Coconut Bread Pudding with Rum Caramel

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Chelsea

When I’m not frying in the summer time, it seems like I’m baking. But in the on-and-off foggy uncertainty of June gloom, sometimes you need a little baking. Of course, now it’s July and the whole West Coast is panting and dreaming of snow drifts so, as usual, I’m behind. This dessert, though, plush with custard and drenched in rum caramel, is worth it.

Bread pudding is an old dish and, like so many of the “comfort foods” we’ve embraced and raised to new levels of ~~trendiness~~ sophistication (I’m looking at you, French onion soup…), it began as a way to use up aging products in a way that made them still taste good. In this case, it’s combining cubes of stale bread with milk, eggs, sugar, and whatever else you think is particularly delicious, whether that be fruits, nuts, or chocolate. Savory as well as sweet iterations exist, and though the dish possibly has European origins, versions now exist in Cuba, the Philippines, Argentina, and in probably every gastropub in the U.S. playing the amped-up-comfort-food angle.

For me, bread pudding is a godsend, because N. loves toast, which means we end up with a lot of crusts. It seems such a shame to throw them away that I forestall the problem by jamming them in the freezer. At the point that they fill up a shelf all on their own, it’s time to make bread pudding, a dish that I see as appropriate for a steaming dessert, warm breakfast, straight-from-the-fridge-3pm-snack, or even lunch on a day that I’m feeling particularly lazy.

This iteration, though, I wanted to be special. I wanted something comforting and homey and rich and delicious, but I wanted a twist. And that’s where summertime, and N., and my dad, all come in.

Husbands are great, aren’t they? But most of them (sorry, guys) aren’t perfect. N. is no exception. He’s close, oh he’s close, but here’s the thing: he doesn’t. like. coconut. I know. And it’s not one of those “no thanks on the coconut cream pie, not a fan” kinds of dislikes. It’s deep. It’s subconscious. The man can tell if a granola bar has coconut in it with one bite. He once declared that a cookie we were sharing tasted “odd,” and sure enough, down at the bottom of the ingredient list was ground coconut. Curries at Thai restaurants are dangerous business. And summer, this glorious season, is a hazardous time of year for N. thanks to sunscreen. Once, decked out for a gardening session, I gave him a kiss and he told me my face smelled funny. SPF coconut.

But I adore coconut. It means vacation and swimming and luxury. It smacks of the tropics: rum-laced drinks. Shave ice. Coconut shrimp (N.’s ultimate nightmare). And, oddly enough, French toast. When my sister and I were little, every once in a while my dad would pull down the electric skillet from some cabinet too high for anyone else in the family to reach and make coconut French toast for breakfast. After dredging the bread in milk and eggs, he dipped each side in coconut before subjecting it to the buttery-slicked heat.

The result was a revelation. The coconut caramelized into a crunchy, lacy, almost-burned web of texture on the outside of the bread, and its flavor made the addition of syrup all but unnecessary. This, then, was the mission. I set out to create my own version of this childhood memory.

Generally I soak my bread puddings before cooking them. I load my baking dish with stale crusty cubes, mix in whatever bits and bobs I want to add (craisins are a frequent suspect), then pour the custard mixture over the top and set a heavy dish on top to press the bread sponges down into the drink. And then I shove the whole thing into the fridge for a few hours to promote full incorporation.

This time, though, I decided to employ a different method. I mixed up the custard with coconut milk and coconut cream instead of regular dairy, and dumped in the bread and, after a moment’s consideration, most of a bag of sweetened shredded coconut. Thorough mixing followed, and the result – a bowl of creamy soft crumbles of bread and the heady smell of the Hawaiian vacation I wish I were on – spoke summer. All I could think of, while I pushed the baking dish into the oven, was a piña colada.

The problem with piña coladas, though, is that pesky piña part. I’ve got no hatred for pineapples, don’t get me wrong, but their aggressive tartness sometimes overpowers the gentle, creamy sweetness of coconut and the spicy complexity of the rum. A bread pudding sodden with coconut and no pineapple to be found seemed like the perfect excuse for, let’s say, a rum caramel sauce. Why not? It’s summer… Dark rum. Sugar. A daring sprinkle of garam masala. Bubbled away in a tiny pot until barely thickened, and the dessert went from homey and comforting to decadent and warming and, oddly enough, somehow reminiscent of camping. I swear my parents didn’t give us rum when we sat around the fire toasting marshmallows, so all I can figure is that the sweet spiciness reminded me of gingersnaps or molasses cookies or some other well-spiced treat.

Once this heat wave breaks, I think you should make this bread pudding, with or without the sauce. You won’t, unless you are like my coconut-hating husband, be disappointed. And if you are, well, someone in your family will be glad they don’t have to share.

Coconut bread pudding

Serves 8-10

4 eggs

½ cup sugar

14 oz. coconut cream

14 oz. coconut milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups shredded coconut – mine was sweetened. If yours was not, you might add up to 1 cup of sugar above.

