Food Lab

Food Lab 14: Flour Tortillas

2012-01-22T15:17:00.000-05:00

Flour tortillas, I believe, are an excellent demonstration of the concept that "simple" does not equal "easy."

The "simple" part: the ingredients. Flour, water, a little salt, a fat (we tried both lard and canola oil) and possibly a little baking powder. And, in fact, making the dough is simple - combine/cut the fat into the flour (and baking powder, if you're using it), add salted water a little at a time until you have a dough that you can form into a cohesive ball but is still fairly dry, rest it, form it, cook it.

Ah yes: form and cook. The "not easy" part. Actually, even the dough falls in the "not easy" category, because ratios and resting times and environments vary.

Recipes: we tried two approaches. Mad Kitchen Scientist and I worked variations on Diana Kennedy's very traditional approach. She recommends bread flour and vegetable shortening. We used The Only Flour You'll Ever Need (accept no substitutes) and lard. Hey, if you're going to go traditional, go traditional. Diana's recipe is a pound of flour, cut in 4 oz. of fat, then moisten with 1 tsp. of salt dissolved in 1 cup of warm water. Even on a dry, cold day, we didn't need a full cup of water - we needed a little more than 3/4 c. water to make a nice dough. And, in the first batch, we found that 4 oz. of lard was a bit too much - the tortillas turned out a little too flaky. They tasted great, but they reminded everyone of pie crust. In a second round, we went with 3 oz. of lard to greater success.

For the forming, we rolled the dough into 10 roughly equal sized balls and let them rest. Diana says rest the dough for anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours, but I'd recommend letting them rest at least an hour - we started forming tortillas at 20 minutes, and the dough was far more cooperative at the end. Diana recommends patting and stretching them into shape by hand. We also had two tortilla presses, which are vital to forming corn tortillas, and rolling pins. The tortilla presses couldn't get them thin enough. The "by hand" method might work if you've been forming tortillas since childhood, but it didn't work for us. The method that worked the best was rolling the tortillas out on a Silpa t to about an 8 inch diameter.

Then on to the cooking: dry cast iron, either a griddle or a large skillet, over medium heat. The Executive Committee was manning the stove, and what she discovered is that the tortillas needed to cook 1-2 minutes per side depending on how thick they were, but that the key, contrary to the advice, is to flip several times, so you can keep an eye on browning progress.

Meanwhile, Chef Spouse took the Cooking for Geeks approach: find all the recipes you can, create a grid of ingredients and quantities, and use that to figure out what your ratios should be. His recipe included 2 cups of flour, 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt, 2 Tbsp. canola oil, and 3/4 c. water. Combine all, adding the water slowly, and mixing until you get to the point you need to start kneading. Still form the dough into about 10 equally sized balls and rest about 30 minutes, then roll out, being careful to avoid rolling over the edges (you don't want them to get thinner than the rest of the tortilla, or they'll be brittle), although his dough kept springing back on him, which made getting to an 8 inch diameter a little tough. Cook the same way as above. They were...biscuity. In the second batch, he took the baking powder down to 1 tsp. and rested the dough in the refrigerator before rolling out. Both were improvements - the dough was more cooperative with being rolled out and the flavor was better - but I still liked the lard-based dough better. Mad Kitchen Scientist agreed with me, but I think everyone else - Chef Spouse, the IAs, The Executive Committee - preferred the non-lard tortillas.

Unlike with corn tortillas, you don't want to store flour tortillas under a tea towel. While the steam created by the heat keeps the corn tortillas pliable, steam with flour-based dough just makes it get pasty spots. Yuck.

Papa IA, whose job, we've all decided, is to encourage us to push the envelope, came up with a plan for cocoa tortillas. We based it on Diana Kennedy's recipe, half batch: 7 oz. flour, 1 oz. unsweetened cocoa powder, a solid shake of cayenne, a solid shake of cinnamon, 2 oz. lard, and a little less than 1/2 c. of water with 1/2 tsp. salt dissolved in it. Combine the flour, cocoa, cayenne and cinnamon, cut in the lard, add the salt water slowly to form dough, shape into more like 6 balls, rest, roll out, cook. They were really good, and would be excellent as a wrapping for mole. Papa IA also discovered that sprinkling on a little powdered sugar and then dipping in a Mexican anise liquor he'd brought was delish as well.

On the tortillas, we ate Mad Kitchen Scientist's pork chili verde and Chef Spouse's flank steak fajitas. To drink? The Executive Committee brought the makings of sangria, and Chef Spouse and I had found the first blood oranges of the season, which we juiced for blood orange margaritas.

What did we learn? Simple but not easy, flour tortillas can be learned in an afternoon, but they'll take some time to master. With our Super Bowl party coming up in two weeks, we'll be eating a lot of Mexican food so Chef Spouse can keep practicing. Also, Chef Spouse needs a cast iron griddle.

Croissants

2012-01-19T07:22:00.001-05:00

I've been testing various recipes for croissants lately, and I thought it would be fun to share Julia's French Chef episode where she makes them:

Next lab goes down Saturday!

SOPA Blackout Day

2012-01-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Food Lab is participating in a national online blackout on January 18th, 2012 in opposition of both the PROTECT-IP and SOPA bills.

If these bills pass, the U.S. government will have the ability to block any website—including any funding partners and external websites that link to the blocked website—based on accusation alone from a copyright holder.

Go to AmericanCensorship.org to learn more about these bills and how our Internet freedoms are at risk.

Food (Mini) Lab 13: Choux Pastry

2012-01-02T13:50:00.001-05:00

Pate a Choux has a reputation for being...difficult. Like a beautiful but high maintenance woman, before approaching it, you tend to ask yourself, "Is this really worth it?"

To that, I say: "Hot from the oven gougeres? Not worth it? Are you CRAZY?"

Also, here's a secret: choux pastry isn't that hard.

Really.

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Take 4 eggs out of the fridge (they need to come to room temperature).

Boil 1 c. of liquid (all milk, milk and water, or milk and stock for savory applications) with 1/4 lb. of butter (cut up) and about 1/2 tsp. of salt over medium heat.

While still over the heat, stir in 1 c. of flour. It's going to look, as Chef Spouse pointed out, like a bechamel sauce gone wrong. Don't worry - keep stirring! Eventually, it will get kind of satiny looking. When that happens, turn off the heat.

Let the choux cool slightly.

Pop it into a bowl and start mixing in the eggs one at a time. Initially, the egg/dough mixture is going to look like the above, and you'll be thinking that the dough is messed up and not going to come together. Don't worry - keep stirring! Once the first egg is incorporated, keep doing the same with the other three eggs. At the end, you'll once again have a lovely satiny dough.

Then you load up your pastry bag, pipe your choux onto a baking sheet, and pop it in the oven. 10 minutes at 400, then 20 minutes at 350, then flaky pastry goodness.

What should you pipe it like? Depends on what you're going to do with it - you can pipe it into 1-2 tsp mounds for savory or sweet fillings, rectangles for eclair applications, a ring for a pastry cake (see Julia Child's The Way to Cook for an example) - whatever you like.

What should you fill it with? The Mad Kitchen Scientist had pre-prepared mushroom duxelles and a Moroccan lamb thing for the New Year's Eve party. Of course, ice cream (for profiteroles) or cream (for cream puffs) are traditional sweet fillings. You can mix cheese into the dough before cooking for gougeres. We were speculating that you could make LARGE puffs as a basis for poached eggs. Really, the only limit is your palate/imagination.

So don't be scared - ask that pretty lady to have a drink. Appearances can be deceiving.

News & Notes

2011-12-29T17:58:00.000-05:00

First, if you haven't seen the "The 10 Types of Foodies" slideshow on the HuffPo, get over there immediately. It's hilarious. Your intrepid Food Labbers definitely fall in the "Made It Myself!" and "DIY" categories. Where do you fall?

Second, when's the next lab? We'll be doing a mini-lab this weekend of pate a choux at Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee's New Year's Eve party. Gougeres for everyone!

We did have a full Lab planned for December 18, but due to some schedule conflicts, it had to be postponed until after the New Year. Topic? Well, here's a hint: it's a "part 2" of an earlier lab, and it's apropos we'll be doing it during football season (well, OK, post-season).

I've done a few more rounds of homemade croissants since our butter dough lab of last fall, always sticking with Julia's recipe from MtAoFC. This last time, I tried my first shot at chocolate-filled. Rather than trying to get the chocolate to stay in the traditional crescent shaped rolls, I went with rectangles, so I could seal them securely. They were good, particularly when they were still warm, but they needed *more* chocolate inside. Next time. That's them in the photo.

Chef Spouse's dad sent him the first Cook's Illustrated cookbook for Christmas (I'd already gotten him The New Best Recipe cookbook), and it has a different take on croissants that I'm looking forward to trying soon. Definitely need to do it while we still have some of the Julia recipe croissants in the freezer for taste testing.

Speaking of Chef Spouse, one of the gifts he gave me this year was 12 coupons for "Honey, I'd like you to try this recipe...". He's been feeling a little bored with his cooking, so be on the lookout for some hijinks.

Also speaking of Chef Spouse, I have a rule about New Year's resolutions that they have to be something fun. He's enjoyed tagging along on some of them (trapeze lessons, getting our motorcycle licenses, sky diving, etc.), but he's never done it himself. This year, he's joining the party. His resolution? To take a serious cooking class, potentially one of the CIA boot camps or something at L'Academie de Cuisine (which has the advantage of being local). Assuming he goes through with it, I'm going to MAKE him write about it for this blog, because that would be too awesome not to document.

Food Lab 12: Rice

2011-11-15T18:20:00.001-05:00

Chef Spouse has a love/hate relationship with rice. Well, since he got serious about cooking, it's actually mostly been a hate/hate relationship. It always seems to come out sticky. Like clumpy sticky.

Ouch.

So we decided, once and for all, to figure out how to get it right.

Before you even start with me, yes, I know: "rice cooker." But Chef Spouse is of the "no single taskers!" school of though, so no rice cooker. Also, even though when we renovated the kitchen, we got a LOT more cabinet space, it's not infinite. And we don't really make rice often enough to make it worthwhile to devote the space to that as opposed to, say, a food mill.

Despite what you might think from the lovely picture above, we stuck with basmati rice the entire time for quality control.

The basic variables are:

Rinsed versus unrinsed
Soaked versus unsoaked
Boiled versus steamed versus baked

The first test we did was rinsed then soaked versus unrinsed then soaked. By "rinse," I mean you rinse and swirl and drain until the water runs clean. Both were then drained and cooked in the traditional manner: bring rice and water (in a 1:1.5 ratio) to boil, then lower heat and simmer under water's pretty much gone (~8 minutes for pre-soaked white rice), then remove from heat, covered, and steam for ~10 minutes. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much difference between rinsed versus unrinsed when you were then going to soak and drain.

For the second test, we rinsed them both, then tested the boiled in lots of water (like pasta would be) versus the traditional cooking method described above. The pasta style was softer and fluffier, while the traditional cooking method was more al dente. Strong preferences started to emerge.

For the third test, we did everything wrong - no rinsing, stirring constantly, no rest. That rice was not good, and didn't cook the whole way through. We used it later to make Persian rice (which is basically rice that's partially cooked, drained, and then finished by being poached in butter. Yeah, it was pretty damn good.)

For the fourth test, we did the Commander's Palace method - it's a parboil, at a 1:4 ratio, for ~12 minutes, then you drain it, bung in butter and bake it at 325 for ~5 minutes. It's good, for sure (BUTTER!), but would probably be best for a situation in which the oven's already on.

For the fifth test, we tried a risotto style method, where you saute your rice in fat first (BUTTER!), then do the traditional 1:1.5 boil/simmer/steam method. This one also came out a true al dente, with a nice chewy center.

Of course, we also ran a test with the Mad Kitchen Scientist's rice cooker. It came out quite light and fluffy - similar to the pasta-style rice.

So what did we learn?

Rinsing is critical. No matter what method you use, you MUST rinse your rice first.

Resting/steaming at the end to finish the cooking is also critical. Well, at least when you do the boil/simmer/steam method of cooking.

Soaking is good, if you remember/have time for it. If you rinse your rice and put it on to soak as you start your dinner prep, you should be golden, particularly since pre-soaked rice will cook more quickly.

Pasta-style is great if you need to make a LOT of rice, because it's more forgiving on technique and time, and you don't have to worry about the bottom grains burning to the pot before the top grains are cooked through.

And yes, a rice cooker is also great, if you have space for one and aren't ethically opposed to single-taskers.

So of course, with all that leftover rice, we made rice pudding.

Actually, the funny part is, only one of the recipes we chose used already-cooked rice. So we cooked yet more rice for two of the three rice puddings we made. Food Lab, thy name is excess.

So we did a custard style that started with cooking rice in milk on the stovetop and then ended with the custard topping dumped on top going into the oven. That resulted in a rice pudding bottom with a flan-like top. Good. Not amazing. Would be better as rice pudding and flan, two separate desserts.

We also used leftover rice to make an entirely stovetop version. That was quite good, very easy, and what is going to happen to all my leftover takeout Chinese rice from now on.

And then there was the version that started with uncooked arborio rice and went straight into the oven. A few caveats: take the advice of the commenters and stir it every 15 minutes to prevent a skin from forming in the first place. It will take about an extra 15 minutes to cook in the ramekins (probably longer if you do it all in one container). Add vanilla when you add the heavy cream at the end.

All that said: IT WAS F-ING AMAZING.

O.M.G.

Best rice pudding ever.

EVER.

Not kidding.

Food Lab 11: Corn Tortillas

2011-10-26T19:27:00.000-04:00

Chef Spouse and I are both passionate about food and drink, but we're also passionate about the NFL. So every year, we have a big Super Bowl party. And Chef Spouse has a dream. His dream is for everything we cook for the Super Bowl party to be made from scratch. We usually do Tex-Mex, not least of which because it's easy to make for a large but indeterminately sized crowd, and while I don't think he's going to try to make tequila in the basement (as far as I know), he did want to learn how to make tortillas.

We were originally planning to make both corn and flour tortillas, but we got side-tracked (beer-tracked? thanks for the awesome homebrew, Mad Kitchen Scientist!) and only got to corn.

Turns out, corn tortillas are REALLY easy to make.

Because corn flour, aka masa, develops no gluten, you can screw around with the dough as much as you need to with no ill effect. And it doesn't need to rise or rest or anything - it takes longer to heat the pan that it does to make the tortillas.

To wit: the first batch of dough I made was, we discovered after pressing a few tortillas, too dry. So I dumped it back into the bowl, added a bit more water, mixed some more, rolled some more dough balls, and Chef Spouse pressed them. And they cooked and tasted just fine.

So what we discovered is that we wanted about equal amounts of masa and water, rather than the 4/3 ratio we had found online.

Traditional corn tortillas are literally just masa and water. We also discovered that a little sprinkle of salt after pressing was nice.

You do definitely want a tortilla press - rolling them with a pin was a pain in the ass, and resulted in very thick tortillas. And then you just cook them in a hot, dry cast iron skillet. Once cooked, we popped them on a cookie sheet covered by a tea towel to retain some heat and moisture, and that was it.

