How Nice It Is To See Old Friends
Last night I had dinner with friends of some 30-years duration with whom I haven't shared space actual for probably three years. And it was great. I had my "Tao of the Bao" Chinese dumpling making dinner in which everyone builds the dumplings and eats to the point of stuffed-ness. Then leftovers go home with the guests since the amount of dumpling filling is eNORmous. I even have some of the leftovers myself but I hope to pass them along this afternoon to some more local friends.
I make some tasty, tasty dumplings I tell you whut.
UPDATE: Yes, I definitely should have taken pics of the dumplings progress. Net time I do this maybe I'll make a record of the progress and post it here. I may have to dragoon someone photogenic into a video record of the dumpling process. I only have movie star looks if you consider that "The Blob" was the star of the movie and not Steve McQueen.

A Qualified Success
Last evening I made the delicious Japanese sweet treat yokan. It's actually not difficult but it is laborious. I'm happy with the result but I have to go through a few more iterations before I'm completely satisfied. My main objection to the block I have in my fridge is that there are adzuki beans that survived the process whole. I used the immersion blender on the bean pot but was hesitant to blend the bejabbers out of them. Next time, no mercy.
UPDATE: Decided to listen to Basia this morning. Good choice.

The Quest Continues!
I have been seeking salt rising (or 'salt risen') bread ever since Lycurgus reminded me of it in comments. I believe I am nearing the acquisition of same. My favorite baker tells me that her first assay at the starter did not work out to her liking but she is going to continue to work on it for me. Woo hoo! She is indeed a sweetheart. I'm looking forward to that tomato sammich I tell ya whut.
I've also put in for a particular cake. But more on that as it develops.

I Can Honestly Say
That maple macadamia nut ice cream is fantastic. I will have to make more. In fact, I may need to get a larger ice cream maker....
OK, not really. But the flavor is killer.
UPDATE: After having the ice cream in the freezer for a couple of days I have to say that my opinion of it has dialed down a bit. It's damn good but the flavor is mild. I'm going to make it again but use the full cup of maple syrup. My house guest says that it tastes like eggnog to him. Which is understandable as there are six egg yolks in the recipe. But more maple is in the future.

Always 'Sperimentin'
Just ordered some adzuki beans and agar agar from Amazon. These are the crucial aspects of making the traditional Japanese sweet treat yokan. It's one of Lycurgus's favorite things. If I can follow the recipe, I may be able to make this delicious stuff myself and not be tied to the yokan cartel that tries to control our lives. Freedom!

(I'll try to take pics and post as I work at the making.)

In The BlogDog Kitchen
Prof. Reynolds today posts a link to Amazon's AlDente blog on one of the great grilling questions to plague mankind: to sauce or not. I'm going to remain hors de combat on that one. But it did call to mind something that I don't believe I've blogged yet. To wit: ginger steak.
If anyone doesn't accept that gingered beef is one of the finest flavors in the history of creation, don't even imagine you're sane. So how to get a whole steak all gingery and deliciously flavored on the grill? My take, which worked (ahem) rather well, was to get jar of sushi ginger and wrap pieces of the pickled ginger around the raw steak. Wrap that in plastic wrap for at least a few hours and overnight if possible. Then put the steak with the sushi ginger still on it on the grill. Let the grill char off the ginger and cook to your desired state. You will lose a little of the crusty char (MMMmmm!) on the steak but the flavor of the ginger will be absolutely suffused into the meat. I had one guest proclaim one of these steaks possibly the best steak he'd had. Overstatement perhaps but nice for a cook to hear to be sure.

Noted In Passing
One of the truly great things available in your local grocery store or supermarket, breakfast meat category, is Jimmy Dean Sage sausage, patty style. I have yet to find the best way to slice them to a thinness I prefer (probably freezing the tube for half an hour and doing all the slicing would work) but the flavor is just exactly, precisely the way I want my breffix sausage to taste. I think McDonald's sausage is based on this as it's almost exactly the same flavor. And McDonald's sausage absolutely kills.

