Vietnamese beef stew

A good thing about having Hawaiian health insurance is the Island Scene magazine that shows up every quarter, bringing a bit of paradise to this windswept corner of New England.  Each issue has two or three ostensibly healthy recipes; one issue from last winter had an intriguing Vietnamese beef stew recipe that we didn't get to try until today.  It turned out to be a fantastic comfort food, perfect no matter if your winter days are 58°F (Hawaii) or 28°F (here).

• The original recipe makes enough for 8, so we cut ours in half.  We still ended up using about a pound and a half of beef tri-tip, 3 star anise, and 2 stalks of lemongrass.
• We had half of a jalapeño in the fridge, so we used that instead of chili peppers.  Because I was the one slicing all of the ingredients, I only used about half of the seeds, but I'd probably just leave all the seeds in next time; it wasn't THAT spicy the way we did it today.
• Next time, I'd add less salt and cut down the amount of fish sauce: the sauce overpowered many of the other flavours.  I'd cut it back to maybe a tablespoon for the half recipe.  Or maybe I should get a better-quality fish sauce that doesn't taste like mostly salt.
• I thought the inclusion of tomato paste was kind of odd, and then when I actually added it in I was convinced it was a poor idea because my pot now resembled something Italian as opposed to something Vietnamese.  But after cooking for an hour, the pot no longer looked like a thin pasta sauce and since the final dish was so tasty, I figured the tomato paste was a worthwhile addition.  Possibly something to reduce a bit for the next time we make the stew so that it doesn't overpower other flavours.
• I have a bunch of candied ginger from some recent baking projects, so instead of buying fresh, I just sliced up some of the candied stuff and reduced the added sugar called for in the recipe. For what it's worth though, it was the kind of candied ginger that is not coated in sugar crystals.
• Homemade bread goes VERY WELL with this.

We had to buy star anise and lemongrass for this, but it was a great excuse to finally try some new spices.

The stew has some great flavour: so much so that I declared that I didn't need anything for dessert this evening, which is something incredibly rare for me to say (usually I'm all "Ice cream?  Macarons?  Pie?  Fruit?  Dried fruit?  Cereal?  Chocolate chips?  All of the above?").  We both agreed that this stew was definitely something to make again, especially since we'll probably have to put up with a couple more New England winters before we can move out to Honolulu. :)

Seriously: so tasty.

Banh mi

Just the other week Caroline had gotten a craving for some Vietnamese sandwiches known as banh mi (there are some diacritics that I have not added - see this Wikipedia article for an introduction).  We were going to go to a Vietnamese bakery/deli last Sunday to satisfy that craving, but sadly discovered the place is not open on Sundays.  So, we checked out some books from the library and tried (and I would say succeeded) on making them ourselves.

We used The Banh Mi Handbook as our basis.  In the book is a recipe for the mini baguettes these sandwiches are named for, as well as recipes for the fillings.  Our sandwiches had marinated chicken, pickled carrots, cucumber, cilantro, and (on mine) jalapeno rings.  Here are descriptions of the things we made.

Bread:
The recipe goes on for a couple of pages in the book, but only because the author is very descriptive and includes nice pictures on how to form the rolls.  The dough is pretty simple - flour, water, yeast, salt, and a small amount of butter.  The recipe called for extra wheat gluten to be added, but we did not have that, nor was I ready to buy some at the store.  It did mention that if you used King Arthur brand flour, you wouldn't need as much additional gluten.  So, I picked up a small bag of the King Arthur flour for these rolls, and kneaded the dough a few minutes longer than called for.

The forming went very well following the instructions in the book, though I will admit that the three that Caroline formed (the recipe made six rolls) looked much better than mine.

The recipe called for the steam method of filling a pan with water while preheating the oven, but we just spritzed some water on the rolls before baking.  Twenty-two minutes of baking later, we had these:

A finished roll ready to be filled with tasty stuff!

The result, in two and a half to three hours of work: some light and delicious bread for sandwiches.

