The Perfect Steak

serves 1

aged sirloin steak, 300-500g (3-5 cm thick)
smoked sea salt
black pepper
vegetable oil

The perfect steak has to start with really high-quality meat. It won’t be cheap, but then steak is not an everyday food. In general, you should look for breed known for complexity of flavor, such as Aberdeen Angus, Longhorn, or if you’re really feeling flush, Wagyu. But even among meat from the same breed, not all steaks are equal – different diets produce different results, and of course aged beef will taste different (many would say better) than beef from a freshly slaughtered cow. Look for meat that’s well-marbled; it should have little ripples of fat integrated with the muscle fibers. Whether or not to go with aged beef is a matter of personal preference, but there are certain benefits to beef that’s been hung for a few weeks. As the meat ages, it dries out slightly, which concentrates its flavor. As the cow’s cells break down, they release enzymes that start breaking down other molecules into smaller ones, producing new, intense flavors, and degrading proteins that cause toughness in the finished steak. Aged meat turns dark and dry along the exposed surface; this part of the beef can be chewy and can harbor harmful microbes, so your butcher should trim it off before portioning your steaks.

If you take a highly precise, scientific approach to cooking the steak, it becomes a prohibitively complicated endeavor. The food chemist Harold McGee dedicates no less than 17 pages to cooking meat in his encyclopedia of kitchen science, and his conclusion is still to use your intuition and senses when cooking a steak to perfection. “Cookbooks are full of formulas for obtaining a given doneness, but these are at best rough approximations. The best instruments for monitoring the doneness of meat,” he writes, “remain the cook’s eye and finger.” There are so many variables in cooking steak – pan temperature, thickness, cut, fat content, age, etc. – and trying to monitor and account for all of them is practically impossible. It is best to stick to a few rules of thumb, but always bear in mind that they may not always yield exactly the same results. You have to trust your instincts, and remember: if meat is undercooked, you can always cook it longer, but overcooking is irrevocable. Always err on the side of rare.

Start with a frying pan with a good, solid base that distributes heat evenly. Blast it with heat on your strongest burner; let it sit on the heat for at least 5 minutes to get really screaming hot. The high heat will ensure the steak develops a gloriously flavorful, toothsome brown crust. You should start with a steak at room temperature, but if you’ve forgotten to take it out of the fridge ahead of time, don’t worry. Just remember that it will take a little bit longer for it to cook through. Rub the steak all over with generous amounts of smoked sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a neutral vegetable oil (I use rapeseed). The smoked sea salt is optional, but I find it lends a pleasant barbecue-ish flavor. Now it is time to cook.

For a sirloin, start the cooking by laying it in the pan on the edge with the thick band of fat. Fat does not conduct heat as well as meat, so the meat along this band will take a little longer to cook. Cooking the fat first also renders off dripping, which will help lubricate and flavor the rest of the steak. After the fatty edge has cooked for 1 minute, turn it onto its side. In general, for a medium rare steak, cook for 1 minute plus 1 minute per centimeter of thickness per side. So if your steak is 3 cm thick, it will be in the pan for 7 minutes; if it’s 5 cm thick, 11 minutes. For medium, add a minute; for medium well, another minute, and so on. Turn the steak frequently; if you leave the steak for too long on each side, the intense heat will cause it to overcook along the edge, so instead of a consistently medium rare steak you get a steak that’s medium rare in the middle but well-done on the outside. I turn my steaks every 30 seconds, although some chefs turn every 15 seconds. If you’ve got a really thick steak, it’s best to cook it in the oven and then just finish it in the pan to develop a crust.

When the steak is finished, take it out of the pan and give it a squeeze with your fingers. There’s a test you can do which is not tremendously accurate, but it’s still one of the best ways to gauge doneness. Hold your hand out with the palm facing you and let it hang limp. Feel the inner heel of your thumb (the big fleshy bit inside your palm). This is approximately the same feeling you get from poking meat that’s raw or cooked blue. Now pinch your thumb and index finger together, but don’t squeeze. The heel of your thumb now feels like a rare steak. Thumb to middle finger is medium rare; thumb to ring finger is medium well; and thumb to pinky is well done. If your steak feels like this, abandon all hope. You’ve ruined dinner.

Finally, an important but often overlooked step: resting. The muscle fibers in meat constrict when they’re hot, forcing moisture out like a sponge being squeezed. If you cut the meat before the meat has cooled slightly, you’ll lose precious juice. Rest your steak for at least half the cooking time before serving.

And there you have it: the perfect steak. Serve it with whatever you like, but don’t obscure the beef’s flavors with overpowering sauces; you paid for it and no doubt fretted over it, so you’ll want to taste it! Some nice, buttery mash and maybe a little horseradish are all you’ll need.

