A New Pickled Daikon

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I picked up two gorgeous daikon from the farmers market, one for a wacky yet delicious “lasagne” made of big sheets of daikon and plenty of red savinas (it had 16 layers of various vegetables in it as well), the other for pickling. We’ve talked about pickled daikon before, but not this one: its complexity and color comes from matcha salt, which replaces regular salt. Why had I not thought of this before?? The result is a supercrisp, superflavored pickle that I can eat all day long. I really like the wabi-sabi off-green color, and the subtle taste of the tea. It’s incredible when taken with well-cooked meat, and acts with the same palate-cleansing sensibility that pickled ginger does with sushi. Here it is:

Peel the daikon and thinly shave it with a benriner, that el-cheapo mandoline that’s incredibly useful for tasks like this (or, just thinly slice it with a sharp knife). You should wind up with something like 5 cups. Place the daikon in a large mixing bowl and add a big handful of matcha salt. Spread it around with your hands, so that it’s reasonably evenly distributed. Let it sit for 30 minutes, then squeeze all the (by now green) water out it with your hands. Then add

Juice of 3 meyer lemons
1/2 cup ginger syrup

and gently mix around. They’re excellent straight up — truly instant pickles – -but they get even better over time, and will keep, tightly covered in the fridge, for a long time (at least several weeks, but probably much more). But I wouldn’t count on them lasting that long — they’re pretty addictive. Try it out.

And if we needed another bonus: another use for matcha salt!

The Many Blessings of Dried Tangerines

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Tangerine salt is one of my true standbys; it has earned a permanent place on my shelf next to the stove, where I place things I use on a daily or near-daily basis. I make tangerine salt in small quantities, using one dried wheel and roughly two tablespoons of sel gris. I first put the wheel into my coffee grinder, grind it to a fine powder, then add the salt, and pulse it a few times to combine. The salt is a wonder; it turns a lovely shade of yellow-orange, smells fresh and toasty citrusy, and, siren-like, beckons me to use it every time I go near it.

Trader Joe’s used to carry acceptable dried tangerines, but, like many great products there, they have disappeared. But dried tangerines are dead simple to make at home: preheat the oven to 200, slice your favorite tangerine (the one in the photo is a Minneola, one of my faves) thinly into wheels, and place on a cookie sheet (outfitted with a Silpat if you like) for roughly two hours, or until they start to really dry out, brown a bit, and finally toast up. They then live in a jar, ready for me whenever I need them, which is often.The quantity in the photo is a single Minneola, and will last me a while, more than likely a month or two.

I’m also fond of using tangerine dust, i.e. pulverized dried tangerine into a fine powder. You can add it to crusts (breadcrumbs, lentils, rice, etc.) to give them color and citrusy zip. You can sprinkle a little on a salad for extra prettiness and vibrant flavor, you can just munch on them like potato chips — amazing with a glass of chilled sake and some edamame.

OK breakaway cooks, let put our collective wisdom to work here: what else can you imagine with them? Do try making them, and be sure to put them in a handsome jar that visible when you cook, so that they can constantly remind you of their wondrous presence.

Administrative addendum: You may have noticed a change in the right sidebar — I decided to show exactly what things I use most in my kitchen, with a short commentary on them. It’s an Amazon Associates thing, i.e. I get a very small percentage of sales if it’s purchased from my link. So if you’re in need of any kitchen tools that I use heavily, please use my links! Thanks.

Baked Crispy Yogurty Rice

I seem to always have quite a bit of cooked rice around. My standby for leftover cooked rice is a breakaway treatment of fried rice, but something got into me today when I glanced over at the Chamba (the Colombian claypot shown in the photo). I thought that I if just combined the cooked rice with some other stuff, gave it a crust, and baked it, that it might be good. It was! Four hungry eaters polished this one off in a heartbeat, and everyone wanted more! This is sure to become a staple around here.

