CSA week one start-up - stalled at the starting line

I was really looking forward to the start of the CSA today. I've cleared space in the freezer, sorted through my stockpiled recipes and I've avoided serious cooking for the last couple of weeks to build up anticipation so I could start this week with some alacrity. But when I got to my pick-up spot all of the half-shares were gone. I looked over the check-in sheet and it looks like we were at least three boxes short. Darn.

I did pick up a couple ears of corn from the extras bin so I'm not entirely bereft. There's a salad recipe I've set aside for the first CSA corn that I can make. Beyond that, I guess it's back to the off-season model for a couple more weeks.

Still, I may as well talk a bit about my plan for this year. I'm deliberately going to be trying fewer new recipes this time around. There are lots of recipes over the last couple years I subscribed to the CSA that I just made once. Many of them showed promise that that first try didn't fully capture and I'd like to go back and improve on that result. I'm not sure how much of that will be worth blogging about. A few tweaks isn't a fully worthy new post, but it's not like anyone's been going through the backfiles. Maybe I'll post with a note that it's a repeat. Any bloggers reading this have thoughts on a proper methodology?

If you want a more proper CSA start-up post, I think there are a few other bloggers who are going to covering it. The Tropical Locavore over at Eating Local in the Tropics has promised a CSA post. I know La Diva of La Diva Cucina and Trina of Miami Dish have talked a bit about their subscriptions in previous years. This is also the first year Bee Heaven's had a blog so we can hear how the first week looks from the other side. Go check them out and see what they have to say.

Pizza 101

Earlier this evening the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce Southeast hosted a social networking happy hour at Piola Brickell that was preceded by Pizza 101: "we invite you to learn how to make a real Italian pizza with one of Piola’s master pizza makers! They will teach you all the tricks you need to know to make a superb pizza, while you make it with them right then and there. As a final reward for your efforts, you will get to eat the pizza you made during the class and share it with your friends!!"

I've got no particular need of the networking, but my pizza skills could sure use some work. So, off I went.

Parking's a pain in Brickell, but I got there more or less on time which meant, of course, waiting a good ten minutes for Piola to get their act together and for anyone else to show up. Once they did, they got four of us lined up along a table, dumped a truckload of flour on it and handed out discs of dough for us to work with.

The instructor did far more flirting than teaching, but I managed to pick up a few pointers. First of all, the texture of the dough was unusual. Soft, but not wet. Elastic, but not tight. That seemed to be the biggest trick of the night and I wish they told us how they managed it. I suspect part of it is from intensive kneading following by a lengthy rest to relax the gluten. The hydration level was hard to pin down, though. It can't have been too high as the dough didn't seem to pick up any of the flour, but normally a dough that dry is stiff. I dunno.

I'm also not sure why they used so very much flour. The dough didn't seem in any risk of sticking to the work surface. I presume it served some important function, though. There was a big minus as they never warned us to shake off the excess and we had big problems with baked on/caked on chunks of flour on the finished pies.

The chef demoed stretching the dough, so even if he didn't try to explain it, we had a model to follow. I've seen some folks say to use your knuckles, but he used his fingertips. He also had an interesting technique of letting half the dough droop off the side of the table while he rotated it around, letting gravity stretch it out. It worked pretty well for me too, but the texture of the dough was very forgiving. I'd want to be really confident any dough I made at home wasn't going to tear before trying it.

Most folks used tomato sauce and they showed us the technique you probably know of spooning a dollop in the middle of the pie and then using the back of the ladle to swirl it outwards. It was hard to judge just how much to use since a little goes a long way, but never quite as far as you'd like. Then a couple handfuls of shredded mozzarella and a pretty good selection of toppings. I lot of folks, I think, overloaded both with cheese and with too many and too much toppings. I believe it's traditional (and just a good idea) to use no more than three. I went with ham, roasted peppers and basil. OK, also some ricotta, but I went light on the mozzarella so the ricotta was intended as part of the cheese element, not a separate topping.

