Tonkatsu frenzy!

All I wanted was an easy recipe for tonkatsu sauce, and what I found was the OCD answer to the question: The Great Tonkatsu Sauce Shootout, wherein the author taste-tests one home-made recipe and nine products, and tests different types of pork (cheapie off the shelf versus pricey Kurobuta) and tests pig’s lard versus Wesson oil as a frying medium.

This guy has read too much Cooks Illustrated.

Nevertheless, with his advice I did throw together a decent tonkatsu sauce made up of ketchup, plum sauce, light soy, dark soy, and Worcestershire sauce.

D.

Daeji Bulgogi

I live in a city where the only Korean restaurant has a big fat B sign in the window . . . and so I am continually torn between risking dysentery and getting my Korean fix. Mind you, I’ve been in this situation before. I’ve lived in the land of Mexican, Chinese, and Nothing Else Ethnic, and I’ve prevailed by dint of my own clever craft. And the internet.

Hence Daeji Bulgogi, marinated slices of pork grilled over coals or, if you’re lazy like me, seared under the broiler. The linked recipe is simple, delicious, all around wonderful. Here are the ingredients, to which I’ve made only one (arguably critical) substantive substitution:

1 pound pork tenderloin, trimmed
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce*
1 1/2 tablespoons sambal oelek or Thai chile paste**
1 teaspoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced***

*I used regular soy sauce. No, it wasn’t too salty. Daeji bulgogi is meant to be eaten with steamed rice, to tone down any excess saltiness or spiciness. But to my palate, this was neither too salty nor too peppery and didn’t really need the rice. But that’s be.

**This is the critical substitution. Instead of Thai chili paste or sambal oelek, I used a Korean red pepper paste (kochujang — I used “Hot Pepper Paste” imported by Rhee Bros. Inc.) We have a halfway decent Chinese market which also carries Korean, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, and Filipino foodstuffs. Wasn’t hard finding kochujang.

***I used more garlic than that. I always use more.

OMG I was looking for a picture of kochujang and found this recipe for potatoes in kochujang and red miso. Sounds amazing.

First, I mixed up the marinade in a gallon bag. Next, I cut my pork chops into 1 inch square chunks and pounded the chunks flat. I then marinated the pork slices in the bag for about 45 minutes.

I spread the pork out on a rack and set the rack over a cookie sheet lined with heavy duty foil. I had some space left over, so I coarsely chopped one onion and shook it in the bag with the leftover marinade. I placed the chopped onion next to the pork and stuck it all under the broiler. After about five minutes, I flipped all of my pieces and put them back under the broiler until I saw some black bits — maybe another five minutes.

I served this with steamed white rice and a very simple asparagus dish (this recipe, using sesame seeds instead of pine nuts).

Yummy indeed.

D.

You’d think I had made tiramisu

We had a pot luck today to say goodbye to one of our favorite admins. She’ll still be with us (corporate-wise) but she’s moving to another office about four or five miles away. Anyway, for once I decided not to sponge off everyone else and bring some food of my own. But I was exhausted yesterday and figured I’d make something fast, easy, and yummy.

Rice Krispie Squares. According to the instructions on the marshmallow package — nothing special, except I decided to throw in a bag of Heath Bar Crunch bits, which gave the end product just enough chocolate-and-toffee zing to be noticeable. One bag of bits was hardly enough to be noticeable among all that gooey krispie goodness. What I’m trying to say is, my squares had freckles, they weren’t exactly mochachino.

I made a big 10″ by 14″ casserole dish of them, too, and guess what? All but one square disappeared. Some people ate two or three squares, which amazes me, since I had one and found it rather barfy after the second or third bite. But people went nuts for my Rice Krispie Squares. It’s incredible. Is it a comfort food thing? Would I have been even more popular had I made potato pancakes? (Oh, wait — that’s my comfort food.)

And how do I top myself next time?

D.

Stuffed squash

I was intrigued enough by Dorie Greenspan’s “Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good” recipe to experiment with it this weekend. Fortunately for me and my family, there are no more pumpkins in the store, so I bought three acorn squash instead. Well, you know how big a pumpkin is, and how big an acorn squash is, right? So you would think that acorn squash would bake a lot faster than that whole, stuffed pumpkin. Yet it took a full two hours at 350 F for our dinner to be ready.

