To those of you who have been checking back here occasionally, thank you. Some people have written in with comments over the past couple of months, and I’ll try to reply to all as soon as possible.
Summer has pretty much called it quits here in Juneau. Long-time residents have developed a sort of sense for this. This sense usually involves the water getting about knee-high. It rains about ten inches this month, and ten inches next month, then it quits raining. It quits raining when it starts snowing. Those of you who live in warmer areas might consider being grateful for your good fortune.
Green garbanzos are now available frozen. This is a brand new product. Costco has a deal with the packer Califresh. I just picked up a bag at Costco, and they should soon be available all over the US.
This is exciting because green garbanzos have a very short season, and haven’t previously been available, fresh or frozen, outside of the immediate growing area. But they are a prize in India, Mexico, and throughout the Mid-East. Califresh and another company, Clearwater Country, are betting they have a winner. We will probably soon see the effects of their marketing campaign on cooking shows and food websites. If you’re looking for some recipes to start with, check out the websites at Clearwater Country and Califresh.
Green garbanzos should be cooked. You can blanch them for 3 minutes in boiling, salted water, then drain and cool for use in salads, green hummus, etc, or simmer then in soup for much longer, 45 minutes, to soften more.
I’ve seen a few recipes for green garbanzo guacamole, which simply involves puréeing or mashing the blanched garbanzos, and then mashing them together with the avocado and other guacamole ingredients.
Last night I tried them for the first time, and they were delicious. I’m afraid I don’t have a picture, but I can describe what I made.
I pan-roasted some 1″ cauliflower pieces in olive oil, until they were quite browned or even charred in spots on the outsides, but just barely cooked in the middle, then I reserved these. In a large skillet, I browned some ground beef with onions and a little soy sauce, then added a big handful of the green garbanzos and enough beef stock to nearly cover all. Then I returned the cauliflower to the pan, and also added a large tomato, chopped, a couple tablespoons ketchup, a pinch or dry oregano, and seasoned with salt and pepper. I let that simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, then added some WW-flour-and-water paste, and let it simmer for a couple more minutes to thicken the sauce. I served this with garlic bread.
To make the garlic bread, I used a fresh loaf of artisinal pugliese bread (like Italian bread), split lengthwise. I mixed soft butter and mayonnaise 50-50, added smashed garlic, then enough shredded parmesan to make a paste. I spread that on the bread. Then I shaved some onion as thinly as possible, pressed that into the cheese mixture, and topped with fresh-cracked black pepper. Then I baked at 400ºF for about 20 minutes until very browned and crusty.
Following is a picture of a nice salad featuring green garbanzos, along with cucumber, tomato and feta.
Okay, so this might be only tangentially related to cooking, but I just want to mention something about the metric system.
My job primarily involves doing cooking demonstrations for people who’ve come to Alaska for vacation (it’s a great job), and I meet people from all over the world. Sometimes people read my recipes and ask me what I mean by “2 c.”
“Excuse me, what does ‘2 c.’ mean?”
“That’s two cups.”
“Oh.”
“Where are you from?”
“The U.K.”
“Hey, we got these measurements from you!”
These people are used to reading recipes like this:
400 g canned pink Alaska salmon
300 g courgettes
150 ml Dry white wine
50 g shallots
25 g cornflour
175 g Gruyere
I’ve been reading recipes on the internet for many years, and I’ve become accustomed to finding recipes in English measurements. But this is changing. I’ve noticed that some professional cooking websites are now using metric measurements.
The world internet is becoming more international. For the last 20 years, the US has dominated. It used to be you could assume a website was US-based and US-focused, but that’s changing.
Here’s a map of all the countries that use the metric system. Metric system countries are in green, the other ones are in red. There are only three countries that don’t use the metric system: the US, Liberia, and Myanmar.
