I have grown to enjoy trying new food.  I have my wife to thank for introducing me to a wide range of foods that I never really ate before her encouragement.  From my first experience having Thai food to the joy of sushi, I owe it to her.  The exploration continues though, as I go on to cook things we’ve never had before.

Offal, if you’ve never had it, refers to the magical “fifth quarter” of the animal, the stuff that falls off (get it, off-fall?) when you cut it open.  This also includes the extremities, like feet and ears.  Today we’re going to look at some organs and a tissue.  For you vegetarians and squeamish people (and because I don’t have any), I’ll spare you the before pictures.

The most common offal available is liver.  It’s available in many forms, from the grandiose foie gras to buck-a-pound pre-packaged chicken livers.  You may have had pâté, which usually includes the liver of some animal.  My friend, Laurence, makes a mean pork liver pâté studded with tongue.  The flavor and texture is one I find so enjoyable.  Some people, however, turn their noses at it because “it looks like cat food.”  Good… more for us.  Beef liver is available, and is commonly served overcooked and doused with onions to try to cover up the fact that it’s overcooked liver.

You can sometimes find tongue, usually beef tongue, especially if you have ethnic markets available to you.  Americans have tended toward the less-worked, less-flavorful, more expensive parts of the animal, but many in the world have held on to traditional cuts.  I’ve had beef tongue a few times, and none of them were spectacular.  It was beefy, but not terribly flavorful.  It needs to be cooked a long time to make it tender, but in the process it seemed to have lost much of its character.  I recommend you try it… find a good taquería and order one.  If you don’t like it, close your eyes, dump some salsa on it, and pretend it’s actually tenderloin.

Now for the serious stuff, the kind of thing you can’t find at a typical grocery store.  The first is a specialty sausage made with a mix of delicious piggy parts, some spices, some fruit, and blood.  The traditional blood sausage, or boudin noir, is made with caramelized apples and cognac (or calvados), but the Caribbean-inspired riff that I tried (courtesy of Larbo’s skilled manipulation) had raisins soaked in rum.

Since I forgot that it had raisins instead of apples, I stayed true to traditional accompaniments and made simple baked (in butter) apples and crisp-fried (in schmaltz) potatoes, as inspired by the mentions on this page about boudin noir.  As recommended by Larbo, I sizzled the sausages in a skillet until heated through and served them sliced open.  The sausage mixture inside was almost creamy, with a slight metallic hint (blood does have a good amount of iron) in the aftertaste.  The allspice came through as a pleasant warm spice accompaniment to the sausage, and despite the raisin/apple difference, it went very well with the baked apples.

If you learn how to cook potatoes one way, learn how to cook sliced potatoes in a flavorful fat (like lard, goose, or chicken fat) until they are nicely browned all over and crunchy.  I added some lightly sautéed onion and garlic and finished with a sprinkle of parsley.  I could have eaten a bowl of those potatoes.

The other offal experience I recently had was with pork kidney.  I’ve seen them at the University meat salesroom a few times, and was always curious what they’d be like.  Last Friday, when my wife was returning from a business trip, I decided to prepare them as a side dish.  As a filtering organ, I knew there would be a much stronger flavor than, say, tripe or tongue, but there was little advice to be found on the web on how to “purge” them of their offensiveness.  I trimmed the meaty outer portions away from the inner glandular portions and gave them a quick rinse with water.

I did read that overcooking was strictly verboten, as they would quickly become disgusting.  I opted to saute them in a bit of butter, then finish with what I gathered is a traditional mustard sauce.  It was simply a bit of whole grain mustard and heavy cream stirred in at the end.  The mustard and cream worked together with the, ahem, unique flavor of the kidneys to make something that really tasted good.  Our 7-year-old tried them first (without knowing what they were) and said the kidney was “really good.”  To her credit, after we told her what it was, she kept on eating it.  I love that girl!

Edited to add (due to a question via Google Buzz): A friend who reads the blog asked me to be a little more descriptive about the flavor of the kidneys.  Here’s what I said: “I’ll be honest… it had a little bit of acidic twang, but the underlying flavor was deeply meaty. The texture was firm but pretty tender. To put it bluntly, kidneys filter pee and you could taste it juuust a little, but it worked well with the acid and fat of the mustard cream sauce.”

Since my wife loves steak, and I’d heard steak and kidney pie has been a hit in the UK for generations, I made a pan-seared steak, some cannellini beans mashed with truffled goat cheese, some kale for greenery, and a parsnip-potato pancake (improvised from a Union Square Cafe cookbook) for crunch.  As a home-coming meal, it was teetering on the edge between extravagant and overwhelming, but we all managed to enjoy it.  I’ll definitely try to learn more about kidneys and prepare them again.  If you can find them, give it a shot.  As a less-desirable organ meat, they are super-cheap and pack a lot of flavor.

