Coffee Liqueur

The difference between a liquor (e.g., vodka) and a liqueur, is that the latter is back-sweetened with fruit or sugar to bring the sugar content up to a minimum of 2.5% and the former is just a distilled beverage. That's the idea anyways. You should probably use a coffee bean of a coffee you really enjoy. This batch uses Stumptown's house blend whole bean coffee. It's recommended for extracts that 100% proof vodka be used, but I am using Kirkland vodka (80% proof) because that's all I have on hand. You can get 1-liter flip-top bottles from Bed Bath & Beyond or similar stores.

Day 1

Ingredients

2 c vodka
1/2 c ground coffee
1-2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean split in half

Grind enough coffee beans for 1/2 c ground coffee. In a large jar, combine coffee, 2 c vodka, and 1-2 tsp vanilla extract (or 1 whole vanilla bean sliced in half). Secure lid on jar and refrigerate for 24 hours, shaking the jar occasionally.

Day 2

Ingredients

2 c brown sugar
4 c filtered water

Make the brown sugar syrup.

In a 2-quart pot, combine 2 c brown sugar and 4 c water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the volume has reduced by half.

As the syrup cools, it'll thicken.

.

Use a coffee filter to strain the infused vodka from the ground coffee. Compost the leftover coffee. Set aside. I used two filters for this step. A gold filter and a paper coffee filter set inside the gold filter.

Into a clean, sterilized bottle, fill with cooled brown sugar syrup and coffee-infused vodka.

Shake to combine.

Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Lemongrass Tea

The last time I saw someone get a gift of Adagio lemongrass tea, I thought that $12/8oz  + shipping is a lot to pay for something you can make yourself. Lemongrass tea is just the chopped up, dried form of the plant. It takes about a week (during autumn/winter) to dry at room temperature on trays. The fresh stalks are typically sold fresh in Asian grocery stores or supermarkets that also carry Asian cuisine ingredients. A bundle of 3-4 lemongrass stalks will cost about $1.60-$3.00, depending in where you shop.

The seafood market (ABC Seafood) in Portland is where I last picked up this culinary herb.  It is typically used to make the lemony part of Tom Yun soup (a hot & sour soup originating from Thailand/Laos). 

After processing the lemongrass stalks, it would be better to make the tea while the stalks are fresh rather than when they are dried if you want a more lemony taste to the tea. A hot cup of tea made from the dried, cut stalks tastes a lot like water that has been mixed with a light lemon essence. But, if a non-citrus lemony tea is what you want to relax with, lemongrass tea is also non-caffeinated.

TheFoodening Blog: lemongrass stalks, all chopped up
and ready to be dried for tea

After trimming the stalks of the rough, woody root part and the tops, peel off any of its 'leaves' that have dark spots on them. Use a sharp knife or kitchen shears to cut the stalks into 1/2" to 3/4" pieces. Use a sharp knife to quarter (vertically) each piece. This will help the lemongrass dry faster.

Don't try to chop these later in a food processor after they have dried. It does not work.

Hot and Sour Soup

My mom would make this soup for special occasions, although it's a good soup for cold, damp weather. The heat in the soup comes from black pepper and its sourness from vinegar; though not any vinegar will do. Apple cider vinegar and rice vinegar are cetain sweeter in taste than say, red wine vinegar. And, don't put balsamic vinegar into this soup.

A note from my dad about the wood ear fungus. It may look small, and the original recipe called for 1/4 of it but that is a mistake. He says that the fungus will soak up enough water to turn into 10x its dehydrated size.

Makes: 2 quarts + 1 pint

Ingredients

3 oz pork loin, pork shoulder, or country pork rib
1/2 tsp olive oil
1 scallion, thinly sliced

1/4 c dried lily buds, soaked in warm water, trimmed
1/4 c dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in warm water, thinly sliced
4 pc dried wood ear (mu-erh) fungus, soaked in warm water, thinly sliced
1/2 c winter bamboo shoots, thinly sliced
1/2 pkg organic firm tofu, small diced
2 quarts organic chicken broth, low sodium
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
3 tbsp white vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 tsp tamari soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste

1 organic carrot, sliced into matchsticks

Directions

Slice pork into thin 1/2" strips then fry with scallion and olive oil. When pork has lost its pink color, remove from heat and set aside.

After soaking the lily buds, trim off the hard parts of the stem.

