to try I.

One of two untested recipes from a cookbook that I had zero faith in but the first (third?) recipe I cooked from it was really great. For this one I think I'd sub actual parmesan for the nutritional yeast. 

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rice cakes with white beans and gochujang. 

INGREDIENTS
5 garlic cloves, peeled
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
125g carrots, roughly chopped
1 celery stalk, roughly chopped

15g basil, leaves cut into strips and stems kept separately
3 tbsp olive oil
1 x 400g can peeled tomatoes

2 x 400g cans of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
10g gochujang
100g ricecake sticks

cheesy sesame topping
1 and ½ tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp gochugaru 
¼ tsp coarse sea salt

METHOD
Finely grind the garlic in a food processor. Add the onion, carrot, celery, and basil stems to the garlic and grind into small pieces.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped vegetables and ¼ teaspoon of salt and cook for 7 to 8 minutes until softened.

Meanwhile, blend the contents of the can of peeled tomatoes and a scoop of borlotti or cannellini beans in a blender until smooth.

Stir the gochujang into the vegetables and cook for 1 minute. Then add the tomato-bean mixture and cook for another 4 to 5 minutes until the liquid has largely reduced. Add 450ml water, the rice cake sticks, the remaining beans, and ¾ teaspoon of salt, and bring to a boil while stirring regularly.

Let simmer uncovered for 10 to 12 minutes until the rice cake sticks are cooked.

Mix the ingredients for the cheesy sesame topping: divide the rice cake sticks with beans among the bowls and garnish with basil leaves and the sesame topping.

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black beans, version xxx.

For a long time I thought I made really good black beans from scratch. I mean, I did (make really good black beans from scratch). But at a certain point I lost the plot via overtweaking and could somehow never really get back to a super-solid base recipe. 

UNTIL NOW. Welllllll, I just went back to the very beginning, the first recipe that ever told me how to make black beans, from Mark Miller's Coyote Cafe cookbook, the black bean soup recipe. And I combined the ingredients/ratios from that recipe with the zero-effort technical approach that Tortilla's perfect bean recipe uses. So, no rinsing, no soaking, no baking soda, no wrapping aromatics in a cheesecloth to perfume the beans, etc. Just herbal beany goodness +/- 3 hours from start to finish. 

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the coyote cafe black bean recipe. 

INGREDIENTS
500g dried black beans
3 liters boiling water

1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp ground coriander seed
1 tsp dried oregano

1 medium onion, peeled and halved
4 large cloves garlic, lightly smashed
1 jalapeno chile, halved
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
1 and 1/2 tsp fine salt 

1 tbsp olive oil

METHOD
In a big bean pot toast the cumin seeds, coriander seed and oregano until aromatic, about 1 minute. Add the 3 liters of boiling water, then add beans, onion, garlic, jalapeno, bay leaves, thyme, pepper and salt. Set heat to a simmer, cover the pot and cook for 3 hours, checking every 30 minutes to make sure nothing is sticking. When beans are tender, you can add the tbsp of olive oil and simmer with the lid off for 15-30 minutes to thicken the pot liquids. 

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tortillas' recipes.

Tortillas was Atlanta's greatest ever burrito restaurant if you ask me or anyone else who ever ate there. As previously discussed in these pages, I would schedule entire days around leaving work early so I could get to Tortillas, have a shrimp and potato burrito with half a bottle of green salsa and two beers and be asleep in bed by 5pm. Good times. 

Anyway, their beans were really something special, and I am placing the semi-apocryphal recipes here for safekeeping since they seem to be disappearing from the places I thought they were. 

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Tortillas Burrito Recipes
adapted from the Tortillas myspace page

Guacamole
Ingredients: Haas avocados, red chili powder, ground cumin, garlic powder, black pepper, salt, vinegar.
Process: Break up the avocados so that they are chunky

Add the spice mixture in this ratio: 6 parts red chili powder, 5 parts ground cumin, 2 parts garlic powder, 2 parts black pepper, 3 parts salt.

