Lower on the Food Chain

Paneer Korma

2009-09-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the Indian theme, I found another dish that seemed pretty interesting. I've had korma in Indian restaurants, but this was a little different. Yogurt makes this dish a really rich and creamy one, but I felt that it overwhelmed the actual taste. In the pan it smelled amazing, but on the tongue the sweet and sour nature of the yogurt blotted it all out.

This recipe comes, again, from VahRehVah.com, but I'll reproduce it here since there were some necessary alterations.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup whole cashew nuts
2 small green chilies
1 cup grated coconut
2 tbsp coriander (minced)
1 tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
2 fresh curry leaves
1 finely chopped onion
Whole garam masala (broken up cinnamon stick, 4-5 pods of cardamon, 3-4 whole cloves)
2 tbsp garlic paste mixed with 1 tspn ginger paste
1 tsp turmeric
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup paneer (cubed)
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tsp ground pepper

In a large pan, add 2 tbsp cooking oil (I used grapeseed) and bring to medium heat. Add whole garam masala mix. Let this cook for a minute, then add the mustard seeds. When they begin to pop, add the cumin seeds. Let those cook just a little, then add the onion. Add a pinch of salt to the onions and let them fry (disturbing them very rarely) until they've started to brown.

In a separate mixer, combine cashews and grated coconut. Blend this into a smooth paste. Add the garlic and ginger paste to the hot pan and let cook for about 30 seconds. Add the cashew and coconut paste to the onions, along with the coriander and cumin powder, chilies, turmeric and curry leaves. Let some of the moisture cook out of this, being careful not to let it burn.

When the texture of the mixture is no longer very wet (can be molded / formed into clumps) add the yogurt and paneer. Cook this slowly until it has mingled with the spices and is the consistency you like (not too runny, but not too dry either).

Before you serve this, try to make a pass and pull out as much of the cinnamon, cardamon and cloves as you can; they can be nasty surprises!

You can spice this dish a little hotter than you might otherwise because the yogurt does an incredible job of soothing that heat.

Butter Paneer

2009-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe I just lightly complained about rich, buttery Indian food that has more to do with tourist restaurants than true, authentic Indian dishes. But you really can't argue with butter paneer (more commonly called tikka masala here, since most things with butter in the title set off alarm bells for Westerners).

Again, VahRehVah comes through with another great recipe. While they use chicken in their preparation, it's a simple matter to substitute paneer instead. For my dish I simple cubed the paneer and added it at the end of the dish.

When they say "butter paneer", there really sure be an emphasis on butter. This recipe calls for 100 grams of it. If, like me, grams means little to you, here's a helpful way to think about it. Take a stick of butter and cut about a half-inch knob off on of the ends. Now put that knob back in the refrigerator and add the rest of the stick to the pan. Oh, and it also has about half a cup of cream in it as well. Also, ketchup. But you know what? It tastes pretty good, so I really can't fault it.

Baingan Bharta

2009-09-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

While vegetarian food is becoming increasingly prevalent these days, it's still a long way from India. Not surprising when you take one of the largest cultures on Earth and remove meat from the equation. Without Indian food, becoming a vegetarian would have been a hard start. Most of the Indian food I was introduced to were buttery, rich dishes. They tasted great, but you left feeling a little overwhelmed. Recently we found a great alternative, a restaurant called Spice Route near our house. Serving southern Indian food, they have a great collection of spicy dishes that aren't all swimming in butter. One of those dishes featured eggplant that was smokey and rich without being overwhelming. It's one of the dishes that made us re-evaluate eggplant. It was called baingan bharta. As I do with so many things, I wanted to know how to make it at home.

I stumbled upon the site http://www.vehrahveh.com which showcases a great collection of Indian recipes and little cooking demonstrations hosted on YouTube. This dish came from that site.

For this one you'll want to get a good sized eggplant and coat it with oil. One tip that the recipe leaves out is that you'll want to poke a few holes in the eggplant before you put it into the oven. If you don't, you might have exploding eggplant. Throw it into a 475 degree oven and let it cook for at least 30 minutes. You can see in the picture below that the eggplant on the right is venting steam.

The video for the dish can be found here.

An update...

2009-09-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

After a little investigation, it seems that coconut milk was completely wrong for the banh mi tofu. Instead, garlic and young coconut juice creates the marinade. I'll be trying this later in the week. Also, I completely forgot red onions as an ingredient!

Bánh mì

2009-09-02T19:50:00.001-07:00

The Baguette Box in Seattle has a really great sandwich with coconut braised tofu as the main ingredient for their take on bánh mì. Lately when we've gone the quality seems to be slipping, which means it's time to start making it for ourselves. One of the great ingredients to this dish is the pickled daikon radish and carrots. Crispy but pungent with the taste of vinegar, they add a really nice dimension to the sandwich. Add to this the coconut braised tofu and the avocado and coriander, and it's a great dish.

Last time I tried to make the pickled vegetables, they came out wrong. This time I learned a better trick. What I failed to do last time was get enough water out of the daikon and carrots to allow the vinegar and sugar to properly penetrate. Much like the eggplant dish, the solution is simply to douse them with salt. To make them, julienne your daikon and carrots and then liberally sprinkle them with salt and about two teaspoons of sugar. In a big bowl, mix the ingredients with your hands for a few minutes. After a short time you'll see water pooling in the bottom, and once that starts to happen you'll notice the daikon and carrots have relaxed their crispness a bit. At that point you can actually pick up and squeeze the sticks to help get even more moisture from them. You'll know you're done when the daikon can be easily bent without snapping; you can even make the ends touch.

Once that's done, place the vegetables in a one quart jar with the following brine mixture:

1 1/4 cups distilled white vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup water

In the picture you can see that the carrots (which were of a variety that's purple on the outside) have turned the brine a deep red.

As for the coconut braised tofu, I tried braising deep-fried tofu in coconut milk with some garlic and ginger. I ended up with tofu with a creamy coconut coating, but not at all what I was looking for, so there's plenty of work still to be done here. But you can feel free to use any sort of "main" ingredient in its place. Just make sure to add the pickled veggies, the avocado and of course the coriander for freshness.

If you have any ideas on the coconut braised tofu preparation, please let me know!

Grilled Vegetable Panini

2009-09-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

First of all, pardon the pictures. Normally, I would spend some time trying to actually light or stage them, but lately I simply want to eat, so consider it amateur photo-journalism.

We recently bought a little kitchen gadget I've been finding more and more uses for. It's called the "Griddler" from Cuisinart. Really, it's just a panini grill, but it has a few more tricks up its sleeve. It can be used as a press grill, but you can also open it up flat and use it as a griddle.

For this panini, I cut up zucchini, eggplant and red peppers, then pressed them with the grill press until they were nicely cooked through. I tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and then spread them on to a slice of focaccia bread.

From there I made two separate sandwiches: one with brie and one with mozzarella and olives. I had been inspired by a great brie and olive sandwich we had in Vancouver.

A quick press in the grill and we had two great sandwiches. I really liked the brie, though I don't think it worked for my wife, so if you're not feeling adventurous, I'd stick to mozzarella.

