keeping cool with sour cherry and apricot soup

I should dedicate this, the second summer appetizer in my series of summer appetizers with obscure ingredients, to the folks at Hentze farm, where I bought the blushing, lovely apricots and the already-pitted sour cherries, submerged in their juice.  It made my life so easy, and easy livin’ is what summer is supposed to be about, right?

Sour cherries and apricots whisper Hungary to me.  My trip to Budapest in 2006 for a conference was one of the highlights of my life.  If my soul had a foreign home, it would be Hungary.  Of course, I’d soon die and have to be buried in a piano box because I would eat so much, but I’d die happy.  At one restaurant, I ordered sour cherry soup (meggy leves), thinking it would be a light starter.  Of course, being Hungary, it was thickened with sour cream and topped with whipped cream.  And every bite was delicious.

My version of the soup is lighter and appropriate for a July grilled meal.  The soup is still rich, but unless you want to serve it as a dessert (which you absolutely can), forgo the whipped cream and replace the sour cream with thinner, lighter crème fraîche.  Noris Dairy makes a delicious, slightly runny “sour cream” that is basically crème fraîche, so I use that.  You might try lightening up your sour cream with a bit of heavy cream if you can’t find crème fraîche.  If you can’t find that, you certainly won’t be able to find Hungarian apricot brandy, which is not imported much in the States, so substitute cherry brandy.  Or make your own apricot liqueur!

Using fresh sour cherries and apricots make this soup extraordinary.  It’s better to substitute fresh Bing or other cherries than to use frozen or canned sour cherries, since this is all about fresh summer produce.  I don’t bother peeling the apricots, but it might make the texture more elegant.

Sour Cherry Apricot Soup

Serves 4-6 as an appetizer or dessert

2 cups pitted sour cherries
3 cups cherry juice
½ cup fruity red wine, such as Merlot
1 cup quartered fresh apricots
1 T. sugar
½ cup crème fraîche
1 T. powdered sugar
1 piece cinnamon stick
1 star anise
3-4 whole cloves
1 T. apricot brandy (Hungarian barack palinka) or cherry brandy

Pour juice and wine into pot, add cherries, apricots, and sugar.  Place spices in small cheesecloth bag and tie with kitchen twine.  Submerge in juice.

Simmer cherries and apricots just long enough to soften them up, about 5-10 minutes.

Mix crème fraîche and powdered sugar in a small bowl.  Remove soup from heat and remove spice bag.

Scoop out about half of the cherries and apricots and puree in the food processor, then return to soup pot.

Quickly whisk in crème fraîche until thoroughly mixed, and add brandy.

Pour into small serving bowls and chill for several hours before serving.

 

fastest pickle in the west

I once had a boyfriend who was so desperate for pickles, he’d even drink a jar of pickle juice.  I still haven’t quite forgiven him for scarfing down my expensive, hand-crafted practically Kobe-beef-fussiness-quality Japanese pickles that were carefully stowed away in my tiny apartment refrigerator in Tokyo.  Bonzai, cried he, and shinkansened out of town before I could beat him with a keisaku.  Thanks to his quick escape, we are still friends today, and I feed him pickles when I can.

So this post is for him.

It’s also for anyone who likes new dill pickles, the ones you get for free in New York delis, the half-sour ones.  Sometimes called refrigerator pickles, mine are much better (she said, humbly) because they have the spirit of half-sours but take less than half the time of than regular refrigerator pickles.  I developed the recipe while making real new dill pickles, a dubious wild fermentation preparation of whey, brine, and sitting on a counter for a couple days.  (The Master Food Preserver in me says no, the mouth is saying let’s go.)  When they work, they’re wonderful, slightly fermented, bright lime green, crisp, lovely.  When they don’t, well, you could die of botulism.

But the pickles I’m touting here are absolutely safe, and while not as good as real, fermented new dills, they are an excellent substitution and they only take a few hours to make.  Having a BBQ this weekend?  Try making these in the morning and serving them with your ribs in the evening.  The pickles last about a day, but the quality starts to deteriorate after that, so plan accordingly.