I’m not sure I’ll ever try the whole pumpkin version. Sounds dramatic, the kind of thing that would make a real impact at a dinner party. But not if dinner is at 7 and the pumpkin ain’t tender until 9 or 10. In any even, the acorn squash version rocked, so that’s what I’m reporting on this evening.

I doubt there are many rules regarding the stuffing itself. Use what you please. I could see a strictly vegetarian version working very well (especially if you’re the kind of vegan who eats cheese), but the bacon and ham I used made for a savory dish. Acorn squash does so well with sweeter flavors — my usual method (handed down from dear old ma) is to roast it with butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar decorating the cut surface — so using cooked rice and chopped fruits and nuts, perhaps sweetened and spiced appropriately, would make an interesting side dish.

My stuffing consisted of the following:
Pepperidge farm stuffing from the bag, about 3 cups
One small yellow onion, chopped fine and sauteed in olive oil
Four strips of bacon, fried up crispy, then chopped
About 1/4 cup of chopped ham
About 1/2 to 2/3 cup of mixed cheeses, chopped into chunks — I used mostly gruyere
Chopped fresh shiitake mushrooms
Three garlic cloves chopped fine
Sage (fried crispy in bacon fat, then crushed), chopped green onion, fresh thyme, salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 while preparing the stuffing. I cooked my bacon, drained off the bacon fat, and added olive oil to the pan. Then I sauteed my onions along with my green onion, then added the mushrooms, ham, garlic, herbs. I took the pan off the heat, let it cool a bit, then tossed the sauteed goodies with dry stuffing and the cheese. Now you’re good to go. Almost.

Cut your squash in half at their equators, then clean out the yuck in the middle. To the stuffing, add 1/3 cup of cream (I’m sure you could use stock or even water) and several grinds of nutmeg. Stuff your squash and carefully put the two halves back together. You’ll find that if you set the acorn squash stem-side-down, they’ll sit squarely. Now cook them on a foil-lined cookie sheet for about an hour, carefully separate the halves, and bake for another hour.

To separate the halves, I used a big bread knife and passed it between the two halves. This worked well.

As I mentioned, it took a full 2 hours at 350 F for the acorn flesh to get tender. These were quite rich — Karen and I each ate only half a squash. The bacon, cheese, and ham likely made this dish heavier than it would be otherwise. I’m sure the cream didn’t help, either!

D.

Squashed potatoes

. . . or as Cooks Illustrated calls them, “Smashed Potatoes.”

These came out great and were really very easy to put together. Buy a bunch of little potatoes, 1.5 inch to 2 inches diameter. They recommend the little red ones but I bought the little yellow ones. Two per person should be more than adequate as a side dish.

Preheat your oven to 500 F. Yes, 500 F. These potatoes are forged in hell.

Line a cookie sheet with foil. Add the potatoes and about 1/3 cup water. Cover with foil and crimp the edges. Pop it in the oven for about 30 min, or until a knife easily pierces your largest potato. For my potatoes (which were more like 2.5 inches diameter), it took 40 min.

Remove the foil and carefully flip your potatoes — they’ll have begun to brown on the bottom. Coat all over with olive oil (a paint brush helps). Smash each potato with something heavy. Cooks Illustrated recommends using another cookie sheet to smush down the potatoes all at once; I used my 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup.

Now slather onto each potato even more olive oil. Add salt, pepper, and a pinch of thyme to each potato.

Pop back into the oven until everything looks good and crispy. Cooks Illustrated did 15 min on the top rack, 20 min on the bottom rack, but this seemed like overkill. I took mine out after the initial 15 min on the top rack and they were wonderful — crispy on the outside and bottom, tender on the inside.

Yummy!

And aren’t you proud of me? I found a YouTube video featuring live maggots in some poor soul’s nose, but I posted this recipe instead.

D.

Shrimp cakes

I think I done good tonight. As usual, I skimmed a bunch of recipes on the web and decided to combine the ideas that seemed most appealing. This recipe which uses cooked sweet potato as a base tempted me, but I opted for something more traditional. But not too traditional: many recipes call for a cup or more of mayonnaise, which has always struck me as a calorie-overkill innovation. Hey, these things are unhealthy enough as it is — why add another several hundred calories?