Add vinegar to taste, approx. 1 tbls. per avocado used

Add Red Rooster or Texas Pete hot sauce to taste., approx. 1.5 tsp. per avocado used

Green Sauce
Ingredients: 1 part canned tomatillos, 1 part canned jalapeño slices, fresh cilantro, fresh onion.
Process:
Drain the tomatillos
Combine with the jalapeños and their juices. (1 to 1 ratio of tomatillos to jalapeños)
Add diced onion and cilantro and blend in a food processor.  Use cilantro for coloring

Red Sauce
Ingredients: 4 parts canned tomatoes, 1 part canned jalapeños, chili powder, cumin, salt
Mix the tomatoes with the canned jalapeños and their juices
Add the spice mixture in this ratio: 5 parts chili powder, 4 parts cumin, 3 parts salt
Blend in a food processer until the desired texture.

Salsa Fresca
Ingredients: Tomatoes>Onion>Cilantro
Process: Combine and blend that stuff!

Beans (Black or Pinto)
Ingredients: dry beans, salt, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, black pepper, vegetable oil (2 tbls. per lbs. of beans).

Do not presoak beans but do remove stones, etc.

In a pot, combine beans with 7 parts salt, 5 parts chili powder, 3 parts cumin, 2 parts garlic powder, 2 parts black pepper, and vegetable oil.

Cover beans with water (just above the level of the beans) and bring to a simmering boil.  Cook for 3 to 4 hours (less if using black beans).

Marinades
According to the “recipe”, the shrimp was covered in guacamole spice; the potatoes and tofu were marinated with the red spice.  The steak was marinated for a day using equal parts vinegar, water, corn oil, and red spice.  Red Rooster was usually added and sometimes the guacamole spice was swapped for red spice.

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Those are the internet notes. Here's my first attempt: 

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tortillas' beans.

900g dried brown beans
2 tsp fine salt
3 tsp chili powder (yeah, generic, would like to come up with a more specific instruction here)
3 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp black peppercorns, freshly ground
2 tbsp olive oil 

Cook til tender, about 2 hours. 

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black bean bitterballen.

Nelson/Hoogte Labs produced this bit of wonder over the past couple of days. It's a real, delicious, vegan vegetarian bitterbal made with black beans and pureed/whipped pozole, rolled in panko, deep-fried, and served with an outstanding vegan piccalilli mayo. Really impressive if I do say so myself, which I can because I only did half of it.

Why isn't it vegan? The chick running the deep-fryer couldn't get the panko to stick without an egg, so we need to look into a replacement technology here. And anyway, unbeknownst to the deep-fryer chick, the asshole running the blender had already added butter to the whipped posole so veganness was out the window.

Additionally, the whole concept was fucked with so much on its way to greatness that reproducing it will be a challenge. Leftover Rancho Gordo posole won't always be in the freezer for example. But I'm thinking if you roast a bag of corn (do they even have bags of corn here?) in the oven for 15 or 45 minutes and then whip it in a blender with oat milk and coconut oil that you might get close. Should also figure out if heating the oat milk is actually thickening the whole thing or if that's a myth.

The Labs also pumped out this alien looking thing today.

The internets told me it was the best thing to do with leftover pasta, and indeed it was pretttttttty good. It's Mark Bittman's recipe plus a handful of chopped spinach, one scallion and one clove of crushed garlic.

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anti-fergettinizin' mechanism.

For a long time I seriously considered writing some ind of a cookbook, but now more than ever I'm pretty sure I don't see the point of it, we hardly really need one more stupie person telling people how to cook, etc.

But, I saw this quote today and it reminded me that I always kind of did imagine saying something about salt in my imaginary cookbook. Not to sound like I know what I'm doing, but carefully salting and tasting every component of a dish before it's served is probably the most important thing I do right in the kitchen.

But also, one should always keep in mind Peter Gallagher's wise, wise wisdom from Sex, Lies, and Videotape:

Graham (to Ann): Dinner was very good.
John: Yeah, it wasn't bad, honey. Usually Ann achieves a kind of critical mass with the salt, but, uh, tonight was...I always tell her, you can always add more, but you can't take it away.
Ann: Yeah, you say that, don't you?

