Black-bottom pudding

1/3 cup chocolate pudding (Kozy Shack, homemade, or as available)
1/3 cup nonfat Greek-style (strained) yogurt (Fage or equivalent)

Swirl together until partially, but far from completely, mixed. Serves 1.

Really has that black-bottom-cupcake taste, and very nutritious (for dessert).

The icecream-maker page

We'll just update this post every time we try a new flavor. Many thanks to Joyce for the machine and the inspiration!

Round 1: 3/27/11
Raspberry/chocolate/goat cheese ice milk.
2.5 cups nonfat milk
1 cup sugar
4 oz fresh goat cheese
1/4 cup frozen raspberries (half thawed)
1/4 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate
The last two go in 5 minutes before it's done churning.
Notes: blend the goat cheese into the milk next time; lumps were a little too tangy. Or just use goat's milk yogurt (if available). Sarah says chop the chocolate finer. Sweetness was about right.

Ham salad with watercress and potatoes

Sarah liked this and was heartbroken that she forgot to bring the leftovers back to Stockton, so we made it again the next weekend.

Two bunches of watercress, washed and dried
1 lb small red potatoes, washed and cut in quarters
1/2 lb leftover ham, cut into 1/3" cubes

Boil the potatoes until just tender, fry or bake the cubed ham to reheat. Toss the watercress, potatoes, and ham with the dressing below and serve warm. Grind pepper on individual servings at the table to taste.

Dressing:
2 tbs white wine vinegar
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tbs grainy mustard (not seeds, from a jar)
Salt
2 tbs EVOO
Mix all the dressing ingredients except the oil first, then drizzle the oil in while beating the dressing to emulsify; (do this just before tossing the dressing into the other ingredients).

Note: what we get in CA seems to be "upland cress" which is paler and more delicate than watercress, but it has a similar flavor.

What are you making???

...that was the question asked by the bemused manager at the Ethiopian restaurant down the block when I came in out of the chilly rain at 5:30pm to ask for a stack of injera to go. The answer was "Chili." That was too weird even to be dismissed with a chuckle or a snort, apparently; she persisted. "Chili? Regular chili?" I shrugged, smiled, said we liked it, and strode back into the wet dark with my prize.

The chili in question is Sarah's All-American Grad School Chili, much better than the slop I made myself and the long-suffering Irene and Rich when I was in grad school, and not susceptible of any improvement I can think of.


Sarah's All-American Grad School Chili


Lean (or extra-lean) ground beef
Black beans (soaked and boiled from dried, or canned)
Chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned)
Diced carrots
Diced onion
Diced mushrooms
Chopped garlic
Chili powder (not hot) (add cumin if
you are using pure powdered chilis
instead of chili powder mix)
Oregano
Salt

The following order of cooking is a guess since I was out foraging for starch at the time:

Saute the onion first until it starts to brown; lower the heat and add the carrots; when they start to soften, add the meat, mushrooms, and garlic; when the meat has browned, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes.

Scoop out of the bowl by hand with palm-sized pieces of fresh injera and enjoy.

After all this time, the world's shortest recipe

You know what's really good?

Ground coriander sprinkled on your boiled fresh sweet corn, with some salt.

It's really good. Age cannot wither it nor custom stale; I ate all my corn this summer this way.

I don't use butter so I don't know if it would be any good with butter.

Spaetzle Dishin'

Decided to make dinner for TIRK and MOBI, and forwent dancing for the whole weekend. I had this inspiration on the drive up Friday and was glad to have a chance to try it soon. I never made spaetzle before, and created a superb Jackson Pollack of batter dribblets over every pot, bowl, collander and horizontal surface in the kitchen.

If you are a visual reader like Irene, rather than a silent mutterer like I am, go back to the title of this post and say it aloud.

SPAETZLE WITH "BORSCHT RAGU" (to serve 6)

Ragu:

2.5 lbs cubed stew beef
1 bottle red wine
3 carrots, finely diced
1/2 head red cabbage, finely shredded
Salt, white pepper, and dried or finely diced fresh dill
Water or beef broth

Braise the meat in the wine for about an hour; put in the vegetables and braise for another hour; remove the meat and shred it. Return it to the pot, season with salt, white pepper and dill, and add additional liquid to remoisten it -- once shredded, the meat will absorb what liquid was in there before.

I actually used prepared red cabbage from a jar, which is sweetened; the end result was a little too sweet for me, but less work than shredding cabbage would have been. You have my permission to approach it either way.

