The use of pineapple and pork as a seasoning intrigued me. Coming off of stewed peas seasoned with chorizo, my expectations were pretty high. I got the ‘Nduja at a local Italian specialty store, Formaggio Kitchen, which I’d recommend if you live in the area. This dish was fine, but not up to the standard of the veg and fish dishes in Mezcla, which I think I’ll focus on for the next couple recipes.
Cooking & Tasting Notes: be sure to use a shallow pan (as opposed to a dutch oven), otherwise there is no way to crisp the skin. I tried broiling my dutch oven and forgot about it and the skin still did not crisp much, whereas the shallow Earthenware pan crisped according to the written instructions. I marinated the chicken in the ‘nduja-chipotle paste for about 4 hours so it could at least brine. The dish is significantly under-salted as written, I’d recommend doubling the salt in the paste and adjusting to taste part-way through the bake. The pineapple didn’t really blacken or caramelize at all. Next time, I would pull half of the pineapple and caramelize it, and the other half I could maybe even try pickling in lime juice and habanero? It is important that at least half of the pineapple be cooked in the juices with the chicken to lend their flavor, so some troubleshooting would be needed. Finally, I served this with rice, but I’d recommend experimenting with bread or another starch, as well as a green vegetable on the side.
Another “vegetable” dish from this very flavorful cookbook. I substituted chorizo for the Linguiça, which sounds less spicy. The recipe actually suggests chouriço as a substitute, which is a Portuguese sausage that is similar to chorizo. There’s 6 oz of very flavorful meat in this recipe for a pound of frozen peas – not insignificant. The chorizo is used to flavor olive oil at high heat, which in turn flavors the other components of the dish.
For some reason I have rarely (if ever) cooked with sausage. I normally like to make my ingredients from scratch, and sausage skirts the line of something that can be made at home. This recipe will change my practices – it is clearly worth using a potent sausage like chorizo as a cooking ingredient. The resulting flavor was unique – smokey, but also a bit earthy/gamey/leathery. This is not a flavor that can be readily achieved through just spices and uncured meat.
Several eggs are poached in the peas before serving. I served the peas on top of a light serving of plain white rice. I would recommend this. As I mentioned, the flavor was deep, smokey, and meaty. With the rice, this definitely stands alone as a course or meal. Using this as a side to another meat dish would be very decadent; I think it would be important to make sure there isn’t too much overlap in the smokey cured-meat flavor. I couldn’t help but have seconds and ended up feeling surprisingly full (more so than a calorie count of the ingredients would have suggested.) These peas set a pretty high bar for the cookbook and I’m excited to make more recipes!
Cooking Notes: Don’t go light on salt; by the time you season, most of the salt will have left the meats, so you don’t need to account for that. A tsp is probably good (but go by taste.) The cooking can use a notch or two higher heat than suggested to good results (note I was using cast iron.)
I decided to make some Portuguese vegetable-focused dishes for personal sustenance. This is my first time cooking out of this 2018 book by Ana Ortins. I researched Portuguese cookbooks over the Christmas holiday and decided on this one; however, I cannot recall what led me to that decision. My experience with it so far based on this one recipe is positive.
This dish is clearly a relative of Moroccan spiced carrots (the cookbook Plenty features a version of this that I cooked in 2016.) The carrots are roasted then tossed with a spicy dressing made with a mortar and pestle. I recall the Plenty-version being more of a spice powder. This version has less cumin and a lot more lemon and garlic. I’d actually go easy on the lemon, especially if they’re big. Try 2 tbsp instead of 1 lemon. The number of servings is definitely for a small side. As a main with rice, this feeds 2.
The carrots are potent: garlicky, lemony, with lighter notes of earthy spices. I really like the pine nuts, especially that they called for 1/2 cup. This makes them very prominent in the dish. There’s also enough dressing to coast some rice or bread. The cook is given the option of cilantro or parsley; I went with the former as it’s featured in the title of the recipe.
Mezcla also has a number of vegan / gluten-free options. This Thai-inspired dish looks like a particularly attractive example and is the first I’m cooking from the “Entertaining” (as opposed to “Everyday”) half of the book.
