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.

Clay pot rice

OK, one last rice cooker post before I get bored with the thing and go back whatever it is I usually do around here.

This, like the clay pot pork I made a while back, is an adaption to the western kitchen, although, since I'm doing it in a rice cooker, perhaps it's better to say that it's an adaption to modern kitchen. One without a clay pot and a charcoal burner at any rate.

The version I made is something of a bastardization. It's got a pretty strict ingredient list traditionally--garlic, ginger and shiitake mushrooms mixed with the rice, Chinese sausage and chicken marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine layered on top, maybe an egg or salted preserved fish, and a scallion garnish to finish.

I substituted some Chinese bacon for the chicken as the bacon was pre-marinated and I was feeling lazy. I used a different brand than last time and what I got was far leaner and more cured, almost jerky. Not quite what I wanted, but it turned out OK. The chicken would have been better, though.

I also layered on a bunch of different vegetables: water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and baby corn, diced carrot and shredded cabbage, plus sliced tofu. And I added a bit of soy sauce and chili oil to the pot too instead of using them as condiments afterward. And I mixed in some thinly sliced sweet pepper with the scallion and, since I was concerned about overcooking the egg, I added a sliced hard-boiled egg to the garnish instead of steaming one along with everything else.

The only thing left is a cup and three quarters of chicken stock mixed with a cup of rice and the garlic, ginger and reconstituted dried shiitake. That goes in the bottom of the rice cooker. Everything else, bar the garnishes, goes on top. Turn on the cooker and come back at dinner time.

There are a few things to note here. First is the extra liquid added to the rice creates extra steam to properly cook the ingredients on top. Second, the fact that they're on top is not just so they can steam, but so the fat and juices can drip down to flavor the rice. The sauces I added really weren't necessary.

Third is a matter of technique that I'll admit I didn't fully appreciate until after I cooked this. There's some tension between wanting to cook the rice slowly to ensure full and flavorful doneness and cooking it at a high temperature to form the crust that's an important aspect of this dish. In a clay pot, it seems, you can do both. In a rice cooker you can't, at least one not in one like mine that is smart enough to think it knows the right thing to do and insists on doing it even when you're trying to do something else. If you've used Microsoft Word, you know what I mean.

That crust is what makes this a respectable sibling of fried rice and sticky rice dishes. Without its added flavor and texture, the dish is fine but dull. And, as you can, see, my version has no crust.



So, how to fix this? Looking around after the fact I see some recipes calling for the rice to have an hour pre-soak. Other add the toppings ten minutes into the rice cooking. You might not have this problem if you try it. My old rice cooker, with its hot "keep warm" setting would have formed a crust on the rice by just waiting ten minutes before dishing it out. Possibly, the fast cycle on my cooker would have done the same thing. I'll have to try it later. I've been talking about rice crust a fair bit this last week and I'm starting to crave it pretty badly at this point. Plus, it'll make a fine blog post.

Tofu donburi

So what to do with the first big batch of rice I impetuously made after unpacking my new rice cooker? I considered just adding a little butter and digging in, but I wanted a real meal. I could have gone with the Chinatown steamed chicken I described last week, but I've only got chicken thighs and they don't steam up so well. Then it hit me: donburi! They're called rice bowls in English, giving the rice top billing over whatever they're served with, which seemed appropriate.

There are lots of variations, but usually it's a protein and some vegetables, including onion of some sort, mixed with beaten egg and served with a sweet sauce made of stock, soy sauce and a sweetener.

I, because I was feeling too lazy to defrost a chunk of meat, went with tofu as my main ingredient. I used firm tofu, cut into blocks about an inch square by two inches and deep-fried for about a couple minutes longer than you usually want to. Usually, when you're frying tofu, you're just getting it a little golden and crisp around the edges. If you cook it longer, the golden layer thickens and the tofu gets dried out and chewy. In this case, that's a good thing. The tofu firms up as it cools so it was still soft enough that I was able to squeeze out the absorbed oil with my tongs as I pulled it out of the pan.

I also dug up a few scraps of sirloin I had in the back of the refrigerator; sliced them thin; marinated in soy sauce, white pepper and sesame oil; shook them dry and gave them a quick dip in cooking oil. Just enough to brown since they're getting cooked a little more later.

Next, in a small pot, I combined 1 cup mushroom stock, 2 Tablespoons soy sauce and 1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar and brought it to a boil. I added the tofu and mushrooms, turned down the heat and simmered for 5 minutes to let them absorb the sauce's flavors. And just absorb the sauce, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I beat a couple eggs and mixed in a large scallion, sliced into 2-inch lengths and the beef I half-cooked earlier. After the 5 minutes were up, I turned the heat up a little and added the egg mixture. Once I saw that the egg had started to solidify, I turned the heat back down, covered the pot and let it simmer for 3 minutes more.

After that, I just dumped half over a big bowl of rice and served (and saved the rest for later). But what I should have done was to fish out the solids and then thicken the sauce with a little corn starch. That would have disguised the ugliness of this bowl a little bit.


Appearances aside, it tastes great. The sauce is a balance of savory and sweet that's a bit intense on its own, but just right absorbed into a whole lot of rice. The simmering has softened the tofu from leathery to a pleasantly meaty chew. The sauce's flavors penetrated through the outer layers, but left a creamy plainer tofu center. The mushrooms, on the other hand, soaked up the sauce and give off bursts of flavor at the bite. And the rest add some nice flavors and textures without being worth noting in detail.

