Dec 26
2010

So we hosted the Feast of the N Fishes for Christmas Eve, and yours truly was responsible for two of them (both smoked, of course): a salmon, and a catfish.

The salmon is pretty simple. So simple that the original only takes two paragraphs in the 1969 printing of the Sunset Barbecue Cookbook. Place your fillet on a “sheet of heavy foil cut to fit the fillet.” I spray canola oil on the foil to keep it from sticking, and place the skin side down. (If you’re lucky — and we were on Christmas Eve — the skin won’t stick to the foil). Then smoke the fillet around 250º F (Sunset recommends less than 275) for two hours. I use Oak.

That’s it. No brine, no rub, and seasoning only if you want while eating.

For the catfish, I started with Elizabeth Karmel’s Beer-Brined Smoked Catfish recipe found in Mike Mills’ Peace, Love, and Barbecue. I did tweak it a bit, though — for starters, Karmel’s brine is more dense.

The ingredients:

  • 2 pounds of catfish fillets
  • 1/3rd cup of kosher salt, ground
  • 3 Tbsp brown sugar
  • 1/3rd cup of hot water
  • 1 cold beer (specifically, a Pyramid Haywire Hefewezien)
  • 1 Tbsp ground black pepper (again, the Penzey’s 4-peppercorn blend)
  • 2 bay leaves

To assemble the brine: start with the hot water, and mix in the salt and sugar. Then whisk the beer until all the carbonation is removed (if you start earlier, you can pour the beer and let it stand for an hour to go flat). When done, add the beer, pepper, and bay leaves to the water.

Place the fillets in a baking dish, and pour in the brine. If the brine does not completely cover the fish, add water until it does. (Not hot water, as you don’t want to accidentally cook the fish.) Move the dish to your refrigerator and let it sit for at least four hours. (Overnight is OK.)

Remove the fish from the brine and place on heavy foil as per the salmon recipe. Then smoke (oak again) for an hour at 250º F.

So how good is this? Auntie Pasto’s parents gave me 3-and-a-half pounds of assorted rubs and 20 pounds of smoking wood for Christmas. That sounds like a hint delivered with a sledgehammer to me.

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Dec 23
2010

Like a lot of other Italian-Americans, and like a lot of Italians, it’s traditional in our family to serve a special fish dinner on Christmas Eve. My family has never used the term “Feast of the Seven Fishes” for the Christmas Eve dinner, but that seems to be the common phrase for it. I actually hadn’t heard that particular phrase before this year.

There are several dishes we make. Cuduridi are an Italian fried bread dough, made with potatoes and yeast, and sometimes stuffed with anchovies. Anchovies are “alici”. We do a special pasta with a breadcrumb-and-anchovy sauce: “alici pasta”. We also do pasta with a red sauce with dried cod (“baccalá”), though given how hard it is to find baccalá these days, we usually use fresh cod now. For vegetables, we always have a green salad simply made with sliced or chopped olives, garlic, and olive oil. We also make my Nana’s recipe for marinated broccoli and marinated cauliflower. My Grandma makes cannoli for dessert. (And she makes the best cannoli — homemade cannoli shells, homemade ricotta … my goodness, you have never had anything so amazing.)

The food’s fantastic. But the best part is being with the family, making the things we always make, telling the same jokes we always tell, and just having a good time.

We’re having Christmas Eve at my house this year. There’ll be pictures coming tomorrow, most likely. We’re doing things a little differently, but just a little. We’re skipping the red sauce because there’ll only be six of us, and Uncle Pasto is making smoked fish to go along with it all. (He’s a diabetic; alternatives to pasta are much easier on him, too.) I’m not sure what fish it’ll be; we’re picking up whatever looks freshest and best today. I might add a little hot pepper to the lettuce-and-olive salad; I tried that earlier in the year and it was awesome. There will be cuduridi. There will be alici pasta. There will be broccoli and cauliflower and cannoli, and it will be wonderful. Like always.

I can’t wait. (:

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Trackback  •  Posted in Holidays  


Dec 23
2010

Several years ago, when my mother-in-law told me that she rarely got potiça for the holidays, and no one made it any more, I vowed to find out what this mysterious substance was and make some for her as a surprise. Only I didn’t know how to spell it. It took a while for me to find out, because potiça is actually pronounced “poe-TEETS-ah”. Yeah, not what I’d call obvious. At least, not if you’re not Slovenian. (:

So, what is this mysterious potiça? It’s a Slovenian yeasted bread, stuffed and rolled with a walnut-honey mixture. Some people add raisins. I think it’d be good that way, but I haven’t done it that way yet. It’s time-consuming to prepare, because of the double-rise and the rolling, and because I have to make two batches, or we don’t get any!

