Smoked Brisket

I have a smoker.  Well technically it is a Weber grill with a smokenator in it.

I also joined a beef CSA, so I decided to try a brisket, and see how it compares against the oven.  (hint: smoker wins)

Step 1:
I started with a 2.5lb grass fed beefalo brisket (Not sure what part of the brisket it came from, but it was super lean 'cause that's how grass fed beefalo rolls.  rolls?  roams?

I let it thaw, and coated it super liberally with a mix of 2pts salt, 1pt black pepper, 0.5pt ancho chilli and 0.5pt dry mustard.  I rubbed this all over, and let it sit overnight.  As it turns out, this was too much salt for a small piece of meat with a high surface to volume ratio.

Here it is in all its glory

Then I fired up my weber to 225-250F (I am still learning to keep it steady so there was a lot of variance through the day), added some hickory wood, and my brisket.  It turns out that like salt, hickory wood is best used in moderation, and instead of thin blue smoke (which I am told is best) I had great billows of grey-white smoke.  The amount of smoke actually inhibited the fire for a bit, and kept the temp too low.  Because of this I felt I could taste an acridity in the bark, but my other taste tester could not.

At 150F internal meat temp I opened the grill up and wrapped the brisket in foil .  Then I let it all be until 203F, at which point I transferred it to my toaster oven set on warm (140F) to "rest"for an hour.

OK, here's the final product:

From 2.5lb start, I was left with a little over 1.5lbs cooked meat.

Flavor wise I was disapointed by the saltiness and smokiness, but these are easily fixed in future runs (for now I just picked some of the bark off my slices before eating).

Texture wise this was some of the best brisket I have had.  it was very very juicy compared to the oven method.  I was especially surprised because Beefalo is a low-fat meat.

It went well with corned bread and braised cabbage.  (I used this recipe for cabbage and I think I ate half of it: http://www.chow.com/recipes/10712-braised-red-cabbage-with-bacon)

Fun fact to end the post:
I reek of hickory smoke.

Old Time Gingerbread and New Fangled Lemon Curd

It's Fall!  It's not 90F+ in my kitchen!
Let's bake.

These are two recipes I made for a tea party.

The first is gingerbread from Beeton's Book of Household Management  (you know my love of historical British cookery).

Here's the text:

THICK GINGERBREAD.

1760. INGREDIENTS.—1 lb. of treacle, 1/4 lb. of butter, 1/4 lb. of coarse brown sugar, 1-1/2 lb. of flour, 1 oz. of ginger, 1/2 oz. of ground allspice, 1 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, 1/4 pint of warm milk, 3 eggs.

[Illustration: GINGERBREAD.]

Mode.—Put the flour into a basin, with the sugar, ginger, and allspice; mix these together; warm the butter, and add it, with the treacle, to the other ingredients. Stir well; make the milk just warm, dissolve the carbonate of soda in it, and mix the whole into a nice smooth dough with the eggs, which should be previously well whisked; pour the mixture into a buttered tin, and bake it from 3/4 to 1 hour, or longer, should the gingerbread be very thick. Just before it is done, brush the top over with the yolk of an egg beaten up with a little milk, and put it back in the oven to finish baking.

Time.—3/4 to 1 hour. Average cost, 1s. per square.

Seasonable at any time.

I basically followed this one by-the-book, but for a few changes:

1. I replaced baking soda with baking powder, and in doing so increased the volume to 3x (1tbspn) since baking powder is 1/3 baking soda by volume
2. I ignored her mixing instructions, which seemed frankly bizarre and instead mixed ala the muffin method (mix all the dry ingredients together, all the wet together, then just combine)  
3. I did not have a 1lb of treacle, so I used 1lb of cane syrup, which is basically the same thing as dark treacle
4. There's no temperature, so following a recipe in another cookbook I did 375.  This was a mistake.  By 45min the gingerbread was done, but I found it quite dry when eating it, best slathered with jam or dunked in tea.  For a moister version I might try 325.*

*Then again, maybe it's supposed to be dry and not moist?  I feel like a lot of what I have baked lately is slightly dry, and this may be because I have switched to stoneground whole wheat flour from whole kernels.  Hmm. . .

I would totally recommend this, with the baking time change caveat or a lot of jam.

My photo standards are really going down hill.

NEXT we jump forward from the pinnacle of 1850s cookery to maybe the pinnacle of 1950s cookery with microwave lemon curd.

