The Confabulist

Paper Chef #5: Stuffed Squid, Savory Cheesecake, and Proscuitto "Candy"

When I first read the ingredient list for this month's Paper Chef, I was a little worried.  Prosciutto, sherry vinegar, and goat cheese are all fairly common items around here, but I've never really noticed green garlic in any of the stores that I frequent.  I called four or five nearby grocery stores just in case.  Sure enough, no one carried it.  Most of the produce managers had never even heard of it.  It looked as though we'd have to substitute regular garlic, which annoyed me.

Our last hope was the Irvine Farmer's Market, which just happens to be across the street from us.  Rebecca went there to investigate while I did some final kitchen cleanup.  I was expecting her to come home empty-handed, so I was quite surprised to see her bearing green garlic from three different vendors!  As a side note, they called it "young garlic" or "fresh garlic" instead of "green garlic"; if you're calling around for it, you might try these terms when the produce manager says "no, we only have the white kind".

First, a note on prosciutto.  I don't know why it's so often served in paper-thin slices, wrapped around other food items.  I can only assume that cutting it thinly is a way to stretch it, since it is so expensive.   I think it's usually too chewy to be enjoyed this way.  I prefer to get a few thickly cut slices , dice them small, and then saute them to get some caramelization (well, okay, technically it's a maillard reaction, but who is picking nits?).  This is the procedure that I used in the main dishes.

Green Garlic and Goat Cheese Cheesecake

In this savory "cheesecake", green garlic bulbs are minced and sauteed until they are mildly sweet.  They are then mixed in with goat cheese, mascarpone, and eggs and poured on top of a shortbread crust in a springform pan and baked in a water bath.  While the cheesecake is in the oven, a maple/sherry vinegar gastrique is prepared (caramelize some brown sugar, add a bit of maple syrup, then dissolve the result in an equal volume of sherry vinegar), diced prosciutto is sauteed, and the two are combined for the topping.

The result is served warm and as a result has a texture more like a heavy souffle or a light quiche than a dessert cheesecake.  It wasn't nearly as good cold; I suspect it would need some sugar in order to succeed as a more traditional cheesecake, if not enough to make it actually sweet.  I haven't provided an explicit recipe because I feel it could do with some tweaking, but  I thought it was a promising direction, and the guests seemed to agree.

Squid Stuffed with Seafood and Green Garlic Risotto

The risotto is straightforward:

1. Saute 2 cups chopped green garlic and the 1/2 cups diced prosciutto in olive oil.
2. Add 3 cups uncooked Arborio rice and stir, cooking until translucent.
3. Add 1 1/2 cups white wine and a shot of Pernod.  Stir until it is mostly absorbed.
4. Add a cup of hot seafood stock.  Stir until it is absorbed.  Repeat ad infinitum.
5. When the rice has about three minutes left, add two cups or more of mixed seafood chopped into bite-sized pieces.   Shrimp, mussels, lobster, crab, and scallops all work well, but feel free to use whatever is available.
6. At the very end, crumble in 6 oz of goat cheese, diced fresh herbs (I used tarragon and the green ends of the garlic) and stir through.

This risotto is good enough to stand on its own, but of course this is Paper Chef -- we had to take it one step further.

1. Take your washed and cleaned squid bodies.  Stuff them 1/3 full of the risotto.  You read that right!  The squid bodies will shrink quite substantially, so if you don't want them to split during cooking, be careful!
2. Bake in a covered, lightly greased casserole for about an hour.
3. In the meantime, add 1 cup of seafood stock and 1/2 cup of white wine.  Reduce by half.  Add a tablespoon or two of sherry vinegar and 1/2 cup of heavy cream.
4. Plate the squid bodies atop a small mound of risotto, and ladle a tablespoon or two of the sauce on top.

We didn't have enough squid bodies to go around, so the other servings were topped with seared fresh ono fillet.  That is one tasty fish.  It is no accident that "ono" means "good to eat" in Hawaiian.

Prosciutto and Goat Cheese "Candy"

The purest expression of the ingredients was prepared by Rebecca.  A green garlic and goat cheese puree, a dab of the sherry vinegar gastrique, and a piece of a date are wrapped in proscuitto -- thin slices this time.  The ends are pinched like little candy wrappers.  The little packages are then sauteed briefly to crisp the prosciutto.  The result is a tasty little morsel that's greater than the sum of its parts.

