Livia N – Page 5 – no counterspace

Broccoli & Butter

In 1988, I was taking a course on logic. And, as is common in classroom debates, the topic was legalization of marijuana.

And we had the usual arguments with health studies and traffic studies and prejudicial enforcement. Fine. But the one that finally won the argument was this slippery slope extrapolation of, “Well, if you are going to go around saying people can’t get high when they are harming no one but themselves (i.e. in a controlled setting without involving non-users), then you might as well restrict people from consuming butter.”

Now at the time, this was ridiculous. And yet the class also had trouble pointing to the one thing that made it a different case.

In 2012, the arguments are exactly the same, but people take seriously the possibility that butter consumption might be affected by governmental oversight of some form. And every single time this comes up, I remember how incredibly unlikely it seemed back then.

What does broccoli have to do with health insurance? (NYT)
Broccoli in the Supreme Court decision (WSJ)
regulating soda size in New York (NYT)
Ruhlman fights back (tongue in cheek) with butter protections (blog)

Cena Trimalchionis

Right, so my local SCA group is experimenting with a casual Latin reading group, and we’re working our way through the Cena Trimalchionis.

So far, the dishes are more edible than I remembered them being in Latin class back in the day, so I’m pondering a bit on making a dinner from the text. We’ll see. But for now, I’m using this spot to make notes.

Initial Nibblies – black and green olives

First Course – fake eggs served in baskets with straw under a wooden chicken sculpture.
Make a thin pastry ‘egg’shell from a dough that is mostly just flour and lard. Maybe the size of a small balloon. Prebake them. Pre-roast a ~~doormouse~~ chicken thigh. Put that in the shell. Fill with ~~peppered egg yolk~~ hollandaise sauce. Top with a little pastry to close the shell, and bake for another 8-10 minutes.

Passover

So now I’ve taken long enough to write this post, that I can also tell you what I did with the leftovers afterward! Whee!

Okay, so I made my own haggadah this year because I wanted the people at the seder to feel more interested in having the discussions invited by the text without rushing along because they were starving. So at every opportunity, I added small courses within the service.

In related news: I now have enough dishes to serve more than 1 plate and 1 bowl course without resorting to disposables!

Bitter Herbs and Salty Tears
Kale and Carrot Salad

This dish was inspired by wilted kale salads in general and this one in particular, but I’ve never actually wilted my kale and this was one of the last things I made, so I didn’t have time to pull up a recipe at the moment I was making it.

So I shredded some curly kale. And I sliced some carrots in half and then thinly on a diagonal so that I had long, thin half-ovals. And I sliced some raw garlic.

I put some of the kale in a bowl, sprinkled liberally with salt, poured olive oil, massaged it all together for a few seconds, added carrots and garlic, and then repeated the pattern.

I didn’t massage enough or I didn’t wait enough or something – but the kale never seemed particularly wilty. It was very salty! In any other circumstance, it would have been way oversalted, but it was perfect for this particular situation.

The bitter greens mixed with tears aren’t really supposed to be easy to eat.

leftovers

Finely dice some onion and cook it down in a little olive oil.

Once the onion is soft, add the leftover salad.

Do not even think of adding more salt. You can, however, add a teaspoon of manischewitz wine.

Crack an egg on top. Cover to steam poach. Eat with a spoon.

I put the matzoh ball soup in after the breaking of the afikomen.

Now last year I was deeply intimidated by the judgement of the matzoh balls, so I put off making them until after guests had started to arrive. I had never made them. So my girlfriend, who had never even eaten them before, offered to give it a shot. I gave her the only advice I knew (from my grandmother): “Use the recipe on the matzoh meal box, and handle them as little as possible.”

They were okay that year. The outsides were fluffy, and the insides were a little dense and had a richer flavor. My mother spent the entire year after talking about how heavy they were. My mother, the convert from Mississippi (Okay, so fine – she’s been a jew for more than forty years and has had my grandmother’s matzoh balls, but still).

But I was fairly sure it wouldn’t be fair to pass them onto someone else again this year. I did have enough worries, though, that I bought a mix this year instead of using plain matzoh meal. Again, just as people were sitting down, I was throwing gobs of dough into the boiling water (just gobs, not even fully formed balls). I turned it down to barely a simmer and covered – and by the time the soup was to be served, they were perfect and the fluffiest I have ever eaten. Some completely fell apart, but there were plenty of balls for everyone’s soup.

Chicken Soup (for matzoh balls)

I have no idea why, but for some reason chicken soup is incredibly challenging for me. It does not come intuitively.

But I bought a whole chicken just for the stock, since trying to make chicken soup with less has failed me in the past.

So I cooked together a chicken, some onion peelings, carrot peelings, garlic, parsley, and stuff with water coming all the way up to the top – as if I were making stock. Then I strained the stock. The chicken got broken down for meat and all of the other strained solids were frozen for garbage (don’t compost the vegetable matter because it has had enough meat contact to lead to insects in the compost).

Clean the pot.

