some housekeeping

I've had a bad day: I slept funny and my neck is sore, I spilled a cup of coffee in an unfortunate location, and I accidentally deleted our recipe index.

Don't panic, though, because everything is fine and the recipe index is back online. It's here.

I also created a travel page, mostly for our benefit, so we can access our travel recaps more easily.

Finally, we updated the cinnamon brioche recipe, with additional photos and a better icing. (Read: Mark decided that the icing would be superior with a little butter and cream.) Have I ever mentioned that the cinnamon brioche recipe is by far the most popular page on this blog? We get tons of hits from a Swedish baking message board. Thank you, Swedish bakers. You are awesome.

beef and root vegetable stew for a cold night

In the end, the centerpiece of our Burns night party was not haggis, but steak pie: rich beef and vegetable stew baked in a pastry crust. I'm not a big pot pie person, but Mark has fond memories of steak pie and chips at the neighborhood pub in when his family lived in Scotland. Who am I to argue with nostalgia, on a night dedicated to indulging in nostalgia?

This was a good one, as far as pot pies go. The stew was hearty and rich, with earthy vegetables and tender beef bobbing in an onion-and-ale-infused gravy. The crust was flaky and shot through with the unmistakable flavor of butter and lard. All good things. But for me? Maybe too much of a good thing. The pastry was so rich and distracting, it kind of overpowered the subtle flavors in the stew itself. We all enjoyed it (that pie was demolished, lest you think we all pushed it around with our forks or something) but as Mark and I agreed the next morning, we've probably filled our pot pie quota for, oh, 3 years at least.


However, as you can tell from my description above, I really liked the stew and would totally make it again. Sometimes beef stew can be stodgy, but this one -- with the sweet, golden rutabaga and carrot slipping into every other bite-- felt lighter than most. A long cooking in a low oven left the beef tender and the onion-and-ale infused gravy was at once sweet, savory and pleasantly bitter. (Not too bitter, just enough that you know the ale is there.) To serve, I'd swap pastry for crusty bread or a bed of mashed rutabaga. Or maybe egg noodles. If you are a pastry lover, I recommend just a top crust. Or, follow Mark's mom's lead; she tops steak pie with a small round of puff pastry.

Beef and root vegetable stew

This stew isn't at all hard to make, though it does take some time to build all the flavors. The most important thing here is to use well-marbled stew beef, like chuck. It's up to you whether you brown the beef: it's not entirely necessary, but I did it here because I like the deep brown color that the fond adds to the braising liquid. Feel free to think of this recipe as a rough guide: I used rutabaga, carrots, and chicken broth because that's what I had on hand. Beef broth would be fine, some other combination of root vegetables, different aromatics. The only caution I have is to watch the amount of ale you use; too much and the stew will taste bitter.

Finally, I'm not sure why, but stews taste significantly better after resting in the fridge, so make this a day or two ahead if you can. I noticed that the stew had much more gravy on day 1 than on day 2, so perhaps the meat and vegetables absorbed more liquid/flavor overnight.

2 tablespoons oil or lard
1 large onion, halved and roughly chopped (1/2 inch cubes)
1 1/2 pounds well-marbled stew beef, like chuck, patted dry, trimmed of excess fat and chopped into 1 inch chunks
3 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 cup ale (I used a Scottish ale called Belhaven)
1 1/2 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs of thyme
2-3 big carrots, peeled and chopped into 2 inch chunks
1 rutabaga (tennis ball sized), peeled and chopped into 1 inch chunks
salt, pepper, a dash of soy sauce

Heat a large enameled cast iron French oven with lid over medium heat. When hot, add the oil and heat until hot and shimmering. Add half the meat to the casserole, without crowding, and brown both sides well. This creates lots of flavor (you'll see a fond begin to build up on the bottom of the pan) so don't rush the process, and don't crowd the meat or it will begin to steam instead of brown. When nicely browned, transfer meat to a bowl (leaving as much oil as possible) and repeat with the remaining meat.

