Schizodigestive — All Food, All the Time

Kip of the Week: Pantera’s Faisanjan. July 5, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, chicken, entertaining, exotic!, fruit.
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Persian food is distinctively delicious because a lot of its flavors are strong and unusual at the same time. Few other cuisines are as enthusiastic about combining fruit and/or nuts with meat, and I don’t know of another one that’s as devoted to sour sauces.

For years I shrugged off this dish because I couldn’t abide the idea of juicing half a dozen pomegranates. Then suddenly, bottled pomegranate juice became an antioxidant darling of my supermarket’s cold case, and — hey!

Try this on a night when you feel tired of everything you’ve ever cooked. Trust me, it’s different. Allow two chicken thighs per serving, and make lots of rice.

four to eight chicken thighs
two tablespoons butter
one large, or two medium, onions
two cloves garlic
one cup walnuts
one cup pomegranate juice
two cups boiling water
one-quarter cup dried cranberries
eight fresh or dried apricots
one small cinnamon stick
salt and pepper to taste

Put the cranberries in a cup and, if you’re using dried apricots, dice them and add them too. Pour the boiling water over the fruit and cover the cup with a saucer. Let this sit while you do the rest. If you’re using fresh apricots, chop them and set them aside.

Mince (don’t slush) the onion.

Process the walnuts, garlic, and pepper together, to a paste.

In a pan large enough for the whole dish, brown the chicken thighs quickly and thoroughly. Set the meat aside and pour off and discard the fat, keeping as much of the nice brown stuff in the bottom of the pan as possible. Add the butter to the pan, let it melt, add the chopped onion and sauté it till it’s golden.

Add the walnut-and-garlic paste and stir thoroughly.

Add the pomegranate juice, the fruit with its liquid, and the cinnamon stick, and bring the sauce just to a boil. Return the chicken to the pan. Cook at a simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, until the chicken is very tender. Add the chopped fresh apricots if you’re using them, and salt as needed.

Serve with rice. If you want to be really Persian, serve a green salad with crumbled feta cheese, mint leaves, and lightly toasted walnut pieces.

KotW: Beet-and-carrot curry. June 23, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, exotic!, vegetarian.
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This is an adaptation of the curried beet recipe to be found at http://curryinkadai.blogspot.com/2007/11/cant-beet-this.html, to which I’m deeply indebted. I had a few more vegetables to add and, sadly, not quite as wide a spectrum of Indian ingredients; before I make this again, I mean to go to Berkeley and scout up some curry leaves. Regardless, this was delectable, and I regard it as an excellent candidate for additional development.

one bunch fresh beets (2 to 4, with greens)
four to eight small or medium carrots; if tender and thin-skinned, don’t peel
one cup frozen green peas, slightly thawed
1 cup medium or hot salsa verde or, if you’re lucky, New Mexico green chile sauce
two tablespoons skinless red lentils (masoor dal)
two tablespoons finely chopped ginger
one teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
one teaspoon black mustard seeds
one teaspoon whole cumin
one-quarter teaspoon ground turmeric
two tablespoons corn or canola oil

Cut greens off beets, stem the greens and soak them thoroughly in cold water. Put beets in a saucepan with cold water to cover, bring water to a boil, and cook beets for five minutes. Remove beets from water, allow to cool, and rub skins off beets under running water. Drain and chop beet greens; combine greens with frozen peas.
Cut beets and carrots into chunks. In food processor, julienne beets and carrots.

Heat oil in wok or sauté pan. Add lentils, cumin seeds, black and yellow mustard seeds, sauté until mustard seeds start to jump; then add beets, carrots, and ginger, and stir-fry until vegetables are almost tender. Add the greens, peas, and turmeric, and continue to stir-fry until greens are barely limp and peas are fully flawed.

KotW: Portobello mushrooms and an application. June 18, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, pasta, saucy, vegetarian.
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Again we are in the realm of the upscale vegetable. As I write, decent portobello mushrooms are about the same price per pound as top-grade hamburger, and in my view offer a better reason for paying it. But once you have them, you have to be careful; you want to bring out robust earthy flavor without bitterness, and alluringly meaty texture without toughness. It took some experiments to hit the note, but here’s how.

4 medium-to-large portobellos
3 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
one large clove garlic skinned and crushed
one teaspoon salt

Rinse the mushrooms well and trim their stems. Skin them by tearing off triangles of skin from the edge to the center. Put the skin, the gill cover [if any], water, oil, and salt in the saucepan and simmer for 20 minutes.

