Blue Kitchen

Spring, schming—It might as well be chili dogs

Terry B — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:20:48 +0000

The lack of reliably warm weather this spring calls for comfort food, and Turkey Chili Dogs don’t just hit the spot—they obliterate it. Recipe below.

This week’s post was supposed to be a light chicken sandwich celebrating the flavors of spring. I’d already created it in my head, and just thinking of it now, I can actually taste it.

But spring is being especially coy this year. We should be flinging windows open, airing out the apartment and waking to birds singing. Instead, we awoke this weekend to a cold rain being blown hard against the windows. The temperature was in the 40s and not predicted to do a lot better than the low 50s, and besides the rain, there was a wind advisory.

I had to absolutely will myself out of the warm bed to get my day started. Clearly, some light sandwich celebrating spring was not going to happen. Comfort food was called for. And to my way of thinking, there are few foods more comforting than a chili dog on a raw day.

We’ve sung the praises of chili here before. And we’ve presented various takes on it—my three-bean chili, Marion’s amazing chili and even a white chili. Whatever your regional preferences—beans, no beans, meat, no meat—chili is just plain good.

Hot dogs are less universally understood. Growing up in St. Louis, hot dogs were what you got at the ball game or something you threw on the barbecue grill for the kids when the grown-ups were having burgers. So I was somewhat mystified when I moved to Chicago the first time [this is our second tour of duty here, as I like to put it] and there seemed to be a hot dog stand every other block or so [outrageous real estate prices have diminished the number of hot dog places severely, but Chicagoans can still find plenty of places to get a great dog].

Then I had one. The word revelation springs to mind. As Doug of Hot Doug’s says, “There are no two finer words in the English language than ‘encased meats,’ my friend.” Unless you live in Chicago or New York, you may not get this level of fervor for the seemingly lowly hot dog. And even if you do get them, you’ll get all kinds of takes on what makes the perfect dog, some of them regional. Here is how NPR’s Daniel Pinkwater, born in Chicago but now living in exile in upstate New York, describes a Chicago dog:

“First, it’s on a poppy-seed bun which is doughy and substantial, but not heavy. The bun is lightly steamed at the point of serving.

“The hot dog is all beef, spicier than the New York variety. It is steamed and has a natural casing. It snaps when you bite into it, and squirts hot deliciousness. A variant is the Polish sausage which the gods ate on Olympus.
This is what goes on it:
• Yellow mustard
• Bright green pickle relish
• Chopped onion
• A kosher pickle spear
• Two slices of tomato
• Two tiny but devastating peppers
• And all-important, celery salt

“All of this is fitted together with fiendish cleverness enabling the eater to get most of it in his mouth, and only a little on his shirt. If there are fries, they are hand cut, skinny and glorious.”

Chili + Dog: The whole equals waaaay more than the sum of its parts. Okay, we’ve established that these foods are wonderful in their own right. I’d heard that chili dogs were even better, but it took Marion to introduce me to their delights. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, as I recall, and we suddenly found ourselves in the lovely semi-deserted darkness of the original John Barleycorn, a long, rambling bar and restaurant on Lincoln Avenue. I had a burger in mind, but Marion started exclaiming when she found chili dogs on the menu. I was skeptical, but even back then, I’d learned to trust her taste buds.

So we each ordered one. Honestly, it fell a little bit short of amazing. But it showed me amazing could be had. As with almost every chili dog you’ll find in a bar, restaurant or hot dog stand, there wasn’t enough chili. Here’s how you can tell: If you can pick up the chili dog and eat it without utensils, there’s not enough chili. Hell, if you can see the hot dog or much of the bun, there’s not enough chili. We bury them. In fact, for the photo above, I kind of skimped on the chili just so you could see the dog and bun.

But the wonder of the combined flavors was undeniable. Our first impulse was to order more there and tell them not to be so shy with the chili. But then we had a better idea. We hightailed it out of the bar, headed for the grocery store and then went home and cooked up the first of many chili dog orgies.

The chili for this recipe is pretty much the same as my three-bean chili, except I felt like lightening the taste up a bit, so I substituted ground turkey for the ground beef; this was strictly a taste choice, since we typically use ground sirloin for our beef, which is actually slightly lower in fat than turkey. For the dogs, I went with reduced-guilt, lowfat hot dogs, also made with turkey. Whichever ground meat and dogs you choose, you’re in for a treat. I use three varieties of beans not so much for taste, but because it looks cool. You can mix it up or use all the same.

Chili Dogs
Serves 3 to 4, with potential stretchable leftovers

For Chili
1 14-1/2-oz. can diced tomatoes with juices, preferably unsalted
3 15-oz. cans beans, drained and rinsed [black, red or pinto and great northern]
2 tablespoons tomato paste, preferably unsalted
1 cup dry red wine
1 cup [plus more] water
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-1/4 to 1-1/2 lb. lean ground turkey
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 medium yellow onion
2 stalks celery
salt to taste

For Hot Dogs
hot dogs
buns [seeded or otherwise—your call]

Make the chili. Combine first eight ingredients in a stock pot and bring to boil over medium high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to medium low and continue to cook, uncovered.

Meanwhile, heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add olive oil and ground turkey, breaking up turkey as you brown it for about five minutes. Grind a generous amount of black pepper over the turkey as it browns. Sprinkle roughly half the cayenne pepper over the browning ground turkey; add the rest to the stock pot. While turkey is browning [or immediately after, if you don't feel like multi-tasking], peel and roughly chop onion and slice celery into 1/2-inch pieces. Using a slotted spoon, transfer turkey to stock pot. Add celery and half of the onion, stirring to mix completely.

Let chili cook, uncovered, for about 30 minutes to let flavors mix and develop, stirring occasionally and adding water by 1/4 cups if chili gets too thick [be judicious here—you don't want to make it too watery]. About 15 minutes into the half-hour of cooking time, add the rest of the onion. This will give some of the onion a little more bite, a trick I learned from Marion. Taste and add salt [as needed—canned products, particularly tomatoes, can add lots of salt on their own].

Prepare the dogs. When the chili is nearly done, heat the hot dogs and buns. Here’s how we do it. We place hot dogs in a shallow sauce pan and barely cover them with cold water. Then we place buns in a bamboo steamer and put them on top of the sauce pan and set the heat to medium high. When the water starts to boil, reduce heat to low. About the time you start to smell the bamboo, the dogs and buns are ready. You can also forgo steaming the buns and even nuke the dogs [stab them with a fork first, so they don’t pop], but for us, the bamboo steamer has become a nice part of the chili dog ritual.

Place a dog and bun in a shallow bowl, then smother with chili. Serve as is, or with grated cheese, yellow mustard, chopped green onions, hot sauce or additions of your choice. Myself, I like my chili dogs naked.

Kitchen Notes

How spicy is spicy? This recipe, made as above and using only a half teaspoon of cayenne pepper, is very flavorful but [to my palate, at least] not hot. But heat is very subjective. If your taste runs to mild, rather than reduce the amount of chili powder, choose a mild one. The Spice House offers chili powders ranging from mild to hot, so you can get all the flavor while controlling the heat. Don’t skimp on the cumin either—it doesn’t add much heat, but its big aroma and flavor are the very foundation of the taste of chili. I didn’t realize this until once, years ago, I was buying chili powder at the wonderful spice shop at Soulard Farmers Market in St. Louis. The clerk asked me if I needed cumin too. I said I didn’t know. She said, “If you’re making chili, you do.” With that, she opened a container of cumin and gave me a whiff of its distinctive, powerful aroma. She was right—I needed cumin.

