New Foods

Friday night was a night of food experiments, inspired by my friends on the food blogs. Sometimes you get in a rut (I'd been doing a lot of roasted vegetables lately...but hey...it's winter!), and sometimes you just need to break out. Friday night was breakout night.

Kimchee
First I had some kimchee. I had seen Aaron from Tea and Food blog about kimchee pancakes, and I thought -- I should try some kimchee. Had it in Korean restaurants many times, but have never had it at home. In the restaurants, it'd always seemed like little cubes of heavily spiced pickled cabbage. In the jar I bought of Sunja's Medium Spicy Kimchee from Whole Foods, it was more like Korean cole slaw. A stimulating first course. Pungent, bracing in its acidity and spiciness, and somewhat addictive. And it's hard to argue with healthy cabbage being a jar away in the fridge.

The main course was miso soup. Now...I've had miso soup loads of times in Japanese restaurants. A few little cubes of tofu and a few green seaweedy things floating around. Fine enough to take the edge off of hunger, but I was looking for something more. I hadn't actually cooked with miso for over 25 years. Heidi in 101 Cookbooks had a post not long ago about miso soup, which got it on the trusty shopping list, so that next time I was at the grocery, I picked some up and had some in the fridge, ready for when inspiration struck. That was a little while ago.

When I went shopping on Friday, I had in mind a simple sauteed shrimp with garlic, baby bok choy and scallions dish, to be cooked quickly. I had some frozen shrimp from Trader Joes already, and they were wanting to be eaten. As I started prepping though, I saw that miso in the fridge, switched gears, and made it into a miso soup:

Miso Soup
About 3 cups water
2 TBSP Red Miso
10 Medium Shrimp
2 stalks scallion, sliced/chopped
3 stalks baby bok choy, sliced/shredded
2-3 "stalks" of Dulce

Defrost the shrimp in cold water, and while your doing that, get the water boiling. Add the scallions and bok choy, and when they start to wilt, add the shrimp and dulce, and finally the miso paste.

The shrimp was succulent and tender. And as the soup cooled, the whole dish just exploded with flavor. This is definitely served best not searing hot, but allowed to cool a bit. The veggies were pleasantly tender too.

Seaweed and grape tomato salad
Notice that I put some dulce, seaweed in my miso soup. Pretty standard. Heidi from 101 had also posted recently about seaweed, which got me inspired again. Now...I didn't do anything like what she did, but I did have some seaweed in the pantry, and thought I'd use some Laver in a little salad of

grape tomatoes, halved,
lemon juice,
olive oil,
frozen cilantro -- a couple of cubes...you can get these at Trader Joes
laver

Let sit for a little bit so that the Laver softens, and eat. I'd had the frozen cilantro for ages, not knowing what to do with it...this was a good application. Tastes about how you would expect...very easy, very tasty.

Meyer Lemons
I first heard about Meyer Lemons when I heard about preserved lemon...the secret ingredient to give dishes an air of mystery. More on that soon. But, I'd heard about them again lately, I don't remember where, and then saw a big display of them at Whole Foods, and I figured I'd grab one to see what I could do with it. A little bit of browsing after the miso soup turned up this recent LA Times article, 100 things to do with a meyer lemon

The thing about Meyer lemons is that they're sweeter than typical lemons...not as sweet as an orange, or even a grapefruit...but sweeter. And their smell is intoxicating. I could've been happy just sniffing the meyer lemon for desert.

Well...I didn't do any of those things in the article yet, but did enjoy some Chinese Breakfast Tea with a little agave nectar and some Meyer lemon squeezed in. Perfect dessert. Just a little sweet, nice and tart.

I did buy a few more on my next trip, so stay tuned.

New toys

 

Some new cooking toys arrived this December, and I finally had a chance to start playing with them. I've lived without a food processor for years. I had one, but it lived off the counter, down low in the cupboard, pretty much guaranteeing that it wouldn't get used. Plus it was over 25 years old, and the bowl was cracked. For the cost of replacing the bowl, I could get a brand new one...and, without a whole lot of research, decided to trust Mark Bittman's advice and get the 14-cup Hamilton Beach processor (well....Susan got it for me...thank you Susan!). And she also got me a nice little stone mortar and pestle. They both needed breaking in.

