the Nom Collective: July 2010

Thursday, July 22

White Chocolate Cranberry Scones

Sometimes I crave white chocolate. This is weird, not because white chocolate is the obviously inferior chocolate, but because the creamy sweetness that I enjoy also makes me slightly queasy in sufficient quantity. None the less, I had been putting off making a batch of oatmeal cranberry white chocolate cookies for a few months. The cookies (along with homemade bread, experiments from Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican cookbook, and an endless supply of coffee) were part of a fond tradition of baking with Mary Menville in the kitchen of her dorm and bitching about how much we hated everyone at the college we went to.

I kept defaulting to cookies, part out of nostalgia, part out of laziness, and part out of not having an idea what else to hide it in. Accusing the entire Internet of conspiracy to cover up white chocolate recipes seems silly. The truth is, I probably just glance over them. I thought about doing scones before. My Betty Crocker Cookbook (don't hate, this was a fantastic book to have in college because anything you wanted to cook from it could easily be obtained by rummaging through cabinets or knocking on a few neighbors' doors. And the desserts usually turn out perfectly) has a picture of some sort of white chocolate scone in it. I'm sure it was the large crystals of sugar glistening on top which attracted me. I mentioned making them a few times to Shira. Her response was usually to shrug and talk about orange-dark chocolate scones. Foiled.

The pieces fell into place: a craving, a stumbled upon recipe, a visiting friend to foist baked good upon (especially if I botched them). I could do a breakfast thing, fulfilling Ten-Forward's mission of non-stop delicious food, and finally scratch the white chocolate itch. The recipe I used was not from the Betty Crocker Cookbook (to be honest, I forgot about it until I was writing this up). It was supposed to be much fancier: buckwheat flour and fine cornmeal were used in addition to all purpose flour. In my early morning grogginess at the coop I forgot to grab buckwheat flour. The rest of the modifications came as a result of what I had on hand: cranberries for the cherries, less white chocolate because I didn't feel like getting two bars and leaving half of one to sit in the fridge for an eternity, and no added corn meal because I didn't feel like it.

Despite all of my modifications, I really enjoyed these scones. They had a wonderful texture. And even though I only used two-thirds of the chocolate the original recipe called for, it was quite enough chocolate for me. Springing for a nice white chocolate probably helped mask that there wasn't a ton of it. Check out the original recipe here: David Lebovitz's White Chocolate Sour Cherry Scones.

White Chocolate Cranberry Scones

This is a modified version of David Lebovitz's White Chocolate Sour Cherry Scones. I encourage you to check out the original, which is a much more interesting and complex (in terms of ingredients, not effort) scone.

Baking time: around 25 minutes, at 400 degrees

2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
6 tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
1/2 cup cream
1 large egg
1 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup (100 g) chopped white chocolate (for me this was one bar of Green and Black's white chocolate)

Glaze
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp milk

Makes six or eight scones.

1.) Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together.

2.) Cube the butter and chill it. I put it in the freezer because I was going to take the food processor route. If mixing by hand or with a pastry cutter, the fridge should is fine. Once chilled, cut into the flour mixture. I put it in the food processor which created more stuff to wash but satisfied my early morning(ish) laziness. (One day, I will own a pastry cutter). You're looking for pea-sized chunks of flour and butter. Be careful not to over mix in the food processor. I did around ten quick pulses.

3.) Mix the egg and the cream together and then add to the flour and butter mixture. Mix until just combined and then add the chopped white chocolate and the cranberries. Mix until the dough comes together. It will be quite crumbly. Do not add any extra liquid yet.

4.) Dump the dough onto a floured work surface. Bring it together and fold it over itself a few times. The crumbs should magically come together, where once you had a pile of dry failure shedding white chocolate and cranberries. Press any escapees into the dough ball and form into a round about eight inches in diameter.

5.) Cut into 6 or 8 wedges. Place the wedges on a baking mat or parchment paper (the bottoms do get burned otherwise). Mix the yolk and milk, then glaze the tops of the scones. Sprinkle lightly with sugar.

6.) Bake until golden brown, about 25 minutes.

Sunday, July 18

Black pepper and sesame crusted tuna steaks with ginger-shiitake cream sauce

Rather than just the title recipe, this post covers the entire dinner that we made to go around it.

