Archive for the ‘recipe’ Category

7 Apr

Seasonal Seasoning Butters

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, farmers market, fish and seafood, front yard gardening, greens, herbs, passing pleasures, Perennial edibles, recipe, sustainable, Uncategorized, urban homesteading, vegetable gardening. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .


At this glorious time of year, perennial edibles are coming up everywhere. Many of them are herbs used as seasoning for generations, and at this time of year I start making seasoning butters to take advantage of them at their best. The butters change throughout the season, according to what is available and fresh and goes well with other herbaceous ingredients that I’m considering.

I used to make a lot of the classic Montpellier butter, and I still make it sometimes, but overall I tend to prefer something a little more spontaneous. I do think that the anchovy fillets ground into the classic butter add a rich and savory resonance to nearly anything, without being identifiable as anchovy. But I don’t keep the fillets around much anymore, so instead I substitute a good grade of fish sauce actually made from anchovies. Do not use the inexpensive ones made from hydrolyzed fish protein, which range from execrable to mediocre. Red Boat is a good grade of fish sauce made in the classic fermented fashion, and it’s not very expensive when you compare it to true Italian colatura, which taste very similar and costs at least three times as much.

The other things you need are a clove of garlic, about 8 ounces of good butter, 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of good olive oil, half a lemon, and herbs. Which herbs depends a lot on what is fresh, good, and available to you. Give some thought to whether the flavors can harmonize. Personally, although rosemary is throwing out fresh growth right now in my area, I don’t find rosemary to be a good team player and if I use it, I use it by itself. Other people view this very differently, so see what you think. For this amount of butter and olive oil, you need the equivalent of a large bunch of fresh herbs, and for herbs I consider a large bunch to be the amount I can just barely get my thumb and forefinger around.


My most recent butter included a large bunch of half garlic greens and half perennial arugula, with several sprigs each of tarragon and thyme. At this early point in the year the new growth of thyme is tender and just needs chopping, but later in the season I would pull the leaves off the wiry stems. If I didn’t have a permaculture garden, I would use the green parts of a bunch of green onions and a few large leaves of mustard greens with the center stem removed.

Set the butter out to soften a bit. Chop the garlic, and separately chop the herbs. Heat a small saucepan over medium heat, put in the chopped garlic and sauté until it’s cooked but not colored, add the chopped herbs, turn the heat to low, and cook for a few minutes until the herbs look definitely cooked but still bright green. This usually takes about five minutes for me. Put in one or 2 teaspoons of fish sauce and a good pinch of salt. Set the pan aside and let cool to room temperature. Put the cooked herb mixture in the food processor, add the butter cut up into pats, and process until the butter is well incorporated but you can still see distinct pieces of the herbs, not green mush. Squeeze in some lemon juice; I use about a tablespoon. If you want to, you can grate off a little of the lemon zest and blend that in too.
Pack into a small airtight container or bowl, store in the refrigerator, and use within a week or two. As for how to use it, it can go on almost anything else that you are cooking in a simple fashion and want to add a little extra pizzazz  to. Generous globs melting on top of cooked green vegetables are wonderful, and it is good on scrambled or fried eggs or on top of omelettes. Some slices of the butter put on top of broiled fish or seafood are very good, and it’s also good on roast chicken or chicken pieces. It is excellent folded into plain white rice. Try it on egg noodles with some Parmesan and maybe a little bit of cream. For all these applications I use generous amounts, but of course you can use a lighter hand if you prefer.
Every week, walk through your garden or farmers market or a good grocery store and see what flavorful herbs are around, and make seasoning butter accordingly. Bronze fennel is beginning to leaf out on my property, and fennel butter with some thyme and a small amount of tarragon is going to be delicious. My lemon balm is just coming up, and I am speculating about whether a generous amount of lemon balm and green garlic and a bit of rosemary would create a context in which rosemary could shine without taking over.
Personally I think that some alliums are always needed for a really good flavor, and if green garlic was not in season I would use perennial green onions or garlic chives, both of which will grow extremely happily in almost anybody’s soil. But don’t get too concerned about specific ingredients, just think about what is fresh and what tastes good together. The whole idea is to have the pleasure of something on your plate that tastes of the growing season.

