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. 

+++

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. 

+++

stovetop tajine.

This picture of a pseudoghetto Sydney liquor store has nothing to do with anything, just needed a picture. Just liiiiiiike....last night, I just needed a dinner. Yeah, sorry, I've been reading and writing art history for 72 hours, I used up my brains. Here's an Anna Jones recipe that, as usual, sounded totally weird and mwah but ended up being pretty darn ok and yay. I'd make this again.

+++

chickpea, zucchini, dates, quinoa, lemon-coconut yogurt.

2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2 leeks finely chopped
A generous pinch of saffron
2 teaspoons of ras el hanout spice
500ml of vegetable stock
a drained 400g tin or jar of chickpeas, or 250g home-cooked chickpeas
1 tbsp sriracha

2 courgettes, thickly sliced
10 dates, roughly chopped
200g of runner or green beans, chopped into bite sized lengths

100ml of coconut yoghurt
A sprinkling of dried chilli
The juice and zest of 1 lemon
A couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds
A few sprigs of fresh mint or basil

optional: 4 free range or organic eggs

Heat a good glug of olive oil in a pan, add the leeks and garlic and cook on a medium heat for 5 minutes until the leeks have started to soften. Then sprinkle the saffron and ras el hanout over top.
Next add the chickpeas and the stock and bring to a steady simmer and cook for 5 minutes until the broth has thickened a little.

Meanwhile, heat a pan with a little olive oil and add the sliced courgettes and the dates and sauté until the courgettes are browned on both sides and the dates have begun to caramelize.

Next turn the heat down a little add the green beans and cook for 8 minutes. Throw the lemon juice in.

Meanwhile mix the yoghurt with the chilli and lemon zest with a good pinch of sea salt and pepper.

Ladle the vegetables and broth into a bowl, top with sesame seeds a squeeze more lemon juice, herbs and the yoghurt for spooning over.

+++

burger test #2.

The quest continues. Burger components, and believe me I know it sounds like a mess conceptually: KRISTY! Turner's "BBQ bacon burger" (whatever, it's beet, brown rice and red lentils); her tempeh "bacon"; my barely lemon version of her cashew ricotta; a splooge of Jack Daniel's BBQ sauce; some tomato marinated in fresh garlic, salt, and truffle oil; a swath of homemade mayo; a ploop of a kind of weak red slaw (sugar, vinegar, red cabbage).

The eating part: more satisfying/less gloomy than the pure, ascetic healthfulness of Contestant #1, which probably has everything to do with the accouterments, which never looks spelled right does it. Maybe it's not. 

Anyway we really need a new bun. The patty itself was initially Nelson's "least favorite burger" so far structurally, any exposed rice became a bit crunchy in the oven like the bottom of a Korean stone-pot dish (the second round today was almost zero amount of crunchy and overall considerably better I thought). 

The tempeh "bacon" is a nice concept, ruined a bit by 1) calling it by a name it can never ever possibly live up to and 2) requiring me to use the dregs of my 2-year-old bottle of Liquid Smoke. Cough, cough.

The keeper components were a) duh, the tomato on the burger, b) less duh, the lemon cashew ricotta, I may try to make a scallion/jalapeno version of this to see if that kicks up the 4d3d3d. Oh and maybe c) slaw, but not this one.

I think Contestant #3 will be either a black bean burger (maybe look here for tips), or maybe Serious Eats' extravagant vegan effort from The Food Lab or we go back to Anna's quinoa burger plus all of the exciting ideas from Ottolenghi's exorbitantly non-vegan quinoa burger (scallions, green chile, and romesco sauce).

+++

burger test #1.

This one, Anna Jones' chickpea and quinoa burger, gets a 7/10. Not bad in any way, but not juicy or spicy or generally decadent enough, needs something like the vermouth/jalapeno/pickle mayo hinted at here to sex it up. On the burger this time was an anemic version of her tomato/onion relish bolstered by Heinz ketchup, spinach leaves, and a quick cucumber pickle. Just not as exciting as the last time we made it, which I think is because last time I made a lot of tomato relish and threw some butter in it, maybe even some chili peppers.....that's why we test recipes I guess isn't it.

