Setagaya Boro-Ichi

I am in Tokyo this week on business, and had a weekend to do some exploring.  I saw that a sort of street fair was going on, so I decided to check it out. 

I started my day with a quick bite at a bakery in Shinjuku station.  They didn't have any English on the signs next to the choices, so I grabbed a pig in a blanket, one of my usual favorites, and something that looked like a sweet pastry.

The sausage thingy was damn tasty.  The crust is green from just a bit of seaweed that was in the dough.  Then I took a big old bite of my pastry.  To my great disappointment, it wasn't sweet.  The filling was mashed potato which had been covered with a sauce that although it looked fruity, was actually made from fish roe.  Not what I had in mind.  Off to the festival.

The Setagaya Boro-Ichi has apparently been going on for 430 years. Basically it's like a giant flea market, with over 700 vendors, which goes on for blocks on end. You can find all manner of things there, stylish handbags, plants, antiques, kimonos, erotic posters, tools, you name it. 

I quickly realized I should have skipped breakfast. The festival was a street food dreamland.  One the first items I had was a sausage on a stick, a common sight at Japanese festivals.

Two other street food classics you see all over Japan are Okonomiyaki, a sort of pancake with a variety of savory ingredients, and yaki soba, a stir fried noodle dish.  I wasn't in the mood for either of these, but they did look good.

Many sections of the festival were so crowded with people, that you literally could not stop to look at things.  The massive throng just pushed you along.  It was a little unsettling at times and definitely not for anyone who is claustrophobic or has issues with personal space.  I saw a number of people giving their kids piggy back rides because they would be quite easy to lose otherwise.

A bit further down the market the crowd cleared up, and I found a vendor making yakatori from beef.  The aroma drew me in, and it's hard to go wrong with grilled meat.  These ones were quite tasty.

I saw several vendors grilling mochi over charcoal.  If you've never had it, mochi is a cake made by pounding sticky rice into a smooth dough.  It is served as a sweet, stuffed with sweet bean paste, but it is also often used in savory applications.  When grilled, the mochi gets a toasty flavor sort of reminiscent of plain popped corn.  The texture is what usually turns off westerners.  It's very sticky and elastic.  I was really turned off the first time I tried it, but over the years it has really grown on me.

As I was wrapping up my trip to the festival, I came across a vendor selling imagawayaki, a filled cake made from a pancake like batter, and filled with sweet fillings.  They are served nice an warm, perfect for a cold winter day.  I wasn't sure what the filling was on these, but I grabbed one anyway.  Turns out the filling was a creamy custard which tasted of maple. 

Warm imagawayaki in hand, I made my way back to the train station for the trip back to my hotel.  Below you'll see a few more images from the festival.  Please enjoy.

Smoking inside the house.

My wife came through, and gave me one of the few items on my x-mas list, a stove top smoker.  I've toyed with the idea of getting one of these things ever since I saw Jeff Blank use one to smoke a few quail during a cooking demonstration at the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival about 10 years ago.  I have a gas grill, a charcoal grill, and one of those electric kettle style smokers already, so I kept putting the purchase off.  Now that I have one, I suspect it's going to become one of the most used pieces of equipment I have.

If you've never seen one before, a stove top smoker is basically a roasting pan with a tray, a rack, and a slide on lid.  To use it, you simply put about a tablespoon of wood shavings, sawdust really, in the bottom of the pan, place the tray and rack directly on top of that, add the food to be smoked, slide on the lid, and place it on a burner set to medium.  After about five minutes the chips will be smoking away, but as long as the lid is firmly in place, the kitchen remains pretty much smoke free.

The main reason I wanted one of these things is for smoking seafood.  This always seemed like more trouble than it was worth in my regular smoker, which requires a least a little advanced planning, and is a bit of a mess to clean up.  It's fine if you're going to smoke a brisket or a couple of chickens, but for a fillet of salmon that requires just 20 minutes of cooking time, the hour or more of setup and cleanup were a real non-starter.

For my first attempt with the new toy, I picked up a fillet of wild salmon, and a rainbow trout.  I brined them both for about an hour, then seasoned them with pepper, an smoked them using alder wood shavings for 25 minutes.  We ate the salmon for dinner, and stashed the trout in the fridge for a later use.  The salmon was tasty, with a nice mild smoke flavor.  The next day I made salad with the chilled trout, arugula, and a goat cheese vinaigrette dressing.  The trout was amazing.  Because it was thinner, it took the smoke much more than the salmon had, yet it hadn't dried out at all.  Beautiful.

