Geocooking

This weekend I made dishes from Louisiana, the South more generally, from Morocco, and (sort of) from Ireland.

Gumbo

I mentioned a previous attempt to make gumbo that was foiled by suspect shrimp. Sunday, I had better luck. Gumbo, if you're not familiar with it, is a spicy roux-based stew from the Cajun country of southern Louisiana. However, the roux is not a thickener here: it is cooked to a copper color and contributes flavor instead. Traditionally, thickening is provided by either okra or file' powder: I used neither and it was fine.

The tricky part of gumbo is cooking the roux to that copper color but not past it. The recipe I used had the roux doing most of its cook time in the oven, providing the cook with a greater margin of error and freedom from near constant stirring. However, I screwed it up anyway and the first batch burned.

(Free tip: if you ever burn a roux, don't pour it out in the sink. What a horrible mess!)

The proteins I used were chicken, shrimp, and andouille sausage. Beside the sausage, the only seasonings were a little cayenne powder, a little thyme, salt, and pepper. Nonetheless, the finished dish has an intense, complicated flavor.

It makes me happy.

Okra

One of the things that spurred me on to do the gumbo this weekend was that I had been able to find some fresh okra. I was conflicted about using it, however – the neighbor lady I sometimes share with really dislikes okra, and I’d once had a different application of okra for which I had been wanting to try.

So I took that okra, and I pickled it! Here's the recipe I followed -- I'll let you know in a month how it turns out.

Roasties

OK, I confess: there's nothing that I know of that makes this dish especially Irish. But I learned about it from my friend Kate, who LIVES in Ireland, so it's SORT OF Irish, right?

Saturday evening, Kate was telling me about the polenta crusted roast potatoes she was planning to do for her mother's birthday party. I was intrigued and did a web search, and she confirmed that this recipe was indeed what she was talking about.

I used lard instead of duck fat - I don't even know where I'd BUY duck fat. (Kate says that she uses vegetable oil except at Christmas.) The amount of potatoes called for works out to around 4 lbs. (I cut this in half), and I used russet potatoes. The oven temperature works out to around 400 F.

They were delicious after salting! Crusty yet tender. Next time I make them (and there WILL be a next time), I'd like to try a dusting of parmesan and maybe some fresh herbs when they're right out of the oven.

Preserved Lemons

Years ago, I read about preserved lemons, an ingredient often used in Moroccan cooking, and always wanted to try it. I'm not even sure what I'll DO with them, but I often find the combination of "easy" and "exotic" to be nearly irresistible.

The procedure I used is on americastestkitchen.com. Basically you're cutting Meyer lemons so they're not quite quartered lengthwise, rubbing a LOT of salt into them, and putting them in a Mason jar and covering with fresh lemon juice. I'll shake them once a day for 4 days then let them continue sitting in the refrigerator for another 6 weeks. Again, I'll let you know how they turn out.

-----
Whew! And I don't even have a passport! 

Time Heals All Pies

Well, actually, time probably DOESN'T healed all pies. But it healed this one.

The other night, I set out to make the Icebox Strawberry Pie I'd seen made on the "Cook's Country" television show. The filling was made by cooking down 2 lbs of frozen strawberries, adding some sugar and some softened gelatin, then folding a pound of sliced fresh strawberries immediately before folding into the baked pie crust. (I used store-bought pie dough this time.) The big thing in this recipe was working with gelatin, which I'd never done before except for commercial Jell-O.

After the pie had set in the refrigerator for the specified four hours, I discovered that I had, well, strawberry soup. And, because I'd overfilled the shell, I had a strawberry soup mess. I took another look at my recipe and discovered that while I had added the lemon juice to my gelatin powder, I was supposed to add water. I figured that my pie was doomed to staying soup, but it was reasonably tasty soup, so I cleaned up a bit and stuck it back in the fridge.

24 hours later, I had actual pie. Go figure.

Beginner's Notebook: Quick Lessons From the Day

1. If you're going to make a dish (oh, say, gumbo) that relies on shrimp (in the recipe I was using), it's a good idea to sniff the shrimp BEFORE you chop your veggies.
2. On the other hand, meals made from abruptly orphaned ingredients have the potential for accidental fabulousness.
3. In the process of making cake doughnuts, I overworked the dough. I thought the final product was a little tough, though my neighbor lady didn't think so.
4. I still need to figure out how not to get overheated in summertime cooking situations. I don't think I stayed adequately hydrated today. I didn't get sick, exactly, but I wasn't feeling all that well when I finished up today.
5. I am unconvinced that deep frying is worth the hassle. I guess the smaller amount of oil my multicooker used would be easier. I'm glad I tried the stove stove top method, however.

Small Fry

I picture a scene from a cheesy war movie with the German officer preparing to torture the downed pilot. "Herr Pedersen, we have someone here you've been avoiding for a long time. His name is Frying. Deep Frying."

Deep frying. Kitchen fires. Unhealthy food. Oil to dispose of. Improperly fried food turning into a grease slick. Yeah, that deep frying. Did I mention kitchen fires? Greasy french fries. Overcooked chicken. Odors that stay around for days. Oily mist over the entire kitchen. Plus, the risk of kitchen fires. Who needs it?

I don't. Except I do.

One of the things that drives my kitchen adventures is the possibly baseless belief that I'm better off making for myself those foods that aren't good for me but which I can't lay aside completely.

