CSA - longan sorbet

Following the tilapia I cooked Saturday, the next item up from this week's CSA is a two pound box of longans. If you're not familiar (and even if you are), longans are a fruit closely related to lychees. They're generally considered to be lychee's poor cousin. It's been a long time since I've had a fresh lychee so I can't make a detailed comparison of the flavors. They're pretty close if memory serves although longan isn't quite as sweet and I noticed honeysuckle notes that I don't recall lychee having. Longan also has a distinctive musky finish that's not to everyone's taste, but personally I like the added complexity.

On the other hand, I really didn't care for the gelatinous texture. So even though I liked the flavor I wasn't going to eat them out of hand. On the plus side, that texture is something I've noticed works well in frozen deserts, so Plan B goes into effect. OK, I'll admit frozen deserts are Plan A; I need the blog fodder. I considered using the longans in another variation on my colada sherbet recipe, but I don't think the longan's flavor is a great match with some of the other ingredients and I do like that flavor enough to want to be able to taste it unadulterated. So sorbet.

That means I'll need three cups of longan flesh and these things are pretty small. Each fruit has a hard outer shell and a large seed so we're talking about over an hour of cutting open each fruit and peeling the somewhat clingy flesh off of the seed. It's a fine thing to do with one's hands while listening to podcasts so I didn't really mind.

It took the full two pounds to produce three cups of longan, but two and a half would be fine if you go scant on the other ingredients. Those other ingredients are 3/4 cup sugar and 3/4 cup water simmered into a simple syrup and two Tablespoons each of lime juice and light rum. All of that goes into the blender for a quick spin and then the refrigerator for a cool down. At this point I'm a little concerned that the extra sweetness and the lime are masking the subtleties of the longan's flavor but I won't know for sure how it will taste until it's ripened.

And now it's tomorrow and I can tell you that the subtleties of the flavor don't survive the process. And with the added sweetness it's hard to distinguish from lychee. Better for people who don't much like longan, but I'm a bit disappointed. The texture turned out quite well--smooth and creamy without noticeable fruit bits or ice crystals--and it melts away to nothing on the tongue. I'm curious to compare it with a lychee sorbet. Have I missed the Florida growing season?

CSA - Chermoula baked tilapia

This was another CSA Summer ad hoc week. I went out to Theine early so I could get my pick of the bananas; a variety of varietals were offered and I wanted to get some of each. I was early enough to meet Margie before she finished the drop-off. We got sidetracked into talking about this blog and another person making a pick-up asked, but I wanted to thank her for all her effort in making the CSA work (and since she said she reads the blog I've got this second chance). It's easy to limit the support in CSA to the money we pay, but we should remember that the C stands for community not consumer. The least I can do is thank her.

Beyond the bananas, some really big tilapia were on offer this week. I've talked about scaling and gutting before I think so I'll skip that this time around. I do think I'm approaching competence at it.

Tilapia is a pretty mild fish--particularly when it's farmed--so I knew I had to really boost the flavor. I decided to go with a North African spice blend that is often used with white fish: chermoula. The formula for chermoula is one of those that's different in every village. I looked a few different ones to get a sense of the range and, as usual, went the over-complicated route. Here's my recipe:

1 small handful parsley, finely chopped
1 small handful cilantro, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1 small hot pepper, finely chopped (I believe I used a birdseye)
1 teaspoon hot paprika
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
3 Tablespoons fruity olive oil
juice of 1 lemon

I mixed all that up, put the fish in a baking dish, cut three slits in each side and then poured the chermoula over top and stuffed some into the body cavity too. Then I let the fish marinate for a couple hours, turning every half hour or so.

Then I preheated the over to 350 degrees, scraped up all the solid bits of the chermoula and fully stuffed the fish, put the squeezed lemon into the pan (plenty of flavor left in it I figure), covered it with foil and baked for 40 minutes flipping the fish at 20.

And the result is this:

No pictures of a serving; sorry. The fish is falling-apart tender and spectacularly moist, but also full of tiny bones so it collapsed as I picked through it and the result is a heap of soggy fish bits on a bowl of couscous. Quite unsightly. Textural issues aside, the tilapia is infused with the aromatic flavors of the lemon, herbs and spices but not entirely overwhelmed by them. I'd say the flavor of the fish was an equal partner with the flavor of the chermoula. That aspect, at least, was a great success. I wonder if the texture of tilapia would respond better to broiling than a braise. Or maybe cutting five minutes off the cooking time would do the trick.

