right.

drain spaghetti when cooked and add to sauce. Add butter to melt in and then add fresh parsley. Toss and serve.

Applesauce Cake

2010-12-20T15:56:00.001Z

So here we are in the final run-up to Christmas and snowed in. London is suffering sub-zero temps and 4 inches of snow (which is a paralyzing amount in the UK!) with more predicted each day up to Christmas.

So, stuck at home I wanted something comforting and reminiscent of my childhood. Voila - Applesauce cake.

I had an assortment of apples that had seen better days but were still edible which I made into applesauce. Very simple to do - peel and core apples, cut into bite-size pieces. Dump apples in saucepan with 1 star anise, 1 clove, 1 cardamom, and a piece of cinnamon stick(bark). Add about 1/2 cup of water, pop on the lid, and let it simmer gently until the apple pieces are falling apart when stirred with a spoon. Fish out the spices and discard, then bring the sauce to a low boil and stir while watching carefully to boil off any remaining excess liquid. When the sauce looks nice and thick, take it off the heat, let cool. No sugar needed, and it's ready to be eaten as-is or used in recipes.

Applesauce Cake -

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
1½ cups sugar
3 eggs
2¾ cups flour
1½ tsp salt
1½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp nutmeg - freshly grated!!!
¾ tsp cinnamon
2 cups applesauce
¾ cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). If you have a fan oven - be careful and adjust it per your experience*

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Blend in eggs.
Sift together dry ingredients. Add to creamed mixture, alternating with applesauce, beating after each addition.

If you like, stir in ¾ cup chopped nuts before pouring batter into pans.

Pour into two buttered 8-by 4-inch loaf pans or large bundt or round spring-form pan. Bake for 1 hour or until done. (Start checking at the 45 minute mark.)

Remove and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing from pans and putting on rack to cool completely.

Sugar Glaze:

Combine ½ cup sifted icing/confectioners sugar with 1 tbsp water to start, then stir and add drops of rum or brandy or more water as needed.. Stir until the sugar glaze is thin enough to pour but thick enough to coat the spoon and stick a bit Pour over cake.

*note: I really hate fan ovens for baking. You can't trust them, their temperature always needs adjusting from whatever your recipe requires, that adjustment is not consistent, and fan ovens will sabotage your baking when you least expect it.

Popovers

2010-11-21T18:11:00.003Z

God knows that my childhood was not one of gumdrops and...and....I don't know, other sweet happy shit. But there were some things I have very happy, fond memories of. The human mind and body are wonderful things. Little things can trigger a smile.

When I was a little boy, we had a farmhouse in the country in upstate New York. We go drive there every weekend and just enjoy being out of the city. In many ways, I think I appreciate it more now than I did then, although I loved being there when I was a kid. I used to love on winter mornings waking up early, going to the fireplace, stirring the ashes around and building up the fire from the night before, then curling up in a chair with a book on my lap and sink into the book for hours before anyone else was up.

Sometimes though, for whatever reason, I would sleep a little late, and my mother would wake up before me, and I would wake up to a smell I was very familiar with. Popovers. I don't know what it is about these things that I adored so much, but I went crazy for them. I pestered my mother to make them almost every damn weekend, the poor woman. Sometimes she would, sometimes she wouldn't. Sometimes, just to be extra special, she would put cheese in the batter. Mmm, popovers.

Time passed, and popovers became a distant memory, all but forgotten. I don't remember when exactly, but about a year or two ago, I was zipping around amazon, and I stumbled onto a popover pan. I had never heard of such a creature and looked it up. It seemed that they are a little different from regular muffin tins- the cups are slightly deeper, more narrow, the slope of the sides different. They also tend to be freestanding cups held by wire- which is a bit more thermally efficient. Apparently you really need one to make perfect popovers. I thought back to my childhood. I remember how much it used to drive my mother completely crazy that the popovers would collapse. They still tasted scrumptious, but the tops would cave inward. I, as a child, didn't give a shit- I cared about the taste. But I as an adult (and a somewhat anal retentive cook) was curious to see whether or not I could pull off the perfect popover. So, I put the pan on my wishlist, and pretty much forgot about it. A few weeks ago, I had a little cash and decided to buy some stuff from my wishlist. Scrolling through, I found the popover pan. I argued with myself about the cost (not much- $17 I think it was) and was it worth it, would I ever make them, etc. etc.

Then I figured, fuck it. I bought it. Well, naturally as I was waiting for the order, the company stopped selling them and replaced it with what looks like the identical thing but $1.50 cheaper. Idon't care- when a company discontinues a product and replaces it with something they claim is the same but cheaper, it usually means it's shoddier. And, hell, it's a buck fifty.

So, it arrived last week and I didn't have a chance to use it, naturally. All my chinese friends, coworkers, wife, all looked at me weirdly when I described them. When I showed pictures, the unanimous reply was always "Do you fill it with cream?" I was scandalized. Also a little mystified that every single chinese person said the same thing. Go figure, it's a cultural thing.

So last night I decided that I would wake up early and make some. I informed my wife who asked "Are you going to fill them with cream?"

"No."

"Well, can you put cheese in them?"

"Well, yes, my mother used to. But I'd rather try making one normal batch first, before I start screwing with it."

"Well, can you put herbs and spices into it?"

"Yes, but I really would like to just make one normal batch first."

So. Out of curiosity, I looked up various recipies, and decided that most of them are bullshit, or have all kinds of weird requirements, etc. For example- you don't need to use kosher salt. It's going to melt in anyway, who cares what kind of salt you use? I used coarsely grained sea salt, but only because it's all I had (just ran out of mortons). Or how the eggs and milk need to be room temperature- nope, I took mine straight from the fridge.

Please please please do not try to make this recipe "healthy." The popover is a fairly delicate thing, and using crap like soy milk, margaine, whole wheat flour, egg whites, whatever- will fuck it up, make it nasty, and hell, why are you bothering to make it if you aren't going to make it well? Just stick to the damn recipe, okay? Yeesh.

You will need:

1. 1 cup flour, bleached white all-purpose

2. 1 cup whole milk (none of that reduced fat or soy whatever, have some pride in your cooking, you fucking hipster).

3. 2 tablespoons butter, melted. You can have a little more, but you need this much.

4. 3 large eggs.

5. 1 pinch salt

Preheat your oven to 425. The tray will go onto the lowest rack, so position that ahead of time. Take your popover pan or muffin tin or whatever you use and grease the inside of the cups with some butter (not the melted butter, this is just butter used as a grease). Set the pan aside. Now, for the batter, you can use a hand mixer, a food processor, whatever. I used my kitchen aid with the whisk attachment. For those of you who care, my milk and eggs were straight from the fridge, the butter was freshly melted and still kinda hot.

Add all ingredients to a bowl and mix. To my chagrin, my flour wasn't sifted or anything, but had some fairly large lumps. I did the best I could, but it was still kind of gooey on the bottom of the bowl and such. After the mixture became homogenous (couple minutes on the second-to-lowest setting) there was a light froth on top, but not much. Enough that I knew that oxygen had made its way into the batter. The batter is fairly liquidy. From my work with creme brulee, I noticed a could of pieces of cooked egg floating in the batter. Probably because of the hot butter. I strained the batter into a mixing bowl. Good thing I did, as I strained a hell of a lot of junk out- cooked egg, gooey flour, etc. I ended up with a very nice, smooth batter. Plus, my mixing bowl has a mouth to pour, while the kitchen aid bowl does not. I poured an even amount into each of the six popover cups and put the pan into the oven, on the lowest rack.

Do not open the oven until you are ready to take the popovers out.

Keep the oven at 425 for 25 minutes. Then turn the temperature down to 350 and walk away. After 15 minutes, come back and take your fresh popovers out of the oven. You will want to eat them within five to ten minutes from the oven.

While baking, enjoy the smell. I walked around my apartment with a smile on my face from it- I had forgotten that smell, but with it, it brought back memories of delight from when I was a kid.

It's sad, but while popovers are an american dish (they are. Yorkshire puddings are very similar, but not quite the same) most americans are unfamiliar with them. It's one of the few points of american cuisine that we should take pride in, but they are almost completely unknown anymore. So, I want to thank my mother for exposing me to popovers, one of my favorite treats in the world.

And for those of you wondering, I took some pictures when they came fresh out of the oven. You can see them below. You will note that they did not collapse, and take my words on it when I say that they were perfectly cooked- crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, just the right balance of flavors. The only weird thing is that the very bottoms have that weird bell shape. I guess it must be a side effect of the pan or whatever, but it doesn't really matter- they're beautiful and delicious.

Next week, maybe I'll make another batch, this time with some cheddar. Oh, and do pay attention to the times- 25 and 15, and you'll get beautifully golden popovers.

Portugese Pickled Carrots - conserva de cenoura - a recipe from the Algarve

2010-10-28T01:42:00.003+01:00

When Astrid and I were in the Algarve region of Portugal a few months ago, everywhere we went restaurants and cafes served us these yummy, garlicky carrots. Served in little ceramic bowls, drizzled with fresh olive oil, it was the perfect nibble to accompany a cold glass of vinho verde or rose wine - and to dunk roughly torn pieces of fresh Portuguese bread into.

Ingredients:
2 cups sweet carrots, peeled and sliced in rounds
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
4 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. parsley finely chopped
1-2 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp. sweet paprika
Salt - a pinch of sea salt/fleur de sel is best
Optional
black or green olives, with or without pits

Instructions:
1. Place peeled sliced carrots in a bowl and steam using microwave. Zap until tender but not too soft. Microwaves vary, so 5 to 10min depending on microwave. *Note: Keep watch so your carrots don’t over cook.
Or simply simmer on the stove, in water to cover, until just tender.

2. Drain the carrots and place in bowl to cool slightly.

3. In another bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, chopped parsley, garlic, paprika, salt.

4. Pour combined liquids over the carrots and mix gently - so not to break carrots, but mix well enough to coat all the slices. Taste for salt and spice and add to taste.

5. Add olives now if you wish and mix again gently.

6. Store covered, in refrigerator. Let the mix rest and absorb the flavours for an hour before serving or let the flavours mature and mellow longer; it keeps beautifully in the refrigerator for 3 days easily. If it looks a bit dry when ready to serve, just drizzle on a bit more olive oil, stir and serve.

Serve with crisp Portuguese bread, baguettes, or other crisp crusted bread for dunking into the garlicky oil . A cold bottle of vinho verde will complete the perfect snack.

Brownies - from scratch!

2010-09-27T13:48:00.000+01:00

Perhaps the companies we have worked at are not typical of most UK firms, but it has been our experience that bringing baked goodies in to share with office mates is not typical and customary in the UK. When I first brought a batch of the classic American "Nieman Marcus $1,000,000 Chocolate Chip Urban Legend Cookies" into my office at KBR, the crowds went wild. Well, ok, we're all techies, all IT professionals, so yummy cookies are a natural along with coffee, lots of coffee. But then I sent in a share of the next batch with Alan (my husband) to his office and again, the crowds went wild. As time went on and we moved to other jobs the same phenomenon occurred - people delighted but mystified at why one would bring in home baked goodies for the office.

Well, it's an American thing.

Anyway, making those awesome cookies is a great deal of work, especially as I have to make them entirely by hand since I have no mixer here in the UK, and I wasn't making them very frequently. But people at Alan's office were making wingeing, mewling sounds of need so one evening I mixed up a batch of classic American brownies - from a mix box, of course. People loved them, and it was a perfect solution for home baked goody craving being dirt-easy to make. So when Alan came home from work on Thursday and informed me that the hints had progressed to stern cross-examination as to the expected arrival date of more snackies I told him to let his mates know he'd be bringing in brownies Monday morning. I planned to pick up a couple of boxes of brownie mix when I did my regular weekly supermarket run. Unfortunately I went brain dead and while I knew there was something I'd intended to pick up, I absolutely couldn't remember what. Until Alan asked me on Sunday afternoon when I planned to bake the brownies for work. Yikes! That's what I forgot to buy! But I knew I couldn't let the office staff down, they were all anticipating rich chocolaty brownies with morning coffee on Monday. So I airily announced no worries, I shall bake brownies from scratch as I had all the necessary ingredients in my cupboard storage. On the other hand, what I didn't mention was that I'd never actually made homemade brownies from scratch. So armed with a recipe from a trusted source, and scavenging the cupboards, I proceeded to bake a batch of what turned out to be the best damned brownies I've ever tasted!

Note to UK users - this recipe used cup and spoon measures, not weights. This makes life VASTLY easier.

If you don't have them, get yourself a set of standard measuring spoons and a set of measuring cups. Forget the misery of scales. I've given a rough guide to metric measures you can use.)

Ingredients:

4 large eggs
1 cup caster sugar (or 250g)
7 0z unsalted butter (200g)
6 oz dark chocolate - use a really good quality bar(150g)
1 cup plain flour (150g)
3/4 tsp baking powder (3.5g) I just used 1 level tsp because it was easier
2 small packs dark chocolate chips or chunks (100 gr bags UK, 4 oz bags US)

Equipment:

Baking pan - 8 x 10 x 1.5 inches (you can use a slightly larger pan but not smaller)
Greaseproof or Parchment paper
whisk
spatula - get yourself a silicone one as they are marvelous
Two bowls, pyrex or stainless steel, (1 large for mixing, 1 which can sit comfortably on top of the saucepan).
Saucepan with simmering water

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 325 F (170c or 160C for fan ovens)
2. Very lightly butter the baking pan (this will help keep baking paper in place).
3. Cut paper and fit to the pan leaving a small bit over the long sides for lifting cake out later and tucking the corners in keep a reasonably neat lining.
4. Lightly butter the bottom paper.

Instructions:

1. Put the eggs and sugar into the large mixing bowl and whisk together until well mixed. Set this to the side.

2. Break up the chocolate and put it into the heatproof bowl.
Cut the butter into chunks and add to the chocolate.
Place the bowl over the saucepan of simmering water.

3. Using the spatula, gently stir the butter and chocolate until they have both melted.
Then pour them into the egg and sugar mix while stirring the mix. It's important to stir the mix while adding the stream of melted chocolate.

4. Add the flour and baking powder to the mix and whisk them in, ensuring there are no lumps of flour.

5. Now stir in the chocolate chips and pour the whole lot into the baking pan lined with greaseproof paper.

6. Put the baking pan into the oven and bake it for 30 minutes.

7. Remove the baking pan from the oven; you'll notice that the brownies have shrunk slightly away from the sides.
Put the pan on a rack or heatproof surface and allow it to rest and cool for 10 minutes (ok, 5 if you're terribly impatient)

8. Take the brownies out of the baking pan by gently lifting on the extra paper you left on the long sides of the pan. Place the brownies on a tray and allow to cool another 30 min or until cool enough to handle. Cut into pieces and serve.

9. You can store the brownies in a tin or tupperware box at room temperature for a couple days - if they last that long! Or you can also wrap them individually in wax paper and place in a zip lock bag and freeze - that way you can take 1 out when you like and just let it come to room temp. Frozen brownies will keep for a couple of months.

Creme Brulee

2010-09-05T21:30:00.004+01:00

By request, I'm posting my Creme Brulee recipe. We recently bought a set which included ramekins, water bath, and ramekin holder. You don't need this, but it speeds up the process quite a bit. You'll see why. It's also an excuse to use a blowtorch.

You'll need few ingredients to make 4 individual brulees. Pre-heat your oven to 300 degrees. In a small saucepan, heat 1 1/2 cups heavy cream on a medium heat. If you have one and wish to use it, feel free to split a vanilla bean and add it. I'm unable to get my hands on one (I live in Chinatown, and work in Harlem. Neither place typically has vanilla beans readily available. Yes, there is a Fairway near me, but it's a pain in the ass to get to.). For the rest of us, add a teaspoon or two (up to you, I like adding a little more to have more of a vanilla taste to the custard) vanilla extract to the heavy cream. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl or kitchen aid (use the wire whisk) whisk together 6 egg yolks and 1/4 cup white granulated sugar until homogenous. When the cream is just hitting the boiling point (which will be about when you finish whipping together the yolks and sugar) remove from heat. Turn your mixer to a medium-high speed (this is important) and add a small amount of the cream (~1/4 cup-ish). Once it is incorporated, add a little more cream. Once that is done, add the rest of the cream, and continue to whip the mixture for another 10 seconds or so. Don't worry about foam.

Remove the mixture and pour into a separate bowl through a strainer. This will remove any egg shell pieces, as well as any pieces of egg which were cooked by the cream. Fill your water bath to about halfway. Place the ramekins in and fill each with the batter. Most recipes tell you to spoon off the foam. I find this a pain in the ass, as well as a waste of batter. Instead, I take my blowtorch and quickly wave the flame over the tops of the ramekins. It will make the bubbles disappear. You can do it two or three times. If you end up singeing the top a little, don't freak out, it's fine.

Stick the bath into your oven and leave in there for 50 minutes. Yes, 50 minutes. I've done this a number of times now (I have to justify the cost of the materials somehow) and it is always 50 minutes. Naturally, ovens differ, so check yours out at 45 minutes. I have not noticed a difference between it being located in the middle or top of the oven, so don't worry about it. How do you know it is underdone/done? Shake the bath gently. If the custard moves like a liquid, it is underdone. If it jiggles like Jello jigglers (which are slightly stiffer than classical jello) you're good. And yes, it is a very fast turnover point. At 45 minutes, it will be completely liquid. At 50 minutes, it is done.

