Onigiri and rice

I've mentioned here and there that I've been making onigiri. Now, I haven't had authentic onigiri, which is something I'll remedy once I'm a bit more settled. Apparently there's some good places in the Bay area to get Japanese cooking supplies, and some of those places also have foodstuffs. My other option is to make onigiri for the group that went to Japan last summer, and use their experience to guide my own. Or both, since the latter is likely to happen regardless. Onigiri for all!

I've been following the tips and instructions over at Just Hungry, which is a really useful blog for people attempting to cook Japanese food outside of Japan. It's a good read, too, so check it out. Rice is very important. I've got ready access to a variety of rices, and I've come to really like the Japanese short grain rice, which is actually a medium grain. It takes a bit of extra prep work. You need to rinse it thoroughly, rub the grains of rice together, keep rinsing, and then let it dry for 20-30 minutes. You cook it like any other rice, start high, go low, tight fitting lid, but with a bit less water than a long grain rice might use. Package instructions are your friend. After the water is gone, let it rest with a damp towel over it for 10-15 min, and it's just a different class of rice. It coheres and is sticky, but each grain is distinct. It's firm but still soft, and has a great flavor. I've been eating it just as rice, or even in place of long grain.

Onigiri are basically balls of rice with filling. They usually end up in a triangular shape for ease of eating and carrying, but that shaping takes practice and my attempts at it have thus far ended up with fillings poking out. I'll keep trying it though. The simple way to make them is a combination of plastic wrap and a teacup (I use a ceramic dish lifted from a chem lab in some distant past that's been in our family for ages, they're the perfect size). The description on justhungry is better than anything I'd be able to do here. I still find these to be a bit big and the ratio of rice to filling isn't quite right. They're still completely edible, but either I need a smaller cup or I'm not doing it quite right. I'll keep messing with it. My other problem is that they seem to dry out pretty quickly, possibly because I live in a very low humidity environment. Dried out rice is not good eats. I have some ideas to solve this, mostly they revolve around eating them faster, but that doesn't help me with packed lunches.

Fillings are the easiest and probably the funnest part. I did a simple tuna with soy sauce filling the first time, and it was okay. Next time I'd use more soy sauce and some ginger and possibly chili sauce too. I sauted some onions and mushrooms with a bit of soy sauce and black pepper, this worked out brilliantly and was delicious. I mentioned I want to try some braised radiccio, since I think the bitterness will contrast nicely with the rice.

oatmeal cookies

This is in part a test to see if this auto-updates on facebook, and partly a reminder to myself to find an oatmeal cookie recipe. Initial research suggests pretty minor variations in ingredient amounts. I can't recall whether I made the Joy of Cooking or the Quaker oats box top last time. They were crunchier than I would have liked. How does one make chewier cookies?

pinto beans

Dry pinto beans were on sale last week, and I figured they were a cheap and useful staple. I had no idea really how to cook them, so I pretty much winged it. I soaked them overnight, drained, and then boiled them until they were soft but not falling apart. I drained them again, and then sautéd some onions and garlic in butter, added the beans and a carton of chicken stock. I let it reduce a bit, then added a bunch of spices, by which I mean I spilled a little too much ancho chile powder into it. I also added cumin, oregeno, black pepper, and a bit of chipotle. Salt I waited on, since I heard somewhere it makes beans tough. They were still a little soupy when I got too hungry to wait anymore, but I put it over some white rice and they were delicious anyhow. I then left it on low and completely spaced out for a couple hours, at which point it had reduced almost entirely. I put in the fridge, and today they have the texture of refried beans and amazing flavor.

