“Deep Purple: Berry From Another Planet”

Eggplant is an usual ingredient.  Bitter and alkaloid when raw, it becomes a flavor sponge when prepared correctly, and many cultures have taken advantage of this to take this canvas for their own spin.  The culture that hasn’t done that much with it?  Mine – America barely eats any.  Growing up in Kansas, that was my experience at least.  My mother never cooked it, and I only used it once before in middle school to make moussaka, a Greek recipe.  I don’t remember why I was making it – it had to be a report of some sort – but I do remember that I thought it was terrible.  That singular experience would be coloring my perception of the two recipes in this chapter, for better or worse.  My goal – make food that didn’t taste as terrible as that dimly recalled memory.

The first attempt at that was the Middle East’s solution to what to do with the eggplant – baba ghannouj.  It’s not something I’ve had often, as I usually prefer hummus, but I bought a few different packaged varieties so I could compare to the freshly made kind.  The recipe involved roasting two eggplants in a 375 degree oven until soft, then wrapping in plastic wrap for an hour to steam.  After that, the tops were snipped off and the flesh squeezed into a strainer to drain for half an hour.  The pulp was pureed with garlic, lemon juice, tahini, and salt in a food processor, and parsley and black pepper were added just at the end.   It was served with pita chips.

My experiences here were mixed.  First off, I had to roast in an oven, even though the recipe suggests that a charcoal grill would be better.  Also, I think they needed to roast longer, as the flesh was still clinging to the skin when I tried to squeeze it out at the end.  As for the actual end product, it was very garlicky – one person complained that it was more a garlic dip than eggplant.  I noticed that there were several single scoops of ghannouj in the bowl, but a lot of it was left.  I didn’t mind it, and finished it off a day later, but I could tell it wasn’t the best recipe out there.  Maybe a charcoal fire would impart more flavor.  Something to try.

The other recipe was a play on eggplant Parmesan, which is quite a chore.  In this one, though, the eggplant took the place of the pasta.  Here we use the traditional method of purging the liquid from eggplant – the thin slices got a liberal coating of salt and allowed to drain for half an hour, flipping and resalting once.  After that time, the eggplant was rinsed and squeezed dry, then sliced into something resembling linguine noodles.  At that point, it was time to make the pasta – garlic and red pepper flakes were cooked in a hot pan for a few seconds, just to flavor the oil.  The “noodles” were then added and tossed o coat.  Some tomato concasse was added and cooked for about fifteen seconds, followed by some cream and tossed for another ten.  The whole thing was finished with a chiffonade of basil and some Parmesan, and topped with breadcrumbs.  I served the whole thing along with garlic bread and Caesar salad.

I really liked this recipe – the eggplant worked really well as pasta.  I had to get creative with the draining rig, as the eggplant made more strips than I could easily place on my cooling rack.  I ended up having to place a few slices in a collander and the rest over a baking dish suspended by bamboo skewers.  I also ended up having the pan too hot at first, and the garlic burned really quickly.  I had to toss the whole batch and wash it thoroughly to get rid of the nasty taste of burnt garlic.  Despite these minor setbacks, the dish turned out really well.  It’s something I’d definitely make again.

So, how do I feel about eggplant now?  Well, I think it’s something that won’t be a new staple in my pantry, but I’m definitely less intimidated by it.  Maybe I need to revisit that moussaka recipe again sometime…

Next: Culinary pin-up art.

Recipes:

Baba Ghannouj

Eggplant Pasta

The Other Half of “Scrap Iron Chef: Bacon”

This one is short, since there’s only one recipe – roasted bacon.  I’ve actually begun to see the advantage to roasting bacon rather than frying it in a pan.  Roasting it allows the bacon to render out and drip onto the pan below.  Moreover, if you do it right, you can layer foil onto the pan, and let it cool.  The foil gets thrown away, and there’s little nasty cleanup that’s necessary in the pan.  The bacon itself is a pound of thick-sliced bacon that gets crushed black pepper and dark brown sugar pressed into it.  The bacon then roasts in an oven for about 45 minutes.  At the end, you have delicious bacon that’s sweet, smoky, and peppery.  I used it in some of the best BLTs I’ve ever made, but I also made it at a friend’s place along with some eggs and toast for breakfast-for-dinner, and it disappeared remarkably fast.

Next Time: Purple reign.