To be honest, I was not going to post on this because it's mostly cribbed from one recipe and there are so many variants out there, but I got some requests so here it goes.

Googling "lemon curd" I came across this recipe by Gordon Ramsay:

"Ingredients for about 1 1/2 cups Lemon Curd:

3 whole large eggs

3/4 cup white sugar

2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 1/2 tbsp freshly grated lemon zest

5 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp, cut in 3 or 4 pieces"

It seemed perfect.  By a British person?  check.  Not having to separate yolks? check.

But you may notice the complete lack of ummm instructions on the page.

This lead to more googling for correct addition order, in which I found many sites claiming you could skip the bain marie and just do this in a microwave!  (I know many chefs skip bain maries anyway and go directly to the stove, but I would totally burn it that way.)

I had to try!

These are the changes I made:

1. I used 4tbspn butter because I was doubling the recipe and that meant I could use one stick
2. I used something closer to 2-3tbspn zest (6 in total) because I LOVE zest.  basically just zest every single lemon.  Yummmm
3. I think I may have used 1/2cup sugar.  Honestly recipes really vary on this.  I would say use the standard amount unless you are trying to cut back for some reason.  

The method I followed:

1. Melt the butter
2. Throw everything in a bowl
3. Taste it (yes I know there is raw egg).  make sure it's not too sweet or sweet enough
4. Whisk it until blended
5. Microwave for 1min
6. Whisk until blended
7. Iterate 5&6 until it starts ballooning in size
8. Microwave in 30sec increments with lots of whisking maybe 3-4 more times
9. Take a small amount on a spoon and put it in the freezer for a minute.  Does it firm up?  If yes you are done cooking, if not, microwave some more
10. Strain the lemon curd through a mesh strainer to remove zest bits and make a smoother consistency
11. Chill

So good there's none left

The one thing I was really disappointing in that I made for the tea party was scones.  They came out like really dense sugar cookies.  I will be working on scone recipes in the coming few weeks trying to perfect one, because seriously!

Ratatouille

OMG, a new post!
The horrid summer heat of Walnut Creek is receding, and a young girl's thoughts turn once more to ovens.

I looked in my fridge Thursday and realized that the only thing in there was all the ingredients for ratatouille.  Sio that had to happen!

There are a million ways to make this dish, but I primarily read Julia Child's recipe, the wikipedia article and a nice article in the Guardian.  (A shout out here to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, my 2yr home town paper).

Rifling through these I evaluated all steps for a) necessity and b) difficulty.  Here is what I did:

Step 1) make a piperade

• Saute one large onion (finely diced) and 2 bell peppers (finely diced) until soft
• Add minced garlic to taste, bay, thyme, and herbs de provence
• Add 2-3 small tomatoes (also finely chopped but neither peeled nor seeded) and simmer down till thick

Piperade

Grilled veggies are yumm

Step 2) grill veggies slices

• Slice up equal amounts of eggplant (1med-peeled)  zucchini (2 large) and tomatoes (3 med)
• Grill the zucchini and eggplant slices.  I did this on my cast iron griddle while simmering the piperade and it was very little effort for big payoff.

Step 3) bake it

• In a pot (I used the same cast iron one I had made the piperade in) layer piperade, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, more piprerade.
•   I think I should actually have put the tomatoes between the eggplant and zucchini.
• Place in a 350F oven with a lid 3/4 on, and leave to bake down for 90min-2hrs/when your house starts smelling like deliciousness

I ate it with some Parmesan cheese over rice.  My only two criticisms:   Needs more eggplant!!!  Also, it seems a waste to cook heirloom tomatoes, given how delicious they are raw.  Especially in caprese.

Fun fact:  I found out while doing research that Thomas Keller was the consulting chef for the film Ratatouille.  I suspect this was just so Pixar guys could try and work expense meals at the French Laundry (The first place I will eat upon becoming filthy rich).

Heirloom tomatoes in all their glory

My camera is useless once the sun goes down.  I promise this looked more appealing than the amorphous yellow blob leftover when I remembered to take a pic at 10pm

+Slack -Cholesterol Hippie Instant Pancakes

Months ago, for a party, we bought some Bisquick, and then had it lying around the house.  I really loved this stuff, in terms of have quick just-add-water pancakes.  I didn't need milk or eggs or anything refrigerated, just the mix.  Nevertheless, when we ran out I didn't buy more, because I try to eat whole wheat stuff, and it was not.

