common esculents

Leff's Hot Sauce

2012-09-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

Leff's Green Hot

Of course I was going to get around to making my own hot sauce. You know this. This is me we're talking about.

There are tons of recipes out there like this and this. I didn't worry about them too much, but I did use them as rough guides. I made two kinds and I kinda made them up as I went.

Leff's Red Hot

Leff's Green Hot is simpler, so we'll start there. Here's what you do. Chunk about 12 jalapeños in to a pot with a half an onion and some oil. After they soften bung in some water and keep 'em boiling for about 20 minutes. A pinch of salt goes in somewhere.

jalapeños and onions

Let 'em cool down for a bit. Put the fine blade in the food mill and go to town on your mixture. Pour a cup of plain white vinegar through the mill. Now you've got hot sauce, but it's not any good yet.

Greene Green Sauce

Put sauce in a jar and that in the fridge. Wait two weeks.

While you wait, bake a potato (set the oven to just above room temperature or it will be done early) and sour some cream (I do this just by looking at regular cream. Cream would normally like this, but I give it the evil eye).

Put them all together.

Hot Potato

You'll find that the vinegar has mellowed and so has the spiciness. The sauce has become well behaved. Some might say civilized.

Now for the Leff's Red Hot. Same deal but replace 3 of the jalapeños with rehydrated New Mexico chilies. Use the rehydration water to boil everything in. Use red wine vinegar instead of plain white. Same deal with the waiting. Decant into a scrupulously clean frank's red hot bottle, but still keep it in the fridge.

For some reason all of my red sauce photos kinda sucked, so you might get the impression that I like the green better. The truth is, I do. The red wine vinegar is too dominant in the final sauce. It's a good note to have in there, but it can be too strong. Next time I'll go halvies on it.

homemade bubble dogs

2012-09-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

moody bubble dogs (bacon bbq and josé)

Rakka and I are probably going to stop by Bubble dogs on our next London visit. But we couldn't wait a whole month, so we made some ourselves. We had some prosecco and some turkey dogs, so we didn't have to.

It's important to play up the fancy, so this is a dog with spicy thai aioli and garden herbs. Which translates to mayonnaise mixed with the ubiquitous cock sauce (sriracha) with parsley and onion on top. The bubble dogs menu would have been a small eye but the onions would have been pickled.

with spicy thai aioli and garden herbs

We also did a bacon barbecue version known as the fourth of july (minus cole slaw because we were out) and a josé, which has avocado, hot peppers, sour cream and salsa.

You may notice that we did the spiral cut like whoa.

Spiral cut

Oh, and we didn't have any buns for some reason so I made some from this recipe. Turned out that this was important. Store bought would have collapsed under the weight of the toppings, and wouldn't have been long enough for the dogs extended by the spirals.

Home made hot dog buns

And the result? Hot dogs and champers go surprisingly well. The bacon barbecue dog was particularly well accompanied by a nice dry prosecco. The sweetness of the barbecue sauce fills in the dry spots in the prosecco, who's fruitiness plays off the smokey note from the bacon.

Simple Ottolenghi

2012-09-09T09:45:00.003-07:00

"Simple" Ottolenghi

The trick with Ottolenghi recipes, like this one, is to leave off half the steps and a third of the ingredients. No I didn't make a smoker for the corn. No, I didn't pre-fry the potatoes before adding them to the chicken. For that matter, no I didn't quarter a whole chicken and cook it bone in.

It was still damn tasty, but it took half the time and half the washing up. Laziness for the win.

Engineering jargon provides a name we can use for this approach. The KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. It applies to a lot of recipes, especially those from celebrity chefs.

On an unrelated note, here's a little quiz. What is made from jalapenos and onions but won't be ready for two weeks?

jalapenos and onions

The secret will be revealed, and you may find this utterly shocking, in two weeks.

Plum Sauce two ways

2012-09-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Sweet Plum Sauce

I've mentioned the damson plum tree before. Well, last year it didn't do much fruiting. This year, though, it's back on form. And it's harvest time.

Plums on the tree

The trouble is, they're not eating plums; too tart. I made plum jam a few years ago. The recipe called for so much sugar to offset the acid that I could barely eat it, in the end. And it gets tiresome after a while anyway.