Preheat the oven to 275F. Now, add the chopped onion to the French oven and cook over medium-high heat. Use a wooden spoon to scrape the fond on the bottom of the pan and continue cooking until onion is nicely browned. Lower the heat to medium and sprinkle the flour into the pan and cook. Stir continuously for 2 minutes to remove any flour taste. Stir in the ale, chicken stock, bay leaves, thyme and beef and bring everything to a simmer. Season the gravy to taste. I added 1 teaspoon salt and a dash of soy sauce at this point, though the amount you need will depend on whether you used a salted chicken stock or not.

Cover and set in the oven to cook. Check after 1 1/2 hours. My beef wasn't quite tender at this point, and I had to let it cook for another hour to get to the texture I wanted. I like the beef to be very tender, but it should keep its shape instead of completely collapsing or becoming stringy. When the beef is tender, adjust the seasoning with extra salt, if needed, and add the chunks of root vegetable. Return to the oven for 45-60 minutes, until tender but not mushy.

Note: if you want to bake this in pie form, I recommend just a top crust. Cool the stew (as in, put in the refrigerator). Roll out a savory crust recipe (we used this one, minus the sugar; it is delicious and flaky, but hard to work with). Add stew to a pie dish, without overfilling, and press the top crust on. Brush the top crust with an egg wash and bake in an oven at 425F for 45 minutes, until crust is nicely browned and filling is 180F or so.

on a totally different note

I'd be remiss if I neglected to mention that my inestimable dad's birthday is this week. Happy birthday, Dad! Among other things, he taught me to ride a bike, drive a car, make smart financial decisions, and to value learning for the fun of it. He pushed me harder in school than any Tiger Mom but also impressed upon me an appreciation for travel, adventure, and some of the finer things in life. I love you, Dad. We will definitely have a belated birthday celebration when you come to visit in a few weeks.

In other news, we are planning a little Burns supper celebration on Wednesday. Sadly, I've been forced to conclude that making our own haggis is not a food project we can pull off on short notice. I'm bummed; it was going to be so weird and fun! So, there will be no simmering of lungs, heart, or kidney. We won't be stuffing anything into an "ox bung." And there will be no sheep's windpipe trailing over the side of our stockpot so the impurities can drain out (!!!). I did investigate canned haggis, but that seemed grossly (literally) undeserving of Robert Burns' majestic Address to a Haggis. So, that's that. I know people are all inconsolably sad that I don't have a haggis recipe but, please, try to get over it. If nothing else, our Burns supper will have good whisky. Don't you worry about that.   

And now I'd like to abruptly segue to the recipe I actually want to talk about today, which is kung pao chicken. I am a total fool for kung pao/gong bao chicken, my favorite weeknight stirfry. The combination of succulent chicken and crunchy peanuts? The complex, flavorful sauce that tastes salty, sweet, spicy, tangy all at once? Oh man, it is good. When I mentioned that I want our recipe index to better reflect what we actually cook, this is one of the dishes I was thinking about. We make this at least twice a month, sometimes more. It is relatively quick -- the ingredient list and directions look long, but this takes no time at all -- and delicious. Forget take-out, seriously. And don't be afraid to try it even if you don't have all the ingredients. No Chinkiang vinegar? Try balsamic or regular distilled vinegar. No rice wine? Use dry vermouth, leftover white wine, or just omit it. No light or dark soy? Substitute regular soy. Can't find Sichuan peppercorns? Forget it. The more substitutions you make, the more of a departure it will be from the original dish, but you might like it.

Kung Pao Chicken

Fuchsia Dunlop's authentic recipe from her Sichuan cookbook/memoir was my starting point. A few changes: I prefer the juiciness of dark meat chicken to white meat, so I substitute thigh meat. I've reduced the amount of vinegar she calls for because I find it overpowering. I toast and grind my Sichuan peppercorns so their tingly flavor is evenly incorporated into the sauce. Finally, I decrease the corn starch just a bit. You need a relatively subtle-flavored vegetable dish or two to accompany: steamed gai lan is a favorite, as are wok-fried green beans with ginger. And, as I mentioned, this dish comes together quickly, so start a pot of rice before anything else.

