Thursday, March 11, 2010

Shad Roe Season

If you were one of the readers of my 2009 column on shad roe who was NOT disgusted by the idea of it, then you might like to know that shad-roe season has come around again.

Sea Products, a seafood shop on West End Boulevard, sent out an e-newsletter this week, announcing that the “coveted” roe has arrived. Call ahead to order or reserve some.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Pizza, Pizza

To go along with my March 10 story on pizza, here are some other pizza-dough recipes, plus a recipe for sauce.

Double-Crust Pizza Dough
Recipe adapted from Pizza Any Way You Slice It by Charles and Michele Scicolone (Broadway Books, 1998). “Double-crust” refers to thicker, American-style pizza crusts. Bread flour produces a crisper crust than all-purpose, but all-purpose will work, too. If desired, replace half of the bread or all-purpose flour with whole-wheat flour. But note that whole-wheat dough may require a longer rise.
1 envelope active dry yeast (2½ teaspoons)
1 1/3 cups warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
3½ to 4 cups bread or unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for coating dough

1. Sprinkle the year over water. Let stand 1 minute, or until the yeast is creamy. Stir until the yeast dissolves.
2. In a large bowl, combine the 3½ cups flour and the salt. Add the yeast mixture and the oil and stir until a soft dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding a tiny bit more flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
3. Lightly coat a bowl with a bit of olive oil. Place dough in the bowl, turning it to oil the top. Cover top of bowl with plastic wrap. Place in a warm draft-free place and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1½ hours.
4. Flatten the dough with your fist. Cut the dough into two pieces and shape the pieces into balls. If desired, the dough now can be wrapped and frozen up to 1 month. It also can be covered, but not in airtight container and kept refrigerated for up to one week. Be sure to thaw and then bring to room temperature any cold dough before second rise.
5. Dust the tops with flour. Place the balls on a floured surface and cover each with plastic wrap, allowing room for the dough to expand. Let rise 1 hour, or until doubled. (If the dough was refrigerated, plan on 2 to 3 hours to let it come to room temperature and rise.)
Makes 2 12-inch double-crust, or thick, pizza crusts.
No-Knead Pizza Dough
Adapted from Jim Lahey, the founder of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, who helped launch the no-knead bread craze after he was featured in The New York Times.
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1½ teaspoons salt
1½ cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour with the yeast and salt. Add the water and stir until blended. (The dough should be quite sticky.) Cover top of bowl with plastic wrap. Let rest for 12 to 24 hours at room temperature, or about 70 degrees.
2. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Lightly sprinkle the top with flour. Fold the dough over on itself once or twice, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes.
3. Divide the dough into 4 pieces and shape each piece into a ball. Generously sprinkle a clean cotton towel with flour and cover the dough balls with it. Let rest at least 30 minutes before shaping.
Makes four 12-inch thin pizza crusts.
The Pizza Maker’s Sauce
Recipe adapted from Pizza Any Way You Slice It by Charles and Michele Scicolone (Broadway Books, 1998). There are lots of different kinds of sauce, even tomato sauce, for pizza. This is the style that most U.S. pizzerias use.

4 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves
Pinch crushed red pepper flakes
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
Salt

1. Place oil, garlic and red-pepper flakes in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook until garlic starts to turn golden, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes, oregano and a bit of salt. Bring to a simmer.
2. Cook, stirring often, until sauce thickens, about 15 minutes. Watch carefully that sauce does not stick to bottom of pan. Taste and add salt if needed.
3. Cool sauce to room temperature before putting on a pizza crust. Sauce will keep refrigerated for up to one week. It also may be frozen in smaller portions (figuring ½ up for each 12-inch pizza) for up to 3 months.
Makes about 2½ cups, or enough for about 5 12-inch pizzas.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Virtual Wine and Cheese

I’m not sure what I think about this, but Hallmark Channel is hosting a virtual wine and cheese party on Saturday, March 6, from 5 to 6 p.m.

