Spring Rolls

Two posts in one day after months without a peep? Yes! I am prone to my particular excesses.

Spring rolls are amazing in the summer. I am not going to call these "easy," as there is a modicum of skill and some deep prep involved in assembling the mise en place. But they are a good project for a weekend afternoon, if you are crazy like me and enjoy the meditation of preparing many little components just so.

Ingredients:
- spring roll wrappers
- rice vermicelli, cooked, drained and chilled (I used the thinnest I could find, but this would actually be more authentic with the next size up)
- shredded chicken
- carrots, julienned and quick-pickled (a splash of vinegar and 1 Tbsp sugar, add water to cover)
- basil leaves
- mint leaves


Dry spring roll wrappers are discs of rice paper.


Soak them in water for about 15 seconds per side. Too long and they will get waterlogged and slippery and won't stick properly when you go to roll them.


Then transfer to another surface for assembly (a slightly moistened cookie sheet, in my case)


Plop the noodles on the round wrapper, slightly off center. You want them to be on the side that is closer to you.


Add all the other fillings.


Now start rolling. Always roll away from yourself, as this makes it easier to get a nice compact package instead of a floppy roll.







Do this a bunch of times. Your first few will probably be floppy and ugly. Eat them immediately to destroy the evidence of your failure. I usually eat at least 2 while making them because being a one-woman operation means I have to conduct my own QC audits.



Peanut dipping sauce:
- 1 Tbsp peanut butter
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- a splash of sesame oil
- a splash of rice wine vinegar
- minced garlic, or garlic powder
- chili paste, or red pepper flakes
- 3+ Tbsp water to thin

Basil Limeade

It is summer. My basil planter is full to bursting, and I've had to harvest 2x weekly to keep up. I didn't have anything planned for this weekend's harvest, so I came up with basil limeade.

Ingredients:
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
3 limes
1 lemon
fistful of basil
Club soda

Heat the water and sugar until the sugar is all dissolved. Zest all the citrus and add it and the juice to the hot syrup. Chop the basil leaves and add them to the mix.
If you are patient, chill the syrup in the fridge before proceeding. If not, fill a glass with ice and pour 3-4 oz. syrup over ice. Top off with club soda. Enjoy your summer.

Morning

Closer to noon, but who's counting.
Super strong French-press coffee, and nectarine-berry-black pepper galette.
We watched Julie & Julia last night and the Julia portions were delightful. I think this is why I woke up wanting to make something French. Emily is planning to make boef bourguignion and tarte tatin tonight in tribute.



I had a single nectarine left, and it wasn't very ripe, and I was hungry. Somehow this seemed like less work than trying to eat an underripe nectarine.



Threw a slovenly pastry dough together in my mixer bowl: 1 stick butter, ~1 cup flour, a bit of salt and enough cold water to bind together.







Breakfast. Lunch. Brunch. It's 1:20pm.

Chilled green soup

a.k.a. Fridge cleaning before the veggies go bad.

It is the middle of another goddamn Houston summer so most nights I want the coldest, simplest food possible. Inspired by this NPR article on the subject, I set out to salvage a few items of produce that were getting kind of old:

1. 2 zucchini
2. 1 bunch parsley
3. 1 head roasted garlic



Shown here still in the pot, cuz I'm lazy. With lazy chunks of homemade bread.

Chunked everything up and boiled directly (adding parsley at the very end of cooking), didn't brown the veggies or use lemon as per the article's directives.
Once cooked, the pot of boiled veggies actually sat in my fridge for a few days before I got around to blending and seasoning...I waited to add salt until after I'd tasted the cold version, as cold tends to blunt flavors and you typically need more seasoning to get your point across. Also added a touch of half-and-half (aka remnants of cream and a glug of milk) while blending to round out the salt+green flavor.

It tastes really fresh (huge bunch of parsley). And cold. mmmm.

Rugelach

Ruuuuugelach. Rugelach rugelach rugelach.

regular rugelach (apricot-walnut-raisin):



chocolate-walnut-nutella rugelach:



how to ruge your lach:
















RUUUUGELAAAACH

Recipe courtesy of Epicurious.com Modified to chocolate version by me. I recommend using less filling than stated in the original recipe, as it oozed everywhere while baking.

The flavor trip

Yeah, yeah, we didn't do an update on our Thanksgiving or Christmas feasts, get over it. There was turkey, porchetta, potatoes, all that stuff. Free range organic turkeys are totally worth it.