I've made this meal a few times, always with one of my Nom Collective comrades: twice with Captain Letdown, my esteemed roommate, and once while visiting the lovely Missy. The centerpiece of the dinner is the black pepper and sesame crusted tuna steak with ginger-shiitake cream sauce of the post title. Captain Roommate found this recipe on Epicurious, and it is pretty spectacular. The tuna itself is just delicious seared steaks, but the sauce is INSANE. In order to enjoy this sauce as much as possible, by putting it on everything ohmygoodnessitissogood, we served it with wasabi mashed potatoes, which are an excellent vehicle for it. Here at Ten Forward, we had a seaweed salad for the vegetable. Captain Action made it, so I can't really speak to a recipe, but it was two or three types of dried seaweed that we keep in the cabinet, soaked and drained and then dressed with a rice wine vinaigrette with sesame. Also there were carrots ins. This is a pretty wonderful, fancy-ish meal, but it really comes together very quickly. There's a decent amount of prep work, but the only part of the cooking that takes any time at all is boiling the potatoes. (And as noted above, I don't know how long the seaweed needs to soak for.) The tuna is only seared, and the sauce takes five or six minutes, max, to make. I'm going to separate the recipes out (tuna and sauce/potatoes) but my advice in terms of order is that you put the potatoes up, then do all the prep work for the sauce while they boil, then mash and season the potatoes, then cook the tuna and make the sauce. Because the sauce only cooks for a minute or two at each stage, and the tuna is only seared, it's really important to have everything chopped up and ready to add before you start. The potatoes retain heat well, and since the oven is on low (200ºF) for the fish to sit in anyway, they can hang out in there while other things happen as long as they're in something vaguely oven-safe. On to recipes!

Wasabi mashed potatoes
(Disclaimer: I've never in my life used or made a recipe for mashed potatoes. I'm keeping this one vague, because in my opinion the levels of everything are taste-dependent and should be personalized. So: instead of precise, conversational.)

Potatoes
salt
pepper
milk or cream
butter
wasabi (paste or powder)

Put a pot of salted water on to boil. There should be enough room and water for the potatoes to be covered with an inch or so to spare. Meanwhile, cut the potatoes into roughly regular chunks. (You could peel them first, if you like, but I like the skins.) I usually use small potatoes like Yukon Golds, and cut them in half or in thirds depending on how big they are, but all that really matters is that the pieces are about the same size. When the water hits a rolling boil, lower the potatoes in and cover, (or don't, really.) Keep the water at a steady boil and boil until the potatoes are tender when you stick a fork through them. This should take something like ten to twenty minutes, and as mentioned, it's a perfect time to be peeling and chopping garlic and ginger and all that. Also, if you're using dried wasabi powder, you can prepare it now - the brands we get tend to want you to let it sit, covered, for at least five minutes after mixing with water and before use. I recommend you make more than you think you'll need, so you can add it gradually to taste. When the potatoes are tender, drain them, transfer to a bowl and mash with a masher or a fork or, you know, anything else that works. Now is when all the amounts depend on your taste and preferences. I start by adding butter, salt and pepper, but less than I think it will end up needing. After that, I adjust by taste, adding more butter, and/or milk and/or cream, until I have a texture I like, and more salt and pepper until it is delicious. Ordinarily, I like significant amounts of black pepper in my mashed potatoes, and often cracked red pepper flakes as well, but for wasabi-flavored ones I hold back on the pepper- there's plenty more bite coming, and I don't want to overshadow the wasabi's taste. I like to add the wasabi last, after the potatoes seem delicious and balanced. Who can say why! I just think it's a good idea. The wasabi should definitely be added gradually, and to your taste - I like it to be a noticeable but not overpowering flavor, and my potatoes tend to end up tinted slightly green. When they are how you want them, set them aside (perhaps in the oven!) until serving time.

