happy new year!

icf will be back in 2010. make sure you have some bubbly for me!

cheers!

dump-and-guess veggie chili

who doesn’t love chili? no one, that’s who. so i decided it was the perfect thing to have in a big pot when our families came over to help decorate the tree.

infinitely variable, this was truly a joint dump-and-guess endeavor, which means while there’s no actual recipe to share with you (why would i have a recipe?? this is only a food blog…!), i want you to see how not-scary chili is and how hard it is to go wrong.

we started with dried beans, which we pressure-cooked for about 40 minutes in vegetable broth and some basic chili spices – pepper, oregano, cumin. (but no salt! salt apparently slows bean-cooking in a pressure cooker.)

if you don’t have a pressure cooker or don’t want to start with dried beans, canned beans can be substituted. i like a mix of light and dark kidneys and black beans in my chili.

while that was happening, i sauteed half a yellow onion, a few small cloves of garlic and a whole bunch of baby carrots in a little olive oil in a frying pan.

(i would rather not have used baby carrots, but the blizzard of ’09 cleared out the grocery shelves. and i mean, i get it, right? carrots would be such a horrible thing to without during a snow storm…)

if you aren’t starting this chili in a pressure cooker, sautee the onions and carrots (and the evil vegetable-that-shall-not-be-named, if you must) directly in your soup pot, adding the beans when they’re done.

sautee until the onions are translucent and the carrots are starting to get tender.

next i added a couple spoonfuls of drained, crushed tomatoes.

why crushed tomatoes, you ask? because i was dumb and bought the wrong thing at the grocery store. i should have bought chopped tomatoes.

why drained? because i didn’t want to make the chili too soupy, but i ended up adding it in later so if you didn’t skip this ingredient all together, you can skip the draining.

however, i am thinking that the delicious deep, sweet tomato flavor this chili ended up with may have come from the crushed tomatoes, so in the future, i might actually make that “mistake” again.

but i do like chunks of tomatoes in my chili, too, and lucky for me, i had a small can of chopped tomatoes in the cupboard, which i added with the juice.

at this point, you want to start seasoning. i used a small spoonful of molasses for a deep, sweet flavor; chili powder, of course; more cumin; salt and pepper; a few shakes of worchestershire; and a small dash of red wine vinegar.

how much of each, you ask?

i have no idea. we both just kept tasting and adjusting until we liked what we had. i think it would be pretty hard to mess this up.

you can also adjust the liquid, bringing it to a boil to cook some off if there is too much, or adding a little tomato juice, vegetable broth, or even water, if you need more.

i served with brown rice, and it was even better the day after.

homemade hot sauce

i wanted to include a homemade element in my christmas gift to him, and if you know him, you know that one of his most ubiquitous side kicks at mealtime is a bottle of hot sauce. or a jar of hot peppers. or a bowl of jalepenos. or a shaker of cayenne. and even so, he rarely runs into a dish that is hot enough for his taste.

this in mind, i decided to take on the challenge of homemade hot sauce. i say “challenge” because not only did i know i wasn’t going to be able to taste my product at any point throughout the process (i’m that much of a wimp), i also know very little about different peppers and their flavors.

so i started by shopping for peppers at a korean grocery store. the clerk assured me these were the hottest peppers around, but maybe she meant for a white girl…

and there they are: a pound of fingerhot peppers.

i took extra precaution when i cut them, because hot peppers are known to sting your skin and eyes, even after you’ve washed your hands.

i cut off the tops and added them to a food processor with some salt. they actually smelled hot at this point. i took that as a good sign.

blend until smooth.

transfer to a jar…

and WAIT TWO DAYS?! shit. this is why you should read recipes all the way through before you start them.

i had planned on making this hot sauce at my mom’s house since it’s hard to do anything secret in a studio apartment that you share. but i hadn’t read the recipe. whoops.

so i bagged up the jar of toxic material – i mean, crushed peppers – threw it in my suitcase, and headed home.

two days later

(actually three days because i couldn’t get him out of the house on the evening of day two. hopefully it didn’t ruin everything.)

remove jar from secret hiding spot (the recipe doesn’t call for refrigeration at this point) and add two cups white vinegar.

rewrap and restash in secret hiding spot.

five days later

(thank goodness he decided to go to the gym.)

strain peppers out of liquid and bottle it. it’s definitely smelling hot.

i don’t have a funnel so i used a plastic bag with a hole cut in the corner to catch drips.

now i had to refrigerate, so i wrapped up the bottle again and taped a nasty note to it.

review: while the sauce wasn’t the least bit “too hot” for him, he said the flavor was great. his other standard hot sauces are made with red chilies, so apparently the change was nice, since green peppers have a distinctive flavor.

