Nibbles

Our First Festa

Nibbles

This past weekend Tallahassee saw it’s first (annual? only the future will tell) Italian Family Festa out at the John Paul II Catholic High School. I found out about the Festa through Groupon, which turns out to be a fabulous resource for learning about local businesses and events, not just saving money at them.

With the Greek Food Festival an annual event that we dearly love, we hoped the Italian Family Festa would come close to that ideal.

Italian Family Festa

As a first-year festival there were some expected hiccups. The website, for instance, was a little sparse on details (it would have been nice to know what sorts of foods would be there, not just a list of Italian foods that might be there, and a price-list is always helpful for folks who don’t carry cash as a habit) and, once we arrived it took being sent to 3 different tables/locations just to find out where to sign up for the wine tasting.

Italian Family Fest Wine

Those bumps aside, we had a good time. The wine tasting (at $10 a person) was more a class than just a taste-for-all, featuring 6 Italian wines and a very good presenter–he had personality to spare and plenty of ways to make wine relatable, always a good pairing. It was held in the school’s gymnasium, though, and was not the only activity going on in the space, making a little hard to hear.

Various entertainment was scheduled throughout the weekend and we had fun listening to the singer perform pop hits. Funny, we didn’t know songs like Firework and Seasons of Love were inherently Italian 😉

But, wait, what about the food?

There was a stand selling meatball subs and sausages–we each chose the latter with peppers and onions. Lots of fennel and very tasty. There was a local New York-style pizza place with a stand and, finally, a stand selling Fried Doughnuts (zeppole? though I’m not sure how authentic they were), calamari (they were out by the time we tried to order some), mozzarella sticks (pass), funnel cakes and steamed mussels. There were also cannoli available at a table, inside. The cannoli were the best things we ate, that day, and gone so quickly that I failed to snap a photo!

Italian Family Festa Food

Ices and a variety of coffee and tea were available from booths as well as bottled water, beer and wine (the latter required the purchase of tickets). Even after the wines we’d taste in the seminar, earlier, we each got a glass of Prosecco to eat with our zeppole before calling it a day.

Thankfully the Groupon offer meant I paid slightly less for weekend passes what it would have cost us just to enter the one day ($5 per person entrance fee). We opted not to return on Sunday.

I hope that they do try again, next year, and are able to add to the cultural options in our little southern town.

ICC: Gujarati Dal

Nibbles

It’s that time again: time for another installment of the Indian Cooking Challenge hosted by Srivali of Spice Your Life. I had to take a couple months off to deal with the move and so forth, but I’m glad to be participating once again. This month’s recipe is Gujarati Dal (a lentil stew of the Gujarat-region of India) studded with vegetables and miles of flavor and was graciously offered by the authors of Sukham Ayu, an Ayurvedic Cookbook.

Gujarati Dal with rice, garlic naan and samosas

Gujarati Dal with Rice, Garlic Naan and Samosas

First skim of the ingredient list had me excited–I had almost all of the ingredients already, it was a more meal-oriented and not a snack (known as chaats, which are nice, but hard to make a meal out of sometimes) and I thought for one hot second that I was actually going to be able to use meat in this one! The tricky word drumstick had me looking forward to a lentil and chicken stew when I realized that the description of “4-5 pieces, 2 inches length” either meant really small birds or, most likely, that I had no idea what this ingredient was. Of course it was the latter. Drumstick is a common name for moringa, a vegetable with tough outsides but edible insides. More on that in a bit, but I did find it canned at the local Indian grocery store that has saved more than one of these experiments.

After doing the usual converting math, I doubled the recipe to make sure I’d have enough for both dinner as well as lunch the next day. Other alterations were the tamarind concentrate for pulp, cashews for groundnuts (which Todd doesn’t eat) and butter for the ghee called for in the tempering step (I hadn’t picked any up and it wasn’t as crucial for us to go to the trouble to clarify a pound of butter just to get a few tablespoons).