Here is where the set is nice. Normally, you will need to leave the ramekins alone or very carefully remove them. My set has a wire holder which allows me to immediately remove the ramekins from the hot water bath, which allows them to cool more quickly. Generally, you'll want to wait until they cool a little bit before you stick them in the fridge (rule of thumb- don't stick piping hot items into the fridge or your milk will be chunky in the morning). Leave them alone for at leave a half hour- you want them nice and chilly. If you are planning on eating the creme brulee more than an hour or two later, leave them in the fridge. The custard will keep just fine, don’t worry. When you are ready to eat the dessert, take a teaspoon of granulated sugar and pour it on top of the first ramekin in a heap. Pick up the ramekin and angle it slightly, rotating so that the sugar coats the top evenly. This will ensure that you get a nice, even layer of perfect thickness. Excess gets poured on top of the next ramekin, and repeat. Once done, grab out your blowtorch.

Your first crème brulee will likely be over-scorched. I expected that I would need to move the flame rapidly and many times to get even heating. In fact, I have found that I get more consistent results if I move the torch slowly and evenly, giving the entire dish only one or two passes (one slow, one quick). Play with it- it’s really mostly a matter of practice more than anything. Oh, make sure you are not holding the ramekin when you use the blowtorch, and if you are afraid of setting your kitchen counter on fire, put foil down first.

Once done, the brulee’s go back in the fridge. Don’t try to eat it just yet- molten sugar + mouth = ouchie. Let it sit for ~1/2 hour. Eat within an hour or so. Any longer, and the sugar will start to soften and re-dissolve in the custard. Bon appétit!

Some thoughts: Have fun. Joanna and I decided to play with the type of sugar we used on the top. Most people use sugar in the raw or white sugar. I’m curious to try maple sugar. Last night, we tried using some black and harlequin sugars we had sitting around. This was interesting not just visually, but because the sugar grains were fairly large, the thickness and texture of the sugar layer was different. The black sugar was surprisingly boring and was very difficult to gauge the temperature. See below. Note: The tops are a little sloppy, because it is very difficult to make an even layer with very large grained sugar. Also, when using colored sugar, it will melt fully, but the dye stays put. So it looks unevenly coated, but it actually was very nice and even.

Oh yea. When adding the hot cream, make sure the mixer is fast. Too slow and the cream will cook the eggs much more- going fast will allow you to properly temper the eggs (raise their temperature without cooking). It always will cook the eggs a teeny bit, but this will minimize it.

Kick-ass Sauce

2010-09-03T01:27:00.003+01:00

Yea, it's a silly name. But let me explain a little. My fiance is an ABC (american born chinese). She likes glazes on her meat- sweet glazes. I tend to dislike sweet glazes. They tend to be cloying and have little flavor. If I'm going to have a glaze, I prefer something savory or spicy. Joanna is more sensitive to heat in food than I am (I'm pretty sure there are entire nations that combined are still more sensitive to spicy than I am) so I tend to avoid making food we share spicy.

Seemingly unrelated, I have been on the search for many years for the perfect barbeque sauce. In my mind, I have a flavor which is what I think of when I think barbeque sauce. For many years, I have tried many, many different varieties from the store. Some would come close, but were always off. Not that some weren't excellent (and Choo-Choo's barbeque sauce will be missed, that's for certain) but they weren't quite right. Generally, they are too sweet, or have too much bullshit fake flavoring added, or I can taste the preservatives or whatever

No, I am not giving the recipe for my dream sauce. I never attempted to make it. I wouldn't even be sure how to start.

As I said before, I like a savory glaze, while Joanna likes sweet ones. I started playing with making my own glaze/barbeque sauce about a year ago. It took a lot of trials. The biggest hurdle was my shift in philosophy. I would make something I thought was pleasant, then my fiance would taste it and not like it, insisting I make it sweeter. Attempting to do so always gave something that tasted okay, but wasn't great. The problem was that I was either making a sweet sauce, or a savory sauce that had something sweet added, and it wasn't right. What I needed to do was to invent a sauce that by its very nature was both sweet and savory. And that's what I'm writing about.

I do not have exact amounts for this. I always adjust to taste. One thing to note- don't worry too much about it tasting perfect. I've discovered to my happy surprise that even if it isn't quite right, once I coat the burgers or ribs with it and cook them, it still tastes the same- fantastic. So give this recipe a try, I think you'll be pleased.

I use a medium saucepan on medium heat. To it I add ~1/2 cup of honey. I then add a cup of Heinz ketchup. You will need to add more ketchup later, maybe a quarter cup or so. You don't want the honey flavor to be too strong. Make sure to stir fairly frequently and make sure the mixture is homogenous before adding any other ingredients. The honey will take a little while before it dissolves into the ketchup, but it will, I promise. To this, add 4-5 cloves of garlic. I use my garlic press; I don't like my hands to stink for a week. Now, take wasabi powder (if you can get your hands on real wasabi root and a sharkskin grater, more power to you) and and in a small bowl mix with some water. Do not add the powder directly tot he sauce- it'll just dissolve in and be overwhelmed. I like to use about a heaping teaspoon or so. I also find it easier to add enough water so that it isn't its customary paste, but instead is more fluid. This allows you to add it more easily tot he sauce and it dossolves more easily. Leave the wasabi alone for five minutes to let the flavor develope, then stir into the sauce. Add a dash of tobasco sauce. This will make enough to coat a rack of ribs.

Be careful about overhating the sauce, or heating it too long. Doing so will enhance the flavor fo the vinegar in the ketchup, and give you an acidic sauce. Taste when you finish and add more of whatever ingredients you need. Again, don't stress out too much- it'll taste great. I don't add mustard- again, the vinegar content keeps me cautious. I tried it but didn't find that it added anything to the sauce. I've heard people express surprise that I cook my sauce, but I think it helps the flavors to really melt together, especially the garlic. If you find that you have added too much ketchup (it happens) you can easily just add more honey and such to taste.

Alternately- you can try sauteing the minced garlic into the saucepan, then add the honey and other ingredients. I cannot honestly say that I have noticed any difference in flavor or texture, so you may as well just make your life easier and add it later. Feel free to add a little salt and pepper if you like. I hope you folks will give this sauce a try- it is really easy to make, and delicious. The wasabi also (maybe just in my mind) makes the meat a little more tender and just compliments the rest of the flavors so fantastically.

Hm. I do have powdered chinese mustard. Might be worth playing with that a little and seeing what turns up.

If you like this recipe, please post and let me know your impressions. Or if you hate it, that's okay too. This glaze, incidentally, caramelizes beautifully. This last week, I madea rack of ribs with Joanna. We were both very hungry, and the ribs came our beautifully tender and juicy and just perfect. Joanna was dissapointed, however, that they really hadn't caramelized at all. She wanted to put them back int he oven longer, but I worried that they would dry out. So, I whipped out my blowtorch (what, your kitchen has no blowtorch?) and set about with it. Everyone ended up very happy.

Pumpkin Pie

2010-08-20T14:01:00.004+01:00

Basic Pumpkin Pie recipe - with notes for variations/options

Note: In an ideal world, this pie should be baked in a
10 inch corning glass deep dish pie plate
Sadly, these once ubiquitous dishes are now rare and precious items.
If you have one or can find one, guard it well. Perhaps you can find one on eBay or steal one from your Granny. And btw there is a Zombie Death Curse on the bastard who stole mine from Astrid's last Thanksgiving dinner.

If you live in the UK, any sort of American pie plate may be difficult to find. Tesco and Waitrose used to carry them but I don't know if they currently do and that will also vary with location. The Waitrose in Canary Wharf, London had an excellent selection last time I was there.

Note: Where do you find pumpkin to make this pie?

The answer to this can be relatively simple or pretty complex - read on:

First you need to make some decisions -
1. Are you going to use pumpkin or sweet potatoes to make this pie. Yes, you can use sweet potatoes instead of pumpkin. Nobody can tell the difference in the finished product. Trust me on this one. (This fact comes in handy in the UK where any kind of pumpkin may be impossible to find.)

2. If you choose to use pumpkin you need to decide fresh or canned.

Canned is easy - Get Libbys 15 oz can - even Tesco in the UK carries that. For some reason, Tesco's often stocks their canned pumpkin in the canned FRUIT section so check there as well as in the canned veg aisle. In the US it's available everywhere and frankly it's become the traditional standard for most people.

Or make a puree from fresh pumpkin - For this you MUST use a little 6" to 8" pie pumpkin (sometimes called a sugar pumpkin), you just need 1 to make either a 10" deep dish pie or 2 shallow dish 9" pies. Do not attempt to use the big Halloween type pumpkin. They are too watery and grainy/stringy and lack natural sugars. You can also use a butternut squash to make the puree - this is actually what is in canned "pumpkin". If you can get pie pumpkins, just cut it in half, scoop out all the seeds and fibers, then place cut-side down on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees F (180 degrees C/160 Fan) for approximately 45 minutes to 1 1/4 hours (depending on size) or until easily pierced with a knife. When done, let cool a bit and then the peel should just lift right off. You'll need to puree the cooked pumpkin in a food processor or in a bowl with an electric hand-blender wand. Let the pureed pumpkin sit in a bowl for about 20 min and if any water seeps out, pour it away before using the pumpkin. (See why we tend to use the canned stuff?)

3. If you decide to use sweet potatoes and you live in the UK, you must use American sweet potatoes for this NOT African or unlabeled ones from god knows where. This is because the name may be the same, but the vegetable isn't. Tesco's sells American sweet potatoes under the name, "Carolina Gold" and they are lovely.

OK, on to the recipe

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C)
Place your oven rack in the middle or bottom third of the oven

Ingredients -

Pie crust - buy ready made in the fresh chilled/dairy section of your supermarket - in the US, I use Pillsbury's, in the UK ready rolled short crust (made with butter if possible). If you make your own pie crust, use your favorite. Make sure you have enough for 1 deep dish/2 shallow dish single crust pies.

(Here's a link with photos about crusts - http://startcooking.com/blog/154/Pie-Crust---Ready-Made )

Pie Filling -

3 large eggs
2 cups fresh pumpkin puree or 1 - 15 ounce can (425 grams) pure pumpkin
1/2 cup (120 ml) double or heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup (110 grams) light brown sugar - you can use white sugar if you prefer
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
Optional - a good splash of Scotch Malt Whiskey

Topping - whipped cream to top pie just before serving

First get your pie crust ready. Line the pie plate with the crust, crimp edges.
Option - sprinkle finely chopped pecans over the crust and press into the dough

Then make the filling:

1. In a large bowl lightly whisk the eggs.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Taste and adjust, you may want to add more sugar or spices.

3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie shell and place on a large baking pan to catch any spills. Note - you can cover the edges of the pie crust with aluminum (kitchen) foil before baking to prevent it overbrowning. If you do this, make sure to remove the foil after the first 20 min baking. I can't be bothered to fuss but it is a nice option.

4. Bake the pie for about 45 to 55 minutes or until the filling is set and the crust has browned (the center will still look wet). (A knife inserted about 1 inch from side of pan will come out almost clean.)

5. Place the baked pie on a wire rack and allow to set and cool about an hour. May be served warm or refrigerate if you like it cold. (We like it cold)

6. Traditionally this pie is served with whipped cream on top

Variations - I like the brown sugar but often I use a mix of white sugar and pure Maple syrup instead. I also use more spices than listed here because my husband likes a deeply flavoured pie. You can also use brandy instead of the whiskey. If you use something different, post a comment and let us know.

Mushrooms sauteed with Chinese cabbage

2010-08-05T19:41:00.001+01:00

Mushrooms sauteed with Chinese cabbage
Originally uploaded by Tavie

This isn't really a "recipe"; call it "tale of a lunch".

I mostly eat vegetarian at home - my roommate is vegetarian and does the bulk of the cooking, and I'm lazy enough that I'm perfectly content to let her cook for me (I do the dishes, in return.) So we do a lot of our shopping at produce markets, when we get the chance.

I'll cook for myself, of course, when I have to. I'm home during the day now and find myself scrounging up lunch for myself, and I've been getting tired of peanut butter sandwiches, so I popped my head in the produce drawer and saw a full head of Chinese cabbage and an unopened container of baby bella mushrooms. Lunch!

So, starting with:

1 head of Chinese cabbage
1 box of baby bella mushrooms

I assembled a few more ingredients after rummaging around in our fridge and spice cabinet:

3-4 stalks of scallions
Sesame oil
Chili sesame oil
Low-sodium soy sauce
Garlic powder (no fresh cloves, boo)
Chinese mustard
Vegetable broth

First I cleaned and chopped up the veggies. Mushrooms - discard stems and slice caps. Scallions - discard both ends and chop up the tenderest middle parts (green and white) into 1/4 inch pieces. Cabbage - chop into roughly 1x2 inch pieces.

I put about a tablespoon of the regular sesame oil into a skillet and heated it up. In went the mushrooms and scallions, and a few shakes of soy sauce. (It's easy to overdue this but you don't want the mushrooms to become little salt pellets, so just be careful.) I sauteed them together until they were nice and soft.

Then I took the chopped cabbage, separating out mostly just the bits with the white stalk (yummiest part, I think). Threw in a few pinches of the Oriental mustard and the garlic powder. (If I'd had fresh garlic handy, that would've gone in earlier with the scallions; que sera sera.) Also added a few shakes of the chili sesame oil to give it a bit of bite. (YMMV.)

I stirred this around over the heat until everything started to look nice and wilty. At this point I added a splash of vegetable broth to thin out the liquid.

At the end I had a crunchy, earthy, savory little lunch that could easily go with rice, if I weren't so lazy. I ended up eating it as is with a glass of iced tea.

Mm, summer.

Black Tomato Sauce part 1

2010-07-10T18:26:00.001+01:00

Just a quick note that enough of my tomatoes ripened that I'm making a black tomato sauce as we speak. I'll post recipe and results later.

Bluegrass Beercheese Burgers

2010-06-14T23:53:00.002+01:00

I will freely admit to swiping this from an episode of somethingorother from Food Network a couple of years ago. Joanna and I were astonished at how good it was. I made some changes to the recipe, however:

1. We didn't use bacon as neither of us are big bacon fans.
2. We had a few drops of some ancient Jim Bean we used, but I'd reccomend a newer batch of bourbon.
3. The beer. Keep in mind that this is an american recipe. Therefore your beer should be american beer. I know, I know, the stuff is garbage. But the flavor won't be right if you use good stuff. We had a bottle of Budweiser in the fridge from god knows when that we used, and it ended up being fantastic. It wasn't flat, but it didn't really matter.
4.Texas toast is all well and good but if you can't get it, use some nice rolls.
5. Poblano peppers are mildly spicy. If you can't get them, try to get something with a touch of a kick to it.
6. When we made this, we forgot to glaze the burgers and ended up pouring the glaze on top before we ate it. It was delicious, so don't freak out if you forgot.

Prep time: ~20 mins
Cook time: ~30 mins
Serves: 6

Ingredients

12 slices bacon
1 stick butter, softened
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 small yellow onions, sliced thinly into rings
1 poblano pepper, julienne
1 green bell pepper, julienne

Bourbon BBQ Glaze:

1/2 cup ketchup
3 tablespoons barbecue sauce
3 tablespoons bourbon
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Beercheese:

2 cups grated sharp Cheddar
1 tablespoon spicy steak sauce (recommended: A1 Bold and Spicy Steak Sauce)
1 clove garlic
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon flat beer
2 pounds freshly ground chuck
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
Vegetable oil, for brushing grill
12 slices Texas Toast

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Lay out bacon strips on rimmed baking sheet pan, lined with parchment paper or foil. Bake until brown and crisp, about 10 to 12 minutes, depending on thickness. Remove, drain on paper towels, and set aside. Alternately, bacon can also be cooked in the microwave or on the stovetop.

Preheat a gas grill, charcoal grill, or indoor grill to medium-high heat.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Set aside remaining butter for bread. Saute onions and both peppers until soft and caramelized.

Meanwhile, combine ketchup, barbecue sauce, bourbon, mustard, and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a light simmer and continue to cook until sugar is dissolved and sauce is thick, about 3 to 4 minutes.

For Beercheese, combine first 5 ingredients in food processor, and with machine running, drizzle in beer until mixture is smooth and well combined.

Divide ground chuck into 6 square-shaped patties, approximately the size of Texas toast. Season with salt and pepper. Brush grill with vegetable oil. Place patties on grill and cook, turning once until done, approximately 5 to 7 minutes until desired doneness. Once flipped, brush tops of patties with BBQ glaze.

Meanwhile, lightly butter both sides of each slice of Texas toast and grill on either side for 1 to 2 minutes along outer edges of grill, until lightly browned and toasted.

To assemble, spread 6 slices of Texas toast liberally with beercheese, approximately 2 tablespoons per slice. Top with bacon strips and burger patties. Top burgers with caramelized onion and pepper mixture. Spread the remaining slices of toast with additional BBQ glaze, about 1 tablespoon per slice, and invert onto burger patties. Enjoy!

