A culinary homecoming, simultaneously opening up the world
Every cuisine, I’ve come to believe, has some variation of bread folded around a filling: ban mi, panzerotti, calzones, sub sandwiches, po’ boys, felafel in pitas, the infinite variability of tacos and enchiladas, etc. etc. etc. (And if they didn’t start out with one, they invent one fast – I’ve got a real weakness for the naan wraps the Indian place in my university food court makes …) I consider dumplings – jiaozi, gyoza, momos, potstickers – to be a closely related category, and similarly, it’s a format found in the widely variant cuisines of many cultures. This month, the Daring Cooks went in for a variety of dumpling that took me back to my own roots, or at least some of them (kinda, sorta, more or less): we made pierogi.
The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.
Now, as I understand the migrations of my paternal grandmother’s family (the branch most associated with the pierogi-eating parts of the world), they were German Catholics who spent some time living in Russia, elected to move to Argentina to avoid joining the Tsar’s armies, went back to Germany, and thence to the Canadian prairies (where my grandmother was born), where they were surrounded by Ukrainians. So, while it’s not entirely clear to me whether pierogis are a traditional German food, at least my family lived in pierogi-eating parts of the world for a good long time.
However, just because we’ve got some history with the pierogi doesn’t mean I felt constrained to try to recreate the Russian- or Polish-style pierogi, though I did take some inspiration from there.
I started by making (small-ish) quantities of four different fillings, to give myself some direction as well as some variety. I do really love the mashed potato fillings and so I had to try that, but I added some garlic and black pepper to the fried onion, and skipped most of the cheese – instead of an entire cup of dry cottage cheese, I went with a few tablespoons of finely grated sharp cheddar. I also made a cabbage filling, but instead of sauerkraut I used the mustardy smothered cabbage recipe from Vegan Soul Kitchen. I also made a few pierogi using the sauteed jalapeno corn from the same book. Finally, thinking of the mushroom “caviar” I’ve made once to top buckwheat pancakes, I concocted a mushroom-and-shallot filling with a slug of red wine vinegar. We ultimately fried them in a bit of butter after boiling, and ate them with some good bacon, sour cream, and chives snipped from one of my plants. Along with a gigantic spinach salad to make me feel like the meal approximated some balance.
The best of the four fillings, by far, were the potato-onion-cheese filling, and the cabbage; the mushrooms were tasty, but had a tendency to slide out of the pierogi shell, and the flavour of the (otherwise delicious) jalapeno corn was overwhelmed. So, when I was prevailed upon to join a friend’s freezer swap, I went with the potato and cabbage pierogis – and have since concluded that, delicious though they are, folding 150-odd pierogis is just about the most time-consuming job I can imagine. I’ll definitely be making pierogis again in the future – just not as a main meal for twelve. And next time, I’ll save the jalapeno corn for a meal where it can shine, and serve the mushrooms on top of the pierogis.
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A foray into cooking decapods:
I’ve come to a turning point in my cooking.
As a mostly vegetarian cook (cooking chicken or fish perhaps once or twice in a month), I don’t have to deal with squicky ingredients as a general rule. Although looking back many of the recipes I’ve featured here have involved chicken, my go-to non-Daring cooking is much, much more likely to be a variation of masur dal or chana masala. I usually work two or three rice and bean meals into my grocery lists – and I could go on for months without repeating myself. I like this style of cooking not just because it’s delicious, filling, and cheap, but because I’m a wimp. Dried chickpeas have no fat or bones or gristle or scales or shells to be trimmed away. So when the Daring Cooks came up with pâté for the June challenge, the gauntlet was really thrown down. I wasn’t inspired by the vegetarian tri-colour pâté (combining white beans, roasted red peppers, and pesto), and I was not at all sure that I could handle a liver pâté (nor was I sure that I could convince the fellow to eat it!), but the shrimp and trout pâté seemed challenging yet edible. And then someone mentioned that bánh mì are often made with pâté, and I knew how I was going to meet the challenge requirements.
Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.
I decided it was time to roll up my sleeves and prove that, grossed out or not, I could peel a shrimp just as easily as I could make bread – in this case, Vietnamese-style mini-baguettes, following a recipe from HomeBaking.
And if this month’s Daring Cooks challenge taught me anything at all, it’s that shrimp have way too many legs. And removing those legs is an icky process. But hey, I can do it. (I’m not going to go this far just yet though. Somebody else deal with the heads!) In the end, I didn’t love the trout and shrimp pâté, finding it simply too rich to want to eat more than a few bites even when worked into a sandwich, but I did a) learn how to peel a shrimp, b) flambé for the first time, and c) try a recipe for a broccoli and nut terrine and make crackers as well. So thanks are due to Valerie and Evelyne!
Enchiladas: An old favourite, revisited
I am a big, big fan of enchiladas as a concept – spicy sauce, tasty filling, cheese, tortillas, what’s not to love? However, I can’t swear to the authenticity of any of the enchiladas I’ve ever made. One of my favourite recipes involves a mess of corn and roasted red peppers and spinach tossed together with cottage cheese, and a cheater’s sauce made of bottled salsa and cream. (In my defense, this combination is really delicious and really quick to put together. And I do make enchiladas with many other fillings, too.)
This month’s Daring Cooks challenge – stacked green chile and chicken enchiladas (though I’ve always called this a tortilla strata and saved the term “enchiladas” for tortillas rolled around the filling and baked) was an excellent opportunity to revisit the dish and strive for authenticity.
Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.
