Experimental Food Culture

In apology for my delay in posting anything in quite some time, I proudly give you one of my very first recipes created many moons ago at the very start of when my kitchen became an experimental laboratory.  In the beginning, when graduate school had just started and this millenium was still in it’s first decade, before I began to throw my own parties, I was graciously invited to a Chinese New Year party by Taiwanese friend Tara (to whom of course this recipe is dedicated and who I owe a Pumpkin Cake in celebration of her marriage; Tara also holds the honorary title of Sous Chef in my kitchen as she is extremely good at mixing, follow directions, and licking out bowls after we are done cooking).  In an effort to be a good guest that Chinese New Year, I attempted to make moon cakes, which while not tasting horrible, were definitely not made to match anyone’s memory.

As part of my education that night in the proper way to make food, I was instructed in the artful skill of dumpling making.  This recipe is of course the strange path I took that simple dumpling down.  Curry dumplings are an undertaking, so don’t expect a quick dish with this recipe.  But the planning is every bit worth it, as my amigos from work will attest to as they were the beneficiaries of this recipe this past week.

Life needs spice and bland is forgettable so these are definitely going to give be something savory and warming, but not too spicy.

• 1 Bunch Asparagus
• 1 Bag Carrots
• a Few Baby Bok Choy
• Pondicherry Curry (If you use another curry spice, I cannot guarantee what flavor you will end up with, but have at it, good luck, and save me a dumpling.)
• 1 package of gyoza dumpling wrappers (These can be found at most major grocery chain stores in the refrigerated section-mine came from Ralphs-as well as at Asian Markets-i.e. 99 Cent Ranch.)
• a little bit of Sea Salt
• Olive or Vegetable Oil

Take your asparagus, carrots, and bok choy and cut off and dispose of all the non-edible ends.  Then chunk the remainder into manageable size chunks (remember these must be small for putting in a dumpling).  Steam the chunked vegetables until soft.  Steaming can be done in a pot or in the microwave, but steaming in the pot will always retain more nutrients.  When I steam the chunked vegetables in a pot, I layer the firmer vegetables at the bottom, closest to the steam, so that they will cook more than those at the top.  At the bottom of my steamer were the carrots, followed by the asparagus, and then the leafy bok choy on top.

In a wok or large skillet, mix the steamed vegetables with some olive oil and a little bit of sea salt.  Saute briefly and add the pondicherry curry liberally.  Seriously, have a heavy hand with the curry and taste it as you go.  The result won’t necessarily look the prettiest, but that’s why we have a nice wrapper to hide it in.

Now we are ready to stuff our dumplings.  There is quite a technique to this act, and if you mess it up, it won’t be pretty.

Place a teaspoon amount of curry vegetable filling in the center of the dumpling wrapper.  Instinctively you will want to overfill your dumpling.  Don’t!  An overfilled dumpling will tear or explode in the pan.  A teaspoon is sufficient.  Have a small bowl of water nearby to dip a finger or two into.  Once you’ve wet your fingers, moisten half the edge of the filled dumpling wrapper and fold the edges onto themselves creating a plump dumpling half-circle.  Now the tricky part, the crimp.  After securely pushing the edges together, pinch the edge towards one side approximately four times along the edge creating a crimped look. (I realized there was no good way of explaining using text on how to close a dumpling and there are many ways to do it, so I looked up someone who appears to be an expert for you… click here for a dumpling folding crash course.)  Folding the dumplings is exhausting, so I suggest doing it with others to help you.  Also, the folding process ends when you run out of wrappers or you run out of filling.

Now you are ready to cook your curry dumplings.  There are many ways to cook the dumplings, but I know three: steaming, pan frying, and baking.  For steaming, you need a special bamboo steamer that sits in the wok.  If you have one, I expect you know how to use it.  If you don’t have one, don’t worry about it and try the other methods.  Baking was something I tried out this last time, and is definitely not a traditional way to prepare dumplings.  However it did make them crispier and added a little crackle to the wrapper.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and put them in on a lightly oiled baking tray until golden brown.  I brushed mine with a light layer of oil as well.

To properly pan fry your dumplings you will need a pan with a lid and approximately 1/3 cup water for each pan of dumplings you plan on making.  Place a small amount of oil in the pan and evenly distribute it along the bottom of the pan.  Place your dumplings in the pan and fry until lightly brown on the down side.  Then pour in the water and cover the pan.  This will cook the top side and rest of the dumpling that wasn’t in contact with the pan.  The water will evaporate as it cooks, but after a few minutes your dumplings will be done and can be removed from the pan.  The dumplings may retain a lot of oil from pan frying, so you can let them sit on a paper towel to blot as they cool.  