Fried Green Tomatoes

2010-06-13T14:42:00.002+01:00

No, this has nothing to do with the movie. I recently was forced to pick almost a dozen of my tomatoes green because they had suffered from Blossom End Rot. Essentially the whole tomato is still green, but the bottom tip begins to rot, while still on the stem. Nothing can be done for these, and it is reccomended you just prune them and throw them out. But I hate to waste food, and I was still upset at the loss. And I figured, all I really needed to do was chop off the bottom and the rest was fine. But what the hell could I do with green tomatoes? Well, I only really know one recipe for green tomatoes, and that's to fry them.

I'm normally not a fan of fried green tomatoes. Generally they are greasy, and/or the tomatoes are cooked in a high heat (I'll get to this) so that the outside is crispy, but the inside is still hard. Let alone, I've never seen or heard of anyone frying tomatoes this small. So I'll tell you right now that they came out utterly gorgeous.

To start, slice your tomatoes into medallions and lay them flat on a paper towel. Lightly spinke salt over all of the tomatoes, then allow to sit for 10 minutes. This will help draw excess moisture from the tomatoes. While they sit, you can prepare the batter. In one bowl, pour white flour. This is stage one. In the second bowl, beat two eggs and a dollop of milk (maybe a couple of tablespoons worth). This is stage two. In the third bowl, mix equal parts breadcrumbs and cornmeal, a little cayenne pepper, a dash of salt and pepper. This is stage three.

Pat your tomatoe medallions gently with a paper towel, then dredge them in the flour. Follow this with a dip in the egg mixture. This part can be twicky, and the egg mixture won't want to stick too easily to the flour. Once that's done, transfer the tomato to the breadcrumb/cornmeal mix and coat. Once that's done, put the tomatoes on a plate and let them rest a good 5-10 minutes.

While they rest, take out a frying pan. You'll want to add enough oil to go 1/2 to 3/4th up the tomato slices, but not cover them completely. I think I ended up using ~1/2-3/4ths of a cup, but my tomatoes were cut fairly thinly. Into the oil, add a pat of butter. Heat the oil on medium. This is important. At medium, the outside will crisp, but the tomato itself will also cook so that it softens and becomes delicious. At high heat, the outside will crisp much more quickly, but the inside will still be raw. If you've ever tried eating raw green tomato, you know it isn't too tasty. And it's also fairly hard, so it isn't easy to eat. So, medium heat. How do you know when the oil is ready? The butter will melt and start to sing. That is, the butter will stop melting and actually start to gently fizzle. That's when it is time to add your tomatoes.

Whether small or large, the tomatoes will take about 4 minutes on each side to get a golden brown. While they cook, you can make your southern tartar sauce to go with it. What's that? Equal parts sweet relish, mayo, and a few dashes of hot sauce (not enough to make it hot, just to add to the flavor a little). Personally though I'm more a fan of sweet relish than I am of mayo, so I add a little extra relish. You can choose whatever you want.

Once your tomatoes have cooked, flipped, and cooked, take them out with a spatulo and lay them on a paper-towel covered plate. You can eat them from there- I reccomend you don't drizzle the sauce over them but rather you dip the tomatoes into the sauce, or take a little on your fork and dab it on each piece.

The nice thing about using these young baby tomatos, actually, is that they become a fingerfood and a really nice snack. For such tiny things, they are a lot of work, but I swear it is actually worth it. Take a look for yourself:

A word on "healthy"

2010-06-05T15:36:00.002+01:00

I tend to find these days that I use the term "healthy" somewhat differently from those around me. From what I can tell, they usually mean "low calorie" instead. When I say something is healthy, it means that you know every ingredient which goes into it, and most of it is good for you in terms of vitamin and mineral content, and generally isn't actively harmful. I am also of the opinion that if you cook for yourself, you'll generally produce food lower in salt and calories and fat than stuff you buy from the store. Even for things which don't have a whole lot of redeeming value beyond taste like alfredo sauce will be infinitely tastier and healthier if you make it yourself than if it comes from a jar. I dislike the taste of many preservatives, and don't need excess salt or vinegar used as preservatives either. One of the worst offenders of the preservatives genre to me is 99% of bottled iced teas. I cannot taste anything but preservatives and simple syrup. There's a question for you- does anyone but me notice that simple syrup tastes very different from actual sugar?

Bouillabaisse and rouille

2010-06-05T02:50:00.003+01:00

My fiance's family were (supposed to) get together to "help" her choose a dress. I thought that it would be a nice gesture if I made a really tasty dinner for them all, something really nice and fresh. Scanning the pathmark weekly, I saw that several fish and littleneck clams were on sale. So I figured, why not a bouillabaisse? I had some ingredients at home, and I was tired of staring at all my plants and not doing anything with them. At the least, I could use some of the basil freshly picked.

So I got up early that chilly Saturday morning and went to the store. Hot damn, beef spareribs and pork back ribs were on sale. I don't normally like ribs, but I have developed a findness for beef spareribs. And my fiance adores them, so it should work out well. I went to the meat section but couldn't find either. I found one of the meat department guys and asked what happened, and was told that they were cutting them at the moment, to come back in ten minutes. Fair enough, think I, and I continues shopping. I come back and see the pork ribs are out. I found one that looks pretty meaty (the rest were way too fatty) but couldn't find the beef ribs. Annoyed, I found another of the butchers and asked what happened. The guy apologised and explained that one of the workers had just had a heart attack, and it would be a little while. Well. I felt like a bit of a dick. I went to the fishmonger and chatted with him a bit. I wanted to buy ~4-5 pounds of scraps to make the stock with, but apparently they don't sell those to you unless you at least call ahead of time. Instead I bought some cheap porgies and had them cut up and bit. Porgies have little meat on them, so I got a whole bunch of the smaller ones which were cheap enough and coudn't really be eaten anyway. The secret to bouillabaisse is that you really want a large variety of fish, but I didn't have THAT much money on me, so I bought three different kinds (I really don't remmeber what kind anymore, it is unimportant) and some of the clams. I joked with the fishmonger that at least the guy who had a heart attack wasn't on the meatcutter at the time. The fishmonger told me that actually, the guy had recently hurt himself on the cutting machine and had just that day returned from sick leave. "Man," I said "some people will do anything to get out of work."

I went looking for saffron. You don't need much, so I wasn't too worried about buying it. I check the spices aisle, and can't find it. I go to the information desk. The woman tells me to check the spanish aisle. I give her a blank look. "But...saffron is grown in India!" I exclaimed. And as a spice, wouldn't it be in the spices section? Nope, spanish food. So, okay, I go over. Nope, not there either. No fucking saffron out of an entire pathmark. I was flabbergasted. After wasting 20 minutes on this, I gave up and called my fiance and asked her to go to the local C-Town, which always sold the stuff in tiny containers right next to the cash register (you know, in case you unload your food and suddenly realize you're running low on saffron...). She called me later to tell me that after much argument with them, they grudgingly admitted to having been sold out. I finally gave up and made my recipe without it.

So, storytime over. Now to the recipe. I like leeks and onions so I added perhaps more than necessary. I chopped about a cup worth of onions and another 4 small leeks and added them with some olive oil to a large soup pot to simmer. Since they'll be going into the soup, if you undercook them a little it isn't so important. You want to sweat them but don't need to caramelize them. I took several cloves of garlic and had fun with my new stainless steel garlic press from Ikea. Yea, you can feel free to chop it really finely, whatever. I like the press, thank you. Keep in mind that the oil is now hot, and garlic cooks very quickly. And it will burn in the blink of an eye, so watch out. If you burn the garlic, you pretty much have to start all over again, because that taste WILL carry through. So only cook the garlic for a minute or two. Having done so, I added a couple of pounds of rough-chopped tomatoes. I always reccomend that you get nice tomatoes if you can. These were nice as they were perfectly red and still on the vine. And on sale. Anyway, they were really nice. So those got dumped into the pot. After cooking these over a medium heat for about five minutes, I added 5 cups of water, a bay leaf, several sprigs fresh parsely chopped up, zested a half an orange, a large pinch of fennel seeds, a bunch of freshly picked basil leaves chopped finely (a word of caution here. If you are using fresh basil, chop it up. Basil, on being cooked whole, will turn into a somewhat slimey weird and ugly mass that nobody wants in their bowl, believe me) a dash of salt and pepper. If you have saffron, this is also a good time to add it. Now is a good time to grab some cheesecloth and wrap your scraps/hacked up tiny fish and tie the ends in a bow to make a rough bag. You want the water to penetrate, and you don't want the fish too squashed, but you don't want it open so the heads can fall in the soup, or so that some of the solids from the soup can get into the bag if you can help it. Congrads, you have just made a raw-fish teabag. I like to lower it into the pot, then stick a wooden spoon through the "handle" of the cheesecloth so that I can occasionally move it a little. It also makes it much, much easier to remove, believe me. Have the handle hand from the middle of the spoon, then lay the spoon across the top of the pot and leave to boil uncovered for ~30-45 minutes. Before you walk away and leave it to boil, drop in one peeled potato, in halves. Make sure you know where it is- search for it later is a pain. Once done, pull out the scrap bag and place into a collender on inside another bowl- the bag will drip a large quantity of broth and juice and we don't want to waste any. At this point, you can cover with a lid and leave it alone until you are close to dinnertime. Have a taste- it should be delicious by now, so you don't need to mess with it later.

While you wait for dinnertime, make the rouille. I took a nice red bell pepper and chopped it into pieces about one inch by a half inch. In a small pot, bring water with a lot of salt to a boil. Pour the chopped pepper into the pot and let it simmer until the pepper is just slightly firm (not mushy- mushy means you've boiled all the flavor out). Taste the pepper- it shouldn't be terribly salty as it won't absorb much from the water. Drain the pepper. dump the pepper, the now cooked potato you fished from the soup, 4 cloves of garlic, and some more fresh basil, all into a food processor. If you want an exercise in masochism, you can use a mortar and pestle. For everyone else, the food processor. Process it in pulses until smooth. Add a small chilli pepper, or a few drops of Tabasco- you should just barely taste the tobasco, it's not supposed to be hot. Once that's done, blend in 4-6 tablespoons of some really nice first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. As I said, taste it.

When dinnertime comes around, toss out the fish scraps and pour the juices from the bowl into the main stock. Bring the stock to a boil about 20 minutes before serving. Once boiling, add 6-8 pounds of cubed fish and shellfish to the pot. It only needs to boil about twenty minutes, and then it is ready to eat.

Take several tablespoons of the soup itself and add it to the rouille and again blend it until smooth. Serve the rouille in a small bowl with some crustily toasted french bread. The bread goes quickly, so have more on hand. Using a slotted spoon scoop up fish and shellfish from the pot and deposit them into the bowl, then using a ladel, pour soup over the fish. The rouille is nice to add to the soup as flavoring, or to spread on the bread, then dip into the soup. On finishing, you can freeze the rest. This should make enough for 6 hungry people. Bon appetit!

A word of warning for those of you watching your salt. This is a very healthy dish. However, don't add any salt to the pot until the very end to taste as the fish will naturally make the soup a tad salty.

Perfect Pancakes

2010-05-23T11:31:00.000+01:00

Alan and I just had these for a leisurely Sunday late breakfast - perfect! Make sure you have real maple syrup to serve them with!

2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
3 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups Plain/All purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar

If you know how to make American style pancakes you can just run with the great recipe above; otherwise, here are the directions how to make the pancakes:

1. Beat the eggs and milk together thoroughly. Stir in the butter or vegetable oil.

2. Whisk the dry ingredients in to evenly distribute the salt, baking powder and sugar.

3. Let the batter rest for at least 15 minutes, while the griddle is heating; it"ll thicken slightly.

4. Heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat, or set an electric griddle to 350°F. Lightly grease frying pan or griddle. The pan or griddle is ready if a drop of water will skitter across the surface, evaporating immediately.

5. Drop serving spoonfuls (approx 1/3 cupful) of batter onto the lightly greased griddle. Bake on one side until bubbles begin to form and break, then turn the pancakes and cook the other side till brown. Turn over only once. Serve immediately.

I recommend serving with butter and maple syrup.

Enjoy!

And yes, you can make the whole batch and put the leftovers into a ziplock bag to store. Microwave them for about 30 seconds or so for a nice, lazy breakfast the next day.

Matzo Meal Pancakes

2010-03-27T13:41:00.000Z

I don't know why I don't make these all year around because they are really a lovely thing to eat for breakfast or even better a leisurely weekend brunch. Perhaps it's the extra effort of beating the egg whites because if you just mix in the eggs whole, the end result while pleasant is just indefinably wrong.

Ingredients:
3 eggs, separated
3/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup matzo meal
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
honey (runny style in the UK) or maple syrup if you absolutely must (sigh)

oil or unsalted butter for frying (do NOT use olive oil!)

In a medium size mixing bowl, lightly beat the egg yolks. (Use a whisk for this process.)
Whisk in the water.
Stir in the matzo meal, sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt.
Let stand for 25 minutes to absorb all the liquid.(in the refrigerator if possible)
(Wait till the liquid is absorbed before starting the next step.)
Use an electric mixer to beat the egg whites until stiff. Make sure the bowl you use is metal or glass (not plastic!) You want to beat the egg whites to the stiff peak stage.

Now gently fold the egg whites into the matzo meal mixture until just blended. Make sure you fold, do not stir!
-------------
*How to fold - a useful technique to know
Use a large spatula for this procedure. Scoop up a good dollop of whipped egg whites on your spatula and gently mix it into the matzo meal batter. This will "temper" the batter and lighten it.

Hold the egg white bowl over the mixing bowl containing your batter, and tilt it so that the egg whites slide out onto the batter. Using the large spatula, cut a path down the middle of the mixture with the edge of the spatula. Then gently turn half the mixture over onto the other half. Continue cutting down the middle and turning a portion over. Don't stir. The point of folding is to retain the air you have beaten into the whites. Be careful to only work the batter enough to incorporate the whites. It's ok if the mix looks a little streaky.
-----------
Cover the surface of your griddle or large flat frying pan with some oil and heat over medium hot.
When the oil starts to sizzle, drop the batter, 1 tablespoon at a time, onto the griddle/pan. Don't crowd the pancakes, make several batches.
Fry the pancakes until they reach the level of golden brown you like, (about 2 minutes or so per side.) Flip them over and and cook the other side.

Remove the pancakes from the pan and let drain on a paper towel while you fry the next batch.

To serve - I recommend drizzling them very lightly with honey (or maple syrup if you insist but honey is better and traditional for Passover.)

If you have leftover pancakes, they're a pretty nice nosh snitched directly from the fridge.

Passover

2010-03-27T00:01:00.000Z

This Monday night is the first Seder of Passover.

You have been warned!

Lemon Curd

2010-02-28T20:27:00.002Z

Forget the stuff they sell in stores as Lemon Curd. Even the stuff in little gourmet places claiming to be homemade, organic, etc. This is the real thing. This is sunshine of the gods. This is the sun spread on your toast.
This is IT!

4 lemons - the grated rind and juice
4 eggs - lightly beaten
4oz butter - unsalted
12 oz castor sugar

Pot of barely simmering water with a large glass or metal basin (bowl) that fits comfortably on top
note: I like this much better than a double boiler, the bowl shape gives a better result.

1. Grate rind of lemons and squeeze out juice.
2. Put sugar, rind and juice, butter and beaten eggs into a large basin on top of a pan of simmering water.
3. Stir with a wooden or silicone spoon until the sugar has dissolved. Then continue heating gently and stirring for about 20 minutes, until the curd thickens. It should coat the back of the spoon.
4. Pour into warm sterile jars, cover, and label.
5. Refrigerate!

This recipe makes about 1 1/2 lbs (3 cups) of lemon curd which is just about enough for 1 nice jar for you and 1 small jar to give away to someone who'd better be damn grateful and worship you for the goddess (or god) which you are for making something as heavenly tasting as this and then giving some away.

Warning: Lemon curd doesn't keep. Make small batches, keep cool, and use within 2-3 weeks. (That's why they have to put extra stuff in commercial curd or it would never make it to the customers.)

You can double this recipe if you need a larger amount but not more than that or it won't cook smoothly.

Honey-wheat bread

2010-02-22T02:53:00.002Z

Evidently, my formspring questions have been showing up on this blog. Formspring is stalling out so I'm not going to answer any questions there until it gets sorted.

However, to make amends for this error, I'm going to post my first recipe here. It's the most basic bread recipe I know. I've made it the last two weekends in a row, because it's cold out and cold weather makes me crave warm bread. I'm also addicted to bread. It has 6 ingredients and could not be simpler. The result is a crusty, slightly sweet wheat loaf that toasts beautifully and makes excellent sandwiches, particularly with freshly sliced ham.

Assemble:

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 packet yeast
1 cup warm water
1/3 cup nonfat milk
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 tsp kosher salt

Then do this:

1. In a large bowl, mix the warm water and yeast. Stir to dissolve (I use a big wooden spoon.) Add in everything else but the flour. Stir until everything's dissolved (the oil won't be, obvs, but that'll mix in fine when you add the flour.)

2. Stir in the flour gradually until you can't really stir it anymore and you have a big ball of dough in the bowl.

3. Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes or so until it's all nice and smooth and your arms are tired.

4. Put a little oil in a clean bowl and turn the dough over in it to coat it. Cover the bowl loosely and put it somewhere the cats won't step in it.

