Rhubarb Chutney

I made this recipe last summer. I remember it well because it was the weekend in July when I had just purchased an ice cream maker and was preparing to freeze the canister so I could get started with this cherry gelato recipe - and my freezer failed. It turned out that it had been melting down for a while, and the hot-as-heck weather that weekend just accelerated the liquification process. All this is just to say that I didn't trust my frozen rhubarb chutney, because it had been sitting in the door shelf of the freezer and sat there, never really freezing, for a couple of weeks. We had it once on the day I made it, but I ended up throwing the rest out.

I'm determined that this year will be different! We had this stuff over lamb last summer. Last night, I made it again and we had it over chicken breasts. I've got some lamb shanks in the fridge, and we will put the chutney to good use again with them tonight.

This recipe makes me think of Easter eggs, for two reasons: the color (bright pink - no lamb accompaniment has the right to exhibit such a flashy hue) and the smell (hot vinegar - you just don't smell that except when dyeing eggs at Easter).

I will say that although the recipe tells you to cook the rhubarb, green onions, and currants for only 4 minutes (before the rhubarb falls apart), you will also get fine results if you choose to just have the stuff simmer on the stove forever while you do other things, treating the chutney as more of a jam. That's what I did last summer, and I remember us saying, "Ooh, this is good." However, you do end up with a more beautiful and chunky mixture if you stop cooking when the recipe tells you to - that's how I did it this time.

I got the recipe from Epicurious - originally published in Bon Appetit in April 2003. A couple of modifications:
-It calls for 1 3/4 pounds rhubarb. This year, I only had three (long and slender) stalks, totalling about a pound, so I cut back on all the other ingredients a bit. The measurements seem very flexible.
- It calls for 1/2 teaspoon "(scant) ground cardamom." I love cardamom, and I had smoky black cardamom pods (further discussed in this posting) just burning a hole in my spice cabinet, so I threw a black cardamom pod into the mixture and discarded it when I took out the cinnamon stick. Here's a picture of the black cardamom. Just imagine a lovely smoky smell.


-Oh, also - you might notice in the picture below that my cinnamon stick is an Andre the Giant among its peers. I got it from one of those bags in the Hispanic foods section at the grocery store. They are very economical and seem to work well for savory foods that call for a little cinnamon flavor. Normally they have a heavenly scent of Mexican cinnamon, although this one seemed a little dried out at the beginning.

So, the recipe.

Ingredients:
-1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
-1/2 cup red wine vinegar (you could also use apple cider vinegar - I looked at another recipe, very similar to this one, that uses apple cider vinegar instead)
-1 1/2 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon (scant) ground cardamom
4 1/2 cups coarsely chopped rhubarb (from 1 3/4 pounds rhubarb)
3/4 cup dried currants
4 green onions, chopped

Stir first 6 ingredients in heavy large saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves and mixture boils.

Add rhubarb, currants, and green onions; bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until rhubarb is tender but not falling apart, about 4 minutes.

Cool to room temperature. Discard cinnamon. Cover and refrigerate chutney until cold, at least 1 hour. [Carrina's note: or if you are impatient, just spoon out whatever portion you are going to use right away into a separate container, and stick it into the freezer until it is sufficiently jelly-fied for your taste. I think I put ours - about 1 cup's worth - in the freezer for about 15 minutes. It was fine.]

(Can be made up to 2 days ahead. Keep refrigerated.) Bring to room temperature before serving.

The chicken is slightly overexposed here, but you can still see the beautiful pink of the chutney.

Noodle Bowl #4 - brown sugar-roasted green beans and celery

I don't feel like I've been in the kitchen any less than usual, but it seems like every time I reach for the camera to record the haps, it's either out of juice or MIA. Nevertheless, I've accumulated some acceptable pictures over month since my last posting, so here's my plan for hopping back on the weblog-wagon: immediately post 4 or 5 things that I made back in April, then rest on my laurels for another week until I feel like posting again (unless my camera is magically within reach and charged when I make this rhubarb chutney tomorrow - mmm... so good on lamb!)