The preparation is inspired by Japanese cucumber salad, and also by my great-grandmother’s recipe for sweet and sour vinegar cucumber salad.  In both of these salads, the cucumbers are sliced, salted, and left to sit in a seasoned vinegar and water solution.  The Japanese sometimes add seaweed or sesame seeds; my great-grandma added thinly sliced white onion.  I was making my regular new dill pickles, as I mentioned, and I ran out of the requisite whey before I ran out of anything else, so I was inspired to turn a long wait into something fresh and salad-like, but with dill flavor.  I thought it might be an amenable idea to add pickling spices, garlic, and a couple heads of fresh dill to a brine and serve the cucumber “pickles” that night as a salad.  And sure enough, it worked.

Can you tell I’m super pleased by this one?  I am.  I have pickle addicts to feed.

Fastest Pickle in the West

• 4 cups sliced pickling cucumbers (1/2-inch slices)
• 3 cups cold water
• 1 T. sea salt
• 1 t. white vinegar
• 1 T. pickling spices
• 1 t. brown mustard seeds
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 fresh dill heads, or substitute 2 t. dill seeds (not weed)

Wash pickling cucumbers well and slice.  Make brine of water, salt and vinegar.  Mix well, then pour over cucumbers in bowl or plastic container for marinating.  Add pickling spices, mustard seeds, garlic and dill.  Cover container and refrigerate at least 4 and up to 12 hours.  Does not keep for longer than a day or two.

 

little green potstickers

One of my very first good friends in college was a Japanese guy, an exchange student who met with me for conversation practice.  I was seventeen, fresh from the suburbs, in a new town, and experiencing life on my own for the first time.  He was a bit older than me, but in certain ways in the same situation as I was.  He treated me at first strangely, based on Japanese custom for dealing with someone who is at once a beloved little sister and an esteemed teacher (so yes, it didn’t really work).  But over the months, as he became more and more Americanized and we got to know each other better, our relationship evolved into something really special.  He had a similar sense of humor as me (poor guy), and also a streak of melancholy and sensitivity that all truly funny people share. We kept in touch for many years, helping each other out in our native lands and through several moves and new careers, until one day he finally he vanished into the ether of Japanese corporate society.

But I still think of him every time I make potstickers.  I learned many of my homestyle Japanese dishes from him.  In fact, for a long time, I knew how to make more Japanese dishes than anything else.  I was a vegetarian for several years in college, and he gladly showed me how to cook Japanese vegetables and modified recipes, like the one for the very popular pork dumplings that we call potstickers and the Japanese call gyoza.

I’ve never measured this recipe, and I would never serve it to guests.  This is messy, slightly greasy, casual family eating with humble ingredients.  It also has a distinct disadvantage of being a pain to make.  But potstickers are delicious, and worth the trouble.

If you’ve had potstickers at Chinese restaurants, understand that these are significantly smaller, with a very light “skin,” not the heavy, doughy wrapping you’ll find there.  This is because you will be cheating and buying store-made skins, not making your own.  This does save a bit of time, especially since the skins can be kept in the freezer.

The other day, faced with (1) some thawing skins I was going to use for cheater pirogies with my homemade sauerkraut, and (2) an ever-growing vegetable bin full of local chard and kale, I was inspired to dude up my potsticker recipe.  My potstickers are usually filled with a cabbage, tofu, green onion, garlic and ginger mixture.  I thought it might be nice (and even remotely healthy) to swap out the cabbage for better greens.  And sure enough, it worked!

This filling is vegan.  You can include an egg, if you want, to help bind the filling, but I’ve never had any real problems with unbound filling, so I don’t bother.

As a warning, you’re going to need a largish non-stick skillet with a lid that fits over it tightly.  If you’re doubling the recipe, you should keep in mind you’ll need to cook the potstickers in two batches.

Little Green Potstickers

For the Filling:

1/2 cake regular (firm) tofu, drained well of water
3-4 green onions, chopped
2-inch long piece ginger, grated finely
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 big handfuls of mixed greens (or a quarter of a small cabbage)
1 t. sesame oil
1 t. sesame seeds
1/2 t. salt
1 T. corn starch

For the Dipping Sauce:

1 part Japanese soy sauce: 2-3 parts rice vinegar
a float of chili oil (la-yu) is optional

For Cooking:

1/4 cup vegetable or peanut oil
1/2 package potsticker “skins,” sold at Asian markets and at some large supermarkets

The first step is to prepare the filling.

To drain the tofu, remove it from the package, squeeze it a little bit, and place it in a colander.  On top of the tofu, place a small plate and then weigh down the plate with something heavy (a small pot or a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with water will do).  Let sit for 15 minutes, pressing down on the weight every so often, to drain as much water out as possible.  Pat dry before using.  Crumble and place into a large bowl.