Here’s what I did:

1 pound of raw shrimp, peeled
1 heaping tablespoon each of jalapeno pepper, red bell pepper, and yellow onion, diced fine
2 green onions, diced
1 large clove of garlic, sliced
1 heaping tablespoon of celery, diced fine
1 egg
1 chipotle chili, diced fine
2 cups of Panko bread crumbs, divided
Salt to taste
Lemon slices
olive oil and butter

Saute the garlic, onion, bell pepper, and jalapeno until tender. Let this cool a bit. Next, put the peeled shrimp into the work bowl of a food processor and add the sauteed vegies, 1 cup of Panko, 1 egg, however much salt and pepper you like (pepper being very optional, thanks to the chipotle chili and jalapeno), and the chipotle chili. Run the processor until you have a nice paste, then add the celery and process until incorporated.

Shape into patties 2 to 3 inches across and about 1/2 to 3/4 inches high. Bread with Panko. Heat up some butter and olive oil in a nonstick skillet and fry those patties on both sides until golden brown. Serve with lemon slices.

I made a nice mushroom risotto with this. Does anyone need risotto lessons? When I have the time to prepare it, risotto is well worth the extra effort.

D.

Fried pizza!

I’ve been enjoying Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, Jamie at Home, and I give it two thumbs up, especially if you’re a gardener. It’s a beautiful cookbook with lots of full page color pix and page after page of tips on how to grow the difficult stuff, like asparagus or mushrooms.

The pizza dough and subsequent preparation were the easy steps. Jamie’s “quickest tomato sauce” was the real bitch, because I don’t enjoy pushing tomatoes through a sieve (and cleaning the sieve afterward wasn’t much fun, either). This recipe produces an intensely tomatoey sauce, though, almost like straight tomato paste, but tastier of course. I’m sure you could substitute the pizza sauce of your choice, but for the record, here’s my scaled-down version of Jamie’s recipe.

olive oil
about a dozen leaves of fresh basil
one 28 ounce can of stewed tomatoes
salt and ground black pepper
3 cloves of garlic, peeled

In a non-stick frying pan, add some olive oil and then the garlic, thinly sliced. When the garlic begins to turn color, add the tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper. When it comes to a boil, strain the sauce through a sieve into a bowl, and press the tomatoes through the sieve using the back of a wooden spoon. Be sure to scrape the “tomato mush” off the far side of the sieve. Return the sieved mixture back to the frying pan and cook it down until you have something that looks about right for pizza sauce.

For the pizza dough, I cut Jamie’s recipe in half and came up with the following. He calls for “strong white bread flour” whatever that is, and mixes it with some semolina, but I used bread flour and it worked just fine.

3.5 cups of flour
1/2 tablespoon of salt (he calls for sea salt)
1/2 tablespoon, heaping, of yeast
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar (he calls for raw sugar, whatever that is)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1.25 cups lukewarm water

Jamie gives a rather tedious recipe for working the liquids into the flour. I threw everything into my Kitchenaid with the dough hook and I let her rip. A few minutes later, I had a nice dough ball. I put it into an oiled bowl, flipped it over to oil it all around, and covered with plastic wrap. Popped it into the garage which in Bakersfield is always a warm place for letting your dough raise. Gave it a good hour for the yeast to do its thing.

I should note that I do indeed have sea salt, so I put my half tablespoon into my spice grinder, which lately has been used to grind fennel seed. Nice flavor addition to pizza dough, in my opinion.

The rest of this is easy as can be. Divide the dough into six balls, roll each one out on a floured board to about a six-inch diameter, and fry each one 30-60 sec per side until a bit golden. I used a combination of butter and olive oil. Top with tomato sauce and other goodies, and finish under a hot hot broiler.

I used tomato sauce, caramelized onions, prosciutto, fresh basil, and mozzarella cheese. Jamie’s recipe calls for buffalo mozzarella, halved cherry tomatoes, fresh basil and some dried oregano. Obviously you can do whatever you like for the toppings.

These were big enough that one for each of us was a pretty full meal, and I have three leftover mini-pizzas (just the rolled-out dough) that I’ll fry up tonight to accompany my dinner (chicken seekh kebabs). I wish I had more leftover caramelized onions,as then I could make a sort of onion kulcha with my leftover dough.

Enjoy!

D.

