Make Me Cook

Welcome to another Food ABC lesson!

Food ABCs - Letter B
Blini

Commonly mispronounced by even culinary snobs as BLI-nee, the correct pronunciation is BLEE-nee.
Blin (prounounced BLEEN) is the singular form of the word, while Blini refers to more than one.
Okay, sure now you know how to say it but what the heck is it, right?
Think teeny thin pancake.
Blini originated in Russia. They are yeast risen buckwheat pancakes about the diameter of a Red Bull can (about 2 inches).
How are they served? Do you eat them with syrup, fruit and a side of bacon?
Nope, Blini are used sort of the same way a cracker is used in an appetizer course. Traditionally Blini are topped with sour cream, then smoked salmon and/or caviar. They are quite delicious!

You want your Blini to come out thin… thick is bad form for your Blini to have, they are not thick like american pancakes. Think somewhere between a Crepe and an American style pancake and you are doing good.
You don’t have to stick with traditional toppings, you can venture out and top it with just about anything you would put on a cracker. They are absolutely elegant and if you make some… you better make plenty becuase they will get gobbled up.

I’ll throw a recipe at you too, that way you just learned a new culinary word and you have a recipe to back it up and impress your guests for the holidays with an elegant taste of Russia.

Traditional Blini Recipe
2 Eggs, room temperature
2 cups Warm Milk
1 Packet of Yeast
2 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
2 1/2 cups Buckwheat Flour
2 tablespoons Olive Oil

Olive Oil for frying

Make sure your cold ingredients have stood until they are at room temperature.

Warm your milk until it is warm to the touch but not scalding, otherwise you will kill your yeast off. In a bowl mix together the milk, yeast, sugar and about 1/2 cup of the flour. Let it sit for 30 minutes. This is your “starter” and it needs to ferment.

After it has fermented, add in the salt, baking powder, 2 tablespoons of oil and another 1/2 cup of flour. Whisk it carefully until blended. You are going to repeat this step, adding 1/2 a cup of flour in at a time until your flour is gone and your batter pours from your whisk in a thick ribbon. You should have the consistency of a slightly loose cake batter. If your batter is too thin, add in a little more flour until it is the right consistency.

Lightly oil your skillet over a medium heat. Take a large tablespoon and ladle the batter into the pan. Roll the batter a bit (same as you would a crepe) until you form a little disc. Let it cook until you see lots of little bubbles appear on the surface. Wait until your bubbles pop and dry, this should take about a minute, then flip over your Blini and finish it off for about 20-30 seconds more. Yank it out of the pan and you are done.

Serve it with a dollop of sour cream and top that with either caviar or smoked salmon… or be decadent and do both! Remember, you can use these the same as you would use a cracker, so don’t let tradition hold you back from making something special for your friends and family.

Blini also keep well, place small square of parchment between them and keep them in the fridge in a ziploc bag. You can easily make these a day or two ahead.

Have you ever eaten food with so much flavor, so much intensity that you think about it long after it is gone. When you speak of it days later your eyes close tightly and you say things like “Mmm-mmm that was soooo good, I could go for some more of that right now!”

Enter Umi Sake House. Formerly a swank hipster place called the Bada Lounge, now re-invented into a sushi bar and sake house. On a recommendation from Culinary Fool who is a fellow Seattlite and food blogger we went there. We took some very special friends of ours who were in from out of town. They had requested sushi and so we thought we would give this Umi place a whirl. We had promised to pick up the tab, which later turned into a wrestling match in the private tatami room for the check and well… we lost. Thank you B&K, you wonderful bastages

We must have ordered one of everything, or at least it felt that way. Everything was AMAZING! I can highly recommend things such as the Tarantula Roll and especially Legend of the Roll. Their Toro Mu-Miso… simply divine. But the thing whose flavor lingered delightfully in my mind was the Chilean Sea Bass. Delicate sea bass in a spicy sweet tomato sauce, with juicy tomato halves and crisp sweet green beans. People… this is what food is about right here. The dish was passed around the table and it was never seen again. It was scarfed up in mere seconds with everyone making those funny food-gasm faces and humming “mmm-mmmm” while chewing. A wonderful time spent with some most honored and loved friends, peppered with amazing food. Can you ask for anything more?

