Foccacia

Foccacia, a popular Italian bread, appears to stem from the Roman panis focacius. Thanks to the magical power of etymology and the relationship between Latin and Spanish, the first part can easily be attributed to bread. The latter, with the help of Google Translate, can be tied to the the Latin term focus, meaning hearth. Thus, the direct translation appears to be hearth bread. Bread-making was a vital piece of ancient Roman cuisine. Examples of preserved loaves (panis quadratus) have been excavated in the city of Pompeii:

 

Panis Quadratus - Wikimedia

More recently, news of a fresco depicting a "Roman pizza" has been making the rounds on the web. Although probably not really eaten as we would imagine a pizza, but rather used as an edible serving dish, it's an entertaining idea. I highly recommend the videos made by Max Miller of Tasting History on the subject, which I'll embed below, since it isn't the primary goal of this post. 

 

On the subject of foccacia - I got the recipe that as was written by Nicola Lamb of Kitchen Projects. I really enjoy reading her work since it contains detailed analyses of different approaches, including photographs comparing the effects of different possible approaches. Since I didn't have bread flour, I used all-purpose, which seems to have done a fair job, even if the gluten network wasn't as strong. I also found out that I only had half the needed flour after I already started the preferment, so I scaled everything except the poolish. Came out alright in terms of texture,but I forgot to add salt, making it rather bland.

 

 

Macaron (The one prounced with a fancy French accent)

"Aim for the Moon. So that if you miss you're still in outer space, rather than burning up in the atmosphere. That would hurt"

~ Medved

 

        When planning a dessert for Thanksgiving, I wanted to try to flex my culinary muscle. And what better way to do so, than a recipe known for having few ingredients and relying heavily on technique. Yeah, I went for macarons. The French ones. Actually, fun fact: their similar names are not a coincidence: both macaroons and macarons are from Italian - maccherone (fine paste). Bon Appetit and Adam Ragusea both have good explanations. I actually really recommend Adam's YouTube channel - he has a lot of great videos explaining the science, etymology, and history behind foods and ingredients. And as an ex-professor and ex-radio host his explanations are really engaging and great to listen to. Can't recommend him enough.

        On the macarons - I went for a raspberry version, taking inspiration from the recipe published by Taste of Home, but riffing on it to make it raspberry. The end result was a tasty meringue sandwich cookie, but I cannot consider it a true macaron. Failed at getting the shell's texture and glossiness, and didn't get the "foot" (little rough rim at the base) traditionally associated with them. I'll need to play around with it more, but in the mean time, I'll provide the meringue sandwich cookie recipe:

Ingredients:

• 4/3 cups almond meal
• 1.75 cups powdered sugar
• .5 cups freeze dried berries
• 3 egg whites
  
• Raspberry jam
  

Recipe:

1. Blend almond meal with freeze-dried fruit
2. Whip egg whites until frothy
3. Slowly add powdered sugar to egg whites while whipping
4. Keep whipping until stiff peaks
5. Fold in almond meal mixture
6. Pipe into (preferably uniform) circles
7. Air dry for 30 minutes 
   
8. Bake at 300°F for 30 minutes
9. Leave to cool completely
10. Apply dab of jam to one meringue, compress with second one

 

 

Churchkhela and Aioli. Or in other words, just a lot of rambling.

As I mentioned in my Israel Day 9 post, there is a traditional Georgian dessert called churchkhela. I told my mother that I bought it at the market in Tel Aviv. To my surprise, it turned out that she had been well acquainted with it- but thought it was an Armenian dish. Further digging showed that we were both right- it's a regional, not a national treat.

Churchkhela is a great example of the complexity of cuisine. Cultures don't truly end at the border of a nation- they flow and mingle, so many nations in a region can all lay claim to similar dishes. The morning that I wrote this, I listened to a rebroadcast of the ninth episode of one of my favorite podcasts- "A Hotdog is a Sandwich". In it, the hosts Josh and Nicole discuss whether or not mayonnaise and aioli are the same thing. Aioli is just mayo with a chip on its shoulder in my opinion, but that's beside the point at the moment. The part relevant to this chain of thought was their breakdown of the condiment's history. 

What most people consider aioli, an emulsion of olive oil and garlic, is the Catalonian version. But the spelling "aioli" is the spelling from Provance, who add egg yolks to their sauce. In Catalonia, it is spelled "allioli". So essentially, we currently use the French spelling and the Spanish recipe. Fair enough. But what about toum? The Middle Eastern sauce also is an emulsion of garlic and oil. So maybe they're in the right? But to complicate matters further, before any of the aforementioned sauces were pleasing anyone's palates, Pliny the Younger wrote about aliatum. "Alia" traveled west, influencing the name of the sauce in Catalonia and Provance, while "tum" went east, turning into "toum". All this is to say that culture and food are complicated and calling churchkhela Georgian or Armenian is, frankly, kind of arbitrary. Just don't tell anyone from either of those countries that I think so, or else they might be a little upset.

Anyway, back to the original topic- churchkhela. I decided to surprise my mom with a homemade version since I had some extra grapes and walnuts. Traditional versions use the grape pulp left over from winemaking, but grapes in a blender seem to have worked alright. 

