Bahn Meatloaf

When you see the finished product it seems obviously delicious... but I was shocked at how much I loved this recipe (from Bon Appétit - though there they call it "Hoisin-Glazed Meatloaf Sandwiches"). I mean, I really really liked it. Meatloaf is one of those things I associate with childhood but at the same time never really liked. Why didn't I like it? Maybe it was overcooked and dry since basically everything was in "back in the day." But I honestly don't know... though calling a terrine a "loaf" seems like poor branding... my distaste for the dish seemed outsized and that always indicates that I need some sort of culinary self help intervention.



Forcemeat. That's what meatolaf is, and I have no idea why some ancient French chef thought that would sound tasty (maybe it sounds better in French? Of course it does: forcément)... but it is! Every sausage or hot dog you've ever had is forcemeat.

So what's special about this recipe? There is nothing really innovative about the technique... it's your standard meatloaf but without veal (i.e just pork and beef) and spiked with scallions and a hoisin glaze. The flavors are really fantastic however... I particularly loved the quick pickled radish, carrot, and cucumber salad.

To serve you heat a couple of teaspoons of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat and brown a slice of meatloaf... then put on toast slathered with that hoisin glaze and top with the salad. Delicious.

Lucky Peach

We're three issues in and I gotta say I dig it. Yeah, a lot of the recipes are aspirational for the average home cook... this quarter's issue contains a recipe for canard au sang for example... but there are definitely doable ones and the food writing is top notch. In reality, it's not a magazine about recipes, but more of a showcase for today's best food writers... which is a nice change from the recipe driven concept of always having to have a lame hook like "Mac and Cheese Gets a Makeover!!" Doesn't it get a makeover every year? Yawn.

It's possible Lucky Peach is a little too precious, but I'm enjoying it so far, and it's the only food magazine I religiously read cover to cover.

New England-centric James Beard Nominations

Culled from Serious Eats:

Best New Restaurant
Petite Jacqueline, Portland, ME
Trade, Boston

Outstanding Bar Program
Cook & Brown Public House, Providence, RI
Drink, Boston

Outstanding Chef
Jody Adams, Rialto, Cambridge, MA
Melissa Kelly, Primo, Rockland, ME

Outstanding Pastry Chef
Joanne Chang, Flour Bakery + Cafe, Boston
Maura Kilpatrick, Sofra Bakery and Cafe, Cambridge, MA
Cheryl Maffai and Jonathan Stevens, Hungry Ghost Bread, Northampton, MA

Outstanding Restaurant
Fore Street, Portland, ME
Oleana, Cambridge, MA

Outstanding Service
L'Espalier, Boston

Outstanding Wine Program
No. 9 Park, Boston
Troquet, Boston

Rising Star Chef of the Year
Benjamin Sukle, The Dorrance, Providence, RI

Best Chef: Northeast
Jamie Bissonnette, Coppa, Boston
Jason Bond, Bondir, Cambridge, MA
Kara Brooks, Still River Café, Eastford, CT
Penelle, Megan, and Phoebe Chase and Ted LaFage, Chase's Daily, Belfast, ME
Tim Cushman, O Ya, Boston
Krista Kern Desjarlais, Bresca, Portland, ME
Brian Hill, Francine Bistro, Camden, ME
Liz Jackson, Libby's Bistro, Gorham, NH
Matt and Kate Jennings, La Laiterie, Providence, RI
Demos Regas, Emilitsa, Portland, ME
Bjorn Somlo, Nudel, Lenox, MA
Champe Speidel, Persimmon, Bristol, RI
Danai Sriprasert and Nattasak Wongsaichua, Boda, Portland, ME
Bill Taibe, LeFarm, Westport, CT
Sai Viswanath, DeWolf Tavern, Bristol, RI
Eric Warnstedt, Hen of the Wood, Waterbury, VT

I guess I'm rooting for Jody Adams, Joanne Chang, and the folks at Chase's Daily... but more than anything I think this annual rite is about adding restaurants to the wish list.

Caramelized Onion and Savoy Cabbage Chowder with Comté Croutons

Anna made this early in the week from a recipe in Vegetarian Times (croutons here). She used Comté instead Gruyère simply because we had it and needed to finish it... and truth be told your probably better off using a much less expensive Gruyère since they'll be soggy in the soup anyway, but man are those croutons good. Makes me think we should use them all the time, but I guess buying a freshly baked artisinal loaf and some Comté for the croutons on your everyday salad is a little insane even for me.

