Posts tagged ‘Recipe For Disaster’

Sunday Night Special: Turkey with Mint and Hot Chiles & Makeua Oop

Sometimes Sunday night is a loose concept. I ended up making these two dishes on separate evenings, though they were originally intended as a single meal. Whenever I cook for myself, I eat less. That’s troublesome, though I know I’m not unique; what I’d always suspected–when a couple moves in together, the man gets healthier while the woman gains weight–was proven by science.

I turned to my trusty, banged up review copy of Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet (it was one of the only perks I got from a short lived online culinary job I had in 2000. Now that I’m all library science I can’t finagle a web job to save my life) because I recalled the book containing a turkey recipe and I’ve been trying to find a use for three drumsticks in my freezer (still on the using up old food mission). I’d much rather experiment with a Laotian salad than mess with tetrazzini or some other abomination.

I’m not sure why I didn’t learn my lesson about trying to poach turkey legs after running into trouble during Thanksgiving. It doesn’t work. They don’t cook all the way using the bring to a boil, turn off the heat and leave with the lid on for an hour approach. And when you get exasperated, then turn the heat back on and simmer for a while, they firm up to near uselessness. I just imagined that the tough meat was approximating a wild Southeast Asian bird.

The recipes from this book tend to be tame with the heat, so don’t hesitate to use more chile. I used five chiles and had to resist the urge to add sugar (I don’t like tweaking recipes I’ve never made before). I thought I already had a batch or roasted rice powder in case I needed to make an impromptu larb, but it was nowhere to be found. Really, it’s no big deal to omit it.  You still get the gist.

Turkey with Mint and Hot Chiles

8 to 10 ounces cooked light and dark turkey meat, roughly cut into ½ inch chunks (about 2 cups packed)
2 tablespoons thinly sliced shallots, separated into rings
½ cup loosely packed coarsely torn coriander leaves
½ cup loosely packed coarsely chopped mint leaves
1 teaspoons minced bird chile, or more to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce, or to taste
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon roasted rice powder, or more to taste

Combine the meat and shallots in a shallow bowl. Add the coriander and mint leaves and mix well.

In a small bowl, combine all the remaining ingredients except the rice powder and stir to mix well. Pour over the salad and toss to distribute the dressing thoroughly. Just before serving, sprinkle on the rice powder, if using.

Serves 4

If you Google “best eggplant dish ever” you’ll find caponata, baked eggplant with mushroom and tomato sauce, szechuan eggplant stir-fry and a few others. The Best Eggplant Dish Ever title is the authors’ not mine. I don’t like to use superlatives, so I hesitate to say best, but I definitely think it’s probably better than any of those listed above.

I could’ve sworn I made this before but I definitely would’ve remembered it now that I’ve tasted it. Mine was slightly bitter, probably because I used small Italian eggplants instead of Asian ones. And I kept wanting to add fish sauce, but stuck with the recommended salt. Perhaps I’m finally getting a handle on seasoning because I thought it definitely needed more than the one teaspoon.

Maybe there wasn’t quite enough moisture in my ingredients or the heat was initially too high but the bottom of the pan got charred with burnt sticky bits, even after periodically checking on the mass. Then it fixed itself like magic. It’s that kind of a dish. Everything seems chunky and disparate, yet eventually melds. 

I’d already finished off my bowl of creamy, spicy mash when James returned from out of town. I was waiting for it…yes, there it was, “it smells like shrimp paste up here” as he promptly turned the air conditioner on. I was trying to conserve energy, not necessarily attempting to recreate a sticky, pungent Malaysian night market in the apartment. Besides, it wasn’t shrimp paste; it was pounded dried shrimp, duh.

Makeua Oop a.k.a. The Best Eggplant Dish Ever

3 Thai dried red chiles, soaked in warm water for 15 minutes to soften
¼ cup finely chopped shallots
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 heaping tablespoon dried shrimp
1 teaspoon salt
1 medium tomato, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup ground pork (optional)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric (optional)
1 1/2 pounds Asian eggplants, cut into ¼ inch slices
5 to 8 leaves mint or coriander, coarsely torn

Drain the chiles, reserving the water. Coarsely chop them, discarding the tough stems, and place in a mortar or blender together with the shallots, garlic, shrimp, and salt. Pound or process to a paste (if using the blender, you will probably need to add some of the chile soaking water). Add the tomato and pound or blend briefly, then transfer the spice pate to a bowl and set aside.

Place a 3 ½- to 4 ½-quart heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid over high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pot with oil. Add the pork, if using, and brown briefly, then add the spice paste and optional turmeric. Lower the heat to medium and cook, stirring, until aromatic, about 2 minutes. Add the eggplant slices and stir briefly, cover tightly , and reduce the heat to low (do not ad water). Coo, checking every five minutes or so to ensure that nothing is sticking and to give the ingredients a brief stir, for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the eggplant is very tender and shapeless.

