Salt & Fat

Khao man gai burger

mrgan — Sun, 06 May 2012 09:29:00 -0700

Khao man gai is my favorite Thai dish, a careful balance of boiled capon (chicken), rice cooked in the resulting broth, a crucial garnish of cucumber and cilantro, and the miracle ingredient: the sauce, oh dear lord the sauce. You should definitely make the whole thing from Leela’s recipe at She Simmers, but that’s not what we’re doing here today. What we’re doing here is an insult to culinary tradition, albeit a delicious insult. We’re going to pun on the dish and make it into a burger.

Note that my name for this concoction makes no sense; we’re using neither khao (rice) nor gai (chicken). However, the original name doesn’t capture the key ingredient either (the sauce, the sauce!) so I’ll let it slide.

Ingredients

Burgers:

2/3 lb ground beef, 10% fat or more
4 tbsp khao man gai sauce (see below)
2 nice burger buns (brioche buns if possible)

Sauce:

1/3 cup ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
5-6 cloves garlic
4 bird’s eye chilis (“Thai chilis”)
1/2 cup yellow soybean sauce (there is no substitute for this, sorry)
1/4 cup usukuchi (light soy sauce) or Thai white soy sauce
1/4 cup Thai sweet chili sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup white vinegar (yes, the cheap stuff)

(Makes more than you need, but it’s hard to make less, and yay, you’ll have leftover sauce. Cook the full khao man gai spread the next day, or top the burger with extra sauce if you like yours punchy with the umami.)

Cilantro mayo:

3 tbsp mayo, Kewpie brand or homemade
3 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped

Quick pickles:

2 small or 1 medium pickling (“Kirby”) cucumber
salt and sugar

Serves 2.

Directions

Combine all the sauce ingredients in your food processor and chop until they make a coarse, wet mix, no more than 5-10 seconds. Move to a small saucepot and bring to a near boil, then immediately take off heat and let come to room temperature (30-40 minutes).

While you wait, read Jim Ray’s post on grilling burgers. Start your grill and come back into the kitchen to make the rest.

Combine the cilantro and the mayo and refrigerate.

Toss the cucumbers in a small bowl with a few generous pinches of equal parts salt and sugar and let rest until you’re ready to top the burger; yes, this is all it takes to semi-pickle them.

Slice your buns while your hands are still free of meat juices.

In a large and cold glass or metal bowl, combine the meat and the khao man gai sauce. Use your (extremely clean) hands, and don’t overwork the meat. Just knead it enough to fold the sauce in. Shape two dimpled patties. Grill the burgers according to Jim’s method and don’t forget to quickly toast your buns.

To serve, spread cilantro mayo on the bun, top with the burger, then the pickles. Goes great with a beer or a drinking vinegar.

A bastardized recipe like this would deservedly roll the eyes of fusion-restaurant goers, but as an experiment in food-punning in your home kitchen, it’s fun and instructive. My apologies to Thai grandmothers everywhere.

Fennel Drinking Vinegar

mrgan — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:51:26 -0700

I understand - you probably think the idea of drinking vinegar is weird. But vinegar is just an acid, and every good soda has an acidic component. (In Coke, it’s phosphoric acid. I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m just saying it sounds even weirder than vinegar.) Here in Portland, Pok Pok Som makes great drinking vinegars in some obvious fruity flavors, and some unexpected ones (celery, honey). As mentioned in episode 6 of the Salt & Fat podcast, I figured I’d play with flavors I haven’t yet seen or tried.

So today, I bring you fennel drinking vinegar. It combines the aromas of fennel and star anise - the most obvious pairing there is. Once you make the syrup, mix it 1:4 with soda water over ice, or use as an ingredient in cocktails and desserts. Heck, you could make milkshakes with it.

Ingredients

2 medium-large bulbs fennel, with fronds
~1/2 quart coconut vinegar
6 star anise, whole
2 cups sugar

Directions

Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat and toast the star anise in it for 2 minutes until fragrant.

Chop the fennel bulbs into 1-2” chunks and place in a tall, narrow container large enough to hold them, but not much larger. (We want to minimize exposure to air.) Add the star anise and cover with enough coconut vinegar to submerge all the fennel; weigh it down with a heavy can if needed. Make sure the container is closed airtight and store in a cabinet, or in another dark, room-temperature place, for 3 days. Check it occasionally to make sure none of is exposed to air. If it is, stir the fennel.

After 3 days, remove and save the star anise; remove and discard as many fronds (herby green bits) as you can. Pour the fennel-vinegar mix into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Move to a stock pot and add the star anise back in. Start the pot on medium-high heat until it begins to bubble, then turn down to medium-low and cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes.

Strain the mix through a fine-mesh strainer and discard the fennel solids. Wash out the stock pot and add the mix back in. Stir in the sugar. Bring to a light bubbling over medium-high heat, then turn down to medium-low and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. You’re essentially making syrup at this point.

Using a funnel, pour the syrup into bottles or jars. Leave it uncovered to cool down to room temperature, then cover and move to the fridge, where it will keep for many months.

Notes

You are unlikely to find coconut vinegar at your local all-purpose food store; instead journey over to your Asian supermarket and look for something like this:

Coconut vinegar is very mild, with no trace of coconut taste. It’s also usually pretty cheap (excepting New Agey domestic brands.) In a pinch, you could substitute cane vinegar (often available in stores that carry Filipino foods.) As for sugar, I use fine cane sugar, but anything that dissolves well should work.

Enjoy this refreshing, licorice-like drink all summer long!

We’re super happy to announce a brand new project: the...

mrgan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:57:00 -0800

We’re super happy to announce a brand new project: the Salt & Fat Podcast. We hope to bring you 30 minutes of discussion about food and cooking once a week. You can listen to it on the new Mule Radio Syndicate website, or subscribe in iTunes. Let us know what you think and how we can make it better.

Tomato sauce with tuna and peas

mrgan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:32:00 -0800

This is the first “recipe” I ever prepared myself. It all started when my mom saw me heating up jarred pasta sauce for a late-night dinner. (I could do that much without assistance.) She suggested it would be more interesting if I fried up some onions and canned tuna, then added the sauce. She was, as always, right: this was way more interesting. I now had options to choose from, ingredients to wrangle, steps to follow! I’ve tweaked the basic recipe back and forth many times, learning in the process the valuable lesson that adding more salt and fat improves the taste noticeably. This is the version I make today, some fifteen years later. (Recipe after the picture)

Ingredients

1 lb pasta - ideally penne or rigatoni, though spaghetti will also do
14 oz can crushed tomatoes
6 oz canned tuna, the good stuff
2 anchovy fillets, chopped
1/3 cup frozen peas
1 tbsp capers
3 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
1 medium sprig parsley
3 tbsp good olive oil
Salt, pepper, crushed red-pepper flakes to taste

Directions

Cook the pasta however the package instructs you to.

Meanwhile, quickly strain the tomatoes by pouring off the juice from the can - no need to user a strainer. (Save the juice for another use).

Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat for 1 minute and add the anchovies, the garlic, and the red pepper (if using). Stir for no more than 1 minute, then add the tomatoes. After another 2-3 minutes, add the tuna and break it apart into bite-sized pieces using a wooden or silicone spatula. Also add the capers, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook for 5-10 minutes to desired thickness. Add the peas and gently fold in to heat through when the sauce is nearly done. Salt liberally, pepper conservatively.

Your last step is to strain the pasta when cooked and add it back to the now-dry, off-heat pot into which you’ve poured the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil. Add 2 tbsp of the sauce and toss to coat the pasta fully.

To serve, make a nest of pasta in a wide bowl, top with more sauce, and sprinkle with the parsley. I won’t stop you from grating on some Parmesan, but this already tastes very rich without it.

Notes

Muir Glen is a good domestic brand of canned tomatoes. For tuna and anchovy, I’m a big fan of Ortiz, or whatever is caught close to where you live. There should always be some peas in your freezer, and none in a can in your pantry. Capers? I buy them preserved in salt, then rinse them and adjust the salt levels; they taste brighter and less acidic that way.

You can play with this recipe by omitting the anchovies or capers, adding onions in step 1, or throwing in some olives for a faux puttanesca. Follow your heart, gut, and head.

Oven-dried Tomatoes

mrgan — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:13:40 -0800

It’s here again, tomato season. As we established in our tomato-butter sauce post, you’re best off eating tomatoes one of two ways:

Fresh when in season
Preserved when not in season

The sauce is one way to lock in their flavor, cooked down and frozen for later use: a bowl of fresh pappardelle in February.

My favorite method, though, is oven-drying tomatoes and storing them in olive oil.

Here’s the short-and-sweet recipe:

Ingredients

Fresh plum tomatoes
Salt
Olive oil

Directions

Pre-heat your oven to 200ºF.

Wash the tomatoes, remove the stems, and core out the stem piece at the top. Slice them in half and remove all seeds, water, and jelly-like insides; reduce them to just the meaty pieces. Drain well.

Line a large baking tray (with sides) with at least 1/4” of salt. Place the tomatoes on the salt bed, skin side down.

Slow-dry on the medium rack for about six hours, until slightly leathery. Store in jars in olive oil, refrigerated.

Use as a substitute for watery, flavorless, out-of-season tomatoes on sandwiches, in sauces, or as a winning antipasto.

Notes

If possible, use plum tomatoes - the long, pear-shaped ones. This is the best tomato to use for sauces, and it works best here as well. Varieties include Roma and San Marzano. Most other tomatoes should work, as long as they’re good - save heirlooms for sandwiches, though. (Oh and, while I’m a fan of canned tomatoes, don’t use them for this - they’re far too juicy and soft.)

Don’t splurge on the olive oil here. It should taste clean, but not too assertive. You’ll want the tomato flavor to shine, so go with a decent, cheap brand of oil.

When seeding tomatoes, work in a colander set over a large bowl. This way you’ll get to save all the delicious tomato water - a beverage that puts “tomato juice” (pureed tomatoes diluted with water) to absolute shame.

Make sure your jars are perfectly clean and the lids close snuggly. Cover the tomatoes with oil completely. This is the secret to preserving things in oil: start clean and make sure nothing is exposed to air. The oil will do the rest. The tomatoes will keep for months in the fridge, or a week or two unrefrigerated. What may happen in the fridge is, the jar will get cloudy as the oil congeals. This is perfectly natural and does not affect the taste of the oil or the tomatoes in any way; you can thaw out the jar in a bowl of hot water and refrigerate again over and over.

My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that oven-dried tomatoes are approximately 500 times tastier than most fresh tomatoes. Here they are in action, topping a sandwich of chicken salad made with fish-sauce fried wings and kewpie mayo.

The clock is ticking - run to the market and grab all the tomatoes you can!

Preserved cherries

jimray — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:18:01 -0700

“Last week for cherries!” the fella at last weekend’s farmer’s market crowed, and I knew I had to do something. I ended up taking home six pounds of the last of the season’s Rainier and Bing cherries.

Here in Washington, we grow more sweet cherries than just about any place else. When I first moved up here, these things flummoxed me — they weren’t tart like the cherries I knew back east. And these white things that look kinda like over-ripened crabapples? You guys think they’re so special you named ‘em after the big mountain off in the distance?

Turns out Rainier cherries are worth moving to the west coast for. They’re pretty fragile as far as cherries go, more suspectible to big temperature swings, and farmers tend to lose a lot of fruit to birds. This makes them pretty spendy, even close to the orchards¹. At the start of the season, I’ll see Rainiers go for something like $5 a pound. When they hit their peak towards the end of July through early August, they’re a little cheaper. All of which is to say: these are premium fruits worth hanging on to for as long as you can as the season ends.

As luck would have it, it’s pretty easy to preserve cherries in syrup and alcohol — our friends at American Drink have a great primer on just that. I took my pal Albert’s advice and did a bit of experimenting. Here’s what I came up with.

Ingredients

2lbs of cherries - Bing, Van, Rainier, go nuts
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of alcohol of your choice (rum, brandy, various liquers, bourbon, wine)
A few clean, wide mouth jars with new lids

When you’re picking a liquor, have fun, but keep it straightforward. Brandies and other distilled wines make a good choice. I matched bourbon with both Rainiers and Bings and they came out great. You could even do a white or a rosé wine with Rainiers to match their light color.

You’re probably going to want to invest in a cherry pitter because pitting more than a couple of cherries with a paring knife or screwdriver (seriously) is a pain in the ass. I like this one from Oxo.

Make sure your jars are clean. I like to run them through the diswasher without soap or boil for about 10 minutes, just to make sure.

De-stem, wash and pit your cherries. This will take a while. SAVE THE PITS. Seriously.

Add the cherry pits and the water to a pot and bring to a boil. The seeds will add some color and flavor to the syrup. You could add other flavors at this point — a cinnamon stick, lemon or orange zest, a vanilla bean, peppercorns — but go easy.

Once the water’s boiling, add the sugar, stir to dissolve, and leave on the heat only long enough to make sure all the sugar has dissolved. Remove the pot from the heat, then add your booze.

A word about the liquor here: you’re going to need to determine on your own how boozy you want these cherries to be. A full cup should do the trick; I wouldn’t recommend more than that. You can boil off some or all of the alcohol if you just want the flavor without the hooch. And you can skip the alcohol all together. You might need to double the amount of syrup you make.

Fill your jar with as many cherries as you can — I found it was best to do a few at a time so I didn’t end up with big gaps. Pour the syrup over the cherries, then let them cool to room temperature then refrigerate. They should last a few months in the fridge.

The obvious use for these is as cocktail cherries and I won’t stand in your way there. Spoon a few with a little syrup over a scoop of icecream to bring a little summer flavor back into fall.

