Tasty Bytes

Quite awhile back I wrote of my adventures with a quickly multiplying mushroom. We cut back now to one batch every 10 days or so which is much more manageable – we even have a few jars to pass on to our BIL who swears that it helps him power through his bike rides.

I thought I would post a few helpful hints on successfully fermenting your own with a few pic’s on the process…

First – cleanliness is a must. You want to make sure you wash your hands (remove rings) and clean all work surfaces so that you do not contaminate your brew with who knows what.

Of course you will need a kombucha mushroom and a bit of kombucha tea as a starter. If you know of anyone who ferments their own tea you can probably ask them for a ‘baby’ (most will be more than happy to pass one along) or you can order them online.

Equipment you will need:

a 3 quart clear glass bowl

a fine woven towel to cover the bowl (flour sack towels work great)

masking tape and a few rubber bands

Now, make a batch of tea – boil 3 quarts of water. When it comes to a boil, add 1 cup of granulated sugar – plain old sugar. Bring back to a boil and put in 4 tea bags – you can use any unflavored black or green tea. I use 2 spoons each of organic green and black tea in a giant tea ball. Bring back to a boil. Cover the pot and turn off the heat. Let the tea steep for about 20 minutes, remove the tea bags (or tea ball.)

Let the tea cool to room temp. I find this usually takes all day so I make the tea in the morning and do the next part in the evening.

Pour the un-fermented tea into the bowl and lay the mushroom light side up:

Pour about 2 cups of fermented tea on top of the mushroom. This is the starter to make sure things get fermenting along.

Put masking tape on the bowl to keep the towel from dipping in:

Make a big round rubber band by connecting a few together. I use a twist tie to connect them into a big circle:

Using a flour sack towel, cover the bowl and fasten the rubber bands around the rim:

It’s important to use a tightly woven towel (NOT cheese cloth) to keep fruit flies from entering.

Now just set the bowl in a safe out of the way place for 7-12 days to ferment away. With the cool winter weather, it’s been taking about 10 days for our batches to brew to our desired puckeriness. You can scoop out a bit with a clean shot glass for a taste after about 7 days until it has fermented to your tastes.

The mushroom will make a baby with each batch. For the next batch I use the ‘mother’ and either give away the baby or put into the compost. For the starter, I just use some of the newly fermented tea.

Have fun!

A cool article in the NYT a few weeks ago highlighted the ancient flavor enhancing and food preserving technique of smoking. Bonus – the article cited research that says smoking is relatively safe compared to BBQ since you do not char the food. It’s the burnt bits of meat that are implicated in cancers.

I do love lightly smoked foods – especially using the Chinese technique of smoking foods with tea.

For our Chinese New Year’s family dinner last night I made tea smoked duck legs. I’m proud to say that Mom declared them “really good.” While I don’t have a formally measured out recipe here is a sketch for the benefit of dear sis (who made incredible seared diver scallops with black bean sauce and a red bean mochi cake – yum! And sil made the traditional Korean New Year dumpling (mandu) and rice noodle (duk) soup…double yum!)

I marinated eight duck legs overnight with Shao Hsing wine, soy, sea salt, five spice, grated ginger, some orange peels and a pinch of allspice.

For the smoking mix I combined 1/4 c each brown rice, brown sugar and oolong tea (other teas that would work: jasmine, lychee) with a broken up 3″ cinnamon stick, 2 broken up star anise, 8 cloves, a few pieces of orange peels and a big pinch of chili flakes.

For my smoker I used a disposable aluminum half hotel pan with a rack. I place the smoking mix directly on the bottom of the pan and laid a loose piece of foil over the smoking mix to prevent the duck drippings from falling directly onto the smoking mix. I put the rack over this and lay the duck legs on the rack. Then I sealed the pan with foil.

I happen to have a portable stove so did the smoking part outside – key to avoiding divorce court since we don’t have an exhaust hood! I put the pan onto the burner on high heat. When I saw a few whisps of smoke escape from the edges of my smoker I turned down the heat to medium and smoked for 25 minutes. Then I turned off the heat and let it rest for another 10 minutes.

Phew! This is a lot of work!

Ok now I took the duck legs and coated in this glaze: 1/4 c hoisin sauce, 2 T pomegranate molasses (a good sub is 1 T honey), 1/2 tsp of grated ginger, 1/4 tsp of ground sichuan peppercorns, 1 tsp of orange zest, a splash of soy, a splash of balsamic and sriracha chili sauce to taste. Really, any favorite glaze will do here.

The final step: Finishing in the oven. I put the duck legs on a rack on a sheet pan and roasted in an 300F oven for 45 minutes to an hour. This step is to finish cooking the duck legs while rendering some of the duck fat and crisping up the skin. Sometimes I will put under the broiler for a few minutes to brown the skin if the skin is a tad too light. After removing from the oven I brushed on some more glaze.

These were a bit hard to serve for a family style dinner – I just separated the thigh from the leg and put on a platter. No one was shy though and just grabbed a leg or thigh and started chomping away.

I’ve done this with salmon (leaving out the finishing in the oven step, just brush on some glaze after it comes out of the smoker) cornish game hens and pork ribs. Next time I am going to use boneless duck breast from Liberty Ducks which I saw up at Baron Meats on Claremont Ave in Berkeley.

it’s peanut butter again but inspired by a traditional Chinese pastry that we only have during the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration. Here is one version. My Mom makes hers using special wrappers from New Hong Kong Noodle Company in San Francisco. I think they are called ‘Sui Gok’ wrappers – the are round like ‘sui gow’ wrappers but thinner. These are filled with a roasted peanut, shredded coconut, toasted sesame and brown sugar mixture. Then they are fried in peanut oil until they are crispy brown and the sugar in the filling has melted coating the insides. We look forward to this treat every year.