12 Jan

The Winter Kitchen: Colorado Seasoning Sauce

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, home food production, kitchen staples, recipe, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

Lately I have been on a Mexican kick. Not the light, bright, tropical flavors that are so refreshing  in the summer, but the darker and earthier ones that are so warming in the winter. In my last post I wrote about the darkest and richest of my home-composed seasoning sauces, and this time I’ll give the recipe for my Colorado sauce. I call it Colorado, the Spanish word for brick-red, because it is that color and to distinguish it from red chile, which is made everywhere in my area with local chiles and is truly bright red. It is quite different from the Oaxacan mole colorado, which is enriched with nuts, seeds, and often fruits or sugar. This one is pure chile.

The selection, toasting, deseeding, soaking, and grinding of chiles can be a prolonged process. I’ve gotten around this by making a base that can be used about 85% of the time as a start, modified as needed with additional chiles and seasonings to suit a particular dish. That way I can make the base once and use it for quick meals.

First and foremost, get good chiles. This is not as easy as it sounds. For instance, a lot of places sell dried anchos, but they are generally dried out, brittle, and have lost much of their special flavor. A proper ancho chile is bendable and leathery, has a scent of good pipe tobacco, and when tasted raw has tobacco and raisin notes. In areas with a large Mexican population, you can usually get good ones, but in other areas the chiles often will be dried out, crumbly, and short on flavor. You can order from The Chile Guy and be certain of getting good stock.

The chiles used here are anchos, guajillos, pasillas  negro, and chipotle meco, shown from left to right above.

8 anchos

6 guajillos

5 pasillas negros, often sold just as chiles negros

2 chipotles mecos

1 large onion

4 cloves garlic

1/4 cup home-rendered lard or avocado oil

3 cups chicken broth or water, heated to near boiling

1 14.5 ounce can fire-roasted tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon oregano

With kitchen shears cut  the stem ends off all the chiles, slit them down one side, pull out most of the seeds and veins, and flatten out as much as possible. Slice the onion fine, peel and chop the garlic, and heat up 3 cups of water or broth in a bowl.

Heat a comal or iron skillet to medium-hot. Be prepared to work very fast. Put one chile  at a time in the skillet, hold down firmly with a metal spatula, and toast about 20-25 seconds, even less if your skillet is really hot. For this recipe, you don’t want them to darken, blister, or burn. As each one is finished, toss it into the hot chicken broth or hot water. As chiles pile up, stir frequently so that they all get soaked. When all are soaking, rinse and dry the skillet. Put 2 tablespoons lard or oil in the skillet over medium heat, add the sliced onion, and sauté slowly with frequent stirring until medium gold. Meanwhile, put the chilies and their soaking liquid and the tomatoes and oregano in the blender and grind to a smooth purée. When the onions are cooked, add the chopped garlic and sauté another few minutes until the garlic is cooked. Pour in the purée  from the blender and cook the mixture over medium-low heat until it boils, then turn down to a simmer and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until it is very thick. This may take up to an hour depending on heat, but be very careful not to scorch it. Now taste and add salt.

You now have a thick chile concentrate which can be smeared on tortillas or sopes or chalupas or meat or chicken as is, but can also be added to rich broth to make wonderful sauces on very short notice. I keep it in the refrigerator in a jar, but if you don’t think you’ll use it that much, freeze it in large ice cubes and calculate about two cubes per cup of broth for a thin sauce or three cubes for a thicker one. It has a little capsaicin heat but not a lot. It’s my favorite seasoning to add to good cooked hominy corn to make posole, and can be used as is or with a little broth added to reheat leftover meat or poultry to make tacos. If you are fond of Oaxacan mole colorado you may be able to elaborate this base into some version of it, although if that’s your preference I think you’d be better advised just to make mole Colorado paste in the first place.

Don’t underestimate the capacity of chile pastes to bring vegetables to life. Stirred into a stir-fry or as part of a rub for roasted vegetables, they can help old favorites show a new side. I can also imagine a little eaten with tortitas, the wonderful Mexican vegetable fritters that are not much seen in the US. You can read more about them here, and I hope that you will, because Zarela Martinez is a truly interesting food writer. However you use your elixir, just be aware that scorched chiles taste acrid and unpleasant and don’t let this happen when using chile pastes.

The toasting step is vital in bringing out the flavor of the chiles. I always do it on the comal because that’s the way that I originally learned, but many sources recommend  oven toasting. I haven’t tried it, but here are directions if you want to experiment: Cook’s Illustrated. In my previous post on Earth and Fire Sauce toasting is replaced by frying in oil, a different and even more complex flavor.

