Healthier German Apple Pancakes

Last night I did some bad tossing and turning so I woke up like a bear out of a cave (in other words, I needed some serious grub). Pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs smothered in maple syrup? Sounded awfully good. So I got to work (did I ever tell you about my butler fantasies?)

My go-to German apple pancake recipe comes from Marcia Adams's Cooking From Quilt Country. Now Marcia's recipes feed armies so I tend to halve them. When I opened the page for the pancake recipe, lo and behold, I found a piece of paper with old notes I'd scribbled for halving the recipe! Great! So I put on my apron and got to work. A quarter cup of flour, a quarter cup of whole wheat flour (apparently, the last time I did this, I wanted a healthy version, thus the whole wheat — well, I didn't have whole wheat but I did have oat bran, so I used that), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder (yeah! get to use the homemade one), 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1 egg, and — this is when I realized something was wrong. Where's the milk? You need milk for pancakes. So I compared the original recipe to my notes. Hmmm. Some serious discrepancies. Like the original didn't call for baking powder or baking soda. And it had all sorts of goodies like nutmeg and vanilla. And apples. Whoops. Wrong notes.

Well, by this time I had pretty much everything all nicely mixed up in my reliable quart-sized Pyrex measuring cup. So I just threw in the milk and spices. I figured it was all good. And it was. I especially liked the addition of the oat bran. It made the batter much more flavorful and gave the pancakes a beautiful brown color.

Making the pancakes is really easy. So much preferable than doing little ones on the skillet. I don't follow Marcia's directions completely. Instead of precooking the apples, I just do it all in the oven like this. Preheat the oven to 470 degrees. Get a really good skillet (cast iron is best but I have an ancient Cuisinart that has stainless steel sandwiched in the aluminum). Put about a tablespoon of butter in it. Cut up a smallish apple very thinly. Put it in the skillet with the butter. Put the skillet in the oven, letting the apples cook while the oven is preheating. About five minutes into it, stir the apples around so each piece gets a nice coating of melted butter.

Meanwhile, mix everything for the batter. When the oven finally preheats, the skillet should be pretty darn hot. Pour the batter over the apples. Put the skillet into the oven. Now, at this point, you can follow Marcia and turn the oven down to 350 degrees. Today, I was too busy with the scrambled eggs and bacon so I forgot. But in ten minutes, I got the crispiest, nicest pancake! I'd definitely give this dish an A.

BTW, if you live in LA, go to Huntington Meats at the Farmer's Market for your bacon. They have the best apple-smoked bacon, thick, meaty slices that are so much better than Niman Ranch. Try to get the older gentlemen to help you. The younger ones so aren't into service. And they don't really know that much. Huntington also sells Moffat's chicken pot pies. Seriously good.

Too Scared To Shop

I had these two experiences shopping in the last month:

1. At Bristol Farms in South Pasadena, one of the employees climbs on top of the cheese display so she can rearrange the shelf above. Her dirty shoes were gripping the rim of the display.

2. At Whole Foods on Arroyo, an employee picks up some red kale that had fallen on the floor and puts it back in the produce display. This was kale that had been kicked around and run over by a shopping cart.

This is why I'm too scared to shop and too scared to eat.

Japanese Style Korean BBQ

In Japan, Korean BBQ is called yakiniku. The meat is flavored for Japanese tastes, but the experience is pretty much the same: large platters of beef or pork grilled at the table. But I think things are changing. I just caught the end of a program that showed one Japanese restaurant serving individual portions of meat. Usually, at a Korean restaurant, you order a platter of a specific cut or part (marinated/unmarinated steak, ribs, tribe, etc.). So, unless you're with a large group, you only order one or two platters. But in Japan, people wanted to be able to order a piece at a time, like at a sushi restaurant, so they could eat a variety of meat. I've often wished that myself! This is such a great idea and hope Korean BBQ restaurants here in the US follow suit.

Deep-frying Disaster

Okay. Not going to deep-fry duk (Korean rice cakes) again! One exploded quite spectacularly about five inches from my face. Unfortunate because the deep-fried duk was really delicious -- like golden noorunji (the crisped up rice at the bottom of a cooking pot). I ate them with sugar.

DIY Baking Powder

When I found out you can make your own baking powder, I thought this is something I must try. Well, it took me several years, but I finally did it this morning. Wow. What a difference. I put some in my oatmeal pancake batter and the whole thing bubbled up like a witch's cauldron!

It's so easy. You just need cream of tartar and baking soda. It takes about five minutes. That's it.

