Kitchen Chick

Galette of Rhubarb

I have these incredibly fond memories of cutting rhubarb from my grandmother's neighbor's plants (I was allowed) and chewing on the oh-so-tart stalks. I bought a few rhubarb plants over the years, but they were never quite the same. One, a 100% green variety, bolts almost as soon as the first leaf unfurls. The other has these tiny short little stalks. Definitely not the rhubarb of my memories. So I was delighted when a few years back a friend offered me some field rhubarb plants from her garden (thanks, S!).  She needed to get rid of them, and I was happy to give them a home.

Since rhubarb doesn't like to be transplanted, I was very nice to it and left it to grow unmolested so it could establish itself. This year I deemed it ready to pick. Strawberries and rhubarb are the classic pairing that everyone knows about, but in Michigan, rhubarb is ready well before strawberry season. I wanted to find a simple recipe that used only rhubarb, but oddly so many of my cookbooks don't feature rhubarb-only dessert recipes. (I did find one, and you'll be seeing the results of that soon.) Fortunately, my friend D came to the rescue and sent me this recipe from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (of Silver Palate fame ).

If you haven't cooked with rhubarb before, please note the leaves and roots are poisonous. Only the stalks are edible.

Galette of Rhubarb
adapted with slight changes from The New Basics Cookbook

Pastry
1 1/4 C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbs granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 tsp unsalted butter (aka 3 oz), cold, cut into pieces (I've used salted butter and it was fine)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
2 Tbs ice water

Filling
5 Tbs confectioner's sugar
2 1/2 C rhubarb stalk chunks (1-inch)
slivered orange zest (I used Penzeys grated orange, soaked in water, but slivered zest will be prettier)

Rosso and Lukins have you combine the dry ingredients and then use a pastry blender, knives, or your fingers to cut in the butter and orange zest. I am far too lazy for that. I put the dry ingredients into my food processor with the cutting blade, pulse to mix, then add the butter and pulse some more until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Then I slowly add the ice water and pulse so that it begins to come together. I do the final kneading by hand — just enough to bring it together into a dough and pat into a flattened disk. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

I like to let the chilled dough warm up just a touch to make it easier to roll out. Roll into about a 11 inch wide circle. I found this dough to be stiff and prone to tearing. (Maybe because I use a food processor? Or maybe that's just the way it is?)

Transfer to a lined baking sheet. Mark off a 9 inch wide circle in the center. (A 9 inch round cake pan makes a great stencil.) Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the confectioner's sugar. Cover with the rhubarb. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of confectioner's sugar and top with the zest. Fold the dough edges over the rhubarb. You should have a nice open area in the center.

Bake until crust is golden and the filling bubbles. Approximately 40 minutes.

Cool slightly before serving.

Kitchen Chick's notes: The first time I made this I didn't have an orange (or any citrus fruit) on hand, but I keep a jar of Penzeys grated orange peel in the refrigerator. I soaked the peel in a bit of water to rehydrate it before using it. The second time I used grapefruit zest as the top garnish, and the Penzeys orange peel in the dough. The grapefruit zest worked wonderfully.

Cooking (R)Evolution

kik alicha, collards, and shiro on injera

I'm not very good at remembering anniversaries or birthdays. In fact, I hardly noticed that this past April was Kitchen Chick's 5 year anniversary.  Five years! Wow. The last time I spent five years doing something it was for my undergraduate degree, and I needed that extra year because I changed majors in my four year. I've never even stayed in the same job for five years, though I think that may happen with my current one.

A lot can happen in five years. Five years ago I had never attempted making Ethiopian food. Over the past few years I've posted some of my attempts, though in truth I've never really been 100% happy with the results. I don't even cook those dishes the same way now as I wrote about them then.

But with thanks to the internet, I've been able to obtain previously-hard-to-find Ethiopian ingredients that really make a difference in the flavor. (If you don't have a local source, I've ordered from Ethiopian Spices, but there are two more sources: Habesh Foods and Brundo.) And with additional thanks to the internet, I can compare the recipes in various books against the increasing number of recipes posted online. As a result, I've been able to modify and tweak what I cook to taste more and more like what I've had at the most authentic restaurants I've eaten at around the country. I've become sufficient efficient that I can bang out three dishes and injera in about an hour fifteen. This is a big improvement from the 2.5 hour marathons of past times. In fact, I've reached the point where sometimes I like my version of a dish better than what I've had at restaurants.

Whoa.

And still, sometimes a new-to-me device, technique, or ingredient comes along that revolutionizes my cooking. Last summer I had the great fortune to stumble upon an Ethiopian grocery/restaurant in the Columbus Ohio area run by a very nice couple. It was a great fortune not only because I was able to buy a 40lb bag of teff, but also because the wife of the couple took me back into her kitchen and showed me how to make a certain beef dish. Wow! I wish I could say more, but I was sworn to secrecy. No kidding. Ironically, while she was swearing me to secrecy, her husband was telling Joe that he didn't understand why cooking food should be such a secret.

But along with the 40lb bag of teff and a pound of totally rockin' homemade shiro mix, they also sold me the below Heritage Grill, which she uses for making injera. She had four grills lined up so she could make large batches of injera, which she sold in their store. This grill has completely reworked my process flow for cooking Ethiopian food. Now I have a sufficiently large and evenly hot surface which cooks up nice wide injera quickly, and it frees up burners on my stove. (I set it to 350 to 400 F, depending on how fast I want to cook. After spreading the batter on the grill, cover it with the lid for a short bit while cooking to trap the heat which helps the the top set.)

I think this grill is the primary reason I've managed to cut my cooking time so much, though I've certainly improved my prep work flow as well. My stove top can now be complete devoted to my dishes, and I can get a lot more going on in parallel.