So, here's another episode of "Pimp My Ramen" (hey, I kind of like that...). This time around, I had some old leathery green beans and just a teensy bit of baby celery, from the very inside of the group of stalks.

I smashed the heck out of some ginger, as is my routine... (mainly sharing this picture because my Ikea meat mallet looks like something out of one of my husband's role-playing games):

I tossed the celery and green beans in some vegetable oil, brown sugar, salt, and five-spice powder... (green beans not shown here)

...and roasted them at 450 for a few minutes - until I could tell that they'd been roasted, but they weren't blackened or anything.

...Stuck them in with the already-simmering water/chicken broth combo (the smashed garlic, ginger, and a star anise have already made it into the broth at this point as well)

...And from here, it's just a matter of following the instructions of Maruchan or Top Ramen, depending on who was on sale last time I stocked up: Boil noodles for three minutes, and serve!

No, we don't actually eat on the windowsill. It's just the only place in the apartment with good light.

Noodle Bowl #3 - Mustard Greens

Can I just say that I don't think I'll ever get sick of noodle bowls? They're the only thing I'm in the mood for on Saturday afternoons, and this week I realized that they also have the side benefit of helping me use up unruly produce that is just threatening to get slimey before I get to it.

That said, I don't really expect anyone else to share my interest in the whole thing. But since I've started taking pictures of them, I think I'll just keep doing it. I'll try to title the posts appropriately, so that anyone reading knows it's not an actual recipe.

I had some turkey lemongrass broth, left over from this recipe, sitting in my freezer for the last 4 months. Honestly, I had forgotten to label it and so wasn't sure if it was chicken broth, or turkey lemongrass. When its thawed scent revealed it to be the latter, I used it for a noodle bowl. Yay!

I used:
-2 cups broth
-1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
-dash soy sauce
-a few drops Sriracha or some other spicy ingredient
-a few drops dark sesame oil
-1 carrot, peeled and sliced thin diagonally
-about 2 cups chopped mustard greens
-1 green onion, chopped
-1 wedge lime, squeezed (or dash seasoned rice vinegar)

Instructions:
Bring broth to a boil. Add five-spice powder, sesame oil, Sriracha, soy sauce, and carrots, and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Return to a non-spilling-over boil, and ramen, and cook for two minutes. Stir in mustard greens and cook for another minute or until wilted. Pour into deep bowl. Squeeze lime into bowl (or splash with rice vinegar). Sprinkle with green onion.

Kimchi!

My kimchi had it all - it was spicy and salty, with just a hint of scandal!

...Daikon radishes!

Now, I know next to nothing about kimchi. All I know is that Big Kahuna's BBQ in St Johns offers it as a condiment for their saimin (Haiwaiian-style noodle soup - I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's the quick description), and when we lived in St Johns, I learned to like both - a lot. It's spicy, crunchy, tangy, salty, and a teensy bit sweet.

I'll now cut straight to the Wikipedia definition, so I don't screw it up: Kimchi is "a traditional Korean pickled dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings. Its most common manifestation is the spicy baechu (cabbage) variety. Kimchi is the most common banchan, or side dish. Kimchi is also a common ingredient and combined with other ingredients to make dishes such as kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae) and kimchi fried rice (kimchi bokkeumbap)."

I saw some big, beautiful daikon radishes on sale at the store a couple of weeks ago. I don't really like radishes, but I had read that daikons are sometimes used in different varieties of kimchi, and seeing them reminded me that I'd wanted to try making kimchi. So, I picked up a bundle... of three. Huge. Radishes.

When I got home and looked up some kimchi recipes online, I discovered that just to get by with basics (so leaving aside powdered dried shrimp and all that good stuff for the moment), I'd also need Napa cabbage, onion, ginger, and garlic, and maybe some bottled kimchi paste. In fact, it sounded like the daikons were a bonus, and actually turn the kimchi into a different variety. In other words, you can make kimchi with cabbage or radishes (or cucumber, etc.) as the only crunchy veggie - you don't have to have both. The recipes also called for a Korean red pepper powder called kochukaru, but since I started this insane quest on a Sunday, it seemed that all of the groceries that might have sold it were closed, and I wasn't about to trek across the river to Uwajimaya (though it was tempting - maybe next time!). So, I ended up using regular ol' red chili powder, and while I am the first to admit that the result was not identical to the bliss I experienced at Big Kahuna's, it was still better than I expected.