Something Is Very, Very Wrong With Me
A couple of years ago, you would not have been able to get me to voluntarily buy or eat a tomato for any reason short of impending apocalypse. As my Brit friend and fellow English teacher in Japan used to say, there was a level of hungry that was 'tomato hungry" which was how famished he'd have to be before he'd eat a piece of tomato. I've long felt pretty much the same way. On my honeymoon as the waitress cleared our dishes one lunch, she observed that no tomatoes had been consumed on both my bride's and my salads. This resulted in the immortal phrase, "Neither one of yeez likes damadahs then." (This was in St. John, NB though you may want to place the accent more Joisey-like.)
The past, though, is always prologue. A couple of days ago, I sat at the kitchen table having a lively time with my visitor who had acquired a nice block of mozzarella for snacking purposes. I had also acquired a nice little Costco pack of Roma tomatoes (on the vine) for use in a dish I'll make in a day or so. I also had, in the kitchen, as I hadn't gotten to point of potting them, several young basil plants. You see where this is going, don't you? You'd be right.
I sliced the tomato to about mousepad thickness (probably should have done this on the bias but didn't think of it at the time), ground some smoked sea salt on the rounds, laid a hunk of the mozzarell' on each slice and a basil leaf atop that. Just amazingly delicious. Which is something you probably already know and is no surprise. But brother Lycurgus is reading this with his jaw dropped at least two notches. It's possible we may be in an alternate universe as what I described above would never have happened in the not-too-distant past on Normal Earth. Strange Earth has good tomatoes!

Sweet Blistering Jeebus!
It's hot here. Jungle hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot. And I had lunch at the Bob Evans restaurant this afternoon. Shockingly, it was not bad. Much better than the last dinner I had a Chili's (which I used to like). Sweet potato fries (cut a little thinner than I prefer), coleslaw (not bad - not nearly as good as mine), and a pot roast sandwich. Reasonably priced, good tasting food. Nothing to make the foodie go out of his or her way but absolutely acceptable. I'd eat there again. Our waiter said the wrap sandwiches are the best deal. I'll probably try one of those.

Kitchen Brief
I recently ordered a quartet of sea salts each in its own grinder from Wine Woot. Tonight I wanted just a bite of dinner and whipped up a couple of eggs in a bit of bacon grease (the second best thing in which to cook eggs trailing butter only by a bit). I opened the alderwood smoked salt and let me tell you: it smells great even before I let a salty morsel pass my lips. But, as you've already figured out, I ground some onto the eggs and hoe lee cow! If you use salt, get yourself some of this. The smoky flavor is delicious and intense and it seems, as much as I can't justify this, somehow saltier than regular table salt. I'm hooked. I hope the other salts are as good.

Once Again This Makes No Sense
Right now I would do serious harm to anyone who stood between me and a slice of lemon cake. I have no idea why but my tastebuds are just screaming "Lemon cake, you sunuvabitch! Lemon cake!"

On The Grill
Yes, friends, the dry aged steaks hit the grill this afternoon (early afternoon - I had a friend over to lunch which was steak, attempted coconut rice, grilled asparagus and bell pepper). Holy cow! As in actual apotheosis of a shard of bovine. I butterflied the steaks and it was interesting to see the color change of the interior versus the exterior. Here are a couple of shots of the halved steaks.


You'll note the dramatic difference of the red and the brown. One side effect of this is that the steaks are a lot easier to handle. They don't goo up your hands down as you deal with, say, cutting them in half.
The exterior is (you're not going to believe this!) dry. So it doesn't take being marked by the grill terribly well but I think that's a minor problem. It may mean that it's better not to butterfly the steak and let the melting marbling wet up the surface of the steak. I will try that and report thereon.
But the center ring of this circus of beef is the flavor. And it is incredible. It is more (please forgive the redundant nature of this) beefy, more meaty than an unaged steak. It's like the difference between a mouthful of cream and a mouthful of milk. I can't in good conscience suggest that you spend the kind of money restaurants charge for such steaks but I strongly suggest you try the home version. Strongly.

Bottom line on this, at the moment, is that I have to try a couple more permutations. Grilling a full thickness steak for example. Even absent full experimentation, I am going to do my utmost to cook only dry aged steaks from here on. They are that damn good.

A Step In The Process
Of dry aging that is. These are Costco choice steaks after being in the fridge for one wrapped day (a couple of days in the fridge in the poyfilm before that).

