Hurry, hurry, you have to make this soup! I took a Hipstamatic photo just so I could post it for you all the sooner!

I adapted this from one of the fantastic Moosewood cookbooks, with just a few adjustments. I like to have extra meatiness and protein in my soups, so I use pork stock instead of water. Less liquid, too – I like my soups thick and hearty, not too watery – more like stews than soups, perhaps. I’m also opposed to puree soups, so I did a minimal immersion blender partial puree of this one before adding the peas, to retain some texture.

It’s absolutely delicious, and I think I’m about to go back for a third bowl…

Ingredients
2 C coarsely chopped onion (about 3 medium onions)
safflower or other neutral oil for frying
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp grated fresh peeled ginger
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground turmeric
3/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground clove
1/8 tsp cayenne
2 tomatoes, diced into 1/2″ cubes
1 sweet potato (approximately 2 C diced), diced into 1/2″ cubes
2 C pork stock
1/2 C water
1 lb frozen green peas

Directions
1. Saute the onions in a splash of oil over medium heat in a medium pot, until they just turn translucent.

2. Stir in the spices, salt, ginger, and garlic and saute for another minute or two, until very fragrant.

3. Stir in the diced tomatoes and sweet potato until coated with spices, then immediately stir in the pork stock and water to dissolve the spices and deglaze the pot.

4. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the sweet potato chunks are tender (about 20 minutes).

5. Partially puree. I like lots of chunks, so I just use an immersion blender to puree just enough to thicken the soup some.

6. Stir in the frozen peas and simmer just until everything is nice and hot again.

7. Adjust seasonings to taste, and serve.

We had a big going-away barbecue for my brother Jordan, who is off to Ghana for the summer as of yesterday. How better to say goodbye than with cherries and satay and live music from all his fabulous musician friends?

It was a fantastic excuse to remake my favorite satay recipe, chicken marinated in a vibrant yellow concoction fragrant with lemongrass and turmeric and coriander, sharp and floral with galangal and ginger, and sweet with rich, dark brown palm sugar, and served Thai-style with chunks of fresh sweet pineapple on the end of each skewer.

I’m in love with this sauce, as you can see. I want to put it on everything now. Steak. Eggs. More chicken. Duck! Everything!

That’s my Dad, following my instructions with rolling eyes and good cheer, basting the skewers of satay with a smashed stalk of lemongrass as a brush, and oil that was steeped with lemongrass for half an hour or so before the grilling began. There is no better smell than lemongrass oil dripping onto the coals and the smoke bursting up around intensely spiced meat.

Have a great summer, Jordan! We miss you already! And in your honor, everyone else who reads this should go make and eat some of this bright, intense, tasty chicken satay!

Archives
2009: Saffron Turmeric Cake with Meyer Lemon Sorbet, Argan Oil Whipped Cream, Almond Brittle, and Thyme
2008: Chocolate-Whiskey Pudding Cake
2007: Strawberry Tarragon Sorbet
2006: Apricot Ketchup


Malaysian Chicken Satay
(adapted from Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland)
For the marinade:
1 tbsp coriander seeds (whole)
1/3 of a small star anise (more if you’re into anise, but I hate it, so this is just enough to add depth of flavor without tasting like licorice to me)
2 thick stalks lemongrass
3 shallots (about 110 grams), peeled and coarsely chopped
3 large cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1″ long piece of fresh (or frozen and thawed) galangal (approximately 40 grams), peeled and thinly sliced against the grain
2″ long piece of fresh ginger (approximately 30 grams), peeled and thinly sliced against the grain
1 tbsp ground turmeric
1/4 C palm sugar (approximately 50 grams), thinly sliced (or somehow made grind-able)
2 tbsp safflower [or other neutral] oil
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
For the satay:
3 lbs boneless chicken thighs
1 thick stalk lemongrass
1/4 C safflower [or other neutral] oil
1 fresh pineapple (1/3 or so is really enough, but you can eat the rest!)
a bag of thin bamboo skewers, soaked in water for at least half an hour and drained

(Serves… well, I don’t know. I made a triple recipe for a big party where more and more people kept stopping by, but there was plenty of other food there, too.)

Set up the marinade:

1. Set up your food processor, and grind the coriander and star anise together in it. Try to get them into powder, but ultimately don’t drive yourself nuts over it at this stage.

2. Prep the lemongrass for the marinade by cutting off the hard bottom and the grassy green tops, leaving about 5-6 inches of usable lemongrass from each piece. Peel off the tough outer layers (usually there are two tough leaves wrapped around that yo don’t want) and discard those. Slice the remaining tastiness into thin rounds, the thinner the better.

