Yeeeech. My beautiful, loving, caring son is at a phase where he's learning to share. And one thing he often wants to share is his food. From his grubby little hands - or, even worse, his grubby little mouth. What does one do? I don't want to shut him down; I want him to know that I'm proud and happy that he wants to share what he has with other people.
I am getting sick of eating gritty grapes, though.
So a few weeks ago, in response to my last recipe, Trey was all like, "Onion and garlic powder? What the heck is up with that? Aren't you all about fresh ingredients?"
And I was all, "I'm about the fresh dance moves, yo!" and she was all "No you are not. In fact, I don't think I've ever met anyone who was less about the fresh dance moves than you are." A quick fact-check confirmed that she was, in fact, 100% correct in all particulars. This being the case, I set out to answer her question.
It's a good point - I usually am careful about making sure that the spices I use are fresh and of the highest quality. So why am I willing to use dried garlic and onion powder, rather than just chopping up the delicious-looking bulbs I've got stored in my kitchen?
There are a few simple reasons you might want to go with powders instead of fresh. And, of course, for those times, you can get high-quality onion or garlic powder from the same place you normally buy your spice. What you probably can't do is make your own - that requires dehydration and fine grinding. Now, if you have a home dehydrator, it's possible - but from what I've seen, home dehydrators still leave a good deal of water in the final product - as much as a fifth of what was there originally. I haven't tried it myself, but I don't think that's enough to powder the final product.
So enough with the what - let's get on with the why. When you think about it, the basics here are pretty obvious. Sometimes, you want the flavor of onion or garlic on your food, but you don't want the texture. A good example would be the recipe Trey was commenting on - it's hard to include raw onion or garlic in breading, but powders work fine. Texture doesn't only matter for cookability - it matters in the mouth, as well. Garlic bread is another application; most people like garlic bread, but not everyone likes garlic enough to want to bite into a mouthful of (even minced) garlic cloves. (Some people do, of course. Hey, some people juggle geese.)
Sometimes, the actual plant matter has other qualities you don't want to introduce into your food, like water. Everything you pull out of the ground is gonna be 80% water or more, and sometimes you want to be able to cook without all that water getting into your food. You're not supposed to infuse olive oil at home using fresh garlic - it's a good recipe for botulism. I suspect that you can get almost as good - and much safer - results using a powder.
Finally, powders are a lot easier to control, quantity-wise. For some reason, recipes - and I'm not exempting myself - tend to include raw onion by volume, rather than weight. That's just stupid. What the heck is a cup of chopped onion? One person's cup might include twice as much onion as another. Until everyone - and I'm not exempting myself - starts breaking out the kitchen scales to measure out the onion, powder is the best bet to get a controllable amount every time.
I'm ignoring the first and most obvious reason that most people actually use powders - convenience. Onion powder doesn't rot, and it doesn't take five minutes to chop up. You measure it out or just dump a bunch of it into your recipe. No dishes, no cutting board, no mess. It's always sitting there in the closet, and you rarely have to worry that you're out.
Now, this is not meant to be a ringing endorsement of onion powder, garlic powder, or any similar thing. (Red pepper flakes, on the other hand, are great. Ring, ring, ring.) In the vast majority of applications, you're going to get much, much more flavor by cooking with raw onion or garlic than you are by using powders. But as long as you're buying high-quality goods, not letting them sit around for too long, and using an appropriate amount - 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder = 1 clove, 1 teaspoon onion powder = 1 small onion - then powders are an appropriate weapon to add to our arsenal of spices.
One thing to watch out for - always use powders, never salts. While I don't have a problem using garlic salt for one particular application - grilled corn - in general, it's always better to add salt and garlic powder separately. Garlic and salt are NOT interchangeable; you really want to know how much of each you're adding into the mix.
Finally, please note that onion is bad for housepets - and for some reason, onion powder especially so, and especially dogs. Onion powder is toxic to dogs. Weird.
Join me tomorrow, when finally, after eight months and about a dozen promises, I do what I wanted to do in the second week -
I PICKLE.
(I made them last week. I haven't eaten one yet. I really hope they're good.)
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
On Portion Size
I had a comment from a reader... I don't want to say who it is, so I'll make up a name. Let's call him "Joah Oualker." He suggested that I was being overly generous by claiming that the eggplant Parmesan dish would serve four people.
Victoria and I had the dish, exactly as I made it, for dinner on Wednesday. It was a meal for the two of us, with one small portion left over. We didnt have any side dishes, and both of us were pretty hungry. My assumption was that, given a salad and a side, or two side dishes, or anything else that you might serve with it, it would be an adequate main course for four adults. Delicious garlic bread, for example, is one thing that you might serve with it, or perhaps marscapone. Then again, perhaps not.
I don't know what marscapone is. Is it an Italian deli meat?
These are, however, only assumptions. There are plenty of situations in which you might want to use your own judgement. My suggestions as to how many people each dish can feed might be wrong in some or all of the following circumstances. Feel free to increase the size of the dish if:
There might be other circumstances that I'm missing - but I think my point is there. I will do my best to give an idea of how much food each dish makes. However, I fully expect my readers to be aware of their own peculiarities, and to adjust the portion size to suit themselves. If you feel that my recommendations are not a value-add for you, feel free to ignore them entirely!
In the meantime, I hope that, for most readers, my estimates prove helpful.
NOTE - Also, maybe instead you're miniature, or something? Like a perfect, tiny doll? And eat less food? So you want to, maybe, adjust the dish size down?
Victoria and I had the dish, exactly as I made it, for dinner on Wednesday. It was a meal for the two of us, with one small portion left over. We didnt have any side dishes, and both of us were pretty hungry. My assumption was that, given a salad and a side, or two side dishes, or anything else that you might serve with it, it would be an adequate main course for four adults. Delicious garlic bread, for example, is one thing that you might serve with it, or perhaps marscapone. Then again, perhaps not.
I don't know what marscapone is. Is it an Italian deli meat?
These are, however, only assumptions. There are plenty of situations in which you might want to use your own judgement. My suggestions as to how many people each dish can feed might be wrong in some or all of the following circumstances. Feel free to increase the size of the dish if:
- You are a giant, titan, cyclops, or other creature of significantly larger than average size.
- You have eaten an entire goat, cow, emu, or swordfish in a single sitting; alternately, if you know off the top of your head how long it would take you to skeletonize such an animal.
- Your guests are circus animals, such as elephants, giraffes, or dinosaurs.
- You have the ability to detach your jaw to consume things larger than your head.
- You are possessed by a demon, ridden by a loa, or are the avatar of a god whose main feature is vicious, unending hunger.
- You were cursed by a gypsy witch to eat constantly and never be sated - yet grow ever thinner, thinner... thinner.
- Your mouth is a portal to some alternate plane, and only one hundredth of the food which passes through your lips makes it to your stomach.
- You are a superhero with a hyper-accelerated metabolism, or who in some other way needs vast quantities of food to fuel super-powers.
- You measure the food you eat in gross tonnage.
- You once went to a restaurant, and ate all the food in the restaurant, and they had to close the restaurant.
There might be other circumstances that I'm missing - but I think my point is there. I will do my best to give an idea of how much food each dish makes. However, I fully expect my readers to be aware of their own peculiarities, and to adjust the portion size to suit themselves. If you feel that my recommendations are not a value-add for you, feel free to ignore them entirely!
In the meantime, I hope that, for most readers, my estimates prove helpful.
NOTE - Also, maybe instead you're miniature, or something? Like a perfect, tiny doll? And eat less food? So you want to, maybe, adjust the dish size down?
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Eggplant Parmesan
I've never made eggplant parm before. However, I came up with a dill-tastic variant on a classic dish that came out way, way better than I expected it to. I did not, however, come up with a funny dill-related name for this dish, like "dilly eggplant parm" or something like that. It's not really a loss.
I don't know why, but for some reason, I really didn't expect this to come out well. Which meant that when it came out delicious, it made me really happy. This is fairly a fairly low-carb variant on the classic dish, substituting dill for most of the breadcrumbs that cover normal eggplant parm. It's not really low-fat, but you could easily broil the eggplant instead of frying it and use low-fat cheese, and get a really healthy, really delicious dish.
Dill-Encrusted Eggplant Parmesan
Serves 4
In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense to me to break down the ingredients list based on what those ingredients are doing in the dish. It helps to understand what's going on in the dish itself as well as sorting out groups of things you're going to be using together. Where it makes sense and where I remember to do it, I think this is a habit I will continue. Not sure exactly what to do with dill weed, which appears in two different places - it is unsatisfactory to me for a lot of reasons. For now, the compromise I reached with myself is to list the total amount of the ingredient used in parenthesis afterwords.
Top-down recipe writing. I really like it.
The Main Event:
1 large eggplant, cut into rounds and purged (see below)
1 cup Mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 normal-sized jar tomato sauce
2 (out of 5 total) tablespoons dill weed
The Glue:
2 large eggs
1/4 cup water
The Spicening:
3 (out of 5 total) tablespoons dill weed
2 tablespoons ground dill seed
3 tablespoons bread crumbs
2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
Black and red pepper to taste
Step 1: Purge the eggplant[1]
Take your eggplant - peeled or unpeeled, as is your wont. Cut it into medium-thin round slices. Mine were about as thick as... a pencil, maybe? Two bagged-and-boarded comic books? Just remember that it's going to get a lot thinner, so make sure it's thick enough that you'll be able to take a nice bite out of it.
Now, lay your slices out on a drying rack, either in/over your sink or on a baking sheet. (Things are going to get messy - you don't really want to do this over a countertop.) Take your kosher salt and liberally sprinkle it over the eggplant. Sprinkle is the word - you don't want piles, you don't want snowdrifts, you want as many individual crystals, with room to breathe, as you can pack on.
Why is that? Well, try it out. After about five minutes, you'll be able to see the salt working its hygroscopic magic. It honestly looks kind of bizarre - each of those crystals will start vacuuming up the water from the eggplant, and what you'll wind up with after about fifteen minutes is a big puddle of briny water standing on top of the eggplant round. If you wind up just dumping a bunch of salt and letting it pile up - as I did today on a few of the pieces of eggplant - there isn't any room (I guess) for the water to go, and it largely stays in the eggplant. (I have no idea if that is actually what is happening, according to Science. However, it really looked like that was what happened.)
Let about fifteen minutes go by, flip over the eggplant slices, and repeat. At this point, you can let them sit for hours, if you want; most of the water gets sucked out in the first fifteen minutes, but the salt continues to do its work as long as the eggplant sits there.
After at least fifteen minutes a side, rinse the salt off the eggplant, and give it a good squeeze. I'm serious! Post-purging, the water in that piece of eggplant is like the air in an air mattress. You can just go ahead and squeeze it out - and pouring water over it isn't going to put any water back into it.
Squeeze technique is important. I think most people instinctively grab between the tips of their fingers and their palms, and squeeze that way... which means that your fingers are going to punch right through the eggplant. You want to be careful not to put too much pressure on it. If there are a lot of seeds in it, it will fall apart anyway, but still, do your best to keep each piece intact. (It won't taste any different, but it looks nicer.) One thing that I found worked fairly well was folding each piece in quarters, then squeezing it like that - the small piece was both easier to get a good grip on and somewhat reinforced.
Okay, so what was the point of all this effort? Well, have you ever baked an eggplant dish? All that water that we just pulled out of the eggplant would have been in the dish instead - specifically, in the eggplant. Duh. That means we would have had a bowl of eggplant mush.
So, by pulling the water out of the eggplant before we cook it, we ensure that water doesn't wind up in our dish. But wait! There's more! Those pieces of eggplant shrunk down to maybe a quarter of their volume, once the water got hygroscop'd out of them. (HYGROSCOP'D!) Except what stayed in there? All the flavor. This is the same theory under which beef gets dry-aged, or soup stock gets reduced. All we're getting rid of is water; all the yummy is staying in there.
Step 2: Prep Work
Beat the egg and water together in a shallow, flat bowl. Mix all of the spice ingredients together in a shallow, flat bowl. Get out a frying pan and get some oil going. Get out a 9x13 baking dish and coat the bottom with a fairly light coat of tomato sauce. Turn the oven to 350 degrees. Now, make sure your feng shui is appropriate for this dish, which means you should have everything set up in a row, like so:
EGGPLANT -> EGG MIXTURE -> SPICE MIXTURE -> FRYING PAN -> BAKING DISH
Step 3: Frying the eggplant and assembly
Well, you got your feng shui all set up, right? Just follow the harmonious flow of energy. Take a slice of eggplant and dip it in the egg, making sure to coat both sides. Let it drip for a few seconds, then dip it into the spice mixture, again coating both sides thoroughly. Drop it in the oil.
Wait about thirty seconds, then repeat the whole process, ending it by flipping the first piece of eggplant you put in the frying pan. It should look nicely fried - IE golden-brown esque. If it's not, you may want to turn up the heat a bit or insert a slightly longer pause.
Wait [PAUSE_IN_SECONDS] again, then repeat again. This time, put in eggplant piece #3; flip eggplant piece #2; take eggplant piece #1 and put it into the baking dish, laid out in one of the corners.
Continue in that fashion until the entire dish is covered in eggplant. (Should take about eight pieces.) At that point, lay down another fairly thin layer of tomato sauce, a few handfuls of cheese, and start the process all over again.
I got two layers out of my eggplant, but there was still plenty of room in the dish. This dish probably serves 4, but if you want more, it's easier to just add more more eggplant and more spices to the recipe, and pile it on top.
Step 4: Baking
The easiest part. When you're done frying the eggplant, give the top layer some more sauce, then the dill and the rest of the cheese. Toss the whole mess into the oven for about a half an hour, let it cool for fifteen minutes, and eat.
Victoria thought that the dish had fish in it; the eggplant, purged and fried, has a deliciously meaty texture. Not sure what to do with the dill - the flavor came out, in part because I used so damn much of it - but I think that the dish could probably be tinkered with to use less and bring the flavor out more. Maybe put the dill on the top after cooking? I don't know; it's worth a try.
I also used about a teaspoon of salt when I made this for dinner, but Victoria thought that it was pretty salty that way. I figured that the purging process probably left some extra salt in the mix - maybe I got lazy washing off the eggplant, that sounds like me. Additionally, commercial tomato sauces are pretty salty. So, probably no need for extra salt in the spice mixture.
I need to start coming up with a clever sign-off at the beginning of these posts, so I'm not forced to think them up when I'm exhausted from writing.
[1]As with many, many things I've done on this blog, this is more or less cribbed straight from Good Eats. It's gonna get worse, too. I'm thinking that next week is going to be ginger, so I watched the ginger episode... and felt worse and worse as Alton Brown did every single thing that I thought of doing.
I'm still going to do ginger week, it just means that I'm basically going to be replicating a Good Eats episode in blog form.
I don't know why, but for some reason, I really didn't expect this to come out well. Which meant that when it came out delicious, it made me really happy. This is fairly a fairly low-carb variant on the classic dish, substituting dill for most of the breadcrumbs that cover normal eggplant parm. It's not really low-fat, but you could easily broil the eggplant instead of frying it and use low-fat cheese, and get a really healthy, really delicious dish.
Dill-Encrusted Eggplant Parmesan
Serves 4
In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense to me to break down the ingredients list based on what those ingredients are doing in the dish. It helps to understand what's going on in the dish itself as well as sorting out groups of things you're going to be using together. Where it makes sense and where I remember to do it, I think this is a habit I will continue. Not sure exactly what to do with dill weed, which appears in two different places - it is unsatisfactory to me for a lot of reasons. For now, the compromise I reached with myself is to list the total amount of the ingredient used in parenthesis afterwords.
Top-down recipe writing. I really like it.
The Main Event:
1 large eggplant, cut into rounds and purged (see below)
1 cup Mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 normal-sized jar tomato sauce
2 (out of 5 total) tablespoons dill weed
The Glue:
2 large eggs
1/4 cup water
The Spicening:
3 (out of 5 total) tablespoons dill weed
2 tablespoons ground dill seed
3 tablespoons bread crumbs
2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
Black and red pepper to taste
Step 1: Purge the eggplant[1]
Take your eggplant - peeled or unpeeled, as is your wont. Cut it into medium-thin round slices. Mine were about as thick as... a pencil, maybe? Two bagged-and-boarded comic books? Just remember that it's going to get a lot thinner, so make sure it's thick enough that you'll be able to take a nice bite out of it.
Now, lay your slices out on a drying rack, either in/over your sink or on a baking sheet. (Things are going to get messy - you don't really want to do this over a countertop.) Take your kosher salt and liberally sprinkle it over the eggplant. Sprinkle is the word - you don't want piles, you don't want snowdrifts, you want as many individual crystals, with room to breathe, as you can pack on.
Why is that? Well, try it out. After about five minutes, you'll be able to see the salt working its hygroscopic magic. It honestly looks kind of bizarre - each of those crystals will start vacuuming up the water from the eggplant, and what you'll wind up with after about fifteen minutes is a big puddle of briny water standing on top of the eggplant round. If you wind up just dumping a bunch of salt and letting it pile up - as I did today on a few of the pieces of eggplant - there isn't any room (I guess) for the water to go, and it largely stays in the eggplant. (I have no idea if that is actually what is happening, according to Science. However, it really looked like that was what happened.)
Let about fifteen minutes go by, flip over the eggplant slices, and repeat. At this point, you can let them sit for hours, if you want; most of the water gets sucked out in the first fifteen minutes, but the salt continues to do its work as long as the eggplant sits there.
After at least fifteen minutes a side, rinse the salt off the eggplant, and give it a good squeeze. I'm serious! Post-purging, the water in that piece of eggplant is like the air in an air mattress. You can just go ahead and squeeze it out - and pouring water over it isn't going to put any water back into it.
Squeeze technique is important. I think most people instinctively grab between the tips of their fingers and their palms, and squeeze that way... which means that your fingers are going to punch right through the eggplant. You want to be careful not to put too much pressure on it. If there are a lot of seeds in it, it will fall apart anyway, but still, do your best to keep each piece intact. (It won't taste any different, but it looks nicer.) One thing that I found worked fairly well was folding each piece in quarters, then squeezing it like that - the small piece was both easier to get a good grip on and somewhat reinforced.
Okay, so what was the point of all this effort? Well, have you ever baked an eggplant dish? All that water that we just pulled out of the eggplant would have been in the dish instead - specifically, in the eggplant. Duh. That means we would have had a bowl of eggplant mush.