The invitation says, “Grab a corkscrew, fire up your laptop…”  —well, you can read it all here:

It’s all just a promo for its new movie, Uncorked, about a woman who discovers love or something during a trip to California wine country. The movie will premiere at 9 p.m. that night.

The Facebook party will be an online chat about wine, movies, food, etc.

I guess what I don’t get is if I invite my friends and crack open a bottle of wine, do we really need an online chat? I mean, we’d have a good old-fashioned live chat, nothing virtual about it, right?

And if I didn’t invite any friends, but cracked open that bottle and went on Facebook, aren’t I then just drinking alone?

Or if a thousand other people are doing the same thing, am I not drinking alone? Is it a party if we’re all in different places?

Is this the new, virtual order? Party like crazy and never have to talk to anyone face to face?

Cream Horns and Almond Cake and Lemon Bars, Oh My!

A few weeks ago, I roped my friend Kate into a visit to the newish branch of Dewey’s Bakery in Harper Hill Commons. We went expecting lunch. I had heard rumors of quiche, and thought we could have a ladylike lunch a la Victorian tea rooms. I envisioned tall ferns. A tinkling fountain, a string quartet? Or at the very least, a selection of savory carbohydrates.

Wrong. While this Dewey’s is more cafe-like than the store in the Thruway shopping center, it’s still solidly stocked with sugary wares. Moravian sugar cake was there. In one corner, two women were mid-photo shoot, working a stack of Dewey’s neon-bright pink lemonade cake squares.

Plan B: Pack a box with pastries and take them back to the newsroom to foist on our co-workers. Sugar, after caffeine, is the drug of choice for many reporters and editors.

We picked out a carrot cake cupcake with cream cheese frosting, a lemon bar, a slice of almond cake, a cherry pop-up (a stunt double for a danish) and Kate’s weakness, a cream horn. Quiche, it turned out, was there - the small, individual pies came in broccoli and cheese, and bacon and onion that day. It was behind the counter, out of sight. It was also semi-frozen.

Then, we took it all back to the office and settled in for our critique. The cupcake was fine, if a little dry. The lemon bar had a nice tang and a shortbread crust, even if it and the cherry pop-up suffered from something I’ve always disliked about many of Dewey’s treats. I know I risk expulsion from Winston-Salem for saying this, but they’re just too sweet. Kate refused to touch the quiches. I did later, at home, and warmed them up in the oven. Meh.

Kate gave the cream horn high marks. It with dusted with plenty of powdered sugar and filled with whipped cream. The almond cake, though, impressed me the most: a dense, moist triangle of intense almondy, marizpany-goodness, capped with a delicate thin sugar top sprinkled with sliced almonds. So it’s not pink lemonade cake. But it’s nice to see Dewey’s try something that relies on ingredients other than sugar for flavor.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Don’t Throw That Food Out Yet!

Nadia Arumugam wrote a very interesting piece on Slate.com about how expiration dates are often so conservative that they mean very little.

So if you ever reach into the fridge and grab some milk or yogurt a week past its expiration date, Arumugam says, it may be fine to drink or eat.

Part of the problem is that there are no uniform standards. Many expiration dates, Arumugam, says, are chosen by individual manufacturers, and sometimes they are at least somewhat arbitrary.

A much better way to determine whether a food is still good, she says, is the old-fashioned way: Look, touch and smell.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Mac-Less Mac ‘n’ Cheese

Chefs have been playing around with macaroni and cheese a lot in the last few years. It seems to be one of those comfort foods that became acceptable in fine-dining restaurants post-9/11.

Here’s a new take I just heard of, from Eli Kirshtein, one of the contestants on last season’s Top Chef.

Sure, he changes the cheese, using mascarpone and fontina—which I might like but my kids would not.

More radical, though, is that Eli doesn’t use pasta. He uses couscous.

That sounds really weird until you notice that he calls for Israeli couscous, which is actually a wheat-based baked pasta that is pearl-shaped and much bigger than the granular semolina that we call regular couscous.

Apparently, he developed this for Solo NYC, a restaurant where he’s a guest chef. And it got passed along in a press release as a Passover recipe.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I have to say it sound awfully interesting. And it looks so rich that people may not care if it’s pasta or couscous hiding under the cheese.

