This is a bit off topic, but it leads to where I personally hope to be going with my new-found rediscovery of my love of cooking:
Roving Feast columnist becomes diet outlaw
Overweight and out of shape, I need to change some things about my life, and the author's focus on not-so-much of many different and delicious foods is one path I hope to be going down.
Stick around for the next installment, where I return to the task of helping David learn to have more fun feeding himself and borrow liberally from Peg Bracken's Appendix to the I Hate to Cook Book, specifically the chapter called "Alone, Cooking if: Eating with your Shoes Off"
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Chipotle Pork Stew
Okay, David, here is the next project: Chipotle Pork Stew. I had you get all of the ingredients the week I was there--all except for the pork. (Well, the tomatillos, if you haven't already used them for something else, may be getting a little bit long in the tooth.)
This is the stuff that needs to be cut or chopped:
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (4 ounce) can green chilies, diced or 2 anaheim chilies, roasted peeled and diced
1 (7 ounce) can tomatillos, drained and roughly chopped or 7 tomatillos, chopped
1 tablespoon minced chipotle chile in adobo (this is in a can; refrigerate or freeze the residue in one of those little plastic containers)
And these spices need to be mixed together. If you still don't have a mortar & pestle, then you might try the bottom edge of a coffee cup for grinding the cumin; to chop the oregano, strip it off the stems and rock your knife up and down on the leaves (see this movie):
1/2 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon oregano leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
Even though you cut the pork off the bones, go ahead and leave the bones in when you are cooking the meat; it will add flavor and gelatin to the stock (take them out before you freeze any of this, though: the sharp bones will poke right through the plastic).
When I made this, I used the crock pot, as it's really ideally suited for that.
As the recipe suggests, you can serve this over rice, but I see it as ideal taco filling, as well. :-) If you don't want to stand over your crappy pot making sure it's not burning on the bottom, you could also transfer it, after it comes to a simmer, to that big pyrex pan you have and finish it in the oven, probably at about 325 degrees.
Update:I made this at my mom's house during Christmas week 2009, only I doubled it and used chicken thighs instead of pork. When it was done we took off the skin and removed the bones, then refrigerated to it was easy to skim the fat off the top. I also made this when I had a long-term houseguest in the fall, and with some additional broth, black beans, tomatoes and so on, it made a really terrific soup. This one is a keeper for sure.
This is the stuff that needs to be cut or chopped:
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (4 ounce) can green chilies, diced or 2 anaheim chilies, roasted peeled and diced
1 (7 ounce) can tomatillos, drained and roughly chopped or 7 tomatillos, chopped
1 tablespoon minced chipotle chile in adobo (this is in a can; refrigerate or freeze the residue in one of those little plastic containers)
And these spices need to be mixed together. If you still don't have a mortar & pestle, then you might try the bottom edge of a coffee cup for grinding the cumin; to chop the oregano, strip it off the stems and rock your knife up and down on the leaves (see this movie):
1/2 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon oregano leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
Even though you cut the pork off the bones, go ahead and leave the bones in when you are cooking the meat; it will add flavor and gelatin to the stock (take them out before you freeze any of this, though: the sharp bones will poke right through the plastic).
When I made this, I used the crock pot, as it's really ideally suited for that.
As the recipe suggests, you can serve this over rice, but I see it as ideal taco filling, as well. :-) If you don't want to stand over your crappy pot making sure it's not burning on the bottom, you could also transfer it, after it comes to a simmer, to that big pyrex pan you have and finish it in the oven, probably at about 325 degrees.
Update:I made this at my mom's house during Christmas week 2009, only I doubled it and used chicken thighs instead of pork. When it was done we took off the skin and removed the bones, then refrigerated to it was easy to skim the fat off the top. I also made this when I had a long-term houseguest in the fall, and with some additional broth, black beans, tomatoes and so on, it made a really terrific soup. This one is a keeper for sure.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Using a meal to make other meals (or, new pancakes from old batter*)
*The above title is a bit of an homage to my old boss at IIASA, Kirit Parikh, Ph.D., who used to say that about our methods of recycling bits of scientific papers to put into other scientific papers. Don't tell me you've never thought about it!
