Continuing with my series of burning off somewhat boring but potentially useful posts, here's this one in time for your holiday partay.
I had a bunch of cilantro left over the other day, and the answer to "What do I do with this now?" was, as it so often is: frozen dessert.
I looked around and found this recipe for a Tequila-Cilantro Sorbet. I didn't have enough lime and no tequila, but I did have some leftover cans of pineapple juice and some rum, so I made up this recipe for Pineapple Rum Cilantro Sherbet (cuz to my American mind, sorbets don't have dairy).
It worked really well. While the rum does make this more a grown-up treat, I wouldn't skip it as it helps keep the texture smoother.
If you don't have an ice cream maker, there's also a granita method below.
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1 1/4 cups water
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
3/4 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
3/4 cup rum
Pinch of salt
Process
In a saucepan, bring milk, water, and sugar to a boil, and stir to dissolve the sugar.
Remove from heat and add cilantro.
Chill overnight in fridge.
Strain mixture through a fine sieve set over a bowl.
Stir in pineapple and lime juices, rum and salt.
SHERBET: Freeze the sorbet in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.
GRANITA: Pour mixture into a chilled 9x13 baking dish. Freeze for about 2 hours or until the mixture has frozen around the edges. Use a fork to break up the ice crystals around the edge and draw them into the middle. Repeat this process 3 or 4 times, about every 1/2 hour or so, or until the mixture is completed converted to ice crystals.(The goal of the breaking up is to keep those crystals small to make the mixture smoother.)
I'm having some thoughts on changing eating habits, but they are still at the unformed, gelatinous stage. Ergo, I am going to spare you the working out of them in a blog entry. This time. Don't get used to it.
I'll just say they have to do with the healthy eating hazard that is a craving for quantity, as separate and distinct from the craving for a particular kind of foodstuff or eating experience, yet not quite at the obviously clinical level of an actual binge.
So more on that once it's a little less of a novella of disjointed thoughts, but in the meantime, I have some recipes that I've come up with around the idea of bulking up.
(Very apple-y Apple Maple Granola)
Serving sizes are too big in this country, of course, and many of us could and should learn to make do with less. But sometimes you do just want more. And so one eating trick is to bulk things up with high-fiber stuff like fruits and veggies, so that you still get the quantity craving satisfied while keeping the more calorie-dense food in moderation.
Granola is one such calorically-dense foodstuff that is crying out for moderation. I do not understand how or where it got the health food label. It's sugary and often has butter.
But it's tasty. And at least with homemade stuff, you can keep an eye on how much sweetener and/or fat you add.
I liked it so much, I gave it as an Xmas present to the Prez of the Debate Club's hubs, a granola fan (a fanola, if you will), and he liked it too. He was an Apple Maple Fanola.
But it occurred to me that if I really upped the amount of dried apples I was adding...well, it's not like it suddenly becomes totally virtuous, but I could eat the same size bowl I would normally have, but the quantity would have more apples than sugary oats or nuts.
So the below recipe gives a range for the quantity of apples. If you use the lower range (1 cup), it will look more like your usual granola. If you use the higher quantity, it will seem more fruit-based than grain-based than a storebought, but is still delicious. But also, high in fiber. Not quite, but high. Keep that in mind per the final consideration listed below.
APPLE MAPLE GRANOLA
Yield: 4-6 Cups
Ingredients
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup chopped almonds or cashews*
1/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground allspice
2-3 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3 Tbl maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla
1-3 cup(s) (packed) chopped dried apple rings*
Process
Preheat oven to 300°F.
Combine oats, almonds, sugar, and spices in a large bowl.
Melt the butter and maple syrup over low heat. Remove from heat, add vanilla. Pour over granola mixture and mix well.
Spread mixture on a rimmed baking sheet.
Bake 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to break up clumps.
Add apples and continue to bake, stirring often to break up clumps, for about 15 more minutes or until granola is golden brown.
Cool completely.
Advanced Prep Notes: Can be stored for two weeks at room temp.
*Special Considerations:
Almonds seem slightly healthier, but can be more expensive. Cashews are a delicious richness and are often a little cheaper. Both are tasty.
Recently, I've seen "Sweet Apple Rings" sold in addition to the usual "Granny Smith Rings." This recipe is geared towards the tangy Granny Smith. I wouldn't recommend using the Sweet ones, as it's too much sweetness with no contrast, but if you do, I recommend cutting back on the sugar. (Don't cut back on the maple syrup as you need the liquid to coat.)
Use the higher quantity of cinnamon if using the higher quantity of apples.
More apples = more bulky, but also keep in mind they are very high in fiber. If you haven't been eating a lot of fiber, just expect it might take your system a while to adjust and don't eat it on a day you have a job interview, for example.
When it comes to food, my cravings are easily triggered.
In the early oughts, when, as the newscasters always says, tensions ran high between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir, I once turned on the radio midway through the newcaster saying the name of the region. Upon hearing "-shmir" I immediately thought, "Hmm. I'd like a bagel."
So as you can probably imagine, since I started volunteering at the East African Community Services, I have been thinking about East African food a LOT. Most of the folks there are Somali, but I don't know much about that cuisine, so instead, my appetite drifts a little to the northeast and lands in Ethiopia.
I first had Ethiopian food on a visit to Cleveland, and ate it in the traditional fashion of sitting around the basket table lined with injera. That was several years ago, before I'd really started learning about food and cooking, so I went in with no expectations.
I loved it, though. Of course I did: many of the dishes are spicy heaps of vegetarian mush eaten with a relatively plain starch. What's not to love?
I've had it a few times since then, and since I started volunteering, find myself thinking about it quite frequently.
