Cornish Game Hen with Prosciutto, Rosemary, and White Beans

I don't really recall how exactly, but I only recently learned that Cornish Game Hen is neither a game bird nor necessarily a hen. They're really just tiny little chickens with a specific parentage.... who knew? Well, presumably lots of people... but not me, which is what matters around here. What's great about them is how small they are (less than 2 lbs by definition) but unfortunately they can be much more expensive than a regular chicken. So even though they're just tiny chickens you can easily pay like they're something much more exotic... I guess marketing works, eh?

I got this recipe off of Serious Eats, and you can go ahead and read it there since I didn't make any changes to it other than cutting it half to serve one... since even though I'm married I'm functionally a lonely bachelor when it comes to eating meat. This is one reason why I love a small chicken... sometimes I don't want to eat leftovers all week, but I can't usually find anything smaller than 3.5 lbs, so that's why I'm kind of intriuged by the whole Cornish Game Hen thing. In addition to avoiding excessive leftovers, everybody says that smaller chickens are more flavorful, though I don't know if that applies to younger chickens necessarily (which Cornish Game Hens are).



The recipe itself is really simple and done in 30 minutes or less (no really!). You just got to cut the backbone out of the bird with kitchen shears and mince some garlic and rosemary and you are ready to go... which you can easily do as the oven preheats. It came out great with no real issues... but the one criticism I have is that I feel like the beans could have been jazzed up a bit... you just dump canned white beans into the roasting pan once you take the bird out to cool, but I didn't really have a whole lot of "accumulated juices" left to flavor them. They were fine and I like that they browned a bit as they heated up, but it just feels like they could have been something more... but then I've got no ideas, so who am I to judge?

This is a recipe that scales really well per person (1 Cornish Game Hen and can of beans for each guest) but at some point you'll run out of oven space. Seems like a good date night recipe since the presentation is pretty cute... or even a romantic dinner for one as I did (no I did not light candles!). Worth doing, at least to see what these Cornish Game Hens are all about.

Thoughts on Sous Vide Carnitas

This is more an addendum to the duck confit carnitas post from last week than a full on recipe. The assertion I made at the end of that recipe was that I felt like you could use the same technique for traditional porky carnitas, saving yourself the trouble of tracking down a couple of quarts of lard in the same way that minimal duck fat is required for sous vide duck confit... thanks to the whole "food vacuum sealed in a bag" aspect of sous vide cookery. Indeed, I think you could get away with no fat at all since the reason for using fat is to protect the meat from over cooking... a necessity that is directly obviated by sous vide. However you are going need fat at some point, and since not much fat is going to render sous vide, you have to add it. I feel like putting it in the bag and separating it out of the cooking liquid after the meat is done is easy enough, but you could also just use it at the final frying step.

So I basically just dove into making my own sous vide carnitas without much of a recipe to guide me. The results were pretty good, but not perfect. One mistake I made, which you can see clearly above, was shredding the pork too finely before frying it... which subsequently dried it out a bit. Don't do that. Leave it as distinct chunks for frying. Another possible mistake was my choice of temperature. I did 176° F because Kenji suggested it would be done on the order of 12 hours, which it was and that meant I could have tacos on Cinco de Mayo. Which was nice. But Modernist Cuisine suggests 149°F for 36 hours, which could lead to juicier meat as well.



So with those caveats as to my approach, I still think... at least as a broad outline... this is a good way to go. I basically just followed Kenji's recipe for "No Waste Carnitas" but used 3-4 tablespoons of lard instead of 1/4 cup of vegetable oil and sealed it all in vacuum bag. Put the bag in a preheated sous vide setup set to 176° F and pulled it out the next morning... about 14 hours later.



You end up with perfectly cooked chunks of pork, some great cooking liquid to use in a salsa or glaze, and all of your fat back for frying. I don't know if you can tell here, but the meat definitely wasn't as dry as it appears up top... it was in fact perfectly cooked from what I could tell, so I'm not entirely sure going the 36 hour route is really necessary... but assuming enough of the connective tissue breaks down over that time frame at 149°F then it's theoretically going to give you the more moist end product.



Despite my error in shredding the pork a wee bit too much, the tacos I made from it were still pretty great... and really quite easy. I think with a few refinements... and some testing of longer cooking times/lower temperature... this could be dish I make pretty frequently.