Then I melted a Tablespoon of chicken fat and cooked down a diced onion, three diced carrots, and three diced parsnips. Once they were flexible, I dusted them with a Tablespoon of matzoh cake flour, and stirred that in to make a pseudo-roux. Then I poured in the chicken stock. Any of the chicken meat that had ended up in smaller pieces, was shredded into the soup as well.

For seasonings, I ended up adding ground thyme, savory, black pepper, and a dash of cayenne pepper.

To serve: spoon a matzoh ball or two into a bowl and then pour the chicken soup over top.

Next thing I did in the service was to put welcoming Elijah way up earlier so that we’d sit with the door open welcoming people to come and have food.

We talked about Philadelphia’s new ban on feeding the homeless in city parks.

For the next dish, instead of a plain boiled potato and boiled egg, I served potato salad brought by my mother (so I don’t know the recipe), and deviled eggs. These were some deeply yellow egg yolks from Livengood Farm’s chickens.

Deviled Eggs

Boil eggs, then put them in cold water to stop cooking them, and immediately peel them.

If you have done this a day or so ahead and have refrigerated your eggs, warm them a bit in warm water before going on to the next step – because I think cold deviled eggs are no longer pleasing.

Slice the eggs in half and pop the yolks into a bowl (make enough eggs that it’s okay to discard 2 or 3 egg white halves that are the lest pretty).

For measurements here, let’s say I’m using 8 eggs.

Break up the egg yolks with a fork and splash them with a capful (1/2 tsp?) of white vinegar. Add
a Tablespoon of yellow mustard (in my callow youth, we used French’s, but I was really pleased with a slightly more upscale dijon) and a forkful (3-4 Tablespoons) of mayonnaise (we used Hellman’s). Mash together with a fork until completely smooth.

That’s it!

Fill the egg white hollows with forkfulls of yolks. And sprinkle with paprika.

And then came the dish I’ve been thinking about all year. MMmm a year of thinking about this next thing.

So after last year’s seder, I had a bag full of trimmed lamb fat from the shoulder roasts I’d been using. I rendered these down to yield a quart! of creamy pale lamb fat.

But what does one do with a quart of lamb fat? The only thing I could possibly come up with was confit – which led to rillettes.

Lamb RillettesAs I was dicing this year’s lamb shoulder, I kept aside all of the uneven and fattier bits to confit. I ended up with somewhere between two and three pound of lamb for the rillettes.

In a small dutch oven, I melted 1 pint of rendered lamb fat and fried up a finely diced onion until golden. Then I turned down the heat and added some water to moderate the temperature.

I tossed in a bay leaf, some peppercorns, an inch of soft cinnamon, a little ground cloves, ground thyme, ground savory, and a dash of ground oregano. A splash of wine, and it was all set to simmer for hours. 20 hours? (It didn’t need to cook that long, but I was able to keep it going overnight instead of making room in the refrigerator so I went for it – by adding a little more water to make sure there wasn’t a grease fire in my sleep because I worry, though in retrospect there might have been too much water to fat in the cooking ratio)

By then the liquid was reduced and the meat exceedingly tender. So I strained out the meat and shredded it with the stand mixer’s paddle. So while it was a time intense process, I was able to do other things during almost every stage of making it. As the meat turned to paste, I added more of the cooking liquid back into the meat until it was a spreadable paste. Salt to taste (took more than expected). I packed it into wee little 4oz jars, and then I melted more lamb fat to pour over top to seal it.

And then everything got stacked in the refrigerator (but I took them out two hours before serving so they could come up to room temperature and the fat on top could soften).

verdict: Erm… not as good as I’d hoped. I do not know if this would have been solved by using Even More Fat. Maybe. Also, I managed to undersalt them as well. Failing at sinful food, apparently. They weren’t inedible, but they didn’t taste… expensive. They tasted a bit like canned meat. ~shrug~

Chicken Rillettes
Some people coming to the seder, however, did not eat lamb. So after having seen how little time was taken up in making them, I decided to do a few chicken ones once the mixer was clean again.

I took the meat from the soup chicken – using mostly thighs – and sliced that into 3/4″ slices across the grain before putting it in the mixer with some rendered chicken fat. Once that was shredded, I added some seasonings (cinnamon, ground thyme, maybe a couple other things) and salted to taste.

Packed that in little jars and poured over with melted chicken fat to seal.

verdict: tastier! They were still a bit like chicken salad with extra schmaltz, but that’s yummy.

So… I ended up with about a pint of leftovers from the lamb rillettes (aside from the 2 untouched jars of each, which I set aside for the next Philly Food Swap) and no desire for that much plain fatty bread on toast points. So I tried adding a little to salads or the kale breakfast, but the best thing ever to do with the leftovers was to add it to pasta sauce!

Grill down another onion in some lamb falt, melt the rillettes into the pan, pour over with a basic tomato sauce and a hearty glug of red wine. Add some crushed red pepper. Best meat sauce ever!

