Category Archives: Dairy

Swing

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Summer into fall into summer.  Salads and grilled vegetables into casseroles dabbled with cream into fresh raw dips.  Luxurious stretches into curled legs under blankets into stressed grading sessions into sampling new half-fizzed white wine.

Sometimes this is called Indian Summer.  I like to think of it as Swing Season.

Two Bittmans for you this week.

77. Trim and dice fresh tomatillos; peel and julienne jicama (or daikon or kohlrabi). For dressing, combine lemon and lime juices, olive oil and chopped cilantro. Pour over salad, top with toasted sesame seeds.

This sounded like a good late summer/early fall salad.  I found tomatillos at the grocery store, but no jicama, no daikon, and no kohlrabi.  And then we went to our Farmers’ Market, and I found all three!  Huge daikons, alien baseball sized kohlrabis and, hidden between stacks of beets and the tiniest fingerling potatoes I’ve ever seen, a pile of grubby little tubers with vine-y stems still attached.  Eureka, jicama!  Back at home, I assembled the troops:

1 TB toasted sesame seeds

2 small jicama

6 medium tomatillos

(really, the number of jicama and tomatillos isn’t super important as long as the quantities are roughly equal once you’ve cut them up.  Start with maybe 1 cup of each, see what you think, and then add more if that’s what makes you happy)

2 TB chopped cilantro

1 lemon

1 lime

Olive oil

Salt

I’ve tasted jicama, but it has been a long time.  And I’ve certainly had tomatillos, but mostly only after they were roasted and processed into salsa.  I wasn’t sure how they would be raw.  This – a lovely fresh slaw/salsa/salad hybrid – sounded so bright and tart and lovely that I wasn’t too nervous.

Before anything else, I toasted the sesame seeds and set them aside.  They give off such a lovely roasty scent when they are just browned and starting to release some oils.

I peeled, then sliced the jicama into rounds.  Then I stacked up the rounds and made thin slices across until my two little aliens were a pile of matchsticks across my board.  Into the bowl with you.

Next I quartered and diced the tomatillo.  Because they are still underripe when green (apparently they can turn purple and get very sweet when they ripen, but I’ve never seen them in that state), their skins were quite resilient – it took some pressure to get my knife through them.  Carefully chunked into miniscule cubes, they joined the white confetti in my bowl.

A quick squeeze of lemon and lime, a whisking pour of olive oil, and a handful of chopped cilantro feathers later, and the dressing was done.  And then a sprinkle of salt, and it was perfect.  It was a little more than needed to moisten the salad, but it’s hard to know how much juice citrus will have secreted away inside it, so it’s always going to be a guessing game.

I mounded the white and green on my plate, then added a generous scoop of Mexican rice and a quartered cheddar cheese quesadilla.  Simple simple.  At this point, you should ideally sprinkle the sesame seeds you so carefully toasted atop the salad, but I forgot until after I’d already subjected it to a photo shoot.

I was surprised and pleased by the flavor of this dish.  I can’t imagine eating it as a Thanksgiving side dish, but it was a bright burst of summer on a day that began in drizzly autumnal terms.  Jicama is crisp and juicy with the barest hint of starchiness, and its flavor reminds me most closely of an Asian pear.  The tomatillos were very tart, but the pairing tamed them.  Imagine a granny smith apple crossed with an underripe tomato and you’re approaching the brightness we experienced.

This was good as a salad, though its tartness necessitates a small portion.  It was also good heaped atop our quesadillas, like a raw salsa.  It contrasted nicely against the melted cheddar and the just crisped corn tortillas.  But where it would really shine, N. and I agreed, would be as a kind of mirepoix for guacamole.  Dicing the jicama instead of leaving it in strips and folding the whole salad gently into chunks of ripe, buttery avocado would make for the perfect chip dip.  Tart, creamy, crunchy, with the right kind of salty sourness from the dressing, and all you’d need was a frosted Corona and a pool to dip your toes into.  Summer.

But things never end there.  At least we hope not!  Days of sweating and hiding inside and waiting till after sunset to go out always, inevitably (even if it’s taking FOREVER, Los Angeles…) relax and cool and crystallize into Autumn.

35. Pumpkin-Noodle Kugel: Cook a half-pound of egg noodles in salted water until not quite done; drain and put them into a buttered baking dish. Whisk together 4 cups milk, 4 eggs, 1 cup pureed cooked pumpkin (canned is fine), ¼ cup melted butter and a pinch each of cinnamon and salt. Pour over the noodles and sprinkle with bread crumbs (or, for added kitsch, corn flake crumbs). Bake 45 minutes to an hour, or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

I had no idea how to serve this dish.  I’ve heard of kugels, but I’ve never even eaten one, let alone made one.  I wasn’t sure, as usual, what to serve it with, so I asked a few friends and did some research on the good ol’ internet.  At the point that I read Smitten Kitchen’s version (okay, so this one is written by her mom, but seriously, that woman has cooked everything, and all of it sounds and looks outrageously delicious), this sounded more like a dessert than a dinner side dish.  It would be, I decided, dessert and weekend breakfast.  Sweet, autumnal, nicely spiced, and custardy.  “It’s going to be like a rice pudding but with noodles.  And pumpkin,” I told N.  He still wasn’t sure.

