Random Ramblings

I've had a few people mention lately that I haven't been posting, mostly due to the fact that I haven't been cooking very much.  I haven't even been keeping up with my Food & Wine or Wine Spectator subscriptions.  They've just been piling up.  None of this is good.  My life is certainly fuller when I have food, friends and writing in it.  I have a feeling that the coming of winter will have me back to my usual cooking and entertaining ways.

In the meantime, I couldn't sleep tonight, so I thought I'd post a random smattering of food-related thoughts.  They shall be numbered, in true engineering fashion...

1)  I discovered tonight that Dante loves popcorn.  "Loves" is probably an inappropriate description.  He's obsessed with it.  Most people have a default craving for sweets.  I, on the other hand, invariably crave salty, crunchy snacks.  Apparently my cat has similar cravings.  Tonight, while scouring my bare pantry (bare, as in, full of stuff I didn't feel like eating), I found some packets of "lite" microwave popcorn that had expired in August.  Clearly popcorn has a decent safety factor for the expiration date, considering it's simply dried corn and salt.  Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure such a combination would last nearly indefinitely, but I probably won't try to test that theory.  At any rate, I doctored up the horribly bland popcorn with some fake butter and seasoned salt and headed back to my bedroom to read up on 3 months of Food & Wine.  Dante immediately turned into Stealth Kitty, came sneaking up to the bowl and quickly swiped a few kernels.  He scarfed them down before I could grab them from him.  I'm guessing popcorn is not a cat-safe food, but he did everything in his little four-pawed power to get more popcorn.  I had to go dump the rest so he'd leave me alone.  I grabbed this photo while he was still celebrating his little victory.  It's pretty low quality, even for an iPhone shot, but it will do for tonight...

2)  I had a brunch date today.  It was relatively awkward and unenjoyable.  The highlight was when this poor fellow asked me what saffron could be used for.  I'm pretty enthusiastic about saffron, as can be seen by previous posts.  I leapt at the opportunity to fill the void in the conversation with a rambling monologue about this precious spice.  I'd like to say that he was impressed, but I think he probably just felt a bit overwhelmed.  When I told him I usually make paella when I need to use up a lot of saffron, he said, "ah, I've heard of that before..."  *Sigh*  This might need to be a weed-out question for future dates.  "Do you know what paella is and can you spell/pronounce it?  How about tomatillos?"  I then suggested Risotto Milanese and got a blank stare, at which point I diverted the majority of my attention to the Cowboys/Texans game on the nearby TV.  I realize how elitist this sounds, but I just don't see how I could connect with someone that doesn't have at least a curiosity about food.  I mentioned to him that I was going to try to make saffron ice cream at some point soon and he replied, "Ah, that sounds interesting..."  Ironically, when I opened my September issue of Food & Wine tonight, there was an entire article on spices, centered around a spice trader called the Saffron King.  One of the recipes was for a coconut cake with saffron cream.  Now I know what I'll be using for the base of the saffron ice cream.  I almost considered emailing this poor date guy with some of the saffron recipes in the issue, but decided that would send unnecessary mixed messages.

3)  I bought a grill a few weeks ago.  It's a dual gas/charcoal grill.  I'm pretty excited about all the possibilities, especially since it opens up the opportunity to cook all this fish I have in my freezer.  I never want to bake fish because that generally makes it unsuitable for human consumption.  Pan-frying it makes the house smell like a cat food can.  Grilling it is pretty much my only acceptable method.  I blame my previous lack of grill as the main reason for my continuing accumulation of frozen fish.  I baptized it with a Labor Day cookout, feeding about 25 people.  It was a great time.  When I bought it, people commented about it being the end of the summer and that I wouldn't get much use out of it.  I'm not entirely sure why the winter would keep me from using the grill, I don't think the charcoal or gas really cares what temperature it is, but I guess we'll see how motivated I am come the single digit temperatures.

And that shall conclude my insomnia-inspired ramblings.

More to follow in the near future...

The Pastabilities Are Endless!

Most Alaskans have a talent for spending lots of money on the activities they love.  Walking into an REI brings on the overwhelming aroma of burning money.  It just incinerates right there in the pocket it's hiding in.  A girl can never have too many pairs of moisture-wicking-you-name-it or too many water-resistant-layers-of-this-or-that.  Or yoga mats.  The same holds true for kitchen appliances.  If you name it, there's a good chance I have it.  If, however, you'd named "pasta machine" or "ice cream maker" you'd have proved me wrong... a week ago.  I recently welcomed these two appliances into the D'Eramo collection and they have not let me down.