 

 

 

11 Jan

The Winter Kitchen: Earth and Fire Sauce

Posted by wooddogs3 in Cook's treat, cooking, home food production, recipe, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

 


In the past, when I traveled in Oaxaca, I fell in love with the moles, as nearly every traveler there does. My favorite is the rich, complex, highly seasoned mole negro, and I have made the mole paste for it a few times but find that I seldom have enough uninterrupted time to collect all the ingredients, prepare and fry them individually, grind them together, etc. There are a few good commercial brands of mole negro paste, and on the rare occasions when I want this special dish, I tend to use them.

 

But I often crave flavors that are somewhat reminiscent of mole negro, involving deep, rich, earthy tones with a spicy seasoned overlay and an element of slow, dark fire. For those occasions, I have come up with a seasoning paste that I can make in the winter, keep in my refrigerator, and add where appropriate. Properly speaking it’s a salsa, but in the American minds salsa is the fresher lighter tomato concoction, so I call it a sauce. The ingredient list is simple, although if you live in an area that lacks a substantial Mexican population you may need to order the chiles by mail. The prep may seem time-consuming, but comfort yourself that it’s insignificant compared to the time spent making mole negro. You’ll need a blender.

The long, narrow Pasilla negro and the light brown chipotle meco are the two on the right

7 chiles Pasilla Negro, often just sold as chiles negros

7 chiles chipotle meco (medium-sized and light brown, not small and dark red)

1 7 ounce can chipotles in adobo, including all the liquid

8 cloves garlic, not peeled

1/2 cup raisins

3 cups chicken broth

1/2 teaspoon Ceylon (canela) cinnamon or a bit less standard cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground allspice

2 tablespoons grated piloncillo or coconut sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt, oak-smoked if available.

2 cups avocado oil for frying

1/4 cup homemade lard or more avocado oil for searing the sauce

 

Cut the stem ends off all the dry chiles, cut them open down one side with kitchen scissors, and scrape out most of the seeds and veins. Snip each one across the length a couple of times. In a small deep sauce pan, heat the avocado oil intended for frying to about 350 or until a piece of chili put into the oil immediately bubbles and sizzles. Have paper towels ready for draining. Put a small handful of the chiles into the oil at a time, fry them until the color changes visibly turning as needed, fish them out with a slotted spoon, and drain them. Now put the cloves of garlic, still in their skins, in the oil and let them fry until the skins are somewhat browned, and drain them. Put the raisins in the hot oil and fry just until they swell and puff, then drain. Now set the saucepan of oil aside in a very safe place to cool off.

Heat the chicken broth to boiling in another pot, turn off the heat, and put all the fried chiles in the hot broth to soak for 20 minutes. Peel the garlic cloves and add them.

Put the soaked chiles and peeled garlic cloves and their fluid in the blender jar along with the seasonings, the sugar, and the canned chipotles with all their adobo fluid. Grind smooth, scraping down the blender as needed. Add a little more water if needed to keep the blender blades turning.

Now for the dramatic step that pulls the sauce together. In a large frying vessel (I prefer a wok to minimize the inevitable splattering,) heat the lard or avocado oil over high heat. When it’s very hot, pour in the purée from the blender jar. Use an apron and don’t lean over the stove, because it will sizzle and splatter viciously. Stir cautiously with a wooden spoon. After 3-4 minutes turn the heat down to simmer and simmer the sauce for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
When ready, the sauce is very thick and will hold indentations when stirred, but it’s not cooked down to a paste. Taste it and adjust the salt if needed, but in my opinion use table salt and not smoked salt at this point. If it tastes a little bit on the acrid side, you may need to add a little more dark sugar.

Now you’re done and can quickly and efficiently add notes of earth and fire wherever you think they are needed. Use diluted or undiluted. The finished sauce can be spread directly on hamburgers immediately after grilling. A tablespoon or two per serving of black beans adds immeasurably to their meaty richness,  and this combination is especially good with a dollop of crème fraîche on top. A few tablespoons per cup of chicken or turkey broth makes a wonderful sauce for roasted or smoked birds. It could be used as a rub for grilled chicken, although you need to be careful not to burn it. I think that it might make a good grilling rub for salmon or other strong-flavored fish. It adds wonderful depth to sautéed mushrooms, and I think it would be great on grilled carrots or roasted sweet potatoes, especially with a pat of butter on top. For a quick snack or lunch, nothing beats a quickly griddled tortilla with a smear of Earth and Fire sauce, a sprinkle of crumbled cotija  cheese, and a few quick-pickled vegetables. A quick soft taco also makes a great cook’s treat. If you’re hungrier than that, add some frijoles negros or frijoles refritos as shown at the top of this post. A good dollop in a bowl of good posole elevates it to a feast.