So with this Ethiopian food obsession on constant simmer, a couple weekends ago I took a trip down to Amy's Merkato to find a pre-made berbere mixture and just poke around. The store shelves are somewhat bare for most products but well-stocked with what you would probably go there for anyway: Ethiopian spices and injera.
I always feel a sort of conflict when I go into Real Deal ethnic market. On the one hand, I find the lack of familiar products exciting and full of possibilities. On the other, I don't know what the heck I'm doing, and generally go into my usual retail-induced ADD fog, forget everything I know about the cuisine, and find myself wandering around in the hopes I can recognize a word on a label somewhere.
And that's why Amy's was a little tricky: nothing was labeled. Now that's some Real Deal. Luckily, the woman working there that day (maybe the actual Amy? dunno) was very helpful, and we overcame our language barrier enough for her to show me which one was berbere and how to use it.
She then described using another spice mixture, and to be honest, I didn't actually catch it, in good part because I'm just a little deaf anyway, and after the second repetition, I was too shy to ask her again what she was saying. I know it is something you sprinkle into a dish at the end. I've since researched it at home and think it might be Wot Kemem? (That is what is now labeled with in my house, question mark and all).
Now armed with one key spice component, I set out to make another, the clarified spiced butter called Niter Kibbeh that is the base for many dishes.
My cooking has been improving a lot lately. I had one big improvement that came with the Taste-and-Season epiphany of a while back. But the next bump has come from a mental shift that I am calling Investing in Flavor.
My impatience used to make it impossible to consider the idea of infusing butter with spices for an hour before I even got to cooking the dish.
But my beloved Mark Bittman Roasted Vegetable Stock has made so many previously watery and unsatisfying vegetable soups and stews so much richer and more delectable that I no longer balk at spending two hours to make it before I can even start the dish it's going to go into.
And what underscored my own direct experience was reading the stock section of Michael Ruhlman's The Elements of Cooking. His impassioned argument that the home cook use veal stock, "one of the most powerful tools in professional kitchens, one of the biggest guns in the professional chef's entire arsenal" made me feel all...wrapped on the knuckles with a ruler for my frequent kitchen laziness (which usually results in culinary dissatisfaction).
I'm not about to start making/using veal stock, but after reading all that, now when I read a recipe that says "6 cups of vegetable stock or water" where I used to feel a sense of relief that I could just use water, now I'm dragging out my roasting pan and pulling my saved up bag of mushrooms stems out of the freezer to make some stock.
So with this new frame of mind, I was happy to make the clarified butter, hoping this would give me a shot at getting a little closer to the delicious I'd had in restaurants. Itwould also allow me to achieve some Cooking Resolution #2: Resourcefulness by using up some underutilized spices like fenugreek and tumeric.
Other than the time, the niter kibbeh process is simple as could be, simply simmer the spices in the butter over the lowest possible heat for an hour or so. Pour through cheesecloth and you are done.
The finished product can be frozen, so you can make a big batch all at once. The recipe can be loosey-goosey with the spices. I saw some with onion, some without, so I opted to not use it. Some include nutmeg, some don't, There is a vegan version using soy margarine. Basically, don't get too worried if you don't have them all or don't like a spice or two.
Once that was done, I used it to make Yemiser Wat/We't, a lentil dish with brown lentils, tomatoes and peas that are cooked in the flavorful butter, with onions, garlic, ginger and that berbere.
Cooking the onions, ginger, garlic and berbere in the niter kibbeh
There were a couple less-than-ideal issues with this particular version of it that I made. Not enough tomatoes, so it did not have quite the tang I was looking for. But the overall flavor profile was definitely a departure from what I usually cook, and I am looking forward to trying this again with more tomatoes. It was still tasty over some basmati rice.
I just made another batch of the butter today and hope to attempt either it or a spicy red lentil dish called Mesir Wat.
If you are also a fan of Spicy Heaps and haven't ever tried Ethiopian, I'd highly recommend giving some of these recipes a shot. If you don't have access to an Ethiopian market at which to buy some berbere, the pretty-available company India Tree makes a blend, or you could attempt your own.
While I suffer from a peculiar condition called Grocery Store Rage (my friend Clay, also a longtime sufferer, and I are considering petitioning to have it added to the DSM V) when people mindlessly BLOCK THE ENTIRE AISLE WITH THEIR CARTS AND BODIES, I do love grocery stores.
And gourmet shops and specialty stores and ethnic markets and the like. When I went to Iceland in 1998 (you know, cuz of the Bjork and the road-building around elves and all), sure, I found the Gullfoss Waterfull beautiful...
...and the geysers interesting...
...and the craters impressive...
...I’m not a geologist, so let’s face it, it was the grocery store that made the biggest impression on me. (I was too shy to take pictures inside though.) All of the different products, the interesting labeling, etc. I always recalled some news story on literacy talking about how without being able to read, it could be hard to distinguish juice from a bottle full of lemon-scented cleanser. Being in an Icelandic grocery store really drove that possibility home.
Anytime I travel to a foreign place or just make a visit to an ethnic or specialty market, I am fascinated by the product, and being a rather impulsive person, I tend to make a lot of impulse buys.
So I now have a kitchen that is very VERY well-stocked with a lot of random stuff. Some of them were just pure impulse, some were odd or uncommon ingredients for just one recipe. Many are expiring soon (marked with an asterik).
I took an inventory and started compiling a list of possible uses. My goal is to fulfill my need for novelty this year NOT through additional shopping, but instead to try to find recipes that focus on using up what I already have. Below is the list and some ideas on what I can do with the items. More to come, with reports on how well I am doing shopping from my own pantry.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 03:59PM 
Ingredients 