Getting a night-before headstart. Over the years, I’ve refined the order of cooking steps to get from raw ingredients to steaming bowls of red as quickly as possible, making it a great work week dish. But this is a dish you can easily start the night before, getting it to the table even quicker the next night. And if anything, it tastes even better because the flavors have been swapping and percolating in the fridge overnight. Just mix the first eight ingredients in a large pot or bowl, but don’t heat them. Brown the ground turkey as described above and stir it into the tomato/beans mixture. Let it cool briefly and then store covered in the fridge. The next night, just put the chili on the stove and add the onion and celery as described above.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 5/14/2008

Goodbye, Mr. Rauschenberg. Thank you. Farewell to the American artist who, as the New York Times said, “time and again reshaped art in the 20th century,” at WTF? Random food for thought.

A gift for you, from Nine Inch Nails. You can’t buy their satisfyingly dark new album The Slip anywhere, but you can download it for free, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

This is some serious gingerbread

Terry B — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:28:27 +0000

Dark molasses, black pepper and Chinese five-spice powder make for big-flavored gingerbread with plenty of spicy bite. Recipe below.

As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, I hardly ever bake. Fortunately for me—and for you—Marion does. Wonderfully. So I’ll just get out of the kitchen and let her take over this week.

I know it’s May, but it’s become cold here again. Spring had a few tentative successes—the young leaves started emerging, all soft and green, the small brown birds came back and began claiming real estate and singing to each other, pollen floated from the trees and we put away our duvets and down coats and brought out the light blankets and the little thin jackets. Then on Friday, it rained—where we were, it rained a lot and the atmosphere was quite unsettled—and then the temperature dropped very aggressively. Last night, shivering and muttering, I gave up and dragged the duvet out for what I hope will be its last hurrah.

On the other hand, I also resumed baking gingerbread. The ancestor of this recipe originally came to us from one of the Silver Palate cookbooks, 15 or so years back. Over the years I’ve monkeyed with it in a number of ways—different sweeteners, varying volumes of spices, assorted toppings and accompaniments. Certain failed experiments included butter, orange peel, raisins, honey. Crystallized ginger was added, then rejected. It’s gone through a lot in our hands. For the past few years, this is the version I’ve almost always made.

There are plenty of gingerbread recipes that call for light molasses and a teaspoon of ginger and a pinch of cinnamon and maybe quickly hold up a nutmeg in front of the oven while you’re baking the bread: Bland to the vanishing point. To me if you are serious about gingerbread, you don’t use recipes like that. Just make yourself some white bread toast. Gingerbread to me is about bite and spiciness. I am looking for high impact power gingerbread.

This is intensely flavorful, and it doesn’t have the high-fat challenge of a cake or pie. It’s a great casual dessert, ideal to end a family dinner or a simple brunch. The ancestor recipe called for a lemon glaze, which in this evolved version is unnecessary. I myself like this gingerbread cut into squares and served plain, along with a cup of coffee or a glass of cold buttermilk [and, sadly, I am the one person in our entire family who likes the latter]. It’s good with whipped cream, it’s great with vanilla ice cream or a delicate nutty gelato, like hazelnut. It’s also one of those things that, eaten for breakfast, cheers you up inordinately even though it may not be the most healthful way to start the day. Not as evil as cold pizza or leftover devil’s food cake, but just as alluring.

We love this recipe in the cold months, but honestly, we have it any time of year.

Marion’s Gingerbread
Makes one 8×8 gingerbread

1-2/3 cups unbleached flour
1-1/4 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 heaping teaspoon five-spice powder
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup molasses [dark, also called “robust”]
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons boiling water
1/2 cup vegetable oil, plus oil for the pan

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Prepare an 8 x 8 baking pan by oiling the bottom and sides.

Grind the pepper [See Kitchen Notes].

Into a large heatproof bowl, sift the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, five-spice powder, pepper and salt.

Break the egg into a separate medium bowl; whisk the egg. Then add in the sugar, mixing until everything is an even lemon yellow. Add the vanilla and molasses and mix well [See Kitchen Notes].

Put the oil and water into a small saucepan and set it over a low flame. If it begins to boil before you are ready to use it, turn off the heat.

Pour the egg-sugar-molasses mix into the flour mix. Stir thoroughly. It will resist you and at first will seem ragged; when everything is mixed together, it will be very stiff.

When the batter is thoroughly mixed together, bring the oil-and-water to a boil (see Kitchen Notes, and I mean it) and pour it quickly and all at once into the batter. With a wooden or bamboo spoon, stir thoroughly until the batter is smooth [it may be helpful to use a whisk to accomplish this]. The batter will quickly become shiny and rather liquid.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan and place it straight into the preheated oven on the center rack. Set a timer for 30 minutes.

The cake is ready when a tester inserted near the center emerges with just a few crumbs on it, and it has begun to pull away from the sides very slightly.

Cool the cake in the pan on a rack. You can serve it still warm or cool. This gingerbread is so moist and intense, and the top maintains a wonderful slight stickiness.

Kitchen notes

The black pepper/five-spice powder duo can be changed to entirely one or the other.

When sifting, if any of the black pepper is so coarse that it remains behind in the sifter, dump it into the mix. Don’t leave it behind.

I used to grill salmon fillets with a crust of fresh ground black pepper and enlist whatever kids were hanging around the house at the time to do the grinding. How much pepper do you need to coat six salmon fillets? When two kids are grinding away, about seven minutes’ worth. Thanks, kids.

Molasses loves to stick to anything, including your measuring cups. When you are measuring out the liquids, first measure the water and pour it into the saucepan. Then measure out the oil in the same cup and pour it into the saucepan. Then measure out the molasses. The oil residue will help it slide out of the measuring cup.

When bringing the oil and water mix to a boil, be very, very attentive—the liquid will quickly start this ominous big scary-movie bubbling, and even if it is amusing it is also not that safe and you don’t want to let it go on for very long. Once the liquid starts bubbling, it is definitely ready for your next step.

Often when I make this, I use a square Corningware pan with a glass lid—ugly but functional. Of course don’t bake the gingerbread with the lid on. Use the lid later, once the cake is completely cooled, to preserve the moistness.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 5/7/2008

RIP, The Spindle: Big art in Berwyn dies. The world becomes a little more bland as an unusual landmark in suburban Chicago is demolished to make way for yet another Walgreens. Yeah, that’s progress, at WTF? Random food for thought.

Buddy Guy: Chicago blues, alive and real. Recorded here at his Chicago blues club, Buddy Guy Live: The Real Deal, lives up to its name, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

Pasta Frittata: Eggs elevated

Terry B — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:10:50 +0000

Peppers, Parmesan and leftover pasta come together beautifully to give eggs a rustic sophistication, as Pasta Frittata. Recipe below.

I don’t know about where you are, but here in Chicago, gas has already blown past four dollars a gallon. And milk is getting close to that price. So when I saw that Ginny over at Just Get Floury had posted a challenge to make a dish that serves at least two people for five dollars or less, it sounded like an idea whose time had come.

Ginny calls her event the Dollar Dish Duel, and while she just challenges her readers to “make a dish for $5 that must feed at least two people,” I took it to mean more than a simple side dish [who can't steam some green beans for under five bucks, for instance]. To me, the challenge was to make something substantial that either stood alone as a meal or became a meal with the addition of a small salad or the aforementioned green beans or, as I chose at the last minute, some fresh strawberries.

