Salt Fat Acid Heat

While I was sick just before Thanskgiving I binge watched this short 4-part series based on the book written by chef, teacher, and author Samin Nosrat. I knew nothing about Ms. Nosrat or this series before I watched it. One of my friends who likes to cook may have mentioned it in passing at some point and then I saw it appear on Netflix, and decided someday I'd get around to watching it.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot. While I knew a lot of the basic information contained in the series, my favorite parts were the insights into the different countries she visited and her personality.

FAT
I hadn't realized this about Italy and it really, really made me want to go there.

SALT
A strong nostalgia for Japan hit me while I watched this. (I spent a school year abroad in Nagoya in college.) At that time, I remember being somewhat concerned about all the salt in the food because American culture tells you lots of salt is really bad for you...and yet the Japanese have a longer life expectancy than Americans. I still don't really know how to reconcile that but I guess neither does health research. I'm still going to enjoy my miso and soy sauce.

ACID
This made me really want to go to Mexico too! I had no idea turkey was so common as a food in the Yucatan. I noticed Samin's Spanish has a lot of Italian mixed in. I also loved that her first reaction to eating something way too spicy was to laugh.

HEAT
It's adorable that Samin got her mother in on this (but it makes a lot of sense, many of us learn to cook and develop our tastes for food from our mothers). The rice dish they make (tahdig) is how my favorite Indian restaurant in town makes their rice, and though I had read about it, it was cool to see the process in action.

Miso Sweet Potato Broccoli Bowl

I am a big Smitten Kitchen fan and lots of things I try end up being go-to recipes for me. I first tried her miso sweet potato and broccoli bowl about a year ago when I needed an idea for all of these ingredients I had on hand and fell in love pretty hard. It's filling and healthy and pretty easy to make. The slightly sweet, salty, nutty dressing has an acidic kick and a bit of heat from the ginger that works really well with the roasted vegetables -- it totally makes the meal. My partner loves it too, which is always a plus. :)

I have no complaints, just substitutions/variations based on what I had in the house at the times I made it, all of which have been pretty good:

Grains and veggies
- brown rice and wild rice for the grain
- winter squashes (butternut, buttercup, kuri) instead of sweet potatoes
- wilted kale instead of broccoli (it cooks faster than the broccoli would so you have to watch it or put it in later than the sweet potatoes)
- sauteed leeks instead of red onions

Dressing
- maple syrup instead of honey in the dressing
- hand mixing the dressing instead of putting it in the blender (only if I'm using the store bought minced ginger/garlic)

Topping
- only one color of sesame seeds instead of both white/black

I agree with her that we need to do more of these grain bowls topped with vegetables and possibly a protein -- every single one I've tried so far has been reasonably good and this is one of my very favorites.

RECIPE: Miso Sweet Potato and Broccoli Bowl

Home Style Applesauce

Apples are one of my very favorite fruits. Every fall I get so excited that I go straight to the orchard in September once Cortland apples are ready, pick more than I can eat, and then come winter I have these soft apples in my crisper that aren't really good for eating fresh or most baking anymore. But one simple, delicious thing you CAN still make out of them is applesauce. This is something my mom would make intermittently throughout the winter for a snack or dessert, though you could serve it on the side of some kinds of meat dishes (pork is a pretty common choice). It was especially nice when we were craving apple pie but weren't quite up to the work and had apples to use up. This is yet another instance where no store bought version can really compare.

The recipe has 3 ingredients -- most any kind of cooking/baking apple, water, and sugar -- and easily scales to the number of apples you have. Cortland is my favorite variety to use, though I've used Regent, Macoun, Northern Spy, and Macintosh apples in recent memory with good results. I do not recommend Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, or Gala apples, or any really crisp/firm variety.

Important Note: Please do not use Red Delicious apples for this or anything you actually want to enjoy eating. As far as I'm concerned, Red Delicious apples are not food. They were bred to look good and that's about it. Personal tastes aside, they don't really break down in the way that most other apples would when they cook -- they get mealy and grainy, which is not a pleasant texture for applesauce.

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RECIPE:

Home Style Applesauce
serves 4

6-7 medium-large baking apples
2 tbsp granulated sugar, or to taste
1/3 cup water, possibly more depending on preference
Ground cinnamon (optional), for finishing

Peel, core, and slice your apples into a heavy bottomed pot. Add sugar and water (if you need more than 1/3 cup, make sure it's just enough to boil to get the apples cooking on the bottom). Put on medium-high heat. When it boils and steam starts to come up, turn heat to low and cover the pot. Uncover and stir every few minutes to move the uncooked apples on the top toward the heat and to help break down the ones cooking toward the bottom. If it gets too thick and you're worried about it burning, add a little more water. After it's mostly cooked, taste it for sweetness. Add a little more sugar if you think it's not sweet enough. It is done when all the apples are cooked through (you should be able to cut the bigger pieces with a spoon with almost no effort) and the texture is to your liking. It usually takes about 15-20 minutes for me and I like it mostly broken down with some larger pieces still intact. If you like cinnamon, sprinkle it on the hot applesauce just before you eat it. Get you some Penzey's Vietnamese cinnamon for a real treat.

