Wild Honey

A New Food Resolution

2012-02-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

The first week when I was thinking I'd have to cut out dairy, but before it really hit me, I was strolling through the grocery store looking for alternative sources of calcium. As I picked up a bunch each of kale and collards, pondering how to cook them, it occurred to me that I, like most Americans, had fallen into a rut of cooking the same things all the time.

I thought about making a (slightly late) New Year's resolution to introduce more variety into my cooking. And why not formalize that, like my abbreviated Year of the Dumpling experiment in 2010, with some blog posts?

So here it is: I'm going to try cooking with one unfamiliar ingredient every week. These might be common to other people (like collards) but new to me!

Chocolate is Out Too. Hi, Carob.

2012-02-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

Whereas Baby Bear responded to dairy with quiet intestinal bleeding, he reacts to chocolate with good old-fashioned Excessive Fussiness. Bedtime? Forget about it! The good news is that as soon as I cut out the chocolate, he went straight back to zonking out after his 8 PM nurse.

So, I pulled out the carob again. Chocolate it isn't, but it's close enough to trick my body into believing it's chocolate, and that chocolate isn't so great after all (same thing stevia does with sweets). One thing I do like about carob is that it isn't excessively bitter like cocoa so it doesn't necessitate tons of added sugar. And there's no caffeine or theobromine. Carob looks and acts like cocoa, but has a more fruity taste, almost like chocolate + honey.

Here's how I made the carob chunks pictured above:

1/2 cup palm oil, just melted and removed from heat
1/2 cup carob powder
1 Tbs turbinado sugar, finely ground in a coffee grinder
1 tsp vanilla

Mix everything together, pour into a parchment-lined 8"x8" pan and refrigerate! Break into chunks after cooling. I tried these in brownies, and the palm oil just melted away, leaving carob-lined pockets behind. Not the effect I was hoping for! But tasty enough raw.

This Isn't So Bad

2012-02-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

First lesson of the day: cereal + rice milk + splash of full-fat canned coconut milk is not half bad.
I reeeeaally miss butter. I could have buttered toast with raw milk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and love it. In the early days of Baby, I'd often make just a tall glass of milk for a meal.
But when dairy's out.., thank God for coconuts. Coconuts are a close second to raw milk on the scale of food awesomeness.
So, pictured above, we have homemade graham crackers surrounding a bowl of COOKIE DOUGH DIP.

Graham Crackers:
4 oz palm oil (Spectrum shortening)
4 oz tropical oil blend (Earth Balance organic coconut oil spread... but since this is just a blend of coconut and palm oils, I might just substitute one or the other for this next time)
5 oz brown sugar

7 oz. all=purpose flour
4 oz. stone-ground whole wheat
1 t cinnamon
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Blend oils and sugar in a mixer until light and fluffy.
Whisk together dry ingredients, and introduce to wet ingredients, mixing until fully incorporated. Pat into a disk, as for pie dough, and wrap and refrigerate 30 minutes, overnight, whatever.
Next day, preheat oven to 350. Roll out into 1/8" layer (thicker is okay... it still comes out crispy and ridiculously addictive), cut into squares with a pizza-cutter, prick THOROUGHLY with fork. Bake for about 20 minutes, start checking after 10. Kitchen will smell kind of like a movie theater concession stand, with the smell of cooking coconut oil (often used for popcorn). Break these apart and let them cool just as soon as they're out of the oven, and they'll crisp up like a dream!

Cookie Dough Dip: (warning - this recipe is VERY SNEAKY. Adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie, a super-skinny dessert-loving vegan genius blogger. I am tantalized by ALL of her recipes.)
The secret is hummus.

In a food processor, blend:
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Brown sugar: I used 2/3 cup, but could get away with less next time
3/16 t salt
1/16 t baking soda
2 t vanilla
2 oz almond butter
2 oz rice milk
3 T oats

After blending, mix in 1/3 - 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Dunk away!

Both totally dairy-free and delicious. Seriously. If we weren't having company this afternoon, these would not have lasted long enough for a photo op.

Bye bye, dairy

2012-02-11T16:51:00.000-05:00

I LOVE MILK. I've been known to drive for hours in pursuit of the white stuff - rich creamy grass-fed life-giving immune-supporting raw milk. Rain, snow, gloom of night notwithstanding. And I love its many friends - yogurt, butter, sour cream, cream cheese, mozzarella, and all the lovely things to be made from those.
I drank raw milk throughout pregnancy and the first few months of breastfeeding. And then last week, baby let me know that the milk had to go.
Dairy sensitivity is pretty common among little babies. Cow/goat/sheep's milk protein comes straight through into human milk, and is very hard for immature digestive systems to process. There is a hope that eventually, the little one's gut will "seal" and be able to digest cow's milk protein once again. Sometimes it happens around six months, sometimes later.
So here I am, desperate for butter (melting into fresh-baked bread with cinnamon sugar, or a fried egg), but willing to give the casein-free diet a go. And since caregiving finds me often seated in front of the computer, why not document this stage of my culinary adventures with a few blog updates?

Ravioli with Roasted Butternut Squash, Lentils and Browned Butter

2010-11-13T14:41:00.000-05:00

These are heavenly. Since I already made the ravioli dough in June (Ravioli de Pesce), I used wonton wrappers this time. Homemade dough is special (and time-consuming and messy) and the Nasoya wrappers are excellent. These were utterly delicious and SO EASY. Especially with three pairs of hands!

The filling is made from one roasted butternut squash mixed with 1/2 cup cooked green lentils (from 1/4 cup dry), 1/2 cup gruyere, 2/3 cup matzo crumbs, a pinch of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mounded on top of the wonton wrappers, folded into triangles and boiled in salted water for five minutes, these were finished with a drizzle of browned garlic butter. The only trick with these is keeping them from sticking together - cooking liquid and melted butter helps for this. The flavor is rich, hearty and perfect for this time of year.

Pierogi Two Ways: Lentil-Onion and Sweet Potato Cheddar

2010-10-30T07:34:00.000-04:00

I had made pierogi once before from this cookbook (with kasha-mushroom filling - March), and had forgotten how divine the dough is. Teeming with sour cream, butter and eggs, (and I snuck in a little whole-wheat flour!) it smelled heavenly while I prepared the dumplings. I rolled it out, cut it in circles with a cup, and filled the circles with (a) boiled green lentils, sauteed onions, salt and pepper or (b) mashed sweet potato, cheddar cheese, sauteed onions, salt and pepper. The sweet potato filling was much easier to manage, in part because it wasn't as wet as the lentils, which made it hard to seal the dumplings. After folding the circles in half and chilling them in the fridge for a while, I boiled the pierogi for five minutes and tossed them in butter. Hearty, toothsome and satisfying - the definition of comfort food - this is a recipe I'd definitely make again. Yum!

Chicken Paprikash with Dumplings (Csirke Paprikas Galuskaval)

2010-10-23T19:07:00.001-04:00

Another terrific stew. This rendition of chicken and dumplings is brightly flavored with sweet Hungarian paprika, tomatoes and bell peppers. The stew is straightfoward - brown the chicken parts in butter, remove the chicken and then cook an onion in the butter, eventually adding garlic, paprika, and tomatoes. Add the chicken back to the sauce with a little water, cover and cook for about 30 minutes, add a sliced bell pepper, and cook about 10 minutes more. I removed the chicken from the bones to make it easier to eat, but this step wasn't part of the original recipe.

The dumplings are made of whole wheat flour, a beaten egg, melted butter and a bit of salt, mixed together and cooked in salted boiling water before being added to the finished stew. Served hot with a generous dollop of sour cream, this stew is perfect. I would make it again in a heartbeat.

Hungarian Beef and Bean Stew with Tiny Dumplings (Csipetke)

2010-10-15T19:14:00.001-04:00

This is a quintessential beef stew that I hope to make many, many more times. It starts with a couple of marrow bones and one giant meaty soup bone simmering in water for about four hours. When the meat was pull-apart tender, I removed the bones from the pot and set the meat aside until the end. Then I added some soaked pinto beans to cook for another 45 minutes, followed by some onions sauteed with paprika and flour, and lastly sliced carrots and bell pepper, and salt to taste.
The dumplings are made like a simple pasta: 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, one egg, and a half teaspoon salt mixed together and given a rest at room temperature to soften. When the stew was ready, I dropped small pinches of dough (so small that 1/2 cup of flour turns into 80 dumplings!) into the simmering stew and let them cook another five minutes.
I made too much broth at first so I strained it, added some tapioca and cooked it down for a few hours longer. The resulting stew had an incredibly rich beefy aroma, vegetables that still held their flavor, and, best of all, adorable little dumplings that add texture, heartiness, and that undefinable "comfort food" factor that makes this recipe a real keeper.
I'm sure it would be even better with sour cream.

Spiced Carrot Pudding (Steamed Cake)

2010-10-14T07:14:00.000-04:00

Here is the steamed version of carrot cake. This one is made with chunks of white bread, whole wheat flour, shredded carrots, sugar, baking powder, pudding spice (coriander, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg) and butter, mixed together with milk and beaten egg, and then steamed in a bowl for about an hour and a half. The original recipe called for a grated potato, which I didn't have on hand, so I added a couple of extra carrots and cut back the sugar from 1/3 to 1/4 cup.

The cake was deliciously sophisticated - not as sweet or moist as a traditional carrot cake, but more like a muffin. It would be divine with whipped cream or cream cheese frosting... but at present it sustains the illusion of being healthy.

I decided to include a visual pudding-basin tutorial this time:

Step 1: Line a quart glass bowl with butter, sugar, and whatever goodies you want to appear on the top of the inverted cake.

Step 2: Fill prepared basin with batter.

Step 3: Place a piece of parchment over the top of the batter followed by a wet kitchen towel or a piece of muslin. Tie a string around the lip of the bowl. Make sure to tie it tightly!

Step 4: Tie opposite corners of the cloth together, forming a handle.

Step 5: Bring a pot with a few inches of water in it to a boil. Push a folded cloth into the bottom of the pot, and then lower the prepared pudding bundle into the boiling water. Cover it and let it cook for 1 1/2 hours, and serve warm with double cream!

Chickpea Dumplings with Berbere Sauce (Shimbra Asa)

2010-10-12T18:20:00.000-04:00

This recipe is hot - spicy hot! It's made of little chickpea-flour biscuits simmered in a savory sauce full of hot pepper, onion and tomato. The biscuits are made from freshly-milled chickpea flour mixed with salt, oil and water, flattened into little disks and baked. They're toothsome and satisfying. I could eat them all by themselves. The recipe also called for them to be shaped like fish, in which case it would be called yeshimbra asa, and I would feel more like I was eating cat treats.

The sauce is made from sauteed onions, a curly red chile I picked up at the farmers' market, garlic, Berbere spice (cumin, cardamom, cloves, allspice, hot peppers, and ginger - I omitted the carom, rue and holy basil), salt, red wine and tomato paste.

We had it over rice. The rice and chickpea dumplings provide a little offset to the extreme spiciness of the sauce, but the sauce wins. It is so gloriously flavorful and spicy I really can't wait to have the leftovers. This strikes me as the sort of recipe that tastes better the next day.

Collards with Ham and Purple Corn Dumplings

2010-10-11T19:17:00.000-04:00

Few things are more "American" than collards with corn bread and pork. This recipe combines all three in a one-pot meal.

First I picked up the collards from the City Farm booth at the farmer's market. City Farm is a 3/4 acre urban farm in South Providence that produced over 1,500 pounds of food last year. I sliced and blanched the collards, and then stewed them for about half an hour with a piece of ham (the recipe called for 1 1/2 hours - way too long, even for collards!). The dumplings are made of blue cornmeal (my own twist - the recipe called for white), salt, hot water and butter rolled up into little balls and dropped onto the boiling collards to cook, covered, for another half hour. I served these up with chopped ham and have to say that they all complemented each other quite well. The greens and the blue corn were both a bit bitter in their own ways, so if I were to make this again, I'd go ahead and use the white cornmeal as recommended by the recipe.

Steamed "Graham" Potato Buns

2010-09-30T20:15:00.000-04:00

I love steamed breads. Until now I associated them with Asian dumplings, but this recipe hails from the United States. It is a simple yeast dough made with milk, mashed potato, whole wheat flour* and white flour. After the bulk rise, it's divided into nine rolls and popped in the steamer for 30 minutes.
The result is a hearty yet soft, fluffy bread with a perfect biscuit-like texture on the inside. I have never been able to make good biscuits with whole wheat flour; they always come out gritty, crumbly and dry. The mashed potato and white flour (1 part white to 2 parts whole wheat) in this recipe make the buns smooth and light(er), and I would sub them in for biscuits any day. The steaming gives them a sweet, shiny skin that only dumplings have. They are equally good with butter and honey as with a saucy, savory stew. I'll be making these again for sure.

*The recipe called for graham flour, which is white flour with bran mixed in, but I substituted freshly ground whole wheat pastry flour.

Whole Wheat Layered Apple and Bread Pudding

2010-09-29T07:05:00.000-04:00

I think I have found my ideal cake: custard-soaked whole wheat bread interlaced with sweet, soft fruit and lots of butter.

I started this recipe by making a loaf of whole wheat bread, cutting 4 cups of it into cubes, and tossing them in melted butter. Meanwhile, I peeled and sliced three Granny Smith apples and sauteed them with some more butter, sugar, and a pinch of ginger. Thirdly, for the custard, I mixed together milk, sugar, eggs, cinnamon and a pinch of salt. The apples went first into a buttered-and-sugared pudding basin (a 4-cup glass bowl), followed by a layer of bread cubes, and then two more layers of apples and bread. Finally, the best part is pouring the custard over everything and letting it soak in, like water on thirsty ground.

Like all other puddings, I covered the bowl with a piece of parchment, wrapped it in muslin, and set it in a pot of boiling water for about two hours. It smelled great while cooking and tasted like heaven. As apple desserts go, it was fairly easy - especially if I didn't bake the bread myself - and healthy-ish, too. I'd definitely make this one again.

Boston Brown Bread

2010-09-25T15:53:00.000-04:00

Boston brown bread is traditionally made with a mixture of rye, wheat, cornmeal, buttermilk and molasses steamed in a coffee can. I think it encapsulates the "make do" attitude of the first New Englanders.

For this version, I used whole wheat flour and blue corn meal blended with yogurt, milk, molasses, Muscovado sugar, a pinch of salt and baking soda. I poured the batter into a buttered and sugared 4-quart glass bowl, covered it with a circle of parchment paper, wrapped it in muslin and put it in the bottom of a pot of boiling water for about two hours. The "bread" cooked up almost as light as sponge cake. While it looks rich and chocolaty, the overriding flavor here is baking soda. I think next time I would use less of that, if possible, and maybe add in some spices to accent the molasses.

Chicken and Dumplings II

2010-09-23T17:44:00.000-04:00

While the previous recipe hailed from Canada, this one is credited to the United States. It was much simpler, with no frying step - everything just went into a pot with water. Instead of carrots and potatoes, this recipe was all about the celery. Rosemary instead of thyme provided the seasoning. Without the onions and bacon sprinkled with flour fried in bacon fat, this broth was much thinner. Also made with whole wheat flour but with less water, the dumplings were more dense and chewy.
I think the ideal chicken and dumpling stew would take the best of both: start with a little bacon and onions fried with flour for thickening, simmer the chicken for an hour, remove the chicken to cook the carrots, potatoes, and celery, and finally add the shredded chicken and dumpling batter (not as thin as the first recipe nor as thick as this one) in the last ten minutes of cooking. Any way you cook it, any chicken and dumpling stew is the essence of comfort food.

Chicken Fricot with Dumplings

2010-09-21T06:52:00.000-04:00

There are two recipes for chicken and dumplings in September, and thank goodness for that.
This one is Acadian in origin and, like many good things, starts with bacon. I cooked the bacon in a big stock pot until the fat melted off, and then browned the chicken in it, removed the chicken, and sauteed some onions in the bacon fat. I sprinkled the onions with flour and made a sort of roux. Next the chicken went back into the pot with a quart and a half of water and simmered for an hour. The chicken came back out and in went some chopped carrots, potatoes and thyme to cook for a half hour longer.
While the roots cooked I pulled the chicken meat off the bones and prepared the dumplings: a simple batter of whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, butter (cut into bits and rubbed into the flour) and cold water. I added a bit too much water to compensate for the whole wheat flour and ended up with a very thin batter. I even let it sit for a few minutes to thicken, but it flatly refused.
Finally (and this is the best part) - the chopped chicken returned to the pot and the dumpling batter splatted on top. Together they simmered, covered, for 10 minutes, and then uncovered for a final 5 minutes. Because the batter was so thin, these dumplings were very light and soft, and by the time leftovers came around, had disintegrated into the stew. Next time I would use less water (I only added an extra ounce) or more flour. Altogether the flavor was phenomenal, and the velvety texture made this the definition of comfort food. If I need a chicken stew recipe, this one will be high on my list.

Honey-Oat Pudding

2010-09-14T11:45:00.000-04:00

Golden-brown like a big bowl of honey, this boiled pudding has a creamy, nubbly texture and mild sweetness like rice pudding. The batter was made from boiled steel-cut oats, sugar, honey, beaten egg, baking powder, a pinch of salt, nutmeg and ginger, all beaten up and folded together with whole-wheat flour. The whole grains, raw sugar (Rapadura) and the honey imparted an earthy, caramel flavor, while the baking powder kept it light. Easy to make and surprisingly delicious.