Charosets

Quarter, core, peel, and finely slice 7 apples (4 roma, 3 empire in this case – I picked the ones with the best crisp snap to the texture). Then slice across to make a small, but distinct, pieces. Squeeze 1 lemon as you go – the single lemon was sufficient to last me through all of the apples.

In between each apple or two, add a dash of cinnamon and a handful of toasted pecan pieces (walnuts are more traditional for my family, but I’d already used up all of my walnuts by the time I made the charosets and had already shopped enough).

When you have a container full of apples and nuts, pour a cup of Manischewitz over and then tighten the lid you your container and shake well. Mix up the apples a few more times while they sit and absorb the flavors.

And then we had the meal proper! This year, my mother’s kidneys have started to fail. Following the writings of a doctor from Johns Hopkins, my mother has been eating an extremely low protein diet. (This is not the forum to discuss the effectiveness of this choice, nor am I a doctor, but I am supporting her dietary choices and cooking to suit her needs) So her food is almost exactly a vegan diet… only with an allowance for plenty of animal fats (since they tend to not contain much protein). (instead of the lamb rillettes, I made her a special vegetable one by running bits of some of the other vegetable dishes and some jarred artichoke hearts through a food processor)

My father, however, must have meat. And one of my guests doesn’t eat any meat other than pork or chicken, but he’s very picky about vegetables. This menu reflects enough variety to feed all of them. So there.

Dinner:
Braised Lamb with Horseradish and Parsley
Same dish I made last year – I used smaller horseradish roots and cooked them with longer, and this year they gave a most distinctly horse-radishy flavor to the meat. It was good, but almost too much. And if I do this again, I’m not going to bother with the parsley sauce. It’s not that tasty and it never gets used.

Mashed Potatoes
For the lamb juices. Just yukon gold potatoes (available as cheap seconds from the farmers’ market, so I yoinked them all) and butter – they were amazing and fluffy when just made, but lost some of their joy by the time all the talking and stuff was over. If I do mashed potatoes again, I’ll have to pay attention to keeping them warmer.

Lemon Rosemary Chicken
Again, same as last year, only I used rosemary instead of thyme. I also used a lot more olives this year because the store has switched from letting me just buy 10 from an olive bar to selling them in a pre-packaged container. I don’t think the chicken suffered from the abundance of olives, but I did have to dispose of more waste at the end of the meal.

Imam Bayildi
Working from the same recipe I’ve enjoyed before, I took three small-ish eggplants and cooked them filled with scallion, parsley, diced (canned because of the season) tomatoes, and a bit of lemon juice (and a lot of olive oil).

Braised Summer Squash
The eggplant didn’t fill the entire serving plate, so as soon as they came out, I sliced rounds of zucchini and yellow squash, sprinkled them with herbs, and covered with a little excess diced tomato and parsley mixture and set them to braising as well.

Braised Scallions
Many people have praised the braised scallion recipe from All About Braising by Molly Stevens. I was a bit confused, though, about the yield – since a pound of scallions (5 bunches) was only supposed to yield 2 servings.

So I bought 8 bunches (and used most of one of them in the eggplant dish) and figured I had a lot of other dishes as well.

I also figured that what this dish really needed in it was a swirl of tomato paste in with the braising water. I didn’t do that, but instead I drained the liquid from a can of tomatoes (again, for the eggplant) into the casserole dish and used that as my liquid component. Well, that and a stick of butter!

Roasted Asparagus
My usual recipe

Dessert
Walnut Date Torte
This was great last year, but this year I overcooked it a little (10 minutes!) and while it wasn’t burned, it was drier than last year and not as good. I soaked it in a bit of orange liquer, and that did not hurt it one bit. I could have probably added a lot more liquid, if I’d started on it a day or two earlier (week? What are the physics of fruit cakes?)

Nutty Dates
I was intending to fry these in oil with salt and pepper, but since the dates were softer than the average dried dates you get around here, I figured they didn’t need cooking. Instead, I just tucked walnut quarters (half of a half) in the pitted dates and left them for people to pick at.

Oh and the leftover charosets!

I made pie crust for the first time (yes, I waited until after Passover)!

Saga of the Pie Crust!

So I’ve been reading up on pie crust for about 2 years too scared to actually make it. Especially since I like Pillsbury and why would I make for myself something where I’d be aiming toward a goal I can buy for $2.50?

Then I found a friend whose pie crust is even better… so she’s talked me through it while I watched her. But I still haven’t bought a pastry cutter (because for some reason flat blades, instead of thick wires, are all you can find these days – and sure they cut better, but it’s harder to clear the gummed up butter caught in them)…

But I didn’t have any pie crust in stock, and honestly it was feeling like cowardice not to give it a try.

So on the first day of talking myself into it, I researched pie crust recipes on the internet and then I took a stick of butter and cut it into quarters lengthwise and then slices along the length. And then I wrapped it back up in the paper and put it in the freezer to forget about it.