10-12 slices sourdough bread, cut or torn into cubes

Preheat your oven to 350F and spray or oil a 9 inch square baking dish.
To measure how much bread you will need, tear the slices directly into the baking dish. Press them down once or twice, packing them until they mound up just a little over the edge of the dish in the center. This gives you the right amount of bread to mix into the custard.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together for a minute or two, until the mixture is homogenized.
Add the coconut milk, cream, and vanilla, and whisk until well blended.
Tumble the shredded coconut and torn or cut pieces of bread into the custard and mix well, ensuring that every bread cube is well moistened and the sticky clumps of coconut loosen and disperse through the mixture. I used a wide bladed spatula and it seemed to do the job well.
Carefully relocate the custard-soaked bread to your prepared baking dish, pushing it down if needed to fit everything in.
Bake at 350F for 45-60 minutes. This seems like a wide range of time, but depending on your oven and the relative staleness of your bread (which will determine how much custard it soaks up) your cooking time may vary a bit.
To determine doneness, check to see that the center of the pudding has puffed up, and the top is nicely browned. Some of the coconut shreds will toast to a dark gold.
When done, let it sit for 10-15 minutes to allow the custard to firm up a bit. This will make it easier to cut or spoon out.
For an elegant presentation, cut into squares and set on a puddle of rum caramel, or drizzle the caramel liberally over the top. Or forgo elegance, and scoop out big spoonfuls to pile into your bowl or plate.

Rum caramel sauce

Makes a scant ½ cup

½ cup sugar

½ cup dark rum

½ tsp garam masala (or more to taste – I used a full teaspoon and it was quite strong)

2 TB cream, optional

Combine the sugar, rum, and garam masala in a small saucepan and cook over medium low heat for 10-15 minutes, until sugar is dissolved and sauce thickens and becomes slightly syrupy. Stir or swirl frequently to prevent sugar from burning.
If you want your caramel thicker or more luscious, stir in the optional 2 TB cream. Stand back as you add the cream, as the caramel may bubble up upon contact.
Cool slightly before serving.

This is dynamite with coconut bread pudding, but would be equally delicious dribbled over ice cream, or mixed into a milkshake, or maybe even as a puddled base for your 4^th of July slice of apple pie.

Vegetable Pakoras with Cilantro Mint Chutney

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Chelsea

Why, I thought, as a rivulet of sweat coursed from neck to waist, do I insist on frying in the summer? The instant read thermometer I was using to check the temperature of the oil sat next to the stove, registering 91F. Normal people wait for summer and then anxiously stuff themselves on grilled meats, fresh salads, wedges of cool melon. Foods that don’t make your back bead up. But here I am, on my first real day of summer vacation, celebrating by standing over a pot of shimmering heat, making pakoras for lunch.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing. I don’t mean the pakoras. I mean frying. Fried foods are a treat frequently enjoyed during the summer months; Americans + carnivals or county fairs = frying anything we can think of. Depending on where you are in the country, corn dogs, funnel cake, hush puppies, twinkies, tortillas, even oreos, all get dunked into vats of hot oil and floated cautiously around until they transform into variously shaped clumps of deep, crispy gold.

So to bring summer traditions like sweating and eating fatty foods and looking at award-winning livestock and riding in twirling cars where the metal shrieks and you smell the grease with every turn into my own kitchen, I’m making pakoras for a weekday lunch?

Partly. But not all.

I’ve talked before about my friend Ph., who even has a whole category on this little site dedicated to her (Phoebe-Phriendly, if you’re interested). Ph. is gluten-intolerant, can’t eat dairy or tree nuts, and is no longer able to process corn or rice. This makes cooking for her a challenge. However, she is one of the reasons I started stretching my food boundaries and knowledge; we became close friends in graduate school, and I wanted to be able to make food that she could eat! We got into a conversation in the comments of her blog the other day, and I brought up pakoras because she was playing with garbanzo bean flour. She had never made them, so we decided I should come up with a recipe she could use. That’s where you, my friends, luck out.

Pakoras are an Indian street food: assorted vegetables (or paneer, or bread, or apparently sometimes even chicken) dredged in a well-spiced batter of besan or gram flour (which is made with garbanzo beans) and water. I added some baking powder to my mix as well, for fluff and lightness. Most often the vegetables are cut into manageable pieces and dipped into the batter individually before they are fried, resulting in something I’ve been thinking about as essentially an Indian spiced tempura.* Sometimes, though, they are cut into smaller pieces, tossed together in the batter, then levered carefully into the oil in chunky mixed fritters. I chose the first of these methods for our lunch, so we could have the fun of mixing and matching which vegetables we crunched our way through. We chose cauliflower, potatoes, and onions. My favorite ended up being the cauliflower, while N. couldn’t get enough of the puffy potato slices.

Though they are eaten year round (depending on where you are), I discovered during my research about this delightful little snack that they are particularly popular during monsoon season, dipped into or sauced with a variety of chutneys, and served alongside a cup of chai. This makes sense – a warm treat to enjoy when it is wet and booming with storms outside – and though the weather in my California kitchen is far (far, far, far) from identical, it is currently monsoon season in India, so it turns out this was, after all, a timely choice.

We had ours with a cilantro mint chutney – lightly spicy, fresh, grassy from the herbs, and bright from the addition of lime juice. I’ve included that recipe here as well.