5. Let it sit there and rise for an hour.

6. Take it out of the bowl and shape it into an 8-inch loaf and then put the loaf in a lightly greased loaf pan.

7. Cover the loaf pan with lightly oiled plastic wrap and leave it there until the dough rises an inch above the lip of the pan. (It took over an hour the first time I did this because my apartment was freezing. The second time it only took 30 minutes.) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350.

8. Take off the plastic wrap and stick in the oven. Bake for about 40 minutes total, but after 20 minutes, take it out and loosely cover with foil.

9. Stick it back in for another 15 minutes or so. Enjoy the aromas wafting out of the oven. Then take it out, take off the foil and brush the top with a little oil so it turns nice and brown for the last five minutes.

10. Take it out and tap the top of the loaf, if it sounds hollow it's done. If it thuds, it's still wet inside and let it go a bit longer.

11. When done, turn the loaf out onto a wire rack, or if you're too lazy to get out the wire racks, just leave it on a stove burner to cool.

At the end you get this:

Warm, sweet, delicious bread. Serve with butter.

Adventures into Weird Flavors, part 1

2010-02-07T20:28:00.002Z

Okay, I like to experiment with interesting, unique, different foodstuffs. I decided this would be a fun place to do some quickie notes/reccomendations of them. Today's item is something which I just tasted for the first time not 2 minutes ago. It was so awful, I immediately said "I have to blog about this!"

The product: Steaz Cola: Green Tea Soda. Yes, it is a green tea cola. It sounded weird, so I bought one- count it ONE bottle.

Our testers: Myself and my lovely fiance Joanna.

Color: It's black. Looks like your standard cola. More like pepsi than coke- coke has a characteristic slight orange/red sheen which pepsi does not.

Bouquet: Andrew: I know that smell...It smells like Moxie! No, wait...it's- like Moxie and A1?!
Joanna: Oh my god, this smells terrible!

Taste: Andrew: Oh my god- it tastes like Moxie and A1 steak sauce!
Joanna:It's like carbonated steak sauce.

Aftertaste: Andrew: The moxie goes away fairly quickly, leaving the flavor of the steak sauce behind- not so awful, but not what I want from a drink.
Joanna: I still have that steak flavor in my mouth.

Afterwards: Joanna: Oh my god, I feel sick...Oh my god- my burps taste like steak sauce!
Andrew: Well, I tried it twice. You have to say that. I think any more would be...unhealthy.

Overall:
Andrew: It's different and unique. But perhaps some things were not meant to be crossbred by man. And steak and unwashed cola nut would be among them.
Joanna: Pepsuber! Pepsi pepsi pepsi pepsi pepsi pepsi pepsi- pepsuber! (it's a mcguyver joke- look it up)

Chinese Almond cookies - celebrate the New Year

2010-02-04T19:26:00.000Z

Get ready to celebrate the start of the Year of the Tiger with some crispy Chinese Almond cookies. They're delicate and perfect to nibble with cup of tea - or coffee or a glass of cold white wine.

I just made a batch of 6 dozen of these - the entire house is filled with the perfume of almonds.
Almond cookies symbolize coins and will be sure to bring you good fortune. Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Chinese Almond Cookies Recipe

makes about 6 dozen cookies

Ingredients - US measures used
1 1/3 cups of almond flour (ground almonds)
1 cup of unsalted butter, cut into cubes
Pinch of kosher salt - I use Flor de Sel (you should, too!!)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of almond extract
1 3/4 cups of plain flour
1 cup + 2 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
Slivered almonds

Equipment -
Mixer with paddle blade attachment (other mixers can be used with care or a heavy wooden spoon)
2 flat baking sheets (cookie trays)
1 pastry brush (you really, really MUST have at least one of these in your kitchen. Please buy one if needed!)
- a small wood-handled pastry brush should cost about a dollar or two
Parchment or baking paper

Method - with comments
1 Place the almond flour, salt, and butter into an electric mixer with a paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for three minutes. The mixture will become course and chunky looking. (I just have a little crappy hand mixer, I used that on the lowest speed - careful not to burn out the motor, you could also use a large wooden sppon and a strong elbow. Scrape down the bowl often with a spatula and poke the mixer beaters clear if you are not using a high end mixer) Note that this step is fast even if done by hand.

2 Add one of the eggs, reserving the other for later, and the almond extract. Mix on low speed until just incorporated.

3 In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and baking soda then add to the butter mixture at low speed. Mix until just combined.

4 Take the dough and flatten it into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Place it in the refrigerator for two hours to chill.

5 Preheat the oven to 325F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the other egg into a bowl and beat it.

6 Take pieces of dough and roll them into balls about 3/4 inch wide. Place them on the sheet about an inch apart and then press them down slightly with your palm to make a coin shape. There should be enough space for exactly 12 cookies on a standard baking sheet.

7 Place a slivered almond onto each cookie and lightly press it into place, then paint the surface of the cookie with some of the beaten egg using a pastry brush or your finger (this will give the cookie a lacquered appearance once it bakes).

8 Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges just begin to tan. Cool on the sheet for 2 minutes and then slide onto a wire rack. Be careful, these can start to go brown very fast at the end, you want them just golden.

Makes 5 - 6 dozen.

Pasta with tomato cream sauce

2010-02-02T03:33:00.002Z

I'm a combination of happy, relieved and proud that I finally can present this recipe. Why? Because I have been working on it off and on for several years now (I don't make it all that often). The big thing I'm concentrating on here is the sauce. I normally serve this with angel hair pasta and some nice shrimp as it is a fairly delicate combination of flavers.

Here's what I did:

I took a pint of grape tomatoes. I like grape and cherry tomatoes because they have a lot of flavor and a brightness to the flavor that is difficult to get from large tomatoes. Larger tomatoes, if they're cheap, tend to be mealy. If you can buy the pricey ones on the stem, they're quite nice. Best, of course, is growing your own- which I plan on doing this year (gotta use that balcony for something- it's a sin to just ignore). Anyway, this recipe makes enough for dinner for two and then lunch for the next day. Take the pint of grape tomatoes and slice them lengthwise and dump them into a saucepan. I should say that you do not, in fact, have to slice them, but it speeds up the process a little. What are we doing and why are we doing it? You are to heat the tomatoes under a medium heat- do NOT get impatient and stick it on high, or you will severelly risk burning the tomatoes. You are heating it on medium to do two things. One is to cook the tomatoes. The second is to remove the water. And this is the trick. I spent years trying different kinds of tomatoes, washing or not washing, removing the jelly or leaving in, patting every single piece of tomato dry with a paper towel- the list goes on. Why did I do all of this? Because once I made the sauce, the sauce would be watery to greater or lesser amounts. Oh, most people would not have been able to tell, I know. But I could- the flavor and texture were off and I knew why. And I knew where the water came from, clearly- the tomatoes. This time, I unlocked the secret. You need to cook the tomatoes under a medium heat until the consistency becomes a somewhat thick paste- yes, this will take a long time and a lot of stirring. Say 20 minutes at the very least. As you cook, I would reccomend that you get a potato masher and smush them as they cook- as I said, to work it into a thick paste.

Okay, paste done. In another saucepan, you're going to make a basic roux. I use one stick of butter and roughly a heaping tablespoon of flour. Melt the butter, then whisk in the flour. Lot it cook for a minute, though not too hot. Now at this point you have some choices, though I know where I go. You will want to add milk or cream. Yes, milk will work just fine. However, I personally like a much richer sauce- I use heavy cream. Slowly add two cups of cream in small amounts, keeping the roux homogenous. Having done so, let the sauce heat to a simmer (careful! milk will boil over in a split second if you don't keep a careful eye on it). Now add the tomato paste. Whisk it in. You'll have a very dark, red sauce. Taste it. Now, I wanted a nice tomato flavor, but not too strong, so I ended up adding roughly another cup of heavy cream. To this, I added about a pinch of black pepper and salt.

I made two pounds of angel hair pasta and two pounds of shrimp with this. This was vastly too much- I'd reccomend one pound of pasta and one pound of shrimp- I shoudl say, one pound after being deshelled. So yea.

Here's a tip. If you want the sauce to have a shrimp flavor, peel your shrimp and put just the shells into a small amount of water- just enough to almost but not quite cover the shells. Heat to a boil and let it go for a little while. Most people don't know, but the majority of the flavor in shrimp actually comes form the shell and not from the meat. After I've heated, I strain the shell with cheesecloth, then heat the water more. Once it goes down enough, add to the cream sauce. However, since this is water, you will end up, of course, watering the sauce. However, this is a useful tip for using shrimp in other meals and sauces.

Chicken with honey, garlic, and almonds - from an ancient recipe

2010-01-25T01:42:00.000Z

I thought this recipe was originally from To The King's Taste, but when I checked that source I couldn't find it again. So it might have been from one of my other medieval cookbooks. It's definitely somewhere between 1000 and 600 years old originally. In any case, the version I make is pretty close to the original, insanely tastey, and easy to make.

Since I make it from memory, there are no set measurements but I think you'll find it easy enough to follow along.

Chicken - cut up in serving size pieces or breasts - make sure skin is left on and intact.
Plain flour - for dredging the chicken prior to browning
Butter
Honey - (the kind called runny or clear honey in the UK, regular honey in the US)
Fresh garlic cloves
Sliced Almonds
Green grapes -tart ones, not quite ripe ones are best
Salt, pepper, ground cinnamon
White wine or chicken stock or water
Cornstarch (Corn flour in the UK)
A whisk
A saute pan (frying pan) with fitting cover

1. Dump a few tablespoons of flour into a plastic bag and season with some salt, pepper, and a light sprinkle of cinnamon (very easy on the cinnamon) Dredge the chicken pieces thoroughly in flour - just drop them in the bag a piece or two at a time, grasp the bag at the top to close, and shake. (Easy trick, eh?)

2. Melt butter in a saute pan (frying pan for us infidels). When the butter starts to sizzle a little, add the chicken pieces in a single layer and brown lightly all over, turning frequently as needed. The skin should be golden brown and slightly crisped.

3. Meanwhile, slice the garlic cloves, take half the grapes and snip each in half.
4. Put the remainder of the grapes in a bowl and crush them. Dump into a sieve and press out all the fresh juice. (This is a simple form of verjuice)

5. When the chicken is lightly browned, lower the heat and toss in the sliced garlic, the cut up grapes, lots of sliced almongs, drizzle in the honey all over the chicken. Add the verjuice (the crushed grape juice, remember?)
6. Bring pan to a simmer and check the level of liquid - you only want the chicken pieces to be covered about 1/2 of the way. Add white wine/stock/water if needed.

7. Cover pan and turn heat low so it very gently simmers. Let cook about 30 minutes, occasionally turning the chicken pieces in the cooking liquid.

8. After 30 minutes, remove the chicken pieces to a plate. Turn up the heat under the pan and allow the cooking liquid (your proto-sauce) to come to a gentle boil. Taste to see if the flavour needs adjusting and add salt/pepper/honey as needed. The taste should be mellow and slightly garlicy and sweet not sugary!
9. Dissolve cornstarch (probably between 2 teaspoons and a tablespoon depending on how much liquid is in the pan) in a bit of cold water (yes even in the UK, it has to be cold water). Pour this slurry into the boiling cooking liquid and then whisk it smooth and glossy. Check the seasoning and adjust if needed.
10 Put the chicken pieces and any juices on the plate back into the pan and mix to coat.

Serve with rice or buttered wide egg noodles - or spaetzle type noodles for a more medieval dish.

French Onion Soup

2010-01-24T19:38:00.002Z

SOUP

3 large onions thinly sliced

2 large cloves garlic crushed

butter

oil

1 tsp sugar

1/3 bottle white wine

1-2 pints beef stock

Slowly saute onions, garlic an dsugar in butter and oil until they are caramelised (about 30 minutes). Then add wine and stock, bring to a boil then lower to a simmer for an hour.

Croutons

1" thick slices of french bread

olive oil

crushed garlic

Gruyère cheese

Liberally coat both sides of the garlic bread with olive oil and garlic then pop into a 180/350 oven for 20-25 minutes. When the soup is ready, load a bowl, float a crouton on top, cover with Gruyère cheese then blast it with your blowtorch until bubbly.

On the off chance

2010-01-24T11:38:00.001Z

On the off chance that anyone ever wants to buy me a gift, please keep this in mind http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Essential/dp/0307593525/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I32FVXXKGS12P5&colid=3FO3ILFOG6OFP

That's the hardcover set not the paperbacks!

Red Cabbage Borscht

2010-01-07T13:27:00.003Z

I was stuck at home yesterday due to the weather and there was nothing in the house to eat and very little in the way of supplies. What I -did- have was a head of red cabbage, some onions and some apples. So I made a red cabbage version of borscht which was absolutely delicious.

1 head of red cabbage

a few onions

a few apples

butter

4 cups beef broth

sugar

apple cider vinegar

sour cream

salt

pepper

I sliced up the cabbage and onions in my food processor, then put them in a pot with a few tablespoons of butter to soften. Meanwhile I peeled, cored, and chopped my apples then added them. After about 15-20 minutes, I added 4 cups of beef broth (sadly I had to use bullion cubes), 1/2 cup cider vinegar, 1/4 sugar and about a teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper.

I brought this to the boil, then let it simmer uncovered for an hour. Serve with a spoon of sour cream. And some love. <3

The morning after

2009-11-27T09:54:00.003Z

Well, things got a bit hectic in the afternoon. Far too much going on to blog about it. In the end we had about 30 people and the food and friendship were both fantastic. We also pissed off the neighbours with a swordfighting championship in the street at 11pm (I won!).

Now I'm just doing the morning after dishes and waiting for the xmas tree to get delivered before I head into the office. But before we part, a few recipes...

Potatoes Dauphinois

White Potatoes

Salt

Pepper

Butter

Ground Nutmeg

Garlic

Cream

Peel and then slice your potatoes super thin. I use a mandolin set at 1.5mm then pat them dry on a clean tea towel. Spread a thin even layer in your baking dish. Lightly salt, pepper, nutmeg, crushed garlic, dot with butter. Repeat this layering manoeuvre until your layers are about 3 inches deep. Pour over cream to just cover. Pop into preheated 180C oven for about 1 hour.

Indulgent Bread & Butter Pudding

I hate raisins so I've come up with this alternative recipe.

Plain Panettone or brioche

Butter

Apricot Jam

Cooking Chocolate or Good Choc Chips

Cream

Milk

Eggs

Quantities are variable based on the size of your baking dish.

Slice your panettone or brioche into slices the thickness of bread. Spread butter and then jam on each slice. Spread a generous amount of choc shavings or chips on each slice. Arrange in a baking dish. Mix 275ml milk, 60ml cream, 3 eggs and 50g sugar then pour over. If you've made a big pudding you may have to mix up and additional batch of the liquids. The custard mix should be about an inch below the surface of the bread. Pop into a 180C oven for 30-40 minutes (or more) depending on the size of your pudding. Cook until the custard is set.

Stuffing

2009-11-26T13:18:00.002Z

After a frantic email rally and hastily written report, I decided to get to work on the stuffing. Or at least the vegetarian stuffing. Which is the same as regular stuffing but I use veggie stock cubes instead of lovely fresh chicken stock.

These ingredients made enough for about 6 people...

1/2 head of celery, finely sliced

1 medium onion, diced

1 tbsp sage

1 package ready chestnuts, coarsely chopped

10 slices bread

butter to taste

Boiling water

Big lump of butter in the pot, add celery and onions and saute until onions are translucent and celery is soft. Add butter as necessary so nothing sticks or burns. Stir regularly.I add the sage about halfway through so it doesn't burn but infuses everything with its herby goodness. Add chestnuts. Add stock. Cube bread and add. Give it a good stir so the flavours coat the bread. Add water carefully - we want stuffing not soup! Keep stirring the water in so that the stuffing begins to cohere. Decant into a baking dish and cover with foil. I'll set this on the side and pop it in the oven when the final bird comes out to rest (about 30 minutes) and leave it covered in foil.

Candied Sweet Potatoes

2009-11-26T11:02:00.002Z

I'm now prepping side dishes. I put the sweet potatoes on to boil for 40 minutes, skins on and then drained them. When they have cooled enough to handle, I will skin them and cut them in 2 inch chunks. I'm using 2 kilos of sweet potatoes.

I'll put the potato pieces in a large baking dish and sprinkle a cup of butter, a cup of brown sugar and about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of maple syrup over then pop that in a 160C oven for 30 minutes or so, basting regularly.

Cornbread

2009-11-26T09:44:00.002Z

Or rather, corn muffins. I see no point in making these from scratch when the Jiffy corn muffin mix is so good.

So, open box of carefully smuggled and hoarded Jiffy corn muffin mix. Add to egg and 1/3 cup milk, mix, let sit for a few minutes while you grease the muffin tins. Spoon in until 3/4 full then bung in 400F/190C oven for 15-20 minutes.

Boston Baked Beans

2009-11-26T09:40:00.002Z

Mom has arrived with supplies, the beans are up and I've got crappy daytime TV on. Let the gossiping begin!

Ingredients:

550g smoked streaky bacon

6 cans canneloni beans

3 Large onions

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup maple syrup (or molasses)

2 tbsp dry mustard

ketchup

This is a slow-cooker recipe so just chop up your bacon and onions and bung all of the ingredients into the slow-cooker. Taste for flavour in 6 hours.