I had some ground lamb in the freezer, and it's been wanting a mission, so I had in mind something Greek or Middle Eastern...and I did some searching for inspiration. Chowhound had a couple of ideas, here and here. I took some bits and pieces from each, and created something that I'd say tasted something like moussaka, but without all the layering, and minus the white sauce that seems to be part of real moussaka. The lamb and the seasonings worked perfectly together, and the eggplant softened and soaked up all the flavor. I'm still learning to cook with eggplant.

Almost Moussaka

1 1/2 lb ground lamb
1 28 oz can tomatoes (diced, or whole, and process)
1 large yellow onion
1 medium eggplant
1/2 bag spinach
1 TBS garam masala
1 tsp whole cumin seed, ground
2 icetray cubes of roasted tomato sauce (made this past fall...and I can't find the recipe! You could use tomato paste, or some sundried tomatoes, or canned roasted tomatoes)
1 cup red wine
3 eggs

Brown the lamb, while softening the onions and adding the spices. When brown, add the rest of the ingredients (except the eggs), and simmer for about an hour...add the spinach until it wilts. Poke indentations in the top, and drop in an egg in each indentation. We had three eaters, so we used three eggs.

Serve over something starchy. We tried rotelli pasta the first night, and it was OK, but not spectacular (that's the picture above, with the egg). For the second night....Polenta! And it was perfect (that's the picture below). Mashed potatoes would work too...but Polenta is a lot easier, and I like it better anyway. Sop up the extra with some bread. (I tried my first "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" loaf....more on that experiment another time!)

I did find the eggs a bit extraneous. It was in one of the inspirational chowhound posts, and then I ran across eggs done like this in a bunch of Greek-inspired recipes. It didn't do much for me, and seemed like overkill.

Oh...back to the original title. I used the food processor for the onions and the tomatoes, and so far I'm happy. The cumin succumbed to the mortar (or is it the pestle) readily!

Comfort food

This is the food I grew up with, and when I go home, some variation on this is usually served. It's perfect for a cold snowy weekend. You cook it on Saturday, warming up the house and giving it a nice aroma, and then serve it on Sunday. Since I took Friday off, I cooked on Friday and served on Saturday accompanied by some roasted vegetables. And, as a first course, Curried Sweet Potato and Apricot soup, as blogged by Bittman (not part of the comfort food concept, but I'd been wanting to play with it....and it's definitely worth doing again).


Bronx Braised Beef Brisket

3-5 lb. Flat beef brisket.
Salt
Garlic powder
Paprika
1 Big onion
1/3-1/2 cup tomato sauce, basic canned kind

• Lightly brown the onion in olive oil
• Coat the brisket with salt, garlic powder and paprika
• Put meat and onions in a roasting pot
• Add water to about ½ inch
• Cook in 375-400 degree oven, uncovered for 1 ½ - 2 hours, until done. Meat should be brown
• Take meat out of the pot, and let cool down separately.
• Strain pot drippings, and mush the onions through the strainer
• Add tomato sauce to drippings.
• Add boullion or other flavoring to taste (optional...I've never had to do this)
• Put drippings sauce in refrigerator. After it has cooled, skim fat off.
• Put meat in refrigerator. After it is cool (next day) cut across the grain into slices about 1/8 inch.
• When ready to serve put sliced meat and sauce into a saucepan, and simmer on top of the stove for a little while, depending on how tender the meat is. If tough, about ½-hour or more. If tender, less is OK.

I don't eat a whole lot of meat anymore, so I don't make this very often. Two-three times per year, at most. And I pretty much make it exactly like this each time, but I've been pondering some modifications, such as:

• A handful of wild mushrooms, like Chanterelles, or something earthy
• Pimenton instead of plain paprika
• A Lebanese spice blend: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, fenugreek

Some day, perhaps!

What more can I say?

Roasted root vegetables. And a chicken leg. I'd been conspiring to make this for a few days. It had been intended for Sunday, but I was too tired to cook, so it became tonight's meal. I love roasted root veggies in the winter. The way the oven heats up the kitchen. And the scent infuses the house. Perfect.