Sous Vide Duck Confit Carnitas

Being that cassoulet is probably my favorite food, I've made a fair bit of duck confit over the years. I've got big tubs of duck fat in the fridge (which gross Anna out) and a local purveyor that stocks several types of duck legs and sells them fresh. If you aren't lucky enough to live near a fancy butcher who can supply you with fresh duck legs you can always go with the more widely available fresh/frozen whole duck... take a pair and break them down - reserving the breasts for another (delicious!) use... or you can get the legs online. The more difficult aspect is likely getting duck fat... if you got a whole duck then you can render fat from it, or you can... once again... purchase it online. Isn't the internet great? You can also always use olive oil or some other fat if you like, but one of the advantages of the approach I'm outlining here is that you don't need very much and duck fat is fun to have just for frying potatoes or what have you.

My most recent epiphany in regards to duck confit preparation was turning to a "low and slow" technique where you cook the legs for 5-6 hours at 200 degrees F, but I came across recipes calling for even lower and slower. At the time 10-12 hours seemed like a long time to have a pot of fat bubbling in the oven, but now that I have a DIY sous vide setup it sounds like a snap. Indeed, I've already mentioned a key advantage... vacuum sealing the legs in pouches means only needing about two tablespoons of fat for each pair of legs. When you do it the traditional way you need something more on the order of multiple quarts of fat to keep the legs fully submerged.

While you could certainly make sous vide duck confit with a curing step (salted plus any additional seasonings for 24 hours), I didn't feel it was really necessary since these duck legs were destined to become carnitas (i.e. fried in more duck fat). This recipe is from the Sous Vide Supreme website with a few minor modifications:

Sous Vide Duck Confit Carnitas Tacos

Ingredients

• 4 duck legs
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon pepper
• 4 tablespoons duck fat, plus 2 tablespoons reserved (melted)
• 1 small onion, quartered
• 6 medium tomatillos (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and split in half
• 2 jalapeño peppers, split in half lengthwise, stem removed
• 2 garlic cloves
• corn tortillas
• chopped onion (optional)
• cilantro (optional)
• crumbled or shredded cheese, like queso fresco or monterey jack (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat water bath to 167 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Season duck legs with salt, pepper, and chili powder and place in 1 quart bags (2 legs per bag). Pour 2 tablespoons of duck fat into each bag. Evacuate as much are as possible from bag either by submerging in water, using a hand pump, or a vacuum pump before sealing and submerging bags in water bath for the next 8-10 hours.
3. While that is going on prepare the salsa verde. Place the onion quarters, tomatillos, jalapeños, and garlic in a saucepan and add water to come up to about 1" below top of vegetables. Bring to a boil and them simmer until the vegetables are soft... about 10 minutes. Blend (hand held or standing) until salsa is smooth. Season with salt and then cool and refrigerate until needed.
4. Remove bags from water bath and allow duck legs to cool enough to handle. Remove skin from duck legs and reserve. Shred duck confit into small pieces.
5. Add reserved duck fat to small skillet and heat over medium high heat. Add shredded duck confit to skillet and fry until about half of it is crisp and browned, about 10 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, wrap duck skin in paper towels and put on a plate in microwave. Microwave on high until skin is crisp, 4-5 minutes. When cool cut cracklings into strips.
7. Next up: heat tortillas. Heat a non-stick small skillet over medium high heat until hot. Dip a tortilla in water and then place in pan for 30 seconds. Flip and heat for another 15 seconds. Wrap in a clean dish towel and repeat with remaining tortillas.
8. To serve, place tortilla on plate (single or stack of two based on preference) and add 2 or 3 tablespoons of carnitas. Top with salsa verde and cracklings (and onion, cilantro, and cheese if desired).

Note that this technique should work with pork carnitas just as easily (and I may in fact try it this weekend). Just swap out duck fat for lard and cubed boneless pork shoulder for duck and you should be in great shape. From this article on Kenji I'd probably go with 176 degrees F instead of 167.

Marcella Hazan's Homemade Tagliatelle and Ragù alla Bolognese

It's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks both for the Boston area and me personally (in a day job sense - thankfully nothing to report in the marathon bombing sense), but things seem to be settling back down so I can joyfully resume regular food blogging.