Stovetop Black Grape Cobbler

2010-09-06T07:50:00.000-04:00

Much like the peach-blueberry grunt of last month, this recipe is a simple whole wheat batter steamed over simmering, lightly sweetened summer fruit. I had never heard of grape cobbler before, but it is much like blueberry cobbler, only the fruit retains its definition.
I started with a quart-sized package of big juicy black "table grapes." I was supposed to use Concord, which would have been amazing (and seedy), but those are hard to find. I plucked the grapes into a skillet, mashed half of them with a rolling pin, and drizzled them with a tablespoon of honey.
To make the dumplings, I ground some whole wheat flour into a bowl and mixed it with baking powder, salt and sugar, cut in some butter and mixed in some milk. I used a little more milk than the recipe called for (5 oz instead of 4) because (a) I used whole wheat flour and (b) I wanted to drop the batter right onto the simmering fruit instead of shaping it like rolled biscuits. Whole wheat breads of the biscuit nature simply do not work with the kind of flour I have.
After dropping the batter onto the fruit, I covered it and let it simmer for 15 minutes. The baking-powder batter immediately poofed up and pressed against the lid of the pan, not cooking properly, so I had to replace the lid with an upside-down glass bowl. Part of the dough was still undercooked after that so for good measure I put it in the oven at 350 F for 10 minutes.
What surprised me most about this recipe was the way many of the whole (unmashed) grapes stayed toothsome after cooking. I had expected them to turn to mush like blueberries, but they were still firm and plump and juicy. Yum. I would definitely make this again, and it's neat to know that you can substitute basically any fruit. There isn't much in the way of added sugars, and it's plenty sweet from the fruit alone. It would be excellent with some vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or plain yogurt.

Leaf-Wrapped Rice Bundles with Pork and Peanuts

2010-09-03T17:16:00.000-04:00

The title says it all, really. To prepare these dumplings, I soaked some sticky white rice overnight, drained and salted it, divvied it between four banana leaf squares and wrapped them up with some unseasoned ground pork and peanuts. I didn't even chop the peanuts. Then I submerged the leaf bundles in boiling water for two hours. That was it.
Since I did not use bamboo leaves as the recipe suggested, a considerable amount of rice tried to escape, only to encounter boiling water and congeal at the exit. The rice came out very soft, chewy, and slightly green. The predominating flavor in these dumplings was salt, even though I had cut down the amount of salt in the recipe. If I were to make these again (and I don't think I would, since if I were to have pork and rice with peanuts I can think of simpler ways to cook them), I'd cut the salt down even more.
One bonus I discovered (re-discovered?) about dumplings made this way is that they produce very few dirty dishes!

Stuffed Rice Bundles (Banh Tet)

2010-08-31T17:18:00.002-04:00

These Vietnamese cakes are traditionally eaten around the lunar new year. Why the cookbook put them in September is unclear. Anyway, they are made with raw sticky rice mixed with coconut milk, cooked black-eyed peas and scallions, wrapped around mashed mung beans and pork seasoned with fish sauce. They were supposed to be wrapped in bamboo leaves, but since I was fresh out of bamboo leaves, I used parchment paper and foil. Finally, the wrapped dumplings are submerged in boiling water for a whopping two and a half hours. Poor things.
Sprinkled with a little soy sauce, these dumplings contain a yummy variety of flavors and textures - a feature of Vietnamese food I have come to adore.

Indian Coconut-Cardamom Rice Dumplings (Modak)

2010-08-26T07:51:00.005-04:00

Modak, traditional steamed dumplings for Ganesh Chathurti, are made with a sweet, cardamom-flavored filling wrapped in a soft rice dough and shaped like pears.

These dumplings ended up remarkably like the Chinese Nuo Mi Ci dumplings of July. The filling was made of peanuts (a substitute for pistachios or cashews), dried coconut, raw sugar (Rapadura), and the seeds of twenty cardamom pods (about half a teaspoon). I think next time I'd grind the cardamom pods because it was a bit overwhelming to bite into a whole cardamom seed. The dough - and I have become fond of rice flour doughs - is made of white rice flour mixed with boiling water, butter and a little salt. This is the first time a rice dough has called for fat, and the butter softens it beautifully. In the end, the flavor combination of soft white rice, fragrant cardamom, butter and sugar was reminiscent of kheer, another amazing Indian dessert.

Nigerian Black-Eyed Pea Dumplings (Moyin-Moyin)

2010-08-25T08:16:00.001-04:00

These traditional dumplings are made of a raw pureed black-eyed pea batter, seasoned with tomato, onions and chile peppers, mixed with chopped bell peppers and peas, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed for an hour.

The recipe called for peeling all of the skins off of the soaked black-eyed peas (removing the "eyes"), but this proved to be infeasible. I picked off maybe half of them and didn't mind the tiny black specks in the batter. The dumplings ended up with a soft, creamy texture like polenta and a slight spicy kick.

Bubble Dumplings! (Sakoo Sai Moo)

2010-08-19T19:42:00.000-04:00

When you put tapioca balls into a drink, they call it bubble tea. Here are dumplings made from tiny tapioca pearls... why not call them bubble dumplings? I boiled the tapioca in water for about three minutes, mixed in rice flour, and then wrapped it around a very Thai filling of ground pork, sauteed onion, garlic, sugar, chile flakes, chopped roasted peanuts and fish sauce. The dough was very sticky and hard to manage, but so neat!
They look like little bundles of frog eggs. Okay, don't think about that if you're going to try these. They are delightfully soft, chewy, and bursting with contrasting flavors and textures in that Thai way. They're delicious wrapped in lettuce leaves and dipped in a little soy sauce.
What surprised me most about this recipe was the fact that, although it said I should end up with 24 dumplings, I made 36 with filling to spare. I even made them bigger than the recipe described. Normally, with this book, it goes the other way - I try my hardest and still fall about 10 dumplings short of the total. Whatever the case, I was tempted to eat all of them myself.

Wontons with Spicy Oil (Hong You Chao Shou)

2010-08-17T15:28:00.008-04:00

Okay, I cheated big time on this one. Since I'd already made the dumpling dough it called for (when I made the Sheesh Barak, I think), I gave myself a break and used store-bought wonton wraps this time. They were so easy! I didn't have to get flour caked all over my hands, rolling pin, countertop and clothes, and they were just the perfect size. If ever I make wontons again, that is how I will do it!
I made the filling from ground pork, ginger, scallions, soy sauce, and rice wine all mixed together. I laid out the wonton wrappers, brushed them with water and put about a teaspoon of the filling in the center of each perfect square. Then I folded one end over to get a triangle shape, folded the top point down, and brought the two opposite ends together like a little crown. These boiled for about ten minutes in salted water. Finally, I cooked up a hot chile oil from olive oil, chile flakes, garlic, salt and rice vinegar, and drizzled it over the top of the cooked wontons. It wasn't quite enough to make one break into a gentle sweat, as the authors suggested, but I think it added just the right kick.

Coconut Rice Bundles with Bananas and Beans (Khao Tom Mat)

2010-08-14T15:21:00.001-04:00

I had wanted to make these ever since I saw them in a Thai cookbook two years ago. They're made from sticky rice cooked in coconut milk, sugar and salt, and then mixed with cooked black beans, wrapped around a quarter of a banana and steamed in banana leaves until soft and gooey. And then I remembered I don't like cooked bananas (except in banana bread). The banana turned strangely purple. These are yummy, though, especially when garnished with some extra coconut cream and a few drops of soy sauce. If I were to make these again, I would probably leave out the banana or use something without that cloying banana flavor, like a slice of sweet potato or plantain.

Kidney Bean Stew with Boiled Dumplings

2010-08-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

Aside from the dumplings, this stew was phenomenal! It's made from kidney beans cooked with a chunk of locally-raised ham, with carrots and sauteed onions and peppers added toward the end of cooking. Pastured smoked ham is very different from the stuff you'd get at a supermarket; it's earthier, somewhat metallic, and less sweet and salty.
I deviated from the recipe quite a lot. The original was a Jamaican recipe in which the red beans are cooked down to a homogenous goop and served with white-flour dumplings. I wanted something more whole. I simmered the beans just until they were done and made the dumplings with freshly ground whole wheat flour. Unlike the blueberry-peach grunt, in which the whole wheat dumplings were soft and fluffy, these unleavened dumplings were dull and heavy. They have a very hearty (bagel-like) feel to them and definitely tasted better the second day, after the bran had some time to soften in the broth. If I made this stew again and decided to put dumplings in it, I'd sneak some baking powder into the batter.
All in all, the stew was yummy and nutritious, but I can't honestly say that it was anything close to what the authors intended.

Stovetop Blueberry-Peach Grunt

2010-08-05T08:43:00.000-04:00

This recipe was surprisingly simple and delicious. I made the dumplings with whole wheat flour, sugar (Rapadura), baking powder, and salt, into which I cut in some butter and stirred in some milk. To better accommodate the whole wheat, I increased the amount of milk a bit.
The "stew" is a mix of sliced peaches and blueberries, a little lemon juice, sugar, honey, allspice and ginger all simmered together. I even cut down on the sugar a bit and it was still sweet enough to go just perfectly with a cup of plain creamline yogurt.

Corn Tamales with Mozzarella and Chiles

2010-08-02T19:12:00.000-04:00

Made with fresh corn and an unidentified gnarly red-and-green chile pepper from the farmer's market, these tamales are the essence of summer. The dough is a mix of fresh corn kernels, masa harina, chicken broth, palm oil, salt and baking powder wrapped around strips of mozzarella and chile pepper. Even after steaming for two hours, the corn and peppers were still crunchy and sweet. Unfortunately the mozzarella turned rather rubbery and mysteriously orange during the steaming, but besides that the flavor of these was excellent. I would like to make these again and try a different cheese - maybe even homemade mozzarella. Now that would be divine.

Cabinet Pudding

2010-07-31T18:04:00.035-04:00

From above, it looks like one big cookie. This English pudding (steamed cake) is actually made from sponge cake and almond cookie bits, layered in a quart bowl, drenched in spiced custard and cooked in a water bath for about two hours. If you already have some sponge cake and almond cookies lying around, it's impossibly easy to put together. Unfortunately I chose to make the components from scratch and, while utterly delicious, it took all day and I ended up on a sugar high. I just have to taste everything when it comes out of the oven.
The odd thing about this recipe is that while it only calls for one teaspoon of a special pudding spice mix (cardamom, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger), it supplies instructions to make one half-cup. I cut the recipe down by about one-sixth and still have extra. I think it will go delightfully in pumpkin pie.

This tastes like the best bread pudding I can remember. It is smooth and rich with warm, sweet spices that I think would go better in the fall. It isn't dense or rubbery like the canary pudding, or dry like the chocolate bread-crumb pudding. The chopped almonds and plump, sweet-tart raisins provide a textural contrast to the soft sponge cake. Unlike revenge, this one is best served warm with a glorious dollop of double cream or custard sauce.

Fresh Corn Tamales with Basil and Cilantro (Humitas)

2010-07-24T19:18:00.000-04:00

Summer's here, folks. From my brief experience, it seems like Rhode Island has had more than its usual share of 90-degree-plus days. The upside is that our farmer's markets are overflowing with delicious fresh vegetables and fruits. Today it was hard not to buy more than I could carry.
These tamales are made of fresh corn kernels pureed with basil, cilantro, white corn meal, baking powder, sugar, salt, and onions sauteed in butter. The batter is then cooked for a few minutes in the same pan as the onions, tied up in corn husks, and steamed for 45 minutes.
The raw salsa is made of cilantro, onion, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and salt all pureed together. It adds a burst of freshness to the creamy polenta-like base. If I were to make these again, I think I'd cook the tamales longer as the recipe suggested. I didn't want to over-kill the fresh corn and herby flavors, but as it was they were a little on the doughy side. I'd also add some chiles (again, as the recipe suggested), which I didn't have on hand today. They'd really benefit from a spicy kick.

Chicken Soup with Green Plantain Dumplings

2010-07-16T07:47:00.081-04:00

On the outside, green plantains look like giant green bananas. Inside, the flesh is a bright cantaloupe color and quite unwilling to separate from the peel. They aren't soft or sweet like bananas, but rather hard and starchy like potatoes. When shredded, pureed and mixed with flour and seasonings, they cook up into very stiff, chewy dumplings.

The soup in the background of this recipe is really something special: homemade chicken broth seasoned with the bright green flavors of bell peppers, oregano and cilantro. I haven't made a good chicken broth in a long time, and this one is just bursting with the flavors of summer. The authors describe it as "sunshiny."

I started with a whole chicken and simmered it with an onion, green pepper, and two teaspoons of salt just until the meat was cooked. After removing the meat, I returned the bones to the pot for about two and a half more hours. When the broth was done, I prepared a pureed sofrito (green pepper, onion, oregano, cilantro, olive oil) and cooked it in a different pan for a few minutes, added the broth and cooked chicken bits, and simmered those for a few minutes longer. I cooked the dumplings in the simmering stew for about ten minutes until they were all floating. Since I didn't have any parmesan, I served these with some aged cheddar, which gives it a nice kick. The second time around I added some fresh corn to the soup, and next time I'm going to cook some lentils in the leftover broth and serve it over rice. I love recipes that keep on giving.

Brazilian Coconut Tamales (Pamonhas)

2010-07-14T07:46:00.001-04:00

I did as the authors suggested and used fresh corn, fresh shredded coconut, and freshly pressed coconut milk to get a taste of pamonhas at their best. I also used unrefined sugar (Rapadura) for a smooth caramel flavor.

I got the corn from the farmer's market, cut off the kernels and saved the husks. I bought a coconut at Whole Foods that turned out to be rotten on the inside. I've never had a rotten coconut before! It was very sad. So I bought another coconut and cracked it open, laboriously separated all of the meat from the shell (nearly cutting off all of my fingers in the process), cleaned it with a vegetable peeler, and shredded it in the food processor. I used some freshly shredded coconut for the recipe and the rest to make coconut milk. I put some of the extra coconut milk in my oatmeal the next day to keep things interesting.

When mixed with a little cornmeal, sugar, and butter, the corn-coconut batter ended up pretty sloppy and I had a very hard time getting it to stay in the husks long enough to tie them up. They steamed for thirty minutes. The cooked pamonhas have a texture kind of like corn grits, only thicker and creamier, with the sweet and soft flavors of corn, coconut and caramel mingling beautifully.

Malaysian Steamed Banana Muffins

2010-07-12T17:03:00.011-04:00

Here we have a steamed version of banana bread. It's simply flour, baking powder & soda, bananas, eggs, oil, sugar and a pinch of salt all mixed together (not too thoroughly), sprinkled with coconut and steamed for 20 minutes. The result is soft, a little chewy (I'm used to crumbly whole wheat baked goods), with just the right touch of sweetness. The coconut adds a hint of the exotic to an otherwise commonplace taste. These would be good with chopped pecans mixed in.

Guyanese Pepperpot Stew with Dumplings

2010-07-10T09:17:00.000-04:00

Pepperpot is an incredible stew made with beef, chicken and pork. Aside from hot peppers, it contains no vegetables of any kind. This versions includes some soft dumplings that soak up the flavor of the broth. The meat ends up sweet, spicy and fall-apart tender. Served over rice, I could eat this all day.

I changed the recipe some. Most significantly I was unable to find cassareep, but I will be on the lookout for it for the rest of my life. And when I find it, I will make this again to find out how it was actually supposed to taste. Cassareep is said to look like molasses, but has more of a pure burnt sugar taste instead of the minerally-medicinal flavor. I don't know of any Caribbean markets in Providence, so I looked in the international aisles of the Stop-n-Shop where I found corn husks. In the most Caribbean section, I found a container of molasses next to a container of something called "Burnt Sugar," which I hadn't heard of. The label boasted of a true West Indian taste. I thought this might be a suitable substitute for cassareep. I later regretted my decision when I realized that it was basically a sugar syrup with caramel color, which isn't the best thing for your health. It's no longer in my cupboard. I used half of what the recipe called for and made up the balance with honey.

I simmered 3 1/2 pounds of beef shoulder with a quarter-pound of cooked bacon in a cinnamon-clove-thyme-infused broth until the beef was tender. Then I added in a whole chicken, cut into pieces. When everything was cooked, I removed the meat and added the dumplings. I think these might be my favorite type of dumplings - a simple batter spooned into simmering broth. They fluff as they cook and all of the flavor seeps into every nook and cranny.

Why this Christmas dish is featured in the July section I don't know... perhaps because of the association with barbecue. I'd love to make this in December. Perhaps I will have found cassareep by then.

Pork and Shrimp Shao Mai

2010-07-08T07:21:00.000-04:00

I know shao mai (shu mai etc.) are supposed to have paper-thin skins, but this is the best I could do with a rolling pin. The filling is made of ground pork and shrimp, potato starch, sugar, salt, pepper, mirin, soy sauce and sesame oil all whipped together. I cut back on the salt and they were still emphatically salty.
The dough is made like an egg pasta rolled as thinly as possible, stuffed with the filling, pinched together like a purse and steamed for twenty minutes. It may have been because I used free-range pork, but the filling was firmer than I expected. The combination of flavors and the firm texture made it taste more like sausage ravioli than shao mai. Still tasty but a little off-target, I'd say.