3. Add the prepped lemongrass, galangal, ginger, garlic, shallots, turmeric, palm sugar, safflower oil, and salt into the food processor, and process until you have a fairly smooth thick sauce. I like to actually transfer it into my blender once it’s as close as the food processor can get it, and use the blender to get it even smoother. This works delightfully well.

4. Prep the chicken by removing the fat and such and cutting the meat into pieces approximately 1 inch wide by 2ish inches long by about 1/4 inch thick. Again, don’t drive yourself too nuts with this – it’s really not that big a deal.

5. Squish the chicken with the marinade such that all pieces are fully coated. Let it marinate at least an hour or two, and preferably overnight.

Prepare for imminent grilling:

6. While your skewers are soaking, cut up the pineapple into bite-sized chunks.

7. Prepare that last stalk of lemongrass for use as a basting brush by cutting off the hard end and then smashing the bottom with something heavy until it gets all bristly. Soak that bristly end in the basting oil to infuse while getting the rest of your prep work done.

8. Thread the chicken onto the skewers, adding a bite of pineapple in the middle and at the end of each skewer.

9. Grill! Baste each skewer with lemongrass oil (with the lemongrass brush!) as soon as it goes on the grill, and again after you flip it. You want the chicken just cooked through, with some nice char on the surface if you can get it. If you don’t feel like setting up the grill, you can cook these under the broiler, but they’re honestly nicer when grilled.

10. Serve immediately. Enjoy!

God, look at those charred peppers! They’re the long, vaguely gnarly, kinda slender but not really, fairly spicy but not very, probably Italian ones I find at my local organic Korean grocery store. I love them with a deep and abiding love. Dave, however, is pretty sure that nightshades give him stomachaches, so I don’t get to cook with them very much lately.

He’s out of town for a conference this weekend, and I was trying to make up for missing him by cooking delicious foods that he can’t eat. This tasty, spicy, black bean sauce pork dish was perfect!

I find that I’m losing my interest in refined food lately. I don’t want to deal with the tiny dabs of sauces and careful presentations. My photography oomph is being taken over by marketing photos for my glass work, and I’m less interested in taking the time to arrange careful photos of my food. But I still love variety in my food, and I’m still particularly in love with Chinese cuisine. I actually just read Fuschia Dunlop’s memoir, and now I’m even more hopeful of managing to come to like more of the unfamiliarly textured foods I mostly shy away from nowadays.

But peasant food doesn’t have to be boring or bland. The peppers are vivid here in flavor as well as in heat. I raised the proportion of fermented black beans because I love their intensity, and I threw in an ice cube of the trotter gear I made with trotters and pig tails from Bobolink farm according to Fergus Henderson’s recipe, which calls for intense homemade chicken stock as a building block for building that tasty building block.

I’ve come to prefer peasant food, sure, but my peasant food is damn good.

Archives
2008: Kumquat Marmalade
2007: Chewy Maple Cookies
2006: Cocoa Nib and Currant Rugelach


Farmhouse Pork with Black Beans and Green Peppers (and Trotter Gear)
(adapted from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuschia Dunlop)
9 oz long Italian green hot frying peppers
2 oz pork belly
14 oz pork tenderloin
1 tsp shaoxing wine
1 tsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tbsp fermented black beans, rinsed and coarsely chopped
oil
corn starch
Optional: 1 ice cube worth of trotter gear (recipe below; needs to be made way in advance if you plan to use it here)

Thinly slice the meats against the grain and place into separate bowls.

Stir the sliced pork tenderloin (or other lean pork) with the soy sauces, shaoxing, and a good hefty sprinkling of corn starch, and set aside.

Cut off and discard the stems of the peppers, then slice them at an angle into oval-ish rounds about 1 1/4″ long and 1/4″ wide. Keep the seeds and ribs – as Dunlop aptly points out, this is a peasant dish! Man, I love peasant dishes.

Prep the garlic and black beans as described in the ingredients list.

Heat your wok until it is nearly smoking and feels like a radiator with your hand a couple inches above the bottom. Swirl in some oil, then stir-fry the peppers in batches as needed until they get a nice tasty bit of char to them. Pour them out into a bowl and set aside.

Wipe any pepper seeds remaining out of the wok and return it to the heat, swirling in some more oil.

Add the pork belly and stir-fry until it’s lightly browned (and not necessarily fully cooked), then stir in the garlic and black beans and fry for just a moment until they’re gorgeously fragrant.

Add the lean pork and stir-fry until mostly done, then return the green peppers to the wok and keep going until everything looks totally done.

Shove everything in the wok out up the sides, and toss an ice cube of trotter gear into the bottom to melt it. When it’s melted, stir everything else back down in with it until hot and melded, then remove from the heat and serve with lots of rice and perhaps some sort of nice, sweet-ish tofu as a second entree.

