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Posts from the ‘Sunday Night Special’ Category

Sunday Night Special: Quick-Fried Lamb & Pounded Eggplants with Green Peppers

Hunan_lamb

Ok, I didn’t make this dinner until Tuesday and it’s now Thursday, but it was intended for Sunday night. And isn’t Sunday night really just a state of mind anyway? This weekend I got waylaid by a late lunch/early dinner at Sripraphai and it seemed silly to cook Chinese food just a few hours later.

The goal was to use at least part of a boneless lamb roast that we bought on a whim from Costco. Having no desire for a traditional British preparation (it’s hard not to think of the U.K. or Australia), Indian food seemed logical. Then I thought of Northern Chinese dishes using chiles, cumin and cilantro. That was definitely it.

There was only one such recipe in The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, quick fried lamb but it didn’t contain cumin. Beef with cumin, did, however. Because I’m a rule follower, I essentially used the lamb recipe and just added the earthy spice in the middle. I didn’t have angelica root and I’m not sure how it tastes exactly. Well, I’m not totally a rule follower because I persist in reprinting copyrighted recipes. I swear, I’ll stop soon.

Because I never learn from past mistakes, I kind of mangled this dish by overcrowding the wok. I’d envisioned these perfectly seared, spicy, oil-coated slices of meat and I ended up with boiled mutton. Well, practically. Too much meat produced too much liquid and my version became soupy and a little tough. Next time I’ll be more careful and make it spicier.

Quick-Fried Lamb
Xiao Chao Yang Rou

Ingredients
10 ounces lean boneless lamb
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
¼ teaspoon salt, plus extra to taste
2 teaspoons cumin
2 fresh red chiles or ½ red pepper
2 ½ ounces cilantro or Chinese celery
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger
2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons dried chile flakes (optional)
1 tablespoon finely chopped Chinese angelica root (optional)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons peanut oil for cooking

1. Cut the lamb across the grain into thin slices. Place the slices in a bowl, add the Shaoxing wine, soy sauces, and salt and mix well; set aside.

2. Cut the red chiles into thin slices; if using bell pepper, cut into small squares. Cut the cilantro stems or celery into 2-inch pieces, reserve some leaves for a garnish and set aside the other leaves for other uses.

3. Heat the wok over a high flame until smoke rises, then add the peanut oil and swirl around. Add the ginger, garlic, fresh chile or bell pepper, chile flakes, cumin and angelica root, if using, and stir-fry briefly until fragrant.

4. Add the lamb and continue stir-frying, adding salt to taste, if necessary. When the lamb is almost cooked, add the cilantro or celery, and stir a few times until barely cooked. Turn off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and serve, with cilantro leaf garnish, if desired.

Eggplant_and_peppers

I scoured the same cookbook for a quick vegetable dish that didn’t contain any hard to find ingredients. Sadly, that meant no Chinese chives, black beans, lotus root, purple perilla, fava beans, duck eggs or bamboo shoots. I landed on a recipe that used eggplant, green pepper and soy sauce, simple as that. Eggplant does tend to require an unseemly amount of oil to get silky. I skimped a bit, but either way the dish was nowhere near greasy and nothing like you’d get from take-out joint. I was tempted to substitute red peppers because green ones are low on my list of favorites, but the dry wok cooking managed to sweeten them up.

Pounded Eggplants with Green Peppers
Qing Jiao Lei Qie Zi

Ingredients
1 pound eggplants (preferably Chinese)
salt
5 ounces green bell peppers, thin-skinned if possible
light soy sauce
4 tablespoons peanut oil for cooking

1. Peel the eggplants and slice thickly. Sprinkle with salt, toss to coat evenly, and then set aside for 30 minutes

2. Meanwhile, cut the pepper in half, discard the seeds and stem and thinly slice; set aside.

3. When the eggplants are ready, rinse them to get rid of excess salt, and shake dry; set aside.

4. Stir-fry the peppers in a dry wok over a medium flame until soft and fragrant, pressing them against the sides of the wok; set aside.

5. Heat the oil in a wok over a medium flame. Add the eggplants and stir-fry for a good 10 minutes or so, until they are very tender but not colored. As they soften, mash them up with a wok scoop, until you have a sludgy paste that is about half the volume of the original eggplant slices.

6. Add the bell peppers and stir-fry until both ingredients are fragrant and well-mixed, seasoning with a little soy sauce to taste. Serve.

Recipes from “The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook” by Fuchsia Dunlop. W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.

Sunday Night Special: Red Snapper with Tomatoes and Cream

Red_snapper_with_tomatoes_and_cream
Yes, there should probably be a vegetable on the side rather than a hunk of French bread but that’s how I eat.

At least on the surface, it seems like the country has gone eco-crazy in 2007. And I’ve been feeling inadequate because I eat factory farmed meat and cheap produce. For me, the leap from grocery store to greenmarket is like getting manicures and paying to have your laundry done. Better taste and higher quality are appealing but I can’t get jazzed about local sourcing or even organic processes. Maybe in 2008.

Sunday night we stopped by Fairway and picked up red snapper, cream, tomatoes, red onions and chives of no provenance. I definitely would’ve preferred ripe heirloom tomatoes–it is the height of summer–but it’s not like there’s anyplace to impulsively purchase them at the end of the weekend in South Brooklyn.

