Miso, umami, and those nifty Japanese

Umami is considered the fifth taste to go along sour, sweet, salty, and bitter.  It is more of an unctous, feel-good, yummy in my tummy kind of flavor.  To me at least.  The Japanese came up with the name for it (and maybe were the first to figure it out? Maybe?) and appropriately so since a lot of their cuisine is jacked full of L-glutatmate.  Miso soup, that piping hot sushi joint staple, is filled to the brim with umami ingredients, and yes miso is one of them.

I usually find it in paste form and it is simply mixed with water.  Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer for a few, taste, adjust, use.  It was the base of the sauce with the salmon dish pictured above. 

First get your pan really hot.  The test I like to use is to drop some driplets (those are baby drops) into the dry pan.  If the driplets bounce and dance around the pan I call it ready to go.  If they stick in one spot and boil; wait longer.  If they immediately vanish in a puff of smoke; I don't know what to tell you.  Next was some peanut oil and let this get nice and hot once again.  It should shimmer slightly.  My seasoned salmon goes in, presentation side down, and I turn the heat down to medium and don't touch it.  Let it get a nice, flavorful crust on the pretty side and do almost all of the cooking that way.  The salmon shouldn't stick at all.  If it did it means you're an impatient ninny-muggins and you didn't let the pan get hot enough.  Flip it for a minute or so and then I put mine into a low (180F) toaster over to keep it warm.  Back to the pan we put in minced garlic and ginger, stir, smell, and toss in sliced red pepper and mushrooms (shiitakes if ya got 'em).  When they are half done I put in my miso/water mixture, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce.  Then baby bok choy and clams go in with the lid on to steam the goodness in. 

When the clams have popped open it is time to plate din din!  I made a nice bed of the veggies, put the salmon on top (with some toasted seasame seeds and sliced raw scallions, arrange the clams, and sauced it up!  (Next time I am going to use smaller clams.  Count necks would be a good option.  These suckers were a little too big and chewy.

Library requirements

In the two year hiatus of this blog more than a couple food books came into my collection. However two of them have become my daily go-to books for inspiration and direction; The Flavor Bible and Michael Ruhlman's Twenty. The Flavor Bible is a list of ingredients with a sub-list of all the ingredients that pair with the category. So if you have a random impulse to buy crayfish and don't know what to do with them... The Flavor Bible lists everything that top chefs from around the world say pair with crayfish. And, between font style and punctuation, it tells you the "strength" with which it pairs. When looking at crayfish it lists basil and also thyme with thyme being the stronger match. This book is a great resource for recipe formulation. I use it more than any other book in my collection.

Ruhlman's Twenty explores twenty fundamental ingredients and techniques to our cooking today. There is a brief, or not so, dialogue about the properties of the subject and then recipes follow. The best part of it to me is that it is all the basics. One topic he chose is water. Hard to get more basic than that. Don't be fooled into thinking the book doesn't offer you anything either. He sets the groundwork for you to go into culinary ga-ga land if you want.  Blogs need a photo it seems so above is obviously a hard boiled egg, also which is in Ruhlman's Twenty.

Building Blocks

Here at House Zube we are working to establish a good pantry collection. And not just dried pasta, canned thingies, and lots of vinegars and oils, but the freezer as well. I come from a Hunter-Gatherer background and a full freezer, and while I don't hunt anymore I can gather with the best of 'em. It's fun to wake up, want duck breast, and have some chillin' (get it!) in the freezer. My freezer pantry is being extended to more then just purchased protein too. I have decided to make more building blocks, to have on hand, for my cooking. For years I have been making big batches of chicken stock, freezing it into blocks, and storing for use as needed. Now I'm expanding. So far I have stock, some pork braising liquid,and soffrito (slow cooked onions and tomatoes in olive oil) put away for a rainy day. Today I am making Thomas Keller's mushroom conserva from Ad Hoc. You take a bucket load of mushrooms and steep them in hot, infused olive oil for 45 minutes and then keep them in the fridge for up to a month. And per usual for Mr. TK this recipe is about layering flavors so that the sum is greater than the components. -fast forward a couple of weeks- "Hmm, I want chicken and mushrooms tonight," you think quietly to yourself on the ride home. You could slice mushrooms and saute in some olive oil, maybe even add a little garlic or onion. Some thyme is always nice but you don't have any and its 7F outside your car. OR you could use the mushrooms that have been so lovingly bathing in the opulence of infused olive oil for the last fortnight eagerly awaiting the chance to adorn you plate! Personally I am in favor of option B. An hour of work (including steeping time) and I will have this rich, umami-packed "condiment" ready at a moment's notice. Sign me up please! 2 lbs assorted mushrooms (its January in Maine... I used cremini, shiitake, and button) 2 bay leaves 2 cups olive oil 4 thyme sprigs 1 rosemary sprig salt and pepper to taste 3 tbs sherry vinegar 1 teaspoon piment d'Espelette (fancy chili powder. I used guajillo. You could use ancho, cayenne, or just not) Yields around 3 cups. Heat olive oil, thyme, bay leaves, and rosemary in a wide bottom pot (I used my dutch oven) to 170F. Add mushrooms, bring temp back up to 170F for 5 minutes. Cut heat and cover. Let it stand for 45 minutes. Package it up in an airtight container with the mushrooms submerged and put in the fridge for up to one month. That's it. It is that simple. Bonus feature is that when the mushrooms are gone you have some very nice mushroom-infused olive oil for vinaigrettes, bread-dipping, or whatever else tickles your fancy!

