random appetites

Random Appetites: Slainte!

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Happy St Patrick’s Day, folks! The day where even if you’re not Irish, you are!

When you think Irish food, most people think of corned beef and cabbage. Did you know, though, that this is only eaten in 2 counties (Dublin and Cork) and more a modern association at that? Be that as  it may, it still tastes awfully good so you might as well indulge whenever you’ve got a reason. And, according to a recent Iron Chef America episode, if you’ve got a pressure cooker you can have a very tender corned beef brisket in about an hour! (So there’s still time if you didn’t set up the slow-cooker this morning–my preferred way of “roasting” a brisket with a minimum of fuss.)

An unfortunate trend in many places, on St Patrick’s Day, is to serve unnaturally green beverages. If you want to drink beer today, avoid the cheap, food-colored stuff and have a Guinness or Killian’s Red or something that’s at least remotely Irish and tasty. If mixed drinks are your bag, have a good shot of Bailey’s over ice as you toast your neighbors “Slainte!” (pronounced, at least so I’ve heard, SLAN-tah and means “[to your] good health”) But please, for the love of Mike, stay away from the green creme de menthe!

Random Appetites: Sources of Inspiration

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While some people are true wizards in the kitchen, throwing random ingredients together and, more times than not, ending up with food that is edible and yummy. But even those people–most of ’em, I’m convinced–had to start off with training wheels: a few good cookbooks.

Now, I can do my fair share of positive-outcome experiments (though, as Todd can attest, more than once he’s come over for dinner and I’ve said: Just in case, there’s always pizza!) but I also have a _huge_ collection of cook books that I pull ideas out of regularly. Sure, Culinary School helped with the collection a lot but I actually had a good starter set going before then. My rate of acquisition may have slowed in the last few years but those stained and wrinkled pages stand out from the others with barely-cracked spines. Here are some of the books that I reach for when I don’t feel like cooking solo.

The Kitchen Companion Great all-purpose kitchen reference book. This one has basic recipes for a lot of simple things and base mixes you can do yourself but the thing I love the most is the amount of charts in this book! For each cooking method and each type of food that can be subjected to it you have charts showing how long it will take to cook, what temperatures it should be done at and so one and so forth. It’s a gem of a book and out of print, but used copies are pretty easy to find.

Marcella Cucina Authentic Italian cuisine and the source of my most favorite Risotto recipe ever. This is one of those cookbooks that can also be read cover to cover because the little anecdotes make it read like a foodie novel of her travels through the Italian regions of food.

The New Orleans Cookbook and River Road Recipes: The Textbook of Louisiana Cuisine are where I turn when I want some home-style comfort food. The latter is a Junior League cookbook so features the names of all the contributors or and some duplicates versions of the same dish and always heavy on the butter and cream. The former includes touches of culture notes and a few stories here and there, but is a good city guide to New Orleans food.

The Cake Bible Dude. This woman (Rose Levy Beranbaum) wrote her thesis on the science and chemistry of yellow cake; talk about hardcore baking! The recipes are great and the techniques so precise (down to how many seconds you need to beat each addition of egg or flour) that, if you follow them, you can’t make a bad cake. I especially like her “Chocolate Bread” (which is really a perfect chocolate pound cake).

Martha Stewart’s Menus for Entertaining Say what you (or I) want about to woman, herself, this book is one I reach for when I need a little nudge about party menus. I don’t think I’ve ever used a full menu of hers all at once, but the balance she strikes between the various elements is a good jumping-off point and the food photography is stunning. That’s enough for me.

Random Appetites: Pasta-rific

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A recent Italian dinner reminded me of the following anecdote:

On one of many blind dates in my younger years I was taken to a chain restuarant infamous for servings various types of pasta from a variety of different cultures. Basically, you chose your style and then among a choice of actual pastas, depending on your order. I ordered the Pasta Florentine [florentine means spinach, no matter where you are] and requested farfalle for the pasta. “I’m sorry, we don’t have farfalle,” the waitress replied. I thought this was odd since it was pictured on the menu, but gamely I asked what pastas they did have. “Spaghetti, fetuccini, penne, bowtie and rotini.” With my best attempt at a raised eyebrow I ordered the “bowtie” and shuddered at what restaurants weren’t teaching their staff.

