Steampunk Cookery

15-Hour Red Wine Brisket

2012-02-27T10:00:00.002-05:00

Beef en Filo with Onion-Leek Marmalade and Chive Garnish.

Sometimes, one cooks with almost no time. In a restaurant, for example, the goal is to reduce any given item to about 10 or 15 minutes total of preparation from "hey, we need a ______" to it going out to the diner. This means that some things are partly finished in advance, destined for a sort of reheating (for example, pasta is often cooked just short of al dente, then re-boiled to finish cooking at service.) Other times, you have a couple hours, like cooking a family dinner. Finally, one can periodically cook with all the time in the world—that is the sort of situation that spawned this dish.

This began rather harmlessly as a variant on the Red Wine Braised Short Ribs that I've made before; in this case, I didn't marinate the beef, nor did I include a lot of aromatic herbs with the braising liquid. Instead, I opted for a somewhat simple, rather old-fashioned approach. I simply placed all the ingredients in a large pan, covered it, and braised it in the oven until it was tender.

In the beginning, I'd planned on maybe 8-10 hours of cooking time—I put the beef in the oven at about 11 AM, and thought "Okay, by 9 PM I'll be able to take it out and cool it overnight, and finish working with it tomorrow."

Then, however, fate intervened—and this time, in a good way. I was contacted by one of my culinary friends to help him with a catering event, so I headed out and passed the 8 hour mark while setting up a little buffet line. I returned home, tweaked my oven settings a bit, and headed back out to drop items off at the bookstore, since this dish formed part of the prep for my most recent steamfeast. I then ventured further away from home to attend a birthday celebration for a friend, and while there directed that the oven be turned down further and left to cook until I returned home...

...which didn't happen until about 4:30 AM.

Thus, this brisket cooked for a little over 15 hours. Without further introduction, then, I present my recipe for:

15-Hour Red Wine Brisket.
13.5 lbs (6 kg) brisket
1.5 L red wine
1 pt (474 ml) beef stock
1 onion, rough chop
1/2 lb (226 g) carrots, rough chop
1/2 lb (226 g) celery, rough chop
4 cloves garlic
paprika
thyme
sage
salt
pepper

1. Season the brisket with paprika, salt, and pepper. Place the brisket into a large roasting pan (preferably one with a cover. I used a turkey roaster.) Trim if necessary to ensure fit.

2. Place onion, carrot, celery, and garlic around brisket. Add thyme and sage to the pan, covering the brisket and vegetables.

3. Add red wine and beef stock, cover, and place in a 325°F/170°C/Gas Mark 3 preheated oven. After 2-3 hours, reduce heat to 250°F/130°C/Gas Mark 1/2. After 5-6 hours, reduce further to 200°F/95°C.

4. After 15 hours, remove from the oven, and remove brisket from cooking liquid. Place in a container and cool. Strain cooking liquid into another container, and save.

After cooling both the brisket and liquid overnight, I pulled the brisket; with the liquid, I skimmed off about 2 oz of the fat, and made a roux of about 4 oz total. To this, I added 1 quart of the strained liquid, and cooked it until thickened. I seasoned it slightly with salt, and then used it to moisten the pulled beef when reheating for service.

Service!

Delicious. Simply. Delicious.

I served these in a phyllo dough cup, which I made quite simply by placing two squares of #10 phyllo dough (slightly on the thicker side of the phyllo range) in muffin cups, brushed with butter. I baked them for a scant 2-3 minutes, just enough to get the to color slightly and stiffen up without browning overmuch or burning. I topped these beef cups with an onion-leek-garlic mixture, and some fresh chives for garnish.

The plates came back clean.

Polastrello in Padella

2012-02-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

There's a truth about being a chef. It's a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless: The minute you get through culinary school, you stop relying so heavily on recipes; this is also the time that you will be given the most cook books.

Nowadays, I tend to use my modern-era cookbooks as a source of inspiration, rather than a direct recipe source. I can flip through a cookbook full of soups, spot an idea that I like, and adapt it to suit my needs, tastes, or supplies on hand. Tomato soup becomes roasted tomato soup becomes tomato-basil bisque becomes tomato, chicken, and rice soup. It's easy to rewrite a recipe if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to write a recipe from scratch.

Yet, there are some books that I will cook from verbatim, whose recipes I will memorize and cook over and over again, because they are so good. La Tavola Italiana, by Tom Maresca and Diane Darrow, is one such book, and their recipe for Polastrello in Padella (Braised Chicken) is simply divine. It's simple, flavorful, and delicious.

Earlier this year, we purchased several chickens from Melo Farms. They were large chickens (between 4 and 5 pounds) and were definitely older—their bones were bigger, and their joints harder to butcher when I was working with them. We roasted one plain, and determined that the meat was just a bit too tough to work well with fast, hot cooking. Moist heat, as I've mentioned before, works well for tough meats, helping to break down the muscle tissues without losing the moisture that makes it palatable.

Polastrello in Padella is a recipe that works equally well with your average supermarket chicken and an old bird like we had.

Tomatoes ready for use

Polastrello in Padella
1 chicken, cut into 4 or more pieces (as you prefer it to be served)
2 pounds (907 g) roma tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 oz (57 g) prosciutto, cut into small pieces
4 Tbsp (60 ml) olive oil
2 garlic cloves, smashed
salt
fresh black pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 peperoncino rosso (hot red pepper, dried; you can use a fresh red chile)
1 tablespoon (15 ml) fresh oregano, chopped
2 tablespoons (30 ml) fresh basil, chiffonade

Searing the chicken

1. Over medium-low, heat the olive oil in a pan large enough to hold all the chicken with room to spare. Sauté the garlic cloves and diced prosciutto for about 1 minute.

2. Rise the heat to medium. Salt and pepper, then sear the chicken pieces on both sides, lightly browning them.

3. Raise the heat to high, then add the white wine and allow it to evaporate, moving the chicken around to make sure it's not sticking, and to stir up any browned bits of goodness on the bottom of the pan. Once the wine is almost completely evaporated, add the tomatoes, basil, oregano, and peperoncino. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, turning chicken periodically.

4. When the chicken is cooked, remove it to a serving dish and cover with foil loosely; reduce the sauce in the pan until it is quite thick, then spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve.

This is a delightful dish, and will serve at least 4, potentially more depending on the size of your chicken and the size of the pieces into which you cut the chicken.

Polastrello in Padella, served with a Dolcetto D'Alba.

Mushroom Beef Barley Soup

2012-02-03T10:00:00.002-05:00

Shortly before Serving

For New Year's Eve some of my culinarily-inclined friends and I got together and decided to do something ambitious: 7 courses of dinner, 12 bottles of wine, and (ideally) 10 or so people. Well, the 10 people didn't show up (we ended up with 7) and only 2 people made it to the main course. I myself passed out after the champagne toasts and chicken course (which was only the 3rd course.)

Jenny, the mushroomian

We opened with an amuse-bouche of lentils with a bacon vinaigrette, and our poultry course was roast cornish game hens... these were followed by a salad (which we called "Graecia Capta"—"Captured Greece" in Latin—a hybrid of a caesar and a greek salad,) the main course of a roasted pork loin, chocolates, and fruit and cheese. As far as I know nobody made it to the chocolates before heading home or turning in for the night.

The soup for the night, falling between amuse-bouche and poultry, was a Beef Mushroom Barley soup, which I carefully crafted a couple days before. When I was cooking it, I had in mind my very dear friend Jenny, who likes beef, mushrooms, and heat—thus the addition of a dried hot pepper to the fortification of the soup's broth. She thoroughly approved of the soup (as did the assembled masses.) Therefore, I present to you, a recipe.

Seared Short Ribs

Beef Mushroom Barley Soup
4 strips of cross-cut (flanken cut) short ribs
14 oz (392 g, about 1 large) onion, chopped
6 - 7 oz (170-200 g) each, chopped
- carrot
- celery
- parsnip
3 cloves garlic
10 stems parsley
1 hot pepper, dried

Shiitake Caps and Button Mushrooms

1 quart (946 ml) veal stock
2 quarts (1892 ml, 1/2 gallon) beef stock
2 bay leaves
2 tsp (10 ml) black peppercorns

3.5 oz (1 package, 100 g) shiitake mushrooms, stems cut off and reserved, caps sliced 1 cm wide
3.5 oz (100 g) oyster mushrooms, separated and chopped
12 oz (341 g) button mushrooms, sliced
1 pack (1/2 oz, 14 g) porcini mushrooms

Oyster Mushrooms

2 parsnips, small dice
8 oz (227 g) carrot, small dice
1/2 of a celery heart, small dice
1 lb (454 g) onion, small dice
1 cup (237 ml) pearl barley, rinsed, picked over, and soaked in 3 cups water
butter
salt
pepper

Porcini being Reconstituted

1. Heat 2 cups of veal stock just shy of a boil, and pour over the dried porcini mushrooms. Allow to steep for about 30 minutes, then remove the mushrooms and strain the stock in case any dust, rocks, or mushroom bits have remained.

2. In a large soup pot, heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil. Salt the short ribs, and sear them in the hot oil on all sides. Remove from pot as you complete and set on a plate. Sear all ribs in this manner.

Sweating Vegetables

3. Add rough chopped onions, and sweat for a few minutes, until they soften. Add the rough chopped carrots, celery, and parsnip, and sweat until all vegetables are beginning to soften slightly. Add smashed garlic, parsley, any clean mushroom stems you have trimmed off, and the hot pepper. Stir and allow to sweat an additional 1-2 minutes.

4. Add all of the stock, beef and veal both, along with the veal stock used to reconstitute the porcini. Return the short ribs to the pot, add the bay leaves and peppercorns, and bring the whole to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and allow to cook for 4 hours.

Simmering all the Ingredients

5. Sometime during those 4 hours, the beef short ribs will begin to loosen their grip on their bones. Remove the meat, return the bones to the pot, and keep cooking. When the meat is cool enough to touch, trim off the rubbery collagen-rich membrane that surrounded the bones, and return it to the soup. All usable meat should be reserved and cut into bite-size pieces, and set aside for later.

6. After at least 4 hours of simmering, strain the soup and reserve the broth. Test the seasonings of the broth now, and add salt and pepper to your taste.

7. Sauté the button, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms in a scant amount of butter or oil, until they begin to soften and release some liquid. Add these to the soup, along with any liquid from the pan. Sauté the vegetables and add those to the pot, deglazing the sauté pan if necessary with some of the broth. Add the chopped beef, bring the whole to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer 30 minutes.

8. Boil the pearl barley until just done (think al dente pasta) and strain it (just like the rice method.) Shortly before service, add the barley to the soup, and cook 5-10 more minutes. Test the soup for seasoning again, and serve.

This is a very, very hearty soup, and will yield a gallon or more when complete. You may want to back off the amounts of garnish vegetables and mushrooms, or increase the amount of stock, if you prefer a brothier soup.

Postmortem: Murder Mystery Wassail

2012-01-11T10:00:00.003-05:00

The Spice Rack (L-R)
Tarragon, Rosemary, Saffron, Sage
Peppercorn, Thyme

All told, the dinner was a success. I was able to get the vast majority of the items prepped in advance, so that little was left to the vagaries of the location's lack of cooking space—however, the one item that could not be prepared in this manner (the Cornish Hens) were, of course, the problematic one. They went from being the first meat course to being the main course, due to spending far longer being cooked than I had anticipated.

Everything ran slower than I'd intended, as well. This was due, partially, to the Cornish Hen issues, but also lay at the feet of some guests being late, the murder mystery show and the servers being (more or less) unable to occupy the spaces between tables at the same time, and not having quite enough staff to efficiently plate one course whilst clearing another. This is not to say that the waitstaff was at all insufficient—I had the easiest time with this dinner because I was able to focus more, and did not have to run around serving, clearing, doing dishes, and cooking all at once.

Tarragon, the Butler, was ably assisted by the twins Rosemary and Sage, and Thyme, the fellow with the bell. Peppercorn was my point man for the Cornish Hens, and Jason (whose nickname has yet to be determined) was an

The Steampunk Chef, and Sous Chef Jason

excellent sous chef, in charge of quenelles, cornish hen fabrication, and piping whipped cream, as well as generally keeping me a sane man.

Apparently, my timing ended up satisfying the guests, who were quoted to me as saying that the slower pace of the food meant that they had time to watch the show, talk, and generally feel that they were not being rushed through the evening. I find that to be a success out of what I would have otherwise considered a failure.

The menu ended up being shifted around, as I said, and finished thus:

Open-Face Tea Sandwiches

Dill Cream Cheese, Cucumber, Hard-Boiled Egg

Chicken Consommé

Winter Squash and Chicken Quenelle

Winter Salad

Greens, Green Onion, Celery, Radish, Hard-Boiled Egg, Beet, Dressing

Braised Beef en Filo

Onion-Leek-Garlic Compote

Roast Cornish Hen, Lemon Cream Sauce

Glazed Carrot, Rice

Winter Spice Trifle

Assorted Fruit and Cheese

It was a lot of food, to be sure, but most every plate came back clean... Recipes forthcoming.

Photos here by Lance, aka Tarragon, aka Blue Dragon Media, LLC.

Roasted Acorn Squash Soup

2011-12-15T10:00:00.002-05:00

Acorn Squash.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

In November I cooked for a great number of people; one group lucky enough to eat my food (if I may, somewhat egotistically, describe the experience thus,) was the Indian Village Women's Garden Club. Indian Village is an area of Detroit containing some of the oldest standing houses in the area, most of them what could be described as mansions—especially in the Victorian era, when many of them were built—and most of those still complete with butlers' pantries, kitchens wholly closed-off from the rest of the house, secret passages, back staircases, servants' quarters, and so on: the whole package of Victorian Opulence.

I was asked to prepare a meal for the ladies, and speak about the historical cooking techniques, theories, and styles that I have documented here. I took the chance to refine the speech I would ultimately give at Teslacon, as well as to debut the curry recipe I intended to cook at the con. I also wanted to take the opportunity to write some new recipes and try some new techniques for preparing them, which is represented in this recipe.

This recipe takes the concept of roasting the squash with aromatic garlic and shallots from a Guy Fieri recipe. I really like the idea, I think it adds some more depth of flavor to the soup, which is something that I like.

Acorn Squash Soup
3 acorn squash
3 shallots
6 garlic cloves
kosher salt
black pepper
olive oil

4 Tablespoons (60 ml) butter
3 shallots, minced
2 teaspoons (10 ml) dry sage
1 Tablespoon (15 ml) dark brown sugar
1 quart (947 ml) chicken stock
1 cup (237 ml) heavy cream
parmesan cheese
kosher salt
black pepper

1. Cut the acorn squash in half, and scoop out seeds. Place on a sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil. Place a half shallot and clove of garlic in each half of squash; salt and pepper lightly. Roast at 350°F for roughly an hour, until the squash begins to collapse and is soft and caramelizing.

2. Allow squash to cool, and scoop out flesh, shallots, and garlic. Set aside. Discard the skins.

3. Melt the butter, and sauté the shallots until they begin to caramelize. Add the sage and brown sugar, mix well, and cook 1-2 minutes. Deglaze with the chicken stock, and mix well.

4. Add the roasted squash flesh, shallots, and garlic cloves. Cook 5-10 minutes, then purée with an immersion blender or food mill. Simmer another 5-10 minutes.

5. Add the heavy cream, and grated parmesan to taste. Adjust seasonings as needed; garnish with fresh cracked black pepper.

Excitement!

2011-12-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

I've been in a prohibition-era mood lately,
it would seem...

I've often declined to post things here because I don't find them to fit particularly with my little project, for one reason or another. The food doesn't feel "steampunk" enough, I didn't take good pictures, I don't feel like it represents the best cooking I can do, and so on and so forth.

There's no immediate solution to this. I could invent a multi-point criteria system for evaluating my recipes in terms of their quality, interest, and overall steampunk nature—but that would involve work, and for someone as sleep-loving as I am, I feel my time might be better spent napping. (Actually, I just don't know what all my criteria would be...)

I do, however, have some interesting things coming up this month that I'd like to tell you all about, and that will form the basis of the new content for this blog in the coming weeks.

First, is the next of my steamfeasts. You'll remember those—the last one was the Soup Feast, several months ago. Coming up this Sunday is a Steampunk Murder Mystery Dinner, with the following menu:

Open-Face Tea Sandwiches
Dill Cream Cheese, Cucumber, Hard-Boiled Egg

Chicken Consommé
Winter Squash and Chicken Quenelle

Roast Cornish Hen, Lemon Cream Sauce
Glazed Carrot, Rice

Winter Salad
Greens, Green Onion, Celery, Radish, Hard-Boiled Egg, Beet, Dressing

Braised Beef en Filo
Onion-Leek-Garlic Compote

Winter Spice Trifle

Assorted Fruit and Cheese

Second, I'll be working in what could only be described as my most Victorian of jobs later this month, from the 21st to the 24th, as the cook for a family in the area. I was contacted by the lady of the house, and my services were officially engaged last week; I had a meeting with her yesterday to discuss menus and the various details of my attending to their dinners. They'll be getting some of my Steampunk Cookery creations (specifically, Mrs. Beeton's Chicken Curry) and some new and different items from various places, including the back—and creative centers—of my mind.

Hopefully I'll be able to post something about both of these rather exciting endeavors here—if I'm lucky, the Steamfeast will yield a few recipes, and many pictures—so that you all can keep abreast of the culinary creativity in which I am engaged. After all, you've stuck with me so far, so why not keep going?

Chicken Curry - From Leftovers

2011-12-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

Photograph by Mark Staubitz, at Teslacon II
(The blue pot soon to hold chicken curry.)

Mrs. Beeton and many of her contemporary cookbook writers were very concerned with using leftover food. In an age lacking refrigeration or the ability to freeze leftover food, the remedy was to create recipes to use that cooked meat, like Chicken Croquettes, meat pies, and stews of cooked meat. These recipes highlight one of the main drives of cooking in the Victorian era, a desire—and indeed a need—for food utilization. Sausages, terrines, and pâtés all see their beginnings in this need to utilize all the parts of a meat animal, and recipes like the one below (and a hundred different variations on hashed meat) come from a need to make something of the very valuable food items left after a meal.

CROQUETTES OF FOWL (an Entree).
954. INGREDIENTS - 3 or 4 shallots, 1 oz. of butter, 1 teaspoonful of flour, white sauce; pepper, salt, and pounded mace to taste; 1/2 teaspoonful of pounded sugar, the remains of cold roast fowls, the yolks of 2 eggs, egg, and bread crumbs.
Mode.—Mince the fowl, carefully removing all skin and bone, and fry the shallots in the butter; add the minced fowl, dredge in the flour, put in the pepper, salt, mace, pounded sugar, and sufficient white sauce to moisten it; stir to it the yolks of 2 well-beaten eggs, and set it by to cool. Then make the mixture up into balls, egg and bread-crumb them, and fry a nice brown. They may be served on a border of mashed potatoes, with gravy or sauce in the center.
Time.—10 minutes to fry the balls.
Seasonable at any time.

"The remains of cold roast fowls" nowadays could be replaced with any kind of cooked chicken meat, from the rotisserie chickens sold in many grocery stores to individual chicken breasts seasoned and cooked off for this express recipe.

In my preparations of this recipe, I have used roast chickens that I bought expressly for the purpose, first at a local supermarket in Detroit, not the best-provisioned place; then at Copp's, a similar type of store in Madison, Wisconsin (where I presented this recipe as part of my Steampunk Cookery panel at Teslacon II.)

This recipe is cooked more or less directly from Mrs. Beeton, as far as the ingredients are concerned. The main difference is applying a modern understanding of cooking techniques, to build more layers of flavor into the dish and create a delicious and complex combination of sweet and spicy flavors that is sure to please—and is a little more elegant than the simpler chicken curry I've written about before.

Curried Chicken — Cold Poultry Cookery

2 oz Butter

2 large Onions, julienne cut

1 Roast Chicken, cold, meat shredded

2 cloves Garlic, crushed

1 whole Granny Smith Apple, peeled, cored, chopped

1 Tablespoon Curry Powder

1 cup Brown Sauce

1/2 cup Chicken Stock

1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice

Salt and Pepper

Melt the butter in a pan large enough to hold the ingredients; Add the onions and sauté until they are soft. Add the chicken, garlic and apple, and sauté a few minutes more.

Add curry powder and cook until fragrant, mixing well. Add in the brown sauce and stock, mix, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the lemon juice, mix well, and serve with boiled rice.

Boiled Rice — For Curry

Long-Grain Rice, (White Basmati for example)

Pinch Salt

Water

Rinse rice well in several changes of water. Place in a container with at least double the volume of water as rice. Soak for at least 45 minutes.

Strain and put the rice in a saucepan. Cover the rice with 2 inches of water, and add the salt. Bring to a boil, and hold at a boil for 4-5 minutes. Test at the end of this time to see if the rice is cooked. If necessary, continue cooking for another minute, and test again. If the rice is cooked through, strain and return to the pan. Set off the heat and allow to sit for a minute or two to dry out.

Wintertime Trifle

2011-12-05T10:00:00.004-05:00

One of the most quintessentially British of desserts, Trifles have allegedly existed since the end of the 16th century. In the Complete Traditional Recipe Book, Sarah Edington says,

Trifle is one of those dishes for which no one can agree on the correct recipe. Grown men remember with affection the trifle made by their mothers and grandmothers and come to blows over whether or not jelly and/or jam should be ingredients.

I won't make any claim to one version of a trifle that's any more correct than any other, but I will present you a short history of the Trifle as I can assemble it from some of the cookbooks in my collection.

From American Cookery (1796,)

Fill a dish with biscuit finely broken, rusk, and spiced cake, wet with wine, then pour a good boil'd custard, (not too thick) over the rusk, and put a syllabub over that; garnish with jelly and flowers.

The boiled custard recipe is as follows:

One pint of cream, two ounces of almonds, two spoons of rose-water, or orange flower water, some mace; boil thick, then stir in sweetning, and lade off into china cups, and serve up.

A syllabub is a sort of thickened cream dish. Depending on the recipe, it either resembles crème fraiche or a soft meringue. According to The Food Lover's Companion,

This thick, frothy drink or dessert originated in old England. It's traditionally made by beating milk with wine or ale, sugar, spices, and sometimes beaten egg whites. A richer version made with cream can be used as a topping for cakes, cookies, fruit, etc.

Two recipes from American Cookery describe two different ways to produce it:

To make a fine Syllabub from the Cow.
Sweeten a quart of cyder with double refined sugar, grate nutmeg into it, then milk your cow into your liquor, when you have thus added what quantity of milk you think proper, pour half a pint or more, in proportion to the quantity of syllabub you make, of the sweetest cream you can get all over it.

A Whipt Syllabub.
Take two porringers of cream and one of white wine, grate in the skin of a lemon, take the whites of three eggs, sweeten it to your taste, then whip it with a whisk, take off the froth as it rises and put it into your syllabub glasses or pots, and they are fit for use.

A development from that leads to Mrs. Beeton's two recipes for trifles:

Gooseberry Trifle
Ingredients.—1 quart of gooseberries, sugar to taste, 1 pint of custard (No. 491), a plateful whipped cream.
Mode.—Put the gooseberries into a jar, with moist sugar to sweeten, and boil them until reduced to a pulp. Put this pulp at the bottom of a trifle-dish; pour over a pint of custard (recipe No. 491), and, when cold, cover with whipped cream. The cream should be whipped the day before it is wanted for table, as it will then be so much firmer and more solid. Garnish as fancy dictates.

Indian Trifle
Ingredients.—1 quart milk, the rind of 1/2 large lemon, sugar to taste, 5 heaped tablespoons rice-flour, 1 oz sweet almonds, 1/2 pint custard.
Mode.—Boil the milk and lemon-rind together until the former is well flavoured; take out the lemon-rind and stir in the rice-flour, first moistened with the cold milk, and add sufficient loaf sugar to sweeten. Boil gently for 5 minutes, and keep the mixture stirred; take it off the fire, let it cool a little, and pour it into a glass dish. When cold, cut the rice out in the form of a star, or any other shape that may be preferred; take out the spare rice, and fill the space with boiled custard. Blanch and cut the almonds into strips, stick them over the trifle, and garnish it with pieces of jelly, or preserved fruits, or candied citron.

Interesting to note is that the trifle described initially in American Cookery has bread (rusk being a hard/dried bread item, similar to biscotti) covered with custard, and then a whipped cream-type dish. The fruit as a bottom layer replaces the cake in Mrs. Beeton, and the cake becomes a part of a similar custard-topped dessert.

Modern trifles usually resemble a combination of the Gooseberry trifle from Mrs. Beeton with the trifle from American Cookery. The National Trust's Complete Traditional Recipe Book has two recipes for Trifle, one that is closer to the original, and one that is a more modern riff on the same concept.