The first course was inspired by a dish I had in Paris, of langoustines baked inside little ceramic pots with red wine and butter, topped with little rounds of toasty brioche. Owing to slim pickings at Sainsbury’s, I had to swap out the langoustines for lemon sole (they had NO shellfish except pre-cooked prawns!) and the pots for ramekins, but never mind all that, because the dish turned out nearly perfectly. It was always my intention to use soy sauce and sake in place of the red wine, and I topped it with a bit of challah and a poached duck egg. It was a gorgeous, buttery, umami mess. And it couldn’t be simpler to make: Get your oven on to 200ºC/400ºF and skin four fillets of lemon sole or other flatfish. Chop ‘em up. Rub a couple ramekins liberally with butter, then press the sole into them, but not too firmly. Top with a nice chunk of butter, then a little splash of sake, and a littler splash of soy sauce. Slice challah to form a cap on the ramekin. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. The butter, sake, and soy sauce all melt together and flood into the fish, and it is so so so good. While the fish is baking, poach a duck egg. Keep the yolk runny! Fish comes out of the oven, egg goes on top of the toast, a little grind of pepper and course one is done. For a dish with only six ingredients, the flavor is huge, and I’ll bet if you use cornbread instead of challah it would be even better.

For the main course I decided to try my hand at one of Heston Blumenthal’s signature dishes: Salmon Poached in a Liquorice Gel. Now, I knew I would never be able to perfectly recreate this dish, even though it is one of his less complicated recipes, because it involved ingredients that were simply impossible to get at such short notice (and would have been a bit extravagant at any time): black truffles, 15 year old Balsamic vinegar, transglutaminase, two kinds of gellan, etc. Not to mention the equipment – I would have needed a vacuum sealer and a thermal immersion bath to really do this recipe right. Luckily, that was never my intention: I just wanted to test out what seemed like unlikely but potentially mind-blowing flavor combinations, namely salmon + licorice + vanilla + grapefruit.

What I wound up doing was simply making a seared salmon dish with a semi-set licorice sauce instead of the gel, but other than that, and the missing truffle, the dish was more or less the same as it appeared in the Fat Duck cookbook, and none too difficult. First, get your sauce going. Pour a bottle of stout into a pot with a little bit of water, a little bit of soy sauce, and some powdered dashi. For the licorice, I’d recommend pure licorice if you can get it; I used soft licorice candy, and it wasn’t quite strong enough and didn’t dissolve properly. Anyway, chop up a good handful of licorice and toss it in the pot and simmer everything. When the licorice is nicely incorporated (use a hand blender if you have to) and everything is simmering, add a leaf of gelatin and cook a while longer.

Next, prep your garnishes. Peel some asparagus (or don’t – I didn’t) taking off just the outermost green layer, leaving the tops intact. Scrape out a vanilla pod and mix the seeds with about two heaped tablespoons of good mayonnaise, or better yet, make your own mayonnaise. Put 250ml or so of Balsamic vinegar in a pan and reduce into a thick, black syrup. Now comes the tricky part, but it actually is worth the effort, and it doesn’t have to be perfect – your home is not a Michelin-starred restaurant, so chill out! Get a nice, ripe pink grapefruit. Peel it carefully. Strip away the outer membrane from a segment, and gently tease out the individual cells without breaking them. Using a toothpick or a paring knife or tweezers, separate each individual cell from the segment. Discard any broken cells. You’ll need about one segment worth of cells per plate.

Finally, let’s cook. Get yourself a nice big hunk of salmon and get the skin off and the bones out. Heat some good olive oil or avocado oil in a pan until it’s nice and hot, but not smoking. Sear the salmon on both sides for about 4-5 minutes, cooking for 8-9 minutes in total. Meanwhile, sauté the asparagus in olive oil in a lidded frying pan, so they steam as they sauté. It will take about the same amount of time as the salmon, but less time if you did peel them. To plate, streak a little vanilla mayo on one side of the plate, and place a little patch of grapefruit cells along the other. In the middle, spatter a bit of the Balsamic reduction. Rest the asparagus across the plate, then rest the salmon across the asparagus. Spoon on some licorice sauce, season to taste, and you’re done.

And it was good – the combination worked, and in fact it was the vanilla mayonnaise that really tied everything together. I loved how the different elements offset and underscored each other without becoming lost or muddled. It was surprisingly subtle, too, and I can only imagine how good it would be if prepared by the man himself.