In Summary

This was a fun menu to work with.  Despite the fact that all three of the dishes featured all four of the Paper Chef ingredients, none of them tasted alike.  In each, the key ingredients are experienced in different ways.  Green garlic, for instance, is suffused throughout the fluffy goat cheese mixture in the first; in the second the coarsely chopped pieces can be eaten individually, and the minced green tops lend an herbaceous note to the finished product.  While it's the textural elements of the goat cheese that's strongly experienced in the cheesecake, they are completely absent in the risotto, where the cheese's primary contribution is a perfect tangy-sour backdrop to the seafood flavors. 

What will enter my permanent repertoire?  The prosciutto candies are good appetizers (though we served them as dessert).  I'll continue to work on the savory cheesecake -- it has the potential to be quite good.  I'll buy ono when I see it, despite the general consensus that mahimahi is better.  The goat cheese - seafood risotto is an excellent combination that I've never had before and was, in my opinion, the catch of the day.  I may try to develop this into a signature dish.

Peppadews of Madness, Empanadas of Malcontent

Peppadews and I'm losing my mind

The Peppadew is a sweet, tangy, mildly spicy pickled pepper from South Africa.  It's got an appealing flavor profile:  It starts out sweet, then gets tangy, and then finishes with a warm, suffused heat.  It's hard to tell how much of this is due to the nature of the pepper itself and how much is due to the brine.  (The peppers are not available fresh.)

I made the appetizer pictured by stuffing a cube of aged Cheddar inside a Peppadew and pinning a wad of soppressata to it with a toothpick.  Quite good.

I don't know how it happened, but for well over a year I've been thinking that a Peppadew was some kind of pepper crossbred with a honeydew melon. It seems silly in retrospect, but I swear it made sense at the time. The most disturbing thing is that I have absolutely no idea how I came to think that.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't from the friend that introduced them to me.  And I'm equally certain that I've never met another living soul that had heard of them before I gave them one.  So just where did this crazy idea come from? 

Was it just a stray hypothesis based on the name and the fact that they're kind of sweet (which actually comes from the brine) that somehow transmuted in my brain into a fact? The autogeny of an urban legend usually occurs during transmission between people, and it's a bit bothersome to think that I'm giving birth to them all by myself.  Okay, maybe I'm taking this a bit too seriously.

The truth is that, outside of the company line, which is largely content-free, not much information is available about what the Peppadew actually is.  Urban legends reproduce well in low-information environments.  In fact, I suggest that you can see one in action right now with regard to the Peppadew -- one besides my own, that is.  The original company materials noted that Peppadews looked like little cherry tomatoes. One way of expressing this resemblance was to say that Peppadews "looked like a cross between" a pepper and a tomato. Possibly after having read such a description, some people decided that Peppadews also tasted like such a cross. A lot of people began reporting that the product was "sort of a cross between" them. It's not really clear what they meant by "sort of a cross"; most likely they didn't know either and didn't care to take the trouble to clarify matters. Then, finally, the genesis of an urban legend:  somewhere, in some random mutation, the "sort of" got dropped.  People began reporting that the Peppadew was a cross between a pepper and a tomato.

Like all good urban legends, this one has some associated facts that lend it just enough support to seem credible enough to propagate:  besides the taste and the look, the discoverer of the plant and the creator of the product was a tomato farmer.

Ordinarily I'd make fun of the originators of such stories as sloppy thinkers and lazy writers, but look at me!  Up until last week, I told people that it was the product of an interracial union between a pepper and a melon!  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  (I'd also like to point out that when it came time for me to put something down in writing about it, I did enough digging to find out that I was wrong.)

So what, then, is the Peppadew?  Some people suggest that it's a hitherto obscure pepper from Central America.  Others suggest that it is a pepper hybrid (no, between two peppers) of recent provenance. Either way, it's a fun little fruit.  Check it out.

Recently, Jeanne over at Cook Sister talked about peppadews from a perspective that's closer to the source.  Have a look.

Empanadas disappoint

I made empanadas the same night that I made Peppadew-on-a-stick.  I had a grand idea: a pork shoulder, black bean, plantain, and currant filling.  I slowly braised the pork shoulder and shredded it like I normally do, briefly boiled the plantains, added the beans and the currants, threw in a goodly bit of lime juice, and let the whole mixture cook together for awhile.  The end result?  Ho hum.  Eatable, but entirely unremarkable.  I had a great idea for a recipe, good ingredients, and flawless technique (ha!), but things still didn't work out.  Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

I'm not sure where to lay the blame.  The pork was probably underspiced, but that could hardly be the sole culprit.  The empanada dough I made, while functional, lacked character. It probably would have been better if I'd had some masa harina.  Still, something else was missing...