In a large stockpot (or a pot large enough to hold 3 quarts of liquid), combine chicken broth, lily buds, wood ear fungus, mushrooms, tofu, white pepper, soy sauce, and vinegar. Add the soaking liquid of the dried ingredients to the soup.

Bring the soup to a simmer and let all the ingredients come up to temperature. At this point, you can add the cornstarck/water slurry and bring the soup to a boil to thicken the soup.

Next, and add the eggs for an egg-drop-soup look. 

Serve hot.

You may need to add more black pepper (for heat) or vinegar (for sourness).

To thicken the soup:

Combine equal portions cornstarch and cold water. Stir until cornstarch is dissolved in the water. Use 1 tbsp cornstarch plus 1 tbsp water per quart of liquid.

To turn this into an egg drop soup:

Whisk 2 eggs in a small bowl

Before serving the soup and while the soup is boiling, stir soup in a clockwise (or counterclockwise) direction so the liquid is rotating in one direction. Usually, it's 1 egg per person for a regular egg drop soup.

As the soup is rotating, slowly pour in the beaten eggs.

Boiled Shrimp

This recipe is pretty easy to do. It's quick and simple. You just need raw shrimp that is either fresh from the seafood counter or thawed completely. I can usually pick up a pound of headless shrimp from Fubonn in Portland. Sometimes shrimp is on sale for $5-$7/lb. I try to stay in that range. What? No instructions on prepping the shrimp? Why bother. Just unshell and rip off its legs after it's been cooked.

Ingredients

2-3 tbsp fresh ginger, sliced
1-2 lb raw shrimp
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
4 c filtered water
pinch of sea salt

Directions

Bring water, wine, and ginger to a boil. Process in batches of 10. When the shrimp changes color to light pink, remove from heat and add more raw shrimp. If you need to, remove all the cooked shrimp from the pot and wait for the water to come back up to a boil.

Serve warm.

Creamy Corn Soup (vegan)

Something nice, hot, and not too complicated for a rainy week. This used up the last of the summer season fresh corn. It seems to be missing something. Maybe I need to mix in some tapioca starch and make it thicker. I also used seven ears of fresh corn in this batch and three instead of two cups of vegetable broth.

TheFoodeningBlog - corn soup?

Note: you can make celery salt by grinding equal portions of celery seed and kosher salt together in a coffee or nut grinder. You'd have celery seed on hand if you like making pickles.

Yield: 2 quarts

Ingredients

2 c vegetable broth
1 can coconut milk (Trader Joe's brand)
2 celery ribs, diced
1 large red bell pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
4-7 fresh ears of corn, husked
1 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp celery salt

Directions

1. Husk the corn. Or is that shuck? At any rate. Remove the corn's leaves and corn silk from the corn cob. Take a sharp knife (serrated works best) and cut the fresh kernels from the cob. 

2. Put everything into the pot and cook on a low-medium heat for an hour, or until the vegetables are soft.

3. If you want some texture, remove a cup of whatever is in the pot and set it aside. Turn off the heat when using an immersion blender to puree the soup.

4. Serve hot.

Crockpot Vegetable Stock/Broth

I read somewhere that stock isn't seasoned while broth is. At any rate, I made this in the crockpot because I needed two cups of it for a soup I'm making. Smells lovely. And the best part? No onions.

Heat/Time: 6-8 hours on Low

Ingredients

8 c filtered water
3 organic carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
2 bay leaves
few sprigs of fresh thyme
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 sprig of fresh oregano, leaves only
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of sea salt

Yield: 1 quart plus 3 cups of broth

Strain the broth into a 5-quart bowl, then decant to other containers for storage.

Kitchen Notes: Pantry Budgeting and Food Prices, part 1

I track a few stores for local prices (Costco, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, Walmart, and Chuck's Produce). Did you know that there are seasonal price variances for grocery items such as dairy, bacon, eggs, and rice? This gives me a general idea of when to stock up on canned goods and food for the freezer and pantry. I currently keep my pricing notes on the Google Notes app on my phone. I should also say that these prices reflect mostly Washington state, not Oregon and not Seattle where the cost of living is significantly higher than Vancouver, WA.

Have a hankering for fresh avocados? When avocados are in season, the best pricing comes from Costco for US-produced large avocados. For small-medium avocados, best pricing is from Walmart and those are imported from Mexico.

