Tuesday, October 30, 2012

POWER PLAYERS: Using the Power Mix in Standards and Staples


We use the Power Mix as the backbone of all our sauces, condiments, and many side dishes. It's a living condiment, so, while the spices will carry through in cooking, it's more powerful to enjoy the living enzymes and bacteria, in symbiosis with your intestinal flora & fauna, by avoiding adding it to anything that's still steaming (transition point of water to vapor phase, 118 degrees F). Since it's just garlic, onion, and peppers, (and vinegar, yum!), it's a natural and specific flavor/spice addition to basic meal components. 

When we're not using the Power Mix as a straight and un-adulturated condiment (ground down to a fine slurry in the Quisen-thingie, with or without extra oil and/or vinegar), we're using it as the spicy/umami component in other condiments and side dishes. 

Here are a few of the Lewis Casa standards:

- Guacamole: use the Power Mix instead of the garlic, onion, and peppers, mixed into avocado and diced tomatoes with lime juice. We use at least a tablespoon Power for each avocado and small lime.

-  Hummous: with garbanzo beans, lemon (or lime), tahini (sesame butter), olive oil, and comino. Start by adding the Power instead of the garlic and then add in more from there, according to your taste. This latest batch, being pepper-spicy heavy, gets things hot quick. So we're cutting the overt heat on this latest batch of hummous with yogurt and extra olive oil.

- Johnny Tapenade: greek kalamata and green olives, carrots, celery, parsley  olive oil, vinegar, and Power Mix. Since the olives and Power Mix are already cured, and the carrot is pretty hardy over time (with these other ingredients), I just put these together for the basic batch. Then I can chop in the parsley and celery when folks come over. Or add chili powder or oregano to take it in a different direction. Like many dishes, subbing in balsamic vinegar or tamari or fish sauce, et al. are fun variations.

Now, moving forward with the backbone concept, I'm starting to structure our fridge with Power Standard elements, the individual components that we mix to make our condiments. We've done this before but it's easy to be tempted into big  batches by the ceramic crocks. While established recipes like Escabeche are great in the big ol' crocks, flexibility ends up offering more utility with our Power Players. The first are the Three Sisters of the Power Mix- sweet peppers, hot peppers, and garlic & onion. Fermenting them separately allows us to custom-blend mixes as we go, helping us past some of the limitations that we get like with this latest batch of all-in-one Power Mix. Here they are:

1) Garlic/Onion Mix: While we usually use six pounds of garlic to seven pounds of onions, we like it when the garlic flavor power just overtakes the onion on the flavor profile

2) Sweet red, yellow, and orange Bell Peppers

3) Hot Jalapeno (seeded) and Serrano Peppers

- Ginger Carrots: spears with ground ginger. If you layer it from the bottom, a fun flavor gradient develops. This stuff is a great as a sauce on its own but mixes in well, too. Shoot for a 1:3 ginger to carrot ratio and use whey as an inoculant.

- Beet/Carrot/Root Kvass: Kvass is a bracing tonic for the immune system and guts, full of electrolytes, and so good for us drinkers, too. With the high sugar content of beets, we ferment it like a chutney, for just a couple or few days (drain and reserve most, then fill the jar back up with water for a second ferment). Adding carrots and root veggies like parsnips, turnips, and rutabaga brings a wider, happier side to the flavor profile. Here's more details: http://houston-cultures.blogspot.com/search?q=kvass

- Root Slaw: Cabbages, root vegetables (carrots, radishes, beets, etc.), Power Mix (or garlic, onion, and peppers), and fun tidbits like apples and seaweeds. The famed and widely-fabled Peanutbutter Mix is the bulls-eye on this one but this is a perennial Fall and Winter standard. Lately, we've been craving a batch that's grated or julienned, instead of chopped, making it a proper slaw.  

Now, after all that, there are a few new Standards to post: 

Power Aioli: a great mayo substitute, aioli is egg yolks, olive oil, lemon, and garlic all carefully mixed into an emulsion, to create the mayo consistency that makes it such a great spread. We start with the Power Mix in the quisen-thingie (instead of the garlic) and egg yolk, blend them first on the slowest setting, gradually getting higher as the yolk starts to emulsify. Then add in the citrus and oil slowly, drop by drop. It takes patience but the spreadable consistency makes it worth it! Now, this is a living food but, because the egg has some shelf life very much worth paying attention to, it isn't a great fridge Staple- it needs to be made to order, like the herbal version of the Johnny Tapenade.

Power Sauces: a few structural bits and then the flavoring component:
- Power Mix (throw it in the Quisen-Thingie and grind it down to a liquid)
- Acid (living cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, lime or lemon juice) and/or Tamari, Bragg's Aminos,  Worsterchestershire, etc.
- Olive Oil emulsion or oil emulsion-diluted cheese or other fat
- And then, the Flavor Star options: 
  - Cheeses: parmesan, gruyere, goat, blue cheese, gorgonzola, chevre, etc.
  - Bacon, baconfat, or brazing drippings or, for bar-be-que or basting,  citrus and honey or maple syrup
  - Herb Blends (rough-cracked pepper mixes, Italian, curry, etc.)
  - Ginger Carrot, this is a fun way to take what's already bangin' to the next level with the Power Mix, vinegar, and oil options.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Orxata, Horchata, Sweetened Ricemilk from Mexico


Orxata, now commonly spelled "horchata" (say "or-chata") is a traditional sweetened ricemilk from Mexico. Here in Houston, we've been buying it at some of the kiosk shops in Fiesta stores. Lots of Mexican restaurants sell it, too. My old favorite taqueria, Tepatitlan 2000 on N. Main, sells it but don't buy it there- their version is without a doubt the worst we've ever tasted; it had the cheapest, worst ingredients. They had to have been using artificially-flavored cinnamon candy or syrup, the really shitty, cheap kind. So, here's the recipe:

- 1 cup of rice
- about or less than 1 cup of sweetener
- about or less than 1 cup of milk product
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 3 cups of hot water & 2 cups of cold
- about or less than 1tsp vanilla
- about or less than 1 cup nuts or seeds

~-~  note: this is a "to taste" kind of recipe, experiment with the ratios ~-~

CHOP: A few handfuls of cashews (makes a creamy texture), almonds, or other nuts or seeds. Mexicans sometimes use Morro seeds (a kind of melon). Pecans or macademia nuts should also add a creamy texture and their own flavor. 