Pakoras are best served as hot as your mouth can handle them. They are crispiest that way. As they sit, the batter loses its magnificent crunch. They are acceptable reheated in a 400F oven the next day, but, as with all fried foods (with perhaps the magical exception of a really good fried chicken), they are best eaten immediately.

* I realize tempura is quite different: rice flour is typical, for one, and the liquid used is often carbonated water to make the batter even lighter. But the essentials – vegetables coated in batter and fried – are the same.

Vegetable Pakoras and Cilantro Mint Chutney

serves 6-8 as an appetizer or snack, or 4 as an embarrassingly indulgent lunch

Pakora batter:

2 cups garbanzo bean flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free mix, which is mostly bean flours)

2 cloves garlic, grated

1 small knuckle of ginger, grated (about a ½ inch piece)

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

¼ tsp cayenne pepper, or more to taste

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup cold water

Whisk together the flour, grated garlic and ginger, and all the spices until evenly combined.
Whisk in the water until a thick but smooth batter forms.
Set it aside for 30 minutes. This is conveniently enough time to prep the vegetables, heat the oil, and make the chutney.

Pakora vegetables:

1 small head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces

2 medium Yukon gold potatoes, sliced thin (1/8 inch slices seemed ideal)

½ large red onion, cut into chunks or thick rings

To prepare for frying, heat 1-2 quarts of oil (I used vegetable oil) in a large, heavy, steep-sided pot over medium heat, until it reaches about 350F. Put on some closed-toed shoes to keep yourself safe, just in case you have drips or your oil bubbles over.
Working in small batches (5-6 pieces at a time), dip the vegetables into the batter, retrieve one at a time with long handled tongs and let the excess batter drip back into the bowl for a few moments before carefully lowering each into the hot oil. They should sizzle as they are immersed, but not spit or foam up wildly.
Cook each batch of vegetables for 4-5 minutes, carefully turning each one halfway through the cooking time, until they are golden and crispy.
As each batch finishes, fish the pieces out one at a time and set them on a wire rack over a cookie sheet. This will allow excess oil to drip off. Salt them lightly as soon as they come out of the oil.
Take the temperature of the oil before adding a new batch of vegetables, to ensure that it returns to right around 350F, the optimal temperature for frying.
Continue until all vegetables are golden, crispy, and cooked!

Pakoras are best consumed as soon as they are cool enough for your mouth to handle. As they sit, the batter gets soggy. It’s still tasty, but not as triumphantly crunchy.

Cilantro mint chutney:

2 bunches cilantro, bottom 3 inches or so of stems removed

1 bunch mint, stemmed (you will be using leaves only)

Zest and juice of 1 lime

1 jalapeño, stem removed and sliced in half longitudinally (if you are concerned about the chutney being too spicy, remove some or all of the seeds and inner white membrane, where most of the heat is concentrated)

¼ cup water

2 TB olive oil

1 tsp garam masala

Salt to taste

Add all ingredients to a food processor and pulse in 3-5 second intervals until everything comes together as a loose, chunky sauce. The resulting mixture should be thinner in consistency than a pesto, and will not remain emulsified for very long.
Scrape into a serving dish and eat with the pakoras.

Smoky Summer Spice Rub

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Chelsea

Let’s talk about your spice cabinet. No? Okay, then let’s talk about mine. I really started cooking when I moved to Oregon, and that first Christmas, coming back home to Northern California after three months of what seemed like non-stop rain, the gift I wanted more than anything else was a spice rack. This, I was sure, would be the essential catalyst in my longed-for transition from college-graduate-experimental-cook to full-scale domestic goddess. Mom and I went to kitchen store after kitchen store, looking for the right one. It needed to hang, so it couldn’t be too big. It had to have a fair number of bottles, but I wanted them empty, not filled, because I wanted to choose my own spices. We finally found it in Cost Plus World Market, which was convenient, because it was immediately adjacent to their spice selection. We picked out ten or twelve of the usual suspects, and then Mom said “okay, now turn around while I put it in the cart, and forget what you saw here,” which has, since the days of Santa Claus, always been our funny way of buying presents for each other in full view of the giftee.

This little spice rack worked fine, and hung proudly from a nail above my stove, until my spice requirements exceeded the twelve little bottles the shelves would hold. Suddenly whole AND ground cumin were necessary. Tumeric and cayenne and cream of tartar and even the dreaded pre-mixed pumpkin pie spice found their way into my kitchen and demanded homes.

So I’ve ended up with something I am going to guess looks familiar to many of you:

This is not a good system. There, I said it. It’s just not! It holds the whole collection nicely, but it’s dark back there, and things fall over, and sometimes I don’t feel like digging around to see if I have any poultry seasoning, and then it’s Thanksgiving and I’m in a dark, cranky place and I think “screw this noise!” and buy a new bottle. So then I have four. What I really need, what I covet and dream about, is something like Aarti’s magnetic spice wall.

In the absence of space or motivation to build something that fancy, though, I stick with my system. Every once in a while, I summon the courage and the patience to investigate the dark reaches of the cabinet, to get a sense of what’s in there, what needs replacing, and what deserves a space in my weekly menu. The early days of summer are a good time to do this, because they offer a prime opportunity to make a smoky, spicy, aromatic rub for grilling.

