Apple Pie, Patis, and Pâté

I often make substitutions and adjustments to make recipes work for ingredients already available in my pantry. I rarely follow recipes even when baking, where precise measurements and specific ingredients matter a bit more as compared to season-to-taste cookery. Some tweaked recipes turn out fine while others get filed in the “meh” or “time to get takeout” cabinet.

One ingredient that I consider irreplaceable is yogurt. Substituting milk, cream, buttermilk, or any other similar product just doesn’t work most of the time.

My favorite yogurt brand is Fage, a tangy Greek-style yogurt strained to a thick consistency. It’s similar to Arabic labneh and is sometimes referred to as, drum roll please, yogurt cheese. As much as I like the taste and texture of Fage yogurt, I’d rather have it as a quick snack than as a cooking ingredient. It’s fairly expensive and plunking down $15 worth of yogurt on a batch of yogurt-braised chicken doesn’t make much sense to me.

View Homemade Yogurt tips and recipe »

Belgian lambics rely on spontaneous fermentation from naturally occurring wild yeasts, giving this beer style its acidity and distinctive tartness. It doesn’t sound too different from the process that makes sourdough sour, does it? The particular style used in this sorbet recipe is fruit lambic — fresh whole fruits are added once the fermentation starts.

There’s a wide variety of fruit lambics available to use in this recipe:

• framboise (raspberry)
• kriek (cherry)
• pêche (peach)
• cassis (black currant)
• pomme (apple)

My favorite is easily the raspberry lambic. It also seems to be the most widely available.

There’s only one thing wrong with this sorbet recipe. Fresh raspberries and framboise lambic are perfectly fine on their own. I’m a firm believer in leaving well enough alone so I had a bit of trouble trying this recipe for the first time.

I couldn’t even keep the ingredients on hand long enough due to an uncontrollable habit of mindlessly popping raspberries in my mouth every few seconds. Before I realize it, there’s nothing left in the container but red streaks. A snifter or two of framboise lambic is also never a bad idea after dinner. It’s the ideal dessert beer.

The raspberries had to go directly from the bag into the blender just to make sure. Ah, the problems I face.

Now that I’ve tried it, I can wholeheartedly say that it is absolutely worth it.

View Raspberry Lambic Sorbet recipe »

Pureed corn miso soup and a poached egg served with Tofu Dengaku – broiled tofu with sweet miso topping and toasted sesame seeds.

Click: the photo event hosted by Jugalbandi

Dotted with tiny bits of yellow, it looks like any other corn soup but one taste and you’ll know it’s unmistakably Japanese. Pureed corn kernels are seasoned with dashi, miso, and soy sauce to create a soup that can be enjoyed hot or cold. Served with tofu, a poached egg, or shredded crabmeat, it can be a light meal by itself.

View Pureed Corn and Miso Soup recipe »

I had my mind set on having some polvoron for the weekend but didn’t have any powdered milk, a key ingredient. Getting a polvoron fix is serious business for me but I’m not about to run to the nearest Goldilocks (there are none). Good thing I have a recipe for a similar Spanish treat called Polvorones Sevillanos that doesn’t require powdered milk.

Filipino Polvoron and Polvorones Sevillanos are two distinct things but do share similarities other than the name. The Filipino version uses flour toasted in a dry skillet and is pressed in a mold to finish while its Spanish counterpart is shaped into ovals before baking in the oven. The resulting tastes of the shortbread made from these two methods are unsurprisingly different.

Even with the different cooking methods, both share the same crumbly texture and instantly falls apart into a fine powder upon biting. One of my hidden talents is the ability to whistle with a mouthful of polvoron without spewing the buttery powder into someone’s face.

View Polvorones Sevillanos recipe »

As much as I don’t mind making breads that take at least two days to complete, sometimes a freshly baked batch of yeasty goodness just has to come out of the oven right quick. Using pre-ferments and soakers are just two of many techniques for making bread with fully-developed flavor but, uh, they had to be made yesterday.

Planning ahead is necessary because any type of yeast bread can benefit greatly from a longer and slower fermentation. This mantra holds especially true for lean breads where flavor development depends heavily on small amounts of yeast and lots of patience.

If the main flavoring came from other sources, say spices, a bit of garlic, and maybe a sprinkling of chickpea flour, then a larger amount of yeast can be used to make the dough rise quickly. In this case, the yeast primarily acts as a leavener instead of flavor enhancer.

This seems to be the thinking behind the curry roll formula from Austrian baker Gerhard Ströck. These pungent garlic-laced buns are finished in about two hours if you skip the much-maligned “cool on a wire rack” step. Dinner rolls are much better fresh from the oven anyway.

View Gerhard Ströck's Curry Roll formula »

Garlic scapes are a lot like asparagus — in season around springtime, spear-like and pointy, crispy but tender, and gets tougher towards the root end. It is naturally fragrant when fresh but releases an agreeable mild garlic aroma once a bit of heat is applied.

Garlic scapes have an eye-catching curliness that makes you want to pick up a bundle and whip it around just to see if it springs back to shape. Don’t flog it too hard — the shape of the garlic scape stems is a good indicator of freshness. The more it resembles a pig’s tail or corkscrew, the younger and more tender it is. Avoid garlic scapes that have almost straightened out if you don’t feel like gnawing on green curly chopsticks.

View 12 Uses for Garlic Scapes »

There are two major categories in Japanese salads — sunomono (”vinegared things”) and aemono (”dressed things”). This crisp asparagus salad falls under aemono where a simple dressing of Japanese mustard, egg yolk, and soy sauce is applied sparingly, just enough to provide that distinctive mustard heat.

View Asparagus with Mustard Dressing recipe »

Red Hen Baking Company’s “Sprouternickel” is a sourdough whole grain rye loaf studded with sprouted rye berries, sprouted spelt berries, and sunflower seeds. My formula is based on the ingredients listed in Red Hen Baking’s Bread Varieties page while the ingredient proportions and baking times for this first attempt are based on Dan Leader’s Vollkornbrot formula.

In my next batch, I’ll try a longer baking time and lower temperature using loaf pans sealed with aluminum foil. The bread developed a rather crunchy exterior from baking uncovered for 3 hours at 300ºF and a crustless version is probably more desirable for this type of loaf. The interior remained moist and creamy and had an assertive sour rye flavor.

While there’s a lot of room for improvement I’m quite happy with the flavor and textures of this hearty rye loaf. The sprouted berries and whole grains also makes it densely packed with nutrients and fiber.

View Sprouternickel Clone formula »

Cooking for a small crowd can be really stressful for the budding Michael Chiarello. However, it can be one of the most fun things you can do for friends and family. There is something perversely satisfying with making something delicious and sharing it with people you really really care about. A lot of things can go wrong but there are a few things I always do when having a few guests over:

1. Have lots of booze. If the food sucks, a good buzz makes it better.
2. Make most of the food ahead of time.
3. Hope and pray that there are no vegetarians.

This Shanghai recipe for slowly cooked pork starts off with a quick sear in copious amounts of hot oil. There is a lot of potential for an unintentional burn ward visit so use a really hot oven to brown if uncomfortable with the idea of lowering a hunk of pig in hot oil.

Red cooked pork shoulder, like most braised and slow-cooked meats, is much better made a day ahead. The sauce is slightly sweet and rendered aromatic from the use of eight-star anise, cinnamon sticks, and ginger.

View Red Cooked Pork Shoulder recipe »