Chego is a restaurant in Los Angeles that serves up a modern fast-casual Korean fusion cuisine. The chef, Roy Choi, is responsible for the Kogi BBQ taco trucks in L.A. that are immensely popular with the late night club crowd. Kogi serves up a fusion of Korean and Mexican, specializing in tacos filled with Korean barbecued pork and kalbi, with other Korean flavors. You can have a look at their menu at the link above.
Chego apparently offers a little different style. Here are some beautiful pictures of some of their offerings. I love seeing creations like this. Here’s a picture of their Hot Dog and Ketchup Fried Rice. I’m assuming the fried rice is underneath the fried egg and other garnishes.
If you enjoy Log Cabin syrup, here’s something to pour it on. This is a breakfast cabin, made with sausage links, bacon curtains, and a waffle roof. Please don’t eat the chimney. Or the curtain sashes. In general, I’d look out for skewers, toothpicks, and possibly some metal.
In the future, I’m sure pretty much all our food will look like this.
Since we’re on the subject of fun food, please let me point you in the direction of Jim’s Pancakes. Jim has figured out a great way to make artistic pancakes…by using a squeeze bottle filled with pancake batter! He adds a bit of food color at times to make pancakes that resemble, well, anything. Here’s a giraffe:
Giraffe Pancake
His daughter then eats the pancakes, which I’m sure works out great for her. Here she looks pretty psyched about her pink monster pancake.
An engineer takes a crack at perfecting the PB&J. According to his post here, he says, ” The jelly spreads more than you think. The first bite may a have a little more peanut butter, but there’s still jelly in it. Try it some time.”
And so proudly forward strides human progress. Click on the picture to enlarge.
Here at Chez Alaska, we use a Yukon sourdough starter that has been passed down from person to person by Alaskans since the time of the Klondike gold rush. Drop us an e-mail if you’d like to buy some; we’ve dehydrated the starter culture, and it can be reconstituted in a flash.
This past winter I did a bit of experimenting with sourdough, and breads in general. In particular, I tried to replicate the flavor and texture I associate with San Francisco-style sourdough. The flavor has a very pronounced tang, and the crust is chewy and pliable, with an almost bagel-like shine, and bubbles. I think those little bubbles are key. The interior, or crumb, is rather dense, and has a heterogenous character, holes of all different sizes.
Local supermarkets make sourdough in their bakeries, but I think for the most part, these supermarket bakeries now just thaw frozen dough rather than making their own from scratch. (I’ve visited institutional bakeries where almost everything, breads, pies, cookies comes in pre-made and frozen, and the baker’s prep work essentially consists of opening hundreds of boxes from a giant freezer.) Often this kind of sourdough is as light and airy as french bread. Seems like they just added tangy chemicals to their basic french bread/baguette dough, and called it a day. Maybe they throw in a small amount of real sourdough culture so they can label the product as sourdough.
My own initial attempts with sourdough breads turned out extremely dense, with homogenous hole structure, and hardly any discernible sour flavor. By switching from all-purpose flour to unbleached bread flour, I got a lighter, better rise and better hole structure. Unbleached bread flour has more gluten than almost any other flour, and the gluten is responsible for the rise. All whole wheat flour produces a sourdough that’s almost as dense as pumpernickel.
To increase the tangyness, I tried increasing the rise time, from 2 hours to 5, and that helped a bit. What worked even better was to make a pre-ferment with the starter and half the amount of additional flour, and then let that wet mixture work for a few hours, then let it rise in the refrigerator for a half day or more. Then I would add the rest of the flour and the salt, knead it into a good dough ball, and let that rise for a few more hours. So basically we’re talking a two day procedure, minimum. This also helps the crumb develop different-sized holes, rather than coming out like Wonder Bread.
