The Cultured Cook

Scottish Winter Stew

Americans eat oats for breakfast and in the occasional cookie.  Scots eat them for breakfast, too…and for lunch and dinner and everything in between.  They eat them in scones and stews and porridges and even with fish.  And why not?  Not only are oats one of the most nutrient-rich grains on the planet, they have a wonderful habit of transforming watery soups into thick, satisfying stews.  (Steel-cut oats or whole oats, that is — the rolled variety has usually had its outer bran removed, and much of that thickening power lies in the bran.)

Steel-cut oats are pretty easy to find these days; you might even come across gluten-free oats, which have been grown and processed in their own fields and factories rather than being grown and processed alongside wheat.  Given the plenitude and reasonable cost of oats — not to mention their flavor and versatility — we could take some valuable lessons from the Scots!  Besides, cold winter days seem a less colder if you have a hot stew simmering on the stove. Roasting the vegetables is optional, but again, why not drive off the chill of winter with some warm, aromatic roasting? Slow-roasted vegetables will also add a deeper, more umami-rich flavor to your stew.

Scottish Winter Stew

4 stalks celery, cut into 2″-long pieces (do not cut down the centers of the stalks as this would make the pieces too small for roasting)*
1 large onion, cut into thick rounds*
4 carrots, cut into 2″-long pieces (only split very wide chunks in half; leave the tips intact)*
1 knob celeriac/celery root, cut into 1″ cubes (optional)*

In a glass pan (or several pans), toss veggies with peanut oil, sea salt, and freshly-cracked pepper. Roast at 375 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until veggies are a golden brown, stirring at 15-minute intervals.

While veggies are roasting, get the soup going:

3 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
8 oz. shiitake or button mushrooms, sliced
1 large tomato, chopped
4 c. chicken broth, preferably from free-range chickens
2 tsp. (combined) of any or all of these spices: thyme, winter savory, sage
Roasted vegetables (see above)
1/2 cup uncooked steel-cut oats

In a large soup pot, sautée garlic in butter or ghee on medium-low heat for about 2 minutes or until garlic is softened and fragrant. Add mushrooms and tomato and continue to cook, stirring often, for about 5 more minutes. Add chicken broth, spices, and roasted vegetables.** Increase heat to high and wait for the soup to barely come to a boil; when it does, notch the heat back down to medium-low and let it simmer for at least 10 minutes.  (This can be your holding point if you’re making the stew ahead of time — just let it quietly simmer for up to an hour.  You may need to add another cup of broth or water to the stew before adding the oats.)

When you’re about 20 minutes away from wanting to serve the stew, add the oats and let it simmer for another 15-20 minutes or until the oats are cooked through to your satisfaction. (I prefer mine to remain a bit toothsome.) Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

* If you’re sautéeing these veggies rather than roasting them, cut them into smaller pieces so that they will cook through when you pan-fry them.

** Also note that you can make use of any roasted veggie for this recipe: leeks, mushrooms, red peppers, corn, green beans…whatever you like and/or happen to have on hand. (A great way to use up leftover roasted veggies!)

Corn Spaghetti Tossed with Guacamole

A whimsical name for a whimsical dish: pasta tossed with guacamole.  I got the idea when I wanted to make guacamole but was out of corn chips.  What to do?  Use corn in a different form, I decided.  I did.  I also deepened the flavors of the dish by sautéeing the garlic and onion before stirring them into the smashed avocado.

This is a great way to serve extra guacamole…and people who object to the greenness of the dip may be more willing to eat noodles swathed in greenness.  (Dad!)  After all, pesto is green, and everyone loves that on pasta.  If a child is balking at the idea of a green meal, tell her you’re serving Shrek pasta for dinner.

“Monster” Pasta (Spaghetti Tossed with Guacamole)
Both gluten-free and wheat versions given

2 servings of a pasta of your choice, prepared according to package instructions (corn is best, but a mild brown rice or wheat would also work)*
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
1 small onion, diced
1 avocado
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 T. fresh lemon juice
Salt and pepper

While pasta is cooking, sautée olive oil, garlic, and onion over medium-low heat in a small saucepan for about 2 minutes or until garlic is fragrant and onion is translucent. Stir often to prevent garlic from browning. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a flat-bottomed bowl, mash avocado with a fork. (It works best if you can easily press down into the avocado flesh.) Stir in tomato, lemon juice, garlic, and onion.** Season to taste with salt and pepper, then toss with warm pasta. Serve immediately. A dollop of good-quality sour cream or Greek yogurt would be a nice garnish.

