Honey-candied orange peels

Another recipe from the aforementioned SCA event lunch, which was held this past Saturday. I served the orange peels as a little sweet bite for the end of the meal.

My recipe is a bit of a mishmash of modern method, a 13th Century Andalusian cookbook recipe translation of "orange paste" I found at http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian10.htm#Heading528 and a recipe from Menagier de Paris translated in Pleyn Delit by C. Hieatt, B. Hosington and S. Butler as follows:

Cut the peel of an orange into five pieces and scrape away the skin inside with a knife; then set them to soak in pure fresh water for nine days, and change the water every day. Then boil them in pure water, but only until they come to a boil, and when this is done spread them on a cloth and let them dry out well. Then put them in a pot with enough honey to cover them and boil over a slow fire, skimming. And when you think that the honey is cooked (to test whether it is cooked, take some water in a spoon and pour into this water a bit of honey, and if it spreads it is not cooked; and if the honey stays in the water without spreading, it is cooked), then take out your orange peels and arrange them in a layer, and sprinkle powder of ginger over, then another layer, and sprinkle, etc., until finished; and leave a month or more before eating. (recipe 133, "Orangat")

I dispensed with the instructions for nine days of soaking orange peels and went with the more streamlined instructions from Judy Knipe and Barbara Marks' The Christmas Cookie Book, which tell the reader to soak the peels in cold water to loosen the membrane, scrape the webby membrane off the peel with a spoon, cut the peels in strips and do this four times: cover with cold water in a pot, bring to a boil, drain, rinse, drain. I didn't let the peels dry out for very long before starting the process of boiling them in honey.

I followed the candying instructions given in both the Andalusian recipe and the Menagier recipe, using the Menagier's candy-temperature testing instructions for soft-ball stage. Then I pulled the peels from the honey with tongs and spread them onto parchment paper on a table and let them dry out for about a week. After the week, they were still pasty and sticky, but I didn't try to make up for it by layering them with powdered ginger. I didn't want to have ginger in too many items at the lunch (it was already in the pies, the bread pudding, the pickled mushrooms and the sekanjabin). I considered cinnamon, but decided it overpowered the taste of orange. Instead, the peels were folded into little waxed paper packets for serving.

I do agree with the Menagier de Paris that the peels taste better with aging. After one week, they were less syrupy and mellower. After two weeks, the orange oil in the peels had more bite.

Read more...

Black garlic: seems weird, tastes delicious

My co-worker introduced me to an ingredient an Asian friend of hers insisted that she try: black garlic. The description of its flavor was intriguing to me, so my co-worker brought me some from her stash at home.

I looked up a little more information about the process of creating black garlic and found these sites about it helpful: http://blackgarlic.com/how-its-made; http://passionatefoodie.blogspot.com/2009/04/black-garlic.html; http://www.philly.com/inquirer/food/20100107_Garlic_in_a_new_hue__Black.html?viewAll=y
I had no idea that the process of creating black garlic out of ordinary garlic was so time-consuming. We're talking fermentation for weeks and then a drying process.

Straight out of the papery skin, the name "black garlic" is not kidding about the color. The skin is brown and smoky-smelling, and the cloves themselves are black and shriveled. They pull away pretty easily from their papery cases because they have shriveled and have fairly dry exteriors. When I cut them, they had a gummy texture a bit like licorice candy, which is the same color as black garlic. The flavor is reminiscent of roasted garlic, but there is an added tang from fermentation.

Not knowing quite where to start with the stuff, I thought I'd just substitute it for ordinary sauteed garlic in a recipe I already had planned for the week: meatless mushroom Stroganoff sauce on pasta. Here is the garlic on the cutting board with the mushrooms:

I halved a few cloves lengthwise and sliced them, putting the garlic into the saute pan with the mushrooms to cook in olive oil. Then in went the sour cream, lots of pepper, a little salt. I served the sauce on spaghetti noodles.

The smell in the pan was fascinating: garlicky, something a little smoky or roasted with that faint whiff of fermented tanginess, mixed with the savory scent of cooking mushrooms. The mixture was intriguing to my nose and heavenly on the tongue, especially since every drop of the sour cream was imbued with a light black garlic flavor. I came away from the meal believing that black garlic and mushrooms were eternal soul mates.

The next experiment with the rest of the black garlic was using it to dress up some smashed potatoes (a more rustic mashed potato in which I don't bother peeling and don't bother mashing until smooth). Again, I just substituted the black garlic for ordinary garlic. When I make a potful of smashed potatoes, I often put five or six cloves of whole, peeled garlic in the cooking water to cook along with the potatoes. When the potatoes are done, the garlic is softened enough that it just melts into the potato mash. No so with the black garlic. Those cloves, even after cooking longer than 20 minutes, were determined to remain intact and squishy-rubbery. The potato masher cut a couple into some thick slices, at best. The black garlic flavor didn't really transfer to the potato mass as a whole, but some bites were punctuated by strong smoky-tangy flavor and the garlic gave a bit more resistance to the teeth than the potato chunks. Nothing unpleasant about it, but the experience left me wishing I had cut the garlic cloves in smaller pieces before cooking.