Anna's had a pasta machine as long as I've known her, but except for some great (and time consuming) Thomas Keller agnolotti it hasn't really been broken out of its box very often. Part of this is due to the fact that I think dried pasta is perfectly fine most of the time, and when we want something like filled pasta we can just buy it from a great place up the street and keep it in the freezer... but I think a larger part is simply that I've been a little intimidated by my conception of the process. The aforementioned agnolotti was made entirely by Anna, and any time fresh pasta has been made it's pretty much been her deal... but on a recent weekend while she was up in Maine I decided to make a pot of sauce and try my hand at pasta making.

The following recipes are all adapted from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.



You're going to want to make the sauce first... probably on a separate day because it's pretty time consuming. Granted, it's relatively hands off cooking, but I still wasn't in the mood to break out the pasta machine after a full day of sauce making. The recipe that follows is a double batch of Mercella's bolognese with a few adaptations for the home cook. Most people would cook this in a big Dutch oven... though I personally prefer my straight sided saute pan... but for either the key is the balance of volume to surface area. With something like a saucepan, with its comparatively smaller surface area, you are going to be noticeably slower in the multiple evaporation steps.

Marcella Hazan's Ragù alla Bolognese

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 medium onion diced (about 1 cup)
• 6 stalks of celery diced (about 1 1/3 cups)
• 4 medium carrots diced (about 1 1/3 cups)
• 1 1/2 pounds meatloaf mix (i.e. equal parts chuck, veal, and pork... or just chuck if you prefer)
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 cups dry white wine
• 1 28 oz can of crushed San Marzano tomatoes

Directions

1. Heat oil, butter, and onion in a pot on a burner set medium. Cook and stir onion until translucent. Add chopped celery and carrot. Cook for 2 minutes more, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.
2. Add meat and season with a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Break up the meat and stir well, cooking until the beef has lost its raw, red color.
3. Pour in the milk and let simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until it has bubbled away completely. This can take anywhere from 1 to over 2 hours, so be patient. You don't want to turn the heat up too high or you'll scorch your sauce.
4. Add the nutmeg and then pour in the wine and return the sauce to a simmer. Let it bubble along, stirring occasionally, until the wine has evaporated. Once again this can be time consuming but it should be significantly faster than the milk... about an hour.
5. Add the tomatoes and return the sauce to a simmer once again. Here you want it to be barest of simmers... you might even want a flame tamer if you are working on a gas stove. Simmer like this for 3 hours, stirring occasionally... and don't be afraid to throw in a 1/4 cup of water if it looks like the sauce is drying out.

So once you have your sauce all ready it's time to make the pasta. I was surprised to find that making pasta is not a technically difficult or a particularly time consuming thing to do... but it's still likely you won't be 100% happy with your first effort. Why? For me it was because... apparently... nobody seems to have thought to standardize the settings on pasta machines. So somewhere between the thinnest and thickest settings (even this range varies from machine to machine) is what you want and you are only going to be able to find that by luck or experience. I made two batches on my machine which numbers its settings from 1 (thinnest) to 7 (thickest) and didn't quite get it right either time... once too thick (4) and once too thin (2) so now I know I want the third setting for my next batch of tagliatelle. In both cases the pasta was still quite delicious, but you are probably going to want some dry pasta on hand just in case you are disappointed with your early efforts.

As far as ingredients go... we actually have 00 pasta flour on hand because we're annoying food people who care about this sort of thing (note we also have 00 pizza flour which is totally different)... but Marcella says you don't really need anything other than all purpose and I suspect she is probably correct. The basic ratio she calls for is 1 cup of flour to 2 large eggs for 3/4 of a pound of pasta... which translates somewhere from 3 to 6 portions depending on whether you are thinking of main course or appetizer size or something in between. If you are confident in your pasta making then I would double it (i.e. 2 cups of flour and 4 eggs) since you can let leftovers dry naturally and keep them for weeks... but otherwise it probably makes sense to work in small batches until you get the hang of it.

If you are OCD about baking things (like me) and prefer weights then just weigh the eggs and use 1 to 1.5 times as much flour.



Not to insult all the wonderful Italian grandmothers out there, but one tip I will give you is that dumping your flour onto the counter, making a well in said flour, and then pouring eggs into it is a great way to end up with eggs on the floor. Just do it in a bowl... I promise I won't tell anybody.