For the second go, I bought some large shrimp, and more trout.  I gave them the same brining treatment as before, but this time, I used a mix of alder and cherry wood.  The cherry produces a stronger smokey flavor.  We haven't had the trout yet, but the shrimp went into a smoked shrimp cocktail I made for a party last night.  They were a big hit and disappeared in about 10 minutes.  I think quail are next on my list.

Stovetop Smoked Shrimp Cocktail


1 lb 20-25 count shrimp
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
ground black pepper to taste


1 cup ketchup
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp fresh grated horseradish
juice of one lemon
salt to taste


Peel and devein the shrimp, leaving the last segment of shell and tail intact.  
Make a brine by whisking the kosher salt and sugar in 1 quart of water until completely dissolved.  
Add the shrimp to the brine, and refrigerate for one hour.  
Remove the shrimp from the brine, and rinse briefly under cool tap water to remove the excess brine.  Pat the shrimp dry with paper towels.  Season with black pepper.
Set up the stovetop smoker using 1 1/2 tbsps of wood shavings.  Line the tray the rack sits in with aluminum foil for easy clean up.  Smoke the shrimp for 20 - 25 minutes until just cooked through.  Remove the shrimp from the smoker, but reserve any juices that have collected in the smoking tray.  These are salty smokey goodness that can be used to season the cocktail sauce.


While the shrimp are cooling, prepare the cocktail sauce.  Combine the ketchup worcestershire sauce, horseradish, and lemon juice in a small bowl.  Taste.  If it needs salt, add a tablespoon or two of the reserved smoking juices if you have them, otherwise just season with salt.  


Serve the shrimp chilled or at room temperature with the cocktail sauce.

Bunuelo Recipe

As promised, here is the recipe for the bunuelos. 


BTW - I've stopped using the tilde over the N when spelling bunuelos because I think it was causing problems with the way the text was wrapping in the blog.  


Bunuelos

4 cups Sugar
6 tbsp cinnamon

1 Stick of cinnamon
1 tbsp anise seeds (optional)

2 lbs flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs beaten
1/2 c shortening

1-2 Q Peanut or canola oil

Put 2 cups of water in a small sauce pan, add the cinnamon and anise seeds.  Bring to a boil then turn off the head and allow the tea to steep for 20-30 minutes.  Strain into a small bowl or measuring cup.

Sift together flour and baking powder, into a large mixing bowl.  Add the shortening and mix in with your fingers or pastry blender until completely incorporated, and the mixture is the texture of corn meal.
Add eggs and about 1 cup of tea.  Mix adding additional tea until a soft smooth dough is formed.  Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. 

Tear off portions of dough to make ping pong sized balls.
Allow the balls to rest for 1 hour covered with plastic wrap or a damp towel.

Heat 1 Q of oil in a large deep pot to 350 degrees.

Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a large cake pan or roasting pan until completely combined.

Roll the dough into large circles as thin as possible.  Streach the dough by hand until it is paper thin. 


Fry the pastry in the hot oil until pale golden brown and crispy, about 20 seconds per side.  Transfer to a paper lined sheet pan to drain.  


Working with one at a time, transfer the bunuelos to the roasting pan filled with cinnamon sugar, and coat both sides liberally with the sugar.  Gently shake off the excess sugar, and move the finished bunuelo to a box or platter.   


Makes about four or five dozen bunuelos

Buñuelos

Depending on where you are in Latin America the term buñuelos
can mean different things. In Central America they are balls of dough,
sometimes filled with cheese, then fried. In most of Mexico, if you ask
for a buñuelo, you are going to get a very thin piece of fried dough,
either dipped in a syrup made from piloncillo, or sprinkled with
cinnamon sugar. The latter variety are the ones I grew up on.

If you've never had one, a buñuelo is a paper thin, extremely fragile,
wafer of fried dough, cinnamony and delicious. They are best eaten
either over a sink or outdoors because when you bite into them, they
have a tendency to shatter, sending a shower of cinnamon, sugar, and
crumbs all over the floor. They melt in your mouth nearly as quickly as
cotton candy. They are very light. As a joke, I have considered sending
the recipe in to Cooking Light magazine as a healthy alternative to
funnel cakes.

My family used to make these every year during Christmas. It's a bit of a
project...very labor intensive, so it helps to have a lot of people
around to pitch in. The tradition sort of died out after most of my
siblings went off to college. About a dozen years ago, my sister Diana
got together with her friends Bob and Lise Burson, and started the
tradition back up. Now every year on Christmas eve, a group of us
convene at the Burson's house, roll up are sleeves and get to work.

