Updating recipes

I wanted to give a heads up that I will be revisiting my posts as I go along.  I've realized over the years that frequently people will post/publish a recipe they have made once and never revisit it.  If it didn't come out the second time, you never hear about it.  You have no indication whether the recipe is reproducible or not.  I will go back and revisit these recipes and tell you, oops, I left out something or, shit, this totally didn't work out the second time and offer some reasons why and what to do to make the recipe better.  I can also toss in some pictures, which would be nice.

Basic Thai/Vietnamese stir fry

A big trend lately is Thai/Vietnamese restaurants.  They are all over and provide a food broadly between Indian and Chinese, with some of the spices of Indian cuisine and the sauces of Chinese.  Like most restaurants, I've been generally pretty disappointed with them.  They lack much complexity or flavor, though frequently the springs rolls are pretty yummy.

This recipe is a versatile base for whatever you want to cook up.  Toss in some snow peas, green beans, carrots, napa cabbage, whatever.

I loosely based this on a recipe I found in Mai Pham's "The Best of Vietnamese and Thai Cooking".  The recipes are a bit hit or miss.  I jacked up the amount of sauce, as everyone loves sauce.  Her recipes tend to be a bit dry.

The basil is added with the heat off to preserve the delicate aroma of the basil.  If you heat basil too much, it kills the flavor.  When you preserve the basil flavor, the dish is oh so good.

Key ingredients that I keep around the house more or less constantly:

Fish sauce (nam pla in Thai, nuoc mam in Vietnamese):  They soy sauce of SE Asia.  Very delicious, but make sure not to throw it directly into a hot pan or oil.  It will stink terribly.  It's made basically by stuffing a barrel full of fish, filling it from brine, and letting it age for a while.  Doesn't sound very appetizing, but neither does sausage making, but it still tastes great.  Buy some without any MSG or other artificial ingredients.  Squid brand is a safe bet.  Soy sauce is an OK replacement.

Fresh chili paste (Sambal Oelek):  Basically, ground chilis, vinegar, salt, and maybe garlic.  Super delicious, but hot.  Not fermented, like chinese chili paste.  Good fresh on top of anything or yummy stir fried.  Huy Fong (the makers of Sriracha) make a tasty variety that is widely available.  Pretty flipping hot, so be careful with it.

Quorn: great veggie replacement for meat.  Tastes like a chicken crossed with a mushroom.  Kroger seems to have 2 for 1 deals once in a while on this.  Much better than a lot of the meat replacements, which tend toward execrable.

Basil: key in this recipe.  Thai or regular work fine.

Oyster sauce: great source of umami.  Not fishy like fish sauce.  They have mushruoom oyster sauce without oysters as well.  Seems to taste fine.

 I seem to recall adding Recaito to this, but I can't remember anymore.  I would have been about a tablespoon.  The cilantro/pepper flavor would be appropriate.

Basic Thai Stir Fry:

1 lb Quorn or chicken
2 Tbsp cooking oil (canola, etc)
1/2 - 2 Tbsp chili paste
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
 1-2 shallots, chopped
2 Tbsp fish sauce
2 Tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 cup broth (veggie or chicken)
1 chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped basil, Thai or Western
Optional: lemongrass (add with sauce), snow peas, other veggies in place of pepper.  Precook them so that they are ready to go when you add them.

1) Heat oil over medium heat (if you heat it too hot, the chili paste might gas you).
2) Add garlic, shallots, and chili paste and cook ~30 seconds
3) Add onions and fry a couple of minutes, until softened.
4) Add protein and fry until cooked.  You might need to dial up the heat.
5) Deglaze the pan with the broth.
6) Add the rest of the sauces and heat through
7) Turn off the heat, mix in the basil.
8) Serve over white rice.

Black Beans and Millet

I bought some millet a couple of months back, but haven't seen too many recipes using it, so I decided to construct my own based on a beans and rice recipe.

Millet is one of those super-grains that was more or less forgotten in America until recent times, a bit like quinoa.  As agriculture moved to greater yields over the years, older crops like millet got forgotten.  Industrialized nations moved to corn, wheat, and rice, giving the biggest bang for the buck.  Only in less developed regions, like Africa, India, and South America did the traditional crops linger.  Millet is an ancient grain and they find records of it from archaeological sites 10,000 years old.  It is gluten free and you can bake flatbreads from it, supposedly.  With some protein, you can bake it into more traditional breads.

I started pretty basic in the recipe, but added more components to give it more complexity.  One great ingredient to have around the house is chipotle chlilis.  Frequently you can find them canned en adobo in the Mexican section of the grocery.  I just frozen them and scoop out a chili when I want some.  One is enough to flavor a whole dish.  I really like the recaito, cumin, chipotle chili, and Mexican oregano blend in the dish.

You'll want to pay attention to the moisture level and the cooking of the millet.  My experience was that millet took about 30 minutes to cook.  It is a bit gummy and chewy until it is done.

Save the extra bean broth.  It is a great addition to stews and a good basis for cooking.  Add it along with broth to add additional flavor and nutrition.

Mexican oregano is great stuff.  It is like super-oregano, bursting with aroma and flavor.  Traditional oregano is a fine replacement.  Make sure to crumble it with your hands before addition to release the flavor.  The flavor components are oil-soluble, so it is good to added directly to the stir fry.

You can soak the beans overnight in salt water to speed the cooking.  You can probably get away with canned beans in place of the dried, but you will need to replace the bean broth with additional veggie broth.

Black Beans and Millet

 1/2 lb dried black beans
1 bay leaf
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup millet
2 cups broth (veggie or chicken)
1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 chili (jalapeno or serrano), chopped
1/4 cup recaito
1 tsp ground cumin
1 chipotle chili

1) Cover beans with water to the depth of 2 inches (the length of a small eating spoon)
2) Add 1 bay leaf, 1/2 tsp Mexican oregano, and 1/4 tsp baking soda
3) Simmer covered until beans are cooked (~1h)
4) Drain, reserving broth.  Remove bay leaf.
5) Bring 1 cup millet and 2 cups broth to a boil, simmer ~30 minutes, until millet is mostly cooked.  Stir occasionally to prevent burning.

6) Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat
7) Fry garlic, onion, and 1/2 tsp oregano until the onion has softened, ~ 10 minutes.
8) Add recaito, chili, and cumin and fry 5 minutes
9) Add millet, beans, 1/2 cup of bean broth, and chipotle chili.
10) Simmer until cooked through.  Add additional bean broth to keep moist.
11) Splash with 1 Tbsp olive oil, add salt to taste (I added around 1/2 Tbsp), and serve.

Minty green sauce

One of my go to Middle Eastern cookbooks is Faye Levy's "Feast from the Mideast":

http://www.amazon.com/Feast-Mideast-Sun-Drenched-Dishes-Cookbooks/dp/0060093617

It's got a lot of really good basic recipes and is very vegetarian friendly.  I made a fish dish yesterday out of it that turned out great, but what really was the clincher was the sauce that went on it.  It is a classic Middle Eastern recipe - lemon juice, herbs, and olive oil.  Fresh and delicious.  It would be fantastic on just about anything - veggie burger, falafel, kebabs, etc.  It is super easy to make, too.

I left out the optional olives, as I hate olives, but love olive oil.

Mint can be cheaply obtained from Asian or Indian groceries.  I bought an enormous mound for $2, enough to make this recipe 4x over.

Parsley is a great herb that Americans just don't appreciate.  I have probably harped on this before, but it tastes great and really makes a dish.  It's more assertive than cilantro and is about the same price.

I usually keep two kinds of olive oil around the house.  One is cheap and is for stir frying.  The other is more expensive and used for sauces and dressing.  Heating oil drives off much of the flavor components and expensive oil burns at a lower temperature.  In this recipe, I used good California oil.  I like California oil because there is a good chance that it isn't counterfit.  A lot of oil from Italy is either not olive oil or is bulk crap from another country.  California oil producers need to keep their quality high in order to compete on the world market, so there is no motivation to make crap.

I have changed the proportions in the recipe a bit.

Minty Green Sauce

2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley.
1/2 cup mint leaves
1/2 cup diced onion
4 Tbsp good quality olive oil
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
pepper

1) Puree vegetables in food processor until uniform
2) Add in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.  Mix and serve over whatever you want.

Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins

This is one of my mother-in-laws recipes and a favorite of my wife's as a kid during the colder months.  My mother-in-law made mini muffins, but I only have a regular size tin, so I make regular size ones.  I think this might be a bit of an improvement, as the muffins get a bit more of a crunchy outside due to being in the oven longer.  It is a basic recipe, but good.  I might try substituting mashed sweet potatoes or another mashed squash for the pumpkin.  Pumpkin is, after all, a squash.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
3/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup melted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

1) Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until just mixed.
2) Add to greased muffin tin or to cupcake cups.
3) Bake at 350 for ~30 minutes, until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Black walnuts

I think we have all seen and smelled black walnuts.  Here is one on my porch with the flesh still on:

In the Fall, they cover the ground under trees, slowly rotting and giving off that characteristic piney aroma.  I really like the aroma.  Inevitably there is a squirrel or ten in the neighborhood collecting them.  I've always more or less ignored them, but this year I decided to try to harvest some.  I mean, they are lying all over the ground.  Just pick them up and you've got free food.  Walnuts are tasty, right?

First thing to know, black walnuts have a very strong, distinctive taste.  It's not for everyone.  They taste rather like they smell, a bit like Pine-sol.  It's an acquired taste.  I hear that they taste good on things and when baked and I've gotten a bit of a taste for them, but it's been a slow process.  If you like retsina, the Greek wine with pine tar added, you might love black walnuts.

Second, they are a pain to get out of the shells.  They are too hard to use a nut cracker, so you need a hammer and a hard surface.  The nut doesn't come out easily, either.  You have to more or less obliterate the nut and harvest the nut piece that fall out.  The nut is kind of interwined in the shell.

Third, they take some time and effort to "process".  How do you do this?

1) You need to remove the outer fruit.  The fruit is actually pretty hard, so you need to cut it off with a pocket knife.  I just cut a circle and pulled the two halves apart.  See the two halves and the shell below:

You need to wear gloves when doing this, like the nitrile ones in the background.  Black walnut juice will stain everything, including your skin.  My glove broke and I had a zombie thumb for a week.

2) Wash the shells of remaining fruit.  I did this in my sink with a scouring pad.  It smells and the waste water is black.

3) Cure the nuts.  They say that you need to put the nuts in a porous bag, like an onion bag, and dry them for a month or two.  I plopped them in my food dessicator for 2 days.  It seems to have worked fine.

I probably won't harvest them again, but we'll see.  I find other foraged foods much more rewarding and delicious.

Pepperpot

I picked up a can of callaloo a couple of months back, but couldn't figure out what to do with it.  Finally, I just looked that the recipe on the can and decided to make something like that, with a lot of variations, as you will soon see.

So what is "callaloo"?  Well, it is basically Jamaican spinach.  I am pretty sure it is native to Jamaica, like allspice.  If you can't find any callaloo, just use frozen spinach.  My can contains a pound supposedly, so I think that is one package of spinach.

Ok, so what is "pepperpot"?  It's a Jamaican stew, broadly with meat, callaloo, scotch bonnet peppers, and a relatively thin broth.  As the name suggests, it can be quite hot.

The recipe is fairly broad, depending on the ingredients you have around the house.  I replaced okra with some German white asparagus I wanted to use up.  I used 1 quart of veggie broth and 1 quart of fish broth (via bonito bag).  If you are using beef, you might go light on the beef broth to avoid overwhelming the dish.  I replaced all the meat with salt fish.  I added Pickapeppa sauce as my salt and umami source, but you could use soy sauce or worchestershire sauce.  I found the broth tasty, but it needed more depth and sweetness and I achieved this with vinegar.  I started with my hot sauce vinegar, but realized that the dish was getting way too hot, so switched to regular white vinegar..

Salt fish is something that I have started to use more often.  It is a great way to preserve fish when freezing it.  Frozen fish tends to be mushy, but salt fish thaws out rather firm, so a much more pleasing texture.  You have to soak off all the salt, but that is no big deal.  Salt fish costs about the same as regular frozen fish.  Go for it.  I added the fish halfway through to cooking to avoid softening it too much.

Keep tasting the pepperpot as you cook and fish out the scotch bonnet (or habanero) when the desired heat is achieved.  If you are sensitive to heat, leave the pepper out and adjust the heat with hot sauce in the end.

If you use shrimp, add it in the last 15 minutes to avoid overcooking it.

Pepperpot

1 lb mild green (callaloo, spinach, etc)
1 lb meat, with bones for more flavor
6 okras, asparagus, carrots, or whatever
2 quarts broth or water
1 onion, chopped
1/3 tsp ground pepper
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 scotch bonnet or habanero pepper, stem removed
1/4 cup coconut milk or whole milk
1 tsp thyme
1 Tbsp soy sauce, Pickapeppa sauce, or Worchestershire sauce
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vinegar

1) Dump everything in a big pot except the vinegar
2) Bring to a boil and simmer 1h uncovered.  Check the heat level and remove the pepper when you wsih.
3) Add vinegar to taste.
4) Eat with corn bread, fried plantains, or whatever.

Fried plantains

Whenever we go out or order from a Caribbean or African restaurant, my wife always orders the plantains when they are available.  Who wouldn't?  They are sweet, slightly crispy, and delicious.  They are so popular that our local African restaurant frequently sells out.  How complicated can they possibly be to cook at home?  Well, not really complicated, but you need to know a couple of tips.

The main key is that the plantains need to be really ripe.  Plantains are basically firmer bananas.  Where a banana would basically liquify, the plantain keeps it's shape.  For some reason plantains seem to be sold really unripe, even more so than bananas and are somewhat more difficult to judge in terms of ripeness.  While bananas go from dark green and hard to bright yellow and soft, plantains turn from green to slightly yellow or to black and slightly softer.  The first time I tried to cook plantains, they weren't ripe enough and I ended up with basically banana flavored fried potatoes.  OK, but not exactly mouth watering.

I would recommend finding the ripest looking plantains, buy them, and put them in a brown paper back on the counter top for a week or so.  Toss in an apple for good measure.  Both the bag and the apple give off ethylene gas which helps to ripen the bananas.  My plantains didn't really change much in color, but after a week I opened one a little and tasted it.  It was quite sweet, like a firm ripe banana, so ready to go.  Plantains appear to have a much longer shelf life than bananas, so you have a lot of time.  Bananas seem to go from unripe to rotten in a couple of days, but not plantains.

I sliced the plantains up fairly thin and fried them in a combination of butter and canola oil.  I am sure any oil should work fine, just as long as you can get it pretty hot.  I found that my range heated to 8 out of 9 was a good temperature for frying.  Yours might vary.  It was a temperature where the plantains brown nicely over a couple of minutes without blackening.  Flip them over, cook them another couple of minutes, then remove.  Drain on paper towels.  They will soften a bit, but still easily keep their shape.

Remember to get the oil to the proper temperature before you add the plantains so that you don't stew them or have them soak up a ton of oil.  Hot oil doesn't get absorbed nearly as much as cool oil.  I usually start with the point where the oil has begun to smoke slightly.  Adding your plantains will cool the oil immediately and then you can tweak the temperature up or down to get proper frying.

Forgive the rotation of the picture, but here are the finished plantains.  Better than any I have ever had in a restaurant.  Even better cold than warm.

Easy Rice and Beans

This one goes out to my mother, who always complains that recipes take too long to prepare and require too much chopping.  This recipe requires minimal chopping and shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so to prepare.  There is one "unusual" ingredient, Recaito, but this should be available in any decent grocery store in your area in the Hispanic section.  It is a Puerto Rican cooking base and is super easy to use and stores in the fridge fine.  It is basically onion-cilantro paste, so healthy, though it might have a touch of MSG.  MSG, despite it's bad rep, has never been definitively linked to any actual adverse reactions.

Interestingly, on the left in the picture on the label is cilantro, and the right is culantro, also know as Mexican cilantro, though I have never actually seen in in a Mexican grocery.  It is "super" cilantro.

Rice and beans is so easy to cook and is plenty healthy.  It is a good way to use up whatever you got in the fridge.  Green seasoning that I published earlier would also work great in place of Recaito.  I used instant brown rice to speed things up.  It tastes fine.

Easy Beans and Rice

2 cans beans (any kind), drained and rinsed
1/4 cup Recaito
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small can chopped green chilis, undrained
1/2 Tbsp salt
3 cups cooked rice
1-2 Tbsp olive oil

1) Heat oil over medium heat in a pan
2) Fry the onion and garlic a few minutes, until softened
3) Add Recaito and fry for a few minutes, until aromatic
4) Add beans, chilis, rice, and salt and heat through.
5) Serve with hot sauce on the side.

