Warning: Undefined variable $show_stats in /home/jdqespth/public_html/wp-content/plugins/stats/stats.php on line 1384

Miscellany – Persimmon, Simmered Quinces, Sunchoke Risotto with Prima Donna, Mashed Parsley Root, and Meaty Pasta with Blue Cheese

New Fruits
Persimmon – I picked up an Hachiya Persimmon at my produce truck (and the sweet guy just gave it to me for free. My mother, having grown up in an area with persimmon trees, had always warned me off of them: “If they aren’t just dead ripe, then they are the sourest things in the world. And it’s almost impossible to catch them between being ripe enough and rotten.”

But this was a beautiful, evenly shaped and unblemished specimen, and it called to me. So I bought it and left it to sit around for a week or two. And then one day, I came back from D&D to find that my kitchen smelled sweet and luscious. So I went over and squished the persimmon, and found it sufficiently squishy. (My research since then suggests that I would have been safer to wait until it was visibly squishy, not just to touch) So I promptly called up my mother and food co-conspirator for advice on eating the thing (Do I peel it? Do I need a specific angle of approach to avoid the seeds? Will it be disappointing on its own – should I make something to go with it?)… and both of them were out.

My mother called back and let me know that all of the seeds would be up at the top, tucked up under the stem, so you could just go on and bit the thing.

MMmmm! It was sweet! And luscious. And dribbling down my chin. It tasted a bit of pears and apricots, and had just a slightly too mushy texture.

Also, I discovered that I didn’t like the skin and proceeded to pick the skin off the next area right before I ate it. The skin is thin (like a pear or tomato, but just a bit firmer so there’s a crisp pop as you bite through… kind of like a cooked sausage casing) but papery, and I could flake it off rather easily, if messily.

Quince – I was first introduced to quinces several years ago by a wise and clever woman in Boston who shares my interest in ancient cuisine. She presented me with a quince, and I think I ended up forgetting it at my sister’s untasted. But I have thought fondly and longingly of them ever since.

And then I saw them at the Headhouse farmers’ market, so I bought 2 (at a dollar each!).

Now you know above where I said the persimmons perfumed the house? I’m not sure that was 100% true. Because I realized later that I had also brought home the quinces that afternoon, and quinces are famed for giving off an amazing floral scent while the sit on the counter and ripen. But after I ate the persimmon, the smell continued but changed a bit, so I think both were making happy smells together, and I’m sticking by that claim.

When I bought the quinces, they were consistently green, but the sweet smell finally guilted me into cooking the quinces (tannins make them tart when raw, but simmering them in sugar and water makes them amazing and pink/red).

First, I washed the outsides thoroughly, removing all of the fluff on the skin. I quartered them and cut the seeds and tough bits out. Even though everyone says you should peel them, I didn’t. I dumped the quarters into a glass loaf pan (2 quinces ended up being slightly more than 1 layer deep), and I poured over top: the rest of the simple syrup I had hanging out in my fridge, 1.5 knifefuls of the honey that had crystallized in my pantry, 3 generous teaspoons of vanilla sugar, and a bunch of water. I have no idea what the proportions were.

Then I popped it into the 350F oven in which I was also roasting a delicata squash and a rutabega. Once those were finished, I lowered the heat to 200F and draped the pan with tinfoil. And then an episode or two of Primeval later, I got bored and brought the heat back up to 350F. And then I decided I didn’t need for it to simmer all night long until it became bright red.

So I washed out a jar with hot water (yeah, I know, not sterilized, but at least the glass wouldn’t shatter with temperature shock) and took up the quinces and poured the sauce over. It was almost like canning; the lid even popped sealed and everything. Actually, I’m not sure I should have kept so much air out – I think the color darkens even more with exposure to oxygen, but at 2am, it seemed like the best way to keep the quinces happy.

see also: David Lebovitz – Rosy Poached Quinces; Zucchini & Chocolate – Vanilla Poached Quince

~*~

New Tuber
Jerusalem Artichoke – you can read the wikipeadia article I linked there for all the fun facts about jerusalem artichokes. I was drawn to them because several of the food blogs I’ve been reading through recently have raved about them. (huh, I was sure I’d have more links there.)

