I've been thinking about pulled pork lately. There's a recipe I kind of like out of the Betty Crocker cookbook, but Jerry's not a big fan and I'm not addicted, so I never make it anymore. It's very barbecue saucey, which is how I always assumed pulled pork was just supposed to be.
But in the past year or two, I've seen it done a different way. At the annual summer picnic at work, they've served barbecue from Dinosaur, which is just the seasoned pork, and you add the sauce at the last minute, right there on your bun. At the Ithaca Bakery, there's one where the sauce is based on strawberry jam, and it also seemed like it was added as a last-minute condiment. At Trillium on campus, there was a North Carolina pulled pork that was just the pork, with a vinegar sauce that we could put on top if we liked. All of those were very intriguing; I was surprised at how much flavor just the pork itself had.
I really like that this style doesn't involve jarred barbecue sauce. I haven't discovered a jarred sauce that I really like - I don't have any reason to keep it on hand, and don't like any of the ones I've tried enough to be motivated to experiment with it. Plus, industrial food is industrial. So I'm glad to ditch it.
So I'm currently looking up recipes, and I found this porknography website rich in the How of pulled pork. I really like how the dude explains exactly why all the important elements are important. Alas, I'm not going to do mine by the method he describes; it requires infrastructure I don't have (a smoker, etc.), and more planning-ahead skills than I can dredge up. What I have is a crock-pot. Nonetheless: there the link is, for reference.
It seems like the thing to do in a crock-pot is going to be to rub the pork in the appropriate spices, give it some liquid, and let it go. I seem to recall the Betty Crocker recipe using a lot of root beer to cook in, and then pouring much of it off before adding the barbecue sauce. That seems to be a typical crockpot approach - pork, cola, onions, and at the end, possibly omittable, jarred barbecue sauce. I don't generally like soda, but I make an exception for root beer - so it seems like that method, minus the BBQ sauce, might be acceptable, but not necessarily intriguing.
The most Googly recipe (i.e. a top hit, and one that several of the next hits on the front page either refer to, or are remarkably similar to) seems to be this one; it looks similar to the one I had in Trillium. It doesn't use any cola or jarred sauces, and some of the hits explicitly call it a Carolina pulled pork. I think that's the variation I'll try.
You know, eventually.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Corn crab cakes
I've been promising Laurel for weeks now that I'd post my crab cakes recipe. I found the original in a Southern Living compilation that I checked out of the library. That's a really beautiful book, by the way. There were too many recipes that looked really good for me to try them all. But I had to do the crab cakes, because every time I go to a new restaurant I want their crab cakes, and I'm sad if their crab cakes suck, and I've been trying for years to make a good one at home, but failing.
I was failing, apparently, primarily because I was using imitation crab meat. It turns out that it is nothing at all like the real thing. I am very sad that crab costs as much as it does; the grocery bill spikes every week I give in to this recipe again.
That said, a pound of crab - although it is an appalling $20 - makes 8 or 10 good-sized cakes with this recipe. And since you refrigerate the cakes for a few hours, or up to a day, before frying them, this can actually be prepared one night and then made for dinner twice - half the first night, and half the second. I haven't done the ingredient-price-math, but I think, all told, it actually isn't that bad a hit to the wallet as a fancy dinner could be. Especially since it's two fancy dinners if it's only 2 or 3 of you - or enough for guests, without having to double it. Unless you've got a lot of guests. With a salad, a loaf of nice bakery bread, a glass of Riesling, slightly chilled... oh, God. I may never order a restaurant crab cake again; it might not measure up.
Corn crab cakes
adapted from Southern Living: 40 years of our best recipes
Part I: frying pan
2-3 tbsp. butter
1 large bell pepper (Orange, red, or yellow; I tend to buy a pack of all three, and use half an orange and half a red. Then I use the rest of the peppers in chili, or on a pizza.)
