Swedish Meatballs

Ingredients

• 8oz ground pork
• 12oz ground beef
• 2 slices sandwich bread
• 1/3c milk
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped finely
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 5tbsp butter
• scant 1/4c flour
• 2c beef stock
• sour cream

Saute the onion in a tablespoon of butter until translucent and starting to brown a bit, about 5-8 minutes. Meanwhile, in the bowl of a food processor, add the bread (torn up) and the milk so that it can soak. You can also add the salt, cardamom, and nutmeg right now.

When the onions are done sauteing, add to the milk/bread mixture and toss the meat in there and the egg. Pulse the mixture until it comes together. You will probably need a spoon to kind of turn the mixture every so often between pulses.

Melt the remaining 4 tbsp butter in a wide saute pan (you can reuse the one you used for the onions). Form the meatballs to be about 1-2tbsp in size, placing them in the butter as you go. Keep the heat low-ish so that they sizzle a little but don't splatter. Also you don't want to burn the butter. Don't crowd the pan, you're going to have to do a couple batches. Turn the meatballs as they cook until they're pretty well browned. You don't need to cook them through at this stage. When you're done, fish them out and put them aside on a plate or cookie sheet and continue cooking the other batches until you've done all of them.

When the meatballs are done, set aside. In the pan, add the flour and whisk around in the remaining grease. Then add the beef stock and continue to whisk as you bring it to a simmer, scraping up the bottom of the pan.

When the gravy comes to a simmer, re-add all of the meatballs. Turn heat to low and cover the pan to cook for another 8-10 minutes. Then you can add sour cream to the gravy (if you're feeling decadent) - go for about 1/3c, tops, though.

Serve with mashed potatoes, black pepper, and lingonberry jam.

Thoughts: Nailed it. We really wanted comfort food tonight, and I think we did it. This is probably our most successful meatball recipe yet, also. This makes enough to feed about 4, but we made it for 2 with a lot of leftovers, as it should be.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Char Siu Bao

This started as a pretty basic bao zi recipe, but we kind of went overboard with the filling.
Ingredients

• Filling
• 2lbs pork shoulder
• soy sauce
• sriracha
• black vinegar
• ginger
• garlic
• brown sugar
• scallions
• salt and pepper to taste
• Dough
• 1tbsp yeast
• 4c flour
• 1c water
• 2tbsp sugar
• 1tsp salt
• 1tsp baking powder

So for the filling, you place the pork shoulder in a crock pot. Add some of all the other ingredients except scallions and salt until it looks right. You just need something for the meat to marinate in that will give it some flavor, though most of that actually comes later. Anyway, turn the crock pot on low and cook for 10-12 hours (overnight).

When you come back to it, use a slotted spoon / tongs to fish out all the pork shoulder (it should be falling apart at this point) into a bowl. Place that bowl in the fridge. Place all the remaining liquid into another bowl (we use a pyrex liquid measuring cup, actually), and place that bowl in the fridge. When it's cooled, all the fat should congeal on the top, so you can scoop it off with a spoon (for later use?).

Put the sauce sans fat in a sauce pan and proceed to cook down, stirring occasionally, until reduced by about 50-75%. Once reduced, adjust the salt. Now pour the sauce over the pork that's in the fridge. Add chopped scallions (about 3 big ones, or to taste), and toss the filling. It could be done at this point if you want OR you can chop the filling into little centimeter chunks if you prefer. Either way is fine.

Now you make the dough. Combine all the ingredients and stir together, then turn out onto a lightly floured counter and knead for 5 minutes (or just do it all in a kitchenaid / cuisinart). Oil the dough lightly (we used sesame oil) in the bowl, cover, and let rise for 2-3 hours. When rise is complete, divide dough in half. Take each half and roll / drag it into a 14-18" log. Using a knife, divide the log into 8 pieces. flatten each piece into a 4-5" diameter circle. Put about 2tbsp of the meat filling into the dough and fold up the sides, clasping them at the top. This is important: place each bao zi on an individual square of waxed paper or parchment paper (or cabbage leaf or SOMETHING) as you finish them.

Repeat this exercise with the other half of the dough. If you have leftover filling, bonus - use it in an omelette or something. Anyway, set the bao zi to rise for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, set up your steamer, either a steamer basket or a rice cooker with steaming tray or whatever you use. We actually use both. Once risen, steam bao zi for about 15 minutes (you can go 20 and it doesn't hurt 'em, though). Enjoy!

