Actual Cooking: Farm Egg Baked in Celery Cream

I mentioned in my post about Miller Union restaurant in Atlanta that I'd had the Farm Egg Baked in Celery Cream appetizer (as seen on TV!). It was such a wonderful combination of deliciousness and simplicity that I just had to try it for myself. Luckily, the actual Miller Union recipe by Chef Steven Satterfield is right there on teh intertoobz™!

So I decided that for Father's Day, rather than being waited on,father wanted a chance to cook brunch himself.

On the Saturday before we went on a lovely drive through the Connecticut countryside looking for fresh, local ingredients. We found fresh jumbo eggs and a small yellow onion at a roadside farm stand. The Fish Family Farm Dairy Store was out of heavy cream (though we did bring home some delicious ice cream), but we can actually get local cream at the "local megamart" through the Farmer's Cow group of Connecticut dairy farms. I had fresh thyme from my own garden, and from a coworker's I had garlic scapes (the same ones I used in my chipotle bacon sweet potato salad), which I substituted for the shallot in my single deviation from Chef Satterfield's recipe. The only major ingredients not locally sourced were the celery (even the farm stands had only California celery) and the Schar gluten-free rolls I used to make my wife's portion of bread.

Sunday morning bright and early I hit the kitchen. Following the recipe, I put the celery, onion, scapes, thyme and other seasonings in a pot with the cream, gently heating it all until I saw the first hints of steam, then removing from the heat to steep for 15 minutes. At this point, it was all I could do not to simply drink the warm cream: I was astounded at the delicious fragrance that filled the kitchen as that cream steeped.

While it did, I got to work on the fresh grapefruit salad that would turn this dinner appetizer into a Sunday brunch. I cut supremes from a ruby-red grapefruit (a technique I've seen a lot on cooking shows, but had never previously tried), tossed them in a lime tarragon mint vinaigrette based very loosely on this recipe and using fresh mint and tarragon from my deck, and arrayed them in cocktail glasses over mixed salad greens from the garden.

When the cream was ready, I strained it and set it aside. I buttered two shallow baking dishes and broke an egg in each, then spooned in just enough of the infused cream to cover the whites, and popped the dishes into a 350°F oven for about 6 minutes. While I waited, I cut slices of bread — from the gluten-free rolls for my wife and from a fresh French loaf for me — brushed them with olive oil, and toasted them in a hot grill pan.

I mixed the residual juice from the grapefruit with some orange juice, grenadine, and club soda to make a Virgin Sunrise, and our brunch was complete:

Not a bad visual imitation of the original, eh? And, as it turns out, not a bad flavor imitation, either. In deference to my wife's preferences, I deliberately made the egg a tiny bit firmer than they serve it at Miller Union, but it was still rich, creamy, and delicious. The bread was perfect, and the salad and drink rounded this simple but luscious app up to a real meal.

I urge anyone who can to get to Miller Union and try the real thing... but if you can't, I urge you to "try this at home."

A DreamCheese Deferred, and Korean Chicken Salad

Well, I was going to try my hand at making paneer (Indian cheese) today, based on a recipe from Food Network Star Season 6 winner Aarti Sequeira, but we got a piddly 4 in. of snow today, and since the town decided not to plow my streets 'til 3:00 pm, I never made it to the store, and plans got changed. Maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime, my house-bound lunch was a sandwich made of the last of some Korean chicken salad I made a few days ago, and should've blogged about then. Here's the deal: I've mentioned before that my family loves the Korean pulled pork wraps with kimchi slaw and sesame mayo that I swiped from my friend Andy, right? What they really love the most about it is the sesame-garlic mayo, and over the Christmas break, I discovered that it also makes a fine condiment for hot dogs and burgers... so I decided to make a batch of just the mayo, and park it in the fridge in squeeze bottles.