The only problem is that it takes time. And on a weeknight, I just want to get food on the table fast. That's why I do so much stir fry. Fast. But I had a plan...get the veggies cut, oiled, and seasoned and into the oven. Bite size pieces of:

sweet potato
an interesting large white and green turnip they had on display at Whole Foods
parsnips
carrot
red onion
celery
Seasoning: coarse salt, pepper, and herbs de Provence

And once they were in the oven at 350, it put in the empty cast iron skillet, seasoned the two chicken legs with Emeril's Bayou Blast (just some salt, onion, garlic, paprika, cayenne., and got those going too.

With those in the oven, and needing little attention, I could pour myself a glass of red wine, put some Trader Joes caponata in a bowl, scoop up with some corn chips, and satisfy the raging hunger till dinner was ready.

About in the oven....I upped the temperature for the second half to 400. Dinner was everything I had hoped it would be. The roasted veggies can really be a meal on their own, but the chicken side dish was perfect, as would many other sides. And there's enough left for at least another meal. I'll definitely being doing this again, even on a weeknight. Just like a stirfry, just a little more relaxed, complete with time to sit around and do nothing (or catch up on other blogs)....

While dinner was cooking, I was catching up on the blogs, and found this surprise at Tea and Food. The roasted veggies, pretty much as I'd done, and the drumstick to boot.

Live at the Improv

I started this blog mainly because I was having so much fun exploring the food adventures of other bloggers, getting inspired by their experiments, or just searching the blogs, chowhound, epicurious, or whatever for something to do with an interesting new ingredient. But much of the time, it's just looking in the fridge, thinking about what's in the pantry, and creating something tasty. Most of the time it works well, occasionally I wonder what I was thinking. This time it worked well, and the need to improvise had become extreme.

I had almost reached the point of "read my lips, no new food". The fridge had aging veggies. The freezer was overflowing. It was time to purge. So...

Red cabbage (1/4 head)
Yellow onion
Small red potatoes, 3
Habanero pepper, half, seeded, minced
1 carrot, sliced thin with mandoline
Kielbasa, half, cut into bite sized pieces
Pea tendrils, handful
cilantro, 4 or 5 sprigs
1 cube frozen roasted tomato sauce, made in early fall.
salt, pepper

I pulled out the trusty wok that I've had for going on 30 years. I'd been avoiding the wok for awhile in favor of the cast iron skillet because I'd been polluted by an article I read in Cook's Illustrated where they compared the heat-inducing behavior of home woks (as opposed to restaurant woks) versus flat bottom skillets and concluded that the flat bottom skillets were far more effective at transmitting heat, and getting to hot hot wok searing stir fry temperatures.

But I'd been thinking that I really like the way you can toss stuff around in the wok with wild abandon. With the skillet, the food pops out easily and messes up the stove. And what I really wanted to try was sauteing food in the wok, rather than blasting it with high heat.

Which is what I did with the above. The trick to this kind of cooking is to cook the tougher things first, adding items as they became more tender. The onions typically go first, because they need some time to soften and develop a sweet flavor. This time, since I was sauteing, and I didn't want to over do it, I didn't wait very long before I added the cabbage and the kielbasa, and then the carrots. I didn't want to overcook the cabbage, and I was hoping to get some carmelization on the kielbasa. The habanero got tossed in at the same time, and I beeped the potatoes in the microwave till they were barely cooked....quartered them and tossed them in.

When things were pretty much where I wanted them, I tossed in the defrosted cube of tomato sauce, the pea tendrils and the cilantro, just warming them up a bit. Stir around a bit, add some salt (not much....the kielbasa is salty) and pepper. The kielbasa also carried along some garlic, so there wasn't the need for any more flavoring.

Served with some bulghur done in the rice cooker, and I had a meal. Several actually. I think I got a second dinner and a lunch out of this.

Will I ever make this again? No. Will I make something else, someday, with interesting things that I have in the house? Of course....many times!

Welcome back into the fold, wok. Sauteing works very well!

Oatmeal Latkes

I don't throw away food easily. Usually, that's a virtue, sometimes it just gets in the way, and the refrigerator gets a little tough to navigate. The other morning I made some steel cut oatmeal, and had some leftover, so I dutifully put it in a plastic container for another day, with no idea of what I would do with it...perhaps figuring I'd just beep it some morning.

Well, tonight's dinner was to be a hodgepodge of leftovers, and I was pushing the oatmeal aside to get to other things in the fridge when the idea of shaping them into patties and pan frying them started to form. It just continues on the idea of savory oatmeal. I've done this with leftover mashed potatoes before, so why not oatmeal?