Ginny says in her rules that you can use three staples from your pantry—salt, pepper and oil were her examples—without counting them in your budget [there's still time to enter, by the way—the deadline is May 5]. I further interpreted the rules to mean that if I only used a portion of something and the rest were saved for a later use, I could count the cost of only the portion I used against my five-buck limit.

With this wiggle room, even meat could work within the guidelines. And after all, I’ll often buy a package of chicken breasts or ground beef planning to get two meals from it. But as much as I love meat, I decided it would be more interesting to make a meal without it for this event.

Most important, though, it had to be good. I wasn’t interested in simply proving I could whip up a meal for cheap. The meal had to be something I would happily serve, if not to company, then as a family dinner. Something we would happily eat. And something I would happily make again.

Soups and scrambles and stir fry all immediately came to mind, but nothing really got me excited. Soups and I are taking a little break right now; I just feel the need to see other courses. Scrambles sounded too breakfasty. And stir fry main courses without meat almost always involve tofu. Yawn.

Then I thought of an elevated form of scrambled eggs: Italian frittatas. Specifically, a frittata Marion has made a number of times, using leftover pasta. She hadn’t made it in so long that we’d forgotten where she first saw a recipe—or even what to call it. The classic frittata is kind of an Italian omelet and doesn’t include pasta.

A little noodling around on Google, though, turned up boatloads of frittata recipes using pasta—and leftover pasta, at that. Some were baked, some were started on the stovetop and then broiled to finish [the classic frittata technique]. Some used cheese, some didn’t. Some even insisted on using pasta mixed with red sauce, which sounded more like a desperate measure than a recipe to me. But virtually all of them involved mixing the beaten eggs with the boiled pasta before any of it went into the pan. I followed Marion’s approach instead, sautéing the cooked pasta in the skillet before adding the eggs. It gives the frittata a satisfying crunchy quality we really enjoy.

Leftover Pasta Frittata
Serves 3 to 4

1/2 red bell pepper, seeds removed, diced
2 jalapeño peppers, seeds and ribs removed, diced
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus additional if needed
leftover cooked capellini pasta, from 4 ounces of dry pasta, about 11 ounces cooked [no sauce]
4 eggs
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Equipment needed: 10-inch nonstick skillet

Prep the peppers. I went back and forth between saying to dice or chop the peppers. Essentially, you want smallish pieces of the peppers and the onions. With the jalapeños, you want just the flavor and the color for this dish, not the heat, so remove the seeds and the ribs. And if you’re not using gloves, wash your hands thoroughly when you’re done!

Heat a 10-inch nonstick skillet over a medium flame [Rather than finish the frittata under the broiler—our broiler's pretty crappy for such processes—I used Marion's method of flipping the frittata with plates; if you're going to use the broiler method, make sure your skillet is broiler-friendly]. When the pan is hot, add 2 tablespoons of oil, then sauté peppers and onion for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add pasta to pan, tossing to coat with oil and incorporate peppers and onion mixture. Drizzle in more olive oil, if needed. When ingredients are thoroughly combined, press down on pasta with spatula to flatten it as much as possible. Let it cook undisturbed for 6 to 8 minutes [don't toss it—you want it to be flat and kind of cook into a single unit]. Meanwhile, beat eggs in a bowl and whisk in grated Parmesan. As you get to the end of the cooking time for the pasta, check it carefully. The edges should be turning golden, and if you tilt the pan, the pasta should move as a unit. As Marion said, “It stops being a bunch of noodles in a pan.”

Beat the eggs a bit more to mix the cheese evenly throughout and pour them all over the top of the noodles, making sure the eggs spread evenly. Gently lift the edges of the noodle mass to get the egg flowing underneath and completely coating the pasta. Let the eggs cook for 6 to 9 minutes. You want them to set up pretty firmly. The top will still be a little “loose” in the middle, but the edges should be fairly firm.

If you’re using the broiler method, slide the pan into a preheated broiler and finish cooking. Here’s what we did, though. Carefully slide the egg and pasta mix onto a waiting dinner plate [don't use your best china—you're not serving on this plate and accidents can happen]. Cover the plate with another dinner plate, this one inverted. Firmly grasp both plates and quickly flip them. Remove the first plate, admire the beautiful cooked side for just a second, then quickly slide everything back into the pan and finish cooking the other side. About 1 or 2 minutes should do it. Slide the frittata onto a serving plate, slice it into 3 or 4 pieces and serve, with a side salad or some fresh fruit. If the first side was a little too browned for presentation purposes, do what I did and flip it again—the second side should be a pretty golden color.

Kitchen Notes

So did I meet the challenge? With flying colors! I came in well under the $5 limit and what I thought would serve two people could actually serve four. Here’s an estimated breakdown:

4 eggs @ $1.79/dozen………..60¢
1/2 red bell pepper…………….50¢
2 jalapeño peppers…………….37¢*
1 onion………………………………5¢*
4 ounces uncooked pasta………30¢
Parmesan cheese………………..25¢*

Total $2.27

*Regarding the prices, we live in a predominantly Latino neighborhood and jalapeño peppers are a staple. They are plentiful and cheap. A nickel for the onion is probably overstating its cost—I got onions at a produce stand for 19¢ a pound most recently. And even though our most recent hunk of Parmesan cheese is semi-pricey and from a swell little store called Provenance, do you know how little you grate to make 1/4 cup?

As always, a quick thanks to my lovely bride. Marion not only let me co-opt her frittata cooking method, she consulted with me as I devised my own take on it and stuck by me as I did the actual cooking.

Also, a quick thanks to Ginny for inspiring this dish with her Dollar Dish Duel. You can join in the fun between now and May 5th. She promises to have the round-up posted soon afterwards. Be sure to check back.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 4/30/2008

Beyond organic: Biodynamic wines. More wineries are embracing ways to have a smaller negative impact on the environment, produce better wines and improve their own working environment, at WTF? Random food for thought.

Stay tuned—the delight of discovery on the radio. Letting someone else program your music can lead to surprising little gems, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

The taste of spring: Seasonal fava beans and pasta

Terry B — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:07:24 +0000

Celebrate spring with colorful, lively Fettuccine with Fava Beans, Red Bell Pepper and Bacon. Lemon juice and zest help brighten things up. Recipe below.

Fava beans have always sounded like too much work to me. I mean, you have to shell them twice—once to get them out of their pods and then again to remove the tough, waxy skin on each bean. It didn’t sound like there was an actual degree of difficulty involved, as they say in certain sports competitions, just more like a degree of pain-in-the-buttedness. But then Susan over at Food Blogga did a post that made shelling them look fairly easy, maybe even semi-fun. Okay, I was semi-interested.

Then the current issue of Bon Appétit featured a beautiful pasta dish using fava beans, Italian sausage and plum tomatoes. I was a little more interested. So I started poking around on epicurious.com, where more than one recipe compared them to edamame, the delicious protein-rich, slightly crunchy, slightly nutty Japanese soybean snack. Sign me up.

Taking my usual approach, I read a number of recipes and then came up with one of my own, a pasta dish that celebrates the seasonality of fava beans—they’re only readily available a couple/few months in spring/summer. I added red bell pepper as much for color contrast with the bright green beans as for flavor, along with some onion and garlic. Then I brightened the flavor with lemon juice and zest. And I balanced all this lively produce goodness with nature’s perfect food, bacon.

Shelling the beans. This is the elephant in the room. May as well get it out of the way right now. I’d always been put off by what sounded like a labor intensive, time-consuming task. Susan made it look easy—just blanch the beans and squirt them right out of their skins. The truth fell somewhere in the middle for me.