Tomato Season

2009-08-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

We purchased 15 lbs. of tomatoes and turned them into 3 lbs. of condensed and delicious sauce. It's certainly a good way to get proficient at peeling and deseeding. One big tip I can offer:

It's a lot faster to deseed a tomato if you cut it across its "equator", rather than lengthwise. The reason being that the cell walls between the seed sacs run up and down the tomato, so cutting with the walls means you have to break through them with your finger. Cutting the other way means you've got access to all the seeds at once.

Normally I don't salt the tomatoes when they're being roasted, but I gave it a shot this time. The idea being that the salt would help draw out the moisture more quickly from the tomatoes, letting it get down to the business of caramelizing more quickly. We let these sit in a low oven (about 250 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 4.5 hours, so I can't say if it really helped that much. It did translate into less salt later in the process, but if too much salt were added, you might be in trouble down the road.

Eggplant Parmesan Sandwiches

2009-08-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

Eggplant has been a much maligned and misunderstood vegetable in my house. Soggy texture, odd flavor; all reasons to have left it well alone for years. But after a series of frankly really great eggplant dishes over the past year, we decided to figure out how we had got off on the wrong foot with this versatile little purple globe.

Our mistake (and other's who had served us their dishes) was to cut the eggplant and immediately put it into service. Eggplant holds a lot of water, even though it seems rather dry on first inspection. Like mushrooms, if you don't get the water out of them, you can't get much flavor into them. You'll also end up with a mushy and soggy texture bomb your mouth won't be thrilled by. Luckily, it's easy to wrest the water from the eggplant's grasp, you just need to apply some chemistry. In our case, just salt. I cut the eggplant into slices, salt both sides liberally and leave it on a cooling rack for about half an hour. Using a towel you can dab away the water droplets that will form on the surface of the slices. After about an hour, you can actually pick them up and wring them out like a sponge (though I would recommend a gentler pressing method if you intend to preserve the slice's shape, like in our case).

Once finished, the eggplant is now ready to take on a variety of flavors and add a pleasant bit of body to any dish you're preparing. In my case, I wanted to recreate an eggplant parmesan sandwich we ran across at a local pub.

Like chicken parmesan, the eggplant will be cut into cutlet-like slabs, prepped as discussed above, then breaded and pan-fried. The breading is accomplished in the same way you would with any cut of meat.

To prepare you breading station, you'll need a dish containing about a cup of AP flour. You'll need one or two eggs, beaten and placed in a dish with tall sides to contain it. Finally, you'll need a dish containing panko or bread crumbs. The trick here is that you're mixing dry with wet, so if you don't use some precautions, you'll ended up with breaded fingers and a big mess. To solve this, devote each hand to a separate task: one for handling dry ingredients, the other for wet.

First, grab an eggplant slice with your dry hand and place it in the flour. Liberally cover all sides of the eggplant with the flour, then lift it out and pat the excess flour off. Now, drop the eggplant into the dish with the beaten eggs. Using your wet hand (for me that's my right hand), dredge the eggplant through the egg to cover it completely. Lift it out and transfer it to the breadcrumbs. I usually drop the eggplant and use my dry hand to cover the top of the slice with breadcrumbs, then flip it over and cover again. Make sure you cover the side walls of the slice as well, not just the tope and bottom. Now just tap off the excess and set aside.

Once you've breaded all your cuts, you're ready to fry them. I do this over medium heat with enough oil to just barely start to come up the side of the eggplant when it's laid flat in the pan. Make sure you're using an oil that can stand up to the heat (read: NOT extra-virgin olive oil). I use a grapeseed oil since it contributes fairly minimally to the taste of the dish.

Once both sides are brown, remove and pat dry.

At this point find some ciabatta bread, some good marinara sauce, parmesan, mozzarella, and provolone. Combine and brown the cheese under a broiler.

Fresh Zucchini Strand Pasta

2009-06-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

After bringing all our freshly picked vegetables home, we had more zucchini than anything else. Rhi suggested we try something she had just seen on another blog, which was a pasta with zucchini peeled into thin strands. We used a peeler to make the strands and tossed this together with some fresh onions and carrots we had slightly boiled to help cook. After letting this heat up over medium heat, I added in a pesto I had made the week before to hold it all together. The result was a really nice, light pasta. It's probably also the freshest meal I've ever made, owing to the fact that the vegetables had been picked less than two hours prior to making it. Hard to top that (but parmesan does a good job).

Garden Treasures

2009-06-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

Rhiannon and I set out to Arlington to eat at a strange little place called the Mirkwood & Shire Cafe. It's a strange little Middle Earth themed all vegetarian cafe, which also has various Middle Earth themed businesses nestled within it. It houses local emo kids and their bands, sells New Age trinkets, and often you'll find people gathered to play Magic the Gathering with one another. All in all, a strange place, but it's a fun venue to be a fly on the wall and watch.

Given that it's strawberry season, we decided to stop at a farm stand along the way. We looked at the produce and decided there was nothing we really wanted. We strolled around the plant section for a bit and then came across an invitation to stroll through the fields.

We noticed people picking strawberries, so we decided to head inside and find out about the "U-Pick" program. The guy manning the stand took us over to a set of baskets and asked us what we wanted to get. We thought strawberries were the only option, but he told us there were a lot of other things in the field we could harvest. He lead us out to the fields and motioned to the right side of the acre. "There's not much out there, a lot of greens. Over there are cucumbers, raspberries, chard, carrots, onions. Grab whatever you want!"

We were both suddenly thrilled; this wasn't a field of strawberries, this was an acre of farm land with rows and rows of everything we'd been buying at the farmers' markets, but here it was in situ, waiting to be picked. No chaperone, no restrictions, we were just set loose.

Now, not having a garden of my own, I'm sure that this feeling will just make those with gardens chuckle, but it was great to get out there and see these things in the fields. I didn't grow up with gardening, so while I know vegetables on the shelf, I didn't know them here. And better than a garden that we'd grown ourselves, we didn't know what was out there. Every row of plants held something new.

We didn't really need anything, but it was pretty hard not to grab a gorgeous zucchini with its blossom still on. I had no idea the blossoms attached the way they did.

We went row by row, picking cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, garlic and onions. It didn't really matter that some of it wasn't ready, it was just very satisfying to pull up a head of garlic from ground, shake loose the dirt and snap off its upper leaves. The smell from the cut vegetation made my mouth water.

In the end our bounty only cost us $9.50, but it was far more fun than going to the market ever had been, and now the urge to have a garden has really started to take root, pardon the pun. We'll be back next weekend to check out their tomatoes coming into season and their raspberries which weren't quite ripe yet.

We brought it all home and got to work on using it. That's another post.

Tikka Masala Pizza

2009-06-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

This isn't a very typical pizza. There's a pizza place near us called Can-Am Pizza. While it technically sells normal Italian pizzas, gyros and calzones, I feel fairly confident in saying they never really make those. I know that because the place sells incredible South Indian-style pizzas. Saag Paneer, Butter Paneer, Tandori Chicken: all these things you'd never expect to find on a pizza. But if you enjoy Indian food, you probably also enjoy having naan with it. Placing these meals on a pizza means you're just serving it on a big, round piece of naan. We love the "Butter Paneer" pizza from Can-Am, so we wanted to try to reproduce it at home.