Rice Dumplings with Sweet Peanut and Coconut Filling (Nuo Mi Ci)

2010-07-06T07:10:00.000-04:00

These are simple and delicious! The filling is made of 2 tablespoons grated coconut, 1/3 cup chopped roasted peanuts, 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons of palm oil. The dough is made from a cup of white rice flour, a tablespoon of potato starch and about half a cup of boiling water, all mixed together until it reaches a modeling clay consistency.
I divided the dough into four balls, shaped each one into a bowl and sealed about two tablespoons of the filling inside. I steamed them for ten minutes, rolled them in flaked coconut, and that's it!
The coconut really brings out the toasty flavor of the peanuts. The rice shell is chewy and bland, making a sturdy backdrop for the sweetness of the filling.

Bread Pudding with Cherries and Blueberries (Kirschen Serviettenknodel)

2010-07-04T18:48:00.077-04:00

I thought I'd add blueberries to this cherry bread pudding recipe as a festive nod to Independence Day. The whipped cream, which completes the red-white-and-blue theme, is another tasty deviation from the original, which calls for cherry compote or cream sauce. I made this with fresh local cherries, blueberries, milk, eggs and homemade bread. The flavor was delicious but I wish the texture had been softer and lighter.

I think the reason my bread pudding goes rubbery is that I start with too-sticky bread. The last couple of times I've made steamed bread puddings I've used white bread made from scratch. The first time I used bread flour; this time I used all-purpose. Both times I used an overnight ferment. I baked the bread on a hot stone at 450 F for longer than the recipe recommended and the crumb was still stubbornly small and sticky. This is troublesome. I have read many books on the theory, chemistry and techniques of bread baking and used to be good at it, but seem to have fallen out of practice. If I were to dedicate the resources to making this recipe again, I would like to try my tried-and-true whole wheat loaf recipe. That loaf still comes out with a small crumb, but the whole wheat bread is naturally more crumbly than white and therefore less likely to turn into rubber. Also, I think my bread would have come out better if I used some tenderizers like fat, milk or sugar. The last two times I made woefully sticky bread it was nothing but flour, water, salt and yeast.
Anyway, to bring this recipe together, I combined a cup of scalded milk with 3/4 cup semolina flour, 1/4 cup sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, 1/2 lb chopped cherries and whole blueberries, and six cups of crustless toasted butter-fried bread cubes. I mixed all this together as best I could and plopped it in the middle of a buttered cloth, tied it up and sunk it in a pot of boiling water for an hour.
I can imagine this being absolutely heavenly when made with a light, open-crumbed baguette.

The Arm of the Queen (Brazo de la Reina)

2010-06-29T07:35:00.000-04:00

File this under Morbid Recipe Titles. While a brief Google Image search shows that the Arm of the Queen can also refer to a harmless jelly-roll style cake, this one is supposed to look like a cross-section of zombie flesh and bone, sort of like those eyeball meatloaves moms make for Halloween.
The batter is made from masa harina, broth, palm oil, salt, baking powder, ground-up roasted pumpkin seeds and chopped spinach, giving it a delightful flecked green hue. This is wrapped around a row of boiled eggs resembling a bone and marrow. The Arm is then rolled up in a banana leaf, steamed for an hour, and then topped with a thick red homemade salsa (tomatoes, onion, chiles, oregano). I was supposed to steam it for two and a half hours, but was reluctant to learn what that might do to the eggs.
The Arm was delicious, especially with the salsa. It's best if you eat it without thinking of a bloody green-fleshed monster missing an arm.

Black Sesame Roll-Ups (Hei Zhi Ma Juan)

2010-06-28T21:35:00.004-04:00

Hey kids! Put down that fruit-by-the-foot and have yourselves a nifty black sesame snack instead. I had my doubts about this recipe, and probably won't make it again, but was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.
These dumplings are made from toasted black sesame seeds, sugar, rice flour, tapioca starch, a pinch of salt, and hot water. Since I was out of proper tapioca starch, I tried putting some tapioca granules into my Fidibus 21 grain mill and hoped for the best. Well, first they clogged the mill and I had to increase the grind size until it would run again. Then I used the finer setting and just dropped in a little at a time.
It's supposed to make a watery batter, but mine ended up more like pudding. I poured it into a cake pan, set it in the steamer and cooked it for five minutes. I peeled it off, rolled it into a log, and sliced it into four pieces.
These came out like gooey black marshmallows. They have a pleasant nutty flavor, slight sweetness, and a soft nubbly texture. Well, maybe this snack won't become the rage in U.S. households but it sure makes an interesting presentation. Fruit roll-ups, step aside.

Steamed Rice Canapes with Mung Bean and Shrimp Toppings (Banh Beo)

2010-06-28T08:33:00.000-04:00

I was reluctant to make this recipe because it required (a) my food processor and (b) steaming batter in little bowls. But I decided today was the day and discovered that each of the steps was quite simple despite being equipment-intensive.
First I cooked a third-cup of sprouted mung beans, pureed them in the food processor, and mixed in some oil and shallots. Then I steamed four ounces of shrimp and pureed those in the food processor as well. I sliced some scallions and prepared the addictive Vietnamese sweet-sour-spicy fish sauce (slightly modified from the original recipe): a clove of garlic, a teaspoon of chili flakes, two tablespoons of brown sugar, two tablespoons of rice vinegar, a tablespoon of fish sauce and a tablespoon of lemon juice). Finally I whisked together one-third cup of stone ground rice flour, the remainder of my packet of tapioca starch (about two and a half tablespoons), and six ounces of hot water. I poured this batter into three little dessert cups in my steamer basket and steamed them for ten minutes. And repeated twice, wishing I had a larger steamer or smaller dessert cups. I slid the gelatinous patties out of the dessert cups onto a plate and topped each with a spoonful of mung bean paste, shrimp, a sprinkle of scallions and a drizzle of awesome fish sauce.
In the end, one bite lets you know it's all worth it.

Pork Tamales with Green Olives and Chipotle Sauce

2010-06-26T20:41:00.004-04:00

This is one of those recipes that looks complicated, but is actually simple enough because it's made from a few components that you can prepare ahead. The tamale batter on the bottom is made from masa harina, palm oil, broth, baking powder and salt all whipped together. The next layer is a mixture of pork, raisins, and a sauce of tomatoes, chipotles, onion, garlic and salt. On top of that goes a dollop of this sauce all by itself, topped off with - not a cherry - a green olive, followed by a bit more batter.

This all gets wrapped up like an envelope side-to-side and then top-to-bottom in a banana leaf and steamed for an hour and a half. I decided to try cutting down the steaming time by fifteen minutes this time because in the past I've found it excessive - the pork is pre-cooked after all - and they came out just fine. I also cut down the fat in the batter from 1/3 to 1/4 cup and they were still too greasy.

All of the flavors blended beautifully. The raisins contributed a welcome sweetness without drawing attention to themselves, while the tomato sauce was bright and just a bit spicy. The corn dough was moist and earthy, rounding off the other flavors.

Peruvian Rice Bundles with Chicken and Peanuts (Juanes de Arroz)

2010-06-26T07:58:00.000-04:00

So I finally made my way downtown to get banana leaves. I had purchased them on one prior occasion in Philadelphia, because I thought they looked cool, but never used them. I found these at the Laotian market on Reservoir Avenue which, by the way, is a really neat store.
I set aside Thursday morning to make these. The recipe starts with a tomato sauce made with onions, chiles, garlic, turmeric, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper (instinctively I reduced the salt by a third because I have found the recipes in this book over-salty). I cooked two chicken legs in this sauce, then removed the chicken and cooked 1 1/4 cups of rice in it. After the rice absorbed all of the sauce (plus some extra water), I set it aside to cool and then mixed in two beaten eggs.
To assemble the dumplings, I cut a couple of rectangles from the banana leaf (which was more flexible than I'd expected, though prone to splitting along the leaf veins) and laid them flat. I spooned a third-cup of the rice mixture onto one of the leaf rectangles and spread it into a circle. I topped that with a quarter of the shredded chicken meat, a tablespoon of peanuts, followed by another two-thirds cup of rice. Finally I shaped it all into a little bundle, drawing the banana leaf around the filling on the sides like a letter fold, and then folding down the top and bottom, wrapping the second leaf around that, and tying it all up with string and a bow. These steamed for one hour - which I think might have been too long.
I remember reading about banana leaves smelling bad as they cooked, but I thought they smelled like pumpkin. These dumplings were tasty, still a little too salty, a bit dry (because I used long grain rice instead of medium) but I think the negatives were balanced by the coolness of being served on banana leaves.

Sticky Rice Dumplings with Mung Beans, Pork and Shrimp (Banh It Tran)

2010-06-23T19:16:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten how much I love Vietnamese food! It is so flavorful. These dumplings are made with a bland rice dough wrapped around mashed mung beans, pork, shrimp and garlic scapes (!) seasoned with sugar, salt and fish sauce. The best part is a magical sweet-sour-hot sauce that gets drizzled over the dumplings right when they come out of the steamer. It's made with rice vinegar, fish sauce, sugar, chile peppers, lemon juice and green onions. The rice dough soaks it right up and it makes the other flavors in these dumplings simply pop.

Iroquois Leaf Bread

2010-06-19T19:59:00.060-04:00

This recipe is super simple as dumplings go, but if you're going to eat corn on the cob, things could be a lot simpler.

I started with three cobs of corn. I shucked them, saved the husks, and cut off all of the corn kernels into a bowl. I pureed the kernels in the food processor with 1/3 cup of cornmeal. I resisted adding salt and butter to the batter - though it begged for it - for the sake of authenticity. I spooned about two ounces of this batter onto each of six pairs of husks, tied them up, and steamed them for an hour.

Our apartment smelled like creamed corn for the rest of the day.

I wasn't sure what to expect when we opened these up. They came out like soft, creamy cornbread. We ate them warm, slathered with butter and salt the way we'd have corn on the cob. It was delicious, but seemed like a lot of effort compared to dropping the whole cobs into boiling water for two minutes. I'm guessing that this tradition arose from a time when corn wasn't as sweet to eat off the cob as it is today. Today's fresh sweet corn I'd eat raw.

Flat Rice Dumplings with Coconut (Palitao)

2010-06-17T20:38:00.016-04:00

These are about as simple as dumplings get. The dough is just (freshly ground) rice flour and water, shaped into little patties, boiled, and then sprinkled with coconut and cinnamon sugar. Okay, the recipe called for anise sugar, but no matter how hard I try I can't abide the flavor of anise. These are also frequently made with sesame seeds on top, but I really wanted to try cinnamon as a substitute for anise.

These are so easy to eat, especially while warm. Apparently they're best made with freshly grated coconut... I can only imagine.

Fish Ravioli in Cream Sauce (Ravioli di Pesce)

2010-06-15T20:38:00.005-04:00

One of the benefits of using farm-fresh eggs is extremely yellow pasta. This fresh pasta was made with just two eggs and shone like the sun because of the gloriously orange yolks that come from pasture-fed chicken eggs.
The filling is made from cod poached in white wine, lemon juice, garlic, thyme and a pinch of salt. The poaching liquid gets mixed with butter, garlic and cream and cooked down into a rich sauce. It sounds (and smelled) very delicious but I'm surprised to say that it could have been creamier. The filling was a little dry, perhaps because I used frozen cod and perhaps because I overcooked it. The problem with making each recipe once is that they often don't come out perfectly the first time. The good thing about making each recipe once is that I try things I otherwise wouldn't and have a better sense of what I should do differently next time.
So next time I would use four or six ounces of white fish instead of twelve, because I ended up with more filling than dough to put it in. I might also try using fresh tilapia instead of frozen cod. I might start the sauce with a roux instead of plain butter because it separated and I had to skim a layer of yellow off the top - possibly another reason it didn't taste as rich as it looked.

Lebanese Lemony Lentil Soup with Bulgur Dumplings (Kibbet Raheb)

2010-06-14T20:05:00.000-04:00

Here we have one superlatively healthy recipe! I think if there were prizes for fitting the most nutritious foods in one bowl this would win. (Okay maybe not, but I'm sure it tastes better than a blueberry-salmon-kale-flaxseed shake.)
The dumplings were absolutely delicious and very easy to assemble. They're made from rehydrated bulgur mixed with a little flour, sauteed garlicky onions, and chopped cilantro.
The soup is made from brown lentils cooked with chard, salt and pepper. When all the cooking was done, I added in one-third cup of lemon juice mixed with more sauteed garlicky onions and cilantro. I hadn't realized just how lemony the soup was supposed to be. Caution: It is very lemony! I may have made a mistake using bottled lemon juice instead of fresh (it's much cheaper and we can't exactly get locally-grown lemons in New England). The lemon overpowered the cilantro and most of the other flavors. Just now, on doing some further research, I realized it's supposed to be served cold like gazpacho or a savory summer lemonade. Now there's a new concept.
When we have the leftovers for lunch today, I think I'll add some more cilantro, strain off some of the sour liquid, add a dollop of sour cream and serve it over rice with soy sauce. Am I breaking tradition? Probably. I prefer to think of it as cultural fusion.

Canary Pudding (English Lemon Cake)

2010-06-13T21:29:00.000-04:00

It's taken me a while to get started on the June recipes, and there are more of them than any other month so far, so we'll see how this goes. I sense a flurry of dumpling-making in the upcoming weeks.

So I prepared the pudding basin (a 1-quart bowl) with butter and slices of lemon. I then poured in a thin batter of butter, sugar, eggs, flour, lemon juice & zest, nutmeg, and baking powder. I snuck about half a teaspoon of vanilla into the batter because it just does amazing things to lemon. I put a circle of parchment over the batter, tied it all up in a piece of cloth, put it in a pot of boiling water, covered it, and let it simmer for two hours.

I'm not usually one to jump for lemony desserts - I usually opt for something chocolate or creamy first - but when I do try them I'm often pleasantly surprised by their freshness and zing. This pudding is no exception. The lemon gets your attention right away, while the buttery foundation gives it depth and richness. It has contrasting layers of flavor and texture; the top layer, which started out as raw lemon, was bright, tart and juicy. The middle layer was dense like pound cake, not too sweet, and almost gummy. It had some large air pockets like an overmixed muffin. The bottom layer was light, spongy, and the sweetest of all. I don't know why exactly it came out that way, but it was a delight to eat. I would love to have had some double cream...

Strawberry Mochi (Ichigo Daifuku)

2010-05-31T20:39:00.096-04:00

Three firsts came together for this recipe: the first local strawberries, my first time making red bean paste (the first time I liked red bean paste for that matter) and my first time making mochi. Red bean paste is simply boiled adzuki beans, sweetened, and then cooked down to a doughy consistency. Mochi is made from ground-up cooked short-grain white rice that is pounded into a bouncy goo much like African fufu.
I was supposed to wrap this extremely sticky mochi around a sphere of red bean paste containing one strawberry. The problem was that said mochi infinitely preferred to stick to my fingers rather than to the red bean paste. After the first attempt I thought this recipe was an epic fail. If I hadn't needed a photo for the blog, I would have given up right then. Eventually I learned to dust my fingers with potato starch at every opportunity and I think the mochi may have dried a bit as I played with it, because the rest of the dumplings came together with relatively little hassle.
Knowing what I did about mochi and red bean paste going into this endeavor, I did not expect to like these, but they are totally delicious. The strawberry is a juicy burst of freshness complemented by the earthy sweetness of the red bean paste set against the soft, chewy blandness of the mochi. Contrary to what the authors say about these being good for only five hours, they have kept well in the refrigerator for a couple of days and are just fine eating cold. Although I was tempted to eat them all within five hours.

Hot Tamales! Pineapple-Pecan and Tomatillo-Chicken

2010-05-24T08:09:00.000-04:00

This was (and I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately) unlike anything I've ever made. The process is pretty involved and kind of bewildering the first time. I had quite a time finding the corn husks but in the process I found a glorious international food section at Stop-n-Shop, where I seldom go, so I think the search was worth it.

I made the dough from masa harina, but next time I'd like to make real fresh masa from dried corn and slaked lime. I have wanted to do that for years now. For the pineapple tamales, the dough included pineapple puree and panela sugar, and for the chicken tamales the dough was made with chicken broth. I didn't know what to make of the fact that the pineapple dough was much thicker than the chicken dough, and contained twice as much masa for the same number of tamales. The filling for the pineapple tamales was chopped fresh pineapple, raisins and roasted pecans. The filling for the chicken one was chopped cooked chicken legs and tomatillo salsa.

To fill the tamales, I put a blob of dough on a corn husk, spread it into roughly a 2 x 4 rectangle, mounded some filling in the middle, folded the corn husk around it and tied it with a cord. This was pretty messy because I inevitably got some dough on my fingers and it's kind of oily so I had trouble holding the bundle together while tying it up. All the while the dough is trying to slip out of every available opening in the corn husk. It took about forty-five minutes to assemble twenty-nine tamales, plus an hour and a half to steam them.

Time investment aside, it is undoubtedly neat to cook and serve a bundle of food in the same organic utensil. They are also delicious and definitely best served hot. I have to imagine that tamales, like most labor-intensive dumplings, are best made with many hands.

Pounded Cassava Dumpling (Fufu)

2010-05-23T08:25:00.000-04:00

To continue the theme of island-shaped food, here we have fufu in a spicy peanut-chicken soup. Like bread or rice, fufu is a staple food of West and Central Africa. It may be made from cassava, yam, plantain, or a combination of these. Said starches are typically boiled and then pounded into a squishy paste.

This was the first time I had ever purchased cassava. I had to look online to see what it looked like. After checking four different markets I finally found some at the big Whole Foods under another name - yuca. The recipe called for shredding the peeled cassava, then steaming it for forty-five minutes, and then mashing the daylights out of it with a blunt object. Something neat happens during the pounding. The stuff that starts out looking like raw hash browns turns into a stretchy, uniform mass.

