Archives for the 'Recipes' Category
Happy Knishmas, Everyone!
My gift to you this holiday season:
Snowshoe
1.5 oz. bourbon
1.5 oz. peppermint schnapps (I’m partial to Rumple Minze for its power to attract barbarian women riding polar bears)
Serve over ice.
I cadged this recipe from last December’s Imbibe (yet which I can’t find in their drink database) and man, is this an awesome wintertime drink — especially right after shoveling the driveway.
Enjoy and Merry Knishmas!
It’s World Vegetarian Day & National Vegetarian Month! Let’s Have a Contest
In honor of October 1 being World Vegetarian Day, which kicks off National Vegetarian Month, we here at Crispy are holding a contest. But first, HSUS on the celebrations:
National Vegetarian Month is kicked off on October 1st by World Vegetarian Day. In response, The Humane Society of the United States—the nation’s largest animal welfare organization—is encouraging consumers to try delicious meat alternatives that are not derived from the routine abuses billions of farm animals endure. The HSUS is also providing recipes for healthy, mouth-watering vegetarian meal ideas.
We here at Crispy would also like to raise awareness about vegetarianism and vegetarian cuisine. To kick off our efforts, we’re urging Crispy readers to try a delicious assortment of meat-alternative alternatives. (Namely, meat.)
We also want to get on the recipe kick. But instead of sharing, we’ve devised a contest in which we ask you, loyal readers, to share your least vegetarian-friendly recipes. Entrants must be in one of two categories. The first consists of some food you have personally consumed. For the second category, we’re looking for (meaty) pie-in-the-sky ideas on what hypothetical dish would be most reviled by vegetarians. Be creative. While cheeseburger = boring, CAFO-aged crate veal in a horsemeat & baby seal reduction = more like it.
We’ll announce our favorites at the end of October. Winners will get some prize of indeterminate (but undoubtedly little) value.
Submit your recipe here in comments or here.
One final note… If the photo above looks mysteriously like a very crispy Santa’s Little Helper to you, I’m with you on that.
Adventures in Grilling, Boozing
Having spent my summer grilling and drinking rum, I thought I’d share two recipes useful for outdoor entertaining.
The first is a dry rub for steak that I impulsively whipped together early in the season:
1 Tbsp. granulated brown sugar
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients and rub into a thin-cut steak. Allow to sit a half-hour or so before grilling. Works best with indirect heat; that is, cooking the steak to the side rather than immediately over the coals. This allows the sugar to glaze over the steak.
The granulated brown sugar is important since regular brown sugar is difficult to spread evenly on the meat, leading to clumping and burning. Also, while McCormick curry powder is fine, I use Oriental Brand Hot Jamaican, which has anise and is heavier on the turmeric, giving it a smokier taste that lends itself to grilling.
Busting Out with Bustrengo
September 3 is the festal day of Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino, founded in 301 by one Marinus, erstwhile stonemason, future saint, but at the time, just an eligible bachelor on the run, seeking to be left the heck alone:
According to legend, Marinus died in the Winter of 366, and his last words were: “Relinquo vos liberos ab utroque homine.” (”I leave you free from both men”). This somewhat mysterious phrase is most likely to refer to the two “men” from whose oppressive power Saint Marinus had decided to separate himself, becoming a hermit on Mount Titano: respectively the Emperor and the Pope. This affirmation of freedom from both the State and the Church, however legendary, has always been the inspiration of the tiny republic.
I felt inspired myself, inspired to make something Sammarinese as a tribute to this sensible, freedom-seeking individual. Being of a one track mind, I turned to the dessert options and found a recipe for a cake called Bustrengo. It involves dried figs, and I am biased toward figs.
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It’s a Gruel, Gruel World
Since I missed the cutoff for turning in paperwork to get paid for my assistantship at the University of Arkansas–and since the financial aid department here seems to distribute loan checks at a governmentally glacial pace–I joked with a program staffer that I’m going to have to subsist on gruel for the next ten days or so until I’m paid.
That led to an amusing email gruel-recipe exchange. Serious Eats, for example, had a good post on gruel earlier this year–who knew gruel had onions in it?
Of all those I looked over, a HootingYard recipe (sent by program staffer Lisa) certainly takes the cake as the ultimate gruel concoction. A taste:
You will need the following ingredients: oats; water.
The following equipment is essential: a big pot; a big spoon; the Holy Bible.
On a blustery winter’s day, with a chill in the very marrow of your poor, poor bones, take the big pot & carry it, trudging through snow, to the rusty spigot on the other side of the village. Weeping, use what little strength you have to turn the spigot until a woeful driblet of brackish water appears. Make sure you place the big iron pot under the drip, so that water collects in it. With luck, & prayer, you should find that the pot is about three quarters full before twilight, when of course the village curfew comes into effect. The evil Grand Vizier proclaimed so in his ukase, to make sure that all pious people are behind their latched & bolted doors by nightfall. Place the big pot on your oven & set it on full.
