Friday, September 9, 2011

Caldo de Res, aka "Beef Soup," aka "Soup of Champions," aka "The Soup of Love"


After Mercedes and I returned from our honeymoon, we were wrecked.  We had the time of our lives, but driving and a lot of running around, with little time for relaxation, did us in.  Mercedes, bless her heart, felt awful.  She requested soup for dinner, and I obliged.


Ordinarily, I don't get excited about soup night.  Most soups don't provide enough sustenance to leave you satisfied.  You'll just get up later and microwave some nachos or something, which is something I don't recommend.  


In fact, I can take or leave soup.  If it's served as a first course, I'll certainly eat it without complaint, but if it's not, I'm not going to raise a big stink about it.  I'm that much closer to steak, that's how I feel about it.  


When I was growing up in Port Lavaca, Texas, the restaurant I frequented most was El Patio.  As I was leaning into my second enchilada, I would see this old guy at a nearby table eating caldo de res.  On the one hand, I'm destroying this plate of enchiladas so who wants a bowl of soup?  If I wanted a bowl of soup, I would have gone to my grandma's for lunch.  


On the other, this soup had a slab of steak in it, and it looked like the guy was really enjoying it.  He never lifted his head - his mouth stayed poised just above the bowl.  He had a spoon in one hand and a tortilla in the other.  It's arguable that I've never seen someone eat with such focus.  It must be noted that caldo, as it's commonly known, is said to be one of those fabled hangover cures.  Judging by this fella, shit must work.  Why the heck not?  He's got a whole day ahead of him.  Eat a bowl of soup to clear the senses, then lay into another twelve pack.  Seems alright to me.  Salut, old fella!  


That was over half a lifetime ago and now I want to try soup with a slab of steak in it, and I want tortillas and rice with it and so does Mercedes.  I set to work on it Wednesday afternoon.


Like most Tex-Mex dishes, caldo's origins are humble.  It was meant to be easy to make and filling enough so the men could work long days under the unforgiving South Texas sun.  Also, Tex-Mex ranks among one of the more resourceful cuisines.  Upon arrival from Mexico, immigrants had to make do with what was on hand to create reasonable facsimiles of the dishes they enjoyed in Mexico.  For example, their efforts to recreate mole resulted in chili.  


This resourcefulness, combined with impeccable technique (I can't imagine making tortillas without my trusty food processor) and care, yielded a regional cuisine that is as thrilling as it is satisfying.  For me, eating Tex-Mex is an occasion for joy every single time.  The fooderati's consistent besmirching of this cuisine is damn near criminal, if you ask me, and, of course, born of snobbery.  Happily, there are folks such as Robb Walsh who treat it with the reverence it so richly deserves.  If you're anything like me, drop everything and hie it down to El Real, where Tex-Mex receives its due respect.  


Back to the soup.  Like I said, caldo is, typically, a relatively simple preparation. To grossly oversimplify, take a slab of beef, chop up a bunch of vegetables, put it all in a big pot, cover with water, and wait.  A couple of hours of so later and you're in for good eating.  


I took few liberties with the recipe itself.  I reserved my culinary poesy for presentation. Instead of chopping the vegetables into big chunks, I julienned them.  I just like the way julienned vegetables look.  They make soups pretty.  I said it.  Julienned vegetables make soup pretty.  Of course, I couldn't julienne the corn.  Doesn't mean I didn't consider it.  


After letting the steak simmer along with beef broth and tomatoes to let the meat reach a newborn could eat it tenderness, it was time to add the vegetables.  It became evident to me almost immediately that our pot was not going to nearly accommodate everything.  I solved this crisis by simply dragging out another pot.  I was afraid that there was going to be one inferior pot of soup and one kick-ass pot.  I tried to apportion everything equally to avoid this.  I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, but as it turns out, the pot I assumed would yield the inferior soup turned out to be the oh-so slightly more kick-ass pot.  We have gallons of soup left.  We need to buy a bigger pot.  


This soup is not complete without corn tortillas.  Not flour tortillas, and not the package of 1000 corn tortillas that seem like a steal until you want a tortilla later and find them all torn up in the back of your fridge.  No sir, this meal called for homemade corn tortillas.  I've made a few batches now, and I'm spoiled.  


Believe me, you don't have to be a genius to make them.  Having a food processor helps tremendously, but someone more patient than I am can probably mix masa and water in a bowl until proper consistency is achieved.  


