MITCH IN THE KITCHEN

midnight's pasta

(photos by the lovely Jocelyn Voo)

I finally got to make pasta with Ashwin again, this time with the very talented Mr. Rajen (who was visiting). Our follow-up to Spaghetti Made by Drunk People was (to borrow more than just photos from Jocelyn) something that made everyone go “aw yeah.” We cleared off as much counter space as we could, cracked open a few bottles of wine, and broke in the pasta machine that Jocelyn found in her office and gave me (yes, she is all over this post, because it wouldn’t have been possible without her).

It took a few tries to get the hang of the machine, but we ended up with fresh fettuccine that we tossed with a cream sauce and some greens. Very few things make me happier than a night with good food and good friends, no matter what time we end up eating.

Here’s how we made the pasta:
We loosely followed the recipe on a package of semolina. Combine equal parts unbleached all-purpose flour and semolina (made from durum wheat, a hard species of wheat) with olive oil, salt, and a few eggs. Knead until elastic. Add more flour if the dough is too sticky. Let rest for about 20 minutes. Roll out dough in the pasta machine  (photo tutorial here), then use the noodle cutting attachment. Boil noodles in salted water for a few minutes, until tender but not falling apart.

Mushroom and Leek Cream Sauce
Melt a pat of butter in a heated pan, over medium heat. Add sliced leeks (just the white and light green parts). Cook for a few minutes, until leeks are soft. Add minced garlic and sliced mushrooms (we used crimini mushrooms). Season with salt, pepper, and thyme. When mushrooms are cooked, add heavy cream. Lower heat to low and let the cream sauce thicken. If it starts getting too thick, add a little more cream. Add cooked pasta to the pan and toss to coat. Top with grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

Broccoli Rabe with Garlic and Crushed Red Pepper
Heat olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add chopped broccoli rabe, minced garlic, and a lot of crushed red pepper flakes. Saute until broccoli rabe stems are tender and leaves are wilted. Add chopped olives (chopped anchovies could also be good). Season with salt and black pepper. Toss with cooked pasta and extra virgin olive oil. Top with fresh bread crumbs.

beet and goat cheese sandwich

This has been one of my favorite snacks lately: multi-grain bread with goat cheese (chevre… the spreadable kind), scallions, and thinly sliced roasted beets (with a little drizzle of olive oil and some salt and pepper).

I usually roast a whole tray of beets at a time (wrap in foil with olive oil and a bit of vinegar, and roast for an hour or two in a 425-degree oven), then spend what feels like an hour or two rubbing the skins off with disposable glove-clad hands. I keep the peeled beets in the fridge and slice them whenever I need them.

By the way, if your pee turns red after eating some beets, don’t freak out. It’s just the intense beet pigments. You probably are not dying. You are among the 10 to 14 percent of the population with beeturia. Note that it doesn’t always happen consistently, and may depend on the conditions (pH, gut flora activity) in your stomach and small intestine, as well as iron absorption.

zha jiang mian (noodles with pork sauce)

I’ve been having about one wedding-related nightmare each week. In the most recent one, I was at a Chinese restaurant ordering lunch with my friend Jeanice. After mulling over my options, I decided to get a basket of xiao long bao (soup dumplings). When the gruff, middle-aged manager-cum-waiter came to take our order, I asked him if he also had zha jiang mian (炸酱面). As he walked back to the kitchen to check, Jeanice asked me if my flowers were ready. I dashed out of the restaurant to arrange for flower arrangements, two days before the big day, leaving the possibility of zha jiang mian for lunch behind.

A few days later, I decided this was inspiration enough to make zha jiang mian, possibly the only Chinese dish I’ve come anywhere close to “mastering” (yes, it’s that easy). You can also find versions of zha jiang mian at Korean restaurants (jajangmyeon) and Japanese restaurants. The noodles should be wheat noodles (made from wheat flour), and the sauce should be pretty salty thanks to all the fermented bean products that go into it. Zha jiang mian is usually served with crunchy vegetables on top, typically bean sprouts, cucumbers, and shredded carrots. I like to cook diced carrots in the sauce (what my mom does) and top it with matchstick-sized strips of cucumbers and blanched bean sprouts. It’s a nice contrast of hot and cold, salty and cucumber-y, and soft and crunchy.

vegetable oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pound ground pork
1 teaspoon corn starch
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
3 ounces pressed five-spice tofu (looks like this)
1 tablespoon broad bean paste
1 tablespoon hot broad bean paste (or substitute with more regular broad bean paste)
1 tablespoon sweet bean sauce (or hoisin sauce)
3/4 cup water
sesame oil

thick wheat noodles, cooked according to package directions

Heat vegetable oil in a large pan or wok over medium heat. Add onion and carrot. Cook until onion is translucent.

