Swiss Chard Hash

Welcome back! It's certainly been a while. Many changes have been afoot in our family, with the birth of our second child and a move to a new house. I had a few posts planned for last fall, but the news of gestational diabetes hit us like a truck and I immediately had to adjust to the new culinary challenge. While such limitations can encourage creativity, calculating carbs down to the gram and weighing everything we ate was not fun. One thing that did come out of it was exploring how to use millet and sweet potatoes, which perhaps will appear on the blog at some point. Luckily, that's behind us now. This post has nothing to do with any of that, and in fact is a celebration of carbs.

I have actually been making various hashes all the way back to college when I first started cooking for myself, but for some reason I've never written a recipe. The formula is simple: boil potatoes and fry them with onions and whatever else you want. This particular one uses Swiss chard to get some vegetables on the table alongside the potatoes. I served with baby back ribs made in the convection oven. Typically, I try to come up with meal ideas where one component can be cooked mostly hands-free in the oven while I focus on whatever is cooking on the stove. 

This dish turned out really well and can be a pattern for other variations. You could easily swap in kale or beet greens for the Swiss chard, though keep in mind that kale stems are tougher and need to cook longer. Bacon or ham could push this in the one-pan meal direction as well.

Ratatouille

Bonne fête! It's that time of year again, when we celebrate Bastile Day through classic dishes of France. Our Bastile Day feast started with escargot and bread and continued into a pan-seared ribeye and ratatouille. I've enjoyed ratatouille here and there over the years and made it a few times before, but had not yet dug into the sources on it. Julia Child has two versions, both on the fancier side, with thin slices of eggplant and zucchini layered between the peppers and onions. Mark Bittman's recipe does the same. Jacques Pépin goes with a more rustic style with cubed vegetables all mixed together. That is the form of the dish I'm most familiar with, so that's what I did here. The most interesting thing I took from these sources is to keep the cuts of vegetables large, so that each can be enjoyed on its own merits. This recipe makes a lot, but the sources agree that ratatouille is excellent both cold and reheated.

Ratatouille is a classic dish of Provence, the southeastern coastal region generally known for its seafood. As I wrote on 2019's Bastile Day post, olive oil, garlic, and tomatoes are characteristic of Provençal cuisine. These elements are central to ratatouille, as well. The four other vegetables featured here (eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, onion) seem to be the most commonly used, but can certainly be swapped out. It's an excellent way to use up summer vegetables like yellow squash or kohlrabi. Any fresh herbs you have on hand can also boost the dish. I used basil because I tend to have a lot of it on hand this time of year. I will finally note that I increased the recommended baking temperature to 400, up from the 350 I used. A dish composed entirely of vegetables has a lot of liquid, which could have been reduced more. At that higher temperature, it may be necessary to stir more often.

Eggplant Dip

This year's Passover recipe is roasted eggplant dip. While not particularly traditional, it fits right into the Kosher for Passover restrictions. While I'd normally eat this dip on a piece of crusty bread, it works just as nicely on matzo. Once you unlock its potential as a carrier of dips and spreads, matzo's not so bad. I used jarred roasted eggplant, which has a nice smoky flavor. This makes for an incredibly low-effort but delicious appetizer or breakfast. Of course, roasting your own eggplant is an option. The dip is also completely vegan, a rarity on this blog but worth noting if you care about such things. This recipe makes a very large amount of dip (about 2/3 of it is shown in the photo), but it keeps well in the refrigerator to snack on for the next few days.

After the last two years of Zoom gatherings, it was truly a pleasure to be able to host a Passover seder in our home. The meal consisted of all the classics: matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, and braised brisket. After my failed attempt at homemade gefilte fish last year, we made sure to stock up from a Kosher store in St. Louis Park last time we were in the area. I made two 3-pound briskets in separate pans, which I then combined into one after slicing. We also made horseradish, charoset, and a flourless chocolate cake.

We were a little nervous hosting a seder for the first time, but by all accounts it went well. Plenty of wine was drunk, songs were sung, and everyone was well fed. I might even say I'm looking forward to doing it again next year. Chag sameach!

Mushroom Nian Gao (香菇年糕)

Gong xi fa cai, everyone! I've already written some recipes for the Jewish New Year (see my Rosh Hashanah cocktail), so it's about time I tackle Chinese New Year, a day full of food traditions. Nian gao, or "year cake," is a popular Chinese New Year treat all over China. There are many regional versions, ranging from sweet to savory, but all made from sticky rice flour. The Shanghai style, which we call "tongue depressors" for their shape, are our family tradition. I first made this meatless version for our combined New Year/birthday celebration a year ago. Any meat could easily be added if you want to go that route. 

