Thit Heo Nuong Xa

That would be lemongrass-marinated pork in English.

From the picture it looks pretty complicated, but it's really very simple and easy to make.

It's just a couple thick pork chops or a hunk of pork loin (not too lean!) marinated overnight in a paste of:
2 Tablespoons light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon garlic, chopped
1 Tablespoon shallot, chopped
3 Tablespoons lemongrass, white bits finely grated
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoon black soy sauce
1 1/2 Tablespoon fish sauce
1 Tablespoon neutral oil. Grill or fry them up and slice it it thin against the grain.

Add grilled green vegetables. I had pak choy on hand. Also sliced tomato and cucumber and a poached egg are nice additions.

Put those over a big bowl of coconut rice:
6 oz rice
1 1/3 cups coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 bay leaf
cooked on a standard rice cooker cycle.

Plain white rice is OK, but the coconut rice does add a nice little something.

and top with drizzles of:
Nuoc Cham
3 Tablespoons fish sauce
3 Tablespoons rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons sugar
125 milliliters water
heated until just about to boil and then mixed with
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 hot pepper, thinly sliced
2 tbsp lime juice
1 small carrot, shredded
and cooled

and
Scallion and garlic chive oil
250 milliliters neutral oil
4 scallions, finely sliced
1 handful garlic chives, finely sliced
1 pinch salt
1 pinch sugar,
simmered briefly and cooled,

and sambal hot sauce
from a bottle and better suited here than over-hyped Sriracha to my mind.

OK, maybe it is a little complicated, but you don't have to do it all at once. You can make a big batch of the pork and keep it in the freezer, make the sauces a day or two before and cook whatever vegetables you've got to hand.

It's as tasty as it looks. More tasty if you don't think it looks so good.

Lambi au Riz

Aaaand we're back.

To be honest, it's too soon. My kitchen is still unbearably hot most days and South Florida is weeks from its first harvest of the season, but a new market (I'm not going to call it a farmer's market has there's no sign of farmers as yet) has opened up at UM literally steps from my office and there's just too much tempting there to not start cooking again.

Case in point, the seafood stand (whose name and proprietor I would have made note of if I had decided at the time that I was definitely going to be writing this up) had some fresh local conch and shrimp at quite a reasonable price. I've never cooked with conch before so I bought a pound.

I did a bit of research to find my options on what to do with it. Basically, they were fritters, ceviche, chowder and stew. I haven't been impressed the fritters I've tried--isolated rubbery bits in a big ball of dough--and I'm suspicious of the texture of notoriously tough conch in a ceviche. So it's down to chowder and stew which are the same thing give or take a couple cups of stock.

Oh, there's also grilled conch steaks, but I really wasn't up for that as the conch I bought was cleaned but not tenderized. I had the choice of banging on them with a hammer for a while or grinding them up in the food processor as most of the chowder and stew recipes called for. On most days I think I'd go with the hammering, but not today. I settled on chowder for a while, but eventually switched over to a stew. And, as you'll note from the title of this post, the dish mutated further.

The stew and chowder recipes generally start with either salt pork or bacon. The bacon struck me as a more readily available substitution so I was going to go with salt pork until I read the recipe from the Bacon Cookbook which made a convincing case for bacon's smokiness pairing well with the clam-like flavor of the conch. So three thick slices, cut into lardons, went into the pot along with a little cooking oil (I'm using a 50/50 olive/canola blend for this sort of thing these days), cooked slowly until crisp and then removed.

Then I added:
a knob of butter
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
2 small hot peppers (from the back of my refrigerator. Serranos I think.), minced
and a pinch of salt.

A stalk or two of celery should properly go in at this point too, but I haven't got any on hand and wouldn't miss it if it's gone.

I turned the heat down to medium low and sweated them for seven minutes to soften. Then I added a little more oil and two Tablespoons of flour and cooked for seven minutes more to make a roux. Given what I did to the recipe later, this step was probably wasted, but you've got other options so I'll leave it in here.

After the roux was nice and golden, in went:
1 14 ounce can of diced tomatoes, not drained
about the same amount of shrimp stock
2 teaspoons each dried oregano, basil, thyme and marjoram (I have three out of the four fresh at the moment so I considered going with a bouquet garni, but I think dried makes more sense for a stew)
1 pound ground conch (I thought I'd have less, as the recipes advised to trim off the tough orange bits, but the orange bits on mine didn't seem any tougher than the rest so there must be more that was already removed)
salt and pepper

I brought that to a boil, covered, turned the heat to low and simmered for 40 minutes.