Also, when opening the cans of beans, watch out for kamikaze cats who equate all cans being opened with being fed.

Fauna of the Biritsh Isles

2009-11-26T07:59:00.003Z

Let me tell you the megillah (that's yiddish for a very long story) of locating the bird for today. In the states I would normally cook a 25 lb bird but monsters of that size are almost unknown here and if you really, really want one you need to pre-order it months in advance. For Xmas. Not for Thanksgiving.

Now I know that the Waitrose at Canary Wharf gets a few fresh birds in for the American contingent so I trotted over there last week. They couldn't take an order for Thanksgiving - only Xmas. Ordering for Xmas is no good to me. For one thing it's too late and for another I already have a 7 kilo goose ordered for THAT holiday.

But they told me not to worry, they would be getting in plenty of fresh birds on Tuesday, they just couldn't take an order. So Tuesday I rocked up nice and early to inspect the flesh on offer. Hah! The biggest one they had just brushed 5 kilos. Good thing I checked. So I bought the biggest frozen bird they had and even THAT was only 6.8 kilos. Mind you, the ovens and roasting pans available here don't really accommodate anything bigger.

So the turkey has been defrosting since Tuesday, mostly in my fridge because otherwise I have to valiantly defend it from my cat, Princess Glinda. My mother has been defrosting another bird at her place and Richard has also bought a fresh turkey crown which is 2 kilos of pure turkey goodness.

Right then, time to brush my teeth and then get the slowcooker out of the garage for the beans.

Turkey Day: Bloody Dawn

2009-11-26T07:47:00.002Z

Silly me, I had my Lib Dems AGM last night (I was reelected as Data Officer) and then got home late and watched 2 episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Hmmm.

Anyway, I'm up. Have made a pass through the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher. The kitchen is clean because I did a blitzkrieg on it this weekend, including the 15 loads necessary to wash all of the glassware and shelving.

I've also just turned on the ice cream maker to begin chilling. Last night, before the Lib Dem thing, I scurried home to quickly prep the sorbet mix (double batch) so it would be able to cool overnight. In parallel I prepared the cranberry sauce which is now in individual ramikins and set in the drinks fridge.

I'll just have some coffee and a cig and by that time the ice cream maker should be cool enough to pour in my sorbet mix.

Pumpkin Pie

2009-11-25T20:33:00.000Z

If you live in the US, just get out one or two of your nice pie plates to bake this in. If you like in the UK - well, rotsa-ruck as Bugs Bunny used to say. It is almost impossible to find a proper pie plate in the UK and you can almost forget about deep-dish pie plates. Asti was lucky enough to find one - but I think she may have bought it in another country and brought it back here. So if you are in the UK - use a quiche pan or tart pan or as I have, 2 "sandwich" cake pans. (I have no idea why they are called sandwich cake pans but they are cheap and handy to have in your kitchen)

Thanksgiving a la Two Project Managers

2009-11-25T20:27:00.000Z

What you need to understand is that my daughter Astrid and I are project managers both by trade and nature. Therefore, all tasks and preparations leading up to Thanksgiving Dinner are scheduled and assigned in advance, whatever can be made the day before, is.

So today, Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, my local Tesco supermarket delivered the order that Asti & I placed. Altho dinner is at Astrid's house, delivery was to mine because my Tesco is reliable and Asti's isn't as we've learned by sad experience. This is a critical detail if you rely on any deliveries - how reliable is the supermarket/supplier. Want to trust your Thanksgiving dinner on some bloke who will shrug and say, "not my job, couldn't be helped, gov"?

The recipes I'm posting tonight were for desserts - all made the night before the big day. Sorbet is chilling in Asti's freezer now. I've just put 2 pumpkin pies in the oven to bake. Apple pie follows. Then 2 pans of potatoes dauphanois.

Tomorrow at 7am I'll pack everything into my little car and drive over to Asti's house where the turkeys will be roasted, sides cooke, and all the other bits come together - and yes, recipes and photos will be posted.

Turkey Day?

2009-11-23T09:50:00.004Z

I will be doing Thanksgiving on Thames again this year and wonder if anyone would like me to share my Turkey Day Recipes? Mom can photograph and blog from my kitchen.

The menu, in addition to the recipe that Mom previously posted includes:

Turkey (of course)

Chestnut Stuffing

Potatoes Dauphinois (Richard hates them but I tell him that for one day a year he can shut up about that and just don't eat them)

Candied sweet potatoes (or yams depending on what's in the shops)

Brussels Sprouts with pancetta and chestnuts

Cornbread

Slow-cooked Boston Baked Beans

Cranberry Sauce

Cranberry Port Sorbet (recipe already posted)

Apple Pie (mom)

Pumpkin Pie (mom)

Chocolate Apricot Bread & Butter Pudding

And don't forget the gravy

Sugar - UK vs US

2009-10-19T10:13:00.000+01:00

Being an American, I was used to just picking up a bag of granulated sugar at my local supermarket when I wanted to do baking. The only issue I had with sugar was to make sure it was pure cane sugar - no corn sugar, no maltose, etc added (to cheapen and stretch the product).

But, when I moved to the UK and bought what was labeled as pure cane granulated sugar something was different, wrong, weird. It looked wrong, it didn't dissolve right in coffee or in batter mixes.

The problem was classic - same names for different things. In the UK, what I thought of as granulated sugar was called Castor sugar. Now the experts on the web claim that Castor sugar in the UK is the equivalent of Superfine sugar in the US. Perhaps. But UK granulated sugar is absolutely not the same as US granulated sugar. End of.

So if I call for castor sugar in a recipe - and you are in the US, just use granulated sugar.

With liquids we get a whole new set of issues. They still have cups and pints here - but they are also very different. For example: US pint = 16 oz, UK pint = 20 oz

I try to be careful about these issues when I post recipes.

Sweet Potato, Raisin, and Cranberry Strudel

2009-10-18T14:10:00.007+01:00

I saw this recipe in Leite's Culinaria, a blog I follow. I modified it a bit to our tastes and made a test batch at Asti's house yesterday. Sensational! A note about the coarse sea salt. You need to use proper flake sea salt for this. Not kosher salt, not regular salt. I use Malden Sea Salt flakes - absolutely the best, a must in your kitchen supplies! Amazing stuff - and that from a known anti-salt person. Anyway, I worried about the saltiness of the finished dish as I lightly sprinkled salt flakes onto each of the 7 layers of phyllo dough. No need, it was delicious. We'll be serving this as an accompaniment to our Thanksgiving dinner at Asti's house this year instead of the usual maple sweetened baked sweet potatoes; a welcome change.

1/4 cup dried cranberries (I used more of course)
1/4 cup golden raisins (Must use golden ones! And more is ok, too)
4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
2 sticks (US) or 1 250 gr block unsalted butter
1/2 pound (8 ounces) phyllo pastry, thawed (1/2 a standard box usually)
1/2 cup pecan pieces, finely chopped (yeah, more is fine)
Coarse sea salt
3/4 cup spiced crème fraîche or sour cream (optional)

1. Put the cranberries and golden raisins in a small bowl and cover with hot water; set aside to plump for 10 minutes, then drain.

2. Put the potato and carrots in a medium saucepan, cover with hot water, and add a little salt. Cook over high heat until fork-tender. Drain the potatoes and carrots in a strainer and set aside.

3. Put the butter in a small saucepan over high heat. Let the butter melt and then stir continuously until the butter starts browning on the bottom of the pan. It will also start bubbling and foaming a little. The butter should have a medium golden-brown color. Immediately pour the butter into a small dish and set aside.

4. Smash the soft-cooked potatoes and carrots with a fork. You are looking for a lumpy consistency. Stir 6 tablespoons of the brown butter into the vegetables. Blend in the dried fruit and season to taste with salt and pepper.

5. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and fit a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

6. To make the strudel, unroll the phyllo dough and lay it flat on a clean work surface. The dimensions of the dough will be 9 by 13 inches, or cut large sheets of phyllo dough to 9 by 13 inches. To help prevent the dough from drying out while working with it, cover with a slightly dampened clean kitchen cloth. Carefully place one sheet of dough on the prepared baking sheet. Brush with the melted brown butter, and lightly sprinkle with pecans and coarse sea salt. Lay another sheet on top and continue layering with brown butter, sea salt, and pecans. Layer and stack seven sheets together.

7. Carefully spoon the vegetable-dried fruit filling along one of the long edges of the dough, packing it with your hands into a tubelike shape. Starting with the filling side of the dough, roll the strudel tightly into a log. Place the strudel in the center of the baking sheet, brush with the remaining butter, and sprinkle with pecans and a little sea salt.

8. Place the strudel in the center of the oven and bake until golden brown, about 25 - 45 minutes depending on your oven. Remove the baking pan from the oven to a cooling rack. Transfer the strudel to a cutting board. With a serrated knife, cut the strudel using long sawing motions. This will help prevent excessive flaking of the pastry. Serve warm or at room temperature with spiced crème fraîche or sour cream (stir in some ground cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice to flavor the cream).

Chocolate mousse

2009-09-22T12:31:00.003+01:00

This is a classic mousse which means there is no cooking of ingredients involved. If you are one of those people with issues about raw eggs - umm scroll back and find the chocolate pudding post and make that instead. Sorry but for me it's real mousse or nothing.

A quick note about chocolate. Of course, always use the best chocolate you can buy. But for this and many other recipes calling for dark chocolate, be careful about using a high % chocolate. I tried this recipe with my usual 70% dark chocolate and it was too intense and concentrated. I'd stick with the 60% range or so for this particular recipe or use less chocolate.

2 egg yolks
4 egg whites
7 oz dark chocolate
2 oz caster sugar (US: superfine sugar if possible)
1 teaspoon golden syrup/maple syrup/light corn syrup
½ cup double cream
1 oz unsalted butter
1 TBs espresso or strong coffee or cognac or rum
1 tsp vanilla

1. Use a large pyrex measure/mix bowl with handle for this ideally. Break up the chocolate and place in the bowl with the syrup and butter.
2. Nuke for 60 seconds in microwave. Remove from microwave and stir gently to make sure all the chocolate is melted - the residual heat will melt all the remaining bits quickly. Set aside to allow to cool slightly while you start the next step.
3. Whisk the egg yolks and the cream together, add vanilla and a good splash of espresso or cognac.
4. Take the bowl of melted chocolate and gently stir in the cream and egg yolk mixture until they have combined.
5. Put the egg whites into a large bowl and whisk them with an electric hand whisk until they have reached the soft peak stage (when the whisk is taken out of the egg whites the peaks left by the whisk should be limp and rounded).
6. Pour the sugar over the egg whites and then continue to whisk them until they reach the stiff-peak stage (when the whisk is removed from the egg whites, the peaks left by the whisk should be pointed and firm.
7. Spoon about half of the whisked egg whites into the chocolate mixture and gently fold it in using a spatula (I love silicone for this!) until it is completely combined.
8. Add the rest of the egg whites and fold them in until they have completely combined (Don't beat or stir the mixture as this will break the bubbles in the egg whites, resulting in a heavy mousse).
9. Either put the whole bowl into the fridge or pour the mixture into ramekins/cups for individual portions and put them into the fridge. Cover with saran/cling film, of course.
10. Let the mousse set in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving. Overnight is fine.

The mouse will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days (are you insane, what kind of household lets mouosse sit uneaten that long?)

You can serve as is or with a dollop of whipped cream on top.

Pasta with Smoked Trout in Dill & Cream Sauce

2009-08-11T17:06:00.002+01:00

I threw a few things together on Sunday night for dinner and Richard really rated it so I thought I might post it here. Basically, smoked trout (which I absolutely adore) was on special so I loaded up on it. I'd planned to use it on a salad but not everyone in the household was enamored of the idea so I ende up doing the following...

Ingredients:

2 fillets of smoked trout

handful flaked almonds

handful fresh dill

frozen peas (I would have used asparagus or french beans if I had any)

butter

olive oil

lemon juice

white wine

double cream

salt & pepper

farfalle (bow-tie) pasta

First off, toast the almond flakes. I spread a handful in a single layer on a nonstick pan and popped them in the oven. It was a cold (not pre-heated) oven at 180C for 10 minutes but YMMV. I cooked them for 5 minutes the checked to determine how much more they needed. Be careful here as it doesn't take much for almonds to burn.

I'm afraid there are no firm measurements here because I was cooking "off-piste" but basically while the pasta was cooking I melted equal parts butter with olive oil (I would say about 4-5 Tbsp each) then added lemon juice, salt & pepper. When sizzling lightly I added my frozen peas (or whatever green veggie you plan to use). I then added a few ounces of white wine and cokked down a bit. If using fresh veg I would still add them at this point point because, while not frozen they will probably be bigger/thicker so the timing will still be ok.

WHEN THE veg seem cooked, the sauce should have reduced a bit. Swirl through some double cream (single is more likely to split) and freshly chopped dill. Let bubble lightly and then add the smoked trout.

Drain pasta, and serve straight away with a generous helping of the trout & sauce. Sprinkle with toasted almonds.

Tomato Sauce

2009-08-09T21:39:00.003+01:00

So, I figured to hell with it, I'd make it up as I went along. Check out what I did and see what you think, try your own vairents, etc.

Ingredients:
1. 3-4 pounds tomatoes. Tomatoes are in season right now, so they're cheap as hell, so I bought the ones still on the vine. They are usually much much mroe expensive but because it's the season, they were only 50 cents more per pound than the cheap shit, so I said fuck it- I'm willing to pay an extra 2 dollars for the vast increase in quality.
2. 1 large sweet texas onion (it's texan so you know it's huge)
3. 1 little bushell of curly parsely (that's the kind with tiny leaves)
4. 3 sweet red bell peppers
5. ~1/4-1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (first cold pressed, naturally)
6. 1 bay leaf
7. ~1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
8. juice of 1 lime
9. ~1 tbsp cocoa powder
10. ~3 tbsp brown sugar (dark brown, none of that light brown crap)
11. ~4-5 cups cold water
12. 5 cloves garlic.
13. ~2 tbsp sherry.
14. 2 pinches dried dill (fresh is better, but I dind't have any)

Chop up two of the tomatoes. I removed the skin from one but it was too much damn work. Don't worry about the skin, honestly. Chop the tomatoes into rough cubes. Put these into the pot and drissle some olive oil over them. Set the heat on high. Continue chopping the tomatoes and adding them to the pot, stirring them in and adding more olive oil as you go. The tomatoes will heat fraster than you can chop (and I was chopping pretty fast). This is goign to be boiling for ages, so don't worry about getting rid of the juice- you want all of it, all the flavor everything, so dump everything into that pot. Once you've done that, add in the red peppers. Chop in the garlic. I would have liked to have added more but I only had 5 cloves on hand. Chop up that huge white onion- it'll seem lik the pot is half onion. The whole thing will be really thick by now, so add the water. I did this all eyeballed, so you have to add what seems appropriate. Bring the heat down to medium and let it simmer for abotu a half hour. Chop up the parsely and add it. I added balsamic vinegar to give the flavor some body. I rolled and squeezed one lime to give the flavor some highlight and let it continue to simmer another 10 minutes. On tasting it was okay but the lime was a little strong. To cut the sour of the lime, I added a little cocoa powder and some brown sugar (I dind't measure the brown sugar at all- just broke off a couple of chunks into the pot). Stir and let simmer a while longer. Add bay leaf. Add dill. It should taste good. Very good. But you need to add that sherry because the sherry acts to bring all the flavors together, to help them to meld into something different. Taste it and it'll be good. Turn the heat to low, cover, and let it simmer for around an hour or so. Come back occasionally stirring and tasting. After an hour or so the liquid should be very red. To really get everything out, I like to take an old-fashioned potato masher, and mash within the pot to maximize the surface area. Let it simmer another half hour or so (if you do it longer, it doesn't do any harm.). Eventually you'll taste and judge it to be ready. At this point stick the whole thing into a blender and puree it in pulses until fiarly smooth. It'll be dark orange-red. It shoudl be tasty as hell too. You can freeze it for at least 6 months and it'll be garden fresh when you eat it. Probably longer. Oh, don't put it straight into the fridge/freezer, let it cool to room temp or a little warmer first.

Cherry Garcia

2009-07-13T15:33:00.004+01:00

I should preface this slightly with a note about my ice cream maker. Mine is such that it is essentially a pre-frozen bowl which is used, rather than the ice and salt or anything subsequently stuck in the freezer. So my method may be a touch different from your own.

You will need:
1. ~1 cup bing cherries, halved and pitted.
2. 1/2 bar dark chocolate.
3. 1 cup milk
4. 2 cups heavy cream
5. 3/4 cup sugar
6. 2 large eggs.

First things first. Make sure all your dairy ingredients are chilled, as well as eggs and such. So, first step is to slice open the cherries and pitt them. Do you have a fancy cherry pitter? Good for you! I, alas, do not. I used a knife and just dug out the pits with my thumbnail. Bing cherries were on sale. It was $2 for a pound of them, so I bought a pound and decided to be picky and select my way through them, using only the choice and firm cherries for the ice cream. I got roughly a cup or so worth of halves.

