Resistance

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There are 3½ weeks to go until my whole dissertation is due to my committee. I’m through revising three of the six chapters, and embarked on the fourth this morning. Dinners vacillate wildly between complex assemblages of roasted vegetables with ancient grains, comforting cheese-laden casseroles, and baked potatoes with steamed broccoli. My Bittman file (yes, I keep the selections in a manila folder, wouldn’t you?) is buried somewhere under piles of criticism on medieval theology and monographs about poems you’ve never heard of. And the selection I have to share wasn’t my favorite. As usual, these things combine to mean I have all but zero motivation to post. But I’ll do it anyway. For you. Because this project needs completion.

“55. Steam and salt edamame. Whisk soy and honey together in a small saucepan over low heat. Add grated ginger and a bit of cornstarch, stir until slightly thickened and pour over edamame.”

This sounded intriguing, so I decided to pair it with a dish my friend and colleague J. calls “scatter sushi”: all the ingredients you might find in your favorite roll diced small and integrated into a bowl of well vinegared sushi rice. Ours had carrots, green onions, crumbled roasted seaweed, avocado, and crab meat. I’ve also made it with shrimp (when N. was out of town, of course), and it’s delicious.

But anyway, again I’m resisting the heart of the post. Here goes:

16 oz. frozen edamame, blanched in boiling salted water, then drained

½ cup reduced sodium soy sauce

2 TB honey

2 tsp ginger, grated with my microplane

2 tsp cornstarch

As the edamame were blanching, draining, and cooling, I mixed the other ingredients together in a small saucepan and brought them to a slight simmer.  The sauce took a minute or two to thicken, and once it was barely viscous I drizzled it over my bowl of beans and served with a slotted spoon.

This had promise, but in its current form I think it fell a little flat. I didn’t love the slippery slickness the cornstarch imparted to the dressing: it clung to my lips and tongue in an unappealing way. Or maybe there was just too much of it. I think this concept would realize its potential if it became part of a full salad stuffed with brightness and texture: red bell pepper, finely julienned carrots, green onion, maybe even grilled tofu or roasted sweet potato or chunks of firm-fleshed white fish. It needed only a light dressing, not the soupy drenching I gave it. And maybe the sauce didn’t even need the cornstarch. I recognize its thickening purposes, but couldn’t the soy sauce just be reduced a bit instead?

As I work through revisions on the longest, most involved project I’ve ever undertaken, I find myself only rarely wanting to completely start over.  And I think that’s good.  Revisions are one thing, but stubborn resistance and insisting on from-scratch perfection can stay in the kitchen…

Spiking your stuffing

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The one part of Thanksgiving dinner I refuse to make from scratch is the stuffing.  I don’t know why, but no stuffing has ever lived up to the Stove-top brand blend my mom puts together: one box of turkey stuffing, one box of cornbread stuffing, mixed up and tossed together and then, rather than just stirred into boiling water, baked in a casserole dish for twenty minutes or so right before serving, so the top is crusty and crunchy.  This is easy to do, since it takes my dad at least twenty minutes to get the turkey carved.  This is smart to do because it makes a texture contrast and provides a gravy sponge.  Other stuffing mixes I’ve tasted, and the homemade one I attempted this past year for A., who doesn’t like celery (have you ever tried to find a stuffing mix without celery?  Impossible!), just haven’t measured up.

And then, Bittman.

“26. Chop corn bread into cubes. Sauté cherry tomatoes, scallions and corn kernels in butter or oil. Deglaze the pan with beer, then empty the pan over the corn bread. Bake in an oiled dish or use as stuffing.”

You guys, this was amazing.  And given how you now know I feel about stuffing, that’s saying something.  Amazing.  Here’s what I used:

6 cups (roughly) corn bread cubes, toasted (use your favorite recipe)

4 TB butter

6-8 beefy green onions

1 pint red cherry tomatoes, rinsed and dried

1 cup corn, fresh or frozen (if frozen, defrost it first)

Salt and pepper

12 oz. beer (I used Drifter)

I made a pan of cornbread from my favorite recipe in a larger pan than usual; I thought this would result in a slightly drier bread, so it wouldn’t become mushy when the liquid was poured over it.  The cornbread was still pretty moist and springy, though, so after it had cooled for a while I cubed it, scuffed it around in the pan a bit to separate the clinging pieces, and tossed it back in the oven at 400F for fifteen minutes or so to get some toasty edges and dark golden spots on it, then set it aside to cool completely.  This worked beautifully and I’d recommend it, especially if your cornbread is moist and cakey.