8 oz. egg noodles 

4 cups milk

4 eggs

1 cup pumpkin puree (I used Libby’s)

¼ cup melted butter (I put this in, but I’m not sure it was really necessary)

¾ cups sugar

¾ cups golden raisins

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

2 cups corn flakes, well crunched (who am I to pass up added kitsch?!)

It wasn’t until I had collected ingredients that I realized Bittman’s recipe doesn’t call for sugar.  But I was already on the dessert/breakfast kick, and I couldn’t quite envision this as a savory dish, so I dumped in my sugar estimation anyway, along with the golden raisins that aren’t part of the original.

I cooked my noodles for 5 minutes and then let them cool for 10.  They probably needed to be cooked for only 4 minutes, because they keep on cooking not only while they are in the oven, but on the counter as they cool as well.

Yes, I take these photos from the floor. But it’s a nice wood floor, and the light is so good, and I promise Lucy stayed on the other side of the room the whole time…

With the custard whisked together and the noodles evenly spread in a buttered 9×13” glass baking dish, I preheated my oven to 375F and assessed the corn flakes situation.  Whenever an ingredient needs to be crushed, crunched, or pulverized on Chopped, I yell at the chefs for using their hands, knives, or a rolling pin instead of just bringing over the food processor.  But they don’t have to wash all the dishes they make, and I do, so my pretty little scarlet processor stayed on its shelf.  I crushed up the cereal with my hands, feeling a kind of satisfaction as the flakes became bits and then powder.  I topped the noodly custard with a generous layer of crumbs and carefully slid it into the oven.

An hour later, the custard had set and the smell flashed me forward to Thanksgiving.  I’m convinced we as a society don’t really know what pumpkin tastes like, because what we experience is texture and spices.  If this kugel didn’t have a sprinkle of cinnamon in it, I’m not sure I would know it had pumpkin either.

Dinner came and went, the kugel cooled a bit, and I dug out a too-big portion for myself, and neglected to feel any kind of remorse about it.  It was too good for that.  The noodles had melded together as the pumpkin infused liquid cooked, making a solid, scoopable, sliceable custard.  The corn flakes on top were perfect: aggressively crunchy against the soft interior.  I wouldn’t omit the golden raisins either; they were a really nice textural contrast to both the softness of the noodles and the crunchy crumbs, and their complex sweetness added some depth to my dessert casserole.  It was warm, and sweet, and perfectly comforting as I tucked my feet under me on the couch and waiting for the approach of Project Runway (don’t judge, every girl needs a little reality TV now and then).

The leftovers are delicious too, though the dish does lose something in relinquishing its crunch to the microwave.  In another universe where I’m a Southern cook, I could see doing crazy things like frying squares of this in butter and then drizzling hot maple syrup over the top.  But I’ll refrain.  Because from my window, I can see my basil wilting beneath the curiously, cruelly hot-for-mid-October sun: back to summer, so it seems!  And here I was considering making soup…

Swing season indeed.

Three for One

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Sometimes you are faced with not enough: not enough time, not enough money, not enough to do…

And sometimes you are faced with too much: too much bounty, too much responsibility, too much joy.  These are both their own kind of problem.  And if I have to choose, faced with these Januses, I will always go for too much.  Even if I fall short.

Last week I only managed one Bittman.  This week, in a startling display of ambition and motivation, I did three.

One of the biggest challenges of this project (aside from cooking, photographing, and writing about the food… you know… actually doing it…) has been deciding what to serve these dishes with.  I’m not up for roasting a chicken or a turkey every week to emulate the Thanksgiving spirit of the project, so I try to piece them together with other entrees.  As you’ve seen, if you’ve been following the project for any length of time, sometimes I choose well, and sometimes I decidedly don’t.

This week, riffling through the slowly diminishing options, it occurred to me for the first time that I could serve them as complements to each other.  They were all, after all, conceived for the same imagined table.  They should work together quite nicely.

“7. Cranberry-Orange Sauce: Cook a bag of fresh cranberries with orange and lemon zest, cut up (peeled) orange segments, ¼ cup sugar (or to taste) and a bit of minced jalapeño or chipotle.”

This sounded good and, with the slightly cooler temperatures we’ve been privileged to receive lately, a nice symbol of our entry into Fall.  Cranberries and oranges are a frequent couple – almost too expected – but there’s a reason they appear together so frequently.  And with the addition of lemon juice and some spice, this seemed far enough from traditional to avoid being boring.

1 bag cranberries (probably 1 pound?)

Zest of 1 lemon

Zest of 1 large or two small oranges (mine were little Valencias from our Farmers’ Market)

Segments of 1 large or two small oranges

¼ – ½ cup sugar, depending on your taste and the tartness of your berries

Dash of spice, depending on your taste

I bounced the cranberries into a pot, zested the lemon and oranges over them, and then cut the peel from the orange and sliced out supremes.  For good measure, I squeezed as much juice from the wasted scraps of orange as I could, then topped the mix with sugar and a dusting of cayenne (I had neither jalapeno or chipotle available) and pushed it onto the back burner.

