Category: In the Kitchen

mendiants for xmas!

so we finally made some goodies for Christmas gifts… and merci to Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini for her inspiration: mendiants. My friend M whipped some up for her family in my kitchen (completely unassisted, I might add, since I was off learning to snowboard unexpectedly, woohoo!)… and they came out *gorgeous*. She used candied ginger, dried cherries, dried cranberries, yogurt covered raisins, giant golden raisins, peanuts, pecans, and almonds, and got some really pretty color combinations. Rather delicious, too.
She made Clotilde’s truffle recipe too, but I haven’t seen the finished product: she made off with the ganache & the coatings to finish them at the last minute. I did taste a bit though, just to be sure it wasn’t poison or anything. *grin*

Wintermelon Soup


I love soup — broth-based soups in particular. It’s a comfort food for me; strange, I suppose, for someone who grew up in the temperate climate of southern California, but I guess it is what it is. Of course, now that I live in New England, I appreciate a bowl of nice hot soup even more so.
Growing up, Mom made two soups that I remember in particular: ham hock soup and wintermelon soup. To be honest, I don’t really have a clear idea whether these were actually two distinct soups or if she would just make ham hock soup and put different things into it, wintermelon being one of them. The memories of the warm savory broth and the delicate, semi-translucent chunks of melon go hand in hand. So when I think of one, I always think of the other.
Over the years, I’ve had cravings for these creations, but never could find the proper ingredients in the local markets. I did find a smoked pork hock at one point, but the resulting soup did not pass muster, let alone reach the warm soupy goodness that I remember. (Frankly, it was just BAD.)

November 2003: Eureka!