Much like my recent experience with shepherd's pie, I was nervous about putting all of my recipe eggs in one basket. So, I went back and forth between two recipes I found online: this one and this one.

I used:

• 2 large Napa cabbages, quartered and chopped into a combination of 1/2-inch little ribbons, and little squares. It's okay if the cabbage doesn't all look the same. It should definitely be a meatier cut than for coleslaw, though.
• 2 large daikon radishes
• 6 cloves garlic
• 3-inch knob ginger
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 cup red chili powder
• 1.5 cups sea salt or regular salt, plus extra for the first step
• 1.5 tablespoons kimchi base (I found a brand called Momoya at Fubonn)

Instructions (again, these are cobbled together from the two sources whose links I included above):

1. Place the cabbage pieces into a couple of gallon-sized bags, layer by layer, sprinkling a fair amount of salt between layers. So basically, add some cabbage to a bag. Reach your hand into the bag to sprinkle salt over all the cabbage. Repeat 2 or 3 times for each bag. You will probably use about 1/4-1/2 cup of salt total.

2. Let the cabbage and salt sit in the bags for a couple of hours (one of the recipes I read asks for the cabbage to sit for 5 hours. I found another one that asks for it to sit for 12 hours. I may try this next time, but I was doing this on a Monday night! I hedged my bets with 2.5 hours). Shake the bags around a couple of times.

3. While the cabbage is resting in the salt, prepeare the other ingredients: fine-chop the onion, mince (or press) the garlic and ginger, and peel and chop the radishes into 1/2-inch cubes.

4. Dump the cabbage from both bags into a colander and rinse really, really well.

5. Mix the chili powder, remaining salt, kimchi base, ginger, garlic, and about 1/2 cup of water together in a bowl. You may need to add more water - it should be sauce-y when it's all mixed up.

6. Dump the rinsed cabbage, onion, and radishes into a bowl big enough to hold everything when it's getting tossed around. Add the pepper sauce to the bowl, and stir, stir, stir!

Now comes the uncertain (for me, because I don't know any kimchi experts, or if I do they haven't revealed themselves) part.

I'm pretty sure the mixture needs to be fully immersed in liquid in order to ferment/pickle. My mixture didn't contain enough liquid as it was, so when I spooned it into the three containers I used, I added a little more water, salt, and kimchi base to each container and stirred the heck out of it until the mixture was pretty much covered in liquid.

Then, I crossed my fingers and let the containers sit on the counter for two days.

And, a week later...

Hey, it's pretty good! (below is a picture with flash - the red color shows up a little better). I stirred it into a noodle soup I made for dinner one night. It gave the soup the perfect amount of kick!

Udon Noodles with Soy-Caramelized Shallots and Baby Bok Choy

Okay, I'm mainly posting this because I will never get my fill of pictures of noodles swimming in broth.

I was super hungry on Saturday and had a baby bok choy that had been sitting in the fridge for a week. I had planned to split it between Mike and me at some point during the week, but it kept getting pushed to the back of the fridge. So, I prepared it pretty much the way I did in an earlier post with the Coke-and-lime chicken: seared it on both sides in peanut oil, removed the bok choy and cooked the remaining oil, ginger, garlic, brown sugar, soy sauce, chopped shallot, and a few drops of sesame oil into a glaze, then turned the glaze onto the bok choy. I simmered some udon noodles in chicken broth, water, and some five-spice powder, then dumped the bok choy into the noodles and broth and added a little lime juice. Yum! I will eat udon noodles completely plain, but it's a bonus when they come swathed in something interesting.

Chicken with Lime Juice and Coca-Cola(!), plus Red Quinoa and Baby Bok Choy with Sesame-Soy Glaze

First, the recipe for the chicken: I got it from a friend who now lives in Peru.