Enjoy!

* Use corn or brown rice to make this dish gluten-free.

** Note that this is how you make basic guacamole, whether you want to toss it with pasta or dip chips in it.  Just use raw onions and garlic rather than cooked ones and use about half (or less) the amount to account for the fact that they’ll be much stronger-tasting when they’re raw.

PB&C (Peanut Butter & Cocoa)

Who doesn’t like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?  Peanut butter and chocolate just go together.  But I guarantee that once you make your own PB&C in solid form or smoothie/shake form, you won’t ever want to go back to the prepackaged kind.  The homemade variety tastes better, it’s a whole lot better for your health, AND you probably already have the ingredients for it on hand.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll just put it this way:

Milk Chocolate, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Milk Non-Fat, Milk Fat, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, PGPR, Emulsifiers, Peanut(s), Dextrose, Salt, TBHQ (off the Reese’s label)

OR

Whole milk , 100% peanut butter, cocoa powder, maple syrup (out of your own blender).

Seriously, you gotta try making your own!  I swear you’ll never want a commercial PB&C again.

Liquid PB&C

Blend 1 cup whole milk (preferably from grass-fed cows, like Calder’s or Organic Valley), 1 T. 100% peanut butter, 1 T. cocoa powder, and 1 T. maple syrup (preferably Grade B) until smooth.  Enjoy!

Traditional PB&C

Dunk a square of dark chocolate (at least 70%; I go for 90%) in 100% peanut butter.  Enjoy!

Homemade Hand Creams

If you’re in the kitchen a lot, you’re probably washing your hands a lot, and your hands  probably feel dry from time to time.  You could buy expensive hand creams to alleviate that, of course…or you can use the oils and minerals you already have to make your own products.

Not only is making your own far less expensive, you get a very high-quality product without a bunch of fragrances and preservatives.  (I began making lotions years ago, when I got frustrated with the scarcity and expense of unscented products.)  The only two caveats with homemade creams are that because they are made without preservatives, you cannot leave them in a hot place (they will melt) and you should make sure your hands are clean before poking a finger into your lotions so that you don’t contaminate them (they are not made with antibacterial chemicals the way commercial lotions are).

To make hand cream, you’ll need a large glass bowl, a small glass bowl (or a small glass measuring cup), a whisk, and a way to heat your oils and boil your water (I use my stovetop, but you could also use a microwave).  Have a clean container ready so that you can transfer your lotion to it once it’s emulsified.

These three lotions are: (top) Lanolin Cream, (middle) Cocoa Butter Cream, and (bottom) Coconut Cream.  The Cocoa Butter Cream is a mix of oils and waxes — it’s thick rather than fluffy — but the other two are water/oil emulsions and are consequently lighter in texture.  I’ll give you the recipe for making the Coconut Cream since it’s the easiest one to make and has the nicest texture.  Home-beauty author Janice Cox has written several books on how to make body, bath, and hair products at home, so if this lotion intrigues you, check out her Natural Beauty at Home!

Coconut Cream
Makes 8 ounces — you may wish to cut this in half depending on the size of your jar/container.

2 T. stearic acid powder*
1/4 cup coconut oil, preferably unrefined
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Melt stearic acid and coconut oil at a low temperature on the stove (or in a water bath) inside of a glass container. Alternatively, you can put the mixture in a large glass bowl, put it in the microwave, and use short bursts of microwave power. The goal is to melt it slowly — do NOT make it so hot that it bubbles. Swirl/stir often to help the stearic acid flakes melt into the oil. The mixture will have to end up in a large glass bowl, so if you don’t heat it in that to begin with, know that you’ll have to pour the oil mixture into the glass bowl when it’s hot and still very pour-able — stearic acid goes solid at room temperature.

While you’re melting the oil, boil some water. Add 1/2 tsp. baking soda to a heatproof measuring cup (i.e., Pyrex glass) or a small glass bowl. When the water is boiling and the oil/stearic acid is melted, pour 1/2 cup of water into the container with the baking soda and slightly swirl to dissolve soda (it’s easiest to use a heatproof measuring cup so that you can measure it as you’re pouring it). Slooooowly trickle water mixture into oil mixture (oil mixture must be in large bowl at this point!) and whisk briskly. This is the fun part: the clear oil and the water will turn into a beautifully rich, fluffy white cream! It’ll look like whipped cream, actually.