Cooking Notes: I accidentally added 50% extra coconut milk to the curry – this was OK since it would have gotten added during the bake anyway, although, I think it may have caused the texture of the potatoes to be softer. We made a double batch as we wanted to fully feed 4 hungry folks (including some vegans / gluten-intolerant folks). I put the gratin in two separate baking dishes to keep the surface area the same, I upped the temp by 10 degrees, and I baked for 10 minutes longer. The resulting gratin didn’t have as much bite as I’d like – try cooking a bit shorter; this may also have been due to the mistake of adding too much coconut milk early on. Be sure to substitute tamari for the soy sauce if you want gluten-free.
Tasting Notes: Yum – very good Thai curry flavor (the recipe description says this is close to a Panang curry). The sweet potatoes are a little soft and mushy in the middle, but theres enough texture at the top, sides, and from the fried aromatics to keep it a little interesting. Definitely do the aromatics! I noticed that everyone went up for seconds (I actually snuck some thirds!) Next time I would experiment with adding a portion of Thai ginger instead of regular ginger to the curry sauce. I’d also recommend adding a few hot chiles to the curry as it could have used a bit more heat. I paired this with Milan Nestarec’s Podfuck – a long skin-contact pinot gris from the Czech Republic that has a following in natural-wine circles. I opted not to do a riesling as the curry didn’t seem very spicy (good choice). This wine had plenty of acid, a bit of volatility (it kind of reminded me of some of the highly volatile Georgian wines I’ve had, but less intense), and medium-light tannins. Good pairing.
Time to try some meat from Mezcla! Whole Foods did not have skirt steak (which is a super-thin, fatty cut on the cow’s chest), so I looked up substitutions and saw on one website that sirloin tips would work. The sirloin tip is a cut from the round of the cow, not the sirloin (confusingly) – it is located adjacent to the top sirloin, a more tender cut that is actually in the sirloin. The sirloin tip is a good bit thicker than the skirt steak and requires longer cooking to reach temperature. It should also marinate 2-4x longer. Some websites suggest cooking these thin and chewy cuts (such as skirt and flank steaks) to a bit higher temperature to make them more tender. I hit rare for mine, but I wish I had shot for med-rare, erring on the side of medium.
Cooking notes: adding a minute to the 2-4-minute-per-side cook time for skirt steak was not enough. The range should have been more like 4-7 mins for sirloin tips. Use a thermometer when changing cuts like this. You can also ask the butcher to select the thinnest cuts as there is a lot of variation. Also: I recommend putting the cast iron in the oven on max and then putting it over the burner on high. Don’t worry about over-charring the steak. Also, don’t bother with using a blender to grind the dried Persian lime. I’ve always used my spice grinder (which is a 20$ cheap “chopping” coffee grinder that I am sure to never use coffee in, a highly recommended investment.) You can easily grind a single lime for a batch of this recipe.
Tasting notes: The steak was nice. I realize in retrospect I should have marinated this cut much longer than the suggested one hour for skirt steak. The highlight of the dish was the maple butter. Do yourself a favor and make at least 2x as much as you need. The steak came out a bit too rare for my liking and definitely too chewy – it made me a bit hesitant to serve it to my housemate. The charr was perfect.
Fresh off of an amazing dinner of poached cod from Mezcla, I needed a quick-fix dinner as a break from work. I turned to the very first recipe and decided to make this eggplant dish. I also prepared a salad and some bread to go with by its suggestion. The recipe looks quick, but I didn’t realized I’d have to blend my own sauce.
Notes: Roast that eggplant hot and near the top of your oven (I’d do 500F next time) as it’s difficult to get it browned in the allotted time (before they deflate into eggplant-shaped pancakes!) You may notice that my sauce is more orange than in the cookbook’s picture. This is because I blended on high speed which creates a very fine emulsion (I like that!) If you want a red sauce though, just be careful to blend on low-ish speed. Finally, note that I actually forgot to include the cream in the cheese mixture – I poured it over about a minute after the cheese had been in the oven. This attempt at a fix was largely ineffective as the cheese remained in gobs.