This post is not really about Thanksgiving, though. This post is about our Christmas evening flavor trip.

Lauren is a gifting mastermind. I had no idea what she meant when she said I was going to be a co-conspirator "the experience" of Emily's gift. Also: best gift reveal ever. First out of the bag was a container of sour cherry syrup, followed by random fruits, then a packet of chocolate, a jar of salsa verde accompanied by a bag of tortilla chips, and a box of sour candies...and finally at the bottom of the bag were the Miracle Berry tablets. Surprise, flavor trip time! Kept us guessing to the end.



So we set up shop on the living room floor and proceeded to flavor trip. We followed the instructions on the box of Miracle Berry tablets (dissolve 1 tablet in mouth, coat tongue all over). We each picked up a slice of lemon and I swear we collectively held our breath before I bit into mine.

I think I said "Holy shit." (Merry Christmas)

And then I proceeded to devour the lemon wedge and sample everything else we had. We all dug in. It was by far the trippiest thing I've ever experienced. I will attempt to tabulate a list.

Super Awesome

Lemons - taste sweet and tart and lemony like the most delicious lemonade. Mind-blowingly good. You can still feel the acid on your lips so it's kind of like sticking your tongue to a battery.
Limes - likewise. There seemed to be a saturation point beyond which additional acid was able to overcome the effects of the miracle berry.
Mandarins - taste like CANDY
Sour cherry syrup - became tart instead of puckeringly sour; deep, rich cherry flavors came forward.
Cranberries - taste like cranberry jelly

Good but Weird

Granny Smith apples - without their tartness, they turn into boring regular apple flavor
Pink Lady apples - not much different, just sweet.
Grapefruit - not as sour
Blackberries - closer to what wild blackberries are like, kind of hard to tell since they weren't in season.
Salsa verde - bizarrely sweet, like a mango or pineapple salsa. Really weird.
Roma tomato - became peach-like, but with the tomato's herbal notes. Also really weird.
Shockers candy - not horribly sour!

Not so Good

Guinness - the edge is gone, thus negating the point of drinking Guinness.
100% cacao chocolate pastilles - still horribly bitter!

I went back for seconds on the lemon and lime, they were so tasty. The effects seemed to wear off around the 30-minute mark, which was fine by us. The Miracle Berry package said it might last up to one hour, but we were eating throughout so that probably stripped the compound from our tongues faster.
We had antacid on hand to neutralize the obscene amounts of acid we were consuming; I recommend that approach to any who want to follow in our footsteps.

Cheese rinds and beets

The Whole Foods down the street sells these little plastic-wrapped bundles of Parmesan rinds for super cheap and I just can't resist. So I've accumulated this small stockpile of cheese rinds and finally decided to do something with them: make cheese stock. Rinds + pot of water + a few hours of simmering = smells amazing, and awesome stock for risotto making.



I had a butternut squash from the farmer's market so I cut that open and roasted it, and added it to the risotto to give it more body. The starchy squash partially disintegrated into the rice, which was nice.

Also: roasted beets for the first time. I paired them with herbed goat cheese, salad greens, and pine nuts. Interesting.

Oh yeah, and I folded sauteed beet greens into the risotto because the internet said they were also edible.

Dulce de leche, buerre noisette, sea salt.

Putting this here to remind myself to do it again:



Was making cinnamon rolls and decided to do a caramel topping. I found some leftover homemade dulce de leche in the fridge so that was the base. (Aside: I make dulce de leche by simmering an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of water for an hour, then putting it back in the pantry, forgetting about it for a year and then opening it by accident when I actually need sweetened condensed milk.)

I browned 3/4 stick of butter, stirred in 3/4 can of dulce de leche, and added 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt to make a saucelike goo. Dan says it is "alternate universe caramel with a goatee because it's evil" and he wants to know if I can replicate this in a solid caramel form.



If you've ever had salted caramel, it's like that, but in sauce form, and with more toasty flavor. And if you haven't had salted caramel, try some, because salt brings out the flavors in sweets.

And now for something completely different.

Remember the ham cake? I made another one, but in reverse. It's a ham shaped like a cake, instead of cake shaped like a ham, because Matt requested it for his birthday.

I bought a ham and baked it according to the package instructions, with a little Grade B maple syrup and water in the bottom of the baking dish.

Then I hacked it to bits.



I trimmed the biggest ham steaks into rectangles roughly the same size. There was some patchwork involved.