Combine pork with corn starch, garlic, and soy sauce. Add to pan and cook until pork is browned. Add tofu, bean paste, and bean sauce. Toss to coat everything evenly. Add water and bring sauce to a simmer. Turn heat to low and continue to simmer until sauce has thickened. Add a tiny bit of sesame oil at the end. Serve over noodles with blanched bean sprouts and julienne cucumbers.

kale and bacon pizza

Between November and—oh, I dunno—April, I eat a lot of kale. It’s a fall/winter vegetable that is readily available, that isn’t a potato. I put kale in fried rice, in soups, tossed with pasta, mixed into mashed potatoes, and I’ve even tried my hand at making kale chips. But the pizza, my friends, was a first. As much as I love bacon, this thick-cut kind I picked up rendered a LOT of fat, which became a little overwhelming for me and John. You can’t really tell by looking at the photo above (or even the actual pizza), but I turned what was meant to be a healthy dinner into a sneaky lard bomb. If I could do it all over again (and I probably will), I would either use less bacon, thinner sliced bacon, a less fatty cured pork product (ham? prosciutto?), or something salty that isn’t made from pigs (anchovies? olives?).

pizza dough

5 or 6 medium kale leaves, stems removed, then chopped
6 oz provolone cheese, sliced 1/8-inch thick or shredded
little bit of thinly sliced red onion
4 or 5 sundried tomato halves, cut into thin strips
3 slices bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch wide pieces
a few tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a half sheet pan (about 18 by 13 inches) with parchment paper.

Sprinkle some corn meal on the baking sheet. Place the dough on the baking sheet and drizzle a little olive oil on top. Shape dough to fit pan. If it won’t stretch, let it rest a bit before handling it.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add kale (in batches if necessary) and saute until it begins to soften and turn bright green. Season with salt and pepper, and a little bit of crushed red pepper if you’re into that sort of thing. Add a splash of water and cook until kale is completely softened. Set aside.

Spread provolone evenly over pizza dough. Top with sauteed kale, then onions, sundried tomatoes, and uncooked bacon pieces. Top with additional Parmesan cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until crust is golden and bacon is slightly crisp, rotating halfway through.

roasted broccoli and chickpea salad

This salad is nothing special, really. It doesn’t require any unusual ingredients, fancy equipment, or more than 30 minutes of your time. I pulled it together today while heavily caffeinated (read: jittery), in between rounds of practice GRE questions (side note: fun/frustrating because I get to review algebra and geometry from over half a lifetime ago). I am a huge fan of roasted broccoli, because it has a nutty-ish flavor that steamed, boiled, or sauteed broccoli does not.

For anyone whose New Year’s resolution is to cook at home more and/or eat healthier and less meaty food, this is kind of a nice option, yes? You can embellish it with herbs, olives, nuts, other vegetables, leftover chicken, or pretty much whatever you want. You can have it as a side dish with something, or mix it with pasta. It’s good warm, cold, or at room temperature. You could double this recipe to make a whole bunch of food for future meals. And it’s cheap; the ingredients below cost no more than $3 total. Really, it’s nothing special.

2 heads of broccoli, cut into bite-size chunks
2 medium carrots, cut into bite-size chunks
1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 sundried tomato halves, minced (optional)
1/2 can chickpeas (or more, if you want)
2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper
a few tablespoons of olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Arrange broccoli and carrots on a large baking sheet. I usually toss the vegetables with olive oil, salt, and pepper right on the pan, but you could also do this in a separate bowl. Roast for about 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.