Transfer lotion to final container (one with a screwtop) and let sit uncovered until the cream is completely cool. Wipe out large bowl with a paper towel before attempting to use soap to clean it — soap won’t remove the waxy stearic acid.

If you’ve used unrefined coconut oil, your lotion will have wonderful scent of fresh coconuts…heavenly. This is by far my favorite cream!

* Stearic acid is actually a fat (fats are technically known as fatty acids). Plants contain it, animals contain it, our bodies contain it, we eat it in whole foods all the time — it’s nothing weird or unnatural. You can find stearic acid at candle-making shops or online at shops like www.mountainroseherbs.com (which sells an astonishing array of herbs and raw ingredients for making personal-care products).

Enjoy!

Sautéed Spinach & Apple

There are savory foods and there are sweet foods, and spinach is definitely one of the former.  But even when a food falls firmly into one category, you can mix and match it with foods from the other to create contrasts — it’s sort of like yin meets yang.  (Although I would probably draw the line at spinach ice cream.  Then again, you never know when and how the Kitchen Muse will strike…)

In this dish — which is based on a classic Spanish tapa — the savory spinach blends with the sweet apple and raisin to hit that yin/yang balance.  Pan-toasted pine nuts add both crunch and creaminess.  You could do it the Spanish way and serve this as an appetizer, or you could simply make more of it and serve it as a meal.  (It would be particularly spectacular alongside a nice leg of free-range chicken!)  Adding hard-boiled eggs would be another way to round it out into a full-fledged course.

Sautéed Spinach & Apples

Note:  this serves enough for 2 people for lunch.  Double recipe as needed, serve as a side (as suggested above), or add hard-boiled eggs to increase the recipe yield.

1 apple, cubed, skin left on
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup raisins
Several handfuls of spinach (baby or curly)
Extra-virgin olive oil or butter for cooking
Sea salt

In a wide pan over medium heat, sautée apple in olive oil or butter for about three minutes or until apple is soft and golden. Add pine nuts and continue to cook, shaking the pan often. The pine nuts should be toasted, fragrant, and golden-brown after about a minute. Turn down the heat to low and add raisins and spinach. If you’re using baby spinach, it should wilt in about a minute or so; curly spinach may take an additional minute. Gently turn spinach with a long-handled spoon as it’s cooking so that it wilts evenly. Sprinkle on a bit of sea salt to taste and serve piping hot.

¡Buen provecho!

P.S. Yes, I’m a huge comic book fan. Bats is one of my all-time favorites.

Cocktail Dogs

Here’s an example of how top-notch ingredients can transform standard ballgame junk fare into a dish you’d be proud to serve Emeril Lagasse.  Seek out grass-fed hot dogs (Trader Joe’s carries products from Applegate Farms), whip up your own homemade cocktail sauce, and enjoy a truly American meal.  The proof really is in the dog!

Real American Cocktail Dogs

Start with good hot dogs, like Applegate’s beef dogs, Niman Ranch’s pork sausages, or Shelton’s chicken or turkey franks.  (All of these products are from grass-fed animals.)

Spicy Chili Sauce
This recipe makes enough sauce for about 6 hot dogs. Double amounts as needed.

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
1 cup tomato sauce
1 tsp. ground mustard (or mustard seeds)
1/2 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. maple syrup, preferably Grade B
1 T. red wine vinegar
1 T. soy sauce
Pinch of sea salt and freshly-cracked black pepper
Crushed red pepper (optional)

In a smallish saucepan, sautée onion in olive oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until onion is soft. Add garlic and continue to cook for another 2 or 3 minutes or until garlic is fragrant. (Do not allow garlic to burn!) Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and turn heat down to low. Let simmer for about 20 minutes to allow the flavors to marry.

While sauce is simmering, slice hot dogs/sausages/franks into rounds and sautée them in a pat of butter over medium-high heat until slices are nicely browned. Stir in simmered chili sauce and serve immediately.

Now, that’s ballpark food!

Roasted Corn Enrobed in Chocolate

I always love to tinker in the kitchen (when my dad does so in his workshop, we call it “puttering”), but lately, I’ve been even more inspired to see if the sometimes-odd-sounding culinary combinations I come up with in my head actually taste as good as I’m hoping they will.  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes that’s due to a-not-so-fortuitous ingredient pairing and sometimes things flop because the technique doesn’t work the way I thought it would.  (Which is why you will not be reading about my pumpkin-cream pasta idea.  Not yet, anyway — I found out that trying to make a roux with sweet rice flour results in a glue, and while my pumpkin-glue pasta tasted okay, I would only serve it to myself.  When I’m really hungry.)

