Apples

My friends Mike and Becca hosted an apple party last night. I am a very big fan of apples --- let me illustrate. When I was young (say 3-7 years old) my mother put a lock on the fridge to prevent me from eating too much fruit, mostly apples. I would easily polish off 6 apples in a day, plus some bananas and oranges. At one point in high school I went apple picking with some friends and consumed 18 apples while picking. Last year I brought like 3 bushels of apples back after Rosh Hashana and ate them for a month.
In any case, I now have the credentials of a fan of apples. There was, at the party, a really yummy apple bread. The bread was pretty dark and molasses-y, so the apples had a good contrast to that. Next there was an apple crisp, and then candied apples. My favorite apple-based part of the party was making beer battered apple fries. I'm not 100% sure on the amounts, but you take like a cup of flour, some baking soda and some salt (and a little pepper too) and mix in with a few ounces of beer. Mix, and then chop apples. The apples are then dipped into flour and then covered in the batter. Meanwhile you take a large pot and heat oil. This was the fun part. I never really get to deep fry, and it is a really cool way to cook. If you use canola oil it can get hot enough without smoking to get a nice clean fry without much oil absorption. The apple fries are like tempura and should be eaten pretty quickly, while still hot. The apple gets almost like potato and its sweetness is a little tempered. Overall a yummy recipe. However I doubt I'll make it here any time soon. The only heavy frying I do is for Hannukah when it comes time to make Latkas. Maybe I'll try to make donuts this year too!

Dairy Kugel

Something was a little stinky in the fridge. It wasn't a secret -- it was the broccoli. I had bought this three days ago in Chinatown and even then it smelled a little. Some of the tops of the broccoli had gotten a little mushy and stunk. It needed to be used, but it was like 2 lbs. So I did what any good Jewish boy would do - I cut off the bad and made the good into a Kugel. Washed and cleaned the remaining broccoli was as choice as the crap you get from wholefoods. Here's what I made:
I grated a gigantic potato and a smaller sweet potato, plus a medium sized onion and pressed the water out. Half of this I put on the bottom of a rectangular pyrex. On this I sprinkled some flour and spices, plus some crushed garlic. 3 or 4 beaten eggs went on this to moisten and hold things together. Then I put the broccoli and a bunch of cheese on top of this base. I made sure to push this down so it was pretty solid. Finally I scattered a cut up chili pepper, more garlic and spices, more cheese, egg and flour, and drizzled olive oil. Covered with tin foil this went in the oven for 30 minutes (my oven is really hot) and then sat there for a little longer. When a little cooler, I removed, freed up the sides of the pan, and flipped it out onto tin foil. Amazingly the entire thing stayed together and came out perfectly. I put this back in the oven to crisp the bottom, and then cooled, cut into freezable chunks, and eat one piece.
The remaining seven pieces will make for great meals.

Cast Iron

I gave my sister a cast iron pan I have spent the past year seasoning and building up with a nice layer of fat. I'm going to pick up a new one and start the process over again later. Its really a fun process. I can't use a pan with a preseasoned coating since it is generally composed of lard or other animal fats. So I get a completely fresh piece of cast iron and scourer it clean. To prevent rusting you need to immediately dry and put on heat. Then I melt some Crisco down and apply to every surface of the pan. Once coated, I put into the oven and bake into the iron for an hour or two (until I get sick of the smell). I let it cool and level out the surface if there are any heavy deposits. For the first few months its important to use a fair amount of fat when cooking, and to avoid eggs or pancakes. Once the surface gets smooth and a little thicker, go crazy. Things I think that are good to cook on cast iron are: Any egg dish, any bread or dough based dish, vegi's without much water content, dumplings, latkas, crepes, nuts, tofu, meat ( in a meat pan), fish. Things not to cook are: anything with high water content when cooked (like Zuchini if over cooked), anything acidic (including tomatos), anything that is too saucy. When it comes to cleaning a cast iron I err on the side of not cleaning. I try not to (unless really necessary) use any water or soap. In fact, I generally just wipe clean and put a drop of oil on before storing. Its important to store in a dry place without anything on it. If you take care of the cast iron, its a completely joy to cook with.