One food blogger called shelling fava beans almost zenlike, and I could kind of see what he meant. Simple, humble processes like this are why we cook. Why I cook, anyway, or part of the reason. The very act of making something with my hands, something I will eat and share with others, is one of the most direct things I do in the everyday living of my life. By way of contrast, my equivalent of hunting and gathering, of helping put food on the table and a roof over our heads, is writing advertising copy.

Zen, schmen. How do you actually shell them? Put a pot of water on to boil so you can blanch the individual beans for part two of the shelling process. While you’re at it, put something on the boombox or radio or TV or whatever for company. Then have at it.

Grasp a fava bean pod in one hand and twist/snap/tear off the end that attaches to the plant. Then tear open the pod and remove the beans. Sometimes the pod will split open along the seam, sometimes not.

When the water is boiling, dump the shelled beans in and blanch them for 2 to 3 minutes. Then drain them and plunge them into a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking. When they’ve cooled, remove the tough outer skin. According to Susan, you can just squeeze them at one end and the beans will pop out. That didn’t happen for me, so I was delighted to later read that even Clotilde over at Chocolate & Zucchini had not been able to do this. We both came upon a similar simple solution, though. Just pinch a little tear in the skin with your thumbnail; then when you squeeze it, the bean will indeed shoot right out.

A pound of unshelled fava beans in their pods will produce about a cup of shelled beans. While producing my cup for this recipe, I remembered wandering through my Aunt Veta’s Mississippi kitchen one summer as a boy. Three or four women were in there shelling just-picked butter beans, bushel basketsful of them, probably still warm from the summer sun. It didn’t look like my idea of fun, but they were having a high old time, gossiping, laughing and “carryin’ on,” as Aunt Veta would put it.

Fettuccine with Fava Beans, Red Bell Pepper and Bacon
Makes 2 generous servings

4 strips of bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 large red bell pepper, seeded and roughly chopped into big chunks
1 medium yellow onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup shelled fava beans [from 1 pound of unshelled beans—see Kitchen Notes]
2 tablespoons lemon juice, plus zest of 1 lemon
8 ounces uncooked fettuccine; cook according to package directions
Parmesan cheese

Cook bacon over medium heat in a large skillet, starting it in a cold pan, until nearly crisp. Transfer with slotted spoon to plate with paper towel to drain. Pour bacon fat from skillet and wipe with paper towel—you don’t want the bacon to overpower the dish. Add olive oil to pan and heat over medium flame. Sauté onion and red pepper for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid browning or burning.

Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Stir in fava beans and reserved bacon and cook until heated through, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and zest.

Meanwhile cook pasta according to package directions. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta water. Add pasta to skillet and toss with fava bean mixture, stirring in a little of the pasta water if pasta looks too dry. Divide pasta on serving plates, top with remaining sauce in pan and grate Parmesan cheese over individual plates. Serve.

Kitchen Notes

Fava beans: A warning, a review and an anecdote. When I did some reading on fava beans, I was alarmed to learn that they can cause a rare but potentially deadly reaction in some people. According to an NPR story, “Some people should stay away from fava beans. There is a rare disease, called favism, which affects some people of African, Mediterranean or Southeast Asian descent. They have severe allergic reactions to eating the fava bean or inhaling its pollen.” Wow. Some things I read suggested that cooking them takes care of the problem, but I can’t say for certain. Just be aware.

So were they worth the effort? In a word, yeah. As I was shelling the blanched beans, I ate a couple and really enjoyed the edamamelike taste and texture. In this dish, they play a supporting role; I might like to try them in a salad to let them take center stage. As further testament to how good they are, when I told Marion I was going to do something with fava beans, she told me a great story. She was visiting her parents. Her father grew fava beans in his garden because both her parents loved them. Marion came in to find them sitting at the table gobbling down bowls of freshly peeled fava beans. Never having eaten them, Marion asked what they tasted like. Her father said simply, “You wouldn’t like them.” And then they ate even faster.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 4/23/2008

New, new, new: Dance, art and a restaurant. Find a triple helping of cool new stuff, at WTF? Random food for thought.

Well-mannered avant garde jazz. The Dave Holland Quintet makes you sit up and take notice without going off on you, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

Ethnic Paris: Spicy shrimp from the Indian Ocean

Terry B — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:35:47 +0000

Easy, flavorful Shrimp Rougail [Rougail de Crevette], originally from tiny islands in the Indian Ocean, is one of many exotic taste treats found throughout Paris—and in The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Cumin, fresh ginger and a fiery little Thai pepper [whose heat can be dialed down] make it a lively main course.

Last week I wrote about crêpes, calling them the ultimate French comfort food. And they are indeed quintessentially French, as are old men in berets, accordion players on the Paris Metro and six-week vacations.

But in Paris, there’s a whole other culinary world besides crusty baguettes, café au lait and stinky cheeses. As with many major cities, Paris is a magnet to people from all over the world. And those people bring their cooking with them, giving each neighborhood or arrondissement its own special flavor.

On one visit to Paris, for instance, Marion went with our friend Marianne, who lives in Paris and who was born in Hong Kong, to the 13th arrondissement for lunch. The 13th really is a mix of things Paris was and has become—the pretty little Butte aux Cailles neighborhood, a tiny quiet 19th century enclave; and the biggest Chinatown in Paris. The latter was their destination. They perused a high-rise shopping mall and then had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant. What impressed Marion most that day was that all of their transactions there in the heart of Paris—in the restaurant and in the mall—were conducted in Mandarin. English would get you nowhere, French and German would get you nowhere.

As further proof of the diverse wealth of Paris, just take a look at The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Sarah over at The Delicious Life recently received a review copy and generously offered it up as a prize in an impromptu drawing. And I won!

This colorful cookbook has more than 100 recipes from internationally renowned chefs who have come from all over the globe to make Paris their home. Everywhere from Cameroon to Cambodia, China to the Caribbean.

And then there’s the delicious, lively shrimp rougail above, from the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius. Nominally part of Africa, these tiny specks of land some 500 miles east of Madagascar are more shaped by their inhabitants’ ancestries—Indian, African, Malagasy, Chinese and ethnic French—and by their ties with France and Great Britain than they are by their proximity to the African continent.

Rougail can be a fiery condiment or a simple, spicy tomato-based sauce as it is in this easy-to-make main course, which I adapted from the book.

Shrimp Rougail
Serves 3 to 4

1 tablespoon canola oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-inch piece [about 2 tablespoons] fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 Thai chili, partially seeded and minced [see Kitchen Notes]
1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 14-1/2 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 pound uncooked shrimp, in the shell [or not—see Kitchen Notes]
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

steamed white rice

Heat a large, heavy, lidded saucepan or skillet over a medium flame. Add oil. When it is shimmering, add onion, garlic, ginger and chili; sauté until onion is soft, about 3 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Sprinkle in cumin, salt and pepper and stir, cooking until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Stir in tomatoes, cover and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Raise heat to medium high and add shrimp, stirring to coat. Cook until just done, 3 to 5 minutes, turning shrimp to cook on both sides. DO NOT OVERCOOK or shrimp will become tough.

Remove from heat. Stir in fresh cilantro and serve immediately over rice.

Kitchen Notes

How hot is hot? Susan over at Food Blogga recently did a great post on the hottest of the hot peppers, the habanero. Being mainly a user of jalapeños, it put heat in perspective. On the Scoville Heat Scale, a red bell pepper is rated 0 for heat. The jalapeño ranks from about 3,000 to 5,000, depending on who’s counting. By comparison, the habanero is a scorching 200,000 to 350,000! The original recipe calls for an African bird’s-eye chili [aka African Devil], which comes close to the habanero for heat. I went for the easier to find but still respectable Thai chili, a mere 70,000 to 80,000 on the Scoville Heat Scale.