Otherwise the progression is to combine your flour and eggs together until well mixed. You don't want the dough to be sticky, so be prepared to add more flour (especially true if you are using 00 flour and aren't doing things by weight since it weighs less per cup than all purpose) as you mix. Marcella says you should be able to poke your finger into the dough and not have it come out sticky.

Then you knead for 5-10 minutes until velvety smooth (possibly adding more flour if it is too sticky). After you let it rest for 30 minutes or so under a towel or plastic wrap you are ready for the pasta machine.

Multiply the number of eggs you used by 3 and divide your dough into that many pieces (i.e. 6 pieces for 2 eggs and 1 cup of flour). You'll need lots of free space from this point forward, so clear off some counters and or tables and put down clean dish towels. These pieces are going to get quite long, but note that you can always hang them over the edge of the counter.



Now you just set your pasta machine to the widest setting and run a piece of pasta dough through. You'll get a rectangle about this big. Fold it into thirds... like you are folding a letter (does anybody even do that anymore? might need to find a new analogy)... then feed the narrow end through the pasta machine. Repeat this process a couple of more times before moving onto the next piece of dough.

Once you've run all of your dough through the widest setting, simply turn the setting down one notch and run each piece of dough through again (don't do the letter folding thing though). From here on out things are pretty quick, though the dough gets progressively more unweildy because of its length... you just turn the setting to the next narrowest and then run through each rectangle of dough a single time. Here is what the dough looks like after the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th pass. As mentioned above I've basically settled on settled on using setting #3 (5th pass) on my machine for tagliatelle but unless you have an "Al Dente" pasta machine (and pasta preferences similar to mine) you are going to have to figure out what setting you prefer by trial and error.

Cutting tagliatelle must be done by hand... just fold it up over itself use chef's knife to cut 1/2" wide strips(see picture). You need to let them dry a bit before you cut or otherwise the strands will stick together... but you don't want to wait until they are too dry or the pasta will crack when you cut it. One option for cutting is to roll up all the pasta dough stips together which will speed things up, but since 2 strips works out to once serving I just cut them in stacks of two and then, after separating the individual strands, piled them into little bird nests to dry. Note that while they will last for weeks once dried completely (24 hours) they do become quite fragile so be careful storing them.

How long they take to cook is determined by how thick and how dry the pasta is... fresh thin pasta can be done in 2-3 minutes but thicker and drier pasta tends to be more like the boxed kind and takes on the order of 5-10 minutes.

Totally worth doing... don't be intimidated by pasta making like I was! Just remember that it's only flour and eggs, so it's not like you are going into the poor house if you need to start over.

A Little Busy

No food post this week due to a conference coming up this weekend where I have one figure done for my poster that I present Sunday afternoon. Somewhat stressed.

Canal House Cooks Every Day: Pork in an Easy Red Mole

This is another recipe out of Canal House Cooks Every Day, and while the weather is nicely turning towards spring, farmers' markets haven't opened up yet in the Boston area... so I'm not quite ready to do 50 asparagus recipes or whatever we're supposed to do when you get a 70 degree day in April. Personally I'm of the opinion that chili is great any time of year, so if you're not starved for spring time recipes... and maybe a little tired of reading about the ramps you can't get yet... then please keep reading.

This is a very straightforward recipe... just pork butt stewed in a simple red mole sauce for a couple of hours. I think most people assume that a mole sauce has to have five different kinds of chilies, six kinds of nuts, and twenty other crazy ingredients... but that is not necessarily the case. Certainly for a special occasion you'll likely want to go to that effort for your turkey in mole poblano, but you can also make simple "everyday" moles that come together quickly. This particular red mole only calls for one type of chili and one type of nut to go with raisins and pretty typical dried spices, so it might not even require anything you don't already have in your pantry.

I've modified this recipe in two ways to make it a little simpler and quicker, and (I hope) better. The first change is to sub in New Mexico chilies for the guajillo chilies called for in the original. The flavor difference between the two is pretty modest, and dried New Mexico chilies are available in practically every grocery store in New England... whereas guajillos require a trip to a specialty spice shop or an internet order. If you've got easy access then, by all means use them. The second change is one championed by Kenji over at Serious Eats... browning only one side of your meat. You can read his reasoning in his recipe for Carne Adovada, tl;dr is that browning brings flavor but it also causes moisture loss and tougher meat, so the best of both worlds is simply browning one side. This provides the material benefit of flavorful and tender pork, but also saves you a ton of time when you are browning in batches.