Lots of plums

But, being cheap as I am, I couldn't sit around and watch all of the plums fall to the ground to rot. So this weekend I collected a colander full and got down to making some sauces.

The first was a chinese style sauce. Tangy, spicy, garlicy, salty. I started with this recipe, but I didn't follow along exactly.

Chinese style plum sauce

The second was a plum version of cranberry sauce. We were having roast chicken and I thought it appropriate. It was sweeter, and chunkier, but still very plummy (photo at the top). This one I more or less made up. About 12 plums, about a third of cup of sugar, some orange juice, and a pinch of salt.

It was very tasty on that roast chicken. I'm going to make some dumplings or something for the chinese sauce.

Ritz Burgers

2012-08-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

Ritz Burgers

Rakka didn't want a bun. She wanted crackers. Done.

Pan fried burgers with bread crumbs and parsley kind of smell like my grandma's house. It sort of felt like the 70s. Can't you just see somebody serving these at a cocktail party in Milwaukee about 1975?

Homemade Tortillas

2012-08-05T10:57:00.001-07:00

Yay, Tortillas!

My first attempt at making Tortillas was basically successful! My first attempt at preserving my first tortillas for more than 5 minutes was less so. Lesson Learned: tortilla warming solution is not optional.

Anyway, let's make some tortillas. It's just flour, baking soda, salt, vegetable shortening and water.

everything but the water

I don't have a tortilla press, but I do have a rolling pin. Turns out rolling pins are sufficient for flattening dough. Who knew‽

Ready to Roll

I might have made these just a tad too thin.

Rolled

They did puff up as expected though, so maybe not too thin.

Cooking

And here we come to the finale. The reason d'tortillas, so to speak. I did all this work because I wanted bean burritos out of a can.

Bean Burritos out of a can

I am truly living the dream!

making baguettes

2012-06-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

Oh, yeah, that's a baguette

So the other day I wanted a baguette. I didn't have one. But I did have flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water. Turns out that's enough.

Kneading

Punching

Looking about right

Also, a couple pans of water in the oven for some humidity helps. It makes it all crusty.

Baguette!

It was surprisingly easy.

American Cheese & Pickle

2012-04-21T10:29:00.001-07:00

American Cheese & Pickle Sandwich

Construction

We all know that I make a study of British food. What we may not know, since I haven't written the post yet, is that one of my areas of concentration is sandwiches and another is pickle. As in branston pickle. The ease of obtaining a cheese and pickle sandwich is a never ending source of delight... When in the UK.

When in the US, we are more or less fucked. It's possible to import some branston, but it's far from common. The cheddar you can get is never quite right, nor is the bread. Sometimes I try, obsessively, to recreate the exact experience that I've had across the sea.

Sometimes, I give the fuck up. This is a recipe I developed in the kitchens of my old job. Cheese and Pickle with the most American of ingredients possible.

Since the only kind of pickled anything we have here is pickled cucumbers, dill chips are the obvious choice. Since the cheddar is never right anyway, we have some nice american cream cheese. Spreading cream cheese requires toast. This all makes sense.

The results are not unpleasant but they're not British either, like an english muffin. This is a tasty sandwich that makes me feel sad and out of place.

Coronation Chicken

2012-04-18T21:02:00.003-07:00

Can I just say how much I love that I've been eating a coronation chicken derivative for the past 10 years and not even known it. Thanks Rakka!

I also love the story. Go read it.

Scotch Devils

2012-03-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Scotch Devil

Makings

There be eggs

Ready for the cooking

There's been a lot of build up. Probably too much. It's a scotch egg, made with those pickled "deviled" eggs that I've been talking about for two weeks. So it's a Scotch Deviled Egg, or a Scotch Devil for short.

Back to the salt thing I was talking about in the first post. I put half a tablespoon of salt in this whole thing, but it's still bursting with flavor.

Here's how it go:

Filling

5-6 "Deviled" Eggs

Meat part

1.25 pounds ground turkey

.5 tbs salt

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp crushed red pepper

some ground pepper

2 tsp worcestershire sauce

1/4 tsp ginger powder

Coating

1 egg (beaten) for wash

breadcrumbs with cayenne pepper

Scotch Eggs are usually made with sausage meat, and you could do that here. I didn't have any. And I didn't have any sage, which would have helped. But it's ok, because lots of hot spicy spice!