Persimmon pudding

The promised persimmon pudding recipe.  I have no idea where I got it from, so I can't credit the inventor.  It is flipping good, as my wife would say, so not worth changing anything, except to lower the oven temperature and bake the pudding thinner.

Wild harvested American persimmons could be the tastiest in the world, but if you can't find any, you might be able to use Hachiya persimmons.  Fuyu are more apple-like, so might not pulp very well.

For the best taste, heat the pudding up before eating and top with loads of whipped cream.  The sugary fluffiness of the whipped cream blends perfectly with the flavor of the pudding.  Cold pudding out of the fridge is OK, but warm, it is out of this world.

For a fantastic dessert, this is not that terribly unhealthy.  It has a lot of fruit and only 1/2 cup of sugar.  And yes, as stick of butter, but one is better than two.

The recipe calls for 1 cup of nuts (pecans or walnuts).  I don't think I've ever added them.

Persimmon Pudding

2 cups persimmon pulp
4 eggs
1 stick butter, allowed to soften at room temperature about 30 minutes
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla (I used Penzey's Mexican, which is intense)

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon (I used cassia)
1/2 tsp nutmeg (freshly graded is best)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp allspice

1) Heat over to 350 oF.
2) Mix together the persimmon pulp, the eggs, butter, milk, and vanilla,  The butter will remain a little chunky, but this is fine.
3) In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices.
4) Add dry ingredients to wet in thirds.  Mix just enough to wet everything and it is relatively homogeneous.
5) Add nuts if you want
6) Bake in a greased glass dish, about 1.5 inches deep.  This comes to two pans for me.
7) Bake about 30 minutes, until a knife in the middle comes back clean and the pudding is solid.
8) Allow to cool a few minutes and taste.  It should be out of this world.

Persimmons

Now that pawpaw season is over, it is time for persimmons.  Typically persimmons are ready late in October, but they look like they are ready right now this year.  You snooze, you lose, so I gotta get out and pick them.

So what is a persimmon?  Basically, if Willy Wonka designed a fruit, it would be the persimmon.  It is tree candy - sweet and gooey.  So good.  Many people are familiar with Asian persimmons, the flat, firm, tomato-like Fuyu and the bigger, softer, Hachiya.  Both are yummy, but they tend to be expensive, especially Hachiya.  And why should I buy foreign persimmons when we have good old American ones growing in our woods?

 American persimmons are much smaller than Asian varieties, resembling orange cherry tomatoes.

Now the kicker with American persimmons is that if they are underripe, they are utterly inedible.  They produce a chemical that makes your mouth super dry.  It's hard to explain unless you've experienced it, but it is very off putting.  They reason for this evolutionarily is that the persimmon is protecting the fruit until the seeds are maximally ready.  This feature of persimmons puts a lot of people off, but it can be overcome.  Every persimmon you see here (and an equal number in an additional bag) is ripe and ready to eat.  How did I do this?  Easy.  Don't pick persimmons off the tree.  Only pick them off the ground, as the tree generally only drops ripe persimmons.  Now if you look at the persimmons I picked, they look a little dicey.  Some are kind of black, some shriveled, and all of them are mushy.  Normally when fruit looks like this, it is rotten, but it is just right for persimmons.  The bad ones are all black

Here is the persimmon pulp after pulping and my pulper (which I specifically bought for persimmons).  I got about 4 cups of pulp, enough for 2-3 batches of cooking. 

Here is the tree.  The bark has a characteristic alligator shape with roughly square blocks and white/orange in between the blocks.

 Here is a tree with a lot of unripe fruit.

I will post a recipe for persimmon pudding later, which is a fantastic use of persimmon pulp.

Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili

I really like Cincinnati chili and have for a long time, ever since I lived in Indianapolis about 7 years ago.  The sweet spiced chili is perfect on spaghetti.  My wife, however, doesn't eat meat, so I can't cook traditional Cincinnati chili with ground beef.  A couple of years back I found a vegan recipe that I have cooked a couple of times with lentils (ohmyveggies.com).  It's rather good and I was initially surprised, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that meat is actually not that big of a flavor component of  Cincinnati chili.  In my experiments in the past, I discovered that if you use beef broth, the chili comes out way too meaty tasting, too heavy.  Basically, you get umami overload.  Texas chili needs this, but Cincinnati chili not.  Cincy chili is much more focused on the spices, the cocoa, cinnamon, and clove in particular.  So vegetarian chili is quite possible.

The recipe I used was good, but not quite right.  It was too sweet and, while Cincy chili doesn't have a lot of umami, it still needs some and this chili was very low on umami.  So how do I address this?

First, sweetness.  Something I learned from experiments in the past is that Cincy chili doesn't need any onions.  Onions go on top raw, but not in the chili.  Onions are actually quite sweet and I think they were throwing off the flavor.  I eliminated them, added some garlic, and increased the lentils to compensate.  I also switch from apple cider vinegar to white vinegar.

Second, how to get umami.  Looking at a lot of Cincy chili recipes, they often used Worchestershire sauce.  Great source of umami.  I have some, but I thought I would switch things up and use Pickapeppa sauce, a Jamaican sauce that is similar.  I used a full tablespoon.  Initially it was a bit too much, but after cooking, everything seemed to blend together.  Soy sauce could also work here.

I am sure the character of your veggie broth will affect the chili.  I used my homemade, which I make from kitchen scraps (mostly onions, carrots, celery, garlic, ginger, with an occasional leak).

If you want it more Skyline-like, I would cut the Worchestershire sauce to 1/2 Tbsp and double the cinnamon and perhaps increase the cloves.

Vinegar is added in the end because acid inhibits the cooking of the lentils.  When I used to add it from the beginning, the lentils never really softened.

Vegetarian Cincinnati Chili

1 Tbsp Worchester sauce, Pickapeppa sauce, or soy sauce
1 Tbsp chili powder
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 bay leaf
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp paprika
1 Tbsp white vinegar
4 cups veggie broth
8 oz tomato sauce
1 lb lentils, rinsed
1/2 Tbsp salt


1) Add everything except the vinegar to a pot.
2) Bring to a boil and simmer about 30 minutes covered, until the lentils are firm-tender.
3) Add vinegar.
4) Serve over pasta 3 way, 4 way, 5 way, or whatever way.

Quick post about recipes and dried vs. canned beans

I got a post about Musamman curry coming up, but I thought I would post some quick thoughts about cooking in general in the meantime.

For a while, I vacillated between using dried vs. canned beans.  Canned beans sure are convenient.  Open the can, rinse the beans, plop them in your dish, and you are done.  Who could argue with that?  With dried beans, sometimes it seems like you have to cook forever before the beans get done.  If you are like me, sometimes you get impatient and settle for somewhat undercooked beans.  Why bother with dried ones?  Well, the answer is that if you go with canned beans, you lose a great ingredient - bean broth.  When you think about it, after the beans have cooked for a while, you have that yummy, thick, brown broth that has a lot of vitamins and flavor.  With canned beans, I always rinse the beans.  Maybe it is just me, but I don't trust the liquid in there.  It just seems kinda gross.  The precursor and critical component to many Mexican dishes is bean broth.

Using dried beans really isn't that much more difficult.  First, soak the beans overnight in salt water (oh, about 1 Tbsp/quart).  This will start the process of softening the beans.  Water alone isn't nearly as good as salt water.  The second way to speed up the process is to add some baking soda to what you are cooking, especially if there are tomatoes in the dish you are cooking.  Baking soda is basic and bases greatly accelerate the cooking of beans.  Tomatoes are acidic, so anathema to rapid cooking unless you counter with baking soda.  I usually go with around 1/4 tsp in the dish, so not much.  Using these steps, your beans will cook in 15-30 minutes, depending on the type.

The other point I wanted to make is, don't believe any recipe.  Be parsimonious when added strongly flavored ingredients - lime juice, chilies, cardamon, etc.  Once you add it, you can't take it back.  Even recipes from the cooks that I admire mostly sometimes include drunken sailor type additions of certain ingredients.  You can generally always add more later, but you can't take any out after you add it, due to entropy in action. 

Pawpaws

This is the the season for pawpaws in southern Ohio.  They grow all over the place, but very few people collect them.  The vast majority of people who grow up in Ohio have either never hear of them before or have heard of them, but never tasted them.