Rumor has it that in Japan, where people tend to be rather perfectionist about their produce, Rainier cherries sell for as much as a dollar a piece. ↩

Summer squash 'pasta'

jimray — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:59:50 -0700

Chances are, you or someone near to you — a neighbor or a coworker, perhaps — has a garden full of yellow and green zucchini, the never-ending summer squash. And by now, you might be a bit tired of zucchini bread and grilled rings of squash that kind of turn to mush after five minutes.

One of my favorite ways to quickly cook these oft-maligned veggies is to turn them into a faux pasta, which requires little more than a vegetable peeler and a pot of water.

The idea is simple — peel the squash lengthwise to create ribbons of that resemble a wide fettuccine or pappardelle. Blanch them quickly then add a few accompaniments for flavor. Easy, right?

Ingredients

A mixture of green zucchini and yellow summer squash, about one of each per person
Thinly sliced shallot, about 1/4 per person (you could sub onion or sliced garlic here)
Cherry tomatoes, halved¹, I like to use a mix of cherry, grape, sungolds
Some olive oil
Freshly grated parmesan cheese

First things first, set a big pot of water to boil. While that’s going, set a small to medium frying pan on low to medium-low. Add a slick of olive oil to the pan, not much, and let it heat up for just a minute. Don’t let the oil get too hot or it will develop an off taste.

Add the sliced shallots to the oil in the frying pan to soften them a bit. The temperature should be low enough that they shouldn’t brown at all, only slightly simmer.

Now, peel your squash, lengthwise. You can usually get a few strips before you start to hit the seeds, at that point, rotate the vegetable and keep going until you’ve got a pile of squash ribbons. I haven’t found much use for the center core and usually just compost it.

The water should be at a full boil at this point. Add a few tablespoons of sea or kosher salt, let it come back to boil, then add a handful of the squash ribbons. Don’t overcrowd the pot, it’s ok to work in batches here. After one minute, the squash will be ready, fish them out with a set of tongs and let them drain in a colander while you work through the rest of the ribbons. Don’t let them overcook, you want to get them to be soft but not mushy — al dente.

When the squash are all done, add a serving’s worth to the frying pan with the oil and shallots, then toss just enough to coat in the oil. Add a healthy amount of parmesan cheese, then turn again to melt the cheese, then move the pasta to a bowl for serving. Again, it’s best to work in batches here.

Before serving, add a handful of the tomato halves, season with a three-finger pinch of grey or kosher salt and a few turns of the pepper mill. I’ll even throw in some prosciutto if I’ve got some.

If you’re looking to capture the end of the summer in a bowl, fresh and crisp, this should do the trick.

Here’s the thing about cherry tomatoes: they’re already bite sized. But do yourself and your guests a favor, slice them in half so you don’t spend half the meal chasing them around your bowl. ↩

Vegetable Confit

mrgan — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:32:00 -0700

Confit is a fancy food-word. If you’re eating confit, there’s probably Salad Périgourdine and beurre blanc on the plate, and a Côtes du Rhône or something on the table. And sure, confit is a high-point of fancy cooking, but its roots are humble. If European farmers could invent it and then use it for centuries, we fancy, modern people can use it in the fancy-free dishes we make in our fancy, modern kitchens. Let’s demystify!

The most traditional confit you’re likely to encounter today is duck confit; duck leg, fully submerged in duck fat, cooked at very low heat. This lack of air exposure and a constant, low heat assure that the meat won’t dry out or overcook - it will just get softer and tastier. Confit meats are the very definition of the word tender.

This process can be applied to many other foods. Just keep these two guidelines in mind:

Fully cover the food with fat (duck fat, olive oil, grapeseed oil, bacon fat…)
Cook at low heat for a long time (no higher than 250ºF, 2-10 hours)

A person of French heritage may grumble about this, but in my book, you’ll be justified calling any food made in this way a confit. Jim will write more about that duck confit I mentioned; for now, let’s look at vegetables, currently at their peak here in the Pacific Northwest.

Cherry Tomato Confit

Compared to their full-sized relatives, cherry tomatoes have an advantageous ratio of meat to juice. Slow-cooking a whole San Marzano tomato would produce a tasty bite, but it would ooze water. Cherry tomatoes just pop a little.

Find a market stand with bright, firm, sweet cherry tomatoes of whatever color appeals to you. Set aside any bruised, cracked, or otherwise compromised tomatoes for another use (such as immediate snacking). Remove the stems, wash the tomatoes well, then dry them thoroughly by tumbling gently in a clean kitchen towel.

Place them in a solid pot large enough so your tomatoes cover the whole bottom, but not in more than 2 or 3 layers. Sprinkle some salt over them - as much as you’d season fresh tomatoes with - then cover with enough cheap-and-clean olive oil to top every last tomato; any bits left sticking out will dry out.

Set the stove to medium heat for a minute or two (to speed up the initial heating process), then turn it down to low. Keep it there for about two hours, adjusting the heat so you get some tiny bubbles at the bottom of the pot, but the surface isn’t moving. Steady, quiet heat is what you’re after.

Side note: meat confit is usually done in the oven, where heat is gentler and more even. It’s a shame to fire up the whole oven for a small amount of vegetables, however, and the stovetop works fine. If you decide to make a huge batch in the oven, set the heat to 200ºF.

You’ll know the tomatoes are done when they’re slightly shriveled, the skin on some has lightly cracked, and they’re soft and juicy. (Don’t forget to let them cool a bit before you taste them. An important lesson it’s taken me many years to learn: oil can be furiously hot even when it looks perfectly still.)

Once it’s cooled down to room temp, store your tomato confit in a clean, tightly-sealing jar, making sure once again that the oil covers everything fully. It will keep in the fridge for months, improving your sandwiches and salads all winter long.

Garlic Confit

Garlic loves olive oil, and olive oil loves garlic. If the day ever comes when I have to name one flaw of garlic (and I hope that day never comes) I’d say that its flavor often lives in the shadow of its pungent power. The good news is, you can mellow garlic out quite a bit by cooking it over - you guessed it - low heat, for a long time.

Same basic principle as the cherry tomatoes: clean your garlic cloves, salt them a bit, cover with oil, cook on low heat for a few hours. You can turn up the heat a bit here, to maybe 1.5 or 2 out of 10, since garlic is pretty sturdy. A slightly shimmering oil is fine, as long as you stir now and then to make sure the bottoms of your cloves aren’t burning.

The garlic confit is done when it’s soft enough to mash with a fork. ~~Store in its oil.~~ (See note below.) Use in pasta dishes, on pizza, in rice bowls, as a robust side for roast chicken.

You know how I said olive oil loves garlic? Don’t dream of throwing out the oil once you eat your way through the veggies stored in it. People pay good money for flavored oils. Since introducing any additional foodstuffs into oil will shorten its shelf-life, keep it in the fridge. But, feel free to use it for cooking (where purity isn’t a must-have), salads, further confiting, etc.

UPDATE: A reader notes that garlic, due to its low acidity, is at risk for developing botulism when stored in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment. Commercially packaged garlic stored in oil is treated with acid first. To minimize your botulism risk, store the garlic separate from the oil and use it within a few weeks.