The traditional recipe is made of sponge cake soaked in sherry or white wine, topped with custard, and those both topped with sweetened whipped cream, and then decorated with jelly and citrus zest. The second recipe has sponge cake, once again soaked with sherry or whiskey, topped with a mixture of fruits and crumbled bitter almond (ratafia) cookies. This is then topped with a custard, and then with whipped cream, decorated with toasted slivered almonds.

All of this, has led to a synthesis. A final, more modern version. It's a lot of recipes. Don't be overwhelmed, you can make this.

Wintertime Trifle

Spiced Sponge Cake

2 eggs (large)

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup whole milk

2 Tablespoons butter (unsalted)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground clove

1/8 teaspoon salt

In a saucepan, heat milk and butter on low heat just until the butter melts. While this is being done, continue with the remainder of the recipe.
Beat eggs in mixer bowl on medium-low speed with paddle attachment until well mixed, about 4-5 minutes.

Add sugar, and continue beating for another 4-5 minutes until the mixture becomes light and fluffy, increasing in volume. Add vanilla and stir on low until just combined.

In a separate bowl, sift the dry ingredients. Add, in stages, to eggs and sugar on low speed until just combined. Slowly add the milk and butter to batter, and beat just until combined.

Pour into 1 greased and floured 8" round cake pan.

Bake at 325° until the middle springs back when touched, or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let stand in pan for 10 minutes. Then turn out onto a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

Kirsch Simple Syrup

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1 fl. oz Kirsch

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat over moderate heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. Cook for a few minutes further, and set aside to cool.

Cranberry Compote

1/2 lb fresh cranberries

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups water

1/2 cup lemon juice

1 lemon, zest

3 Tablespoons corn starch

Combine cranberries, sugar, water, lemon juice, and lemon zest in a non-reactive saucepan. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until the cranberries have all split.

Mix the corn starch with just enough water to moisten it completely (a slightly thick slurry is okay.) Add to the compote, stir well, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes, or until thickened appropriately.

Custard (Thickened Crème Anglaise)

12 egg yolks

8 oz granulated sugar

1 qt whole milk

1 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated

6 Tablespoons corn starch

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

Scald milk (bring it to just below a simmer) in a saucepan with the nutmeg, making sure that it does not scorch. Hold back about 1/2 cup of the milk for a later step.

Place a saucepan with 1-2 inches of water in it on the stove, to use as a double-boiler with the bowl for your custard. Bring to a simmer.

While the milk is warming, mix the egg yolks with sugar. Whisk together immediately, do not allow to sit. (The sugar will cause the egg to dry out and make it lumpy, and that’s no good.) Whisk until they are thickened and lightened.
Slowly add the warmed milk to the egg yolk/sugar mixture, and mix well as you do so. Whisk the cornstarch with just enough milk to moisten it, and add this slurry to the mix as well. Place the whole thing over the simmering water, and cook slowly, mixing constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, and hold the shape of a finger pulled through it. This happens around 165°F. Do not over-cook the mixture.

When the crème anglaise has thickened, immediately take it off the double boiler and add the vanilla extract. Mix well, and place in an ice bath or directly into the refrigerator to cool. Cover with plastic wrap, one layer touching the top of the cream. (This will allow you to easily remove any skin that forms.)

Sous Chef Jason piping rosettes of whipped cream on trifles.

To construct the trifle, begin with the Sponge Cake at the bottom of the trifle dish. Wet it well with the Kirsch Simple Syrup, then pour over a layer of the Cranberry Compote. Cover that with about 1 quart of Custard, and chill, covered, until service. At the time of service, fill the remaining space in the trifle dish with Whipped Cream (start with about 1 1/2 pints of cream.) Decorate the top with some dried cranberries or dollops of Cranberry Compote.

Photographs by Lance, of Blue Dragon Media, LLC.

On the Future

2011-10-18T12:29:00.000-04:00

I haven't been writing here a lot of late, and I feel rather guilty about that. It's not that I haven't been cooking—I have, in fact, been catering and cooking for friends and family—but I haven't been taking pictures of the things I have made, when they're appropriate for the blog, and a lot of the time the things I'm cooking don't really fit that well into the catalog of Articles for the blog.

HOWEVER! The next month is auspicious. On the 27th of this month, a friend and I are catering an art show. Nothing particularly steampunk about it, but I might write it up just for the fun of it—after all, it's not every day I get to throw down Tapas at a show that bills itself as "An Exhibition of Enlightened Darkness." The next night, exhaustion permitting, I'll be cooking at Up in the Aether again, as I do on a (mostly) regular basis.

Then, in November, I'm presenting twice in the space of one week on Steampunk food! First is to a local ladies' garden club in one of the older portions of Detroit. I'll be cooking three dishes for them: A fall/winter squash soup, curried chicken—a different recipe than the one I've presented here, and a trifle.

Second, and most excitingly for me, I will be hosting a panel at Teslacon II on Steampunk Food.

Hopefully, I will be able to record the panel and post clips (or indeed the full hour-and-a-quarter lecture) here. I will once again be presenting a couple items for the assembled masses, and (though I am still awaiting final permission to do a live-fire cooking demonstration in a hotel conference room,) I plan on doing:

• Chicken Curry (same as at the garden club—it's a cooked chicken dish, which makes it easier to do.)
• A Cold Dish of some kind. Perhaps a salad, perhaps an hors d'oeuvre.

Of course, there will be a bonus to the people attending the panel—because I am a magnanimous host—in the form of five or six as-yet unpublished Steampunk recipes, presented to them in my usual prosaic but useful recipe form.

So if you're coming to Teslacon (and why wouldn't you be?) make sure to come to my panel.

As always, I appreciate your readership and patience, my friends, and hope to return with more Steampunk food again soon.

A Triumphant Return

2011-09-16T17:45:00.002-04:00

Or sort of, anyhow. The restaurant and I have amicably parted ways—I wasn't exactly what they needed, and they weren't exactly what I needed, and that was (as they say) that. They're some very nice businesspeople and I would work for them again in the future, if the opportunity presented itself.

Once again, that leaves me here to contemplate life, the universe, and everything—and to cook delicious food and present it to the lot of you!

Last week, I returned to the Phoenix Café, with two dishes for the assembled masses: From New Vegetarian Dishes by Mrs. Bowdich, 1892, a preparation of Green Beans (which I purchased fresh at that week's Tuesday Market at Eastern Market,) and Chicken Cacciatore.

Green Beans
1 shallot, minced
1 pint (473 ml) tomato juice
1 pound (453 g) green beans, steamed and shocked
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) pepper
a blonde roux of 1 oz (28 g) flour and 1 oz (28 g) olive oil

1. Sweat the shallot, and add the tomato juice. Whisk in the roux, Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer about half an hour.

2. Season with pepper and salt. Add the Green beans in, and thoroughly re-heat.

(When I prepared this, I used tomato purée instead of juice, and a bit of garlic instead of a shallot. I think the results were comparable. This is a very simple dish, and I like it that way—even though my compulsion is to complicate it overmuch.)

On to the second recipe: Chicken Cacciatore. It's a recipe that has existed more or less in the same manner for many years; I have a cookbook from the turn of the 20th century called "The Cook's Decameron" that includes a recipe for Cacciatore; indeed, "Hunter-Style" food is a common item in many cuisines, usually containing more "rustic" (or wildly available) items like mushrooms, as well as "spicier" things like bell peppers. (French cuisine includes "Forestière" sauce, for example.) I've figured out a way to make the recipe cook more quickly, so that I can serve it in under an hour from start to finish.

Chicken Cacciatore
2 pounds (907 g) chicken meat (I used breasts,) boneless, skinless, and cut into 1" (2.5 cm) cubes
2 Orange Bell Peppers, Julienne
2 Green Bell Peppers, Julienned
2 White Onion, Julienne
1 pound (455 g) White Button Mushrooms, Sliced
2 28-oz (794 g) cans Diced Tomatoes
Dry Red Wine
Salt and Pepper
Oregano
Olive Oil

1. Salt and pepper the chicken, and sear it in hot oil. Set aside.

2. Heat more oil and begin to cook the onions. When they have become somewhat translucent, add the bell peppers. Cook until slightly softened.

3. Add the chicken back in, and the mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are softened.

4. Add a good quantity of red wine (it will depend on how large your cooking vessel is how much you want to use,) and cook until mostly evaporated. Add the tomatoes and season with salt, pepper, and a good amount of oregano. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through.

I apologize I don't have any pictures of either of these dishes at this time—hopefully I'll add some soon.

Lessons Learned

2011-09-12T11:27:00.000-04:00

About a month after opening the restaurant, and about two months after starting to work there, I have moved on from the place. It was not a decision that I came to on my own after consideration, but it is not one that I am explicitly unhappy with.

Working at the restaurant was a lot of fun. I got to meet some good contacts in the food industry, and I got to get into the groove of cooking the same 16 items day in and day out, as well as figuring out HOW to make them given the equipment that I had. At the same time, though, it was frustrating—I lost an entire month of my life to the fact that I worked almost every day; the few days that I didn't work, I was lucky enough to spend with the important people in my life—but the sudden change from seeing someone every day to almost never seeing them was... disheartening.

But onward and onward I go, and hopefully this will return to being a busy blog in the next week or so.

The Travails of the Restaurant Chef

2011-08-06T11:28:00.000-04:00

Caprese Salad: Roasted Roma Tomatoes, Fresh Basil,
Buffalo Mozzarella, Olive Oil, Balsamic Reduction,
Crostino with Tomato Confit, Sicilian Pesto.

As I've made mention of on my Facebook page, I've become employed lately at a restaurant (not that the bookstore was a bad place to work, by any means, but I do feel the need to work within my chosen profession.) It's a startup, and I'm running the kitchen. This means that I'm responsible for everything from designing plate layouts to purchasing products, and everything in between.

It's been a lot of work—consecutive 14-hour days and I are now friends—but it's also been a lot of fun, and a wonderful learning experience so far. My sous chef is a good friend of mine from culinary school, and together we're rocking this place out.

I'll leave you with a couple menu items from the restaurant. It's not particularly steampunk, but it's fun and delicious...

Triple Grilled Cheese—Pepperjack, Mozzarella, Cheddar

Pepperoni Pizza, hearth-fired

Italian Roast Beef Sandwich (Mozzarella, Roasted Red Peppers)

Potato Soup

2011-06-24T11:58:00.003-04:00

Potatoes—delicious in many ways.

The lovely and talented Miss Hayley Jane (also available at Facebook and more) is, I have learned, a fan of potatoes. Being as I have some Irish heritage, the potato is a familiar item to me as more than just a thing to mash, boil, or bake. As much as I do enjoy taking potatoes, chopping them up, boiling them up, and/or putting them in stews, I also enjoy playing with potatoes in many different manners, such as using them to thicken sauces, making them into chips (Saratoga Potatoes, which are covered well by the Culinary Chronoaviatrix,) roasting them for salads, and generally trying new and different ways to use the humble potato.

Today, I am making potato soup. Simple, clean, and delicious. There's half a million recipes for potato soups; each cookbook I have in my collection has at least one, and some have more than that. As is my style, I shall present to you a few recipes, followed by the one that I will use for tonight's little dish—an item being sold at the bookstore for Craft Night.

The Potato Harvest in Idaho, c. 1920

From Buckeye Cookery, we have the following recipe:

POTATO SOUP.
To one gallon of water add six large potatoes chopped fine, one tea-cup rice, a lump of butter size of an egg, one table-spoon flour. Work butter and flour together, and add one tea-cup sweet cream just before taking from the fire. Boil one hour.--Miss Lida Canby.

Simple and relatively quick, and exemplary of the one-pot cooking so commonly seen in the Age of Steam; this would make a good crock-pot recipe, with extended cooking time of course. However, I'm looking for something with a little more flavor.

Mrs. Beeton offers us several recipes:

I. 145. INGREDIENTS - 4 lbs. of mealy potatoes, boiled or steamed very dry, pepper and salt to taste, 2 quarts of stock.

Mode.—When the potatoes are boiled, mash them smoothly, that no lumps remain, and gradually put them to the boiling stock; pass it through a sieve, season, and simmer for 5 minutes. Skim well, and serve with fried bread.

Time.—1/2 hour. Average cost, 10d. per quart.

Seasonable from September to March.

Sufficient for 8 persons.

Miss Hayley Jane, Potato Fiend.

This is a rather simple recipe, combining mashed potatoes with boiling-hot stock to create a soup of appropriate texture and consistency. Clever, and to be filed away in the "things you can make at college for cheap" file. (Seriously—a bag of pre-mashed potatoes and a can of chicken stock, and you have dinner right there. Damn, I wish I'd found this recipe earlier.) Also worth noting is the distinction of mealy potatoes, as opposed to waxy potatoes. I'll address that later.

II. 146. INGREDIENTS - 1 lb. of shin of beef, 1 lb. of potatoes, 1 onion, 1/2 a pint of peas, 2 oz. of rice, 2 heads of celery, pepper and salt to taste, 3 quarts of water.

Mode.—Cut the beef into thin slices, chop the potatoes and onion, and put them in a stewpan with the water, peas, and rice. Stew gently till the gravy is drawn from the meat; strain it off, take out the beef, and pulp the other ingredients through a coarse sieve. Put the pulp back in the soup, cut up the celery in it, and simmer till this is tender. Season, and serve with fried bread cut into it.

Time.—3 hours. Average cost, 4d. per quart.

Seasonable from September to March.

Sufficient for 12 persons.

This recipe much more resembles the way that I would approach a potato soup from a modern perspective: The addition of aromatics build basic flavors, the use of a garnish item (the celery) and some rice to thicken it (which is a good substitute for roux when gluten sensitivity is at issue.) There's also meat here, to create more flavor and nutritive qualities, and although I would normally be all over that, I'm going to leave it out tonight in favor of being vegetarian. I'm also interested in the use of peas in this soup, which is definitely not something I'd be interested in using normally—a light green cast to a potato soup would strike me as recalling that green color that indicates a potato has gone bad.

III. (Very Economical.) 147. INGREDIENTS - 4 middle-sized potatoes well pared, a thick slice of bread, 6 leeks peeled and cut into thin slices as far as the white extends upwards from the roots, a teacupful of rice, a teaspoonful of salt, and half that of pepper, and 2 quarts of water.

Mode.—The water must be completely boiling before anything is put into it; then add the whole of the ingredients at once, with the exception of the rice, the salt, and the pepper. Cover, and let these come to a brisk boil; put in the others, and let the whole boil slowly for an hour, or till all the ingredients are thoroughly done, and their several juices extracted and mixed.

Time.—2–1/2 hours. Average cost, 3d. per quart.

Sufficient for 8 persons.

Seasonable in winter.

Here we see the use of bread as a thickener; rusk, or stale bread, is commonly used in more economical soups—both to use up a piece of bread on its way to being inedible, and to substitute for more expensive flour, rice, or starches; it's also a great extender, allowing you to use less of your other ingredients to achieve the same volume of soup.

Fifty Soups says the following:

Potato Soup.—Wash and peel two dozen small sized potatoes; put them into a saucepan with two onions; add three quarts of corned-beef water; boil for one hour and a half until the potatoes fall to pieces. Pour the soup through a sieve, and rub the potato through it to a fine pulp; put the whole into the saucepan again; when very hot add a pint of hot rich cream, salt and pepper, if necessary; whisk thoroughly; pour into a tureen, add croutons, and serve.

Onions, potatoes, stock, cream, salt, and pepper: a simple, yet delicious soup.

All of the recipes, more or less, follow the same formula: Cook up the potatoes, make it into a purée, and season. The addition of other ingredients varies with the tastes of the cooks, more or less.

My tastes run towards the following:

Potato Soup
1 onion, small dice
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 lbs (1.36 kg) russet potatoes (mealy), peeled and chopped into rough 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes
1 cup (237 ml) white rice
1 qt (946 ml) chicken stock
2 tsp (10 ml) dried thyme
1 Tbsp (15 ml) fresh chives, chopped
1 Tbsp (15 ml) fresh parsley, chopped
water as needed
salt and pepper to taste

1. Sauté the onions until they are soft. Add the garlic, and continue to cook 3-5 minutes, or until the garlic just starts to burn to the bottom and the onions are beginning to caramelize.

2. Add the chicken stock, and stir to unstick any delicious bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the herbs and salt, stir, and then add the potatoes and rice. Add water to bring the volume up to about a gallon. Bring to a boil. Cover, and boil until the potatoes are cooked through and beginning to fall apart.

3. Put through a food mill or purée with an immersion blender, and adjust seasonings as needed.

For a more rich soup, you may add cream as a finishing item.

Makes about 1 gallon.

I'd love to have some pictures of the soup to show you... but it was eaten all too quickly.

Potage Printanier—French Springtime Soup

2011-06-24T10:00:00.001-04:00

Much like Chicken Soup, there are myriad variations on the Potage Printanier; Technically speaking, the name merely means "Springtime Soup" and therefore can be made with any number of springtime vegetables, generally resulting in a green, semi-thick soup. Typically it includes peas as a main ingredient. Some recipes will have it merely be a puréed pea soup; others include lettuce and greens; others include asparagus and haricots, and many include egg. It's all a matter of whose cook book you use.

Mrs. Beeton supplies us with a recipe for Potage Printanier, as follows:

Ingredients.—1/2 a pint green peas, a little chervil, 2 shredded lettuces, 2 onions, a very small bunch of parsley, 2 oz butter, the yolks of 3 eggs, 1 pint water, seasoning to taste, 2 quarts medium stock.
Mode.—Put in a clean stewpan the chervil, lettuces, onions, parsley, and butter, to 1 pint water, and simmer till tender. Season with salt and pepper. Strain the vegetables and put two-thirds of the liquor thy were boil in to the stock. Beat up the yolks of the eggs with the other third, give it a toss over the fire, and add, with the vegetables that have been strained off, to the soup.

The White House Cook Book (my edition from 1926) provides a nearly-identical recipe for "Spring Vegetable Soup":

Half pint green peas, two shredded lettuces, one onion, a small bunch of parsley, two tablespoonfuls butter, the yolks of three eggs, one pint of water, one and a half quarts of soup stock.
Put in a stewpan the lettuce, onion, parsley and butter, with one pint of water, and let them simmer till tender. Season with salt and pepper. When done, strain off the vegetables, and put two-thirds of the liquor with the stock. Beat up the yolks of the eggs with the other third, toss it over the fire, and at the moment of serving add this with the vegetables to the strained-off soup.

Clearly plagiarism concerns were not as rampant in the age of steam as they are now. Regardless, the recipe is for what amounts to a slightly-thickened broth with cooked vegetables floating in it—nice, but not quite up to the standard of elegance I desire for this dish.

Fifty Soups, from 1884, provides this recipe:

Spring Soup.—Take two quarts of nicely seasoned veal stock; place it on the range to keep hot, but not to boil. Cut into neat strips four young carrots, four young spring turnips, and two spring leeks; add them to the stock. Now add half a pint of fresh green peas; boil gently for fifteen minutes; taste for seasoning, and serve.

Strikingly different from the other two with the use of leeks, turnips, and carrots in addition to the peas (which, as mentioned, tend to be omnipresent.) Here, as well, the "soup stock" called for in the previous two recipes is named as a veal stock—in Mrs. Beeton, it's a mixed stock using beef, veal, turkey or chicken, and ham.

In New Vegetarian Dishes, from 1892, we find this recipe:

Fresh Green Pea Soup.
2 pints of shelled green peas.
1 ounce butter.
A handful of mint.
1 cabbage lettuce.
3 pints of water.
1½ teaspoons of salt.
1 onion.
1 lump of sugar.
Dissolve the butter in a large saucepan and place in the peas, the onion sliced, the lettuce and mint thoroughly washed, the water, salt, and sugar. Boil for one and a half hours, strain through a wire sieve, rubbing the peas through with a wooden spoon.

Notable here is the fact that the soup is a purée (well, a "strained" soup, but the end result is the same) and, of course, that it is entirely vegetarian. Whether it tastes good or not, I can't say—the mint is an interesting addition, and I suspect the cabbage would strongly influence the flavor in a somewhat unsatisfactory manner.

Finally, I present a recipe of entirely modern provenance. It's from Chef Kevin Enright (CEC/CCE/AAC.)

Purée of Sweet Green Pea Soup
7 lbs fresh or frozen green peas
3 gal chicken stock
1 1/2 lbs onion, diced
3/4 lb celery, diced
3/4 lb leek, diced
3 lbs spinach, frozen
1 1/2 lbs butter
1 1/2 lbs all-purpose flour
8 bay leaves
1 tbsp dried mint flakes
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp white pepper
3 qt heavy cream
Heat butter in stockpot, and add mirepoix. Sweat until clear, add flour, and cook the roux until blond. Add chicken stock, bring to a boil, then add herbs, peas, and spinach. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer until the peas are soft. Run through a food mill with a fine mesh, and return to pot. Heat heavy cream and add to the soup. Adjust seasonings.

A much more modern approach to the soup in some ways, and yet it's awfully similar to the recipes above. The lettuce or cabbage is replaced with spinach, and a full white mirepoix (onion/celery/leek) is used. In addition, the flavors are developed more fully with a more modern approach to the soup—instead of putting everything in a pot and boiling it, there's a step-by-step process of cooking each ingredient in a sequence, so as to allow the best flavors to mingle.

Finally, then, a definitive recipe for my soup:

Potage Printanier
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, medium dice
4 leeks, cleaned and sliced thinly
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 bags frozen green peas, thawed
10 oz baby spinach
6-10 leaves mint
chicken stock or water, as needed
Salt and White Pepper to taste

1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan, and add onions and leeks. Sauté until softened, then add celery. Sauté 2-3 minutes, and add the spinach.

2. When the spinach has wilted completely, add the peas and mint leaves (torn up slightly) and sauté lightly. Add a pinch of salt, then add about 1 cup (237 ml) of chicken stock, cover, and cook until everything is softened, maybe 10 minutes.

3. Purée with an immersion blender, food mill, or by forcing the soup through a strainer. Add chicken stock (or water) to attain desired thickness, test and adjust seasonings, and serve.

Yield: Roughly 3 quarts (2.84 L)

Carrot Coulis
4 cups (947 ml) Carrot Juice
2 tbsp (30 ml) Heavy Cream
4 oz (113 g) butter, diced, cold
cornstarch slurry (about 1 Tbsp (15 ml) of starch)

1. Place carrot juice in a saucepan. Cook to reduce by one-half.
2. Add heavy cream and cook until thickened slightly. Add corn starch slurry if needed, cooking the starch fully to ensure proper thickening.
3. Swirl in butter, and set aside to hold, warm, until service.

For serving this soup, I ladled the green soup into a bowl, and topped it with a design drawn in carrot coulis. (It should float if you're gentle in applying it.)

Tomato-Basil Bisque

2011-06-22T10:00:00.001-04:00

Bisques are traditionally a French soup made from crustacean shells. They are smooth, creamy, and highly seasoned. Typically, you lightly cook the shells to develop a rosy color, then simmer them with wine and other aromatic spices; they are strained out, ground, and the soup is thickened with a combination of the ground crustacean shells and roux or rice, leaving a smooth, creamy, and delightful dish.

Being as I am allergic to crustaceans, Lobster Bisque and Shrimp Bisque (and Crawfish Bisque and...) don't hold much interest to me, and therefore for the soup feast I set upon a very bright and flavorful soup, one of my personal favorites, Tomato-Basil Bisque.

This is loosely based on Tomato Soup No. 2 from the White House Cook Book, as well as Tomato Soup from Fifty Soups.

The former reads,

Place over the fire a quart of peeled tomatoes, stew them soft with a pinch of soda. Strain it so that no seeds remain, set it over the fire again, and add a quart of hot boiled milk; season with salt and pepper, a piece of butter the size of an egg, add three tablespoons of rolled cracker, and serve hot.

The latter,

Tomato Soup.—Cut four ounces of ham into dice; slice two onions, and fry with ham in two ounces of butter; when browned turn them into a saucepan containing three quarts of stock or corned-beef water, and add three carrots, two turnips, and one long red pepper, and a dozen outer stalks of celery. Simmer gently for one hour; then add a quart of canned tomatoes; boil gently for another hour; rub the whole through a sieve, and simmer again with the liquor a few minutes; add salt, and serve with fried bread crumbs.

Both are simple; from Fifty Soups, we see more development of flavors and more vegetables, but also the use of ham, which I seek to avoid here—I aim to make this dish vegetarian, after all. In the White House Cook Book, we see an old-fashioned approach—that is, put everything in a pot and cook it—and while that is less interesting to me, the enriching of the soup with butter and milk is notable. Finishing soups with cream or butter is a very common way of enriching the soup,

Tomato-basil Bisque
2 tablespoons 100% Olive Oil
1 large Onion, medium dice
2 cloves Garlic, crushed
24 Roma (Plum) tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced
50 (or so) Fresh Basil leaves
1 pint (473 ml) Water
1 quart (946 ml) Heavy Cream
Salt
White pepper

1. Heat olive oil in a 5-quart saucepot. Sauté the onion until soft, and add the garlic. Sauté for another minute or two.