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Anyway. Here's what I saw today, I'm agreeing with the "use more than you're comfortable with" part, not the "salt things until they taste like the sea," though I can see experimenting with that:

Nosrat frees her readers to use their own senses instead of measuring cups. 

She says we should salt things until they taste like the sea — which is a beautiful image, but also sounds like an awful lot of salt. 

"Just use more than you're comfortable with, I think is a good rule for most people," she says. You know, especially when you're boiling things in salted water, the idea is that most foods don't spend much time in that water. So the idea is to make it salty enough that the food can absorb enough salt and become seasoned from within. A lot of times you end up using less salt, total, if you get the salt right from within, because then the thing isn't over seasoned on the outside and bland in the center."

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This post was originally just to remind all y'all that if you make a big pot of great black beans on Saturday, you can certainly have a few then, but then the next day you can make this salad, and the day after that you can make a soup like this one minus the wine and the full can of chipotles...and it still doesn't feel like too much black beans.

None of which has to do with the above picture, which was about trying to create a satisfying vegetarian version of the Dutch classic of white asparagus with buttered potatoes, ham, hard-boiled egg, and more butter. My ham substitute was mushrooms cooked in quite a lot of, yes, butter, with smoked salt and smoked paprika, not bad at all.

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intermission.

Before we continue with Italy I have to jot this down, because we agreed it was the least disappointing dinner in many moons. We've both been craving Jamaican food, which we used to dig on quite a bit back in the Salad Days, but we'd been speculatin' over a hypothesis about whether our jerk chops were still up to snuff or not.

Short answer is: yes, in fact, this was pretty fkn impressive, not a hair out of place. From top: black beans, a different recipe than usual, more neutral, this one; jerked steak, perfect; plantanos maduros, perfect; rice, totally serviceable; peach + cucumber pickle. In the center a raspberry-vinegar coulis thing for the plantains, not Jamaican at all but that's the way they used to do it at the now-defunct Bridgetown Grill back in the ATL and that's the specific meal we were jonesing for.

The platanos maduros tips came from Slate, unexpectedly, and here's the jerk marinade, adapted from Dunstan Harris' Island Barbecue.

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jerk marinade.

1 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg (I used freshly ground)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (I maybe used a tad less)
1 bunch of scallions, green and white parts (roots removed)
2 Scotch Bonnet or habanero peppers, stems removed and cut in half, seeds retained
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
pinch of garlic powder

Combine everything in a food processor and process for a minute or two. Pour into a jar until ready for use. We marinated our steaks overnight, then finger-squeegeed off the excess and cooked them for 2-3 minutes per side in a blistering hot skillet, then let rest for 6 minutes.

gray matter.

Today's lunch, based on David Lebovitz's version of this, it was super and somehow ready in 25 minutes start to finish. As Mr. Lebovitz says: "The fennel isn’t necessary (well, neither are shoes)". I myself would say that the Puy lentils are absolutely necessary. 

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warm du puy lentils with mustard vinaigrette.

1¼ cup (250 gr) French green lentilles du Puy, or in a pinch Beluga will do, but don't even bother doing this with anything else 

1 bay leaf
a few springs of fresh thyme
pinch coarse salt

2 or 3 carrots, peeled and finely diced
1 medium red onion, peeled and finely diced
1 bulb of fennel (optional), finely diced, or lately I've been subbing 1 tsp of fennel seed, not disagreeable
freshly-ground pepper

3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp red wine or sherry vinegar, or really, any vinegar, to taste
1 scallion, minced

Basically: cook lentils with bayleaf, thyme and salt for 20-25 minutes, do not overcook. While that's happening, saute the carrots, onion, and fennel in olive oil 10-15 minutes, until tender. Make vinaigrette. When lentils are done, toss them with the vinaigrette while still warm and add the sauteed vegetables. 

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It was so good I made it again for dinner plus some shrimp, there are a bunch of complementary things going on.

poppy.

Above: Shokomonk's white chocolate with poppyseeds. Below: last night's besan-battered Moorish catfish (Spanish + Creole ideas), plus black beans, plus the last dollop of Surinamese hot sambal. It might not look like much, but for me it was a perfect plate of food, with the added bonus that finishing the last of the Surinamese sambal means it's time to try a new one.

you complete me.