I hope you'll forgive me if I don't post more recipes. I'm still really adjusting how I make the dishes and don't feel ready to post, but there are a multitude online resources these days. Here are a few to check out:

• Brundo's Recipes
• University of Pennsylvania
• Ethiopian Recipes.net
• Ethiopian Restaurant & Food Guide
• Food Down Under Recipe Database

The Heritage Grill also rocks for French crêpes

Brindisa's Chorizo Sandwiches at Borough Market, London

Chorizo Sandwich from Brindisa, Borough Market, London, UK

In March we went to England to visit friends and family. And eat a lot of good food, because Britain is actually full of really good food. 

Mid-March in England is a lot like Mid-April in Michigan. The grass is green, the daffodils are in full bloom, the trees are just starting to leaf out, and the temperatures are mild. It should also be raining constantly, but in our typical traveling luck we had ten straight days of sunny weather. In England, can you believe?  (Okay, we had two cloudy afternoons.)

We arrived on a Friday morning and sacked out most of the day, while our friends who were hosting us went off to work.

Saturday we hooked up with another friend, P, who took us to Borough Market, which is London's oldest food market.  The Market's management claims that its roots go back to Roman times, which is plausible since this is London, though there's only documentation back to 1276.

We entered in though "the back", and were immediately transported to food heaven. We brushed past a restaurant that was serving up paella on their outside seating area — the aroma was intoxicating — and found ourselves in a fabulous chaos of outside stands with foods from around the world. Sausages, sweets, spices. Pasta, paté, preserves. Oh my! I didn't know which way to turn first. The Indian snacks and condiments, the Mexican chiles, the Middle Eastern meze and spices... You can eat your way around the globe at the Borough Market. We spotted many cured meats and cheeses that are either restricted from import to the US or are taxed outrageously.** The only thing that kept me from buying everything in sight was the fact that for one, we'd go broke on our first day in London, and for another, we wouldn't be able to legally bring it back through customs. (Traveling abroad? Learn what's illegal to bring back before you go.  The real crime?  That it's illegal to bring these things into the States.)

The market was packed. We pushed our way through the crowds and came out into the covered area of the market with more fruit and flower stands, butchers, and baked goods.   We're told locals try to shop on Thursdays and Fridays to avoid the heavy tourist crowds.

Eventually we came out to a corner of the market and found ourselves at Brindisa. Our friend Gauri told us that we absolutely had to have one of the Chorizo sandwiches that Brindisa grills up on weekends. We were hungry, but we passed up a lot of fabulous food because we trusted Gauri that it would be worth it.

You order a single or double portion of chorizo, and Brindisa's cooking staff split a roll and add chorizo hot off the grill with some roasted peppers and arugula (aka "rocket" as its known in the UK). And then you eat.

Oh yeah. The wait was worth it.  It was pretty much perfect. The sweet pepper was a great foil to the salty and spiced chorizo, and even the rocket added something.  The proportions are better if you don't get the double chorizo, but extra chorizo has its own benefits.

You don't have to go Brindisa to enjoy at least a very similar sandwich. Pick up some Spanish chorizo (not Mexican style), available in the cold case at Sparrow Market, some arugula, and preserved roasted red peppers with the skins peeled off (I think Brindisa used Spanish preserved pequillo peppers, which are roasted and then preserved). I don't know what kind of bread they used specifically, but a French baguette, ciabatta, or similar bread ought to do the trick.

Borough Market's art deco main entrance (that we didn't use)

**For example, Jamón ibérico de bellota was only approved for import recently, and has a new 100% import tax for "jamon on the bone" courtesy of an ongoing trade war with the EU because its ban on U.S. beef produced with growth hormones.

A quick photo tour of Borough Market in the extended post.

Pancakes & Bacon fat

Buttermilk pancakes and Snow's Maple Syrup

I had buttermilk that needed using up. And bacon from Sparrow Market that really needed to be cooked sooner rather than later. And a brand new bottle of locally produced Snow's grade B maple syrup in the fridge. (By the way, if you haven't tasted Grade B maple syrup before, it's darker and richer in flavor than Grade A. Mmmm....)

That was a sign that, even though I now had plenty of onions, I still wasn't going to be making Ethiopian food, and it was time for a buttermilk pancake dinner. Although I can make pancakes without a recipe, I actually enjoy trying the (usually only slightly) different versions in our various cookbooks. This time I pulled out our 1953 Edition of the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook to see what it had to say about making pancakes.

Pancake recipes generally call for some melted butter, oil, or shortening to be added to the batter. This was a 1950's cookbook, so of course the fat called for was shortening or — and as I contemplated whether I wanted to melt some shortening or just use butter I took a second glance at the recipe — bacon fat.

Bacon fat. In pancakes.

I eyed the bacon frying in the pan. Okay, sure. Why not? If I'm already eating bacon, is some bacon fat in the pancakes really going to make dinner that much less healthy?  I had never made pancakes with bacon fat before, but I'm sure many of you out there have (or your grandmothers did). I measured out some of the fat into a small cup and let it cool a bit before whisking it into the eggs and buttermilk, which was then quickly and loosely blended with the flour and other dry ingredients.

Since I was already using buttermilk, which has a distinctive flavor, I don't think the bacon fat had much of an impact on the flavor. The pancakes were perhaps a bit more rich and a bit less sweet, but when you're putting maple syrup on them they don't really need to be all that sweet.

Yum.

Anyway, just a thought to leave you with as we head into the weekend, that glorious time when there is more time to make breakfast than the work-day quick bowl of cold cereal on the way out the door. (Or, as some of my co-workers seem to do, the cup of coffee from a drive-through.)

So what's your favorite pancake recipe?

---

Snow's Maple Syrup is available at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market, at their store in Mason, Michigan, or online from their website.  And it's worth it.