Here's before:













and after:



It turned out OK, but I had problems with excess flour and I like a spicier sauce than Piola uses so their unexpectedly sweet sauce threw off the balance of flavors a bit. One other point I learned from someone else's pie was that anchovies are to be used sparingly no matter how high quality they are (and these were really nice ones).

I think the big takeaway here was that getting the right texture on the dough at the start makes the process go much smoother and faster and gives you a better texture and flavor at the end. Does anyone have a favorite recipe they'd like to share?

Mocha ice cream with malt balls and warm caramel sauce

Sorry about that last post. I really should know better to try such things and just stick to recipes.

This particular recipe is a remake of one of the first ice creams I made when I got my churn a couple years ago. I've updated it into the Britton style, tweaked it a little and added the caramel which I though would go well with the other flavors.

I started by coarsely grinding 12 Tablespoons of coffee beans. Which was a mistake, I think. I added them to 1 1/2 cups cream and 1 1/2 cups milk, brought the mix to a boil, simmered for a few minutes to cook down the dairy a little, turned off the heat, covered and let steep for 10 minutes. That nicely infused the flavor, but the grounds grabbed on to a lot of the milk solids and I ended up mashing them in a sieve to try to get all the good stuff out. Kind of a pain, not terribly effective and some grounds make it through and back into the pot. Since the ice cream was going to be gritty from the maltballs anyway, I thought it would fly, but if I were to do it again, I'd just crush beans, not grind them.

Once the dairy was infused with coffee, I mixed in 1/2 cup sugar which isn't a lot for 3 cups, particularly with the bitterness of the coffee. I wanted to keep the ice cream on the less sweet side so the malt and caramel would contrast nicely. Once the sugar was dissolved, I mixed 1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon corn starch with 3/4 ounce by weight of Dutch-process cocoa (mainly as an aid to getting lumps out of both) and whisked the mixture into the pot and brought it back up to a boil to thicken up. Finally, I whisked in 1 1/2 ounce by volume of cream cheese (whipped up for easier incorporation) and checked for flavor and texture. It was both too intense and too thick so I thinned it out with 1/4 cup of cream.

The malt balls are the fancy sort from the bulk bin at Fresh Market. I think the chocolate to malt ratio is too high, but they've certainly got Whoppers beat. I wanted irregularly sized pieces so I put them in a plastic bag and whacked them with a crab hammer. That's a couple handfuls. I don't know, 1 1/2 cups?

The caramel sauce is only a sauce since it's warm. It's really just a simple soft caramel. I forgot to write down the amounts I used, but I think it was a half cup of sugar, melted, and then the cooking stopped by mixing in 3 Tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup cream. I may have added a dash of vanilla too. That's all there is to it.

So I chilled and churned the mix, folded in the malt balls and ripened in the freezer. I haven't got a beauty shot of the final product I'm afraid, so you'll just have to use your imagination. I made it for a baby shower that happened while I was away visiting my mother and I never got to taste the fully assembled dish. I asked for them to take pictures, but nobody did. I tried a little of the ice cream and thought the coffee overbalanced the cocoa flavor, but I hoped the chocolate on the malt balls would compensate. I'm told the ice cream went over well and certainly it was all gone when I got back, but I couldn't get any details about how it tasted from those I asked. You'll just have to use your imagination for that too.

Recipe Exchange

I'm off visiting my mom this week so, unless you're interested in a review of the new tapas place in Wilmington, Delaware, I've got nothing for you. But here's a class activity for the meantime.

I was recently sent this chain e-mail:
Hi!

You are being invited to be a part of a recipe exchange. I hope you will participate. Please send a recipe to the person whose name is in position 1 (even if you don't know them) and it should be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. Actually, the best one is the one you know in your head and can type right now. Don't agonize over it, it's the one you make when you are short on time.

After you've sent your recipe to the person in position 1 below and only to that person, copy this letter into a new email, move my email to the top and put your email in position 2. Only mine and your email addresses should show when you send your email. Send to 20 friends. If you cannot do this within 5 days, let me know so it will be fair to those participating. You should receive 36 recipes. It's fun to see where they come from! The turnaround is fast as there are only 2 names on the list and you only have to do this once.

