recipes – The Snack Review

A Carrot Salad a la Orangette

More fun with root vegetables. I’m easing myself back into cooking after being on hiatus from the kitchen for a couple weeks. I’ve got a few flavors on my mind (the light curry from Lemonade’s curry cauliflower salad, the recipe for which already exists on the internet!) and some recipes that I’m slowly gathering ingredients for (cream of tartar and a cooling rack, for snickerdoodles and frozen seafood, for a particular kind of Chinese fried rice). At the moment it’s just about making the most simple of food for myself.

Enter this carrot salad, a favorite of mine from Orangette, way back in the day. Fresh, bright, portable and healthy. This salad is the platonic ideal of airplane travel food, just as Molly describes. I remember once being on top of my life enough to make this for myself before a cross-country plane trip. I ate my carrot salad with so much self-satisfaction on that trip! Alas, the rest of the times I’ve made this have been when I’m going nowhere in particular, and it’s fantastic. It’s great the next day, too, just as Molly says.

I love the bite of the garlic and tang of the lemon juice against the sweetness of the carrots. The whole thing is a lot of fun to eat. Note: the dish is a great opportunity to work on your knife skills.

French-Style Carrot Salad, adapted from Orangette

Ingredients:

5 medium carrots, julienned into match sticks

2 cloves garlic, minced

juice of a whole lemon

salt

2 tbsp of olive oil

1) Mix in a bowl and season to taste. Serve. Yields about 3-4 cups of salad.

Sweet Potatoes, With Furikake

I’ve been thinking about a banchan that’s not uncommon to get in Korean restaurants, boiled skinned potatoes glazed with a lightly sweetened soy and served chilled. They’re a perfect counterpoint to crunchy, pungent kimchee and spicy everything else, a great humble dish. I’ve also been studying a cookbook by Harumi Kurihara (Japan’s Martha Stewart/Donna Hay/Nigella Lawson!) I got a few years ago at Kinokuniya, and have been trying to bring some of her clean, pared down flavors to my cooking.

This dish doesn’t come close to either of its inspirations. But! I’d make it again and even serve it to loved ones, and it was easy enough to make in a few minutes as a small lunch. Its closer cousin is this Furikake Chex Mix–which is the reason I have corn syrup in my pantry to begin with. (This dish does in fact beg to be named “soy-glazed” something other other, but such a move would P.F. Chang-ify this dish in a way I cannot bear! So:)

Sweet Potatoes, With Furikake

Ingredients:

1 sweet potato

1 tbsp butter

1.5 tsp soy sauce

1 tbsp light corn syrup

aji nori furikake

1) Wash and dry sweet potato and stab small holes in it with the tines of a fork or a paring knife.

2) Wrap sweet potato in a damp paper towel and microwave on high for five minutes, then flip over and microwave for another five minutes. Remove from the microwave, peel off the skin and chop into medium bites.

3) In a medium skillet, melt butter, then stir in soy sauce and corn syrup on low heat. Toss in sweet potato cubes and mix until sweet potatoes are glazed and slightly caramelized, 3-5 minutes.

4) Serve in a bowl and top with furikake.

Chinese Oatmeal-Jook

Call it desperation or a flash of inspiration, but the other day, with a real hankering for a filling breakfast that wasn’t eggs, I took out my steel cut oats and tried my darndest to turn them into jook.

I cooked the oats according to the instructions, boiling two cups of water and stirring in half a cup of McCann’s until smooth before bringing down the heat and cooking on low for half an hour. Except before turning it down to simmer I added a little splash of soy sauce, sesame oil and minced garlic. I sauteed mushrooms, chopped up some green onions, and threw them on top of the oatmeal when it was done, along with some ichimi togarashi and furikake. That was it.

Friends, it was fine. It was not going to taste bad–though oatmeal, and especially steel cut does have a particular flavor that might have interfered with the soy sauce and sesame oil. I might try something with less body like Quaker’s. It was not revelatory. And it was sure quicker than making a pot of jook.

But on my last few bites it hit me. What I really wanted was some Chinese porridge.

I Cooked Dim Sum in My Apartment Kitchen

Culinary achievements, dim sum edition. Dim sum is so labor intensive, but readily available around these parts that it’s rarely cooked at home. But when I saw Classic Deem Sum in a used bookstore in Atwater Village I knew it was coming home with me.

In San Francisco, Yank Sing is practically a dim sum institution. My sister-in-law’s mom actually used to work at Yank Sing, and she sends over batches of red bean-filled sesame balls (jeen deuih) so crispy fresh and perfectly spherical that they don’t look like they could have come from a home kitchen. I was certainly inspired by her homemade treats when I decided I’d make something from this book. Classic Deem Sum was printed in 1985, and has recipes for just about every dim sum basic–from spring rolls to taro dumplings, pillows of beef wrapped in rice noodles and crispy turnip cakes–along with hand-drawn illustrations showing how to pleat perfect shrimp dumplings and squeeze fish paste balls out of your fist. I love everything about this book, right down to the Chinese romanization that’s intended for Cantonese speakers.