Close up: the bounty.
Recently, when we visited my friend DrJ down in Maryland and did a tour of the Baltimore public markets, we came upon hocks that were finally up to the task. We brought a few back with us, and have since had our small freezer cache restocked by her most recent visit.
Wintermelon is also not particularly common, but we haven’t had any trouble finding it in most of the markets in Chinatown and have even found them at Russo’s, one of the local farmstand markets.
So, with the weather turning cold, we decided it was time to make some ham hock wintermelon soup.
Ingredients (quantities guesstimated):
2 high-quality Hollins Market ham hocks
1-2 Tbsp dried shrimps
6-8 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 wedge of wintermelon (1/8 of a whole melon)
napa cabbage
1/4 lb bamboo shoot
chinese cooking wine
ginger
vermicelli (mung bean noodles)
white pepper
salt
We started the stock midweek (Thursday, I think), adding two hocks, a handful of dried shrimps (2 Tbsp?) and several (maybe 6-8) largish shiitake mushrooms to a stockpot half-full of water. I brought the water to a boil and then lowered the heat to a simmer. At this stage, you should skim the schmutz that floats to the top, but due to the high-quality nature of our hock supply, there was very little schmutz to be skimmed. We let the stock simmer for a couple of hours and left it outside for the night. (the fridge is always packed and it’s cold enough now that the deck serves as an auxiliary cooler. Foodnerd somehow managed to make space in the fridge the next morning. I really have no idea how she does it but I think it involves the access of 4th dimensional space through some kind of invocation to a pantheon of kitchen deities.)
[I should mention now that you will hear no more of the shitake mushrooms. Normally I love shiitakes, but we bought a crummy batch at Costco, and while they do fine in a soup/broth making capacity, they’re actually quite nasty to eat. When the soup was done we tried one, and promptly fished the remaining mushrooms out and dumped them. Bah. But having said that, the soup was otherwise a great success — you’ll see.]
Anyway.
Saturday, we headed over to the Super 88 in Brighton to fetch our wintermelon. While we were there, we also picked up some fresh bamboo shoot and some napa cabbage. We could have gotten canned bamboo shoots, but Foodnerd insisted on the fresh. We also purchased some unrelated fat sticks (sweet Chinese sausage) and sauces. (The Foodnerd just can’t help herself sometimes. She claims we “needed” them.)
First, I coarsely julienned about 1/4 lb of the bamboo shoot. (I’d say it was about enough to make a full handful. Pretty much everything here can be adjusted to taste.) I pulled about half the leaves off the napa cabbage, rinsed them and then sliced them crosswise into 1″ wide strips. (I’m guessing it ended up being about 1/2-1 lb — basically a heaping pile on the cutting board.)
And then it was on to the wintermelon.
I’ve now read that you could just eat it raw, like watermelon, I suppose. It’s also interesting to discover that if you do a Google search on wintermelon, after asking you whether you’re really searching for “watermelon,” you’ll end up with a lot of pages about wintermelon soup. Foodnerd only found one thread on recipes that didn’t result in soup.
Basically, you want vaguely cube-like chunks that are around 1″ on a side. I removed the seeds (I hate to waste any melon, so I don’t just cut off the seedy section), sliced it into 1″ wide, um, slices, and cut off the rind trying to preserve as much of the tender white flesh as possible. (I’m sorry, does that sound dirty?) I then cut the slices into cubes. You don’t want them too large so they don’t take forever to cook through, but you don’t want them too small or they’ll just dissolve. (But you probably already knew that.)
[I had a tough time figuring out how much wintermelon we actually needed so we bought two wedges (roughly an eighth of a whole melon each, i.e. cut in half and then quartered), where each wedge probably weighed around a pound or so. After cutting up one of the wedges, I’d say one’s probably enough.]
So in went the bamboo shoots, wintermelon and cabbage. The stock (still with hocks) only filled the pot half way, so when I put all the other stuff in, all the wintermelon was submerged, but the cabbage kind of sat above the waterline, an island of vegetable. No worries, though. The volume reduces as the water cooks out of the cabbage, which also increases the volume of the soup. Now that’s win-win. At this point I also added the white pepper and salt.
One more thing:
Last year, we tried to make a pork and pickled cabbage soup, but the broth just didn’t come out right. We’ve been looking over some of our Chinese cookbooks, and one of the things we noticed was that some of the recipes added ginger to the stocks. Something clicked, so Foodnerd managed to dig up some ginger root out of the freezer (maybe a 1/2″ chunk) and we threw that into the stock too.
We let the ingredients cook up for about an hour. You can generally tell when the wintermelon is done because it takes on this cool semi-translucent appearance. But of course, you gotta do the taste test: it should be really easy to bite through, but still should have a little something to it — like a perfect al dente pasta, but then it should pretty much melt in your mouth.
At that point, we figured we were done, but when we tried the broth, it still seemed to be missing something. Foodnerd suggested vinegar, but I didn’t think that could be right, especially since I think she’d suggest that for just about anything anyway (it’s her east-European pickle-lover side). We finally agreed on Chinese cooking wine. (we have a bottle of Shao Hsing rice cooking wine in the fridge for just such an occasion.) We tried a splash, then a few more and it rounded out the flavor nicely. All told it probably worked out to about 1/4 cup, but as with much of this, you should probably just do it to taste.
With everything else done, we finally added the vermicelli, a mung bean thread. Growing up, I used to know it as xi fen (pronounced: she-fun), and I loved the stuff. It was in college when I first heard the term “vermicelli,” and since then, I had a bit of confusion as to exactly what it was that I loved so much. I just remember the little bundles of dried noodles that Mom would have in the pantry that she’d put in soups or we’d have for the (infrequent) hot pot dinners. The one time I bought them in college, I found them by pattern-matching the packaging in an Asian food store. I got it right that time, but recently we made the mistake of buying rice noodles and it just didn’t cut it. It’s gotta be the mung bean.
We now have a pink netting bag of Lungfung brand vermicelli, each bundle of noodles tied off with two pieces of thread, just like I remember it. I threw two bundles in, and gave it about 5 minutes to cook through and then it was serving time.
Hot, savory, rich, and yet…clean. A little crunch of bamboo shoot (and I’m usually not a big fan), cabbage that’s barely there, clear noodles and yummy chunks of melt-in-your-mouth wintermelon. Ahhh.
Oh yeah, I love me some wintermelon soup.