Turn out into a shallow bowl and top with the mint or coriander. Serve warm or at room temperature

Serves 4

Recipes from Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Artisan, 2000

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Sunday Night Special: Birria de Chivo

It’s fall freezer cleaning time, which means going through all the crap that’s accumulated in both of them (yes, two) since lord knows when and no, not tossing it, cooking it. Maybe I’ll get food poisoned but it looks like I won’t need to buy any proteins (ew, I hate it when chefs and whoever else use that unappetizing term) for a couple weeks. Here’s the gruesome break down:

-Pork ribs were grilled Saturday night
-Chicken wings were buffalo-ized Sunday afternoon
-Lamb roast will become mutton kolhapuri (from a mix—we also have enough dried and canned goods to last into 2008)
-Lamb chops will be barbecued yueyang style
-Beef roast will be turned into rending
-Ground beef will transform into American hard shell tacos with cheddar cheese and lettuce
-Ground pork? I’m not sure yet, maybe ma po tofu

I also found a bag of cheese curds I bought in Montreal Labor Day weekend ’06. Sad as it makes me, I’m not sure how great year-old frozen cheese is. They do sell curds in the neighborhood so my eventual poutine experiment won’t be a total bust.

[written on Sunday] But presently, I’m only concerned with the goat chunks I’m turning into birria this evening. I went with a Rick Bayless recipe, but quickly realized I had the wrong cut of meat. I have bone-in hunks made for stewing while he requires a five-pound solid mass of meat. I’m not sure how well the steaming approach will work with my tougher bits of goat.

[back to the past tense] Well, it succeeded in using up freezer meat and a bag of guajillo chiles that have been neglected for months, but didn’t quite succeed as an amazingly tasty meal. You’re supposed to skim fat from the broth but there didn’t even appear to be any broth; it all looked like orange oil. I did what I could to clean it up. The flavor was there but the meat was like jerky. I almost lost a tooth. Americans seem to hate goat meat, and this use of the gamey flesh would only succeed in scaring most people further. I’ve only eaten birria once in Chicago so I’m hardly a connoisseur, but wrong is wrong. Lesson learned: do not attempt to steam stew meat.

At least my evening was salvaged by the pretty as a pastel rainbow mithai I picked up at Dehli Palace earlier in the day. I love their box decorated with photo collage of the goods.

Clearly, there is no throwing out of food in my household, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that while James was home sick yesterday that he attempted salvaging the birria. After sitting in the refrigerator overnight, the fat had congealed enough to easily remove. That was a start, and then he stewed the whole thing within an inch of its life (after giving up on steaming, I let the meaty bones cook in the broth for about an hour the night before to no avail). And it succeeded. I had un-bad birria waiting for me when I came home from work. A squeeze of lime and a few corn tortillas enhanced the new and improved meal. I didn’t take any photos of round two, though.

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Sunday Night Special: Crispy Pancetta, Burrata & Tomato Sandwich

The last thing I wanted was to be a summertime loser. It’s already August and I haven’t eaten a single real tomato (at least not while sitting on my couch watching the increasingly opaque John From Cincinnati). I managed to drag myself up to the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket just shy of closing time, and then reminded myself why I’m lucky to live two blocks from Caputo’s.

I had browsed tomato recipes on Epicurious and actually chose three, two for later in the week, but it was the crispy pancetta, burrata and tomato sandwich that seemed low maintenance enough for a scalding Sunday night. I’ll admit that Bon Appetit isn’t on my regular reading list so I had no idea that I was making this month’s cover recipe until I saw the picture on another site’s banner ad. Maybe I’d been subliminally influenced all week?

Simple as they are, sandwiches and salads are two things I like to leave to professionals. My versions always end up as weak imitations or when made up by me, just plain weak. You only need to compare my version to the original for a glaringly disproportionate bread/filling ratio. I didn’t think it was a big deal if I substituted pane rustico for brioche but that was a bit of a mistake. The crust was hard on the mouth and the inner crumb kind of dominated.

The only blob of burrata left at Caputo’s was truffle-laced, so that subtly changed the flavor. Not for the worse, though. I will freely admit to being borderline ignorant with Italian food (I hate it when home cooks are all unabashedly clueless with cuisines that I love, though). I wasn’t familiar with panna and had no idea what type of leaf the wet cheese ball had been wrapped in (I think it’s a leek relative).

Once you got past the breadiness, the center was a cohesive blend of all ends of the flavor and texture spectrum: salty, gooey, fleshy, bitter, a little tart and not terribly sweet (using the prescribed egg bread would’ve taken care of that). I made a second small sandwich using the same bread sliced thin, crosswise and it was close to ideal. 

Next mission is to find uses for ripe tomatoes that don’t involve cheese, olive oil and basil. I know that’s a classic combo but I’m keen on this rendition using fish sauce, white anchovies, cilantro and ginger. The strange thing is that I’m 85% certain that I made this dish before but I don’t remember getting the idea from Food & Wine.

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

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.

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.

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Sunday Night Special: 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

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Sunday Night Special: Cochinita Pibil & Pickled Onions

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.

Pre pound

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
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

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.

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Sunday Night Special: Pad Thai

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.

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.

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.

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Sunday Night Special: Stargazy Pie & Saffron Potatoes

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

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

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.

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