After kneading the dough, you roll them out.  Actually, I don't roll them out.  I've tried, and they always wind up looking like some Salvador Dali nightmare creature.  A tortilla press would be helpful, but until we get one, I found some excellent advice on Amazon while doing some window shopping.  In lieu of a press, you can press a ball of dough between two heavy pans.  Take a freezer bag and cut down the sides so that you have one long thick piece of plastic.  Take a heavy pan and and turn it upside down.  Put the plastic on the pan, and then place a ball of dough on one side.  Place the other side of the plastic over the dough ball, and then, with the other pan, press down hard.  You'll likely have to do this several times.  After you've formed the tortilla (you'll be amazed at how round they are!  Heck, I was), peel it off the plastic.  This is probably the most difficult part of the process but after a bit of practice, it becomes almost effortless.  All that's left is to put your tortillas on a hot griddle/in a hot skillet/on a comal and fry them until they look like tortillas.  


Should I just make an instructional video?  Until then, feast your eyes, food lovers:






This was no ordinary bowl of soup.  We ate caldo for two nights, and both nights we ate like Masters of the Universe.  After one bowl (I dumped rice in mine) and tortillas, we were full as ticks.  I've eaten lots of good meals, meals better than this one, but this one will be one embedded into memory.  One thing's for certain:  this is the most soul-satisfying meal I've had had in recent memory.  Undeniably, an atmosphere of good cheer and cooler temperatures heightened the sensation.  Still, and this is the highest praise I can give, I can't imagine having eaten anything else at that time.   


Soup.  YOU figure it out!


Oh yeah, I also had one of these bad boys:


They're cheap at your neighborhood Fiesta grocer.  Nothing else would've done.





  














Friday, August 26, 2011

Jittery Chicken Soup with Olive Tapenade/Feta Appetizers

A Deceptively Beautiful Bowl of Soup

Olive Tapenade/Feta Appetizers





Immediately you're wondering why it's called "jittery chicken soup."  That's answered simply enough:  because the chicken was prepared in the same manner as "Shaking Beef."  Heat the wok until you smoke up the apartment, and then add the chicken.  Sear the chicken - you shake the wok so the chicken jitters.  Jittery chicken.  So that's out of the way.  


I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that I was a bit disappointed in the soup and it's all my fault.  I didn't want to make a soup that was specific to any cuisine, but I wanted to stir fry everything because that method lends depth of flavor to almost anything.  For example, stir frying does wonders for otherwise unremarkable tofu.  Similarly, celery becomes an entirely different vegetable after it's stir fried, like it's almost not a vegetable anymore.  


I figured the stir frying would provide the chief flavor element, so I consciously limited the number of ingredients that went into the soup, partly to make the cooking easier, but also as an experiment.  I did spend an inordinate amount of time with prep because I wanted the soup to look nice.  I julienned zucchini, celery, carrots, and onions.   I also shredded at least a half-head of cabbage with the attention usually reserved for shredding compromising government documents.  "Selling arms to Iran?  What the fuck are you talking about selling arms to Iran?"  Salt and pepper, a package of button mushrooms, three cloves of garlic, a generous sploomp of sriracha, four goddamn cans of chicken broth, a quartered chunk of parmesan cheese, and water rounded out the soup.


The soup was still pretty bland.  Not bad, but definitely lacking.  I suspect that I got too ambitious with the cabbage given the amount of broth we had.  We had close to a half-gallon of broth, which should have been more than enough, but it didn't nearly cover everything once it was added to the pot.  I added two broth cans of water, which surely diluted everything.  I quartered two lemons and squeezed in some of their juice, which usually helps to ramp up whatever latent flavors are there; still, the soup had that "I did the best I could with water, salt, and a bag of cotton balls, and I think I did a damn nice job" aspect about it.  In summation:  pretty good, but ultimately unremarkable.  We won't crave this soup a week from now.  We won't look forward to eating the leftovers, but they'll make a filling enough lunch.


The olive tapenade appetizers, however.  These require some back story.  I've become a real sample prick.  I don't really do it because I want something for nothing, like I'm entitled to free samples because I'm shopping at the store or something; instead, I do it to get dinner ideas.  Good example:  last night, we ate this really simple to make chicken casserole.  I'd craved it since I tried it at HEB, and wanted to eat it again.  The dish consisted of a rotisserie chicken (shredded), cheese, tomatillo/chile sauce, and corn tortillas.  Layer it, throw it in the oven, watch the news, eat.  Shit on a shingle, essentially, but astonishingly, undeniably delicious.  


We'd sampled the olive tapenade appetizers at HEB, too, and I couldn't get them out of my head.  These were brain dead simple to make:  melt butter, add olive oil to butter, spread on ciabatta, and put in the oven.  Mix olive tapenade and feta cheese (plaudits again to Phoenicia - best feta I've ever eaten).  Allow bread to brown, take it out of the oven, let it cool, spread olive/feta schmeer on it, devour lustily.  Mercedes made these, and honest-to-Joe they were the business.  Ciabatta, olives, feta - someone in Greece is making ranch on this combination as I write. I could, and maybe should, have eaten just these for dinner.  


