CHIUCJEND RICE!

CHICKEN RICE!

It's hard to explain exactly how good chicken rice is except with one word: UMAMI

Chicken rice is one of the national dishes of Singapore. Often known as Hainan chicken, this dish represents the Hainanese majority of the population on the all-star roster of must-have dishes. And it is certainly acceptable to the most unadventurous palate. After all, chicken rice is only chicken rice. OOIR ISIT????!!?!?!

It looks so simple, nu? Boiled chicken, served almost ice-cold, atop a bed of rice and garnished with some cucumber and red pepper. So simple. But like all things Spanish, it is dangerous.

A whole chicken is boiled, then removed and put into a bucket of ice water. This separates the fat/skin from the meat and the chicken is then hung up until it is chopped into delicious bite sized pieces. But we need part B of the concoction, rice. The simplest of foods - but with a brilliant twist and shout. The rice is not simply cooked, it is cooked IN the chicken stock from its boiled counterpart. So simple.
Exhibit B.

Admire the succulence of not only the chicken but the rice. The rice. Which you could eat for days and days because what you see are grains swollen not with water but with pure UMAMI. I'm salivating as I write this. The dish is served with a kind of fish sauce reduction, a black-brown syrup, as well as a chili sauce. The chicken-rice + condiment 1,2 punch would floor Mike Tyson as quickly as he rocked Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover.

Rice is often left on the side, or used to balance out a foodstuff. But in this case, I just could not stop eating the rice. Helpless I was. The lure was too strong. And not only for me, but for this whole crowd as well.

Chicken rice. Ask me and I'll fed ex it to you.

Caprese

Isn't this a beautiful looking salad?

pizza...again

Dear reader, I apologize for the continued attention paid to this humble culinary endeavor. There is no doubt that the pizza has attained a level of media scrutiny usually reserved for Kim Kardashian's hind quarters. While I hesitate to call the pizza "played out," I will go so far as to say that this particular blog has been flooded. Pizza party after pizza party, the pizza marches on tirelessly. I'm not even really doing anything new or unique, but pizza is probably the one dish I make that is deserving of internet immortality. My general menu is comprised of the cheapest possible items, cooked in a pan with oil, eaten with neither relish nor revelation. I take a bit more care with pizza.

This addition is noteworthy primarily because I purchased and pickled a quantity of hot red cherry peppers to accompany it. I was hoping to recreate in some small way the sublime Tomato Pie sold at Trenton's venerable Delorenzo's. I'm not sure if it was because of my horrible hangover at the time, but the sausage and cherry pepper pizza presented a fine combination of cheesy umami, spiced meat, and piquant pepper; it was a veritable casual-Friday for the mouth.

To pickle the cherry peppers, I haphazardly added equal parts white vinegar and water to a sauce pan, added a liberal amount of both salt and sugar, and made use of some long lingering whole garam masala mix to spice the brine. Rather unconventional, I know, but my focus was somewhat lacking. The end result was pretty good, basically the acid and spice heightening one another, coupled with a hint of sweetness.

The pizza was perhaps overly ambitious in its desire to be loaded with toppings. Onto the dough I heaped 1 large yellow heirloom, mozzarella, pecorino romano, the pickled cherry peppers,  and soppresetta. Into the oven it went, slightly overloaded, and out it came golden brown but a bit too thin in the center. A handful of basil finished the whole thing off. The center was a gooey mess but it was tasty nonetheless. I enjoyed each rich bite with relish and shared not a crumb with anyone in my house. BOOYA.

3 ribeyes and a tomato

Beefsteak tomato, that is. A good piece of red meat, marbled like fine porphyry,  is not something to be fucked with. Salt, pepper, flame. No sauce or marinade for high quality ribeye - the king of cattle cuts (filet is for chumps).  

Bring the raucus

Cross-section

Since MS posted a Marcella Hazan dish, I shall too (Although Ma made it).

Now you got a stew...Veal Stew

Dhosa na mean?

