Specifically, Rösti!

The Daring Cooks’ February 2012 challenge was hosted by Audax & Lis and they chose to present Patties for their ease of construction, ingredients and deliciousness! We were given several recipes, and learned the different types of binders and cooking methods to produce our own tasty patties!

I have never made hashbrowns successfully.  I’ve managed to brown potatoes in a pan somewhat effectively on occasion, but I’ve never made a truly beautiful plateful of hashbrowns – until now!

This recipe for Rosti (which is a patty, but basically, it’s hashbrowns in one piece) is amazing; amazingly delicious, amazingly easy and amazingly inexpensive.  For about a buck and 30 minutes of time, you can have a beautiful plate full of fried potato.

There were many other patties included in this super fun challenge, and I encourage you to visit some other Daring Cooks to see what they’ve been up to!  Thanks Audax and Lis for another fun challenge – I can’t wait to make another Rösti soon!

Cheers.

Potato Rösti

Servings: makes two large rösti
adapted from a family recipe

The classic rösti; cheap, easy and so tasty.

Ingredients:
1 kg (2½ lb) potatoes
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (6 gm) salt
2 teaspoons (10 ml) (6 gm) black pepper, freshly milled
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons (30 ml) (½ oz/15 gm) cornflour (cornstarch) or use all-propose flour
3 tablespoons (45 ml) oil, for frying

Directions:

1. Grate lengthwise the peeled potatoes with a box grater or a food processor.
2. Wrap the grated potato in a cloth and squeeze dry, you will get a lot of liquid over ½ cup, discard liquid since it is full of potato starch.
3. Return dried potato to bowl add the egg, cornflour, pepper, and salt.
4. Mix until combined.
5. Preheat a frying pan (cast iron is best) until medium hot, add 2 teaspoons of oil wait until oil shimmers.
6. Place half of mixture into the pan, flatten with a spoon until you get a smooth flat surface. Lower heat to medium.
7. Fry for 8-10 minutes (check at 6 minutes) the first side, flip by sliding the rösti onto a plate then use another plate invert the rösti then slide it back into the pan, then fry the other side about 6-8 minutes until golden brown. Repeat to make another rösti.

Kashe pictured with penne and no cheese

Kashe Varnishkes is one of the best and easiest dishes on the planet.  It’s also one of the cheapest.  Double score.

There’s not much to write about this dish before the recipe, because there really isn’t much to it; pasta, onion and buckwheat.  That doesn’t sound impressive as a meal, but it’s very hearty and very satisfying, due at least in part to the frying of the onion in chicken fat.

If you’re a vegetarian, chicken fat is a no-go for you and you’ll probably want to use olive oil to make this.  I can’t vouch for the version made with olive oil, because I haven’t tried it, so if you do, please let us know how it is!

If you’re not a vegetarian, I highly recommend using the chicken fat and rendering your own.  It’s really easy (and fun in the way that being thrifty and using all of an animal that you are eating is fun).  There is a step by step explanation of how to render fat below.

The Kashe recipe is my adaptation of Mark Bittman’s adaptation of his mother’s recipe.  She approved of his recipe, and mine’s not much different, so I’d like to think I’d get the seal of approval as well.  But even if she hated it, I’d still make it this way – it’s just too easy and good not to!

Cheers.

With cheese and bow ties

Kashe Varnishkes with Bow Tie Pasta

Adapted from Mark Bittman

Serves 2

1 medium onion, sliced (not super thin, but a half an onion shouldn’t give you 4 slices either)
1/2 cup uncooked buckwheat
5-6 handfuls of uncooked bowtie pasta, grabbed by someone with medium sized girl hands (I’m not really sure how much this is exactly – you want enough pasta to feed two people – I’ll try measuring next time and update with a weight)
1/4 chicken fat* (instructions on rendering below)
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese (for serving)

Prepare the buckwheat.  Rinse it, put it in a small or medium saucepan and add 1 cup of water.  Bring to a boil, then turn it down and simmer, covered, like you would if cooking rice.  It will take about 15 minutes.  I like to fluff it up a bit when it’s finished cooking, and take the lid off to let the steam escape while I’m cooking everything else.

Prepare a pot of boiling water to cook the pasta.  I like to have this on the back burner, ready to go so I can time it with the onions.