So I saw them at the the market, and I picked the prettiest one (yes, just one). I figured I’d make a simple 1-person soup to get to know the tuber, but I ended up seduced by risotto.

Now, I love to cook hovering by the stove and tinkering with things, and I tend to pass up recipes that involve leaving food alone for extended periods of time because I like to pick at things. So I will tell you that risotto is not that hard.

Sunchoke Risotto

I had some homemade vegetable stock (though, oddly enough, not my home), and I didn’t think it had any parsnips in it, so I took the opportunity while heating up the stock to chuck in some large cubes of parsley root (more on the difference later). But, yes, always get your liquids up to temperature for stock, if you can (by which I mean, if you are saving on dishes by not pouring a finishing splash of cream into a separate container first, there it no need to get your container of cream warm. Just suck it up and keep cooking.)

So I started off with a mixture of butter and olive oil because both tastes seemed like they would go well with the corner of jerusalem artichoke I nibbled raw and the way the flavor is described when warm (all nutty and earthy). Into that, I threw the white of a small leek (sliced, cleaned, and drained). I did not use the green part because I was aiming for an earthier dish, and I probably would have opted for onions or shallots if I hadn’t had a leek in my fridge.

Once the leek softened, I added 2 cloves of garlic (minced), my 1 jerusalem artichoke (washed, rough spots peeled off so that it was sort of striped with peel, halved lengthwise, and then sliced thinly), and some arborio rice (3/4 of a cup, maybe less).

Once the sunchoke softened and the rice was a little toasty, I ladled in a little vegetable stock. Cooked and stirred until it started looking a bit dry… then more stock. Repeat as necessary.

When the rice was almost cooked, I started to consider seasoning. 1/2 teaspoon salt (you might prefer less salt than I). A decent grinding of pepper. A shake of powdered thyme. And a small pinch of chipotle. And a few grinds of nutmeg.

I finished it off with 2 half & half creamers (so about an ounce total) and a generous grating of Prima Donna cheese I had acquired through a random offer for bartering. Grate and stir, grate and stir. And then grate a little more for the top.

It was delicious. Awesome, even. But I’m not sure I could distinguish which parts of the flavor came specifically from the jerusalem artichoke.

~*~

So – Parsley Root – I actually discovered parsley root before I figured out parsnips. There I was, in the suburbs, learning how to make stock for the first time. My mother thought I was nuts for wanting to go through all that work to make something that was just an ingredient, but she humored me and told me anyway that I needed some celery, carrots, and parsnips (and onions, garlic, parsley, rosemary, thyme, and pepper). So we went to the supermarket to buy fresh vegetables. And there were some lovely things that looked like parsnips but still had the parsley attached at the top, labeled parsley root. So I got those and thought it wonderfully convenient to grab one thing with two ingredients and had no idea they weren’t parnips.

Then I went to a different grocery store, and they had never heard of parsnips with parsley greens. So I went back to the original store and bought the parsley root again, this time noticing the different terminology (still not realizing that it wasn’t just a vocabulary issue). Finally, after years of being puzzled, I found websites that acknowledged it was a different thing.

The main thing is that parsnips are sweeter than parsley root, and they don’t come with the delightfully flavorful greens that taught me how to appreciate parsley, too.

Mashed Parsley Root

So there I was with stock to boil. In this case, vegetable stock.

So I peeled three parsley roots (and saved the peelings for a later stock) and cut it into large, easily fished out, chunks maybe 1″ square. And put them in the stock.

Some time later, when they could be easily pierced with a fork, I pulled them out (with a slotted spoon) into a bowl. I threw in a chunk (2 Tbsp) of butter, and I went after them with my potato masher. They were still quite resistant to the mashing, and it took a decent amount of persistence… but the result was a lovely dish that I would make again at the first excuse. Not a cohesive mash like potatoes, but a delightful texture nonetheless.

Luckily, I already knew that I wanted to package up the risotto for the next day because I was glad not to have to worry about making the mashed parsley root my dinner.

