No...I Want It All

I was called a punk ass bitch today for not posting, so whenever I decide to take over a month to not write anything, you know how to motivate me.

I like fruit. My brother likes fruit. He once was punched in the face for calling a guy "the pussy of fruit" after the guy wouldn't let him skate on his quarter pipe: it being a known fact that the guy hated fruit and would freak out if you approached him with a red delicious arm outstretched. Independent of my brother's misfortune, as an 11-year-old (and a 32-year-old), I found it one of the funniest things that my brother has called someone. It also made me think about the quarter pipe owner. The guy really was the pussy of fruit. I mean seriously, how do you not like juicy, sweet, ripe fruit in your mouth?

I can understand not liking some fruit. My mom sent me to school with a persimmon once. I didn't really like it, but when it's one of the only things you have in your lunch, you eat it knowing full well that the only thing to snack on when you get home are more persimmons--might as well eat it now and hope the ones at home disappear. I was questioned about what kind of fruit is was by some classmates and was promptly called a weird fruit. "You know why he likes weird fruit? Because he's a weird fruit!" Clever, am I right? At least I didn't get called "strange fruit." Although the kid was more or less right about my character, I would've rather my mom had packed one of those tiny dwarf bananas or better yet, some kind of regular American looking fruit like some watermelon.

Nowadays though, I seldom buy melons because I hadn't known how to pick out a good one for a long time. Even following the conventional steps of choosing a watermelon--listen for a hollow, heavy for its size melon with a yellow or light bottom--I'll still get suckered by a 60% usable melon. You can probably get around this by just buying a smallish one in the midst of the summer from the farmer's market, but have I mentioned how frugal I am about buying food?

About...let's make it two weeks ago, I was at the discount grocer with a friend and bought an 11 lb. seedless watermelon. It was huge and likely to be mealy in that inner ring where the seeds normally are, but I'd been having ideas about watermelon, and $2.99 was the right price for making uncertain food.

Sure enough, it had that mealy dry ring from being too old or improperly stored. Unlike an apple that you can still cook to release the flavor and moisture, I was sceptical about cooking a watermelon.

I really needed something refreshing to chill me out from recent 100 degree weather. With sorbet requiring time and an ice cream maker, which I'd have to borrow from someone, clean, and return, fruit water sounded the more immediate remedy.

After cutting out the still firm center and outer parts of the watermelon, I was left with about 4 lbs. of melon mush. I tossed it into the blender with about a cup of water, and a quarter cup of fructose. Why the fructose? The co-op ran out of sugar in their bulk bins, so that's what I was left with. I guess it sort of doesn't taste as sweet as regular refined sugar, but it's been working out in all the things I've been using it in.

Once liquefied, I strained it through a sieve and added a quarter cup of Meyer lemon juice. Poured into a glass and spritzed with seltzer, I garnished it with a lemon wedge for the fruitiness. My spirits were so lifted that I sung out in German song.

It made a 2 quart pitcher without the seltzer, and it's also good after the morning run when I don't feel like eating anything but know I have to before I start work.

The following day I packed up the choice middle cuts for a camping trip that ended up getting water logged in the cooler. "Waaahhh..."

Good thing I thought ahead and pickled the rest before leaving. I did two different pickles. The ones below are from a Saveur recipe for Russian pickled watermelon that I'd been eager to use. I don't know how Russian this actually is, so one of my Russian friends will have to chime in here.

The other, I'd been wanting to do even longer: pickled watermelon rind.

After gleaning several Southern recipes online, I prepared them as follows:

Boiled the peeled rinds until tender.

While that boiled, 3 c. fructose, 2 c. apple cider vinegar, 3 cloves, and 1 cinnamon stick are combined and heated until the fructose dissolved.

The sugar-vinegar mixture is then poured over the tender rinds and refrigamated for a week.

The two pickles were both pretty nice but very strongly flavored by the other ingredients. Casual snacking was a bit out of the question for the pickled rinds. Less fructose/sugar might solve that problem though.