There was surprisingly little meat for a fish this size, but I did save a little bit for a salad tomorrow and all those bones should make a decent stock so I should get a few meals out of it anyway.

Corn Toasties

How is it that I can have a nostalgic craving for something I'm pretty sure I never actually ate? I remember seeing the bright orange box in the freezer case and wanting to try them. But I don't think my mom ever bought them and if I saw them on a menu I never ordered them. Despite all that, ever since I saw this post at the blog A Good Appetite my breakfasts have not been complete.

The recipe she found called for:

1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/2 c + 2 T sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 t baking powder
3/4 c + 2 T cornmeal
1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t salt
1 c milk

but I gave into the impulse to tinker and instead used:

1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/2 c sugar
2 T dark honey
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 t baking powder
3/4 c + 2 T cornmeal
1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t salt
2 dashes cinnamon
1 dash allspice
1 dash paprika
3/4 c milk


Preheat oven to 350 F.
In a medium-sized bowl mix together the melted butter, honey & sugar. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Add the baking powder, cornmeal, flour, spices & salt. Mix until everything is moistened. Stir in milk & mix until almost smooth (a few lumps are fine).

Lightly grease a 10" x 15" baking sheet with 1/2" sides. Pour the batter into the baking sheet, spreading into all the corners. Tap the baking sheet on the counter 1 or 2 times to even the batter out.

Bake for about 25 minutes. The edges should be brown & pulling away from the side of the pan & the top show be set. Allow to rest in the pan on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes. Using a sharp knife cut into individual pieces I cut it into eight 2 1/2" x 3 3/4" rectangles.

Store the toasties wrapped in plastic wrap or in a resealable bag in the refrigerator for use over the next week. For longer storage keep them in the freezer.

To serve toast until browning & top with butter, syrup, honey or jam.

Makes 8 toasties


They turned out just as I hoped: corn muffins re-engineered. Dense and chewy with the structural integrity to hold up in a pop-up toaster and eat in the car. A mild sweetness that intesifies at the crispy brown edges out of the toaster.

I think the original recipe would give a bright straightforward corn flavor, but my changes deepen the flavor profile with some initial aromatics and a lingering richness that seems almost smokey although I didn't use that sort of paprika. It's nice, but it's meant to be a pallet for other flavors so simpler is probably better.

Still, I tried it in a few contexts to see how it worked out. First I tried it with poached shrimp and Chef Allen's hot mango cocktail sauce (which I picked up at the Mango Festival a few weeks back). I should have plated up the shirmp cocktail nicely and taken a picture but my impulsive decision to bake up a tray of corn toasties delayed my dinner for an hour and I was too hungry to screw around with that.

The next morning I toasted a toastie and had it topped with butter and a dollop of the other Chef Allen hot mango sauce I got at the Festival. (And I've finally found out why I bought both. The horseradish in the mango cocktail sauce limits its applications. The Mango Tears you can spread on toast if you like your jam hot and garlicky.)

And finally, I melted some pepper jack cheese on top of a toastie and had it with a bowl of chili (which I've got say has improved quite a bit by a month in in the freezer. Chili usually does I've found.)

The toasties performed admirably in all three cases: adding flavors and textures without overwhelming or clashing with the other elements and soaking up butter and sauce without falling apart. They look like they'll freeze really well too so I can see keeping them on hand as a kitchen staple. I'm glad I gave in to the craving and made a batch.

Chocolate-banana-toasted coconut ice cream

I've been thinking that we lucked out that bananas were the fruit with the magical custard-substituting powers. Bananas go with so many different flavors they make a wide variety of reduced fat ice cream flavors possible. If it were, say, grapes, what could you do with them?

That's all to say that I'm still ringing the changes on banana ice cream although, after going through a variety of different fruits, honey, peanut butter, white and now dark chocolate, I'm just about out of standard pairings. I've got at least one more novel idea, but unless I think of more, or find a less calorie- and fat-conscious audience, I'm going to be sticking to lighter fare hereafter.

But there's still today's chocolate banana toasted coconut ice cream. I've got no real story as to the origin of the recipe; It's really using up the leftover cream and coconut milk I had along with some shredded coconut that I bought for an Indian recipe I never made because my curry leaves faded before I got the chance.

Here's what I did:

1 1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup milk
3/4 ounce (by weight) dutch-processed cocoa
1/4 cup Splenda blend or 1/2 cup sugar
a few pinches more of sugar, don't use Splenda for this
1 frozen and defrosted banana
1/4 cup cocoa nibs (have I talked about cocoa nibs? Good stuff. They're what you get if you stop making chocolate halfway through the process. Take Cocoa beans and clean, ferment, roast, shell and crack them to get nibs. Crush the nibs into a liquid, maybe add a bit extra cocoa butter, add sugar and maybe milk, temper the results and you've got chocolate. Nibs give you a nice crunch and a dark chocolate flavor and they're good for baking and freezing.)