Recipes:

None!  This one ain’t on Food Network for some reason.  I think I’ve given you enough to go on here, though.

“Celebrity Roast” and Half of “Scrap Iron Chef: Bacon”

Holiday dinners are a family affair.  That seems to be a universal truth.  There’s nothing more natural than gathering together to make delicious foods and share them with the people you consider to be the most important part of your life.  For years, my family has always gathered at my aunt and uncle’s for Thanksgiving, and at my mom and dad’s place for Christmas.  I don’t recall exactly when I started helping my mom make Christmas dinner, but I do remember making a pork tenderloin with a tart cherry sauce to go with it.  Over the years, I’d make several more dishes, as time went on, life would make holiday dinners smaller and smaller.

This year, however, would be the first time that I’d make most of the dinner.   My mom is in her 70s now, and she can’t do nearly the amount of stuff she used to do.  As a result, I had to make most of the dinner this year, though we planned it together.  And what was the line up?

Main Course: Standing Rib Roast with Sage Au Jus

Sides: Braised Red Potatoes, Grilled Radicchio with Bacon Vinaigrette

Dessert: Cheesecake with Cherry Sauce

Of this, I ended up making everything but the cheesecake, which was storebought (and that’s only because I wasn’t quite ready to do the cheesecake episode).  Since I was working on the menu, I got to seed the menu with several recipes I would be working on, particularly the standing rib roast recipe.  This one I was quite excited about, because a standing rib roast is a serious affair.  Anyone who knows me knows my favorite cut of beef is the ribeye steak, and a standing rib roast is basically the same cut – just bone in and uncut.  As with many things in cooking, 90% of making a good standing rib roast is to find a good specimen.  As I’ve said before, there are some significant advantages to living in Kansas City, not the least of which is that it’s remarkably easy to find a number of good butchers that offer up great cuts of beef.  We ended up getting it through Dean & Deluca, though I can think of three other places off the top of my head we could have easily found it from instead.

The recipe is a bit unusual, mostly because Alton suggests the use of a flowerpot.  It sounds insane, but makes sense when you think about it.  An earthenware pot is a bit like cast iron – it heats slowly and gives up its heat slowly, so it cooks more evenly.  First of all, though, the roast needs to spend some time dry aging in the fridge.  I picked up a plastic tub that I drilled some holes into in order to promote air flow.  The roast aged in that for three days.  Why is this necessary?  Well, the beef has a lot of water in it, so removing the water will make the beef that much more beefier.  The day of the roast, I removed the roast and let it come to room temperature – the shorter the thermal trip, the less damage the trip would cause to the beef.  The 16″ azalea planter was put in a cold oven, which was then heated to 200 degrees.  The roast is oiled with canola oil to promote browning, and the roast is to be placed in a glass bake-ware dish, and that dish is to be placed in the planter.  It cooks for several hours, until it reaches an internal temperature of 118 degrees.  It’s then removed from the oven, and it should reach an internal temp of 120.  While it’s out, the oven temperature is raised to 500, and the roast goes back in once it’s there, and roasts for 10-15 minutes, just to get a good crust on the outside.  It’s then removed from the oven and allowed to cool, while the au jus is made.  Like most pan gravies, water and wine is added to the roasting pan, and brought to boil over low heat, scraping up the fond from the bottom.  Several sage leaves are bruised and thrown into the pan, and a few ounces of butter is added to finish the sauce.  The jus is then strained.

While that was all going, I made up the warm salad.  The first step was to roast some thick-cut bacon, and reserve some of the bacon grease.  Some of that grease is added to a bowl along with some olive oil, cider vinegar, dark brown sugar, coarse-grain mustard, salt, and pepper.  This is all whisked together until you have a vinaigrette.  Once that was done, I went to work on the radicchio, quartering them and brushing them with some of the bacon grease, grilling them in a hot grill-pan.  The radicchio quarters get dressed with the bacon vinaigrette and some crumbled bacon, and served together.

(I could give the potato recipe here, but it’s not an AB recipe.  Go search for the America’s Test Kitchen braised red potatoes recipe.  It’s easy and delicious.)