It can be frozen after preparation for use later, either in jars or in individual portions in large ice cube trays. On late afternoons when you need something warm and not too filling, a cube could be dropped in a cup of hot chicken broth to make a warming “instant” soup.

 

A few notes on ingredients:
The best chiles that I know of come from The Chile Guy
The best beans and posole corn that I know of come from Rancho Gordo
The only lard worth using is the lard that you render yourself, not the awful commercial stuff. If you don’t want to render a little, use oil instead.
My favorite tortillas are the nixtamalized heirloom corn tortillas from Masienda. In my area, Whole Foods carries them.

25 Feb

Fermentation VIII: Kefir Broth

Posted by wooddogs3 in Books worth reading, cooking, fermentation, home food production, mushrooms, recipe. Tagged: , , , , , , .

I love to make soups in the winter, and have often written about the wonders of homemade broth.  I’ve never cared much for any vegetable broth that I have tasted, and I like the deep savoriness and the economy and thrift of making meat and chicken broth. But recently, more or less by accident, I did discover an alternative.   I was experimenting with my abundant supply of water kefir, and was cooking it down to make a syrupy glaze of the type that I have enjoyed making out of kombucha.  About the original idea, all I can say is please don’t try this with kefir, because the result is rather dreadful. However, having tasted the product of one pot, I turn the heat off under the other one, which had been reduced to a little more than half its original volume. I tasted, thought, added some salt, and had something that tasted savory and surprisingly like chicken broth.  Cooked with some aromatics and herbs, the resemblance would be even more striking.

I tried the same experiment with some water kefir  made with coconut sugar, thinking that the deeper color and flavor would be attractive in this context.  But to my surprise, the faint bitterness that is detectable as an undertaste in brown sugar or coconut sugar was greatly exaggerated in the finished broth, to the point that I threw it out.  So save yourself some time and trouble and use plain sugar when making kefir that you intend to cook down.

Since I remain obsessed with fermentation months after first reading the Noma Guide to Fermentation, I decided to try combining various fungi both microscopic and macroscopic in a mushroom broth.  I had a quart of broth made from boiling down 2 quarts of water kefir.  I started with butter, which made my soup vegetarian, but if you wish to use olive oil or some other vegetable oil instead it will be vegan.  Heat about 3 tablespoons of your chosen fat in a small heavy sauce pan, and sauté one large or two small cloves of garlic finely chopped and one small onion sliced thin.  Cook them over medium low heat, stirring frequently, until they are thoroughly cooked, soft, and a bit caramelized.  Put in 3 tablespoons of mushroom powder. I used dried and powdered Sullius that I had gathered, but the most commonly available powdered mushroom is porcini.  Sautée the powder for a few minutes, and add a quart of broth to your pan. Bring to a boil, and then turn the heat down to simmer.  Now stir in 2 tablespoons of white miso paste.   Taste for saltiness. You might want more miso, but taste it first. I am working on making my own miso, but a good grade of white miso from your nearest Asian market is fine.  Simmer  the soup for 15 to 20 minutes over low heat.

The final step is to smooth it out.  You can do this with a stick blender, but in my opinion there is no alternative to a Vitamix blender to turn your soup into pure velvet.  Make sure you know how to handle hot liquids in your blender without creating a sort of fluid explosion.  When the soup is completely smooth, return it to the pan, heat gently, taste for seasoning, grind in a little fresh pepper, and serve.

There is nothing quite like the process of fermentation to produce a rich, meaty savor without the use of meat. In this basic recipe, I was experimenting with fermentation as a way to make a vegan or vegetarian product highly satisfying.  But if you are not a vegan or vegetarian, there is no reason to feel limited.  You can start with bacon fat if you want to, or add chunks of leftover cooked meat, or finish it with a dash of good sherry or a swirl of cream or both. Sautéed mushrooms would be a great addition.

It interested me that despite use of miso, this soup doesn’t taste identifiably Asian. It just tastes good. If you want something that leans more Asian, you could add a piece or two of kombu to the kefir for a few minutes  as it cooks down and finish the bowls with some diagonally slivered scallions.

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