Corn and Green Onion Waffles

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Chelsea

I have, I promise you, a beautiful recipe for today that churns out beautiful waffles. But this weekend being what it was, I had to make a choice between editing photos and grading papers. I chose the responsible option. (At least, between those two choices. Other choices this weekend were less responsible. Related: holy god, do you guys remember how GOOD frappucinos with whipped cream are?!)

At any rate, I’ll get right to the meat – as it were – here, and promise weakly that images will follow. These are my standard beer batter waffles, except that half the flour is replaced by cornmeal, resulting in a crisp finish on the ridges and squares that even stands up to melted cheddar cheese (more on that in a tic). Before letting them sit to rise, you stir in a heap of corn kernels and green onions, and you end up with something that, depending on your currently location’s definition of “autumn,” could be a lovely alternative to cornbread to balance against your steaming bowl of chili, or a substantial side for a crisp salad like this one.

Because waffles cook one at a time, if you want to eat with your dining partners, instead of taking turns, it’s handy to have a system for keeping them warm. My favorite is to preheat the oven to 250F with a wire rack resting over a cookie sheet inside. As each waffle is done, I sprinkle on a few tablespoons of grated cheddar cheese and stow the laden circle in the oven. While the remaining waffles bake, the cheese melts into a perfect gooey layer, and the waffle, with its cornmeal armor, stays crisp and light underneath.

Corn and green onion waffles

Makes about 8 5-6-inch waffles

Approximately 2½ hours, including rising time

1½ cups (12 ounces) beer, the darker the better

1½ teaspoons active dry yeast

3 tablespoons maple syrup

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) melted butter, cooled

1 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup corn kernels, fresh or defrosted

6 large green onions, pale and dark green parts only, thinly sliced

Optional: grated cheddar cheese

In a 2 cup glass measuring cup, or a small microwave safe bowl, heat the beer until just warm to the touch, about 40 seconds. Add yeast and the maple syrup and let them mingle for 5-10 minutes. The yeast will foam up considerably, thanks to the extra sugars and yeast already in the beer.
While the yeast proofs, whisk together the cooled melted butter, the salt, and the eggs in a large bowl. Be sure there’s room for the batter to expand.
Add the beer and yeast mixture and whisk to combine, then add the flour and cornmeal a little at a time, whisking to combine thoroughly. Add the corn kernels and green onions and whisk again until only vegetable lumps – not flour lumps – remain.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it on the counter for 1-2 hours. The mixture will slowly develop lethargic bubbles and begin to smell quite bready.
Once it has had a chance to rise for an hour or two, either stow in the refrigerator overnight, or preheat your waffle iron!
Drop the batter in generous batches (mine can take about ⅔ cup at a time) onto a preheated, greased waffle iron. Close the lid and cook for the recommended amount of time, or until the waffle is crisp on the outside and deeply golden. Mine take about 6 minutes.
As you finish each waffle, you can either drop it directly onto some lucky person’s plate, or stow it on a wire rack in a preheated 250F oven. If desired, sprinkle each waffle with 1-2 tablespoons grated cheddar cheese before placing them in the oven, so the cheese can melt before serving.

Photo Essay: Goat House Brewing

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Chelsea

Coming back feels like starting over. How do I do this? What do I sound like? Which words should tumble onto the page first? In an article from The New Yorker about language intimacy and its ties to relationship intimacy and communication, Lauren Collins notes that “Bilinguals overwhelmingly report that they feel like different people in different languages. It is often assumed that the mother tongue is the language of the true self. In many ways, it remains the primal vehicle… But, if first languages are reservoirs of emotion, second languages can be rivers undammed, freeing their speakers to ride different currents.”

Though I write and speak in English – it is my first and (aside from garbled, declension-less memories of high school Spanish and college Latin) only language – I have always felt that the spoken and written form of a language might as well be two different tongues (one of which doesn’t require the tongue at all). Thus, though I’ve talked about food consistently during the weeks we’ve been apart, I haven’t written about it (or about much of anything) at all. You can chalk this up to issues of vacation, politics, heat, social justice, laziness, or good old writer’s block, but the result is the same as a month off from practicing a different language: the water in that pool feels cold, and awkward, and heavy. This is why, for my students, coming back even after the summer makes writing feel ungainly and foreign – it is. It’s another language. It’s hard to float when you’ve spent a month on the solid ground you knew first.

