Victor’s birthday cake. He has the same request every year: chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I make the Devil’s Food Cake recipe from New Best Recipe, and frost with the Rich Chocolate Cream Frosting. The choco frosting sets up a little stiff, even at room temperature, so for next year I’ll perhaps add a bit of extra cream. Cake: A Frosting: B
Apparently some mythical 1850s sea captain traveled to India and then, his head swirling with the subtle flavors and fragrances of that noble and delicious cuisine, got back to his plantation in the South and did a piss-poor job of duplicating what he had eaten. This is the result. Reviewers on Epicurious seemed to like it, but I found it to be pasty, bland, and overly sweet. The leftovers languished in my fridge until they went bad. Don’t give up your day job, Country Captain. D
I’m not very good at shopping for clothes. Usually when I go clothes shopping, I end up only looking at items that closely resemble things that I already own. “Look! A grey hoodie! I have a brown hoodie, and that’s worked well for me, so maybe this grey hoodie will be just the ticket! So versatile – it will go with jeans and camos!”
I think a little bit of that tendency was at work when I decided to make this salmon recipe. Cause there was that other salmon recipe I made not too long ago, with pistachios, that was strikingly similar. Only that recipe features a crust, and this features a pistou. Totally different.
I didn’t use the yellow bell peppers called for in the original recipe. I always feel like colorful bell peppers are kind of a letdown compared to how much they cost. And green bell peppers are just not that good. And you keep tasting them long after you eat them, if you know what I mean. I julienned some zucchini instead, which I found to be an acceptable substitute.
The pistou, consisting of chopped up dill, pistachios and green onions in some oil, was a very nice topping to the fish. It was way more pistou-like than the pistachio crust on the other salmon recipe was crust-like. Which is to say, one virtue of a word like “pistou” is that it does not cause me to have any expectations whatsoever. It’s also pretentious as hell. But whatever – it tasted good, so that’s what matters, right? A-
This recipe could be a meal unto itself, but I served it with a kabocha squash-green lentil-goat cheese salad. Victor felt that the word “salad” was a misnomer, since this dish was actually quite substantial and filling, and could also probably be a meal unto itself. Really good, though. I’ve been grooving on green lentils lately – a bit more delicate and less earthy than their larger brown cousins, they also seem to hold their shape better after cooking.
What a terrible picture! This salad is way better than it looks here. Trust me! A
Today I will clean out my drafts folder! I made this cauliflower apple soup a while ago. Instead of curry powder, I toasted and mortared and pestled some star anise and coriander seeds, which I found to be a good substitution.
Roasted cauliflower apple soup might be even better. But then, the soup might not match the color of my kitchen counters, so that’s no good.
Easy weeknight meal with your standard issue salad-and-crusty-bread sides. Super easy if you have an immersion blender for the pureeing (I hate pureeing hot liquids in normal blenders. The risk of burning, the escaping hot air, the need to have the cover partially off. It’s just a CF.) B+
So. You know how anti-heroes have dominated television dramas for the last decade or so? Those deeply flawed, yet magnetic characters who you still root for even though they commit atrocious acts over and over and over again? I’m talkin’ about your Don Drapers, your Tony Sopranos, your Dexter Morgans, your Jax Tellers, your Nurse Jackies. You know what I’m talking about.
Well, in the food world, we got anti-anti-heroes. And, no – pipe down out there. An anti-anti-hero isn’t just the same thing as a hero. Two wrongs don’t make a right, right? An anti-anti-hero is someone who does everything right, who is good, and wholesome, and upstanding, maybe even good looking. Shines his shoes, calls his mom, takes out the garbage, brings you flowers. And you still can’t stand the jerk. You know what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about, is beets.
When I was little, my mom would occasionally serve the red beets from the can. I think my dad is partial to them. Myself, I couldn’t stand them. I thought they tasted like sweetened earwax. Nasty things. I think a lot of folks have shared the same experience, yet have been able to get past that in adulthood and appreciate fresh beets. “No!” these people will tell me, “fresh beets are completely different from canned! Try roasting them!” Roast them? Huh! Never heard that one before!… <rolls eyes>.
And I want to like the beets! I’ve tried them, several different types, prepared several different ways. They’re wholesome, relatively inexpensive, colorful, packed with nutrition. And, despite the assurances of well-wishing bystanders that I will really like them if I just give them a fair shake, they still taste like sweetened earwax. I decided to give them one more try in this Farro, Radicchio, and Roasted Beet Salad recipe. I went into the recipe knowing full well that there was a good chance that the leftovers wouldn’t get eaten. I mean, come on. Whole grains? Bitter salad leaves? And beets? Blargh!
The farro was actually quite pleasant. When I think of farro, I think of the word “toothsome”. I also think of Titus Pullo (“of course, your best method for pleasing a woman is the warm, beating heart of an enemy…”), cause apparently farro was a staple food for Roman legionaries. And, oh yeah! Lucius Vorenus? Another anti-hero.
The radicchio was, well, bitter. I read a tip in the comments for the recipe for how to supposedly make it not bitter – soak it in ice water – but, nope, still bitter. Wanna know the best way to make radicchio not bitter? Don’t use radicchio. Use, like, I dunno, endive or something.