I use a recipe from a Slovenian cookbook entitled More Pots and Pans, put out by the Slovenian Women Union of America. My mom-in-law gave it to me. It’s a pretty cool book — I’ve made some other recipes out of it. I make a variant on the “especially for beginners” recipe. This is my version.

Walnut Potiça

  • 4 1/2 tsp. rapid-rise yeast
  • 3 1/2 c. white flour
  • 3 c. whole-wheat flour (not traditional, but I find that it really complements the filling well)
  • 4 Tbsp. sugar
  • generous pinch salt
  • zest of 1 lemon, grated (I like Meyer lemons)
  • 1/2 c. milk
  • 4 egg yolks, well beaten (reserve the whites for the filling)
  • 1 c. sour cream
  • 1 stick (1/4 lb) butter
  • 1 c. half-and-half

Mix the beaten egg yolks and sour cream. Set aside. Melt the butter with the half-and-half and set aside to cool slightly.

Combine the white flour, whole wheat flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and lemon zest in the bowl of a large stand mixer. You can also knead this by hand, of course. I have shoulder problems, so the mixer is a big help for me, and it makes it go quickly. Add the egg yolks and sour cream, the butter and half-and-half, and the milk. Mix until the liquid is absorbed. You should have a nice soft dough. If you don’t, add more milk.

Knead in the mixer or by hand until you have a smooth and elastic dough. It will take about 10 minutes by hand, 4-5 in the mixer.

Place the dough in a large greased bowl (I use spray oil), turn the dough upside-down to grease the top, and cover with a damp towel. Set aside to rise in a warm place for about an hour and a half, or until the dough is doubled in bulk. Meanwhile, make the filling, and grease four bread pans and a pie pan for the ends.

Walnut Filling

  • 1 stick (1/4 lb) butter
  • 1 c. half-and-half, heated
  • 1 1/2 lb. ground walnuts (a nut grinder is traditional, but I don’t have one. I grind mine in the food processor. You do get a slightly different texture if you use a nut grinder, but the potiça is equally tasty either way.)
  • 1 1/2 c. sugar
  • 3/4 c. honey (I use California wildflower honey, which is my favorite. Different honeys will give the filling different flavors — use what you like best.)
  • 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract (I use Penzey’s double-strength vanilla)
  • 4 egg whites, beaten to stiff peaks

Heat the butter in the half-and-half until melted. Pour the hot mixture over the ground walnuts. Add the sugar, honey, and vanilla and mix well. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Assemble the Bread

When the dough has doubled, turn it out onto a floured cloth or sheet large enough to roll the dough to 30 x 40″. A table pad or quilt under the sheet will make rolling easier. Roll the dough out into a 30 x40″ rectangle from the center, using only enough flour to keep it from sticking.

Spread the walnut filling evenly over the dough, covering the entire surface except for 1″ on the wide end to be rolled last. I usually spread the filling with my hands. It’s sticky, but faster and you get a smoother coat.

I don’t usually bother to trim the dough to shape, because everyone likes the little gooshy edges where the filling has escaped. But if you want to make it look a little more even, you can square up the dough and trim the edges off. Roll these up like cinnamon rolls and put them in the greased pie plate to bake off.

Start rolling the dough with your fingers, tightly at first and tugging and stretching lightly as you roll. Try to keep the side edges as even as possible.

Rolling the Potiça

When you’re halfway through rolling, take a skewer or cake tester (you can see mine in the picture above) and prick the roll about every two inches, going about halfway through. This helps release air bubbles. Continue to roll until you’re at that 1″ you left bare. Paint that with egg white to help the seam seal (I find that the filling always tries to squish out into that area), and finish rolling up. Prick the dough again about every 2 inches.

When the dough is rolled up, you’ll need to cut it to fit. Their recommendation is a plate, which works fine — I’ve done that before. I also have a bench scraper, which is what I’m using in this picture. Whatever you’ve got will work.

Cutting the Potiça

Trim off the ends and put them into the pie plate, then cut each loaf to fit your pans. Place them in the pans, cover with a damp towel, and set aside in a warm place to let double in bulk, about 1 hour. Preheat your oven to 325°F.

