Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Friday, January 15, 2021
Amaranth Sushi with Smoked Trout
Amaranth Sushi 1/15/2021
Some grains simply don’t stick together well enough to hold
together in a rolled sushi, but amaranth is an exception. The nutty flavor also
goes so nicely with the fish that it doesn’t need any further embellishment.
¾ c water
1/8 tsp salt
½ c amaranth
1 smoked
trout filet
1 tbs
mayonnaise
2 sheets of
nori
Bring the water to the boil in a small pot with the salt.
Add the amaranth and lower the heat. Simmer very gently for 20 minutes covered.
Remove the lid and let the steam rise in the hot pot, stirring now and then,
until the amaranth is completely dry and cool. Mix the trout and mayonnaise.
Briefly pass the sheets of seaweed over an open flame for just a second so they
are toasty and crisp. Divide the amaranth between the two sheets and make a
thin layer. Place the trout in a thin line along the middle. Then place the
whole thing in a sushi rolling mat, and roll up tightly, pressing it in with
the edge of the mat rolled around it. Remove the whole roll, cut into 4 parts
with a serrated bread knife, very gently so you don’t squish out the contents.
Repeat with the other sheet. Makes 8 small pieces.
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Sev Nachos
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Among the most ingenious ways to transform chickpea flour is to extrude it through a brass device used in India to make sev – a kind of fried noodle that goes into a variety of dishes. There are various other machines that will work just as well, a small hand-held noodle extruder, a ricer and even a cookie press with a perforated die. Here I have obviously desecrated a revered snack food, but it is so remarkably delicious, I implore you to try it.
- 1 c chickpea flour
- 1 tsp vegetable oil
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp turmeric
- 1/8 tsp paprika
- 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
- Water (less than ¼ cup)
- 2 inches of vegetable oil in a pan
- 1 ounce mozzarella
- 1 Roma tomato
- 2 tbs sour cream
- ¼ c fresh cilantro
- 1 tbs milk
- 1/8 tsp of salt
Mix the
first 6 ingredients and add just enough water so it becomes a stiff dough. If
necessary add a little more chickpea flour and form into a cylinder with your
hands. Slide it into your press. There is no need to oil it, your hands, or
anything. Now heat your oil in the pan. To test take a tiny bit of the dough
and put it in the hot oil. See if it floats up. If it sinks and no bubbles form,
it’s not hot enough, if it browns quickly, it’s too hot. Adjust heat
accordingly. Then put the plunger in your extruder and turn the crank directly
over the oil, filling the whole pan with noodles. With a pair of metal skewers,
start turning them over. Cook on both sides about 5 minutes or until golden.
Remove with a slotted spoon or strainer and place on paper towels to cool.
Then
arrange on a baking sheet covered with tin foil, sprinkle on the cheese and the
tomato, chopped. Place in a toaster oven at 350 degrees until the cheese is
melted. While that is heating, mix the sour cream, chopped cilantro and salt,
thin with milk until it’s pourable. Take the nachos out of the oven a drizzle
with the sour cream mixture. Be forwarned: it’s awfully messy, but there’s no
other way to eat it but with your fingers.
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Boyos (Sephardic Rolls with Rabe and Feta)
“My grandma was the best cook ever!” says anyone who has
ever been interested in cooking and eating. I say the same thing myself. For
years I have been trying to replicate her recipes from memory. She died when I
was 13, so it’s mostly guesswork. One of these is boyos – a kind of round roll
with spinach and feta filling. There were also other fillings, like onion and
egg, ground beef too. I recall vividly one day exclaiming how much I liked
them, so whenever I saw her, she would have made dozens just for me, to put in
the freezer and have for breakfast every day. In all honesty, they were a bit
dense and since she was Mediterranean at heart, she poured olive oil on top. My
father would become incensed; he liked them fine without oil, but she insisted.
After a little sleuthing I found that boyoz, as they are
spelled in Turkey, are still made in the city of Izmir (Smyrna) where my
grandmother’s family came from, and they are still associated with the
Sephardic Jewish community. Of course the name is bollo – and they come
originally from Spain. They are often unfilled in Turkey and are made of a
pulled filo dough, light like a croissant. Nothing like my grandmother’s.
