"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.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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.
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