Birthday Special 2024

No Free Lunch is back to celebrate Ariel's birthday and look back on completing year 12 of the blog's existence. It's hard to believe we were both just 23 when I started this thing. It continues to be a great creative outlet and a source for inspiration when I can't think of anything to make. I recently even surprised myself with a tip I wrote a decade ago to throw some eggs in the already hot water from boiling potatoes. I have no recollection of writing that, but I'm pleased to report it worked like a charm.

On Ariel's request, we went for a classic Japanese meal for the birthday dinner. The menu consisted of chicken katsu, rice, and Japanese potato salad. The no-soy rule eliminated our usual Kikkoman katsu sauce, so we made our own using the recipe from Just One Cookbook. I increased both the Worcestershire and oyster sauce content to suit our taste. Shayna was able to gnaw on a strip of katsu and loved the potato salad. 

This year's cake sadly broke my 10 year streak of homemade birthday cakes. Unable to use dairy, we determined a box cake with a tub of frosting was the right call this year. It did take a lot of stress of my shoulders and gave me the energy to produce a great dinner. 

Unfortunately, 2023 was the leanest year to date for the blog, but having Shayna in our lives has been a truly worthy tradeoff. Of course, the dairy and soy issue has done a number on my cooking options, while at the same time I'm cooking more because we can't go out very much. As such, I have explored some new flavor profiles, and one that really clicked was my braised spare ribs with pasta. I've made variations of that dish several times this year. I was also very happy to have finally published an update to chicken cassoulet, better known as "beans" in our house). It's also easy to make it dairy free by omitting the butter I used to toss in at the end. It's a dish that's near and dear to my heart and has never left our dinner rotation in the last ten years. So, while I haven't been able to blog too often, I'm still quite happy with what I did manage to post. While I don't know if I'll end up posting more this year, I'm sure it will still be an exciting time as Shayna explores food for herself. 

Braised Spare Ribs with Pasta

It's great to be back to No Free Lunch! I'll mainly blame my absence on a particularly busy time at work, plus caring for a baby at home. The other reason is that we've had to go dairy and soy free, at least for the time being. This threw a huge wrench in the works for my cooking, as long time readers will know my love for both cheese and various fermented soy bean products. This has left me in a bit of a rut, cooking-wise, and a lot of our old standbys have gone out the window. Recently, I've developed this dairy and soy free braised spare ribs recipe. It's loosely inspired by Mark Bittman's simple braised ribs recipes featured his book, Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix. This is where I got the idea to have ribs with pasta. It's a winning combination, and I don't miss the dairy too much here.

Adding some umami-rich ingredients to braises is an idea that's been floating around the internet for a while (Kenji was an early proponent on Serious Eats). Soy sauce and parmesan rinds are usually my go-to choices, exemplified by my chicken and mushroom pasta from a few years ago. Although soy sauce isn't in that recipe, I have subsequently included some mushroom-flavored dark soy sauce. Since we've had to give up both soy and dairy, I've turned to tomato paste and anchovies for this recipe. I also love some acidity in this type of dish, and include the usual splash of vinegar. If you don't have to omit dairy, I couldn't fault adding some grated parmesan at the table, but we did not do that, of course.

The other benefit of braised ribs is that they are an ideal food for a baby! We have been introducing Shayna to food using baby-led weaning, where we let her explore food on her own rather than feeding her purees. Early on, babies need food with a long shape to grab onto, and ribs provide this with a built-in handle. She's taken to them like a star!

Zucchini Pasta

This zucchini pasta recipe is loosely based on one found in Kathleen Flinn's The Kitchen Counter Cooking School. We got the book as a gift about a decade ago, and reading it back then had a major influence on my cooking. For one thing, it got me to switch to the "pinch" knife grip used by professional chefs. The book details Flinn's experience teaching cooking classes to a group of novice cooks. While I don't agree with everything in it, it's a good read for anyone who wants to get more creative in the kitchen. Rereading the book during the pandemic reminded me of an intriguing pasta dish that Flinn used to teach her students basic knife skills.

