03-29-2009
Sweet Sticky Rice
Marc, Stéphane, Liz and myself made a poor attempt at going to the bacon take-down in Williamsburg on Sunday afternoon. It turned out, an hour before it even started, all the tickets were sold. Well we could have been cheesed off (ça aurait pu nous foutre en rogne) for being robbed of our bacon fest, instead we set off to have a nice beer and proceeded to sample oysters with dark miso, fresh tofu, black cod and shark fins in a funky maze of a Japanese restaurant nearby.
It does feel like I over-ate that day (*burp*) - a little earlier, I made a rather large amount of coconut rice pudding after Jean-Georges Vongerichten's recipe (Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges
Soak a cup of glutinous Thai rice (I used Arborio, it was fine) overnight, or at least for a few hours. Then steam it for 8 minutes (for Thai rice) - Arborio took 15 minutes. My set-up was pretty ludicrous, I stacked a rescued bamboo wonton-steaming basket on top of my cast iron pot, and lidded it with a pyrex dish. I'm sure you can do better than that.
While the rice is steaming, make a simple syrup by dissolving (over low heat) 1/4c sugar and 1/4c water. Once the rice is cooked, transfer it to a bowl, pour the syrup on top and stir. Let it sit 5 minutes, sprinkle it with salt. In a separate bowl, combine a 14oz can of coconut milk (mine was the Trader Joe's "light" version for some obscure reason, but it did the trick) with a Tbsp of sugar - I used superfine sugar so it dissolved better. Give it a stir and add it, a 1/4c at a time to the rice mixture. I confess that I microwaved the rice for a minute a couple of times to help it soak up the milk, once in a while. But quite frankly, it's merely because I was being a glutton and I couldn't let it sit for hours. In the end, the rice absorbed the entire can of coconut milk. The more you wait, the more of a melt-in-your-mouth texture the rice develops. I made it at 1:00pm, and it was succulent by 5:30pm, to give you an idea. Perfectly edible by 1:30pm by all means (re-*burp*). When ready to plate, top with freshly diced mango, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds (I like black sesame seeds because I'm a sucker for chromatic contrasts). Dig in. Hmmmm and Ahhh.
UPDATE!! Enjoy your favorite Sweet Sticky Rice in no time thanks to the clever contraption called RICE COOKER! Just put 1c of rice and 1,5c of water in the inner bowl, and let it cook until it switches off to the "keep warm" setting. Transfer to a bowl, dump in the simple syrup (1/4c sugar melted in 1/4c water), the entire can of coconut milk, all at once. Stir, let it sit 15 minutes then add salt to taste! Serve with cold diced mango and toasted sesame seeds! Nomnomnomnomnom!
03-25-2009
A Pen and a Fork #1 : Beef Jerky
"And so the winter crept slowly on, and the brief, brilliant summer flitted in, then out, like a golden dream. The second snows were upon the little fort, the second Christmas, the second long, long weeks and months of the new year. An unspoken horror was staring them all in the face: navigation did not open when expected, and supplies were running low, pitifully low. The smoked and dried meats, the canned things, flour, sealed lard, oatmeal, hard-tack, dried fruits--_everything_ was slowly but inevitably giving out day upon day. Before and behind them stretched hummocks of trailless snow. Not an Indian, not a dog train, not even a wild animal, had set foot in that waste for weeks. In early March the major's wife had hidden a single package of gelatine, a single tin of dried beef, and a single half pound of cornstarch. "If sickness comes to my boys" (she did not say boy), "I shall at least have saved these," she told herself, in justification of her act. "A sick man cannot live on beans." But now they were down to beans--just beans and lard boiled together. Then a day dawned when there was not even a spoonful of lard left. "Beans straight!"--it was the death knell, for beans straight--beans without grease--kill the strongest man in a brief span of days. Oh, that the ice bridges would melt, the seas open, the ships come!"
Pauline Johnson, "Mother o'the Men" in The Moccasin Maker, University of Oklahoma Press [1913] (1998), 188
New York is hardly in Yukon territory, and the Hudson certainly cannot compare with the Klondike, but I don't give a hoot (rien à cirer).It stills feel good to have a tin of dried beef in your pantry.