I let the pot come to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to melt the sugar evenly and prevent it from burning until the cranberries released some juice to protect the mixture.  Once it boiled, I lowered the heat and let the whole thing simmer for about 20 minutes.  At one point I tasted, decided there wasn’t enough sugar or cayenne, and added more of both.  The addition of sugar was a good thing.  The addition of more cayenne was less so.  I’d caution you to start with less than you think you will want.  The mixture does not taste at all spicy while it’s hot.  When it cools, though, it becomes fiery.  It was still tasty, though.  We ate it sticky and thick and room temperature, dabbing up popped clusters of ruby and letting it linger on our tongues – but not too long – enough to wake our taste buds from the spice.  As an autumnal side, this works very well and is a pleasant update to the traditional cranberry sauce.  It would also make a glorious topping for a baked brie, perhaps with some rosemary or red wine glugged in for good measure.

While the cranberry sauce was heating, I turned my attention to its companion.

“59. Blanch thinly sliced potato and leeks until tender but not mushy; drain well. Layer the vegetables in an oiled or buttered baking dish, then top with a mixture of bread crumbs and lightly sautéed chopped bacon (some cheese mixed in is pretty good, too). Broil until golden brown.”

Potatoes and leeks are a combination that, a mere year or so ago, I didn’t realize existed.  Now it’s such a natural pairing I can’t believe I never knew about it before.  Sliced blanched potatoes and sautéed leeks now fill every frittata I make.  I collected:

2 russet potatoes, peeled

1 massive leek, tough tops and root ends removed, halved vertically (rinse it out well at this point) and sliced into slim, slim, oh-so-slim half moons

1 lb. bacon

½ – 1 cup bread crumbs (I used Italian seasoned)

Knowing how good leeks can be when they are sweated and barely brown, and conscious that the beauty of bacon grease shouldn’t go to waste, I made a few changes to Bittman’s directions.

First I cooked the bacon.  You likely don’t need a whole pound of it, but this guaranteed an appetizer: one still sizzling slice each for N. and for me.  If you aren’t cooking for or with someone else, go wild and have two all by your lonesome.

While the bacon cooked and the cranberries simmered and popped, I put a pot of water on to boil.  When its aggressive bubbling demanded attention, I carefully lowered in the potato slices and gave them free reign for five or ten minutes.

When it was edging toward crisp, I set the bacon aside to cool and drain a bit on a paper towel lined plate.  I dumped the potatoes into a colander when they were barely cooked through.

Time for the leeks.  I scraped my board free of the slender, just green shards, capturing a satisfying fizz as the vegetation hit the pan.  You want to stir with some frequency here, and not raise the heat above medium; we’re looking for a light sauté, not a heavy brown.

The shards collapsed into resistant-less ribbons, and I pushed them to one side to add the drained, cooling potatoes.  With adept wooden spoon manipulation, I managed to achieve something like layering: half the potatoes flat on the bottom of the pan, the leeks draped across them, and the rest of the potato slices on top.

I turned on my broiler, and while it heated I crumbled the bacon, tossed it with bread crumbs, and dusted the potatoes with the mixture.  But dust wasn’t enough.  They required a landslide.  I drizzled the top with olive oil, knowing the bread crumbs would need it to brown, and slid the whole pan into the broiler (note: if you use a skillet or pan for this, rather than a casserole dish, be sure you wrap any plastic or rubber with aluminum foil before you put it into the broiler.  We don’t want your nice pan handles to melt…).

Five minutes later, the parts of the crumble I had oiled were beautiful brown (the other parts remained sandy and unaltered, much to my chagrin) and the dog was close by, nose moist with curiosity and the urge to assist.

We loaded our plates, completing the meal with a completely unnecessary slice of toasted jalapeno cheese bread, and ate.

As has proved often the case with Bittman’s layered vegetable dishes, I expected this one to be a gratin, and it just wasn’t.  Some cream, some cheddar cheese, some binding between the vegetables, would have been ideal.  But not crucial.  They weren’t supposed to be scalloped potatoes, after all.  The bacon and bread crumbs made them exciting, and the leeks were almost creamy nestled between the thick slices.  Honestly, forgetting to salt the water I boiled the potatoes in was the only real unfortunate mistake.  Two down, with only one mistake (two, I suppose, if you count the overly spicy cranberries, which I suppose I do), is pretty promising.

 

To make this a trifecta, on another night I chose another autumnal option.

“64. Mushroom Bread Pudding: Put 6 cups of good bread (day-old is best) cut into 1-inch chunks into a buttered baking dish. Beat 4 eggs with 2 cups of milk and ½ cup grated Parmesan and pour over the bread. Sauté 4 cups of sliced mushrooms until tender with a teaspoon or two fresh thyme leaves and mix into the bread. Bake until just set, about 40 minutes.”

Mushrooms and thyme are so nice together.  They are earthy and deep and musty, like the back of a dark pantry into which no anxious hands have reached for some time.  Since they were more precise than usual, I followed Bittman’s ingredient quantities almost to the letter.

I sautéed the mushrooms and thyme in butter, taking time to let the slices soak up the butter, then expel their own liquid.  Only after that, as the moisture from the mushrooms evaporates from the pan, can the mushrooms take on the same kind of crisp brown sear as a steak pressed into a screamingly hot pan.

While the mushrooms cooled, I tore up the crusts of a month’s worth of sourdough bread (I keep them in the freezer for just these sorts of occasions) and pressed them gently into a buttered square glass baking dish.  I grated cheese – swiss and parmesan – and cracked eggs from the Farmers’ Market into a bowl, marveling at the rich orange yolks you just can’t get in the grocery store.  I stabbed them, flooded them with milk, and whisked in the cheese.