What did we eat on them? Mad Kitchen Scientist had prepared mole pork and refried beans, and Chef Spouse and I made a bunch of salsas - fresh mango and kiwi with fresh chiles, roasted tomatillo and roasted chiles, roasted pineapple and fresh and roasted chiles, and roasted tomato with roasted chiles. I can't really say with 100% certainty what was in any of them, since we just had bowls of ingredients and added everything to taste. But I can say that the bowls contained roasted tomatillos; roasted japalenos, habaneros, and serranos; fresh jalapenos, garlic, shallots, cilantro, and salt & pepper.

Now, I don't know if Chef Spouse is really going to make a zillion fresh corn tortillas and deep fry them all up for the chips for the Super Bowl party, but it's nice to know we could if we wanted to.

Food Lab 10: Sausage

2011-08-02T19:12:00.000-04:00

Told you we weren't out of business.

In what has become a continuing theme for us, we went for excess: 9 1/2 pounds of pork shoulder, 2 1/2 pounds of uncured pork belly. For those who are bad at math, that's TWELVE pounds of meat to grind, season, and stuff into casings.

One thing we realized immediately: sausage making brings out your inner 12 year old. Yes, it's all kind of gross and lends itself to lots of adolescent jokes about sex. I even pulled out "that's what she said" at one point, and I NEVER make "that's what she said" jokes. NEVER.

Another thing we realized nearly immediately: as Mad Kitchen Scientist observed, "This is a process that lends itself to industrialization." The grinding, mixing and spicing was FAST. The stuffing was S-L-O-W. No wonder sausages are made in factories.

We chose 3 basic sausage recipes:

The herbed breakfast sausage from Lets Make Sausage.
Chef Donald Link's spicy sausage recipe from Real Cajun.
The andouille recipe from The Spicy Sausage.

A few notes on making sausage: one, the recipes all make HUGE batches. We cut everything at least in half. Two, we thought none of them seemed seasoned enough, so after cutting the meat in half or more, we kept all the other spicing as the original full recipe called for, other than the salt - we reduced the salt accordingly.

For grinding, we did a rough chop on everything (like 2 inches x 2 inches), then fed it through the KitchenAid meat grinder.

The mixing of ingredients happened fast. All the sausage recipes recommend mixing with your hands, and they're right - you need to feel the distribution of your herbs and spices throughout the meat. We followed the first two recipes pretty closely, although, as often happens with Food Lab, things started to spin out of control by the third sausage, so we got a little creative with the andouille recipe. Fresh hot peppers and cloves both made an unexpected appearance. The spinning out of control may have been related to the excellent home brew Mad Kitchen Scientist supplied - a porter, a steam ale, and an accidental summer lager that was FANTASTIC.

Julia and McGee both recommend a 2 to 1 ratio of meat to fat. Most of the recipes we found online called for no additional fat. That just seemed wrong to us, so we sought a middle way, spreading the 2 1/2 pounds of pork belly across the 9 1/2 pounds of shoulder.

Anywho, the thing that really takes the time is the stuffing. The guy who runs Let's Make Sausage seems to have some sort of press that apparently makes the stuffing process go quickly. The KitchenAid stuffing attachment works fine, but it takes FOREVER. It takes to long that Chef Spouse uttered the unthinkable: if we start making a lot of homemade sausage, we're getting that uni-tasker sausage press. What would Alton Brown say?!?!?

Even though we had snacks, we wanted to try the sausage, so we did do a little cooking and tasting of patty sausage. We quickly learned that the patty sausage is not nearly as good as the sausage in casings. My theory is that sausage in casings basically cooks by poaching in its own fat, while the fat in patty sausage cooks out. I could be wrong. But I don't think so.

Another thing we learned? The casings smell BAD. It was the pig's GI tract. It smells like it was the pig's GI tract.

I thought the best sausage was Donald Link's spicy sausage. Chef Spouse and The Executive Committee preferred the herbed sausage. Mad Kitchen Scientist was reserving judgement until he had the chance to smoke some of the andouille.

So how much did it make? FIFTY 6-8 inch sausages. The IAs couldn't make it - the Spawn was having a bad day - and I've already promised them some of the haul. Yes, it made THAT MUCH sausage.

[Insert naughty sausage joke here.]

Four Questions

2011-07-07T11:40:00.000-04:00

When's the next Food Lab?

We were going to do it over the holiday weekend, but illness and schedules intervened, so we're now re-scheduled for Sunday, July 31. The re-schedule means that we might have a special guest chef join us. Who? You'll just have to wait to find out.

What will you be labbing?

Well, I don't like to give these away in advance, but I can say that it required Chef Spouse to purchase another attachment for the Kitchen Aid mixer AND we have the following accompaniments planned: home brew from Mad Kitchen Scientist, various slaws from Mama IA, and I'll be making the hot pretzels from Food Lab: Boiled Doughs again. That should give you a good clue as to what's on tap.

Are you doing a CSA again this summer?

I am, although it wasn't nearly as much of a challenge as I anticipated last year, so I've opted against blogging about it again. But rest assured I'm still getting weekly deliveries of delicious (mostly) organic produce from our friends at Shallowbrook Farm. So far, I've enjoyed summer squash and Boston bibb lettuce pretty much every week, plus red cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, sugar peas, green beans, Swiss chard, scallions, onions, red potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, beets, green peppers, corn on the cob, strawberries, and blackberries some weeks, plus this week, I got my very first peaches of the season. PEACHES!

Any other exciting food news going on?

Chef Spouse and I have been trying to get out once a week to enjoy all the new restaurants that are popping up in our newly hip neighborhood. Favorites so far include the Atlas Room and Smith Commons, joining old favorites Ethiopic, Granville Moore's, the recently renovated Argonaut, and H Street Country Club. Eat local!

Chef Spouse has perfected his chicken and andouille gumbo recipe - now we're on to experimenting with duck gumbo. Can mastering Prejean's pheasant-duck-andouille gumbo be far behind?

We've been playing around with flavored simple syrups for cocktails - so far, the ginger is the biggest hit.

The grape vines we planted a few years ago (gift from my pops) are LOADED with grapes. We'll see if any survive the annual summer bird onslaught.

Chef Spouse is also working on learning how to properly cook fish this summer. He never liked fish growing up (a real shame for a boy from Cape Cod), but he's realizing it was because it was mostly poor quality and poorly prepared. We can afford good fish, and we're both good cooks, so he's decided it's time to conquer his fear/distaste. Score! (since I love fish)

We've been continuing to enjoy the deep fryer my parents got us for Christmas last year, although we never have gotten around to trying fried Snickers bars again. But I'm kicking some beignet ass, and we continue to enjoy properly made French fries at home from time to time.

We planted a second large pot of Kentucky Colonel mint for juleps this summer, and, predictably, we're now completely overwhelmed with mint. Hmmm - speaking of flavored simple syrups.

So what's new with you?

Food Lab 9a: More -aise-iness

2011-06-01T21:40:00.007-04:00

The return of the leftover egg whites . . .

Yes, even with egg-white cocktails, Aise-lab left a surplus of egg whites, but oddly no butter leftovers . . . hmmm.

So as is often the way with food lab, the goodness keeps on coming. In this case, an orange angel cake for the Executive Committee's birthday! Following Joy to a T -- and happily noting that Joy's recipes calls for one-and-a-half cups of egg whites (easily measured) rather than X egg whites (impossible, given the chaotic accretion of egg whites during Aise-lab) -- a light, fluffy temptation is ready to go into the oven:

Food Lab 9: -aises

2011-05-31T20:31:00.000-04:00

As in:

Holland-aise
Bearn-aise
Mayonn-aise

Etc.

When you're going classic, go classic. Our texts for the day? Julia and McGee of course.

According to McGee, there are 5 basic types of Hollandaise:

Careme – cook egg yolks and water based ingredients – whisk in pats of whole butter
Escoffier - warm eggs yolks and water based ingredients – whisk in melted or clarified butter
Simple - bung all ingredients into a cold saucepan – heat on low – stir constantly
Mayonnaise - warm egg yolks and water based ingredients – whisk in clarified butter
Sabayon – whisk egg yolks with water to form a foam – whisk in butter and lemon

How much butter? For that we go to Julia. She says 2 sticks - a full cup - for 3 yolks, but we felt that *might* be a little excessive. We ended up with about 3/4 c. per batch.

What do I mean by "water-based ingredients"? Non-oil-based. Generally a Tbsp of water and a Tbsp of some acid (we mostly used lemon juice).

I could recount it all, but here's the short of it (I was going to write "skinny" but do you have any idea how much butter we ate Sunday?):

Use a glass bowl for your double boiler.
Forget the clarified butter - it scrambles your yolks. Use pats of cold butter. Which also cuts down on steps.
Do not use an immersion blender. You'll end up with mayonnaise. Which is excellent, but not what we're after.
You MUST beat the sauce until sticky before adding the butter if you want a nice thick Hollandaise.

When the sauce broke - aka, the clarified butter attempt (and no, metal versus glass bowls didn't make a bit of difference), the McGee method of fixing it did work, at least for a while. Strain the broken sauce to get the solids out, then start with another egg yolk and a Tbsp of water, whisk that, then whisk in the broken sauce. It eventually broke again, but it took about an hour.

The big difference with Bearnaise is that rather than just using lemon juice for your liquid, you use a reduction. The traditional reduction is white wine, white wine vinegar, tarragon and shallots. But we invented something WAY better: deglaise.

What is Deglaise?

You start by preparing scaloppini beef like we did in deglazing lab. Then you prepare a pan sauce, also from deglazing lab. Then you use THAT for your wine/vinegar reduction part of Bearnaise. Mad Kitchen Scientist actually asked Chef Spouse to marry him after the delivery of this sauce to the table.

We did also do a Maltaise, which is Hollandaise with orange juice and orange zest added. THAT was an application for the immersion blender, as the added liquid thinned out the sauce considerably. It was delicious, though.

Mad Kitchen Scientist then whipped up a bunch of mayonnaises. Clearly I should've paid more attention, because when I tried to make it tonight to bind our crabcakes, it did not go well. I thought "1 egg yolk, a little vinegar, salt and pepper, then oil until it looks right" seemed clear enough, but apparently not. He did one version using walnut oil, which we decided would be divine on a waldorf salad, and another using sesame oil. It was a little strong initially, but with the addition of some peanut oil and some sriracha was quite nice.

Mama IA made a lemon meringue pie, too, which I heard was fantastic, but I was MUCH too full to partake, not least of which because she made a LOT of meringue, which we turned into a lemon meringue drink with vodka, limoncello, simple syrup and lemon juice.

I leave you with one thought (which was the quote of the day):

"Butter before booze."

Food Lab 8: Duck

2011-03-28T21:57:00.000-04:00

There was a man. A man who loved to cook. This man had a dream. His dream involved poultry. And animal fat. For many long years he dreamed. And cooked. And stored animal fat. And sought fellow travelers, people who could understand, nay, share in his dream.

One cold, slightly snowy March Sunday, it all came together.

The man.

The plan.

The team.

The animal fat.

And Food Lab: Duck was born.

Sadly, the IAs were unable to join us. but Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee had right-minded friends in for the weekend, so we still had a full compliment of 6.

Our mission? Duck confit.

Confit as a technique arose as a way of preserving duck. According to many recipes, a batch of duck confit well covered with fat and sealed in a glass jar or stoneware crock can keep in the refrigerator for up to 6 months.

Ours didn't make it quite that long.

Of course, we had to start with drinks. Since blood oranges are in season, we went with a variety of blood orange cocktails: a blood orange margarita, a blood orange Negroni and a blood orange French 75. All quite tasty.

We had 3 full ducks, plus an additional 6 legs. We had planned to cook the legs and wings entirely in duck fat, but Chef Spouse just grabbed the bag of fat cubes that was on top. Not duck fat - bacon fat. Which turned out just fine.

So while Chef Spouse mixed the cocktails, we dumped the bacon fat and the big ass bag of duck fat into a large pot and started it warming while the Mad Kitchen Scientist butchered the three whole ducks, reserving the livers and hearts.

Confit is surprisingly simple to execute: you salt down (and season if you like) your duck parts while your vat o' animal fat comes up to temperature (275). Then you rinse and dry your duck parts, submerge them in the fat, and cook for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Then you remove the parts from the fat, remove the cooked meat from the bones, and enjoy the tasty deliciousness.

The other cool thing is that at the end of the process, you actually have MORE fat than you started with, because some renders out of the legs while you're poaching them in fat, thus encouraging you to make even MORE confit. Not that this crowd will need much convincing.

Quick note: this is a LOT of animal fat. You will need to be able to wipe up spills. Two words for you: shop towels. Much more effective than paper towels.

While our duck legs were taking their warm fat bath, we had other duck parts to play with.

Like those reserved livers and hearts, aka pate. We started by sauteing the livers and hearts in duck fat with minced shallots and garlic. We also reconstituted some "Chinese black fungus" - yes, that's really what it was called. No, I can't be more specific. In round 1, we stuck with the basic: bread crumbs, salt and some chiffonade fresh sage leaves from plants I'd trimmed back that morning. We blitzed it up in the food processor and popped it into a crock in the fridge.

But you know us: we can never leave well enough alone. So with the second half of sauteed innards, we added tarragon, blood orange zest, and some dates. Verdict? The second batch, a little more complex and sweeter, was better.

Chef Spouse also wanted to perfect his method for searing duck breasts. If not done properly, the fat can get gummy or rubbery. He tried high heat the whole time, starting low and going high, starting high and going low, and the winner: high heat the whole time, but flipping the duck breast onto an extra slab of duck fat so there was always fat between the meat and the pan. Of course, it did manage to smoke up three rooms and set off the smoke detector. But it was totes worth it.

The other thing to remember is that the USDA recommends cooking duck to 160 degrees. Do that, and you'll end up with duck-flavored shoe leather. Take the duck off the heat when it hits 120 degrees, let it rest to about 130-135, and eat it. Live dangerously.

But we still had more parts, although at this point things start getting a little fuzzy for me. Hey, we'd had a fair amount of wine. We went on to tea-smoke some curried duck legs. And roast the 3 carcasses plus 2 more Chef Spouse and I brought along to make duck stock. And we deep fry cracklins on the stove top in more duck fat: black pepper versus white pepper versus five spice powder, which was the best of the three.

As the out of towners observed: we were all on the quacklins diet.

Thank goodness I had my annual cholesterol screening done back in January. By next January, I might be back to a reasonable level.

Food Lab 7: Boiled Doughs

2011-02-22T19:16:00.001-05:00

Food labbing during football season didn't work quite as well as we'd hoped, but the season's over now, so it's time to get back to experiments with food!

First up: boiled doughs, aka bagels (and pretzels).

So one of the things that's interesting about boiled doughs is that the boiling process basically super-charges the second rise. Which is a good thing, since immersion in boiling water also kills the yeast.

We decided to do two takes on bagels:

1. Based on the recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

2. Based on a recipe from Emeril Lagasse.

The Bittman recipe was a long rise recipe, so we went with pumpernickel flour (4 parts to 2 parts whole wheat pastry flour and 2 parts bread flour, all King Arthur) and SAF red label yeast. Initial rise there was about two hours.

The Lagasse recipe was a short rise recipe, so we went with Fleischmann's yeast (which is faster-acting) with equal parts whole wheat pastry flour and bread flour. We also substituted barley malt syrup for the sugar, since we had it on hand for the pumpernickel bagels, but you could also use honey or a honey/molasses combo. Its initial rise was about an hour.