It being dim sum (or deem sum!), it’s hard to find a recipe in the book that doesn’t require making your own sheets of rice noodles or pounding out your own fish paste or firing up a pot of hot oil for deep-frying. I’ve got a few recipes marked for when I’m feeling more ambitious but in the meantime I started with stuffed tofu. The recipe is actually terribly easy. It took me about 45 minutes, start to finish, and I was just putzing around the kitchen.

Even better, this dish didn’t require anything beyond Cantonese kitchen basics to bring it to life. There was no need to haul myself over to SGV to pick up any new ingredients. I did swap out the suggested ground pork for ground turkey and left off shrimp and cilantro, but that’s all your call. It’d probably also taste great with some chopped up water chestnuts in there, too. I will say: of all the ingredients in the stuffing, the tapioca starch is probably the most important. It lightens the meat and smooths out the texture of the stuffing so it’s not like eating a meatball inside a stewed tofu triangle. It’s more like a stuffed tofu pillow.

We’re talking serious Chinese comfort food here. Make a pot of rice, a plate of veggies and there’s dinner for two.

Stuffed Bean Curd (Yeung Daufoo), adapted from Classic Deem Sum by Henry Chan, Yukiko Haydock and Bob Haydock

Stuffing Ingredients:

4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped

4 ounces ground turkey, minced

half of a beaten egg

2 tbsp minced green onion, green and white parts

½ tsp finely minced ginger

2 tsp tapioca starch

2 tsp Shao Hsing wine

1 ½ tsp soy sauce

1 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

½ tsp sesame oil

a dash of ground white pepper

1 tbsp chicken stock

1 tbsp oyster sauce

Bean Curd Sauce Ingredients:

1 ½ tbsp oyster sauce

1 ½ tsp sugar

¼ tsp salt

a dash of white pepper

½ tsp sesame oil

¾ cup chicken stock

1 tbsp Shao Hsing wine
2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp water

1 container firm tofu

cornstarch for dusting
oil for pan-frying

1) Mix together stuffing ingredients thoroughly until pasty. Refrigerate until ready to stuff.

2) Prepare bean curd sauce. Combine all sauce ingredients except for cornstarch/water mixture) in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Once it’s bubbling, stir in cornstarch/water mixture. Simmer while stirring until sauce thickens. Remove from heat and set aside.

3) Drain liquid from tofu container and slice tofu block in quarters, and then cut each quarter diagonally into triangles.

4) Cradle a triangle in your palm and scoop out a pocket (about 1 tbsp) along the diagonal angle.

5) Dust each cavity and cut surface with cornstarch.

6) Fill each cavity with stuffing mixture, mounding it up to cover the cut surface.

7) Heat a large heavy flat-bottomed frying pan to hot and coat the bottom with ¼ cup of oil.

8) Place the triangles, filling side down, in the pan and fry at medium heat.

9) When filled edge is brown (about 4 minutes) turn the triangles onto their flat sides and pan fry.

10) Pour bean curd sauce over the tofu. Cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes.

Furikake Chex Mix

Here’s a snack classic. The recipe comes from my Auntie Cindy. I know this because the xeroxed copy I’ve got is written in her friendly, confident, wide second-grade teacher script. I have no idea what else people use corn syrup for–please do share if there’s something I ought to do with my bottle while I wait for the next round of chex mix cravings to hit.

Furikake Chex Mix

1 stick of butter

½ cup oil

½ cup corn syrup

½ cup sugar

2 tbs soy sauce

2 – 14 oz. boxes Chex cereal (corn and wheat are best)

1 jar aji nori (seaweed+sesame seed) furikake

1) Melt first 5 ingredients together in a small pot on the stove.

2) In a large bowl, mix Chex cereal and melted ingredients. Sprinkle furikake over mixture and incorporate.

3) Spread onto baking sheet. Bake at 250 for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

4) Remove and cool in the pan. Store in an airtight container for up to a week.

Notes: I added in a bit more soy sauce than the recipe calls for, which gave it more of a salty/sweet edge. I’ve done this with every kind of Chex available and I like the corn version best. Wheat’s a little too coarse and rice will just disintegrate. Kitchen trick: measure out the oil first, and use the same measuring spoon for the corn syrup. It’ll slide right outta there, easy peasy.

An Improvised New Year’s Eve Winter Panzanella

It started with a visit to Zero Zero Pizza with some girlfriends over the holidays. I saw their menu listing for a Winter Panzanella and it made immediate sense to me. No matter that I’ve never tried a regular ‘ol spring or mid-summer or autumn panzanella, and we didn’t order Zero Zero’s that afternoon either. It was enough to get my wheels turning. (I admit part of the appeal is being able to say the word “panzanella” over and over.)

A few days later and with a New Year’s Eve potluck dinner a couple hours around the corner, Kevin and I mostly winged it. As in: Kevin did the bulk of the work while I shouted out guidance from the Internet. Making dishes up on the fly and testing them out on a group of mostly strangers? Ina Garten would probably not approve. But she did teach me the basics of a standard panzanella.

