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.

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.

I’m thinking of coming up with a new feature on the site featuring my daughter in the kitchen.  I think it’s important to bring your kids into the kitchen for many reasons.

• Culinary math is great practice – whether you’re doubling or halving a recipe, or just want to play around with cup to ounce to tablespoon to teaspoon to milliliter conversions, it’s good clean (or messy) mathematical fun.
• When kids take part in making the food, they are more likely to eat it.
• The more kids learn about (healthy) food, the better chance they have to follow better eating habits when they’re older.
• When you’re making food with/for your kids, it’s probably going to be way better for them than the average boxed or frozen meal many kids eat every day.

For our first installment of the (tentatively-titled) SEACCDI (So Easy A Child Can Do It), we have egg rolls.  Well, this is just the rolling part, because there are so many different filling recipes out there.  Besides, if you can get your kid to do the rolling, your workload is very small.

The recipe we used is from the Steamy Kitchen Cookbook, which I got as a Christmas present from my sister (and BIL, and niece and nephew).  I’ll be doing a more thorough review of the book soon, but the quick sneak preview is BUY IT.  If you like Asian food, this is a great collection of tasty but easy-enough-to-cook-on-a-weeknight recipes.  Without further ado, here is my six-year-old explaining how to roll up egg rolls.

If you have a better name for the series (please!) or have some ideas of things I can get my daughter to do in the kitchen, please leave a comment or send an email.

Sorry for the long gap between posts.  I was off enjoying the holidays and the time off.  I hope all of you were able to do the same.

One of my adventures was to the Windy City with my wife and her friend since high school, Stephanie.  Stephanie lives in warm, sunny California, and wants everyone to move there.  Walking around Chicago with snow blowing everywhere, I wished for a moment that I was blessed with the warmth of the Golden State.

We drove downtown and found our way to the corner of Clark and Illinois, where Xoco is located.  If you’ve ever been to Bayless’s other restaurants, Frontera Grill or Topolobampo, Xoco (pronounced sho-ko, meaning “little sister”) is right on the corner of the same block.  Looking through the window you can see the preparation of chocolate and churros (see my earlier post on churros) for eager guests.

When you enter, the space looks very small, just enough for a small kitchen and a winding line to wait in before you order.  While waiting in line you can look at surreal images, like the one at right of children in a churro-cactus forest, or one of a woman riding a torta flying through the air (see that one in the gallery at the bottom of the post).  As you enter, there are only a few tables visible, but it turns out that there is another section of tables further back, but the total seating capacity is probably only 40. Read the rest of this entry »

[View with PicLens]

Fall and winter are a great time to make warm side dishes with big roasty flavors.  Sweet potatoes (previously seen in pie form) are a delicious reason to fire up the oven.  I contributed a recipe for garlic sage roasted sweet potatoes to local mom parent-focused site, chambanamoms.com, for Thanksgiving.  This is a simple-to-prepare side dish that is sure to satisfy.  Make it for a holiday meal when you’re tired of mashed potatoes (as if that ever happens), or any weeknight meal that needs a little seasonal pick-me-up.

Find the recipe over on ChambanaMoms.com.  I made this with butternut squash just a couple days ago and it was delicious.  Just cut them up into cubes, since the squash takes a little longer to cook than most sweet potatoes.

As you may have seen, I’m trying out a gallery plugin to put together a bunch of photos on this post.  If you like it (or don’t), please let me know.

Reminder: if you haven’t already entered the giveaway for some tasty Taza chocolate, go read up on the details and enter!

Photo credit: Megan

A couple weeks ago we traveled up to the Chicago area to visit with family.  Part of our plan was to visit the downtown ice rink, near Millenium Park.  You can skate as much as you want for free, and skate rentals are available for $10.  I hadn’t skated since high school, but I was encouraged to get out on the ice.  We waited nearly an hour in the skate rental line, but ended up spending much more than that on the ice.  It turned out to be a lot of fun for all of us.  Our hearty lunch helped us stay warm despite the very cold temperature and the lack of sun, blocked out by all the tall buildings.