If you need to store it long term, it can be frozen in a plastic bag for up to a year. Just thaw and serve it hot.

Chicken Dumpling Soup

I made chicken dumpling soup today because I have been craving it ever since I was sick, but couldn't settle for anyone else's.

I don't really have a recipe for how I make mine because soup is so forgiving, but the basic steps are:

• Saute roughly chopped onion and celery (with some of the leaves) until soft. Carrots will be in there too but they probably won't get soft yet.
• Add herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, bay leaf), salt, and finely ground pepper, and saute a couple more minutes
• Add broth (usually I use water + refrigerated base; Better Than Bouillon is my favorite) 
• Bring to a simmer and cook ~15 minutes, until carrots are soft. Cut raw chicken thighs into bite size pieces (if they're frozen, I thaw them a little bit in the soup as it simmers) and prepare dumplings in the meantime.
• Turn up heat to medium. Add chicken and then dumplings. When chicken is cooked through and dumplings float, it's done.

Lots of restaurant dumpling soups I've had make the dumplings so big they take several bites to eat (messy since you have to throw the half eaten dumplings back in, and they might fall off your spoon and splash), and they're often not done in the middle, or they are and the rest of the stuff in the soup is overcooked). Or on the other end, they disintegrate and thicken the soup in a gross way. And often they have no flavor, just gummy floury ick. I know that's a little bit what dumplings are, but they should still taste good.

But I cry no more! I have found what I love. My go-to soup dumpling recipe is from Natasha's Kitchen. They're small enough to fit on your spoon with other elements of the soup, they are a bit chewy, they cook at the same time as the chicken, and they have a nice flavor (thanks to eggs and butter). I often use plain Greek yogurt instead of the sour cream because it's what I have on hand, and olive oil instead of butter when I'm too lazy to melt butter. I even halve the recipe when I'm making a smaller batch of soup and it works great.

Tonight I used white whole wheat flour in the dumplings instead of all purpose flour, though...and I wish I hadn't. They were still edible but had a grainy texture. Live and learn.

RECIPE: Chicken and Dumpling Soup

Butterscotch Walnut Blondies

I made butterscotch blondies to bring to a Thanksgiving gathering. We had to work the next day so we didn't go to visit our families, but our neighbors invited us to their family celebration. We were asked to make a dessert of some kind, and I wanted to make a pie but was recovering from being sick and was not quite up to the work. Then I decided since we knew the other desserts were going to be pie, maybe I'd do something that was not pie (and easier to make).

For most of my life blondies were never high on a list of desserts I'd actively choose to make/eat, but butterscotch ones made an appearance at a tae kwon do club post-promotion test dinner a couple of years ago (made by my friend Sarah, who introduces me to all kinds of new recipes) and I ate WAY more of them than anyone should because they were so delicious. I decided I needed to be able to make them too. They're an addictive combination of buttery, sweet, and salty. Kids love them too, or at least my neighbors' kids and their cousins did.

I made this recipe from My Kitchen Addiction, adapted from Dorie Greenspan's recipe.

My adjustments, mostly out of convenience rather than trying to improve the recipe:

• I lined the pan with parchment instead of greasing it (so you can lift the entire thing out of the pan easily, plus it's easier to clean).
• Since I didn't have butter rum extract, I put in about 1/2 tbsp of bourbon whiskey instead (increased the amount because I imagine butter rum extract is quite strong). I have also substituted spiced rum before, and I think I like the spiced rum better.
• I sprinkled fleur de sel on top of the batter before putting it in the oven.

I still don't know what recipe Sarah used and I feel like this one is good and close but it's not *exactly* what I was going for. Maybe the chocolate and shredded coconut in Dorie's recipe would help? I have also tried miso butterscotch blondies and I thought those were yummy, probably because of the extra layer of saltiness. I also seem to remember trying Smitten Kitchen's Blondies, Infinitely Adaptable with butterscotch chips (I didn't need an entire 9x13 pan of them, or so I thought) and I seemed to remember that batch being particularly good. I think next time I'll try the SK version again. Come to think of it, both SK and the miso ones had browned butter. Maybe that is what makes all the difference.

RECIPE: Butterscotch Walnut Blondies

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Possibly an unpopular opinion: the best chocolate chip cookies have oatmeal in them.