A buddy of mine has started a food blog.

Go read it. :) Carlisle Kitchen. Even if he does spell my name wrong...

Whip it! Whip it good...

As I have mentioned in the last couple of posts my current reading material has been to go back through Ratio and pick up on old inspirations. Well today we are like Devo and we're gonna whip it good.

We are talking about mayonnaise here folks, or as we like to call it at Chez Zube, food grease. And if you use your Sherlock Holmes' powers of deduction you realize that we are making it from scratch! This was one of those mystical miracles (and not Miracle Whip... yuck!) that I knew the basics of, but it still loomed intimidatingly in the shadows. Let's just say it has been conquered.

The great thing about Ratio is that it breaks recipes down to,well, ratios. The bare bones of what is needed is explained. Take for example vinaigrettes and how they all start with a base ratio of 3:1 oil to acid. You can then take that knowledge and go running willy-nilly into the gastronomic wilderness with the endless possibilities. Well mayonnaise follows that same rule of having a base ratio. 2:1:1. Two ounces of water, one egg yolk, and one cup of oil. All that is left is a bowl, whisk, and a shoulder with Lance Armstrong endurance! And like a vinaigrette once you have the base recipe down there is so much you can do to customize it. Acid, herbs, spices galore are simply begging to be whipped into this creamy concoction and how are you to deny them that?

Get your bowl out and I suggest a heavier one on a non-slip surface. We used a Pyrex bowl on a silicone pot holder. I say "we" because Wife Zube was an integral part of the process. I apparently do not possess Armstrong deltoids. Not yet at least. The chemical process that we are looking for is emulsification and according to Ruhlman room temperature ingredients do this best. So make sure to get your egg out of the fridge and separated with plenty of time to warm up. Into the bowl goes the two ounces of water, I squeezed a teaspoon or so of lime juice in, the egg yolk, and a pinch of salt. These were whisked together until completely blended. Next drip, literally, a couple of drops into the bowl while whisking. You'll be able to see it incorporate and become slightly frothy. Drip some more. Whisk some more. I added a tablespoon or so this way until I could see some substance to the mixture. Now the oil was added in a thin stream while I, or Wife, whisked our hearts out. We might have been a little over-zealous, but I didn't want my first hand-whisked mayo to break. The humiliation...

It only took a couple of minutes and a couple drops of sweat to yield a beautiful,shiny bowl of homemade mayonnaise. It was a nice little achievement. I know that at some point my attempts will fail and end in a sludge of broken oil and yolk, but numero uno was a smashing hit.

Your mayo will last for a week or so if you keep it free of garlic/shallots/etc so I took half and put it away for later. The half that was for dinner had cumin, coriander, minced garlic, salt, pepper, and more lime juice added in. If there had been any cilantro roaming around I would have wrassled that in as well. The reason for this southwestern flair was due to there being a skirt steak marinating in the fridge in lime & orange juice, garlic, oregano, cumin, salt, and cayenne. I thought a nice Tex-Mex style mayo would do quite nice by a fajita-marinated skirt steak. I was right.

Some family came over for late evening snacks and the skirt steak was broiled to medium rare and sliced thinly on the bias. Set out family style, it hit the spot with a dab of mayo. Meat and food grease. Yum. There was going to be a photo, but deliciousness was quicker then photography.

Melted Onion and Potato Gratin

Pop quiz hotshot (bonus points for naming the movie): What is better than a TK recipe? Two TK recipes rolled into one! Its easy math, awesome + awesome = more awesome! I alluded to this magical marvel in the new Twitter box to the right of where your eyeballs are looking at this moment. Ha, made you look! It is there though actually, I am just not sure about it yet. Maybe it will grow on me, sorta like a fungus...