Gem and Herb Salad with Maple, Lime, and Sesame Dressing I’m not the biggest salad fan, but I didn’t want to ignore Ixta’s suggestion to pair this dish with a salad. I chose the gem and herb salad because it looked easy (it is.) Not because it looked delicious or interesting (it’s not). Maybe go a bit heavier on the maple syrup in the dressing? With the pickled shallots, I was getting a lot of acid overall. I would also rip or cut up the lettuce leaves to make them smaller. I used mint and cilantro; wish I had gotten basil too.
Mezcla, a Mexican-Brazilian-Italian+ fusion cookbook by Ixta Belfrage, apparently hails from the extended Ottolenghi universe. After I received the book and flipped through the pages, I was initially skeptical about whether I would enjoy the book. Sadly, this may have been due to my bias against vegan and gluten-free cooking, which the author prioritizes in some recipes, as well as my fatigue of cooking from Plenty, Jerusalem, and the many other recent Ottolenghi books that I’ve been mostly ignoring in favor of other books that I find more exciting. Tired of rich and heavy meat dishes (from My America and Jerusalem), I decided to give a light-looking poached cod dish a go from Mezcla. And why not throw on an easy dessert (a crème brûlée)? In short, I misjudged this book. Both recipes delivered a show-stopping dinner.
First off, the paprika-saffron aioli is *not* optional in the recipe. You have to make it! It’s too good to leave out. This particular aioli has a nearly 1:1 yolk-to-oil ratio, which is unlike any aioli I’ve ever made, but it’s rich and it works great. Besides this, I’d emphasize that you should be careful to include the lime, herbs, jalapeño, and olives at the end – all components add something unique and balanced to this dish. I paired the dish with a tart and fruity French gamay rosé with a couple years on it, which was yummy, but just an OK pairing. Given the prominence of the saffron, I’d consider going with a Rioja rosé instead. There’s enough acid in the broth that you don’t need it in the wine for balance.
The main dish of poached cod was outstanding. “This is fucking amazing” was uttered multiple times. I also added, “this is better than any flakey fish dish I can remember getting at a restaurant ever.” The saffron, jalapeño, olives, herbs, lime, and tomato are all strong and make an addicting broth that becomes sauce-like with the addition of the aioli. It is great to mop up with crusty bread and desired in every bite.
The dessert is straightforward if you’ve made custard before. Note that there’s a lot added to the custard, so it probably needs more like 6 hours to set up in the fridge, and you might want to throw them in the freezer for 20 minutes before you torch them so it doesn’t disturb the custard. I actually got enough for 5 small ramekins. Also, there’s a hidden chocolate layer on the bottom! It’s very very rich. This was a perfect winter show-stopping & easy dessert to pair with any main! Looking forward to cooking more from this book!
This meal has had me thinking about the value of cooking regional versus fusion foods. I feel like I learn and remember a lot more from mono-regional, traditional cookbooks; however, these two recipes reminded me that I probably enjoy eating good fusion cooking more. I also find the cooking from fusion cookbooks to be more approachable because I’m more likely to find a one-pot dish that stands as a meal and less-likely to need to make accompanying pickles, breads, chutney’s, etc. that may feature in a regional cuisines traditions, perhaps hailing from a time that family/household members focused more of their day on cooking. While I *love* learning all of this stuff, I do wonder if it sustainable to learn such types cooking? It’s too bad that this tradeoff (seemingly) exists. I suppose I will seek a balance between both types of cookbook in the future.
The combo of doro wat (spicy, smoky Ethiopian chicken stew) and fossolia (carrot and string beans in a sweet-spicy onion stir-fry) struck me as a good starting dish to make from Kwame Onwuachi’s new cookbook “My America.” An added complication was the need to serve the doro wat with Injera, a spongy micro-pocketed sour earthy flatbread made from a tiny grain called Teff. You may have had a version of this flatbread in Ethiopian-American restaurants, but it was probably made with mostly wheat and barley and has a spongier, less stretchy texture than the real McCoy. I figured I would try the 5-day fermentation with some teff flour I ordered online. I also had to order some dried koseret, an herb related to Mexican oregano. According to Wikipedia, it smells “camphorous and minty.” I also ordered some Maggi seasoning cubes.
