Nice Potato Salad

 

 
Not exactly a Nicoise salad, but still pretty nice. Har har. Moving right along...

I said I'd bring potato salad to Jej's picnic, and I'd had some little potato finger-food thingies that were 'nicoise inspired' which gave me this idea. Traditionally, Salad Nicoise has potatoes, green beans, olives, eggs, tuna and sometimes tomatoes on it. The hors d'oeuvres  were basically just tiny tuna-deviled potatoes with a green bean stabbed through the top and a sprinkle of "egg mimosa" which meant little crumbs of egg yolk to make it look fancy. The green bean was awkward to eat. But I liked the potato part, and as silly as it was, the green bean tasted really good. Still, what I wanted was potato salad, not tuna salad, so I came up with this.

1 lb tiny yellow potatoes
1/2 lb fresh green beans
a handful of parsley, chopped
a green onion, sliced fine
2 cold, hard boiled eggs, sliced
1/2 cup olives, coarsely chopped
zest of a lemon

dressing:

juice of a lemon, about 1/4 cup
2 T fish sauce
1 T sherry vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
pepper
2 T minced fresh thyme

Mix all the dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake them up. Set aside.

Boil the potatoes whole until you can stick a fork through them. Drain them, then let them cool completely. Meanwhile blanch the green beans. To do this, bring a pot of water to a boil, then dump in the beans. Leave the beans in the water just until they turn translucent and bright green. Drain the beans then either dump them into a pot of ice water or run them under cold water until they are chilled.

When the potatoes are cold, cut them into bite sized bits. Cut the green beans on and angle to increase the area of cut surface (and to make them prettier). Put all the salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss with dressing. The orange things in the picture are nasturtium petals, they're just to make it look fancy.

Ok, this was a pretty good salad, but some things occurred to me later, namely

1. It would have been better if I'd roasted the bitty potatoes instead. I think little toasty parts would definitely add  a more complex and interesting flavor.

2. I might put in tiny red tomatoes. Both for color and because tomatoes.

3. Tuna in olive oil. Yes, the fish sauce is fine, but the fish itself is actually more important to the whole nicoise thing than just being a way to add a certain fishy something-something. I think partly it's texture, and partly because fish sauce is fermented, which gives a very different character to things.

4. It would look better if you just decorated the top with egg slices. The egg yolks get all smushed up if you stir them into the salad.

Yardlong Beans

 

 
I went to Fubonn on Memorial Day in spite of the weather. It makes a very nice bicycle adventure in good weather, and a slightly chancy but still enjoyable one in less nice weather. I got some of the usual stuff, but I also got a jar of powdered ginger drink, a box of dashi sachets, a very ordinary orange soda pop with the most remarkable Japanese packaging, a box of preserved plums that are too icky to eat, and because I am trying to branch out from the tofu and broccoli rut, I got a can of braised gluten and a pack of yardlong beans.

I was skeptical about the beans being actual beans. Once I cooked them and the beans popped out of the pods it became apparent that they really are just that, albeit a tad spooky looking. I like green beans in any case, but these are somehow particularly good. They are more tender than any western style of green bean I've eaten so far, and they have a more subtle bean flavor.

a handful of yardlong beans
half an onion, sliced quite thin
teaspoon minced fresh ginger
sesame oil
salt

can of gluten tidbits

oil for cooking

Remove any little stems left in the beans, then cut the beans into manageable lengths. Put a skillet on medium hot with some oil and a pinch of salt. When the oil starts shimmying in the pan, throw in the beans and stir them around to coat them with oil and get them good and hot. Add about 1/4 cup of water to the pan and cover it to trap the steam. When the water is evaporated, add the onions and ginger, and a little more oil if needed. Stir until the onions are brown, then add the tidbits. Stir until heated through, serve with rice, and hot sauce if you like it.

Nothing special going on here as far as technique, but the ingredients are a change of pace for me. The beans are one thing, the gluten thingummies are another. Dad used to call them vegetarian abalone, and they are also called seitan. Whatever you call them, I called them disgusting when I was a kid. I'm not sure about them now. They are squishy and chewy, and I don't know if they actually have a taste of their own, because if you buy them in a can they are packed in broth and oil.They aren't precisely fibrous, or sticky, and they are a little spongy, hence their ability to absorb flavoring agents. But they do go very well with yardlong beans, so there's that.

Falafel update

  

  
The first time I made falafel, I stuck to the traditional fried version. It was delicious. But deep frying is messy, and it is an amazingly inefficient way to use oil. This time I baked them, and I also remembered to take pictures.

Baked Falafel

Use the ingredient list from the original falafel recipe. Assemble the  ingredients as per the original recipe too, up until the cooking part. Then,

1. pre-heat the oven to 450
2. add 1/3 cup oil to the falafel mix and combine well
3. drop 2" blobs of mix onto an oiled cookie sheet
4. bake for 30  minutes.