The recipe I used comes from Scott Peacock's The Gift of Southern Cooking, a most excellent book. Much of the recipes from the book is from his mentor, Edna Lewis, as is the baking powder recipe. Scott writes that Miss Lewis was so "distressed by the chemical additives and aftertaste of commercial 'double-acting' powders" that she started making her own: 1/4 cup of cream of tarter with 2 tablespoons of baking soda, sifted together three times and stored in a tight-sealing jar (I use a tiny Lock 'n Lock). The powder lasts 6 weeks, but store at room temperature and away from sunlight.

Scott writes that when he first started using the DIY powder, he didn't taste any difference, but that when he tried using the commercial powders again, he could definitely feel the metallic tingle on his tongue. I thought my oatmeal pancake batter fried up crisper too.

Baked Asian pears

Recently, while shopping at Costco (one of my least favorite things to do), I noticed a box of fruit labeled "Apple Pears". I, naturally, thought it was one of those weird hybrid fruits, borne out of some mad marketing scheme. But no, the "Apple Pears" were just Asian pears. Go figure. Anyway, the price was right, so I bought a box, and after eating two or three, decided to make some baked pears for a little variety.

The inspiration came from a show I saw about steamed Asian pears. This woman had cut in half this massively big pear (the size of a small watermelon), scooped out the seeds, and filled the cavity with honey, jujubes, ginkgo nuts and all sorts of goodies. I didn't have any of these things, nor did I have a steamer. So I put my halved pears into a baking dish, filled their tiny cavities with maple syrup, filled the baking dish with a little water, sprinkled some cinnamon and baked it in a 325 oven.

After about an hour and a half, I opened the oven to take the pears out and this strange thing happened to me: the warm smell of baking fruit, the steam from the oven, lifting the ceramic baking dish — I suddenly thought about baked apples, how I used to make baked apples all the time — why had I completely forgotten about baked apples — why did making baked pears seem so completely novel?

Why had I stopped making baked apples? Baked apples are fantastic. Why was no one else making baked apples? I can't remember the last time I'd read a recipe featuring baked apples. Caramel and candied apples are all over the place, but the equally good baked apples have disappeared from our collective memory (aka the media). Very strange.

The interesting thing about baked pears is how boozy the result was. I'd only added maple syrup and cinnamon, and yet, it tasted like I'd added a good quarter cup of eau de vie. Since I like boozy, the result was heaven. Or at least a little bit of heaven.

I'd give this dish a solid A.

Welsh Rarebit

On a cold fall day, nothing is better as an afternoon snack than Welsh rarebit. Not the strange runny cheese sauce on toast you often get in the US, but the substantial crusty pizza-like thing you get in the UK. One of my favorite recipes comes from the Two Fat Ladies, Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright. According to them, the original Welsh rarebit was just a thick slice of cheese toasted in the oven. Their version is like a souffle, the melted cheese puffed up with eggs. And fairly easy to make. If you're making it as a snack for you and a buddy, shred about 4 ounces of cheddar cheese and add some mustard (they recommend dry English, but I used Sierra Nevada Pale Ale mustard), Worcestershire sauce (I add a huge amount), Tabasco, salt and pepper. Now take two eggs and separate the yolks from the whites. Add the yolks to the cheese mixture and stir until things look pretty uniform. Then whip up the whites until there are some nice stiff peaks (mine were just soft, but hey, it all eats the same). Fold the whites into the cheese mixture. Finally, put the mass on top of toasted bread and bake in a preheated 450 degree oven (hopefully, you've put the bread and cheese into a baking pan). In ten minutes, the tops should be golden.

Snacking on Welsh rarebit isn't a bad way at all of spending the time while waiting for the Muse to come back. And, Dear Muse, come back soon. I really don't think it's fair of you to get me all excited about this thing and leave me hanging with barely 40 words. After all, I've been so good. Ever since that time you punished me and left me with a 11,000-word story when I was hoping for a good, chunky novel, I've been your devoted slave. I'm not even hoping for a novel this time.

What I Just Cooked: Japanese-style Braised Pork

I wanted to make a pork stew, but with a Japanese twist, so I went to one of my favorite books, Japanese Cooking A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji. There aren't a lot of pork recipes in the book, but I did find something called Nagasaki-style Braised Pork. The recipe called for all sorts of things like bean curd lees and bacon and required two days of cooking. Not going to happen. So I just simplified it by using the basic simmering stock and throwing in whatever vegetables I had.

Braised Pork

About a pound of cut up chunks of pork shoulder (or butt as it's sometimes called)
About 4 small red potatoes cut into chunks
2-3 carrots peeled and cut into chunks
24 pearl onions, peeled

simmering liquid

3 1/2 cups dashi (I just put half a small packet of powdered dashi with 3 1/2 cups of water)
1 cup sake (I used the mei kuei lu chiew because I didn't have sake)
2 tablespoons of mirin (can be skipped)
6 tablespoons of soy sauce
5 tablespoons of sugar

Put the pork into a casserole pot and add the simmering liquid. Let it come to a boil. Skim impurities. Then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Recipe adapted from Japanese Cooking A Simple Art.

