Vacation

In Germany for the holidays.

I'll try to do some updates, but it's going to be super slow until the new year.

Thursday Night: Southeast Asian

We had a friend over for dinner last night and I wanted to do something nice, but it had to be makeable in not much more than an hour. Aside from the soaking time for the cabbage, this meal fits that description:

App: Dungeness crabmeat mixed with a bit of lemon juice, black pepper, and sesame oil; served with thinly sliced scallions and diced mango with butter lettuce leaves to roll it up.

Salad: Shredded green cabbage and diced carrots; dressed with lime, lemongrass, ginger, toasted cumin and coriander seeds, sesame oil, canola oil. I soaked the cabbage in brine for a few hours first to soften it up. This could have used some 'tro, but we somehow didn't have any in the house.

Main course: Halibut steaks browned in the pan, then braised in a fish-sauce caramel with minced lemon grass, scallions, garlic, and loads of black pepper. Served with sticky rice.

This all came off rather well. :-)

Wednesday Night: Sambar and Rice

This was just the standard Sambar recipe from Dakshin, made with the last of the drumstick that we had in the freezer. What an odd vegetable that is. :-)

As always with recipes from that book, it was very good and left our house very aromatic.

Cauliflower Cleaning Tip

We've been eating leftover braised chicken and some cauliflower we picked up at the farmer's market and the roasted.

The problem with organic cauliflower is that it's frequently full of bugs. Sure, they're organic bugs, but it's still kind of gross. The trick I've come up with for cleaning cauliflower is this: cut it into pieces, drop the pieces into hot (like from the tap) salted water. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes, then rinse and brush the pieces. This seemed to work pretty well.

Hachiya Persimmons

On a whim, we got a few hachiya persimmons at the farmers market yesterday. I've only had them less than perfectly ripe (and thus deadly astringent) before, so this was a bit of a leap of faith for me. Boy was I rewarded. These things are like aromatic fruit pudding barely constrained by the skin. mmmm

I'm tempted to take the remaining one and toss it in the freezer for an hour or so to see if we end up with persimmon granita; but then I guess you'd lose the beautiful melty quality. hmmm.

Sunday Night: Braised Chicken with Root Vegetables

Last week's Minimalist column had this recipe for browned and braised whole chicken surrounded by root vegetables and a light cream sauce. That was totally irresistible sounding, so last night it was braised chicken all around. :-)

I followed the recipe pretty closely, though I couldn't resist a couple minor modifications:

2 Tbs butter
1 small (3 pound) chicken, trimmed
2 onions, sliced
2 large carrots (I used French carrots), 1/2" dice
1 large parsnip, 1/2" dice
8 whole cloves of garlic, peeled
2 large yukon gold potatoes, peeled, 3/4-1" dice
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup cream (I actually use 1/2 heavy cream, 1/2 milk)
1 bay leaf
1 sprig each thyme and lemon thyme
fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Brown the chicken, breast-side down in the butter in a pan large enough to hold everything with a lid on it (my 12" everyday pan worked fine), sprinkling with salt and pepper. Flip the chicken and brown the other side, season it as you go.
Remove the chicken from the pan, pour out some of the fat, and add the onions, carrots, parsnips, and garlic. Cook until the onions start to take on some color, about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and mix well. Add the liquids and herbs (I included a bit of parsley as well), bring to a boil, lower the heat to get a simmer, cover and simmer until the chicken is done, 45 minutes or so.
Remove the chicken and vegetables, raise the heat and reduce the sauce a bit. Thicken with potato starch if you want, and adjust seasonings.

I actually forgot the garlic last night, but the dish was still awfully good.

We ate this with rice, lima beans, and a green salad.

Saturday Night: Westlake Fish Soup

We had a big lunch of leftover hobo pack, so dinner was more moderate: Westlake Fish Soup (from BittmanWorld, using tilapia as the fish) and a big green salad.

The soup was excellent: it's amazing the depth of flavor you can get from browned shallots, soy sauce, and some ground pepper (black and white).