While the oven was occupied by an herb-stuffed chicken (again, I know.  I can’t help it), I melted the butter in a skillet over medium heat and sliced the green onions, using the white and green portions.  I tossed these little rings into the sizzling butter along with the corn, and agitated them gently.  When the onions were soft and the corn just beginning to caramelize, I added the cherry tomatoes and seasoned the whole skillet with salt and pepper and, on a whim, a few shakes of garlic powder.

I turned the heat up to medium high for just a few minutes until the cherry tomatoes started to burst through their skins, spilling pulp into the mix, and the corn had browned delightfully, leaving the kitchen smelling like summer.

I then switched off the heat and poured in a full bottle of beer, nutty, yeasty, and brown (Drifter is a pale ale, so it has some body and depth – I wouldn’t go any lighter than pale ale, and might in fact prefer something darker: a brown ale like Newcastle, or even a porter if it’s not too strong).  The aroma changed from summer to fall harvest in an instant as the beer fizzed over the vegetables.

After scraping the bottom of the skillet gently with a spatula to remove any persistent browned bits, I poured the whole steaming bubbling mass over my pan of cornbread cubes and tossed gently to distribute the liquid evenly.  Then I stowed the pan in the oven: 350F for 25-30 minutes until the top is deeply golden and just crunchy.

We ate this with roasted chicken and creamed spinach.  Vegetarians shield your eyes, but the chicken just collapsed so beautifully across my carving board that I felt I had to show you:

But the stuffing!  The stuffing was incredible.  The cornbread soaked up the beer, and the sweetness of the bread plus the sourness of the ale created this yeasty glory I couldn’t stop eating.  And I don’t like beer.  It was just such a perfect liquid for this dish, contributing just the right amount of malty bitterness.  The tomatoes got richer and sweeter in the oven, as did the corn kernels, and they partnered with the green onions to make such a good accompaniment to the cornbread that I’m almost tempted to add them into the batter in my next pan.  Or maybe into a compound butter to spread on top.  That would be better, texture-wise.  Green onions, cherry tomatoes, and corn: three musketeers. 

This stuffing was gone in two days.  With only two of us eating.  It was that good.  If you’re in the Northwest, where Spring is shunning us, make this now while you still need your oven to keep warm.  Accompanying some baked sweet potatoes and leafy greens, this becomes a vegetarian meal.  If you use oil instead of butter and have a good egg replacement, it could be vegan.  If your cornbread is free of wheat flour and you use gluten-free beer, it could be gluten-free as well.  However you make it, make it.  This one is too good not to try.

The Buttercream Project 3

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My favorite weekends always turn out to be the ones that revolve around cooking.  You know the ones I mean.  You have a dinner party, or a potluck, or an afternoon on the porch surrounded by cookbooks, or you watch a marathon of FoodNetwork shows while almost absent-mindedly spooning one of your favorite indulgences into your mouth…

I wouldn’t know what that’s like…

Seriously, though, I am suddenly having one of those weekends.  Our friend Sh. is sharing a pulled pork dinner with us tonight, so by 9am (which felt like 8am, cursed Daylight Savings…) I was standing at the kitchen counter, pouring ginger ale and Jack Daniels whiskey atop 4 pounds of pork butt in my slow cooker, and deciding whether it needed anything besides salt and pepper to round out the flavors (I decided on a big chunk of fresh ginger and a few shakes of Worcestershire sauce).  Now, I’m sitting in the kitchen babysitting a pot of polenta, which I’ll cook, spread, and chill today to be cut into squares, pan-fried, and eaten later this week, and keeping a wandering eye on some cornbread, which we’ll have tonight with the pulled pork.

And yet this post isn’t about any of those things.  Whether you believe it or not after that extended tangential introduction, this post is about buttercream.  Again. 