Note that this dish renders a lot of fat, and as awesome as pork fat is you are probably going to want to get rid of most of it before serving. One solution is to simply have the stew the next day, as spooning off the fat of a completely cooled and refrigerated stew is pretty easy. Another way is to use a gravy separator.

Pork in an Easy Red Mole

Ingredients

• 12 dried New Mexico chilies
• 5 cups hot chicken stock
• 1/3 cup blanched almonds
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 10 black peppercorns
• Salt
• 1 cup raisins
• 3 cloves garlic
• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 6 lbs boneless pork butt or Boston butt, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 3 medium onions, sliced
• Pepper
• half-bunch scallions, chopped
• Large handful cilantro leaves, chopped

Directions

1. Tear off stems of the dried chilies and shake out the seeds. Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. Toast the chilies in the skillet, pressing them down with tongs and turning once or twice, until they are fragrant and turn a slightly darker shade, 30-60 seconds. Transfer the chilies to a medium bowl. Pour 2 cups of the hot chicken stock over the chilies and set them aside to soak until soft and pliable, about 30 minutes.
2. Toast the almonds in the skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently, until pale golden brown, 6-8 minutes. Transfer to a plate to cool completely. Add the cumin, oregano, cinnamon, and peppercorns to the skillet and toast the spices over medium heat, stirring until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a small bowl to cool. Finely grind the almonds with 1 tsp of salt in a food processor or blender. Add the chilies and their soaking liquid, along with the toasted spices, raisins, and garlic, puree to a smooth paste.
3. Heat the remaining 2 tbsp of oil in a heavy large pot over medium heat. Working in batches, brown the pork on one side, about 2-3 minutes per batch. Transfer the meat to a bowl as it browns. Add the onions to the pot and cook, stirring often, until soft, about 5 minutes.
4. Return the pork and any accumulated juices to the pot. Stir in the spice paste. Add 2 cups of the stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer. Cover the pot and simmer the stew over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the pork is tender, 2-3 hours. Add a little more stock to the pot if the stew begins to dry out. Serve the stew garnished with scallions and cilantro.

Blanching Almonds: Easier Than You Think

Blanched almonds are simply almonds with no skin... which, when you think about roasted almonds where the skin seems basically painted on there, doesn't even seem theoretically possible. Or like you'd be hunched over a bowl scraping off almond skin with your fingernails or something.

Fear not! It is seriously a super easy technique that can save you some money.

Pour boiling water over raw almonds and let them sit for a minute (no longer or they won't stay crisp) and then drain and rinse with cold water. You'll notice that the skins have all shriveled up and pulled away from the almond The skins pop right off with just a little squeeze. I was seriously shocked at how easy it came off. Finished a cup in like 15 minutes even with boiling the water. Great for when you can't find blanched almonds or when you simply want to save some money (raw almonds are much cheaper than blanched or slivered).

Canal House Cooks Every Day: Leg of Lamb and Creamy Potatoes

So this is what I made for Easter... a roasted leg of lamb and potatoes simmered in cream. It was a sort of a spur of the moment decision, as I was just paging through Canal House Cooks Every Day on Saturday, trying to figure out something seasonal to cook, when I noticed "Hey, wait, it's Easter!" (Obviously I'm not very religious and past the age of chocolate bunnies) An afternoon of shopping later and I had a 5 lb bone-in leg of lamb... which is a lot of meat (and money) for a household with only one meat eater, but leftover lamb is really awesome. One of the few foods that is just as good (or better) cold.



I feel kind of dumb that I didn't think to sous vide the thing, but in the end, since this was the first dish I made from this cookbook it's probably best that I tried it out exactly as written. I'm not going to post the recipe since a) who really needs a leg of lamb recipe the week after Easter?, and b) as I said, I did it exactly as written with no modifications. The basic idea though, was to cut little slits in the leg and stuff them with a garlic anchovy paste. Then roast it on a rack over some coffee (yes coffee) at 350 F for about an hour and a half (for medium rare an internal temp of 130 degrees F). The use of coffee here is the brilliant bit... that's what you end up making your gravy from, and I gotta it was some of the best gravy I've ever made. You can't taste the coffee in it, but it really does add a depth and complexity I've never achieved just from pan drippings. Anyway, the whole thing turned out pretty great, but you can see here why I sort of wish I had done it sous vide:



The interior looks to be a perfect medium rare, but a pretty large area of the meat is cooked to medium... which is fine, as it still quite good cooked to that point, but if I had done it sous vide it would be a perfect pink all the way through.