I'm eager to try again, though, using masa harina in the dough and with a different recipe for a filling.  Any suggestions?

party of five

Hosted a little soiree this evening. Rebecca, Darrell, and I had over Lisa and Else from the scavenger hunt. Mostly this was an excuse for Darrell to gawk some more at Else, but hey, any reason to have people over and eat and drink and play games is a good reason, as socially impoverished as my life is right now.

Last week I'd considered what I wanted to prepare, and I'd begun grandiose plans: duck and cherry puff pastry, spanikopita with ground lamb and moroccan spices, somehow exotic crab cakes... that sort of thing. Then I realized that a) it was a game-playing party, so we should probably serve finger food, and b) there's no way in hell I was going to spend the evening in the kitchen making all that crap when everyone else is in the living room playing games.

So I altered my plans somewhat. First, Rebecca and I made our salsa, only this time without the pears and poblanos and with mangoes. Turned out well, even though we forgot to serve it.

I wanted to mess around with serving cheese in a spring roll format. Here are the variations I came up with:

Cheese Spring Rolls Two Ways

Spring Cheese Variation #1

  brie
  jam (a berry jam of some sort works best)
  finely diced walnuts

Spring Cheese Variation #2

  stilton
  fig jam
  diced proscuitto, or diced roast duck skin

Directions:

  Roll and fry as you would a spring roll.

The second, as you can see, betrays my continual fascination with the ingredients in my favorite sandwich . I'm providing them with a different context in order to forestall the inevitable demise of my obsession.

Normally they sell cheap diced proscuitto at Trader Joe's. If you can get this near you, don't dare pass it up. It's a much more flavorful substitute for ham and an excellent alternative to bacon. Deli proscuitto is much too expensive to use freely in everyday cooking, and the cheap thin prepackaged slices that you can find in most stores are entirely the wrong format for most dishes. The diced stuff, while not nearly as good as what you would get at a deli or meat market, is still passable and is a great improvement over regular ham.

Today, though, Trader Joes failed me; they were out of diced proscuitto. Since I had the skin of two roast ducks on hand (you'll see why later), I used some of that instead. Seemed to work out.

The rolls were well recieved. Some (including myself) preferred the Stilton rolls, others the brie. I suspect those that preferred the latter were people who are not great fans of bleu cheeses to begin with. Otherwise, I think, there'd be no contest. The flavor of the Stilton rolls is so much more robust. Next time I may change the brie roll recipe some; perhaps add more jam, or put less jam in and serve with a jam-based dipping sauce.

I'd also decided to do something with duck. The idea of a duck cherry puff pastry had gotten me all excited. But rather than follow my ostensibly simple roast duck recipe, this time I thought I'd leave the duck roasting to the experts in Chinatown.

Turned out to be the best decision I'd made all week. We bought two roast ducks at a random chinese roaster on Stockton, and it was better than any roast duck I've ever had at a chinese restaurant. And cheap! At $7 apiece, it's only a tiny, tiny premium on top of an uncooked duck and quite a bit cheaper than buying a frozen duck at a grocery store. They even chopped it up for us.

Here's what I did with it:

Duck Pizza Two Ways

Red Pizza:

  shredded duck
  red bell peppers
  shiitake mushrooms
  fresh oregano
  tomato sauce
  storebought pizza crust (Boboli or similar)

White Pizza:

  shredded duck
  crimini mushrooms
  brie
  heavy cream
  chopped figs (less sweet) or fig jam (more sweet)
  storebought cornmeal pizza crust

Directions:
  
  Place the cream -- about 3/4 cup per pizza -- and the brie in a 
  pan on medium-low heat.  Make sure the cream is steaming but
  not boiling.  Let it sit, stirring occasionally to mix in the
  brie, until the mixture is reduced by about half.  (It's OK
  if the brie never mixes in completely.)

  Put all of the other ingredients on both pizzas.  Pour the
  brie/cream mixture over the white pizza.  (This is why it's
  good to have a cornmeal crust for the white pizza -- it
  usually has a well-defined "lip" so that the white sauce
  doesn't just pour off the pizza in the oven.)  Cook 
  for 9-15 minutes (depending on their size and the
  type of crust). 

These also turned out very well. It was a successful meal all around, I think, especially considering how easy it was to prepare.

It was a good time. We played some of our favorite games, including Carcassonne , Web Of Power , and Falling . We sat down to eat and play around 5 o'clock and the next thing I knew, it was midnight.

Else again seemed out of Darrell's reach with her aloof German personality, but then surprised us all once again by baring her inner nerd for him. She came out of his bathroom proclaiming the utter coolness of the Lord of the Rings poster he has on the wall in there. She loved the movie and is now re-reading the books.

I think she wants him.