Monday, November 26, 2007

Roasted Roots, Meet Pumpkin



I don’t remember how I wound up subscribing to Gourmet magazine. I think it was a combination of factors: one, my friend Christine, who is a great cook, said that it is her favorite. Two, they tempted me with a $1 per issue subscription, or something ridiculously cheap.

It’s one thing to subscribe to Gourmet, browse it, find some inspiration, and eventually discard it. It's another to make the food in it. Who am I to be put off by “start to finish time: 7 hr”? With tantalizing phrases such as, “A stew-stuffed pumpkin is sheer drama”, and “Why stop at cookies when you can transform your kitchen into a full-scale holiday sweetshop?”, my voice of reason flies out the window and I find myself with enough dirty dishes to warrant hiring a day laborer, baking crostata at 10 pm on a Monday night. This is not normal.

For Thanksgiving this year, we tackled their “Pumpkin Stuffed with Vegetable Stew” and “Roasted-Vegetable and Wine Sauce”. I won’t lie. It took a while to make. But, in an unusual turn of events, the recipe looks more complicated than it actually is. The hardest part was rounding up the ingredients.

Armed with a long shopping list, I went to my trusty organic market to stand in front of the carrots-and-celery section for a good 5 minutes, looking for parsnip. This is one of those stores that doesn’t bother to place its food labels in any relation to the actual food it refers to, which is fine, unless you’ve never bought a parsnip before. Realizing divine intervention was not forthcoming, I finally asked someone where the parsnips are. They pointed me to the case I’d just stared at in vain. I decided it best to re-phrase my question. “Which ones are parsnips, and while you’re at it, can you point out the leeks, too?”

Whenever I am confronted with a new-to-me vegetable in its raw form, I’m amazed that someone, a long time ago, thought to try eating said food item. A basket of parsnips, celery root, leeks, and chanterelle mushrooms later, I wonder if this isn’t some sort of test.

I roasted the vegetables for the sauce the night before and then started the 2.5-hour long reduction while I went out for a run. Nothing like leaving a full stockpot boiling unattended on the stove to make me run faster. Everything came together well in the end, and was delicious. I’d make it again. Roasting the vegetables and using fresh thyme give the stew good depth of flavor and a very seasonal quality. It’s a great vegetarian main course for Thanksgiving, being festive and savory, clearly not just another side dish. The time and energy put into it ensure that it will likely remain a special occasion meal, though this meal could easily inspire a simpler version one cold and lazy weekend this winter.

Speaking of simpler versions, I’ve got a lot of leftover sauce I should freeze. The sauce is the slowest part, and it would be easy to roast up a random assortment of veggies to stuff into a squash or something in a few weeks, once we’ve recovered from this meal. One problem with making meals from magazines: my food never looks quite like theirs. I think I need to check their picture halfway through to get it right.

The recipes (and their photos) are at the links above. I think, by the way, that for the "sheer drama" the Gourmet food writers so eloquently describe their pumpkin having, you might need to find an 8-9 lb pumpkin, rather than 2 4-lb pumpkins.

Smaller is always less dramatic.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Comfort me with meat and tomatoes


I went to Siesel’s today. I love going to good butcher shops. So many great cuts of meat, plus my curiosity is always piqued by relatively exotic (to me) offerings like pigs’ feet, duck (love it, never made it), and rabbit. I lingered in front of the “exotics” for a while, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to make such a purchase without a plan, so I deferred to the more familiar (and relatively very boring) ground sirlon.

Ground beef in hand, I went home, poked around the pantry, and settled on spaghetti with meat sauce. Wow… take a boring meat, make a boring meal? Au contraire! Like a baby you won’t give a name to before you see, so with this pasta. It’s different every time. This one, I’m calling “Capsaicino”.

Pasta sauce…it’s not hard to make a decent sauce at home in a relatively short period of time. I’ve picked up two tricks, I’m sure there are more. One, use olive oil in your sauce. Two, save some of the cooking liquid from the pasta. When everything is ready, don’t just pile pasta on plates and ladle sauce on top. It needs to be brought together. Instead, mix your cooked pasta, the sauce, plus about 1/4-1/2 c. pasta water (start with a little, add more as needed), and about 3T olive oil together in a suitably-sized pot, cook together for about 5 min over medium heat. You can add cheese at this point, too. That pasta water helps the sauce stick to the pasta, and the oil makes it taste good.

