What's Cooking (Take Three!)

To go with the hot dogs (frankfurters), victory cabbage (sauerkraut), and Salisbury steaks (hamburgers) we got in WW I

I didn't know that!

Because it's mostly not true:
- "Hot Dog" was first used in 1884 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog#Etymology
- "Salisbury Steak" was first used in 1897 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury ... f_the_name

Thanks Jeff!

And the article you linked to answered who the Salisbury steak was named after.

Although Salisbury's recipe was for a beef patty, the legal definition now is that it van contain less the 50% beef....

I knew that the terms "hot dog" and "Salisbury steak" pre-dated WW I. What I meant to say is that at least in the US, the anti-German sentiment during the war promoted their usage. But Jeff's right--those two terms are not in the same category as "victory cabbage" or "freedom fries".

-Paul W.

One of my hobbies is ragtime music. One artifact that can actually connect us to people of that era is the piano roll. This was the big era of their manufacture and consumption. Although the early rolls were made with rulers and razor blades we soon had the technology to record a person while playing. These rolls were, of course, labeled with the performer's name. And, as the years went from 1913 to 1914 (etc.) you saw fewer and fewer published performances by players with Germanic names... and the rise of a whole new bunch of players with the same first name and a non-Germanic last name with the same initial, though....

[Jenise]

Tonight I'm making lamb meatloaf. Will use oatmeal and red wine in the panade plus lots of herbs. Will serve on rice and make sauteed shitake mushrooms for a sauce. All New Zealand wines for the drinks part (my brother and his husband will join us).

I'm making a Texas-style chili con carne with sirloin cubes, but I'm adding some beans (it's a free country). And I made my own chili powder this time for seasoning, something I usually don't do. Also added some mesquite smoke and a bit of green chile.

I found Eight amazing cucumbers lurking under one small vine! So just made a few jars of bread and butter cucumber pickles.

Last night I made gai tod Hatyai, Fried chicken wings Hatyai style. Hatyai is a province in southern Thailand. The recipe calls for fifteen whole wings, with just the wing tip removed and the other two pieces joined together. Fully disjointed "party wing" style wings would work, too. You pierce the skin of the wings with a fork in several places to help the marinade flavor the meat. The wings are marinated 2+ hours in a mixture of one head (!) of garlic cloves pounded to a paste, ground coriander seed, ground white pepper, and fish sauce. You then mix in 1/2 cup of rice flour, which turns the marinade into a very sticky batter. The wings are deep-fried first at very low heat for 12-15 minutes and then at very high heat for 2-3 minutes. This leaves them dark colored and very crispy.

The recipe said to mix the rice flour into the marinade, but I found that this left the coating rather irregular. Next time I'm going to dredge the wings in the rice flour. I also may shorten the cooking time. They came out a bit dry, but perhaps that's due to the uneven coating. I gave them 12 minutes at 275 degrees F and 3 minutes at 375 F. I'll try 2 minutes for the second frying next time.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Those wings sound killer, Paul. I'm drooling all over my keyboard. Btw, I grinned when your description said marinate for two hours. Last week, for the Japanese whiskey tasting two couples in our bubble did, one couple wanted to bring chicken wings per a new recipe he wanted to try. "You soak them in sake for only15 minutes, then salt and pepper the heck out of them--that's it! So easy!" To which I said, "make that an hour, they'll be better." "But the recipe says...." was his reply, to which I had to explain that modern recipes frequently attempt to make things sound simpler and easier by leaving out ingredients and shortening time spans even though that comes at the cost of flavor. Chuck did not want to hear this--it was like telling a kid there's no Santa Claus.

Last night I'd planned to do a NYT sheet pan recipe I'd printed out for my 'Get Around to it Someday' folder in the past year called Chicken in Vinegar with olives, or something like that. The idea is that you rub chicken parts with turmeric and oil, liberally apply S&P, place them on a small sheet pan and pour vinegar around them. Roast at high heat, then remove the chicken and pour crushed castelveltrano olives and garlic into the pan juices, swish swish and serve. After being snowed in all weekend, my larder's kinda low but I did have a whole chicken breast in the freezer and a can of green olives in the pantry, so it was eminently doable.

And so it came to be that we had the first episode of CNN/Stanley Tucci's new Italy show to watch, and I realized that the dish I was making, though not called Italian, was certainly as much that as anything so to take it all the way, I prepared a white truffle polenta on which to set the chicken slices before scooping over the olive sauce, and cracked a bottle of Chianti. Ooh la la, we loved this dish!!!!!

I love grocery store mistakes. I picked up a 6-oz bacon-wrapped tenderloin for 78 cents today. The reason? The label indicated it was ground beef. Yum. I made Edie a breakfast burrito (scrambled egg, bacon, cheese, onion, salsa in a flour tortilla) and hash browns for dinner. She likes breakfast food anytime. Luckily, she's easy to cook for because we frequently eat two different menus (I feel like a restaurant).

The idea is that you rub chicken parts with turmeric and oil, liberally apply S&P, place them on a small sheet pan and pour vinegar around them. Roast at high heat, then remove the chicken and pour crushed castelveltrano olives and garlic into the pan juices, swish swish and serve.

So, does the chicken end up with a vinegar taste?