So, by pulling the water out of the eggplant before we cook it, we ensure that water doesn't wind up in our dish. But wait! There's more! Those pieces of eggplant shrunk down to maybe a quarter of their volume, once the water got hygroscop'd out of them. (HYGROSCOP'D!) Except what stayed in there? All the flavor. This is the same theory under which beef gets dry-aged, or soup stock gets reduced. All we're getting rid of is water; all the yummy is staying in there.
Step 2: Prep Work
Beat the egg and water together in a shallow, flat bowl. Mix all of the spice ingredients together in a shallow, flat bowl. Get out a frying pan and get some oil going. Get out a 9x13 baking dish and coat the bottom with a fairly light coat of tomato sauce. Turn the oven to 350 degrees. Now, make sure your feng shui is appropriate for this dish, which means you should have everything set up in a row, like so:
EGGPLANT -> EGG MIXTURE -> SPICE MIXTURE -> FRYING PAN -> BAKING DISH
Step 3: Frying the eggplant and assembly
Well, you got your feng shui all set up, right? Just follow the harmonious flow of energy. Take a slice of eggplant and dip it in the egg, making sure to coat both sides. Let it drip for a few seconds, then dip it into the spice mixture, again coating both sides thoroughly. Drop it in the oil.
Wait about thirty seconds, then repeat the whole process, ending it by flipping the first piece of eggplant you put in the frying pan. It should look nicely fried - IE golden-brown esque. If it's not, you may want to turn up the heat a bit or insert a slightly longer pause.
Wait [PAUSE_IN_SECONDS] again, then repeat again. This time, put in eggplant piece #3; flip eggplant piece #2; take eggplant piece #1 and put it into the baking dish, laid out in one of the corners.
Continue in that fashion until the entire dish is covered in eggplant. (Should take about eight pieces.) At that point, lay down another fairly thin layer of tomato sauce, a few handfuls of cheese, and start the process all over again.
I got two layers out of my eggplant, but there was still plenty of room in the dish. This dish probably serves 4, but if you want more, it's easier to just add more more eggplant and more spices to the recipe, and pile it on top.
Step 4: Baking
The easiest part. When you're done frying the eggplant, give the top layer some more sauce, then the dill and the rest of the cheese. Toss the whole mess into the oven for about a half an hour, let it cool for fifteen minutes, and eat.
Victoria thought that the dish had fish in it; the eggplant, purged and fried, has a deliciously meaty texture. Not sure what to do with the dill - the flavor came out, in part because I used so damn much of it - but I think that the dish could probably be tinkered with to use less and bring the flavor out more. Maybe put the dill on the top after cooking? I don't know; it's worth a try.
I also used about a teaspoon of salt when I made this for dinner, but Victoria thought that it was pretty salty that way. I figured that the purging process probably left some extra salt in the mix - maybe I got lazy washing off the eggplant, that sounds like me. Additionally, commercial tomato sauces are pretty salty. So, probably no need for extra salt in the spice mixture.
I need to start coming up with a clever sign-off at the beginning of these posts, so I'm not forced to think them up when I'm exhausted from writing.
[1]As with many, many things I've done on this blog, this is more or less cribbed straight from Good Eats. It's gonna get worse, too. I'm thinking that next week is going to be ginger, so I watched the ginger episode... and felt worse and worse as Alton Brown did every single thing that I thought of doing.
I'm still going to do ginger week, it just means that I'm basically going to be replicating a Good Eats episode in blog form.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Posting again
So, I don't really have a new plan. I don't really know why I had an old one. Do you know what I do know? Oglethorpe does.
So I'm going to write. There's some writing below, and I definitely did it. It's about pie - spinach pie, delicious spinach pie with a heaping load of dill so it is full of dilly goodness.
We'll see what happens.
So I'm going to write. There's some writing below, and I definitely did it. It's about pie - spinach pie, delicious spinach pie with a heaping load of dill so it is full of dilly goodness.
We'll see what happens.
Dilly Spinach Pie - "Batsaria"
Man, I have the weirdest freakin' dreams sometimes.
I kid you not - I just woke up from a dream in which I was the main character in a remake of The Last Starfighter. The big bad guy was a giant Ko-Dan computer played by the Floating Head of Neil Patrick Harris, and it was a total smarmy jerk. Amongst our weaponry was a giant pencil that we used to disrupt the printouts he was forever spewing. The action was happening on... two dimensions... at the same time? Or something? With me switching between the Starfighter and myself, here on Earth, running around trying to do... well, I actually have no idea what part of the quest I was trying to accomplish on Earth. But there was something really important I was doing.
The stuff that we were doing with the giant pencil was having profoundly weird effects on Earth - we'd make some marks on his printout, which he'd then have to rewind in order to correct. (He was really, really anal, I guess.) As he was rewinding his printouts, time would fold backwards on Earth, which I'd then have to deal with when I switched back to Earth. Also, I think the head of AT&T was in some way in league with the Ko-Dan on Earth. I don't know why.
I'm not joking - this is the kind of thing that goes on in my head when left unsupervised. I think it's better all around that I just keep writing this blog.
I wish that was some type of clever lead-in into this blog post - but seriously, that crap was going to be rattling around in my skull until I spit it out somewhere. And that somewhere, Gentle Reader, is right into your eyeballs. Sorry.
Okay, now that that's over with. I made a Greek spinach pie for dinner tonight. The original recipe is here; I assume, from the text on that page, that this is called a Batsaria. It was absolutely delicious... but I would follow my recipe as opposed to the original. I'll talk about why later.
Dilly Spinach Pie
STUFF TO CHOP:
1 pound fresh spinach
3 leeks
5 green onions
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch dill
1 8 oz. package of Crimini (baby bella) mushrooms
STUFF TO BIND:
1 cup milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup olive oil
STUFF TO MAKE YUMMY:
12 oz crumbled feta cheese
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp white sugar
STUFF TO MAKE CRUST:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 2/3 cups water
1/3 cup olive oil
STUFF TO TOP CRUST:
4 oz. grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp (1/4 stick) butter, cut into small chunks
2 tbsp olive oil
1 handful of dill weed
This isn't nearly as difficult as the ingredients list makes it out to be - there's basically a lot of chopping, but once that's all done, the recipe is basically "mix it all up in a bowl and spread it in a pan." You can pretty much ignore the groups I put the ingredients into - the "crust" and "crust topping" groups are useful break-outs, but the other three groups all get mixed together. I was thinking about what the different parts of the recipe were doing, though, and broke them up this way in my head; I though that it might be interesting and/or educational to write up the recipe that way.
What I did differently from the original recipe:
The first thing I did was axe the mint that the original recipe uses; I do not like mint, Sam I Am. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.
One thing that I've been realizing recently is that my knowledge of spices is really lacking in the middle of the range, if you will allow me to go back to the music metaphor. I'm getting pretty good with the high notes, the cumins or wasabis, that jump out and grab your attention. And I'm getting pretty good with the bass notes, the turmerics and oreganos - deep notes that you can build a dish on. But I'm really weak in the middle range - the things that sustain a piece.
Take, for example, a curry I made recently. I started out by heating up some oil and frying up a who's who of my favorite spices - cumin, turmeric, coriander, fennel; added some garam masala for kicks. The smell was utterly heavenly; the entire house smelled mouth-wateringly delicious. But when served over rice, the dish didn't even come close to living up to its smell. Frankly, it was somewhat boring - an explosion on the nose, and on the tip of your tongue, but after that - nothing.
This story has a happy ending - though dinner was somewhat boring, when I ate the leftovers for lunch the day after, it tasted perfect. The flavors had mellowed out quite a bit, and the sauce had soaked into the rice, mixing the flavors much better. But still, the dish was quite a disappointment.
Now that I think about it, maybe the answer isn't that I'm spicing things incorrectly, maybe I just need to give dishes like this time to cool and mix before serving.
But for now, I'm going to assume that the problem is the way I'm spicing it - that I'm paying too much attention to the top and bottom, and leaving out the middle.
That's definitely where this dish has problems. Not that it wasn't good - hell, not that it wasn't great. I mean, how could something which includes a full pound of cheese NOT be great? But I feel like, perhaps, the mint was there to fill out the middle notes - middle notes which were definitely the weakest part of this. Next time I try it, I'll definitely include the mint, just to see how it comes out. (Maybe the mint will be like cilantro in chili. I don't like cilantro, in general, but chili really needs it to reach its fullest flavor.)
I had two big problems, not with the contents of the original recipe, but the way that it was presented. Pet peeves, really. First, in every supermarket I've been to, cheese is sold by weight, not volume. So, I've substituted the weight that I had to use to get that amount for you. Second, the original recipe calls for salt and pepper "to taste". Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not inclined to taste a mixture of sugar, olive oil, and leeks... especially when raw egg is the chaser. [1] So, I'm going to strongly suggest that you add two big pinches of kosher salt and two big grinds of pepper, or two teaspoons of each.
(Also, as a number three: Come on. You split it up into three steps. Step one: preheat oven. Step two: Do all the cooking. Step three: Put in in the oven. Can we divide things a little better than that?)
Another thing I changed was adding mushrooms. I mean, come on. Look at that original recipe. Where are the mushrooms? There's an empty line there that SHOULD say "Now get some mushrooms, ja?" Ja. Victoria also suggested black olives, or maybe kalamatas - which would add some salt, and probably do the job of filling in that middle-range flavor I was talking about.
The cooking itself is fairly easy. First, whisk together all the crust ingredients in a mixing bowl. Grease up a baking pan. The original recipe says a "deep 9x9", but I don't have any particularly deep pans. A 13x9 is the way to go here, unless you've got some sort of specialized bakeware. Once the pan is greased, lay half the crust batter down on the bottom.
Now, the filling. Beat the eggs, then mix everything in the "chop", "bind", and "yummy" categories into the eggs. Spoon everything (gently) into the pan - as much as possible you want to lay it on top of the crust batter, rather than letting it drop all the way though. The batter is pretty thick, so it's not that big a deal.
You've still got about half the batter left, right? Spoon it on top of the spinach mixture to make a top crust layer. The original recipe again slips up a bit - it calls for 2/3 of the batter on the bottom, 1/3 on top, but that wasn't enough for me to make a decent top layer, so I wound up having to mix up some additional crust. If, for whatever reason, this turns out to not be enough, don't be afraid to make some more of the crust mixture. 1 cup of flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2/3 cup water, 1 tbsp olive oil.
I really feel bad about ragging on the original recipe constantly - I'm ripping off someone else's dinner for a blog post. And in the end, it's a great meal, just not a well-written recipe, so kudos. Still - I have no idea why the recipe tries to divide the crust 2/3 - 1/3, and those proportions simply didn't work. (Probably, in part, because it's trying to fit way, way too much filling into a 9x9 pan. I just looked online for "deep 9x9 pan", and I couldn't find anything aside from the standard sizes - 9x9x2 or 9x9x1.5.) I think half and half should work fine; if not, like I said, just mix up an extra cup of batter.
Now that you've got a nice smooth top crust, put the "crust topping" stuff on top of it. Butter plus olive oil seems like a touch of overkill... but never let it be said that I wasn't willing to destroy my heart in pursuit of a delicious meal. Toss the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for an hour, or until the crust is all crusty. And the cheese is all melty. Take it out, give it a good twenty minutes or more on a cooling rack, and dig in. Serve with a Greek salad, some tomatoes, and quite possibly a prescription for Lipitor.
[1] It occurred to me that I've always interpreted the phrase "to taste" to mean "taste the dish, and add salt and pepper until you think it tastes good." Now that I'm thinking about it, it might very well just mean "you know your own tastes - add as much salt and pepper as you think you would enjoy." I still think that my original interpretation is more likely, but...
I kid you not - I just woke up from a dream in which I was the main character in a remake of The Last Starfighter. The big bad guy was a giant Ko-Dan computer played by the Floating Head of Neil Patrick Harris, and it was a total smarmy jerk. Amongst our weaponry was a giant pencil that we used to disrupt the printouts he was forever spewing. The action was happening on... two dimensions... at the same time? Or something? With me switching between the Starfighter and myself, here on Earth, running around trying to do... well, I actually have no idea what part of the quest I was trying to accomplish on Earth. But there was something really important I was doing.
The stuff that we were doing with the giant pencil was having profoundly weird effects on Earth - we'd make some marks on his printout, which he'd then have to rewind in order to correct. (He was really, really anal, I guess.) As he was rewinding his printouts, time would fold backwards on Earth, which I'd then have to deal with when I switched back to Earth. Also, I think the head of AT&T was in some way in league with the Ko-Dan on Earth. I don't know why.
I'm not joking - this is the kind of thing that goes on in my head when left unsupervised. I think it's better all around that I just keep writing this blog.
I wish that was some type of clever lead-in into this blog post - but seriously, that crap was going to be rattling around in my skull until I spit it out somewhere. And that somewhere, Gentle Reader, is right into your eyeballs. Sorry.
Okay, now that that's over with. I made a Greek spinach pie for dinner tonight. The original recipe is here; I assume, from the text on that page, that this is called a Batsaria. It was absolutely delicious... but I would follow my recipe as opposed to the original. I'll talk about why later.
Dilly Spinach Pie
STUFF TO CHOP:
1 pound fresh spinach
3 leeks
5 green onions
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch dill
1 8 oz. package of Crimini (baby bella) mushrooms
STUFF TO BIND:
1 cup milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup olive oil
STUFF TO MAKE YUMMY:
12 oz crumbled feta cheese
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp white sugar
STUFF TO MAKE CRUST:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 2/3 cups water
1/3 cup olive oil
STUFF TO TOP CRUST:
4 oz. grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp (1/4 stick) butter, cut into small chunks
2 tbsp olive oil
1 handful of dill weed
This isn't nearly as difficult as the ingredients list makes it out to be - there's basically a lot of chopping, but once that's all done, the recipe is basically "mix it all up in a bowl and spread it in a pan." You can pretty much ignore the groups I put the ingredients into - the "crust" and "crust topping" groups are useful break-outs, but the other three groups all get mixed together. I was thinking about what the different parts of the recipe were doing, though, and broke them up this way in my head; I though that it might be interesting and/or educational to write up the recipe that way.
What I did differently from the original recipe:
The first thing I did was axe the mint that the original recipe uses; I do not like mint, Sam I Am. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.
One thing that I've been realizing recently is that my knowledge of spices is really lacking in the middle of the range, if you will allow me to go back to the music metaphor. I'm getting pretty good with the high notes, the cumins or wasabis, that jump out and grab your attention. And I'm getting pretty good with the bass notes, the turmerics and oreganos - deep notes that you can build a dish on. But I'm really weak in the middle range - the things that sustain a piece.
Take, for example, a curry I made recently. I started out by heating up some oil and frying up a who's who of my favorite spices - cumin, turmeric, coriander, fennel; added some garam masala for kicks. The smell was utterly heavenly; the entire house smelled mouth-wateringly delicious. But when served over rice, the dish didn't even come close to living up to its smell. Frankly, it was somewhat boring - an explosion on the nose, and on the tip of your tongue, but after that - nothing.
This story has a happy ending - though dinner was somewhat boring, when I ate the leftovers for lunch the day after, it tasted perfect. The flavors had mellowed out quite a bit, and the sauce had soaked into the rice, mixing the flavors much better. But still, the dish was quite a disappointment.
Now that I think about it, maybe the answer isn't that I'm spicing things incorrectly, maybe I just need to give dishes like this time to cool and mix before serving.
But for now, I'm going to assume that the problem is the way I'm spicing it - that I'm paying too much attention to the top and bottom, and leaving out the middle.
That's definitely where this dish has problems. Not that it wasn't good - hell, not that it wasn't great. I mean, how could something which includes a full pound of cheese NOT be great? But I feel like, perhaps, the mint was there to fill out the middle notes - middle notes which were definitely the weakest part of this. Next time I try it, I'll definitely include the mint, just to see how it comes out. (Maybe the mint will be like cilantro in chili. I don't like cilantro, in general, but chili really needs it to reach its fullest flavor.)
I had two big problems, not with the contents of the original recipe, but the way that it was presented. Pet peeves, really. First, in every supermarket I've been to, cheese is sold by weight, not volume. So, I've substituted the weight that I had to use to get that amount for you. Second, the original recipe calls for salt and pepper "to taste". Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not inclined to taste a mixture of sugar, olive oil, and leeks... especially when raw egg is the chaser. [1] So, I'm going to strongly suggest that you add two big pinches of kosher salt and two big grinds of pepper, or two teaspoons of each.
(Also, as a number three: Come on. You split it up into three steps. Step one: preheat oven. Step two: Do all the cooking. Step three: Put in in the oven. Can we divide things a little better than that?)
Another thing I changed was adding mushrooms. I mean, come on. Look at that original recipe. Where are the mushrooms? There's an empty line there that SHOULD say "Now get some mushrooms, ja?" Ja. Victoria also suggested black olives, or maybe kalamatas - which would add some salt, and probably do the job of filling in that middle-range flavor I was talking about.
The cooking itself is fairly easy. First, whisk together all the crust ingredients in a mixing bowl. Grease up a baking pan. The original recipe says a "deep 9x9", but I don't have any particularly deep pans. A 13x9 is the way to go here, unless you've got some sort of specialized bakeware. Once the pan is greased, lay half the crust batter down on the bottom.
Now, the filling. Beat the eggs, then mix everything in the "chop", "bind", and "yummy" categories into the eggs. Spoon everything (gently) into the pan - as much as possible you want to lay it on top of the crust batter, rather than letting it drop all the way though. The batter is pretty thick, so it's not that big a deal.
You've still got about half the batter left, right? Spoon it on top of the spinach mixture to make a top crust layer. The original recipe again slips up a bit - it calls for 2/3 of the batter on the bottom, 1/3 on top, but that wasn't enough for me to make a decent top layer, so I wound up having to mix up some additional crust. If, for whatever reason, this turns out to not be enough, don't be afraid to make some more of the crust mixture. 1 cup of flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2/3 cup water, 1 tbsp olive oil.
I really feel bad about ragging on the original recipe constantly - I'm ripping off someone else's dinner for a blog post. And in the end, it's a great meal, just not a well-written recipe, so kudos. Still - I have no idea why the recipe tries to divide the crust 2/3 - 1/3, and those proportions simply didn't work. (Probably, in part, because it's trying to fit way, way too much filling into a 9x9 pan. I just looked online for "deep 9x9 pan", and I couldn't find anything aside from the standard sizes - 9x9x2 or 9x9x1.5.) I think half and half should work fine; if not, like I said, just mix up an extra cup of batter.