Into a big mixing bowl:

roughly 5 cups cooked rice (I used basmati, but any rice will do)
2 tablespoons greek yogurt
about 1/4 cup tofu, squished
2 eggs
about a cup of leftover cooked, chopped vegetables: I had an onion/fennel/carrot mixture, but you could use any veggies at all
plenty of salt and pepper

Rub some butter or olive oil into the claypot, and spoon in the rice mixture. Then take a slice of stale bread (I used a grainy hippie bread) with a teaspoon of coriander seeds and whir. Sprinkle that over the rice, and spray the whole thing with olive oil. Bake at 375 for about half an hour, or until the top is nicely browned and crispy.

Serve a slab in lieu of your usual rice (or other carb), alongside whatever else you’re having for dinner.

The All-Sardine Diet!

Little silvery wriggly pure goodness, how I worship thee! But it was a learned worship.

I didn’t grow up eating sardines, unless you count the supercheap nasty ones they sold in tins in our local crappy supermarket. Blech! No wonder so many people think they hate sardines! When I tasted real, i.e. fresh, sardines for the first time in Japan, it was one of those handfuls of culinary epiphanies that come along in life. How was it possible that I had missed, for most of my life, something so good? They serve iwashi every conceivable way in Japan: cured, raw, sauteed, deep-fried, as ceviche (with yuzu, sudachi, and kabosu), on rice, as kabayaki (fried first, then basted with a sweetened soy mixture) . . . and dozens of other ways I’m too lazy to list. It was HEAVEN.

What’s so good about them? Everything. The taste, mainly — their natural oils are pure manna when hyperfresh. Everyone has different food buttons, both good and bad, but sardines going into my gullet is pure crack for me; the body just goes AHHH, thank you kind sir, that is exactly what I needed! Whenever I read some bit of nutritional research that tells me how good sardines are for me — they contain more omega 3s than any other single naturally occurring substance, I believe — I just laugh, because how much better does it get when science has got your back on a particular food AND you can’t get enough of it?

Sometimes you can find plastic tubs of perfectly cured white sardines, sold next to the olives. I can go through a tub in a single sitting, like popcorn. But it’s best when you find sardines fresh; they’re not that easy to track down though. So I was elated when Santa Rosa Fish, the giant seafood purveyor at the Marin farmers market, had them in quantity. Most of the fresh fish they sell there is well north of $10, $15, even $20 a pound, but beautiful, perfect, local (Monterey) sardines were …. $2.99! Their cheapness just underscores their beauty to me; they are the overlooked yet deeply attractive sea babes.

But how to deal with them?

You first cut off the head, fins, and tail. Make a slit with a sharp knife near the butthole, and glide the knife upward. The viscera should just pull out. Rinse the fish. Then, carefully using your index finger and thumb, grasp the backbone from the tail end, and gently lift it out; this may require a tiny amount of pulling and separating flesh from vertabrae. But it should come out reasonably easily. Rinse again. You now have a butterflied sardine. You can dust the fish with good salt and pepper and saute in a heavy pan heated aggressively with olive oil and butter (sardines are the bacon of seafood; you really don’t need to do very much to them) and be instantly rewarded with sardiney goodness.

Or you could do what I did, which is place the fillets in a bowl, rinse a few times, generously salt, then cover with a vinegar blend (apple cider and rice vinegar this time) for a few hours, or more. This will cure the fish, and make the delectable little morsels available anytime fancy strikes. You can just put them out on an antipasto plate, alongside some olives, salami, and bread, and have a stellar snack. Or you can get more ambitious and make a kickass pasta with nothing more than a few cloves of garlic confit, a handful of sardines, fruity olive oil, some toasted breadcrumbs, and a few fistfuls of finely chopped parsley (this is a very dangerous combination; caveat eator!). Sardines love cauliflower for some reason, too — saute some florets, add some chopped-up sardines and minced tarragon and you’ll have side dish guests will wolf down in record time. Nice on salads, too — be sure to have some spicy croutons around, along with some bitter lettuces like arugula, treviso, or other chicories. Above I made a simple sardine, satsuma tangerine, and fennel salad.

Maybe I should start promoting the all-sardine diet! Any other sardine fans out there? Have you ever had any from a tin that taste great?