The true reason I call them Curry “No Hurry” Dumplings is because they always taste better the next day after the flavors have fully entered every bit of the dumplings.  You can refrigerate them and eat them cold after cooking, or heat them back up.  I have also experimented with spicy soy and lemon honey dipping sauces on occasion.  As always, enjoy and don’t be afraid to cook outside the lines!

Even when your cupboards are next to bare, you can still make something delicious and memorable with just the basics.  If you have no cooking skills, or if you are cooking with children, you can still make this and not screw up.  

This recipe is a favorite of my friend Laney for whom I threw together a last minute bread pudding for a Memorial Day(?) poolside BBQ and to this day, despite the many other recipes I’ve concocted over the years, she always requests it.  

In cooking, and in life, there are many, many opportunities to deviate from the standard, break the rules, and make your recipe your own.  This bread pudding is your opportunity to explore your options and live outside the lines of regular recipes and the boredom of average life.  Other recipes for bread pudding will usually overly complicate and add unneeded steps.  

• 1 Brioche or Challah (You can use any loaf of white bread here, but I prefer a brioche or challah because they are sweeter and don’t come precut)
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
• 1 cup sugar (The natural, non-bleached, granulated sugar is preferred, but use what you want… it’ll still taste good)
• 3 large eggs, beaten (If your eggs aren’t that big, go for it and add a fourth…it won’t hurt)
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream (You can use milk, but the cream is much richer… and this is NOT whipped cream, it’s the stuff used to make real whipped cream)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Add-In Options (no more than a half cup):

1. Golden Raisins Soaked in Rum (Cover raisins in Rum, let soak 20 minutes, remove raisins to add to recipe)
2. Blackberries
3. Chocolate (This can be small chocolate pieces or even a little cocoa powder added to the egg mix… I had some hot chocolate powder I added this time around, and drizzled it with chocolate syrup on top after it was cooked)
4. Whatever you might think would taste good, or nothing at all…

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Rub sides of an approximately 3 quart casserole dish with butter.

Cut entire loaf of bread into 1” cubes.  DO NOT DECRUST! Here is where most recipes say your bread needs to be stale or toasted…NOT TRUE!!! They’re just adding unnecessary steps when you can make it just as good this way ;)

Combine sugar, eggs, heavy whipping cream, vanilla extract, and cinnamon.  Mix until even.

Put bread cubes into your dish.  If you’ve decided to go outside the box and put something a little extra in, evenly mix it with the bread cubes now.

Pour all of the egg mixture over  the bread mix, and attempt to distribute it across the entire pan.  The bread will act as little sponges and suck up a lot of the liquid.

Press down on the top of the bread pudding mix, pushing dry pieces of bread into the wet mixture until every piece of bread no longer appears dry.

Bake it for 40 to 55 minutes (depending on your oven) or until its pudding texture, but no runny liquid.  Runny liquid goes back in for a little bit longer.  Let it sit a bit before eating, even if the smell is irresistible, or you’ll feel like you poured molten lava into your mouth.

If it’s hot outside, serve it cold.  If it’s cold outside, serve it hot.  Eat it any time, day or night.  Make it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  Go crazy!  However you eat it, eat it with friends or loved ones and it will always taste better.

Sometimes we don’t have the right words to say how we feel, or sometimes the right words don’t even exist.  But if you cook for someone and truly put your all into it, no matter how that cooking turns out or how simple or elaborate the dish, they will know how you feel.  How someone reacts to that cooked expression of yourself will tell you quite a lot about what you need to know about a person, even to the point of knowing whether or not it’s worth seeing them again. (That’s the reason why my casserole dish set is lacking one of the sizes: I hoped in sending the leftover dessert from a multi-course meal for someone with special dietary restrictions would encourage appreciation, but you can’t force that.  And if someone can’t appreciate, lose the dish and don’t go back for seconds of the person.)

There are some risks in cooking for other people, but they’re surmountable obstacles.

1. Their tastes and your tastes might differ - If they’re not a fan of something, that just means you’ll have leftovers for later.  And if you cooked to your tastes, then it’s something you’ll want to be eating.
2. You won’t have enough food - The true horror of any host or hostess is not having enough (and probably is a recurring nightmare for some).  Making extra typically is not that much harder with any recipe once you are making it already.  If you have big eaters, the extra will be gone.  If you have extras and it was a liked dish, you give guests to-go portions.  If you have extras and no one wants any… well I refer you back to #1 and the great fact where you get more of what you like.
3. You don’t know if what you’re making will turn out good enough to serve to others - As nerve wracking as this may seem, there is a simple rule to keep your cooking from being disastrous: Good ingredients and good flavors make good food.  Whether you are trying something new or a twist on a classic dish, keep things simple, taste everything at every stage of the process, and follow your senses.