Mac and Cheese

·      2 cups Israeli couscous

·      2 cups heavy cream

·      1/2 cup fontina cheese

·      1/4 cup mascarpone cheese

·      Salt and black pepper, to taste

Cook the couscous like pasta, chill and hold. Reduce the cream by half. Melt the mascarpone and half of the fontina cheese into the cream. Season with salt and pepper, to personal taste. Combine the cous cous with the cream and cheese mixture. Put into a casserole and cover with the remaining fontina cheese. Bake in a 400 degree oven until hot and browned on top. Serve immediately.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

More Stews

I got a lot of great stews and chilis from readers. In addition to the ones published Feb. 17, here are some others I liked:

Caraway Pork Stew
Submitted by Sandra Kopchik of Pfafftown, who got it from The Washington Post Food Section.
2 tablespoons oil
2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into 2 inch chunks
2 beef bouillon cubes
1 ½ cups boiling water
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 or 2 cans (total – about 27 ounces) shredded sauerkraut, drained
1 package (10 ounces) frozen lima beans
1 cup diced tart apple
1 tablespoon sugar

Heat oil in a large heavy sauce pot or Dutch oven. Add pork, a few pieces at a time. Brown well on all sides. Return all pork to pot. Dissolve bouillon cubes in boiling water. Stir in onion powder, caraway seeds, bay leaf and black pepper. Add seasoned bouillon to pot. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until port is tender, about 1 ½ hours. Add sauerkraut, lima beans, apple and sugar. Return to boiling point then reduce to simmer. Simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Serve with noodles or boiled potatoes.

Hearty Vegetable Stew Seasoned with Beef
Submitted by Laura Slawter.

2 (14 1/4-ounce) cans fat-free beef broth
1-2 pounds lean, boned chuck roast
1 teaspoon olive oil, divided
4 cups vertically sliced onion
1/3 cup tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups cubed carrots
3 cups cubed red potatoes
2 1/2 cups quartered mushrooms
1/2 cup- 1 cup dry red wine
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Trim fat from roast; cut into 1/2-inch cubes. Heat 1/2 teaspoon oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add beef; brown on one side. Remove from pan, and set aside. Heat remaining oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add onion, tomato paste, and garlic; cook 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Return beef to pan. Add broth, carrots, and next 5 ingredients (carrots through pepper); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Combine water and cornstarch in a small bowl; stir well. Add to stew. Bring to a boil; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Lamb and Black Bean Chili
1 ½ pounds ground lamb
1 C. chopped onions
2 minced garlic cloves
Saute the above in a large pan or dutch oven. Drain the fat and return to the pan.
Add: 2 14 ½ cans of whole or crushed tomatoes
1 C. dry red wine
1 T. chili powder (or more to taste)
1 ½ tsp. cumin
1 ½ tsp. oregano
1 tsp. sugar
¼ tsp. salt
Bring to a boil; cover and simmer for 2 hours.
Add 3 15 oz. cans of black beans, drained, and hot sauce such as Texas Pete to taste.
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Friday, February 12, 2010

How Many Pancakes Can You Eat in a Minute?

Here are photos from Friday’s pancake-eating contest at Twin City Kiwanis Pancake Jamboree.

Scott Sexton and I tied for 2nd in the pancake-eating contest. 1st went to Grant Achilles, an asst. baseball coach at WFU and 2006 alum. At the bottom was WXII: Austin Caviness in 3rd and Nicole Ducouer in 4th.

I thought the 1-minute time period a bit short. Scott and I got down 2 pancakes in the that time. Grant beat us with 2 1/2.

Photos courtesy of Ben Flynt of the Journal.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Beefing Up Pancakes

As a child, I remember my grandfather making pancakes for us kids for breakfast. The only kind he ever made were buckwheat, possibly a result of his upbringing on a farm with a full load of chores every day.

These old-fashioned pancakes are heavy and substantial but beloved by many of those who have tried them. The rule about overmixing doesn’t really apply here because this is a yeast batter. Buckwheat flour is sold in some supermarkets and most natural-foods stores.