When the dough is fully proofed, you can brush the top with a mixture of cream and sugar, but I always forget. My potiça never gets a glaze. Oops. I actually don’t think it needs it; it’s plenty sweet on its own. Bake the loaves and the ends at 325°F for an hour and 10 minutes. Keep an eye on the ends, but they’re usually fine.

Remove from the pans and let cool for 20 minutes, then remove from pans and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

So much work, right? Wouldn’t you say the results are worth it, though? And this is just one of the end bits.

Completed Potica

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Trackback  •  Posted in Baking, Holidays  


Dec 19
2010

I found this recipe on the ‘net a while back while I was looking for pickle recipes. During the summer, I had lemon cucumbers coming out my ears. And Uncle Pasto’s ears. And anyone who stepped in the house’s ears. For future reference: you only need one lemon cucumber plant for a family of two. No more than one. Trust me. (; We meant to only buy one, but we somehow managed to get two …

Anyway! So I made these pickles in the summertime, and hadn’t had an excuse to open them yet, because we were eating dill pickles that I made out of the same cucumbers. Since my cousins were throwing a Christmas party, I decided to pop open a jar and bring them. They went over so well that everyone asked for the recipe! ^_^; I am so flattered!

Here is the recipe, with my notes. Unfortunately, I no longer have a link to the original, but as I recall, it was a recipe that someone found in a French magazine.

French Vanilla Pickles

This recipe makes a lot of brine. I put up three quarts and could easily have put up double that amount with the amount of brine it makes. I had two full quart jars of brine left over when I was done. You may wish to cut it in half when you make it, depending on how many cucumbers you have. I am sure this would work fine with any type of pickling cucumber, if you don’t have access to lemon cucumbers.

  • lemon cucumbers, well scrubbed and cut in quarters
  • 9 c. sugar
  • 2 quarts white vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp. kosher salt or pickling salt (pickling salt is a specialty salt that is designed to dissolve quickly and easily, leaving your pickle brine sparkling clear. It’s not necessary to use, but it is a nice luxury.)
  • 1 Tbsp. whole cloves and 1 Tbsp pickling spice, tied in a spice bag
  • 1/4 c. lemon juice (because you are using so much vinegar, the acidity of the lemons should not be a factor. Fresh-squeezed juice should be fine.)
  • 1/4 c. vanilla (I use Penzey’s double-strength vanilla extract)
  • cinnamon sticks
  • 3/4 tsp. pickle crisp per pint, or 1 1/2 tsp. per quart, or a couple of fresh grape leaves per jar (fresh grape leaves will not keep the pickles quite as crisp as pickle crisp, but they do help, and I have some growing over the fence in my backyard, so they’re easy for me to get)

Wash and slice the cucumbers. Combine the salt, vinegar, sugar, vanilla, and lemon juice in a large saucepot, mix well, and heat to dissolve the salt and sugar. Add the spice bag and boil five minutes.

Prepare a hot water bath and canning jars and lids. Bring the jars to a boil for 5 minutes to sterilize them before packing them.

If you are making pints: add 1/2 a cinnamon stick and 3/4 tsp. pickle crisp or a few grape leaves to each jar. If you are making quarts, add a whole cinnamon stick and 1 1/2 tsp. pickle crisp or a few grape leaves to each jar. Pack the sliced cucumbers tightly into the jars. Ladle vinegar mixture into each jar within 1/2″ of the top. The cucumbers will try to float. It’s kind of annoying, but doesn’t seem to actually be a problem in terms of the canning. Just don’t over-fill the jars. Release any trapped air bubbles, and add lids and rings, tightening to fingertip-tight.

Process pints for 5 minutes and quarts for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath, following the usual canning method.

The recipe didn’t say how long to let the pickles mature before eating. I generally think a month is a good length of time. Make sure you note on your jar labels when you packed them, and when they’ll be ready.

Enjoy! These are sweet and flavorful — a great snacking pickle. (:

French Vanilla Pickles

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Trackback  •  Posted in Canning and Preserving  


Dec 8
2010

Well, maybe not infinite … I haven’t figured out how to make pumpkin fudge with this recipe yet. And Alton Brown will tell you that technically, this is not a fudge, but a different kind of candy. He’s right. But it’s got the same consistency and creaminess with a lot less work and fuss, so that’s good enough for me. Especially because it is delicious. I make batches and batches and give it as gifts for the holidays.