At this point it was time to add a starch: small-diced potato according to most recipes with options of yam and yucca. But one recipe, at all-fish-seafood-recipes.com, suggested adding rice. That recipe is the only result Google finds for the phrase "lambi au riz" so maybe the author made it up himself. Lambi appears to be the name for the Haitian version of conch stew, though.

Anyway, I added a cup of rice (rinsed) and cooked for 20 minutes more.

Here's the result topped with parsley, scallion and the reserved bacon.


And, after a taste, I discover something I should have noticed rather earlier. I've just made a batch of conch jambalaya and a pretty darn tasty one at that. Actually, the flavor is somewhere between jambalaya and Manhattan clam chowder. It starts with a bright tomato/shrimp gravy, rich and buttery and rounded with herbs, and fades into a smokey brininess. There's a sweetness up front and a bit of bitterness in the aftertaste too. Not enough to be actively unpleasant, but enough to prompt the next bite.

The textures worked out really well too. The rice has a little firmness to it and the conch just a little chew. Lucked out there, getting the timing right. The flavors are going to be better tomorrow, but I'll bet the texture's all downhill from here.

Still, an auspicious return to the blog, I think for an experimental dish to turn out so well and so interesting. Coming up next (although quite how soon I'm not sure) is a different take on mamey ice cream and I'd like to try making fabada. Xixón Café sells fabada kits with the Spanish beans and pork products portioned out, but there's some disagreement in recipes as to what else goes in there and on the details of the cooking method so it's not quite as easy as that.

CSA week five - Bacalhau a Mineira

Coming off of two relatively dull posts and some extra time away from the blog, I knew I had to come back from my trip with an extra interesting post. That's a particular challenge given the cabbage and plum tomatoes I had to work with. Not the most congenial ingredients for something impressive.

But, I think what I've got here just might fit the bill. Bacalhau a Mineira is a salt cod dish from the Minas Gerais state of Brazil. It's one of those dishes where every village has its own variation and the only proper one is the way your mother made it. I found a recipe in English on recipehound.com that was taken from the Book of Latin American Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, but when I looked for other versions, I had to Babel-fish translate them from Portuguese. I may not be getting everything quite right, but at least I know they're authentic.

Almost every version I found, with the exception of Ms. Ortiz's oddly, was a casserole layered with pre-cooked vegetables, heavy on the potatoes. So, I started with a pot of salted water where I boiled two thickly sliced medium red potatoes until just tender. I removed those and then blanched three plum tomatoes to make them easier to peel. Removed them, lowered the heat and coddled two eggs.

Meanwhile, in a medium cast iron pan, I sautéed sliced onion, garlic and red and green peppers until softened. Then I added about three quarters of a pound of sliced cabbage which I sautéed over rather high heat until nicely wilted. To that I added the tomatoes, peeled and chopped, and a half cup of white wine. I reduced the heat, cooked until the tomatoes started to fall apart and then removed all of that to a bowl, leaving the accumulated juices in the pan.

Into those juices went three quarters of a pound of salt cod that I had soaked overnight in a few changes of water to desalinify (so why I didn't just use fresh cod, I dunno). I cooked the cod until it started getting fragrant and flaky and then removed it to another bowl.

Now it was time to start building the casserole. Since the pan was oven safe I just used it instead of a baking dish. First a layer of the cabbage mixture, then some potato slices, then some cod, sprinkled with parsley, green and black olives and, god help us all, raisins. I repeated that two more times, each layer well-lubricated with olive oil.

On top I nestled in my halved beautifully mollet-cooked and then topped with shredded queijo Minas. At least that's what the recipe called for. I asked for a substitute at Whole Foods, but the cheese expert (from Brazil fortunately enough) got called away and a couple yahoos attempted to help. I ended up with a queso blanco that was a) a bit too salty and b) didn't melt the way queijo Minas is supposed to. Ah well.

But I only learned that latter part after 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

And here's the result:


That pile really ought to be at least partially held together with melted cheese. One recipe I saw shredded the potatoes and mixed it and shredded cheese in with the other ingredients. Maybe I should have done that.


