An Effing Foodie

Recession Recipe: Brekky/Brinner Strata with Arugula and Gouda

We're in a recession!  We're out of a recession!  Whatever the current CNN status is, your average eater is a little strapped and cautious at the moment...

So it seemed an appropriate time to address this comment:

What does the effing f o o d i e eat when she is home? Us humble ham 'n eggers want to know.

Short answer: Scraps.  If it can't be finagled from rotating produce and pantry power, I'm probably not eating it at home...which boils down to lots of cold udon, bean soups and homemade pizza:

...and eggs. LOTS of eggs.

One may be inclined to blame the economy for my egg-sucking ways, but I've always been grossly fond of them.  Those closest to me know that I adamantly believe EVERYTHING can be improved by putting an egg on top, and that the only thing better than brunch is brinner.

The recipe I'm about to share is totally money for the following reasons:

1. It's stupid-easy, but to impressive effect.
2. It can (and should!) be made ahead of time, for as many or as little people as you need.
3. It costs mere pennies to make, and encourages scavenging/repurposing.

TahDAH!

<Readers squinting>  Is it quiche?  Bread pudding?  Souffle?

Yes and no, to all of the above.  It's strata!  Think savory bread pudding, but puffier and more custardy, with more egg than bread.  It's the answer to your large-scale brunch-making prayers, the quiche-esque solution for those with no talent for crust-making or fluffing egg whites.

Don't let the golden-brown crusty look fool you--as intact and tough as that crusty bread looks in the picture, the long soak ensures that the whole is soft and yielding, with nary a trace of dryness.  I served this bad boy with a spoon!

Some basic principles:

• Use stale or toasted hard-crust bread: It's time for that half a rock-hard baguette to shine!  With the moisture drawn out, the bread will be more receptive to soaking up your custard mixture, making your end result puffier and crisper on the exterior, and more tender on the interior.
• Use whatever you have on-hand (or, whatever appeals to you at the moment): Magically, if you use whatever odds and ends you've got, your strata is likely to be just as delicious as if you choose to procure special ingredients.  It's a recipe that dresses up as easily as it dresses down, whose success and eater-satisfaction is not dependent on pricey add-ins.
• Think omelette with your fillings: I.e., precooked.  Roasted/grilled/sauteed veggies, browned sausage, melting cheeses--nothing raw or weepy, as you'll overcook your eggs trying to cook the fillings, or create an excess of liquid that won't cook off in time (mmm, swampy strata). 
  
• Give yourself time: Strata requires very little active preparation, but soaking = love.  Rush egg/bread bonding time at your own peril.  If you want to have strata for dinner, toss it together that morning or afternoon; if you want it for brunch, assemble the night before. 

Ready? 

Recipe Reeeemix: Hainanese Chicken Rice (AKA Chicken with Scallion-Ginger Sauce)

I love it when people insist that chicken doesn't taste like chicken anymore.  Maybe it's because I wasn't raised on a farm, and never had to opportunity to purchase a chicken in the golden era of non-industrialized food.

Or maaaaybe people just don't know how to cook chicken.

I'm not saying that all chickens are created equal--if you can come up with the scratch to buy free-range sustainable boutique chicken at $7 a pound, then by all means, please do support that farmer.  I, however, take a certain glee in scooping up family packs of thighs and drumsticks at my local megamart.

That your chicken needs to be expensive, or preciously tended to, or expertly timed in order to taste good is a load of bull.  Family FN Foodie does have a penchant for meats of a darker, sultrier nature (duck, beef, fatty pork and lamb), and often eschews chicken in restaurants, but there's one chicken dish that we not only order every time it's offered, we order it in concert.

I speak of the humble Hainanese Chicken Rice.  Beloved by Chinese people at large (and favored by Singaporeans and Malaysians in particular) it's straightforward comfort food: Gently poached chicken served over rice made from its own stock, served with a ginger-based dipping sauce and a chili sauce for ooomph.

No fancy fusion, glitz or sideshows.  Just pull-apart chicken that tastes like chicken, on top of chicken-flavored rice.  Sounds like a snooze, but trust me--the anise-tinted stock steeped into jasmine rice is soothingly savory, and everything you want out of flavored rice packets that you just can't get without boiling bones.

Recipe Reeeeeemix: Chicken Long Rice with Green Curry and Leeks

I dig braised meats, deep-fat frying, and charred chops as much as (who am I kidding, grossly-more-than) the next eater, but I've definitely hit a brown-food wall.  I'm a 'lil fatigued of things that taste like they're meant to prepare you for hibernation.

Which makes me cuckoopants-nostalgic for local Hawaiian food.