      Home for the yontif , MG, MS and myself did what any onther good hebrews would do - beeline for Flushing's Chinatown. Huzzah! This obviously included a stop at White Bear where the wontons in hot sauce will make you say ooooh wheee. Yet, our usual itinerary soon diverged as we ambled out of the mandarin log-jam towards al Hind - home of the dhosa. While Jackson Heights is the Little India of the NY metro area, the tentacles of hindustan do indeed stretch into Flushing's fertile plains. More specifically, MG discovered the existence of the Ganesh Temple, a Hindu waystation for prayer and potluck. In the basement of this place of worship is their canteen which is known to serve a dank dhosa. A dhosa is essentially a South Indian crepe filled with various foodstuffs. See The Dhosa for further information. Our three variations were as follows Masala Dhosa, Set Dhosa, Pondicherry Dhosa. The wikipedia article clearly defines the first two, leaving the contents of the pondicherry dhosa more of a mystery (something with fried lentils...). 

                                 Pondicherry and Masal Dhosa

Set Dhosa

Through my wiki-research I also have isolated the two different sauces accompanying our meal. One was certainly a coconut chutney while the other, I believe, was what they call "Sambar."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambar_(dish)  Some of that OG sauce. The meal was awesome.

    However don't just go to the Ganesh Temple to eat, go to pray!

                                 Although don't break your coconut here...

                                                       ...Break it here!

 It is amazing that nestled in the madness of Flushing is such a beautiful sanctuary for Indian cuisine and culture. Get at it.

Bonus round.

Every culinary escapade in Flushing should be immedietly followed with a mushroom hunt through Rockeffeller state park. How do you think we maintain these slender figures?

                                        Mushroom Hunters

Lasagne

I didn’t used to think that lasagna was anything special.  It’s good, sure, but the usual mess of packaged mozzarella/ricotta, meat sauce and pre-made pasta sheets is more satisfying to the appetite than the palate.

Then I had lasagne in Bologna.  Lasagne alla Bolognese is a simple dish.  Its heart and soul are a rich Bolognese and freshly rolled sheets of lasagne verdi, made with spinach.  These ingredients are brought together and transformed by the addition of béchamel and Parmigiano Reggiano.  Nothing else is necessary.  Without hunks and dollops of fresh cheese to weigh and water it down, this highest form of lasagne is rendered into a crispy, tender, multi-layer delight that remains buoyant despite its density.

I’ve never since had lasagne to match or even rival the two I sampled during the few days I spent in Bologna.  Although American restaurants occasionally get the concept, they usually put in too much stuff and somehow it isn’t quite right. Bolognese cuisine is not particularly delicate, and really there is no good reason why a proper Lasagne alla Bolognese is hard to find.  But it is.  The following effort was an attempt to do lasagne right, to capture the essence of a dish that is known to too many people only in a diluted, inadequate form.

As a guide, I used Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cookbook.  She largely shares my opinion of lasagne, and respectfully dismisses the Southern Italian immigrant version, laden with meatballs, sausage and heaps of cheese.  She only mentions the bastardized mainstream version indirectly, when she insists that one can never make lasagne with anything but homemade pasta.

For her recipe, you need only a few ingredients.  The most important is a quantity of Bolognese sauce.  You need to have this ready to go unless you want to make your lasagne an all-day project.  I recommend making huge quantities of Bolognese at one time.  It lasts for over a week in the fridge, and for months in the freezer, with essentially no ill-effect.  I used the same sauce that I posted a couple weeks ago, which had been frozen.  You also need flour, eggs and spinach for pasta, butter and milk for the béchamel and Parmigiano Reggiano.
 
The first step is to cook your spinach; I used about a half-pound of fresh leaves.  You can use frozen too.  Clean and remove any stems, then cook it in a pan with just the water that clings to the leaves.  After 10-15 minutes it should be at a point where a little prodding will turn it basically to mush.  Take it out to drain and cool.  Squeeze out as much water as possible, then chop it very finely.


Now, place the spinach and two eggs into a well of flour without fucking up by making the well too small like I did.  It’s alright if you do though, just scoop the egg back in like I did.

I think I started with 2.5 cups of flour, but I can’t quite remember.  Anyway, I added more later.  You want to mix the spinach into the eggs pretty thoroughly with a fork or your fingers.  Then incorporate the flour gradually.  It will go from a sticky mess to a putty-like ball.  Add as much flour as you can without making the dough dry and crumbly.  I think the spinach actually makes the pasta more pliable and generally easier to deal with.  After it’s all mixed, knead for 8-10 minutes.  It looks like this.

Meanwhile, you can heat some milk for the béchamel gently.  I used 2.5 cups.  Marcella doesn’t infuse it with anything, but I threw in a couple crushed garlic cloves.  I think it’s also traditional to grate some nutmeg in there, which I neglected to do, but would recommend.