However, as a friend pointed out, Trader Joe's also has well received multi-grain baking mix, so I thought I would try that.  Only, it need milk and eggs!!  what?!  Why don't I just make the damn things myself then?  Is adding baking powder really that much of an inconvenience?  When I want to go lazy, I want to go all the way.


This desire for slack has combined with my current desire to eat less cholesterol, and hot internet cooking trends regarding chia seeds, to produce the following recipe for an instant pancake mix:

In a mason jar, combine:

• 3 cups Trader Joe's multigrain baking mix
• 5 tablespoons nonfat milk powder
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds
• 1 tablespoon baking powder

Make sure to leave 1/3 the volume of the jar empty, so you can vigorously shake everything together to mix it.

When in urgent need of pancakes, combine 2pts of dry mix to 1pt water, stir, and let sit 15min in the fridge.

I think this will be really useful if I start backpacking again. 

How did I get those numbers?

Milk:

According to my dry milk package, 3tbspns dry milk  should be added to 8oz water, though you can go higher for richer milk.

Chia Seeds:

Here is the gooy mix, in all its glory.

The chia seed amount was all about whether you trust public opinion, or expertise.  Bob's Red Mill says that 1/2 teaspoon of chia seeds + 1 tablespoon water = 1 egg equivalent.  The entire rest of the internet (mostly independent food blogs) say 1tbspn of chia seeds + 3tbspns water = 1 egg.  That is a 6 fold discrepancy   As a food blog writer, I am naturally suspicious of the so-called expertise of parvenues like myself, but I 1/2 teaspoon seemed SO little, so I added 1 teaspoon.

The first batch of pancakes were very thin, and so I added both some more dry mix, and more chia seed for the last pancake  It looked lovely, but was substantially more gluey.  Therefore, I decided to stick with the original chia seed amount, but reduce the overall water slightly.  If this doesn't work (I was too full of pancakes to make another batch), I'll revise this article.

Baking Soda:

I basically added this for luck, and because I worry that the baking soda in packaged mixes has gotten old.  Feel free to leave it out.

Pancakes, showing thin and thick

Stir Fry!

I am posting today on my post-Christmas obsession with stir fry.  Though I will discuss a specific dish, I am not going to post the recipe since it is an un-deviated-from duplicate of that in my stir fry cookbook.  Instead I am going to talk about the process and equipment.

First, let me describe the first recipe I cooked:

For Christmas my husband bought me a wok, my sisters bought me a mushroom farm, and I bought myself a cookbook.  So I decided to make chicken with carrots and shitake mushrooms.

Here are the mushrooms, both in all their farmed glory and sliced beside carrots:

 



I have really enjoyed the farm.  It will send out 3 crops over a few months and is fun to watch grow.  They can be bought at the S.F. Ferry building from Far West Fungi.


And here is the completed dish:


The spice level and flavor complexity in this is very low, but the earthy  umami of the mushrooms combined with sweet carrots make it addictive and comforting.  I repeated it recently in a meal for two friends, but using dry mushrooms (which is what the recipe calls for, and found them far inferior to the fresh option, but still good.

















To make stir fry at home you really only need 4 things:

1. A 14 inch carbon steel wok that has been thoroughly cleaned and then seasoned.  These are cheap and can be found at Asian markets or in china town or online.
2. A metal spatula
3. A cookbook (I use "Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge"and like most of the recipes)
4. A trip to Ranch 99 or a similar store where you can buy the ~10 condiments needed to cover basic stir fry.

The process is pretty easy and quick.  The big points are to treat your wok like any other seasoned iron cooking vessel (no soap, clean with scrubbing and hot water or a salt oil rub) and to prepare all ingredients ahead of time because the actual cooking process is often <5min, with a lot going on.  It does require a somewhat good eye for vegetable cooking stages.  Sometimes on my small residential gas range the suggested times in the recipes are off (1min becomes 2) and I just have listen to the sizzle and watch the coloration.

I have found that stir fry combined with a pack of frozen chicken breasts from Trader Joes and a rice cooker  yield's reliably tasty, low fat, high vegetable content meals that can be done in <30min from first slicing vegetables to cleaning the wok.  Because I already enjoyed Chinese food, this has become my normal weeknight meal / next day's lunch.

(18th Century) American Apple Pie

This post is a blast from the past in 2 ways.  Firstly, it is another attempt at historical cookery, and second it is a recipe made a year ago, and posted to my G+ feed, which inspired me to start the blog.