+++

untitled.

Vegan recipes: occasionally difficult to title appetizingly. Title aside, this Anna Jones thing was delicious, fluffy like a Spanish tortilla, creamily starchy like french fries with mayo, and spicy and herbal like a falafel. OK I guess it was really truly only like a tortilla. Served with a spicy mayo, which you'd almost never do, egg on egg crime and whatnot. Wait what am I talking about you'd totally do that. I myself used to do that all the time, toasted bread, egg over-easy, mayo and sambal badjak, it's called the Sjako. That's a good sandwich. Chomp.

+++

carrot and chickpea flour pancake with lemon-herb mayo. 

150g chickpea flour
230ml homemade oat milk or other non-animal milk of your choice
2 tbsp EVOO
2 medium carrots, grated...I decided that I hate grating carrots enough to buy pre-grated
1 or 2 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil for frying

4 normal gherkins or 8 cornichons
1 fresh green chile
a few sprigs of fresh parsley
4 or 5 tbsp homemade vegan mayo (this recipe, is, in fact, nearly indistinguishable from trad mayo if you bump up the lemon and the mustard a little)
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
the zest of 1⁄2 an unwaxed lemon, or 1 tsp of Moroccan preserved lemon rind

a handful of mesclun for serving.

Serves 2, which is important to note. Also important to note: in order to get this looking awesome like the picture in the book you've got to have your tortilla/frittata-flipping skills happening as well as two cooperative skillets. Somehow mine worked.

champion sounds.

Damn you Kristy(!) Turner. Another really edible thing that just sounds ridiculous as titled, "Chickpea Omelets."

They're not fucking omelets. They're, eh....cheela. And that is not a sausage patty. Etc, And yet....damn you, Kristy(!)...if I'd made the patties a little smaller, this would've been a perfect breakfast plate that no meat eater I know wouldn't like. The above is non-vegan because I, eh, cooked them in butter, and that's Greek yogurt in the center of the plate. But it could be!

This recipe keeps evolving: lately I've been using fresh green beans and unsauteed iceberg lettuce and the result is very different but also good.

+++

besan ka cheela (chickpea flour, cabbage, onion and scallion patties).
1 cup chickpea flour
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup + maybe 1 or 2 tbsp water

2 cups pointed cabbage (ugh, what is the real name of this?), cut into non-stringy shapes
OR 2 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
1/2 onion
1 cup scallion, sliced
salt to taste

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, stir in 1/2 cup of the water and keep going until it's mostly smooth. I had to add a little more than a tbsp of water here to get to a pourable pancake batter consistency.

Saute cabbage or lettuce and onion in a little olive oil for 5 minutes or so, or until cabbage (or lettuce) is mostly wilted, then add scallions for a couple minutes. Make sure to salt the contents of the pan once while sauteeing. Then throw those vegetables in with the batter, stir to coat everything.

Heat up your saute pan, oil or butter it, throw in about 3/4 cup batter for each patty. Here's what I think the key step was other than salting both the batter and the sauteed vegetables: you throw it in the pan, then cover immediately and cook for 3 minutes. Remove cover and flip, replace cover, cook for 2 more minutes, serve immediately.

That's it! This amount serves 2 or 3.

+++

new curry 2.

Yeah, no posts, I know. What can I make. I imagine there'll be a Winter Photo Roundup Jamboree at some point, but for now what-a we have-a to offer is some continuing documentation of Papyrus Problems 'round the globe.

And.......segue........also some continuing terse documentation of recent Indian food successes. I thought that the Anna Jones curry from last month was pretty special, and while I'm pretty sure it still is, this kind of even simpler and rounder version from Kristy Turner's vegan cookbook that I can't even type the name of because it offends my tender sensibilities was really almost every bit as good. I could imagine making both of them for a dinner party kind of thing if you could decide which one would more resiliently handle swapping out the main ingredient since they're both sweet potato curries. I kind of think this one would be good no matter what the main ingredient was.