Lastly, dessert. The dessert didn’t turn out quite right, if I’m honest, but it still tasted nice, so here it is. Coconut milk, milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla in a pan. Bring it to a boil. Add a leaf or two of gelatin and stir to dissolve. Break up some white chocolate into smallish chunks in a bowl, then pour on the hot coconut mixture and allow to melt. Whisk gently to dissolve any remaining chunks. Cool in the fridge for a good two hours. Meanwhile, chop up a couple ribs of rhubarb. Simmer them with lime juice, rose water, water, and sugar until very soft and syrupy, then allow to cool. Whip some cream to soft peaks, then fold into the coconut white chocolate to form a light mousse. Allow to set in the fridge for another two hours. To assemble, break up some ginger cookies and place them at the bottom of bowls or glasses. Sprinkle in some dessicated coconut, then add a spoonful of the rhubarb compote. Fill with the coconut white chocolate mousse, and top with more compote and more coconut.

Simple, yes, but I still managed to screw it up! What went wrong: I didn’t give the gelatin enough time to set, so the mousse turned out more like a kind of thick eggnog. But hey, ain’t nothin’ wrong with eggnog! We cleaned our teacups just the same, and rang in the New Year with satisfied stomachs, expensive sake, moderately priced beer, and cheap champagne.

MMXI will be MMXIting.

Yesterday my mom presented me with a challenge: cook a meal using only what we have around the house. We needed to use up stuff.

It actually wasn’t that tricky. We had flank steak in the freezer, and green beans in the fridge, and fresh rosemary and cheese and whole wheat flour and all kinds of lovely things to eat. But as always, I thought it would be nice to try something new. But how to do it, with all these old things?

I have been craving a Bloody Mary lately. I don’t even particularly like Bloody Marys, but there was a can of V8 in the fridge, and this house seems to never run out of vodka, so the idea simply haunted me. So today I made that Bloody Mary. I made it just how I like it, with truckloads of hot sauce and horseradish, and then I put it in a plastic bag with the flank steak.

That settled the entrée: Bloody Mary-nated Flank Steak. It also settled the theme: cooking with booze. As a side I decided to bake beer bread, fancy beer bread with interesting bits and bobs scattered throughout. And as a veg, I ultimately took a gamble on what I will call haricots verts à la gin gimlet, using my Great Aunt Gloria’s homemade kaffir lime marmalade.

The boozy meal was a success. The flank steak, that most underrated of steaks, was juicy and tender and flush with a peppery tomato tang and the pungent umami of Worcestershire sauce and vodka. The bread was soft and sweet and dense and fragrant. The beans were zesty and crunchy and sweet and moreish.

Booze: it’s not just for breakfast anymore.

Bloody Mary-nated Flank Steak

1 1/4-1 1/2 pound flank steak
olive oil

For the Mary-nade:

12 ounces V8 or tomato juice
1/2 cup vodka
1/4 cup hot sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
2 heaped tablespoons horseradish
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dill pickle or olive brine
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 pepperoncini, chopped
celery seed
celery salt
onion powder
garlic powder
salt
pepper

For the rub (make about 1/3 cup, all of the following in equal measure):

salt
pepper
onion powder
paprika
celery seed

1. Trim excess fat and pull membranes from flank steak.
2. In a sealable plastic bag, mix all marinade ingredients. Seal bag and shake to combine.
3. Add flank steak to bag and marinate, refrigerated, for 8-24 hours.
4. Remove flank steak from marinade and drain. Pat dry with paper towels.
5. Mix rub ingredients in a bowl. Rub half into each side of the dry flank steak.
6. Boil leftover marinade to use as a jus.
7. Heat olive oil on a griddle to high heat. When oil is very hot, sear flank steak on both sides for 4-5 minutes. Let rest 5 minutes before serving. Slice against the grain and serve with hot jus.

Parmigiano, Rosemary, and Kalamata Olive Beer Bread

3 cups whole wheat flour
12 ounces beer (use a fairly robust beer, such as a pale ale)
1 1/2 cup shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
6 kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
2 large sprigs fresh rosemary
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
butter
pepper

1. Preheat oven to 325ºF.
2. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl, reserving 1 sprig rosemary and 1/2 cup cheese. Add beer and knead to combine. Dough should be sturdy but still slightly limp and sticky.
3. Turn dough into a buttered or oiled bread pan. Bake for 65-80 minutes.
4. Mix remaining rosemary and cheese with butter. Sprinkle on top of bread about 10 minutes before the end of baking.
5. Allow to cool at least 1/2 hour before slicing.

Haricots Verts à la Gin Gimlet

about 3 cups green beans, trimmed
2 tablespoons gin
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon lime marmalade
1 tablespoon lime juice
salt
pepper
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup fresh basil, torn

1. Mix gin, honey, marmalade, lime juice, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
2. Toast sunflower seeds in a dry pan.
3. Boil green beans for 5-6 minutes, until just tender. Drain, return to heat and add gin mixture, sunflower seeds, and basil. Toss to coat and serve.

Am I alone in the belief that the word “ultimate” has no place in the title of a recipe? One of the many joys of cooking is the experimental aspect of it. Even if your aim is to make a dish perfectly, exactly as it was meant to be made, chances are you’ll still have to tweak the recipe a bit to get the finished product just right. “Ultimate” means final. The end. The zenith, the conclusion, the last word. So when a recipe is presented as the “ultimate” of something, I take that as a challenge to do it one better.