Unfortunately, I don't get out much so I don't know 20 new people to send it to. I'd be obliged if you guys could help out instead and send your favorite quick easy recipe on. I probably shouldn't stick her e-mail up on the web for spammers to harvest so just send them to me and I'll pass them on.

The e-mail assumes only 6 out of 20 people will follow through so no pressure. Only send a recipe along if it's something you really want to share. If you decide to extend the chain, put in:
1. my e-mail from my profile
2. your e-mail address
I'm much obliged for your help.

Proper posting will resume when I get my act together some time next week. Your patience is appreciated.

Moroccan fried chicken

I usually prefer to use the original-language name in the title, and the cookbook, The World's Best Fried Chicken Recipes (if they say so themselves), calls this recipe "M'Hammer" which is a pretty cool name. But it's not a term that Google turns up much for and most of the recipes its attached to are for grilled, not fried, meats. Then again, Google only turns up one Moroccan fried chicken recipe and it doesn't have any Arabic name attached so who knows? Other than just about everyone living in Morocco that is.

All that aside (and since all that was just an excuse to use the term "M'Hammer" despite its doubtful applicability, aside is where it belongs), this recipe has a really interesting technique--a reversed fricassee--that I've never seen before and was curious to try.

Ingredients:
1 small chicken, under three pounds if you can find one
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
copious chicken broth (at least four cups if you're using canned. You can get by with less if you're using homemade that you condensed down for storage like I did.)
salt and pepper (preferably white)
1/4 teaspoon crumbled saffron threads
3 large sprigs parsley or cilantro
zest of 2 preserved lemons, chopped (did you know to use only the zest? I didn't until now.)
juice of 1 lemon
2 Tablespoons cilantro or parsley, chopped (I like to use both for north African recipes so I used sprigs of parsley and finished with chopped cilantro.)
4 Tablespoons butter
1 cup olive oil

0. Clean the chicken and pat dry. Season generously with salt and pepper.

1. Pick out a stew pot or dutch oven that will comfortably fit the chicken, but isn't much bigger than necessary for that. Layer the bottom of the pot with half of the sliced onion. Put the chicken on top, either side up. Add broth and/or salted water until the chicken is covered at least three quarters of the way up. The broth will get cooked down later so you can dilute it a bit now, but not so much that it tastes thin and weak. (It's up to you, but I think it's OK to taste the broth even with a raw chicken sitting in there. There's no way you found an industrial chicken under 3 pounds so had to have bought a boutique organic pastured bird that's unlikely to carry anything nasty. And even if it does, the nastiness hasn't had time to seep out into the broth. And even if it has, is one sip going to kill you?) Top the chicken with the rest of the onion and add saffron, parsley sprigs and preserved lemon to the pot.

2. Turn the heat to medium-high and bring the broth to a boil. This will be frustratingly slow, but don't rush it. If you turn the heat up, it'll wait until you get bored and wander out of the kitchen and then go into a full rolling boil all over the stove top. Instead, as soon as it starts to boil, loosely cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and slowly simmer until the chicken is very tender, about 45 minutes.

3. Move the chicken carefully to a draining rack over a platter or tray to catch the drippings. Remove the parsley sprigs (and, if you forgot the saffron earlier like I did, add it now). Move the broth off of your primary burner (and possibly into a smaller pot) and bring to a higher boil to start it cooking down. Adjust heat so that you end up with a reduced, thick sauce in about 20 minutes. Consider mashing up the onions a bit if they haven't fallen apart on their own. Add the drippings to the sauce and pat the chicken dry.

4. Place a medium cast iron or heavy-based non-stick pan or dutch oven on your primary burner. Add the butter and olive oil and turn heat to high to melt the butter and raise the temperature to near smoking. Carefully add the chicken to the oil and fry for a few minutes on each side until it is golden brown and delicious. Try to break the skin as little as possible or the oil will get in and dry the meat out. The skin's pretty delicate by now so I wasn't entirely successful. Once it's browned on all four (six?) sides, remove chicken from pan and drain again. Check the sauce for consistency and, if you're happy with it, turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice and chopped cilantro. Cool the chicken for five minutes, carve into serving pieces and serve with (but not covered by) the sauce on a bed of couscous with maybe a vegetable of some sort.