I heated up the cast iron skillet, put in a few tablespoons of canola oil, plopped the stiffened oatmeal mass onto the cutting board, and found I didn't have to form them, I just had to cut them into pancake shaped disks. Fry on medium-high (turned down to medium after a bit) and flip when then start to brown.

They were good. Not great, but good. Some salt and pepper helped. What would have really helped would be some minced onion. So next time, I'll try to have the presence of mind to add some minced onion before I put the mess into the fridge. Or...maybe just sprinkle in some onion powder -- that'll just give it a little more interest. Or, just fry them up with some onions in the skillet. I ate them by themselves, as an appetizer, but they could easily be a side dish.

It could also be served like potato latkes, with some apple sauce, or something else on the sweet side, even some maple syrup, brown sugar or cinnamon. But I think I'll stick with the savory them for awhile.

Breakfast Redefined

Thank you food blogging community.

The thing I love most about this blogging adventure is that it's not just about the experimentation, the writing and the photography, but about the collaboration and sharing that is happening, spreading culinary ideas around the globe as fast as people can blog and comment.

Case in point. Steel cut oats with egg. Consider this journey.

It's getting cold, and I've been eating oatmeal more frequently in the mornings, and had worked off last winter's supply. Shopping list in hand, at Trader Joes, I headed over to the oatmeal, and instead of buying the usual rolled oats, I bought the steel cut oats -- which I'd never made before (or even eaten).

Next morning, excited by my new acquisition, I was all set to put in a large bowl, add some water and salt, stick in the microwave for 2.5 minutes, and add some agave nectar and dried fruit -- just like I usually do with my oatmeal. Until I read the directions. Thirty minutes on the stove top. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Stir occasionally. I was NOT going to do that on a weekday morning, so I abandoned my plan, and had a bowl of cold cereal (I was even out of granola, which I often have with milk warmed in the microwave, when I'm not in the mood for oatmeal). I figured the steel cut oats experiment would have to wait until the weekend.

Then I saw this Tea and Food post about savory oatmeal. Encouraging readers (not for the first time) to skip the sweet and revel in the savory at breakfast. Hmmmm. I thought I'd give that a try. As soon as I bought some more of my old standby rolled oats.

In the comments to the original post, though, Karen B mentioned making steel cut oats in a rice cooker. !. I could do that, even on a weekday. Roll out of bed, put oats and water in rice cooker, hit the button, then proceed with other morning activities. A half hour later, my oats would be ready. And indeed they were. For my first foray into steel cut oats, and I decided to take the traditional path. Agave nectar and a banana. Wonderful. Great texture. Great taste. A keeper. The oats did foam a lot, overflowing the top, making a bit of a mess, but not really so bad that I wouldn't do it again.

I mentioned this all to Susan, who said: "Cheesy Grits"! She'd been doing this for years. Grits, cheese, salt and pepper. Perhaps an egg on top. So we proceeded to have that yesterday morning, with that sage cheddar that she hordes whenever she finds it. Delicious. She's always trying to get me to have grits, which I now realize after many grit adventures with Susan is way more tasty than the sorry looking puddle of white tasteless stuff served with eggs and bacon in the South Carolina hotel I stayed at 25 years ago and prejudiced me against grits for a long long time. (We didn't have grits growing up in New York). Someday I'll fill you in on Shrimp and Grits.....but not today.

Today was the day to try the savory steel cut oatmeal, done in the rice cooker. Easy as can be. 1/3 cup of grits. 4/3 cup of water (that's four-thirds). A half hour, and presto. When it's all done, fry up a sunny side up egg, add salt and lots of black pepper, and that's a tasty hearty breakfast. Which I will do again and again. I may even try cooking the egg on top of the oatmeal itself, as Tea and Food's Aaron suggests.

But beyond all this, when I had first read about the rice cooker steel cut oatmeal, I decided to do a little browsing to see if others were on board with this technique, and indeed they were. And some have been using a slow cooker, started the night before, and ready by the time you wake up. That'll be the next experiment. Stay tuned.

So...thanks to Aaron, Karen B. and the forgotten web site that suggested the slow cooker. Breakfast just got a lot more interesting.