In an average year, cooking for one and seasonal canning/preserving. I'll typically use:

10# all purpose flour
5# sugar
1 gallon white vinegar
0.5# sea salt or kosher salt
1 qt tamari soy sauce (wheat free)
0.5 gallon unseasoned rice vinegar
4# unsalted butter (what can I say, I love butter)
2 liters olive oil

Bulk unbleached/unbromated flour is inexpensive. You can still get 10# of it from Fred Meyer for less than $5.

Currently in the US there is a surplus of dairy. There is so much overproduction of dairy products that a pound of brie cheese (Presidente brand) costs $5 and 2.5 lbs of Colby Jack/Havarti cheese will run you $7/pack at Costco. However, you might not see this savings with brands that are priced to compete at your local supermarket (e.g., private label supermarket brand vs Sargento, Daisy, Tillamook, etc.). If you aren't looking for double or triple cream brie, Costco pricing for brie cheese is the best among all tracked stores.

Also in mid-2017 pork products are noticeably on the rise in pricing, with 4 lbs of Kirkland bacon going for $20/pack or $5/lb. However, this rise has been going on since 2014 since the Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PEDv. The disease kills millions of piglets per year. You might have also seen an article about a decline in the frozen pork belly supply at the start of the year. There is significant demand for pork products and pork producers cannot keep up with supply.

There is a worldwide shortage of vanilla beans. This is following a glut of vanilla beans from 2004 which forced pricing down for farmers who then replaced their vanilla crops with more profitable ones such as sugar cane and coffee. The March 2017 cyclone storm that hit the Madagascar region wiped out 30% of vanilla crop production. To put Madagascar into the context of market size, the region grows 3,000 tons of vanilla; compared to Africa's Comoros region which produces 50 tons and Mexico which produces 100 tons. 

It'll be a long while before raw vanilla prices stabilize. This means if you are making a lot of baked goods or mixed beverages that call for vanilla, you may have to just buy vanilla beans in bulk and make your own vanilla extract. Price-wise, you can make a few liters of vanilla extract from lesser quality vanilla beans (grade B) for the same amount of money you'll dish out buying that 16 oz bottle of vanilla extract from Costco ($25, as of March 2017). You could use artificial flavorings, but at that point, you might as well skip the recipe altogether.

2017 retail price per vanilla bean: $6 (Cost Plus, Chuck's Produce, Fred Meyer, etc.). In a surplus year, per bean retail cost is $1.50-$2.00/bean. This is a labor-intensive, hand-produced crop after all.

Also rising in price is bulk sea salt. It used to be $0.30/lb (early 2016) at Fred Meyer and has now risen to $1.50/lb (Aug 2017). Fortunately, for most people, you don't really use that much of salt in a year, unless you're also curing meat and seafood products for jerky or smoked salmon. I have no explanation for the rise in salt prices, except that demand is high because winter storms have been more severe everywhere (municipalities purchasing more rock salt to combat ice/snow) and the US states that have manufacturing and distribution facilities are in regions hit hard by severe weather. Price increase is more likely due to increase in transportation costs than actual impact of weather or cultivation practices.

What affects pricing? Let's take a brief look at Texas. It's a state that produces the most cotton of the top 10 cotton-producing states in the US. In fact, Texas produces so much cotton that you can add up the total cotton production of the other 9 top cotton producing states and it doesn't even come close to what Texas produces. Just do any web search for "drought + Texas cotton" and you'll see which years the drought has heavily impacted cotton production. Look at the 10-year historic chart from NASDAQ for cotton prices. And then there was a market crash in cotton in 2011. What would have been a bumper cotton crop this year for Texas was nullified by the recent deluge of rain from hurricane Harvey. A cotton shortage means that pricing for similar products (synthetic and plant-based fiber--bamboo, modal, tencel, rayon [wood], and polyester [coal/oil/water]) that compete in the same market place--also rise because of demand for cotton substitutes.

Dairy

Cottage cheese isn't a healthy snack. While you can certainly find 'fat free' or 'low fat' versions of cottage cheese, perhaps consumers don't understand how this product is made. Take farmer's cheese which is produced when combining lemon juice or vinegar with heated whole milk (or low fat milk), strain out the curds, then mix those curds with heavy cream. Voila! Cottage cheese. So, anyhow. Here's more about seasonal dairy pricing.

Butter: $2.50/lb $3.50/lb

If you can get unsalted (or salted) butter for $2.00/lb stock up and freeze what you don't need. As long as the butter is rBGH-free, I haven't really seen a noticeable difference in taste and quality compared to organic butter other than my wallet is a lot lighter when I buy organic. 