The basic concept is simple: cook zucchini for a long time, until it breaks down and becomes part of the sauce for the pasta. In principle, it's not far from my own crab pasta. Flinn's recipe uses a huge amount of zucchini relative to the pasta, which I've rebalanced. I also add some garlic, onions, and sausage to make it a complete, self-contained meal. The sausage I used for this dish are from Costco and are a staple in our house. They are fully cooked and easily frozen and reheated in a convection oven to add some meat to a meal with little effort. You can, of course, use any sausage you like, or none at all. Some fresh basil from the garden completes the dish, but can be left out if unavailable.

Upgrade: Chicken Cassoulet

Bonne fête! No Free Lunch is back for another Bastille Day, albeit a touch late. After a few months off, I think it's appropriate to return with a dish that's personally important to me. I started making my chicken cassoulet shortly after Ariel and I moved in together about a decade ago. It quickly became a staple meal, to the point were we just call it "beans." This is not meant to be a traditional Occitan cassoulet, but it does adhere to the rustic spirit of the dish and is authentic to the way I like to cook. It takes humble ingredients and puts them together into a very satisfying meal. I thought this was a great time to update the recipe to how I make it now.

I've made a few small but important changes to my previous recipe. It turns out that stews like this freeze exceptionally well and are great to pull out for a quick dinner later. As such, I've scaled it up, but a bigger pan is needed. Although precision is not really needed for something like this, I've also weighed out the vegetables for more clarity as there is a lot of variance in the size of onions and carrots. For the chicken, I now recommend bone-in pieces as there is flavor to be had in the bones. I usually pull the meat off the bones after cooking and return it to the stew to serve. This makes it easier to portion out and easier to eat, especially if you have to hold a baby. If you like the presentation with whole chicken pieces, skip that step. 

Many great dishes balance richness and acidity, which I now get done with a little butter and sherry vinegar at the end. This should be done to taste - you can always add vinegar but can't take it away. I no longer recommend my old method of cooking the stew with a lemon as it can add bitterness. My last change is in the beans. The cooking orthodoxy (which I once followed) says to always drain and rinse canned beans. I think this arose from older generations who thought of canned food as a little unclean. For me, this changed from making Kenji's white bean soup, where he notes that there is flavor to be had in the bean liquid. If making a bean salad, I would still rinse, but in a stew, leave it in. I drain two of the cans to make room for some chickens stock, but don't bother with rinsing. I served with a little parsley for color and some crunchy baguette toasts.

Pressure Cooker Brisket Tacos

I make an oven-braised brisket about twice a year, for Passover and Rosh Hashanah. While I love the classic method, I've wanted to experiment with brisket a bit more. Brisket typically comes as a very large cut of several pounds which I cut into three pieces. We usually have one of these at each holiday and freeze them in the meantime. The other thing about brisket is that it takes a very long time to cook: over 4 hours with my usual method. As such, I wanted to use the Instant Pot for my first experiment. 

I've previously done both pulled chicken and pork (also with the Instant Pot) recipes for use with tacos, nachos, potatoes, and so on. Brisket is also perfect for this because it needs to be cooked low and slow. In just an hour on high pressure, the meat becomes fall-apart tender. This sort of dish is highly customizable to taste. I seasoned similarly to how I would do ground beef tacos, with the addition of a poblano chili and soy sauce for some extra depth. I also used some Mexican oregano here, which I recommend picking up at a Latin American market if you can find one. Some Asian stores also stock Mexican herbs and spices.

We used about 1/3 of the meat from this recipe for a few rounds of tacos and froze the rest for later in two quart bags. For the tacos themselves, I used corn tortillas (heat on both sides in a dry nonstick pan and keep in a tortilla warmer), cotija, corn salsa, and sour cream. Guacamole is a welcome addition if available. This recipe turned out well, especially for a first attempt. In my pulled pork recipe from three years ago, I discussed some apprehension I had coming up with Instant Pot recipes. I'm happy to report I've developed some good instincts for what's going to work in the pressure cooker. The most important tip I've learned is when using the sauté setting to brown meat, it is imperative to deglaze and fully clear anything stuck to the bottom before sealing. If the Instant Pot detects burning on the bottom, it will shut off, so be careful.

Taco Potatoes

Today's post is less of full recipe and more of an adaptable idea. Baked potatoes topped with various meats at Big Daddy's BBQ were one of Ariel's favorite meals in Tulsa, and I can't disagree with the concept. It's a great self-contained meal with endless variations. With how busy things have gotten lately, I'm appreciative of simple but tasty dinners. 