So, that’s how things should have gone.  In practice, things weren’t quite that simple.  First off, my mom’s oven wasn’t tall enough to allow the pot in the oven, so that had to be jettisoned.  Also, the rib roast was supposed to be bone-in, but we ended up getting a boned roast.  Neither of these things really caused too much problem, though, in the final product.  Also, the high heat at the end might have caused a bunch of smoke from the fat already in the pan, and we might have tried to prevent the smoke alarm from going off in the house by opening all the windows and using a fan to blow the smoke out.  (It didn’t work.)  Regardless of these minor setbacks, the roast came out beautifully, and was amazingly delicious.  The radicchio…well, radicchio is very bitter, and the grilling didn’t do much to fix that.  The dressing helped mask the bitterness, but I don’t see making that one again.

The main course, as I mentioned was an unmitigated success.  I hope to make this again in the future, this time with the planter, so I can accurately determine how important it is to the recipe.  The radicchio, however, probably won’t be made again.  I can think of better things to do with bacon.  And that will be evident in the next blog post.

Next Time: We marry savory and sweet.

Recipes:

Dry Aged Standing Rib Roast with Sage Au Jus

Bacon Vinaigrette with Grilled Radicchio

“Crepe Expectations”

I’ve never really had much to do with crepes, either cooking or eating, mostly because if I wanted pancakes, then I’d just have pancakes.  My mom never made them, and when I had the opportunity to have them out, I would usually get pancakes instead.  The only crepe experiences I can think of off the top of my head is a restaurant in town called Cinzetti’s, which is basically an upscale Italian-themed buffet.  They have sweet crepes you can get from their dessert bar, but I’ve never actually had savory crepes, something that I’d fix with this chapter.

Alton demystifies the crepe here, since there’s a lot of additional equipment that fussy French chefs would tell you are required for making crepes.  All you really need is a non-stick skillet and a blender.  The blender is used to bring the batter together very quickly, and then gets rested for an hour in the fridge.  An ounce or so of the batter is ladled into a hot, buttered pan, and the thin layer of batter cooks relatively quickly, no more than a minute or two in total.  That’s it.  No special pan is required, no special stirring implement is required – just a simple technique.

The first of the two recipes was a savory herb crepe that would be used to make a mushroom crepe cake, something that a friend likened to crepe lasagna.  The crepes themselves are herb crepes, and while the recipe didn’t specify the sort of herb, I went with a combination of parsley and tarragon – mostly parsley, since tarragon’s a very strong herb, and a little goes a long way.  The plan for the recipe is to make as many herb crepes as possible, which would be the noodle stand-ins for the crepe lasagna.  The layers would be held together by a duxelles, which is a mushroom paste that’s as French as Escoffier.  I’d never made it before, and from what I’ve seen, Alton’s is a bit…unorthodox (I know, that’s shocking, right?).  It’s got a pound of mushrooms, which are the vegetarian’s secret weapon against missing meat.  Half of the mushrooms are finely chopped.  In a saute pan, we melt some butter and sweat a diced onion until soft.  The mushrooms are added, along with some salt and pepper, and we cook until the mushrooms give up their liquid and shrink.  We then add some whole milk, and cook until we have a paste.  We then add some shredded Provolone cheese, and cook until it all comes together.  We’re now ready to build the “lasagna,” which starts with two herb crepes, then a bit of the duxelles, followed by a bit of chopped chive.  Then we add another crepe, followed by more duxelles, and more chives.  Repeat until we’re out of duxelles, then top with one more crepe, sprinkle on some shredded Parm, and broil for a few minutes.  Slice into wedges and serve.

This one…well, it was fraught with problems.  First, the duxelles didn’t quite come together – the cheese stuck to the bottom of the pan, and the paste wasn’t quite as pasty as I expect it should have been.  I didn’t bring a non-stick pan to the friend’s place I made it, because I expected that they’d have a 10″ non-stick pan.  They did, but it was very scratched, and wasn’t all that non-stick.  As a result, I lost a lot of crepes trying to depan, and I basically needed to butter the pan every time in order to successfully depan one.  It tasted fine, but this one didn’t come out the way I’d hoped.