~*~

And then the dish I’ve been making a lot because the weather has been cold and wet and miserable and I have wanted simple food with rich, dark flavors. This dish might not be for everyone.

Meaty Pasta with Blue Cheese

So I acquired from my mother (in with a bunch of containers of frozen leftovers) a package of her lasagne filling – ground beef with tomatoes, garlic, and onion (and probably other things) cooked down until it is solid goodness.

So I boiled two ounces of pasta (penne).

With just 4 minutes left for cooking the pasta, I heated up 3 Tablespoons of the lasagna meat. Poured over it about a cup of pasta sauce from a jar.

One the sauce was hot, I drained the pasta, poured it over the sauce, and mixed it all together with a teaspoon or so of the pasta water. I kept cooking it until the pasta was finished cooking.

Then I tossed it into a bowl, crumbles blue cheese on top, and then mushed the cheese deeper into the pasta so it would melt a little around the edges.

In later versions, I added:

  • 1 big floret of cauliflower, cut into small pieces and started cooking at about the same time as the pasta so that it could soften sufficiently.
  • 1/2 teaspoon of homemade pesto, added at the same time as the beef
  • cloves of roasted garlic, added at the same time as the beef

food list

I ended up acquiring an abundance of food over the weekend (leftovers from my mother, a tempting farmers’ market, and a delightful cheese exchange – oh, and amazing fruitcake in the mail), so roasting is postponed.

Well, at least the part where I crack open the butternut squash… I am still looking longingly at the uncaramelized garlic and onions and things. Soon.

But my larder has an abundance, so that calls for a list to make sure everything is properly savored.

Food I have
Produce
1 hachiya persimmon
2 quinces
6 large red potatoes
cherry tomatoes (from neighbor’s tomato plants)
2 red and 3 green tomatoes (from mother’s tomato plants)
mixed tomatoes (adopted from friend’s refrigerator)
1 green cauliflower
4 radishes
1 sunchoke / Jerusalem artichoke
3 carrots
carrot greens
arugula
2 small leeks
hot peppers galore
4 limes
small chinese cabbage
3 parsley roots
1 rutabega
ginger
kale

orange juice
vegetable stock
most of a can of coconut milk (full fat)

leftover cooked vegetables (from a restaurant)
creole seasoned creamy corn sauce (from a restaurant)

dairy
smoked aged local cheddar
Prima Donna
a blue cheese
store brand extra sharp cheddar
cream cheese
2% milk
plain yogurt

meat
filet mignon leftovers
chicken raft leftovers
and one of the leftover containers from my mother looked like she accidentally gave me some of her concentrated ground beef cooked down with onions and tomatoes for filling lasagna.

chicken stock

red beans made with pork

Meals to make with that
I’ll make some carolina rice and freeze up the beans in lunch-sized portions

And then I want to make a bunch of small batches of soup –

  • I bought the carrots for the carrot greens so I could see what they were like in my standard asian pork, greens, and noodles soup ETA: Done. Ummm… not as exciting as I’d hoped. It just tasted like its component parts and the greens never melted into the soup flavor. I have a leftover portion, so maybe they’ll end up better.
  • While this recipe for Jerusalem artichoke soup with lemon and saffron sounds exciting, I think I’d rather try my first introduction to this tuber more simply… I’m a little worried, though, that most recipes seem to call for 3 parts potatoes to 2 parts jerusalem artichoke. Do you think that’s because the flavor is too strong (probably not, since they can be eaten raw) or because of the expense? I’ll let you know how it goes. ETA: Oooo – or I could turn it into risotto!
  • Carrot Ginger Coconut Milk Soup (inspired by Orangette’s travels, possibly with this recipe as a starting point)

I still want to roast the cauliflower. I think that would tumble well with some of the tomatoes.

And I have a hankering for pasta. Possibly tossed with blue cheese and toasted pine nuts. But that’s not an efficient use of ingredients. I might have to use some of the blue cheese with the roasted cauliflower to make sure I get to it while it’s still tasty… hmmm.. or the cheese and cauliflower could add to the list of soups.