When I was in Ajijic most recently, I bought two chickens at the local tienguis and cooked one that day and another the day of David's dinner party. We invited only Elliott for the "sneak preview," which was beer can chicken made in the oven rather than on the grill (David didn't have the heart to evict the spiders and lizards inhabiting his outdoor grill since he moved in in July). I'm happy to share the recipe with anyone who asks, but I got it from www.cooksillustrated.com, which you need to subscribe to (plus there are variations all over the Internet; it's a simple dish), and in any event I tweaked it beyond recognition because of not being able to find ingredients, or not being willing to pay $8 for a small jar of celery seed, or other shopping difficulties occasioned by the fact that in Spanish the words for Cayenne pepper, allspice, and pepper are apparently more or less the same. :-(
It came out well, though, as did the rosemary garlic roasted chicken and potatoes I made (after brining) Saturday night.
However, Elliott raised a point on one of these nights that was a good one: she said she would never roast a chicken because she knows that on Tuesday night [fill in name of chicken guy here] has a 2-for-one special that will taste as good as anything she could make and it won't cost her appreciably more than making them from scratch.
Which brings me to the whole question: why cook? and especially: why cook for yourself, without an audience?
As fate would have it, I happened to run across a relevant passage this morning when re-reading my favorite clay pot cookbook (don't get me started, that will be a whole nother post, as they say):
[author Grover Sales rants about all the bad food he'd had to eat, first in his home town of Louisville, then at college, then in the military]...
There are reasons to cook for yourself, though, and they are as individual as people themselves. One good reason is you've got a hankering for something you can't just run around the corner and buy, whether it's corned beef and cabbage or a BLT. Another reason for me is that often I don't feel a restaurant does as good a job as I would do myself with a particular dish. I happened to grow up in the Arizona-Sonora desert with a certain kind of guacamole accepted as the standard, and if you try to serve me one with no discernable tomatoes, for instance, I'm not going to be happy. (By the same token, I'll often order grilled halibut or sea bass at a restaurant, rather than, say, steak, because it's hard to grill fish properly at home without drying it out.) Or what if somebody brings you 5-10 pounds of freshly caught salmon or trout or something? You can't just let it moulder away in the fridge. There is also--and I'm trying to entice David with this argument as well as with the frugality aspect--a sense of almost artistic accomplishment in having taken a bunch of unrelated raw ingredients and, with a little magic, turned them into a scrumptuous dish. We are shorthanding it for now as "the zen of chopping."
Anyhow, regardless of whether you roasted it yourself or bought it two-for-one at Tony's Grill, that chicken is good for a lot more than one meal. Sure, the night you get it, you cut yourself off a nice quarter (for me it would be the wing and breast bit) and serve it to yourself with a little pile of fluffy jasmine rice (the fluffiness of which you've ensured by tying a kitchen towel over its lid like a little white turban), or a potato you've roasted along with it, and the veg of your choice. A very respectable meal for a bachelor, after all.
Once you've got the remains snugly encased in their plastic wrap in the fridge, though, they can still be eaten more or less as is--nothing wrong with cold chicken for lunch or even dinner--or, they become the slices or bite-sized pieces of chicken that form the prime ingredient of many other recipes, such as:
a sandwich;
an open-faced toasted sandwich (with cheese, maybe even a slice of ham);
(suitably jazzed up) a taco or burrito or enchilada or quesadilla;
a chicken pot pie (using the faux Bisquick mix we didn't get around to making);
a creamy or pesto-y pasta dish (either stove-top or baked with a crumb-cheese-type crust);
a salad (maybe even made with some of that left-over rice, or see magical oriental salad posted earlier)
See, I think when people aren't used to doing much cooking for themselves, the idea of a whole chicken or roast or loin of pork intimidates them. But truly, from both an economical and a time-expenditure point of view, a big cut of meat can be a lot more useful than single boneless, skinless breast or chop. It's one or two meals that are really fit for a king, and then it's a stockpile of--not leftovers--but ingredients for further meals. I mean, you pay Louis Rich and Oscar Mayer a lot of money for those tiny packets of carefully sliced and overly salted and processed sandwich meats. Why not just use the good stuff? Don't want to eat pork or chicken all week? That's why god gave you a freezer, honey chile! And that's why she invented ziploc bags.
When you really get into cooking, you will also pop the chicken bones into another ziploc bag so you can use them to make soup. But we're not aiming for the moon here yet.