I decided to finally take my grandmother up on her offer to let me borrow her tortilla press (I think it may be a permanent loan!) and make my own corn tortillas. My first attempt at this, a few years ago, was a miserable failure, but I was ready to try again. I visited the Perola Supermarket in Kensington for masa harina, fresh tomatillos, and poblano chilies. If anyone found Anaheim chilies in Toronto, I’d love to know where!
I also made a second batch for the fellow’s family, using chicken chorizo, potatoes, and mushrooms for the filling, with a spicy tomato-based sauce. I have no pictures, but I’ll have to sit down and figure out exactly what I put into it, because it was really good too.
I served both versions of the enchiladas with the Mexican red rice from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Seductions of Rice – at some point soon I’ll write that up as a post in itself, because it’s a book that deserves some dedicated attention.
Barbara and Bunnee, thanks for another wonderful challenge!
Filed under Daring Cooks, tariqata cooks | Tags: casseroles, enchiladas | Comment (0)Southbound, part III: the main meal
Having teased a bit with my posts about Bryant Terry’s fabulous smothered cabbage and my cornmeal dumplings, we now come to the meat (literally) of this series: the April Daring Cooks challenge, Brunswick Stew.
The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club. It was great fun, too; thanks, Wolf!
Now, being Canadian, the first thing that sprang to my mind when I read the name “Brunswick Stew” was, naturally, New Brunswick, which called to mind visions of seafood, which scares me a little. Because I’m a snobby Torontonian, the second was the Brunny, more properly known as The Brunswick House, a notoriously icky pub. Now, I’ve never actually been there, because the fellow in my life is a wee bit older than me and he has, and we started dating a few months before I was legally old enough to drink, so I sort of skipped the phase in my life where I might have found a grungy, filthy bar the perfect place to be. (And I miss the Queen’s Head/Pimblett’s, the pub we did frequent, and its awesomely bizarre British decorating scheme, comfy couches, board games, and aging drag queens, whenever I go out anywhere else.) So, anyway, seafood or grungy bar stew – my first thoughts weren’t so promising.
However, as it turns out, the “Brunswick” in Brunswick stew actually is a reference to either Brunswick, Georgia or Brunswick, Virginia (which one appears to be a matter of controversy) and it’s a slow-cooked mess of various meats, beans, and corn (and perhaps other vegetables, depending on whose rules you’re following). This is a meal that I can totally get behind, even if my version probably offends the standards of authenticity. Salty-sweet-smoky-spicy is perhaps my favourite flavour combination in the world and oh, does this ever deliver.
Southbound: Part II
True story: My brother hates dumplings. It doesn’t matter if they’re the kind of dumplings that you might eat with chicken and dumplings, or the delicious steamed dumplings of dim sum fame, or gyoza, or even strawberries and dumplings. And that last is just weird; my brother is sort of like a strawberry vaccuum. If he’s in the same room with strawberries, they’re just naturally drawn to him in order to fill the inner strawberry void. But it doesn’t matter; if you call it a dumpling, he won’t eat it.
This is funny because this aversion goes back to daycare, where apparently they fed him dumplings that were so awful, the automatic aversion has persisted into his twenties. Personally, I don’t remember anything about daycare that well. It’s pretty amazing.
And I, unlike him, love dumplings. My mom used to make them when I was a kid – I think she called them “pound dogs”, or at least that’s how I remember things – and ever since I re-discovered them a few years ago, I’ve had an urge to make them every time I make soup or stew. (Okay, it’s always a toss-up between dumplings and biscuits and bread. But I always at least think about making dumplings.) I haven’t made Deb’s strawberries and dumplings yet, but I’m totally going to this summer, and I’m not sure I can wait.
In the meantime, it’s all about the cornmeal dumplings. These were the first ones I made – to go with an awesome (though insanely hot, if you use the full three quarters of a cup of chopped jalapenos) squash and tomato stew from Anna Thomas’ The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two. They’re still my favourites; they may look ugly here, but hey, it’s the flavour that counts.
Filed under Daring Cooks, tariqata cooks | Tags: cornmeal, dumplings | Comment (0)Many delicious ways to eat rice.
I could never, ever do a low carb diet. (In fact, the very idea horrifies me.) When I go out for Korean barbeque, my friends all go straight for the meat and say that they don’t want to fill up on the rice; mixed with the kimchi and other vegetables, that’s my favourite part! A spicy vegetarian riff on gallo pinto just became my go-to for breakfast. My brother and I have to fight over the nasi goreng when my family gets Malaysian take-out – and oh, how I envy my parents’ proximity to that restaurant!
Yeah, this month’s Daring Cooks challenge was straight up my alley. Risotto. Mmm.
I make risotto a lot, but I took the opportunity to play around and try a few new things: a roasted vegetable stock, a different play of flavours in the risotto itself, arancini, and an Indian-inspired “sweet risotto” (yes, it’s rice pudding in my lexicon – but made using the general risotto method).
The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.
Daring Cooks #1: A mezze table
The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.
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Back in December, I had a fantastic meal with the Fellow at a Lebanese restaurant in Dublin. (We also ate Hungarian takes on Italian, Thai, and Mexican food in Budapest. We approve of checking out regional twists on the cuisines of others. The Lebanese food was, however, reasonably authentic. As far as I know.) The only problem was the number of possibilities; we had grilled halloumi, tabouleh, hummus, something that involved merguez sausage, and three or four other dishes, but I could easily have ordered a dozen.
Just from the vegetarian section.
It was good stuff. I want to go back. Unfortunately, it may be a while before that happens, but the Daring Cooks gave me an excuse to do it for myself this month.