+++

sweet potato and red lentil curry with green peas and spinach.

1 medium or large red onion, chopped
1 tbsp coconut oil

4 garlic cloves
one 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
one 2-inch piece fresh turmeric, peeled

1 tbsp sambal
1 tbsp curry powder, I used Chan's Surinamese masala
1½ tsp garam masala
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

good pinch smoked salt

2 or 3 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
3 cups peeled and chopped sweet potatoes (about 2 medium)
1 cup red lentils
1 cup coconut milk
1 tsp to 1 tbsp Dutch appelstroop (mm, kind of like molasses or treacle, start with 1 tsp)

1½ cups frozen green peas
2 handfuls fresh spinach, leaves roughly chopped

1 teaspoon black salt (kala namak) or sea salt (didn't have this)

Melt the coconut oil in a pretty big pot and throw the onion in. "Meanwhile", process the garlic, ginger, and turmeric and after the onion has browned a bit throw this stuff in too. Don't burn it, if you start to run out of liquid/oil you can either add more coconut oil, or toss some coconut milk in, or some of the broth you'll be using in a minute.

After say 5 minutes of cooking the onion/paste mixture, throw in the sambal, curry powder, garam masala, turmeric, black pepper and smoked salt, cook for maybe 3 minutes. Then add the broth, sweet potatoes, and lentils. Cook for maybe 20-25 minutes, until your potatoes are almost done. Throw in the coconut milk and appelstroop, cook for 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Add the peas, cook for 5 minutes, make sure everything's still hot and the frozen peas have become unfrozen, then throw in the spinach and serve over the starch of your choice. Serves, mwahhh 4 at the most.

+++

new curry.

I've always thought that Indian cooking was probably the hardest kitchen to properly replicate at home. There is nothing hard at all about this recipe, and while it's not something you'd ever be served in your standard curry house, it hits all of the "Indian food" bullseyes totally squarely. Lightly adapted from Anna Jones' A Modern Way To Cook.

+++

sweet potato curry with roasted coconut, lime and tamarind + cauliflower rice.

1/2 of a giant cauliflower
2 tbsp olive or coconut oil

2 tbsp coconut oil
1 red onion, chopped fine
2 garlic cloves, minced
a thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
1 fresh red pepper, or an equivalent amount of dried
1 tsp ground turmeric

2 average carrots, peeled and cut into coins
400g sweet potato, cut into 1/2-cm thick wedges? plakjes
200g cauliflower, cut into 1/2-cm thick plakjes
1 tbsp fennel seed
1 tbsp mustard seed

1 400ml can coconut milk
1 400ml can peeled tomatoes
2 tbsp tamarind paste

200g unsweetened coconut pieces
zest of one lime
2 tbsp maple syrup

200g spinach, washed

+++

Process the cauliflower until it looks like couscous. Toss it with the olive oil, spread it out on a baking sheet and roast for 12 minutes at 200C. Remove, salt to taste, and set aside.

Standard curry making instructions for onion, garlic, ginger. Throw seeds in, wait til the mustard seeds pop, then throw in everything else up to tamarind paste. Cook for 25 minutes or so.

Put the coconut flakes flat on a baking sheet, sprinkle/drizzle/eetc the maple syrup over top and roast in that same 200C oven for 3-5 minutes until lightly browned.

When curry is ready, throw spinach leaves in and serve over cauliflower rice with toasted coconut on top.

+++

rootmasher.

Probably time to jot this one down as well, it's Ottolenghi, but this is the slightly less complex and expensive version.

+++

root vegetable stampppot with red onions.