Put the mushrooms, caps down, in a wide casserole, strain the liquid over them, and add the garlic. Cover and braise in a 275°F oven for an hour and 15 minutes. The mushrooms will be both tender and tasty, but save every drop of the broth, which is some of the most potent mushroom stock imaginable.

now make

MUSHROOM, TOMATO AND PEPPER STEW WITH PASTA

mushrooms from above recipe, cut in chunks
mushroom broth from above
3-4 fresh ripe tomatoes, skinned, cored and chopped
2-4 red bell peppers or sweet red chiles, roasted, water pack
1/2 lb. penne, fusilli, farfalle or any chunky pasta
four to six cloves garlic skinned and chopped
two tablespoons good olive oil
one tablespoon fresh sage, minced, or one teaspoon dried sage, crumbled

Cook the garlic in the oil till golden. Add the sage and stir till you smell it. Quench the pan with the mushroom broth.

Add the mushrooms, tomatoes and peppers and keep the mixture over very low heat — you want it quite warm but not cooking.

Cook the pasta in oiled salted water till it’s about two minutes short of your preferred doneness. Drain it, add it to the vegetables, and bring it to serving temperature. I swear this is one of the most flavorful dishes I ever made, or ate.

KotW: Southwestern Stew. June 8, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, New Mexico, soups and stews, tomato.
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had two pattypan squashes from the vegetable box, which I wanted to cook while they were really fresh. I was thinking about New Mexico and the NetHeadChef, for a customary constellation of reasons. And I had a nice batch of stock from the most recent roast chicken…

one cup dried small white beans
one-half cup red (skinless) lentils
two cups boiling water

Put the dried beans and lentils in a large cup, pour the boiling water over them, cover the cup with a saucer and leave it for at least two hours.

3 quarts carcass stock or box stock
one 15-ounce can diced tomatoes with diced green chiles
OR
one 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
one 7-ounce can diced green chiles
one large or two medium yellow onions, chopped

one teaspoon ground cumin
one teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
one-half teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
one-half teaspoon red flake pepper, or more to taste

two medium pattypan squashes, trimmed and chunked
three medium or six small carrots, trimmed and chunked
three large or six medium cloves garlic

12 ounces or one pound interesting earth-toned sausage, like chicken mushroom, chicken artichoke, chicken apple
one 15-ounce can whole kernel corn with diced bell peppers
one-quarter teaspoon ground nutmeg
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Combine the soaked beans, chicken stock, tomatoes and chiles, and chopped onions, and cook at a high simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, until the beans are almost tender and the lentils have almost dissolved. Add the cumin, thyme, oregano, and red flake pepper.

With the grating blade of your food processor, grate the squash, carrots and garlic together and add this to the pot, and simmer for 10 more minutes. Slice the sausage, add it, add the corn, and bring the soup to a boil, stirring for five more minutes. Add the nutmeg, and the salt and pepper as desired. This is tremendously satisfying without being heavy and, unlike most complicated soups, doesn’t need cold weather as a backdrop.

KotW: Wow for wowshi. March 23, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, restaurants, reviews.
Tags: exotic!, red meat
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West Los Angeles, less imposing than downtown to the East and less posh and pricey than Santa Monica to the west, is a Shangri-La for cheap eats. Today, let’s talk about wowshi.

Wowshi, if you’ve never met them (I never had), are a Middle Eastern take on calzone — a spicy meat filling wrapped in pita dough, then baked to a delectable brown. Contrasted to the Italian contender, there’s no messy red sauce, the fillings are more varied, and the bread jacket is far more tender and flavorful. This is a big win.

Last night I had my first wowshi at Bella Pita on Westwood Boulevard. This is a little vest pocket of a place that seats about 10, cozily, and does a robust trade over its counter. The menu is not only wowshi, but more formal sandwiches on the same delectable home-baked pita, as well as falafel, and side dishes like french fries, fried cauliflower, black beans, and Kalamata olives. Naturally, I didn’t and couldn’t sample everything in a single visit, I only wanted to. And, of interest in these trying times, there’s not a thing on the menu over seven dollars — which is why this place does a roaring lunch business with rave reviews.

If you happen to be in West LA, you’ll find a ton of really good ethnic fast food, most of it cheap. Give serious thought to Bella Pita, which is a place I’d go back to any time — and we know I’m picky.

Bella Pita
1945 1/2 Westwood Blvd.
West Los Angeles
Monday-Saturday 11 a.m. — 9 p.m.