Which brings us to this post’s recipe: Sweet Potato Stuffed Shells

Sweet potatoes have this tendency to be inexpensively priced and somehow the huge bag of them ends up in my crisper drawer for what seems like forever.  But eventually they must get used, because to waste them is as bad as sinning.  So before you get bored of my writing and stop reading my blog I give you one more wisdom bit pre-recipe…A fancy dinner does not have to be an expensive dinner.  This whole dish will probably be between $10-$15 dollars to make at most, and you’ll have lots of it.

• 1 Box Jumbo Pasta Shells
• 2 or 3 Sweet Potatoes
• 1 container Ricotta Cheese (approx. 15 oz)
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup Grated Parmesan Cheese 
• 2 cups Grated Mozzarella Cheese
• Red Sauce (Homemade or from a jar)

Steam the sweet potatoes until a fork can fully pierce through easily. The sweet potato has most of its nutrition in the skin, so you can choose to include it in your recipe or scrape the insides out before mashing.  (Eat the skin, even if by itself.  It’s really good for you!) Remove from steamer and mash sweet potatoes until consistent texture is achieved.

Cook pasta shells according to directions on box.  This usually involves bringing the water, with a dash of salt, to a boil on medium heat.  Add pasta stirring occasionally.  When pasta is done (you know by test eating), strain and rinse with cold water.

Mix sweet potato mash with ricotta, parmesan, 1 cup of the mozzarella, and the eggs.  This is your stuffing mixture.  The smoother this looks the more consistent the texture and taste throughout every shell.

Prepare your cooking pan by putting a layer of sauce on the bottom.  This will keep the shells from sticking to the pan.  You can use whatever type of sauce you want, whether its homemade or from a jar, or your family’s secret recipe.  Just be sure to taste it, add some spice and flavor, and make it your own.

Spoon mixture cheese mixture into shells until full and place in sauced pan.  (Like the picture at the top.)  Then cover the shells with another layer of sauce and then cover the shells with the remaining mozarella cheese (see those two pictures below).

You can cover an refrigerate your shells to eat another day, or you can preheat your oven to 350 degrees and cook your shells for about 30-40 minutes.  The mozzarella on top will be nicely melted.  Refrigerated shells should cook for a bit longer.  Since everything, except the eggs, are precooked or can be eaten uncooked, under cooking is almost impossible.

If you’re hungry from reading, I guess you know what to add to your grocery list for dinner.  And when you’re eating the good food that you’ve taken the time to make yourself, you’ll know that there’s no fast food or restaurant comparison… until it’s time to do the dishes :)  Have a good weekend!

Like many things in life, what’s good one way can be good other ways, too.  A slight variation can change things up and keep things interesting.  Today is your double option of tiramisu.

Tiramisu is definitely a dessert worth saving for the best company.  No surprise then that tiramisu is my friend Ben’s favorite, and as he has done me the great honor of flying out from Boston this week to surf and relax with his amigo, I am whipping up some tiramisu in thanks.  Tiramisu is very easy to make, there is no cooking involved, and is best made in advance of serving for ideal taste (the day before is good enough).

In Italian, tiramisu means pick-me-up due to that little jolt of espresso hidden inside.  Truthfully you better pick yourself up and do some exercise first, because this tiramisu might be the end of you!  It’s hard not to keep eating it, so I suggest only making it to give to someone else or when lots of company is coming over.

• 2 packages of Ladyfingers (seasonal depending on what store you get them from, World Market usually has them year round)
• 4 shots of espresso (if you don’t make your own just go to your local coffee shop)
• Hot Chocolate Mix or a Quality Rum (No Captain Morgan please!!!!)
• 16-24 oz. of Mascarpone (a dessert cheese, a little looser in consistency than  cream cheese)
• 16-24 oz. of Cream Cheese
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• Cocoa Powder

In a mixing bowl, mix mascarpone, cream cheese, and powdered sugar.  I do a 50/50 mix of cream cheese to mascarpone, however you can do more cream cheese if you want it more cheesecake-y.  Either way make sure you have both cheeses.   This would be easiest with an electric mixer, but arm power works too, just make sure it gets to an evenly mixed consistency.  

Here’s your times two:

• If you want to get a little tipsy off your dessert, use rum in a 50/50 mix with your espresso.  Since this is not a cooked dessert, the alcohol will stay in the dessert, so I wouldn’t suggest this version be served to children. (Although giving a child something with espresso is pretty crazy as well.  Probably best if tiramisu is thought of as an adult dessert.)
• If you want a more chocolate-y tiramisu, mix a couple spoonfuls of Hot Chocolate Mix in the hot espresso.
• If you want to do both, no one’s stopping you :)

Pour your espresso mix into a shallow container with a bottom wide enough to dip the ladyfingers in.  Quickly dip ladyfingers individually into espresso mix and place in a layer across the bottom of a pan (glass 9x12 works well, but just eyeball it and it should work out fine.  Remember good cooking is hardly an exact science but more an experiment in taste.)  Spread a thin layer of the cheese mix on top of the ladyfingers, covering them completely.  