So, with that barely successful recipe out of the way, it was time to make the final recipe for the chapter.  This time, we were making the most famous of crepe recipes, Crepes Suzette.  I decided I needed to make some more homemade vanilla ice cream to go with it, which was quickly becoming my go-to recipe from this book.  I ended up making the dessert at a different friend’s house, and fortunately, they had much better non-stick pans!  The sweet crepes were just as easy to make as the herb crepes, and with the better pans, I only lost one or two due to bad flips.  Crepes Suzette has an orange liqueur sauce that they’re dipped in, which was also rather easy to make.  Orange juices, Grand Marnier, white and brown sugar are all added to a pan and whisked until slightly reduced.  Butter is then added to tighten the sauce, and the finished crepes are dipped in the sauce, then folded into quarters on the serving plate.  I added a scoop of ice cream, and garnished with orange zest and supremes.  This one worked much better, and tasted great!  The only issue is that I grated the zest way too fine, and should have been finely shredded instead of grated.  Regardless, it was rather simple, and I feel like I should make this one again for family.

And with that, the chapter comes to a close, with a fifty-fifty success rate.  Crepes are definitely not nearly as difficult as I imagined they would be, and I figure I could make them again pretty easily.  I just need to invest in a blender.  Food for thought.

Next Time: The Holiday Special.

Recipes:

Crepes

Mushroom Crepe Cake

Crepes Suzette

“Oat Cuisine”

When I was a kid, I used to eat Quaker Instant Oatmeal almost exclusively for breakfast.  Maple & Brown Sugar was my favorite, but Apple Cinnamon was a close second.  I never cared for oatmeal raisin cookies, and granola was only useful if it included chocolate.  Oats were basically filler, and I never really gave them much thought, so these recipes would be ways to use a historically very versatile grain.

But first, I need to address elephant in the room.  The most memorable part of this episode is the part where Alton makes haggis, and he adopts what can only be loosely described as a Scottish accent.  I’ll be honest, this was one of the recipes I was afraid of making when I started this project, and I’m happy to report that this recipe isn’t in the book.  I don’t have to make stuffed sheep’s stomach!  Hooray!

However, oatmeal totally is.  The recipe is simple, and I hesitate to even call it that.  You combine steel-cut oats, dried fruit (cranberries and figs in this case), water, heavy cream and a bit of salt in a crock pot, and cook it overnight over low heat.  I think either this recipe was made for crock pots that have a Warm setting, or my crock pot runs hot, because I found that the cream burned along the edges.  Still, it was quite nice waking up with the smell of cooked and toasted oats in my apartment, and the amount it made meant I had leftovers for the next few days.

Speaking of toasting oats, the next recipe was granola, and like the oatmeal, this is a very simple recipe.  Rolled oats, slivered almonds, raw cashews, unsweetened shredded coconut, dark brown sugar, and salt are combined in a bowl along with maple syrup and vegetable oil.  The mixture gets put onto a half sheet pan, and spread into a single layer.  It’s cooked in a low oven for an hour and a half, stirred every fifteen minutes.  After it comes out, it’s cooled and mixed with raisins.  I really enjoyed this recipe – granola is stupid easy to make, and the oats tasted like my favorite instant oatmeal flavor, only better!  Definitely making this one again.

Finally, there’s a recipe for an oat drink, refresco de avena.  Of the three recipes in this chapter, this was the one I wanted to try the most, simply because of how odd it was.  Demerara sugar is dissolved in water, and oats, lime peel, and cardamom seeds steep in this sweet liquid for an hour.  The solids are strained, and the beverage is served.  It’s…unusual.  I didn’t hate it, but I don’t feel a need to make it again, and I suspect that the friends I served this to would agree with that statement.

Well, as the philosopher Loaf once said, two outta three ain’t bad.

Next: Quickbread goes French.

Recipes:

Overnight Oatmeal

Granola

Refresco de Avena

“Deep Space Slime”

This marks the first episode of Season 5, a key year for Good Eats, as Alton leaves the original white counter kitchen and settles into the hardwood kitchen that would become the iconic space for the series.  That space won’t be shown until the next episode, however.  Apparently, the kitchen would not be ready to shoot in until after season 5’s shooting schedule began, so this episode had to be shot on location, and this episode was created to fill that need.

I’m rather ambivalent on gelatin desserts, if only because it’s a dessert that’s fallen into disfavor.  Back in the fifties, there were plenty of recipes that featured them, but plenty of them have disappeared, probably because they were horrid.  The worst part is that they didn’t just relegate gelatin to desserts – they made aspics, savory gelatins, with flavors that should never have been combined.  We recoiled from these culinary crimes, and gelatin was relegated to the ignoble realm of cafeteria-based chow.

