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Cold beet soup for a hot beat day.
That is all.
Category Archives: Home Cookin’
Green Jackfruit Confit with Fish Mint
Part eight in a series of reports.
Some folks look forward to the annual celebration of their birthdays or anniversaries; for me it’s the occasion to cover America’s largest food and beverage trade show right here in New York City, Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show. (Check out full coverage and a description of a past event here.) Aside from the fact that it affords the chance to hob and nob with other professional foodies, see what products and brands are trending and poised to make a breakthrough, and get a sense of what the industry thinks the marketplace is craving, it gives me the opportunity to turn you on to new products to watch for locally or order online.
The 2020 FFS was, like almost everything else, canceled because of the pandemic, but the organization has announced a 2021 iteration of the event coming soon. At a previous show, I was introduced to Nature’s Charm canned Young Green Jackfruit Confit; in its yellow ripened form it’s one of my favorite fresh fruits, but the unripe green version also figures into a number of cuisines (particularly Southeast Asian) as a savory ingredient and is especially popular as a meat substitute among vegetarians and vegans.
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I used this confit variation in a stir-fry with fresh Chinese noodles, peas, and cashews. The dish started out with caramelized onions, shallots, pressed garlic and ginger plus a paste containing dried chilies, tomato paste, and a bit of coconut milk to loosen things up. The outlier ingredient was fish mint used two ways here: julienned and sautéed with the aromatics, and fried as a garnish.
Fish mint (botanically, Houttuynia cordata) does have something of a vaguely fishy character, but that doesn’t really describe it precisely. Its common name is almost calculated to drive you away (like “mugwort”), even though it does have a toe dipped in accuracy. It’s also known as rainbow plant and chameleon plant. Better.
The jackfruit confit straight out of the can is falling-apart tender (it’s a confit, after all), not sweet in the least, and it picked up the flavor of the aromatics beautifully. I also used the seasoned oil in which it was packed as an ingredient for the sauce.
Ready to try some experiments of your own? Find Nature’s Charm Young Green Jackfruit on Amazon.com.
Shrimp Patia – Masala Mama
Part seven in a series of reports.
Some folks look forward to the annual celebration of their birthdays or anniversaries; for me it’s the occasion to cover America’s largest food and beverage trade show right here in New York City, Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show. (Check out full coverage and a description of a past event here.) Aside from the fact that it affords the chance to hob and nob with other professional foodies, see what products and brands are trending and poised to make a breakthrough, and get a sense of what the industry thinks the marketplace is craving, it gives me the opportunity to turn you on to new products to watch for locally or order online.
The 2020 FFS was, like almost everything else, canceled because of the pandemic, but the organization has announced a 2021 iteration of the event coming soon. At the last show I attended, I was pleased to see the folks from Masala Mama and their Organic Spice Kit for Shrimp Patia, one of those Indian dishes that’s so delicious but so labor intensive.
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Unlike many of the curries you find on local Indian restaurants’ menus, shrimp patia is a spicy, sweet and sour dish that has roots in ancient Persia. It’s based on tomatoes (whole, paste, or puree) for umami, gets is sour component from tamarind, lemon, or lime, its heat from red chilies, its sweetness from a touch of jaggery (brown sugar), and a variety of herbs and spices which are found in this handy packet.
It’s a sauce that accompanies shellfish, chicken, lamb, or even paneer equally well. And it’s also a pain to prepare. But Masala Mama makes hunting down and measuring out the spice component easy and the dish tasted like it came from a restaurant. (The rice and parathas are my own.)
They’ve also got a line of jarred sauces – even easier! Check out their website, masalamamafoods.com, to shop online and see what they’re up to now.
My LGBTQ Sandwich!
I can’t let Pride Month slip away without sharing this treat that I created some years ago, my culinary contribution to the cause.
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You all know the classic BLT, of course: Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato; those ingredients are all present and accounted for in the LGBTQ. It’s customarily dressed with mayonnaise but I upped the ante by using Guacamole instead of mayo and added a hint of sweetness with Quince paste (aka membrillo) to balance the touch of tart lime juice, aromatic onion and garlic, and spicy jalapeño pepper – how I do guacamole.
Usually, I serve this on marble rye bread so I can include swirling carbs of color, but I couldn’t score any recently, so this version has a slice of rye bread on the bottom and a slice of pumpernickel on top.
And for those who prefer the acronym LGBTQI, well that is Iceberg Lettuce in there! 😉
And here’s something sweet to celebrate Pride Month: a rainbow bagel with mixed berry cream cheese and local (and by “local” I mean from a garden three blocks from my apartment) blackberries, pink champagne currants, and strawberries.
Schav
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In my last post, when I enumerated the odds and ends of greens that were dwelling in my fridge, I didn’t mention the two bunches of young sorrel that had been keeping them company. That’s because I had set them aside to try my hand at making schav, an Eastern European soup sometimes referred to as green borscht.
