Latkes

One set of fond memories growing up revolves around potato latkes.  Being Jewish means being a little outside the mainstream for holidays, but I can live with that -- especially when it comes to the food.  Almost every Jewish holiday revolves around some specific foods or abstaining from foods, and for Chanukah that means fried foods.  Yes, doughnuts are proper eating during Chanukah.  It gets better, we can eat ice cream to celebrate Shavuot.

Anyways, latkes are not always easy to make.  We used pre-made mixes a few times, which were convenient, but they weren't the same as homemade.  We hand-grated potatoes and onions when I was young, and I am glad I have a food processor now because I am lazy.  My latkes this year were made of shredded potatoes, chopped onions, chopped apples, eggs, matzah meal, dried chives, ground pepper, and salt.  I do have a few tips:

• After you've shredded your potatoes, squeeze them a handful at a time over the sink to get rid of excess moisture.
• If you use your food processor to chop your onions, squeeze them out over the sink as well.
• Do not turn the apples you are putting into your latkes into apple paste or apple sauce.

The final ingredient to add should be the salt.  Don't add it until you see that you have no liquid pooling at the bottom of your bowl.  The salt will draw liquid out from your latke mix after you mix it in, which is expected.  Just don't give the liquid at the bottom of your bowl a head start.

If you want to, you can squeeze your shredded potatoes out over a bowl.  I didn't do this step this year, but I have in prior years.  When you're done with squeezing potatoes, pour off the liquid carefully.  If you make baked goods, some recipes call for potato water for bread.  Leaving that aside, under the liquid should be some potato starch.  It can be helpful to add this back into your latke mix.

When frying latkes, use hot oil or fat, somewhere in the medium-high setting on your stove.  It will make them crispier and, paradoxically, they will absorb less oil.  Oh, and be ready to add more oil to your pan between each pan-ful of latkes, as even at high heat they absorb a lot of oil.  Letting finished latkes cool off on wire racks, preferably a rack placed over a half-sheet pan, can help wick away some of the oil.  If you don't have a wire rack, don't panic.  A dinner plate lines with paper towels works nicely too.

Happy new year to all!

Gnocchi

Slightly over a decade ago I worked in Marlborough, Massachusetts and had an actual hour for my lunch hour.  There was an excellent little Italian place near my workplace named Linguine's, which had only opened up a year or two before.  You wouldn't know it from the crowd that packed the place at lunch.  It's still there, still serving excellent food at generally reasonable prices, and still a place I think of any time I pass within ten miles of the place.

Though they make a very good Boston thin-crust pizza, the dish I loved most was their gnocchi -- I would always get the dish in their tomato sauce with fresh mozzarella and basil.  I tried to recreate it a few times at home, but never successfully.  Either I used an overly sweetened jarred sauce, or I didn't melt the mozzarella enough, or I didn't have fresh basil or fresh mozzarella on hand, or some combination.  A few years ago I had to cut down my gnocchi consumption, as these lovely miniature pasta-and-potato dumplings are usually heavily loaded with salt.

A couple of months ago I picked up a four-pack of De Cecco gnocchi at Costco.  I felt that with this gnocchi I stood a chance of making it properly at home.  The sauce I made earlier this week -- I did end up using a stick blender to smooth it out -- combined with the leftover fresh basil I didn't use in the sauce, made me ready to give the dish a whirl.  I figured that the low salt content of the sauce would help balance out the high content in the gnocchi and the moderate amount in the mozzarella.

I started heating the sauce and the mozzarella around the same time I put the water for the gnocchi in the pot.  It's a good thing I did, as I finally got the mozzarella to melt.  I tossed the cooked gnocchi with the mozzarella-laden sauce and fresh basil leaves, and enjoyed.

Now this said, the subtleties of the sauce were not properly brought out in this dish.  If I do this again anytime soon, a simpler red sauce or a vodka cream sauce will work fine.