Both would work well as ingredients to a salad, and the pickled rind spurred thought about a watermelon rind pie, as it had the texture of a cooked rhubarb and lends itself to other flavors really well.

If I make the pickled watermelon again, I'd cut back on the garlic and bump up the cayenne to suit my own tastes better.

Having now used the entire melon, the next time I'm in the market and I see that watermelon eyeballin' me, Imma lookit it square and let it know that I will have it--I'm gonna have the whole thing. That goes for you weird fruits too.

Nacho Much to Talk About

It's been a few weeks in the making. Not just this post, but the food involved. I planned it out precisely: One week for beano refrito; next week for making the green salsa; and the third week finding someone to make jumbo nachos with.

Bean week started with soaking pinto beans with double water to the volume of beans. To keep down the fartiness, other than using the usual epazote, I following my crazy uncle's advice, who lived in TJ because he's crazy, and added an inch strip of seaweed to the water.

After letting this business go on overnight, I dumped the water and refilled my pot with fresh water along with the seaweed and brought it to a boil and then a simmer uncovered for two hours minding that the beans remained covered with water throughout.

The next few days were spent rendering a pound of self-cured pork belly that was cut into cubes and finally being able to saute the onions, garlic, a couple serrano peppers, cumin, and oregano in the pork fat. After this went on for about 7 minutes, I roughly mashed the beans and added them to the skillet.

Seventy-two hours of reduction and stirring time made this:

then I entered the sea of beans

Salsa week was characterized with the tender slow dance of making a tomatillo salsa. First I spent four days lovingly slow roasting the tomatillos. Then I tossed them into a blender with a couple cloves of garlic, a chopped onion, a small handful of cilantro, a serrano chili, the juice of four of the dryest limes one can find at the discount grocer, and all this while listening to Salt-n-Pepa.

The final week, I basically harassed one friend day after day until she ultimately relented to let me come over to watch South Park and exploit her fresh vegetables to create one of the most gigantic plates of nachos I have seen, created, and dispatched from this world.

If you can't determine from the photo below, the veggies include radish, cut corn from the cob, fetal tomatos, spring onions, and cilantro. Oh, and my friend had the cheese and fried the segmented tortillas into chips. It probably took her several weeks to prepare these items, so we were on the same page in terms of quality.

One might think that such a platter could be thrown together in a single day, maybe two at the most, but I like to take my time and get things right because anything worth doing is worth doing well; even when it takes three weeks.

P.s. No farts.

A Herring Evening

I managed to get out of cooking for my folks on Easter. I believe it was about 9 years ago that my mom had transferred cooking responsibilities to me for family occasions: those being mostly Christmas and Thanksgiving. Although I got out of Easter cooking, my mom made it understood that she was having Wienerschnitzel for Mother's Day next month; that is, a proper breaded veal cutlet mit Pommes.

After a lunch of pulled pork sandwiches and salad at my folks, I found myself contemplating what I should have for dinner. I immediately knew I'd be having the pickled herring that I joined in making at a couple-friends' house from Saturday. It worked out to be a nice assembly line starting with Eva gutting the herring from the Russian market in West Sac. It moved onto me, as I pulled the large stray bones out of the filets and rinsing them. Mark finished the deboned filets by slicing them into smaller ca. one inch chunks. For each herring the following was called for by the recipe:

1/2 onion

1/3 c red wine vinegar

1/4 olive oil

2 tsp sugar

2 tbs fresh dill (or 2 tsp dried dill)

The ingredients are combined, jarred, and look like this:

In addition to the herring, I paired it with something that I'd been wanting to make for about a week now--korokke or Japanese croquettes. I basically followed the steps in this video from Cooking With Dog with the exception of changing the ground beef component to the ground turkey already in my freezer. It's basically a croquette with ground meat and sauted onions spiced with raw sugar, pepper, and nutmeg and then battered and fried.

While preparing the korokke, I kept trying to remember what the sauce is that is normally served on them and recalled that it was something like HP, which after some short Internet browsing is basically what tonkatsu sauce is: what with the catsup, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, black pepper, and mustard powder.

