Onigiri

Made onigiri with Sagey when I went home over Thanksgiving break. I love them and have wanted to learn how to make them for a while. Got the general idea from this very helpful website. They're really easy to make, and with more practice I think I'll get even better at making them. Since they are so portable, I think they'd be perfect for both of us to bring as school lunches. Making them reminded me of tamales, in a way, since it's a starchy blank slate with an intense filling. There seems to be a lot of room for innovation as far as fillings go.... we made some with just plain umeboshi plums, and a made up one with some smoked salmon and pickled ginger muddled together.

2 c sushi rice

2 1/4 c water

salt

umeboshi plums/other yummy things

3 or 4 nori sheets

In strainer, rinse rice thoroughly until the water runs clear. Soak in a bowl with the 2 1/4 water for about 30 minutes. Bring to a boil in a medium sauce pan, then turn down and simmer and cook till water has evaporated. The rice is very glutenous, so don't stir too much or it'll turn into a giant mushy glob. Let it cool for a while, until it is safe to handle.

Clean your hands very well and leave them damp with cool water. Sprinkle salt on your palms and grab a handful of rice (amount depending on how big you want your rice ball to eventually be) and cup it in your palm. Make a round little well in the center and add an umeboshi plum or a tablespoon of filling. Add another little bit of rice on top of the filling and begin forming the onigiri by pressing and turning the rice ball around in your hands. The traditional shape is triangular, and to achieve this I first formed a sphere and held it at the bottom of one palm and pinched two sides at the top, then pressed this shape gently with my palms flat.

Then wrap the nori however you like. Jean tells me that you can put the nori on later, just before eating, so it doesn't get soggy. But I kind of liked it a little chewy.

We used a rice mold my mom bought at Uwajimaya in Seattle to make the funny shaped ones, and they were cute but kind of a hassle. I liked the tactile experience of pressing the warm rice with salty palms.

Next, toasted onigiri...

West Side Dinner Club

The second official meeting of the West Side Dinner Club.

It rotates between our West Side homes, we meet on Sundays at dinner time. We only make good food. It might get pretty fancy, it might get pretty big. We've added a new member or two each week we've existed. It's really wonderful to cook good food for your friends, and wonderfuller when it's reciprocated.

This week, in the spirit of cold weather, we made traditional beef stew baked with parsnips, glazed carrots with balsamic vinegar, and spaghetti squash with so much butter and garlic. Kate brought some gluten free (luv) Spite & Malice cookies for dessert, made with foraged oregon grapes and dark chocolate, they were wicked.

Rose Brandy

Someone told me once that 70% of what we taste is actually smells. Personally, I love the taste of the smell of flowers. Frequently, as in one of my favorite candies, Chowards Violet Mints, floral flavors taste a bit like soap, but I guess I kind of like that. It makes my mouth feel elegant on the inside. I love rose water in a lassi and once made a baked Palestinian dessert with layered pita, cream, rose water and pistachios.

To me, roses are synonymous with the sunny wealth of summer. Rose Brandy is an easy way to utilize this temporal flavor. I only use home-gardened flowers because those long-stemmed supermarket roses are weak fragranced from over hybridization and are farmed with toxic chemicals which endanger the underpaid workers. Preserving the beautiful blossoms picked from the yards of dear friends just tastes better. 

I made a batch last summer with foraged petals from all over town. Having a bottle sitting a shelf in my room during the cold, gray winter months was like having the sweet essence of summer stoppered up in my sanctuary. I used it all year for sipping and baking. I made a sticky, strange and delicious dessert by simmering purple rice with coconut milk and the brandy. I once mixed it in coconut sorbet with lemon, and recently added a bit to a plum clafoutis. It's quite versatile and unusual. More roses can be added as found, and the longer it sits the more intense the flavor is. It's so concentrated that I only ever used a tiny bit, and because of the preservative powers of alcohol and sugar, it keeps all year long. The end of last year's bottle is still perfectly good, the petals intense and succulent from soaking in honey and brandy.

Rose Brandy

1/3 rose petals

1/3 honey

1/3 brandy

I picked the roses from the side of my friend's house, selecting only the good, fully developed blossoms and a few nearly open buds. These round white roses had a very unusual, sweet smell, almost like vanilla. If I get a chance, I might add some deep red roses later on. I didn't rinse them off because a friend told me you're not supposed to when making tinctures, and this is kind of like a tincture.  They had a few little bugs on them, so I shook the petals off and refrigerated the bag overnight. 

I pushed the petals into a clean decanter, then covered them in brandy and honey. 

I capped and shook the decanter vigorously, bruising and swishing the petals in the syrup. After sitting for a while, no matter the color, the petals will turn the same color as the brandy.