If you want to try making this at home, here are my tips:

• Give the mozzarella at least 10 minutes to cook in the sauce, preferably closer to 15, and put the fresh basil on top about the same time you put in the mozzarella
• Get or make a relatively smooth red sauce, but avoid sweetened sauces
•  use an appropriately-sized skillet for the sauce, not a saucepot
• Use 4-6 oz. of fresh mozzarella and a about pint of sauce per 16-17.6 oz. package of gnocchi
• If you have good parmesan, romano or grana pradano cheese, anywhere from 1/4 to 1 oz. of it will add some good flavor, but it is not required
• Do not overcook or undercook your gnocchi
• If your gnocchi says to salt the water before cooking but you have a low-sodium diet, don't put the salt in the water.  They suggest that for taste purposes

This isn't a dish I recommend for every day, not that I have many I do suggest for daily consumption, but it is mighty tasty.

Homemade spaghetti sauce

When I make spaghetti sauce at home I usually use canned tomatoes.  They are convenient, they are fast, they are economical, and the right kind of canned tomatoes can be tasty.  In some cases they can be tastier than fresh tomatoes, because usually fresh tomatoes are picked before they are fully ripe and allowed to ripen on the way to your grocery store.

However, a couple of days ago I was shopping in my local farm-stand market, Rosebud in Malden MA, and I saw both plum tomatoes and some yellow tomatoes.  I decided I wanted to make my own sauce with fresh ingredients, so I got the tomatoes and a bunch of fresh basil -- all very reasonably priced, I should add.  They don't sell organic vegetables and herbs, but they have what my British friends would call "good fresh veg."

Tonight I got my chance.  I took my tomatoes and skinned them, using a short boil followed by an ice bath.  I had some caramelized onions ready to go.  I chopped up four washed crimini mushroom caps, cooked in extra virgin olive oil.  The fresh basil leaves were put in whole if they were small, chopped in a chiffonade for the bigger leaves.  I put in some roasted garlic and chopped up a couple of ready roasted peppers.  A sprinkle of Kosher salt and some grinds of fresh black pepper were the final touches.  Right now the kit and caboodle is simmering in my medium skillet, covered, on low heat.  I'm giving it a stir every so often, and it smells very very nice.

I am unsure if I'll use a stick blender to make it less chunky later.  Time will tell.

Sundae Driver

I don't make them often at home, but I love a good sundae.  When I was out shopping yesterday at Trader Joe's, I decided a sundae in the very near future would be ideal.  Living near Boston, the ice cream consumption capitol of the world, it seems natural to eat ice cream on a cold day.  Among the items I picked up were some coffee ice cream, their house-brand peppermint sandwich cookie and cream ice cream, and their caramel fleur de sel sauce.  I plan on a scoop of each ice cream, some caramel sauce, some heated hot fudge, a few drops of Byfar Coffee Syrup, and a dollop of homemade maple whipped cream.

If the only whipped cream you've ever eaten is the stuff from a can, I recommend experimenting with making your own sometime.  Not only is the flavor generally richer than the stuff from a can, but you can add extra flavors and modify the sugar content.  The store-bought stuff is highly sweetened.  Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the canned stuff every now and again; but if I can make my own, I do it.

While it is possibly to make whipped cream by standing around for 15-20 minutes whisking with a fork or a wire whisk, I am a big fan of electrical methods.  An electric hand-mixer is very useful for this, as it cuts down the time required by a lot.

I do have an important tip regarding adding liquid flavorings to whipped cream: stir those flavors in before you start mixing with a hand mixer or stand mixer.  If you don't, you may find yourself with whipped cream floating atop your maple syrup or your grenadine.  About 30 seconds with a fork or a wire whisk should be enough.

Whipped cream generally takes a couple of minutes with a hand-mixer.  After your cream is able to form soft peaks that don't just fall down, you have whipped cream.  You can continue for longer if you want firmer whipped cream, but be careful.  If you whip it for too long, you'll end up with butter and buttermilk.  This is not what most people want on top of their ice cream.  However, if you like it a little buttery, you might want to whip it for longer than needed.