Sourdough starter is a culture of many different wild microorganisms, mostly yeasts and bacteria. The tang comes from bacterial acids, primarily from lactobacilli, which are used for making yogurt, cheese and kimchi, and Acetobacter and other acetic acid bacteria, used for making vinegar. Enzymes already present in wheat flour break starch down into simple sugars, and the yeasts convert the sugars into CO2 gas and alcohol. Lactobacillus converts sugars into lactic acid, and Acetobacter converts alcohol into acetic acid. Refrigerating the dough inhibits lactobacilli more than the other microorganisms, leaving more sugar for the yeast, and producing more alcohol. This in turn encourages the production of more acetic than lactic acid; and acetic acid is much tangier. Letting the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator will help produce a stronger sour flavor. I suppose some people prefer sourdough that has less tang, but I figure if you’re going to go for sourdough, you might as well go all in. In either event, a very tangy sourdough bread when toasted, beats all other breads hands-down.
Longer proofing times are great, but it’s possible to overproof. When that happens, the yeast has consumed most of the available sugars, and is on a maintenance diet. Starch is still continuing to be enzymatically converted into sugar, but a a constant rate. But the dough needs to contain some free sugar for it to spring in the oven. When the dough hits the hot oven, the heat initially turbocharges the yeast into super-activity, causing the spring, or oven rise. Later, the heat kills the yeast and crusts the bread, fixing its final shape. But if the dough has overproofed, it won’t spring, and will remain very dense.
King Arthur has a solution for achieving extra tangy sourdough by adding citric acid. The recipe is here. Powdered citric acid can usually be found in the baking section of the supermarket, or sometimes in the health supplements section.
In order to get that shiny, pliable crust, you need to use a spray bottle of water, and mist the oven when you toss in the bread, to increase the humidity. Some people also place a pan on the lower shelf, and after preheating, fill it with ice or water when putting the bread in the oven.
Peter Reinhart illustrates this technique beautifully. If you’ve never heard of Peter Reinhart, he’s pretty much one of the reigning gurus of artisanal (AR´-tizz-i-nul) breads. He’s also a former monk, which is kind of cool. There are some other videos of his here, which are very informative.
He’s using a baking stone here, and has had his oven preheating for probably an hour at its hottest temperature, then he probably turns it down to 400°F or so when he slides in the bread. The baking stone will quickly transfer its heat into the dough, creating a good spring. He has let the bread rise on pieces of parchment paper to facilitate transfer to the stone, and he uses the back side of a baking sheet in lieu of a peel.
A baker's peel.
Another baking tool you might consider getting is a baker’s blade, or lame (lahm). That’s what you use to make the characteristic slashes on the top of a bread loaf. The razor blade in the lame works better and faster than a serrated-edge knife, which is the next best thing. The purpose of those slashes is not primarily decorative — the bread will crack open somewhere, and by using the lame you can control where that occurs. Especially when using a stone, the loaf can develop cracks near the bottom edge, which can cause the bottom of the loaf to become too dry.
A lame.
Edit: A friend writes that commercial bakers probably use a starch glaze to get the sourdough shine. Make a very thin glaze of 1 tsp. cornstarch and 1/4 c water, and brush on the loaves for the last 10 minutes of baking.
A mayonnaise cure is essentially a marinade. Seafood or other foods are coated with a mixture of mayonnaise and other seasonings, and then baked or grilled. Mayonnaise is basically oil emulsified with raw egg yolk, a powerful binding agent. This emulsified fat mixture transforms during cooking into a sort of glaze, and it helps to keep moisture in the fish as it cooks. Used as a thin coating, it is almost invisible on the finished product, or used thickly, becomes a kind of sauce.
A simple mayonnaise cure involves mixing mayonnaise with fresh herbs, crushed garlic, dijon mustard, and/or lemon juice and zest. All those things together actually works out quite well.
Simple Mayonnaise Cure
1/2 c mayonnaise
1 Tb dijon
1 tsp garlic, crushed
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 Tb chopped fresh herbs
fresh cracked pepper to taste
This makes enough for 4 8-oz. fillets. Rub the mixture onto deboned fillets and bake or grill.
Depending on the type of cuisine you are cooking, you can easily whip up a compatible mayonnaise cure. For Asian cuisines, a mixture of 2 parts mayonnaise with 1 part soy sauce is a real winner. Or like this:
Oyster Sauce Mayonnaise Cure
1/2 c. mayonnaise
3 Tb. oyster sauce
1 Tb. Chinese black bean garlic sauce
.
