Chicken Rendang

Map: Wikipedia -- Click to enlarge
Almost 2/3 of the population lives on the Malay Peninsula,
with most of the rest occupying northern Borneo.

For this evening's dinner, I had decided yesterday to return to the core purpose of this blog, which is to encourage us to take a fresh look at the familiar recipe books in our kitchen. It was to be our first unscripted Saturday in our own house in a couple of months, and there was no excuse not to pull a book off the shelf and look for something new. It was also our first Saturday after the end of our farm-box season, so local vegetables, though they could be involved, would not dictate the menu.

I opened Extending the Table, an excellent collection of recipes from throughout the world, and started scanning the index for the main ingredients we had on hand. We quickly settled on chicken rendang (rendang ayam), which I later realized would be my first foray into Malay cooking.

I began by finely chopping an onion, one dried chili pepper and three garlic cloves. I grated  hunk of ginger root with our microplane and tossed all together in a small bowl. Once I had heated olive oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, I added these and sauteed gently until the mix was golden brown and beginning to caramelize. I then added one pound of chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces, 1 cup of water, half of a 13.5-ounce can of coconut milk, and about a tablespoon of lemongrass paste. We were looking for fresh or dried lemongrass, but when we found the paste and neither of the other forms, we declared our quest successful enough. I heated all of this until boiling, and continued for just a few minutes until the chicken was nearly cooked through.

I then added the rest of the coconut milk and a tablespoon of sugar, returned to boil briefly, and then I lowered the heat and simmered for 90 minutes. Meanwhile, I sliced a cucumber (diagonally, as the recipe suggests, and with "racing stripes" as I always do cucumbers) and put it in the fridge. Near the end of the simmering, I cooked rice in a separate pan. At 90 minutes, the chicken was extraordinarily tender and the sauce greatly reduced, but still like a sweet gravy. We served it over the warm rice, with cuke slices on the side.

This paired very well with the lemony 2012 Rkatsiteli from our friends at Westport Rivers.

Where to find many of our cookbooks ...

Most of the cookbooks mentioned in this blog can be found in the Cook Book section of the online book store I helped to set up for our church. I encourage readers to do the opposite of what often happens -- use the online store to learn about books, and then buy them locally if you can. But if you are going to buy online, doing so through our store does return a small kickback to our community.

Sreenshot: First Parish Online Book Store

Hearty Asian Noodle Salad

Our CSA passed out copies of this recipe to its subscribers last Saturday. Of course several of the ingredients where in the weekly pick-up, and the rest I already had at home, so it made perfect sense to try it.

I started by chopping a small head of cabbage, which of course grew exponentially when cut and almost completely filled the salad bowl before I could add any other ingredients. I added shredded carrots, a shredded turnip, a bit of grated ginger, 4 minced garlic cloves, and some cooked egg noddles (the recipe says any kind of pasta will do) then mixed in some rice vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce. It was hard to mix together because the bowl was really overfull at this point. I really should have put it into a bigger serving bowl, but I have a thing about making too many dirty dishes.

The dish was tasty and filling, and made for good lunchtime leftovers. It is also super easy. The only real cooking involved was boiling the noodles.

The recipe comes from Red Fire Farm

Chemex Crucible

We actually used our Coffee Love book as recently as Valentine's Day of this year, but it seemed longer. Over the past few days we discussed it, and finally got organized for a post-work, pre-lecture experiment.

The lecture in question is a presentation on coffee at the local public library, so this seemed a great time to try something new in coffee.

Author Daniel Young introduces this concoction:

The French word brûlot, from the verb brûler (to burn), can refer either to a small fire ship with enough fuel to incinerate an enemy position or a sweetened, flambéed brandy. In New Orleans, the café brûlot is pretty much both those things. 

I have never been to the Big Easy, though I have visited vicariously through Pam's visit, films, and food. Our success with this little beverage makes me want to get there all the sooner.

We made our café brûlot essentially the way Young describes it, except that he calls for orange peel and we had none. As readers of this blog well know, lack of orange is a good excuse to get out the Triple Sec, which I did. I later learned that a variation by Melissa Roberts on Epicurious does exactly the same thing.

Essentially, I made coffee in the Chemex (I'd make it a bit stronger than usual next time) and meanwhile gently heated some courvoisier with sugar, cloves, and a cinnamon stick. Once the coffee was brewed and the sugar dissolved, I lit the liquid on fire, and then slowly doused it with the coffee (which amazingly did not splatter anything) and continued pouring it in. Then I poured the whole concoction back through a sieve into the Chemex.

The result: smooth, spicy, and delicious -- and definitely on the list for next Valentine's Day.

Now that we have proven this recipe (or more precisely, proofed it) we will work on our technique so that we can try it table-side after a nice meal.

Lagniappe

From our friends at Atlas Obscura, Pam found a story about how café brûlot is done tableside.