I've written about Shanghai nian gao twice before, and the differences highlight the evolution of my Chinese cooking. The original 2012 version was very simple, as much of my bachelor cooking was. Back then, I parboiled the rice cakes, which I now know to be unnecessary. By the 2015 version, I was experimenting with Koon Chun bean sauce and napa cabbage. I had recently discovered the method of salting and squeezing the napa to get the excess water out. I've since moved on from bean sauce as the base of a sauce (I still use it for the char siu marinade) and am now doing a classically Chinese combination of ginger, scallions, and soy sauce, lengthened with the mushroom water and thickened with corn starch. 

This recipe uses mushroom-flavored dark soy sauce (Pearl River Bridge brand). Although available at most Chinese stores, it's somewhat niche. If unavailable, regular dark soy sauce would work just fine. Comparing the photos here to my previous versions, you can see the effect of the dark soy sauce in coloring the rice cakes. We rounded out the meal with spring rolls out of the freezer. These fry excellently right from frozen with no problem. I did subsequently make some spring rolls using the 45-degree angle fold, and can report they fry much more evenly. 

Tomato Jam

Today, I'm pleased to present a recipe from Ariel, which serves as a follow up to her strawberry jam from 2012. As I mentioned earlier, our cherry tomato plants have been quite prolific lately. Tomato jam is a great way to use them up while also putting them into something that won't go bad as quickly. The tomatoes for this recipe came from one day of picking. Although I'm generally not a huge fan of cherry tomatoes, this was an interesting and enjoyable application. It was very nice on a warm pita with a little goat cheese.

Ariel used yellow sunburst tomatoes, which resulted in a deep orange-colored jam. Other colors of tomatoes could be mixed for different colored jams. The main discussion we had afterward was about the sugar content. I didn't mind it, but Ariel thought it was much too sweet. I suppose the sugar does obscure the tomato flavor a bit. I tried the jam by itself on toast, as well with goat cheese as shown above. The goat cheese does balance out the sweetness. Dropping the sugar down as low as 1/2 cup could be a good experiment for the future. 

Guacamole

I love guacamole (who doesn't, really?), and we've made it occasionally over the years, mostly using Alton Brown's recipe. I had been mostly satisfied with that and grocery store offerings, but a video by Kenji Lopez-Alt recently put me onto using a mortar and pestle to make guacamole the traditional Mexican way. Kenji is a big proponent of the mortar and pestle, and explains that it can extract more flavor from the aromatics by crushing them. Ariel got me one for our anniversary, so guacamole was a natural first experiment. There was part of me that wondered how much of a difference it would make, but when I tasted this guacamole, I was blown away by how delicious it was. 

In preparation, I did some research on what should go into a guacamole. Rick Bayless has a good discussion of how he makes it in his restaurant. Douglas Cullen's article on Mexican Food Journal was also helpful. The traditional Mexican style is quite simple, with just onion, hot peppers (serranos seem to be the classic choice), cilantro, and lime being the common additions to the avocado. As far as I can tell, the other typical additions made their way into guacamole north of the border.

My version here is definitely not traditional, but it's still very tasty. I didn't have any cilantro or hot peppers, so I used parsley (from the garden) and garlic instead. This would also be a good route for people who don't like it as spicy or are averse to cilantro. I also added in some diced tomato, which is definitely optional. Tomato adds some texture and color contrast, but doesn't make or break the guacamole. We used the guacamole as an accompaniment to mahi-mahi tacos. 

Spicy Potatoes

Over time, I've blogged most of the dishes in regular rotation in our household, including such favorites as adobo chicken, roasted mushrooms, and grilled cutlets. Roasted potatoes have been a core part of my repertoire almost since I started cooking, which was reflected in a very early post. Several years ago, I started adding paprika to them. This version, which Ariel dubbed "spicy potatoes," quickly became a staple. I even made small jars of the spice mix (along with my rib rub) to give to guests at our wedding. 

For years, I've made these potatoes by mixing all the ingredients together and throwing them in the oven. If you're in a rush, that works perfectly fine. Recently, though, I've been experimenting with parboiling them first. This idea was inspired by Kenji's recipe, as well as a video by Adam Ragusea. Although this takes a lot longer, the result is a soft interior with a crispy crust. We usually serve them with a mix of Kewpie mayo and ketchup. Although we call them "spicy potatoes," they aren't actually spicy in the sense of heat, just that they use spices. Try a little cayenne pepper, or some sriracha mixed into the sauce, if you like.