Hmm...this is an interesting combination of flavors. I wouldn't have thought raisins and cod would work, but they do. It's not really melding though. It's a lot of individual elements that aren't actively clashing, but not building to anything either. Maybe the cheese is supposed to hold it together more than just physically. Now that it's cooled a bit, the cabbage, potato and cod flavors are working well together, the earthy melange punctuated by the bright saltiness of the olives emphasizing the cod and raisins bringing out the cabbage's sweetness. The tomatoes don't do much, but these aren't the world's most flavorful tomatoes. Still, I think I'm starting to get how it's supposed to work and I think I can say I actually like this now. Good thing since I've got about five meal's worth left over.

CSA week four - A couple of compicated salads

I don't think it struck me until just now, after the fact, that this week's CSA share (the half-share at least) is better suited to salads than cooking. I thought it was just my slow recovery from various ills that making me not feel like cooking, but with grapefruit, curly parsley, avocado, green pepper and tomato, this is just a raw foods sort of week.

As these are salads, there isn't much to say or illustrate preparation-wise. Chop everything up, mix it together, make the dressing and toss. Not much too it. The aforementioned complication comes from the sheer number of ingredients in each of these dishes. I only made minor tweaks in each so with no further ado, here are the recipes:

Italian Parsley Salad

Adapted from “Roast Chicken and Other Stories” by Simon Hopkinson (Hyperion, 2007)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup soft, fleshy black olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
1 bunch parsley, coarsely chopped
1 large shallot, chopped
1 ounce capers, rinsed of salt or brine
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
7 large anchovy fillets, chopped

Dressing:
Freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
juice of 1 lemon
salt, to taste [probably not a lot]

thin slivers of Parmesan cheese
crackers or biscuits or toast or bruschetta or suchlike

Mix the salad ingredients. Mix the dressing ingredients. Mix them together. Top with the Parmesan and serve with the crackers.

This has a pleasing combination of flavors that blend together in a pretty classic way and compliment the parsley while still letting it be the center of the salad. Both the texture and the somewhat less strident bitterness of flat-leaf parsley would work better; That's probably why the original recipe called for it. Still, it's still not bad with the curly parsley. The crackers are important in toning down the intensity of flavors, but it's still a bit much to eat on its own. It's better as a side dish to a straightforward piece of roasted meat, I think.



Avocado shrimp Thai salad

This is an unsigned recipe from Recipe4Living which is a community recipe website so there's no way to know where the recipe actually came from. No other versions of it online are immediately obvious so I can't track it down that way. They don't claim association with any old media source of recipes or have any chefs on staff either so far as I can see. I guess it'll have to remain a mystery unless one of their editors notices this post and wants to clear things up in the comments.

Ingredients:
1 hass or lula avocado, peeled, pitted and cubed
1 fluid ounce lime juice
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined, poached and chopped if they're larger than 'large'
1 large meaty tomato, [whatever sort our CSA tomatoes are is perfect for this sort of thing] coarsely chopped
1 1/2 green onions, sliced lengthwise and separated into four pieces then chopped into 2-inch lengths
1/2 small green bell pepper, diced
1/2 small red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup bean sprouts [I left these out as the grocery that usually has them didn't this week. They would have been a nice addition even in that small amount.]
1/8 cup mint leaves, coarsely chopped

Dressing:
1/4 cup lime juice [You can get this out of one lime if you rough it up a bit, microwave it for 20 seconds or so and then ream it out with a fork.]
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup vegetable oil [That's clearly way too much so I used only 1/3 cup which seemed to emulsify well with the amount of water-based ingredients.]
1/2 Tablespoon sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 inch knob ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
zest from 1/2 lime
1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes
salt to taste

Mix the salad ingredients. Mix the dressing ingredients. Mix them together. Serve.


Now this is pretty darn good. There are so many different flavors and textures going on in here that every forkful is a different combination. Each starts with the bite of the dressing, sesame and lime foremost, blending as the crunch, creaminess or chew of the ingredients releases their individual flavors. The tartness gets to be a bit much after a full serving, though. I think that's because there is way too much dressing here. I think halving the amount would probably balance things a little better.

CSA week one - Mchicha

I mentioned a while back, I think, that mchicha is the Swahili word for callaloo. It's also the name of this Tanzanian dish, but all of the versions I found called for spinach. I'm making a, small I'll grant you, logical leap that these are Westernized recipes substituting in spinach for amaranth. Cooking times quite unsuitable for spinach are good supporting evidence that of a late insertion or a clumsy translation. But those cooking times are too long for amaranth too so I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.

Whatever the case, I used the calalloo and it turned out just fine once I cut it in quarter to use the small bunch we got this week and tweaked the cooking times a bit.