I love going out in the woods and collecting food.  A lot of people like their food from the supermarket, clean, wrapped up, and with a price tag, but not me.  The closer the food is to the earth it grows from, the better.  Going out in the woods and collecting food feels to me like getting to know my ancestors, reconnecting with the earlier humanity..

So what the heck is a pawpaw?  Well, I describe it as looking like a green potato that grows on trees.  The flesh ranges from white to bright yellow and tastes similar to banana custard or mango puree.  It is funny that the fruit is so variable.  You find some that have firm white flesh and they are pretty bland.  Others are really moist and oily and also not the best.  The really good ones are deep yellow and creamy, dessert in your hand.

I usually cook with pawpaws.  Even the best ones are not something I can eat a pile of, but they are great to use in any dish in place of banana.  I will frequently make pawpaw custard, pawpaw bread pudding, pawpaw cookies, and other goodies.  The flavor is far more complex than a banana with more spicy notes.

Here are some good recipes: http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/recipes.htm  

 Here is the inside of a good one.  There are a ton of really big black seeds that are surrounded by the yellow flesh.  Plop them in your mouth, suck the fruit off, and spit 'em out.

Here are the leaves of the tree.  The trees are in virtually every forest, but they don't typically have fruit.  If you bruise the leaf with your fingers, you get a bad aroma.  This is a positive ID for a pawpaw tree.

Pawpaw frequently grown in bunches, like bananas.

Here is a bowl of pawpaw pulp.  You can see the light and dark flesh from different fruits mixed together.  Pulping takes some time, as you have to remove the skin, then depulp the seeds.  I used my finger nail to break the membrane around the seed, then peel off the flesh.  I freeze the pulp and puree it before I cook with it.  Looks like scrambled eggs.  Pawpaws are messy.

Fried noodle nest

I've been out of town and haven't been cooking much that's interesting.  I did find a great technique over the weekend.

If you are like me, you eat East Asian (Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese) food fairly frequently.  I generally serve this cuisine on jasmine rice.  It works fine, but for a change, how about a fried noodle nest?  Just boil up some Asia noodles, drain them, and rinse them with water until they are no longer warm.  This will prevent them from cooking further and sticking together.  Spread the noodles out into separate "pillows".  I did 4 piles for 1lb of noodles. Pour off any excess water and let them dry maybe 30 minutes.  Add a couple of tablespoons of oil to the pan and heat just below the max setting.  I set my dial on 8 of 9.  When the oil gets good and hot, toss in a "pillow" and fry a couple of minutes without moving.  If the heat is too high, you will scorch the noodles.  If it is too low, they will more or less sit there.  You want the noodle to fry into a pancake basically.  Keep checking the edge of the noodles until the look done, then flip over.  Since the one side is fried into a contiguous chuck, the pillow retain its shape.  When the pillow is fried on both sides, remove it and drain on a paper towel.  Add some more oil and repeat.  The nest will be nicely crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.  I tossed some Vietnamese shrimp and snow pea dish on top and it was excellent.  The nests seem to keep OK in the fridge.
 
The noodles were Vietnamese rice stick variety and required soaking in hot water rather than actual boiling.

Easy and fun.

Jerk sauce, mark 1

I love, love, love jerk.  I love the spiciness, yes, but the flavor behind the spiciness is so rich, full of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, umami, garlic, and scallions.  So far, I've been relying on store bought jerk seasoning, Walkers or Grace or some other Jamaican brand.  A little goes a very long way (2 tsp/pound of food).  For some other marinade, you would expect to need 1/4 - 1/2 a cup, but jerk is just so intense in flavor.  But how do they do it?  I've been poking around Jamaican cookbooks, but they usually seem to have sucky recipes for jerk.  I don't get it.  Too much allspice and green onion and zero umami.  It tastes like your meat is seasoned with spicy lawn clippings - yuk!  So, I took the sucky recipe I had, looked at the ingredients on the bottle of jerk, and looked at some alternative recipes.  Now I got something a lot better.

First I needed some umami.  What is umami?  Umami is basically the "meaty" flavor you get from vegetarian ingredients, like mushrooms or tomato paste.  It's that rip sticking good flavor.  Two good sources of umami for jerk paste are soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce.  Even better than the latter is Pickapeppa sauce, which comes from Jamaica.  It's a bit thicker, so better for keeping the jerk thick.

Jerk isn't super acidic (it's not hot sauce), but a touch of acid helps bring everything together.  I like white vinegar, as it is the least sweet.  Other kinds might work fine.

Interestingly, I found that a lot of cinnamon and an addition of nutmeg brought out the flavor.  Using allspice, you're theoretically covering cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, but not really.  Allspice comes off as unpleasantly peppery at high doses.

Ginger is a big flavor component.  I didn't have it in there originally and it's vital

I will probably do some more refining.  The recipe doesn't replicate the bottled stuff, but it is still pretty good.

Jerk Sauce, Mark 1

15 scallions, chopped
4-6 scotch bonnet peppers, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp peeled, shredded ginger
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp Pickapeppa or worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1 cinnamon stick, finely ground
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 Tbsp allspice
2 Tbsp thyme
Salt to taste (should be relatively salty)

Blend everything together.  Thin with water until a thick paste is obtained.

Update Oct 2, 2014

 I made jerk chicken and compared with commercial paste.  My came back a bit grassier and milder, but still good.  I need more Pickapeppa sauce, I think

I need up upload a picture.

Beef Tibs

I had some extra beef in the freezer and I am always looking for new ways to consume berbere, so an obvious option was Beef Tibs.  This is a classic Ethiopian dish, basically beef in a thick, spicy berbere infused sauce.  Pretty simple.  The blend of butter, berbere, ginger, garlic, and onion is irresistible.

Like most of my cooking, I start with a recipe as a base and go from there.  I found a decent looking recipe on my new food app Yummy.  I liked it in that the beef is fried instead of boiled in the sauce, adding to the depth of flavor.

The first change that I made were in reducing the butter somewhat to improve the healthiness.  Butter makes everything good, but there is no reason to go overboard.  Ethiopians might also use spiced butter, niter kibbeh.  Basically this is clarified butter with spices added.  I don't have any and didn't really feel like making it.  The berbere adds more that enough flavor by itself.  I also doubled the amount of sauce.  The sauce is frequently the best part of a dish, but most recipes give you too little.  I like to have tons to pour over rice or dip bread into.  Sauce is cheap.  Finally, I tweaked the cooking of the beef so that it comes out juicy rather than dried out.

I used to shred ginger and mince garlic, but I find that the flavors are too easily cooked away, so I have gone to coarsely chopping them with much better results.

Beef Tibs

1/4 cup unsalted butter
4 cups chopped onions
2 Tbsp diced, peel ginger
1/4 cup diced garlic
1/4 cup berbere
Kosher salt
1 lb beef, diced into big chunks, as for making a kebab
1 Tbsp canola oil
1 tsp lemon juice

1)  Melt butter and heat until at frying temperature, but being careful not to heat it too high and burn it.
2) Turn heat to medium and fry onions, ginger, garlic, and berbere.  Be careful not to burn the spices or garlic.
3) Heat until the onions are fully softened and have incorporated the berbere.
4) Allow to cool slightly and puree in a food processor.
5) Salt the beef chunk liberally with kosher salt
6) Heat oil until just smoking in frying pan.
7) Fry the beef, searing the outside, but keeping juicy and not full cooked in the middle.  This should take a minute or two, so you need to work quickly.
8) Add the onion paste back in the pan.  Rinse any remaining paste into the pan with a little water.
9) Simmer a couple of minutes to finish cooking the beef.  Don't go overboard, as the beef will get tough.
10) Serve over rice or scoop up with thin bread, like a pita or naan.

BBQ in Cincinnati

I was pretty excited when Cincinnati magazine came out with an article about barbeque.  I have grown to love BBQ lately, but I almost always seem to be disappointed.  Well established food trucks, tried and true restaurants with a long pedigree, fancy places, run down places, it just seems like restaurants just can't get their BBQ right.  Too fatty, flavorless, insipid sauces, too mushy, no meat, niggardly portions, just not right.  So I thought great, finally some people who know food have gone around and picked out the very best places.  I've been hitting a lot of the places on the list the last couple of months and, unfortunately, like so many restaurant reviews, they completely miss the mark.  Half of the barbeque rated as the tip top of Cincinnati has been mediocre at best and down right awful at worst.  The last place I went the ribs were completely flavorless and about the consistency of mashed potatoes.  Everyone likes tender ribs, but the meat should at least resemble meat, not mush.  I was so excited when I saw the wood piled up near the door, too.

