pizza sauce
this is a pizza sauce recipe that i have calculated and it serves me well so far.

basic recipe
-wash the tomatoes (2lbs)
-put a dry pot on the fire, throw in the tomatoes
-let them cook in the pot and occasionally press them down with the potato masher to crush them. they should cook until everything turns to liquid and you don't see any firm chunks of tomato.
-pass them through the food mill, first the coarse plate, then the fine plate. if you don't want to do that, you can press them through the wire strainer with a wooden spoon.
-return the tomato sauce to the pan and set it to boil. add a teaspoon of herbes de provence, a half teasopon of salt, and a tablespoon of olive oil.
-boil until it is thick. you will want it quite thick since it is spreading on dough.
-adjust the sweet/sour balance with sugar and vinegar

another method is to start with a raw concassé. cut the tops off the tomotoes, and squeeze out the juice and seeds through a wire strainer into a bowl. coarsely chop the tomatoes with the skin and put them in the bowl with the juice. add your salt now and let it sit 30 minutes. you can do the same thing if you are using canned whole tomatoes. pour them into a bowl and crush with your hands and add the salt.

after you have the concassé just proceed as you would and skip the straining step and don't add the salt because you already did.
- posted by Jesse @ 2:33 PM 0 comments

 
le grand aioli
in provence region they have something called le grand aioli, which is a selection of boiled vegetables with garlic mayonnaise dipping sauce. i made something similar which i think would have merit for football games, especially if you want some good finger food that is a bit healthy:

make aioli. you can add potato puree to tone down the garlic flavor, that way you can put more sauce in one dip without burning your mouth.

i made boiled eggs, baked potatoes, raw carrots and unbreaded fried chicken (poached chicken would probably do fine as well) more authentic recipes also use artichoke hearts, green beans, plum tomatoes, beet roots and sweet potatoes, all boiled.

for the eggs, took out the yolks and mixed with some of the aioli to devil them. everything else you just dip in the aioli. also a mixture of lime juice, salt and pepper, or nuoc cham, is a good optional dip for the chicken.
- posted by Jesse @ 1:42 PM 0 comments

 
Parle G
http://tinyurl.com/mve48c
- posted by Jesse @ 8:27 PM 0 comments

 
ars tecnica practicaque favarum
in making pulses, indian cooks usually boil the dal in water and not much else, then add in a tadka: aromatic spices cooked in hot oil.

i carry this technique over to tweak my pan-latin american bean recipe:

black beans, the tadka technique:

soak and rinse

1 lb black beans, +/-

put enough water to cover and a pinch of baking soda. boil gently for about 45 minutes, or until tender. add water from time to time, but there should be not much water left at the end of the cooking.

now wash

5 roma or 3 medium sized tomatoes

heat up a dry saucepan, throw the tomatoes in whole. begin crushing them with a masher of spatula until they have all broken apart into a seething stew. pass this through a wire strainer to remove skins & seeds, pressing down with a spoon to extract all juice. (the number of tomatoes is too small to warrant having to assemble and clean a food mill). if the resulting juice is watery, reduce it until it is a bit thick. add a teaspoon of salt to this and set aside.

to prepare tadka, heat 2 tablespoons of bacon fat until it's almost smoking. add

a tablespoon cumin seeds
3-4 roughly chopped garlic

stir for 10 seconds or so. the cumin seeds will be popped and browned, the garlic blonde to golden brown.

now add tadka and tomato sauce to beans. partially mash so that the liquid is thick. add

1/2c chopped cilantro

remove from heat.

if you need them spicy, you can put chili powder in the tomato juice or a diced jalapeño to the tadka.

these beans i devised to eat with the arepa recipe from mark bittman. they work well with an arepa and a bit of yogurt or sour cream.
- posted by Jesse @ 10:51 AM 1 comments

 
arepas
Mark Bittman on NYTimes has an arepas recipe. his version looks more hearty/homestyle than what is usually sold in venezuelan restaurants
- posted by Jesse @ 11:53 PM 0 comments

 
canning
right now at the end of summer some kinds of produce are cheap and plentiful, especially tomatoes and peaches. the usda has a series of publications all about canning food, with recipes, including exact guidelines for avoiding botulism contamination:

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html

as for me, i bought 17 pounds of tomatoes today. i'll see if i can can 12.
- posted by Jesse @ 7:13 PM 0 comments

 
india
my wife convinced me that we should buy a battery of indian spices. most towns have an adequate indian store that will sell you the necessary spices. once you have your store of spices, which you can keep in a briefcase, you just need a constant supply of cilantro, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, yogurt, butter, meats, pulses, rice, flour and greens, then you can make just about anything indian.

one recipe for chicken korma from a UK newspaper worked out well. the woman chef uses whole spices, not grinding. i used cashew butter instead of ground almond and coconut cream instead of creamed coconut.
- posted by Jesse @ 8:47 PM 0 comments

 
summer cocktail.
my grocery store this week has been having a promotion on two pound bags of lemons. i made lemonade then found out the benefits of adding eau de vie. you only risk getting drunk if you have a mechanical lemon juicer, because your hands will get tired.

a good cocktail:

squeeze lemons over a wire strainer into a container until you have at least 1 cup of fresh lemon juice.

meanwhile make a simple syrup with 3/4c sugar and 1c water.

combine these two liquids in a 1L jar, top off with water. chill.

then put ice cubes in a tall glass and mix 1 part spirits to 3 parts lemonade. you could also drink the lemonade by itself.

i have tried with vodka and a good quality bourbon. best results with the bourbon. i suspect rum would work.

lemonade is an easy mixer for cocktails because it has both a sweet and sour component. probably squeezing the lemons fresh makes a noticeable difference over using a manufactured product.
- posted by Jesse @ 8:34 PM 0 comments

 
gumbo
i am writing this recipe down because i used to have my grandmother's recipe and i guessed and managed to reconstruct it from memory and as far as i know it tastes the same.
========================
serve with rice. table condiments are worcestershire sauce and crackers. shrimp or crawfish can replace or join with the sausage.
- posted by Jesse @ 8:37 PM 0 comments

 
new innovations
i thought about buying a coffee maker, but told myself that because i had already bought a wine decanter i would not be allowed to. this is when i remembered that decanters were originally for the purpose of keeping sediment out of one's glass.

so i found that if you mix hot water and coffee ground in a wine decanter and wait for it to steep, then you pour off brewed coffee and the grounds will stay at the bottom of the decanter.

the decanter can do it all.
- posted by Jesse @ 1:34 PM 2 comments

 
some theoretical aspects of making bread at home
this is the first time that i went to the trouble of using a spray bottle to create steam in the oven. i get a thin and brittle crust that started to crack on its own as it was removed from the oven. also better oven spring and a lighter crumb with larger bubbles.

- posted by Jesse @ 1:22 PM 3 comments

 
nitrosamine




this is a bacon made by following a recipe from fuchsia dunlop's book. it is a chinese bacon, but i suspect you can make a normal unspiced bacon, the kind for breakfast plates, by omitting the spices.

you seal a pork belly in a plastic bag with curing salt, which is sold in most grocery stores, and let it sit for a week. then you hang it to dry, then you smoke it. you can smoke it in a pot or wok by lining it with foil and putting flour sugar and sawdust or groundnut chaffs, placing the meat on a rack and covering it.

this bacon is saltier, dryer, more saltpetrous and more flavorful than bacon from a grocery store.
- posted by Jesse @ 7:20 PM 0 comments

 
pork2
in this case, it is to bone a pork shoulder and make ground pork of some of it. to make ground pork, you beat it with the back of the cleaver, and pick out the fibers as they get loosened.

i am also attempting a bacon smoking technique given in that book, and should tell more about it soon.

- posted by Jesse @ 9:17 PM 0 comments

 
pork1
for me, a cleaver is becoming an important tool. i am reading fuchsia dunlop's book on sichuan cooking, land of plenty. it explains different uses of a cleaver, and how to maintain it properly.

- posted by Jesse @ 9:17 PM 0 comments

 
sichuan
i first tried sichuan food about five years ago, but this is the first time that I have obtained the sichuan peppercorns.

here is a simple soup, from Periplus Mini Cookbooks: Spicy Sichuan Cooking:

bring to boil

1 litre chicken or vegetable stock or water

add

10 sichuan peppercorns
4 slices ginger
2 spring onions, cut into large sections
1 turnip or large potato, cut into bite size cubes
a mixture of (2t salt, 1t sugar, .5t ground black pepper 2t rice wine, 2t sesame oil)

boil gently 12 minutes

add 300g bacon, sliced into small pieces

boil 3 minutes.

i made this one with a vegetable stock. the peppercorns give it a heat that warms your body and makes your tongue slightly numb. light but quite satisfying. good use of bacon.

what else to do with these peppercorns?
- posted by Jesse @ 7:08 PM 0 comments

 
Squid Salad that its Totally OK to Consider Making Love To

I'm not going to use quantities for this recipe, because I assume the discerning nomadfood reader has their own well-tuned sense for relative proportions in their ideal salad.