3 chicken thighs, skinned, deboned, and trimmed of excess fat
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch section of ginger, minced
5 scallions, chopped into 1/2-inch lengths
10 dried red chiles (preferably Sichuanese)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1-2 teaspoons whole Sichuan peppercorns
1/2 cup dry roasted peanuts

For marinade:
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon Shaoxing rice wine
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

For sauce:
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon dark rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon chicken stock or water

Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. In a bowl large enough to hold all the chicken, add chicken and marinade ingredients. Stir and set aside while you prepare the other ingredients.

If you haven't already, prep your garlic/ginger/scallions. Heat a wok over high heat. Before adding any oil, add the peanuts and toast until warm and fragrant. Remove to a bowl. Next, add the Sichuan peppercorns and toast 10-15 seconds, stirring and tossing so they don't burn. Remove peppercorns and grind to a coarse powder in a mortar and pestle. Set aside.

Add oil to the wok. When the oil is hot but not smoking, add the dried red chiles and stir-fry briefly until slightly browned and oil is fragrant. Take care not to burn the chiles; remove the wok from heat source if necessary. (Note: at this point, spice compounds in the air always make me cough. It's okay, just be mindful.) 

Quickly add the chicken with its marinade and wok-fry over high heat, stirring constantly. When the chicken is 70% done (the exterior will be brown but the inside may not be totally cooked through), add the ginger/garlic/scallions and continue to stir fry for a few minutes until they are fragrant. Stir the sauce and then add to the wok. Continue stirring and tossing until the sauce has become thick and glossy and the chicken is fully cooked. Transfer contents of the wok to a serving bowl. Mix in peanuts and the ground Sichuan peppercorns.

let's get slightly virtuous

Our garden has been mostly a bust this year. Thank goodness for the citrus trees we planted. When I look outside -- past all the runty lacinato kale  and rows of seeds that failed to sprout-- and see my dozen bright yellow lemons, I feel pretty happy. Not to say that skill had much to do with it. I get the idea it's next to impossible to kill a citrus tree in this climate.

Since we moved to California, we've done a lot of cooking/baking with lemons and Meyer lemons and have decided that we almost always prefer using regular lemons in desserts. Meyers are nice in savory dishes -- their aroma and sweetness plays well with salty/bitter flavors -- but they lack the tartness to stand out in a sweet dessert.

Take these split-level lemon pudding cakes. (I call them split-level because, in the oven, the batter separates and you get one layer of creamy pudding and one layer of airy sponge cake. It's neat.)

We don't make these pudding cakes more than once or twice a year, but they do occupy an important place in our repertoire: filling the "Mark wants a dessert with lemon, but nothing rich" void. (Anything calling for skim milk is basically health food, in Mark's world.) Anyway, when you make them with regular lemons, you get this feisty, tart, puckery, refreshing lemon flavor. When you make them with Meyers, the fragrance is wonderful but the taste falls flat due to the relative lack of acidity. Some might like it, but I don't want subtlety in my lemon desserts! If I'm eating lemon, I want it to shock my taste buds a little bit.

Let's Downton Abbey-ify this thing (since I can finally refer to season 2 plot points now that it's airing here!). Lavinia Swire is a lovely lady who knows how to rock green with her auburn hair. I get why Matthew is drawn to her soft-spoken ways and the way she quietly rearranged her life to be a part of his, especially after Lady Mary toyed with his heart in season 1. But she's also a bit of a wallflower, no? (Marconi scandal notwithstanding.) Lavinia is a Meyer lemon, very nice in her own right, but a bit meek. Lady Mary, with her bluntness and her desire to be the center of attention and her messy life choices that upend Matthew's emotional well-being, well, she's a lemon. An uncommonly upper-class lemon who inherits furniture instead of buying it.

Unlike me, however, Cousin Matthew just can't choose his favorite.

(Source) 

Lemon pudding cakes

via Food & Wine magazine

All right, these are a bit homely. They are good, but not fancy. A downstairs dessert, not an upstairs dessert, is what I'm saying. But since we don't dress for dinner, it works anytime for us. They take a bit of doing -- I say any recipe where you have to whip egg whites takes a bit of doing -- but I like the split-level result. As I mention above, use regular lemons if you like bright, tangy flavor and Meyers if you prefer sweet, muted, wallflower-y flavors (I won't judge). You could also use Meyer lemon zest for fragrance and regular lemon juice for tartness.