Repeat the layering process at least one more time.  Depending on the depth of your pan, you can do even more layers, but you don’t want to run out of anything half a layer in.  

After the final layer, dust a thin layer of cocoa powder across the top.  Cover and let sit in the fridge until serving.  Minimally, let it sit 2-3 hours before digging in.

Word of warning where your tiramisu could go wrong:

1. Don’t use mascarpone that’s loose or liquidy (bad Ralphs experience, when TJs was out)
2. Don’t dump your extra espresso mix between the layers.  Plenty gets soaked up into the ladyfingers.

Good luck— and beware the temptation to eat tiramisu for breakfast!

It’s good to question.  Question the norm.  In fact some of us have even been brought up knowing that it is our obligation to question.  So last night my question caused all of this to start.  And that question was Why would I have plain gnocchi with marinara when it could be something so much more?

Some of my recipes may not have measured amounts (most actually), so just take the measurements on faith and trust yourself in the kitchen.  And taste and smell and feel what you’re cooking and it’ll turn out great.  Like I said, throw some good prepared stuff together, or make it from scratch, but it doesn’t have to take a lot of work to make a good dish.  So this is what happened…

• 1 pack pre-made gnocchi (I used Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat Gnocchi)
• 1 jar of marinara sauce 
• Brown Sugar (Turbinado from TJs)
• Red Pepper
• Garlic Salt
• Olive Oil
• Basil
• Oregano
• Mint
• Sea Salt
• Bread Crumbs (Also from TJs)

Lightly salt water and bring to a boil.  Add gnocchi and cook until gnocchi float to the top.  In separate frying pan, heat a small amount of olive oil, just to lightly coat bottom of pan.  Strain gnocchi and add to frying pan.  Add garlic salt, basil, oregano, and mint (or whatever spices you are feeling~ I typically spin the spice rack and start opening spices and smelling them while whatever I’m cooking is cooking so I know what’ll go in) and mix well with gnocchi in pan.  

After a bit, add the marinara sauce to the frying pan.  I used about half of a jar, but just enough to partially submerge the evenly distributed gnocchi.  I like a lot of spiciness, so I liberally added red pepper and let it distribute it’s spiciness throughout for a bit. To cut the spicy edge, I added just a bit of brown sugar to the sauce, and mixed it in well.  (This is not my recipe for red sauce, sometimes referred to as “Crack” Sauce… that will come in a post down the road.)  Once the sauce tasted how I wanted it to, I started to add breadcrumbs to eliminate the wetness of the sauce. I ended up adding three handfuls, I know so accurate :), mixing between each handful until the sauce stuck to the gnocchi and was no longer wet but instead more like breading you’d find on a eggplant parmesan.  Now I didn’t have any parmesan, however I think it might have made a nice addition to the dish.  

I ate all probably 4 portions myself and didn’t even save any for today’s lunch.  If you can get the gist of it, you can recreate it or at least your own version.  Enjoy! My mom, who started me cooking young, and Mike, with the added Italian influences, are definitely responsible for this little experiment, and for that I thank them very much.

Socrates said “Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”  And yet somehow, as a great philosopher, I seriously doubt that he ever thought on an empty stomach.  I have come from a culture and family of people who live to eat and drink and am proud of it.  Socrates may not agree, but I think that most everything that’s worth thinking about can be best accomplished in a kitchen or over a meal.  And so, I give you my humble attempts at thoughts and food through EXPERIMENTAL FOOD CULTURE.

In any given situation, everyone has something they can “add to the pot”, so to speak.  Over many years, I have had the great pleasure of sharing meals of superb quality with the people in my life that make the food taste better just by their presence.  Although many of those people are scattered around the globe, I hope that in sharing my thoughts and recipes here, we can continue to share those wonderful meals together.

I have no pretense of being a world class cook and often you might find my recipes store-bought components (I love Trader Joe’s more than you can possibly imagine).  But let’s be realistic, cooking from scratch is often exhausting just as a thought when you come home from work.  So rather than turn to the frozen and the canned, I hope you’ll find something here to add to your next shopping list. The recipes are most commonly mixtures of multiple recipes and adaptations of others in an attempt at something better than just edible.

Some of these recipes will be new ones and some will be tried and true, but you’ll never find anything here that hasn’t been made by me before.  If the photos aren’t of the most beautifully plated food, sue me.  It’s because I was too busy stuffing my face to care about the presentation, and you will be, too.  

Finally, I dedicate these all to you, the experimenters.  (Even though, truthfully, many of you who will end up reading this have been my past test subjects.)