Cantaloupe Alone

KWT Winter CSA Month 2 January

2012-01-07T11:56:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year. It's snowing leafy green vegetables with a high of 55 degrees in Brooklyn. My CSA is great this month, heavier than the previous month and just as vibrant. A result of warm weather, or just good agriculture practices from Garden of Eve? I look forward to eating the results. Here is what was included:

Kensington Windsor Terrace Winter CSA Month 2: January
1 big bunch of arugala
1 bunch beets
1 bag broccoli
2 bags of salad greens
1 bag of kale
1 bag of collards
8 yellow/white carrots
6 turnips
3 potatoes
3 medium diakons
3 heads of garlic
3 DOZEN EGGS (thats alot!)

Here's my plan of attack: eat the salad greens up first, as they are the most perishiable. I will probably eat them in salad for dinner and chopped up with beans for lunch. Diakon and carrots will get sliced up for snacking on plain. I will have an egg and potato. I predict some savory bread pudding in my future too. For dinner I'll make a pot of black bean soup and toss a few handfuls of collards, kale, and beet greens in. I loved the roasted broccoli I made last month, maybe I'll try something new this month. Those white juicy crunch turnips will be gone by Monday. I love to snack on them plain.

Brooklyn Dirt Talk One: Urban Agriculture with John Ameroso

2012-01-02T10:46:00.003-05:00

Brooklyn Dirt Talk: Monthly Talks on Urban Farming and Gardening.

Dirt Talk One: Urban Agriculture with John Ameroso
This urban agriculture hero of NYC since 1976 shares his wisdom. Come with your questions!

January 18th, 2012
7 - 9:30 pm
Downstairs @ Sycamore Bar and Flowershop, 21+
1118 Cortelyou RD, BK (Q train to Cortelyou)
Hosted by Meera Bhat

Event on Facebook
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John Ameroso is responsible for around 18 tons of produce grown in NYC a year, and sowing gardens and since 1976.

In 1976 John Ameroso piloted the Urban Gardening Program with Cornell University Cooperative Extension, and through his efforts successfully set the ground for Extension education in urban horticulture and food production for New York City. Mr. Ameroso served as President of the New York State Association of County Agricultural Agents (1997) and serves on the Boards of Directors for four organizations - one concerned with environmental “greening” issues (Neighborhood Open Space Coalition); one involved with local food security issues (Just Food); another with youth development utilizing agriculture and food accessibility programs (Added Value); the other promoting and supporting farmers’ markets throughout New York State (Farmers’ Market Federation of New York). Two of his programs have received National recognition: Rikers Island Prison Farm Project and The Gericke Organic Farm Education Project at Clay Pit Pond State Park in Staten Island.

John Ameroso's legacy was well-honored in this New York Times profile.

Meera Bhat is part of the team at Prospect Farm (www.prospectfarm.org), a neighborhood growing initiative in Windsor Terrace that is working together to grow food in a formerly vacant lot. She lives in Prospect Park South and works as a project manager at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. She also leads a girl scout troop, if you're looking for cookies.

Cantaloupe Alone is a food blog for people with garlic breath and sweet teeth run by Kensington, Brooklyn based Naomi Donabedian. www.cantaloupealone.com

The Cookie Plate: Cookie Tips and Fails

2011-12-31T15:40:00.008-05:00

Choice Christmas cookies of lovely variety

I know what you're thinking, and I'm thinking it to. Enough with the cookies. Well I successfully baked over 40 dozen this year. I managed really well. And wanted to throw down some of my notes for posterity.

A) Plan: It sounds obvious, but its the only thing that makes it happen for a busy person. You can freeze cookie dough for about a month. You can and should just start making Christmas cookies after Thanksgiving. Making the dough in advance also gives you greater focus when its time to shape and decorate cookies. Its a lot of work, so planning this step in advance makes everything else easier. I usually keep a written list of what I'm making, the amounts, and on what days of the month I think I should do the baking.

B) Ingredients: Buy all new flour, butter, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and butter. Flour can get stale, baking soda and powder lose their oomph, butter starts to taste like the freezer/fridge. Just do it.

I use about 10 lbs of flour, 8 lbs of sugar, 4.5lbs of butter. Related to point a, planning, I decide how many cookies I should bake (18 per person and 3-5 dozen for groups) in advance, decide how many kinds of cookies and what quantity I will make of each, and then add up the amount of ingredients I will need. I know down to the stick of butter what I'm using. Always have a few extra bars of butter just in case you need to chuck some cookie dough. This weight to volume website is really helpful for determining how many cups are in a 5 lb bag of something.

You may want to take stock on your molasses, cinnamon, vanilla extract and other baking ingredients just to be safe. Throw some waxed paper and freezer bags in there too. You will need them. If everything is in place then you can just wake up at 6 am and bake 4 dozen cookies before you go to work without worrying about running out of nutmeg or some dumb thing.

c) Own a Standing Mixer: Its expensive but you need it if you want to power bake. You can actually walk away from a standing mixer, which allows you to multitask. I made a ton of my cookie dough while I made and ate dinner. It saves a lot of time, and gives you the power to really whip your cookies together. Plus you can make pasta dough or stuff sausages with the attachments if that's your jam. I use a second hand Kitchen Aide. Check Craigslist.

d) Screw Brown Sugar: That's right! Forget it. Brown sugar is white sugar with molasses in it that gets rock hard in your cupboard. I don't care about the tricks for keeping it moist, or softening it. You don't need it. Just add molasses. How much? Usually a gob, which is maybe 1 1/2 teaspoons per 1 cup. A big gob if it calls for dark brown sugar.

e) Pre-shape and Freeze Cookie Dough: This was my most brilliant idea ever. This year I made the dough in advance, chilled it, and then shaped into bars/balls/logs or whatever. Then I froze the shaped dough on cookie sheets (otherwise they would clump together) and stored in freezer ziplock bags. When it was time to bake I just plunked frozen shaped dough on baking sheets. It was really fast. I didn't try it with cut out cookies. That doesn't seem like it would work to me.

f) Don't Eat all the Cookies Yourself: This is a legitimate problem for me. Not good. Very bad. I have tried defensive tactics to prevent myself from eating the cookies such as duct taping cookie bags closed. I have no shame. The best idea is to do bake a day or two in advance. Even though cookies are perfectly fine for about a week in the freezer they will probably get eaten before its time to hand them out. The other tactic is to allow myself a few. I set aside all the broken, half burned and wonky cookies for myself.

Here are a handful of such misfit cookies, and a few reasons they went wrong.

Star cookie burns on the edges. Its not my fault, it's the cutter I swear. Those thin points are out there on there own uninsulated from heat. I found no way to prevent this, and have stopped using this cutter. Too bad. Its nice.

Smooshed sesame cookie. I put the pot holder over the edge of the cookie sheet and right on top of this guy while rotating sheets in the oven. Otherwise very tasty.

I made these fab fig bars this season. Instead of throwing away trimmings I decided to re-roll them. The filling became part of the bar crust. More fig taste, but ugly. Anyways I sent these to the hungry people I know who wouldn't judge a cookie by its gross color.

It's really hard to make the figs bars square. More trimming means more waste. I eventually started shoving the scraps together to make this scrap cookie. Again, ugly but no less delicious for me.

The Pistachio-Apricot Shortbread Icebox Cookies were really good. Perhaps the best cookie I made? The log of dough I cut the cookies from was a little less than perfect and provided me with more misshaped cookies to snack on.

I also had trouble with the hyper sweet apricots burning (over-browned in better cases) on the bottom of the cookies. After experimenting with cookie thickness and cookie sheet color and quality I determined that the dried apricots have much more sugar than the cookie dough. Can't stop the burn. Again no one but me seemed to notice. The cookies won many praises.

There you have it! More cookie knowledge. The more you bake the more you know. Happy New Year reader. Thanks for making it this far! It was great year. I promise more savory delights in 2012.

Christmas Cookie no 5: Maple Roll-out Cookies

2011-12-31T10:27:00.004-05:00

Maple shape, maple sugar, maple cookie. I like maple.

I don't really want to think about Christmas cookies anymore. Its after Christmas, and I've had my share. As long as its still the "holiday season" I think I have a right to post one more cookie recipe. This recipe was introduced to me by my cousin and superb baker Mary-Tyler a few Christmases ago. It's everything and more a roll-out cookie can be sweet and easy to make. The maple flavor has an addicting edge that makes for a sinfully desirable cookie that makes for a memorable Christmas cookie.

The original recipe from Emeril (hey I think this is the only Emeril recipe I've ever made) suggests you ice the cookies. The icing is good, but it makes them harder to pack and send. I sprinkle maple sugar on top, which I will show you how to make. The key ingredient in this recipe is maple extract. Its super powered delicious stuff, and you can't really make these cookies without it. I had trouble finding it at a brick and mortar store (not at Dean and Delucas, Sur la Table, or Whole Foods) but the King Arthur Flour catalog has it. Make sure to order other stuff if you get it from there or your shipping charges will be out of control.

Maple Roll-Out Cookies
2 stick butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tblsp molasses
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp maple extract
1/4 cup maple syrup (all natural, that other stuff is just flavored sugar)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
4 cups flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour)

1/2 cup sugar
10 drops maple extract

Mix butter and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer on high until light colored and fluffy, about 7 minutes. Scrap the bowl and add eggs and molasses. Mix on high another 2 minutes. Add vanilla, maple extract, baking powder, and salt. Mix on medium for another minute. Scrape the bowl. Add half the flour and mix until just combined. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and add remaining flour. Mix by hand until just combined. Do not over mix the cookie dough, or any other cookie dough, ever. Just lay off the very second the flour is mostly absorbed into the dough. Tough cookies suck, and I'm sick of eating them and being nice about it. Divide the dough into fourths on a counter top and shape into disks. Chill the dough for 2 hours or place in a ziplock bag and freeze for up to a month.

When its time to roll and decorate preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Sprinkle a very clean work surface with flour. Place one disk of dough over flour, and sprinkle more flour on top. Wipe a little flour on your rolling pin to prevent sticking. Roll dough out to a little less than 1/4 inch thick. I like my cookies thick, but you can go thinner if you prefer.

The dough is easy to work with, not too sticky, and doesn't crack or break that easily after baked. Go ahead and use your eleborate and crazy shaped cookie cutters. Like Mary-Tyler, my cousin, I like to use maple leaf cookie cutters to hint at the flavor. You can ball up the scraps and roll and cut more cookies 2 more times before the dough will noticibly start to get drier from all the extra flour. Any cookies you make after will be okay, just not as great. Place the cut cookies on a cookie sheet at least 1/2 inch apart.

Mix 1/2 cup sugar and drops of maple extract in a small bowl. Mix with a whisk until evenly blended. I used a coffee grinder to hurry up this step. Sprinkle maple sugar over the tops of the cookie for an extra sugar jolt.

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes until browned on the bottom. I actually pick up a cookie off the sheet in the oven to check for browning. I have callused hands, so maybe use a spatuala because this could get a little dangerous.

Remove cookies from oven. Let cool for 2-5 minutes on cookie sheet before moving to racks to cool. Allow sheets to cool before using them to bake more cookies.

Holiday Cookie + Food Swap

2011-12-15T22:03:00.005-05:00

It's a Christmas cookie dream come true. I'm finally hosting a Christmas cookie, candy, holiday food swap. What is holiday food? Maybe like some holiday jerky, or holiday pigs in a blanket. Jam is very holiday-esque. Someone could bring some homemade egg nog, that would be right up the holiday alley.

I will be bringing the milk though! And some baggies for you all to take your cookies home in. I'm really excited to sit around and eat cookies and reflect on food, recipes, and the year. Please join me.

How the Cookie Swap Works:

Bring 2-3 dozen homemade cookies or candies, or 10-12 samples of your favorite holiday treats e.g jams, infused spirits, granola. Then swap 3-4 cookies or 1 sample from each other. Print out copies of your recipes to share. Please RSVP by email: naomidonabedian at gmail dot com or facebook what you plan to bring to avoid repeats. Forward to all the bakers you know!

Thursday December 22nd
8 - 10pm
@ Bar 4 in South Slope
444 7th Ave, Brooklyn

Music provided Monday Night Vinyl Clu b

Sorry for late notice!!

Christmas Cookie no 4: Sesame Cookies

2011-12-11T07:04:00.000-05:00

Why are sesame seeds so cute. Love them on a little cookie.

I've made Pistachio Apricot cookies for their fruity nutty flavor. Nutella Dream cookies are a gooey filled surprise. The gluten-free ginger bread people fulfill the ginger spice category and cover the gluten-challenged people on my list. I wanted the next cookie to be less sweet. I'm a sugar junky, but I know a lot of people like to take it easy on the sweets. Sesame seeds are just the savory to sweet flavor to top off such a less than sweet crunchy little cookie that could almost pass as a mini biscotti. The dough is easy to make, and dousing dough balls in sesame seeds takes a fraction of the time it takes cut and decorate them. It's on my cookie list for sure. This recipe is based on the version on Giusto Gusto.

Sesame Cookies

1 cup sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter
4 tblsp olive oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tblsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups flour
2 cups sesame seeds

Mix sugar, butter and oil in the bowl of standing mixer for 7 minutes until light and fluffy, scraping sides of mixer at least once. Add eggs one at a time, mixing between in each addition. Scrape down sides of mixer. Add vanilla, baking powder, and salt, and mix for another 2 minutes until combined. Add half the flour and mix until barely combined. Add remaining flour and mix until combined. I like to take the bowl off the mixer during the last few mixes of dough and get in there by hand to make sure its evenly mixed.Chill dough for 1 hour to overnight.

Preheat oven to 350. Scoop one tablespoon of dough. Roll the ball in a circle on your palms to create a ball. Then roll back and forth to make slightly oval. Place shaped dough on a tray and continue until all the dough is formed. Place the 2 cups of sesame seeds into bowl. Roll each dough ball in the seeds to cover and place on an ungreased baking sheet, about 1 inch apart. Bake for about 20 minutes until golden brown on the bottom. Transfer cookies to cooling racks.

Makes about 3 1/2 dozen cookies

Christmas Cookie no 3: Gluten-Free Gingerbread People

2011-12-08T07:15:00.002-05:00

The heads will be the first to go

Gluten-free baking is new to me. This is my second dip in this dietary specialty pool. I seem to have vegan baking down, so this can't be much harder? I'm pretty sure that gluten free baking requires a grasp of different flours (potato, chickpea, rice) and thickeners (guar and xanthan gum) in proportions slightly different to wheat flour. I'm not sure how these flours taste baked into cookies and in what combinations. I'm dying to know but for now I'm using an all purpose mix and hoping for the best.

This recipe makes a crispy cookie, nice crunch. A softer ginger bread guy would have been a little nicer, but with this mix of flours. The texture is good though. Not too gritty. They don't have that melt in your mouth wheat feel, but they definitely are more in the food than cardboard category too.

Picking a flavorful cookie like gingerbread means that even if the texture is different, at least I know the spice will be right. Spicy gingery cookies are always important this time of year anyways. Gluten-free friend bear with me. I think I'm gonna be okay at this. This recipe is adapted from the Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef.

Gluten-Free Gingerbread People

1 stick of butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
zest of one orange rind
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups all purpose gluten-free baking mix

Mix sugar and butter in the bowl of a standing mixer until fluffy and white, about 7 minutes. Add molasses, egg and vanilla and mix for another 2 minutes. Add baking soda, salt, and next 6 ingredients. Mix for about one minute until combined. Add half of the gluten-free baking mix and mix until combined. Add remaining baking mix and mix again until combined. The dough will be sticky. Chill it covered in the fridge for one hour to overnight.

Preheat oven to 350. Dump dough onto a long piece of wax paper (parchment would probably work better), and split dough in half. Place one half of the dough back in the fridge so it stays cold while you work. Cover remaining dough on wax paper with another piece of wax paper and roll about 1/4 inch thick. Peel back top piece of paper, and lightly replace paper on top of dough. Now flip over and peel back the other piece of paper. I found this step helps to release the thick sticky gluten free cookies.

Stick free dough rolled in waxed paper

You're ready to cut out cookies. Before you pick out that multi-faceted snowflake cookie cutter or cute octopus cookie cutter consider that this dough is challenging to work with. Its going to fight you a little by sticking and warping. I suggest using simple shapes with round corners. People are simple, and round. Also remember that everyone loves to bite the head off a little ginger bread person.

That star never made it to the baking sheet. Choose simple cookie shapes

Cut out your shapes and carefully move them to your cookie sheet. Re roll scraps out and continue to cut until all the dough is rolled out. You can also roll your dough out on your cookie sheet if you are having big problems with sticking. Just remember to leave some space between shapes.

Decorate cookies as you see fit. I'm using raw sugar for natural look. I don't really see what's so festive about red lake dyes 40 and 15. Raisins, currants, nuts, and other dried fruits look great too. Bake for 15 minutes. Move cookies to a cooling rack with a spatula. You may choose to ice your cookies at this point. Good for you if you have time for this. I would like to remind you that icing your cookies makes them harder to store and ship without damage.

Christmas Cookie no 2: Nutella Dream Cookies

2011-12-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

Is this a Christmas cookie or just a regular cookie? The Nutella Dream cookie is probably just a regular cookie on a normal day. But Christmas needs more chocolate cookies, so I'm bringing them over to the holiday side.

I was definitely woo'd by the thought of a chocolate chocolate chip cookie with nuts that gets stuffed with Nutella. That's a combo that just doesn't stop.Now that I've made them I will say they are good, but they are in the "great with milk or tea" category. That's a nice way of saying they could be a richer, a little more moist. They aren't exactly the gooey chocolates brownie-like Chocolate Monster Cookies. But these cookies are stuffed with Nutella. Its a very good surprise to bite into. Its like a lovely, thoughtful, and unexpected holiday gift. See, they are Christmas cookies after all. This cookie recipe is from Serious Eats.

Nutella Dream Cookies

1 cup sugar
2 sticks butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
(I use Dean Deluca's it a good value for the quality)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
1/2 cup hazelnuts, chopped
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup Nutella, chilled

Add sugar and butter to the bowl of a standing mixer. Whip until white colored and fluffy, 5-7 minutes. Scrape sides down 1-2 times while whipping. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until incorporated about 2 minutes. Scrape sides down and add cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda and mix for another two minutes. Add one cup of flour and mix until beginning to incorporate. Add remaining flour and mix until beginning to incorporate. There should be some flour visible. Remove bowl from mixer and add in nuts and chocolate chips. Fold in by hand until flour is no longer visible.

Shut your nutella hole with cookie dough

The dough will be very sticky. Cover with a sheet of wax paper and chill for at least one hour to make the dough more manageable. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Shape two tablespoons of dough in to balls. Fill each ball with nutella by pushing an indentation into the center. Spoon about 1 teaspoon of chilled nutella into the indentation. Its much easier to manage the sticky nutella if its cold. Pinch the balls closed to cover the nutella. I found it convenient to grab a little dough off the side of the ball and smoosh it over the opening of the nutella hole.