Trotter Gear
(adapted from Fergus Henderson)
3 trotters (pigs’ feet) (I threw in some pig tails, too)
2 red onions, halved
2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
2 leeks, coarsely chopped
1 head garlic
2 bay leaves
12 black peppercorns
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup Madeira or other sweet wine
Chicken stock to cover (about 1 quart) (ideally the homemade good stuff)

If your trotters or tails are a bit bristly (and sometimes they are), shave them. A disposable razor works wonders, and it’s very straightforward. Sort of comfortably homey, even. No shaving cream, though, please.

Put all the solid ingredients into a pot. Pour in the madeira or wine, and then add enough chicken stock to cover all the stuff in there. (Homemade chicken stock really is best. We condense our chicken stock down to fit into our freezer and then often use it condensed, so this was some pretty intense stuff to begin with.)

Bring to an almost-boil, and then simmer for 3ish hours, until the trotters/tails are “very wobbly” and the meat is falling off the bone (or easily pierced by a chopstick, or whatever measure you tend to like for this sort of thing).

Take the trotters (and tails!) out of the pot and put on a cutting board. Strain the stock and set aside.

Pull all the meat, flesh, skin, tendons, and other wobbly bits off the bones. Discard the bones. If you missed any hairy bits, just pull those bits off and throw them away too. But keep all those weird, gross looking wobbly bits – they are the magic here.

Chop your meat and skin and wobbly bits and such sort of medium finely – not a superfine mince or something, but more along the lines of pieces around the size of a pinky fingernail that’s been trimmed down to the quick. (Not the pig’s. Yours.)

Stir your chopped up wobbly mess back into the stock.

Set up a few ice cube trays lined with plastic wrap, and portion out the wobbly-bit-filled stock into ice cubes of meaty goodness. Freeze. Once they’re frozen, store them in your freezer in a big ziplock bag of meaty chunks. Add them to fried rice, to finish other stir-fries and sauces, soups, what-have-you. Instant tasty umami injection!

Dear people who live in or visit London,

Have you stopped by Ottolenghi yet? You should. It is a happy place that makes people happy. I spent about 2 hours fighting through insane crowds and delayed buses to get there during a London tube strike once (not counting the time spent flying across the pond and back, of course), and it was worth it. (Though to be fair, partially for the adventure and nearby chocolate shop.)

In other news, we made a modified version of Ottolenghii’s black pepper tofu, modified for us carnivores who keep Momofuku-style pickled chilies in our fridge, just in case. Though the black pepper is incredibly spicy all on its own, no chilies needed, which I’ve never experienced before playing with this recipe. And I’m really learning to love tofu in spicy dishes. It’s absolutely marvelous!

My apologies for the terrible photography. We made this dish while my mother was borrowing my good camera, so this is the iPhone Hipstamatic version of food blogging instead. It’s hardly ideal, but it’s better than failing to get my version of the recipe out to you.

Archives
2008: Shredded Burdock Root
2007: Lamb Kofta with Apricot Sauce


Black Pepper Tofu with Pork
(adapted from Ottolenghi)
800g (1.75 lbs) firm tofu
Corn starch, to dust the tofu
454g (1 lb) ground pork
3 tbsp sweet soy sauce
3 tbsp light soy sauce
4 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
Safflower [or some other neutral] oil, for frying
65g (~4.5 tbsp) butter
12 small shallots (~350g), peeled and thinly sliced
12 garlic cloves, crushed and then minced
3 tbsp minced ginger
5 tbsp crushed (or very coarsely ground) black peppercorns
16 small, thin scallions, cut into segments 3cm (~1″) long
Optional garnish: sliced pickled chilies (recipe below)

1. Stir the pork in with the soy sauces and sugar and set aside.

2. Cut the tofu into cubes (3cm x 2cm, or about 1″ x 1/2″) and toss them in corn starch, shaking off the excess.

3. Heat your wok until it starts to smoke and feels like a radiator with your hand held a few inches above the bottom, then pour in enough oil to really coat the bottom in a thin pool. Fry the tofu in batches in the oil, turning the pieces as you go so that they’re golden and crispy on all sides. Once they are golden all around, and have a thin crust, transfer to a paper towel. It’s important to do this in batches, because if you overcrowd your pan the tofu will steam instead of frying and will never develop that wonderful crisp, dried texture.

4. Clean the oil and tofu bits out of your wok, then throw in the butter. Once the butter melts, add the shallots, garlic and ginger, and stir-fry until it’s all shiny and soft (should take about 15 minutes, but of course your mileage may vary).

5. Stir in pork once the shallots are soft.

6. Stir in the black pepper once the pork is pretty much cooked.

7. Stir in the tofu and keep going for just a minute until it’s thoroughly warmed up and coated in the sauce, then stir in the scallions and remove from heat.