There are infinite variations on this recipe, play with it to make it your own. Here’s the basics to get your creative juices flowing. A note about portion size: this feeds me, with enough leftover for about 2 more meals. I like my pasta saucy- it’s more about the meat and tomatoes than the pasta the way I make it. Depending on your own preferences, modify accordingly. It can easily be doubled, but you’ll need a stockpot for the sauce rather than a 12” frying pan. The other benefit about this one is that you don’t have to do a lot of mise en place- it’s very forgiving, you can prep ingredients as you go.

First, set a pot of water to boil. While it heats, prepare the sauce.

Throw the ground beef (1/2 lb) into a large frying pan over medium high heat to brown. While it cooks, chop an onion. Stir the beef occasionally, adding salt and pepper to taste, plus a generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes.

When the beef is browned and no longer pink, transfer it to a plate lined with paper towels. Wipe the grease out of the frying pan with a paper towel. If there’s lots of stuck-on bits, you can deglaze the pan with 1T stock or water, boiling it for a minute or so. Add 1 T olive oil and the onion (I had about 1c onion, you don’t have to measure). Cook the onions until they are soft and lightly browned. While the onion cooks, slice cremini mushrooms- I had about 1.5 c, sliced. Add those to the pan once the onions are browned. Cook until they become very soft and release their juices. You know you’re ready to proceed when it looks like you’ve got a lot less mushroom than you added.

Add the contents of one 28-oz can of chopped tomatoes with their juice to the pan, 1 T tomato paste, a drizzle of olive oil, 1 tsp kosher salt, lots of ground black pepper, and more red pepper flakes- about 1/4-1/2 tsp or more if you love your spice. I had fresh rosemary, so I tore up about 2 tsp of that, added that to the sauce along with about 1/2 tsp dried oregano. Feel free to experiment with herbs in the rosemary, oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram group. You can use them combination, just try to keep it about 1/2 tsp dry or 1 T. fresh for this amount of sauce. If you’ve got dry (not oil-packed) sundried tomatoes, you can use them in this dish, too. Slice them thin and add them with the tomatoes.

Let that simmer over low heat to meld the flavors. In the meantime, salt your boiling water and add dried pasta (I used about 1/2 lb).

When the pasta is cooked, drain it, reserving about 1 c. of the pasta water, and add the pasta to the sauce. Finish as described above. This makes a good, spicy meat sauce. It also works well using half ground beef, half sausage- remove it from its casing and cook with the beef. If you don’t like spice, skip the red pepper, or use a light hand there.

The real secret about this dish? I like it with a glass of milk. I once told this to Valentina. She indicated this would not win over any Italian, and advised me to keep such information to myself.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Pumpkin Risotto





I love all things pumpkin.

I don't, however, buy pumpkins in the raw much. But there was a nice heavy sugar pumpkin at People's, looking bright orange and delicious. So I bought it. While I had planned on soup for this pumpkin, I have to admit I was a bit souped-out from the squash a few days ago. Inspired by a recent episode of KCRW's Good Food that loosely discussed the idea of pumpkin risotto, I decided to forge a path in that direction. As it was starting to rain and I had a good parking spot, I based it on my kitchen's current ingredients.

1 pumpkin
1/2 onion, chopped
4 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled, 1 whole, 1 chopped
vegetable stock (about 5 c)
2 c. arborio rice
spinach
chipotle chile flakes (not necessary)
a few gratings of fresh nutmeg
olive oil, butter
cheese, if you like it: Parmesan or goat cheese would both be good.

I halved the pumpkin, scooped out the seeds and the strings (save seeds), and put the pumpkin, with the exposed insides down, into a casserole dish with about 1" water in the bottom. Put that in the oven at about 425F to roast.