The dough for buñuelos is quite similar to a dough for flour tortillas, but
instead of plain water, you use a tea made from water that is steeped
with a cinnamon stick and some anise seeds for about 30 minutes. I've
misplaced the recipe, but I will post it in a day or two. Once the
dough is made it needs to rest for an hour or so, then it's rolled into
roughly ping pong sized balls. Then the assembly line needs to get to
work. A round or two of mimosas will motivate them and make the time
fly by.

You really need a crew of at least four to get the job done, but seven or eight is ideal.

The positions are as follows:

Roller - this persons job is to roll the small balls of dough into relatively
round, paper thin disks. We have found it works best to have a group of
three or four people rolling out dough, as this is the most time
consuming part.

These disks of dough are then passed to the...



Stretcher - this person takes the already very thin dough, and stretches it even
thinner. In the end, the dough should be thin enough to read a
newspaper through. A granite counter top works great. You just lay down
the pastry, then lift an edge, stretch it out a bit, and lay it down
again, so it sort of sticks to the granite. Repeat working your way
around the dough, stretching it until it is impossibly thin. Sort of
like a strudel pastry.  

Once the dough is stretched, it's passed to the...

Frier - who as the name implies, fries the dough, flipping it once. This takes about 20 seconds per side tops.  

Once the dough is crispy, it's set aside on newspapers to drain, then is picked up by the...

Duster
- who very gingerly sets the buñuelo into a large roasting pan filled
with copious amounts of cinnamon sugar, then spoons sugar over the top.
The finished buñuelos are set aside in a safe spot. We have found
sturdy cardboard boxes work very well. You can stack them up 10 or 12
high with no problem. They are so light the bottom ones won't get
crushed. Just make sure your sister doesn't trip and fall on the box
instantly converting two hours of work into crumbs (yes this happened
once about 20 years ago).

One batch of dough makes a good four dozen eight inch buñuelos. In terms of
storage, you do can just keep them in the box. They will disappear
before they have time to go stale.

Salvage Operation

We had a hard freeze in Austin last weekend.  It was 24 degrees outside my house on Saturday morning.  I had moved all my potted plants to safety, but we did have tomato plants in the ground and they weren't so lucky.  When I went out to assess the damages, I found two big green tomatoes on one of the plants.  I didn't realize those were out there, and now they appeared to be frozen solid.  I went ahead and picked them and took them inside, figuring I'd end up throwing them away.

By mid afternoon those tomatoes had thawed, and to my surprise, they didn't turn to mush.  In fact cutting one open revealed that it was actually in pretty decent shape.  From what I could tell, only the outer 1/2 inch or so of flesh had really frozen, and even it was fine, perhaps a bit softer than the rest of the fruit.  I decided to try to make some sort of a preserve from the tomato.  I found an interesting recipe for tomato jam.  It called for several pounds of green tomatoes, but I was able to adjust the recipe down.

I diced the tomatoes, weighed them, then added an equal amount by weight, of sugar.  To that I added lemon zest, lemon juice, and half a stick of cinnamon.  I allowed the mixture to sit for a while to draw the juice out of the fruit, then cooked it over medium high heat until the fruit had turned translucent, and the mixture thickened.  I ended up taking the mixture a bit too far (probably to the soft ball stage), and I could see that if I had allowed it to cool, I would have wound up with a jar of green tomato taffy.  That might have been an interesting new confection, but it wasn't really what I was going for.   I could have cooked it some more to try to make green tomato Jolly Ranchers, but instead I added another several tablespoons of lemon juice to thin it out and hoped for the best.

Once it cooled, it ended up a bit stiffer than I'd like, but not unreasonably so, it looks beautiful, and the flavor is great.  It goes great on a thin cracker with a bit of goat cheese.  Yummy.   Next time I find myself with an abundance of green tomatoes, I may have to make a bigger batch of this to give out as gifts.

Thanksgiving 2009 - Post mortem.

Thanksgiving diner came off without a hitch.  I was a bit harried at the end, as there were a bunch of things that needed to be done at the last minute, sauteing green beans, making gravy, carving turkey, etc. but over all things went fine.   The standouts.  I'd say the turkey was delicious, the mashed potatoes are always a crowd pleaser, but my sister made what is known as "Mom's stuffing", and for me that was a highlight.  It is a really nice, light, rice based stuffing with sausage, apples, and pecans.