8. Optionally, serve with sliced pickled chilies and a bit of their pickling liquid (recipe below). I really like the flavor and extra heat these offer. Though seriously, even without the extra pickled chili garnish, it was ridiculously spicy considering that all the heat came from just the black pepper, not chilies of any sort. Really tastily so. Serve with lots of rice.

Pickled chilies
(adapted from Momofuku)
1 C water, as hot as your tap can get (~120 degrees F in most American kitchens)
1/2 C rice wine vinegar
6 tbsp sugar
2 1/4 tsp kosher salt
4 C Thai birds-eye chilies (or other small (less than 2″ long) chilies)

Combine the water, vinegar, sugar, and salt, stirring them until the sugar dissolves.

Wear gloves when handling chilies, please. Just rinse them off and remove any stems if you feel fussy. You can slice them however you like when you actually use them later on. I like using green Thai chilies, because I enjoy their flavor and the green ones are supposedly spicier than the red ones. Really, use whatever makes you happy, and it’ll turn out just fine.

Pack the chilies into some sort of fringe-friendly, long-term-storage-friendly container (tupperware or mason jars), and pour the brine over them to cover. Stick them in your fridge for at least a few days. They’ll last approximately forever, to make every day a happy spicy vinegary day.

The last half dozen times or so we made peposo, we ate it all too quickly for me to get a photo for you and post about it. It’s a winter staple in my household, and I regret not having posted it sooner. Sorry about that! I happened to have my camera out at the right moment today, though, so here you finally go.

We’ve adapted this recipe pretty thoroughly to make a lot of perfect winter stew in one go, a huge batch of amazing winy braised meats drenched in a thick, luscious sauce just begging to be soaked up with crusty bread. The original recipe called for a kilo of 2″ chunks of stewing beef. Here, well, we cook about 10 lbs of mixed cuts of beef and lamb and veal on the bone, good meaty braising cuts to cook low and slow in the wine. The mix of meats drastically improves the flavour, and using shank allows you to stir the marrow back into the sauce in the end, thereby elevating the dish to so much more than a simple winter braise.

The cookbook this recipe was inspired by, Piano, Piano, Pieno by Susan McKenna Grant, claims that Peposo originated in Impruneta, a town famous for its pottery where workers would cook this meal while keeping endless watch over the kilns. I can’t speak to the historical accuracy, but I like to let it simmer while I’m working at the torch and keeping watch over my kiln myself.

This recipe is going to look expensive, I’ll warn you. It calls for 10 lbs of meat and 2-3 bottles of wine. But go for the cheap wine, and keep in mind that this is enough at least a dozen meals, probably more. (Looking into my fridge now, I know we’ve eaten 5 meals of it already, and there’s about 6 C of it left. So that’s maybe closer to 17 portions, total? Something like that. It’s pretty intense, with bread and a nice salad on the side.) We make it in huge batches, and if we get sick of eating it (highly unlikely!), we freeze individual portions for later. But if you’d rather keep it cheap or smaller, feel free to scale it down! It’s very forgiving.

It’s dead simple, ultimately. There are basically five ingredients, and mostly you just let it simmer while you putter about doing whatever else you feel like doing for a few hours. Watch a movie. Go for a walk. Read a book. Write that novel. Get some damn work done. Enjoy the smell. Eat the glorious results.

Archives
2009: Miso Almond Romanesco
2008: Saffron Duck Pot Pie
2007: Stewed Garlicky Black Bean Spare Ribs


Peposo
(adapted from Piano, Piano, Pieno by Susan McKenna Grant)

10 lbs mixed red meat on the bone, ideally including: beef shank (sliced like osso bucco), lamb shoulder arm chops, ox tail, veal shank or tail, and if you feel like it, maybe some lamb neck bones or beef short ribs – whatever you can find!)
Safflower or other neutral oil
3 heads garlic
3/8-1/2 C coarsely ground black pepper (no, that’s not a typo)
2-3 bottles red wine (ideally a young Chianti, supposedly, though we’ve used all sorts of inexpensive reds to good result)
Salt to taste

Salt the meat a bit. Don’t go overboard, you can always finish salting the dish later. A light sprinkle on each side will do for now.

Got a big pan (or two at once, is what I do) nice and hot, grease it up a bit with safflower or some other neutral oil, and brown your meat nice and good, tossing each piece into a big bowl once it’s good and dark on all sides. Set out snacks to get you through a few hours of that delicious smell that’s only just starting to fill your home.

For this much meat, I use three pots to cook a batch of peposo – a nice big cazuela (a Spanish clay pot), the bottom of my tagine (a Moroccan clay pot), and a big cast iron pan.