2. Add the tomatoes and basil, and cook until soft and starting to lose their structural integrity. Season well with salt and pepper. Strain through a sieve, pushing the tomatoes and onions through to break them down. (Alternatively, you may use an immersion blender.) Add any remaining solids back to the pan, and add the water.

3. Simmer 15-20 minutes, and purée with an immersion blender, food mill, or another run through the sieve.

4. Add the cream slowly, bring to a simmer, and test for seasoning. If the soup is too thin in texture, add a thickener such as corn starch, beurre manié, or a roux.

Yield: 3 qt

Note: If you use chicken stock for this soup, it will be more flavorful... at least to the palate of someone who eats meat.

Parmesan Croutons
1 baguette
grated Parmesan cheese
8 cloves of garlic
1 stick butter (113.4 g)

1. Slice the baguette into 1/4-1/2 inch (1/2-1 cm) slices. You may cut on the bias (an angle) or straight across the loaf. Set the slices aside.

2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Take a handful of garlic cloves (let's say 8 or so,) mince well (or food process into paste) and add them to the butter. Cook over low heat until very aromatic. The butter should taste like garlic.

3. Brush the baguette slices with the garlic butter. Toast under a broiler or in a hot oven until just starting to brown. Top with the Parmesan cheese, and return to the oven just to melt the cheese. Cool and store until service.

For service, I set one crouton on the top of the Tomato-Basil Bisque. If you set it lightly enough and are gentle in handling the bowl, it will float... and be delicious as it slowly absorbs the soup.

Chicken Curry

2011-06-10T10:00:00.000-04:00

Photos by Russ Turner Photography

In The Curry Cook's Assistant, from 1889, the following recipe is given:

No. 8.—CHICKEN CURRY.
One good-sized Chicken (about a pound or more).

Other ingredients same as for Madras Curry, No. 4. Now cut up the chicken in half of each joint. Keep it to a side. Now fry the onions, sliced, in a stew-pan, with a large spoon of butter. When the onions are nice and brown, just fry the chicken in it less than half done. Take it out and keep to a side. Now fry the Curry Powder till it is nice and dark brown, then add the chicken, more onions, and other things into the frying Curry Powder, etc., and add half-pint of good gravy, and set it on a slow fire for 20 minutes. When serving, add two large spoons of cream. If it is very dry, add little more gravy to it. A few drops of lemon will flavour it, but I recommend to make the chicken into a “moley,” as No. 29. Much nicer to be eaten with rice or treated as an ordinary entree, and the curried fowl (whole) nicer as a joint.

Madras Curry (No. 4) reads as follows:

No. 4.—BEEF CURRY (Madras).

For a Pound of Beef.
2 Tablespoons Coriander Powder and 1 of Rice Powder.
1 Saltspoon Saffron and a Pinch of Cumin Powder and Fenugreek.
½ Pint of Milk or good Gravy.
1 Large or few small Onions.
A bit of Cinnamon, 2 Cloves (if you wish spices).
½ Teaspoon Green Ginger chopped up fine.
A Small Garlic chopped up fine.
1 Large Spoonful of Butter (fresh); Salt to taste.

N.B.—This Curry is made in Madras with or without Cocoanut, but little Tamarind will flavour this Curry better than Lemon Juice. Vinegar, Curry Leaves, etc., are used in Madras and Ceylon. This is a first-class Curry if carefully prepared.

Mode.—Have the meat ready cut in half-inch squares; then slice the onions; put a good stew-pan on the fire, add the butter; soon as the butter gets hot put in the onions and Curry Powder, but not the ginger, garlic, and spices. When the onions, Curry stuffs, etc., are nicely browned, add the meat, garlic, ginger, spices, and give it a turn. Let it stand for a few seconds, then add the milk or gravy, salt, etc.; set on slow fire for about 20 minutes. When sending to table add a few drops of lemon or good pickle vinegar, but tamarind is best. Add little cayenne if preferred hot; a hot Curry is considered always nice and healthy, the cayenne to be added when preparing.

Now, being as I am a modern-day chef, I don't necessarily put each spice into the dish on its own in turn; I like curry powder, and I'm happy to use it.

Therefore, my recipe is much simpler, and looks like this:

Chicken Curry
1 Chicken Breast half (about 1/2 lb or 226 g), cut in cubes of 1 inch (2.5 cm) or so
2 small Onions, about 1 1/2 - 2 cups' worth (355 - 473 ml), julienne
2 cloves of Garlic, minced
2-3 tsp Curry Powder
a dash Cayenne (optional)
Chicken Stock
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil or Butter

1. Heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat and add oil to cover the bottom. Sear the chicken until lightly browned on all sides, then remove from the pan and set aside. Season lightly whilst searing with salt and pepper.

2. Add more oil if necessary, and turn down the heat to medium. Add the onions, and cook until softened and beginning to become translucent. Add the garlic, and cook until the onions have taken on a brown color and are soft.

3. Add the curry powder, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Sauté until deeply aromatic and beginning to brown on the bottom of the pan.

4. Deglaze by adding chicken stock, enough to cover the pan by about a centimeter's depth, and stirring well to release all the bits from the bottom of the pan. Bring to a simmer, then add the seared chicken. Reduce heat to keep a simmer but not a boil, and cook, uncovered, until the chicken is done through, 15 or so minutes (depending on the size of your chicken chunks.) Stir frequently to keep the curry from sticking to the pan, and add more chicken stock if necessary.

5. Test seasonings and add more salt, pepper, cayenne, or curry as needed. Cook, and stir well, after any addition for a few more minutes to allow the flavors to fully develop.

6. Serve over boiled rice—remember how to do that?

Creates 4 servings of appetizer size.

Spontaneous Soup—Minestrone

2011-06-09T20:45:00.001-04:00

I'm working the closer tonight at the bookstore, and it's craft night. So, I felt the need to make something to serve to people here, and I have at my disposal only one cooking implement: A crock pot.

Let's get to work.

Ad Hoc Minestrone Soup
2 Zucchini
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
4 carrots
4 stalks celery
some basil
some parsley
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can (19 oz) cannelloni beans
1 can (4 oz) tomato paste
water to cover
about 2 cups elbow macaroni
salt and pepper as needed

1. Combine all ingredients in a crock pot, and cook until the zucchini is soft. Add macaroni somewhat into the cooking process. Add salt and pepper to taste—this can take a quite surprisingly large amount of salt, if you like things that way.

Now, presuming I didn't have a crock pot—or rather, presuming that I did have a stove, I'd approach this a little differently.

1. Heat some olive oil in a pot, and sweat the onions and garlic. When soft, add basil, carrots, and celery. Sweat until all items are soft and glistening.

2. Add tomatoes, beans, tomato paste, zucchini, and parsley. Cover with water (bring it up to the desired amount, in essence) and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

3. With about 15 minutes left in cooking time, add macaroni. Season to taste, and serve when the macaroni is soft.

Seared Asparagus

2011-06-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

Photgraph by Russ Turner Photography

In The Italian Cook Book from 1919, the following entry appears for asparagus:

Asparagus can be prepared in many different ways, but the simplest and best is that of boiling them and serving them seasoned with olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice. However there are other ways as, for instance, the following: Put them whole to brown a little with the green part in butter and, after seasoning them with salt, pepper and a pinch of grated cheese, pour over the melted butter when it is browned. Or else divide the white from the green part and place them as follows in a fireproof plate: Dust the bottom with grated cheese and dispose over the points of the asparagus one near the other; season with salt, pepper, grated cheese and little pieces of butter. Make another layer of asparagus and, seasoning in the same way, continue until you have them. Be moderate in the seasoning. Cross the layers of asparagus like a trestle, put on the oven and keep until the seasoning, is melted. Serve hot.

If you have some brown stock, parboil them first and complete the cooking with brown stock, adding a little bust and dusting moderately with grated cheese.

In every other cook book, from Mrs. Beeton to Buckeye Cookery, asparagus is suggested to be served boiled and laid on toast—so I combined the two ideas, and served seared asparagus (similar enough to broiling for my purposes) with lemon and olive oil on a toast point... and then added a little grated cheese.

Seared Asparagus
6 spears of Green Asparagus
about 1 Tbsp (15 ml) Olive Oil
about 1 tsp (5 ml) Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
Salt
Pepper
1 slice White Bread, toasted
about 1 tsp Grated Parmesan Cheese

1. Heat a cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat with a small amount of oil in it. Chop asparagus spears in half at the midpoint, and when the skillet is hot—the oil should begin to smoke slightly—, add them.

2. When the asparagus has slightly browned on one side, roll the spears and brown them a bit further on another side.

3. Toss the browned asparagus spears with the oil and lemon juice listed in the recipe, add salt and pepper, and arrange 6 pieces (3 spears) on one half of a slice of the toast. Pour the remaining dressing over the asparagus, and sprinkle with the cheese. (See the picture at the top of the post.)

Serves 2.

Feeding An Art Show

2011-06-06T10:00:00.001-04:00

Not every weekend is a convention for the Steampunk Chef—though in the future that might change. This past weekend, however, I was at an art show in Farmington, MI, a short drive away from my home in Detroit. I had a table to work with, and was asked to do two items. I ended up deciding to work with the idea of a vegetarian item and a meat item, both of which I could make in one pot or pan.

That pound of curry powder is burning a hole in my cupboard (though it's rather mild in flavor, oddly enough) and so I set upon the idea of doing some kind of meat curry—chicken being inexpensive and rather widely-accepted, I put that atop my list for marketing. Now, a curry is always best served in a traditional manner, atop a bed of rice, so my favorite boiled rice was set to accompany the curry.

As for vegetables, I was a little more free-form. As I wandered through Eastern Market in the morning on Saturday, I spied bunches of fresh asparagus, advertised as having been picked at 10 AM on Friday. The same vendor had some lovely lemons, so I quickly decided on the idea of searing the Asparagus and serving it on a toast point with a vinaigrette of lemon juice and olive oil, and topping that with some shredded Parmesan cheese. Recipes to follow!

A Moment of Reflection

2011-06-04T00:28:00.001-04:00

200 Followers.
Almost 27,000 views.
Over 600 fans on Facebook.

I think the irregularly-updated cooking blog of a nerdy fellow from Michigan is going pretty well.

I'm off to the market early this morning to prepare to serve food at an art opening. I'll try to take some pictures...

The soup-feast posts will go up as soon as I get my pictures from that event, which have been held up due to various other issues, such as conventions and life.

Also, what do you think about that building up there? I think it would make a lovely restaurant. If only I could hit the lottery or get some investors or something.

A Little Something for Your Perusal and Amusement

2011-05-19T00:52:00.002-04:00

The author over at Great Grandmother's Kitchen tagged me in a little blog-based thing that, back in my day, we used to call a meme. Now, that's not the proper use of the word, so I'll say it's a little chain letter sort of thing in the blogosphere, designed to help you introduce yourself and promote the blogs of folks who might not otherwise be seen.

I definitely appreciate the praise lavished upon me, and so I suppose I can spare a few moments of my time (and take a few of yours) to write up a little something. While I do that, why not head over and read this article:

Great Grandmother's Kitchen: There is Steam in My Kitchen!: "If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Steampunk, Scifipedia explains it rather succinctly as something that, 'is set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of HG Wells and Jules Verne.'"

Seven Things About Me That Are Little Known:

1. In addition to cooking, sewing, teaching, and acting, I am also an avid photographer. I prefer the silver-halide process to digital, and own 5 different film still cameras, including one from 1920s Austria.

2. If you're paying attention to this blog, you may know that I speak Yiddish; I also speak some French, though it's dying from lack of use these days. It's basically been rendered a way to get extra-annoyed at chefs who didn't pay attention to pronunciation lessons.

3. Despite being a hot-foods cook, I love carpaccio.

4. When I was young, I wanted to be a doctor, because my father was in medical school. As such, I'm not afraid or distrusting of doctors or hospitals, because I grew up with and in them, respectively.

5. Despite being a historian, having a penchant for things historical (I like my base-ball played by amateurs, thank you very much,) and preferring to cook from old cook-books, I am an addict of modern technology. I love my car, my web radio, my computer, and my cell phone.

6. I drink espresso. Straight. Single shots. No frou-frou.

7. I didn't eat vegetables of consequence from age 4ish until I was about 14-15.

Some Blogs you might want to check out:

1. The Boychik Balabusta, one of my friends who strongly influenced my decision to start this blog. He's got a project of cooking his way through a cookbook from 1871, Mrs. Esther Levy's Jewish Cook Book.

2. Sweet Juniper, a media empire run by a couple that are neighbors to me. Cute children, crafts, wonderful pictures, and street urchins!

3. Tutto Fatto a Mano, a blog about fashion focusing on the dissection of garments and the creation of traditionally-sewn tailored garments.

4. Warfare in the Age of Steam—I'm a military fanboy, and so I enjoy this blog.

5. Multiculturalism for Steampunk, which I would be remiss to omit. I mention it enough to forego a description of it.

Maghreb Braised Chicken Thighs

2011-05-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

Thighs! The mere word sends shivers up the spine. Chicken thighs, however, are a little less titillating, and a little more hunger-stimulating.

This recipe developed as a way to use the thighs from the chicken I broke down during my practice for my Practical Exam earlier this year. When you create the finished plate for that exam, you're expected to use the chicken breasts, and are not required to use any other part of the bird for any reason. I suppose you could, but there's no real requirement.

Anyhow, having had the recent experience of the Classical Restaurant class, and thinking of ways to put more than one protein item on a plate, I came up with this as a little side dish for the home version of my plate—something I'd do here, and not replicate at school unless I had a whole boatload of free time. From there, however, it spiraled into something my mother liked, and that I ended up serving at a local underground restaurant event.

This truly was a case of what the bread guy likes to call "a stroll through the fridge," meaning that I just sort of put into the dish what I saw that we had on hand, and what sounded good to me.

Yes, I know those are whole legs.
I did not butcher those.

I started with the chicken thighs, of course. Seasoning both sides with salt and pepper, and then searing them in a hot sautoir with 100% olive oil.

Once they were nicely seared on both sides, I removed them from the sautoir and put in one large onion that I'd diced up (later editions of this dish have seen it be a julienne cut.) I added a little extra oil to help them cook cleanly, and caramelized them. When they were about half-way there, I added garlic to the onions. As they cooked, I also added salt, pepper, cinnamon, allspice, coriander, and both hot and sweet paprika, as well as a few red pepper flakes. I cooked the spices in with the onions, added chicken stock to deglaze the pan, and then returned my partly-cooked chicken thighs to the pan. I covered the pan and let them simmer for about 30 minutes, until they were thoroughly cooked. I then pulled them out and removed the bones, and then tore up the meat into a pulled chicken sort of state, after which I returned the meat to the pan, along with one half-can of chick peas, drained of the canning liquor. A stir, a test of seasonings, and a short simmer uncovered to reduce down the liquid later, and I had a dish that I was happy to serve.

When I have done this dish since, I've served it over boiled rice, which I've made with the addition of some Lapsang Souchong tea. It takes on a nice smoky flavor, and counterposes the heat and spicy richness of the chicken braise very nicely.

Maghreb Braised Chicken
2 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, medium-size, julienne
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) hot paprika
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) sweet paprika
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) allspice, ground
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) red pepper flake
1 teaspoon (5 ml) coriander, ground
1/2 can (6 oz/170 g) garbanzo beans, drained
chicken stock, as needed

1. Salt and Pepper chicken thighs; sear in olive oil. Set aside.
2. Caramelize onions, add garlic; sauté and add spices. When aromatic, deglaze with chicken stock.
3. Bring to a simmer, return meat to pan. Cook until done.
4. Remove meat, shred, return to pan. Add garbanzo beans, and cook uncovered until the liquid is reduced to a glaze.
5. Serve over rice cooked with Lapsang Souchong tea.

A Soup Banquet

2011-05-16T10:00:00.010-04:00

Coming this month at Off the Beaten Path is another in my series of Steamfeasts. In response to a massive showing of interest in the various soups that I have prepared at home and abroad (i.e., in the houses of others,) I was offered the suggestion that I might prepare a meal entirely consisting of soups. I thought this a capital idea, and have prepared the following menu, showcasing a variety of soups from simple to complex, elegant to rustic.

Several of the recipes are things I've prepared before, which makes this a slightly less productive feast in terms of blog content. However, each soup has its own garnish that I will discuss in turn, as well as posting recipes for the new soups.

Chicken Consommé
Leek Royale

Tomato-Basil Bisque
Parmesan and Garlic Crouton

Potage Printanier
Carrot Coulis

Mulligatawny Soup
Boiled Rice

Peach–Yogurt Soup
Palmier

On Mustard for Picnicking (part Two of Two)

2011-05-13T10:00:00.008-04:00

Welcome back, true believers! Today, I shall finish up my discussion of the foods served at the picnic for Grand Ledge Victorian Day.

This was our crew, a fine and gallant bunch. To accompany our luncheon dish of cold roasted chicken, I created a thyme-infused Dijon-style mustard. The recipe came out of a fusion of new and old recipes, as well as basic flavoring techniques.

The mustard was a smash hit at the picnic, winning commendations from the picnickers and visiting soldiers alike (our blankets are a neutral zone where Union and Rebel may eat together in peace and harmony. And booze.)

As is my habit, however, I shall herein discuss a little bit about the creation of mustard over the Steampunk era, and present a few recipes from my collection of cook books.

Mustard, or more properly "Prepared Mustard" is really quite simple. Powdered mustard seeds are combined with a small amount of liquid, just enough to make a smooth paste, and allowed to sit to develop a hot, pungent flavor and characteristic aroma. Its history is long—the name itself comes from Romans making mustum ardens, or "hot must," referring to the original liquid—must, unfermented grape juice with stems and peels included.

In The Good Housekeeper from 1841, the recipe to prepare mustard is given as follows:

Mustard is best when freshly made. Mix by degrees the best ground mustard and a little fine salt with warm water; rub these a long time till perfectly smooth.

Mild mustard.—Mix as above, but use milk instead of water, and sugar instead of salt.

Ignore the curry powder, that's for another thing. Yeah.

The box of ground mustard that I purchased for this endeavor says,

To make up Colman's Powder Mustard to serve as a simple condiment with food, only cold water should be used. Mix with equal quantity of water and allow ten minutes standing time to allow the full flavor to develop.
The water acts as a catalyst that helps yield the essential oil of mustard which produces that unmistakable taste.
The strength of flavor diminishes with time so we recommend that you make your mustard fresh each time.

In Buckeye Cookery, two recipes are given:

TO PREPARE MUSTARD.

Boil one pint vinegar, stir in a quarter pound mustard while hot, add two table-spoons sugar, tea-spoon salt, and one of white pepper; let the mixture boil.
--Mrs. Olivia S. Hinman, Battle Creek, Mich.

MADE MUSTARD.

Take three tea-spoons ground mustard, one of flour (two if the mustard seems very strong), half tea-spoon of sugar; pour boiling water on these and mix into a smooth, thick paste; when cold add vinegar enough to make ready for use, and serve with salt. This resembles the French Mustard.
--Mrs. Mary Herbert Huntington.


Mustard powder, onion and garlic powders, and white vinegar.

The "French Mustard" to which Mrs. Huntington refers is now known world-wide as Dijon Mustard, and in truth the recipe for it does not resemble Mrs. Huntington's recipe in anything more than the most cursory way. True Dijon Mustard is made with dry white wine and/or red wine, as well as some honey, garlic, and onions to contribute to a richer flavor in the mustard.

A modern recipe for simple mustard is presented in my Garde Manger cookbook:

Heywood's Mustard
4 1/2 oz (128 g) dry mustard
1 oz (28 g) sugar
2 tsp (6 g) salt
12 oz (340 g) eggs
16 fluid oz (480 ml) malt vinegar
1/4 tsp (1.25 ml) Tabasco sauce
3 oz (85 g) honey

1. Combine the mustard, sugar, and salt.
2. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
3. Whisk in the vinegar, Tabasco, and honey. Cover and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
4. Beat in a double boiler over hot water until thick and creamy. Cover and refrigerate until cool.
5. Transfer to a clean storage container, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.
Yield: 1 quart or 960 ml.

Very similar to the recipes from the Steampunk era, with the addition of eggs to speed the thickening process and add richness of flavor and mouthfeel.

My recipe for a Thyme-Dijon mustard is as follows:

Allowing the thyme
to infuse in the wine.

Thyme-Dijon Mustard

2 oz (57 g) dry mustard

6 fl oz (177 ml) dry white wine

1 tsp (3 g) salt

1 oz (28 g) honey

1 fl oz (30 ml) white wine vinegar

1-2 sprigs fresh thyme

1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) garlic powder

1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) onion powder
6 oz (170 g) eggs, well beaten (about 3 large eggs)

Mixing the mustard
over a double boiler.

1. Combine the wine, salt, honey, and thyme in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, cover, and steep for 15-20 minutes. Cool, and strain to remove the thyme.

2. Mix the onion and garlic powders with the ground mustard.

3. Combine the wine mixture with the dry ingredients, and add the vinegar. Mix well until smooth.

4. Add the eggs and warm over a double boiler (medium-high heat,) cooking until smooth and creamy. Bottle and mature overnight.

Yield: roughly 1 pint/473 ml

A Picnic! (Part One of Two)

2011-05-11T10:00:00.004-04:00

Roast Capon

This past Saturday saw the much-needed trip to an event in my area, Grand Ledge Victorian Day. It is an incredibly enjoyable event, featuring croquet, Civil War reenactments, a low tea, quilts, antiques, a parade, a beard and mustache contest, and educational programming about the Victorian era. In particular, my friends and I (a motley group including Miss Kagashi of The Steamer's Trunk and our various associates, some from the Imperial Anti-Piracy Squadron) have established a tradition (which I have taken to calling "The First Manassas/First Bull Run Memorial Picnic" in homage to that battle) of picnicking during the Civil War skirmish. This year, Miss Kagashi and I coordinated ourselves to prepare some picnic items from the book Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, which says:

The following bills of fare may be picked to pieces and recombined to suit tastes and occasions:

SPRING PICNICS.--Cold roast chicken; ham broiled on coals; fish fried or broiled; sardines; tongue; hard-boiled eggs; eggs to be fried or scrambled; Boston corn bread; buttered rolls; ham sandwiches prepared with grated ham; orange marmalade; canned peaches; watermelon and beet sweet-pickles; euchered plums; variety or bottled pickles; chow-chow; quince or plum jelly; raspberry or other jams; Scotch fruit, rolled jelly, chocolate, Minnehaha, old-fashioned loaf, and marble cake; coffee, chocolate, tea; cream and sugar; salt and pepper; oranges.

We set upon having a somewhat simpler picnic, not using everything off that list, and designed the following list of provisions, which we believed would suffice:

Cold Roast Chicken*
with Thyme-Dijon Mustard*
Pickled Cucumbers* and Zucchini Relish*
Fresh Pears
Cheese
Coconut Cream Cookies
Bread* (from a local bakery... the Bread Guy took this week off)
Saratoga potatoes.
Wine

For the meal, I am providing the items marked with an asterisk.

The Cold Roast Chicken was made from a very simple recipe:

Trussed Chickens in a Roasting Pan.

1 Chicken, young—broiler/fryer is ideal, weighing about 3 lbs (1.36 kilos)
Salt, of the kosher or coarse variety
Fresh Thyme

1. Preheat your oven at 450°F/230°C/Gas Mark 8.

2. Dry the chicken well. Don't let it be wet or frozen, for this will steam the meat, and that is undesirable.

3. Truss the chicken by looping a string around the pope's nose (that's the chicken's tail area) and each end around one of the legs. Tie tightly. Sprinkle well with salt, and place in a roasting pan.

4. Roast until done, reading 155-160°F/69-71°C on a thermometer; for a 3(ish) pound chicken, this can be anywhere from 30-45 minutes. If your oven begins to smoke and spit, it means that the fat is rendering out of the chicken quickly; you may wish to reduce the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas Mark 4.

5. Remove the chicken from the oven. Strip the fresh thyme leaves over it, baste with the juices, and cover with aluminum foil for 5-10 minutes. This will infuse the flavor of the thyme into the meat. Trust me, it's delicious.

6. Allow to cool, and refrigerate until use; alternatively, carve while warm and store, refrigerated, until consumption. Eat with mustard.

Capon and broiler/fryers, for comparison.

I also found a Capon while out marketing. I treated it exactly the same as the broiler chickens, but with the following change: Before trussing I threw a handful of garlic cloves—maybe about 8—and two sprigs of fresh rosemary into the bird's cavity. The capon, being larger, will take longer to roast, however; perhaps 50 minutes or an hour.

A capon is a castrated rooster; as such, it has a much greater amount of breast meat at an earlier age than a normal rooster would; they're a little bit more expensive than a normal broiler/fryer chicken, but their meat is richer and more flavorful, and they're just fun to tell people about.