I turned to assembly.  First, mushrooms must be tossed with bread.  Attempt even distribution.  Then, a careful, rich pour of the dairy component, taking care to attend to the corners, until the bread almost floated in a puddle of would-be custard.

 

One of the things I’ve learned in my years of bread pudding production is that pressure and soaking time yield the best results.  I carefully pressed a layer of plastic wrap over the top of my pudding and set it in the fridge for an hour, while N. and I answered the velvet brown eyes begging for “walkies.”

Upon our return, it was as simple as preheating the oven to 375F (pull the pudding out of the fridge and let it approach room temperature as your oven heats), sliding the baking dish onto a rack, and reluctantly grading a paper or two as 45 minutes ticked by (I like my bread pudding a little more than “just” set).

A puff in the center signifies doneness.  Mine levitated just barely in the middle, but the custard was set and the edges of bread not submerged were crisp and darkly golden.

The serving spoon broke sharply through the crisp top but then exhaled through the custard underneath.  Piled on our plates next to an amazing skillet casserole of deeply browned sautéed Brussels sprouts and chopped walnuts drizzled with a balsamic glaze, we accepted its golden softness.  With a higher ratio of eggs to milk than most bread puddings I’ve made, this had almost a soufflé quality, though vastly more substantial.  It was rich and earthy and savory, and I suspect it will be just as good for breakfast as it was for dinner. 

Three more down.  This can be done.  2012 has already been a year of many accomplishments.  Why not go for too many, rather than hesitating at not enough?

Breaking Bread

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Last week I tallied up what remained on my Bittman Sides project and discovered, through careful calculations that included pointing to my calendar and counting on my fingers, that if I make two selections from the list every week, I will be finished with the whole thing at the end of the year.  And I mean the end.  The very last week.  Ambitious, yes?  I decided I could do it.

Guess how many I made this week?

Yeah.

One.

So I’m not starting out well with this, but I’m going to try anyway.  I’m years overdue from my original goal anyway.  And in my own kind of backwards reverse engineering, I try to make up for this how?  By posting twice in one week.  So it goes, I suppose…

87. Combine 2 cups whole wheat flour with 2 cups white flour and 1 teaspoon each baking powder, baking soda and salt in a food processor. Pour in 1½ cups buttermilk or thin yogurt, and pulse until a ball is formed. Knead for a minute (fold in ½ cup raisins or currants if you like), shape into a round loaf, slash the top in a few places and bake on a greased sheet for about 45 minutes, or until the bottom sounds hollow when you thump it.

I’ve tried bread in the food processor before and it didn’t go very well (what does “when the dough is shaggy” mean anyway?), but I was willing to give this a shot.  It looked like a basic Irish soda bread recipe, and though I’ve never put that in the food processor, I have made it with success on multiple occasions.  So, I pulled down my food processor, opened my pantry, and collected

2 cups wheat flour

2 cups white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ cup Greek yogurt whisked with 1 cup whole milk (I had neither buttermilk nor thin yogurt – this seemed like a happy medium)

½ cup craisins

I followed Bittman’s directions to near disaster.  Either my food processor is too small, or this method isn’t all that reliable, because the dough never formed a ball.  Half of it just clumped into a solid mass in one side of the processor bowl and refused to budge.  I said some words in the quiet of my own brain and then held my breath while I tumbled the half-mixed contents out onto a floured board.

This is certainly not a ball.  But I sprinkled on half a cup of craisins and started kneading anyway, trying to ignore the hateful feel of dry dough on my hands.  After a minute or two I determined that things were just not coming together.

Flour-streaked hands reached into the refrigerator and pulled out the milk, dribbled a few tablespoons into a hollow in the dough, and tried again.  This time, things started to stick, to smooth, to pull into a ball.  I patched, I patted, I pushed and knuckled, and finally plopped one of the homeliest loaves ever made onto a greased baking sheet.  Slashed, scored, and enclosed in a warm oven, and I’d done all I could.

Bittman didn’t specify a temperature, but I estimated 375F and returned to grading papers for the better part of an hour.  The timer’s buzz 45 minutes later called me back to a crusty, mottled, flour-speckled loaf that sounded empty when I thumped the bottom, and smelled like humble sour sweetness.

I waited a few hours to try some.  When I cut into it, my knife scraping through the crust and scattering crumbly bits across the board, the interior was dense and moist and still just warm.

It tasted good.  A bit heavy, from the whole wheat flour, and not suitable for eating in large chunks like the one I’d carved off for myself.  But the craisins added a welcome punch, and I think if I’d used all buttermilk instead of my odd mixture of milk and yogurt, the tang would have come through and broken some of the one-note density of the texture.  This would be good, I suspect, toasted and buttered, or maybe – if you’re the daring type – transformed into French toast.  It might also be good made with 3 cups of white and 1 cup of wheat flour, rather than equal parts.

Both N. and I have some Irish blood, and although it doesn’t show too often (unless you count his beard and my very occasional temper), by strange coincidence we ended up eating this bread as part of an accidentally, avant-garde-ly “Irish” dinner: pan fried gnocchi and sauteed cabbage.  Potatoes, cabbage, and Irish soda bread.  If only we’d had corned beef, I told N., and a horseradish sauce to moisten it.