On the next day, I decided I’d be more likely to do make crust a second time if things were simpler, so I grabbed Ratio and my food processor. And I put 6oz of flour and the 4oz (1 stick) of frozen butter in. Once I’d pulsed that into pieces, I was sure everything would suck because the processor made a much finer texture than my friend goes for in her amazing crusts. But I added the few splashes of cold water (from the filter pitcher I keep in the fridge, rather than making ice water) so that it would just barely hold together if I squeezed the stuff in a fist. And then I packed it tightly into a container and left it in the fridge overnight.

Finally, on the third day – I rolled it out. And it rolled out in a rectangle and refused to curve at all. (I used a wine bottle from my refrigerator, which had the benefit of being cold and heavy, but it was also a bit damp… but that didn’t hurt things as much as I was worried it would) Oh – and this is important – I rolled it out on a silicon mat. If got to be about the right thickness before it started trying to pull back in on itself.

Then I put the leftover Passover charosets in the middle, studded it with butter, wrapped the dough up and around and pleated it in place (for a galette), pressed some large-crystal sugar into the top of the dough, and baked it for a guestimated amount of time.

And it turned out much better than I expected! Real live flakiness and everything. The foodie guy who brought over funky cheese complimented me on the crust especially even though he thinks I could make pie crust all the time. Woo!

Why are you feeding people?

Michael Ruhlman is a person who thinks about the whys and hows behind the food we eat, the methods we use to make it, and the sharing of it with others. He has given a TED talk. He has written many impressive cookbooks and books about cooking, with his most recent books exploring especially the fundamental components of cooking: Ratio and Twenty. And his recent post on Food Fascism has really struck a chord among the community of people who think about sharing food with each other.

The focus is on the decisions one person had to make in choosing the foods for a dinner that was part of her wedding celebrations – and whether it is reasonable for everyone to expect their preferences to be catered to, especially when that catering is expensive.

The whole post is not particularly long and worth reading completely for context. But his advice contained the following two paragraphs that will serve here as a summary:

“As you noted in a follow up email that no one in your party has any serious conditions (celiac disease, shellfish allergies), I would serve whatever the hell makes your daughter happy. I’m sure she’ll want a good variety, and so every normal person can enjoy his or her self.

But since you know that some of your relatives are a bit touched in the head with regard to their own diet, and that restaurants do charge by the head, I recommend including just what you elegantly wrote in your email on the invitation, politely. “I’m aware many in our big and diverse family may have diets they must adhere to, so if you suspect that our menu won’t suit you, please let me know so that we can let the restaurant know how many people will be attending the meal. If you won’t be attending do let me know, and also let me know if you will be joining us for the celebration following the meal.””

I’d say that a good 80% of the comments are in support of his positions, many of them with a wave of relief that they can admit to being unhappy about the sense of entitlement displayed by seeming-ubiquitous picky eaters.

There are even people with highly restrictive diets agreeing with his position because there are standards of behavior to be maintained:

The bottom line is that it’s never OK to rant and rave and make a scene about your food. Whether you’re at a party or a wedding, just remember that the event is not about you (unless of course it’s your own event). Even if you’re at a restaurant, the other diners don’t need to be subjected to your special dietary concerns. If you have a problem, quietly ask for a manager and pull them to the side to discuss it. Even better, write a letter to the management and don’t go back to the restaurant — both you and the restaurant will be better off. I’ve always appreciated a restaurant that will tell me up front that they can’t accommodate me as it means that nobody is wasting their time and even better, I’ve just increased my chances of not getting sick.

And I have to tell you that the whole discussion makes me wince. Because it’s the same discussion that you see in other venues – and it uses many of the same kyriarchal language that is used to refuse to examine privilege.

And I’m going to call BINGO

Who gets to be the “normal” eater and who gets the synonym for insanity? Well the picture right at the top of the post (which is held up as an ideal in the text) is meat and potatoes and a bit of vegetables. Ah, the golden era of nostalgia these days – the 50’s.

Also, there’s a generous accession that there are some people with real/medical needs to have restricted diets, and those are okay (but so inconvenient M I Rite?). And who are you to call the people eating fascists, when you are talking about asking for accreditation for food restrictions upon entry? Please may I have no ____, here’s my doctor’s note. Are you serious?

Why do we even care whether someone’s diet is restricted for health, ethical, or purely whimsical reasons? It’s restricted.

What reason do you have to want to feed people food they won’t enjoy? No matter that the reason!

Ruhlman says, “But foisting your diet on anyone or even talking about it in a way that even remotely self-serves or proselytizes, pisses me off.”

But by inviting people to eat your food and then serving people food they won’t enjoy eating is doing exactly that.

Making food for vegans and sneaking some butter in because you’re sure they’ll like it better that way if they don’t know – isn’t helping your guests. It’s helping you feel better about your own food choices. It’s betraying your guests’ trust that you are their friend and respect their ethics.

