Sweet-Corn Fritters

There's something marvelous about fritters. They tap into my longing to be a strong American pioneer wife (as does anything with molasses), and the word fritter is fantastic. Etymologically, what more could you ask than for a word that means "tiny, tasty morsels" to also mean "to squander or disperse piecemeal; waste little by little"?*

This recipe verges on corn pancakes--they're deliciously fluffy and light--though spicy enough to keep the sweetness of the corn under control. The trick with cooking these suckers is to wait until you see bubbles emerging through the raw batter on top of each fritter in the pan before you flip them, just like you would for thick breakfast pancakes.

*In looking for the dictionary.com link above, I discovered the the two meanings of fritter are not etymologically related: The fritters pictured above are [Middle English friture, from Old French, from Late Latin frīctūra, from Latin frīctus, past participle of frīgere, to roast, fry], while the frittering away of time on, say, this blog is [Probably from fritter, fragment, probably alteration of fitters, from fitter, to break into small pieces]. Huh.

***
Sweet-corn fritters
Original recipe here

Combine in a large bowl:
1 cup flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
pinch paprika, salt, and pepper

Beat together, then add to the dry ingredients and mix well:
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk

Add:
2 cups (approx.) sweet-corn kernels, cut off 6 cobs (UPDATE: cooked or uncooked works, as long as the corn's not cooked to death. Frozen corn is also an option)
1/2 cup sliced scallions or shallots
Small handful parsely or cilantro or basil or baby spinach leaves, chopped
1-2 small hot peppers, Thai peppers or jalapeno, minced

Pour a generous amount of vegetable oil into a large skillet, then drop heaping spoonfuls of batter into the pan in small batches. Fry for approx. 2 minutes on a side.

Eat over a spinach salad, or dolloped with sour cream.

Ratatouille: A Movie and Dinner

Some of you may recall that I became extremely excited about the new Pixar movie, Ratatouille, when it was announced last fall. After seeing it, I had no choice but to do a version of the dish as whipped up by Remy, our rodentine hero. Especially since the Human Vacuum's mom (my mother-out-law, previously mentioned here and in my other ratatouille recipe here), had just come home with a bunch of individually-sized enameled baking dishes from a Long Island tag sale.

Mine isn't quite French Laundry (which served as the food consultant for the film), but it's a little fancier than your average ratatouille and there's something very satisfying about getting your own personal baked dish of anything, I think. It's like being at a restaurant, except there's no fussy plating. You just yank the baking dishes out of the oven and plonk them down in front of people.

As always, I have omitted the peppers here, since I don't like them and they would have ruined my disk-based composition.

***
Remy's Ratatouille
(Inspired by Pixar's Ratatouille. Seriously, I worked hard to duplicate the steps taken by a cartoon rat during a musical montage. Sheesh, I'm a nerd.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a small skillet, heat:
2-3 Tablespoons olive oil

Fry until golden:
5 cloves garlic, finely minced or microplaned

Add and cook until the color starts to darken and the caramelize:
6 Tablespoons (or one small can) tomato paste

Oil the bottoms of 4 individual shallow enameled dishes (or one large one), then spread each one with the tomato paste mixture, dividing it equally. Arrange in the dishes, in an alternating pattern so that they look like the picture above:
3 zucchini, cut into 1/4 inch coins and lightly salted and oiled
3 yellow/summer squash, cut into 1/4 inch coins and lightly salted and oiled
3 roma tomatoes, cut into 1/4 inch slices and lightly salted and oiled
3 Chinese eggplants (the long, narrow, bright purple ones), cut into 1/4 inch coins and lightly salted and oiled
(NOTE: If you have time, cut the veggies in advance, salt them--but don't oil them--and spread them out to paper towels. The goal is to remove as much moisture as possible ahead of time to keep the product from getting soupy. I did this in a pretty perfunctory way and I was fine.)

Dust with cracked pepper and tuck in springs of fresh rosemary and thyme (or the dried herb of your choice). Cover with foil or parchment paper and cook for about 45 minutes, or until the veggies are meltingly soft and the tomatoes are wrinkled and collapsed like little old men.

Sprinkle with toasted bread crumbs and lots of parmesan and serve immediately, or let cool and reheat when ready to serve.

Because the Human Vacuum loves his ratatouille over pasta, I put a bowl of olive oil slicked, peppery bowties on the table as well, and extra parmesan to pass.



Update: Apologies to commenters. I had to disallow comments on this post because of spam.

Shrimp on the Barbie

This can't even be called a recipe. Just a suggestion. But consider it a strongly-worded suggestion. More like marching orders, really.