Now, here is an alternative you may wish to consider. I did NOT use this alternative but I am mentioning it nonetheless. Halfing the cherries is nice for texture and flavor. However, there's not a whole lot of surface area exposed to the cream. You may want to slice them a little thinner. It might also be worthwhile to take a few extra cherries and simply crush them (or slice them thinly, then crush them) to collect the juice. The reason? The end result has a fairly delicate cherry flavor- but then, cherry garcia actually doesn't have a strong cherry flavor either. It's up to you. Try a batch, see if you like it, adjust accordingly.

Cover the cherries and stick them in the fridge.

I bought a bar of Hershey's All Natural Extra Dark, made from 60% cocoa. It costs about as much as a regular chocolate bar. You don't need to get anything too fancy, but you want some nice dark chocolate. Now this is important. High cocoa percentage means it will melt very readily, so hold the bar fairly lightly with the bar in the foil as much as possible. Make sure your kitchen isn't too warm. With a knife, shave off about half the bar. I alternated between scraping and shaving, getting nice little curls and the like. Don't hack off chunks but don't worry too much if it seems a little thick- it will be breaking up and such. As soon as you are done, cover the bowl and shove it into the fridge. If you were anything like me, now if the time to wash your hand off.

Do not bother to set up your stove top. Nothing is getting heated. Why not? Because that chocolate will simply melt into the milk and be done with. But the whole point is to have these little delicate flakes of chocolate. Does that mean that the ice cream will have raw eggs in it? Yes. Deal with it. So.

Crack open the two eggs, and whisk them until they become light and fluffy- 1-2 minutes. Then slowly add the sugar- I added it 1/4 cup at a time, whisked until dissolved, then added a bit more. You want to keep whisking until it gets fairly thick. Will all of the sugar dissolve? Likely not- but whisk it a couple of minutes anyway to dissolve as much as possible.

To this, add your cup of milk, whisk it, then your two cups of cream, and whisk again. If everything was properly cold, dump your cherries and chocolate in. Whisk the cherries and chocolate in with a few strokes- you don't want the cream mix warming too much and melting the chocolate, and you don't wan tot break up the chocolate if you can help it. Stick the mixture into the fridge for a good hour or two. From here, follow instructions accordingly for your ice cream maker. The shot below was taken VERY quickly as I was giving it a quick stir before I shoved the bowl, covered, back into the fridge.

Thoughts. You may be able to add the chocolate to the ice cream as it stirs and freezes. I didn't because I worry about it breaking up, and a little bit of the chocolate going into the cream might be nice. The couple of hours allows the cherries to flavor the cream a bit. however, if you tried the alternative above, then pour the cherry juice in with the cherries.

This is a delicious home-made version of cherry garcia- one of my absolute favorite ice creams. Let me know what you think. I'd also take some suggestions as to what to do with the greater portion of a pound of cherries.

Edit: I made this again this weekend and I used even more cherries, this time taking out a number and squishing them by hand and pouring the juice and the flesh into the ice cream. The result was a nice purple ice cream with a much more pronounced cherry flavor. I also, for the fuck of it, added about a teaspoon of almond extract. Its the kind of thing that gives a nice background flavor that the other flavors springboard off of. You may not notice the taste, but you notice its disappearance.

Comfort Food - Rice Krispies Treats

2009-05-28T16:50:00.002+01:00

Sometimes you just need the soothing comfort of a childhood favorite -this is so quick and easy to make. Gotta love it.

3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 package (10 oz., about 40) regular marshmallows
OR -
4 cups miniature marshmallows
6 cups Rice Krispies

1. In large saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.

2. Add KELLOGG'S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated.

3. Using buttered spatula or wax paper evenly press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray or buttered lightly. Cool. Cut into 2-inch squares. Best if served the same day.

Store no more than two days at room temperature in airtight container. To freeze, place in layers separated by wax paper in airtight container. Freeze for up to 6 weeks. Let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving.

Ultimate Brownie

2009-05-13T20:59:00.003+01:00

The Ultimate Brownie is absolutely the best brownie recipe I've ever found. It is tall like a cakey-brownie, but is dense like a fudgy-brownie. I just made a batch tonight and the house is full of a gentle chocolate scent - irresistible! It's easy to make and pretty forgiving if you tend to toss in a bit more this and less that like I do.

8 ounces unsweetened chocolate or fine quality 70% dark chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
5 eggs
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt (I cheat and only use 1/2)
2-1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F/190 C/ 170 Fan.

Grease a 9 x 13 pan. You can also bake this in 2 round cake pans, etc.

1. Melt chocolate and butter in a saucepan over low heat; set aside.

2.In a mixer, beat eggs, sugar and vanilla at high speed for 10 minutes. (If you use a Kitchenaid type mixer, 5 minutes may be enough.)

3. Blend in alternately chocolate mixture, flour and salt until just mixed. Stir in the nuts.

4. Pour into prepared pan/s.

5. Bake for 35-40 minutes. (Don't overbake.) If you are using 2 round pans, 30 minutes may be enough. Just check to prevent burning. Brownies will start to shrink away from sides of pan as it nears doneness.

6. Cool and frost if desired, but that is not necessary.

These brownies are dead gorgeous. Believe me, I know. You can wrap half of them in a freezer proof bag and save for later. Or you can take any extras to work and win the abject gratitude of the entire staff.

Banana Nut Muffins

2009-05-06T10:08:00.002+01:00

These are super easy to make - only needs a bowl and a spoon to mix up. Make sure the bananas are very ripe for best flavor.

Ingredients - basic recipe with notes on how I actually make it

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
(note - depends on size, I used 5 of the dinky ones we get in the UK)
1/3 cup melted butter - unsalted
3/4 cup sugar
(note - I used 1/2 cup - depends on how ripe bananas are)
1 egg, beaten
(note - I used 2 eggs - why? Because I'm the Mommy)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup of flour
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (toasted or raw)
dashes of spices of your choice - I use cinnamon, nutmeg

Method

No need for a mixer with this recipe. Get out a comfy mixing bowl and big spoon

1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl.

2 Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla.

3 Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in.

4 Add the flour, mix until it is just incorporated. Fold in the chopped walnuts.

5 Pour mixture into a prepared (this means well buttered) muffin tin.

6 Bake for 25-30 minutes. (My crazy UK fan oven did them in 23 - so check after 20 min to see how done they are)
Check for doneness with a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin. If it comes out clean, it's done. Cool on a rack.

Makes 12 muffins.

Cheesey Chedder Biscuits

2009-04-30T01:22:00.003+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted so I figured I would put up somethign quick and easy (even though I have photoes and such of other recipes, I haven't bothered writing them up yet so yea).

So, the ingrediants:

1. 2.5 cups Bisquick baking mix
2. 1 cup cheddar cheese, grated.
3. 3/4 cup whole milk
4. 2 tablespoons butter melted
5. 1/2 stick melted butter (keep seperate from the 2 tablespoons)
6. 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
7. 1/2 teaspoon onion powder (keep seperate)
8. 1 teaspoon dried thyme.

Note: The origional recipe calls for garlic powder rather than onion,m and parsely flakes rather than thyme. I can't speak for that as I haven't tried it. I'd love ot hear from someone who tries both. I just don't have either garlic powder or parsely leaves here (or, more properly, I didn't see either and I'm not prepared to empty out the cabinet to find out)

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine (by hand, it's quite fast) the bisquick, milk, 2 tbsp butter, cheese, 1/4 tsp onion powder.
3.Put dough onto baking sheet in ~1/4 cup sizes (roughly 1.5-2inch diameter) Should make about 12.
4. Combine melted butter, thyme, rest of onion powder.
5. Search for brush. Fail to find one. Grab small spatula and try your best to "brush" the butter mixture onto the tops of the biscuits as a wash.
6. Stick in oven for 15 minutes.
7. Eat.

Possibilities for alterations:
1. Add 1 tsp old bay seasoning to the dough and/or a tsp paprika.
2. Try different cheddars. I used Cracker Barrel Extra-sharp white. You may like something more mellow, or use an aged cheddar for a richer flavor.

Sauce, anyone?

2009-04-21T01:46:00.002+01:00

This isn't so much a post as a request, or two requests. One is that people post a recipe for tomato sauce. I can and have made it and it was nice, but it essentially consisted of me shoving a bunch of stuff I thought would be good into a pot, boiling the shit out of it and going at it with a potato masher to smoothen it out. Mind you it still came out really nice.

The other is for people to reccomend their favorite nice pasta sauce, store-bought. Don't say the word mushroom- canned mushrooms I find completely disgusting. I don't need cheeses or meat- I'm talking straight-up tomato sauce. I can never remember the brand, but it's either Ragu or Prego (I think Prego) which I cannot stand because it has an incredible amount of stabilizers, to the point you can barely taste the tomatoes.

But I want something nice and tasty. My brother and father used to like Mama Rizzo's, but I find it too watery. I want something that actually tastes like....well, a tomato sauce. It's store bought so it won't be awesome. But something reasonably palatable which you actually enjoy, not just what's on sale or whatever. I don't eat a lot of pasta, so when I do and I'm going to use sauce, I want to use nice stuff. I don't always have time to make the stuff fresh (or even to make it fresh and freeze it) so this would be really handy for me.

Fish and Chips (hold the chips)

2009-04-13T19:22:00.005+01:00

So my fiancé and I were watching Food Network yesterday and saw a throwdown between Bobby Flay (nee asshole) and this Fish&Chips place here in manhattan run by some bloke who has been cooking fish and chips in England since he was 7 at a place I’ve passed many times and wanted to try but never actually went into called A Salt And Battery. Well, after an hour of watching F&C we both sat there moaning about how much we wanted some- good, light, crunchy, fresh ones, not crap from the freezer. So we decided to do it. Only, we were too lazy to make the chips portion. So whatever. We also made the tartar sauce. Here’s the thing- I highly recommend you make the tartar sauce at LEAST an hour beforehand, though if you can let it sit in the fridge say overnight, I think that would be better.

Tartar Sauce (makes a SHITLOAD)

1. 3 heaping tablespoons sweet relish.

2. 1 minced garlic clove

3. 1 minced scallion

4. 1 teaspoon pepper

5. 2 tablespoons lemon juice

6. 2 tablespoons pickle juice (acts as a thinner)

7. 1 cup mayonnaise

Pretty much mix everything together nicely, then adjust for taste. I started with 2 tablespoons of relish and 1 tablespoon lemon and it was okay, but a bit heavy on the mayonnaise flavor. Adding more relish and lemon really made it much better and the mayonnaise gave a nice creaminess rather than being a heavy flavor. I saw a recipe that recommended sticking it all into a blender, but I like mine with a little texture and it seems a bit of a lot of cleaning for such a small thing. Note that this makes a hell of a lot so you might want to either cut the amounts used or simply store it for another day. Or make more fish, whatever. The pickle juice I used was the brine from some pickles bought on Essex street, so you know it’s the good stuff. Joanna gives it two thumbs up.

The Fish.

Now, I’ve never deep fried anything so this was a bit new for me. Luckily, my lovely assistant Joanna handled that part of it. Now this is a variant of the classic beer batter. However, beer batter tends to taste a bit like, well, beer and neither Joanna nor I really care for the flavor. So instead, we substituted seltzer. It gives it a nice, lightness which you get from beer, but without the instrusive flavor. We ended up with a batter which was crunchy but with a fairly delicate flavor that allowed the flavor of the fish itself to come through.

1. 2 pounds of cod

2. 2 cups flour

3. 2 cups cornmeal

4. 3 cups seltzer

5. 2 eggs

6. 1 teaspoon pepper

7. 1 teaspoon salt

8. A shitload of vegetable oil

Directions:

1. Head to your local fishmonger. Seriously- as with all fish, the fresher, the better. We, being in Chinatown, have a few within easy walking distance. I dunno what the usual price is but we got about 2 pounds worth (2 large fillets) for $11.50 and this stuff was really nice. Yes, that’s right- I’m eating fish from a Chinatown fishmonger. Again. If I come down with heavy metal poisoning some day, you’ll know why.

2. Debone the fish and slice into pieces roughly 2”x3” (some wiggle room is fine of course- but we found that too big took a bit longer to cook- although that might have been because of the oil temp- more on this later.)

3. Dump the vegetable oil into a big pot and put it over a high flame. We used vegetable oil because we didn’t want any flavors from the oil affecting the taste of the cod (papa, I’m talking to you- don’t use goddamn peanut oil or olive oil or mustard seed oil or hair oil or whatever unless you want your fish to taste like anything but fish). You need to let the oil pre-heat for about 10 minutes before it will be the right temperature. Some people have thermometers, I do not.

4. Combine all the dry ingredients together with a whisk. The corn meal is, I admit, a little odd. I was afraid that it would make the batter gritty. As a matter of fact, it didn’t since it ended up being crisp. However, it still strikes me as rather odd. I looked up several recipes and they all recommended it, so I used it but it still seems a touch odd to me. As I said, because they were fried to a nice crispness, it wasn’t a problem, but I still think it seemed wrong. Thoughts from across the pond?

5. Crack in the eggs and add half the seltzer, THEN stir. With the amount of dry ingredients involved if you try stirring having only added the eggs, you will end up with a large ball of goo in the middle of your whisk. Once the mixture is homogenous, add the rest of the seltzer and keep mixing. You may need to adjust the amounts of seltzer and flour and cornmeal. My original amount I used 1.5 cups each of the flour and cornmeal, and 2 cups of seltzer. That ended up being too thick. I added another cup of seltzer (yes, I thought it was foolish adding so much at once, but there you have it). It ended up being watery. I added 1/3 cup each of corn meal and flour So really it’s not 2 cups each, it’s 1 5/6 cups each but close enough, says I. Anyway, the consistency should be roughly that of a thin pancake batter. It should coat your fish, but not glop on.

6. Take your fish and dunk them in, good and covered. Let some excess drip off.

7. Take battered fish and carefully drop them into the oil. Now this is delicate- the oil MUST have been preheated, or you’re fucked. How do you know the temperature is okay? Well, you never really know for sure until you add your first piece. However, you can try testing with a drop of just the batter. It should bubble like crazy, but not dangerously so. That’s about all I can tell you. Joanna got nervous after a while and turned down the heat. After a while we noticed some of the pieces were taking forever to cook and weren’t browning. I suggested turning the heat back up- worked like a charm. So keep the heat up on high the whole time, if you can.

8. Leave the fish in the oil for ~7 minutes. By this point they should be a nice gold and brown. Take them out with tongs or a mesh scoop or whatever (do NOT use plastic- it’ll melt). Put them onto a plate covered with a few paper towels and let cool a minute or two.

9. Dunk cooked fish into tartar sauce and enjoy!

Note: The amount of battery is ludicrously more than you need for only 2 pounds of fish. I’m giving the measurements I used because I know that they work, but feel free to half this. That said, this is actually healthier than you might think (among other things because of the clean oil, etc.). Make sure you let the oil cool before you chuck it- and please do throw it out, don’t save it.

One thing I rather liked about this recipe was that it was pretty cheap. It mostly used stuff I had around the house. The only things I needed to buy were the fish and the oil (we don’t use much oil in my home). I am telling you this- after 1 pound of fish, you will be full, so if you plan on adding chips (not fries unless they are steak fries. Real chips are meant to be chipped off of a potato) then you can probably feed four with this recipe.

One other thing. Some recipes call for salting your fish before you dip them in the batter. I’m not a huge salt guy and I’ve had fish that was too salty because they did that. I also know that when Bobby Flay (*asshole*) was doing that on the show, the guys from A Salt and Battery were looking over saying “Oh no, he’s salting the fish…” in a “look what that idiot is doing” kind of voice. Their fish and chips have consistently been rated as the best in the western hemisphere, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

You can add things like paprika to the batter to give it a little spice. However, to my mind the batter is mant to be fairly subtle in flavor and act as a nice baseboard for the fish to come from. The fish, being cod (you can use other white fish, but cod is really traditionally best) is fairly light in flavor itself, and so is easily covered up. The big flavoring I would use is the tartar sauce. However, should you get ahold of some malt vinegar, sprinkle some over your fish and give it a try- let me know how it comes out (I don’t have any on hand, but was more interested in the tartar sauce anyway)

I should also say- I despise tartar sauce, and have since I as a little kid. However, a few years ago I finally tried some and to my surprise I enjoyed it. I discovered what an absolute world of difference there is between home-made (which is surprisingly easy) and store-bought tartar. If you, like me, hate both mayonnaise and tartar sauce, give this recipe a shot- you might be surprised.

Edit: I have now tried the recipe by changing one or two things. First, got rid of the corn meal. Also, added some salt and pepper to the batter itself. Third, let the oil run hot the whole time- yes it bubbles at first but it will go down within seconds. I also tried making a slightly thicker batter and not letting as much drip off post-dredge. My conclusion- there's a leeway in the thickness of the batter. However, it is a good idea to really let the majority of the excess to drip off. Otherwise you get pieces curling up on themselves, or giant globs of the stuff you're biting into, etc. And don't be afraid to let it go an extra minute or two- you really want them nice and golden- if they're too pale, you can eat them but they aren't as nice. Added to this, the lack of cornmeal definately improved the flavor and texture. We also tried chips- not so hard all in all, but not so interesting. We made the tartar sauce int he morning and let it sit throughout the day until we cooked- made a huge diffrence- learn from this.