We have two recipes to examine today, and before I start, I should discuss the names right now.  The first is labeled “Panna Cotta Brain with Cranberry Glaze,” and the other is “Sparkling Gingered Face.”  The conceit behind the episode is that Alton is a special effects consultant for a film crew, and he makes gelatin based practical effects.  I wanted to actually make the face mold, but I couldn’t find one anywhere.  I knew I could find the brain mold, and wanted to make it for my coworkers and bring it in for Halloween, and a few weeks before October’s end, I found a mold at a party shop in town.

So, onto the first recipe, which was the face.  It’s a rather simple recipe, requiring only prosecco, unflavored powdered gelatin, ginger beer, and sugar.  You combine the prosecco and gelatin in a mixing bowl and stir to combine.  In a saucepan, you combine the ginger beer and sugar, and bring to a boil.  Then you combine, pour into your mold, and refrigerate.  While this one was easy, it didn’t taste very good.  I chalk this one up to having a rather mild ginger beer.  I wanted one that had a good deal of bite, but it ended up being milder than Canada Dry.  If I ever make this one again, I’ll need to do a tasting of several ginger beers before I do, and find one that’s got some real good gingery heat to it.

So, the brain.  I ended up spending a great deal of time on this one, as I wanted to get the effect done perfectly.  The idea is that the panna cotta – a cream-based gelatin dessert – goes in the brain mold, and the cranberry glaze is the blood.  I knew I wanted to color the dessert so that it was gray, just to enhance the look of it.  I spent a good fifteen minutes tinkering with food coloring in my kitchen, trying to figure out how to get gray. Of course, ten of those minutes were spent adding coloring to water, until I realized that these experiments were worthless.  The medium I was going to be dropping these colors into was white, not clear!  If I wanted gray, I needed to first make black.  That was actually pretty easy – equal parts of red, yellow, and blue gave me a black base, and once I poured a bit of milk into that cup, I was able to tinker with the coloration enough to get the gray I wanted.

The actual recipe isn’t much more difficult than the sparkling ginger face.  The gelatin blooms in evaporated milk, and another saucepan of more evaporated milk, cream, sugar, vanilla bean, salt, and bourbon simmers until it just begins to bubble.  The hot liquid goes into the cold, and it’s stirred to combine.  The food coloring is added here, and it’s all cooled for an hour.  It’s then strained, placed in the brain mold, and sets in the fridge to firm up overnight.

Again, I had perfectionist tendencies on this one – I needed the brain mold to be as level as possible, so I had to rig up something to keep it level in the fridge.  I had the lip of the mold setting on a can of baking powder, as it was just the right height to keep it level.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t cause a mess by spillage, so I put it on a sheet pan and transferred the liquid into the mold.  As I poured it, though, I clearly didn’t think through what I had done.  While the sheet pan balanced just fine when it was pulled partway out of the fridge, it upended once I had put some of the cream into it, getting goop all over my fridge.  I had to pull everything out, trash some food that was coated in the stuff, and clean several items by hand, like the crisper drawers.  Fortunately, there was still plenty left, so the recipe was not a bust.

The cranberry glaze was also a bit problematic.  You use gelatin to thicken the juice, but you use far less of it, so it doesn’t immediately gelatinize.  It’s supposed to set up once it’s drizzled onto the brain, but I found it just drizzled off.  I also found it too translucent, and if I were to do this again, I would find some way to make it opaque to make it look more like blood.

How was it, though? Amazing.  It tasted sweet, and the tartness of the cranberry’s a great counterpart.  On top of this, the gray color was perfect, and there were several people who had some apprehension at eating the brain.  My only complaint about the brain is that when I strained the liquid, the vanilla bean seeds stayed in it.  I think I’ll probably add some cheese cloth to the strainer next time to catch these tiny things, since they all settled at the bottom of the upturned mold, which then became the top when removed from the mold.

Next Time: The infamous oat episode.  God help me if I must make haggis.

Recipes:

Panna Cotta Brain with Cranberry Glaze

Sparkling Gingered Face

“Chile’s Angels”

Anyone who knows me knows I like spicy food.  Capsaicin and I are good friends.  I’ve been on record as saying spicy food isn’t hot enough if it doesn’t make my scalp sweat.  It wasn’t always like this, though.  I think like most children, I didn’t care for spicy food much.  I didn’t like the pain, and I eschewed condiments like Tobasco for safer ones, like ketchup.  I think my sea change came after I ordered some General Tso’s chicken from a Chinese takeout.  It was spicy, sure, but boy, the flavors were unlike anything I’d had.  It was like I discovered a whole new wing to a house that I’d lived in for years.