The first stage is ideally done the day before eating, but can be squeezed into an overnight / 3 hour deal if necessary.

Steam squid rings or pieces for a couple of minutes - err on the side of undercooking, because you're basically going to pickle these little sweethearts in the coming 24 hours anyhow, and nothing is worse than overcooked squid. 2-3 minutes should be plenty to have them turn bright white but stay soft and tender.

Squeeze a whole bunch of lemons and limes, enough to make maybe 1/2 a cup of juice, or enough to cover the squid, into a marinating dish. Add some seeded, chopped birdseye chillies (2 for a mild bite, 3-5 for the chilli lover), a hearty splash of Thai fish sauce (nam pla), a splash of rice vinegar, and a few torn mint leaves.

Add the cooked squid and one or two cucumbers, sliced into thin, wide strips. At this point (when putting it all in to marinade) you can also add some wakame, a kind of Japanese flaked seaweed. I also added nori, another seaweed, that typically comes in square sheets sold as "sushi wrappers." For the nori sheets, hold them over a gas flame for a couple of seconds to let them crinkle up and char, then just crumble them into the salad.

Leave that all in the fridge for a day to let it build its inner powers.

To finish it off, add snow peas / sugar snap peas / whatever you crazy people call them, some halved cherry tomatoes, a red pepper sliced into thin strips, and whatever fragrant leaves you consider kinky and appropriate. If you like fish sauce, give it another splash. Toss it all up, making sure to take advantage of the abundant dressing / marinade liquid, which needs to infiltrate all possible nooks of the salad.

The nice thing about this salad, other than it being mad delicious and totally gorgeous to look at, is that it will keep getting better in the fridge for a few days. Power to the people.
- posted by Tom Gara @ 3:01 PM 2 comments

 
being busy and being virtuous


if you cannot go out to get fresh produce every day, then you will consider pickling. put a bit of pickled vegetables on the side of each meal then you are eating vegetables like they are junk food. pictured: bean sprouts, pig's ears, radish and carrots, cucumbers. pig's ears are anju, the rest side banchan.
- posted by Jesse @ 6:56 PM 0 comments

 
eat less meat!
i am starting to get into the craze of eating less meat. it is better for the environment. however, meat tastes very good, and like alcohol, marijuana and sugar, it cures anger and nervous affections. this means that it is very important for us to make the most use of meat. here i am going to discuss how to make your own CHICKEN FAT and your own BEEF TALLOW. adding animal fat to your food makes it taste good without you even having to add meat.

the approach is the same for both. you take bones and all the least desirable cuts of meat and turn them into broth and fat. you will get a higher yield with chicken fat, because chicken skin is full of fat.

place under the broiler or in a dutch oven on low heat:

chicken backs, beef bones.

let it brown and some of the oil will come out. you can pour off the rendered fat or add it to a stock pot along with the bones. then add celery, carrots, onion, bouquet garnis and water to cover it all. simmer for several hours.

strain out the liquid, then separate the fat from the liquid using a gravy separator. strain the broth through a chinois and save it. once you have the fat separated, you can purify it a bit by adding hot water, stirring, then separating again. add water to your fat, put it in the fridge. the next day you will have a layer of solid fat which can be used in cooking.

two healthy MEATLESS recipes:

1. beef tallow quinoa: mince carrots and onions, sweat in beef tallow. add quinoa, salt, water and a bay leaf, cook until the quinoa is done.