Andrew's Awesome Chowder

2009-04-02T01:11:00.002+01:00

I don't have pictures this time because I didn't have my camera ready. Nonetheless, this is pretty straightforward. The result is both very nutritious and delicious. I thought it was fantastic. Joanna, while eating it, would periodically come up for air and say "this is fucking awesome!" So, without further ado:

Serves: enough for 2 hungry people for dinner, plus lunch for them the next day.
Time: Roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
Cost: 15-20 dollars, depending.

Ingredients

1. 3 1/3 cups water
2. 4 large potatoes (I would say fist sized, but my fists are pretty big...)
3. 1 1/2 cup baby carrots
4. 1 1/2 cups broccoli.
5. 4 Shallots
6. 2 Tbsp butter
7. 2 cups whole milk
8. 1 large ham steak
9. 1 tsp salt
10. 1/4 tsp pepper
11. 3 tbsp flour (I used all-purpose)
12. 1 can corn.

I'm lucky in that I'm the only guy in my family who can eat broccoli, either raw or cooked. Which is great because I love the stuff. Anyway, that said, the amount of broccoli is not exact because I really just eye-balled how much I wanted to put in. You do the same. I did the same with the carrots. The carrots ended up being roughly half of a standard-sized package of fresh baby carrots, if that's any help. You can substitute onions for the shallots here, but I think shallots are so lovely- if you don’t know, they're a cross between onion and garlic and smell like acetone when cooking but taste divine.

Equipment:

1. 1 medium pot
2. 1 wooden spoon
3. Cutting board
4. Chopping knife
5. Frying pan.

Instructions:
1. Peel and chop the shallots.
2. Peel and cube your potatoes.
3. Melt the butter in the pot.
4. Add shallots to pot, and stir go gently cook them. Keep an eye on these shallots as they cook rapidly.
5. For gods sake, don't do what I did which was peel the potatoes now and then try chopping them- it's a nightmare. The timing is just terrible.
6. Once the shallots have finished cooking, add the potatoes, and then add 3 cups of water.
7. Add the salt and pepper.
8. Turn the heat up to high to help the water get hotter faster. Leave uncovered.
9. Chop up the baby carrots into small chunks. Add them to the water.
10. Chop up the broccoli and add them to the water. Note that you want to try to remove the stems for the most part. Not the teeny stems, I mean the primary and possibly secondary branches from the main stalk- when you are going to eat this, it's going to be hot and you don't want to have to try working your mouth around a stalk of broccoli. It'll cook relatively quickly.
11. Separately, take your ham steak and stick it into your frying pan on a medium heat for three minutes. Turn over and let the other side cook for 3 minutes.
12. Take the ham steam out of the frying pan and slice into small cubes- try to remove as much fat as possible. I used a hickory smoked ham for this that was really delicious- I really recommend it.
13. By now, roughly 15 minutes should have passed and your potatoes ought to be finished cooking. If they aren't, let it cook another 5 minutes and they should be done. The water ought to not cover the vegetables in the pot quite, or might just barely cover them. Turn the heat back to medium.
14. Take 1/3 cup of water and the flour and separately (I did it in a measuring cup) mix them until smooth. Add to the pot and stir.
15. Add the 2 cups milk, and then stir. Allow to come to a simmer.
16. Add the ham and corn. Allow to cook a further 10-15 minutes. Enjoy how your kitchen smells.
17. Serve hot with some crackers in a big bowl.

I'll admit, this is the first time I had ever made any kind of chowder except out of a can. I was really surprised how incredibly rich and fulfilling this dish was. I actually though you needed cream and such but no, it came out just great. I am pretty sure that this is robust enough to simply substitute clams for the ham and make it into clam chowder instead, or shrimp or whatever you like.

Perfect Pancakes - American style

2009-03-29T13:16:00.002+01:00

By noon I was feeling well and truly famished and wanted an American Sunday Breakfast. Well, forget getting any Jones Farm breakfast sausages but I immediately thought PANCAKES! GMTA because Alan popped in to say, "Any chance of pancakes? American kind?" Well, that was enough to get me started heating up the griddle. Here's the recipe I used this morning to produce absolutely perfect pancakes; taste was delicate and clean, texture was light and fluffy and raised high.

2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups whole milk (If you insist on substituting, on your head be it)
3 tablespoons melted butter (or vegetable oil if you must, but please don't)
1 splash Vanilla extract (optional but adds a subtle warmth to the flavour)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I confess, I used self-raising flour by mistake - worked great!)
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar

Directions

1. Beat the eggs and milk until light and foamy using a wisk. Stir in the butter.

2. Measure out the dry ingredients into a bowl and stir a turn or two to evenly distribute the salt, baking powder and sweetener.

3. Gently and quickly mix flour into the egg and milk mixture. Let the batter rest for a few minutes, while the griddle/pan is heating; it"ll thicken slightly.

4. Heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat, or set an electric griddle to 350°F. Lightly grease frying pan or griddle. The pan or griddle is ready if a drop of water will skitter across the surface, evaporating immediately.

5. Drop large serving spoonfuls (about 1/3 cup) of batter onto the lightly greased pan. Bake on one side until bubbles begin to form and break, then turn the pancakes and cook the other side till brown. Turn over only once. Serve immediately.

I recommend serving the pancakes with unsalted butter and REAL maple syrup.

Bagels

2009-03-27T23:55:00.007Z

I give up on finding real bagels anywhere within reasonable travel from where I live in London. I know there are some Jewish areas that have shops where you can get real bagels but we're talking 3 hours car travel round trip in off-peak hours or more - and forget about public transport, they shut down half the subways and trains here on weekends. Are you kidding?

So I watched Rachel Allen teaching how to make bagels on a cooking show and thought, "I can do that".

Know what? I can and I did. Twice this week already. They're great. Look they are no H&H but they are damn good and easy enough to make. Fresh bagels? Heaven. You can make them, too.

Makes: 8
Prep: 3 to 4 hrs
Bake: 20 min @ 220C (210C Fan)

Ingredients:
450g strong bread flour, plus extra for dusting (This is a high glutin bread flour)
2 tsp Salt
7g fast-acting Yeast (1 packet)
250ml warm water (this is approximate, I needed almost 275ml)
2 tbsp clear Honey
1 tbsp vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing
3 tbsp honey or molasses or in US - Karo syrup can be used
maize or cornmeal, for sprinkling
1 Egg, beaten with a bit of water
sesame seeds, sea salt poppy seeds, or a savoury topping of your choice (optional)

How-to:

1. Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl

2. Measure the water in a measuring jug then stir in the honey and oil. , Add the yeast and mix well. Yeast should start to bubble and turn water cloudy.

3. Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour the liquid in gradually, bringing the dough together with your hands. Dough should be soft and slightly sticky - add slightly more water if the dough feels stiff and dry.

4. Turn the dough out onto a clean, dry and floured work surface. Start kneading the dough, stretching it away with the palm of one hand and folding it back again with the other, for about ten minutes, adding more flour if the dough becomes too sticky. Continue kneading until the dough is firm and elastic. This takes about 10 minutes. Do not try to cheat and cut it short. If you are one of those lucky people with a proper mixer with a dough hook, go for it! Let the machine knead it till it forms a smooth and elastic ball around the hook. (You know best how your machine works.) I did the kneading by hand, the dough shapes up nicely.

5. Shape the dough into a large ball and put into a lightly oiled large bowl and turn in the oil to coat. Cover with cling film or a plastic bag and put in a warm, dry place for 2–3 hours or until the dough is doubled in size.

6. When the dough is nearly ready – doubled in volume – bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and add the honey or molasses. Cover and turn off the heat.

7. Lightly oil two baking trays and sprinkle with maize or cornmeal. (I confess, I lined the trays with non-stick baking parchment and lightly oiled it. Didn't use cornmeal since none was available here) Remove the dough from the bowl, then punch it down and knead it briefly. Roll it into a rough sausage shape and divide into 7 or 8 equal chunks. As you work with one chunk, keep the others covered with a clean tea towel.

8. Firmly roll out each chunk into a long log, then bring the ends together and seal with a splash of water and squeeze the ends together. Place on the prepared baking trays and repeat with the rest of the dough. You can also do it the traditional way of lightly rolling the dough into a flattened ball, then pushing a finger through it to make the hole. Twirl the bagel around your finger a bit to enlarge the hole as it will shrink when the dough rises.

9. Cover and allow to stand for a further 20 minutes.

10. Preheat the oven to 220C.

11. Bring the saucepan of honey and water back to a gentle simmer. Gently drop each bagel into the water (do this in batches of no more than 2 or three at a time as they swell) and turn over after 1-2 minutes. Simmer for another 1-2 minutes, then remove the bagels from the water, and drain.

12. Place the bagels on the prepared baking trays, spacing them widely apart. Brush the tops with the beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds, sea salt, poppy seeds or a savoury topping of your choice, and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer onto a wire rack to cool before serving.

Lime Marmalade

2009-02-24T23:58:00.002Z

This is a classic "free form" recipe, in other words, something I just whipped up from stuff I had in the house anyway and without bothering to measure or test. It's absolutely gorgeous.

I've tried to remember general measurements but don't worry, it's pretty forgiving.
Another thing is that it's just a small batch - a couple of jars for us and 1 to give away to a friend. If you make this and want to make more to stock up, just double the recipe.

I should warn you that I like a really strong tart lime flavor. This is it in bags.

Ingredients:
13 big juicy limes
5 cups water
1 KG jam sugar - this is a special sugar you can buy in the supermarket that has pectin in it to help fruit jell. It's essential with soft fruits and good with lime because limes have no pits (well, mine didn't) and very thin skins with little pith. It's the pith and pits that release pectin into jams. You must have pectin as that's what makes the marmalade "jell".

You want to use a fairly large/tall saucepan for this because the liquid bubbles up high and FAST when it boils.

1. Slice limes in half, squeeze out all the juices and dump juice into the pan.

2. Slice the leftover peel from about 4 of the limes into very, very thin crosswise strips. Cut the limes halves into quarters to get about the right size for the strips. Six is better but I'm a lazy sod and lime peels are tough and a misery to slice into small thin strips. Dump the strips in the pan with the juice.

3. Now add the 5 cups of water to the pan. I used filtered water because London water is - well it just is.

4. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 2 hours, until the peel is very soft

5. Add the jam sugar and stir over low heat until all the sugar is dissolved.

6. Turn up the heat and let it boil rapidly for about 15 min. Watch the pan because you will have to adjust the heat occasionally or stir down the boil if it gets too active and starts to rise too high.

7. The mix needs to reach the "setting point". To test for this, put a small glass or china saucer in the fridge when you start cooking. After the mix has boiled for 15 min, move the pan off the heat, dip in a small spoon and drop a teaspoon of the marmalade onto the saucer. Let it cool a few seconds and then blow on it and touch gently with your fingertip. If the surface wrinkles it is ready. If not, boil for a further 5 minutes. When I made the marmalade today it needed 2 extra min cooking for perfection.

8. Take the pan off the heat, skim off any obvious foam -don't fuss. Let it settle for 15 min and then you can ladle it into jars.

9. You can be fancy and use proper canning jars/jam jars. Or you can be like me and save a few small jars and lids, wash them thoroughly, and reuse them for jam. I used 4 small jars for this batch.

10. We'll assume your jars are clean. Just before you fill them, while the marmalade is settling, rinse the jars and lids with very hot tap water, drain and set upside down on a clean dishtowel.

11. Ladle in the hot marmalade leaving about 1/3 inch clear space at the top. Wipe the jar lip with a damp paper towel and put on the lid. Place filled jar back on the dishtowel to cool. You may have enough to partly fill a 5th jar like I did. This is fine. That jar will be ready to use first.

12. Leave the jars to cool and then store all but one (see- that's what the partial one is for!) in a cool dark cupboard.

13. Put up coffee or tea. Make some toast. Butter toast with unsalted butter. Spread some marmalade on the toast.

14. Sit back, sip your coffee/tea. Eat buttered toast with lime marmalade and smirk at the world knowing you have something utterly delicious that you made by yourself.

Eve's Pudding

2009-02-22T02:17:00.004Z

Tonight was the debut of Eve's Pudding at our house.

This recipe is easy and delicious, and must be eaten all in one sitting. That's an order. It can be done, really.

Eve's Pudding

Sponge Cake:
1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 Tbsp sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Milk - to reach "right consistency"

3 apples, peeled and cored
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch ground cloves
pinch salt
optional - splash of cognac or calvados
1 Tbsp unsalted butter

1 48oz souffle pan or 1 medium pudding basin

First the apples:

1. Slice apples into thin 1/8" slices. Gently toss with 1/4 cup sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and cloves.

2. Place all in small saucepan. Toss in the butter and now's the time for that good slug of booze. Splash it in. Also a splash of water to prevent burning.

3. Bring apples to the boil, cover pan, let boil a minute then turn off heat and let apples sit COVERED. Don't touch that lid. You want to let the steam poach those apples a bit.

4. Go have a cup of coffee while the apples cool down a bit - covered.

Note - the apples should be firm sweet apples. If you can get Winesap apples they are quintessential. In the UK, I used Pink Lady - don't even ask.

Now the sponge:

1. Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

3. In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar with a mixer until it becomes smooth and pale. Add the eggs, one at a time.

4. Alternately add in the milk and flour mixture. Do not over beat.
- This is tricky here. I suggest you add the flour mix in 1/4 cup increments. After each 1/4 cup of flour goes in, add a little splash of milk to keep the mix from tightening up. The operative word here is LITTLE. The sponge batter should be soft, satiny but thick. If you want a more exact description of how much milk and what the batter should look like - you will have to come and watch me make a pudding. And remember, don't kill the batter by mixinig it to death. Gentle. Gentle. Quick.

Now to assemble:

1. Spoon the apples into the souffle dish/pudding basin. Pour any remaining juices over the apples.

2. Spoon batter over the apples and with a flat spatula, level out the batter to form a flat seal to cover the fruit. Sprinkle the top with sugar.

3. Place on flat tray to protect from spills. Bake 45 minutes.

Serve warm with your choice of custard, whipped cream, cream

Cinnamon Ice Cream

2009-02-21T10:49:00.000Z

Having dazzled all and sundry with my gorgeous Cranberry & Port Sorbet, there was a bit of a problem. What to make next? It seemed that everyone had an opinion and to complicate the matter, I had about 4 different recipe books to be explored.

But, once we got past the tears and recriminations (it being Christmas after all), we had settled on something everyone could enjoy that was also festive - Cinnamon Ice Cream.

Next issue, how to make the custard base. It seems that every recipe book has at least 2 different recipes for the custard base - none of which agree with each other. The problem, I think, stems from the fact that different people like different things from their ice cream base. Some like it swet, some like it to be a blank palette upon which they can paint with the flavours of their ingredients. Another factor to consider is the consistency that you are looking for which will be dictated by the amount of dairy fat in your ingredients.

In other words, it's an art as well as a science.

::sigh::

In the end I threw caution to the wind and came up with my own recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup single cream
1/2 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks
cinnamon sticks

So, I put the milk into a small saucepan, brought it to the boil, then cut the heat and put the cinnamon sticks in to infuse as it cooled. Unfortunately, after much searching through our ridiculously huge amount of spices (and a few muttered imprecations about the perfidy of men), I managed to find some ancient cinnamon sticks. They were by no means at their best but were still within date. I used three 6 inch sticks but if you have some decent fresh sticks, 2 should be fine for this recipe.

While the milk was cooling and the cinnamon infusing, I whipped the eggs and sugar until thick and foamy (the colour will change to a pale creamy yellow).

At thispoint, most recipe books say to bring the milk back up to a boil, then add slowly to the egss, whipping all the way. I think that this is a fine way to make scrambled eggs but not so hot for ice cream.

Instead, I removed the cinnamon sticks from the milk, then slowly added the room temp milk to the egg mixture, whipping constantly. Then I added my cream and gave it another whip.

THEN I returned my mix to the pan and heated it over a low flame, stirring constantly. As it reaches the boiling point the custard will thicken so it will coat the back of a wooden spoon. Then take it off the heat.

Pour the mix into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and pop it into the fridge to cool, then into the ice cream machine.

One surprising thing about this recipe is that it looks just like regular old vanilla ice cream. I can only surmise that commercially available cinnamon ice creams that have flecks in them or are a pale brown are created using either ground cinnamon or food colourings.

Anyway, this recipe creates an incredibly refined and sophisticated ice cream. The only drawback is that this recipe serves 4 genteel guests or 2 gannets. In other words, you may be wise to double the quantities.

Cranberry & Port Sorbet

2009-02-21T10:24:00.000Z

For Christmas this year I got a beeeauuutiful ice cream machine, the Magimix Gelato Chef 2200 which is awesome as it removes a huge amount of the tedium involved in making tasty frozen treats.

So, as it was Christmas morning, I went straight to work preparing a few festive delights and the very first thing I experimented with was making something fairly safe - a Cranberry & Port sorbet. This is straightforward but one must always keep in mind that when working with alcohol it will have a direct effect on how long it takes for your recipe to freeze.

Right then, ingredients:

9 0z. fresh cranberries
1 3/4 cups water
1 cup sugar
5 Tbsp ruby port

OK kids, it really doesn't get much easier than this:

Dump the cranberries and the water in a small sauce pan, bring to the boil, then simmer untill the berries are soft.