Ingredients:
1 small bunch callaloo
1 1/2 Tablespoons natural smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup thin coconut milk
1 Tablespoon butter (or ghee if you've got it)
1 small tomato (I used four cherry tomatoes), peeled (unless you're using cherry tomatoes, then don't bother)
1/4 onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon curry powder (a South Indian blend would be most traditional, but whatever you've got is worth a try)
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Trim the woody stems from the callaloo, separate the leaves, roughly chop the remaining stems and roughly tear the leaves. Wash everything somewhere along the way. I got about 1/2 pound after cleaning.

2. Mix the peanut butter and coconut milk. Set aside.

3. Heat the butter over medium heat in a medium frying pan or dutch oven. When it stops foaming add the onion, tomato, curry powder and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion softens and the tomato breaks down, about 5 minutes.

4. Add the callaloo stems. Cook 5 minutes more.

5. Add the callaloo leaves. Cook 3 minutes more to wilt and begin cooking the leaves.

6. Add the peanut butter and coconut milk. Stir well and scrape the bottom of the pan. Cook 5 minutes more to blend the flavors adding water to keep the sauce saucy as necessary.

Serve with an approximation of ugali, a Tanzanian starch dish that is essentially an extra-thick polenta made with more finely ground corn meal.


It looks a mess, but I really like how this turned out. The flavors have blended together in a synergistic way I haven't seen in other African recipes using similar ingredients. There's an earthiness, but I'd be hard pressed to identify peanut butter; a spiciness but I couldn't say it was curry powder; there's a creaminess but no clear coconut. The amaranth, though, is unmistakable. It stands up to the strongly flavored sauce in a way spinach couldn't. I even like the pairing with the ugali, and polenta really isn't something I could have predicted to work with these flavors.

This may be the first fully successful sub-Saharan African dish I've made (although I don't think I've done any Ethiopian cooking. How could I have missed that? That's going right on my to-do list.) If you've still got your amaranth, give it try.

CSA week 16 - Mulai keerai kadaiyal

a.k.a. callaloo curry.

I wasn't looking forward to cooking the callaloo this week. I hate to say it but, at least as far as home cooking is concerned, Caribbean cuisine just isn't doing it for me. But then I remembered that the particular callaloo (the Spartacus of the vegetable kingdom) we've got is amaranth a.k.a. Chinese spinach. Did that name mean anything or was it just meant to sound exotic like Chinese gooseberries or Jerusalem artichokes? When I started looking into it I found out that amaranth is cultivated and eaten all over the place. In China it's yin choi and it's used in really boring stir fries; in Viet Nam it's rau dền and used in pretty much the same boring stir fry; but in India it's either mulai keerai or thota kura and it's used in some pretty interesting curries. Most of which, unfortunately, call for ingredients I haven't got. Once recipes are calling for amaranth instead of spinach, you're pretty well out of the adapted-for-the-Western-kitchen zone.

However I was able to cobble together something presentable without making a trip to an Indian grocery (which I really ought to do one of these days).

Ingredients:

1 bunch of amaranth for a couple servings. It cooks down quite a bit so use substantially more than you think you'll need.
1 1/2 cups water
1 pinch turmeric
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 teaspoon white rice flour
salt to taste


2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 dried red peppers, broken up
1 teaspoon mustard seed, whole
1 teaspoon cumin seed, whole
1 teaspoon black lentils or, failing that, millet
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

6 extra large shrimp, cleaned and brined
The shrimp is optional, but I think they add a lot to the dish. You could use whitefish or crab instead if you'd prefer.

1. Strip amaranth leaves from stems. Cut off the woody bits and peel the tougher stems. Chop roughly.

2. Place amaranth in a medium pot with water and turmeric, heat on medium high until boiling, stir, cover and turn down heat. Simmer until amaranth is tender, 4 to 5 minutes.

3. Move amaranth from pot to food processor, leaving the water in the pot. Add tomato, rice flour and salt to processor and process into a paste. Adjust for flavor and texture.

4. Add shrimp to pot, return to heat and poach gently until firm.

5. Meanwhile, in small pan heat oil and spices until garlic is golden and mustard seeds start popping.

6. Serve amaranth with rice, topped with shrimp. Pour oil and spices over top.


Now that's tasty and expeditious (although I'll admit it could be prettier). You might think that that's just saag, but you can identify the amaranth through the spices and it's a better match with the spices than spinach would be. You can see that I overcooked my garlic a little, but I didn't quite ruin it and I actually like the crunch it added. Maybe some peanuts would be a good way to get that instead. Also, I would have liked to top the dish with some curry leaves but I'm long out of those.