Place cookie dough balls on an ungreased baking sheet, at least 1 inch apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes until tops are beginning to crack. Don't overbake or they will be really dry. Remove from oven and let rest on tray for 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack.

Recipe yields 18 cookies.

KWT Winter CSA Month 1 Decemeber

2011-12-03T11:15:00.000-05:00

I can't even begin to tell you how I excited I am. 3 years ago I belonged to the Kensington/Windsor Terrace summer CSA. I didn't like Garden of Eve's quality compared to the other CSAs I had belonged to. This year I thought what the hey. Time to try again, and now I am so excited about it. The variety! The gigantic variety of crisp flavorful greens is blowing my mind. First thing I shoved some lettuce in my mouth. So damn good.

The winter CSA picks up once a month. If this was a weekly selection I'd be offering you all some bok choy. Its gonna take me at least 3 weeks to chow through this.

KWT Winter CSA -- December

1 small head of cabbage
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch of beets
1 big bag broccoli florets
3 small heads of broccoli
1 head of garlic
1 diakon
1 butternut squash
1 big bunch of celery
2 small heads of fennel
1 dozen eggs
1 bunch of kale
1 bunch of collard greens
1 big bag of mixed salad greens

Christmas Cookie no 1: Pistachio Apricot Ice Box Cookies

2011-11-29T19:35:00.005-05:00

I do Christmas cookies every year. I do them pretty seriously for my friends, colleagues, employers, postal workers, and I know they are appreciated. After 6 years off practicing baking en mass I know how to make a lot of cookies without losing my cool.

This year I decided not to do any of my regular cookie recipes. I trust my skills, kitchen, and ingredient knowledge. I have a mental picture and flavor palette of exactly how I want my Christmas cookies to be. I want my Christmas cookies to include all the flavors, sizes, colors, and shapes that amplifies everything that I find wonderful about the holidays. To repeat myself, I take this seriously.

Lots of fussy roll and cut out cookies did not make my final Christmas cookie list. A few did. Instead I thought I would try one "ice box cookie" recipe. Ice box cookies are a basic vanilla/shortbread cookie dough, shape it into a log, rectangle (or here) triangle; freeze; slice; and bake. Its a very easy way to control the quantity of cookies you are baking over time, making economical use of the freezer. This recipe is based on Martha Stewart's version. Follow it to a tee. It works.

The bonus is you can add flavors, ingredients for color and texture, roll the outside in decorated sugar, dip in chocolate, sandwich with a filling, or about a million other techniques for personalizing the finished cookies. The bonus bonus is that your making your own version of a tube of cookie dough. Having a tough week with work/love/life? Pull out a tube of dough and eat your way out of that funk. No, really please don't do that. Go for a bike ride or something.

So! This all fits in great with my larger cookie plan. I chose to make triangles because they're different, and add pistachios and apricots for a festive sprinkle of confetti color. I can also make them about 2 weeks in advance knowing they will be safe in the freezer. Enough baking philosophy, and more cookies.

Pistachio Apricot Ice Box Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cut into chunks
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
3/4 cups pistachios, chopped
3/4 cups dried apricots, finely diced

Place butter and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer. Beat on high for 5-7 minutes until butter is fluffy and pale yellow/white-ish. Add egg, vanilla, salt and banking powder. Beat on high for another 2 minutes. Add two cups of flour and mix until half combine on low speed. Add the remaining cup of flour and and mix until mostly combine. Remove bowl from the mixer. Add pistachios and apricots and mix by hand until barely combine. Its better to see a few flecks of flour than to over mix.

Cookie dough pyramid logs

You should be left with some very soft, slightly sticky dough. Place two long sheets of wax paper side by side on your counter top. Empty the dough from the bowl on to one of the sheets. Cut the dough in half and slide to the other sheets of wax paper. Now is the fun part. Gently shape the dough into a log. With the help of the wax paper mold the log into a triangle, or even a rectangle if you're feeling like it. The cookie dough log will be about 12 inches long, maybe a little bigger. Wrap the dough tightly and freeze until you're ready to bake. An extra layer of foil or plastic bag will help your dough stay fresher in the freezer.

No need to defrost when you're ready to bake. Preheat the oven to 350. Slice 1/4 inch cookies off the roll, and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake about 10 minutes until lightly browned on the edges.

You should get about 8-10 dozen cookies from your logs.

Taiwan Food Mashup

2011-11-28T10:02:00.000-05:00

Sweet potato caramels are really good and a really good idea.

Hey look! Its all the really interesting food I ate, laughed at, choked on, or generally marveled over while in Taipei, Taiwan that didn't find a real place in any of my blog posts. This also marks the last of my month long trip photos. After today I will switch to holiday baking and my winter CSA.

Mos Burger is Japan's idea. They ask why not use grains of rice to make a hamburger bun. The answer is yes rice should be a hamburger bun. At Mos Burger, a fast food chain, you can get all kinds of hamburgers, and fried chicken is a side dish like French Fries.

Pumpkin ice cream. I saw it, but didn't try it. Ice cream stuffed in little pumpkins. Sounds right to me.

Another essential Taiwanese snack. Sweet waffle/crepe batter filled with bean paste. Often made from the small stands on the street in cast iron molds, much like squid balls.

Beitou, famous for its hot springs also has a very impressive food market. Here you can see all the usual suspects: squash, carrots, diakon, persimmon, onions, greens, mushrooms, peaches, papaya and more. You never seem to find brussel sprouts, cauliflower, beets, or tomatoes. There are sad orangey-green tomato look-a-likes, but nothing that compares to a real tomato.

On any main strip there is usually one bakery with loads of flaky European style pastries, cakes, tortes, sandwiches, and stuffed rolls both sweet and savory. I have a hard time eating at normal times, so around 4 if I found I still hadn't eaten lunch I'd step into one of these spots for a new mystery item. I was never disappointed.

Here I picked a pile of different sweets to share. Top right was a dense nut roll thing, middle right a pineapple cake, and lower left an almond croissant made up of hundreds of flaky layers of extra thin dough. Just barely sweetened, the almond thing was the best.

Roll filled with tuna fish. Not your average tuna sandwich. Very delicious.

The english name for this, which I imagine is the Chinese translation is ground pork in pig intestines. Yes, that is what a hot dog is. Chew on that. This hot dog's bun is a split rice filled hot dog. Another great asian innovation. Wheat's not all that anyways. It came with onion and cucumbers. It was some mean good street food.

KTV karaoke is just one of many karaoke shrines in Taipei. Its an entire building with floor after floor of private karaoke rooms. The ground floor has an all you can eat buffet of better than expected food and drinks. There is also dessert, sushi and dim sum snacks you can buy with tickets.

Remember the "if its black it probably contains blood rule, and that's okay" rule? It applies here. This is a blood cake with rice and either sesame or peanut. It was nice.

If I could go back in time I would have taken better pictures of Seven Eleven. Everything happens at Seven Eleven. You can pay your electricity bill, buy beer, send a package with FedEx, get some tea eggs, bananas, or millions of other snack I took for granted by the end of my trip. You can also pay with your subway card. Very nifty. This was a bag of special edition plum flavored chips. They didn't taste a single bit like plum, but it illustrates the higher purpose Seven Eleven stands for. More quality, more flavors.

Day 020: Stink Tofu at Shilin Night Market

2011-11-25T11:06:00.005-05:00

I'm going out of chronological order! I'm not even in Taiwan! I just want to share all the cultural specialties I plowed through for your benefit. I was thinking of all of you, my dear food craving readers while I ate such dishes as stinky tofu. Stinky tofu is quintessential Taiwanese comfort food. Fermented tofu served sauteed or fried. It reeks to high heaven with a sharp scent. You know it before you try it from all the carts stinking up the street. They will tell you that it does not taste like it smells, but it does it does. It smells and tastes like a wet dog that's been rolling in overly ripe cheese. The distinct flavor strikes a special cord with anyone who has grown up on it. I was proud that I didn't have any problems putting it in my mouth, chewing it, or swallowing it. Its not offensive, just boldly different.

The stinky tofu I tried came with Taiwanese style kimchi, which is just a lightly pickled sweet cabbage and cold sesame noodles. It was all very delicious together. In the picture above you can see a good example of the bucket of hot chili sauce you get on most tables. Note Taiwan beer was also part of the meal. Taiwan beer goes pretty darn well with all Taiwanese foods.

A tub of fermenting tofu stacked up 4 high, and just hanging out on the street. I'm not sure how the tofu is fermented. Maybe it's just old?

The stinky tofu stand where I tried it at the Shilin Night Market is hoping. We waited in line to get a seat and be served.

After the stinky tofu meal came course/meal number two. Seafood. Whole fried crabs were delicious. They were cleaned, so there was less work to do. The crab meat was huge, and fluffy. A lot more generous than you're average Maryland crab. Sadly these crabs had their claws removed, but you could still pick a little out of the legs. Next up was an oyster omelet. Another Taiwan classic, which tastes just as you could imagine. Finally there were, for lack of a better term, hermit crabs steamed and served in a star anise sauce. They had a pleasant chewiness. Not at all unlike snails.

We really kept going. Somehow we got into a discussion about the glutinous rice doughs you find in many asian dishes. Its straight up chewy-gooey and a work out for your jaw. But I find it pleasant. This was a giant steamed rice dumpling stuffed with chopped meat.

And then shaved ice! I loved shaved ice! A delightful delicate and sophisticated way to make ice cream. They freeze a cylinder of flavored condensed milk. The frozen tube is then set on to a giant drill press with a razor on the bottom. The milk is pressed on to the razor while spinning to make light frilly shavings of ice cream that dance as they melt in your mouth. Most of the flavors are fruity: strawberry, mango, kiwi, pineapple, passion and come with more fruit on the side. My favorite Taiwanese dessert.

By this point i'm not hungry, but I've never let that stop me before. These are glutinous rice balls covered in nut powder. They're fun to eat. Eating is fun. I'm good at having fun.

Day 021: Gonguan Supper

2011-11-19T19:54:00.004-05:00

Some tea eggs, veggies, garlic, and rice and lets call it a day

Believe it or not the following meal happened on after all the goodness of of Tamsui. I am the energizer bunny of eating, but without the ears or drum. I really have 3 or 4 more meals and items that belong on this blog. I am in America now, but everything that happened in Taiwan is much more interesting than my own food experiences here. Don't worry, we will get to Christmas cookies soon enough.

So the night market in Gonguan is very near a university, and has a youthful vibe. I sat down to this meal with my ultimate hosts and they ordered all of their favorite dishes. It was one of my favorite meals. Lets take a look at why.

Ground beef. Yeah, I know. Its the easy solution in any culture to hardy, comforting deliciousness. Here we have something called marinated ground beef, or as I like to call it Chinese Hamburger Helper. Chinese Hamburger helper pretty much says it all. I inhaled this. It was superb food.

Here we have Taiwanese kim chi, or pickled cabbage. Like many Taiwanese dishes the flavor is distinctly sweet. The cabbage is lightly pickled, and firm which is nice. It tasted great with a little of that ground beef on top and some hot sauce.

Egg drop soup! Its my childhood favorite. This was the first time I encountered a dish from any typical American Chinese restaurant. I was delighted to know that egg drop soup exists in Asia, and is much egg-ier, with a clean broth. Can someone make me this dish every time I get sick?

Pork loin breaded, seasoned and lightly fried with shredded ginger. As beautiful to look at as it is delicious to eat. Sort of an Asian breaded cutlet, because pork is the chicken of Taiwan.

Cooked bamboo? I do not know the name of this dish, nor can I identify all of the ingredients. It was soft and a bit sour in a great way. A really nice compliment to some of the fattier dishes.

Another dish which I shall call by its description. Hunks of pork slow cooked, possibly braised or marinated first, with the skin on. So what you get here is gooey gelatinous skin that is nearly melted on top of fork tender pot-roast like pork. This dish summarizes everything that is great about meat, and stand up to everything that ground meat fails to . Well, maybe if there were some bones in there it could be a little more meaty. But the name of this dish in my mind is "The Great Pork Meat Bowl."

After slurping this all down I feel into a long sleep coma nap. It was my last meal with my hosts, Michael and Katherine, and it was a home run.

Day 021: Damsui/Tamsui

2011-11-06T16:30:00.006-05:00

Seafood rules this land

I had been reading about a magical place near Taipei called Damsui. A seaside town for biking, an nearby island for hiking, and LOTS OF SEAFOOD. I was perplexed because I couldn't find Damsui on the map. Reason: they changed the English name from Damsui to Tamsui weeks before I arrived. This makes no sense. Its still pronounced Damsui, but will forever on be known as Tamsui. Its accessible by the Taipei subway system only 45 minutes or less. Go there if you're in Taiwan. Its nice, and the food is wonderful.

Shrimp

Something with pork?

I visited Tamsui on a bright, bright, extra sunny day. One of the first sunny days on my trip. As a rule all museums and attractions are crowded on weekend. Once you're used to the bustling of crowds the relaxing slower pace and people watching forgive the lack of space. I was with a group of 6. A boon to all the new street foods. The more people you have the more variety you can nibble on.

Whole fried baby crabs

Not your average greasy fried food

Seafood is no joke in Tamsui. It is the freshest I have ever tasted. Squid, fish, shrimp and crabs are everywhere in every form. Above is a cup of baby crabs, about 1-3/4 inch in width, fried whole, and seasoned. They taste like crab chips, but with brains and faces. They're really good. The other fried stuff on from the cart was good too. The seafood has a pleasant firm texture, not the soggy stuff that comes out of the freezer and goes into the microwave/deep fryer. When seafood is fresh it has a neutral taste. Not at all fishy. "Fishy" is a sign of old seafood.

Squid balls being made

In a boat shaped box

Who doesn't love meat in ball form? So much easier to hold and swallow. Squid balls are another specialty in Tamsui. Chunks of fresh squid are chopped up and mixed into a batter. The batter is poured into semi-spherical hot irons. With great speed and dexterity the squid ball maker then spins the batter over itself as it cooks. A little bit like the same process as making an ebelskivers. By the 3rd or 4th pass the batter is fully cooked and the squid ball is nicely browned on the outside. Our squid balls were seconds old before they were dressed with what seems like mayonnaise and some bonito fish flakes. It took much longer for the steaming hot squid balls to cool than for them to cook.

Wall of iron eggs

In the iron egg

Iron eggs are another local special. Iron eggs are bird (quail, chicken, etc) eggs that have been steeped in spiced soy sauce until turning a dramatic black color. The eggs have a dense texture, and are a bit chewy. Not a bad snack. Some how against all odds I was able to bring a pack home through customs and quarantine.

Candy coated tubers

Taiwan loves its sweets. These are candy coated sweet potatoes and taro roots. Not unlike a similar to the candied tomatoes I ate at Longshan, very similar to a candied apple. A bit sweeter perhaps. I found these inelibly sweet.

Tofu skin wrapped noodles

Fish balls, and other fine noodle dishes

Dumb waiter service

The eating will not stop until we try 2 more of Tamsui's specialties. The first is cellophane noodles wrapped in tofu skin served in a pool of reddish-pink sauce. I don't know what the sauce is made from. Its certainly been thickened with starch. Its more than a little sweet and that turns me off. I like the noodles wrapped in tofu part. Its a great way to add texture and flavor to the otherwise plain tofu. The other dish is fish ball soup. This is winner. Its ground seasoned fish meat. The texture is firm and a little resilient making for a pleasant bite. The broth is simple, and clear. Very satisfying, the stuff of comfort food. Our group sampled these dishes on the 4th floor of a towering restaurant facing the ocean. The food was brought up on an electric dumb waiter. The joint was packed.

Red headed fort

Besides the seaside food stands littered with the ocean's goods stands the Santo Domingo fort. The fort was built by the Spanish in 1629. The Dutch took over the area in 1642 and rebuilt it to look as it is today. The fort has a red exterior and is referred to as the "Red Headed Fort" by locals, a reference to the red haired Dutch. In 1868 the English took it over and it was used as the English. The fort sits on the top of a hill, with spectacular views of the oceans, and the islands across the way.

Days 017-020: Advice -- feeding yourself without speaking Chinese

2011-10-31T10:47:00.007-04:00

Look at this guy in the shop. He's waving and posing for my photo. Why?!
Because they really are that happy to see foreigners eat their food, so enjoy.

I was really lucky to have wonderful friends take care of me in Taipei, who enjoy the best food Taipei has to offer. But there were plenty of times on my trip I found myself on my own. I was staying near the student filled Shida area, but not near enough. Many of the restaurants and food carts in my area do not offer English or photos of food options.

Rows and rows of food stands

There are several approaches to hunting and gathering your meal in a completely foreign language. It only takes an ounce more courage than ordering for the first time any new place. The process is eased by how incredibly friendly Taiwanese towards a non-Chinese speaking person in their restaurant. They want you to enjoy a meal from them, and will go out of their way to help you.

Bubble tea also know as pearl tapioca is everywhere. Let the locals
tell you where the best stand is. None of it tastes bad if you
like the chewy and semi-slimy texture of the tapioca pearls.

Best food suggestion winner from fellow traveler, this sushi cost me $7.25

The first approach is by suggestion. Staying at a hostel is social. Hang out in the living space even to check a map and ask what someone's trying. The staff have to eat too, and they know all the spots. Seasoned travellors will have carved many notches into their chopsticks too. Go with their wisdom. This is the easiest and most worry free way to order. One funny problem came from this approach in which a) its hard to remember the exact alley or lane which the food comes from and b) every restaurant has a red sign. I would often hear "got it from the place with thre red sign near seven eleven." That limits it to several thousand places in Taipei.

What is it? I ordered this by blindly pointing to a menu.

Its an oyster! And its delicious. Food bravery pays off I promise.
You'll only become (street) smarter from it.

Ginger pork dumplings, safer and easier to order. You can
usually spot them from behind the cart.

The next is by exploration. Every twist and turn of every block has store front restaurant and food carts. Each one different from the next. Sometime around food time I would walk up and down a street, maybe twice looking and sniffing for my next meal. See a line, head there. Not sure what to order? Point at the guy in front of you and have what he is having. I would sometimes poke my head around the other side of the cart and try to see what was cooking, and then just point to whatever looked good. Or just pick something on the menu and keep your fingers crossed. Granted this method isn't for picky eaters, but its fun. If I was a little more prepared I may have memorized the Chinese characters for pork, beef, fish, chicken, etc. Or if you have a smart phone you can download an app to translate photos of Chinese characters on the spot.

Really overwhelmed by a foreign food and language? Just eat a taco.

The final is pure laziness. Go to Seven Eleven, a grocery store, or Western-style restaurant and just order recognizable food. They have burritos, tacos, doughnut, pasta, and hamburgers in the Taipei. Its quite the fad. Not feeling brave, just relax and eat something from home. Just don't make it a habit or you will miss out on lots of delicious Taiwanese food.

Worst meal of the trip. For every variety of prepared food in Taipei there
are 5 carts that make it fresher, better, and CHEAPER. Don't waste
your time eating prepared foods unless time or traveling circumstances prevent it.