Dry Aging Steak
I was lucky enough to catch a recent episode of Alton Brown's "Good Eats" in which he dealt with dry aging a steak at home. I just took a squint at uToob whereon I didn't find said episode. Oh bother.
Nonetheless, if you're unfamiliar with dry aged steak, let's just say that it makes whatever steak you buy at your local purveyor of cow parts into a better thing than taking said steak out of the clingwrap and plonking it on the grill. The meat is kept from getting too dry and the flavor builds as the aging performs its glutaminic magic. Short version: This is what high-end steak houses do to make their steaks better than those served at Outbacks and the like. Nothing wrong with an Outback steak to be sure, but it's not been coddled for maximum flavor.
Now those high-end steak houses have special climate controlled rooms wherein their beef ages. At home, well if you have one of those rooms at home, please send all that excess money you have lying around to me. The idea is that the process can be accomplished in the refrigerator. Alton took a disposable aluminum pie tin, poked skewers through it to create a place for the steak to sit and have air circulate underneath. I have no disposable pie tins. However, my inspiration was to use the polyfoam tray that the steaks are sold in to the same end. I poked skewers through the side of those and a day later have found them to have performed exactly as I'd hoped.
The steaks themselves get wrapped in a paper towel which is discarded the second day and replaced by a fresh paper towel. Alton says that the second towel need not be switched out. I'm only on the start of the second day so I'll hold my water on that. Then the steaks are put on the "skewer grate" and tucked into the coldest part of the fridge (lowest level as far back as possible). I've only finished the first day so I can't report on the longevity of the second towel wrap but the first wraps all came off without sticking to the steaks and all have a reasonable amount of steak juice on them - not at all soaked through.
I did take some pics but I've managed to leave my camera far enough away from the computing masheen to make posting this as a text post the logical thing to do for now. I will post the pics tomorrow and I'll probably grill a steak on Friday as a test. I have both prime and choice steaks so it'll be interesting to see what dry aging does to each. I think a final assessment should be posted early next week. Looks like a winner so far though.
UPDATE: My fridge is filled with a marvelous funk of aging beef. It's a funk all right but it's like good mushrooms - earthy, dense, almost chewy. Makes you salivate even as you're saying, "What's that funky smell?" First steak goes on the grill Sunday evening.

Cookery At Maggie's Farm
Today's linkage is a post at Maggie's Farm (Another one I need to add to the blogroll) getting all up in the greens and slaw and the bacon and the vinegar and the.... Please note, read the comments as well. There's much of a muchness in the comments. I'm salivating even before I've cooked me egg for brekkies. I was tempted to comment about the buttermilk cilantro coleslaw recipe I posted here but held myself back. I'm all about restraint doncha know.

When Good Onions Go Bad
Wherein the blog post starts with a brief digression into onion prices. The other day at Trader Joe's, I picked up one of their "Onion Trio" mesh bags which contains a red onion, a yellow onion and a white onion. Name becomes kinda obvious then, doncha think? I like onions and I seem to be particularly partial to red onions these days. But I don't use a heck of a lot of them being a single guy 'n' all. So I picked up the bag and hat the native wit to look at the price before I dropped it in my shopping bucket. $2.99. Paging Whiskey Tango Foxtrot to aisle 2! A dollar per onion! I do not think so.
Instead I grabbed a bag of yellow and a bag of sweet onions for about the same price as the "trio." At home I put the onions in a paper bag more to get them out of the way than properly store them only to find a little spot of moisture on the bottom of the bag the next day. That's not good. So I pulled out all the onions and wiped them down only to find no moisture. Hmm. Oh well. Back they went into the bag. Naturally I had to check the bag again and damned if there wasn't a new spot of onion exudate. This called for further investigation.
The Sherlock Holmes of the kitchen finally tracked down the culprit. One onion was rotting from the core. The outer four or five thick layers were fine, firm and dry but the center was like a reverse twinkie: full of nasty softening, gooey onion instead of delicious creamy filling. And the remains of the stem was actually wicking out the spooge. Bad onion! Bad!

I Like The Looks Of This

SMOKED SALMON DEVILED EGGS

Makes 8 stuffed egg halves. Instead of yolks, these deviled eggs are stuffed with smoked salmon mousse that tastes as rich, although it contains significantly less fat and cholesterol.