To prepare the greens (this step is unnecessary if you are using cabbage), blanch them in a pot of boiling water for a few seconds, then immediately plunge them into a bowl full of ice water. This will fix the color and make the filling cook more evenly.  Remove greens from ice water, squeeze them very well to remove most of the water, then chop finely and add to bowl with tofu.

After preparing the tofu and greens, add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Filling and Folding the Potstickers:

The basic technique is to place a teaspoon full of filling on a “skin,” gently dampen one edge of the circle with water, then crimp or fold the edges to seal the dumpling.  A good seal ensures that when you cook it, it won’t burst the seams and ooze filling out all over the place.  The crimping process is difficult to describe in words, so I’ll give you a few options.  One, check out a video on how to do it.  Two, look at my pictures, and see how I fold while pressing the filling down with a finger inside the potsticker.  Three, just forget the whole thing and seal each potsticker by crimping the edges with a fork, just as you would a pie crust.

For the first option, check out this video I found on youtube, and watch her fingers.  She is using thicker “skins” that might be homemade, rather than store-bought.  You’ll want to use less filling than she does, but the video provides a good tutorial on folding:

Some tips:  more hands makes for faster eatin’ — see if you can enlist others to help you.  Some people get so good at the process they can work at the speed of light.  I’m not that talented, as you can see from my messy folding, but still rarely have a potsticker disaster.

Don’t use any more than one teaspoon of filling for each potsticker.  Less is better than more.

Don’t let the filled, uncooked potstickers sit too long on a plate, or they may start to stick and rip when you remove them.  You may want to prepare some, then cook them, then prepare some more.  Retrogrouch and I do this, often eating potstickers straight from the stove, as we’re folding more.

Cooking the Potstickers:

Once you run out of filling, you are done, and you can cook the potstickers!  Cooking is a two-step process: first browning the bottoms in some oil, then steaming the potstickers until the skin becomes translucent.

You don’t want to use too much oil.  Just coat the bottom of the non-stick pan with oil (I confess I use a regular pan and more oil, but they are much more prone to sticking and ripping that way).  Place each potsticker into the hot oil.  To discourage sticking, I do this in a quick one-two motion, dipping it in the hot oil down on the pan, then immediately lifting it up again, then putting it down.  It’s ok to crowd the pan, but move quickly, watching the earliest potstickers so they don’t get burnt on the bottom.

Once all the potstickers are browned on the bottom, add about a 1/3 cup of water.  Again moving quickly, pour all the water in the pan at once, then immediately put the lid on the pan so you’ll get the full rush of steam.  N.b., if you don’t move fast, all the oil and water will spray all over your stove.  See the video for a good example of this process:

When the skins are translucent, and you can see the filling inside, remove the potstickers carefully. (See the picture above for what they should look like when steamed — can you see the green?)  You can use a nylon spatula and loosen the bottoms, then flip them onto a plate.  Expect to lose a couple.  The losers should be devoured by the cook before anyone can see your lack of professionalism.

To Serve:

Serve with rice and a dipping sauce made of one part Japanese soy sauce and two or three parts rice vinegar.  It can be doctored with a float of chili oil (la-yu), and some chopped scallions or sesame seeds or even chopped garlic, if you’re fancy.

Enjoy — and feel good that you’re using up some of those delicious local greens!

 

licking letters: meadowfoam honey

A certain famous architect tells a story about his childhood in a traditional Jewish family, a story that sits so well with me I just might curl up with it, some hot biscuits and butter and a cup of tea, all unctuous with clear, golden, musky honey.

To learn the Hebrew letters, the teachers traced them on paper with honey and let us lick them, he says, so we could learn how sweet the word was.

Those of us who write for a living know, instinctively, what those teachers meant. But isn’t there always time for another reminder? Make a date with some local honey. In the Willamette Valley, we have extraordinary varieties of honey. Poison oak honey is said to be an inoculant for encounters with the rash. Blueberry honey is fruity and clean. We have fireweed honey, madrone honey, and raspberry honey. Blackberry honey is ubiquitous, but if you ask me, it doesn’t taste like anything special, unfortunately. Certainly not like the best local honey of all, a Willamette Valley specialty: meadowfoam honey.