When I was in Ajijic most recently, I bought two chickens at the local tienguis and cooked one that day and another the day of David's dinner party. We invited only Elliott for the "sneak preview," which was beer can chicken made in the oven rather than on the grill (David didn't have the heart to evict the spiders and lizards inhabiting his outdoor grill since he moved in in July). I'm happy to share the recipe with anyone who asks, but I got it from www.cooksillustrated.com, which you need to subscribe to (plus there are variations all over the Internet; it's a simple dish), and in any event I tweaked it beyond recognition because of not being able to find ingredients, or not being willing to pay $8 for a small jar of celery seed, or other shopping difficulties occasioned by the fact that in Spanish the words for Cayenne pepper, allspice, and pepper are apparently more or less the same. :-(
It came out well, though, as did the rosemary garlic roasted chicken and potatoes I made (after brining) Saturday night.
However, Elliott raised a point on one of these nights that was a good one: she said she would never roast a chicken because she knows that on Tuesday night [fill in name of chicken guy here] has a 2-for-one special that will taste as good as anything she could make and it won't cost her appreciably more than making them from scratch.
Which brings me to the whole question: why cook? and especially: why cook for yourself, without an audience?
As fate would have it, I happened to run across a relevant passage this morning when re-reading my favorite clay pot cookbook (don't get me started, that will be a whole nother post, as they say):
[author Grover Sales rants about all the bad food he'd had to eat, first in his home town of Louisville, then at college, then in the military]...
So dining out stayed a dream deferred until I moved to San Francisco in the late Forties, when the City still boasted of countless nontourist down-home eateries--Chinese, German, French, Greek, and mainly Italian family-style, with groaning seven-course spreads including a carafe of gusty Grignolino and dark, pungent espresso with a twist of lemon peel--all for little more than the price of a first-run movie, in those days about $1.25. With this kind of dining out, who needed to cook?
There are reasons to cook for yourself, though, and they are as individual as people themselves. One good reason is you've got a hankering for something you can't just run around the corner and buy, whether it's corned beef and cabbage or a BLT. Another reason for me is that often I don't feel a restaurant does as good a job as I would do myself with a particular dish. I happened to grow up in the Arizona-Sonora desert with a certain kind of guacamole accepted as the standard, and if you try to serve me one with no discernable tomatoes, for instance, I'm not going to be happy. (By the same token, I'll often order grilled halibut or sea bass at a restaurant, rather than, say, steak, because it's hard to grill fish properly at home without drying it out.) Or what if somebody brings you 5-10 pounds of freshly caught salmon or trout or something? You can't just let it moulder away in the fridge. There is also--and I'm trying to entice David with this argument as well as with the frugality aspect--a sense of almost artistic accomplishment in having taken a bunch of unrelated raw ingredients and, with a little magic, turned them into a scrumptuous dish. We are shorthanding it for now as "the zen of chopping."
Anyhow, regardless of whether you roasted it yourself or bought it two-for-one at Tony's Grill, that chicken is good for a lot more than one meal. Sure, the night you get it, you cut yourself off a nice quarter (for me it would be the wing and breast bit) and serve it to yourself with a little pile of fluffy jasmine rice (the fluffiness of which you've ensured by tying a kitchen towel over its lid like a little white turban), or a potato you've roasted along with it, and the veg of your choice. A very respectable meal for a bachelor, after all.
Once you've got the remains snugly encased in their plastic wrap in the fridge, though, they can still be eaten more or less as is--nothing wrong with cold chicken for lunch or even dinner--or, they become the slices or bite-sized pieces of chicken that form the prime ingredient of many other recipes, such as:
a sandwich;
an open-faced toasted sandwich (with cheese, maybe even a slice of ham);
(suitably jazzed up) a taco or burrito or enchilada or quesadilla;
a chicken pot pie (using the faux Bisquick mix we didn't get around to making);
a creamy or pesto-y pasta dish (either stove-top or baked with a crumb-cheese-type crust);
a salad (maybe even made with some of that left-over rice, or see magical oriental salad posted earlier)
See, I think when people aren't used to doing much cooking for themselves, the idea of a whole chicken or roast or loin of pork intimidates them. But truly, from both an economical and a time-expenditure point of view, a big cut of meat can be a lot more useful than single boneless, skinless breast or chop. It's one or two meals that are really fit for a king, and then it's a stockpile of--not leftovers--but ingredients for further meals. I mean, you pay Louis Rich and Oscar Mayer a lot of money for those tiny packets of carefully sliced and overly salted and processed sandwich meats. Why not just use the good stuff? Don't want to eat pork or chicken all week? That's why god gave you a freezer, honey chile! And that's why she invented ziploc bags.