I should mention the potatoes before bringing this post to a close, as I've never really made potatoes like this before. Essentially it's just 8 russets cut into one inch chunks and stick of butter that is simmered in 4 cups of half and half for an hour. Pretty rich obviously, but I suppose not much more so than mashed potatoes... which is kind of what these are. Unmashed mashed potatoes. Pretty good stuff, but next time I'll cut the recipe in half... though I think just taking an immersion blender to the leftovers would make a pretty good potato soup.

So I've only made two things out of Canal House Cooks Every Day, but so far I'd say it's a pretty good cookbook... obviously you know the pictures are incredible if you've ever been to their blog... but I'll try to cook some more out of it to get a more thorough impression.

Spatchcocked Pimentón Roast Chicken with Potatoes (A Work in Progress)

This is an adaptation of David Tanis's Pimentón Roast Chickens with Crispy Potatoes (I saw it originally on Lottie + Doof). The problem I had with the original is that it's two chickens, and when do I need to feed 8 people? Pretty much never, and though I love me some leftover chicken and crispy potatoes, I can't house two 4 lb chickens in a week unless that's all I'm eating (a vegetarian wife means she's not helping). I also cheated and instead of getting fancy Spanish pimentón picante just used regular smoked paprika and some cayenne pepper. Worked for me.

I also decided to try an old favorite technique: butterflying or spatchcocking. In short this flattens the chicken allowing you to cook the breast and thighs to their appropriate temperatures (160 ish and 170 ish respectively), but it also allows more fat and juices to get into the potatoes... which is the whole point, no? I didn't brine or salt the bird or even really marinate it for very long. Instead, as the chicken is supposed to come to room temperature before cooking I brushed it with the paprika/garlic marinade (after the spatchcocking obviously) and let it sit on the counter for two hours.



Then instead of a roasting pan I used a skillet... having the chicken just lay on top of the quartered Yukon golds. This kind of resembles brick chicken but you know... without the brick. Then I just put it into at 500 degrees for 20 minutes before turning and going for another 20 minutes.

The chicken came out pretty well... but the clumps of marinade you see above mostly burned... which is fine I guess since you can just brush it off, but it suggests I probably need to turn the oven down a bit (and indeed Tanis has you go from 500 to 425 after the first half) and use less marinade. In addition the potatoes were super delicious but not at all crispy... I sort of expected that since that was my (minor) complaint with brick chicken... but I think I'd like to try this again with a the potatoes under a rack of some kind so air can circulate and crisp them.

So like the title says... still a work in progress as I try to get to a point where I'm not just doing recipes by rote.

Kirkland Tap and Trotter: New Tony Maws Restaurant Coming to Somerville in Late Summer 2013

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This may be somewhat old information for fellow Boston area peeps who regularly peruse Chowhound threads, but it's news to me... and since the old Kirkland Cafe is 5 minutes from where I work and 15 minutes from where I live, I am very interested a new Tony Maws restaurant:

"Of course, there’s going to be ways you will look at it and know it is a Tony Maws restaurant. How could it not be? I will be deeply involved. But it will not be an extension of Craigie. It’s not Baby Craigie, it’s not Craigie Two,” Maws says. “The dots and the swooshes [on the plate] will stay at Craigie.”

Maws will be working with the same farms and purveyors that he does at his flagship, but says the food will be more rustic, neighborhood-friendly appetizers and entrees. “There will be big cuts [of meat], simply prepared but perfectly prepared, beautifully executed and seasoned,” he says. “It’s the stuff that you crave and want to eat more than once a week. It’s the food I like to cook for my friends, and Mondays at home.”