Making food for someone with an allergy and figuring that it’s not that severe, or probably faked, or just inconvenient to cater to, is risking their health. Even if they do not suffer for your choice, you are still the kind of host who is deliberately willing to compromise your guests’ health. Often times when this comes up, it’s discussed with a tone of spite – the cook getting back at the people who would dare make the person planning the menu think about the guests’ needs.

But even if it’s a fad diet. Even if it is just a food preference. Why are you calling them people who are important to you, if you don’t care what is important to them?

When I read the letter from the bride, I was pretty sure that the guests with the food restrictions were not just difficult to eat with, but also people who were generally unpleasant to be around. The answer there – don’t invite them. Don’t invite them and then test whether they’re willing to starve themselves for the pleasure of your company. Don’t invite them and expect a present when you are unwilling to offer food they can eat. Don’t invite people you know ahead of time you aren’t willing to have at your event. Because is slighting them on the invitation any less rude than slighting them on food? At least the former you can pretend was an oversight.

And what about more general cases? It’s important to ask yourself why you aren’t willing to accommodate the people you want to feed. What are you trying to prove to them? Why are you trying to normalize them?

And then once they are invited and you’ve undermined their needs and or values, don’t you dare say they aren’t being polite enough when they criticize you. (see also: tone argument)

And, yeah, it can be hard work to pay attention to what everyone will eat. It can take a certain amount of thought to pull together a meal with enough elements that people will enjoy that everyone will be pleased even if they can’t eat 100% of the meal. It’s much easier just to make a meal you’d like. But paying attention to other people’s wants and needs is one of the important steps in building friendships. It shows you give a damn.

Beans for Breakfast – Azuki Bean, Lemon, and Coconut Bread Pudding; Red Bean Paste Cinnamon Rolls; Kale and White Bean Quiche; Conchicla Commodiana; Marrow Bean Jook

Okay, so you’re going to have to forgive me on this one – I’m trying to take pictures of my food, and photography isn’t one of my interests. However, of all the people I invited to eat my beans, I didn’t manage to invite anyone else who wanted to take pictures, either, so it was all up to me and the camera in my phone.

That said, I can cook – and cook I did. I wasn’t expecting a particularly good success rate. In fact, I did run out and buy bagels just in case everything failed – that’s how little confidence I had. This was way out of my comfort zone, and yet I ended up liking everything!

So I cook with beans regularly – why was this out of my comfort zone? Well, for one – one of the dish was a baking project, and I’m still not fully pleased with my breadmaking skills and don’t consider myself a competent baker yet. And for another – when I make beans for just me, I really enjoy cooking them to mush, but for this I wanted to much more precisely control the textures of the beans and have a wide range of firmnesses… and if I were going to be playing with it, they might all end up crunchy after 3 hours cooking and what would I do? Oh, my!

So my two main weapons for playing with texture were baking soda (basic) and citric acid (acidic). Well, okay, I had many options for acidifying, but alkalizing has fewer options.

Marx Foods is a lovely company, and so far they’re the only people to ever offer me free things to experiment with, and some of my favorite experiments have come from working with exotic samples they have given to me. This time, they gave me three kinds of beans: Marrow, Mayacoba, and Azuki.

Picture of the full spread (without quiche) width=

And I made at least one dish for each bean.

Azuki beans – intrinsically sweet, source of red bean paste (on language)

my opinion – I didn’t find them all that sweet… just not so savory that sweet things wouldn’t work with them. But I did end up adding sugar to both dishes.

I separated the 700g of red beans into two sets of 350g each, and I cooked one with baking soda to make paste, and the other batch with an added 1/4 tsp of citric acid as soon as they started to soften so that I could work with whole beans. With both batches, I ended up using less than the whole quantity (noted in the recipes)

Dish 1 –
Azuki Bean, Lemon, and Coconut Bread Pudding
(dairy free)
ingredients:
1 lemon peel (after having been used for something else)
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

~~350g~~ 150g azuki beans
50g coconut sugar
1/4 tsp citric acid

1 loaf challah, day old
1 cup large flake unsweetened dried coconut, loosely filled
1/2 cup golden raisins
8 10 eggs
3/4 cup coconut sugar
(2) 15oz can coconut milk

Two days before:

Take the peel of 1 lemon (organic, since you’re using the peel) and boil it in plain water. After the peel is soft and the water has a yellow tinge (the longer you boil it, the less bitter – I aim for about an hour), drain. Boil (low boil, not rolling, because this is hot sugar!) it again in equal parts sugar and water. Again, for as long as you have patience – at least half an hour. This time, when you remove the peel, reserve the syrup as well.

Put red beans on to soak. (I put them in an empty quart yogurt container, add plenty of water, and let sit about 24 hours)

The evening ahead:

Drain red beans and simmer in plenty of water until they just start to soften. Add sugar and cook for another 10 minutes. Bite a bean and see if it has a pleasing texture. When the texture is firm but not crunchy, add the citric acid. Stir. And then drain the beans.

Oil large casserole dish and tear the challah loaf into chunky pieces so that they fill the casserole dish. Add drained beans, coconut, and raisins. Slice off the pith from the lemon peel, and cut the candied peel into thin slivers – add as many of these slivers as you like, I used half a lemon’s worth.