When left to my own devices I will probably eat a doughnut.
This is a matcha / green tea frosted chocolate doughnut from
Mister Doughnut. Mister doughnut is worth visiting for its
mildly sweet doughnuts. Very dunk-able.

Day 016: Meals to Kill a King

2011-10-28T07:47:00.002-04:00

I'm in Taipei to eat and explore. Not traveling, just working while hanging out in a foreign land. I take eating very seriously. Ask me if I want to try it and the answer is yes. Especially if I've never tried it before. Every meal is big, big enough for a king, and often I have 2-3 a day to make any royal gout flame with fear.

Hot pot food station, pace yourself

I met up with an American friend, Chris, who has been living in Taiwan for more than a year. He has a lot of insight on being a foreigner in Taipei, which is a welcoming place. He answers all my, "How do you make this happen?" over hot pot. Hot pot is a buffet of raw ingredients you cook yourself in a pot of broth kept hot by a burner inside each table. Your first choice is between normal and spicy broth for the pot. Off you go to the food station where there are hundreds of fresh ingredients to choose from such as: cabbage, carrots, peppers, beans, asparagus, mushrooms, fish cakes, meat/fish balls, dumplings, buns, hunks of fish, squid, shrimp, beef, oysters, mussels, scallops, dried noodles, tempura things, and much more I can't identify. There is a drink station with hot and cold tea, juice and sodas. Don't miss the dipping sauce area to mix a series of 7ish sauces with scallions, sesame, and chilis to create the perfect sauce for your perfect selection of anything you feel like eating. Variety is the emphasis as long as you don't go into decision shock. Did I mention there's an ice cream bar of more than 15 flavors and soft serve!

Spicy and normal hot pot broths

Its very casual, and fun. You can't really mess this up as long as you can recognize the difference between cooked and raw food. I ordered spicy broth for my hot pot. It came with a purplish black opaque jelly. I sorta thought it was marinated tofu that had absorbed the dark color of the spicy broth. It tasted neutral and satisfying with an umami flavor. Vegetarians beware: this was not tofu, but pig's blood. If its a dark black/brown/purple in Asia it probably contains blood. That being said blood is pretty yummy, and there is nothing to fear.

Red bean, black bean, and plum (maybe?) ice cream

After a drawn out and pleasant meal we set off for a walk towards the Sun Yat Sen memorial and Taipei 101. Dr. Sun Yat Sen is the over thrower of the Qing Dynasty and first president of the Republic of China. Perhaps inspired by history or just knowing what's what my food guide Michael brings us to a "main land immigrant style" restaurant. The restaurant has been open since the 1950's, which is very very very old for Taipei.

When food is all sort of one color you know its going to be good

Its good. So good. Home cooked with people who remember how food should taste in respect to the past. I eat way too much, because I know this is a unique opportunity. We have a noodle dish with sesame and black beans. Count me in for anything in those combinations. A giant bowl of pork meatball (meat balls the size of a fist) and fish soup are brought to the table. The broth complex and meatier than most of the light and clear broths I've tried so far. The staff comes by every 15 minutes or so with a big tea pot of broth to replenish what we've eaten. There's also a giant plate of pork stacked with sliced pork intestines (chewy) slices of pork (soft) tofu (standard) and pieces of pork meat from the side of the pig's head. I can't stop eating. In addition (if I haven't already tempted you enough) there's poached chicken and stir fried vegetables, and sliced and stir fried scallion pancake. The only beer pairing that can honor this meal is good old Taiwan beer, which we drink in short glasses.

Sesame black bean noodles

Porkity porky pork and some tofu

On hearing my sad attempts to learn some new Chinese phrases from my friends an old man comes over to laugh at me. This usually doesn't happen in Taipei, but he means no harm. Immediately he offers my friend and I a betel nut. Betel nuts are tan, about the size of a small date, and come wrapped in a green leaf. To start the betel action, you bite the end of, and stick it in the back of your teeth on your molars. Spit out the first juice, and keep going. I've never had chewing tobacco, but I'm spitting like it. Its sort of disturbing how much you need to spit. The betel nut is a stimulant, which make the inside of mouth warm and tingly. It also makes beer taste sweet. Take a look at other betel nut connoisseur's mouths and you'll see the long term damage it can do to your mouth. Not a new habit for me. Eating like a king.

Day 015: The Day I Ate Snake

2011-10-26T06:45:00.000-04:00

Stir-fried snake skin delight

After a good long rest after my 24 hour first day I spend the afternoon working. Boo. But food is the main event, and night time is when the carts get cooking. Michael and Katherine decide to take me to Longshan to visit the grand temple. Not only grand, but functioning as an important local place to pray.

Longshan Temple

Longshan nightmarket accompanies the temple, and its not too be missed either. Instead of all the youth oriented night markets full of university students, and skinny tie-dyed jeans. Longshan is full of home goods, hairbrushes, tea, massages, and prostitutes. Its also the place to eat turtles and snake.

Big ass snake, and rats for its dinner

Listen for announcements of snakes medicinal benefits and looks for the cages of snakes and rats. Snake is good for your skin. Its served as a soup. Ours came with 3 shots of other beneficial liquids. One of shots was possibly snake blood, the other de-poisoned venom.

Snake happy meal.

Ours was on sale for $150 NT, about $ 5 US

Snake tastes like chicken, but not as good. Snake tastes like bony chicken, with really not a lot of meat. Beyond its flavor, you feel bad eating snake, guilty. I was not hungry for snake, but the 8 year old tom boy in me wanted to.

The meal

After our snake appetizer came the meal. My food guide Michael took us to an old sit down stand that serves a fish dumpling soup. We had fish ball/dumpling soup, vermicelli noodles, shrimp rolls, and sauteed greens.

Watermelon milk tower

Watermelon milk to wash it all down. Watermelon milk is coming back to the states with me.

Add slashes next to food to place an order

The night markets have lots of little stands on the street. Usually you wait in line to get a serving. There are bigger stands, with kitchens, and seating. Like an outdoor restaurant. You sit elbow to elbow at tables and eat. Even if you can't read the menu you can still get food. A brave eater can just add hash marks next to the dishes you want to try and your table number. In my experience just pick on thing over $60 NT (about $2 US) and 1-2 under. Its a $5 investment and you're bound to get one thing right. Its a little easier than ordering if you don't speak much Chinese like me.

Tomato candy

Tomatoes are dessert in Tawian. I sampled some sugar coated cherry tomatoes on a stick. Just like a candy apple, plus some dried plums in between. Taiwan enjoys dessert.

Fish Gummy

Finding the last empty pocket in my stomach I tried this gummy dried fish slab. Its really the only unpleasant food I've had in Taipei. A powerful fish flavor with a gummy grainy texture that gets stuck in your teeth. Not unlike a thick fish fruit roll-up. After chomping the whole thing in one bite I learned the virtue of nibbling new foods.

Day 014: 24 hour day in Taipei

2011-10-24T08:28:00.001-04:00

Dragon fruit, guava, persimmon, peach, mango, kiwis, and more tropical fruit delights at the night market

I landed at the Taipei airport around 4:30 am. The airport and buses were still asleep. I needed the hour before everything opened to gain my courage. It was hesitant to enter Taipei, and Asia for the first time in my life. Would I get lost constantly, would I be able to communicate with anyone, how will I know what to eat were all the thoughts troubling me before arriving. NEVER MIND those worries. Taipei is awesome. They really love foreigners, especially Americans here. They love helping you and making you feel welcome. They love helping you find subway stops, new destinations, jobs, and breaking down menus and customs. Come right over. Don't hesitate. This is a vibrant city with style and tradition, nature and architecture, and lots and lots of motor scooters.

Kind people bringing me to food right away

I had booked a 2 week stay at hostel in Guting/Shida, near the universities, at Eight Elephants. It just home here. Run by a crew of funny and inviting young ladies. Its laid back without the out to party vibe extremist backpacker vibe i had grown tired of in Australia. Within an hour of arrival Sara, the Eight Elephants receptionist, lead a group of us out for breakfast. A triangle of rice filled with beef, fish, pork, or many other fillings, wrapped in seaweed. I don't know the name, but its recognizable in America.

Smacking a piece of fried pork belly for our lunches

I'm all about business in Taiwan, working on design projects for clients in the states. Food breaks are the main event. I count the hours until my stomach is ready to try something new. Food is everywhere in Taipei. For lunch Sara shows some of the other guests and I Hong Kong style bento box. Each box comes with white rice, with sauteed greens and vegetables, sprouts, and some noodles (rice) and a choice of pork, duck, or beef. How could I pass up duck? The rest had pork. Which was a giant slab of deep fried pork belly hacked up in front of us. It costs less than $4 American. Asia is great. Well Asia is great if you're into meat.

Duck, always into ordering the duck

A few hours of digestion and my Taiwanese friend and supreme food lover whose acquaintance I made in America, Michael, swings by to pick me up with his friend Katerine. He had a wise master plan to show me the sights, night life, and food of Taipei. First stop the Shida night market, which is within walking distance of my home.

Common night market scene

If you've been to Taipei than you know about the night markets. The lively blocks filled with everything from trendy clothing, jewelry, knickknack, home stuff, tea, massages, prostitutes, but most importantly food stands and restaurants. Each has a specialty, snacks, sweets, fruit, all the way up to full meals and the options wind around alleys and lanes for blocks on end. You could spend an entire year of nights at the night markets and never try everything. I'm thankful to have my local Taiwanese friends with me to decipher whats what. Not to mention I'm so overwhelmed I have no idea where to begin.

Buns

First up a fried bun filled with pork and pepper. Warm, fatty, salty, and very comforting. I could eat two and call it a night, but there's so much more.

Porkifyed bun

Next stop is liquid refreshment. Its legal and socially acceptable to walk around with open containers of alcoholic beverages. Katherine and I grab girly fruity malt beverages, mine was grapefruit, while Michael drinks ubiquitous "Taiwan Beer."

Road drinks, this is totally legal

After balking at all the options we decide to sit down to a proper meal. My friends know what to order, and more importantly how to read the all Chinese menu. First a set of garlicky cucumbers with carrot and onion appear, followed by crunchy long pickled seaweed. Both are lightly pickled, and provide a nice contrast from the rich foods we are about to eat. Scallion pancakes rolled with thin beef, oval rice cakes sauteed with pork and tofu, ginger pork dumplings, and beef tendon noodle soup follow. Its a huge spread, but all the flavors are so strong and clear, that I can't stop going between each dish for more and more.

This is what I'm talking about, Taipei

The oval rice cake dish has really pleasant soft bite to it and coated in its meaty sauce is one of my favorites of the night. The noodles as this restaurant are hand cut to be about 5 inches long, and 1/4 inch thick. They have an irregular shape, and look very hand made. They're in a soup with gelatinous soft beef tendon seasoned with star anise and surrounded by Chinese greens. This is my favorite. Its my first night in town, but I'm already gobbling it up with chopsticks. I may be making a mess with my half-assed chopstick skills, but my gluttony is forcing my hands to work.

Would you like some whiskey with your ice?

Next stop a glass of whiskey at A Bar to help digest. Taipei has a vibrant night life full of modern bars to keep any New Yorker like myself impressed. There's table service, and a live band. It feels a bit glamorous. The whiskey is served with balls of ice nearly the size of the glass. Doritos are set out as bar snacks. Dorritos are really popular as food for adults here.

About to be set on fire

Michael orders a special drink. Shot glasses are set over glasses of liquor, set on fire with a torch, and knocked over into the glasses domino style causing the drink to foam and fizzle. The drink is dangerously mild for a mixture of many alcohols.

Cucumber sesame snacks

Sometimes the best company is simple and comfortable. Cucumbers with sesame sauce are a great drinking snack. Healthy enough not to worry about over indulging. The cool crispness of the cucumbers offsets is a nice break from fire and ice whiskey.

Elva Karaoke

I'm really really happy I made the trip to Taipei. So happy I don't care how late I stay out, even if it means staying up past the time I arrived for a little karaoke. In Taipei they have a giant building full of karaoke called Cash Box Party World. Its a tower of singing and drinking. Sometime after cash box I made my way home and slept a long time.

Australia's Exotic Fruit Farm: 2 Fruit Tasting

2011-10-22T09:02:00.007-04:00

Tasting fruits in whole form

You're greeted with a cool glass of water with splash of West Indian Lime at the Cape Tribulation Exotic Fruit Farm on arrival. The flavor is recognizably lime, but subtler, less tart. The fruit farm has been collecting and growing unique tropical fruits since 1988. The tasting is a chance to get up close and personal with some very rare fruits, many of which are grown on the same land the farm sits on. Trish, our instructor also offers lots of information on recognizing when the fruit is ripe, peeling and cutting the fruits, and recipe and flavor pairings. Its a fruity dream in a tropical rain forest.

Tasting list

Breadfruit is a large spiky fruit. When its fully ripe, its a falling apart mess. Its eaten in its starchier state, and has lots of uses. We had ours roasted like potatoes. The flavor was nutty, and rooty. Very like a parsnip.

Roasted breadfruit

You've probably heard of the next one, jakfruit. Its available in a can in the states, and I've had it in halla halla, an Asian dessert. The canned version doesn't have much to do with the real thing. Its a monster. Jakfruit is the biggest tree-born fruit and can weigh as much as 88 pounds. The segments of the jakfruit are removed and cut into pieces after the skin is removed. The fruit is full of a sticky latex that will aggressively adhere to skin and clothes. Its recommended to wear gloves when cutting it up, and wipe your knife to prevent build up.

Cutting the jakfruit

The flavor is beautiful. Bright honey, banana, even a little watermelon in there. The texture is crunchy, and smooth. The segments contain seeds, which can be boiled and eaten too.

Jakfruit segments

Pomelo are becoming less and less exotic. They are widely available in New York City markets. These Burma bases fruits are the granddaddy of a many other citrus fruits, namely grapefruit.

Cutting the pomelo

Pomelos are still very similar to grapefruits. The fruits are triple the size with a drier texture. The fruit, pith and rind are all edible. The flavor is less bitter than grapefruit, but with a good citrus taste.

Pomelo fruit

After the first 4 fruits the tasting took a real departure towards very exotic. Sapodilla is small brown fruit which turns a caramel color when ripe. An indicator of its sweet caramel flavor. I found it similar to a fresh date, but fleshier with a little mealy texture. Its wonderful.

Cutting the sapodilla fruit

The sapodilla is also used to make gum. The seeds should not be eaten. The sapodilla fruit is best fresh, and hard to cook.

Sapodilla, soft and sweet

Yellow sapote was another fruit first for me. Its texture is like no other fruit. Its velvety soft and a little dense. The flavor was mild. My eyes may be playing tricks on my palette, but I detected some pumpkin notes, perhaps a little peachy too.

Yellow sapote in halves

Because of the yellow sapote's unique texture it goes very well with cheese, in yogurt, and ice cream. Its just a delight to feel it in your mouth and shines with its stand-out yellow color. Of all the fruits I tasted I really imagine this one having its own place in the commercial market.

Yellow sapote fruit with a creamy texture

Next Trish held up what looks like a plus size unripened tomato. In fact even the farmers have a hard time knowing when this fruit is ripe. They watch the birds to know when to pick it. The black sapote is ripe 4-5 days later. From then you must be quick to eat it, or falls apart.

You'd never guess what's inside the black sapote fruit

Black sapote is also known as pudding fruit, because its flavor is just like pudding, Jell-o pudding to be more exact. Its related to persimmon, and shares a similar taste. The flavor is sugary, and undistinguished. But its minimal flavor and decadent texture makes it a great palette for other flavors. Go ahead and add cocoa powder or orange juice, maybe some cinnamon or spice. Black sapote could be the healthier vegan alternative to custards and richer desserts. If it weren't so hard to package I can imagine this fruit also having a greater life in the international market.

Black sapote the pudding fruit

Davidson plum is local to the Daintree rain forest area. Its another surprise, but this time not so sweet. The tiny plum is mouth wrenching sour. Remember warheads? Its that sour, but I believe with more of a physical effect. Your face can not stop its self from puckering and twitching. The color is as large as the flavor, fluorescent magenta. How does nature event this stuff?

Mini Davidson plum with a huge flavor

The davidson plum is popular in savory foods. It does well in sauce with gamy flavors. Kangaroo with davidson plum anyone? It can also be used to color foods with 10x the color of a beet. If I got my hands on some of these plums you can bet I'd make some really radical sour pickles.

Davidson plum electric sour flavor

The star apple is neither an apple or a star, discuss. Well, there is a star revealed by cutting the fruit in thirds. The flavor is mellow and sugary, a bit like a fresh fig. The texture is velvety and airy. Emphasis on the mouth-feel rather than the flavor.

Cutting the star apple

The star apple should be eaten in wedges. The skin is not edible.

Star apple

The next fruit has many names to many people. Guanabana aka soursop aka custard apple or the people's jakfruit. Its the best fruit I've tried yet. The flesh is wet and avocado soft with some fibers. The flavor doesn't know when to stop. Complex flavors are sweet, acidic, and a bit perfumed. Describing the taste is like describing the flavor of a banana. Nothing compares.

Saving the best for last, guanabana

Guanabana is ripe when the scaly skin is pale green. The stay away from the toxic seeds. The fruit is often paired with champagne. This fruit has an international reputation already, and I can't remember seeing it in America. I am dead set on finding it at home.

Guanabana aka soursop aka custard apple

With or without the exotic fruit farm the Cape Tribulation in Northern Queensland is a spectaluar place to visit. Combind with this special farm dedicated to collecting, and educating people on the delights of fruit I think its a number one destination for anyone interested in food. Really interested? Try a work stay or a few nights in their B&B. You only stand to risk to spoil your senses.

Australia's Exotic Fruit Farm: 1 Permaculture

2011-10-20T09:35:00.000-04:00

Star Apple grows at the Cape Tribulation Exotic Fruit Farm

Cape Tribulation is a special place. Located on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest, the world's oldest living rainforest, its only accessible by a small winding road after crossing the crocodile filled Daintree river by ferry. Those who find it often stay a long time I encountered a number of travellers who picked up and stayed. Digby and his wife have rooted down in Cape Tribulation since 1988 when they purchased a piece of land with the dream of growing a fruit.

Fruit trees of all variety grow together, some shading others to protect them from the heat of the sun.

The farmers have collected exotic fruit seed from around the world and using permaculture have learned to make them grow in the tropical jungle. The grow over 60 varieties of tropical fruits and foods including: mangosteen, lychee, cloves, pummelo, turmeric, vanilla bean, jakfruit, limes, and many many more. No mono cultures here. The farm practices eco certified permaculture.

A mangosteen tree. Jakfruit, breadfruit, and mangosteen all are planted together to help one another grow.

The fruit farm wholesales its fruit, mangosteen being the cash crop, but also benefits from tourism in the Cape Tribulation area. Fruit tastings, a Bed and breakfast, and the sale of fruit products like jam are all available. Not only profitable, the farm gets to educate and promote its practices in this unique climate. The Cape Trib Fruit Farm has a work stay with the Wwoof program for anyone interested in tempting a longer stay. Vist their site for more details: www.capetrib.com.au

Edible plants for daily use are grown closest to the kitchen. Our guide plucks an leaf allspice from us to smell. It has a strong allspice odor.