Which makes me dig through the pantry...and realize that I'm a couple of staples short of a faithful reproduction of chicken long rice. 

(Perhaps in the next life, I'll learn to keep a non-sprouting hand of ginger around.)

What is chicken long rice, you ask?  It's basically broth-bathed, ginger-scented bits of vermicelli noodles suspending tender chunks of chicken, usually spooned over rice.  It's a pretty Hawaii-specific thing, amorphous by nature--neither Chinese nor Japanese, too thickened to be soup-noodles, but too thin to be stew. 

No matter! I'm recklessly tweaking the beloved, monotone classic of chicken long rice to suit the contents of my fridge and my selfish mid-winter needs.

At home, they usually make long rice with round onion and finish it with green onion; I didn't have either, but I did have some pert leeks.  Using both the white and the green parts of the leeks made a fine (if blaringly inauthentic) substitute. 

I was also missing the aforementioned ginger, which is tougher to duplicate.  But my eye landed on a jar of Thai green curry paste crouching in the fridge door.  Why not?  It's got galangal in it--not quite ersatz ginger, but closer than anything else I had on-hand--plus, the heat from chilis and citrus notes from the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves would be an eye-opening off-beat to a generally one-note dish.

And hell, since we were taking it to curry paste, why not season with Vietnamese fish sauce rather than salt?  Let's flip in some star anise, too, as a shout-out to the Chinese.

The result?  Not a chicken long rice you'd find at a luau or plate lunch place, but a bright, soothing bowl that I'd be happy to serve to NYers and kamaaina alike.

Prime Rib, the Vertical Strip!

Since y'all have already read the ins-and-outs of doing a standing rib roast at home (AHEM!), I figure emphatically captioned piccies would serve you better than a recap.  Be prepared to know everything you need to know about roasting in a scrolling 18 seconds.  Ready?

1) Assemble your sh*T! AKA, mise en place:

• 1 (4-lb.) fridge-aged standing rib roast
• kosher salt, cracked black pepper
• mixed herbs (I went with 2-3 sprigs each of rosemary, thyme, and winter savory)
• 6-16 cloves of garlic (to taste!)
• Coleman's mustard powder
• (not pictured: olive oil)

2) Strip herbs!  Chop 'em!  Mix with chopped garlic and a couple glugs of olive oil!  Smear it on!  Season with salt, pepper and mustard!

3) Brown on high heat (450 degrees F, 25-30 minutes), finish on low (275 degrees F, 60 minutes, or 15 minutes per pound for medium-rare)!

It's Fusion*! It's Metaphor! It's Toad in the Hole con Curry!

Like anyone else, I’m kinda given to cooking ruts.  My inclination is to slap steaks, chops, pasta, and variations of green beans and tomato salad in front of peeps, and nobody complains, so I rarely deviate.  But it makes for FN boring cooking (and FN boring reading about cooking, natch).

So when I blew up my router vacuuming (don’t ask), and a trusted friend of mine popped in remotely and fixed it lickety-split, I figured I owed the man some eats, and told him to name his dish.

We were chatting online, so I couldn’t see him, but I could practically hear the smile spread across his face.  “Toad in the Hole,” he said. “Con Curry.”

A little background on this guy--Japanese-style curry is his lube/eats-cornerstone of choice.  For Curry Fiend, there is no food that can’t be improved with a cloak of spicy brown, and there is no meal he’d prefer over a steaming plate of katsu curry.

His request was not as strangely fusion-disastrous as it sounds...Toad in the Hole is browned sausages enveloped in Yorkshire pudding, generally served with squishy peas, mashed potatoes and onion gravy.  Topping it with curry and pairing it with rice seemed a bare half-step from its Brit comfort food origins, and given the rapidly apparent fall chill, it felt totally seasonally appropo.

The Battle for Middle Pork is Far From Over: Cider-Brined Pork Chops with Sautéed Apples, Onions and Sage

These are the voyages...of the Pork Chop Enterprise...DAAAA-DA-DUMMMM....

“I don’t have pet peeves,” he said, correcting the interviewer. And with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he added, “I have major, psychotic hatreds.”
        -the late George Carlin, (via the NYT)

A minor psychotic hatred of mine was recently inflamed in the Meat Department of Stew Leonard’s.

Who, I fumed, will pay prime prices for a steak in the shape of a 3-ring binder??? WHOOO???

Of course, as I was thinking this, sleep-deprived mommies and hungry bachelors were edging around me, trying to get at my “reject” stack of cellophaned, lopsided meat.

Ushering my shopping-cart-pushing Man away from the misshapen beef (and similarly ill-fated lamb...CURSES!), we took stock of the Other White Meat selection.