California Que BBQ Sauce

I was in Whole Foods recently and there was this really friendly gentleman offering samples of his BBQ sauce. I always like to taste samples but I almost never buy anything. Not this time. The BBQ sauce was from The California Que and I've never tasted anything like it. Usually, you can summarize BBQ sauces with "sour", "sweet", "vinegary", "inedible". But not this one. There was such a rich, fruity taste to it, you could just eat it as a dip. But it does make a fantastic BBQ sauce, as I found out when I marinated some chicken legs.

California Que is pure sauce — no additives at all. You have to love the simple ingredients list: ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, pepper sauce, honey, molasses, herbs and spices. The gentleman said it took him years to refine the recipe, and you can taste it. He offers three degrees of hotness — I found the medium plenty hot.

What I Just Cooked: Soy Poached Chicken

About nine years ago, I came across a recipe in The New York Times which was so intriguing, I've never been able to forget it. It was a Mark Bittman recipe and it was for soy poached roast chicken. Now, I've made plenty of soy sauce chicken in my lifetime, mostly because it's pretty easy. You just surround some chicken with soy sauce, a little sugar, chili pepper, green onion and let it simmer for about an hour. But his recipe was really from Roy Ip and Roy liked to poach his chicken with a Chinese cooking alcohol called mei kuei lu chiew, which is made with rose essence! So for nine years, I kept an eye out for mei kuei lu chiew with no luck. Finally, in the SGV, at Hawaii Marketplace, I found a bottle! Actually several different bottles ranging from cheap to really expensive.

Without hesitation, I bought the one for around $6 dollars, bought a chicken and poached away. Wow. The dish was phenomenal. Make it now.

Soy Poached Chicken

3 cups mushroom soy sauce
3 cups mei kuei lu chiew
2 cups water
2 star a nise
1 14-ounce box yellow rock sugar, crushed or 1 cup of unrefined sugar
3 ounces of ginger cut into slices
10 scallions
1 chicken, 2 - 3 pounds

1. In a stockpot, combine the soy sauce, wine, 2 cups of water, star anise, sugar and ginger. Bring to a full boil. Add 6 scallions. Add chicken, breast side down. In the original recipe, you're supposed to bring the liquid back to the boil and cook for 10 minutes. And then you're supposed to turn off the heat and turn the chicken over and you let it sit in the liquid for 15 minutes. Didn't work for me. The chicken just wasn't cooked after 15 minutes. I find that if you're going to go this route, you really need to let the chicken sit for at least an hour, or increase the simmer time to twenty minutes or so.

4. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. When the chicken is done, put the chicken into a roasting pan (without the liquid!) and roast it in the oven until it's brown (about 5 minutes).

5. Now is the time to make a nice sauce, which is just the poaching liquid — about a cup — with the remaining scallions nicely minced. Carve the chicken and pass the sauce.

Adapted from The New York Times.

Sichuan Peppercorns

Confession time: I was never a fan of Sichuan peppercorns. I just couldn't figure out what the fuss was and why book after book always insisted on adding the difficult little things to so many recipes. I was told to buy them whole and pan toast them and grind them — and for what? A metallic burn that gave food an off flavor?

Well, I've finally seen the light. I am now a huge fan of Sichuan peppercorns. This is what happened: last week my husband took me to Xiang Wei Lou, a Hunan restaurant in San Gabriel (CA). We order their famous steamed spicy fish. It's covered in the most amazing sauce, so complex, so balanced, so floral, and I'm thinking, where's that coming from? That floral back note that's making my little taste buds ohhhh and ahhhh? And it comes to me: OMG, it's Sichuan peppercorns. Sichuan peppercorns!

So now I realize that I've only been using crap Sichuan peppercorns. And so do most Chinese restaurants. If you get the really good kind, the fresh stuff you get in China, Sichuan peppercorns are like little taste fairies that will turn even humble ma po tofu into a delicacy.

So where do I get fresh, top-grade Sichuan peppercorns? HELP!

Bulgur and Walnut Kibbeh

I'm really becoming a fan of Martha Rose Shulman's health columns in the NYT. In the last week, I've made two of her recipes, one for Lebanese tabbouleh and one for bulgur and walnut kibbeh. Both were so delicious and amazingly easy to make (if you use a food processor). And in the middle of a heat wave, just what the cook ordered, as there's no heat involved, except to boil water.

