Starch on starch, and some musings on pesto

Last week my friends Patrick and Willy paid me a visit. Patrick supplied the tonic, and Willy contributed the gin (and ice cream sandwiches). That meant that the task of feeding us dinner fell to me. I considered a number of factors while deciding what to cook. The first was Patrick's vegetarianism. Easy enough. Secondly, I would be getting home from work at around 7 p.m. and therefore wanted to make something that would both cook quickly and also require little effort on my part. Lastly, I was low on cash but still wanted to fill my friends' bellies. You might already know which food fit the bill on all three accounts: say it with me now, pasta. Predictable enough, right? But to stretch that pasta even further (and because I had some lying around that I needed to use up), I decided to mix in another cheap and filling staple: potatoes. Pasta and potatoes?!, you might be thinking, that's a lot of starch! Indeed it is, my friends, and the combination happens to be delicious. Especially when you stir in some sweet, snappy green beans for color and crunch. Particularly when you liberally coat the whole mélange with a thick slick of nutty, herbaceous, unctuous pesto.

Like sundried tomatoes, chipotle peppers and, most recently, bacon, pesto has suffered from overexposure. Emblematic of the "California cuisine" craze that swept the nation beginning in the 1980s--thanks in large part to a man named Wolfgang Puck--the classic Italian formula soon seemed to show up in everything from scrambled eggs from the diner to Domino's pizza. Having reached its zenith in the 90s, this trend has subsided a bit, whether breathmint manufacturers like it or not. And though our palates may have experienced pesto fatigue for a while there, it's easy to understand why pesto achieved such notoriety. It's in the taste: that bright combination of spicy garlic, lemony fresh basil, earthy pine nuts and fruity olive oil is hard to argue with. Another thing that pesto has going for it is its ease of preparation. If you have a food processor or blender, you're there in about 60 seconds; armed with a mortar and pestle, it's a matter of mere minutes. Lastly, pesto's versatility is nearly unparalleled in the world of condiments: it's as at home slathered on a sandwich as it is dolloped on a piece of simply broiled fish. It's for these reasons that I'm still a fan of pesto in spite of its ubiquity.

An easy way to keep your pestomaking exciting and new is to swap out two of its essential components--the basil and the pine nuts--for different, but no less delicious, ingredients. In basil's stead, you might try using a fresh herb such as parsley or cilantro or even a peppery green like arugula, and in place of the pine nuts, try grinding in some walnuts or almonds. That's what I did when I prepared my starch-on-starch pasta dinner for my friends. I had plenty of basil on hand, but no pine nuts, and so to save myself a trip the store (and a bit of cash--pine nuts are expensive) I used walnuts instead. The resulting pesto was a little earthier-tasting and somewhat more bitter than traditional pesto, and provided a nice foil to the bland comfort of pasta and potatoes:

















Basil-Walnut Pesto
Makes about 1 cup

1. Thoroughly rinse and dry one large bunch of basil.
2. Pluck basil leaves, discarding stems, and add to the bowl of a food processor. Add 2 -3 garlic cloves, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (not toasted), and salt and pepper to taste. Pulse mixture until nuts are finely chopped and a paste begins to form. Scrape down bowl and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil and puree until oil is incorporated.
3. Scrape mixture into a bowl and add 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan (or similar cheese). Stir to combine. Taste pesto and adjust salt and pepper as necessary.

Spaghetti with Green Beans, Potatoes and Pesto
Serves 4

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add 1 lb. (about 4 - 5) small new potatoes and cook until tender, about 8 - 10 minutes. Remove to cool.
2. Add 3/4 lb. trimmed and halved green beans to the water and cook until cooked through but still crisp and bright green, about 3 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the beans to a large bowl of icewater to stop their cooking. Drain beans and set aside.
3. Cook 3/4 lb. spaghetti in the water until al dente, about 10 - 12 minutes. Towards the end of the cooking process, reserve about 1 cup pasta water. Drain pasta and return it to the pot.
4. Cut potatoes into bite-size pieces and add them to the pasta along with the green beans. Add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup basil pesto to the pot, along with a small amount of the pasta cooking water, and toss gently until the pasta, potatoes and beans are evenly coated with pesto. If pesto remains too thick, add more pasta water, a few tablespoons at a time, until it has thinned. Taste pasta and add more salt and pepper as needed.
5. Divide pasta between bowls, garnishing with extra grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper, if desired.