If, like me, you have a blog that has been going for a while, maybe you forget some things you've already blogged about and then blog about them again. I mean not the stuff about estranged friends dying, or general social incompetence, or veiled references to recurring problems...you tend to remember that stuff.

Nope I'm talkin' bout runner bean recipes. I make awesome runner beans (snijbonen in Dutch), in an Atlanta-meets-Paramaribo stylee. Soft and spicy is what I'd call them if that didn't sound completely gross. But they're great, and I never use a recipe, and for some reason I often completely forget that they're in my arsenal, or holster, or wherever I keep things to cook.

Here's the definitive reminder.

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mark's really good runner beans. 

400gr runner beans, cut attractively
1 can of whole or chopped unseasoned tomatoes
1/2 cube of good, unspiced chicken or vegetable boullion
1/2 cup of water, or more, maybe a cup, enough for the beans to be submerged
1 healthy tbsp of surinamese sambal (javanese also works well, probably any sambal would work well)
1 tbsp butter

Combine all of this in a pot, cook until the beans are the consistency of, say, tagliatelle and the sauce is reduced, this took almost 90 minutes last time, but maybe I could've stopped after an hour.

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huevos.

OK, the absolute best thing about making too much green chile pork? Having someone turn it into some badass huevos rancheros the next morning (what you're seeing, from the bottom up: corn tortilla, green chile pork, an egg over easy, pico de gallo, black beans, queso fresco, and a shot of habanero sauce)

today's fad diet.

Messing around with a 1500-calorie CRON diet for a while, should be a good exercise. The biggest challenges so far are 1) getting to sleep early enough so that I'm not starving before bed, and 2) high-protein breakfasts that don't involve 3 eggs. Here's one potential solution for the latter, a cup of chickpeas + the egg is about 20 grams of protein and +/- 400 kcal. Seems like a little sauteed chorizo and a tablespoon of lowfat Greek yogurt wouldn't be bad ideas either in the protein and taste departments.

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chickpeas, tahini, shoarmaspice, harissa, pickled fennel + an egg over-easy.

Next time I make this I'll do proportions.

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the dread moray eel.

Projected day off from drinking failed, but in a good way. Above: colazione dei campioni, consisting of sauteed shrimp, pineapple and scallion salsa, adobo, egg over easy, pinto beans, and a little creme fraiche.



Above: Brouwerij 't IJ has a new IPA! And it's really good. And: at only 7%, you can drink 3 of them and not be in trouble.

Below: which means that afterwards you can go to China Si-chuan Kitchen and have a couple Tsingtao to go with your Sichuan duck, Mongolian chicken, Yangtze beef, and Peking duck. I like this place: they're not shy about chilies, and the prices are reasonable (as long as you stay away from the sizzling dishes). I think the best things we had were the spicy dumpling app (hiding in the rear middle of the photo) and Mara's Yangtze beef (to the right), but it was all good. Next time we try vegetables.

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pineapple and scallion salsa.

juice of one lime, possibly two...this is the important flavor
1 cup diced pineapple
1 pointy green chile from the Maroc, chopped fine
most of 1 scallion, chopped fine
1/4 cup coriander leaves, chopped
a good bit of salt to taste

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black beans.

 Ahhhh, Europe.

"Any ideas for dinner?"
"Eatme?"
"Jeez, what's with you?"

"Where do you want to go for dinner?"
"Eatme."
"Eat your own self".

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This is one of my most-frequently-made things, but I've apparently never written it down on this site, or if I have, I can't find it. 

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black beans.

500gr dried black beans
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp oregano
2 bay leaves
1-2 tbsp dried epazote
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
3 liters water, or enough to cover beans by roughly 2 inches of water

Bring beans and water to a boil. Add bay leaves, epazote, thyme, and black pepper to water. Toast cumin, coriander, and oregano in a skillet for a minute or so, until smoking but not burning. Add to water, reduce to a simmer, and cook until beans are done, at least an hour, possibly as long as two hours. Remember to do smart things like make sure there's enough water covering the beans, and make sure you stir towards the end so they don't stick and burn. Salt to taste at the end.