Buy a big bag of giant frozen shell-on shrimp--the ones that come 8-10 shrimp to a pound. You can get these really huge ones in a grocery store freezer case sometimes, prebagged. They're cheaper there, and the "fresh" ones in the seafood display case were frozen anyway.

Thaw them, then skewer them in fat rows, curled against each other like they are spooning. I didn't have proper barbecue skewers, so I soaked come chopsticks in water and used them instead. Slap the skewers onto the banked fired of a barbecue grill, cooking them until the shells start to blacken and the flesh of the shrimp turns bright white and opaque. After careful study, I've determined that the process works best if you cook while consuming a beer or a glass of white wine in the picturesque summer twilight.

Grab a skewer each, and immediately consume the world's best barbecue first course, burning your hands on the shells. If you manage to get them peeled without a trip to the hospital for second degree burns, try dunking in premade peanut sauce, cocktail sauce, or black bean sauce.

Retro Angel Food Cake

Nobody ever bakes a cake for their neighbors anymore. Why is that? Cakes are just as easy--easier, if you count box cake (and I do)--to make today as in 1950. I'm sure there are many complex sociological reasons having to do with the increased presence of women in the workforce, commute time, the falling price of prepared foods, the fact that no one uses their kitchens anymore, and that we bowl alone. But all of that social science added up to my enormous delight when Mr. and Mrs. ToastFriend came over for dinner recently with a cake in tow. And not just any cake: a genuine, homemade coconut angel food cake on a polka-dotted cake stand. Did you get that? It was on an actual cake stand, people!

The recipe, as emailed from Mrs. ToastFriend below, seems seductively easy with the help of an electric mixer. But I recommend my method: Wait until someone shows up at your door with one.

***
Angel Food Cake: Many Possible Variations
From page 705 in the 75th anniversary edition of the Joy of Cooking

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Use an UNgreased 10-inch tube pan (this cake is BIG, a smaller pan won't cut it; I'd wash the pan right before use, there can be no grease or oily residue otherwise the cake will collapse b/c it is so light and airy it needs to "stick" to the sides of the pan for support. The first time I made this cake I didn't pay attention to this instruction and it was about half as tall as the cake I brought to your house. And lopsided. Tube pan is clutch for the same reason.)

Sift together:
1 cup cake flour (if you don't use cake flour, sift the all purpose flour a few extra times to try to simulate cake flour for the fluff factor)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine in large bowl and beat on low speed for 1 minute:
1 1/2 cups egg whites (about 11 or 12 large whites)
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional, be careful b/c it is very easy to overdose on the almond extract, a tiny bit goes a really long way) for coconut flavor: add 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract

Increase speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture increases to 5 times in volume and resembles a bowl of soft foam (3-5 minutes). On medium-high speed, beat in another 3/4 cup of sugar, 1 tbsp at a time, taking 2-3 minutes

When all the sugar has been added, the foam will be creamy white and hold soft, moist, glossy peaks that bend over at the points; do not beat until stiff.

Sift a fine layer of the flour mixture (about 1/4 cup) evenly over the batter and fold gently with a rubber spatula only until the flour is almost incorporated. Do not stir or mix. Repeat 7-8 more times until flour mixture is used.

If you're going for coconut cake, fold 1/2 cup of shredded coconut in with the last addition of flour (the sweetened dried kind works the best I think, of course!)

Pour batter into UNgreased pan. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes (I actually only baked it for about 28 minutes last time.)

Quick icing
Just beat 4 cups (1 lb, usually one box) of confectioners' sugar with 1/2 cup of butter (softened). Then add in 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and 5 tbsp of a liquid--not water but milk, sherry or schnapps, or even coffee works (coffee aesthetically makes the cake look a little dumpy unless you cover the outside with shredded coconut for a brown and white ensemble.)

Note: I bet you could do a really tasty orange or lemon version of this, too. I'd fold in the zest of one or two lemons or oranges instead of the coconut in that final stage. And substitute a tbsp of freshly squeezed oj for the lemon juice.

No Coulis for Me!

Fancy chefs have mostly gotten over this by now, but the managers of banquet halls and "casual dining" restaurants haven't gotten the memo: Enough with the coulis already!

I understand the principle here: A drizzle of raspberry covers a multitude of sins. Dry chocolate cake? Coulis! Colorless panna cotta? Coulis! Huge slab of bland cheesecake? Coulis!