Bonus recipes: pearl onion confit and leek confit

Now that you have the general idea, try playing with it: confit some fresh (not frozen) pearl onions. Hint: peel them first.

Feel free to experiments with different kinds of oil or fat. Since the heat will be low, you can safely use butter, for instance. Leek confit calls for thinly sliced (up to 1/4”), lightly salted leeks cooked in butter, with the optional addition of a bit of water. If you’re after a texture closer to onion soubise, a rich and sweet marmalade, don’t cover the leeks completely. Just stir now and then, making sure they’re slowly cooking but never burning. Spread on toasted bread immediately, fold into eggs, or store in fat.

Like so many cooking methods, confit was originally a preservation method, child to necessity. Even in 2011, there’s nothing wrong with preserving in-season foods, especially when the preservation method transforms them into softer, sweeter, fancier versions of themselves.

Kajmak

mrgan — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:02:38 -0700

Growing up in Croatia and Bosnia, I ate a heck of a lot of kajmak (say it fast: kai-muck). Gallons and gallons of this rich, fatty, savory, goes-with-anything cream at the intersection of milk and cheese. It’s the region’s cream cheese, mayo, and ketchup all in one. I can’t think of a widely available US product that would serve as a workable substitute, so here’s a recipe for making your own.

Ethnic authenticity note: from town to town, from street to street, from family to family in Croatia, folks will prefer creamier versions to thicker, cheesier ones - and vice versa. This is the easiest version to make at home, and luckily, it’s my favorite.

You will need:

2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp salt

That’s all, seriously. I would strongly recommend using the highest-quality milk and cream you can find: if it’s from a neighbor or a nearby farm, 5 points; if it comes in a glass bottle, 3 points; if it’s at the very least local and fresh, have a point. This will affect the tastiness of the final product, but it’s also not a bad idea for the purposes of food safety. Speaking of which, keep your pots very clean in the next step. Cool?

This recipe is best started in the evening. It’ll be edible in 36 hours or so. We’ll be heating the dairy in a double boiler; bain-marie in French, if you wish to impress your friends. Start with a large, wide pot filled about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way with water, then in the middle of it place a smaller pot - also wide, if possible. The idea is to heat the inner pot with the indirect heat of the water, which will prevent our milk from scorching. Make sure the inner pot is stable. If it has handles, hang them off the sides of the larger pot; if not, you could put a metal cookie cutter under the inner pot, thus lifting it off the bottom. (Obviously, don’t use anything metal to support a pot inside an enameled pot, as shown here.)

Add enough water to the outer pot to run up half way up the sides of the inner pot. With the smaller pot thus surrounded with water, pour the milk into it and set your heat to high until the water is at a light boil. Don’t let it roll violently or boil over. Stir the milk until it’s at something like a simmer, adjusting the heat as needed. The milk should be steamy and ever-so-slightly bubbly; anything harsher than that is too hot.

Pour in the cream and the salt and stir. Bring the milk up to a steamy simmer again, then turn the heat down to medium-low and keep it there for 90 minutes. Don’t stir past this point, no matter how tempted you are; we want to let the cream form on top.

After the 90 minutes, turn off the heat and leave everything as is overnight. No fridge, no moving, no stirring. You can cover the smaller pot after a few hours, but you’ll want to let the milk slowly evaporate for a while.

In the morning, set the stove to medium heat and warm everything up for 15 minutes or so, then turn it down to medium-low and keep it there for 30 minutes. You can now move the smaller pot to a cooling rack and bring it to room temperature, then cover it and move it to the fridge. Still no stirring!

The following morning, check how much kajmak has formed in the pot. If you’re lucky, almost all of it is now a dense substance the consistency of cream cheese. There could also be milk half an inch below the surface - if that’s the case, carefully skim the cheese from the surface, cutting around the edge of the pot with a knife to make sure you get all the cheesy goodness. Strain any pieces that break off and combine all the solid, curdy, or thick-and-creamy parts. Leave behind any milk or cream at the bottom of the pot.

With all the kajmak now in a fresh container, stir it with a fork to even it out. It may still be a bit chunky or curdy; this doesn’t bother me a bit. Taste and add salt if needed. It will thicken and smooth out if you leave it in the fridge a bit longer.

What to do with it? Oh boy, oh boy… Dollop it on savory pies, dip freshly fried fry-bread in it, spread it on bagels, pair it with raw onion if you’re tough enough to handle it. The cooling richness of kajmak pairs great with grilled meats; you should really be using it instead of sour cream in our Slavonian Burger recipe.

Here it is, topping a messy slice of Americanized burek. Could’ve fooled you into thinking it was ice cream, huh?

707 Fried Chicken

mrgan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:33:00 -0700

This recipe is inspired by the extremely satisfying “808 fried chicken” at Portland’s 808 Grinds Hawaiian cart. Theirs is better because it’s battered and they serve it with the best mac salad in town, but mine is healthier (probably?) Cucumbers instead of mac salad - I mean, come on. Scroll down for a photo or trust me and read on.

You will need:

4 chicken thighs, boneless + skinless
1/2 cup usukuchi (light soy sauce; not “Lite soy sauce” or the low-sodium kinds.)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tsp freshly grated ginger
2 tsp sugar
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (but kept whole)
Peanut oil and canola oil
2 cups sweet rice flour or cornstarch

1 cup Japanese rice (short grain, sometimes called “sushi rice”)

1 cucumber
white wine vinegar
sake, if you’ve got any

For a few of these things, you might need to make a run to your friendly neighborhood Asian market. No, really, some of the best foods you’ve never had are right there. In addition to the above ingredients, pick up some:

Nanami togarashi - a salty, spicy seasoning of chili and orange peel. It’s like salt, but better.
Kewpie mayo - the best mayo you didn’t make yourself. The one in the big squeezy bottle with the baby on it.

Who knows, maybe we’ll use these in another Salt & Fat recipe! I’m on a minor Asian kick right now.

Let’s start by making Japanese rice. (This is the generic Japanese method; a great thing to know.) Place your rice in a stock pot or a bowl and rinse it under running water, stirring it around with your hand. Drain the water 2-3 times, until it’s no longer milky. This gets rid of extra starch which would make your rice sticky and shapeless; Japanese rice is served with the grains perfectly outlined.

Drain the rice in a sieve for a few minutes while you prep the chicken. Then, place the rice back in the pot you’ll cook it in and add 1 cup and 1 tablespoon of water. The equation is, about 1.1 parts water to 1 part rice. Let the rice soak for a while; the longer, the better (up to a few hours.) To start cooking, bring it to a near-boil, then cover and turn the heat down to low. Keep it there for about 10-15 minutes or until the water is fully absorbed. Now, they always tell you not to peek, but you’re pretty much going to have to - how else would you know if it’s done? Just do it infrequently and quickly.