The character of sorrel is sour – in a good way like lemons are sour, but in this case not citrusy or floral – due to the presence of oxalic acid; its tartness is mitigated by cooking. Since I had never made schav before, I set out to do an utterly basic version, reserving any culinary experimentation for future investigation. Some recipes include potatoes or eggs (beaten and added to the soup as it cooks to thicken it or hardboiled as an addition for serving), but I went with just a bit of diced carrot and onion sautéed at the outset.
Instead of relying on raw eggs and the tempering technique required to thwart their propensity for scrambling when added to hot soup, I opted for a flour and butter roux cooked with the aromatics, added a few cups of very light chicken broth (very light because I didn’t want it to dominate the flavor), brought it to a boil and then down to a simmer, added the sorrel and stirred in a little sour cream which also softens its acidity. (Those of you who have been following me lately know that that was not sour cream. 😉)
I plopped a dollop of “sour cream” in the middle and scattered some herby garnish and cracked black pepper on top and that’s where I stopped.
The inner workings. Pretty good considering it was a maiden voyage.
Schav can be served warm or cold but I had been tasting continually as I was going along, so sadly, it was gone before I had a chance to sample it chilled.
Parting is such sweet sorrel.
A Mess O’ Greens
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Today’s brunch actually started a few days ago. I had prepared some ribbons of collard greens (cooked just until tender, not to mushy death) using smoked pork necks as a base and my secret enhancements – a bit of butter, brown sugar, red wine vinegar, and hot sauce (not secret anymore, I guess) – in the pot likker to bring some character and complexity to it. For the uninitiated, pot likker (i.e., pot liquor) is the heavenly liquid that is left over after greens have been cooked. Needless to say, after I consumed the collards, I saved the pot likker to work its magic on another day.
Today was that other day. It happened that I had a bunch of greens from various sources in the fridge: kale, beet greens, mustard greens, and redvein dock; I also had a few stems of Tokyo turnips (aka hakurei turnips), the leaves of which would integrate perfectly with the verdant mélange, and of course, the transcendent pot likker waiting to be called upon to glorify the mundane.
On the side, I dished out some leftover potato salad with bacon (one of my signature recipes that calls for a ratio of 2 pounds of bacon to 4 pounds of potatoes plus lots of other good stuff) that I had recently made for a party (you know, how to win friends and influence people). The Japanese turnip roots got a shower of dill. But it still needed a bit more zhuzh to make a proper meal of it, so after a bit of contemplating, an over-easy fried egg with lots of freshly ground black pepper did the trick.
For a bunch of remains and surpluses, this is one of those times when the leftovers outshined their progenitors.
Japanese Curry
👨🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨🍳
It’s been a minute since I posted any homemade Japanese food but since I cooked up this Japanese curry and it wasn’t bad, I thought I’d share. Actually, the word “homemade” might be something of a stretch: the sauce comes from a package, specifically the quick ‘n’ easy, rather ubiquitous S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix, the hot variety – and for “hot”, read medium.
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Yes, Japanese curry is a thing; as a matter of fact it’s considered to be one of the country’s top two national dishes (the other being ramen) which are only then followed by sushi and miso soup. From The Japan Times: “The spice mix known as curry powder and curried dishes were most likely introduced to Japan via the Anglo-Indian officers of the royal Navy and other stalwarts of the British Empire. They were among the first Westerners the Japanese came into contact with, after Commodore Matthew Perry landed his Black Ships at Kurihama in 1853, opening the country to the world after hundreds of years of isolation. Since this new dish came from the West, as far as these Japanese travelers were concerned, it was classified as yōshoku (Western food)….”
After years of tinkering with flavor profiles and targeting them to local tastes, Japanese curry came of age, a countrywide comfort food that exhibits little similarity to the Anglo-Indian dishes that gave rise to it. Inside the box, you’ll find blocks of curry sauce mix, essentially an instant roux packed with all the typical flavorings. The instructions couldn’t be simpler: stir-fry chunks of your protein of choice (I used beef) along with some vegetables (onion, carrot, etc.) in oil for 5 minutes, add water, bring to a boil, and simmer for about 15 minutes.
Now if you do any cooking at all, you will immediately recognize that there’s no way red meat is going to tenderize during that meager interval, so put your optimism back in the pantry, take out your patience, and let the dish simmer covered for a good deal more time until the meat is actually tender. Then turn the heat off, break the curry-roux bricks into pieces, add them to the skillet, and stir until the sauce mix has dissolved completely. Simmer and stir for another 5 minutes or so.
I kicked up mine with some yuzu shichimi togarashi (seven spice mixture) that includes dried yuzu peel and red chili pepper and topped the rice with furikake. Raw scallion is a good foil for cooked beef and more important, I had some on hand, so why not?
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
My Beef with Stroganoff
👨🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨🍳
Top Round London Broil was on sale at my local supermarket and the memory of Beef Stroganoff, an economical comfort food from my youth, came to mind: budget beef, sautéed mushrooms and savory gravy over noodles – what could be more fundamental? I’ve been tossing this together for so many years that the idea of consulting a recipe never crossed my mind, but since my obscenely large collection of cookbooks has been gathering cobwebs of late, I reasoned that a quick memory refresher couldn’t hurt.
