Apples... Many Apples

 

We have two apples trees on our Camano Island property.  If you have apple trees, you'll know that in the fall you get more apples than you can deal with.  You give some away (until the neighbors pull their curtains when they see you coming).  You make apple sauce, apple crisp, apple cobbler, apple pies.  It's a problem like the zucchini one - What do you do with the bounty?

Well here's an idea you may not have considered...  apples as a vegetable side dish with dinner.

Apples as a Veggy

1. Quarter, core and cut up into approximately 1" pieces enough apples to fill a 4 qt sauce pan half full
2. Chop up a medium onion
3. Mince 4 large garlic cloves
4. In the sauce pan, sauté the onion and garlic in 2 Tbsp butter
5. When the onion has softened, add the apples to the pan, and 2-3 Tbsp white wine to deglaze, and cover.
6. Cook covered until the apples have softened, then uncover and cook just until the sauce has thickened.
7. Serve hot
   

 

For variations on the basic recipe, try these:

• Add 1/2 tsp (or to taste) curry powder
• Add 1/2 tsp Garam Marsala and deglaze instead with 2-4 Tbsp Marsala wine or Sherry
• Add 1/2 tsp cumin and 1/2 tsp (or to taste) chili powder.  Deglaze instead with 2-4 Tbsp red wine

Apples... Many Apples

Eggrooms

It's a rainy day here in the San Juan Islands... a perfect day for eggrooms.

Whoa - what's that?

Eggrooms is a recipe that I invented nearly 50 years ago for a romantic morning after breakfast. I've never seen it published anywhere... before now.  So the secret is now officially out.

A good blogger would have pictures, both intermediate and finished.  I'm a hungry blogger.

This is way easier (especially for one who fears flipping floppy things with a spatula) than a mushroom omelet.

Ingredients

• Mushrooms, sliced 1/8" thick
• Four eggs
• Butter
• Garlic salt
• Pepper

Start by slicing enough mushrooms 1/8" thick to cover the bottom of your non-stick frying pan.  Try to make the slices uniform in thickness so they all will cook at the same rate.

Melt a tablespoon or so of butter in the pan and saute the the mushrooms over medium heat until they are getting golden brown edges on the bottom side.  Don't try to turn them over - you can't, and even if you could by the time you get the last one done, the first will be over-cooked.  Romove the mushrooms from the pan, retaining as much of the butter in the pan as possible.

Did I mention that I am spatula impaired?  I can only handle two eggs at a time.

Return half of the mushrooms to the pan and arrange them into two circles, more of less, with the centers large enough to contain the egg yolks.  Crack two eggs into the mushroom circles.

Sprinkle with garlic salt and pepper.

We like our eggs over easy - cook as you would normally

Prepare the second two eggs the same way.

You will find eggrooms to be as tasty as a mushroom omelet, but in a different way...

Enjoy!

Eggrooms

Panang Curry, ala Eolian

Panang Curry has forever been the benchmark by which I have judged Thai restaurants.  And I have been struggling for years to come up with my own perfect Panang Curry recipe.  Until now, I have come close, but have missed the mark in one gustatorial dimension or another.

Not any more.

Magic

I have found the magic.

Now mind you, this doesn't get you all the way there, but it is close.  Still needed are a little more peanut flavor, some sweetness, and (perhaps the most magic ingredient of all) some ginger.

Here's my recipe (makes 4 very generous servings).  If there are only two of you, make the full recipe, but only half the rice.  Use the rest on a second batch of rice another day.