Now that you've got a nice smooth top crust, put the "crust topping" stuff on top of it. Butter plus olive oil seems like a touch of overkill... but never let it be said that I wasn't willing to destroy my heart in pursuit of a delicious meal. Toss the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for an hour, or until the crust is all crusty. And the cheese is all melty. Take it out, give it a good twenty minutes or more on a cooling rack, and dig in. Serve with a Greek salad, some tomatoes, and quite possibly a prescription for Lipitor.
[1] It occurred to me that I've always interpreted the phrase "to taste" to mean "taste the dish, and add salt and pepper until you think it tastes good." Now that I'm thinking about it, it might very well just mean "you know your own tastes - add as much salt and pepper as you think you would enjoy." I still think that my original interpretation is more likely, but...
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Dill Butter and its Malcontents
Okay, I'll admit, I've had plans work out better. It's been a crazy few weeks... but hopefully I'll be able to get back to my planned posting schedule.
Victoria was gone over Memorial Day weekend, leaving me in the position of having to take care of to take care of an utterly sweet and adorable baby with no backup. I have no idea how single parents do it. If, as I suspect, Victoria's actual plan was to prove to me that I need her far more than I suspect - and my suspicion is that I need her a lot - then her plan succeeded. I had no idea just how much I relied on having an hour or two in the morning and the evening, and on not having to wake up at the same time he does.
So, it was a fairly stressful weekend. I did my best to tire him out as much as possible - which meant we spent a lot of time at the playground. My local playground is pretty awesome; it's a great middle ground between the jagged cast-iron deathtraps of our youth and the padded tire-piles of the nineties. (One of my earliest memories... or, I guess, lack of memories... is climbing up onto the big slide at my grandmother's apartment, getting ready to slide down... and then waking up in a hospital.)
You know what else I learned, in addition to "wives are really useful when taking care of children"? Playing is hard. I mean it! I remember playing as being effortless fun. It's still fun... but effortless? I don't think so.
Benjamin can't walk yet - though he's standing - and he's still in a phase where every stick and rock goes straight into his mouth. So despite how much I'd like to let him crawl around the playground and go nuts, I really can't. What actually happens is that I carry him everywhere, and do most of the playing with him on my shoulders, which he loves.
What will often happen is that one of the other little boys will come over and want to play with him. They're always really interested in him - I think they recognize that he's not really a baby any more, but at the same time, he can't do the things that they do, which they don't quite understand. So what often happens is that I will wind up carrying Benji around as we ride the bus, or go on a bear hunt, or simply go on the slide thirty or forty times in a row.
My point is... that crap is tiring. These kids have way, way, way more energy than I do... not to mention that they think nothing of charging full-steam through parts of the playground that are more than big enough for them, but which I have to squeeze into while holding a baby.
One thing that Benji loves is this clear plastic tunnel that connects two sections of the main play-area. Here's the problem - the tunnel is slightly less than a foot above the main surface, which is low enough for him to clamber into... but not nearly low enough for him to crawl out of. He can usually get a good ten or fifteen minutes of fun just doing laps in this thing - babies do not get bored particularly easily - but eventually, he'll wind up at one end, clearly ready to do something which will wind up with him face-planting his way out of the tunnel. At this point, I have two choices - crawl in there to retrieve him, which is non-trivial, because the tunnel was not designed for shoulders as wide as mine. Alternately, I can run all the way around the structure, come up the other side, and meet him there. This means that I'm running the risk of him deciding to go for it before I get there.
This particular weekend, I came up with a third option - one which seemed quite a bit easier. I decided I would simply hop on top of the pipe, run across it, and hop down on the other end. Now, it's been a while since I did anything like that, but my memory - both muscle and regular - told me that it should be trivial to do. So, I planted my hands on the edge, sprang up, and...
And the emergency system which prevents me from doing things which will wind up in me injuring my old, flabby self cut in and told me that there was a ninety-six percent chance that if I followed through with my plan, I would wind up hobbling home with a baby in my arms. At best. At worst, Benjamin would get to ride to the hospital with me. (I guess that would be my inner C-3P0.)
Now, I didn't get where I am in life (unemployed with six figures of educational debt) by not doing things merely because they were really, really stupid. So I tried the jump again. And again, my body flat-out refused to do it.
Well, I have to live in this piece of rotting hamburger, but I'm sure as heck not going to take orders from it. So I overrode all the safeties and leaped up. It was not a graceful leap. It was not an athletic leap. But it was a leap. It moved me, vertically, from the level I was at to a higher level... I counted it as a win, all things considered. I looked down into the pipe, where Benji was looking at me in what I'm going to assume was pride and awe. I made funny faces at him for a minute or two, because I thought he'd enjoy the novelty of me being directly above him, and not at all because I needed any time to recover.
After that, though, it was easy to clamber across the pipe. And jumping down? Easy-peasy. When it comes to moving horizontally, or in a downward direction, I've still got it.
My point being? Playing is hard.
You know what isn't hard, though? Making this delicious dill butter, which I used in several different applications.
EASIER THAN PLAYING DILL BUTTER
1 stick of butter
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish (the kind you get in the supermarket)
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
2 teaspoons dill weed (or fresh dill)
Salt and pepper, as always, to taste - a small pinch of each will do.
Let the butter warm, and beat it lightly with a fork to loosen it up. Mix everything else in, and put it back into the fridge to re-solidify.
Like the wasabi butter I made last week, (and by "week" I mean "month") the butter seems to do a good job of shielding the heat-sensitive flavors of the dill from heat. It's not perfect, but the dill definitely stands up to heat better in this form than it does normally. Which is great when putting it on corn.
My favorite way to cook corn, bar none, is on the grill. Once corn season starts, I really try to make sure I grill up a few ears every time I have people over. And when it comes to preparation, there's only one choice. Shuck the corn, butter it heavily, dump a little garlic salt on it, follow that up with either lemon or cayenne pepper, and wrap the whole thing tightly in foil. Give it a half hour or so, on direct heat if you like a little charring or indirect heat if you don't. Basically, what you're doing here is broiling the corn in the butter - the butter seeps into every nook and cranny and absolutely infuses the entire ear. Delicious.
Well, I say "only one way", but it's the method I'm wedded to, not the particular combination of spices. So, the dill-horseradish butter seemed absolutely perfect; it had salt, it was both a tiny bit spicy (which goes great with corn) and the rich flavor of the dill really seemed like it would pair well. Which, of course, it did.
Both the dill and horseradish definitely suffered on the grill - they were noticeable, but they had definitely both retreated into the background. Which was fine, as far as I was concerned; corn covered in butter doesn't need a whole lot of jazzing up, and my goal is not to overwhelm the natural flavor, but to compliment it, which this does quite nicely.
I used the butter in a salmon dish, as well. Salmon in pan; onions, some more fresh dill, and lemon juice (or lemon slices, or both) on salmon. Pan in oven, 350 degrees until done. Let the butter soften while the salmon is cooking, and when the salmon comes out immediately spread the butter on top of it. The butter melts and mingles with the flavors of the stuff that's already there. A simple and tremendously tasty dish. (If I weren't married, I would totally make this to impress a girl. Not because it's so tasty - although it is - but because doing something to food after it comes out of the oven to get it ready for plating is impressive. Even if it's something as simple as "butter it", it makes you look like you know what you're doing.)
With the salmon, the dill flavor stands out much more. In part because there's more dill on the salmon, but more to the point, the butter here gets less heat, so less chance for the dill and horseradish flavors to degrade. I think this kind of dish - where the butter can be put on after cooking - is ideal for the dill butter. (Come to think of it, I could grill corn in the husk, and just butter it afterwords. I think I'm going to try that tomorrow night, see how it works out.)
I think working with the more fragile spices I've done recently has given me more of an appreciation for applications like this, or like the yogurt sauce I made a while back. I'm half-thinking that when the year - or two years, or however long it actually takes me to finish fifty-two spices - is over, I'll try "The Year of Living Saucily," and not just because I like the name.
As for the butter, I haven't tried it on popcorn yet, because, frankly, Victoria and I ran out of popcorn. But I'm going to the supermarket tomorrow... and the great wheel of science will continue.
Join me tomorrow (hopefully) when I talk about Sir John Dill, and a really, really odd dream I had.
Victoria was gone over Memorial Day weekend, leaving me in the position of having to take care of to take care of an utterly sweet and adorable baby with no backup. I have no idea how single parents do it. If, as I suspect, Victoria's actual plan was to prove to me that I need her far more than I suspect - and my suspicion is that I need her a lot - then her plan succeeded. I had no idea just how much I relied on having an hour or two in the morning and the evening, and on not having to wake up at the same time he does.
So, it was a fairly stressful weekend. I did my best to tire him out as much as possible - which meant we spent a lot of time at the playground. My local playground is pretty awesome; it's a great middle ground between the jagged cast-iron deathtraps of our youth and the padded tire-piles of the nineties. (One of my earliest memories... or, I guess, lack of memories... is climbing up onto the big slide at my grandmother's apartment, getting ready to slide down... and then waking up in a hospital.)
You know what else I learned, in addition to "wives are really useful when taking care of children"? Playing is hard. I mean it! I remember playing as being effortless fun. It's still fun... but effortless? I don't think so.
Benjamin can't walk yet - though he's standing - and he's still in a phase where every stick and rock goes straight into his mouth. So despite how much I'd like to let him crawl around the playground and go nuts, I really can't. What actually happens is that I carry him everywhere, and do most of the playing with him on my shoulders, which he loves.
What will often happen is that one of the other little boys will come over and want to play with him. They're always really interested in him - I think they recognize that he's not really a baby any more, but at the same time, he can't do the things that they do, which they don't quite understand. So what often happens is that I will wind up carrying Benji around as we ride the bus, or go on a bear hunt, or simply go on the slide thirty or forty times in a row.
My point is... that crap is tiring. These kids have way, way, way more energy than I do... not to mention that they think nothing of charging full-steam through parts of the playground that are more than big enough for them, but which I have to squeeze into while holding a baby.
One thing that Benji loves is this clear plastic tunnel that connects two sections of the main play-area. Here's the problem - the tunnel is slightly less than a foot above the main surface, which is low enough for him to clamber into... but not nearly low enough for him to crawl out of. He can usually get a good ten or fifteen minutes of fun just doing laps in this thing - babies do not get bored particularly easily - but eventually, he'll wind up at one end, clearly ready to do something which will wind up with him face-planting his way out of the tunnel. At this point, I have two choices - crawl in there to retrieve him, which is non-trivial, because the tunnel was not designed for shoulders as wide as mine. Alternately, I can run all the way around the structure, come up the other side, and meet him there. This means that I'm running the risk of him deciding to go for it before I get there.
This particular weekend, I came up with a third option - one which seemed quite a bit easier. I decided I would simply hop on top of the pipe, run across it, and hop down on the other end. Now, it's been a while since I did anything like that, but my memory - both muscle and regular - told me that it should be trivial to do. So, I planted my hands on the edge, sprang up, and...
And the emergency system which prevents me from doing things which will wind up in me injuring my old, flabby self cut in and told me that there was a ninety-six percent chance that if I followed through with my plan, I would wind up hobbling home with a baby in my arms. At best. At worst, Benjamin would get to ride to the hospital with me. (I guess that would be my inner C-3P0.)
Now, I didn't get where I am in life (unemployed with six figures of educational debt) by not doing things merely because they were really, really stupid. So I tried the jump again. And again, my body flat-out refused to do it.
Well, I have to live in this piece of rotting hamburger, but I'm sure as heck not going to take orders from it. So I overrode all the safeties and leaped up. It was not a graceful leap. It was not an athletic leap. But it was a leap. It moved me, vertically, from the level I was at to a higher level... I counted it as a win, all things considered. I looked down into the pipe, where Benji was looking at me in what I'm going to assume was pride and awe. I made funny faces at him for a minute or two, because I thought he'd enjoy the novelty of me being directly above him, and not at all because I needed any time to recover.
After that, though, it was easy to clamber across the pipe. And jumping down? Easy-peasy. When it comes to moving horizontally, or in a downward direction, I've still got it.
My point being? Playing is hard.
You know what isn't hard, though? Making this delicious dill butter, which I used in several different applications.
EASIER THAN PLAYING DILL BUTTER
1 stick of butter
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish (the kind you get in the supermarket)
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
2 teaspoons dill weed (or fresh dill)
Salt and pepper, as always, to taste - a small pinch of each will do.
Let the butter warm, and beat it lightly with a fork to loosen it up. Mix everything else in, and put it back into the fridge to re-solidify.
Like the wasabi butter I made last week, (and by "week" I mean "month") the butter seems to do a good job of shielding the heat-sensitive flavors of the dill from heat. It's not perfect, but the dill definitely stands up to heat better in this form than it does normally. Which is great when putting it on corn.
My favorite way to cook corn, bar none, is on the grill. Once corn season starts, I really try to make sure I grill up a few ears every time I have people over. And when it comes to preparation, there's only one choice. Shuck the corn, butter it heavily, dump a little garlic salt on it, follow that up with either lemon or cayenne pepper, and wrap the whole thing tightly in foil. Give it a half hour or so, on direct heat if you like a little charring or indirect heat if you don't. Basically, what you're doing here is broiling the corn in the butter - the butter seeps into every nook and cranny and absolutely infuses the entire ear. Delicious.
Well, I say "only one way", but it's the method I'm wedded to, not the particular combination of spices. So, the dill-horseradish butter seemed absolutely perfect; it had salt, it was both a tiny bit spicy (which goes great with corn) and the rich flavor of the dill really seemed like it would pair well. Which, of course, it did.
Both the dill and horseradish definitely suffered on the grill - they were noticeable, but they had definitely both retreated into the background. Which was fine, as far as I was concerned; corn covered in butter doesn't need a whole lot of jazzing up, and my goal is not to overwhelm the natural flavor, but to compliment it, which this does quite nicely.
I used the butter in a salmon dish, as well. Salmon in pan; onions, some more fresh dill, and lemon juice (or lemon slices, or both) on salmon. Pan in oven, 350 degrees until done. Let the butter soften while the salmon is cooking, and when the salmon comes out immediately spread the butter on top of it. The butter melts and mingles with the flavors of the stuff that's already there. A simple and tremendously tasty dish. (If I weren't married, I would totally make this to impress a girl. Not because it's so tasty - although it is - but because doing something to food after it comes out of the oven to get it ready for plating is impressive. Even if it's something as simple as "butter it", it makes you look like you know what you're doing.)
With the salmon, the dill flavor stands out much more. In part because there's more dill on the salmon, but more to the point, the butter here gets less heat, so less chance for the dill and horseradish flavors to degrade. I think this kind of dish - where the butter can be put on after cooking - is ideal for the dill butter. (Come to think of it, I could grill corn in the husk, and just butter it afterwords. I think I'm going to try that tomorrow night, see how it works out.)
I think working with the more fragile spices I've done recently has given me more of an appreciation for applications like this, or like the yogurt sauce I made a while back. I'm half-thinking that when the year - or two years, or however long it actually takes me to finish fifty-two spices - is over, I'll try "The Year of Living Saucily," and not just because I like the name.
As for the butter, I haven't tried it on popcorn yet, because, frankly, Victoria and I ran out of popcorn. But I'm going to the supermarket tomorrow... and the great wheel of science will continue.
Join me tomorrow (hopefully) when I talk about Sir John Dill, and a really, really odd dream I had.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Scallops with Dill Cream Sauce
So I started writing my post on the dill-crusted tilapia, and then I kind of half-remembered that I had done something very similar a while back. So I went to check through my older posts, to see if I was right, and while I was doing that something shiny appeared and I was all like, huh, a shiny thing, and I wondered what it was and why it was there, and it was pretty and shiny and I tried to get it but it got away.
Shiny.
What was I talking about? Oh right. A shiny thing. In any case, I never figured out whether I duplicated an earlier recipe, just using dill instead of something else. I really need to make up an excel spreadsheet or something. In the meantime, I made something for dinner tonight which obviated the need for me to do background research on my own blog, so I'ma write about that.
Victoria and I had a date to watch Iron Man this evening - I had meant to go see Iron Man 2 with my brother, last week when I was up in New Jersey. My parents threw a first birthday party for Benjamin, and...
How to put this.
My dad's friend Kolya showed up early. This is a man who is two hours late for everything, and he showed up early. Why is this a problem? Well, it's a problem because by the time the majority of the guests showed up, a half hour later, I was already six shots in. And every time anyone wanted to drink a toast to my son, well, guess who had to drink with them?
So by about five - if I'm being generous to myself - I was what one could probably refer to as "passed right the hell out." No Iron Man. But I really liked the first movie, really want to see the second one... but going to see a blockbuster alone (or with a 1-year-old) is really not much fun. (Now, that's not to say that I don't look forward, more than any other part of the parenting experience, to a time when I can sit down with Benjamin and we can watch Batman cartoons together.)
Much to my delight, my wife stepped up to the plate here and said she'd like to go with me. Definitely good times; Victoria and I each have our own nerdy interests, but it's always nice when there's a little bit of crossover there. Sometimes I go to see her Morris dancing; sometimes she plays games or watches comic-book-derived entertainment with me. Obviously, if she's going to see Iron Man 2 with me, we need to see the first movie beforehand, so this is kind of a two-in-one for me.
Now, I don't know very much at all about women. In fact, I can probably sum up everything I know in two bullet points:
1. Women really like having their back scratched right under their bra clasp.
2. If they're doing something that is outside of their comfort zone, and you want them to do it again, make sure the experience is as enjoyable as possible and that they are aware of how much you enjoyed having them do it.
So, for our stay-at-home date to watch Iron Man, I decided I wanted to make scallops, which I know that she really enjoys. I looked up a few recipes, didn't find anything that really blew me away, so I winged it. I'm really starting to feel a lot of confidence with the process - coming up with an idea in my head, reading a few recipes that are close or have elements that I'm trying to reproduce, then putting the pieces together to make my dish.
In this case, I knew that I wanted to have scallops and dill in the dish. I also was laboring under the fairly serious restriction that supermarket day is tomorrow, so the house is fairly empty of veggies. I settled on something fairly simple - I pictured the scallops on top of some pasta, with some sort of butter or cream sauce. This is what I wound up with. It was delicious, and surprisingly quick to make.