Bamboo was planted as drainage. Its sucks up excess water.

Peanut plants cover the ground to replace the nitrogen the trees use up.

Davidson Plums are native to the Northern region of Australia. Our guide advises that you should just wait for them to drop rather considering their unique tall skinny size.

This season the plums have uncharactertically grown lower to the ground after bad weather and hurricanes.

A ripe Davidson plum

A guanabana fruit

Breadfruit on a tree. Some bread fruit grow directly off the trunks of the trees, and some of branches.

Grocery Shopping Australia

2011-10-18T10:39:00.001-04:00

Something pineapple? I Didn't try, and no one I asked had either.

Hitting the grocery store in a foreign country gives me kid in a candy store syndrome. I could stand in the aisles reading ingredients and feeling produce all day. Its necessary to do so in Australia on a budget. I've been grocery shopping to avoid the $3.50 syndrome. Coffee, water, Coca-cola, chips, everything costs $3.50. Most restaurant/cafe meals are $10-20. I can easily drop $50 without even trying, but that makes 7-10 meals depending. Its important to remember that Australians are paid $19-22 an hour minimum wage. Quality of life is higher here, because everyone is paid well, but prices reflect their pay stubs.

Strawberries a darker red than California/Florida, taste the same. Mangoes rule this country as a standout fruit.

Grocery stores are well stocked, and fresh foods seem fresher than in America. A bag of lettuce in America doesn't have the same flavor as one piece of lettuce in Australia. Is this because Americans don't like the taste of their vegetables, or because Australia is so much better at growing them? Australia lacks the variety foreign food available in the America. You aren't going to find flat leaf and curly parsley, culantro, or peaches. Again I don't know if Australia is proud to be selling food it produces itself, or if its too expensive to be importing a wider variety. Its probably unfair to compare anything to NYC where the melting pot of residents call for lots of ingredients.

Good peanut butter isn't really available outside of the states. I find it mostly too thick, so that it practically closes your throat, with an off flavor. Not enough salt or sugar. Natural peanut butter is a better option. My pal Ben has located this variety, which is really is a good representation of peanut in butter form.

Tim Tams are the nations pride. A crunchy wafer biscuit covered surrounding sweet chocolate mouse, can coated in more chocolate. Sugar is more prominent flavor than chocolate. The textures are right on. Tim Tams come in lots of flavors, white chocolate, caramel, dark chocolate, mint, and run raisin.

$11 a kilo (about $5 a pound) for bananas is a good deal in Queensland. They were more in Sydney. It may seem like a shock, but Australia doesn't import food it can grow. Floods and cyclones have devastate crops since March, so bananas are scarce. Its also a few weeks from the beginning of the banana harvest, when more will hit the market.

A triumph of flavor technology from the Smiths chip company. Bacon chips taste more like bacon than most bacon and are just as crispy too. All that's missing is the hot fat texture. Awesome with the super thick sour cream in Australia. I look forward to making a Bacon chip, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I nabbed a few bags to bring back to America.

They said it not me. Coon cheese will not be making an appearance in America anytime.

They like their chilies here. Just liked the name. Nothing special to taste.

Artificial butter for fairies.

Got to have ice cream in the jungle. Maxibon is half ice cream sandwich, half chocolate dipped ice cream bar. Perfect for people like me who enjoy a little of everything. The ice cream is smooth, thick, and custardy. Maxibon I hope to see you in America some day.

Day 004-013: Queensland and Back

2011-10-16T10:12:00.005-04:00

Didn't get sick of daily diet

To get to Queensland you have to visit the bustling tourist and backpacker wasteland that is Cairns. It may not a bad town, but it presents itself as a diving board to the rest of the beautiful north eastern region of Australia constantly pressuring you to eat, drink, and sign up for a dive. My hostel was welcoming, and I found my way to Woolworths aka Woolies the grocery store chain. Lamb is a big deal here, and much more affordable. I bought 4 baby chops for $6.50 a good deal and a big treat for a lowly traveller. Despite the hostel's pathetically low gas flame I managed to cook them to perfection. I only had an appetite for two. I shared the rest with others backpackers who were surprised and hesitant to indulge in the lamb.

Lamb chops and broccoli rabe a superior meal made a backpackers hotel

I loaded my grocery bag before heading further North to Cape Tribulation with breakfast and lunch foods. Avocados, mango, apples, oranges, dried fruits, nuts, hard boiled eggs, rolls, lettuce, and salami, and Timtams. A good healthy regimen that worked out well and saved me at least $25 a day.

Hills, vines, palms and beach on the way to Cape Tribulation

Cape Tribulation is located next to the Daintree rain forest. It is the world's oldest rain forest, and the only place where the great barrier reef touches the beach. It's a little hard to get to, full of salt water crocodiles, and stingers (summer only) but magnificent. Everyone I encountered on my way up and on vacation there was dedicated in love with the area. But it is the jungle, and resources are few. The kitchen at my hostel did not offer any cups, plates, cutlery, knives, pots or pans. I did keep my stuff in the fridge. Until I nabbed some plastic ware, I actually used my hands to open mangoes and avocados for sandwiches. I was happy to have brought my food with me, the grocery store was limited.

Mackay Reef and sand cay at the Great Barrier Reef

After plenty of full days swimming in water holes, hiking around the self-guided trails in the jungle, snorkeling the reef, and swimming in the ocean I treated my self to prepared meals from my resort. All the food was delicious, and I stuck to pizzas though kangaroo rump an kangaroo lasagna made appearance on the local menus. On my last night in Cape Trib a young girl came by and requested my pizza box. Little girl was fire crazy, and using the boxes to pump up her camp fire. We watched as she enjoyed her pizza box fire momentarily jump.

Pizza fueled fire Cape Tribulation

Next stop Mission and Wongaling Beaches. This area has seen some hard times since being hit by a hurricane/cyclone in February. Damage is still around, but can't keep stop the beach from showing off its beauty. I continued my avocado, fruit, bread, nut diet here. The first night I arrived was Saturday, and indulged in sausages on white wonder-like bread at the backpacker hotel's free Saturday night BBQ.

Damage evidence Mission Beach

After Mission Beach it was already time to head back to Cairns. Europeans (Germans, English especially) gravitate to Australia where they can get working holiday visas. They stay for over a year only needing to work a few months and travel in similar paths. Cairns is backpacker capital of Australia. Hostels/backpacker hotels can hold up to 500 at time, and are all competitively modeled in "resort" style with pools and palms. The real benefit is that breakfast is often included. Toast with jam, butter, vegemite, and peanut butter, cold cereal, coffee, tea, and milk are laid out.

For kilos of toast

I was elated to leave backpacker land for the real world in Sydney. After 9 days I was ready for my own bathroom, kitchen and quiet bed in the apartment my friend is sharing with me. An even bigger benefit is a kitchen attached to your living space. I spent an entire joyful afternoon cooking a meal from scratch. Beet salad with garlic and parsley, sweet potatoes with cinnamon, chili, and cumin, and tofu soaked in soy plum sauce.

Return to cooking back in Sydney: beet salad, roasted sweet potatoes, and tofu.

Day 003: Blue Mountains

2011-10-14T10:36:00.001-04:00

My first passion fruit

It's still cold in Sydney. Worse, its colder than New York City. Otherwise I'm impressed with Australia. Every morning starts with toast, coffee, and mango. Maybe yogurt, peanut butter. Most lunches involve avocado on bread and apples. Oatmeal is called for on a chilly day before heading out to the Blue Mountains with my ex-pat American friends Ben and Meredith.

3 Sisters of the Blue Mountains

Its about a 90 minute drive west from the edge of Sydney to the Blue Mountains. The mountains are foggy with a misty clouds collecting around the peaks and valley. Thankfully rain does not drop on us, and the clouds burn off by the afternoon.

Mountain picnic lunch

We choose a 7 km walk. It sounds easy but factoring the steep decline and incline to get into the valley its no walk in the park. The first part of the walk curves around the perimeter of the ridge. Looking down into the valley you can see white specks as cockatoos fly from branch to branch. After more than an hour we decide to stop for lunch.

Ben and I have predictably packed avocado sandwiches and apples. Meredith on the other hand has very generously collected kiwis, apples, oranges, strawberries, cheese, olive bread, and more avocados to share picnic style along with thermoses of hot tea. Meredith participates in a CSA in Sydney, so the kiwi and avocado have exceptional taste and textures. Both are denser with brighter flavors. I also broken open my Japanese green tea Kit Kat which tastes a lot like white chocolate. A little anti-climatic.

Skip it next time

The big moment is when Meredith splits open a passion fruit. I've seen passion fruit flavored items, but have never had one. Definitely the flavor sensation of the year. Passion fruits transform in your mouth from tart to sweet in a big way that only a tropical fruit can. My first reaction was, "Oh my god its like gum," because passion has the magical morphing flavor of juicy gum. The texture is wet and loose with seeds that slide down your throat without drawing much attention to them. I have since been hunting them from grocery stores. Passion fruits are best when they are shriveled up. Bigger is better. Passion fruit is perfect on yogurt.

Surrounded by waterfalls, ferns and slippery steps descending to the valley

After lunch we wind our way down the stairs past "fern gully" to the valley. The built board stairs are wet an muddy, so every step must be considered. We change paths a few times to avoid the terrifying stairway to heaven, a steep set of 900 stairs straight up. After watering ourselves and a few stretches we drive to the local town Katoomba in search of scones, but end up happy with curry and sausage pies. The trail wiped us out, and my day is over except to pack and prepare for my trip up to Queensland.

Day 002: Sydney

2011-10-12T21:35:00.011-04:00

I did well the first 2 days in Sydney. I was very mentally awake. What happens to your physical body on a 14 hour time difference is out of your control. It was raining and gray, so first priority in the morning was buying umbrellas. Afterwards off to Blacktown to love on some marsupials, reptiles, and birds. Australia really has great wildlife even if half of it (spiders, snakes, crocs, dingos, stingers, jellies, etc.) will kill you.

Koalas are like little furry people

I pet the kangaroo after it grabs the food I was feeding it away.

Wallabys are miles cuter than kangaroos, this one followed us around.

Wiped after an afternoon of cuddling marsupials we headed to the Rocks towards Sydney Central. Lord Nelsons is the oldest pub in Sydney, and brews its own beer. Most beers in Australia are watery, but the beer at Lord Nelson's is excellent.

Pure drinks, food and rugby at Lord Nelsons in Sydney

Lord Nelson's beer list

Ketchup is called tomato sauce. Never mind because sweet chili is the new ketchup. Its bright pink with little chili bits floating in it. A bit like sweet an sour sauce. Not at all spicy. It comes with fries, chips, wedges along side sour cream. Sour cream is unbelievably luscious here. Thicker and with less tang than America's sour cream. I could eat it by the spoonful, or just apply it to my thighs as they say in my family.

Potato wedges with sweet chili and sour cream at Lord Nelsons, top notch pub fare

We tried reading the paper and playing pass and play Scrabble while digesting plate of wedges and a few pints of beer. Not a bad way to pass a Sunday afternoon unless World Cup Rugby is on. It was. Until I learn the rules, rugby is just a violent beastly man on man in shorty shorts sport.

After a few hours a walk, train ride, and stop at the bottle shop for white wine we sat down for seafood at Garfish in Kirribilli. Its BYOB. Its chilly but they have lovely covered outdoor seating with area heaters. Pacific oysters are plump with a clean ocean flavor. Again they come with sweet chili, like most things in Australia.

Snapper pie with broccoli rabe

Garfish serves an elegant list of regular dishes including snapper fish pie, fish and chips, salt and pepper squid, and a few more. The highlight is the specials hauled daily from the ocean. I had the famed Australia favorite barramundi. A thick moist flavorful piece of fish that practically melts in your mouth. Served on a comforting and familiar bed of peas and potatoes I can't imagine a better meal.

Barramundi on buttered peas and potatoes

For dessert, or do they say pudding, we had caramel ice cream on a Belgian waffle. Indulgent. Rolling off our chairs, we made our way down to the waterfront for the best view in Sydney. Sydney's harbor is full of nooks, crannies, and beaches, but only this view includes the Opera House and bridge. It was nearly 50 degrees by now, and jet lag attacks after 8 pm, so off to bed. No Sydney night life for me. Food, koala, and coffee.

Day 000 - 001: 40 hours from NYC to Sydney

2011-10-03T16:42:00.011-04:00

Taipei water machine, desperately balancing lack of water with bathroom access is key in traveling

There are no days in the realm of travel. If you're on a plane for 14 hours, and you arrive a day later, or 2 days later you just don't count days. The shades are drawn sun up or down. Without movies (I had movies) you're basically in an isolation tank especially when you're on a flight of 99% Chinese and Japonese.

Food was what all time frames are based on. Every 5 hours or so you're given another meal. Meals, were classified as snack, hot, cold, or light. Tea and coffee (China oolong, as the flight staff happily inform) were brought around in between while you'rr locked down under a plastic tray and lap table, which is its own kind of hell. I didn't get photos of the meals. Pity 6 foot tall me on a 14 hour flight. I had the emergency exit row with nowhere to stow my belongings but in the overhead bin.

Meals were better than expected. The first, a chicken breast on mashed potatoes was almost like a home cooked meal. Tender and moist. There was chicken fried rice, which tasted like chicken fried rice heated up several thousand miles above Asia. Not bad. Salmon over rice did me in. No more hot meals for me after that. Never have the fish option.

Oz customs made fun of these

The real highlight of the trip was the 30 minutes I spent in Japan. I wanted to try everything. My instincts told me to go for the Kit Kats. There are hundreds of flavors of Kit Kat in Japan. The water from the fountain was the cleanest most flavorless water I've ever known. I had to immediately re-board my plane, well after taking a shuttle to security, then taking a shuttle back.

Long Black and flat white coffees

I arrived in Sydney at 11 am Saturday after 3 flights starting out at 10 am on Wednesday from Brooklyn. There is nothing like the freedom of walking outdoors, showering and the taste of hot Australian coffee. Add an egg sandwich with bacon and avocado and the return to daily life is like beginning over.

Avocados are serious in Australia

Ditmas Park CSA Week 14

2011-09-13T17:45:00.003-04:00

Week 14, and my last CSA share for 6 weeks. I shed bitter lettuce tears of sadness as I prepare to travel to Australia and Taiwan. I collected only part of the CSA share in preparation of depature. I left potatoes (currently have 10 lbs laying around my kitchen) and broccoli in the swap box. Looks like this is the last-ish week for tomatotes. But I've thought that before. Jorge's tomatoes don't stop most years.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 14 Share Contents

6 ears of corn
1 eggplant
1 big old zucchini
9 medium-small tomatoes
7 small beets
2 onions
4 hot peppers
2 red peppers
1 big bunch lettuce (was labeled "sacrole" so maybe escarole?)
1/2 lb yellow wax beans
1/2 dozen eggs

Candied Bacon

2011-09-10T13:00:00.004-04:00

Dangerous candied bacon

What is that dark slimy looking spider like blob up there? Well it's simply one of the most addicting flavors to ever be added to confections and desserts. Candied caramelized bacon. That's right salty and smoky taste awesome with sweet and chewy food. It's almost evil. Putting meat in dessert feels bad, but tastes so good. I've written this recipe before, but by popular request I have chosen to give candied bacon it's own recipe. Its is amazing baked into chocolate chip cookies, or if you're really fancy these monster chocolate toffee cookies. You could also use it to garnish cupcakes (think banana peanut butter Elvis style!), doughnuts or whatever needs a modern and slightly wild kick. Whatever you put it in, people will ask you for the recipe. Send em here.

There are two popular recipes for candying bacon. Well one is more popular than the other. Most often I see recipes suggesting people put bacon on a silpat, cover with sugar, and let it do its thing in a 300 degree oven. That will work, and it will work with much less effort. But the bacon fat will crowd the baking sheet, and prevent the sugar from adhering and caramelizing perfectly. Small batches on top of the stove allows you to perfect the carmelization.

Candied Bacon

1 lb bacon
1 cup demura sugar (raw sugar)

Par-cook the bacon in a wide sauce pan or stock pot until only beginning to brown. You want to render off half the fat so you don't get that swimming in fat problem. I usually work in batches of 4-5 strips, pouring the fat off into a can between batches. You will finish cooking the bacon as it caramelizes.

Fry bacon a little bit to render off fat first

Pour off all remaining oil from pan. Sprinkle 1-2 tablespoons of sugar right on to the pan. Lay 4 strips of half cooked bacon on top, and cover with another layer of sugar. Let sit for 3-4 minutes until the sugar begins to melt. You may hear a quiet hiss or see small bubbles. If its loud and spitting oil you need to turn the heat down or you will burn the sugar. Periodically press the bacon down and into the sugar to really coat it. Flip after 5-6 minutes, and repeat. The bacon will be a very dark brown when its ready. Remove from pan and let harden in a cool place on a cookie sheet about 3 minutes. Repeat until all the bacon is done.

I find a pound of bacon takes the better part of an hour, maybe more like 90 minutes after clean up. You can chop the bacon up and add it to any baked good, or freeze it in airtight bags. The bacon is coated in salt and sugar, which means it should last for a few months. Don't be too ashamed to it plain like candy, sooooo good.

Cucumber Mint Vodka Watermelon

2011-09-01T16:31:00.005-04:00

Watermelon man hole for vodka

I should have posted this a few days ago. I'm worried you'll see this post and want to make a big fat vodka watermelon for your Labor day picnic/bbq/yacht party. And you should want to but you need to act NOW. That's right, if you are slightest bit interested in boozing up a watermelon turn off the computer, buy a watermelon and some vodka and come back.

Did you do it? Lets proceed. It is not common knowledge unless you have tried this or read lots of recipe comments that it can take up to FOUR DAYS for your watermelon to absorb vodka. There are million recipes that look simple, and you think will take 6 hours or overnight. Unless you know where to buy a "dry" watermelon it will take at least 2 full days for a great vodka watermelon to begin. A week would be awesome. You might not get invited back to the party if aren't careful. Here are my real time instructions.

Cucumber Mint Vodka Watermelon

1 large watermelon
1/2 cucumber cut into spears, divided
1 handful of fresh mint leaves, divided
2 350 ml bottles of vodka

You're going to be feeding your watermelon over the course of a few days, so first you'll want to prepare the watermelon and space for it. Now look at your fridge and make sure that you can fit the watermelon with 6-7 inches head space for the vodka on a shelf. You may need to rearrange shelves. Place the watermelon on a plate to catch run off juice, and prevent it from sliding around. I also used an upside down coffee can lid to keep it snug.

Make sure you have room for this in your fridge

Take an old, but clean cap from a bottle of oil or similar. Press the cap down onto the top of the watermelon, where you plan to feed it, making an indentation. Now cut inside that indentation to make an opening. Using a spoon dig down and carve out some watermelon. 5-6 inches is good, or to the center of the watermelon. Turn the watermelon upside down and drain out some of the fluids too.

