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Mmmmm...I haven’t had a proper Chicken Katsu Curry plate in a while. There are a few things I miss about not working for Honda R&D anymore. Getting a dish like that from the company cafeteria is definitely one of them...
I described the dish as both "westernized" and "appropriated," pointed out that it was a product of colonialism, and described its long, cross-cultural migration.
If Stephanie had pandered to the libs by doing the same, she'd have been fine.
Originally Posted by Efini~FC3S
Mmmmm...I haven’t had a proper Chicken Katsu Curry plate in a while. There are a few things I miss about not working for Honda R&D anymore. Getting a dish like that from the company cafeteria is definitely one of them...
I may have to steal this Joe, thanks for posting!
Feel free.
There are a lot of different recipes out there, which vary greatly. This didn't come out exactly like I remember the curry at Go Go Curry! Thicker, and with a different spice profile. I shouldn't have put in the garam masala, that was a mistake.
A lot of recipes suggest the use of a pre-made curry base, and I avoided this mostly because I enjoy doing stuff from scratch. But I think I may try it again with a store-bought base, to see how my memory of the dish from 10 years ago holds up.
To the leftovers, I added half of a granny smith apple (finely chopped) and about 1.5 tsp cinnamon. That definitely moved the dish in the correct direction.
I regret putting in the garam masala. I was trying to up the heat, and it was just the wrong kind of spicy.
Haven't been able to be with the family for a full year at this point. I miss them.
The last time I visited them down in FL, the crowning achievement of the trip was custom-building a macerator system to mate with the sewage discharge pipe of the motorhome which they'd recently purchased (without having facilities to accommodate it), so that it could be used as a guest-house when docked in the back yard. That feature came in handy many times during the quarantine situations of the past several months.
Yes, I'm acutely aware of the fact that that's a stereotypical Florida story.
And yes, being the one engineer in the family does occasionally involve devising methods to pump poop uphill under pressure through an industrial-grade wastewater hose, past the illuminated plastic idols of the virgin Mary and the baby Christ, to the cleanout fitting in the front yard near the entryway.
Anything to not be Cousin Eddie, I guess...
So, I've decided to do a full-on Christmas dinner just like we had as kids. My niece arranged for a Zoom videoconference between us, and so she, my sister, mother, brother-in-law and I are preparing this together, a thousand miles apart. Identical dinners on both ends.
I relocated the gooseneck that I mount the kitchen tablet on to the far end of the island, so it has a pretty decent view of the prep and cook areas. Down in Florida, and they propped an iThing against a wall. It worked.
There will be other recipes tomorrow, but the star of the show here is a two-day ordeal. It happens to be my absolute favorite, and one which I have never attempted solo before: Pastel de Medianoche.
Interestingly, if you search "Pastel de Medianoche" on the web, you'll find a number of vastly different and wholly unrelated recipes. It's a pretty vague name for a dish (the literal translation is Midnight Pastry), and one common Cuban-American version is basically a Cuban sandwich in pie form: ham, turkey, puerco asado, swiss cheese, pickles, mustard etc.
This is not that.
One look at the ingredients and the Mediterranean flavor palate is immediately evident. This is the old-world Spanish variety; the one which my grandparents would have enjoyed for Sunday lunch as children back in Santiago de Compostela, during the reign of King Alfonso XIII. This recipe was passed from my paternal grandmother to my mother in the early 1970s in Hato Rey, PR, and she still has that original sheet of tattered and much-stained paper, now protected in a plastic sheet, in a binder in her kitchen in Florida.
I'll note that I'm doing some things the hard way here, slightly for the sake of authenticity, but mostly because mom was watching and coaching. She's a stickler for detail, and I admire that.
Day 1:
Quarter a whole chicken. Separate the drumsticks and wings. If you're squeamish about this part, or have limited tools, you can buy a whole chicken pre-quartered and separated as described here, at the supermarket.
Now, mom does this all in one pan. But since I don't have a 22" paella pan like she does, I used two skillets and my largest soup-pot from here on out.
In skillet #1, sauté 1 yellow onion and 1 bell pepper (both chopped) in olive oil. Not all the way, just until softened. Add in 6 cloves crushed garlic about a minute from the end. Transfer that all to the soup pot, which is cold at this point.
Add more olive oil to skillets 1 and 2, arrange all of the the chicken pieces any way they will fit, and raise to high heat. Fry for about 15 minutes per side.
In a bowl, mix 8oz tomato sauce, three packets sasón Goya and 1/2 cup Edmuno vino seco dorado para cocinar. Spiced golden cooking wine. Yes, it has to be this exact brand, or else it's not abuela's recipe. Mix well, then add to the large soup pot. Add the chicken pieces. Raise to a bubbling simmer, and let that go for about an hour or so, covered. We want the chicken to be fully cooked by the end. Maybe an hour and a half, depending on the size of your chicken, pot, and flame.