Ingredients - serves 4

• 2 cups Basmati/Jasmine rice
• 4 cups water
• 2 tsp salt

•  2 Tbsp Olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, diced into 1/4" pieces
• 3 large cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 green Bell pepper, diced into 1/4"pieces
• 1/2 cup of carrots sliced into 1/4" pieces
• 1 large stem broccoli, sliced thinly, including the entire stem.
• 1 8 oz can pineapple chunks in water, drained
• 1 to 1-1/2 cups cooked chicken (left overs work best!), cut into chopstick-sized pieces
• 1 12 oz can of coconut milk.  Do not use "light".
• Mae Ploy Panang Curry Paste
• 1 Tbsp peanut butter
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar 
• 4 Tbsp Thai basel, chopped with scissors
• 1 cubic inch of fresh ginger, sliced thinly and diced
• Zest and juice of one lime

The Rice

1. Start the rice - this always takes the longest and can tolerate waiting the best...  Bring 4 cups of water to a boil.  Add 2 tsp salt.
2. Once boiling, add the rice.  Stir immediately to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pan and cover.  When the water again comes to a boil stir again, lower the heat to low, crack the lid and start on the curry.

 The Curry

1. Stir fry the onions and carrots in a couple of Tbsp of olive oil in a 2-qt saucepan until just beginning to get tender.  
2. Add the pepper and continue to stir fry.
3. Add the garlic and continue to stir fry.
4. When the garlic just begins to stick to the pan and/or the pepper is just getting tender, add the broccoli.  Note that Asian cooks don't discard the stems of the broccoli - just cut off the dried out end and slice the rest thin.
5. Stir fry the broccoli until the color changes to bright green.
6. Add the coconut milk, sugar, pineapple, and peanut butter.
7. The Mae Ploy paste comes in a plastic bag inside the container.  Cut off a corner of the bag to make an opening about 3/4" diameter.  Extrude a log of curry paste about 3" long and 3/4" diameter into the pan (more if you are a 4-5 star kind of person, a little less if 2 stars is more to your liking).
8. Mix well.  Add the chicken. 
9. Once everything has come to a simmer, turn off the heat and add the aromatics (ginger, basil, lime zest and juice).  Stir.  You should have enough curry to nearly fill a 2--quart saucepot - 4 generous servings.
10. Reserve enough basil to garnish the servings

Meanwhile, you have been checking the rice all along, right?  When there is no more water visible and there are a bunch of holes in the surface, turn off the heat.  Wait another 5-10 minutes, until the last of the water has been absorbed and you have "sticky rice".

Divide the rice onto 4 plates, divide the curry onto the rice, and garnish generously with the chopped Thai basil.

Present with chopsticks (naturally!)

Panang Curry, ala Eolian

More meat mania

We continue to work our way thru the Low and Slow book - we're now at Lesson 4 out of 5.  And I have to say that not only have we passed all the quizzes, we've aced the lessons.  But each chapter has a long list of exercises left up to the student - things we will go back and investigate once we have made it thru all five lessons.  There is a lot of culinary exploration in those exercises!

Lesson 4 is Spare Ribs - more difficult than Baby Back Ribs because the meat is tougher and must therefore be cooked longer.  Here you see three gigantic racks of ribs just as they were when I put them in the smoker.  Each has been rinsed with vinegar, slathered with yellow mustard, and heavily annointed with a special rub (the mustard serves mostly as glue to keep the rub in place).  I purposely left the red Solo cup (yes, adult beverage from my kegerator) in the picture to give some scale.  Those are huge slabs of meat.

And here are those same slabs of meat after spending five hours in the smoker.  Oh. My. Gosh.  Are they delicious!  I couldn't take the same picture of them, on the grill in the smoker, because it was dark by the time they were done.

I'll point out that, tho we tried mightily, Jane and I were only able to polish off one half of one of the racks.  Our freezer is is getting full of smoked meat. 

What a terrible problem...

Update:
We're having everybody and their dogs up to the cabin for Thanksgiving, so we will be doing smoked ribs for the Friday dinner (no, I don't trust myself to do a turkey... yet.)

More meat mania

Low & slow

Smoking meat is all about 'low & slow' - cooking at a low temperature for a long time.   You can kind of think of it as roasting meat at 225° - 275° in a smoky atmosphere.   It's not a process that is for the impatient.  And also like sailing, the journey to smoky goodness is a part of the enjoyment.  (There - I worked in a sailing reference, making this a legitimate post for this blog.)