1/4 pound smoked salmon, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons light cream cheese
2 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground white or black pepper
4 large hard-cooked eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise

1. Place the salmon, cream cheese, mayonnaise, and lemon juice in the bowl of a food processor. Whirl until the mixture is nubbly. Add 3 or 4 grinds of pepper and whirl to combine.

2. Remove and discard the egg yolks. Place the whites cut side up on a plate. With a spoon, scoop up enough salmon filling to make balls the size of yolks. Roll the filling between your fingers to form round balls. Set the filling into the whites. Serve chilled.

"Discard the egg yolks?" Are you mad? Maybe they can't be used in this recipe but for the love of all that's protein, they can be used in other ways (added into a potato salad for example - but then I love an eggy potato salad).
And I love the instruction "whirl until the mixture is nubbly." Great image. I have a little shopping to do but I think I'll be assaying this one over the weekend.

Next Up On The Foodie Front
Having watched Alton Brown go medieval on the tiny little asses of lentils, I had to get some into my pantry. So I ordered some Bob's Red Mill red lentils from the 'Zon. (I just got some Bob's Red Mill brewer's yeast after reading the consumer reviews at the 'Zon and I have to agree - very good brewer's yeast.) When they arrive, I'm going this way: mirepoix into some olive oil, sweat it a bit, add quartered onion (for substantial pieces to eat), bay leaves, a smoked ham hock broken and cut to allow maximum flavor over the short cooking cycle of the lentils, the lentils and, added about halfway through the cooking, walnuts for the crunch. I was thinking of using chicken stock but with the ham hock, just water should do fine. Smoked finishing salt and pepper to taste with a green salad and rice.
Done and done. I'd also het up the lentils with hot sauce but that's just me.

You Want to Know What's A Big Damn Mistake?
Apart from the whole Obama election of course? Starting a web search about sharpening Japanese knives, that's what. It leads to such places as the Japanese Food Report which makes me: First - hungry at 11:00pm, Second - desirous of accumulating a whole slew of ingredients that I don't have on hand (I am now in dire need of katsuobushi), Third - misty with nostalgia for a childhood of delicious Japanese treats and Finally - trepid that I don't have the capacity to cook those wonderful foods.
The great thing about it all is that it drives creativity. The leading picture of thinly sliced beef wrapped around scallions and grilled sets my mind on fire. What would make this exceptional? Hoisin brushed over the exterior? A red miso paste with a dash of mirin inside with the scallions? I love the spicy sprouts as well, which stand by themselves but would a flavored rice go with this? A plain white rice? Would a miso soup starter preclude the idea of using miso in the dish itself?

So, as manifold as the awful things such late night caprices contain are the wonderful they contain as well. I'm now planning to acquire a roast and thinly slice the raw beef in order to make this dish. I'm not sure it would be spectacular, but with a few iterations to test some ideas and refine them, this could be a dish that might be both excellent on the palate and possibly easy to assemble. Fingers crossed. When I get to it, I will blog it.

The Non-Review of "Hooked"
A while back I mentioned that I thought I might go to a local seafood restaurant called "Hooked" and a friend recently asked me whether I'd been. I still haven't. I decided instead to have lunch at another local place I hadn't tried before called "Mimi's Cafe." I did satisfy my desire for meatloaf but I was decidedly underwhelmed with the place. The decor is New Orleans/Mardi Gras inspired and it comes across as a little ... 'forced' I guess would be the word. Famous Dave's barbecue places have a similarly constructed ambiance but there it doesn't across as forced (and they serve mac-n-cheese with jalapeno in it, oh yeah!)
It was lunch on a rainy Saturday and when we showed up it was remarkably full which I really don't understand as the food was not exceptional and the prices are not so great as to pull crowds in this economy. But it does offer a lot of what's characterized as 'comfort food,' though it pales in comparison to the all-time champ for that (the Black-Eyed Pea restaurant). I opted for the veg with my meatloaf and what I got was some carrot coins and broccoli florets that were undercooked (just a little) and kind of flabby. Outback just schools them when it comes to the veg side. The meatloaf was OK albeit generic. The executive chef for this place must not have much imagination. It doesn't take a lot to stamp a signature on something as flexible as the loaf de meat.
Bottom line: Meh. It's OK. Not special. A decent family place but not as inexpensive as I'd expect a family place to be. You could do worse. But it wouldn't be hard to do better either.