I started with a recipe from Fine Cooking originally designed for beer can chicken, and then I tweaked and adjusted and adapted for what was, as you might have guessed, in my spice collection. It’s got cumin, it’s got crushed red pepper, it’s loaded with garlic powder and mustard seeds and sea salt and just a hint of ginger for an intriguing and different kind of heat.

This is a tasty rub for grilled meat, obviously (we like it for chicken, patted on before a liberal slather of equal parts Dijon mustard and apricot jam), but I think it would also be great on slabs of pressed tofu, or buttered corn, or potato wedges (you make your steak fries on the grill in the summer, right?). And if you were really feeling adventurous, you might even add some to a light, lemony vinaigrette to carry the flavors through your side salad.

This recipe makes enough for several applications, which means you’ll have enough to last part of the summer. It keeps well in a sealed zip top bag. And in between grilling, you can just store it… in… your spice cabinet. Oh. Well, just jam it in at the front, for easy access. Maybe it will help you forget the ~~mess~~ ~~nightmare~~ treasure trove behind it. Plus, it’s got so many tasty flavors in it, you surely won’t need anything else for the rest of the summer, right? Right.

Happy grilling!

Smoky Spice Rub

Adapted from Fine Cooking Magazine

Makes about ¼ cup

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 TB coarse sea salt

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

½ tsp ground ginger

If you are feeling especially ambitious, toast your cumin, coriander, and mustard seeds in a small, dry pan over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, or until the cumin starts to pop a bit and look just a touch oily. Once that has happened, turn the heat off and let cool before moving on.
If you are feeling ~~lazy~~ less ambitious, skip the toasting step and put the cumin, coriander, and mustard into a spice grinder (or your husband’s coffee grinder. If there’s a little residual ground coffee in there, all the better! Extra shot of flavor you didn’t have to work for!) and pulse until the seeds become a fine powder.
Mix together ground seeds and all remaining ingredients in a small bowl or, if you are ~~lazy~~ especially efficient, the zip-top bag you’ll be using to store your mix in.
Ta-da! Apply liberally, patting and massaging for good coverage and adhesion, to whatever you’ll be grilling for a smoky, slightly spicy kick.

Jalapeño Cheese Rolls #TwelveLoaves June

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Chelsea

Last week I presented you with something both vegan and gluten-free. Dietary allergen-buster, that’s me! This week, to prove that I’m a ~~fickle~~ ~~equal opportunist~~ flexible sort of cook, I’m giving you something that is neither. But really, this is the kind of food person I am, and I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially given this post from Shauna at Gluten-Free Girl. I’ve thought, over this past year as I finished my Bittman Project and moved on to my exploration of dough, what kind of food blog this is, anyway. I don’t follow a specific dietary regimen. I don’t cook – or eat – specifically one type of food. So what am I? As I wrote to Shauna, what drove me to her blog, and what drove me to one of my own, was the expression of joy through food. I want food that tastes good and brings joy. And then, because it has given joy to the tongues and teeth and bellies of the people I made it for, I want to pass that on to people who weren’t in our little house with us. That’s you, people. So I guess what it comes down to is: this is a blog about food that brings you joy. At least, that’s what I hope you feel when you read, and when you eat, if you end up using the recipes here (and if you do, will you tell me? I’d love to know what you guys think).

These little rolls brought us considerable joy. They are cheddar infused, jalapeño studded puffs somewhere in between a rich, buttery brioche and a stern, crusty, segmented Kaiser roll. They are also, given this month’s Twelve Loaves assignment of buns, the perfect choice to slice equatorially, layer with mayonnaise or hot sauce or pickles or onion rings or dripping fresh tomato slices and then cram with a burger of your favorite juicy variety.

I started with my Nana’s sweet roll dough, replacing the sugar with a smaller amount of honey, opting for the tang of buttermilk rather than the roundness of whole milk, and injecting wafer-thin slices of jalapeno and cheddar cheese so sharp it made me – let’s not lie – basically drool when I sampled some.

Though you could just divide your dough into equal sections and let these rise into sweet, uncomplicated burger buns, I decided to take on the familiar lobed shape of a Kaiser roll. This is, as you might expect, not the most straightforward approach, mostly because there are numerous methods for achieving that instantly recognizable shape. You can score the dough as it rises, you can use a special press that creates the petal shape, can follow a complex procedure of folds, or, as I learned and executed to my delight, you can roll the dough into ropes, tie them in a simple overhand knot, and then tuck up the ends. I’ve attempted instructions and accompanying pictures below, but if you are lost, try this recipe, which explains the knotting and tucking process pretty clearly.

Sprinkled with more sharp cheddar and topped with a few more, probably gratuitous slices of pepper (you have to know what you’re in for, I think), these bake into all but perfect imitations of the jalapeño cheese rolls N. and I used to buy from Market of Choice as the occasional treat after a perfect sunny afternoon trip to the dog park in Eugene. We never put burgers on those, because they never made it through the whole ride home. But these little Kaiser-roll-buns of mine, burnished with cheddar and lip-tingling with heat, will carry anything you load them with.

