What's Cooking (Take Two!)

Thanks, Jenise. I'll look for them next time I'm shopping and give 'em a whirl.

And I think I just googled up a simple but tasty-looking side-dish recipe for it, too:
http://chefinyou.com/2013/03/11/chow-chow-chayote-squash-curry/

[Jenise]

That sounds outrageously good, Jeff. I'm not familiar with the black gram ingredient, though, are you?

Black gram or urad dal is one of the many dried legumes used in Indian cooking. It is smallish and has a black skin. In this case it's being used hulled and split. You can see it in the step 5 photograph. Adding a small amount of toasted dal is pretty common in South Indian cookery. You should be able to find urad dal in an Indian or South Asian grocery store.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Black gram or urad dal is one of the many dried legumes used in Indian cooking. It is smallish and has a black skin. In this case it's being used hulled and split. You can see it in the step 5 photograph. Adding a small amount of toasted dal is pretty common in South Indian cookery. You should be able to find urad dal in an Indian or South Asian grocery store.

-Paul W.

Thanks Paul. I'm pretty sure I've never had it. As it appears in this recipe, will it soften or be a crisp element?

That sounds outrageously good, Jeff. I'm not familiar with the black gram ingredient, though, are you?

I have not. I bet the recipe would survive my substituting something else for it.

As used here, the urad dal will be crisp.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Flavor too, Paul, or just texture? It's essentially a tiny lentil, right?

It should add a bit of a toasted, nutty flavor as well as texture.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Last night I wanted seafood. And in spite of the fact that I live on salt water, fresh fish is scarce in these parts and so I keep a bag of frozen scallops from Costco in the freezer for just such occasions.

What I really had a hankering for was shrimp scampi--garlic, butter, thyme, white vermouth. Maybe on orzo. Didn't have shrimp but figured a scallop would be happy swimming in that pool so that's what I decided to make for dinner. But reflecting on the vermouth reminded me of martinis so I suddenly hatched a plan for pre-dinner cocktails--very unusual for us--of martinis, something we're just getting into, in test-kitchen batches that would take us far enough down that road to resolve for ourselves the answers to these questions: vermouth yes or no, lemon vs. olive, and Tanqueray vs. Hendricks. (Some will point out there are other brands of gin and I get that, but these are what we had on hand.)

Verdict: Hendricks, yes vermouth, yes lemon peel, no olive. And the scallop scampi was mighty fine, too.

Beef chow fun tonight.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Beef chow fun tonight.

-Paul W.

Oh, yum! I love those wide chewy noodles.

Haven't made any decisions here. I'm determined to buy nothing but use up food I have laying around, and I have too much laying around including far more produce than one can reasonably use in three days even if you more produce than most people do as is the case with me.

Might turn Friday night's leftover roast pork into some kind of pork sandwiches for lunch while watching the Seahawks game.

Friday night I had a friend from high school over who had picked up a car in Sacramento and was getting ready to drive back to Phoenix. I made Chicken Canzanese for the occasion. The recipe is from the NY Times cookbook and it's posted here. You brine the chicken (I used boneless breasts and leg quarters) for an hour or so and then throw it into a skillet with water, white wine, sage, rosemary, cloves, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves, chilis, and cubed prosciutto. Then simmer for a half hour or so, remove the chicken, and reduce the sauce. It was excellent. The flavors from the spices and such permeated the meat and it was one of the most flavorful chicken dishes I've ever made. The only knock on it was that the sauce was fairly salty from the prosciutto, and so a little went a long way. I served it with mashed potatoes, which is probably not authentically Italian but worked well.

[Jenise]

Mike, I've made that (love the book)! And it's everything you say.

Mike, I've made that (love the book)! And it's everything you say.

It's an interesting recipe. According to the article in the Times, it dates back possibly to Renaissance times. I'll certainly make it again.

Last night I wanted seafood. And in spite of the fact that I live on salt water, fresh fish is scarce in these parts and so I keep a bag of frozen scallops from Costco in the freezer for just such occasions.

What I really had a hankering for was shrimp scampi--garlic, butter, thyme, white vermouth. Maybe on orzo. Didn't have shrimp but figured a scallop would be happy swimming in that pool so that's what I decided to make for dinner. But reflecting on the vermouth reminded me of martinis so I suddenly hatched a plan for pre-dinner cocktails--very unusual for us--of martinis, something we're just getting into, in test-kitchen batches that would take us far enough down that road to resolve for ourselves the answers to these questions: vermouth yes or no, lemon vs. olive, and Tanqueray vs. Hendricks. (Some will point out there are other brands of gin and I get that, but these are what we had on hand.)

Verdict: Hendricks, yes vermouth, yes lemon peel, no olive. And the scallop scampi was mighty fine, too.

Funny, I had just about the same feeling a few nights ago. Bag of frozen shrimp, just got some nice Italian spaghetti from Costco, and the hankering for scampi. It's one of those hopelessly unfashionable dishes that is still delicious. Mine is super simple, just half butter, half oil with garlic, no vermouth or herbs.