KotW: Citrus Chicken. February 25, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, chicken, entertaining, fruit, quick & dirty, saucy.
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This is just about guaranteed to be new to your guests, and it’s soooo easy.

chicken pieces
flour [optional]
salt
pepper
thyme
1 or 2 oranges
1 or 2 lemons
1/2 to 1 bottle white wine (I prefer a dry one like a pinot grigio, but you could experiment with something like a riesling, just stay away from chardonnay which doesn’t cook well)

If you like extra browning, shake the chicken pieces in a bag with flour, salt and pepper, but that’s really optional. In a large skillet brown them nicely on both sides, being careful to dry out but not burn the juices in the bottom of the pan. Meanwhile seed the fruit, if necessary, and slice it thinly, discarding the ends.

Remove the browned chicken from the pan and line the pan with a layer of orange and lemon slices, then replace the chicken and season it with salt, pepper and thyme. Cover the chicken evenly with the rest of the orange and lemon slices.

Add half the bottle of wine, raise the heat, and bring the wine just to a boil. lower the heat to a simmer, cover the pan, and let everything cook for 20 to 25 minutes. Check it two or three times and, if a lot of the wine has evaporated, add more; there should be plenty of pan juice when the dish is done.

Serve with rice, couscous, orzo, kasha, or anything sort of grainy that’ll soak up the juice. I’ve made this dish two or three times a year for thirty years and it usually gets raves.

Kip of the Week: Pörkölt. February 17, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, herbs & spices, red meat.
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Ah, Hungarian cooking. Especially Hungarian national dishes!… oh, wait, everything out of a Hungarian kitchen is a national dish. But I’m speaking here specifically of the world-renowned meat dishes of the Hungarian prairie — gulyás (goulash) and gulyásleves (goulash soup, which is not goulash, but is still good,) pörkölt (which has never been translated into English because everybody in an English-speaking country thinks all Hungarian stew is goulash), and finally paprikas (”paprikash”) which is what you make when you don’t want your stew to have water in it. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

There are articles, there are books, and for all I know there are fistfights, about the precise distinctions among these dishes. However, they all depend on one of Central Europe’s most robust culinary armatures — red meat, onions, paprika, potatoes or pasta, and some sort of stock. Confronting this, one can only say “How could I go wrong?” And, really, you can’t; but a little extra attention to technique makes for an entirely superior result.

Some day I’ll develop a goulash recipe, but I just don’t have time today to write that book. So let’s concentrate on (very) good (very) old pörkölt, which is really the wellspring of almost all Hungarian stews.

three pounds of stew beef, or a three-pound boneless chuck roast, or a three-pound boneless cross-rib roast
three pounds yellow onions (say, four to five medium)
one tablespoon oil
two Anaheim peppers
two cloves of garlic
three tablespoons sweet or hot paprika
OR
two tablespoons paprika and one tablespoon Santa Fe or Chimayo chile powder
OR
either of the above plus red flake pepper to taste
two teaspoons Bell’s poultry seasoning
one teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
one-half teaspoon dried marjoram, crushed
one teaspoon salt
one-half teaspoon ground black pepper
water or stock, as given

If you’re working with the chuck roast or cross-rib roast, cut it into nice bite-size pieces. Also skin and chop the onions, so as to have them ready.

Warm up a large sauté pan or metal casserole, and put the oil in it. Cover the entire bottom of the pan with a single even layer of beef pieces, so that there are no gaps. (You may have to do this in two batches.) Turn the heat to medium or medium-high.

As the beef cooks, juices will bubble up in the gaps between the pieces. So long as this is happening, the pan needs only occasional attention. Once the bubbling stops, though, watch the pan like a hawk, because you want all the juices to dry out and brown nicely, but not scorch! Just when the pan juices are the right shade of brown, the beef pieces will unstick from the pan, so take them out with a spatula and set them aside. IMMEDIATELY add the onions, along with a little more oil if the pan is very dry, and stir until the onions start to shed water and dissolve and pick up the dried pan juices. Here you can lower the heat a bit and cut back to stirring occasionally, so top, seed and chop the Anaheim peppers and crush the garlic.

When the onions are a uniform, appetizing brown, add the chopped peppers, crushed garlic, paprika, Bell’s seasoning, thyme, marjoram, salt and pepper, and stir until everything is nicely mixed.