Pickled Carrots:
Pickled vegetables are standard for banh mi, so we chose carrots.  The book called for a combination of carrots and daikon, but we didn't have the daikon readily available, so carrots alone it was.  It was a simple process that I did while the dough was rising. First I added some salt and sugar to the carrot sticks that were about 3 inches long and 1/4 inch wide.  A couple minutes of working the salt and sugar in and the carrots were getting floppy.  At this point I diverged from the book.  It said to rinse the vegetables and then put them in a water, vinegar, and sugar (1/3 cup) solution.  I thought that sounded sweet, so I left the salt and sugar in the original bowl and put the rinse carrots back in with the vinegar and water.  I was later told that I should probably have gone with the sweeter route.  Ooops...

Chicken:
For the chicken, I did not look at a recipe.  We had some chicken breast tenders, and I made a marinade of soy sauce, hoisin sauce, minced garlic, and a small amount of oyster sauce.  The chicken marinated in that for about 4-5 hours in the refrigerator.  Then, just simple pan frying - we don't have a grill yet... :(

Pan seared marinated chicken - turned out extremely well for guessing on the marinade.

The end result:

Caroline's sandwich.

My sandwich. I took out some of the jalapeno seeds so that they didn't overpower the other filling ingredients.

These sandwiches were delicious and flavorful.  The bread was light enough that with the overstuffing you see above it just deformed around the filling and nothing fell out.  The crust was also strong enough that the hinge didn't give out.  Definitely make again!

Stuffies

Since it appears that we will be living in Rhode Island for at least the next couple of years, I figured that we should make the best of it, and my philosophy is that there is no better way to get to know a place than by its food.  Accordingly, we decided to make "stuffies", or what the rest of the country would call "stuffed clams".  At least around here, these are typically made with the largish quahog clams, which we found at our local supermarket for the ludicrously low price of $0.99/pound.  I suppose much of the weight is taken up by the shell, and then the end user has to do all the prep work, but that's still a ridiculously low price for any kind of fresh (and live!) food.

The clams

We checked various recipes to figure out the best method of preparing the clams; in the end we put about an inch and a half of water into our pot, brought it to a boil, put our 4 clams in, and turned the heat down.  In theory, the water would have only simmered after putting the clams in, but we must not have turned the heat down enough, and the water started boiling again.  According to some recipes this is one way to make clams tough; in the future, we'd want to be a little more vigilant and a little more patient!   But all of the clams popped open when done, just as the recipes said they would.  So far, so good.

When the clams were done, they would pop open rather more violently than I would expect, enough that I didn't want to use the tongs to get the first clam out lest the next one decide it was done at that exact moment and splash boiling water onto my hand.

It was Dom's job to chop up the clams while I rinsed off the shells. Here's his take on it.

Chopping the clams turned out to be pretty easy.  If I had wanted to, I could have just chopped them all haphazardly and things would have been fine.  However, I noticed while I was chopping that the centers of the clams were a different consistency and a bit gritty.  (From later reading of Joy of Cooking, we determined that this part must be the stomach.)  I removed this part of the clam starting on the second one, and by the fourth, and last, I had devised the following strategy - and I apologize if it sounds gory.  If I was to slice the clam horizontally to open its stomach wide, and spill out the contents by scraping (actually not to hard to do).  This way, there should be no grit left, and all you should have is meat.  We don't want a repeat of the bit of grit that found its way into one of Caroline's clams.  I will have to report back on the strategy after take 2.

The filling

From our research, we determined that the stuffie is one of those kinds of foods where no two recipes are the same.  Even something like oven temperature is pretty variable; apparently you can bake stuffies at anywhere from 300°-425° and they'd still be good.  But the biggest differences are in the stuffing mixture; the most basic just use minced clams and breadcrumbs, while the more elaborate concoctions use celery, peppers, various herbs, and even bacon or chouriço.  We ended up using the clams, the rest of our panko breadcrumbs (about 2 Tbsp.), some Italian breadcrumbs (about 1 Tbsp.), an egg, and some sautéed celery, onions, and garlic.  I didn't want to cover up the taste of the clams, which I figured was a big part of the reason we wanted to make stuffies in the first place.

Stuffing mix, pre-mixing.