This past weekend, I decided to break out the new additions.  The plan was to make some fresh pasta with my white whole wheat flour, and some tahini ice cream.  That's pretty much as far as I had gotten in the planning process before jumping right in.  My friend Tony helped me kneed the dough and roll it out.  We attempted two methods.  For half the dough, I used a food processor with a dough blade to combine the flour, eggs, oil and salt.  The other half I combined the old-fashioned way, creating a little egg volcano in the pile of flour.  This latter method proved to be significantly more difficult.  I broke the barrier of flour and ended up with a nice little lava flow of raw egg, headed straight for the edge of the cutting board.  I found myself asking Tony questions like, "This does not look right, does it?" "How much flour do you think they mean when they say 'not all of it'?" "Hmmmm, is it supposed to do that?"  Poor Tony just shrugged, and then Googled a YouTube video for me to watch, which ended up being somewhat helpful.  I will say that the traditional method could be more appropriate for moderating how much flour is added to the dough.  With the processor, it's pretty much an all-or-nothing.  At least the egg-volcano method provides more freedom to gradually increase the flour.  In the end, I don't think the two sets of dough really behaved differently.  Letting the dough rest after it's been kneaded seems to be pretty important.  It definitely relaxed quite a bit.  We struggled with the first batch and it started to tighten up on us from overworking it.  Giving it 30 minutes to re-relax made all the difference in the world.

Rolling the dough out was tons of fun.  It was just like playing with Playdough.  I think that I could eventually do it by myself, but it was certainly helpful to have two people to help guide the dough through and catch it on the other end.  We went down to the thinnest layer for the first sheet and decided it was too thin for fettuccine, so we kept the subsequent layers at a level 2.  After rolling and cutting both batches of dough, we hung the pasta on racks and let it dry while we moved on to the ice cream festivities.  

The ice cream turned out to be a bit tricky.  It basically requires a cooked egg custard as the base.  I let myself get distracted while making the first batch and it boiled, creating a tapioca-looking goo.  I tossed it and tried again.  The second time around the custard came out well, and immediately after taking it off the burner I added the tahini to it and beat it in.  The mixture had to cool completely before being added to the ice cream maker.  An ice cream maker, by the way, is an incredibly simply thing, (unless you get the super-uber-fancy kind).  Basically, you pour this custard into a pre-frozen container and that container does the "freezing" of the ice cream.  The machine itself just insulates the process and turns a mixing apparatus to break up the ice crystals as they form.  It's surprisingly noisy.  All this being said, the ice cream that came out of that little machine was pretty fantastic.

While all this ice cream business was churning in the background, I started thinking about what to put on this potentially fantastic pasta.  I hadn't thought as far as sauce.  After rummaging around a bit, I decided that some hand-crushed canned tomatoes would work.  I rinsed them off to get the seeds and goo off, crushed them by hand, strained them, and tossed them in a deep pan with a little olive oil.  I found some of the leftover cooked Italian sausage I had from earlier in the week and I added that in.  I made a little well in the center of the mixture and sauteed some crushed garlic.  I bloomed some saffron in warm water and added that in, as well as a splash of white wine.  I let that all simmer for a while, reducing the liquid, and then I added the remaining 1/4 cup of the mascarpone cheese I had from Easter brunch.  I served that over the pasta and topped it all with some Romano cheese, served with a bottle of Alta Vista 2007 Atemporal Blend.  The result was pretty much heavenly and the wine paired perfectly.  I'm going to hold on to that little "recipe" in my head, but I doubt I'd ever be able to replicate the magic.  The pasta was extremely easy to cook and very tasty.  I think that if I make it again with the white whole wheat flour, I'll set the machine to the thinnest setting.  I thought the pasta was a bit dense. Everyone else seemed to prefer the thicker pasta, but as the chef, my preference rules.  

Everyone loved the main course and the dessert was a hit as well.  The ice cream was a bit nutty and very creamy and rich.  It was a bit reminiscent of halva, which is a favorite sesame-based treat of mine.  I'm looking forward to all the fun of combinations.  Chile pepper, gorgonzola and blueberry?  Black pepper and cherry?  Rooibus tea and vanilla?  Avocado?  Mmmmmm.  The possibilities are endless!  

Oh, and the shameless title of this post?  I'm going to blame that one on a co-worker of mine who had a bit of elevator-induced inspiration on our way out today.  Thanks Sam!

This weekend I'm attending The Chemistry of Wine which is a wine tasting benefit for the museum.  It's supposed to be about the science behind wine tasting, complete with wine and food.  Right up my geeky wine alley.  More to come on that...

Worth it's weight in gold

A couple of weeks ago, I had an amazing revelation: perhaps I should start using some of the "very special" ingredients that I've been stockpiling.  Like saffron.  I have tons of the stuff.  It's one of the top ingredients that fall under my "ingredient hoarding" compulsion.  Other items in that list would be Madagascar vanilla beans, white truffle salt, hazelnut oil and French gray sea salt.  I would assume that all of these items have a relatively short shelf life (except perhaps the salt).  The irony is that I don't even know what to do with most of these ingredients, so there's really no reason to actively stockpile them; I have yet to hear myself despair, "If only I had more saffron available!"