These was my mom's go-to cookie recipe when we were growing up, and the first cookies I ever learned to make by myself. It's the recipe on the back of the Quaker oatmeal box with semi-sweet  chocolate chips. My mom tells me these were also her mother's (my grandma's) go-to cookies as well. When she learned to make them, my grandma impressed upon her the importance of only putting half the bag of chocolate chips in, rather than the full 12 oz bag it called for. I imagine it's because she had 9 children and not a lot of money for chocolate, but I think there is such a thing as too many mix-ins in a cookie. At some point you have to stop calling it a cookie. Plus, I've had too many chocolate chip cookies where the cookie part is an afterthought -- a sugary, tasteless slog just to get to the chocolate bits. The oatmeal part of the cookie is just as good as the chocolate bits here. :)

I still remember the first time I made them because that night I learned an important lesson. I was probably 11 or 12 years old. I got ambitious and made a batch of these cookies after dinner one night while my mom was at work, all by myself. Being that it was my first batch of cookies, I saw that the ingredient list included salt. But sweet things don't need salt, I reasoned, and deliberately skipped it. My mom came home and was pleasantly surprised that I had made cookies and used the oven all by myself (and most importantly I had not burned down the house). I gave her one to eat. She took one bite, and the first thing out of her mouth was "they're good, but you didn't put salt in them!" and I was like "HOW DID YOU KNOW??" Then I remembered a batch of egg bread she had made a while back that we all thought tasted weird. The memory stuck in my mind because it was the weirdest tasting bread I had ever eaten. We both looked at the recipe and mom realized it hadn't called for any salt. I suddenly understood how my mom would know just by tasting. Salt is important, kids.

I had to retrieve the original recipe from my mom's stash because the one currently on Quaker's website halves the salt and then calls it "optional" (as if). You need some salt. It makes them taste better. Reduce it if you must, but do not leave it out completely. Below is the recipe as I make it. I take Grandma's advice with the chocolate chips, and cut some of the butter out because I was too lazy to cut a third stick in half once, and I never miss it.

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RECIPE:

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Quaker Oats, with input from three generations of my family

1 cup (2 sticks/225 g) butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup (150 g) brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (200 g) all-purpose flour
1 tsp (5 g) baking soda
1 tsp (5 g) kosher salt (less if you're using salted butter)
3 cups (260 g) old fashioned oats, uncooked
6 oz (170 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 375 F/190 C. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar on medium speed until thoroughly mixed, lightened in color, and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, and mix until well combined. Add flour, baking soda, and salt to the bowl and mix on very low speed until just incorporated. Add one cup of oats at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until incorporated. Either mix in chocolate chips by hand or with the mixer on low speed until evenly incorporated. Drop by rounded spoonfuls (about 2 tbsp each) or scoop balls of dough with a medium size cookie scoop onto parchment paper lined baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-9 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Makes about 3.5-4 dozen.

Edit 7/8/22: I've made these a couple of times now with half butterscotch chips and half chocolate chips and I really like them this way.

Niratama Donburi (Garlic Chive Omelet Over Rice)

I spent a school year studying abroad in Japan in college, and one of the most profound impacts it had on my life was expanding my food horizons. Between the wildly different food culture and watching my host mother while she cooked meals, I learned a lot about Japanese food but also other kinds of Asian food. Donburi (a bowl of rice with a topping, usually a protein and vegetables) quickly became a favorite of mine. They are served both in restaurants and at home, and the variations are endless.

I began growing garlic chives (nira) in my garden in 2010, and as they proliferated I began to wonder what I could do with them besides chop small amounts to garnish dishes with. I tried a few recipes but they were all kind of labor intensive for what the end result was. I gave up for a while and the chives continued to grow.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago, when I was browsing Namiko Chen's Just One Cookbook, when I found her Niratama Donburi recipe. I really like eating eggs and rice together, and it would use up a significant amount of my chives at once, and be relatively quick and easy, so I gave it a try.

It is quick, filling, and satisfying. The savory flavors work really nicely together. I am so pleased. It is one of my go-to recipes for a quick meal when I have chives in the garden.

To make this recipe work the best it can, use a bowl-shaped/wok like pan rather than one with a wide/flat bottom, be sure your pan is hot enough before you try to cook the egg mixture, and do not try to reduce the amount of oil. The puffy texture of the egg you want is from it cooking in enough oil to essentially deep fry.

Some substitutions/variations/additions I have tried:

• Brown short grain rice, and white or brown jasmine rice. I personally have come to love the texture of brown rices, so if you like it in other applications, you'll probably like it here too.
• Sauteed leek instead of garlic chives when I was really desperate. It's a little sweeter and less visually appealing, not quite as good but scratched the itch. Green onions or regular chives would probably be too sharp unless you significantly reduced the amount.
• Drizzling sesame oil and/or soy sauce over the top of the finished dish.

RECIPE: Niratama Donburi