We made do (don’t tell me it’s due) just fine and turned to last week’s Fast Food My Way episode for a very simple (it was genuinely fast where some of these recipes aren’t so swift, at least not in our kitchen) red snapper recipe. Jacques Pepin is James’s fetish (I just stumbled upon Jacques’s Playa del Carmen condo that he appears to be renting out and now James is all into that. It would be kind of crazy to go to the Yucatan and hang out at Jacques Pepin’s house when he’s not there, right?) and I think I ruined his fun by buying the companion book. He prefers starting and stopping recorded episodes while cooking. I actually like things spelled out; you can still improvise.

Red Snapper with Tomatoes and Cream
2 cups sliced red onions
2 teaspoons good olive oil
1/3 cup water
1 ½ cups diced (1-inch) tomato, from 1 large or 2 medium peeled and seeded tomatoes
4 red snapper fillets (each about 6 ounces)
¾ cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup heavy cream
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon potato starch dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives

Put the onions and olive oil in a large skillet with the water. Cook over high heat for about 3 minutes, or until the liquid is gone and the onions are lightly browned. Add the diced tomato, sauté for 1 minute, then set aside and keep warm.

Arrange the fish fillets in one layer in another large skillet and add the wine and ½ teaspoon of the salt. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and boil very gently for about 2 minutes, or until the fish is tender but not overcooked. (The timing will depend on the thickness of the fillets.)

Transfer the fish to a platter and set aside in a warm place. Add the cream to the liquid remaining in the skillet used to cook the fish and boil over high heat for a few minutes to reduce it to 1 cup. Add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt, pepper, and dissolved potato starch and mix well.

To serve, divide the warm red onion-tomato mixture among four plates and arrange a piece of fish on top. Coat with the cream sauce, sprinkle with the chives, and serve immediately.

Serves 4

Recipe from Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way Houghton Mifflin, 2004

Sunday Night Special: Cochinita Pibil & Pickled Onions

Cochinita_pibil_taco

Wow, I’ve barely cooked anything other than a turkey burger in the past three weeks. Vacation, recuperation and entertaining out-of-town family hasn’t lent itself to kitchen experimentation. Instead I’ve been eating mediocre take-out Chinese and paid visits to Totonno’s, East Buffet, Fragole, Sripraphai, Sophie’s, Om Tibet, Junior’s, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, La Rosa and Sons and Dunkin’ Donuts (can you believe these no longer exist in Portland, Oregon?).

Sunday was not the smartest day to get back into the kitchen. Especially since I was keen on slow-cooking a pork shoulder, Yucatan-style. There’s nothing like a hot oven on all afternoon and evening during 90 degree heat. I suppose that’s the beauty of an outdoor roasting pit.

After reading a little Diana Kennedy, Rick Bayless and Gourmet, I eventually settled on CHOW’s rendition of cochinita pibil. It seemed the simplest (though I can’t figure out how I managed to miss scrolling down and seeing all the negative comments) and I had no problem with using a pre-made paste. But a problem shortly arose with acquiring said paste.

Sunday morning I got into a huge unnecessary fight because James got up early and went shopping for ingredients without waking me up and asking what I needed and where to go. The hunk of meat practically cooks all day so I get that he was trying to get a jump start. I guess I’m a control freak because but I was irked because he didn’t know what store I had in mind. I was thinking of Nuevo Faro on Fifth Ave. around 16th street but the night before when I said “that Hispanic store in South Slope” he thought I meant the wretched National Supermarket in my old neighborhood on Fourth Ave. and 25th. No!

And no paste. He did pick up achiote seeds and some achiote lard blend in a glass jar, but didn’t get the concept that these are raw ingredients that need seasoning. It was now going to take extra time and effort to make the paste from scratch. I hadn’t intended on toasting and pounding spices in such heat and humidity. I really felt like I was in the tropics, though. Our spice grinder bit the dust some time ago and some things like say, annatto seeds, are hell to pulverize even in a sturdy mortar and pestle. I pounded until my wrists almost snapped and the ingredients weren’t close to powdered.

Achiote_paste_spices
Pre pound
Achiote_paste_pounded
Post pound

Ultimately, I also borrowed from a recent Gourmet recipe for the paste-making steps. We stopped an hour short of  CHOW’s original 300 degrees for eight hours instructions, which seem too high and long now that I think about it. The meat wasn’t dried out, though. Next time I would consider marinating the meat overnight but we were short-sighted as it was. Dinner wasn’t ready until Entourage started.

Cochinita_pibil_in_banana_leaf

Cochinita Pibil
1 3-pound boneless pork shoulder roast (also known as pork butt)
1/2 cup fresh Seville (bitter) orange juice
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole allspice
3 tablespoons annatto (achiote) seeds
6 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican), crumbled
1 large banana leaf (about 4 feet long)
3 cups water

Heat oven to 375°F. Trim any excess fat from pork.

Toast peppercorns, cumin, and allspice together, then cool slightly. Transfer to grinder along with annatto seeds and grind to a powder. Transfer to a small bowl.

Mince garlic and mash to a paste with remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons salt using side of a large heavy knife. Add to ground spices along with oregano and remaining 6 tablespoons juice and stir to make a paste.

Trim center core from banana leaf and run it under hot tap water until leaf becomes soft and pliable. Remove excess water from leaf and cut in half horizontally; overlap the two leaves so that they are about 2 feet long and 1 foot wide, together.

Generously season pork on all sides with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place the pork in the bowl with the achiote mixture and coat it well, rubbing the spice mixture into any crevices. Place pork on banana leaves, fold in the left and right sides, and roll it up like a burrito, completely encasing the roast.

Place roast in a roasting pan on a rack, with the seam of the banana leaves facing down. Add the water to the bottom of the pan, cover tightly with foil, and place in oven for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 275°F and continue roasting for 6 hours.