3 chickens on their way to a smoky Nirvana

For my birthday, I received a smoker.  No, let me rephrase that. For my birthday, I received permission to buy a smoker.  I chose the one above: an offset type.  This means that the firebox is in a separate chamber from the cooking meat, rather than being directly below the meat.  I like the design because of the separation of function, and because of the large cooking surface - 36" x 18".  However the large size means more external surface to keep hot, so this smoker burns more charcoal than the more compact smokers, tho I'm not sure that would be true on a per-pound-of-meat basis if I always ran it with a full load.

And here is the result of the effort depicted above:  6 chicken halves, deliriously, deliciously smoky.  Done properly, the taste is smoky, not acrid.  And the flavor goes the whole depth of the meat; it's not just on the surface.  Have you ever been in the South and stopped at a roadside BBQ joint?  Yeah, that good.

They were smoked with alder wood - alder grows like a weed around here, and if you have any, you know that eventually the stems get big enough to just fall over.  So we have lots to use for smoking.

ISBN: 978-0-7624-3609-5

Even tho this post is tagged with 'recipe', I'm not going to post a recipe here.  Instead, I am going to exhort you to get a copy of what I now am calling the 'Smoker's Bible'.  Truly everything you will need to know is in there.  I started from scratch and followed the directions in the book (the chicken was Lesson 2) and the results have been unbelievably good.  Really.

With the book, you can too.

So get smokin'!

Low & slow

How to: Make ricotta

Recently (and earlier) I've referred to making ricotta onboard - that wonderful sweet creamy cheese.  Bonny, the Italian lady that taught us to do this, told us that making cheese which would be used in cooking dinner was just another part of making the dinner itself in her family.

I have been asked how we do it - it is simplicity itself:

• In a pan which is large enough, put 1/2 gallon of whole milk and 1 pint of buttermilk.  Mix well.
• As slowly as possible, heat the mixture to 175°-185°.  DO NOT BOIL!  
• By the time you get to 160°, curds will probably be starting to form.  This will impede the heat flow by thickening the mixture.  Occasional gentle stirring is in order.  But I repeat, GENTLE.  You don't want to break up the forming curds.  When curd formation begins in earnest at say 170°, cease stirring.
• Once the mixture reaches 175° to 185° and the curds are beginning to separate from the whey, turn off the heat.  Be careful not to overheat.  Measure the temperature of the mixture in multiple locations - the thickening mixture will trap heat near the source.
• Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes.  
• Drape a double layer of cheese cloth over a colander or strainer.  In a pinch you can use another pot, but you'll have to lift out the cheese cloth and dump off the whey as it drains.
• Using a slotted spoon, carefully and gently scoop out the curds from the whey and place them into the waiting cheese cloth.  Every inch or so of depth, sprinkle on a little salt.
• The more you drain the cheese, the firmer it will be.  For a nice spreadable cheese, do not over drain

160° - curds starting to form

180° - curds separating from whey

Into the cheese cloth with you!

Drip, drip, drip

Yum!

Some notes:

• Don't bother doing this if you feel you must use anything less than whole milk.  Abominations: 2%, 1%, skim milk.
• If you don't have buttermilk, any source of (edible) acid will do - vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice.  But the character of the resulting cheese will be subtly different.  Try starting with a tablespoon or perhaps two of vinegar or citrus juice.
• Real cheese cloth works best - not that filmy stuff that you could push your finger thru.  Use a double layer.
• An oriental noodle spoon - the round flat one with all the tiny holes - works really well for scooping up the curds
• Don't just discard the whey - it is a wonderful cooking resource.  For example, if you are making pasta, boil it in the (already hot) whey instead of plain water for a wonderfully creamy taste.  You were making pasta, weren't you?

How to: Make ricotta

Say cheese

Quick - what's one of the last things you would expect to hear me say we did on the boat last nite?

You said, "Make cheese", didn't you?

I love cheese.

Let me say that again:  I love cheese.