Any heavy-bottomed pot should be fine, though, so don’t worry if you don’t have any clay pots on hand. I’m a bit obsessed with them, but I haven’t really experimented properly to figure out yet whether they actually improve flavor or if they just make me happier by looking nice on the stove. Relax, it’ll all work out in the end.

Lay out your meat in a single layer, tightly packed into the pots or pans you’re using to cook it. (Note: If you use short ribs, I find that they come out better when packed on their side, rather than bone up or bone down.)

Take the garlic heads apart, discarding the outer skin but not peeling the individual cloves. Tuck the garlic cloves in the various crevices between the meats.

Sprinkle the black pepper over everything, then pour in enough wine to mostly (but not completely!) cover the meat. This usually turns out to be the first 2 bottles, for me.

Cover the pots with tin foil (I don’t actually have lids that fit the pots I tend to use for this dish – your mileage may vary, just make sure they’re covered!) and put them on your stove at its lowest possible setting.

Now you just have to be patient. Some cuts start feeling tender and wonderful and done after about 3 hours, while others take closer to 4 or 5. After about two hours, if you got that 3rd bottle of wine, you can check in and pour some more in to make up for whatever may have cooked off. If not, don’t worry, it’ll still be delicious.

Start checking the meat after about 3 hours. Poke every piece with a fork, and take out whichever ones feel done. I like to shred the meat off the bone and connective tissue while the rest of the meat cooks further, then do another check, and so on.

As the meat comes off the bone, make sure to push the marrow out of the bones and into a small bowl you’ve set aside for that purpose. As each pot finishes up, take out the garlic cloves and squish them from their skins into that same little bowl. Discard the garlic skins, emptied bones, and bits of connective tissue or other questionably textured bits (if you’re picky like me). Stir the marrow and garlic together with a fork until it’s a nice squishy tasty mess.

Once everything is out of the remaining braising wine, stir the garlic/marrow into the wine to create the sauce. Turn the heat back on and reduce the sauce until it’s nice and thick – it doesn’t have to be super dense, but you want it thick enough to really coat every bite and stick to it.

That’s it. Stir the meat back into the sauce, and salt to taste. Eat approximately forever, with enough bread to sop up the sauce and something green and vivid and crunchy on the side to contrast with the deep rich ultimate winy meatiness of the peposo.

Going through older post drafts, I’m always a bit startled when I come across a photo that I actually really like! It always seems to me that surely I must have posted all the good photos already, and only left the dregs as drafts. But apparently not.

Salad may not seem that exciting, but for me it’s revolutionary. In fact, so are blood oranges – I can’t stand regular oranges, but blood oranges taste just different enough. The redder they are, the better they taste. I can’t tell if that’s a real difference, or if I just like that the reddest ones look less like oranges. We made this during the height of Dave’s obsession with stovetop approximated sous vide cooking, and my obsession with finding salads I actually enjoy eating.

I think what won me over was the realization that salads could include fruit and spices and artistry, and not just a bunch of leaves on a plate. Who knew?

Enjoy!

Archives
2008: Cocoa Nib Flans with Raw Sugar Sauce
2007: Stewed Garlicky Black Bean Spare Ribs

Artichoke and Blood Orange Salad
2 small heads frisee, removed from base and cleaned
1/4 C coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley
for the pickled artichokes
8 artichoke hearts, cut into eighths (held in acidulated water)
150 gm white wine vinegar
1.5 gm gelatin (optional — don’t bother if you have a chamber vac)
1 quarter preserved lemon, rind only, coarsely chopped.
4 cardamom pods, crushed
2 cloves garlic, crushed
for the blood oranges
4 blood oranges
1 tsp ground cardamom
for the vinaigrette
2 tbsp mustard seed oil
1 tsp red wine vinegar
fleur du sel
black pepper

First, make the pickled artichoke hearts.

This is actually a pretty spectacular method for doing sous vide cooking with liquidy contents inside the vacuum sealed bag without having a hugely expensive chamber vacuum sealer. Ordinarily, a FoodSaver or other normal, affordable home vacuum sealer can’t seal up anything that isn’t pretty dry, because the liquid gums up the works (as it were).

To solve this problem, we hit upon the idea of gelling the liquid with gelatin, since gelatin is thermoreversible and melts back into liquid when heated. This turns the liquid into a solid during the vacuum-sealing stage, and back into a liquid during the cooking stage. A perfect solution to all of life’s problems!

1. Bring the vinegar and gelatin to a boil, then refrigerate it until it is set.

2. Make a sachet with the cardamom, garlic, and lemon.

3. Add gelled vinegar, spice sachet, and artichoke hearts to a vacuum bag and seal.

4. Cook at 185 F for 40-75 minutes, until somewhat tender.

Next, prepare the blood orange.