makes a great homemade gift for a hot sauce lover (buy a pretty, professional-looking bottle at pier 1 and design your own cute label!), and it’s really easy enough to make it a standard part of your repertoire.

i’m sure we’ll make it again… when he can pick his own peppers!

flank steak

today’s guest report comes from icf’s british correspondent, who has spent several years undercover as a “professor” and “furniture conservator,” while actually doing a close and thorough study of british food.

i’ve been teaching historic furniture making and conservation of historic furniture at a small arts and crafts college near chichester in the south of england, going on 3 years.  it is a bucolic area with pretty much everything i need…in the food department.  the pubs are historic and provide everything from fish and chips to wild game that the local hunters drag in from the woods.

imperial left-overs like curries, kabobs and chinese run the spectrum of quality, and the various pizza chains just creep onto a yank’s scale of acceptability.  (they have the strange habit of taking the 4 ingredients, say, mushrooms, pepperoni, cheese and anchovies, and separating them into quarters.  fortunately they don’t seem to mind mixing them all together, ‘a la americaine’.)

puddings (desserts) tend toward ‘sticky toffee’, and ‘spotted dick’, all made with heaps of treacle.  i love the 19th century tins it comes in, but treacle is my idea of nothing.  on the other hand, they do a great job with fruit crumbles, generally served with custard that greatly appeals to my new england background.  (for my taste, english beer does not favourably compare with sam adams boston ale, so i’ll stay away from discussing the drink.)

one thing i do miss is rare beef, and in particular a properly prepared flank steak, so when the opportunity arose for an open house in my department at college, we needed finger food for the guests.  i floated the idea with my students for a platter of thinly sliced, rare strips of flank steak, served with similarly sliced french bread.  a previous open house in the ceramics department, overwhelmingly female and asian, featured sushi and veggies, and the furniture students (including one female asian) unanimously wanted something meaty.

the problem was that the brits hadn’t heard of flank steak.  what?  the protein staple of modestly-incomed offspring-endowed families in the states…unheard of across the pond?  how odd.  the first step then was to track down what the brits called it.  a quick search came up with ‘skirt’ steak… ‘thin’ and ‘thick’.

thin skirt was considered a frying, minute-steak sort of cut, so we assumed we needed to find the thick.  visits to the usual suspects, sainsbury’s (middle of the road), waitrose (high end…what passes for whole foods) and tesco (costco-esque) all resulted in blank stares.  my student, matthew, is quite the gourmet cook and volunteered to take over the search.  his butcher knew of the ‘olde style’ cut, and ordered up twenty pounds for us from his supplier in london.  matthew prepared the marinade.

we had decided to grill it the day before in the workshop courtyard to tease the other students and ensure a good turnout for our open house, so requisitioned a big bbq grill from the college food service and stoked it in readiness.  when matthew showed up with the goods, the problem was immediately apparent.  instead of the big, wide flat steaks i was expecting, he had three footballs…massive hunks of marinading meat in plastic bags.  obviously the brits skipped the third, goldilocks version of skirt steak: ‘just right.’

each one had to be cut horizontally into thirds to get them down to the proportions we needed to avoid having to pot roast them.  matthew handled the grilling: a smart spank on both sides, and then into the fridge to chill.

that evening he prepared the dipping sauce, and the next day the seemingly endless task of carving began.  flank steak, being on the tough side, needs to be sliced thin, and across the grain, ending up with pieces that look like giant red sandworms with dark brown fringe… mm, mm, good… and the amount of beef we bought produced a beachload of the little devils.  the groaning board was a slab of maple, 12 inches wide and 3 feet long, and we could barely fit all the carved steak on it.  i could not imagine all of it being eaten, but with the appetising aroma of grilling still wafting around the courtyard, the rest of the student/faculty chow hounds were at the door on the dot… no one was interested in fashionably late.  it was a smash hit; an ambivalent veggie even fell off the wagon.

i was even able to score a couple of cases of sam adams from a local distributor at crippling cost, but the brits loved the party and we kept up the side of the special relationship.

matthew and the steak

flank steak marinade and dipping sauce

this recipe was for 6.4kg steak, you may want to reduce the amounts by half for smaller quantities of meat

for the marinade:

10oz soy sauce (preferably naturally brewed)
10oz sherry
4 tbsp pouring honey
4 tbsp toasted sesame oil
4 tbsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
8-10 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp dried chilli flakes (more if you want more heat!)

method:

score the top of the flank steak to a depth of ¼ inch approximately 1 inch apart.

refrigerate and soak in the marinade for preferably 1 to 3 days or at least 4 hours.

remove the meat from the marinade and reserve the marinade for the dipping sauce:

for the dipping sauce:

pour the reserved marinade into a large pan.

add:

10oz water
1 beef stock cube
port to taste
more honey to taste
3 squares of good quality cooks dark chocolate (at least 70 percent coco solids) green and blacks is a quality brand i use.

method:

bring to the boil and taste regularly as you add the port and honey.

once you have the taste to your liking add more chilli flakes to make a much spicier dip (or divide the mixture into 2 and add more chilli to one so you have one mild dip and one spicy dip).

simmer and reduce by half till thick and sticky, enjoy!!

merry christmas!

glaedelig jul!
vrolijk kerstfeest!
boas festas!
hauskaa joulua!
joyeux noel!
frohe weihnachten!
natale allegro!
christmas alegre!
feliz navidad!
god jul!
maligayang pasko!

however you say it, have a lovely one filled with good friends, good food and lots of love.

see you next week for a guest blogger from across the pond, a christmas surprise and some easy, heart-warming comfort food.

blancmange

since our fabulous birthday plans were disrupted by the blizzard of ’09 (at least i think they were fabulous. they were – and remain – a surprise merely postponed), i decided to make a special dessert for our impromptu dinner at home.

blancmange, or traditional, basic vanilla pudding. (french for “white food”)

it matched the white outside and seemed like a simple but elegant comfort food. fannie farmer provided the recipe. (according to fannie, this dessert played a key role in little women, but you couldn’t prove it by me.)

i halved the recipe to make three small portions, and i had my ramekins ready.

start by mixing 1 and a half tablespoons of cornstarch (half a tablespoon is a teaspoon and half a teaspoon. i was doing some funny math here because i was halving the recipe), 2 tablespoons sugar, a pinch of salt…

…with 1/8 of a cup (or 2 tablespoons) of milk.

meanwhile, warm the rest of your milk (3/4 of a cup plus 2 tablespoons) in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan (or, better yet, a double-boiler) over medium-low heat.

whisking constantly, add the sugar-cornstarch mixture to the warm milk.

fannie said to stir until the mixture got thick, then cook (still stirring!) for another 15 minutes to get rid of the cornstarch-y taste. in total, this took about 30 minutes. don’t let it boil, or even get close. just keep it nice and warm.

when it’s thick, stir in half a teaspoon of vanilla.

if you are going to serve it in ramekins like i did, now is the time to divide it up, let it cool, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for, i’d say, a couple hours or up to a day before serving.

tastes like tapioca, but without the lumps or the eggs. quick, easy… i’ll definitely make it again.

virtual sweet swap

i may have mentioned before that i had an office sweet-swap… (identical to a cookie swap, just more inclusive) and it was so successful i wanted to share it with cyber space. we had no duplicate recipes and a ton of delicious variety.

peter's double chocolate brownie bites

gingerlicious holiday cutouts

pecan tassies

hoppy's double-baked love surprise

pecan sandies

snickerdoodles

toffee bars

dulce de leche surprise

christmas bark

fruit cocktail cookies

assorted sugar

’round the table you go until you have collected a whole plateful!

pop’s eggnog

she’s back! my very first guest blogger, queen of the cocktail and winner of the 2009 tapas bonanza. this time, with a recipe for holiday cheer… from grampa. because seriously, isn’t that what grampas are for? (mine had his own bottle of champagne to celebrate my birthday, even though he’s miles and miles away. i love it. hi grampy!)

a blizzard was upon DC and a pile of gifts had accumulated under the tree, needing to be wrapped. carols were playing, the yule log was on tv and a cup of eggnog, i thought, was in store. while i was tempted to run to the store and grab a carton of ‘nog, i thought better and called my pop to freshen up on the old family recipe.

during the prohibition, my pop told me, whiskey was made in a basement distillery in my great-great grandfather’s home in annapolis.  this homemade whiskey was the staple of his eggnog.  i’m the 5th generation to drink this tasty recipe which is still enjoyed during the christmas season on miller road.

this recipe makes a vat.  it can easily be halved, which i recommend, if you’re making for just a few.

here’s what you need:

6 eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup whiskey (jack daniel’s is my pick), 1/2 cup dark rum, 2 cups whipping cream, 2 cups milk, nutmeg (optional)

here’s how it’s done:

in a large bowl, put egg yolks.  in a smaller bowl, keep egg whites.

beat yolks until they look lemony with some air bubbles.  add sugar and beat.

SLOWLY add whiskey and stir in with spatula.  SLOWLY add rum and stir in with spatula.