2. kasha varnishkes. gently cook two or three large onions in a large amount of chicken fat until they have lost all their water, about twenty minutes. add cooked kasha, cooked bowtie pasta, salt and black pepper.
- posted by Jesse @ 1:29 PM 0 comments

 
Cooking Korean Tofu stew and mixed greens with Maangchi

- posted by Jesse @ 10:27 AM 0 comments

 
quinoa
i bought some and i don't know what to do with it.
- posted by Jesse @ 12:40 PM 2 comments

 
thitnuong
this is a very good use for a cheap cut of pork, i find. you can take as much pork shoulder or butt as you like, then make separate frozen packets after it is marinaded. very easy.

there are many marinade recipes. oyster sauce is popular i hear. i'm adapting a very basic one from Bach Ngo's 1979 "The Classic Cuisine of Vietnam".

this is marinade for a pound of pork.

grind or puree these things together:

3 shallots
2 cloves garlic
1 T sugar
2 T nuoc mam
1 T fresh ground black pepper
1 t vegetable oil

you want the pork to be slightly frozen so it is easy to slice it thinly. if you use a food processor then you can do several of pounds of pork with no sweat and have enough marinaded meat to cover the back of your freezer.

if you use the food processor, make sure to take out the bones, slice across the grain. if you use shoulder, slice so that each piece has a bit of rind.

marinade for an hour to a day.

to cook:

ideally, you grill it over charcoal. that failing, heat a wok on high heat with a bit of vegetable oil, until the oil almost smokes. add the meat, let it be in a layer covering the bottom. DON'T STIR IT! it needs a chance to sear. leave it for about 3-5 minutes, then you can stir once, then leave for another 3 minutes or so.

accompaniments are usually

nuoc cham, which you pour over it upon serving
pickled and fresh vegetables
crushed roasted groundnuts
grain rice or rice vermicelli

- posted by Jesse @ 1:12 PM 0 comments

 
cigarette cookies
This recipe is from Bach Ngo's 1979 "The Classic Cuisine of Vietnam"

they are called Banh Sen Tan, cookies with a novel preparation technique. you put a non-stick skillet over low flame, then you paint the batter onto the skillet surface. when they are brown you roll them up and they harden.

rinse

1 lb yellow mung beans

boil

4.5c water

add mung beans, bring to a boil, simmer 20 minutes. process until smooth.

process until smooth, not too long to avoid forming gluten,

4c sugar
3.5 c flour
4c coconut milk

combine the two phases, this is your batter. get your non-stick skillet properly heated, low heat. paint on a cookie. thinner is better. once it has browned, lift up an edge and roll it with your fingers. you can use a pencil to help make the cylinder, or just roll. this is a good technique to develop calluses on your fingertips. make these cookies every day. they take a long time, but the work isn't very solicitous, and they will last for a long time.

- posted by Jesse @ 12:54 PM 0 comments

 
Leftovers
Back in college, whenever I ordered Chinese food with roomies, it was always a chore to use up the white rice that generally sprinted to staleness in under a day. Luckily one year I became semi-obsessed with rice pudding. Last week I went out for some Chinese food, where we devoured everything except the rice so tonight I whipped some up (in about 5 minutes):

Take your stale rice and put it in a pot/pan small enough that the rice covers the bottom but large enough that it is no more than an inch high. Pour in a 50/50 cream/water mix to just cover the rice. If you don't have cream, use whatever milky product you have, but the less fat, the less water in the mixture (if you're using skim, skip the water altogether). Heat on medium, adding sugar and cinnamon to taste. Take it off heat when the liquid evaporates and thickens around the rice but don't let the rice get mushy. This is probably a rice pudding best eaten warm, but I tend to only make enough for what I'm in the mood to eat.

You can substitute or mix honey, agave or brown sugar and add spices like cardamom and nutmeg. Or if you're feeling really crazy you can substitute coconut milk for the cream. Yes.
- posted by Jenna @ 8:24 PM 0 comments

 
If you're thinking about the politics of food, it's worth reading this article by Michael Pollan.
- posted by Jenna @ 5:36 PM 0 comments

 
rice cooker pork beans
back on the rice cooker.

wash pinto beans four good times, soak overnight.
in rice cooker add water, some cheap cut of pork and the beans. salt, bay leaf and garlic. turn on, then change to "keep warm" after it boils.

leave it overnight.

throw in a diced half onion, a tomato, roughly chopped, cumin, dry mustard, vinegar, rock sugar, salt, a whole jalapeno. leave it another 6-8 hours.

take out the bones and mix around with a ladel until all the pork meat falls apart and disperses amongst the beans.

- posted by Jesse @ 9:48 AM 0 comments