1. Supreme the blood oranges by cutting off the peel to create a whole skinless fruit, then cutting segments of fruit out from between the layers of membrane. There are some great visual instructions on how to supreme citrus here.

2. Toss the blood orange segments with the cardamom.

Finally, construct the salad.

1. Whick together the vinaigrette, and toss with the parsley and frisee.

2. Top with blood orange segments (cold), artichokes (warm), salt, and freshly ground pepper to taste.

3. Serve immediately.

We’ve served this sauce at the restaurant twice now, and I’m not tired of it yet, which is an absolute miracle for me. It was another one of Dave’s brilliant sauces, where he came up with the main idea and all I had to do was taste and give him a few suggestions for rounding out the flavor in the end.

When we’re cooking in our tiny Lyceum kitchen, we can’t really hear what’s going on in the big room outside. Our waiters come back and tell us what people say and how they look, and we eagerly wait to see which plates come back with fingerswipe marks in lieu of leftover sauce.

When this mole was served the first time, though, a moment later someone out in the dining room exclaimed with delight so loudly that I could hear it back in the kitchen: “Oh my god, this sauce! There’s so much going on!”

Back to work, anyways. We are at t minus 3 weeks for the wedding, and there’s still so much left to do! There are fans to be made, Zambian honey to be labeled, and the flower girl still needs new shoes.

Right after the wedding, we’re leaving to wander around Southeast Asia for 3 weeks. We have a few days in Tokyo on the way to Bangkok, and then eventually we fly home from Hanoi. Haven’t figured out the middle yet. I definitely want to stop by Chiang Mai and Siem Reap (and Angkor Wat, of course), possibly somewhere in Malaysia, and almost certainly not Singapore or Laos. Indonesia is tempting, but 3 weeks just isn’t enough time. Melaka is iffy enough as is.

Any advice? Restaurants we need to check out, people we need to meet, places we should avoid?

Archives
2008: Duck Confit and Fig Crostini
2007: Fig, Sweet Potato, and Wild Rice Stuffing
2006: Blueberry Port Chutney Shortbread Bars

This makes a ton of sauce. For 18, Dave thinks, but we always have plenty left over after that. It freezes well.

Pecan Mole
4 tbsp safflower/peanut/canola oil
1/4 C ipek pul biber (a Turkish ground hot chili – not too hot, with a complex fruity flavor)
1/2 tsp pulla (another chili – grind it before measuring)
1.5 tsp new mexican chili
2 tsp kalonji/nigella
200 gm shallot (about 5), sliced
1 plantain, sliced
4 cloves garlic
100 gm pecans
50 gm shelled raw sunflower seeds
1/4 tsp ground clove
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp packed tiny dried shrimp (easily found in Chinatown)
1/2 C raisins
2 C water
2 C intense chicken stock
Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the chilis and kalonji. Cook for about 30 seconds, then add the shallots and plantain.

After the shallots have softened, add the garlic, pecans, and sunflower seeds.

Cook until the garlic is translucent and the pecans and sunflower seeds are lightly toasted.

Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until reduced to about 3 cups.

Blend until smooth.

Adjust seasoning to taste.

We most recently served this with warm zucchini terrines, lamb chops that had been cooked sous vide and then seared, garlic scapes, and cocoa nibs.

Zucchini Terrines
1/2 recipe pecan mole
8 red potatoes
4 small or 2 large zucchini
12 shallots
cocoa nibs
Salt to taste
Oil

Add a bit of extra salt to the mole sauce, as it has to flavor the potatoes.

Briefly saute the shallots until translucent.

Thinly slice the potatoes and zucchini. Toss the zucchini with oil.

In oiled ring molds or foil-lined muffin tins, layer potato slices with mole. Top and edge with zucchini. Top with shallots. Press to shrink.

Bake at 400 F for 40 minutes, then reduce heat to 350, cover with foil, and bake for 20 more minutes.

Sprinkle with cocoa nibs.

Everyone loves romanesco, the green fractal cauliflower that has been appearing more and more in stores and greenmarkets in the area over the past few years. It’s gorgeous, in a geeky sort of way, and very tasty, especially when you let it get a good pan sear during the cooking process.

Don’t let the green fool you into thinking this counts as a nutritious vegetable, though. It’s mostly starch, and the sweet sauce in this recipe doesn’t exactly help on the health front. It is, however, addictively delicious.

Eating fractals is fun!

In other news, I went down to North Carolina this past weekend. There, I bought a drop spindle and taught myself to handspin yarn. Here’s my first yarn, in progress and on the spindle. It’s a merino/silk blend, done with navajo 3-ply, with curly locks twisted in for the fun of it.

