Beet-cured salmon

I'm on a new project in Denver, and one of the team members shared what sounded like an interesting cook book that I thought I would try.  This is the first of many recipes that look absolutely delicious, and are a refreshing change of pace from the usual heavy sauces and heavily spiced foods I typically prepare.  The cookbook is POLPO: A Venetian Cookbook (of Sorts).

Beet-Cured Salmon - the finished product

First of all a warning - this takes two to three days to make.  I cured mine for a week before taking it out to eat.  I also made half a recipe as I didn't think two people could eat it fast enough - turns out I was wrong.
There are two parts to the recipe - the salmon, and the horseradish sauce:

Beet-cured Salmon

Ingredients

• 600g salmon fillet - get really really fresh, free caught (not farmed) salmon
• 250g raw beetroot 
• 85g flaky sea salt
• 85g caster sugar (it's a really fine grade of sugar cane sugar used in pastries typically)
• 1 bunch of dill, roughly chopped (I used two)
• Zest of two oranges
• 4-6 black peppercorns
• 50ml vodka

Procedure

Remove the skin, bloodline and belly fat from the salmon being careful not to take any flesh.  Peel and grate the beetroot using the large side of a cheese grater (I used the medium).  Mix all the ingredients together except for the salmon.

Find a non-metallic container just big enough for the fish (do yourself a favor and make it a glass container as the plastic ones aren't good for you, especially when you're putting caustic stuff in it). Put a layer of the beetroot mixture on the bottom, reserving enough to cover the salmon. Place the salmon on top of the bed of beetroot mixture and cover with the other half.  Cover and refrigerate for 1 - 2 days (I did 5 days as I was on the road).

After 1 -  2  days the salmon will be a deep dark red, and somewhat leathery.  Take it out of the bath, rinse clean and pat dry with a paper towel.  Wrap in plastic wrap until you want some.

To serve, slice as thin as possible (no, thinner - and get a really really sharp knife please) and pair it with the horseradish sauce below.

You can keep it refrigerated for a while (I'm on two weeks and it's holding up fine), cutting off a few slices.

Horseradish Sauce

This is ridiculously easy to make, but be prepared to have your eyes and nose water as you grate the horseradish - easily 2-3 times worse than cutting onions.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of creme fraiche (see below)
• 3 tablespoons fresh grated horseradish (or more if you like it hot)
• 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard (Grey Poupon of course)
• Caster sugar (optional)

Procedure

Mix the ingredients together.  Season with salt and pepper and a little caster if the mixture is too tart.

Creme fraiche

What ever you do don't go out and buy creme fraiche - it's too easy to make - but takes a couple of days.

Ingredients 

• 1 cup full (whipping) cream
• 2 tablespoons butter milk

Procedure

• Pour a cup of full cream into a glass container (I use mason jars - probably have 40 or 50 of them with various things in some state of fermentation).  
• Add the buttermilk.  
• Seal the top and give it a shake.  
• Leave the jar out on the counter in room temperature for about a day (overnight will do).  
• Refrigerate for a day and it's ready to go.  

Banana Bread

There's really nothing quite like a good banana bread.

Our tourist guide to Maui had countless entries for roadside stands with different styles of banana bread -some flagged for "worth a journey" - and many of them were.

One of my favorite banana bread recipes comes from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook.  The catch is that she changed it in the new edition. So for posterity's sake,  I'm capturing it here from our well thumbed and heavily used  original 1977 paperback edition.

You'll find it on pages 188 and 189 of the original edition.  Page 188 is the recipe for Carrot Cake, of which, on 189 is a derivative for making Banana Bread.

I've taken some liberties with how to do this based on my experience making the bread, and the fact that I'm using equipment rather than the time honored method of bowels and spoons.

First - Mollie's original recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients

To make the liquid:

• One cup (two sticks) of room temperature butter
• 1 1/3 cups of brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp grated orange rind
• 2/3 cup black coffee
• 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana

For the dry ingredients

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 cups white flour
• 1tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 TBS baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Optional

• 3/4 cups each currants or nuts

Procedure 

Mollie has you mix the liquid ingredients together in a bowl and separately mix the dry ingredients.  Then fold the ingredients in a third bowel together a third at a time beating gently with a , alternating dry-liquid- dry until it's all folded together.  The point is to not stir too much as it toughens and dries out the bread.

Once it's mixed together, prepare two small loaf pans (4" x 9" or so) by generously oiling, and coating the sides with sesame seed.  Split the batter between the two, and bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center has no batter / liquid adhering to it when pulled out. 