1. Spread 3/4 cup coconut in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Toast in 350 degree oven until golden brown. This should take only a few minutes. Watch closely as they burn quickly.

2. Spread the remaining coconut on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with a few pinches of sugar. Toast until golden brown. It won't be in the oven long enough to fully melt the sugar into a glaze, but it will melt enough to stick to the coconut. Put this batch of toasted coconut into a freezable container and put into the freezer. When it's been fully chilled, it will become brittle. Crush the coconut into pieces of whatever size you'd like. I left mine about a half-inch across.

3. In a medium pot bring cream, milk and coconut milk to a boil. Add the unsweetened toasted coconut, turn the heat down to low and let simmer for ten minutes. (Normally for an infusion I'd turn the heat entirely off, but simmering coconut milk long enough can cause it to caramelize and I was hoping to get some of that flavor into the ice cream as well.

4. Take the cream mixture off the heat. Fish the toasted coconut out and whisk in the sugar and cocoa. Don't worry if the cocoa won't entirely dissolve.

5. Either put the cream mixture and the banana into a blender or add the banana to the pot and use a stick blender. Blend until smooth.

6. Pour into a suitable container and chill to 40 degrees. Churn. Just before ice cream is ready to remove from the churn sprinkle in the reserved toasted coconut and the cocoa nibs and allow the churn to mix them in. Or do it by hand after removing the ice cream from the churn.

7. Ripen in the freezer for at least two hours.


And here's what I got: (Sorry, that picture looked a lot clearer when it was still in my phone.)



I've got to admit, I'm a little disappointed in the results. Oh, on the whole it's just fine but the details still matter. The ice cream itself froze quite solidly (and it bugs me that I still can't predict what texture I'm going to get) but has a nice smooth texture when it warms up. I used a bit too much cocoa as the chocolate flavor pushes the coconut infusion and banana into the background. If you're going to have imbalanced flavors, you can do worse than having over-strong chocolate, but I was hoping for better. The faint coconut flavor is definitely toasted coconut so that's nice, though. The real problem was the nicely crisp toasted coconut shards reverted to the raw texture. As the ice cream melts away you end up with a mouthful of coconut and nibs; I wanted both to be crunchy but instead you have to chew for a while and bits get stuck between your teeth. Coworkers more fond of coconut than I am liked it so it's good for what it is but I was aiming to overcome my a priori anti-coconut bias and I didn't beat the spread.

Next time I'll have to try a stronger infusion and skip the mix in. And maybe add some almonds. That should work.

Eggplant casserole with shrimp and country ham

Regular readers of my blog will know that I'm a fan of Mark Bittman's minimalist style of cooking. He's got a food blog for the New York Times, Bitten that I've recently begun reading. A couple days ago he was talking about his acquisition of a big chunk of high quality domestic prosciutto and how he was making use of it. One example was sautéing it with garlic, onion and peppers, adding a past-it's-prime eggplant and then cooking it down into a tasty mush. As I've got a past-it's-prime eggplant languishing in my vegetable drawer I took note.

However, I'm fresh out of prosciutto. What I do have is a pack of country ham chips. Fresh Market has just started carrying country ham in a few different forms. As a suburban boy from Delaware I haven't a clue what to do with it so I picked up chips as the lowest buy in for my experimentation.

Country ham changes my flavor profile substantially so the Italian flavors Bittman had in mind weren't going to work. While I was looking around to see how others have used ham and eggplant I came across this recipe that also includes shrimp and stale bread. I've got plenty of both of those at the moment so I was leaning towards that recipe. However I didn't really want to run the oven today so I ended up making something somewhere in the middle.

I started by chopping up and soaking the remaining quarter of the loaf of bread I baked last Sunday. I put in a good bit of rye flour so it was pretty hearty and had a nice rustic flavor.

Next I put a dutch oven on medium heat with a couple teaspoons of butter, an equal amount of olive oil, and a half dozen crushed garlic cloves. Once they got soft, but not browned, I added a small onion and a small bell pepper, both chopped, about a quarter pound of the country ham, a bay leaf, a teaspoon of thyme, a teaspoon of creole spice mix (paprika, garlic powder and cayenne primarily), a couple pinches of salt and a couple dashes more of cayenne.