In case you don’t see the problem with the above exchange, farfalle is the correct term for the pinched rectangles with the ruffly edges that are also known as bow-tie pasta. The fact that the server didn’t know this is, to me, just as ridiculous as the (possible urban legend) McDonald’s employee not knowing that half a dozen nuggets is the same as a 6-pack.

What reminded me of this was dinner Sunday night: we found (thank you, Google) a family-owned Italian place with a fairly broad menu not too far from our hotel and gave it a whirl. On the menu were some unknowns: bucatini (which feels like a thick spaghetti but is really a tube, there’s a tiny hole in the middle) and tortelachi ( large tortelini–makes sense if you think about it). Thankfully, though, our servers had no issues with the menu and the food was excellent. I’ll be doing a proper write-up about it at some point in the future.

Until then, if you’re curious about pasta names and shapes, check out this handy page from the National Pasta Association.

Random Appetites: Travelling Food

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Happy Fat Tuesday to all the revelers among us: Laissez les bon temps roulez! (let the good times roll, for the uninitiated)

(And, now, back to our regularly scheduled Random Appetites)

Seems like I spend an inordinate amount of time in my car–I’m sure many of you can relate. And even though my commute is a short one (around 20 minutes to work, less if the students are on break), the road trips have become quite regular occurences and, among other things, road trips mean travelling snacks.

It all started when I was a kid and we’d take trips back home to visit family over the holidays. The boys (my younger brothers) would be tucked into the back seat with toys to keep them occupied for as much of 6 hours was possible and a bag of simple, non-messy snacks to keep the tummies from grumbling. Just after high school I was diagnosed as hypoglycemic so travelling with food became more of a necessity than a perk. And then there’s those trips home where the sun makes you sleepy and the only thing you can do, once blasting the a/c and the radio have stopped working, is chew to stay awake–travelling food to the rescue.

When choosing foods for interstate foraging it’s best to follow a few, simple guidelines:

  • Avoid those that need refrigeration; you never know when the cooler will get wedged closed, spring a leak, or just be too difficult to get into while at top speeds,
  • Packages must be easy to open so as not to cause impediment that you’d have to explain to a state trooper or your insurance company,
  • Must be edible with only the use of hands–no cutlery allowed.

I prefer, also, to keep things on the dry side (easier to brush off crumbs than spills) and as self-contained as possible (to avoid those crumbs in the first place).

In the canvas bag that holds the snacks for the next road trip are the following supplies:

  • 3 types of organic granola bars–the Cascadian Farms bars are just too yummy and the fact that they avoid all those convoluted chemicals can’t be a bad thing
  • dried fruit (apricots, pineapple, cranberries)–can be high in sugar but it’s at least fruit that won’t spoil if left in the car for a few hours
  • packets of trail mix–good for protein
  • baked pita chips
  • Oreos (what, I need chocolate in there somewhere!)

The cookies, admittedly, are more for destination snacking when the post-con sweet-tooth hits. The rest are prime examples of road snacks.

Random Appetites: Mardi Gras

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Even though Fat Tuesday, the culmination of weeks of carnival-type fun in New Orleans, Mobile and elsewhere, isn’t until next week, what’s the point in giving you recipes, etc. to try out with only 1 day to do it? Exactly. So here’s your annual dose of the green, gold and purple with time to spare.

For those who may not know, I grew up about an hour away from New Orleans, in a little town named Ponchatoula which has been making it’s name, over the last couple of decades, as an antique center. Anyway, despite my formative years having been so close to the action and family still fairly thick over there, I have a confession to make:

I have never been to Mardi Gras.

The shame! I know! How can I have gone this long without attending this cultural event? Hell if I know. But one of these days I’ll remedy the lack and experience the fun for myself. Of course, more and more I have less and less tolerance for crowds and craziness so I think it’ll be only when I can afford (and book way in advance) a Quarter room so that I can explore and escape as needed without having to navigate anything but foot traffic.

But I digress!

There’s a lot of history behind Mardi Gras and this New Orleans website has a heaping helping of it, so if you’re curious, check it out! But I know what you really want to know, you want the skinny on all the fattening, pre-Lent consumables. And here we go!

First things, first, the King Cake. (Pardon me while I drool…) Now, in reality, the King Cake is a coffee cake decorated for the occasion in green (for faith), gold (for power) and purple (for justice) and with a wee plastic baby, silver or gold coin or bean of some such inside. Why? Well, it’s heavy on the Christian symbolism: the prize inside is supposed to be the Baby Jesus. Whoever finds the baby, coin or bean is, traditionally, the King or Queen of the week and is supposed to host the next party or, at the very least, supply the next King Cake.

