BakeSpite.net

Hi there, Spitesketeers. Tonight is another delicious dinner at Chef Ryan’s, also known as Studio 54. We’ve live blogged from here before, but tonight I’m trying something different: a dry run for next week’s PAX coverage.

I’m trying to determine whether or not it’s actually possible to liveblog an event using an iPad, up to and including grabbing photos with the little photo dongle thing. So bear with me.

Tonight’s menu is a pretty simple izakaya-style Japanese course, Ryan being of Japanese extraction and all. We also have a few other random things to snack on.

We have some sausages that Cat picked up at a Polish deli she photographed the other day, all freshly made and tasting of delicious smoked white meats. And of course the traditional Studio 54 gin and tonic, made with Tanqueray Rangpur.

I photographed the two together because they’re a good match, believe it or not. Smoked sausage doesn’t necessarily seem like the perfect match for a G&T, but the Rangpur has a great lime flavor that goes quite nicely with the pork.

And now it seems the egg omelets are ready for consumption, so I will let this test entry stand. OM NOM NOM NOM

Maybe because it’s Saturday, or because I can’t seem to sleep past early morning these days, but the oven’s fired up at 375 and cranberry shortbread is a-baking. The shortbread marks the second time baking today. It’s some sort of compulsion lately. I should be getting paid to bake this much, but instead, I have to figure out new things to bake each time. (The popover incident seems to have been a minor crave-until-you-can’t-eat-anotheroneitis.)

This morning’s jaunt in the kitchen was inspired by last night’s experiment with Julia Child’s hollandaise sauce recipe. That, in turn, was inspired by two lovely artichokes ripe for the steaming. Despite some unclear direction on Julia’s part (sorry Julia) regarding whether or not to whisk eggs in a sauce pot (with or without heat?) while adding cold then melted butter (this is no small matter when it comes to hollandaise sauce), the sauce was a success. Of course, due to the fact that I had nearly no idea what I was doing, I almost destroyed the sauce. Luckily, Julia adds a section on troubleshooting (and here you thought troubleshooting only involved computers). Once my sauce started curdling, yes curdling, I realized I probably 1) added the butter too quickly and/or 2) heated the mixture above its emulsion point. The way to fix this is to take out a tablespoon of the mixture and add a teaspoon of lemon. You whisk this, then slowly add the mixture again, whisking all the while until you see the consistency is creamy once again.

I woke up this morning with what amounts to enough hollandaise sauce for four brunch plates and thought, “I should make biscuits and poached eggs for the sauce.” I turned to the handy Better Homes and Gardens and found an easy recipe for biscuits.  On my first try, they were pretty delectable. Another mystery uncovered: biscuits do not have to come from the Pillsbury factory! Unfortunately, the biscuits were so good that I ate them with butter straight from the oven and had no time to make poached eggs for the hollandaise sauce. (Is it weird to eat hollandaise sauce and eggs biscuits for dinner?)

And here we are at a quarter to nine on a Saturday night. I needed to figure out something to do while Jeremy was working out. I guess the only way to successfully combat his uphill battle is to make the hill into a mountain. Tonight, this mountain involves cranberry shortbread thanks to the Joy of Cooking. So far, the sauce may have suffered a temporary setback as I had dried sweetened cranberries rather than fresh. Why is this an issue? After adding the 1/3 cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of water to roughly 2 1/4 cups of the cranberries on the stove, nothing resembling boiling was happening. When you have fresh cranberries, the liquid from the cranberries releases from the fruit when you heat it up. The starch in the berries mixes with the water and sugar to form a syrup. Lacking its own berry juice, I added extra water and when this didn’t thicken, I added about 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. This seems to have formed a cranberry sauce that is more fruit than sauce, but tastes good, so how bad can the result be? We’ve got about 15 minutes before I find out, so stay tuned for pictures and an update.

Happy Saturday. Enjoy the good eats. (more…)

As Jeremy mentioned, for some reason, I can’t stop baking and/or cooking. Add to this my lifelong love of doughnuts and well, there you have it. The perfect marriage of my love of things yeasty and other things I can cook (or in this case, fry). Don’t get me wrong, I know doughnuts along with french fries and other fast food are among the worst foods you can eat, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t loved them from not-so-afar. Today, you may learn to love them from up close as well.