When you’re done working the pasta, melt five tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan for the roux.  When it’s melted, add about 2.5 tablespoons of flour.  Cook the flour over fairly low heat for a couple minutes, stirring constantly.  Add the hot milk slowly, just a tablespoon or so at a time for the first few, then a little more, mixing it into the roux all the while.  When all the milk is added, the béchamel should be a viscous liquid, similar to heavy cream.  Season it.

It might be better to do the béchamel after the pasta is fully prepped, but I did it earlier, leaving it on the lowest heat possible until I was ready for it.

Now, roll out the pasta with a rolling pin or pasta machine. It should be about as thick as a flat noodle like fettuccine.  Mine was a bit thicker, which I think is fine.  This picture shows the pasta a little more than halfway through the rolling process.

Depending on the size of your casserole dish, cut the pasta into strategic strips.  They don’t have to be the size of the entire dish; you can just use multiples for each layer.  Keep scraps for filling holes.

Preheat the oven to 450.

Put the pasta in boiling water.  Remove it about ten seconds after the water comes back to a boil, then rinse in cold water and lay out to dry.  Beautiful.

When everything is ready, spread a thin layer of Bolognese at the bottom of your pan or casserole, using the fattier part at the top.  Then build layers of pasta separated with Bolognese, béchamel and parmesan.  Here's my first of five layers.

I only had parmesan on the bottom and top layer, plus to top off the whole thing, but that was accidental.  Marcella says to taste the béchamel/Bolognese mixture and add varying amounts of cheese depending on how much flavor it has, with more cheese going into less flavorful layers.  Just do what you want, basically, but make sure to top it with béchamel, cheese and some butter to get a good crust.  There’s not really as much butter as there appears in these pictures; the pieces are really thin.

 

The lasagne should be in the oven about 10-15 minutes.  I turned on the broiler for the last couple minutes to get some extra crispness on top.  It is a rather striking finished product.

Enjoy with fresh pepper and some more grated cheese, to taste.

Bonus shot:

I made this macaroni last night with provolone and cheddar left over from last week's pizza.  It's a poor cousin to the kingly lasagne, but still very tasty.  To cook it, just make the same bechamel described above, adding onions sauteed with garlic, thyme and red pepper, grated provolone and cheddar.  Stir in your macaroni product of choice or convenience, already cooked, then put in a casserole and top with more provolone/cheddar, bread crumbs and pecorino romano, or another grating cheese.

Pizza Party

Pizza posts are getting old, but the evening recorded here was about more than dough, sauce and cheese.  The images you see below represent not just a tasty meal, but also the realization of a vision: the make-your-own-pizza-party.  The concept is pretty self-explanatory.  Dough and ingredients are provided; attendees create their own pie.  Although the model can be improved (and expanded) this was a remarkably smooth pioneering effort.

Here are the ingredients: eight dough balls, homemade tomato sauce, danish bacon, onion caramelized in bacon fat, raw red onion, grilled peppers and onion, spinach, prosciutto, some kind of Ukrainian sausage, sauteed crimini mushrooms.  Not pictured are the cheeses: fresh mozzarella, aged provolone and cheddar.

This is actually the second pie, made by Czar Champignon but no record exists of the first.  Those mushrooms look really good.

 

King Boletus' first contribution.  Can't go wrong with bacon, prosciutto, mushrooms and lard-saturated onions.

I like red onions, but personally I feel that caramelized works a bit better than raw.  First use of the zucchini and first and only use of the spinach.

 

This kind of looks the same, but I promise it's different.  It's like that game.

This one is unmistakable.  Chiles and tomatillo bring a whole different game.  Shit wasn't even on the menu.

 

Second go for King Boletus, probably my favorite.  Can't get over those caramelized onions.  And the zucchini was a nice touch - it's got to be really thin though.  Also, you can see the new and improved stone in action below.

Kind of a throw everything you've got left effort, this pie was delicious, and quite good-looking, nonetheless.

Pictured the following morning after a breakfast slice had been removed, this pie literally contained all of the leftover ingredients, except for spinach and zucchini.  Note the Cheerios-cum-pizza box.