I can fry food okay, but I often opt for pan frying as opposed to deep frying simply out of cooking oil costs and lack of a Fry Daddy and as a result, I tend to avoid frying food, but this turned out quite nicely with the batter frying up crispily with a fluffy meat and potato mash.

The entire meal turned out to be nice and light fare after a porky lunch. After seeing the simplicity of combining fresh fish with simple ingredients, I'm encouraged to experiment more with the pickled fish recipes in my Scandinavian Time Life book.

Happy Easter Monday, everybody!

Ga Xao Sa Bánh Mì Ma Ma Ma Ma

I was reminded that I've been wanting a bánh mì sandwich last week when I was Southside in Sac going to the Vietnamese market to pick up pork belly to transform into bacon for a friend's birthday last weekend. Instead of going down to Huong Lan, I just bought a bag of bánh mì rolls.

It'd be a long day and a half of translating paperwork from 25 page divorce settlement, so when it came about today that I'd suddenly had nothing to do for a couple hours at midday, I decided to do something with those week old rolls sitting in fridge, which keep quite well. Don't leave them out on the counter--they will mold.

The first step to making this sandwich is making the do chua or rather pickled carrots and daikon, so I went to the link my friend Joe Tyrone sent me. Pretty easy, but instead of doing the prescibed root vegetable massage, I just tossed the matchsticked veg in the salt and sugar and let it sit for 30 minutes before leaving it for an hour in the salt, sugar, water, vinegar brine.

On Sunday while waiting for the greens from the last post to simmer, I went to marinated some lemongrass chicken à la my ma's marinade:

2 stalks lemon grass

4 clv garlic

1/4 c fish sauce

2 tbs brown sugar

1 tbs black peppercorns

I blended this in my bullet-like mixer and tossed 1 lb of chicken thigh meat in it and let it marinate for a few days.

Once skewered, it got grilled with my toasted bánh mì roll.

I combined it all onto the roll with the fermented/pickled fresno peppers from last autumn that are to this day still edible and a delicious condiment.

I like cilantro when a recipe calls for it, but I really have to have it light on a lot of things other than those that just don't taste right without (e.g., salsa). This is one of those food items that I feel can do without, so I didn't feel the need to go out and buy a bunch on my two hour lunch to garnish this bad boy.

I declare this guy a win that kept me satiated from 130 pm nearly throughout trivia nite tonight, 8 pm.

You're Kaling Me

I've had a running experiment going on to see how long my farmer's market produce would last when I keep them in those green bags you see in the produce section. It turns out kale and beet greens hold up quite well in the green bag. Normally they would have wilted and been in need of cooking by the third day in the icebox, but they lasted a good 9-10 days in the green bag without wilting. By last Sunday though, their wilting had called for a short bath in water with a splash of vinegar, which I read somewheres helps the water flow back into leafy vegetables and gives them another day or so before having to been finally tossed away.

Sunday was a lazy day of reading and print mounting, so I wasn't in for anything elaborate concerning these green, so K.I.S.S. it was: keep it simple stupid.

Half a head of minced garlic and four small chopped dried cayenne chilis went into a quarter cup of oil to flavor for about a minute. Then in go the "reconstituted" greens, two cups of prepared Better Than Bouillon and a light sprinkling of salt and pepper.

When it comes to cooking greens, a lot of recipes call for cooking the hell out of them at a simmer for an hour. I've had barbecue joint greens that are heavily flavored with ham hocks or bacon that make up for the paste-like texture and the unappetizing grey color. I never cook them for this long myself due to one hour results, so I keep it to a limit of 30 minutes.

Otherwise they wouldn't turn out like this.

Blurry and tender yet still with something substantial to masticate, but more significantly, they remain a pleasant green. If I were to simply prepare greens like this again, I'd probably cut back a chili or two. For now, it was a bit spicy with a strong garlic flavor, so it was just o-kale.

Corny Chicken

Now that I've starting corning meat, along with help from a hefty paycheck, I can't stop corning or better known as brining.