Anywho, the recipes at hand are two Thomas Keller's that I mastermindedly melded. And the self-explanatory title clearly indicates which ones; melted onions and potato gratin. The melted onions have been used many times in the past and if I was better versed in HTML I would have a snazzy link for you to click to transport you within the realm of fond. However I am not snazzy, so you have to scroll. Ghetto I know.

Step One is the melted onions for the gratin. I inadvertently bought onions and Yukon Golds (he recommends russets for this dish. I'm sorry!) when we already had some. So now I was faced with the problem of what to do with my excess. Potato and onion are a classic combo, kinda like Mork and Mindy, Jekyll and Hyde, bacon and anything else ever. The neat thing about melting the onions, as I am sure you have all discovered on your own...right?, is that they get kinda creamy. Now when you hear potatoes, onions, and creamy you think gratin/casserole/baked dish jobbie. Or at least I did. So, make some melted onions and then see Step Two.

Step Two is potato gratin where we sneakily will slip in the onions near the end. But first take some taters, peel, and thinly slice 'em. If you don't have a mandolin go out and buy one and some Band-Aids. Everyone cuts themselves once. And badly. Slice your spuds to 1/8 inch-ish and it helps to slice them directly into cold water to prevent discoloration. My cooking vessel was a 9" Pyrex pie dish and ruined the day for about 5 small to medium potatoes. Next they were layered into a pan and covered with cream. Now TK didn't specify what kind of cream and I had a little of a two kinds. So my gratin got Half&Half and 2% milk. I'm thinking heavy cream would have worked best. Either way it is important to heavily season the cream. This is the medium that is going to season some very bland potatoes. Salt, pepper, and nutmeg are good choices. Simmer the pot of potats until the slices are just slightly not tender. Strain the cream out and reserve. This is also a good chance to taste the seasoning of the cream again. A step I forgot to do. (There is that foreshadowing again!) Now I splashed in(or gently ladled depending on your mood) enough cream to coat the bottom of the pan and laid a layer of potato down. Next a layer of melted onion. Rinse. Repeat. Make sure your final addition is a enough cream to pretty much cover the tater-onion concoction and then sprinkle on some bread crumbs. Bake in a 375F oven until the taters are fully tender and bread crumbs brown and crispy. Let cool, slice, and feast.

A little background on my night of making this dish. I worked all day on not much sleep and was dragging pretty hard. I came home with grand intentions of a full meal for Wife Zube (who was working until later) but only made it through the gratin before succumbing to the call of a comfortable chair. So, as the post photo indicates, we had this for breakfast and it was perfect. Underseasoned, but it went really well with a nice runny egg yolk and salt. Enjoy!

Chinese style pork short ribs

Chinese takeout is a good idea until you get halfway through it. That lip-smacking MSG-laden goodness suddenly turns into a cornstarch paved highway to bloatedville. Even though your eyes are now glazed with that syrupy sauce that was recently a pure delight, you still keep eating yourself deep into the pit of "that was a bad idea". Sadly that is Chinese food as most Americans know it, including myself. At some point I am going to feast on authentic Chinese cuisine but until then I have to fend for myself.

I like Top Chef. That is my confession. It is also the extent of my reality television watching. I like to see what the chefs come up with (both good and bad) and to witness the guest judges "in person". When you see that many cooks coming up with two dishes a night per week for X weeks, there is bound to be some inspiration in the mix. A recent winning dish was Chinese style pork belly, pickled daikon radish, and watermelon "air". I didn't really like the overall dish or the winner, but Chinese style pork has me head over heels.

I got no belly, but I has me some short ribs. They are both fatty pork chunks that need long cooking, so that means we are green light on this mission! The only other ingredients are soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and water. I have it all but hoisin sauce, but I know my local grocer carries a couple of varieties.

Enter main obstacle for recipe accuracy: hoisin sauce. I push my cart down the fancy food aisle looking for the Asian section (gotta love Maine) and then peruse my choices of hoisin. *sigh* Wheat in all. Wife Zube and wheat equals no fun. I like fun. Ok. Do I abandon my endeavour or keep on keeping on? Grr, I want my Chinese pork! I will make my own hoisin (or at least pretend to) and reap the rewards of slow-cooked porcine flesh!

So now I look up hoisin recipes on the internet, read a couple, and then completely ignore them. I'll just make some barbecue sauce and use some Asian ingredients (mainly Sriracha hot sauce)to make it Eastern. Should work out right? *quiet laughter in the background* Or maybe not. My Asian barbecue sauce was just downright weird. It didn't taste bad, just weird. Guess what? Didn't stop me...

I got the ol' short ribs browning in my trusty dutch oven while loving the sweet smell of pork and daydreaming of the end product. Once sufficiently browned I deglazed the pan with some chicken stock and poured in my soy sauce, imposter barbecue sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and water. Its looking pretty insipid despite the powerful flavors in the mix, but we charge on ahead irregardless.