I made my acquaintance with meadowfoam honey out at Detering Orchards, a local u-pick farm that has an astounding range of fresh produce. The jars of honey were marked M/F, and being in gender studies and all, I wondered if that meant it was ok to eat if you were male or female, or a combination of both, so I asked.

“Meadowfoam honey,” was the response. “It tastes like toasted marshmallows.”

Now, being no great fan of marshmallows, I hesitated. I wanted my honey to taste like honey. But the adventurer in me couldn’t resist.

Meadowfoam is a plant that was introduced in the Willamette Valley in 1984, one of those new get-rich-quick crops that anticipates consumer demand for a trendy ingredient. Meadowfoam bears a pretty white and yellow flower that issues an oil that has fatty acids found good for skin and hair, so it is used in beauty products. Importantly for us, it’s a marsh plant, so it grows well in poorly drained soil.

It also makes some darned good honey. I don’t think “toasted marshmallows” is the best term to describe it; it’s more like caramelized custard, with a hint of burnt sugar. It’s a soft and very sweet taste and unlike any honey I’ve had. I’d imagine a honey cake would be delicious with meadowfoam honey, but I just eat it straight out of the jar on plain yogurt. Or lick it in alphabetic curlicues off a plate. Because I swear that when it coats my tongue, I can taste our valley. I learn more each time about just how sweet it is.

 

again-with-the-winter cranberry brisket

This week in the Willamette Valley, we’ve got blue skies and temperatures reaching upwards of 80 degrees. This is not a recipe for us. It is a recipe, instead, for people in the Midwest like my family, who are suffering rain and temps in the 40s. “Again with the winter?” they cry. So it’s long-cooked brisket one more time, before spring yawns and finally gets up out of bed.

The recipe is one I make whenever I get my hands on a brisket. Note that I don’t mean a corned-beef brisket, one of those marinated, spiced, plastic-wrapped dealies you get in bags around St. Patrick’s Day. It’s an uncorned, fresh brisket, tough as a gardener in Midwestern spring, meaty, with a big layer of fat, weighing in at about 5 lbs.

I saw a brisket on sale at Safeway for dirt cheap (and dirt quality — bah) and had planned to experiment with it. I’m longing to make my own corned beef. A quick look in a couple local stores yielded nothing but a problem, though. I couldn’t find the Morton’s Tender Quick (a mix of salt, sugar and nitrites) that one needs to add to corn the beef, so I’ve tabled that project for now. The brisket was destined to become cranberried.

The recipe comes from my mother-in-law, who made it at Passover one year, via Bon Appetit magazine. I’ve amended it a bit. It’s much, much better than any brisket recipe I’ve had, and it gets compliments every time it is served at such an occasion. You may use sweetened or unsweetened dried cranberries (I prefer unsweetened) and dried mushrooms to your taste. I prefer the already sliced dried Chinese shiitake mushrooms, but fresh portobello (use about 12 oz.) or shiitake are good, too. Don’t use button mushrooms, which are too watery and bland for this recipe.

Allow me to point out one technique before proceeding that can be used in all stews: double seasoning. If you add the seasonings prior to long cooking, the flavors will meld and form a complex gravy. Adding just a bit more of the predominant flavors about 30 minutes to the end of cooking punches those flavors up considerably. In this recipe, I add more wine and rosemary, for example.

Cranberry Brisket with Shiitake Mushrooms

Serves: 6-8

Note: Brisket needs to rest in the refrigerator overnight. Please plan accordingly.

4-5 lbs. fresh beef brisket (NOT corned beef brisket)
2 medium white onions, chopped
3-4 large garlic cloves, chopped
2 c. full-flavored red wine (Cabernet is good), separated in half
1 c. cranberry juice or orange juice
1 c. beef stock or chicken stock or water
2 T. flour
2 bay leaves
3 T. fresh rosemary, chopped (or 1.5 T. dried), separated in half
1 c. dried cranberries
1/2 c. dried shiitake or Chinese mushrooms, reconstituted and sliced thinly.

Separate out the wine and rosemary. You’ll use half later. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Brown the brisket in a deep skillet over medium high heat in a couple tablespoons vegetable oil. Remove brisket and place in dutch oven, fat side up. Turn down the temperature to medium, then brown the onions in hot oil. When onions are golden brown and slightly caramelized, turn down the heat to medium low, add three or four garlic cloves, chopped, and the flour. This is called making a roux, a thickener, but in the very lazy way. Mix and cook for a few minutes, until the flour starts to change to a golden color. Don’t burn the roux.