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social event #18.

I wish I had enough time to describe this peach to you, but I really can't even say how long it would take. #3117 was a good peach. I had to eat it standing over the sink for a number of reasons.






















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I like the look of this grocery receipt. There's a certain amount of foreshadowing there.













Your advanced deductive reasoning will no doubt already have determined that we had a family barbecue last evening. Burgers, brats, a pretty good baked beans recipe, that corn salad thing, homemade pickles, lots of tomatoes, etc. etc. etc. And then, just to be safe, lots of billiards and a little tequila.

In the above photo, the light-skinned dogs are your traditional pork bratwursts, the darkest dogs are beef brats, and the mocha-colored ones are Tofurky kielbasa. As followers of this blog may remember, we have a certain fascination with "flesh substitutes", and when we were looking for vegetarian things to grill, the Tofurky things were the only viable option at our local Publix.

Our review? They were...inedible. as if you'd filled the inside of an empty toilet paper roll with unsalted bread and thrown it on the grill. I really can't believe these things didn't just burn up like kindling. So dry. And virtually tasteless. And of course they were more expensive than the beef or pork brats. I would not be at all surprised to discover that the beef industry was actually behind Tofurky, as a sort of sabotage, a way to push possible vegetarians back into Camp Carnivore.













And today a little snuggling.

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goodbye double headphone.

So yesterday was the official release of The Double Headphone Project, just about one year after it started.

It was also the official end of my vegetarianism experiment, which I'll write about eventually. Capsule review: vegetarianism will continue for the forseeable future.

And it also begins an alcohol-free month. Well, there was nothing alcohol-free about yesterday, but you know, moving forward.

To tide yourself over until I feel like writing again, maybe you can read this article that pretty much describes my life from 2001-2004, if you substitute "CD" for "coffee". I may have even linked to it before, but guess what? It's still relevant: especially the bit at the end about what happens to your relationship with your spouse when you decide to work behind the counter yourself. Fun stuff....

"Guess what, dear dreamers? The psychological gap between working in a cafe because it's fun and romantic and doing the exact same thing because you have to is enormous. Within weeks, Lily and I—previously ensconced in an enviably stress-free marriage—were at each other's throats. I hesitate to say which was worse: working the same shift or alternating. Each option presented its own small tortures. Two highly educated professionals with artistic aspirations have just put themselves—or, as we saw it, each other—on $8-per-hour jobs slinging coffee. After four more months, we grew suspicious of each other's motives, obsessively kept track of each other's contributions to the cause ("You worked three days last week!"), and generally waltzed on the edge of divorce. The marriage appears to have been saved by a well-timed bankruptcy."

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Speaking of fun stuff, we saw Revolutionary Road last Wednesday. Unsurprisingly depressing, and sometimes unpleasantly shrill. High points were the constant pre-blubbering torment on DiCaprio's face, a face which I normally find completely uninspiring; and Michael Shannon. Bottom line: I can't believe so many critics are calling this the American movie of the year. The trailer, though...great trailer.

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Anyway! Here is a recipe that Mara has been tinkering with. Last time she did this, the beans were too broken down, and the bulgur was too cooked, and the texture was too much like a potato pancake or something. Something you could add that would probably be good is walnuts, but Miss Mara doesn't really like nuts "in things". Regardless, the doneness of the bulgur and the roughness of the mashed beans are integral to making the texture vaguely hamburger-like.

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mara's veggie burgers.

+++

1/2 cup onion
3/4 cup fine bulgur
3/4 cup water
100gr white beans, cooked
200gr brown beans, cooked
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 cup onion, chopped
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
1 large egg

Saute onions, when they're brown, add bulgur and water, cover, and turn off. You just want the bulgur to be slightly al dente and not mushy. Let cool.

Mash up the beans (roughly, not a puree), add bulgur and raw onion, soy sauce, Worcestershire, garlic, and spices to taste. Then add egg and breadcrumbs, thoroughly combine and chill for at least an hour.

Form into patties and pan-fry.

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duck, sucka, etc.