They taste remarkable similar to the fried ones, but there is a tendency for them to be a little dry. I have some ideas about how to fix that, to wit:

1. Soak the beans longer. I got impatient, so these were under water for only about 12 hours. 24 to 36 hours might be better.
2. Leave a little more water in the mix, duh. Bean starches need a deal of moisture to cook nicely.
3. Make sure the blobs are big enough. If they're too small, they'll dehydrate.
4. I might make these in a mini muffin pan next time. Less surface area exposed to air, for one thing, and for another, if I make a moister batter, the muffin tins would help the bits keep their shape.

Really, this is a very nice way to avoid having a bucket of semi-used oil and a slick of grease on everything in your house. Moreover, its far less work. No standing around hovering over your fritters, just plunk them in the oven and set a timer. I think with some tweaking, this recipe could be improved enough that it would be comparable to the original. If I make it again, I'll tell you how it goes.

Noodles and greens, noodles and beans

  

   
I don't like bowtie pasta. It reminds me of my college cafeteria, a thing which was distressing and, on at least one occasion, traumatic. They served a lot of bowtie pasta. I don't like the name farfalle either. It sounds both prissy and ludicrous.

Elbow noodles, on the other hand, generally make me feel pretty chipper. It's true, I avoid cold macaroni salad, but elbow noodles themselves are not the problem. I just think letting your pasta go cold and mushy and then putting mayonnaise and pickle relish on it is gross. I like elbows. Elbows are what you make mac & cheese out of, and that's a good thing. Mac & cheese was a very special food in my childhood, and I retain great admiration for it. Also, the shape of the noodle itself is enjoyable. If you cook them to the right texture, you can squoosh the air out of the noodle with your lip and cause the elbow to suck itself onto your tongue when it bounces back into shape. I think mom didn't like that aspect so much, but I did. Maybe she just didn't like the fact that having attached a noodle to my tongue, I was eager to display the result to my dining companions. As an adult, I'm sure she was right about that.

I don't actively refuse to eat bowties, it just takes something kind of special to make me thing 'hmmm, I'd like to eat some of those.' That's what was so unusual about this recipe that a friend posted a link to. I got a bit excited about it. Pasta, nuts, greens, beans, garlic, sounds good. Even if the picture did have bowties in it.

1 cup small pasta, like elbow noodles
1 bag Trader Joe's baby arugula
1 large clove garlic, maybe 2, crushed or minced
1/2 can white beans, rinsed
1/2 teaspoon broth concentrate, maybe a smidge less
toasted walnuts
olive oil, salt, pepper

Boil the noodles in salted water, and save about a cup of the boiling water when you drain them.

In a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients comfortably, heat up a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Saute the garlic for a minute, sprinkle on a little salt, and put in all the greens. Stir them up until they are wilted and tender, then add the beans, the pasta and the broth concentrate with some of the pasta water. Stir to combine, and then let it heat through. Serve with nuts if you like them.


Points to consider:

1. On a practical level, elbow noodles are about the same size as beans, which makes it easy to keep the pasta to legume ratio constant throughout the dish. This is good for eating, but not as interesting to look at as having something like bowties. I'd rather have my food eat good than look good.
2. On the other hand, the arugula will have an insurmountable tendency to clump up. You will have to take a fork and comb the greens apart a bit in order to eat them with the noodles and beans. You could chop the greens slightly, but somehow that seems...incorrect. I could just be fussing over details.
3. The finished product can be anything from quite dry, almost like a warm pasta salad, to something more like soup, depending on how much liquid you add back to the pot. It's up to you. I made it dry this time, because I want the noodles to be at least semi-solid tomorrow when I take the leftovers for lunch, but if I was pretty sure it was all going to get et at one sitting, I might make it more soup-like.
4. Yes, you want that whole bag of greens. At least. They shrink to nothing, pretty much.
5. The only reason this isn't vegan is because I use chicken stock. You could just as easily use veggie broth.

Falafel!

You can always tell when I'm extra pleased about something, because there are exclamation points. So, Yes! Falafel! I'm from Ann Arbor. This is not mere non sequitur, Ann Arbor is where Jerusalem Garden* is, and thus, all other falafel is to be compared to theirs, in my mind. When I was a small child, my parents wouldn't get us food from there. This was not, I maintain, due to pecuniary embarrassment, but rather due to dad's prejudice against the very idea of middle eastern food. It was certainly cheap- cheaper than Portland food cart cheap- although prices rose latterly.

Erica Knopper gave me my first falafel. I think she asked me if I liked falafel, and I said I didn't know what that was, and was it spicy? She said it wasn't 'really' spicy, which to a kid is just like saying Warning: grownup trying to get you to do something dreadfully uncomfortable. She must have realized this (I'm sure my skepticism was obvious), and offered to let me try some of hers.