bah, humbug

I am just not cut out for baking and candymaking. I tried to make the cranberry-pear jellies from the November Gourmet, and I followed the instructions EXACTLY and today I find they will stay only vaguely cubeshaped and have an alarming tendency to puddle and smush when you pick them up. To make up for this lack in a gift-package to dear friends tonight, I decided to whip up a batch of my great-uncle’s fabulous butter crunch, consisting only of butter & sugar cooked to hard crack & cooled. This of course curdled just as it was starting to color, and though my mother’s suggestion to whisk it actually did manage to recombine it, the damned thing had already overcooked, so now I have rather burnt-tasting crunch, also unfit for gift-giving, and possibly unfit even for surreptitious guilty comfort eating later in the privacy of my own darkened kitchen. All this on top of the parade of slumped-over horrid-looking birthday cakes over the past year. BAH.
At least the cheese scones came out okay, even if the cheese did end up mostly on the outside of the scones in crunchy puddles rather than inside. And I managed not to screw up chocolate dipped pretzels too badly, once I figured out that the colored sugar looks better if you let the chocolate cool almost all the way before dipping into the sugar. However, for my money, it’s the ones sprinkled with fleur de sel that taste best. My taste for salt is clearly a sign that I should leave the confections to the competent, like spleen & hedge. Sigh.
(Update: Second replacement batch of butter crunch also curdled, and would not be reconstituted by any amount of whisking, but at least I didn’t burn it and I was able to salvage it by pouring off the excess butter, then covering its textural deficiencies with chopped nuts & pushing it into the pan by hand. I give up, I swear. Sigh.)

damn, why didn’t I think of that?

As soon as this is typed, I am getting up from the chair to make one of these.
from davesbeer.com:

Italian (-American) Soda

  • sugar, 1-2 T
  • flavor, e.g., vanilla extract, 1 t
  • water, flat, ca. 1 oz
  • water, fizzy, ca. 11 oz

Add sugar to your favorite glass. Add about an ounce of tap water and swirl to dissolve the sugar. Add the flavor extract to the sugar solution. Then, fill with cold fizzy water. I like mine without ice.
I usually don’t care about health or diet, but this drink is quite a bit lighter than a typical soft drink. For instance, when Coke finally oozes out of the can, it has a sugar content around 10% by weight. This version is about 3%.

cauliflower that even cauliflower-haters will love

I made this tonight for a group of friends, some of whom are vegetarian and needed something yummy to substitute for the turkey tetrazzini I made to use up the last of the damned turkey. (Tallasiandude has declared a moratorium on turkey consumption because all the tryptophan gives him hangovers.) It went over huge, and I have nothing left to photograph — the veggies loved it, the carnivores loved it, and one friend who hates cauliflower loved it. It comes out savory and spicy and a little tangy, and nice & soft & brown & roasty. Easy as hell, too — make a spice vinaigrette, toss with veg, roast. I got this recipe out of Bon Appetit Sept 2004; it was credited to reputedly-fabulous LA restaurant A.O.C. and billed as Roasted Curried Cauliflower. I made a half recipe using one head of cauliflower.
12 cups cauliflower florets (4 lbs)
1 lg onion, quartered
1 tsp coriander seeds (or 1/2 tsp already ground)
1 tsp cumin seeds (ditto)
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
3.5 tsp curry powder (I used madras)
1 tbsp hot paprika (I used hungarian hot from Penzey’s, which is pretty spicy — supplement with cayenne if yours isn’t spicy)
1.75 tsp salt (I used kosher salt & it was plenty salty, so if you use table salt, I might cut back a little)
fresh ground pepper
fresh cilantro (very optional)
Preheat oven to 450F. Put florets in large roasting pan or cookie sheet. Separate onion layers and add to pan. Toast coriander & cumin over medium heat 5 minutes till slightly darkened, then crush in a mortar & pestle. (Frankly I think you could skip this step, especially if using already-ground spices, but then again I am lazy and kind of a philistine when it comes to toasting spices.) Combine all the spices & salt & oil & vinegar and whisk or shake to blend. Pour over vegetables & toss to coat. Spread in a single layer, grind some pepper over, and put in oven. Roast until tender, stirring occasionally, about 35 minutes. I found that 35 was just a shade too long and they were starting to burn, but my oven runs hot. Sprinkle with fresh cilantro if desired. These can hold 2 hours, and are good at room temperature or hot, and can be rewarmed at 450F for 10 minutes if desired.
I am actually thinking about making up a batch of the spice blend, so I can have it on hand to use for roasting vegetables in this way at the drop of a hat. Spice, vinegar & umami — what’s not to love?

