Day Fifteen - Page 261 - Pickled Chanterelles + a book review and more pickles

Riding on the coattails of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is the latest book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals. Part memoir and part investigative reporting, the book is the result of three years of research into the practices used on factory farms to produce the vast quantities of inexpensive chicken, beef, and fish that public appetites demand. Foer writes in excruciating detail about the cruel confinement and slaughter of animals that take place in large corporate operations and to a lesser extent in small family farms. In addition, he expounds on the the environmental degradation and threat to human health caused by meat production. For Foer, vegetarianism is the only option when deciding what to eat.

Foer doesn't shy from hard topics and tries to convince the waffling omnivore that strong cultural and traditional motivations for eating meat can be overcome by creating new stories and rituals that describe what we eat. He takes on that most sacred and celebrated symbol, the Thanksgiving turkey, by saying, "Would the choice not to eat turkey be a more active way of celebrating how thankful we feel?" By eliminating the turkey, "the question no longer is, 'Why don't we eat this?' but the more obvious one: 'Why did they ever?'" At this point in time my family would regard that as a very cruel joke but Foer's energy and personal stories will undoubtedly move many people over to the vegetarian side.

My household is conscious of the quantities and qualities of meat we consume. It's convenient that we have a nearby source of grass-fed and pasture raised meat: Marin Sun Farms. At the local store in Point Reyes I can find pork bellies, bones, lard, and trotters along with goat or chicken parts and when I cook with their products it is always tasty and wholesome.

The mushroom harvesting is still going strong and I made Chang's Pickled Chanterelles this week. That reminded me of some good pickles in Barbara Tropp's China Moon Cookbook. The Cucumber Pickles with Chinese Black Beans is one of my favorite recipes. Google has digitized it here.

Below, on the same site, I found Tropp's Ginger-Pickled Daikon and made up a batch:

Day Fourteen - Page 63 - Kimchi Stew - Home Style

Home style is an adjective that restaurants use to tantalize customers who crave simple home cooking but don't have the time, skill, or desire to cook. When I see it on Chinese restaurant menus I think of dishes that my father or mother made from ingredients at hand and became staples of their kitchen repertoires. Chopped pork steamed with salt fish and egg custard studded with pieces of black gelatinous thousand year old eggs are so home style.

Kimchi stew is definitely in the home style category and since I've only had it twice, once in a Korean restaurant in L.A. and my own today, it will be a while before I can honestly say I have my own version of the dish developed through years of trial and error.

A Web search brings up dozens of stew recipes and mine is a combination of what I found that sounded tasty and the Momofuku version. From the book I used kimchi, ramen broth, rice cakes, and roasted onions. From My Korean Kitchen
and others, like Korean Home Cooking I added canned tuna fish - not so surprising since Chang mentions anchovy stock in his mother's stew - and a paste of kochujang, kochukaru, and mirin. From the refrigerator I added some chanterelle mushrooms. Some corrections would be to use a tuna that maintains it's shape after cooking and to put the kimchi in at the last minute so as not to lose the crunchiness of the vegetables. Nevertheless, this dish is as umami-rich as you'll ever get.

Day Thirteen - Page 52 - Slow-poached Eggs

The timing was a little tricky and I had to throw away two that were undercooked but I did get three eggs that worked. You'll know when they are done because they will easily slip out of the shells intact without leaving too much white behind. It's kind of amazing. As you can see, the yolk isn't perfectly centered inside the white but the egg would probably have to be turned around in the water for that to happen. I wonder if the restaurants use some sort of device to achieve that. We had crispy fried poached eggs in Yountville that might have used this technique to precook the eggs before dropping in a batter.


The recipe says that fried, "they're shaped like hard boiled eggs that have been lightly run over by a car. Here mine are served with a side of kimchi.

Day Twelve - Page 293 - Miso Butterscotch (and some sticky rice w/ mango)

Is this what was was intended? The recipe says, "The miso should be on the blackened side of browned and should have an incredibly appetizing burnt smell to it." I think mine got a little too black at the edges so I threw those bits away prevent my butter from being too bitter.

Having made the Miso Butter earlier, I had a pretty good hunch that this was going to be another really scrumptious spread. It's nutty, salty, and sweet. Blind tested, John thought that it was chocolate!

It turned out to be another good topping for boiled dok:


Then I made a panna cotta using a David Lebovitz recipe and
flavored it with about 1/4 cup of the butterscotch. I topped it with pieces of papaya. It was mildly sweet and somewhat salty. Not what you normally expect in a dessert panna cotta but good nonetheless.


Then, because I had the time and the ingredients I took a stab at making Thai sticky rice with coconut and mango. I combined a couple of recipes I found on the web and used canned coconut milk and fresh mangoes.

It took two tries but I found that the best way to cook the rice was to soak it in water overnight, line the basket of a steamer with a dish towel, place the rice on top of the towel, lightly drape the rice with the ends of the towel, and steam over boiling water for about 45 minutes. The rice will be translucent and soft.

While you are cooking the rice, make a sauce by heating the coconut milk and sugar until it is dissolved. How much sugar you use depends on how sweet you want your rice to be.

When the rice is done, put it in a bowl and pour a little of the coconut sauce over it. You don't want the rice to be swimming in sauce but all the grains should be nicely coated. Cover it and let it sit for a few minutes. so that the sauce is absorbed into the rice. You can mold it or serve it in a pile with some slices of mango. This disappeared pretty quickly.

Day Eleven - Page 59 - Roasted Rice Cakes

Another pretty sunrise - the spectacular kind that reminds us that it is still winter. There may be some turbulence on high but unfortunately it hasn't made it down here in any meaningful way so the drought continues.

Today I rushed home from work to whip up a dish of dok and dragon sauce. The denjang and kochujang (I combined them to make a ssamjang) were pretty salty and not as spicy as I wanted but a nice flavor boost for the dok. I know now that I will have to work on my dok frying technique to keep the cakes soft and chewy. These had a nice crunchy outside but they got kind of hard as they cooled. I'll have to experiment with frying times, different brands and whether they are frozen, vacuum packed, or fresh. I don't see myself pounding rice any time soon but I won't rule that out entirely if I can't get the right texture with manufactured dok.