These days, I’ve discovered my tolerances.  Habaneros are about as hot as I go, and even then I have to be careful.  While I enjoy my chicken wings hot, I don’t understand people that insist on buying and eating ridiculously hot wings – there’s a certain point where the heat just turns into pain.  Ghost peppers make no bloody sense to me, and neither do any of the superpeppers that have been cultivated since then.  Still, if people enjoy that sort of pain, then who am I to stop them?  This chapter would utilize chile peppers in two salsas, one traditional, and one more dessert oriented.

The regular salsa is pretty standard fare, truth be told.  The recipe calls for half of a red onion, and it made no sense to me to use half an onion when I could just double the recipe and have twice as much salsa.  I used four jalapenos in this salsa, two of which were raw, and two were roasted.  Two pounds of Roma tomatoes, eight cloves of minced garlic, two red bell peppers, the aforementioned red onion, two dried anchos, some olive oil, some lime juice, salt, pepper, chili powder, cilantro, and scallions.  All of this was chopped and made a mighty fine pico de gallo if I do say so myself.  My only complaint is that there was too much water in the salsa, and I figured out how to handle that – strain out the water and blend it with some of the pico, making a smooth, thick sauce to coat chips.

As for the dessert option, it’s a very simple recipe, using only three ingredients: canned crushed pineapple, habanero pepper, and fresh mint.  I wasn’t sure whether to use pineapple in natural juice or pineapple in syrup, and since the recipes were so simple, I decided to make it both ways.  From my estimation, I couldn’t find a difference between the two, so I ended up mixing them together.  The resulting salsa was definitely hot, but it’s not designed to be served straight.   It’s designed as an ice cream topping, and the ice cream cuts through the heat.  Also, I served some corn chips dusted with cinnamon and sugar atop the ice cream.  This dessert was amazing, and I definitely plan on making this again.  Oh, did I mention I made the Good Eats vanilla ice cream for this?

And so ends Season 4 of Good Eats.  In the history of the show, this marked the end of the show’s beginning, and Season 5 would introduce things that would stay with the show until its end.  More on that later, though.  Before I go, though, a taste of things to come.  Season 5 of this blog will see easily the most expensive recipe in the entirety of the first book, the recipe that has eluded me more often than any other, and the most infamous recipe in Good Eats history.  See you back here at the end of October, food fans.

Recipes:

Salsa

Spicy Pineapple Sauce

“True Brew II: Mr. Tea”

While I only recently overcome my dislike for coffee, I’d made my peace with tea a long time ago.  I never really consumed it in any great amount, but back when I worked at Borders (back when Borders was a thing), any time I had a sore throat, I’d order some tea with honey and lemon to soothe it.  I’ve never really enjoyed it as a drink, though, either iced or hot.  This chapter, however, would be my real introduction to the world of teas.  This chapter has two recipes, though they can only be just classified as that – making tea isn’t exactly difficult.

My journey would begin at a local tea shop I discovered on Yelp.  They were close to my work, so I was able to head over that way after work.  They had a large assortment of teas available – plenty of black teas, quite a few greens, plenty of herbals, etc.  I needed to purchase two teas, one for the hot tea and the other for the iced.  I decided a good British Breakfast would be perfect for the hot tea, while I chose a Nilgiri for the iced tea.  I also needed to get a French press for the hot tea, and while this shop sold a few, they were incredibly expensive.  Like, $40 bucks expensive.  I passed that up and picked one up at Target for about $15.

Making the hot tea couldn’t have been simpler – I measure a portion of the tea leaves into the bottom of the French press, and added hot water to the top.  I put the lid back on and let it steep for a few minutes.  And then, the best bit: plunge.  The French press then acts as a sieve keeping the leaves out of the tea itself.  The tea was fine – the tea flavor was good, and very pleasing.  My complaints were twofold.  The first was that the tea at the bottom was overextracted and incredibly strong.  It was hardly a problem to solve, though – just add more water and dilute.  The second was a little more problematic – for some reason, if I had a cup of tea on an empty stomach, I’d get a horrible wave of nausea.  I never figured out why that was.  Still, it was enjoyable.

