Whole-Meal Ficelles

shlomi on August 22, 2010

Backstory

Cook with what you have, the complementary concept to “write what you know.” I’m in love with alternative grains. I’ve got nothing against good old wheat, but it’s just… boring, you know?

This recipe yields enough for a person to have eight complementary-protein meals (each ficelle is about 190 calories). Serving suggestions (gawd, I feel like Susie Homemaker) include:

  • Nonfat yogurt infused with Vietnamese red sauce
  • A nice lamb stew
  • An unusual counterpoint to a very spicy eggplant cabbage curry

Ingredients

  • 4C unbleached flour
  • 1C millet
  • 1C quinoa
  • 1/4C flaxseed
  • 1/4C dried onion flakes
  • 1/4C granulated garlic
  • 1T light salt
  • 1T yeast
  • 1.5T sesame oil
  • 1t sugar
  • Optional: chili pepper flakes, cracked peppercorns, sesame seeds, or poppy seeds

Preparation

  1. Combine all ingredients but optional ones and oil in a mixer
  2. Add warm water until you’ve got a firm, slightly sticky ball
  3. Take 1/2 the oil and coat bowl. Roll dough into bowl, cover, and let rise 45-60 minutes
  4. Knead thoroughly, then divide into 16 equal balls
  5. If you’re using optional ingredients, spread them evenly on a cutting board
  6. Pull 2 oven baking racks and loosely lay tinfoil on them, letting them (so the ficelles can rest on them). Use the reserved sesame oil to LIGHTLY coat the tinfoil. If you’re a foodie with ficelle racks, please accept my total hatred of you 😉
  7. Roll each ball into a snake about 12″ (30cm) long
  8. If you’re using optional roll-ons, by all means roll them on. The ficelles.
  9. Lay the ficelles down on the racks and cover (if you’ve not got enough towels, support your local energy oligopoly and use plastic wrap)
  10. Let rise for 20 minutes, then set the oven to 475°F. Put a cast-iron or metal pan in the bottom with 1″-2″ water in it (don’t use Pyrex, it may well explode!)
  11. Let the ficelles rise an additional 15 minutes.
  12. Bake for 9 minutes, then reduce temperature to 425°F and bake for an additional 20 minutes.
  13. Remove, and let cool on wire racks (or flipped upside-down in their trays at least 15 minutes before cutting open.

Yield: 16 ficelles

Review: Torchy’s, Rudy’s and TacoDeli

shlomi on July 20, 2010

Tweetreview: Pretentious meets bad customer service meets… who cares. You can do better in Austin!

I’ve eaten here. A few times, in time for the morning rush and between breakfast and lunch. I’m a bit… geezer… as my kids put it, so I’ve got arms way too short for some menus. Torchy’s included, it turns out. Who ever heard of 8pt italic serif fonts on a menu? On a black background? Yeesh.

I don’t mind surly people: we need them, so we special folks can feel superior to them. But if they’re surly to me and fun and prancy with their co-workers, that’s just stupid. I mean, by definition we’re having a better life than they are: we’re not up at 5:30 making tacos for folks, and swabbing bathrooms in our copious spare time? No need to rub your relative serfdom in; we understand your passive aggression just fine.

Right, food review. I’ve had five tacos. Like at McCoffee-type places, I don’t use their corporate lingo. A taco is a taco is a taco. I ordered a barbacoa taco (those and napolitos, in my opinion, quickly define the mettle of a taco place).

“Barbacoa taco,” I said.

“What do you want on it?”

I considered that for a a moment; some people do want to contaminate their barbacoa with ingredients. “Nothing else,” I said after a moment.

“Like, um, a Democrat?” life-reject said. She pointed to aforementioned black page with italic, small-fonted text.

I looked down on it, trying to make sense of the haze that befalls people pushing 50, much to denial of their younger ilk. “No,” I said, trying for a little respect. “Just barbacoa.”

“On corn or wheat?”

Do they even serve barbacoa on corn? Sounds even more messy than it otherwise might be. “Flour,” I said shortly.

The meat was good. The taco was industrial. The service was marginal and the salsa was entirely forgettable.

And given the cost, not worth the time to purchase, let alone ingest.