Chicken with Lime Juice and Coca-Cola (thanks, Laura!)
-4 medium boned, skinless chicken breasts
-5 cloves garlic, minced
-Juice of 5 limes
-1 can Coca Cola
-Salt and pepper to taste
-Olive oil to coat bottom of skillet

Heat olive oil and place chicken breasts in skillet. Brown on medium heat turning as needed. As soon as chicken is brown add garlic and saute 1 minute. Pour Coca Cola and lime juice over chicken and simmer uncovered on low heat, approximately 20 minutes. Serve over rice along with your favorite vegetable.


It was so easy, and so good! My only regret is that I did not brown the chicken enough. I thought I had, but really it just had kind of a temporary dark glaze from the oil. It looked a little pasty when all was said and done. Next time I'll give the breasts several minutes on each side.

And now, the baby bok choy! This recipe was a lot of fun: the oil spatters quite a bit though, so watch your glasses and make sure the fan is on. Oh, and use your best judgment with whether you really want to go adding garlic to a pan as hot as this one gets. I found myself holding the pan off of heat for at least a minute, throwing the garlic in after the green onions (scallions) so that the moisture from the onions could act as a buffer to keep the garlic from burning.

This recipe is from Cooks Illustrated and was originally published on May 1st, 2001.

Sesame-Soy-Glazed Baby Bok Choy

Serves 4 as a side dish.
"This recipe works best with baby bok choy weighing no more than 4 ounces each. If your market sells larger baby bok choy, remove a layer or two of the large outer leaves."
-2 tablespoons soy sauce
-2 tablespoons chicken stock or canned low-sodium chicken broth
-1 tablespoon rice vinegar
-2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
-1 teaspoon granulated sugar
-3 tablespoons peanut oil
-4 baby bok choy (about 4 ounces each), each head halved lengthwise
-3 medium cloves garlic , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
-1 inch piece fresh ginger , minced (about 1 tablespoon)
-2 medium scallions , sliced thin
-1 tablespoon sesame seeds , toasted in a small dry skillet over medium heat until lightly browned and fragrant, about 4 minutes

1. Combine soy sauce, stock, vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar in small bowl.

2. Heat large nonstick skillet over high heat until hot, about 2 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil, swirl to coat pan bottom. Place bok choy in skillet, cut-side down, in single layer. Cook, without moving, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Turn bok choy and cook until lightly browned on second side, about 1 minute longer; transfer to large, warm platter.

3. Add garlic, ginger, and scallions to now-empty pan and drizzle with remaining 1 tablespoon peanut oil. Cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add soy sauce mixture and simmer until reduced and thickened, about 20 seconds. Return bok choy to pan and cook, turning once, until glazed with sauce, about 1 minute. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve immediately.

I love baby bok choy! Love it! It's so cute and wrinkly, and invidual-serving-size-ready!

It looks kind of burned, but I think it has to in order to get that caramelized flavor.

And here's how everything came together! I didn't write any instructions for the red quinoa because it basically made itself. I gave it a quick rinse (turns out that the kind I buy in bulk is pre-rinsed to get rid of quinoa's naturally bitter coating) and threw it in the rice cooker with 1 part quinoa to 2 parts chicken broth. So easy!

Note: I've tagged this recipe as "gluten-free" because the main dish is. The baby bok choy, however, contains soy sauce, which has wheat. So, the menu is not gluten-free. But it could be with a few adjustments.

Pho, Interrupted

Disclaimer: This isn't really pho. I'm sure a closer title would be "Soup which superficially resembles pho, but whose broth was concocted in an inauthentic manner." But whatever it is, I love it almost as much as I love the bowl I get down the street at Pho Gia! So, I just wanted to get that off my chest: this broth has no beef knuckles or anything of the kind. It's just an approximation.

Aaaaanyway, I bought a knob of fresh turmeric the other day (grown organically in Hawaii! Who knew?) and was itching to use it in something. I don't think I've ever seen turmeric in its non-yellow-powder form before! Looked like ginger except for the whole orange factor. This picture doesn't really do it justice.