turkey, REALLY old-school










My parents live in an 1825 farmhouse in the boonies, and have a big fireplace with a brick beehive woodfired oven. They use it once a year to cook the Thanksgiving turkey, which comes out amazing because the heat is very high at first, with a long slow heat to follow. The meat stays moist & tender & flavorful — it’s just great.
The one problem has always been that the outside has a tendency to burn to a crisp because the heat is so high at the outset (between 500-600F). Over the years we’ve tried lots of things, like covering the bird with an oil-soaked cloth, putting water in the bottom of the pan, etc. Last year’s innovation was to cover the bird with a pound of bacon underneath the oiled cloth, which worked great, because the bacon burned to a crisp instead, leaving mahogany skin underneath. Bacon makes *everything* better.
This year, we let the oven cool down much more than usual (because I was too slow finishing the stuffing, whoops), to just above 400F or so. This means we don’t have enough residual heat after the turkey finishes to bake our usual pots of beans, but I’m willing to sacrifice, because the burning-to-a-crisp situation is much improved. The bacon is almost edible, if a bit well-done, and the skin is gorgeous and the meat is delectable as usual. Next year, I’m agitating for even more preliminary cooling. I’m sure it will make my father completely insane, because he has waiting issues — he can barely stand to let the bird sit & reabsorb its juices for more than 10 minutes after it is done. *grin*
The basic method for brick oven usage is to build a wood fire inside the night before, and let it burn down. In the morning, shovel out the ashes, and build another fire, which you time so it’ll have burned down by the time you want to start baking. Shovel out the coals & ashes again, and when the temperature is where you want it, bung in the bird and shut the door. The whole fireplace structure will be hot to the touch, because the bricks have absorbed so much heat, and the cooking is done by the heat radiating back out from the bricks. That’s why the temperature comes down so fast, from 600F+ to below 400F in just a few minutes after the coals are removed, but then stays between 375 & 300F for hours. It’s nice to come in from a walk outside in the cold raw woods and warm your hands up by fondling the toasty fireplace wall.
The rest of dinner was even better than usual, if we do say so ourselves. We had mashed potatoes with the usual complement of dairy-based fats, mashed buttercup squash, smashed rutabaga & carrot (YUM), green beans, brussels sprouts picked out in the yard that morning, creamed onions (my father’s sweet & tender garden onions made these *so* much better than the slightly tough, sharp supermarket onions that never seem to meld right with the cream & butter), bread stuffing with sausage, sage & mushrooms sauteed in sherry, dripping gravy, corn pudding (from my friend M’s family recipe, soon to be a foodnerd family recipe – yum!), relish tray of olives & sweet gherkins & carrot sticks, and jelly-style cranberry sauce still bearing the shape of the can. And because too much is never, ever enough, especially on Thanksgiving, we had four desserts: apple pie — please note my mother’s fabulous pie crust, which I have never been able to equal; marlborough pudding (an old 18th/19thC recipe of custard laced with sherry and stewed apples and nutmeg & baked in a pastry shell); pumpkin pie from my jewish grandma’s asskicking recipe (a shot of whisky is the secret ingredient); and sailor’s duff, another recipe of M’s for a steamed molasses-based pudding-cake, with unbelievable sauce of whipped cream enriched with a cooked egg-sugar mix, and for which I am forbidden to post the recipe, lest I be hunted down by M’s family members and shot. Oh, and vanilla ice cream and regular whipped cream. And port.
We had to go lie down for a while after dinner.