This pizza was made around a tikka masala sauce. For simplicity, we went with a pre-made sauce from the store. For the paneer, I opted to make it from scratch at hom. I also, for the first time, made the dough myself from scratch.

Making paneer is fairly easy. You bring whole milk to the scalding point (just below boiling) and when it's reached that temperature, you add the juice of about half a lemon. This causes the milk to curdle and separate out into curds, which you then pour into a sieve lined with cheese cloth. You bind the cloth up into a ball and then press it down to form a firm cheese. You can fry this (which I've done for this pizza).

After forming the dough, I spooned out the pre-made tikka masala sauce on to the dough just like you would the tomato sauce on a more traditional pizza. I thinly sliced young red onions on a mandoline and sprinkled them over the top of that, then added the paneer. This was baked in a 500 degrees Fahrenheit oven until the crust was good to go.

Ginger and coriander would have been welcome additions to the toppings, as would tomato. Next time I might try adding a normal tomato base to the pizza as well.

Early Summer Pasta

2009-06-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

After a long winter with little more than cabbage and potatoes, the farmers' markets have started to come back to life. Strawberries and the first crops of cherries are rolling in, along with early summer crops. Lots of snap peas and young plants. We gathered up a good load of ingredients and brought it home to make a simple pasta.

My wife had made the pasta earlier in the day (we've dusted off the pasta roller and have been making ravioli) so I just needed to make the base.

I used asparagus, garlic tops (cut into three inch sections like green beans), beet tops, snap peas, brocolli, and young red onions. I started by sauteeing the onion and garlic tops, then throwing in everything else (save the beet tops). Once they were getting close to done I added the roughly chopped beet tops, a splash of water for moisture, and covered it all up. I let that braise for about five to ten minutes until the beet tops had nicely cooked to a velvety and rich texture. Top the pasta and then use the tops of the young onions for garnish!

Eggs on Toast

2009-06-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so fried eggs on toast isn't exactly gourmet, but it is tasty in a pinch. My wife had made a really nice pain rustique and we didn't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. We had also just grabbed a nice bunch of garlic tops from the local markets and wanted to try them out. The vendor said that the best way to eat them was to simply grill them whole like you might asparagus.

So, that's exactly what we did. I carmelized some shallots to top off the eggs (I don't mind sweeter flavors with eggs, but my wife wasn't a big fan) and used the garlic tops as an accompaniment. I wasn't a big fan of the garlic tops (too stringy and not enough flavor) but we've used them before in a sautee which was quite nice.

A Long Absence

2009-06-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in this blog for quite a while now. While some of it was laziness, the majority of it was that we've just had a new kitchen put in at the house. This meant more than a month of no cooking on top of two months of travel to various places. The results were great though and I'm happy to be able to post again.

Lisa's Eggplant Appetizers

2009-03-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

I heard about this recipe second-hand from my wife after a dinner party she attended that was hosted by an old work buddy named Lisa. While I'm not usually a big eggplant fan, this dish is quite nice.

Start by cutting up a male eggplant into half-inch wide rounds. Lay the rounds out on a cooling rack and liberally salt both sides. Let this sit for about an hour; you'll start to see the salt pull water out of the eggplant slices. You can then actually wring the rounds out like you would a wet paper towel. Dry them off and set them aside.

Mix equal parts sun-dried tomatoes and cream cheese in a blender (or to your taste). Next, crumble feta into the mix (again, to taste).

In a saucepan, pan fry both sides of the eggplant rounds until browned nicely. Let the rounds drain and cool. Then spoon the tomato mixture into the middle of the rounds and fold over.

You can server these at room temperature with some balsamic vinegar drizzled on the top. I found these a little oily, so I'd like to find ways in the future to reduce that a bit. Any suggestions?

A Month of Nothing Produces

2009-01-31T21:39:00.001-08:00

After a month of sitting in the basement, I now have a very large amount of sauerkraut at the ready.

At first the cabbage simply smelled of flatulence and fermenting, but after about two and a half weeks that changed over into the more acidic and biting smell of the sauerkraut you're probably accustomed to. Apparently the bacteria that are active in the kraut come in waves: the first wave produces a less pleasant odor and slowly starts to raise the acidity of the brine; this kills off the first batch and allows a different strain of bacteria to take over (preferring the more acidic environment). With the new bacteria comes a new smell and taste. Our last batch of kraut was sweet in flavor, but this is tangy like it should be.

Next time I would definitely shred the cabbage using a grater for finer strips (this batch is a little too substantial).

Next up: kim chi

The First Harvest

2009-01-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

Careful daily mistings have finally produced my first harvest of oyster mushrooms! Some of the caps are huge, others a cluster of tiny growth. I'll be curious to see how the others continue to grow after the first monster was harvested.

Harvesting is as easy as grabbing them firmly and twisting! I cooked these up by simply rough-chopping them and then sauteing them in butter with shallots and garlic. The stalks are a little tough, so I think in the future I'll stick to the caps. Can't beat this for simplicity of growing though!

Brown Butter Cabbage

2009-01-25T16:32:00.001-08:00

A lot of vegetables looks amazing when fresh and sitting in front of you, but savoy cabbage is good enough for a photo shoot. As we've been eating seasonally, two things have become apparent. First, we need to move to California. Second, cabbage and all its variants must have been in a love/hate relationship with pre-Industrial era societies.

One thing that certainly helps is butter. Cabbage, when shredded and cooked very lightly, actually has a nice crunch and flavor to it. This is one of my favorite preparations (and best of all, it's simple). From "Good Eats with Alton Brown: Veggie Eats 2"

1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup pulverized croutons (you'll want them seasoned, not bread crumbs)
2 pinches dry mustard
1 tspn caraway seeds
1 tbspn kosher salt
1 tbspn sugar
1 small head cabbage, shredded

Get some water on the boil for the cabbage. You'll be adding the sugar and salt to it just before cooking off the cabbage.

Before that, melt the butter and add the croutons. Throw in the caraway seeds and the mustard, then let this cook over medium heat until it's browned and nutty smelling. Remove from the heat but keep it in its cooking pan.

Now boil the shredded cabbage for two minutes before draining it and drying it (via spinning). Then combine it with the butter.

The croutons add a nice crunchy texture and the butter and caraway give some depth.

And this is just food porn (also from the same vendor).

Signs of growth

2009-01-15T07:11:00.001-08:00

After a lot of spraying and little sign of activity, the first crop of oyster mushrooms are poking their way out of the sawdust and into the air. They look more like corral than mushrooms at this point.

Not quite hunting

2009-01-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

I was really excited last year to learn about matsutake mushrooms and actually find and cook some from the market. We even went to a mushroom exhibition (which was disappointing at the time). As I've read more, I'd really like to venture out with a group and try to find morels and chanterelles in the wild in the coming spring and fall. Unfortunately, I've got all winter to wait.

While at the University District's farmers' market last weekend, we saw a new vendor named Cascadia Mushrooms. They had two different "grow your own" mushroom kits for shiitake and oysters. Given that my wife hates shiitake (which is a shame since I quite like them) we decided to try out the oyster.