These got baked at 350° (mostly because the oven was still set to 350° after baking a loaf of bread) for about 13 minutes, after which I sprinkled a bit of pecorino cheese on top of 2 of the clams and popped them all back into the oven for another 4 minutes.  The stuffies were plenty hot and cooked through.

Stuffies before going into the oven.

Verdict

This was literally the first time either of us had eaten a stuffed clam.  We thought they were pretty tasty but that the actual clams were kind of tough; next time we'll know how to cook AND prepare the clams!  The stuffing was flavorful but the other ingredients didn't detract from the clams, and I don't feel the need to toss any other meats into the stuffing.  If we happen to have any fresh herbs around next time we make stuffies, I might throw some of those in, but otherwise, these tasted fine as they were.  Overall, we think this was a resounding success for first-timers like us!

A stuffie with pecorino in the front, one without in the back, and a slice of homemade bread.  Tasty!

Easter picnic

This being the first big holiday spent away from our families, we wanted to do something special for Easter.  There was no way I could prepare a ham for just the two of us, so we hit upon doing a picnic (or, as I like to call it after our Provence excursion last spring, "le pique-nique").  We figured that it would be a good way to explore the state a little more, but even if the weather turned out to be poor, we could just put our picnic blanket out in our living room!  Our menu consisted of sandwiches on homemade baguettes, avocado salad, orange-lime-vanilla fruit salad, and hot cross buns.

Sandwiches

For the sandwiches, we went with prosciutto, mozzarella, basil, and a little drizzle of balsamic, all piled onto homemade baguettes.

• We made the baguettes from the Joy of Cooking recipe; the stand mixer again proved its worth for the mixing and kneading.

Nice crumb!

• We had previously made the mozzarella, though for whatever reason our result was more like a cream cheese spread than regular mozzarella (we have made mozzarella successfully in the past, so it wasn't a first-timers thing).  So we just figured that the cheese could be spread onto the bread before putting all the fillings in.
• The prosciutto came from Venda Ravioli in Providence.  This was our first time going there and it was, I'll admit, a little overwhelming.  It was like a whole emporium for Italian foods; there were even multiple options for prosciutto at the meat counter!  Apparently the "San Daniele" prosciutto was the one to get, but as the guy in front of us requested the San Daniele, we had to 'settle' for prosciutto di Parma so as not to hold up the line.  There were already a LOT of people in line behind us as it was the Saturday before Easter at an Italian market....but I was just really excited to buy prosciutto in the same manner than one might buy some deli turkey for the week's lunches.
• The balsamic also came from Venda Ravioli.  The ingredients list was just one ingredient: 100% cooked must.  So I figured it was the real thing, or at least as close as we can get to the real thing without going bankrupt.  It's sweeter and less overtly acidic than the regular balsamic vinegars.  Well worth it to try!

  

  This is but one reason why I like going to Italian markets.

I made my sandwich with prosciutto, balsamic (sprinkled onto the cut surfaces of the bread), mozzarella, and basil; Dom added sliced red peppers to his.  Both were quite tasty!

That's mine on the left.  Amazingly tasty.

Avocado salad

Just a simple mixed salad of avocados, corn, grape tomatoes, snap peas, and green onions tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette.  We used the regular balsamic vinegar, not the stuff we'd picked up at the Italian market yesterday.  A good mix of colours, textures, and flavours.

Spot all five ingredients.

Orange-lime-vanilla fruit salad

This recipe came from The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays as "orange vanilla fruit salad", though I scaled it down considerably since I didn't want 12 servings.  We used a half pint each of blackberries and blueberries, plus some strawberries and Muscat grapes (they were the same price as the green grapes).  The recipe is pretty flexible as to what fruits to use.

The "orange vanilla" part of the original recipe title comes from the syrup poured over the fruit.  The original recipe called for equal parts sugar and water plus the zest and juice of an orange.  I used less than a quarter cup of sugar, a bit of vanilla, a half cup of water, the juice and zest of one Cara cara navel orange, and the juice and zest of a lime.  I figured that since all the fruits I'd chosen were pretty sweet, the syrup could use some tartness from the lime juice.  There was something between a third and a half cup of syrup after reduction.