Kirkland Butter (4 lbs), Oct/Dec/Jan/Jun 2016, $9.99 ($2.50/lb)
Kirkland Butter (4 lbs), May 2016, $10.49

Sour Cream:

Watch the labeling on this item. Some vendors list this by weight and others by volume. It is not the same. Most recipes call for the volume measurement of sour cream. 

The same could be said for fresh blueberries. You're more likely to get better pricing buying blueberries by the pound than by volume (typically sold in 'pint' packaging). A pound of fresh blueberries is roughly one quart by volume. You're better off picking local blueberries at a u-pick farm at $1.60/lb (this year's pricing at Majestic Farm Blueberries in La Center, WA) than buying at any grocery store or bulk retailer. Costco sells fresh, not local blueberries in 18 oz packages for up to $8/package.

Sells by the pound: Costco, Daisy
Sells by volume: Trader Joe's

Cheese:

Kirkland Mild Cheddar (2-lb block), $4 (late June 2016)
Tillamook Kolby/Jack Sliced Cheese (2.5 lb pack), $7.99 (Oct 2016)

Broiled Lemon Chicken

This recipe is for those of us who don't own outdoor grills. This is the second, successful time I've cooked chicken this way. The timing is everything, and maybe also the level of heat and the distance from the flames (if you also have a gas oven). Let's just say that the first time I did this and used the cook times one would use on an outdoor grill, the chicken turned out a bit more charred than I would have liked. I used two packages of chicken drumsticks, or roughly 10 drumsticks. Also, my oven has an adjustable heat setting for the broiler.

Heat: 500 F
Time: 10 minutes one side, 15 minutes other side
Distance: 2nd rack slot from the top

Marinade Ingredients

juice of one large lemon plus its zest
1/4 c olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1-2 lbs organic chicken parts, with or without skin on

Marinade chicken for 20 minutes or longer. Place chicken in a single layer on a foil-covered baking tray. Reserve marinade. Cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, Flip the chicken over and brush/spoon marinade on top of chicken. Return to heat and cook for another 10-15 minutes, until a meat thermometer reads 160 F in the thickest part of the chicken.

Kitchen Notes: Preserving the Harvest

I realize now that making a case of salsa (12 pints) for the year was excessive, so I only made five more pints to go with the five pints leftover from last year's canned batch. Although, now that I am eating the stuff that didn't make it into the jar, this recipe ratio is really good. Slightly sweeter than the default batch. What a difference ripe tomatoes and sweet peppers make.

And the best part? No onions.

Makes: 5 pints + 1 cup
Heat: mild

Ingredient Ratio

1 green bell pepper, small dice
1 red bell pepper, small dice
1 orange bell pepper, small dice
12 tomatillos, washed/peeled, quartered
12 green jalapenos, stemmed/seeded
2 red Fresno chiles, stemmed/seeded
2 heads of garlic, cloves peeled and roughly chopped
5 lbs ripe vine tomatoes, quartered
1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
juice of 2 fresh limes
2 tbsp kosher salt

Add all to a stockpot and bring to a boil. Cook for 1.5 hours.

I ended up having to cook this on a simmer heat for an additional hour to get to a salsa consistency (not watery and thick enough to be held on a tortilla chip). I also used a slotted spoon to fill the jars and I had more than a pint of 'salsa water' leftover, which I haven't used for anything.

The garlic got a rough chop in the food processor.

These items got pureed together: tomatillos, jalapenos, red Anaheim chiles

I also used an immersion blender, but didn't blend the whole batch. Though, the sauce wouldn't be in the chunky category for salsa.

I've been sterilizing washed jars in the oven at 170 F (lowest the oven can go) for 30 minutes.

The lids and bands, get the boiling water treatment. I have yet to get food poisoning using these methods.

Processed in a boiling water bath for 30 minutes. Really, canning time is just under an hour since after you add the jars to the water, it has to come back up to temperature, even though everything is already hot.

Remove from heat and set on racks to cool. Tap on lids after jars have cooled for an hour to check seals. Leave to cool completely for 24 hours. Once you're sure that the jars are sealed properly, you can store the jars with or without the metal band.

Sweet Garlic Grilled Chicken

Yes, two sets of directions on the same recipe means that I've done this recipe twice. Once on an outdoor gas grill and again using a gas oven broiler.