In retrospect, I don't know if "fried chicken" is the right term for this dish. If I came at it without knowing that label beforehand, I think I might called it crisped stewed chicken. The frying is just a finishing touch. A pretty good finishing touch, sure, but not essential to the dish. I do like the idea; if I were to go back and do the chicken in curdled milk recipe again I'd fry the chicken afterward instead of before cooking it in the milk. On the other hand, that chicken picked up a lot more flavor from the cooking medium than this one did. Granted there was a lot more there to be picked up, but the cooking may have opened up the meat to outside influences. Certainly this chicken picked up a lot of flavor from the sauce during a night of soaking in the refrigerator.

As for that sauce, the onion, preserved lemon, parsley and cilantro is a normal combination of Moroccan flavors (at least for the American kitchen approximation)--boldly tart, savory and herbal. If you like that sort of thing then that's the sort of thing you like. I'm pretty happy with it myself. I'm just a little disappointed that the chicken was bland in comparison. I really don't like it when the meat in a dish becomes just something to put the sauce on. That chicken gave its life for my dinner; it seems the least I can do is to try to bring out its best.

Mushroom, mango and brie fondue

Last week was the new faculty reception at my library. Turnout's been lousy since the faculty realized we've dialed the catering back to wine and cheese. On one hand, that's pretty lousy since it's one of the few chances we get to pimp library services to a skeptical and indifferent audience. On the other hand, hey, free cheese.

Specifically, I liberated a big wheel of mediocre brie. I've been whittling away at it by eating it with crackers and in sandwiches with jamón ibérico and basil, but I wanted to do something more interesting with it. Not a lot of choices out there. You can bake it, of course, but the wheel was in two pieces so it would be an awkward process. Giada de Laurentis has a recipe for a brie, chocolate and basil sandwich that gets some mixed reviews. I was more interested in the pairings of brie with tart apple. I figured I could substitute in mango and get some interesting results. I was thinking of a mango, brie and bacon risotto, but I also had my eye on a brie fondue recipe and I don't think I've ever had fondue. So I thought I'd give it a try. Adapted from this recipe.)

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 handful dried cremini mushrooms, rehydrated and finely chopped (the original recipe called for an implausibly large amount of porcinins which were sold out in the two places I looked. I used what I had and, to boost the umami, added...)
a few slices of jamón ibérico, finely chopped (although jamón serrano or prosciutto would have done fine)
1/2 somewhat underripe sweet-tart mango, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup fruity but not overly sweet white wine
3/4 pound rindless brie (maybe 4/5 pound with rind), cubed
2-3 ounces goat cheese (I used Humboldt Fog, an ash-aged cheese whose fresh, slightly funky flavor nicely rounded out the brie.)
2/3 cup light cream
salt and pepper
parsley, chopped

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. When it stops fizzing add the shallots, garlic and ham. Sweat until the shallots are softened.

2. Stir mushrooms and mango into the mixture in the pan. Add wine and cook briefly to blend the flavors and soften mushroom and/or mango if they need it.

3. Add the cheeses and stir until they start to melt. Add the cream and continue stirring until the cheese melts into a thick sauce.

4. Remove from heat and check seasoning. I found it needed a bit of salt and pepper. Garnish generously with parsley and serve before it clots with bread for dipping. (The original recipe also suggested serving with broccoli. I didn't think it would work so well with the adjusted flavors. I did try grape tomatoes, but I didn't care for the combination.)


Not bad at all. Mostly cheesy of course, but the other flavors bring some real complexity. There are earthy notes from the mushrooms; sweet and tart from the mango emphasized by similar notes in the wine; some herbal counterpoint from the parsley. The flavors intensify as the fondue thickens so it's a balance between ideal texture and flavor that shifts as you eat which adds a bit of interest.

I just did a search and found a recipe with paired a brie fondue with a mango chutney. Not quite the same, but close enough that I don't feel entirely original. Darn.