It’s sometimes hard to grump about a taco place. After all, there are taquerias that are described with a number rather than a name (#17 is pretty good, if you can find it). There are showy ones like Maria’s Taco Xpress, pedestrian yet utilitarian places like Taco Shack, and wildly smiley ones like Rudy’s BBQ, which has GREAT breakfast crews; folks that really smile and really enjoy their jobs (especially with taskmasters — I mean, managers — close by). (Kidding: the folks and management there are efficient and VERY customer focused).

So Torchy’s has got to have more than snooty waitstaff and incomprehensible-to-folks-with-theoretical-disposable-income-customers menus.

Couldn’t find it. Pretty sad.

On the other end of the scale, however, aside from praising Rudy’s yet again — but they’re mainly a BBQ place, so they need to amscray from the limelight of this post — we have Tacodeli. I’ve known these folks for… uh…. too long? Ten years? Wow. They’ve got some fanatic employee loyalty, with managers who started as servers nine years ago. They make kick-ass tacos, and there’s not a thing they won’t do to make the customer happy. I’ve seen a customer return two tacos before being satisfied with the third, even if it was their… obtuseness… that was the source of the miscommunication.

Three dishes worth particular mention:

  1. Blanco pappas breakfast taco. Eggwhite and Mexican mashed potatoes. Great vehicle for the dona sauce (see below). Addictive. Best on flour.
  2. Fish tacos. Well, it’s more than one dish: there are a few they tout. Light, crisp ingredients, tasty. Corn is a nice wrapper for them.
  3. Vegetable burrito. This is my personal favorite, one per person per meal. Brown rice, beans, freshly grilled veggies. Simple and delightful.

Their dona sauce is heavenly; potent, creamy and, most importantly, a shade of green not usually found in nature. I may have to drive WAY out of my way for it, compared to a five-minute walk to Torchy’s but it’s well worth the effort: Tacodeli has the food, the service, the staff and the attitude that makes them, not Torchy’s, a great local chain. They’ve got locations across from Central Market in Central Austin, up by the IBM buildings on Braker, and down by Barton Skyway and Bull Creek.

Shitake Navy Split Pea Crock Pot Stew

shlomi on July 20, 2010

Backstory

Can’t beat the simplicity of crock pots and simple, healthy foods. Just about fat-free, great, complementary protein dish.

Ingredients

  • 1lb navy beans (7C full beans)
  • 1C split Peas, 1 cup
  • 3.5C (1-28oz can) Diced Tomatoes in Tomato Juice OR equivalent of 4 beef tomatoes
  • 1.5oz. Dried Shitake Mushrooms
  • 12 (30g) Chinese Dried Red Chili Pepper
  • 2T dried oregano
  • 2T parsley flakes
  • 1t cumin

Preparation

  1. Pre-soak the beans.
  2. If you’re not using canned tomatoes, dice the tomatoes
  3. Take all ingredients except mushrooms and put into a 4Q+ crock pot.
  4. Fill with water to 1″ from brim.
  5. Add dried mushrooms (no need to soak).
  6. Cover and put on “low for 8 hours.

 

Yield: 12-1C servings

Timing

Prep time: 5 Elapsed time: 8 hours (plus bean soak time

Cocoa Venison (or Tofu) Lentil Rice Chili

shlomi on July 20, 2010

Backstory

Cocoa adds an interesting flavor to the mix. Add habanero, serrano, or other peppers as you see fit. All you need with this amazing complete protein is a little salad!

Ingredients

Protein

  • 2lb Venison (substitute 1.5lb seitan or 2lb. extra firm tofu)
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 12 cloves (~1 bulb) Garlic
  • 2T ground cumin
  • 2T Paprika
  • .5T ground black pepper

Remainder

  • 1lb Lentils
  • 1lb Brown Rice, medium grain
  • 1/8C unsweetened cocoa powder
  • For added spice, toss in 4 sliced Habanero and a half-dozen Serrano peppers
  • 1.5T Tabasco Sauce
  • 1T ground black pepper

Preparation

In Crock Pot

  1. Toss in rice and lentils & 7C water.
  2. Add Tabasco, 1T black pepper and cooca
  3. If you’re heating things up, carefully slice the hot peppers and add, with seeds, to the pot

In Skillet

  1. Fry up the onions in the oil.
  2. Add the remaining spices until well blended.
  3. Add the protein and sliced garlic.
  4. Stir until browned.