Until now I held the modest assumption that vegetables do not contain bones. This does not apply to cassava. Once you shred, steam and mash it, you will discover a handful of pin bone-like twigs in the mix. I pulled most of them but did end up biting down on one or two during dinner.

Until now I also hadn't thought of soup as a finger food. But with fufu, yes it is. To eat it, you pinch off a piece of the fufu, shape it into a tiny bowl with your fingers if it's not too sticky, scoop some soup, and eat the whole thing. This recipe made a lot more soup than fufu, but that won't be a problem; we'll be happy to have the leftovers with rice or noodles.

Coconut-Rice Island in Spicy Chickpea Curry: My Take on Puttu Kadala

2010-05-21T18:28:00.000-04:00

I am in love with this dish. I think I felt that way about the last chickpea curry I made too. Maybe I am in love with chickpea curries.

This recipe starts with simmering chickpeas in a turmeric broth until tender. Then I made my own masala (spice mix) of coconut, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, chile peppers, cinnamon and cloves. All my favorites. After the chickpeas were done I sauteed some mustard seeds, onion, garlic, ginger and more chile peppers together with the masala I just made. When the onion was cooked I added the chickpeas and enough turmeric broth to cover everything. Then, for the most important step, I let the stew sit in the refrigerator all day so the flavors could mingle and mellow.

For the dumpling, I ground brown basmati rice in the spice grinder and mixed in salt and coconut milk and let the resulting grainy paste sit in the fridge as well. This allowed the rice to soften before steaming. I didn't have the special puttu steamer, and wasn't willing to go and buy one just for this recipe, but I saw on another blog that you can use a sieve instead. I alternated layers of coconut flakes with the rice-coconut milk mixture in my small metal sieve, set it over a saucepan of boiling water, covered it with foil and let it steam for about 12 minutes. I was skeptical about the result. But I gave it a taste and was wowed by the flavor and texture. It had a fluffy consistency like cous cous and that really satisfying richness that comes from coconut milk and just enough salt to bring out the flavors.

I tried to invert it onto a plate, picked up the pieces and fixed it to look like a dumpling, and poured the reheated chickpea stew around like a moat. Am I thinking about making this miniature island again for the LOST series finale? Yes.

Chewy Rice Balls in Pork-Cabbage Soup (Tang Yuan)

2010-05-15T14:58:00.000-04:00

I must have done something wrong here. I know I took some leeway when I substituted neck bones for the pork butt and simmered everything longer to obtain a gloriously cartilaginous broth. That move I feel comfortable with. I did have to keep adding water because the amount the recipe called for wasn't enough to submerge all of the other ingredients at any time.

What confounded me was the dumpling part. I made the dough as directed: white rice flour plus warm water, mixed and rolled into balls just like the other rice-flour dumplings I've made from this book (onde onde, kube mutli). The recipe said to drop them into boiling water, boil until they're all floating (about two minutes) and then cook another two minutes.

Well.

After not two minutes, but about an hour of energetic boiling, these leaden dumplings still sat obstinately on the bottom of the pot. Not stuck - just sitting there. They had long since turned the cooking-water into a pale starchy soup but refused to float. I tested them every twenty minutes or so and observed the uncooked center spheres becoming smaller and smaller, but they never decided to cook all the way through.

End result? The soup was a little too salty but otherwise delicious, and the dumplings were very, very chewy. Given the opportunity to use pork neck bones again, I think I'd just stick to plain rice.

Sticky Rice and Chicken Bundles (Nuo Mi Ji)

2010-05-14T17:16:00.000-04:00

Ok- I didn't use the lotus leaves. But I have to say that this recipe is so awesome that I will be making it again and probably next time I'll use the lotus leaves.

A couple of notes: I would use a rice cooker next time to prepare the rice. I tried it their way - steaming it in a cloth-lined steamer basket, pouring water over and stirring every so often - but when time was up there were still rock hard rice kernels in there. I cooked it a second time and it was still undercooked at the end. They said the rice was supposed to be a little undercooked, so I thought that was okay, but in the final dish the rice was still a little hard. And I have had something like this at dim sum and the rice was incredibly gooey and sticky, not hard at all.

I also omitted the hard-boiled egg and sausage. In the end the filling was made of marinated chicken, dried shrimp, shiitakes, chopped bamboo shoots and scallions. Dried shrimp smells horribly fishy by itself, and I was worried that the whole thing was going to taste horribly fishy, but it turns out that dried shrimp is one of those amazing condiments like anchovies and fish sauce that are disgusting on their own but make other things taste good. I had read about dried shrimp's ability to impart the sought-after umami flavor and until now I wasn't quite sure it was true, but now I know.

Baozi Two Ways: Mushroom and Pork

2010-05-10T13:57:00.000-04:00

I think these are my favorite style of dumplings. I typically think of char siu bao when I think of baozi - soft, steamed bread with a red roast pork filling. The dough develops a shiny skin during the steaming process that makes it taste a little sweeter.

These were made with the same dough as baozi, that is mantou, which is pretty sweet (1 tablespoon sugar per cup of flour) so it rises really fast. I turn my back on the dough for a minute and it's about to crawl out of the bowl like some sci-fi monster. Ten minutes and it'd be pushing out the windows of the apartment. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but to someone who's used to whole wheat dough - which you can let rise forever and ever and it would just sit there heavily, impassively, daring you to turn it into a sandwich loaf - this white-flour dough puffs like a burgeoning marshmallow.

The fillings were similar in flavor and preparation. I made half of the dumplings with crimini mushrooms (the recipe called for shiitakes but they were more than twice as expensive) and the other half with ground pork. They were seasoned with soy sauce, ginger and scallions.

Since I was making two different dumpling fillings, I doubled the dough recipe. After mixing the flour, water, scalded milk, sugar and yeast, letting the dough rise for an hour and a half (apartment remained intact), I kneaded in some palm oil, salt and baking powder, gave it another fifteen-minute rest, and then chopped it into four parts. The recipe said to roll out each part and use a cookie cutter (a.k.a. drinking glass) to shape the dumplings, but that doesn't work out so well for me. Instead I just chopped each quadrant into twelve marshmallow-sized lumps and rolled them out individually.

Each shell got a scoop of filling, edges pinched together on top, and a 30-minute rest. After that they steamed for fifteen minutes. These are meant to be frozen after cooking, so I'll cook the rest of these and put some in the freezer because I have a feeling that the two of us can't finish 48 dumplings in three days, delicious as they are.

Mushroom Bread Dumpling with Asparagus (Schwammerl Knodel mit Spargel)

2010-05-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

This was my first jelly-roll-style dumpling. I baked a loaf of bread, chopped it into bits, mashed it up with milk and egg, flour, sauteed onions and mushrooms, and then rolled it all up into a spiral with blanched asparagus in the middle. Then I tied it all into a lovely bundle and steamed it for a whopping hour.

Cruelty to asparagus, anyone?

The outside was dense and rubbery and the poor asparagus had seen better days. But the mushrooms were so yummy and the whole thing tasted like Thanksgiving stuffing. Overall not my favorite style of dumpling but a new experience nonetheless.

Steamed Sesame Seed Cakes (muki goma mushipan)

2010-05-04T18:02:00.000-04:00

Mushipan means 'steamed bread' in Japanese. This version is made like a sponge cake and steamed in little cupcake cups. I started with triple-sifted cake flour, powdered sugar and baking powder in one bowl. In another bowl I mixed together three egg yolks, some palm oil and some toasted, ground sesame seeds. In a third bowl I whipped four egg whites to soft peaks.

I folded the three parts together, a little at a time. The resulting batter was bright yellow and very fluffy.

The recipe did call for black sesame seeds (kuro goma) but I didn't have any, so I hoped it wouldn't be a disaster if I substituted white. Next time I might make both white and black versions and construct a little cake chessboard.

These tasted very eggy, a little savory, and barely sweet. They were of particular interest to our cat.

Caribbean Fish Stew with Dumplings

2010-05-03T22:28:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what these should be called, but the dumplings in this recipe are unlike any I've encountered before. These were made of typical dumpling materials (flour, water, salt) and cooked in a typical dumpling fashion (boiled until bobbing and then some) but an unusual shape. Dumplings are usually some neat circle-based form like spheres or half-moons, but these looked more like giant slugs.

Specifically I think this is what Hagrid's flobberworms would look like. The dumplings ended up rather long - at least five inches long and a quarter-inch thick - in varying widths. During cooking they kind of twisted into different contortions and ended up looking like meaty fish fillets. I wondered if this recipe started out as one of those "Ritz apple pie" fake-out dishes that makes a cheaper ingredient simulate an expensive one - in this case flour for fish.

The recipe did call for real fish and I used a pound of sole. The fillets were very thin and sort of disintegrated during the cooking, but were still very tasty in the pepper-okra-tomato sauce. The sauce should have been a lot more spicy but I used a humble chipotle instead of the exponentially more fearsome scotch bonnet.

Odd thing about this recipe: the ingredient list includes a sliced scallion and a lime but the instructions don't say what to do with them. I decided to use them as garnishes and I think that worked out all right.

In the future I'd make the sauce spicier and either leave out the dumplings or make them smaller. At present they're just a bit unwieldy for stew. Looked fascinating in the pot though.

Khanom Chan: Nine-Layer Coconut Tapioca Cake

2010-04-30T21:15:00.001-04:00

When I looked at the list of this month's recipes, having finally gotten my head on straight after two weekends of travel, I did not think I could finish them all before May. I think this month had a disproportionately high number of labor-intensive dough-rolling recipes, too. Indeed our kitchen has seen a flurry of mad dumpling-making activities over the past week or so.

So I saved this simple recipe for last, knowing I could knock it out on some weekday before work.

This steamed cake is unlike anything I've made before. I set a cake pan in the steamer and poured in a thin layer of batter, made of tapioca starch and sweetened coconut milk, every three minutes. The cake ends up with a lot of distinct rubbery layers. Traditionally the layers are made in different colors, so I made mine various shades of pink and green. Aesthetics aside, the taste is reminiscent of Play-Doh and the consistency is sort of like extra-viscous Jell-O. There may be some trick to making this of which I am not yet aware. Until then - adios, April!

Pork and Cabbage Dumplings (Mandu)

2010-04-29T20:03:00.005-04:00

I have to say there's something meditative about making dumplings. Rolling and cutting dough until you think of nothing else, filling and sealing and shaping just so. It is sculpture for food.

So I spent yesterday afternoon from roughly five to seven rolling and cutting and filling 49 pork dumplings. I had spent the morning chopping and mincing cabbage and bean sprouts and scallions and pork until I thought my fingers would fall off. But at the end of the day, my fingers did not fall off, and I had 30 dumplings in the freezer.

These are time-consuming but awesome. The filling is bright and fresh with lots of veggies and a kick of ginger and sesame oil.

Salty-Sweet Coconut Puddings (Khanom Thuay)

2010-04-28T20:12:00.000-04:00

So these are cute. This was my first try at a traditional salty-sweet Thai street snack. Both layers are made of some combination of coconut milk, rice flour and sugar. The bottom layer has more starch and sugar and less coconut cream, while the top layer is mostly coconut cream with a bit of sugar and salt. Both layers are pretty runny when poured into the cups in the steamer.

The bottom layer sits in the steamer for ten minutes and the top layer for fifteen. When they're done, the bottom layer is quite gummy and the topping is still a bit runny, but it sets as it cools.

Besides the fact that I can't get them out of these cups without destroying them, these are SO easy to eat. They're just so small and slightly sweet and gooey and creamy and, well, you can't get them out of the cups without destroying them...

Masa Ball Soup: Supposedly the Easiest Recipe of April

2010-04-28T20:03:00.000-04:00

Just looking at this recipe, I knew it didn't belong on the first page of April. The recipes are supposed to be listed easiest to hardest each month, and, well...

The dough was easy enough to put together - just masa harina, baking powder, salt, shortening, broth, cheese, cilantro and chiles all mixed together. The problem is, since they're to be floated in soup later, the dumplings need to be fried to seal out the water or else they will disintegrate into the soup. This wouldn't be a problem except that simply heating oil on my stove sets off the Most Agonizing Fire Alarm on Earth.

So I had to barely fry these at a wimpy low temperature and, bottom line, they didn't quite fry enough. No matter. At least I didn't set off the alarm. They lasted long enough for a photo and lunch, but when I reheated this for dinner the dumplings were nowhere to be found but the soup was pleasantly thick and cheesy.

Ashak: Scallion-Parsley Dumplings

2010-04-27T12:50:00.001-04:00

I only got one picture of these before my camera battery ran out. The dumplings are pictured here on a bed of minted yogurt, but without the beefy tomato sauce on top.

I wasn't able to get the garlic chives for the filling, so I substituted equal parts scallions and parsley plus a bit of garlic. The wrappers are shu mai dough, made of flour, water, an egg, and salt. They are folded over the filling in the standard half-moon pattern, like pierogies, and boiled in salted water.

Combined with the smooth, minty yogurt and chunky tomato sauce, these herbaceous dumplings are a burst of contrasting flavors and textures.

Spicy Beef Dumplings in Yogurt Soup

2010-04-26T20:39:00.001-04:00

I didn't get a chance to plate these before my camera battery ran out, and then we ate them all. These dumplings are made with a highly seasoned filling of beef, toasted walnuts (recipe called for pine nuts), onion, garlic, allspice, cinnamon, paprika, salt and pepper. The dough is just flour, oil and water, rolled paper-thin and cut into 2 1/2" circles.

To assemble the dumplings I put about a teaspoon of filling onto a circle of dough, folded the dough into a half-moon shape, and then pinched the two corners together to get a tortellini shape.

I did this about sixty times.

Then I whisked together some yogurt, water, garlic, egg white and dried mint in a pot and brought it to a boil. The recipe called for strained yogurt but I used regular, so of course it curdled. I simmered the dumplings for about eight minutes and served them with the yogurt soup. They were delicious, and so different from anything I'd ever made before. I did put most of these in the freezer and can't wait to have them again.

Matzo Balls in Beef Stew (Fleischsuppe mit Matzoknepfle)

2010-04-26T12:39:00.000-04:00

Of course - no Year of the Dumpling could be complete without matzo balls. I normally associate matzo balls with chicken soup, but this Alsatian recipe calls for a hearty beef stew.

Although I had used up the last of my Stonyledge Farm stew beef months ago, I had two packets from my last visit to Predel Ranch in upstate New York. I cobbled together an awesome broth from short ribs, marrow bones, stew beef, thyme, bay leaves, cloves, salt and pepper, an onion and a carrot. The broth recipe called for other vegetables but I dropped off after the carrot. After the beef was tender, I separated it from the broth and shredded it for later.

The recipe called for both matzo crackers and matzo meal, but I didn't want to buy a whole package of crackers and use just two, so I used all matzo meal. I soaked half a cup of the meal (as a substitute for the two crackers) to make a grainy mush, which I then stirred into a pan of sizzling onions, ginger and nutmeg. After adjusting the water ratio to get a workable dough, I let the mixture cool and added two eggs, some more matzo meal, and fresh parsley. Then I left it in the fridge overnight.

Once the stew and the dough were made, dinner was a snap. I brought the broth to a boil and dropped in walnut-sized lumps of dough, covered the pot and let the dumplings simmer for ten minutes on one side, five on the other. In the last couple of minutes I added the beef and carrots. The matzo balls were very flavorful and dense, standing up well to the hearty beef stew.

Manti: Turkish Oven-Simmered Beef Dumplings

2010-04-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

For my first attempt at making paper-thin shao mai-type dough, these didn't turn out too badly. The dough, made from flour, water, egg yolk, olive oil and salt, was a little too thick in places, but still delicious and functional. Not to mention bright yellow. The filling called for lamb (I substituted beef), onion, oregano, mint, salt and pepper. I'm not normally a big fan of mint, but in this recipe it was amazing.

After mixing and resting the dough, I rolled it as thinly as possible, and then cut it into roughly 2"x2" squares. I put a rounded teaspoon of filling on each one and bunched the dough around it, squeezing the top so that it resembled a little drawstring pouch. The dough was strong and malleable, and even if it did break in places, the filling stayed put.

This recipe is unusual in that the dumplings are first baked in the oven, then simmered in chicken broth while still in the oven. I served these with a garlicky-minty yogurt sauce, which was a perfect offset to the hot and little-too-salty dumplings.

Shogo Momo and Sha Momo: Tibetan Half-Moon Dumplings

2010-04-16T19:55:00.048-04:00

These two recipes go together because they use the same dough for two different fillings. They look remarkably like gyoza or fen guo but, like ting momo, the dough is a blend of white and whole wheat flour. The result is a slightly chewier, heartier skin that takes a little more effort to eat.

The dough is two parts whole wheat flour, one part white flour, and one part water, beaten together to form a not-too-sticky dough, and then left to rest for 30 minutes to an hour at room temperature. Then the dough should be rolled as thinly as possible and cut into rounds with a cookie cutter or, in my case, an empty water chestnut can.

The first filling is vegetarian: turmeric mashed potatoes. It contains toasted cumin seeds, one mashed russet potato, a scallion, turmeric, salt, pepper, and cilantro. I think my potato was too small because the filling ended up too salty. It was beautifully yellow though. Since the filling was so salty, this one didn't need dipping sauce. Note that the dough has zero salt, so they sort of balance each other.

The second filling was beef (substituted for yak), onion, scallions, garlic, ginger, cilantro, salt and pepper. This one did benefit from a little dipping sauce (soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and sesame oil).