The original is not my recipe. I reproduce it here for your convenience, because it is all over the Internet anyway, and I have added some notes to make it a bit clearer. I believe it is originally an official recipe from Kahlua. My variations on the theme will be posted below.

Note: I strongly recommend using quality chocolate chips for this recipe. I use Ghirardelli. My mom uses Guittard. We have both found that Nestle chips do not melt all the way, and you end up with hard chunks in your fudge.

Kahlua Creamy Fudge

  • 1 1/3 c. granulated sugar
  • 1 (7 oz.) jar marshmallow creme
  • 2/3 c. evaporated milk (just under half of a 12 oz. can)
  • 1/4 c. butter (half a stick)
  • 1/4 c. Kahlua
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 c. semi-sweet chocolate pieces
  • 1 c. milk chocolate pieces
  • 2/3 c. nuts, chopped (optional)
  • 1 tsp. vanilla

Line an 8″ square baking pan with foil. In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, marshmallow creme, evaporated milk, butter, Kahlua, and salt. Place over medium heat, and stir and break up the marshmallow creme as you bring it to a rapid boil. Boil for five minutes, stirring constantly. (The mixture will turn a light caramel brown as you cook it). Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add all the chocolate and the vanilla, and stir quickly and thoroughly until the chocolate is all melted and the mixture is well-combined. Add nuts if using, stir to distribute them, and pour the fudge into the lined pan. Refrigerate until firm. Cut into squares. Makes about 2 3/4 lb.

Cherry Almond Fudge

Replace Kahlua with Amaretto. Replace vanilla extract with almond extract.  After stirring in the chocolate, stir in 2/3 c. snipped dried cherries and 1/3-2/3 c. toasted slivered almonds.

Raisin Picante Fudge

Replace Kahlua with brandy. Add 1 Tbsp. Hatch chile powder to marshmallow creme mixture. Stir in 2/3 c. raisins after stirring in chocolate.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Fudge

Make a batch of Kahlua fudge and split it between two 8×8″ foil-lined pans. Leave these pans on the counter while you immediately make another batch of fudge, replacing all of the chocolate chips with Reese’s peanut butter chips. Pour the second batch of fudge over the first batch, and leave on the countertop to cool, so that the layers will seal themselves together. Alternatively, if that’s too much fudge, you can make one batch of fudge with 1 c. semi-sweet chips, 1/2 c. milk chocolate chips, and 1 1/2 c. peanut butter chips. Stir in chopped peanuts if desired.

White Chocolate Blueberry Fudge

Replace Kahlua with Domain de Canton ginger liqueur. Replace all chocolate chips with white chocolate chips. Add 1/3 tsp. lemon extract when you add the vanilla extract. Stir in 2/3 c. dried blueberries and 1/3 c. candied lemon peel after stirring in the white chocolate chips. You could also add a very small amount of very finely chopped candied ginger. Be careful; it can overwhelm the rest of the fudge.

Like I said, infinite variations! There are all kinds of things you can do by varying the chips, the extract, the liqueur, and your mix-ins. Enjoy, and have fun experimenting!

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Trackback  •  Posted in Improv, Recipes  


Dec 8
2010

Every year, Balboa Park hosts a terrific holiday event. December Nights is the first Friday and Saturday of December, from 5-9pm. All of the Balboa Park museums are open and free. There’s music at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion and elsewhere throughout the park. There are vendors of all types. The Spanish Village has all kinds of art for sale. It’s really cool.

My favorite part has always been the International Houses, though. The International Houses each set up a food booth, featuring specialty foods from the nations that are represented. There’s cannoli and tiramisu at House of Italy, pastries and haggis at House of Scotland, crepes at House of France, and so forth. Uncle Pasto and I try to go and find new foods we haven’t tried before. It’s great fun. (:

What we had this year:

House of Argentina: choripan and alfajores. I am rather amused that choripan sounds Japanese, and kind of functions the same way as many Japanese portmanteaus, in that it’s a grilled chorizo sausage (chori-) on crusty bread (pan). It’s topped off with chimichurri sauce … yum!Alfajores are sandwich cookies. The cookies are made with flour, honey, and nuts, and they’re filled with dulce du leche, and the edges are rolled in coconut. I’d like a little lemon or something in the cookie to cut the sweet just slighty, but they are still really tasty.