ADD: to the blender with the nuts about a cup of sugar. White is traditional but we used brown sugar, half a cup 1st, then 3/4s a cup. You can add cacao or cocoa here if you want, too- we used half a cup of powdered cacao. Set this aside in a jar, sealed- you'll use it tomorrow. 

ROUGH CHOP: 1 cup of rice. White rice is traditional but we used brown rice. And it's just fine!

MIX: the rice with 3 cups of hot water, drop a cinnamon stick in there, and pop it in the fridge to... 

STEEP: for 12 hours. 
And these two in this order makes clean-up a bit simpler...

COOKED RICE VARIATION: With 1 cup of cooked rice (and the deeper I dig into this, the more I see folks using brown rice) to 4 cups of cold water. After trying it out and asking a few Mexicans familiar with making their own, I'm disinclined to go through this step.

After steeping the rice and cinnamon overnight, it's time to 
STRAIN and MIX: with the sugar/nut stuff + 2 cups cold water and the vanilla. Now's also the time to mix in the milk products. We've experimented with yogurt and goat's milk. Any other kind works- sweetened & condensed, almond, sheep, hemp, plain old moo juice, hell, even buttermilk- whatever you like.

EXPERIMENTAL: Since this is a cinnamon and vanilla-flavored drink, it seems like some of Cinnamon's good friends fit in here, like white pepper, clove, cardamom, and nutmeg, so rocked a batch with these extra. We boiles the cardamom and clove whole in a bit of the strained mix and then mixed it back in- yum! 

I'm trying to find out if this was once fermented, like so many traditional dishes and drinks that are no longer. I can't see why it wasn't at some point- anything that we set out to steep for a while was once commonly, or at least sometimes, fermented. In Japan, Koji, a controlled-mold product, led to Tempeh, a fermented rice product. Down this path, miso, soy sauce, sake, pickles, and amazake are formed. Amazake is a sweet rice porridge, seems like a close relative to a fermented ricemilk, eh? More on this, later...


https://www.google.com/search?q=how+is+ricemilk+made&aq=f&sugexp=chrome,mod=11&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
http://nomilk.com/ricemilk.txt
http://www.veganreader.com/2009/05/17/how-to-make-rice-milk-and-stop-supporting-rice-dream/
http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/what-is-rice-milk-and-is-rice-milk-good-for-you.html#b
http://pumpkinhaus.blogspot.com/2012/02/make-rice-milk.html

Yum yum!

Our House-Warming Inaugural Pickle Party


House Lewis has finally fermented our first batch of pickles in our own kitchen! We can now host, not just instigate pickle parties, with a dedicated curing cabinet in a temperature controlled environment and a nice, big workspace. And just as cool, since it's our own space, we can do this whenever we want! Ahh, central A/C and culinary freedom!

Everyone's store of fermented goodies has been running low lately since May was the last time we were able to pickle. Since the Power Mix is the backbone of so many of the other things we like to make, fermented or not, that was the first objective. This inaugural batch was a deviation from previous ratios in that we backed off on the garlic and wanted to cut the hot peppers a bit and go heavy on the sweet bell peppers. We kinda missed that mark, however- we're still perfecting ratios and techniques. We didn't de-seed the jalapenos (or banana peppers added in by Ranger Roo and Tapon, many thanks!) and used too many serranos, so things turned out spicy! Here's what we did, in pounds:

- 5 red, yellow, and orange bell peppers
- almost 3 jalapenos, not seeded
- almost 4 serranos
- 6 garlic
- 7 onion

This yielded a little over three gallons, just a couple inches from the top of the crock. And it turned out HOT!

So, the next one would look like this, if we just made a straight batch (more on this in a later post):

- 5 sweet bells
- 2 japs, seeded
- 2 serr
- 6 gar
- 7 onion

Heh, my sweet lady has been bravely and assiduously spicing up her diet since hooking up with me but it's still a poignant thing to watch her make that "too spicy" face! So, our latest batches of guacamole are getting some fresh veggies along with the Power Mix, to temper the heat. And Power Mix hummous gets a little yogurt, which also cuts the heat whilst allying itself nicely with the creamy side of the sesame tahini.

In the neat way that things go full circle, we learned this last time how to use a plastic anaerobic barrier in the 3 gallon ceramic crock to seal the beautiful little buggies in for their ferment time. We've used this technique to seal glass mason jars before but we've lost (in the move, I'm sure) the special plate that goes with the crock (AND filled it a little overfull) and so had to improvise. Things turned out great, as mentioned above. Where we usually use the plate to hold the fermenting goodies under the surface of the brine, less brine and a layer of plastic formed the essential anaerobic barrier this time. This hybrid technique had the added bonus, in addition to cutting the addition of extra brine, of also cutting out the headspace above the liquid layer, leaving no room at all for opportunistic molds to enter the picture. The stuff is harmless and confined to the surface and headspace, with everything we care about taking place below the waterline but it's still nice to not have to skim the stuff off after fermentation!

Happy fermenting!