Luckily, the pork didn’t suffer the same madman with a hacksaw, so into our cart went 4 evenly butchered, bone-in pork chops.  As we navigated through the one-track maze that is Stew’s, I pondered brining possibilities; I knew I had a 6-pack of hard cider in the fridge, and it seemed as good a place to start as any.

LambBurger! LambBurger! (with Mint and Cumin)

My Mister originates from the Land Down Under; so it was no real surprise that in the course of dating, lamb has become the primary red meat for our meals for two.  (No worries, I get my cow fixes in when he's a-travelin'.)  Most of the time, this just means seared chops marinated in olive oil, crushed garlic cloves, and lots of bruised rosemary.

But as we were wandering the fluorescent hall of meat at our local Stop-and-Shop, I spied ground lamb hiding between the pre-formed turkey patties and mounds of ground chuck.  Hmmmm....

For whatever reason, my homemade hamburger attempts have never been anything to write home about.  Methinks this has something to do with my love of char--alas, I'm in a perpetually grill-less state.  But these LambBurgers came out really nicely, considering they were sans cow + sans direct flame.

New Year, New Post-Bloat Post: Standing Rib Roast

Momma Foodie's trip to NYC wasn't ALL about rolling from restaurant to restaurant--call it daughterly guilt, but I felt the Foodie Clan should have at least one home-cooked meal. So I searched and spliced together a recipe for the Granddaddy of Holiday Dinners: Standing Rib Roast.

I'm not what you'd call a natural at roasting--I make a pretty fierce Thanksgiving turkey, but that's about it in terms of really big cuts of protein.  This may be a myth perpetuated by 1950's Martyr Mommies, but I was inclined to equate muscle mass with difficulty.

Luckily, my momma isn't of this ilk, so when I told her I was a little apprehensive, she shrugged and said: "It's really not hard at all."

Bringin' 'Em Back: Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Pine Nuts

Generally, if you're a weirdo, you have to be told, and my peers have always provided me that service.  But it was only after watching hours of "You Can't Do That on Television" in 4th grade that I finally understood that kids are supposed to hate vegetables--brussels sprouts, lima beans, and broccoli in particular.

And here I was, a juvenile mega-weirdo, asking for seconds of lima beans and broccoli at the school cafeteria.  Brussels sprouts were few and far between in Hawaii, but I loved 'em, and thought of them as custom cabbages for little people.

I get where the dislike comes from: institution-style, freezer-burned, gray-cooked veggies made by ladies with hairnets and well-meaning biddies.  But friend, when you're pushin' thirty and STILL making faces at your veggies, take a seat...WEIRDO.  Your colon will thank me.

Brussels Sprouts FAQs:

• When choosing fresh ones in the market, look for bright green, tight little heads. (Don't buy the friggen frozen ones, they won't improve your opinion of 'em.)
• Brussels Sprouts season is from August to March.
• These little guys grow on big 'ol stalks, with dozens of sprouts per stalk.
• The sprout of yesteryear was probably more bitter; these days, farmers tend to deliberately cultivate sweeter varieties.
• No really, they're good for you: lots of folic acid, fiber, and Vitamins A, C, and K.

Gravy, Baby, Gravy: Pork Ragu Rigatoni with Ricotta

My favorite kitchen game?

There's-a-half-inch-of-snow-on-the-ground-so-the-whole-free-
world-will-be-at-Stop-and-Shop-buying-bread-and-milk-let's-see-
what we-can-make-from-the-pantry-and-freezer.

(Let's-cram-two-week's-worth-of-groceries-into-my-condiment-
choked-fridge is a close second. Like Tetris, but with mustard and jam jars!)

This be gravy weather, in all its various, multiculti forms; an amalgam of meat juice and thickened fat, gravy is true sustenance for the masses, and among the most economical and tasty ways to stretch the use of meat.

I love hearing people talk about "Sunday Gravy"--it's the stuff of legend, and a relatively new culinary concept to a gal who grew up in Hawaii.  Here is an abbreviated chronology of my understanding of gravy:

• Age 8: The almighty beige glue cloaking eerily symmetrical ice-cream-scooped mashed potatoes.
• Age 12: The lifeblood of Loco Mocos.
• Age 18: First honest-to-God gravy, made from our tiny family turkey drippings.
• Age 21: First intro to sausage gravy and biscuits. (Thank you, Alton Brown!)
• Age 22: First intro to disco fries. (Thank you, Odessa!)

Tomato-based "gravy" never entered my consciousness until:

A) I watched "The Sopranos" and saw a beehived Livia wielding a two-pronged fork over a stock pot.

B) I moved to the East Coast and made friends with true-blue, Feast of the Seven Fishes Italians, who had frozen red pints of the precious stuff stashed in their freezers.