Steamed Chickpea Cake (Khaman Dhokla)

2010-04-15T07:55:00.000-04:00

Between travel, taxes and full-time work, April has been a crazy month. Of course, the April chapter of my dumpling cookbook has some of the most intriguing and complicated recipes too. I decided to start with this one because it didn't seem as complicated. The recipes from this month might just have to stretch into May, when I'll have more time for cooking adventures.

This yummy chickpea cake (think spicy - not sweet) has the consistency of cornbread with the satisfying heartiness of beans. The batter is made of soaked & pureed chickpeas, water, yogurt, semolina, dried chiles, ginger, turmeric, salt and a touch of lemon. It needs to sit at room temperature for 1-2 hours to soften and ferment a little. Lastly, I added a mix of oil and baking soda just before pouring it into the cake pan to steam.

After steaming for fifteen minutes, the cake is then topped with a spiced oil (mustard seeds and sesame seeds heated in oil until browned), chopped cilantro and flaked coconut. The finished cake could be a nice anytime snack; we made it dinner. The outer edges were breadlike but the interior was still undercooked, so I think I'd steam it longer next time.

Fen Guo: Pork-Shiitake Dumplings in Rice Wrappers

2010-03-30T21:46:00.104-04:00

Similar in construction to gyoza, these dumplings have skins made from rice instead of wheat flour. The rice skins are sturdier and chewier, probably because they have to be a little thicker in order to not fall apart in the absence of gluten. It was plenty sticky, though. As the only ingredients in the dumpling dough are rice and water, that part is a bit bland, but a necessary counterpoint to the flavorful filling and dipping sauce.

I made the filling with pork, shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, onion, rice wine, soy sauce and cilantro. The cilantro came from the freezer, and I think it had lost some of its punch. I will make this recipe again when the fresh cilantro is up - I think it would taste amazing.

The first few dumplings I shaped using the authors' method: roll a ball of dough and then squish it under a flat surface until it attains a certain thickness and diameter. Then I discovered it was a lot easier just to shape the dough with my hands like clay. That was much faster and easier than scraping sticky rice dough off of the bottom of a glass bowl, destroying the shape in the process.

After shaping and sealing twenty-nine dumplings, I steamed four them on a bed of lettuce (to keep them from sticking to the steamer) and put the rest in the freezer.

The soy-vinegar dipping sauce will wake you up. I made it this time with 2 T soy sauce, 1 T Chinkiang vinegar, 1 t sugar (I used Rapadura), and 1/2 t sesame oil. The other ingredients may be commonplace, but that vinegar sure gets my attention every time.

Pierogi z Kasza Gryczana: Kasha & Mushroom Pierogies

2010-03-28T17:53:00.000-04:00

Ahh... my first pierogies. They were not very beautiful, but so delicious - even without butter or sour cream - that I had difficulty keeping enough on the plate for the photo.

These weren't the typical mashed potato pierogies. The filling looks and tastes like ground beef but is actually made of porcini mushrooms, kasha and onions ground up in the food processor. The dough is rich with sour cream, butter and egg. The most difficult part of the recipe was wrestling the dough, which got pretty springy at times and needed rest now and then (don't we all).

The best part about this recipe is that I now have enough pierogies in the freezer for at least two no-fuss meals - my favorite kind for a weeknight dinner.

Pisari e Faso: Bean Stew with Gnocchi

2010-03-25T17:50:00.084-04:00

This recipe might make me a gnocchi fan. Tender yet firm to the bite, satisfyingly salty and chewy, these dumplings might just make up for the amount of work required. I think they were supposed to look like cashews, but mine ended up looking more like mini marshmallows or chicklets because the dough was so springy when I was shaping it. They're just flour, breadcrumbs, water and salt - the same ingredients for any fresh pasta - boiled in salted water until bobbing, and then folded into the stew.

The bean stew alone was stellar. I started with dried pinto beans (soaked overnight) and simmered them with sauteed onions, celery, rosemary, garlic and water. This recipe calls for bacon or pancetta, without which it would be perfectly vegetarian; I used bacon. Normally when I cook dried beans, they never end up with the same texture as canned. They're always crumbly or falling apart or mushy or crunchy. This time they ended up perfectly soft, smooth and unbroken. It may have been because I used a brand new package of beans, whereas I usually use beans that have been sitting on the shelf forever. I had always thought it was just impossible to get dried beans to have the same texture as canned and I'd very nearly given up and bought canned beans for this recipe.

After simmering the beans I added salt and Pomi chopped tomatoes. I like Pomi tomatoes because they're only tomatoes, tetra-pakked, without citric acid or any of the weird chemicals on the insides of cans.

I forgot to add the Parmesan (which just means tomorrow night's rendition of this stew will be even better) and there isn't a leaf of basil to be found anywhere. I didn't miss it, but maybe I'll make this again in August when the basil is growing.

Onde-Onde: Malaysian Sweet Potato Dumplings

2010-03-24T17:45:00.074-04:00

Problem: One-hour window to produce something sweet

Materials: Rice flour, sweet potato, brown sugar and coconut

Method: Combine rice flour, water, mashed sweet potato in food processor. Shape into spheres with 1/4 teaspoon hemisphere of packed brown sugar inside. Drop in plain boiling water until all bobbing. Roll in flaked coconut with a pinch of salt.

Results: These were chewy and slightly sweet in a mochi kind of way. I think some of the sugar fillings may have melted out of the dumplings while boiling. With a few layers of contrasting textures and a surprise sugar-lined hollow center, they're very fun to bite into.

Conclusion: I think next time I'll use a touch more salt and maybe some sugar in the dough itself, plus a little salt in the cooking water to intensify the flavors. I'll also take more care to seal the sugar filling inside the dumplings. I might even try using chunks of palm sugar as the recipe suggests (I used muscovado).

With their pastel-orangey hue, festive coconut sprinkles and superior grabbability, these treats could be a stellar finger food for Easter, Halloween, or anything in between.

Cauliflower Soup with Bread Crumb Dumplings

2010-03-23T21:10:00.000-04:00

Kvetakova Polevka s Knedliky. Say that ten times fast! Here is a recipe that, despite a long list of blah ingredients (cauliflower, turnips, parsnips, nutmeg, stale breadcrumbs) tastes amazing. It's a perfect example of a recipe I'd normally never try but am glad I did.

The leftover cornbread crumbs from last post (which did not taste very good when they were cornbread) became delicious when mixed with butter, eggs, milk and seasoning, rolled into balls and then boiled in salted water. They look like meatballs and have a similar texture - "firm but not chewy"- so I might try them with spaghetti sometime. (How's that for a carb overload?) I would like to try making these from different kinds of bread and with different herbs mixed in; I think they'd be an excellent compliment to any soup or stew.

Steamed Cornbread!

2010-03-19T08:24:00.000-04:00

It's basically the same as regular cornbread, only cooked in a steamer instead of an oven. In the absence of sizzling hot temperatures it never develops the crunchy crust many consider essential to cornbread, but rather a soft shiny skin similar to baozi.

Well, at least the steamed version should be moist, right? That is, after all, a notorious drawback of baked cornbread. Unfortunately (and this may be my fault for using whole wheat flour instead of white) it was just as dry and crumbly as any baked cornbread, if not more so.

After a few days on the shelf this one went straight into the food processor to become bread crumbs for my next recipe.

Kube Mutli: Clams and Rice Dumplings in Spicy Coconut Sauce

2010-03-12T08:02:00.000-05:00

So here is the result of my first clam-buying experience. I've passed by the shellfish table at the farmer's market so many times, sometimes stopping to look at the giant ice-filled bins overflowing with clams, mussels, oysters, even crabs and lobsters on occasion, but never brought a single one home. But lo and behold a clam recipe in the March chapter of my cookbook - so last Saturday I brought home two dozen littlenecks from Matunuck Oyster Farm.

I made sure that steaming the clams was the only thing I had to do to finish this recipe as soon as I got home from the market. I'd steamed the rice dumplings that morning and prepared the spice mix and sauce earlier in the week.

Like many of the other more complicated recipes in this book, this one was easy to break down into parts that I could manage before or after the workday. I made the curry paste with dried coconut, coriander, cumin, white peppercorns and chili flakes all toasted together and pulverized in a spice grinder. The recipe says it should be a "coarse powder" at this time but mine was definitely the texture of peanut butter. Hmm.

The sauce is a luxurious concoction of sauteed onions, the previously-assembled coconut curry paste, garlic, turmeric, creamy organic coconut milk, and a little salt and sugar (the recipe called for tamarind but I didn't have any).

I made the rice dumplings by grinding basmati rice in my grain mill and then cooking it with water and salt until it made a thick paste. With wet hands I rolled the paste into walnut-sized balls and steamed them for fifteen minutes. As can be expected they're very sticky and chewy. Probably a choking hazard.

To bring it all together I slipped the rice dumplings into the bright yellow sauce, added the clams and let them simmer together until all of the clams opened - about ten minutes. Every single one opened!

The recipe made way more than enough sauce for the amount of clams and dumplings, so it was reincarnated on Monday night with leftover ribeye and Tuesday night with chicken legs. I think if I were to make it again I'd skip the rice dumplings and just serve the sauce and clams (or chicken or fish) over plain rice. More surface area = more efficient delivery of yummy coconut sauce.

Chana Vada: Fried Chickpea Dumplings in Curried Tomato Sauce

2010-03-04T07:52:00.000-05:00

This dumpling recipe is like an Indian falafel - herbed chickpea batter shallow-fried in oil until crispy and then served in a spiced tomato sauce.

On Sunday I started soaking the chickpeas. On Monday morning I ground the soaked chickpeas in the food processor with a little water, then mixed in cilantro, salt, baking powder and spinach. I then attempted to fry the dumplings in palm oil (which is supposed to have a super-high smoke point) and promptly set off the fire alarm. If you can imagine the most piercing fire alarm ever and then multiply it to such a degree as to make one despair of life, you will have a rough idea of how our fire alarm sounds. And I set it off at 7:30 in the morning while Stephen was sleeping. It's not the earliest time of day I've set it off, though.

Deep/shallow-frying is a point of frustration for me because the oil always starts to smoke at a lower temperature than it's supposed to. This time I used organic palm oil, which was supposed to be safe up to 450 F. It's almost a year before its sell-by date and smells fine. My deep-fry thermometer was barely pushing 300 F when I started seeing smoke. What am I doing wrong?

Fire alarm notwithstanding, I finished frying the dumplings and they did have a gorgeous crispy crust. On Tuesday night I prepared the sauce - sauteed onion, ground cumin & coriander, ginger, garlic, Pomi tomatoes, turmeric, Indian chile powder and salt. I reduced the salt in the sauce because I thought the chickpea dumplings were too salty. I let the dumplings simmer in the sauce for about ten minutes and then put it away for the flavors to mingle overnight. We had this for dinner on Wednesday night with rice, peas and fresh cilantro. It's so delicious I'm willing to brave the frying step (though maybe with a little less oil at a lower temperature) to make it again.

Ting Momo: Tibetan Cloud-Shaped Bread Buns

2010-02-28T21:21:00.000-05:00

It took me a few tries to get these right and they're absolutely worth it. The first time I made the dough too wet and held it overnight, ending up with shapeless blobs. The second time I forgot to dip them in the turmeric sauce before steaming, and they were good, but not as good as the third time when I got them right.

The dough is a simple mix of water, sugar, yeast, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and baking powder. No fat or salt. After the bulk rise, I cut the dough into strips and bundled them, four at a time, into little knots. They don't have to be perfect and it's okay if they break in places - just reshape them and they'll be fine. I dunked each one in a glaze of olive oil, turmeric and salt. They don't need a second rise, but it doesn't hurt to give them a short rest while the water comes to a boil. Pop them in the steamer for fifteen minutes. That's it.

The turmeric glaze seeped into all of the little nooks in these delicious clouds, providing unexpected bursts of flavor in an otherwise bland bun.

Dampfnudeln: Milk-Steamed Buns with Prune Sauce

2010-02-28T21:04:00.000-05:00

So this is a new vehicle for butter I hadn't heard of. First off I have never seen a bread recipe with so little water. For two cups of flour (9 oz) the recipe called for just a quarter-cup of water and the rest of the liquid came from eggs and butter. And if that wasn't enough, the buns are cooked in a bath of milk and more butter. Still not enough? Okay, there's a pat of butter in the sauce.

If you like butter, these are awesome. They're soft, rich, a little sweet, and a little puddinglike around the edges. They expanded so much while steaming that I had to improvise a new lid for my skillet - an inverted Pyrex bowl. I think the recipe called for too much milk for the steam-bath because I had to pour some off at the end; it was supposed to all evaporate. Maybe my skillet had a smaller surface area than the one the authors used because I also had trouble fitting all of the dumplings in. Since I used two cups of milk this time, next time I'd start with just one and add more liquid if it cooked off too quickly.

Speaking of which, the recipe said not to let the milk boil, but my stove just can't maintain a low enough temperature for that. I don't think the dumplings minded too much. It might make sense to get a wok ring one of these days, but it's not like I do this all that often.

Since I already made the vanilla custard sauce to go with the chocolate steamed pudding, I made the prune sauce (also included with this recipe) this time. Made from prunes simmered with water, cinnamon, orange juice and a little sugar, it had just the right amount of sweetness to complement these buttery dumplings.

Chestnut Gnocchi with Walnut Sauce

2010-02-28T20:27:00.000-05:00

I'd never heard of chestnut flour until now. It is, as the authors described it, bittersweet, and I think also responsible for turning the gnocchi sort of purple.

I started this recipe Wednesday or Thursday morning, peeling and pureeing boiled walnuts. The peeling was the most cumbersome part of the recipe. The walnut paste, mixed with garlic, parmesan and a simple bechamel, made a very rich sauce. I accidentally added too much salt so I tempered it with a little sugar (not in the recipe). I also dropped some on the floor more than once and the cats have been so interested in that corner of the kitchen today.

The dumpling dough was made from boiled russet potatoes mashed with chestnut flour, regular flour, water and salt, mooshed into little fingertip-sized lumps, then boiled in salted water for four minutes. Mine might have been a bit soft because I accidentally added too much water. Yes - the accidents were caused by me halving the recipe and occasionally forgetting. I do that a lot.

I tried texturing the gnocchi with the tines of a fork, but they lost their shape while cooking.

Gnocchi are exactly the sort of thing I would never make on a voluntary basis, which is why I'm glad I forced myself to try every recipe in this book. They were delicious.

Spoon-dropped semolina dumplings

2010-02-24T08:05:00.000-05:00

These came out differently than I expected. I didn't quite end up with distinct dumplings so much as a fluffy indistinguishable mass. The recipe said they would sink down when I dropped the dough by spoonfuls into the boiling water, but they just bobbed there like little sponges, falling apart like undercooked pancakes whenever I tried to flip them. The dough is made with milk, butter, semolina, salt, and egg yolks, folded together with softly-beaten egg whites. I think I might have beaten the egg whites too long because the dough was just too fluffy.

These ended up more like spoon bread, I think. The dominant flavor was definitely butter, and you won't hear me complain about that.

Nuo Mi Juan: Steamed Bread with Fried Rice: There are Oversized Maggots in my Steamer

2010-02-21T21:51:00.000-05:00

I have no idea how these were supposed to look because I'd never heard of them and apparently neither has Google. I'm more accustomed to having this kind of dough in bun form, but it was an adventure to make into loaves as well.

The dough itself is soft, sweet and shiny after steaming. The filling is sticky rice fried with seasoned pork, dried shrimp, scallions and soy sauce.

This recipe sent me outside of my normal food zone to find the dried shrimp. I hadn't actually been to an Asian market around Providence yet, which is odd because I love them so. I guess that's an indication of how boring my cooking has gotten over the past year and a half. I went to Asiana in East Providence over my lunch break; it has a substantial selection for such a small building but is a little pricey.

Dried shrimp is one of those ingredients that seems like it's going to be disgusting by itself - like anchovies or fish sauce - but makes anything around it taste better. If I looked for it I could detect a fishy flavor.

I did not attempt to find la chang, the traditional Chinese sausage, mainly because I wanted to use naturally-raised meat without preservatives. I made a substitute with 1.5 lb ground pork, 28g sugar, 12g soy sauce, 10g rice wine, 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 20 drops of liquid smoke. I'm sure the texture wasn't anywhere near authentic, and I don't even know what it was supposed to taste like, but Stephen loved it.

And yes, they really do look like adorable oversized maggots. Only delicious.

Kluski Slaskie: Polish Potato Dumplings with Mushroom Sauce

2010-02-21T07:44:00.044-05:00

This recipe is more about the mushroom sauce than the dumplings. The sauce is made with dried porcini mushrooms, fresh bellas, onion, butter, salt and pepper. The dumplings are made from boiled russet potatoes mixed with flour, salt and beaten egg.

The whole thing took two hours from start to finish. I could have made the sauce in advance to save time at dinner. I learned that dried porcini mushrooms, while soaking, smell exactly like dog food. I was so worried the sauce would end up tasting like dog food. Fortunately that smell cooked out after I added the butter and onions, leaving behind a rich delicious sauce.

As I learned with the kroppkakor, it's very important to use russet potatoes in the dough. They were nice and starchy and the dough was perfectly manageable after I added the minimum amount of flour. I probably could have used even less.

This recipe is very simple, just has three time-consuming steps: rehydrating the mushrooms, simmering the sauce and boiling the potatoes. They're very cute but a little heavy for our taste.

Kroppkakor: The Dumplings that are as Fun to Say as they are to Eat

2010-02-20T06:37:00.000-05:00

But not so much fun to make the first time around, as it turned out.