Meanwhile, I tossed the seeds with a bit of melted butter and some salt, spread them on a baking sheet and added them to the oven to toast, about 30 min. Stir them occasionally and try not to make the same mistake I did, keep an eye or a keen nose on them so that they don't over-roast.

Let the pumpkin go for a while... about 35-45 min, until the pumpkin is cooked (this is a good recipe for a rainy day). Peel the skin off with your fingers or cut it off with a knife, then cut the pumpkin into roughly 1" cubes. Put half of it on a baking sheet (I used the one that had the seeds on it) and toss with salt and olive oil, return to oven to caramelize the pumpkin a bit, get it nice and roasty. Take it out when it starts to brown slightly.

Mash the other half up for use in the risotto.

Risotto: Put about 2 T olive oil in the bottom of a large pot. Heat the oil, add the onions and shallots. When onions start to soften, add the garlic. You'll later remove the whole garlic clove, it gives good flavor without overpowering.

After about another 3 min- before the garlic browns- add the rice and stir to coat with oil. Add the mashed pumpkin and coat the rice with the pumpkin. Let that cook for a few minutes, it might start to brown a bit on the bottom.

Add the stock, 1 c. at a time, stirring frequently. Don't add the next cup until the previous one is well-absorbed. The stirring is important b/c it releases starches from the rice, making your risotto feel creamy in your mouth.

Repeat until your rice is al dente- like cooked pasta, it shouldn't be mushy or soggy. The very inside will offer the slightest resistance to your biting into it. When it's about done, finish it with about 1T butter (just stir it in) and the cheese if you like it, salt and pepper to taste, and grate in the faintest hint of nutmeg. Finally, add several handfuls of spinach to the pot and cover it. The spinach will steam this way, then you can fold it into the risotto.

Dish it up, adding a few cubes of roasted pumpkin and top with the toasted pumpkin seeds.

No bread flour in Beijing?

Since I won't mail bread to China, SYZ wants to know...
"...Maybe you can make up for it by posting advice for a breadmaker stymied by the lack of bread flour in Beijing. I've tried substitutes, but bread is not the same. Is there some unpronouncable chemical compound I can add to compensate for whatever makes bread flour bread flour?"


Would it make you feel better to see a picture of my very first loaf of bread ever baked (right) next to my second loaf of bread (left)? Each weighed about a pound. I hope your problem doesn't look like mine did...




If you already know bread chemistry, excuse the background and skip down. One important difference between types of flour is the amount of protein they contain. Your bread flour may have, for example 12% protein, while your all-purpose only 10% protein. The proteins (glutenin and gliadin) are what form strands of gluten when combined with water and kneaded, giving the dough elasticity and extensibility, which both help it hold its shape and allow you to manipulate it. Maybe this is the root of your problem?

Short of going to a local bakery and convincing them to sell you 5 kg flour, try this...

1. Add protein to the flour you have. In the States they sell vital wheat gluten in the stores. I don't know what that is in Chinese. Try adding 1 or 2 tsp to your recipe, if you can find it.

2. Add extra folds into the dough as it rises. This will strengthen the gluten that's there. You can rise your dough for longer, folding about every hr- so if your normal rise time is 1 hr, rise for a total of 2 or 3 hr, folding every hour. To fold dough: spread into a rectangleish shape on a floured surface. Fold it like a business letter- in thirds on itself. Then fold it in thirds the other way so that you have a nice little cube of dough. Put that back into the bowl, seam-side down. Folding also de-gasses the dough (so you don't have to punch it down, if you normally do that). After that first fold, always turn it out from the bowl upside-down on your work surface. This keeps the top and bottom in their established orientations. You might add a bit less yeast since if you'll be lengthening the rise time. Extra folds can make a big difference.

3. Add less water. Higher protein content doughs absorb more water. The more protein you have, the more water will be absorbed. You shouldn't have to change it by much, maybe only 1 or 2 Tbs, depending on how much bread you make at once.

Monday, November 12, 2007

The Cookie Fairy


Sylvia Leighton is the cookie fairy.