My modifications

First - use a food processor for everything but the flour and nuts.  Take all the wet and dry ingredients together and blend them until smooth. 

Second - I just feed the bananas into the food processor while it's running - let it do the work. 

A note on bananas - try to find the little short bananas that we can get in Asian markets out here - they're far tastier than even over ripe regular bananas.  I don't really measure them anymore - I just drop about 8 or 9 of the little guys (3 large) into the food processor while it's going.  Oh, after peeled of course..  You can play with the total amount over successive batches to find out what works best for you.  

Third - We use pecans for nuts and skip the dried fruit.  When I was growing up some distant relative owned a pecan grove in Oklahoma and would send us crates and crates of pecans for Christmas - grew to appreciate the pecan above most other nuts.  But you could use walnuts if it rocks your boat.  Chop them up separately with a cleaver and mix in when ever.  I probably use a cup and a half (three handfuls) because I like a lot of nuts.  If you want,  put some sesame seeds in at this point.  Maybe 1/2 cup or so.

Fourth - in a large bowl mix the two flours together until well blended.  I use a rubber spatula to do this since that's what I'll stir in the liquid ingredients.

Fifth - I don't bother with the third/third/third fold in approach - make a pocket in the flour and pour the entire contents of the food processor into the pocket.  Using your rubber spatula, gently fold the flour into the liquid until you no longer see any flour - it should be a thick goo once you're done.  Be sure to scrape the sides as yo duo this to get any flour that's sticking there.

Sixth - while I do oil the pans, I don't use sesame seed to coat them - we've found that this just makes a huge mess when you cut the loaves to toast or serve them.  See point 3 above.

Seventh - I let the loaves cool on a cooling rack (OK, really a vegetable grill that if turned upside down thinks it's a cooling rack) and then wrap in tin foil once cooled.  Be careful if slicing before the the loaf cools - it can be a little crumbly.

Enjoy - and play around!

A note on ovens - I prefer old gas stoves - ours is a 1940s Wedgwood - it's been refurbished several times, the burners rebuilt and replaced and the stop re-chromed.  It's about the best stove  I've ever used, EXCEPT the temperature knob on the oven has very little to do with the actual temperature inside.  Get an oven thermometer to be sure you're cooking at the right temperature.

A note on the orange -  I use the whole rind of a medium orange - quite a bit more than Mollie's instructions, but I like the sharper taste of the orange in the banana bread.  

A note on the coffee - Over the years I've played around with this - drip, espresso, french press, caff, de-caff, dark roast, light roast.  I've settled in on a dark roast caff made in a french press because it doesn't convey the bitterness of a drip coffee, and to get 2/3 of a cup of espresso  makes it really really coffee-tasted.  

One thing is for sure - use a good roast.  I'll plug my neighborhood roaster (he's been in business for 40 years and is transitioning the business to his son - love the smell of roasting beans in the morning) and his Italian Roast for this - Henry's House of Coffee - he delivers and has a web order page here.  Order some today - you won't be disappointed.

Grilled Pork Sandwiches with Radishes, Carrots and Chiles

We were gifted a copy of Alice Water's "The Art of Simple Food II" by my sister-in-law for Christmas this year.  Our nephew works at the restaurant and they thought it'd be a great addition to our library.  Boy were they right.

The first recipe we tried was a real keeper and I'm going to share it here today.  Sorry, no pictures on this one as I hadn't intended to do so.

There are three major parts to this delicious banh mi sandwich - the meat, the pickled vegetables, and the aioli:

Meat:

Ingredients

• 1 pound pork shoulder sliced as thin as you possibly can get it.  (Seriously - thinner than you think possible, shaved is probably the best if you can keep the pieces large)  (Alice suggests sliced chicken thighs or breasts as an alternative - haven't tried it)
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce - we used Red Boat fish sauce from Vietnam, a first pressing fish oil that costs about 3X the cheaper oils but well worth it
• 1 small lemongrass stalk, chopped.  Fresher is better - try the farmers market at Stonestown Mall on Sundays for some really good organic lemongrass (we got ours at Rainbow grocery and it was a little old).  We sliced thin (1/16th inch or smaller) and then chopped to get the smallest pieces possible. 
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed.  OK, I love garlic so I doubled this - but this is what the recipe calls for.
• 2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar (or 1/2 tablespoon each honey and brown sugar) - we found palm flower sugar at Rainbow, however it's apparently not the same as palm sugar which is made from the sale of the palm tree.
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil - we only have the really dark roasted sesame oil so I don't know if the lighter type is as good in this or not
• 1 teaspoon salt