80g red lentils
1 celeriac (600g), peeled and cut into chunks
2 big old carrots (300g), peeled and cut into chunks
2 sweet potatoes (600g), peeled and cut into chunks
70g butter, diced
2 tbsp maple syrup
1½ tsp ground cumin
salt and black pepper

2 tbsp olive oil
600g red onions (roughly 6 medium), peeled and cut into eighths
200ml red wine
400ml vegetable stock
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 or 2 tsp dried thyme, depending on how much you like thyme
1 tbsp brown sugar
smoked salt, or well, salt
30g butter

The instructions on how to do this are important in terms of doneness timings.

Put the oil and onions in a heavy pan and fry, stirring occasionally, for five minutes until lightly browned. Add the wine, stock, bay, peppercorns, thyme, sugar and a pinch of smoked salt, cover and simmer for an hour. Remove the lid, raise the heat and boil until the liquid is reduced by half, or you are left with a 1/2 inch of sauce.

Fill a sizable pan with boiling water and add the lentils, celeriac and carrot. After 10 minutes, add the sweet potato. The vegetables should be just covered by the water. 10 to 15 minutes later, everything should be fork-tender but still toothsome.

Drain all that shit, getting rid of as much liquid as possible, and then mash everything with one of those stamppot mashers. Or whatever you normally use to coarsely mash things. Mix in the butter, syrup, cumin and cooked lentils, season to taste, and keep warm.
Then I just add the last tbsp or two of butter to the shallots, simmer/reduce for 5 minutes and serve, topping the mash with shallots and sauce.

Serves at least 4.

+++

july.

It was "half price all vegetables" at the Maroc on Saturday, so I spent the amount I was planning to spend and bought twice as much stuff. Above: 5-minute sugar snap peas in butter. Below: Ottolenghi's roasted fennel with goat cheese and lemon zest; vadouvan salmon with what should've been Ottolenghi smashed ginger cucumbers and a beet chutney from Nigella; torrential downpour at Paviljoen van de Dame in Paterswolde; Ottolenghi's cauliflower cake; an excellent kaas/worst plankje from Maallust in Veenhuizen; windowsill snails making off with almonds and cat food; something dreadful-looking from the Coastal Maine Cookbook.

coyote cafe.

I know it's not cool anymore. Well it probably never was, but their current website is just kind of gross in a Women Laughing Alone With Salad kind of way, and the new menu looks like something made by one of those automatic Brookyln menu generators.

However none of that stopped me from cooking a pretty fkn marvelous vegetarian version of Mark Miller's bestest-ever recipe, Chipotle Corn Cakes last weekend. Plus a couple of other key additions. And after assembling everything, like most of the best southwestern food: you really can't say you've ever tasted anything quite like it. And yet I have zero pictures, that's why we have this leftover noir seagull attack from Texel above.

So, the procedure: I guess first you make a couple of picnic food ideas from Mark Bittman. Yes I know, not southwestern in the least. I don't know, I really thought we might go on a picnic. So I made two "salsas": one with peach, tomato, red onion, and lime, basically a ho ho ho kind of "Peacho di Gallo" I guess, yes I just fucking 1) made that up myself and 2) then said it out loud. "Shoot me." And then another one with roasted beets, blood orange, a little white wine vinegar, roasted almonds and mint. The almonds are for a little crunch that you might miss without the shrimp. Anyway, these are the garnishes.

Then you make Miller's queso fundido, which is essentially baked fresh goat cheese in a zhoomed-up poblano, tomatillo and pumpkin seed sauce he calls a pesto. I guess this whole thing is really a garnish too, but we also used it as an appetizer served with tortilla chips, and then the next day with leftover corn cakes and well yeah it just works.

Then you make the corn cake batter and chipotle butter, easy. Then you....assemble, I guess: fry up the corn cakes, and serve them with a couple slices of good ripe lightly salted avocado on top, the beet and peach garnishes, a dollop of queso fundido on the side, and a couple spoonfuls of chipotle butter drizzled on top. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but trust me, the result is a mouthful of luxury comfort. Alllllmost didn't miss the shrimp.