Beat together the eggs, sugar, and coconut milk (I did this in a couple batches so that I could use a bowl with a spout – having a container that pours well is more important than efficiency here). Pour the mixture over the bread and fillings. Cover and refrigerate overnight – to make your life easier in the morning when you’re hungry, and so that it has a creamier texture because everything has longer to soak the liquids in.

The next morning:

Cook in a slow oven. (In this case, the cooking temperature and time were determined by another dish, but on it’s own I would guess that it would do well at 325F for 45minutes, but definitely check to make sure it’s cooked through)

Heat up a quarter cup of the reserved lemon syrup, and pour overtop the pudding.

Verdict:
I ended up with the beans a little harder than what I had pictured when I devised the dish, but it really worked well that way – they were almost like nuts. But my guest who abhors nuts in bread pudding (or almost anything sweet), still loved the dish. The beans and the coconut really play well together, and I’m thinking of taking the beans I ended up not using and simmer them with coconut milk to have with sweet sticky rice. I’ve adjusted the recipe also to include more liquid because mine ended up near the dry side, but I was limited by my coconut milk and didn’t want to switch to adding dairy to the amazingly dairy free bread pudding.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 6 out of 10
I found things with similar names on some restaurant menus (Ozumo’s execution in very different; Bamboo Sushi’s is also a bread pudding and has a citrus note, but the execution is darker and it does not have coconut), but I did not find any recipes or blog posts with a similar recipe. The closest I came there was a rice pudding.

Dish 2 – Azuki Bean Paste Cinnamon Rolls
(note: dough is only slightly adapted from King Arthur Flour’s guaranteed recipe)

ingredients:
(dough)
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
198 to 255g lukewarm water
361g all-purpose flour
85g unsalted butter, at room temperature
35g vanilla sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
30g dry milk
21g oat flour
20 cardamom seeds, ground

(filling – enough for 2 batches of the dough above)
350g azuki beans, having soaked overnight
42g coconut sugar
1-2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp korintje cinnamon

2 tsp milk
oil for pans

(icing)
3oz cream cheese
1/3 cup powdered (vanilla) sugar
milk to thin for consistency

The evening ahead:

Make the dough – proof the yeast, mix everything together in a mixer with a dough hook for, “about 7 minutes at second speed, and the dough should barely clean the sides of the bowl, perhaps sticking a bit at the bottom,” put in a greased container to rise in the refrigerator overnight. (more complete directions here)

Make the paste:

Only use about an equal quantity of water to beans because you aren’t going to be pouring any off – add more as needed. Simmer. beans and water until soft.

Oh, what, they aren’t getting soft? Add 1 tsp of baking soda and stir that in. There’s no reason not to add the first teaspoon right at the beginning, but you get a fun foaming action if you wait until the beans have started to cook.

If they still take a while to soften, add up to another teaspoon of baking soda, but increase slowly.

Often with sweet things you add a pinch of salt for balance – do not do that here because baking soda has a salty taste of its own.

Once the beans are soft, add the sugar to taste. I like the coconut sugar because it’s not as sweet as regular sugar, and it has a bit of a toasty dark undertone. I was aiming for the low end of sweetness, so you might want more sugar.

Add the cinnamon. If you are using a milder cinnamon, feel free to increase the amount to taste.

Note that I don’t have any mushing directions. I found that just stirring broke down the beans to the point where there was a lumpy paste, and I liked the additional texture enough that I didn’t see a benefit to breaking it down further.

Refrigerate overnight.

That morning:

Roll out the dough to 16″ x 12″ (possibly just those dimensions because it fits well on the KAF cookie mat or because everything happens in half sheet pan measures – I was rolling it on the mat to measure). If the dough starts to resist and pull back in, cover it in plastic and come back in a few minutes to keep going.

Brush dough lightly with milk.

Spread a thin layer of the bean paste on top.

Roll dough the long way as tightly as will keep everything tight but not distort the dough too much. It will stretch some as you roll. Pinch the end to the roll to create a smooth seal (it seals especially well if you roll the seam to the bottom as you slice the cylinder).

Slice into 1″ pieces and set in your tins (I had 1 8″ round, which held 7, and 1 9″ square, which held 9). Cover and let rise for an hour.

Bake at 375F for about 20 minutes.

Whip together the cream cheese and powdered sugar, and then drizzle in the milk until it’s loose and runny. Drizzle lightly on top of the hot rolls.

Serve!

Verdict:
Wow! These came out perfect. And they were never frustrating, even though I’d been told that this sweet roll dough could be hard to work with. And I was going to put all of the credit on the King Arthur Flour recipe, but no – I have also gained skills, too! The giving up and letting the dough rest when it starts to fight back is definitely a new skill. There was no frustration rolling it out at all. And I now want to use my mixer for my bread doughs instead of all of this kneading by hand craftsmanship. Though the reason I went with mechanical help was that in the reviews and comments on the King Arthur site there were a couple people who had troubles, and the answer was almost always insufficient kneading time.