Black pepper and sesame crusted tuna steaks with ginger-shiitake cream sauce

From epicurious.com. The original is supposed to make enough sauce for six tuna steaks, but clearly Bon Appetit magazine did not fully appreciate the glory of this sauce. Last time I made it, we made two tuna steaks, but only halved the sauce recipe. Next time, I'm just going to make the full sauce recipe, because it is wonderful and leftover sauce on a baked potato would center a very fine dinner, in my opinion. Accordingly, I'm including the full recipe here, not a halved one. Depending on how much sauce you want, it would work for two to six people; adjust as needed.

tuna steaks (one per person)
coarsely ground black peppr
coarse salt

sesame seeds (we used a mix of black and regular, because we had them around and it's pretty)

oil for the frying pan

sauce:
3 T (tablespoons; t = teaspoons) butter
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
2 T finely chopped peeled ginger root
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
half a pound of fresh shiitake mushrooms, cleaned, stemmed, and sliced
6 T soy sauce
1.5 cups whipping cream
3 T fresh lime juice

Preheat the oven to 200ºF - this is where the tuna will wait while the sauce is being made. Heat the oil (a tablespoon or two) in a large, heavy skillet on high heat. Mix the coarse black pepper and the sesame, along with a sprinkling of coarse salt, together on a plate, and lay one or both (up to you!) sides of each tuna steak on it to coat. If you only coat one side with the sesame, you should still season the other side with a little salt and pepper.When the skillet is heated, place the tuna steaks (or some of them, if you're making too many to fit) in the hot oil.

Now, the original recipe says to leave them for two minutes, but that is crazy talk. You want a delicious crust, but you don't want the fish cooked through (I mean, unless you do, but that is not what I am looking for from tuna steak.) Watch them, but I advise leaving them no more than a minute. Turn over and, again, sear to desired doneness- again, they think two minutes, I think more like one. When you've got them where you want them, remove them to a baking sheet and pop it in the oven to stay warm. To the same pan, with its bit of oil and peppery-sesame-y tuna crust bits, add the butter, ginger, garlic, green onion, and cilantro, and saute until it smells wonderful, about thirty seconds. Add the soy sauce and the mushrooms, and simmer another thirty seconds, then add the cream (you probably want to ease off the heat at this point) and simmer merrily until your sauce lightly coats the back of a spoon, roughly three minutes during which you can start plating everything up. Mix in the lime juice and serve.

Tuesday, July 13

Goya chanpuru, Okinawan Bitter Melon Stir Fry

The Carrboro Farmers' Market usually has a surprise or two lurking in with the boxes and boxes of tomatoes and eggplants. This visit, I was greeted by a small pile of bitter melon at the first stand. Because I usually make one pass at the market before I buy anything, I was worried that someone would buy all of the bitter melon before I could get to it (haha). The market was packed and I didn't have a lot of patience after having to fight through isles and stands where people were standing around having conversations in the worst place physically possible (if only I had taken fluid dynamics, I could have at least distracted myself with physics). After braving people and a blueberry spill at the bitter melon stand, I at last secured two smallish bitter melons. The woman working the stand asked if I had eaten bitter melon before. Naturally, I lied. I've had arguments at stands before where vendors tried to talk me out of buying things and I didn't feel like getting lectured—a tiny delicate flower such as myself cannot possibly tolerate spicy, bitter, or flavorful foods.

Yes, I realize that she was probably going to offer friendly advice on how to prepare it and she probably could have helped me to pick riper and less bitter melons. But I am to personal interactions as coarse sandpaper is to your face. The melons were mostly the same color anyway. Bitter melons start off dark green with white pulpy interiors and eventually ripen and turn yellow and split open to reveal bright red pulp and seeds. They become less bitter as they ripen, so a lighter more yellowish green is desirable, to a point. The fruit of the melon is too mushy and bitter to eat when it turns yellow/yellowish orange.

You can see that mine were pretty dark green. Another way to mitigate the bitterness is to blanch the melons. You can also salt and drain them. I went the salting route in order to keep as much crispness to the melon before cooking as possible.

Bitter melons are prized for their pleasantly bitter flavor (when properly prepared) and their reported cooling effect. They are also many health benefit claims from aiding digestion to lowering blood glucose (always a welcome side effect, given Ten-Forward's proclivity towards dessert). I halved my melons, lengthwise, and scooped out the pith and seeds. I then chopped the melon into half inch slices. Curious, I bit into a piece. The texture was like a cross between a cucumber and a bell pepper. It was bitter, but not terribly so, until the aftertaste: it had that familiar medicinally bitter taste. I was not tempted to spit the piece or vomit, which I took as a good sign. It was certainly edible and I was interested in tasting it after salting and eating it with other food.