For the meat topping, I went with my own ground beef taco meat recipe from 2016. I can report that it's still good, though I increased the paprika a bit. Other good choices would be my Instant Pot pulled pork or the shredded chicken I use for nachos. All these recipes are linked below. Since the pork and chicken freeze very well, using those would make putting this together a snap if you have them on hand. For the toppings, I used the green parts of a napa cabbage. The basic baked potato is derived from Alton Brown's simple instructions.

Birthday Special 2023

Before we knew it, another year has come and gone. Happy birthday to both Ariel and No Free Lunch. Scrolling back through the birthday posts is a real trip through time to see how our lives have evolved. This year's cake was the same as the last one: Stella Parks' almond cake. It's quite a complex recipe but worth the effort. If I make it again I might increase the almond extract a bit. The frosting was the old stalwart, Mark Bittman's chocolate buttercream, which I have made quite consistently since 2015. I used sliced almonds to decorate again, this time with a simple but undeniably classic design. Unfortunately, little has changed with my stress level when baking.

This year's birthday dinner was a pan-fried ribeye steak topped with compound butter I had leftover from escargots. This turned out to be an excellent application. We accompanied that with mashed potatoes and roasted mushrooms. 

As it finishes its tenth year, the blog has settled into a comfortable rhythm. For the second year in a row, I hit my goal of at least one post per month, with a nice mix of recipes. I recreated some long-overdue nostalgic comfort foods like curry turnovers and Buffalo chicken quesadillas. I've continued to put out original cocktails like the rum nectarine smash, which will for sure feature next summer. I was also pleased to codify two all-time family favorites: fish-fragrant eggplant and parmesan garlic wings. The upgrade series continued with the eggplant and Portuguese chicken, which was for many years the most visited post on the blog. Finally, the highlight of the year may well have been fløtegrøt, not only an addition to the rather thin dessert category but also a tribute to my Norwegian ancestors. 

In other news, 2022 represented something of a return to "normal," such as it is. As big changes in our house come down the road, I'm sure it will be an eventful 2023.

Pork Congee (粥)

Congee, known as zhou in Mandarin and juk in Cantonese, is a rice porridge popular in many parts of Asia. I recall my grandparents making it from time to time, but my memory for what theirs was like has faded over the years. Until today, I had never attempted to make it, but the cold weather inspired me to give it a go. My research turned up a lot of variation in how it's made, particularly in the rice-to-liquid ratio and the length of cooking time. I'm going for the Cantonese version, which seems to feature one of the lowest (1 to 20) ratios. Over the cooking time, the rice breaks down and thickens the broth. As first attempts go, I think the congee turned out very well, though I have some tweaks in mind going forward and plan to document those.

My recipe here is based on a combination of the basic juk from ArChan Chan's Hong Kong Local cookbook and the pork congee from Chinese Cooking Demystified. I also consulted a few other sources on the internet. As mentioned above, the 20-to-1 ratio appears to be the standard for Cantonese-style juk, which comes to 1/2 cup rice to 10 cups liquid. I think next time I will increase the rice a bit to get a heartier result. Some recipes out there go as low as 7 to 1. The key to achieving the proper texture in the porridge is by breaking down the rice. Traditionally, this is done with a very long cooking time, but some modern recipes (including Chan's) start by freezing the rice overnight to speed that up. Freezing is known to break down fibers in food. Normally, this is a bad thing, which is why people typically advise not thawing and refreezing meat, but here it works to our advantage.

Congee can start with plain water but often uses stock. Here, I made a simple pork stock from a shoulder bone I had in the freezer. When I break down a shoulder for char siu and other things, I save the bone with a good amount of meat left on it. The meat gets super tender and we sometimes just eat them with a little soy sauce and scallions (known as "pork snacks" in our house). It's natural to toss them in the congee. I made the stock the day before and kept it in the fridge. The rest of the seasoning is simple and can be adjusted to taste - salt, white pepper, ginger, scallion, and MSG (if you want). Congee is a bit of a blank slate and there are many possible add-ins and sides. Century eggs are a popular option. I didn't have them on hand, but will be on the lookout.