But I digress…the reason for my recent propelled inspiration is the book A Day at elBulli: an insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adriá.  A friend gave me this remarkable tome for my birthday, and ever since I drooled over artistic photography and read the precisely-written explanations of how the world’s best restaurant creates, flows, and serves, I’ve been getting more experimental with my pairings.  (Ferran Adriá is the chef and owner of elBulli, a restaurant in Spain that receives 2 MILLION reservation requests each year when the restaurant only has the capacity to serve 8,000 diners each year.  That means you have a 1% shot at getting at a reservation.  And the requests generally go something like, “I’d like a table for two any time in 2011.”)

Hence, the roasted corn enrobed in dark chocolate!  I’d roasted the corn (along with a bunch of other veggies) the previous night for dinner and used the leftovers to make these chocolates the next day.  While using a proper chocolate/candy mold would have been the best way to make them, I didn’t have that, so I used what I did find in my cupboard:  a 1960’s-era hard plastic ravioli maker.  It had smooth little cups dented into a tray, and I thought, “Well, shoot, better than anything else I’ve got.”  And it worked!  So you, too, can use whatever in your kitchen is nice and small and rounded and smooth — just grease each individual cup first.  The resulting confection is a little bit chewy, a little bit salty, a little bit corny…and a lot bit chocolatey, especially if you do what I did and use 90% dark Swiss chocolate.  (Not for the faint of tooth!)

Roasted Corn Enrobed in Chocolate

Place a few kernels of roasted corn (I roasted mine with unrefined peanut oil and sea salt) into each greased cup.  Set aside.

In a small saucepan, melt chocolate* and coconut oil* over very low heat, stirring constantly, until melted.  Carefully pour over each mound of kernels, using a spatula to scrape all of the chocolate out of the pan.  Freeze chocolates for one hour or refrigerate for three hours to harden them, then use a butter knife or stiff, small spatula to pop each chocolate free from the tray.  After they’ve hardened, store in a cool, dark place…or eat them right away.  Enjoy!

Next up:  mango and pink peppercorns enrobed in chocolate!

* The proportion of chocolate to oil should be 20 grams per 1 1/2 tsp. oil.  The reason I used coconut oil was to enable the chocolate to be solid at room temperature, to enable it to pop out of the mold better, and to give it a little bit more creaminess.  (And because I used very dark chocolate, this also means that the chocolates were dairy-free.)  I also used 90% dark chocolate; lower percentages will yield a bit softer chocolate, although anything 70% and above should be fine.  I would not, however, attempt this with milk chocolate, not unless you greatly increase the amount of oil to compensate for the softer chocolate.

If you have a sweet tooth, I would use 85% dark and add 1 tsp. of sucanat or honey for every 20 g of chocolate.  (If you’re using Lindt bars, 20 g equals 2 squares.)  Also note that 20 g of chocolate will yield 4 smallish chocolate creations, so make as much as you want for as many as you need.

Ugli Fruit

Okay, I’ll admit it — I’ve been shallow.  For years, I’ve avoided the ugli fruit because it was called an ugli fruit.  (And because it didn’t look weird enough.  I get so curious about strange foods I’ve never seen before that I would happily try something called “ugly” as long as it looked weird enough.)

I love citrus, though, and I realized that I’d tried all the other oddball citruses:  pomelos, tangerines, kumquats, yuzus, tangelos, blood oranges, even limequats.  (Yes, they look like kumquats and taste like limes.)  It was just time for things to get ugli.

So they did.  I found out that ugli fruits are oddly baggy — it seems like the skin is a bit too big for the inner sections — and that they taste like a tangy-yet-sweet grapefruit.  The fact that the juicy sections are too small for their britches makes them a bit tricky to squeeze on my citrus juicer but also makes them rather handy to pull out and eat.  All in all, I would say that ugli fruit can be treated like a tart orange or a sweet grapefruit, depending on how you’d like to use it (as drinking juice, tossed with salads, squeezed onto seafood, etc.).  One thing is certain:  ugli fruits sure do taste pretty!