The beets! I used golden and chiogga in the hopes that they’d be less beety. But they weren’t. They were still really beety. They’re pretty, though, all cut up and waiting to be roasted.
I made sort of a composed salad so that I would still be able to easily pick out the stuff that I didn’t like. I tossed toasted walnuts into the farro along with the goat cheese and parsley, which was good. And, surprisingly, when you take a bite of everything altogether the nasty parts don’t taste quite as nasty. Still, that’s not the ringing endorsement that you’re normally looking for when interviewing recipes.
I’d definitely make a dish with farro again – that was the best part by far. The radicchio and beets, I can safely say, will not darken my grocery bag again. I’ll give this recipe a C. But if you actually like beets and/or radicchio, it might be worth a try.
Sometimes Victor and I will be driving in the car, and one of us will turn to the other and say, in a low, menacing, heavily-accented voice:
Boca Raton. Mouth of the rat.
Other times, we’ll talk to each other in Spanish about what IHOP breakfast we would like:
Quiero un desayuno de Ruti Tuti Frutas Frescas
It helps to while away the time.
Another thing that’s Spanish is the title of this recipe: Boca Negra Chipotle Chocolate Cakes. This is currently my very favorite recipe for individually-portioned chocolate cakes, and that’s saying something, because that’s one of my very favorite dessert formats, so these are, perhaps, my very favorite dessert, other than maybe the peanut butter chocolate bar at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack.
The cakes all on their own would be excellent. Baked slowly in a water bath so that they cook very evenly with no crust development, they have an explosive depth of chocolate flavor, accented by a hint of smokey chile from the chipotle paste, along with fresh-squeezed orange juice. But wait! There’s more! Along with the cakes, you get, absolutely free, not one, but two sauces. Does this sound too good to be true? It’s not! The first sauce is a vanilla custard sauce, which is very nice but which is mostly a supporting actor in this ensemble, a fancier version of whipped cream. But you need it in there to keep your throat from closing up while eating the intensely chocolatey dessert (and, just to be clear, I do not recommend subbing whipped cream in this recipe for the vanilla custard sauce). The second sauce is definitely the leading lady, a tomatillo sauce made by stewing tomatillos with piloncillo and cinnamon until they form a thick syrup. The recipe has you whir this around in a blender, but I’ve found that if you just chop the tomatillos up fairly small and mash them with a potato masher there’s no need for this extra step. The result is a thick, sweet but very uniquely flavored sauce that perfectly sets off the cakes.
It galls me a little bit to hand out two A+ grades in a row, but there’s not a heck of a lot else I can do.
I made Toll House chocolate chip cookies a couple of weeks ago. You are all no doubt familiar with these, so I’ll limit my observations to the following anecdote:
I’ve been making these for years; like many of us, I learned them at my mother’s knee. I’ve probably had the recipe memorized for about 2 decades now. So, the other day, when I made these and couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to use baking soda or baking powder, I became a little concerned. Could this be the first sign of early-onset dementia? Then I had this protracted daydream about how, if I had early-onset dementia, before I completely lost my mind Victor and I would go on a camping trip in the winter, and I would walk out into the snow one night and take off all my clothes and lie down and wait for death to come. And then I pictured Victor lying down in the snow next to me. And then I stared into the abyss, and started to cry a little bit, and Victor had to come and hug me.
So that is how Toll House cookies caused me to have a “Don’t Fear the Reaper” moment. This recipe gets an A+
P.S. Mom? Dad? Don’t worry. I wouldn’t really go lie down in the snow and wait for death to come.
P.P.S. It’s baking soda. Definitely baking soda.
I’ve made this recipe perhaps 4-5 times now and will continue to return to it. It’s incredibly easy, but the flavor of the harissa paste has a toasty, peppery, garlicky depth that really complements the meat. And tri-tip is one of my favorite cuts of meat these days. Middle of the road, pricewise, it’s flavorful and lean, and a typical 2-2.5 lb roast is a nice size for a meal for two plus generous but not excessive leftovers. It’s also a way to prepare tri-tip without a grill, which is good since this household is currently lacking aforementioned device.
HOWEVER. What’s with the crust? I’m starting to feel that writers of recipes are tossing the word “crust” about with reckless abandon. When I think of a crust, I think of something that has crunch to it, or that at least is somewhat friable. Since the harissa in question in this recipe is a paste, and retains its paste-like properties throughout the cooking process (though it does dry out a bit during roasting, to be sure), describing the roast as encrusted by the harissa is kind of like describing myself as encrusted by the sweatshirt I’m wearing. Which may be sort of apt during certain sweaty times of the year towards the end of the laundry cycle, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway. Whatever. The backbone of this particular harissa is chile pepper paste and garlic. The recipe recommends using sambal oelek, an Indonesian chile paste, but I’ve never laid hands on that substance, so I’ve variously used reconstituted dried ancho chiles pureed in the blender or, most recently, the Korean chili paste gochujang. Examining the ingredients of the gochujang and comparing it to online descriptions of sambal oelek, I see that both have in common red chiles, garlic, vinegar, and sugar, so I think it’s a reasonable substitution. It certainly tasted good, and I’ll be using it again.