1 cup frozen corn
1 onion, chopped
Part II: small bowl, or 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 egg
2 tsp. Old Bay seasoning
2 tsp. Worcestshire sauce
3/4 tsp. dry mustard
Part III: large mixing bowl
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 cup finely crushed crackers (I use 1 sleeve of Ritz crackers, which we have on hand for eating anyway)
1 lb. fresh lump crabmeat, drained and picked (whatever that means - the can of crabmeat my supermarket carries appears to have no juices, and have no shells to pick out)
First, deal with Part I: melt the butter in the frying pan, and start sauteeing the Part I ingredients.
While they're cooking, mix together the Part II ingredients. I tend to measure out the mayo into a 1-cup Pyrex liquid measuring cup, add the eggs and spices right into it, and stir them up with a spoon.
Then, chuck the Part III ingredients into the large mixing bowl. It doesn't matter if you mix them up or not. They're just waiting there for the other stuff. When Part I is done cooking to your satisfaction, throw all the ingredients - I, II, and III - together in the mixing bowl, and mix.
(Aside: the original recipe suggests that you handle the crabmeat as little as possible, to keep the crab lumps lumpy; they break apart easily. I'm a little dubious about this. For one thing, do I really care? I like crab, and I like corn, and the closer together they are, the happier I am. Granted, their original recipe did not contain corn, so clearly they are not responsible for the consequences of my adulterations and my tastes. But for another: if the crab lumps aren't already broken and mixed uniformly throughout the crabcake, I suspect that they might provide fault lines along which the cake can break when I try to flip it. One of the other reasons my crabcake attempts fail is because I am a terrible crabcake flipper. Sometimes my salmon-cake attempts are reduced to salmon hash. It can be an ugly business.)
Get a plate or cookie sheet out, and line it with wax paper or something similar. Now start taking handfuls of crab mixture and forming them into balls of roughly the size you want your crabcakes to be; set them on the wax paper. Put them in the fridge for at least 1, but up to 24 hours. (I've actually done it for 48. They still seemed OK to me.) This is important: whether it's the lower temperature, or the time it gives the cracker crumbs to absorb the liquids and do some starchy-bindy thing, it helps the crab cakes hold together when you're frying and flipping them.
In your frying pan again, pour a layer of frying oil to cover the bottom. (Not olive oil; it smokes at frying temperatures, I hear. But canola or peanut or generic vegetable oil work.) You want enough oil in the bottom that it's not going to all get absorbed and then risk the cakes sticking to the pan when it runs out, but not so much that you're going to have a big pond to clean up afterwards. Original recipe suggests 1/2 tbsp. butter, 1/2 tbsp. oil; this seems inadequate, to me. Especially if your stove is slightly slanted and all that oil runs to one side of the pan. I don't like it. I coat the pan, so as to not run into these problems.
Heat the oil. I hear you get better browning if the oil is hot from the get-go. Then lay as many crab cakes in the oil as you can fit in your pan, but still leave room for your spatula to easily get in and flip them. (For me and my 8- or 9-inch skillet, that's four.) Don't crowd them. Flatten the cakes after you put them in the pan. (You can flatten them beforehand, even before you put them in the fridge, but I find if you do that, that they sometimes fall apart when you try to move them. I'd rather risk a little oil spit on my hand from being too close to the pan while putting them in. Maybe my priorities are backwards, I don't know.)
Here's the part I don't understand well enough to give good instructions on: cook them until their bottoms are browned, and then flip them and do it again. Sometimes I guess wrong on when it's time to flip them, and the first crab cake is ugly or broken. I usually err on the side of the premature flip, rather than on the burnt side.
Repeat until all the crab cakes you want to eat that night are cooked. Leave the others in the fridge to cook tomorrow, if there are any remaining.
Devour.
adapted from Southern Living: 40 years of our best recipes
Part I: frying pan
2-3 tbsp. butter
1 large bell pepper (Orange, red, or yellow; I tend to buy a pack of all three, and use half an orange and half a red. Then I use the rest of the peppers in chili, or on a pizza.)