Hence this beef jerky project, another genius recipe by Michael Ruhlman. Not a cakewalk (c'est pas du gâteau), though, when you don't have a dehydrator or a vast wind-swept and sun-drenched plain at hand. No, a rooftop in Williamsburg doesn't cut it. Granted, the prepping is easy as pie (simple comme bonjour). You get extra lean beef - eye of the round here - you slice it as thin as your patience, practice and knife allow you, you dump it in a box in the fridge, tossed in some seasoning (chipotle in adobo, onion, garlic and a lot of black pepper for me, please), then forget about it for a day or so. Then you slow-dry it in your oven.
If I have learned one thing from making this, it is that it's not about precision. The guys out there who dried beef - natives, gold diggers, grizzli bears - did not anxiously wave a thermometer out of their tipi/cabin/cave to check that external temperature was 90°F. Unlike me. You see, the configuration of my oven knob suggests that its lowest setting is 200°F. But because there are no numbers below that on the said knob doesn't mean that it's not going to still heat up. I feared that gas would start leaking in the oven and the resistor which sets it on fire woudn't work. Then I considered coming back from work and finding a great big smoking crater in place of my building, with beef strips hanging from the nearby tree branches. I therefore sat in front of my oven with a thermometer, leaving the door ajar, and monitered it for a while. Well it never went as low as 90°F or even 120°F as another blogger suggested, but it must have oscillated between 130 and 150°F (door propped open). I put it at 7:30am before going to work, and took it out at 6:00pm when I came back.
I'd never had beef jerky before so I didn't know what to expect or look for. Fortunately, my roomies were once more glad to guineapig for me and give me a piece of their mind. Apparently, right out of the oven, it was slightly too crisp. It should have been more leathery. But after a few hours, I had some for dinner, and it had gone softer. Still extremely chewy by all means, don't get me wrong. My inner grizzli was very pleased and kept going back for more. If I hadn't liked the jerky, I had a back-up plan involving making baby moccasins for the latest addition to the bean-eating community. Phew, that was a close call, sweetie pie (Eh ben mon petit chat, t'as eu chaud)!
03-22-2009
Hot Cross Buns
If you were born (to baking at least) a year ago, you may never had kneaded anything. At best you may have kneaded (accidentally I hope) your pie dough and realised it was BAD. Then more articles than you can shake a wooden spoon at were written on how kneading was not only perfectly optional but completely unecessary. I'm not even going there, there isn't a blogger around who isn't gloating with his/her first no-knead wonderloaf, me included. Kneading is *so* out (c'est tellement ringard). People who still knead nowadays are likely to be people who continue to send letters with actual stamps, use a landline or drive a horse carriage.
I hate to be old-hat, kids, but I wouldn't give kneading up so fast. Like those hot cross buns - if someone comments that they have achieved perfect buns with a no-knead method I'll slap'em in the back of the head (je leur colle une beigne). You don't want to mess with good old methods if you're going to make something as traditional as, say, cannelés or hot cross buns. Besides, they don't take long, and kneading is really easy.
Opening a parenthesis, I have seen hot cross buns with ICING crosses in Boston last weekend. I won't comment on this double heresy but basically people, I don't think the Archbishop of Canterbury (or me) would be too impressed by this systematic candification of Easter. There. Parenthesis closed.
Start things off by mixing a yeast sachet (7g) with 1 tsp flour and 1 tsp sugar, and diluting the mix with 60ml of lukewarm water. Let it bubble like crazy while you mix the rest.
In a large bowl, mix 2c bread flour, 1 tsp mixed spices (cinnamon, clove, allspice - pumpkin pie spice mix works fine), 1.5 tbsp sugar, and a couple of pinches of salt.
