Poof! Magic Sauce

Sometimes I am fascinated with how quickly food is transformed from its entirety to something unidentifiable. What I love is when you can taste all the wholes that went into a concoction, no matter how deformed, or reformed (I'm an optimist) it becomes. In my travels, both nationally and internationally, I've noticed every place has a sauce. One unique to the location: super versatile in flavor, put on everything, so robust, and there you are left with an overwhelming feeling of "daaaaaaanng," for lack better words. The best ones of these sauces I've had are quite simple to make. Its a little bit of a few things, squished together or blended, with some salt. And, although the taste is something totally new and exciting, you can distinguish the flavors of the once whole parts. 

Some of my most memorable of these sauces are so sharp in my mind. In the Andes, there's this sauces that ranges from yellow to green, kind of creamy, super sharp with floral spicy yellow peppers, garlic, sometimes peanuts, sometimes milk, and always full of wild mountain herbs. It tastes like all of these things individually, but it also tastes like the Andes, or at least the rural parts and all their aromatic splendor. Whether you eat it on choclo, cold potatoes, or anticucho, its amazing and its everywhere. In southern france I ate aioli on a lot of things: bouillabaisse, french fries, sandwiches. The ones made with olive oil were so rich, and yet you could taste the egg, fresh oil, garlic, and lemon. That too tasted something like the landscape. I hate mayonaise, but I absolutely loved that. And the Virgin Islands! Where every roadside stand has gatorade bottles full of vinegar with a hole poked in the top, stocked with whole scotch bonnet peppers, garlic, and wild oregano and thyme. Three drops on your pattie (pa-té as its pronounced) or goat curry is almost too much, and yet, the individual flavors permeate the entire plate and there's an instant party in your mouth. And of course, every taqueria has a salsa that's perfect, even if it's different every time. Or that fish sauce concoction you put on Vietnamese noodles. Or even good ol' french onion dip. There, I said it. 

My friend Kate taught me one of these recipes. The other one is a bastardized veggie pate I had one when I was twenty. There's a million other sauces I would add here, but maybe they'll come later. Basically, these two are fantastic as condiments for many things (veggies, bread, sandwiches, one's good for tacos, etc). They both have a fairly similar treatment, where you stick everything in the food processor or poke it with the immersion blender and its done. I'll include some variations, too, as nothing is every repeated indentically in my kitchen.

Winter Pate (Mushroom, Beet, or Savory)

2 cups chopped assorted mushrooms or 1 grated beet or 1 stalk of celery, chopped

1/4 c olive oil

1 grated carrot

1/2 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/2 c wine, optional

1/2 c cashews, walnuts, or pecans 

soaked in hot water

juice of half a lemon

salt and pepper to taste (more than you think)

2 tablespoons fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, or whatever is laying around), optional

*** for beets and celery option

First, pour some boiling water over the cashews to cover them. They can soak while you do everything else. Next, rough chop the mushrooms, and put them in a hot (medium high) DRY pan. Now walk away. Don't touch the mushrooms for 7-10 minutes. You can get your other ingredients ready now. After 7 minutes you can check to see if they are toasting by picking up one piece of mushroom and looking for browning. If its not there, don't touch the rest. Give the 3 more minutes. After that, right about when they begin to show a bit of smoke, stir them up. They will have lost a lot of volume and sound like you are stirring rubber bands. Stir them for a minute, then scrape them to one half of the pan and add the oil, carrots, garlic, onion, and herbs to the other half. Now, if you don't have mushrooms, and you opten for beet or celery, you ***START HERE (everything in the pan at once). Just let them sit undisturbed for five minutes. This will develop some caramelization on the bottom while you find some old wine. Stir the veggies again, this time incorporating the mushrooms, until everything is soft and browned. Next, throw in the wine, which will quickly evaporate, or don't, your preference. Put everything form the pan into a food processor bowl or immersion blender vessel (I use a mason jar). Add the cashews, lemon, salt, pepper, and 3 tablespoons of water and whizz it till its smooth. I let mine go for a few minutes to whip in a little air. Scrape it down once.

Voila! Where'd everything go? Don't worry, its all there. So savory, warming, and rich. Oooo-wee!

Summer Sauce

4 juicy lemons or limes, squeezed

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

1/4 onion or 2 scallions

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 c cashews, pumpkin seeds, or  sunflower seeds, soaked in hot water 

1 jalapeño, without seeds, optional

salt to taste

This one is so easy. Soak the nuts or seeds before you do anything else. Everything goes in the food processor or the immersion operation (see the jar above). Add a tablespoon or two of water to thin it to the consistency you wish (I do thinner for dip or sauce and a bit thicker for bread). I whip this one too for a super smooth finish. It's an awesome sauce for roasted or grilled veggies or meats and raw ones, too! So versatile. Oh, Baby. What a transformation!

 

Better is Forgetting

 I am still reflecting on 2012. It always seems that January and February are full of extra alone time and contemplative, lamenting, even grumpy glances from every direction. It is filled with the freshness of the new year, of course, but especially for a New Englander like myself, there's a lot of feelings fermenting and changing about time's passing. We're just programmed to do this in the winter. The feelings come in different forms, all too familiar. I guess it's kinda like sauerkraut. A love hate relationship. Mostly love, and a little bit of hatred for loving it so much.