For Laura’s birthday a few weeks ago, I made a cake. The recipe I used was called “Ultimate Chocolate Cake,” which I chose because it seemed to be the densest, fudgiest chocolate cake recipe out there. As far as I’m concerned, chocolate cakes ought to be rich, dense, and dark – essentially, my ideal chocolate cake is actually a brownie. So this “ultimate” recipe, which calls for sordid, indecent quantities of dark chocolate, butter, and sugar with flour kept to a bare minimum, looked just about perfect.

And it was. The resultant cake was weighty, moist, and as dark as earth; it was chocolate first and cake second. It was, in fact, so rich that I decided to make tart currant-nectarine sauce to offset it. But as exquisite as it was, the recipe as written ought to have been named “Penultimate” chocolate cake, for I swapped out the original, basic ganache for an experimental frosting formed by alloying Nutella with Bailey’s – making this even more debauched and delicious.

Of course, I could never presume to call my cover version of this cake the “ultimate,” either, and so I’m giving it a new, more accurate name. Please do tailor it to your own taste!

Super-Duper Chocolate Cake

For the cake:

200 grams high-quality dark chocolate, chopped
200 grams butter, cut in pieces
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules, dissolved into 1/2 cup cold water
85 grams self-raising flour
85 grams plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
200 grams light brown sugar
200 grams golden caster sugar
25 grams cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
5 tablespoons buttermilk

1. Butter a 20- by 8-centimeter cake tin and line the bottom. Preheat oven to 160ºC/325ºF.
2. Melt chocolate and butter together with coffee over low heat in a medium saucepan.
3. Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Beat eggs in a separate bowl and stir in buttermilk.
4. Pour the chocolate mixture and the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Batter should be runny and smooth.
5. Pour batter into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour 30 minutes-1 hour 45 minutes. Cake is finished when a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely for 3-4 hours.

For the ganache:

150 grams high-quality dark chocolate
1 tablespoons golden caster sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup Nutella
6 Ferrero Rocher, crushed

1. Pour Irish cream into a saucepan and allow alcohol to cook off over medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Do not boil.
2. Add chocolate, sugar, cocoa, butter, and Nutella stir until smooth.
3. Allow ganache to cool to room temperature, then pour 1/3 ganache into a separate bowl and stir in Ferrero Rocher.
4. Slice the cake into two layers. Spread the ganache with Ferrero Rocher pieces onto the bottom layer, then replace the top layer. Spread remaining ganache evenly over the entire cake, smoothing with a pallette knife.
5. Serve with fruit sauce and fresh mint.

As a fan of big stouts as well as Islay whiskies, I had hoped this brew would be a nuanced and complex interplay between uniquely earthy Islay smokiness and the mocha, dark fruit, and roasted flavors of a good stout. Instead, it was disappointingly two-dimensional. Other Beer Advocates disagree with my assessment (mine is the lowest score this beer received), apparently uncovering subtleties that I failed to locate. To me, it was just dark, smoky sweetness. I didn’t feel the urge to finish it, but I recognized that where Paradox Smokehead failed as a beer, it would excel as a marinade for beef! That dark, smoky sweetness, I thought, would be the perfect accent to a good steak.

I was right. Last night I marinated a hunk of sirloin in the brew, with a few embellishments, then fried it up in a pan today for lunch. The result was a tangy, tender, sweet piece of meat with a touch of smoke – almost, but not quite, as if it had been charcoal-grilled. I liked it so much I may buy the beer again just to use as a marinade… I’ll bet it would be good with pork, too. Enjoy!

Paradox Smokehead Steak with Herb and Marmite Onions

Note: If you can’t get Paradox Smokhead in your area, try any stout aged in Scotch casks. You could also use a smoked porter, or you could simply mix a shot or two of Islay whisky into an ordinary stout for a similar flavor.

Steak:

2 250-300 gram sirloin steaks, trimmed
12 ounces Brew Dog Paradox Smokehead
5-6 sprigs fresh thyme, torn
1 clove garlic, smashed
1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon Bovril (optional)
cumin, to taste
smoked paprika, to taste
black pepper, for seasoning

Onions:

butter, for sauteing
1/2 large onion, sliced
1/2 teaspoon Marmite
1 teaspoon Herbes de Provence or mixed Italian herbs (use more if herbs are fresh)
black pepper, for seasoning

1. In an airtight container or plastic bag, mix together Paradox, thyme, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, Bovril, cumin, and paprika. Submerge steaks in marinade and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.
2. Melt butter in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat and add onions and pepper.
3. When onions have softened slightly, add Marmite and herbs and toss well.
4. Continue sauteing for 4-5 minutes, until onions begin to brown.
5. When onions are quite soft and brown, move to the sides of the pan. Remove steaks from marinade and season on both sides with black pepper, then lay them in the center of the pan.
6. Cook steaks as you like them. Spoon marinade over them while cooking.
7. When steaks and onions are finished, remove from pan. Pour in some of the marinade and use it to deglaze. Pour the resulting jus into a bowl or cup and serve on the side.