The substitution of the millet was a good idea, I think, as there's a toasty flavor in the dish that's particularly nice with the shrimp. Those shrimp were my addition and I don't think I could have made a better choice of protein except maybe crab. It all worked together very well indeed.

CSA week 12 - Potato, green bean and tomato salad

Apparently, this is a thing. Not so much of a thing that it has a special name or origin story or anything, but enough that when you search for "tomato potato green bean recipe" you get a few pages of it.

There's some small variation between the recipes--ratios and cooking methods mostly. A few include sausage and since I'm having this as a main dish I included that. I saw one that roasted the tomatoes and I thought I might try expanding that aspect out a bit.

So I preheated my oven to 300 degrees and quartered my three remaining plum tomatoes, took out a baking sheet, poured in a bit of olive oil, added some fresh thyme and rosemary and kosher salt, added the tomatoes and tossed everything about a little and put it in the oven for an hour and a half.

Meanwhile I cut up my remaining potatoes into similar-sized pieces (mostly quartered too), boiled them in a big pot of salted water until tender--about 8 minutes but I think I overcooked them a little. I tossed them with a bit more olive oil, herbs and salt, and added them to the pan--cut side down--with an hour left on the clock.

Next, I simmered a half pound of green beans in the selfsame big pot of salted water until al dente. Those went onto the pan with a half hour left on the clock.

Finally, I fried a quarter pound of relatively-thinly-sliced keilbalsa until crisp. I'd roast that too, but I want something crisp and I can't count on the potatoes in that overcrowded pan. I think there's some leeway in the choice of sausage so long as the other seasonings match. I'd use Italian sausage if I wasn't out of fresh basil.

After the full hour and a half, I extracted the tomatoes from the pan and transferred them to a bowl. Into the food processor went a garlic clove, a couple Tablespoons of mayo, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar and a teaspoon of German mustard. While that was blending I drizzled in a Tablespoon of olive oil from the pan. I tried anyway, but I don't have one of those mini-processor bowl inserts so it didn't work out. After the garlic clove got minced I just mixed everything by hand. Once that was smooth I added the tomatoes and pulsed a few times until still slightly chunky and added salt and pepper (and more vinegar) to taste. [While the roasting process I came up with on my own, this distinctive dressing is pretty close to the one from the June 2003 issue of Food and Wine magazine.]


So how is it? Not bad, but it could use work. The potatoes would be improved by another half hour of roasting and the green beans don't gain anything by their half hour. I'd rather have them plump and crisp than withered. And the dressing is wrong--mayo plus tomatoes plus vinegar equals French dressing. It hides the nice roasting the tomatoes got, too. Next time, I'll leave those whole and just dress it with a little vinegar added to the olive oil left in the pan.

I think this all might be better cold. I'll try the leftovers again tomorrow and let you know in the wrap-up.

CSA week 11 - filet mignon with Gorgonzola creamed arugula and rosemary garlic roasted potatoes

I don't often make the classic American dinner plate of meat, starch and vegetable, but I wanted to make the arugula into a side dish, I've got these potatoes here and half the tenderloin I bought is still taking up precious freezer space so it seemed like the way to go.

The filet mignon I seasoned with salt and pepper then cooked a couple minutes on each side and a minute on each edge in plenty of butter and olive oil at medium high heat. Nothing fancy there.

The potatoes are the recipe Fabio used to wow the chef Jedi council on Top Chef this week. I quartered four of the new potatoes and simmered them until tender. Then I drained them and tossed them with a couple smashed garlic cloves, a dismembered stick of rosemary, salt, pepper and a little olive oil. That went into a 375 degree oven for a bit over an hour. I turned the potatoes at around 40 minutes so more than one edge would brown well.

The arugula is a variation of a pasta sauce and includes mushrooms and tomato too. I'm out of fresh mushrooms so I used some dried creminis. I briefly sautéed them in a little butter, added the finely chopped tomato and arugula and sautéed for another minute until the arugula wilted. Then I poured in a bit too much cream and added the Gorgonzola and salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. I originally used half the arugula but it wilted quite away while the sauce was cooking down so I threw in the rest. I added a bit more Gorgonzola too while I was at it. When the cheese had melted and the cream reduced enough to form a clingy sauce, it was done.