I started making the dough the night before. Little did I know that starchy old russet potatoes are the key to the texture of the dough and I - thinking a potato is a potato when it comes down to it - used reds. So I cooked and mashed half and grated the other half in the food processor, squeezing out the extra liquid. After I mixed in the right amount of flour, and then twice the amount of flour, I had a bowl of sticky mush. And then, since the dough was made with half raw potatoes, I ended up with a bowl of horrifyingly gray sticky mush the next day when I went to assemble the dumplings.

The filling was easy and delicious - just minced ham, onions and allspice browned in butter.

The recipe says to roll the dough into a 12-inch log and then slice it into eight pieces. Wasn't happening. I sort of shaped it into a gloppy slug on a heavily floured board, and with the help of lots more flour squished the filling into the middles of eight limp blobs. The dough was so soft I was certain the dumplings would disintegrate as soon as I dropped them in the boiling water, but they actually kept their shape.

The second hardest part about the recipe was finding lingonberry jam for serving. I know Ikea sells it by the bucketful but didn't feel like driving 45 minutes. The third place I looked - the big Whole Foods on North Main in Providence - does carry it. It reminds me of cranberry sauce but without the bitter edge. It makes for a delicious combination of savory and sweet.

A traditional English pudding

2010-02-19T07:43:00.000-05:00

Pudding is one of those etymological oddities that means something very different in the UK and the US. On this side of the pond it's sort of a sweet goop that usually comes from a boxed mix or a plastic cup. In the United Kingdom it can mean anything from a savory sausage to a heavy spiced cake splashed with brandy and set on fire.

This recipe uses a thick breadcrumb-based batter (so it's a bit like bread pudding) that gets steamed in a bowl for two hours. The breadcrumbs are mixed with flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, milk, butter and Ghirardelli 60% dark chocolate chips. Next time I might add a little vanilla and cinnamon.

I baked a loaf of whole wheat bread on Sunday, then ground it into breadcrumbs on Wednesday night by pushing it through the grating wheel on the food processor. After making the breadcrumbs, the rest of the recipe was a piece of cake (or pudding?)!

The most fun part was assembling the pudding basin setup. I scooped the batter into a buttered quart-size glass bowl and put a circle of parchment on top. Then I covered that with a square of damp cloth and tied it securely under the lip of the bowl. I picked up the hanging corners of the cloth and tied them over the top so that my glass batter bowl now had an adorable little handle. The handle is for lifting the bowl into and out of the boiling water.

The recipe says to steam the pudding for 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours - I left it in for two hours. It was rather light, tasty and a little dry. Enter the vanilla custard sauce! I nicked the sauce recipe from a different dumpling recipe in this chapter (Milk-Steamed Buns with Vanilla Custard Sauce - stay tuned) it complements the chocolate pudding terrifically. The sauce in the picture is caramel-colored because it is made with Rapadura instead of refined sugar. Rapadura has a lovely caramel flavor too.

I wonder how this would turn out if I borrowed a bread pudding technique and let the batter sit overnight to let the dry bread absorb more moisture. In that case I think I'd increase the milk. Cheers!

Jiao Zi - Potstickers with Chicken and Mushrooms

2010-02-18T07:26:00.000-05:00

The last couple of nights I made these chicken potstickers for dinner. I decided to take on the last (most difficult) recipe of February because (a) I had chicken (b) it's the New Year holiday and (c) I wanted to test my limits.

Potstickers are indeed tricky. The longest step of the process was actually mincing the chicken. We have a great new vendor at the farmers’ market who sells fresh chicken parts so I don't have to use the whole bird at once. The rest of the filling was a breeze. I used canned water chestnuts and discovered that while I don’t really care for their metally flavor, the empty can was just the right size to cut out the dumpling rounds. The recipe calls for what seemed to be an alarming amount of sesame oil (1 Tb) but it didn’t overwhelm the other ingredients. It really complemented the earthiness of the dried shiitakes. Yum.

The dough was the real challenge. Most recipes for potstickers involve going to the store and buying pre-made dumpling wrappers. Making dumpling dough from scratch, however, is a careful balance between too-sticky and too-dry - capturing the oft-elusive ratio of water and flour that varies with ambient humidity, when the wheat was harvested, and the price of tea in China.

After developing the gluten to the point that the dough was still a bit sticky but pulled away from my hands, rolling it and assembling the dumplings was a breeze. I'm not convinced that you really need a circular cookie cutter to make these. They could be any shape as long as you crimp the edges together. I assembled fourteen on Sunday, six on Monday morning and six for Monday dinner. The first two batches went immediately into the freezer. Having a stash of homemade dumplings in the freezer makes me feel rich indeed.

True to their name, these dumplings have the remarkable ability to stick to any cooking surface. The first batch I fried in palm oil and then steamed. Even though they stuck to the pan in places, it didn't destroy them. It was messy and oily but delicious. I tried cooking them in the steamer basket; they stuck to that too. Then I steamed them on bits of waxed paper and they even stuck to the waxed paper! In the future, I think I'll stick with the fry-start because I liked the texture best.

Year of the Dumpling

2010-02-14T22:52:00.000-05:00

Today I begin a year-long quest for myself and this blog. It's all about pushing the limits of my kitchen comfort zone. Lately my cooking has been so uninteresting I'd feel sheepish blogging about it, hence only six posts last year (five of which occurred before Valentine's Day). So to shake things up, this year I am going to cook through a cookbook.

I chose "The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide" by Wai Hon Chu and Connie Lovatt. I think that if I were to describe a perfect food, it would be a dumpling. The authors give a three-part definition of dumplings as carbohydrate-based, boiled or steamed, and not noodles. Within this definition - which allows things like steamed puddings and tamales but not doughnuts or meatballs - there is a staggering variety of recipes and techniques from all around the world.

The book is conveniently organized by month. Recipes are sorted into the seasons they fit best so, while I will be trekking out more to get things like banana leaves and taro, I'll still be able to source many of my ingredients from my favorite local farmers.

I know this is the sort of thing that I should have started on January 1, but really, that's such a hectic time of the year that it's no good for making any major decisions. Fortunately we get to celebrate a second New Year right around the time things have settled down after the first one.

So to mark the inception of the new project, I made a recipe from the January section, actually. They're steamed rice buns for the New Year, called "Fot Gao" in the book but if you want to look them up online, they're spelled "Fatt Koh." They're basically rice flour, sugar, water and leavening mixed together and steamed in muffin cups. Some recipes also include coconut milk, yeast and bright food coloring, but this one used just baking powder and unrefined sugar. The first time I made these, I used white rice ground in my grain mill, but those didn't "bloom" as much during steaming as the ones I made with purchased (Bob's Red Mill) white rice flour. I also cut out 1/4 cup of sugar the second time around with no apparent detriment.

These are very chewy and gooey, and if you aren't likely to eat something like this out of hand, they're really good steamed on top of my morning oatmeal as it boils.

Whole Wheat Cream Cheese Snails go Pumpkin

2009-10-12T13:59:00.009-04:00

How I love fall. Of course I love spring and summer too, being a locavore in Rhode Island where each crop has such a short, sweet time in the spotlight. I remember bringing home the first asparagus and fiddleheads of the year, feeling as if reunited with a long lost love. All the money in the world can't buy Rhode-Island-grown asparagus for all but a few weeks each year.

At least we'll have pumpkins for a good while longer.

This recipe I adapted from a post on The Fresh Loaf. I just substituted 7 oz soft white wheat and 7 oz hard white wheat for the 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and added pumpkin to the filling. Last night I mixed and proofed the dough, put it in the refrigerator and roasted a little sugar pumpkin.

Step 1: Roast pumpkin.

1 sugar pumpkin, skin on, cut up and cleaned

1 Tablespoon butter

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

Rub the butter and olive oil all over the cut up pumpkin slices. I put mine in the oven at 425F, but after 30 minutes it was starting to burn on top, so I would use a lower temperature next time. The burning might also have been a result of an interruption in the baking that may have allowed the tops to dry too much. Next time I'd put it in at 375F for as long as it takes to get soft - I'm guessing about 45 minutes. After peeling the skin off, I squeezed the chunks of pumpkin into a ziploc container, pushing most of the liquid out, and left it in the refrigerator overnight.

Step 2: Puree pumpkin with cream cheese and flavors.

6 oz. roasted pumpkin chunks, squeezed of excess water (about 3/4 cup)

6 oz. cream cheese

3 Tablespoons granulated sugar or Rapadura

1 Tablespoon brown sugar or Muscovado

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine everything in a food processor and puree until smooth. This pumpkin cream cheese would be awesome on bagels or toast, or - I confess - straight off the spoon. In this case, I put it in the middle of the pain-au-lait snails. I took out half of the dough, cut it into eight strips, coiled them into circles, brushed them with egg wash, made wells in the middles, and put a dollop of pumpkin cream cheese in each one. After baking them at 400F for 14 minutes, I sprayed them with a sugar glaze (2 T water, 2 T sugar and a few drops of vanilla). I put the sugar glaze in my Misto, as my one basting brush had already been messied by the egg wash and I wasn't about to reuse it on freshly baked pastry. One negative effect of the Misto was a sticky film of sugar on the kitchen floor afterwards.

Constructing the snails was a bit messy because the dough was so soft and sticky, but soft sticky dough makes for tender whole wheat pastries. Whenever the dough strips break, it's easy to pat them back together again and it always looks (and tastes!) fine in the end. The dough recipe on The Fresh Loaf plus the pumpkin cream cheese recipe above will make enough for 16 snails. These were totally awesome and well worth the effort.

Love is Pizza

2009-02-14T21:28:00.003-05:00

When is food more than food? When it comes in fun shapes! American culture doesn't exactly put the greatest emphasis on presentation - except in magazines telling you how to get your kids to eat healthy food - but it sure adds a special touch.

This year we celebrated Valentine's Day by eating at home. We had heart-shaped egg sandwiches for breakfast, heart-shaped pizza for lunch, and spaghetti and meatballs for dinner - comfort food all the way! And it really was food from the heart. The bread and cheese were homemade, and the eggs, bacon and beef came from local farms. We topped it off with a box of out-of-this-world artisan chocolates from Farmstead. Now that's love.

Something Approaching the Best Mozzarella on Earth

2009-01-25T10:09:00.004-05:00

Good mozzarella is expensive. Even bad mozzarella is expensive. Since I am a lover of good milk and good food, I invested in a cheesemaking kit to try making it myself.

Now that I have made one batch of mozzarella, I am glad to have purchased the kit even though I now know it is not really necessary. It is self-contained and pretty cute, but not really cost-effective. It would make a fantastic gift for an unsuspecting food-and-cheese-lover. If you don't purchase the kit, such as if you already have a good thermometer, the essential mozzarella items can be purchased individually as follows:

Thermometer: $5.95

Food-grade citric acid: $5.95

Rennet for 40 batches: $6.50

Cheese salt (optional, included with kit): $2.95

Total: $21.35

Cost of kit (with shipping): $36

The kit also comes with butter muslin (for ricotta) and an instruction booklet. The instructions are disappointingly vague at times. The thermometer is just a plain, mercury-free rod with no clip - you have to hold it while taking the milk's temperature. The kit also advertises itself as "30-minute," but it took me closer to an hour on my first try.

The first step in cheesemaking is to sterilize everything as best you can. I washed everything with soap and water, but didn't do anything too special as I didn't feel I was relying so much on bacterial action for mozzarella as I would for yogurt.

Next I measured 1 gallon of farm-fresh cow's milk into a big stainless-steel pot. In two separate cups, I dissolved a quarter of a rennet tablet in a quarter-cup of filtered water, and a teaspoon and a half (about 4 grams) of citric acid in a cup of filtered water.

I mixed the citric acid solution into the milk and heated the mixture to 90 F while stirring. Once it hit 90, I added the rennet solution, stirring constantly for 30 seconds with an up-and-down motion. Then I covered it and left it alone for five and a half minutes. When I removed the cover, the milk looked completely unchanged, but when I touched it, it was solid like soft custard or tofu. I think I should have let it set longer, because my whey was very milky.

Next I cut the curds with a clean bread knife into roughly half-inch cubes. This was probably the worst curd-cutting job in history, as they were all different shapes and lengths.

Then I strained the curds into a sieve that was just a bit too small. I kneaded the moisture out of the curds, pouring off (and saving) an enormous quantity of whey.

In another pot, I heated about a half-gallon of the whey to 180 F, poured it into a glass bowl off the heat, plunked the curd-ball into it, splashing hot whey everywhere, and started kneading the curds under water with my attractive yellow gloves. The curds need to be around 130-135 F in order to stretch properly. I never quite got it to stretch like taffy, as I was afraid of breaking it, but it got smooth and shiny as promised. As with any recipe that says to add something while doing something else (i.e. add salt while kneading curds) I forgot to do it. To compensate, I put the finished cheese into salty water in the refrigerator.

I tasted the curds right after kneading and they were rubbery, chalky and bland. I was really disappointed and, after some online research, decided that I'd overcooked and over-kneaded the curds. Until I tasted the mozzarella again this morning. What a world of difference! After a good night's rest, the cheese was supple, soft and creamy, flaking off into little layers when torn. I could eat this with anything and can't wait until tomato & basil season. In the meantime, I think I will incorporate it into my miso sandwiches.

In the photo above, I am holding just one-half of the batch. See how shiny it is! This would cost $15-20 in a store and would have traveled much farther from cow to kitchen. One gallon of milk produced just over 20 ounces of mozzarella. I have heard ranges from just under to just over a pound, but this yield exceeded my expectations. I used very local, very fresh milk (with very undamaged proteins), which I think accounts for the performance. I have already used some of the surplus whey to cook rice and oatmeal and can't wait to use it to make bread.

Unidentified Flying Ovum

2009-01-12T19:00:00.004-05:00

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ... the tallest yolk I've ever seen, courtesy of a baby-blue Araucana egg from Zephyr Farm. Delicious, too.

Best Yogurt Ever

2009-01-12T18:05:00.004-05:00

The key to yogurt is maintaining the right temperature. There are plenty of tricks out there - hot pads, crock pots, dehydrators, coolers packed with hot water bottles, various configurations of home ovens - but none of them worked for me. My yogurt was inevitably chunky and bitter, and rather than fiddle with the techniques, I'd opt for the $3.50 organic yogurt at the store. Enter the $15 Salton yogurt maker.

For a simple job, this baby is spot on. All you have to do is heat the milk, cool it, add a culture, and let Salton do its magic.

Another key to making quality cultured products is to sterilize all of your equipment so that no other bacteria are competing with the cultures you want to win. The first time I made this yogurt, I sterilized all of my tools in a 450-F oven (I was making bread at the time) and the second time I just boiled them in the same pot I used later on to heat the milk.

I started with 1 quart of fresh, whole, non-homogenized milk. I heated it to 210-F, then set the pan in a big bowl of cold water to cool it to 110-F. The second time around, I accidentally let the milk boil, with no noticeable damage to quality in the finished product. I used a regular candy/deep-fry thermometer for the measurements. In a separate bowl I mixed 3 oz of Stonyfield plain yogurt with a little of the hot milk to thin it before stirring it gently into the big pot of milk. It is important to thin the culture with milk so that it isn't necessary to stir the milk vigorously after adding it and to ensure that it is evenly distributed. Finally I poured the warm, cultured milk into a glass mason jar, put it in the Salton and left it for eight hours. Then I refrigerated it for at least two hours before opening it.

This yogurt is like pudding! It's thick, smooth, creamy and not too tart. It's so thick it can stand up on its own. The 8-hour yogurt was so mild in fact that I think I will try incubating it for 10 and 12 hours in the future to get a little more tang. There's a heavenly cap of sour cream on top that's great spread on toast, since it's basically thin cream cheese. Or eat it straight.

I have yet to see how the yogurt performs with successive generations of cultures. The Salton manual says that the cultures only stay strong for about five batches, but other recipes suggest they'll last forever. I suppose it's not the worst thing to have to shell out an extra dollar for every ten quarts of yogurt - especially yogurt this good. This yogurt doesn't need a single thing - no sweeteners, no fruit, no granola - it's perfect as is. I can't wait to use the whey to bake bread!

A Side of Beef from Stonyledge Farm

2009-01-11T14:58:00.008-05:00

In the middle of December, Stephen and I brought home one-half of Steer 42.

First, I would like to summarize my philosophy that leads me to eat "outside the box" (or, "outside the bun," to borrow a phrase from Taco Bell):

Food is basically the only thing I buy that becomes a part of me. My bones, organs, muscles, skin, hair, blood - everything - started out on my plate. If I were building a house, I wouldn't use poor-quality materials or cut corners to save time and money. The raw materials that go into the animals I eat are just as important.

In nature, bovines eat grass. For a few weeks of the year, they may eat the seed heads that sprout from the grass. In industrial farms, cows eat chewing gum, "spent hens," bits of other animals, urea, stale candy, doughnuts and heat-treated garbage in addition to their main staple: commodity corn. As the price of corn goes up, so does the amount of non-food "filler" in the feed. A high-corn diet makes cows sick, so they receive antibiotics, plus hormones to make them grow faster.

While food quality is important to me, so is money. With grass-fed beef starting at $8.00/lb at the farmers' market, I can hardly afford to have it regularly. To cut costs but not quality, I purchased a whole side of organic grass-fed beef from a local farm, bringing the average cost per pound down to $4.80. That's still high when you compare it to supermarket meat, but satisfies my concern for quality.