SLOWLY should be emphasized; if added too quickly, whiskey will cook eggs. [editor’s note: really??!?!]

beat egg whites in separate bowl until very frothy and stir into larger bowl.

beat whipping cream in separate bowl until very frothy and stir into large bowl.

stir in milk.

pour yourself a cup and add a sprinkle of nutmeg. get snowed in and enjoy!

meringue “thin mints”

somebody told me recently they liked reading about my missteps in the kitchen.

well, happy birthday to you. here’s an epic failure.

the plan was to make chocolate-mint meringue kisses for my office sweet-swap (more about that later), and i looked up a few recipes to compare.

first mistake: my dependable fannie farmer cookbook called for superfine sugar, but my not-so-dependable trader joe’s didn’t have any. (they didn’t have any plain old white vinegar, either, but that’s a different story/recipe all together.) i had seen a recipe online that used powdered sugar instead, and since tj’s had that, i decided to substitute. even though my mother cautioned me not to. bad move.

second mistake: i tripled the fannie farmer recipe. (we owed 3 dozen cookies to the swap, the recipe made one dozen and it was already 8:30 at night) this turned out to be a terrible idea because it caused me to seriously over-beat my egg whites, totally deflating them.

anyway, to make meringue, you start with egg whites. remember how to separate them? i also recommend doing it into a small bowl so in case you make a mistake like this:

fortunately, i was able to fix this one without ruining the whole recipe.

better.

(i saved the yolks, we’ll have some kind of custard soon… and before you ask, YES, that is a wine glass  in the picture. i had a HARD DAY, ok? and NO, that is not why this recipe failed.)

then i measured out the sugar and cocoa and got my vanilla/mint extract ready. i like having everything ready to go before i start baking.

start by beating the egg yolks

until they form “stiff peaks” but are not dry.

at this point you are supposed to add your sugar/cocoa in batches, beating until mixed each time.

i sifted the sugar in because, since i was using confectioners sugar, it was very lumpy.

when you have most of it mixed in, you add the vanilla/mint extract and fold in the rest of the sugar/cocoa. i think at this point i was beginning to realize i had a disaster on my hands.

see how deflated and batter-looking this is now? bad bad bad. it should be fluffy fluffy fluffy. i think that because i had tripled the recipe, i had so much extra sugar/cocoa to beat in that i totally destroyed the egg whites.

but since it was now around 9 pm and these cookies were due IN THE MORNING, i had to soldier on.

i spooned the mixture into my improvised piping bag and cut the tip off.

when the “meringue” began to POUR out of this hole as soon as i cut it, i finally realized the enormity of this failure.

there was no way i could pipe kisses because it wouldn’t/couldn’t hold its shape.  instead i got turd-like puddles.

mistake three: i didn’t set out enough parchment-lined baking sheets (probably because i didn’t have any more!) so as the meringue mixture is pouring out of the bag and dripping down my arm, i’m yelling at him to lay out more parchment somewhere! anywhere! where? there’s no counter space left! THE FLOOR!!!!

oh yes. it was magical. and there are no pictures of that. thank god.

i ended up having to improvise to get all the turds – i mean, meringue thin mints – into the oven.

yes, i baked them on a cooling rack.

and to make matters worse, they didn’t all fit into the oven, so there was some stacking involved.

bake for one hour at 250 degrees, then let them sit in the oven for at least 6 hours to dry completely. don’t open the door! they have to sit undisturbed.

this is what you are going for:

credit all*you

HA!

reports from the tasters actually were somewhat positive. mine ended up like the inside of a girl scout thin mint – crisp, chocolaty and minty. if i had had time, i should have dipped them in melted chocolate to complete the effect.

curry mee

my mom and i adapted this mark bittman recipe for coconut curry chicken noodle soup, or curry mee.  i love the flavors of coconut and curry with ginger and lime.

here’s a similar favorite, but vegetarian – with squash.

one of our main adaptations to the original recipe was that we used cod fish instead of chicken.

start by heating 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a soup pot, a melting 1 small onion, minced, 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger and 2 minced cloves of garlic.

then add 1/4 teaspoon dark red chili paste (“sambal” – mark wanted you to use 1 whole teaspoon, but 1/4 made it plenty hot enough for us) and 3 tablespoons curry powder. stir to distribute evenly.

then add 14 ounces of coconut milk, 1/2 cup milk, 4 cups chicken stock, 1/4 ground tumeric, 2 tablespoons fish sauce and 1 tablespoon sugar.

bring the broth to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and add 1/2 pound cod. let the fish cook through; this hardly takes any time at all.

right before serving, stir in a tablespoon of fresh lime juice.

meanwhile, soak thin rice noodles in hot water for 10 minutes.

add noodles to serving bowls,

add fish,

add broth,

and garnish with toasted coconut, cilantro and a lime wedge.

thoughts: 1) delicious. 2) would be better with white rice instead of rice noodles. 3) could definitely use more fish, or other seafood like a few scallops, shrimp or even mussels. 4) mark said it would make four servings, but without more meat in it (whether of land or of sea), it will only serve two.