If you want to learn more about offal, there are many great resources.  The local meat master, Larbo, of This Little Piggy, has explored everything but the oink.  Famous chefs are becoming more open about offal, as it becomes more available and trendy in times of economic hardship.  One notable chef is Chris Cosentino, who is known for his offal cooking skills.

“1000 Year Old Food Club” sounds like a dangerous place to be eating anything, but I attended this curiously named event this past weekend and enjoyed food most people will never get to try.  The idea is not old food in the sense of aged or rotten, but in the method behind it.  I forgot my camera, so all the photos you see in this post are courtesy of artist and fellow local food lover, Bonnie Fortune and her iPhone.

Think about the foods you love and think about how they’re made.  If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food you will already understand the difference between how modern versions of old foods like yogurt are different from what our (great-)grandparents ate.  Modern products labeled as yogurt are often made “yogurt-like” with additives that add texture or mouth-feel and flavored with artificial flavors and too much sugar.  Fat-free yogurt is a poor attempt at latching onto the public’s fear of fat, and doesn’t behave the same as the real thing.  Real yogurt, made from raw milk and natural bacterial cultures is good stuff.  There are even different types of cultures that can be used to make everything from watery to stiff yogurt to a slimy, mucus-y substance like the Nordic specialty, viili.  There’s a video showing what the texture is like… watch it if you dare.

The whole premise of this tasting event was to take a trip back a thousand years or so to taste foods made in traditional ways.  There was homemade miso, with some mixed into a porridge.  I really liked how the funky umami flavor of the miso dispersed into the creamy porridge.

There were two sauerkrauts on the table, provided by Dan H. Schreiber.  One was a plain cabbage sauerkraut (which I, regrettably, didn’t try) and another one made with mostly white cabbage but colored deeply with beets.  Sauerkraut is often made with unnecessary additives, rendering it much less healthful than the original fermented formulation of cabbage and salt.  Dan’s is all-natural and tasted fresh and still crunchy.  Sure it was sour from lactic fermentation, but it was a wonderful flavor unlike any sauerkraut I’ve had before.

The meats were, of course, provided by the masterful meat manipulator, Laurence, of This Little Piggy fame.  The chorizo was a solid interpretation of the Spanish cured meat, but the salami was my favorite.  I was told it was a fennel salami, but the peppercorns in it gave little bursts of peppery kick when you met one.  It’s the kind of salami I could munch on all night.

Then there were the dairy products.  This is where the crazy regulators get all antsy in their seats just wishing they could barge in the door and tell us how un-pasteurized milk is dangerous stuff and pour bleach all over everything in sight.  Fortunately this is purchased directly from a farmer who cares about preserving the 1000 year old food that comes out of his cows’ udders.  I was able to advocate for raw milk that night, convincing another attendee that she could drink raw milk just fine, despite her lactose intolerance.  You see, raw milk still has all the stuff that is needed to digest it, including some bacteria and enzymes like lactase (which is what LI folks can’t produce enough of).  I was really happy with the milk, and will definitely be obtaining some in the future.

The other delightfully raw dairy came in the form of a raw milk cheese made by the same aforementioned farmer.  It was a cheddar style, and was by no means a refined, commercial product.  I imagine this is cheese that he makes with extra milk he has for his family to enjoy.  With some age, maybe heavier salting, this could be great cheese.  As it was, it was amazingly light from lack of age, but the flavor of the milk was concentrated.

There are no pictures of it here, but there was a selection of Dan’s chocolate as well as a mint fudge prepared by his business partner, Bill.  If you haven’t heard, Dan is already in the process of finding the right equipment and the right space to start up his own micro- (nano-?) chocolate factory right here in Urbana.  He’s already started making certified (i.e. by the health department, so he can sell it in retail stores) chocolate, drawn up business plans, and by the time I’m writing this who knows what else he’s accomplished?  Keep an eye on his blog to find out all the latest.  Congrats Dan on all that you’ve accomplished so far, and all the success that is sure to come!

This event was “sponsored”, supported, and publicized by the newly resurrected Prairie Table organization.  Prairie Table plans on holding more events like these, tasting excellent locally available products, as well as many other community-building opportunities.  I am already involved with them and hope to be a part of bringing more local food opportunities to the community.  If you’re in the Central Illinois area and are interested in hearing more, go to the website and look around.