It was delicious. It was rolled in pita, with lettuce and tomato, and it was crunchy, and warm, and savory, and sour (that was the tahini sauce), and just a bit spicy- I think I ate most of one of their falafel with hummus sandwiches. I used to hang out with lots of earnest hippies back then, and they cooked a lot of earnest food that usually tasted a bit odd to me. It didn't cross my mind until years later that what they were trying to do with all that earnest cooking was produce the experience of eating that falafel. It was vegetarian, it was comfort food, but more than that, it was just really good food.

 I moved here a little over 3 years ago, which was a little over 20 years after I ate that sandwich. In New York, I worked with a rapidly changing stream of several hundred energetic and quirky people in their 20's, and so when I ended up at a bar here in southeast a couple years ago, it didn't surprise me that I recognized one of the bartenders. Lots of people I'd worked with had moved to Portland, I got on the bandwagon pretty late. But I couldn't remember this dude's name. So finally I did the "hey, not to be creepy or anything, but haven't we met" and he said well, you look pretty familiar. New York? I say. No, not there, Michigan, he says. And it turns out that he was the guy who made my falafel patties at Jerusalem Garden before I left town. I sorta wish now that I'd got his number, or given him mine, just to hang out maybe, but I was feeling bashful, and he was at work, and well, you know. It was a little weird.

Sometimes I really miss that falafel. I'm not going to say that my falafel is at all the same as the falafel at J Garden- I used black eyed peas- but it's got the right something-something to it.

This is a single-girl sized recipe,which makes about 8-10 2-inch balls. About enough for dinner one day, and lunch the next.

3/4 cup dry black eyed peas

half bunch green onions, chopped-this is around 1/2 cup
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced very fine
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon paprika
a smidge of black pepper
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Cover the beans with at least 3 cups of water, and leave them to soak for about 24 hours. If you can stir them up and change the water somewhere in the middle, even better.

Rinse the beans and drain them thoroughly. Put them in a food processor with the onion and process until the mix looks like wet, green cornmeal. You'll have to keep scraping down the bowl. Add all the seasonings and process to combine.

Put about 3 inches of oil in a deep pot. Heat it to about 350 degrees, then drop spoonfuls of falafel into the oil. They take about 10 minutes to cook. Drain on paper towel for about 5 minutes, and eat with tahini dressing. And pickles, if you have 'em.

Oh yeah, tahini dressing.

1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon tahini paste
salt, and a pinch of cayenne

There's no reason you can't use all lemon juice, but I prefer it slightly less tart than that.

Notes-

1. I have a candy thermometer. I thought I'd never use it, but it's great for this. If you don't have one, test the pot by dropping a bit of dough in. Remember the noodle video? Falafel should only sizzle up about half that hard.
2. The temperature and thus, cooking time, is important. 10 minutes seems to be enough time to develop a dark, crusty outside, and a fully cooked interior. If the oil is hot enough to brown much faster than that, the insides might not be cooked, and if it isn't hot enough, the falafel will just be sodden and greasy. They will be quite dark when they're done.
3. Balls rather than patties are best for deep frying. Keeps the proportion of crust to middle balanced.
4. It is also important to let the balls stand for several minutes, because they will keep cooking for a while, which helps with the texture.
5. Most importantly, this recipe used raw dried beans, unlike many which call for a can of cooked. Here is my pseudo-scientific hypothesis: in canned beans, the starches are already cooked. When you mash them, the starches get gummy, and no matter how carefully you cook them, your falafel will be dense and puck-like. With raw beans, running them through the food processor before they are cooked breaks open all the plant cells and dumps the raw starches out into a slushy suspension of fiber and water, pretty much like, say, cake batter. Thus, when the falafel is cooked, the starches expand and remain subsequently unmolested, resulting in a substantial, but bread-like texture. Baking powder undoubtedly helps.

Other thoughts-

As I said, these are not quite like J Garden falafel. The only real reason I used black eyed peas instead of garbanzos is that those are what I had. But I think it's a pretty good knock-off. Of course, I asked the Falafel Guy (who did tell me his name, but I don't know that he'd want to be identified) about the secret formula for Jerusalem Garden falafel. He couldn't tell me, not having been granted the knowledge, but I'm pretty sure he said that there was thyme in it, and powdered garlic, and that they used a lot of green onions. Thyme was not a feature of any of the recipes I read before making mine, nor were garlic powder or scallions. I suspect the first two are the key flavor ingredients that make the recipe unique- thyme is not mentioned at all in any of the formulae I referred to, and garlic is always fresh. It's the scallions which make the dough bright green, and if you wanted to enhance the green effect, you could use just the tops of them. I'm going to have to try this with actual chick peas some time. The eyes of black eyed peas leave little dark flecks in the dough, which doesn't affect the flavor or texture, but sort of annoys me aesthetically.