I've made my Splendid Table-inspired pho-proximation several times. The broth contains a bunch of broiled ginger. I figured I would use a little less ginger than usual, and add in some turmeric. The turmeric gave the broth a beautiful color!

The bad news: All of my pictures are showing up tiny, even though I select "Large"! What gives??

Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Rice Noodle Soup With Beef and Fresh Herbs (Pho)

From The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper

Cheater's Asian Broth (this name comes from the cookbook! not me)

-1 medium onion, thin sliced

-4 large garlic cloves, thin sliced

-One 2- to 3-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and thin sliced

-6 whole cloves

-1 whole star anise, bruised; or 1/2 teaspoon anise seeds

-Fresh-ground black pepper

-Four 14-ounce cans chicken broth

-2 tablespoons sugar

-2 teaspoons Asian fish sauce (nam pla or nuoc nam)

Soup

-6 to 8 ounces linguine-style rice noodles

-6 to 8 ounces top round steak (chicken breast can be substituted), sliced extremely thin

Table Salad

-10 sprigs fresh coriander (okay, where I come from this is cilantro, and the Splendid Table isn't British so I'm not sure who they're trying to impress...)

-6 to 8 sprigs Thai or other fresh basil

-2 serrano chiles or jalape*os, thin sliced

-Generous handful bean sprouts

-1 large lime, cut into wedges

Sauces (I've never used these and haven't particularly missed them)

Hoisin sauce

Hot sauce

1. Position an oven rack 4 to 6 inches from the broiler, and preheat. Double a very large piece of heavy foil. Scatter the onion, garlic, ginger, cloves, anise, and 5 grinds of pepper on the foil.

Broil for 5 minutes, turning the pieces once. You want the onion to have some toasted edges, and the spices should be fragrant. Scrape everything into a 6-quart pot. Be sure to get all the anise seed if that's what you used.

2. Add the broth, sugar, and fish sauce, and bring to a gentle bubble. Cover tightly, and simmer for 20 minutes. [Carrina's note: stop right here! Every single time I make this broth, I end up simmering for closer to 40 minutes, because I forget to start soaking the rice noodles until the broth is done. Consequently, the broth always ends up being a little too, ahem, pungent. 20 minutes really is plenty of time for this method. Just sayin'. Now could you please tell my future self this, so she remembers the next time she makes this broth?]

3. Meanwhile, put the rice noodles in a large bowl, and cover them with very hot tap water [Carrina's note: hot tap water just did not cut it when I made this at my mom's house. We ended up just having to boil water at the last minute. I've started using almost-boiling water from a teapot instead, and it works much better. And yes, cover it!]. Soak the noodles for 10 to 15 minutes, or until they are tender but with a little more firmness than you want. Stir a few times. When they are ready, drain and rinse well with cold water. Divide the noodles between two large soup bowls.

4. While the broth is simmering and the noodles are soaking, arrange the table salad on a platter and set out the sauces.

[Carrina's note: also slice the meat at this point, if you have time! I used top round steak that had been frozen solid for a month, then thawed in the fridge for five minutes. It was like I was shaving the meat! I used my super-sharp, fairly new chef's knife, or this method probably wouldn't have worked.]

5. To serve, divide the beef between the soup bowls. Ladle the bubbling broth into the bowls [check out the beautiful yellow color the turmeric gave to the onions!]

Top each serving with selections from the table salad.

Spicy Turkey and Jasmine Rice Soup

- from Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak (yes, the same guy who wrote Where the Wild Things Are - but this is the book that gives me kindergarten memories).

I pulled a bag of this soup out of the freezer to have for lunch yesterday. Even without the snappy toppings, this soup makes a great meal - it's like your classic chicken soup and rice with a kick.

I got this recipe from Cooks Illustrated online a couple of years ago (and it originally appeared in the magazine on November 1, 2000), but have never actually made it with a turkey carcass until our Thanksgiving hosts were kind enough to let me walk off with theirs last November (thanks, Becca! link to her awesome and prolific food blog appears here). Before November, I'd just used chicken - sometimes with intention, and sometimes because I had extra chicken "pieces" to use. Either way works. If you don't have enough bone-in chicken/turkey/fowl of your choice to bring flavor to this much stock, just use less water or combine the stock with some canned chicken broth until the flavor is bumped up to acceptable.