There's still a Glad bowlful of the chicken/cabbage combination in the fridge.  I'm not sure I want to make soup out of the leftovers, but they'll make some fuggin' good egg rolls maybe.  How about I make some egg rolls out of that chicken/cabbage mix in the fridge?  Yeah!?!?  Okey-doke.  


We should finish the soup first?  


Shit.


Is there any of that bread left?

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Bo Luc Lac, aka "Shaking Beef," aka "Garlic Beef"


This past Saturday, we were kinda strapped for dinner.  We'd gone to the store, but by the time we got back, it was late and no one was in the mood for cooking.  It seemed like we'd exhausted all options until Mercedes mentioned pho.  Heck, why not Mai's?  


Mai's burned down a while back, and to be honest, I wasn't really broken up about it.  "Back in the day," it was a cool place to go at 2 in the morning to eat noodles.  In the interim between "the day" and when Mai's burned down, midtown's demographic changed.  You went to Mai's at 2 in the morning and you were eating noodles alongside the the Ed Hardy/boom-boom crowd, for whom yelling into their cell phones still represents some act of defiant prestige, who'd muscled its way in after leaving the cluuuuuuuuuub.  All they talked about was the cluuuuuuuuuub and how drunk they were.  Also, the wait staff got older and surlier.  You'd ask for a water refill and some gargoyle would return with a pitcher, dump water and ice in your glass with such violence that it sounded like a meteor crashing into the Astrodome, and leave it teetering on the table, a smile never creasing his face.  It doesn't seem like mere coincidence that the food became strictly pro forma as well.  I just quit going after a while.  


None of that explains our excitement about returning to Mai's.  For better or worse, Mai's was an institution of sorts, so maybe we had an obligation.  It occupies the same spot on Milam that it did when I started going there.  Other than that, the place was hardly recognizable.  The host greeted us very warmly, and seated us immediately (the restaurant was three-quarters full or so; then again, it was around 9:30.  Mai's doesn't see much action until after midnight.)  Upon entering, we noticed a new addition:  a full-service bar, which lends a welcome touch of class to the joint, which surely has to be a first.  The ambience has changed quite a bit, too.  You no longer feel like you're eating with hot spotlights trained on you.  The sheer whiteness, and I'm going to steal a phrase from Tobias Wolfe here, was "eye-frying."  Subdued hues of green and tasteful wood molding create the ambience now.  It's damn near romantic.  


I'd planned to get my usual:  a vermicelli bowl with grilled pork and Vietnamese egg rolls, very satisfying for around six bucks.  Before ordering, however, I espied a family (family?  At Mai's?) to my right.  The wife ordered a colorful, attractive dish that, indeed, got my attention.  I wasn't sure whether it's gauche to approach a stranger, poke her on the shoulder, and ask what she's eating.  It seemed to me Larry David like.  


As luck would have it, our waiter arrived while I wondered what the woman was eating, so I asked him.  Garlic chicken, which sounds pretty prosaic, maybe like something you could get at Panda Express.  The husband piped up and said, "The garlic beef is good too."  What is it about beef that elevates a dish to poetry?  I looked at the menu, and the description for garlic beef reads more-or-less thus:  "Beef marinated to perfection, with vegetables..."  I wasn't sure how to interpret that.  "Perfect beef ruined by vegetables?"  Facetiae aside, it sounded like a winner, so I ordered that.


Man.  Oh.  Man.  They weren't kidding.  The meat was among the most succulent I've ever eaten - dentures-tender yet beautiful charred, redolent with garlic, what tasted like white wine, balanced by salty/sour/sweet elements.  I chewed the last morsel as long as I could, which is really saying something because I usually eat so fast that I've been accused of not chewing anything as much as ramming fistfuls of food straight into my stomach.  


The meat rested atop a lovely presentation of leaf lettuce, tomatoes, red bell pepper, and garlic slivers.  Unwittingly, I'd ordered a beef salad.  Don't get me wrong:  getting me to eat salad is not like embedding medicine in dog food to get the dog to take it.  I like salad, and probably more than the next guy; however, I demand meat.  I'm a confirmed meat-eater.  Not in some Ted Nugent, mow-every-animal-down-in-sight-with-automatic-weapons-and-take-out-the-ones-you-can't-see-with-napalm way, but I enjoy meat with all the alacrity of the Nuge and then some.  I swear I'm not going to come over and ask if I can grill and eat your cat.