EDIT: Of course there are so many things that I’ve nearly forgotten, like home-brewed beer (the stout was tasty).  If anyone in attendance remembers something I didn’t, please let me know!

This is a follow-up from the previous post, trying to cover a collection of recipes from the Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

As you probably saw in the last post, I’ve really been enjoying this book.  Friendly prose, consistent and clear instructions, and excellent photography make it a very useful and easy-to-read cookbook.  There was one recipe, however, that I tried that didn’t quite turn out as well as it should have.  On the flip side, there was one so good that you will be convinced that you can stay home to have great Korean food.  I’ll be sharing that recipe here.

I think part of the problem was my relative lack of experience cooking fish.  After all, in the middle of the vast corn fields of Illinois, there aren’t a lot of good seafood options.  I’m fine with fatty fish, like salmon, and crustaceans (shrimp) and shellfish (clams, et al.) are no problem for me.  When it comes to firm-fleshed white fish, I’m much more comfortable breading and deep-frying it than anything else.  Unfortunately, I made a bad choice of fish for this recipe, which I was really looking forward to.

Have you ever had eel?  Usually served in a sushi restaurant, it’s usually labeled unagi (fresh-water eel) or anago (salt-water eel).  It’s grilled with a dark soy glaze called kabayaki sauce that brings out the meatiness in the eel.  It’s one of my favorite things on a Japanese menu.  The sweet umami-rich kabayaki sauce is made with  soy sauce, mirin, and sugar.  In deference to the relative unavailability of fresh eel and the questionable sustainability of it, Jaden uses it to glaze some firm-fleshed white fish.  And now you can probably tell why it didn’t work out so well.

Alright, it wasn’t really that bad, but my choice of fish (cod) was not the right one.  I should have used the catfish fillets that were suggested.  I also probably slightly over-cooked and under-charred it, which left it a little more bland than I would like.  The sauce is delicious, though, and could be used to glaze or just pour over anything.  On a side note, this was my first time eating edamame (you can see them peeking out behind the fish in the photo).  They’re basically fresh young  soybeans, available frozen in any grocery store.  You just steam them, pop them out of their pods and enjoy.  Soybeans are really good for you, and if you don’t like tofu, this is a great way to eat them.

Kabayaki Sauce

from Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by Jaden Hair

• 1/2 c soy sauce
• 1/2 c mirin
• 3 T sugar

1. Stir ingredients together and bring to a simmer.
2. Simmer 4 to 5 minutes, until it coats the back of a spoon.

One of our stand-out favorites so far from this cookbook is a spicy Korean stew.  I’ve seen the name spelled many different ways–soon tofu, soon doobu, soon tubu, soondubu.  Sometimes they add in jjigae, which Wikipedia tells me just means “Korean stew”.  If you’ve never had soon tofu, it’s usually made with a broth that is rendered deep red and spicy with the liberal addition of Korean chili paste (gochujang) or flakes (gochu garu).  It has silken tofu and a few vegetables, and usually includes seafood or beef, though it’s easily adjusted for vegetarians or vegans.  Once you have the broth and the tofu, though, you can use whatever you like and adjust the spice to your own tastes.  It is customary to serve it with white rice, as it helps to temper the heat of the spicy stew.

Instead of the beef in the recipe, we made it with a frozen seafood combo from a local Korean grocery store.  It had octopus, clam meat, shrimp, and a few other tasty bits.  Unlike the white fish, this turned out perfect.  The combination of creamy silken tofu, chewy seafood, and the bright crunch of the green onions on top make each bite a tasty new exploration into this stew.

Spicy Korean Tofu Stew

from Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by Jaden Hair

• 1 T cooking oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 pound very thinly sliced beef
• 4 c stock or broth (homemade is best, any kind will work)
• 4-8 fresh shitake mushrooms
• 2-3 T Korean chili flakes
• 1 T soy sauce
• 18-oz block or tube of silken tofu, cut into large cubes
• 4 eggs
• 1 t sesame oil
• 2 green onions, sliced on the bias

1. In a pot over medium heat, add cooking oil and swirl to coat.
2. Add garlic and fry until fragrant (about 30 seconds).
3. Add beef slices and fry for 1 minute until browned.
4. Pour in stock, and add mushrooms, chili flakes, and soy sauce.
5. Bring to a boil, then add the tofu and return to a rolling boil.
6. Taste and add additional chili flakes or soy sauce as needed.
7. Crack eggs into the pot and let the eggs cook until the whites are white, but the yolk is still runny.
8. Turn off heat, drizzle with sesame oil, and finish with the green onions.
9. Serve in bowls with white rice.