Put the onions, spices and herbs in the bottom of the casserole, then put the meat on top, and add stock or boiling water JUST to cover everything. Keep on a high simmer on the stove, or in a 275° oven, for… oh, an hour to 90 minutes, tasting occasionally to make sure that the beef is tender but not flaky. Serve with noodles or boiled potatoes, and I highly recommend boiled carrots or steamed cabbage as a vegetable side.

KotW: A memory of beef February 15, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, food philosophies, red meat.
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Probably in 1976, in a restaurant in San Francisco’s Japantown called Sanppo, I had one of the most intriguing Japanese appetizers I’ve ever had. On the menu, it was called “Grilled Beef.”

It was simply two large cubes of beef, which had been grilled, but on one side only. The side of the cube touching the plate was almost, but not quite, charred. The visible top was almost, but not quite, raw.

Give that a thought. It means that a bite of that beef, a vertical slice, comprised infinitesimal layers of every possible degree of doneness — therefore every possible intrinsic flavor — that the meat could have. By a cooking method so simple as to seem slipshod, a genuinely complex and elegant dish had been created.

Now — okay. To begin with, those two cubes were beef of a quality that would be very difficult to buy on the open market. Also, the cooking had been done with fanatical care; I’ve tried to duplicate it since, and have only come close. But whether I’m brave enough to use this technique to create an appetizer, I sure have learned something about browning beef before I stew it. And we’ll get to that tomorrow, when I post a recipe.

KotW: Pork with Pears, Lentils, and Plum Sauce February 5, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, all-in-one, exotic!, fruit, herbs & spices, pig pig pig.
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[In North America we have an odd attitude toward fruit; we want to cook it only when it’s perfectly ripe. That insistence makes for great apple and peach pies and strawberry jam, but in other contexts it’s awfully limiting. For example, what would the great Cuban beef dishes –- picadillo or ropa vieja or boliche -– be without a side of fried plantains? Unripe fruit is an estimable staple in savory cooking.

So find a few really rock-hard pears and try this. I give two slightly different versions, one using fresh plums if it’s the right time of year, the other substituting dried fruit and factory sauce. ]

1 1/2 cups green or brown lentils
two cups boiling water

two medium yellow onions, chopped
two tablespoons oil
one pound boneless lean pork, sliced

two to four unripe hard green pears, peeled and cored (depending on size, enough to make four cups chopped)

If you can get them:
four tart purple plums, seeded and cut up
Otherwise:
eight dried apricots
one-half cup Chinese or Japanese plum sauce, from a jar

four to six cloves of garlic
a piece of fresh ginger the size of a walnut, peeled and sliced
one-quarter cup dry sherry
one-quarter cup cider vinegar or rice wine vinegar
one tablespoon sriracha, or more to taste

Put the lentils in a large measuring cup, pour the boiling water over them, and let them sit. If you’re using the dried apricots, put them in a smaller cup, pour boiling water over them to cover, and let them sit too. Chop the pears.

Sauté the chopped onions in the oil, allowing them to brown generously. Add the sliced pork and stir until the meat loses its pink color. Add the chopped pears, the lentils, and the soaking liquid, stir, and leave at a simmer.

Drain the dried apricots, if you’re using them. In a food processor, mince the garlic and ginger till it settles on the walls of the tank. Add the cut-up plums OR the dried apricots, and purée. Add the sherry, the vinegar, the plum sauce if you’re using it, and the sriracha, and blend.

Pour the plum sauce over the meat-lentil-fruit mixture, turn up the heat and bring it to a boil. Ideally, the pears will still have a tiny bit of crunch, and the lentils will be nutty-tasting and firm. Correct the seasoning.

KotW: Unbelievably Complicated Borscht January 28, 2009

Posted by panterazero in Kip of the Week, all-in-one, chicken, holidays, potatoes, poultry, soups and stews.
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If you’re like me, your early experience of borscht was with the over-refined broth often served as a starter course for Jewish holiday dinners. It looks like cranberry-grape kool-aid and tastes like a nondescript root vegetable; if you’re lucky it’s elaborated with a few shreds of beet or carrot; and if you garnish it with sour cream it’s not bad, really.

Nahhhh.

With a tip of the chef’s hat to my old pal Harriett, I give here the recipe for the reason the Soviet Army beat the Waffen-SS; the borscht that was in the fuel tanks of the first Sputnik; borscht that could make a chronic emphysema patient run the high hurdles. Plan about three days ahead to make an eight-quart pot of this stuff, which will take hours and cost you serious money. And when it’s done and boiling, if a wooden spoon won’t stand up in the middle of the pot, you missed the bullseye.