The kits are basically plastic bags with a mixture of organic sawdust that's been inoculated with mushroom spawn, so as to form into harvestable mushrooms under the right conditions. Now, my understanding of mushrooms is limited to how to cook the ones you find at the store and that you do not cook the ones you find outside. I have, however, gleaned a few interesting insights lately. The most basic being that mushrooms are spore delivery mechanisms of the actual mycelium living under the earth. The mycelium can be vast in size and thriving, even if you don't see a single mushroom peek above ground. One of the causes for mushroom formation is environmental change or stress. If a fire wipes out a section of forest, mushrooms are often found springing up afterward. Likewise, if the season changes, mycelium can put up their "feelers" (the bits we eat) and try to spread themselves around.

For my little kit, I would employ the latter case to induce the kit into producing mushrooms. By leaving the kit outdoors in sub-40 degree weather overnight, then bringing it indoors and placing it in a very humid little container, they get the message that spring has arrived and start to produce mushrooms. Then you simply spray daily to ensure humidity and harvest your crop as it grows. Apparently they can go for months at a time and produce multiple pounds of homegrown edibles.

Not quite hunting, but still pretty fun.

Moved to the cellar

2009-01-07T22:35:00.001-08:00

Despite the label, it's been about 5 days since I started this batch of sauerkraut. The batch has started to form gas bubbles and applying pressure to the top of the "crock" causes them to bubble up out of the layers of cabbage and up the sides, where they formed an oddly soapy foam. The brine has become clouded and the cabbage is losing its bright green tinge. It smells like a fermented item, which is to say not entirely pleasant, but familiar as sauerkraut underneath that. It really makes you wonder what the cirumstances were that made someone smell something in this state and decide to forgo caution and chow down.

Due to the smell, I've moved the crock into the basement. In about three weeks I'll work up the nerve to actually try some. There's something wholly unnatural about leaving something to stew in its own juices for a month and then eat it.

Sauerkraut

2009-01-03T19:18:00.001-08:00

We've been eating more seasonally and going to the local farmers' markets on the weekend to source most of our ingredients for the week. That's been great in the summer and fall. But as winter now takes hold, things get a little more bare out there. The only thing to do is to embrace what humans have been doing for centuries: preserve!

The easiest thing to start with seemed like a nice sauerkraut. We had made a smaller version (only about a pint) earlier, but armed with a modest degree of experience we paid a visit to the local restaurant supply store and picked up two food-grade plastic prep dishes. These fit inside one another perfectly and added up to a great leap ahead of the glass jars we had been using previously.

The process is pretty straight-forward: Take as many cabbages as you can stand, shred them, then toss with a good couple pinches of salt per head. Then pack the shredded cabbage into the (very clean) vessel. By pack, I mean literally punch, beat, or otherwise compress the cabbage down on itself. I used the end of our rolling pin to accomplish this, but I think in the future I would use something with a little more surface area. After they're packed, the second jar slides into the first and a weight is added to press down onto the cabbage.

The salt will slowly draw the water out of the cabbage, which will form a brine that the leaves will be submerged in. The weight keeps the leaves under the brine and out of the mold-zone. For four large heads, I got a little over 2.5 litres of packed kraut.

Tomorrow I'm moving it into the basement for a month. I'll be sure to include updates.

'Tis the season

2008-12-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

The weather in Seattle has very suddenly reminded me of my time growing up in Wisconsin: frigid winters trapped indoors, leading to humid and oppressively hot summers. I used to spend each Winter debating whether I hated the cold more than the heat, then flipping my position when the Summer came around. But in-between were the Fall and Spring, the really beautiful transitions that made the past suffering bearable and braced us for the polar opposite fast approaching.

But in Seattle the weather is more homogeneous; a gray, rainy season and the beautiful Summer (which is sadly quite short). Though not as extreme, it also tends to smooth out (to a vanishing, nearly flat line) the demarcations of the seasons. Where in Wisconsin I could appreciate the cycle of the year, in Seattle it all tends to blend together.

As my family has more and more started to opt out of the local Supermarkets and increasingly into the farmers' markets, we've had to adapt to a certain reality of food; namely that it is seasonal. I've always grown up in a food system where you ate whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Strawberries in the winter? Sure, why not? Oranges and bananas apparently grew all year round and why should anyone ever want anything different? But as the plentiful growing season of the summer and fall winds to its inevitable end, we're looking at ever-shrinking options at the markets. I couldn't be more thrilled.

With so many source options at your local Supermarket, you can swing from ingredient to ingredient for a year without every really focusing on anything (or even repeating!). But when there's a glut of braising greens at the stalls, you really start to center your culinary sights on them. You clearly can't cook the same meal night after night, so you're forced to change things up. In doing so, I had suddenly reconnected with just how people had come to make so many cabbage dishes, such a variety of potato entrees, and why onions found their way into just so much. Necessity is the mother of invention, or at least in this case, the desire for variety sparks experimentation.

Rather than dabble in an ingredient for a night, we've been zeroing in on them. We've cooked kale and chard at least ten different ways by now and have a better feeling for what makes it good and what makes it go wrong. If you had told me even six months ago that pizza topped with chard would be incredibly tasty, I probably couldn't have even envisioned chard's shape in my head, much less the taste or texture.

More than anything, I wonder if I can regain some of that seasonality I've missed through the food I'm eating (and not the temperature outside). Remember that it was Fall due to what was on my plate, rather than what was outside my window.

Pattypan Quesadilla

2008-12-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

At the Ballard Farmers' Market (on Sundays), you can find a little stand called the "Pattypan Grill" (or something to that effect). A few weeks ago my wife and I had a really delicious quesadilla filled with a mix of chard, beets, red onion, and kale. While it may not sound appetizing, it was really good.

Like most things, we dissected what could be in it, what we might change, etc.

Tonight I had most of the ingredients I needed to give this one a try at home. The results were different, but still quite tasty.

Ingredients:

1 bunch Swiss chard (cut into 1-2 inch strips)
1 bunch kale (cut into 1-2 inch strips)
1 red onion (diced)
1 medium leek (cut in half and then into 1/4 in. sections)
2 Quorn "chicken" cutlets
1 tbspn vegetable oil
1/2 tbspn. butter
2 tortilla wraps (burrito size)
Monterey Jack cheese

Once you've prepped, start by sauteing the onions and leeks in the butter over medium heat in a large sauce pan (surface area helps here).

Once those have softened, heap the greens on top and let it slowly cook. The greens will begin to wilt down and fit nicely and when they do, cover the mixture and continue to cook over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes, or until the texture of the greens has lost its toughness.

While this is happening, heat the oil over medium heat and prepare the Quorn cutlets. I think chicken would be a fine substitute here for you meat eaters. I add some cayenne pepper to the cutlets so that they have a little bite. Once they're cooked to your liking, remove them from heat and slice them into 1/4 inch strips. Cover with foil and set aside.

Remove the lid and crank the heat back to medium. Let the moisture in the pan cook off until the greens are no longer in so wet.

At this point, find a pizza pan or cookie sheet that will hold the tortilla.

Spoon half the greens mixture on to one half of the tortilla. Grate the cheese on top. Now add the tortilla to the oven, utilizing the broiler to heat it up. Once the cheese has melted, take the tortilla out, fold it in half, and press down the top half of the tortilla down onto the filling. Return to the heat until the tortilla becomes crisp. Flip the whole thing over and repeat for the other side. Now take it out and cut it into pieces with a pizza cutter.