More Chinese food

A few months ago, I read the excellent food memoir by British author Fuchsia Dunlop entitled Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper. In the book, Dunlop, who by now has made a career of eating her way through China and writing about what she finds, goes back to the beginning of her story, relating how she first landed in the country and how--by ducking into noodle shops, flagging down street food vendors and inviting herself into the kitchens of local restaurants--she discovered her true calling. Dunlop has traveled all over China and has written magazine articles and cookbooks describing the cuisines of many of the country's diverse regions, yet the one location that she considers her true home abroad is the Sichuan (or Szechuan) province. It is while living in its capital, Chengdu, that she truly falls for Chinese food, characterized, in that region, by prodigious use of spicy, warming ingredients such as Szechuan peppercorns and chiles of all varieties. Though I had some prior knowledge and appreciation of Sichuan cuisine (a restaurant called Szechuan Gourmet is one of my favorites in New York), reading Dunlop's impassioned and evocative descriptions of the local fare left me completely tantalized--and wanting more. I didn't just want to eat Sichuan food; I wanted to cook it myself. Luckily, Dunlop is also the author of an incredibly comprehensive, highly regarded and easy-to-follow compendium of Sichuan cuisine entitled Land of Plenty. Minutes after finishing Dunlop's memoir, I was online ordering her cookbook.

While I waited for it to arrive, I set out to obtain all the sauces, seasonings and ingredients I would need to prepare the recipes. Though Sichuan cuisine is best known for its numbing peppercorns, fiery chiles and hot, deep red oils, the style of cooking relies on several more key ingredients in order to achieve the incredible fullness and depth of flavor that characterizes true Sichuan food. In order to stock my pantry, I ventured into Brooklyn Chinatown (one of my favorite places in the city to explore) and picked up Szechuan peppercorns, dried red "Heaven-facing" chiles, fermented black beans, light and dark soy sauces, toasted sesame oil, Chinese sesame paste, Chinkiang vinegar, Shaoxing rice wine, Sichuan chili bean paste, pickled chili paste, Tianjin preserved vegetables, potato starch and dried star anise. All cited by Dunlop as key ingredients in Sichuan cuisine, the items in this haul cost me about $17 total. Now I was ready to cook.

So far I've tried two recipes from Land of Plenty, and both have been extremely quick and easy, with delicious results. The first was Dry-Fried Green Beans. In this dish, trimmed green beans are fried in hot oil until slightly browned and softened, then removed from the pan and set aside. In the same pan, you then stir-fry ground pork with a small amount of garlicky, gingery preserved vegetables and a bit of soy sauce. Once the pork is cooked through, the beans are added back to the pan, and the whole dish is finished with a drizzle of sesame oil. That's it. The whole thing takes about 10 minutes to prepare, and is lip-smackingly good. I first prepared this for dinner with Gideon while he was in town, and a few days later made the same dish for lunch for myself, using broccolini in place of the green beans and eating it over white rice--authentic, no, but delicious, yes. Here are the green beans from that first go-around:

















The second dish I made from the cookbook was Gong Bao, aka Kung Pao, Chicken. An iconic Sichuan dish that combines a thick, sweet and sour sauce with spicy Szechuan peppercorns and dried chiles and adds the salty crunch of peanuts for good measure, Gong Bao chicken is a Chinese takeout staple but is very simple (and cheap!) to prepare at home. You start by marinating cubed chicken breasts in soy sauce, rice wine and potato starch, thereby "velveting" the chicken, a technique that ensures tender, juicy meat and also aids in thickening the final dish due to the inclusion of starch. As the chicken marinates, you stir together a sauce of sugar, more potato starch, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil and set it aside. When you're ready to cook, you heat the peppercorns and chiles in oil, toss in the chicken and its marinade, add chopped garlic, ginger and scallions and stir-fry until the chicken is cooked through. Finally, you pour in the sauce, which, as it hits the heat, turns beautifully glossy and thick. Toss in a handful of peanuts, serve over hot, sticky white rice, and you've got a meal that's bound to impress your friends as much as it did mine--in this case my roommate and her boyfriend:

















Because I think it's only fair to adhere to copyright law, and because I really think Land of Plenty is a book worth purchasing, I can't include Dunlop's exact recipes here on the blog. However, I urge you to buy the cookbook--or at least check it out from your local library. If you like Chinese food even a little bit, you won't be disappointed--and, moreover, you'll probably learn a lot.

Lucky Eight Restaurant

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us headed down to Sunset Park, Brooklyn to a restaurant called Lucky Eight to celebrate Gideon's birthday. Sunset Park has a sizable Chinese population, and 8th Avenue, where many of the Chinese restaurants and shops are concentrated, is sometimes referred to as Brooklyn Chinatown. I've been eating out in this area for years, thanks entirely to my friend James, who is Chinese and lives in the neighborhood. Starting in high school, James would periodically lead a group of intrepid eaters to some fabulous restaurant for dim sum. We would almost never consult a menu; rather, James would just ask our server (in Chinese, of course!) what was good that day, and a parade of sumptuous (and, for most of us, exotic) dishes would soon crowd our table.