Taming the heat. The heat in peppers comes from capsaicin, found in the seeds and veins, or ribs—the whitish ridges inside the pepper. By removing the seeds and ribs, you take away virtually all of the fire. With the fiery little Thai pepper for this recipe, I removed all but about 1/3 of the veins and kept only a half dozen or so seeds. Even that little bit made the dish respectably hot. I might up it a tiny bit next time, but these tiny peppers definitely pack some heat. You could also substitute a jalapeño and use however much of the seeds and veins you usually do. The dish calls for heat, but you can control what that means for you.

Shells on, shells off on the shrimp? Chef Rafiq Hamjah, owner of Paris restaurant Comme Sur une Ile and creator of the original recipe, insists on using unpeeled shrimp for this dish. Leaving the shells on definitely boosts the flavor of the shrimp. It also makes this a hands-on meal, one I would classify as “not first date” food. On the other hand, you may view it as a first date litmus test, seeing just how messy a potential partner is willing to get in pursuit of good food.

Shelling and deveining uncooked shrimp is a semi-pain, so I applaud a recent development I’ve been noticing in the stores: Shrimp with shells intact, but split down the back with the “vein” removed. It’s easy to shell them before cooking, or you can cook them in the shells [as I did here—and yes, it upped the flavor], knowing they’ll be easy to peel as you eat and that no gritty vein is lurking within.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 4/16/2008

Revisiting the French film that got me hooked. Maybe I like French films more than some of them deserve, but see The Two of Us and you’ll understand why, at WTF? Random food for thought.

Revisiting the man who put me off jazz. Oliver Lake’s fierce avant garde saxophone maybe isn’t the best introduction to jazz. Rediscovering it later, though, is a real treat, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

Crêpes: A delicious way to always have Paris

Terry B — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:25:46 +0000

I’ve been thinking of Paris lately, and that has me thinking of crêpes. And as wonderful as dessert crêpes may be, the savory variety is what I always crave. Recipes for these delightful, paper-thin French pancakes and a satisfying poulet aux champignons [chicken in mushrooms] filling below.

This week, Blue Kitchen is all about France. A couple of events conspired to put me in this state of mind. First, the excellent biopic of French singer Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose, has come out on DVD [more about this at What's on the kitchen boombox?]. And just last Friday, our friend Cara Black was in town promoting Murder in the Rue de Paradis [An Aimée Leduc Investigation], the latest in her acclaimed series of Paris-based mysteries [more about this at WTF? Random food for thought]. If you’re still hungry for Paris and France when you’ve finished here, you’ll find some interesting links at the end of this post.

A movie and a book got me pointed in the general direction of “something French.” What focused me on crêpes was Ben’s post about strawberry crêpes at What’s Cooking?

For me, crêpes are the ultimate French comfort food—the humble pancake made elegantly thin and filled with all manner of delicious concoctions, both sweet and savory. In Paris, they can even be gotten as street food, an even bigger treat. You get to watch your crêpe be made right in front of you, and then it’s wrapped and ready to eat on the go, as you make your way to your next attraction.

In Chicago, my go to place for crêpes is La Crêperie. This very French little neighborhood bistro opened its doors in 1972 and probably hasn’t been updated since. It has the wonderful, slightly scruffy, tobacco-stained patina that only age can give it. Some days, the food is stellar, others merely dependably good. But given the friendly, unhurried service and charming setting, that’s plenty good for me.

La Crêperie makes two different kinds of crêpes for their sweet and savory offerings. The crêpes for savory main courses are made with buckwheat flour. So when I started looking for recipes, that was one of the ingredients I had in mind. As always, I found numerous recipes, looked for similarities and differences, then created my own.

For the filling, I just knew what I had in mind, my own take on poulet aux champignons—chicken, mushrooms, wine, cream—and winged it. One of the beauties of crêpes, though, is that they are so wonderfully versatile; La Crêperie’s menu includes 15 different fillings that run the gamut from coq au vin to scallops to a chicken curry! So while I’ll give you my recipe below, once you’ve made the crêpes, feel free to experiment away with the fillings.

Crêpe-making equipment strictly optional. Restaurants and street vendors in Paris use special griddles that allow them to make larger crêpes, almost 16 inches in diameter. For home cooks, a 10-inch nonstick skillet will work just fine. What won’t work is a stationary griddle; You need to be able to swirl the pan to spread the batter into a thin layer over the entire bottom.

If you’re really lucky, though, you’ll have a French crêpe pan like this one. As Marion said with a little too much glee to suit me, she’s had it longer than she’s had me. While I’ve seen her use it countless times, I was dubious about my own ability to turn out paper-thin pancakes without the aid of Teflon, so I had a 10-inch nonstick pan at the ready, just in case. Not necessary. The well-seasoned French pan performed beautifully.

Crêpes with Poulet aux Champignons Filling

For the crêpes:
This recipe makes 10 or so 7-inch crêpes [you can freeze leftover crêpes]

3 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour [or double the all-pupose flour—see Kitchen Notes]

1 cup whole milk, plus additional, if needed

Canola or other neutral high smoke point oil for cooking

For the filling:
Makes enough to fill 6 crêpes

2-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
2 generous cups sliced mushrooms [I used Trader Joe's Baby Bellas]
1 teaspoon dried herbes de Provence, divided
1-1/4 cup dry white wine, divided
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup broth [I used Superior Touch's Better Than Bouillon Mushroom Base—you can also use low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth]
2 generous cups cooked chicken, torn/cut into small chunks [see Kitchen Notes]
1/2 cup each, heavy cream and whole milk [or 1 cup whole milk], plus additional milk, if needed

Make the crêpes.
Whisk eggs and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk in all flour until thoroughly blended. Gradually whisk in 1 cup of milk, stirring until completely blended. Cover and let batter rest for at least 1 hour; without this rest, the cooked crêpes will apparently be tough.

Lightly oil a small nonstick skillet or crêpe pan, spreading oil with a crumpled paper towel; heat the skillet over medium-high heat. Ladle about 2 to 3 tablespoons of batter into the skillet with a small ladle or measuring cup, tilting and rotating pan to spread the batter evenly over the entire bottom of the pan. Do this motion as you pour, not afterwards—otherwise, you’ll end up with a thick center.

Cook the crêpe until the underside is lightly browned, about a minute or even less. You’ll see the top side of the crêpe dry out and bubble as it nears doneness; the edges may start to curl or show signs of browning. Carefully loosening an edge of the crêpe with the tip of a spatula, work it under the crêpe and flip it. Cook until the second side is lightly browned, about 20 or 30 seconds or so. Slide the crêpe onto a plate.

If batter doesn’t spread easily to create thin crêpes, whisk in more milk, 2 tablespoons at a time.

If serving immediately, fill and roll or fold the crêpe. Continue to cook crêpes with the remaining batter, oiling the pan as needed and stacking the crêpes as you go. You never want oil standing in the pan, just a nice shine over the entire surface. Cover plate of crêpes with aluminum foil and transfer to warmed oven while you prepare the filling [I had done all the prep work for the filling before starting the crêpes, so they didn't have to spend too much time in the oven].

Make the poulet aux champignons filling.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high flame. Melt 1/2 tablespoon of butter with the olive oil, swirling pan to combine. Sauté mushrooms until they give off liquid and it evaporates, 4 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of herbes de Provence and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Add 1/4 cup wine, and cook until it evaporates. Transfer mushrooms to bowl.