Mom's stuffing was the only stuffing we ever ate with our Thanksgiving meal, for all of the years I was living at home.  I've only prepared it once or twice, and it's been probably 7 or 8 years since I last had it.  I never knew where the recipe came from, so I recently got the story on it from my mom.  Apparently she saw the recipe in a magazine she was reading in a dentist's waiting room.  She doesn't recall what magazine it was, but since it was about 1970 I'd guess Better Homes and Gardens.  Mom is too polite a person to go and rip a page out of someone else's magazine, and she didn't have anything to write with, so she she did her best to memorize it.   Apparently she didn't write down the recipe when she got home, but that Thanksgiving, she put together the recipe from what she remembered.  It turned out so good, that she made it again and again each Thanksgiving.  One year my sister Martha asked mom for the recipe, and she told her she didn't have one, so Martha watched mom make it, and documented the recipe.

So here it is, Mom's Stuffing, or perhaps we should call it Gloria's Stuffing.  I have modified it slightly.  It called for 2 handfuls of pecans, whatever the heck that measure is, so I changed it to a half cup, and none of the dried herbs had any measurements, so I set them each to 1 tsp.  You can adjust these to taste.  Also, there are absolutely no instructions on the recipe card, so I provided a basic procedure.

Gloria's Stuffing

1 c. wild rice

3 c. chicken broth

1 lb. pork sausage

3 stalks celery chopped

1/2 green bell pepper chopped

1/2 onion chopped

2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped

1 c. seasoned croutons

1/2 c. chopped pecans

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. dried tarragon

1 tsp. poultry seasoning

1 tsp. dried basil

1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

• Cook the wild rice in the chicken broth until done, about 1 hour. 
  
• Cook the sausage in a large skillet over medium high heat, breaking it up as you go. 
  
• Drain off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat from the pan, then add the celery, onion, and bell pepper.  Saute the veggies until translucent, about 10 minutes.
• Turn the temperature down to medium, add the apples, and cook stirring occasionally until the apples begin to soften about 10 minutes. 
• Add the remaining ingredients, and continue cooking for about 5 or 10 more minutes stirring occasionally.  Add a bit more broth if the mixture seems a bit dry.  In the end the apples should be tender but not mushy and the croutons should be soft.
  
• Adjust the seasonings and serve.
  

Notes

• Mom always used Jimmie Dean sage breakfast sausage, but an upgrade to a good quality pork sausage would work, but I'd add some rubbed sage to the spices. 
• You can use other rices.  We often used a rice blend that you can buy in bulk that is a mixture of long grain brown rice and wild rice.

The brined heritage turkey was great.  It's the third year in a row that I prepare my turkey this way, and I am not sure when, if ever, I'll change what I am doing.  Thanksgiving is about tradition after all.  My camera lens was mangled and not functioning when I was preparing the bird, but I documented my process in a Flickr photo album a few years ago, which can be found here.




Of the two pies I made for desert, the Praline Pecan Pie, from a Cooks Country (Cooks Illustrated) recipe was the hands down winner in my book.  It's loaded with spices, and the topping is sweet, crunchy, and slightly salty.  I served it with some fresh whipped cream.  Delicious.  The recipe can be found here.

I also made an apple pie, which I drizzled store bought cajeta over before serving.  It was tasty, but the sweet cajeta did not go as well with the tart apples as I thought it would.  However, I was the only one who was disappointed by it, so perhaps I'm being too critical.  It certainly looked great.

Thanksgiving 2009 - Let the games begin.

I'm hosting Thanksgiving at my house for my mom and several siblings.  I've been working out the menu, and it looks a little excessive as most Thanksgiving menus tend to look.  I'm doing most of the work myself, because I love it.  I did ask my sister to bring a salad and some stuffing, or more accurately, dressing, since it's not actually going to be stuffed in the bird.

Here's how this years menu is shaping up:

Starters - a country style Rabbit Pate from France, Quail Liver Mousse from Dai Due (a wonderful local gourmet foods company/supper club), Cranberry Pecan Goat Milk Ricotta from Wateroak Farm.

Green salad with vinaigrette dressing
Brined roasted heritage turkey with gravy
Cranberry sauce
Dressing/Stuffing - TBD
Mashed potatoes - Yukon golds and sweet
Green beans with tomato confit (the ones from my earlier post are still holding up)
Curried creamed onions
Sweet potato biscuits

Apple pie with cajeta drizzle
Praline pumpkin pie
Whipped cream

Then on Friday, a quick trip to the cardiologist.