Whole thing here. More on gruel here. Jazz up your gruel by using a Chinese, Southwestern, or pan-Asian variety.
One final note: an 1883 article from a New Zealand paper details how a railroad executive who provided his workers with gruel instead of beer saw a remarkable increase in productivity. Sadly, it looks like I’ll be superproductive these next couple of weeks.
Defusing the car bomb
Despite my cocktailian tendencies, I have a soft spot for the Irish car bomb. Sure, it’s got a politically incorrect name, it’s messy, it curdles if you don’t drink it fast enough, and it requires chugging a half-pint of Guinness, but it’s also tasty and fun. Even so, I’m not about to put it on my cocktail menu at a classy place like Carlyle. Well, not exactly…
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Giving New Meaning to the Word “Fathead”
Score one for fat: Fatty foods might contain memory enhancers. University of California, Irvine, scientists found that oleic acids from fats—and the compound oleoylethanolamide used in the lab—send signals to the memory-forming amygdala.
(All of my grandmother’s recipe cards call for “oleo,” short for “oleomargarine,” as the butter substitute was originally known. Perhaps that explains my fond memories of her peach dumplings and sugar cookies.)
One of the scientists offered an evolutionary explanation for the fat/fond memory relationship:
“By helping mammals remember where and when they have eaten a fatty meal, OEA’s memory-enhancing activity seems to have been an important evolutionary tool for early humans and other animals. Remembering the location and context of a fatty meal was probably an important survival mechanism for early humans.”
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reminds us that there’s a lot we still don’t know about the moving parts (so to speak) of human biology. The researchers seems to have been originally investigating the compound for its potential in encouraging weight loss. While it’s still far too early to tell what the human applications might be—the fats are being tested on rats for now—there’s discussion that this might be good news for Alzheimer’s patients as well. You never know what you’re going to find on your way to developing much-condemned “frivolous” pharma.
Pizza in Pyongyang: Kimchi Pie?
North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong Il has accomplished a miracle: Pizza in Pyongyang.
It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader’s heart—the nation’s first “authentic” Italian pizzeria.
That’s a long time to go without a decent slice, and I feel for the guy. But this is a pretty serious case of reinventing the wheel, no?
For those of you keeping score at home:
- New York, center of capitalism: 1,520 pizza joints (search pizza and pizzeria here)
- Pyongyang, communist hermit kingdom: 1 pizza joint
(To be fair, there are those who say it’s impossible to get a decent slice outside New York, even in the good old U.S. of A. While I’d submit New Haven pizza as holding its own, I understand the sentiment.)
And the Pyongyang v. New York pizza smack-down above doesn’t even take into account per capita figures. New York has 9 million residents. North Korea has 24 million (starving) residents. Thus this charming contrast:
Despite the food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.
Via Volokh Conspiracy, where we are reminded of another glorious chapter in North Korean culinary history: “Kim Jong Il’s plan to provide pizza for the toiling masses of North Korea seems to have worked out better than his earlier plan to alleviate food shortages by breeding imported giant rabbits, which was aborted when the greedy Dear Leader decided to eat the initial batch of rabbits himself.”
Go here for the recipe for the delicious looking kimchi pork belly pizza pictured above.
Semi-crossposted at Reason.com
Mmmm….Doughnuts….
In England, Shrove Tuesday is the day to eat pancakes. (Unless you’re Anglo-Catholic apparently. The local parish is having crepes, not pancakes. Sounds very Catholic and not so Anglo to me.) On the Continent, Fastnacht, Mardi Gras, Carnevale, etc. is the day to eat fried dough. Who, I ask you, has chosen the better part?
I plump (literally I fear) for the Continent and started off the day frying up Krapfen, Shenkli, and “Naked Ladies with Their Legs Crossed“. I remain skeptical of the fried cookie (the Shenkli were not that great), but the Naked Ladies are–as I guess one should expect naked ladies to be–winners.
Fattening Tuesday
I pride myself on making the finest etouffee east of the Mississippi Hudson. Here’s my recipe, which was originally the crawfish etouffee recipe rustled from The New Orleans Cookbook but since modified (little hard to find crawfish or crawfish fat in Connecticut). As I tell Mrs. Kuhl, it’s basically health food — except for, you know, the sausage and the six tablespoons of butter.
Origins of Rubber Chicken in French Recipe?
Molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck, speaking to the Daily Mail for its food issue, relates the craziest recipe he’s ever come across. And it’s a real doozy.
The most outrageous recipe I found was from an antique French cook book – although I’d be amazed if anyone actually made it. You pluck a chicken while it’s still alive, brush its skin with a wheatgerm-and-saffron dripping, then tuck its head under its wing and rock it to sleep.