The biggest difference between Craigie and its new sibling, technique-wise, will be the large wood-fired grill that will anchor the kitchen, which means more large-format preparations and lots of live-fire cooking. This leads us to what you were all thinking: WHAT ABOUT THE BURGER?!?!?!? “The Craigie burger is going to stay at Craigie on Main,” Maws says. “But there will be a burger. And it might be a rotating burger. Maybe it will be a burger of the week. We will have some fun with it.” He’s also planning to give hot dogs the same star treatment that he’s given the burger at Craigie. Whether this means a suet, miso, and mace-laced frank remains to be seen: “We are about to start working on that as we speak,” Maws says.

Asian Tofu: Spicy-Sweet Fried Tofu Buns

These lovely little Chinese style steamed buns are from Andrea Nguyen's cookbook Asian Tofu... which I received for Christmas but have yet to use to make tofu... though I did buy soybeans! Still need to make/improvise/buy a tofu mold and press so I can document the process... but of course, you don't actually need to have any desire at all to make tofu at home to get a lot out of this book. Store bought tofu works for all the recipes, and what's interesting about Asian Tofu is that since it's written from an Asian perspective (obviously) it's not particularly vegetarian. Certainly most of the recipes are, but since in Asian cultures tofu is a completely mainstream ingredient, you'll see it mixed with meat or fish in ways you wouldn't in American restaurants where it is still mainly considered a protein substitute for vegetarians. People with any experience with tofu know better than this... it's a crazy versatile ingredient that can do all sorts of neat things based on how you prepare it... and that shares almost nothing in common with meat... but I admit I still do feel a little guilty about mapo tofu, even if it's really awesome... or perhaps especially because it's really awesome (vegetarians take heart, there are vegan versions).

That said, this recipe is completely vegan and based on a recipe from Eddie Huang's BaoHaus. Serious Eats has the recipe, so I won't bother to repeat it here. The easiest way to do it is to make the Thai sweet chili sauce on a separate evening, because otherwise assembling the buns isn't super difficult. You have time to prep everything else while the tofu is soaked and drained, and the buns should stay warm for a while even after you take them off the heat, so I didn't find time management to be difficult (generally my Achilles heel). The recipe calls for two "special" ingredients 1) Chinese folded buns and 2) potato starch. The first is the entire point of the dish and thus pretty critical, but you can safely sub in corn starch for the potato starch. Allegedly potato starch crisps up a little better when fried but I've not personally compared. The Chinese folded buns are most likely to be found in an Asian market, probably frozen... which here in Boston/Cambridge means Super 88... though I've been told you can actually get them fresh down in China Town. Being that steamed buns are a pretty versatile dinner option I'm beginning to think I'll want to keep the frozen variety stocked from now on.

Another note is that those Asian style double layer steamers are necessary if you want to do all twelve buns at once... a fold up steamer basket will probably only hold five or six.

Beyond those notes on specialty ingredients/instructions, I thought the tofu is actually treated in an interesting way here... soaked in near boiling salted water for 15 minutes before being drained for another 15 minutes. That's not something I've heard of people doing before, and it seemed to result in a softer texture for the finished product, but more research seems necessary.

Anyway, I really liked this recipe... found it to be a good collection of flavors: fried tofu with sweet chili sauce topped with cilantro and crushed peanuts. Recommended.

Tree-to-Bar Chocolate in Costa Rica

During our visit to Costa Rica, one of our guides showed us a cacao farm run by one of his friends. The farm was producing chocolate, but was only a handful of years old and still in the early stages. Nonetheless he was able to show us the complete cycle of turning the fruit of a cacao tree into chocolate.



Here is the tree and a relatively ripe fruit. As we walked through the grove the farmer would snip off occasional stray branches and rotten or misshapen pods so that more of the plant's energy was directed to healthy pods. It was clear immediately how labor intensive of a process it was, because the pods were all at different stages of ripeness.



Within the pods are the seeds, but they don't look very much like cocoa beans at this point. The milky white coating... the pulp... is actually quite sweet (we tried them), and apparently locals will suck on the seeds as a treat (the bean itself is bitter and inedible). At this stage they harvest the seeds and pulp... cutting open the pod with a machete and scooping them out by hand... for fermentation in large covered boxes, which takes somewhere on the order of a week.



Once fermented the beans are dried, and finally resemble what most of us think of as cacao/cocoa beans. At this point they're ready for sale to chocolate factories and the like, and this is where those ever popular "bean-to-bar" chocolate operations get involved... by buying their beans directly from small farmers like this.