STEP ONE.

3- to 4-pound whole chicken
one large yellow onion
Seasoning as for Roast Chicken

Season the chicken and stuff it with the peeled onion. Roast it till done, but moist; water the roasting pan (at least) midway through so the drippings don’t burn. Put the chicken in a bowl to catch the draining juices, and allow it to cool. Strip the chicken (don’t be compulsive about getting the last of the meat off the carcass) and refrigerate the meat.

STEP TWO.

bones and skin of the chicken
pan drippings and collected juice
onion from cavity, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
bay leaf
1 clove garlic, smashed but not skinned

Put all the above in an 8-quart stockpot and cover it with 6 quarts boiling water, then simmer for several hours — I let it bake overnight in a 225-degree oven. Refrigerate until you can remove the fat easily, 24 to 36 hours. Meanwhile

STEP THREE.

1 bunch fresh beets (4 to 8 beets depending on size) with greens

Cut the greens off the beets. Stem the greens and wash them THOROUGHLY in 2 or 3 changes of cold water. Boil the beets in lightly salted water for 15 to 20 minutes. Shred the greens. Let the beets cool slightly, peel and chop them. Put beets and greens into a tightly covered plastic container and refrigerate.

STEP FOUR.

two pounds meaty beef short ribs (2-3 ribs)
two or three yellow onions skinned & diced
one or two peeled baking potatoes
one tablespoon oil
the stock from step two

Skim the fat off the stockpot. Lots of stock will stick to the stocktrash, so let it drain into a colander into a big bowl. Discard the stocktrash. Wash out the 8-quart pot and brown the beef ribs in it; remove them to a plate. Discard some of the fat, add the oil, brown the onions till golden. Put the ribs on top of the onions, then strain in the stock through a fine strainer. Bring to a simmer, cover and let simmer (not boil) for 3 to 4 hours. Add the potatoes for the last hour. Meanwhile

STEP FIVE.

four carrots
six stalks celery
half a small green cabbage
four to six cloves garlic

Pare the carrots and cut them into chunks. Wash and slice the celery. Dice the cabbage. Shred the reserved chicken.

STEP SIX.

Remove the beef ribs from the broth and let them cool, separate and shred the meat, and discard the bones and surplus tissue. If you have a food processor, chop the garlic, then add the potatoes and a couple of cups of stock till everything is a thin smooth slurry. If you don’t, mash the potatoes, press the garlic, and combine them while you add stock; the result won’t be as evenly thick but will still work.

Add the chicken, beef, potatoes and garlic, and beets to the broth and let simmer 30 minutes.
Add the carrots and celery and let simmer 10 minutes, stirring.
Add the beet greens and cabbage, bring to a slow boil and cook 10 minutes, stirring. Serve.

There you have it, comrades; the borscht of commissars. And personally, I think topping this with sour cream would be like gilding a tank, but who am I to tell you what to do? Enjoy, you’ve worked for it.

Plain Ordinary Borscht

So now you’re saying “Kip, only a maniac would go through that.” And I look haplessly about the room for the maniac in question, and concede that you might be right. I pretty much guarantee that if you make borscht from the elaborate recipe once a year, after a year, you will be so hungry for it that you will resign yourself to performing those miracles again.

But what if you just want, you know, borscht, and you don’t want it to take three days, but you certainly won’t stoop to the Manischewitz stuff in the jug in the supermarket? Well…

For the carcass stock above, substitute four quarts of box stock. If you do that, you might want to dice up a few boneless, skinless chicken thighs to give the stock some substance; and season it generously.

The irreducible minimum for borscht is:

With that as a base, you’ve actually got some latitude. You can include the potatoes, or not. You can add tomatoes, which traditional cooks in very old countries might sniff at, but they’re still good. You can use other greens in addition to the beet greens; I’ve made fabulous borscht with kale. You can add parboiled lentils. You can add canned white beans. If you use your imagination, you may arrive at something that some people wouldn’t call borscht, but so long as you call it delicious, there’s no harm done. Enjoy!

A Note on Toppings

Contemporary supermarket sour cream needs to loosen up a little bit. Stir in a little half-and-half or whole milk, while you watch the texture carefully — you want it still thick enough to stand up when it’s applied. A little grated horseradish is a good addition. Alternatively, use paprika, and use enough that you can taste it!

Another direction: a good slug of basil pesto, or walnut pesto, to top each serving.

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