Buckwheat Pancakes
Recipe adapted from A Real American Breakfast (William Morrow, 2002) by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison, who say that the best buckwheat pancakes need overnight to ferment and develop the best flavor. 1¼ cups milk, warm (not hot)
1 teaspoon active dry year (about ½ envelope)
1 cup buckwheat flour
½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornmeal
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar, optional
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg, separated
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon butter, melted
Vegetable oil, or a mix of oil and bacon drippings, for cooking

1. The night before, pour the warm milk in a bowl. Stir in yeast until it begins to bubble, about 5 minutes. Stir in both flours, the cornmeal, brown sugar and salt. Cover with a towel and refrigerate overnight.
2. The next morning, remove bowl from fridge and let sit while assembling remaining ingredients. Beat the egg white until soft peaks form; set aside. To the batter, add egg yolk, baking soda and enough water to make the batter pourable, about ¼ cup. Stir melted butter into the batter until combined. Fold the egg white into the batter.
3. Heat a griddle over medium heat and lightly oil it. Spoon about 3 tablespoons batter onto hot griddle for each 4-inch pancake. Repeat until pan is comfortably full. Cook until top surface is covered in air bubbles, 1 to 2 minutes. (Bubbles will be fewer and larger than for wheat-flour pancakes.) Flip and cook until the second side is golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Keep cooked pancakes warm in a 200-degree oven while making subsequent batches, adding more oil as needed.
Makes 4 servings.

Consider the Lobster

PETA readers, you may want to skip this post.

Sunday is Valentine’s Day, and while I spend plenty of time in restaurants the rest of the year, I’m not particularly wild about eating out on the same day as the rest of the world. I know it’s a big money-maker for hard-working restaurant owners and chefs, but It’s just not my style. Or my husband’s. We’d rather hunker down with some wine at home and cook together.

But we actually met on Valentine’s Day, at a party. So to mark the occasion, we do something we only literally get to do about once a year - boil lobsters! I’ve already got a bottle of small-producer Chablis stashed away, and I can’t wait to start melting the butter Sunday night.

There’s nothing like a pair of live, clawing crustaceans to bring a little excitement to the kitchen.

I’ve been researching the most humane way to kill them, though. Call me a wimp, but there is something striking about bringing home these very live creatures (in cardboard boxes that look like pet-carriers, no less) and then chowing down on them. It at least makes you think about your meal in a way that shrink-wrapped chickens do not.

This Atlantic article was helpful, and so was the Lobster Institute. Yes, one exists. From its website, I learned why lobsters turn red (live lobsters greenish/black because of its different color pigments. When it is cooked, all the pigments are masked except for astaxanthin, the red background pigment) and that lobster “has less calories, less total fat and less cholesterol (based on 100 grams of cooked product) than lean beef; whole poached eggs; and even roasted, skinless chicken breast. Lobster is also high in amino acids; potassium and magnesium; Vitamins A, B12, B6, B3 (niacin) and B2 (riboflavin); calcium and phosphorus; iron; and zinc.”

I digress.

You can check out the Lobster Institute for loads of information on lobsters, including cooking, but they suggest icing or chilling the lobsters briefly (Until numb - a few minutes? How are we really to know? I’m betting 5 to 10 minutes will be enough. You don’t want to freeze them.) before putting them in a pot of water at a rolling boil. Researchers think the best way to minimize a lobster’s time clanking around in the pot (and your trauma). And it’s got to be less messy than sticking a knife in their back before boiling them, though a friend suggested dousing their heads in wine (or cheap vodka).

Do lobsters feel pain? No, the Lobster Institute says, or least about as much as insects do. “Neither insects nor lobsters have brains. For an organism to perceive pain it must have a more complex nervous system. Neurophysiologists tell us that lobsters, like insects, do not process pain,” the Institute says.

Note: A PETA spokesperson sent me a comment arguing that lobsters do, indeed, feel pain. You can read it below. It’s an argument that I think is still up for debate.

Here’s to you, lobsters!