A decent southwestern chipotle marinade:
Chipotle Mayonnaise Cure
1/2 c. mayonnaise
1 Tb canned chipotle chiles in adobo, minced, plus some of the sauce, to taste
2 green onions, sliced and then minced
.
The mayonnaise cure is the basis for a family of rather rich baked fish recipes involving bread crumbs and/or parmesan cheese in or on top of a mayonnaise coating. Sometimes mayonnaise is mixed 50/50 with sour cream, sometimes it is mixed with parmesan and/or sliced green onions. Often this mixture is layered thickly on fish fillets, and then topped with bread crumbs before baking. The queen of such recipes is Halibut Olympia, of which many versions exist, but here’s a good basic one.
Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut halibut into entree size portions – approximately 3×4 inches. Place halibut filets in single layer in buttered baking pan. Combine sour cream, mayonnaise, green onions, bacon, garlic powder, salt, pepper, basil and thyme. Cover halibut with sauce and top with bread crumbs. Bake at 400°F for 18 minutes. Remove from oven and top with Parmesan and return to oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork. It should be white and moist. Serve hot with rice pilaf and a green vegetable.
Some Halibut Olympia recipes are much simpler than this. An older Alaskan recipe, which appears to predate Halibut Olympia, comes from Pelican, a small fishing community near Juneau. This is Halibut Caddy Ganty, named after its creator, Caddy Ganty. This recipe is unique in that it calls for first marinating the halibut in white wine, before rolling in bread crumbs, and then topping with the mayonnaise mixture.
Halibut Caddy Ganty
2 lb. Halibut, fresh or defrosted
white wine to cover
sourdough bread crumbs
2 c. sour cream
1 c. mayonnaise
1 c. finely chopped onions
Paprika
Take two pounds of filleted halibut cut into pieces approximately 1″ thick and 3″ x 3″, and put into a bowl, lightly salting and pouring wine over each layer until the fish is all in. Cover the fillets, and set in a cool place to marinate for two hours.
Drain the fillets and pat dry with paper towel or cloth, then roll in dry bread crumbs. Place the crumbed fillets in a single layer in a lightly buttered baking dish which can be brought to the table, and cover with the following topping:
Mix sour cream, mayonnaise and chopped onions and spread thickly on top of the fillets in the baking dish, smoothing it out to the edges so the fish is covered completely. Sprinkle the top with paprika and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until light brown and bubbly and an instant reading thermometer reads 125 degrees in the thickest part. Serve at once.
I think the soaking in wine part comes from an effective practice for refreshing previously-frozen halibut (or other seafood). Fish which is just past its prime of freshness naturally begins to acquire a fishy odor, and when the odor is still slight, it can be removed by washing the fish in a slight acid solution, such as with lemon juice and wine. Fish which has been frozen has an additional problem, in that the fats may have started to degrade and become slightly rancid. Also, both the fat and the flesh can become freezer-burned. The best way to combat this is to skin the fish, and carefully cut away all the slighty brown parts, which are fat, and also any parts that have been exposed and which are freezer-burned….and then soak the fish for an hour or two in white wine, then wash with lemon.
Now, you should never accept fish from a fishmonger if it smells fishy, and never accept it if served to you in a restaurant. But interestingly, fish that smells a bit fishy is perfectly safe to eat. The initial fishy smell is caused by natural enzymes in the fish breaking down the flesh, not by bacterial decomposition. Bacterial decomposition occurs later, and smells different, like rotting fish, hmm, what a coincidence. Fish degrades much faster than the meat of land animals because the enzymes in fish flesh are designed to operate at very cold temperatures. When the fish warms up even temporarily to above 40°F or so, the enzymes become super-active, and start denaturing proteins like mad. That’s why fish should be cold held at as close to 32°F as possible, such as when packed in ice, and why it seems to spoil so quickly, even when refrigerated at 40°F.