Once the vegetables had softened and the spices and herbs were aromatic I added the eggplant, coarsely chopped, the bread and a half cup of chicken broth. I probably should have held off on the bread and broth to give the eggplant a chance to cook down a bit first. But I didn't, so all in they went. A stir and a bit more salt and on goes the cover. I cooked it for twenty minutes, stirring every five minutes and adding a bit more water. The bread broke down pretty quickly, the eggplant a little more slowly, but both were a thick mush at the end.

Meanwhile, I had a quarter pound of shrimp in a salt and sugar brine. The brine was strong enough to do the shrimp some good, but not so strong that I couldn't safely slosh some in to the casserole to add flavor and thin it out.

After the twenty minutes were up I chopped up the shrimp along with a large scallion and a handful of parsley. I added those to the pot, gave them a couple minutes to cook through and that was it.

I'll freely admit, the end result isn't the most texturally presentable dish around but I really like how the flavors play off each other. The bread has taken up flavors and now tastes like a particularly good bread stuffing. Each bite is a bit different; the bread/eggplant mush is first flavor in each bite, but it doesn't overwhelm whatever combination of firmer-eggplant, ham and shrimp you happen to have on the fork. Those three components do work well against each other and I think I made a good choice of herbs and spices to tie it all together.

A shame about the texture though. Maybe cooking it in an uncovered casserole dish would have let it firm up more. Certainly, browned breadcrumbs on the top wouldn't be a bad thing. I've put a couple extra servings into the freezer for later; when I take one out, if I remember, I'll reheat it an oven and add breadcrumbs to see how it goes.

Beefsteak fajitas with fresh tomato salsa

I mentioned a little while back that I had picked up some skirt steak for the first time. It has a reputation as nature's Steak-Um--flavorful, quick to cook, flat--but it was an impulse buy and I didn't have any particular recipes in mind. A bit of later research turned up that this is the traditional cut for fajitas and since I've got a fajita recipe I like (from Jim Fobel's book Big Flavors) easy enough for a summer kitchen that sounded like a plan.

What I particularly like about Fobel's recipe is how he marinates the meat. On the bottom of a flat container lay out thin slices of tomato, onion, jalapeno and garlic and some chopped cilantro. (Leave in the stems; cilantro and parsley stems are just as flavorful as the leaves. In fact you can use all stems here and save the leaves for other applications.) Down goes the meat and then another layer of vegetables on top. For the second layer I used my pickled jalapenos and added a little salt to release juices. Seal it up and refrigerate overnight. It infuses the beef with some nice flavors and tenderizes it a bit. I've also done this with chicken breasts pounded flat which works well, too.

The salsa is just:
1 large juice tomato, 1/2-inch dice
1/8 cup chopped cilantro
1 whole scallion, minced
1/2 jalapeno, fresh or pickled, minced
1 Tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Mix and let sit on the counter for an hour for the flavors to meld.

Fobel actually serves this as whole steaks dressed with the salsa but I always slice it up for fajitas. If you're going to do it as beefsteak ranchero, Fobel suggests matching it with corn tortillas, pinto beans, corn-on-the-cob and grilled scallions. If you're going with fajitas, you'll need flour tortillas and grilled onions and peppers.

Since I don't have a grill, I toss the onions and peppers in a high-smoke-point oil and a bit of salt and then throw them into a piping hot cast-iron skillet. Let them sit long enough to start to scorch, stir them up and let them sit again. Maybe a third time, maybe not, depending on if they've gotten tender yet.

But before you do that, take the beef out of the marinade, pick off all the bits of cilantro and onion that stuck on and pat it dry. Cut it up into bite-sized pieces (on your special beef cutting board of course). Thin slices against the grain is best but I went with a chunkier option. That was a mistake as the results were a little chewy. Sprinkle on a little salt as there wasn't any in the marinade and you're ready to add them to the cast iron pan when the vegetables are done. Less than a minute per side should do the trick but the exact timing depends on how thick your pieces are.

Serve in flour tortillas with the onions and peppers and a spoonful of salsa. A dollop of guacamole's not a bad idea either if you've got some handy. And that's a pretty tasty fajita right there. The best bit is how the juices from the beef and the liquid from the salsa mix into a flavorful sauce that coats each bite and leaks out of the bottom of the tortilla over your hand. That second part's not so good, but the first part makes up for it.