Fill the watermelon cavity half way with vodka from the first bottle of vodka. Slide half the cucumber spears and mint into the vodka bottle. Now for your big maneuver, carefully flip the vodka bottle into the watermelon. Place in the fridge and let sit for 1-2 days until absorbed. After the first bottle is absorbed, crack open the second and repeat the last set of steps. Some of the vodka may not absorb from the second bottle. It depends on the size and juiciness of your melon.

When it's party time you can use the same cap from the first step as plug to keep all the juice in place! Smart! Or just cut it up and bring it in slices, but there really is nothing like a the show of carving the vodka watermelon in front of a hot and thirsty audience.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 12

2011-08-31T08:20:00.002-04:00

Its been a solid month since I've picked up my share due to vacation! I missed my vegetables, and when I returned the predictable cucumber, pepper, tomato, onion, kale, melon, and corn (would you believe its the first corn of the season for me?) combo were still waiting for me. Broccoli is here now too, a hint that cool weather is on its way, and different set of vegetables are growing.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 12

7 large tomatoes
3 cucumbers
3 small zucchini
1 red onion
1 white onion
1 bunch kale
1 egg plant
1 bag wax beans
1 head broccoli
1 watermelon
2 peppers
4 ears of corn
6 eggs

Ditmas Park CSA Week 8

2011-08-02T18:24:00.003-04:00

After several above average weeks, I am happy to see a normal variety of food in normal amounts. Not that I don't love a challenge, and I have proudly seen very little go to waste. I am overjoyed to get a cantaloupe. This blog, so called Cantaloupe Alone, attracts lots of google searches for preposterous cantaloupe recipes. I often find "cantaloupe cookies," "(hot?)cantaloupe (rind?)pickles," "baked cantaloupe," "cantaloupe butter," and "cantaloupe broth." Search terms that have never ever crossed my mind as food I would ever eat. I was thinking in honor of these die hard searchers who are continually finding and probably being disappointed by my blog's lack of cantaloupe cookie recipes I would figure out some new cantaloupe recipes. Meta inspiration. But back to my CSA for right now.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 8
10 medium and small tomatoes
2 onions
2 heads of garlic
1 bunch of basil
2 eggplants
1 bunch of kale
5 medium/small cucumbers
4 banana peppers
1 patty pan squash
1 yellow squash
1 cantaloupe

Cilantro Basil Slaw

2011-08-01T10:22:00.003-04:00

Softened and flavored cabbage = dang good slaw

Raw cabbage is fibrous (sometimes tough) and watery. Those two conditions add up to a crunchy food. Crunchy is fine in small amounts, but just try to chew and crunch your way through a 4 pound head of cabbage in a week. You will end up with a sore jaw, and maybe a headache. There are two ways to address this issue. 1) Use heat to soften/cook the cabbage. Using the stove is fully off limits. It's been over 95 degrees in my kitchen this summer. 2) Cut/grate/process the cabbage into bitty pieces. That's slaw for you folks!

I swear by Bittman's recipe/technique of salting the cabbage to draw some of the water out, which further softens the cabbage. Once salted and squeezed of natural moisture the cabbage sucks up flavorful dressing. Let me be clear: the cabbage still has a little crunch, but has been humbled by the salting. Ooh that coleslaw is the perfect thing for topping burgers, tacos, sandwiches, and complements anything off the grill.

Cilantro Basil Slaw Recipe

1/2 large head of cabbage, about 2 lbs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tblsp white wine vinegar
1 tblsp vegetable oil
1 large pinch red pepper flakes
zest of one lime
juice of one lime
1 big handful of basil leaves, chopped
1 big handful cilantro leave, stems removed, chopped
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
more salt to taste

Core cabbage and shred with box grater or the shredding disc of a food processor. Place cabbage in a large strainer. Sprinkle with salt and sugar, and toss to uniformly coat. Let site over a bowl for 30-60 minutes. Press every 10 minutes or so to help draw out fluids. Before you're ready to dress the coleslaw use a the back of a large spoon to really push out the last of the fluids. You will notice the cabbage has reduced in volume. It will perk back up.

Add squeezed cabbage to a bowl. Add vinegar, oil, pepper flakes, lime zest and juice, basil, cilantro, and sesame seeds. Stir, and taste. Add more salt if necessary. Serve!

I have noticed that this slaw tastes best the day it is prepared. The vibrant fresh lime and cilantro flavors seem to fade a bit in time. You could always add an extra squeeze of lime juice by day 3 to make it seem new again.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 6

2011-07-19T18:03:00.001-04:00

Big stuff in week 6 from the Ditmas Park CSA

It's the week of the callaloo bigger than a raccoon/medium sized dog. Callaloo bigger than a small child. Callaloo big enough to curl up in bed with, not like it's gonna keep you warm. This bunch of callaloo is so big I tell you it takes up the entire bottom shelf of my fridge hiding the tupperware containers in a forest of leaves. Not to mention a large head of cabbage, that's also pretty big.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 6

1 enormous head of callaloo
1 bunch of basil
1 head of cabbage
1 red onion
1 white onion
2 cucumbers
2 zucchinis
2 heas of garlic
1 yellow squash
1 bag of yellow wax beans
8 medium tomatoes
11 red sweet peppers
6 eggs

Thurston's Ginger Beer, Again

2011-07-17T11:51:00.006-04:00

No one will see it coming, but this is killer ginger beer

Summer has been a whirl wind of picnics, barbecues, road trips, and questionable luck. The combination is keeping me out of my kitchen. I am repeating an old summer time favorite recipe, Thurston's Ginger Beer. I am also demanding you make this recipe. It is easy. It is cheap. It was given to me on a boat by a Jamaican Guyanese friend, and I have never seen anything like it online. It have served it every which way with soda, rum, vodka, lime to all matter of thirsty chefs and mixologists. Everyone loves it. Its is authentic, and nothing in a bottle can come close to this ginger beer recipe. Thinking I'm bragging? Try it yourself.

Thurston's Ginger Beer

2 quarts water (1/2 cup reserved)
1 large ginger root peeled
(Thurston indicated that the piece be the size of a man's 4 fingers and palm)
1/2 cup rice
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup turbinado or raw sugar
1 quart seltzer water
ice
lemon/lime slices to garnish

Heat all but 1/2 cup of the water over high heat in a pot. Meanwhile puree the ginger in a Cuisinart, or a blender until smooth. A spice/coffee grinder also works well. Place the ginger puree, rice, and salt in a tall glass pitcher or jar with a good lid. Add the water when hot, but not boiling to the pitcher and stir. I like to put the lid of my jar on and shake. Cover and place in fridge for 2-3 days, shaking/stirring periodically.

Strain through a fine mesh sieve or cheese cloth, squeezing to remove fluids from the rice/ginger puree. I had to strain mine twice. Heat 1/2 cup water with 1/2 cup sugar until sugar dissolves. Add to ginger beer, and stir.

Now comes the moment of truth. Taste your serious biting sharp ginger beer. I found I needed 2 to 1 ginger beer to seltzer to tame it just enough. More sugar may be necessary, but this isn't exactly your grandmother's Vernors, so don't over do it. Add lemon slices to make it pretty.

What makes this recipe real is that you don't cook the ginger, its full of raw ginger power. I am not sure what the rice does. Certainly it adds some starch to the mix, maybe curbs the bitterness of the ginger? It works.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 4 + Prospect Farm Week 1

2011-07-09T13:23:00.010-04:00

13 varieties of vegetables, we are so spoiled

If I dropped my fridge down horizontally on the floor, removed the door I could literally bath in vegetables. I went on a trip for Independence day that turned into am mega road trip to the South extending well past Tuesday's pick-up. This week's Ditmas Park CSA haul was picked up by the crazy awesome Sarah Friedland. I didn't get my veggies until Thursday night after resolving to take a cab to pick it up. I barely caught the last light of the day to snap a quick photo before I inhaled most of the beets, greens, a salad made with kale, cukes, basil, green onion (previous week), and half a head of lettuce. I hadn't tasted a fresh vegetable on my trip, and it was time to bath my stomach in crisp cool vegetables.

Peek a little closer at those hard veggies

Ditmas Park CSA Week 4
2 heads of lettuce

1 bunch collards

1 bunch basil

6 beets with greens

1 green pepper

6 medium red potatoes

2 long red hot peppers

3 cucumbers

1 large zucchini

1 yellow squash

4 tomatoes

1 bag purple shell beans

5 yellow onions

6 eggs

AND this was the first week of Prospect Farm's harvest, which is divided over two days. I didn't take my herbs or greens because I have enough for now, but there's always room for tomatoes, cucumbers, snap peas, and zucchini. Would you believe I've been working for 1 year and a few months for this moment. I'm happy it's here.

There was more, but I could not handle it!

Prospect Farm Harvest Week 1

17 cherry tomatoes

1 zucchini

1 cucumber

5 snap peas

Callaloo Coconut Soup

2011-06-25T18:25:00.005-04:00

Howdayado Callaloo Soup

Big bunches of callaloo have been inhabiting my vegetable drawer, a large part of my Ditmas Park CSA. I vaguely know what to do with callaloo. Stew, soup, steam? It's like spinach, with a little bit more iron, and perhaps a less tender. Callaloo has a pleasant mineral taste that really mellows in a soup. I'm happy it's here before it's too hot to cook it down in a soup. Make sure to rinse it plenty of times to remove the grit that may be on it. Nothing worse than dirty grit callaloo stew.

Almost like spinach, but healthier

Callaloo Coconut Soup

1 large bunch callaloo (roughly 1 lb)
1 large onion, diced
2 tblsp vegetable oil
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 quart water
1 can coconut milk (unsweetened)
1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
1 pinch red pepper
1 tblsp white wine vinegar
salt to taste

Separate leaves from callaloo stems. Rinse each individually in a large clear bowl. Rinse callaloo until water is clear to make sure all the grit is off. Meanwhile heat oil over medium heat in a large soup pot. Add onion with a large pinch of salt and cook until transparent. Chop callaloo stems down to 1/4 - 1/8" pieces. Add to onion and cook for about 10 minutes until soft. Add the callaloo leaves with about 1 cup of water to the pot. Stir and cook until softened. Add remaining ingredients: water, coconut milk, spices, and vinegar. Bring to a boil, and turn off heat. Transfer soup to a high speed blender or food processor. Process until smooth. Add salt to taste and serve.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 2

2011-06-22T09:03:00.004-04:00

It's already week two of my CSA distribution. I'm splitting a full share, alternating pickups every other week. It's crispy and fresh as ever with a few new varieties of vegetables from last year. It's also already enormous, which is nerve racking considering the season has only begun. Let vegetable endurance challenge and my favorite time begin.

Ditmas Park CSA 2011 Week 2

4 tomatoes
3 zucchini
1 bunch beets
1 kohlrabi
1 bag snow peas (new!)
1 red onion
2 yellow onions
1 bunch green onions
2 heads lettuce
1 bunch kale
1 bunch calaloo
1 bunch basil
6 eggs

Duck Fat

2011-06-16T15:37:00.003-04:00

pure liquid duck

I made a duck. With the whole duck I also go to enjoy, bones for broth, offal for paté, and gobs of fat and skin which can be rendered down. The flavor is pure duck, liquid fatty duck. Most fats have the same amount of calories per serving, but different amount of saturated and un fats. Saturated fat gives food that greasy crave-able fat flavor. Just as a review of your average fats:

1 tablespoon of olive oil 119 calories / 2 grams saturated fat
1 tablespoon of butter 100 calories / 7 grams saturated fat
1 tablespoon of lard (pork product) 115 calories / 5 grams of saturated fat
1 tablespoon of duck fat 112 calories / 4 grams of saturated fat
1 tablespoon of peanut oil 112 calories / 4 grams of saturated fat

Duck fat isn't healthy but it's not the most bad for you oil either. I'm sure all kinds of debates can be had over what makes a fat good or bad. If you want to check out more nutritional stats visit NutrionalData.com.

Rendered Duck Fat and Cracklings
Duck Skin
Drippings from cooked duck

Make sure to reserve every drop of duck drippings from your duck. Place in a glass container, measuring cups work great. Freeze for 20 minutes until the fat hardens. Scoop the fat out of the container and place in a small heavy bottomed pan. Slice up the duck fat into thin strips, 1/4-1/8". You may use cooked or uncooked (which you may have trimmed off before cooking) skin. It all has fat in it. Place skin in the pan along with 1 cup of reserved duck liquid.

Heat over medium low heat. You don't want the fat to sputter and splash. Cook for 10-20 minutes until all the liquids have evaporated and skins are a deep golden brown. Remove duck skin cracklings with a fork and drain on a paper towel. Salt immediately, and those are ready. Cool the fat off. Store chilled in a glass jar for 3-4 weeks.

What do you do with this pure gold oil? Well, you will automatically be left with duck crackling as you render the fat out of the skin. Crunch bits you can use to garnish food like bacon, or eat like chips. I found them way too rich to eat plain, but my guests enjoyed them with cheese and fruit at a picnic. The oil can be used to saute potatoes, yams, green beans, zucchini or any veggie. Try throwing it melting over pasta, topped with cheese. My biggest success was using it to make Duck Fat Mayo! Yes duck fat mayo was awesome on anything between two slices of bread. I adapted Serious Eat's mayo recipe, it's a good idea to jump over there and read the detailed instructions if you have not made mayonnaise before.

Duck Fat Mayo

1 large egg yolk, room temperature
1/2 tsp table salt
1/2 tsp Dijon Mustard
2 tsp white wine vinegar, divided
2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice, divided
1 duck fat
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Either leave your egg out at room temperature for 3 hours or place in luke warm water for 20 minutes. Whisk together the yolk, salt, mustard, 1 tsp lemon juice, and 1 tsp vinegar. Whisking constantly add 1/4 of the duck fat in a slow steady stream. Whisk in the remaining lemon juice and vinegar. Finally add the remaining fat in a slow steady stream followed by a dash of cayenne. Allow mayo to sit at room temperature for 1 hour before refrigerating. Should be good for a week. Hello heart attack week.

Rainbow Cookies

2011-06-06T11:51:00.007-04:00

Happy rainbow cookie will make you WORK

Rainbow cookies nearly defeated me. To make them requires almost 1 lb almond paste, 6 eggs, 2 lb of butter, lots of steps to make the batter, 3 rectangle pans to bake, many steps to assemble, and so much patience. Multiple steps means multiple ways to screw up, and once you've messed up a few steps you're going down a creek without a paddle. You can see the struggle in the photos, but I did not give up.

The cookies tasted fine, but not perfect. I found the recipe in the May 2o11 issue of Bon Appétit. You may also notice my cookies are yellow, red, and blue rather than the Italian reg, white, and green. I made the cookies to match my composting diagram for Prospect Farm. I brought the cookies to Compost for Brooklyn's Block Party to highlight the layers of trench compost. Each cookie acted as a mini trench compost diagram. A cute idea that some appreciated, and had some asking is this made of dirt?

Rainbow Cookies
2 tblsp plus 2 cups unsalted butter, at room temp
6 large egg white
6 large egg yolks
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
12 oz almond paste (not marzipan), chopped
2 3/4 cups plus 1 tblsp flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red food coloring
1/2 tsp yellow food coloring
1 tsp blue food coloring
3/4 cup orange marmalade
4 oz bittersweet chocolate

Whip 6 egg whites until soft peaks form. Add 1/3 cup sugar and continue to beat until firm peaks form. Chill. Meanwhile line three 9 x 13 inch rectangular baking pans with foil, allowing foil to overhang length-wise. Grease foil and sides of the pans with 2 tablespoons of butter.

Add 1 cup of almond paste and sugar to a mixer and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. Increase speed to medium high and slowly add 2 cups of butter. Beat until fluffy. Add in yolks, one at a time until combine. Add salt and flour, being careful not to over mix. Fold egg whites in two additions by hand with a spatula. Lots of work, eh? Take a breather.

Uggh, I hate artificial colors, but it's a tradition.
You can use green in place of blue to, so Italian.

Preheat oven to 350. Divide batter into 3 bowls. Add 1 color of food coloring to each bowl, and fold until evenly colored. Now you're ready to bake. Transfer each colored batter into one prepared pan. Spread evenly, and place in oven. Bake for 9-12 minutes. Rotate pans half way. Remove cakes from the oven when batter is just set.

Yellow layer will go up, over, and on top of the marmalade covered red layer

Meanwhile melt marmalade. The recipe suggests you strain the peel parts out, but I think it's fine to leave it in. Brush half of the marmalade on top of the red layer. Lift the yellow layer up using the overhanging foil. Flip top-side-down over the red layer. Peel foil back. Brush the top of the yellow layer with remaining marmalade. Lift the blue layer up using the overhanging foil. Flip top-side-down over the yellow layer. Do not peel the top layer of foil. Place a cookie sheet on top of blue layer. Carefully flip all layers on to the cookie sheet. Place another cookie sheet over the red layer. Weight down with cans, and chill for 4 hours or up to one day. Congratulate yourself on completing the hardest part of making rainbow cookies. You are out of the woods.

Ready to chill? The layers are.

Melt the 4 oz of chocolate over in a double boiler (or a heat proof bowl such as stainless steel or tempered glass, over boiling water) or in a microwave. Whichever you prefer. Remove cake layers from fridge, and peel back top layer of foil. Brush half the chocolate over the red layer.

Take your time, and the results will line up neater then mine. Less trimming equals less waste.

Place uncovered in freezer for 15 minutes to harden the chocolate. Remove from freezer. Place wax paper on top of chocolate layer. Replace cookie sheet over waxed paper, and carefully flip so blue layer is now up. Peel back foil on the blue layer. Brush remaining chocolate over blue layer. Freezer, uncovered for another 15 minutes until hardened. Cut the cookie into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices. Serve! Finally! I kept mine in an airtight freezer container until they were ready to be served.

Duck Tales: Roasting a Whole Duck

2011-05-31T17:36:00.012-04:00

Oh duck. I have taken your beauty, but given you delicious flavor from moist cooking

Shop Rite in Midwood Brooklyn is a super-duper market. It has a meat department one city block long. Somewhere among the 100's of cuts of pre-packaged meats I found a pile of ducks. I grabbed a mid-sized 6lb whole duck and checked out. From that duck I was able to make 2-3 pounds of luscious dark roasted meat, 6 oz of pure rendered duck fat, 2 handfuls of duck cracklings, 1 quart of duck stock, and a duck liver, heart, and kidneys I have plans to turn into some paté. Expect a few of those recipes soon.

What a long neck my duck had

I hate when people use the flavors of other foods to describe another. Tastes like chicken, can't get any less creative. Duck does not taste like chicken. Sorry to rely on the cliche, but duck may be the "pork "of the poultry world. It has a stronger richer flavor then turkey, Cornish hen, or even chicken. Moist, and hopelessly fatty from a thick layer of fat under it's skin.