Salt water chicken

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged this. I MUST have blogged it. But I just did a search, and came up empty-handed.

This is so simple: it’s a simplified version of Julia Child’s roast chicken recipe.

1. Make some brine. I use one heaping tablespoonful of kosher salt and four cups of water.

2. Rinse your chicken and put it in a garbage bag. Set the garbage bag in a big glass bowl. Fill the bag with the four cups of brine. If you like, you can add other things to the brine, such as peppercorns, rosemary, bay leaves. But I really don’t think it makes much difference. Tie off the bag and put the whole thing in the fridge.

3. I usually remove the giblets from the cavity and add those to the bag, too.

4. Leave the chicken in the fridge overnight. This is a very mild brine, so don’t expect 1-2 hours to do it for you.

5. Preheat oven to 425 to 450 F.

6. Coat a casserole dish with olive oil and then add vegies to the dish. Usually, I peel one potato and cut it into big (3/4 inch high) disks, and then I chop one yellow onion and add it to the dish, too. Portabella mushrooms are nice. Today, for the first time, I used a combination of chunks of butternut squash and chopped red bell pepper. It’s all good. Whatever you use will take on the loveliest flavor from the chicken.

Anyway, what you’re doing is building up a platform upon which your chicken will sit. Stir the vegies in the oil, flip the potatoes, add salt and pepper to taste. Place the chicken, back-side-up, on this platform.

7. Brush the chicken with a combination of olive oil and melted butter. Salt and pepper to taste. Pop it in the oven.

8. At 15 minute intervals, brush the chicken with more butter and olive oil. When you have sufficient drippings from the roasted chicken, you can brush with this instead.

9. When the chicken is nicely browned, usually after 30-45 minutes, flip it. The breast side will then brown fairly quickly, usually in no more than thirty minutes.

10. Remove from oven, rest, carve, voila!

Gizzards cooked in this manner (in the bottom, along with the vegetables) will be gloriously tender, not the chewy horrors you’re imagining right now. Livers tend to overcook. Necks are delicious.

The vegies are always great. The drippings are useful, too: you’ll have a combination of highly concentrated chicken stock with a top layer of fat (which is butter + olive oil + chicken fat). I usually save both for use in other dishes.

Julia Child is insistent about the baste-every-fifteen-minutes thing. I’ve left this in the oven for a half hour at a time, no basting, and it does very well. Brining is your insurance against a dry bird.

By the way, I’ve done this with Thanksgiving turkey, too. Takes a special kind of refrigerator to accommodate a turkey in brine, but it’s worth it. Best bird you’ll ever eat, and I don’t even like turkey.

Bon appetit!

D.

Sweet potato pie (correction)

This blog is my spare memory. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up one of my own recipes when I’d forgotten where I’d found the original, or if I was just too lazy to search through several dozen back issues of Cooks Illustrated. So . . . since I’ve hit upon a great recipe for sweet potato pie, I’m reprinting it here.

I think I have improved upon the original. Main differences: I believe in baking my sweet potatoes, since that leads to caramelization and greater depth of flavor. For similar reasons I prefer brown sugar to white, and to make sure we’re talking REALLY BROWN sugar, I added some molasses, too.

The result? Big hit.

1 pound of sweet potato pulp from thoroughly baked sweet potatoes*
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar**
1/2 cup milk***
2 eggs
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tablespoon black strap molasses
1 (9 inch) pie crust****

Mine is darker. And tastier.

*If you don’t have a kitchen scale, this is roughly equal to one very large sweet potato or two medium-sized potatoes.

**I didn’t make any effort to pack the brown sugar, just scooped it out of the bag.

***As tempting as it was to use all cream, I used a scant 1/2 cup of low fat milk that I topped off with cream.

****Marie Callendars. Guess I could have made my own, but I’ve never been too skilled at pastry.

The instructions are easy-peasy. Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Combine the sweet potato with the butter using an electric mixer. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat with the mixer until smooth. Pour into a pie shell that’s been sitting in the preheated oven for about five minutes. Bake 55 to 60 minutes.

The original recipe says to bake until a butter knife inserted into the center comes out clean. I think this would take longer than 60 min, maybe a lot longer, and I worry about overcooking my pie. I hardly ever wait until the knife comes out clean.

There you have it. Enjoy! This bugger kicks ass over pumpkin pie.

D.