And, every once in a while, I really-really-really want doughnuts.

And, while there are recipes for baked doughnuts, seriously: doughnuts are fried.

And, tonight, I made some. Sort of, anyway.

(I have deep-fried once before, the target food being tofu. I like tofu, prepared well, but that's hardly what deep-frying is for, now, is it?)

I think I'll spare you the saga of my search for a recipe and why I chose the one I did. But I settled on  Orange Sugar Fried Doughnut Holes,  from Food Network host Sunny Anderson.

I think I'll also spare you the play-by-play. But I didn't start any fires. And the doughnut holes were tasty. And, mixing orange zest into the sugar is a neat trick.

I will tell you that I'll be obtaining a doughnut cutter and that I don't intend on using pre-made biscuit dough again if I can avoid it. It's just not right.

But I deep-fried.

"You see, Herr Pedersen? It is YOU that have your methods."

Beginner's Notebook: Sampler Platter 2

It's not that I've not cooked recently: it's more than I haven't done many of the kind of project that seemed to merit a post by itself. So, here's a mixed bag of recent endeavors.

A Piece of My Grind

One thing that I've been wanting to get into is making my own sausage. However, my first experience was less than a total success. A couple of weekends ago, I used the lessons I'd learned the first time (and my food processor instead of my stand mixer's grinding attachment) to try again. I ground some beef for a chili-like substance and pork shoulder to make breakfast sausage patties. The keys proved to be to get the meat cubes good and cold (by putting them in the freezer until quite firm but not frozen), to use some added fat (fatback is what I used) in the sausage, and to use the 'pulse' button on the food processor to carefully judge the grind desired.  The beef (which I ground more coarsely) worked really nicely in the chili, and the breakfast sausage was really good with the dried thyme, dried sage, allspice, and maple syrup.


Crusty the Beginner, Part 2

I recently signed up to be a volunteer recipe tester for a cookbook publisher. (I qualified for this honor by passing a rigorous demonstration of my ability to type my e-mail address.) Last weekend I tested a recipe for an easy pie crust (details are confidential), and the company included a recipe for French Silk pie filling. The pie was good, and my neighbor lady thought it was delicious. But the filling was a LOT of work, much more so than the crust, and involved a long period of beating a custard in a makeshift double boiler with an electric beater. I really would have enjoyed some additional flavor, perhaps some cinnamon or some chili powder. And, since neither my neighbor lady nor I need much chocolate pie and I didn't want to carry it to work, I threw most of it out. I don't regret this: I got the experience, which is what I most wanted.

Tortillas, Again

After my success making flour tortillas, I decided to try a recipe I found that used whole wheat flour and vegetable oil instead of lard. I also decided to invest in a very inexpensive tortilla press. Between lacking some tortilla technique and maybe needing to tweak the recipe, I didn't get quite the results I wanted. But I did want you to know that I'm working on it.

Chill Out, Dough

I've been a little worried about how I could continue baking bread with the arrival of summer. My area of the world is not exactly tropical, but it does get hot and humid, and my kitchen is at the opposite end of my apartment from my window air conditioner. I've been concerned that if I assembled a dough in the morning when I got up, it would often be too late in the day to run my oven by the time the rising periods were done. So I wanted to follow up on the notes in a couple of recipes I've seen that one of the rises could occur in the refrigerator.

So I made a dough last night, put it in a bowl, covered it in plastic, and stuck it in my refrigerator to see if I got any rise. This morning I found that my dough had more than doubled and outgrown its covering of plastic wrap and I had a crusted-over area to remove. But, even with getting a later start than I'd have like, my bread was out of the oven by around noon and was good. Next time, I'm going to try doing the first rise the night before and do the in-the-pan rising in the refrigerator.

Flour Tortillas

One of the things I made over the weekend (or tried to make, in this case) was a fritatta. I've made several, but this time I tried to do it without a recipe. The result was, well, scrambled eggs with sausage and potato. When I tasted it, it said "breakfast burrito!" (It really did. I heard it distinctly.) But, I had no tortillas.

But, an idea formed, and tonight I put it into action. Using this recipe, I made my own flour tortillas tonight. It seemed audacious when I thought of it, but it was mostly pretty easy.

Here is the dough - flour, lard, salt, water - at rest.

And here are the cooked tortillas. "Round" is such an arbitrary concept, don't you think?

The unroundness is related to the bit of trouble I did have. I found it difficult to roll out nice-looking rounds, and I also had trouble laying them nicely in the pan. I suspect both these things are matters of practice.

And practice I will. Although the difference is not huge, I did find my tortillas to be tastier than store-bought. (And, of course, I'm thinking about flavor that could be added to the dough. A little cumin, perhaps? Lemon zest?)

I also found mine to be stiffer than what I'm used to from the store: they will work just fine for a soft-taco approach, but I don't think I could wrap a burrito.  But their small size (about 7" in diameter) is probably too small for that anyway. (Can a shapeless blob have a diameter?)  I could make the dough balls bigger, but that would also increase the difficulty with managing them.

Tomorrow morning, I will have a breakfast burrito with egg, potato, and my own breakfast sausage. Yum.

UPDATE: I found this morning that, having fully cooled, the tortillas were much softer than when first out of the pan. I don't quite understand this, but I'll certainly go with it!