The pickles for this picnic came out of my cupboard. They were made last summer (or was it the summer before?) from Israeli cucumbers, and roughly followed a recipe from Country Wisdom & Know-How, a title that sounds Victorian but is actually from the 1960s. It was originally a series of pamphlets designed for those hippies who were going off the grid and starting farms and communes... not all of its information is great, but much of its cooking section is useful, in that it presents simple recipes that are relatively timeless.

Kosher-Style Dill Pickles
4 lbs (1.81 kilo) cucumbers
3 1/2 tablespoons (52.5 ml) pickling salt
1 1/2 tablespoons (22.5 ml) mustard seeds
3 cups (709 ml) water
3 cups (709 ml) white vinegar
6 bay leaves
6 cloves garlic
6 fresh dill heads or 1 1/2 tablespoons (22.5 ml) dill seeds

Wash cucumbers and remove blossom ends. Combine salt, mustard seeds, water, and vinegar in a saucepan. Heat to boiling.

Into each hot, sterilized quart jar, put 1 bay leaf, a piece of garlic clove, and a piece of fresh dill. Pack with cucumbers. Top each jar with 1 bay leaf, 1 garlic clove, and 1 dill head. Fill with the hot liquid, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal. Submerge in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes. Turn heat off when all jars are in the canner. Be sure jars are covered with boiling water. Remove at once when 10 minutes are up. Or process in a steam canner for 10 minutes. Ready to eat in 2-3 weeks.

Yield, 3 quarts.

The zucchini relish is a recipe from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. A couple summers ago, we got a pair of absolutely giant zucchini from a Community-Supported Agriculture farm that my family was part of. Lacking anything to do on a summer Wednesday, let alone something to do with about 3 lbs of zucchini, I cracked open my cookbooks and made this recipe. It's been hard to get rid of, as I'm not really sure what to do with it, but it doesn't taste bad at all.

Zucchini Relish
2 cups chopped zucchini
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped sweet green pepper
1/2 cup chopped sweet red pepper
2 tablespoons salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons celery seed
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1 cup cider vinegar

Combine zucchini, onion, green and red peppers; sprinkle with salt; cover with cold water. Let stand 2 hours. Drain; rinse and drain thoroughly. Combine remaining ingredients in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil. Add vegetables; simmer 10 minutes. Pack hot relish into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

Yield, about 4 half-pints (I packed it in jelly jars.)

Tune in next time for a discussion of mustard!

Lamb Curry

2011-05-09T10:00:00.008-04:00

This is what we call "Kitchen Face"

Here in my collection, I have a book called "The Curry Cook's Assistant," published in 1887. It's a little dense, and the recipes not always the clearest; yet, they are useful in that they showcase the sheer variety of curry dishes. (Of note, it's available through Project Gutenberg—which is an utterly invaluable resource—right here. They have a whole passel of cook books on there, and I may well exhaust my digital storage space saving them.)

The Phoenix Café, which I have discussed before, celebrated our DJ's birthday this month. I spoke with him last month and asked him what he'd like, food-wise, at his second 22nd birthday party. He requested that I create a lamb dish in his honor, and I suggested a lamb curry. My suggestion was met with enthusiastic nodding and excited eye movements, so I went with it.

I found a gorgeous leg of lamb on sale at my local farmer's market in one of the many meat purveyors' warehouses, grabbed some onions and old-fashion curry powder, and set them aside for the evening. I had other obligations in the morning, and would have to fetch and cook on the fly. I remained undaunted, and met with resounding success—one of my best-received dishes to date.

Ever the humble servant, I present to you Tommy's Lamb Curry.

The Curry Powder of Choice

The Curry Cook's Assistant gives recipes for Beef Curry and Mutton Curry; the mutton recipe refers back to the beef recipe, and therefore what I present here is a combined and adjusted recipe, comprehensive in its representation of the two recipes, and adjusting for their vagaries.

1 lb. Mutton (Fresh or Cooked Meat will do).
1 Tablespoon Curry Powder (not hot).
1 Pint good Milk or strong (Beef) Gravy.
1 Large Onion or few small ones.
1 Young Capsicum
1 Tablespoon Rice Powder.
Small piece of Cinnamon.
Pinch of Cumin Powder; Salt to taste.

Mode.—Cut the meat in half-inch squares; put into a clean stew-pan, then slice the onions, and add the onions, Curry stuffs, chillies, cinnamon, milk, cumin seed, etc., and salt. Mix all well together, and set on fire for 15 to 20 minutes; do not let it burn. Add a tablespoon of cream when serving, as well as a few drops lemon juice. If required hot add a pinch of cayenne when preparing.

The recipe is obviously somewhat confused, and doesn't really include a reference to when to add its ingredients. I aim to make this a little more clear.

Boneless Leg of Lamb, closed

Leg of lamb is typically found in two states: Bone-in, and boneless (also known as boned, rolled, and tied or b/r/t). Bone-in leg of lamb, while a great deal of fun to play with, is also a pain in the neck to fabricate—lamb leg bones are obnoxious and there's a lot of connective tissue everywhere. One day, I'll do a demonstration here, but today is not that day.

Boneless leg of lamb still has a great deal of fat and connective tissue in it. This must be cleaned off to allow for tender, easy-to-eat pieces in curry, as well as to reduce the fat content. Lamb fat is difficult for the human body to digest, and a dish rich in this fat leads to stomach-aches and indigestion later. So, one must take care when preparing the lamb for lamb curry.

Boneless Leg of Lamb, opened

Lamb Curry
1 lb (454 g) lean leg of lamb, cut in 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) cubes
oil or clarified butter
1 large onion, julienne
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp (15 ml) curry powder
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground cinnamon
beef or chicken stock as needed
salt and black pepper to taste

Lamb, Seared

1. Heat the oil or butter in a pot big enough to hold the finished product. Season the lamb with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, sear the lamb (in batches if necessary,) turning periodically, so that all sides are nicely browned, but not burnt. Set the seared lamb aside on a plate, or in a container. If there is a great deal of fat in the pan, drain some off so that 1-2 tbsp (15-30 ml) remain.

2. Add the julienned onion and sauté until it begins to become clear. Add the garlic, and sauté another minute or two, then add the curry powder, cayenne, cumin, and cinnamon. Stir and turn down the heat slightly so that the spices cook in the fat, but do not burn. Return the lamb and any juices that have run from it to the pot.

3. Add the beef stock and stir to dislodge all the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. These browned bits are called the "sucs" (pronounced "sook," and French for "juices") or the "fond" (French for "base" or "foundation") and they are the absolute best thing for making a sauce taste good. Bring the whole to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.

4. Cook, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes, or until the lamb is cooked all the way through and the sauce reduces around it to form a glaze. Check for seasonings and add salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste. You may wish to add a small amount of lemon juice, as suggested in the original recipe, if you find that there is not enough acid in the dish. (It's all a matter of taste; richness is something I enjoy in a dish, but a small bit of acid helps the flavors become much more lively.) If you need more curry flavor, heat a sauté pan on the side and lightly cook some curry powder before adding to the dish.

Serves about 4, depending on portion sizes.

Serve over boiled rice.

Passover—The Feast of Unleavened Bread, part 2

2011-05-05T23:01:00.001-04:00

Passover is a long holiday—eight days, to be exact—and so I have returned to complete my task. When last we met, I discussed the traditional table items for a passover meal; in this, the second part of my little discussion of Jewish passover tradition, I shall take on the passover meal itself, and elaborate on some of the varieties of food found in the Steampunk era. It will begin, with my apologies, in a somewhat scholarly manner, examining the sources I have used to create this pair of articles; I shall quickly proceed to a lesson on the origins of the dietary restrictions surrounding Passover, and finish with a discussion of dishes typical to a seder in the age of steam. As of this time, I have not prepared many of the dishes in my usual manner, and as such will present recipes from the primary sources without editing; it is a goal, however, to prepare some of them for my more typical posting style shortly. (Kosher for Passover food goes on sale after passover is over...)

For this post, I have relied heavily on two cookbooks. First is The International Jewish Cook Book: 1600 Recipes According To The Jewish Dietary Laws With The Rules For Kashering: The Favorite Recipes Of America, Austria, Germany, Russia, France, Poland, Roumania, [Etc., Etc.] By Florence Kreisler Greenbaum, in its second edition from 1919 (originally published in 1918;) secondly, Aunt Babette's Cook Book, in its eleventh edition from c. 1889. Notably absent from my collection is Mrs. Esther Levy's Jewish Cookery Book - on Principles of Economy Adapted for Jewish Housekeepers with Medicinal Recipes and Other Valuable Information Relative to Housekeeping and Domestic Management, which is the purview of my friend over at The Boychik Balabusta. Sadly, the item is only available in print, and I have not (as yet) put my hands on it. I am informed, however, that Mrs. Levy doesn't have a section for Passover, but rather has recipes sprinkled throughout the book that are noted as being Kosher for Passover.

It is interesting that, while several other cookbooks treating on Jewish food (in part or wholly) are available from the same time period, none of them set aside a separate portion of the book for Passover recipes. Also worth noting is that both of the books I have uncovered in my research were published by the Bloch publishing house, and both include the same exact passage describing the seder plate (as quoted in the previous entry on Passover:)

Set the table as usual, have everything fresh and clean; a wineglass for each person, and an extra one placed near the platter of the man who conducts the seder. Then get a large napkin; fold it into four parts, set it on a plate, and in each fold put a perfect matzoh; that is, one that is not broken or unshapely; in short, one without a blemish. Then place the following articles on a platter: One hard-boiled egg, a lamb[*] bone that has been roasted in ashes, the top of a nice stick of horse-radish (it must be fresh and green), a bunch of nice curly parsley and some bitter herb (the Germans call it lattig), and, also, a small vessel filled with salt water. Next to this platter place a small bowl filled with כרוסת [charoses] prepared as follows: Pare and chop up a few apples, add sugar, cinnamon, pounded almonds, some white wine and grated lemon peel, and mix thoroughly.

Thirty years separate the specific editions in question; I am sure that more separate the origin of that paragraph and these printings. It seems evident that the cookbooks published by this particular publishing house followed a similar formula for their chapter order and names (both Passover chapters are subtitled, "Cakes, Puddings, Sauces, Wines, Etc.", and follow the chapter on Beverages.) What can be assumed, however, is that if the specifics of a seder plate did not change enough between 1889 and 1919 to merit a significant editing of the exact language of this description. The only change, as marked by the asterisk in the excerpt, is that "lamb" was added as a descriptor of the bone in the later cookbook.

The origins of Passover prohibitions come from the story of the holiday, as discussed in the previous entry:

The Torah (the Jewish bible) says in Exodus 12:14-17:

And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the lord, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree.

The further rules about leavened items and grains are explained very well at the Wikipedia article on chametz. The condensed version, more or less, is that the minute that flour from the five grains:

Shippon (shifon) - einkorn (Triticum monococcum)
Kussemet - emmer (Triticum dicoccon)
Chittim – durum wheat (Triticum durum) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum)
Se’orim – two and six row barley (Hordeum vulgare)
Shibbolet shual – oats (Avena sativa)

touches water, they become leavened and may no longer be consumed. This means that many of the traditional dishes (dumplings, breads, etc.) cannot be used, but there are a great deal of secondary items that cannot be used either—beer, breadcrumbs, roux, pasta...

Passover tradition stems from a great tradition of rabbinic interpretation and responses. Someone finds a situation for which they do not have an answer, and they write a rabbi to request an answer; the rabbi writes a religiously-informed interpretation and answer, and the situation is resolved; years later, that interpretation is relied upon for new interpretations, and so on and so forth. Each of these sets of interpretations happen in their own local areas, and so several cities can come to several different final decisions. Each group of Jews, therefore, has their own set of understandings about the Rules and Regulations of being a Jew.

Onward to recipes, then. In large part, the goal of any cookbook presenting Passover recipes is to present alternatives to any recipe that would normally include one of the five grains prohibited on passover (for their potential to leaven and therefore ruin the feast of unleavened bread.) Thus, puddings, cakes, breads, and many other dishes are replaced, while soups, roasts, and other main dishes (that don't include the said prohibited items) usually remain mostly unchanged.

Aunt Babette's book is useful, in that she presents a table of contents for her Passover section, called "Easter Dishes." It is appended here. Obviously, the focus here is replacing items that would normally be made with flour (puddings, cakes,) but there are also items that are unique to passover, which make use of various forms of matzo.

The "Chand'eau Sauce" recipe is of particular interest to me, as it provides a recipe for a thickened sauce that does not violate the passover laws; potato flour is used in place of regular flour to create a rich (eggs are included) white-wine flavored sauce to serve with the Matzo Pudding ("Schalet") that is also detailed in the section. Potato Flour Pudding, as well as apple puddings containing matzo flour, are also described.

Most of the recipes in this section are, however, unique to matzo: chrimsel and kloesse are both preparations of matzo that are known and individually extant, not a substitution for flour in some other dish.

Of particular note is a Strawberry Short Cake recipe (which I intend to experiment with.) It goes as such:

Beat the [yolks] and whites of four eggs together with a scant teacupful of sugar, a punch of salt, and the grated peel of a lemon. Beat until the consistency of a thick batter, add last about three-quarters of a cup of matzo flour. Bake in two layers. Pick strawberries, cut them in halves, sugar liberally, fill each layer (this makes two cakes); whip some very rich cream, sweeten and spread on top of the cakes.

There is also a Sponge Cake that I would like to try:

Beat eight eggs very light with two small teacupfuls of sugar, a punch of salt and grated peel of a lemon. Beat until the consistency of a very thick batter, sift a small cup and a half of matzos flour as fine as possible, add the grated peel and juice of a lemon and bake in a moderate oven.

Matzo flour is a cooked product, made from pulverized, baked matzos. It is somewhat equivalent in nature to breadcrumbs. The recipes both make use of eggs and sugar for the majority of their structural components, using the matzo flour to augment it. (Normally, the cake flour would form a small amount of gluten, trapping the leavening gasses... but we can't leaven flour for passover.)

In 1919, the recipes look remarkably similar. Compare the recipes from each book for Matzo Kleis (Kloesse), which are now known commonly as Matzo Balls.

In 1889, the recipe reads:

Soak some matzos about half an hour, and press out all the water. Heat some goose oil in a spider [a cast iron fry-pan]; cut up part of an onion very fine, heat it with the goose oil, and dry the matzos in it. Put the matzos in a bowl; break in five or six eggs, a large handful of matzo flour, some salt and grated nutmeg and a little ground ginger. Mix this thoroughly into the dough. Grease your hands, and form into little balls the size of marbles. You can make enough at once to last a few days. Keep in an ice-chest. Another way is to use all matzo flour, moistening the flour with scalding soup stock and proceed as above. These are very nice for soups.

In 1919, the recipe reads:

Soak four matzoth in cold water and press them after being thoroughly saturated. Add little pepper, salt, sugar, parsley, and half an onion chopped fine, first browning the onion. Beat four eggs and add all together. Then put in enough matzoth meal that it may be rolled into balls. The less meal used, the lighter will be the balls. They should boil for twenty minutes before serving.

A second recipe is much the same:

Take six matzoth, three eggs, two cooking spoons of chicken fat, parsley, onion, salt, pepper and ginger. Soak the matzoth in boiling water a minute, then drain every drop of water out of them. Press through a sieve. Fry about three onions in the two tablespoons of chicken fat, and when a light brown, put the matzoth in a spider with the fat and onions to dry them. Add one teaspoon of salt, dash of pepper and ginger and one tablespoon of chopped parsley. Add the three yolks of eggs and beat all this together a few minutes; last, add the well-beaten whites. Form into balls by rolling into a little matzoth meal. Drop in boiling salt water and boil fifteen minutes.

In 1919, there are also two recipes for making Matzoth Kleis from Matzoth Meal, both of which involve a similar process of adding eggs, fat and seasoning to matzo meal. This is more or less where our modern matzo ball comes from, with the addition of some baking soda to give it a little more fluffiness (a more modern taste.) Regardless, however, the process changed slightly over the years, but nothing substantial about the recipe did until very recently.

A Passover meal of the Age of Steam resembles most other meals from the time, much as a modern Passover meal resembles modern dinners; Vegetables, starches, and a roast or braised joint of meat would be served as a main course, along with a first course and a soup of some kind. A salad might make an appearance, and additional courses as well—depending on the wealth of the family hosting the meal.

Apologies

2011-05-04T13:19:00.000-04:00

It's amazing what happens when you have an exam that decides your future in the business (passed with a 90%, one of the highest scores in my school,) the end of the semester, and a lack of free time...

What happens is your blog falls quickly by the wayside, as do your social life, propensity to have fun, and health. I'm back now, though, and I'll see you shortly with more posts.

The Bread Guy Presents: Matzah

2011-04-22T10:00:00.001-04:00

Hello again.

It's The Bread Guy.

Aaron asked me to put in another appearance, so I thought I'd tell you about my latest foray into the world of dough. As some of you may know, it's Passover, which gave us the opportunity to get together with the family to celebrate the Seder. This ritual has many symbolic components, recounting the history of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. So, how does this relate to The Bread Guy? Well, there's special bread, which is part of the Passover meal—matzah. The biblical narrative tells of the haste of the flight of the Israelites, such that they could not even wait for their bread to rise, resulting in an unleavened flatbread or cracker that we know as matza. It symbolizes freedom and redemption, but as the "poor man's bread," it is also a reminder of the humility of servitude.

So why does this interest The Bread Guy? Well, my recent bread baking efforts have explored the enrichment of flavor that various methods of pre-fermentation add to breads. (You remember the 12 to 16 hour poolish used in the Pain Rustique.) And in particular, how these techniques can be applied to whole grain loaves. Well, matzoh is the complete antithesis. The religious elders determined that the time it takes for wild yeast to start its fermentation action is 18 minutes. During Passover, eating chametz (any food which is leavened) is forbidden. So, for matse to be kosher for Passover, it needs to be prepared in less than these 18 minutes. That is from the time the water is mixed in with the flour until the dough is baked in the oven.

Well, I considered this a challenge and decided I'd try my hand at preparing the matso for the family, and I have to say, I was able to modify the recipe that I used and meet the time limit. Actually, it worked quite well, the matzho that was baking was done just as the next batch was ready to put in.

To give credit where credit is due, this recipe can be found in a great bread book- Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. What I thought I'd do is pass along the original recipe, and then tell you the changes that I made to meet the time limit.

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups (227 g) whole-wheat flour
1/2-teaspoon (4 g) salt (optional)
3/4-cup (177 ml) water
extra whole-wheat flour for adjustments

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees with a baking stone in place (you can use an inverted sheet pan if you don't have a stone).

Combine flour, salt and water in a bowl and mix to form coarse dough. Transfer to a lightly floured work surface, dust with more flour, and knead for three minutes. Dough should be firm and tacky, but not sticky. (You can see in the photo that the dough does look pretty shaggy when first turned out of the bowl. But, it comes together quite well after the three minutes of kneading.)

Let the dough rest three minutes, then knead for an additional minute, adjusting flour or water as needed to produce dough that is "soft and satiny, not sticky, and only a little tacky." I have to tell you, the three minute rest does do the dough a world of good- it feels great, just as described, smooth and just a little tacky.

Divide the dough into 8 to 10 pieces, round each into a tight ball, and let them rest for three minutes.

Using minimal flour, roll out each piece of dough into a disk or rectangle, until it begins to shrink back. Dust with flour if you need to stack them.

Return to the first piece, start from the center and roll into a disk or rectangle 1/8 inch thick, dusting the bench only if necessary.

Lightly flour a peel (or underside of a sheet pan), and transfer the first piece to the peel. Dock the entire surface and slide from the peel onto the baking stone.

Bake until the motsa turns a rich brown- 8 to 15 minutes depending on thickness.

Remove to a cooling rack, and continue baking the remaining pieces of dough, rolling out the next while the previous is baking.

The motso should be crisp and snap easily after it cools.

So, as you can figure out from looking at the recipe, if you have 8 to 10 pieces of dough, and each one takes 8 to 15 minutes to bake, and a train traveling at 80 miles per hour leaves Philadelphia at...? Sorry… I got sidetracked.

Anyway, with that many pieces of dough, and only one stone to use, the 18-minute production limit didn't seem feasible. So this is where I made the first modifications. I have both a hearthstone and a pizza stone, so I separated the shelves in the oven far enough to give me room to work with a peel, and preheated the oven to 400 degrees with both stones in place. Next, I decided to cut down on the amount of dough mixed at one time, halving the amounts of flour and water called for in the recipe. I actually increased the amount of salt by 50%, however. So for my version of the recipe, the ingredient list is:

114 grams (~7/8 cups) whole-wheat flour
3 grams (~3/8 teaspoon) salt
85 grams (~3/8 cup) water
Extra whole-wheat flour for adjustments

I also decided to make the motza larger, so that I would only have to bake two at a time, (two stones, two mazzot). You can get an idea of their size by looking at the photos of me moving them from the bench to the peel. Which brings me to the next issue. I wanted to make sure that the matzo would break evenly and not just crumble to pieces when snapped. So after rolling out the dough and docking it with a fork, (I don't own a docking wheel yet), I made perforations in the dough with a pizza cutter. Then I transferred the rolled out dough to an unfloured peel and slid it into the oven.

So you can see from the photos, I took the suggestion of using minimal flour for the process of rolling out the dough literally. When I first tried this recipe, I had a more liberal hand. But the extra, raw flour that ended up on the matzot detracted from the flavor and enjoyment of eating them. So with this attempt I went to the opposite extreme, using as little as possible on the bench, peel, or rolling pin. This meant that I had to lift the dough off the bench and reposition it a few times while rolling it out, until I got it to the thickness that I wanted. When I say "lift it off", it was sticking and would only roll out so far. Repositioning it allowed for further expansion. I was careful in releasing it from the bench so none of the pieces ripped, and in fact, peeling it off as I did helped to thin it out a little bit more. You can see from the photo how tacky the dough was.

I was pleased with the results of my efforts. The matsoth were satisfyingly crunchy, with a whole grain, nutty taste, which went well with the horseradish and charoset at the Seder meal.

OK! So by now you may have noticed all of the different spelling for matzot. Well, none of them are wrong. Since the word is a transliteration from Hebrew, there's actually no "approved" spelling or pronunciation. All of the different versions used in this blurb are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition.

Try the recipe. I think you’ll like it. I did, and I hope the family did as well.

Until next time,

The Bread Guy

Passover—The Feast of Unleavened Bread, part 1

2011-04-20T10:00:00.000-04:00


Jews making a Passover sacrifice; represented in a 15th-century art piece. (Wikimedia Commons)

Holidays sneak up on you, if you're not careful. In Christian tradition, they're mostly predictable; after all, our modern calendar is a Christian one, and therefore Easter is somewhat more predictable (or at least marked on more calendars.) Being (culturally) a Jew, I am not much on Easter celebrations, but I do celebrate passover with my family every year. Passover has a varying date, much more variable than Easter (though the dates are somewhat linked,) as the Jewish calendar is a lunar cycle-based calendar and doesn't always match up quite so nicely with the Gregorian calendar that most countries use to mark their time.

Passover is holiday with great cultural significance for Jews. Simply, it is a commemoration of the flight of the Jews from slavery in Egypt sometime between 1550 and 1203 BCE. (These dates are cited on Wikipedia, and represent such a vast time period that most estimates are encompassed.) As a festival celebrating freedom, however, Passover contains much more than just a simple remembrance. Primary amongst these traditions is a meal rich with symbolism, possibly the most symbolic feast of any in Jewish canon; many holidays in Judaism have associated foods—I have previously discussed the use of oil during Hanukkah—but Passover is somewhat unique in that it has foods that are inherently part of the celebration of the holiday. (Think of it thus: Most holidays in Judaism have foods associated with them in the way that a nice big ham is associated with Easter dinner: It's mostly to do with tradition, and less to do with the actual religious aspect of the holiday—though there are notable exceptions—; Passover's foods are more like the wafers and wine involved in communion: they are actively part of the holiday's basic meaning.)

A 19th-century illustration of Ukranian Jews at a seder.
(Wikimedia Commons)

The Torah (the Jewish bible) says in Exodus 12:14-17:

And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the lord, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree.

Biblically, we are commanded about our food choices for the holiday—but the food traditions do not stop with unleavened bread, and the meanings are manifold.

So what are these foods? What are the meanings? Read on.