Take the rice off the heat and replace the lid with a clean towel. This will steam the rice further; you can keep it here for 10 minutes to an hour, however long it takes you to fry the chicken. Fluff it gently with a flat spatula and it’s ready for the bowl.

About an hour before you’re ready to fry, marinade the chicken. Start by cleaning up the chicken pieces - trim away any loose or large pieces of fat. These are tasty, but save them for another use. (No, really - I freeze mine, adding to the collection as I go, then fry them separately, as a topping.) Cut the chicken into 2-3” pieces, trying to keep them even. Mix the soy sauces, the ginger, sugar, and garlic in a bowl, then toss in the chicken. Grind in some black pepper if you like. Move the whole thing to a large zipper bag and close, removing as much air from the bag as you can. Refrigerate for half an hour (if you’re in a hurry) up to, say, 4 hours.

So, we’ll be deep-frying. Deep-frying at home kind of terrifies me. Or, it used to. Let me give you some tips, earned by oil burns on my hands and a lot of stovetop clean-up:

Use a good candy thermometer. What’s a good one? Honestly, I’ve never been super-impressed with any, but find one that’s rated up to at least 400ºF and has a clip. Set it up so the tip is near the side, but not touching anything.
Get the oil as close to 375ºF as you can when you start, resulting in the final temperature of about 325ºF. (Cold food will drop the temprature of the oil.) Any hotter, and it’ll boil violently; any cooler, and you’ll be eating soggy, greasy food.
Keep your friables very, very, very dry. Splatter is usually caused by cold water hitting hot oil. This is why we coat things in breading, by the way.
Use a splatter screen when possible. It does other things, too!

Heat a lot of oil - 4” at least - in a very big, deep pot, with the candy thermometer all set up. (Why “candy” thermometer? Candy is made at frighteningly high temperatures.) It’ll take a few minutes to reach 375, during which we’ll prep the chicken further. Remove the chicken pieces from the bag, reserving the marinade, and place them on a big plate lined with lots of paper towels. Pat the chicken dry; completely dry, please.

(If you hate to throw out that juicy marinade, bring it to a simmer in a saucepan, turn the heat down to low, and reduce to a glossy, thickened sauce.)

Next, pour the sweet rice flour into a wide, shallow pan. Grab the chicken pieces with tongs or a fork and press them gently into the flour on all sides until it’s covered; shake off any unsightly clumps. Once they’re all floured up, let them rest for a few minutes while you make the sides.

Quick-pickle some cucumbers; slice them thin and toss them with the white-wine vinegar, the sake, sugar, and salt. Hit them with a dash of the nanami togarashi. Chill.

Back to the chicken - hopefully by now your thermometer is at 360 or so; good, now turn the heat to medium-high or whatever will keep it at 375. Note that the temperature will keep climbing after you first see 360 on the thermometer. If it climbs over 380, move the pot off the heat for a bit. Basically, do whatever you can to hit that magic number, 375. Just keep in mind that hot oil never looks as dangerous as it really is; be careful.

Don’t worry, though, this will be a walk in the park. One by one, tong the chicken pieces into the oil, making sure they produce that satisfying tssssss sound. Do not cover the pot - this will trap moisture, resulting in more splatter. If some oil drops do jump out at you, grab that splatter screen; just make sure you don’t knock off the thermometer with it. You should notice a temperature drop when the cold chicken enters the pot - down to 325 or so - and that’s just what we want. Fry the chicken, mostly undisturbed, for about 10 minutes. (Work in batches if needed.) The finished chicken should look golden and irresistible. If you’re unsure, pull out a piece and check it - it should be done, with no sign of pink, but still juicy and springy.

Using tongs or a spider skimmer, remove the chicken from the pot and dry it on a wire rack placed over a large pan. If you don’t have a wire rack, line the pan with crumpled paper towels. Whatever you do, don’t just put freshly fried food on flat paper; it’ll end up sitting in its own grease. Let the chicken rest for a couple of minutes while you serve the rice, drain the cucumbers, and clean up the kitchen a little. (Watch out for those hot pots and utensils!)

If you made the marinade into a sauce, toss the chicken with it. If not, hey, still tasty!

Here’s how I served mine:

(Sorry about the Instagram filter; trust me, the photo looked worse before. Next time we design a kitchen, we’re putting in bright, even, shadow-free lighting everywhere.)

The chicken was hit with a deconstructed version (lol) of the Perfect Condiment: kewpie mayo and sriracha. That pink stuff at the sushi bar? That’s it.

This is chopstick-friendly food, so ditch the fork. Healthy! Maybe!

America is enjoying a minor food renaissance, and one of its...

mrgan — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:55:29 -0700

America is enjoying a minor food renaissance, and one of its masters is David Chang of Momofuku. He’s an outspoken and overachieving fella, so you may not be surprised that in addition to running five restaurants, he is starting a magazine called Lucky Peach.

You should also not be surprised to hear that it’s a completely wonderful publication. Published by McSweeney’s (but of course), it’s a 174-page exploration of food, cooking, and eating. No ads, no crazy gimmicks, just a bunch of writing and honest, person-to-person recipes.

The first issue is all about ramen (and poached eggs) so if you like ramen, eggs, Japanese food, or good writing, you’d be crazy not to pick this up. Highly recommended! (Duh.)

Sugar snap peas with mint

jimray — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:54:00 -0700

I tend to cook most nights and am fortunate to have one of the most supportive partners, in eating and life, one could hope for. She greets everything with wide eyes and an “Oh, baby!” before it even gets to the table, even the misfires like my ongoing trials with thai peanut sauce. It’s pretty rare that I get to genuinely surprise her, though, as was the case with this side dish of sugar snap peas with mint, which we now excitedly refer to as “minty peas”.

This is a side that was meant for spring, with the sweet peas lifted by fresh mint and a little lemon zest. You’ve probably been roasting gourds and root vegetables since October; it’s time to brighten up a bit.

There are two techniques, both quick and simple, to getting this right. The first is to chiffonade¹ the mint into fine strips. The easiest way to do this is to pick the mint leaves from the stem, stack 6-8 or so together, roll them tightly, and cut them across the rolled bundle. Pick out any of the center stems that stick out and you’ll have a nice nest of mint. This technique works well with most herbs and leafy things, like collards.

Blanching is the other, and it’s one of my favorites, especially this time of year. With fresh, green vegetables, I like to use the big-pot blanching technique championed by Thomas Keller in his wonderful Ad Hoc at Home — it keeps fresh vegetables crisp and forces a brilliant green color. The key is to use a big pot of very salty water (Keller recommends 1 cup of kosher salt to 1 gallon of water) at a rolling boil to cook the vegetable as quickly as possible. Using lots of water helps to keep the temperature of the water from dropping when you add the vegetables so that they cook quickly. Lastly, prep an ice bath to submerge the vegetables in once they’re done so that they don’t overcook.

I like to dress the peas, either in a flavorful oil like a fruity olive oil or something nutty like walnut or hazelnut, or mix a very simple vinaigrette.