The process is pretty obvious.

Mix up the Meat part.
Wrap up your eggs in it (I only had 5 because I used one to test my eggs).
Mix some cayenne into the bread crumbs
Roll the meated eggs, one at a time, in the egg then the bread crumbs.
Bake them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes.

And they really do come out very tasty. The capsaicin hits first, then the vinegar from the pickled egg. Then the egg from egg. I dig it. I'll dig it again.

"Deviled" Eggs

2012-03-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

"Deviled" Egg

Brown on the outside

Here's a pile

Remember dem eggs we set ta picklin? Well, they sher did pickle up real good, I tell you what.

Seriously though, this is after a little less than a week on the shelf in the pantry. They went a bit rubbery on the outside, and I expect the'd be rubbery all the way through if I left them longer. All the spices turned them a medium brown.

Remember, these are supposed to be spicy. In fact, they're supposed to be a pickled version of deviled eggs.

But they spicy flavor was not that strong. Possibly because the spices settled out after the first day or so. I either need to figure out an emulsification strategy or an agitation strategy. Or give up on making this the spicy part.

The spicy part? Of what? Oh, wouldn't you like to know. But that's the next post.

In the mean time, let's talk about the recipe for these.

3/4 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup malt vinegar

1/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp paprika

1 tbsp crushed red pepper

1/4 onion

1 jalapeño

6 eggs

Boil the eggies, let them cool, remove the shells. Put all the other stuff in a pot, boil it for a bit, let it cool. Put the eggs in a jar, put the juice in the jar, seal the jar. Leave it in a cool place for about a week. And I mean 'cool' temperature wise. It's not sufficient to leave it in the presence of the Fonz for a week.

Keep in mind, this recipe is a work in progress, but I'm pretty sure it won't kill you. But no promises.

It Smells Like Spicy Easter In Here

2012-02-27T22:31:00.001-08:00

Deviling Eggs

Devil Spices

The Ceremony Is About to Commence

Joined

I had this idea, right. It's not going to be ready for some days, but I can't wait to start talking about it. Consider this a preview.

So here's my fundamental dilema. Point 1: My rickety old cardiovascular thingamy tends to pour on the psi. Point 2: A need for weird prepared foods is the very core of my being.

Overstated point 2 a bit. To be honest it's more like the D'' layer.

Anyway. The point is that 1 & 2 don't go together very well. This is because most prepared foods, weird or not, are basically just flavored salt.

One day last week I got a sandwich from sbux and noticed that it accounted for 47% of the recommended salt intake for the day. That sounds like something I'm making up. But I'm not. Not at all. So I think, maybe, before the blood just erupts from my temples, that I need to take charge of the whole show.

The solution to my dilema is simple, if not easy. I prepare my own ridiculous food (I know, you're shocked, right?) sans salt.

And lo, these spicy pickled eggs have no added salt. And probably they'll have some flavor. I dunno. I'm just winging this. I made the recipe up as I went, while looking at this.

We'll know in about a week. That's when the fun really begins. That's when we move on to phase 2. heeeee!

Shelved

Onigiri at BibimBap [Joomuk-bap]

2012-02-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

BibimBap is in the spot formerly occupied by Bento Kudasai. The place has changed owners, names etc. several times in the past year or two. I used to be called Grab N Bowl, which I never went to because it was called Grab N Bowl. BibimBap is apparently new enough that nobody has interneted it yet. I'm not going to be the one. At least not today.

Anyway, I thought I'd stop in for a light breakfast. Onigiri breakfast.

spicy tuna, fried anchovy, crab meat

Yes, that's an anchovy's head. Fried Anchovy joomuk-bap.

crab meat joomuk-bap

spicy tuna joomuk-bap

This being a Korean place, I think it's probably more properly called joomukbob or joomuk-bap. And, indeed, these are not the triangles of rice with stuff in the middle that I was expecting.

Not that I'm complaining. These things were good.

Well, the crab and the spicy tuna were fantastic. The fried anchovy was just a bit much.

Because it was a giant ball of fried anchovies.

A. Giant. ball of fried anchovies.

Heads and all. Now, I like weird preserved fish things as much as the next man. But no. Don't think I'm having it again.

Other stuff, yeah. I'll go back for the other stuff.