On every table set for a Passover Seder you will find what is known as the Seder Plate, a combination of ritualistically significant food items. They are as follows:

A seder plate; visible are parsley and beet horseradish,
with the roasted egg in center back.
Photograph by Dara Skolnick

ביצה [beitzah]—The Roasted Egg: Traditionally, a hard-boiled egg that is then oiled and browned in the oven, to recall both the tradition of sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem that were part of the Passover feast before the destruction of that Temple, and the rebirth of the world coming of spring.
זורה [z'roah]—The Lamb Bone: In my family, for many years, there was not a lamb's shankbone on the seder plate, but rather a chicken bone. From what I understand, this is remarkably common, as lamb is not always easily found or commonly enjoyed, for some reason or another. Regardless, this item commemorates the Passover Sacrifice, a tradition dating back to the days before the Egyptian enslavement, when Jews (like the Greeks) sacrificed animals at the altar to God; in addition, it recalls the lamb slaughtered for the purpose of marking the doorways of Jewish homes in Egypt with blood, a task undertaken to protect the residents of the home from the Angel of Death, on a mission from God to strike fear into the Egyptians with the death of their firstborn sons.
מרור, חזרת [maror, khazeres]—The Bitter Herbs: There are two bitter herbs placed on the Seder plate; oftentimes, one is almost always horseradish, but the other varies (a commonly used item is romaine lettuce.) The bitter herbs symbolize the bitter treatment of the Jews in their enslavement by the Egyptian Pharoah, and are eaten as part of the ceremony.
כרפס [karpas]—The Other Herb: In modern households, this is often Parsley (and in the age of Steam, I'm certain it was as well, given the incredible love for Parsley evident in every cookbook from the era...) The herb is dipped in one of several items, depending on the particular tradition of the observers: For Eastern European Jews, it is dipped in saltwater, symbolizing the tears of the enslaved Jews; for Sephardic Jews (those whose traditions originate in Spain, Portugal, and the Western areas of Europe) the dipping medium is Vinegar, to symbolize the bitter tears; in older traditions in various places, the herbs are dipped in the next item.
חרוסת [kharoses]—Charoses: This one lacks a good translation; it is a mixture of chopped nuts, fruit, wine/grape juice, honey, and spices. It is designed to look like the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses and monuments of the Egyptians. It is used to create one of the simplest parts of the Passover meal, the Hillel Sandwich (made of Matzah, horseradish, and charoses,) as well as being eaten on its own, with the other herbs, or with matzah.
מצה [matzah]—The Bread: A big, unsalted saltine cracker. No, really. These (commercially, at least) are giant crackers made of flour and water, with no flavoring but a bit of salt; docked and baked within 18 minutes from initial mixing, matzah is a simple but pleasurable part of passover meals. It recalls the flight of the Jewish slaves from Egypt; as they left, they did not have time to bake bread to provision their wanderings, and therefore they mixed their flour and water, placed it upon their backs, and began their trip. The sun baked it into crackers, and ever since we have eaten unleavened, crisp bread.

All of these items have existed as components of the passover seder for many, many years. One of my early resources on Jewish food, a 1918 cookbook, says the following:

Set the table as usual, have everything fresh and clean; a wineglass for each person, and an extra one placed near the platter of the man who conducts the seder. Then get a large napkin; fold it into four parts, set it on a plate, and in each fold put a perfect matzoh; that is, one that is not broken or unshapely; in short, one without a blemish. Then place the following articles on a platter: One hard-boiled egg, a lamb bone that has been roasted in ashes, the top of a nice stick of horse-radish (it must be fresh and green), a bunch of nice curly parsley and some bitter herb (the Germans call it lattig), and, also, a small vessel filled with salt water. Next to this platter place a small bowl filled with כרוסת [charoses] prepared as follows: Pare and chop up a few apples, add sugar, cinnamon, pounded almonds, some white wine and grated lemon peel, and mix thoroughly.

It is evident that about 100 years ago, our modern conception of the seder plate was mostly extant. Jews from the Old Country would have brought these traditions to America, changed them slightly to suit the new foodstuffs that were available, and continued to honor the religiously significant culinary traditions of their families.

Friday, my bread guy will have for you a post about making matzah. Forthcoming in part 2 of this entry will be a discussion of the traditional parts of the passover meal.

Maghreb Meatballs and Garlic-Sumac Sauce

2011-04-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

I think I've mentioned the Phoenix Café before; it's a local art and gathering space that hosts a monthly steampunk gathering, small but enjoyable, that centers on music controlled by a gentleman called Tommy Toony. He's a DJ with many years of experience, who's somewhat new to the Steampunk scene. Therefore, the music is often a mix of typical steampunk music, strange things from Vaudeville and other historical music sources, and modern dance music that our crowd enjoys. (The Time Warp makes frequent appearances.)

The proprietors of the establishment have been kind enough to let me prepare food for these gatherings, so I take the opportunity to make simple but delicious items. The baozi made their premiere there, and last month (the night after the Irish Feast) I served a very quickly made (but delicious) beef stew. Last Friday, the 15th, we celebrated Tax Day by drinking, carousing, and staying out late... and I made food, of course.

Maghreb Meatballs
3 lbs (1.36 kilos) ground beef (2 parts ground round, 1 part ground sirloin)
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper
cumin
cinnamon
coriander
paprika
crushed red pepper
dried parsley

Mix ground beef with seasonings; you will note that I have not listed amounts here as I do not have a good handle on how much I have used. The trick here is to season well with each spice in roughly equal proportions, with the cayenne, parsley, and crushed red pepper used in smaller amounts. My method works thus:

I place the meat in a large mixing bowl and flatten it down to about an inch thick, give or take. I then punch holes in the meat with my fingertips, creating more surface area. Each spice, in turn, gets sprinkled evenly over the surface. Then, I knead the ground meat like bread dough to evenly disperse the seasonings. I repeat once or twice (for a total of two or three seasonings) and then make a small patty of meat, which I then sauté and taste. I continue to adjust the seasonings and taste as needed until I get the desired result.

What is the desired result, you ask? The cinnamon and coriander flavors should be most prominent, with a slight heat and adequate salt content. If you mostly taste beef, you need more seasonings. This will take a fair bit of time to get completely right, so you may want to buy some extra ground beef.

Regardless, once you have achieved ideal seasoning, create small meatballs (about 1 inch in diameter, slightly smaller than a golf or table tennis ball) and sauté over medium heat until cooked through, somewhere around 5-10 minutes. Stick with a skewer and serve with garlic-sumac sauce.

Cooked, mashed potatoes make an excellent thickening agent,
especially when you can't cook the dish you're thickening.

Garlic-Sumac Sauce
1/3 cup (79 ml) olive oil
1/3 cup (79 ml) vegetable oil
1/3 cup (79 ml) lemon juice
2 heads' worth garlic cloves
1/3 cup (79 ml) cooked potato, mashed
1 tsp (5 ml) ground sumac
pinch salt

1. Purée garlic, oils, and lemon juice together in a container just wide enough to accommodate an immersion blender.

2. Add mashed potato to thicken to desired thickness; purée.

3. Add sumac and salt, purée quickly to combine, and store. This will keep for a couple weeks, and gets stronger with storage.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

Majadara Kagashi

2011-04-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

Auguste Escoffier, master of Classical French Cuisine, had a habit of naming his dishes after people. It's not immediately clear whether these names were chosen because the dishes were inspired by the people named, created for the people named, or merely associated with them by Escoffier to make a splash on his menu: the likely answer is a combination of the three, though during his tenure as head chef at the Savoy, Ritz, and Carlton hotels (as well as nominally overseeing many other kitchens, directly or indirectly,) he most certainly did serve food to many of the people included in his Guide Culinaire.

In the grand tradition established by the king of chefs, I have named this dish in honor of my good friend Miss Kagashi, author of The Steamer's Trunk (Multiculturalism for Steampunk.) She posted the recipe I used for the base of this plate; of it, she writes:

Majadara is a Levantine dish, dating back thousands of years. By its definition, it is a simple pilaf of rice and lentils topped with caramelized onions and was primarily eaten as "poor man's" or "working man's" food. As with most staple Middle Eastern and Mediterranean dishes, there's some squabble over where it actually originated[...], but the recipes differ country to country so it could actually be considered several separate dishes. In some places the rice is switched out for bulgar wheat, in Lebanon pine nuts and garlic yogurt are sometimes companions, and sometimes the recipe alternative between red or green lentils.

Considering what you use and the final yield, this is a fantastically cheap recipe that can be dressed up a couple of ways in good times or just eaten as is in less than fortunate ones.

As good as majadara is on its own, I chose to combine it with a few other dishes from the Mediterranean region, to create a dish delightful in its own right, and more along the lines of my typical presentation than a simple pilaf.

To my interpretation of Miss Kagashi's majadara recipe, I have added a piece of sautéed köfte (kefta, as some may know it) as inspired by my friend Oz (remember him from the State Dinner?) and some halloumi cheese, floured, sautéed, and flambéed with brandy. (Some may recognize this as saganaki halloumi from their local Greektown... I suppose growing up across the street from Detroit's Greektown has had some effect on me.)

This dish is somewhat labor-intensive—at the very least, it's equipment-intensive, because it uses about 5 cooking vessels, and requires some amount of time to prepare: fear not, however. With care and concentration, this dish is simple, delicious, and nutritious.

Onward to the recipes!

For my majadara, I used some black lentils that I found at my local gourmet market—it's just as good with all varieties of lentil, but I like the dark, dark brown color that these lentils yield. I've also chosen to use brown rice, since it's healthier and has a better flavor to it.

Majadara
1/2 cup (118 ml) black lentils, sorted and rinsed
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) ground cumin
a small amount, maybe 1 ml, of freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 cup (118 ml) brown basmati rice, rinsed
2-3 cups (473-709 ml) stock (I used beef, vegetable or chicken stock, or indeed water, are all acceptable)
1 1/2 onions, julienned (I used 1/2 of a white onion and 1 spanish onion, for a total of maybe 2 quarts/about 2 L of onion, total)
olive oil or butter

1. Slice up your onions and set them aside. You'll want to get this out of the way first, because there's a lot of onion to slice and doing it on the fly is always hard. Reserve the other half of one onion for use in the köfte.

2. Rinse the brown rice, and soak it in one or two changes of water for an hour total. Place in a saucepan with 1 cup (236 ml) of stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a slight simmer, and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes (or until the water is absorbed and the rice is very slightly al dente.)

3. After sorting and rinsing your lentils, place them in a small saucepan and cover with 1-2 inches of stock; depending on your lentils and pan this may end up being as much as 2 cups (473 ml.) Add the cumin and nutmeg. Bring to a boil, and as soon as your pot boils, reduce it to a simmer and allow the lentils to simmer, very gently, until tender but not mushy.

4. Heat your fat of choice (I used 100% olive oil) in a sauté pan (I used a cast-iron skillet, for optimum browning) over medium-high heat. When shimmering, place your onions in the pan and begin to cook, stirring frequently, until they have reduced to a candy-like sweetness and medium brown color. Some may begin to get crispy—don't worry, this is highly desirable. Don't let them burn, however. You may need to oscillate between medium-high and medium-low heats.

5. When the rice is done, the lentils are tender, and the onions are caramelized to a delightful point, you are ready for final assembly. Strain the lentils and rice of any excess liquid, and mix them together, gently. Add about 1/3 of the caramelized onions, and mix those in as well. Season, if needed, with salt, pepper, and cumin. To serve, spoon out some of the mixture and top with the additional caramelized onions.

Köfte
1/2 lb (227 g) ground beef, from round
1/2 onion, puréed (about 1 cup/236 ml)
1 cup (236 ml) finely chopped parsley
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) hot paprika
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) ground allspice
salt
freshly ground black pepper
dry breadcrumbs, as needed

1. Mix the ground beef and ground onions together, and allow to marinate for about 15 minutes. Add in the parsley, spices, and seasonings. Cover and set in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

2. Mix in breadcrumbs, a small amount at a time, until the mixture tightens up and feels somewhat dry. It will remain moist to the touch and slightly tacky, but won't have liquid dripping from it.

3. Form into small patties, no more than 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) thick.

4. Heat a sauté pan (or grill) over medium heat, oil it lightly, and place your köfte patties in the pan. Brown, flip, and brown on the other side. Check to see that it's cooked through, and if they aren't, place in a 350°F/180°C/Gas Mark 4 oven on a sheet pan until they're cooked through.

5. Serve (with garlic sauce!)

Saganaki Halloumi
Halloumi cheese, cut into 1/4 inch (7 mm) slices
All-purpose flour
Olive oil
Brandy

1. Slice the halloumi and dredge it in flour. Knock off excess flour and set each piece aside.

2. Heat oil in a sauté pan, and lightly brown the halloumi on both sides.

3. Pour in about 1 fluid ounce (30 ml) of brandy into the pan, and flame! Be careful, stand back, and for the love of all that is holy, don't set your kitchen on fire.

To assemble Majadara Kagashi, place about 1 cup (236 ml) of majadara on a plate, top with the caramelized onions, place a köfte piece on top of that, and finish with the saganaki halloumi.

Majadara Kagashi

Brian Bóru's Delight

2011-04-11T13:17:00.001-04:00

The dessert I call "Brian Bóru's Delight" is a simple one, especially compared to the Victorian Tea Trifecta. It is a combination of two simple, old-fashioned desserts: a bread pudding, and a fool.

What is a fool, you ask? It doesn't sound familiar to most modern diners—in fact, my pastry instructor in culinary school didn't immediately know how to explain the Fool to my class. A fool, simply put, is a fruit-flavored whipped cream. It's sort of a precursor to the modern churned ice cream, as it is light, airy, and sweet, but not frozen (as churn-freezing ice cream is a relatively recent development.) Heavy cream is whipped to stiff peaks, and then a purée of fruit, often sweetened, is added in by folding gently. In this recipe, I replaced the purée with fruit preserves, because it's hard to find blackcurrant purée (or indeed, much of anything from blackcurrants) here in Michigan.

Bread pudding is a more familiar item, and in this case I've used a simple white bread, good quality butter, and raisins with a little twist suggested by my friend Brian over at The Boychik Balabusta (a blog you ought to read)—soaking the raisins in Irish Breakfast Tea and whiskey.

Blackcurrant Fool
24 oz (680 g) blackcurrant preserves
2 1/2 cups (591 ml) heavy cream

1. Whip the cream to stiff peaks. Fold in preserves. Test for sweetness, and add sugar if necessary.

2. Portion into serving dish(es) or hold in a bowl, and refrigerate until service.

Yields about 1 quart/1 liter of fool, give or take.

Bread and Butter Pudding with Whiskey Sauce
Pudding
16 slices white bread, buttered
1 1/2 cups (355 ml) golden raisins
1 cup (237 ml) brewed Irish Breakfast Tea
1/4 cup (60 ml) Irish Whiskey
1 teaspoon (5 ml) grated nutmeg
1 1/2 cups (355 ml) caster sugar
4 eggs, large
2 1/2 cups ( light cream
4 cups milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
light brown sugar, for sprinkling top

Whiskey Sauce
1 1/4 cups butter
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
3 oz (90 ml) Irish Whiskey

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Remove the crusts from the bread and put four slices, buttered side down, in the base of an oven-proof dish. Sprinkle with the fruit, some of the nutmeg, and 1 tbsp sugar.

2. Place the remaining four slices of bread on top, buttered side down, and sprinkle again with nutmeg and 1 tbsp sugar.

3. Beat the eggs lightly, add the cream, milk, vanilla, and the remaining sugar; mix well to make a custard. Pour half this mixture over the bread, and sprinkle light muscovado sugar over the top, if you like to have a crispy crust. Repeat steps 1-3 for the second pan of pudding (8 more slices of bread.)

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour, or until all the liquid has been absorbed and the pudding is risen and brown.

5. While the pudding is baking, make the sauce. Melt the butter in a heavy pan, add the caster sugar, and dissolve over gentle heat. Remove from the heat and add the egg, whisking vigorously, and then add the whiskey.

6. Serve the pudding immediately when it is done—it will be light and fluffy, and will fall quickly if it is not served.

Two pans, which is anywhere from two to twenty-four servings, depending on your level of gluttony.

To plate up, I merely placed a slice of pudding with a dollop of fool, and drizzled the sauce on top. I also sprinkled a few raisins that remained over each, adding a nice little zing.

This sauce is incredible—it appears to be broken and failed, and then you add the whiskey, and poof! It comes together perfectly.

As you can see, the dessert was quite popular. There were no fights, but there might have been had I run out of anything.

Colcannon, Champ, and the Potato

2011-04-08T01:32:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, the best things in life are the simplest. A delightful meal with friends, a beautiful snowstorm, the sunset at the end of a summer's day, or the potato.

Seriously—the potato is simply wonderful, useful in a variety of manners, able to be prepared into any number of dishes—from appetizer to dessert—in any number of ways. Think of the pervasiveness of the potato: we eat them in myriad manners, from potato breads and biscuits to chips (crisps) and fries (chips.) We bake them, roast them, boil them, cook them sous vide, sauté them, simmer them, and make them into confit; we smash them, eat them whole, peel them, save the skins and serve with bacon and sour cream, and cover them in mayonnaise or hot bacon dressing. I use potatoes to thicken the occasional item, like my garlic sauce, and can put them in soups for a similar effect—not to mention the ever-popular loaded potato soup, and their presence in chowders.

Ireland has not always been the beautiful, idyllic place we think of it as. For a great deal of its recent history, Ireland was exploited thoroughly by England, which used Ireland as a convenient place to produce food for English consumption.

In 1834 William Cobbett, the English journalist and agricultural reformer [wrote], ‘Hundreds of thousands of living hogs; thousands upon thousands of sheep and oxen alive; thousands upon thousands of barrels of beef, pork and butter, thousands upon thousands of sides of bacon and thousands upon thousands of hams; ship loads and boat loads coming daily and hourly from Ireland… we beheld this while famine raged in Ireland amongst the raisers of this very food.’ (Irish Food and Cooking, Biddy White Lennon)

When food left the shores of Ireland, and the vast majority of the population dwelt in abject poverty, good food was hard to come by—so the potato, which could be grown in poor soil and yield plenty, took its place as the primary sustenance for most of the residents of Ireland.

Most know the story of the potato blight, a disease that wiped out the potato crop between 1845 and 1852. Mass starvation led to death—around one million people died—and emigration, spreading the Irish love for potatoes across the world and creating a diaspora that has fostered St. Patrick's day celebrations across the world.

Potatoes come in two general varieties: Waxy and Mealy. Mealy potatoes, for my American readers, are what we know as Russets or Iowa potatoes: A rough, dark brown exterior and a texture that feels rough to the touch when peeled, but, when cooked, becomes light and fluffy. Waxy potatoes are redskins, Yukon Golds, and most fingerlings—they have a higher moisture content, feel smooth when peeled and stay smooth when cooked. Waxy potatoes are generally known as "Boiler potatoes" while mealy potatoes are "baker potatoes," so named due to the common cooking methods for each type. They can, of course, cross over successfully to some extent: Waxy potatoes can be cut and roasted to create a dry, crisp exterior; mealy potatoes can be boiled and used to create sautéed dishes or served as boiled potatoes, plain; and, both waxy and mealy potatoes can be boiled (or steamed) and used for mashed potatoes, relevant to our recipes today.

Colcannon and Champ are two similar and typically Irish uses for potatoes. They both take boiled potatoes, mash them with butter, cream (or milk,) salt, and pepper, and then add something extra for flavor and color. Colcannon adds kale or cabbage and onion, while Champ uses green onions steeped in the milk and cream.

Colcannon

1 lb (454 g) potatoes, waxy or mealy, peeled and cut into equal-sized pieces

heavy cream as needed, at room temperature

2 Tbsp (30 ml) butter, melted

Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper, to taste

1 lb (454 g) cabbage or kale, cut into strips

1 cup (237 ml) onion, small dice

additional butter, for sautéeing

1. Place the potatoes in a pot of cold water, salt well (about 1-2 Tbsp/15-30 ml will do) and bring to a boil. When a fork easily pushes through the potato, it is done cooking. Drain the potatoes and return them to the pot. Add melted butter and cream to create delicious mashed potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.

2. Mix in the sliced cabbage, and set aside.

3. Sauté the onions in some butter until soft, and stir these into the potato-greenery mixture.

4. Melt butter in a sauté pan big enough to hold all the potatoes, and when the butter has melted completely and is sizzling nicely, place all the potato mixture into the pan. Smooth down, and allow it to brown somewhat on the bottom.

5. With a spatula, chop up the potatoes and mix them around. Keep cooking until they are nicely browned with crispy bits in the middle, and everything is warmed through. Serve immediately.

Champ

1 lb (454 g) potatoes, waxy or mealy, peeled and cut into equal-sized pieces

1/4 cup (60 ml) milk

1/4 cup (60 ml) heavy cream

1/2 bunch (maybe 2-3) green onions, sliced thinly

2 Tbsp (30 ml) butter, melted

Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper, to taste

2. Add the butter to the pot and melt over medium-high heat. When ready, add the green onions and sweat for a couple minutes, until the green darkens and they begin to soften slightly. At this time, add the milk and heavy cream, and reduce the heat under your pot to low, and steep the green onions in the dairy for 15 minutes.

3. Return the potatoes to the pot, and mash up until creamy. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and butter. Adjust consistency with heavy cream—and bonus points for a little garlic powder in this, too.

Beef, Carrot, and Stout Casserole with Barley

2011-04-04T09:50:00.002-04:00

Irish food has a reputation of being a conglomeration of boiled things. The fact that one of the more well-known items is "Boiled Breakfast"—an item lauded in songs like "Boil the Breakfast Early" by the Chieftains—doesn't help in the least to dispel this rumor; nor does the fact that Irish Stew is the one of most commonly prepared items from the Irish kitchen.

Beef Chuck is an excellent cut to make into stew; it's generally somewhat tough, and contains a great deal of connective tissue—this is what makes it a good candidate for long, slow, moist cooking. This method creates a tender, well-textured meat in a velvety stew.

Stew is a hearty dish, a belly-warming dish, something that can keep you going for a hard day's work, or a hard night's drinking. Served with colcannon, this stew is a consummately Irish meal.

Beef, Carrot and Stout Casserole with Barley
4 lb. (1.8 kg) beef chuck roast, cut in 1" cubes
36 fl. oz (1 L) stout (or enough to cover the beef)
1/4 cup (60 ml) oil
3 large onions, julienne
4 lb. (1.8 kg) carrot, 1/2" rondelle
8 cloves garlic, crushed
1 head celery, 1/2" slices
2 Tbsp (30 ml) tomato paste
3 tbsp (45 ml) oil or clarified butter
3 tbsp (45 ml) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (177 ml) pearl barley, rinsed
beef stock as needed
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. Soak beef in stout overnight, or for 6 hours minimum.

2. Drain and dry beef, reserve stout. Heat oil in large dutch oven. Sear beef in oil, set aside.

3. Sauté onions. When softened, add garlic, carrots, and celery. Sauté until all vegetables begin to become tender. Add tomato paste, mix well, and cook until it takes on a slight rusty color. Add extra fat, heat, and add flour. Mix well, and cook 2-3 minutes. Deglaze with remaining stout. Return meat to pot, add barley, and add stock just to cover.

4. Cover, and simmer gently over low heat, or cook in 300°F oven for 1 - 1 1/2 hours, or until meat is tender. During last 1/2 hour, check the liquid level in the stew; if it is too thin, remove the lid and cook uncovered to thicken. Season with salt and pepper to taste; finish with a cornstarch slurry if necessary.

Serves roughly 24.

The Kilkenny Salad

2011-03-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

There are two courses, or plates I suppose, that benefit from having names as opposed to being called by their components: salads and desserts. Think of some well-known salads: A Greek Salad, a Caesar Salad, a Cobb Salad, a Waldorf Salad; none of these are named by their components, but rather by an eponymous title of some type, denoting a general style for the salad (it contains Greek ingredients,) it was created by or for a particular person (Caesar and Cobb,) or at a particular place (the Waldorf hotel.) My tendency when naming salads is to go with a thematic name, rather than something directly related to the origin of the salad or its components.

This plate, for the most part, takes its ingredients straight from Irish cuisine: There's potato cakes, made like biscuits; there's a pear, poached in a syrup made from Harp Lager, sugar, and lemon zest and juice; A quenelle of goat cheese, seasoned and mixed with chopped parsley; and a vinaigrette made with lemon juice and salad oil, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. The salad itself is made with arugula, spinach, and an assortment of baby lettuces, a very springy, slightly spicy mix of greens.

Kilkenny Salad
Salad
5 oz (140 g) arugula
5 oz (140 g) baby spinach
5 oz (140 g) mixed greens
Pear
1 1/2 cups (355 ml) sugar
3 cups (710 ml) water
3 cups (710 ml) irish lager (two 12-oz bottles, standard American size)
1 1/2 lemon, zested and juiced
6 pears, firm, sweet (I used d'Anjou)
Goat Cheese
12 oz (340 g) goat cheese, mild-flavored
6 oz (170 g) cream cheese, softened
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3/4 cup (175 ml) parsley, chopped
Dressing
3/8 cups (89 ml) lemon juice
1 1/8 cups (266 ml) vegetable oil
1 tablespoon (15 ml) lemon zest
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
sugar, to taste

1. Combine water, sugar, lemon juice and zest, lager. Bring to a simmer to dissolve and combine fully.

2. Peel and halve pears; remove stems and cores. Place in poaching liquid and bring to simmer. When simmer is reached, remove from heat, cover with plastic film, and allow to sit until softened and flavorful. When cooled to lukewarm, transfer to a container to hold until service.