This comes from a cookbook I bought in Colonial Williamsburg called The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple by Mrs. Glasse.  On page 122 is a recipe entitled "To Make an Apple Pie", which seemed an appropriate place to start.  This 1805 cookbook, filled with recipes from the 1700s, has its recipes in a format very different than those half a century later.  There are no amounts and very little technique, it's basically just an ingredient list with brief explanation, and so a lot of interpretation was required.  Here is an image of the entire recipe from the Google E-book:

In making the recipe there were basically 2 places where I had to use my own initiative (guess):

• There is no recipe in the book for puff pastry (I used a recipe from a modern cookbook)
• The amount of sugar required is highly subjective. (I used the least I could and get an even layer over the apples, under the assumption that it was a dear commodity)
• Obviously no baking time and temperature was given, so again I looked at a modern apple pie recipe
• Apple type:  I honestly can't remember what i used, but I think it was Jonagolds.  I would go with a sweeter apple and avoid the tarter ones, because of the limited sugar in the recipe.

I also had a deviation in terms of spices.  Instead of adding cloves to the pie itself, which seemed unpleasant, I simply boiled them with the syrup.  Also, i left out the mace.  Nutmeg would make a good substitute, but I was unsure how much to add.

The final recipe as posted on my blog:

Make a dough out of 2c (250g) flour, 150ml water, and 8tbsp butter. Blend it enough so it forms a coherent dough, but has visible butter pieces in it. Roll it into a rectangle and fold the right third over the middle, then the left third over the middle. Place in refrigerator for 30min.

Then roll it back out into a rectangle, and put another 4tbsp butter (in thin pats) to cover the middle 3rd. Fold the edges as before and roll out into the rectangle. Fold the edges and refrigerate for 15min.

Meanwhile, core and peel 7 apples. Cut them into 8ths and add some lemon juice, put in the fridge. Boil the cores and peels for 10min with some cloves and strain. Add 1/4c sugar to the liquid and reboil until it forms a thick syrup (maybe another 10min),

Take the crust from the fridge and roll it out. Divide into two parts, one slightly larger and place in pie pan (you can do the folding trick more in 15min iterations if you want to get flakier crust). Add a layer of apples and sprinkle with 2tbspn sugar. Add second layer of apples, and sprinkle with 2tbspn sugar. Drizzle with the syrup.

Add top crust and bake at 425F for ~1hr. You can turn down to 350 if the crust seems to be browning too much.

So How did it work?

As you can see from the picture below, my first ever attempt at puff pastry became hugely puffy because I was a bit overenthusiastic in terms of layer numbers.  I think 2 refrigeration sessions is more than enough.

Also, this is not a very sweet pie.  It is definitely a pie that tastes mostly of the natural sweetness of apples, which makes it a good option for those avoiding processed sugar in their diets (leave sugar out and either add honey to the syrup making stage, or try boiling the cores and peels in apple juice instead of water).

Lastly, the part where you boil the peel and cores is really great.  You get this beautiful pink pectin with a strong apple flavor.  That technique is something I will carry forward into future apple pie attempts.

Mrs. Beeton's Christmas Plum Pudding

Now Bring us a Figgy Pudding!

In the spirit of both Christmas and Historical Cookery I endeavored to cook Recipe 1328 from The Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton:  "Christmas Plum-Pudding (Very Good)"

This book is full of recipes, anthropology, history, and a surprising amount of perspective into the lives of Victorian housewives.  A first edition facsimile like I used can be gotten here, or you can simply pick up the free Kindle edition, or the one at Project Gutenberg.

For those who don't know, Christmas Pudding / Plum Pudding / Figgy pudding is a traditional Christmas dessert which, paradoxically, neither contains plums nor figs, and does not fit the American definition of pudding.  What it is is the boozy predecessor to the fruit cake.

Like fruitcake, this is very dense.  Beeton says this recipe produces a 1 quart mold of pudding suitable for 5 or 6.  In my experiment I got 2 1 quart molds, that would feed ~8 people each for a total of 16 servings.

Traditionally this is made the weekend before Thanksgiving, and stored at least a month to "age".

The Ingredients: (by weight!)

Bread Crumbs

• 1.5lb raisins
• 0.5lb currants
• 0.5lb mixed peel
• 0.75lb bread crumbs
• 0.75lb suet (unrendered beef fat)
• 8 eggs
• 1 wineglass full brandy 
• Pudding Basin
• Parchment paper
• Cheesecloth
• A big mixing bowl

Before we can start cooking we need to cover some of these ingredients more in depth. . .