Since my seafood blend was already cooked, I added it with the tofu, so it only heated through and cooked for a few minutes.  Jaden says you can substitute regular chili flakes in place of the Korean variety, but with so many ethnic groceries, I recommend going for the real thing.  The flavor is fruitier and more complex than the straight-forward hot POW of the chili flakes you put on pizza.

You can look through the table of contents of the Steamy Kitchen cookbook on Amazon (click “Look Inside”).  If there’s any dish that you’d like me to try out, just let me know.

I got a few cookbooks for Christmas this year.  They have all been fun to look through and cook from over the weeks after the holiday.  One of the books I got was the Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by Jaden Hair (who also writes the food blog of the same name).  I was excited to look through it because the recipes seemed simple, but still tasty.  Turns out I was right!

I like to try recipes from cookbooks, unaltered.  This seems to be something that foodies decry as being a silly exercise in mindlessness, because all cooking should be improvisational.  I call bullshit.  I’m happy to improvise and come up with a meal from various cuisines, but if I’m cooking something I’ve never made before, I’m not just going to look at a recipe once and wing it.  I want to understand the intention, what the published dish is supposed to taste like.  In my mind, I’ll compare it with other things I’ve had.  Maybe I’ve had the dish in a restaurant, or I’ve enjoyed other meals in the same ethnic family.  Once I’ve tried it, I can move forward with a little more understanding.

For trained chefs, this is what cooking school seems to be all about.  You learn techniques and flavor profiles from a few different regions of the world and then they are challenged to regularly innovate on those ideas.  If you’ve ever read about someone going through cooking school, read any cooking school text, or watch any episode of Top Chef, you’ll see that chefs are expected to cook from experience, not books.  However, ask them to produce a dish in a cuisine they haven’t mastered and they’ll usually turn up short.

For me, I still feel like I’m learning a lot about Asian food.  The ingredients and techniques are in some ways very different from those used in Western cuisine.  Since I haven’t taken the opportunity to attend any local cooking classes, like those taught by Tien as part of an adult education program, I take my chances learning a lot from books.  Without further ado, let’s get into the book at hand.

Whether you’ve made pho from scratch, or never heard of chap chae, Jaden Hair’s cookbook has something to offer.  Since I have had some experience cooking variations of many of the dishes in the book, some of the recipes worried me a little bit.

How good could “Quick Vietnamese Chicken Pho” be?  Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is supposed to use a richly flavored broth that requires long simmering, not some Rachel Ray 30-minute abomination.  My fears were unfounded, though.  The technique worked really well, infusing classic pho flavors like star anise and clove into chicken stock.  I think the real secret to success here is starting with a good chicken stock.  Trust me, making your own stock is easy and uses up stuff you’d probably just throw away otherwise.  You’re not too stupid to cook.  Apologies for no photos… it was really good and we ate it too fast to stop and take photos.

I’m sure nearly everyone in America has eaten egg rolls in their lives, but how many people think of making them?  Well, we did, using “[Jaden Hair's] Mom’s Famous Crispy Eggrolls” recipe.  I shared a video of my daughter rolling them, but here are some more pictures of the before-and-after, as well as our younger daughter enjoying them with “dip” (a/k/a hoisin sauce).  The proportions of this recipe are huge.  We made about 40 egg rolls, perhaps being a little bit conservative with the filling.  We went on to make a couple dozen pot stickers and a batch of fried rice with the left over filling.

Jaden includes a really great recipe for a peanut sauce that serves as the base for another dish, “Thai-style Chicken Flatbread”.  This one I took her inspiration and ran with it.  After all, it’s really just another pizza topping suggestion.  I made my own dough, since I had the time.  We served it with some brussels sprouts cooked with bacon (not from the book).  This one was pretty popular with everyone in the family.

One dish I wasn’t crazy about was “Clams Sautéed in Garlic and Black Bean Sauce”.  I was lucky enough to go to the store right after a shipment of clams came in.  They were beautiful clams, too.  Unfortunately, the sauce was  a bit spicier than we wanted, and the flavor just didn’t do it for us.  We ate it… all… and enjoyed it, but it’s not on our must-repeat list.  No finished-dish photo, but aren’t the clams lovely?

Chap Chae (or Jap Chae, Japchae) is a dish of sweet potato starch noodles with some vegetables and (usually) beef, flavored with sesame oil and soy sauce.  If you’re used to Italian pasta made from wheat, these noodles are weird.  They start out bumpy and greyish, then when you cook them they turn nearly clear, smooth, and the texture is springy and chewy.  They have very little flavor on their own, but they absorb flavor well.  This dish is one that I order in restaurants often, because I really love it.  The Steamy Kitchen recipe came through again, with a dish that we all loved.