Any oval coffee cake will do and many, these days, deviate from the cinnamon brioche tradition and use danish pastry filled with cream, fruit filling or chocolate. Yum! I tend to stick with the eggy brioche because it’s just so good the way it is, and the crunchy sugar on top is the best!

According to Rima and Richard Collin’s The New Orleans Cookbook, the King Cake should be made with a coffee cake dough of choice that uses about 4 packages of active dry yeast. So, the first time I made it I went to my go-to brioche recipe from Nick Malgieri’s How to Bake, which uses 2 packages of yeast. So I doubled the recipe. Despite the fact that Malgieri’s recipe makes 2.5 lbs of dough. I made 5 lbs of brioche. I ended up with 2 ginormous king cakes that overflowed my sheet pans, not to mention my counter space. Use only a single batch of the recipe below and you’ll probably still have enough for 2 normal size cakes.

Brioche Dough
(by Nick Malgieri with my paraphrased directions)

Sponge
1 c milk
5 tsp (2 env) active dry yeast
1.5 c all-purpose flour

Dough
12 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
6 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 lg eggs plus 1 egg yolk
2.25 c all-purpose flour

For the sponge: Heat the milk until warm (seriously, you don’t want it over 110 or you could kill the yeast, so just slightly warmer than body temperature) and (off the heat) whisk in yeast and then the flour, cover with plastic wrap to protect against drafts and let sit for 30 minutes.

For the dough: Cream the butter until it’s very soft and fluffy, beat in the sugar and then one egg. Alternate flour and the remaining eggs, one after the other, until everything is incorporated. Mix in the risen sponge then knead for 5 minutes (or let the dough hook of your mixer go at it for 2 minutes). Cover with a piece of plastic wrap, let the dough rise for about an hour, punching down the dough periodically.

Punch down the dough once more, then place it in an oiled bowl, turning the dough over so the surface is lightly coated. Cover and refrigerate the dough for 4 hours or overnight. It’s going to rise so use a big enough bowl to accommodate it and don’t be surprised if it goes all ‘blob’ on you and pushes the top of that super-large rubbermaid container completely off–just means your yeast was really healthy!

After four hours or overnight, take the dough out, punch it down and knead it a bit to get the extra air out, and divide the dough into 2 pieces for one big cake or 4 pieces for 2 normal sized ones.

Now, if you want to fill your dough with anything, that’s up to you. Filled or not you want to roll out each piece of dough into a log shape and twist two of them together and then arrange the twist into an oval, gently pressing the two ends together. Sprinkle the ring with colored sugars and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until the bread is golden and done (thump the bottom of the loaf and if it sounds hollow, it’s ready).

Alternately, you can simply sprinkle the dough with cinnamon sugar, bake, and then drizzle the cake with a powdered sugar icing and then top with the colored sugars. (But the crunchy baked sugar really is one of the best parts!)

After the cake has cooled, insert the bean, baby or coin in through the bottom of the cake (make sure no one is looking) and serve to a group of friends. Sure, you can bake a bean or coin inside, but I usually don’t. It’s just as easy to wait until it’s cool (and make sure you clean that coin well before adding it to any food!).

Now, if you’re serving this cake in the morning, coffee will work well enough to wash it down (but at least go for a good, chicory blend or an all-out cafe au lait) but if you’re off for the day or out for the evening, wash your King Cake down with the quintessential New Orleans drink: the Hurricane. You can find a mix in many liquor stores or specialty shops, but Chef Rick has a from-scratch Hurricane recipe that will most likely treat you better than any powder ever could:

Hurricane Punch

1 ounce white rum
1 ounce Jamaican rum
1 ounce Bacardi 151 proof rum
3 ounces orange juice, with pulp
3 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
1/2 ounce Grenadine
Crushed Ice

Combine all ingredients, mix well (shake or stir). Pour over crushed ice in Hurricane glass. Garnish with orange or pineapple ring and drink through a small straw for maximum wind speed.

Also, his olive salad recipe is the best I’ve found short of taking a trip to Central Grocery for a jar, which isn’t exactly convenient when you’re 4 states away and craving a Muffaletta