Remove pork from oven; unwrap the banana leaves and discard them. Shred meat with two forks onto a serving platter. Serve with pickled red onions, warm corn tortillas, and salsa.

Serves 8

Recipe based on Yucatecan-Style Pork from Gourmet May 2007 and Mayan-Style Pit Pork from CHOW

Habanero_salsa_pickled_onions

Habanero Salsa

After leafing through a few versions of habanero salsas (mildly fun fact: habeneros are traditionally used only in the Yucatan), I chose one from the Gourmet’s international issue. It’s meant to accompany cochinita pibil. It ended up  too liquidy. I was hoping it would be thicker like the ones I had at Coox Hanal in Mexico City. I added an extra pepper and it still wasn’t so hot. When I eat it again, I’m going to strain off some of the orange juice and add a few drops of El Yucateco KutBil-Ik.

Pickled onions are also a must with Yucatecan fare. The end result is supposed to be tangy, pink slivers but I had to make do with white onions. After the achiote paste fiasco there was no way I was going to make a stink about only getting white onions from the store.

Pickled Red Onions
escabeche de cebolla

1 small red onion, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican
2 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cider vinegar

Parboiling the onion. Blanch the onion slices in boiling salted water for 45 seconds, then drain and place in a medium-size bowl.

The pickling. Coarsely grind the peppercorns and cumin in a mortar or spice grinder, and add to the onions. Add the remaining ingredients, plus enough water to barely cover.  Stir well and let stand for several hours until the onions turn bright pink.   

Makes a generous 1 cup

Recipe from Authentic Mexican by Rick Bayless

I really don't understand memes and how they take off like wildfire. I was peripherally aware of a Robert Rodriguez taco cooking video showing up all over blogs in the past week but only took notice after I saw another one demonstrating puerco pibil. Everyone's a cook nowadays. Also entertaiment-related, I just discovered that even Variety has a food blog. Forgive me, I'm slow to Hollywood trends.

Sunday Night Special: Pad Thai

Bean_sprout_ro I’ve never understood why bean sprouts are so scarce. I got it when I lived in Ridgewood: Polish = no bean sprouts. I almost even resorted to canned La Choy once. In Sunset Park/Greenwood Heights the nearest source was about half a mile away at a South Slope deli. I didn’t think bean sprouts were a specialty or “ethnic” ingredient but I’m starting to wonder. They don’t even carry them at Rossman Farms, my favorite cheapo, all-purpose produce store that sometimes surprises. A full handcart never ends up being over ten bucks.

Bean sprouts aren’t worth the hassle of going out your way for them. Currently, the closest grocery store to me is the so-so Henry Street Met. And I’ll occasionally stop by after work for a handful of things but I’m not going to walk sixteen blocks home and back to come away empty-handed.

I thought for sure the healthy Korean deli with packaged vegan sandwiches and loose tofu would have them, but no. They did have enoki mushrooms, and I considered them for similar shape and crunch but it didn’t seem right. So, no bean sprouts appear in this semi-impromptu pad thai.

I had been writing about Thai restaurants and strangely, I was bitten by the pad thai bug. I don’t think I’ve had the noodles in at least a year. Ordering them at restaurants seems like a waste of a dish. Kasma Loha-unchit is reliable for recipes and I followed hers almost faithfully and adjusted to what I had around the house. That meant chicken thigh instead of tofu and shrimp and using two eggs instead of three because I was already going protein heavier than the original. I used hot radish rather than sweet because I have a perishable little jar in the fridge that needs to be used up. I also considered this foil packaged radish because I tend to buy pickled things without knowing how to use them and I need to pare down my pantry contents. I do like this sentiment on the label, “It is not only an idea food at home or journey but also a best gift to your friends.”

And I like chopping and sprinkling the cilantro rather than sticking a few sprigs on top. Urgh, and then my limes that I’d bought the day before disappeared. I’m not sure if they got left at Stop & Shop or if I accidentally threw them out with a plastic bag. Ok, so this was a sproutless, limeless rendition (luckily, the corner produce cart guy near my office had a few limes so my evening leftovers will be tarter) and it was still better than average.

Pad_thai
No, I'm not much of a photo stager

Soaking the noodles in warm water for nearly an hour instead of cooking for a few minutes made a big difference. I wasn’t sold on the idea. They seemed way too stiff after their water bath but I tossed them into the wok anyway. And then after adding the sauce, everything seemed too wet. But miraculously, it all came together and the noodles were nearly perfect. I usually have issues with rice sticks, well, sticking. If I only had those damn bean sprouts, this would be a high-ranking rendition. But that’s a reflection of NYC’s vegetable lameness, not the recipe’s fault.

Friedfish_2 As an earlier lazy snack, I peeled open a tin can of fried fish with chile and consumed it simply with a small bowl of rice. It’s possibly the equivalent of canned sardines with crackers. A cheap treat with crunchy, edible bones but sweet and spicy. The only thing is that the cartoon fish logo looks like he’s drooling. And the fish used in the cans are downright scary. I didn’t know what grinner or clarias were until I looked them up. One is borderline monstrous, the other walks, yes, walks. Though I like munching on their flesh, I have an aversion to sea creatures (whales, while majestic to many, give me the creeps. And these timely things, sweet jesus). It’s not always a good idea to know what your food looks like.