Thoughts:

• Dan: "I think we've done something really smart here."
• Claire: "A+++. Would eat again."

Disaster Index: 1/10

Green chili pozole

This is almost too spicy?

Ingredients

• 2 cans hominy, rinsed and drained
• 1.5 lbs pork ribs
• 8 springs of flat-leaf parsley, tied with kitchen twine
• 4 garlic cloves
• 3/4 tsp dried oregano (preferably Mexican, says Martha, but seriously?)
• .5 lbs tomatillos, husked and rinsed well (they get pretty sticky)
• 2 jalapeno peppers, quartered
• 1 cup cilantro
  
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped (it's going into a food processor)
• 2 tbsp neutral oil
• salt

Place pork in large pot -- cover by 2" with water. Add parsley and garlic and bring to a boil. If any foam or fat rises to the top, skim it off with a ladle.
Reduce heat to medium low, and add oregano. Simmer, partially covered, until the meat is falling off of the bone, about 2 hours.
In the meantime, fill a small pot with water and bring it to a boil. Add your tomatillos and cook them in the boiling water for about 10 minutes, until the tomatillos are tender. Transfer them to a small bowl. Reserve some of the cooking liquid.
In a food processor or blender, add the onion, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, tomatillos, and as much reserved cooking liquid as you need to make the whole thing blend. Blend it until smooth. It should look like green chili.
Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat. When it's hot enough to make you nervous, add the tomatillo mixture and 1/2 tsp salt, stirring constantly. It will probably spatter a little. Use a spatter shield.
Reduce heat to medium and simmer gently, stirring almost constantly (if you have pots like we do), until the mixture is thick, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
The pork might be done by now. If it is, remove it from the broth (reserve the broth) and trim any excess fat from it (we didn't have any to trim). Remove the meat from the bones (which should be pretty easy at this point). Shred meat. Remove the parsley from the broth and throw it away.
Stir tomatillo mixture into the reserved pork broth and bring to a boil. Add the shredded pork.
Reduce heat, and simmer gently until heated through. If you just took the pork from the broth, this really shouldn't take long.
Add the hominy. Simmer until heated through, about 5 minutes. Season with salt or pepper to your heart's content.
Eat.

Thoughts: This was a pretty involved recipe, actually. There must be a way to simplify it. We'll see. This was pretty good -- I was hoping it would be JUST SLIGHTLY more flavorful. I think the pork ribs we used were not super fatty, and they probably could have been. In the future I would choose a less lean cut. Although a healthier thing to do might be to cook everything in pork broth instead of water. Then you would get a more savory flavor without the extra fat. Just a lot of extra sodium. TOTALLY WORTH IT, KIDS. The hominy adds a really interesting flavor. I have never really eaten much hominy before, but I would like to be eating more of it. The heat is of a proper intensity. Dan says "delicious" about the whole affair. Good.

Disaster Index: 1.5/10

Luo Bo Gao

Radish cakes!

Ingredients

• 1 large daikon radish
  
• maybe 1/4c dried mushrooms
  
• 3oz ground pork
  
• 3 scallions
  
• soy sauce, salt
  
• rice flour
  

Peel and grate the daikon radish finely (it actually wouldn't grate on the "fine" side of my box grater, so I went with the normal side - this will work fine). Boil some water, and pour it over the dried mushrooms to rehydrate. with a little sesame oil or neutral oil, start the ground pork cooking in a pot. Cook until just brown. Then fish out the dried mushrooms from the water (reserving the mushroom liquid) and chop coarsely. Add to the pork along with the scallions, chopped. Cook a little longer and then transfer to another bowl.

In the bowl in which you cooked the pork, add the daikon and the reserved water from the mushrooms. If there isn't much water, you may need to add a little more (or add a little soy sauce) until the daikon is moist but not drowning in liquid. I don't really have a good rule of thumb for this - you kind of have to experiment. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add the pork / scallions / mushrooms and combine. Now add rice flour to the mixture until you get something resembling a pretty thick batter. For 1 daikon, I used about 1-2c rice flour. The first time I made this, I actually added more water so I could add more rice flour. This was a good idea - if the pieces of things in the batter are pretty big, adding quite a bit of rice flour will help your luo bo gao with internal consistency. On the other hand, too much might make for gluey radish cakes. You have to experiment, but if you can get 1.5c rice flour into your batter, I think you're in good shape.