On an unrelated note, I hit the farmer's market again this morning. I got some pluots, which are amazing and wonderful. I much prefer them to plums, and am excited to try more varieties in spring and summer. I got some oranges, which look really sketchy on the outside, but are really juicy and tasty. I got some meyer lemons, which I don't know what to do with yet. I got some radiccio, some of which I will grill, some of which I will braise in ginger and put into onigiri. There was a vineyard there which doesn't seem to make wine so much as edible grapes. Do you still call it a vineyard? Anyhow, I tried some Thompsons, which are small, golden, and oh so sweet. I also got some flame raisins, which have a deeper flavor than standard raisins and are going to turn into some oatmeal raisin cookies tomorrow. They make all the varieties into raisins, and the flavor difference between them is amazing. I'll bring some back east with me at Thanksgiving.

Merced: first impressions

So I moved across the country. The trip itself is another post, maybe. I'm not sure we had any real culinary adventures, aside from fry sauce (meh) and some very good barbeque in Lovelock, Nevada, of which the beans that were almost as much linguisa as beans were definitely the highlight. At any rate, I now reside in Merced, CA.

My basis for comparison is Storrs, but to be fair to CT, I'll include Manchester and Vernon in my local area. Merced, at first pass, pretty much kicks the crap out of it either way. On the fast food front, the presence of In'n'out and Sonic means that it's possible to eat a cheap, quick burger and fries without ingesting toxic additives. Also, strawberry limeade.

I was anticipating being able to get better Mexican food, but my only venture in that direction has been at the 24 hour drive through called Victoria's. Yeah, 24 hour drive through Mexican food. It is cheap, and everything I've tried has been really good. Their beans are a bit too salty for my taste, but the horchata is muy deliciouso. Did I mention they're open 24 hours and I don't have to get out of my car? I've seen at least four or five other Mexican places, including one with a lunch buffet and another that apparently specializes in enchiladas.

As far as other cuisines, I've seen a couple of different asian countries represented, one Italian place, and an Indian place. I went to a Vietnamese place for lunch today, called Rice Bowl. The summer roll was good, if not as fat as I'm used to, and the coffee was great, but the pho was not terribly impressive. The broth was a bit weak, both in spice and general beefiness, and there was no basil included. A nice guy who was arriving as I was about to leave told me there's another one down the street, but that the pho there was too heavily spiced, particularly with ginger. Apparently San Jose has a ton of Vietnamese places, which were the standard for him. I think the strength of this place may be in their non-pho dishes, which I will have to explore at some point.

I'm about to hit the grocery store for the first time, to get some staples and food for the week. I need to explore the different options for grocery stores, especially the ethnic specialty stores, of which there seem to be many.

Ravioli with meat sauce

Tonight was the last regular (to the extent that they ever have been) Tuesday night dinner, ironically, on a Wednesday. I wanted to use some of the tools I don't use a lot, do something a little different, as well as delicious.

I ended up making the ricotta for the ravioli. It's a dead simple recipe, takes no time and is delicious. One gallon of milk, one quart of buttermilk. Combine in a big non-reactive pot over high heat. Stir frequently until it hits 175-180 degrees, at which point the curds and whey will separate. Remove from heat, and ladle the curds into cheesecloth over a strainer. Pull the ends of the cheesecloth together and hang it for 5-15 minutes depending on how loose you want the ricotta to be. The recipe emphasized that the flavor really comes from the quality of the milk, and I got raw milk from some local farms, which worked out wonderfully. To make it into ravioli filling, I added two eggs, a head of roasted garlic, a bit of parmesan, some fresh basil and parsley, salt, pepper and a touch of lemon juice.

I also made the pasta dough. Jamie Oliver had a bit about making your own pasta on a show about eggs, and asked the question of why anyone would buy pasta when it was so easy to make. Tonight really drove that home. If you have a food processor and a pasta roller, it really is a trivial task. Half a cup of flour (plus a bit for adjustment) for each egg, about one egg worth per person. Process it until it changes from a whizzing noise to a thumping noise. Squeeze it, if it sticks to your fingers, add a bit of flour and process until it's incorporated. Repeat until it just sticks to your fingers. Dump it onto a floured surface, work it together, throw it through the roller. Flour it lightly, fold it in half, roll it again. Repeat this four or five times, then roll it to the desired thickness. We made ravioli, and the second setting was pretty much ideal. The ones we did on the lowest setting were too thin and came apart in the water too easily.