Meat and salad makes for a fine combination.  The meat juices permeate the vegetables and wilt the lettuce just so, creating a heavenly medley of taste, color, and texture.  It's one of the most complete, satisfying dishes I've eaten in a while.  I knew I'd have to replicate it at home.


During our trip to the store, we got two-and-a-half pounds of flank steak, which were intended for tacos.  I decided instead to use it for the garlic beef.  Flank steak is ideal for this type of dish.  It's relatively thin and slices on the bias well.  Bias slicing creates more surface area, thus more surface for coveted caramelization.  Also, flank steak's striations lend it what's called in the biz more satisfying "mouth feel" - tender, but you still have to work at it.  


I cut the steak, put it in a freezer bag, and added the marinade.  The marinade consisted of five or six cloves of garlic, which I crushed using a garlic press, several generous squirts of fish sauce, several liberal bloob-bloobs of soy sauce, and sugar and honey.  The idea is tangy/sweet/salty.  After I'd poured the marinade over the meat, I worked it in with my hands.  I suppose I could have sealed the bag and turned it end-over-end a few times instead, but I wanted to ensure that the marinade was good and worked in.  I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, and yes mom, I washed them before AND after.


I also wanted rice, so I soaked jasmine rice in a pot with tap water.  Okay, wow, ancient Chinese secret, but this really works wonders.  Soaking jasmine rice makes cooking it virtually effortless.  After it's soaked for a couple of hours or slightly more, drain it, return it to the pot, add a little less than double the water (eyeball it), and bring it to a vigorous boil.  Let it boil for a minute or so, and then put the top on the pot and remove the rice from the heat.  That's it, perfect rice!  Ancient Chinese secret, huh?


Truly, if you prep properly, and it doesn't take a heck of a lot of prep, garlic beef is one of the easiest, most efficient meals you could hope to make.  The pot for the rice and a wok or deep skillet for the rest.  Two big pans that wash easily after use.  


The most difficult part of cooking the dish is charring the beef properly.  I ran into a bit of trouble with this from the get-go.  I cranked the wok up full-blast and then added the beef, yet it seemed like it wasn't browning at all, just swimming in circles in its own juices.  I removed the meat from the wok and consulted the recipe again.  Let wok heat to smoking.  Bingo!  I rinsed the wok, added two tablespoons or so of canola oil, let the wok smoke up, and then added the beef.  This time, the meat charred dutifully.  


Once again, I had a hit on my hands.  Garlic beef was such a big hit, in fact, that my plans to have it again tonight were foiled because we polished it all off.  I guess tonight's taco night.  


Afterward, I had cantaloupe for dessert.  I like fruit, maybe not quite as much as the next guy, but I like it.  I just don't eat it often.  The reason is simple:  I prefer savory snacks.  If I had the choice between cantaloupe and, say, hummus, I'm gon' tear up the hummus.  I'll eat the odd apple or orange slice if it's given to me, but I'll usually pass on the cantaloupe.  I like cantaloupe fine, definitely not like the next guy, but I like it fine.  


This cantaloupe was different. On the way home, the 'lope's perfume dug deep into the car seats and stayed there, more potent than a pine tree rear view mirror car freshener.  Mercedes said that it smelled like strawberries, and I agree with her.  Every time you'd open the fridge, the cantaloupe greeted you.  It was itching to be split open.  Last night was the night.  Mercedes cut it and cubed it.  The cubes were bright, almost glowing, no shit, and consistent in color and texture.  It looked like a bowl full of cheese.  Here it is:




Mercedes put these next to me as I was watching TV.  I kept digging my hands in and shoving the pieces in my mouth like I was eating meatballs.  


This is but one among a million or more reasons I love Mercedes.  

Friday, July 29, 2011

Sunday is Quickly Becoming Pizza Day



Pizza-making, it seems, has become a Sunday ritual of late.  I enjoy making them, and we enjoy eating them, which are good reasons to continue the ritual if you ask me, at least until we get tired of pizza.  Who gets tired of pizza?  


I'd been making thin-crust pizzas, with admirable-to-awesome results, but this past Sunday, I decided I wanted to try making a deep-dish.  I really like Star Pizza's deep-dish pizza.  I'm sure it's nothing like the one you can get at Vinnie's or wherever in Chicago, but taste good is taste good, and Star's tastes good.  I'd hoped to get close.