Before I wrote this post, a concerned reader wondered whether these pies were, by and large, "undercooked."  Let me assure you that they were all fully cooked and quite crisp.  I will say, though, that some more charring would not have been unwelcome.  The lack thereof is the result of two factors.  First, making eight pizzas in a relatively brief window with one pizza stone and one peel means that there is some pressure to get pizzas out.  Second, the oven was only set to 495 and the stone was placed toward the middle to make sure that it wouldn't break.  I think it's safe to crank it back up next time, and I'll be sure to share the results, in a more modest post.

Spice

While bro jargon was recently dismayed by the tame-ness of his South Indian cuisine, I have found myself awash in capsaicin. The heat of the summer sun has produced a surfeit of pequin, jalapeno, and thai chilis. While I've been incorporating them in my various cooking endeavors, the harvest was beginning to overwhelm me. Enter hot sauce.

In addition to my own production, I purchased a handful of hot cherry peppers and a satchel of habaneros from the local grocery.

Chilis are interesting. They are all hot, no doubt, but they definitely have distinct characteristics. Habaneros take a bit to hit you, but then build furiously. Hot cherry peppers hit you right away. Jalapenos aren't too bad. The pequins and thai chilis are somewhere in between.

Anyways, the first steps of making the sauce involved chopping onions, garlic, and chilis. I made two sauces: a watermelon-habanero variety and an all chili kick-in-the-glass variety. Below is the early stages of the latter

The process of cooking these babies was deadly toxic. My tear ducts operated at full flow and my napping room mate was coughing non-stop in his sleep. Sorry dude. Anyways, once this mixture seemed soft, into the blender it all went, along with some vinegar, salt, and lemon/lime. The sauce below is the habanero-watermelon variety, so pureed watermelon makes a brief appearance, mainly to add a bit of volume and a hint of sweetness to the fiery mixture.

It was all a dream...

Anyways, this mixture and the other, all chili one, have served well. The habanero-watermelon gives you an initial acid blast followed by a fiery punch in the nuts. The all chili bottle is straight deadly. Added to some simmering greens, these sauces have really kicked up my life. Endorphin rush or not, I'm feeling the spicy life. Shall we dance?

Garden Redux

Now that Labor Day has come and passed, I believe a briefing on garden progress is due. I've heard that some neighbors are unhappy about my growing compost pile, fearing that it will attract "rats." These unnamed people can suck an egg, to use the parlance of not our time. I assume the complaintants to be of the yuppie variety, fearing any and all rodentia even as they munch their organic vegetation. How the fuck do you think "organic" food comes to be? These unnamed hypocrites, fearing that their overleveraged finances will be dealt a fatal blow as their house value crumbles in a rodent fueled sell off, might benefit from a few moments of carefully reasoned thought. Compost does not attract rodents. It is not a garbage pile. No meat, oil, or other odoriferous scraps find their way into my pile. Last I checked, rats weren't eating corn husks, bell peppers seeds, or banana peels. No, they are too busy sneering at me for spraying my broccoli and kale and foregoing the sanctifying and unassailable good that is organic vegetation.

To the spraying. My hopes for a fall crop have been meeting my expectations. Broccoli and kale seem to be thriving and the last of my summer vegetables, green peppers, jalapenos, and cucumbers, continue to bear fruit.

Hello bell pepper.

Kale: king of greens

Despite their rich appearance, the kale and broccoli plants have been under siege. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that leaf matter was disappearing at an alarming rate. Up until this point, I had not run into any cultiavtional issues. Having a garden was basically a matter of pulling out anything I didn't want (weeds) and watering what was supposed to stick around.

What was an inexperienced gardener to do? At first, I basically ignored the problem. As it grew, I blamed my neighbors outdoor cat. Cats like broccoli, no? Last weekend, I finally investigated the matter more fully and quickly realized the issue: broccoli caterpillar infestation.

These green caterpillars were literally all over my plants, leaving their mark in the form of mini poops and dissappearing greenery. More than that, my garden had become a haven for white butterfly, stage two of these ravenous creatures. Recognizing the problem, I purchased some sort of sulfur-based spray and seem to have vanquished my well camouflaged foe.

With luck, the broccoli and kale will be joined by recently planted beet and carrots for a fall harvest. Beets apparently can withstand a frost. I'm somewhat skeptical, given that their greens are delicate and succulent. Nevertheless, the beets continue to grow, coaxed forth by the warm sun and with nary a care in the world.