So with this recipe I thought about how much better they
would be light and flaky, so I made a simple yeasted and laminated croissant-like
dough with butter. I also used broccoli rabe instead of spinach, because the
oxalic acid in the latter strips the enamel off my teeth and makes them feel
chalky. And because rabe is the best vegetable on earth, period. Use a good
creamy feta too, ideally from Bulgaria, but French feta can be great too.
1/8 tsp sea salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1/3 c water, plus a little more for kneading
6 tbs salted butter
1 bunch broccoli rabe
3 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
6 oz feta cheese
1 egg
1 tsp each black and white sesame seeds
Mix the flour, salt, yeast and water and knead for about 10
minutes, keeping your hands wet with extra water (rather than dry with flour).
Place pats of the cold butter on a sheet of plastic wrap and put another sheet on
top. Roll it out into a thin square. Roll out the dough on a large wooden
board, this time floured. Remove the top sheet of plastic from the butter and
set it directly on the dough; then remove the other sheet. Fold the dough over
the butter like a book and roll out. Repeat folding over and rolling out 4 or 5
times more, wrap the dough in the plastic and let rest in the fridge for an
hour.
Chop the broccoli rabe, discarding the thick ends of the
stems. Fry in the oil and season with salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring now
and then, for about 15 minutes. Remove from the pan and place in a bowl to
cool. Then crumble in the feta and add ¾ of the egg. Mix well. And set aside
until the dough is finished resting in the fridge.
Roll out the dough on a floured board. Cut into four pieces.
Place the filling in the center of each piece and fold over the sides, encasing
the filling. Then turn them over, so the top is smooth. Brush with the
remaining egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Then heat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the boyos for 10
minutes and then lower the heat to 350 and cook another 20 minutes until
browned. Eat them hot, for breakfast of course.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Recipe Testing
First get on your sturdy hiking shoes and a good hat and a
little blue backpack from Disney Word with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit on it. Set
out early, but not too much before stores open. Head north. Don’t forget your
earbuds. Prepare to spend about 4 hours listening to Trout Fishing in America,
which will lull your brain into a state of hypnosis. This will help you focus
on the recipe at hand, still as yet unimagined. Drop into a little party supply
store that is almost always closed, and for no good reason buy a few 3-inch
tinned brioche molds for $2.40 each. Keep going north. Stop in the famous San
Francisco Boudin Bakery chain, which you haven’t been in for about a decade,
when your son was taking guitar lessons and the other son wanted clam chowder
in a sourdough bowl. Buy some sourdough and wonder, as always, how that the
particular lactobacillus strain can survive the heat of Stockton. Keep walking
north. Imagine stuffing the bread into the brioche molds. Pick up some vodka
(best to plan ahead) and put it in Oswald. Buy some olive oil, the last drop of
which you used last night. The backpack will begin to sag by now. Richard
Brautigan will make you say Trout Fishing in America when the person at
the cash register asks if this is credit or debit. When you finally get home,
cut the sourdough into thin three-inch rounds with crust all around. Butter
every surface, including the sides, your hands, and the top of your head. Suddenly
remember that although you have no trout, there are chunks of salmon, well
salted, strewn with dill and splashed with Linie Aquavit, which is better than
any other because it has crossed the equator. Unlike the salmon, who only went
upstream. But they didn’t have a ship, which is why they die after spawning.
The people who bring Linie Aquavit across the equator, they do not die after
spawning. Squish your buttered bread, but not your head, into the brioche molds
and fill with a few nubbins of cured salmon. Nibble on the salmon, then
remember that you put the vodka in the freezer and make a drink with lime,
sugar and lime-flavored seltzer so you can bear out the 15 minutes you arbitrarily
decide will be the time this recipe takes to bake. Preheat the toaster oven.
Crack and egg, add a pinch of salt and pour into the molds. Whisk the brioche molds
into the toaster oven and sip your cocktail. When the bell goes off, remove
them, take a few pictures and pry them out of the molds and take a few more.