I’m starting the feature with a food that is often overlooked – but when it’s good, damn is it good. Chicken is so frequently bland and dry, a rather pointless thing to eat when prepared or processed witlessly, but if it’s prepared well, then there is almost no meat I’d rather eat.

Zankou Chicken
Los Angeles, California

Taco trucks aside, there may be no LA food institution so cherished as Zankou Chicken. The darling of streetsmart food critics like Jonathan Gold, Zankou is beloved among all strata of Los Angeles society, including the loyal Armenians that invented it. It’s so good that Beck name checks it in a song about having a threesome on Midnite Vultures. I must say, there is something very nearly sexual about the buttery, delicately spiced skin and the voluptuously tender and juicy meat of a spit-roasted Zankou Chicken. And that garlic sauce is a wicked aphrodisiac.

Yangon Restaurant’s Hot and Sour Deep-Fried Chicken
Bagan, Myanmar

All of the chicken I ate in Burma was really good, which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that there aren’t any industrial chicken farms there. “Free range” isn’t even a meaningful category there, because the chickens just roam free around people’s houses. Our drivers had to hit the brakes a lot to dodge them – along with cows and lots of dogs. The Burmese chicken that stands out in my memory was a searingly spicy, addictively tangy dish of crispy and succulent fried chicken, perfumed with an immoderate amount of garlic and green onions.

Jitokko Sumibiyaki
Miyazaki, Japan

One thing I miss about Japan is the thrill of discovering new meibutsu. The Japanese present their unique regional cuisines to the rest of the nation with an enthusiastic pride, and the rest of the nation eats it up. Food and drink, along with flowers, temples, and hot springs, really seem to be what drives domestic tourism in Japan. For salmon, go to Hokkaido; for soba, go to Nagano; and for chicken, go to Miyazaki. There are at least two very famous Japanese chicken dishes originating in Miyazaki: the tartar saucy chicken nanban, and my favorite, jitokko sumibiyaki: literally, charcoal-grilled local chicken. It’s as simple as it sounds, and so very good. Miyazaki chicken has a firm texture and a fantastically buttery quality that sings beautifully with the smoky, blackened flavor of charcoal grilling.

Chicken Truck
Kitakyushu, Japan

One more for Japan – they do chicken right. At one of the schools where I taught, I used to walk to a nearby supermarket pretty much every day for lunch. I usually got some fruit and onigiri, maybe a pastry. But on certain days, there was this truck there. I think the truck was an outpost of a local restaurant, but I can’t remember the name of it. At any rate, this truck sold chicken – really good chicken. You could get the chicken wraps, or you could just go for a huge chunk of chicken, simply grilled with salt and pepper and probably MSG. I think it was the back quarter of the bird, neatly boned and flattened, full of fatty skin, just about as juicy and flavorful as chicken gets. It never failed to brighten my boring days as a human tape recorder.

Homemade Roast Chicken with Sausage and Chestnut Stuffing
Wherever you live

There’s nothin’ like a chicken you roast yourself – expecially when you rub it up with butter and herbs and serve it with a rich, moist sausage and chestnut stuffing. I’m not really much of a roasting guy (I’m more of a sautéing guy), so this week I took it upon myself to try something new. The result was a lovely, exceedingly juicy chicken with a delicate skin and deep flavor. Together with the stuffing, it is a rather rich dinner, so I served it with a palate cleansing salad of arugula and pea shoots with a lemon dressing.

The Chicken

1 4.5 pound chicken (get the free range kind, you cheapskate)
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
a few bunches of fresh herbs (try rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, thyme, and flat leaf parsley)
3 bay leaves
1 onion
1 lemon or orange
paprika
salt
pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF (205ºC).
2. Clean the giblets out of the chicken, if they’re in there.
3. Rinse the chicken inside and out with cold water, then dry thoroughly with paper towel. The bird should be very, very dry on the outside especially to help crisp the skin.
4. Finely mince the herbs and mash them together with the butter and a pinch of salt.
5. Quarter the onion and lemon or orange and stuff them into the cavity, along with the bay leaves and anything else you have to flavor the chicken: celery greens, additional herbs, apple peels, and garlic cloves work well. Pin the skin together to close the cavity with a toothpick.
6. Rub the herb butter all over the bird, then season well with salt, pepper, and paprika.
7. Put the bird on a rack and place in the oven. Roast for 10-15 minutes at 400º, then decrease heat to 375º (190ºC) and roast for another hour and a half (basically, you should cook the bird for 20 minutes per pound, plus the initial 10-15 minutes at a higher heat to crisp the skin).
8. Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes before carving.
9. Thicken the drippings and add a spritz of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce to make a gravy. Add a bit of chicken stock and/or cider or beer if there aren’t enough drippings.