1 cup frozen corn
1 onion, chopped
Part II: small bowl, or 1-cup Pyrex measuring cup
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 egg
2 tsp. Old Bay seasoning
2 tsp. Worcestshire sauce
3/4 tsp. dry mustard
Part III: large mixing bowl
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 cup finely crushed crackers (I use 1 sleeve of Ritz crackers, which we have on hand for eating anyway)
1 lb. fresh lump crabmeat, drained and picked (whatever that means - the can of crabmeat my supermarket carries appears to have no juices, and have no shells to pick out)
First, deal with Part I: melt the butter in the frying pan, and start sauteeing the Part I ingredients.
While they're cooking, mix together the Part II ingredients. I tend to measure out the mayo into a 1-cup Pyrex liquid measuring cup, add the eggs and spices right into it, and stir them up with a spoon.
Then, chuck the Part III ingredients into the large mixing bowl. It doesn't matter if you mix them up or not. They're just waiting there for the other stuff. When Part I is done cooking to your satisfaction, throw all the ingredients - I, II, and III - together in the mixing bowl, and mix.
(Aside: the original recipe suggests that you handle the crabmeat as little as possible, to keep the crab lumps lumpy; they break apart easily. I'm a little dubious about this. For one thing, do I really care? I like crab, and I like corn, and the closer together they are, the happier I am. Granted, their original recipe did not contain corn, so clearly they are not responsible for the consequences of my adulterations and my tastes. But for another: if the crab lumps aren't already broken and mixed uniformly throughout the crabcake, I suspect that they might provide fault lines along which the cake can break when I try to flip it. One of the other reasons my crabcake attempts fail is because I am a terrible crabcake flipper. Sometimes my salmon-cake attempts are reduced to salmon hash. It can be an ugly business.)
Get a plate or cookie sheet out, and line it with wax paper or something similar. Now start taking handfuls of crab mixture and forming them into balls of roughly the size you want your crabcakes to be; set them on the wax paper. Put them in the fridge for at least 1, but up to 24 hours. (I've actually done it for 48. They still seemed OK to me.) This is important: whether it's the lower temperature, or the time it gives the cracker crumbs to absorb the liquids and do some starchy-bindy thing, it helps the crab cakes hold together when you're frying and flipping them.
In your frying pan again, pour a layer of frying oil to cover the bottom. (Not olive oil; it smokes at frying temperatures, I hear. But canola or peanut or generic vegetable oil work.) You want enough oil in the bottom that it's not going to all get absorbed and then risk the cakes sticking to the pan when it runs out, but not so much that you're going to have a big pond to clean up afterwards. Original recipe suggests 1/2 tbsp. butter, 1/2 tbsp. oil; this seems inadequate, to me. Especially if your stove is slightly slanted and all that oil runs to one side of the pan. I don't like it. I coat the pan, so as to not run into these problems.
Heat the oil. I hear you get better browning if the oil is hot from the get-go. Then lay as many crab cakes in the oil as you can fit in your pan, but still leave room for your spatula to easily get in and flip them. (For me and my 8- or 9-inch skillet, that's four.) Don't crowd them. Flatten the cakes after you put them in the pan. (You can flatten them beforehand, even before you put them in the fridge, but I find if you do that, that they sometimes fall apart when you try to move them. I'd rather risk a little oil spit on my hand from being too close to the pan while putting them in. Maybe my priorities are backwards, I don't know.)
Here's the part I don't understand well enough to give good instructions on: cook them until their bottoms are browned, and then flip them and do it again. Sometimes I guess wrong on when it's time to flip them, and the first crab cake is ugly or broken. I usually err on the side of the premature flip, rather than on the burnt side.
Repeat until all the crab cakes you want to eat that night are cooked. Leave the others in the fridge to cook tomorrow, if there are any remaining.
Devour.
Coconut-ginger cookie experiment, continued:
In this trial, I used coconut oil instead of shortening/butter, and added 2 tsp. coconut extract. I did two batches; one was with the original molasses, and the other was with an equal amount of honey instead.