One issue I do have with this recipe is the waste of all those vegetables in the marinade. They're a little mushy from the night in the refrigerator but there ought to be some use for them. I decided to run them through the blender and then boiled the mix on the stove-top for a couple minutes as there is some raw beef bits still in there. The result isn't the most pleasant color but it's got lovely flavors of onion, pepper and cilantro in a tomato base. It could live to marinate another day or it could work as a dip for chips. It's a nice contrast with the more tomato-forward flavor of the fresh salsa. I'll have to see how it tastes after it's been chilled before I figure out what I want to do with it.

Turns out when it's cold it loses all its zip. So, along with the leftover fajita bits and some pickled carrots, both roughly chopped, some white beans that have been sitting in the fridge, pepper jack cheese and rest of the (no-longer so) fresh salsa, it's topping some nachos. Not bad, but Garden of Eatin' organic corn chips sure go soggy quick. I should have trusted to the agrobusiness complex to engineer a better chip. If there's anything they know, it's designing corn products.

Shrimp in Escabeche

I mentioned a while back, after making nanban zuke, that I wanted to try making the European dish that evolved from, escabeche. I've been slightly sidetracked from that because when I went to buy the whitefish for the recipe I found that Publix was having a 2-for-1 sale on Greenwise shrimp. So now I've got three pounds of shrimp to get rid off. I suppose that doesn't sound like a lot but I'm not really a sit-down-and-eat-a-pound-of-shrimp sort of guy.

By the way, has anyone seen an investigation of Publix's Greenwise program to see if the animals actually get the humane conditions claimed? The website is high on marketing crapola and low on useful details. There's a lot of lip service paid to humane treatment in this sort of thing and even beyond any interest in the animal's welfare taking away antibiotics without improving living conditions has been shown to reduce safety of the resulting meat. None of which probably has any relevance to shrimp, though. Publix doesn't say anything more specific than that they're farmed in Thailand which isn't helpful as there's a wide range of qualities of farming practice over there. But since none of the places I shop offer certified organic meat or fish of any sort (except for some whole chickens at Whole Foods I think), Greenwise plus some wishful thinking will have to do.

Anyway, I found this recipe on Epicurious.com which it says is originally from a 2007 issue of Gourmet. It's attributed to Maggie Ruggiero but I don't know if she developed the recipe for the magazine or just typed it into Epicurious.

1 small red onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 Turkish bay leaves or 1 California
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 pound large shrimp in shell (21 to 25 per pound), peeled, leaving tail intact, and deveined

Preparation
Toss together onion, vinegar, oregano, and 1 teaspoon salt in a shallow glass or ceramic dish.

Simmer oil, bay leaves, garlic, and peppercorns in a small saucepan 10 minutes, then let stand until ready to use.

Add shrimp to a medium pot of boiling salted water (2 tablespoons salt for 4 quarts water), then remove from heat and let stand, uncovered, until just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Drain well, then stir into onion mixture along with oil mixture.

Chill shrimp in escabeche, covered when cool, stirring occasionally, at least 12 hours. Discard bay leaves and serve shrimp cold or at room temperature.
__________

I used just a half pound of shrimp as I'm not cooking for a crowd here but I only halved the amount of marinade. I've found it to be a good rule of thumb in scaling down recipes to only cut down marinades by half as much as I cut the amount of stuff I'm marinating. It tends to be too skimpy otherwise.

Another important note here is that 21 to 25 count shrimp called for are not large as the recipe says, they're jumbo. I found a handy guide to shrimp sizes here. The actual large shrimp I had cooked through almost instantly. One thing I'm working on with my surfeit of shrimp is learning to properly poach them to get that nice tender texture boiling and steaming won't give you. I didn't get it this time as I was confused by the inaccurate "large" in the recipe, but maybe next time.

And a third thing, there's no emulsifier in the marinade so I found the olive oil tended to separate out and solidify over the 12 hours in the refrigerator. Got to watch that.


So, there's a nice garlic vinaigrette and some shrimp. I decided to poach a few extra shrimp at the last minute that just got a dunk and a drizzle for comparison to see if it's worth the twelve hour soak. I'm going to say yes. The marinated shrimp are infused with the marinade's flavors but not overwhelmed like a full pickling. There's a mild tang from the vinegar, the warm richness of the fried garlic and the aroma of the herbs all blended fully with the shrimp. The fresh shrimp the sauce just rolls off of.

So, on the whole, pretty good and not a whole bunch of trouble beyond the fact that you have to make it before heading off to work in the morning. Or you could have it for breakfast I suppose.

I still want to make a fish escabeche. I understand that most recipes call for the fish to be fried and I'm curious how those nice browned bit react to being pickled. Plus, this recipe wasn't suitable for storing for a month. I want something I can keep for a while.