Rub in 1.5 tbsp of soft butter, add 3/4c raisins, and pour in the bubbly yeast mix. Then while you mix, add about 100ml lukewarm water until you reach a chewing-gummy (?!) consistency. Flour your countertop and knead five minutes like you mean it. Give it a hard time. It's tough love (c'est l'amour vache). Put it back in the bowl, cover loosely with cling film and let it rise about 40 minutes. Mine almost quadrupled in volume. It's its way of being appreciative of you taking the time to massage its gluten (hence "hot" cross buns). While it rises (oh shut up), you have just enough time to do the proverbial "Jane Fonda workout". Or watch your rommate do it while you eat toasted soda bread with raspberry jam.
Punch the dough down, split it in 8 (I did six but they ended up being slightly too big), re-knead them vaguely and shape into balls, huddle them snuggly on a silpat or parchment paper, let them go wild for another 20 minutes or so. And they will, trust them.
Stay on the flippin silpat you freaks.
Prepare the crosses: in a small bowl, make a paste with 1 tbsp flour and enough water to get a spreadable but not runny consistency. Don't put any sugar in (I did, bad girl [oh la vilaine]), because it will promote browning and we don't want that. We want them to stay really pale. Transfer to a small sandwich ziploc bag, cut off a small corner and draw crosses on the buns.
Bake in a preheated oven 16 minutes at 400°F, or until nicely browned. If you so wish, glaze them with a simple syrup (1tbsp sugar+1tbsp water melted on low heat). They are best warm out of the oven. The archbishop loves them with a smattering of Devon salted butter and a nice cuppa Darjeeling.
Or so he was telling me at lunch today. Rule Britannia.
03-16-2009
Irish Soda Bread
It's the leprechauns' no-knead bread. My roomies love it. It never survives the evening.
Gold pots suck for soda bread.
We are talking ultra speedy bread-making here. The measurements don't need to be terribly accurate. I have put in brackets the unauthentic pimping-up that I make or not, depending on my supplies and my feeling flush.
Preheat your oven on 425°F with your cast iron pot inside, lid on. In a bowl, put 2 cups of flour (whole wheat, all purpose, or a mix of the two).
Add 1/2 tsp salt and 3/4 tsp baking soda. [Rub in a tablespoon of unsalted butter if you want your loaf to have that extra oomph. Think of butter as Irish soda bread's wonderbra®.] [Add a handful or two of raisins/dried cranberries/walnut pieces/whatever].
Pour about 7oz of buttermilk (I never ever measure it - I pour and stir with a spoon until it is moist enough to all stick together), and shape it in a ball with your handy-pandies. Don't bother kneading.
Cut a cross on top of the dough, sprinkle with flour/rolled oats. Pop it in the cast iron pot, bake with lid on for 25 minutes, take the lid off and bake an extra 5 minutes. Let it cool as much as you can before you unleash your roomies. Wearing a football helmet may ultimately be a good idea. Or a colander.
03-08-2009
English Pork Pie
You want lard AND butter, you want ground forcemeat AND diced Berkshire ham, you want PORK PIE!
Today's pictures are all Marc's - he uncannily captured the spirit of that pork pie.
Man, that pie was so mean I was on the verge of proposing to myself.The pork pie adventure started in Astoria in a dodgy Mexican grocery store and finished in Williamsburg at a lovely dinner party with Giff, Stéphane, Marc and his wife Liz. They're all such good laughs (une belle bande de joyeux lurons).
It all kicked in when I started reading Michael Ruhlman's spectacular opus on pig, Charcuterie
I wasn't going to give the recipe first because it didn't seem fair on Micheal and his hard work, but since the recipe's proportions for the dough were so completely off (I guess mistakes were made in downsizing the recipe for a domestic use), I take advantage of this nifty little blog of mine to give perplexed charcuterie amateurs some helpful hints. By all means, people, run buy the book, you won't regret it (well maybe you will when bikini time comes, if you're not into natural buoyancy aids - it's still far anyway).
Ah - oops, obviously, not one of Marc's pictures.
For a nice lardy crust (yes, and smell your hands after you're done with the dough. Groovy ain't it?):
1 stick (4oz, 113g) cold unsalted butter
1 stick (idem) super cold lard
1 lb all purpose flour
1 egg, beaten (you may not need it all)
1 to 1,5 tsp salt (taste to check, you may need more)
Rub the diced fat in the flour with the tip of your fingers until you reach the "sandy" stage. Add the salt. Then pour enough egg in the flour to gather up the dough in a ball. Work quickly so that the fat doesn't melt (it's ok if some fat lumps remain) and the gluten doesn't become tough and rubbery. Wrap the dough in saran wrap, and refrigerate. This step can be done a day ahead if you're short on time. It also freezes well.