Thursday Hobo Packs; Sauteed Broccoli Stems

The hobo packs were the sausage-and-potato kind from JPFF. We made this once before with an inappropriate sausage substitution. This time, using just mild italian sausage and polish-style sausage from Draegers, the results were much more satisfying.

To go along with the meat and potatoes, I steamed the broccoli stems we had leftover from the puree a couple nights ago and then sauteed them with some good olive oil and a splash of vermouth. I didn't really taste the vermouth, but the sauteed brccoli sure was good. :-)

To accompany came baguette and green salad.

Tuesday's Improv: Pasta and meatballs; Broccoli puree with beurre noisette

This started with the broccoli, which I picked up at the farmers market on Sunday. Pasta was a natural thing to have with it, particularly since there were still some sweet peppers left from our last CSA box. I added meatballs because there was a small amount of ground turkey in the freezer. So pretty much this is a "emptying the fridge" meal.

For the meatballs I mixed about 1/2 pound ground turkey with 2 cloves minced garlic, 2 thinly sliced scallions, sweet and smoked paprikas, and salt and pepper. I made the meatballs small (1" in diameter), and browned them in olive oil before adding them to the sauce at the last minute.

The sauce was a standard improv tomato sauce: onion, browned garlic, sweet peppers, red wine, tomatoes. Simple and good.

The broccoli recipe is from JPFF and I've made it before. This time I did use less broccoli, as I should. :-)

Sunday Night Korean

Sunday night we had kalbi jim (Korean braised short ribs, using ribs from our cow) and kimchi, both from recipes in BittmanWorld. I didn't plan particularly well, so I had to make a couple of substitutions when I made the marinade for the ribs on Saturday (an extra shallot for the scallions, a mixture of white wine and xiaoxing wine for the sake).

The kimchi, which we made with a mixture of napa cabbage and daikon radish, turned out great. The ribs were also very tasty, but somehow seemed "unfocused" in their flavor (to the extent that makes sense). This probably is because of the substitutions; the only thing for it is to try the recipe again and do it right. Soon! :-)

Thanksgiving redux

Karen and Jamshid hosted the big event and I helped cook. Stuff I made:

1. Parkerhouse rolls: didn't turn out as well as those from last year.
2. Baked sweet potatoes: baked in the skin, then peeled and reheated with butter at the last minute. This is a great way to get excellently concentrated flavor.
3. Mushroom stuffing: I used one "sweet" batard and one sour batard for this. The sour component was a bit too potent and could be dropped or further diluted, but otherwise I thought this turned out well. There were complaints about there being either too many or too strongly flavored mushrooms. I used cremini instead of button mushrooms, which may be partially responsible? Worth keeping in mind for the future.
4. Squash-leek soup with delicata squash. Similar to the one I made when Christina was visiting.
5. Roasted green beans: salt the beans and cook them in a single layer at 425 for 10 minutes, flip them and roast another 10 minutes. They are shriveled and delicious and can bemicrowaved at the last minute to reheat.
6. Gravy

The food overall was just right. :-)

Friday: Devilled porkchops; Bratkartoffeln; lima beans

I had a porkchop craving yesterday, so I made this "devilled porkchops" recipe from BittmanWorld. The only realy variation I did was to let the chops sit for a while after covering them with the mustard. We ate them on a bed of frisee (we got a nice head of frisee at last week's farmers markte), topped with a pan sauce.

For the potatoes, I diced them large (1" dice, or thereabouts), put them in cold water and brought it to a gently boil over medium heat. The idea was to end up with potatoes that were barely cooked (even a bit raw in the middle) and not all beat up so that they held together in the pan frying. This worked. :-)

We had lima beans as a side because I wanted to show Andrea what lima beans are.

This was good food.