3. Thoroughly mix goat cheese and cream cheese, do not whip in too much air. Season with salt and pepper. Add parsley and mix to combine evenly.

4. Whisk together lemon juice, zest, and oil. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and sugar.

5. Dress greens; place 1 oz on a plate. Place 1/4 pear on each plate, sliced to fan. Place 1 tablespoon-sized quenelle of cheese mix on each plate, next to 1 potato cake.

Oven-baked Potato Cakes
4 cups self-rising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter, diced
2 pinch salt
12 oz mashed potato, freshly cooked
2 tablespoons fresh chives, finely chopped
2 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.

2. Sift flour and baking powder into bowl, rub in butter. Season with salt. Add mashed potato and chives, mix well. Add enough buttermilk to make a soft dough.

3. Turn on to a floured work surface, knead lightly into shape, and quickly roll out roughly 1/2 inch thick.

4. Cut into desired shape—I used 2" rounds.

5. Place on baking sheet and bake until crisp, golden brown, and well risen; roughly 20 minutes.

Yields 25-30 cakes.

Garlic Soup

2011-03-28T10:00:00.008-04:00

It's no secret that I'm a fan of garlic. Between garlic sauce, zchug, and my penchant for Italian foods, garlic is consumed rapidly in my kitchen. This soup, however, takes the metaphorical cake, using more garlic per serving than any other recipe I've made, as far as I can calculate.

Served with some soda bread croutons, this soup is refreshing and hearty, and full of flavor without being overpowering. Granted, I like garlic, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt, but...

Garlic has health benefits, too—from warding off vampires to anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal properties evident from lab tests. It's been used as a panacea since time immemorial, seen as a cure for a wide variety of ailments. It can help prevent scurvy, and has other traditionally-believed effects on the common cold, blood sugar, and heart problems—though not all of these claims are fully supported by science.

We know for sure that eating enough garlic will leave you smelling like garlic, so this soup is best shared with a large group of friends, if only to ensure that you won't be the only one whose very pores exude garlicky goodness.

Garlic Soup
72 cloves garlic, peeled
3 Tbsp (45 ml) olive oil
3 Tbsp (45 ml) butter, melted
3 onion, small, finely chopped
3 oz (85 g) all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp (45 ml) white wine vinegar
3 quarts (2.83 L) chicken stock
6 egg yolks, beaten lightly
soda bread croutons

1. Crush the garlic. Put the oil and butter into a pot, heat until shimmering, add the garlic and onion, and cook gently for 20 minutes.

2. Add the flour and stir to make a roux. Cook for a few minutes, then stir in the wine vinegar, stock, and water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Purée lightly with a food mill or immersion blender.

3. When ready to serve, whisk in the egg yolks, and hold at a simmer. Do not allow the soup to boil again.

4. Sauté soda bread slices (recipe forthcoming) in butter until brown. Put the croutons into soup bowls and pour the hot soup over.

Serves 24. (This recipe does scale well.)

Re-constructed Corned Beef and Cabbage

2011-03-23T10:00:00.008-04:00

When St. Patrick's Day rolls around in the US, every food-service establishment with a changeable kitchen breaks out some form of corned beef, often in the "Traditional" construction of Corned Beef and Cabbage. Miss Kagashi over at The Steamer's Trunk has an excellent little write-up of St. Patrick's Day, including a discussion of this dish:

Corned beef and Cabbage is thought of as the staple dish of St. Patrick's Day, and this is true outside of Ireland. Back in the old country, a thick meaty rasher of bacon was the main course to the cabbage and potatoes, not beef. When thousands of Irish immigrated to America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they found their usual cuts of pig to be far too expensive—so they took a cue from their Jewish neighbors who were enjoying corned beef.

This doesn't, however, mean that we have to abandon the concept entirely: rather, it is useful as a starting point for new versions of an Irish (-American) classic.

The concept of deconstruction and reconstruction are very popular in modern kitchen settings. An episode of Top Chef or Chopped will usually include one "Deconstructed Caesar Salad" or "Deconstructed Grilled Cheese Sandwich" or some similarly silly-sounding item. This concept, in fact, has become somewhat overused and is now being left behind in favor of "Reconstructing" items.

It is useful here to explain some terms.

Deconstructing a dish is the idea of taking a recognizable food item—a Caesar Salad, say—and breaking it down into its component gustatory and textural pieces. For the aforementioned salad, you have the romaine, the dressing, the crouton, and the Parmesan cheese. Each of these flavors, when combined, create the Caesar salad—on their own, however, they can each have unique flavor properties as well. Deconstructing the salad, then, becomes about isolating what it is from each part of the salad that makes it a whole, and re-imagining those parts into individual pieces. Once all of the parts are consumed, the flavor of a Caesar salad remains. Chef Michael Voltaggio created such a dish on Top Chef, which set my mind with a true understanding of the nature of "deconstructive" cooking. The idea of this salad is that when consumed, all of the individual components—separate on the plate—will combine into a recognizable Caesar salad.

Reconstructing a dish is similar in function to deconstruction. The individual flavors of a finished dish are isolated and worked into a new finished dish, recognizably the same as the original, but different in some significant manner—from plate arrangement to ingredients. A reconstructed Caesar salad might take the form of a sandwich on toasted Italian bread, with a nice garlicky aïoli and Parmesan spread (or maybe a Parmesan crisp,) romaine lettuce, and a fried egg. The flavors and components of a Caesar salad remain, but assembled together in a different manner.

The idea of this dish was to take the typical Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner dish, a hearty combination of cooked, warm corned beef and cabbage, and re-create it into a dish that would capture the flavors and concept, while also transforming it into an appetizer course.

A little tour of my thought process: (Sadly, I don't have any scribblings on a napkin for this.)

Cold appetizers are easier to pull off than warm ones, as I don't have to cook anything à la minute when I'm doing them cold.
I want to work potatoes into as many dishes as possible.
Corned beef and mustard work well together. Potatoes and mustard work well together. Mustard can be a component of a cole-slaw dressing.
Cabbage as a cole-slaw-style item is not typically done with a corned beef and cabbage preparation.
Roasted Fingerling Potato and Cabbage Salad with Dijon Mustard Vinaigrette Dressing, and Cold Sliced Corned Beef.

The final dish was arranged from 1 fingerling potato, quartered lengthwise, seasoned and roasted, set atop a small pile of a cabbage salad made from sliced green cabbage, sliced green onion, and shredded carrot. Both of these items were dressed with the mustard vinaigrette, and then were topped with a single slice of locally-made corned beef, deli-style.

A light but delicious dish. To the recipes!

Reconstructed Corned Beef and Cabbage

Dressing
5 tbsp (75 ml) white wine vinegar
3 tbsp (45 ml) Dijon mustard
10 tbsp (150 ml) vegetable oil
1/4 tsp. (1.25 ml) dried sage

salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Salad
24 fingerling potatoes, quartered and roasted
salt and freshly ground black pepper
dried sage
olive oil

2 cups (473 ml) thinly sliced green cabbage
1 cup (237 ml) sliced green onions
3 medium-size carrots, shredded or julienned

24 slices cooked corned beef

1. Combine vinegar and dijon mustard, season with salt, pepper, and sage. In a thin, steady stream, add oil, whisking well to combine. Set aside and refrigerate.

2. Slice fingerling potatoes into quarters, lengthwise. Place in a bowl and toss with ample olive oil. Season with salt, pepper, and sage. Roast in a 425°F/220°C/Gas Mark 7 oven until lightly browned and cooked through. Cool completely and dress with the vinaigrette.

3. Combine green onion, cabbage, and carrot. Add dressing to moisten well, and toss to coat.

4. Plate up with the cabbage salad first, potatoes atop that, and a slice of corned beef with a small amount of the dressing on it.

Serves 24.

The Victorian Tea Trifecta

2011-03-21T10:57:00.007-04:00

Now and then, I am lucky enough to be able to take a project from my schooling, or an item from my work life, and utilize it for service to my friends and acquaintances—or my happy customers, in this case.

You've seen, I hope, my Earl Grey Panna Cotta. This is a dessert that builds on it, and with wild success. Plated desserts are made up of three main components: A main piece, a sauce, and a garnish. Chef Roger Holden, CEPC, would tell you that there's a fourth component: Crunch. It's important to have a variety of colors, flavors, and temperatures on a plate, to create something with visual and gustatory interest.

The Victorian Tea Trifecta
Photograph by Anthony Horger

The Victorian Tea Trifecta is made up of Earl Gray Panna Cotta, set with a Rose Tea Gelée top; that piece is set atop an Olive Oil Sponge Cake. Beside it, there is an Orange-Blossom scented Tuile Cookie, with a quenelle of Lavender Honey Ice Cream. It is garnished with Rosemary Chocolate Sauce, Orange Suprêmes soaked in Earl Gray tea, and Mint leaves.

At the feast on the 25th, I served a slightly simplified version of this dessert, as pictured above: It was the panna cotta piece, the sauce, and the lavender honey ice cream. I therefore present to you the recipes for these items, and the olive oil sponge cake (mostly for academic interest.)

Rose Tea Gelée
50.0 grams rose tea, brewed
8 grams sugar
1 gram lemon juice
1 gelatin sheet, silver-grade

1. Steep 1 cup of rose tea (1 cup boiling water, 1 tsp leaves) for 3 minutes. Measure out 50 grams for use. Consume the rest.

2. Bring all ingredients but gelatin to a boil in a nonreactive pot. Soak gelatin in ample cold water.

3. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin. Pour into moulds, allow to set up in fridge, freezer, blast chiller, or cold porch.

Makes enough for 4 molds.

Rosemary Chocolate Sauce
2 1/4 oz (65 g) dark chocolate, 65%
3/8 cup (90 ml) heavy cream
2 1/4 (11.25 ml) teaspoons fresh rosemary
half-and-half, to thin

1. Combine cream and rosemary in a small pot. Simmer 15-20 minutes, or until adequate rosemary flavor develops.

2. Cool, then strain the cream into the top of a double boiler, add chocolate, and place on the heat. Over low heat, stir constantly until the two ingredients come together.

3. Add half-and-half as needed to achieve a smooth consistency. Use immediately, or store to re-heat later.

Lavender Honey Ice Cream
22 oz (625 g) milk
1 1/2 oz (43 g) milk powder
2/3 oz (19 g) sucrose
2/3 oz (19 g) glucose powder
2 1/2 oz (71 g) butter, 82%/plugra
2 1/2 oz (71 g) egg yolks
5 1/2 oz (156 g) lavender honey
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) ice cream stabilizer

1. Mix stabilizer with sucrose.

2. Mix milk and milk powder, heat.

3. At 25°C, mix in glucose.

4. At 35°C, mix in butter.

5. At 37°C, temper in egg yolks.

6. At 40°C, add honey.

7. At 45°C, add sucrose and stabilizer.

8. Continue cooking to 85°C, and then for two minutes. Do not allow to go over 100°C.

9. Cool in ice bath.

10. Let mature 4-12 hours.

11. Strain and homogenize with immersion blender.

12. Spin and freeze.

Makes about 1 quart of ice cream.

Olive Oil Sponge Cake
76 grams egg
138.67 grams sugar
94.67 grams goat's milk
160 grams cake flour
5.33 grams baking powder
76 grams olive oil
1/3 orange, zest
3 grams cinnamon

1. Whip eggs and sugar to ribbons.

2. Slowly add milk.

3. Sift flour and baking powder, and add to mixture.

4. Add olive oil. Fold in orange zest and cinnamon.

5. Pour into pan, smooth. Bake until done.

Makes 1/4 sheet pan.

Polenta and Polonaise

2011-03-16T10:00:00.002-04:00

Polenta is becoming more familiar to mainstream American eaters; many years ago, I first encountered it in this sort of log-shaped container, like Jimmy Dean's loose sausage or a one-pound bullet of ground beef. The polenta was this sort of gelatinous, textured mass that wasn't particularly good. My mother and father didn't really know what to do with it, whether to fry it or grill it or bake it... so my first memory of polenta is of a gritty corn burger. Not the most appetizing thing.

It was many years until I returned to eating polenta, and that at the hands of my culinary school instructors, who showed me the proper method to create smooth, dense porridge that we solidified in the cooler, cut, breaded, and deep fried; then, I was taught how to make it creamy, a mashed-potato substitute that makes a delightful base for braised meat.

Miss Kagashi à la Polonaise

I have a particular fondness for mushrooms in my polenta. I don't know why, exactly, but the flavors just work for me. At the feast, we used a mushroom polenta as the base on which the braised short rib could sit.

A Polonaise is a kind of dress, and a dance. Indeed, "à la Polonaise" refers to any item done in a Polish style. In this instance, it refers to a preparation put on vegetables, a mixture of breadcrumbs sautéed in butter, hard-boiled eggs, parsley, salt, and pepper. It's simple and easy, and a little bit goes a long way to make the brassica family of vegetables edible. (Editor's note: Aaron doesn't like broccoli and cauliflower.) Any vegetable with nooks and crannies in the edible portion is suitable for service with a Polonaise; the little morsels of breakfasty goodness get caught in the florets of broccoli and cauliflower, and make them into a delightful and classical dish that presents with a surprising amount of flavor.

Creamy Mushroom Polenta
1 oz (30 ml) Vegetable Oil
1 tbsp (15 ml) Minced Shallot
6 oz (170 g) Button Mushrooms, sliced
2 cups (473 ml) Medium Ground Cornmeal
8 cups (1.9 L) Chicken Stock or Water
1 quart (946 ml) Heavy Cream
Grated Parmesan
Salt
Black Pepper

1. Heat oil in a a saucepan large enough to hold all the cornmeal and stock or water. Sauté shallot and mushrooms until slightly softened.
2. Make a slurry by mixing about 2-3 cups (473-709 ml) of the chicken stock or water with the cornmeal; bring the rest to a boil in the saucepan. When it has come to a boil, add the slurry, stirring constantly so that no lumps form.
3. Reduce to a simmer, and stir to cook the polenta until it is smooth, roughly 45 minutes.
(At this point, you may cool the polenta and store it for re-heating later.)
4. Add cream and stir well. Add parmesan cheese to taste, and season with salt and pepper.
Yield: roughly 8-10 cups (2 L.)

Polonaise
8 oz (227 g) Butter
1 qt (947 ml) breadcrumbs
1 1/2 tbsp. (22.5 ml) parsley, finely chopped
2 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. (2.5 ml) salt
1/8 tsp. (.625 ml) white pepper
1 pinch nutmeg

1. Melt butter in a non-stick sauté pan. Add breadcrumbs and sauté until the butter is absorbed.
2. Add all other ingredients, stir to mix well, sauté 1-2 minutes.
3. Store for later use.
Yield: 1 quart (just under 1 L)

When preparing your vegetables, cut them into small florets; heat them in your preferred method, and place in a sauté pan with a bit of butter, oil, or stock. Add a handful of polonaise for every portion of vegetables, sauté a few minutes, and serve.

It's always nice to have some side dishes that everyone enjoys. Polenta and Polonaise are two that seem to go over well with a wide variety of people.

A St. Patrick's Day Feast

2011-03-14T17:18:00.005-04:00

This Friday (admittedly one day after the actual holiday,) I shall be creating yet another feast at Off the Beaten Path Books, themed on the immediately proximal day of excess and Irish pride. Seeking to avoid the traditional perception of Irish food as bland, boiled stuff, I have come up with a menu fusing traditional recipes with modern presentations and sensibilities.

For those of you in the area, seats are still available, so head to the event page to purchase your seat now—$25 gets you the whole menu.

The menu will be as follows:

Corned Beef

Cabbage and Roasted Fingerling Potato Salad

Garlic Soup

Soda Bread Crouton - Potato Crisp

Kilkenny Salad

Poached Pear - Goat Cheese - Oven-Baked Potato Cake

Mâche - Arugula

Beef, Carrot and Stout Casserole with Barley

Colcannon - Soda Bread

Brian Bóru's Delight

Bread and Butter Pudding - Whiskey Sultanas

Whiskey Sauce - Blackcurrant Fool

"What butter and whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for."

Red Wine Braised Short Ribs of Beef

2011-03-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Food is cyclical. In the Victorian era, most every cut of beef was used by someone, whether poor or rich, delicious or disgusting. Just as the brisket was often used by poor Jewish people as a food source, short ribs have also long been used as a cheap but delicious piece of meat. For a time, they fell out of style; now, there is a trend of using the underused parts—shanks, brisket, short ribs, cheeks, oxtail. These cuts had once been popular as cheap alternatives to the more expensive steaks and roasts, and now they have found a place in high-end restaurants as gourmet pieces.

They are first marinated in red wine, spices, and aromatics, then slow-cooked in brown sauce, aromatics, red wine, and the leftover marinade. Rosemary is the primary flavoring in this particular version, but the concept is a very wide-ranging one that can be used in many circumstances

Short ribs are cut from the bottom end of the rib primal (orange on the diagram to the left) Short ribs are a cut full of connective tissue, tough and flavorful. In the Western tradition, they take well to being braised or slow-cooked in another manner; other cultures have created recipes that grill, sear, or barbecue the short rib, oftentimes after marinating in pineapple or papaya juices to tenderize the meat.

2 lbs (907 g) short ribs, boneless

Marinade
1 oz (30 ml) olive oil
4 oz (113 g) onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoon (7.5 ml) garlic paste
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) kosher salt
1 bay leaf
2 tsp (10 ml) black peppercorns
1/2 bottle Red Wine

Aromatics and Braising Liquid
1 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 oz (113 g) onion, chopped
2 oz (57 g) carrot, chopped
2 oz (57 g) celery, chopped
1 pint (473 ml) Espagnole (Brown Sauce)
Red Wine as needed
1 sprig rosemary

1. Sauté the mirepoix for the marinade in a saucepan, starting with the onion. Add the celery and carrots, sauté until soft, then add the garlic paste and sauté for a minute or two. Add the wine, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 minutes, and then remove from the heat.

2. When the marinade has cooled, pour over the short ribs, and store in a container large enough to hold the short ribs and keep them covered with the marinade. If they are not fully covered, make sure to turn them about halfway through the marinating time.

3. Store in a cooler overnight to marinade, or at least 6 hours.

4. Preheat a pan on the stove large enough to hold the short ribs, either all at once or in batches. Remove the short ribs from the marinade, dry them, and sear the short ribs on all sides until browned well, but not burnt.

5. Place the seared short ribs off to the side, or in a dutch oven large enough to hold them, and sauté the mirepoix in the searing pan until soft. Deglaze with a splash of red wine, and pour into the dutch oven over the short ribs. Add the remaining marinade, the brown stock, and enough red wine to cover the short ribs 3/4 of the way. Toss in the rosemary, the whole sprig at once, cover, and place in a 300°F/150°C/Gas Mark 2 oven. Braise until tender, usually about 3 hours.

6. Remove from the oven, pull the short ribs out, and skim the fat off the top of the sauce. Bring to a simmer on the stovetop and reduce to a slightly thick consistency. Return the meat to the sauce and cook a few minutes to glaze them.

The Practical Housekeeper's Salad

2011-03-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

While my presentation of this dish may not quite resemble what the authors of The Practical Housekeeper (written in 1857) had in mind, the ingredients and method of preparation are more or less the same.

The book says:

Coss-lettuce and blanched endive make the best salad, the green leaves being stripped off, and leaving nothing but the close, white hearts, which, after being washed and placed for an hour or two in cold water, should be wiped quite dry. To this should be added a head or two of celery, a couple of anchovies (which are far preferable to the essence), and several chives, or young onions, all cut small, while the lettuces should be divided lengthwise into quarters, and cut into rather large pieces.

Generally speaking, blanching endive isn't done much these days, since it's now commonly used as a liner item, the base of a salad plate, and not necessarily a primary component of the salad itself.

Romaine Lettuce

In regards to dressing, the book says:

The mixture or dressing.--For four persons bruise only the yolk of one hard-boiled egg (leaving out altogether the white), with some salt, and make it into a paste with two large teaspoonfuls of moûtarde de maille. Then add oil and vinegar in the following proportions, without using so much as to make the sauce thin, and taking care to have the finest Provence or Lucca oil, and the very strongest species of real French vinegar: namely, to every one spoonful of vinegar add two of oil. A little tarragon may be an improvement.

The recipe here is surprisingly similar to modern formulas for salad dressing, though the proportion of oil to vinegar commonly called for nowadays is 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar—otherwise, mixing in Dijon mustard and tarragon is somewhat common—the egg yolk is an interesting touch.

When this is done, mix the sauce well, but lightly, with the salad, to which a few slices of boiled beet-root, and the white of the egg sliced, will be a pretty addition.

The excellence of a salad consists in the vegetables being young and fresh, and they should be prepared only a short time before they are wanted; the salad mixture being either poured into the bottom of the bowl or sent up in a sauce tureen, and not stirred up with the vegetables until they are served.

Belgian Endive
Photo by Chez Loulou

It's interesting to note the instructions on dressing the salad that are provided. In summer, one set are given, which consist of pouring the dressing in the serving dish then placing the salad over it.

In winter salads, however, the reverse of this proceeding must be adopted, as thus: the salad of endive, celery, beet, and other roots being cut ready for dressing, then pour the mixture upon the ingredients, and stir them well up, so that every portion may receive its benefit.

In other words, only in winter should you serve a tossed salad, apparently.

The Practical Housekeeper's Salad
1 head Romaine/Cos Lettuce
1 head Belgian Endive
2 stalks celery, small dice
2-3 green onions/scallions, thinly sliced
4 baby beets, cooked and quartered

1 tsp (5 ml) Dijon Mustard
1 Tbsp (15 ml) Red Wine Vinegar
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) Salt
1/4 tsp (1.25 ml) Fresh Ground Black Pepper
1 tsp (5 ml) fresh Tarragon, chopped
3 Tbsp (45 ml) Olive Oil, Extra Virgin

1. Chop Romaine lettuce leaves, and soak in ice-cold water for 15-20 minutes. Swish around to loosen any dirt or grit in the leaves, then dry in a salad spinner and set in a refrigerator or ice-box to crisp it.
2. Pull Belgian endive apart, leaving each leaf whole, and soak leaves in cold water for 5-10 minutes, cleaning out any grit or dirt. Dry gently in a salad spinner, place in refrigerator to crisp.
3. Combine Dijon mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper, and tarragon, and mix well. Allow the flavors to mingle for 10-15 minutes, then whisk in the oil in a thin stream, ensuring that an emulsion forms. Set aside.
4. Toss together the romaine, celery, and green onions. Dress lightly with the vinaigrette.
5. Set out a few leaves of endive, a handful of the romaine mixture, and one beet (quartered) onto your plates. Serve!

Apple-Butternut Velvet Soup

2011-03-09T10:00:00.020-05:00

Puréed vegetable soups are delightful. They're ridiculously simple to create, being little more than a cooked and reduced mixture of vegetable and stock or water, and they're often delicious with little effort invested. The thickness and texture of the soup are easily managed by the amount of puréeing that is done, and the amount of liquid used to cook the ingredients. The main vegetable can be cooked before the soup is created, even—roasting, grilling, or poaching various ingredients can lead to a multitude of flavors and a wide variety of soups created from a small palette of basic items. Simple food, done well, is a motto and watchword in modern culinary arts, and it can be traced back to some of the recipes present in Victorian cookbooks—soups with only three or four ingredients were not uncommon. Mrs. Beeton's Turnip Soup calls for:

3 oz. of butter, 9 good-sized turnips, 4 onions, 2 quarts of stock, seasoning to taste.

This simple concept for soup is replicated here, using slightly different ingredients.

Butternut squash is wonderful, as a basic item. They're usually rather inexpensive (I find them regularly for 99¢ per pound) and contain a great deal of flesh with little effort required to seed them. The effort saved in seeding is ceded to peeling them, as they have a rather tough skin that does not peel off easily. If you are willing to move past this—or, indeed, roast them before cooking them into the soup—the results are well worth the effort. A somewhat sweet item, the squash pairs well with apple and nutmeg flavors, leading to the creation of this simple yet elegant soup.

A garnish of nutmeg-spiced chantilly cream (sweetened whipped cream) and an apple crisp make this dish sweet, delightful, and texturally interesting.

Apple-Butternut Velvet Soup
1 ¾ lb (794 g) butternut squash, peeled, medium diced
6 oz (170 g) apple, peeled, cored, medium diced
5 oz (142 g) leek, sliced
1 qt (.95 L) white stock
1 cup (237 ml) heavy cream
1 Tbsp (15 ml) salt, additional to taste
1 tsp (5 ml) freshly grated nutmeg, or to taste
1/4 tsp (1.25 ml) white pepper, ground, to taste

1. Sauté leek in a small amount of fat until soft.
2. Add broth, squash, and apples. Cover, bring to simmer, and cook over medium heat 25 minutes.
3. Puree.
4. Add cream and season to taste.
5. Garnish with apple chip, chantilly cream, and sprinkle of nutmeg.
Many different vegetable soups can be made on this same principle—look to the lentil soup, for example—without changing the method a great deal. Substitute pumpkin or any hard squash for the butternut, for starters; add or subtract additional flavoring items, add onions and garlic for a different flavor. You can roast the vegetables too—a roasted eggplant soup would be delightful. All of these follow the same principle: Develop flavors, cook the main item until it is soft, purée, season and serve.