These Poached Quines will finally give me a use for my vanilla sugar.

I’ll probably make a colcannon type think with the parsley root and the kale. Or maybe the rutabega.

And as soon as I finish gobbling up the rocket with nibbles of the local smoked cheddar cheese, I’ll start making kale, tomato, and poached egg breakfasts.

So there are ideas maximizing the combinations, but now I have to figure out a schedule and get to it in time.

Which means I need to head home and make myself some dinner.

Playing with eggplant

So I liked the Imam Bayildi so much that I started making vows such as, “I shall never use any other method to prepare eggplant!”

And I immediately set out to bastardize the recipe. And since they are chinese eggplants I’ve got, I was thinking something vaguely chinese in flavor. Especially since I was reminded of the buttery texture of the stuffed and fried eggplant in black bean sauce at my current asian restaurant.

But I wasn’t about to start messing with pork mince and shrimp… actually, I could even be bothered to thaw a hamburger patty of (nothing but) ground turkey and repurpose it… but I did have a zucchini looking for a home.

So I actually ended up jumping out at bed at 2am after I made the Imam Bayildi to jot down notes for modifying it. But let me spoil the ending of the story and tell you that it just didn’t end up as perfect. I don’t know if it just needs tomatoes to have the perfect synergy of flavors or if it would have been perfect if I’d just added more sugar (or oil!), but I’m still liking the result enough that I will be tinkering with this recipe some more – even the disappointing version is entirely edible.

Tinkered Imam Bayildi

Peel 2 chinese eggplants in stripes, cut in half widthwise, and cut deep slits into each of the 4 pieces. Drop them into a pan with 1 Tablespoon hot oil (see, I’m still trying to minimize the oil, and maybe that’s just going in the face of the whole point of the original recipe), and turn them at intervals until the outside is evenly golden.

Meanwhile, fry cleaned leeks in 2 tsps oil until just starting to brown. (And this here is another place I might need to tinker. See – using all the way up the greens of the leeks was great when I was also capturing the chlorophyll taste of parsley, but it ended up being a bit too much damp green leek in this version. Then again, maybe it would have been better if the leeks had gone into the pan drier (or if there were more oil) – this experiment and reading about Orangette‘s perfectly cleaned and dried leeks has my pondering the purchase of a salad spinner.)

Once the leeks are soft, add minced garlic and ginger. A minute later, add zucchini diced a little smaller that 1cm (so it will stuff inside the eggplant nicely, but not so small that it loses justifiability). Cook just another minute or two longer – maybe with a splash of a stir fry sauce, if you have a good one. I had just finished a bottle, so I did without.

Turn the eggplants so they are slit side up, wiggle a spoon into the slit to open it up, and then stuff with the leek/zucchini. If there is any left, pile it on top.

Mix together – the juice of one lime, 1/2 tsp sugar (I ended up using a teaspoon of the lime simple syrup I had leftover), 2 tsp soy sauce (and I still ended up seasoning both versions with more plain salt while eating, but that might just be me), and 1/2 cup of water. Pour the mixture into the pot with the eggplant, put on the lid, and simmer on low for 45 minutes.

~*~

So, as I said, not perfect – nowhere near as exciting as the original – but still decently tasty.

And then I’ve been using the leftovers.

1 day I microwaved a whole stuffed eggplant piece and wrapped it in a piece of bread and ate it as a sandwich. 🙂

Another day, I made a salad of spring mix, 1 ounce sharp cheddar cheese pieces, a tomato, and a de-seeded and sliced serrano pepper. Topped that off with microwaved (and sliced into smaller pieces) Imam Bayildi. And dressed it with some balsamic vinegar stirred up with half a teaspoon of dijon mustard.

I think tonight I’ll make a salad with carrots and crispy noodles and top it with one of the modified versions (and dress it with black vinegar mixed with a 1/4 teaspoon chinese mustard).

Imam Bayildi

So I had eggplants and a lot of time to kill last night, so I started looking though my cookbooks for something exciting. So I ended up attempting Imam Bayildi for the first time.

I’ve never ordered this is a restaurant, so I have no idea how authentic the taste ended up being, but I liked it.