Summer’s coming. That should bring you joy. If you can stand more, make these for your next barbeque. This recipe can easily be doubled, and once baked, these will keep in the fridge for a few days or, securely wrapped in airtight packaging, in the freezer for much longer.

Jalapeño Cheese Rolls

makes 8 petite rolls, or 6 larger ones

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 TB warm water

½ cup warm buttermilk

2 TB honey

¼ cup room temperature butter

1 egg

1 tsp salt

2 cups flour (I like bread flour best for these, because it has a high protein content that stimulates gluten production. But I think all-purpose would create similarly fantastic rolls)

1 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese, divided

1 medium jalapeño pepper, thinly sliced

Stir the yeast gently into the warm water, set aside for five minutes to let the yeast wake up.
Add butter and honey to the warm buttermilk, stirring them together until incorporated. This will make the honey and butter easier to integrate into the dough, and cool the buttermilk so it won’t kill the yeast or scramble the egg.
Pour the puffy, bready yeast, the buttermilk mixture, and the egg into a large bowl (I use the bowl of my electric stand mixer), and whisk or stir together with a wooden spoon or the paddle attachment of your stand mixer.
Add the flour and salt to the mixture, and stir just until roughly combined.
Add ¾ cup of the cheddar cheese and half of the jalapeño slices to the rough dough and stir again, just until the cheese and peppers are well distributed.
If you are using a stand mixer, replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook and knead on medium speed for 8-10 minutes. If you are not using a stand mixer, turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead by hand for about 10 minutes. Though I think kneading by hand will work fine here (I haven’t tried it, so I’m not positive), there are two things to take into consideration. First, this dough has cheese it in, so that may make it messier to work with than your average burger bun dough. Second, it contains jalapeño peppers, which can leach capsaicin onto your hands and sting delicate skin (read: don’t forget and wipe your nose!), so be absolutely certain you wash your hands really well after handling this dough.
In either case, the dough starts out sticky, but becomes smooth and stretchy as you continue to work it. Once it is elastic and supple and lovely, place it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside in a warm room (if you have one handy) for an hour and a half, or until it has doubled in volume.
Remove the plastic wrap and punch down your doubled dough by gently but firmly pressing your fist into the center. It will almost gasp as the built-up gasses are released.
Divide the dough in 8 equal pieces (for petite buns), or 6 equal pieces (for big, beefy buns).
Now would be a good time to do some prep, while the dough-balls get some breath back. Preheat your oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. If you haven’t already, dust a bread board with flour.
Working one at a time, roll each dough ball into a 6-8 inch rope (Picture 1).

Picture 1: dough rope

Picture 2: overhand knot

Picture 3: tuck right side into top middle of knot

Picture 4: tuck left side under and into bottom middle of knot

Tie the rope into a simple overhand knot (the same way you would begin tying a shoelace). I tie mine left side through right side, probably because I am left-handed. If you are right-handed and you tie your knot the opposite way, reverse the L and R in the directions below. You will have a knot in the middle and some lanky excess on either side (picture 2).
Now, to form the segmented shape of a Kaiser roll, lift the length on the right side of your knot (which started out as the left end of your original rope) and pull it up over the knot, shoving the end of it down into the middle of the knot itself and pressing lightly to secure (picture 3).
Next, lift the left side and tuck it under the knot, pushing it up through the middle from the bottom. Sometimes it will poke through and make a little button in the top of the roll; sometimes it won’t. Either is okay (picture 4).
With all of your rolls knotted and tucked, set them on your prepared baking trays, spaced evenly. I did four per sheet tray.
Sprinkle each roll with cheddar cheese from the remaining ¼ cup. Top each with 1-2 slices of reserved jalapeño. Cover trays with a clean kitchen towel and let rise for 30 minutes.
Remove kitchen towel, admire the puffy little buns you’ve created, and bake in your preheated, 350F oven for 20 minutes. The cheese will melt, the dough will rise, the color will deepen to a lovely golden brown, and the thinnest of your jalapeño slices will barely begin to caramelize.
If you eat these immediately, you will burn your mouth. And it won’t just be the good burn from the jalapeño. So do what you can to let them cool a little, and then load them up, or just eat them plain. I think you’ll be happy either way.

Kidney bean, brown rice, and shiitake “vurgers”

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Chelsea

I talk a lot on this blog about myself. Today, I want to talk a little bit about my husband. Before I met him, N. did a study abroad program in London. He was there for six months, and by “there” I mean taking classes in London, but also zipping around England and then parts of Europe with a speed that his British hosts looked upon with alarm (“what do you mean you’re going to York just for the weekend? That’s a 3-4 hour trip! It’s a whole holiday!” To which N., who grew up in a road-tripping family, would shrug and go anyway. Example: his family, when they lived in a suburb of Sacramento, California, thought nothing of jumping in the car to drive to Reno for the day. Once when his parents visited us in Oregon, we drove to Tillamook from Eugene via the coast to get ice cream and cow cookies at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and then headed home in time for dinner).