I put it on my windowsill because food makes great decoration. It should be nice and rosy in a month or two or three.

Real Pretty Food

I am kind of addicted to ume vinegar. Since my roommate, Morgan, made pickled radishes with it the other day...I can't get enough. Maybe it's the salt. Maybe it's the sour. Maybe it's because when I pour it on white rice, it's pretty in pink and I feel like I am eating doll food. 

I generally dislike artificially tainted food. For example, I find the abhorent flavor "Blue Razellberry" to be ridiculous at best and utterly icky. That said, there's a certain aesthetic to which I am puzzlingly drawn to consume: that which I imagine dolls might also eat. Perfect, shiny, not particularly realistic, frequently out of proportion to the hands of the dolls, charming, off colored and ever fresh. Doll food. Cute. 

It doesn't make me hungry to look at, but somewhere my imagination leaps and and I somehow like to eat things that I might eat, if I were actually a doll. Not miniature scones or meticulously glazed tiny turkeys, but bright and aesthetically princess-y, human proportioned meals. It just tickles me. 

I had some rice vermacelli sitting around, and poured some of the ume vinegar brine from Morgan's radish pickles atop them with some chopped fresh basil and a generous dollop of my blackberry preserves. The noodles turned pinker the longer they stayed in the sauce. 

So pretty! Not to mention sour and salty and sweet and herby. 

A doll would totally eat pink noodles. This doll does.

Pickled Radishes

My roommate, Morgan  Taylor, made the most beautiful, delicious pickled radishes. I didn't have anything to do with them but they were so great I can't help but shout from the rooftops about them for all to hear. 

Adapted from here, the recipe calls for pouring a brine made of ume vinegar, rice vinegar and strawberry syrup over a jar of sliced radishes, then sticking it in the fridge for two hours. Not wanting the pickles to be too sweet (and also not really knowing what strawberry syrup is), Morgan strained some of my blackberry preserves into the brine mixture. It was quite subtly sweetened, but very obviously colored a bright and deep magenta color. The ume vinegar was so salty and tangy I kept eating one after another of these wonderful pickles. I had to drink about eight cups of water after, but it was totally worth it. 

I am in love with the brine and want to put it on everything. It's so pretty, too, almost like not-food, but the powerful flavor redeems it. Morgan promised to make more, and I'm really glad as I'd like to always have a jar of these cooling in in my fridge. 

Neighbor Squash

My neighbors have this monstrous squash vine which has totally taken over our grassy alleyway. When I step over it on my way to the co-op I get a Jumanji-style chill up my spine. Not really, it's gorgeous and prolific, with giant yellow blossoms and huge, strange pale green globes lurking in the growth. 

I talked to the mom, Mary, and she said a friend-of-a-friend had given her the seeds and she didn't know what kind. We both speculated on when the squash was ready for picking... when it's darker green, or was it already past prime since they were so gigantic? I gave her a recipe from the Joy of Cooking for stuffed squash blossoms, and she picked one squash and gave me half.

I baked it till it was soft, and cut it up (light yellow on the inside, with big, meaty white seeds) for thai green curry with cashews. It was creamy and with a delicate flavor. Still no idea what kind it was, though. I'd love to find out.

Heirloom Tomato Soup with Bacon and Blue Cheese

It was rainy all day today. My bones were cold but it smelled like mulchy leaves and made me want to hibernate and eat soup. Mmm. Tomato soup. With bacon and blue cheese. It still sounds delicious, even after consuming several bowls of it. Salty and rich and warm. Mmm. Maybe I'll make more tomorrow, as I am trying to utilize all those 20 lbs of heirlooms. 

5 or 6 heirloom tomatoes, cored

6' of leek, thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

3 slices bacon

1/4 c chicken stock

handful crumbled blue cheese

1 tbs smoked sea salt

generous pinch black pepper

Made about four + cups

Fried the bacon in a cast iron pan. Thinly sliced the leek, fried it in the bacon fat. Removed bacon and leek to separate bowl, then tossed the cored tomatoes into the remaining fat. They simmered around for a while, their peels curling off (I picked a few out but didn't bother with it much).

Threw in an icy chunk of chicken stock I'd frozen from a previous soup into a big pot, on medium high heat, then the tomatoes and leeks in. 

They cooked into a brightly colored mush, for about 15 minutes, then I let it cool for a bit before food processing it. I didn't puree it, but left it a tiny bit chunky, though there were no discernible seeds or leeks or peels. 

Buttered toast with a bit of blackstrap molasses (I love sweet and savory), poured the soup in bowls and crumbled the bacon and blue cheese on top. 

It really hit the spot.