(The sugar, of course, helps activate the yeast by giving it something to feed on, and using something other than plain granulated sugar adds some subtle flavors and a little moisture.)

In the meantime, we also mixed up a soft pretzel dough. I can't remember where I got the recipe (although I do promise to reproduce it in another post), but I do remember that I found it while looking for a replacement for the recipe in the CIA baking book, which calls for barley malt syrup (which I didn't have on hand at the time) and...boiling in a lye solution. Not gonna happen. (Although Mama IA is agitating for a liquid nitrogen lab, so perhaps Dangerous Kitchen Ingredients Lab is in my future.)

Pretzels are nice because they're super fast - first rise is 45 minutes, you form the pretzels, second rise is 20 minutes, you boil them, then bake for 20 minutes. From "let me collect my ingredients" to "break out the mustard!" it takes less than 2 hours.

Most recipes for bagels advise dividing your risen, punched down, and re-kneaded dough into 8 (or 10 or 12) pieces, rolling them into logs and then pinching the ends together. That seemed a little silly to us. We formed our bagels by making dough balls, then poking a hole through the middle, and swirling them around on a finger to form a dough ring.

Then it was time for the second rise, about 30 minutes for each set.

Quick pop into a kettle of boiling water - about a minute per side - then baking for about 30 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

Observations: these are nice normal sized bagels, not GIANT bagels, thank goodness. And they taste great, particularly the pumpernickel variety. But they came out sort of flat. I think in retrospect, I'd definitely let the second rise go longer, and possibly the first rise, too. I think the whole wheat pastry flour might be the culprit, as the texture was nice, but we didn't get a strong rise. Perhaps a little more kneading time would be of benefit, too. Also, we had the kitchen door open (you'll see why below), so it might have been a little chilly for dough.

So why was the kitchen door open? Because what goes with bagels better than smoked fish?

Specifically, smoked rainbow trout and smoked salmon.

Chef Spouse and I stopped at Eastern Market on our way to the IAs' pad and bought two beautiful whole boned but head and skin on trout, and a gorgeous piece of wild Alaskan king salmon fillet.

We were going to attempt an outdoor smoking in the IAs' outdoor fire pit, but it was a code red day for fires around here (high winds), so we used The Mad Kitchen Scientist's indoor smoking method:

Line a large saute pan with a tight-fitting lid with foil.

Cover the foil with a thin layer of rice and sugar (aka, "stuff that will burn").

Set a circular rack on some foil ball spacers.

Season your fish as you like, pop it on the rack, and cover with that tight-fitting lid.

Heat the pan on high until it starts smoking (that tight-fitting lid won't completely contain the smoke, which is why the door was open), and leave on the fire for about 25 minutes.

Then turn the burner off and let the pan sit, tightly covered, for about another 20-30 minutes, at which point lifting the lid hopefully will not set off your smoke alarm.

This was delicious and SUPER easy.

Accompanying drink? Manhattans of course. (Get it? Bagels? Manhattans? I kill me!) We all fell in love with Redemption Rye (a recent acquisition) and Fee Brothers bitters, although I remained firmly in my traditional whiskey barrel bitters camp, while Mad Kitchen Scientist definitely preferred the rhubarb. Chef Spouse is a Peychaud's man. Regardless, if you've been mixing cocktails without bitters, shame on you. They add a level of complexity that's impossible to achieve any other way. And they're dirt cheap - a bottle will run you about $6 and probably last you at least a year. You have NO excuse! Go get some!

One of the frequent side effects of food lab is that I discover new kitchen tools I MUST have. This one showed me four:

A circular rack for my largest saute pan so I can stovetop smoke my own fish.
A Danish dough whisk. LOVE! Makes starting a yeast dough MUCH easier than using a spoon.
A SodaStream. Do you have ANY idea how much club soda we go through during mint julep season?
An Appalachian kneading bowl. The Mad Kitchen Scientist has a gorgeous hand-carved specimen he acquired while in Blacksburg, VA that I attempted to steal. Sadly, he noticed. So now I have to figure out where to get one. Any ideas?

Experiments in King Cake: Take 3

2011-02-21T19:07:00.000-05:00

OK, THIS is the one.

I think.

Feedback from Chef Spouse and the office has been very positive. I did a HALF recipe this time so it wasn't so giant, and went a little lighter on the liquids and a little heavier on the eggs.

So here we go:

Times-Picayune/Bain Family King Cake
(as interpreted by me)

3/4 lb. all purpose flour
1/2 oz. yeast
3/4 c. lukewarm water
1/2 c. lukewarm milk

Combine them all in a big bowl and mix - and it will be mixing rather than kneading, because this is a very loose dough. Once it's all blended, cover the bowl and let rise in a warm spot for about 2 hours.

1/2 lb. unsalted butter
4 eggs
1/2 c. sugar

Use a mixer to beat them all together in a LARGE bowl. I've been just dumping them all in together, but I also want to try beating the butter and sugar first, then adding the eggs. Next time.

So why a LARGE bowl? Because...

1-2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt

Combine the risen dough, the butter/sugar/egg mixture, and 1 tsp. salt in the LARGE bowl. Start with 1/2 c. of flour and add it 1/2 c. at a time until everything's incorporated and you once again have a loose dough. I know I just switched from weight to volume with the flour, but it's hard to eyeball weight.

Confession time: I used the Kitchen Aid with the dough hook for this round. The dough is so sticky it's really hard to work by hand. And the dough hook did great - you just have to stop it periodically and scrape the dough off, otherwise it just spins in the center of the egg/butter/sugar mixture and the two never combine.

OK, on to the next rise, which should take about an hour.

While waiting, empty a can of mandarin oranges, peel off the label, and wash the can. Fill the can with clean rocks and lightly grease the outside. Also grease a 12" springform pan.

Once the dough is risen, dump it into your springform pan and make a hole in the center. Stick the mandarin orange can of rocks into the hole.

One more rise, again about an hour.

Heat your oven to 360 degrees (335 if convection), and bake the cake until it reaches an internal temperature of 200 degrees, which should take about 40 minutes (but start checking it at 30 minutes).

While it's cooling, make your icing:

1 c. 10x powdered sugar
1/8 c. sweetened condensed milk
1/4 tsp. almond extract
a little water

Whisk together the powdered sugar, the sweetened condensed milk and the almond extract, and add just enough water to allow you to drizzle the icing but not so much that it's runny (or it will run right off the cake). We're talking less than 1/8 c. water. Not much.

Once the cake is cooled, drizzle the icing on and decorate with your purple, green and yellow icing.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Experiments in King Cake: Take 2

2011-02-16T19:25:00.000-05:00

Take 2: Bossman's family secret recipe. Well, actually, it's not that secret, but they're krewe members, and the recipe dates to 1901, so it's pretty authentic. (Since they are also long-time Garden District residents, I'm guessing maybe Rex or Comus.)

Did I mention the recipe is old? It's also hilariously vague.

Problem #1: the recipe provides no clue whatsoever about how much liquid to use. Well, OK, not no clue. I quote: "Make a dough that is neither too stiff or too soft."

OOOOOOOO-kay.

Fortunately, Bossman had shared a key piece of information: it's "brioche-like."

Brioche! I can work with that! To the cookbooks, Batman!

A little investigation revealed that brioche recipes generally call for about a cup of liquid per 8 oz. (by weight) of flour. Of course, I'm also going to be adding between 6 and 12 eggs (yes, the recipe really says 6-12, which is not s subtle difference), so I need to account for that. And...

Problem #2: the 1 cup of sugar/6-12 eggs/1 lb. of butter combo doesn't get added to the dough until after the first rising. It occurred to me that if the dough were actually a dough at that point, there would be little chance that would happen successfully. Hence: make something that's more of a batter, at least in round 1.

So I mixed up 1 1/2 lb. of flour, 1/2 oz. yeast dissolved in a little water, 1 1/2 c. tepid water, and 1 1/2 c. room temperature milk (no, I did not scald it first). And by "mixed" I mean "with a spoon" because there was no kneading the resulting very soft dough. Well, batter.

Problem #3: the recipe calls for an initial rise of 6 hours to double in size. Fortunately, I realized that that was EXTREMELY unlikely, and checked back in about 2, by which point my batter was a-bubblin'.

On to beating together the 6 eggs, the cup of sugar, and the pound of butter. I let the Kitchen Aid do the work there, and thank goodness I did, because the butter wasn't quite as softened as I thought - the centers of the sticks were still just this side of frozen. Oops. So then I combined the egg/sugar/butter mixture, my bubbly dough, and the last 1/2 pound of flour and 1/2 oz. of salt.

Problem #4: at this point, I really needed to knead this, and there was just no way - the dough was WAY too soft.
Me: kneadkneadknead

"Chef Spouse, can you add some more flour?"

kneadkneadknead

15 seconds later: "Can you add some more flour?"

kneadkneadknead

40 seconds later: "I need more flour."

kneadkneadknead

23 seconds later: "More flour over here!"

kneadkneadknead

30 seconds later: "NEED. FLOUR."

You get the picture.

We're now switching from weight to volume, because I was eye-balling quantities (there's a scary phrase in baking), but if I had to guess, I'd say I added between 1-2 additional cups of flour.

On to the next (1 hour) rise.

Then it was time to form the cake.

Problem #5: brioche, when formed, really needs something to be formed IN. Like a pan. No such luck here. I had a cookie sheet - I did my best to form a ring on said cookie sheet.

Another 1 hour rise.

Then bake at 350.

Problem #6: the recipe says to bake a 350 for AN HOUR AND A HALF. Um, no. Spotted that one in time, too, and set the initial bake time for 30 minutes.

Julia says that baguettes need to reach an internal temperature of 200 degrees, and I figured that what's good for the baguette is probably good for the brioche. It reached 200 degrees internally in about 40 minutes.

I also tried something different with the icing that I won't bother to recount, because it was distinctly unsatisfying. It turned out more like a glaze, which tastes fine, but it doesn't hold the colored sugar, thus messing with the whole purple, green, and gold thing. Not kosher.

I thought the last King Cake was Godzilla? I guess that means this was one Mothra, because it was GIANT. Seriously. We ate some Sunday night, I took 2 big pieces into the office Monday, I took 2 more big pieces to friends we had dinner with Monday night, I've been eating it every morning this week for breakfast, and there's still a big hunk left. I probably shouldn't have been surprised - after all, the recipe required 2+ pounds of flour. That gonna big a BIG cake.

So how did it taste?

Divine. Seriously, seriously, seriously amazingly awesome.

Bossman actually asked me today if I had any more. I quote: "I haven't had King Cake in years. You nailed my family recipe. And now I'm craving it."

Conclusion: I have definitely found the right recipe, but the technique needs a little work. You guessed it - this weekend will see ANOTHER King Cake, using the cake recipe from round 2, the icing recipe (minus the lemon) from round 1, and this great idea I have using a springform pan...

Experiments in King Cake: Take 1

2011-02-10T19:33:00.000-05:00

So one thing you need to know about me is that I have a passion for all things New Orleans. The music, the food, the culture - all of it speaks to something deep in my soul. So, although it is not my official New Year's resolution, I set myself the goal of learning how to make a proper King Cake from scratch this year.

If you've been reading this blog at all, you know I'm the baker, and Chef Spouse is the cook (although I definitely cook, too, but he does not bake). So the techniques for yeast doughs are not going to be a problem - it's all a matter of finding the right recipe. Given that many of them are closely guarded krewe secrets, that's easier said than done.

Round one: Restaurant August's John Besh's recipe from Epicurious.com.

One thing you'll notice right away, if you pop over and take a look at the recipe is 3 teaspoons (aka 1 TABLESPOON) of cinnamon.

You may find yourself thinking, as I did: "That is a LOT of cinnamon."

So I cut it back to 2 generous teaspoons.

Honestly, it was still way too much cinnamon.

The problem was compounded by the fact that the icing recipe calls for enough lemon that you actually taste it. The LEMON icing did not go with the CINNAMON cake.

The dough had a really nice texture, though - very easy to handle and it baked up nice and tender.

But it was GIANT. I expected it to be 12-13 inches in diameter.

Not exactly.

It barely fit on my largest circular platter (see photo above), which was a problem for cooling it, since it was WAY wider than my cooling rack.

It was the Godzilla of King Cakes, assuming Godzilla was made of tasty pastry and not Tokyo-leveling rage.

In other words: I'm still searching for Mr. Right King Cake.

Next up: the delightfully old-skool and vague recipe from the Times-Picayune cookbook, hopefully this weekend.

Not Dead Yet!

2011-02-07T19:46:00.000-05:00

Don't worry - we're not out of commission. Things just got really busy with the end of football season. Next Food Lab goes down in just under two weeks. Subject? Boiled doughs and smoking. Trust me, it will make sense.

Although, as Chef Spouse points out, if we don't do a duck confit lab soon, Mad Kitchen Scientist is probably going to spontaneously combust.

Food Lab 6: Potatoes

2010-11-15T18:04:00.001-05:00

We had originally planned to do a two day lab making homemade sausage, but Chef Spouse had to work Sunday and Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee had a commitment, too, so we decided that we'd bust out the IA-By-Day Chefs-By-Nights' deep fryer and take on potatoes.

Conclusion 1: I NEED a deep fryer. Are you listening, Santa?

Conclusion 2: Mix 6 people who like to experiment in the kitchen, booze, a deep fryer full of hot peanut oil, and a bowl of simple baking powder batter, and all kinds of insanity is likely to result. "What can we batter and deep fry?" "What CAN'T we batter and deep fry?"

Following our usual practice, we gathered, pulled out all the supplies, made cocktails (bloody marys of course, with vodka which of course is made from potatoes), sat down with the snacks, and figured out the plan.

What we arrived on was:

Hash browns
Fries
Chips
Stuff Covered In Batter (more on that later)

We had the traditional russet potatoes, Yukon golds, and sweet potatoes, plus olive oil, peanut oil, and bacon fat (from the bacon we cooked to snack on). We never did use the olive oil, as emptying the deep fryer proved impractical, and once we started on doing the hash browns in bacon fat, we all agreed that there was really no reason to try anything else.

Chef Spouse was the hash brown guy, and I ended up Queen of the Deep Fryer

On the hash browns, we labbed each option with both the russets and the Yukon golds. Russets are traditional for most potato frying applications, but we agreed that in most cases, the Yukon golds were superior in taste and texture. Chef Spouse captured it best: "Yukons remind you of brunch, russets remind you of camping."

First trial was to grate raw potatoes, spread them widely/very thin, and fry in bacon fat. Didn't really work - the potatoes didn't seem to cook evenly and were almost impossible to flip. We did better keeping them more in a potato pancake configuration, but we didn't really start cooking with gas (so to speak) until we parboiled whole potatoes, then grated them, then dried them, then cooked them in more the pancake configuration in bacon fat for about 15 minutes (until golden and crispy).

Once we realized the parboil was the key, we tried going the other way - grating first, then parboiling for 10 seconds, then ice shocking, then drying (as best we could - there was a LOT of water still in there, though), then cooking the potatoes in bacon fat for 15 minutes. They weren't as crispy as the parboiled whole potatoes (almost definitely because we couldn't get the water out), but they were still better than the grated potatoes that went in the pan raw. We also tried coating the raw potatoes with potato starch to see if we could duplicate the effect of parboiling without actually parboiling. No go.