Recently, I found an article about 10 food trends for 2013. The piece should have been called "Forgotten Foods" or "How to Make the Most of it" or "Making Good Food Last" or better yet "Trends of Yore for 2013: Other Cultures do it Better." Besides the California soft-serve, I walked away from the article saying, "Duh," and immediately bought ingredients from the store to make sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut is everywhere. Ya know why? It's smart. It stores forever, its raw, and its full of vitamins. All the bad stuff is gone but the good stuff remains: the hard to digest sugars have been taken care of by the bacteria doing the fermenting, and the crunch crisp flavors stay, with the added bonus of some gut-loving bacteria that make your body function better than normal, not to mention some damn good flavor.

Hard to convince people to love sauerkraut. I'll start with some stories.

El Salvador. Never been there. I can only imagine its amazingness through the hundreds of pupusas I've consumed in the Bay. Walk into a authentic pupuseria and you are deep in a sleeping bag of chicharron, sweet plantains, and masa. Somewhere between literally and figuratively. And just like the cold breeze you get across your little face when camping, is the smell of something fresh and acidic, with a pinch of oregano and a wisp of fresh chile. If you don't smell it you are in the wrong place. Curtido is fermented cabbage to cut the delicious grease of meat and cheese and it is my favorite. I like to think that the warmth of the pupusa griddle and El Salvador itself speeds up the fermentation of the dish, and then more stuff just keeps getting added and added forever.

The same goes for Korea and Kimchi. Rich, salty, savory, super fatty flavors sliced with the crisp and spicy pickled Napa cabbage saturated in fresh pungencies. Nothing cuts pork fat like a tart, fresh, vegetable, full of flavor. A lot of cultures would agree with that. Sausages and kraut. I heard that in Korea and other countries, the most fermented treats come out for the most special occasions. I once heard a story about tofu packed in a crock and buried in the ground, only to be uncovered on a wedding day.... but that's another story.

And you'll find fermented cabbage in hundreds of iterations all over the globe. There is a reason for it. If I haven't convinced you yet, read this article about the benefits of fermentation, trying to ignore the characature photo on the left.

Now, if only we could get a little creative and move away from the jar or even baggie of while, soggy, salt-laden sauerkraut at the store.....

Here's my version of simple sauerkraut. Of course, I always add exciting things to make it, well, more exciting. Variations will follow.

Sauerkraut

5 pounds cabbage, white or purple
1 1/2 tablespoons coarse sea salt or 2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon whey, drained from yogurt, OPTIONAL

Quarter and core the cabbage(s). Slice the cabbage into thin strips either by hand or with a food processor.  Put all the cabbage in a giant bowl and toss with salt. Cover with a towel and let sit for 1-4 hours on the counter. Just forget about it.

When you remember it exists, it's time start crushing it up by squeezing. Alternate crunching and squeezing with you hands and tossing. After 5 minutes, you'll notice the cabbage feels wet. If you want to make other additions, now would be the time.

          

In a super clean 1/2 gallon Mason jar, begin to pack the kraut. One handful at a time, pack the kraut tightly in the bottom of jar. Use your fist to press firmly after each additional handful. By the time its all in the jar, there will be a bit of liquid on top. This is what it is suposed to look like. You can also do two 

quart-sized jars, especially if you want to make different kinds.

Now for the weight. Sauerkraut is anaerobically fermented. That means that for the buggies to grow in a healthy way, it has to happen without oxygen. It is for this reason your cabbage has to be submerged under it's own juice. I find the perfect helper is a 22 ounce beer bottle. Try to find one with a flat bottom, so no air bubbles get trapped. Clean it really well. Make sure the rim of the jar is wiped clean from kraut pieces. Fill the beer bottle with water, cap it, and fit it inside the rim of the ball jar, on top of the cabbage. But the whole jar-bottle-apparatus to sit in a bowl in a cool darkish place. Cover it with a cloth or towel. Now walk away.

day 1: Ready to be forgotten!

It's safe to say you could now leave this for a week, never looking at it once. Sometimes I peek, sometimes I don't. The pictures here document some of the change you might see over the course of the week. You can let it sit for up to three weeks. My preference is a young kraut,so, one week. Sometimes if you add things that are slightly sweet to the mix, it seems to speed up the process. Worth noting.

After one week its done! Lots of color and flavor change! Ready to be cleaned, capped, and stuck in the fridge. This stuff is good for a long time. Mine never lasts more than a couple months. It is good on everything. Tacos! Fried rice! anything heavy and spicy. Meat. Fish. Cheesy things. Sausage. Beans. Rice. Avocados. Salads. Sandwiches. Eggs and toast. You name it, kraut belongs there.

These variations can be made by just throwing these in the mix!


Curtido:

Day 2: Juicy, a couple bubbles,  very distinct colors.