+++

bookcooking.

Been doing a lot of cooking out of a couple of cookbooks the past couple of months. Ottolenghi's Plenty More (above, Spice-Stuffed Potatoes, filled with mint and tamarind, great), and David Bailey's Fresh Vegan Kitchen. Oh also some experiments from the Inspiralized website that I'll talk about in another post maybe.

+++

Plenty More seems to be having a pretty high success rate, I don't know how much of that can be attributed to knowing what kinds of things to aim for and what things to avoid after cooking through most of Plenty. "No patties under any circumstances, no matter how good they sound" is a good rule for example.

And since it was a Christmas gift, we've really only cooked wintry shit. Root mash with wine-braised shallots was really good on a cold late-winter night; stuffed peppers with fondant swede and gruyère was an unusual concept, if better cold from the fridge the next day; winter saffron gratin was slightly too much trouble, but maybe that's just the fussiness of Jerusalem artichokes...this beetroot and celeriac gratin was easier and better if you take all of the ridiculous Epicurious-comments-section-esque VDuck shortcuts as outlined below.

+++

beetroot and celeriac gratin.

500ml double cream
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
20g thyme sprigs, leaves picked but also keep the stems
2 bay leaves
6 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
Shaved skin of 1 large lemon
8 whole cloves
Salt and white pepper
4-5 medium beetroots (700g), boiled, peeled and sliced 2mm thick
1 large 900g celeriac, peeled and sliced widthways 2mm thick
100g hard mozzarella, grated
150g extra mature cheddar, grated

OK so: the Plus doesn't have cheddar (I don't blame them, almost no one does), so I used two packets of pre-shredded Old Amsterdam (aged Gouda) instead, and two balls of 49 cent mozzarella instead of "hard mozzarella" whatever that is. I think this means I ended up using roughly 150g of each cheese, but it could've been slightly more. And it means that around the two-hour mark I had a bit too much liquid in the pan (fresh mozzarella does this), but due to the eventual total cooking time it worked out OK.

And of course the Plus didn't have raw beets, nor did they have their normal vacuum-packed pre-roasted beets, so I bought a big jar of pre-sliced and marinated beets instead and just rinsed it really well. And I couldn't imagine putting a half liter of double cream in a recipe, so I used half soya cream, and didn't notice it at all, which makes me think you could maybe use all soya cream.

And yeah, there's a step where you steep the first six ingredients together for a while and then drain the cream and throw the solids away. I didn't drain the cream after I boiled it with the lemon and garlic and all that shit in it, I just threw all of it in the baking dish when I layered the beet and celeriac layers.

And then I baked the whole thing for 3 fucking hours or whatever because Nelsker's oven has mysterious buttons that never seem to do the same thing twice. Seriously, we've successfully turned on the broiler about three times in 18 months I think. There are only three unlabeled, textless buttons that can either be pressed or unpressed, some combination of them turns on the broiler, but.....yes, file under "Unsolved" for now.

+++

xo.

View from the Groningen train station. Ottolenghi's root vegetable mash with stewed shallots (or whatever it would be called in English) from Plenty More. View from the train to Groningen. Momofuku's shrimp and grits (and bacon and egg). View from the train to Groningen. Ottolenghi's tagliatelle with walnuts and surprisingly good spinach, date and pita salad. Cafe Atlantis in Groningen, Nelson in foreground Bert in background. Bert's tosti, winner of the VDuck Tostiproeftest 2015.

mr. saturday night special.

Saturday? Mole rojo from my oldest cookbook, Coyote Cafe, just now finally starting to fall apart. Somehow the only ingredients we're lacking are chicken and celery.