But here’s the good news: smeared with cream cheese, the bread was tasty and chewy and wholesome, with bright pops of cranberry sweetness here and there.  Shallow fried in a mixture of butter and olive oil, the gnocchi were amazing.  Tongue searingly hot, their exteriors crisped and browned like the perfect roasted potato.  Their interiors remained soft and creamy and rich, but the contrast of crusty brown outside to creamy chewy perfection inside was unbelievable.  I could eat these every day.  I could eat them for every meal.  Fried and rolled, still blisteringly hot, in cinnamon sugar, I would scarf these for breakfast alongside a glass of milk like tiny churros.  Tossed with pesto or roasted red pepper sauce, I would gulp them for lunch.  Folded into a mornay sauce with too much extra cheese, I would sub these for pasta in a beautiful perversion of oven-baked macaroni and cheese.  And well salted and perhaps tossed in garlic powder or red pepper flakes, I would happily substitute these for popcorn during a movie.  I might be obsessed.

So with one Bittman down for the week and an intense regimen in store for the rest of the year, it turns out I’m more interested in fried potatoes.  And I’m tempted to ask: who wouldn’t be?  But then I wonder… is that just the Irish in me talking?

Milestones. And Cake. And Salad.

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This September has been a big one for me.  New home (okay, so we technically moved in July), new job (okay, so school started in August), and new decade!  I’ve finally hit my 30s, and I like what I see so far (though admittedly I’ve only been stationed in this new world for two weeks).

Given my fanciful proclivities for putting food in my mouth, then, N. knows that my birthday must involve a restaurant in some form.  Since we are only just beginning to explore our new culinary surroundings, this was a perfect opportunity to embark on our adventures.  I started with Culver City which, delightfully, has a whole webpage devoted to its downtown restaurants, including (in most cases) links to each restaurant’s website.  This was almost too much.  I spent the better part of an evening cruising through online menus, imagining what kind of mood I might be in on the big day and what I might want to order and what, if the restaurant I ultimately chose should happen to be out of my top choice, I would order instead.

Based on menus and Yelp reviews, I decided on Fords Filling Station (FFS), whose upscale comfort food and wide range of offerings sounded promising.  I tend to like mid-range restaurants: not too fancy, where a prix fixe menu or outstandingly high prices make me feel like a grubby graduate student out of place (I know, I’m not anymore.  But it’s a hard habit to break in this new world of adulthood and employment), but not too casual either, where the food is sub-par or inconsistent and the wait staff makes no pretense of caring about our presence.  A gastropub – a self-proclaimed innovative collection of food, decor, and atmosphere – seemed like the right fit.

FFS is a fun spot.  It’s centrally located downtown, and the dining room is a big open space with a bar to one side, traditional tables, and long narrow two-tops where the couple sits on a bench next to one another looking out at the other diners, rather than across from each other.  N. and I were seated at one of these bench seats, and it was fun to sit side by side for a change in a restaurant setting.  Brick walls, big barrels, and warm colors make it inviting and, I thought, pretty unpretentious.

Our server, who was the perfect balance of informative and attentive, sold me on one of the night’s cocktail specials: citrus vodka, house made lemonade, and a little float of chambord.  It was nice – punchy and bright and sweet-tart, but oddly similar to a Rennie’s Lemonade from our erstwhile happy hour hangout in Eugene, and therefore it felt drastically overpriced at $12. 

We opted to share entrees so we could order a few things, and got a Cuban flatbread with smoked pork pieces, cilantro, mozzarella, and some kicky little red chilis; grilled asparagus blanketed in shaved parmesan,; and a flattened half chicken with amazing garlic mashed potatoes and succotash.

N. was most attracted to the chicken (as is often the case when we dine out), and here he was clearly right to be.  Flattened, the bones were gone, the meat was compressed, flavorful, and intensely juicy, and the skin was crunchy and buttery and tender and perfectly unctuous.  Because he is fonder of white meat, it was also a perfect dish for us to share, because N. left me the thigh, with its dark, meatiness pleasantly encased in a crisp layer of fatty crunch.  Beside the chicken, the mashed potatoes swam in a sauce of garlic confit, which was rich and intense: the best gravy I’ve had in a long time.

The flatbread, which would have been just delightful on its own, paled a bit in comparison to this chicken.  The crust was cracker-like in texture, and the pork pieces paired nicely with the pepper and cilantro, but together the dish was a little bit dry.  It needed – perhaps – some herb oil drizzled over the top, or maybe 45 seconds less in the oven.  Tasty, but not the star of the show by any means.

The asparagus was excellent: nicely flavorful and light, well cooked and, aside from the piece I dropped on myself (grace embodied, truly), a nice vegetal accompaniment to our meal.

Since I didn’t get any dessert that night (I was full but not overstuffed, and didn’t want to tempt myself by even glancing at a dessert menu), I was still longing for birthday cake a few days later.  Fortunately for me A., who blogs from the other side of the world at Over and Under, had told me about Porto’s – a Cuban bakery in Burbank that turns out to be right on my route to and from work.  I had to drive up to the school for a Friday meeting, and as I headed toward the freeway to come home, I decided to stop in and treat myself.

Inspired by the flatbread we’d shared at FFS, and because I thought it would be a good benchmark for a Cuban bakery, I got the Cubano.  Then, because it was still my birthweek (I’m big on extending the celebration as long as seems rationally possible), I picked out two tiny cakes to share with N.: flourless chocolate, and tres leches.