I am going to take this short station break to point out, if you had missed it, the blatant tone of "hey this isn't quite right, but I am sure it will work out fine if I just close my eyes and keep on cooking like I got Chinese skillz". Nothing like foreshadowing eh? (<--- props to Honors English for that technique.)

Out comes the pot a few hours later and when I take the lid off I am pleasantly surprised. I have a nice darkly lacquered piece of pork staring up at me in a sufficiently thick sauce. Perhaps the close-your-eyes-and-cook-like-you-know-how approach worked?

We plated the pork up over garlic green beans and a rice/veggie combo. Drizzle some sauce, sit down, grab a fork and say, "Huh... kinda weird." Next time the main ingredient is hoisin sauce I am either going to find a gluten-free product or something else to cook. Zube's Asian Barbecue will not be going to market soon. Not bad, just weird.

School Lunch!

Sometimes you just need an excuse to use your Fry-Daddy. Fortunately for us we found an excuse tucked into the back of a cabinet. Ceramic lunch trays with the compartments and everything! Wife Zube found these a few years ago at Marden's and couldn't resist their allure. She brought them home and we both agreed that we could do some fun food ideas with them. Then we promptly put them away and forgot about them for two years.

So yesterday with our dust encrusted lunch trays in hand we pondered what to make. If you take just a couple of minutes to reminisce about your own school lunch experiences, you'll discover there are plenty of options. We went with chicken nuggets, tater tots, fish sticks, and green beans. Wife Zube made up a batch of gluten free brownies for desert as well.

Obviously something had to be done to elevate school lunch from the wincingly painful memories we have of gluey potatoes and grease soaked everything. The whole point of serving food on lunch trays would be lost if it actually tasted as poorly as school lunch did. Jamie Oliver would be very upset too.

Operation Chicken Nugget: I have been perusing my copy of Ratio lately looking for inspiration and by golly I found some! I made my chicken nuggets by following the recipe for a basic chicken mousseline and folding in chunks of chicken breast. In retrospect it wasn't the best technique for the application, but it got the nuggets fried if you know what I mean. Mousseline is a fancy French technique for more or less pureeing a protein with some stuff into a paste. You can then use your meat paste (actually called a farce, but I couldn't resist typing meat paste) as dumplings, ravioli filling, sausage, etc. Or for a chicken nugget!
Get your food processor cold, and by this I mean I put mine in the freezer. You need 8 oz of chicken thigh meat, 1 egg, pinch of salt, and 4 oz of heavy cream. Pulse the chicken, salt, and egg until pureed and then drizzle in the cream slowly. Bam! Meat paste. In went some diced chicken breast and then I was stumped. The farce was way to loose for me to shape into nuggets and bread. Huh. So I read Ratio for a second and got my next wave of inspiration via Ruhlman! I plunked gobs of them into a pot of simmering water, pretending they were dumplings, and let them cook enough to set into shape. Out of the water, cooled/dried on a rack, and presto they were breaded and fried!

Tater-Tot Mania: Michael Symon does a side dish of crab tater tots. I just omitted the crab, but put in a whole head of roasted garlic instead! This is a pretty straight forward recipe. If you need to fancy it up you can talk about making a pate a choux and folding in pomme de terre. (I think that is French for potato...) Melt two tablespoons of butter in 1/4 cup of water and when it simmers whisk in 1/4 cup of flour. It will bind up instantly and you want this so don't scream and run away like I did my first time. (Boy that was embarrassing.) Let it cool a bit because you need to mix in an egg and scrambled doesn't really work here. After the egg is incorporated you can congratulate yourself on making pate a choux and then fold in one cup of mashed potatoes and a head of roasted garlic. Shape into tots, bread, and fry.

Fish Stick Fiasco: I didn't do anything creative with the fish sticks. I cut up cod and made a batter of club soda and flour. The bubbles in the soda make the batter a little lighter. Sorry, but that's all I got for these sticks.

Green Bean Berets: Simply sauteed with garlic and onion. I thought about frying these also, but too much of a good thing crossed my mind.

Our selection of dipping sauces were homemade tartar, homemade barbeque, and some San-J spicy thai peanut sauce. K and E were the guest of honor so they went first in line and got to wear the hair nets!

My tummy hurts...