In a medium bowl, combine onion, sundried tomato, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and olive oil. When vegetables are done roasting, add to dressing, along with chickpeas. Toss to coat.

ham and cheddar drop biscuits

I meant to post this from home (The Nut, CA), but realized too late that my parents do not have photo software that can convert raw image files. For me, the holidays are a chance to escape to blindingly sunny southern California, say hi to my very large extended family, and drink beer in a high school friend’s garage. Every year, my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc. (and this year, future in-laws!) all come over on Christmas Eve. It’s a pot luck, more or less, with everything from Chinese noodle dishes to pastries from a local Cuban bakery to yellow chicken curry. My mom always makes her famous spare ribs, and I usually pull something together at the last minute (while causing my mom to fret that her only child, now 27, still has no grasp of time management). Along with fresh guacamole, I whipped up some bite-sized savory biscuits. They taste excellent fresh out of the oven (but that didn’t stop me from eating all the stale leftovers for breakfast the next day).

makes about 60 (if I remember correctly)

1 cup butter (2 sticks), very cold
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups milk
4 oz ham, diced
8 oz cheddar cheese, shredded or diced

Combine flour with baking powder, salt, and pepper. Cut butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender until the granules are the size of small peas. Add milk and stir just until combined. Gently fold in ham and cheese.

Scoop by the tablespoon-ful onto a parchment or foil-lined baking sheet. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes, or until biscuits turn lightly golden.

spicy chocolate cookies

I’ve probably mentioned before that I don’t bake much, mostly because I’m not really a sweets and desserts eater. I am, however, trying to get better at it (the baking part, not the eating part), so yesterday was a perfect opportunity to bake a bunch of cookies for a holiday party (again, at Pavla and Diana’s). I’m not sure if they were eaten in the sangria-fueled chaos and gift-exchange-rage that ensued, but I’m glad they at least looked cute.

(recipe adapted from Epicurious)

Makes about 5 dozen (I got up to 66 cookies)

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

powdered sugar
candied cherries, dried cherries, almonds, or pistachios

Remove butter from the refrigerator and let it sit out at room temperature (I forget to do this all the time).

Melt chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, or in a double boiler. Set aside.

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and spices in a medium bowl. Beat 1 3/4 cups sugar and butter in large bowl until light. Beat in eggs one at a time, then add vanilla and chocolate. Gradually add dry ingredients, mixing just until combined. Chill dough until firm, about 2 hours (or throw it in the freezer for 20 minutes while you worry about being late to your friends’ party because you didn’t read the recipe directions).

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly butter your baking sheet(s), or line them with parchment paper. Place powdered sugar in a plate or shallow pan. Form dough into 1-inch balls. Roll each ball in sugar to coat; shake off excess sugar. Arrange cookies on prepared baking sheets, spacing 1 1/2 inches apart. Press one cherry or nut into the center of each cookie. Bake until cookies puff and crack but are still soft, about 10 minutes. Transfer cookies to rack and cool completely.

brussels sprouts two ways

And I’m back! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know Dr. Dayan & Co. did, since they prepared an outrageously photogenic turbaducken (photo by the lovely Jocelyn) and lived to tell about it. Mine was mostly spent nestled in a comfortable corner of a soft leather couch, gently falling in and out of sleep after enjoying my future mother-in-law’s delicious home-cooked meals (like how I slipped that in there?). Between a surprise celebratory weekend trip to Chez Panisse (best meal ever: fresh oysters, Dungeness crab, coq au vin, a beautiful piece of halibut, big smiles, and funny because I guess I like seafood now) and the Thursday turkey feast, we also had a downright awesome pre-Thanksgiving dinner at Pavla and Diana’s. Warm and tasty food, warm and fuzzy feelings, and a warm apartment where I am always happy to break a sweat for just about any occasion.

Without even hosting Thanksgiving in my own home, I had some minor cooking disasters: gluey pie crust and a pot that boiled over and extinguished the pilot light by flooding the stove. My plates to share were a sweet potato pie and two preparations of Brussels sprouts (apparently I’m the only asshole who brings meat to a vegetarian household). These aren’t really recipes, just loose re-tellings of things prepared while sleep-deprived, giddy, and hungry.

Brussels Sprouts with Chorizo and Almonds
Blanch Brussels sprouts in boiling salted water: about 2 minutes for small ones (about 1 inch in diameter). Drain and put the sprouts in a bowl of ice water (this quickly stops the cooking process and preserves the bright green color). If you have larger sprouts, cut them in halves or quarters after they’ve cooled off in the ice water. In a separate pan, cook chopped Spanish chorizo with a tiny bit of olive oil, over medium heat. After the chorizo looks like it’s starting to glisten and bubble a bit, add chopped onions. When onions turn translucent, add Brussels sprouts, a bit of salt, and black pepper. Cook until sprouts are slightly browned, tossing occasionally. Toss with sliced almonds at the end.