+++

mole rojo.

caldo de pollo (makes about 4x as much as you need, but then you've got leftover chicken broth)
1 chicken

2 celery ribs

2 carrots

1 onion

1 head garlic

1 clove

1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp thyme

couple grinds black pepper

mole
18-24 dried chiles, comprised of
mild new mexican chiles

ancho chiles

pasilla chiles

mulato chiles

I used 18 mild new mexicans, 3 pasilla, and 3 mulato b/c that's what I had

5 tomatoes, charred under the broiler for 5 minutes

1/3 cup sesame seeds, toasted carefully

1 cup toasted almonds

1/2 cup currants, soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes, water discarded

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 tbsp butter
20g barely sweetened chocolate
20g slightly sweeter chocolate

pinch of ghost pepper salt if anyone complains about the "lack of heat"

+++

gingerly.

Since you know by now that we loves us some dieting around here, how bout let's start an anti-cancer diet, what you got to say about that? Why, you might ask? Why not, I might reply. What exactly does an anti-cancer diet mean? We don't know really.

We do know that turmeric is almost definitely a good fixer-upper, and that it becomes exponentially more bioavailable when you combine it with black pepper and olive oil.

This here is a recipe that ALREADY HAS MOST OF THAT SHIT IN IT (no disrespeck but we was Thug Kitchen long before they was any such thing as a Thug mfkin Kitchen). It's from Cradle of Flavor, and it's for Singaporean black pepper crab, but I'm betting it would be pretty righteous on anything that used to live in the water. 

There's also a super-long version of acar kuning in Cradle of Flavor (more turmeric and useful rhizomes), I'm wondering if a simpler one would do. 

AFTER A LITTLE GOOGLING: No, they're all complicated. This one looks good too.
AFTER A LITTLE TASTING: The below recipe is awesome. But really, unless you "like spicy food", this is probably not for you. I myself am going to keep making it until I'm sick of it. 

+++

singaporean black pepper paste. 

4 tbsp black peppercorns

8 cloves garlic

3 inches fresh turmeric, peeled with a spoon or 2 tsp dried

3 inches fresh ginger, peeled

3/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp mild olive oil

3/4 cup water

Basically, process the five ingredients in a food processor. Fry the paste in the oil over medium-low heat, about 5 to 7 minutes or until the garlic no longer smells raw. 

If you're going to be adding seafood to this now, add the water and your seafood and cook til it's done. Otherwise just keep it as a seasoning paste and use it over the next week or so.

+++

marvin lee aday.

This would be more Google Maps Street View, Antarctica this time. It's like the worst video game ever. You can't even interact with the penguins when you eventually find one (and there is one just to the left of that clot of three researchers or penguin preservers or whatever they are in red at roughly the 3 o'clock position above).

Here's Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago. The red flags in the distance show where the "street" is.

+++

In my non-globetrotting hours yesterday, I made meat loaf for the first time (I typed meta loaf first, something else entirely). I was having this weird persistent craving for it, and Mara was all yeah yeah do it so I did it. It was the slowest, most careful meat loaf in history I think, because meat loaf is not known for being something you linger over in the kitchen, and yeah man I lingered.

I lingered b/c me, being me, never having made it, and me, having the humongous and still awesome Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe as my guide, wanted to make sure I was doing it right. I mean why bother using such an exceedingly anal-retentive cookbook if you're not going to do exactly wtf it says.

The most awesome and humongous thing I learned is that meat loaf is not at anywhere near its best when it comes out of the oven. It needs time to contract or something and I guess just relax for a while. The absolute best bite I had of it yesterday was at 11pm, five hours after it came out of the oven, and I don't think that's (just) the post-mirtazapine munchies talking, because this morning's bite at 6:30am was even better (and the bite I just had for lunch was even better, etc, it's really good now). I just don't think it should be any warmer than room temperature.

My adaptation of the recipe is gluten-free, with almond flour as the filler, and I think I didn't do much else different except bumping up some of the seasoning and omitting the, eh, bacon. And substituting arugula for the parsley b/c I didn't have any and don't ever reallly love it anyway.