If I were to recreate this, this is what I’d do: chop up a hefty butternut squash into one-inch cubes, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Throw it in the oven set at 400 degrees for an hour, tossing at the halfway point. A half hour into it, put a pan of chopped crimini mushrooms into the oven to roast on another rack. Fifteen minutes before the butternut squash are done, throw a handful of dried cranberries onto the pan and return to the oven. Borrow Amardeep’s lovely Le Creuset to toast one-inch cubes of rustic bread. Bread cubes toasted on a medium-low fire with a little olive oil, salt and pepper in that perfectly regulated heat, even with meh meh bread from Trader Joe’s, will be so good you’ll be plucking them out of the pot to pop in your mouth before they make it into the bowl.

Remove everything from the heat and let it all come to room temperature. Continue to resist the pull of the bread cubes. Lightly mix the squash+cranberries, mushrooms, a couple generous handfuls of arugula, and some torn up fresh mozzarella in a large bowl. Lightly dress with a citrus vinaigrette (olive oil, orange juice, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and finely minced garlic), and just before you’re ready to serve, throw in those bread cubes and give it another good toss. Dip a spare bread cube in some leftover vinaigrette and snack away, because you and your sweetheart have earned it. Serve!

Second Timer’s Granola–With Egg Whites

Immediately after my triumphant first foray into the world of granola, I turned to my on-demand cooking counselor, the Internet, and asked: “How to get those clusters in granola?” And lo, the fine folks at Food52 had recently answered this very question. Armed with their brilliant tip (egg white = binding protein), I set out for another batch, and have made this several times over since. What follows is my recipe for gently clustered pecan almond chocolate chip granola. (And please forgive the blurry photo–still getting the hang of this photographing all my cooking business.)

Chocolate Almond Pecan Granola, With Clusters
Makes 3-4 cups
1 ¾ cups rolled oats
1/3 cup sliced raw almonds
½ cup roughly chopped raw pecans
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
¼ cup olive oil
½ tsp coarse salt
1 egg white
½ to ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 300ºF and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix everything, except for the egg white and chocolate chips, in a medium sized bowl.
3. In a separate small bowl, whip the egg white until it’s frothy and foamy, about 3-4 minutes. Incorporate into unbaked granola and mix, then spread into an even layer onto baking sheet.
4. Bake for 30-40 minutes, removing every 15 to stir, until the oats and nuts are toasted to your taste.
5. Remove from oven and cool in the pan until granola is just warm, then stir in chocolate chips. Store in an airtight container.

Easy First Timer’s Granola

An old friend named Corina, herself a pro baker, once told me that if your dish takes good raw you know it’s going to taste great cooked. This was, if I remember correctly, why she insisted on trying all her cookie dough. Sound logic, if you ask me.

I was thinking about that kitchen wisdom as I was making this granola. Granola is not unlike fried rice, I discovered. Whatever you like (or happen to have on hand) goes! The original recipe calls for coconut, I had none. The recipe wanted dark brown sugar, all I was light. Again I swapped out fancier dark chocolate for regular old chocolate chips. No matter. When I snuck a few bites of the oats prior to their toast in the oven, I knew the finished product would be a keeper. Thanks, Corina, for that wise advice.

p.s. This was my first time making granola! With that whopping one experience under my belt, I pass on to you this pro tip: you’re going to want to stay in the room to catch the wafting smells of oats and nuts while they roast. Heavenly.

Chocolate Almond Pecan Granola
(adapted from xobreakfast)
Makes 3-4 cups

1 ¾ cups rolled oats
1/3 cup sliced raw almonds
½ cup roughly chopped raw pecans
1/3 cup light brown sugar
¼ cup olive oil
½ tsp coarse salt
½ to ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 300ºF and line baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Mix everything, save for the chocolate, in a bowl and spread onto pan.

3. Bake for 30-40 minutes, removing every 10 to stir, until the oats and nuts are toasted to your taste.

4. Remove from oven and cool in the pan until granola is just warm, then stir in chocolate chips. Store in an airtight container.

Olive Oil Banana Chocolate Bread

Noelle calls hers, adapted from Melissa Clark, the “chicest banana bread.” My version was a decidedly more down-market affair, but delicious nonetheless. I daresay it’s the best chocolate banana bread I’ve made yet.

Olive Oil Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Adapted from Melissa Clark via xobreakfast

Makes one 9×5 loaf and four muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour

¾ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

3-4 ripe bananas

¾ cup light brown sugar

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 eggs

¼ cup plain yogurt or sour cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon zest

juice of half a lemon

¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Notes: I didn’t fill the loaf pan completely to leave room for some extra muffins. If you’re not in a muffin mood the batter will fill out one 9×5 loaf pan perfectly.

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF and butter the loaf pan.
2. Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt) in small bowl.
3. In a larger bowl, mash the bananas, then mix in sugar, olive oil, eggs, yogurt, vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice.
4. Incorporate the dry into the wet in three parts. Fold the chocolate chips in at the end. Pour batter into pans and muffin cups and bake 45-60 minutes, about 25 minutes for muffins. It’s ready when a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out clean. Cool in the pan.