Tonight started with a healthy salad and then plummeted into an abyss of overly rich food. Actually the true start wasn't exactly heart friendly either. Christmas-time brought some Stilton (English blue cheese) straight from London and some smoked German sausage my way. That was my baseline for the evening. And it was delicious.
Wife Zube's sister made a bedazzling salad of arugula, bacon (obviously), cucumber, cheese, red pepper, and red onion. And that was the end of healthy.
I have made my own version of mussels that are a combination of a TK recipe and from Fore Street (a downtown Portland restaurant). Basically your typical two pound bag of mussels gets cooked in a heavenly mixture of a stick of butter(!), thyme, roasted garlic, white wine, almonds, and dijon mustard. Nice and light...
We then finished with Michael Symon's Chicken, Rosemary, and Chevre Mac n Cheese. Which has only a couple of ingredients: chicken, rosemary, pasta, goat cheese, and 32 oz of heavy cream! It is a succulent delight so hold your judging eyes until they feast on it. The recipe for this doosie is located somewhere in the depths (albeit not that deep) of this blog.

I need to go to bed.

First snow storm of the year and a 10 min drive is at 50 and counting. *sigh*

For all you food dorks like me out there

Alinea at Home has a post about tips for designing her new kitchen which I skimmed through but then caught a very interesting food nugget at the bottom. Harvard School of Applied Engineering and Science does a class on the science of cooking. As in let's make a mathematical formula that can empirically explain how egg proteins denature (read that as "cook") when certain levels of heat are applied. Blah, blah, blah. Okay that part is not really interesting to us chemical/mathematical mortals but the next link was! They have guest lecturers from molecular gastronomy restaurants! Alinea is a molecular gastronomic restaurant so they had Grant Achatz (the chef/owner) come speak on what he does. His food gets critized for being too un-food like and he has some crazy combinations on the same plate. In the video though he goes through the thought process on how he arrives at the finished product.

Grant Explains It All

Pork chops, sherry, and dates

For the last three Turkey Days I have been evolving a squash, date, and walnut dish that inevitably leads me to have excess dates on hand. The only dish I have in my culinary arsenal is wrapping them in bacon, drizzling with honey, and roasting them into succulent nuggets of pristine gastronomic delight. And while that is a solid way to consume said dates, it just doesn't feed the masses. This year however I am putting an end to that silliness.

I plunked around in my cookbooks and came up with a date and Madeira wine recipe for guinea fowl in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I am fresh out of guinea fowl and Madeira, but I do have some sherry on hand. Hey, they're both fortified wines right? I also have some pork chops from Windy Hill Farms in the freezer as well. Close enough in my book.

So like most other protein with pan sauce recipes we start by getting the pan hot and then getting a nice brown on the chops and fond in the pan. When I flipped the chops I also buried a couple of cloves and bay leaves under them and put the pan in a 350F oven. After 8 minutes or so (really I have no idea how long, but "8 minutes or so" sounds much better then the truth) the pan came out of the oven and the chops removed to a plate to rest. I feel slightly tempted to make a very bad pun about the chops being tired from jumping around in the pan, because saute translates into jumped. But I won't do that.

Now we move on to the pan sauce part. I put a couple pieces (half inch by one inch) of orange zest and half a cup of Sherry into the hot pan and deglazed the fond (repetition technique here, I am embedding fond into your subconscious) using the zest as a sort of organic scrubby pad. This also does a nice job of distributing the oils in the zest throughout the dish. The same idea as wiping a martini glass rim with a twist. Once this boiled a bit I added some turkey stock, chopped dates, and a few small pieces of cinnamon stick and let it all reduce down. Once the sauce came together I plated it all up and we dined.

Three things:
1) I used turkey stock because we just had Turkey Day and the carcass was used to make stock. If you didn't do this or make soup with it then shame on you. *finger waggling*

2) The original reason why I had dates in the first place is for a squash, walnut, date dish. I needed sides to go with the chops so we had sauteed onions and arugula in a walnut vinaigrette and roasted butternut squash.

3) In all honesty this came out okay. Not superb or tear-inducing. I admit I was neglectful of the sauce. I should have reduced the wine down more before adding the stock, and the seasoning was underdone. Next time...

Quickie food notes

Once again Michael Ruhlman has a great post on small gadgets that make a huge difference in the kitchen. Just like most things in life the same goes for cooking; the proper tools make it that much more fun/easy.

Ruhlman's blog

Yankee magazine also did a really neat article on a small town in Northern-ish Vermont called Wolcott. It is how the town has gone green/self-sustainable/locally sourced/etc and is succeeding at it.

Wolcott Vermont in Yankee magazine

Why turkey is like Chinese take-out

Turkey Day has come and passed, tummies have been stuffed, and pants un-done to make room for more pie. It is great to sit down and know that an amazingly high percentage of the rest of our country is doing the same thing with basically the same food on the same day. Pretty uniting, eh?
I have decided that turkey is magical. Magical in the same way that Chinese take-out containers are; you know the white ones that rice comes in? Yeah, the little box that makes you disappointed that "that was all you got" somehow spills forth enough rice to feed a small third world country. Don't know how they do it, but its magic for sure. Turkey's magic is still food-based but it comes in the form of enticing you even deeper into the pits of gluttony. It isn't malevolent, but simply wants to share all it's tryptophanic delights with you and it only has a day or two to accomplish this.