So far, I have found two that I would visit again.

1) Eli's (elisbarbeque.com): Yes, everyone else in Cincinnati knows this place is awesome, so no earthshaking discovery here.  The pulled pork is spectacular, full of flavor, tender, and moist.  So, so good, and not expensive.  Good portion too.  The sides are top notch.  They only  have one sauce, but it is full of flavor and delicious.  So many places in Cincy have a whole array of sauces.  They all suck, but you have a lot of choices of suckiness.  I am perfectly content with one good one.  The ribs at Eli's I found OK, but not spectacular.  Maybe I need to try them again.  They were tasty, but just not like the pulled pork.

2) Alabama Que alabama-q.com:  I only went once, but the smoked turkey tips were great.  They were super lean and quite flavorful.  Semi-healthy BBQ.  The portions were quite large and only $8.  They make their own real fruit teas, which is a bit bonus.  My wife liked her smoked salmon.  Unlike other places, their range of sauces are actually pretty good and the spicy is very spicy.  You have been warned.  The neighborhood is shall we say gentrifying, so a mix of poverty and young money.  The sides seemed pretty decent (had collards and candied yams - very good).  They have tables, but take out is the way to go.

3) B and W (corner of Kennedy and Montgomery in Kennedy Heights) Nice ribs, good firm texture to the meat, some grilled crispiness, relatively meaty, super-hot sauce was a good balance of heat and sweetness.  Fairly broad menu.  Also have turkey tips that I haven't yet tasted along with Jamaican dishes.  This is another take out place

Ok, not great:

J and W Bar-B-Que (www.yelp.com/biz/j-and-w-bar-b-que-cincinnati):  OK ribs, friendly people

Disappointments:
Pit to Plate (love the name, but ribs expensive, mediocre)
Jim Dandy's (overcooked, flavorless)
Smoq (too expensive, mediocre food on all levels)
Food truck in Madisonville east of Red Bank (need to get the name)

Kala chana, Green chana, and the George Foreman grill

I've been cooking a bunch this weekend, but mostly recipes that I am trying for the first time out of cookbooks, so I don't  have any recipes to report.  I do have a few things to talk about, though.

First, I just discovered two great new ingredients - kala chana and green chana.  "Kala" means black in Hindi and "chana" means chickpea or garbanzo bean.  There is also chana dal, which is a lentil unrelated to the chickpea.  I make a decent amount of chickpeas, as they are a pretty common bean used in India, the Middle East, Europe, and Mexico, among other places. They're good.  They're meaty, they're tasty, they're cheap, and they are easily available.  I can only take so many, though.  Kala chana and green chana are two different version with a bit more flavor that are used in India.  I haven't yet tried the kala chana, but I made some green chana last weekend and it tasted a bit like the cross between a black bean and a chickpea.  A bit firmer, a bit more bean flavor.

They are available from Indian groceries dried and frozen.  Frozen is a bit quicker, though I would guess more expensive (I didn't check).  I bought dried.  I simmered them about 45 minutes after adding 1/4 tsp of baking to accelerate cooking.  I saw a reference to pressure cooking them.  Frankly, simmering 45 minutes is a pretty easy task and I don't own a pressure cooker.

Don't be intimidated by Indian groceries.  They smell funny and they have a lot of stuff you've never heard of.  Don't worry about it.  They got a lot of stuff you have heard of (kidney beans, chickpeas, cumin, coriander, mangoes, etc).  Look around, grab what looks interesting, and pay.  Often their products can be a lot cheaper, fresher, and better than what you find in the grocery store (though not necessarily).

Incidentally, if you are looking for regular chickpeas in an Indian grocery, they are called "Kabuli" chana.  I guess Indians associate them with Afghanistan for some reason.

The other topic on my mind is the George Foreman grill.  I remember when these were big and I still use mine, but I think that I will be putting it away for good.  It is really a pretty stupid device.  It is just a grill shaped hot plate.  It does a shitty job cooking just about anything.  I tossed some veggie burgers on it this weekend and it basically just slowly dried them out.  Stupid.  I ended up just pan frying them and they turned out really good.  The George Foreman just doesn't get hot enough to induce a proper Mailliard reaction, so you don't really get any roasting.  It goes back to that old Burger King commercial about how Burger King cooks their burgers over a flame instead of a hot plate like McDonald's.  A hot plate isn't a grill.  The food gets cooked, but in a bland, flavorless way.  Might as well just throw it in the microwave.  I am pretty wary of the non-stick coating on the George Foreman as well.  Non-stick was invented by Satan to slowly poison us through our food.  Evil, evil stuff. 

Jamaican Brown Stew Fish

This weekend I tried out a recipe for Brown Stew Fish, a common Jamaican recipe.  The recipe comes from the Jamaican cookbook I borrowed from my brother, "Jamaican Cooking" by Lucinda Scala Quinn.  It turned out so well, I really don't recommend too many improvements. Good, good stuff.

A fundamental skill for this recipe is frying fish.  Frying fish is tricky because there are so many ways to fail - burning it, leaving it raw in the middle, obliterating the fish, explosions of hot oil, etc.  The first time I tried to fry battered fish, all the batter fell off and I ended up with a mess.  The two key factors are 1) dry the fish as much as possible before frying and 2) get the oil really hot before adding the fish.  On point 1), drying the fish limits the addition of water to the pan.  Water causes the oil to explode and you run the risk of injuring yourself.  Basically, the oil is 350 oF, but water boils at 212 oF, so as soon as water hits the pan, it turns to water vapor, greatly increasing in volume, exploding hot oil in all directions - very bad.  Water also cools down the oil, preventing good frying, even boiling your fish instead of frying it..  Finally, wet breading will readily fall off, defeating the purpose of having breading in the first place.  On point 2), having hot oil cooks the fish quickly, solidifying it before it has a chance to fall apart and limiting the time in the pan limits the amount of oil that the fish picks up.  Nobody wants greasy Filet-o-Fish..

I left the scotch bonnet pepper whole.  This way I didn't need to touch the pepper too much (and later touch my eyes-ouch) and it was easy to remove at the end.  Even one pepper for the relatively brief cooking time was enough to give it a distinct spiciness.

I really liked adding vinegar based hot sauce in the end.  The broth was delicious without it, but I think it added an additional depth.  The hot sauce I prepared a couple of weeks ago worked great.  Tabasco or Franks would also do the job.

The recipe called for 3lbs of fish.  I used 2 and even one would be fine.  With two pounds, the broth barely covered the fish.  It sort of depend whether you want to emphasize the brown stew or the fish.

I used swai and perch as the fish.  Both worked fine.  Swai is a catfish from SE Asia.  I thought it might be too mushy, but it worked great.

Make sure to thaw the fish thoroughly before cooking.  This will get all the water out and allow you to cook the fish all the way through without leaving it raw in the middle.

 Caribbeans like to rinse meats with citrus fruit before cooking.  I think this is a waste of a lime and in the case of chicken, it is a good way to give yourself salmonella.

Fun fact: Allspice originates and is grown almost exclusively in Jamaica.  All the allspice that people use in cuisines throughout the world come from Jamaica.

Jamaican Brown Stew Fish
1-2 lbs fish filets
vegetable oil
1.5 onions, sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
6 roma tomatoes, diced
1 scotch bonnet or habanero chili, stem chopped off
1/2 tsp allspice
1/3 cup chopped flat leaf parsley, chopped
2 cups water
1/2 Tbsp salt
black pepper to taste
1/4 cup vinegar based hot sauce (optional)

1) Thaw fish completely and pat dry with paper towels.  Cut the fish into pieces.
2) Add oil to a pan sufficient to cover the bottom completely and heat it until it just starts to smoke.  I use a meat thermometer to monitor my progress.  Once it maxes out, I know I am on my way.
3) Fry the fish ~3 minutes on each side.  I should get nicely browned a slightly crispy.  Keep monitoring the heat so the fish continues to cook quickly, but doesn't burn.  Each time you toss another piece on, the oil cools off quickly.
4) Drain the fish on paper towels.
5) Discard the oil and add add 1-2 Tbsp fresh oil and heat over medium oil.
6) Add onions, garlic, tomatoes, chili, allspice, and parsley.
7) Crank up the heat a bit and stir fry one minute.
8) Add water, salt, pepper, and fish.
9) Bring to a boil over high heat, then cover, turn down the heat and simmer 10-15 minutes.
10) Toss in optional hot sauce and eat up.