The Stuffing

500 grams sausage meat
250 grams cooked, peeled chestnuts, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 apple, cored, peeled, and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 pound (about six cups) stale bread, lightly toasted and cubed
about 1 1/2 cups medium-dry cider and/or chicken stock
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
about 1/2 cup fresh sage leaves, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

1. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook until browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain the grease.
2. Add the butter to the pan. Sauté the onion, celery, and fennel seeds along with salt and pepper until the onions are translucent.
3. Add the chestnuts, apple, and sage and sauté for another few minutes.
4. Add the bread cubes and sauté until they have absorbed almost all the butter.
5. Add the cooked sausage, then the cider or stock a bit at a time, until the bread is quite soft but not mushy.
6. Scoop the stuffing into a buttered baking dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until top has browned. Serve with gravy.

November sucks (and pardon my northern hemisphere/temperate climate-centrism here) because that’s when winter really hits. You can feel winter coming in October, but there are still leaves on the trees, the days are reasonably long, and it isn’t too cold just yet. But when November rolls around, it’s full-on winter: all grey skies, lifeless landscapes, and unpleasant wetness. But it is a month of adjustment; by December, I’m used to it. By February, however, I’m sick of it; it is the nadir of the year. February isn’t the darkest month of the year, and in most of the places I’ve lived, it isn’t the coldest and it isn’t the wettest, but it sure does feel like it (surprisingly, in London February is actually the least wet month on average). Even sunny Los Angeles is not immune to the climatological ills of February:

(Color altered for effect.)

So what to do to cope with February, Old Man Winter’s loathsome last hurrah? I offer three solutions:

1. Draw anthropomorphic squirrels ad nauseam. Works for me!
2. Celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. If you’re single, just take it as an excuse to drink Scotch and eat chocolate.
3. Try your hand at baking. I don’t bake very often, but now that I’m unemployed and have easy access to a convection oven, I have no excuse not to. Baking is meditative, time-consuming, and fun, and it fills the kitchen with delightful smells and warm air. And did I mention that when you’ve finished, you get baked goods?

Here are a couple of easy recipes I made last week for a party. And I say they’re easy because even I, a complete novice to baking, made them without any trouble. The main inspiration behind them both was the always delightful Borough Market.

Red Currant, Pine Nut, and Cardamom Oatmeal Cookies

In the United States, currants are eaten rarely and almost exclusively dried. I don’t know why – it’s not like we can’t grow them there. In England, and I think in much of central Europe, both black and red currants are a favorite flavor in baked goods, candies, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages as well as savory dishes. The red ones are perky and sharp, with a cranberry-like sourness, while the black ones have a richer, plummy, pruney taste. This recipe would work well with both; red is what I found, so red is what I used.

I liked the way the fresh berries popped open in the oven; when they came out, the heat had turned them into little patches of sweet red goo. They still hung on to their tartness, which complemented the buttery pine nuts and spicy, aromatic cardamom nicely.

If you can’t get fresh currants, you can use chopped cranberries or cherries, or you can try it with dried currants. This is based on a recipe from Bon Apétit.

2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup fresh currants
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups (packed) dark brown sugar
2 cups oats

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk eggs and vanilla in small bowl to blend. Stir in currants.
3. Sift flour, baking soda, salt, and spices into medium bowl.
4. Using an electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add sugar and beat until smooth.
5. Add currant and egg mixture and whisk to blend.
6. Stir in flour mixture, then oats.
7. Butter and flour baking sheets. Drop batter by spoonfuls onto sheets, spacing 1 1/2 inches apart. Using moistened fingertips, flatten cookies slightly.
8. Bake one sheet at a time until cookies are golden brown, about 13 minutes. Cool on sheets.

Chestnut and Ginger Brownies with Kinako Frosting

Cravings for Japanese junk food, rediscovering one of my favorite blogs, and my inability to leave recipes alone led to this recipe. Laura has a Marie Claire cookbook with a good brownie recipe in it, but I knew I wanted to tweak it somehow – originally I was thinking mochi brownies with black beans and kinako frosting, but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, and besides, we were out of mochi.

Enter Borough Market, where I happened to stumble upon a pack of prepared chestnuts. Later I spotted a bit of ginger chocolate at Sainsbury’s, and I had my new recipe (I’m rewriting it here with simply ginger and chocolate). The kinako frosting recipe is from Delicious Coma, which has always been my favorite Japanese food blog, and it’s becoming one of my favorite Los Angeles food blogs since the author moved there last year. The frosting is amazing, by the way.