Eat the whatchamacallits with your cocktail. Oh just call them Trout Fishing
in America. Mayonaise.
Friday, October 16, 2020
Idli with Almond Butter and Persimmon Chutney
Were I to tell you that this recipe is highly reminiscent of
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you probably wouldn’t believe me, but it’s
true. Idli, from Southern India, are soft cakey rounds that are oddly like
white bread but pleasantly sour and made entirely from fermented rice and
beans. Almond butter is more nuanced than peanut but either would work well,
and the chutney is infinitely more vibrant than jelly. Combining these
ingredients also came to me entirely serendipitously. About a decade ago I
planted a little persimmon tree at the corner of my house, where it received
next to no light and even less water. I vaguely remembered it was there, but it
never bore fruit and never grew. This past season we trimmed back nearby trees
and fixed the sprinkler. I happened to be poking around in front of the house
mid October, and what do you know? Three gorgeous fuyu persimmons, crisp and
sweet and ready to go on the idli I had just steamed for breakfast.
In terms of cost, I bought a large bag of basmati rice for $5.99
and beans $2.99. To make the idli batter, I used about a dollar’s worth of rice
and 50 cents for the beans. The almond butter was already in the cabinet and
the persimmon, free. So breakfast for me, just a cup of the batter, of which I
had about 7 cups, so that means this cost 21 cents. I tested it a few times to
get the cooking time right, so let’s be fair and say 63 cents to test and 25
cents for the other ingredients – a shallot and a few raisins, a spoon of almond
butter. Eminently affordable, unusual, and quick. The only thing you need to
start ahead of time is the batter, but it takes very little effort.
Idli
2 c basmati rice
½ c urad dahl (tiny white black
gram beans with the outer coating removed – not lentils)
Spring water or filtered tap water
½ tbs butter
1 tbs almond butter
Then generously butter a small bowl about 4 inches in
diameter and pour in some batter, about half way up. Place the bowl into a
steamer and cook for 12 minutes. A smaller bowl will take a little less time,
larger more. Remove from the steamer and let cool for a few minutes. Run a
knife around the perimeter to loosen the idli and turn out onto a board. Slice
the idli horizontally so you have a top and bottom, like a little bun. Spread
the almond butter on one side.
Persimmon Chutney
2 tbs neutral oil
1 small shallot
1 knob of ginger
1 small fuyu persimmon
About 20 golden raisins
1 tbs vinegar
When you put your idli in to steam, peel and chop the shallot and start to cook gently in the oil. Peel the ginger with a spoon, slice and dice finely, then add to the pan. Chop the persimmon finely and add. Likewise chop the raisins and add them. Splash with vinegar. Ideally this should be cooked just enough by the time your idli are done, about 12 minutes. Or let cook a few minutes longer if necessary. Put a good dollop of the chutney on top of the almond butter, close and serve up, just as you would a PB&J sandwich.
Friday, October 2, 2020
It's a Wrap
I am fairly committed to writing a book about breakfast now. This very simple, quick and easy dish I made this morning has me excited to send out a proposal and get the ball rolling. I'm up to 16 recipes in the past few weeks, pretty much one a day. Well, here's a sample:
2 tbs chevre
1 tbs umeboshi plum paste, found in a Japanese grocery
¼ c walnuts, crushed
1 tsp unrefined sugar
¼ tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
3 slices leftover turkey or roasted turkey cold cuts
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp maple syrup
1 tbs walnut oil
Pinch of salt
Handful of baby spinach
Warm the flatbread over an open
flame. Then spread with the chevre and squirt on the umeboshi paste. This is a
stand in for cranberry sauce, it’s more sour, salty and sits in the wrap
better. Spread it around evenly. Heat the crushed walnuts in a nonstick pan
with the sugar and salt and cinnamon, stirring constantly and being careful not
to let burn. Transfer to a plate to cool. Then sprinkle on the flatbread. Add
the slices of turkey. In a small bowl mix the vinegar, syrup, oil and salt to
form a dressing. Add in the spinach and mix with your hands. Then transfer to
the flatbread. Roll up the bread tightly, cut on the diagonal and serve at
once.