Oh yis, the other awesome thing I learned was to not use a, eh, "loaf pan". This is what Cook's Illustrated is good for, they're the Mythbusters of the kitchen: turns out that if you follow conventional wisdom and use a loaf pan (can't stop saying it, loaf pan, loaf pan) for your loaf, the, ulp, "juices" will bubble up around the sides about halfway through the cooking time and ruin the sides of your glaze, which was actually the most critical component, the glaze was, so its non-ruination and general maximalization is an absolutely stellar thing to focus on. Ze recipe below will double ze glaze amounts and add a shot or two of Frank's to it for zest and zing.

And if we don't do that recipe again, we should do this one.

+++

oldventure.

I cooked a lot today, for the first time in weeks. Above is Ottolenghi's Black Pepper Tofu, Momofuku's Quick Salt Pickles, and Saveur's Perfect Brown Rice. And VDuck's kind of Indian/Indonesian runner beans with toasted coconut.

+++

slow-cooked coconut runner beans.

3/4 cup dried coconut, recently toasted

2 tbsp coconut oil
400g runner beans, cut prettily
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 onion, sliced thin
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 tsp ground turmeric
smoked salt to taste

Melt coconut oil in wok, saute onion for 10 minutes, stirring often. Mix in mustard seeds and saute for a minute, until they begin to pop. Add remaining ingredients and simmer uncovered for an hour,  checking to make sure there's enough liquid to keep it going.

+++

give it up grand dad.

I think I suddenly went elderly. This is my new favorite place to hang out. A bench. It's not totally new, I've been visiting for a year or so, it's just a minute's walk past our Dirk. It's one of those places that all winter long is colder than everywhere else b/c of the wind, but now, as summer begins to think about showing up and temperatures approach 70F for the first time....suddenly my obscure and breezy bench is a great place to do old people activities like read or look at birds.

+++

El Carote Negro is taking a break from meat, so I'll be cooking out of Ottolenghi's Plenty for the next little while. We're also entering a period of serious financial crackdown so yes, there's a weekly grocery budget and I'm even going to try and stick to it this time.

Tonight's first adventure features two items that were on sale at Dirk last week: witlof (Belgian endive) and Gouda, subbing for Gruyere (I'd actually have used taleggio or raclette if either of them had been on sale anywhere).

The second adventure is this.

REVIEW: This could really only happen in this country because Gouda is the default cost-cutting cheese around here: substituting it into this caramelized endive recipe made the results taste pretty much exactly like cheap Amsterdam snackbar pizza (with a finishing note of just-bitter endive), not a totally bad thing.

+++

tartiflette.

In our kitchen, it's a wonderful thing to get a new cookbook (especially a free one!), because it doesn't happen all that often. Of course you hope that every new addition to the library becomes a Momofuku or an Ottolenghi, somewhere you can always turn for a novel but solid twist on familiar ingredients, or the opposite, a traditional approach to unexpected inputs.

But obviously, a book doesn't automatically make it to the "let's make something fun...grab Momofuku" level without a few smashing successes. And in our kitchen, for test-driving a new cookbook....there's a problem, and that problem is: we wants some delicious food. We never ever want to spend time in the kitchen making something that's not delicious.

I guess that's why we don't review cookbooks rount here. I never want to spend an hour chopping and peeling and dirtying utensils and dishes and then wait another hour while something cooks, only for it to come out of the oven and make us frown...what possible satisfaction could be gained from this. I understand that this is a job some people have, recipe testing, people do this for a living, but god how depressing does that sound (unless it's some kind of perfection-oriented quest like ze Cook's Illustrated)...

So in the interest of this necessary deliciousness we can't actually review a cookbook properly. We start out by trying to test or follow the recipe, but if something is counterintuitive or unclear to the point of possibly fucking things up ("8 potatoes, thinly sliced" can result in some pretty wildly varying amounts of potatoes, no?...give me grams or cups, or at least a potato size), then we cross-reference some other trustable recipe sources to get a better idea of what's supposed to happen in terms of ingredient proportions.