The other thing that gives this recipe its character is the presence of toasted caraway seeds in the harissa. Whenever I taste this flavor, the descriptive word that pops into my head is “dark”, I guess because of the toasty, burn-y quality of the flavor. I think the caraway seeds are what add that elusive, mysterious depth of flavor to this recipe.
I served it with fresh pineapple. This gets an A.
This post is going to contain an actual recipe, because I made turkey tomatillo chili the other night and I just did it off the top of my head. It came out pretty good.
This chili is not your typical red-colored chili – the tomatillos replace whatever tomato product you might usually add to chili, giving it a sort of brownish-green color, which actually turns out to be more appetizing than it sounds.
I had the intention of making cornbread muffins with cheddar and roasted green chiles to accompany this, but suddenly, mysteriously, the chili was gone and no cornbread muffins had materialized. If you make this, though, you should make cornbread muffins to go with it. You probably won’t be sorry.
Some tweaks that I think might be worthwhile:
Here’s what I did. As is, I give it a B+. Tasty weeknight meal, could use a bit more punch.
Turkey Tomatillo Chili
Serves 8 or so
2 lbs tomatillos
1 onion, diced
1 tbsp canola oil
6 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
2 tbsp cumin
2.5 lbs ground turkey
3 canned chipotles in adobo sauce, seeds and ribs removed, finely chopped
2 c chicken broth
1 c water
1 tbsp oregano
2 bay leaves
3 c cooked pinto beans
1 c frozen corn
1/2 c chopped cilantro
sour cream
Husk, stem, and roast the tomatillos under the broiler, turning frequently, until charred spots appear all over, about 7 minutes. Allow the tomatillos to cool, roughly chop (reserving liquid), and set aside.
Saute the onion in the oil in a large skillet or dutch oven till soft, then add garlic and cumin and saute for another minute or so. Add ground turkey and brown. Add tomatillos, chipotles+adobo, chicken broth, water, oregano, bay leaves, and salt and cook for around 30 minutes. Add beans and corn and cook for another 20 minutes. Add cilantro, and serve topped with sour cream.
Roasting tomatillos:
Roasted chile peppers that I didn’t use, but look at this nice picture!
Finished product:
So this partially-written post has been hanging around in my drafts folder for a while now, and I haven’t been at all excited about completing it, because the recipes I am about to describe were both so perfectly unexciting that I’m just not really that inspired to write about them. But, history is made by foot soldiers as well as generals, and if this blog is to fulfill its mission as a document of my culinary endeavors both successful and un-, I might as well face the fact that it is just as important to write about the meh as the marvelous.
I’ve made two rib recipes in the past few months. The first were Korean-Style Short Ribs from the Gourmet cookbook. These are a version of kalbi or galbi. The kalbi I ate in restaurants in Korea was sliced thin, off the bone, and diners would quickly barbecue up the thin slices of meat at a small grill set right into the table and wrap it up in lettuce with a gochujang (chili pepper paste) sauce, garlic, and a couple of other condiments for a delicious garlicky treat. I’m sure several of you (are there several of you out there reading my blog? Ok, maybe a few of you) have had similar kalbi or bulgogi experiences at Korean restaurants here in the States.
These ribs were left on the bone, and were broiled, not grilled, after marinating in a sauce made of sesame oil, soy sauce, scallions, ginger and other stuff. The ribs were scored, sugared for four hours, then marinated for two.
Ribs with sugar:
Ribs after broiling:
Here’s the thing. I think that the kalbi I remembered was all about the preparation, cooking technique, and condiments; grilling vs. broiling matters, and slicing thin off the bone vs. leaving the ribs thick and meaty on the bone definitely matters. These short ribs, broiled for a mere 15 minutes or so, were nicely caramelized but still quite fatty and fairly tough left on the bone. The amount of fat and connective tissue that failed to be rendered by the relatively short cooking time was actually a little repellent. And, without the lettuce, gochujang, and garlic, not to mention the real live fire in the middle of your dining table, kalbi wasn’t nearly as fun. C-
The other ribs I made were Slow-Baked Spareribs with Mango Chutney Marinade. These, you marinate overnight in a mixture of soy sauce, sherry, sesame oil, and mango chutney, and then bake for several hours. You see how it says mango chutney, right there in the title of the recipe? Perhaps I’m naive, but I thought that this indicated that mango chutney would be a predominant flavor in the dish. I was envisioning a scenario where the chutney thickly coated the ribs and cooked up to a nice, sticky glaze-like substance that imparted a sweet yet tangy flavor.
But that’s not what happened. The recipe calls for a mere 1/4c of chutney, compared to 1c of sherry and 1/2c of soy sauce. I doubled the amount of chutney and it was still just barely detectable. That being said, they were still ribs, and they were still pretty tasty and tender after baking for a few hours at low heat, even if they did mostly taste like soy sauce and sesame oil. I tried to up the chutney power in the dish by making a dipping sauce of rice vinegar mixed with chutney, and that was pretty good. But still, a good barbecue rib recipe would kick these ribs’ asses any day of the week. B-
