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!