So instead of plunging, I’m coming in from the shallow end, a few steps at a time. More recipes to come, I promise; there are only a few weeks before school starts and I want to have a good back-log to keep us going, plus there’s that whole 2016 blog challenge I took on in January that I’m doing so well with… But for today, as my first step back into the pool, I want to offer you something different.

Part one of our vacation was a visit with N’s parents. They live in northern California, in the same town he grew up in. This town, its sleepy rural character disrupted only by railroad and pottery booms, is now a distant outskirt to Sacramento and decidedly in the “suburb” category, boasting itself as an All-America City with wood-planked “downtown” area and well-marked signage advertising the “Wine Trail” in the outer reaches of the city.

When we first started visiting N’s parents there as a couple, every time we drove through town he would remark on something that had changed. Family grocers became Walmart. Undeveloped fields became track housing. He’s now able, thanks to the number of new roads, to get lost in the city he grew up in.

The one area of the sleepy old town that remains is where N’s grandmother lives: on an old ranch house a ways outside the center of town. We visit her when we make the pilgrimage through, and the last few times we’ve noticed signs for a relative newcomer to the scene: Goat House Brewing.

Brewery’s sign from the road

Around since late 2013, Goat House is the epitome of local. Their taproom is a converted barn. They grow their own hops – about 20 varieties – which they use in their brews. They experiment and collaborate and incorporate hometown ingredients – hop honey from their own vines in a light honey ale, Valencia oranges from their orchard in a Belgian, and an interesting wine-beer blend using a red wine made less than three miles away. It’s a very vertical, rather than horizontal, business plan – there is no sense that Goat House wants to stretch outward, only that they want to work closely and deeply with what is nearby. Because they are only open four days a week, until this recent visit we hadn’t had a chance to stop by.

Logo inside the barn

This particular day, we spent an hour or so with N’s grandmother, listening as she coasted through stories about far-flung relatives and trying together to work out how the slim, distant branches of the family tree weave together. As we headed out to the car, we’d already decided to stop at Goat House Brewing on the way home. After receiving a friendly, detailed run through the tap offerings, we selected our first pours and settled in on the picnic style tables made from wood salvaged from an old stadium in San Francisco. It was in the mid-90s, but there was a breeze blowing through the barn’s wide open doors on either side, and we spent a comfortable hour or so sampling and enjoying this little sparkle at the end of a dusty drive.

Growlers ready to be filled

So here are some glimpses of Goat House Brewing, a place we’re already planning to return to when we next pass through N’s hometown, to try new flavors, to chat with the owners, to see Rory the donkey and Georgia the dog; to carve out a space of familiarity in this new-old city.

Hop vines awaiting a harvest

Hide and seek goat!

Georgia, the brewhouse dog

“Baciami Prima” (“kiss me first”) – intriguing wine-beer blend. All the mustiness of a wine cellar and all the funk of a Belgian in one deep purple pour.

A “Dark Side” (left – their stout: creamy and roasty with hints of coffee and chocolate) and a “Row Hoe” (right – a red ale on nitro that I didn’t taste)

foam trails from the Dark Side

A brewery and taproom called Goat House better have some goats, and indeed they are right out back behind the barn (along with Rory the donkey, who helps keep them safe)

See you next week, when I hope my treading water in this form of my language will have smoothed, with the application of both kitchen and keyboard, into more practiced strokes.

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Beer Braised Cauliflower Tacos with Chimichurri

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Chelsea

The first heat wave of the summer has hit Southern California (actually, if I’m honest, it has hit most of the country. Stop cackling, Seattle), and as a result, the things I most want to consume are tacos, grilled anything, bright, herbaceous sauces with plenty of acid, and beer. Fortunately for everyone concerned, today’s recipe combines three of the four. Entirely decent odds.

I had these tacos at a brewery restaurant in Venice, just on the other side of Highway 1. We’ve done cauliflower in tacos before, but that was a wintry dish. This one, with bright, sharp chimichurri sauce and briny crumbles of feta, is all summer.

As many breweries do, this one tries to use their beers in their food as well as in pint glasses, which makes a lot of sense. A glug or two of dark beer into a cheese sauce is perfect, and braising everything from beef to cauliflower in a simmer of ale rather than red wine just fits the venue.

I suppose in this instance, braising isn’t quite accurate – a braise is a long, slow cook in liquid, and here the beer deglazes the pan and then simmers just until the cauliflower florets are tender – but the name sounds nice, doesn’t it? Anyway, the normally mild, sometimes musty vegetable picks up some color and char from a very hot skillet, then sucks in some of the nutty bitterness of whatever beer you pour, sputtering and steaming, into the pan with it. It’s not quite the same depth and richness as roasted cauliflower, but a lighter incarnation that is a bit less sweet.