This is actually the answer to the question that we all mutter/curse/whine at some point on Turkey Day: "Why did I eat so much?" Turkey magic. Duh!

For me personally the magic while at the table is pretty standard, but its later that the juice (or perhaps gravy is more appropriate in this situation) really gets poured on. The turkey is still on the counter or tented under foil in the fridge. Purely wonderful elves have done the dishes and family/guests are spread throughout the house making very odd digestion noises, sometimes no so quietly. And then you hear this quiet voice in your ear, that little knock-knock on your psyche. Come eat me. Next thing you know someone walks into the kitchen and catches you chomping madly with both hands actually in the fridge ripping chunks of cold meat from the carcass. Your shoulders are probably hunched, feet spread for balance, and one eye is open wider than the other. You might be taking the time to salt the turkey before consuming but really you are throwing pinches of salt in your mouth and mixing a la minute.

Nine guests and a twenty-three pound bird equals turkey sandwiches for days and days. And the beauty is that only three ingredients are required: turkey, bread, and mayo. Sure there are an almost infinite number of possibilities (squash makes an awesome spread) but let's not fall into the trap of over-complicating matters. Simple is perfect and it keeps the magic alive.

Radishes (and not the dried wafer salad version either!)

I am pretty sure that most, and I mean all, of us have mainly been exposed to radishes in only one form; sliced rounds on a salad. Occasionally they will be fresh, peppery, and crunchy, but the usual state of despair is dessicated, rubbery, and devoid of any flavor that you actually want to have in your mouth. I like the concept of the radish, but once I start consuming I get dubious as to why I was all excited. Don't get me wrong, I like the taste, but it seems like they should just be better.

*The lights dim, a single spot light hits the corner of the stage, and in enters the hero of our story, the Pan Braised Radish*

It never occurred to me to actually apply some heat to these little guys until I came across a recipe that did precisely just that. These are good! Wife Zube ate her first one and sorta did a double-take at the unexpected deliciousness. And another cool aspect of this is that start to finish is about 15 minutes with little attention needed. This is helpful for all you ADHD suffering cooks out there.

We had these hot as a side dish for our main meal, but I am thinking cooled down these buggers could make a cool amuse/canape/something fun to snack on.

After rinsing and trimming the root/green ends the basic goal is to make them all about the same size. Same size means equal cooking time and Grandpa doesn't get stuck with a rock hard radish in his dentures. The general dimensions vary but I would suggest taking your smallest one and halving it unless your smallest one is big then quarter it. If it is huge the 1/6th it... I'm not being that helpful here, eh? Just make them all somewhat similar. Okay...moving on.

For two eaters you most likely have 8-10 radishes cut into appropriate sized bits and now you'll need a shallot finely minced. Into a hot saute pan with a bit of oil/butter go the shallots and sweat them for a minute or so. Medium to med-high heat we don't want to scorch of shallots here. The radishes should mostly lay in a single layer and not have to compete for prime real estate in the pan. Add in the radishes (as a side note I keep starting to type turnip instead of radish) and a tablespoon of butter, or more if you are feeling naughty. Next into the mix add either chicken stock or water. Add stock/water until the radishes are half submerged (or half not submerged for you optimists out there) and simmer gently until the liquid is mostly evaporated. At this point you get to eat one to check for doneness. I recommend adding too little liquid at first and then putting more in if needed. Once the radishes are glazed in the stock/water/butter glaze shake a dash or two of red wine vinegar and chuck a small pinch of sugar in. Swirl your raddies around and let the pungent, nose-hair burning vinegar smell die down a bit. Taste to make sure you likey and serve!

Today's disconcerting thought

A friend of mine now works for a small bio-diesel plant and there primary source of oil is restaurants. They have been approaching restaurants and offering to buy their used fryolater oil in order to convert it into bio-diesel. This is taking the oil (in almost every case) away from a massive international company. This company certainly did nothing as "green", eco-friendly, or in anyway constructive. Nope, they take the used, nasty, burnt oil, filter it, and then sell it to the beef industry. Where it goes into cattle feed. And then you eat it.
Once again, please take the time to find a locally raised beef, chicken, and pork supplier. Also, as I have mentioned in the past, Hannaford Nature's Place sticker seems to be sourced from more responsible farms. A couple extra dollars spent will help a local business out and give you a much superior product.