150 grams butter
250 grams dark chocolate
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1 cup prepared chestnuts or marrons glaces, chopped
1 tablespoon grated ginger
2 generous tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. Melt 150 grams of chocolate and butter together in a double boiler or in the microwave. Stir until smooth.
3. Beat eggs and sugar together until mixture is pale and thick.
4. Fold in chocolate mixture, followed by sifted flour and baking soda, ginger, chestnuts, and remaining chocolate, chopped.
5. Butter an 8″x8″ square baking pan and pour in batter. Bake for 30 minutes or until brownies are set.
6. Allow brownies to cool for at least 30 minutes, then spread evenly with kinako frosting and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Cut into squares and serve.

I don’t have a photo of the brownies, but please enjoy this picture of what I made for lunch on Valentine’s day instead:

Mmmmmmm.

Horchata is so nice. It is so sweet and milky yet light and refreshing on the palate, it has the flavor of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and it makes me doubly happy because I associate it so strongly with Los Angeles. My recent trip there was not complete until I had a cupful of homemade horchata from Huarache Azteca in Highland Park. Mmm.

In Spain, horchata is traditionally made from chufas, a small, nutty, oily tuber that really sounds quite nice, but I have never seen any horchata de chufa in America (and I have looked). Horchata can also be made from barley or oats, and in Mexico and Los Angeles it is almost always made from rice – and often blandly translated as “rice milk.” It is so much more.

The horchata I had in LA only made me crave it more, but as far as I know, it doesn’t exist in Racine. So I decided to make it myself. I got this recipe of the internet and tweaked it a bit – I wanted to make almond horchata, because I hear it approximates the taste of horchata de chufa – and it was a great success. ¡Viva horchata!

Horchata de Almendras y Arroz (Almond and Rice Horchata)

1/2 cup rice
1/2 cup blanched slivered almonds
5 cups water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon dried ginger
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup milk or half-and-half

1. Pulse the rice and almonds in a blender until they are well pulverized, but not powdered.
2. Pour in water and vanilla and let sit for at least three hours, stirring occasionally.
3. Strain liquid through a cheesecloth or nylon. Return liquid to blender after rinsing it out thoroughly.
4. Add all other ingredients and blend until homogeneous. Pour into a pitcher and chill. Stir before serving.

Viking Lasagna

Pasta (adapted from a recipe by Mario Batali)

3 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup rice bran
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons sweet vermouth
1 teaspoon olive oil

1. Mix all ingredients using either the well method or with a food processor or electric mixer.
2. Dust your countertop with additional flour or bran and knead the dough until it is firm, homogeneous, and dry. The dough should not stick to the countertop.
3. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and allow to rest at room temperature for one hour.
4. Cut the dough into eighths and process into lasagne, about nine inches long, according to your pasta maker’s instructions. Alternatively, the dough may be rolled out into very thin sheets and then cut into lasagne.
5. Dust finished lasagne with a small amount of bran to prevent sticking, cover, and set aside.

Filling

3 small eggplants, thinly sliced into long strips
3/4 bunch maitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
about 3/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano
about 3/4 cup grated Mozzarella
about 1/2 cup Ricotta
about 1/2 pound mixed ground beef and ground pork
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 or 3 large green olives, minced
7 or 8 capers, halved
1/4 teaspoon garam masala (substitute five-spice and curry powder)
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil, for frying

1. Salt sliced eggplant and allow to sit for about 15 minutes to sweat.
2. Mix cheeses together and set aside, reserving about 1/4 cup Pecorino Romano.
3. Combine meat, capers, garam masala, marjoram, fennel seeds, and pepper in a mixing bowl.
4. Rinse off salted eggplant and drain and dry well. Toss or brush eggplant with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
5. Warm a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add eggplant and fry until both sides are browned, about 2 or 3 minutes on each side.
6. Remove eggplant from heat and set aside on paper towel to drain excess oil.
7. Add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the same non-stick skillet. Sauté pine nuts, onion, garlic, and olives until slightly browned.
8. Add meat and cook just through, making sure to break up any large chunks. Drain excess fat and reserve.