We bought some whole milk mozzarella at Phoenicia with the intent to make some sub sandwiches.  Man, I tell ya, if I had to pick one store to shop at, it would be a tough call between Phoenicia and Spec's.  Spec's has liquor and Phoenicia doesn't, so I guess Spec's (not like I drink that much liquor anymore or anything), but Phoenicia runs a mere speck behind.  If I had to choose two stores to shop at, there's no contest; in fact, if I could choose one store to buy food at and one store to buy liquor at, Phoenicia for the former, and Spec's for the latter.  I should note here that Spec's also has a fine selection of coffees.  


We didn't make the sub sandwiches, so we had cheese begging to be used.  There's no finer way to use a pound of whole milk mozzarella than for pizza.  I will submit that eating an entire block while watching baseball in your underwear is a close second, though.  Furthermore, the lovely Mercedes wanted meatballs.  A meatball pizza is tough to beat.  This pizza was virtually in the stars.


I used this recipe for the dough.  It was written by Jeff Smith, aka "The Frugal Gourmet," whose show I watched every single Saturday as a kid.  I learned a lot from the show, even if TFG turned out to be a less-than-savory character.  


The instructions' first paragraph reads thus:


In the bowl of a stand mixer (e.g. KitchenAid), dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the vegetable oil, olive oil, cornmeal, and half of the flour. Beat for 10 minutes. Attach the dough hook and mix in the remaining flour. Knead for several minutes with the mixer. (Note: because the dough is very rich and moist, it would be difficult to do this by hand.)


Baloney.  After I'd mixed all the ingredients, I, against the advisement of the author of this recipe (don't know whether it was TFG or someone else) kneaded the dough by hand, and it was no more taxing than a game of tic-tac-toe.


In some ways, I could be a more resourceful cook.  I could use what we have on hand more often, and I could use time more wisely.  I am, however, very resourceful in terms of using the space I have alloted and the tools I have to work with.  I've rolled out pie crusts on a surface that barely accommodates a pack of playing cards.  My kitchen gadgets range from the serviceable (a knife I bought at a department store that needs constant sharpening, a potato masher I bought at Fiesta) to the really nice (Kitchenaid food processor.  It was a Christmas gift.), but none of it's very fancy.  No Le Creuset pots and pans, for example.  Nor a Kitchenaid Mixmaster.  Boy do I want one of those.  I'll bet you can mix a nice batch of cement in one of those.  Delicious cement.  And I would, too!


What I'm trying to get at here is that I don't like the dialogue surrounding food these days.  Neologisms like "foodie" - what a stupid term.  Worse than that, the notion foisted upon us that ordinary folks can't eat good food.  This dish requires truffles, everything tastes nutty (a lazy, tired food descriptor), you don't have the training, you can't make this pizza dough without some Fancy Pants appliance, that sort of shit.  And celebrity chefs.  Man they make my skin crawl.  This butthole is the most egregious example:


Guy Fieri is not fit to scrub Jacque Pepin's bidet.  

The dough was a breeze to make.  Pizza dough isn't difficult at all, really.  It's not like Pizza Hut harbors some secret to making pizza.  You may never eat another Pizza Hut pizza or anyone else's after you've made a few of your own.  There's something distinctly gratifying about making your own pizza from scratch.  You feel accomplished, and not in a "hey, I could put Pizza Hut out of business!" way, although your pizza undoubtedly will taste better than Pizza Hut's.

I ended up making two deep-dish pizzas.  We ate them for two days, and were quite satisfied.  We also saved a wad of cash.  We probably spent $10-$12 on these two pizzas, and that's using quality ingredients (kiss my ass, Papa John's).  We would have spent upwards of $30 at Star, no sweat.  Hell, we would have spent at least $20 at one of the more lowbrow joints.  You don't want to know what you're getting from one of those places.  I've worked at almost every one of them.  Males have a propensity for making genitalia out of pizza dough, if that gives you any idea of some of the unhinged personalities at work.  I've never seen anyone spit on a pizza, put a booger on a pizza, or clip his toenails over a pizza, but I believe that happens, and it probably doesn't take much provocation.  

You're better off making pizza at home.











Thursday, July 21, 2011

Very Difficult to Eat Soup With Delightful Garnishes

I have to say that I've made some dishes for the ages within the past several days, real epics.  I know I run risk of sounding like an insufferable braggart, but I'm really proud of them, and I could've written about each of them, but I've chosen to write about the soup, not least of all because I'm really amused with the name.  Very Difficult to Eat Soup With Delightful Garnishes, née Very Difficult to Eat Soup.


We were supposed to go to an event on Monday night, with promise of "light bites,"  but we were too wrecked, even for free food, prompting Plan B.  "Always have a Plan B" was advice given to me, but rarely heeded, as a teacher.  When it comes to food, though, there's always a Plan B, even if it's McDonald's.