This year I decided to make a cookie based on ‘Gok Doy’ so here it is:

* Exported from MasterCook *

New Year Peanut Sesame Cookie

Recipe By :
Serving Size : 30 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories :

Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
1/4 pound slightly chilled unsalted butter — diced
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter (6.75 wt oz)
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup brown or white rice flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 cup sesame seeds, lightly toasted
3/4 cup shredded sweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 350F

Beat butter and sugar with a mixer on high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add the egg then peanut butter. Mix well. In a separate bowl, mix together flours, baking soda, and salt. Add to the peanut butter mixture and mix to a smooth dough. Now stir in by hand the sesame seeds and coconut – mix well.

Using a tablespoon or a small ice cream scoop (#70), form the dough into 1/2 inch balls and place on baking sheet lined with parchment (or silicon mat.) Flatten the balls or shape into little crescents. They should be about 1/4″ thick. Bake until golden brown, about 10-12 minutes. Cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to a rack to cool completely. Next time out I will adjust the recipe to leave out the egg to go for a more ‘shortbread’ texture.
Don’t pig out!

Happy New Year! The Year of the Golden Pig!

I’ve been craving Japanese style curry! But I wanted to make this from scratch because the packaged curry paste seemed too scary with all the MSG and other stuff. After searching high and low I based this recipe off of Saveur’s February 2007 issue. Though made a few changes 😉

I made this vegetarian with some veg broth, water and shiitakes instead of chicken and it still came out good! Ha ha. For me, I served it with some sauteed fish and brown rice…had it for dinner last night, breakfast and lunch today! I’m gonna turn yellow from all the turmeric! I’m on my own with this pot of curry because it was a tad too hot for P.

Other variations – add some coconut milk in place of some of the stock, add different veggies (zuchinni, sweet potato, winter squash, mushrooms.) Instead of chicken – use pork or beef (cook longer), shrimp or fish (cook separate from curry and serve with sauce on top). How about a few raisins thrown in? I used S & B brand curry – beware this is pretty hot even for the mild version.

Enjoy!

* Exported from MasterCook *

Curry Wafuu – Japanese Curry

Recipe By :
Serving Size : 4 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories :

Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
3 cups chicken stock or mix with water or sub vegetable broth
1 tablespoon oil
1 pound chicken thigh — cut in chunks
salt and pepper
Sauce
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon ginger — minced
1/2 medium onion — finely chopped
1 clove garlic — minced
2 tablespoons + 1 tsp flour (add another teaspoon or 2 if you like it thick)
2 tablespoons curry powder — S & B Brand
2 tablespoons crushed tomatoes
Remaining Ingredients
1/2 medium onion — diced in 1″ pieces
1 medium carrot — cut 1/2″ thick
1 stalk celery — cut 1/2″ thick
1 medium russet potato — cut in 1″ cubes
1 small fuji or granny smith apple — peeled and grated
1 each bay leaf
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Heat chicken stock in a 3 to 4 quart pot.

Salt and pepper chicken and saute in a skillet with oil. Remove from skillet and set aside.

In same skillet, melt butter and saute fine chopped onion. When onions are light brown add ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until onion is caramelized – add more butter if needed.

Sprinkle in flour and stir until browned.

Add curry powder and tomatoes. Stir to combine. Be careful not to burn curry…ick.

Remove from heat.

Add 1/2 cup of hot stock and whisk, scrapping up browned bits.

Pour into pot of chicken stock and whisk to thicken.

Add onion, carrot, celery, potato, bay leaf, apple and chicken. Simmer low for about 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Add honey, soy and salt to taste. Simmer another 10 minutes.

Serve over steamed brown rice.

Source:
“Saveur 100 Feb 2007”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I hate it when I can’t decide what kind of cookie I want to eat. This dilemma was moot at a recent party I attended. Lucky for me it was put on by a fabulous chef with a few talented chefs in attendance. MG always brings sweet treats and he did not disappoint with his Peanut Butter “Plenty” Cookies.

Not too far from the “Patti’s Favorite” cookies I like to make which have oatmeal, chocolate chips and shredded coconut, these cookies have the added addition of peanut butter and orange zest. Yum! Most peanut butter cookies are a bit rich and overly peanuty to me but these have a nice balance. I also love the textures that the coconut and oatmeal lend. These are the new favorite cookie in this house.

I made a few changes to his original recipe…a bit less sugar, used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of chopped bittersweet chocolate and baked them a tad darker.

Here is the recipe:

Peanut Butter ‘Plenty’ Cookie

1/2 lb slightly chilled unsalted butter, diced
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup crunchy or smooth peanut butter (9 wt oz or 256 g)
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 cups old fashion oatmeal
1 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
finely grated zest of 1 orange or tangerine

Preheat oven to 350F

Beat butter and sugars with a mixer on high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add eggs and vanilla, then add the peanut butter. Mix well. In a separate bowl, mix together the zest, flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to the peanut butter mixture and mix to a smooth dough. Now add by hand the oatmeal, chocolate and coconut – mix well.

Using a tablespoon or a small ice cream scoop (#70), form the dough into 1/2 inch balls and place on baking sheet lined with parchment (or silicon mat.) Flatten the balls with a fork (dip the fork in water if it sticks to the dough.) Bake until golden brown, about 10-14 minutes. Cool for about 5 minutes on the pan, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.