I always simmer the jalapeños [note to self: stop posting recipes with jala - dang it - until you figure out how to put the "~" over the n without copying and pasting from Word. This is the third time in two days, and is getting tedious], garlic, ginger, and lemongrass longer than the 10 minutes the recipe calls for, because I love pungent spiciness. Taste it after ten minutes and see what you think.

I cook the jasmine rice separately and then throw it into the broth to simmer for a few minutes at the end, because no matter what I do, leftover rice in a soup always soaks up any remaining broth, and there's no way I'm going to slave over a homemade stock only to have it gobbled up at the last minute by rice.

This recipe freezes great! You may need to add a little chicken broth when reheating, due to rice greediness problem alluded to above.

A note on the lemongrass: the recipe calls for one stalk. I usually use three or four, since I have them anyway. Safeway sells lemongrass, sometimes at least, in the "refrigerated ethnic produce" section with the cactus arms, tamarind, bell peppers, and tomatillos. In the past I have been tricked into buying a big bundle of lemongrass at Safeway, but I think you can just pull out a couple of stalks. If not, you will have a lot of lemongrass to use up. New Seasons in Portland definitely sells it by the stalk. Some grocery stores also sell little pieces of lemongrass in a plastic box along with the other fresh herbs, but it is soooo marked up! If you can't get fresh stalks, try lemongrass paste, also available near the refrigerated ethnic produce section.

Last note: this recipe assumes that your primary goal is to rid yourself of a turkey carcass, and that you won't mind staying home all day to accomplish this goal. If the spiciness sounds good to you, but you'd just as soon infuse the spicy flavors into a commercially-prepared chicken broth, then just do that! You can save yourself, oh, four hours (still allow some time for that massive amount of white wine to simmer, though - or cut back the amount).

Spicy Turkey and Jasmine Rice Soup

(originally published in Cooks Illustrated, November 1, 2000)

Basic Turkey Stock
-1 turkey carcass from 12- to 14-pound turkey, cut into 4 or 5 rough pieces to fit into pot
-1 large onion , peeled and halved
-1 large carrot , peeled and chopped coarse
-1 large rib celery , about 4 ounces, chopped coarse
-3 medium cloves garlic , unpeeled and smashed
-2 cups dry white wine
-1 bay leaf
-5 sprigs fresh parsley leaves
-3 sprigs fresh thyme

For the Soup
-1 stalk lemon grass , trimmed to bottom 6 inches and bruised with back of chef's knife
-3/4 inch piece fresh ginger , peeled, cut into thirds, and bruised with back of chef's knife
-2 large cloves garlic , unpeeled and smashed
-2 jalapeño chiles (fresh), or Thai chilies, halved lengthwise and seeds removed
-Table salt
-1 cup jasmine rice
-2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro leaves
-3 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves
-5 medium scallions , sliced thin

1. For Stock: Bring turkey carcass, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, wine, bay leaf, and 4 1/2 quarts water to boil in 12-quart stockpot over medium-high heat, skimming fat or foam that rises to surface. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, 2 hours, continuing to skim surface as necessary. Add parsley and thyme; continue to simmer until stock is rich and flavorful, about 2 hours longer, continuing to skim surface as necessary.

2. Strain stock through large-mesh strainer into large bowl or container; remove meat from strained solids, shred into bite-sized pieces, and set aside; discard solids in strainer. Cool stock slightly, about 20 minutes; spoon fat from surface. Use stock immediately or cool to room temperature, cover, and refrigerate up to 2 days.

3. For Soup: Bring turkey stock to simmer in large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add lemon grass, ginger, garlic, chiles, and 1 teaspoon salt; cover and simmer until broth is fragrant and flavorful, about 10 minutes. With slotted spoon, remove and discard lemon grass, ginger, garlic, and chiles. Add rice and reserved shredded turkey meat from stock; bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer, covered, until rice is tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper; ladle soup into individual bowls and sprinkle each with a portion of cilantro, basil, and scallions. Serve immediately.