When Rice/Lentils are done, toss in the skillet contents into the crock pot and stir in well. Let cook on low for an hour or two.

D. Serve and curl toes as appropriate.

Yield: 16-1C servings

Timing

Prep time: 5 Elapsed time: ~4 hours

Baba Ganoush

shlomi on May 17, 2010

Backstory

I simultaneously love and worry about making this food. Love because it’s a great food: healthy, delicious when warm and fresh, but a wonderful cool counterpart to fresh-baked bread. I worry about it because the main ingredient, eggplant, is a member of the nightshade family (as are tomatoes), and hence a possible low-grade toxin. I sometimes react to it (itchy mouth), so I’m never sure if I’ll react to this yummy dish or not.

Ingredients

  • One large eggplant
  • 1/4C te’chi’na (see recipe here)
  • 1 large or 2 medium lemons
  • 1T ground cumin

Preparation

  1. Wash the eggplant and remove the green head leaves, then, with a fork pierce it repeatedly all over. Use a fork, if you want to be effective, or an awl if you like yelling ha-HAAAH repeatedly.
  2. Put eggplant on tin foil, then onto a baking sheet and place into an oven on the upper shelf on broil. You can put it directly on a gas flame on top of the burner, or in a BBQ grill.
  3. Burn, Eggplant, Burn! Let it go for about 20 minutes. The skin will blacken, it will smell burnt. Persevere. At 20 minutes flip it over (carefully: it’s HOT). Give it another 5 minutes. Then start checking the ends at 5-minute intervals for squishy softness.
  4. Remove from oven and let cool.
  5. Split eggplant open with a knife. With a spoon, scoop out all the meat, picking out any charred skin. Or any skin at all, for that matter.
  6. Toss into food processor, along with 1/8-1/4C tehina (depends on the size of the eggplant). Start with less and add more during the blending process.
  7. Add the lemon, first the juice, then the (seedless) meat.
  8. Fire up the food processor and add the cumin powder.
  9. Add more tehina until the baba ganoush is creamy, not stringy.

Serves: 3 people for appetizers

Timing

Prep time: 10 minutes.  Elapsed time: 45 minutes

Cheap Great Steak

shlomi on May 9, 2010

Backstory

Every year a couple of great friends throw a MudBug Party: a crawfish boil, with plenty of sausage, beer, and other fine drinkables and comestibles. I’m on a fairly tight budget this year, but I wanted to make something my non-mudbug-eating daughter and others might enjoy. Costco trip ensued, and here’s a great dish that has a few serving suggestions at the end of the recipe.

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs. Eye-Round Roast (yes, the cheap stuff)
  • 1/2C Worcestershire sauce
  • 3/4C low sodium soy sauce
  • 1/4C tabasco (or chili flakes if you want more zing and less sodium)
  • 1.5T fresh ground mustard powder
  • 1/4C brown sugar or unsulphured molasses
  • Water sufficient to dilute marinade

Preparation

  1. Take all ingredients aside from meat and water and pour into saucepan.
  2. Heat until ingredients are well mixed (no need to bring to boil). Add water and continue stirring until you’ve got about 1.5Q of liquid. Set aside from heat and let fully cool. Then refrigerate for one hour.
  3. Take eye-round roast and trim excess fat.
  4. Cutting against the grain, slice into approximately 1/2″-3/4″ medallions.
  5. Pour cooled marinade into a gallon-sized freezer thickness sealable bag.
  6. Place medallions, one at a time, into the marinade. With a wooden spoon, make sure each medallion is fully coated before adding the next.
  7. When they’re all in the bag, remove all air from the bag and gently massage, ensuring that marinade coats all the meat.
  8. Place in fridge for 24 hours, massaging the bag and turning it ever 6-8 hours.
  9. BBQ grill as you would any steak

Serves: 18-24 medallions

Serving Suggestions:

Steaks

As shown above. I’d taste it before slathering it with any more condiments. The meat, especially if it’s not too well done, is surprisingly juicy and flavorful.