Spaetzle:

4 eggs
4 cups flour
About 2 cups milk
Salt
Onion juice or puree, or very finely diced chives
Vegetable oil

Mix the wet ingredients (except the oil), then gradually mix in the flour. Keep extra milk and flour on hand to adjust the mixture to the consistency of a thickish cake batter. Boil a large pot of water, and force the batter through the large holes of a collander into the water; fish out and drain after about 3 minutes of boiling. You will have to do several cycles of this, and probably change the water at least once. If you dice chives, make sure they are fine enough to fit through the holes. Like an idiot I put in chopped scallions that didn't fit through my holes, and I regretted it. These are on the softest, moistest end of the spaetzle continuum; they could have been a little drier, perhaps, although it would have been more work to force them through the holes in the collander (there are also devices for this). The other approach to spaetzle is more of a pasta than a dumpling -- you make a much firmer dough then shred it with a knife. Mixed a little vegetable oil into the bowl of completed spaetzle as I went along to keep them from sticking; but they were wet enough that I wonder if I really needed too.

Tried it with sour cream but decided against it -- the red wine makes this a little subtler than the usual borscht sweet-and-sour, and I thought in the end that it was too delicate for the sour cream.

Timing: make the spaetzle batter, then put up its water, starting just after you have put the vegetables into the ragu. By the time the water boils, it's a good time to start making the spaetzle.

Hellooooo Whittier!!

I am now my own cookbook. Went back through the blog for inspiration and ended up making this meal for TIRK this weekend.

Had a few friends from work over for dinner at my own actual place in Santa Cruz yesterday, for a change. Made my Mom's caponata (more or less) for both appetizer and side dish (hi Mams!) and wang a main dish as follows:

On a bed of Italian farro cooked in the broth from soaking dried porcini and chanterelle mushrooms, plus dry sherry, a little port, a little balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and the sliced mushrooms, I put a piece of baked (black cod/butterfish/sable -- take your pick), then drizzled with truffle oil and sprinkled with diced chives and fresh marjoram. I don't usually serve "plated" dishes but this worked out pretty well. For dessert, ice cream with raspberries and brandy syrup. To make brandy syrup:

Put 1/2 cup of brandy in a saucepan on high heat. Add 2 tablespoons sugar. Watch the alcohol quietly boil off as expected until it suddenly ignites and leaps into 2 foot flames. Hold the saucepan at arm's length with a stunned look on your face while all your guests watch until it finally burns down. Lose any cool-chef points you may have picked up by serving the fancy plated fish. Chill in freezer, pour over raspberries and ice cream. Delicious.

I'd love to hear from my reader in Whittier. It's you, my family, and a very small handful of friends. Cheers!

-David

Moscow food blog #1

My arrival in Moscow went like clockwork. Cyrillic signage makes everything seem particularly alien and strangely comic. One of the first things I noticed on the drive into the city from the airport was a huge, indigo warehouse, surrounded by asphalt, and bearing this cryptic sign in enormous letters:



I was surprised at how much learning the alphabet actually helps. My first thought was, "well, all that work struggling through the phonics, and what will I have? A word in Russian." But the word often turns out to be English, or else a word that both English and Russian probably got from French.

Food. With the aid of Lonely Planet, I picked a nearby Bulgarian restaurant for lunch, my first meal on arrival. The staff spoke no English and the menu was in Russian and German. I had a slightly better time with the German, but not quite enough to really know what to expect. I knew they were all small items from the price, one was a soup, and two were touted as typical Bulgarian specialties. As it turned out, I did very well. I got a very tasty sort of hot meat knish, with a slight livery flavor (but not straight liver), a hot dish of thinly sliced potatoes and something else cooked in herbed yogurt or sour cream, and a cold soup with yogurt, dill, cucumber, and ground walnuts. I haven't figured out what the thing mixed with my potatoes was. It had the texture of baked apples, but a very mild flavor that tasted more like a mushroom than an apple. A friend later pointed out that it's more likely that there's a mushroom with the consistency of an apple than an apple with the flavor of a mushroom, which was well taken. Any ideas?

I drank kvas, which is a sort of traditional pumpernickel soda. I heard it's slightly alcoholic, but it must be very slight. I don't know if Bulgarians drink it, but I was eager to try it. Not bad, but Coca Cola doesn't have to worry about a worldwide threat to its market share or anything.

For dinner, I met up with a fellow conferee and we went to a traditional Russian restaurant, also recommended by Lonely Planet. Touristy enough to have English menus. I ordered appetizers of cold-smoked sturgeon (not expensive), marinated mushrooms ("cracked red boletus") and onion, a salad made from herring, beets, and potatoes, and a side order of kasha (just to see if it tasted like the Jewish version -- it did). The waitress seemed to be following me through all the appetizers, but balked and disapproved that I didn't want some kind of meat or fish to go with my kasha (I just didn't have room). Washed blissfully down with one of the most grateful giant draft beers of my life (long hot day touristing).

Breakfast next morning at the hotel was a vast array of choices, not spectacularly fresh, but interesting. The best thing was very simple: sweetened porridge of kasha and milk. This runs circles around oatmeal or any other hot cereal I've had. Easy enough to try at home.