Pretty simple, but pretty impressive too (although a smaller plate would have displayed it better). I've got to hand it to Fabio's grandmother; these are great potatoes--crispy and chewy on the outside, but with a soft fluffy center and full of flavor. The steak was done perfectly medium rare, if you consider medium rare perfect as right-thinking people do. And the creamed arugula retained a bit of texture against the creaminess of the sauce and the soft tomatoes and mushrooms. All those flavors match nicely and the Gorgonzola is fine with both the steak and potatoes so the sauce did triple duty. Add a spicy dry red wine to cut the fat and you've got a lovely meal.

CSA week 10 - Homemade pasta with fresh tomato sauce

Earlier this week La Diva ventured into the realm of homemade pasta with trepidation, difficulty and mixed results. This may have been at my instigation so I feel honor-bound to follow her example and make some pasta myself. This is not only my first time making pasta, I think it'll actually be my first time cooking or eating fresh pasta too.

I started with a cup and a third of flour--half semolina and half white bread flour--a third of a teaspoon of kosher salt and, into the well, cracked two large eggs. I beat the eggs with a fork and gradually mixed in the flour.





Here's where I decided using the fork was getting tricky and switched to bare hands. The dough was still wet, but there was a good bit of flour left so every time it stuck to my hands I'd just roll it in flour and go on kneading it. It only took around five minutes before there was enough gluten formation for it to form a tight ball at which point I let it rest for a half hour.



Meanwhile, I set a big pot of water on the heat and started the sauce. I browned a Tablespoon of butter, added fresh sage and oregano and some chopped pancetta, dipped one of the CSA tomatoes into the boiling water to loosen the peel, peeled and chopped it and added it to the pan along with a spoonful of water to give it a chance to cook down and form a sauce.



Once the dough had rested came the hard part. I cut it in two and attempted to start rolling one half out using my pasta maker. It jammed up just like my earlier attempt at making gyoza wrappers a while back and the result was ragged and uneven. I rolled it back up into a ball, cursed the machine and took out my perfectly good rolling pin to roll out the dough.




I was able to make a good start, but the gluten was too tight to let it roll out to the thinness I was looking for. I did notice that the dough was incidentally getting much better coated in flour than my earlier attempts managed so I figured that may well have been my problem. The dough had gotten too wide so I sliced it in two again and fed half into machine.

I had the rollers set at the widest setting but the dough was too thin for it to get a good grip on it so I had to go down a couple notches. That did it, but it took a few tries before I managed to get it through. This is a process that really requires three hands: one to feed in the dough, one to feed it out and a third to crank the machine. I managed as best I could.

I had better luck with one half than the other. I think just a little bit less flour is causing problems. Also, a bit of metal on the machine is bent out of shape on one side catching the pasta as it comes out the bottom of the rollers so I have to be careful not to get too close to that side.

Long story short, I eventually figured out to keep the dough strip narrow and well-coated in flour and how to feed it in straight. That latter is very important as hitting the sides immediately wads everything up. Next time I'm going to start by cutting the dough into a rectangle to keep everything nice and even.



I managed to get the dough down to roller setting four which was about the thickness of the paperadelli I get dried so I figured that was what I was aiming at. I put on the cutting attachment and made noodles without any further drama.






I brought the water back up to a boil, salted it and added the noodles. I let them cook for just two minutes before taking them out and adding them to the pan of sauce (which had cooked dry and had to be rehydrated a couple times as I struggled with the pasta). I let the noodles cook another couple of minutes in the pan to finish up and absorb the flavors, drizzled some balsamic vinegar, grated on some Parmesan and it was ready to eat.




The cooked pasta is pretty chewy, but I don't think it's undercooked just overthick. They swelled a bit and I forgot to account for that. Next time, at least one notch thinner. As for flavor: they taste like egg noodles. Less distinctly so than dried as they absorbed the flavor of the sauce just as advertised.

That wasn't so hard, considering. And I got enough of a feel for it that next time should go more smoothly. Once I'm comfortable rolling out noodles I'll move on to stuffed pasta but I think that may take a while.

CSA week nine - Taquitos with guacamole

The guidebooks will tell you: if you go to any taquerilla in San Diego (other than Rubio's Fish Tacos where you want to order the specialty), the thing to get is "three rolled with guac". That is: three rolled tacos--chicken or beef--topped with cheese and guacamole. Today, I made chicken.

Really, this stemmed from having a ripe avocado and tomato, some leftover cilantro and no clever ideas defaulting me down to guacamole. But if I'm going to make guac I may as well put it to good use.

I searched around and found a good-looking recipe here. Now that I've poked through his site a bit, I see he's got a lot of authentic but doable Mexican recipes. I'm going to have to try out some more of those.

I cut the recipe down to a third to use the two chicken thighs I had in the freezer, but otherwise I followed it straight:

"Ingredients: Shredded Chicken

1 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 teas. seasoned salt [I used adobo con sazon which is probably what he meant)
1 teas. pepper
3/4 teas. garlic powder
2 teas. onion powder
2 teas. chili powder
3/4 teas. cumin powder
1/2 teas. oregano
2 dry bay leaves
enough water to cover chicken ( about 2-3 cups )

Ingredients: Taquitos

shredded chicken
15 to 20 6in. corn tortillas
toothpicks
3 to 4 cups vegetable or canola oil for frying

Method: Shredded Chicken Taquitos

Wash chicken thoroughly and place in a medium sized skillet and add just enough water to cover the chicken. Add all ingredients and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 to 40 minutes or until the chicken can be shredded using a wood spatula. If there is any liquid left simply turn up the heat and allow the liquid to evaporate. Let the shredded chicken cool enough to work with.

While the chicken is cooking, add the oil to another medium sized skillet. Only use enough oil to go half way up the side of the pan so when you start frying the oil won’t spill over. Heat oil to 350 degrees and lightly fry the tortillas, on both sides, using a pair of tongs, for about 5 to 10 seconds total. All you are doing here is making them pliable enough to roll, you don’t want them crispy yet, that will come later. Stack the cooked tortillas on a plate and when all of the tortillas are done, flip the whole stack over. this will allow the oil on the tortillas to drip evenly over all of them. Turn off the heat on the oil while you are rolling the taquitos. [I wasn't sure how many tortillas I would need so I prepared eight. I only used five so the rest I chopped into sixths, fried until crisp, sprinkled with salt and lime as they drained and stored in a paper bag for later.

Take about 2 spoonfuls ( about 2 ounces ) [I found a little less than one ounce filled a tortilla to my liking. Skimpy fillings is the San Diego style.] of the chicken and place it in a line across the center of a tortilla and roll it up. Use a toothpick to keep it closed by inserting it at the edge of the tortilla and running it through the center. Continue this process until all of the chicken has been used, you should get somewhere between 15 and 20 taquitos. I like to place them on a piece of foil after rolling them because I don’t have to wash it later but a plate will work fine.

After they are all rolled up you can start to fry them in the 350 degree oil ( turn the heat back on when there are only a few taquitos left to roll ). Fry a few at a time on both sides until golden brown, they will take about 2 minutes a side. Remove to a plate and remove the toothpick. Top with guacamole, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese and tomatoes and a little bit of hot sauce. Toppings are always optional, you can really put anything on them you want, this is just what I put on them." [Cheese usually goes over the guac, but I like mine under so it melts a little. I used half cheddar and half queso fresco. Over the guac I added a little onion, a little tomato and some hot sauce. The guac was a pretty standard recipe; I won't bore you with it.]
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Back at the originating site there's an attached recipe for Mexican rice, but I wasn't feeling up to it. Instead I just put the rice in the rice cooker with the water I simmered the chicken in and some tomato and onion. Not at all bad, really.

I thought it turned out really well. The chicken was a little on the dry side--maybe I should have packed it in more tightly so it would keep out the oil and steam instead of deep fry--but still nicely spiced. All the flavors were there just as they're supposed to be. It's not quite the same as the authentic San Diego rolled tacos; they're not cheap and trashy, it's not 3 a.m. and I'm not drunk so no Ratatouille dolly-zoom flashbacks but still, pretty darn good.

CSA week seven - Eggplant caponata

This is a recipe by Todd English, chef and the restaurateur behind the Olives restaurants and a bunch of others, too. If you've seen his show Food Trip or seen him interviewed you'll know that his schtick, at the Olives locations anyway, is pan-Mediterranean--bringing together all of the cuisines where olives grow by adulterating dishes a variety of foreign (but not too foreign) substances.

I've seen him putting these dishes together on Food Trip and generally the results don't look all that appealing to me. I'm fine with complicating a recipe with lots of fiddly little additions, but I try to stick with classic combination of flavors within a cuisine or, if I stray, take the flavors entirely over to the new cuisine. But then, I'm just some schmuck with a blog and he's a restaurateur with sufficient reputation to sell out to Home Shopping Network. So when I saw this recipe (and you don't see a lot of his recipes floating around the web. Probably because they're a pain to make without a sou chef helping out.) I thought I'd give it a shot and see how one of his recipes actually tastes.