Once you pile the florets up into a nicely toasted tortilla, you spoon on some chimichurri sauce, a bright, Argentinian answer to pesto, possibly of Basque origin, that is traditionally used to both marinate and top grilled meat. It’s usually dominated by parsley, though sometimes cilantro and oregano make appearances, and gets its sharpness from raw garlic and a healthy dose of vinegar. Mine starts out traditional and then tempers the tang with red wine vinegar, rather than straight white, and sneaks in a bit of sundried tomato and green onion (though you could also use shallot) for a sauce that would make an equally good salad dressing, if you have some substantial greens laying around that need a kick. My version also uses much less oil than some, so feel free to glug in a bit more if you want a looser sauce.

A few crumbles of feta on top of the veg, and you’re ready to serve. And if you’re really feeling the beer-y flavor, perhaps a side of these black beans. Hit it, summer.

Beer Braised Cauliflower Tacos with Chimichurri

Makes 1 cup chimichurri, and enough cauliflower for 4-6 tacos

About 30 minutes

For chimichurri sauce:

3-5 garlic cloves, peeled

2 tablespoons shallot or the whites of green onions

1 tablespoon oil-packed sundried tomato, drained

¾ cup packed parsley, stems and all

2 tablespoons cilantro, stems and all

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

5 tablespoons (¼ cup + 1 tablespoon) red wine vinegar

⅓ cup vegetable or olive oil

For cauliflower tacos:

1 large head cauliflower, cut into bite-size florets

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

12 ounces dark beer

soft corn tortillas, lightly grilled or toasted over an open flame

crumbled feta cheese, to serve

pico de gallo, to serve (optional)

additional cilantro, to serve (optional)

To make the chimichurri, blitz the garlic, onion or shallot, and sundried tomato in a food processor until the ingredients are well broken up. This ensures no large chunks of garlic in the final product. Then, pack in the parsley, cilantro, salt, black and red pepper, and vinegar, and pulse the food processor 2 or 3 times at 1-second intervals. Finally, drizzle in the oil and pulse again, 2 or 3 times at 1-second intervals, until everything is well chopped, but not so long that a fully emulsified paste is created. We are looking for the mixture to retain some texture. Set aside until ready to serve.
In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower with the 1 teaspoon salt, the cumin, and the 2-3 tablespoons olive oil. Preheat a large skillet or a grill pan over medium-high to high heat and, when it is quite hot, tumble in the oiled, seasoned cauliflower. It will sizzle tremendously.
Char the cauliflower on all sides – you are looking for dark bronzed marks on the outside, but not to cook it through – this should take 3-4 minutes.
Deglaze with the beer by adding it all at once and stirring gently. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cook until the florets are tender but still have some texture; about 5 minutes.
To serve, use a slotted spoon to pile up about ¼ cup of florets in each tortilla. Spoon over a few teaspoons of chimichurri, then a few teaspoons of crumbled feta. Add pico de gallo and a few extra cilantro leaves if desired, and serve immediately.

Chocolate Stout Floats with Bourbon Caramel

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Chelsea

Labor Day deserves to be celebrated. The reason we have not just a three-day weekend this week, but a weekend at all, is a result of the hard work and fighting of workers, federations, and labor unions demanding reasonable working conditions and time off. In many industries, they helped us get fair working conditions. Their efforts should be commemorated.

I think, though, on Labor Day we should treat ourselves more than fairly. We should treat ourselves well. We should celebrate what has been fought for and allow ourselves not an indulgence, but a reward we deserve. After all, we work hard!

real shoes: crucial caramel-making equipment!

In my case, of course, this reward is food. I’m not completely devoted to the Labor Day barbecue tradition (in fact, tonight we are having arroz con pollo), but I do think a special dish is an appropriate method of celebration. Let’s do dessert.

dissolved sugar, rapid bubbling

sugar caramelizing around pot edges

approaching dark amber color; almost time to add the cream.

Like Labor Day, this dessert of just rewards has several origin stories. The first is simple: as I noted here, a few months ago my friend B. asked for my tips on bourbon dessert sauces. One of her attempts involved a bourbon caramel to douse over ice cream, and terrified as I am of the whole boiling sugar thing that is required for caramel, I couldn’t pass up the challenge. I wasn’t quite satisfied, though, with presenting a recipe for caramel sauce enrobing a simple scoop of ice cream. I wanted something a bit more exciting.

