Archive for the 'Ingredients' Category

Foraging for Spring

Published
by
marc
on April 21, 2008
in Ingredients
. 12 Comments
      

I finally got impatient for Spring to come to the Union Square Green Market and decided to take matters into my own hands. Wildman Steve Brill takes groups to the various parks in and around New York City to collect wild edibles growing right under our noses. This weekend he had a tour up at the Crestwood Riverside in Westchester, which is one of those “jogging” parks bordered on one side by a highway and the other by railroad tracks. While the environment doesn’t sounds too appealing the roster of items along the tour included ramps, fiddleheads, stinging nettles, field garlic, wild ginger and violets.

I called up, reserved a spot, and found myself traipsing through stands of Japanese Knotweed and fields of cut-leaf toothwort, in search of some of my favorite Spring-time delicacies. After a lackluster start, we came upon a small patch of stinging nettle.

These little shrubs have thousands of hollow needles filled with formic acid (a skin irritant). You need to handle them with gloves otherwise you’re hands turn red and burn. I’m not sure how someone figured this out, but when you cook them, the needles wilt and the toxins are neutralized so you can eat it without the unpleasant side-effects. It has a green flavor and is delicious added to pasta or soups.


Once we got past the nettles, there were a few ramps scattered about. The clusters grew more and more dense until we were surrounded by a field of these glorious members of the onion family. They’re like a cross between baby leeks and garlic with tender, slightly sweet leaves and a small bulb at the bottom. Someone needs to figure out how to make these things more hardy so grocery stores will carry them at a more reasonable price. By far my favorite thing to forage for, and quite possibly my favorite vegetable.

After scouring the park for 2 hours, we hit the foraging jackpot with the first sighting of these little green fiddleheads emerging from the forrest floor. These little guys are only in season for a few days and we managed to catch the tail end of their short season. They’re the spring shoots of the Ostrich fern and can only be eaten when they’re curled up and first erupting from the ground. Slightly sweet and with a texture like young asparagus, these are delicious steamed with a bit of lemon and olive oil, or sauteed and added to a pasta.

Overall it went well and I may have to head back up there this weekend for more ramps. As for the tour guide, he’s great. If you live in the NY/CT area, he has tours almost all year long picking everything from spring greens, to summer berries, to fall mushrooms.

Here is the rest of my haul, click on the thumbnails for more detailed description.

        
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Meyer lemon curd

Published
by
marc
on March 30, 2008
in Brunch, Dessert and Ingredients
. 10 Comments

Meyer Lemon Curd

As you probably know by now, I’m all about making simple things. If a recipe has too many ingredients, involves too much prep, or looks like I’ll get too many pots and pans dirty, I probably won’t make it. Lemon curd is the perfect example of this laziness-turned-innovation. Most recipes will have you cream the butter in an electric mixer, then do all kinds of crazy things with a double boiler.

Rather than accept such non-sense at face value, I set out to simplify this recipe. First I remembered an old trick for getting melted butter to combine with other liquids without clumping up. This eliminates the need to beat it in a mixer. Then I decided a double boiler isn’t necessary as long as you use a heavy bottomed pan over low heat. Voila, 1-pot, 1-bowl lemon curd in less than 30 minutes.

Update: I love Meyer lemons for their intense sweet lemony flavor, but they are much more delicate than regular lemons so they’re not so supermarket-friendly. If you’re in California they’re available all over the place, but for those of us in other parts of the country/world, try looking at “gourmet” groceries or at a farmer’s markets while they are in season (late winter - early spring). You could substitute for regular lemons, but you may need to increase the amount of sugar.

1 stick unsalted butter (1/4 lbs)
2-3 Meyer lemons zested
1/2 C Meyer lemon juice
3/4 C sugar
2 extra large eggs separated

Drop the whole stick of butter into a heavy bottomed saucepan over low heat and let it melt (the pan should be just warm enough to melt the butter). Once it’s mostly melted turn off the heat.

In a medium bowl, add the sugar and zest a few lemons into it. Then squeeze about 1/2 C of juice and add it to the sugar.