Tonight I'm preparing the base for Manresa's famous corn croquettes.

It's kind of a silly flourish to throw in for Thanksgiving, especially since it means having a pan of hot oil on the stove right in the maelstrom that is the last few minutes before we sit down. For some reason, I seem to have one dish every year that I make just for me. Sometimes it's oyster dressing when I'm the only one who eats oysters. Other times it's Steve Plotnicki's Five Alliums dish. But it's always something. I've decided that Walt's Folly, as I'm calling it, is now an official tradition.

We didn't cook yesterday, so we were without leftovers. I ended up throwing together a frittata with mushrooms, leeks, gruyere, creme fraiche, and Spanish chorizo. It made for a nice light supper after yesterday's indulgence.

For the Thanksgiving holiday meal I followed Julia Child's recipe for beef Bourguignon, but I used lamb instead of beef. It made a perfect pairing with the Chave Hermitage.

-Paul W.

Tonight, I roasted some broccoli and brussels sprouts. Those were tossed with penne, garlic-infused olive oil, Spanish chorizo, and parmigiano. Came out very nicely.

Tonight was Thanksgiving Redux - we had leftovers of everything, and a new dinner guest so....

Dinner last night was shui zhu niu rou (water-boiled beef), one of the most alarming-looking Sichuan dishes. The final assembly involves pouring the beef in its broth over the stir-fried vegetables, topping with 30 chopped Chinese chiles and a tablespoon of chopped Sichuan peppercorn, then pouring 1/3 cup hot oil over everything so that the chiles and peppercorns sizzle. The numbing quality of the Sichuan peppercorn tames the heat of the chiles a bit.

-Paul W.

Dinner last night was shui zhu niu rou (water-boiled beef), one of the most alarming-looking Sichuan dishes. The final assembly involves pouring the beef in its broth over the stir-fried vegetables, topping with 30 chopped Chinese chiles and a tablespoon of chopped Sichuan peppercorn, then pouring 1/3 cup hot oil over everything so that the chiles and peppercorns sizzle. The numbing quality of the Sichuan peppercorn tames the heat of the chiles a bit.

I've heard about dishes like this but I've never had one. I have had Guangzhou Chicken (...at least, that's what one local Sichuan place calls it) which is also scary-looking: a mound of dry-fried red chiles with little bits of chicken meat hiding in the heap. Very yummy and very aromatic and not so hot as it appears.

But about Sichuan peppercorns... what else can you do with them, other than medicate your mouth while eating other things?

Sichuan peppercorns are an integral part of the "mala" (hot-and-numbing) flavor of many famous Sichuan dishes. I don't know of any other use for them.

-Paul W.

BananaRama!

A friend of mine who's a doctor had HER doctor tell her that her potassium levels are really low - low enough that her doctor was telling her this while she was in the emergency room recovering from a supra ventricular tachycardia episode caused by a severe potassium deficit. She was advised to eat bananas (I know, there are lots of other foods with high K levels, but for various reasons it's bananas for my friend.)

Anyway, she called me yesterday in a panic asking me to devise banana based dishes that were not either banana bread or banana pudding - both of which she hates. And she doesn't like raw, either. So I went to the store and started in.

Here's what I came up with (if the picture posts).

The turd looking thing up top is a banana-Nutella churro (the nutella turned it almost pitch black, but it was great). The bowl on the right is banana chili. Beneath that is stir fried banana and asparagus with black bean sauce. Over on the left are Sicilian style rice balls, but stuffed with banana, scallion, ginger, and chili-garlic sauce. On the center board are Viet coconut-batter bánh xèo filled with banana, galangal, and lemon grass (one also has Nutella).

For the chili and stir-fry I first tossed the banana pieces in a flour+starch mix and fried them off. That produced enough of a crust that they didn't dissolve into mush for the subsequent procedures.

I still have a couple of bananas left over, so today I'm going to roast them off and try a soup of some sort, maybe a riff on Thai curry puffs, and cookies. We'll see. Suggestions welcome!

Plantains have even more K. And less sweet, less cloying. Can be made into flour.

How about a vitamin supplement... if it works it's a lot easier than kitchen/dining room behavioral modification.

Mix mashed banana into pancake batter.
Banana chips, either via frying or dehydrating.
Banana madeleines (...a variant on a banana muffin, eh?)
Banana wontons (...with a cold fruit soup).
Can you make banana liqueuer?
Use it in Black Forest chocolate cake instead of sauerkraut or cherries (or, in my case, pumpkin).
Fill blintzes (...it's Hanukkah now, you know).
Sub into tarte tatin or pineapple upside down cake
There is a (in)famous Brillat-Savarin steak-and-banana dish, recently revived by Achatz at Next, but most people seem to think it's pretty dubious.

Had enough?