TheFoodeningBlog - sweet grilled garlic chicken

Chicken Marinade

6-8 large garlic cloves, minced
1/4 c brown sugar
2 tbsp raw honey
1/3 c light soy sauce
3 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 c water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 lbs organic chicken parts (I used drumsticks)

Marinade chicken for 30 minutes or overnight. 

The leftover marinade is quite watery. You can reduce it to a 'sauce' by adding 1-2 tsp cornstarch and simmer it until it thickens. Then use this sauce to baste the chicken as it cooks.

Heat: 300 F
Time: 30 total (15 minutes each side)

Above heat/time is for an outdoor gas grill.

To broil in a gas oven:

Heat: 500 F
Time: 10 mins one side, 10-15 mins reverse side
Distance to flame: 2nd rack from the top

Crockpot Pulled Pork

This recipe ratio turned out tasting very good. There were a few changes to how I did this. The first being the lack of apple juice (one cup). I substituted one cup of unsweetened apple butter (made from winesap apples) plus one cup of water. Also, I didn't toss the cooking liquid from the crockpot, instead I reserved it to a pot and simmered it until it had the consistency of barbecue sauce again. This yielded 2.5 cups of sauce. The cut of pork that was used is called "country pork rib", and you can get this in a large multipack from Costco. It's the same cut style of pork that I use for my kimchi pork soup. The only onions in this batch is what is in the BBQ sauce.

Total prep/cooking time: 8 hours
Yields: 1 quart pulled pork (for 2 lbs of meat)

TheFoodening Blog - pulled pork

Ingredients

2-3 lbs boneless country pork rib

1 c unsweetened apple juice, or 1 c unsweetened apple butter plus 1 c water

4 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 c brown sugar

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 c BBQ sauce (I used Trader Joe's Kansas City BBQ sauce)

Directions

In the crockpot, place pork on the bottom. Cover with cloves, apple butter, brown sugar, salt, pepper, and barbecue sauce. Add the water to the bottom (don't wash off the stuff on top of the pork).

Set the crockpot to high for 2 hours. Then, set the crockpot to low for 4 hours. After the 6 hour mark, drain the crockpot of its liquid to a separate pot, leaving a half inch of liquid at the bottom of the crockpot. Cook pork for an additional hour. Turn off heat and use two forks to shred the pork.

In the separate pot with the cooking liquid, simmer the liquid on low heat until it has more than reduced by half of its liquid volume. It should be somewhat runnier than the barbecue sauce that went into it but thick enough that it isn't watery.

Take a half cup of the reduced sauce and pour it over the shredded pork. Stir to combine. 

If you made the hamburger buns from the previous post, split those in half and place a good amount of pulled pork on the bottom bun and cover it with the top bun. Enjoy!

TheFoodening Blog - pulled pork on a homemade bun

Note: If you don't have a crockpot or slow cooker, you can also use a dutch oven and bake the pork until tender for 4 hours at 325 F. 

Quick Hamburger Buns

Made this to go with the pulled pork. Don't let the dough rise. That's all I have to say. Although, it'll rise somewhat after shaping the buns as the oven heats up to temperature. The first batch, I have no idea what happened. It turned into some lumpy, soupy mess. But the second time around, the dough came together just fine. The order of operations certainly is a factor here. Onto the recipe...

From mixing to kneading to forming into buns to baking, the prep takes less than an hour.

TheFoodening Blog - hamburger buns

Makes: 7 buns (at 4 oz to 4.25 oz raw dough)

Ingredients

1 c warm water
2 tbsp active dry yeast
1 large egg
1/3 c olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
2 tbsp + 1 tsp organic granulated sugar
3 cups all purpose flour + more for kneading
(optional) 1 egg + 2 tbsp water, for brushing tops of buns

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, add yeast to warm water plus 1 tsp sugar. If the yeast does nothing within 10 minutes (e.g., does not foam or make bubbles), toss it out and try again with fresher yeast.

Add the oil, sugar, and salt. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes.

Whisk in the egg.

One cup at a time, whisk in three cups of flour. By now the dough should be a little runny but smooth. Turn dough out onto a floured board and knead until it isn't sticky any more.

At this point between flouring the board and kneading, I may have added up to a cup more flour.

If you don't have a kitchen scale, divide the dough into six equal pieces. If you do have a scale, make 4 oz balls of dough. Place buns a couple inches apart on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Brush tops of buns with egg wash.

Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Note: if you divide the dough into 12 pieces, you'll be making buns large enough for sliders

Note2: It would appear this is the second time I've written this recipe up. Although, the buns came out really good and not small like what happened before.. 

Marinade for Mushroom Kabobs

Originally I thought about using this marinade for both the brown (cremini) and white mushrooms, but ended up just using the brown mushrooms with red and green bell peppers. I only have aged balsamic vinegar and it seemed a waste to use a tasting vinegar for a marinade so I used half balsamic and half rice vinegar for the vinegar part.

The Foodening Blog - grilled mushroom and vegetable kabobs

Makes: 9 skewers (using 10" bamboo skewers)

Ingredients

8 oz brown cremini mushrooms, stems trimmed
8 oz grape or cherry tomatoes
1 large red bell pepper, sliced into 1" pieces
1 large green bell pepper, sliced into 1" pieces
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tbsp fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Directions

Combine all items in a resealable container. Shake to coat everything with the marinade. Refrigerate for an hour or until ready to use.

To grill:

Stab vegetables and mushrooms in an alternating order (for variety!). Grill vegetables for 10-15 minutes, rotating at the half way mark until the mushrooms are done. The bell peppers can be slightly charred.

Asian BBQ Pork Spare Ribs

This recipe tasted OK. How the pork gets cooked probably needs some work and/or tweaking as they came out a little tough to eat. Overall, from an aesthetic perspective, they looked great and social media post-worthy. I was looking to do something different than how pork spare ribs are traditionally served up, e.g., as dim sum small plate (steamed with black beans) or as grilled ribs with an Asian-flavored sauce slathered onto it.

The Foodening Blog: Asian BBQ Short Ribs

While I had a jar of hoisin sauce in the pantry, for once, I made hoisin sauce from scratch for this dish. You can get these short ribs at any Asian grocery store butcher counter. These were already cut to 1" - 1.5" size, and if you were going to make the dim sum short ribs recipe, you'd need these cut to the 1" size. Onward.

Ingredients

2-3 lbs pork short ribs

1/4 c white vinegar

2 tsp sea salt

Marinade Ingredients
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1/2 c light soy sauce
1/2 c unbleached cane sugar
1/2 c ketchup
1/4 c lemon juice, or fresh juice from 1 lemon plus its zest
3 tbsp raw honey
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 tbsp fresh garlic, finely chopped

Garnish

2 tbsp white sesame seeds, toasted
green onion, white part (optional)

Directions

Start by bringing a large pot of water to boil with salt and vinegar. Add pork ribs, bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sugar, ketchup, lemon juice, honey, ginger, and garlic. Whisk to combine.

Place cooked ribs in a large ziplock bag (or food storage container with a lid). Pour on the marinade and marinate for up to 6 hours or overnight.

Grill ribs until the ribs are slightly charred. -or- if using an oven broiler, broil meat until slightly charred

Hoisin Sauce (gluten free)

The secret to a good hoisin sauce is to use fermented black beans as one of the main flavor ingredients. Simply using peanut butter and other savory ingredients isn't going to cut it. While you can use a starch (potato starch, cornstarch, or wheat flour) to thicken it up, substituting the starch with peanut butter and using a tamari-based soy sauce makes this sauce gluten free. Also, you should probably use a smooth peanut butter, but alas, all I had on hand was chunky. I've read that if you have a peanut butter allergy, you can also substitute dried prunes (2 prunes per 1 tbsp peanut butter). If you do end up using peanut butter as a thickener, your sauce won't be pasty black at all. It'll be a brown-ish color, like peanut butter.

Hoisin sauce is a sweet and savory sauce, with neither element overpowering the other. And, it certainly does not use Chinese five spice powder. But, you could add it if you like that flavor in your sauce and the accompaniment is a meat-based dish.

At some point I reverse engineered Trader Joe's light soy sauce by experimenting with tamari soy sauce, rice vinegar and water until I got a sodium content that was close to Trader Joe's. You can also find that recipe here.

Makes: ~1/2 cup

Ingredients

1/4 c light soy sauce
2 tbsp organic peanut butter
1 tbsp raw honey
2 tsp rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1 garlic clove, minced
fresh ground black pepper, a few grinds
1 tbsp black fermented soybeans, rinsed and prepared
1 tsp chili sauce, or more to taste (e.g., Trader Joe's Sriracha or a sweet chili paste)

Directions

In a small bowl, soak fermented soybeans with hot water for about 5 minutes. Drain and then crush the beans with the tines of a fork. Voila. Now you have prepared fermented soy beans.