Separate the eggs, dropping the yolks into the pot of melted (but not hot) butter and the whites into the sugar mixture.

Whisk the yolks and butter together until well combined. Then take the whisk to the sugar mixture until well combined. Pour the sugar mixture into the pot with the butter and whisk it all together.

Turn the heat back on to low and use a heat-proof silicon spatula to constantly stir the mixture, scrapping the bottom and sides of the pan to make sure nothing burns. If you have an instant read thermometer, just get the temp up to 170 degrees and you should be golden. Otherwise, just keep stirring until the curd thickens enough to coat the spatula. Make sure you don’t over cook it!

As soon as it’s done, take it off the heat and pour it into another container.

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Make fresh ginger last

Published
by
marc
on March 29, 2008
in Ingredients
. 1 Comment

Vodka preserved ginger

Fresh ginger is great, but it’s something I don’t use all the time and it usually goes bad or dries out by the time I want to use it again. Since I almost always use it in cooked food, I’ve found a good way to preserve it.

Just peel and cut up the ginger, put it in a tupperware and cover it with vodka. It will keep in the fridge forever. When you cook it the alcohol burns off so you can’t tell the difference and you also get some ginger infused vodka out of it that you can use for cooking or for drinking:-)

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Japanese marinade

Published
by
marc
on March 29, 2008
in Ingredients
. 0 Comments

This is a universal marinade used in Japanese cooking. Used fresh it’s great for marinating meats or fish and when cooked down, it makes a fabulous teriyaki sauce for grilled things (yaki-mono). I use this all the time and yet until today I never actually measured anything out. I tried to keep the proportions equal to make it easier to remember, it’s basically equal parts soy sauce, mirin and sake then half a part sugar and some garlic and ginger.

Depending on what you’re using it for (and your tastes) you can vary the proportions and of course I encourage you to experiment with different ingredients. Sometimes I’ll put some grated apple or honey for sweetness, other times I’ll use chilli powder or sauce to give it a bit more kick. You could also put other stuff like scallions, sesame seeds or sesame seed oil to take it in another direction.

1 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine)
2 Tbs sake
1 clove of garlic crushed
1 tsp ginger grated

Whisk all the ingredients together and use.

You could probably make a lot of this in advance and keep it in the fridge as it’s got a fairly high salt content, though it’s so easy to make I’m not sure why you’d want to take up the room with another bottle of sauce.

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Dashi (Japanese stock)

Published
by
marc
on March 15, 2008
in Ingredients and Japanese
. 2 Comments

Ingredients for dashiclockwise from top: dried shiitake mushrooms, konbu (dried kelp), niboshi (dried baby sardines), katsuo (dried bonito flakes).

Dashi (along with soy sauce, miso, and mirin) is one of the 4 cornerstones of Japanese cooking. Given the simple, understated nature of many Japanese dishes, good dashi is what sets apart bland salty water from a deeply nuanced miso soup.

“Instant” dashiMost people (both here an in Japan) tend to reach for the instant packets of powdered dashi out of convenience, but a quick look at the list of ingredients will reveal that most of these have loads of salt and MSG. While I’ll admit I do keep some of this stuff around to use in a pinch, I try to avoid it whenever possible.

Another alternative is to use dashi “teabags” that you can find in most japanese grocery stores. These are basically satchels that have been filled with ground up dried fish, kelp and mushrooms that you just drop in a pot of water and steep. These are actually pretty handy when you’re pressed for time and provide a nice well rounded broth, but like packaged salads, there no replacement for sourcing the ingredients yourself.

Unlike making a good chicken stock, dashi can be made with a few ingredients in just a few minutes. Typically dashi is made with some combination of dashi konbu, katsuobushi, niboshi, and sometimes shiitake. The proportions, ingredients and cooking time determine what kind of dashi you’ll end up with. Try varying combinations to see what suits the dish you’re preparing as well as your tastes.

Typically I find that konbu and katsubushi based dashi work better with lighter fare like white miso soups and light soy sauce based stews, while dashi made with niboshi is better suited for dark miso soups, dark soy sauce stews and as a soup stock for Udon noodles.

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