Scallops with Dill Cream Sauce
1 Lb. Scallops
1/4 stick butter
1/4 onion, chopped
1/2 cup sherry
Heavy cream
Sea Salt
Pepper
Dill
Throw a nice big pat of butter in a pan and get it nice and warm - not sizzling, but enough to cook the scallops. Throw the little guys in there, and sprinkle them with some sea salt, some pepper, and some dill. (The dill is probably not going to carry significant flavor here, but I liked the way it looked. I used sea salt instead of kosher because it seemed like a good place to add the more complex flavor of the sea salt.) Give them a minute or two, depending on how big they are, then flip them over. They should be browning when you flip them, but don't let them stay on too long - I'm told scallops are really easy to overcook. Repeat, and when they're done, remove them to a plate and cover to keep warm.
Throw in the rest of the butter and saute the onions. When they're starting to turn golden, in goes the sherry. It should sizzle a bit; keep it moving, and while you're at it use it to deglaze anything left of the pan. When about half the sherry has cooked off - shouldn't be more than 5-10 minutes - add in the heavy cream. Unfortunately, I didn't really measure the amount of cream I used; I would guess that I added no more than a quarter cup, probably less. Enough to thicken the sauce and make it a nice light brown color; I see no reason you couldn't add more to make it even creamier, though.
Toss in a bit more pepper and a bit more salt; stir in the cream, warming it but not letting it go above a simmer. (My gut tells me that would get messy quickly.) At the very end, throw in the dill; I probably added about two tablespoons, all told. Give it a few more stirs - enough to mix the dill, no more, you don't want to lose the dill's flavor - and take it off the heat.
I served the scallops on a bed of linguine, and poured the sauce on top of it. Victoria licked the plate clean, and loved the movie as well. Mission accomplished. Really, what more can one ask for in a wife?
Mission accomplished. Loved the dinner, loved Iron Man.
Confidential to guys with beards - man, when you clean out your laptop's keyboard, there sure is a lot of beard in there, isn't there?
Shiny.
What was I talking about? Oh right. A shiny thing. In any case, I never figured out whether I duplicated an earlier recipe, just using dill instead of something else. I really need to make up an excel spreadsheet or something. In the meantime, I made something for dinner tonight which obviated the need for me to do background research on my own blog, so I'ma write about that.
Victoria and I had a date to watch Iron Man this evening - I had meant to go see Iron Man 2 with my brother, last week when I was up in New Jersey. My parents threw a first birthday party for Benjamin, and...
How to put this.
My dad's friend Kolya showed up early. This is a man who is two hours late for everything, and he showed up early. Why is this a problem? Well, it's a problem because by the time the majority of the guests showed up, a half hour later, I was already six shots in. And every time anyone wanted to drink a toast to my son, well, guess who had to drink with them?
So by about five - if I'm being generous to myself - I was what one could probably refer to as "passed right the hell out." No Iron Man. But I really liked the first movie, really want to see the second one... but going to see a blockbuster alone (or with a 1-year-old) is really not much fun. (Now, that's not to say that I don't look forward, more than any other part of the parenting experience, to a time when I can sit down with Benjamin and we can watch Batman cartoons together.)
Much to my delight, my wife stepped up to the plate here and said she'd like to go with me. Definitely good times; Victoria and I each have our own nerdy interests, but it's always nice when there's a little bit of crossover there. Sometimes I go to see her Morris dancing; sometimes she plays games or watches comic-book-derived entertainment with me. Obviously, if she's going to see Iron Man 2 with me, we need to see the first movie beforehand, so this is kind of a two-in-one for me.
Now, I don't know very much at all about women. In fact, I can probably sum up everything I know in two bullet points:
1. Women really like having their back scratched right under their bra clasp.
2. If they're doing something that is outside of their comfort zone, and you want them to do it again, make sure the experience is as enjoyable as possible and that they are aware of how much you enjoyed having them do it.
So, for our stay-at-home date to watch Iron Man, I decided I wanted to make scallops, which I know that she really enjoys. I looked up a few recipes, didn't find anything that really blew me away, so I winged it. I'm really starting to feel a lot of confidence with the process - coming up with an idea in my head, reading a few recipes that are close or have elements that I'm trying to reproduce, then putting the pieces together to make my dish.
In this case, I knew that I wanted to have scallops and dill in the dish. I also was laboring under the fairly serious restriction that supermarket day is tomorrow, so the house is fairly empty of veggies. I settled on something fairly simple - I pictured the scallops on top of some pasta, with some sort of butter or cream sauce. This is what I wound up with. It was delicious, and surprisingly quick to make.
Scallops with Dill Cream Sauce
1 Lb. Scallops
1/4 stick butter
1/4 onion, chopped
1/2 cup sherry
Heavy cream
Sea Salt
Pepper
Dill
Throw a nice big pat of butter in a pan and get it nice and warm - not sizzling, but enough to cook the scallops. Throw the little guys in there, and sprinkle them with some sea salt, some pepper, and some dill. (The dill is probably not going to carry significant flavor here, but I liked the way it looked. I used sea salt instead of kosher because it seemed like a good place to add the more complex flavor of the sea salt.) Give them a minute or two, depending on how big they are, then flip them over. They should be browning when you flip them, but don't let them stay on too long - I'm told scallops are really easy to overcook. Repeat, and when they're done, remove them to a plate and cover to keep warm.
Throw in the rest of the butter and saute the onions. When they're starting to turn golden, in goes the sherry. It should sizzle a bit; keep it moving, and while you're at it use it to deglaze anything left of the pan. When about half the sherry has cooked off - shouldn't be more than 5-10 minutes - add in the heavy cream. Unfortunately, I didn't really measure the amount of cream I used; I would guess that I added no more than a quarter cup, probably less. Enough to thicken the sauce and make it a nice light brown color; I see no reason you couldn't add more to make it even creamier, though.
Toss in a bit more pepper and a bit more salt; stir in the cream, warming it but not letting it go above a simmer. (My gut tells me that would get messy quickly.) At the very end, throw in the dill; I probably added about two tablespoons, all told. Give it a few more stirs - enough to mix the dill, no more, you don't want to lose the dill's flavor - and take it off the heat.
I served the scallops on a bed of linguine, and poured the sauce on top of it. Victoria licked the plate clean, and loved the movie as well. Mission accomplished. Really, what more can one ask for in a wife?
Mission accomplished. Loved the dinner, loved Iron Man.
Confidential to guys with beards - man, when you clean out your laptop's keyboard, there sure is a lot of beard in there, isn't there?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
A Dilly of a Week
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and dill and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith."
-Matthew 23:23
Back in the day of the Pharisees - a Jewish sect that was just one of about four bitterly feuding Jewish groups - Jews still tithed ten percent of everything that they grew to the kohenim, the priestly class. This was how the priests sustained themselves; some of the offerings were burnt on the altar, and some of them were preserved for the priests to eat. Dill - often mistranslated as anise, in this passage - was a common household herb, as were mint and cumin. From what I've read, Jesus here is chastising the Pharisees (who at this time were a fairly corrupt sect) for arguing that the people's obligation to tithe extended even to the cheapest, most easily acquired things. It's not enough that you brought seven perfect lambs from your flock; your failure to bring three agarot (the penny to the shekel's dollar) worth of dill would bring chastisement from the priests.
Of course, reports of the Pharisees' corruption come almost entirely from writings of a young sect seeking to supplant the Jews as the area's dominant religion, so... (I wrote, then revised, the phrase "Christ-worshipers". For some reason, it looks slightly offensive to me - does anyone have any instincts on this matter?) Within the Jewish people, at least, the Pharisees eventually emerged victorious from the sectarian conflict. Pharisaic Judiasm eventually evolved into Rabbinic Judaism, based on the idea that the entire Jewish community should study the Torah, rather than just a limited caste of people. Modern Jewish thinking descends entirely from that philosophy.
The name dill itself comes from the Norse word dilla, meaning soothing, and references - depending on who you read - either dill's soporific properties (dill tea was a traditional insomnia cure) or its carminative (anti-flatulence) properties. Dill is another spice that spread across the world, appearing in Asian, Mediterranean and European cooking. (I've even found a reference to it in Georgian cooking, and I've asked my dad if he's ever come across it.)
Dill is another plant that does double duty as a spice and a herb. Early in the season, the spice - dill seed - is harvested; later on, the herb - dill weed - yes, I'm serious, that's what it's called - is clipped off the plant for its herbal value. (You can also extract dill oil from any of the above parts, plus the stems and branches.) Like most such plants, the spice and the herb have quite different tastes, although in this case, supposedly, they're closer than most. (I'll follow up on that in a future post.)
Actually, I'm wondering how many herbs there are out there than don't have any value as a spice, as well. I guess that makes sense, though - a plant that has flavorful oils is likely to have them in many different areas, not just concentrated in the leaves.
Dill is supposedly a good plant to keep in a rose garden - it attracts a particular kind of bug that is one of the aphids' chief predators. It's easy to grow, and incredibly mineral-dense - one tablespoon of dill seed contains a hundred milligrams of calcium (about a third of a cup of milk.) It's fairly hearty, and tolerates having its leaves snipped off, slowly, dinner after dinner.
I don't ever use a little bit of dill - if I'm putting dill in something, I'm going all out. I like to do dill-encrusted steaks, and last week I made a fried fish recipe which used almost as much dill in the breading as breadcrumbs. And, in the last few hours, as I've learned what I can about dill, I've figured out why I do this, and why I'm an idiot for doing it.
Dill, like wasabi, is fairly fragile. It loses its flavor quickly if it is heated or dried. It doesn't seem to be quite as bad as wasabi - which loses its flavor if looked at by one not of the purest heart - but it needs to be treated with a fairly gentle touch. The broiler, it might be suggested, is probably not that touch, and the same can be said about frying oil. So the reason that I've gotten used to throwing huge amounts of dill in any dill-based dish I cook, is because I'm killing the flavor of most of it. Dill should properly be used in a cold dish, in a sauce applied post-cooking, or in a way which allows the oils to be captured rather than simply evaporating. (Tea would, one assumes, be a good example of this. I would imagine that you can infuse butter or olive oil with dill, as well.) Dill's most famous use - the dill pickle - is an example of this. (Pickles take weeks to make. Still, I really wanted to pickle when I was doing salt... maybe I'll try again this week.)
So I've got a "week" to learn how to use a soft touch on dill - how to coax its flavor out without simply dumping half a bottle of it on whatever I'm cooking. I've never used it at all as a spice, so that'll be new; I'll see what I can do with it, and see what things want the spice as opposed to the herb. And, hopefully, I'll put up some pickles that I'll be able to enjoy by the end of the summer.
Join me tomorrow, when I'll talk about the tilapia with dill I made last week. Which didn't really taste that much like dill. And now I know why.
We'll talk.
-Matthew 23:23
Back in the day of the Pharisees - a Jewish sect that was just one of about four bitterly feuding Jewish groups - Jews still tithed ten percent of everything that they grew to the kohenim, the priestly class. This was how the priests sustained themselves; some of the offerings were burnt on the altar, and some of them were preserved for the priests to eat. Dill - often mistranslated as anise, in this passage - was a common household herb, as were mint and cumin. From what I've read, Jesus here is chastising the Pharisees (who at this time were a fairly corrupt sect) for arguing that the people's obligation to tithe extended even to the cheapest, most easily acquired things. It's not enough that you brought seven perfect lambs from your flock; your failure to bring three agarot (the penny to the shekel's dollar) worth of dill would bring chastisement from the priests.
Of course, reports of the Pharisees' corruption come almost entirely from writings of a young sect seeking to supplant the Jews as the area's dominant religion, so... (I wrote, then revised, the phrase "Christ-worshipers". For some reason, it looks slightly offensive to me - does anyone have any instincts on this matter?) Within the Jewish people, at least, the Pharisees eventually emerged victorious from the sectarian conflict. Pharisaic Judiasm eventually evolved into Rabbinic Judaism, based on the idea that the entire Jewish community should study the Torah, rather than just a limited caste of people. Modern Jewish thinking descends entirely from that philosophy.
The name dill itself comes from the Norse word dilla, meaning soothing, and references - depending on who you read - either dill's soporific properties (dill tea was a traditional insomnia cure) or its carminative (anti-flatulence) properties. Dill is another spice that spread across the world, appearing in Asian, Mediterranean and European cooking. (I've even found a reference to it in Georgian cooking, and I've asked my dad if he's ever come across it.)
Dill is another plant that does double duty as a spice and a herb. Early in the season, the spice - dill seed - is harvested; later on, the herb - dill weed - yes, I'm serious, that's what it's called - is clipped off the plant for its herbal value. (You can also extract dill oil from any of the above parts, plus the stems and branches.) Like most such plants, the spice and the herb have quite different tastes, although in this case, supposedly, they're closer than most. (I'll follow up on that in a future post.)
Actually, I'm wondering how many herbs there are out there than don't have any value as a spice, as well. I guess that makes sense, though - a plant that has flavorful oils is likely to have them in many different areas, not just concentrated in the leaves.
Dill is supposedly a good plant to keep in a rose garden - it attracts a particular kind of bug that is one of the aphids' chief predators. It's easy to grow, and incredibly mineral-dense - one tablespoon of dill seed contains a hundred milligrams of calcium (about a third of a cup of milk.) It's fairly hearty, and tolerates having its leaves snipped off, slowly, dinner after dinner.
I don't ever use a little bit of dill - if I'm putting dill in something, I'm going all out. I like to do dill-encrusted steaks, and last week I made a fried fish recipe which used almost as much dill in the breading as breadcrumbs. And, in the last few hours, as I've learned what I can about dill, I've figured out why I do this, and why I'm an idiot for doing it.
Dill, like wasabi, is fairly fragile. It loses its flavor quickly if it is heated or dried. It doesn't seem to be quite as bad as wasabi - which loses its flavor if looked at by one not of the purest heart - but it needs to be treated with a fairly gentle touch. The broiler, it might be suggested, is probably not that touch, and the same can be said about frying oil. So the reason that I've gotten used to throwing huge amounts of dill in any dill-based dish I cook, is because I'm killing the flavor of most of it. Dill should properly be used in a cold dish, in a sauce applied post-cooking, or in a way which allows the oils to be captured rather than simply evaporating. (Tea would, one assumes, be a good example of this. I would imagine that you can infuse butter or olive oil with dill, as well.) Dill's most famous use - the dill pickle - is an example of this. (Pickles take weeks to make. Still, I really wanted to pickle when I was doing salt... maybe I'll try again this week.)
So I've got a "week" to learn how to use a soft touch on dill - how to coax its flavor out without simply dumping half a bottle of it on whatever I'm cooking. I've never used it at all as a spice, so that'll be new; I'll see what I can do with it, and see what things want the spice as opposed to the herb. And, hopefully, I'll put up some pickles that I'll be able to enjoy by the end of the summer.
Join me tomorrow, when I'll talk about the tilapia with dill I made last week. Which didn't really taste that much like dill. And now I know why.
We'll talk.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Wasabi Odds and Ends. And bagel chips.
Seriously - I not only made wasabi bagel chips, they were delicious.
Well, the two slices I didn't totally fry to a crisp were. More on that later.
Wasabi Taste Test
I honestly wouldn't have thought that wasabi would be so interesting, when I started out. Once again, I really feel like this project has been a rousing success - I'm finding things - and ways to use things - that I never would have, otherwise. At the end of the year, I'll tell you whether or not I feel like the memories have stuck - whether or not learning about Wasabi for a few weeks in May helps me better use it in December. Hopefully, the answer will be yes.
When I was last at the spice store, I picked up some pure powdered wasabi. It was, as I said, quite expensive - fifteen dollars for a jar that held less than an ounce. I expected it to be a pure lark - fifteen dollars spent simply to say I had tried it, two or three lines in a blog post. I've got to admit, I was more than a little surprised by the results.
It would be pure exaggeration to say "Real wasabi is nothing like the horseradish-based powders that we get in Asian groceries and sushi restaurants." At the same time... I'm running into the problem of lack of language again. I simply don't know how to describe the difference in the tastes. They are very similar, no doubt - but I don't feel that you could ever mistake one for the other. Like Jack Nicholson and Christian Slater.
I'm not sure that was quite what I was going for.
The true wasabi is a deeper, earthier green than any of the fake powders I've seen. It is also - totally contrary to my expectations - not nearly as piquant as the horseradish-based powder. I fully expected it to have an even sharper heat, to find that the horseradish was trying vainly to imitate that. Instead, it is less spicy; a much richer and more mellow flavor, one which stays in your mouth a bit longer. Like scotches, I suppose - cheaper scotches deliver more bite and less flavor, more expensive ones taste less like alcohol and more like liquid gold. That's exactly what this was like. The harsh bite of the horseradish was significantly lessened, and the flavor of the wasabi itself was much more able to come through.
Not that I'm saying that I think anyone should run out and spend fifteen bucks on three meals' worth of genuine wasabi. It was different, but different is not necessarily good. Studies show people prefer cheap tequila in margaritas, because like scotch cheap tequila has more bite, and the bite is what people notice once there's other ingredients added. The true wasabi was richer and more flavorful - but it also had a harder time standing out in the symphony of flavors that is sushi.
The best choice, to my mind, is the middle-of-the-road "natural wasabi", which includes pure wasabi powder. It's more expensive than the fake stuff or the tube-of-toothpaste wasabi, but not by much, closer to two dollars an ounce than fifteen. It's plenty flavorful, with a nice piquant kick. And, although we might wish things were different, it tastes the way you expect wasabi to taste. (When I was a kid, my mom made Hungry Jack mashed potatoes. I'm pretty sure they're potatoes you reconstitute from dehydrated flakes. For a long, long time, that was what mashed potatoes were to me - and I hated "real" mashers.)
Bagel Chips
Wasabi definitely endures heat much better when it is in butter than in anything else I've tried so far - not only did it stand up to the microwave (albeit for about thirty seconds) when I melted it to put on popcorn, it even kept some of its zing when it went through the broiler. Now, admittedly, putting it in the broiler was a huge freakin' mistake... but as I've often emphasized, this is warts and all.
Last time my folks came down, they brought bagels. Every time they come down, I make them bring bagels. For those of you who have never lived outside the New York area... you have no freakin' idea how good you have it. In the rest of the country, a "bagel" is just toroid bread.