Wednesday: Pasta with vegetable sauce

We needed to use up some remaining CSA vegetables, so last night I improv'ed a pasta sauce:

eggplant, 1 cm dice, about 2 cups (salted, rinsed, and drained if necessary)
orange peppers, small dice, about 1 cup
1/2 large red onion, small dice
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 anchovy
olive oil
chicken stock
salt, red pepper flakes, black pepper
1 Tbs butter
finely chopped parsley to top

Heat a couple Tbs olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat and add the anchovy. Cook, stirring, until the anchovy breaks down. Add the garlic and cook for about a minute. Add the onion and half the pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, for another couple minutes until things start to soften. Add the eggplant and a pinch of red pepper and cook for another couple minutes. Add a bit of stock (1/4 cup or so), cover and let simmer until the eggplant is soft. Add more stock if necessary to keep it from getting dry. Add the remaining pepper and cook for another couple minutes. Stir in the butter and adjust seasonings.
If needed, thin with some pasta water before serving. Top with the parsley.

This sauce, served atop penne, made a nice dinner with a green salad on the side.

Black-eyed peas and collard greens

I originally was going to make the black-eyed peas and have the collards on the side, but I decided to just go for the whole beans-and-greens thing. That was a good idea:

1 cup dried black-eyed peas
water
1/2 red onion, medium dice
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2-4 oz smoked ham, cubed (I used the butts from a Niman Ranch "black forest ham", and that was good...)
1 bunch collard greens chopped (This was whatever size bunch we got from our CSA box, I think it was probably 1/2 pound)
neutral oil
extra chicken stock
salt and pepper

Pick through and rinse the black-eyed peas, then transfer them to a pot with a lid. Add water to cover by about 1/2 inch. Bring to a boil covered, then turn off the heat and let the beans soak for 4-6 hours.
Add the onion, garlic, and ham and bring to a gentle boil, covered. Add more water (or stock) if needed.
When the beans start to get tender, flash fry the greens in the oil and then add to the beans along with however much stock you need to make sure everything is covered.
Continue to simmer until the beans and greens are tender (about 20-30 minutes).
Adjust seasonings and serve.

Notes:

1. mmmm, beans and greens
2. smoked ham hock would also work in this
3. evidence on the plate seems to indicate that this might appreciate a hit of lemon juice. Vinegar would be more traditional, but lemon juice seems to go as well.
   

Tuesday Randomness

Last night we had a very colorful, very random mix of primarily vegetables on our plates:

1. the remaining roasted pumpkin from Sunday
2. brussels sprouts sauteed with garlic, lemon, and bread crumbs (from Bittman)
3. black-eyed peas with collard greens[CSA] and ham (next post)

Though there's some argument for the brussels sprouts and the beans and greens to go next to each other (particularly that lemon), these didn't really go together. But they were all individually good, so there ya go.

Sunday: Apple Butter

This was an idea Andrea and I had for a food gift for Christmas. I hadn't done apple butter before, so this was an adventure/learning experience. For proportions and basic technique I used the recipe in The Joy of Cooking.

The first time I tested this (much smaller quantity), I used a sweet apple and was not real pleased with how the apple butter turned out (it also didn't help that I added the optional lemon zest and had the inspiration of adding a bit of molasses: those two overpowered everything else and you couldn't taste apple at all). This time we picked out a mixture of granny smith and mutsu apples; I think the tartness of the apples really improves the apple butter.

Start with a goodly quantity of apples (about 5 pounds). Wash them, quarter them, and remove the cores and stems. Then throw them in a large pot with enough water to cover the bottom by about 1/4 inch, cover the pot, and let it simmer (low heat) until the apples get soft - an hour or more. Run the apples through a food mill (fine mesh) into a second, ovensafe, pot. Measure the pulp.
Add the spices: for about 5 cups of pulp, I added 2 cups of sugar, 4 cinnamon sticks, 6 cloves, and 6 allspice berries (crushed with the side of a knife).
Put the pot, uncovered, in a 275 degree oven for a good, long time, maybe 4 hours, maybe longer. Take it out every once in a while and give it a stir. (Theoretically, you can do this step in a crockpot too, but we don't have a crockpot.)
The apple butter is done when it seems appropriately thick and the color has changed to a nice caramel brown.
We then canned the apple butter in 8 oz jars (20 minutes in the canner).
We ended up with 6 jars, which isn't enough, so we'll be doing this again next weekend. :-)

Sunday Night Chinese

Last night we made a couple Chinese dishes from BittmanWorld: "shrimp with cabbage and black beans" and "chinese greens with oyster sauce" (though instead of greens we used broccolini from the farmers market). Both turned out nicely, though the shrimp would have benefited from a bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce.