Roasted potatoes are a versatile side dish with a great result-to-effort ratio. With the long shelf life of potatoes, they are also excellent pandemic cuisine. We enjoyed these as part of our anniversary dinner, along with steak au poivre. Steak frites is a classic for a reason, and these potatoes can easily substitute for fries while be much easier and less messy to make.

Chickpeas with Roasted Red Peppers

Although I typically feature main dishes on the blog, it's equally important to have easy side dishes in the cooking repertoire. This is especially true now, when access to fresh vegetables is more limited. This chickpea dish is perfect for this purpose. Most of the ingredients are pantry staples, and the bell pepper keeps relatively well in the refrigerator. It can also be left simmering more or less indefinitely while a more labor-intensive dish is prepared. In this case, I made fried calamari. 

This recipe is loosely based on a chickpea dish Dad used to make for his Spanish wine class. The original had Spanish chorizo, which is somewhat hard to come by in these parts. I converted it into a completely vegetarian dish by replacing the chorizo with a roasted bell pepper. Roasting a pepper is easy to do directly on a gas stove, but a grill or broiler work fine, too. 

This was also a good opportunity to show my (relatively) new saucier. A saucier is similar to a saucepan, but with sloping sides. They are perfect for a dish where there is need for both a saute and simmer. The sloping sides make tossing easy, but there is still enough volume for liquid. When cooking tomatoes or other acidic foods for a long period of time, I've read a nonreactive pan is best. Stainless steel, lined copper, or enameled work best here. The pan I used has a three layer construction which sandwiches conductive aluminum with nonreactive stainless steel.

Upgrade: Pineapple Rava Kesari

Although I've loved Indian food most of my life, I have taken only tentative steps into making it at home. All the different spices and combinations thereof are quite intimidating for an American home cook, even one with a lot of experience with other Asian cuisines. A lot of the Chinese dishes I've shown on this blog use prepared products like fermented bean pastes or dried mushrooms, which are quite complex all on their own. Building a dish from these things is a relatively simple process. Indian dishes, on the other hand, are often built from the ground up using spices. From what I've read on the topic, spices should be as fresh as possible, which means buying whole spices (rather than ground) and buying frequently in smaller quantities. This poses some problems of practicality for me. Luckily, I've had pretty good access to Indian restaurants in places I've lived, including the phenomenal Sharma's Kitchen in West Lafayette and Passage to India in Fargo. It is the latter that inspired my efforts to make rava kesari back in 2012. With the nearest Indian restaurant nearly an hour away from Vermillion, I find myself tinkering at home again.

My original post on rava kesari was groundbreaking in many ways. I rarely make desserts at all, let alone Indian ones. While it was a success, I missed the mark in a few ways, which left room for an upgrade. The main shortcoming of the original recipe was a failure to get the signature deep yellow color. It ended up a somewhat unappetizing yellowish brown instead. I reacted by throwing in some turmeric, which I'm not sure helped much. What I've done this time is make sure to pulverize the saffron and bloom it with a little water. 8 years of cooking experience definitely makes a difference in realizing these kinds of things. As such, the turmeric is gone. The other big change is the incorporation of pineapple. While the dish is perfectly good without it, pineapple is a popular and tasty variant. I referenced a post on Veg Recipes of India for how to incorporate the pineapple, while keeping the structure of the dish consistent with my original post. Combining the sugar into a syrup with the pineapple also speeds up the process, since the sugar will already be dissolved by the time it goes into the semolina mixture. Since the pineapple and pineapple juice are somewhat sweet on their own, I've cut down the amount of sugar a bit. Overall, rava kesari is a really nice treat and quite simple to put together. I highly recommend giving it a try!

Roasted Mushrooms

I usually feature main dishes or, often, one-pan meals on this blog, but easy side dishes that allow you to focus on the main dish are an important part of a cook's repertoire. I've been making some version of these marinated, roasted mushrooms for several years. The dark/light soy combination is one I use quite often and one that complements mushrooms well. The long roasting time gives the mushrooms ample opportunity sweat out liquid, concentrating the flavor, a technique I owe to Kenji. I reserved the liquid and added it to a particularly tasty batch of braised chicken and mushroom pasta a few days later.

I usually use cremini mushrooms for this dish, but you could really use any kind. In researching this post, I discovered the three types of mushroom you typically see at the supermarket (around here, anyway) are actually all the same mushroom. White/button mushrooms are at the most immature stage. As they grow, they turn brown and become cremini mushrooms, sometimes called "baby bellas." The most mature mushrooms are the much larger portobellos. I generally find the creminis have more flavor than the white mushrooms.