Recipes: June 2006 Archives

What's not to love about a cool Caprese salad of thickly sliced heirloom tomatoes and fresh buffalo mozzarella drizzled with 15-year-aged balsamic vinegar? Nothing, except the price tag. Good ingredients are always worth the splurge--if you can--but let's be honest, if the choice is between rent and a pound of yellow sunrise heirloom tomatoes, it's going to be, "Hello Albertson's cherry tomatoes!" Still, summer is for everyone and so are Caprese salads, goddamnit.

Here we took some decent cherry tomatoes and braised them in olive oil and herbs to give them more flavor--it's a technique you can apply to tomatoes going into any number of dishes to make them richer-tasting. Plus, when you're done you have a tomato/basil infused oil to use for dressings and sauces.

Confit Tomato Caprese
1 pound cherry tomatoes
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
8 oz. fresh mozarella
2 cans white beans
2 oz. basil
4 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Habanero pepper (or Serrano)

Tomato Vinaigrette
2 Tbs. sherry vinegar
4 Tbs. tomato infused olive oil
4 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Give yourself enough prep time to pan braise the tomatoes and then chill them for a couple hours (or overnight). These suckers are great warm, but different beasts when cold. Fill a large, deep pan with the olive oil, tomatoes, Habanero, garlic, shallots, 4 basil leaves and bring up gently--covered--to medium heat. You're going to let this pan go for at least an hour, but check on it every 10 minutes to give it a little stir. Once the tomatoes seem close to bursting from their skins, remove from heat and let cool in the pan. Then strain the excess oil into a cup and set aside. Place the tomatoes in the fridge for a couple hours--along with the shallots, garlic and Habanero--to chill.

When you're ready to plate, start by making the vinaigrette. Heat the infused olive oil in a small skillet. Add the fresh garlic and shallots and sauté for 2 minutes. Then add the vinegar and shake pan (beware of flames). Add salt and pepper to taste, and then the lemon juice, and remove from heat.

Chiffonade the rest of the basil into thin curly strips and toss in a mixing bowl with the drained white beans. Add the tomatoes (toss the Habanero) and the vinaigrette. Then gently toss with your hands, being sure not to pop the tomatoes. Slice the mozzarella into nice ovals and place them on a large serving plate. Now, top the cheese with the tossed salad.

Beverage: Hopf Helle Weisse
Soundtrack: Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express

This pancake recipe is a hand-me-down from an old chemist, Alex's Grandfather. If you take the time to hunt down the required wheat germ and some proper flour, you will resolutely swear off pancakes from a box until the day you die. Grandaddy Brown did. Never again will you contemplate a $6 stack of fluff that will languish in your gut for the rest of a lackadaisical Sunday. Not that these thick flapjacks won't send you flying into a food coma--they will--but it will be a rocking-chair-on-the-stoop coma you can relish with old tyme vigor.

Make these treats for your sweetheart in bed, your friends after a night of drinking, or for your kids when they get off drugs. The only thing you'll think about after you eat them will be when you get to convert another in the war against Bisquick Mediocrity®.

Penultimate Pancakes
1 envelope dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1⁄2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup buttermilk, or soy milk.
1/3 cup honey
1 Tbs. molasses
1 1/2 cup flour buckwheat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
3 Tbs. warm water
6 Tbs. vegetable oil
2 eggs

For the Batter:
Gently mix the yeast, sugar, and warm water in a small bowl and cover for fifteen minutes. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. In a third bowl--a larger one--whisk together the eggs, veggie oil, buttermilk, honey and molasses. Check your yeast: if it's all foamy, gently mix it into the batter. Gradually mix in the dry ingredients and you're done.

To Prepare and Plate:
Heat a lightly greased nonstick pan on a medium flame. Feel out for yourself how big you want your cakes to be, we like ours to be about 2 inches in diameter. The batter will start to bubble and when the bubbles just start to set flip your cakes. Serve your pancakes hot with maple syrup, fresh berries, and a few leaves of minced mint.