When I woke up about an hour ago at 4am, I had a moment of really being happy to see winter. Not that it's terribly cold or anything, but the short days and increasing windiness are starting to assert themselves as unignorable signs that summer is truly not coming back until next year. And this morning's view of dark winter nights came via the pendulum-like swinging of the halogen streetlight suspended just outside our "bedroom" window, rhythmically casting shadows on the ceiling above the bed, and making me glad that I was inside and warm, even though like I said it's not really that cold here yet.

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There's a new addition to the family that I've been meaning to tell you about. It's our first extravagant houseware purchase since I don't know, our couch maybe?













In case the 4:45am lighting isn't revealing enough: it's a freezer. A standalone freezer that in one fell swoop multiplies our existing freezer space by a factor of 10 or so.

Having a useful freezer is such a novel concept to us that upon her arrival we started sounding like a bad Caveman Gets Sent to The Future movie: "Mm. So, if I understands this correctly, this device allows you to cook when you feel like it, freeze the results, and then just 'unfreeze' something when you're not in the mood to chop and dice," I said, thoughtfully scratching my chin, really feeling like I'd actually had some sort of observant insight. "Yes, yes...I think I'll call this concept 'leftovers.', etc. etc. etc."

We're still not quite used to her, in that we keep forgetting to make "enough to freeze" of things. I made a very comforting Jewish chicken soup this weekend (my first ever using a whole chicken) but really only ended up with like two bowls' worth of leftovers. From tonight's chili there were no leftovers, which is just stupid.

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So tonight's dinner was black bean and duck chili with all the trimmings (actually all 3 trimmings: goat cheese, scallions, and raw sweet onions). It was superb, as it usually is, but there's a problem: I never use a recipe for it. I always try to write down what I did, but I never look at what I've previously written down. Here's today's version.

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duck and black bean chili.

+++

1 leg duck confit

250gr dried black beans
1 dried red new mexican chile
1 dried chipotle chile
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp epazote

2 chipotle chiles in adobo
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp tamarind concentrate
1 tbsp maple syrup
3 cloves garlic
2 shallots, diced
2 tbsp chile molido
1 tsp smoked pimenton

1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, minced

4 scallions, diced
1/2 sweet onion, chopped
goat cheese, shredded
sour cream

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duck, you sucker.

Goddamn, that's a cute fucking duck. How could I eat this? Well, here's my hypotenuse: I've never had a serious relationship with a duck, or really a bird of any sort. But you know I can sort of see why that's the case: what other species of animal is inconsiderate enough to crap on your head (unprovoked, I might add...I could totally see a cat doing this in a revenge-exacting context)? It's like birds are completely on some first strike shit...and frankly I think this backfires on them: it completely justifies my wanting them dead, as I would anyone who shat on my head (I think this perspective can also be specifically traced back to the Russian Lit Final Exam Head-Shitting Incident, which I'll elaborate upon later). And personality? Come on. There's no one home. Fetch! Nothing. If I meow at my cats, they'll fall down in their tracks and writhe around on the ground. Try that with a duck.

So it's for these reasons that I can continue to munch on them happily, regardless of their faux-snuggleability (which I'm pretty sure is nothing more than a [apparently ineffective] defensive measure anyway). However (and they'll be happy to hear this), I think I'm reaching the end of my recent French phase, a decision perversely enabled by my discovery that my local poelier Jonk (Haarlemmerstraat 53) has perfectly decent duck confit available by the leg (4 euro per). IIRC, a duck confit craving is what kicked this whole French fixation off a few months back, but somehow I never actually got around to buying or making any.

Or eating any. Until now! I tasted my first Jonk leg this morning for breakfast and it was everything I hoped for: very lean (you know, except for the fat that it was preserved in) and purely ducky. Really good.