Tomatillo salsa (like at Mazunte)

So my only restaurant review so far has been Mazunte.  They take a while and I feel like I need to go somewhere a couple of times before I can write an accurate review.  In the meantime, I've been trying to reproduce the tomatillo salsa from Mazunte.  I knew it was very simple, most likely uncooked, and it is super tasty, so I figured that I could do the same.  I poked through my Mexican cookbook (Marge Poore's "1000 Mexican Recipes") and looked at all the tomatillo recipes and found the simplest one requiring no cooking and whipped it up.  Sure enough, it tastes pretty much the same and only took about 15 minutes to make.  I found that it needs a touch more salt to bring out the flavors.  I considered increasing the amount of chilies, but one is actually quite enough.  I think Mazunte's is a bit lighter on the cilantro, so I entered a range in the recipe, depending on how much you like cilantro.  It might be fine without it if you don't like it.  Increase the garlic if you want.  I found that the flavors really came together after aging for an hour or so.  The cilantro flavor mellowed.

Tomatillos - you should be able to find them in your grocery, but if not, there is almost certainly a Mexican grocery near you.  Mexicans are pretty much everywhere in America nowadays, even in small towns, and they need a place to buy the ingredients for the food they eat at home.  Tomatillos are husk-tomatoes, green tomatoes with a think wrap around the outside.  Tomatoes come from the New World and it isn't a bit surprise that there are a tremendous number of varieties.  Tomatillos are a little sticky, so definitely need to be rinsed before use.  Otherwise, they are less juicy than tomatoes and have a nice mildly sour taste to them.  You'll swear that these is vinegar in this salsa, but all the sourness is from the acidity of the tomatillo.

Fresh Tomatillo Salsa (like at Mazunte)

1 lb tomatillos, husked, rinsed, and coarsely chopped
2 Tbsp chopped onion
1 serrano chili
1 clove garlic
1/4-1/2 cup cilantro
3/4 tsp salt

1) Through everything in a food processor and blend to a uniform sauce
2) Put in the fridge for 1h.

I wouldn't keep it too long, as it is so fresh.  It is so yummy, I am sure you will eat it up in 24h.

Pasta sauce with mushrooms and sausage

I've had a recipe for a pasta sauce that I have propagated for years, modifying slowly as I go along.  I will typically make a big pot and put the sauce in the freezer to thaw and eat whenever I run out of food. 

Something I have worked with lately is tailoring the herbs to proper implementation.  Some herbs, like basil, are delicate and not conducive to long simmering.  They are something that you add at the end.  For people who brew, this is like added aroma hops at the end of the boil.  If you continue to boil, you lose all the delicate aromas.  Other herbs, like oregano and thyme, are hardy and the flavor components are oil soluble.  These herbs you want to fry in oil and simmer a long time to get their full flavor.  Once again, they are your bittering hops if you are a brewer.  You need a long boil to fully extract their flavor.

Given that basil is so delicate, dried basil is more or less a waste of money.  The drying process kills pretty much all the flavor of basil.  Use fresh where you can. Use your dried basil to fertilize your garden.

Chili paste really gives this pasta sauce zing.

Pasta Sauce with Mushrooms and Sausage

1lb Italian sausage (I prefer hot)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup diced onion
8 oz sliced mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, sliced
28oz diced tomatoes
48oz tomato puree
1 Tbsp oregano
1 tsp thyme

1 tsp salt
1 tsp vinegar, such as balsamic or red wine
2 Tbsp chili paste
some chopped basil
black pepper to taste

1) Cook the sausage and drain off the grease.
2) Slice the sausage
3) Cook onions, mushrooms, garlic, oregano, and thyme with olive oil until softened, about medium heat
4) Add sausage, tomatoes, puree, salt, vinegar, and chili paste and simmer for 2-3 hours, until thick.  It will start to sputter when it reaches the right consistency.
5) Add basil to taste. 

Hot sauce vindaloo: updated

Ah, vindaloo.  My favorite Indian recipe and a recipe typically made very traditionally by restaurants, so very worth making yourself.  It doesn't take more than a half an hour (excluding marinading time).

I love Indian food and cook it all the time.  It is generally healthy, as it includes a lot of veggies and not a lot of animal fat.  I feel a bit like an emperor when I eat it, as it includes heavy amounts of spices that previously were outrageously expensive and only royalty could afford them (at least in Europe).  The spice trade literally drove the European exploration and colonization of the world.  The Dutch, Portuguese, English, and French established towns all over Africa and Asia with the sole purpose of provisioning ships on the way to and from the Far East to trade for spices.  Columbus braved the Atlantic not to explore, but to find a shorter route to acquire spices.  Cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, and nutmeg were the heavy hitters.  It's funny now that you see pepper on every table everywhere nowadays.

One factor that makes Indian food so special is the influence of foreign nations and foods.  From the north came Turkic muslim invaders (the Moguls) and from the coasts came Europeans.  I think most people know that India was ruled by Britain for many years, but few people know that Portugal had a colony on the west coast until the 1961.  This colony, Goa, gave rise to a wonderfully delicious blend of Portuguese and Indian cooking with the best known dish being vindaloo, combining Portuguese vinegar and pork with Indian chilis and spices.

A lot of restaurants will add cream and butter to their vindaloo and go easy on the vinegar and chilies.  While this is yummy, it really isn't authentic.  Vindaloo is vinegar, pork, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, garlic, and lots of dried chilies. This makes for a light, intensely flavored sauce.

In the recipe below I am replacing the vinegar and chilies with hot sauce.  I have adapted it from Raghavan Iyer's recipe in "660 Curries", my go to book for Indian cooking.  It is an awesome book.  His recipe calls for vinegar and 8 dried cayenne or Thai chilies if you want to reproduce it.

Note: vinegar will readily remove the seasoning from your pan, so be ready for this.  Typically, the next time I stir fry anything, the seasoning is reapplied, so I don't worry too much about it.  I just have to remember that my pan won't be functioning optimally.  If you are concerned about this, use a non-reactive or non-stick pan.  I would avoid cast iron unless you want a mega-supplement of iron.

Hot Sauce Vindaloo

1/2 cup hot sauce
1 Tbsp cumin, ground
1 Tbsp peeled and shredded ginger (I use a cheese grater)
8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 cinnamon stick, ground
1 lb diced pig flesh
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 Tbsp cooking oil, such as canola
2 Tbsp cilantro, finely chopped

1) Mix together cinnamon, hot sauce, cumin, ginger, salt, turmeric, and garlic.
2) Blend pork and sauce and allow to marinade 30 minutes to overnight.
3) Heat oil over high heat
4) Fry the pork and marinade until the liquid is cooked off, ~10 minutes. I play with with the heat here and keep stirring.  At first, I crank up the heat to get rid of the liquid, then turn it down when I get close.  Be careful to just get a crust at the bottom of the pan and to turn your crust into ash.
5) Deglaze the pan with 1/2 cup of water, bring to a boil, and simmer until the pork is tender, ~15 minutes.
6) Add cilantro and stir to mix.
7) Served over long grain rice, like basmati.  You might need a lot of rice to temper the heat of the dish.

Verdict: It is good and tastes about right, but not as spicy as vindaloo usually is, even though my hot sauce is pretty hot.  Next time, I might try some death sauce and see how it tastes.

Hot sauce

I love hot food.  The hotter it is, the better the food, thus I have a lot of interest in hot sauce.  Now hot sauce is pretty cheap and there are a million varieties, but it is fun to try to make stuff at home.  Also, I keep eyeing the bags of Scotch Bonnet peppers at the Caribbean grocery and thinking what I could do with them.  One or two are easy to use.  20 not so much, except via hot sauce.

So the last time I tried to do this, I used apple cider vinegar.  Poor choice.  It was too tangy and sweet.  Some people like sugar and fruit in their hot sauce, but I like salt, vinegar, garlic and lots of heat.  Otherwise, the hot sauce was Trini-style, with chado beni (similar to cilantro), mustard, and two heads of garlic.  The garlic was actually worse than the peppers.  Raw garlic burn my tummy like the dickens.  It needed a couple of weeks to mellow before it was edible.

I kept the sauce in a mason jar, which was a bad idea as well.  The sauce stuck to the lip of the jar, dried, and got gross.  Much better would be to put it in a tapered jar.

This time I am started with a recipe from my brother's Jamaican cookbook.  It's a bit odd and I plan to split it in half and modify one half.  I am not sure why you don't puree the veggies, but we'll see how it turns out.  At 5 days, it is actually turning pretty good, if colorless.