Sunday Night Special: Stargazy Pie & Saffron Potatoes

Stargazy_pie

Based on my recent media exposure to modern British food, which pretty much only consists of Olive magazine and The F Word, there seems to be a trend toward revamping or rediscovering classics. Prawn cocktail, cottage pie, syllabub and suet-based oddities like Sussex pond pudding. I’ve been surprised how much attention is given to Sunday roasts. I didn’t realize the meal was such a big thing and that’s not the direction I wanted to go. While I love those skin-on, crackly pork roasts, what I really wanted to cook was something fun.

I was looking for a recipe to fit the Fish & Quips call to arms (I rarely get involved with these food blog cooking events but this one struck my fancy), and had a hard time striking a balance between the stodgy and the esoteric. I most definitely didn’t want to delve into spotted dick or faggots territory. This is supposed to be an exercise to prove that English food isn’t a joke, duh

I surprised myself with the number of appropriate cookbooks and pamphlets I had at my disposal. I was thinking that my only option would be The Cooking of the British Isles, which I found on the street some time ago. But it turned out I also owned Favorite Devonshire Recipes, Symington’s Recipes, a 1930s, thin promotional book with horrific recipes like tomato sauce & fried bread and green pea eggs, which are scotch eggs with a layer of Symington’s pea soup between the white and breadcrumb layer, Carrier Cookery Cards in seafood, soups, main dishes and salads and cakes, sweets and puddings, Recipes for The Nation’s Favourite Food, Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating (without the Tony Bourdain intro but with an entire [small] chapter devoted to lamb brains), Traditional Scottish Cookery and British Regional Food. And well, technically Moro is a British cookbook, despite its Mediterranean cuisine.

Fish pie popped up in three of the four issues of Olive I’ve received since Christmas. Who knows if that’s any gauge of the dish’s popularity? I’m not acquainted with fish pie but I liked some of the takes on it even though smoked haddock seemed like it might be a pain to procure. Then I stumbled upon stargazy pie, which totally sounded up my alley. The recipe I found in British Regional Food had no photo so I was trying to imagine if fish heads truly did stick out of the top of the crust. To me, that’s not creepy but adorable. One of my favorite Indian by way of Singapore and Malaysia dishes is fish head curry; no one should fear the fish head.

Based fully on what I read with no grounding in reality, stargazy pie appears to be a specialty of Mousehole (pronounced mowzol) that is served on December 23. I don’t get the feeling this is a popular, or even particularly well known dish. But what do I know? I’ve never been to Cornwall. I have heard of pasties, though.

Unfortunately, pilchards are about as easy to find as that smoked haddock. I didn’t even find any fresh sardines (ok, I only tried two shops) so I went with the suggested mackerel (herring being another option I couldn’t find un-pickled). It’s a bargain fish at only 99-cents a pound at Pacific Supermarket, a Chinese grocer. Later in the day, I saw the exact same fish listed as Boston mackerel for $3.99/lb at Fairway. The only problem was knowing how many to buy. The recipe called for six pilchards and I guessed those were smaller. I bought four mackerel but only ended up using three.

Many of the recipes I found kept the fish whole and propped the heads up against the rim. That seemed precarious and I went with the version that cut the heads off and reserved them as more of a last minute decorative addition. Supposedly, the heads were traditionally included pointing upward so that essential oils would run down into the pie. All variations were fairly simple, no fancy spices (yes, the bland cliché has basis in fact) so I spruced it up minutely because salt, pepper and parsley aren’t enough for me. I’ve lightly adapted the following recipe from British Regional Food.

Stargazy_pie_fixings

Stargazy Pie

1 onion, finely chopped
3 strips of bacon, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon butter
½ tablespoon flour, plus more for dusting
3 tablespoons dry white wine
8 ½ ounces fish stock
10 ounces heavy cream (double cream if you have it)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 hard boiled eggs, shelled and chopped
1 thyme sprig
1 star anise
3 mackerel (or a few more pilchards, sardines or herring) filleted, residual bones removed and heads reserved
2 sheets of puff pastry
1 egg, beaten

Gently cook the onion and bacon in the butter until soft. Add the flour and stir well, then slowly add the wine and fish stock, stirring well to prevent lumps from forming. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the cream, bring back to a boil and simmer until reduced by half and thickened. Remove from heat; add parsley, chopped egg, thyme, star anise, season with salt and pepper and leave to cool. Remove sprig of thyme and star anise.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lay a sheet of puff pasty in a shallow pie pan and trim excess. Cut the fillets of fish in half and lay them on top of the pastry, then lightly season. Pour the sauce over them, then lay the other sheet of pastry over the dish and trim to size. Make as many small slits in the pastry as fish heads and push the reserved heads through. Brush the top with the beaten egg.

Bake for 40-45 minutes.

Serves 6

Stargazy_pie_saffron_potatoes

Roast potatoes are a logical accompaniment (though the stargazy recipe called for greens in fall and winter or a selection of spring vegetables. I’m not sure what you do in summer). I used a Delia Smith recipe for saffron potatoes, which were good but not as good as they could’ve been because I wimped out and cut the fat by a third. I have noticed that one of the secrets to nice, crispy English roasted potatoes is the roughing up bit after they've boiled. The battered edges absorb more of the oil or butter. Yum.

To be honest, I was mildly concerned that this dish would be all (weirdo) style, no substance. But the pie ended up a rich, creamy and yes, fishy, success. If you didn’t like strong, oily fish in the first place, it probably wouldn’t make a convert out of you. I don’t know that I will incorporate stargazy pie into a frequent dinner rotation, though I’ll certainly tuck it away for future reference.