Conclusion? Your best bet is to parboil Yukon golds, cool them, grate them, dry them, and then cook them in the hot bacon fat you have on hand from making your bacon (we are, after all, talking about breakfast here). But that takes a lot of time. So if you don't want to get up at the crack of dawn, grating and then parboiling for 10 seconds before frying in bacon fat is an acceptable solution.

Queen of the Deep Fryer?

Let me cut to the chase: there's a reason the double fry in peanut oil is the classic way to make French fries. We tried a single fry at a high temp, we tried a single fry at a lower temp, we tried parboiling the potatoes first. Yeah, don't even bother. 3 minutes at 300 degrees, drain while the oil temperature comes up, 5ish minutes at 360 degrees = French fry perfection. Both the russets and the Yukon golds worked well. The russets had the traditional floury texture, the Yukon golds were more buttery, but you MUST double fry. No excuses, no exceptions.

Did I mention that The Executive Committee made dipping sauces? A roasted red pepper (her take on ketchup), aioli, a spicy yogurt cilantro, and a cream cheese, scallion and bacon. All delish, but I thought the yogurt cilantro was particularly good.

Chips: well, unsurprisingly, we discovered that double frying was the best here, too. One tip? Your chips MUST be of a consistent thickness. The taste difference between the russets and the Yukon golds was not nearly as noticeable once we moved onto chips. And this was when we broke out the sweet potatoes. Sweet potato chips? Awesome. Sweet potato chips with the spicy yogurt cilantro dip? Even awesomer.

By this point, we'd all had a few cocktails, and Mama IA-By-Day Chef-By-Night had mixed up a batter for deep fried pickles. And sweet potato chips. And Snickers bars (yes really). And - ultimate triumph - bananas sprinkled with cinnamon palm sugar.

The thing that I learned about deep frying in general is that you have to gently slide the items into the fryer by hand from close up (which always looks so dangerous when I see it on cooking shows, but it really is better - good control and no splashing), you can't put too many in, and you need to keep an eye out to make sure the items aren't sticking to each other or the fry basket. That goes triple once you include batter in the mix. And the battered items will want to stick to EVERYTHING, so have a variety of metal tools handy to use to pry things apart.

So the pickles were decent. The Snickers bars were hard to fry - even though we froze them before battering and frying, they kept melting. The sweet potato chips ended up very tempura-like, even without panko bread crumbs in the batter.

But the bananas? The bananas were SOOO good. How good were they? They were so good Mad Kitchen Scientist decided he needs a deep fryer just so he can make them. They were that good

Recipe: Chili Cheese Scones

2010-10-30T18:49:00.004-04:00

At the request of my colleagues, who GREATLY enjoyed the scones I brought in Friday, and HEAVILY adapted from a recipe from Epicurious.com. (Sorry there's no photo - I didn't think to take one.)

Jalapeno Cheese Scones

Preheat the over to 375 degrees F.

2 c. all purpose flour (I like King Arthur unbleached white myself)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
2 tsp. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. chili powder

Dump them all into the bowl of your food processor, fitted out with your plastic blade and pulse a few times to combine. Julia was the first person who introduced me to the concept of using the food processor in baking breads, and it definitely makes the early stages go faster.

1/2 c. (1 stick) butter

Slice the butter into the bowl of the food processor (thin slices), and again, pulse several times until it gets to "coarse meal" stage. That link will take you to a picture if you're not sure what "coarse mealthe dlooks like.

8-10 oz. cheddar cheese, grated
1-3 jalapenos, finely diced

Cracker Barrel Vermont extra sharp white works fine - you don't have to get fancy, unless you want to. Choose the number of jalapenos based on how spicy you want these and how big the chilies are. Pop the grated cheese and diced chilies both into the bowl of the food processor, and again, pulse several times to distribute everything evenly.

3/4 c. heavy cream
1 large egg

Whisk the two together, then pour them into the bowl of the food processor, and pulse until the dough starts to form.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead just until it all forms together.

Divide the dough in half, form each half into a round a little less than an inch deep, and cut each round into 6 triangles.

Space the triangles out on cookie sheets and bake about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them after 15, though. You don't want them to overcook.

These things are awesomely delicious. Seriously. And they go great for breakfast or on the side of a soup or Tex-Mex dinner.

Tales from the CSA: Week 20

2010-10-21T20:44:00.001-04:00

(I just realized I never posted this!)

The final box:

4 apples
5 yams
5 red potatoes
8 white potatoes
1 green bell pepper
2 turnips
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
4 chilies

So in the final analysis, what did I think?

With the exception of a turnip that had a bad spot and most of one head of lettuce (both of which got composted), we used everything, and without breaking a sweat.

For a number of items, I really didn't taste a major difference between what I got from the CSA and what I get from the local supermarket.

But...

Fresh peaches. Fresh strawberries. Fresh tomatoes. Fresh corn.

Every week, Chef Spouse keeps asking: "Is the CSA really over?"

And that, to me, is the real answer: the fun of not knowing what's going to show up every week.

Next year? It's ON!

Food Lab 5: Butter Doughs

2010-10-11T21:50:00.003-04:00

We're now into our High Holy Days - aka, the NFL season - so we decided to switch over to two day food labs, so we can start Saturday and then have everyone come back to watch the games on Sunday. This weekend marked our first two day lab, taking place October 9 and 10.

The thing about butter-based doughs is that, in most cases, you don't HAVE to rest them over night. But they definitely benefit from it. We had decided on brioche and croissants.

For labbing brioche, we picked two recipes: I made the one from Julia's The Way To Cook (which is basically the Mastering recipe, only she found religion on using food processors to start a variety of bread doughs since Mastering) and Mad Kitchen Scientist focused on the poolish-based brioche from Bread Alone.

Mad Kitchen Scientist had given me an excellent sealed brick of live yeast a while back, and I was waiting for a special time to open it up. This was it.

We both used regular King Arthur unbleached white all-purpose flour, which is pretty much the perfect baking flour, although Mad Kitchen Scientist supplemented with some King Arthur wheat pastry flour. He swears by it for pie crust.

The two recipes were fairly similar, other than the fact that Julia calls for more butter, and Bread Alone uses more eggs.

Now, the thing about brioche is that it can be almost more of a batter than a dough. And actually, that's the problem I had the last time I tried to make it (using the Joy recipe) - too dense (so not batter-y enough). Anyway, I think my "large" eggs might not be quite what Julia was thinking of when she said "large" eggs, since I had to throw in at least an extra half cup of flour (maybe more) to even render the dough workable. But I got to use my new pastry scraper, and after that, it went like a dream. After the first two rises, I rested it overnight. Sunday morning, I brought it to cool room temperature before forming a small loaf and some small and large a tetes, going through one more rise, and baking.

Mad Kitchen Scientist followed pretty much the same pattern, although he started his dough in the mixer rather than a food processor.

We discovered that you want the dough to be just this side of too wet to work. More butter is definitely preferable (surprise, surprise). The wheat pastry dough didn't add anything, and in fact, detracted from the pretty pale yellow color you get in a good brioche. I didn't think the poolish really added anything, either. Mad Kitchen Scientist said he might've enriched the Julia recipe with one more egg yolk, although that obviously would've required even again a bit more flour.

We also cooked it at too high a temperature. Julia, oddly, didn't specify. Bread Alone advised 400 F, but the edges were browning too fast. In retrospect, I think I would've gone with 400 for the first few minutes, then turned it down to 350 or lower for the remainder of the cooking time.

We also ran into some problems with shape formation. Our tetes all looked somewhat to fairly drunken. Considering that we'd gone wine tasting before starting on Saturday, and then started off Sunday morning with bourbon milk punch, though, that's probably apropos.

With the croissants, we didn't lab them - we just wanted to see if we could make them successfully. We used the classic Mastering recipe, and did it all by hand. You start with a smallish amount of fairly wet dough that you knead just a little - that pastry scraper will come in handy - and then it's a LONG first rise (3 hours). The second rise is the point at which you can refrigerate it (which we did), which gives you a long, cold rise - or you let it rise for 90 minutes and then chill it thoroughly before proceeding.

Sunday morning was all about banging in the butter. You roll your dough out into a rectangle, beat your butter into a thick rectangular paste, and fold it in. The first round, you do two folds, then you rest and chill for another 90 minutes. Two more rolls and folds leaves you with 55 layers (according to Julia) of dough separated by 54 layers of butter. After the final roll and fold, you chill for another 2 hours. This is another place where you could refrigerate overnight.

Or you move on to forming the croissants. We discovered that, although you don't want to over-flour the dough, if it gets sticky at any point in any of this, you're done. We also discovered that the smaller the triangles you cut to roll, the better.

Then it's one final 90 minute rise (before or after which you can freeze them, which if you want them for breakfast, I recommend), an egg wash, and 12-15 minutes in a hot oven (about 400 F, although Julia once again didn't specify - maybe she thinks we'll all just *know*?). After that? Buttery, flaky, warm delicious heaven.

Seriously, though, were they worth 12 hours of effort? Are they that much better than store-bought?

Yes. No contest.

Tales from the CSA: Week 19

2010-10-06T20:21:00.000-04:00

In the penultimate week's box:

1 butternut squash
1 small pumpkin
2 winter squash that could be a variety of acorn
2 turnips
6 potatoes
pile of green beans
4 apples
2 jalapenos
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce

The box was delivered while I had my door closed for lunch, and when I opened it, I discovered the week's box...and a bag of 10 apples. I figured that constituted a request from my colleagues for more pie, so I obliged.

I'm hanging onto all the winter squash and, after next week's final delivery, plan to roast it all, puree it, and freeze it to be used later this winter in muffins, quick breads, pies, soups, etc. One of my favorite winter soups is a curry pumpkin - can't wait to make it using CSA pumpkin rather than canned.

Tales from the CSA: Week 18

2010-09-29T12:58:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

1 pumpkin
1 butternut squash
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
5 potatoes
4 apples
small pile of green beans
1 green bell pepper
2 little hot peppers
a cute little decorative gourd

More squash! That squash-cooking day is starting to look increasingly critical. Last week's and this week's apples went into pies for the weekend. My folks were in town to celebrate my dad's birthday, which is a pretty common event each fall - they'll often make the trek down from the Philly area for a weekend of fun, good company, yummy food, and football around his birthday. And I always make apple pie for dessert, because it's his favorite. My crust making has improved dramatically in the past year. I attribute it to 3 things:

Butter. I had been sticking with 100% vegetable shortening for my crust. Since it's an old family recipe, it used to be made with lard, and shortening is the closest modern cognate. But it really tastes better if you use about 1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening. The shortening is easier and more forgiving (and makes the crust nice and tender), but flavor-wise, it doesn't bring much to the party. Butter does.
Better sense of what the dough is supposed to feel like. I've been making pies with homemade crust for years, but, as is the point of this whole Food Lab exercise, you need to make a given thing frequently to really get a sense of the best tricks.
Confidence. See above.

Also, I have a much better rolling pin now (solid wood French style pin rather than the kind with the ball bearings), which contributes. The right equipment really does make a difference.

I was a little heavy with the cloves (I was chatting with my mom while making the pie, and shook the container a little too vigorously over my sliced apples), but everyone was nice enough not to mention that.

Two more weeks to go - I'm really going to miss the weekly surprise over the winter...

Tales from the CSA: Week 17

2010-09-22T13:06:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
1 green tomato
1 acorn squash
1 butternut squash
1 green bell pepper
3 hot peppers (one looks like a poblano, the other two I'm not sure - possibly habanero)
6 apples
6 red potatoes
small pile of green beans
small pile of okra

We're in the home stretch, with 3 more weeks of produce to go. Nothing too exciting to report this week, other than I'm starting to get a lot of winter squash. The cool thing about it is that if you have a cool, dark place, you can store it for quite a while. I do not have that. I'm thinking I'll probably hang onto everything we don't use through these final weeks, and then spend part of a Saturday roasting it all, pureeing it, and then freezing it in 1 c. amounts, thus leading to a winter of squash pies, breads, pasta filling, and muffins from organic CSA squash. Sounds yummy - and will save time, since roasting, cooling, and pureeing squash is not exactly a 10 minute process.

Recipe: Rum Punch

2010-09-20T22:48:00.000-04:00

Did you know that September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate day? Of course, rum punch was the best way to celebrate!

Anyone who's been to any of the Caribbean islands should be familiar with the rhyme to the right. So here's how we played it:

Sour: lime
Sweet: simple syrup
Strong: Mt. Gay rum (not white rum, because, as my friend Deb pointed out, you might as well use vodka)
Weak: we tried both OJ/pineapple and blood orange Italian soda/pineapple. Both had things to recommend them, but I preferred the blood orange soda - the carbonation made the drink a little lighter and it wasn't as sweet.

We skipped the bitters (mostly because I couldn't find this photo to remember that we needed them), but we did grind on some fresh nutmeg.

ARRRR!

Tales from the CSA: Week 16

2010-09-15T18:39:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

small pumpkin
small other winter squash
2 yellow summer squash
1 zucchini
1 green bell pepper
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
4 ears of corn
5 apples
large pile of green beans
small pile of okra

This week's box arrived a day late. Of course, I can't think of a better candidate to take Labor Day off than farmers.

I was happy to see more okra. We can either just eat it or put it in gumbo.

And the winter squash went into some lovely fresh ravioli in sage butter sauce for a dinner with friends on Saturday night.

4 more weeks to go...

Tales from the CSA: Week 15

2010-09-09T21:43:00.000-04:00

In this week's box

6 ears of corn
small pile of green beans
small pile or okra
2 little yellow squash
1 green bell pepper
head of Boston Bibb lettuce
6 apples
1 small acorn squash
1 mostly green tomato

Sure enough, as Dean from Dino predicted, the composition of my produce box is changing. I suspect that the peaches are done, and the tomatoes are probably not far behind. Sigh.

We were out of town for Labor Day, but we ate it all anyway other than the acorn squash (saved to make filled pasta this weekend), the okra (not enough for a side dish, so hoping to get more), and the apples (saved to make pie for the 2010 NFL season opening weekend).

Speaking of, I'll continue writing about food during football season, but there will be a transition to writing about football food. Although we're still planning to do labs, it will likely be with less frequency until after the Super Bowl.

In the meantime, though, we have weekly Sunday parties to watch games, and every Sunday morning, Chef Spouse gets his cook on. So prepare yourself for musing on cooking for a crowd and recipes for gumbo, chili, ribs, and other hearty fall and winter fare.

Tales from the CSA: Week 14

2010-09-01T17:31:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

Pile o' green beans
4 ears of corn
1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
1 green bell pepper
3 white peaches
3 nectarines
4 apples
4 tomatoes

Dean and Kay, owners of the fabulous DC trattoria Dino, send out a weekly enewsletter. In addition to news of the restaurant and their ever-changing list of awesome special promotions (my favorite recent one? continuing Restaurant Week prices through Labor Day weekend), Dean also muses on various food and food-related topics.

This past week, he focused on what he has - and., notably, hasn't - been seeing at the farmers' market. The record-setting heat we've experienced in DC this summer means that the tomatoes and peaches are petering out early. I would venture to guess that the summer squash will follow suit.