Add the onion roux to the brisket to the dutch oven. Add 1 cup wine, stock, juice, bay leaves, 1.5 T. rosemary, and some freshly ground pepper.

Cover dutch oven and braise in the oven for about 3 hours.

When the brisket is soft and pliant, take out of the oven and add the cranberries, reconstituted mushrooms, and salt and pepper. Let brisket cool enough to handle.

Take the brisket out of the pot and slice it across the grain in long, thin slices. Note to brisket virgins: this is important. If you cut it in chunks or shred it, you will look like a caveman at a mastodon roast trying to eat it. It is only tender when you slice it across the grain.

Place the slices back in gravy and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. About 45 minutes before serving the next day, heat up brisket on medium low heat, adding a cup of wine and the rest of the rosemary. Adjust seasonings and simmer for 30-40 minutes. The flavor improves greatly the next day.

Serve with egg noodles, mashed or roasted potatoes.

 

my staples: preserved lemons

We always have lemons hanging out in our refrigerator. I’m sure it’s a relic of living in the Bay Area, o those lemon-tree-having days of yore. Every once in a while, I go a little crazy and find myself with an extra bag or two. When this happens, I decide friends will need gifts in a few weeks, and I make a batch of preserved lemons.

This recipe is so simple that anyone can do it, and it’s really, truly a unique addition to your stock of condiments. Homemade preserved lemons are much better than what you can buy in a jar. A quarter of a preserved lemon, pulp removed and very finely chopped, is delicious over roasted asparagus or steamed green beans, and you can use the lemon pulp in marinades and dressings. I even put little pieces of preserved lemon on skewers of BBQ shrimp or chicken.

Although it seems like Meyer lemons would make a terrific version, their lack of acidity, whereas delicious in many dishes, is a detriment in preserved lemons, and they tend to go bad more quickly. I have made this recipe with Meyers, and stored the jar in the refrigerator, but I found they also get bitter. Plain lemons, known in the biz as Eurekas, are best. And try to get organic lemons, since you will be eating the peel.

Preserved Lemons

An easy-delicious way to instill punchy lemonitude into anything you use lemons for, except, maybe, lemonade. From Morocco, these little darlings can be used for all kinds of different preparations. There are other recipes that include spices such as cumin and coriander and clove, but I like the versatility of the plain salt version. Add seasonings as you please.

3-4 pints jars, cleaned well, with lids
a dozen or so juicy organic lemons
kosher salt
a few peppercorns

Wash lemons well, remembering you will be using the peel, and pare off discolored spots. The lemon’s shape doesn’t matter as much as its freshness, but if you’re gift-giving, look for pretty specimens. Ugly ducklings can be juiced and used to fill the jar with juice — plan to devote at least two lemons to juicing.

Slice 3-4 long gashes into whole lemons, leaving ends intact. Sterilize pint jars. Put a tablespoon of salt and a few peppercorns in the jar. Stuff a bunch of salt into gashes in lemons. Pack lemons into jar tightly, pouring in some lemon juice and adding a bit of salt every layer or so. Cut a few lemons in pieces to stuff in cracks, if you like. Top off jar with lemon juice to cover. I’ve seen some recipes that say cover with boiling water, but I don’t do that. Don’t worry about “wasting” lemons by juicing them into the jar. You’ll want all the delicious salty juice you can get. All recipes caution against using that nasty-ass fake lemon juice. Seriously, don’t.

You should be able to get 3-4 whole lemons into a pint jar if you really press down on the lemons, and you should.

Close jars tightly and keep unrefrigerated in a cool place for a couple of days (the refrigerator is, I find, too cool to allow the lemons to properly cure), then add more lemon juice, if necessary, to fill the jars. At this point, I like to smush down the salted lemons with a wooden reamer to extract more juice in the jars, as well.

After 2-3 weeks unrefrigerated, you will see the lemons have considerably softened and become a bit viscous and juicy. This means they are ready. After opening, keep in the refrigerator. As you use lemons, add more juice. You’ll find the preserved lemons change character over time, and they keep for a long time, if properly acidic and salted.