Mollie Katzen's Savory Fruit-Stuffed Squash

I got out the classic Moosewood Cookbok to find a recipe for the acorn squash that we'd gotten in our CSA farm box. There were a few choices, but James and I settled on the fruit-stuffed squash. This was a bit time consuming as it required me to cook rice, and to pre-bake the squash halves, and to cook the filling all before filling the squash and baking for 30 more minutes.

The filling was made by sauteeing chopped onions, minced garlic, diced apple, a sectioned navel orange, and adding some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and a bit of honey. This was mixed in with the cooked rice and then used to fill the baked squash halves, which were then topped with sliced almonds. Everything was baked for half an hour at 350.

While the squash was baking I made the Orange-Ginger Sauce topping. It was a simple recipe using corn starch, orange juice, garlic, fresh ginger, soy sauce and dry sherry cooked over a medium heat.

Once everything was ready it was served, along with plain yogurt for an additional topping. Paired well with Rkatsiteli

Two Simple Dishes

Huffington Post shared a link recently of the "Easiest, Fastest, Tastiest Meals You Never Make" from which I tried two last week. The first "Chicken with Apples and Carrots" I was able to prepare all in one skillet. And, with the exception of sour cream, I was able to prepare it with ingredients I had on hand. I did also substitute dried thyme leaves for the fresh thyme sprig. A winning fall recipe.

The other recipe Tomato and Chard Bake (the doughless pizza) should have been prepared all in one indispensable-cast-iron skillet but I forgot to bring such a skillet with me with we drove to our weekend "autumn house", so I had to use one skillet for the stove top, and then place everything into a cake pan when it was time to bake it. I used the remains two-day old baguette which I sliced and placed in the bottom of the pan with some olive oil and minced garlic. I did not have enough bread to place another layer on top of the tomatoes, mozzarella and chard, but it turned out fine anyway. I think I should have let it sit out a bit longer before serving, as I found the second helping to be better than the first. I think if I make it again I will also use a bit more olive oil and let the bread soak in it a bit longer.

Getting A Head in the Cabbage Game

When I arrived at Colchester Neighborhood Farm yesterday, the farm manager noticed my skeptical look at the huge red cabbages that were first in line for the weekly produce pickup.

Fortunately, CSA is not just about getting a good deal on local, organic vegetables. It is about being part of a community committed to good food. As regular readers of this blog know, sometimes enjoying what is local and good takes a little effort. Most of us have gotten so accustomed to foods that are easy, comfortable, and tasty in a very generic way. A subscription to a CSA puts us in touch with the rhythms of the land around us, and connects us to the foods that are best suited to each season. And it takes a little help to enjoy that sometimes.

Unfortunately, I did not slice across our cabbage to see if it had a spiral like this. It was, incidentally, a deeper purple than any red cabbage I had seen before.

In this case, manager Maryann was ready: she handed me a sheet of paper with three recipes, one of which was Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage. She was so confident that I would love it that we simply put it on the menu for tonight's dinner. It is now among our two favorite cabbage recipes (the overall list is quite short), the other being our famous lime slaw.

The recipe is simple -- simple enough that we were able to pull it off in a kitchen other than our own. Herewith, the details:

Heat 2 T oil, then add 1/2 diced onion and 1/2 diced apple (peeled and cored), sauteing until golden brown. (In reality, I used a whole onion and a whole apple -- we had cabbage to cover I mean enhance.)

Add four cups thinly sliced cabbage. Of course, I did not measure this; I was going to use all of this except the tough outer layers, and I was certainly not going to go buy more if I was a 1/2 cup short! I think slicing the cabbage thin was key, as was reducing the heat so that it did not cook too fast. I added 1/4 cup (or so) apple cider vinegar and 1/4 cup sugar. I actually added all the sugar we had in a little dish, and it was actually brown sugar. This was another key to the success of this dish, I'm sure.

I could not find any celery seed, so in place of 1/4 t of this, I added a liberal sprinkle of dried basil. I simmered for 10 minutes, mixing frequently and thoroughly. I then added 1/4 cup diced Canadian bacon. (Again, the measurement was imperfect -- it was one small package, minus a thick slice for the dog's dinner.)

I sauteed for just another couple minutes, until the bacon was heated through and the whole thing was nice and glazy. I have been careful not to overcook cabbage ever since I heard one of those food-chemistry discussions of how it can go quite quickly from raw to crisp to tender to sulfurous nasty mush.

Fortunately, this reached desired sweet-and-sourness as well as desired tender-crispness in less than a half hour start-to-finish, earning its honored place in our cabbage repertoire!

Mulled Mead

To celebrate the first chill of autumn (and the fact that we'd been married 10,000 days!) James and I decided to try Mulled Mead using some of our own homemade Mead. We adapted this recipe we found online. 

We started by heating up the Mead in a saucepan, and then added two cinnamon sticks, a few whole cloves, a couple of whole peppercorns, a whole nutmeg (cut in half), a pinch of ground ginger, a dash of cardamom, and a splash of Triple Sec, we let the concoction boil, and then let it simmer for about 25 minutes. We removed the whole spices with a strainer and poured the Mead into two glasses along with a shot of Amaretto and a tablespoon of honey.

A great celebratory drink!