This is the first time I've ever used bulgur wheat. Unlike other grains and pulses, all you need to do is soak it in some water and it's ready to go. Once soaked, there's something so enjoyable about working with bulgur, the feeling of the grain so smooth and spongy — I'm tempted to add some cucumber juice and stick it all over my face. What a great facial!

Back to the kibbeh. Wow. You'd never know there wasn't meat in the recipe. Something about the combination of walnuts and bulgur; so rich and hearty, it kept me full for hours. I think I like it better than traditional kibbeh, which is usually made from ground raw lamb. The ingredients are very similar for both the tabbouleh and the kibbeh (the kibbeh has walnuts, the tabbouleh tomatoes and scallions), so if you decide to make one, make the other the next day.

Feta Sushi Roll

Well, they do say necessity is the mother of invention. And a lot of barmy concoctions in the kitchen, I'll bet. Like today. I'm making sushi rolls and I go to get eggs for the tamago and there's only one egg and the egg is cracked. Now, I don't want to risk food poisoning, but, looking in the refrigerator, there really isn't anything I can replace the egg with except feta cheese. And I think, okay. Feta cheese rolls.

Not as bad as it sounds, I'm glad to report. After all, cheese and rice is a basic in many European countries. So I make the sushi rice. And I cut up the feta cheese into nice thin slabs. I then moisten the feta cheese with the soy sauce-dashi mixture I was going to use for the tamago. And I add finely sliced mint, with a smear of wasabi. And voila. Feta cheese sushi rolls. Why not? About time there was a Japanese-Greek fusion dish!

How did it turn out? I'd give it a solid B.

Japanese Turnips

I was shopping at Marukai this weekend when I saw the most delectable looking turnips I'd ever seen. Plump, round bulbs with lovely green leaves and sturdy stalks. I had no idea what to do with them but decided I couldn't pass up anything that looked so fresh and good.

Back at home, I pondered and pondered. You can always pickle turnips. Or eat them raw. Or make soup. I decided to pickle one turnip and make soup out of the rest.

But before making anything, I decided to eat a piece raw. I was expecting something crunchy, something with a bit of bite. But not this turnip. It was creamy! Like turnip ice cream. I could have eaten all four bulbs right there on the spot.

What I did to make the soup was pretty easy. I sliced up the turnips (unpeeled because they were so tender) and added it to chicken stock (made simply with chicken, garlic and ginger, salt and pepper). I also added the chopped up greens. Again, the turnips defied expectation because I was thinking the greens were going to take some time. Nope. Within five minutes they were ready to eat. And the soup was incredible! Definitely an A.

For the pickles, I left the bulb and greens whole. First I salted them for twenty minutes. And then I added them to well-salted water, with green onions, a slice of ginger, and two sliced cloves of garlic. Now the turnip is resting in the refrigerator, but the pickling liquid tastes great already!

What I Just Cooked: Banana Muffins

Today, I noticed I had two very ripe bananas. They were so ripe, they were actually beginning to ferment. Well, there's only two things you can do with black, fermenting bananas: you can throw them away or you can make banana bread. I have countless recipes for banana breads and cakes, but I particularly like the one I MacGyver from a basic muffins recipe I got from epicurious.com years ago: it's easy and the texture is something between a bread and a cake.

As usual, today I tried to clean out as much from the refrigerator and pantry as I could. In addition to the bananas, I had half-and-half that was almost off, a piece of cream cheese with a bit of mold on top, and a jar of pumpkin spice that probably should have been thrown away last month (they say you shouldn't keep spices for more than a year). Well, what's the harm of slightly-off food since it's all going to be mixed and baked? The cream cheese is fine—I just took a quarter of an inch off the moldy part and threw the non-moldy part in with the half-and-half, egg, and bananas. Hey, it's all good. So here's the recipe.

Banana Muffins

2 cups of white flour (I added about two tablespoons more to compensate for the cream cheese)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup of half-and-half or milk
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup cream cheese (optional)
2 black bananas (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Either butter muffin pans or stick paper muffin cups inside. Or, if you're feeling very lazy like I was, just get out a 8-inch square baking pan and grease it (I was so lazy, I used the baking pan as my mixing pan too — hey, one less dish to clean up). In a bowl, put in bananas, half-and-half, melted butter, and cream cheese. Mix with a hand-held blender or just use a food processor. In another bowl (or in the mixing pan), put in all the dry ingredients and mix. Add the liquid mixture to the dry mixture and combine together until the dry ingredients are just wet (don't over mix). Put the mixture in the muffin tin or baking pan, and place in the oven. If you're making muffins, this should take about 20-25 minutes. If you're using the pan, you're basically making banana cake/bread, so check after 40 minutes. If the middle of the bread is still wet, bake for another 10.