Whirl all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Put it into a lidded jar and refrigerate until ready to use.

Beef and Bean Burritos

I will probably not be making this as a lunch week batch any time soon, or maybe if I do, I certainly won't be eating them every day for lunch.. again. Filling but boring. My burrito wrapping skills, like most recipes that call for wrapping food in something else (e.g., tamales, zongzhi, dumplings, etc.) needs a lot of work. The biggest difference in taste, besides my inept wrapping skill, is that restaurant-quality burritos are typically served warm. You just can't slap together cold ingredients, wrap it up, and call it a burrito. I suppose you could, but it doesn't taste like effort went into it. Anyhow, I ended up making a week's worth of lunch burritos with this attempt.

The Foodening Blog: behold! a burrito in the making

Ingredients

12" flour tortillas
1 lb ground beef, seasoned and prepared
tomato-based salsa, any style
16 oz can of refried beans or salsa-style refried beans
1 to 1.5 c cheddar cheese, grated
sour cream, to taste
shredded lettuce, optional

Directions

If you're making this for lunch, toast the tortilla before assembling the burrito. If not, skip the toasting step.

Lightly toast a flour tortilla on a griddle, or otherwise flat-enough frying pan surface so that your 12" tortilla can lie flat and be heated up. Flip and toast the other side before it burns.

Preparing the ground beef

There are two ways to do this, the quick way (use a taco seasoning packet) with the ground beef before frying it up and draining out the oil. Or, the more authentic way and mix in spices (minced garlic cloves, chili powder, ground cumin) and taco sauce with the ground beef before frying and draining out the oil. Yes, for this step I cheated and used Trader Joe's taco seasoning packet. Aside from what's in the packet, you'll probably also note that a lot of my adapted Mexican recipes do not contain onions. This is on purpose. If you like onions with your beef, go ahead and use it. You'll need one cup of chopped onion per pound of ground beef.

On a plate, begin your assembly.

In the lower 1/3 of the flour tortilla, add the refried beans. This will be your liquid barrier between the tortilla and the rest of the ingredients. Spread the beans like the paste it is across the bottom third, leaving a 1" space to the edge of the tortilla.

Next, add 1/3 cup of prepared ground beef. Spread it around on top of the beans.

Top the meat with 1/4 c grated cheddar cheese, salsa, and garnish with 1 tbsp of sour cream.

You could add shredded lettuce to this step, but not if you intend to freeze the burritos. Lettuce freezes poorly and it'll be a soggy, terrible mess if you include it for not-eaten-same-day burritos.

Folding the burrito

If only I had read this before both writing and doing the recipe. 

Start rolling from the bottom-up, once you pass the filling part, fold in the right and left sides and continue folding up.

Not eating today? Wrap for later.

For each burrito, wrap it up in a sheet of foil large enough to house it. Use a marker on the foil to label what it is and when it was made. Put it in a resealable plastic bag, and freeze.

To reheat

This was interesting since I don't own a microwave, and it seems like a waste of energy to use the oven for one burrito. Let your burrito(s) thaw in the refrigerator. Pan fry on low heat in a covered pan. Make sure to check your burrito so that the tortilla does not burn. Burnt tortillas taste awful.

Baked Sesame Chicken

I envisioned something different. But alas, this is the best that it gets when it's baked and not deep fried. Visually, not terribly appealing. It tasted okay, but I don't think I'll be making this again any time soon. It does not even come close to the sesame chicken you'd get at a Chinese restaurant.

TheFoodeningBlog - Baked Sesame Chicken

Ingredients

2-3 lbs chicken body parts (drumsticks, thighs, wings, etc.)
1/4 c white sesame seeds, toasted
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
pinch of fresh ground black pepper
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp soy sauce 

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 F.

1. In a 9 x 11 x 3 baking dish, add soy sauce and tilt the dish so that the soy sauce covers the bottom evenly.

2. In a shallow dish, combine sesame seeds, flour, salt, and black pepper together. Dredge each chicken piece in the dry ingredients. Lay chicken in a single layer in the baking dish.

3. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the thickest part of the chicken measures 160 F on a meat thermometer. Remove from oven and serve hot.