Chocolate Orange Toasty

2012-02-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

The best thing ever

cali style sweet orange marmalade

ooooh yeah [smashes through wall]

Oh, Leffy done did it again.

Culinary history is happening right here. right now.

Your classic PB&J has many variations, but they all fall in to the larger "nut butter and sweet fruit preserves sandwich" category. So does this. It is the OM&N, the Orange Marmalade and Nutella sandwich.

It is made, as you can see, from California Style Sweet Orange marmalade, Nutella, and white toast. It goes together like a standard PB&J on toast. And it is the best thing ever.

I'm not even joking. It is literally and objectively the best thing ever to happen in the history of the universe. It even surpasses the Raspberry Jam and Nutella sandwich (not an easy feat).

You're welcome.

Peasecods

2012-01-21T13:12:00.000-08:00

The cook shop also sold... in the summer peasecods, fresh peas boiled in their pods which you ate like artichoke leaves, dragging the peas away from the pod, but first dipping them into melted butter with added salt, pepper and vinegar. (This was called 'scaldings of peas', still being sold in exactly the same way in the 1850s.)

British Food - An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History [p.61], Colin Spencer, 2002

What we've got here is 12th century fast food.

The cook shops operated around the Thames as early as 1190, and probably earlier. There was also various meat dishes, including savory pies, but the peasecods have caught my interest because they seem pretty easy to make, and tasty to eat. As soon as I can get my hands on some peas in the pods, I'll try this out. I may have to wait until summer; I've never seen frozen peasecods a la edamame.

I don't know that these were really quite as long lived as Spencer says. Henry Mayhew doesn't agree that they were still being sold this way in 1851. Emphasis mine.

The sale of hot green peas in the strees is of great antiquity... In many parts of the country it is, or was, customary to have "scaldings of peas," often held as a sort of rustic feast. The peas were not shelled, but boiled in the pod, and eaten by the bod being dipped in melted butter, with a little pepper, salt, and vinegar, and then drawn through the teeth to extract the peas, the pod being thrown away... None of the street-sellers, however, whom I saw, remembered the peas being vended in any other form than shelled and boiled as at present.

London Labour and the London Poor: a Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work. Volume 1 [p.180] Henry Mayhew, 1851

Disclaimer. Book titles link to amazon, who will give me money if you happen to buy the book. Where possible I link the page number directly to the related content (on google books or whatever).

Baking Bread

2012-01-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

homemade toast

I enjoy making bread. It's a nice project for a cold day, and it's not really as complicated as all that when you have a good recipe. I tend to go for over complicated stuff, but this weekend I kept it simple. I chose a recipe has just four ingredients, yeast, water, salt and flour. It makes fantastically dense and yeasty bread.

collecting the stuff

I'm not going to actually give you the recipe, unless you ask. If you're in to it, you should get a book about baking. I have the book of bread, which is pretty good, but whatever.

I will show a lot of pictures though. Here we see the yeast going creamy.

yeast

Salt and a bunch of flour go in.

flour

dough

It gets mixed up, and stuck on the counter.

dough

work surface

needing kneeding

Kneeding takes about ten minutes later. I don't have a machine or anything. Just good, old fashioned hands. Once it's nice and elastic, and all the gluten is activated, it rises for a couple hours. The stovetop has a warming pad, which sped up the rise.

mr dough, you're kneeded

he is risen

he is beaten down

After splitting the dough in half and putting it in pans, it rises another hour. Then, finally, actual baking.

he was panned

he rose again

baking

Then cooling. Then slicing. Then eating.

baked

cooling

sliced

Eating eating eating. Yum yum yum. This bread is fantastic with butter. It makes a pretty good sandwich too. I could see myself eating this stuff as my primary bread. I'll be making it again.

Cheesy Beanos

2012-01-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

Cheesy Beanos

I am so having these. Just need to get some proper beans from somewheres. (via the guardian)

Bibimbap

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

bibimbap

with egg

So, after this post I was going to make some chogochujang and follow it up with a nice kimchi bibimbap. Well, it turns out my gochujang expired in january 2010. I decided to give it a miss.