This is a photo which mom sent me during the process. We'd been jovially trading barbs about the superiority of gas vs. electric, and she's showing off her huge pan:
(It's all in good spirits. We have that kind of relationship.)
Now, for the dough, into a large bowl mix 2.5 cups flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt.
I will note here: this dough is truly awful to work with. It's delicious in a way which no store-bought pie dough can even begin to compare with, but it's a pain to make.
I was all ready to dump this into the stand mixer with the K-blade, but mom insisted that, no, we had to do this old-school.
So, add 1/4 lb (one stick) room-temperature butter, divided into small slices. And then, using a fork, blend it. This part takes about 20 minutes, and you get a good workout. Rotate the bowl with one hand, while mashing down and inwards fom the rim with a fork in the other. Once the butter is fully broken up, start working it with your hands. You need to get to the point where the mixture has the consistency of dry snow. No lumps, and it should cling together if formed into to a ball, but be easily broken up.
I am really appreciating the work that mom put into all those dinners so many years ago.
Spread the mixture out so that there's a large depression in the center. Into that depression, put three eggs, 1/4 cup Edmundo, and 1/4 cup olive oil. Start blending those together with a fork, and once they're homogenous, start blending the flour mixture into it.
This takes another 10 minutes or so.
Once you have a really thick, sticky, totally unpleasant-to-work-with dough, transfer it into a small bowl, cover, and refrigerate.
Stop, and have a drink. Maybe also a cigar, if that's your thing.
By this point, the chicken should be about done. And by "done," I mean "falling off the bone." That's not hyperbole. If the next step is difficult to perform without the meat literally sliding off of the bone, then it's done.
Remove the pot from the flame. Using tongs, transfer the chicken pieces into a bowl, and let cool to the point where you can work it by hand without burning yourself. Once at that point, working by hand, remove the skin, pull the flesh from the bone, shred it between your fingers (separating out the gnarly bits), and put the flesh back into the soup pot. Stir it all together.
Mom keeps the skin and bones to make stock from. I... don't.
While prepping for the frijoles negros this morning, I unintentionally made an extremely Christmassy-looking peppers and onions combo. I wasn't planning this, it just kind of happened.
The past two days have been amazing. Been doing Zoom calls with the family down in Florida, as we prepare the exact same dinner together, a thousand miles apart.
Amazing aromas in the house right now. Part 2 of the Medianoche story is coming. In the mean time, the frijoles negros are about done. Never done this as a crock-pot dish before, but the big soup pot was in use at the time.
Start by walking to the grocery store, in the snow, on Christmas Eve morning, like an idiot, because you weren't paying attention and bought black olives instead of green olives two days ago. Yes, it really matters that much.
Buy the green olives. I like the pitted, pimento-stuffed kind. And also a cigar from the place next door.
Smoke the cigar on the way home.
Slice 1/2 cup of olives. Put 1/2 cup of golden raisins in water to plump up. Thaw 1 cup of frozen peas, or have fresh peas on-hand.
Do not used canned peas.
Bring the chicken-pot out of the fridge, and put it on the simmer burner to start warming lightly. The chicken should have soaked up nearly 100% of the liquid in the pot overnight.
Once it's warm enough to stir, add in 10g of chicken bouillon, and the aforementioned. (Drain the raisins first.)
Stir, taste, and adjust. I added another 5g bouillon and a healthy shot of black pepper at this point.
Now comes to hard part. Remember yesterday when I said that this dough is "truly awful to work with"? That was the easy part.
Lay out two sheets of wax paper, and liberally sprinkle flour upon one of them. Take a quarter of the dough in your hand, roll into a ball, and flour it. Start to flatten it out in your hands until its about 5 inches in diameter, then plop it onto the floured wax paper. Flour the top, place the second sheet of wax paper atop it, and VERY gently roll it out to a diameter suitable to fit the pie pan.
At this point, there's no possible way you're going to pick it up. This dough is delicate as hell. So pick up the whole sheet of wax paper, place the pan atop it, and then... flip it over.
You can't hesitate or be gentle here. Gravity is a harsh mistress, and you gotta just plunge into this move as though you have some idea what you're doing.
Then do that again for a second pie tin.
Whether this is your first time or your hundredth, it'll probably tear. That's ok. Wet the edges of the tear and patch with another piece of dough. Like I said, this is the most awful-to-work-with recipe ever created.
Fill both with the chicken mix until it's precisely level with the top. Reserve the left-over chicken mix in a container in the freezer. We'll be making empanadas out of it next week.
Then, repeat the horribleness twice more to produce tops for the pies. Because I used so much flour, I had to wet the rims of the lower portions in order to get the uppers to stick.
Crimp the edges, coat with one scrambled egg, and perforate. Bake at 375° for 45-50 minutes, until golden-brown.
And that's it for tonight. