Fried chicken with basil leaves

After coming back from my trip I was disappointed at how poorly my curry leaves fared. I stored some in a sealed plastic bag with a strip of paper towel to absorb any stray moisture and some in one of those perforated greens storing bags. The batch in the sealed bag had begun to rot. I think they would have done fine for a couple weeks, but it's now around four weeks since I got them in my summer CSA a la carte. The second batch was well on its way to drying out, but the leaves had lost all of their aroma and without that they're hardly worth calling curry leaves.

I'll admit that this is something I should have checked somewhat earlier than halfway through preparing a recipe called Fried Chicken with Curry Leaves. However, I had a back-up plan. I've been needing to prune the basil in my garden (Last year I didn't and my basil plant grew like I was under attack by Plantman but died just as quickly.) so I can move this recipe from Malaysian to Thai. Luckily I had already switched out the soy sauce in the marinade for fish sauce so I was on my way. I don't actually know what variety of basil I've got, but it doesn't have the peppery bite of real Thai basil so I'll have to toss in some peppers to compensate.

So here's how it went:

Ingredients:
oil for deep frying
2 chicken thighs, boned, skinned and cut into largish bite-sized pieces
1 large handful basil leaves
1 small onion, chopped into largish bite-sized pieces
1 small green pepper, chopped into largish bite-sized pieces
1 bird's eye or similar hot pepper, sliced (and seeded if you're a wimp)
Marinade:
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (black pepper is fine, but I got tired of grinding. I need a new more efficient pepper mill.)
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 Tablespoon corn starch
Glaze:
1/2 Tablespoon oyster sauce, I used Chinese-style which worked fine although I've just learned that Thai-style is different
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
80 ml chicken broth
20 ml rice wine
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
juice of 1/4 lime

Directions:
1. Combine marinade ingredients, add chicken, marinate in refrigerator for one hour.
2. Heat oil for deep frying in a wok. Add chicken in batches without draining. Deep fry until golden brown. Don't worry about under-cooking as they'll be going back into the pan for a significant amount of time.
3. Drain all but 2 Tablespoons of oil (or heat 2 Tablespoons of oil in a wok at high heat if you used an actual deep fryer).
4. Add onion, peppers and small handful of basil leaves. Stir fry until onion and pepper begin to soften and become translucent.
5. Add chicken and glaze. Stir fry until almost, but not quite dry.
6. Add remaining basil leaves, toss and immediately remove from pan and serve over rice.

No offense to ponikuta whose original recipe this is based off of, but this turned out much better than when I followed her recipe to the letter. The switch from curry to basil leaves was, I think, a lateral one, but boosting the amount made the results much more aromatic. Adding the onion and pepper gave a better solids to glaze ratio so the sauce didn't over-reduce as it did on my first try. Instead of those overly salty and simple results, the flavors this time are a lovely blend of the savory chicken boosted by the oyster and fish sauces and the sweet of the lime and sugar with the basil wafting up behind and the pepper burning beneath. This would actually be a fine not-quite-vegetarian dish as the sauce brings out and supports the flavors of the onions and peppers. You could deep fry tofu and it would work really well, but don't use those frozen pre-fried tofu puffs. They'd absorb too much of the glaze and it wouldn't reduce right.

It's when I unexpectedly get these sorts of spectacular results that I regret that I'm only cooking for myself. Well, that's why I have this blog; If I can't feed you, at least I can record and pass on the recipe. Please make this; I promise you won't regret it.

Piña Colada Sherbet

or possibly sorbet. Whether coconut milk counts is a point on which reasonable men can disagree.

This recipe was inspired by a poor freezer packing job that popped the door open while I was at work a few days ago. Nothing got above refrigerator temperature so no bacterial bonanza, but the impromptu defrosting did no good for the texture of some of my freezer's contents, most notably the bananas (awaiting their turn as smoothie components) which turned into mush.

Well, that's perfect for making ice cream so off I went. Also on hand was a pineapple that I wanted to do something with beyond just eating in chunks so a tropical flavor was in order. In Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop I found a tropical sorbet that used bananas and pineapple, but also tangerines and passion fruit which I didn't have. There was also a Piña Colada sherbet that didn't use banana (as the traditional drink recipe doesn't) but did have the intriguing inclusion of coconut milk. So I decided to improvise something somewhere in between with a few touches of my own.

Ingredients:
2 bananas, frozen and defrosted so they get all glorpy
1 1/2 cups pineapple, cut in chunks [fresh is best and the Golden Sweet variety is a good choice.]
1 cup canned coconut milk [not Coco Lopez which is sweetened. I should look into fresh. If I'm going to live in a town where I risk getting conked on the head by falling coconuts I should at least reap the benefits.]
juice of 1/2 lime
1/3 cup Splenda blend or 2/3 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon dark rum [I'm still using up the bottle of light rum I bought last year so I used that]
1 teaspoon kosher salt
6 shots vinegar-based hot sauce [for this application I chose Dat'l Do-it Devil Drops which have a bright fruity flavor and lots of heat.] or a little mint extract or just a shot of vanilla if you're not feeling adventurous



Just put everything in a blender, blend until smooth, chill to 40 degrees F, churn as per your machines instructions and ripen overnight.


And here's the end result. The texture is impeccably soft, creamy and smooth with not a hint of ice crystals or fruit fiber and the flavor is that lovely tropical synergy of banana, pineapple and coconut with a just noticeable note of pepper and a trace of burn to round it out. Neither the rum nor the off chemical taste Splenda can have are at all noticeable. If you want to taste the rum, I'd suggest making a rum float instead of adding more to the mix. And it's low fat and relatively low calorie. A big hit in my Weight Watching office.

Smelt nanban zuke

If that name looks familiar it's because it's one of the dishes I had at Shiro's while I in Seattle.
I liked it a lot when I had it there and it looked straightforward enough so I thought I'd try to make it at home. If you don't want to click through, basically we're talking about deep-fried pieces of smelt in a vinegary sauce topped with a garnish of onion and pepper. Luckily, my visit to Shiro's was a couple weeks back so I have no real recollection of how it tasted there. I wouldn't want to put my version up to a direct comparison.

I looked around a bit for a recipe right after I went to Shiro's and settled on this one I found at Chilies Down Under although I couldn't tell you why at this remove:
"Nanban Zuke

Marinade

• 2 tblsp light soy sauce
• 1 small chilli (serrano, birds eye, etc) seeded and finely chopped
• 2 tblsp sake
• 700g mackerel fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
• cornflour
• oil for frying

Sauce

• 0.5 cup rice vinegar
• 0.5 cup sugar
• 0.3 cup water
• 1 teasp salt
• 1 tablsp sake
• 1 small chilli (serrano, birds eye, etc) seeded and finely chopped
• 1 tablsp light soy sauce

Garnish

• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 0.5 small green capsicum, cut into thin strips
• 1 cayenne chilli seeded and finely slivered
• a few slices frish ginger, cut into slivers

Combine the sake, light soy sauce and chilli in a bowl and marinade the mackerel in it in a fridge for around 20 minutes. Take out the fish and let it drain for a minute. Dust with cornflour and fry in the oil in a frying pan until golden brown.

Blend the sauce ingredients together, place the fish in a serving dish, and pour the sauce over the fish.

Pour boiling water over the spring onion, capsicum, and chilli, leave for 30 seconds, then drain. Sprinkle the spring onion, capsicum, chilli, and ginger over the fish."

The author calls it a "classic example of the Japanese style" but "nanban" translates as "southern barbarian" if you believe Wikipedia. This article (which is pretty interesting nanban aside) explains that this dish evolved from Spanish or Portuguese escabeche, another dish I need to get around to making at some point.

I made a few adjustments to bring this recipe more in line with Shiro's. First, instead of mackerel fillets, I used whole (well whole-ish, they'd been beheaded and gutted) smelt cut into bite-sized pieces. I was hoping to find fresh smelt somewhere as Florida is known for its smelt, but I only found frozen at Whole Foods so that's what I used. Where the recipe says "cornflour" I assumed it meant cornstarch not cornmeal. I used chili oil instead of fresh chili in the sauce to better distribute the flavor. And I substituted slivers of sweet onion for the chopped scallion. And finally, I made sure everything was deeply chilled instead of room temperature

Since I wasn't using fillets I probably should have lengthened the marination. Twenty minutes wasn't enough for more than a bit of heat to soak in. Wilting the onion probably wasn't necessary; I liked the crispness of the onions at Shiro's.

Shiro's served the dish alone, but I served it over rice. I made a last minute decision to sushify my rice (1 1/2 T rice vinegar, 1 T sugar and 1/2 T salt for each cup of uncooked rice. Rinse the rice well; sushi rice should stick together because of the additions not because of starch. You might add a piece of kombu to the rice cooker too if you're thinking that far ahead.) so I went light on the sauce to keep the dish from getting too vinegary. Overall, a pretty nice summer dish. Cool, light, tart and not too much time or trouble in the kitchen. A green salad with that Japanese style dressing and some hot sake would accompany it nicely.

Seattle addendum

On the off chance anybody's been eagerly awaiting my return to blogging, I'd like to apologize for the delay. After the end of my Seattle vacation I spent a few days at a second conference in Pittsburgh. If you're looking for a way to avoid gaining weight on the buffets and boxed lunches foisted on you at conferences I strongly recommend a few days of fine dining immediately preceding. I pushed a lot of plates away in disgust. I did have a pretty good dinner at the Original Fish Market by the Westin Convention Center, though. They do a P.E.I. mussels appetizer that matches them with celery, a pairing that would never have occurred to me as I'm generally not fond of celery, but worked surprisingly well. The grilled talapia was nice too, golden brown, crispy and delicious on one side and tender and moist on the other. That must be tricky to get just right. When I got home I had to restock the refrigerator and then I got in a snacky mood as I caught up on all the podcasts and Daily Shows & Colbert Reports I recorded while I was out. But I'm finally back in the kitchen

First, I should also mention a couple last things from back in Seattle.

I mentioned that I'd be trying Jidori chicken at the Skyline Lounge. Jidori chickens are free-range, clover-fed chickens delivered fresh to restaurants daily. Beyond the ethics of it all (I just finished reading the Omnivore's Dilemma so the ethics of meat are on my mind) it ought to taste better, or at least chickenier, than your average chicken. Hard to tell at the Skyline Lounge as they only used the breast, which generally has less flavor than most cuts, over-seasoned it, overcooked it and covered it in gravy. Ah well.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the Savor Seattle tour I took of the Pike Place market. I think it was a pretty good tour if you like that sort of thing, but I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't. Oh, I did learn some interesting details of the history of the place and got to try eight or so samples, but I also had to sit through a good bit of schtick and get stared at by the tourists as the group awkwardly stood either in their way or on display behind a counter. I think I would have been happier with a self-guided audio tour sort of thing. I was limited in what I could buy due to my travel plans, but I did pick up some lavender extract I want to use for ice cream and some xanthan gum I can use to experiment with foams and such.

This went on a bit longer than I expected so I think I'll put it up and talk about the meal I just cooked in a separate post.

Seattle trip - Steelhead Diner

Steelhead diner is in the greater Pike Place market area. That is, it's in one of the market buildings, but not in the building where you can only sell what you grow or make yourself. I knew I wanted at least one meal in a restaurant that sourced most of its ingredients from the market and, when I was poking around I found that one generally considered well above the rest is Mel's on the Market. However, Mel's is tiny, hard to get into without a reservation (I didn't know quite when the interview I went to see was going to end) particularly a half hour before closing (the most likely time I'd find my way back downtown), and also harder to find as I wandered through most of the market and never stumbled across it despite having it clearly marked on the map I got on my tour.

But, hey, nothing wrong with Steelhead Diner. It's commonly cited as the first runner up and it was recommended by Salumi's owner earlier that day. I wouldn't have called Steelhead a diner if it wasn't in the place's name. I suppose you can see some hints of that focus in the sandwiches on the dinner menu, but the decor is more upscale casual. I ate out on the patio which was a mixed experience. Thankfully, there was a closable door between me and the drunken singing inside (not the Harvard Glee Club this time, unfortunately). On the other hand, I got to listen to skateboarders rattling down the cobblestones at the end of Pine street nearby. On the third hand, the sound of an unmanned board rolling away after a failed trick was distinctly identifiable and pleasantly common. I neglected to bring my phone/camera so no pictures of food or skaters wiping out this time; sorry.

One dish Steelhead is known for is it's caviar pie. It's not described on the menu so I was figuring a little tart mounded with local salmon roe. Instead, I got what looked like a thin slice of cheesecake striped with dense rows of brightly colored caviar--yellow, red, crimson, orange and black from the outside in. The whole pie must have looked like an archery target for someone who really doesn't like fish eggs. The slice was surrounded by piles of crumbled hard-boiled egg, capers and diced onion along with maybe a dozen slices of thin crisp toast. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a savory cheesecake, just a layer of whipped cream cheese and even more disappointed to discover how the mild the all the caviar save the bullseye of salmon and sturgeon roe was. The substantially more flavorful garnishes, cream cheese and toast crisps completely overwhelmed them. Impressive presentation, though, so you should encourage someone else to order it so you can take a look.

For my main dish I had an oyster po'boy made with local oysters. And I have to commend my waiter for taking it back to the kitchen and having them fry up a new batch instead of letting it sit under a heat lamp when he saw that I wasn't quite done sampling the various bits of the caviar pie. It was a pretty good po'boy. I'm looking for whatever's inside the deep-fried breading to be flavorful enough to be identifiable through a spicy breading and remoulade. And there shouldn't be too much of that remoulade; too many places spread it on thick. Steelhead did add sweet pickles which I don't think are too traditional, but it's not like I was dining in New Orleans so I'm not going to be too picky so long as the flavors work which I think they did.

No dessert so that's it. Frankly, if it wasn't for the caviar pie I may not have bothered writing it up. Next post should be more interesting.

Seattle trip - Union restaurant

My final dinner in Seattle was at Union, another French influenced American fine dining sort of place that plays in more or less the same cuisine area as Dahlia Lounge. They also focus on fresh seasonal local ingredients.

Union is in a bit of mixed area. From my seat I could see construction, a museum, and a strip club. The market's not far away either. It seems to be a semi-special-occasional sort of place. There are families with children but its too fancy and pricey for just a night out. Like Dahlia, it's dimly lit with dark woodwork but it's a bit more formal.

Union's schtick is kind of like those old Chinese restaurant menus where you picked one dish from column A and one from column B. At Union the menu is designed for a complete meal to be one appetizer, one pasta, one main dish and one dessert which you can get for $50. You can stray from the plan, but they don't encourage it.

I chose a geoduck with cucumber, radish, salmon roe and horseradish appetizer; potato gnocchi with lobster and bacon; veal sweetbreads with morrel mushrooms, garlic spears and turnips; and a frozen chocolate pate with pistachio brittle and cherry soup. I neglected to make a note of the wine I ordered, but the glass came with a little carafe of extra which was much appreciated.

Unlike Shiro's preparation of bite-sized chunks, the geoduck came in shaved paper-thin slices piled up and shingled with rounds of radish and cucumber, topped with roe and sprinkled with grated bits of horseradish. The geoduck was pretty mild and the flavor only came out in a lingering aftertaste. The forward flavors were the cucumber and radish so, as you might imagine, it was a pretty understated dish. The roe provided the dish's salt so you had to try to get a bit in each forkful to make the flavors come out right. A bit of the broth, which I think also had cucumber and geoduck in it helped to blend flavors together as well. It was a pleasant enough dish, but, for me, it didn't really come together into a coherent whole.

I had the same problem with the gnocchi. The gnocchi itself was nicely prepared--light, fluffy and with a nice potato flavor, and the lobster was soft and the bacon crispy, but I didn't get any synergy that elevated the dish above those three, admittedly very nice, components. There was a sauce, based on lobster-stock I think, that helped tie things together, but it didn't stick to the gnocchi so it mainly stayed in a puddle on the plate.