[Jenise]

Surprisingly, no, though it might be more so for different cuts of chicken. A whole breast (that is, both sides, keel bone in place) sits up a bit. A thigh sitting down in it would probably absorb more. Most of the vinegar evaporates before blending into the schmaltz.

Here's her recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020486-vinegar-chicken-with-crushed-olive-dressing

The oven got a workout on Valentine's Day. My wife made chocolate cupcakes from scratch, very cute. She also decorated the table in red and white damask with candles. I made creme brulee in the oven, a very easy recipe that does not require a double boiler or cooking the egg mixture to a custard temperature. I roasted cherry tomatoes and served it with sliced Persian cucumber and very good jarred grilled green olives for antipasti with bready NV Piper Heidsieck Champagne. For the main I made mustard-crusted roast Niman rack of lamb with mashed potatoes, and while the lamb rested I had roasted the daintiest pencil asparagus in new olive oil. Served that with 2001 Ecard Savigny-les-Beaune 1er cru (our wedding year). After dessert we had 2005 Selbach-Oster Zeltinger Sonnenheur Riesling Beerenauslese in little tulip glasses that we bought in Zell on the Mosel. Not nearly as sweet as I would have thought, glad I didn't serve it with dessert. One of the great things about never going out on Valentine's Day is you don't miss it when you can't.

Coincidentally, we did listen to a Scott Joplin piano roll that was recorded by the composer. Though a lush Satie piece was my favorite for romantic atmosphere.

Made my favorite wife a croque monsieur and soup. I had leftover Persian chicken.

Walt, what a great menu and wines! Good to see Cotes de Beaune wines on the table.

Larry, I'll bite: what did you make for your not favorite wife?

Larry, I'll bite: what did you make for your not favorite wife?

That's like dividing by zero. Overload! Overload! Bzzzt. Poof.

Tonight... well, starting yesterday and ending tonight... cassoulet. Made with Great Northerns, fennel, carrot, thick-cut bacon, boneless pork chops, lamb shoulder, confit duck legs, some nice pork-garlic-red wine sausages made by a Vermont charcuterie, and seasoned with rosemary, thyme, bay, garlic, a spoon of tomato paste and a couple shots of Worcestershire.

Sujet Saenkham runs a restaurant in Sydney, Australia called Spice I Am. Although it's almost literally a hole in the wall, they serve the best Thai food I've ever tasted. He has a cookbook out called Spice I am with recipes for a full range of curry pastes and for many of the dishes on the restaurant's menu. I got the cookbook a few years ago, the last time I was in Sydney, but I haven't made anything from it because the recipes I'm most interested in call for fresh "long red" and "long green" chiles. Based on the photos in the book, and my experiences in Australian supermarkets, these are similar, if not identical to, serrano chiles. Green serranos I can find everywhere but I've been unable to find red serranos until last week, when I found some at a Vietnamese market. So now I'm going to try a couple of Sujet Saenkham's recipes: his take on stir-fried chiles with chicken and holy basil (pad prik gai bai graprow) and stir-fried chicken with lemongrass (pad takrai gai).

-Paul W.

Serranos are really easy to grow in a pot. I got a bunch from just one pot in front of my house.

[Jenise]

Paul, sounds fantastic. If you were to ask which is the food I like the most but cook the least, my answer would hands-down be Thai. It's a shame, too. It's just so hard where I live to find the right ingredients. I can sometimes find lemon grass, but every time I plan a meal around it's nonexistent, ditto thai basil (in fact there's only one tiny Asian market I can buy it at, usually but not always, but I haven't been there in the past year for obvious reasons). Etc etc. I'd happily make do with red Fresnos when lucky enough to find them as long as I could find the rest!

Last night I cooked for the first time in many days, since we'd been under the weather. Pork schnitzels made from tenderloin. Exceptional tenderness and flavor, pretty identical to veal in the final result, but having done that: I may never make schnitzel again. Honestly, the carb-loaded coating that soaks up so much oil--really, I need that? No, I don't.

Jenise, fortunately lemongrass freezes really well. The local supermarket sells lemongrass in bundles of three or so sticks--way more than I can use before it goes bad. So I trim off the dry leaves as one usually does, then cut the stem into convenient lengths and put them in freezer bags. Bird's eye chiles also freeze pretty well, but you have to use them the same day you defrost them--even refrigerated they will go off overnight once defrosted. Fresh galangal also freezes well.

Both the supermarket and my local Thai market were out of Thai basil today, but I found some at the Vietnamese market. They sell the "long hot" chiles both green and red. They are not serranos--they are the same shape but a bit bigger and longer.

-Paul W.

Lemongrass is also not difficult to grow.

[Jenise]

So I hear. In fact a friend in the 'hood has some, wonder how they started it.

Apparently you can take a lemongrass stalk you bought at the market, trim off the root end and all but four inches of the bottom of the stalk, then place the bottom of the trimmed stalk in a glass of water. Change the water daily. New roots will grow in a couple of weeks and you can then transfer the plant to soil. It's a tropical plant and needs a lot of sun if you're growing it outdoors.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

We don't really have the protected sun for it--we're south-facing and get as much sun as someone can here but we're right on waterfront and get hammered by storms from the south. The friends who have a pot of it are further back, and have an outdoor glass room, I'll bet that's how they keep theirs going.