Procedures

• In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients (except the pork) in a bowl until everything is dissolved.  I was tempted to use the Vitamix, but decided not to as is would shred the garlic cloves.
• Stir the pork into the marinade - you'll need to stir a lot as there's not a lot of marinade to go around.  
• Get a good marinading container (glass - not plastic, or if plastic please be sure it's BPA free - we use the Pyrex storage containers) and put the marinading pork into the container - make sure to press it down to get as flu a coverage as you can.
• Seal the container and put in the refrigerator.  The recipe says for a few hours or overnight - we did it for a day.  Be sure to stir the marinading pork a few times and press flat in the container while it's marinating to get everything fully spiced up.
• When ready to cook, grill the meat.  Alice calls for over medium hot coals until crispy, about 4 minutes a side.  We used a Cuisineart panini press at 350 degrees on both sides and grilled for about 8-10 minutes until crisp.  The meat was still tender inside, which tells me it should have been sliced thinner - if you use a hibachi or similar grill you'll probably have different results.

Pickles

Ingredients

• 1 carrot ( we used three as the daikon was a little large and we wanted equal amounts)
• 1/2 daikon
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt

Procedures

• Julien the carrots and daikon.  Since they're going into a sandwich you want them fairly fine - say about  1/8th inch square, and 3-4 inches long at the most.   I sized mine to fit flat (rather than upright) into a quart mason jar (made a triple recipe to fill it - I love pickled daikon) so about 2 1/2 inches long)  
• Layer the sliced carrot and daikon in the jar, alternating layers of carrot and daikon (no real reason other than to make an aesthetically pleasing jar of pickles) and set aside
• Mix the remaining ingredients together.  Alice doesn't have you boil them, but I boiled the ingredients together to make sure the sugar and salt fully dissolved, and to sanitize the julienned vegetables in the jar
• Pour the boiling pickling solution into the jar - make sure to completely cover all the julienned vegetables.
• Let cool and refrigerate - Alice calls for at least two hours - I did a full day before using.
• Drain thoroughly before using - I put the pickles I wanted for the sandwiches in a colander for 5 minutes in the sink to get most the moisture off of them.

Aioli

Ingredients

• 1 egg yolk (pasture raised of course - the eggs are so much tastier and better for you)
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon water
• 1/2 cup light olive or canola oil (Alice calls for vegetable, but canola is really the only one that's close to healthy to eat - stay away from corn oils (GMOs) and grape seed etc (including really good, flavorful olive oils) are too heavy flavored and overpower the aioli)

Procedures

• Do not use a blender - my experience is that the blender whips too fast and the resulting mayonnaise is thin as a result
• In a mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolk, water and fish oil, ensuring you thoroughly is the ingredients together.
• Slowly drizzle the olive oil in - a bit at a time, and whisk until combined.  As the oil is absorbed into the yolk mixture, the sauce will thicken, lighten in color and become opaque.  Make sure it thickens before adding additional oil - at first you'll need to whisk quite a bit, but as you add additional oil it will take less whisking.  If at the end it's too thick (not sure what that means as mine have never been too thick) they say you can whisk in a few drops of water to thin it out.

Final Assembly

Additional Ingredients

• 1 sweet baguette (don't use sourdough as it will overpower the other flavors)
• Fresh cilantro sprigs
• Slices of jalapeño

Procedures

• Cut the baguette into sandwich length pieces.  Slice each piece lengthwise almost all the way through - you want to leave enough that there will be a hinge holding the faces together.  Butter the faces and grill them until crisp and browned.  (Alice calls for pulling a bit of the bread out to make room and then toasting them - I like mine grilled better, plus it let's me use my panini press!)
• Spread some aioli on both faces of the toasted bread.
• Layer with the grilled pork
• Cover with a generous amount of pickles
• Garnish (to me that means cover completely) with fresh cilantro and jalapeño slices
• Fold together and enjoy while still hot

Notes

1. The pork is fine cold - left overs are great.
2. Serrano peppers work as well - if you like a little more heat
3. I'd recommend adding a 1/4 teaspoon of red chile pepper flakes to the pickling sauce if you like it spicy.
4. We used fried onions on ours as well -  our favorite bahn mi places use crunchy fried onions in their sandwiches.  They're really simple to make - use either shallots or leeks sliced really really thin (1/16th of an inch or better).  Heat a pan with about 1/4 inch of a light, high heat oil (canola works great) with a low heat, and then fry the onions until brown and crispy.  If they turn black you've gone too far.  It takes a bit of time to do this - don't get distracted as you'll wind up with charred onions that are great as worm feed in your compost bin.