The iced tea was slightly more difficult, but only slightly.  An ounce of tea leaves is steeped in hot water, and strained again.  This is cooled down and diluted more.  I also made a simple syrup infused with lemon and mint.  Again, that’s the entirety of the recipe.  Somehow, though, I screwed it up.  The iced tea was cloudy and incredibly strong.  I’m not sure why, but I haven’t gone back to figure out where the mistake was made.  As for the syrup, it was less lemony and too minty.  I still have plenty of the stuff in my fridge, just sitting there and getting old.

So, how do I feel about tea now?  Great stuff.  For someone else.  Me?  I’ll stick with coffee.  Unless I have a sore throat.  Then all bets are off.

Next: The final episode of Season 4.  And it’s a hot one.

Recipes:

Perfect Cup of Tea

Sweet Tea

“Puff the Magic Pastry”

It’s been awhile (again) since I posted anything here, but there’s a very good reason for that.  I’ll get to it, but all I’ll say up front is that the weather gods have been uncooperative.

So, puff pastry!  I don’t have a lot to say about the stuff, as my mother never really worked with the stuff when I was growing up.  At least, not in sheet form, that is.  I remember her making some apple turnovers that were definitely made with puff pastry, but I suspect these were premade and frozen.  So these two recipes are the first time I’ve really worked with puff pastry, and by and large, it’s not too difficult.  From what I understand, it’s not easy to make the stuff, which is fine – as a home cook, I really don’t need to be able to make puff pastry from scratch.  However, these two recipes are good explorations in basic baking techniques, so I’d say working with puff pastry’s a great way to teach someone how to treat the dough right.  In both of these cases, the common thread is to thaw the puff pastry so it won’t break once you try to unfold it, and then crimp the seams together to help reinforce those weak points in the structure, followed by a once or twiceover with a rolling pin to thin it out and smooth out the seams.  After that, the pastry is ready to be shaped.

The first one was definitely the simpler of the two recipes – apple tarts.  This is a sweet application, and the puff pastry was cut into two rounds, each about six inches wide.  Thinly sliced Granny Smith apples are layered atop each of the tarts, and sprinkled with sugar before being placed in the oven and cooked for about half an hour.  Then, after they’re out, some microwaved apricot jam is dabbed onto the edges to make it glisten.  This was topped with homemade vanilla ice cream, and was a resounding success.  This is an extremely easy recipe, and one that I can see making again.

Of course, this was only one of the two recipes, and the second was a salmon turnover.  There’s very little complicated about the recipe – a prepared puff pastry is divided into four squares, and stuff is put in the middle of them.  They’re folded over onto themselves, and baked until done.  However, the recipe suggested that I use the fungal sautee from “The Fungal Gourmet” episode, the rice pilaf from “Power to the Pilaf,” and the smoked salmon from “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fish.”  This recipe, therefore, was the most referential of the bunch so far, and it presented me with one major challenge: how do I cook the fish?

For those of you who don’t remember, this had to be cooked in my cardboard box smoker rig, so I had to find a time when I could do it at a friend’s house on a Sunday he was free when the weather was dry both that Sunday and the day before.  Naturally, immediately after the tart was done, we didn’t get a dry weekend here for about a month and a half.  EIther it would rain on that Sunday, or it would rain very heavily the Saturday before, ruining my chance to get the salmon cooked.  Finally, however, the weather let up, and a rare sunny weekend popped up.  I purchased the fish, started curing it, cooked the mushrooms and rice the day before, and smoked the salmon without a hitch that Sunday.  After that, I let the salmon cool for a bit, and started mixing up the ingredients for the turnovers.  In addition to the mushrooms, rice, and salmon, there was some green onion, some chopped parsley, and salt and pepper.  All of that was mixed up in a bowl, and a few tablespoons of the mixture was placed in the center of each square.  An egg wash was brushed onto the corners of each, and crimped shut.  Slits were cut on them to allow steam to escape, and the each turnover was brushed in an egg wash to promote browning.  Into a hot oven they went for half an hour.

I only have myself to blame for what happened next.  I should have really checked them in twenty, but I foolishly let them cook the entire way.  They were burned.  They centers had gone past golden brown and turned a deep brown, and the ends were blackened.  It still tasted good, but the damage was done.  Fortunately, I had plenty of leftovers, which meant I could try this again at my parents’ place on July 4 weekend.  This time, I kept a close eye on the cooking, and it came out beautifully.