When you really get into cooking, you will also pop the chicken bones into another ziploc bag so you can use them to make soup. But we're not aiming for the moon here yet.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Vinegar and onions
So, David, you thought I had let you off the hook just because you made your first blog post. (Well, technically, your second.) Not so fast, buddy!
The thought occurred to me more than once as I was wandering around Superlake (store run by canny Mexican where you can buy goods beloved of American ex-pats) and contemplating passing on to you my favorite chicken salad recipe that I would need to distinguish between the way I cook and the way you do or may be about to, if that turns out to be different.
"Should I get David some rice wine vinegar so he has it for the Top Ramen chicken salad," I mused, "or is that overkill"? It would be a simpler question if he had any kind of vinegar, say, apple cider or white, or anything but Balsamic. Tragically, in case you hadn't heard, that stuff we've been buying at Safeway and even Trader Joe's isn't real Balsamic vinegar at all, but that's another show, as Alton Brown would say.
I personally have the following vinegars at all times in my pantry, and when I run out I go get some more: "Balsamic," red wine, rice wine, raspberry (which I use almost exclusively on cooked spinach--raw spinach doesn't have enough nutritional value to put in your eye, apparently, so you can stop feeling guilty about not liking it). No tarragon, because it doesn't come up and anyway I hope to be growing my own tarragon next year, and no apple cider because, well, because I'm not sure what I would use it for. I also have a gallon jug of white vinegar, but that's for household chores relating to cat accidents, etc.
The main reason to have vinegar, unless you are into esoteric things like Sauerbraten, is for salads. So I guess it's a matter of judgment and personal taste whether you want to subtly distinguish between an Italian and an oriental salad. Will using "Balsamic" vinegar ruin the Top Ramen chicken salad? I can't tell you, but it might bug me just because I know.
Now, on to onions. I would ideally always have at least one yellow and one purple onion kicking around the kitchen. This is another thing, besides tomatoes, that doesn't go in the fridge. Cool and dry storage, kind of like potatoes, is what you need here. Conventional wisdom is that you use the yellow onion for cooking: either "sweating" it to form part of a mirepoix or soffritto, or cooking it until it starts to carmelize and turn brown, depending on the function and flavor you want in the dish. By contrast, the red onion is associated with cold service--e.g. a salad, the garnish for a raw seafood item, etc. A gorgeous combo for any raw fish or scallop would consist of lemon or lime juice, capers (chopped if they are big), and finely chopped purple onion. Come to think of it, I would make a sauce out of these to put on a thin chicken breast or fish filet I had just pan-friend or steamed.
What my father told me: Apparently when food stands set up at places like the state or county fair, the first thing the cooks do, even if they are selling corn dogs or cotton candy, is to throw some chopped onions on the griddle. The smell of the frying onions makes everyone hungry!
The thought occurred to me more than once as I was wandering around Superlake (store run by canny Mexican where you can buy goods beloved of American ex-pats) and contemplating passing on to you my favorite chicken salad recipe that I would need to distinguish between the way I cook and the way you do or may be about to, if that turns out to be different.
"Should I get David some rice wine vinegar so he has it for the Top Ramen chicken salad," I mused, "or is that overkill"? It would be a simpler question if he had any kind of vinegar, say, apple cider or white, or anything but Balsamic. Tragically, in case you hadn't heard, that stuff we've been buying at Safeway and even Trader Joe's isn't real Balsamic vinegar at all, but that's another show, as Alton Brown would say.
I personally have the following vinegars at all times in my pantry, and when I run out I go get some more: "Balsamic," red wine, rice wine, raspberry (which I use almost exclusively on cooked spinach--raw spinach doesn't have enough nutritional value to put in your eye, apparently, so you can stop feeling guilty about not liking it). No tarragon, because it doesn't come up and anyway I hope to be growing my own tarragon next year, and no apple cider because, well, because I'm not sure what I would use it for. I also have a gallon jug of white vinegar, but that's for household chores relating to cat accidents, etc.
The main reason to have vinegar, unless you are into esoteric things like Sauerbraten, is for salads. So I guess it's a matter of judgment and personal taste whether you want to subtly distinguish between an Italian and an oriental salad. Will using "Balsamic" vinegar ruin the Top Ramen chicken salad? I can't tell you, but it might bug me just because I know.