Melt fat in a non-non-stick frying pan over medium high/high heat.  When fat is hot, add onions, sprinkle with a bit of salt**, and cook, stirring regularly (not like someone with OCD, but stir them once every minute or so), for about twenty minutes, or until they are mostly brown, but not brown/burnt.  Add water as needed (a couple of tablespoons to about a quarter cup) to keep it from sticking and to deglaze the yumminess.  When onions are done, add the buckwheat and fry it all together for a bit.  Add more salt to taste and lots of pepper.***

While the onions are cooking, you can cook your pasta.  My bit of advice here; I like to have it all synch up and have the pasta ready just as the onion stuff is ready, but if they aren’t done at the same time (happens more often than not), it’s better to have the onions done before the pasta.  Pasta that just sits around tends to get icky and stick to itself, so don’t worry about the onions being done first.  Just turn off the heat.  Reheating them won’t hurt them at all.

When pasta is done cooking, drain it and add to the frying pan with the onions.  If a bit of pasta water gets in there as well, so much the better.  Additionally, if anything is sticking to the pan, add a bit more water.  Cook just to get everything nice and mixed up and heated through (2 minutes – maybe 3 unless your onions are really cold).

Turn this out into bowls (warm ones are not a bad idea!) and add more of whatever you like (salt, pepper, rooster sauce, peanut butter).  I like to add finely grated Parmesan****.

How to render poultry fat

Kathlyn’s method

Save the fat from whole chickens or ducks***** that you roast (collect the fat from the bird’s cavity and around the neck pre-roast and store in a ziplock bag).  The great thing about rendering fat is that you can collect this stuff for quite a while******.  I had a ziplock in the freezer for months with chicken fat in it – it did look a little weird when I finally rendered it, but it turned out fine.  If you’re big on roasting chickens, you’ll have a pretty easy time of this.  If you’re not big on roasting chickens, read this.

When you decide you have enough fat (you could have fat from three chickens or 40 – more fat=more rendered fat, but it doesn’t really matter how much you do), chop the fat up into more or less uniform 1″ pieces and put it in a sauce pan,  adding enough water to cover the fat.  Put a lid on the sauce pan and set it over medium heat for about 15 minutes.  The steam from the water is going to get some of the fat out of the…fat?  I know that makes no sense, but the fat you want to cook with will start to come out of these fat chunks.

Take the lid off the pan and keep boiling for another 20-30 minutes.  The water will boil off, and the liquid fat will start to darken.  I’ve seen instructions that say the chunks will melt, but I’ve always strained something out of my rendered fat.  You’ll get a sense of what it looks like and you’ll definitely be able to tell that the water is gone – you won’t have any more steam and it will start to smell different.

Strain the liquid fat and either use it immediately, or put it in an air-tight container for storage.  If you’re really hard-core, you can leave it on the counter (like we used to do with bacon grease back in the hippie 70s), but if you refrigerate it – or freeze it – it’ll keep for quite a long time.  How long?  Not sure but nothing smells quite like rancid fat, and it’ll smell like something you don’t want to eat.

You can use rendered fat to cook all kinds of things – it’s really yummy.  It’s not a good general fat substitute for olive oil or canola, especially if you have heart problems, but it’s a nice treat, and you can always use it sparingly or in combination with other oils that are a bit “better” for you.

*Duck fat would probably be really nice in this as well.  I think lard or tallow would be too strong.
**Adding this salt here is something you can do, or not do.  I picked up the habit of doing it when cooking onions, and I like it.  It’s one of those things that will spark debate with cooks (when to season, salt, etc.) but in my opinion, it’s all opinion, and you should do exactly as you please. So experiment.  Add spices early, add them late.  There is one Indian dish I make where I learned that adding the spices in exactly the same sequence with the same timing as the recipe calls for makes a big difference.  But there are a lot of times when it just doesn’t.  So add salt here, or don’t.  You will want to add some salt eventually, but when you do it – like so many things in cooking – is totally up to you.  Isn’t that cool?
***Unless you hate pepper.  Please see note above.
****Which is definitely not part of the Bittman recipe, but it’s my kashe and I can smother it with cheese if I want to!
*****Not sure what would happen if you mixed the two kinds of fat.  It could be like crossing the streams, or it could be completely fine (more likely).  If you try it, please let me know how it works out!
******Apparently, you can get more fat off a whole chicken if you cut it up into pieces.  We really never do that, but it makes sense that you’d be able to.  From what I’ve read, a home-butchered bird will give you enough fat for about 1/2 cup of rendered.  If you do it the way we do it, just pulling the fat out of whole chickens, you’ll probably want to save the fat from at least 5 or 6 birds.

Keeping with our easy meals theme, I’m resurrecting a recipe that I’ve posted before.  Since we’re doing easy this month,  I think that applies to me too.