I'd met her once before, and yesterday I had the pleasure of her company over brunch with extended family. She bakes cookies every day (!) to give to people as part of her own personal ministry to to "encourage smiles on faces and joy in hearts."

From talking with her, I understand that she has quite an arsenal of cookie recipes. They're delicious, she is both a skilled baker, and a skilled smile-maker. Sylvia really put her finger on the force driving a lot of home bakers: the ability to give a gift of unadulterated pleasure.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Chocolate Bobka.





Chocolate Bobka... so good, it's no wonder it was the topic of discussion in one Seinfeld episode:

JERRY: That was our Bobka.

ELAINE: You can't beat a Bobka.

JERRY: We should have had that Bobka.

ELAINE: They're going to be heroes.

JERRY: What are we going to do now. If we can't get the Bobka the whole thing's useless.

This recipe for bobka is so good, you will never suffer the fate of Jerry and Elaine, who had their chocolate bobka scooped up by the woman in line in front of them.

It's not that hard to make, especially once you become adept at working with yeast. My initial inspiration was from the December 2006 gourmet magazine, I've futzed with the recipe. This works great every time, and it's definitely worth the effort. It's also pretty easy to fit bread making into a busy schedule. I tinker with the recipe and timing a lot, but here's one way to get started:

The night before, make a sponge by mixing together 200 g flour, 1/4 tsp yeast, 3/4 tsp salt, 250g cold milk. Let that sit on your counter overnight, covered.

The next morning, whisk 1/2 c. sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla into the sponge. In a separate bowl, mix together 300 g flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tsp yeast. Knead that into the wet sponge mixture. Let the dough rest for about 5 min, then knead in about 1 stick butter. Half should be kneaded in so that the dough is smooth. The other half, break up with your fingers and knead it in such that it is well-distributed as small pieces, but there should still be small pockets of butter.

Return the dough to the bowl, cover, let rise 1 hr. After 1 hr, fold dough, return to bowl. Let rise about 1-1.5 hr more, until it's about doubled in size.

Divide the dough in half and roll it out into a rectangle, about 10x18". Spread 1.5T softened butter over the dough, leaving a 1.5" border on all sides. Distribute 4 oz good-quality chopped bittersweet chocolate over the butter. Sprinkle 2T sugar over this. Make an egg wash by mixing an egg white with about 1T water, use a pastry brush to brush some of the egg wash on the 1.5" border.

Roll the dough up like an 18" cigar. Bring the ends together so that you have a circle with an 18" circumference. Seal the ends by overlapping them and banging them with your fist. Twist the circle into a figure 8, then give it one more twist and put it into a greased 1-lb loaf tin.

At this point, you have a few options: You can let it rise until the dough comes up to the top of the bread pan, then bake it. You can put it in the fridge, covered w/ plastic wrap, overnight... then bring to RT for 2-3 hr and bake it. OR, my favorite, put it into the fridge, covered with plastic wrap until you go to bed. Then take it out and put it in a box outside, or in a shed if you've got one (the nights here are about 45-50F). Let it rise slowly at this cooler temp. In the morning, pop it straight into the preheated oven.

Before you bake it: for a glossy finish to the bread, save the yolk from that egg wash and mix it with 1T milk. Brush that gently over the surface right before you put it into the oven.

Bake it at 350F for 35-40 min, or until it's 190F inside the bread. If it browns too early, put foil over the top and finish baking. Let the loaves rest in their tins for at least 30 min before removing them to fully cool.

You can always make extra and share...



My friend, Valentina, and I had fun time photographing the bread. The top 2 pics are her works of art- thanks Vale! You captured the bread's jauntiness.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Blisters on my...eyeball?



It's November in coastal San Diego, which means that yesterday I had to close several of the windows in my apartment to stay warm at night. This new chill in the air puts me in the mood for soups... with a butternut squash languishing in the metal hanging fruit basket of the kitchen and a fancy organic pumpkin in the wings, I decided to experiment with the less expensive gourd. It's been a while since I cooked up a butternut squash soup, but as my grandmother used to say, "you can turn anything into soup!" This is also what I told the curious man in line ahead of me at the market when I was purchasing bananas, an onion, and carrots.