Repeat with the other tortilla.

These DVDs are seriously...

2008-12-16T21:12:00.001-08:00

There were three shows the formed the corners of my food interest pyramid.

Iron Chef started it off by supplying the intrigue: strange and foreign ingredients transformed into dishes with equally strange and foreign techniques, all with flash and running commentary!

The second was Jamie Oliver, supplying the enthusiasm. Though my interest in his shows and books has waned over time (more vegetables, please!), Oliver was excited for good food and was excited to infect other people with that same notion. He made cooking something you could learn and approach, instead of something you could either do or not do.

The final show was Good Eats, starring Alton Brown. Good Eats supplied the know-how: techniques, terms, tools, and a healthy tongue-in-cheek geek's view of food that resonated with me. I have a kosher salt always available at the ready in my hand caddy, and know the value of a "multitasker" tool in the kitchen.

I hadn't seen Good Eats for years and had kept my eye on the series DVDs, but they were hundreds of dollars and were just too much to justify. But two weeks ago I found (I believe) the entire series on DVD - new - and under $100. What I didn't realize is that it came on 36 DVDs, each with three episodes on each. I'm now in need of a bookshelf devoted solely to Alton, as well as a year or two off of work to watch them all.

Still - gotta love it.

Vegetable Tome

2008-12-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

I came across a great book today that I'm looking forward to tearing through over the next year. Written by Alice Waters, the book is titled "Chez Panisse Vegetables". Laid out as a complete reference guide to all sorts of common vegetables, it's a great resource for coming home from the market to see what exactly you can do with turnips.

The cooking instructions are laid out quite simply; they don't bother with ingredients lists or exact amounts, it mostly deals in pinches, gists and what the desired effect is. I quite like that sort of writing (once you've cooked enough to be comfortable winging it a little -- which I'm not great at).

In Defense of Food

2008-12-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

Lately I haven't posted much. I started to spend a lot of time worrying about what food I was making, how pretty the picture could be, or what sources I got my recipes from. But all that started to make cooking much less enjoyable for me, to the point where it became a hassle.

But in the last few weeks, I've slowed started to step away from that a little. Instead of worrying about what magazine to glean inspiration from, we simply walked around the farmers' market and saw what looked interesting. Swiss chard? I didn't like it last time, but let's try braising it with onion and garlic and see what that's like. Turns out it has a nice texture and the bitterness went away; I figured that it might. Brussel sprouts? Let's do the same sort of treatment but sautee them at the end. Not bad. I bet I can take that oven softened squash and sautee it to the point where it's a little crispy on the exterior and soft on the inside. Oh, and throw on some sage. This seems vastly more interesting than the mad science or chemistry experiments the magazines and books can often provide. It's food from its simplest and you can see how the parts fit together.

Add to this that my wife and I started to change how we ate: instead of trying to make five courses arrive at the same time, we started taking to making a dish and then snacking on it and talking about it as we prepared another. Dinner turned into a five course meal that we ate standing up -- yet it was far more fun than sitting at the table with mounds of food we stressed about coordinating.

This was all going on while I had begun to read Michael Pollan's book, "In Defense of Food". It's a sometimes dry book that basically states that food should be enjoyed, should not be processed and sitting on a shelf, and should be a very conscious aspect of our lives. A lot of science is thrown into the mix, some of it (as he admits) probably tenuous. But after having fun and success cooking simple things in simple ways, it makes me want to put down those books and fancy preparations, and roam my local farmers' market even more. It makes me want a patch of land to grow something on -- to start to cut out that middle man, even if they're a local farmer.

Kabocha Puree with Brown Butter Sage

2008-12-04T23:31:00.001-08:00

We've had a large kabocha squash sitting around on the kitchen counter for weeks now. We found it at a farmers' market and after trying some freshly cooked samples, decided to give it a try. Unlike a lot of squash, this one's skin can be eaten as is.

By committee, my wife and I decided to make a puree. Instead of going to read up on it, I've done what I've started to do quite regularly in the kitchen now -- wing it.

Starting with two cups of vegetable stock, I added the squash (which had been covered in foil and roasted/steamed in an oven at 350 degrees until somewhat tender) and basically poached it until the stock had reduced and the squash had started to fall apart with tenderness.

At that point, I used an immersion blender to puree it, then passed it through a sieve to remove the fibrous tissues and come out with a nice texture. Two cups of stock was probably too much, so you might try just one instead.

To finish it off, I cut chiffonades of sage and added them to butter. Over medium-low heat I browned the butter and fried up the sage. Drizzling that over the top added a great bit of texture and flavor from the crispy sage leaves.

Split-pea Soup, Hold the Ham

2008-10-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not a huge fan of split-pea soup. Even when I ate meat, it wasn't really my thing. But, my wife really enjoys it, so I decided to make it for her. The only rub being we can't use ham.

I started out by browning a whole onion down to nothing, then adding in the split-peas and the water necessary to cook them. After this had laboriously cooked down, I added some Field Roast (a true gift to vegetarians). Cubing the "meat" added just the right amount of taste and texture to the mix. To replace the smokiness that bacon or ham would have added, we used the incredibly useful "Liquid Smoke" that you can pick up at places like Williams Sonoma.

Hard to make look pretty in a picture, but it was a nice hearty soup on a cold night.

Food is Oil

2008-10-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

Michael Pollan wrote a fairly interesting article for the New York Times recently that details the challenges the next president of the United States will face in the realm of food.

While most of the arguments and facts will be familiar to people who have read a few key books on the subject, it was still an interesting read.

Sadly, I came away with the feeling that most of the change he calls for will not be implemented until there is an even greater crisis in the oil sector. If you look at people's reaction to the environmental warnings of the past few years, many have responded in small ways: changing their light bulbs, recycling a little more, etc. But it didn't really stop people from buying huge SUVs and the like because that was still very socially acceptable and desirable. That shift didn't occur until people's wallets were very heavily hit in oil prices.

Because so much oil goes into the production of our food (fertilizers, pesticides, transportation, etc) the price of food has also gone up. To then remove subsidies on the food items we're so used to, the items that have fueled the problem, we'd only cause prices to "artificially" inflate to their more true costs. But people would see this as external tampering, and so you'd have a very unloved politician. Even if told the reasons, I believe Americans are not tempered to deal with plans that require long-term vision; look at education.

Farmers' Markets have been growing rapidly and small local farms in my area have been gaining more and more of a celebrity status for their produce. Stimulation in that field seems like it could slowly show people a better alternative. But are the mandates in the article likely to help those farmers who are diversifying their crops, or simply shove them into an ideological high-ground that will leave them holding the bag when throngs of buyers don't follow?

I'd be interested to hear farmers weigh in on this.

Bread at Home

2008-10-26T23:26:00.001-07:00

I'm not a baker; that's my wife's job. I don't typically like dough, I avoid her stand mixer like it was plagued, and you'll never find me spending much time with flour or sugar. But tonight we put our levain to good use and created some great baguettes, as you can see in the picture.