Pour the batter into small loaf pans or basically anything you can then put in a steamer. Steam for 40 minutes, being sure to check the water level frequently and replenishing as necessary. When they're done, take them out and cool to room temperature, then chill for at least 2 hours. When you're ready to serve them, turn the "cakes" out and slice them, then fry lightly on a griddle to crisp up the outside. Serve with soy sauce.

Thoughts: The first time we did this, we got the texture more or less correct, which was pretty cool considering I didn't have rice flour (and instead just ground up rice in my coffee grinder - very tricky). But the flavor was a little bland the first time because we used fresh mushrooms. The second time, the flavor was great, but we used WAY too many dried mushrooms and the texture was way off. It's a work in progress. I think next time we'll use fewer dried mushrooms but we'll also use a little bit more rice flour.

Disaster Index: 3/10

Bao Redux

This deserved its own post. We re-made the Bao recipe but with some modifications, and it turned out just... great.

Ingredients

• Bread dough
  
  
  
  • 3 tsp yeast
    
  • 3 tsp sugar
    
  • 1tsp salt
    
  • 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled
    
  • about 2.5 cups regular flour
    
  
  
  
• Filling
  
  
  
  • .25lb ground pork
    
  • 1/2 small yellow onion chopped
    
  • 1 tbsp garlic, crushed
    
  • 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped fine
    
  • 2c kale, chopped fine
    
  • to taste (our amounts in parentheses): ginger (.5tsp), soy sauce (2tbsp), black vinegar (1tbsp), oyster sauce (1tbsp), thai chili sauce (.75tsp), chicken stock (1/2tsp), corn starch (.5tsp mixed with some cold water), black pepper (.25tsp)
    
  
  

To make the dough:
Throw the milk in the microwave on high for 1.5-2 minutes, until it's about to boil. Set it aside to cool. In the mean while, add the flour, sugar, and salt and whisk together. Add the yeast to the dry mixture and give another stir. When the milk is cool enough that you can just put your finger in for about 2-3 seconds comfortably (but not much more), mix the milk in with the dough. Stir together, and then turn dough out onto a well floured surface and knead until smooth. Put the dough back into the metal bowl and place in a humid place to rise. (Try microwaving a cup of water for 2.5 minutes until it boils and then move the cup aside and stick the bowl of dough in the microwave to create a humid warm chamber).

To make the filling:
While the dough is rising, prepare the filling.
Place all the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed saute pan. Add some neutral oil (peanut oil?) and set to medium-high heat. Add about 1/8-1/4c water and cover. Once the water is mostly evaporated, turn to medium-low heat. Add the ground pork and cook. Our ground pork was frozen, so I covered it and let it thaw at a low temperature, then broke it apart with my spoon and set over high heat until it was completely cooked through.

Now add all of the sauces / flavors you want. Finally add the cornstarch (mixed with a little water) and set to high heat again until the sauce (if there is any to speak of) thickens. In ours, even with all the sauces we added there wasn't much liquid in the final mixture, so the corn starch was probably overkill. Anyway, be sure to taste and make sure you like what you taste. We added a little bit extra vinegar because we wanted a little more acid, but I could see adding more thai chili sauce, which is a little sweet.

To put them together:
Once the dough has risen for 40 minutes or so, dimple it into a sheet with your fingers and fold in 3 first one way then the other. Put back in the bowl and cover to let rise another 20 minutes. Pinch off a piece of dough about half the size of your fist. Press into 4-5" rounds. Put an appropriate amount of filling in the center of the round of dough - about 2tsp. With your fingers, gather the edges of the dough and pinch them together in the middle as best you can. Pinch the dough so it will hold MORE OR LESS together - doesn't have to be perfect because this side is facing up. Place the filled bun pinched side up on a square piece of parchment paper. Put in a bamboo steamer. Place buns a few inches apart, because they will expand during the steaming. If they stick together, it's no big deal. When steamer basket is full, cover the steamer with a lid and cook. Steam the buns for about 6 minutes.