So I got home and, in a burst of productivity, first turned half the chickpeas in my fridge into hummus (which, in my opinion, called for far too much tahini, so I've barely touched it, but I'm hoping to pawn it off on someone.)

Hummus made, but no satisfying appetizer at hand, I set out in earnest to create dinner with renewed interest. I halved the squash lengthwise and put it face-down in the oven to bake at 400F, in a pyrex dish with some water in the bottom. With that going, I chopped half an onion, sauteed that in olive oil in a stockpot until it became translucent. Meanwhile, I peeled and chopped 2 large carrots, about 1 tsp fresh ginger, and 3 large cloves of garlic. Threw all that into the stockpot and waited for everything to soften.

The hummus called for toasting 1 tsp cumin and grinding it. Well, that cumin smelled so good, I couldn't resist toasting 2 tsp and adding 1 to the soup. This got thrown in there with the carrot mixture. My advice: go easy on the cumin. When things were looking good and mushy, and starting to stick to the bottom of the pan a bit, I peeled a banana and broke it up into chunks, adding it to the mix.

Banana? Subtle sweetness, almost creamy, a "secret ingredient," if you will. Not as obvious as an apple, which is often added to pumpkin soup to sweeten it. Apples require peelers and knives.

Things were smelling good and the squash was mostly cooked. I added several cups of water- about 4- to the soup and scraped the bottom of the pot to loosen all the tasty bits. Brought that to a boil while I cubed the flesh of the squash, cutting it from its peel. The squash went into the pot, along with about 1/2 c. of the chickpea cooking liquid (why not?)- this is certainly not necessary, but I didn't have any stock in the freezer, so I improvised for flavor.

Salt (2 tsp), pepper (lots), 1 tsp curry powder, and 1/2 tsp crushed chipotle chile pepper (1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes would work well, too- adding more heat rather than smokiness). Boiled everything until I was sure that the squash was fully cooked.

Took the pot off the stove and used my immersion blender to mix everything up pretty well- all the squash got nicely blended, I left some of the carrots as chunks in there.

Returned the pot to the stove, adjusted the liquid, and added 1 c cooked chickpeas. Let that get well heated through. At which point, the soup turned on me. Once the boiling point is reached with a thick gruel-like substance, don't forget that it doesn't come to a gentle, rolling boil. Rather, it comes to an explosive boil. So as I was lovingly leaning over my soup, smelling it, a huge bubble erupted from the bottom and splattered very hot soup directly into my left eyeball.

I flew, cursing, from the room, abandoning the soup to visually examine this searing pain. Someday, my kitchen will have tall countertops, an eyewash station, and a safety shower. I contemplated flushing my eye with water or rubbing an ice cube on it, but the soup splatters all over the wall distracted me.

Safety first.

I cautiously added more salt, toasted up some pepitas, poured the soup in a bowl and sprinkled the seeds on top. By the time all that was done, the injury seemed to be mostly resolved.

Pepitas, incidentally, make the soup.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

The Joy of Cooking (for one)


The risk-reward profile is not optimal for the solo home cook. No wonder fast food has become so popular. Sometimes even cooking for two can be tricky, but I dare say not as potentially unsatisfying as cooking for yourself.

Let's review the plight of the single home cook.

Scenario 1: Work all day. Come home. Assess mess of yesterday's dishes (who's going to complain?) Look in cabinet. Snack on Doritos while pondering the options. Forgo thinking (you already did that today) and meal preparation in favor of box of macaroni and cheese. Add reheated string beans or peas to make it look healthier.

Scenario 2: Find delicious looking recipe. Studiously copy down all ingredients. Go to the store and buy everything. You are now $27 poorer, and think you should have gone out to eat. Spend 1 hr cooking everything by yourself. Congratulate yourself on a job well done during your 10 min of eating. Call your mom to tell her how amazing you are, reassure her you are not starving. Spend 20 min doing dishes. Eat the same thing over and over again for the rest of the week, figuring the meal gets cheaper every time you do so. Next week: throw out all those leftover perishables from last week's recipe. Repeat.