I love bagels. I'm not kidding about making my folks bring bagels - when they came out to Illinois for Benjamin's bris, I made them bring three dozen bagels along for the party after. In their luggage on the plane.
The problem is that bagels go stale fairly quickly. And even I can't eat them fast enough to go through two dozen before they go stale. So if my folks visit on Saturday, by Tuesday, there are usually one or two sad, stale bagels left, not inedible but hardly worth the effort.
Holy crap. I am so happy I'm going up to visit my folks this weekend - I want a bagel so badly right now.
Anyway, I decided, this time to try to repurpose one of these stale Yiddish treats. I sliced it lengthwise, as thin as I could, and wound up with about four or five thin pieces and about a dozen smaller chunks. I laid them out on a baking sheet, and decided to try some science. I split the pieces into a bunch of different batches. Some of them got olive oil, some got butter; some got wasabi powder, some would get it after cooking. (This was early in my wasabi experiments, and I didn't yet know that you need to reconstitute wasabi into paste before it really has much flavor.) Finally, the two largest pieces got lovingly slathered with wasabi butter. The whole baking sheet got throw into the oven at three fifty for five minutes, flipped, and given another five.
At this point... I had one of my less successful ideas. Now, bagel chips are supposed to be crispy, right? And these guys, while warm and delicious-looking, didn't really look crispy. What makes things crispy? The broiler.
And it did! I intended to give the whole thing one minute to crisp up - but when I took them out, sixty seconds later, the entire tray was burnt. The only pieces that survived the flames were the two large pieces that had the wasabi butter on. They weren't exactly crispy, despite the broiler - I had drenched them too thoroughly in the butter for that to happen - but they were utterly delicious.
As for the rest, maybe I'll try next time I have leftover bagels. Which should be in a day or two!
See everyone on Monday, when I start to learn about a spice I never use only a little of - dill.
Well, the two slices I didn't totally fry to a crisp were. More on that later.
Wasabi Taste Test
I honestly wouldn't have thought that wasabi would be so interesting, when I started out. Once again, I really feel like this project has been a rousing success - I'm finding things - and ways to use things - that I never would have, otherwise. At the end of the year, I'll tell you whether or not I feel like the memories have stuck - whether or not learning about Wasabi for a few weeks in May helps me better use it in December. Hopefully, the answer will be yes.
When I was last at the spice store, I picked up some pure powdered wasabi. It was, as I said, quite expensive - fifteen dollars for a jar that held less than an ounce. I expected it to be a pure lark - fifteen dollars spent simply to say I had tried it, two or three lines in a blog post. I've got to admit, I was more than a little surprised by the results.
It would be pure exaggeration to say "Real wasabi is nothing like the horseradish-based powders that we get in Asian groceries and sushi restaurants." At the same time... I'm running into the problem of lack of language again. I simply don't know how to describe the difference in the tastes. They are very similar, no doubt - but I don't feel that you could ever mistake one for the other. Like Jack Nicholson and Christian Slater.
I'm not sure that was quite what I was going for.
The true wasabi is a deeper, earthier green than any of the fake powders I've seen. It is also - totally contrary to my expectations - not nearly as piquant as the horseradish-based powder. I fully expected it to have an even sharper heat, to find that the horseradish was trying vainly to imitate that. Instead, it is less spicy; a much richer and more mellow flavor, one which stays in your mouth a bit longer. Like scotches, I suppose - cheaper scotches deliver more bite and less flavor, more expensive ones taste less like alcohol and more like liquid gold. That's exactly what this was like. The harsh bite of the horseradish was significantly lessened, and the flavor of the wasabi itself was much more able to come through.
Not that I'm saying that I think anyone should run out and spend fifteen bucks on three meals' worth of genuine wasabi. It was different, but different is not necessarily good. Studies show people prefer cheap tequila in margaritas, because like scotch cheap tequila has more bite, and the bite is what people notice once there's other ingredients added. The true wasabi was richer and more flavorful - but it also had a harder time standing out in the symphony of flavors that is sushi.
The best choice, to my mind, is the middle-of-the-road "natural wasabi", which includes pure wasabi powder. It's more expensive than the fake stuff or the tube-of-toothpaste wasabi, but not by much, closer to two dollars an ounce than fifteen. It's plenty flavorful, with a nice piquant kick. And, although we might wish things were different, it tastes the way you expect wasabi to taste. (When I was a kid, my mom made Hungry Jack mashed potatoes. I'm pretty sure they're potatoes you reconstitute from dehydrated flakes. For a long, long time, that was what mashed potatoes were to me - and I hated "real" mashers.)
Bagel Chips
Wasabi definitely endures heat much better when it is in butter than in anything else I've tried so far - not only did it stand up to the microwave (albeit for about thirty seconds) when I melted it to put on popcorn, it even kept some of its zing when it went through the broiler. Now, admittedly, putting it in the broiler was a huge freakin' mistake... but as I've often emphasized, this is warts and all.
Last time my folks came down, they brought bagels. Every time they come down, I make them bring bagels. For those of you who have never lived outside the New York area... you have no freakin' idea how good you have it. In the rest of the country, a "bagel" is just toroid bread.
I love bagels. I'm not kidding about making my folks bring bagels - when they came out to Illinois for Benjamin's bris, I made them bring three dozen bagels along for the party after. In their luggage on the plane.
The problem is that bagels go stale fairly quickly. And even I can't eat them fast enough to go through two dozen before they go stale. So if my folks visit on Saturday, by Tuesday, there are usually one or two sad, stale bagels left, not inedible but hardly worth the effort.
Holy crap. I am so happy I'm going up to visit my folks this weekend - I want a bagel so badly right now.
Anyway, I decided, this time to try to repurpose one of these stale Yiddish treats. I sliced it lengthwise, as thin as I could, and wound up with about four or five thin pieces and about a dozen smaller chunks. I laid them out on a baking sheet, and decided to try some science. I split the pieces into a bunch of different batches. Some of them got olive oil, some got butter; some got wasabi powder, some would get it after cooking. (This was early in my wasabi experiments, and I didn't yet know that you need to reconstitute wasabi into paste before it really has much flavor.) Finally, the two largest pieces got lovingly slathered with wasabi butter. The whole baking sheet got throw into the oven at three fifty for five minutes, flipped, and given another five.
At this point... I had one of my less successful ideas. Now, bagel chips are supposed to be crispy, right? And these guys, while warm and delicious-looking, didn't really look crispy. What makes things crispy? The broiler.
And it did! I intended to give the whole thing one minute to crisp up - but when I took them out, sixty seconds later, the entire tray was burnt. The only pieces that survived the flames were the two large pieces that had the wasabi butter on. They weren't exactly crispy, despite the broiler - I had drenched them too thoroughly in the butter for that to happen - but they were utterly delicious.
As for the rest, maybe I'll try next time I have leftover bagels. Which should be in a day or two!
See everyone on Monday, when I start to learn about a spice I never use only a little of - dill.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Adventures in Saucery
Before I get started, I want to say something. In case you haven't heard, the Supreme Court decided that, for security reasons, it would shut down the main entrance. The commentary I've read or heard on the issue, so far, has unanimously lamented the closure - I've heard the phrase "forty-four marble steps" about ten times in the last two days, and more people lament the fact that people will no longer walk into the courtroom past the marble busts of the Chief Justices.
You know what? The only thing that would make me happier than closing the main entrance to the Court would be if they dynamited the building entirely. The Supreme Court - the building, not the institution - is an affront to any decent American aesthetic.
Where to start? The fact that a building designed to house America's most important court is made to look like a Greek temple? (Cass Gilbert, the architect, was ironically enough one of the pioneers of that most American of buildings, the skyscraper. Why couldn't you have given the Supreme Court a skyscraper?) How about the feeling that one gets when walking in - that you are an insignificant supplicant, dwarfed by this gigantic building? Or maybe just that the busts of the Chiefs are clad in togas, rather than robes or suits. (Of course, it could also be the fact that the building is totally unsuitable for its job - it doesn't have enough viewing space, a decent coatroom, or, as this decision highlights, the ability to be made secure.)
More than anything else, the one that has always steamed me is the feeling of insignificance. Someone walking into the Court isn't a beggar, come for handouts from the justices. Justice is our right as Americans. The building should make us feel welcome. It should show us how awesome and unique the role of the Court is, yes, but it should make us feel like we are a part of that. All Americans are.
You know what? I like the side door. It's small. It's workmanlike; visitors and lawyers go in the same way. It leads, not into some Grand Hall with Statues of the Lords of Justice, but a museum - a place that can teach the visitor about the Court's role and history. (Also, a fairly awesome statue of Oliver Wendell Holmes, if I remember correctly.) Sure, it doesn't have the grandeur and majesty of the forty-four foot high ceiling of the main entry hall. It doesn't have the statues of Roman praetors or of "Lord Coke barring King James from sitting as judge." Just all this stupid stuff that's actually relevant to the lives of the people who walk through the door every day, to visit their highest court.
So - for security? Sure. I don't care why the front entrance is being closed. All I can say is, good riddance - I'll never be happier to go in through the servant's entrance.
Back to the topic at hand.
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the yogurt wasabi sauce that I made the other night. I have a few last things about wasabi in general that I had wanted to finish up today, but I'll push that back until Friday. Today, let's talk about two delicious things to do with leftovers.
Leftover Sauce Shrimp Salad
1/2 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
Leftover Wasabi Yogurt Sauce
Uhhhhh.... salad.
The salad, in this case, was a fairly simple green salad - some spinach, some lettuce, and some chopped-up green pepper. I think you don't want the salad to get too complex, but I could definitely see some cucumber or cherry tomatoes, sort of thing, getting added.
The wasabi yogurt sauce servers triple duty in this dish. First, when the shrimp are peeled, toss them into a bowl (or zip-lock bag) with about half of the sauce and let them marinate for about a half an hour. Then, pour the whole mess into a pot, and simmer for about five minutes, or until all the shrimp have changed color. Drain the shrimp. (I was using fairly tiny shrimp - if you're using larger ones, you may want to cut them down to bite-sized, either before or after cooking.) Toss the shrimp with the salad, then dress the salad with the remaining half of the sauce.
The shrimp themselves, as hopefully we've learned by this point, don't have any heat at all. However, the reserved sauce - the part we're using as a dressing - still does have a bit of zing. Not enough that my spice-phobic wife had any problem with; just a little bit of bite on the back end. Definitely not something you would expect out of a salad, which is part of what made it taste so good; the sauce was cool and refreshing on the shrimp, and ever-so-slightly piquant on the greens. A nice lunch, or salad course to a dinner.
Breaded Tilapia with Leftover Wasabi Yogurt Sauce
Hmm.
Actually, I think I'm going to save the fish recipe for next week. It's not really relevant here, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to use the main ingredient as next week's spice, so I'm going to go with the path of least resistance and save myself a post.
Really, though, the relevance here is this - after making the shrimp salad the night before, I still had a few tablespoons of the sauce left. The plan was tilapia; I puttered for a while, and came up with a recipe that sounded fun. I'd like to say that I was thinking about compatibility with the yogurt sauce beforehand, but I'm not that clever; as I was frying it up, I realized that I still had the leftover sauce. It was a perfect match; the fish came out a little dry, and the sauce solved that problem while, once again, adding a little bit of zing.
I keep wanting to say something like "I'm amazed at how versatile this sauce has been." The reality is, I've used it on two fish dishes and a shrimp dish. Not exactly a showcase of versatility, to be honest. Still, it was spectacular every time we used it; the combination of cool and spicy at the same time is unusual and enjoyably surprising. Definitely something I'll make again.
On Friday, I'll give some final thoughts on wasabi, including a report on the differences between the horseradish-based wasabi powder and real wasabi. (I broke down and bought some) Also, some more ruminations on wasabi butter, and anything else I can think of that I've thrown wasabi in over the last few weeks.
You know what? The only thing that would make me happier than closing the main entrance to the Court would be if they dynamited the building entirely. The Supreme Court - the building, not the institution - is an affront to any decent American aesthetic.
Where to start? The fact that a building designed to house America's most important court is made to look like a Greek temple? (Cass Gilbert, the architect, was ironically enough one of the pioneers of that most American of buildings, the skyscraper. Why couldn't you have given the Supreme Court a skyscraper?) How about the feeling that one gets when walking in - that you are an insignificant supplicant, dwarfed by this gigantic building? Or maybe just that the busts of the Chiefs are clad in togas, rather than robes or suits. (Of course, it could also be the fact that the building is totally unsuitable for its job - it doesn't have enough viewing space, a decent coatroom, or, as this decision highlights, the ability to be made secure.)
More than anything else, the one that has always steamed me is the feeling of insignificance. Someone walking into the Court isn't a beggar, come for handouts from the justices. Justice is our right as Americans. The building should make us feel welcome. It should show us how awesome and unique the role of the Court is, yes, but it should make us feel like we are a part of that. All Americans are.
You know what? I like the side door. It's small. It's workmanlike; visitors and lawyers go in the same way. It leads, not into some Grand Hall with Statues of the Lords of Justice, but a museum - a place that can teach the visitor about the Court's role and history. (Also, a fairly awesome statue of Oliver Wendell Holmes, if I remember correctly.) Sure, it doesn't have the grandeur and majesty of the forty-four foot high ceiling of the main entry hall. It doesn't have the statues of Roman praetors or of "Lord Coke barring King James from sitting as judge." Just all this stupid stuff that's actually relevant to the lives of the people who walk through the door every day, to visit their highest court.
So - for security? Sure. I don't care why the front entrance is being closed. All I can say is, good riddance - I'll never be happier to go in through the servant's entrance.
Back to the topic at hand.
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the yogurt wasabi sauce that I made the other night. I have a few last things about wasabi in general that I had wanted to finish up today, but I'll push that back until Friday. Today, let's talk about two delicious things to do with leftovers.
Leftover Sauce Shrimp Salad
1/2 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
Leftover Wasabi Yogurt Sauce
Uhhhhh.... salad.
The salad, in this case, was a fairly simple green salad - some spinach, some lettuce, and some chopped-up green pepper. I think you don't want the salad to get too complex, but I could definitely see some cucumber or cherry tomatoes, sort of thing, getting added.
The wasabi yogurt sauce servers triple duty in this dish. First, when the shrimp are peeled, toss them into a bowl (or zip-lock bag) with about half of the sauce and let them marinate for about a half an hour. Then, pour the whole mess into a pot, and simmer for about five minutes, or until all the shrimp have changed color. Drain the shrimp. (I was using fairly tiny shrimp - if you're using larger ones, you may want to cut them down to bite-sized, either before or after cooking.) Toss the shrimp with the salad, then dress the salad with the remaining half of the sauce.
The shrimp themselves, as hopefully we've learned by this point, don't have any heat at all. However, the reserved sauce - the part we're using as a dressing - still does have a bit of zing. Not enough that my spice-phobic wife had any problem with; just a little bit of bite on the back end. Definitely not something you would expect out of a salad, which is part of what made it taste so good; the sauce was cool and refreshing on the shrimp, and ever-so-slightly piquant on the greens. A nice lunch, or salad course to a dinner.
Breaded Tilapia with Leftover Wasabi Yogurt Sauce
Hmm.
Actually, I think I'm going to save the fish recipe for next week. It's not really relevant here, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to use the main ingredient as next week's spice, so I'm going to go with the path of least resistance and save myself a post.
Really, though, the relevance here is this - after making the shrimp salad the night before, I still had a few tablespoons of the sauce left. The plan was tilapia; I puttered for a while, and came up with a recipe that sounded fun. I'd like to say that I was thinking about compatibility with the yogurt sauce beforehand, but I'm not that clever; as I was frying it up, I realized that I still had the leftover sauce. It was a perfect match; the fish came out a little dry, and the sauce solved that problem while, once again, adding a little bit of zing.
I keep wanting to say something like "I'm amazed at how versatile this sauce has been." The reality is, I've used it on two fish dishes and a shrimp dish. Not exactly a showcase of versatility, to be honest. Still, it was spectacular every time we used it; the combination of cool and spicy at the same time is unusual and enjoyably surprising. Definitely something I'll make again.
On Friday, I'll give some final thoughts on wasabi, including a report on the differences between the horseradish-based wasabi powder and real wasabi. (I broke down and bought some) Also, some more ruminations on wasabi butter, and anything else I can think of that I've thrown wasabi in over the last few weeks.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Still Life With Wasabi and Mayonnaise
I'm changing my posting schedule slightly. Check out the entry below this one for details.
Mayonnaise is not something that I often find myself using. My mom never really used it when we were kids - I can't remember her ever making tuna salad and it certainly never got used as a sandwich spread. Truth be told, I've always found mayo to be a fairly revolting substance. I don't know why; I think it's partially because I have no idea what it is. (So I just looked it up - at its simplest, it's an egg yolk with olive oil added in, trivial to make at home. Doesn't make it any more appetizing.) I love emulsions, in general; I love drinking them, putting them on my salads, and smothering foods in them.
Here's the thing, though. You ever have one of those days, where you're all like "I've got a substance I'd like to coat another substance with. But my first substance simply does not take a form which makes spreading convenient!" Of course you have. We all have! And, if you're anything like me - and I'm sure that you are - you then thought, "Aha! What I need is some sort of neutral-tasting organic emulsion - something which will be viscous enough to trap and contain whatever it is that I want spread, yet won't change its flavor significantly."
That was pretty clever of you.
So, despite my distaste for it, I will generally keep a small jar of it around the house. It's good if I want to make a creamy honey mustard sauce, or... Or. Oh! Or if someone comes to my house who... wants... a fairly lousy spread... on a sandwich? Hmm.
Anyway, I've got some mayo in my fridge.
So we had Yousef and Sarah over for fondue.
(Wait, before I go any further, let me spoil the ending. Two days after this, I was in the supermarket, and saw wasabi mayo for sale on the shelf. I was all like, "Huh.")
Fondue. I'm a big fan - a big enough fan that I own three fondue pots. (You really need three - one for cheese, one for broth or oil, one for dessert. A second one for the main course isn't terrible either.) For the main course, I had lamb, steak, chorizo, shrimp, and some mushrooms.
A big part of the fun of fondue - and a part that, I am ashamed to admit, I rarely give the attention it deserves - is the sauce. You're eating twenty or thirty single-bite portions of various different items, with a three or four minute interval between each piece. Time and wine do their job cleaning your palate; there's no overarching theme that needs to be obeyed. A perfect opportunity to set out a cornucopia of different sauces, and let each bite be its own combination of flavors.