Sure, it's still fine to eat store-made stuff from an aerosol can.  If you have the time, though, try the homemade sometime.

A long-lost food - unfortunately, still lost

When I first went to college, back in the late 1980s, I was introduced to a candy I had never tried before, named  Laekrits.  Each piece was a small chocolate lentil, meaning it was the same size and shape of an M&M, but it was different for three reasons: one, the chocolate was a fine milk chocolate, akin to putting a Swiss or Belgian chocolate inside a candy shell instead of the relatively grainy and unbalanced chocolate of an M&M; two, the shell was black; and 3) the shell was licorice-flavored.

I adored these little lentils, but they were not easy to find and pricy to boot.  A package half the size of an M&M package usually cost twice as much.  Still, I enjoyed it when I could.  Then the manufacturer stopped making them.

I have eaten other candies in the meantime, but earlier this year I was excited to find a supplier of what looked to be a recreation of Laekrits.  I ordered a five pound bag and waited for it to arrive.

When my bag arrived I tried a piece of the candy secreted inside.  The chocolate was grainy and insipid, the mark of an American mid-grade dark chocolate.  The shell wasn't very strongly licorice.  When I looked at the ingredients list I knew why it tasted so wrong: high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oil, two ingredients never present in the old lentils.  I gave them away, sad that I had not found the candy I'd missed.

Earlier today, when visiting an office, I saw two candy dishes.  One had Hershey's Kisses while the other had Jelly Belly jelly beans, including some licorice-flavored beans.  On a whim, I combined one licorice bean with a Kiss.  It wasn't the same as my beloved missing Laekrits, but it was a lot closer than anything else I've had in the last decade.

I still miss those little licorice lentils.

Cooking while sleepy

One of the problems with cooking while sleepy is grabbing the wrong size pan.  If it's too big it's usually just a headache to clean.  Unfortunately, this evening I grabbed my small frying pan instead of my medium one.

Results?

It took twice as long to caramelize my onion, and several of my green beans ended up falling on the stove instead of cooking.  Further, because the green beans were not cooking the way I would have liked, I did not get to make the sauce for them I'd hoped to make, with tamari, mirin, ginger, garlic, mustard and sesame seeds.

No, this is not as bad a problem as accidentally cutting yourself, but it is frustrating.

Restaurant Review: Ruyi in Lexington

One of my occasional problems is buying too many online deals for dining out.  I do not plan my time for these as well as I would like, and I end up with vouchers that I can't really use.  I was facing this problem with my second voucher for Ruyi, so last week I went there for lunch during one of my less busy days.

I was able to park on the street quite close to the restaurant.  Parking, by the way, is considerably cheaper than street parking in Boston, Cambridge or Somerville, though not quite as cheap as in Medford.  I walked into the establishment and found it mostly empty.  This is more likely in places outside of easy train reach, but it was still disheartening as I like the place.

I sat at the grill for some Japanese steakhouse food.  I started with the onion soup (tasty) and a green salad with ginger dressing (also tasty).  The show after the introduction was short but sweet, with the chef displaying considerable knife skills.  Lunch does not include shrimp, but as I don't eat shrimp I didn't miss it.  It does include grilled vegetables, rice and some sort of animal-based protein.  I paid a bit extra ($2) to have vegetable fried rice and a little more (another $2) to have two sources of protein: sirloin steak and tuna steak.  The vegetables went very well with the rice, and both the sirloin and the tuna were quite enjoyable even if a little saltier than my diet would strictly allow for.

Ruyi serves a variety of styles, from sushi bar to Japanese steakhouse to Chinese Cantonese-style cuisine.  Prices are reasonable, with most steakhouse suppers coming in under $25 and Cantonese entrees generally in the $8-$12 range.  It's a fine place for lunch or supper, and there's some excellent ice cream right down the street.  If you have a car, or you have the time to ride the bus there and back, I suggest heading over there some day for a nice supper.  It's closer to "nice date" range than "regular eats" range, but it is well worth it.