The answer came during our summer trip to Oregon. The night of our reunion with our dissertation crew, we had chocolate stout floats for dessert: tooth-achingly cold scoops of vanilla bean ice cream drowning in a bitter fizzing cocoa bath of cold, black beer. With each spoonful, you can moderate the combination, choosing just a fleck of ice cream, or mixing the whole thing into a pale, drinkable swirl. The following day, we repeated the dessert with a new set of friends, and one of them judiciously declared the need to slosh in a shot of bourbon.

Mic drop.

There it was.

So what I have for you today, in celebration of our hard work, is a chocolate stout float drizzled with bourbon caramel. It’s a perfect dessert for a hot day, because though it’s far from light, it’s gloriously cold. You can make the caramel sauce earlier in the day, so by the time your belly is ready for dessert, it will have had ample time to cool (and, if you’re doing the barbecue thing, you won’t have had to deal with the stove for several hours). The ice cream and beer are in lovely, tenuous balance with one another – almost too sweet, almost too bitter – and the just-shy-of-bitter notes in the caramel (which is, after all, almost-burnt sugar), play off of both. The bourbon here is noticeable, especially after the caramel cools down, but it isn’t overwhelming. It’s a light, floral, vanilla note that capitalizes on the toasty flavors already created by making the caramel.

You can serve this in whatever quantities, by whatever process you like. I followed my usual method in considering the caramel and adapted several recipes, but mostly this one, along with several sensible suggestions by David Lebovitz. He’s right – you really do have brave the smoke and the suspiciously-close-to-burning smell of the sugar cooking, lest you end up with something that’s just sweet, not developed and complex. And warming your cream before adding it to the vat of boiling sugar makes good sense for easier integration, but you should still take precautions and wear shoes no matter how hot it is in your kitchen. Boiling sugar burns are serious business.

When it comes to serving, we like to scoop in some ice cream first, then top it up with the beer. As this delicious experiment explains, this nets you a lovely, creamy foam on top, on which you can drizzle as much caramel sauce as you want. The sauce thickens as it cools, so what barely coats a spoon while hot will pour even thicker than maple syrup once it’s had time to chill for a while. The layer that sinks and coats the bottom of the glass makes for a lovely last few sips, too.

Chocolate Stout Floats with Bourbon Caramel Sauce

Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce

Approximately 20 minutes active cook time, plus an hour (or more) for the sauce to cool

For bourbon caramel:

1 cup sugar

¼ cup water

½ cup room temperature or warm heavy cream (helps it incorporate faster)

¼ cup bourbon

½ teaspoon salt

For float:

Vanilla ice cream

Chilled chocolate stout

For the bourbon caramel, stir the sugar and water together in a medium pot that is heavy in weight and light in color (the light color lets you see the color change in the caramel sauce – very important). Cook over medium high heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture becomes clear.
Now, stop stirring. If you have one, use a wet pastry brush to brush down any sugar crystals that have adhered to the sides of the pot so they can melt along with the rest of the mix.
Without stirring, let the melted sugar simmer over medium or medium-high heat until the outside edge starts to darken, about 7-8 minutes. Bubbles will be very fast. It’s important not to stir because you don’t want any unmelted sugar crystals falling in and marring the perfect smooth texture.
As the edges darken, swirl the mixture gently and keep cooking until the whole bubbling pot is the color of dark maple syrup, another 2-5 minutes. The bubbling will slow and thicken, and the mixture will smoke a bit and may begin to smell burnt – don’t be afraid! It really does need to cook to this dark amber color, or the final product will taste overly sweet (besides, as Lebovitz points out, if you do end up burning it, you’ve only lost 1 cup of sugar which, though bothersome, is not a huge financial disaster).
Remove from heat (I mean it!) and, with a whisk at the ready, add both the cream and the bourbon. Stand back! It will bubble up vigorously, and the bubbles will continue to form quite quickly for the rest of the cooking process. Whisk in the salt and set the pot back over medium heat, whisking until the sauce is smooth. Cook for an additional minute, just to ensure smooth texture (and to cook off some of the alcohol in the bourbon!). The sauce will remain thin at this point.
Remove from heat and cool – it will thicken to the texture of cold honey while at room temperature, and even to something more like dulce de leche when refrigerated.
To serve, place a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream in a tall glass. Pour in 6-8 ounces of cold chocolate stout, pausing as needed to avoid overflow. Atop the thick, rich foam that forms, drizzle a tablespoon or two of the caramel sauce and dig in.