When we were in France, the absolute best meal we had was a simple baguette with Brie. The problem with a baguette is that the crispy, crackled outside is brought on by a burst of steam introduced into the oven. The steam causes the skin to crisp up, while leaving the inside of the baguette nice and soft.

Luckily there are ways to achieve this at home. To accomplish this, my wife and I rolled out our baguettes, mercilessly slashed them with a razor, then prepped our oven.

At 460 degrees, our oven has never run so hot. At the bottom we placed a bread pan, into which we placed a couple of ice cubes. This causes the oven to be "moistened" but not steamed. Once the bread is on the stone, you then ladle boiling water into a red-hot cast-iron pan you've had at the bottom of the oven heating away. This causes a burst of steam as you slam the oven door shut.

Once the bread has risen and crisped up, you'll have some great baguettes at home.

I also finally got out my real camera...

Roasted Beets in Mustard Cream Sauce

2008-10-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

With the farmers' markets full of nice, small beets, this is a great time to try this dish. The cream and Dijon mustard reduce down to a wonderful and rich dressing to hearty and warm roasted beets. It's a very pretty dish as well, as the cream will take on the colors of the beet types you add it to.

Leaving the root tail and the leaf stems on the beets while you cook them leaves an easier route to peeling them once they're done. Without that, you'll be tearing your hair out while trying to get their tough skins off.

25 small beets of assorted colors
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 tblspn chopped fresh thyme

Add beets of like colors to a tin foil pouch. Drizzle them with oil and let them bake in a 400 degree oven for about 50 minutes. Once tender, open the foil and skin them when cool enough. Don't wait too long or that job gets harder!

Combine cream, mustard and thyme in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer. Reduce it to a level you like (I'd recommend letting it reduce by one half of a cup).

Place the beets into a glass cooking dish large enough to hold them. Season them with salt and pepper, then add cream. Bake until the sauce is bubbling (takes around 25 minutes).

From: Bon Appetit magazine, September 2008

Today, on the French Chef!

2008-10-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

This year my wife and I flew to Germany for twelve days, followed by another three days in Paris. For the flight over, we picked up two books: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdaine and My Life in France by Julia Child. Because my wife has just started culinary school (which causes me jealousy to no end), we've really ramped up our unabashed "foodie" status. Hey, at least one of us will be a professional, and I suppose that makes me half a professional in the same way I'm jokingly half Australian now.

I never really knew much about Julia Child other than some vague memories of her speaking (I thought she was British...) and being an old-school culinary TV personality. I never attributed much worth to her show or cooking, for whatever reason. Perhaps because so many TV personalities these days, like Rachel Ray, don't really inspire awe or even interest.

The book was a little slow to begin, and often read like I was reading a paper for school-work, but I slowly began to get a glimpse at a woman who was really quite remarkable. She hadn't begun cooking until her mid to late thirties. She was obsessed with food and was, in all adoration, a complete geek when it came to cooking. She thrust herself into a major culinary academy and pushed herself to become a legitimate and accomplished home cook. And she happened to write an absolute tome of French Cooking.

Here was someone who found her passion later in life than most people think they could. Not only that, but she turned her passion into something that had a profound impact on the world around her, mostly through hard work and determination.

I always enjoyed watching "Good Eats" with Alton Brown due to his scientific take on cooking. By learning the science behind what you were doing, you quickly learned the "hows" and "whys" of what you were cooking, and that sort of knowledge readily applied itself to other meals and methods you might be using later on. In the same way, I always enjoyed watching or reading America's Test Kitchen for their scientific experiments on which tomato paste was the best, or how to make the best roast. They didn't do it by hearsay, they simply tried the recipe quite a few different ways and determined what they liked the most. In the same way, Julia Child took a scientific approach to her cooking. She always wanted to know why something failed to turn out correctly, or if old methods based on seeming superstition actually carried any weight. The sheer amount of time and effort she put into her recipes made her confident that they not only worked, but worked well.

If you haven't seen Julia, you should definitely take a look. And pick up "Mastering the Art of French Cooking"; it's sure to be at your local library no matter where you are.

[Some Clever "Beet It" Joke Here]

2008-10-21T20:06:00.001-07:00

Sooner or later I'm going to get a decent picture of the very tasty "Roasted Beets in Mustard Sauce" dish I've been making lately, and I'll actually post it. Until that time, this is a great dish to make use of the tops of those beets. I tried something similar with Swiss chard, but really hated the texture and the bitterness of it. These greens however have a great mouth feel and really take the garlic, oil, and salt and deliver it up nicely.

Blanching the greens makes them incredibly vivid, so don't skip the step!

From: The New York Times: Sautéed Beet Greens With Garlic and Olive Oil

The First Rule of Soup Club

2008-10-20T20:31:00.001-07:00

At work we started a new weekly tradition, affectionately known as Soup Club. Each week, one member from the club cooks and brings in soup for everyone to enjoy. The next week, a new member cooks and the cycle continues I suppose until we get bored.

For the first week, I cooked the mushroom soup recipe from this blog. We were missing bread to round things out, and I think salads will be added to the list of things people can bring. I think ultimately it'll look like a free-form pot-luck lunch every Monday, which is a pretty fun idea really. It was a good time to sit around with the people you work with and talk food, or whatever else comes up. And there's no discussions of where to go out to eat, how to split the bill, etc.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

2008-10-14T23:11:00.001-07:00

Another recipe from Julia Child. I used half common crimini and half "fried chicken" mushrooms that we picked up from the farmers' market on the weekend. I don't know why they call them "fried chicken" mushrooms (and neither did the vendor)!

This produces a really rich and warm soup with good meaty bits of mushroom for bite. Make sure to skim the soup to remove any film that collects at the surface. You'll end up with a much prettier end result if you take the few moments to do it.

Serves 6-8

5 tbspn butter
3 tbspn flour
1/4 cup minced onions
6 cups white, chicken, or vegetable stock (boiling)
2 parsley sprigs
1/3 bay leaf
1/8 tspn thyme
Stems from 1 lb. fresh mushrooms (roughly cut)
Heads from 1 lb. fresh mushrooms (thinly sliced)
1 tpsn lemon juice
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup whipping cream

Slowly cook the onions in 3 tbpsn of butter until they are tender and translucent. Add the flour and cook for another few minutes, being careful not to let it brown. Take the onions off heat and add boiling stock, blending it with the flour. Add the mushroom stems and season to taste.

Simmer this, partially covered, for at least 20 minutes. Skim off cruft that floats to the surface. Strain the liquid through a sieve and press the juices out of the stems. Discard the stems, then return the liquid to the pan.

In a separate saucepan, melt 2 tbspn of butter. Once foaming, add mushroom caps, a pinch of salt, and lemon juice. Cover this and let it cook for 5 minutes.

Pour the mushrooms and all juices into the main soup liquid. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Beat together the egg yolks and cream. Very slowly, add a spoonful of the yolk/cream mixture to the soup. Doing this too quickly can curdle the yolks, so you'll need to let it integrate with time. Let the completed soup heat for a few minutes, but do not let it come to a simmer.

If desired, add a little butter as a final step before serving.