1 pound of sugar snap peas
8-10 fresh mint leaves
1 tablespoon flavorful oil (fruity olive, walnut or hazelnut)
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice (optional)
lemon zest (optional)

Set a big pot of water, at least a gallon, on high heat.
While the water’s coming to temperature, snap the stem ends off the peas and pull the attached “string” down the full length of the pea.
Chiffonade the mint leaves by stacking them on top of one another, rolling them tight, and slicing them into thin ribbons. Discard any tough-looking stems.
If using the lemon juice, mix a vinaigrette by slowly adding the oil to the juice and constantly whisking with a fork to create an emulsion. Add a pinch of salt and whisk some more.
Prepare an ice bath of equal parts water and ice (a full ice cube tray is about right).
When the water is at full boil, add a cup of kosher salt per gallon of water and stir. Waiting until the water is fully boiling will keep the salt from pitting your cookware.
Add the sugar snap peas and watch carefully for them to turn bright green, about 1-2 minutes in. Fish one out and taste it - it should be crisp and sweet but not raw.
Drain the peas and quickly submerge in the ice bath until they’ve cooled, about five minutes, then drain and dry on a paper towel.
Toss in a large bowl with the oil or vinaigrette. Add the mint chiffonade, a pinch of salt and lemon zest (if using) and stir to combine.

The French chiffon refers to either a delicate silk or, more simply, to rags. Chiffonade means literally “made from rags”, a reference to the appearance of the herbs after they’ve been cut. Technically, it’s improper grammar to use chiffonade as a verb, though it’s common enough in the parlance of the kitchen. ↩

The official Salt & Fat t-shirt

jimray — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:16:41 -0700

It’s a dilemma you’re probably already familiar with: you love to cook and eat, but you don’t know how to look good doing it and help support one of your favorite food blogs.

Friends, we’ve heard you and we’re here to help. Starting today, you can become the proud owner of a limited edition Salt & Fat t-shirt, designed by our own Neven Mrgan and printed in beautiful Portland, Oregon by our friends at Buy Olympia.

If you’re worried about staying cool when your kitchen gets hot, don’t be. These are American Apparel’s 50/25/25 blend we’re talking here so you know they’re going to feel great whether you’re stirring a batch of tomato-butter sauce or roasting a chicken. And it’s a great way to help support what has been a labor of love for us.

Like we said, this is a limited run so get yours while you can. And ladies, we’d love to hear from you — should we print a run of ladies’ cut shirts? Do let us know.

Roasted beet and blood orange salad

jimray — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:00:00 -0800

When you’re cooking to make an impression, as I suspect some of you may be this Valentine’s Day, it’s especially important that your dish look as good as it tastes. The expression “you eat first with your eyes” wouldn’t be cliche if there weren’t some truth to it.

This roasted beet and blood orange salad is certainly colorful but it also brings together a mix of winter flavors — sweet and earthy beets with just a little sharpness from blood oranges. Complete with a mix of spicy greens with a few herbs and some crunchy almond slivers.

I like to use golden beets here so that I have an excuse to use my favorite citrus, the blood orange, but you can certainly invert those colors with red or chioggia beets and a more traditional orange.

A little heads up: roasting then cooling the beets will take you about an hour to an hour and a half, mostly unattended, but it’s not like you can just whip this one up right before serving the main course. The beets and the dressing can be prepared well ahead of time, though.

Your ingredients:

3 medium golden beets (red or chioggia will work, or a mix)
2 blood oranges, sectioned, juices reserved
A few handfuls of spicy greens, like a mix of arugula, spinach, frisée and baby lettuces
A few fresh herbs like dill, cilantro or mint
1 tablespoon of good extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons of canola oil
Juice of 1 meyer lemon
1 teaspoon of champagne vinegar
1/2 a clove of garlic or shallot, diced
Slivered almonds

First things first, preheat the oven to 400. Place the beets in the middle of a sheet of foil big enough to wrap them and drizzle them with canola oil. If you’re using a mix of colors of beets, wrap each one separately to keep the colors distinct. Seal the beets in the foil packages and roast them in the oven for 50-60 minutes.

While the beets are roasting, section the oranges, saving as much of the juice as you can by scraping it from the cutting board into a glass and squeezing out the core of the orange. Chill the orange suprêmes in the fridge.

A word here about vinaigrette dressing. What you’re aiming for is an emulsion of an acid, in this case the juice of the meyer lemon and blood orange with a little champagne vinegar, in a fat, canola oil. Oil and vinegar don’t naturally like to combine but with careful attention and a slow hand, you can make it work beautifully.

Dice the garlic or shallot. Mix the garlic (or shallot) with a pinch of kosher salt, one teaspoon of meyer lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of blood orange juice and 1 teaspoon of champagne vinegar. You are more than welcome to adjust to your liking (if you don’t have champagne vinegar, for instance, feel free to go with 2 teaspoons blood orange juice, 1 teaspoon meyer lemon juice), just make sure you end up with 3 teaspoons at the end.

Measure out 3 tablespoons of canola oil, preferably into a container with a spout that will let you pour it slowly (I find that a glass Pyrex liquid measuring cup works brilliantly for this).

Slowly, starting with just a few drops at a time working to a thin drizzle, pour the canola oil into the juice/acid mixture, constantly whisking with a fork. You really can’t go too slowly here or whisk too much.

Back to the beets. Before you pull them out of the oven, prepare an ice bath that’s equal parts ice and water in a medium sized bowl. Check the beets for doneness — if a paring knife easily slides through them, they’re done. Let them cool until you can handle them (about 5-10 minutes) then peel them while they’re still warm. The easiest way is to slice the top then scrape the sides with the sharp edge of a knife, the peel should come right off, and then slice off the bottom. Cut the beets in half lengthwise, then each half in half again lengthwise, then each quarter across the middle for 8 cube-ish pieces. Cool them in the ice bath for at least 15 minutes, again, keeping them separate if using a mix of colors.

Coarsely shred the greens and herbs into bite-sized pieces then rinse and dry them. Put them in a dry bowl then drizzle the olive oil along the side of the bowl, not directly on the greens, then add a pinch of salt and use a pair of tongs or your hands to mix the greens with the oil. The oil will add a little complexity and mouth-feel to the greens without weighing them down too much.

Drain the beets and drizzle them in the vinaigrette and mix to combine. Start the plates with a bed of the greens (let any excess oil drip off before plating) then add the beets, then the blood orange sections, arranged to your liking. Roughly crumble the almonds over top and season with a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

This will be a beautiful, simple but elegant start to dinner.

Pissaladière: funky French pizza

mrgan — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 09:20:00 -0800

It’s a cruel trick of the brain that the things we can’t easily reach become so much dearer to us by that quality alone. Consider one of the recent additions to the list of my favorite foods ever: pissaladière, Provençal pizza. It has all the makings of a Neven Pleaser: rich, salty, satisfying. Yet I can’t think of a single restaurant in Portland that serves in (on a regular basis, anyway).