Fun Fact:  1 pound of saffron requires an entire football field's worth of flowers and can cost up to $5000.

So, what to do with these beautiful little crocus threads...

I decided that paella would be a good use for saffron.  It would also help me use up a portion of the gargantuan bag of frozen giant prawns from Costco.  This was another purchase that was preceded by the thought, "oh, those would be really handy to have around the house!" and followed by the thought, "I don't want to waste those big beautiful prawns on just myself.  I'll save them for a 'special occasion.'"  I think this is how ingredient hoarding usually begins; good intentions, poor execution.

Saffron and prawns, check.  The recipe also called for grape seed oil, which, *shock and awe* I happened to have a full bottle of which was rapidly approaching it's "use-by" date.  I decided to use some of my French gray sea salt at the table and some of my Madagascar vanilla beans for the flan.

I invited two of my coworkers and their female counterparts to join me for this saffron-laden meal, forgetting that one of them is vegetarian.  Apparently he eats seafood and wild game though, which meant the prawns and mussels were in, but what about the chorizo?  As fate would have it, the other coworker (an enthusiastic carnivore) happened to have some caribou chorizo lying around his freezer and he offered it up for the occasion.  Perfect!  I cheated a bit with the free-range organic chicken broth, but otherwise it was very much a farmed-animal-free meal.

The paella was very easy to make.  The sauteed onion, chicken stock, saffron and white wine made a fantastic broth.  I will definitely be holding onto that flavor combination for future creations.

The caribou chorizo was interesting to work with.  It was in hamburger form, so rather than slicing a piece of cured sausage, I formed little meatball-esque gobs of raw ground caribou which I squeezed the liquid out of and then seared in the hopes of creating a stabilizing outer layer.  I was moderately successful, but there was still significant disintegration during the cooking process.  The final product somewhat resembled Cajun "dirty rice".

Overall, the whole process took far less time than I had expected, which meant that it ended up sitting on the burner longer than it probably should have.  The rice lost some of it's structure and was more "spreadable" than I'd have liked, but the fantastic flavor was intact.  The caribou was easily recognizable and it added an intriguing depth to the spectrum of the meal.

My guests brought a spinach salad with toasted almonds and dried cranberries.  The fresh baby spinach leaves provided a great visual contrast against the very warm colors of saffron rice and cooked prawns.

For dessert, I made flan.  I have a love-hate relationship with this dish.  Love it because it's a classic; all creamy and silky, a secret little reservoir of caramel hiding in each ramekin, waiting to be plated.  Hate it because it requires dealing with candy napalm, volatile molten sugar which quickly turns from "slightly caramelized" to "overly carbonized" in a matter of nano-seconds.  I, of course, let my first batch of sugar go a few shades too dark and in a brief lapse of judgement I reached for the cold water tap to both cool and dilute this hellishly hot mixture, hoping to reclaim the pot and start all over again.  Shame on me.  I know better.  Pouring water (with a boiling point of 212 degrees) into a pot of 350 degree sugar will not create more liquid, it will create explosive steam which will project that sticky 350 degree plasma-like sugar right onto the unsuspecting chef.  As soon as I heard the water hit the sugar, I realized my mistake and threw a towel over the pot to try to subdue the little candy volcano I had just created.  I don't often get an adrenaline rush in kitchen, but flan can do it every time.

At any rate, I had to let the sugar cool and harden on its own and then waited it out while the hot tap water unhurriedly washed away the inch of hard candy from the bottom of the pot.  This is equivalent to trying to dissolve a big ol' lollypop in a drinking-fountain stream.  Less than thrilling, but hey, I suppose I'd already gotten my adrenaline fix for the day.  Needless to say, I didn't let the sugar burn the second time around.  I managed to transfer the molten mixture to each of the ramekins and made 16 beautiful little flans.  Unfortunately, they tasted like caramel-covered heaven on a plate, thus ensuring that the Erica v Flan saga shall continue.

Everyone seemed to like the meal, start to finish.  I paired it with a beautiful 2006 Las Rocas Garnacha (one of my favorites!) as well as a Tempranillo blend and a Rioja which I can't remember the names/vintages of.  When I make it again, I'll try it with traditional chorizo and I'll add some chicken pieces.  I'll also try to time it so that the rice doesn't mushify as much.  As far as the flan goes, I'll definitely make it again, and hopefully skip the whole burnt sugar volcano bit.

Here is a photo from Kat's camera phone.  Maybe next time I'll break out the Nikon...

I think that my main goal (ditch the ingredient hoarding habit) was accomplished.  I've definitely given myself the freedom lately to abandon the guilt associated with breaking out my finest ingredients.  That's what they're there for!  I think that as long as I choose options that really show off each of them items, then that's certainly far better than letting them waste away on the shelf, donating their best flavor molecules to the atmosphere.

C'est vrai, non?