I used the recipe from Tess Mallos’ Complete Middle East Cookbook. Only I didn’t have any parsley, and I had leeks to use up, so I swapped them for the onions and parsley both. And I added the juice of half a lime because I had already used its zest in popcorn, so it was just going to dry out if I didn’t use it quickly.

So here’s how I made it –

Imam Bayildi

ingredients
1 leek
2 chinese eggplants
roughly 3 Tablespoons of olive oil, YMMV
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
salt
pepper
juice of 1 lemon (+ half a lime – optional)
1/4 tsp sugar
1/2 cup water

Cut off the root bit of the leek, slice it in half lengthwise, and then cut into strips that range from 1/2″ where it is white to 1mm where it is dark green and tough. Dump all of the slices into a large bowl of water and rub them through your fingers to make sure they are as clean as possible. Wash the cutting board, and let the leeks sit in the water while you prepare the eggplants. Then rub them through your fingers some more and lift the floaters out of the water and let drain. Don’t try to get every piece of leek out of the bottom because you’ll stir up the sediment.

Wash 2 long chinese eggplants. Remove the stem, and peel off strips of the skin so that it looks striped (I accidentally peeled 4 stripes consistently, and that really helped to make them nice and square for turning evenly – worth doing again on purpose). Then, so they’d fit in my pot, I sliced them in half widthwise. Cut a deep slit lengthwise in each piece, stopping short of each end.

In a pan (I used my soup pot because I don’t have a lid for any of my deep saute pans), pour enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pot (the recipe called for 1/2 cup for 8 medium eggplants – I used more like 2 Tablespoons). Turn the burner on to medium high, and once the oil gets up to temperature, add the eggplant sections. While doing the next step, check in with the eggplants occasionally to turn them and make sure that the brown (lightly) evenly – but you want them still a bit firm.

In a saute pan, add another 2 teaspoons of olive oil and fry down the leeks with a sprinkle of salt. Once they start to brown, add 3 chopped cloves of garlic. Cook 1 more minute, and then pour the leeks and garlic into a bowl with the peeled and diced tomatoes. Mix that together with pepper (since you already salted the leeks, take a taste before adding more salt to the mixture).

Squeeze the citrus into a cup, and mix in the sugar and water so the sugar dissolves.

By now, your eggplants are probable nicely golden. Turn them so the slits are up and wiggle the slits open with a spoon. Now spoon in the tomato/leek mixture (or tomato/onion/parsley mixture, if you were following the real recipe). Any filling that does not fit inside can be piled on top, but all of mine pretty much fit. Add the lemon juice/sugar/water mixture and cover the pan/pot tightly. Cook on gently heat for 45 minutes.

And then, even though it is supposed to be served cool or room temperature, I ate two pieces right away – on bread to sop up the juice. And I put away the other two pieces to have later (maybe with a salad).

Cream cheese addiction (three ways) + Squash Blossom Quesadillas (no cream cheese)

I love cream cheese. If I were poetically inclined, I would write odes to cream cheese.

It makes almost everything, sweet or savory, taste better.

But most especially – bagels!

And if you’ve been buying your fancy cream cheese spreads from the store, you’ve been missing out.

Cream cheese and scallions – I think stores must try to put them through a food processor or something to universally come up with bland, stringy (but I’ll still eat it!) scallion cheese. Let me tell you how to make this one better.

Take 1 bunch of scallions. Cut off the root bits and then peel them down until you have firm, clean skin left. (If you keep a bag of onion skins in your freezer for stock, wash off these scraps and put them into the bag, too) Then line up three or four of them, and slice the thinnest rounds you can (if anything is thicker than a millimeter, slow down and try it again). And keep slicing all the way into the green parts (pulling out any that are too wilty, and then slicing up the rest until you have just the tips left… and then those can go into the stock bits bag, too).

Dump the sliced scallions into a bowl. Dump an 8oz block of cream cheese into the bowl.