The sauce was basically a cross between a traditional ragu and pot roast. I got some top round roast that was on sale (I would definitely experiment with other roasts, this was a bit hard to shred). Seared the salted and peppered pieces of roast, deglazed with onions, garlic, carrots, celery and leeks. When they were soft, I added some red wine and beef stock and let it simmer for a bit. I then crushed some cans of peeled tomatoes with my hands and added them. I added too many and then couldn't fit the roast pieces back in, so I pulled out a bit of the vegetable mixture and set it aside (I added it again when I put the leftovers away). Roast pieces back in, lid on, into the oven for a couple of hours. I pulled it out, pulled out the roast pieces and shredded them with a pair of forks, returned the shredded meat to the pot, and put it back in the oven for a bit to let the smaller pieces absorb a bit of liquid.

It was pretty delicious and very filling. I plan on adapting it to cooking for one by making the sauce ahead of time and freezing single portions, and then making the pasta with the mini cuisinart I have. Probably not ravioli, but it takes less time to make a batch of pasta and rough cut it into tagliatelle than to boil a pot of water. I eat a good bit of pasta in the winter, and while I won't really have winter in CA, I imagine I'll still be eating pasta.

Braised pork roast with fennel and apples

Pork roast was on sale, buy one get one today, so I picked up two smaller ones (2.5 lbs, roughly). I knew I wanted to do something with the shiny new dutch oven that Carissa got for me. So I synthesized a couple different recipes based on what caught my eye and what was in the house. Namely, fennel and apples.

I cut slits in the roasts and put slivers of garlic in them. Roughly 15-20 slits, maybe two cloves per roast. I rubbed salt, pepper, fresh rosemary and fennel fronds into the meat, and then seared each on all sides in the dutch oven with a bit of peppery olive oil. I set them aside, and tossed some onion cut into thick slices and whole cloves of garlic. One large onion, the rest of the bulb of garlic. I tossed that around to loosen the sticky goodness leftover from the searing, then properly deglazed with about half a cup of cider. I put the biggest, outside pieces of the fennel bulbs (after trimming the top and bottom and slicing into half inch discs), on the bottom of the pan to keep the roasts up a bit. I put the roasts back in, and wedged the rest of the fennel in along with two apples sliced about like the fennel. I added another half a cup to a cup of apple cider (whatever was left in the bottle), a couple of sprigs of rosemary, covered it and put it in a 325 degree oven. I have convection, but I don't really think it matters too much, since it's cooking for so long. I left it in there about 3 hours 15 min, it probably was find after about 2 and a half, and I probably could have left it in there for another hour or so without too much going wrong. The meat was falling apart, had all of the sweetness from the cider and apples and the herbiness of the rosemary. The apples had all but disintegrated, and the fennel was on its way, but still delicious. I think if I was using a smaller roast, I'd put more fennel in, because it felt like there wasn't enough, but there really wasn't room for much more than the two bulbs I used. Less liquid and some root vegetables would be interesting as well.

I served it over whipped (sort of, the mixer went with my sister when she moved out) potatoes with a bit of parsley, and a simple salad on the side.

Hmmm, looking back at that, I wonder if I should write these up as proper recipes. I do lot of recipes out of magazines and don't want to really muck about with copyright, though. But I guess in cases like this it wouldn't be bad to make it an actual recipe.

To be resumed

I've been lax in updating the last couple months. I was finishing my dissertation and thus didn't have a lot of time to update. As a result the Tuesday night dinners either haven't been happening, or were something quick and/or not terribly interesting.

I'm moving to California in early October, which will unfortunately cut down on the Tuesday night dinners to almost non-existent, since I was unable to negotiate a benefits package that included weekly flights the east coast. I will have a fabulous kitchen and be living in the area that produces a huge amount of the produce consumed in the US, so I will be cooking a lot. Expect it to feature smaller meals and experiments. My isolation may contribute to more frequent updates, we shall see.