I’ve completed my third buttercream experiment, and I must report mixed success.  I decided this time I’d better try out the cake recipe I’ll be using for the wedding in cupcake form so I could start nailing down baking times.  On a whim, I picked up some cake flour, which I’ve never used before.  This was for texture: often my cupcakes, if they are not chocolate, end up with a suspiciously muffin-like consistency, and I didn’t want that for these babies.  I also picked up some mascarpone cheese to continue the experiment in de-sweetening the frosting.

The baking process involved a lot of checking the cupcakes with a trembling toothpick, hoping for the barest of moist crumbs, not a completely clean tester.  I have found the completely clean tester is a recipe for overcooked baked goods, especially when it’s something very tender and delicate like cupcakes, because the cake continues to cook for a while as it sits in its tin on the cooling rack.  Tough cupcakes would not do.  Fortunately for me, they cooked up the color of pale cream and sported perfectly slight, perfectly shaped domes. They were pillowy tender.  They smelled good too – sweet and soft with the barest hint of floral fruitiness from the sparkling wine I used.

As they cooled, I started the buttercream process.  I wasn’t nervous at all this time – hadn’t my previous attempt come out smooth and creamy and lusciously perfect?  This time, I was golden.

This time, unfortunately, my kitchen was about 59 degrees Fahrenheit and, despite having left the butter out for hours and hours, it wasn’t the same squashy softness it had been last time.  The mascarpone cheese I decided to use was fresh from the fridge, since it was already soft enough that it didn’t occur to me having it at room temperature would make a difference.

It does.

Here’s what happened.  I whipped together a cup of butter and a cup of mascarpone cheese.  I sifted in about 3 cups of powdered sugar, a slight sprinkle of salt, and then trickled in a couple tablespoons of whole milk and a splash of vanilla (I can’t find champagne extract anywhere besides Amazon.com, where it costs upwards of $12 for a teensy bottle.  Needless to say I haven’t bitten that bullet).

Immediately I knew this wasn’t going to be perfect.  Already I could see tiny little clumps of butter, rechilled by the cold cheese, and tiny lumps of sugar, courtesy of a hasty and careless sifting session.  I pressed on regardless, deciding in the moment that this experiment was about taste, not texture.  Let’s get the taste right first, I told myself, to avoid the tumble into hysterical depression the blue poo cake had wrought.

So I loaded up a piping bag with my new fancy-pants metal star tip and went to work on the full sized cupcakes.  In the process I got enough frosting on my fingers to be able to taste, and I have to say I was incredibly pleased.  The mascarpone cheese added another layer of velvet and creaminess, and because it is not sweet to begin with, there wasn’t as much overwhelming saccharine powdered sugar taste to the finished product.  The touch of salt probably helped with that too.  It was just incredibly rich and moist and lovely.

The texture, on the other hand, sucked.  Well, that’s not fair.  It wasn’t ideal.  It was slightly grainy, and the star tip’s sharp edges combined with my not-exactly-quite-as-smooth-as-I’d-wanted icing produced rough crumples on my swirls of frosting rather than delicate demure rosettes.

Hasty, thoughtless, and stubborn, I pressed on to my next experiment.  I’d found this the previous month: a video tutorial about making beautiful blue flowers on mini cupcakes, and I wanted to surprise my bride by testing these out.  I considered, as I dripped blue food coloring into the remaining buttercream, rewatching the video.  And then I talked myself out of it.  I’d watched it twice, I remembered basically what she’d said to do, and she made it look abysmally simple.  I’m marginally artistic.  How hard could it be? 

For starters, the frosting was now looking a little wet.  Terrified of a repeat blue poo scenario, I added more powdered sugar.  But now I was in a hurry, because I had girlfriends coming over for a TV night and I wanted to serve them beautiful, frosted cupcakes (notice I didn’t say beautifully frosted cupcakes.  I was trying to be realistic).  So I didn’t sift the sugar.