Chinese-spiced chicken stew

This recipe is an interesting example of a dish mutating as various cooks adapt it to different purposes. It started as the classic French braised version of chicken with forty garlic cloves. Mark Bittman switched out the seasoning for Chinese flavors and, for some reason, called it a stew even though it's still just chicken in sauce. I toned down the garlic to let the other seasonings come through and made it into a proper stew.

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon high smoke-point oil
2 chicken thighs, bones in and skins on
1 Tablespoon minced Chinese ham, bacon or sausage (I used something labeled bacon, but it's so lean I think it's actually ham)
5 cloves garlic, peeled (halved from amount of garlic in the original recipe, so if you want to scale it back up to a whole chicken use 20 cloves)
2 Tablespoons dry rice wine or sherry
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 star anise
1/2 stick cinnamon
2 1/4-inch slices ginger (or a roughly equivalent chunk if your ginger is all dried out from too long in the refrigerator like mine was)
1/4 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorns, lightly crushed
1 1/2 Tablespoons soy sauce
vegetables you've got on hand including, preferably, greens and scallions. (I keep to minimalistic vegetables off-season so I only used scallions and peppers today.)
2 handfuls fresh egg noodles

1. Heat the oil on medium high heat in a deep well-seasoned cast iron or nonstick pan or pot just large enough to accommodate the chicken. (I didn't use nonstick and, as you can, see, the chicken skin stuck.) Add the chicken, skin-side down. Cook for several minutes to brown, adjusting heat to avoid burning. Turn and cook for another minute or two (depending on where your heat level turned out) to brown lightly. Remove chicken to a plate and pour off any more fat than you started out with. (And save it. I save both chicken and pork fat for adding a little extra flavor when I'm frying up random vegetables.)

2. Return pan to fire and adjust heat to medium. Add your cured pork product and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic is browned. Add rice wine, scrape bottom of pan with a wooden spoon to deglaze, then add sugar and spices. Once the sugar is dissolved, add soy sauce and a quarter cup of water (maybe a little more if the rice wine mostly boiled off when you added it).

3. Return chicken to pan, skin-side down, turn heat down to low, cover and gently simmer for 15 minutes. Turn chicken and add any tough vegetables you're using (e.g. bamboo shoots, carrots, rehydrated mushrooms, daikon, kale or other tough greens), squish the garlic to release a bit more flavor, re-cover and simmer another 10 minutes.

4. When chicken is done, remove to a plate and keep warm. Add noodles and lighter vegetables (e.g. scallions, peppers, eggplant, mizuna or other mid-weight greens) to pan. Look at the amount of liquid in the pan and taste it for flavor. Decide if you want to keep the cover off to reduce it, keep the cover on to keep it, or add some water or stock to thin it out. Simmer for three to five minutes until vegetables are tender and noodles are cooked.

5. Remove the cinnamon stick, star anise and ginger from the pot and check the thickness of the sauce. If your noodles were coated with flour like mine were or if you left the cover off the pan earlier, then it will be thickened slightly. If not, you might want to remove everything else from the pot and mix in a little cornstarch. Up to you. Also up to you is if you want to keep your chicken pieces whole or carve them up into bite-sized pieces. I went with the latter.

Serve by filling the bottom of a bowl with the noodles, layering in the vegetables, topping with the chicken, pouring the sauce over and garnishing with scallion and/or cilantro. Or mix everything together.


This is really quite lovely with flavors that are complex and understated. The sauce is sweet, but not cloying. Aromatic, but not spicy. Bright, but not salty. I'm normally not a huge fan of anise, but I like how the star anise pairs with the Szechuan pepper to compliment the chicken. I also like how the flavors in the sauce reconfigure into a notably different, earthier arrangement when they're absorbed into the noodles. The variety of textures, with the chewy noodles, tender chicken and still slightly crisp scallion, is nice too. But this is really just a test run for a more vegetable-intensive version of this dish I'll make after the CSA shares start arriving. Given the similarity to a standard red-simmering master sauce (like the one I never used again last year), it should make a good throw-in-whatever-you've-got dish. I'll report back then with how it goes.