What I should have said was...

...see you in a couple of months. My name is Zube and I am a bad summer cook. That is my confession (and I don't like olives!). Sure I marinade, grill, and all that, but there really isn't any of my soul in it. My summer cooking tends to be more mechanical than passionate, more necessity than pleasure. It is absurdly ironic that when I want to cook the least, I have the largest plethora of produce available. But that is how it is.

It isn't that I didn't eat well during the summer, but rather I ate differently. Fast and furious grilling, quick salads, and lots of marinades/vinaigrettes filled the summer months. Wife Zube made me a burger one day that made a tear fall from my eye and I had a garlic-herb-dijon, hickory-smoked prime rib at Cape Cod that made me dance a jig! (And I have totally stolen that recipe and used it at work and home.)

That being said it is the end of October, fond has sat dormant for almost 5 months, and I am cookin' again! And it feels goooooood. Yesterday I had the house to myself and spent hours prepping for a small dinner party that night. Going through the quiet mechanics of chopping, peeling, roasting, etc. just puts me at ease and sorta re-establishes my being. Sounds cheesy (we did have goat cheese...) and it is, but we all have our thing that recharges our battery. Mine happens to be standing in a kitchen for a couple of hours. Sue me.

A couple of days ago Wife Zube and I realized that we both had Thursday off and that we hadn't had anyone over for awhile. Text message sent, dinner party guest list established. What to cook? Well, in the recent past I had been politely reminded by Wife Zube that I pretty much always make some form of chicken, potato, and veg for the incoming couple. So instead we took it to Fancy Town:

Second Course (first one was camera shy)
Roasted beets and sweet potatoes with watercress, goat cheese, and walnut vinaigrette


Third Course
Spaghetti squash, scallops, red curry, and fresh basil


Fourth Course
Seared duck breast, brussel sprouts, and creamy dijon-garlic sauce


Fifth Course
Braised pork shortrib, glazed purple turnips and carrots


It is good to be back. Part of the side effect of this blog is that it pushes me to make new/different things or else face the consequences of a really boring blog. This is going to be a good winter for food, I can almost taste it.

Nine days! Yikes!

I knew I was deliquent in posting, but nine days without word is unacceptable! My apologies to you all. Tonight's post is pretty much shooting from the hip, albeit an Asian hip.

It is 11 p.m., Wife Zube is out of town, I just got home from work and cleaned up, and I am hungry. I had originally planned on some form of Asian take-out for tonight, but didn't follow through. But I still want Asian flavor. Huh. I thought about the contents of my pantry, fridge, freezer and came up with this dish. It is a bastardized version of multiple different Asian cuisines, but I am a white honky and I don't know any better.

Epiphany number 1: I have really good chicken stock.
Epiphany number 2: I have fresh ginger.
Epiphany number 3: Enough said.

Here is the dilly-o for tonight's recipe:

2 cups of chicken stock
1 tbs fresh minced ginger
1 tbs miso paste (not really needed, but I had some)
1 scallion sliced thin
some celery leaves
a small handful of rice noodles, you pick which type
1 egg, beaten
crushed red pepper, if you like-a da heat.

Bring the stock to a boil and combine all ingredients except the egg. Cook this until the noodles are just shy of how you like them. While stirring the soup, slowly pour in the beaten egg and then keep stirring for a few moments. Pour into a bowl, wait a couple minutes, and devour.

In retrospect I am happy to have forgotten my take-out fantasy. This bowl of delight was beyond easy, used up random stuff in my fridge, and made my tongue thank me. It is a fair reminder of how delicious food can be made in minutes with basic ingredients.

P.S. Good chicken stock is key for this dish. Actually it is key for any dish that calls for chicken stock. And so on and so forth for beef, veggie, and fish stock. Good stock is what separates most home cooking from restaurant quality. I keep saying to Google it, but one of these days I will post a recipe for it. Until then though, Google is your friend in stock.

P.S.S. The photo is from my phone. I scrounged around but the ol' digital is no where to be found. Let your mind visual the flavor, succulence, and smell that my image completely lacks.

Celery Root with Melted Onions

Two nights ago my tongue, in a fit of sheer joy, did a back-flip and high-five'd a molar. What would make my tongue do such acrobatics, you ask? Celery root with melted onions is the culprit. The rather benign looking pile of soft, wilted looking stuff is the celery root with onions. This is another TK recipe from Ad Hoc and it is another home run. In traditional TK-style he breaks components down and then loads each step with maximum flavor. This dish needs cooked onions. You could a) simply saute them for about 5 minutes or b) sweat all the moisture out and then simmer them in butter with garlic, thyme, a bay leaf, and peppercorns for 30 minutes. Option A is a fine choice, but B will make you write your mom. (I am killing two birds with one stone, because my mom reads about it here...)