N. is a little camera-shy.

Interestingly, and perhaps unfortunately, N.’s study abroad program took place shortly after some of the worst scares of mad cow disease in England. He was there in late 2002, and eating beef was a no-no. This meant, when I met him, that N. had some food issues. He wasn’t a picky eater – that’s not quite the right word. He was, let’s say, a particular eater. Beef, especially beef that wasn’t well-done, was out. The frightening potential consequences had been too drilled into his head. Lamb was too gamey. Pork was not his favorite. When I was trying to impress him with my rudimentary cooking skills when we first met (rudimentary is kind – the first time I tried to make him French toast for breakfast, the bread collapsed into over-soaked crumbles in my custard mixture. But we fried it up and ate it anyway – sweet scrambled eggs with bread bits – and he was either kind enough or smitten enough to pretend he liked it), we ate a lot of chicken breast.

N.’s willingness and preference when it comes to food has expanded and matured significantly since we’ve been together. Still, though, he is wary. When we lived in Oregon, we were lucky enough to find ourselves in Eugene, which is a bit of a hippie mecca. This meant we had a wide variety of vegetarian choices. Neither of us is vegetarian, but N. developed the habit of ordering veggie burgers when we went out to eat, since it was a safe bet. You didn’t have to worry about doneness, and many of the restaurants we frequented made their own patties instead of relying on something frozen from a box.

Even though we’ve been living in Los Angeles for almost a year now (can that be true?!), and we’ve done our share of restaurant investigating, we don’t have the favorites yet that we had in Eugene. Though we’ve found some delicious options, N. doesn’t have a go-to veggie burger yet. This week, therefore, I decided to make him one.

It always interests me, when a veggie burger is advertised as a homemade patty, to find out what its base is. A lot of meatless patties – especially the premade kind you find in the freezer section – are wheat based, which seems like a strange thing to put on a sandwich: a patty of pressed wheat between two pieces of bread made from wheat. Gluten-fest! But sometimes they are made from tempeh, and sometimes from beans, and we had a really tasty one once that I’m sure had shiitake mushrooms mixed into it, which contributed a fantastic texture I haven’t found again.

Taking this textural component as my must-have, I considered my pantry and spice cabinet, and cobbled together what turned out to be a delicious, filling patty made of brown rice, kidney beans, and reconstituted dried shiitake mushrooms. I used a mixture of red wine and hot water to reconstitute my mushrooms, which contributed to their deep, earthy flavor. You could use chicken or vegetable broth if you prefer, or just hot water.

To bump up the flavor and add a little moisture, I added onions and garlic I’d sweated down with some warm, southwestern spices, and pulsed the whole thing in a food processor with a generous pinch of salt until it was willing to be molded, but not completely homogenized. The beans should be smashed but not totally pureed, and you should be able to discern the occasional grain of rice in your shaped patty. This adds texture and interest when you are chewing, and makes the finished product less like you’re chowing down on a fried patty of bean dip. Not that fried bean dip patties necessarily sound like a bad thing…

N.’s one complaint about veggie burgers is that they are often smothered in cheese. It’s as though restaurants are trying to hide the flavor-that-isn’t-meat. That might be exactly what some people want, but for us, these non-cow flavors are just as interesting and tasty. To make this a burger (or vurger, as one of our Eugene favorites called it) worthy of N.’s preferences, I decided to skip the cheese on the actual patty, and incorporate it into the bun instead. Thus we settled our patties on homemade jalapeño cheese “kaiser” rolls, which I’m going to have to boast about… maybe next week…

For now, though, the patty itself: these are a bit dense and fairly filling, but the mushrooms really do add a delightful chewiness that I wouldn’t want to skip. Adding in some tempeh crumbles to replace or enhance these components would likely be delicious, though I haven’t tried this yet myself. The final addition of the barest squeeze of lime juice makes a surprising difference: it takes them from slightly heavy to a flavor I can only describe as somehow more awake.

A few days ago Deb at Smitten Kitchen asked what her readers’ go-to dinners were. I thought about this for a while and decided ours were pizza, roasted vegetable tacos, and a lovely little one-bowl meal I learned from a friend called “Scatter Sushi.” I can tell you, though, based on the reaction these “vurgers” got at our house, they just joined that list.

Note: these patties are vegan (until you put them on a cheese roll), which means they lack the dependable binding power an egg typically brings to such a party. Therefore, I recommend shaping them and then letting them sit for half an hour or more before cooking, which will let the rice and beans soak up some of the moisture from the vegetables, and thereby hold together better. If they threaten to crumble on you or you’re frustrated or frightened by their potential fragility and not determined to keep them vegan, go ahead and add an egg to the mix.

Brown rice, kidney bean, and shiitake “vurgers”

Makes 4 patties

1 cup cooked, cooled brown rice

1 15 oz. can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 oz. dried shiitake mushrooms (about 12)

3 cups wine, water, or broth for reconstituting mushrooms

¼ cup diced onion

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 TB olive oil, divided

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp black pepper

½ tsp salt (if you are using dried beans rather than canned, you might want to increase this quantity)

1 tsp lime juice or red wine vinegar

First, reconstitute the mushrooms. Heat water or broth to near boiling, then pour into a heatproof bowl with dried mushroom caps and wine (if using). I typically like to use 1 cup of wine and 2 cups of hot water – it’s enough heat to revive the mushrooms, and enough flavor to intensify them. Cover, making sure the mushrooms are fully immersed, and let sit for about 20 minutes. I like to place a small plate atop my soaking bowl to keep the mushrooms underwater.