As it happens, I have some canned chicken that I bought as emergency supplies last year in preparation for Tropical Storm Irene, and since we didn't eat it during the storm, I've been thinking about ways to use it up. I've decided to experiment with various kinds of chicken salad, for sandwiches to take to work for lunch, and last week I fired the first salvo: I made a Korean-influenced chicken salad. I don't have a proper menu, because everything is "to taste": Just put the chicken in a bowl and start doctorin' and tastin' 'til it's good. But here are the things I used:

• Canned chicken
• Homemade sesame-garlic mayo
• Kimchi, chopped
• Sriracha
• Coarse black pepper
• Kosher salt

The kimchi I used was storebought (but apparently house made) from Je Mart Asian market in East Hartford. I selected several thick cabbage pieces and diced them, as a stand-in for the celery traditionally found in "normal" chicken and tuna salads.

This is by no means Korean food, but the combination of the sesame mayo, kimchi, and sriracha produces a distinctly Korean-influenced sandwich filling. To complete the sandwich, I used some whole pieces of the kimchi to substitute for traditional lettuce. Yum!

What Facebook Is Good For: Booze!

One of my earliest cocktail-related posts described my visit to The Hour, a great Alexandria, Virginia, shop specializing in vintage and vintage-style barware. I don't know when I'll make it back — I'm not in Alexandria all that often — but I've been able to keep up my acquaintance with The Hour through the magic of Facebook.


One of the delights of following The Hour's Facebook feed is the wonderful cocktail recipes they post. Back in January, they cocktail of the day was the Gold Rush, made with Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, bourbon, and fresh lemon juice. Since I had some Canton on hand — I'd sought it out to make Gary Regan's Debonair cocktail — I thought I'd give it a whirl... but when it comes to cocktails, it seems I'm never content to leave well enough alone: I tend to think that wherever bourbon is good, rye is better, and in this case the spiciness of rye seemed a perfect match for the ginger liqueur... so I made my Gold Rush with Michter's Single Barrel:

1 1/2 oz Domaine de Canton
1 oz Michter's Single Barrel Rye
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

That made a delicious drink, but I found myself wanting to bring the whiskey more to the front, so I reversed the proportions of rye and ginger...

1 1/2 oz Michter's Single Barrel Rye
1 oz Domaine de Canton
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

...and this is the version I finally decided to stick with. It's obviously not quite a Gold Rush anymore, and while a quick Google search turns up a number of recipes including rye, Canton, and lemon juice, none is precisely this drink, so I make bold to give it a name myself. Following my earlier punning convention, I hereby dub this... the Sardonic Redhead. So mote it be!

Actual Cooking: Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Sauce

So after dealing with the third and fourth snowpocalypses in the last 3 weeks, I'm finally getting caught up (as promised) with some of the actual cooking I've been doing, starting with the sauteed pork with mushroom sauce I made almost 2 weeks ago, based on a recipe from James Peterson's Cooking, which was one of my first acquisitions after I started putting food-related stuff on every gift list.

I didn't feel quite up to breaking down a whole pork loin and packaging the portions I didn't need for one meal for later use¹, so I wimped out and bought a package of boneless pork loin chops, leaving me with three somewhat larger pieces of meat (for two servings) instead of the smaller noisettes called for in the recipe. In addition, my market didn't have any of the wild mushrooms that the recipe says can "make this an especially elegant dish," so I settled for the readily available cultivated white mushrooms for both the sauce and the garnish. I guess I'll have to cook this recipe again in the future, and go for the more "elegant" version.

In the meantime, it was quite tasty. I did learn that my electric glass-top stove is apparently hot, because Hi heat got the surface of the pork browned in about half the time the described procedure suggested, and without getting the interior fully done; I ended up finishing the meat in the oven. In future, I'll interpret "high heat" in recipes as 8 or 9 on my stove's dial.

Even with plain, inelegant mushrooms, the mushroom sauce was delicious, and easy to make: coarsely chopped mushrooms simmered with a couple tablespoons of meat glaze, a little water, and a half cup of heavy cream, then pureed in a blender, thickened back on the stove, and finished with salt, pepper, and a bit of wine vinegar. A yummy, meaty tasting sauce which has the excellent feature (when cooking for a gluten-sensitive partner) of being self-thickening without any need for flour or a flour substitute.