To melt your onions take about 4 cups of sliced onions that have been sliced from end to end, not cross-sectioned. (End to end cut onions hold their shape better when cooked.) Put them into a saute pan over medium heat, and without adding any oil, slowly cook them for about 15 minutes or so. You are removing moisture from the onions and concentrating their flavor at this point. The onions shouldn't really brown at all, but just soften up a bit. Next add in a bay leaf, two whole cloves of garlic that have been lightly crushed, a dozen peppercorns, and some sprigs of thyme. If you have cheesecloth on hand, and I never do, this would be a good time to wrap all that stuff in it. Fancy people call this a sachet. You don't need to wrap it up, but it saves time at the end when you are individually picking peppercorns out... Melt half a stick of butter (in cubes) into the pan, swirling as you do to keep it emulsified. Now the recipe calls for a parchment paper lid. TK has a huge crush on parchment paper lids, and I finally broke down and made one. It took 2 minutes and I think it really made an impact on the dish. I'm not going to describe how to make it, but just go ahead and Google it. It is as easy as falling down and I am sold on it now. The onions are going to gently cook away on medium low heat for the next half hour. Other than stirring every 10 minutes don't do anything else to the pan.

While your onions melt take your celery root (a.k.a. celeriac) peel it, quarter it lengthwise, and thinly slice it using a mandolin or your mad knife skills. (Mandolins are cheap an exceedingly useful. Go buy one. And some band-aids.) Get a pan hot over medium heat, once again no oil, and add the celeriac and let it sit for 10 minutes or so to soften. Then add in another bay leaf, crushed garlic cloves, more thyme, and some canola. Cook until completely soft, 10 minutes or so. Remember to keep the heat on the medium side. You aren't looking for color, but just to cook and soften your veg.

When your onions are sufficiently melted, mine browned a bit, and the celeriac softened drain them both on paper towels. Combine them in a pan to heat them together and add a cup or so of good chicken stock. This helps with the creamy factor.



I didn't make enough of this dish. I used one large celery root for four people and that was a bad decision. From now on, we use one large root per two people. We also had some delicious grilled asparagus and Arista pork chops (also an Ad Hoc number). The frenched pork chops are from DuBreton and the others from Windy Hill Farms.



When in doubt, eat pork.

Chicken, Mushrooms, and Cauliflower "Mac"

I have decided to treat mushrooms like bacon. To clarify, I am including them in almost every dish I now make. All foods have different properties (bacon's is that it is awesome!) and mushrooms have the ability to satisfy. They are high in the chemicals (the carboxylate anion of glutamic acid) that contribute to the taste, umami. (Leave it to the Japanese to give a name to the taste that is difficult to explain.) We are use to salty, sweet, sour, and spice as the four primary tastes. However, we are now aware of the fifth taste; umami. It is the feeling of savory, fulfillment, and soul-restorration that comes from eating foods high in it. My favorite example is miso soup. I would always eat it and think that there was something fundamentally awesome with it. It turns out that dashi (a component of miso soup) and seaweed are both quite high in umami! I am a genius.

The color palette of this dish is just shy of institutional boring-ness, but the flavors ran strong! As the photo (And yes, it was taken on the railing of our deck. I thought I would mix up the scenery a bit.) shows we have a big ole pile of cremini and button mushrooms. These were sauteed with about a tablespoon of minced thyme and then had about 1/4 cup of chicken stock ladled in near the end. The chicken stock gave its flavor to the shroomies and picked up flavor from the pan. This became the delectable sauce you see floating around on the plate. It was included because the chicken was un-marinated and needed some moisture. The cauliflower "mac" is blanched cauliflower florets that I mixed in with a cheese sauce. I miscalculated and ended up with far too much cheese sauce, but some would argue that is impossible. The cheese sauce starts with the classic bechamel sauce and then I whip in some grated cheese. I have read about bechamel for years and have just started making it. I think the fancy French name got all big, tough-guy on me and intimidated me away. Well not no mo'! I kicked Mr. Bechamel in the face and now realize the ease and utility of it!

Take two tablespoons of butter, melt over medium heat, and then whisk in two tablespoons of flour. Bring this to a light simmer for a few minutes. Slowly pour in hot milk while whisking until it thickens. This only takes a few minutes and it is like an ankle in a tattoo parlor: a blank canvas. The cheese goes in at the end. You want the milk hot because cold milk will make the sauce seize and then you have to whisk more. A lot more.

Enjoy this dish, we were both quite happy with it, and it was around 8 points on the WW scale.

p.s. good chicken stock makes a huge difference in every dish.