Add remaining 2 tablespoons of butter to pan. Sauté onions until softened, about 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and remaining herbes de Provence and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Whisk flour into pan and stir constantly until flour is browned, about 3 minutes, making a quick roux. Gradually whisk in broth and wine, stirring constantly to combine flour and liquid to make a smooth sauce. I find this kind of whisk indispensable for the task.

Stir in chicken and mushrooms and warm through. Stir in cream and milk [or just milk]. If the sauce is too thick, gradually add more milk; but do so sparingly—you don’t want the sauce too runny when you fill the crêpes.

Assemble crêpes.
Lay crêpe on serving plate. Spoon filling down the center and fold sides over it. Repeat. Admire your handiwork, then devour it.

Kitchen Notes

Thanks, Marion! Being a crêpe-making newbie, I relied heavily on her expertise. She made the first few, then turned things over to me. As with pancakes, you sometimes just discard the first one or two. All of ours were usable, but as we went on, they became more beautifully browned.

Buckwheat flour. Although not essential, buckwheat flour gives the crêpes a heartier flavor. According to Marion, it also makes them a little sturdier. You can also substitute whole wheat flour for the buckwheat flour, or just use all-purpose flour.

Sweet crêpes. For sweet crêpes, use 1 cup all-purpose flour, with no buckwheat or whole wheat flour, and add 1 teaspoon of sugar. Don’t use more sugar than that—it will burn.

Already cooked chicken? You can quickly sauté skinless, boneless chicken breasts for this dish. You can also use a store-bought roasted chicken. I pan roasted some chicken thighs, basically following this recipe, but using a skillet on the stovetop instead. After browning the thighs on both sides, I covered the pan to keep the chicken moist. They were done in about 1/2 hour, and three thighs [minus the skin and the bones] supplied the 2 cups needed.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 4/9/2008

The dark side of Paris, by way of San Francisco. San Francisco-based mystery writer Cara Black’s Paris-based heroine is half French, half American. It is only fitting, since Cara seems to perpetually have a foot in both cities. You’ll see what I mean, at WTF? Random food for thought.

A double helping of “Little Sparrow.” A DVD and a 30th anniversary two-CD set illuminate the amazing, self-destructive life of French torch singer Edith Piaf. Enjoy some YouTube samples, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

Hungry for more France? Check out these blogs:

Francophiles in America
French Kitchen in America. Chef’s daughter Mimi cooks up French-accented delights in Wisconsin. She also shares wistful stories of her trips to Paris with her husband and fond memories of her French grandmother’s kitchen.
Cara’s Paris Blog. Quick stories and links to news articles, by mystery writer Cara Black. At her website, you’ll also find Paris photos, her novels and so much more.

An expat in France
Thyme for Cooking. Katie has spent a year in Ireland and seven in Andorra. For the past four years or so, she’s called a little French hamlet half an hour from the Atlantic Coast home. There she cooks and gardens and writes wonderfully about food.

A French expat in America
La Tartine Gourmande. Béa lives with her Irish husband in Boston and writes eloquently in English and in French about food and cooking. All this great writing is accompanied by absolutely exquisite photography.

And finally, a Parisienne in Paris
Chocolate & Zucchini. Scratch any halfway serious blogger and you’ll find someone secretly hoping for a book deal someday. The charming, talented Clotilde already has two! One look at her wonderful writing and photography and you’ll know why.

And now it’s your turn. I’m sure there are many wonderful France-focused blogs out there. If you have any favorites, list them in a comment here. Thanks! Or perhaps I should say, “Merci!”

Straddling seasons: Pot roast and fresh asparagus

Terry B — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:21:06 +0000

Cooking for the calendar, this weekend saw some beautifully skinny fresh asparagus, simply prepared. Cooking for the actual weather, though, called for a hearty pot roast. Recipes below.

Before we get to the food, a quick little digression about blogging.
When I started Blue Kitchen a year and change ago, I knew it would be a way to indulge my passions for food, photography and writing. I also knew it would make me think more about food and cooking, ultimately making me a better cook. What I didn’t know is what a wonderful international network of warm, sharing friends and fellow bloggers I’d be plugging into.

This kind of welcoming environment isn’t necessarily unique to food blogging, but it seems to be more prevalent here than elsewhere. Interestingly, according to a food blogger who specializes in restaurant reviews, it’s mainly found among bloggers who write about making food, not critiquing it. My friend Ronnie writes two blogs, the wonderfully eclectic Out Of My Head and the advice-filled Work Coach. She also reads a wide range of blogs and says she hasn’t found this kind of community anywhere else.

The latest example of this comes from Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry. She was just given the E for Excellent Award—by four different bloggers, no less. She then took a turn, passing the award along to five other blogs. Including this one. Thanks so much, Lydia! I learn something new every time I read your blog, so it means a lot that you thought of me.

And now my turn. The easiest thing would be to award it to everyone in my blogroll. They’re all wonderful sources of information and great reads to boot. But I’ll try to narrow it down to five. And I’m sticking with food blogs, just because [we food bloggers are a clannish lot]. Just as Lydia was in her choices, I’m every bit as swayed by entertaining writing as I am by good food. Maybe even more so. These bloggers deliver, post after post. Every one of them has made me think—and made me a better cook in the process:

Ann, at A Chicken in Every Granny Cart; Christina, at A Thinking Stomach; Jennifer, at Last Night’s Dinner; Patricia, at Technicolor Kitchen and Toni, at Daily Bread Journal.

Okay, back to the kitchen. Here in Chicago, the calendar says spring [yeah, it says that everywhere north of the Equator, I know]. The thermometer takes a different view, often dipping below freezing. In fact, the tulips you see here were an impulse purchase, something to remind us that it is indeed spring. So when we were planning one of those Sunday dinners we don’t do enough of, I decided to split the difference. For the calendar, I made fresh asparagus, suddenly plentiful and affordable again. And for the chilly weather, I made a satisfying pot roast, complete with chunky vegetables. Let’s start with that.

I’ve been on an oven braising kick lately. Soon the weather will heat up and I won’t want to do the same to the kitchen. But for now, it’s a great way to let tough cuts of meat like chuck roast get all nice and tender without drying out. You’ll find more about the technique here. My other pot roast recipe in the archives is a more exotic take on this humble, hearty meal, made with Biryani Curry Paste and pan roasted on the stovetop. I call it Terry’s Mysterious Pot Roast. You can use the stovetop technique for the more traditional recipe below, but honestly, oven braising will keep it more moist.

Pot Roast with Vegetables
Serves 4

2-1/2 to 3-pound boneless chuck roast [see Kitchen Notes]
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons canola oil [or other high smoke point oil]
1 cup dry white wine
1-1/2 cups broth [see Kitchen Notes]
3 to 4 carrots, peeled and sliced into big chunks
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
water, as needed
4 to 5 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into big chunks [I used Yukon Gold]

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Pat chuck roast dry with paper towel, season on both sides with salt and pepper. Heat a roasting pan [make sure it has a tight-fitting lid---I used our beloved Staub La Cocotte oval roasting pan] over a medium-high flame. Add enough oil to coat bottom and sear roast on both sides, 4 to 5 minutes per side.

Add wine, broth, carrots, onions, garlic and bay leaves around sides of roast, stirring to evenly distribute. Cover roasting pan and place in oven. Roast for 2 hours, checking after one hour to see if liquid is evaporating. Add water as needed to bring the liquid level partway up the side of the roast without submerging it completely—you want to braise it, not boil it.