My brother came with us, and was the one who urged us to grab lunch before going skating.  Lucky we did, because we ended up spending way more time skating than we originally expected.

His recommendation was an iconic Chicago deli–Manny’s.  I don’t know all the Chicago area  names, but I’ve read it’s in the South Loop area.  We had a GPS to help us get there.  It opened in 1942 and has been going strong ever since.  According to the Manny’s site, the Zagat review says it’s “[t]he closest thing Chicago has to a New York deli.”  They host various events, and even have a counter inside where you can buy tickets for all sorts of Chicago events.  It’s been reviewed hundreds of times, bolstered in part by President Obama visiting for lunch back when he was just President-elect Obama.

Going in and seeing the long cafeteria-style counter with various menu boards strewn across the wall behind it, I was a little bewildered.  I didn’t really know what to expect, and there wasn’t much sympathy or patience for first-timers like myself.  My brother led the way, since he had been there before, ordering matzo ball soup.  He couldn’t decide between corned beef and pastrami, but was elated when the man behind the counter suggested he get both… mixed.  Off he went with his sandwich, picking up a Green River along the way.

My daughter got a jumbo kosher hot dog (just made that morning, they said), and my wife got a corned beef sandwich.  I got the pastrami sandwich and a side of pasta salad.  All the sandwiches came with a potato pancake.

So, here’s the rundown.  First, Green River soda is just plain wrong.  I tried a sip of my brother’s electric-green beverage and it tasted (as he told me it would) of green “lime” freezer pops.  This is not a bad flavor, per se, but it’s not something I want to consume as an adult.

I tried the matzo ball soup my brother had.  I apologize for not having a photo, but imagine a single large matzo ball (about the size of a racquetball) in a transparent yellowish broth.  I’m not a matzo ball expert.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever had matzo ball soup before, but this couldn’t be a good example.  The matzo ball had very little flavor, though the texture was great, not too dense.  The broth it sat in was even more disappointing, with little flavor to justify the cost.  I think any 89 cent can of broth could compete with this dish.

My pasta salad was boring, tri-color rotini with what tasted like salad dressing.  I should probably take the blame for this one.  Who thinks of a Jewish deli serving good pasta salad?

My pastrami sandwich, on rye, was a disappointment.  The meat was not treated well.  It was fatty and a little stringy, a little dry, but at the same time dripping with greasy juices which ran out and soaked the bread.  This sandwich was all about fulfilling the stereotype of a nearly-impossible-to-fit-in-your-mouth “sandwich” with no attention paid to the inadequate amount of (really delicious, house-baked) rye bread.  It was hard to eat and not that great.  You’d find better at your supermarket.

You can see the potato pancake peeking out on the left behind my sandwich in the above photo.  These could be great, but ours were not.  They weren’t hot enough, were fried at the wrong temperature (too greasy), and held too long (strangely chewy).  The flavor was great, and I could imagine if they were crisp and hot they would be a highlight of the meal.  Instead, they are a pushed $1 add-on to your sandwich.

My wife’s corned beef was the shining star at the table.  It was moist and sliced thin.  It was delicious, and while it was the same height as my overly huge sandwich, it stayed together much better because it wasn’t destroyed by the juices running out and making everything soggy.  If/when I go back, I am getting the corned beef.

It was a satisfying meal, despite the imperfections.  It’s an expensive sandwich ($11.95 each with potato pancake) for us small-town dwellers, but it’s an experience you can’t find down here.  Now, if there were only a way to get great deli meats and artisan breads in C-U.  If you live or eat in the Chicagoland or central Illinois area and can recommend other Jewish delis to experience, please leave a note in the comments.  If you want to try Manny’s, but can’t make it to Chicago, you can order their goods through Tastes of Chicago.

Oh, and if you haven’t already entered the giveaway for some tasty Taza chocolate, go read up on the details and enter!

The contest is closed. However, I’d love for you to fill out the survey so I can keep making the site better.