Sunday Night Special: Pork in Caramel Sauce & Pickled Bean Sprouts

Pork_chop_with_caramel_sauce

While trolling the internet I used to save recipes I might seriously make in a word document ingeniously called recipes. I haven’t touched or updated it in years. But I was reminded of its existence on my hard drive after eating a pork tenderloin in caramel sauce at Silent H a few weekends ago.

The first recipe I ever added to my list was Mark Bittman’s take on this dish, beef tenderloin in carmelized sugar, from an October 30, 2002 New York Times. It was really easy and unbelievably good (quick enough for a Monday night—I’m fudging the category because I didn’t cook on Easter). I made it once. In an effort to strive for authenticity, I looked in a few Vietnamese cookbooks and online sources but I decided to stick with his version.

It appears that this recipe also can be found in his The Best Recipes of the World (click on Southeast Asia on the left menu), a book I had completely forgotten existed until literally about two hours ago when I decided to watch a taped version of Bittman’s new TV show that aired this weekend. I didn’t realize the show was a tie-in with this book. It was a fitting coincidence that I decided to crack out the ol’ carmelized meat recipe when I did.

I substituted semi-thick pork chops for the beef called for and just cooked the meat a little longer. I’ve never exactly pinned down umami but I imagine that this dish is teeming with it. The sauce would almost be too salty if it weren’t for the hefty dose of melted sugar, which turns everything gooey like a piquant fishy candy. That’s a good thing.

Beef Tenderloin in Caramelized Sugar

4 pieces filet mignon, each 1 inch thick
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup nam pla, or to taste
1 large onion, cut in half-moon slices
1 teaspoon black pepper, or more.

Put a 10-inch skillet over high heat. Wait a minute. Add meat, and brown on both sides. Turn off heat, and place steaks on plate.

A minute later, add sugar to pan, and turn heat to medium. Cook, gently shaking pan, until sugar liquefies and begins to bubble. Cook another minute until it darkens, then turn off heat. Mix nam pla with  1/2 cup water. Carefully add liquid, and turn heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring constantly, until caramel melts into liquid. Add onions, and cook, stirring, about 5 minutes. Stir in any liquid that has accumulated around meat.

Stir in black pepper, and return meat to pan. Cook over medium heat, turning meat once in a while, until it is done to your liking (about 5 to 8 minutes for medium-rare). Taste, and adjust seasoning, then serve, spooning onions and sauce over each steak.

Serves 4

As a side, I made an even simpler accompaniment of pickled bean sprouts from Nicole Routhier’s The Foods of Vietnam. I halved this recipe because as tasty as they are, you can only eat so many bean sprouts and they don’t keep well.

Pickled Bean Sprouts
Dưa Giá

1 pound fresh bean sprouts
1 bunch of scallions, cut into 2-inch long sections
1 tablespoon salt
½ cup white vinegar

Mix the bean sprouts and scallions in a large bowl.

Combine the salt, vinegar and 4 cups of water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cool until warm to the touch. Pour the brine over the bean sprout mixture. Marinate for at least 1 hour, or until ready to serve. Drain before serving.

Serves 4 to 6

Sunday Night Special: Tartare, Ragout & Scaloppine

I don’t always document my Sunday dinners. I was too frazzled to write about tapas two Sundays ago where I mangled the aioli twice, or Hunan pork the Sunday before that. It was so simple that I didn’t even bother (plus, I’d already done a few Fuchsia Dunlop recipes recently and I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I was crazed).

This past Sunday James stepped up. He’s on some weird Jacques Pepin bender. Normally, James cooks stuff more like fried chicken, split pea and ham soup, pasta and sausage, huevos rancheros, American tacos, egg, bacon and cheese sandwiches (in fact, he’s making one right now and it’s 12:20am and that’s frustrating because the bacon smell has permeated the apartment, making me hungry, and we already ate my healthy spinach, white bean and tuna salad a few hours ago) and occasionally Thai basil chicken.

Fast Food My Way was recently added to the DVR queue. I’m starting to become a sucker for all the channel 21 shows. In fact, I just ordered the accompanying cookbook and Rick Bayless’s reissued Authentic Mexican. Maybe I’m just relieved to not be watching Food TV.

Because we don’t have the cookbook yet, James made the recipes from what he caught on TV. This was his deal, I just very lightly documented it. All the measurements are super approximate. And by the by, this may be fast food Pepin’s way but it took well over an hour to prepare in our apartment.

Salmon Tartare over Cauliflower Puree
1 lb salmon
2 tablespoons capers
¼ small red onion, chopped
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon chopped chives
½ tablespoon Tabasco sauce
salt
pepper

Slice salmon into one-inch cubes salmon and toss with capers, vinegar, Tabasco and olive oil. Season to taste.

One head cauliflower
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ small red onion, sliced
salt

Boil cauliflower until soft, maybe five minutes. Mash with hand masher and mix with mustard, olive oil and onion. Salt to taste.

You’re supposed to have a ring mold for the puree and tartare and garnish with egg and chives. Tall food never happens in our house so we didn’t have the ring mold. A tuna can is too short.

Salmon_tartare_cauliflower

Chickpea Ragout
1 white onion, chopped
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 serrano chile, chopped
2 scallions, chopped
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat olive oil in pan. Cook onions until golden. Add scallions, tomato, chile, chickpeas, and chicken broth. Bring to boil, cover, then simmer for 15 minutes. Remove lid, let cook down a bit if it seems too soupy.

Jacques said to use a “luscious” tomato and his certainly fit the bill. That’s not happening in Brooklyn in April. Pale supermarket tomatoes had to suffice.