Lentils are extremely nutritious and very easy to make.  It’s just a matter of simmering with some spices (turmeric and salt) and then finishing with oil.  Brown lentils are super healthy, but they take a while – about 45 minutes to an hour.  Their cousin, pink lentils** (which you can see are actually orange) however, take about 10-15 minutes.  In fact, this light meal (which doubles as a nice snack) can be made in about 20 minutes, and it only takes that long because you need 20 minutes to make rice.

Simple, easy, delicious and pretty healthy.  Oh, and a perfect protein (legume and grain) and vegan to boot.  How’s that for covered bases?

Hope that’s helpful!

Cheers.

Indian Spiced Pink Lentils

1 cup pink lentils
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups water
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 dried red chilies
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Rinse the lentils and pick out any weird stuff (like rocks).  Drain them really well and put them in a med-small sauce pan.  Add turmeric and salt and water.  Bring to a boil, skim off the foamy part (although I don’t know why you need to do that – if you skip the skimming and nothing bad happens, let me know).  Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes, covered.

Whisk lentils to break them up into a sort of chunky puree.  Simmer uncovered for another few minutes and let it get thicker.  Meanwhile, heat the oil and cumin in a small frying pan.  After about two minutes (seeds are toasty but not burned!), add the chilies and cook for another 30 seconds.  Take the pan off heat, maybe add a little more oil to cool it down (just a little), add the cayenne pepper and stir.  Add this to the lentils.  Add the lemon juice and gently stir.

Note – this stuff will thicken up as it sits around, and I think it gets better as it does.  It’s pretty thin when you first take it off the stove.  If you want to make it to eat now and like it thicker, try taking away one cup of water.  You can always add more if you need to thin it out.  Just keep an eye on it as it simmers to make sure that it doesn’t burn.

Serving this over rice is great.  You can eat it by itself as well or with some flatbread, which is a real treat!

*My schedule has changed recently and consequently, the Friday Tip may change days.  Stay tuned.
**If my world-wide-interweb sources are correct, pink lentils are skinned and split massour lentils, which are very similar to brown lentils.  I believe this is why brown lentils have considerably more fiber (over twice as much – I think it comes from their skins).  But both varieties are excellent, low-fat sources of protein.  If you need to watch your fat intake, you can use less oil in the finishing of the lentils.  I think I’ve already halved the amount from the original recipe, but you could probably do 1 TBSP of oil.  You just need enough to fry the spices.

Hola!  It’s almost the end of Friday, but a tip you shall have!!

I just started a new job (yay!), which will likely lead to more food postings (I’m now in the grocery business and work with quite a few folks who love to cook and eat, so I’m anticipating a lot of idea sharing), but has also led to me being more or less exhausted.  I’m expecting this to sort itself out in the next few weeks, but for now, posting may be thin and sporadic.

So we’ll keep this short and sweet (and late).  Powdered (ground) spices tend to go off quickly.  Not in weeks by any means, but most of us buy a container of cumin and find it sitting in the cupboard two years later.  It’s really not any good then.  It won’t make you ill, but it won’t taste like much, especially compared to a fresh container.

Enter the coffee grinder.  The one pictured above was given to me by a friend, but you can usually find one at the Goodwill (or your thrift store of choice) for a few bucks.  If you want to be fancy, buy one new (but please just get it at Target – save money on the grinder and splurge on good spices).*

Once you have the grinder, you can take whole spices and…grind them!  It’s not hard.  You just fill the grinder with spices and…grind.  You’ll get a nice powder, perhaps a little less fine than your store-bought variety, but that’s no concern (unless you’re making something that’s supposed to be really smooth).  The aroma when you take the lid off the grinder is AMAZING.  Truly.  Amazing.

And you can do all kinds of nifty things that you can’t really do with store bought ground spices.  Like toast the spices.  This adds a nice depth to them (that you probably don’t want on everything, but it’s quite nice).  You can also make spice blends, like garam masala, and once you get a basic recipe, you can alter to proportions to make it taste the way you like it.  Cool no?

Oh!  I almost forgot.  To do this, you’ll have to buy whole spices.  If you have a good ethnic market around, you should have great access to whole spices.  If you don’t, you might need to order them online.  There are a lot of outlets to get them.  If you have some space to keep the whole spices in airtight containers in your pantry, that’s ideal.