I started with a refrigerator check though and found that I had beets and a giant Costco box of spinach that needed to be eaten. I roasted the beets in the oven at 450°F for 30 minutes (they were tiny), and combined the following into a dressing:

6 tbs balsamic vinegar

3 tbs oil

2 tbs honey

1 tbs dijon mustard

1 lemon juiced

1 hefty pinch of crushed black pepper

I tossed all this together with the baby spinach and homemade feta cheese that Gbomb gave me. With that, I give you this:

For the chicken thighs, I brined them for 4 hours in:

1 gallon water

1 c sea salt

1/2 c sugar

5 tsp pink salt

5 tsp dried garlic

5 tsp dried onion

5 tsp dried tarragon

3 tbs black peppercorns

1 bunch parsley

2 bay leaves

2 lemons halved and squeezed and tossed in.

Note: I used the massive excess of brine to brine a whole chicken.

Finding a pack of Bockwurst at the back of the bottom shelf in the icebox, I grilled those too with the thighs.

Post-grill:

Plated:

Note the rosy corned color of the chicken. I made it superscharf with German toothpaste tube mustard.

Cornography

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I'm not Irish by any means, but as I tell Europeans, all Americans think there's some Irish in them and especially so on this holiday when most everyone crams in the cured beef and boiled cabbage. I've been making this annual dish for some years now, but this is the first that I have made it bottom up; i.e., starting at the corning.

This dinner had to take a bit of elementary planning, as I had to make sure the beef brisket will have been brined enough to be fully corned, which generally takes about three days. I've found through experience that any longer for the first cut brisket makes for a saltier brisket of corned beef that must be simmered longer to reduce the saltiness. That meant buying the brisket by Monday. I managed to get it by Monday evening, and I thought it'd be fine if I started brining that evening.

Lets start on St. Paddy's day though. The morning involved pulsing the following together in the food processor for the soda bread:

4 c flour

2 tbs sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp backing soda

4 tbs cold butter

This is kneaded together after the addition of 2 c buttermilk, scored with an X about 1/2 in deep, and baked at 425°F for 40 minutes. Bang! Baked while dealing with my morning work files.

Before brining the 10 lbs of brisket I trimmed about 1 lb of fat from it, so I could render the beef fat for later use.

rendering...

Around 4 o'clock I rinsed the brine off of the brisket and set to boil it by 6 pm when people would start showing. My single bedroom apartment was at capacity tonight with a total of four people in it, so I missed a few photos opportunities, but I think everyone knows what a pot with liquid covering meat looks like. This is what a brisket of corned beef looks like after two hours of simmering.

I whipped up a mustard glaze with the following ingredients:

6 oz whole grain dijon mustard (half a Trader Joe's jar)

3 tbs honey

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp ginger (1/2 in piece)

1 tsp onion powder

1 clv garlic

Off to the grill!

After the glaze has formed a nice crust, I put it in a pan and tacked it against the outside wall of my apartment.

I then Sandra Lee'd it and made a tablescape out of my food. In case any of my guests had digestive issues with the meal, I left out some super gas treatment.

Boiled vegetables are boiled vegetables: generally boring even if you throw parsnips into the mix of cabbage, red potato, and carrots. It still all goes into the greasy corned beef broth that leeches more flavor that contributing. Good for later soup use, crappy for tonight's side. I suppose it cooks the veg though...

At any rate, this is when the rendered beef fat enters, and everything is tossed in the fat and seasoned with crushed black pepper. See!

The cabbage was never the star of the show though. The corned beef is, and I really couldn't stop laughing as I fluffed it like this.

Everything was delicious, and again I made way too much food for such a small dinner party. For some reason, it made sense that each person should have 2.5 lbs of corned beef. Despite the ingurgitating pleasure, I goofed the corning. I should've bought the brisket on Sunday. It only brined for 2.5 days before I cooked it. It could have benefited from an additional day. I spoiled everyone's meal by allowing certain parts of the brisket to have this unsightly appearance.