There are other problems. Food is very social. Eating alone is not. The word "leftover" is often used to describe dinner. Not a word that sends most people running to the table. You always have to be the one that chops the onions. Entire meals can be eaten standing up and no one is around to think it uncouth. Tip of the iceburg.

The goal: One shopping list. Several meals. No repeats. Enough crossover in ingredients that you don't drop $80-100 on groceries for yourself for one week. A few nights of quick and delicious meals.

The execution: I prudently saved half of that nice pork chop from Sunday's dinner, plus some of the cooked apple slices. Reheated all that in the microwave for 2 min (put some water on the plate and cover with saran wrap). While they were reheating, I assembled my salad:

Fresh washed organic baby spinach
Sliced avocado (salted)
Crumbled blue cheese
Chickpeas that I cooked over the weekend and have hanging out in my fridge
Olive oil and vinegar

Sprinkle kosher salt (about 1/4-1/2 tsp) and copious amounts of freshly ground pepper over this mix in a large bowl and toss everything together with hands or forks once you've drizzled your oil and vinegar on top. There's nothing magical about kosher salt- it isn't more pure than regular table salt, it doesn't taste better. But the crystals are bigger, so it has a different texture in your mouth. And it won't completely dissolve in the oil-vinegar that you put on top. Salads need salt!

When the microwave stops, add the warm apples to your salad and dump it all out onto a plate. Slice the pork and arrange on top of the salad, along with a sprinkling of dried cranberries and a few roasted, salted cashews.

You'll feel special as you surf the web, watch TV, and skim a magazine while you eat your dinner, all the while talking to yourself about what a good meal you're having...

Monday, November 5, 2007

Brioche Bonanza


Yes, yes... I know. Brioche is meant to be shaped into little knots and put into cute high-walled fluted tins. Well, I don't have special little tins that exist for that sole purpose. It's not in the cards for me right now. AND, living on my own as I do, I can't possibly eat 12 or 24 little brioche rolls before they go bad. My elegant solution to this problem is the 1-lb loaf tins, in which my bread rises nicely, develops a buttery thin crust, and toasts from the freezer beautifully, if I do say so myself.

Being my breakfast toast, I like to change it up with mix-ins (I am a product of the frozen-yogurt for 4 years through college generation, after all.) My favorite combos so far: apricot-almond and golden raisin-walnut. Today I tried maple-cherry-pecan and I also did one in which I spread cooked apples over dough that had been rolled out, sprinkled them with cinnamon-sugar, and rolled it all up into the center.

My basic brioche dough starts with...
400 g flour
1/2 tsp yeast
1.5 tsp salt
500 g milk (cold)

Mix that all together before you go to bed, leave that on the counter overnight. Also, leave out a stick of butter and 5 eggs. Eggs are fine on the countertop overnight, and you want them about RT when you mix them in.

The next morning your starter should look bubbly and airy. If it doesn't, set it somewhere warm, like on your stovetop if you've got a pilot light to warm it up a bit more. Or bring it into the bathroom with you while you shower. Friends and colleagues need not know you shower with dough in the room...

When you and the dough are both ready, wisk in eggs and 3.5T sugar. Knead in 475g flour, 2 tsp yeast, and 1/2 tsp salt. Wait a few min for the flour to absorb the liquid and the gluten to start to form. Then knead in 6-8T butter, depending on how rich you want your dough and how the dough is feeling.

Finally, when you've got all that worked in, add your mix-ins: 150g nuts and 200 g dried fruit is where I typically start. It may or may not all make it in there.

Return dough to bowl, cover with plastic wrap, let rise. After about an hour, fold your dough to increase its strength.

Let it rise for another hour or so, depending on the temperature, then shape it into 2 loaves and put them into buttered 1-lb loaf tins. Cover those with plastic wrap and let rise until the dough comes up to the top of the loaf tin.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350. If you've got a baking stone, throw that into the bottom of the oven to help it maintain a constant temperature.