Now that I live one neighborhood above Sunset Park, I've been shopping and eating there much more often. The grocery stores, vegetable stands and fish stalls are incredibly bustling and lively, with vendors shouting out offers and attempting to lure customers to their wares, making for an engaging shopping (and people-watching) experience. Recently, James, our friend Sam and I ate dinner in a fantastic restaurant called Lucky Eight that James (of course) picked out. The dishes we ate were unlike any Chinese food I had ever had before--much, much cleaner and lighter than the greasy takeout a lot of us are accustomed to, and with smooth, nuanced and balanced flavors. The restaurant also happens to be especially welcoming to non-Chinese diners: all the servers speak English (often not the case in other restaurants in the area), and the menu features large, full-color photos of all its specialty dishes, making it a lot easier to order. Lucky Eight made such an impression on me that when Gideon asked for a restaurant recommendation for his birthday it was the first place that came to mind.

What follows are some photos of the food we ate that night. I have to say that I don't remember the individual prices of each dish, but what I do remember is that we ordered 6 dishes and a bunch of beers and we paid $18 each, including tax and tip. For the quality of the food and the hospitality of the service I'd say that's a pretty remarkable deal. So go! You won't be sorry.

We started with some duck's feet. Yes, the idea of eating feet might be unsavory, and the gelatinous, chewy-crunchy texture of the dish is likely off putting for those of us not used to consuming such things. But I have to say that this dish is truly delicious. I first ate it with James and Sam, and made sure to order it again. The feet are served cold, deboned, and, along with some sweet, lightly pickled shreds of carrot and daikon radish (and a few slivers of red chiles for a touch of heat), tossed in a vinaigrette-type mixture of sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. It's a very refreshing dish and a gentle introduction to the nose-to-tail type eating that is so common in all regions of China:

















Next up was a stir-fry of impossibly tender and juicy jumbo shrimp with sweet, crunchy candied walnuts and large pieces of warm, ripe pineapple. The vegetables included crisp green beans and chunks of onion. A scattering of toasted sesame seeds tied everything together:

















For a vegetable dish we chose eggplant with abalone, a species of giant sea snail (!). I had never eaten abalone before and I was a little intimidated by the thought of it--I figured that it would be plain-tasting and very chewy. I was totally wrong; it had a mild, but tasty, flavor and a smooth, soft texture that matched beautifully with the creamy Japanese eggplants. The mix was coated in a sweet soy-based sauce and crowned with a few slices of scallion:

















For a meat dish we chose a lamb hotpot. Again, I had eaten this previously with James and Sam and couldn't get it out of my head. The stew is brought to the table over a little gas flame and continues to bubble away as you eat, wafting its succulent aroma over the whole table. The dish included tender, falling-apart pieces of lamb, some chewy, delicious slices of bean curd skin (one of my favorite ingredients in Chinese cooking), slices of lotus root and thick leaves of Chinese cabbage. The broth surrounding all of those tasty ingredients was thick, meaty and rich:

















And lastly we ate a simple, straightforward dish of baby bok choy with garlic and ginger. The glistening little globes reminded me of emeralds:

















Oh yeah, I told you we ordered six dishes, right? Some of those among us with less adventurous palates ordered a type of rice noodle dish, but I didn't like it--it was heavy on curry seasoning but also somewhat bland at the same time. So I'm not including it here. Artistic license, doncha know?


Lucky Eight Restaurant
5204 8th Ave. (between 52nd St and 53rd St)
(718) 851-8862

Blog's first birthday

It's true: For the Love of Food turned one year old yesterday. Since March 17, 2008, I've graduated from college, moved into my first apartment, completed one internship at a food magazine and started another--and through it all, I've kept cooking and writing in this space. I think that's pretty great. I haven't always written as often or as well as I would have liked, but what's important is that I've stuck around--and you've stuck around, reader, whoever you might be. Thanks for that; please keep coming back for another year.