I still went ahead with the bibimbap though. Had to use sriracha though, and old rice and an overcooked egg. But it was still a tasty dinner.

chogochujang

2012-01-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Gochujang

I have some of this in the fridge. Maybe I'll make some chogochujang today.
Gochujang: Korean Go-to, All-In-One Magic Chile Sauce

Fried Mac&Cheese Balls

2012-01-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

mac and cheese balls

People ask me, "do you go out very often, over there in Bremerton?" The thing I tell them, and this may shock you to the core of your being, is "no."

bunch of balls

more fried stuff

The main reason being is that my heart can't take it. Spicy fried mac and cheese balls are tasty, yes. But I don't want to die like that. I want to live! And what else is on the menu? Fish and chips. I might as well bacon up my sausage (warning, awful video)!

This is the Bremerton Bar and Grill (warning, awful music), btw. Right doon by the ferry dock, in that old bank what's now a restaurant. You know the one. The one they turned in to the Bremerton Bar and Grill.

New Years Herring

2012-01-01T14:56:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, dear readers. You will probably know by know of my affinity for tinned fish. So for my first meal of the year, I broke out a tin of fried herring. Obviously, I just have some sitting around; see point one.

It's german, tangy and slightly spicy. And it's quite good on toast. Have it with with sparkling wine and you've got the breakfast of champers.

In a can

on toast

in bits

Turkey Curry

2012-01-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

rice

cooking up

The idea for this meal came from outside of casa rakkaleff (which is still a thing. white stripes metaphor, yadda yadda). It came from an Irregular Shed. Since he's half a world away, he can mention a boxing day dinner on boxing day, and we here can copy him also on boxing day. The internet. It's tops. (Why I waited to post this I have no idea)

So, yeah, turkey curry. In true casa rakkaleff style this was both a joint effort and made up as we went along. It started with onions. Then some peas and curry powder. Like, four tablespoons of curry powder. We don't play around.

Normally casa rakkaleff curry has diced tomatoes from a can, the juice of which is the base of the sauce (anybody who wants to argue over the authenticity of this need to remember two things. 1. the hot peppers that curry is known for come from the same continent as as the tomatoes. and 2. we're crackers). This time we went for chicken stock.

Of course, we weren't waiting for hours. Who plans out a meal more than an hour in advance [smart people? -ed]. We thickened it with some yogurt.

And it was good. I had the left overs for breakfast the next day. That's the kind of man I am.

finished product

Cheese and Wine

2011-12-28T18:14:00.000-08:00

Broiled Provolone

Yes, this is dinner. It's made of cheese.

There's nothing quite like the simplicity of a cheese and wine dinner. Except, of course, it's not simple at all.

Making cheese is a pretty complicated. Have you ever tried it? You can make queso fresca with stuff you've got in your kitchen but even then it's complicated. If you want to make stuff that's going to be aged, pwwft.

Wine is the same way. Think you can just chuck some grapes in the blender, add some time, and get wine out? Well, you can't.

Bread, Cheese, Wine

Even bread. I've made bread. It's not that big a deal. You just add the magic yeast granules and... And oh, right, where do those come from? If you had to make bread with out a packet of fleischmann's yeast would you know how? Will all post-apocalyptic breads be flat?

These days, even the simple pleasures are facilitated by a vast conglomeration of teams of people. And that's a lot of people. Think on that the next time you have a cheese and wine. Though to what end, I have no idea. Really. There's not much of this wine left...

Tandoori Tikka Chicken

2011-10-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

Speaking of World Market. This marinade fell in to my basket while I was there. Luckily I just happened to have a kitchen full of chicken, skewers and electric grills.

No trick photography! This is a single, shocking shot!

The funny thing about this stuff is there's "No ... Artificial Colours", and yet the package clearly depicts bright red/orange (rorange?) chicken bits. How is this not false advertising?

It's easy. Easy peasy. In the directions they tell you to add orange food dye if you want orange chicken.

Mmm. Charry.

It's nice to have the choice to be honest.

Anyway, it's a simple and quick marinade. Yogurt and the packet. We had greek yogurt, which worked out very well, actually. I think I'll be doing this again.

Mint Aero Bar

2011-10-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

After some encouragement from santos, I'm attempting to dust off this blog. I'm going to start with the fantastically photogenic mint Aero bar.

Mint Aero Bar

Because, damn. Look at how green that is!

They're rare here in Seattle, but cost plus has 'em. Get 'em while they're GREEN.