So the combined Father's Day/Jane's b'day present that Adam and Kaci gave us was a perfect fit - tuition at a cheese-making class.

The class we attended was the first in a two-part curriculum, and dealt with fresh cheeses: ricotta, mozzarella, mascarpone and chevre.  Bonny, our instructor, an Italian woman and stand-up comic, grew up in a family that made cheese as a regular part of life.  In fact, I was amazed to hear that for them, making ricotta or mozzarella was just a part of normal meal preparation!

Oh my gosh!  What I have been missing!

In the 3-hour class, Bonny took us thru the making of all four cheeses I mentioned above...  and by that I mean that we (hands-on) made these cheeses, and then at the end of the class we ate them.

So last nite, we put our training to the test:  we made ricotta.  Yes, you can do it on a boat - here's proof: cheese making at anchor in Port Madison. (See Bonny?  I told you we would do this!)

And here's the result:  yummy whole-milk ricotta.  We had this with blueberries over it, and a glass of wine of course. 

Now I ask you:  Can you think of a better dessert than fresh ricotta with fruit and a glass of wine, at anchor in a beautiful, protected little harbor?

No, I didn't think so.

Say cheese

Comfort food for Valentine's Day

Is it cold where you are?

If you are reading this in the Northern Hemisphere, chances are excellent that the long winter is getting you down.  I don't think that it is a coincidence that Valentine's Day is celebrated at this time of year when we all need a lift.  For reasons that surely must link back to our hindbrains, here in the second half of winter comfort food really does bring, ummm, comfort.  Tho I have posted precious few recipes here, this is one I think you really must have.  And I am breaking with custom here by posting this on Sunday, to give you time to do the shopping and be ready for Monday.

Now imagine: your boat quietly at anchor in a protected little cove, a romantic candle-lit dinner of braised short ribs slow-cooked in wine, a baguette, a (another) bottle of wine, gazing into the eyes of your lover across the table.  Wherever you are when you consume this recipe, it will make the evening.  It is that wonderful.

Two cooking methods are provided - the crock pot version is probably the most practical on a boat and is the one Jane used.  But if you are an adherent to the Church of Pressure Cooker, I think that would work equally well.

Just in case the link disappears over time, I am duplicating the recipe below:

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Red Wine-and-Apricot Braised Short Ribs

From Country Living

This recipe has been tested by Country Living

Minimal preparation and long, slow cooking turns these short ribs into a falling-apart tender masterpiece.

By Cheryl Slocum

Nutritional Information
(per serving)

Calories	625
Total Fat	19g
Saturated Fat	--
Cholesterol	95mg
Sodium	344mg
Total Carbohydrate	49g
Dietary Fiber	5g
Sugars	--
Protein	34g
Calcium	--

Aimee Herring

Serves: 4

Update

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Total Time: 3 hr 30 min

Prep Time: 20 min

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 pound(s) short ribs
• 4 clove(s) garlic, chopped
• 3 cup(s) dry red wine (such as Syrah)
• 3 tablespoon(s) coarse-grain Dijon mustard
• 2 cup(s) (11 ounces) dried apricots
• Salt
• Freshly ground pepper

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Directions

1. Season short ribs with salt and pepper. Working in batches, brown ribs in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate and set aside.  [Ed. Note: If you are on a boat, you probably don't have a large dutch oven - use a frying pan.]
2. Add garlic to pot and cook over medium heat until browned, about 2 minutes. Add wine and mustard and stir, scraping up browned bits from bottom of the pan. Add apricots and reserved ribs and increase heat to high, bringing liquid to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover pot, and simmer until ribs are so tender that meat falls off the bone, about 3 hours. Skim excess fat from braising sauce. (Alternatively, after step 1, add browned ribs and all other ingredients to a slow cooker and cook on low, following manufacturer's instructions, until ribs are so tender that meat falls off the bone, about 8 hours.) Serve meat and apricots in a shallow bowl with braising sauce.

Feed your soul: you really gotta try this one.