Well… we went back with another friend of ours on Thursday. Of course we ordered the Chilean Sea Bass again. This time I paid special attention to the details… the heat, the sweet and the juicy. And this time there was no wrestling around for the check after dinner… although the wrestling bit is pretty entertaining.

Those of you who live in the Seattle area… go to Umi Sake House. Drop what you are doing and go there now and order this dish. Those of you who live elsewhere… fear not. In paying special attention I somewhat dissected the dish and put together a recipe inspired by the flavors I experienced there. It’s not perfect, but it is exceptionally close. Tonight the dish made it to the table to have it’s picture taken and once we started to dig in we ate it right off the serving plate, it never touched our dinner plates and it didn’t have a chance to get cold.

Umi-Style Chilean Sea Bass
2 8 oz. Sea Bass Filets(Or you can sub Halibut)
10 Green Beans, ends removed and chopped in half
4 Cherry Tomatoes, halved

Spice Rub
1 1/2 teaspoon Chili Powder
3 teaspoons White Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt

Spicey Miso Sauce
1 teaspoon Miso Paste
2 teaspoons Tomato Paste
1/2 teaspoon Chili Powder
1/4 cup White Wine
1/4 cup Mirin - Sweet Rice Wine
1/4 cup Chicken Broth

Mix together your spice rub and set aside.

Mix together your Spicy Miso Sauce in a bowl and set it aside.

Get a skillet and put a little oil in it, not alot, just enough so the fish does not stick. Heat the oil over medium-high heat just until it gets hot. Watch it carefully so that it does not smoke. If it starts smoking dump it out and start over, otherwise your dish will taste like burned oil.
Dredge your fishy filets in the spice rub, just so they have a nice coat on each side, it’s not important to have it on the sides, top and bottom is perfect.
CAREFULLY put the fish into the heated oil, you are going to sear it on each side for about 3-4 minutes. We are searing it just long enough that the sugar in the spice rub carmelizes and so the fish stays ultra juicy.

Once the fish is finished searing remove it from the heat and put it on your serving plate. Now carefully pour the sauce into the hot pan, heat it until it starts to bubble. It won’t take long at all maybe 3 minutes. Throw in your green beans and tomatoes, kind of stir those little suckers around for a minute or two, until they are heated. Now take the skillet full of piping hot sauce and carefully pour it over the fish.

You’re done!
From start to finish this should take you about 15-20 minutes to whip together. It’s really quick, healthy and totally impressive once you serve it up.
Now share this with some special people. Spread the love!

Big ups to Umi Sake House for inspiring this dish. This doesn’t mean I’m not ordering it when I go there hehehe

I’ll need to give you folks a little history behind this recipe posting. I recently started a blog over at this site called VOX. It’s been the place where I’ve been putting my daily ramblings, okay so sometimes not daily but fairly regularly. I wanted to keep my food blog clear of me spouting off about jerkholes who play midnight golf and break out car windows… stuff like that.

So a little while back I had mentioned that I’ve been recently suffering from horrible migraines. I’ve never had headaches in my life up until about this past year and a half… migraines suck dirty butts, plain and simple. I can usually feel when they are first coming on, that dull constant pain right behind the eyes and little white flashes, so this last time I thought “I’m going to make scones!” Why? I don’t know. For some weird reason I thought if I made scones then my world would be right again.

Well guess what…. I made those scones and before I finished the first one my migraine was gone. Since I customarily take two Excedrin Migraine I thought it was best to have two scones as well. Just to be safe though…. I had three, better safe (and stuffed!) then sorry right? So I made a little post over at VOX to share with those who had given me all kinds of advice to help in getting rid of migraines, and I totally spaced off putting the recipe over here! I will make myself available for floggings later.

So I posted the picture up over at my photo sharing on flickr and uploaded it to my stock portfolio too. Since posting it at those two places I’ve been asked for the recipe from countless folks. So I decided to post it here, since this is where everyone comes to find my recipes. So I must share with you my baking therapy… Lovely hot scones!