Ginger Syrup

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Ginger syrup has become such an integral part of my cooking of late that I’m bumping it up to official status as a breakaway flavor blast, which some of you may recall as

the six salts (matcha, smoked paprika, lavender, kaffir lime, tangerine, and umami)
pickled ginger and its brine
pickled fennel and its brine
breakaway tomato spread
lemongrass citrus syrup
garlic confit
and now, ginger syrup

What is it? Well it’s just chopped up ginger, good cane sugar, water. The formula couldn’t be easier:

one part chopped ginger
one part cane sugar
2 parts water

How I love simple formulas!

I start by chopping up about a cup and a half of fresh ginger. I sometimes peel it first, sometimes not, depends if I care about its eventual color (peeled ginger will give a prettier, lighter, more pure look, while unpeeled is browner and more rustico; the taste difference is negligible). Toss that in the Vitaprep along with an equal amount of cane sugar (i.e. 1.5 cups), and three cups of water. Puree, transfer to saucepan, and bring to boil. Simmer for about 35-40 minutes, or until the quantity has roughly halved. Strain into a measuring cup, then carefully pour it into some pretty bottle that will live in your fridge, next to the maple syrup.

How to use it? Use it anytime whatever you’re cooking would benefit from a touch of complex sweetness. A small drizzle is fabulous in salad dressings. Into an omelet, into soups, in pan reductions. On pancakes and Dutch babies. Or just for guzzling! It’s a remarkable substance — you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it once you taste it.

Addendum: The spent ginger (what’s left after you strain it) also has a huge variety of uses — a few tablespoons of it is really amazing in soups. It really zings them up. Don’t throw it away!

Bliss-Inducing Thai Soup

I’ve been in hypersoup mode lately, probably driven by 1) a nice selection of recently made stocks, and 2) crappy, cold weather. Every few days brings something new, but this one stood far above the rest, so here it is. It’s one of those soups that are destined to become mainstays.

Did anyone watch that Rodriguez video on puerco pibil I pointed out a few days ago? In it he had a great idea: he made a menu that he keeps around his kitchen featuring about 10 of his favorite dishes he’s perfected over the years. Whenever someone comes over, he just shows them the menu, and they can “order” off it if he’s in the mood. I think of Rodriguez because I would probably put this soup on my menu if I had one.

I started with some crab stock, made a few weeks ago with the remnants of a few Dungeness crabs we devoured and then frozen in ziplocks. It was pretty intensely crabby, so I wanted to tame that taste a bit. But with what? By chance I had just made a batch of ginger syrup (a post is forthcoming on this amazing condiment, I promise), the byproduct of which is a few cups of pureed sweetened fresh ginger. I put about half a cup into the broth, and voila! Instant mellowness and gingeryness, exactly what I had hoped it would do. So the broth was pretty set.

What to put in? What you have, of course! I sauteed a sliced onion, a sweet pepper, half a daikon, and a fennel bulb, all cut into strippy julienne. Into the broth. Cooked for a bit, needed some creaminess. Over here, Mr. Can of Coconut Milk. Thai flavors were rapidly developing, so I tossed in five or so kaffir lime leaves, which sealed the deal. Over-the-top deliciousness after a half-hour simmer. The pot still had some room in it, so I opened a package of tofu shirataki (tofu that’s been extruded, looks like skinny egg noodles) and stirred that in. Adjusted with kaffir lime salt, tossed in some cilantro and chopped up chicory, and had a little moment of satori, blessings and all.

Indian Turkey, Heady Turkey Broth, and the Perfect Turkey Sandwich

I may have set a record for getting every last gram of turkey off the carcass this year. It was a 10-pound wonder from Diestel that got spatchcocked/butterflied — i.e., I took some sturdy shears and snipped out the backbone, first one side of it, then the other, then kinda flattened the whole thing out — and slathered it with a blended combo of sauted onion, cumin, coriander, fennel seed, cardamom, tomato, and homemade applesauce, all spooned under the skin, and roasted for about 90 minutes at 375. I used cut-up ruby grapefruit wedges as “scaffolding” to layer it into my pan. It was as excellent as Indian turkey could be, and again made me wonder, as it does every November, why we only cook this bird a few times a year.