Mushroom soaking contraption

When the mushrooms are soft and pliable, drain them and set aside until cool enough to handle. Heat 1 TB of the olive oil in a skillet and gently sweat the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent and the garlic is aromatic and sweet. This should take 5-8 minutes over medium-low heat.
As the onions soften, add the cumin, paprika, oregano, and pepper, turn the heat down to low, and stir to combine. Let the spices cook with the vegetables for another 2 minutes, to let their flavors meld and warm. Turn off the heat and set aside.
Once your mushrooms are cool enough to handle, squeeze them gently to release some of the water they have collected in their bath. You don’t want them to be drippy, but you don’t want to squeeze them completely dry either. Some of the liquid they’ve soaked up, especially if you’ve used wine or broth, will add lovely flavor to your veggie patties. It will also help hold the patties together. Remove the stems (they are tough and unpleasant to eat) and then chop the shiitake caps roughly.
Place rice, beans, chopped mushrooms, onion, garlic and spice mixture, and ½ tsp salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 4-5 times at 3 second intervals, just until the beans are broken up and the rice is in smaller pieces. You want some of the mixture to be smooth, but some to retain texture and shape. Taste for seasoning, and add more salt if needed. Squeeze in the lime juice and pulse one more time just to integrate it.
Remove your mixture from the processor, being careful of the blade, and dump it into a large bowl. Press it together with your hands a bit to ensure workability. If it is really crumbly or you are nervous about the patties holding together, you might add a lightly beaten egg or some olive oil here. However, don’t be too worried – they are going to firm up a little when you let them sit after shaping.
Divide the mixture in four even quantities. One at a time, press and shape each quarter into a round, flat patty no more than 1 inch thick. Everything is cooked already, so you don’t have to worry about rawness, but you do want everything to heat evenly. Any thicker than this and your burgers might still be a bit cool in the middle. Mine were just under 1 inch thick, and had a diameter of about 3 inches.
Once all 4 patties are formed, set them aside on a plate or a board for at least half an hour. If you are going to wait much longer than that or if you are making them ahead, stick them in the refrigerator, but be sure to let them come back up to room temperature before cooking, so they heat evenly.
When you are ready to cook, heat the remaining 2 TB olive oil in a skillet (I just used the same one I’d cooked my onions and garlic in) over medium to medium-high heat until it glistens and ripples. Add the burgers carefully to the skillet and let them sizzle for 4-5 minutes on each side, until they develop a deep, bronzed crust.
Serve with your favorite condiments on the bun of your choice. We kept it simple: mayonnaise, red leaf lettuce from the garden, on the jalapeño cheese rolls I’ll share with you here next week.

Note: if the burgers look like they are falling apart, or if they threaten to break when you try to flip them, turn the heat up a little. This, bizarrely, helps keep them together because it sets the outside faster, so the surface of the patty is firmer.

Garlic Fontina Flatbread

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Chelsea

I have a thing about garlic bread. Achingly soft butter, a scattering of herbs, pungent, sharp garlic paste, spread thickly on sourdough baguette and broiled until the butter bubbles and browns and the garlic takes on a toasty depth; what’s not to love? I make it in the oven, I make it on the grill, I’ve even tried turning it into a sandwich. But all too often, the process of toasting leaves the edges of the bread blackened and the crust just too crunchy for my taste. I want crisp toastiness, but I don’t want mouth-scraping shards of bread shrapnel.

Enter flatbread. I don’t mean the dry, cracker-like stuff carelessly sprinkled with toppings and served up as an appetizer. I mean something a little puffier, a little richer, a little cheesier. A few months ago, I dabbled with a Food Network recipe for Spinach and Cheese Flatbread, and was delighted by the elastic dough that bubbled up into a soft-but-crisp rectangle. It is chewy and golden, but not quite as sturdy as a pizza dough. The bottom, slapped against a well-oiled sheet pan, gets just crisp enough to support all but the most ridiculously sized slices (don’t ask me how I know this. Thank you), so you aren’t left with a square that wilts as you hold it.

As soon as I ate the FN version, I realized this was the answer to my garlic bread dreams. The dough would be smeared with a loving, excessive layer of garlic-butter-herb-are-you-drooling-yet?-paste, sprinkled with fontina, which melts beautifully and has a mild funk I really enjoy, and baked until crispy toasty nirvana resulted.

My results approached sublimity, and the shortcomings were entirely human error, which seems fitting. The paste didn’t spread very evenly because this is a soft dough: it threatened to tear when I applied a spatula, so I ended up smearing and dolloping my mixture with my fingers. You could easily solve this by melting your butter instead of just softening it, and then pouring the mixture evenly over the dough. Then, because I was afraid the butter and garlic would burn at pizza-cooking temperatures, I was pretty liberal with my cheese application, which meant that the toasty roasty golden color I was expecting didn’t quite happen. Another minute or two in the oven might have helped, but we were hungry. A little less cheese might have helped too, but seriously, less cheese? Totally unreasonable.