Beverage: Mimosas
Soundtrack: Palace Music's Viva Last Blues

So you followed our orders last week, threw a summer kegger, and left a few cups of wicked brew sludge to use for a barbecue sauce-now what? Well, there are any number of things you could do with it, but here are two of the best ideas we had. Slow roast some sticky tempeh ribs and simmer some sweet black lentils to serve them on. The taste may seem redundant, but if presented alongside some vinegar-laden onion rings, you're golden.

Baby Back Tempeh Ribs
1 8 oz. package tempeh
2 Tbs. canola oil
1 cup Tapped BBQ sauce (re: "Hot Knives" vol. 5 no. 29)
salt and pepper to taste

Take the thawed tempeh and slice into thick 3-inch long strips. Then heat the oil in a large skillet, on high heat, and place the tempeh strips in one by one. After 3-4 minutes, or when crispy and brown, flip the strips onto the other side. Once fully browned remove from heat. Grease a casserole dish or deep baking pan and place the strips in neat, tightly packed rows. Then thoroughly cover them with your barbecue sauce and throw them in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until sauce has become bubbly.

BBQ Lentils
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups black lentils
1/2 cup Tapped BBQ sauce
1 Tbs. brown sugar.
1 bay leaf

Measure out your lentils and then wash thoroughly and dry. Fill a large saucepan with the veggie broth, the lentils and bay leaf. Bring to a slow rolling boil and then simmer about 20 minutes or until most, but not all, of the broth is reduced. Add the barbecue sauce and brown sugar and stir vigorously. Cook off more of the broth for about 10 minutes and then serve.

Balsamic Batter-free Onion Rings
1 yellow onion, skinned and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 tsp. cumin seeds
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

Heat your skillet on a high flame. Place the onion slices in the pan face down and dry sear them for two minutes. Sprinkle the top of each onion with the salt, sugar and cumin, and carefully turn them over and sear. Then add the balsamic. Once the vinegar is bubbling vigorously, cover your pan and reduce the flame to medium, or place your pan on a heat diffuser if you have one. Reduce the vinegar until it is almost completely gone. Drizzle the onions with the remaining ooze when you plate them.

Beverage: Stone's 2006 Vertical Epic Ale
Soundtrack: Tom Wait's Swordfishtrombone

Talk knives with us at www.laalternative.com/hotknives/

(Thai Green Curry Samosa
w/Ginger Wasabi Curry Sauce and Sweet Basil Edamame Chutney)

In most American markets, the Chinese restaurant has been issued a swift kick to the egg rolls in the last decade by three worthy competitors from elsewhere in the Orient: Japanese, Indian and Thai cuisines. Americans got a taste of curried paneer and nearly forgave India for developing nuclear weapons. Then we got addicted to sashimi and all its tart, vinegary accoutrements. And nowadays, you can't walk a block in any American city without literally stepping in a plate of pad thai.

So, when the L.A. Alternative's readers' choice votes piled in for the best Indian, Japanese and Thai restaurants in L.A., we felt it too obvious to review the now well-known features of a good plate of sushi, so the neck-and-neck results seemed almost inconsequential. Instead, we at Hot Knives were recruited to tame the tastes of these increasingly popular cuisines by combining them all in a sick experiment of Asian fusion. The result-quite surprisingly-was the best fucking samosa this side of Nagasaki.

Samosa Dough
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup chickpea flour
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup warm water
1 Tbs. vegetable oil

Mix both flours and the salt together in a food processor. Add the water and oil in a slow stream, pulsing sporadically. On a floured surface form the mixture into a ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 20 minutes. After chilling, remove dough, divide in half and roll into two flat circles. Then cut each circle into four quadrants creating four triangles.

Samosa Filling
1 large purple yam
3 Tbs. green curry paste
2 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 Tbs. sesame oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 can coconut milk
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 head cauliflower, sliced
3 cups canola oil

Take your large yam and stab it with a fork and place in large pot of boiling, salted water and cook for 10 minutes. While the yam boils, sauté the green curry paste in a saucepan with the oils and garlic for 2 minutes on high heat. Then add half the coconut milk and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove yam, run under cool water and chop into small chunks. Add the yam, peas and cauliflower to the pan with the rest of the coconut milk. Simmer until cauliflower is tender and remove from heat. Place mixture into a strainer and drain excess sauce into a bowl.