Today’s doughnuts are thanks to Donna Hay’s Modern Classics. If you haven’t heard of Donna Hay, you’re in for a happy surprise. She takes what Julia Child started for “servantless” cooks in America and simplifies it.  (It doesn’t hurt that she was a food stylist and that the photography by Con Poulos is fantastic.)  Somehow, she takes what looks like Martha Stewart cooking (Con Poulos shoots for Martha Stewart Living as well.) and actualizes the simplicity of the images.  Each page of ingredients and steps is limited to one page, not counting full size pictures.

Sugared Doughnuts

Recipe from ‘Modern Classics 2′ by Donna Hay.

This recipe can be adapted to make doughnuts with any type of filling. Try custard, Nutella, chocolate ganache or any kind of jam you like. To do so, at step three, omit the step of cutting out the middle hole and fry as instructed. Pipe your desired filling into your doughnut using a small piping bag. Don’t toss them into the sugar, dust with icing sugar instead, or leave them be.

4 teaspoons active dry yeast

¼ cup lukewarm water

1 cup lukewarm milk (I just combine the two liquids in a jug and nuke it in the microwave for a bit)

3 tablespoons caster sugar

100g unsalted butter, melted

4 ¼ cups plain flour

3 eggs

vegetable oil, to deep fry

1 cup caster sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, to coat

1. Place the yeast, water, milk and one tablespoon of sugar in a bowl and set aside for 10 minutes. The mixture will start to foam, indicating that the yeast is active.
2. Add the butter, flour, eggs and remaining sugar to the yeast mixture and mix with a butter knife until a sticky dough forms. Bring the dough together by kneading on a lightly floured surface. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a tea-towel and set aside in a warm place for 45 minutes or until doubled in size. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for five minutes or until it feels smooth and elastic.
3. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until 1cm thick. Cut 8cm rounds with a cutter. Cut a 3.5cm hole in the middle of the rounds. Place a tray lined with non-stick baking paper, cover with a tea-towel and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes or until risen.
4. Heat the oil in a saucepan until the temperature reaches 180C. Cook the doughnuts a few at a time until golden. Drain briefly on paper towel and toss in the combined sugar and cinnamon.

Much of Bakespite was borne from my attempts to bring flavors from the past to life. Like Remy’s ratatouille that brings the evil Anton Ego to tears, I first tried to replicate the divine chocolate chocolate chip cherry muffins that my mother-in-law baked this summer in Michigan’s prime cherry season. This was followed by myriad attempts to make Martha’s rolls deliciously edible rather than dead weight worthy of well, the trash. My last baking-like-mom attempt was so successful on the first try, I made them 3 times in 24 hours. Popovers! Light, airy, cream-puff like without the cream. Yum. One of the best butter-deliverance devices ever.

Today, I decided protein should be added to our diet (see Jeremy’s post on Cheesecake and our death match against the weight of the universe.) Enter my mother’s fried tofu with scallions. Over and over during my childhod, I made fried tofu for dinner. It was a weekly staple. I would make the jasmine rice and while it was cooking, fire up some oil and fry tofu. Somehow, er, 19 years have passed and the tofu I’ve made resembles the first sets of rolls: dead weight. Deceivingly crispy and golden on the outside, but so hard, they are inedible. Today, I tried a new tofu called Wild Wood; a packaged tofu loaf that boasts high protein and extra firmness. A raw taste confirmed both.

Finally the results I’ve been waiting for: dry the tofu carefully, fire up the oil on high, drop in the tofu and coat with oil before letting fry un-touched for 2-3 minutes (until golden on the bottom). Flip with chopsticks or a slotted spoon. The tofu is done when it is evenly golden and it passes the hollow tap test. This is exactly as it sounds: tap the tofu with chopsticks and listen for that beautifully hollow sound that alerts you to the tofu’s crispy outside and airy interior.  The secret is the right type of tofu and the correct frying temperature.  If you buy most of the tofu in the white plastic containers, expect disappointment.  Extra firm.  High heat.

For an extra taste of homemade Vietnamese:

Chop scallions very thinly and after the tofu has finished crisping, add the scallions into a ladle and dip into the oil so it sizzles.  Drain with the slotted spoon and drop into a dipping bowl with approximately two tablespoons of Nuoc Mam (fish sauce).  Let soak and then pour over the tofu to serve.

Perfection. Thanks moms!

A recent Asian Crab recipe posted by FoodNetwork.com got me thinking about my long-standing love affair with crab.

Growing up in NY, my mom would take us in our red Plymouth station wagon into Chinatown, park with the windows down (imagine the er, aroma of the city streets on a roasting summer’s day) while she and my dad bustled down to the seafood markets south of Canal.  I didn’t know how good I had it.  I was hot and cranky, my legs sticking to the grey vinyl seats of our car.  When mom and dad returned, amongst the assortment of vegetation sticking out of white plastic bags with red calligraphic lettering, there would be a bag, sometimes two, lined with brown paper.  The bag would rustle in the trunk, all of its own accord.  Crab’s on.