That's the honey cookie on the left, and the molasses on the right. I actually baked these weeks ago, but it took me forever to get around to uploading this picture from my phone. Oops.
Things learned:
- You still can't taste any coconut.
- Honey cookies spread just a little bit more than molasses cookies, but not problematically so.
- Molasses has a slightly stronger flavor than the honey, and I think it stands up to the spices a little better. The spices seemed more... obvious, in the honey cookie. Honey was still a perfectly acceptable substitute, though.
- Putting the dough in the fridge for a long time really solidifies it. It does soften up when you work with it, if you can dig a chunk out with a spoon, or leave it out on the counter to warm up a bit. I discovered this the next day; I didn't bake it all at once, because there was a lot of it. I'm going to roll it into balls, roll it in the sugar, and freeze the dough like that for later baking. I never thought I'd see the day that I could bake cookies faster than I could eat them.
- [Upon finally uploading the picture to this post and coming back to it, I report the results of freezing the cookies: instead of 10 minutes to bake, it takes 13. The cookies spread less, and they're softer on the inside (while still being crunchy on the outside) - a little closer to my ideal, actually. I don't think I can overstate how impressed I am at this result. You can do all the work of cookies far ahead of time, stick them in the freezer, and then have hot, fresh cookies right out of the oven any time you want. The dough balls held their integrity really well in the freezer, too - they didn't smash together pre-freezing and be hard to peel apart at all. They're just... hard dough balls. Easiest cookies ever; I am so totally doing that more often - mixing the cookies, rolling all of them into balls and in sugar, baking just enough for the day's cravings, and then freezing the rest of them.]
Did I get a bum coconut extract? Is it really not powerful enough, or are the spices too strong? (I meant to halve them, but I forgot.) I'm going for a very unsubtle coconut flavor, without resorting to flaky coconut bits. I really hate the texture of those.
I don't know whether I'll try the next iteration with molasses or honey. I think I like the molasses better - perhaps from long familiarity - but the honey seems like it might let other flavors come through better.
Alternatively, at Joy of Baking they have a substitute table that suggests you could replace molasses with "3/4 cup (180 ml) light or dark brown sugar heated to dissolve in 1/4 cup (60 ml) liquid" - what if I used coconut milk for that liquid?
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Chocolate chip cookie dough (edible)
Today I got this insane craving for a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sundae. But alas, we had no chocolate chip cookies on hand, and no eggs. And anyway, I wanted it NOW. The solution: Cookie Dough for Ice Cream (Eggless).
I approximately followed the suggestions in the first comment (the one voted most helpful) and also cut the recipe in half, and this is what I came up with:
3 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp softened butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tbsp milk (I used 2% which was all we had)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup chocolate chips (I didn't measure these, just added what looked like an appropriate amount)
I accidentally added 2 tablespoons of milk and it was a bit too runny, but adding a bit more flour and brown sugar helped. Then, instead of rolling the dough up and freezing it, I put a few spoonfuls of it in a bowl and microwaved it for about 30 seconds until the chocolate chips started getting all melty... mmmmmmmmm. And then put some vanilla ice cream on top. I would have put hot fudge on top of that if we'd had any. The final product wasn't that pretty (thus no picture) but wow did it taste heavenly! The recipe made enough for about 2 more servings.
I approximately followed the suggestions in the first comment (the one voted most helpful) and also cut the recipe in half, and this is what I came up with:
3 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp softened butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tbsp milk (I used 2% which was all we had)
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup chocolate chips (I didn't measure these, just added what looked like an appropriate amount)
I accidentally added 2 tablespoons of milk and it was a bit too runny, but adding a bit more flour and brown sugar helped. Then, instead of rolling the dough up and freezing it, I put a few spoonfuls of it in a bowl and microwaved it for about 30 seconds until the chocolate chips started getting all melty... mmmmmmmmm. And then put some vanilla ice cream on top. I would have put hot fudge on top of that if we'd had any. The final product wasn't that pretty (thus no picture) but wow did it taste heavenly! The recipe made enough for about 2 more servings.
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