But as I said, this is a part of the meal that I often neglect - and lamb is not something that we eat frequently. (I do, however, frequently remark that I wished I thought to get lamb more often.) So when I was looking for sauces that I thought would go well with it, I came up nearly empty - a can of mango chutney was about it. Then I thought... what about some kind of wasabi sauce? We have the technology! Plus, I'll get a blog post out of it.
Here's the embarrassing part - remember when I was all like, "all these wasabi things are actually really easy?" Yeah. Wasabi mayo. Make up some wasabi paste. Mix it with the mayo to taste. Make sure to give it a few minutes to develop its flavor.
Oh, you can do other stuff with it - I added some rice vinegar and a tiny bit of soy sauce. But basically, the equation is wasabi + mayonnaise = wasabi mayonnaise.
It was simple - but it was also stellar. The bowl with it in was practically licked clean by the end of the night. The mayo smoothed out the heat of the wasabi enough that it had a little kick, but no harsh bite. The rice vinegar thinned it enough that just the right amount stuck to each bite. And the soy sauce gave the whole concoction just enough of a twang to stay interesting bite after bite. It went great on both the lamb and the shrimp - although I'd be lying if I didn't I also tried it on the mushrooms, steak, and chorizo. The chorizo, not so much, but everything else? Pure yum. (Is "pure yum" some product's slogan?)
A few days later, I had a piece of salmon sitting around waiting to become dinner, and no particular brainstorms about how that process should go. I had kept the wasabi mayo in the back of my head, though, and this seemed like a perfect time to give it another go.
It would require some slight adaptation, though. First, I wanted something that was a bit runnier - something that I could drizzle over the salmon after I cooked it. Second, I was planning on doing something fairly simple with the fish - poaching or baking - so I wanted something a little bit more complex than the two-note sauce that I had made for the fondue. I just wasn't sure, though, exactly how to change it.
As always, she saved me. No, not my wife. What were you thinking? Martha Stewart, of course. Riding across the fens on a white charger, the leatherwork on her saddle resplendent in its handcrafted beauty. Riding crop held high, her mouth an angry line, used to obedience and control... but could that anger be, perhaps, turned to love?
I'm getting off track. I got a recipe from her website.
It sounded like just what the doctor ordered, throwing some ginger and lime juice into the mix. However, there was still one thing that I couldn't get over - the simple fact that I was still using, as my base, mayonnaise. Why? I don't like mayo! It's boring! It doesn't add much! And when I opened the fridge, there, right in front, was the Greek yogurt.
Greek yogurt is strained yogurt - yogurt with the whey removed, so it's a lot thicker and tangier. As I've mentioned previously, Yousef once used it instead of sour cream when cooking for us, and since then I've been a fan of replacing sour cream with it. Would it work in place of mayo?
Here is the sauce I wound up making:
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 1/2 inches of fresh ginger, chopped fine
Salt and pepper to taste
3 teaspoons wasabi paste
Now, we're going to make the wasabi paste a little bit differently here. Usually, it's equal volumes powder and water, going a little bit light on the water and adding more slowly until all the powder is mixed into paste. The problem with that is that it leaves a lot of little scraps of paste all over the vessel you're mixing in. And, since this recipe calls for a bit of extra water anyway, we're going to just toss it straight into the wasabi. Mix an extra teaspoon of water into the wasabi, and you should have a fairly liquid mess - more than enough water to dissolve all the wasabi fully.
Toss everything into the blender, and pulse once or twice. Seriously; that's it. The mayo version of the sauce suggests keeping an extra tablespoon or two of water handy, in case you need it. My yogurt-based version came out a bit more watery than I'd like - I added more water to the wasabi than I suggested above - so I doubt you'll need anything extra.
More than anything else, this sauce tasted like a wasabi-flavored tzadziki sauce - the Greek sauce that goes on gyros. Lo and behold, when I looked up strained yogurt to find out what it was, I found that it is the main component of tzadziki. The spicing is different, of course, but anyone who eats a lot of Greek food will definitely taste the similarities. I thought it was a spectacular compliment to the fish, and it looked pretty nice, too:
One last thing, and I'll call it a day. I should have gotten the message by now, but I keep getting reminded just how fragile wasabi is. I pulled the fish out of the oven, put it on our plates, and poured the sauce over it. It was delicious, but with just a bare hint of the wasabi - a tiny bit of bite at the back end, and that's it. That's okay; it's a fairly large amount of sauce, compared to the volume of the wasabi, and yogurt is used in Indian food to cut down on spiciness, isn't it? (I should have thought about that earlier.)
After the fish was gone, I still had a taste for the sauce. I pulled out some carrots and used it as a dip - and was floored at how spicy the sauce was. It didn't taste precisely like wasabi - something was spreading it out more, turning that flashpaper burn into something a bit slower, a bit more mild and tangy - but the sauce that had rested on the hot fish was barely spicy at all. A little heat, and the sauce turned into something else. Startling and quite fun.
I wonder if that's an effect that you could use? It would be neat to find a way to make a meal whose flavor changed as it cooled.
Mayonnaise is not something that I often find myself using. My mom never really used it when we were kids - I can't remember her ever making tuna salad and it certainly never got used as a sandwich spread. Truth be told, I've always found mayo to be a fairly revolting substance. I don't know why; I think it's partially because I have no idea what it is. (So I just looked it up - at its simplest, it's an egg yolk with olive oil added in, trivial to make at home. Doesn't make it any more appetizing.) I love emulsions, in general; I love drinking them, putting them on my salads, and smothering foods in them.
Here's the thing, though. You ever have one of those days, where you're all like "I've got a substance I'd like to coat another substance with. But my first substance simply does not take a form which makes spreading convenient!" Of course you have. We all have! And, if you're anything like me - and I'm sure that you are - you then thought, "Aha! What I need is some sort of neutral-tasting organic emulsion - something which will be viscous enough to trap and contain whatever it is that I want spread, yet won't change its flavor significantly."
That was pretty clever of you.
So, despite my distaste for it, I will generally keep a small jar of it around the house. It's good if I want to make a creamy honey mustard sauce, or... Or. Oh! Or if someone comes to my house who... wants... a fairly lousy spread... on a sandwich? Hmm.
Anyway, I've got some mayo in my fridge.
So we had Yousef and Sarah over for fondue.
(Wait, before I go any further, let me spoil the ending. Two days after this, I was in the supermarket, and saw wasabi mayo for sale on the shelf. I was all like, "Huh.")
Fondue. I'm a big fan - a big enough fan that I own three fondue pots. (You really need three - one for cheese, one for broth or oil, one for dessert. A second one for the main course isn't terrible either.) For the main course, I had lamb, steak, chorizo, shrimp, and some mushrooms.
A big part of the fun of fondue - and a part that, I am ashamed to admit, I rarely give the attention it deserves - is the sauce. You're eating twenty or thirty single-bite portions of various different items, with a three or four minute interval between each piece. Time and wine do their job cleaning your palate; there's no overarching theme that needs to be obeyed. A perfect opportunity to set out a cornucopia of different sauces, and let each bite be its own combination of flavors.
But as I said, this is a part of the meal that I often neglect - and lamb is not something that we eat frequently. (I do, however, frequently remark that I wished I thought to get lamb more often.) So when I was looking for sauces that I thought would go well with it, I came up nearly empty - a can of mango chutney was about it. Then I thought... what about some kind of wasabi sauce? We have the technology! Plus, I'll get a blog post out of it.
Here's the embarrassing part - remember when I was all like, "all these wasabi things are actually really easy?" Yeah. Wasabi mayo. Make up some wasabi paste. Mix it with the mayo to taste. Make sure to give it a few minutes to develop its flavor.
Oh, you can do other stuff with it - I added some rice vinegar and a tiny bit of soy sauce. But basically, the equation is wasabi + mayonnaise = wasabi mayonnaise.
It was simple - but it was also stellar. The bowl with it in was practically licked clean by the end of the night. The mayo smoothed out the heat of the wasabi enough that it had a little kick, but no harsh bite. The rice vinegar thinned it enough that just the right amount stuck to each bite. And the soy sauce gave the whole concoction just enough of a twang to stay interesting bite after bite. It went great on both the lamb and the shrimp - although I'd be lying if I didn't I also tried it on the mushrooms, steak, and chorizo. The chorizo, not so much, but everything else? Pure yum. (Is "pure yum" some product's slogan?)
A few days later, I had a piece of salmon sitting around waiting to become dinner, and no particular brainstorms about how that process should go. I had kept the wasabi mayo in the back of my head, though, and this seemed like a perfect time to give it another go.
It would require some slight adaptation, though. First, I wanted something that was a bit runnier - something that I could drizzle over the salmon after I cooked it. Second, I was planning on doing something fairly simple with the fish - poaching or baking - so I wanted something a little bit more complex than the two-note sauce that I had made for the fondue. I just wasn't sure, though, exactly how to change it.
As always, she saved me. No, not my wife. What were you thinking? Martha Stewart, of course. Riding across the fens on a white charger, the leatherwork on her saddle resplendent in its handcrafted beauty. Riding crop held high, her mouth an angry line, used to obedience and control... but could that anger be, perhaps, turned to love?
I'm getting off track. I got a recipe from her website.
It sounded like just what the doctor ordered, throwing some ginger and lime juice into the mix. However, there was still one thing that I couldn't get over - the simple fact that I was still using, as my base, mayonnaise. Why? I don't like mayo! It's boring! It doesn't add much! And when I opened the fridge, there, right in front, was the Greek yogurt.
Greek yogurt is strained yogurt - yogurt with the whey removed, so it's a lot thicker and tangier. As I've mentioned previously, Yousef once used it instead of sour cream when cooking for us, and since then I've been a fan of replacing sour cream with it. Would it work in place of mayo?
Here is the sauce I wound up making:
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 1/2 inches of fresh ginger, chopped fine
Salt and pepper to taste
3 teaspoons wasabi paste
Now, we're going to make the wasabi paste a little bit differently here. Usually, it's equal volumes powder and water, going a little bit light on the water and adding more slowly until all the powder is mixed into paste. The problem with that is that it leaves a lot of little scraps of paste all over the vessel you're mixing in. And, since this recipe calls for a bit of extra water anyway, we're going to just toss it straight into the wasabi. Mix an extra teaspoon of water into the wasabi, and you should have a fairly liquid mess - more than enough water to dissolve all the wasabi fully.
Toss everything into the blender, and pulse once or twice. Seriously; that's it. The mayo version of the sauce suggests keeping an extra tablespoon or two of water handy, in case you need it. My yogurt-based version came out a bit more watery than I'd like - I added more water to the wasabi than I suggested above - so I doubt you'll need anything extra.
More than anything else, this sauce tasted like a wasabi-flavored tzadziki sauce - the Greek sauce that goes on gyros. Lo and behold, when I looked up strained yogurt to find out what it was, I found that it is the main component of tzadziki. The spicing is different, of course, but anyone who eats a lot of Greek food will definitely taste the similarities. I thought it was a spectacular compliment to the fish, and it looked pretty nice, too:
The mushrooms are, of course, wasabi stuffed mushrooms - I'll get to them tomorrow on Wednesday.
One last thing, and I'll call it a day. I should have gotten the message by now, but I keep getting reminded just how fragile wasabi is. I pulled the fish out of the oven, put it on our plates, and poured the sauce over it. It was delicious, but with just a bare hint of the wasabi - a tiny bit of bite at the back end, and that's it. That's okay; it's a fairly large amount of sauce, compared to the volume of the wasabi, and yogurt is used in Indian food to cut down on spiciness, isn't it? (I should have thought about that earlier.)
After the fish was gone, I still had a taste for the sauce. I pulled out some carrots and used it as a dip - and was floored at how spicy the sauce was. It didn't taste precisely like wasabi - something was spreading it out more, turning that flashpaper burn into something a bit slower, a bit more mild and tangy - but the sauce that had rested on the hot fish was barely spicy at all. A little heat, and the sauce turned into something else. Startling and quite fun.
I wonder if that's an effect that you could use? It would be neat to find a way to make a meal whose flavor changed as it cooled.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Reconfiguration
Gonna try something different
I'm gonna have to make some changes.
It seems obvious that attempting to post five times a week simply isn't going to work. In the last two weeks, Benji has gotten sick, I've been sick, Victoria has been sick... and it's been really obvious how fragile my schedule is. One little bump, and I'm all of a sudden skipping a week or more.
At the same time, I'm really reluctant to make the obvious change - taking two weeks per spice, and posting Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That would allow me to increase the number of posts per spice - something I've occasionally felt I should do - while at the same time reducing the amount I'd be writing.
The reason that I'm so resistant to doing something like this is fairly personal. I prefer - I have always preferred - to set agressive goals. Right now, I have a goal of a post per day. I've rarely met that goal, but most weeks I get three or four out. Well, some weeks. What I really don't want to happen is this: To go down to a schedule that requires me to post three fifths as often, and post three fifths as often as I do now. To lower my expections, and proportionally lower what I actually achieve.
But as I said, it's obvious something needs to change, so I'm going to give this a try. I really enjoy writing this blog, and really enjoy all the great food I've been making; I hope you've been enjoying reading it. I'll finish up wasabi this week, and move on the week after. I'm not sure if this means I'm going to do twenty-six spices, retitle the blog, or simply allow the title to lapse into inaccuracy.
Every day is an adventure.
I'm gonna have to make some changes.
It seems obvious that attempting to post five times a week simply isn't going to work. In the last two weeks, Benji has gotten sick, I've been sick, Victoria has been sick... and it's been really obvious how fragile my schedule is. One little bump, and I'm all of a sudden skipping a week or more.
At the same time, I'm really reluctant to make the obvious change - taking two weeks per spice, and posting Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That would allow me to increase the number of posts per spice - something I've occasionally felt I should do - while at the same time reducing the amount I'd be writing.
The reason that I'm so resistant to doing something like this is fairly personal. I prefer - I have always preferred - to set agressive goals. Right now, I have a goal of a post per day. I've rarely met that goal, but most weeks I get three or four out. Well, some weeks. What I really don't want to happen is this: To go down to a schedule that requires me to post three fifths as often, and post three fifths as often as I do now. To lower my expections, and proportionally lower what I actually achieve.
But as I said, it's obvious something needs to change, so I'm going to give this a try. I really enjoy writing this blog, and really enjoy all the great food I've been making; I hope you've been enjoying reading it. I'll finish up wasabi this week, and move on the week after. I'm not sure if this means I'm going to do twenty-six spices, retitle the blog, or simply allow the title to lapse into inaccuracy.
Every day is an adventure.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wasabi Shrimp and Wasabi Mashed Potatoes
A good comparison today. Two recipes, both alike in dignity, in fair DC, where first we set our scene. The wasabi shrimp I tried to make worked much like any regular recipe, trying to use wasabi as a traditional spice. As a result... nothing. No heat, only the tiniest echoes of wasabi flavor. The mashed potatoes, on the other hand, did what I suggested yesterday - tried sneaking the wasabi in around the side door. As a result, they keep a lot more of the wasabi flavor.
Word to the wizard, though - mix those potatoes well. (I have, depending on how you look at it, either a good or a terrible eye for bowl sizes. That is, given a known quantity of ingredients, I am good at knowing exactly what bowl will fit all the things that need to go in. What I don't have, however, is the forethought to take the next bigger bowl, if I'm going to be mixing ingredients rather than just storing them. Combine that with being too lazy to transfer everything and clean an extra bowl once I've realized that the process of mixing will spill half of my ingredients on the floor... and I often wind up mixing things in a less than vigorous manner.)
That being said - if you don't mix them well, do not give the heaviest wasabi bit to your spice-phobic wife.
Wasabi Shrimp Ke-Babs
24 shelled and deveined shrimp (I almost always use 31-40 count shrimp, but honestly, that's purely because of pricing pressure. At my local supermarket, they're often on sale and therefore half the price of the larger shrimp. I would probably choose to use larger shrimp, if this wasn't what I had at home.)
1/8 cup peanut oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon wasabi paste
2 cloves minced garlic
Mix up all the non-shrimp ingredients, whisking thoroughly. Remove half the sauce to a zip-lock bag. Marinate the shrimp in the bag for fifteen minutes, making sure to squeeze all the air out so the marinade is in full contact with the shrimp. Remove the shrimp, skewer them, and either broil or grill them for 3-4 minutes a side. Serve with the other half of the sauce for dipping.
I'm learning, right? Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time has heard me sing the same song a dozen times. This is a bad recipe. I should have, upon reading it, realized that it wasn't going to work as promised. I probably could have corrected the flaws, come up with something different that actually did what it promised. But, I didn't; I went ahead with this recipe, and got something which...
Well, to be perfectly honest, something which was really, really good. Broiled shrimp marinated in soy sauce, with some garlic for extra punch and peanut oil to give it a nice tan? I would totally make that again. It was delicious. But, if I was appearing in the Wasabi Battle episode of Iron Chef, the vapid Japanese soap actress would remark approvingly that she couldn't taste the wasabi at all in this dish. Then Chairman Kaga would totally katana her.
I do have one thing to fess up to - when I made these shrimp, Victoria and I were out of sake, so I didn't include it in the recipe. There is a chance - a remote chance, but a chance nonetheless - that the sake, in some way, has some heat-fixing effect on the wasabi. I somehow doubt it, though.
If I had it to do all over again, I would probably marinate the shrimp in soy sauce, with some garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, and a splash of peanut oil. I would grill them, then make up a wasabi mayonnaise sauce (I'll talk about that tomorrow) and either drizzle it over the shrimp or give a small bowl to each person for dipping.
Wasabi Mashed Potatoes
Yum. These came out great. I usually do a slightly more complex mashed potato recipe - a blend of red and russet potatoes, a la Good Eats s01e02 - This Spud's For You. (Admittedly, an early episode and one I've watched several times - but I don't know if I should be worried that I can cite Good Eats off the top of my head.) However, I didn't think that would work here - I didn't want the extra texture that the red potatoes would add, I just wanted a smooth and consistent dish. For whatever reason, I didn't feel like chunks and spice would go well together, and I stand by that. (In similar news - never make a screwdriver with pulpy orange juice. Recipe for instant vomit, that.)
I'm going to be relying heavily on that good eats episode here - so if anything I'm writing is unclear or incomplete, just go to the source.