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can turn it into almost any kind of muffin, blueberry, date, cheese, corn, etc. Just be sure to adjust the sugar depending on whether you make a sweet or savory muffin (if savory, only put in about 2 tablespoons).

So how'd it turn out? I'd give it a solid B.

An interesting aside, I'd printed out the recipe in 2001, and on the sidebar, there's an ad for a Cuisinart mini prep food processor. They wanted $40. Today, you can get one for around $36, so I guess the price's gone down — way down if you calculate in inflation. There must be a mental price barrier for things like food processors. BTW, the KitchenAid mini is really good.

What I Just Cooked: Tofu Croquettes

Tofu Croquettes (or burgers, depending on how fancy you want to go)

Sometimes I get sick of doing the usual pan-fry with tofu, or the salad, or the soup, so I make tofu burgers. Before I got my little mini KitchenAid food processor, I had to be fairly energetic to make them though, because the tofu has to get pretty well crumbled up, which is a chore to do with a fork or knife. But now, I just get rid of the excess moisture in the tofu (usually by squeezing the water out with my hands — wrapping the tofu in a towel helps), roughly crumble it up in the bowl of the food processor and whiz away. I can't tell you how much I love my little mini KitchenAid. The motor is pretty darn powerful — creams butter like a dream. And what it does for tofu! Like whipped heaven! (This is sounding a little too much like a Good Housekeeping ad from the 60s...)

I found out that by whipping up the tofu, I didn't need any eggs as a binder. Which is great because sometimes you don't have eggs in the house. Today, I made a pretty simple burger. Just a regular package of tofu, about a half teaspoon of salt, some pepper, a grated carrot, ginger, garlic and about a cup of panko break crumbs to absorb moisture. Now, I call the burgers croquettes sometimes because, after forming the tofu mixture into patties, I pat them in a pile of panko before frying them up. The great thing about this burger/croquette is that you can add almost anything, like diced ham or peas or cheese or chicken or shredded cabbage. If you've added too much dry ingredients and the mixture isn't forming, add an egg to bind it all up.

Now if you haven't fried with panko before, I should say that you need a very hot pan and a good deal of oil. The oil should come to about a quarter of an inch up the sides of the frying pan. Keep the oil fairly hot, but watch it or the bread crumb will burn! I know I'm keeping the oil at a good temperature when I see gentle bubbles of oil dancing against the food.

Since I've taken care of the croquettes, I'll talk about the tofu and my latest discovery. Last year, at a branch of Whole Foods, I noticed a brand of tofu I'd never seen before, Wildwood. And a kind of tofu I'd never seen before, organic tofu made from sprouted soy beans. The package explained that the sprouted soy beans meant your body would digest the tofu better. I'm always up for better digestion, so I decided to try it, thinking it would taste like the typical American tofu, rubbery and kind of gross. But, boy, was I wrong. The Wildwood firm and soft tofu is some of the best tofu I've ever tasted. Great texture, great flavor. Absolutely nothing off. All I could think was "how in the world could an American company get tofu so right"?

Well, today, I did some checking on Wildwood. It's owned by Pulmuone, a Korean food manufacturer, one I know very well! In fact, most of the Korean food products I buy now are made by Pulmuone. And then, I recalled that about a year ago, I was watching a Korean news program that talked about how a big Korean manufacturer had bought an American tofu maker and was trying to teach them how to make tofu better. Well it figures that I'd end up buying and loving it! I just wish all the branches of Whole Foods carried it. In LA, I've only found it at the Pasadena and the Studio City branches. At least the sprouted soybean tofu. All the branches seem to carry the Wildwood tofu burgers, so why not the regular tofu? It's a good price and much better, I think, than even the Asian brand that they carry. One word of advice, the Wildwood extra firm has very little water and rubs against the teeth like chalk. Definitely not something to be eaten plain.

If only the Pulmuone naeng myun was as good! But that's another story.

Citrus Kimchee

About a month ago, I was watching a Korean cooking show called Best Cooking Secrets and this kimchee master came on and said, "Today I am going to make citrus kimchee" and I thought, "What! I have to try that!" While I've eaten a lot of different kinds of kimchee, I'd never even heard of one with citrus fruits in it (and I've heard of some weird ingredients, like 7-up). This recipe calls for tangerines, which gives the kimchee a nice tangy sweetness.

For most people, kimchee is just the very spicy fermented cabbage side dish you usually get at Korean restaurants. Even many Koreans don't realize that there are over 180 different kinds of kimchee — there's even a kimchee museum in Seoul dedicated to its glories. Kimchee isn't really one dish, but a term for a kind of fermented food, just like pickles used to be. At one time, you'd never say just "pickles". You'd say "cucumber pickles" or "beet pickles" or "pickled watermelon rinds" or "pickled pig's feet". That's the same with kimchee.