Ask yourself whether you want to be creative. If yes, also add some garlic (either minced from a jar or roasted cloves, but not fresh because that ends up just a little too potent) and maybe some chipotle. See what odds and ends are hanging around your fridge looking exciting. A dollop of heavy cream makes it a very sexy dip for company. A blob of mayonnaise makes it more spreadable. A drop of worcestershire sauce may sound like a good idea to me, but it just ends up making it taste a bit off, so don’t do that.

Mix it all up. It will be the best scallion cream cheese you have ever had, and people will ask for your secret. You will end up looking at those people like they are crazy, since it’s just scallions and cream cheese – why is it so hard?

roasted red pepper and cream cheese – okay, so it took me a while to make a better one than my bagel place, but I blame that on being a relative newcomer to the wonders of roasted red peppers. One warning though, since cream cheese mold often shows up first as orange dots and this is a fairly strong flavor so it’s basic nature will mask early signs of spoilage, you do want to be careful how long this sits in your fridge – this has never been a problem for me, though.

Roast red peppers. Remove skins. Have them hanging around your fridge looking lonesome.

Lay out a kitchen towel. On top of that, put a paper towel. (or you can have lots of paper towels… or 2 kitchen towels, if you are doing laundry tomorrow, otherwise the little scraps of red pepper will get ingrained in the fabric for a while.)

Cover half of the paper towel with roasted red pepper strips (you can strip some of the moisture with your fingers while you’re still dangling them over the container… and possibly with the container resting in the sink). Fold the other half of the paper towel and kitchen towel over top of the peppers, and then just plop your cutting board on top and maybe a pitcher of water. Read some food blogs. Come back. Set aside the pitcher of water, move the cutting board, and flip over the pepper/towel sandwich. Replace cutting board and pitcher. Oh, wait, have you checked your email? Better do that again.

Okay, so you’re bored and eager to eat breakfast now. Fine. Go open up your towels. Peel the red pepper off of the paper towel, tear it into smaller strips (and inch wide or so is plenty fine) and pile them onto your cutting board. So when you were tearing them, you noticed that peppers have a grain direction, right? It runs from stem to seat. Slice the peppers into thin strips opposite the grain direction.

Dump the strips into a bowl. Add one 8 oz. package of cream cheese. And then there’s just no question on this one, go ahead and add several cloves of roasted garlic. Mush it all up.

And try not to eat it all in the first day.

Chives, fennel, garlic, and cream cheese – or you can just be creative.

I lopped off a hunk of chives from the herbs on my patio, and then used scissors to cut them into wee tiny slices.

Pulled off some fennel fronds from the bulb [redacted] gave me (note: I have done this before with bronze fennel, and it doesn’t look nearly as appetizing as with green), sliced them up into tiny pieces as best I could.

And then tossed in the rest of the cloves from head of roasted garlic.

And a stick of cream cheese.

It was delicious! And all gone.

~*~

So I was hungry this morning, but I kind of didn’t want to make a new batch of sexy cream cheese because they haven’t been lasting well in my fridge (and the box of triscuits is getting low, too…). And I thought about making oatmeal, but I have a craving for cranberries to put in them, and I haven’t made it to Trader Joe’s, which I think will be my best bet. I considered making it with dates and apples, and while that sounds good, but it wasn’t what I really wanted and I only have sexy oatmeal that requires standing for half an hour. And Kundalini yoga kicked my ass on Sunday.

So I went for squash blossom quesadillas.

My neighbor has a butternut squash plant that is planning to take over the world, so we had already talked about how it wouldn’t be any problem for me to relieve her of a few blossoms.

Only my default for quesadillas is using them to get rid of any small leftovers I have, so it ended up including: half an onion, half a bell pepper, a jalepeno pepper, the last 2 of the tiny yellow summer squash, some mushrooms – and 8 squash blossoms. Seasoned with Penzey’s fajita mix. With plain old store brand sharp cheddar cheese from the grocery (which I usually wait to buy at $2/lb, but they haven’t had that price in a while and this is my last stick. Should I keep waiting, or buy a couple at 2 for $5 to tide me over).

It ended up being full of deliciousness, but I couldn’t have told you where the flavor of squash blossoms added a damn thing. But delicious. In my mouth.