In any case, the bread itself was puffy and buttery and decadent. The garlic loses some of its pungency during baking, but retains that addictive sharpness and bright tingly aroma that makes it so good. The dollops of butter became dimples of puddly richness that, upon reflection, reminded me a little bit of the center of a really good bialy. The bottom of the crust is like an old-style pan pizza: golden with burst air bubbles and just oiled enough to leave your fingertips in need of a napkin.

This is a great happy hour snack. Since it heats up the house, it gives you a great excuse to sit out on your patio, or deck, or picnic blanket, or camp chair. It pairs well with a crisp, summery wine, and equally well with a frosty pint of beer (or maybe, since, you know, Cinco de Mayo, a classic Corona with lime, or a salt-and-cayenne-rimmed margarita). You can use any combination of herbs you like. I chose what was happening right outside my back door:

Oregano – I love the fuzzy leaves on this little guy.

Basil – back in late fall, I relocated a few stalks of basil from the supermarket clamshell container to a vase of water, and instead of wilting, they grew roots! I shook my head, still in Oregon mindset, while planting them – they would never make it through the winter – but this is Southern California, so of course they did, and are now flourishing. I’ve read that plucking the blossoms off encourages them to keep producing leaves, so every day or so I faithfully scatter the delicate white blooms.

Parsley – my parsley plant is looking a bit wild these days; it has bolted thanks to the heat.

But if you peer down inside, amidst the sunburned jungle, you can see there are still some stems worth serving!

As for additional toppings, you could add sundried tomatoes or thin rings of bell pepper or even jalapeno to the butter paste if you want to get fancy about it, and it would certainly fare well dipped into a bubbly saucer of marinara, if that’s your thing. Either way, I think you should make this.

Maybe today!

Are you making it yet?

Garlic Fontina Flatbread

adapted from Food Network’s Spinach and Cheese Flatbread

For the dough:

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp active dry yeast

1 cup warm water (it should feel just slightly warmer than body temperature when you dip your finger in to test it)

2 ¼ – 2 ½ cups bread flour

1 tsp salt (I like coarse sea salt)

1-2 TB olive oil

For the toppings:

8-10 cloves garlic, minced (about ¼ cup in all)

1 stick very soft butter (1/2 cup)

2 TB each chopped fresh parsley and basil

1 tsp chopped fresh oregano

¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes

1-2 cups grated fontina cheese

Sprinkle the sugar and yeast over the warm water, stir gently to combine, and set aside to proof for 5 minutes or so. The yeast will begin to bubble and smell like warm bread.
In a large bowl (I use the bowl of my electric stand mixer), combine 2 ¼ cups of flour, the salt, and the olive oil, and whisk together briefly. The olive oil will create little streaks of moistness, like barely dampened sand.
Once the yeast mixture is bubbly, pour it into the flour and mix with the paddle attachment or a wooden spoon just until a sticky dough comes together. Then, if you are using a stand mixer, switch to the dough hook and knead on medium speed for about ten minutes. If the dough is still relentlessly sticky by minute six, smearing tackily across the sides of the bowl and schlopping stubbornly on the bottom, add an additional ¼ cup flour to make it more manageable. If you don’t have a stand mixer, plop your dough out onto a floured board and knead by hand.
After about ten minutes, the dough should be smooth and elastic, though still fairly sticky. That’s okay. That stickiness will keep it moist and supple and lovely.
Place the dough – more or less sticky as it is – into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set it aside in a warm place until doubled. This may take about an hour and a half, but my kitchen was about 80 degrees on the day I made this, so it only took mine an hour to puff triumphantly.
Gently deflate the dough and let it rest for ten minutes. Then, stretch and spread it carefully on a well-oiled baking sheet. If it stubbornly snaps back against itself and refuses to form a nice rectangle, let it rest another ten minutes and try again. The gluten needs to relax a bit after all that rising work it has done.
When you have the shape you want, cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel and leave it to rise again for half an hour, until it has doubled yet again.
While the dough rises, preheat your oven to 450F and prep your toppings.
In a medium bowl, combine the butter, garlic, herbs, and red pepper flakes into a chunky paste. I haven’t added any salt here, because the cheese is salty, but if you are a sodium fiend sprinkle in some salt to taste.
Approach your risen dough with caution: you may be able to smear on the garlic butter paste with a spatula, but you may have to carefully coat the surface with just your hands. It will depend on the texture and elasticity of your dough. If it won’t spread the way you want and you get frustrated with it, microwave the paste for a few seconds until the butter is melty, then pour the mixture on instead of smearing.
Top your buttered dough with an even sprinkle of cheese, keeping in mind that where the cheese completely covers the buttery garlic paste, not much toasting will occur. I’ll leave determining quantities and coverage up to you and your preferences.
Place your topped flatbread into the oven and bake for 15-18 minutes, until the edges of the dough are puffed and nicely browned, and the cheese has turned golden and sizzles. Let it cool on a countertop for 5-10 minutes, just to let the cheese cool from molten temperatures a bit, then slice and serve.