Thoughts: Second time's a charm. We followed all of the minor changes in the previous edition but used different filling - this time with pork instead of beef. The flavor was much stronger and had a fairly authentic taste even with the carrots and kale (which we were just trying to use up). Next time I can see using mushrooms, finely chopped, and more pork-to-vegetable ratio. But the flavor was just fantastic. Secondly, the dough was much softer and lighter. The high amount of leavening probably gave it substantial rise in the relatively short time. Using only milk instead of milk and water gave the dough a very velvety texture that made it easy to work with. We TRIED baking one bao instead of steaming. It ALMOST worked - if we were really motivated, we'd do all the bao but place them pinched side DOWN on the parchment and then brush the other side with an egg wash. But it was a little bit too much work. Steaming was actually much easier. Somehow this was just much less work than last time. And better tasting.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Dirty Rice

Ingredients

• 2 cups extra long grain rice
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 4 cloves minced garlic
• 1.5 cups diced white onion
• 1 cup diced green pepper
• vegetable oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 hot sausage, chopped and quartered
• 1/4 lb ground pork
• 1 bunch green onion, chopped

Cook the rice: rinse rice in cold water several times (about 6) until the water runs completely clear. Place rice in pot and add chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Do NOT stir. You will mess it up.
Meanwhile, saute the garlic, onion, and green pepper in the vegetable oil until soft (15 minutes). Add the salt, pepper, oregano, and cayenne. Mix well.
Add this mixture to the cooked rice. Stir.
Cook the meat together in another pan and then add it into the rice.
Turn heat to low, and cook for another 10 minutes. Eat.

Thoughts: This was pretty delicious. In retrospect, the rice was a little more mushy than I like - we cooked it according to the directions in the recipe, rather than using our own failsafe method, which usually yields less mushy rice. So in the future, we will use that method, and then rather than adding the various ingredients into the rice and stirring over and over again, we're just going to cook the vegetables and meet together, and then put it all in with the rice at the last minute. This will also decrease the mushiness of the rice. I thought that the rice: stuff ratio was a little off. I would have preferred more stuff to rice. Also, this recipe can feed like, 12 people, so we'll also halve the recipe next time we make it.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Shrimp and Pork Pot Stickers

Ingredients

• 1 small (3oz?) can water chestnuts, chopped
  
• 1/2lb uncooked shrimp, peeled, deveined, and chopped
  
• 1/4lb ground pork
  
• 3/4c chopped scallions
  
• 1.5tbsp soy sauce
  
• 1 lobe ginger, peeled and minced
  
• 1tsp sesame oil
  
• 1 pack of wonton wrappers
  

This is pretty basic. Mix together the ingredients. Put in wonton wrappers. Then comes the fun part: figure out how to cook them. The original recipe says to fry them in oil, then add water and cover, cooking until the water has evaporated. This method keeps really true to the name "pot sticker", but was not terribly successful for us. Frying worked pretty well, but the wrappers got a LITTLE overdone for me. They were tasty, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't really worth the effort.

Thoughts: Maybe next time I would get different wonton wrappers... or, I don't know, plan on having them in a soup. We never tried just cooking them in boiling water. That might have worked. Probably steaming (on lettuce leaves?) would be the way to go, but it was late, and we were tired.

Disaster Index: 3/10 - provisionally. If we cooked them differently (steaming?) it would probably be more like 1/10.

Chinese BBQ ribs with jasmine rice

Ingredients

• 2 lbs baby back ribs
• 1.5 tbsp peeled chopped ginger
• 1 tbsp chopped garlic
• 1/6 cup soy sauce
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1.5 cups rice
• 2 cups jasmine tea
• 1 cup water
  

Preheat oven to 400 F. Put rack in middle position.
Puree the marinade ingredients together in a food processor.
Reserve 1/4 cup sauce and coat the ribs with the remainder.
Arrange ribs, meaty side down, in a broiler pan or a baking pan (lined with foil), and bake, turning the ribs and basting them with some of the reserved sauce about half way though. Bake for 30 minutes.
In the meantime, make the rice. This isn't difficult. Just make normal rice but instead of cooking the rice with water, do it with 2 parts jasmine tea and 1 part water.
Remove from oven. Turn on the broiler. Brush ribs, meaty side up, with the remaining sauce and put them under the broiler for 3 minutes, until there is char.
Eat.

Thoughts: Pretty damn good. This was the first time we attempted to make ribs, so we were pretty impressed with the outcome. I was worried they would be too dry, but they were not. I liked the chinese marinade, but in the future I would probably stick with traditional American BBQ sauce because I am a huge fan. Part of the ribs didn't cook all the way through the first time, so we can to throw those in for another 10 minutes, but they came out fine. The meat pulled away from the ribs pretty well, which was good. The jasmine rice was also pretty good. Not overpowering.

Disaster Index: 2/10