Brussels Sprouts and Carrots with Lemon, Honey, and Thyme
Again, start by blanching Brussels sprouts. Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add chopped carrots and saute for a few minutes. Add sliced garlic, Brussels sprouts, sprigs of fresh thyme, salt, and black pepper. Cook until sprouts are slightly browned, tossing occasionally. Add a little bit of water if things seem to dry or are sticking to the pan. Add honey and lemon juice, tossing to evenly coat the vegetables. Give it another few minutes to heat everything through.

meat is muscles

I just took a monster practical exam yesterday for my anatomy course. As someone who has not taken a “real” science class for, ohmygod, almost 10 years (Integrative Bio 30: Marine Mammals for Non-Science Majors, challenging as it was, does not count), using flashcards to burn the names of all the muscles and bones of the human body into my memory is quite a task. The most interesting things that I have learned/figured out about muscles have been, of course, food-related (I will attempt to keep it brief, so as not to bore the shit out of you):

Why are those loins so tender?
The tenderloin (a portion of which is the well-known filet mignon of beef) is usually a lean, very soft cut of meat (and therefore expensive). In anatomical terms, it is the psoas major muscle, which runs from the lower part of the spine to the upper part of the thigh. On humans, it’s a muscle that allows us to raise our thighs toward our bodies, like the Captain Morgan pose from those TV commercials. Since cows and pigs don’t really have that range of motion with their thighs, the psoas major is hardly worked and stays tender.

Hamstrings do have something to do with ham
Butchers used to hang hams by the long tendons that connect these thigh muscles to the leg bone.

Fast glycolitic chicken breasts vs. slow oxidative drumsticks
Why is white meat white and dark meat dark? It all comes down to types of muscle fibers. Basically, leg muscles are built for endurance, so they have more myoglobin (a protein containing red pigment) and capillaries to provide a constant supply of oxygen. Chest muscles are built to act quickly and forcefully (think weight lifting) and have less myoglobin and fewer capillaries.

Side note related to chicken: the wings (the flat-ish part, not the drumettes) are analogous to your forearm. There are two bones (the radius and the ulna), and I’m really just bringing this up as an excuse to show you this mind-blowing video that Mike sent me:

laap gai

Three years ago, I joined my family (I’m talking extended family: a small busload of aunts, uncles, and cousins… and that was only half of my mom’s side) on an epic trip to Laos. We spent several nights in Luang Prabang, a city full of old Buddhist temples that is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (yes, the entire city), then traveled down a narrow, winding, sometimes unpaved highway to the capital city of Vientiane, where both of my parents grew up.

At an unremarkable roadside stand down the street from the apartment where my dad lived as a child, I had what was probably the best and freshest bánh mì I’ve ever eaten. In the eco-touristy city of Vang Vieng, I gorged myself on a green papaya salad dotted plentifully with chopped green beans and chopped raw green chilies that were indistinguishable from each other until they entered my mouth. It was the kind of capsaicin overload that makes you dizzy and lightheaded. Throughout the trip, I had many iterations of sweet sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and sticky cakes made from rice flour, with things like egg custard, coconut, and mung beans. And of course, we had a lot of laap (also spelled larb, larp, or laab), a common meat dish in both Laos and northern Thailand.

I returned to New York SAD-free and with a reinvigorated appreciation for painfully hot chili peppers, best eaten raw. It’s not that the food was a revelation; I loved it because it was familiar. These were all things I had tasted at the homes of relatives and family friends. But food seems to taste better when you’re on vacation.

Below is a rough recipe for laap gai (chicken laap). I hand-chopped the chicken into pieces that weren’t quite small enough (blame it on hunger-induced impatience), then overcooked it. The real deal should have ground meat or more finely chopped pieces, along with a little bit of liquid at the bottom of the plate. It also looks really nice when you garnish it with mint leaves (I ran out).

2 tablespoons glutinous rice (sometimes called sticky rice… but not the same thing as sushi rice)
1 pound ground chicken
1 small shallot bulb, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fish sauce
juice of half a lime
a few small hot chili peppers (such as Thai bird’s eye), chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Heat rice in a small dry pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. When all of rice is golden brown, remove from heat. Let it cool a bit, then grind with a mortar and pestle, or in a spice grinder. Set aside.

Heat some vegetable oil in a large pan or wok over medium heat. Add chicken, shallot, and salt. Stir it around to cook evenly. Add fish sauce. Cook until most, but not all, of the juices from the chicken are gone. Toss with lime juice, chilies, mint, cilantro, and toasted rice powder.