Saturday: Allium-Potato Soup

For dinner last night I adapted the "Garlic Soup" recipe from JPT to use up some alliums we had lying around. The primary stars in this very assertive soup are the leeks [CSA] and garlic:

4 leeks, including part of the green, sliced
8 cloves garlic, chopped
6 cloves braised garlic
1 large yellow onion, medium dice
1 pound starchy potatoes, peeled, medium dice
2 Tbs butter
4 Tbs olive oil from braising garlic
1 quart chicken stock
2 cups milk
2 cups water
Salt and white pepper
heavy cream, optional

Add the butter and oil to a soup pot over medium-high heat until the butter foams. Add the leeks, sprinkle with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to soften, 3-4 minutes. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens and starts to take on a bit of color, about 10 minutes. Add the potato and cook, stirring frequently, for a couple of minutes.
Add the stock, milk, water, and some white pepper (maybe 1/2 tsp) and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and let simmer until the potato pieces are cooked, 15-20 minutes.
Remove from the heat and homogenize thoroughly.
Return the (low) heat, taste for seasonings, and add a bit of heavy cream if the soup tastes too thin.
Serve with grind of black pepper and, optionally, some chives (we didn't have chives last night or I would have done this).


To accompany the soup, we had also had some good bread and a "Deconstructed Salad":
- Green leaf lettuce [CSA], ripped into bite-size pieces, dressed with salt, good olive oil, balsamico
- Threaded watermelon radish [CSA], lightly salted
- Threaded cucumber, lightly salted
- Roasted pumpkin chunks [CSA], dressed with salt, black pepper, good olive oil, fresh parsley [CSA], and a small amount of rice vinegar.
(Threaded = sliced using either a peeler or the ceramic slicer, then cut cross-wise into threads)
Each of the veggies was in a distinct pile on the plate, which made a nice arrangement.

Thursday night: Escarole and white bean soup

We had escarole from the CSA box, and this Bittman column from back in October was still in the back of my head, so last night we had soup:

1/4 cup olive oil
4 strips bacon, cut into small strips (lardons)
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 dried cayenne peppers, sliced
1 good-sized head of escarole, cut into chunks
1 20 oz jar of white (cannellini) beans, drained
3 cups chicken stock
salt and pepper
good olive oil for drizzling
Big croutons and parmesan cheese for serving.

Brown the bacon pieces in a pot over medium heat in the olive oil, then remove them from the pot. Add half of the garlic and all of the cayenne and saute for a minute or so. Add the escarole and a pinch of salt and saute for another minute or so, until it's coated with oil. Add the stock and beans, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the escarole is tender. Add back the bacon and the reserved garlic, let cook another minute or so.
Serve drizzled with the oil and topped with croutons and parmesan.

This was just excellent. Something (escarole and/or beans) leached a bunch of starch into the stock, making it nice and thick (mmm, unctuous), and the mild bitterness of the escarole plays off really well against the creaminess of the white beans. To complete dinner we had a green salad from the CSA box.

Microreview: Mike's Cafe in Menlo Park

This is the place that took over the old "Late for the Train" spot a while ago.

I went to Mike's for lunch today and was not even remotely impressed. They're borderline white tablecloth in terms of atmosphere, but the service was sloooooow and the food was both overpriced and dull.

I had fish and chips ($10.95) which was a few pieces of nicely breaded red snapper piled on some tired romaine lettuce and about 8 steak fries. The fish had a nice crust, but to call it flavorless is to give it far too much credit; this stuff seemed to destroy the flavor of the things around it on the plate. The fries were warm (not hot) and mushy inside.

Maybe they were having a bad day, but I won't find out, because I won't be going back.

I guess I miss Late for the Train.