The sandwich was good.  Ham and pork packed tightly onto a fresh bakery roll with cheese, sharp mustard, and a pickle.  A simple sandwich, but a delicious one.

My dessert selections, though, were fantastic.  The tres leches was rich and light at once, not overly sweet but dripping with cream, like a well soaked angelfood cake topped with toasted marshmallow cream.  The flourless chocolate selection was less cake than a giant chocolate truffle: impossibly rich solidified ganache inside a thin shell of cake-like crumb.  N. was only able to eat two or three bites before declaring it too rich for his tummy.  I had no such trouble, but did talk myself into enjoying only half at that sitting, and saving the other half for another night when chocolate felt mandatory.

Indulgent?  Certainly.  But (at least in the case of the desserts) at $2-3 each, a reasonable indulgence.  Still, when one is a responsible adult (as I suppose some might now imagine me), one must temper such indulgences.  In this case, that means salad.

80. Trim and coarsely chop chard (rainbow makes for a gorgeous salad) and combine with white beans and chopped scallions. Dressing is minced ginger, a suspicion of garlic, olive oil and cider vinegar. 

I collected:

½ huge bunch red chard, thick stems removed

1 15 oz. can white kidney beans

5 green onions, finely sliced

1/2 inch knob of ginger

2 garlic cloves

1/4 tsp coarse salt

1/4 cup each cider vinegar and olive oil

1 TB honey

I tossed together the chard, beans, and green onions and set them aside in a big salad bowl.  To make sure the ginger and garlic were fine enough, I minced them by hand, then sprinkled them with coarse salt and dragged the flat of my knife across them until they turned into a thick, aromatic paste.  I scraped the paste into a glass measuring cup and whisked it up with cider vinegar and olive oil.  A taste of this was a cheek puckering revelation, so I added a healthy squeeze of honey to make it less astringent.

Aside from spinach, raw bitter greens are not always N.’s cup of tea.  Because I feared this might be the case with this combination, I decided to treat this more like a slaw than a salad.  I combined the main ingredients early and doused them in dressing a good fifteen minutes before dinnertime.  This would, I hoped, give the acidic dressing time to wilt the chard a bit, much like the vinegar in coleslaw dressing does for the cabbage.

It worked well.  By the time we ate (grilled chicken breasts sauced with equal parts whole grain mustard and apricot jam), the chard had lost just a bit of its aggressive bite but its freshness was not compromised.  The beans, sometimes bland customers, had soaked up a bit of flavor from the tangy bright dressing, and so while they were a steady, creamy counterpoint to the earthy-fresh chard, they weren’t at all boring.  We were both surprised by how well we liked this simple little salad.

Success, then, and balance: excitement and indulgence followed and tempered by stability.  If this is what the 30s are like, I’m ready.  Bring it on.  I’ll just be 30 forever.

Bars and Biscuits

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Thyme for our herbed biscuits

Last week’s reflections were a bit morose: the thoughts of a person overwhelmed and trying to settle into some kind of groove.  Because while too deep grooves can become ruts, no groove at all just leaves us… squares in a hipster-filled world?  Not just squares, but squares tipping and zig-zagging confusedly over an unfamiliar landscape trying to dig a corner in here and there.  New home, new job, new routine, and no chances to explore yet.

All that has changed.  Shallow wheel marks dig in behind us.  Our adventures have begun, and they began (don’t be offended) with booze.

Last Friday, our dear friend J. appeared at the door, bearing duty-free Japanese whiskey from his time in Tokyo, and a phone full of bar recommendations from an associate.  After a quick tour of our new digs (you guys have a backyard?!), we set off into the night and ended up at Oldfield’s Liquor Room on Venice, where J. bought me a pre-birthday cocktail called the Blonde Comet.  Bourbon, crème de peach, fresh grapefruit juice, and angostura bitters.  I’m not much of a bourbon gal, but the name was too good to pass up.  I like to think of myself as something of a blonde comet every once in a while… The drink was tasty.  Strong, but tempered by the freshness of the grapefruit and the stem of fresh mint they plunged in as a garnish.

We caught up over this first round and then decided to explore further.  A quick amble down the street brought us to Bigfoot West, but it was so crowded and loud inside that not even the promise of creative whiskey cocktails could entice us.  We were back in J.’s car and rolling toward Santa Monica.

We ended up at The Daily Pint, where it smelled like peat and old shoes and yeast, and the impressive chalkboards full of beer options and the seemingly endless whiskey and scotch menu made J.’s and N.’s eyes shine suspiciously.  I got (don’t laugh) a pint of Spiced Caramel Apple Ale that was neither as sweet nor as fruity as it sounds.  J. and N. got something peaty and boggy and fiery, and I only needed a whiff to know I wasn’t interested.  We settled ourselves in at a tall table next to the pool and shuffleboard stations.  You must know this: I don’t like beer.  When I have to, I will settle for the fruitiest, sweetest, most un-beer-like option I can find, and when I do, I like it to be ice cold so it doesn’t have a chance to taste as much like beer as I know it’s going to.  As we sat and chatted and laughed, time passed and my beer warmed.  Where it tasted like yeast and carbonation to begin with, as it came to room temperature the flavors got rounder and deeper, and by the time I was sipping the last half inch or so in the glass it did have some spicy apple flavors to it.  I’m not sure I would order it again, but it wasn’t a bad beer, and the company and high energy atmosphere made it a good experiment.