As for the soup, I'm not sure what exactly qualifies it as "chowder"... since it's not thickened in any way, let alone with milk or cream... but it was quite good, so who cares I guess? It is surprisingly hearty and a comforting meal on a (not that) cold winter night. While I didn't make it, it seemed like a nice weeknight meal as she was able to get it to the table... even with teaching an evening class... at a perfectly reasonable hour.

So I definitely recommend this one... and you can easily veganize it by omitting the cheese on the croutons and subbing oil for the butter in the soup.

Sausage Gravy and Buttermilk Biscuits

Never had sausage gravy before... from what I understand this is more of a Southern thing... but I had a spare 8 ounces of bulk sausage from the last dish I made and was intrigued by recent Gilt Taste posts on said gravy and Per Se biscuits. Seemed like a pretty easy breakfast to make on a Saturday morning, and I think it came out quite well if I do say so myself.



The biscuits require a little extra preparation than normal... about an hour... since you need a cold bowl and cold fat (butter in my case), but I suppose you could cut up the butter and chill the bowl overnight. I used my hands to try to incorporate the fat, but I wish I had used our pastry blender... but since baking is more Anna's thing than mine I didn't know where it was. Oh well... the biscuits still tasted great but I didn't feel like I had much control over the final size of butter crumbs. Used a glass to cut the biscuits which seemed to work fine, but maybe the biscuits would have risen a little more if I had a cutter.



The gravy was about as straightforward as the biscuits. I performed all the "optional" steps, including frying the sage leaves and adding some water and reducing it for 15 minutes. It ended up a little too thick for me... either from reducing too much or using too much flour... but it's an easy enough thing to thin it out to the proper consistency, so that really helps with any guesswork. I had some available chicken stock so I used that instead of water and thought it came out great.

Definitely recommended.

Easy Polenta

Russ Parsons with the secret:

But now I serve polenta any time I feel like it. And these days I'm feeling like it a lot. Here's how easy preparing polenta can be: Pour water into a wide, deep pot; stir in polenta; bake; stir; bake; stir; done.

As he notes, he didn't invent it... nor does it seem anybody can really lay claim to it (as in most things cooking)... but it sounds like a great technique that I would do well not to forget.

Kitchen Spy

I've never been to either of his restaurants... we don't get down to the South End as much as we should (It's sooooo far away... I mean it's the other side of the city!)... but I thought this new(and hopefully regular) Boston magazine feature about the kitchen and fridge of chef Jamie Bissonnette was pretty interesting in a voyeur-ey kind of way.

Kale, White Beans, and Sausage

I guess it's fairly obvious by the sparse posting that I haven't been cooking a whole lot the last couple weeks... what can I say? Sometimes none of the recipes I see in my RSS feed, or cookbooks I page through, really inspire me... and it's not like I can post consecutive days of takeout or ramen hacks (well I guess I could). So when I saw the Simply Recipes post Kale with White Beans and Sausage and thought "Hmmm that looks pretty good" I knew I needed to grab the ingredients on the way home and make it immediately.

It's a straightforward dish... brown your sausage and onions, deglaze with a little broth, steam your kale a bit, and then add in the beans. I was supper lazy on this one... buying the bagged kale that is already cut up. Still took me 45 minutes from start to table, but I rate that pretty good... most "quick and easy" recipes probably take me closer to an hour. The only change I think I'd make to this is using hot Italian sausage instead of sweet... red pepper and greens are a perfect marriage in my view, and that small change might elevate it to a staple dish. As it is I just threw some red pepper flakes on there and called it a day.

Bourbon Barrel Aged Soy

Kind of neat.

Based in Louisville, Kentucky, the city known as the gateway to bourbon country, Matt Jamie has found a new way to repurpose barrels that have been used to age the region's signature spirit. Bourbon Barrel Foods makes micro-brewed and barrel-aged soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, marinades and sorghum salad dressing, as well as barrel-smoked salt, sugar pepper and paprika once the whiskey has been drained.

Allagash's Curieux has always been my favorite use of not-used-to-make-Scotch bourbon barrels, but maybe that could change? Looks like they also have a vegetarian Worcestershire sauce that sounds intriguing.