Nutmeg Chantilly Cream
1 cup (237 ml) heavy cream
1 Tbsp (15 ml) caster (superfine) sugar
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) nutmeg, freshly grated

1. Chill a metal bowl big enough to hold more than double the volume of cream, as well as electric mixer beaters or a whisk.
2. Combine all ingredients in chilled bowl, and whip until cream is stiff.
3. Check the flavoring and add additional nutmeg or sugar as needed.

Apple Crisps
1 apple
simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, cooked until the sugar dissolves completely)

1. Slice apple very thinly on a mandolin slicer. There's no better way to do it, sadly.
2. Place on a sheet pan (there's an ongoing debate whether a silpat is necessary) and place in a 200°F/93°C oven (there's no gas mark for that, as far as I know—it's a very, very low oven.)
3. As the fruit begins to dry, brush with the simple syrup, and continue to cook until the fruit is completely dry but not browning.
4. Remove the apple chips from the oven, and pick them up from the baking sheet. They should be somewhat flexible. Place on a cold metal surface (another sheet pan is ideal, or a counter-top.) They should crisp up immediately.
5. Store in a cool, dry place. Do not refrigerate, and do not bag up in plastic. This will cause the chips to begin to re-hydrate and become soggy.

Lamb Purses with Garlic Sauce and Zchug

2011-03-07T10:00:00.011-05:00

Sometimes, recipes are complex and only applicable to themselves. Other times, a recipe uses some basic techniques which can be applied and re-worked into many different recipes.

This recipe is one from the latter category. It combines a simple pastry dough with a savory ground lamb filling, a combination which can be re-worked time and time again. The original version of this dish is based on a recipe from the Elizabethan era in England, and can be found in various styles throughout the ages. It's similar to a meat pie, and indeed I am using a pie dough recipe for the pastry in this version.

The filling is seasoned in a middle-eastern style, with parsley, rosemary, hot paprika, sumac, salt, and pepper. It's chilled and the flavors are allowed to mingle overnight. Small portions are then wrapped in the pastry, egg washed, then baked until brown, delicious, and cooked through.

I served these delightful little pastries with a thick Garlic Sauce and the eternally popular Zchug.

Pastry
12 oz (340 g) flour
8 oz (227 g) butter, chilled
2 oz (57 g) ice-cold water
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) salt

Lamb Filling
8 oz. (227 g) ground lamb
2 tbsp (30 ml) parsley, chopped
1 tbsp (15 ml) rosemary, ground
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) hot paprika
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) sumac
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) salt
freshly ground black pepper

Egg Wash
1-2 eggs, beaten
a splash of milk

1. Mix all ingredients for lamb filling together, and refrigerate overnight, or at least six hours.
2. Place flour and butter in a bowl, and rub together with your fingers (not your palms, they're too warm) until the mixture looks somewhere between coarse cornmeal and peas.
3. Add the salt and water and mix just until the dough comes together. Do not over-mix the dough at this stage, or it will create gluten and become tough. You're aiming for flaky.
4. Shape the dough into a disk and refrigerate at least 15 minutes.
5. Roll out dough 1/8" thick on a floured surface. Cut 3 inch/7.5 cm diameter circles. Place about 1 oz/28 g by weight of the filling on each circle. Paint edges lightly with egg wash. Fold in half, and pinch edges to seal. Place on a baking sheet with parchment. Brush with egg wash.
6. Bake 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Garlic Sauce

This recipe is so simple it shouldn't be legal. It came to me via searching for a way to replicate that garlic paste you get at some Middle Eastern restaurants—pungent, thick, creamy, it's almost like butter, if the butter were made out of garlic instead of cream. I figured it had to be simple, but I never realized quite how simple it was, or could be.

The recipe goes like this:

1 part Olive Oil, Extra Virgin
1 part Vegetable Oil
1 part Fresh-Squeezed Lemon Juice
1 part Garlic, or to taste, roughly chopped
Salt to taste
1 part Mashed Potatoes

This isn't a matter of exactitude, so much as the rough idea. The method is as follows:

1. Place oils, lemon juice, salt, and garlic in a container. Purée (with immersion blender or regular blender) until homogeneous. Taste, and add additional garlic cloves as necessary to reach desired pungency.
2. Add cooked mashed potatoes by portions until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. Taste, adjust seasonings, add more garlic if necessary.

I aim to make mine like smooth, spreadable whipped cream. Slightly tougher than the stuff you get out of a can, but not so thick a spoon stands up in it. The way I make it, nobody should want to talk to you for a week.

Guest Cook: Pain Rustique

2011-03-04T10:00:00.006-05:00

Hi! I'm Aaron's bread guy. He asked me to share a recipe with you all, and suggested this bread. It's one I made for him, and he liked its crispy crust and light crumb. The recipe incorporates a couple of techniques which may be unfamiliar to those of you who don't bake on a regular basis, so let me review those first. (For those of you who are seasoned bakers, bear with me.)

It's worth developing an understanding of these techniques as they can be incorporated into other bread recipes, (I've adapted some to a 100% whole wheat recipe with wonderfully flavorful results) and their benefits justify the extra effort.

The recipe starts with a "poolish", that is a pre-ferment, which helps develop a richer flavor in the loaf. This is simply a mixture of equal amounts (sometimes by weight, sometimes by volume- for this recipe, by weight) of flour and water with a little bit of yeast, which is then left sitting on the counter for 12-16 hours. It bubbles, and swells, and smells deliciously "yeasty."

The poolish then becomes a separate ingredient in the final dough. (Other pre-ferments, like a pate fermente', and a biga, accomplish similar results, and differ from a poolish by varying the relative amounts of the flour and water. But, let's stick to what you need to know for this bread.)

The second technique incorporated in this recipe is a stage of thoroughly hydrating the flour used to make the bread. This is done by combining the poolish with the remaining flour and water, then letting it sit in your mixing bowl for 20-30 minutes. You'll add the remaining yeast and the salt to the final dough after this time on the counter. In bread baking, this step is called the "autolyse", a rest between the mixing and kneading the dough. This rest allows the gluten in the dough to begin developing, which can simplify the shaping of the your loaves. It also increases extensibility, which means less chances of ripping during shaping. (Though, for this particular recipe, this characteristic is less important as this bread is neither pre-shaped nor shaped, but is cut directly from the fermentation bowl, giving it a rustic look. Hence the name.) The result of this autolyse step is a more aromatic loaf, with a creamier color and more open crumb, a sweeter wheat taste, greater volume and more pronounced cuts. The term was coined by French Professor Raymond Calvel, said to be the foremost authority on french bread production, and who is credited with developing this technique.

The next technique used is a fold. This is done once or twice during the bulk fermentation step, and helps to further develop gluten structure. The fold is accomplished by turning the dough out onto a lightly floured bench and gently degassing it (pressing it a little flatter) using your palms and extended fingers as a unit. (Meaning, you don't poke at it with the fingertips.) Then you fold over the right side about a third of the way, and press out again.

(Dust off any of the raw flour after each fold so that it doesn't get incorporated into the loaf, because at this point it won't. It will stay raw, create streaks in the crumb, and affect the flavor in not a good way.)

Continue the fold by bringing the left side over about a third, pressing down and dusting off. At this point, your dough will be roughly rectangular, with the narrow side toward you. Bring the near edge up a third of the way, press out and dust. Finally, bring the far edge down a third, press and dust.

The dough will be squared at this point. The side on the bench is the top, so it's sitting bottom up. Place the dough back in the bowl, top down, to continue the bulk fermentation step.

The last trick for this bread is steam. Using steam for the initial part of the baking cycle helps oven spring, and promotes development of a crisp, crunchy crust. For the home oven, you can get a pretty good result by arranging the racks so that one is on the bottom level, and the other is in the middle. Put a small cast iron pan on the bottom rack. If you're using a baking stone, place it on the middle rack, leaving about an inch space all the way around. Preheat the oven with the stone and pan in place for about half an hour. About five minutes before baking, put 3 ice cubes in the cast iron pan to "moisten" the oven, and put a kettle of water on to come to a boil. If you've timed it right, when you're ready to put the loaves in to bake the ice will have evaporated and the cast iron pan will be very hot. After putting your loaf in to bake, pour a cup of the boiling water into the cast iron pan for the steam production. Be careful! The goal here is to produce a burst of steam, so wearing an oven mitt might not be a bad idea.

Steam only works its magic early in the baking cycle. Once the crust begins to brown, the steam loses its effect. So, I usually check the loaves after about 10 minutes and, if they're browning, I "open the vent" to finish the loaves off in dry heat. Wedging a metal spoon on the side of the door accomplishes this very well. Just remember that the spoon will get hot, so wear an oven mitt when taking it out. And, don't forget it's there or you'll be picking it up off the floor (Several times! Personal experience.)

A last topic to cover is the mixer. There are different types, and the times and speeds referenced in this recipe will have to be adjusted accordingly. I use a Kitchen-Aid brand, Professional HD model, stand mixer with a dough hook for the initial parts of combining my ingredients, and then finish the dough off by kneading. Good results can probably be achieved with any mixer, as long as it's designed for making dough.

Well, it seems like it's time to get to the actual recipe, so here goes. First I'd like to give credit where due. This recipe is adapted from a wonderfully informative book, Bread—A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. The author is Jeffrey Hamelman, a Certified Master Baker, who (at the time the book was written,) had about 30 years of professional experience as a baker and teacher. It includes a good bit of background information, historical tidbits, lots of recipes, and chapters on dough handling techniques, including methods of creating some intricately braided, beautiful loaves and even more intricate show pieces.

Okay! Now it's really time to get to the recipe.

Ingredients:

Poolish:
3 5/8 cups/1 lb (454 g) bread flour
2 cups/1 lb (454 g) water
1/4 teaspoon (1.25 ml) active dry yeast

Final Dough:
3 5/8 cups/1 lb (454 g) bread flour
3/4 cup (177 ml) water
all of the poolish
1 tablespoon (15 ml) kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons (7.5 ml) active dry yeast

1. Sprinkle the yeast over warm (about 100°F/38°C) water and let it start to bloom. Add in the flour and mix until a smooth consistency. The bowl should be large enough to allow for the volume of the mixture to expand two to three times. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it sit on the counter for 12-16 hours. Ideal ambient temperature is about 70°F/21°C.

2. Now comes the autolyse step. When the poolish is ripened, put it in your mixing bowl. Add in the final dough flour and water, holding back the salt and yeast. Mix on low speed until the ingredients come together. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it rest for 20-30 minutes.

3. When the mixture has rested, sprinkle the reserved yeast and salt over the dough, and turn your mixer on to the second speed, mixing until the dough is well developed. I like to knead dough. It feels good, and it lets me know how the gluten is developing. So I mix the dough until it comes together fairly well, then I dust my counter and hands, and finish by kneading until it "feels right." For this dough, that means that it feels smooth and supple, not stiff, rather on the looser side. At the point that you're done kneading the dough, the smooth side should be on the counter, and the "seams" will be facing up. The smooth side becomes the top or good side of the dough. This carries through for the rest of the time you handle any dough—fermentation, folding, pre-shaping, shaping, proofing and baking. I found that following this little practice helps your final loaves look great and makes it easier to close the seams.

4. Turn the dough into a lightly oiled/greased bowl, top down. I use a very thin coat of butter for my bowl. Total fermentation time is 70 minutes. Fold the dough at the 25 and 50 minute marks.

5. This is the step in the recipe that gives your final loaf its rustic look. Lightly flour a baker's linen. (A lightly floured, smooth kitchen towel works well also. You'll need to flour an area large enough to give your loaves room to proof- final rise before baking. I put my towel on a sheet pan for easier handling, and since I make 2 loaves per batch, I just flour the part of the towel that is actually covering the sheet pan.) Turn your dough out onto your bench gently, again, top down.

6. You want to minimize how much you handle the dough from this point on, to maintain the open and airy cell structure which has developed during fermentation. The more you handle it, the more you'll compact the cell structure.

7. The turned out dough will be roughly squared in shape. For two loaves, I divide the dough in half with one or two cuts using a bench knife, so the final shape is roughly a rectangle. You can see from the photos what I mean by roughly. Since I'm not producing the bread for sale, I don't worry about whether the pieces are of equal weights. A method for scaling the dough to equal weights is explained in Mr. Hamelman's book. If you wanted to do more, smaller loaves, you could continue cutting rectangular pieces. Just remember that the more you handle the dough, the more you affect the cell structure.

8. Gently place the loaves top down on the floured linen and cover with plastic wrap. Final proof 20- 25 minutes, ambient temperature of about 76°F/24°C.

The Family that Cooks together...

9. Preheat your oven to 460°F/238°C/Gas Mark 8 1/2 and prepare your oven as explained in the section on the use of steam. If you don't have a baking stone, the preheat time can be shortened, and you could probably use a sheet pan lined with parchment as the baking surface. I use a stone, because I think it makes a great crust, and I use a peel to transfer the loaves to the stone. So, first I'll explain the steps in this process, then suggest the alternate handling.

10. Season your peel, or prep your sheet pan/parchment. I use rice flour to season the peel, but corn meal could work as well. By seasoning, I mean rubbing a light coat of flour or meal on the peel, so that the loaves slide off easily onto the stone. Parchment doesn't need to be "seasoned."

11. When your loaves are done proofing, moisten your oven and boil your water. Remove the plastic wrap and gently flip the loaves onto your peel or parchment. I do this by pulling on the linen and bringing the loaf to the edge of the sheet pan on which its been proofing. When at the edge, I either flip it with my hand or by pulling it over the edge with the linen. The flip leaves the loaves top side up, with a light dusting of flour, which adds to the rustic look.

12. Just before the bake, slash the top with one cut and slide the loaves onto your stone or put your sheet pan/parchment in the oven.

13. Add the boiling water for the steam, and set your timer for 10 minutes. Total bake time will vary based on the size of the loaves that you made, and on the actual temperature of your oven. My oven runs hot at times, so I check at regular intervals, based on how the loaves are progressing. My oven also has hot spots which affect how the loaves brown, so I move the loaves around to even this out. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the internal temperature is 200°F/93°C, or until the crust is richly browned and the loaf sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom.

14. Cool at least 2 hours, then enjoy this delicious bread. Have your first piece naked (the bread, not you!) so you can appreciate its richness and complexity. Then add your favorite topping or spread for a slice of heaven—pun intended.

One point I want to emphasize is that this recipe allows you to make a luscious bread with roughly 3 hours work on bake day, and about 5 minutes the day before prepping the poolish. A modest investment, with excellent returns.

There you have it. Hope you like it.

The Bread Guy

Cooking Under a Deluge

2011-02-28T21:50:00.001-05:00

Photograph by Lance Sabbag

February has come and gone, as you are well aware, and with it many plans have not come to fruition.

It is a common adage in kitchens that if you put something on the menu, you should deliver, regardless of how difficult it is to execute. My menu for the month of February included much more than I was able to put forth, and for that I apologize. I do not deign to be so important to all of you that you have been hanging on my every post, but I still do feel that I have shirked a certain amount of responsibility that I promised to you.

The month contained three notable successes on my part, though. One was a test-run of serving food at the Phoenix Café, during their Up in the Aether event—this was the debut of the Baozi, a very, very successful little experiment, and a lesson in making recipes to fit your crowd. I could have served many more than the 16 buns I was able to create.

The second success was an event held separate from my Steampunk endeavors, a banquet dinner through my culinary school for which I was the Marketing Manager, and an event that took up much of my time for the first two weeks of the month.

The third success happened just last Friday: The Steampunk Dinner at Off the Beaten Path Books went off to great acclaim. With copious help from my friends, bread guy, and others, I was able to put forth a remarkable feast, to a room packed with people, and at a level of quality with which I was more than pleased. Forthcoming shall be posts on each course, as well as the bread served (a special guest post by my bread guy.)

Of course, this past month was also The Great Language Learning Challenge promulgated by my friend Miss Kagashi. I made an honest attempt to learn the Magyár language, but amongst all my other responsibilities and things laying claim on my time, I found myself unable to follow through with my goals...

So I cheated a little, and produced the following:

This month I'll have more posts about food and delights, I promise. There's another feast the day after St. Patrick's day, and then two days afterward, I'll be putting up some food at the Phoenix Café once again.

For now, however, I need a vacation, so I'm heading to the North of Michigan to relax with some friends from my Culinary program. We'll be partaking of wine, beer, foods, and relaxation. It's well-needed on all our parts, I think.

Have a wonderful month. You'll be hearing from me shortly.

Chinese Steamed Buns-Baozi

2011-02-16T10:00:00.011-05:00

Baozi are a common food in China—and indeed across the Asian region—because they are simple, simple to make, and easy to eat. They have existed in Asian food culture since time immemorial, and come in an astounding number of varieties, filled and empty. The fillings range from custards and bean pastes to cooked meat and vegetables, making the basic technique at the heart of making baozi a very, very versatile piece of knowledge.

I have decided to create two kinds of baozi for this little post, because I am serving them at a local Steampunk event, and I don't want to bar anyone from enjoying the fruits of my labor. Therefore, one will contain a mixture of sautéed vegetables, and the other a sort of Cha Shao-style (Cantonese barbecue) pork filling.

Baozi are made with a soft, simple dough—yeast, water, flour, sugar, and a small amount of salt are combined, allowed to rise, and then kneaded with a small amount of baking powder before being shaped into the buns, filled, proofed, and steamed.

My Baozi dough was produced by my bread guy. It's very important to have a bread guy, because as a cook producing items you don't always have time to also make bread. While I was preparing the baozi fillings, I had assistance from my bread guy in making my dough.

Doctor Bob's Baozi Dough
3 1/2 c AP flour
2 3/8 c water @ 100 F (May need more or less depending on the ethers.)
1 T yeast
1/2 t salt
—
1 t baking powder (double-acting)

1. Mix the first set of ingredients in a bowl (on a stand mixer or not) until starting to come together.
2. Dust bench and hands, and turn out dough to bench. Knead until supple, dusting hands and bench as needed. (Incorporate shaggy bits as kneading.)
3. Turn into bowl coated with sesame oil, and allow to rise until doubled—or slightly more than doubled—in bulk. This may take up to an hour or more, depending upon your ambient temperature—you want something around 70-80°F
4. Turn out to dusted bench, and punch down the dough.
5. Sprinkle the baking powder over dough and knead well to incorporate. Your dough is now ready.
6. Divide the dough into 18 equal portions. Cover half with a damp towel to keep them from drying out.
7. Roll each portion into a ball, then flatten into round discs roughly 1/8 inch thick. They will be about 4-5 inches across.
8. Fill center with about 1 T of filling, and pleat edges around to close, creating a pretty shape. Twist the top to close fully, taking a small bit of the dough with you as a sort of souvenir. (I did not do this.) Follow the pictures below.

Filling

Pleating

The finished Bun

Placed to Proof.

9. Set individually on parchment squares, proof 1/2 hour.
10. Steam 15-20 minutes.

(You will notice, I am sure, that we have omitted the sugar from this recipe. For a sweeter baozi dough, add 1-2 Tablespoons/30-60 ml of white sugar to the dough in the first step. I found the dough just fine as it is here, but I'm also a bread fiend.)

Cha Shao Pork Filling
1 lb (454 g) ground pork
1/4 cup (60 ml) soy sauce
2 Tbsp (30 ml) hoisin sauce
1-2 tsp (5-10 ml) 5 spice powder
1/4 cup (60 ml) honey
canola oil

1. Season ground pork with about 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 Tbsp hoisin sauce, and 1-2 tsp 5 spice powder. Mix to ensure even seasoning, and allow to marinate for at least 1 hour.
2. Heat wok and add oil. When ready, place the pork in the wok and begin to fry.
3. Add honey and additional hoisin, soy, and 5 spice powder to taste. Season to taste with salt and pepper as well.
4. Stir-fry until the pork is cooked, ensuring that it is cooked through.

Vegetable filling
2 oz (57 g) onion, fine dice
4 cloves garlic
1 head bok choy, roughly chopped
2 tbsp (30 ml) soy sauce
2 tsp (10 ml) szechuan sauce
2 handsful (about 1-2 ounces/30-60 g) spinach, roughly chopped
8 oz (227 g) shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, caps sliced
canola oil

1. Oil a wok lightly and sauté the onions and garlic until the onions soften. Add bok choy and sauté until the leaves darken and stems soften slightly.
2. Add soy sauce, szechuan sauce, and a small amount of water, mix, and cover the wok to braise the bok choy slightly.
3. After 10-15 minutes, add mushrooms and spinach, and sauté until the mushrooms are soft, and the spinach has wilted. Test seasonings and add salt, pepper, and 5-spice to taste.

A panoply of pleased partiers—from the Phoenix Café.

Photographs by Through This Lens and myself.

Dinner Party

2011-02-11T10:00:00.004-05:00

Bartending, on the other hand, is a job
full of thanks and contact with people.
Photo by Don Watts

Being a cook is not an easy job. You work in a small, hot, dangerous space for a long time, and if you're doing things right nobody who is consuming your food should interact with you for more than a few minutes when, and if, you go out to take your curtain call—because, in truth, there is not a single soul who does not like to be applauded.

When someone appreciates your work, therefore, it is always a remarkably pleasing experience, and to be asked to produce a dinner party is a sign of confidence and a recognition of talent. Being a cook can be a rewarding job.

I've been asked to create a simple dinner party for the most frequent and prolific customers of Off the Beaten Path Books. Five courses at the most, simple, but delicious. It's scheduled to go off on the 25th of this month, three weeks from today.

It's a chance to strut my stuff for paying guests, to push the limits of the space in which I will cook, and—of course—to make delicious food with a historical flair.

Having given it consideration, therefore, I have determined the following meal shall go forth:

Appetizer

Lamb Purses
Zchug – Garlic Sauce

Soup

Apple-Butternut Velvet Soup

Apple Crisp – Nutmeg Crème Chantilly

Salad

The Practical Housekeeper's Winter Salad
Romaine – Butter Lettuce – Endive
Celery – Beet – Scallion – Egg
Vintage Vinaigrette

Entrée

Red Wine Braised Short Ribs of Beef

Vegetable Polonaise – Creamy Mushroom Polenta

Dessert
Victorian Tea Trifecta

Earl Grey Panna Cotta – Rose Tea Gelée – Lavender Honey Ice Cream
Rosemary Chocolate Sauce – Lavender Tuile

Steamed Dumplings-Mantı

2011-02-09T10:00:00.014-05:00

Mantı are a popular dish in Central Asia and the Middle East. Depending on where you find them, their exact shape and size vary, but in many respects they are similar in fashion to Baozi. The main difference is that while Baozi are made with a yeast dough, Mantı are made with something much closer to a pasta dough. Both dishes are steamed, however, making them quite similar in function and in creation, if not in form.

Mantı are typically filled with a beef or lamb mixture, similar to the boreks from earlier, and steamed until the dough wrapper and the ground meat inside are cooked. Many regional varieties exist, as the dish spread across its geographic area with nomadic tribes. Most are served with a yogurt-garlic sauce, sometimes with sumac, hot red pepper powder, or dried mint, sometimes with other sauces and spices.

Pasta dough is a simple item to prepare. Simple by hand, and simpler by utilizing some kind of mechanism like a food processor or electric mixer. There are four ingredients:

Flour
Egg
Salt
Oil

Sometimes, if there is a need for additional moisture in the dough, a small amount of water can be added.

A filling for this dumpling can be made in any number of styles. I have found recipes for everything from beef to pumpkin manti. Potatoes, rice, vegetables, and a variety of spices are added to or substituted for the ground meat that is traditionally the filling; the one constant seems to be minced onion.

Mantı
1 lb (454 g) flour
4 eggs
pinch salt
1 fl oz (30 ml) water
1 fl oz (30 ml) oil, preferably olive
1 lb (454 g) ground beef
1 large onion, minced or ground
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) cumin
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) hot paprika
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) dried parsely or 1 1/2 tsp (7.5 ml) fresh parsley, finely chopped
Ground black pepper
Salt

1. Mix dough by placing eggs, salt, water, and oil in the bowl of a food processor; pulse briefly to mix, then begin adding flour by four additions, processing then adding more flour each time. Once all flour is in, process until the dough looks like cous-cous, and is warm. (You may also make the dough by hand, or in a stand mixer. Directions are available for both methods online, but the general concept remains the same: combine all ingredients until elsastic and smooth.
2. Turn it out onto a floured counter, and knead until elastic and smooth. Set aside and rest for 20 minutes, minimum.
3. Combine onion (including its juices,) ground beef, spices, and seasonings, and mix well. Set aside to chill in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes.
4. Roll out the dough to a thickness of just less than 1/8 inch (2-3 mm). Cut into 4.5 inch squares.