To prep for this recipe, I also checked Cooks Illustrated‘s techniques for making the dough. And while the dough wasn’t so useful there, they spent a lot of time discussing the problems of filling leaking and burning. And you know what – I think bean paste cinnamon rolls might be superior to cinnamon sugar ones. One – it stays where you put it and doesn’t leak. Two – instead of using the sugar for texture and quantity of filling as well as sweetness, you don’t have nearly as much flexibility with the sweetness level of the roll and they often end up too sweet.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 2 out of 10
This was hard to search as there are many permutations of rolls and buns, which might include or just be on the same page as cinnamon, using azuki beans or red bean paste. So it’s hard to be sure I wasn’t missing a lot. That said, I didn’t find many exact matches, which is actually a shame since I think it’s a superior result. The first match I found that was close was a cinnamon roll that used the beans in the dough, instead of the filling, but then I found someone with the exact same idea (in fact, that search was where I got the idea to include cardamom in the dough), only she did not enjoy the results as much as I did – partly because she processed her red bean paste more than I.

Mayacoba beans – described as mild beans that are thin skinned and also good at keeping their shape in cooking.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these! You know those kale and white bean soups that are so delicious? Imagine that – as a quiche!

Dish 3 – Kale and Mayacoba Bean Quiche
ingredients:
400g Mayacoba (Canary) beans, soaked overnight
1 sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
1 Tablespoon dried oregano

1 Pie crust (sorry, I used up all my baking mojo on the rolls – this was purchased)
egg white

1/3 lb pancetta, in 3 thick slices, then diced (bought at Milk & Honey Market)
1 medium purple onion, diced
3 large curly kale leaves, cut off the stem and sliced into thin shreds

4 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbsp spicy mustard (obtained mine at the Philly Food Swap

Put the beans and herbs together in a pot with plenty of water and simmer for an hour – but keep a close eye on them. We want them completely soft, but not at all mushy or broken down. And, yes, these beans were amazing for that – the skin might break, but the beans kept their shapes nicely. When they’re cooked to your satisfaction, drain them and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Pick out the rosemary stem and the bay leaf.

Cook the diced pancetta all the way until at least half of it is looking crispy. Pull out the pieces and drain on paper towels.

Take 2 Tablespoons of the pancetta fat, and cook the diced onion down in that over medium high heat. Once the onion is soft and starting to brown at the edges, add the kale. Just dump it over top, and then start turning it as the bottom wilts. Stop cooking it when the kale is a bright, vibrant green, soft all through, and glistening with an even coating of fat. (note: pancetta fat can be exceptionally salty, so wait until you can taste the kale before deciding whether to add more salt to accommodate the beans.

If you’re going to make the pie crust, do so. Lay the pie crust into the pan and ease it into the base. Prick all over with a fork and then brush with some egg white. (in the land of not being wasteful, I just go ahead and crack the first egg for the filling and aim the brush for whites – thus having one fewer dish to wash). Bake for 10 minutes at 350F

So now you have ready to go in: beans, cooked pancetta cubes, and a kale/onion mixture.

Take your pre-cooked pie crust and layer those fillings in. (I considered also adding a hard cheese, but that idea was abandoned when I saw how rich my other ingredients were already going to be). If you can, end with the kale on the top, but that doesn’t matter much.

Thoroughly scramble your eggs and beat in the dairy (yes, you can use half and half, instead) and the mustard. Pour the eggs over the filling, and then stir them together a bit (which will break up your layers – no worries.

Bake at 350F for about 45 minutes.

Verdict:
Yum! OMG Yum! This was exactly what I’d hoped. Everyone loved it. You really can’t go wrong with quiche. It didn’t even seem heavy at all, even with the full measure of beans. I’ve even frozen some pieces to reheat as breakfasts over the next few weeks. I tried microwaving one this morning, and it even reheats well. ♥

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 8 out of 10
I have no idea why I didn’t find anyone else making this recipe – it’s delightful. Possibly because there are just so many white bean options that I didn’t search the right one. Here are the ones vaguely in the same family of delicious: white bean quiche with fennel and corn; spinach olive bean quiche; parsnip and kale quiche avec bacon; spinach and white bean quiche; vegan cannellini bean & kale quiche)

Erm… so I ran out of original ideas, and this next one is from a recipe. That said, it’s a recipe from ancient Rome that’s very different from a lot of food going on these days.