12/8/04 addendum: In addition to the creamed onions recipe in the comments, by popular demand here is the Marlborough Pudding recipe.
2 large apples
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup sherry
6 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons nutmeg
4 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 lemon , juiced
1 sheet puff pastry dough OR 1 pie crust
Preheat oven to 350F. Stew apples until very tender — push through fine sieve (or food mill) to make puree. Mix together 3/4 cup apple puree, sugar, sherry, butter, eggs, heavy cream, lemon juice, & nutmeg.
Line deep 8″ pie plate or square pan with pastry. Pour in apple mix. Bake about one hour or until set — knife inserted in center comes out fairly clean. Cool before serving. (Old Sturbridge Village recipe. )

IMBB10: Chocolate Afghans

I am still in the throes of work hell, so baking was an utter impossibility for me this weekend, but I know what cookie I would have made: chocolate afghans. All over New Zealand, we found these fabulous crunchy chocolatey cookies wherever you might find a big thick chocolate chip cookie here in the US. We happily gobbled them up with our tea, and eventually happened on the best cookie in NZ as far as we could tell, at the DeLambert Cafe in Oamaru on the east coast of the South Island, 70 Thames St, Oamaru. 0-3-434 8884. (Apparently it is/was for sale. Oh, the temptation.)
The picture above is from the last batch I made for the MoveOn bake sale, so unfortunately they’re wrapped up in plastic for sale, but you can get the general idea: thick chocolate cookie, with thick fudgy icing, and a walnut half on top. The web turns up not very dang much on these cookies, but my friend Ian did some experimenting and pointed questioning of his Kiwi pal, and came up with the following recipe.

Cookies:
200g (a little less than half a pound) unsalted butter
1/2 cup = 1.2 dl sugar
1 1/4 cup = 3 dl flour
4 tablespoons = 60 ml cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder (can try using up to 2 tsp)
2 cups = 4.5 dl corn flakes (I would measure before crushing). You can also use Weetabix. (Note: Foodnerd recommends Weetabix if available for better crunchiness.)
Frosting (this made almost twice as much as I needed):
200g sweetened cooking chocolate
2 scant tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons cream (the original recipe called for 1/2 cup but this would
have made it too runny)
walnut halves
Preheat oven to 350 F/ 180 C
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then stir in dry ingredients. Note that this dough is really stiff and will take a lot of elbow grease to incorporate properly. Crush Weetabix/cornflakes (more or less fully depending on taste) and fold in well. (It works best if the crunchies end up inside the cookies not on the surface.)
Use your hands or a tablespoon to form dough into fairly large cookies, almost golf ball size (this recipe made only 18-20 cookies). Place on greased cookie sheet and press down slightly. They’ll be a bit thick.
Bake about 13 minutes; better to undercook rather than overcook & make them too dry. Cookies should still be soft and fragile when you take them out of the oven, but they will harden somewhat after a few minutes of cooling. Let them cool enough on the tray or they’ll smush as you lift them.
To frost, melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler and add cream until you get the right consistency. After cookies have cooled somewhat, use a spoon to cover them generously with frosting and then put a walnut half on top.

finally, those damn tomatoes get fried

In an act of sheer pigheaded will, I carved out time to fry the last two green tomatoes. I sliced them about 1/4″ thick, dredged in beaten egg thinned with a tablespoon of water, and then in seasoned breadcrumbs (I used italian flavored ones, with some extra black pepper and hot paprika added). Fried them in about 1/8″ of canola oil over medium heat just till golden brown & crunchy. Served with plain baked chicken legs & rice & veg. Yum.