Basic Hot Sauce:

1 carrot, finely diced
1 white onion, finely diced
4 Scotch bonnet or habanero chilies, thinly sliced
2 cups white vinegar
2 cloves garlic, pressed

1) Put everything in a jar.
2) Age one week, agitating once in a while to mix.

Day 5.  Still basically colorless.  A little cloudy from the minced garlic.

Day 7.  Filtered off the solids.  Cloudy yellow.

I tried to puree the vegetables, but they really didn't liquify.  It's kinda gross to have hot sauce with a bunch of debris at the bottom, so I just tossed it.  When I made my Trini hot sauce, I was able to get a pretty homogeneous sauce, so I suspect that soaking the veggies makes them less willing to puree.  No matter.  Interesting, while perusing Jungle Jim's, I noticed some hot sauce that looked just like mine - clear.  Some of the color might just be cosmetic.

The flavor is pretty good, with very hot pepper flavor and rich vinegar bite in balance.  I considered adding some mustard to some of it to make it Trini, but I haven't done that yet.  What do I do with a cup of hot sauce now?  Next post, the answer.

B and B

This is one of my wife's favorite recipes.  It is quick, cheap, and delicious.  We discovered this dish at Yat's, a now chain restaurant centered in Indianapolis.  They have a great selection of cajun food cheap.  There dishes are great vehicle for hot sauce, which I love.

So the dish is black beans with caramelized corn and red pepper.  The first "B" I guess stands for "Black Beans", but I am not honestly sure what the second "B" stands for, but it is "B and B".

Part of the key to the flavor is caramelizing the corn.  The controlling factors are moisture and heat level.  I have always used canned corn, but frozen or fresh might work just as well (or better).  Canned corn is of course packing in water, so you need to do a decent job of draining the corn and letting it sit a bit in the sieve to let it drip through.  You are never going to get it all out, so you need to boil off the rest.  Don't be timid with the heat.  I usually crank it up to one notch from max and that gets rid of the water quick.  Max on my stove is killer and I try to avoid it unless there is no risk of scorching.

One the corn is dry, modulate the heat so that the corn start to brown a little.  Don't baby it, but don't get impatient.  You don't want it black.  The corn should deepen in color as the white sugar in the corn turns to brown caramel.

Yes, there is a decent amount of butter in this.  There's no meat, so it is still pretty healthy.

The milk can be switched out with heavy cream.  Skim might work, but they sauce will be a little thin.  Try some red beans, black eyed peas, or pinto beans for a change.  If you don't like spicy, switch the cayenne to paprika.  Mmm.  Paprika.

B and B

4 Tbs Butter (half a stick)
2 cans sweet corn, drained
2 Tbs brown sugar
2 cans black beans, drained
1 red pepper, chopped
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 Tbs kosher salt
pepper to taste

1) Melt the butter over medium high heat.  Be careful not to burn the butter
2) Add the corn and boil off the liquid
3) Fry 5-10 minutes, modulating heat and stirring to caramelize the corn
4) Add brown sugar and fry 2 more minutes.
5) Add black beans on red pepper and fry 2 minutes
6) Add milk, cayenne, salt, and pepper.
7) Heat to boiling, then simmer until the sauce is properly thick, around 2-3 minutes
8) Serve over rice.  Add hot sauce as you wish.

I'll add some pictures next time I make it.

Basic sausage and vegetables recipe

 This is I think the only recipe that I learned from my mother.  It is super simple and tastes spectacular and is really pretty healthy.  It is a great way to use up extra potatoes and carrots, which I always seem to have around

The big key is the yin and yang of moisture.  Too much moisture and everything turns out mushy and too little and the veggies don't soften.  Remove the lid if things get a bit too moist and cook off the moisture.  Also, you want to add the pepper at the end.  Otherwise, it turns to goo.  I leave the potatoes fairly large.  They take a while to cook, but I like the big chunks.

Sausage and Vegetable Stir Fry

1 lb smoked sausage, sliced
5 potatoes
3-4 carrots
1 onion
2-3 garlic cloves
1/2 tbsp seasoned salt
1/2 pepper (red, green, yellow)
1/4 tsp rosemary (optional)
2 tablespoons oil (olive, canola)

1) Chop and peel the veggies.
2) Heat oil to medium-high
3) Toss in the veggies and sausage except for the pepper.  Add season salt and rosemary
4) Cover the pot and fry and stir until the veggie begin to soften and a brown crust forms on the bottom of the pan
5) Add two tablespoons of water to deglaze the pan.  Stir to incorporate, cover, and cook until nearly done
6) Add the pepper and cook another couple of minutes, until the pepper has softened, but is still crispy.

Mexican Food and Gazpacho

I think a lot about food origins.  As I make guacamole, I think, āhuacamolli from the Aztec language of Nahuatl.  I think avocado - from Mexico, onions - from all over, chilies - from Mexico, cilantro - from south Asia, but equivalents exist in Mexico, lime juice - from east Asia, and salt.  Seems like we have something that is pretty traditional that we could have eaten centuries ago, assuming the lime juice is substituted for some other acid, such as vinegar, which was available to all cultures.

So I've been cooking Mexican this week and I realized that Mexican and Middle Eastern cooking are very similar.  First, the ingredient lists line up very well.  Cumin, citrus juices, peppers, chickpeas, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, cilantro, etc.  Second is the focus on freshness.  Raw tomatoes, herbs, vegetables, and fresh crumbly cheeses (feta and queso fresco) are staples of the the cuisines.  Modern Mexican is even beginning to use a lot of olive oil, which is produced out in Baja California.  It is funny that the Mexicans have adopted Middle Eastern ingredients and the Middle Easterners have adopted Mexican ingredients until they both kind of met in the middle.  It is very odd to think of Sichuan, Indian, and Thai cuisines without chili peppers, but until the Europeans hauled them out of Mexico a few centuries back, none of these cuisines were spicy, unless you count black pepper as "spicy", which I wouldn't.  You can only incorporate so much black pepper until the meal become unpalatable (and ridiculously expensive in the days before industrial agriculture).

It is unfortunate that Mexican food has been dominated by "package" presentation.  Everything is wrapped in some fashion, whether it be burritos, tacos, tamales, enchiladas, empanadas, etc.  I for one don't generally make "package" food, as it doesn't really keep that well, getting quickly soggy.  Fortunately, it doesn't have to be this way.

It being summer, I was dying for some gazpacho and what better source for a gazpacho recipe than the homeland of tomatoes - Mexico.  I optimized this recipe from Marge Poore's 1,000 Mexican recipes.  Use "good" tomatoes and not the ones strip mined from Texas that you buy during off-seasons.  These are flavorless.  I used Romas, but farmer's market ones would be even better.


Mexican Gazpacho

2 lbs fresh tomatoes
1/2 cucumber, seeded and peeled
1 celery rib, chopped
2 tbsp chopped onion
1-2 minced garlic cloves
1 diced jalapeno
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
12oz tomato juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt or to taste

1) Put everything in food processor and puree to a liquid
2) Refrigerate until cold.

Quick dumplings

Just back from vacation, so I haven[t been cooking much, but I have a very easy recipe that I just made today.  It is not uncommon that I end up with a soup that is mostly broth.  While yummy, it doesn't fill you up.  An easy way to turn it into a more filling meal is to add dumplings.  These won't take more than a couple of minutes and don't require any sort of skill.

Quick Dumplings:

1.25 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup water

1) Mix all the ingredients in a bowl until relatively homogeneous.
2) Tear off dumpling size chunks and add to boiling soup/broth
3) Simmer 20 minutes while covered.

The dumplings should poof up a bit and firm up.  Yummy.

Hummus

I am not sure why, but virtually every time I am at a potluck and someone brings hummus, it isn't very good.  It fails on about every level.  It's dry and bland and usually the person leaves with a ton left over.  I am baffled, because really good hummus takes at most 10 minutes to make and is pretty foolproof.  I think there must be a lot of bad recipes online.

So some people turn hummus into a complicated dish, soaking dried beans until the texture is just right, removing the skins, pan frying the beans, etc.  None of this is necessary for good hummus and is way, way too much work.  Canned beans work fine.  Hummus should be a volume dish.  You make a ton, you eat a ton, you make more.

This is a recipe I have used for a while.  Feel free to play with the amounts a bit.  I have jacked up the tahini, as this is key.  Stir the tahini to reincorporate the oil before adding.