 

eat mostly plants, especially leaves

Thank you, Michael Pollan, for this dictum. The problem is that I’m not a giraffe. If a salad is put in front of me, I’ll eat it, dutifully masticating the endless leaves of lettuce, but I never crave salads and I find the eating of salads tiresome. Salads without leaves are much better in my book, but still, I’d rather eat raw cauliflower or a cucumber instead of a jumble of uncooked veggies in a dubious dressing.

There is one salad, however, that I absolutely love, and it’s so simple that you can have it any time, any where. In short, it’s the omninvore’s solution. What’s particularly nice about this salad is it can be inflected subtly with other peppery greens, depending on what’s available. You can use arugula, endive, chicory, or frisée. I often buy Korean watercress at the Asian market, since it’s fresher in the winter than what’s usually available at the big box supermarkets, but our CSA grows arugula, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use that first. But don’t use the mixed bag of greens. This salad is meant to be a study of ingredients and contrasts. Using only one green allows the diner to appreciate the way that particular green is complemented by the nuts and the cheese. Other than the greens, I don’t recommend substitutes or additions. If you must, you can use walnuts, but it won’t be nearly as nice.

And because this is an Oregon blog, I must stress that this salad is absolutely at its best if you use Willamette Valley roasted hazelnuts and Rogue Creamery blue cheese.

Watercress Salad with Pears, Hazelnuts, and Blue Cheese

Serves: 2 for dinner, 4 as side salads

1 large bunch of watercress

1 cup roasted, unsalted hazelnuts, chopped

2 very ripe D’anjou or Bosc pears

1/2 cup crumbled Rogue Creamery or other good-quality blue-veined cheese

Toast the hazelnuts in a toaster oven until you can smell the toasty nut smell (watch so they don’t burn). Chop the leaves off the watercress after washing well in several changes of water, and chop up stems (if tender) in 1-2 inch lengths. Dry thoroughly and place in bowl. Toss in the rest of the ingredients. You should have about half greens/half other ingredients. You won’t need salt or dressing, since the cheese “melts” in to the salad when it comes in contact with the ripe pears. Add some black pepper or a tiny bit of olive oil to balance the flavors if they’re not perfectly peppery or ripe enough. Enjoy the green.

 

while the cat’s away, the mouse will eat garlic chicken

When I eat garlic, it lingers on my breath for days. For some reason, I am extra sensitive to its effects. It oozes out of my pores. I leave a faint (or not so faint) whiff of garlic as I breeze through a room. Because this is unpleasant to my close associates (read: my husband), I am forbidden to indulge in some of my favorite binge eating. Do other people do this, too? I wonder what the taboo foodstuffs are in other relationships.

Sometimes, I dream of being single again. When I lived alone, I used to roast a head of garlic or two and spread the creamy, carmelized cloves on hunks of baguette. Now I just save these gloriously gluttonous moments for when Retrogrouch goes away for several days. I’m very responsible about it, too. I plan for mid-week, so I’ll have a couple of days to clear the stuff out of my system.

This week, I decided to binge like a mofo. I started planning for a Thai garlic pepper chickenfest. I haven’t had much chicken since I taught the food politics class in the fall. The articles we read, and the papers my students wrote, really made me re-evaluate eating cheap chicken. But suddenly, I wanted good chicken, and I wanted it with garlic, and I wanted it NOW.

One of the miracles of Thai food is garlic pepper squid — squid flash-fried with white pepper and a bit of coating, then mounded over lettuce leaves with a huge pile of fried, chopped garlic. A friend took classes with the celebrated Bay Area Thai cookbook author and teacher, Kasma Loha-Unchit, and then he practiced on us. My eyes nearly rolled back in my head when he introduced us to this dish.

I soon discovered you can make this with any seafood or meat, but chicken is particularly good. I think tofu would work as well, but since it takes a longer time to fry up golden than meats, be sure that the pieces are small. And by all means, check ahead to confirm that your dining companions and loved ones are ok with garlic eau-de-cologne.

And sorry, sweetie, I know you’re in England, where the food is not exactly jolly good, and I know you love this dish, too, but believe me, I’m doing it for our relationship.