Got Nothin'

This weekend's cooking project didn't really come out in an interesting enough fashion to seem worth posting about... in that it wasn't really a spectacular failure or success, and just made me feel kind of meh. So unless I come across interesting food news the blog looks to be especially quiet this week.

Vegan Kimchi Secret Ingredient?

Kenji, writing about his month adhering to a vegan lifestyle, has an interesting recipe for the old Chimpanzee Tea Party favorite: kimchi. For those who are unaware, the issue here is that your traditional kimchi is decidedly not vegan... at the very least it has fish sauce, but could also have salted shrimp or oysters. Always one of the tricky parts of finding vegan/vegetarian food in the Asian sphere is their propensity to put non-obvious fish products in places you'd never expect... everywhere from the aforementioned kimchi to the dashi used to make an unassuming miso soup. Now, you can simply exclude these fish products when making Asian dishes at home... as I did when I made vegan kimchi... but what's a temporary vegan to do when he doesn't want to give up that precious umami? Well, Kenji, of course, experimented:

What's the best substitute for the umami-burst of the dried shrimp? I tried a number of things including soy sauce, marmite, and pure MSG powder, but the best option was red miso paste, a similarly glutamate-rich condiment that's readily available.

I really want to make kimchi again, but I think Anna is deeply concerned about the current pickle proliferation and losing refrigerator space... so I might be on pickle timeout. But for the rest of you... definitely worth making and dead easy to do... plus it lasts forever... assuming you like the funk of "ripe" kimchi, as I do. Otherwise, I guess you have to eat it in a month or so, but there are plenty of things to make with it (kimchi quesadilla!).

Pink Pickles (aka Zuni Cafe's Red Onion Pickles)

They are actually red onion pickles from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook... but that's a pretty brilliant shade of fuchsia for a pickle. You can find the recipe here. I haven't had a chance to try them yet so I don't have whole lot to say... but the recipe isn't quite as fussy as it sounds. Yes, you have to blanch the onions in the brine three times (in batches)... and yes, you need the onions to cool completely in between... and yes, that's along time to have your head over simmering vinegar (a good exhaust fan is helpful here)... but it really doesn't take as long as you might fear. Part of this was probably that I used a wider bottom pot than the 4 quart saucepan suggested, so my brine came back to a simmer quite quickly. In addition, spread out on a cookie sheet they cooled pretty fast. Plus, they're pickles... they have to sit around at least a day anyway, so they is no particular hurry.

I suppose the proof will be in the eating, as the repeated blanchings are allegedly the only way to get a great pickle flavor while maintaining the crunch of the onion. Certainly they do make for quite a pretty pickle.

Happy National Cheese Lover's Day

In honor of National Cheese Lover's Day, here's a collection of photos (which link to the associated posts if you click on them) about Chimpanzee Tea Party's Adventures in Cheese over the past year:

Harvard’s Science + Cooking lectures Available on iTunes U

From the LA Times:

...the real find here is Science + Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter from the Harvard School of Engineering and Science, 52 one-and-a-half- to two-hour videos from a lecture series that “discusses concepts from the physical sciences that underpin both everyday cooking and haute cuisine.” You have Ferran Adria of the late El Bulli presenting spherification, Jose Andres of The Bazaar (and minibar in Washington, D.C.) discussing basic components of food and gelation, and Wylie Dufresne (wd-50 in New York) on inventions with transglutaminase.

Just listen to the titles of some of the lectures: “Mixing the Unmixable,” “Sous-vide Cooking: a State of Matter,” “Meat Glue Mania,” “Olive Oil and Viscosity.” Heady stuff, and it’s free, free, free -- even the app.

So kinda cool... you can watch these lectures through the iTunes U app on iPhone or iPad... though they're also all available on YouTube here.

Vegetarian Southern Food

The only contribution to this meal I made was those watermelon pickles I made back in September, but apparently never followed up on.

Well, they're good. Kind of like eating an Arnold Palmer (i.e. 1/2 lemonade and 1/2 iced tea). If you never had them (I hadn't) then I definitely recommend it. While I admit to being a little intimidated by the idea that a rind could ever end up as something tasty... no matter the pickle alchemy applied... this definitely made me a believer.

Otherwise what you see was made by Anna. Up front are a seitan based "rib" creation (from Vegan Diner), and in back is a riff on baked mac and cheese that subs in cauliflower for the pasta. Both were delicious.

UPDATE: Added links to the recipes.