Sauce

about 20 ounces diced canned tomatoes in juice
1 small eggplant, peeled and diced
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 bunch maitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 or 3 large green olives, chopped
2 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup red wine or fruit liqueur
dried thyme, to taste
dried basil, to taste
dried oregano, to taste
1 bay leaf
1 dash Tabasco sauce
salt and pepper
reserved fat from meat (see above)

1. Warm reserved fat over medium-high heat. Add eggplant, onion, garlic, mushrooms, olives, salt, and pepper and cook until onions become translucent.
2. Add tomatoes, vinegar, wine or liqueur, herbs, and Tabasco sauce and bring to a boil.
3. Cook uncovered to reduce until sauce reaches desired consistency

Assembly

fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
olive oil

1. Boil about 6 cups water in a large pot. Brush excess flour or bran from fresh lasagne and add to water.
2. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until firmly al dente. Remove from pot and rinse under cold water, then drain and dry on paper towel.
3. Lightly coat a 9-inch bread pan with olive oil.
4. Layer pasta, eggplant, mushrooms, meat, sauce, and cheese two or three times until pan is full. Top with pasta, sauce, parsley, and grated Pecorino Romano.
5. Cover with foil and bake at 350º (180ºC) for about 20 minutes, then remove foil and continue cooking for another 15-20 minutes.

In the end, I had extra ingredients, especially pasta, so I made another lasagna-moussaka type thing with extra sauce, sliced onions, and a mixture of beaten eggs. That’s in my freezer now. I’ll let you know how it turns out. After that I still had extra pasta, which I microwaved with clotted cream, dried herbs, and a splash of sweet vermouth. It was delicious.

Simple Almond and Raspberry Tiramisu

about 12 ounces Mascarpone
about 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
about 12-15 lady fingers or amaretti cookies
1/2 cup espresso or strong coffee, cooled
1/4 cup Amaretto
1/4 cup Crème de Framboise
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon roasted almond oil (optional)
about 1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder
freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
fresh raspberries (optional)

1. Blend together cheese, sugar, almond extract, vanilla, and almond oil until homogeneous and set aside.
2. Combine coffee, Amaretto, and Framboise in a bowl. Dip lady fingers into coffee mixture until soaked (but not soggy) and arrange on the bottom of bowls or a baking pan.
3. Spread out one half of the cheese on top of the first layer of lady fingers.
4. Add another layer of soaked lady fingers and then another layer of cheese.
5. Dust with cocoa powder, cover, and refrigerate 1-4 hours before serving. Serve with fresh nutmeg and raspberries.

3 pork tenderloins (about 1300 grams)
about 2 cups apple juice
about 3/4 cup amber lager
about 1/2 cup apple vinegar
juice of one lemon
Tabasco sauce, to taste
about 8 whole cloves
2 whole bay leaves or about 3/4 teaspoon ground bay leaves
1/2 tablespoon whole cardamom seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
4 cloves garlic, crushed and quartered
2 Mandarins, sliced laterally
about 1 1/2 tablespoons honey

1. Combine all ingredients except pork in a large bowl.
2. Pour half the marinade into an airtight, sealable plastic container. Lay in the pork and then pour in the remaining marinade. Make sure the Mandarin slices, cloves, and cardamom seeds are evenly distributed throughout the container.
3. Refrigerate for up to four hours, then pat pork dry and sear, broil, or grill until done.

Almond Joy Eggnog

5 large eggs
about 3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
about 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
about 1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup Bourbon whiskey
3/4 cup coconut rum
3/4 cup Amaretto

1. Beat eggs until frothy and homogenous.
2. With a blender or hand mixer, beat powdered sugar into eggs a small amount at a time until mixture is smooth and solid pale yellow.
3. Combine egg mixture with cream, milk, vanilla, and nutmeg in a large pitcher.
4. Stir in liquor and refrigerate. Serve cold topped with freshly grated nutmeg.

Viking Glögg

2 bottles dry red table wine
2 Mandarins, halved
2 cinnamon sticks
about 10 whole cloves
1 tablespoon whole cardamom seeds
1 tablespoon prune extract (substitute molasses)
2 tablespoons honey
about 2 ounces gin
about 3/4 cup Cointreau

1. In a large, deep, dry pot, heat spices over low heat until they begin to smoke and release their aromas.
2. Remove from heat and add gin, followed by honey and prune extract. Stir until homogeneous.
3. Pour in both bottles of wine and add Mandarins. Stir well, raise heat to medium-low and heat to a gentle simmer. Do not boil.
4. Simmer for about 20-30 minutes; taste to make sure the spices have been incorporated into the wine.
5. Add Cointreau and serve hot.

Sour Apple and Dill Dip for Crudités

about 1 1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
juice of 1 lemon
1 golden delicious apple, peeled, cored, and finely chopped
about 1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
about 1/8 cup apple vinegar
about 1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons honey
about 1/2 tablespoon dill
white pepper, to taste
3 scallions, chopped

1. In a small saucepan, heat chopped apple along with vinegar, water, honey, and juice of half the lemon. Cook until the liquid is gone and apples are slightly soft, but not mushy. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
2. In a medium bowl, mix remaining lemon juice and mayonnaise.
3. Stir cooled apple mixture into the mayonnaise.
4. Add sour cream and mix well.
5. Stir in white pepper, dill, and scallions and serve with raw vegetables.