At the end of 2 hours, add potatoes. Roast for another 30 to 45 minutes, until potatoes are done. Transfer roast to platter, tent with foil and let it rest for 10 minutes before serving. Keep vegetables in roasting pan on stovetop until just before serving—the residual heat in the pan will keep them warm. Slice pot roast crosswise in 1/2-inch slices, transfer vegetables to a separate serving bowl and serve.

Kitchen Notes

Choosing a chuck roast. We’re lucky to have a source for nice, thick boneless roasts—2 to 3 inches think. Some stores sell bone-in roasts that are more like 1 to 1-1/2 inches thick. Those will work fine too. The cooking time isn’t affected; this cut of meat needs plenty of cooking time to tenderize it. Whatever size roast you get, know that it will shrink in size during cooking, so err on the generous side; there are worse things than delicious leftover pot roast.

“Broth?” What kind of broth? Any kind. Chicken, beef. I used Superior Touch’s Better Than Bouillon Mushroom Base because we had it and like it a lot. Heck, you could even use vegetable broth if you like—but with a big slab of beef, that would just seem silly, wouldn’t it?

And now for the calendar, the asparagus. You can keep your robins and crocus as harbingers of spring. For me, it’s bundles of beautiful, slender asparagus spears standing at attention in trays of ice or water in the produce market. Sure, you can find asparagus in the supermarket sporadically throughout the winter, but the quality varies wildly and the price is invariably exorbitant. Early spring begins the season of readily available, reliably tender, reasonably affordable asparagus. Later in the season, the fat, cigarlike stuff will be all you can find, but for now, I’m in asparagus heaven.

There are plenty of ways to dress up asparagus. Hollandaise sauce recipes abound, for instance, and I’ll admit that a cold spear wrapped in prosciutto is pretty tasty. You can grill it. You can roast it [toss it with a little olive oil, salt and a squeeze of lemon juice, then roast it on a cookie sheet at 350-400ºF for 15 minutes]. But in the end, my favorite way to eat asparagus is also the simplest way to cook it. It’s so easy, in fact, that I hesitate to call it a recipe. But here goes anyway.

Steamed Asparagus

Fresh asparagus, 6 to 8 spears per serving
salt

Rinse asparagus under cold running water. Trim off the tough ends of each spear. The easiest way to do this is grasp each spear near the base with the fingertips of both hands and bend. The woody end of the spear will naturally snap off. Discard ends. If you’re not going to cook it right away, stand it in a bowl of cold water to help it stay crisp.

Fill a lidded pot or skillet wide enough to accommodate the length of the spears with cold water to a depth of 1/2 inch or so. Bring it to a boil over a medium-high flame. Add asparagus spears, salt generously and cover. Steam the asparagus for 4 or 5 minutes, no longer. You will begin to smell the asparagus when it’s done. Scoop the asparagus from the water, transfer to a serving dish and serve.

See? Simple, simple, simple. And the best way to let its flavor shine through.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 4/2/2008

A museum! At night! With wine! We are so there. If you’re drinking while you’re geeking out, is it still geeky? In any case, it’s still fun, at WTF? Random food for thought.

More than three chords, but plenty raw. Old Time Relijun rocks out, with complexity, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

Sweet fire: Chicken, chili paste and maple syrup?

Terry B — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:56:55 +0000

East meets Nor’east in an improvised Chinese chicken dish that gets its heat from potent chili paste, its complexity from five-spice powder and its subtle sweetness from New England maple syrup. It’s paired with another improvisation, my first attempt at Szechuan green beans with garlic. Recipes below.

The first full day of spring in Chicago saw snowflakes the size of dinner plates. Lots of them. Just to the north of us, near the Wisconsin border, they got 11 inches of the heavy “heart attack” snow. Having lived here as long as I have, I’m not even surprised by this anymore. I am annoyed by it, though.

My first thought for this week’s post was something hearty—a soup, a stew—something that reflected the actual weather, not the calendar. But then I decided to turn up the heat with spiciness instead. My patented poking around—online, at the library, in our cookbook collection—got me started down the path to making something Chinese. When I found a pork dish that combined chili paste [you can also use chili sauce with garlic---see Kitchen Notes], five-spice powder—both Chinese staples—with maple syrup[?], I was intrigued. But having just served up pork here last week, I decided to adapt it for chicken.

The main course sort of nailed down, I started thinking vegetables. Just about our favorite restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown is Lao Sze Chuan [the only reason I slightly hedge my bets here is that owner/chef Tony has recently opened two new restaurants, also wonderful, Lao Shanghai and Lao Beijing]. And one of our favorite vegetable dishes at Lao Sze Chuan is the Szechaun green beans, crisp and garlicky. I knew I wouldn’t match these, but I thought I might find a recipe to help me come close. What I found was a bewildering array of recipes, none of them even sounding vaguely close to this pared down dish. So I improvised, coming up with something very different but pretty good, if I say so myself. Best of all, the most exotic ingredient in it is soy sauce. So if the chili paste and five spice powder have put you off the chicken, give these a try.

But first, about those exotic ingredients. Living in Chicago, I have access to a dazzling array of ingredients from many cultures and cuisines. And in many cities, both these ingredients are available in Asian markets and in a growing number of supermarkets.

Chili paste or sauce is made of crushed chili peppers, oil, vinegar, seasonings and sometimes garlic. It has been accurately described as fiery hot, but you can control the heat by adjusting the amount you use.

Five-spice powder is a dry spice blend that incorporates the five basic flavors of Chinese cooking—sweet, sour, bitter, savory and salty. Used widely in Chinese cuisine, there are many variations on the theme. But a fairly standard recipe calls for fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns. It is a very intense spice mix, not in terms of heat, but in terms of flavor. Recipes tend to call for fairly small amounts. Trust them.

I searched the Internet for what seemed like minutes for substitutes for these ingredients. Alas, no luck. The couple of recipes I found for chili paste sounded pretty dubious. And every recipe for five-spice powder called for Szechuan peppercorns. If you can find those, finding actual five-spice powder should be a breeze. And as Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry rightly points out, they’re not even really peppercorns, so substituting regular peppercorns will yield something that falls far flat of the real thing. If anyone out there has substitutes they’ve tried and like, please leave a comment.

Well, blah, blah, blah. How about some recipes?

Spicy Sweet Chicken
Serves 2

12 ounces to 1 pound skinless boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized chunks
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon canola oil [or other neutral-flavored oil]
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup low-salt chicken broth
1 1/2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 tablespoon chili paste [or less---see kitchen Notes]
1 green onion, chopped

cooked white rice

Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper and five-spice powder. Toss to coat.

Heat oil in large skillet over high heat. Add chicken; cook until browned, stirring frequently, about 3 minutes or 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds, stirring to keep from burning.

Add next 3 ingredients to skillet. Boil until reduced slightly and chicken is cooked through, stirring frequently, about 3 or 4 minutes minutes. Serve over rice; sprinkle with green onion.

Kitchen Notes

Chili paste: how much, what kind? Heat is subjective. If your eyes are bugging out and you’re chugging water when others are asking the waiter for a bottle of hot sauce, you might want to go with a half tablespoon rather than the whole tablespoon. But if you’re the one in the Thai restaurant saying “bring it on”… well, bring it on. Use the whole tablespoon. It is hot, though. Marion and I like our spicy food fairly hot, and the tablespoon delivered plenty of heat. Regarding what kind to use, this is easy: Use what you have or can find. We had chili paste in the house, so I added fresh garlic to the dish for the hit of garlic I wanted. If you have chili garlic sauce or paste, just omit the fresh garlic.