Goat Gouda, White Cheddar & Spanish Manchego

You can’t go wrong with a classy cheese.  It can be goat cheese, sheep cheese, cow cheese, yellow cheese, white cheese, orange cheese…it can have gray ash or dried cherries or dried herbs in it.  It can even have blue mold in it.  Whatever its story, top-notch cheeses always have a welcome placemat on my table.

One of the great things about cheese is that it’s delicious served alongside something (or melted into something or sprinkled on top of something) or all by itself.  Another great thing is that there is an astonishing array of cheeses out there — Spain alone boasts over 100 native cheeses.  And nowadays, smaller-scale stores are starting to offer small pieces of cheese amongst the larger chunks.  Samplers, if you will.  (Large chain stores, however, are not good places to explore new fromage frontiers.)  That way, you can get a nice piece of a $15/lb. cheese for $2 and see if you like it.

Whenever I’m poking about in the cheese basket, I go for variety:  I try to find one cow’s milk cheese, one made from goat’s milk, and one from sheep.  Not only is it more interesting to taste the (very!) different flavors each one offers, but it’s also a good way to avoid overdoing it on cow’s milk and risk developing an allergy to it.  I also try to get raw cheeses whenever possible — they’re more flavorful and easier to digest.  (Again, mixing things up helps prevent problems down the line.)  And when you’re talking top-notch cheeses, you’re also talking milk from grass-fed animals, which is another big nutritional and gustatory plus.

The above selection, for example, includes a Benning goat Gouda from Holland, a 12-month Manchego sheep cheese from Spain, and an American St. German artisian white Cheddar.  (My all-time favorite American cheese is Prarie Breeze.)  On that same trip — to my great delight! — I also found a cheese made from cow, goat, and sheep milk…quite an intriguing blend of flavors.  (I ate that wedge before I got a chance to take the picture.  Oops…but yum!)

A few things to remember when serving cheese for yourself or others:  let it come to room temperature, and don’t be afraid of mold.  If it molds, that just proves that you have some very lively cheese.  Cut off the specks and eat the rest before the bacteria beats you to it.  (As a matter of course, you might want to cut off the sides of the cheese that touched the plastic wrap since it can sometimes leave an aftertaste.)  As far as the room-temp thing goes, if you’re not going to eat the whole wedge, it’s best to cut off the part you do want, tightly re-wrap the remainder and stick it back in the fridge, and then let the sacrificial chunk come to room temperature.  (You can speed that process up by slicing or cubing it.  That also makes it easier to eat the cheese.)

If you’re lactose-intolerant, you may very well be able to consume raw dairy products, so you might want to give raw-milk cheese a shot.  (Look at the ingredients to see if it’s made of unpasteurized milk.)  If you have a problem with cow milk, you might be able to consume goat or sheep milk.  Plenty of European cheeses –and some American ones — are made with those.

And if you’re shopping in boutique markets in New York, you might just stumble upon Caravane.  It’s the only cheese in the world made of camel’s milk and it is at the top of my Fantasy Food List.  (Along with Moroccan argan oil and Tibetan yak-butter tea.)  If anyone out there has sampled Caravane, please let me know how it tastes!

Papaya

The best kind of fruit is the kind that yields all of itself to the cook:  flesh, skin, and seeds.  If it can be used in savory or sweet settings, so much the better!

Enter the papaya, a fruit that can be sliced, sautéed, and served as a vegetable when green.  You can scoop out the flesh and use the sturdy skin as a serving vessel for fruit salads, ice cream, or anything else that can be eaten with a spoon (a fork would rip through the “bowl”).  The sweet, silky-smooth flesh can be included in salsas and salads, puréed into sauces and smoothies, frozen into ice cream, and freeze-dried into chips.  Or you could add an interesting coolness to cocktails by serving them with frozen papaya-chunk “ice cubes.” (Mojito with papaya cubes, anyone?)

The seeds are edible, too, and resemble a cross between a caperberry and a peppercorn — they have the texture of the former and the flavor of the latter.  You can use them as garnish or include them in dishes that call for capers, like baked chicken with a delicate stock-based sauce or poached fish set off with lemon juice and sea salt.  Some cooks in southeastern Asia even dry out the seeds and then grind them the way we would grind peppercorns.

I think the best way to enjoy papayas, though, is straight off the spoon.  Just cut them in half laterally, scoop out the seeds (you might want to leave a few in for contrasting flavor/texture), and then spoon out curls of sweet papaya meat.

Enjoy!