Pork Scaloppine
1 lb Pork loin or cutlet, cut into four
fresh bread crumbs from 4 slices of white bread
parmesan cheese
1/3 chopped onion
2 cups white mushrooms, sliced
½ cup white wine
chives
butter
olive oil

Pound pork rounds into thin cutlets. Mix crumbs and cheese. Coat pork in the mixture. Add butter and olive oil to a pan. Once hot, brown cutlets on both sides. Remove. Add onion, then mushrooms into the pan. Cook until they start to brown. Deglaze with white wine. Pour sauce atop pork cutlets and garnish with chives. Serve with ragout.

Pork_scaloppine_chickpeas

It’s not the prettiest looking plate but everything was very tasty and completely suitable for a Sunday night. I can’t say I’m crazy about The Tudors. I don’t really understand the recent appeal of cable historical melodramas (once you remove the rampant humping and explicit violence, that is). Though, that’s nothing compared to my other Sunday TV viewing fright: watching Christopher Kimball, blindfolded, taste testing low-fat mayonnaise with a spoon. Egads.

Sunday Night Special: Menudo

Neither of my parents could’ve qualified as good cooks during the many years I lived with them. We probably ate breakfast for dinner twice a week and fried eggs, bacon, grated cheddar cheese and salsa wrapped in flour tortillas are the only thing I even recall my dad churning out. Breakfast burritos were about as Mexican as it got in my household, too. 

Well, Tex-Mex enchiladas, along with lasagna–another baked dish adept at feeding crowds–were my mom’s two company’s-coming-over standards. The one anomaly, which I’ll have to ask her about, was her taco technique. She would deep-fry corn tortillas when making tacos while all of my friends’ families used those crunchy shells from a box. I’ve since learned that the puffy oil-dipped style is Texan, a state no one on my maternal side has any ties to. I have no idea where she picked that up because she’s way more of an out of the box woman than an extra step type.

I’ve never been given a straight answer as to when either sides of my family came to America and where they even came from. The closest I could gather from my father was that his ancestors lived in Texas before it was a state. That’s kind of weird, like my relatives didn’t come from anywhere; they were just hanging out in America already. But I don’t see how that century-old-plus connection could’ve had any influence on my mom frying corn tortillas.

Menudo_menuditoEpisodes that only occurred a couple times in childhood often multiply in the mind years later. My dad likely bought a big can of Juanita’s menudo two or three times, though I remember it as a more regular purchase. I thought the crimson, lightly spiced soup crammed with monster-sized white pieces of corn was the coolest thing ever. It was much more exotic than Campbell’s bean with bacon, my favorite up until that point.

My father and I were the only ones who’d eat it. Tripe was alien and like nothing I’d encountered before. The fact that it was cow stomach didn’t bother me–I was never grossed out by things like giblets either and had no problem eating pet food on dares. My sister turned out the opposite and grew up into a vegan whom I think has loosened up and started eating cheese. Cheese is one animal product worth clinging to.

I liked anything different or underdoggy. When given a choice between blue and white Trax (Kmart’s house brand) or tan and sienna, I chose the dirt colored combo because they were uglier and not the Nikes I wanted in the first place. Eventually I grew to genuinely enjoy the contrary. Maybe a lot more kids had to wear Trax than I realized at the time since like it not, irony is such a trait of my generation. ‘80s kids are way more straightforward and jubilant (and could use a good spirit-crushing).

Menudo_ingredientsYou don’t see menudo in cans much here, or even freshly prepared on menus. It’s standard weekend fare on much of the west coast but NYC doesn’t necessarily follow the rules. Yesterday, I visited a tiny lunch counter in the Bronx, Real Azteca, and they had pancita, a tripe soup which I suspect is similar to menudo if not the same thing. I was just in the mood for tacos, though.

It had never occurred to me to try and cook my own menudo but it seemed like the perfect Sunday afternoon project. I know menudo is morning food but I rarely get out of bed before noon (and I didn’t even go out drinking on St. Patrick’s Day).

Finding a good recipe proved more difficult than I’d expected. For one, I don’t own a single Mexican cookbook, which is plain sad. In fact the only Latin American cookbooks I possess are a ‘60s Time Life Foods of the World volume and Havana Salsa and Daisy Cooks, which were freebies because I reviewed them for the New York Post. Not counting multi-cuisine (primarily S.E.) Asian cookbooks like Hot Sour Salty Sweet, New Wave Asian, The Occidental Tourist and the like (19 in all), I have 12 Malaysian, 7 Thai, 4 Singaporean, 2 Vietnamese and even 2 Filipino and I never ever cook Pinoy fare. This Mexican cookbook situation must be rectified pronto.

Menudo_extrasI turned to the internet but every recipe seemed slightly off to me. The Diana Kennedy one floating around had no call for liquid which had to be a misprint and contained no seasonings whatsoever, possibly because it was for white menudo. I didn’t want white. Others were too fancy and called for bay leaves and employed bouquet garni. Some put chopped green chiles in the broth and I don’t think anything but red and dried chiles belong. I’m so not a recipe writer, so I borrowed bits from all over as part of the learning process and would change a few things next time. I’m not saying what follows reflects any authenticity but it felt right.

Menudo (attempt #1)

2 pounds honeycomb tripe
1 calf’s foot, chopped into chunks
1 white onion, roughly sliced
1 clove garlic, sliced in half horizontally
1 ancho chile, toasted and ground
1 sprig thyme
1 teaspoon peppercorns
1 28-ounce can hominy
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
water
salt

For garnish
chopped cilantro
chopped white onion
piquin chile powder
lime wedges

Place calf’s foot, garlic and onion in a large pot and sprinkle with salt. Top with tripe and salt a little more, then pour water to cover all the ingredients. Add peppercorns, thyme and ancho chile powder. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer for about two hours.