The humble site you are reading, Clever Food Blog, has only been around about a year.  I appreciate all the emails and comments I’ve received from my readers.  If you’ve shared a link to the site with others, thank you for spreading the word.

Furthermore, I want to make sure that the next year goes even better.  Help me improve the site, help shape it into something you love.  Share a story and your opinions on a bunch of things.  Please fill out my survey, created through Google Forms.

In about a month, after the New Year, I’ll choose a respondent at random to receive 2 (new, unopened) packages of Taza Mexican Chocolate (see the picture… you get 2 disks in each package).  You can read all about these delicious disks in my last post.  I’ll try to figure out something else special to give the lucky winner, and maybe a runner-up as well.  If you’re local, I’d be happy to hand-deliver the prize.  Otherwise, I’m happy to box it up and send it to you wherever you are.

To have a chance at the give-away, you need to fill out my survey.  I love filling out surveys, but what I hate is having to answer questions.  In that light, I made most of the survey questions optional, however the more questions you answer, the better your chances of winning will be (respondents will be weighted based on how many questions they answer).

So go take the survey!

First, to update from previous posts. The chef’s knife that I won has been working out fantastically.  The edge is sharp, and the weight of the knife has been a welcome addition to all my cutting.  It certainly came in handy over the gustatory celebration known as Thanksgiving.

I had a great seasonal recipe published on a local site, featuring more delicious sweet potatoes.  I’ll leave it as a tease now, but I’ll be posting a copy (with links to the original post) very soon.  This is one to bookmark and share with your friends for the holidays and any time you find great sweet potatoes.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, chocolate has been taking over my life.  First it was getting involved with Dan Schreiber.  At some point I started noticing a small, artisan, bean-to-bar chocolate maker out of Somerville, MA–Taza Chocolate.  They’re on Twitter (@tazachocolate), and apparently if you’re in the area, they offer tours of their facility and have a Chococycle that they pedal to local markets and events.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of great chocolate makers out there.  One way that Taza distinguishes themselves is by putting their values in the forefront of what they do.  Their chocolate is not merely fair trade, but Direct Trade.  They work directly with the people who grow their vital raw material–theobroma cacao.  Not only do they pay them more generously than fair trade standards require, but they work with them to ensure they are using organic, sustainable growing practices.  So far, all their chocolate (other than a recent limited release) has used chocolate from a single coop in the Dominican Republic.  In addition to holding their suppliers to high standards, they work for sustainability and eco-friendliness in their own operations, reusing, recycling, and composting wherever possible.  They even work with a local organization to help keep their community green.

Their process is very manual, using vintage machinery that they put a lot of love into.  At the end of the line, the chocolate is wrapped by hand.  Their bars are sealed with a label that has a number corresponding to the batch of chocolate your bar is from.  On Taza’s website, you can put in this number and see all the details of where everything in the bar came from, when it was made, even the signature of the cacao grower the beans came from.  Click the image on the right of one of the bars I had to see all the details for batch #218.

When you unwrap one of these bars, you’re greeted by a shiny bar of dark chocolate.  Each section snaps loudly as you make your way through the bar.  The chocolate has texture, character, owing to the hand-hewn stone grinders they use at Taza.  Pressing it to the roof of your mouth, it slowly melts and the flavors of this 80% dark chocolate unfold with delicious notes of fermented flavors, a surprising brightness (acidity?) and unexpected tropical fruit flavors, like banana.  Before having real artisan-made chocolate, I never experienced chocolate like this.

Their other primary product is Mexican Chocolate, sold in adorable disks pressed with the company name and hand-wrapped in pairs.  They are all 55% cacao, since they are intended for making drinking chocolate, though they are tasty on their own.  For these decadent disks, they offer several flavors on top of their cacao puro, including classic flavors like vanilla, cinnamon, and guajillo chile.  They also offer, for the slightly more adventurous, a yerba maté infused chocolate.  If you’ve enjoyed the bitter South American beverage before, it’s a really neat combination.