GUJARATI  DAL

Ingredients:
1.25 cups Split red lentils
1.5 tsp Turmeric powder
4 cups water

2 Tbsp Tamarind Concentrate
1 Tbsp Jaggery (un-centrifuged sugar)
8 Hard, Dry Dates, halved & pitted
8 pieces Drumstick, cut to 2″ lengths
3-4 cups cubed Sweet Potatoes
3 Tbsp Cashews, roughly chopped
4 Green chillies, split
2″ piece of Ginger, minced
2 Tbsp Coriander powder
1 Tbsp Cumin powder
2.5 cups Water

 For Tempering

2 Tbsp Butter
1.5 tsp Mustard Seeds
3/4 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1.5 tsp Cumin Seeds
4 Dry Red Chillies
3/4 tsp Asafoetida Powder
10 Curry Leaves

For Finishing

3/4 tsp Garam Masala
Coriander leaves to garnish
Kosher Salt, to taste

Serves 4-5

Putting it all together:

Soaking the dal and rice Rinse and soak the lentils for 20-30 minutes. Rising helps you spot any small pebbles or other stuff that might have made it’s way into the bag of beans and the soaking helps speed the cooking time. Granted, lentils for dal have their outer husks removed which is why they cook so fast to begin with, but the soaking is still a good idea. Since I was making basmati rice to go with the dal, I went ahead and soaked both side-by-side while I chopped the rest of the ingredients. Drain each well before moving on to the next step (you don’t cook rice or beans in the water they were soaked in).
Cooking the dal with turmeric The original recipe calls for pressure-cooking the dal but a) I don’t own a pressure cooker and b) lentils cook quickly enough as it is so I just put them on to boil with the water and turmeric (aids digestion, always a good thing) and cooked for 10-15 minutes. The original recipe also calls for churning the dal. I took that to mean stir, but I see from other participants that it means to mash them. The lentils were pretty cooked down into mush already so I really don’t see as this little translation “error” has any bearing on the finished dish, but now we know!
The rest of the dal ingredients The up-side to not using a pressure cooker is that we don’t have to switch pots when we add the next ingredients (tamarind through water) to the pot and simmer the mixture for 15-20 minutes, stirring as needed to keep the mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pot. The goal is to have the sweet potatoes tender before adding the tempering mixture, so if it takes a little more time, it’s okay.
Tempering ingredients for Dal In a small saute pan, heat the ghee or butter until melted and then add the mustard seeds. Once they start to jump around in the pan, add the fenugreek seeds, lower the heat and, once the fenugreek starts to brown, add the rest of the tempering ingredients and cook until fragrant.
Adding the tempering to the dal Add the tempering mixture to the dal and simmer for another 5 minutes or so, just enough to left the flavors mingle. Turn off the head and stir in the garam masala and salt, if needed. Or, if your like me, forget to add the garam masala until after dinner is already on the plates and sprinkle a little on top of each portion to be stirred in just before eating–it works the same. I was also lacking coriander leaves (aka fresh cilantro) for garnish.

Deforesting Dinner

Gujarati Dal with rice, garlic naan and samosasRemember I mentioned something about those mysterious drumsticks? Well, my research had forewarned me that the usual way to “eat” this was to chew the pieces and spit out the inedible husks. Well, that probably works wonders when you’re working with fresh, but the canned version disintegrated by the time the dal was finished and left us pulling the 2″ twiggy bits from the stew before we could comfortably dig in. While I’ll probably skip this (or substitute something like okra) next time, it certainly didn’t ruin the dish for us.

The flavor is both sweet and spicy and was wonderful over the basmati rice I’d prepared–the rice helped tone down some of the spice (could have held back a few of those red and green chillies). The lentils made a wonderful backdrop for the sweet potatoes, dates and nuts. We loved it and were very happy to try this month’s challenge.

Looking forward to the next one!

Nothing Says I Love You Like…

Nibbles

They say (whoever they are) that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Despite the anatomical argument against it, it very well could be true. Cupid knows the first, second and future dates I’ve procured due to the promise of my culinary skills.

With today being Valentine’s Day, the most loving of holidays (at least according to Hallmark), what foods of love are you serving up to your nearest and dearest?

Will it be the tried and true(?) aphrodisiacs of oysters and chocolates?

Dinner out, brought in!

Dinner out, brought in!

Will you be dining out? (If so, I hope you have a reservation someplace or are willing to wait a good, long while.)

Or will you skip dinner and go straight to dessert?

The other day we’d decided to seek dinner out a little too late on a Friday night to find any place without at least an hour’s wait and a line out the door. Rather than give in and pick up fast food, we got the idea to pop into Fresh Market and check out their ready-to-eat deli selections. We made a fabulous meal with a couple of pop-in-the-oven items, fresh fruit and cheese. Add in a bottle of wine from the fridge and a fire in the fireplace and it was a wonderful dinner out, brought in!