My attempt at fermenting teff-flour into injera batter (based on a recipe from TheDaringGourmet.com) seemed to be working well by days 2-3, but by days 4-5, it was clear something was amiss:
Day 5 of fermentation
The white film on the surface would have been fine (likely a type of yeast), but the black spots (combined with a musty, sewage-y, unappetizing smell) indicated mold. I had to toss this batch of batter. Quickly, I looked up a fast-Injera recipe on Cookshideout.com, and threw it together an hour before dinner. I used 100% teff and it was fine – no need for the suggested wheat here. The resulting flatbreads were nice, but less sour and less pocketed than the injera I’ve had in restaurants and seen in pictures (maybe add a touch more vinegar than suggested). Next time I’d like to either ferment this is a cleaner environment or pitch a sour-dough starter (which I would borrow from a baker) and let it ferment for only 24-hours – I think I found this technique discussed in the comments online and as a former brewer, I think it makes sense that one could achieve the desired result much faster with a sour-culture starter like this. The fast recipe worked well enough though.
The doro wat featured a lovely, smokey-spicy Barbere seasoning, used to dry rub the chicken overnight and near serving:
The spices in this blend are smokey and bold and make the dish. An addition of pure ground black cardamom also happens later in the preparation! As part of the stew, you will have to make niter kibbeh, a spice- and herb-infused oil. Traditionally, niter kibbeh is made by clarifying butter, but Kwame thankfully uses grape-seed oil here, so my lactose-intollerant friends can enjoy without modification. Note though, the niter kibbeh oil must be simmered over very low heat so as not to burn the spices. To give you an idea, in clarifying the butter of a traditional recipe, the milk solids should not darken much, so don’t darken your spices! My niter kibbeh oil was definitely burnt and I wonder how much more fragrant the dish would be if I hadn’t made that mistake. Something to work on for next time.
Also, as a fluid dynamicist, I have to take this opportunity to share with you these lovely convection cells that were made visible as I heated by niter kibbeh oil. The little black dots are some of the burnt ground spices, and they each indicate a point of convergence at the bottom of the oil, above which the oil is rising. If this were the atmosphere, vultures would be circling a draft above the dots and avoiding downwelling between them.
Similar to groundnut stew (from this book, see below), a single recipe makes a huge amount of food (about a gallon by volume). I originally thought that this meant there were more servings of food than the listed 4; however, I calculated that the double batch of stew, the fossolia, and the injera only added to about 8000 calories. If my calculation is accurate, the recipe correctly lists about 4 meals worth of food (unlike the groundnut stew.)
The resulting dish was rich, moderately spicy, smokey, salty. I think the injera, despite not being fermented, was a highlight. It was pleasantly stretchy and had a nice fresh yeast and slightly sweet and nutty grain flavor. It went really well with the stew. The fossolia was fine, nothing particularly special in terms of either the pairing or as a standalone dish. The meal was one of the messier ones I’ve prepared. It was difficult to figure out how to pull off pieces of chicken, break up the egg, rip apart the Injera, and get them all into a bite without getting wrist-deep in the dish. It makes sense that this dish is meant to be eaten by hand.
So, my go-to Israeli cookbook is Zahav. I have found Jerusalem to not be quite as flavorful and impressive at the table. However, for a quick weeknight dinner (and admittedly not wanting to use up the most exciting dishes in Zahav that I may be saving to cook for others), Ottolenghi will answer my call. I’ve been looking to cook this one for a while, both because it looks yummy and is beautiful!
For some reason, I had my doubts that a serving of this with a single egg would really constitute a whole meal. Wishing to sustain myself for 6 meals (until a much-anticipated Ethiopian dinner with my housemates on Sunday), I decided to play it safe and triple this recipe. I made this decision thinking the eggs would be finished in the oven (like shakshuka and a few other baked Ottolenghi dishes). It turns out this recipe actually calls for setting the eggs on the stove (perhaps just for convenience?). I followed the recipe using my 13-quart dutch oven, extending the times by only a few minutes for each step. When it came to the eggs, I put the whole thing in the oven with the lid on at 310F for about 15-minutes. I think this would have worked well had I kept a better eye on it, but it did go slightly over. 12 minutes would have been ideal. Instead, my egg centers had just set, and were deep gold and gelatinous throughout (fine!) Serve with crusty bread.