Middle Eastern Style Strips with Pita and Hummus

Cook to medium done. Slice cooked medallions into 1/4″ strips. Taking a pita, add 3-5 strips to a small bed of lettuce and tomatoes. Top with a generous dollop of hummus.

Texas Style Strips with Tortillas and Hummus

Cook to medium done. Slice cooked medallions into 1/4″ strips. Place 2-4 strips on a tortilla already layered with a generous slathering of hummus. Add spanish rice and guacamole to the mix, roll and enjoy.

Timing:

Prep time: 20 minutes + grilling    Elapsed time:25 hours

Review: Triumph Cafe

shlomi on April 22, 2010

Tweeview: Triumph has no-MSG, authentic phở with all the fixings in a family atmosphere. Way fast service, great prices. Discount program rocks!

You can catch vibe in a lot of places. I get a creative vibe while driving south under the 45th street bridge on MoPac (two patents, a novel, three short stories, a bunch of business ideas; no kidding!).

I think there are vibes in places as well. I’m not a spiritualist or anything like that; analysis might focus on lighting, angles and proportions and the number of good things seen inside it. Whatever.

Triumph Cafe is an amazing little place. It’s a family business; you’re probably going to be served by the same blood that preps the food, that cooks the food, that handles the books, etc. Like all Austin joints, the Hispanic presence is there, in the back room: busing, dishwashing. But the kids bus tables too. And grandparents keep a steely eye on things and kids when they’re around.

[Full disclosure: I’m on the board of a non-profit that has used Triumph’s tables and chairs for monthly and sometimes weekly meetings, generously and freely hosted. More later…]

Phở is the currency of the place; it’s served with traditional elements like sprouts and Vietnamese (not Thai!) basil. Also what I suspect to be stand-in ingredients like and jalapeno peppers instead of whatever’s local back “East.”

It’s a bit too salty for me. But the flavors of fresh ingredients and nicely cooked bánh phở (noodles) work well, and adding brown sauce certainly balances the equation (be still my straining heart).

The price is very competitive, and then it gets better. Their idea of frequent diner looks to me more like a real ‘friends and family’ sweetheart deal. Put money on one of their cards, and you get 10% added to your deposit (e.g., $50 becomes $55 when you charge up the card), and an additional 10% off the tab when you buy something. And, of course, they have the ubiquitous ‘get this card stamped ten times and then have an entree on us’ deal.

The service is equally amazing. I enjoy taking newcomers to Triumph, just to see the look in their eyes when the dish arrives almost as soon as they fill their soda glasses and find a seat. Someone do a time and motion study on these folks; they’re ridiculous!

It’s worth talking about the environment as well. The restaurant has a great patio, where smoking is discouraged (but unfortunately not enforced as city code requires). Despite that, Austinites tend to be polite folks, and I haven’t had more than a couple of cigarette issues at lunch. (I resolved it my way, but it didn’t make the news, so all’s good.)

The shot at the right (cadged from their web site) is fairly accurate, except for the lack of grackles which, like the white-tailed deer, ort some deity’s idea of humor in the guise of wildlife. You know the Monty Python routine with the liver donation and “I’m not done with it yet?” They’re like that, only with food. Yours, if you’re not keeping track of what’s going on around you.

The inside of the store reminds me of the Cuban-style bodegas in New York City. You want Phở? Covered. A nice silk tie? Office water fixture? Vietnamese coffee, freshly ground or in custom-made cans? Sure! Jewish Klezmer music occasionally displaces country, bluegrass, Asian fusion, or silence.

I’ve come in when I was the one and only, and come in to pandemonium, where two board meetings and a bible study group are meeting inside, and a book club is holding court in one end of the outside patio.

Throughout all this, the family at Triumph serves great food at GREAT prices with aplomb, a smile, and the odd tattoo and spiky ‘doo.

It’s an amazing place. The ‘vibe’ here is a comfortable, community, family establishment.Go. Eat. Enjoy! And remember to bring your stopwatch when you come: it’ll be the standard against which all other lunch and dinner restaurants will be judged.