Blend the resulting mixture (careful here or you may have a hell of a cleanup job!)

Push the resulting slurry through a fine sieve (nylon if you have one) into a bowl.

Add sugar and port, then stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Pop the bowl into the fridge to cool down for a few hours (at least 2). You can, of course, accelerate this process by seating the bowl within a larger container of ice, but be careful that the melting ice doesn't cause the inner bowl to sink and slop water in!

I then poured the mix into my my new toy, turned it on, and about 30 minutes later had a wonderfully refreshing sorbet. It's not sweet. The sugar is just enough to take the edge off of the bitterness of the cranberries and it made a marvelous palate cleanser.

If you are not blessed with a shit hot ice cream maker, you can still follow this recipe but will have to do all the freezing and churning manually.

New York Cheesecake

2009-02-15T20:26:00.009Z

I don't use a graham cracker crust in my cheesecakes. I used to live around the corner from the Turf Cheesecake shop, they didn't use the crust and I prefer it that way. You can add one to the baking pan before adding the filling, if you insist.

2-1/2 pounds PHILADELPHIA brand cream cheese (at room temperature)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1-3/4 cup sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks
6 large eggs
optional 3 tablespoons plain flour

Mixer - You really need to use a stand mixer for this - preferably a kitchen-aid type. Needs must, a hand held will do. But you can't make this with a wisk and spoon. Unless you're crazy.
10 in. springform pan
Pre-heat oven to 500 F (yes, really! If your oven doesn't go this high, then the top temp available and you'll have to cross your fingers)

Assemble all ingredients.
Butter bottom and sides of the springform pan. (I prefer unsalted butter)

Cut the cream cheese into small chunks and place the pieces into work bowl of a standing mixer. Beat the cheese on low until smooth, about two or three minutes. It may be easier to beat half the cream cheese first, followed by the second half. Once the cheese is smooth, add the salt and about a third of the sugar. Beat until integrated and scrape down the sides. Add another third of the sugar and continue to mix until the sugar is mixed in. Then add the final third of sugar and mix in. Optionally, three tablespoons of flour can be added with the sugar to help add a bit of stability to the cake. Adding flour will not affect the taste or texture of the cake, but will reduce the likelihood of a cracked cake. Add the lemon juice and vanilla extract and mix.

Scrape the sides down and add the heavy cream. The cheese should be much easier to work with at this point.

Add the egg yolks and mix until they are blended in.

Now add three whole eggs and mix until the eggs have been completely mixed into the filling. Scrape down the sides and beat in the final three eggs. Now, pour the filling into the springform pan. A 10-inch pan should fill up to almost its rim with this filling. Lift the pan an inch or two above your counter or cutting board and drop it to bring any bubbles trapped inside to the surface. Place the springform pan onto a sheetpan (for easy handling and safety), and slide into the middle of an oven preheated to 500°F.

After ten minutes, reduce the temperature to 200°F and allow the cheesecake to bake as the oven gradually reduces temperature (do not open the oven door). Bake the cheesecake until the center of the cake registers as 150°F (making sure it does not exceed 160°F), about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Feel free to use an instant read thermometer in the center of the cake - a slightly blemish is worth a perfect cake. Note: When baking the example cheesecake, I kept the cake at 500°F for only five minutes (thinking that the convection oven would keep the temperature higher for longer). Notice that the edges of the cake had begun to brown, but the whole surface of the cake is still a light shade. This cake resulted in the texture and taste of a New York style cheesecake, but failed to achieve the look. Remember to keep baking at 500°F for the full ten minutes.

The cake will not fully set until fully chilled, but the cooling process should be gradual. First remove the cake from the oven and onto a cooling rack. After about ten minutes, run a paring knife along the rim of the cake to release it from the walls of the pan. This will reduce the risk of cracking as the cake contracts and tries to pull away from the walls of the pan.

After about two to three hours of cooling, wrap the pan tightly in plastic wrap and place the cake into the refrigerator to chill for at least five hours. remove the springform sides and serve.

If you must, you can serve this topped with a fruit sauce - I suggest keep it simple. Strawberries or blueberries briefly cooked with a bit of sugar and cornstarch. You can splash in some liquer to be fancy. Cool and spoon over the cake or spoon over individual serving slices of cake.

Kiwi Sorbet

2009-02-15T10:42:00.002Z

After seeing Andrew's fabulously illustrated recipes, I vowed to myself that I, too would start photographing recipes step by step.
However, this recipe for Kiwi Sorbet is an old family favorite and I'm not making it at the moment, just sharing it. (I'll photograph the English dessert I'm making this afternoon and post it later.)

8 kiwis
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 - 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Step 1. Combine water and sugar. Heat in a saucepan until sugar is dissolved. Cool the syrup You can do this the night before or early in the morning, whatever is easiest for you. It is called a "simple syrup" and is used in many recipes - basically 1:1 sugar & water.

Step 2. Peel kiwis. Puree in a food processor.

Step 3. Add simple syrup and lemon juice to the processor. Give it a pulse or two to mix well.

At this stage you are ready to start the freezing process.
Option 1 - If you are one of those priviledged people with a ice cream machine:
Pour the mixture into ice cream maker and freeze 15 to 20 minutes.

If you are one of the Rest Of Us:
Option 2 - Pour into container, cover, and place mixture in the freezer.
When it is semi-solid, mash it up with a fork and refreeze again. (this may only take 2 hours depending on your freezer)
When almost frozen, place in a food processor or blender and process until smooth.
Cover and refreeze until serving time.

NOTE: Can be prepared 2 to 3 days in advance. Cover and keep frozen.

Char Shu Bao

2009-02-12T23:08:00.012Z

Andrew here again. Steamed Char Shu Bao (that’s the mandarin pronounciation. Cantonese is Ta Siu Bao- I add this not to be a dick, but because it can be handy, as you’ll see), or steamed barbeque pork buns.

I should start off by saying that pretty much every technique I’m about to describe is wholly unfamiliar to me. Many of them are quite common, but I’ve never done them- such as making dough, kneading it, etc. So your results may well be different from my own. Secondly, the dough used for steamed Ta Siu Bao is different from that used in baked bao. So don’t try using this for that. The sough here is relatively unique for food in that it requires the use of active yeast throughout the preparation. The result is an incredibly light, spongy dough, almost like something from a pastry. Or it ought to be, anyway.

Important: this is a LONG recipe. By which I mean it takes a LONG time- as in, 4 hours, mostly waiting. So don’t do this spur-of-the-moment unless you have the time to kill. I was lucky in that I had an unexpected day off. You may not be so lucky. This makes roughly 22-24 bao.

That said, this recipe is an adaption of the recipie found in Madame Wong’s Long-Life Chinese Cookbook, a book from the 70’s that you can get pretty cheaply, but has some good stuff in it, and is apparently illustrated. Why do I say adaption, your ask hesitantly. Because I didn’t have all the ingredients, added a few, found out I didn’t have all the right equipment partly-through. So taking all of that into consideration, I’m still pretty happy.

First thing’s first. Ingredients and equipment. I’m going to separate this recipe into two parts; the dough and the filling.

Dough:

1. 1 package of dried yeast, or 1 cake fresh yeast.

2. 1 cup lukewarm water

3. 4 ½ cups flour

4. ¼ cup white sugar

5. 2 tablespoons wegetable oil.

6. ½ cup boiling water

7. A little butter

Equipment: Measuring cups, measureing spoons, a flat area to work on, a couple of large mixing bowls, a rolling pin. A whisk. Some paper towels or kitchen towels.

Directions:

1. Place the yeast in the bottom of one of the mixing bowls. Add the lukewarm water. Whisk this until it is fully dissolved.

2. Add 1 cup flour. Whisk until homogenous.

3. Cover top of bowl with cloth and wait 1 hour.

4. Seperately, take a larger mixing bowl and use the butter to butter the whole inside of the bowl.

5. Add the sugar and vegetable oil to the boiling water and stire until dissolved.

Now cool until lukewarm. I was running out of time for the hour and got impatient, so after trying to cool the measuring cup with cold water on the outside, I realized what a dope I was being, since glass is pretty insulating. I transferred the hot water solution to a metal measuring cup and put it into a bowl of cold water which I had the faucet continue running cold water into. Two mintues later the water was lukewarm-perfect.

6. Add the sugar-oil-water mixture to the yeast stuff.

7. Add 3 ½ cups flour. Stir a little bit, until it gets a bit gooey.

8. Scoop up all the dough-like stuff from the bowl and start to knead it on a lightly floured surface. You’ll only need to do so for a couple of minutes until you’ll notice that it is pretty uniform, and is no longer sticking to everything it otuches and leaving clumps behind. This means it is ready.

9. Place this lump into the bottom of the greased bowl.

10. Take a towel and wet it and squeeze it until it is only a little damp. This is INCREDIBLY important as you do NOT want the dough to rise and hit a dry towel. Place the towel over the bowl. Wait 2 hours.

Now we head to the filling part.

Ideally, you should already have barbeque pork, but I did not. In fact, I didn’t have any pork. I had to run out while the dough was rising to buy some. As I’m in china town, I went to a nearby butcher’s shop. I was the only white person in there and felt a little silly. After looking around for a while,k I finally talked to one of the butchers.

“Hello, how many?”

“None, I’m looking for barbeque pork”

“Oh” (he starts to walk to the right)

“Cha shu”

“Oh! Cha shu! Ok!” (he starts to walk left)

Cha Shu was a little risk that they were mandarin speakers, but most of the people in Chinatown these days are mandarin speakers- all the Cantonese went to Flushing. Cha Shu is barbeque pork. I had been hoping that they had already barbequed pork I could buy, but as I saw, they did not. Instead what he grabbed was a piece of what I THINK was labeled pork butt. This was some pretty dark pork, that almost looked like beef, or just like dark meat on a turkey or something. This was some manly looking pork. But he knew exactly what I meant, so he knew what cut to recommend. He pulled out a slab and held it up grinning.

“Good, huh?”

“Yea”

“How much you want?”

“Uh…2 pounds”

(astonished)”2 pounds? Okay!”

He proceeded to cut me what I asked for. Total price: $4.17. This turned out to be very good quality. It was also extremely low fat content. That is, there was some fat around the sides, but virtually fat-free within the meat part itself. Very nice. Remember, when it doubt, ask your butcher- he probably knkows better than you.

I can’t help but wonder what I would have gotten if I hadn’t asked him for the char shu rather than just the barbeque pork.

Anyway, this was barbequing pork, but I don’t have a barbeque. So I did my best. I brought it home with some fun adventures and prepared to cook the filling. You’ll need the folliwng:

1. 2 tablespoons lite soy sauce (yes, I said lite- this is supposed to be somewhat sweet, not salty)

2. 2 tablespoons oyster sauce

3. 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

4. 2 cloves garlic, chopped very fine

5. About as much scallions, also chopped fine.

6. 2 tablespoons olive oil

7. 1 tablespoon flour dissolved in 2 tablespoons water.

8. 1 tablespoon brown sugar.

9. A frying pan

10. A steamer

11. A pot of boiling water

12. Aluminum foil

13. 1 pound pork butt.

For gods sake, before you start this recipe, make sure you have a steamer. I didn’t until after I had gotten home (of course) from buying the pork. Why didn’t I know? Because I had no idea I was in the only Chinese apartment in all of Chinatown which DOESN’T have a steamer. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Go out and buy yourself a nice one.

Direction:

1. Take your 1 pound of pork and chop it up. You want it to be in small cubes around a cubic centimeter. Yes, this is a pain in the ass, but you won’t be putting much into each bun and it’s meat to be fairly delicate. But you wouldn’t be doing this recipe if you weren’t willing to endure some pain in the ass, right? Try to make the cubes as fat free as possible- I’ve eaten cheap cha shu bao which has fatty chunks of pork and it’s not nice at all. Even my chinese friends wouldn’t touch it after a couple of bites- and they’ll eat almost everything!

2. In a frying pan, heat the oil.

3. Add the garlic and scallions, and let them sizzle for around 30 seconds or so.

4. Add the pork. Stir it around for a minute

5. Add the soy sauce. Stir it in.

6. Add the oyster sauce. Stir it in.

7. The hoisin sauce is the Chinese equivalent of barbeque sauce. It is very sweet. As I did not have actually barbequed pork, where you would use the hoisin sauce, I tried to help approximate the flavor by adding the hoisin sauce. Stir it in.

8. Add brown sugar. The recipe calls for white sugar, but I like the flavor of brown a bit more for this. Stir it in.

9. Add the dissolved flour. The recipe calls for corn starch, but I never use the stuff. Stir it in.

10. Let the pork cook for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. You’re cooking until there isn’t much fluid left, and it’s pretty thick and the pork is all cooked. You do not want to cook it until dry. That sauce is part of the goodness of the food. I’m not going to lie to you. At the end of this, it’s goinig to look like some pricey dog food.

11. Once done, set aside to cool and deal with the dough.

1. Take the dough out of the greased bowl and split it into two parts. On a lightly floured board, take each part and knead it for 2 minutes. You should end up with two lumps about the size of your original lump.

2. Combine lumps and roll into a snake about a foot and a half long by 2 inches in diameter.

3. Slice this snake about every centimeter, or a fingerwidth (depending on yoru fingers). Once sliced, separate each slice so it doesn’t mold back together, which happened to me. You ought to end up with 22-24 (I got 22, recipe claims 24)

4. Don’t worry if you’ve twisted the dough out of shape- it’s perfectly okay to take the dough piece, roll it into a ball and try re-flattening it.

5. Take each piece and flatten it with your palm a little, then take out your rolling pin and flatten it until it is around 4 inches in diameter or so. Place each rolled out piece onto a plate, without letting any touch each other (so around 5 per plate). Cover each plate with a slightly damp paper towel.

6. Now comes the tricky part. If the dough is a little dry face up, flip it over, so the part that was laying on the plate is face up- it ought to be moister.

7. Put about 1-2 tablespoons of the filling into each circle.

8. Once you put the filling into a circle, pinch it in half like a taco.

9. Take the two ends left and pinch them up to the top.

10. Cinch the open areas closed.

11. Give the top a slight twist.

12. Place onto a 3 inch square of aluminum foil.

13. Place into steamer.

14. Repeat this for every single one. This is very labor intensive and dull.

15. Once done with each plate, cover with a slightly damp paper towel.

16. Put aside for 1 hour to rise. Dough should be springy to the touch.

17. Place over rolling boiling water for 10 minutes. As you see, I didn’t have a steamer. I used these metal things instead. It also meant I could only cook 3-4 at a time. So this took much longer than it should have.

18. After ten minutes, open it up to examine. I know what you’re thinking- it doesn’t look done.

So take one and try it. I was astonished to find it really was done (they don’t look quite like they do in restaurants). I must say, this recipe utterly rawked! But my god it takes forever. One good thing- the notes say that once cooked, you can freeze them. When ready, let them thaw, and re-steam for 10 minutes. It’s just a thought.

To sum up. This is a godawful amount of work, especially if you don’t have a steamer. If/when you make it, feel free to double this up so you can freeze them and it’ll be more worthwhile- it’ll take you less time to make more than to make two separate batches. Bon appetit!

Edit: Joanna says "They don't look like they came from a restaurant- but they taste like they do." Gladdens my heart. My dough doesn't puff up as much as they do in restaurants. Could be different flour- I used all purpose, but I have seen high gluten reccomended as well. I will note that while mine end up shiny, restaurants end up dull. Maybe they cover them in oil or something so they grow bigger without developing a skin or something? I really honestly don't know. Again, however, that's really mostly aesthetic. Oh, Joanna also says "My only criticism is that they need more meat inside." So you mihgt want to keep that in mind for the future, folks.

Maple Orange glazed Duck Crown

2009-02-12T13:21:00.003Z

Here in the UK supermarkets sell something called a "duck crown". No, it's not a duck with a little gold crown, its the trimmed front half of a full size duck. First let me explain that they don't do "duckling" here like we are accustomed to in the US. This means that duck in the UK is not the delicate, succulent, soft deliciousness we New Yorkers expect. It's still tasty but not as succulent by far. So - back to the crown - they remove the rear half with legs and thighs and trim back the wings. The resultant roast sits neatly in the pan and roasts evenly and quickly.

So - 1 crown = 2 portions. It's just right for supper for a couple. Cost is around £5 - £6.

I knew I should have taken photos because it came out of the oven looking sensational. Anyway -

Preheat oven to 190 C (375 F)
Drizzle duck with maple syrup
Roast duck for 1 hour and 15 min
The orange glaze trick:
-After 45 min remove duck from oven and ladle on orange marmalade (yes, the one in the recipe last week!)
- You need to use really good orange marmalade - nothing sour or dark tasting. Definitely not too bitter!
- Be generous, spoon it on and gently spread to a thick coating
Put duck back in oven for remaining 30 min roasting

Remove from oven and cover with foil
Let rest for 10 min (this gives you time to get the side dishes finished)
*Duck MUST rest after cooking or it will be tough
Gobble up that baby and enjoy

The important trick is 1 hr and 15 min at 190C/375F
Don't let the duck dry out. It should be a bit pink when done.

Note: we had baked potatoes and fresh peas with the duck.
The time was just perfect for baking large potatoes along with the duck.

Dessert was a splash of vintage port in a snifter glass