Actually, McDonald's is more like a Plan ZZ, and I say that with all deference to the immortal ZZ Top.  Happily for me and ZZ Top, Plan ZZ has not been enacted in years.  It has less to do with the food (I used to crave those $1 cheeseburgers, but that's largely subsided) than it does because of practices like this.  The Jack in the Box on Montrose and Westheimer, I'll eat my own eyes before I eat there.  I'd love nothing more than to watch a wrecking ball go through one side of that dump and right out the other, with Jack the Mascot in attendance, crapping little antenna baubles.  Suffice it to say, "B" did not, nor will it ever again, stand for "Bisquick." That crap is clogging up a landfill by now, I'm proud to say.  


Plan B was soup.  For whatever reason, and this doesn't happen often, I wanted soup, the desire that won't be placated.  It was to be chicken soup, and it had to meet two salient criteria:  



  1. It had to be quick.  We were hungry and tired and in no mood to eat past midnight.  
  2. The chicken had to be prepared in a manner other than boiling.     
We went to the store, and I literally created the recipe walking down the aisles.  The soup began to take shape when I grabbed a nubbin of ginger and said, "This soup will be a faux pho."  We'd toyed with the idea of buying a a rotisserie bird, but the deli was almost closed when we got there.  After dick knows how long they roasted under greasy jaundiced light, all the chickens looked like catchers' mitts or George Hamilton.  They asked a song for breast quarters, so that's what we got..  

Once home, I hacked the quarters into smaller pieces with aid of a cleaver.  I'd like to say I did it with one graceful whack like Martin Yan of "Yan Can Cook" fame, but his cleaver is much bigger, with a laser-honed edge.  He chops onions and it looks like a shell game, but he's so humble about it.  I like what he says when he's finished:  "Loot at dat!"  

The chicken went into a flailing hot wok and after I'd moved it around some, I added, first, a nice viscous stream of soy sauce and an innuendo of sesame oil, and then finely-minced garlic and ginger.  I drained the chicken and skitterings on a couple of pieces of paper sack, and deglazed the wok with a blub of sake and chicken stock.  All this went into a stock pot, along with enough water to cover it.  With some shake still in the wok, I stir-fried shredded bok choy, added that to the soup, and then stir-fried a julienned zucchini.  Udon noodles were added last.  I saw them at the store during a trip previous and wanted to use them, so we bought two packages, which proved to be perfect.

One thing I like about Asian cuisine is that Asians don't blanch about adding condiments to their food.  In that spirit, we chopped green onion and shredded carrot with a potato peeler to place atop the soup with the sort of care reserved to a head of state in the grip of delirious fever.  I yanked out soy sauce, Sriracha, and hoisin sauce from the fridge to be added at the discretion of each diner.  

I'd read about Japanese soups that are garnished with tempura, and if you can think of a more irresistible way to top a soup, I'll prince about in a fish skin skirt some day.  Tempura was a last-minute idea, and I nearly didn't make it for fear of violating Criterion 1, but I couldn't help myself.  Sake, rice flour, soy sauce, salt, and water were mixed until it all achieved the consistency of slightly runny pancake batter that I could pour into the oil.  When the mixture hit the oil, it formed into some really cool shapes, like these:


This one reminds me of an H. R. Geiger construction, a cracker that H. R. Geiger designed to put on top of soup.

The tempura was a nice addition, but it tasted like a snack cracker I can't identify, good, but off somehow.  Undoubtedly, this had something to do with the properties of the rice flour, but since I don't really know the properties of rice flour, I won't enumerate them here.  

I did a dumb thing my mom had warned me about repeatedly and I'm not doing it anymore.  My mom would make fried chicken, and I'd scoop out the crispies and shovel them into my mouth straight from the pan.  They were hot enough to deform flesh on contact, but a tablespoon full of those crunchy, chicken-flavored morsels poised for my mouth made me take leave of my senses quicker than anything this side of angel dust.  

I was removing the last of the tempura from the wok with a spatula.  There was a piece at the end of the spatula that proved too tempting to pass up.  Without considering that the oil could boil a Ford Pinto, I wrapped my lips around the spatula, and they stuck instantly.  I ripped the implement off before I lost my entire upper lip, but not before a nasty blister formed on it.  Applications of ice and antibiotic ointment might ensure that I won't have a permanent bubble on the middle of my lip.  

The soup was probably done in an hour and a half, after much sweat and injury.  Though I improvised quite a bit, I considered each component really carefully so it wasn't like Kenny G in the kitchen.  There must be something about frying on hand-hammered steel because that element featured prominently.  It makes sense, really - almost everything but the water was fried.