I figure that since it's a birthday here on Blogspot I might as well share a cake with you. I haven't made one recently, but, digging into my photo archives, I found an image of a chocolate layer cake frosted with peanut butter ganache that I made for my friend Malcolm's birthday party back in January. If you like peanut M&M's, Reese's peanut butter cups and the like, then this cake is definitely for you. Both of its components deliver on the promise of intense flavor: the cake, made from a recipe from an old Hershey's pamphlet that my mom has had lying around forever, has been my standard birthday cake for, oh, twelve years or so. It's called Black Magic Cake, and there's definitely something magical about it: incredibly moist, fluffy but rich at the same time, this cake packs a powerful hit of cocoa--and a subtle hint of coffee--in every bite. For the peanut butter frosting, which I had never made before, I turned to the doyenne of simple, elegant baking: Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa herself. She didn't let me down. Her recipe takes sugar, peanut butter, butter, vanilla, salt and heavy cream, and turns them into a thick, oozing, coat-your-spoon (and lips, and fingertips) ganache that nevertheless manages to heighten--not obscure--the flavor of the chocolate in the cake. Consider this combination for the next birthday in your life--whether you're celebrating a website or, you know, a real person.


















Black Magic Cake
Adapted from hersheys.com
Makes two 9" cake layers

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups unsifted flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup strong coffee
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk (1 tbsp. white vinegar or lemon juice plus milk to equal 1 cup)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans, tapping out excess flour.
2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer for 2 minutes (batter will be thin). Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.
3. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks and cool completely. Frost as desired.


Peanut Butter Ganache
Adapted from the Barefoot Contessa
Makes about 4 cups

Ingredients:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/3 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Place the confectioners' sugar, peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on medium-low speed until creamy, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula as you work. Add the cream and beat on high speed until the mixture is light and smooth.

Irish eyes are smiling

Being that there is nary a drop of Irish blood in my Eastern European Jewish body, I don't make a habit of celebrating St. Patrick's Day (well, save for the fact that March 17th also happens to be the birth date of my longtime friend and fellow snacker--and, I might add, Jew--Gideon). But because traditional holidays are a great excuse to indulge in national cuisines, I decided some time ago that I couldn't let another St. Patty's Day pass without making colcannon. As Wikipedia dutifully informs us, colcannon is a mix of mashed potatoes and shredded, cooked cabbage or kale. In its most basic permutation, the potatoes are mashed with just salt and pepper, and combined with simply steamed greens. More elaborate preparations call for a touch of milk or butter (or both) in the potatoes, and for the greens to be sauteed--possibly with a small amount of bacon or ham--before joining the potatoes in the pot. Whichever way you choose to make it, colcannon is a hearty, filling side dish that's perfect for the winter months--or for providing a solid base for pints of green beer, if that's your style.

I had never made colcannon before tonight, but, as you can see from the above description of the dish, it's dead simple. After browsing through a few "recipes" online--it's more of a method, really--I settled on a slightly more detailed version. I enriched my mashed potatoes with a small amount of scalded milk, and I also sauteed the strips of kale with some butter and a few slices of green onion (you can use any type of onion you want; I happened to have the green ones lying around, and I needed to use them up. Alternatively, some chives snipped into the finished dish would provide a nice allium flavor). From start to finish, the colcannon took about 20 minutes and required almost no effort. Piled high next to two burnished sausages (what's more Irish than potatoes and sausage?), I'd say it made a meal fit for Patrick himself.

















Colcannon with Kale
Serves 4

1. Peel and quarter 2 lbs. of starchy potatoes, such as Idaho or Russets, and place in a medium pot. Fill pot with cold water, covering pototoes by about an inch. Set the pot on the stove over a high flame, cover it, and allow it to come to a boil. Drop the heat down to medium, uncover pot, and allow potatoes to cook at a low boil until they are just tender when pierced with a knife, about 10-12 minutes.
2. While potatoes are cooking, strip the leaves of one medium-sized bunch of kale, discarding the tough stems. You should have about 2 cups of kale leaves. Place the kale in a steamer set over simmering water, cover, and cook until kale is tender but still bright green, about 6 minutes. Remove steamer to the sink and rinse the kale in cold water. Drain well.
3. Squeeze all excess liquid from kale and transfer it to a cutting board. Cut it into wide strips.
4. In a medium, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat 3 tbsp. of butter over a medium flame. Add 6 green onions, white parts only, sliced, or 1/4 cup diced white or yellow onion. Cook until slightly wilted, about 4 minutes, then add sliced kale. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 4 more minutes.
5. Drain potatoes and return to hot pot. Add 1/2 cup of milk, preferably not nonfat, and cover pot to allow milk to heat up. Uncover pot, season heavily with salt and pepper, and mash potatoes coarsely, leaving some chunks. Add sauteed kale and mix well. Add two small pats of butter, mix, and taste for seasoning, adding more salt or pepper if neccessary. Serve hot.