Mixed Peel:  We're talking candied citrus peel, usually a 50 / 50 mix of orange and lemon.  You can make this on your own (if enough people ask I will post a recipe for this), but I bought mine at Berkeley Bowl.  Make sure to mince the peel.

Bread Crumbs:  These need to be super fine.  Beeton recommends grating them on a cheese grater, but I pulsed them in a food processor.  Also the bread should be dried in an oven, not stale.  I made a really basic white bread ala Ratio (5 parts / 600g flour, 3 parts / 360g water, 2 tspn yeast, 1.5 tspn salt, 1 tbspn sugar) and then sliced and dried it.

Suet:  This can be hard to find.  I recommend going to a butcher that cuts/trims their own meat.  Make sure they stick the suet through a meat grinder for you, so you don't have to finely mince it on your own.

"1 wineglass" of Brandy: I added a modern white-wine-glass-ful, and then worried it was too much compared to Victorian wineglass volumes, but the final product does not at all taste too much of brandy so just go with any modern glass you have lying around. 

Pudding Basin:  You have 3 options here.  You can buy fancy aluminum basins at cooking stores or online that give your pudding cool shapes , or go for a classic ceramic British pudding basin, or just use a glass or ceramic bowl you have lying around. Whatever you use needs to have a lip to tie string around.  As mentioned above, the recipe calls for a 1 quart mold  but I filled 2 1 quart molds, so best to have a second one handy or buy a 2 quart mold.

Disclaimers out of the way, let's get on to the cooking!

*If you are using an aluminum mold, steps 8-10 will be different for you

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl
2. Add the suet and continue to mix
3. Add the brandy to the eggs and whisk until blended
4. Pour egg/brandy mix over the other ingredients
5. Mix again  (At this point you are dealing with large messy volumes  and your goal is a homogeneous mixture, so I recommend abandoning the spoon and using your hands.)



Mixed Pudding

6. Butter your mold/basin/whathaveyou generously
7. Pack the pudding into the mold.  You don't want to go above the edge, but you do want to compact it down
8. Cut out 2 circles of parchment paper to the same diameter as the bowl, and place them on top of the pudding mix
9. Cover the top of the bowl with a square of 4-ply cheesecloth big enough to be tied down under the lip
10. Using kitchen twine, tie the cheesecloth onto the basin, then make a handle out of twine for moving the bowl into and out of boiling water.
11. Boil the pudding for 6 hours
1. DO NOT let the water level get above the top of the pudding.  Start with the water ~1 inch below the top of the bowl, and keep the pot covered and simmering with the water at this level.  This will require you to frequently top up the pot with more hot water. (I found an electric kettle indispensable)
12. After 6 hours remove the pudding and put it away in a cupboard to store.  Do not remove/replace the cheesecloth or parchment paper as everything is now boiled and sterile. 
13. Before serving reboil for 2 hours as per step 11
14. Upend the basin / mold onto a pate
15. Light a ladle of brandy on fire, and pour it over the pudding
16. Serve with heavy cream, whipped cream, or hard sauce (recipes for all of these can be found online)

Pudding Unveiled

Pudding After Boiling, Ready for Storage

More Boozy Variation:

Another traditional way to make the pudding it to forgo the mold/basin/bowl and simply make a tight round sphere of pudding encased in 4 ply cheesecloth.  Because this is more open to the air, you need to keep spoilage at bay by pouring a generous amount of brandy over the pudding 1-2x a week.  However, Beeton's version does not recommend this step, she merely stored the pudding in cupboards, so I did not make my pudding this way.  I added the parchment paper lids under the cheesecloth specifically because I was worried about aerobic bacteria growing on the pudding without regular brandyings

Tiny Currants and Huge Raisins

Taste

This pudding came out much mellower than other Christmas puddings I have had.  The beef suet and the relatively small amount of currants and peel gave it a smooth and less tart flavor that I quite like.  I would say it beats modern store bought versions hands down, and that if you find modern home made Christmas Pudding to be too tart, you will find this a pleasant alternative.  Another contributor to the excellent flavor may have been the extremely plump flame raisins I bought from Berkeley Bowl.

Pudding on FIRE!

To finish I would like to thank Walter for his technical expertise from years of making modern Chrstmas Puddings, which helped me interpret some of Mrs. Beeton's instructions.