Then you put it on a serving platter between two cooked chickens, bring it to the table and wait for someone to try to carve it – at which point this apparently roast chicken wakes up, squawks and runs down the table. You then take the poor bird, kill it, stuff its neck with mercury and sulphur, stitch it up and roast it, and as you bring it back to the table the chemicals in its neck are still making a clucking noise – as if it were alive.
Wow. And wow.
That’s probably the highlight, but there are several other fun nuggets in the article, which features Brit celeb chefs Blumenthal, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Gordon Ramsay, and loathesome crumb opponent Jamie Oliver.
Also this weekend across the pond, Brit chef Antony Worrall Thompson came out against nationwide plans for a menu-labeling scheme in The Sun.
Christmas Brunch
Most people rave about Christmas dinner, spending all morning and all afternoon preparing a delicious turkey, duck, ham, etc. Snacking throughout the day, tasting your various dishes at their different stages of preparation can be rewarding and delicious, but why don’t you treat yourself (and perhaps even your dozens of relatives) to a delicious brunch or breakfast?? As the most important meal of the day, it’ll provide you with the energy you need to last the basting, baking, stuffing, and kneading. NY Times has provided a list of possible Christmas breakfast/brunch recipes.
Here’s my favorite (that didn’t make the cut), provided by Paula Deen (yes, beware — it is not for the faint of heart). It’s a Baked French Toast Casserole. I’ve made it for the past few holiday brunches and it is DELICIOUS — you should start it the night before, but if you wake up early enough, you can prepare and stick it in the refrigerator for a noonish/early afternoon brunch. Or it could even be a special way to start your post-Christmas morning. Happy Holidays and Happy Eating!!
Cripsy Potluck and the Last Word
When I worked at Open City in Washington, DC, our bar was surprisingly well stocked with European liqueurs. That doesn’t mean we knew what to do with them, it just means we had them. For the most part they sat on the shelf gathering dust.
I made it my mission as a bartender to find uses for some of these obscure liqueurs. My favorite became Chartreuse. The Garden Party from Imbibe — basically a Mojito with Chartreuse in place of rum — served as my introduction to the liqueur and on one particularly memorable night my friends and I finished off the bottle that the restaurant had purchased for its opening nearly two years before. I’ve been in love with the stuff ever since.
It turns out co-blogger Katherine recently discovered Chartreuse as well, so when I brought a bottle to the Crispy Potluck I knew exactly what to make for her. And since I’m the last one here to post a recipe from the party, here’s the Last Word cocktail:
.75 oz gin
.75 oz green Chartreuse
.75 oz maraschino liqueur
.75 oz fresh lime juice
It’s a weird recipe. Chartreuse is intensely aromatic and flavorful, reportedly made with 130 different herbs, and can easily overpower other ingredients in a drink. Maraschino, a fruity, nutty liqueur made from whole Marasca cherries, can also dominate. Combining these in equal parts with lime and gin somehow evens them out, creating a beguiling, complex, delicious cocktail.
Paul Clarke notes that this libation may have been created during Prohibition at the Detroit Athletic Club, making this one of the few bright spots in a dark era for mixology. Why the Detroit Athletic Club happened to have Chartreuse and maraschino on hand we may never know, but I’m very glad they did.
Spam fingers are as good as they sound
Better late than never, I present to you the recipe for my Spam Fingers with Aioli that I served at the Crispy potluck last week.
First, the aioli. In a mixer, combine 2 egg yolks, 4 crushed garlic cloves (I like to use a microplane to disintegrate them), and 1/8 cup lemon juice. Get the mixer going nice and fast and slowly stream in 2 cups of mild olive oil. If it gets too thick, add a bit more lemon juice. Season with salt to taste.
For the Spam Fingers, heat the oven to 375. Slice a can of Spam into finger-like pieces. Beat one egg and 2 tablespoons of milk in a bowl. Coat each Spam finger with flour, then dip in the milk mixture and roll in panko. Place the fingers in a alumium-lined baking sheet. Bake 15 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with the aioli over them and/or as a side dipping sauce.
Gravlax with Team Crispy
My contribution to the Crispy dinner was gravlax. It is a wonderful crowd-pleaser and only requires four ingredients beyond the salmon. To make it, cut your piece of salmon in half. Then place one half on a dish and lay on top of it a generous amount of fresh dill. Then sprinkle caraway, salt and granulated brown sugar, enough to coat the fish but not too much. Then place the other piece of salmon on top of the first one, flesh meeting flesh, wrap it up in plastic wrap and put something on top of it to press the flesh together. Let it sit for two days at least and it will be great.
I served the gravlax on toasted German sourdough bread (bought at Rodman’s in DC) with whipped Philly cream cheese and capers.