Kimchee, pickles, sauerkraut — it's all one and the same thing, foods that have been preserved in salt. In fact, when Kimchee was first being made (about 8,000 years ago), the only difference between kimchee and sauerkraut was the variety of cabbage or vegetable. It was only later that Koreans started adding spices like garlic and ginger. The red, chili infused versions are late-comers, as chili peppers weren't introduced to Korea until the 16th century. The popular cabbage kimchee you usually see is called mak kimchee. At the better Korean restaurants, you'll also see mul kimchee, which is a white kimchee served in a broth of its own fermented liquid ("mul" means water in Korean). Citrus kimchee is in that category. [For examples of different kimchees, with pics, click here.]


Mul kimchees tend to be one of the easier kinds of kimchees to make since you can make it with chunks of ginger and whole cloves of garlic — with kimchees like mak kimchee, you have to spend quite a lot of time mincing all the garlic, ginger, scallions, etc. Having said that, this particular recipe does require some diligent work in the peeling of all the tangerines. Extra flavor has a price!

Citrus Kimchee

2 cups of Chinese cabbage, washed and cut into small one to two inch squares
1 small Korean radish, cleaned and cut up into small, flat rectangles (about a cup or so)
6 Tangerines, just the pulp*
1/4 cup of Minari (Korean watercress), cut into 4 half-inch pieces
2 cloves of Garlic, sliced into strips
1 teaspoon of Ginger juice — to get ginger juice, grate a hunk of ginger in a Microplaner (the one with the smallest holes)
2 tablespoons of Korean dried chili or 2 sliced red chili pepper
Kosher salt


Put the cut-up cabbage in a big bowl (you want the cabbage to have lots of room and be happy). Sprinkle the cabbage with enough salt to coat the cabbage with a light layer. Shake up the cabbage a little (you want to make sure every bit of the cabbage gets a little salt). Let the cabbage stand for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, clean the radish. First wash and then trim all the hairy parts with a small knife. Cut into small, flat rectangles.

After 30 minutes, the salt will have extracted some liquid from the cabbage. You want to keep that. Add the cut-up radishes along with the minari, garlic, ginger juice, and Korean dried chili. Mix thoroughly with your hands. Add half the tangerine pulp*. Mix again with your hands. Put the mixture into a container, like a pickling jar or even a plastic box — just make sure whatever you are using has a tight lid. Put some water into the bowl that had the cabbage in it — about a cup. Add the other half of the tangerine pulp to the water. Clean your hands in the water. While you're at it, clean the bowl, swishing the water gently around and around. I know this sounds odd, but there's a method to this madness: by cleaning the bowl with your hands, you'll extract every bit of flavor left in the bowl and on your hands. There's also a theory that using your hands while cooking transfers your energy into the food, so it's crucial that you're in a happy mood when you cook. Now add that liquid into the container. Put the container in the refrigerator. In about three days, the kimchee should be ready to eat.


*To get the tangerine pulp, use this technique. Take a sharp, small knife and cut off the top and bottom of a tangerine. Place the tangerine firmly on a cut end. With the knife, cut away the skin and inner membrane, going from top to bottom, easing the knife around the curve of the tangerine. With the membrane gone, it should be easy to remove the pulp, either with a knife or with your fingers.

Here's a picture of a display from the Kimchee Field Museum. All the dishes are examples of ancient kimchee.



credit: Wikimedia Commons

Biscuits With Cream Cheese Hearts

I love breakfasts at B&Bs. Unlike at hotels, the food is usually much better, and more likely than not, served from the heart. One memorable B&B breakfast I had was from a small B&B in Ulster county, New York, years and years ago. The highlight was this incredible sweet roll filled with warm cream cheese. I guess the owner of the B&B couldn't help but notice how much I liked them, because as we were leaving, she slipped me the recipe. I've been meaning to make them, but only now had the chance! I have to say, they're better than I remembered.



Biscuits With Cream Cheese Hearts

From Sunset cookbook, tasted at Orchard House, and slightly revised by me

1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of pumpkin spice mix (the original recipe called for straight ground cinnamon)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (the original recipe called for almond extract, but I didn't have any so I substituted)
3 tablespoons of melted butter or margarine
1 3 ounce package of cream cheese, cut into 10 equal portions
1/4 cup of chopped walnuts (the original recipe called for almonds to go with the almond extract)
1 package (10 pieces) or refrigerated biscuits like the Pillsbury kind

In a small bowl, combine sugar and pumpkin spice mix. In another small bowl, combine vanilla extract and butter. Dip each piece of cheese in butter, then roll in the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Lay the pieces side by side on waxed paper. Mix walnuts with the remaining cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Separate the biscuits and pat each into roughly 3 inch rounds. Place a piece of cheese in the center and pinch the dough edges to seal. Dip the filled biscuits in butter and then roll in the cinnamon/nut/sugar mixture.