Now the sweetbreads really worked for me. On Top Chef a few weeks back one of the chefs said that sweetbreads, prepared well, were like chicken nuggets, a statement that caused some skeptical comments on a discussion board I was reading. But not a bad comparison, really. The photo here is pretty lousy--the sun had set at this point and I didn't have enough ambient light--but that's a pile of deep-fried chunks of sweetbread you're looking at and a chicken nugget's not far off, although they were a bit softer and gamier. The sweetbreads by themselves were a bit too spicy and salty due to their breading, but they were balanced by the wine reduction sauce and brightened the flavors of the vegetables. The turnip was nicely cooked, retaining some firmness and flavor. The garlic spears were slightly on the raw side of al dente, but not really undercooked to my tastes. It was quite rich so the small serving size was about right.

Finally, the frozen chocolate pate'. The picture didn't come out at all, but you can kind of make out a rectangular slice in the middle of bowl. This was actually milk chocolate mouse coated with a bit of ganache and frozen so it could be sliced. It was served in a pool of cherry soup and topped with a big chunk of pistachio brittle which you can see stretching into the upper right corner of the picture. You can see, I think, that it was huge and unwieldy. I couldn't break the thing and I wasn't willing to pick it up and gnaw on it so it just sat there. The flavors and textures here were disappointingly single-note and familiar--all very Whitman's sampler. The temperature was different, but not any real improvement I thought. I suppose the pate presentation was interesting, but like the caviar pie I had the previous night, a cute presentation doesn't improve the flavor. Not that the flavors here were bad, they just weren't anything special.

And that would have to be my reaction to the meal as a whole. Nothing was bad, but nothing knocked me out either. The gnocchi and pate were too straightforward for my tastes, the geoduck a bit scattered and the sweetbreads a bit heavy. I think if I were in Seattle longer (and could afford another $80 meal) I'd want to go back and try some of the other menu items to tell for sure, but maybe Union's approach just isn't for me.

Seattle trip - Salumi

I've been mostly trying to focus on the food and only describe the atmosphere as a bit of preamble but you can't do that with Salumi, it's more of a dining experience.

Salumi is basically a family-run hole in the wall lunch sandwich shop if a) they cured all their own meats, b) were world famous and constantly mobbed and c) deserved every bit of that fame and attention due to their fabulous food. I got there five minutes after they opened at 11 am on a Friday and the line was already halfway down the block. That's mainly because the place is tiny with just a few individual tables and two bigger eight person tables. They seem to have a system set up where taking and fulfilling an order takes just long enough for a seat to open up. The line moves slowly, but steadily and is livened up by the occasional plate of samples passed down. The line was a mix of neighborhood locals who were stretching their lunch-hours that day, Seattlites who took the day off to go (Salumi only does weekday lunches and Friday dinners for long-time customers and friends of the family. I get the impression that those two categories inevitably overlap. And they do mail order, too.) and touristas like me.

After about twenty minutes I made it inside, checked out the menu and days specials, placed my order at the counter and tried to find a seat. I found one at the eight person table in the back room. The three people already sitting there, it turned out, were a couple from a local community kitchen and one of the owners, Armandino Batali (Mario's dad), who were chatting while sampling everything Salumi makes. Now I was all in favor of minding my own business, but the table filled up, people got chatty and one must be polite. So I've got about three weeks worth of dinner recommendations for my one night without a reservation.

But now the food. I got the cured meats and cheese platter. I honestly couldn't tell you what's what and since it was all great in various ways I'm not certain it really matters. I'm pretty sure there's a smoked paprika salami, sopressata and mole salami (made with chocolate) in there. I also got to try a bit of Salumi's cooked meats shared by the other folks at the table and it was equally as good--some of the most flavorful, tender and moist roast pork I've ever had.

And then the Harvard Glee Club came in a sang a tune. Really; they're touring the country and had a concert in Seattle that night. See? I was busy seeing William Gibson being interviewed that night or I might have gone.

And that's about it, really. In a way I regret going. Whenever I try top quality versions of a product I'm ruined for the cheap stuff. It happened with beer, chocolate, bread and potato chips (I favor Kettle Chips Krinkle Cut Salt and Pepper). With the CSA subscription it happened with vegetables (which is why I've been trying to cook more with meats and grains this summer) and now I think it's happened with cured meats. I think my only recourse will be to start hunting around Miami for the best jamon serano. Any suggestions?