So I definitely savored this week's tomatoes and peaches, letting the peach juice drip down my chin and slicing the tomatoes thin, topping them with salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a chiffonade of basil from my garden, enjoying the classic tastes of late August while looking forward to fall's flavors. Although it's still about a billion degrees in DC, the days are perceptibly shorter at this point, 10 weeks past summer solstice, and I'm already thinking of butternut squash-filled pasta, long-simmered dishes, and fresh homemade bread.

Recipe: Variation on a (Tuna Tartare) Theme

2010-09-01T12:26:00.004-04:00

We decided to make another run at tuna tartare. We'd been out of town for the weekend with a group for whom food is basically fuel. Case in point? I took fresh peaches and tomatoes from the CSA, and I was the only one who was interested in eating them - everyone else wanted to grocery store cherry tomatoes and pre-cut (under-ripe) melon.

We love these people, but we were in need of some tasty, quick to make, goodness.

Yes, I know that tuna tartare is "over." Foodies have declared it another dead fad, along with plating your food in towers, foams, small plates, tasting menus, and gourmet burgers. The thing is, classics done well tend to taste good, and I mostly care about whether things taste good. Tartare too pedestrian for your refined palate? More for me, SUCKA!

Anyway, we wanted something a little spicy, so to hand-chopped tuna we added:

Sesame oil
Soy sauce
Jalapeno
Ginger
Garlic
Scallions
Salt

(all to taste, of course)

We went heavy on the green stuff and toasted more wontons - only this time, we brushed them with egg white so the sesame seeds actually adhered - and dug in.

Late summer bliss!

Tales from the CSA: Week 13

2010-08-25T21:20:00.001-04:00

In this week's box:

1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
4 tomatoes
4 nectarines
4 peaches
4 apples
2 zucchini
1 yellow squash
6 ears of corn
1 bell pepper
little pile of okra!

Outside the box:

Yellow watermelon (it was too big to fit)

This week Chef Spouse was on a short business trip, and I was on a business trip for pretty much the entire week. He managed to get through everything but a few tomatoes and enough side veg for dinner on my arrival home tonight. How? He took all the fruit with him since he was driving (lucky boy!) - and ate a lot of veg the nights he was home!

I really love yellow watermelon - and we ate about half of it before I left. Texturally, it's very similar to red watermelon, although I think it's a little crisper. But the flavor is far more subtle and interesting - and I say that as a watermelon lover in general. It's sweeter and a bit like honeydew (at least to my palate), but again, with that wonderful watermelon crunch.

While I was on my trip, I had a delicious summer cocktail - a watermelon margarita. It was a very traditional margarita (tequila, fresh lime, Cointreau, a little simple syrup) made with muddled fresh watermelon, not that nasty watermelon schnapps shit. It was FANTASTIC. Sadly, Chef Spouse had consumed all the watermelon by the time I got home to share this discovery with him. Perhaps next week...

Tales from the CSA: Week 12

2010-08-17T18:28:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

6 more ears of that AWESOME corn
big pile of green beans
the largest jalapeno I've ever seen
2 cantaloupes (1 med, 1 bitty)
2 zuchinni
2 yellow squash
3 HUGE peaches
6 tomatoes
6 black plums
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce

I have no idea how they're continuing to get lettuce to grow in this heat. Must be magic.

We've had plums every week for the past several weeks, but they're different varieties each time. Impressive.

Now that we've hit the mid-point of the CSA year, we're conducting a survey of participants (to see what they think and whether they're interested in doing it again next year) and non-participants (to see if they want in next year). Plus a comment box.

The good part is that 18 of the respondents to date are currently participating and 21 (so far) are interested in next year, so the experiment was a success. But the comments have been kind of hilarious and demonstrate to me that most people really have no idea what growing food is actually like. Also, apparently, many of my colleagues could really stand to eat more produce on a regular basis.

I was fortunate to grow up with an avid gardener for a dad, so we had a large vegetable garden every summer, plus a yard that sported, at various times, 3 apple trees, 2 pear trees, 2 peach trees, and a sour cherry tree (many of them are still there), plus a strawberry patch (that isn't), raspberry and blackberry bushes (likewise) and blueberry bushes (that still go gangbusters every year). And in the last few years, my dad added an herb garden right be the back door (which is, of course, the most logical spot for an herb garden, assuming your light exposure permits).

Most people aren't that fortunate.

Thanks, Dad!

Tales from the CSA: Week 11

2010-08-11T17:50:00.000-04:00

In this week's box

6 peaches
6 plums
4 apples
4 little onions
2 HUGE red tomatoes
6 ears of corn
2 green peppers
2 yellow squash
1 zucchini
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
1 watermelon
1 cantaloupe

I could barely lift the box and couldn't even get everything repacked so that the lid would go on once I'd checked out the haul in my office!

Obviously, none of this has been complicated to use, even though we went out of town this weekend and Chef Spouse continued on from there to a week-long training class in Ohio.

I actually woke up this morning thinking, "Thank goodness it's Wednesday! I'm almost out of produce, even though I supplemented at the market this weekend with more peppers, more plums, cherries, figs, a cucumber, and some carrots!"

The out of town trip meant I got to share some of the AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS corn and the cantaloupe with our hosts (my folks), who have a large garden (more on that later) but don't grow corn (too space-consuming) or melons (too much trouble, learned from experience).

I can't tell you the last time I had a seeded watermelon. When I first cut it open, I was a little concerned, not so much because of the seeds but because it looked pretty pale to me. I was worried it might be a little tasteless. Those worries turned out to be unfounded - it's tasty and juicy, and I'd forgotten how fun it can be to spit watermelon seeds.

I'm all set on apples for a pie, which is a good thing, since I need to make one this coming weekend to take to a dinner party, and everything else is gone (aside from 1 plum and the onions, which will keep).

Food Lab 4: Raw Meat

2010-08-08T18:07:00.000-04:00

Saturday, July 24, it was about a million degrees in DC (which has pretty much been the case the entire summer). We couldn't have picked a better time to do a no-actual-cooking lab: raw meat. As usual, we bit off too much, testing both ceviches and tartares.

We had all brought a bunch of the side ingredients, but if you're going to be eating raw or nearly raw meat and fish, you want to make sure it is F-R-E-S-H. So we started the day at DC's fantastic Eastern Market.

One thing you need to know about Chef Spouse and Mad Kitchen Scientist - they should not be left alone with credit cards and a vast array of amazing potential ingredients.

We had planned to get some beef and some tuna steaks (for the tartare) and some white fish (for ceviche).

What we got?

An entire eye of round, several pounds of tuna steak, shrimp, octopus, squid, red snapper, and Chilean sea bass.

That was, as you may note, a LOT of protein. And did I mention that, due to other schedule constraints, we only had about 4 hours? From when we started out?

We figured we needed to start with the ceviche first, since it would need time to cure. Our first test was different citrus acids. We prepared a base of a combo of the sea bass and snapper with red onion, jalapeno, garlic, and salt, divided it into 4 ramekins, and covered each with one of:

lime
lemon
orange
grapefruit

We also prepped the shrimp with lime and pineapple juices, leaving us with the cephalopods. We divided the squid into two groups: one with lime and pineapple, the other with grapefruit. We also divided the octopus into two: one with lemon, one with lime.

Everything went into the fridge, and we moved onto tartare creation.

First, Chef Spouse made some wonton crisps: olive oil and sesame seeds, 9 minutes at 350.

Chef Spouse hand-chopped the tuna, and we each made a tartare.

Well, the FIRST thing we did was have some of the gorgeous tuna plain on the crisps. Other than the fact that it needed a shake of salt, it was divine.

Chef Spouse made a tuna tartare with coconut, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, ginger, lime, and soy sauce that he served on cucumber slices (fancy!).

Mad Kitchen Scientist made a tuna tartare with sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, sesame seeds, and scallions.

The Executive Committee made a tuna tartare with wasabi, soy sauce, scallion, and jalapeno.

Mama IA by Day-Chef by Night made a tuna & fruit tartare with mango, coconut, onion juice, pineapple juice, and Hawaiian alaea salt.

I made a tuna tartare in the classic style: olive oil, lemon, capers, salt, red onion, chives, and parsley.

We ate them immediately, because by this point, we were STARVING. Verdict? All were good. You'd choose which direction to go based on the rest of the meal. And the cucumber slices provided a very nice platform.

Then it was on to the beef and the IA by Day-Chef by Nights' fun surprise: amazingly fresh venison.

We tested hand chopped versus ground by the Kitchen Aid, the beef versus the venison (obviously), and getting the heat from jalapenos versus serranos versus chilies in adobo sauce. All were based on the same fundamental recipe. Papa IA by Day-Chef by Night also put together a chocolate cherry version with the venison.

The best was the classic recipe, hand chop...venison. The various pepper versions were good, but we'd omitted the capers so as not to muddy the flavors. And we missed them big time - there's a reason they're a classic.

After we got through the tartares, we decided it was time to check on the ceviche.

One problem we ran into is that we didn't really have enough time. The squid and octopus didn't cook fully - they weren't bad, but they also weren't done.

Also, we were trying to test the acids, so we didn't "finish" the ceviches - no avocado, no olive oil, no salt adjustment, no cilantro - just the original red onion, garlic and jalapenos.

Even though they were mixed together, it was easy to tell that the sea bass was better than snapper. On the citrus side, the lime and grapefruit won over the orange (which was not acid enough to cook the fish) and the lemon (the flavor was TOO strong). But ultimately, they were all pretty one-dimensional.

What we ended up doing was combining all the differently citrused white fishes in a bowl, finishing them with avocado, olive oil, cilantro and more salt, and then divvying them up. They were, unsurprisingly, better the next day.

What did we drink? I made a batch of The Cuke, The Executive Committee brought a sort of sangria base (fruit in pomegranate juice), which we tried with both rum and a resposado tequila. Tequila was the hands-down favorite. When we busted out the beef, we moved over to martinis made with Spruce Rogue gin.

Oh - the shrimp? The thing is, you can't eat raw shrimp. And it never cooked. It wasn't even close to cooked. You know how some restaurants serve shrimp ceviche? They're totally parboiling it first. More than 24 hours later, the shrimp still wasn't cooked. We finally gave up, treated it like a marinade, and grilled it.

Tales from the CSA: Week 10

2010-08-04T17:51:00.001-04:00

In this week's box:

4 apples
6 peaches
8 plums
6 nectarines
2 red tomatoes
4 green peppers
3 little eggplant
2 cucumbers
2 zucchini
2 yellow squash

As I was unpacking it, all I could think of was: "This is like a food clown car!" Delicious produce just kept on coming.

Three observations from this week:

Even though that seems like a LOT of food, it was all gone by Tuesday morning, other than enough squash to have as a side for dinner Tuesday (grilled, then tossed with pesto made with basil from the garden) and the apples, which I'm hanging onto for pie purposes.
PEACHES! I had forgotten how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE peaches! Supermarket peaches are crap, by the way, which may be the source of my forgetting. YAY PEACHES!
The Thomas Keller ratatouille recipe really is better than the traditional. Like, a LOT better. Even though Chef Spouse had neglected to note that it would take 2+ hours to bake, which meant we ate dinner on Saturday at about 10:30 pm. But it was totally worth the wait. The thin slices of squash and eggplant are nice, but we agreed that the real difference is definitely the roasted peppers.

Tales from the CSA: Week 9

2010-07-28T19:11:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
1 lg. bag broccoli florets
1 green pepper
4 Ginger Gold apples
2 red tomatoes
2 yellow tomatoes
4 cucumbers
3 eggplant
1 zucchini
2 yellow squash
5 Star Fire peaches
6 nectarines
6 plums (some Shiroh, some Methley)

It was so impressive I had to take a picture.

This week I got double-whammied, because we ended up with a lot of Food Lab: Raw Meat leftovers as well (PERFECT avocados, grapefruit, watermelon, lemons, asparagus). So we've enjoyed avocado and grapefruit salad with a honey poppy seed vinaigrette the past few nights and a watermelon and feta salad on the side of fresh pasta with an asparagus lemon sauce this evening. Which of course is not helping with using the CSA produce.

The fruit is mostly gone, other than the apples, just from snacking - no special work there. Likewise with the tomatoes - some went into pasta salad and the rest just got sliced and eaten with basil from my garden. The cucumbers went into a batch of "The Cuke" for the Food Lab crowd, which everyone loved.

The big news/discoveries from this week were: that cucumber sorbet? AWESOME in gazpacho (had dinner with a friend on Sunday, she had made gazpacho, and I took it along). I'll definitely be doing more of that as the tomatoes really start rolling in. And the Thomas Keller ratatouille is on, but Chef Spouse wanted to wait until this coming weekend to make it - less time pressure. I'll be sure to report back on how it turns out.

Recipe: Apple Pie

2010-07-24T10:12:00.000-04:00

Story: While the filling recipe comes from my mom, the crust is my great-grandmother’s recipe. My mom’s side of the family is Pennsylvania Dutch farm people going back to before the Revolutionary War. They settled around Hanover, PA in the 1720s, and the overwhelming majority of my extended family on my mom’s side still lives within about a 100 mile radius of Hanover. Up until my grandparents’ generation, most of the family was still speaking Pennsylvania Dutch (a dialect of German) in the home. Pie is practically its own food group for farmers – it can be breakfast just as easily as dessert. My great-grandmother would have made the crust with lard, but lard’s not so easy to come by these days. If you can get it, though, use it in place of the shortening for the most tender, flaky pie crust you’ve ever tasted!

Recipe – Fool-proof Pie Crust
Makes two double crusts

4 c. all purpose flour (I like King Arthur unbleached white)
1 Tbsp. granulated sugar
2 tsp. salt
8 oz. cold unsalted butter, sliced into thin pats (2 sticks)
3/4 c. vegetable shortening
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 large egg
1/2 c. cold water

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Cut in the butter and shortening with a pastry cutter until it forms a coarse meal. Combine the vinegar, egg, and water in a separate bowl. Pour liquids into the center of flour/fat mixture and mix enough to combine but not so much as to break up all the fats (you need to maintain pockets of fat for a flaky crust). Fold into a ball, cover (either in a bowl with a tight fitting lid or tightly wrapped in plastic wrap) and chill at least 15 minutes (or up to a week).

Recipe – Apple Pie
Makes 2 pies

6 c. apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced (about 12-14 apples – I like MacIntosh best, but any good baking apple will do)
1 1/3 c. granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. all purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Generous 1/2 tsp. ground mace
Scant 1/2 tsp. ground cloves

Milk
Butter (unsalted)
Granulated sugar

Combine apples, sugar, flour and spices in a large bowl. Have the milk, butter, and more sugar at the ready.

Assembling the pies

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Get out two 9” pie pans and two cookie sheets with sides. Get the crust dough out of the fridge and cut it into a generous half (for the bottom crusts) and a scant half (for the top crusts). Have some flour handy in case the crust starts to stick to the rolling pin. Cut the generous half in half again, roll out the bottom crusts (I like to roll them out on top of a sheet of waxed paper, which makes them easy to transfer to the pie pans), and lay them in the pie pans. Do not overwork the dough or the crust will get tough. Do not trim the crusts (yet). Pour half the apple mixture into each pie crust and pat down firmly. Top each pie with several pats of butter. Roll out the top crusts and cover the pies. Trim the crusts and pinch the edges shut. Poke some vent holes in the top crust with a fork. Use a pastry brush to paint the crusts with milk and then sprinkle on a little sugar. Sit the pie pans on the cookie sheets (to catch drips) and bake for 40 minutes. Cool thoroughly before cutting. A scoop of vanilla ice cream, some whipped cream, or a slice of good cheddar cheese is yummy on the side.