Having no idea how to roast a duck. I instinctually searched for a recipe on Epicurious. The duck wasn't cheap ($18), and I wasn't going to dry it out or burn it away with a somewhat reliable or not internet recipe. Gourmet magazine had my back. I sought the most complicated multi-step recipe. Easy and fast wasn't going to cut it. I settled on braising (moist heat to cook the meat), chilling (to prevent meat from cooking further while roasting) before roasting shortly (to crisp the skin). The product was a perfectly luscious (I think!), but less than butcher shop brown attractive duck. I will definitely be leaning on this process from now.

If you haven't tried duck, and are anxious to spend $20, 8 hours, and lots of residual oven heat on a strong flavored meat you may dislike look for duck legs or breast first. I'm sure they have them at places like the giant shop rite.

Roast Duck With Ginger Marmalade Glaze

1 5 1/2 - 6 1/2 lb Long Island duck
sea salt
1 carrot, sliced length wise into medium strips
6 green onions, chopped in half, root ends removed
1/2 cup sugar
hot water
1 tblsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1 large pinch red pepper flakes

Glaze
2 tblsp marmalade
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tblsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1 pinch cayenne

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare duck by pricking skin all over with a fork, which allows the fat to drain out. Place duck in a roasting pan. Note that a pan with higher sides is better than the one I'm using. With breast up, and cavity towards you gently separate skin from meat with your hand. Be careful not to tear the skin, which I did. I needed to use a knife, making a slit above the cavity to get under the skin. I'm not sure why this step is necessary, you aren't going to shove butter or herbs under the skin as you would a turkey, but I do as I'm told.

My hand inside a duck

Coat the skin and cavity with salt and rub. Place carrots and scallions in the cavity of the bird. Sprinkle ginger, coriander, and red pepper on top of duck, along with sugar around the bird. Add hot water (shrinks the skin, again don't know why, doing as told), within an inch of the top of the roasting pan. Cover the pan tightly with foil, and place in oven.

Flavor rubbed

After 1 hour remove from oven. Carefully peel back foil. Using a wooden spoon placed in the duck's cavity and a spatula, carefully flip the duck breast side down. Re-cover roasting pan with foil and cook for another hour until meat is tender. The wings on my duck actually fell off. A snack for me! Move duck into a bowl full of ice cubes. Strain remaining fluids and save. That's some rich duck stock and fat for another dish. Chill duck in fridge on ice for 2-3 hours until cavity feels cold.

Not so elegant after 2 hours of cooking in hot water, but moist

Meanwhile prepare glaze by mixing the marmalade, soy sauce, vinegar, ginger and cayenne pepper in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Stir until bubbling. Once the marmalade melts turn remove from heat.

Remove duck from fridge, and pat dry. Heat oven to 500 degrees. Place a piece of foil on the bottom of the roasting pan. Place duck breast side down on top of foil. Brush glaze over the bird. Roast for 15-20 minutes until browned. Remove bird from oven, flip, glaze the breast side, and return to oven. Roast for another 15-20 minutes until browned. Remove from oven, and let rest. It's finally ready. You and everyone in a one block radius will know by the delicious smell. I couldn't help but tear into my duck, eating a leg off the bone. The rest I shredded and served on sandwiches with cucumbers, mayo, and pickled ginger carrot relish. You could also carve and serve the breast for a formal meal.

Cloud-Like Biscuit Recipe

2011-05-24T16:48:00.006-04:00

Never have I been so pleased with a biscuit recipe

I bake a lot. I bake for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, picnics, bar mitzvahs, weddings, special occasions, and on. I also bake for me. When I'm out of whatever, or sick of eating whole wheat pita, oatmeal, and wild rice I like to bake up some carb-heavy, gluten nasty flat bread, zucchini bread, cake, cookies. I am adding this biscuit recipe today (and I've made a lot of biscuit recipes) to that list of quick breads.

The batch you see above is the 4th I've made since January, and all have been a success out of the gate. My cloud-like, fluffy, can't do anything but rise biscuit recipe is adapted from Greg's Southern Biscuits, which I found on Allrecipes.com. The main difference is mine don't have lard or bacon drippings, but only because I don't have that food in my kitchen. You bet I'd make them with good lard if I had good lard. Also, this is a great recipe for using up leftover, extra buttermilk.

Cloud-Like Biscuits

1/2 tsp butter
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
(I use Bakewell's which I order from the King Arthur Catalog)
5 1/2 tblsp cold butter
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with 1/2 tsp butter. Mix flour, salt, soda, and powder in a medium bowl. Cut butter into 1/4 inch chunks and add to dry ingredients. Blend butter in by pinching and rubbing with your hands. Butter should resemble a fine meal when ready. Make a well in the mixture and pour buttermilk in. Mix with your hands lightly until just combine.

Lightly fold and turn the biscuit dough to build layers

Scrap the dough, its a little sticky, out on to a floured work area. Pat dough out about an inch with your hands. Fold the dough in half, turn 90 degrees, pat gently, and fold again. Repeat 3 more times. This builds the biscuit layers up. Now pat or roll the dough out to one inch. Cut biscuits with a 2 1/2 inch round cutter. Its important to push the cutter straight down and lift straigh up. Turning the cutter will seal the edges preventing the biscuits from rising. Use a spatula to move the cut biscuits to the buttered baking tray. You should have 6-8 biscuits.

Now you are supposed to pop those in the hot oven and get baking, while ignoring the rest of the dough. The more you handle the dough the tougher it gets. I simply can not bring myself to do trash the dough. Readers with lots of biscuit experience, what do you do with that excess dough from the first cut? Maybe I'm cutting my biscuits wrong. I squish and re-pat the dough one or maybe two more times to maximize the dough. Serve the virgin first cut biscuits to good company and hoard the second and third batches for yourself.

Bake all the biscuits for 15-18 minutes. Biscuits are ready when they're so light they nearly fly out of the oven, and have beautiful browned bottoms. Move to a cooling rack immediately. Serve with a hunk of butter on top for breakfast, lunch, tea, or dinner.

Barley Pilaf with Peas and Bacon

2011-05-17T19:25:00.002-04:00

It's wise to keep a secret list of meals you can put together with what you might have in the pantry. Frozen vegetable (spinach, peas, fava beans, artichokes) + canned/curred protein (tuna, bacon, ham, prosciutto, smoked fish salami, etc) + grain (pasta, rice, noodles, barley) is a pretty good equation for those "I need a meal without a trip to the store times." These meals taste awesome with an egg on top, or a douse of cheese which I would consider more of a bonus garnish rather than an ingredient.

I came across Job's Tears (aka Chinese Barley, Tear Grass, or Hato Mugi) in a Japanese grocery store in San Francisco. Its shape is rounder and fatter than your average barley. The grain has a memorable toasted cereal flavor, not far from Cheerios or puffed wheat cereal. The texture is springy and light. The best news is that's its really really healthy with iron, fiber, and protein. According to the package Job's tears are known for being easy to digest, and and suggests adding to soup and rice. I think it is tasty enough to stand on its own and delicious cooked along spring flavors, thyme, peas, and bacon.

Barley Pilaf with Peas and Bacon

1/2 cup Job's Tears or Pearl Barley
1 tsp butter
water
1/2 lb bacon, chopped
1 cup frozen peas
1 tblsp white wine
black pepper
red pepper
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
salt
olive oil

Add the barley to stock pot with 1 teaspoon of butter, and a pinch of salt over medium low heat. Allow the barely to lightly toast, stirring often. Add water to cover the barely 2-3 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and cover. Simmer for 1 hour until barley is soft with a little bite. Add frozen peas during the last 5 minutes of cooking. Drain and return to the pot. Meanwhile saute bacon (I used slab bacon) until well done. Add bacon to barley and peas along with a few grinds of fresh black pepper, a small pinch of red pepper, white wine, thyme leaves, plus olive oil and salt to taste. Stir and serve warm. This meal is really great with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese or fried egg on top and served on top of spinach leaves.

Big Fat Avacado Sandwich

2011-05-10T13:40:00.000-04:00

Orange and green are pretty food colors.

I like to cover the corners when creating food for groups. Something for the meat eaters and something for the non-meat (vegan, vegetarians, etc.) eaters. Fruitarians, raw foodists, and gluten impaired tend to be harder for me to please. I like grains, bread, and baking. I have a little list of star non-animal ingredients that I like to showcase for the vegetarians. Avocado, peanut, almond, tahini, mushroom, tofu, tomatoes (in season), whole grains (barley, wild rice, bulgur), legumes (black bean and garbanzo particularly) olives, sweet potatoes, and eggplant all stand on two legs for both crowds. Garnish with whats in season and everyone goes home full and happy.

This sandwich was dripping with creamy avocado, which I seasoned with lime, salt, and green onion. Almost like guacamole. Salted carrot and fennel, shaved thin for an easy bite, contrasted with a lightly sweet-salty crunch.

Big Avocado Sandwich

2 ripe avocados
1 green scallion, finely sliced
juice of 1 lime
salt
olive oil
1 peeled carrot
1/2 fennel bulb
fennel fronds, chopped
1 12-14 inch ciabatta loaf

Cut the avocados in half. Whack the pits with a sharp knife, turn, and pull out. Be careful with that maneuver. It works well, but if you're holding the avocado and miss you might get your hand. Scoop avocado flesh out with a spoon, and mash in a bowl. Add sliced scallion, lime juice, salt to taste, and 2 tsps of olive oil. Mix until combine. Peel the carrot and fennel firmly with a peeler to make nice strips of each. Sprinkle with salt.

Freshness

Cut ciabatta loaf in half length wise. Sprinkle olive oil on top, and rub with fingers to coat evenly. Spread a thick layer of avocado over the bottom half of the bread, and a thinner layer on the top half. Pile the bottom half with carrot and fennel strips, parallel to the bread. Top with fennel fronds, and cover. Wrap it up and it's ready to go to the party.

Steak Sandwich Lament

2011-05-03T13:23:00.003-04:00

Loaded steak sandwich

Sandwiches may be my real passion. An artful stack of textures and flavors in a portable package. Filling and satisfying bites of everything you're craving all at once. Plus they are terrific for sharing. Do I need to sell you on the form and function of a sandwich? Nope, but it's always nice to dream about the perfect sandwich. Choosing high quality ingredients, and dressing them up a bit make for a superior experience. Also taking some time to consider how to cut and layer your sandwich will allow everyone to take a big bite without the sammy guts dropping out.

Blue Cheese and Steak Sandwich

1/2 lb skirt or hanger steak (the fresher the better)
1 tblsp molasses
1 tblsp soy sauce
1 splash hot sauce
1 tblsp oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tblsp crumbled blue cheese
1/2 tsp fresh cracked pepper
1 12-14 inch ciabatta loaf, split
6 oz roasted red peppers, sliced into strips
fennel fronds, optional
olive oil

Marinate the steak for 1-4 hours in molasses, soy sauce, pepper, hot sauce, and oil. Meanwhile mix blue cheese and buttermilk together to make the dressing. Remove the steak from the marinaded. Squeeze off excess marinade, and pat with paper towels. Turn the heat up to high/medium-high under a hot grill pan until it begins to smoke. Add steak and cook for 2-3 minutes per side until medium rare. Remove and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice the steak in thin layers.

Roasted red peppers, buttermilk blue cheese dressing and steak, slap it on some bread

When it's almost sandwich time slice your ciabatta bread in half length wise. Drizzle a little olive on in each side, and rub to spread evenly. Next spoon some of the blue cheese dressing on the bottom half. Place the sliced roasted red peppers in a row over the bottom. It's nice to layer the slices parallel to the length of the bread. When you cut, and later bite into it the skinny slices are less likely to fall out. Next layer the steak slices, also parallel to the length of the bread. Sprinkle with fennel fronds, or whatever green you have laying around like lettuce, basil, arugula etc. Adding something green shows that you are trying to be healthy, and adds a nice contrast to the other ingredients. Drizzle remaining dressing on top of the sandwich pile and cover it up with the top half of bread.

I wrapped mine in wax paper and chilled it for a half an hour so the flavors could get to know each other. Cut into 2-inch slices, serves 6.

Bread and Burritos in Springy San Francisco

2011-04-28T17:37:00.007-04:00

San Francisco's best Tartine bread basking in 4:59 pm light

I haven't been updating Cantaloupe Alone much, but I have not stopped eating. I know some people love to blog, twitter, and post while on vacation, but I'm in my element away from electronic devices. Today is my first day back from a quick 2 day trip to San Francisco visiting good friend and food lover / artist extrodianare Ava.

First stop: Tartine. Hands down the trip could have ended after a morning of sampling 1 gougère (light and cheesy), 1 scone (just nice), 1 almond croissant (monstrous and delicious), and 1 morning bun (the classic). The morning bun was so much more sophisticated then I imagined. Flaky croissant dough with crispy caramelized top with crusty and sweet bottom, hints of orange, rich but not overpoweringly decadent. Worth waiting in line for. Perfect with their bottomless coffee. I didn't remember my camera!

Tartine bread several minutes old

The next afternoon we happened to be biking home from nearby Dolores Park at approximately 4:50 pm. Several minutes before their famed bread comes out of the oven. In perfect time we snagged a loaf with zero wait. Fortuitously Josey Baker Bread happened to bike by for a with a 3 gallon drum of flour under arm. A real San Fran moment in gluten history. I found the bread incredibly flavorful with a great sour dough tang. Our bread was still steaming inside. We were perhaps a few minutes too early cutting the loaf in half before the hot moisture finished absorbing into the thick loaf, as explained by Mr. Baker Bread. Later on when the bread was cool I found the texture silky and soft with a big chew. Easily one of the best bread experiences ever.

Ceviche from El Farralito

You can't visit San Francisco without eating Mexican food in the Mission. I had a veg bean burrito with drips and drops of all the different salsas from El Farralito. Ava's ceviche was the winning item at lunch. California has some choice produce and seafood that make every flavor bigger and fresher.

El Farralito burrito

Other food moments of note included sushi from Japantown's grocery store, Italian food in North Beach, It's It ice cream sandwich, ice cream, ice cream, more ice cream, and homemade spaghetti, and numerous sweet California oranges. I'll have San Francisco on the brain for a while. It's a great city to get to know. I was lucky to see so much in a short time with the help of two bikes and a fun friend.

Vegetable Hunting in Early Spring

2011-04-03T10:26:00.013-04:00

I spent a solid 3 weeks consuming bread, cheese, meat, sugar, and dairy. Less of a craving, and more situational testing out recipes (scotch eggs, mac & cheese with bacon, shepard's pie, mushroom pot pie, rolls, crackers, and more obscene baked goods I'll show you later) and cooking for a big dinner party. This week I decided to veg out at the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market in Brooklyn. It's been a cold and wet spring in the New York City area, but you can still make a week's meal from the goods at the market. Cheese, meat, yogurt, flours, grains, legumes, pickles, jam, bread, cookies, and doughnuts are popular 52 weeks a year at the market. Hard vegetables and and hardy leafy greens are out too. Here is some of the veggie porn for your viewing:

Mushrooms, as expensive as meat but hardy and full of minerals and fiber. Don't chop the character of these unique shrooms as an ingredient in other dishes. Saute them in butter or oil and let them stand on their own feet as a beautiful entree or side dish.

Spinach, cool weather's great irony, green gift for salads, layered in lasagna and pastas, soups, frittata, or simply steamed and tossed with sauteed garlic.

Potatoes are everywhere, parsnips are fewer found, but sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) are harder to find. Sunchokes with a smooth, nutty tuber taste can be lightly steamed and then sauteed in butter (really all farm fresh veggies are excellent this way), sliced and fried into chips, pickled, or roasted with other root vegetables like parsnips or carrot.

Apples are around most of the year too. It's a New York's specialty. Winesaps are my favorite orchard apple; crispy, tart with just a little sweetness. Perfect for eating raw. These winesaps reminded me of the kind I used to pick growing up in Ohio.

Radishes, turnips, kohlrabi, and daikon of all shapes, sizes with varying spicy flavors. These groundlings make awesome pickles, are great shredded or chopped into salads and slaws, sliced into discs for dip, or try a savory Asian daikon cake.

I also saw an abundance of carrots, squash, cabbage, leeks, onions, herbs, and ornamental flowers. Just a few stands had pea shoots. More of those plus ramps will be on their way soon. And oh I can't wait for my CSA to start up too.

Fig Bars

2011-03-27T19:39:00.004-04:00

Fig Bars better than you remembered

Loving a food is nice, calling it your favorite is serious. You crave it, you dream about it, you go out of your way to bring it to your life. That was the way I felt about Fig Newtons before I cut out processed foods or most things with corn syrup. If you've ever eaten the brown clump plastic wrapped fig bars often stacked in lopsided piles at the register of NYC deli's you'll know there aren't too many good commercial replacements. THEN this recipe came to my life and offering a newer better kind of fig bar. Try remembering your favorite part of the fig newton, and then imagine it made 10x times better with butter, rich dried fruits, and a touch of almond. I adapted this recipe from the allrecipes website. It still has quirks, but it's good enough to pass on.

Fig Bars

(makes 40)

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tblsp vanilla

1 tblsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup almond flour

3 cups flour

2lb figs

1 lb raisins

1 lb dates

1/2 apple, cored and chopped

1/2 orange with peel, chopped

3/4 chopped pecans or walnuts

1 tsp cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light colored and fluffy about 7 minutes. Add eggs incorporating each into the batter before adding the next. Add vanilla, baking powder, and salt. Mix until combine. Add half of the flours and gently mix until mostly combine. Add the remaining flour and mix until flour is just barely combine. Cover and chill for 90-120 minutes, or overnight.

Add figs, dates, and raisins to the bowl of a food processor. Run until dried fruits form a paste. Add in apple and orange, and run until smooth. Add nuts and cinnamon, and run food processor one final time until nuts are chopped up.

Preheat oven to 375. Remove dough from refrigerator. Roll about 1/8 inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Spread dried fruit paste down the center. Fold in dough in half over filling, and seal. *Cut into rectangles 1 x 2 inches with a knife or pizza cutter. Move to an ungreased cookies sheet with a spatula, spacing 1/2 inch apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes until bottoms are golden brown. Serve to adults and children, and be prepared to accept compliments.

*Note: You may have extra dough, the quirk of this recipe I have not worked out. I found the extra dough made nice cookies on their own.

Dirt Talk Two Tonight at Sycamore

2011-03-16T11:59:00.003-04:00

I'm proud to present (for Prospect Farm), but still hesitant to host tonight's Dirt Talk Two: Garden Design at Sycamore Bar + Flowershop in Ditmas Park with Sustainable Flatbush.

Dirt Talk Two: Garden Design
With Speakers Tom Angotti with Jesse Alter (Hunter ) and Chris Kreussling (AKA Flatbush Gardener)
March 16th, 2011
7 – 9:30 pm
Downstairs @ Sycamore Bar and Flowershop, 21+
1118 Cortelyou RD, BK (Q train to Cortelyou)
$5 suggested donation (proceeds benefit Sustainable Flatbush & Prospect Farm)
——-

Tom Angotti and Jesse Alter led a group to Cuba in January that studied urban agriculture and organic farming. Tom teaches urban planning at Hunter College and helped start Prospect Farm in Brooklyn. Jesse is a graduate student at Hunter and works at the Center for Cuban Studies in New York.