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to make pissaladière at home. Before we look at the ingredients, a brief disclaimer: like pizza, this is a dish of many styles and variations. This recipe is a combination of several kinds I’ve read about, ordered, and attempted myself. Feel free to improvise. I’m including a bonus sauce at the end; it’s optional but delicious, and good to know as a secret weapon for other dishes.

The below recipe, combined with a nice salad, will feed two. If you plan on using both puff pastry sheets from the package, double everything and bake in sequence.

1 sheet puff pastry, frozen
8-12 anchovy fillets; half chopped, half whole
10-15 niçoise (“nee-swaz”) olives or Kalamatas, pitted and quartered
1 large onion, sliced chunky
fresh thyme
fresh parsley, chopped
good olive oil
salt, sugar, black pepper

Ingredient notes: the best possible anchovies are Ortiz brand; Scalia will also work. Check your local Italian deli - the grocery store is unlikely to carry anything you’d want to eat.

Preheat the oven to 500º F. Next, grab the puff pastry sheet; they usually come in pairs, so remove one from the package and place it on a tray on the counter for 30 to 60 minutes, until it unfolds easily.

Meanwhile, let’s caramelize the onions - heat a bit of oil in a shallow nonstick skillet on medium-high. When it’s shimmering, add the onion and half a teaspoon each of salt and sugar. Stir lightly immediately to distribute the sugar. Cook 15-25 minutes until the onion is soft, with some brown spots, but not fully browned. If any slices were so small that they’re now burnt black, remove them. When done, remove from heat and add half a tablespoon of water to the skillet to keep the onions shiny and moving. Set aside.

Time to assemble: place a large sheet of parchment paper (NOT wax paper) on a pizza peel or a cookie sheet. Unfold the puff pastry sheet onto it and roll it out with a rolling pin lightly; we want to prevent the whole thing from puffing up madly, but don’t “crush” it.

Brush the whole thing with olive oil; if your anchovies came in a nice oil themselves, add some of that. Next, top with the olives, then the chopped anchovies, leaving a 1/2” border around the toppings. Add a sprinkle of fresh thyme and grind on some black pepper. Grab onions from the skillet using tongs and top the pissaladière. Finish it off with the whole anchovy fillets arranged in a pretty criss-cross pattern.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the edges of the puff pastry and the underside are golden brown. The edges may puff up quite a bit, but they’ll deflate once out of the oven. Let it cool for 5 minutes, then cut into a 2 × 3 grid. Top with the parsley and the sauce. What sauce? This sauce:

Bonus recipe: herbed mayonnaise

I learned this as sauce ravigote, which is probably not quite right, though the definition of the sauce appears to be controversial. Let’s just call it a sort of herbed mayo.

1 tbsp mayo; if possible, Kewpie brand
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp canola, grapeseed, or other mild oil
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp combined fresh herbs: parsley, chervil, tarragon, thyme; minced as finely as possible

Combine the egg, mayo, and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking vigorously, making sure it gets integrated and the sauce stays together without separating. Stir in the juice and the herbs. Add salt if needed.

Grab dollops of the sauce with a fork and drizzle it over the pissaladière; if you have any left over, it’ll keep in the fridge for a week. Use it on literally anything savory.

Serve everything with a crisp white wine or lemonade for the youngsters.

Sectioning a citrus

jimray — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 17:40:00 -0800

There are two reasons to section¹ a citrus. The first is for presentation, an elegant way to use lemons, oranges and grapefruit pieces in all kinds of recipes, from salads to cakes. The second is to remove the tough, often bitter, pith and inner membrane so that the flavor of the fruit can shine.

As we’re at the height of citrus season, with exotic blood oranges and meyer lemons in the stores, it’s a good time to take advantage of these wonderful fruits.

The basic idea is to first peel the fruit, taking the white pith along with it, and then separate as much of the flesh fruit from the inner membranes. A sharp knife, as always, is important here, I like to use a small paring knife for most fruits because it’s thinner blade lets me extract more flesh. A good chef’s knife is fine, though, especially for bigger citrus like grapefruit.

First, cut off each end of the fruit so that it’s flat enough to stand up on its own. You want to cut just to the flesh of the fruit, but not too much. It’s ok to take a few shallow slices, you can always cut more.

With the fruit standing on one end, cut into the peel where it meets the flesh and use a sawing motion to work down the side of the fruit and remove the peel and the pith. Make sure to follow the shape of the fruit as you work down by adjusting the angle of your knife along the way. Try to avoid cutting into the flesh as much as possible but make sure to get the bitter pith.

Rotate and peel the fruit until all of the pith and peel are removed. You may have a few white pith pieces left, just trim those off on your own. What’s left is an orb of just the flesh of the fruit and the inner membranes that hold the sections together.

Now you want to cut each section of the fruit out and leave the membranes that separate each section behind. Cut as close to the membrane as possible, towards the center of the fruit, to get as much of the fruit out, but be careful to fully detach the flesh from the membrane. The first and last sections will probably be the hardest. Be sure to pick out any seeds that may be lingering.

You’ll be left with peel, the self contained core and your beautiful citrus sections. Be sure to squeeze the core over a bowl to save any juice you might want to save for salad dressing or to use in a recipe.

You might also see this technique referred to as supreming or to an individual section as a supreme (or even suprême), pronounced “soo-prem”. It’s a French word (it’s like the French have a word for everything) that originally referred to a filet of chicken breast with just the wing bone attached, all other bones and skin removed. The term is now used generically to refer to anything with all of the skin and bones removed, somewhat cleverly applied here to the “skin” and “bones” of a fruit. ↩

Hoppin' John

jimray — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:41:16 -0800

Editor’s note: We desperately wanted to get this up before New Year’s but an east coast blizzard, two airlines and four airports conspired against it. We think it’s still worth your time, even if you have to wait until January 2nd.

New Year’s is as good a time as any to add a little luck, whether you think you’ve got use for it or not. Where I’m from that usually comes, at least in part, in the form of a dinner of Hoppin’ John and often a side of collard greens for good fortune. I suspect that they make a great pair because of their similar and shared histories, both dishes brought to the United States by African slaves and now considered staples of Southern cooking.

The exact etymology of Hoppin’ John is lost to history and the variations appear to be endless, but the basics are these: black-eyed peas¹ cooked slowly with smoked pork and a few aromatics served over rice that’s been cooked in broth from the peas. A little heat from dried peppers, garlic or even hot sauce is nice, too. Nearly every culture has their take on rice and beans, this is America’s contribution.

Like collards, the traditional preparation calls for a ham hock, and if you’ve got one on hand, by all means, use it. But a few strips of thick, smokey bacon, sliced into batons will work just as well. The following should make enough for 4-6 servings, depending on whether you want them as the main course or an accompaniment to, say, country ham or a roast chicken.

Some recipes would have you add the rice directly to the cooked black-eyed peas but I prefer to cook them separately. It lets me make sure both the rice and the beans are cooked just right instead of ending up with a mushy, porridgy mix where neither is.