House of Ukraine: Uncle Pasto and I like sausages. At House of Ukraine, we got the kovbasa sandwich with kapusta. Kovbasa is similar to a kielbasa, and kapusta starts with sauerkraut, but adds other vegetables. In this case, we noticed carrots and onions. It was tasty. We also got the varenyka, which is kind of like potato-stuffed ravioli. The dough is thick and chewy, and the potato filling is soft. It’s sauced with butter and sauteed onions, and topped with sour cream. Fantastic. Probably a good thing we limited ourselves to one, or we’d never have made it to …

House of Finland: where we got lihapullat and kastike, the Finnish take on meatballs and gravy. The meatballs were pretty normal, but the kastike was terrific — a savory pepper gravy, which neither of us had thought to pair with meatballs before. We also got rosolli, a chopped salad of beets, apples, carrots, onions, and sour cream. I am pleased to note that we now have a new favorite beet dish. Rosolli is delicious! We also picked up a “Finnish doughnut” — they didn’t have listed what the actual Finnish word was for it.  It was a spongy fried bread dough, dusted with cinnamon sugar.

On to House of Panama: Oh, how we love House of Panama, and we were rather sad that we got to them late, because the arroz con coconut y pollo smelled amazing. But we were both pretty full, so we settled for a bacalaito and a small batch of yuca frita. Bacalaito is a deep-fried codfish fritter which totally screams Christmas at me — it’s also similar to Italian fried dough, which we make on Christmas Eve. My family puts anchovies in them instead of baccala (salt cod). Yuca frita is just as it sounds — deep-fried cassava root. Yes, that’s the same stuff they use to make tapioca. Yuca frita is pretty bland, but kick it up with Panamanian hot sauce, and look out. Panamanian hot sauce is a mix of habanero, mustard, onion, garlic, and sometimes turmeric. It’s utterly incendiary and absolutely delicious.

We finished off our noshing at the Houses of Czech and Slovak. We did this on purpose because we know they usually have kolaches, and they did not disappoint. Kolaches are a sweet roll made with a yeast dough, and topped with jam or poppyseeds, or occasionally stuffed with sausage. We got three utterly scrumptious apricot kolaches and ate them all up. I had my first real kolaches ever at the Czech Stop in Texas, and have loved them ever since. They’re not a common food here in San Diego, so it’s a real treat getting them at December Nights.

It was a wonderful experience, and I wholeheartedly encourage you, if you are local, to pay a visit to the International Houses the next time you go to December Nights (next year, right? (; ). It is totally worth it. Bring cash and an open mind and empty stomach!

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Dec 1
2010

I love cranberry sauce, but Uncle Pasto, who is a supertaster, basically can’t eat more than a bite of it before declaring it “too sour”. He likes cranberry bread, though. So when I brought home two cups of the family cranberry sauce, I knew I’d have to do something with it, rather than just serve it plain.

The cranberry sauce we make is one that came up years ago in the San Diego Union-Tribune: Chef Katie Sutton’s Spicy Cranberry-Pear Relish. It’s great — a sweet and savory combination. I took the leftovers we had and made it into these:

Cranberry-Pear Muffins

  • 2 c. chunky cranberry sauce, preferably homemade, drained of liquid
  • 2 1/4 c. white whole-wheat flour
  • 1 c. white flour
  • 1/4 c. mesquite flour (or just use more whole-wheat flour)
  • 2/3 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
  • 4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • pinch each of cloves and salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 c. canola oil
  • 1 1/2 c. milk

Preheat the oven to 400 °F. Set the cranberry sauce in a strainer to drain the juices away. While the sauce is draining, make the batter.

Combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in the bowl of a mixer. Mix to combine. Beat the eggs and add them to the bowl along with the milk and canola oil. Mix to combine, then add the drained cranberry sauce, and mix again. The batter should come together very quickly.

Scoop the batter into greased muffin tins or muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake about 20 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Makes about 20 muffins.

These are pretty good on their own, but can be made decadent with the addition of a little cream-cheese icing. For a quick and easy cream-cheese icing, whip cream cheese in a mixer with maple syrup and powdered sugar to taste. Start with just a little maple syrup, add more as needed, and when you hit the consistency you like, use powdered sugar instead so that the icing doesn’t become too thin.

Enjoy!

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Trackback  •  Posted in Baking, Improv, Recipes