Heat the canola oil in a large wok for frying on high heat. Place one large spoonful of mixture in each quadrant of samosa dough and fold half of the quadrant over itself. Pinch edges of each samosa closed and fry for 2 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.

Ginger Wasabi Curry Sauce
2 small bulbs galangal
2 small bulbs ginger
2 Tbs. canola oil
1 Tbs. sesame oil
3 Tbs. mirin, or sake
1 Tbs. rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
2 Tbs. wasabi paste
leftover green curry from samosa filling

Skin the galangal and ginger with a spoon, slice. Heat oils in a skillet and sauté both roots for 3 minutes. Add the mirin, rice wine vinegar, cilantro and cook for 5 minutes. When most of your liquid has evaporated add the wasabi and strained curry. Cook for 15 minutes on low heat. Next, puree the mixture in food processor and set aside.

Basil edamame chutney
2 cups sweet basil leaves
3 Tbs. olive oil
2 thai red chiles, sliced
2 thai green chiles, sliced
1 Tbs. coriander seeds
1/2 cup shelled edamame
1 Tbs. tumeric
2 Tbs. rice wine vinegar

Wilt basil in a medium skillet for 3 minutes in oil on medium heat, then remove. Saute chiles in oil with coriander seeds. Add edamame, turmeric, vinegar, and wilted basil. Toss and remove from heat. Puree everything with just enough water to "move" the mixture in a food processor.

Garnish the samosa plate with Ginger Wasabi Curry Sauce and Basil Edamame Chutney, plus a splash of rooster sauce, wasabi and a pickled ginger rose.

Beverage: Yeti Special Ale sake bomb with Thai whisky chaser.
Soundtrack: Acid Mothers Temple's Electric Heavyland

When you fail to finish off a keg, you've clearly shirked your responsibilities and there is only one way to redeem yourself: turn it into to a thick and smoky barbecue sauce. Contrary to popular opinion, that brown sugar, hickory ooze is not such a mysterious undertaking. Here's an intermediate recipe that will make use of those cups of keg beer and boost your self-esteem. The only problem is that once you're going ape shit, smothering everything in your fridge with this sauce, you'll wish you had a keg of beer to go with it.

BBQ Sauce
4 cups keg beer (we used Arrogant Bastard)
2 cups whole tomatoes with sauce
2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3 Tbs. whole grain mustard
3 Tbs. Worcesterhire sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 Tbs. molasses
1/2 white onion, finely chopped
1 bunch celery leaves, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs. butter or extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbs. smoked salt/hickory liquid smoke
2 Tbs. corn starch
1 Tbs. hot sauce
1 shot bourbon whiskey

Tap what's left of the keg and throw 4 cups of beer straight into a medium saucepan and onto the stove. Bring it to a slow rolling boil and let go until beer reduces by half. (This recipe will work with the dregs from any keg, but it's far tastier with a darker, more boozey beer like Stone's Arrogant Bastard.) Set aside or refrigerate overnight.

When you're ready to make the sauce, start by heating a large pot with the butter or oil. Toss in the onion, garlic and celery leaves, and cook for five minutes. Pour in the shot of bourbon and cover for one minute. Uncover, add the tomatoes, and let cook for 10 minutes. Once the tomatoes are tender, squish them with a slotted spoon.

In a large measuring cup mix the broth, mustard, Worcestershire, vinegar and hot sauce. Bring the saucepan up to high heat and add the mixture. Once it boils, turn the heat down, add the brown sugar and simmer it for one hour, covered.

The sauce should have reduced by about an inch. Bring the heat up again and add the reduced keg beer and molasses. Let it cook off for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste. If it seems too tart add 1 Tbs. more of molasses.

To thicken it make a slurry. Fill a small bowl with 1/2 cup cold water, add the corn starch, and stir with your hands until milky and without clumps. Bring the sauce up to a hard boil one last time and add the slurry 1 tsp. at a time, stirring vigorously. It should visibly thicken. Set aside to cool, where it will thicken considerably more. Once room temperature, store in jars or bottles and use on everything for a week.

Beverage: Lagunita's Censored Ale
Soundtrack: Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street

Talk knives with us at www.urbanhonking.com/hotknives/