Comfort food for Valentine's Day

Crabs, Part 3: How to cook and eat them

How does one dispatch a crab? OK, sorry - that's a euphemism. How does one kill a crab in order to cook and eat it? There: I've faced up to it.

In two previous postings, we've met crabs, and learned how to catch them. Now how do we get them into the cooking pot?

When we first moved onto the water, we were told a lot of things. One method (which I suppose we have all heard) is to just throw them into the cooking pot while they are alive. This method has the following drawbacks:

• The crab doesn't want to go in the pot. Imagine trying to put a cat into a cat carrier, except with crab pinchers.
• You need a really big pot.
• This is by far the clincher for me: you're boiling the poor creature alive. They react to this just about like you'd expect.

OK, so that method is out for me. I'd also read about pithing them (think: high school biology; frogs). Supposedly a crab's brain is just aft of the forward edge of the shell and between the eyes. I tried crushing a couple there with pliers - again, I was just torturing the poor things.

Finally, Art showed us the way. Remember we were talking about the "sex plate" on their under sides as a means of determining gender? Well, it turns out that if you turn the crab over and strike a sharp blow on that plate - hard enough to break it - you will kill it instantly. I mean:

Right.
Now.

I use our bronze winch handle to do the deed.

Discarding the parts of the crab that won't be eaten is quick: with one hand, hold the shell, and with the other, put your thumb on that broken plate and weave your fingers in with the 4 legs. Lever the legs up and in, away from the shell. Setting the shell and the other legs aside for a minute, look at what you have in your hand. You will see 4 legs and some grey, curved finger-looking things on them. These are the crab's gills - you should pick them off and throw them back into the water. Give the legs a quick slosh in the water to rinse off anything else, and they are ready. Do the same with the other side, and throw the shell and contents back in the water. (Trust me - the other crabs down there will see this as manna falling from heaven.)

You will need about 1 full set of legs per person. If everybody is starved, then 3 crabs will serve 2 people.

Here's how we cook crab on Eolian:

• In a suitable sized pan, put 1/4" - 1/2" of water (I like to use 50/50 salt/fresh), and put it on the heat. We are not going to boil the crab; we are going to steam it.
• When the water is boiling, sprinkle in some crab boiling spices, add the crab, and put on a lid.
• The crab will be done when the meat at ends of the legs is no longer translucent - maybe 3-5 minutes, depending on the size of the pot, the size of the flame, and how much crab is in there. Another bit of evidence will be steam escaping from the pot - this won't happen until the crab inside is heated; if it were still cool, the steam would be condensing on the crab instead of escaping. Don't over-cook it. For us, well we have pots with glass lids, so it is easy to see when it is done.

Each person should be provided with a plate to work on, or maybe just a clear spot on the dock, and plenty of paper napkins. If you are eating inside, a bowl will be needed to collect the emptied shells. Each person will definitely want a crab cracker to open the shells to get at the meat. The pointy end segments of the legs make excellent, disposable picking tools to get the last bits of meat from the far recesses of the joints. (Here we have put a towel over the pot to keep the crab warm until we get to it. And beer has been substituted for wine - beer works too.)

Separate a leg from your crab half, and first dip the meaty end into your little pot of melted butter. Stick it in your mouth, and use your lips and tongue to separate the meat from the little bony separator plates. When you have gotten all of that meat, put the first joint ( the one that was closest to the body) in between the jaws of the cracker, tall way up. Crack it a couple of places along it's length, and you should be able to pull away half of the shell and get at the meat. Dip it in the butter! Have a sip of wine! (yes, your wine glasses are going to get dirty finger prints all over them. Shelling crab and eating it is not something you do in evening attire.

Eating crab is like eating corn on the cob. Everybody has a system. I work from the small legs to the big one with the claw. That leg is special, since it is the mother lode - there is meat even in the elbow joint - that's why I save it for last.

Crab caught, cooked and eaten like this will have a wonderful rich, sweet flavor, not very much at all like the strong taste of the whole-cooked crab you find in the grocery store (if you live in a coastal area), let alone the canned variety.