Bake bread for 35-40 min, until a thermometer inserted reads 190F or until it's golden brown on the top and "hollow-sounding when thumped on bottom," a description I've read various places and never quite grasped myself. If your bread isn't done yet but it's brown on top, you can turn the oven off and put it in the warm oven, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Resist the temptation to bust into those loaves too soon! Let the bread cool, it is still cooking. If you cut it while it's still warm, you won't be able to fully appreciate it's flavor, and the remaining bread will have a hardened, slightly fallen end where you cut.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Sear my chop

I came upon pork later in my post-college dinner preparation years. I shied away from it because every pork chop I ever ate as a child was cooked for a long time at very high heat, ensuring that neither I nor the lurking trichinellosis could or would survive on it. Mom was deathly afraid of poisoning her family... I think her foe, the pork chop, made its appearances to give us a change of pace from chicken. To her credit, I didn't know what food poisoning was until my first year after college. Though let the record show pork was not involved, rather my lack of concern for prompt refrigeration.

But to my dinner. I was having an "oh, crap, the nice pork chop I ambitiously bought from Sisel's last week needs to be cooked" moment. So I took a gander at the contents of my pantry and fridge and assembled apples, ginger, rice, and chard...

I started the Trader Joe's "Brown Rice Medley" with 2 c. water, 1 c. rice plus 1/2 tsp "better than bullion" chx flavored paste. Peeled and sliced the apples thick, threw the raw pork chop and my apple slices into the skillet with a bit of melted butter. Everything seemed off to a good start. But it's been a while since I tackled the pork chop. At least a year.


When the pork chop was browned on the bottom, I stirred the apples around a bit and flipped the pork, let that brown on the bottom, then popped the whole thing (with lid) into a 350F oven for about 10-15 min while the rice cooked.

While that cooked, I chopped the chard and thinly sliced about 1 tsp fresh, peeled ginger.
I took the skillet out of the oven and removed the pork chop, turned on a burner and cooked the chard with the ginger while the apples were still in there over medium heat in the liquid that had been released from the apples. The chard cooks fast, stir it a few times and sprinkle in about 1/4-1/2 tsp salt as it cooks.

Easy, moist, good flavor combo. That ginger brings the chard, apples, and pork together well.

Egg on egg goodness


One of (my particular) life's simple pleasures is a fried egg sandwich. It's ready in a flash, it's warm, it's a great vehicle for fried cheese, it's egg-on-egg goodness.

I discovered fried cheese in the form of raclette as a young girl. My family was living in Switzerland at the time, and we would take ski trips in France every winter. After a full day of skiing, we often went and ate cheese and ice cream for dinner (those were the days). Fondue or Raclette. While most of us are familiar with fondue, raclette hasn't gained the same sort of name recognition here in the Staes, and I'm not sure why. It's delicious. Raclette cheese, cooked on a hot griddle until it forms a crust. Served with boiled potatoes, pickles, and onions.

I came upon frying the cheese in this sandwich last year when some of the cheese I melted on top of the egg sneaked off the side and fried on the hot pan. It brought the sandwich to a whole new level.

My preference is 2 egg whites, no yolk. The yolk is delicious, but it's just too rich for me with the cheese. My preference is also for mayo on both slices of toast. Egg-on-egg fantastico. One day, I will make the mayo from scratch. And then I will have reached a state of lunch nirvana not yet seen at my kitchen table.

Get everything ready, because it goes fast:

2 egg whites, with a pinch of salt and several grinds of pepper
Sliced avocado
Thin slices of cheese, I usually use cheddar.

Get a non-stick pan or cast-iron pan nice and hot. Spray some cooking oil in there, pour your eggs in. Pop the bread in the toaster. When egg has browned on the bottom (about 1 min or less), flip it and top the cooked side with cheese. When the bottom side has browned, flip it back over so that the melty cheese fries in its own fat- this will take less than a minute.

Somewhere in there, slather mayo on your toast.
Transfer the egg to the bread, top with avocado, sprinkle avocado very lightly with salt (I'm a salt fiend). Top with other slice of bread.

I'd recommend potato chips, sliced apple, and a root beer as accompaniment.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Flipping Naked!