It should make a good weekday meal since it's so quick and easy. Here's a more generalized recipe:

Ingredients:
1/2 pound of firm tofu, cut into largish chunks
a little meat or fish, cut into strips [or ditch the tofu and add more meat if you like]
4 small dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked and quartered
1 large or 2 small scallions, both white and green parts or a white onion, cut into 1-2" lengths
some broccoli, fresh mushrooms, greens or daikon wouldn't be a bad addition. Just add heartier stuff early and more delicate ingredients late
1 cup stock or dashi
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar or mirin
maybe a couple teaspoons sake
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
lots of white rice

0. Start cooking the rice.

1. Deep or pan fry the tofu until golden brown and crispy. Par-cook the meat.

2. Mix sauce ingredients and bring to a boil. Add tofu and dried or tough vegetables. Simmer 5 minutes.

3. Mix egg with meat, delicate vegetables and onion. Add to pot. Cover and simmer 3 minutes more.

4. Remove solids from pot and divvy up amongst two or three bowls of rice. Measure 2 teaspoons cornstarch into a small bowl. Add a small ladle of the sauce and mix well. Pour back into pot and simmer until thickened slightly. Top the rice bowls, add a sprinkling of sesame seeds to garnish and serve.

Plain white rice

Hey look, I got a cool new rice cooker! It's a birthday present from my mother, (thanks Mom!) although I had to tell her exactly the make and model I wanted and where to get it from. I was kind of interested in the super-fancy models that have humidity and temperature sensors and use fuzzy logic to adjust the temperature and cooking time for perfect results every time, but I couldn't find one that did anything other than cook rice. I really wanted one that doubled as a slow cooker. One that tripled as a deep fryer would have been nice too, but, as far as I can tell, that remains a dream.

On the other hand, this one can also steam and make tofu. But that's for later, for now, let's talk rice.

My old rice cooker was fine if your expectations weren't too high. The rice tasted fine, but it was always kind of mushy and had a crunchy crust on the bottom which is a good thing in Chinese and Korean cooking, but it's a no-no in Japanese. The new cooker has settings for both styles along with the standard white, brown and congee settings.


Here's the first batch with the new cooker. I'm not sure I've zoomed in far enough for you to see, but each individual grain is distinct and has expanded until it looks like a little length of rice noodle. They're slightly sticky, but come apart easily; soft but not mushy; aromatic and flavorful (as rice goes, anyway). It's a far superior rice experience all the way around.

Since then, I've made a batch on quinoa (on the brown rice setting), which did turn into a bowl of mush, but I think that's just the nature of quinoa. It was a
fluffier mush than the old cooker ever managed and tastier too. Beyond the aesthetic improvements, I'm just pleased that it didn't burn as it did half the time in the old cooker.

Next up is slow cooking some short ribs, but that deserves a post to itself. And there's also the issue of what to top a big bowl of fine quality rice with which I'll be covering soon, too.

Vietnamese fried rice

O.K., this is just fried rice and you don't need to be told how to make fried rice, but this quick-and-easy way to use leftovers is a little different from the more familiar Chinese version so it's worth documenting.

When I did it, it turned into a huge production number, but you can just consider the contents of each bowl a list of possible ingredients to choose from and you'll be fine. Use whatever you've got handy and follow the same procedure of fluffing the rice then cooking the vegetables in stages before mixing the sauce then rice back in. It is really easy if you are using leftovers they way you're supposed to and not prepping everything right there like I did.

In that first bowl are:
a few cloves garlic, chopped
an equal amount of ginger, crushed and chopped
1 stalk lemongrass, cleaned and thinly sliced
1 small handful dried kaffir lime leaves [I've been picking them off my kaffir lime tree and drying them myself. I'm finding dried rather easier to work with than fresh although not nearly as flavorful so you have to use a lot more.]
1 carrot, peeled and diced small

In the second bowl are:
2 links lop chong (Chinese sausage), microwaved 1 minute to partially cook, cooled and sliced
1 half cup peas
1 1/2 cups bean sprouts
4 large shrimp, cleaned and cut into centimeter-sized pieces
1 small handful cilantro, chopped

On the plate are:
2 eggs, beaten, gently cooked into an omelet and sliced
2 scallions, chopped

In the sauce is:
2-3 Tablespoons Vietnamese fish sauce (milder than Thai)
2-3 Tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon sriracha hot sauce (did you know that this was invented in Los Angeles? You don't see this brand or quite this formulation outside the U.S.)


Step one was to heat up in my wok:
1 Tablespoon canola oil
1 Tablespoon chicken fat
1 teaspoon sesame oil

to which I added:
3 cups day-old rice
and stir-fried until the rice had regained its fluff.

Out that went and into the wok went another Tablespoon of canola and another Tablespoon of chicken fat. Once that was hot I added the contents of the first bowl.

When the aromatics were nicely aromatic and the carrot starting to soften, in went the contents of the second bowl.

When the shrimp was just about done (just a minute or two), I added the sauce and cooked it down a little. Then I returned the rice and tossed it around to get all of the rice coated before adding the eggs and scallions. A little more stirring to get everything well-distributed and warmed through and it all went out of the wok and into a big bowl.

To finish, I garnished each serving with:
chopped cilantro
ground peanuts
caramelized onion (I keep a small bag in the freezer)
crispy deep fried garlic (I keep a small jar in the pantry)
a squeeze of lime
and, after I took the picture,
thinly sliced hot pepper
a drizzle more of sriracha



So that's 25 ingredients all told. And you can really taste each and every one of them. Enormously complicated, but everything retains their own flavor and texture and works together. There are deep savory flavors infused into the rice, crisp fresh-tasting vegetables, aromatic citrusy notes and just a touch of heat. And all sorts of textures in there too. I don't know how I did it, but this is quite spectacularly good. Or maybe I was just very very hungry since dinner was two hours late?

Was it worth all the effort? Well, I am getting five servings out of it, so on average with the four zero prep-time meals, maybe?