It’s Todd’s turn to cook this week so he’ll be cooking dinner but I’ve got dessert all ready to go: a lemon-blueberry cheesecake. Want to make your own? Check out my basic cheesecake recipe and not-so-secret secrets to getting the best results possible. This one features Lemon Snaps as the crust as edging, the cheesecake batter is flavored with a bit of Limoncello and then has lemon curd swirled-in along with fresh blueberries.

Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake

Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake

So, what’s the way to your heart?

The Lost Art of… Marmalade?

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Blueberry Toast with Mixed-Citrus Marmalade

Blueberry Toast with Mixed-Citrus Marmalade

On our second trip to the farmers’ market (Todd came with, this time), I spotted kumquats and thought making marmalade would be a good way to use the fruit and have it available for more than just one meal. Now, I’d made marmalade in the past, but it had been maybe 10 years since, so I wanted to check what I thought I remembered (namely that it didn’t require added pectin) and how much sugar per pound of citrus and so forth.

Would you believe that I went through 6 cookbooks before finding marmalade instructions? We have an entire bookcase of cookbooks and not all of them are general-use, so it’s not like I was looking in the specialty books and striking out, these were the massive tomes of all-purpose food knowledge. And while my “textbook” from Culinary School did have a definition and basic method listed, it still wasn’t telling me what I needed to know. Even Joy of Cooking only had a Red Onion Marmalade (which, by the way, is stretching the definition just a bit).

It’s no wonder, then, that the one book to finally come to my rescue was Forgotten Skills of Cooking. It had a whole section on marmalade and even featured a kumquat one. I ended up cobbling together several recipes to fit my time constraints (it was already Sunday and I wanted to use the finished marmalade Monday night, so doing an overnight soak of the seeds and membranes wasn’t practical) and did a mixed citrus marmalade using up some leftover lemons (from Lemon Curd-making the day before), tangerines from Christmas and a couple of pink grapefruits, too.

What I ended up with, after analyzing the various recipes I’d found, was a basic formula that can be used for any sort of citrus you’ve got:

Marmalade Formula

Per pound of citrus (weighed whole) you’ll need:

1 quart water plus 1 cup for the pot
2-3 cups granulated sugar, depending on the kind of citrus you’re using and how sweet you want your finished marmalade to be

And it really is that simple–which is probably why only 7 of our 95 cookbooks mention it at all. (The other reason being that most people buy their marmalade, of course.)

The reason you don’t need additional pectin is because you get that from the seeds and membranes of the fruit, itself–you use everything in some way, shape or form.

Marmalade Procedure

Break Down the Citrus Break down the fruit into its basic components: juice, seeds and peels. Juice each lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit, reserving the juice and placing the seeds in a cheesecloth-lined bowl. Remove the membranes from the squeezed-out fruit halves and add those to the seed-pile. Since kumquats don’t really juice so well, just slice those and remove the seeds, and slice the other citrus peels into bite-sized strips.
Combine and Simmer The initial simmer. Combine the reserved juice, the peels, water and the seeds and membranes tied up in their cheesecloth sack in a deep stock pot. Choose one deeper than I did to prevent boil-overs in later steps–learn from my mistakes, folks! Simmer this mixture, covered, for an hour or so. Don’t let it boil or your marmalade could end up very bitter. Unless, of course, you prefer your marmalade with a lot of bite, then boil it covered through the next step.
The Volume Decreased by Half Cook and concentrate. Right now you’ve got a lot of liquid and some still-tough peels in your pot. Remove the cheesecloth bag with the seeds and membranes (you’ve already harvested the required pectin from them). Bring the mixture to a boil and cook, at a low boil and uncovered, until the liquid has reduced your preferred amount and the peel is as soft as you want it to be.
Adding the sugar before the final boil Add the sugar and cook until set, approximately 15-20 minutes. Here’s the tricky part. According to Forgotten Skills you can test for doneness by placing a small amount of the marmalade onto a cold saucer and see if it gels. This didn’t work for me so I kept cooking the marmalade (on medium-low) for another hour or more (honestly, I lost track). It still hadn’t passed the set-test as described, but I pulled it off the heat and let it cool, anyway, figuring something had to have happened by now.
The finished Marmalade I started with 2.5 pounds of citrus and ended up with 2 quarts of marmalade. I’ve never been into canning so I just divided the spread between 4 pint containers and popping them into the fridge once they’d had a chance to cool off a bit on the counter. If you don’t go the sterilized jars and heat sealing method, you’ll want to store any marmalade you’re not going to use in the next couple of weeks in the freezer.