3 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
Put these into a big pot, and fill it with water until it just barely covers the potatoes. Add salt until you can taste it in the water - Alton says "until it tastes like seawater" but I don't think that really helps me. Put the heat on, bring it to a boil, and then simmer until the taters are soft - about twenty minutes. You should be able to pick out a potato with tongs and crush it easily.
Prepare some wasabi paste - two tablespoons powder, one water, and leave it to sit. (If that's not enough water to reconstitute all of the paste, keep adding more, slowly - literally a drop or two at a time - until you've got a nice solid ball of wasabi.) Should leave you about fifteen minutes for the wasabi to wake up, which is exactly the right length of time.
Once those are on their way, get some whole milk or heavy cream - about a cup - on medium-low heat in a saucepan. Toss some butter and some minced fresh garlic in, and carefully - carefully! - bring the heat up. You want to soften the garlic, but a heavy boil will ruin everything really quickly, so just keep your eye on it. When the potatoes look like they're ready, take this off the heat.
Drain the potatoes, and either transfer them into a mixing bowl or put them back in the pot, depending on where you prefer to mash. Add the wasabi to the milk/cream mixture, and whisk it until it's mostly dissolved. Now, pour some of the liquid into the potatoes and start mashing; the liquid lubricates the process, and at the same time gets absorbed by the potatoes. You can definitely ruin potatoes by over-mashing them, so go easy; you're unlikely to ruin them with too much of the milk mixture, so don't worry about going heavy on that. Early on in the process, give it a taste, and add a pinch or two of kosher salt if needed. Once it's mashed, it's ready to serve.
I would go easy on the garnishes here; sour cream or butter would hardly go awry, but I wouldn't add cheese, and I'd be wary about bacon, scallions, or anything like that. Now, I know, it seems insane that I'm encouraging people not to add cheese or bacon to something; it's just my gut feeling that it wouldn't really work out that well. Actually, maybe scallions would be good. Who knows.
So, again, the lesson for today is this: don't try to treat it as a regular ingredient. It hates that, and will give you nothing in return. Treat the wasabi as something special, give it the royal treatment. Make it feel special, and it'll reward you; make it spend too much time with the hoi palloi, and it'll leave before you get a chance to taste it.
Finally, in ironic news - coming of age in the era of Dan Quayle has left me totally unable to spell the plural of the word "potato". If it wasn't for the magic typing box telling me when I'm right and when I'm wrong, I'd be making myself look like a fool accidentally, rather than on purpose.
Word to the wizard, though - mix those potatoes well. (I have, depending on how you look at it, either a good or a terrible eye for bowl sizes. That is, given a known quantity of ingredients, I am good at knowing exactly what bowl will fit all the things that need to go in. What I don't have, however, is the forethought to take the next bigger bowl, if I'm going to be mixing ingredients rather than just storing them. Combine that with being too lazy to transfer everything and clean an extra bowl once I've realized that the process of mixing will spill half of my ingredients on the floor... and I often wind up mixing things in a less than vigorous manner.)
That being said - if you don't mix them well, do not give the heaviest wasabi bit to your spice-phobic wife.
Wasabi Shrimp Ke-Babs
24 shelled and deveined shrimp (I almost always use 31-40 count shrimp, but honestly, that's purely because of pricing pressure. At my local supermarket, they're often on sale and therefore half the price of the larger shrimp. I would probably choose to use larger shrimp, if this wasn't what I had at home.)
1/8 cup peanut oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon wasabi paste
2 cloves minced garlic
Mix up all the non-shrimp ingredients, whisking thoroughly. Remove half the sauce to a zip-lock bag. Marinate the shrimp in the bag for fifteen minutes, making sure to squeeze all the air out so the marinade is in full contact with the shrimp. Remove the shrimp, skewer them, and either broil or grill them for 3-4 minutes a side. Serve with the other half of the sauce for dipping.
I'm learning, right? Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time has heard me sing the same song a dozen times. This is a bad recipe. I should have, upon reading it, realized that it wasn't going to work as promised. I probably could have corrected the flaws, come up with something different that actually did what it promised. But, I didn't; I went ahead with this recipe, and got something which...
Well, to be perfectly honest, something which was really, really good. Broiled shrimp marinated in soy sauce, with some garlic for extra punch and peanut oil to give it a nice tan? I would totally make that again. It was delicious. But, if I was appearing in the Wasabi Battle episode of Iron Chef, the vapid Japanese soap actress would remark approvingly that she couldn't taste the wasabi at all in this dish. Then Chairman Kaga would totally katana her.
I do have one thing to fess up to - when I made these shrimp, Victoria and I were out of sake, so I didn't include it in the recipe. There is a chance - a remote chance, but a chance nonetheless - that the sake, in some way, has some heat-fixing effect on the wasabi. I somehow doubt it, though.
If I had it to do all over again, I would probably marinate the shrimp in soy sauce, with some garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, and a splash of peanut oil. I would grill them, then make up a wasabi mayonnaise sauce (I'll talk about that tomorrow) and either drizzle it over the shrimp or give a small bowl to each person for dipping.
Wasabi Mashed Potatoes
Yum. These came out great. I usually do a slightly more complex mashed potato recipe - a blend of red and russet potatoes, a la Good Eats s01e02 - This Spud's For You. (Admittedly, an early episode and one I've watched several times - but I don't know if I should be worried that I can cite Good Eats off the top of my head.) However, I didn't think that would work here - I didn't want the extra texture that the red potatoes would add, I just wanted a smooth and consistent dish. For whatever reason, I didn't feel like chunks and spice would go well together, and I stand by that. (In similar news - never make a screwdriver with pulpy orange juice. Recipe for instant vomit, that.)
I'm going to be relying heavily on that good eats episode here - so if anything I'm writing is unclear or incomplete, just go to the source.
3 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
Put these into a big pot, and fill it with water until it just barely covers the potatoes. Add salt until you can taste it in the water - Alton says "until it tastes like seawater" but I don't think that really helps me. Put the heat on, bring it to a boil, and then simmer until the taters are soft - about twenty minutes. You should be able to pick out a potato with tongs and crush it easily.
Prepare some wasabi paste - two tablespoons powder, one water, and leave it to sit. (If that's not enough water to reconstitute all of the paste, keep adding more, slowly - literally a drop or two at a time - until you've got a nice solid ball of wasabi.) Should leave you about fifteen minutes for the wasabi to wake up, which is exactly the right length of time.
Once those are on their way, get some whole milk or heavy cream - about a cup - on medium-low heat in a saucepan. Toss some butter and some minced fresh garlic in, and carefully - carefully! - bring the heat up. You want to soften the garlic, but a heavy boil will ruin everything really quickly, so just keep your eye on it. When the potatoes look like they're ready, take this off the heat.
Drain the potatoes, and either transfer them into a mixing bowl or put them back in the pot, depending on where you prefer to mash. Add the wasabi to the milk/cream mixture, and whisk it until it's mostly dissolved. Now, pour some of the liquid into the potatoes and start mashing; the liquid lubricates the process, and at the same time gets absorbed by the potatoes. You can definitely ruin potatoes by over-mashing them, so go easy; you're unlikely to ruin them with too much of the milk mixture, so don't worry about going heavy on that. Early on in the process, give it a taste, and add a pinch or two of kosher salt if needed. Once it's mashed, it's ready to serve.
I would go easy on the garnishes here; sour cream or butter would hardly go awry, but I wouldn't add cheese, and I'd be wary about bacon, scallions, or anything like that. Now, I know, it seems insane that I'm encouraging people not to add cheese or bacon to something; it's just my gut feeling that it wouldn't really work out that well. Actually, maybe scallions would be good. Who knows.
So, again, the lesson for today is this: don't try to treat it as a regular ingredient. It hates that, and will give you nothing in return. Treat the wasabi as something special, give it the royal treatment. Make it feel special, and it'll reward you; make it spend too much time with the hoi palloi, and it'll leave before you get a chance to taste it.
Finally, in ironic news - coming of age in the era of Dan Quayle has left me totally unable to spell the plural of the word "potato". If it wasn't for the magic typing box telling me when I'm right and when I'm wrong, I'd be making myself look like a fool accidentally, rather than on purpose.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Cooking with Wasabi is hard.
Irritating and difficult, to say the least.
After a few days working with it - well, I definitely have to agree with what I wrote the other day. It is fragile, fragile stuff. A little bit of heat, or a little bit more of time and air, and you've got something which has barely any flavor at all - and no heat to speak of. It needs to reconstitute in water to really gain its heat and flavor back, but wasabi paste doesn't really mix well into things. As a result, despite how strong a snootful of wasabi seems, it's rarely something which will headline dishes.
What makes wasabi both exciting and educational, then, is that someone interested in cooking with it needs to find a way to sneak it into dishes. The most successful things that I've cooked over the last week have used wasabi as part of a sauce, dip, or other additive.
I've done a lot of experimentation; some of it has been really good, some of it has been really bad. Most of it has been fairly short. As a result, there will probably be a higher-than-average percentage of two-recipe posts this week - however, there will probably be a higher-than-average percentage of fairly short recipes, as well.
I thought today would be short, and had planned to write about popcorn, then about shrimp. Then I got to writing, and realized that I'm bad at "short". Or maybe I was trapped in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
WASABI POPCORN
Okay, this is kind of a lie - the topic is really "wasabi butter" - but here's how it went down. Wasabi butter is brutally easy to make. This is what I did:
You are standing in an open road east of a white house, with a glass front door. There is a small mail slot in the door.
>WEST
You are in the KITCHEN.
>OPEN PANTRY
You open your pantry door, exposing your pasta, canned goods, and various teas and spices to the world.
>TAKE WASABI
You have taken the wasabi powder.
>TAKE BUTTER
Do YOU store butter in the pantry? No, you don't. The butter is in the fridge. You'll have to go over there.
>GO TO FRIDGE
What, were you raised in a barn? The pantry door is still open!
>CLOSE PANTRY
Regretfully saying goodbye to your precious apple sauce stockpile, you close the pantry door.
>OPEN FRIDGE
You walk over to the Frig-o-matic 5000 and open the door. A blast of icy air fills the room. Wow, anything you take out of this baby is going to be solid as a rock!
>TAKE BUTTER
You have taken the butter.
>INV
You have:
1 teaspoon of wasabi powder
1 half-stick of butter
>SOFTEN BUTTER
You leave the butter on the kitchen table for a half hour. It slowly warms up from the chill of the fridge, releasing an aroma of delicious buttery goodness. When it is sufficiently soft to cook with, you put it back in your pack.
>TAKE FORK
Do YOU store your forks in the fridge? No, you don - aah, what's the point. You have taken the fork.
>MAKE WASABI BUTTER
I don't understand what you mean.
>USE FORK
What do you want to use the fork on?
>USE FORK ON BUTTER
Using the fork, you mush the butter up. Now you have mushy butter. Happy?
>USE FORK ON BUTTER AND WASABI
Using the fork, you mush the butter up. Now you have mushy butter. Happy?
>USE FORK ON WASABI
I don't know how you can use a fork on that.
>I HATE YOU
I don't understand what you mean.
>YOU SUCK
Maybe you should try rephrasing that.
>PUT WASABI IN BUTTER
You dump the wasabi powder into the soft butter.
>USE FORK ON BUTTER
Using the fork, you mush the wasabi into the butter until the two are thoroughly combined.
>INV
You have:
Wasabi Butter
>USE POPCORN MAKER
You plug in your trusty Pop-O-Matic 9000, but as you do you hear the sound of a fuse blowing. All your lights go out.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
>OPEN FUSE BOX
The fuse box isn't in the kitchen.
>EAST
Oh no! A lurking grue slithered into the room and devoured you!
*** YOU HAVE DIED ***
See what I mean? Easy-peasy. Make sure you've got a lantern, or at least a book of matches and a candle, when you turn on the popcorn maker and you should be fine.
I made the wasabi butter during dinner, just on a lark, with no idea what I was going to do with it. At about one in the morning, I decided I needed a snack - and with that special one-in-the-morning logic, I decided that snack should be popcorn with wasabi butter on it. The part of my brain which might have flagged that idea as "crazy" was long asleep at that point - so I got the popper running, gave the butter twenty seconds in the microwave, and got some salt.
It was delicious. I was totally floored at how much I enjoyed it, considering that I thought that it would be a random stupid experiment. There wasn't a ton of piquancy in the butter, but there was just enough to keep it interesting, and the flavor the wasabi added was totally unexpected - in a great way - on popcorn.
I'm not sure why the butter only had the faintest hint of heat. It could have been any of three things. First, wasabi powder itself isn't spicy if you taste it - it needs to be mixed with water to really develop its full heat. I had assumed that mixing with butter would be just as good. I read several recipes that used wasabi butter - none were clear that they were mixing wasabi paste in with the butter, so I assumed "wasabi" meant "wasabi powder." So it seemed reasonable that whatever chemical brought the piquancy to wasabi was fat-soluble. If not, I thought that once the butter melted, the wasabi powder would dissolve in it the same as it would water. (I know that oil is not the same as water - but I'm pretty sure there's a ton of water in butter.) Therefore, if both of these assumptions were wrong, the heat would never really get drawn out of the powder.
Second, of course, is the fact that I subjected it to heat - to wit, twenty seconds in the microwave. I think tomorrow I'll do a fairly simple experiment - take a small mount of wasabi powder, and see how the taste degrades over repeated five and ten second microwaving sessions.
Third - and perhaps most obviously - I might just not have been using very much wasabi by volume. Wasabi paste is wasabi powder mixed somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1 with water, depending on various factors. One teapoon of wasabi to four tablespoons of butter is a 1:12 ratio; the butter simply might have drowned the heat.
Honestly, though? Whatever the reason was, I think I was a lot better off with low-spice wasabi butter. Hyper-piquant popcorn wouldn't have been nearly as fun as what I got, which was popcorn dripping with a greenish-yellow butter that had hints of piquancy, like little firecrackers going off in your mouth as you ate them. This isn't just something I would do again, this is something I would serve to guests at a movie night, or something else that called for popcorn. This is something that actually makes me want to make more popcorn, simply so I can try again. Another one of those random experiments that hits gold.
Sheesh - I had hoped to get to the shrimp today. Oh well - guess I'll have to leave that off for tomorrow. This is going to be a fun week.
After a few days working with it - well, I definitely have to agree with what I wrote the other day. It is fragile, fragile stuff. A little bit of heat, or a little bit more of time and air, and you've got something which has barely any flavor at all - and no heat to speak of. It needs to reconstitute in water to really gain its heat and flavor back, but wasabi paste doesn't really mix well into things. As a result, despite how strong a snootful of wasabi seems, it's rarely something which will headline dishes.
What makes wasabi both exciting and educational, then, is that someone interested in cooking with it needs to find a way to sneak it into dishes. The most successful things that I've cooked over the last week have used wasabi as part of a sauce, dip, or other additive.
I've done a lot of experimentation; some of it has been really good, some of it has been really bad. Most of it has been fairly short. As a result, there will probably be a higher-than-average percentage of two-recipe posts this week - however, there will probably be a higher-than-average percentage of fairly short recipes, as well.
I thought today would be short, and had planned to write about popcorn, then about shrimp. Then I got to writing, and realized that I'm bad at "short". Or maybe I was trapped in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
WASABI POPCORN
Okay, this is kind of a lie - the topic is really "wasabi butter" - but here's how it went down. Wasabi butter is brutally easy to make. This is what I did:
You are standing in an open road east of a white house, with a glass front door. There is a small mail slot in the door.
>WEST
You are in the KITCHEN.
>OPEN PANTRY
You open your pantry door, exposing your pasta, canned goods, and various teas and spices to the world.
>TAKE WASABI
You have taken the wasabi powder.
>TAKE BUTTER
Do YOU store butter in the pantry? No, you don't. The butter is in the fridge. You'll have to go over there.
>GO TO FRIDGE
What, were you raised in a barn? The pantry door is still open!
>CLOSE PANTRY
Regretfully saying goodbye to your precious apple sauce stockpile, you close the pantry door.
>OPEN FRIDGE
You walk over to the Frig-o-matic 5000 and open the door. A blast of icy air fills the room. Wow, anything you take out of this baby is going to be solid as a rock!
>TAKE BUTTER
You have taken the butter.
>INV
You have:
1 teaspoon of wasabi powder
1 half-stick of butter
>SOFTEN BUTTER
You leave the butter on the kitchen table for a half hour. It slowly warms up from the chill of the fridge, releasing an aroma of delicious buttery goodness. When it is sufficiently soft to cook with, you put it back in your pack.
>TAKE FORK
Do YOU store your forks in the fridge? No, you don - aah, what's the point. You have taken the fork.
>MAKE WASABI BUTTER
I don't understand what you mean.
>USE FORK
What do you want to use the fork on?
>USE FORK ON BUTTER
Using the fork, you mush the butter up. Now you have mushy butter. Happy?
>USE FORK ON BUTTER AND WASABI
Using the fork, you mush the butter up. Now you have mushy butter. Happy?
>USE FORK ON WASABI
I don't know how you can use a fork on that.
>I HATE YOU
I don't understand what you mean.
>YOU SUCK
Maybe you should try rephrasing that.
>PUT WASABI IN BUTTER
You dump the wasabi powder into the soft butter.
>USE FORK ON BUTTER
Using the fork, you mush the wasabi into the butter until the two are thoroughly combined.
>INV
You have:
Wasabi Butter
>USE POPCORN MAKER
You plug in your trusty Pop-O-Matic 9000, but as you do you hear the sound of a fuse blowing. All your lights go out.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
>OPEN FUSE BOX
The fuse box isn't in the kitchen.
>EAST
Oh no! A lurking grue slithered into the room and devoured you!
*** YOU HAVE DIED ***
See what I mean? Easy-peasy. Make sure you've got a lantern, or at least a book of matches and a candle, when you turn on the popcorn maker and you should be fine.
I made the wasabi butter during dinner, just on a lark, with no idea what I was going to do with it. At about one in the morning, I decided I needed a snack - and with that special one-in-the-morning logic, I decided that snack should be popcorn with wasabi butter on it. The part of my brain which might have flagged that idea as "crazy" was long asleep at that point - so I got the popper running, gave the butter twenty seconds in the microwave, and got some salt.
It was delicious. I was totally floored at how much I enjoyed it, considering that I thought that it would be a random stupid experiment. There wasn't a ton of piquancy in the butter, but there was just enough to keep it interesting, and the flavor the wasabi added was totally unexpected - in a great way - on popcorn.