1 cup black-eyed peas
¼ pound of smokey bacon, cut into about ¼-inch thick lardon
2 cloves of garlic, cut lengthwise then smashed with the side of a knife
½ yellow onion, itself cut in half
1 carrot, peeled and quartered
1 bay leaf
1 dried chili, coarsely chopped or 2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 sprig fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried thyme
3-finger pinch of kosher salt
1 ½ - 2 cups of long grain white rice, such as basmati

Add the black-eyed peas, bacon, garlic, onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppers and thyme to a medium saucepan (at least 2 quarts) or enameled dutch oven. Cover completely with cold water, about 6 cups, and bring to a boil, then lower to a slow simmer. Stir it a few times then leave it alone for at least 45 minutes, when the beans will still be fairly al dente. Test for salt and add a healthy pinch, stir, and let continue to cook for at least half an hour more.

While the beans are cooking, dump the rice in a large bowl and fill it with water then stir to rinse it. You’ll notice the water is a milky color, pour it off, being careful not to lose too much rice, then repeat until the water starts to clear. This is the secret to good rice.

After about an hour and a half, the beans will probably be about the right consistency, still distinct, but not too starchy or toothy. Add a little more salt if you think it needs it but go slowly. Place a colander over a pot big enough to hold all of the liquid from the beans, line the colander with cheese cloth if you have it, and then pour the beans into the colander.

Pick out anything that’s bigger than bite-sized — the quartered onions and carrots, the bay leaf, distinct cloves of garlic — and dump it into your food waste bin. If there are bits of bacon that are more fat than meat, get rid of those, too, but keep some of the bacon. Pour the beans back into the saucepan you cooked them in and add half a cup or so of the broth to help keep them moist. Cover the beans.

Measure out enough of the bean broth so that you have about 1 ½ times as much broth as you do rice — for 2 cups of rice, this means 3 cups of broth. You can keep the rest of the broth, it should freeze great. In another saucepan or pot, bring the broth and rice to a boil, then cut the heat to about medium low and cover. Stir every five minutes or so to make sure it’s not sticking, it should be done in about 20 minutes. Set the beans on medium-low to reheat them when the rice has about seven minutes left.

You can stir the beans in with the rice if you like, I prefer to keep them separate, though I can’t tell you any good reason why. Serve them with mess o’ collards and good beer or even champagne if you’re feeling fancy.

It turns out that black-eyed “peas” aren’t peas at all but legumes related to the Indian mung bean. Don’t tell will.i.am. ↩

Friend-of-the-site Jelisa Castrodale has a little fun with...

jimray — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:49:08 -0800

Friend-of-the-site Jelisa Castrodale has a little fun with holiday cookies.

Thankful

jimray — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 11:44:55 -0800

Neven and I started Salt & Fat back in January because we both love food and cooking. I thought our friends and a few stragglers would read it, I never imagined there’d be thousands of you tuning in. The response continues to be a bit overwhelming.

We don’t get a chance much to say thanks to you and this day, full of food and family, is a good one to take a minute to do just that. Thank you for letting us share something we love, trust me when I say I’ve gotten more out this than I could possibly give back. Happy Thanksgiving.

Turkey

jimray — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 10:52:00 -0800

There’s probably no greater pressure on a cook than Thanksgiving, and no more high-profile dish than the turkey. It gets a bad rep — “all turkey tastes the same”, the haters insist — but there are things you can do to make sure your turkey stands out. Here are few tips to help.

Start with the bird itself. Avoid the mass produced brands like Butterball if you can and definitely avoid anything that’s been “injected” or “basted” — these are mostly chemical and sodium-rich solutions that are meant to enhance flavor but can leave the meat with a spongy consistency. Look for fresh if you can find it; but, modern freezing methods tend to leave the bird in pretty good shape, so a frozen turkey won’t ruin the big day. If you do get a frozen one, make sure to give it plenty of time to defrost in the fridge, it may take a few days.

If you thought ahead and reserved a locally raised bird at your farmer’s market, good for you. If not, check places like Whole Foods or a local food co-op for the best bet on local, organically raised turkeys. If you’re lucky enough to find a heritage turkey, snap it up, but be ready to pay about twice what you would otherwise. I’ve gotten my heritage turkeys from Stokesberry Farms for the past few years now and I’ll never go back to the bland birds you find in most supermarkets.

Figure on about 1-1½ pounds per person, which should leave for plenty of leftovers. If you’ve got a lot of people coming to dinner, consider two smaller birds instead of one giant one, or one full turkey and one turkey breast instead.

Brining is a popular technique for adding flavors to the turkey and one that I used to use. It can be messy and somewhat unwieldy, though, when you’re trying to keep a 12 pound turkey submerged in salty water for two to three days.

Last year I tried a so-called “dry brining” technique, popularized by LA Times food writer Russ Parsons. The results were spectacular. The basic idea is to season the turkey with kosher salt — about a tablespoon for every five pounds, flavored with spices or aromatics if you want — a few days ahead of time. The salt penetrates the meat to the bone, similar to the way a brine will, without the hassle of gallons of water sloshing around. My plan is to dry brine my birds on Sunday night, rinse and pat them dry Wednesday night, and leave them uncovered in the fridge until they’re ready to cook on Thursday (to help dry out the skin so it’s nice and crispy after roasting.)

A turkey takes time to cook: on average about 3-4 hours if you’re dealing with a medium sized (12-15 pounds) bird. Plus, it needs to rest for at least half an hour, which lets the juices released by roasting reabsorb. So, if you’re planning on having guests arrive around 4, the bird should be in the oven by noon.

Cook according to temperature, not time. The best way to do this is with a probe thermometer that you insert into the thickest part of the thigh. Your turkey is done when the meat reaches at least 165° — make sure to check the breast, too. It’s ok if your dark meat (the thigh and legs) hits 170° or higher, but don’t let the breast get much above 165° or it will run the risk of drying out. The meat will probably continue to warm up a few degrees after it’s out of the oven.

When it comes time to carve the bird, forget the idyllic Norman Rockwell scenes of the full bird at the table. The best way to carve is to deconstruct the major groups and then assemble the sliced pieces on a platter.

Start by removing each leg and thigh as a whole piece, where the thigh meets the body. Remove the drumstick from the thigh, which gets to stand alone for the crazy uncle who eats them Henry-VII-style. Cut the thigh bone out, discard, then slice the dark thigh meat across the grain. Next, remove each wing at the joint where the wing meets the body. Now, feel for the center of the bird for the breastbone, cut along each side of the breast bone to remove the two halves of the turkey breast. Cut the breast across the grain in about ½ slices.

The New York Times has a great article on carving your turkey like a butcher. I like to assemble everything on the platter, with the legs and dark meat at one end and the slices of breast meat at the other, all ready to be served.

The most important thing to remember is not to panic. A turkey is just a big chicken and you’ve been roasting those all year, right? With a little bit of planning, everything’s going to be delicious.