I began staking out the local food scene as soon as I found out we were moving to Rhode Island. I built a spreadsheet of the farms I found, comparing products, prices and distances from Providence. As I was a business major and a job seeker for quite a while, I have found that the mantra of "networking, networking, networking" thus drilled into my head also applies to sourcing local food. I have e-mailed and visited many farms, and in the process learned about others, and so on. Many were dead ends due to prices or locations, and that's all part of the search. I found Stonyledge Farm via the Footsteps Farm website. While organic certification isn't as important to me as overall farming practices (example: I would rather eat a non-organic grass-fed cow than an organic corn-fed cow), I am delighted to add that Stonyledge is certified organic.

For beef, I decided on Stonyledge because they had the lowest prices. In 2008, they charged $2.95/lb for hanging weight plus processing costs. Hanging weight is the weight of the animal minus head, hide and organs. After cutting, the actual meat you receive is usually projected to be 70% of hanging weight. For us it was actually around 84% because I requested many bone-in cuts of meat as well as organs and bones. The bones contain a lot of flavor! From a hanging weight of 350 lbs, we brought home about 295 lbs of meat and peripherals.

Processing costs include a $65 slaughter fee for the whole animal ($32.50 for half) plus $0.93/lb to cut and cryovac the meat with a USDA label, description and weight on each package.

I started an email conversation with Belinda at Stonyledge in April. I immediately got on their waiting list for a half-side of beef. The terminology was confusing to me, because I was under the impression that a side of beef was half of the animal - which it is - and that a half-side was therefore a quarter - but no, it is actually still half. Going back through the emails, I see that Belinda was clear about how much meat I was in for, but I didn't understand until the week of delivery. Belinda has been extremely helpful with answering all of my questions.

The day before the slaughter, Belinda patiently walked me through the cut sheet, which I also didn't understand. You do not need to know how many pounds are allotted to each cut (i.e. sirloin, ribeye, roasts), just specify how many pounds you want of each cut per package. Since there are just two of us in this household, I requested the smallest possible number of items per package. For example, our strip steaks are individually wrapped one to a package so I can thaw and cook just one at a time. The largest packages of the regular meat were the chuck steaks, with the biggest weighing in at 4.71 pounds. The most numerous were the ground beef packages, with 87 units averaging 1.21 pounds each. Notice I wrote 'regular meat' in reference to the chuck steaks. I also received, among the organs, an unlabeled item weighing five and a half pounds. They were pretty sure it was a heart since it looked like the two other heart packages which weighed around two pounds each. The important thing is that it was free! Remember - organs weren't included in the hanging weight.

When we arrived at Stonyledge Farm, Ed showed us around while we waited for Belinda to arrive with the meat. We were followed by a cooing flock of chickens as we met some pigs, calves, and a rebellious heifer that we helped corral back into the appropriate pen.

The meat arrived in five large boxes. It was already frozen solid when we got it and remained so the whole way back to Providence.

The box of organs was missing at the time of the first pickup. This was the fault of the processing facility, not Stonyledge. They had set the box with a different order and hadn't labeled it. The facility also apparently did not give us the exact cuts we had asked for. Belinda mentioned that they'd been having problems with this processor and might use a different one in the future. I don't know the name of the processor. I didn't remember what I'd asked for anyway and was very happy with the meat I received. For example, they gave us semi-boneless ribeye instead of bone-in. It was still fantastic. With a quick sear on each side and ten minutes in a 425-F oven, those steaks just melt in your mouth. Did I mention that grass-fed beef is also cleaner than factory-raised?

They found the box of organs about a week later, and just yesterday I returned to Stonyledge Farm to pick it up. I also bought some cuts of pork and two dozen eggs. I'm waiting until Stephen gets back into town to try the pork, and the eggs have been terrific.

The beef cuts were distributed as follows, in pounds:

Ground Beef: 105.27

Stew Beef: 20.32

Bones: 16.8

Top Round: 16.75

Tenderloin: 3.95

Flank Steak: 1.71

Shoulder Steak: 11.87

Sirloin Tip: 10.15

Shanks: 13.93

Brisket: 7.52

Hanger: 1.04

Skirt: 0.96

Short Ribs: 9.93

Ribeye: 16.14

Chuck: 20.27

Sirloin: 9.67

NY Strip: 6.42

Liver: 4.96

Heart: 3.68

Tongue: 3.37

Mystery Organ: 5.54

Pig Liver (free): 4.52

I recommend having a 14-cubic-foot freezer for this amount of meat. We plan to keep about a month's worth of meat in our regular freezer (the one attached to the refrigerator) so that we only have to open the chest freezer once a month. It's a worthwhile investment if you plan to buy meat in bulk, or have a prolific garden, or both.

All of the meat has been fantastic so far. Before now, I rarely cooked beef because of the expense and difficulty of finding good quality. Some cuts, like the steaks, I had never prepared. Grass-fed beef is extremely lean (comparable to skinless chicken breast, I've heard) so it gets dry and tough very easily. I have been experimenting with a Jaccard meat tenderizer and find that it takes five or six passes to tenderize the good steaks. Roasts and stew beef need to cook very slowly for at least three hours, after which they become perfectly al dente - neither mushy nor tough. The Cook's Illustrated goulash recipe worked perfectly with the stew beef. It required little more than onions and beef in a covered dish in a 300 degree oven for three hours. One final word on cooking times: grass-fed beef is exceptionally high in omega-3 fats. Omega-3s come from eating green things. They tend to lose their health benefits when heated too long. There isn't really a way around long, slow cooking for the tough roasts, but steaks and ground beef should be cooked as little as possible to preserve the Omega-3s.

Again, all of these cuts averaged to $4.80/lb. Grass-fed ground beef tends to run around $6-8/lb and strays upwards of $20/lb for the nicer cuts. Even "Naturally Raised" bones and organs at Whole Foods can cost $4-6/lb, and these animals usually have spent up to a third of their lives on feedlots (approved feedlots, but feedlots nonetheless). Grain-finished beef quickly loses the nutritional benefits of grass-feeding.

Buying this amount of beef hasn't exactly saved us money, since we normally wouldn't buy the nicer cuts, but has rather allowed us to raise our standard of living for not as much money as it should cost. I have bought some exciting heirloom beans with which to spread out the beef, and it should last us a few years. It's a significant investment, and as far as health is concerned, a worthy one.

Symbiosis: What has Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream to do with Breakfast

2008-10-21T17:37:00.014-04:00

This morning, I made two breakfast pitas, ten cups of granola and a quart of rich, dreamy chocolate-hazelnut ice cream that Stephen has since declared his favorite. All that and I still arrived early for my 9:30 interview downtown.

Oddly enough, these three recipes are all related, starting with the ice cream. The recipe calls for steeping a cup and a half of precious hazelnuts in hot, sweet milk and then... discarding the nuts! And that's not all. As is typical of custard-based ice creams, it also calls for egg yolks only - so what to do with the whites?

Make omelettes and granola, that's what. Although I'm not intentionally a fan of the egg-white omelette (Nina Planck calls it a culinary abomination), I can consider it a whole food when we'll be eating the yolks later. So for breakfast we had homemade pitas stuffed with cooked egg whites, Dutch Gouda and local (Pat's Pastured) bacon.

As for the sweet, sticky hazelnut bits that had flavored the ice cream, they blended perfectly into a batch of granola. I would summarize my granola formula as "half an ounce of sweet and one-fifth of an ounce of fat per cup of stuff." My favorite sweeteners are equal parts honey and brown rice syrup. Honey is sweeter than brown rice syrup, while the latter is extra-crispy after baking. As for the fat, I use equal parts organic grass-fed butter and coconut oil. Both of these have a bad reputation for their saturated fat content, but when they come from non-industrial sources, I believe their health-promoting attributes far exceed the negatives. Now for the "stuff" I use oats, puffed brown rice, and nuts.

Today's recipe looked like this.

The stuff:

3 1/2 cups thick rolled oats

3 cups puffed brown rice

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup sunflower seeds

1 1/2 cups hazelnuts, roasted, chopped in a blender, then steeped in sweet milk during ice-cream-making process

The glue:

2.5 oz honey

2.5 oz brown rice syrup

1 oz coconut oil

1 oz butter

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp Stevia powder

Preheat oven to 300 F. Toss the stuff together in a large (4 qt) bowl. In a small saucepan, combine the glue ingredients and bring to a gentle boil. Let it bubble for a minute to intensify the butter flavor. Pour the glue over the stuff, folding with a wide spatula until it's evenly distributed. Spread the sticky granola all over two large cookie sheets, using wet hands to push it down to a uniform thickness a half-inch deep all around.

Put the granola in the 300 F oven for about twenty minutes, then turn the heat off and leave the granola in the cooling oven for two hours [while I go to my interview]. After two hours, reheat the oven to 300 F. Remove the granola from the oven and stir it gently. If the granola has fused into a solid layer, use a metal spatula to break the pieces and flip them over. Return the granola to the oven for another 20 minutes at 300 F, then turn off the heat and wait another two hours. When the granola is completely cool, dry and crispy, store what is left [after I've been sneaking bites of it during the day] in an airtight container. I do not know if it will last more than a week at room temperature.

Last but not least, the cause of it all: Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups hazelnuts

2 cups half-and-half (Rhody Fresh)

3/4 cup unrefined sugar (Sucanat)

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup cream (Butterworks Farm)

2.5 oz 60% dark chocolate chips (Ghirardelli)

4 egg yolks (Sunset View Pastures)

2 Tbs liquor (optional)

Toast the hazelnuts: Spread the nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast them in a 300 F oven for seven to ten minutes. When you start to see the papery skins separating from the nutmeats, take them out of the oven and rub them briskly in a clean kitchen towel to remove most of the skins. Finely chop the nuts in a blender.

Warm the half-and-half, sugar and salt in a small saucepan until little bubbles appear around the edges. Remove it from the heat, add the hazelnuts, then cover and let steep for an hour at room temperature.

Put the chocolate chips into a quart-sized (or larger) bowl. Heat the cream just to boiling, then pour it over the chocolate chips, whisking until they melt into the cream.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together.

Strain the hazelnut-infused milk into a medium saucepan. Squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the hazelnuts, then set the nuts aside for granola or cookies. Reheat the milk, then pour it over the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, stirring constantly over low heat until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Making a stovetop custard is sometimes tricky - if heated too quickly, the whole thing can curdle. Some recommend using a double boiler, but I don't bother. The point is to bring it just below a boil to cook the yolks without causing them to separate from the milk. The end result should be a colloid. It should be smooth and creamy, slightly thickened, but not like scrambled eggs.

Pour the custard into the chocolate-cream, then add the vanilla and liquor (optional - if you like spiked ice cream). I used Bailey's only because it was all we had, but Frangelico would have more appropriate. Alcohol does not freeze, so adding liquor helps homemade ice cream (which is notoriously hard) keep a softer texture after freezing. Chill the custard in the refrigerator for at least four hours, then freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.

So there you have it - one wasteful recipe and two economical ones to pick up the pieces. Even though the ingredients are extravagant, I consider this a nod to our culinarily thrifty forebears.

No-Frills Flatbread

2008-10-02T13:25:00.002-04:00

Cooks Illustrated just ran an illuminating article about a bread called 'Pizza Bianca,' a sauceless, cheeseless flatbread that turned out to be the most practical bread recipe on earth. It is simple, inexpensive, flexible, and delicious. For weeks around our move, this was the only bread I made. We would cut it into squares for sandwiches, shape it into mini-rounds for personal pizzas, twist it into bread sticks, cube it for strata, make it with spelt, durum, red wheat, buckwheat... as bread recipes go, this one pays a big reward for a small effort.

One caveat: the first time I made it, it came out like shoe leather because I hadn't given it enough time to rise. It still tasted great, but the texture left something to be desired. Every batch after that, however, was perfect - crisp crust, soft bubbly crumb, ready when I needed it.

Another caveat: I have made this recipe with some buckwheat, but have not tried a 100% gluten-free version. This being a flatbread, it's conducive to GF-adaptation and I'd be curious to see how that turns out.

Here we go:
8 ounces sourdough starter (100% hydration)
11.5 ounces wheat flour, any kind
9.5 ounces water, filtered if you live in Philadelphia
1 1/4 (one and one-quarter) teaspoons salt
Oil for the proofing bowl
One overnight rest in the refrigerator
One 2-hour rise at room temperature
One 30-minute pre-bake rise

Mix everything together. No need to knead - just mix, plop in the oiled bowl, and toss it in the fridge overnight. It doesn't have to be "smooth and elastic;" one big sticky mess is just fine. An overnight rest is key to getting amazing flavor out of whole wheat. If you made the same recipe with the same flour, minus the overnight soak, it would taste suspiciously like cardboard. I think that is how whole wheat got a bad reputation.

At some point between the mixing and the baking, it's necessary to give the dough a two-hour rise, followed by a thirty-minute rise just before baking. Keep in mind that bread will rise more slowly when it's cold from the refrigerator and will need a little extra time to de-chill.

Sometimes I break up the two-hour rise into an hour in the morning before work and another hour after work, so that the bread will be ready in time for dinner. After the two-hour rise, I might also split the dough - some to bake now and some to save in the refrigerator for tomorrow or the next day. After three days in the refrigerator, the yeasts start to die, giving an off-flavor to the bread.

When you're ready to bake your proofed bread, preheat the oven to 450 F. If you have a baking stone, put that in the oven before preheating. Spread the dough on a baking sheet to a thickness of about half an inch. The dough should be so wet that it's just a matter of pouring it out and guiding it into a roughly rectangular shape or mini pizza rounds. If you want to cut the dough and save some to bake later, kitchen shears can do a neat job of this. Try not to pop too many of the air bubbles while shaping/cutting the dough. Let it rise thirty minutes while the oven preheats.

When the oven and dough are ready, put the dough into the oven and leave it alone for about fifteen minutes. Start checking after fifteen minutes, but don't pull the bread out of the oven until the crust is a rich brown and the bread sounds hollow when thumped. I'm sure many things are less appetizing than underbaked bread, but I don't want to go there.
Depending on thickness and hydration, this bread should take 15-25 minutes to bake at 450 F.
Once you master the basic technique, get creative!

Our Daily Bread

2008-09-08T10:31:00.000-04:00

It's been a long and beautiful summer. I spent it in three different kitchens, the last of which is just starting to feel like home. I took my sourdough starter with me on each move, along with my trusty mill and grains.

After many months’ experimentation, I thought I had nearly perfected my standby bread recipe (shown above). I normally made at least one batch a week to stay in practice, with more or less consistent results. No two batches ever come out exactly alike, since my sourdough culture is a living thing that reacts differently to ambient heat, humidity, and how frequently it’s fed. Like many people, it gets sourer the longer it goes without eating.

Then, after our first move, I ran out of my favorite wheat - hard white. No problem. I bought some spelt and plugged it into the usual formula and behold - soup! My first batch of spelt buns, made with the exact same weights of flour, water and starter as always, could not even hold a shape. I tried the same with durum wheat, which was a little firmer, but still not as shapeable as my last batch of hard white. No matter what kind of wheat I use, nor how blobby the dough, the taste is always phenomenal.

This is a very versatile and forgiving recipe. I tend to prefer a wetter dough because it makes an airier, bubblier bread that’s fun to tear apart. I almost always make mini rolls instead of loaves so that I can pop them one at a time from the freezer to my lunchbag.

I can personally vouch that my previously-frozen rolls, whether thawed at room temperature or toasted, taste just like fresh-baked. I have often wondered about the nutritional aspect of previously frozen bread versus stale unfrozen bread. At what point in time do nutrients lost at room temperature surpass those lost by freezing, if ever? I would expect frozen bread to lose a lot of nutrients initially, when those cell walls burst, and then more slowly due to the stability of the frozen environment. I can be fairly certain that since baked bread has such a low moisture content and retains its texture after thawing, it does not lose as many nutrients to freezing as, say, a vegetable, which becomes a limp and sodden shadow of its fresh self. Then again, it probably had fewer to start out with, but I think it’s safe to say that freezing does less damage to a roll than to green beans.

Invisible nutrients aside, I can answer to the sensory factors. Within three days of baking, unfrozen bread has significantly deteriorated in flavor and texture and is all but inedible by the end of a week. My previously-frozen rolls smell, feel and taste just like fresh-baked, even after sitting in the freezer for a month. It's a wonderful treat to open my lunch drawer at random during the day and get a waft of that homemade sourdough.

Here goes. This is adapted from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads book, which revolutionized the way I approach bread. While I've simply reproduced a recipe here, Peter Reinhart spends three chapters explaining the chemistry of all this before getting to the formulas. And it really does make whole wheat taste amazing. I heartily recommend it.

Biga (yeasted pre-dough)
8 oz. 100% hydration starter, fed yesterday
4 oz. hard white wheat, freshly ground
2 oz. filtered water

Combine all in a medium glass bowl. Cover and refrigerate 8 to 72 hours.

Soaker (yeastless pre-dough)
8 oz. wheat, freshly ground
6 oz. filtered water
½ tsp. sea salt

Combine in a small glass bowl. Cover and leave at room temperature up to 24 hours; refrigerate up to 72 hours if schedule demands.

The next day, combine:

Both pre-doughs
1 oz. honey
1 oz. oil
½ tsp. salt (lately I have been leaving this out by mistake and find that the bread tastes just fine without it - your call)

Knead all of the above ingredients together until they form a smooth, elastic dough that pulls away from your hands. Put the dough into a clean, oiled bowl; cover and let rise at room tepmerature for two hours. When the dough is done rising, it should be roughly doubled in size and will not bounce back when poked. Turn the dough onto an oiled work surface and slice it cleanly into sixteen wedges if you wish to make dinner rolls. Don’t tear the dough or you’ll lose precious air bubbles.