Chris Kreussling (AKA Flatbush Gardener) is a garden coach with more than 30 years gardening experience in NYC. Chris is also the Director of the Urban Gardens and Farms initiative of Sustainable Flatbush and a community member of the Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities advisory board, a project of the Cornell Waste Management Institute.
http://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/

Sustainable Flatbush brings neighbors together to mobilize, educate, and advocate for sustainable living in their Brooklyn neighborhood and beyond.
http://sustainableflatbush.org/

Prospect Farm is a community group in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn that is working together to grow food in a formerly vacant lot, with the mission toward creating a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm that can serve our community. Prospect Farm is the community leader for the Kensington/Windsor Terrace neighborhood group for the Brooklyn Food Coalition.
http://prospectfarm.org/

http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/2011/02/dirt-talk.html

Tomato Soup

2011-03-13T15:11:00.004-04:00

Really this red and really better than can soup from a can

I was sick earlier this month eating bread and soup for 7-10 days. Campbell's Tomato soup became dinner on more than one occasion. The soup has a nostalgic but salty sodium and tinny flavor. I discovered this weekend that it doesn't take much to make a soup that blows Campbell's lingering memory out of the way in 30-45 minutes. I also discovered the line between tomato soup, tomato sauce and bbq sauce can be a tricky one to walk. I used canned tomatoes, with summer a distant memory. You could easily roast fresh tomatoes if your climate or season allows.

Tomato Soup

1 red pepper

1 large onion, chopped

2 tblsp vegetable oil

36-38 oz canned crushed tomatoes (one big and one normal sized cans)

12 oz vegetable or chicken broth

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/4 tsp cayenne

1/4 tsp sriracha

1/2 tsp smoky Hungarian paprika

1 tsp sugar

4 drops liquid smoke (optional)

2 tblsp olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Core and de-seed red pepper. Wrap in foil and roast in 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked. Remove from oven, and let rest for 10 minutes. Remove skin, and chop. Meanwhile saute onion in oil until translucent in a large stock pot. Add roasted pepper, canned tomatoes, broth, spices, and sugar. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Puree in batches in a food processor or blender until smooth. Return pureed soup to pot and liquid smoke, olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir, and it's done. Serve with grilled cheese, bread, or whatever comforts.

Salmiakpastiller

2011-03-10T15:47:00.006-05:00

Strong candy, beautiful Finnish packaging

If you hadn't guessed from my Piparkakut recipe, I enjoy Finnish food, culture, and people. I had a chance to visit in 2003 traveling from Helsinki to Mantyharju to Rovaniemi to Pyha in Lapland and back. A beautiful trip filled with lakes, trains, reindeer, hiking, coffee, beer, and lots of great food. My travel companion and I stayed with Jaakko Matilla who led us berry picking in the countryside. Afterwards I pulled together a blueberry pie with the small blue berries (like the Maine variety) that no one has ever forgotten. The rest of the trip was filled with herring (creamed, pickled, fried, and stuffed in bread) and lots of liquorice treats.

Lapin Kulta, a not so fancy beer I enjoyed in Finland, 2003

Jaakko is visiting NYC this week, and I've been treated to an impressive ring of ruis rye bread from Nordic Breads NYC. I'm told is better than the kind in Finland. Jaakko also brought a bag of Salmiakki, or should I say Super Salmiakki candies. Salmiakki contains ammonium chloride (salmiac) which gives the already aggressive flavor of black liquorice a salty flavor. The candies are beyond chewy. The texture is more like a hard gummy candy that clings to your teeth and tongue with a vengeance. The flavor is only slightly sweet, nearly savory, liquorice with a bite of table salt taste and an unexpected menthol minty flavor. I'm eating them in small quantities. The flavor lingers on for an hour or more, jammed in my molars.

Reindeer in Lapland.

I haven't traveled abroad in a few years now. Jaakko has made it clear that NYC and America's new foodie tendencies toward organic foods, CSAs and sustainably produced foods would be welcome in Finland. I've been elected to help. I can't make promises but it's a thought to grow on. Finland must be doing okay. Jaakko tells me that you can split a whole or half reindeer meat share.

Mini Pies

2011-03-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

2-bite sized perfect mini pies

Mini (palm sized) pies are roughly equivalent to cupcakes, plus a little bit of extra work rolling dough, minus the frosting, which no one but sugar freaks actually like anyways. My good pal Craig (Sugar Daddy) invented this idea one Christmas handing out individual mince pies at a party. This recipe is dedicated to him! So simple they should a phenomena found everywhere. Fill 'em up with apples or whatever pie you like. If you want to be fancy make 2 small batches of filing for variety. McDonald's has nothing on these.

Mini Pies

Whole Wheat Pie Crust
1 cup ice water
1 tblsp apple cider or white vinegar
1 cup fat (butter, or shortening, or a mix)
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 egg, beaten

Apple filling
t tblsp water
1 tblsp brandy
8 oz dried fruit (pears, figs, apricots, raisins, dates etc), chopped coarsely
3 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and diced 1/4 - 1/2"
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of sea salt
2 tsp white flour
1 tblsp butter, cut up

Prepare the crust first. Pour ice water and in a 2 cup measuring cup. Its exceptionally easy to measure the fat into the water adding until water displaced up to the cup line. Add vinegar, swirl, and freeze for 5-10 minutes. Add flours, salt, and sugar to the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to blend. Add half of the chilled fat to the food processor and pulse until medium crumbs form. Add the remaining fat and pulse until small and medium crumbs form. Its better to under mix in the processor then over to avoid tough crust. Stop the processor, remove lid and smoosh in any stray large clumps of fat with fingers. Be careful to avoid the blade. Put lid back on and add beaten egg while pulsing. You may need to add a few drips of ice water to bring the dough into a ball. Dough should be soft but floury and modestly dry. The dough is ready when it holds together when pinched. Dump dough on a sheet of wax paper. Form into a disc, and wrap in wax paper. Chill in refrigerator for 1-2 hours or freeze for up to a week inside an air tight plastic bag.

Brandied dried fruits have been making lots of appearances in desserts lately

Prepare the filling. Mix brandy and water in a small sauce pan. Bring to nearly a boil over medium heat. Add chopped dried fruit, and turn off heat. Mix and let soften for 5-10 minutes. Drain fruit. Add apples, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, salt, flour, and dried fruit to a bowl. Mix and let sit for 10-30 minutes allowing fruit to macerate.

Use biscuit cutters to fit dough into muffin tins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove dough from the fridge. Let sit at room temp for 30-45 minutes if its been in the freezer. Butter the bottoms and sides of a dozen muffin tins. Place disk of dough on a well floured surface and roll 1/8 inch thin. Cut 3 inch circles with biscuit cutters and gently place in muffin tins. Fill each crust to the top, or a little over, with filling. The apples will bake down. Dot with pieces of cut butter. Cut little circles or shapes with remaining pie scraps and use to decorate pies, leaving some areas open for air to escape. Bake for 30-40 minutes until crusts are browned and filling bubbles. Cool for 15 minutes. Serve plain or with a dollop of rum spiced whipped cream, like Craig did.

Garlic Goodies

2011-02-20T12:40:00.005-05:00

I love roasted garlic. Sweeter, smooth, spreadable easier-going version of garlic. The acme of savory garlic flavor without bite. Set garlic on foil square, drench in oil, wrap foil into a present and bake. That's what I did for years until I finally realized that I could be making a second product at the same time. Garlic perfumed oil isn't just a by product of roasted garlic, its an equal garlic treat to dab on vegetables, use to dunk bread, blend into sauces, dips, sprinkle on fried food, pizzas, salads and everywhere else you use plain oil.

Roasted Garlic and Oil

3 cups vegetable oil

2 heads of garlic

cracked pepper

a few fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, mint, sage etc)

red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Remove the excess loose papery skin around the garlic. Its fine to leave most of the skin, but you don't want the excess floating around in the oil you plan to eat. Cut the top of the garlic heads, and place in a oven-proof pot with oil and seasonings. Cover and cook for 45-60 minutes. Flip garlic heads half way. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. Squeeze roasted garlic out of the heads and use on any and everything. Pour oil into a glass jar with a lid or carafe. Should be good for 1-2 weeks.

Brooklyn Dirt: Monthly Talks on Urban Farming and Gardening

2011-02-14T19:58:00.002-05:00

The first Brooklyn Dirt talk is Wednesday at Sycamore. I organized this event with Sustainable Flatbush, and I'm looking forward to "digging deep."

Prospect Farm and Sustainable Flatbush are proud to present Brooklyn Dirt: Monthly Talks on Urban Farming and Gardening.

Talk One: Dirt and Soil

With Speakers Jay Smith and Chris Kreussling (AKA Flatbush Gardener)

Sycamore Bar and Flowershop

Wednesday February 16th, 2011

7 - 9:30 pm

1118 Cortelyou RD, BK

Q train to Cortelyou

21+

$5 suggested donation

proceeds benefit Prospect Farm and the Urban Gardens and Farms Initiative of Sustainable Flatbush

Event on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188915917798918

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Jay Smith is a lifelong environmentalist, member of several environmental organizations, member of the Park Slope Food Coop, completing a Certificate of Horticulture from BBG, deeply interested in Urban Agriculture and re-localization of food production in anticipation of food issues in the wake of the peak oil crisis.

Chris Kreussling (AKA Flatbush Gardener) is a garden coach with more than 30 years gardening experience in NYC. Chris is also the Directory of the Urban Gardens and Farms initiative of Sustainable Flatbush and a community member of the Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities advisory board, a project of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, and earned a BBG Certificate in Horticulture, 2009.

http://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com

Sustainable Flatbush brings neighbors together to mobilize, educate, and advocate for sustainable living in their Brooklyn neighborhood and beyond.

http://sustainableflatbush.org/

Prospect Farm is a community group in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn that is working together to grow food in a formerly vacant lot, with the mission toward creating a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm that can serve our community. Prospect Farm is the community leader for the Kensington/Windsor Terrace neighborhood group for the Brooklyn Food Coalition.

http://prospectfarm.org/

Baked Bone Stock

2011-02-13T10:24:00.007-05:00

Crispy baked bones

I've already written a recipe for vegetable broth and explained chicken stock this is a baked bone recipe. Baking meat bones gives depth to the meat flavor steeped out for a rich stocky umami flavors. Beef and lamb bones are brilliant for this recipe. If you have a dog then she'll appreciate an extra hunk of bone too.

The difference between what's in the soup can/box and in your soup pot starts with good broth or stock. Inspired by Brooklyn Boullion and Andrea Beaman I've been trying to incorporate stock into more of my meals. Being winter, those meals are usually soup. I try to make stock in advance, freezing it in different sized containers for different uses. I even do that crazy thing they suggest on every cooking show ever and freeze cubes in my ice tray then pop them out to be stored in bags. 3 cubes of stock can really improve your mashed potatoes/pasta/sauteed vegetables/sauce/soup/rice/braised meat etc. Its a secret weapon you keep in your freezer.

On the rare occasion I eat meat at home its almost always on the bone. After the meal is over, the bones go in the freezer until I have 3-5 hours to keep a pot hot on the stove. You can also buy bones at the butcher for not much money. I got these bones last time I bought a leg of lamb which I had trimmed on site. The bones came complimentary.

Baked Bone Stock

2 lb meat bones (beef or lamb)
10 cups of water
5 sage leaves
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dark miso paste or 1 tblsp soy sauce

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Lay bones out on a baking sheet. Bake for 45-60 minutes until brown. Turn half way through cooking. You should hear bubbling and spitting as some of the fat cooks off.

Reduced soup, increased flavor

Remove from sheet from oven and place bones in a stockpot with water, sage, bay, and miso paste. The miso paste is a little bit of a cheat. You want a little salt in your stock, but not too much as stock is an ingredient that will be salted later on down the road. Miso adds that touch of saltiness but also colors the stock brown. If you don't have miso, try soy sauce for a similar effect. Bring the stock up to a boil over medium high.

Lower heat and simmer. Foam and gunk will gather at the top of the stock. Spoon it off. Don't mix your stock. There is nothing to stir except that foamy gunk back into the soup, which clouds your stock. Allow stock to simmer for 90 minutes. The stock will reduce in volume, and fortify the stock flavor.

Turn heat off. Move pot to a cool burner and let sit for a half an hour. Strain stock into a clean bowl or pot. Press and shake bones to get all the stock out. One of the great things about being the cook is eating the little nuggets of goodness not fit for company. There are often little hunks of meat in the crevasses of bones. Pry them out with a fork or your teeth. Super flavorful from being next to the bone, and tender from hours of cooking. Its your kitchen, so get all caveman on that bone. Don't let it go to waste.

Uber tender hunks of meat in the stock bones

You may want to strain the fat off your stock. I don't, I think that fat is much more flavorful then butter or oil. If you do want to strain your stock, put it in the fridge. The fat will float to the top and congeal until its thick enough to be scraped off with a spoon. Pour stock into covered storage containers and freeze for future uses.

Three Pizzas

2011-02-10T14:52:00.007-05:00

Potato, bacon, cheddar, roasted garlic and sage better than a baked potato pizza

Yams, onions, potatoes, winter squash, kale, chard, beets, and mushrooms are all excellent winter veggies. Its even possible to get some of these winter garden foods at the farmer's markets around New York City. I know, because I've been eating them all winter. I needed a break from winter and with my favorite mid-winter holiday upon us, the Super Bowl, I decided I would make pizzas. Even if the fresh stuff isn't around cheese, olives, artichokes, garlic, meat, canned tomato sauce are all excellent toppings which can be locally sourced. Baking pizza in a hot oven is appealing in winter, and gruesome in the summer.

I used the crust recipe from Serious Eats because they suggest techniques I've tried, but in different proportions. I think the Serious Eats is a keeper. Mine has too much yeast, and theirs has more flavor with sugar and salt. The recipe makes 3 medium pizzas that would happily feed 2-3 people each. Dress them up how you like. My potato, bacon, cheddar, roasted garlic and sage pizza (pictured up top) KILLED!

Potato, Bacon, Cheddar, Roasted Garlic and Sage Pizza
1/3 recipe pizza crust here
1 head roasted garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
6-8 torn sage leaves, divided
salt and pepper
4 pieces of bacon
4 small russet potatoes
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon white wine
1 tsp cornmeal
6 oz sharp white cheddar, sliced thin or grated

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Cut the top of the garlic head and place in a small oven proof bowl or ramekin. Cover with oil, add salt and pepper and a few pieces of sage leaf. Cover with foil and let roast for 60-90 minutes. Flip garlic head over half-way. Cook until garlic cloves are soft. Remove from oven and let cool. Can be made up to 4 days in advance.

Meanwhile cook bacon in a skillet until browned. Do not cook until crispy. The bacon will crisp up in the oven. Reserve 1 tblsp bacon fat.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Slice potatoes 1 cm thick by hand or on a mandolin. Place in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover with water and wine plus reserved bacon fat. Bake in oven for 20-30 minutes until soft and golden brown.

Assemble your pizza. Crank the oven to 450 degrees. Pull your dough out to a 12x9 inch rectangle or whatever shape you can manage. I find that after you pull the dough it snaps back. If you let it rest for 30 seconds it will stretch a bit farther then the previous. Be patient when working the dough. Place dough onto a baking sheet which has been sprinkled with cornmeal.

Squeeze the cloves out of the roasted garlic head. Gently rub onto dough with some of the garlic oil. Cover with a layer of cheddar, followed by potatoes. Sprinkle sage and bacon on top. Follow with a drizzle of garlic oil. Place in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until the bottom of the crust is brown. Remove and cool. Cut up and serve warm. Salad, wine, beer, hockey, football, music all go great with pizza.

Olive and Artichoke Heart Pizza
1/3 recipe pizza crust here
1 tsp cornmeal
1/2 cup tomato jarred sauce
6 oz fontina cheese, sliced or grated fine
15 kalamata olives, pitted
10 preserved artichoke hearts
(canned, jarred are fine, but also look for them at your deli near the olives so you don't have to buy more than you need)
olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Shape dough into a 12-14 inch circle, as above. Place on a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Spoon an even layer of tomato sauce over the crust. Cover with a layer of cheese. Top with olives and artichokes. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 20-25 minutes until bottom is browned. Serve warm. This one pairs with white wine.

Turkey Meatball Pizza
1 small onion finely chopped
1 tblsp olive oil
1/2 bunch parsley finely chopped
1 tsp milk
1/3 cup bread crumbs
pinch of red pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1 egg
1/2 lb ground turkey

1/3 recipe pizza crust here
1 tsp corn meal
1/2 cup tomato jarred sauce
6 oz fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced into rounds
2-3 torn sage leaves
1 tblsp grated Parmesan cheese

Make meatballs first. Preheat oven to 35o degrees. Saute onion and olive oil in a pan over medium heat until translucent. Turn off heat and stir in parsley, bread crumbs, milk, and seasonings until clumpy. Let cool 10 minutes and mix in turkey and egg until evenly combine. Shape into 1/4 - 1/2 inch clumps on a baking sheet leaving an inch in between. Bake for 15 minutes until cooked through and browned. Can be made 3 days in advance.

Assemble the pizza. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Shape dough into a 12-14 inch circle, as above. Place on a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Spoon an even layer of tomato sauce over the crust. Cover with mozzarella rounds. No need to overlap, they will spread when cooked. Top with meatballs. Sprinkle with sage and Parmesan. Bake for 20-25 minutes until bottom is browned. Serve warm.

Lost and Found Oatmeal Cookies

2011-02-02T11:19:00.003-05:00

Oats, butter, dried fruit, nuts, booze, coconut, this cookie has it all

I have 10 or so systems for keeping track of recipes I plan to cook. Tearing out pages from magazines and newspapers was my favorite before print died. Favorite-ing on Photograzing, Tastespotting, and from Flickr Groups are the easiest way to forget a recipe. Epicurious has a pretty good recipe box that I've successfully been using while browsing food ideas for years. Emailing myself recipes and making simple text documents saved to my computer are the only way I can search for old recipes. If I can remember 1 or 2 ingredients in the missing recipe, technology will do the rest.

And so with a little determination and digging in every possible spot this oatmeal cookie recipe, lost for 3 years, has come back to me! It was on my Mac as part of cocktail party menu, copied from an online version of the Gourmet 2001 recipe. I substitute dried fruit for chocolate. The proportions of this cookie are great, and coconut always adds the oooh factor. Ooh being saturated fat. I discovered the importance of soaking dried fruit with this recipe. I've brought these healthy cookies to lots of house warming parties, birthdays, and more because they go well with everything and stand as a meal on their own when a group gets together.

Lost and Found Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/2 cups finely chopped mix of dried fruit

(raisins, cranberries, figs, apricots, dates, etc.)