Caponata is a traditional Sicilian appetizer served on crostini; it's eggplant, tomatoes, a bit of vinegar and capers, maybe some olives--that's about it. English starts off by adding a big pile of sausage which is such an unusual addition that Google doubts that's what I mean when I search for "caponata sausage". So this thing is going off the rails even before we get to the orange juice and curry powder. I've got my reservations but it's got some intriguingly odd combinations; take a look:

Todd English's Eggplant Caponata

Ingredients:
1 eggplant, peeled and cut in medium dice
12 ounces sweet Italian sausage
2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced
1 small red onion, peeled and minced

1 teaspoon minced fresh peeled ginger
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 teaspoons chopped capers
1 cup chopped fresh or canned tomatoes
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon curry powder
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 to 1 cup water

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary leaves
2 tablespoons chopped scallions

1. Place a large non stick pan over a medium heat and when it is hot, add the eggplant. Cook until the eggplant is golden brown on all sides, about 10-15 minutes. Remove the eggplant and set it aside.

2. Reheat the pan, add the sausage and cook over medium high heat until golden brown, about 7 minutes. Remove the sausage, discard the fat. When the sausage is cool enough to handle, roughly chop it.

3. Reheat the pan an add the oil. Add the garlic and onion and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the reserved sausage, raisins, ginger root, capers, tomatoes, salt, orange juice, curry powder, pepper flakes, honey, reserved eggplant and 1/4 cup water, stirring well after each addition.

4. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook until the eggplant is soft and the mixture is chunky and saucey, adding more water if necessary, or about 30 minutes.

5. Remove the pan from the heat and add the vinegar, basil, cilantro, parsley, rosemary and scallions. Serve at room temperature.

So is it any good? Well, if you like oranges and raisins, sure, as it's hard to taste anything pat the sweetly curried fruit. But it's a nice enough curry and the flavors are more harmonious than I expected; when you get a bit of eggplant or sausage that retains some identity, the sauce does compliment them well enough. I will say that the Mediterranean fusion thing is a bust. Change the sausage to something north African and you'd have no clue of an Italian origin. It's a fine enough dish, but is it a good caponata? I'd say no, but I'm not judging a caponata cooking competition here so I don't suppose it really matters. I kind of regret not trying something more classic instead . When you cook from a recipe do you prefer to stay traditional or a chefs' idiosyncratic creations?

CSA week six - tomato-carambola sorbet

This isn't an unusual combination for salads (and if you haven't tried it, you should) and I always have an eye out for interesting possibilities for sorbets and ice creams. And interesting this did turn out to be.  

Ingredients:

1 1/2 tomatoes, peeled and seeded

2 medium carambola, peeled as best you can and seeded (which is easier than you'd expect if you don't mind unsightly shredded results)

5 fluid ounces sugar (I used a not-fully refined sugar with a bit of molasses still in it)

5 fluid ounces water 

1 pinch salt

juice from one thick lime wedge

1 Tablespoon light rum

1. Purée the tomato and carambola. I ended up with about 2 cups worth so I scaled the other ingredients to match.

2. Make a simple syrup by bringing the sugar, salt and water to a simmer. Let it cool for a few minutes.

3. Mix everything in a blender. You're blending the fruit twice to get it extra smooth.

4. Chill, churn, ripen, scoop. You know the drill.

You can see in the picture that the texture isn't as smooth as my sorbets usually get. I skimped a bit on the rum and over-churned. I've since broken it up like a granita so it's more crumbly than solid which isn't too bad. It'll smooth out as it melts a little.

The tomatoes from this week's CSA share never ripened quite right so the sorbet has that tart, resinous flavor slightly under-ripe tomatoes have. It's an interesting match with the tartness of the carambolas and the slight acid of the lime. I've got to admit that of all the ridiculous flavors of ice cream and sorbet I've made this is the first one that's really wierded me out. It's bright and fruity--the tomato and carambola seamlessly blended into a quite pleasant tropical-noted flavor, but it's still clearly under-ripe tomato in there and it's hard to get past that. I'm going to offer this to my co-workers without telling them what's in it to see if the tomato really is that obvious and how it goes over without that knowledge.