We are Asian, specifically, Vietnamese.  This is not a fact I was always proud of growing up in a white neighborhood on Long Island; attending predominantly Irish, Italian, Polish Catholic private schools.  Sometimes there’d be someone else Asian, usually Philippino. The kids thought my last name was ridiculous, and given how hard it was for me to try and pronounce it correctly for them, I tended to agree.  Back in those days, I’d bring the traditional gio sandwich to lunch while my classmates chowed down on PB&J and deli meats that didn’t single them out as strange.

How I long for the days of my taken-for-granted youth: filled with Vietnamese cuisine.  Only then, it was just food.  What we ate at home.

Crab.  It’s not just an Asian thing, it’s definitely not just a Vietnamese thing, but oh the way my mom would prepare it.  Julia Child may have been fearless, but my mother was positively matter of fact.  We’d get home from Chinatown, bring the groceries in and the crabs would unceremoniously get dumped into the sink, awaiting execution.  I will say this, my mother was quick and spared them a prolonged death-by-boiling.  She’d pop off the tops of their shells, take a large and sharp knife and aim right between the eyes.  One quick stab to the heart.  It would be over.  (Don’t try this without gloves.  The better crabs are feistier, don’t bother with the ones missing limbs or barely moving around.  The fresher, the sweeter and tastier.)

After the crabs had been set to rest, my mom would go about cleaning them with a brush to dislodge any stray sand.  Then, she’d take off the gills.  I believe the secret to the deliciousness of my mother’s crabs was in the sauteeing rather than boiling.  She’d clean and chop scallions, garlic and possibly ginger.  She salted and peppered the crabs.  The scallions, garlic and ginger were sauteed in oil (though I suspect butter would not hurt this recipe) and then, the piece de resistance, adding whatever crab egg she’d scraped from the opened, cleaned crabs.  After the aroma would start to waft, fish sauce, which makes all things Vietnamese.  After the sauce has simmered a few minutes, you add the crabs, which she’d break into halves or quarters (depending on the type of crab).  Mix them into the sauce.  Turn the heat a bit lower and cover them to let the flavors settle in.

Crabs cook quickly, so check under the cover after a few minutes.  Once the shells have turned bright red, they’re most likely done.  If you want to be sure, open up a leg and check that the meat is no longer translucent.

The crabs themselves were so divine but the sauce, oh how I loved their sauce.  I would save it to eat over jasmine rice at the end.

If you’d like a variation (and possibly measurements/a more specific recipe) I found this Vietnamese-style Spicy Crab Recipe from Sunset Magazine’s test kitchen.  If you’re in San Francisco, Yummy Yummy in the Inner Sunset has three variations of Vietnamese crab (butter, red pepper and black bean) that are pretty good as well as reasonable for dungeness crab in the area.  Dragonfly, also in the Sunset serves a slightly higher-end version with garlic noodles.  And to round out San Francisco’s offering, Thanh Long in the Outer Sunset has what some say are the most delicious Vietnamese-style crabs in San Francisco.  I would say Dragonfly is just as good, but not nearly as pricey.  My favorite is having crabs at home, where you can eat them as messily as you like!

Well, I guess that liveblog didn’t work out quite as smashingly as I’d hoped, but it’s not my fault. Nor was it the gin-and-tonics. Right after I posted the last update, Chef Ryan glared at everyone who was hanging out in his kitchen eating all his fried eggplant and demanded we go sit at the table. A few moments later, the completed repast was served. It was weird, because when I left the kitchen, all the dishes seemed to be in their base components; yet about two minutes later, we were served golden-brown pan-fried sole over a bed of sauteed brussels sprouts and a potato au gratin. I would theorize that he simply dumped all the raw ingredients into the trash and whipped out meals he had secretly prepared in advance of the dinner party, but I know better. He’s simply that awesome in the kitchen.

The salad

"The beets in this salad are delicious," I opined. Wait -- beets? Delicious? But I hated them as a kid! That's when I knew I had pupated at last into my adult form.

Besides, now that I think back on it — which is of course completely contrary to the entire purpose of a liveblog — I recall that he led off with a salad. Simple mixed greens, beets, and an Italian cheese whose name eludes me. I’m sorry for the vagueness; I was the least “foodie” person in attendance, which is why I was liveblogging and not, say, helping to prepare the food. Part of the reason we launched this blog is so that I may learn more about food by immersion. (Not literal immersion.)