Last, but not least (in this post), I’ll mention a couple of the vegetarian dishes in the book.  We made a big pot of jasmine rice and invited a couple of friends over one night and had the “Garlicky Tofu and Spinach” and the “Asian Style Brussels Sprouts”.  The tofu and spinach were cooked quickly until they were silky and smooth, with a delicious sauce rich with garlic and sesame oil.  Did I ever mention sesame oil is one of my favorite Asian ingredients?  Great stuff.  Anyway, the hardest part of the meal was the brussels sprouts, and only because I took the time to trim and slice them all by hand.  They are cooked quickly with some Vietnamese touches, like fish sauce and lime juice, just to start softening them.  They are bright and still a bit crunchy, offering a contrast to the soft tofu and spinach.  Best part about this meal?  I started when I put the rice in the rice cooker, and had all the food ready just as it was finished.

The theme of this book seems to be fast, flavorful food.  Jaden’s a mom, she does all the writing and photography for her blog and the cookbook herself, she’s obviously putting lessons from her own life on these pages.  The book is filled with so many beautiful photographs of her food, her travel, and her kids.  The great thing is that these recipes work.  It’s not just fast for the sake of being fast.  That said, the speed of Asian cooking usually relies on the cook’s diligence at the cutting board, prepping all the ingredients before-hand.  Take it as an opportunity to practice your knife skills, or an opportunity to buy pre-cut vegetables.

I’ll be doing another post soon with a recipe from the book.  It’s a versatile Korean recipe that you can bend to your will.  Stay tuned!

On a blog note, I’ve adjusted the line spacing (not everywhere yet, gotta track down a working Firebug), as it was mentioned in the survey that the text was a little dense and hard to read at times.  Let me know if you think it’s better, worse, or didn’t notice!

I mentioned in my previous post reviewing Xoco that I really wanted to have the torta ahogada.  Since I’m in Chicago quite infrequently, I had to take matters into my own hands.

First I made some crusty bread.  This is a pretty standard Ratio (5:3) bread, formed into a baguette shape, baked with steam until very crusty.

The centerpiece of the sandwich are the delicious little meats, carnitas, made from a big hunk of pork shoulder.  I used the simpler-than-you’d-expect “Slow Roasted Pork Carnitas” recipe from Rick Bayless himself.  You get tender shreds (or chunks if you prefer) of pork with crunchy surfaces, and all that without the mess of stove-top frying.

I also made some black beans, a blended chipotle salsa, and some pickled onions.  Slice the bread, top with meat and all the fixings, then slide it all into the oven to melt the cheese a bit.  Here it is pre-bake.

So, I wasn’t 100% accurate, but the spirit was there.  My bread was a little too crusty, but the components come together in a symphony of rich, sweet, salty, tart, spicy Mexican flavor.  The pickled onions are vital to balancing the richness of the carnitas, so you should make plenty.  I usually go with a really simple preparation and wish I made twice as much.

Pickled Onions

These things are great on sandwiches, tacos, toss them in salads or eat with a fork–anywhere you want that acidic zing.  Keep them refrigerated and they will stay nice and crunchy.  I like to use cider vinegar, but feel free to use whatever you like or is most appropriate for your dish.  I like them to be crunchy and bold, still offering the heat of the onion.  If you’d like to tame them a little, combine all ingredients and cook anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the texture you’d like.

• 1 medium onion, sliced thinly
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/4 c vinegar (cider vinegar, or whatever you like)
• sugar, to taste (optional)

1. Sprinkle sliced onions with salt, and toss to distribute.
2. Add vinegar and toss to coat the onions.
3. Allow to sit 10-30 minutes, tossing occasionally.
4. Taste and add sugar to balance the vinegar, if desired.

In blog business, the winner (chosen by random draw) of the contest was Stuart, who writes the excellent food blog kitchenhacker.net.  A couple disks of Mexican chocolate (and a little something extra) from Taza Chocolate will be its way to him very soon.  He used to live in the Champaign-Urbana area, and I was fortunate enough to meet him a few times.  When he was in his last-minute moving preparations, he offered me some of his frozen stash that he just couldn’t take with him.  It’s still in my freezer, but it will be featured soon.

Taza is supporting the efforts to aid people devastated by the earthquake in Haiti by donating half of each retail sale on their website through January 22nd.  You can read more about the organization they are donating to in their blog post.  Go buy some chocolate and help a good cause.  I get nothing for telling you this, but there are plenty of people whose lives will be changed.