This, as you might expect, resulted in more lumps.  But I was not to be discouraged.  I slapped some icing into a bag with a tip that looked similar to the one in the video tutorial, and started trying to make flower petals.  I made circular blobs.  There were no delicate curling edges, no gentle petal shapes, and the lumps of powdered sugar I’d stubbornly ignored made the frosting emerge from the piping tip unevenly.  I ended up with deformed starfish in a lovely cornflower-esque shade on the mini cupcakes, and a spotty lace pattern surrounded by blue blobs on the tiny taster cake I’d made for the bride and groom.  (It was supposed to be cornelli lace, but when hunks of cold butter in your frosting burst out through the piping tip, all bets are off.)  I did, however, glean a valuable tip for frosting a cake from the Barefoot Contessa: once you have your layer covered, dip your frosting spatula in very hot water and run it gently over the sides and top surface of the cake.  The hot water lightly melts the very outer molecules of butter and sugar and solders them together while smoothing them out, resulting in a perfectly level layer of frosting.  I tried this out to great success.

But back to the cupcakes.  Undaunted by their aesthetically challenged appearance, I sprinkled them with silver-gray sprinkles and presented them proudly to my friends, who pronounced them praiseworthy masterpieces.  I privately thought them too kind, but it is gratifying to have good friends who support your stubborn goofy screw-ups and prevent you from being too hard on yourself.

It was only the next day that I rewatched the tutorial video and saw that not only was a using the wrong tip to pipe these petals, but I was holding it the wrong way.  This gave me hope.  Next time, next time when butter and mascarpone are at the same temperature, when it’s warmer in the kitchen, when a fresh bag of powdered sugar and careful sifting result in a perfectly velvet texture, and when I acquire a rose petal icing tip, I will be on my way.  The flowers won’t be perfect, but they will actually resemble flowers.  Next time. 

I keep ending these posts by talking about what I will do next time.  Upon reflection, it seems dangerous to be counting always on next time in this project.  There will come a time when “next time” no longer works, and on that day in July I’d better get everything right.  What if the butter is too soft?  What if I over whip it?  What if there are lumps?

Fortunately I still have a few next times to lean on.

Blowing Hot and Cold

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I’ve been uninspired to write this post, mostly because the weekend we just experienced made Punxsutawney Phil into a fat little liar.  And then today came, with a promise of freezing temperatures tonight and the specter of snow.  This is perversely appropriate then, because this Bittman recipe for Potato Leek soup is essentially vichyssoise, one of the best known chilled soups (along with Borscht and gazpacho). We had ours hot, but it is often chilled and served in small, sippable portions.

“22. Sauté leeks in butter until soft but not browned, then add cubed waxy potatoes, a little sage and stock or water to cover. Simmer until tender, puree and finish with about a cup of cream for every 6 cups of soup. Serve hot or cold, garnished with chives (if cold, call it vichyssoise).”

Here’s the line-up:

¼ cup butter

at least 3 leeks, maybe more, halved lengthwise, rinsed well to remove sand and dirt wedged between the layers, then sliced thinly into little crescent moon shapes

8 medium yukon gold potatoes, diced in smallish cubes

6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

6-8 sage leaves, torn or chopped

1 cup heavy cream

I can say right away that I wish I’d had more leeks for this.  My meager supply was just not enough for that unique, sweet garlic/onion flavor.  Nevertheless, I sliced them up and sautéed them in butter for that springy wonderful pale green aroma.  A tub of homemade chicken broth, the sage, and the diced potatoes followed, burbling together and permeating each other with flavor.

I let the pot simmer until a tentative fork prod proved the potatoes were tender – probably fifteen minutes – then seasoned with salt, pepper and, on a whim, a few taps of garlic powder.

I switched the heat off and let the pot cool off just until it wasn’t boiling anymore before taking my immersion blender to it.  Have you used an immersion blender?  I love mine.  It is a bright red Kitchen Aid model and I use it for blending soups and salad dressings.  I know it could also be used to whip cream or maybe even make hummus, though I haven’t yet put it through all its paces.

A few long dunks and careful swirls of the immersion blender and the chunks of potatoes became more of a mash.  Another few sessions and they transformed into a velvety soup.  Even the torn sage leaves were obliterated, leaving only a few shreds of potato skin (I never peel yukon golds) to disrupt the ivory smoothness.

When everything was well blended, I put the pot back on the heat, poured in a cup of cream, and stirred the swirls of white until the whole thing paled ever so slightly in color and the cream was completely incorporated.  It only took a few moments for the pot to rise back up to serving temperature, at which point we dipped it into bowls and sipped away.