Begin by working the dough

with your fingertips...

...then move to a rolling pin.

The rough thickness you seek.

5. Place about 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of filling in each square.
6. Fold up in the following manner:

Step 1: Meat on Squares

a. Opposite corners together

First, two corners...

...then the other two.

b. Adjacent corners together

Then fold the new corners together
to close up the dumpling.

7. Arrange on a steamer tray, with roughly 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) between the mantı, and place over boiling water. Steam for roughly 15-25 minutes, or until the center of the meat mixture registers 165°F/74°C on a thermometer. Going above that temperature is not an issue, but since it's ground meat that you've been working with, you don't want to go too far below it.

8. Remove dumplings from steamer and set to rest for 5 minutes. If you cut into them right away, all the liquid inside will run out, and you'd prefer that it be re-absorbed into the meat filling.

9. Serve sprinkled with black pepper, sumac, or paprika (or a combination thereof) with your choice of sauces—I prefer the yogurt-garlic sauce, but I suspect our old friend paprika butter would be delicious, too.

I made a sauce for some left-over filling (which I formed into patties and sautéd,) the said sauce consisting of about a pint-and-a-half to a quart of quartered grape tomatoes, half a large onion medium diced, some olive oil, a clove of garlic, hot and sweet paprika, salt, black pepper, oregano, sumac, and fresh lemon juice. I didn't really measure anything, so much as add here and there. I first began by sautéing the onions over high heat, then, when they were softened and translucent, added the tomatoes. I reduced the heat to a medium-high state, and continued cooking. When those got soft enough to slough their skins, I began seasoning and cooking them down. I added the lemon juice last. Season to taste at the end, and if necessary cook further to get the flavors right. I didn't take any pictures, sadly, because it was just so tasty that it didn't last long enough to be photographed.

An Excerpt from the Journals of Graf Georg von Ziger

2011-02-07T10:00:00.006-05:00

February 7th, 1874. Ochamchira, Abkhazia, Russia.

Traveling to have the Halcyon refitted in Timbuktu. Departing Archangelsk was an enjoyable experience—the ladies out with handkerchiefs a-waving for us were motivation to redouble our efforts in the destruction of piracy. We have landed today in Ochamchira, a coastal town on the Black Sea.

Captain Thibodeau has granted us 1 day's shore leave, and I have spent it among the lowest of the low. Dockworkers, prostitutes, clockwork pickers... the criminal element seems to like me when I am not in uniform.

Walking the streets with a group of ruffians who called themselves the "zavodnoĭ ubiĭtsy"—they say it means "clockwork killers"—I began to grow hungry. I commented upon this state to my newfound companions and they escorted me to one of the more cosmopolitan corners of the poor quarter, a through-way for the sailors, aviators, and travelers—poor and wealthy alike—going between the Zeppelin docks and the rail depot. A man stood on the corner, a small boiler beside him. It appeared to be powering the machinery of a workhouse, but he had managed to vent some of the steam through pipes to a series of plates in front of him. On each stood a stack of pans with perforated bases, appearing to be some sort of straining device, like a colander, but flat-bottomed, like a fry-pan. These pipes and plates served to direct the steam shunted from the engine up through the perforated pans, providing a steaming apparatus usable for cooking.

Street food is fascinating. The gentleman, having characteristics both of a Chinaman and a Turk, was cooking several items in the various plates. Buns, dumplings, and even meat items were being prepared for sale—at reasonable rates—to the passers-by, rich and poor alike. Simple food, but delicious. I made note of the different foods I ate, and I have endeavored to re-create the recipes in the kitchen of the Halcyon.

Ice Carving

2011-02-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ice carving is a part of the Culinary Arts, just like fruit carving, cake decorating, and buffet arrangement.

Admittedly, you do not usually eat carved ice—it's had chainsaws and chisels and drills all over it, been torched down with a giant blowtorch—and its purpose is typically aesthetic rather than nutritional.

Yet, the artistry involved in ice carving is something that leaves me in awe. Some of my friends competed this past weekend in the 2011 NICA Collegiate Championships. On the right, you will see a picture of a robotic angler fish, with a propeller for a tail, gears and a lightbulb as a lure, and a clean, beautiful body with big teeth.

This was the team carving done by two of my friends. It took the gold medal for the team carvings.

I'm honored to know these people, and to have the opportunity to marvel at their skills.

A Culinary Commentary: Utilization

2011-02-02T10:00:00.002-05:00

The Buffalo Hunt
From Native Americans

There's an old story—perhaps you learned it in grade school—saying that the Native Americans used every part of the buffalo when they killed it. This story is meant to highlight the decadence and wastefulness of Western culture, in contrast to the noble, in-touch-with-nature Natives. Besides its obviously orientalist trappings and its exclusion of non-plains tribes (I don't think the Mi'qmak, Ojibwe, or Potawatomi were hunting buffalo in the woods and northern lakes,) it is also a patently disingenuous statement: Classical Western Cuisine contains hundreds of uses for many parts of pretty much every edible animal.

Beef bones being used for stock

From the meat animals, bones are simmered into stock or rendered into glue; hides are tanned for leather, or made into edible items. Many organs are consumed (liver, sweetbreads, kidneys) or used in culinary preparations—some recipes for chili call for ground beef heart, for the flavor it imparts; pigs' feet are used for gelatins and stocks, and chicken feet find great use as a stock component; coxcombs—yes, those things on top of roosters' heads—are served often in classical French cuisine, sometimes in soups and sometimes on their own; jowls and cheeks are used for their fat or braised for their rich flavor.

Caviar with crème fraiche, lemon,
and smoked salmon. By Julia at Avlxyz

We eat caviar and roe, and old recipes for cod cheeks, tongues, and sounds can be found; fish skeletons are used in stocks and soups; indeed, we often see fish served whole to diners, who will sometimes partake of the non-fillet portions. Squid ink is used to color foods from pasta to forcemeats; squid tentacles are served from deep fried to dried; octopi are eaten with suckers on, (the only portion we discard is the beak—which probably could be used for fish stock.)

There is very little, in truth, that needs to go to waste in your kitchen. Even with vegetables, many portions we discard out of hand can be saved and used in various manners. Onion skins are valuable for their color, both as a dye component but also as a way to darken a clear soup. Carrot peels and celery ends can go into stock. Onion roots? Stock. Broccoli stems? Soup. The list goes on and on.

The only reason that western culinary culture is so wasteful is because of availability. Why should I carefully cut all the usable red pepper flesh up when I can just go get another one out of the cooler? Why should I use the chicken's feet? There are 2,000 more chickens one phone call away. Why eat this strange organ meat when I can just go over to the supermarket and get another steak?

A Victorian method of
carving a Calf's Head

This same sentiment is not evident in Victorian cook books, which often include recipes for heads, tongues, tripe, organ meats, and every conceivable part of a given animal—often more than one recipe each, no less. Slowly, from the time of the early cook books in my collection to the modern era, we have come to disregard these portions of an animal as disgusting, inedible, or distasteful to see being cooked—a friend states, "My father (from China) used to eat chicken feet. When I think about it I still shudder seeing those chicken feet sticking out of the big stockpot." Generations change, tastes change, but not always for good reasons.

We have gotten to the point where we do not need to use every possible portion of our food, and that's unfortunately led to the death of some culinary traditions. Liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, head cheese, tripe, and so on and so forth are more and more seen as esoteric foods relegated to ethnic cuisines or strange cooking shows—or worse, "Fear Factor" competitions—rather than being accepted as delicious, edible, useful ways to get the most out of your animals.

Consider all the things we throw away in the kitchen, or are thrown away at a butcher's shop. Consider what isn't in the meat case. We do these things not because we have to, but because we choose to.

That's all I have for today. I've probably gone on for far too long, but alas—this is something near and dear to my heart. As I've said before, right outside the layer of butterfat.

February Preview

2011-01-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

Since February is a month containing St. Valentine's day, and considering that the theme of romance is so popular across the world, I have decided to incline this month towards the steamy.

A Pressure Steamer

The use of steam for cooking purposes is usually seen as a healthful but ultimately limited cooking method in Western cookery—most people who go to cooking school in the United States learn to steam vegetables for service—but only after they're sautéed—, or potatoes to make into mashed potatoes, or to hard-boil eggs; rarely do the giant pressure steamers in American kitchens see anything outside of the vegetable kingdom.

In other cooking traditions, however, steam sees much more widespread use, for a much greater variety of dishes. In Chinese cuisine, for example, meat is frequently steamed over fragrantly spiced water. Fish is steamed in many culinary traditions, and cooking "en papillote"—an item (often fish,) combined with aromatic vegetables and seasonings, wrapped in parchment and baked—steams the items being cooked in their own evaporating juices.

Finally, many traditional English "Puddings" (starch- or dairy-based desserts) are steamed as the preferred cooking method.

I hope you'll enjoy the offerings in the month to come. I've gotten busy again, so sadly my posts will not be as frequent as they have been in January, but I'll try to keep you up with something intriguing every week; and, since eating is about more than just food, I hope to tell you more about wines, spirits, and beers that I enjoy with the foods I cook, as well as blathering on about a few subjects near and dear to my culinary heart (just outside the layer of butter.) I also will hopefully offer some Hungarian items, to tie in with my attempt to learn a bit of Hungarian.

In the meantime, eat well, my friends.

Roast Pork Loin with Sage-Onion Stuffing and Apple Sauce

2011-01-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

Mrs. Beeton prescribes this combination of dishes in her book, and as I am from time to time inclined to take a cook-book writer at their word, I have elected to prepare the dishes exactly as she sets forth.

Exactly, that is, with the exception of any tweaks I might need to make to render the dishes delicious, edible, and suitable for the palates (and diets) of my friends. Mrs. Beeton leaves quite a bit un-said, you see, about the proper manners of cooking; there is much that must be read between the lines of her work, that must be assumed or implied or otherwise added to the simple recipes she provides.

A nice dinner is never amiss, however, and since I'm at home I might as well prepare something that everyone will enjoy—and that will serve as an opportunity to perfect these historical recipes for later use. After all, while half of cooking is creativity, the other half is replication. A dish is no good if I can't make it again the same way.

Roast Pork Loin

Mrs. Beeton:

Score the skin in strips rather more than 1/4 inch apart, and place the joint at a good distance from the fire, on account of the crackling, which would harden before the meat would be heated through, were it placed too near. If very lean, it should be rubbed over with a little salad-oil, and kept well basted. Pork should be thoroughly cooked, but not dry. Serve with apple sauce, and a little gravy made in the dripping-pan. A stuffing of sage and onion may be made separately, and baked in a flat dish.

Obviously, it is rare in our time to roast a piece of meat by a fire, so Mrs. Beeton's admonitions about roast placement are somewhat useless. It is also worth noting that nowadays, a pork loin roast is usually sold boneless and trimmed, so that there is very little fat and no bones, skin, or extraneous meat attached—this both adjusts the cooking time and also the initial bits of the instructions—in other words, the changes in butchering and technology have rendered Mrs. Beeton's recipe little more than a suggestion of what to serve with what.

1 pork loin, boneless, trimmed
Kosher Salt
Black Pepper

Allow the meat to come to room temperature before cooking; don't leave it out for too long—30-45 minutes should suffice if you're removing it from a refrigerator. Season the roast well with salt and pepper, and place on a roasting rack.

Roasting pork is not a difficult thing—place it in an oven at about 450°F/230°C/Gas Mark 8; cook briefly to develop a nicely browned exterior. Turn the oven down to 300°F/150°C/Gas Mark 2, and roast until the internal temperature is 145°F/63°C (for a slightly pink in the center roast; if you like yours done further, keep cooking 'til about 155°F/68°C.) This can take anywhere upwards of an hour to accomplish, depending on the size of the pork loin.

Remove from the oven, and allow it to rest for about 5 minutes (minimum) before carving, to let the juices re-distribute. Slice into 1/8"-1/4" (3-6 mm) slices, and serve.

Sage-Onion Stuffing

Mrs. Beeton says:

Ingredients. — 4 large onions, 10 sage-leaves, 1/4 lb bread crumbs, 1 1/2 oz butter, salt and pepper, 1 egg.
Mode. — Peel the onions, put them into boiling water, simmer for 5 minutes, or rather longer, and put in the sage leaves for a minute or two to take off their rawness. Chop both very fine, add the bread, seasoning, and butter, and work the whole together with the yolk of an egg, when the stuffing will be ready for use. It should be rather highly seasoned, and the sage leaves finely chopped. May cooks do not parboil the onions, but use them raw. The stuffing then is not so mild.

As recommended in the pork recipe, I will then bake this stuffing in a pan and use it as a side to the pork loin. I have also elected to add some more vegetables to the stuffing, to create a better flavor profile.

2 lb (907 g) onions, sliced
1/4 lb (113 g) celery, small dice
2 ounces (57 g) carrot, small dice
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 oz (56 g) butter, melted
10 sage leaves, finely chopped
1/4 lb (113 g) fresh bread crumbs *
1 1/2 oz (43 g) whole butter
1 egg, beaten
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the melted butter in a sauté pan large enough to hold all the vegetables, and sauté onions until they begin to soften. Add garlic, continue to sauté a further two to three minutes. Add celery, carrots, and sage, and continue sautéeing until the vegetables are tender, and the onions soft and sweet.

2. Mix bread crumbs, whole butter, vegetables, and egg in a bowl. Pour into a greased baking dish large enough to hold it evenly, and bake until browned on the top and warmed through.

* For fresh bread crumbs, take sliced bread, cut off the crusts, and weigh out to slightly more than called for. Place in a food processor, and pulse until there are no more large chunks of bread remaining.

To be honest, as much as I like onions this particular recipe is a little strange. I'd prefer it to be something... different. It could work as a stuffing, but as a dressing/side dish, I find it a little lacking. The onions are sweet but not caramelized. The bread crumbs are there, but not enough to make it the bready stuffing I am familiar with, nor are they subtle enough to be ignored. I may also have affected the recipe by slicing the onions rather than dicing them as originally described. This recipe will be re-visited in the future, I suspect. (Note: My father is actually trying it tomorrow, to be served with a smoked turkey.)

Apple Sauce

Ingredients. — 6 good-sized apples, sifted sugar to taste, a piece of butter the size of a walnut, water.
Mode. — Pare, core, and quarter the apples; throw them into cold water to preserve their whiteness. Put them in a saucepan with sufficient water to moisten, and boil till soft enough to pulp. Beat them up, adding sugar and a small piece of butter.

Simple, and more or less what I did for the applesauce in the Hanukkah Dinner. I like that recipe's substitution of apple cider for the water—I find it gives a better finished flavor—and the addition of cinnamon and Southern Comfort was welcome. Otherwise, though, the recipe is almost identical. No surprises here. For the sake of completeness, I present it to you again here:

6 apples
1 cup (237 ml) water
2 tbsp (30 ml) butter
3 tbsp (45 ml) honey
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) ground cinnamon
2 tbsp (30 ml) Southern Comfort (optional)

1.) Peel, core, and quarter the apples. Combine all ingredients in a stockpot—this will all fit easily in an 8-quart/8 liter pot.

2.) Simmer gently for 20 minutes or until the apples are tender. Mix occasionally during the cooking.

3.) Using a potato masher, an immersion blender, or a food mill (or a combination thereof) break down the apples into a smooth sauce. Some texture should persist, but there shouldn't be big lumps.

The recipes presented here may not match the pictures exactly—the pictures come from a small dinner with friends, where I forgot to photograph the final plates as is my usual habit.

Chicken Consommé

2011-01-26T11:00:00.004-05:00

Clear soup. Not just clear, but crystalline. It is—or can be—perfection in a bowl. The effort put into creating such a dish speaks through the gentle flavors, perfect clarity, and precisely prepared garnishes. It is a foundation of the classic cuisine of Escoffier, but it originated earlier.

What Mrs. Beeton described in her entry "To Clarify Stock" was refined over the ensuing 40 years into Escoffier's King of Soups—Consommé. The concept of a clarified stock has been around for many years—indeed, some recipes can be found dating to the medieval period—but it has been refined over the ensuing years.

Mrs. Beeton said,

INGREDIENTS - The whites of 2 eggs, 1/2 pint of water, 2 quarts of stock.
Mode.—Supposing that by some accident the soup is not quite clear, and that its quantity is 2 quarts, take the whites of 2 eggs, carefully separated from their yolks, whisk them well together with the water, and add gradually the 2 quarts of boiling stock, still whisking. Place the soup on the fire, and when boiling and well skimmed, whisk the eggs with it till nearly boiling again; then draw it from the fire, and let it settle, until the whites of the eggs become separated. Pass through a fine cloth, and the soup should be clear.

This technique has only changed slightly since her writing—the basis of clarification is still egg whites, but now we include lean ground meat and mirepoix in the process, creating a mixture known as "clearmeat," which is then simmered in the stock, to create what is known as a "raft;" this raft traps the impurities in the stock and enriches it simultaneously, creating wonderful flavors.

Nowadays, a typical recipe for chicken consommé looks something like this:

5 qt/4.8 L Chicken Stock or Broth
1 lb/454 g mirepoix (i.e., 1/2 onion, 1/4 carrot, 1/4 celery) small dice
3 lb/1.36 kg lean ground chicken
10 egg whites
Some kind of acid (this varies in quantity depending on the acid, its strength, flavor, etc.)

All ingredients are combined, stirred frequently, and brought just to a simmer—the temperature should come between 120°-125°F/49°-52°C. Once that point is reached, it is left to simmer, with a small hole made in the raft, for 1-1 1/2 hours. The raft is periodically "basted" by drawing out some of the clarifying stock and pouring it gently over the raft, to keep it moist.

Garnishes for Consommé vary widely, depending on the style of cooking. I've found an amazing recipe for Duck Consommé with Potato and Nori (it's so much more than that, go look,) and I've seen Pheasant Consommé served with a Pheasant Galantine and Brunoised Potatoes and Carrots. Traditional garnishes include poached quenelles of ground meat, fine-cut vegetables, "Royale"—a kind of custard made with egg and stock—, eggs, wines—the possibilities tend to be somewhat endless. For this dinner, I've stuck with a classic—finely cut vegetables, allowing the richness of the soup to shine through without any interruption.

I started this Consommé a few days in advance by making chicken stock. Instead of chicken carcasses, I used two pounds of chicken feet, and three pounds of chicken wings. Chicken feet contain a great deal of cartilage, and therefore using them in stock creates a finished product with exceptional mouthfeel; gelatin in the finished product is essential to a high-quality stock, and a high-quality stock is essential to a perfect consommé.Wings have good amounts of cartilage (from young chickens, anyhow) and small bones. The only downside is they tend to be somewhat fattier than is desirable, but in my case the stock is going to be chilled and re-heated for use, so the fat will be easily removed.

Consommé, with raft visible.

Chicken Consommé
2.5 qt (2.4 L) Chicken Stock
8 oz (227 g) mirepoix, small dice
1.5 lb (680 g) lean ground chicken
5 egg whites
5 ounces diced tomato

Garnish
8 tsp (40 ml) carrot, brunoise
8 tsp (40 ml) celery, brunoise

1. Chill thoroughly, then combine the mirepoix, chicken, egg whites, and tomato in a heavy saucepot. Add a small amount of the stock to facilitate mixing well. Slowly add the remaining stock, mixing vigorously to combine all ingredients.

2. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently. Once the raft forms, stop mixing, make sure a hole is present, and allow to bubble gently for 1 hour.

Clarified Consommé

3. Carefully ladle out the clarified soup, straining through cheesecloth.

4. If time allows, chill and degrease; otherwise, use a paper towel to blot up any grease that floats to the surface.

5. Blanch all garnish vegetables, shock, then place into service bowls. Pour hot soup over and serve immediately.

A Linguistic Project

2011-01-25T10:00:00.002-05:00

For this coming month, my friend Miss Kagashi (of The Steamer's Trunk,) has laid forth a little challenge. The details are on her blog, but in short—you are challenged to learn a language.

Being as I already know a fair bit of French, though my abilities are on the wane due to lack of usage—rendered now mostly a way to be easily annoyed by culinary professionals pronouncing things like "foie gras" as "fwah gwah"—and a fair bit of Yiddish, my usage of which is regular enough to keep me speaking it convincingly, I've decided to add a third foreign language to my acumen.

I've spoken before about my maternal grandparents, both of whom grew up in Vienna, and both of whom were born around the time of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While learning German—the language of Austria—would certainly be easy, given that Yiddish is very close in structure and vocabulary, I've decided to do something a little more daring, a little more dangerous, and a little more difficult: I'm going to learn some Hungarian, properly called Magyar. It's a Finno-Ugric language, unrelated to German, English, or French. It's got a modified Latin alphabet, but the word forms are going to be rather alien to me.

Oh dear.

Paprikas will be forthcoming, I suspect.

Wine of Note: Guenoc Victorian Claret

2011-01-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

Claret is a British term, somewhat genericized in the United States (but so are many wine names... an argument for another day,) used to refer—nowadays—to a dark red, dry Bordeaux wine. If you pay attention during The Supersizers Go Victorian, you'll notice that Claret is one of the most frequently consumed wines—after all, Bordeaux wines are classic, they're delicious, and they're what French Wine was known for for many years.

Guenoc, a label of Langtry Vineyards, produces a wine they call "Victorian Claret." It was brought to my attention during The State Dinner, when one of our guests brought it with her to share. A simply delightful wine, I had to go out and find another bottle (or three) so I could have a drink of it when I was not in the kitchen, running around like a madman.

The Wine Buyer quotes the winemakers at Guenoc, who say,

The [...] North Coast Victorian Claret is a complex blend of our award winning wines. Dark ruby in color, the wine has a wonderful fruity nose bringing on black cherry, plum, and blueberry aromas. Rich and soft on the palate, the hints of vanilla and nutmeg, from 12 months of barrel aging, add to the complexity and the long smooth finish.

I have a penchant for drinking Big Red Wines. I like Zinfandels, Shirazes, and Chiantis—things that make my palate stand up and take notice, things that don't taste at all watery. The other night I had some Italian wines that are supposedly delightful—but they tasted watered-down to me, and I didn't enjoy them. In that regard, this Claret does not disappoint—the flavors are full and strong, yet the wine is eminently drinkable, even by people who may not like the aforementioned big spicy wines.

The Victorian Claret is available in stores and on-line, and retails for anywhere from $10 to $15, depending on local taxes, discounts, etc. Don't buy any in Michigan, though, I have dibs on it all.

Mystery Spices

2011-01-21T11:00:00.003-05:00

Portrait by Mark Moore of Pict Studios.

Every so often—more frequently when cooking in a kitchen with foreign items—you will run into a spice you've never encountered before, a spice for which you have no frame of reference, or a spice whose appearance does not correlate with the name on the label.

When cooking with Oz, we discovered one such spice while preparing the Lentil Soup. Searching for something to give it a little extra zing, we came across the above-pictured jar in Oz's kitchen cabinet. Glancing at the label, the kitchen crew immediately knew it was Turkish in origin (the Turks like their i-with-no-dot letter quite a bit,) but were all uncertain as to what, exactly, it was. Physically, it resembled a slightly finer version of crushed red pepper, but there were almost no seeds in it, and the color was much deeper and richer, almost like Sumac. It smelled fragrant, but didn't have a particularly unique odor. Being the intrepid culinarians that we are, each sampled a small portion (a couple flakes,) and found it to be somewhere between the flavor of paprika and crushed red pepper, but with a marked sweetness.

From what Oz's father (a Turkish fellow) says, and what little English information was found by another researcher, it's a family spice, a sort of "house blend" of ground/crushed peppers used widely in Turkey.

It was quite delicious, and definitely added a certain je ne sais quoi to our soup.

The moral of this story is this: Never be afraid to try something new. Flavors are an experience as powerful as any other, and can catalyze creativity or be the springing-off point for research and new culinary understanding. Sometimes, if you're lucky, a new spice can be just what you're looking for.

A Milestone!

2011-01-17T17:39:00.003-05:00

I am... exuberant. Some times. This is one of those times.

Sometime today, ladies and gentlemen, I hit 10,000 views on this humble blog. I appreciate your readership, and hope you have enjoyed the recipes and writings I have posted so far, and that you will enjoy the things to come in the future.

I find it auspicious that on the day I post my favorite production so far—my Mulligatawny Soup—I also hit this milestone. Please take a look at that recipe, it's delicious and a popular dish with everyone who has consumed it.

I'm also flattered to have been featured on the Phoenix New Times in their post, Steampunk: The Past and Future of Cooking? as well as the Steampunk Tribune in the post called "Steampunk Gastronomy." Both are rather rewarding, and it's exciting to get attention for something that I enjoy doing for myself as much as for others.

I have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities for this little endeavor... much more will soon be written.