The salad kept our mouths and brains occupied for several minutes, which must have been when the chef put the finishing touches on the meal. Tricky!

The main course

Fish is the greatest thing. I grew up in West Texas, so to Young Jeremy fish was this sort of foul-smelling, rubbery thing that was sometimes inflicted upon us, or else a curious foul-smelling sandwich meat that was sold in cans. Now that I live somewhere near the water and can eat fish that was plucked from the ocean somewhat recently, I have discovered that there is very nearly no kind of seafood I don’t like. I’m not so big on raw squid, but even that’s palatable if served correctly. Unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed last night’s meal.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever had dover sole before, but it seems like the sort of fish that requires an expert touch. Ryan said he selected it over the more common types of sole because he likes its thinness and delicacy — which, in cooking terms, means it’s the sort of meat that can go from succulent to overcooked in an instant. Ryan lightly breaded and pan-fried the fish, and he did it just right, so that every bite was perfect. I know from experience this isn’t easy to do, since the thinnest extremities of a fillet often end up overdone if you leave it on the heat long enough to properly cook the thickest portions.

Sole in itself isn’t a terribly flavorful fish, even prepared in such a fattening manner. In this case, the sides balanced it out: The fish was served on a bed of chopped brussels sprouts sauteed with mushrooms and olive oil (among other things), which had a very slight bitterness that complemented the neutrality of the fish. Sitting aside the sprouts were homemade potatoes au gratin — not overpoweringly cheesy, but just rich enough to balance the other flavors.

The finished dinner.

Unfortunately, food photography is as difficult as Cat keeps telling me, so I’m afraid this photo doesn’t properly convey the excellence of our meal. I fear you will have to take it on faith that it was, indeed, excellent.

You’ll probably be pleased to know that I don’t intend to liveblog meals. It was an interesting experiment in irony, but on the whole I think I prefer to socialize and enjoy the food — at least, when it’s this good.

Tonight’s menu, according to Chef Ryan:

“A pseudo-Turkish… sort of an appetizer, I guess. Pan-fried eggplant and arugula with mint. Pan-fried dover sole with a potato, leek, and cauliflower gratin. And a side of….”

“Delicious? With a dash of bring it on?”

“…shredded brussels sprouts and mushrooms.”

Club 54 is the official nickname for our friend Ryan’s house, so named because his street address is 54 (redacted) Court. Clever people, we are. What we lack in wit, however, we more than make up for with our enthusiasm for Ryan’s cooking. He loves great food, and he loves making great food. And we love eating it. He invited us over for a small, impromptu dinner tonight, and when this happens it is the highlight of our week!

And I am going to write about it, or at least I will until the G&Ts knock me out of commission.

The beverages

Possibly the world's finest gin and tonic, courtesy of Scott Z.

Pretty much any dinner at Ryan’s begins with a heavy dosing of gin and tonic, which is the official awesome specialty of his boyfriend Scott. I am not really a drinker myself, but I really can’t turn these things down. They’re like joy in a glass, slightly sweet and deceptively potent.

To my credit, I’ve developed a decent tolerance for these over the past year or so and no longer find myself asleep on the couch midway through.

The big spherical ice cubes are great, too. I’m not sure where Ryan found ice cube trays in a spherical shape, but it’s an awesome idea. The sphere is the most compact Euclidean object possible, meaning it has the least possible surface area of any geometric form in real space. And minimizing the surface area of an ice cube (or not-cube) means it melts more slowly. Which means the drinks retain their flavor longer. And potency, I suppose!

Maybe I’ll need that lie-down after all.

Appetizer 1: Turkish eggplant

Turkish-style eggplant, all presented and yogurted up.

The first appetizer is on the counter, and I have just made a glutton of myself. It’s cool, though; we all did. We have: pan-friend breaded eggplant dosed in a Mediterranean sauce consisting of Greek yogurt and mint and a drizzle of butter whipped in a skillet with a light dusting of sumac.

It probably goes without saying, but it’s delicious.

I think I offended Chef Ryan when I said it tasted kind of like potato chips, but I didn’t mean it in a bad way! It’s a starchy vegetable that’s been fried and served with a sour, creamy, spicy accent, that’s all. The difference between these eggplant slices and potato chips is that these are amazing and wonderful and fresh and I don’t even care that my exercise efforts have been completely nullified in half an hour because I just ate my own weight in fried eggplant.