Ingredients:

• ~ 1 liter pureed grapes or grape juice
• .5 lb walnuts
• .25 cup flour

Recipe:

1. Mix the grape juice with flour in a pot
2. Simmer and reduce by about half, whisking regularly (or until nice and thick)
3. While the grapes cook down, thread walnuts onto strings
4. Coat walnut strands in the thick grape juice, let it drip
5. Dry for a few days - I used my oven since it seals, and I wanted to avoid fruit flies 
6. Repeat the coating process? (Would make for a better casing, but I didn't do it since I didn't have any more grapes)
7. Eat and enjoy

Chucula - Plantain Pudding

After a bit of a grocery store fiasco that resulted in me buying plantains instead of bananas, I needed to look up some ideas for utilizing them. Since they were already rather ripe, my initial thoughts about plantain chips were swept away, since my research seemed to suggest that those are best with green plantains. A quick bit of further searching pointed me to this recipe for chucula, a Colombian pudding, from Saveur.

The recipe was pretty simple to follow, although I needed to make a couple of minor changes. The first was using ground cinnamon rather than cinnamon sticks, since I couldn't find any of the later on the spice rack (I could have sworn there were some). The second change was also fairly minor - after I went at the plantains with a potato masher, I still had a chunky result, so I took the easy way out. I simply added the chunky mash into the milk and then used an immersion blender to smooth it out. 

Even as it cooked, the cinnamon-clove aroma made the whole kitchen smell great. The end result did look odd though... Even the orange twist didn't do much to pretty it up. 

Presentation aside, I really enjoyed the pudding. For such a simple recipe, it packed a complex flavor with the cinnamon, clove, and vanilla blending well. It had a subtle sweetness, making it a flavorful snack, more so than a dessert, which is, in my opinion, a plus. 

My variation of the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 3 plantains
• 2 cups milk
• 3 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 cloves
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 tbsp sugar

Recipe:

1. Peel the plantains and boil until soft
2. Drain the plantains
3. Mix milk, cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla, begin heating
4. Mash the plantains
5. Add the plantains and sugar to the milk mixture
6. Simmer until it thickens
7. Cool on countertop, before placing in fridge to finish setting
8. Eat and enjoy

Tofu-based Peanut Butter Pudding

 I maintain that there is no better flavor combination than peanut butter and chocolate. And so, when I was browsing the web, as usual, and ran into ideas for pudding made from tofu, I was rather intrigued. I mean, what can be better than pudding? Using a few food blogs for inspiration, I tossed everything into a blender and hoped for the best. Thank you to TofuBud (link) and Weelicious (link) for the inspiration (disclaimer- I have no affiliation with them, just got the idea from them).

Inspired by those fine bloggers, I kind of improvised using what I found in the fridge and pantry. Experimentation is what makes life exciting- who needs silken tofu if you have extra firm. Even though basically everyone recommends silken for desserts. And it would probably work better. Eh, this worked well. Maybe I'll try silken at some point. Who knows?

Ingredients:

• 8 oz tofu
• I used extra firm since that's all I had
• 0.5 cup smooth peanut butter
• 0.25 cup maple syrup 
• Please use the real stuff, artificial syrups just aren't as good
• 0.25 cup kefir

Recipe:

1. Toss everything in the blender
2. Blend well
3. Spoon into any sort of vessel and refrigerate for a few hours until it firms up a bit
4. Eat and enjoy

Corn Fritters

I decided to try cooking a new-to-me recipe: corn fritters. As I described it to my taste testers, it is essentially an American latke, using corn instead of potatoes. This was the first time that I've tried pan frying, and oh boy, that was a bit of an experience. I added a bit of oil to the non-stick skillet I was using, heated it up, and poured in a bit of batter. That part went about as expected. The cook time, or lack thereof, was the surprise. Let's just say the first one was a bit burnt. Still edible though, so better than the first time I tried cooking polenta...

Oh, and the funniest part of the whole operation- the flipping. When the time came to turn the first one over, I realized that I had absolutely no idea how to do so without splashing oil all over the place. Luckily, I'd caught that idea right before I tried using a wrist flick the way I do with pancakes. That would have been painful. Anyway, my solution was pretty efficient. I would use the spatula to pick it up before dropping them on the other side. As they fell, I would jump back to avoid the oil splatters. Mostly worked. And I only slipped once. Not bad. 

The end result were crispy, lightly sweet, corn-studded fritters. Out of everything that I've cooked, these probably got the most rave reviews. A dollop of sour cream served as a perfect topping. The main takeaway for me- I should figure out how to fry at some point. The jumping technique worked, but there must be a better way.

Notes: 

Some bloggers always write about sifting the flour, or room temperature ingredients, etc. I'm not like that, and it worked fine. Take that as you will. Oh, and I can't give oil temperatures and all that since I have no idea. Winging it seems to work. Lastly, I added a bit more milk to the batter as I fried since the first few seemed a bit thick. The extra milk thinned out the batter, making thinner fritters.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups of corn 
• I used frozen and thawed it with some water in the microwave for 8 minutes to steam it. Canned should work as well.
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 0.25 teaspoons baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• .75 cup of milk
• Adjust as needed in order to bet a pancake batter-like consistency
• Oil for frying

Recipe:

1. Heat a thin sheen of oil in pan. I used about .25 inches
2. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together
3. Stir in corn, trying to make it evenly distributed
4. Gradually add milk, mixing well, until a goopy pancake-batter texture is achieved
5. Spoon batter into hot oil and flip when crispy
6. Remove to a wire rack or paper towels
7. Eat and enjoy