Go ahead! What are you waiting for?

Get crackin!

Crabs, Part 3: How to cook and eat them

Final Thursday

Last Thursday, we rushed off the dock right after I got home from work (delayed, unfortunately, by a blowout on my bicycle tire) - across the Sound to Port Madison. Nevertheless, we barely had the anchor down and dinner started and it was dark. Not "city street" dark, *DARK*. There are no streetlights on the water. This will have to be the final Thursday run to Port Madison this year.

Dinner was fabulous, if a little sad because of this (I always get maudlin at the passing of the summer). Jane picked all the crab we still had in the freezer (it was getting a little old), and I made crab cakes - yum!

Crab Cakes

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• Pick the meat from 5 or 6 medium rock crabs
• Add two eggs
• Crunch up a half a line of saltines or so and add it
  
• Add a big blob of mayonnaise
• Season with Old Bay or shrimp boil (my favorite), or...
• Mix it all up completely
  

Spoon the mixture into a hot pan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, shaping it into patties - pat them down until they are perhaps 1/2" thick. Fry until they are golden brown on each side.

Makes 4 6-8" diameter crab cakes

Other things you might consider adding to the mix:

• chopped celery
• chopped bell pepper
• squeeze in a clove or two of garlic
• chopped dill weed

Final Thursday

Oysters in Desolation Sound

It was a collision between opportunity and tradition.

In the summer of 2004 we took Eolian on a 515-mile, 4 week long trip to Desolation Sound. I will not attempt to detail that trip here - that would take much, much too long. There were some stories out of that trip, however, that beg to be told. This is one...

We had just anchored in a rocky pool behind Jean Island, just outside of Grace Harbor. The anchorage was tight - just large enough for one boat. Following our normal anchor drill, to be certain that the anchor was securely hooked we watched as Eolian swung on the anchor, and discussed our position. Unfortunately, it became clear that when the tide changed and we swung from the anchor in the opposite direction, we would likely not fit in the pool.

As I have mentioned before, on Eolian we focus entirely on getting securely anchored before we allow our attention to go elsewhere. In this case, that meant putting the dinghy down, carefully lowering the stern anchor into it, and offloading enough rode to cover the distance to... well, somewhere where I could hook the anchor securely. There was a small rocky islet about the right distance away - it seemed perfect. So I rowed the dinghy over there, paying out rode as I went. I tied off to a lump of rock and proceeded to hook the anchor manually in the rocks in a way that it wouldn't come loose (but ensuring another dinghy trip, at low tide, when we wanted to leave).

And then I looked down and really saw what I was looking at. I was standing on oysters! By this I do not mean that there was one under my foot, I mean that the little islet was completely blanketed in oysters! Opportunity! I bent over and picked them up, stuffing my pockets, and then finally I made a basket out of the front of my tee shirt and filled that too. I suppose I picked up 12-18 of the delightful lumps.

Back onboard Eolian, I could see Jane, waiting, *NOT* patiently. She was the perfect picture of impatience, standing with crossed arms and tapping foot. She was convinced that I had become side-tracked, thoughtlessly picking up rocks, and was unnecessarily delaying. Delaying what? Well it is a tradition on Eolian that after the boat is made secure, we open the liquor locker and prepare ourselves an adult beverage. As this had been an especially long, hard day, the sundowner was especially anticipated. Frivolous delay was just unacceptable!

But when I shoveled the oysters onto the deck after tying up the dinghy to Eolian, the scowl turned to laughter, and all was well. The sundowners were especially delightful when enjoyed with grilled fresh oysters!

Grilled Oysters

1. Heat up the grill
2. Open the oysters, retaining the meat and liquids in the deepest shell half
   
3. Place the half-shells on the hot grill
4. Add a little pat of butter and sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese
5. Remove when the meat is just firm and the cheese has started to melt.
6. Some folks like to add a splash of Tabasco

Oysters in Desolation Sound