2 grated carrots
1 bunch chopped scallions or 1/2 onion thinly sliced
1 tablespoon dry oregano
2 sliced jalapeños

Mustardy:
1 tablespoon black or brown mustard seeds
1 bunch chopped scallions

Gingery:
a 2-3" piece of ginger, julienned
1 bunch scallions or a clove of garlic, chopped

Super Spicy:
3-5 jalapeños, or other hot chilis

Caraway:
1 tablespoon caraway seeds

Day 3:Saliva-y Bubbles and distinct colors

Day 5: Brown Bubbles and stinky! Lots of purple juice

Day 7: Crusty bubbles and stinky! Uniform color.

Honestly, the possibilities are endless. You can
add most vegetables and spices to kraut and it will
do its thang. I only caution you to watch it carefully if you add sweets.... beets, onions, carrots, daikon, even hot peppers... they all have a bit of sugar, and so the fermentation seems to be slightly faster in those.

Cleaning the rim

Finally, if your kraut looks weird, smells particularly bad, or has blue and green stuff growing all over it, don't eat it. If you have any question at all, don't risk it. If fermentation and preserving is something you are serious about, I recommend these two bibles: Putting Food By and Wild Fermentation. These really go into the science of preservation and fermentation,
 which is quite relevant if you value survival.

Enjoy the kraut! Fermented foods are the answer to taming the wild-belly beast.

2013: Daaang, January, that's fresh!

New Year's Resolution #1: Listen to my friends

After a weekend in the North Woods of Minnesota I am finding myself incredibly grateful for my amazing friends and (real) seasonal food. A quick shout out to my besties: Every time I get together to share food with folks they tell me to write down all my intuition so it can be shared with everyone. So, here's it goes.

To sum up the slacked year and a half: I am in graduate school. The end.

But, I am still cooking, obviously, and like many graduate students, on a budget that is nothing to brag about. But I manage to eat seasonally and locally on that budget. Being in California, it's all relative, but it's good practice for when the time comes to move back East or anywhere but here for that matter. 

 On a recent trip home to NH, I checked on my parents greenhouse bed expecting to see frozen miniature plants, and lo and behold, I found some delicious leafy kale! What a sight in a landscape devoid of color. Green! Short and shout from the long cold nights and short days, there wasn't much to the plant, but I knew the flavor was perfect. If you don't already know that kale is better after it's been through a frost, consider yourself enlightened. It complete changes the flavor and texture into something quite magical. In fact, you can pack raw kale in the freezer and when you defrost it it's sweeter, still appears to be raw! I learned that one out of laziness, avoiding blanching before freezing. 

I took a bunch of it, brought it back to the house, and whipped it up as a replacement for basil in pesto. I added a touch of lemon and zest to brighten it up. Threw some roasted butternut squash on there and suddenly seasons were melding. The hot pasta hit the garlic and lemon and it's summer, and the roasted butternut squash and sweet kale was a strong reminder of the lasting power of hardy crops. It's a nice experience on the shortest days of the year.

The best part about this recipe is it is incredibly fast. If it weren't for the butternut squash, you could make this in the time it takes to boil water and make pasta. It would be perfectly delicious without it. But I love contrast, orange, green, winter, summer. The squash follows my leave-it-alone mentality. Chunk it up and forget about it in the oven. I suppose the hardest part of this recipe is peeling this damn thing. Worth the time, and if you get a big squash, you'll have plenty left over to use in something else. Or you'll find it tastes like candy and you eat most of it before dinner is served. That could also happen.

Winter Pesto 

A bunch of kale, destemmed and washed 

A cup of nuts or seeds toasted or raw, no salt   (pumpkin seeds, pecans, walnuts, almonds, or cashews)

zest and juice of a lemon

2-4 cloves garlic

1/2 c good quality extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

A hardy winter squash (butternut, buttercup, or kabocha)

1 pound pasta (a sturdy shape like orecchiette, rigatoni, spaghetti)

Cheese (Reggiano, sharp cheddar, anything aged, nutty, salty) or not

**A note about the garlic: you can use raw or you can roast the cloves a bit in some of the olive oil (for a few minutes in a pan over medium low heat) to take the edge off. Thats up to you.

Start with the squash. Peel it and cut it into 1 or less inch chunks, toss with a drizzle of olive oil on a sheet pan. No seasoning.  400 for 30 to 45. Honestly, forget about it while you do everything else.

For the pasta, bring a big pot of water to a boil with a small handful of salt. That's right, handful. An exact measure would be at least 2 tablespoons. No oil.

While the pasta is boiling, whiz all the other ingredients, sans cheese, in the blender, cuisinart, or just chop finely by hand. The pesto is finished. It's hard for me at this point not to just eat the whole lot spread on bread.

Drain the pasta when its al dente. Don't let it drain too long, keep a bit of moisture on it to steam the kale in the pesto. Throw the pasta and pesto in a bowl and toss to combine.

Take out the squash. Salt and pepper the squash once it's out of the oven. Put it on top of the already tossed pesto and pasta. A dash of cheese, or not. A drizzle of really yummy olive oil, or not. Your preference.

To think that something so fresh could come out of a place with not a speck of green in sight. Where people cut holes in frozen lakes to jump in on the shortest day of the year.