Now, on to onions. I would ideally always have at least one yellow and one purple onion kicking around the kitchen. This is another thing, besides tomatoes, that doesn't go in the fridge. Cool and dry storage, kind of like potatoes, is what you need here. Conventional wisdom is that you use the yellow onion for cooking: either "sweating" it to form part of a mirepoix or soffritto, or cooking it until it starts to carmelize and turn brown, depending on the function and flavor you want in the dish. By contrast, the red onion is associated with cold service--e.g. a salad, the garnish for a raw seafood item, etc. A gorgeous combo for any raw fish or scallop would consist of lemon or lime juice, capers (chopped if they are big), and finely chopped purple onion. Come to think of it, I would make a sauce out of these to put on a thin chicken breast or fish filet I had just pan-friend or steamed.
What my father told me: Apparently when food stands set up at places like the state or county fair, the first thing the cooks do, even if they are selling corn dogs or cotton candy, is to throw some chopped onions on the griddle. The smell of the frying onions makes everyone hungry!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Speaking of Umami
I don't know where I had been for the last couple of years, culinarily speaking, but now that I've pulled my head out of the sand I'm discovering all manner of things: a citrus fruit called Buddha's fingers, ponzu sauce, and umami. According to Wikipedia, "Umami was first identified as a basic taste in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University while researching the strong flavor in seaweed broth." The article's authors draw a parallel with the concept Brillat-Savarin named osmazome. This NPR story links Escoffier's discovery of veal stock to Europe's first conscious experience of umami. Perhaps it's too boring to go into all the theories--it is the 5th taste, after sour, sweet, salty, and bitter--or it's a sign that the food contains protein and is thus important for evolution and survival--but the practical item of interest to me is that there is perhaps a predictable way to ensure that good tasting things really do taste good. Could this be used by someone who is trying to lose weight, for instance, to induce a sense of satiety more reliably? I hope to experiment with the concept over the next months.
What to do with leftover chicken
I have a small store of "more than the sum of their parts" recipes. This one comes from a cookbook published by the Heifer Project (warning, pop-up alert), an unusual charitable organization that literally buys livestock for people in developing countries. However, it's pretty easy to find it on the web. One reason I like this recipe so much is because it is a way for me to eat raw cabbage that I actually like. I've only once found a cole slaw I could stand. (That reminds me, I should write to my cousin Diane about that!). Of course, you can find variations of this recipe all over the internet. This particular version is from Cooks.com.
The version I am used to omits the peppers, but why not use them if you have them? (Except for the icky, unripe, green peppers.) For lemon juice, I substitute rice vinegar, and for sugar, hoisin sauce. I use white pepper instead of black when I have it. As for the Accent, I guess we all know that is MSG. Not sure that is as bad as it's painted, given all the fuss about Umami these days, but in any event I'd be surprised if it weren't already in the Top Ramen spice packet.
| TOP RAMEN CHICKEN SALAD | |
2 pkgs. Top Ramen chicken flavored noodles 3 chicken breasts, cooked 1/2 head shredded cabbage 3 tbsp. toasted sesame seeds 3 tbsp. toasted sliced almonds 3 tbsp. sugar 3 tbsp. lemon juice 6 tbsp. oil 1 tsp. Accent 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. pepper 1/2 c. each red, green, yellow sweet peppers 1 sm. can sliced water chestnuts, drain 1/2 c. chopped green onions, tops too Remove soup packets and set aside. Crunch up dry noodles and place in large bowl. Add cabbage, peppers, onions, water chestnuts and chicken (chopped). Mix in another small bowl sugar, lemon juice, oil, accent, salt and pepper and contents of the two small soup packets. Mix well. Add sesame seeds and pour dressing over all. Mix thoroughly and cover. Let it set for 24 to 36 hours before serving, tossing it several times. Scatter toasted almonds on top before serving. Do not cook noodles. You can vary this salad by using shrimp flavored soup and putting in baby shrimp, or omit meat and serve vegetarian. Serves: 10 to 12. | |
The version I am used to omits the peppers, but why not use them if you have them? (Except for the icky, unripe, green peppers.) For lemon juice, I substitute rice vinegar, and for sugar, hoisin sauce. I use white pepper instead of black when I have it. As for the Accent, I guess we all know that is MSG. Not sure that is as bad as it's painted, given all the fuss about Umami these days, but in any event I'd be surprised if it weren't already in the Top Ramen spice packet.
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