First of all, the picture above doesn't do this dessert (or breakfast) justice. At least I remembered to photodocument it. Flash bulb and plastic wrap- oh, so elegant. This food wasn't ready for its photographic debut, but time was short and daylight was obscured by heavy cloud cover.

The French have probably already discovered my "Carmel Apple Brioche Tatin". I am sure that I bring no news to them. That, or they'd think it a ridiculous bastardization of their traditional tarte tatin. Or a waste of enriched yeasted dough. I, however, was feeling quite clever today when I replaced the usual puff pastry or pie crust dough with a version of brioche dough I like. I was inspired by a variety of cooking-related programs recently that went on about apple pies in great length... even the NPR segment on apple pies had my mouth watering, among their lip-smacking, pregnant pauses, and graceful "mmmm" noises. I could practically smell the apples cooking.

So I took a field trip over to People's Co-Op and bought a 5-lb organic apple assortment: the pinova sonata, honeycrisp (a favorite), granny smith (classic baking apple), and an arkansas black apple, which I haven't tried yet, and couldn't bear to include in the pie because its main appeal to me is that alluring deep red skin. It looks like a plum.

The brioche dough... see my next post for the brioche in full-detail. I was a mad experimentalist today, I made enough dough for 3 loaves of bread plus this crust.

With the dough made, I set to making the apple brioche tatin. I basically followed the recipe from the Moosewood Recipe Book of Desserts for Carmel Apple Tarte Tatin.

Start with the caramel: 1 c. sugar + 1/3 c. water. Dissolve the sugar in the water on medium heat in a saucepan on the stovetop. Stir constantly until the mixture is clear, this takes about 5ish minutes, you'll start to see lots of bubbles. Stop stirring and turn the heat up to brown the sugars. You want it to turn honey-brown in color. I swirled it occasionally to check for color under the bubbles. When it's browned (don't let it get too dark- your caramel will taste burned), take it off the heat and work on your apples.

Pick 5 favorite apples. I peeled 3 grannies, one honeycrisp, and one pinova. I wanted a combo of tart and sweet. Core and quarter them. Melt 2 T. butter in a cast-iron skillet, I added the seeds and inner flesh of about 2" of a vanilla bean pod that I split open lengthwise, put it in with the butter. Once the butter is melted, arrange the apples in the pan in a circle starting at the outside of the pan, then fill in the middle. Cover and cook about 8-10 min until apples begin to soften.

While the apples cook, stir 1/2 c. sour cream into the caramel.
Note: I have made this twice now- last time was about 2 yr ago. Both times I managed to screw up the caramel bit. First time: burned the caramel. This time, let caramel get too hard. I couldn't stir in the sour cream. I've learned to have 2x as much sour cream as is necessary. It's also important to let the caramel cool a bit- if you don't, the caramel doesn't thicken properly and you don't get a nice, gooey caramel. It's still tasty, but more like a nice sweet sauce.

Back to the apples: when you deem them ready, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp salt and juice of 1/2 lemon (1.5T). Pour the caramel on top of the apples. Spread the dough out gently with your fingers to be about 2" larger in diameter than your pan. Lay it over the apples and tuck the overhang into the pan, down the sides.

Bake in oven 20 min, 400F

Let sit 5-10 min, then invert onto a plate.

Careful with that inversion... it's not that hard, but I wound up with some hot and sticky caramel running down my leg. Could my shamelessness be a blessing in disguise? Rushed, I was flipping still dripping from my shower. At which point I thought, "baking in the buff IS a good idea!"

Safety first.

Serving note: Next time, depending on how the caramel turns out, I would like to try browning the top of the apples with the kitchen torch. It would look lovely with a few raspberries on top there. And it needs fresh whipped cream. Though ice cream certainly wouldn't suck. But a nice creamy sauce would be the perfect complement.

The outcome: A good twist on the tarte tatin- nice because it's not as buttery and heavy as puff pastry of pie crust. The brioche dough is slightly eggy, not too sweet or too rich. It also gives the tart good structure. The leftovers make a good breakfast- I stored it in the fridge overnight and toasted a slice of it briefly under the broiler.