Kelly’s Scone Medicine
2 cups/280 grams Flour
1/4 cup/50 grams White Sugar
2 teaspoons/10 grams Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon/2 grams Salt
1/3 cup/76 grams Cold Butter (cut into chunks)
1 large (that’s metric large too) Egg (lightly beat that sucker)
1/2 cup/120 ml Whole Milk

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

You can put down a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet if you want to prevent the scones from sticking, but you don’t have to if you don’t have it. Just make sure to remove the scones from the ungreased cookie sheet while they are still hot.

Okay the mixing part.

Combine all your dry ingredients into a bowl. Mix it up… see that was easy! Okay now take that cold butter and toss it in that dry stuff you got there and use a pastry blender to “cut” the butter into the dry mixture. If you don’t have a pastry blender you can use forks or two knives. Don’t do this in a food processor or with an electric blender, that will overwork your dough and you will end up with doorstops instead of flakey scones. We don’t want that do we.

Okay, keep cutting that butter into the dry stuff until it looks like a coarse meal, like little balls of butter and flours about half the size of a green pea. Now we are ready for the egg and milk action. Combine your slightly beaten egg with the milk, mix it up good until the milk turns all pale yellow then dump it into the flour and butter mixture. Using a large spoon (of the wooden variety is my preferred spoon) start mixing in the milk and egg. Don’t over mix, you are going to JUST mix it to get the flour stuff all moist. This dough will be sticky, so don’t fret.

Divide it up into 3 equal portion. Take one portion out and put it onto a well floured board. You are going to knead it about 5 or 6 times. The trick is when you press your dough flat, flip it over then fold, then press flat again. Repeat that the 5 or 6 times I mentioned. What you are doing is folding the floured side together, this is what makes those lovely flakey layers you are after.

Now make that kneaded dough into a little mound about 5 inches (12.7cm) in diameter. The center of your little mound should be slightly higher than the outside rim, so it’s kind of like a dome. Now take a big knife and cut it into half and then half again so you have 4 (and that is 4 for you metric users out there) equal pieces.

Now what I like to do is brush the tops of my scones with milk then sprinkle a pinch of turbinado sugar onto them. You don’t have to do this, you can leave them plain if you want.

Stick them on your cookie sheet and bake them for about 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown. Top them with butter, clotted cream or marscapone cheese with fruit preserves. YUM!

Now go make and take your medicine!

Dammit… I’ve said it once if I’ve said it a million times that Mangoes are sexy! I mean come on… they blush for you. Okay well some of them do at any rate. Those large green variety have no shame at all and stay green, feigning being unripe tempting you to turn away from their sexy sweet and succlent orange fleshy interior. Meanwhile other mangoes blush a rainbow of green to yellow to crimson just begging to be devoured. And do I need to mention (okay, YES I DO) that when you turn two of them so the stem end is facing you and you have a pair of voluptuous… well you get the idea. Better than melons, because mangoes are SEXY!

So on my counter I have had for the past week or so these two ginormous green mangoes. These guys are so big that you would need three adult hands to properly hold one, they were just a wee bit smaller than an American Football, if that gives you any idea on size. So Ras and I were sitting here thinking of things to make. The obvious things like Sticky Rice and Mango, Mango Chutney all came to mind. Then Ras said “Why are there no Mango Preserves, I bet preserves would taste delicious.” The light bulb above my head came on and lit up the room. I immediately ran to the kitchen and started peeling and hacking them in to little cubes.

Fueled by Rasmus’ ponderings, I have devised a preserve like no other. I’ve infused these preserved mango-licious cubes with lime juice and zest and ground red chili flake… just enough to make it interesting, think of how you would use cinnamon in like Apple Butter, that’s how we are going to use the chili flake today. Since Rasmus is my Man-Muse™, I’ve decided to name it after him. Awww.