Technique: Butchering a Chicken

2010-07-23T17:37:00.001-04:00

This recording of an episode of Good Eats features one of the best visual explanations I've ever seen of correct butchering technique for a chicken (starting at 5:16). It also features a funny parody of Edgar Allen Poe's great poem The Raven.

Tales from the CSA: Week 8

2010-07-21T17:53:00.000-04:00

In this week's box: BOUNTY!

4 ears of corn
3 yellow squash
2 zucchini
6 cucumbers
2 green peppers
2 tomatoes
1 onion (looks like a Vidalia)
8 plums
3 Ginger Gold apples
large bag of broccoli florets
small pile of roma green beans

Garde manger is a funny thing. I saw peppers and onions this week and immediately thought: fajitas (into which we also put the kernels from two of the ears of corn)! Which necessitated buying cilantro for the marinade. I don't grow cilantro because it's frankly too much of a pain in the ass - in order to keep a continuous supply, you have to keep re-seeding and re-seeding and re-seeding. And it's cheap and easy to come by at the market. And it keeps reasonably well, as long as you lop off the ends of the stems, plunk it in a glass of water and pop it in the fridge as soon as you get it home. But it comes in LARGE bunches (at least at my local market). Garde manger to the rescue! How about flank steak with chimichurri sauce? Plus I have all that flat-leaf parsley in the yard. Of course, one batch of chimichurri sauce is way more than you need for flank steak for two. Would it be good on boiled little red potatoes? Yes! What about broiled snapper? You bet!

Anyway, the other thing that this week's bounty said to me was: ratatouille. We always make the traditional stew-like version, and it's good, don't get me wrong, particularly when make with fresh herbs from my garden. But I'm dying to try the version Thomas Keller created for the eponymous Disney movie. I suspect I'll have more opportunities.

I made another run at the cucumber sorbet, this time going back to basics: cucumbers, basil, lemon juice, a little gin, simple syrup, a little salt. That's it. MUCH better. As the tomatoes start rolling in from the CSA, I'll be making gazpacho and I think a scoop of the cucumber sorbet will be an EXCELLENT addition.

The plums seemed a little under-ripe to me, so we drizzled them with honey and popped them on the grill the night we had the flank steak, turning it off and cooking them with the residual heat, then tossing them with a little cinnamon before eating. Yummy and simple.

The broccoli, the other two ears of corn and the rest of the squash have gone to side dishes, but I haven't used the roma green beans yet, and they're starting to look a little peaked. Any ideas?

My colleagues came to the rescue on the apple situation - I only had 5 between last week and this week and they were smallish. That's not even enough to make one pie. Word got out that I was looking for CSA apples to make a pie, and apples came pouring in, with the request that if I got enough to make TWO pies, could I please bring one into the office? Done and done!

Upcoming: the apple pie recipe (it's a good one!) and...THE NEXT FOOD LAB! Topic? Food Lab: Raw Meat.

Recipe: Black bean & corn salad

2010-07-18T10:53:00.002-04:00

I love corn on the cob, don't get me wrong, but with the abundance of corn showing up from the CSA these days, I had to come up with some other things to do with it. This recipe is adapted from the black bean, corn and tomato salad in Joy of Cooking.

Cut kernels from about 3 ears of corn. Put them in a small pan and boil in just enough water to cover for 1 minute. Drain, rinse under cold water, and put them in a large bowl.

When it comes to corn on the cob, YMMV on amounts. You're looking for 1-2 c. total, depending on your preferred ratio of corn to other ingredients. You'll count your minute from when the water starts to boil.

Next you're going to make the vinaigrette:

2 Tbsp. any flavorful vinegar (but probably not any of the fruit ones - if you've made homemade herb vinegar, though, this would be a GREAT application)
several cloves of garlic
salt & pepper to taste
5 Tbsp. good quality olive oil
1/4 c. (or thereabouts) basil (or other green herbs)

OK, the EASIEST way to make a vinaigrette is to use a stick/immersion blender. If you have one, just bung everything into the tall cylindrical container that comes with and have at it. If not, you're going to have to do a lot of fine dicing, chopping, and whisking. You don't want a big glob of basil - or garlic - in your mouth, and you need to WHISK WHISK WHISK to make sure it emulsifies properly.

Obviously, everything that goes into a vinaigrette is to taste, so make sure you taste as you go. Don't have basil? Use cilantro. Want to toss in some shallots? Go for it. Garlic is always to taste, as are salt & pepper. A little lime juice? Divine. The only requirements are some sort of flavorful oil and some sort of flavorful acid.

Rinse 1 15 oz. can of black beans and toss into bowl with corn.

The Joy recipe calls for about twice as many black beans and encourages you to do the overnight soak/long cooking time thing. Dude, this is a SUMMER dish. I don't really want to steam up my kitchen by simmering beans for an hour or two. I also think a roughly equal balance of beans and corn is what you're after, not twice as many beans as corn. But you may not agree.

Now comes the good part. The Joy recipe just calls for you to add cherry tomatoes and red onion. Whatever! Here's what I added:

2 large, very ripe tomatoes chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
several thinly sliced scallions
1 finely diced jalapeno

This is about using your produce. The tenor of the dish will be influenced by what you decide to include. Include jalapeno, cilantro, and lime juice? Viva la Mexico! Oregano, feta cheese and black olives? Sounds Greek to me. Stick with the recipe above but take out the jalapeno and add some chopped zucchini, and it seems kind of Italian.

Pour the dressing over the vegetables in the bowl, let sit at room temperature for at least 20 minutes, stir, taste and serve.

Stir gently - you don't want to smush the beans or the tomatoes. As always, remember to taste and adjust seasonings before serving! Because of all that starch, the flavor can be a little flat. If it does, you want to add more acid (citrus juice, tomatoes, or vinegar) or salt. You should be using really fresh, ripe corn and tomatoes, so there should be plenty of sweetness. If your produce was sub-par (which during the summer it absolutely should not be, and if it's not summer, you shouldn't be making this), you might want to sprinkle on a TINY bit of sugar. Don't be too stingy with the olive oil, either - you need fat to carry flavor.

This makes a great side dish with a simple grilled steak or broiled fish.

Recipe: "The Cuke"

2010-07-16T17:01:00.001-04:00

This is adapted from a recipe that was entered in a summer 2006 New York Times cocktail contest.

Have a large pitcher at hand.

I love pitcher drinks for summer, for parties, and especially for summer parties. They're invariably cold, refreshing and not terribly alcoholic - and you can make them in advance.

Peel and VERY thinly slice at least 3 cucumbers. Drop them in the pitcher.

The original recipe only calls for 2 cucumbers and calls for you not to peel them. Wrong on both counts. The cucumbers become a tasty bonus snack.

Thinly slice 3 limes. Drop them in the pitcher too.

Add several tablespoons of fresh squeezed lime juice to the pitcher.

The original recipe says to juice 3 limes, but you really need to do this to taste, because limes don't produce a consistent amount of juice nor do they have consistent acidity. We've adopted the practice of purchasing a bag of limes just about every week and then squeezing them all at once and storing the juice in the fridge in a plastic squeeze bottle so we have plenty of fresh lime juice on hand. You'd be surprised at how much use you'll get out of it. Also, remember to microwave the limes for about 15 seconds before squeezing them (or roll them vigorously on the counter) to help them express more juice.

Add about a cup of mint leaves (no stems) to the pitcher.

This is also an approximation - if you're not big on mint, add less. If you love mint, add more. If your mint plants are going crazy, add LOTS more. Not that I would know anything about that, of course.

Add about 1/2 c. of simple syrup to the pitcher.

The original recipe calls for straight sugar and then encourages you to muddle all the above ingredients. But it's hard to dissolve the sugar fully unless you muddle really energetically, and then the lovely cucumber slices end up all mashed, which is appealing neither to the eye nor the palate.

Add 2 c. gin to the pitcher. Shake or stir gently.

The original recipe calls for Hendricks, but there's so much going on in this drink taste-wise, I wouldn't waste Hendricks - use a simpler, less expensive gin like Tanqueray or Blue Coat or Bombay. You do need to stir or shake (if you can seal the lid on your pitcher) to mix all the ingredients, but do it gently to preserve the yummy cucumber slices. The original recipe also says that you can use vodka, but why would you want to do something like that?

Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Taste and adjust ingredients.

You want to let the flavors blend. After that, you'll want to taste to see if you'd like more of any of the elements listed above - lime, cucumber, mint, sugar.

To serve, fill a highball glass with ice. Use a bar spoon to fish out some cucumber and lime slices into your glass. Fill glass at least half way (or a little more for a less-strong drink) with cold club soda. Fill the rest of the way with the gin mixture, straining it as it goes into the glass. Grab a straw, sit back and enjoy.

The original recipe gets all wacky with garnishes, but that's really defeating the purpose of the pitcher drink. Chef Spouse observes that all tall drinks over ice need to be served with straws in the summer. No particular reason other than it just seems right. Nibble the yummy cucumber slices as you drink and congratulate yourself on getting part of your Recommended Daily Allowance of vegetables during cocktail hour.

Tales from the CSA: Week 7

2010-07-13T18:19:00.002-04:00

In the box:

1 tomato
1 green pepper
4 ears of corn
sm pile of green beans
1 head Boston bibb lettuce
4 cucumbers
2 yellow squash
1 zucchini
2 Ginger Gold apples

Once again, Chef Spouse is out of town.

A - it's a good thing I like vegetables.
B - if he's going to be around more next summer, we might need to upgrade to a full share.

I was warned that the apples might be a little tart. So I'm hanging onto them in hopes of getting more next week and then making a pie.

I made another batch of "the cuke" cocktails with the cucumbers, with some key modifications to the recipe I found online. That updated recipe will be forthcoming.

I ate one of the ears of corn immediately, but realized I wouldn't be able to eat the other four before their yummy freshness dimmed. Black bean & corn salad to the rescue! I based it on the recipe in Joy of Cooking, again with some significant modifications (that included the tomato). That recipe is also forthcoming.

The squash made a nice side dish, sauteed in butter with garlic.

The green beans and lettuce are waiting for dinner on July 14, when they'll go into a Salade Nicoise in honor of Bastille Day.

The green pepper waited on Chef Spouse's arrival home to go into fajitas.

Tales from the CSA: Week 6

2010-07-07T20:51:00.001-04:00

In this week's box:

3 ears of corn (!)
2 tomatoes (!)
1 zucchini
2 yellow summer squash
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
pile o' green beans
6 cucumbers

OK, so the cucumber situation had gotten dire. Including the ones left over from last week, we had 8 cucumbers. Time to do more than eat them in salads.

I had ideas: the mythic cucumber gin drink I've been pursuing and a cucumber sorbet. So I made both.

The cucumber drink, aka "The Cuke" was a huge hit. I made a recipe and a half (my pitcher wasn't quite big enough to accommodate a double recipe) and took it to an Independence Day pool party. I love a pitcher drink for parties, because then you don't end up getting stuck behind the bar rather than hanging out with your friends. Bonus? The thin slices of cucumber that have marinated in cold gin for a few hours are delicious - crisp and lightly alcoholic. One change I think I will make the next time (which will probably be this weekend, because I just got 4 more cucumbers this week) is to use double simple syrup rather than sugar, which didn't completely dissolve, because I didn't want to muddle/smash the cucumbers. Oh, and I did peel them first (contrary to the recipe), and I topped the drink with club soda rather than sparkling water. I would think it would also be good topped with a splash of champagne.

The cucumber sorbet...less so. I used this recipe from the Washington Post/(purportedly) The Inn at Little Washington, only I substituted basil rather than dill, since I have TONS for fresh basil. I think Patrick O'Connell's not telling us everything, because it didn't turn out great. In the first round, although I chopped the basil VERY finely, it all settled to the bottom of the sorbet as it froze, leaving large globs of basil down there, taking the corn syrup with it. Now admittedly, had I used dill, that likely would not have happened. But also, the egg white didn't really seem to incorporate properly, leaving an almost meringue-like topping. So it ended up in at least 3 layers, none of which were really all that good, and all of which had an odd texture.

So I decided to take another run at it. I completely thawed it, ran it through a chinoise to pull out all those bits of basil, re-mixed it MUCH more thoroughly to try to flatten the egg whites a little and incorporate them more fully, and re-processed it in the ice cream maker. I did all that tonight, so I'm still waiting for it to re-freeze, and I'll let you know if it improves.

Edited July 16 to add: it's better, but it's still not very good. I suspect tossage is forthcoming. You can't win 'em all.

Tales from the CSA: Week 5

2010-06-30T13:06:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

2 cucumbers
2 yellow squash
1 zucchini
4 potatoes
1 sm bunch scallions
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
1 head cabbage
small pile of green beans
6 little carrots
1 bag broccoli florets

Week 5 brings us another episode of "Chef Spouse is out of town."

Before he left, he sauteed the yellow squash and zucchini with ginger, garlic, soy, scallions, and sesame oil as a side dish. Chef Spouse was displeased because the pan wasn't hot enough when the squash went it, so it steamed more than browning. So make sure your pan is HOT! It was served on the side of cornmeal-breaded, pan fried cod and okra sauteed with roasted red pepper and the scallions.

The broccoli, once again, was just eaten as a side dish, as were the green beans and potatoes.

Another taste test: little CSA carrots versus regular grocery store (organic) carrots. The CSA carrots are SO much sweeter. They've been used, with the lettuce and cucumbers, in salads, and are a revelation in carroty goodness.

Speaking of cucumbers, I'm still working on the cucumber/mint/lime gin drink. When I perfect the recipe, you'll be the first to know.

I'm hanging onto the other head of cabbage (which tends to have a pretty good shelf life anyway), because we want to do a repeat of last week's braised cabbage, replacing the duck fat with bacon fat, and that really requires two eaters - a full head of cabbage is a fair amount of cabbage.

Recipe: Salted Caramel Ice Cream

2010-06-24T19:56:00.003-04:00

This is based on the recipe at Epicurious.

Heat 1 c. sugar in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon until it melts and gets to a dark brown

The dark brown stage is important - you want a good, strong caramel flavor because ice cream is cold, which dulls flavors. Burn it? Start over. But be bold. Much like roux, the trick is knowing the difference between something that's burning and something that's burnt.

Add 1 1/4 c. heavy cream a bit at a time, stirring continuously

Pour the cream in a little at a time. It will bubble up BIG TIME. Keep the heat to medium high, but take your time adding the cream.

Pour the sugar-cream mixture in a bowl and stir in 2 Tbsp. vanilla extract and 2 Tbsp. flaked sea salt

It doesn't have to be flaked sea salt, but flaked dissolves easier. Make sure your bowl is on some sort of trivet or hot mitt (like in the photo). Before you ask: yes, this is a lot of salt. Remember in the Food Lab: Milk post how I mentioned that this doesn't really freeze solid like you'd expect ice cream to do? It's the salt content. But the thing is, if you want salted caramel that actually tastes salty, you need to go there.

In the meantime, make your custard.