Oh no, Marc and Liz are not on the picture!
The tasty innards of the pie
The proportions for the meat filling are also pretty different from Michael's, since I intended to make a larger pie, and also one that looked like what we usually get in France (yes, I know that I'm straying from the English theme but people, I was feeling nostalgic. Bear with me.)
1 1/2 lb (about 700g) ground pork shoulder (grind your own if you have a grinder) (no, not your own shoulder)
1.4 lb (about 600g) thickly diced Berkshire ham (two great big fat slices)
1/2 c finely diced onion (I used a cool CSA red onion)
1 tsbp minced garlic (don't be shy!)
2,6 tsp table salt
1 heaped tsp of black pepper corns, which you bash to a powder in your mortar
1 tsp of finely chopped fresh thyme leaves, packed (more if you are a thyme lover)
1/2 c cold chicken stock
On low heat, cook the onion and garlic in a tbsp of butter until soft and transparent but not coloured. Let it cool, add the thyme, and refrigerate until you use it. Again, that can be done ahead of time.
In a large bowl, combine the cold ground shoulder with the salt, ground pepper and onion mixture, add the stock and mix until combined, then fold in the diced ham until it's all harmoniously distributed (harmony and pork pie are not antinomic, folks, quite the contrary).
Roll out two thirds of the dough in a disk (diameter about 30cm), put in on a silpat or parchment paper, stack the filling at the center of the dough rather high (diameter of the filling, about 18cm; height about 12cm), then fold and wrap the dough around the sides of the meat mountain. I found that you can erase the creases in the dough by rubbing them down patiently with fingers dipped in cold water.
Roll out the remaining third of dough in a circle (about 20cm in diameter), make a steam vent in the center. Before you pop the top on, brush the side that's going to be inside with eggwash (one egg beaten with a tsp of milk). Stick it on top of the pâté, and weld the top with the sides. Brush the entire thing lavishly with the eggwash.
Bake in a preheated oven at 425°F for at least 20 minutes, or until the crust is nice and golden, then reduce the temperature to 325°F and bake until the interior temperature reaches 150°F. It took me a good 50 minutes. I also had to take the tray out several times to empty the succulent juices seeping through the bottom, for fear that the crust would go soggy. When you're good to go, take the pie out, give it five minutes and then slide it onto a cooling rack so that the pie doesn't sit in its juices. Some juice was also coming out of the steam vent and I emptied it. I guess it would be ok to leave it if you were going to eat it warm, but I was going to serve it cold on the day after.
I didn't need to make an aspic, because there was no space between the filling and the crust once baked, possibly because I used so much ham, which doesn't shrink when cooked. Not that it needed the aspic either, mind you. Once completely cooled, I put it on a dish, clingfilmed the whole shebang, and put it in the fridge.
Well I hate to brag, kiddos (je ne veux pas me faire mousser, mes bons petits), but that pie knocked our socks off. It was perfectly self-sufficient, although nicely paired with grain mustard, pickles, frisée, and one (or two) (or three) glasses of delectable Brunello di Montalcino and Crozes-Hermitage. How perfectly European in spirit. For dessert, Marc baked, as we were licking our chops (pendant qu'on se léchait les babines), a wonderful sticky toffee pudding - the most gooey and volcanic-looking treat to finish off with. I shamelessly scraped the sticky bits at the bottom of the plate, squandering the little French glamour that I had managed to uphold to that point.
The leftovers were almost even nicer on the day after. What? You're still reading? Chop chop, off to the butcher's, ladies and gentlemen. Et que ça saute!
Uncanny Citrus Moment
It's a girl!
Papa Pomelo and Mama Tangerine are proud to announce the arrival of sweet little Minneola Tangelo. Mother and father are doing well and baby's in my stomach.