Hummus

1 16oz can chickpeas (garbanzo beans, chana)
1/4 cup liquid from can of chickpeas
4 Tbsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp tahini (or more)
2 cloves garlic, put through garlic press or finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1) Drain chickpeas, saving the liquid
2) Put everything in a food processor along with 1/4 cup of chickpea liquid.
3) Run food processor for a couple of minutes, until the desired texture is obtained.  I like mine a little chunky, but I think most people like it creamy.


When serving, make a well in the middle of the hummus and fill with olive oil.  It should keep for a few days in the fridge.

Easy veggie broth

Cooking mostly vegetarian food, I frequently have to switch out chicken broth or beef broth with veggie broth.  This means that I go through a lot of veggie broth, so I make it pretty regularly (including yesterday).  For a while I was looking for the perfect veggie broth recipe, but my sister-in-law turned me on to an easy trick.  Instead of wasting money (and perfectly good vegetables) on veggie broth, just save up your veggie scraps in the freezer.  When the bag gets full, dump it in the crock pot with some water and turn it on all day.  Filter it off and plop it in the freezer.  I used to compost all my used veggies, so I never thought of this, but I had to leave my house, so no more composting for me.

I tend to include a lot of celery, onion roots, and carrot peelings (the holy trinity of French cooking).  I tend to avoid potato peelings and broccoli.  The former tastes a bit like dirt and the latter is too strongly flavored.  Tomatoes are excellent.  For seasoning, I will add a tablespoon or two of corned beef seasoning.  I have a ton of it and it contains some good spices for broth (coriander, pepper, allspice, bay leaves).  I will season with salt to taste in the end, usually a half a tablespoon or so.  Keeps in the freezer indefinitely.  Easy and makes enough for a long while.  

Matbucha

Matbucha is basically Middle Eastern salsa which you eat with pita bread.  It is a close rival in terms of popularity with hummus.  I got introduced to this dish through The Pita House in Bexley, OH when we lived up there.  The owner was a Palestinian from Jerusalem.  When we moved away, I wanted to figure out how to make it myself and scanned a lot of recipe's.  I found Tori's to be excellent and I will post the link below. I brought this to an Xmas potluck at work last year and had two people ask me for the recipe.  I've considered trying to vary kind of canned tomato.  Most canned tomatoes contain calcium chloride, which helps to preserve the texture of the tomatoes, but in this case, I want the tomatoes to disintegrate.  It's not pico de gallo.   It's salsa.

It is amazing how much the flavor changes from when it is piping hot to when it is cold.  It interacts with the tongue completely differently.  Try it yourself. 

This is the recipe that I will be bringing to a group potluck this weekend.

http://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/2012/04/matbucha/

Update:

I wasn't happy with the texture using canned diced tomatoes.  The tomato chunks just didn't soften during the long cooking.  I would definitely go back to canned tomatoes without calcium chloride. I think stewed lack this, but check the label.  Or use fresh.  Just make sure they are good tomatoes and not green tomatoes strip mined in Mexico and ripened on the truck ride up to your grocery store.

Mulberry season is here

Mulberry season is once again upon us in SE Ohio.  I love find food outside in the woods, be it mushrooms, fruit, or nuts.  Plucking food off a tree or bush instead of opening a package or seeing a huge mountain on a grocery shelf gives the food a reality.  For all you can tell from the grocery store, food is synthesized in a lab or strip mined somewhere.  There is also the pleasure of identifying edible plants from inedible ones.  The reward is the food.

Below is a picture of a small mulberry tree (alas with no fruit).  They have very characteristic leaves, resembling mittens.  It is pretty easy to find a producing mulberry tree.  Look for the enormous purple stain under it.  I see them over sidewalks and bike paths a lot.  They are great raw, but make good pies as well.  Trees are pretty variable.  In full sun, the berries tend to dry out and in full shade, you don't find many berries.  The perfect berry is sweet, soft, and tangy.  They are basically tree-raspberries.  The white mulberry is used to grow silk worms, but the red mulberry is for eating.

Below is a picture of the actual berries:

Rum punch

So I had a cookout last weekend and wanted to bring something yummy and alcoholic.  I tend to drink mostly beer (homebrewed and commercial) and a little wine, but my wife convinced me to start making margaritas a couple of months back, which got me thinking about mixed drinks.  I've off and one heard references to whiskey punch in Irish song/literature, which sounds pretty delicious.  Even better seems rum punch, made with tropical fruit juice, some citrus, and of course rum.  When I made it last weekend, I made it too weak (in my defense, I brought the bottle of rum with for people to strengthen it up).  I added a cup of rum, which seems like a lot, but when it is diluted 12x in juice, it comes to 40%/12 = 3.25% alcohol (beer is ~5%).  So I was at Jungle Jim's on Friday and had the opportunity to load up again on tropical juices.  This time I made it right!

Warning, this goes down way too easily.

3 cups mix tropical juices (I used guava, mango, and pineapple.  Check the Mexican section of the grocery)
1/4 cup lime juice or to taste
2 cups rum

Mix and drink.  Don't plan on doing anything demanding after you start drinking, because you probably won't be very productive.

Restaurant review: Mazunte

I think people have different philosophies when they go out for dinner.  A lot of people I think want to be indulged.  They looks for something deliciously unhealthy, a massive plate loaded with  salt, fat, sugar, and carbs, all the things that our bodies crave.  Most restaurants cater this this philosophy.  It makes for happy customers and it doesn't required great cooking.  You can deep fry, salt up, and drown in cheese just about anything and it will taste good.  This isn't what I look for, however.  I am always looking for a restaurant where they cook better than me, where the food is "real", that is prepared from scratch with raw materials, beans, chopped vegetables, vinegar, spices, and a little bit of oil.  It is hard to find places like this, but Mazunte is definitely one.

Mazunte Taqueria
5207 Madison Road Suite 100
Cincinnati, OH 45227
Phone: 513-785-0000
http://mazuntetacos.com/

Here is the menu.  It is primarily tacos of different permutations, but has some choices beyond these. 

Here is the restaurant.  It is very small, so I recommend getting there early.  They are expanding soon, which should hopefully alleviate some of the peak hours crowding.  The kitchen is to the right here where you can watch them make your food.  There are some tables to the left, but not that many.  They also do carryout, so you can call a head and pick up your order.

In front you can see serve yourself margarita, punch, and fruit juices.  The margarita is spectacular, which heavy emphasis on the lime juice and citrus (Triple Sec probably).  I recommend splitting one, as it is very strong.

Here is the salsa bar to the left (sorry about the focus).  All you can eat chips and salsa for $1.50.  The chips are made at the restaurant and they seem to alternate between blue and yellow corn.  The chips are the size of a small frisbee and delicious.  They have four salsas, a roasted tomato, a tomatillo, pico de gallo, and a hot chipotle.  The salsas are fairly basic and fresh.  I could probably go for a little more cilantro flavor in them, but that is just my preference.

Here are the chips, salsa, and margarita.  The salsas are clockwise from the top left roasted tomato, pico de gallo, tomatillo, and chipotle.  On the left side is a bottle of their homemade chipotle hot sauce.  Previously they had bottles of San Marcos hot sauce, which contains artificial colors, and I was delighted to see they ditched these in favor of homemade sauce.  The San Marcos hot sauce was radiation green, which was not very appetizing.  I am hoping that they will eventually also make a "regular" hot sauce without chipotle chilis.  I don't always want that intense smokiness, as it can mask the flavors of the food.

I got the pork enchilada.  They use corn tortillas here, which is characteristic of southern Mexican cuisine.  I find them more flavorful, but also more brittle and prone to breaking.  Here the enchiladas are on the bottom and covered in lime marinated pork, pickled onions, and shredded lettuce with a tomatillo-lime sauce and crema.  They do an excellent job with presentation.  The pork was fresh, juicy, and lean.  Because everything was freshly prepared, the tortillas still had a good texture and weren't soggy.  The rice was relatively simple, lightly salt and a little buttery.

Here is my wife's potato empanada.  She like the crispiness and the mild heat in the sauce.

One thing I haven't ordered, but saw them prepare was the roasted corn.  Basically, they throw a whole corn cob directly on the burn and char it carefully, caramelizing the sugars.  I've done this before and it makes for delicious corn.

The staff is super friendly and seems to be partially Mexican, though the owner is American.

Overall, top notch real food like you would make at home, healthy and flavorful.