Strain out the ingredients. The garlic and onion can be tossed, any meat from the calf’s foot can be shredded and the tripe should be cut into one-inch pieces. Return the meat to the liquid. Add the hominy and oregano. Simmer for another two hours.

Skim off any foam or oil that has accumulated on the surface. Add salt to taste and serve garnished with chopped onion, cilantro and chile powder and lime wedges.

Serves 6-8

Adapted from here, here and here.

Menudo

I’m still not 100% sure about the process. Next time I would cut the tripe before cooking it. There wasn’t any meat on my cow’s feet so there wasn’t anything to remove and add the pot. And I was confused by the onions and garlic. I’m assuming they had to be strained out because menudo doesn’t have chunks of aromatic vegetables floating in it.

Even after adding ancho chiles, thyme and oregano, which weren’t a part of the original recipe I was following, the broth tasted a little flat. It smelled and looked richer than it was. And my tripe was too tough (I didn’t cook it as long as I’ve indicated above). But after re-heating the pot full the next day the flavors had melded and the meat had softened up. This is a work in progress and I plan on revisiting tripe soup after I do a little more research.

Pork Loin with Fennel, Chile and Garlic Roasties

Sunday roast isn’t so much of an American thing, is it? Occasionally my mom would put a pot roast and some chopped carrots and potatoes in a crockpot before going to church so we’d have a meaty early dinner but that was infrequent. While briefly in Wales this summer, Sunday carvery seemed to be a thing; restaurants and pubs would serve lamb, beef and pork roasts with various mushy vegetables, Yorkshire puddings and sauces. This month’s Olive had a Sunday roast feature, which we attempted to adapt to American cuts and ingredients.

My love of Western Beef is no secret, it’s my go-to all-purpose supermarket. They were hyping up pork shoulders for 68 cents per pound over the PA, but they were paired two to bag, which is excessive even for a household with two fridges. But damn, that’s cheap. Think of all the carnitas you could fry up. (I know, I know, low cost meat equals grotesque practices but I’m a grocery store girl. As charming as they sound I’m phobic of $8.50/lb humane organics as well as old school butchers. What you never hear about are those live animal markets scattered throughout the outer boroughs.)

Where else can you find prepped, ready-to-use goat meat, tripe and cow feet plus red currant jam (the makings of future cooking projects) all under one roof? Western Beef’s apt slogan “We know the neighborhood” plays out in Polish shelves stocked with jellies in hard-to-find flavors (currants are totally un-American) and the recent addition of Bosnian canned goods. No fresh tarragon or Yukon gold potatoes, though.

James was convinced that they wouldn’t have fennel. I guessed that they would but that there would be trouble at the checkout. Cashiers not recognizing lesser purchased produce can sometimes work in your favor, they’ll just give it to you cheap. As our cashier was ringing up our goods, I caught her glancing at the frondy bulb and stealthily avoiding it. Eventually she had to pick it up and asked, “What is this?”

Me: Fennel. F-E-N-N-E-L
Cashier: F what?
Me, slower: um, F-E-N-N-E-L

No luck, she finally had to ask another cashier who tried to ignore her question then admitted that she didn’t know what it was called. After a spell a male employee sauntered over and bluntly declared, “Anise, it’s under A” That’s so not right and everyone looked at us like we were delusional and making words up. I guessed maybe anise was a Caribbean misnomer since even in Spanish fennel isn’t anise, it’s hinojo.

Bastardized terminology was the theme of this meal. I can’t bear to type chilli so I’m sticking with chile but I’ll leave their roasties, which appear to be roasted potatoes. And the recipe called for maris piper potatoes, a British spud. I also substituted baking dish or roasting pan for roasting tin. That’s just wrong. Pork loin on the bone that’s been “chined” was too esoteric so we substituted a boneless, skin on pork loin and cooked it for a shorter time. And don’t get me started on Celsius oven temperatures and milliliters (or calling desserts puddings then shortening that to pud).

When all was said and done, we ended up with an unusually seasoned roast, very spice rich but not spicy hot. It might’ve been slightly overcooked, partially due to tweaking the cooking time and not having the bone-in cut. The potatoes were actually the best part of the meal but anything slowly browned in large quantities of butter olive oil is bound to be pleasing.

P.S. A few slices of pork, a couple fennel wedges and a swipe of Dijon mustard between two slices of french bread makes a great lunch sandwich.  I'm saving $7 by avoiding Pret a Manger this very minute.

Pork_loin_wtih_fennel_and_chile_and_garl_1
There's nothing like the glow of a TV to illumimate a plate of food.

Pork Loin with Fennel, Chile and Garlic Roasties

2 pounds boneless pork loin with skin scored
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
½ teaspoon, crushed dried chiles
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 garlic cloves
Zest of one lemon
Maldon sea salt flakes
3 fennel bulbs, trimmed and cut into wedges
1 tablespoon olive oil

Garlicky Roasties
3 pounds firm white potatoes, peeled and quartered
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Gravy
1 tablespoon flour
1 ½ cups Marsala or white wine
2 ½ cups chicken or vegetable stock

Heat oven to 350 F. Pat the pork dry with paper towels and put into roasting pan. Using a mortar and pestle, pound together the fennel seeds, chiles, peppercorns, garlic and lemon zest and work the mixture into the slashes on the pork skin. Sprinkle the salt, rubbing well into the skin.