Needless to say, the soup was delicious.  I can't imagine eating anything else at that particular time.  I can't praise a dish more highly than that.  














Thursday, July 14, 2011

Not So Quick...

After last night's dinner debacle, we decided that we were going to flush the Bisquick down the toilet.  There are so many additives in Bisquick, though, that it might turn into concrete.  So Bisquick might be good for something.  Like spackling.  Bisquick might make fine spackle.


I scrambled somewhat tonight.  I knew what I was going to make, but I wasn't sure how I was going to execute it.  In a previous post, i alluded to a pasta disaster.  Tonight I made gnocchi, and the possibility for a repeat disaster loomed somewhat large.  


I had a half cup of semolina flour and about the same amount of farina, and that would have to do for a basic dough.  That went into the food processor, along with two eggs, a bit of water, and several king-sized dollops of leftover mashed potatoes.


I made one mistake immediately:  I poured the flour in before the eggs.  I realized my error as I watched the flour whirl around and around in the food processor while I added the eggs.  Oh yeah, I'd added the potatoes, too.  I'd reserved a bit of the flour in case the ingredients didn't come together as they should have.  After I'd added everything, the dough was the consistency of an unattended Icee.


There was no getting around it.  Break out the Bisquick.


I added the Bisquick very gingerly in an effort to use the least amount possible.  No telling how much I'd used until the dough began to assume any semblance of cohesion, and I didn't want to use anymore because I didn't want dinner to taste like fabric softener.  


I tried to mill some polenta (okay, grits.  Okay, gree-yits) in the Ninja, one of my most useful appliances.  I got it for Christmas a couple of years ago, and immediately I was skeptical.  Just by looking at it, I knew there was an infomercial for it, yet I'd never even seen the infomercial.  After I'd used it, however, you could've knocked me over with a flapjack.  It makes routine prep work pretty effortless; however, it makes pretty awful guacamole, and I stripped it out some making snow-cone grade ice.  So the verdict on the Ninja is:  almost indispensable for small tasks and tasks for which you don't to drag out the blender or food processor, just don't use it to make guacamole or margaritas.


Nor is it good for milling polenta.  I'd pulsed it for quite awhile, to virtually no effect.  But screw it.  I'd probably ruined the gnocchi after the Bisquick addition (and at this point, I'm beginning to enjoy using the word Bisquick the same way I enjoy using the word flapjack.  Maybe we should keep the Bisquick so that one morning I can say, "How about some Bisquick flapjacks!"  Well, I can say Bisquick flapjack Bisquick flapjack whether we have Bisquick or we don't have Bisquick, so we're dumping the Bisquick down the annoying neighbor's toilet.  Besides, I don't eat breakfast), so why the heck not?  I'd added enough polenta to form a nice firm ball, and then divided it into four portions, and refrigerated them.


I'd never made gnocchi, but I think it's safe to say that the process of making mine was inordinately tortuous.  However, they also turned out pretty alright.  They floated to the surface of the boiling obediently, and they were very toothsome to the bite.  They also paired quite nicely with my piecemeal sauce of bacon, chorizo, and avjar.  


Oddly, Bisquick actually helped save this meal.  Don't get me wrong, I'll never use that shit again, but this time I'll begrudgingly cut it some slack.


Thanks Bisquick.


That was fun to say.  "Thanks Bisquick!  Ha ha!"






  Gnocchi with Bacon, Chorizo, and Avjar Sauce.







Don't Gimme No Flap, Jack

No pictures were taken of last night's meal.  Frankly, the inerja were an embarrassment, easily one of the worst things I've ever made and not very picturesque.  I say blame it on the Bisquick.


I think I'm going to call inerja "Ethiopian flapjacks" from now on.  They are a lot like pancakes, and I just like the word flapjacks.  


I used to work at Central Market.  That store is crawling with loony-tunes.  One time, some guy carried on about how he makes the best pancakes.  I somehow got a word in edgewise.  That word was, of course, flapjacks.  The King of All Short-Order Fry Cooks asked me whether I'm from around here because the term flapjack doesn't have much currency in these parts.  Flapjack is more of a Northern term, said Mel Sharples.  


Despite all this, I still like the term flapjacks.  


Edit:  In lieu of photo from last night, enjoy this photo of our breathtakingly clean microwave:







Careful With That Bisquick, Eugene

Last night, I embarked upon my first foray into making Ethiopian food.  I'd been craving it awhile (the anticipation of making and then eating inerja, which I will discuss shortly, kept me awake a couple of nights ago), but since we haven't been able to get over to The Blue Nile, I decided I'd give it a go myself.