I also got my very first shooting lesson, with a friend’s air rifle in his backyard. I’m not particularly fond of guns, in theory, but I am fond of learning new skills. And as another friend put it, I’m now entirely prepared for the collapse of civilization. I can shoot, I can spin, I can cure meat, and I can litigate.

I’m fairly pleased with myself – I hit the black on my very first target.

On the plane, I was doodling, and I created this rough little map of the directions from my apartment to my favorite dim sum place. I need to get a better scan of it, but here it is for now. Ping’s Seafood makes the best har chow (long shrimp noodles) ever.

The directions are of limited value, though, because Dave and I are actually apartment-hunting right now. We’re supposed to hear back today about the first place we applied for, so please keep your fingers crossed for us.

Anyways, onto the delicious fractal recipe!

Archives
2008: Broiled Yellowtail with Grapefruit Salsa
2007: Malaysian Beef Curry with Thick Onion Sauce (Daging Nasi Kandar)


Miso Almond Romanesco
2 medium heads romanesco, about 1200 grams total
1/8 C white miso
1 tsp Korean anchovy sauce
1 tsp Korean red pepper flakes
1 tbsp Vietnamese caramel sauce
1/4 C sliced almonds
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
4 tbsp unsalted butter

Cut the romanesco into individual florets, cutting the larger florets in half. Discard the stem and leaves.

Stir together the miso, anchovy sauce, red pepper flakes, caramel, and 1/8 C water until smooth.

In a wok, heat 2 tbsp butter on high until it melts and sizzles. Add the romanesco and saute until browned all over. Let it sear a bit; that will only make it taste better. Stir in the water and garlic and simmer until the water is nearly gone. Stir in the almonds and cook a minute more. Stir in the sauce and serve.

With a typical home wok, it is best to do this in two batches so your romanesco actually sears instead of merely steaming when you cook it.

I had so much fun cooking this! The recipe comes from Chez Panisse Cooking, and it’s one of those recipes you look at and you just know it’ll be an adventure to create. I mean, pigeon essences! What could be better?

Dave practically cried at the thought of pounding those beautiful pigeons through the food mill. It was tragic. But me, well, I got to say something I never in my life expected to be able to say: Apparently I like pigeon liver, in the appropriate context.

Intrigued yet?

We bought the pigeons from our current favorite Chinatown butcher, where they were completely uneviscerated and, of course, labeled squab. Fowl is supposed to be eviscerated before it can be sold here, but these squab were clearly labeled as coming under the Confucian Exemption.

I’d never eviscerated a bird before. Fish, sure. But birdies were a new adventure. Dave read me instructions off the internet, always a step behind what I had already done with gloved hands and a sharp little knife. I was very proud of myself for leaping ahead blindly into something new and making it work, always the skill I’m most proud of in myself, in every arena.

So, I butchered my pigeons and Dave roasted them for me. He made the pasta dough and I rolled it out and cut it. He minced the giblets and hearts and cooked the livers, and I pounded the pigeons through the food mill. We make a good team, me and him, splitting up the tasks to create fun, tasty monstrosities just because I saw the phrase “pigeon essences” and decided it had to be done.

So, here it is, just about straight from the original recipe. Next time I’d get some extra pigeon and shred roasted meat into the dish, too, for extra texture and to make Dave happy. If there is a next time. We’ve made the rosemary noodles since, but no matter how tasty, food milling the pigeons was just too traumatic for us to repeat.

Archives
2008: Saffron Duck Pot Pie
2007: Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins


Rosemary Noodles with Pigeon Essences
(from Chez Panisse Cooking by Paul Bertolli and Alice Waters)
rosemary noodles (recipe below)
4 pigeons, with hearts, livers, and giblets
1 tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, minced
2 oz pancetta, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
4 C chicken stock
4 C beef stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 tbsp butter

Make the rosemary noodles as per the recipe below, but do not cook them yet, just set them aside in the fridge while you do the rest of the steps here.

Grill the pigeons (organs removed and set aside, heads and feet removed and discarded) over a hardwood charcoal fire, uncovered, turning frequently, until the skin is nice and brown and the bird is fully cooked. This should take about half an hour. If you don’t have a grill, you can cook them under the broiler instead, but they’ll suffer from the lack of smokiness.

Remove the birds from the grill to a bowl, careful to catch the juices from the cavity, then transfer them to a large cutting board. With a cleaver, chop them into very small pieces, making sure to crack all the bones. Transfer all the pieces to a large saucepan and add the chicken and beef stock. Bring to a quick summer, making sure not to boil, and simmer for 1 hour.