From: "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck

Roasted Tomato Sauce

2008-10-14T22:37:00.001-07:00

I hate raw tomatoes. I don't know if I was attacked as a child by tomatoes, or someone wielding them, but I just cringe at the taste and even the smell. Yet for some reason, I really love roasted, sweet and rich tomato sauce.

Muir Glen makes great fire roasted tomato products, but they were never that sort of meaty, sweet and deep flavor that I really enjoyed. So I set out this morning to make my own off the top of my head. Luckily, this not only turned out well, but it turned out better than any previous sauce I'd made!

Serves 2

10 ripe Roma tomatoes (look for equals sizes to help the roasting process)
1 head of garlic
1 half stalk celery (skinned, thinly sliced)
1 medium carrot (~1/4 cup, thinly sliced)
1 medium sized shallot (~1/2 cup, diced)
1 tbspn fresh basil (chiffonade)
1 tbspn fresh oregano (minced)
1 bay leaf

To get the tomatoes in good shape, first skin and de-seed them. I hate the flavor introduced by the seeds and guts; I'm a big fan of tomato flesh alone. Place the tomato halves cut-side down on a baking sheet. Season them with salt, pepper, and a good Italian herb medley. Add a smattering of skinned garlic cloves to the pan to exchange flavors. Drizzle with olive oil and put them into a 350 degree oven. For this experiment I kicked my oven into convection mode. This seemed to dry the tomatoes out more quickly and speed up the cooking process. If you don't have a convection oven, you can increase the heat and/or wait longer.

Let the tomatoes roast for about 1.5 hours. You'll want them to be shriveled and cooked down without too much burning. I had a little burnt tomato where they met the pan, but it was easily remedied. Remove the tomatoes from heat and set aside.

Add a tablespoon of vegetable oil (a mix of butter here may have been nice) to a medium saucepan and add the shallots and one clove of minced garlic. When the shallots have started to become translucent and the garlic is fragrant, add the carrots and celery. Let these cook for until they're begun to get tender.

Chop the roasted tomatoes into decent sized chunks and add it to the mix. Add a little water as well to give it room to simmer. Add a tablespoon of basil (as a chiffonade to be fancy), a tablespoon of oregano, and one bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper at this point.

Let the sauce simmer for 10-15 minutes. It should be moist, but not runny. If the flavor is a little acidic, try adding in a quarter tablespoons of unsalted butter until it rounds out a little.

The Ropes

2008-10-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

I think perhaps the hardest thing for me as I strive to cook better is that there's not an easy bar to compare myself against. If I were to study writing, there are many great authors to read and learn from, with libraries full of their works. Want to study the great directors of our times? Even a place like Blockbuster will open the doors for you. The same is true for music or art. Cooking, on the other hand, can not be easily accessed. If I want to know how Thomas Keller's meals taste, I really have no choice but to go to the Napa Valley (or maybe Las Vegas) and find out. I can't have it shipped from Amazon and reading a book about it doesn't really give me the information I really need – how it tastes!

The same is true for ingredients: I can read about what makes a really good peach, but until someone hands you one and tells you that this peach is the perfect sort, you're never quite sure what it should be. I think this is what I really want from a cooking class, and seems to be exactly what chefs gain when they serve in different kitchens throughout their careers.

As a novice cook, what choices do we have? Certainly visiting the best restaurants we can and taking note of the food. I'm lucky that my wife loves food like I do, so we can happily pass a whole meal breaking down each taste and texture we're experiencing, musing on what other flavors might go well with it, or what we would do differently. The other end of the equation would seem to be talking with purveyors about their foods and making them commit to sharing with you what makes their food good and how you'll know it when you smell it, when you hold it.

I wish I had the same access to chefs.

A Better Bounty

2008-10-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

After the disappointment of the mushroom exhibition, we set off for the West Seattle farmers' market on Sunday morning. Luckily we found a great harvest of interesting mushrooms to fill the gaping hole of disappointment left by the previous day's let-down.

We decided to overload ourselves with mushrooms and figure out what to do with them when we got home. We bought the typical chanterelles, but also porcini, "fried chicken", and the very special matsutake mushroom. The latter have a very pungent smell and are incredibly sought after in Asia. It just happens that in the Northwest we also have them, and this year has apparently been a good foraging year, so there are matsutake available in local vendor stalls. If you haven't had them, I'd recommend it.

I cooked this simple dish that was referenced at a local news source.

French Onion Soup

2008-10-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

There's a whole post stewing in my brain about Julia Child. After reading her book about her time in France while traveling through Germany and Paris, I have a new-found appreciation for the woman who was hitherto just a funny voice on an old show before my time.

I've been pouring through the tome that is "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and decided to take a crack at the old classic, French Onion Soup.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite have the right bread or cheese to properly cap-off and melt over the ramekin, but that'll be saved for next time. If I can find the classic little dishes they serve this in, I'll have to secure a couple which will sit unused 364 days of the year in our cupboard.

Julia's recipe calls for both dry white wine and cognac. Not having either, I ended up using a Muscat wine and brandy (which I was assured is a close enough match to cognac). Unfortunately, I ended up with a wine-heavy taste that overpowered all the work I did to get the onions into a nice, rich brown state. Using vegetable broth instead of beef probably also worked against me a little.

Still, it was a cold day and the meal was well appreciated.

French Onion Soup

1.5 lbs or about 5 cups of thinly sliced yellow onions
3 tbspn. butter
1 tbspn. oil
3 tbspn. flour
2 quarts brown stock
1/2 cup dry white wine

Cook the onions slowly in the oil and butter in a covered 4 quart saucepan for 15 minutes.

Raise to a medium heat and stir in 1 tspn. salt and 1/4 tspn. sugar. Cook for about 40 minutes or until the onions have turned a deep brown. You don't need to stir too often until the onions have released most of their moisture and will begin to burn if not watched. You can hear the sizzle change from a moist to dry.

Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 3 minutes.

Take the onions off heat and add the stock (boiling). Add the wine and season to taste. Make sure you use a wooden spoon to deglazed the onion bits burnt to the bottom of the pan. Simmer partially covered for about 40 minutes. Skim off fat and debris.

Just before serving, add the cognac.

Wild Mushroom Exhibition

2008-10-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

My wife and I happened to stumble across an announcement for a wild mushroom exhibition promising lots of wild mushrooms and cooking demonstrations this weekend. We decided that we wanted to check this out, see what the cooking demos were about, and hopefully buy some good, local and wild mushrooms to take home and make into a whole feast of different dishes.

Instead, we found a very small room with lots of natural displays of mostly inedible mushrooms, a booth or two for "arts and crafts in mushroom style", and a cooking demonstration that really only served to talk about mushrooms you'd be hard-pressed to find, presented in fairly routine ways. It was a mushroom lover's dream, if by love you mean that you like to identify them for the sake of it and compare gills between species. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just wasn't what we were looking for.

We really wanted to find some good, local mushroom purveyors to get information on what's in season and get something more than just chanterelles and shiitakes. We're going to visit the West Seattle farmers' market tomorrow and see if we can do just that.

In the future, we'll be looking for mushroom "festivals" and not "exhibitions".