But if you had your own cacao tree farm, wouldn't you make your own chocolate? I mean, you need to make sure your beans are good right? We'll just call it quality control.



Just cacao beans and sugar... and made from trees just a hundred feet from where we were standing. Pretty cool.

Buffalo Fried Cauliflower

This is a pretty unusual recipe from Kenji's Vegan Experience (here is the the Pinterest page if that's how you roll) that he's now done for a month in two consecutive years. He's got some good tips on how to stock your pantry and stuff if you are thinking of making the switch, but as someone with a vegetarian wife and two vegan in-laws, it's also just a nice collection of reasonably surefire recipes.

While the recipe was labeled "crispy" my effort seemed to produce inconsistent results in that regard... some were and some weren't. Was it a problem with the batter, or did I simply not fry them long enough?

I can't really blame the recipe though, as I have to admit I don't think I executed this one quite to perfection... when I first went to make it I found out we didn't have enough cornstarch but had already measured out some of the other dry components of the batter, so I put them aside under some plastic wrap until we could get some more... but the issue was I just had to guesstimate how much cornstarch I had already put in. I knew it was about a 1/4 of a cup, and I'm sure I didn't make the batter too thick... but was it perhaps too thin? It's also possible that Kenji just likes his batter coatings thinner than I do, but without another go at the recipe it's impossible to know. I am somewhat intrigued by the concept of double frying them for a thicker coating, but my troubles here might be more indicative of the fact that I don't do a whole lot of deep frying.

Even though they didn't come out perfectly, I still think it's a cool recipe... and a good thing to have in your repertoire along the lines of other vegetarian junk food. Just because you don't eat meat doesn't mean you don't get hankerings for fried food, and this could easily become a go-to recipe with a little tinkering.

In my post about traditional Costa Rican food, I prominently mentioned gallo pinto as the highlight of their breakfast. Well here is what it looks like in all it's glory. Like the majority of Costa Rican food it's not terribly exciting, just rice and beans with peppers, onions, garlic and dash of cilantro... but it's still very tasty and filling. A typical Tico would use leftover rice and beans from last night's casado to make this for breakfast, but there is no harm here in making fresh rice and using canned beans. This dish is so strongly flavored that I don't think making beans from scratch is really called for, but if you have them by all means use them.



The secret ingredient is Costa Rica's favorite condiment: Salsa Lizano. A little bottle of this, along with Tabasco or some other chile based sauce, is on nearly every restaurant table in the country... as common (more?) as salt and pepper shakers. I have a bit of a condiment obsession so I grabbed it as soon as I saw it, especially when Anna... who lived in Mexico for a while... didn't have any idea what it was. It's not spicy at all... well, maybe a hint of heat... but it's strongest notes are sweet and savory (umami). It's 100% vegetarian/vegan as far as I know and is somewhat similar to Worcestershire sauce which typically is not vegetarian (one of the hotels we stayed at labeled it "English Sauce"). However it definitely tastes significantly different from Worcestershire sauce, so if you sub that in know that you are not getting the full Costa Rican experience. Given that you can even order Salsa Lizano on Amazon at this point, I think it's worth spending the $4 on a bottle if you are going to bother making this dish. Salsa Lizano is basically great on anything, so it's a pretty fun thing to have sitting around.

Above I just have the gallo pinot in a bowl by itself, and it is filling enough to serve as a meal on it's own, but the absolute best way to serve it is with a fried egg sitting on top. That's a breakfast (or dinner!) of champions right there.

Recipe is adapted from Serious Eats, where all I've really changed is to up the rice and beans to match the quantity in one can for ease of use.

Gallo Pinto

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 red pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1.5 cups cooked rice
• 1 can of black beans (14.5 oz) or 1.5 cups of cooked beans, with liquid
• 4 tablespoons Salsa Lizano (or Worcestershire sauce)
• Salt and black pepper
• Handful of cilantro, chopped

Directions

1. Heat oil in a large skillet set over medium heat. Add the onion and the red pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. The onion should be translucent and the red pepper soft. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.
2. Dump in the beans and the Salsa Lizano (or Worcestershire sauce). Stir, and let it cook for about 3 minutes.
3. Add the rice, and stir until well coated. Season mixture with salt (you probably won't need much given the sodium in Salsa Lizano) and pepper. Top with a sprinkling of chopped cilantro.