Whisk 5 egg yolks in a heat-proof bowl and keep ready

What to do with all those egg whites? Make Ramos Gin Fizzes, of course.

Bring 1 c. milk, 1 c. heavy cream, and 1/4 c. sugar to a boil in a small heavy saucepan. Just when they reach a boil, remove from heat and add at least half the hot dairy mixture to the eggs, stirring continuously.

Why do you do this? You're tempering the eggs. If you just dump those yolks into the hot dairy mixture, they will scramble. Which will be tasty, but not what you're after.

Pour the tempered egg/dairy mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously, until the mixture reaches 170 degrees F. Do not boil.

OK, the reason the recipe says "do not boil" is that if you do, the egg yolks will scramble regardless of the tempering. Actually, they might scramble anyway. As long as you follow the next step carefully, it really won't matter either way.

Strain the custard through a very fine meshed sieve into a large bowl, then stir in the caramel.

If the custard scrambles, you're not screwed. Just make sure that sieve is REALLY fine, and use a metal spoon to press the custard through.

Chill the custard overnight. Process in an ice cream maker for at least an hour. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the freezer.

Given the salt content, this ice cream is never going to get really firm. It doesn't matter. It's the bomb-diggity (at least if you like salty/sweet things).

Tales from the CSA: Week 4

2010-06-22T19:39:00.000-04:00

In this week's box:

1 bag broccoli florets
1 sm bunch scallions
5 med potatoes
1 head cabbage
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
2 zucchini
2 yellow squash

This week was a breeze - that's enough veg for, like, two dinners. We had to BUY veg at the grocery store to make it through the week.

Chef Spouse ate the zucchini and yellow squash for lunches, sauteed with garlic, ginger, soy, sesame oil, and scallions.

The broccoli was just a side dish early in the week.

Last week's turnips and this week's potatoes went into a gratin as part of Food Lab: Milk.

The Boston Bibb served as the basis for a Salad Nicoise. Surprisingly, Boston Bibb is what Julia recommends, and I don't think it's a very good choice. I think you really need a lettuce with more structure, like Romaine.

Last week's cucumbers got turned into a Thai sweet and sour cucumber salad to accompany red curry chicken with sugar peas and red bell peppers.

We braised the cabbage according to a recipe in Alice Waters's vegetables cookbook that uses duck fat (!!), and served it on the side of pork chops in a mushroom sour cream sauce.

Food Lab 3: Milk

2010-06-21T19:10:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, June 19 the milk challenge was on.

Why milk? Well, you may recall that the IA by Day-Chef by Nights were unable to participate in the Deglazing lab due to the early arrival of The Spawn. So...new baby = milk. Yes, we're all secretly 12 year old boys.

So we started with a taste-test that included:

Skim milk
2% milk
Whole milk
Kefir
Goat milk
Buttermilk
Half and half
European style heavy cream
Regular heavy cream

Among the "regular" milks, whole milk was the clear winner. Actually, the only reason we even had skim was because Chef Spouse insisted we needed to include it in the test trials. Verdict? Yuck.

When it came to cow's milk versus goat milk, there wasn't as much difference as you'd think. The cow's milk was a bit sweeter, but without doing a direct comparison, you might never notice.

The kefir was tangy like yogurt and thick like heavy cream. Quite yummy, but very different.

The verdict on buttermilk was that it tastes better all by itself that anyone thought/remembered.

Half -n- half versus whole milk? There's not as much difference as you'd think.

Same thing with the European style versus regular heavy cream. Although European style has more fat (35% versus 30%), there's not much of a difference, taste-wise.

So once the tasting was over, we got to cooking with milk products.

The initial focus was various ice creams. We made 3:

Salted caramel - recipe forthcoming
Peach - very traditional - peaches, sugar, heavy cream, cinnamon, uncooked
Avocado - salt, sugar, lime, coconut milk, also uncooked

All 3 were delicious, particularly the salted caramel that is extremely rich and the consistency of soft-serve. More on that later.

For the main meal, we made milk-braised pork (whole milk), a gratin of potatoes and turnips based on the recipe in Larousse Gastronomique (using the kefir), Parker house rolls (two batches - cow versus goat milk), and sliced tomatoes with chiffonade basil and cheese we made with skim milk. We also made a shortbread that we ate with strawberries and cream.

Skim milk does not make good cheese.

The Parker house rolls were good either way - the cow's milk were a bit fluffier, but the goat's milk seemed to make better tasting rolls.

The gratin was quite tasty - between the turnips and the kefir, it definitely had extra zing.

As usual, we played around with some drinks, too.

We made Ramos Gin Fizzes using the recipe detailed back in March.

We also had some blueberries, so we made a drink with milk, gin, basil, the blueberries and sugar, topped with club soda that was surprisingly tasty.

Conclusions?

Skim milk sucks.

Kefir is really, really unusual and yummy.

There's a reason people used to drink buttermilk straight.

You could probably replace the half and half in your coffee with whole milk without even noticing the difference.

And if you drink milk, you'll want the whole around anyway.

Tales from the CSA: Week 3

2010-06-15T18:23:00.000-04:00

The box this week included:

1 qt. strawberries (sadly, probably the last ones of the season)
3 turnips
1 head Boston Bibb lettuce
1 med. cucumber
1 zucchini
2 yellow summer squash
pile o' peas
1 sm head of broccoli

The broccoli had started to bolt, which apparently freaked some people out. Sadly, we ended up composting ours because one small head is not enough for the two of us, and by the time the next week's box arrived (with more broccoli), it had started to go bad.

Seeing as we keep getting cucumbers, we really need to get cracking on our cucumber/mint/gin cocktail. We've had variations on this at a number of local DC bars recently - it's kind of like a gin-based mojito, but not as sweet and with the addition of cucumber. In other words, VERY refreshing. We've started playing around it with at home and are having some trouble with the sugar balance - they've all been too tart. Anyone have a recipe they want to share?

The strawberries were gone in a flash.

The squash got eaten as a side dish, prepared my favorite way: chopped in quarters, then sauteed in butter with garlic, scallions, and fresh herbs from my garden.

We also prepared the peas as a side dish the same night, based on a recipe from Alice Waters. We shelled the peas, then sauteed more CSA scallions with fresh thyme in butter, then popped in the peas with a little water to steam, then topped them all with fresh chives. Chef Spouse decided that he had undercooked the peas slightly, but they were still quite tasty.

The protein that accompanied all this lovely veg? Salmon fillet.

The lettuce just went into salads - nothing exciting there - and we hung onto the turnips for use in Food Lab 3: Milk, set for Saturday, June 19.

Recipe: Bread Pudding

2010-06-14T19:20:00.002-04:00

Every June, we gather a the biggest group we can to go to Wolf Trap's annual Louisiana Swamp Romp - an afternoon of eating, drinking, and dancing to Louisiana music in the sunshine.

The best part about Swamp Romp is that it's just a big party where everyone brings yummy comestibles and a lot of sharing and making friends goes down. We're Team Julep for reasons that probably don't need explaining. Most years, we set up near Team Crawfish, a great group that comes with a cooler (a hotter?) full of crawfish, corn, and potatoes. This year, they couldn't come - hence the photo to the right.

This year's menu included:

Gumbo (from Donald Link's Real Cajun cookbook, although Chef Spouse has tracked down the recipe for Prejean's famous pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo, but not in time to do a test run)
Jambalaya (from a recipe I clipped from...somewhere)
Chocolate chip cookies (for making friends with the nearby children)
Mint Juleps (for making friends with the nearby adults)

Plus goodies made by the Romp crew:

homebrewed beer
duck tamales
pralines
gazpacho
ceviche
sangria
fruit salad
more wine
more beer
Popeye's fried chicken (it's traditional and a seriously delish guilty pleasure)

And...Elizabeth’s New Orleans-style Bread Pudding

This is based loosely on recipes from the Commander's Palace cookbook and from Joy of Cooking. But here’s the thing to remember about bread pudding: it’s an inexact science. This is a dessert that was created to use up stale bread, so all quantities are approximate.

Anyway....

Butter a 4 qt (ish) casserole dish
Thinly slice about 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter on the bottom of casserole
Spread golden raisins over bottom of casserole

Don't have/don't like raisins? Use other dried fruit - or even fresh fruit that holds up well to baking (i.e., any kind of stone fruit, apples)

Slice 1 loaf of stale French bread about 1/2 - 1 inch thick

Don't have French bread? Use whatever you've got - but probably not whole-grain.

Stack the bread tightly in the casserole

I like a spiral pattern

Sprinkle on some more raisins (for about 1 c. total, give or take)

Make sure you press them down - any fruit that doesn't get coated by the custard mixture will tend to burn

Whisk 3 large eggs in a medium bowl

Have extra yolks hanging around from an egg whites only preparation? Feel free to substitute 2 yolks for an egg

Add 1 c. heavy cream
2 1/2 c. milk
2 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

You can go heavier on the heavy cream (reduce the milk accordingly) for a richer dish, or heavier on the milk (reduce the heavy cream) for a lighter dish, or replace some (or all) of the dairy with half-and-half. Use what you have on hand.

Pour custard mixture over the bread and let stand for about an hour

Press bread down into custard mixture several times during the hour it’s resting - this makes sure everything gets fully saturated with the custard mixture before baking, which is what you're after.

Bake at 375 for 1 hour

Meanwhile, make the bourbon sauce:

Melt 1 stick (8 oz.) butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat

stir in 1 c. sugar
1/3 c. bourbon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt

If you like it a little less boozy, you can replace a few Tbsp. of the bourbon with some water.

Cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar dissolves
Remove from heat

Whisk 1 large egg in separate bowl
Whisk egg into bourbon/butter/sugar mixture
Cook over medium heat about 1 minute, whisking continuously, until the sauce thickens

Ok, this is where the magic happens:

When the bread pudding comes out of the oven and while it’s still hot, pour the bourbon sauce over the bread pudding so it soaks in.

You can hang onto a little of the bourbon sauce and re-heat to pour over individual servings when you serve it, but you don't need to. (Actually, you could also make another batch of the bourbon sauce for additional saucing of individual portions, because it keeps in the fridge and it's really good on ice cream, pancakes, waffles, pound cake, shoeboxes....)

Tales from the CSA: Week 2

2010-06-08T18:27:00.000-04:00

I was a little concerned last week. I know Farmer Eric told us we'd be getting a lot more produce as the year went along, and I was certainly hoping so. This week, I was not disappointed!

Week 2 box:

1 lg head pak choy
2 lg heads broccoli
2 sm cucumbers
1 sm bunch scallions
2 yellow squash
1 zucchini
1 qt. strawberries
1 head green leaf lettuce
1 bunch Swiss chard
3 bunches spring kale
5 potatoes

This was an interesting week, as Chef Spouse was out of town on business. We used a number of the ingredients immediately, as we had a friend over for dinner on delivery night: we had a salad of the last of last week's Bibb lettuce plus some of this week's leaf lettuce, goat cheese, about half of the strawberries, toasted almonds and a simple balsamic vinaigrette. Chef Spouse had already planned to make pork chops, so he used the scallions in the pan sauce, and we had the squash on the side, sauteed in butter with garlic, more scallions, and fresh herbs. For dessert, we ate the berry sorbet we made with last week's strawberries.

The rest of the strawberries vanished pretty quickly, the lettuce and cucumbers were consumed in salads, the potatoes and broccoli got eaten as regular old sides, and the scallions got used in everyday food prep.

Which leaves us - actually, me, since Chef Spouse had skedaddled by that point - with the greens.

I split the head of pak choy with a friend (it was REALLY big) and made a stir fry with chicken (thinly sliced thighs) for myself based on the the recipe provided by the CSA. I say "based on" because I looked at the recipe and was like "where's the flavor?" Marinade of rice vinegar and cornstarch and a sauce of 1 clove of garlic and chicken broth. Right. Make that sauce like 4 cloves of garlic, fresh ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil, and throw some more soy sauce into the marinade plus some of the scallions is more like it.

The spring kale got sauteed in olive oil and garlic, then sprinkled with some red wine vinegar, then tossed with pasta (Alice Waters's idea), sprinkled with a little fresh ground parmesan cheese (my idea) and eaten on the side of a nice trout fillet done under the broiler with herbs from my garden, olive oil, lemon juice, and sea salt.

The Swiss chard got sauteed as well and served on the side of a steak done on the grill and some olive oil and garlic roasted potatoes.

Recipe: Berry tequila sorbet

2010-06-03T18:22:00.000-04:00

So one thing about CSA produce is that it tends to have a short shelf-life, berries in particular. And with being out of town when our first batch of berries arrived, we decided we needed to do something quick. This sorbet resulted.

3 c. mixed berries (we used the CSA strawberries, plus some grocery store blueberries and blackberries)
1 c. simple syrup (or to taste)
1 Tbsp. lemon juice (or to taste)
1/2 c. tequila

Combine all in a blender and puree. Taste and adjust simple syrup and lemon juice to match your palate and the sweetness of the berries. Press through a very fine mesh sieve to remove all the berry seeds. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Process in an ice cream maker for at least 45 minutes. Store in the freezer in an airtight container. Serve with finely shredded fresh mint. Try to eat it within a week or so.

Tales from the CSA: Week 1

2010-06-01T11:17:00.000-04:00

I've been working at my current job for about a year at this point. It's an awesome place to work, not least of which because it's the most staff-friendly place I've ever been. Case in point: we have a wellness initiative, through which you can earn extra days off. As a result, the senior leadership supported me coordinating a group (20+ people) to participate in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) on work time. And the CSA we chose, Shallowbrook Farm, delivers to our office. Which they also support. It's great.

Anyway, this all helped me finally convince Chef Spouse to try a CSA. He was worried about getting food he didn't choose and might not know what to do with. But I bribed him with a copy of Alice Waters's Vegetables cookbook, and I figured out how to start an urban compost pile as insurance.

So I thought I might document what we get each week, and what we end up doing with it.

Week 1 box:

1 head Boston Bibb Lettuce
1 sm bunch scallions
1 qt. strawberries
1 lg head broccoli
1 yellow squash
5 med potatoes

Chef Spouse was disappointed - he knew what everything was on sight and knew exactly what to do with it.

The first thing we did was run a taste test. There was not as much difference between the farm strawberries and the store strawberries as I would've thought. The difference was more in texture - the farm strawberries were much softer and juicier. There was a HUGE difference in taste between farm yellow squash and store yellow squash. We didn't have anything else on hand to do a one-to-one test, but the broccoli was extra yummy, too.

We were out of town Memorial Day weekend, and we still managed to use everything - potatoes, broccoli, squash, lettuce and scallions were used in the course of normal cooking. And we turned the berries into sorbet (recipe forthcoming).

Technique: Deglazing

2010-05-25T12:10:00.000-04:00

This is what we came up with at Food Lab 2:

Whatever your meat is, scallopini it.

Heat about 1 Tbsp. of butter in a heavy skillet

Lots of recipes tell you to go half-and-half with olive oil, but don't. All butter is better. Just keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn.

Sear your meat 1 min each side and remove to a hot plate

Too rare? No way - and remember that it's going to keep cooking once you get it off the fire.

Toss in 1-2 Tbsp. finely minced allium

Which one? As we discovered, whatever you have on hand (shallots, onions, leeks, scallions, garlic, whatever) - but the KEY is that it be finely minced.