It was almost midnight when J. asked if we wanted a snack.  He was thinking, he said, hot dogs or pastrami.  I’ve been experiencing some cognitive dissonance when it comes to our new location – scoffing when I see patrol cars that say LAPD on the side: what are we, in a movie or something? – grinning with disbelief as I pass Warner Brothers studios on my drive home from work – but something about that night made me remember where we were.  I just knew he was thinking of Pink’s.  Did I want to go to the little stand with the most famous hot dogs in the state?  Yes.  Yes I did.

At almost 1am, as my contacts screamed and the almost-responsible-adult inside me withered and gave up, we were standing in line with at least 30 other people, waiting for a hot dog. 

 

 

 

I got a New York dog – traditional hot dog topped with a sweet onion sauce – and added shredded cheddar cheese.  N. and J. got Chicago dogs, loaded with lettuce, tomato, and pickle.  We sat at a crooked little table and took in the space: dozens upon dozens of signed celebrity photographs who had visited Pink’s, some of whom had given their names to a hot dog.

 

Well, N. and J. took in the space.  I took in my hot dog.  It was fantastic.  The skin was taut and crisp and snapped between my teeth.  The onion sauce was thick and sweet with hints of caramel, like the best sweet and sour sauce you’ve ever tasted, and the cheese, though it could have been melted more, added a nice mellow counterpoint to the meat and the sauce.  Delicious.  And it made me feel like a kid: I was back to the nights in high school when, after band competitions, we used to go to Denny’s and order chili cheese fries and chocolate milkshakes.  Those were the days before we knew heartburn was real…

There really is no logical transition I can make to this week’s Bittman, aside from the lame play on the White Stripes song I provided as the title of this post, so let’s stop pretending and just talk about biscuits.  And let’s not take our sweet little time about it.

85. Herbed Buttermilk Biscuits: Combine 3 cups flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 tablespoon thyme leaves.  Use your fingers to rub in 1 ½ sticks of butter until the mixture resembles small peas.  Add 1 cup buttermilk and stir until just combined.  Drop large spoonfuls onto a baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees until golden, about 15 minutes. 

With measurements and oven temp clearly provided, I had very little to guess about or change in this recipe.  Because I was using lemon in other parts of dinner, I decided on the spur of the moment to add a teaspoon or two of lemon zest to the dough to see what would happen.  You could probably change up the herb used, add cracked black pepper or flaky sea salt, or even add finely chopped raisins.  I wouldn’t change the buttermilk, though, as the tang it adds is entirely necessary.  I even got excited tasting the raw dough, with a slight crunch from the salt and a suggestion of sweetness from the tiny bit of sugar.

The bowl of dough produced 15 biscuits.  I put nine on my greased baking tray and the other 6 on a plastic-wrap-lined plate in the freezer for another occasion.  After 15 minutes in the oven, they were browned on top, slightly crunchy around the outsides, and knee-waveringly fluffy inside.  Quash your fears about the amount of butter here: it really makes a worthwhile textural difference.  It doesn’t hurt the flavor either – these were rich but light, and the buttermilk and lemon zest added intriguing sourness that brightened the mixture and made them more interesting than your standard dinner biscuit.

We ate these – no, that’s not right – we wolfed them down alongside grilled chicken sausages and grilled planks of zucchini wrapped around a mixture of goat cheese, lemon juice, thyme, parsley, and pepper.

It was delightful.  And here’s the delicious secret: if you end up with some leftover goat cheese mixture, and you whip in some honey, and then if you happen to split one of those fluffy delightful biscuits down the middle and perhaps toast the open sides in a toaster oven or under the broiler for a moment, and dollop a hefty tablespoon of the sweetened goat cheese on top, and eat it, you have the most delightful little end-of-summer breakfast biscuit you’ve had in years.  And if you’d been out late the night before and perhaps chased some whiskey with a hot dog, a sprinkle of extra salt in the goat cheese filling would make this a quite decent hangover breakfast too, as a cure for excessive adventuring.

Next week we settle more comfortably into this lovely little groove we’re making for ourselves: another restaurant, another Bittman, another decade(!), of our new little lives.

Emptying the Fridge III: Crack(er)ing the Code

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Last week I told you about my favorite new dip.  White beans, toasted almonds, the piney sharpness of rosemary, the heady perfume of orange zest… and promised to provide a vessel on which to deliver this deliciousness to your eager taste buds.  N. and I discovered shortly after my first foray into this creamy blend of balanced spice that the ideal vehicle for consumption was not in fact a spoon, but the best crackers ever: Trader Joe’s Raisin Rosemary Crisps.  In fact, these are good not just as a vehicle, but a snack in their own right.  Every time I went to the pantry to retrieve a few for dip spreading, I’d find them gone, thanks to N.’s voracious nibbling.

I wondered at one point, as I broke down yet another cracker box for recycling, how difficult they would be to make myself.  I’ve never made crackers before, but looking at the list of ingredients – sunflower seeds, millet, raisins, baking soda – it seemed doable, and further, thanks to the kind of collection that happens in established kitchens, when you don’t remember why you have something like toasted millet or roasted ground flaxseed but you just do, I had every single dry ingredient in my pantry, waiting to be used up so they didn’t have to make the move to California.  On that door dividing me from opportunity, he was pounding with a brass knocker.