Now, I mentioned drinking chocolate, not hot chocolate.  The recommended recipe is one disk to 6-8 ounces of milk, or water if you want to be traditional.  This elixir is intense.  If you love chocolate, this will change your life.  If you snack on the dark stuff every once in a while, and you think it might be too much, share it with a friend.

One of the typical ways that people all over the world enjoy this decadent beverage–from cafes and street carts in Spain and Mexico, to chocolate mexicano advocates like Rick Bayless in his Chicago restaurant, Xoco–is with churros.  I remember having churros in my high school cafeteria, but if you’ve never had them they are essentially fluted tubes of fried dough.  They are often dusted with sugar, maybe cinnamon, and if you’re going over the top, like Bayless does, rolled with finely ground cacao nibs.  Warm churros, with their crunchy exterior and (usually) softer, interior, are delicious on their own, but this classic combination is a winner.  The way the fluted edges hold just enough chocolate to soften them ever-so-slightly is a testament to why this is a lasting match.

As long as you’re not afraid of piping dough into hot frying oil, churros are easy to make.  Most recipes I’ve found make a dough that is too hard to pipe out of anything I have–most churros are extruded from large metal churreros, not plastic piping bags that most of us have access to.  The traditional dough is similar to pâte à choux (you know, the stuff eclairs & cream puffs are made from) without eggs  or butter.  Boil oil, sugar, and water, then turn off the heat, dump in flour and stir, stir, stir.  Bayless’ recipe is available from StarChefs.com (and probably elsewhere).  Since it was way too thick to pipe with my jury-rigged zip-top-bag-with-the-corner-cut (I do screw on a star tip), I added a couple eggs, which softened up the dough enough to allow for precise piping.  Pipe it into hot oil (watch out for splashing), and cook until lightly browned.  Watch the oil temperature though.  If it’s too high, the insides won’t cook enough, and I’ve heard that if it’s too low, they will explode as the outsides will set before the moisture inside has a chance to escape.

If you’re having visions of drinking delicious hot stone-ground chocolate, explore Taza’s online store or ask around at local stores.  In the C-U area, I found some of the Mexican chocolate disks at Art Mart in Urbana.  I’ll be hosting a give-away of some Mexican chocolate disks (and maybe an additional surprise), but it won’t end until after the New Year (expect details in the next week), so if you want some before the holidays, go ahead and order some.

Disclosure: Taza sent me some free samples of their products (see below), with no request or expectation of a review, positive or negative.  I have since bought my own chocolate from them, beyond what they sent, which is why I have some to give away. I like the chocolate and believe in their mission and their quality, which is why I’m spreading the love.

You may have read some statistics recently about childhood hunger in the United States.

• more than 12.4 million – 1 in 6 kids live with food insecurity, and are at risk of hunger
• nearly half of US children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood, and
• 90% of black children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood
• over 900,000 Illinois residents rely on food pantries
• In Champaign County, over 32,000 people (18.8%) live below the poverty line
• In Champaign County, over 7,000 children (18.7%) live below the poverty line

- stats from Share Our Strength, Feeding America, Associated Press article (link broken), and the Eastern Illinois Foodbank

Please click on some of the links to the sources of this information to learn more about how childhood hunger affects our country.  With Thanksgiving and the holiday season are coming up, we are blessed to have an abundance of food in our house, enough to share with friends and family, but others don’t have that luxury.  Giving just a few dollars can make a difference.

If you want to help fight childhood hunger across the United States, donate to Share Our Strength.  $25 dollars can provide three meals a day for a month for a child.

Since this is a food blog, your special incentive here is to donate through fellow (much more famous) food blogger, Carol Blymire, who writes Alinea At Home, and wrote French Laundry At Home.  She is giving away some great cookbooks to five lucky winners.  The only way to get a chance is to donate through her link.  Read all the details and donate to Share Our Strength through her link.

If you want to keep the money local, donate to your local food bank.  Find yours through Feeding America.