One of the other great things about mister duck is that he submits dutifully to Mexican preparations: as a quesadilla or tamale filling for sure, and duck's affinity for corn, red chile, maple, and mushrooms would make it nice in some kind of dark saute over some sort of masa cake. But since I don't really feel like dealing with masa at the moment, maybe I'll try that idea over a grilled semolina cake called a harcha (I get them from Bakkerij Mediterrannee on the Haarlemmerstraat, here's a recipe). They remind me of cornbread, but you know, without corn. Here's the one I bought today:

















Another duck confit plus is that you can use the fat to cook with, and it's supposedly a bit healthier than butter or lard due to its high percentage of monounsaturated fats, you know the kind that supposedly help raise good cholesterol. We'll see about that.

In Googling Jonk and harcha I came across an interesting Dutch food site called Cheffen. At least it looks not totally useless. Or it may be totally useless, but at least it looks like genuine regional restaurant culture.

Anyway, here's what I'm actually going to do with my duck since I already have black beans made and also have some masa that I made for tamales (during an overly ambitious moment) that I'll use to thicken it. This recipe is not based on the Rough Creek Lodge's version, but I did look at theirs, here.

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duck and black bean chili.

1 skinned and defatted breast of duck confit, removed from the bone
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 cups cooked, seasoned black beans and their liquid
1/2 cup ancho chile puree
1/2 to 1 chipotle pepper, minced, or 1 tbsp adobo sauce from the can
1 tbsp ground cumin, freshly toasted
up to 1 cup chicken or duck stock
1 tbsp blueberry or blackberry preserves
1-3 tablespoons masa harina (optional)

garnishes:
1 sweet onion, diced
1/2 cup mint leaves, chopped


saute the duck meat in a skillet for 3-5 minutes to brown a little, add garlic for 1 minute, then add beans, chiles, and cumin. cook for 1 minute, stirring. add the stock and preserves, lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes. if it's still too soupy at this point, sprinkle the masa over top to thicken, and simmer, stirring, for 3-5 minutes. when you reach your desired consistency, you're ready to put it into bowls: top it with chopped onion and mint. and maybe a little crumbled goat cheese if you've got it hanging around as we usually do. and serve.

serves 2 probably.

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guisado de garbanzo istmeño.

I cracked the spine of a cookbook today for the first time in a long time, and it was Susanna Trilling's Seasons of My Heart.

Gag-inducing title aside, it's a great cookbook, focusing on the diversity of Oaxacan cuisine. Today I was trying to use up some ancient items from the pantry and my darting eyeball's gaze landed on a 3/4-full bag of chickpeas. Gotcha, you ceci monkeys. Here is my adaptation of Lupe's Stewed Garbanzo Beans (p.203):

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guisado de garbanzo istmeño.

400g chickpeas, soaked overnight (or 5 cups canned)
water to cover
1/2 medium white onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

400g canned peeled tomatoes, chopped or pureed
1 cup chicken stock or roasted vegetable stock
200g chorizo
1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped
8 garlic cloves
1 ripe plantain or 1 not-so-ripe banana, cubed
2 tbsp. pickled jalapeños

The general idea here is to cook the chickpeas first (if you're not using canned) with the onions and 3 cloves garlic, adding water as necessary to keep beans barely covered, maybe 30-45 minutes, until al dente, then drain them and place them in a good stew pot. Add the tomatoes, onion, 8 cloves garlic, and 1 cup chicken stock to the chickpeas and simmer on low heat.

While the chickpeas are simmering, remove the meat from the chorizo casings and fry it for 5-7 minutes in a smallish skillet. Add the browned chorizo to the beans, leaving the oil from the chorizo in the pan. Fry the plantain in the same pan (with the chorizo oil) until browned, then add to the beans. Add anything that's still laying around, then cook the assembled stew on low heat for another 30-60 minutes, or until beans are completely tender. Puree if you want a bisque-y kind of thing. I did.

Notes: This was unexpectedly fantastic. Something I might change would be the pickled jalapeños...kind of a mmm jarring taste against the comforting roundness of the guisado. My jalapeños were also 1) a bit old and 2) European. I think some reg'lar fresh green chiles diced would be a better idea. I also turned the leftovers into a sauce for pork tenderloin for unexpected dinner guests Phil and Andy, paired with a reduced ancho/roasted garlic broth: out. of. sight. Literally, in about 5 minutes. Gone. Then we got really high and listened to a bunch of Wu-Tang. Good night!