Triumph Cafe â–  3808 Spicewood Springs 254 â–  Austin, TX 78759 â–  (512)-343-1875

Dine In  |  Take Out  |  Catering  |  Coffee  |  Silk Ties  |  Chotchkes

Mongolian Steak Shards

shlomi on April 22, 2010

Backstory

Reverse engineered from the Mongolian restaurants, I’ve got this on tap for tomorrow as each kid has their own form of food insanity. Okay, here’s a joke: a carnivore, a vegetarian and a picky eater go into a restaurant. “We’d like to share an entree,” they say.

So this is for the meat-eater. I’ll integrate it into the vegetarian stir-fry (not given here) on my own. And the picky one? She can eat the mac and cheese… 🙂

Ingredients

Marinade:

  • 1/2C Ginger marinade
  • 1/4C Low-sodium soy sauce
  • 1 habanero pepper
  • 2C water

Food:

  • 2.5 lb. beef shoulder
  • 8 cloves garlic, finely minced
  • 1/2 a medium onion, finely chopped
  • 2T canola oil

Preparation

  1. Mince the habanero pepper and toss in with liquid marinade ingredients.
  2. Carefully trim fat from shoulder (2.5 lb. shoulder should render at least 1/3C of fat trimmed from meat).
  3. Slice meat across the grain into 1/8″ thick slices. When you come to fat deposits, carve ’em out.
  4. Put meat into marinade, shake well, then squeeze air out of bag and set in refrigerator to soak.
  5. Marinate for 12+ hours
  6. In wok or pan heat up oil. Toss in garlic and onion; stir until softened.
  7. Add strips of meat, making sure each gets browned a bit on both sides when it goes in.
  8. If you like it spicy, strain the marinade and add the habanero peppers.

Don’t overcook! a couple of minutes per slice of meat is more than enough (1 minute/side). Keep the onions and garlic in there until it’s all done, then pour off the remaining liquid and reserve to pour on the meat.

Serve as an entree or add to a larger stir fry. Serving sized based on a 3oz serving of meat. You’ll get a discount on the sodium since you’re not actually using all of it, but I’m not accounting for that. (So feel good about yourself but the numbers will have a separate statement for the press.) 🙂

Serves: 12

Timing

Prep time: 25 minutes Elapsed time: 12.5 hours

5.5:1 Quinoa Onion Bread

shlomi on April 22, 2010

Backstory

I’ve been do a LOT of cooking lately. By a lot I mean that I’ve tried to only make food from ingredients, and not buy ingredients. That’s been hard, but until I got my new steadily-paying gig, it’s been tough not to do that.

Bread and various riffs on it attract me: they’re easy and quick to get going, I can beat the crap out of the dough and vent on it, and it’s fun to watch powders and water get turned into this really cool food.

This bread was born of my interest in creating a biyali-type bread, redolent with onion, without the grief I believe is inherent in the dish. Bread I can do. Playing in odd ways… not ready for that (yet). I also love to add protein grains, usually quinoa, to make the bread a more satisfying dish. That has a downside for those looking to lose weight, this isn’t the bread for you.

Using the dried onion and sesame, instead of other oil, serve to intensify the flavor of the quinoa, and make this a great bread for cold cuts or, cubed and then baked, incredible croutons.

Ingredients

  • 5.5C unbleached organic flour
  • 3/4C dehydrated chopped onion
  • 1C quinoa (dry)
  • 1.5t salt
  • 1T yeast
  • 1T sesame oil

Preparation

  1. Proof yeast
  2. Mix dry ingredients
  3. Add proofed yeast
  4. Mix and add water until it’s a slightly sticky ball
  5. Grease with the almost all the oil and let rise 40 minutes
  6. Use remaining oil to loaf pan
  7. Turn dough into loaf pan
  8. Let rise another 40 minutes.
  9. Bake @ 350 degrees for 40 minutes
  10. Decant and let cool 20 minutes!

Serves: 10

Timing

Prep time: 7 Elapsed time: 57

shlomi on March 31, 2010

I’ll be doing reviews as well as recipes, starting this date. I’ve got such a backlog of recipes I figure it’ll be better to give a few reviews sprinkled in. I’m pushing the dates around so they’re salted throughout the blog. These aren’t expert critiques: I’m an eater, a bit of a foodie, but heavily influenced by the vibe of the place and the people.

So… enjoy!