3/4 cup granulated sugar (you can try 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar if you are using Meyer lemon juice)
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, separated
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus a bit extra for the ramekins
1 cup skim milk
5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (if your lemons yield exactly 6 TB like mine did, no problem) 
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (I've used up to 3 tsp here)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly butter six 6-ounce ramekins. In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar with the flour. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the butter until well blended. Whisk in the milk, lemon juice and lemon zest. Pour the lemon mixture into the sugar mixture and whisk until smooth.
2. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites with the salt until firm peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the lemon mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared ramekins and transfer them to a small roasting pan. Place the pan in the oven and pour in enough hot water to reach halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
3. Bake the pudding cakes for 35 minutes or until puffed and golden. Using tongs, transfer the ramekins to a rack to cool for 20 minutes. You can serve them from the ramekin or unmolded on the plate. And while you can serve them warm, I prefer them chilled.   

crisp oven-fried chicken

I really like fried chicken. I really don't like deep frying. How to reconcile the two? A recipe for oven-fried chicken by Amanda Hesser caught my eye a few months ago, and I must have read her recipe 5 or 6 times, trying to figure out how baking chicken could possibly result in the crispy skin and juicy flesh of my Alabama dreams. But that's the thing about trying new recipes -- you never know.

The recipe is simple, but some advance planning is required. Hesser directs you to buy "good" chicken thighs and to soak them in a salt water solution for 8 hours, to season and tighten the flesh. I did have a good chicken on hand, but it was a whole chicken. After cutting up my chicken, I ended up brining 2 whole legs and 2 wings, while the breasts and the back both went straight into the freezer.

After 8 hours in the brine, you pat the chicken dry and dredge it in a flour mixture. Amanda Hesser's recipe calls for flour, salt and pepper, which I supplemented with lemon zest, chopped rosemary and cayenne pepper. After a vigorous shake, you pop the chicken in a buttered roasting pan, skin side down, and set it in the oven. Easy, right? Then I made Mark a Boulevardier, stole a few sips, and put on some music. At this point, I felt glad that I wasn't attempting real fried chicken. 

However, after an hour, I inspected my chicken to see that the skin wasn't crispy, or chestnut brown, or anything that she said it was supposed to be. I was getting hungry, so I decided it was shortcut time: the chicken got a nice sprinkling of panko flakes and a drizzling with some of the buttery chicken juices on the bottom of the pan. 20 minutes later, it looked like this:

It wasn't quite fried chicken, the recipe took some significant hacking, and the lemon zest/rosemary/cayenne I added to the flour imparted no perceptible flavor. However -- it was much more low-fuss than real fried chicken and it resulted in deeply flavored flesh and crisp chicken skin. I've made it again and again, without brining, without panko, with other seasonings. It turns out different and good each time, but this is the basic technique for the chicken as pictured. 

Oven fried chicken legs
adapted from Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
2 chicken legs (drumstick + thigh), or 4 thighs, or 4 legs
1 tablespoon unsalted butter or olive oil
1/3 cup all purpose flour
black pepper
panko flakes, about 1/4 cup

6-8 hours before cooking, combine 1 tablespoon of salt and about 1/2 cup of warm water in a large container. Stir to dissolve the salt and add the chicken to the bowl. Cover with very cold water and chill in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove the chicken from the water and pat dry with paper towels. Add the butter to a roasting pan large enough to fit the chicken in one layer and place the pan in the oven to heat. Add the flour, remaining teaspoon of salt and a generous grinding of black pepper to a bag (freezer bag or paper sack) and give it a good shake. Add the chicken pieces and shake until thoroughly coated. As you lift them out of the bag, shake them well so the coating isn't gummy or clumpy.

Lay the chicken pieces in the roasting pan, skin side up (this is a departure from her recipe, but I don't want the skin to stick), and oven-fry for 40 minutes. The skin should be crisp and glistening, though not entirely brown. Sprinkle panko flakes on the skin and spoon some of the drippings from the bottom of the pan over the entire leg, including the portion covered by panko flakes. Continue baking another 20-40 minutes, until the chicken is done and juices run clear. Just before serving, grind fresh pepper over top and sprinkle lightly with sea salt.