So I set about experimenting, and today I can offer you not one, but two ways of making these crackers yourself.  They aren’t perfect replicas.  They will always be discernable as imitations.  But they are delicious, and they are pretty darn close.  Only a thinner knife, a bit of whole wheat flour, and patience, I suspect, separates them…

Here’s what you need:

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour (the first time I made these, I used equal parts AP and WW flour, and the result was a bit heavy.  Using 2 cups AP instead of adding the WW would probably make the crackers even lighter, and the TJ’s ingredient list doesn’t contain WW flour at all)

1 tsp baking soda

¾ tsp coarse sea salt (I used Maldon, with which I have a deep love affair)

2 TB roasted, ground flax (if you have whole flaxseeds, use them!  Just toast them in a dry pan until fragrant and beginning to darken, and whiz them in a spice grinder, or your husband’s coffee grinder, if that’s the machinery you happen to have)

1/3 cup millet

½ cup sunflower seeds, toasted or not, salted or not, just use what you can find

¼ cup brown sugar

1 TB finely chopped dried rosemary (again the spice grinder works really well for this – chopping dried rosemary with a knife is an exercise in absurdity: it flies everywhere)

½ cup craisins

¾ cup buttermilk

Whisk together all ingredients except buttermilk until seeds, nuts, and fruit are evenly distributed.

Add buttermilk and cut in with a fork or pastry blender until dough starts to lump together.  It will be roughly the consistency of biscuit or Irish soda bread dough.  At this point, switch to your hands (the best tools, really, aren’t they?) and knead the dough for three minutes or so, until it all comes together and becomes a bit less shaggy.  You can either dump the mixture onto a lightly floured board to knead it, or you can be lazy like me and knead it in the bowl.

At this point, you have a choice.  If you want flat, rectangular crackers like Ry-Krisp or Stone Ground Wheat, roll out your dough into a big thin rectangle (1/8 inch thick or even less, if you can) and cut gridlines along your dough with a pizza cutter.  Create whatever size squares, rectangles, trapezoids, or polyhedrons you desire, then place them close (but not quite touching) together on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or sprayed with non-stick spray.  Slide them into a preheated 300F oven for 45 minutes.  You’ll end up with crunchy crackers with the slightest bit of give in the center, evenly colored with a dense crumb.  They are a little like miniature flatbreads. 

If you want slightly lighter crisps with a darker “crust” perimeter and a sprightly, Panko-like crunch, there is only one inspiration to which you can look: biscotti.  I liked the flat crackers.  I did.  They were tasty, they were good with the dip, and they were relatively quick: roll, cut, bake, done.  But they weren’t the ephemeral cracker experience I was after.

If you’re going the biscotti route, once the dough is kneaded together well, divide it in thirds.  Instead of rolling it out on a board, roll it into a long, thin “worm” of dough on some plastic wrap.  Press, squeeze, and moosh it into a log of even thickness, using the plastic wrap to help you.  Wrap up securely in the plastic, then pop it into the fridge.  Repeat with the other sections of dough, each in their own piece of plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for at least three hours (my trusty biscotti recipe from which I estimated times and temperatures says you can leave them in the fridge for up to three days). 

When you are ready to bake, take the worm/logs out of the fridge and unwrap.  Leaving them sitting on the open plastic wrap, paint them lightly with buttermilk to encourage browning.  You could probably paint them with egg wash too, but the TJ’s box doesn’t list egg as one of its ingredients… Carefully move the buttermilked logs to a baking sheet, then place in a preheated 325F oven for 30-40 minutes, or until the tops have swelled and are lightly golden.  Let them cool completely. 

You will find when you move your logs that the bottoms are browner than the tops.  I am toying with the idea of slowly rolling these logs as they bake so that each side comes in contact with the metal of the baking sheet for ten minutes or so during the baking.  This might make the finished logs a bit more rectangular (and hence capable of producing square crackers), and it might make each edge evenly brown.  Let me know if you try it out, and I’ll do likewise.

When the logs are cool, carefully cut them into thin slices with a serrated knife.  Some of mine crumbled a bit, especially when there were craisins at the edges of the log, but that just meant more sample scraps.  My ideal would be 1/8 inch thick or even thinner, if you can manage it.  But really, what you want here are crackers of the thickness you want to bite into.

Position your slices on a baking tray in a single layer (it’s fine if they touch each other, as long as they aren’t in layers) and bake in a preheated 300F oven for about 20 minutes.  The edges will bronze a bit deeper, and the centers will flush golden brown.  They won’t feel quite crunchy yet, but take them out anyway: much of the crisping happens as the crackers cool.

In an hour or so, when they are cool and crisp, I recommend you slather them with my almond white bean dip, or maybe a thick slice of rich brie, or some sharp, tangy goat cheese, and consume.  They are deep and toasty in flavor, the nuts and seeds lend appealing texture and different kinds of crunch, and they are just barely sweet from the brown sugar and the craisins.  I like the switch to cranberries as the fruit source, because they pair so nicely with the orange zest in my dip, but also because their uncompromising tartness makes these crackers interesting enough to eat all on their own.  Enjoy!