If, when we're cross-referencing, we see that Nigella or Bourdain or Julia or Bittman or Marcella or Wolfert says to put a splash of white wine in there, then we probably will. If the original dish is filled with bacon but the adapted recipe we're looking at has zero smoky elements, then we're likely to season with smoked salt and throw in a pinch of pimentón instead of paprika. And if enough things accumulate that don't sound delicious, then we just switch to rescue mode and "start cooking".

So after looking at the recipe for Home Made Winter's tartiflette with cod today, we knew from the outset we were going to throw some bacon and white wine in there just to be safe, but really, we changed a lot of things. And our end result was delicious, but I'm sure it's quite different from whatever the original instructions would've resulted in.

+++

tartiflette with cod.

250g raw lean bacon, cubed, or lardons

3 cups mandolined red-skinned potatoes
3 medium yellow onions, mandolined
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup dry white wine

250g fresh cod filets
1 and 1/4 cup cream (full cream, anything less will curdle)
1 tsp black pepper
tiny pinch pimentón
tiny pinch smoked salt
200g reblochon cheese

So yes we added bacon. Saute the bacon until it's given up all of its, ehh liquid, and has lost almost half its volume, as bacon tends to do. Set the bacon aside and get rid of most of the fat in the pan.

We decided that something in this recipe should have some direct contact with a hot pan and the onions weren't quick enough to escape. We threw the onions in with the reserved bacon fat, sauteed for a bit then tossed the wine and bacon and maybe half the thyme in there when it got dry. We sauteed a little more.

Then we tried to assemble everything in layers in a buttered baking dish. We did season the cream as the Home Made Winter (hereafter HMW) recipe suggested. We did not grate the reblochon as suggested because we'd still be trying to get it out of the grater if we had: seems like a cheese you'd want to freeze a little before grating. We did use the rind as everyone suggested.

HMW says to layer your cold ingredients (our onions were hot), cover your dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Then uncover and bake for 15 more.

Based on our results, there may be a good reason why almost every other recipe we saw including Bourdain and Nigella has you pre-cook your potatoes before layering and baking. It took our potatoes a full hour to cook the HMW way, which is pretty much exactly what Cook's Illustrated told us would be the case (they start you instead with bringing your potatoes to a simmer in a pan (5 min), simmer till they're tender (15-20 min) and then bake for 20 minutes and rest for 10-15 minutes.

It's not a big deal, right? We added some extra ingredients, one or two seasoning tweaks, did some extra cooking, and things turned out delicious. It just makes me put Home Made Winter back on the shelf for now instead of looking for the next thing I'll cook out of it.

+++

gift horse mouth-looker, part two.

Now I don't want y'all to think it's all gone be woe is me time around here. I mean it is a little, but man a duck gots to relax too know what I'm sayn.

And how do a duck normally relax? Dass correck: by messin' up his speech and then bitchin and complainin about some dang fool thing (it just entertains me to no end).

Well I'm not really complaining here too much. I won something. I entered a contest on Serious Eats, b/c it took me all of two seconds to do, and I won me a damn cookbook which I had literally just been ogling at the American Book Center here the day before, something I do maybe once a year. So yay, cool. It came in the mail while I was in the States, and in the flesh it's a beautyful presentation by Irish/Dutch food writer/food stylist Yvette van Boven called Home Made Winter.

Now about that gift horse (gift horse explaint). Having taken a poke at one of the savory recipes today, I'm a tiny bit afraid that it looks and sounds sooo good that the recipes themselves don't quite live up to the pictures, plus HBF also took a poke at one of the oft-published baking recipes back around Xmas and said yeah it needed a few tweaks (now that also don't mean there's anything wrong here: in a Pepsi Challenge [uhh, definition #3] with just about anyone's baked goods I'm taking HBF's shit any ol' day of the fkn week).

I'm just sayin...we gone be taking a good hard look at this sumbitch sometime soon while it's still winter and everything. And really, all kidding aside, you know we're hoping for the best, it seems to be a thoroughly charming book.

+++