For those of us who are not big fans of the raspberry to begin with, this is sheer torture. In fact, the coulis has become so standard that many menus neglect to mention its presence at all, thus denying a polite, if fanatically coulis-averse diner from requesting that it be omitted. And it is the height of churlishness to send back a dessert due to unannounced drizzle. (Not that I haven't been tempted.) But nothing is sadder than the pure joy of a slice of chocolate cake tainted by overly sweet, radioactive red raspberry drizzle.

So...enough! We unhappy few shan't be trod upon any longer. Stand up for your right to a coulis-free dessert! Join my Anti-Coulis Crusade, small and quixotic thought it may be. Adorn your blog with one of my logos (below) and boldly speak up in restaurants: "No Coulis for me."

***
Just think what the world could have been like if great men had devoted themselves to a topic that truly mattered, like coulis:

Martin Luther King, Jr.:
I have a dream that my four little desserts will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their drizzle but by the content of their character.

Karl Marx:
A spectre is haunting American restaurants—the spectre of coulis.

The Anti-Coulis Crusaders disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing patisserie conventions. Let the ruling classes tremble at an dessert revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their coulis. They have a world to win.

Students for a Democratic Society at Port Huron:
We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably at the desserts before us.

The American Founders:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all eaters are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the freedom from raspberry drizzle. That to secure these rights, restaurants are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the eaters, — That whenever any dessert service becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Eaters to alter or to abolish it.

***
If you care to join my tiny, pointlessly furious anti-coulis campaign, feel free to steal my big logo, the shrunken version at bottom, or use this little guy:

Braised Bok Choy

This recipe is worth a trip to Chinatown. Of course, I am a woman who will seize virtually any reason to go to Chinatown. A dim sum run is my excuse of choice, but I've been known to head out because the freezer seems kind of empty (frozen dumplings are a staple in our household), when I get a craving for a particular kind of tea with preserved lemons, because I need to get a housewarming gift for someone (a set of bowls from a cheap Chinatown supply shop is always a good choice), or just because I have nothing better to do on a Sunday.

Once there, of course, a bagful of cheap veggies is a must. On a recent trip, an old women was unloading a box of the tiniest bok choy I have ever seen. You've heard of baby bok choy? These were fetus bok choy, or potentially blastocyst bok choy. I was standing there with my plastic bag, trying to make a decision when she appeared with hands full. The decision was made. I opened my bag, and from her two hands fell 12 perfect specimens.

The recipe below couldn't be simpler. The original recipe, from Nigella's Forever Summer, calls for Boston butter or little gems lettuces. I made it once with lettuce, and wasn't bowled over. But when Nigella insists on something, it stays with you. And this version with bok choy is divine.

***
Braised Bok Choy
Inspired by Nigella's "Braised Little Gems"

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a roasting pan or baking dish, lay in tidy rows:
12 tiny bok choy (this probably wouldn't work with anything much bigger than what I described above. For scale, the pan pictured is 9 by 16 inches.)

Pour over:
2-3 cups chicken stock

Drizzle on:
3 Tablespoons olive oil

Sprinkle on:
2 teaspoons dried thyme, or the leaves from a small handful of fresh thyme sprigs
Lots of salt and pepper

Cover tightly with foil and bake for 40 minutes, or until stalks are tender. Serve with almost anything.

***
Note: Save the stock. I used it for an outstanding matzo ball soup the following night. The herbal, green taste of the leafy bok choy infused the stock, and the mellow thyme balanced out the fresh dill I sprinkled directly into the soup.

Tibetan Momo, or Yak Dumplings

Tibetans love their yaks. ToastMom's recent trip to China featured a stop in Tibet where she claims she was nearly drowned in something called yak butter tea, a horrifying salty tea drink with butter made from yaks' milk churned into it. Far more delicious, though, are these traditional Tibetan dumplings, momo (or མོག་མོག, if you happen to read Tibetan).

Nepal also lays claim to these tasty dumplings, and I first tried them at a Nepalese/Himalayan restaurant in Washington, now closed. Their warm-spiced filling and slightly fluffy skins have haunted me every since. Once I had actual yak in hand, another craving hit. It seemed serendipitous, so I made my first ever foray into dough production in an effort to recreate the magic.

This is, of course, part three of ToastPoint's exotic meat series:

***
Tibetan Momo

First make the dough. Combine in a large mixing bowl:
3 cups flour
3/4 cup water
pinch baking soda

Mix the dough until crumbly, then use your hands to knead the dough into a coherent ball. Add additional water 1 Tablespoon at a time as necessary if dough refuses to cohere. When a ball has been formed, cover the dough with a damp cloth and let it rest from about an hour.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Combine:
1 yak rib eye steak, approx 1 lb., trimmed of fat and minced (ground or minced beef would work, too)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small handful cilantro, chopped
1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cumin
2 cloves garlic, finely minced or microplaned
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
2 Tablespoons oil

Let this mixture rest for the remainder of the hour. When the dough is ready, remove it from the bowl, knead it for another minute or two, then divide it into 1 inch diameter balls. Roll the balls between your hands, then flatten them into 4 inch circles. I used a rolling pin dusted with a little flour, but some recipes prefer momo skins made by patting each ball of dough flat with your hands. Your call. Put 1 Tablespoon of yak filling in the middle of the skin, then fold the skin in half and pinch the edges to seal them, making semicircular dumplings.