Dish 4 – Conchiclam Commodiana (Dried Beans in Commodus’ Style)

Conchicla Commodiana: pisam coques. cum despumaverit, teres piper, ligusticum, anethum, cepam siccam, suffundis liquamen, vino et liquamine temperabis. mittis in caccabum ut combibat. deinde ova IV solves, in sextarium pisae mittis, agitas, mittis in cumanam, ad ignem ponis, ut ducat, et inferes. (Apicius book 5, section 4, number 4) (I mostly used this site’s redaction, except for where I corrected their translation or substituted based on what I had available – and I didn’t look up the measurement equivalences… so only a little bit, but I did use it as a source)

ingredients:
400g Mayacoba (Canary) beans, soaked overnight
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp dill seeds (anethum is dill, not anise)
1 tsp epazote (because I wanted more green herbs, and it might be helpful with beans)
1 tsp fat or oil
1 small-medium yellow onion, finely diced (dried in recipe)
half a dozen healthy sprigs of parsley, leaves and stems divided, both chopped finely
1 tsp Phu Quoc fish sauce
2 Tbsp red wine
4 extra large eggs

Boil the beans, skimming off the froth.

With a mortar and pestle, grind the pepper, dill seed, and epazote.

In a skillet, fry the onion and parsley stems in a little oil (I used a teaspoon of the pancetta fat from the previous dish). Add the cooked beans, ground herbs, and fresh parsley – stir that together. Add the fish sauce and the wine, and it should be easy to stir, but not liquidy.

Take the beans off the fire and let cool.

Beat together the 4 eggs, and then stir into the cooled bean mixture.

Put it in the oven and cook very slowly. You could use a water bath, but I was already using the pan I usually use for that with the bread pudding, so instead I slowly raised the oven heat – letting it settle a bit at 180F, 220F, 275F, 325F, and 350F. And I think it was almost 2 hours before it looked cooked through.

Surprisingly, it was a souffle! I made ancient Roman bean souffle!

Verdict:
Fascinating. The (other) classicist among us said that it tasted like spring time – with the bright dill, green herbs, and earthy loamy beans. It was simultaneously heavy and light. It wasn’t a dinner dish, and I’m not sure it’s a breakfast dish. This was solidly in the land of brunch food.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 2 out of 10
You won’t find it anywhere else, but I certainly didn’t make it up.

Ohhh… this next one might be my favorite. This is the only one that could actually be a workday breakfast.

Marrow beans – described as having a creamy texture with either a meaty or a bacon-y flavor.

Okay, so this past year I finally started to enjoy congee or jook – by making it at home. I was inspired by both Tea and Cookies and David Lebovitz to make it at home with rich and flavorful little tidbits.

And I thought to myself – why not cook a very thin bean soup full of tastiness like you do with rice? I was so confident of this recipe, that I used the whole measure instead of dividing it into two potential recipes.

So I have no idea how incredibly inappropriate the name of this dish is – probably a bit, since it’s not rice – but I also have no better word to describe to you what is going on in this dish.

Marrow Bean Jook
ingredients:
1 tsp bacon fat (or pancetta fat, or any oil, really)
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 inches of ginger, cut into thin 1″ matchsticks
750g marrow beans, soaked overnight

duck stock

1 cup dried chanterelle mushrooms, steeped in hot water for half an hour

3 scallions, sliced into thin rounds
2 garlic cloves, sliced into thin rounds
2 mild peppers, sliced into thin rounds with no seeds

Stock:
Right, so I made special duck stock for this dish. I picked up a container of duck heads and feet from Siu Kee Duck House in Chinatown, and I cooked it overnight at 200F with my allium ends and carrot peelings, seasoned with 2 dried chilies (one of the few remaining things from the first sampler of free things Marx Foods sent me), black peppercorns, 3 whole cloves, 1 star anise, some fennel fronds, and a sprig of rosemary.

Jook:
In a bit of fat, cook down the onions. When they are creamy, add the garlic and ginger. After a minute, add the drained beans. Stir a few times, and then in goes the stock. Don’t worry if the stock is gelled solid, it will melt as it gets warm.

And then cook it for hours as you make everything else.

After the first hour, take the rehydrated mushrooms and cut them into centimeter pieces. And go ahead and add both the mushrooms and their water to the jook – it’ll only make it tastier.

Stir it every 15-30 minutes to encourage it to break down. I found that the marrow beans did not need any baking soda to turn smooth.

Near when it was time to serve, I took the three condiments above (scallions, garlic, and hot pepper) and toasted them separately in a barely-oiled skillet and put them out for toppings.

Also, go ahead and taste the soup. Mine was plenty salty, but if it had not been, I would have added a teaspoon of fish sauce.

Would also be excellent with a poached egg on top – but this particular meal had used plenty of eggs already.

Verdict:
YUM! Totally breakfast-y. Rich flavors, mellow intensity. Felt like a big hug.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 7 out of 10
There’s millions of years of history of thin bean soups. Gruel, porridge, pottage, pulse – there’s really very little possibility this is a unique innovation. But as far as I can tell, it’s the only one on the internet.

Here’s a small selection of other things vaguely like it that I found while searching: lima bean potato gruel (wow – least exciting name for food ever); mung bean millet gruel; Pat jook (made with azuki beans, so that wouldn’t have been original); fruited green bean congee; congee with mung bean; 1889 bean porridge; Tutu – dutch Antilles bean porridge; mung bean porridge in coconut milk; Molly Katzen’s Bean Porridge; Ful