Numbers and Organization

2008-10-09T06:45:00.000-07:00

Growing up, cooking was always something I hated. My understanding of cooking was fairly simple: you always needed recipes to do anything, and all cooking was a matter of putting exactly the right amount of food into exactly the right amount of heat, for exactly the right amount of time. My brief attempts were always disappointing in result and nerve-wracking in execution. After awhile, I just didn't bother.

Then I happened to catch a show called "Iron Chef", which you've probably heard about. Besides being fascinating in its own right, I was really amazed with how the chefs could take any random ingredient and prepare it without a recipe. I was also fascinated with the techniques, tools and knowledge they possessed. As I watched more of the show, I became more interested in cooking, but assumed that you'd have to have a lot of training and field practice to pull off those sorts of moves.

On the same channel I started to watch one of Jaime Oliver's shows. He presented food that wasn't carefully measured or accurately timed. He talked about tasting the food, about watching for this sign or that to know when it was ready. Although it should have always been obvious, I had never really devoted much thought to cooking, feeling that it was just someone else's domain and not mine. But here were practical, useful tips to cook things that looked far better than what I'd been eating or ever attempting to make.

Add now to this Alton Brown's "Good Eats", which dove into the science of cooking. He didn't just explain recipes, he explained techniques and the reasoning behind things.

All of this finally got me to cook. I've always been a technique freak, so learning to use a knife properly was fun. Tearing through Sur La Table to stock my meager kitchen with new pots and pans and gadgets was also no great battle. I couldn't cook very well (and still don't) but suddenly it was something attainable and interesting.

Although I love to cook, I wasn't particularly fond of shopping for ingredients, writing lists, or cleaning up. Luckily for me, my wife had great knowledge of how to pick the best ingredients and she slowly taught me what a good orange looks and feels like, or when a tomato is actually ripe. Over time, she infected me with the same picky eye when strolling the aisles.

There's so much to learn, but what other hobby can you not only sustain yourself with, but in good fashion as well?

Baked Cauliflower with Comte Cheese and Penne

2008-10-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

This dish's title basically sums it up. Think of it as an adult's version of macaroni and cheese, with some nice cauliflower to add a contrast to the very, very rich sauce the penne swims in. The breadcrumbs on the top add a good crunch.

This can be found in the most recent Bon Appetite. Because I like the magazine, and because I don't think their lawyers will appreciate it, I'll simply leave it at that for now.

Simmered Vegetables and Tofu

2008-10-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

This is a really nice, warm dish that's sweet but also rich in flavor. It also takes about ten minutes to cook, so it's a good deal for how much time you'll spend on it. Serves 4.

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 tbspn soy sauce
2 tspn sesame oil
1/2 cup shaoxing rice wine
1/2 cup mirin
2 star anise (whole)
1 tbpsn fresh giner, finely sliced
12 fresh shiitake mushrooms (cut down if large)
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
10.5 oz tofu
2 spring onions, finely slice on a bias (reserve as garnish)
white rice

Add all ingredients and 1/2 cup water to a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 10 minutes.

Cube the tofu into 1/2 inch cubes and add divide amongst the serving bowls. Add the broth and vegetables to each dish. Garnish with spring onions.

From: Marie Claire Seasonal Kitchen by Michele Cranston

French Toast with Caramelized Bananas

2008-10-07T17:02:00.000-07:00

My wife had made some caramelized bananas that she wasn't going to use for a tart, and we also happened to have some brioche in the freezer. There was nothing to do but make French toast for breakfast.

The recipe comes from my favorite food geek, Alton Brown. Rather than reproduce it all here, you can check it out directly from the source.

Orzo with Shiitake Mushroom Sauce

2008-10-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

There's a pasta purveyor in the Pike's Place market named Pappardelle's who offers all sorts of odd pasta every week. One of these included the interesting but not very tasty "chocolate linguine". Along with their interesting wares, they also provide little recipes to go along with them. This is one of those.

Serves 2

1/2 lb orzo pasta
1/2 lb shiitake mushrooms (cut into slices)
1/3 cup onion (minced)
1/4 tspn garlic (minced)
1 tbspn medium-dry sherry
1/4 cup vegetable stock
1 cup water
1/4 tspn cinnamon
1/4 tspn nutmeg

Saute the onion and garlic until fragrant. Add mushrooms and continue to saute until they are tender. Add sherry and cook until it is taken up by the mushrooms.

Add the orzo, water, broth, spices, and season to taste. Cover and heat over medium-low heat until the orzo is cooked.

In the future I would try thyme or parsley to freshen things up a bit.

The "Whys"

2007-09-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

About five months ago I ran across an interesting article by Paul Watson. Noted to most as an environmental activist (at best) and an "ecoterrorist" by others, the piece spoke on how the sea was being over-farmed and how Watson ran his sea vessels as vegan boats. More interestingly for me at the time, he spoke of the ecological impact of meat, outside of any discussion of cruelty or nutrition. His simple assertion was, "A vegan driving a Hummer around is more ecologically friendly than a meat eater who gets around solely by bicycle." This was due to the "hidden cost" of meat, the incredible amount of food and water required to sustain just one cow, and how much waste is put into the rivers, not to mention pesticides concentrated into the meat by eating so much treated grain.

I had never really considered that aspect of the meat industry and it put me a little off kilter. I had just started to take the bus regularly to be a "good steward" of the planet, and felt very self-righteous in doing so. Yet here was a larger waste of resources that I was happily buying into.

At about that time I also started to research the nutritional choices I had been making. Long hours at work, no fresh food for lunch and eating out regularly had been my diet for years. As I learned more, I knew that needed to change.

I realized that the easiest way for me to force myself to carefully consider my diet was to restrict it in such a way that I had no choice but to eat more healthy foods. I decided to become a "soft vegetarian". I didn't yet tell people, but I stopped eating meat. Making a broad, sweeping restriction meant I had a much harder time allowing myself the small temptations. If I couldn't eat meat I couldn't cut corners and go through the drive-thru at Wendy's. In fact, most fast food was off limits as well as a lot of restaurants. An inconvenience, but I felt an important one to bear.

I knew that becoming a vegetarian meant that I now had new nutritional challenges to overcome, and I needed to really understand what I was eating and what I needed to eat to stay healthy. I was sure that I would now become terribly deficient without meat. I would need to eat beans with rice at every meal or face a lack of protein, a lack of iron, a lack of energy. I began by reading "Becoming Vegetarian" by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis. While there were considerations, I found that protein wasn't going to be a major concern and that my biggest challenge was to eat a variety of things during my day.

From there, I began to read "Food Politics" by Marion Nestle. She detailed how the meat and dairy industry, bolstered by previous subsidies and now rising popularity, muddy the waters about nutrition and what their products have to offer. I learned that meat was not only not crucial for health, in many cases it was detrimental. I also read "Diet For a Small Planet" by Frances Moore Lappe which went into greater detail about the true cost of meat.

Without becoming self-righteous, for myself I felt that my decision was now not just simply about nutrition, but had grown into a choice about ecology and economy.

The casualty from this all was my interest in cooking. Without meat, my options were limited, as was my interest. But as I also learned more about the cost of prepared food, both nutritionally and economically, I decided that I wanted to prepare my own foods again.

This blog details that process of rekindling a desire to cook great food without meat - a desire to eat lower on the food chain.