Corn Chowder

What started out as a vegan recipe, turned into one not so vegan friendly. I don't usually stock vegetable broth since it's mostly just vegetables laced with onions that have been boiled in salt water for a period of time. Instead, I used beef bouillon as the broth base.

The Foodening Blog: Corn Chowder

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

2 c vegetable or beef broth
1 lb organic cut corn, frozen or fresh
One 14-oz can of organic coconut milk
3 organic celery ribs, diced
1 yukon gold potato, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1-2 tbsp olive oil or unsalted butter
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp celery seed

Quick beef broth:

2 tsp Better than Bouillon Organic Beef Base + 2 c hot water

Directions

In a medium stockpot, melt butter or olive oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic, celery, spices, and salt. Stir until the garlic has started to brown. 

Add the bell pepper, corn, potato and broth. Let this cook until the potatoes are fork tender, about 10 minutes.

Last, add the coconut milk. This might take some serious spooning as it is winter and coconut fat is solid at room temperature.

At this point you could reserved a cup of the vegetables. Use an immersion blender to turn the soup into a chunky chowder. And then, put the reserved vegetables back in.

Serve hot.

Garnish: fresh ground black pepper and/or minced chives

Canning 2016

One day I'll figure out an easier way to log this down. At the moment, I'm just copying a list of what got made on the Notes application of my smartphone with the hope that I remember to blog about it.

Here's what got made in 2016:

peach brandy, 1.5 pints refrigerated
strawberry-rhubarb syrup, 2 pints refrigerated

Extracts
lemon extract, 1 pint
chive flower-infused vinegar, 1 pint
blueberry-infused vodka, 1 quart
blueberry-infused bourbon, 1 pint

Salsas
Control batch salsa (jalapeno peppers), 5.5 pints
Hatch chile salsa (hatch chiles), 5 pints
Spicy salsa (Anaheim & jalapeno peppers), ... pints?
Harissa (dried chile negra, ancho chile, Calif chile), 1 pint refrigerated
La jiao jiang (hot chile paste), 0.5 pints refrigerated

Fruit butters/jams/preserves
Winesap apple butter, 6 pints
Peach bourbon jam (burnt)
Peach bourbon jam (normal)
Apricot-pineapple preserves, 1 pint, 3 half pints, 1 four-oz jar
Apricot-rosemary preserves, 3 half pints, 4 four-oz jars
Strawberry basil preserves, 5 half pints plus 8 oz refrigerated
Strawberry port wine jam, 5 half pints plus 8 oz refrigerated

Pickles/Pickled
Bread and butter pickles, 3 pints
Kimchi, 1 quart refrigerated

Slow Cooker: Stewed Pork Hocks

One way to add depth to any soup is to cook meat bones for a long time, say more than 6 hours. My parents would just cook this stove top for a couple hours, but I find that in these modern and subsequently lazier times, I would much rather start this in the morning and have it ready by dinner in the slow cooker.

It's quite a simple recipe and it makes a few things: a hearty meat stock that can be a base for other soups, a bone broth, and the pork itself can be chilled, sliced and served up with hot or cold noodle dishes. But, for me, I just like the meat and marrow part of the pork.

For those of you (like me) who had to look up what part of the pig the "hock" is, it's the part of the fore or hindquarters above the hoof and below the pig equivalent of the knee/elbow; as illustrated in this Wikipedia stub.

Ingredients

1-2 tbsp olive oil (if cooking by stovetop)
1 lb pork hocks
1 star anise
2-3 slices of fresh ginger, peeled
2-4 tbsp soy sauce
filtered water

To cook this by stovetop:

Brown the hocks in 1-2 tbsp olive oil (or any vegetable oil), add one star anise, a few slices of peeled ginger, 2-4 tbsp of soy sauce (depending on how salty you like it) and an amount of water that covers the hocks. Bring to a boil then simmer covered until the meat is tender, 1-2 hours. Be sure to check on the pot every so often so that the water does not boil all away.

To cook this by slow cooker / crockpot:

Place pork hocks (about a pound) in slow cooker, preferably in a single layer. Add a star anise (one is plenty of flavor per pound of meat), 2-3 slices of peeled ginger, 2-4 tbsp soy sauce, and enough water to cover the hocks. Cook on LOW for 8 hours.

If putting raw meat into a slow cooker is a concern, you can also brown the hocks before putting them in but this is not necessary and it means more stuff to wash.