Love,

me

Thai Garlic Pepper Fried Chicken

(adapted from Kasma Loha-Unchit’s recipe in It Rains Fishes: Legends, Traditions, and the Joys of Thai Cooking)

4 chicken half-breasts (i.e., one small package)

2 heads as-fresh-as-possible garlic, chopped

2 t. ground white pepper, or more to taste

2 T. fish sauce

2 t. cornstarch

3 T. white flour

vegetable oil for frying

Slice chicken breasts into thin strips. Chop all the garlic by hand into small pieces. Smashing the cloves with the back of a cleaver first will help make this process easier. Add to bowl with chicken. Add rest of ingredients to bowl, and mix thoroughly, being sure that each piece of chicken is coated well. The chicken and garlic will look dry. If it looks wet, add a bit more flour.

Fry chicken in several batches to avoid over-crowding in a wok with about a cup or two of vegetable oil. Watch carefully, since the garlic can burn. When chicken and garlic are golden brown, remove to dish with paper towels, then transfer to platter lined with lettuce leaves. Between batches, be sure to remove ALL stray garlic pieces with a fine strainer so they don’t burn in the oil. The oil can be cooled, strained and reused in stirfries, since it will pick up a nice garlicky odor.

Serve with other, more reasonable dishes with vegetables and jasmine rice. Or, if you’re completely alone and without hope for future alliances, half the recipe and serve with kimchi radish pickles and rice. I like to wrap up the chicken pieces in the lettuce with bits of garlic. Heaven.

Serves 2-3, if you can restrain yourselves.

 

couscous for the slow cooker, in desperation

I make couscous frequently. It’s one of our favorite meals. It can be vegetarian or carnivorous, depending on what’s at hand. One can make bountiful substitutions and it still tastes good. In fact, every time I make it it’s a new dish. The bright colors and root-veggie goodness are fantastic pick-me-ups in the dreary PNW late-winter, like little chunks of sun we’re promised will come again.

Last year, after we bought our fixer-upper house, a cute little post-WWII cottage with great bones but needing a major face lift, I discovered that the worthless previous owners had been cooking on a stove that had caught on fire. The wires connecting the burners were frazzled and burnt. The electrician advised not using the stove, wisely, so I waited for a couple of months until we could afford to convert to gas and buy a new unit.

This was the middle of a cold winter, so, with trepidation, I bought a slow cooker for my winter stews. The crock pot was a major feature of my childhood. We had crock pot meals all year ’round, at least twice a week. Sometimes the reek of sauerkraut and kielbasa would be so bad that I’d get a headache, because there’s nothing quite like cooking sauerkraut all day long, even if you live in a large two-story house. I still associate crock pot smells with nausea. It’s so deeply ingrained in me that I actually felt a bit sick when the odor of my couscous permeated the house. Ah, le temps perdu. Proust had his madeleines, I get crock pot meals.

Anyhoo. The couscous turned out pretty well, and I’m far more sensitive now to those with compromised kitchens. For those of you who are similarly compromised, or if you just like the crock pot, the adjusted recipe follows.

I’ll have to admit that I like couscous better on my new stove, so I give notes that allow you to cook this recipe on the stove, as well. Lately, I’ve been forgoing the meat and simplifying the spices to only cinnamon, salt, red pepper flakes and cumin. We also had a version adding ground lamb and green beans that was good. See? Flexible as can be.

Slow Cookin’ Couscous Stew

Note:  I usually cook this stew on the stove, so you can easily modify it for stovetop cooking by browning the beef and onions, then adding stock/water and seasonings.  The root vegetables should be added after about an hour (if you’re using chuck beef) and the other vegetables near the end of cooking (about two hours or so).

2 lbs. cubed beef chuck (or pork shoulder, or lamb, or chicken thighs…)
1 large onion, chopped

Seasonings: 1 T. cinnamon, 2 t. salt, 1 t. coriander, 1/2 t. turmeric, 1 t. cumin, 1 t. allspice, 1 t. onion powder, ground pepper.

At least 3 root vegetables, 1 each, cut into largish (2-inch) chunks. I use turnip, rutabaga, yam, white potato, winter squash, leeks, carrot, parsnip. Cabbage works too, cut into 3-4 inch wedges, but it isn’t very pretty because the wedges fall apart. Russet potatoes and sweet potatoes will dissolve and make broth thicker, which is fine, but may be disappointing if you want chunks.