Put the dumplings into a steamer lined with a cabbage leaf or lightly oiled to prevent sticking, like the bamboo version pictured above. Steam for 20 minutes. Eat with soy sauce or jarred chili sauce for dipping.

For a hilariously weird version of this recipe, visit the website of Momo Tours.

Remember the Wonder

In today's New York Times, "A Soft Spot for the Anti-Artisanal" a brilliant pro-Kraft/Hostess/Wonderbread manifesto:

Into every life some Kraft Singles, Hostess Sno Balls and Snickers bars must fall. Could you possibly substitute a wedge of that pampered Camembert for a workaday Kraft Single on a tuna melt? Never. And equal only to the fetishistic satisfaction of eating the filling of an Oreo before you eat the cookie is peeling the Sno Ball’s coconut-sprinkled dome of marshmallow from the chocolate cupcake beneath it and saving its creamy center for last. These products are sui generis in our great American culture where variety rules; you can’t find a real substitute for any of them....

Don’t get me wrong. I’m genuinely glad about the progress being made in the culinary world, and I’m grateful that our daily diets are improving thanks to the tireless efforts of local farmers and obsessive compulsives who have chosen heritage pork as their final frontier instead of space. I salute them.

All I’m saying is that sometimes, people, you’ve still got to remember the wonder.

Kangaroo with Fig Sauce

Welcome to Part II of the ToastPoint exotic meat series. Today, kangaroo in fig sauce. When we ordered from exoticmeats.com, there was some sort of procurement delay. To make up for the dreadful incovenience of tardy deliver of bits of dead exotic animals, the fine people at Exotic Meats sent some extra kangaroo with our order.

We decided to pay the windfall forward by having a kangaroo dinner party, fairly bold considering that we figured there was a decent chance the meal would be inedible, either through native nastiness or ineptitude of preparation. To up the ante, we even invited a gen-u-ine Australian to the table.

We stocked up on cheese, made extra large portions of side dishes, plied our guests with (Australian) wine, and crossed our fingers. And lo and behold, the kangaroo was awesome. The tender, extremely flavorful, appealingly rosy meat was wolfed down (apologies for mixing species) by one and all. I can only assume that the reason humanity domesticated cows and not kangaroos is that cows are easier to catch in the first place. The sweetness of the caramelized fig complimented the meat perfectly.

Discussion at the table revolved around whether a kangaroo was, in fact, a giant rodent and its status as a pest Down Under--all of which were basically efforts to keep ourselves from feeling bad about eating such a charismatic megafauna.

It will seem like there is a lot of oil in the marinade, but kangaroo is very lean so many recipes recommend variations on a oil bath before cooking. And since the meat is so lean, it will dry out if you try for anything more the medium-rare--thus the quick sear and little else.

This fig sauce would be brilliant with pork or beef as well. So if you can't lay your paws on some kangaroo, you can still give it a whirl.

***
Kangaroo with Fig Sauce

Combine:
2-3 Tablespoons fig preserves
1 small onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 inch fresh ginger, minced
4 generous Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon French mustard
1 lemon, juiced
2 Tablespoons fig vinegar, or balsamic vinegar with a bit for extra fig preserves

Pour marinade into a freezer bag and add:
1- 1 1/2 pounds of kangaroo loin filets

Marinate for as long as possible. I marinated mine overnight in the fridge.

About 1 hour before dinner, removed the bag from the fridge and bring kangaroo to room temperature.

Heat on high in a non-non-stick pan (cast iron or aluminum is best. If all you have is non-stick, it just means a little less tasty brown crust on the meat):
1 scant Tablespoon oil

When oil begins to shimmer and smoke, removed kangaroo from marinade, shake off excess and add to the pan. After 3 minutes, turn the filets. After three more minutes, removed the filets to a warm oven (250 degrees) and keep them there until ready to serve.

Meanwhile, reduce heat and pour the marinade into the pan. Deglaze with a little wine or water if things are too dry. Reduce the juices to a thick, syrupy sauce and serve on in a little pitcher or bowl on the side of the kangaroo.