I'm not sure why the butter only had the faintest hint of heat. It could have been any of three things. First, wasabi powder itself isn't spicy if you taste it - it needs to be mixed with water to really develop its full heat. I had assumed that mixing with butter would be just as good. I read several recipes that used wasabi butter - none were clear that they were mixing wasabi paste in with the butter, so I assumed "wasabi" meant "wasabi powder." So it seemed reasonable that whatever chemical brought the piquancy to wasabi was fat-soluble. If not, I thought that once the butter melted, the wasabi powder would dissolve in it the same as it would water. (I know that oil is not the same as water - but I'm pretty sure there's a ton of water in butter.) Therefore, if both of these assumptions were wrong, the heat would never really get drawn out of the powder.
Second, of course, is the fact that I subjected it to heat - to wit, twenty seconds in the microwave. I think tomorrow I'll do a fairly simple experiment - take a small mount of wasabi powder, and see how the taste degrades over repeated five and ten second microwaving sessions.
Third - and perhaps most obviously - I might just not have been using very much wasabi by volume. Wasabi paste is wasabi powder mixed somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1 with water, depending on various factors. One teapoon of wasabi to four tablespoons of butter is a 1:12 ratio; the butter simply might have drowned the heat.
Honestly, though? Whatever the reason was, I think I was a lot better off with low-spice wasabi butter. Hyper-piquant popcorn wouldn't have been nearly as fun as what I got, which was popcorn dripping with a greenish-yellow butter that had hints of piquancy, like little firecrackers going off in your mouth as you ate them. This isn't just something I would do again, this is something I would serve to guests at a movie night, or something else that called for popcorn. This is something that actually makes me want to make more popcorn, simply so I can try again. Another one of those random experiments that hits gold.
Sheesh - I had hoped to get to the shrimp today. Oh well - guess I'll have to leave that off for tomorrow. This is going to be a fun week.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Week Wasabi
Wasabi. That little mound of green stuff that comes along with your sushi is a surprisingly complex spice. I've always thought of it as the spice equivalent of flash paper; it's intense, but it burns out quickly. Usually, even if my eyes are watering (I learned the word for "something that makes your eyes water" when looking up wasabi - "lachrymatory") when I exhale, I exhale all of the heat along with the air. Which I like, because it means that you can risk putting a bunch on, knowing that the pain will be fairly transitory if you misjudge.
I generally like piquant food, but I find that even people who don't like food particularly hot enjoy wasabi. Well, enjoy things that are like wasabi - it's entirely possible that it's a spice that you've never actually tasted. Real wasabi is very expensive - the pure, ground root costs ten to twenty dollars an ounce or more, and that ounce generally doesn't take you very far. Wasabi powders start out, at the lowest end, not including any wasabi at all; seiyo-wasabi is made from horseradish and mustard powder and dyed green. One spice house (whose honesty I appreciate) describes their natural wasabi as "A blend of horseradish, mustard, tapioca starch and wasabi."
I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest, how large the difference is. The first time I used the "natural wasabi" instead of the non-wasabi powder we used to use, I could definitely taste the difference. Hotter and... brighter, more flavorful. Tonight, however, Victoria made sushi for us for dinner, and I have no idea which one she used. Well, that's not quite true either - the non-wasabi powder has been moved, so I'm fairly certain she used that. Three possible explanations - either I was fooling myself that I could taste a difference, or the difference is so slight that I have to be looking for it to notice. Third, and the one I think is most likely, is that the old wasabi powder is the one that I'm most used to; we've been using that type of powder for years, and have only used the new one once or twice, so nothing was different from what I expected.
So what is wasabi? It's a rhizome - an underground leaf-bearing stem, similar to ginger or turmeric. Even though horseradish is most often used to fake wasabi, they're not related; wasabi is a type of cabbage. The rich green color most of us associate with wasabi is marketing mumbo-jumbo, a reminder that chlorophyll or other dyes are being used to color it. The two main variants of wasabi are pale green and nearly white, with the lighter color being the hotter one. Outside of japan, few people will ever see an actual wasabi root. Wasabi only grows in Japan, and its flavor is extremely fragile. Wasabi gets powdered and dried to protect the flavor, then gets shipped out. (Traditionalist sushi cooks grate fresh wasabi using a sharkskin grater. This doesn't add to the flavor, but I'm sure adds significantly to the awesomeness of both the sushi and the chef.)
Fragile flavor? Sure, most of us think of wasabi as a total bruiser. It's hard to think of something that can kick your ass so easily as fragile. But wasabi has a glass jaw. Think about it - and think about our definition of spice. Volatile essential oils. Think about that flash paper effect; wasabi is strong, yes, but it's also extremely volatile. Try it for yourself; mix some up (or swipe some from the restaurant next time you go out for sushi.) By the next morning, most of the fire will have faded; by the evening, it'll be hard to taste anything at all.
This makes my life at least a little difficult, but at the same time, a little more educational. I was planning, tomorrow or the day after, buying some tuna steaks; I've occasionally grilled tuna with wasabi and soy sauce on it. I always assumed that I wasn't putting on enough wasabi, because it never came out particularly spicy. Actually, heat will kill wasabi fairly quickly. It needs to be mixed into something and kept cool in order to keep its flavor.
Ironically, respecting its fragility needs to happen on both sides - you can't just mix up some powder and water and expect it to taste good. You need to give it at least fifteen minutes to come to its full potency, after which it immediately starts going downhill from exposure to air. This is part of the reason why sushi rolls (yes, I am aware that my sushi terminology is off. Don't be pedantic.) are made with a schmear of wasabi paste inside of them - once it is rolled up, it is somewhat protected from the deleterious effects of contact with air. The lump of paste that is plated along with it has no such protection.
I will admit - I was, at one time, one of those macho idiots who piled tons of wasabi onto my sushi in order to prove I can take it. I have since learned that if you leave sushi alone, it has a subtle and complex taste that you can actual enjoy, if your eyes aren't watering through it. These days, actually, I've become an annoying purist about almost everything; I don't put a sauce on my steak, I don't take sugar in my tea, and I don't put soy sauce or wasabi on my sushi. The exception to all three cases is if I'm consuming something low-quality; Lipton tea gets sugar, but I actually want to taste the genmaicha that we bought. Steak needs to be shoe leather before I'll sauce it. And at most quality sushi restaurants, anything but the most basic rolls comes with a sauce of its own; something that the chef deliberately put on it. Why would I want to overwhelm that with a generic sauce? (Sorry, sweetie - I love making sushi with you, but the stuff we make definitely counts as low-quality, which is a testament to how bloody good sushi is.)
I'm a little excited, going into this week. I'm going to have to treat wasabi differently than I've treated anything else, because it can't just be added into a dish then cooked. I'm sure I'll talk about sushi again, but I don't know if I want to do a long post on how to make sushi; I think that's something that it would be easier to learn elsewhere. There's a great Good Eats episode on the topic. My challenge is going to be to find places where I can use wasabi as a sauce, and at the same time not overwhelm my wife - who has a low tolerance for piquancy - with its heat. I'm due for a spice shopping trip, so I'll probably splurge on an ounce of pure wasabi, and do a taste test. Aside from that - I have no idea. I'll be doing a lot of research tomorrow.
By the way - I hope at least some of you did your homework and bought some fresh oregano, and hopefully some other spices as well. Don't make me come over there.
I generally like piquant food, but I find that even people who don't like food particularly hot enjoy wasabi. Well, enjoy things that are like wasabi - it's entirely possible that it's a spice that you've never actually tasted. Real wasabi is very expensive - the pure, ground root costs ten to twenty dollars an ounce or more, and that ounce generally doesn't take you very far. Wasabi powders start out, at the lowest end, not including any wasabi at all; seiyo-wasabi is made from horseradish and mustard powder and dyed green. One spice house (whose honesty I appreciate) describes their natural wasabi as "A blend of horseradish, mustard, tapioca starch and wasabi."
I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest, how large the difference is. The first time I used the "natural wasabi" instead of the non-wasabi powder we used to use, I could definitely taste the difference. Hotter and... brighter, more flavorful. Tonight, however, Victoria made sushi for us for dinner, and I have no idea which one she used. Well, that's not quite true either - the non-wasabi powder has been moved, so I'm fairly certain she used that. Three possible explanations - either I was fooling myself that I could taste a difference, or the difference is so slight that I have to be looking for it to notice. Third, and the one I think is most likely, is that the old wasabi powder is the one that I'm most used to; we've been using that type of powder for years, and have only used the new one once or twice, so nothing was different from what I expected.
So what is wasabi? It's a rhizome - an underground leaf-bearing stem, similar to ginger or turmeric. Even though horseradish is most often used to fake wasabi, they're not related; wasabi is a type of cabbage. The rich green color most of us associate with wasabi is marketing mumbo-jumbo, a reminder that chlorophyll or other dyes are being used to color it. The two main variants of wasabi are pale green and nearly white, with the lighter color being the hotter one. Outside of japan, few people will ever see an actual wasabi root. Wasabi only grows in Japan, and its flavor is extremely fragile. Wasabi gets powdered and dried to protect the flavor, then gets shipped out. (Traditionalist sushi cooks grate fresh wasabi using a sharkskin grater. This doesn't add to the flavor, but I'm sure adds significantly to the awesomeness of both the sushi and the chef.)
Fragile flavor? Sure, most of us think of wasabi as a total bruiser. It's hard to think of something that can kick your ass so easily as fragile. But wasabi has a glass jaw. Think about it - and think about our definition of spice. Volatile essential oils. Think about that flash paper effect; wasabi is strong, yes, but it's also extremely volatile. Try it for yourself; mix some up (or swipe some from the restaurant next time you go out for sushi.) By the next morning, most of the fire will have faded; by the evening, it'll be hard to taste anything at all.
This makes my life at least a little difficult, but at the same time, a little more educational. I was planning, tomorrow or the day after, buying some tuna steaks; I've occasionally grilled tuna with wasabi and soy sauce on it. I always assumed that I wasn't putting on enough wasabi, because it never came out particularly spicy. Actually, heat will kill wasabi fairly quickly. It needs to be mixed into something and kept cool in order to keep its flavor.
Ironically, respecting its fragility needs to happen on both sides - you can't just mix up some powder and water and expect it to taste good. You need to give it at least fifteen minutes to come to its full potency, after which it immediately starts going downhill from exposure to air. This is part of the reason why sushi rolls (yes, I am aware that my sushi terminology is off. Don't be pedantic.) are made with a schmear of wasabi paste inside of them - once it is rolled up, it is somewhat protected from the deleterious effects of contact with air. The lump of paste that is plated along with it has no such protection.
I will admit - I was, at one time, one of those macho idiots who piled tons of wasabi onto my sushi in order to prove I can take it. I have since learned that if you leave sushi alone, it has a subtle and complex taste that you can actual enjoy, if your eyes aren't watering through it. These days, actually, I've become an annoying purist about almost everything; I don't put a sauce on my steak, I don't take sugar in my tea, and I don't put soy sauce or wasabi on my sushi. The exception to all three cases is if I'm consuming something low-quality; Lipton tea gets sugar, but I actually want to taste the genmaicha that we bought. Steak needs to be shoe leather before I'll sauce it. And at most quality sushi restaurants, anything but the most basic rolls comes with a sauce of its own; something that the chef deliberately put on it. Why would I want to overwhelm that with a generic sauce? (Sorry, sweetie - I love making sushi with you, but the stuff we make definitely counts as low-quality, which is a testament to how bloody good sushi is.)
I'm a little excited, going into this week. I'm going to have to treat wasabi differently than I've treated anything else, because it can't just be added into a dish then cooked. I'm sure I'll talk about sushi again, but I don't know if I want to do a long post on how to make sushi; I think that's something that it would be easier to learn elsewhere. There's a great Good Eats episode on the topic. My challenge is going to be to find places where I can use wasabi as a sauce, and at the same time not overwhelm my wife - who has a low tolerance for piquancy - with its heat. I'm due for a spice shopping trip, so I'll probably splurge on an ounce of pure wasabi, and do a taste test. Aside from that - I have no idea. I'll be doing a lot of research tomorrow.
By the way - I hope at least some of you did your homework and bought some fresh oregano, and hopefully some other spices as well. Don't make me come over there.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sleepless Oregano Cheesy Bread
I’ve been losing a lot of sleep over this blog lately.
I mean that literally; I don’t mean that I’ve been worrying about the blog. I mean that I’ve been up in the evenings writing, and that for one reason or another I've been getting distracted, haven't been able to either write or get to sleep, and have been up until the wee hours. I've seen sunrise twice this week. That's not good times when I've got a baby to watch. (Who just turned one, by the way.)
I think part of it is the fact that I'm just not super-jazzed by oregano. I've definitely got some delicious oregano in the house, and I'm discovering that it is not the boring, flavorless spice that I've always thought it to be. But in the end, oregano is oregano; I've used it before. I could make a red sauce, or a pasta dish, or something, but that honestly sounds kinda boring - and honestly, several of the people who I know read this blog are better Italian cooks than I am.
The other problem is that Victoria's parents are down from Toronto for Benji's birthday, and we've been going out a lot. Like I said yesterday, I'm really into the idea of making lamb, but they're vegetarians - yet another thing that throws a wrench in the works. Maybe when my folks come down on Saturday, I'll make some lamb... or maybe I'll just say "I said what I felt I needed to about oregano, which was less about dishes - because most people know where and when to use oregano - and more about the common problems people face with, i.e. the sucking."
In any case, I made some cheesy bread as an appetizer/side dish tonight. (I say cheesy bread because... well, you'll know why I don't feel right calling it garlic bread in a second.) It was really good. It's also not a particularly long or involved recipe - hence the whole discussion about the fact that I don't feel like oregano is really getting its due.
Sleepless Oregano Cheesy Bread
Take a loaf of crusty bread and cut it open. Butter both sides. Sprinkle liberally with oregano, then minced garlic, then shredded mozzarella (or any other cheese that will get melty.) Bake at 300 degrees for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the cheese is starting to brown. Let cool for 5 minutes, cut, and serve with tomato sauce for a-dippin'.
When I say sprinkle liberally - the bread was about 1/2 covered with oregano, and I used a big soup spoon scoop of garlic on each side.
See what I mean? That's not much of a recipe. Oh well. I need sleep more than I need a long wordcount. (I don't think that it helps that I look at the counter in MS Word which reports how many words your document is as my score for the post. Hey, if it's good enough for Dickens...)
(Oh, wait. I hate Dickens.)
Anyway - I used the Mexican oregano, which was probably not the obvious choice. The thing is, I wasn't likely to make anything Mexican in the next few days, and I haven't cooked with the Mexican oregano at all yet! It was delicious - deeper than the Mediterranean oregano, with that hint of piqancy. It definitely made the dish more interesting than it would have been otherwise. An old girlfriend always used to talk about "the wrong touch at the right time", and that's the feeling I got here - the Mexican oregano was absolutely not the flavor you were expecting, but not nearly different enough for it to taste wrong. It just jolts you out of your expectations for a moment or two, which is a lot to get from a simple choice of spices.
I'm not sure where to go from here, to be honest - I've still got a dish or two (a Greek potato dish forwarded to me by Mike, and the lamb I keep talking about) that I want to cook, but at the same time, I feel like it's time to move on. Oh well, we'll see. For now... sleep.
PS - I never realized how much of a racist I was.
I mean that literally; I don’t mean that I’ve been worrying about the blog. I mean that I’ve been up in the evenings writing, and that for one reason or another I've been getting distracted, haven't been able to either write or get to sleep, and have been up until the wee hours. I've seen sunrise twice this week. That's not good times when I've got a baby to watch. (Who just turned one, by the way.)
I think part of it is the fact that I'm just not super-jazzed by oregano. I've definitely got some delicious oregano in the house, and I'm discovering that it is not the boring, flavorless spice that I've always thought it to be. But in the end, oregano is oregano; I've used it before. I could make a red sauce, or a pasta dish, or something, but that honestly sounds kinda boring - and honestly, several of the people who I know read this blog are better Italian cooks than I am.
The other problem is that Victoria's parents are down from Toronto for Benji's birthday, and we've been going out a lot. Like I said yesterday, I'm really into the idea of making lamb, but they're vegetarians - yet another thing that throws a wrench in the works. Maybe when my folks come down on Saturday, I'll make some lamb... or maybe I'll just say "I said what I felt I needed to about oregano, which was less about dishes - because most people know where and when to use oregano - and more about the common problems people face with, i.e. the sucking."
In any case, I made some cheesy bread as an appetizer/side dish tonight. (I say cheesy bread because... well, you'll know why I don't feel right calling it garlic bread in a second.) It was really good. It's also not a particularly long or involved recipe - hence the whole discussion about the fact that I don't feel like oregano is really getting its due.
Sleepless Oregano Cheesy Bread
Take a loaf of crusty bread and cut it open. Butter both sides. Sprinkle liberally with oregano, then minced garlic, then shredded mozzarella (or any other cheese that will get melty.) Bake at 300 degrees for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the cheese is starting to brown. Let cool for 5 minutes, cut, and serve with tomato sauce for a-dippin'.
When I say sprinkle liberally - the bread was about 1/2 covered with oregano, and I used a big soup spoon scoop of garlic on each side.
See what I mean? That's not much of a recipe. Oh well. I need sleep more than I need a long wordcount. (I don't think that it helps that I look at the counter in MS Word which reports how many words your document is as my score for the post. Hey, if it's good enough for Dickens...)
(Oh, wait. I hate Dickens.)
Anyway - I used the Mexican oregano, which was probably not the obvious choice. The thing is, I wasn't likely to make anything Mexican in the next few days, and I haven't cooked with the Mexican oregano at all yet! It was delicious - deeper than the Mediterranean oregano, with that hint of piqancy. It definitely made the dish more interesting than it would have been otherwise. An old girlfriend always used to talk about "the wrong touch at the right time", and that's the feeling I got here - the Mexican oregano was absolutely not the flavor you were expecting, but not nearly different enough for it to taste wrong. It just jolts you out of your expectations for a moment or two, which is a lot to get from a simple choice of spices.
I'm not sure where to go from here, to be honest - I've still got a dish or two (a Greek potato dish forwarded to me by Mike, and the lamb I keep talking about) that I want to cook, but at the same time, I feel like it's time to move on. Oh well, we'll see. For now... sleep.
PS - I never realized how much of a racist I was.
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