*I could wish that their website was as awesome as their food, but I suppose I'm glad they concentrate on the essentials.

Hoppin John

I have no idea why you're supposed to eat blackeyed peas on new years day. Fortunately, I happen to like them, so I made up a bunch. Technically, 'Hoppin John' is a version of beans & rice made with  blackeyed peas, but I'm pretty sure that it's the peas, not the rice, which are the luck-inducing factor. I was feeling a trifle disorganized on the first of the year, and didn't get this post up that day, but I don't guess anybody else will care either.

Cook these the same way you would green beans, with bacon, onion, and salt. They take about an hour and a half, if you use the frozen fresh ones that you can get in little baggies at Fred Meyer.

They are supposed to be eaten with collard greens and cornbread, and although I like cornbread, I can do without collards. Nothing against collards, but they are a bit fiddly, and I would just as soon eat some other green.

I seem to remember saying on new year's eve that, during January, it's totally valid to feel that  it is a worthy goal to a) eat breakfast before noon, and b) wear pants before breakfast. I just want you all to know that today, I have done those things. Barely.

Green Beans

Green beans are really only appealing when they are cooked in one of 2 ways: either barely blanched enough to make them go bright green and then shocked in cold water to stop the cooking, or really, REALLY cooked. This is one option for the latter. Interesting cultural side note: hillbillies in Floyd County, Virginia, and hillbillies in Shandong Province, China, cook their green beans in exactly the same way. Here's how they do it-

Get a mess of green beans, an onion, and a good sized bit of bacon. Cut up the bacon and onions, put them in a pot with the beans and enough water to about half-cover the lot. Bring the pot to a boil. Cover it, reduce it to a simmer and add a few pinches of salt. If you want, you can put in a little bit of pepper. Stir it every once in a while, but mostly just leave the pot to simmer until the beans have nearly dried out, and you can almost hear them sizzling on the bottom of the pot. Take them off the heat, leave them to cool for a minute then stir them once to get the flavors well mixed and to take up any brown bits from the pan.

Practical notes: Use really good bacon. I used 2 slices of TJ's to about a pound of beans. Also, taste for salt after about half an hour, they take a good bit. It encourages Maillard reactions. They should take around an hour to cook.

Beans cooked this long develop nutty, roasty flavors that go really well with the smoky and meaty flavor of the bacon, but they retain their characteristic 'beany' taste as well. Also, long cooking makes them very tender, which is enhanced by the bacon fat. They are quite buttery, a satisfying thing to eat in the winter.

If you live in Floyd, you can eat them with biscuits, or rolls, cornbread, mashed potatoes, homemade pickles, and pork chops or chicken if you are at all reasonably prosperous. If you live in Shandong,  you can eat them with rolls, possibly  boiled potatoes, homemade pickles, and pork chops if you can afford it. But if you haven't got any of those things on hand, don't let that stop you from eating green beans. Really, there isn't anything they don't go with. I get creeped out by cooking raw meat in my own apartment, (the packaging is nasty) so I ate mine with a cup of tea and some gingerbread.

Trotter Chili

I made this because I had a pig's foot lying around. I guess you don't have to use a pigs foot, the shank-end of a hock would probably do just as well. The thing is, a fresh pig foot costs about 75 cents at Fubonn, and unless you're somebody's crazy chinese dad, you don't actually eat it anyway. (Bleah.) It's just to add gelatin and fat to the chili. It would probably be better to use fresh garlic, onions and bell peppers, but I was pretty sleepy when I made this, so I went the lazypants route and used dry ingredients.

1 pig foot

2 cans toms- I used the ones at fred meyer that say 'chili ready'
1 can black beans
1 T red mole- I used Dona Maria brand, it's ok for this, but it's kinda sweet.
1 T cocoa mix, the best quality you can find, or a heaping teaspoon of baking cocoa
1/2 t each, more or less, oregano, marjoram, paprika, cumin, coarsely ground coriander
dash of onion powder
a bay leaf

Put the pig foot in a 3 qt pot with a half gallon or so of water and bring it to a boil. Pour off the water & put in a fresh batch. This step is probably unnecessary, but I admit to a little squeamishness. Add 1/2 tsp salt to the pot and set it on a medium boil for an hour or two, or until the foot starts to fall apart. The salt is important, it reacts with the proteins in the pig's foot and makes them softer, faster. My piggy toes were frozen to start with, they took a long time.

Once the pig's foot is falling apart, throw all the other ingredients into the pot and simmer until it cooks down enough that you like the texture. Stir it from time to time or it will burn, it may take as much as another hour.

You could serve it with the cornbread from the last recipe, but I actually prefer corn chips with my chili, the crunch is nice. Pick out the bone and skin fragments, there isn't anything really worth eating on a trotter.