After resting the pork, I sliced it (on the bias, like they do on TV!), plated and sauced the slices, added some sauteed mushroom slices as a garnish, and served it up with a side of rice. (I had bought some fennel, which I'd planned to braise as an accompaniment, but I bailed on that at the last minute; more about the fennel in another post.)

In the end, it wasn't really quite the same dish the recipe promised, but it was a hearty meal that managed to impress the Lovely Bride™, and made me feel at least marginally like an actual cook... and I call that success!


¹ This business of buying primals and portioning them for future use is a project I want to tackle in the future, both because I think it might save some money, and because I want to get more intimately familiar with the ingredients I use.

The End of the Canning Season

Well, today I probably finished my canning for the year: The yield from my pepper plants is winding down (the tomatoes are pretty much already done, except for onesy-twosies), and what I'm getting now is mostly the long red peppers (cayenne and hot Portugals) and habaneros (they're always the last to come in and the last to give up). So I made a double batch of red pepper jelly, using the same recipe I posted previously for jalapeno jelly, with the following modifications:

• In place of the 4 green bell peppers, I used 3 red bell peppers (3 instead of 4 because, at least at my market, the red bells run significantly bigger)
• In place of the 4-6 jalapenos, I used 4 long red peppers (and as with the jalapeno jelly, I added some habanero for extra heat).

The jars are still cooling and setting, of course, but based on a lick-the-spoon test, I have high hopes for this counterpoint to the green jelly I've so enjoyed making over the years.

Interestingly enough, while I was busy chopping peppers this afternoon, regular Emerging Foodie commenter JackC and his wife stopped by on their way home from a holiday weekend at the shore. Canning has this interesting dynamic: You spend all this time putting up jellies and pickled peppers and relishes, and yet, until you have a chance to open the jars and use what you've made, you never really know if it's any good. Unlike a dish prepared to be eaten right away, there's no immediate feedback; even the lick-the-spoon test only provides a rough approximation of what jellies will be like once they've set, and pickles and preserves that get processed in a boiling-water canner are even harder to guess at.

So Jack's visit put me in the odd position of giving food gifts — one jar each of jalapeno jelly, sweet-hot relish, and pickled habaneros and reds — without actually knowing how they would taste.

Well, lovely fellow that he is, Jack apparently sampled everything as soon as he got home and sent me a generally positive review: The relish is apparently not as hot as I'd intended (it's easy to get gun-shy with the habaneros, given how pungent they smell when you're cutting them), but the flavor is reportedly good; the jelly is "wondrous"; and the pickled peppers "awesome."

Even if he's just being kind, it's good to know I didn't kill him! ;^)

Recipes: Sardonic Buddha Cocktail

OK, this post is a bit of a cheat, because I've posted it previously on my now-mostly-dormant general interest blog, but I want to post a recipe here that's actually my own creation, and this is the best I got!

After I caught the cocktail bug, from listening to Rachel Maddow, I went on a bit of a buying spree, snapping up all sorts of ingredients simply because they looked or sounded interesting. Among other things, I bought Zen green tea liqueur because it looked exotic (plus I'd had a Zen mojito at a restaurant, and really liked it), green Chartreuse because it sounded exotic (and, as a bonus, was hard to find at first), and rye whiskey because... well because Rachel likes it... and besides, my mother drinks Manhattans but makes them with <shudder> bourbon, and I wanted to make a proper one for her.

So eventually it was time cook something up with these goodies. Flipping through my books, the first drink I hit upon using any of them was called Everybody's Irish, made with Irish whiskey, green creme de menthe, and the green Chartreuse. It was a good drink but the creme de menthe made it too sweet for my taste (ironically, since I love mint, and it was the creme de menthe that initially drew me to the recipe), so I tried a version replacing the creme de menthe with Zen, which tasted much better.