Place each biscuit, seam side down, in an ungreased 2 1/2 inch muffin cup tray (I just put them on a baking tray, but the muffin tray will help the biscuits from popping open). Bake in a 375 degree oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Remove from the muffin tray immediately and let cool for ten minutes. Serve warm. (You can cover and chill any leftovers, just reheat in a 350 degree oven until warm, about 20 minutes.)

What I Just Cooked: Short Rib Sandwiches

I was watching some show on TV (I think it was Diners, Drive-ins and Dives) and I see this incredible short rib sandwich being featured. It had red onions and gruyere cheese dripping all over it. Now, I love short ribs and I love short rib sandwiches. I particularly loved the sound of the red onions and gruyere, so I couldn't wait to make my own version of it.

First, I stewed the short ribs with the only things left in the refrigerator: celery, half an onion, a clove of garlic and an old bottle of Paulaner beer. To add flavor, I first browned the ribs until they were pretty crusty. To add even more flavor, I sauteed all the vegetables in olive oil until I could smell the sugar in the air. At the very end, I added about a tablespoon of tomato paste and let it toast a bit. I then put all the ingredients together in my trusty Creuset stewing pot and let the lot simmer for about four hours. With some salt and pepper, of course.

As it turned out, Paulaner made a fantastic braising liquid. Better than beef broth or consumme. I could have used the Paulaner broth as is, but I wanted a really rich, thick gravy so I strained the broth, degreased it, boiled it down by a third and added beurre blanc. The end result was restaurant perfect. Tasted like I'd used glace de veau, without the heavy, MSG salty flavor you often get at restaurants.

So, to assemble the sandwich! On toasted hamburger buns I put down a layer of thinly sliced red onions, a layer of shredded short ribs, a layer of gravy and a layer of cheese. BTW, I wasn't in the mood to buy a big chunk of gruyere at $9 a pop, so I just mixed together leftover Monterey Jack (for the melting factor), leftover Parmesan and leftover Pecorino.

How did it turn out? A+ But then, how can you go wrong with short rib sandwiches?

Kumquats

I've decided kumquats are the S&M specialists of the fruit world. You take a bite and the tiny little devils are so sour you think you're going to scream. And then just as you're about to spit it all out, the incredible, delicious sweetness of the rind kicks in and it's heaven and you immediately want another...

So what exactly are kumquats? They're little, tiny citrus fruits that look like toy oranges. They even come with wee seeds. The inside is SOUR and the rind is so sweet that it almost tastes like the kumquats come naturally sugar coated. There's also that flavor orange rinds have, that complicated perfume which is so concentrated in the peel's oil. You can eat kumquats whole, peel and all, or just eat the peel. Kumquats also come candied.

I'd tried kumquats before, but having bought them at supermarkets, had been very disappointed. This time, I tried some organic ones at the local farmer's market — I just could not believe the difference. Like biting bits of sunshine.

Here's a recipe suggestion: slice some and put them in chicken salads. Or sandwiches. For lunch today, I made a sandwich of leftover chicken, kumquats, celery, and lettuce. I gave it a Middle Eastern twist by making a dressing of yogurt, tahini, garlic, salt, soy sauce (just a drop or two), pickled chili peppers, and chopped parsley. Or course, I wrapped a pita around the entire concoction. Filling and healthy and cheap and oh, so good... I think Julia would have approved!

What I Just Cooked: Apple Empanadas

Last night I made mandu and had about half a dozen wrappers left over. Not really enough to save but too much to throw away. So today, I decided to make dessert with the leftover wrappers. Actually, the whole dish was a leftover treat. I had apples and cream cheese, so I shredded one apple, sugared it, threw some pumpkin spice in and added a big spoonful of cream cheese. After a good mix, I stuffed the mixture into the leftover wrappers and deep fried the parcels. The result was a kind of dessert empanada.

How did it turn out? I'd give the apple empanadas a solid A.

Itadakimasu

Itadakimasu is the Japanese way of saying grace before a meal. A way of thanking everyone who contributed in the preparation of that food, from the people who grew the food to the people who made the meal. I've long thought before every meal we should take the time to remember and acknowledge where and how our food comes to us. To thank the plants and animals for giving their life to sustain ours. It seems to me in thanking just a god, you lose our immediate connection to the physical world around us. In a world of cubicles and boxes, where physical contact is more accidental and brutal than kind or purposeful, it seems more important than ever to remember our interdependence, that it can be a beautiful thing. Itadakimasu is a nice, simple way of saying all that.