One thing I left out of the stir fry was the pork. Pork is not cooked in Ten-Forward when Shira is around. I didn't replace the pork with another protein. I think the balance of the dish was thrown off. Perhaps I should have added more egg (keeping it at least ovo-vegetarian) but I think some other meat would be better. The melon was bitter but was delicious with the pieces of egg. It was slightly less bitter after salting, cooking, and coating with sweet miso sauce. Not bad, but definitely better paired with something else.

Would I try bitter melon again? Yes. I would even try goya chanpuru again. There are many different ways to prepare this vegetable, from soups to stir frys to even deep frying it. It was far from the most bitter thing I have ever eaten and I think that in a well balanced dish, the bitterness is very enjoyable.

Goya Chanpuru [ゴーヤチャンプルー]

You can watch this dish be prepared (not by me, of course) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp-a5y8rY28. Cooking with Dog is a wonderful channel for learning to make Japanese food and is one of my favorite Japanese cooking resources (a nice way of saying, expect more posts of Japanese food from here).

Makes two servings

2 medium sized bitter melons or one large melon
salt
half of a chopped onion
half a block of firm tofu
2 eggs
pinch of pepper

Sauce

2 tbsp white miso
1 tbsp sake
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp soy sauce

Katsuobushi, for garnish

1.) Prepare the bitter melon and tofu

Cut the melon(s) in half, lengthwise. Scoop out and discard the seeds and white pith. Chop the melon into half inch slices. Place the pieces in a bowl and salt them. Wrap the tofu in a paper towel and set a weight on it. Allow both to sit for half an hour. Rinse the bitter melon and drain. Wipe the tofu with a dry paper towel and cut into half inch slices.

2.) Precook ingredients

The key to stir fry is to remember that, usually, the ingredients do not cook at the same rate. By the time the tofu is browned, the eggs would be tiny, tough blobs and the melon overcooked and mushy. Precooking lets you control when everything will be done. Heat up a pan on medium-high heat with a tablespoon or so of oil. Add the tofu and cook until browned on both sides. If you didn't drain the tofu well, it will spit hot oil everywhere. After the tofu is browned, I precooked the onions. If you like crisper onions, you can cook them alongside the bitter melon later. Finally, beat the two eggs with a bit of salt and pepper and cook them half way. Enough that they will congeal together, not create an omelet. This keeps the eggs from overcooking and becoming rubbery in the stir fry while keeping the eggs in larger chunks.

3.)Prepare the miso sauce

Combine the miso, soy sauce, sake, and sugar. Set aside.

4.) Assemble the stir fry

Heat the pan back up to medium high. Add a bit of oil and then stir fry the bitter melon (and the onions, if not precooked) until the melon is softened, about a minute or two. Add the tofu, onions, and sauce. Toss to coat. Add the eggs and stir to mix in and to finish cooking the eggs. When the eggs are cooked, remove and plate. Top with katsuobushi, if desired.

Sunday, July 11

Welcome to the Nom Collective

Hello, Internet! We are the (fledgling) Nom Collective, a group of friends scattered across the country and enthusiastic about food. We are, from East to West:

Captain Letdown is powered by an engine fueled by caffeine and anger. Food is prepared as a means of channeling energy into non-destructive endeavors.

Shira loves to cook and bake and entertain and eat out. She was raised in a kosher household, then learned to cook from a vegetarian, though she is currently neither; cooking meat is still new for her. She especially enjoys cooking with a friend, and ambitious cooking, the kind that takes all day and possibly oven scheduling. However, she also likes to do the sort that produces dinner after work every night.

Missy knows that food is love (particularly when said food is chocolate). With a passion for Southern style breakfasts, baked goods, and fresh fruit, her sweet tooth is indulged in nearly every course. When she isn't cooking and eating food that would make a cardiologist cry, she loves to work on her budding edible garden.

Dear Cohen, like many humans, enjoys both food and opinions. She is a vegetarian and has recently begun eating ≥ 1 vegan meal a day. Dear doesn't cook as much as she'd like, but when she does, she mostly makes Mediterranean food and soups. Sometimes Mediterranean soups.

Mary Menville would love nothing more than to live on a farm with goats, chickens, and organic lettuce but is currently surrounded by miles of concrete in the City of Angels. Cooking is a way to satisfy her hunger for a DIY green lifestyle, and her hunger for delicious food.

Later: our food!

the Nom Collective