I’m a sucker for a good turkey sandwich, so I macked on them for a good four days. Lots of permutations, but here was the winner: combo of dark and white meat, on toasted sourdough, slathered with:

drizzle of olive oil
schmear of Grey Poupon
drizzle of salad dressing made mostly with hachiya persimmon
slices of fuyu persimmon
liberal dusting of tangerine salt and freshly ground pepper

Fruity, hints of sweetness, juicy as hell. A close second was a sandwich with a liberal dose of mango chutney, thus rounding out the full Indianness of this highly versatile bird that Indians ought to love! (does anyone know if turkey is served in India?)

The carcass, tossed into a stockpot along with a few carrots, bay leaves, chilies, and dried galangal, along with enough water to cover it all, yielded a huge wealth of meat and a rich, smoky, intense broth that got bagged up in Ziplocks and frozen. It turns out to be much more pleasant to make stock with a turkey carcass than it is with a chicken carcass, I think because the fat content is just so much lower; virtually no de-fatting was necessary.

I hope everyone had a good holiday. Would love to hear about any standout moments! And, if you like, your favorite way to prepare turkey/turkey sandwiches.

(photo by the hypertalented Annabelle Breakey)

Happy Thanksgiving, Breakaway Cooks!

Delia and I woke up to this beast, and about 20 of her pals, the other morning when we were camping up in Lake County. I had always thought that wild turkeys were exceedingly skittish, but these guys were poking around practically inside the tent!

May you all have a very special day (and meal) tomorrow; if anyone feels like sharing any breakaway dishes you’ve made, please do! I’m thinking of butterflying the 10-pounder I bought yesterday, and giving it an Indian spice treatment.

I’m thankful for everyone reading this, and simply for being alive in this time, in this place. Peace and good wishes to everyone!

Wild Perch with Grains of Paradise

OK, it’s time for the long-awaited grains of paradise.

Stuart was kind enough to send me a jar of these little gems, which sort of look like peppercorns (that link says “what peppercorns only dream of being” — reminds me of a long-ago friend who lived and breathed the stoner sport of frisbee; his favorite quote: “when a ball dreams, it dreams it’s a frisbee). They don’t have much aroma at all when you open the jar and take a whiff, but, once ground, everything changes: it’s almost like a combination of coriander, cumin, cardamom, and something tropicalish. It’s native to West Africa, and it’s actually, most improbably, in the ginger family. It also changes color when ground! It becomes a silvery gray dust, redolent of earth and ground minerals.

I found some perch, caught in Morrow Bay, and thought it might make a good canvas to really see what the grains of paradise would bring to it. It’s subtler than one would think, given the above description, yet it’s unmistakably there; the fish became lightly perfumed with fleeting glances of exotica — perfect, really. If it were any stronger, it would have been too much about the flavoring, and not enough about the fish. The brick-colored residue in the pan is from a lone piece of tomato that was floating around the cutting board. The pan was mighty hot — it was first heated by a maxed out flame, then a film of olive oil, then the whole thing was tossed into a 550 degree oven, along with a few pieces of Meyer lemon and the spoonful of tomato. Perch is delicate, so I figured that was better than pan-frying it, which would surely have resulted in a mangle, though a delicious one.

I also had a very successful experiment with a thick pork loin — LOADS of GoP, plus kosher salt, that’s it, fried up to perfection, followed by a deglazing of the pan with Calvados and chopped-up persimmons. Next up on the GoP experiment queue: tofu, carefully crisped in a GoP crust.

I believe it has earned a permanent place on the spice shelf, next to the pepper; it’s almost like having a choice of pepper 1 (good old Tellicherry) and pepper 2 (GoP), with the latter getting the nod when just a bit more complexity and — dare I say it? — mystery is called for.

Please chime in with any GoP experience, thoughts, dishes …. it’s a very worthwhile spice to have around.

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