1 tablespoon brandy or rum (optional)

hot water

2 sticks (1 cup) butter

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp molasses

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup flour

2 1/4 cups old-fashioned oats

1 1/2 cups finely shredded unsweetened coconut

3/4 cup almonds chopped

Mix dried fruit, booze, and hot water in a bowl and let sit for 5-10 minutes. Strain fruit, pressing to remove excess fluids, and set aside. The juices that drip off the the fruit are excellent with a little bit more brandy. Yum.

Combine butter, sugar, and molasses and beat with a mixer until fluffy, 3-5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add in vanilla, baking soda, and salt, and beat for another minute. Add flour and mix until just combine. Add oats, shredded coconut, soaked fruit, and almonds. Mix until just combine. Chill for 2 hours or up to days covered in the refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop cookies in 1/4 mounds on to cookie sheets, keeping 2-3 inches between each. Bake for 15-18 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling racks.

Great for dunking in coffee, tea, or milk!

The Cheese Speaks

2011-02-01T16:39:00.006-05:00

Non-conventional cheese label

"When at first you don't think that it will matter, remember life is not a bunch of stairs its a very high ladder." said the Italian Fontal.

I stopped buying cheese a while ago buy to my lac-tardy-ness. Super bowl approaches and it seems impossible to plan a menu without cheese. Went to my favorite cheese spot, the West Side Market and discovered more then just cheeses. Someone, or maybe "The Doctor" has entered clever but cryptic messages onto the cheese labels. There was more, some advice with the an heir of fortune cookie sobriety, and some thoughts on cheese.

Does anyone recognize the passage above? I am guessing its original, since Google didn't have any coherent search results for it. Who is this doctor? Is he only at this location?

Sarma Grapeleaves

2011-01-22T17:35:00.000-05:00

Sour and savory grapeleaves filled with rice stuffing and steamed

Some of you know stuffed grapeleaves as dolma, but in my home (half American-half Armenian/ Lebanese) we called them sarmas. The reason? Sarma means rolled and dolma means stuffed. I have an ancient memory of my father telling me that. My sarma has shredded vegetables, white wine, and parsley. Not traditional ingredients, but flavorful. I hold no recipe sacred. No food is safe from my kitchen meddling.

This isn't an easy recipe. It involves multiple steps, and a little bit of a guessing game (How much rice goes in each leaf? How long to cook until the rice isn't chewy or too soft? Why is there extra water left in the pan) and time to manually roll each leaf. The good news is even if you mess up you will probably get something that tastes great. Make it for a special occasion, or a good party. If you're making grapeleaves, then you ought to show them off, er, um, I mean share.

Sarma Grapeleaves

1 medium onion
1 medium zucchini
2 tblsp vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 tblsp tomato paste
1 tsp dried mint
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 bunch of parsley, stems removed, chopped
2 tsp white wine
1 1/2 cups uncooked medium or long grain rice

1-2 jars of grapeleaves
olive oil
2 cups of water
1/2 lemon juice
1/2 cup pickle juice from jar of grapeleaves
more olive oil and lemons for presentation

Shred onion and zucchini. I used the slicing disks on my food processor. Alternatively, can pulse the vegetables in the bowl of your food processor until it's in little pieces, or the old fashioned on the large holed of a cheese grater. Add vegetables to large skillet with salt and oil. Cook over low-medium heat until very soft. Don't brown. Brown chunks in the grapeleaves looks kind of funky. Add tomato paste and mix to coat vegetables. Cook for about one minute, stirring. Stir in spices and mix until combine. Add white wine, scraping the bottom of the skillet to remove any of the flavorful bits that cling to the bottom. A wood spoon is a great tool for this. Turn off heat, and stir in rice. Mix until the rice is evenly coated. This mixture will be the filling for the grapeleaves. It can be prepared 3-5 days before rolling the grapeleaves and stored in a sealed container. When I'm in full on party planning mode I make the filling up to 2 weeks in advance freezing it in a good container.

A good set up makes the work easier

To roll and cook the grape leaves you're going to want to set aside a good 1-2 hours. Have some fun music playing while you dirty your hands, maybe invite some friend over to help. First find a large pot, 4 qts are more, to steam the grapeleaves in. You will need to keep a plate on top of the grapeleaves while they cook, so make sure that you have a plate that fits snugly over the opening before you start rolling grapeleaves. Find a nice clean workspace to roll grapeleaves where you can place the pot, a surface for rolling individual leaves (like a plate), the stuffing and leaves within comfortable reaching distance.

Remove the grapeleaves from the jar and rinse. Don't throw out the pickle juice the leaves are packed in. Cover the bottoms and sides of your pot with grapeleaves. Try to use the large leaves, which may be tough or hard to roll the sarmas with. The leaves will provide an ideal steaming environment, and help prevent sarmas from burning on the surfaces of the pan. Slosh a few glugs of olive oil on the leaves, and you're ready to sit and roll.

Stem facing you, veins up

Spread an individual grapeleaf on a plate, stem end pointing towards you, veins up. Using a small spoon plop a clump of filling across the wider stem end of the leaf. Around 1 tsp of filling per leaf. You don't want to over fill the leaves. They will explode, and you will have wasted all your hard work. Fold the sides of the leaf over the filling and roll away from you. Push/fold any wild leaf edges in towards the center as you roll. You are trying to make a nice little rice and leaf package that is not too tight, with a little lose space for the rice to expand. Tight packages may explode when cooked. Place each rolled grapeleave loose edge down (important) in the pot. Continue rolling and neatly packing grapeleaves in rows in your pot. You can stack 2-3 rows of grapeleaves.

Rolling grapeleaves never takes me less than an hour, and usually I get bored and antsy. Do not give in to the urge to overfill the grapeleaves to get done faster. You may just be messing them up, making them pop when cooked. I wish I had take a photo of my exploded grapeleaves, but they're so gory and sad.

After you've rolled all of the sarmas, and stacked them in your pot, gently pour in the water, lemon juice, and pickled leaf juice. Cover with an inverted plate, and place a weight on top of the plate. I use my Pyrex 2 cup measuring cup filled with water to hold down the plate while the grapeleaves expand. Place pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and lower heat to medium low.

Sometimes it takes 30 minutes to steam the sarmas sometimes over an hour. I'm not sure why. I suggest tasting a sarma after 30 minutes for doneness, and every 10 minutes there after. The rice should be tender, not chewy. Remove from heat, and drain any fluids that may remain. Move sarmas to storage container to help cool. Be careful they will be really hot. Use tongs. Squeeze lemon juice on top, and another glug of olive oil. Serve at slightly warm or at room temperature. Enjoy all your hard work, and know it gets a little easier every time you make sarmas!

Vanilla Extract

2011-01-16T14:22:00.008-05:00

Letters courtesy of the dollar store

Full disclosure: I haven't owned a bottle of vanilla extract in close to 2 years. I was annually buying a big bottle of Massey vanilla to last a year of baking. I fell out of that habit when I couldn't validate the extra expense during a tight year. So yes, I have been lying. Most of the recipes I've tested/written with vanilla actually contained almond extract, vanilla powder (an odd xmas gift from way back) or vanilla beans. Vanilla beans are $0.99 each at the Flatbush co-op, about half or less what you would pay at the grocery store or online. Planning for Christmas baking I decided it was time to end my vanilla drought. Vanilla extract isn't a magical elixir squeezed from rare plants. It's just cheap alcohol infused with vanilla beans. I can do that, so can you. You need 4 things: a bottle of cheap booze, vanilla beans, a dark place, and time. Two of those things are free.

$12 worth of vanilla beans

Small mouth glass bottles for storing are nice too. I made mine directly in the store bought booze, but bottled it down to give out to friends, and for easier pouring. Bottles are atrociously expensive at brick and mortar stores in NYC. I considered buying little bottles of vanilla at the dollar store, dumping the contents and refilling. It would have been cheaper then buying them at Sur La Table, but wasteful. In the end I found Specialty Bottle online. The bottles are cheap, but shipping and handling is expensive. Still a deal in the end. The quality of the vanilla is a good price compared to store bought.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

10-12 Vanilla beans
.75 ml cheap brandy or vodka

The proportion I found trolling the internet is 3-5 beans per cup of alcohol. A .75 liter bottle of alcohol is almost a 3 1/4 cups, so 10-12 beans. Break it down anyway you want for more or less vanilla extract.

Split the beans in half with a the tip of a sharp knife. Place beans in the bottle of alcohol. Shake and let sit in a dark place. Shaking every week or so is supposed to help develop the flavor, but can you prove it? Vanilla will be ready after 2 months. I've read that after 6 months the flavor will be at full force. My vanilla at 3 months seems a little better then after 2 months. Only experience and practice will tell. My last batch of cookies tasted great, so I'm on to something.

If you plan to bottle your vanilla I suggest sterilizing first by boiling in water for 1-2 minutes. Its difficult for bacteria to grow in alcohol but not mold. Anyways, you never know, and if you do know (cough cough, Dad) then let me know in the comments. I've stopped washing in soap in water to avoid the chance of leaving soap residue. Vanilla is a concentrated flavor, and I would hate to mess it up with dish detergent.

I bottled my vanilla with a 1/4 of a split bean. A little indicator of how the vanilla is made. Maybe by the time I remember to ship out all of the vanilla it will be at full strength.

Venison Chili

2011-01-09T11:53:00.003-05:00

meal

January to February is chili season, directly following Christmas cookie season. Easy, fast, spicy, warming, and and easy way to feel like you've eaten a round meal with just one bowl.

Dangerously close to a year ago I was given venison loin by my cousin Mary-Tyler. The venison was hunted by her half of the family, likely in Virgina. Mary-Tyler will correct me in the comments if I'm wrong. I wasn't sure if the venison would be freezer burned (from a year in the freezer) or if the meat would be too strong. The venison was neither, and I ate a hunk hot off the stove. It was a little bit of a waste to cover up great meat in chili, but this is some outstanding chili. One thing to note, I defrosted the venison on a shallow plate in the fridge. The plate was brimming with blood when it thawed, and got everywhere. Gross. Watch out.

Venison Chili

1 lb venison
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tblsp canola oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (or more)
1 tblsp ground cumin (I fresh roast and grind cumin seeds for much better flavor)
1 tsp ground coriander (roasted and ground seeds preferred)
2 tsp chili powder (ditto with above)
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 can black beans
1 can kidney beans
2 cans water

Put venison a stock pot with 1/4 cup vinegar and water to cover 1 inch. Let sit for 3-5 hours. Soaking in vinegar is supposed to tenderize the meat and remove gamy flavor. I'm not too sure if you should soak the meat longer or shorter period of time. I couldn't find specific directions online. Please leave your thoughts in the comments if you know better. When ready to make chili remove venison from the water, and wring out. Pat with many, many paper towels to dry.

Add oil to a stockpot and heat over high fire until oil is smoking. Salt the venison and carefully add to the stock pot. Cook until browned, turning to brown each side. Remove and let sit 5-10 minutes. Don't worry if the venison is raw on the inside, you aren't done cooking it.

Add onions and salt to the pot and saute over medium heat until transparent. Add chopped garlic and spices. Continue to cook for 2 minutes. Toss in the crushed tomatoes and beans with fluids. Fill each bean can with water and add to the pot. Stir. Cut the browned venison into 3/4 inch chunks and return to the pot with any drippings. Stir again. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. Simmer for 30 minutes and serve. Tastes great with beer and cornbread. Makes about 8 cups of chili.

Jazz and Experimental Vinyl Club tonight at Sycamore

2011-01-03T11:32:00.003-05:00

Bring the jazz and the noise. Open deck spinning after guest djs

<<<*&%--> MNVC #32 - Jazz + Experimental Edition at Sycamore < ---*&%>>>

- - - - GUEST DJs - - - -
8-9:30 DJ Flail
10 -10:30 IMPOSE Selector

Monday January 3rd, 8p-12a
@ Sycamore Bar and Flowershop, 1118 Cortelyou, BK
F R E E

Best of 2010

2010-12-28T19:43:00.008-05:00

Not a traditional list, but many lists of lists. Great flavors locked in the memory of my tongue's brain. Plus, the music in the background of all those happy moments.

Flavors of 2010
-- Pickled lemons which I accidentally added cardamom to, and then later turned into hummous.
-- Fancy maple syrup from Poor Farm Farm. The best I have ever, ever, ever, ever tasted.
-- Horseradish
-- Thums Up Cola
-- Whole wheat almond crust on this pie.
-- Chili ginger plums
-- Jam jar cocktails at Fire Island
-- Grilled asparagus
-- Cucumber vodka infused with cucumbers from my garden
-- Beets
-- Mile End smoked meat
-- Strawberry cupcakes from Sugar Daddy at Trophy Bar
-- Sausages from The Piggery
-- Vermont butter fresh from the owners, but sadly the packaged butter from the store was horribly over-salted.
-- fried eggplant stuffed with shrimp paste
-- Achiote oil
-- Old fashioned organic oats from the Flatbush Co-op. Why are they so good? I love them.
-- Momofuku cornflake cookie
-- Roasted Root Vegetable and Turkey Soup
-- Melted brie and fig spread
-- Anything from dim sum at Harbor East

Recipes of 2010 (the ones I'll make over and over)
-- Pretzel rolls
-- Oven onion rings (not because I like them, but because they were such a hit online)
-- Chock-a-block fruit and nut bars
-- Grilled flat bread
-- Vegan burgers
-- Lemon curd
-- Strawberry ice

Recipes in my jotter for 2011
Homemade tofu
Egg nog fudge
Home brewed apple cider
Kimchi
Crackers
Vanilla ice cream without a machine
Pickled carrots

Music of 2010
Beach House / Teen Dream
A Sunny Day in Glasgow / Autumn Again
Nerve City / Sleepwalker EP
Nice Face / Immer Etwas
Hooray for Earth / Momo
Future Islands / In Evening Air
Black Tambourine / Best of

Songs
Sleepwalking by Cosmetics
Go Outside by Cults
Maria Maria by Mercedes Sosa
Plastic by Starter
Saturday Night Drive in by Bowie
(the last few aren't new but I listened to them a lot)

Live Shows
Faith No More at The Williamsburg Waterfront (I could end the list for all time. Faith No More was awesome.)
Yummy Fur at Market Hotel
A Sunny Day in Glasgow at Prospect Farm
Total Slacker at Don Pedros
Screaming Females and Jeff the Brotherhood at Death by Audio

More Culture of 2010
The Wire, I waited too long to rent this
The Nose by William Kentridge at the Metropolitan Opera
The end of Lost, took away too much of my life watching that show.
Seven Samurai, again I waited too long to rent this
Big Man Japan, perfection as a contrast to the above.
Twitter feels more like home then any other social networking site i've used in the last 9 years.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

2010-12-21T20:27:00.005-05:00

Jamming

From last Wednesday to this Tuesday I brought cookies to several offices of clients and many of the people who make my life easier all year long. I made 5 varieties of cookies, piparkakut, buckeyes, sugar cookies, chocolate cookies with candied bacon and these jam thumbprints. Without a doubt the most coveted and devoured cookies were jam thumbprints. I was glad. They're mine too, since childhood. A classic combination of rich butter cookies coated with nuts (or coconut, or neither) with a dab of jewel like jam in the center. Pretty and pleasing on multiple levels.

I grew up eating the cookies with red currant jam. The tart jam suits the rich cookie with a pure ruby color. I'm far too experimental for traditions. I filled mine with mulberry preserves that I canned this summer. The chunky preserves don't sit flat or fill the thumbprint indent well. The flavor is great and under-sweetened, as like it. I had a revelation just a few days ago. If I don't need to use jam in the cookie, then I don't need to use walnuts or pecans on the outside either. Apricot jam and pistachios, nutella with hazelnuts, coconut with lemon curd. Nothing is stopping me from banging out a whole series of thumbprints with a unique touch. Next year! or maybe next month. These are good cookies.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

2 sticks of unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs, yolks separated from the whites
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups flour
1/2 pound nuts, chopped medium fine
jam

Cream butter with sugar for 5 minutes until pale and fluffy with a standing or electric mixer. Add egg yolks and blend another minute. Add vanilla and salt, blend again. Add half the flour and lightly blend until just combine. Add the remaining flour and carefully stir by hand until just combine. Shape dough into a disk, wrap in waxed paper, and chill for 3 hours to overnight. The dough can frozen for up to a week before baking.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Divide the dough into 24 sections. Roll each section into a 1 inch ball. Divide balls larger then 1 inch into extra cookies, you may have a few. Lightly whisk remaining egg whites in a bowl.

Cookie set up

Time to decorate and form the cookies. Its a good idea to organize all of the remaining ingredients. I like to place the formed dough balls on a plate in a row next to the beaten egg whites, and chopped nuts all near the baking sheet. Roll dough balls in the egg whites. Place in the chopped nuts and cover with nuts. Don't roll the ball in the nuts. That will cover the nuts in egg whites, and prevent them from sticking to your dough balls. If that happens, which it does, press the nuts into the cookies gently with your palms.

Birds nests? No, cookies.

Continue coating all the dough balls. Place the nut coated dough balls on a cookies sheet about 1 inch apart. Now the fun part. Press straight down with your thumb through the top and center of the dough ball to make an indentation. Bake for 10 minutes until pale to light golden, but set. My cookies often spread, causing less of a thumbprint. I'm not sure if its the recipe, or the way I treat my ingredients. Anyways, you may need to reform your thumbprint by pressing down again. Act quickly, don't burn yourself.

Someone want to give me a new cookie sheet for Xmas, this one is done!

Use a small spoon to scoop up some jam. Scrape/push the jam with another spoon into the thumbprint center of all the cookies. Place back in the oven for 2-4 minutes until the cookies are golden, and the jam has melted/settled into the cookie. Remove from oven and cool on racks.

There are alternatives to my jam filling technique described above.
A) Bake the cookie with the jam in the cookie from the start. I find this cooks the jam giving it a weird skin.
B) Drop the jam into the cookies as they come out. This only sort of works in my experience. Often the jam doesn't melt into the thumbprint.
C) Melt the jam ahead of time, and spoon into the cookies as they come out. This is equally effective as my method, but creates an extra pan or bowl to clean. Not my style.

Piparkakut Printed in the NY Times

2010-12-19T14:43:00.005-05:00

Yes!

The Piparkakut Finnish Christmas cookie recipe I posted last year was made famous this week. They're great cookies, and aside from my pal Ava, who shared her family's recipe with me, I had never heard a peep about them elsewhere. Last year I submitted the recipe and photo to NYTimes online reader cookie feature. This year the fine people at the newspaper tested my recipe, and chose to feature it along with the other top cookies, my photo, and a short profile of me for the Diner's Journal column of the Wednesday Dining section by Emily Weinstein. An honor. I'm flattered. I will forever carry my copy of the article. It's validation at the highest. Validation at it's most real is the speed those cookies disappear when delivered to clients and colleges. I'm proud that I've brought this extraordinary little spiced cookie to homes this Christmas. Black pepper and cardamom bake a great cookie that is otherwise low in sugar and butter, in comparison to the rest of my cookie recipes. Try them!

The official way to pronounce the cookie name: Pee-Pah-Rah Kaah-Koo, and you say it as fast as you can.