In the meantime, saute the hearts and giblets in the olive oil over medium-high heat, stirring often, until they are browned all over. Add the pancetta and garlic. Reduce the heat to low and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring often. The aim is to not brown the pancetta and garlic.

Remove the heart mixture from the pan and transfer it to a clean cutting board.

While the pan is still hot, add the livers and cook gently over low heat, turning them as soon as the edges begin to lighten in color and touching them frequently to test for doneness. When they are just firm in the center, remove from the pan and set aside.

Finely chop the heart mixture and set aside separately.

Now, back to the stock you’ve had simmering for the past hour. Sieve it through a chinoise or food mill, pounding or milling as much pigeon meat and marrow as possible through with the stock.

Set up a pot of salted water to boil for the noodles.

Return the pigeon broth to the stove and reduce it to 2 C. Add the chopped heart mixture, the butter, and a big dash of freshly ground black pepper. Check for salt and adjust to taste. Simmer until the butter is melted and stir well. Coarsely chop the reserved livers.

Cook the noodles for just a few minutes, until they float. Add to the sauce with the chopped liver. Stir well and serve immediately.

Rosemary Noodles
1 C all-purpose flour
1 egg
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary

Make the pasta dough by creating a mound of the flour with the other ingredients in the center. Slowly stir them in with a fork, then knead the dough for about 10-15 minutes, until smooth. Add in a bit of water if necessary to help it form a smooth dough, but don’t go overboard, try to be a bit patient.

Form it into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Set it aside and let it rest for 45 minutes.

Take 1/3 of the dough at a time, leaving the rest covered until you’re ready to deal with it.

If you have a pasta maker, run the dough through the pasta maker at its widest setting. Fold in half (parallel to the line of the pasta maker). Run it through again. Fold again, run it through again. Fold in half (perpendicular to the line of the pasta maker, to make it narrower), and run it through again. Reduce the width by one setting. Run the dough through. Reduce the width again. Run the dough through again. Keep going as long you can, which will probably be the second-narrowest setting (6, on our machine). Then cut the sheets of pasta into lengths one foot long, and run them through the fettucine cutting attachment.

Separate the strands of pasta and set them aside in the fridge on a floured plate, covered, until needed. They can last all day in there waiting for you, but probably not overnight.

I know, I know, Alton Brown says you should always make your stuffing separately, not actually stuff your bird with it. But we made this stuffing when friends from out of town were visiting, and it was splendid stuffed right into the duck we roasted for dinner one night.

I’ve had a cold for the past few weeks, and Dave is just starting to come down with the same thing now. We spent part of the holidays visiting his family down in Philly, and head home tomorrow. I’m ready for some easy comfort food like this, to help us limp through New Year’s and towards better health together. Have to build up my strength – I have at least one trial on in January, and more to come. Life, it is still not boring.

While I’m on a total tangent, let me ramble a bit about the latest turn my practice has taken. I feel like an old country doctor lately. I’ve been doing house calls and hospital visits to execute powers of attorney and wills and such for elderly patients who simply can’t make it out to my office on their own. It’s very satisfying – I like to pretend that I’m traveling old country roads instead of the NYC subway system, that I’m visiting in the dead of night in the middle of a storm instead of in early afternoon during a light flurry of snow and sleet and rain. It’s a small part of what I do lately, but it has a sort of fun that I just don’t find anywhere else.

As soon as I turned 18, my Dad started taking me to visit his elderly clients at home and in hospitals to witness will signings. It’s weirdly one of the real cozy pleasures of the business, being able to do that.

It’s on my mind this month, since I did a few earlier in the month, and over the holidays and bouts of sneezing, coziness and home are very much on my mind. I always have to resist the urge to bring along gifts of homemade cookies when I head out for these signings. Probably inappropriate, under the circumstances. But it’s all tied together in my head.

It’s like feeding people. A way of reaching out to take care of each other.

It’s a grand life.

Happy new year, in case I don’t have a chance to post again this week! May your 2009 contain joy, health, and interesting times in only the very best of ways.

Archives
2007:
2006:


Cranberry Pecan Stuffing
1/2 C wild rice
1/2 C dried cranberries
1 shallot, finely chopped
leaves from 3 sprigs rosemary, chopped
leaves from 1 sprig thyme
1/4 C pecans, coarsely chopped
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the wild rice in salted water and some duck stock, if you have it. This should take 20 minutes in a pressure cooker at a high pressure, or you can cook it on the stove for longer. When the rice is done, set it aside to finish up the rest.

Gently saute the shallot, rosemary, thyme, and pecans in olive oil for about ten minutes. Towards the end, stir in the dried cranberries, and finally, stir in the rice.

You can use this stuffing to actually stuff a duck or other fowl before roasting, or serve it separately as a side dish on its own.