The resulting dish was rich, meaty, and nutty. The picture in the book doesn’t quite capture how much this is a meat stew of sorts. The yogurt sauce and the tomatoes make the dish quite good (bumped it up half a point!) Get the cast-iron as hot as you comfortably can. Cleaning the cast iron after charring these cherry tomatoes will test your cast-iron cleaning abilities – do it right away, remove as much as you can with a chain mail or scraper, wipe dry, heat it up on the stove to apply oil, *then* you will probably have to spot clean with some steel wool to really make sure there is no residue building up. Then apply a nice layer of oil and let it smoke for 5+ minutes. Good! Also, you will need more than a pinch of salt in the sauce, and I did find the water to be necessary there too.
When I saw Kwame Onwuachi had a new cookbook, my interest was piqued. Any Top-Chef-favorite cookbook is going to get serious consideration in my kitchen, if for no other reason than it reinforces the lessons and ideas featured in the show, which I’m already invested in. Kwame’s cookbook, My America, was an easy choice to buy and try because it features regional recipes from the American South, Caribbean, and Africa. For example, the recipe featured here is from “Nigeria/Ghana/Senegal.” When combined with the handful of other recipes from this region in the book, you then have a straightforward menu for an impressive dinner party.
Rather than jumping into a full-fledged dinner party, I opted to give the cookbook a test run with some everyday cooking. Groundnut stew (essentially peanut-beef stew) from West Africa must be served with fufu (lest it be inauthentic or incomplete.) Yay – this is a big reason why I chose the recipe as fufu pops up occasionally on Top-Chef and I’ve always wanted to try eating and making it. The meal is also gluten- and dairy-free.
The groundnut stew took about 5 hours to make (yikes!) and I still had to abridge a recipe for the “Peppa Sauce” by making it in a mortar and pestle. My America will feature many such pantry recipes that are suitable for a kitchen that is devoted to this book, rather than standalone recipes for a hobbyist moving among many books. So far, none of these pantry items / ingredients seem very difficult or involved to make.
Fufu is made most traditionally and centrally with cassava flour, but variations can also include green plantains (very common), as well as true yams or malanga. I found about 4 different ways of making fufu. My America has a recipe that uses fufu flour, which I couldn’t find at my market, so I opted to use a recipe from AfricanBites.com, which chops, boils, and processes the ingredients. Another common method is to chop, process, and boil the starches; this is appealing because the chop-boil-process technique definitely overworked my food processor and I found the texture less gummy than I’d like (this can be improved by further cooking, hopefully). Finally, the most traditional and laborious method would be manually working the starching in a mortar and pestle. Next time I would like to try Kwame’s fufu-flour method.
The resulting stew was super rich and probably will last me more like 6 or 7 meals instead of the advertised 4. It also goes well with bread if you run out of fufu. The stew is of medium-mild spiciness, I would say, so don’t be alarmed by the scotch bonnets. Do watch the salt levels, as I could imagine it being too much if I hadn’t been careful to use unsalted peanut butter or taken the additional step of wiping the rub off of my beef shanks before searing them (good choice). The flavor has peanut notes, but is not monotone and has considerable complexity, and, again, above all, is rich. I did find myself wishing there was more textural variation in the stew though; I’d consider adding more meat or carrots or something too. As I mentioned before, my fufu was also not as gummy as I’d like (bordering on mashed-potato texture.) Still, it is an appealing flavor vehicle and I hope to improve the texture by further cooking.
Update: cooking the fufu did indeed thicken it (especially after it cooled); however, watch out as this stuff burns super easy! Also, note that fufu has around twice the amount of starch and calories as mashed potatoes. It’s easy to eat a lot then feel really full like 20 minutes later. The fufu and stew are kind of addicting even when cold. I bumped both ratings by 0.5 after this update.
Joe Cook Me 