Deglaze with cheap red wine or brandy

How much? Enough to get the fond up from the pan. A few Tbsp. up to 1/2 c.

Add your stock

You do have good homemade stock handy, right? How much? Well, how many people are you feeding and how thick do you want the sauce? The more you reduce, the thicker the sauce.

Strain the sauce through a chinois

You don't have to strain the sauce, but it's a nice touch.

Pour the sauce over the meat and enjoy!

Recipe: May Duck

2010-05-22T12:11:00.000-04:00

This was an on-the-fly invention of Mad Kitchen Scientist, so quantities are all pretty much to taste:

Start with duck breast crusted with:

1/2 Tbsp. palm sugar
1/2 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 Tbsp. minced ginger

Brown in a hot pan

Deglaze with rice wine (Hua Tiao)

Make a pan sauce using sriracha, rice wine vinegar and soy sauce to taste

I literally can't even tell you how good this was. And we ate it after having consumed about 2 lb. of beef a person, so not only were we not hungry, we were already stuffed.

Recipe: Mint Julep

2010-05-20T12:10:00.000-04:00

OK, first let me point out that the pursuit of the perfect mint julep recipe is one of Chef Spouse's major life goals.

That said, there is a (relatively) simple way to make a really fine julep. Ready?

Put 4 or so good sized ice cubes in an old fashioned glass and set aside

Combine in a metal cocktail shaker

6-10 leaves of fresh mint (preferably Kentucky Colonel)
1 tsp. sugar
3 oz. bourbon (I prefer Woodford Reserve for juleps)
6 or so good sized ice cubes

Shake REALLY vigorously - you're trying to dissolve the sugar and pulverize the mint

Strain into the old fashioned glass

Top with club soda

HOWEVER, you can get a lot more complicated (if you want to)

Chef Spouse's Nearly Perfect Julep

1 stalk of mint - strip off the large leaves at the bottom, leaving a tuft of leaves at the top

In your julep glass, muddle:

6 large leaves of mint
2 tsp. sugar
3 oz. bourbon (Maker's Mark)

Don't rush - you don't want to shred the mint, you're just trying to press the mint oils into the bourbon and dissolve the sugar

Fill glass with crushed ice, pressing it down until glass is full

Top with club soda, a thin slice of lemon zest, and possibly a little more bourbon

To quote Chef Spouse: "Everyone uses a different glass - adjust quantities appropriately."

Drink with a straw

Food Lab 2: Deglazing

2010-05-17T12:06:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, May 16, Chef Spouse and I headed to Virginia to Mad Kitchen Scientist & the Executive Committee's house for our second food lab. Papa and Mama IA by Day-Chef by Night couldn't join us because The Spawn decided to make her appearance several weeks earlier than planned. Welcome Spawn!

Anyway, we had a GIANT tenderloin of beef, an equally GIANT tenderloin of pork, an entire duck, various alliums, beef stock, and a plan: to discover the BEST way to to deglaze and create a pan sauce.

This time, we decided to be a little more systematic, so the Executive Committee set us up a spreadsheet to record the results of our experiments.

After taking some time over cheese, bread, pate and mint juleps to plan our afternoon, we quickly realized that we had WAY more meat than we could possibly use - and really, we definitely SHOULD not eat that much all in one day. We decided to reserve the pork tenderloin for another application and stick with the beef.

Mad Kitchen Scientist quickly fabricated a pile of 1/4 lb. beef scallopini for fast cooking, we pulled the beef stock cubes out of the freezer, and we began:

Test 1: butter versus olive oil
Winner: butter, no contest

Test 2: good wine versus cheap wine for deglazing
Winner: surprisingly, the cheap wine. The flavors were brighter. Which was a good thing, because we wanted to drink the good wine (Fritz Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Vintage 2006, and damn, was it yummy).

Test 3: cheap red wine versus brandy
Winner: no clear winner. Both were good, and we decided you'd want to choose based on what else you were planning to make.

Test 4: alliums - shallots versus onions
Winner: we all expected the shallots to win, and what we discovered was that it really didn't matter, as long as the allium in question was very finely diced.

Test 5: allium - garlic plus onion versus garlic alone
Winner: garlic plus onion. Delish pan sauce resulted.

But what about the duck?

Glad you asked.

We did one test: white wine versus brandy
Winner: again, no clear winner. The brandy sauce was nutty and warm - a fall/winter duck. The white wine sauce was very fresh and bright - a spring duck.

Important kitchen tip? Brandy + duck fat = flash pan fire. Be careful.

And then, Mad Kitchen Scientist lived up to his name with the other duck breast, creating something we named May Duck, which recipe I will post separately.

So what did we learn? Doing really good beef as a quick saute scallopini in butter is AWESOME. After that, it's really up to you...

Technique: Scrambled Eggs

2010-04-07T12:11:00.001-04:00

Prep a double boiler

Whisk 3 large eggs, 1 Tbsp. heavy cream, and 1/2 tsp. of salt

Alton Brown, aka The Boss of Us, recommends scrambling eggs in a double boiler to provide continuous low heat, and he's right - this does result in awesomely delicious scrambled eggs, but is a mess to clean up - man, does the egg stick to the bowl.

Anyway, more on that in a minute.

Once you've poured your whisked eggs and cream into your double boiler, use a flexible silicon spatula to scrape them up continuously until they achieve the desired degree of doneness.

The faster you scrape, the smoother texture your eggs will have. As far as doneness? It's a matter of taste, but you need to remove the eggs from the heat a little runny for your taste because the hot eggs will continue to cook off the heat.

To go over the top? Smear a little goat cheese on the hot eggs.

A few notes:

Chef Spouse has tried a variety of options to make the cleanup a little easier. The type of bowl does not seem to make a difference. A little browned butter in the bottom improves the flavor, but does not help with the cleanup either.

And of course, the downside of using a double boiler is that you have to hold the bowl, and it's hard to hold still, because the steam comes up and hits your arm.

Chef Spouse realized that the key is that your pan cannot have any sharp edges where something might collect, which will wreck the texture. So you can skip the double boiler if you have a good heavy weight saucier pan and a cooking surface with consistent and easily adjustable temperature. In other words, an All-Clad saucier on low to med-low on a Viking gas range obviates the need for the double boiler.

Chef Spouse is constitutionally disinclined to nonstick pans, but he loves making scrambled eggs this way so much he's considering getting one.

Technique: Poached Eggs

2010-04-04T12:09:00.000-04:00

As with most cooking techniques, we base our findings on Alton Brown, with a few changes.

Break a fresh egg into a small bowl or ramekin

Bring water to a boil in a saucepan

We generally do a smallish saucepan and do one egg at a time

Add green herbs

Tarragon is awesome and classic, but anything that's not an oily herb - like rosemary - and that you like with eggs would work. Use more than you think - we generally use several large sprigs.

Shut off the water and add 1 Tbsp. of white vinegar per cup of water in the pan

This is quite a bit more vinegar than most recipes call for, but we found, in testing the amounts, that this quantity produced the best results in egg texture.

As soon as the water settles, tilt the pan and pour the egg gently into the side towards where the pan is tilted. Keep the pan tilted until the egg starts to set up.

The water cannot be moving AT ALL when the egg goes in. We found that this method is more sure than the traditional swirl the water and drop the egg in the center, because if you miss with that, it makes a mess - and it's easy to miss.

After 3 minutes, remove the egg using a slotted spoon and serve.

Recipe: Ramos Gin Fizz

2010-03-30T12:08:00.000-04:00

The Brennan family hasn't let us down yet. Can the people behind Bananas Foster ever go wrong? But we do need to give a shout-out to the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone. A dash of orange flower water? I think not.

2 oz. half-and-half
1 1/2 oz. gin (we like Leopold's - its floral notes match well with the drink)
1/2 oz. simple syrup
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 egg white
Orange flower water (4-5 dashes)
Vanilla extract (about a dash)

Combine all in a shaker, and shake until your arm is about to fall off. Then shake some more. Strain into a rocks glass and serve immediately, while everyone can admire your shaking skills.

Do I need to tell you that the lemon juice needs to be fresh or how to make simple syrup? No - otherwise what are you doing here?

The Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel also makes an excellent Ramos Gin Fizz. Clearly, more research is required.

Recipe: Bourbon Milk Punch

2010-03-23T12:07:00.000-04:00

This is (basically) the Commander's Palace recipe. Pete Fountain can't be wrong.

1 1/2 c. 2% milk
1/2 c. heavy cream
12 oz. bourbon (Maker's Mark is the rail in our house)
1 egg white (NOT optional, even if the recipe says it is)
1/2 c. simple syrup
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract (the real stuff, not the fake stuff)

Combine the milk, cream, bourbon, egg white, sugar, water and vanilla in a pitcher. Mix using an immersion blender. Serve over rocks in old fashioned glasses with a grind of nutmeg on the top.

Food Lab 1: Eggs

2010-03-22T17:37:00.000-04:00

We decided to hold the very first Food Lab on March 21 in honor of my birthday. Between eggs being one of the building blocks of cuisine, the players desiring to gather on the early side because it was a Sunday, the variety of great brunch drinks you can make with eggs, and my own love of - and inability to make - poached eggs, the subject was obvious.

So Mad Kitchen Scientist, The Executive Committee, Chef Spouse, Papa IA by Day-Chef by Night, Mama IA by Day-Chef by Night, and I gathered at our house to learn everything we could about eggs.

Now, I love poached eggs. But we've had no luck poaching eggs. Chef Spouse had proposed getting an egg poacher, but I'm with Alton Brown on this - no single taskers. So we will poach eggs in a pot of water or not at all. We tried plain water and vinegared water. We tried just off the boil and just steaming. We tried adding herbs into the water. We tried dropping the eggs in the water and poaching them in various vessels. Yes, we ate a lot of eggs. In the end, the winner was water off the boil (no heat), 1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar, tarragon in the water, egg straight in, 3 minutes. Perfection. Yes, you need to use a LOT of tarragon - and thanks to Papa IA by Day-Chef by Night for the idea - but it's awesome. Grow your own. Buying fresh herbs is too expensive.

Mad Kitchen Scientist had made some Parker House rolls for us, so in between poaching and eating eggs and eating the rolls, we decided to try baking some eggs in the rolls. It did not thrill.

In the meantime, Mama IA by Day-Chef by Night started making some divinity, which is a really old-skool traditional southern candy that's made with egg whites, and, if it doesn't set up properly, comes out kind of like marshmallow fluff. Yes, I know that from recent experience. Why do you ask?

Back to the eggs: now we were on to scrambled. We decided to try Alton Brown's double boiler method. When you're starting to play around with ingredients, you can't go wrong with Alton Brown. Everything Alton says about whisking the curd as it forms is true. Everything Alton says about low heat is true. The cleanup is a mess - the eggs never brown, so a fair amount sticks to your inner bowl and is a bitch to remove. But the eggs? Divine. Even better with a schmear of goat cheese (once again, a Papa IA by Day-Chef by Night innovation. He rules.). You know what didn't work? Bourbon scrambled eggs. Yuck. But you don't know until you try

We also enjoyed a cornucopia of egg-based drinks: Ramos Gin Fizzes, Bourbon Milk Punch, and champagne. Well, OK, champagne's not egg-based, but it goes with everything.

We finished the day with fantastic chocolate souffles, courtesy of Mad Kitchen Scientist (who was totally looking for an excuse to buy a bunch of ramekins) and The Executive Committee. Recipe to follow.

Verdict? Fun day, we all learned to poach and scramble eggs perfectly, we were more than a little buzzed, our cholesterol counts were off the charts, and Food Lab was a hit.

Author Bio: Elizabeth Engel

2010-03-10T16:53:00.000-05:00

Hi there! I got into this because my spouse, Jim (aka "Chef Spouse") came up with the idea.

My history with loving food goes back a long way. Some of my earliest food memories include:

Going to the Kimberton Country House with my grandparents. They introduced me to fine dining early (i was probably around 7 years old the first time we went), so I learned proper table manners, how to behave my rambunctious self in a nice restaurant, and how to order off a REAL (as opposed to from a clown's mouth) menu.

Ordering Veal Marsala at the Vale-Rio as a kid - much to the surprise of the waitress - and eating it all.

Meeting my dad in Center City Philadelphia and going to Bookbinders for oysters.

Speaking of my dad, his huge vegetable garden which, as a kid, I did not fully appreciate. Too much work.

Vacationing in Maine at about the age of 10 and, for the first time, eating as much lobster as I wanted. The fact that the restaurant was a picnic table place overlooking the water, and the lobster boats, didn't hurt.

Anyway, other than a flirtation with vegetarianism (that lasted 10 years), I've always been an adventurous eater. I attribute it to my folks, who always said that we had to try one bite of everything, but if we didn't like it, we didn't have to eat any more. As an adult, there is literally NOTHING I won't eat. Sure, there are some things I like better than others - who doesn't? - but you know those people who are like, "I won't eat anything purple"? Not me. Jeffrey Steingarten thinks he ate everything? Me, too, and I wasn't an ass while I was doing it.

Some culinary highlights include:

My first chili half-smoke at Ben's after abandoning vegetarianism
Omakase at Morimoto
Omakase at Makoto
Dinner at the Inn at Little Washington
The year my New Year's resolution was to dine at all the Washingtonian's Top 100 restaurants in DC I hadn't yet eaten at
Lunch at La Tour d'Argent in Paris
Dinner at Ristorante Santini in Milan in the pouring rain
The first time my baguettes came out right (another New Year's resolution - and see photo above)
My first taste of caviar (can't even remember when that was)
Mastering the technique for risotto (thank you, Roberto Donna)
Mastering the technique for roux (thank you, Jude Theriout)
Prejean's pheasant/quail/andouille gumbo

Anyway, welcome to our little project. I hope you enjoy it as much as we will!

Who are you people, and what is "Food Lab," anyway?

2010-03-01T16:35:00.000-05:00

So glad you asked!

Food lab is the brain child of Jim Engel, aka "Chef Spouse." It starts during the 2009 NFL playoffs. Chef Spouse and I (Elizabeth Engel, your humble correspondent) love to eat, love to cook, love to entertain, and LOVE the NFL (specifically, the Philadelphia Eagles). All during football season, we cook every weekend and have people over every weekend to watch the games (thanks to the magical invention of Direct TV and the Sunday Ticket). Which is AWESOME. Until the second week of February, when football season is over. Normally, we spend a few weeks totally depressed, pick ourselves up, and move on with our spring and summer.

Not this year.

This year, Chef Spouse started thinking...we love to cook. We have friends who love to cook. We love to entertain. We have friends who love to entertain. We're all trying to learn more about cooking and improve our skills. Experimentation is tough, though. You don't want to do it for a dinner party - what if it flops? Weeknight dinners are pretty much out, too - no time. And what you REALLY need to do is make the same thing over and over with slight variations to determine which combinations of ingredients and technique produce the best results. But 2 people eating 3 dozen eggs in one day is not a good idea.

Hence, Food Lab.

The mission? Gather a bunch of food-loving friends. Pick an ingredient or a technique. Do a little pre-planning to make sure you have all the tools you need. Gather in someone's kitchen on a weekend. Bring plenty of booze. Cook. Taste. Test. Render a verdict. If it all goes to hell, give it to the dog and order takeout.

This blog will document our experiments in cookery and hopefully shine a little light on classic ingredients and techniques.