1 andouille sausage, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 can chick peas, drained
1 cup large raisins (white ones if you can get them)
3-4 dried red hot peppers

1 zucchini, cut into 2-inch long fingers
1 red pepper
1 green pepper (Retrogrouch likes these — I’d rather use roasted pasilla peppers I keep in the freezer or nothing at all)

harissa

about 4 cups chicken stock or water

In a 6-quart or larger slow cooker, layer beef, onion, seasonings, root vegetables, sausage, chick peas and raisins, in that order. Don’t mix. Add enough chicken stock or water to cover most of the vegetables (about 1/2 full?). Cook on high for first hour or so, then cook on low for 5-6 hours.

In last hour of cooking, mix in zucchini, red pepper and green pepper, plus a spoonful of harissa and some chopped preserved lemon, if you have some. Taste for salt and heat. Serve with couscous. If you want to be fancy, mix couscous with cilantro and chick peas. Makes a huge pot.

 

my staples: summer blueberry liqueur

When my husband and I arrived in Oregon, we went blueberry picking at a farm just outside of town. I had picked blueberries in my childhood, but in Michigan blueberries grow in bogs on small bushes, not on hills in hedges that are higher than my head, so I dressed in waterproof boots and slathered on the mosquito repellent, not bothering to bring a hat.

A few hours later, he had wandered off with his bucket to quaff fresh blueberry juice at the home base, and I was sunburnt and lost in the foliage. Finally, I made my way back, branches in my hair, a huge pail of blueberries. We ate them for weeks, often by the handful, then in crumbles and pies, then in jams and syrups, and still our freezer held as many as it could store. Oregon’s Willamette Valley - can you see why people call this place paradise?

The nice thing about frozen blueberries is that you can bring back a bit of summer to the dead of winter. I’m cleaning out my freezer right now, and I have just enough to make a new batch of my Summer Blueberry Liqueur. It doesn’t take up much space or time to put up, but you do need to devote some time to filtering the liqueur. This liqueur can be sipped and used in cocktails, but it also adds a perfect blueberry note to fruit salads, and crumbles, in whipped cream and poured over pound cake. I add some to my blackberry jam. In short, it’s one of my kitchen staples. Since I first made it several summers ago, I’ve had some on hand. If you cultivate a few staples like these that make your cooking special, you can add your own style to every dish you make.

Summer Blueberry Liqueur

(recipe adapted from Gunther Anderson)

You will need several months processing time to make and age this liqueur. Ideally, use big, plump, juicy blueberries you picked last summer and froze whole. If this isn’t possible, use organic frozen blueberries.

2 cups, packed, frozen blueberries
1.5 cups vodka (80 proof)
zest from one organic lemon, in long strips (use vegetable peeler, making sure to get only yellow part)
.75 cups simple syrup (see recipe below)
Optional: whole spices, such as a few black peppercorns, coriander, cloves, part of a cinnamon stick, juniper berries, a dried chili

Steeping the Berries
Don’t worry about the simple syrup yet. Let blueberries thaw, mush them up well to release juices. You are using frozen berries because they are much juicier than fresh ones. In a quart jar with a tight-fitting, removable lid, add the blueberries, the vodka, and the lemon peel. Steep for at least one month in a cool, dark place (no need to refrigerate), shaking gently every couple of days.

Making Simple Syrup
Now worry about the simple syrup. Boil two cups sugar to one cup water. Watch carefully once it starts boiling, because there will be a point where the liquid will suddenly go from cloudy to clear. When this happens, and the liquid is completely clear, you have succeeded in making simple syrup. Let cool, then use 3/4 cup for this recipe and the rest for your iced tea or lime rickeys. Can be stored in the refrigerator in a clean bottle.

Filtering the Liqueur
Open the blueberry jar, and strain the liquid from the berries. Filter the liquid three times: (1) through a sieve, (2) through a double layer of cheesecloth on the sieve, pressing down on the berries as much as you can to get out all the tasty berriness, and (3) through a gold coffee filter fitted atop a large funnel, and don’t skip this step, because it’s the one that will give you a ruby clear liquid. The last filter will be very slow. I find I need to rinse this filter several times because it gets plugged up completely with sediment.

Place liquid in a clean quart jar, then add 3/4 cup syrup to liqueur, shake well, and age for another month or two in a dark place. You may freeze the berry residue for use as alcoholic topping for ice cream, but I find the taste is a bit too harsh.

Spicing It Up
Many of the recipes online will tell you to add a few whole cloves or coriander - because I use this recipe for so many purposes and need to communicate “BLUEBERRY!” I prefer a clean blueberry taste, but you might like something spicier that acts as a counterpoint to the blueberry.