I reconnoitered the fridge and cupboards for stuff to make Ethiopian food out of.  The freezer contained a package of chicken thighs and legs (bought a couple of weeks ago expressly for making doro wat), and there were red lentils in the cupboard.  Here, I'll level with you:  the lentils weren't in the cupboard.  The cupboard's crammed full of spices, lots of shit you can't make a meal out of without a lot of effort like baking chocolate, what-must-be thirteen varieties of vinegar, and cans of, hell, I don't know.  Veg-All?  We try not to eat the Veg-All or anything else from a can if we can help it.


Ethiopian food requires not only a staggering number and amount of spices, but also roasting and pulverizing those spices.  The aroma permeates the house in a kinda poetic way, but all that roasting smokes up several city blocks and causes violent fits of coughing and painful, watery eyes.  The recipes also call for lots of butter; specifically, the recipes call for nitter kibbeh, or spiced butter, which requires its own preparation, including the addition of more spices.  Lots of onions, too, more onions than we had in the whole house, like six pounds of onions or some crazy amount that not even the most nutty onion-stinking guy would ever use in a lifetime.  Two small onions would have to do, including their cute little tippy-tops.  


Once all the prep work was finished, cooking the meal was a breeze.  Fry your weight in onions, and then add to it garlic, water or broth, berbere, which we have plenty of now fr Chrissakes, the butter I can't pronounce, and the chicken. Let the whole schmeer simmer for thirty to forty minutes.  Fry ginger, garlic, and an armload more onion in the nutty butter, add the bunga-bunga spice mixture plus some tumeric, add water or broth, and boil the lentils until you can maysh 'em like those maysed taters, takes about thirty minutes, maybe fewer.  


I'm thrilled to say that the meal was delicious.  Not quite Blue Nile delicious, but damned close enough and we didn't have to drive across town to get there.  Indeed, my doro wat and the lentil dish I can't remember the name of and I'm too lazy to look it up and link it right now were a big hit.  


The astute reader has noted that at this point, I've mentioned the inerja, really the attraction for me, but once.  And what about the Bisquick, Shiftless Chef?  Inerja is, effectively, Ethiopian silverware.  All the dishes are served on it, and the inerja is used to scoop up everything into your mouth.  I'm too lazy to look up a youtube video to demonstrate how this is done.  At any rate, an Ethiopian meal seems incomplete without it.  


Inerja calls for teff flour and three days of preparation time to allow the teff to ferment.  I didn't have teff flour and I didn't have three days to prepare a meal.  Happily, Ethiopian cuisine seems pretty casual in terms of ingredients.  Many of the recipes read, "These proportions aren't set in stone, so if you don't have something, you'll get it right next time."  Such is the case with the inerja.  Ordinary white flour and some sort of fermentation or bubbling agent will do in an emergency.  I had some sourdough starter that's been brewing in the fridge for a couple of months now, so no problem.


We'd run out of ordinary white flour because of my failed pasta attempt two nights prior.  How do you prevent pasta from drying out before you're ready to use it?  None of the pasta recipes, which vary pretty wildly, I consulted address this.  They think-it we all know-a how-it to make-it the pasta?  They're it the crazy types!  No flour, but we did (do) have a box of Bisquick somebody gave us.  I looked at the ingredients, which I'm wont to do.  Bisquick contains leavening, which is good.  It also contains dextrose, which I'm not sure about.


The inerja recipe seemed similarly casual to the other recipes.  "Mix all ingredients until not-quite pancake batter like consistency is achieved."  I mixed the sourdough starter, the Bisquick, and less than a cup of water with a couple of teaspoons of baking soda together until I achieved the runniness I was looking for.


As casual as Ethiopian cuisine is, I'm now sure that it makes absolutely no allowances for Bisquick under any circumstances.  I don't care if that's all you have, eat pancakes or waffles or biscuits tonight instead, or drive across town and eat Ethiopian food the way it's supposed to be made.  I'm pretty easy-going, but Bisquick, no-sir-ee.  


I dipped my finger in to taste the batter, and ascertained a distinct laundry detergent-like taste, and not the good stuff, like Tide.  I tried to thin out the dough using more sourdough starter, a bit more salt, some vinegar, and the scant amount of bread flour I discovered behind the stupid Bisquick.  None of those additions helped much, but I soldiered on anyway because I was determined that we were going to have inerja, befitting a proper Ethiopian meal, soldiered on in bad faith, believing that I could fry out the Sam's Choice detergent flavor.  


Bisquick is wretched, wretched stuff.  I have deemed Bisquick unfit for human consumption.  I'm convinced that it doesn't even make good roach feed.  


Bisquick Buyer Beware!