Boil the potatoes in salted water for 10 minutes and drain well. Give them a really good shake to rough up the edges. Heat the butter and olive oil in a separate baking pan. Add the potatoes, season with salt and toss to coat in the hot fat. Roast the pork and potatoes for 20 minutes then arrange the fennel around the pork and drizzle with olive oil. Cook for a further 20. Add the crushed garlic and parsley to the potatoes and cook for a further 10 minutes until golden brown and crisp.

Remove the fennel from the pork dish and keep warm. Transfer the pork to a clean pan, turn the oven up to high and return the pork to the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up the skin. Meanwhile make the gravy. Drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the pork roasting pan and put over low heat. Add the flour and cook for 30 seconds. Pour the wine into the pan and bring to a boil scraping any carmelized bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce by half and then add the stock and simmer for 5 minutes. Season and serve with the pork, fennel and potatoes.

Serves 6

Sunday Night Special: General Tso’s Chicken

Ok, this isn’t technically a Sunday Night Special, but I didn’t cook on the day of rest because I had a huge late lunch at Pio Pio. Tonight I made what I would’ve wanted to cook on Sunday night if I'd been hungrier.

I’m sure I’m not the first to discover what a deal Amazon’s free super saver shipping is. You’re entitled if you spend over $25 and they warn that it will take 5-9 days just to scare you off but it never takes that long. Just Sunday I ordered Fuchsia Dunlop’s brand new Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province (as well as Memories of Philippine Kitchens and Nueva York: The Complete Guide to Latino Life in the Five Boroughs [I'm trying to learn more about the Bronx]). I was inspired after killing time in the airport the day before, reading her recent General Tso’s chicken article off a handheld device from a copyright violating website. I couldn't believe that an Amazon box was sitting in the hall when I left for work this morning. Very impressive.

I must not get out much because I’d never heard of this popular chicken dish referred to anything other than Tso’s or possibly Tsao’s, and I grew up in a city completely lacking in authentic Chinese food. This Gau’s and George’s business is nuts (but then, I’ve also heard that you can get white bread with Chinese take out in Boston)

General_tsos_chickenI’m all about the dark meat, despite always having a stash of listless Costco chicken breasts in the freezer. Thighs are so much tastier, so I followed this suggestion in the recipe. Unfortunately, we didn’t scrutinize the cooking instructions before shopping on Sunday afternoon and only picked up a pack of three thighs. To make up the difference, I tossed in a sliced chicken breast. There was no contest between the two cuts. Funny that General Tso has recently prompted a light vs. dark discussion elsewhere.

The only thing we had to pick up was potato flour and some gai lan as a side (I realize American broccoli would’ve been truer to take out form). Loosely based on a water spinach recipe in the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, I stir-fried garlic, black beans and sliced red chile, then added the broccoli and covered for a few minutes to steam. I finished the dish with a splash of rice vinegar and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Gai_lanThis Hunan by way of Taiwan recipe isn’t sweet as typical General Tso’s is, and that’s fine by me. (I just noticed that the recipe floating around on the internet is a copy of what was in The Times and has been edited differently than what's in the book. ) There is a Changsha version on the following page of the cookbook that looks nearly the same yet uses white sugar, more ginger and no garlic. I stuck with the more savory approach even though I will admit to enjoying the crispy, candied, hyper-battered, American-Chinese meat chunks. Lightly sauced, velvety slices of moderately spiced chicken aren’t so bad either.

General Tso’s Chicken (Taiwan Version)
Zuo Zong Tang Ji

4 boned chicken thighs with skin (about 12 oz. total)
6-10 dried red chiles
2 tsp. finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tsp. sesame oil
Peanut oil for deep-frying
For the marinade:
2 tsp. light soy sauce
½ tsp. dark soy sauce
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp. potato flour
2 tsp. peanut oil

For the sauce:
1 tbsp. double-concentrate tomato paste mixed with 1 tbsp. water
½ tsp. potato flour
½ tsp. dark soy sauce
1 ½ tsp. light soy sauce
1 tbsp. clear rice vinegar
3 tbsp. stock or water

Thinly sliced scallion greens to garnish

1. Make the sauce by combining all the ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.

2. To prepare the chicken, unfold the chicken thighs and lay them on a cutting board. Remove as much of the sinew as possible. (If some parts are very thick, cut them in half horizontally.) Slice a few shallow crosshatches into the meat. Cut each thigh into roughly 1/4 -inch slices and place in a large bowl. Add the soy sauces and egg yolk and mix well. Stir in the potato flour and 2 teaspoons peanut oil and set aside. Using scissors, snip the chilies into 3/4 -inch pieces, discarding the seeds. Set aside.

3. Pour 3 1/2 cups peanut oil into a large wok, or enough oil to rise 1 1/2 inches from the bottom. Set over high heat until the oil reaches 350 to 400 degrees. Add half the chicken and fry until crisp and deep gold, 3 to 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a plate. Repeat with the second batch. Pour the oil into a heatproof container and wipe the wok clean.

4. Place the wok over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil. When hot, add the chilies and stir-fry for a few seconds, until they just start to change color. Add the ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a few seconds longer, until fragrant. Add the sauce, stirring as it thickens. Return the chicken to the wok and stir vigorously to coat. Remove from the heat, stir in the sesame oil and top with scallions.

Serves 2 to 3

Adapted from “The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook” by Fuchsia Dunlop. W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.