It was smooth and hearty and rich.  It’s hard to make potatoes taste like anything but potatoes, but the additions of sage and cream and the barest onion-y flavor from the leeks came through.

I served this with a lovely loaf of dimpled rosemary foccaccia and a glass of white wine.  A thoroughly beige looking meal, but a satisfying one nonetheless.

But satisfying isn’t always enough.  This soup lacked intensity and freshness.  It was a winter meal, and my stomach, along with my skin and heart and brain, is craving spring.  So when I faced the leftovers, I felt the need for a pick-me-up.  The addition of a tablespoon or so of pesto stirred gently into the soup woke up the flavor considerably but somehow didn’t overwhelm the wholesome starchy creaminess of the potatoes.  Were I to make this soup again, pesto might become a required addition.  Or perhaps a gentle, fluffy layer of extra sharp white cheddar to blanket the top like the snow I hope does not fall on us tonight.  This was good, but it’s time for hot soup season to be over, and not yet time for cold soup season to begin.

Chicken’n’chutney

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We’ve become huge fans of roast chicken this year. I rub a mix of herbs, salt, pepper, garlic, lemon zest and olive oil under its skin, and stuff it full of the same herbs, a few cloves of garlic, and half a lemon. The lemon is, I think, the secret weapon. It gives the finished meat a really nice light suggestion of citrus. I’ve also started creating my own rack in the cheap metal rectangular baking pan that subs in for a roasting pan in my kitchen: on Kelsey Nixon’s suggestion, I make a triangle in the bottom of the pan out of a few carrots, a few sticks of celery, and a halved onion. This gives the chicken a nice platform to sit on so it doesn’t steam in the juices it exudes. Plus, I like to think the extra vegetables impart a nice, delicate flavor into the meat as well. (Plus plus, the vegetables roast down and caramelize in the chicken fat and juices, and you can extract them from the pan and gobble them as an extra veggie with your dinner, as you can see I’ve done with the carrots below. Their skins maintain the tiniest resistance to the teeth, and they taste like all the goodness of chicken skin, but really you’re just eating a roasted carrot!) I roast breast side down, always, to keep the white meat as juicy as possible. I’ve done this vegetable trick with our Thanksgiving turkey the last two years as well and I’m ridiculously pleased with the results.

But this isn’t about Bittman, is it? To go with this chicken, I decided to go with one of his chutney ingredient combinations:

“5. Apple Chutney: Cook big chunks of peeled, cored apple with a little apple cider, Dijon or whole-grain mustard and chopped sage until the chutney thickens. Don’t cook it until it becomes apple sauce unless you want to.”

Between that day and this moment, I lost the small square of paper onto which I scribble quantities. Alas. So what follows are approximations from memory, but I think this is really a “how you like it” sort of dish, so you’d be using my values only as approximations anyway.

3 crisp, tart apples, peeled, cored, and cut into large chunks (I had Fujis, but Granny Smith or similar would also be delicious)

¼- ½ cup Gravenstein apple juice

1 generous TB whole grain mustard

1 TB finely minced sage

I tumbled these together in a small saucepan and cooked it over medium heat for fifteen minutes or so, stirring infrequently and gently, until the apples became soft but still resistant, and the juice had somehow thickened into what was not quite chunky applesauce, but was securely on its way.

We ate this draped over juicy, moist hunks of chicken, and while not the same perfect pairing as I think it would be with a well breaded and deeply fried pork chop, it was pretty delicious. I liked the combination of apples and mustard: they added a tart sweetness that balanced well with the sharp spice and the deep earthy flavor of the sage.

With this, in what must be one of the more monochromatic plates ever made, we had parsnip “puree.” I place this descriptor in quotations because my results were less than smooth. I didn’t core the parsnips or roast them long enough to make them sufficiently tender for my immersion blender. Alas. They were delicious, however, and they are a commodity I plan to revisit. Once I get the specs correct, I will certainly share the recipe here. It involved butter, and heavy cream, and roasted garlic, all in embarrassingly large quantities. But once you swirl them together you can’t see how much there ever was, which means it doesn’t count, right?