Fried potato mush made from the leftovers was an awakening for the nasal cavities as the black garlic pieces touching the frying pan launched a smell that was like dark brown toast close to burning, smeared with roasted garlic. A couple of times, I flavored my mush with slices of leftover turkey Italian sausage. The sausage and garlic were bright lights in a fog of plain potato, making for a more exciting mush than I've ever eaten before.

Read more...

Easter dinner and other springtime foods

Mmmm, I like serving springtime food at Easter. There is always a fun mix of stuff that has kept over the winter and new spring produce.
Here are some photos of our Easter foods.

The food above is called Osterbrötchen in German, and they are a yeast-raised bun with dried fruits. I serve them as a breakfast food about every other year, alternating with a German cake (which is not served for breakfast), Osterlamm. The cake is baked in a lamb-shaped mold. Here I am with last year's cake, which has homemade chocolate frosting for a black sheep.

At this year's Easter dinner, the first course was a deceptively "cream"-y soup (soymilk thickened with a little roux) filled with carrots, spinach and peas, accompanied by blanched asparagus with a faux bernaise sauce. I found another application in which Ener-G egg substitute is a terrible idea. The sauce texture was sticky and elastic, meaning that it acted a bit like melted cheese when we dipped asparagus in it. It had a lot of lemon juice, which tasted nice on the asparagus, so at least it was edible. Here's the table shot before we eat the soup and asparagus. Daffodils are from the backyard. The wine is Beaujolais.

And for the main course at Easter dinner, I had planned something that wasn't an Easter ham, but did have ham in it. I had some minced ham left over in the freezer after ham pie, and I wanted to add it to fried potatoes. I boiled sliced potatoes in salted water, then fried them, and although they tasted fully cooked and well-salted like I wanted them to, I had to adjust to a new textural reality from what I had in mind. The potato slices fell apart when I turned them in the pan, so now I had potato hash. No big problem. The hash tasted great with the ham bits and a generous sprinkling of fresh-ground black pepper.

Also wonderful in springtime are mangoes and the new crops of berries. Of course, none of these items grows anywhere near here in April, so they are an occasional indulgence until the local fruit appears in May or June. This week, Andrew mixed blackberries with the banana slices I had in the freezer for an impromptu fruit salad.

Read more...

Lower-fat, no-coconut korma

I found a recipe I wanted to try from a slow-cooker cookbook in my collection, one that promised delicious curry slow-cooker style. It was a chicken korma with a coconut milk base, thickened with ground toasted almonds. "Lite" coconut milk still isn't light enough to make the cut in my diet, and there are already ground almonds in the recipe, so I thought, "why not kill two birds with one stone? I'll make almond milk instead of using coconut milk and then I'll have ground almonds to use for the thickener."

Lorna Sass offers a delicious almond milk recipe from the 1400s in To the King's Taste: Richard II's book of feasts and recipes adapted for modern cooking. That almond milk is sweetened, which I didn't want, so I changed things up a little in my most recent almond milk.

The most fun part about making the almond milk comes after Step 1: blanch whole almonds, drain, rinse with cold water, drain. Then I get to squeeze them until the almonds pop right out of the skins. The flying almonds have a surprising velocity when they hit the bowl. Sometimes they leap right out of it. For this recipe, since it was going to cook down for a long time, I made a rather thin almond milk by putting 1/2 cup almonds and 2 cups water into my blender to whirl until the almonds were ground and the water was white. I strained out the almonds to add to the curry later in the cooking.

I also decided there was no reason why I couldn't, when I didn't want to wait four hours for dinner, make the dish on the stove in about an hour. 

The rest of the recipe:

No-coconut chicken korma 
serves four to six

Almond milk made with 1/2 cup almonds and 2 cups water, ground almonds strained out
2 Tbsp butter or ghee
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into bite-size pieces
1 onion, chopped
4 green cardamom pods, cracked
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 dash ground turmeric
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground chilies
1/2 cup chicken stock, if more liquid desired
1 Tbsp lime juice
1 tsp garam masala
salt and ground black pepper to taste

Heat ghee/butter in a pan and cook chicken pieces until they start to brown. Fry onion for a few minutes, then add cardamom pods and garlic and fry 2 minutes. Add ground almonds, cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon stick, ground chilies and cook about one minute until fragrant. Add liquids and simmer until chicken is cooked through. Stir in the citrus juice and garam masala and cook until liquid has thickened and reduced to your liking. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serving suggestion: spoon curry over saffron rice -- rice sauteed in butter/ghee and then steamed in water with a pinch or two of saffron for color and flavor
Garnish suggestion: toasted sliced almonds

Read more...