So how was it? Making this dish for the first time, I expected [feared?] that the maple syrup would play a bigger role than it did. Instead, the sweetness was wonderfully subtle. No hint of pancakes here. If anything, as Marion pointed out, its sweetness was more restrained than if I’d used honey or even hoisin sauce. We’ll definitely do something with this sauce again. Maybe boil it down into a thicker version and serve it over pork, as the original suggested, or over some kind of steamed or sautéed white fish.

And now, on to the green beans. After looking at umpteen wildly varied recipes from various sources and discussing Lao Sze Chuan’s delicious beans with Marion, I heavily adapted a recipe for sautéed green beans from Susanna Foo Chinese Cuisine.

Szechuan Green Beans with Garlic
Serves 2

1/2 pound green beans, trimmed
1 tablespoon canola oil [or other neutral-flavored oil]
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, to taste
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon soy sauce [we use low-sodium]
1 teaspoon sugar
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add beans and cook for just 2 minutes. Drain and plunge beans into cold water to stop cooking. Drain and set aside.

Heat a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Add oil. When it begins to shimmer, add beans and toss to coat. Stir fry for 2 minutes or so, then add garlic and crushed red pepper flakes and cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Stir in water, soy sauce and sugar [I pre-mixed them in a ramekin to let sugar dissolve]. Toss to coat beans and cook sauce down slightly, stirring constantly, about a minute or so. Adjust seasonings [taste before salting---there's soy sauce in there] and serve.

Kitchen Notes

These aren’t Tony’s beans. We suspect that, as Susanna Foo says about the classical dish twice-cooked green beans, Tony’s are deep-fried, then stir-fried to finish. That said, they were quite good. I’ll make them again and perhaps ramp up the heat with more pepper flakes. The key is to not overcook them.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 3/26/2008

Thank you, Benjamin Franklin. Sure, he was a founding father, inventor, statesman, author… but even cooler, he gave us public libraries. Read all about it, at WTF? Random food for thought.

Big band giant thinks small, plays big. When big band legend Duke Ellington downsizes to a quartet with quintessential avant garde sax player John Coltrane, big things happen, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?

Delicious, delicate: Tarragon mustard sauce

Terry B — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:18:59 +0000

Cream, tarragon, wine and mustard add up to a sauce that brings a delicate finish to pan-seared pork medallions. Recipe below.

I just checked our fridge. We currently have six different mustards in there, most of them either from France or French in style. And ironically, even our über-American yellow mustard is French’s brand. Obviously, mustard is big with us.

It’s big with France too. A city in Burgundy even gives its name to perhaps the most famous mustard or moutarde. According to The Nibble, the city of Dijon had long been a gourmet center. The mustard, developed in local monasteries, “was based on particularly strong and piquant mustard seeds grown in their chalky soil and densely wooded terrain.” In the 1850s, a local mustard producer substituted verjus [an acidic, sour liquid made from green juice of unripe grapes] for vinegar, creating a smoother, less biting product that became the standard. Today, while mustard is still a big industry in Dijon, the term Dijon now refers to a style of mustard rather than place of origin, and vinegar has again replaced verjus in most commercial mustard.

The venerable French mustard maker Maille has been at it since 1747, and their Dijon Originale is my go to for straight Dijon. Just how seriously France takes its mustard—and indeed, pretty much all of its food—can be summed up in this statement from the Maille website: “Its recipes have not changed since they were written down by Antoine Maille in a vellum notebook watermarked with the Arms of the King of France.”

Mustard figures prominently in many French sauces. That’s because, when you combine it with butter or cream and perhaps some herbs, it takes on a wonderful delicacy. Forget the puckery, vinegary zing straight mustard delivers. Mustard sauces offer a subtle, complex liveliness shaped equally by all the ingredients. And when I started experimenting in the kitchen, that’s exactly what happened with this sauce.

What got me started was a recipe Marion came across for pork medallions with a mustard-chive sauce. It sounded pretty wonderful, but of course I had to explore. I started with our cookbooks. For the somewhat modest number we have—some three dozen or so [have I mentioned lately that we're big fans of public libraries which, it turns out, have googobs of books they're perfectly happy to loan out?]—we have an impressive [or alarming, depending on your point of view] number of French or Francophile cookbooks. Then I turned to the Internet. There were similarities and differences across the board. Some commonalities, though. Butter showed up a lot. So did cream, sour cream or crème fraîche. Onions, shallots or leeks. Wine, broth. Garlic—or not. Capers—or not. In the end, the recipe I cobbled together was a mix of the taste I was looking for and what I had on hand.

Pork Medallions with Tarragon Mustard Sauce
Makes 2 servings [may be doubled]

For pork medallions:
1 1-pound pork tenderloin, cut crosswise into 6 slices
salt, freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 generous teaspoon dried tarragon, divided [or 1 tablespoon fresh---see Kitchen Notes]
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil

For sauce:

Note: If you make the mustard sauce on its own to use with something else, you will need to start with some butter and/or olive oil for browning the leeks.

1 cup chopped leeks [white and pale green parts only; about 1 medium---see Kitchen Notes]
1/2 cup low-salt chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup whipping cream
1-1/2 tablespoons whole grain Dijon mustard
1 1-pound pork tenderloin, cut crosswise into 6 slices
1 teaspoon dried tarragon [or 1 tablespoon fresh---see Kitchen Notes]

Season slices of pork tenderloin on both sides with salt and pepper and half of tarragon. Melt butter with oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork and sear until browned on tone side, for about 3 minutes. Turn and sear on second side for about 2 minutes. Transfer to plate and tent loosely with foil to keep warm. The pork is not cooked through at this time; that’s okay, it will finish in the sauce.

Reduce heat to medium and let pan cool for a moment or two. Add leeks and cook until beginning to turn golden, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and remaining tarragon, stirring constantly until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Stir in broth and wine, scraping up any browned bits. Boil until mixture is reduced by about half, stirring occasionally, about 4 minutes. Reduce heat to low.

Whisk in whipping cream and mustard. Return pork to skillet, along with any juices. Cover and cook until pork is just cooked through and sauce thickens slightly, about 3 or 4 minutes. Pool a little sauce on serving platter or individual plates and place pork medallions on sauce. Spoon a little more sauce over meat and serve.

Kitchen Notes

Tarragon—dried or fresh? I used dry partly because I had it on hand, I confess. Partly, though, I like the way it starts adding flavor to the dish from the outset. If you cook with fresh herbs, they should generally be added toward the end of the cooking process. I often find that their flavor in that case comes more from biting into actual bits of herbs than in the taste being imparted to the dish. All that said, fresh herbs are the absolute choice in many dishes.

Leeks? Shallots? Onions? I’m a recent convert to the sweet, mild taste of leeks. When I recently made a potato and leek soup, I began by sweating leeks in butter. I wanted to get out a spoon and just start eating them straight from the pan. That said, use what you have on hand or you prefer. All will work just fine.

If you use leeks, clean them carefully—they love to harbor grit. Slice off root end and most of the green tops. Slice leeks in half lengthwise. Rinse under running water, fanning layers to wash out any trapped grit. Slice crosswise in 3/4-inch pieces.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 3/19/2008

The history of the world in five minutes. The inexhaustible Internet turns up another gem—a short, fascinating and funny history of the world man has built on ideas. See it at WTF? Random food for thought.

Rock-based jazz and Dick Cheney’s hidey hole. Bet you never thought you’d see those two phrases together. FInd out the connection, at What’s on the kitchen boombox?