So without rambling on too much longer here is the recipe (I’ve done a half measurement for those who don’t want to make a huge batch- you will find that number on the left side of the bar that looks like this: | in italics):

Rasmus’ Mango Preserves
3 | 6 cups Ripe Mango, peeled, pitted and diced
3/4 | 1 1/2 cups White Sugar
1 | 2 Limes, zested and juiced
Pinch to taste | scant 1/8 teaspoon Ground Red Chili Flake
1/8 | 1/4 cup water

In a large saucepan combine all of the above ingredients. Zesting the lime BEFORE juicing it is always best, it’s damn near impossible to zest an already squeezed and mangled lime. ***Hint: You may wish to hold back half of the chili flake and adjust it accordingly to your taste, remember that the chili flavor will intensify as the mixture cooks down.
Cook it over Medium-High heat for about 30-45 minutes stirring constantly. The mixture will look something like thick applesauce, that will be when it is done. As it cools it will gel up some more. Enjoy!!!

Serving suggestions:
–Serve it with pork chops instead of applesauce.
–Stir-fry shrimp with green peppers and add it in.
–Toast an english muffin. Top with preserves and top that with ham and an egg.
–Take wild greens, put on some thinly sliced duck breast, top the duck with it!
–Put it on Ice Cream!
–Put it in your yogurt with some crushed pistachio or macadamia nuts
–Eat it straight out of the freakin’ pan with a spoon because it’s that damn good!

Enjoy!!!!

Oh yeah baby… that’s what I’m talking about. Comfort food. First of all, let me send out an apology to my vegan friends for the graphic image I’ll make it up to you later (I’ve got something special in the works because I like vegan food too!)

So this will be a quicky recipe for the meat eaters. It’s a no brainer, throw it in a pot, stick it in the oven and walk away for a couple hours. Dinner.

What is it? Oh my, oh my. Your looking at the picture and thinking it’s your old run of the mill potato and carrots Yankee Pot Roast aren’t you. Oh no! This is special, calling forth the rich and aromatic flavors of the fall season. Get ready to have you socks blown off and to have your nose have multiple orgasms. Yes, you heard me right… it’s that damn good!

Savory Drunken Fall Pot Roast
1 Chuck or Roast cut of Beef (you can use Pork if you prefer)
1 large Celery root, peeled and cut into sticks
5 plump Whole Carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
1 Sweet Onion, crudely chopped in large pieces
10 whole Cloves of Garlic, peeled
1/4 cup Garlic Oil (see recipe below)
3 cups Merlot (stuff good enough you can drink it)
5-6 whole fresh Bay Leaves (or 8 dried)
Few pinches of Coarse Ground Seat Salt and whole White Peppercorns

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees C.
Unlike a medium rare roast beef, we are not going to sear this slab of flesh. We want it to ooze its juices out into the vegetables and into the wine. Take a dutch oven or a ceramic crock, pour half of the garlic oil into the bottom. Scatter half of the onions on to the bottom of that and then place the meat in the middle of the pot. Scatter the celery root, carrots, garlic and remaining onion alongside the meat. Carefully pour the wine around the vegetables and take the remaining garlic oil and pour it over the meat and vegetables. Season the meat with a few pinches of corse sea salt and whole peppercorns. Finish it off with a scattering of bay leaves.
Cover it tightly with a lid or with foil and put it in your preheated oven for about 3-4 hours. Check it to make sure that there is liquid in there, you want it to “stew” in its juices. The longer you leave it the most tender the meat will become. The consistency you are after here is falling apart at the touch.

So simple, chop, scatter, cook and enjoy!
Once it is finished you can dish it up onto a platter, meat in the center with vegetables surrounding it. Take that left over juice that it was stewing in and make it into a gravy. You can do this by thickening it with a little cornstarch/water mixture and bringing it up to a boil. Very quick and easy.

Garlic Oil
3 heads of garlic, cloves seperated
2 whole shallots roughly chopped
3 cups Canola or Olive Oil

Take a glass or corning ware oven-safe pan. Pour the oil into it and randomly place the garlic and shallots throughout the oil. Slow roast at 200 degrees until carmel colored ooze starts to come out of the garlic and shallots. Take it out of the oven and let it cool. Once it is cooled off, discard the deep fried garlic and shallots and strain the oil into a glass bottle. Cap it and use it whenever you want a savory punch in salad dressings or for cooking.

Enjoy!!!
And tell me that your entire house didn’t just smell like roasty heaven! I’m dying over here, I wish you could all smell it!!!