Perfect Tofu for stirfry

Here is the way I like preparing Tofu to accompany a stirfry. Cut a block of tofu into 16 pieces of like 2.5" x 2.5" x .5". Press the tofu to drain excess water for like 30 minutes. Then mix together soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, orange juice, honey, diced scallions and diced ginger. Put the tofu into this mixture, adding orange juice so as to cover all the tofu. Leave for 30 minutes or more to absorb flavor. When ready to cook take a large cast iron, well seasoned, skillet and put enough oil to just cover the bottom. Transfer tofu to a cutting board and remove pieces of scallion and ginger. Then cut tofu pieces in half. In two shifts put the tofu into the pan and cook until browned on each side and slightly crunchy. One extra thing which makes the tofu really nice and crunchy is to brush some honey on to each side before cooking. This will really make it good.
When done put on a paper towel and let cool. Don't immediately add to a dish, but rather store separately.

Chinatown

Over the course of this blog you will learn about my food shopping habits. Its taken over a year to get it right, but I think I have it pretty figured out now. Last post I spoke briefly about the East Village Cheese Shop (3rd btw 9th and 10th). Today I speak about the outdoor markets in Chinatown. Located on Forsythe street, just south of Canal, along side the Manhattan bridge is a bustling row of outdoor fruit and (mostly) vegetable vendors. I learned yesterday that they are more numerous in the early evening than afternoon. This probably has to do with the fact that they get stuff which grocery stores turn away for being too ripe. In any case, I have begun to go there with a canvas hand bag plus my hiking backpack. The place is great for vegi's, though its easy to go overboard. Like yesterday I got 9 lbs of carrots, and about 10lbs of asian greens. They asian greens are the hardest since they generally go back fastest. Thus in the week or two after I go to Chinatown, I eat a ton of stirfry and often make eggrolls to freeze. Yesterday I made a stirfry plus I bought a little over a pound bass (99cents a pound) and steamed it with scallions and ginger. Really good for the price (it can to $1.10). This method of cooking fish is really easy. You have the monger gut, scale and fin a whole fish, preferably not a thick fish. Then you stuff it with the ginger and scallions and place it on a plate which will fit, with some room on the sides, in a pan of boiling water. You place the plate in the pan but not directly --- so you can put it on a bottle cap for instance. Then leave it be with the lid on for like 10 minutes. The great thing about this method is that once cooked you can just pull, from the tail forward, the entire spine and all the bones with it. There remain some small bones to watch for, but its much easier to enjoy the flesh now.

A beginning and a failure

I am totally out of food. Despite having spent 150$ in the past few days on groceries, I have nothing to eat in my kitchen. The reason is that most of my purchases were canned goods or dried fruits and nuts. I have enough food to last me for more than a year. In fact, after carrying like 100 pounds of cans home from the associated supermarket, I may be laid up in bed for a year with back problems.
Anyway, I'm going to start to write since my friends Jarid and Sarah (whose apartment I had dinner at last night) convinced me its worth posting some recipes and failures.
Of failures I must relate my attempt to make Paneer (indian cheese). My sister-in-law Lori showed me the basic steps a few weekends ago. Essentially you slowly boil whole milk and right as it is starting to boil you denature it with lemon juice (or lime juice or vinegar). This causes the, already excited and likely unfolder proteins to denature even more and form a mesh with the fat in the milk --- essentially forming curds. Then you drain and wash away the acid, leaving just the curds. The curds are wet and need to be squeezed of their water and then pressed into a block for frying.
My first attempt was precipitated by a purchase of 1.5 pounds of Jareslburg cheese I got for 4 bucks at the east village cheese shop. The cheese was starting to go, and I had too much left, so I figured I would use non-fat powder milk and melt the cheese into it to create my own version of whole milk. Well I did this, but the cheese didn't really go into any solution. All the seemed to happen was that all of its flavorful oils left it. I was left with a very pale, stringy piece of cheese, with a similar feeling to mozzarella cheese. Nothing like paneer at all. I ended up just throwing it in with some white beans, garlic, basil, pine nuts and pasta mixture I made the next day.
My second attempt was less of a failure at first glance. I got proper whole milk and created the curds. They were not as big as Lori's and I didn't have a proper device to drain such small curds. I ended up using a slash guard to drain and wash the curds. This process ended up costing me a lot of the curds and I was left with a fist full of curds. Then I tried to squeeze them with a kitchen towel, but the knit was not tight enough and som curds squeezed out. Finally I pressed the remaining amount of curds and tried to fry it in my small cast iron. The result was a mush of cheese and oil, plus a bunch of stuck burnt cheese. I threw all this into a cauliflower, peas and cashews mixture I made in a spicy indian tomato sauce. The final product was fine, but the cheese had no real positive impact on the dish, and had wasted over an hour of my time. Next time I want to add cheese I'll either get farmers cheese from the cheese shop, or go to the indian store and get proper paneer.