Behold, my tower of ham.



Potatoes were set to boil.



Glaze. Those pre-glazed spiral-sliced hams annoy me because the inside of the ham doesn't get glazed, just the outside. So I decided to do something about it by glazing the entire cut face of each layer of ham.



Contents of glaze: grade B maple syrup, ketchup, brown mustard, brown sugar, mushroom salt, balsamic vinegar, paprika, ginger, garlic granules, and possibly some other stuff.

Glazed.



Put under the broiler for a few minutes:



It turned out all runny and juicy. I was going more for a creme brulee type crust, so next time I will pat the meat dry and use a completely dry phase glaze mix. If there is ever a next time.



Mashed potatoes, made with heavy cream and cream cheese instead of milk and butter. I thought to myself, "how can I make the potatoes stiff enough to support ham slices, but still creamy?" This is how. We are all going to die of fattiness because of those potatoes.

Assembly was your standard stack-and-frost affair, which proceeded smoothly after an emergency run to the store to get MORE POTATOES. I got a can of French's fried onions to use as "nuts" on the sides of the cake (which worked well to disguise the rough frosting job on the sides). I used a sandwich bag with the corner cut off to write a message using the leftover ham glaze. I am pretty darn proud of my piping job.



Aaaand the money shot:

Pumpkin ravioli in sage browned butter

Still feeling pretty good from last night's hand-cut pasta dish, tonight I decided to use up half a can of pumpkin puree by making ravioli. After a quick googling for ravioli-assembling instructions, I was ready to go.

No eggs this time, just flour, water, a pinch of salt, and a bit of olive oil:



Really unphotogenic filling:



Contains: pumpkin puree, minced garlic, mixed dried mushrooms (crushed fine and rehydrated), grated really old parmesan, shredded cheddar&jack cheese mix, plain yogurt, a bit of brown sugar, and salt/pepper/herbes de provence/paprika/coriander. It tasted pretty flat in the beginning which is why yogurt and sugar and prepack cheese mix got in there. But afterward it was tasty! Go team improvisation.

After some finagling with rolling out and dolloping and cutting and sealing and boiling and tossing in sage browned butter and some simultaneous making of honey-lemon-ginger glazed carrots, I picked the prettiest ravioli and sage leaflets and put them on a plate to show you.



Pine nuts were added for textural contrast.

Go team pantry cleaning!

Pasta carbonara

They say adding constraints to a creative process will keep the creative spark alive, and apparently this principle totally applies to my relationship with food.
Tonight's dinner exists because we have no milk, no onions, no bread, no greens, and we are tired of bean soup (I made a very mediocre soup). What we did have were: really good farmer's market bacon, frozen green peas, two eggs, and pasta.

Or I thought we had pasta.

Since we didn't, I had to make some. By hand. Because kneading dough is a great way to blow off steam, and because by then I was set on having pasta carbonara for dinner.



My previous attempts at homemade pasta have been pretty poor. Learning to handle dough (thanks to bread-baking) made the outcome a whole lot better this time around. The real secret to getting lovely smooth fresh pasta dough is giving it multiple rests throughout the mixing, kneading, and rolling out processes. Five minutes after mixing for gluten formation and starch hydration, then a good 5+ minutes of kneading (it's a stiff dough), then a few 1-2 minute rests while rolling out to counteract the dough's inherent elasticity.

I started out with the Italian grandmother method: cracking an egg into a little well made in a mound of flour. I wound up adding another egg's worth of water to the dough to extend it, since one egg doesn't make for very much dough.

Rolled out, floured well, rolled up, and sliced like (rustic) fettucine:



I had to unroll the noodles and dust them with more flour immediately after cutting to keep the cut edges from sticking.

BACON. Bacon which we got from a charming meat and pork sausage vendor who said his family was Jewish.



Would have used onions. Instead you get minced garlic.



GREEN THINGS. And salt & black pepper were added at some point.



I prepared the remaining egg to use as the carbonara "sauce" by beating it with a pinch of salt and some water (so I wouldn't wind up with an accidental omelette)



Shortly after this point, I gave the noodles a quick tumble in boiling water too cook (they just need a minute) and added them to the pan. More salt to taste, a few grinds of black pepper once plated, and a generous grating of Parmesan followed:



I'm eager to try making fresh pasta again and possibly freezing little pasta nests for future use, because fresh pasta is fucking amazing.