Also, if you are going to grind spices fresh for each recipe (which I actually don’t – we use so many ground spices that I usually just grind up a mess of whatever it is and then store that in a container), you’ll need to take into account that whole spices don’t measure the same as ground spices.  I usually more or less double the amount of whole that I’ll need ground in a recipe.  That generally works.  And honestly, aside from cayenne (which I never grind…I don’t even know what it is!) and maybe coriander, it’s hard to have too much of any given spice.

Hope that’s helpful!

Cheers.

*In case you’re wondering why you need to buy a coffee grinder to do this when you already have one that you use for coffee, open the coffee grinder up and take a whiff.  Smells like coffee, yes?  Coffee is hard to get out of a grinder (or anything for that matter).  Spices are too.  So unless you like your Indian food to taste like coffee and your coffee tasting like cumin, it’s best to have two grinders.  If you’re just dead set against having two grinders (and I hear you, I do), I’ve heard that you can take a piece of bread and grind it up in the grinder to absorb most/all the flavors of whatever it is you last ground in there.  Personally, while I’m thrifty, I’m also kind of lazy, and grinding up bread (instead of eating it?  Pishaw!) every time I want to use the grinder sounds tiring.  But it’s an option.

As promised, we’re moving from philosophical to hands-on practical around here.  Today’s tip is a fantastically easy way to save a broken mayonnaise.

Don’t know what that is?  Well then, skip to the bottom of the post and let’s get you making some mayonnaise!

If you do have experience in making mayo at home (or aioli, which is marvelous and the main reason I make mayonnaise instead of buying it), you have likely found that many recipes “break.”  I don’t know why exactly breaking happens, but it’s maddening and until last night, I’d never been able to save a mayo that had done this.

Broken mayo is essentially just mayo that won’t hold together; it’s thin, oily, looks disgusting and doesn’t taste very good.  I’ve had this happen many times before, especially when I’ve tried to make it in the blender.  Just never works.

Last night was no exception.  I was trying to make a quick aioli (which is just garlic-infused mayo – yummy!) for something I was eating and thought I’d save some dishes by doing it in the blender.  Forty-five minutes, three egg yolk additions and a messing up of not only the blender but the food processor later, I still had broken sauce.

I went to my trusty “The Way To Cook” by Julia Child and saw that she did indeed have a trick for saving mayo; just take about a tablespoon of mustard (prepared, not dry) and put it in a bowl.  Take your hand whisk and start to beat the broken mayo into the mustard.  Do this very slowly at first, making sure the mustard stays thick, like you do if you’re emulsifying a salad dressing.  Keep adding the broken mayo into the new emulsion in a slow thin stream and eventually, you will incorporate all the broken sauce into a lovely new sauce.  Yay!

Surprisingly, the sauce doesn’t taste overwhelmingly of mustard.  And I didn’t have to throw out my broken mayo and start again.  Or give up on aioli with my dinner.

Hope that’s helpful!

Cheers.

How to make homemade mayonnaise

Homemade mayo is very nice and not too hard to make.  We do buy quite a bit of mayo from the store, but that’s mostly because it keeps forever (I think maybe literally – I have yet to throw out a rotten jar).  The homemade stuff is better, so if you’re making something special, or if you have a lot of mayo eaters on your hands, consider giving this a try:

2 egg yolks, room temp (use fresh eggs – they will be raw and you don’t want to make yourself sick with rotten raw eggs)
1 whole egg (see above)
1 TBSP fresh squeezed lemon juice (you might need a bit more)
1 TSP dijon mustard
1/2 TSP salt
Pinch of pepper (if you’re all pretty about it, use white.  I use black and no problems)
1 1/2 – 2 cups oil – use canola, vegetable or a combo of these with some oil oil – if you use all extra virgin olive oil, it’ll taste like that instead of mayo – and be a waste of really good oil!

Combine yolks, whole egg, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper in a food processor fitted with the plastic blade (didn’t know that thing had a use?  Me neither!).  Process for about 10 seconds until it’s creamy.  Turn motor on and leave running (you might want to suggest your spouse try watching TV or listening to his podcasts in the other room – you’re going to have this on for a while).  Pour oil in very slowly – like drops at a time.  Keep the motor on the whole time, but let the stuff process for a bit in between additions of oil (15-30 seconds).  When you can see that your mayo is thickening up, you can start to add the oil in a very thin stream, but stop adding oil every so often to make sure it incorporates.  Finish adding all the oil like this.  If it’s way too thick, add a little more lemon juice.  If it never thickens and just stays a runny oily mess, try saving it using the technique described above!

You can use the mayo immediately, or store it covered in the fridge for about a week.  If you need to keep it around longer than that, buy the stuff at the store.  About 2 cups.