That version, which I called an Irish Buddha, turned out to be a transitional form, though: No sooner had I finished the first one than I started to think it might be even better if I made it with rye (I like Michter's Single Barrel), and finally the Sardonic Buddha was born:

• 2 oz Rye Whiskey
• 2 tsp Zen Green Tea Liqueur
• 1 tsp Green Chartreuse

The mossy green color of the final drink may take some getting used to, but the earthy rye blends exceedingly well with the green tea liqueur, and the herbal Chartreuse adds just the right amount of complexity and bite. I thought at the time that the right garnish would turn out to be a bit of sushi-style pickled ginger on a decorative toothpick, but even after all this time, I haven't gotten around to trying that yet; so far the drink remains ungarnished... but it tastes great just the same.

Enjoy!

Recipes: A Peck of Pickled Peppers

Okay, I promised my friends at Pharyngula that I'd post recipes, and since I've been talking about canning¹, I guess that would be as good a place to start as any.

I started growing hot peppers because, well, it seemed like it would be a cool thing to do. Somewhere during my first growing season, it dawned on me that I don't actually have any use for many pounds of jalapenos, red peppers, and habaneros... especially since they all show up within about 6 weeks at the end of the summer, and also especially since I'm the only one in the household who really likes hot stuff.

So naturally, I had to learn to make preserves: I had a cherished Texas cookbook (Texas On the Halfshell: A Cookbook of Tex-Mex, Barbecue, Chili and Lone Star Delights) that had a recipe for jalapeno jelly, and when I went to buy jars and canning supplies, I found the Ball Blue Book guide to home canning, which had a recipe for hot peppers. I was in business.

Here are the recipes, mostly from the above sources, with a few tweaks of my own:

Jalapeno Jelly
4-6 large jalapenos [My peppers are smallish, so I use 6-8.]
4 green bell peppers
1 cup apple cider vinegar
5 cups sugar
6 oz liquid pectin

Procedure: The original recipe says to seed and devein all the peppers, but because I like a little extra heat, I leave in the seeds and veins of the jalapenos; the seeds in the jelly don't bother me. If you like even more heat, you can add a single small habanero. Chop all peppers fine. Liquify peppers in a blender or food processor with the vinegar, dividing into 3 or 4 shifts if necessary. Mix liquified pepper/vinegar mixture with sugar and boil gently for 10 minutes. Add pectin and boil hard for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and skim any foam (if necessary; I usually find there's very little foam). Ladle into hot, sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace and wipe the jar tops clean if necessary. Cap with 2-piece canning lids. Place in a cool place and don't disturb for several hours (preferably overnight). Once the jars have cooled and the jelly set, check the lids for a tight vacuum seal. Yield: About 6 half-pint jars, or twice that many 4 oz jars.

Serving suggestion: The classic application is on Ritz crackers with a smear of cream cheese. The combination of crispy, salty, creamy, sweet, and hot is to die for!


Pickled Hot Peppers
~2-3 lb hot peppers
6 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
3 cloves garlic, crushed

Procedure: The original Blue Book recipe calls for a mix of banana peppers, jalapenos, and serranos, but I simply use whatever I have at hand... mostly jalapenos, supplemented with habaneros, cayennes, and (this year) red Portugals. You can leave small peppers like jalapenos whole for pickling, but I like to cut them into the classic nacho-style rings. Mix the vinegar, water, and garlic in a large saucepot. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Pack peppers, in whatever combinations desired, into hot, sterilized canning jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Ladle in hot pickling liquid, also leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Cap with 2-piece canning lids and process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner. Yield: About 5 pint jars, or the equivalent in other sizes (half-pint jars are a convenient size for taking to cookouts or potluck dinners).


Two notes relevant to both these recipes:

• If you haven't canned before, check the Blue Book for a description of the equipment and general procedures, including especially how to prepare jars and lids.
  

• And when working with hot peppers, you might want to consider wearing gloves. I haven't actually received any burns from handling peppers barehanded, but I've heard of others who have... and if you don't wear gloves, your hands will retain some chemical heat for at least a couple days, no matter how much you wash. So be careful where you put them. If you know what I mean... ;^)

¹ Fair warning: I'm going to construe cooking broadly to include stuff like canning, ice cream making, mixology, concocting homemade liqueurs, and (if I ever get 'round to it) brewing, in addition to, you know, actual cooking. I fear it's the only way I'll have much to talk about here!