About the setting thing? I needn’t have worried. The next day You could stand a knife in the marmalade and it wouldn’t even wobble. And despite it’s dark color (probably from the extra cooking time), it wasn’t bitter at all. Added to warm, buttered toast, it’s quite tasty!

Oh, and the main reason I purchased the kumquats and the redfish fillet on the same day? Monday’s dinner was marmalade redfish and it was wonderful!

Season the redfish (or any other firm, white-fleshed fish like cod or monkfish) with salt and pepper and place, skin-side down, on a bed of sliced lemons. Heat half a cup of marmalade with a tablespoon of white wine, just until pourable, and spoon over the fish. Broil the fish 10-15 minutes until done (the flesh is opaque and flakes easily when pressed with a fork), moving it a few inches farther away from the heat if the pieces of peel in the marmalade start to get too dark.

Marmalade Redfish

Marmalade Redfish

A Tasty Experiment of Strawberry Proportions

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I don’t usually post recipes, here, but today I’m making an exception. Strawberries have started to appear in stores and, while it’s still early in the season, the temptation is there to make something of them. This recipe would be a nice in-between step between now and when spring and summer shortcakes come around.

~~~oOo~~~

Hidden Strawberry Cake

Hidden Strawberry Cake

Company was coming for dinner and we’d picked up some early-season (but so fresh you could smell their sweetness as you walked past the flats) strawberries with a vague plan that they would comprise dessert.

But a vague plan only gets you to a few hours before dinner. What to do with them?

Sure, there’s the usual pie, shortcake or cobbler but I wanted something more cake-like.

For Christmas Eve I’d made the Caramel Apple Cake from Food Network Magazine, which was similar in concept to a pineapple upside-down cake and we really enjoyed the combo of dense cake and moist fruit. To make a strawberry-friendly version, I headed to Joy of Cooking for a basic Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe (skipping the streusel) and added in a layer of strawberries between each half of the dough.

The addition of the strawberries and the change in baking pan from the original recipe meant it took twice as long for the cake to bake. And I worried that skipping the streusel topping would result in a blah cake.

Thankfully, our guest proclaimed it a very successful experiment.

~~~oOo~~~

Hidden Strawberry Cake

Cake
(adapted from Joy of Cooking)

4 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup plain Greek-style yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs, beaten

 Strawberry Filling

1 pint fresh strawberries
1-2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar

Strawberry Topping

1 pint fresh strawberries
2 Tbsp demerara sugar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and prepare an 8-inch square pan.

In a stand mixer, beat together butter and sugar until light-colored and fluffy.

Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium-sized bowl and stir until combined.

In a small bowl combine the Greek-style yogurt and vanilla.

Scrape down the mixing bowl and then, on low, add the dry and wet ingredients in batches to the creamed butter and sugar: 1/3 dry, 1/2 wet, 1/3 dry, last of the wet, last of the dry. Scrape down the bowl and mix in the beaten eggs.

Stem, hull and slice 1 pint of the strawberries for the filling.

Spread half the batter into the bottom of the prepared pan. Scatter the sliced strawberries in an even layer over the batter, sprinkling with cinnamon and brown sugar. Carefully spread the remaining batter over the top of the strawberry layer.

Bake for 45-55 minutes, until the cake is golden brown, the edges pull away from the sides of the pan and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

While the cake bakes, take the remaining pint of strawberries and stem, hull and slice them. Place them in a bowl with the demerara sugar (or other raw sugar), cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until you’re ready to serve the cake.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then unmold to a serving plate to cool completely.

When ready to serve, top each slice with some of the sugared strawberries.

~~~oOo~~~

The strawberry layer does sink a bit, instead of staying firmly in the center but the flavor is just fine regardless of the shift. The hint of cinnamon is just enough to spice the whole cake and the extra strawberries on top (along with the juices the sugar helps draw out) add a touch of moisture to the top of the cake. If anything, a little freshly whipped cream might also be added, but it’s certainly not necessary to enjoy the cake as-is.