I still have one sheet of puff pastry left, so I’ve been debating what to do with it.  I think I’ll use it to try the secret bonus recipe that Alton included here as his favorite puff pastry filling: Manwich mix and Cheddar cheese.  Sounds beefy.

Next: An episode on the twentieth letter of our alphabet.

Recipes:

Fruit Tart

Salmon Turnovers

The Egg-Files IV: Mayo Clinic

Seems like I just recently did an Egg-Files chapter, but hey, that’s how versatile these things are.  One part thickens, the other foams, and they both taste great when scrambled.  They’re used to make baked goods turn golden, and no meatloaf will bind correctly unless you use one.  This chapter, if you hadn’t guessed is all about mayonnaise.

I was slow to come on board the mayo train as a kid.  Like most tots, I took to ketchup right away, putting it on everything – potatoes, chicken, rice; you name it, it probably got a healthy dose of ketchup.  Like all first loves, they don’t last, and while I still enjoy the stuff, I relegate it to a meatloaf topping and French fry condiment these days.  Mustard quickly took ketchup’s place, and I’m rarely without a bottle of the stuff.  The pleasant burn of the mustard mixed with vinegary goodness is my favorite condiment.  But there was a jar of stuff in the fridge when I was a kid that I never truly appreciated, a creamy white concoction that my mother slathered onto toast for her sandwiches.  Mayonnaise – more accurately, Miracle Whip.  I never liked the stuff, and truthfully, I still don’t.  Miracle Whip is too sweet for my tastes when I want to use a mayonnaise.  I stayed away from the condiment until I tried Hellman’s, which was a bit yellow and didn’t taste at all like Miracle Whip.  No, Hellman’s was the real deal, not a salad dressing, but an honest-to-God mayonnaise.  I’ve got a container of Hellman’s in my fridge right now, and while I don’t often use it, it’s the off-the-shelf mayo I grab, due to its far more complex flavor when compared to Miracle Whip.

Of course, even Hellman’s has to bow before homemade mayo.  This is less a recipe and more of a procedure, but it’s no less difficult.  There’s two recipes in this chapter, but really, they’re both here so you understand the process of making mayo.  Mayonnaise is a suspension of oil and fat, much like a vinaigrette.  Unlike a vinaigrette, which separates after some time, mayo uses the powerful emulsifying agents within the egg yolk and mustard to keep it in suspension.  The first recipe is a standard mayo, while the second is a flavored mayo.  They really only differ in a few places, so I’ll start with the standard mayo.

The first thing to keep in mind when making mayonnaise is that fat and water don’t want to bind together, and this was very obvious to me when I was making this recipe.  The process begins by putting an egg yolk, some salt, some ground mustard, and some sugar in a bowl, and beating it until a foam starts.  Put some vinegar and lemon juice in the egg mixture, then slowly introduce the oil, whisking constantly.  Once about half the oil is in, add the rest of the acid, then keep adding oil, whisking the entire time.  If you do it right, you’ve got mayo.

Unfortunately, I didn’t.  Everything was going fine until I added the rest of the acid, and then the emulsion broke.  Nothing I did could fix it, not even adding some more egg yolk to help bind it together again.  As a result, I had to start over.  Rather than go through this whole process with nothing to show for it, I skipped ahead to the second recipe and stole its thunder – rather than go through the labor intensive process of constant whisking, I put all the non-oil ingredients in a food processor, turned it on, and slowly drizzled the oil into the running machine.  Within two minutes, the sauce came together far faster and far easier than if I had to make the mayo myself.  The takeaway here: we’re in the 21st Century now, so if you have something to do your whisking for you, use it.

I took this to heart when I looked at the second recipe, which is called “party mayonnaise,” but really, it’s supposed to be a chile mayo.  You still have the oil, but you also add a few tablespoons of a flavored oil.  In my case, I chose a sesame-chile oil.  Rather than lemon juice, you use lime juice.  Other than that, it’s almost identical.  Since I didn’t have a food processor where I was making it, I grabbed my immersion blender.  This ended up working perfectly fine, though it was quite hot by the end.  My only complaint is that the sesame-chile oil was mostly sesame by the time everything was done.  I found a good home for my sesame mayo in an Asian-inspired chicken salad, but it was a bit strange in my Southwestern deviled eggs.

Next: Mr. Diddy makes a pastry.

Mayonnaise

Party Mayonnaise