Syrup, after reduction.

The result was a very tasty fruit salad; if anything, I would have left the vanilla out.  In fact, I debated for several minutes whether I should even include the vanilla in the first place as the lime-orange syrup already smelled pretty good.  But in the end there were no complaints about the fruit salad!

I usually like fruit salad, but this was really tasty with the zesty syrup.

Hot cross buns

I'll admit it: my only knowledge of hot cross buns before this year came from the first named melody in the music books used by novice instrumentalists, and the incomplete explanation I got about what hot cross buns represent.  I didn't realize until this year that they are an Easter tradition!  And they didn't seem too difficult to make.

I used the Joy of Cooking recipe with inspirations from the version in Nick Malgieri's Bread.  So to the Joy recipe's cinnamon and nutmeg I added lemon zest, cloves, cardamom, and a pinch of ginger, and then instead of currants I threw in dried cherries (being a Michigan native and all).  In place of 1 egg I used 2 egg yolks.  So it was not exactly a traditional hot cross bun, but these were tasty nonetheless.

The icing was confectioner's sugar, water, and a little vanilla.  I had just enough for all 18!

The picnic site

We scoured a very helpful website listing public parks in the state to figure out where to go.  We finally settled on going to the park surrounding Conanicut Battery in Jamestown, which promised to have a nice view of the West Passage of Narragansett Bay.  We ended up having our picnic amid the earthwork fortifications of a Revolutionary War-era gun battery.  Neat!

Upper 50s, sunny, a light breeze, and too early in the season for bugs: could there be any better conditions for a picnic?  I don't think so.

Happy Easter!

Recipes used:

Baguettes: Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 601

Fruit salad: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays (2013), p. 108-109

Hot cross buns: Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 610; with inspiration from Nick Malgieri's Bread (2012), p. 208-209

Writeup background noise: first it was NBCSports's replay of the Chinese Grand Prix, because while the Red Wings were losing, I commandeered the TV; and now it's the soundtrack from Super Mario Galaxy. 

Ragù with rigatoni v2.0

In our last post I had talked about the ragù with rigatoni I'd made with beef instead of lamb.  I recently tried making it again with some of our modifications.  The results were a mixed bag of success: not quite as tasty, but some of the new techniques can be incorporated into the next iteration.

• We stuck with beef, mostly because in this area, it's easier to buy beef than lamb.
• I wanted to try making this with an Italian wine rather than a French wine.  Thanks to Wines and More Rhode Island (right next to Whole Foods!), we got a wine from the Campania region.  I actually ended up liking the French wine better, both on its own and in the dish (but see the caveat in the next point), though I do believe that we need a bigger sample size on this one.  The Italian red we used was a little more dry than the Rhône wine we'd gotten the first time.
• Instead of using the 1 cup of canned whole tomatoes + 1 cup of the juices, I used a 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes.  This was definitely not a solution.  The whole tomatoes are not canned in additional tomato juice; it's just whatever juices come from the tomatoes themselves.  Diced tomatoes, I have learned, are canned with additional juice added, so the ragù was much more acidic than version 1.0.  This made the dish overly tomato-y and combined with the wine we used, it didn't seem quite as complex of a flavour as the first ragù we made.  Most of the spices were drowned out.
• The recipe called for a cup and a half of chicken stock, which I had felt was too much, so for this iteration I reduced it to 1 cup.  Unfortunately, my ill-fated decision to use the diced tomatoes meant that there was still way too much liquid in the pot; I still had to boil the sauce uncovered for about 45 minutes to get it to reduce a bit.
• I greatly reduced the cumin and threw in a pinch of nutmeg along with a bay leaf, but as noted previously, the final dish was mostly a tomato sauce with some beef in it and practically no spices.  Next time I'll keep the proportions I used for this attempt.

So, I suppose this is what learning to cook is all about, right?  Trial and error, modifying the recipe a bit, then refining it some more?  That's what I keep telling myself, at least.

The fantastic thing about cooking with wine?  You can drink while cooking.

The Dinnertime Survival Cookbook (2013), p. 148-149

Writeup background noise: Mike and Mike simulcast on ESPN2.