The exercise brought me up short, however: every recipe I came across emphasized how “the quality of the beef makes the dish excel” and to “use filet mignon or ribeye…nothing less”. What? Slather filet mignon or ribeye in gravy? Now, where I grew up this preparation was considered a frugal approach to stretching meat; as a matter of fact, even to this day in my world, a great gravy is what makes the dish. So I returned the books to their dusty shelves and proceeded with my tried and true methodology:
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I seasoned the meat with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper and in a hot cast iron pan, seared it in a mixture of butter (for flavor) and oil (so the butter wouldn’t burn), flipped it once, and let it rest while I made the gravy.
In the same pan, I sautéed onions, added sliced cremini mushrooms, garlic, S&P, removed them from the pan, made a roux in it (nothing unique – standard rouxles apply), and used a very rich beef broth I had in the freezer plus Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, and dill. When the gravy had thickened, I would have customarily added sour cream at that point, but there was Mexican crema in the fridge and I swear it was even better than sour cream in this application and may become a new component of my “recipe” (such as it is).
After the meat had had a chance to rest, I sliced it thinly (prudent if it’s a tough cut)…
…folded it into the gravy along with the vegetables and ladled it over boiled, drained noodles.
A side of roasted Brussels sprouts rounded out the meal.
I don’t care what they say – I think this is a dish fit for a czar!
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
Cinco de Mayo – 2021
Since it’s Cinco de Mayo, I found myself musing about some of the Mexican dishes I’ve cobbled together over the past year or so of quarantining and hyper-conscientiousness. I’m hopeful that my 👨🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨🍳 series will be drawing to a close soon – but for just a little while longer, I’m still proceeding con cuidado.
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Chicken Mole. Shredded chicken, sautéed onions and the like combined with a packet of Mole Rojo Oaxaqueño (took the easy way out that time) topped with some crema Mexicana. (BTW, stay tuned for a post about the subtle differences among commercially available Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran cremas.) In the back, rice cooked in chicken broth along with onion, garlic, red bell pepper and achiote for color; freshly grated cotija cheese sprinkled on top. On the side, black beans, corn, and jalapeños with red pepper, onion, garlic and spices including Mexican oregano and Tajín.
And what did I do with the leftovers?
¡Las quesadillas estaban deliciosas!
For a side dish, I made esquites, the Mexican street food favorite: grilled corn with garlic, jalapeños, scallions, cilantro, crema and lime juice topped with crumbled cotija cheese and Tajín.
On another occasion, I was jonesing for fish tacos and it wasn’t even the officially sanctioned el martes. Besides, it gave me an excuse to break out the comal and make salsa cruda. There’s nothing auténtico about these, but they were a cinch to prepare. Pan seared fish, cut into chunks and set into a taco shell along with avocado, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, and a bit of crema, all awaiting some homemade salsa to do the heavy flavor lifting.
The salsa cruda started by charring white onion, tomatillos, tomato, and jalapeño on a comal – shown here mid-blister. Added rehydrated dried ancho and chipotle chilies, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, olive oil, salt, and a pinch of cumin and Mexican oregano. I chopped it all by hand because a blender or food processor creates a thin salsa which is fine but I prefer some crunch.
The finished product. And last but not least…
…guacamole!
¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
Crispy Prawn Chilli
👨🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨🍳
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At least that’s the way that Heng’s spells it on their label, and orthography notwithstanding, this stuff is outrageous.
On a recent visit to a market in Sunset Park’s Chinatown as I was ogling the infinitely many sauces and condiments, I couldn’t help but spot this product with its flashy reflective gold label. I suspected it might be a fishy requisite that could take its place beside the jumbo jar of spicy chili crisp in the fridge and I was not disappointed.
Remember when you first heard about sriracha and soon began dousing everything in sight with it – until you heard about spicy chili crisp and started slathering everything in sight with that? That’s where I’m at with Crispy Prawn Chilli now: I’ve even incorporated it into a dressing for seafood salad. There are other brands, of course (it’s not a new creation) just as Laoganma has its challengers in the spicy chili crisp division and Huy Fong has among sriracha rivals; Heng’s is a product of Malaysia.
The label lists its main ingredients as soybean oil, chilli, shallot, garlic, dried shrimp, sugar and salt; it’s spicy but not overly so, crispy and shrimpy, and can be used as a condiment at the table or in a stir fry as in this hastily flung together dish. For its maiden voyage, I decided to do a stir fry with Chinese cauliflower and peanuts to ensure that the prawn flavor wouldn’t compete with another protein in future applications, but now that I’ve experimented with it, I don’t think it would present a problem any more than fish sauce turns a dish “fishy”. Got a little delicate brown char on the cauliflower which played well with the crunch of the peanuts and the crispness of the prawn chili.
The verdict: delicious!
It’s also available in Fish and Cuttlefish versions, so now it’s back to Chinatown to sample its mates. (As if I needed an excuse. 😉)
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️