Cooking Without Money

I was delighted to find out that there's an Italian dish called "potatoes with escaped lamb" (patati con agnello scappato). The dish contains no lamb, thus the "escaped lamb"! I got all this in Amanda Hesser's NYT article "1971: Mrs. Sebastiani's Malfatti". "Mrs. Sebastiani's" features an Italian peasant dish made with bread, spinach and Parmesan. Hesser explains, "It’s a more direct descendent of the cucina povera from which the dish originates, when cooks would make a meal of bread and what few ingredients they had."

Hesser's article reminded me that I wanted to blog about cooking on the cheap. At the moment, there's a real worry about "recession obesity", the fear that with less money available for fresh fruits and vegetables, people will eat a diet of Spam and empty carbs, thus becoming even more obese than they already are. The thing is, in many parts of the world, the poor eat nutritionally, and oftentimes, well. It's just that in the US and Britain, people have forgotten how to cook well on a budget (they also don't know how to cook). And they've forgotten about cheap vegetables like kale, cheap cuts of meat like pork legs, and complex carbs like beans. I frequently advise people to buy a good Italian cook book because so many of Italy's great dishes are based on cucina povera. I don't know of any cuisine that makes beans taste so good. And the recipes are so simple that you don't really need to know anything more than how to boil water. And if you can't get filled up on pasta e fagioli (pasta and bean soup), you need to see a doctor.

For a simple pasta e fagioli recipe, click here. The recipe is from Epicurious and directed at Americans so all the ingredients are easy to find.

One last thing, most Italian recipes will call for expensive Parmesan (and don't use the thing in the can because that is not Parmesan). I can't afford Parmesan. So I'll buy a small piece of Pecorino or Piave. Also, for cooking, most Italians use the cheaper Grana Padano, saving Parmesan for grating on top of dishes right before serving. I've heard that Grana is creamier and that's why it's preferred for cooking.

Squirrel Cuisine

We have a lot of nasty tempered squirrels around the house and I'm always kidding my husband by saying that he should go out and shoot a bunch for dinner.* Well, I guess I wasn't the only one thinking this because now there's a whole industry in Britain revolving around wild squirrel meat. Yes, nouveau squirrel cuisine has arrived.

I think I should begin with a little history lesson. This one is called The Battle of the Red and the Grey. Once upon a time in Merry Old England, the cute little Red Squirrels lived very happily in the cozy countryside, nibbling nuts and playing alongside the Hobbits and the elves. And then one dark day, an evil armada of North American Grey Squirrels arrived, devastating the landscape. The invading squirrels were big and nasty; the invasion was swift. Poor little Red Squirrels.

But all was not lost. Hearing the cries of the little Red Squirrels, the Gamekeepers of the Nation rose and began shooting the hell out of the nasty Grey Squirrels. Now, Gamekeepers are a thrifty lot. They don't like anything to go to waste. So what did they do with the piles of dead Grey Squirrels? Why sold them to pubs for the public to eat, of course! Well, imagine their surprise when fancy chefs (and even TV chefs) started buying the squirrels by the wheelbarrel full. And they're getting creative. One hotel restaurant is turning the nasties into mock Peking duck.

So how do nasty Grey Squirrels taste? According to an article in today's NYT's Dining & Wine section, it all depends on what the nasties have been eating. If you order squirrel pie, hope your dead squirrel lived on nummy nuts. Apparently, the NYT couldn't get enough of the story, going into a depth rarely explored in that publication.

If you'd like to cook a squirrel, the Guardian website has a squirrel pastie recipe (pasties are basically Welsh empanadas).


*For details, click here.

What I Just Cooked: Beans and Swiss Chard

I saw this basic beans and Swiss chard recipe on a Lidia Bastianich show. All I needed to do was blanch some chard in unsalted water, which I did. Then I drained the chard and chopped it up after letting it cool. The rest was even easier. In a large frying pan, I threw in sliced red onions, garlic, tomato paste, cooked white beans, and crushed canned tomatoes and sauteed the whole lot in some hot olive oil.* What I found really interesting was that you fried the tomato paste before adding the canned tomatoes. As the beans started to coat in the paste, I got the idea to throw in a small amount of dark brown sugar — something about the coating beans made me think of Boston baked beans. I really regretted not having any bacon to throw in. At last, the Swiss chard was added and the dish was finished. Lidia suggested using this as a side dish to meat but I just ate it as the main.

So how did it turn out? I think I'll give this concoction a B.

*In Lidia's version, she added red peppers instead of the red onions.