I always shape my dough into spirals that pull apart easily. Starting with the broad end of a wedge in one hand and the narrow end in the other, twist the dough like a rope. With the broad end at the center, wrap the twisted dough rope around and around, finally folding the narrow end underneath. Place each roll on a baking sheet lined with parchment, cover with plastic wrap and let them rise for another hour.

During the second rise, preheat the oven to 400 F. At the end of an hour, remove the plastic wrap from the rolls, turn the oven down to 350 F, and place the rolls in the oven for thirty minutes. Rotate the trays after fifteen minutes if your oven has hot spots.

The variations are endless. When you use different wheats – hard white, hard red, spelt, triticale, durum - you may have to adjust the water content. Your bread will still rise if you substitute up to a quarter of the flour with gluten-free alternatives like buckwheat, oat groats, quinoa, t’eff or rice. Yum. Try different oils – coconut oil, homemade mayonnaise, egg yolks, melted butter, olive oil. I wouldn't go with fancy flavored oils in the dough, since they'd lose their flavor during baking and taste so much better for dipping anyway. Different sweeteners – honey, molasses, dark muscovado, maple syrup, maple sugar. Add herbs, spices or crushed garlic. As for me, I prefer bread to be plainer, a canvas for delicious accompaniments, equally conducive to savory and sweet applications.

Asparagus with Boiled Egg and Miso Butter

2008-06-11T19:09:00.000-04:00

This morning I happened upon an extraordinary breakfast. Asparagus season should have met its natural end two weeks ago, but there it was again at the farmers' market last week. And when you have fresh, local asparagus but one month out of the year, it's worth having for breakfast.

It occurred to me that the way I cook asparagus and the way I hard-cook an egg are so compatible that they can be done in the same pot. I have also been experimenting with miso lately.

Miso is a fun condiment made of fermented soybeans. It has a distinctive nutty, wine-like flavor, and is much less intimidating if you think of it as a salt substitute. Keep in mind that table salt has fifteen times more sodium per teaspoon than white miso. White miso is mellower than red or black miso, which I haven't tried yet. To get the most out of your miso, never heat it or you’ll lose valuable enzymes. At the end of this post I’ve included a recipe for miso-honey vinaigrette, in case you’re wondering what else you can do with it.

Per serving:
1 egg
8 asparagus spears
1 teaspoon butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon white miso

Fill a medium saucepan with enough cold water to submerge an egg. Put the egg in the water and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Meanwhile, chop the asparagus spears into roughly one-inch lengths on the diagonal. Sort the stems and the tips into separate piles. In a little bowl or ramekin, whip the miso and soft butter together with a fork and set them on the table as a condiment.

As soon as the water (with the egg in it) just begins to boil, turn the heat off and slide the asparagus stems into the water. Cover and wait two minutes. Then add the asparagus tips, cover again and let everything sit for another three minutes. Drain the water and remove the asparagus to a small bowl. The asparagus will be bright green and just tender; the egg will be hard-cooked with a still-moist yolk and no green halo or sulfur smell. Pour cold water over the egg, crack it in the pan and peel it as best you can. Serve the boiled egg on top of the asparagus and garnish with miso butter to taste. Or serve it all over rice for lunch.

Honey-Miso Vinaigrette for Two

½ tsp honey
1 tsp yellow miso
½ tsp granulated kelp
1 T fresh basil leaves, sliced
1 T brown rice vinegar
2 T olive oil

Blend all ingredients until emulsified and pour over fresh garden salad.

Chocolate Pecan Pie

2008-05-11T11:57:00.000-04:00

During my childhood, no summer was complete without a trip to Camp-of-the-Woods: a week of sandcastles, penny candy and, of course, the signature chocolate walnut pie. Chocolate walnut pie has since become a family favorite. I haven't made it in years, since the average recipe is predominantly sugar and corn syrup. The result, to paraphrase Debra Lynn Dadd, is something that tastes more like sugar than nuts.

So I took Debra's pecan pie recipe and ran with it. She recommended replacing the sugar and corn syrup with brown rice syrup and barley malt syrup. Brown rice syrup, produced by sprouting brown rice and boiling it down to a thick golden goo, is mostly maltose. In the sugar world, maltose takes the longest for the human body to absorb, which is all around better for blood sugar and insulin levels. For extra sweetness and flavor, I used maple syrup instead of barley malt syrup and halved the amount. I also added a half-cup of Ghirardelli 60% dark chocolate chips and I must tell you - this pie is out of this world.

Choose whatever pastry crust recipe you like. There are so many pastry recipes out there it hardly makes sense for me to reproduce one here. I used 6 oz freshly ground soft white wheat, a combination of organic unsalted butter and lard totaling 4 oz, and a few splashes of creamy fresh milk. I accidentally left out the salt, which I don't advise. My recipe called for salted butter. They were right.

Here's the most important part:

The Filling
5 T (2.5 oz) butter
1 cup (8 oz) brown rice syrup
1/4 cup (2 oz) maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups (6 oz) chopped pecans
1/2 cup Ghirardelli 60% cacao dark chocolate chips or other delicious dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 8x8 square pan with your unbaked pastry shell of choice.
Melt the butter in a little saucepan over low heat. Turn off the heat, pour the butter into a medium mixing bowl and stir in syrups. Add eggs, vanilla, cinnamon and salt, beating until smooth. Stir in the pecans and chocolate chips. Pour all into your prepared pie shell. You will notice that the chocolate chips try to cling to the bowl; scoop them out and sprinkle them evenly over the pie. They'll sink straight to the bottom anyway.
Bake 50 to 60 minutes until the filling is just set.

This pie is utterly fantastic. I would like to try it with even less sweetness and perhaps a touch more salt. I've got to admit it's pretty close to perfect as is.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Naan

2008-04-29T17:44:00.001-04:00

Sourdough is a wild, living thing. Like snowflakes, no two loaves are ever alike, and we like it that way. I've been working with whole wheat sourdough for about a year now and never stop learning.
While there's no substitute for hands-on experience, I can't overemphasize how much books and blogs have helped me along in my bread-baking adventures. Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads was by far the most helpful as far as the chemistry is concerned. The Sourdough Home has also been instrumental in my bread-baking education. While the experts can't tell you how the dough should feel or smell or sound, even the smallest tip can save hours of frustration [and pounds of wheat] lost on trial-and-error.
Last weekend I made two batches of Peter Reinhart's Whole Wheat Naan using a sourdough starter instead of instant yeast. I've never gotten the instant yeast to perform quite as well as my starter, which I got for the price of two stamps. This recipe makes a soft, buttery pita-like bread that makes every food you eat with it taste better.

Begin the recipe the day before you plan to bake the naan. Refrigerating the dough overnight, as Reinhart explains at length, is the key to making whole wheat taste good.

Special equipment: baking stone
Ingredients:
12 oz. whole wheat flour (freshly ground for ultimate flavor and nutrition)
8 oz. 100% hydration starter (equal weights flour and water)
9 oz. yogurt
1 oz. melted butter
1 tsp. salt
Mix everything together with your hands, adding the salt last. The dough should be soft and a little sticky. Work the dough with your hands, folding it in two, rotating it a quarter-turn, folding it again, and so on. You will feel the dough begin to build resistance; this is the gluten (structural wheat protein) developing. After kneading for a few minutes, the dough should begin to pull away from your hands. Ball it up and drop it in an oiled, otherwise clean bowl, cover it and refrigerate overnight.
Note: during the kneading step, Reinhart recommends flouring a work surface and kneading it on that, but I find that too messy. I always knead dough in the air. I prefer wetter doughs in general, since as I learned from Cook's Illustrated, wetter doughs produce bigger air bubbles, which are hard to get with whole wheat.
The next day, take the dough out of the refrigerator and chop it into eight pieces. It will have risen a bit. Roll each piece into a tight ball, cover them with plastic wrap, and set them aside to rise for about two hours, depending on the room temperature. You'll know the rolls have risen sufficiently when they do not bounce back when poked.
About an hour into the rising, position a baking stone in the top third of your oven and preheat it as hot as it will go - mine goes up to about 550 F. Authentic naan are baked in 1000 F tandoors, which the average American household tends not to have. Positioning the stone in the top third of your oven is essential for heat distribution. The ceiling of the oven radiates a substantial amount of heat, which helps the dough inflate.

Now we get to flour the work surface and make a big mess. I use white flour for this. It is essential to use a rolling pin at this point. The smooth surface you get with a rolling pin versus hand-stretching creates the surface tension that allows the dough to puff beautifully in the oven. Roll the dough to about 1/8" thickness and hand-stretch it a little further. You should be able to see a little light through the dough, but it shouldn't be paper thin or it (a) won't inflate and (b) will burn on the thin spots.
Note: Reinhart says to dock the dough, or prick it all over with a fork, to keep it from inflating all the way. Personally, I just love seeing it blow up, and the pocketed version gives you twice as much surface area to play with.

After your baking stone has preheated for thirty minutes to an hour, slap one of those rounds of dough onto the stone and shut the oven as quickly as possible. Turn the oven light on and keep an eye on the dough while you roll out the next round. Within three minutes, the dough on the stone will begin to inflate like a pillow. As soon as it is completely inflated, remove it with a metal spatula and slap the next dough-disk onto the stone. Some rounds may not inflate all the way if they're rolled too thickly or too thinly. If the dough doesn't inflate all the way, let it bake until it stops inflating or develops brown (caramelized) spots.

After baking, slip the naan onto a cooling rack. If you're having them right away, spread them with butter or flavored oil and serve hot. I usually cut them into fourths. If you've prepared them in advance, grab one while they're hot anyway. After the others have cooled completely, keep them in a not-quite-airtight container at room temperature for up to a day. Just before serving, melt some butter in a wide frying pan and swab each piece of bread in the butter before setting them in a warm (200 F) oven for about ten minutes.
These are so soft, sweet and pillowy that you'd never guess they're whole wheat. I am so pleased with this recipe - it promises to be a lifelong standby. This bread is pure heaven all on its own, and even better with a good curry or souvlaki.

What's a Bobotie?

2008-03-05T20:09:00.001-05:00

Bobotie (ba-BOO-tee) is a traditional South African meatloaf. It starts with a symphony of toasted, freshly-ground curry spices. Milk-soaked whole wheat breadcrumbs soak up the flavors in a custard base. The final dish is studded with raisins and almonds.

The recipe came from a love-at-first-sight library book entitled Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant: Ethnic and Regional Recipes from the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant. It is a hefty 730-page tome with eighteen chapters highlighting specialties from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Southern United States.

This Bobotie recipe was originally vegetarian, calling for tofu instead of [grass-fed organic] beef. It also employs two to three times the volume of spices I'm used to seeing in traditional Indian and Thai curries. I was a bit hesitant, but it works well. This dish is flavorful, complex and satisfying. It's also a great way to use up leftover bread, which we often have.

The curry spices:
1 Tbs cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 Tbs coriander seeds, toasted and ground
5 cloves, toasted and ground
1/2 tsp black peppercorns, toasted and ground (I used Szechuan)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp turmeric

2 large yellow onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbs organic lard, butter or olive oil
1 lb ground beef

2 Tbs brown rice vinegar or white vinegar
1 1/2 Tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup peach, apricot or mango chutney (I had none of the above, so I used Trader Joe's pineapple salsa)

1 1/2 cups whole wheat bread crumbs or chunks, toasted
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/2 cup raisins or currants
1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped

1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Blend the curry spices and set them aside.
In a large frying pan, sauce pan or chef's pan, saute the chopped onions and garlic in the oil over medium-low heat until soft - about 20 minutes. Add the beef and curry spices and cook, stirring constantly, until the beef is browned. Remove from heat and add vinegar, soy sauce and chutney or salsa. In a separate bowl, soak bread crumbs in milk. Moosh them with your fingers (or a food processor, but not both at the same time) to help them disintegrate. Mix in the sesame oil and mix well. Lastly, add the onion-beef-curry mixture, raisins and almonds.
Spread the bobotie in a large pie dish, or cute miniature ones if you have extra. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and milk and pour it over the top of the bobotie. Cover with foil and bake 15 minutes. Uncover and bake another 15 minutes or until the custard is set. Serve over brown rice and enjoy!

South Indian Feast

2008-02-01T19:43:00.001-05:00

If there's any food I love nearly as much as fresh cows' milk, it's coconut milk, and there's plenty to be found in great South Indian cooking. We had a little mela at our place the other night, with the dishes almost exclusively drawn from Ruta Kahate's cookbook 5 Spices, 50 Dishes. Her recipes are disarmingly simple and approachable. She "interprets" them for American kitchens, suggesting canola oil instead of ghee, cayenne pepper instead of Kashmiri chilli powder. I changed them back.

The menu was as follows:
Cauliflower in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Butternut Squash and Green Bean Curry
Black-Eyed Peas in a Goan Curry
Meatballs in (not-so-) Spicy Malabari Curry
Cucumber-Cilantro Yogurt Raita
Whole Wheat Naan, from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads
Steamed Brown Basmati

This meal was an adventure. I'm very proud of it still. From slapping naan dough onto the baking stone in my 500-degree oven to symphonizing flavors in smooth curries, the preparation techniques were as diverse as the meal itself.

I decided to try the cauliflower in spicy tomato sauce because it's so much like a curried cauliflower my mom makes. This dish came out the spiciest, even though I only used one serrano chili with the seeds scraped out. It brought intense flavor and a light counterbalance to the creamy curries.

The butternut squash and green beans taught me that fresh green beans taste so much different from the frozen ones that the latter should not rightly be called by the same name. This dish is so simple it doesn't even need a recipe. Peel (with a vegetable peeler, not a paring knife!) and dice a butternut squash and steam it until tender (about 10 minutes). Trim and slice a pound of green beans and steam them until tender as well (6 minutes). In the meantime, heat a cup of coconut milk with salt to taste. If you like, add a minced serrano chile or two. I left them out, but I can't remember if it was deliberate. Chop three tablespoons of cashews and toast them in a dry skillet. Toss the squash cubes and green beans into a serving dish, pour the coconut milk over, and garnish with the cashews. Stir carefully if at all to avoid mashing the squash. This combination is utterly delicious.

The Black-eyed Peas in Goan Curry was a little bland, probably because I doubled the volume of beans in the recipe but kept the same amount of spices. Silly. Here's the recipe with the right amount of beans:

1 cup dried black-eyed peas, cooked (or two 15-oz cans, drained)
2 Tbs ghee (or oil)
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 tsp coriander seeds, toasted and ground
1 clove garlic, grated
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne (or Kashmiri Chilli powder)
1/4 cup diced tomato
1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp sugar
1 cup canned coconut milk
2 Tbs minced cilantro leaves
1 Tbs lemon juice

I used a slow-cooker to cook the peas ahead of time, only I used a whole pound, as mentioned above. Once they're cooked, drain and set aside.
Heat the ghee or oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat and saute the onion until brown. Add the coriander, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chilli powder or cayenne, and cumin. Stir for two minutes, then add the tomato and stir 2 minutes more. Add the drained peas and mix well. Pour in the water, add salt and sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer about 20 minutes. Stir in the coconut milk, uncover and simmer another 10 minutes. I cooked this one in the morning and let the flavors mingle in the refrigerator all day. Just before serving, stir in the cilantro and lemon juice and simmer one minute longer.

The other curry, the Malabari meatballs curry, had fantastic flavor and plenty of extra gravy to use on other dishes afterwards. It really woke up the leftover lentil soup!

For the meatballs:
1 pound ground beef or lamb
1/4 cup minced shallots
1 green serrano chile, minced
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
3/4 tsp salt

Mix gently, shape into golf-ball-sized meatballs, and set aside.

2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 Tbs ghee (or oil)
4 shallots, sliced thinly
5 cloves garlic, grated
1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli or cayenne
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 14-oz can coconut milk
1/2 cup water
1 green serrano chile, seeded and minced
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs minced cilantro leaves
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

See any common ingredients? After making a few curries, you may notice that the technique is similar from one to the next.
Toast the coriander and cumin seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, then cool and grind in a spice (coffee) mill. I toast them together for simplicity; most cookbooks say to toast them separately. Considering their different sizes, it makes sense that one would burn sooner.
Melt the ghee in a large saucepan over medium heat. Saute the shallots, garlic and ginger, stirring constantly until the shallots turn golden brown. Add the coriander, cumin, cayenne, and tomato paste. Simmer 5 minutes.
Add the coconut milk, water, chile, and salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and gently add the meatballs. Simmer until the meatballs are cooked through, about 8 minutes. Just before serving, gently stir in the cilantro and vinegar. Simmer one minute more and serve.

Raita, for Indian food lovers, is the blessed respite and counterpoint to the very spicy foods at the table. I based mine on a recipe from Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, which simply combined whole yogurt, a diced cucumber, a handful of cilantro, and salt.

The Naan was a very hands-on recipe requiring a slow-fermented yogurt dough, several rollings-out and restings of said dough, a beastly hot oven and an afternoon of sweat and burns. All told it was a delightful experience. An essential part of the naan flavor and texture is a quick swab of melted butter just after cooking/before eating (preferably the same time).

All told, this spread did take all day to put together. But when cooking is your choice of entertainment comparable to someone else's reading books or gardening, I consider that a day well-spent. I come away with a new appreciation for Indian culture, a better mastery of culinary techniques I haven't thought of, and a great meal to share with friends.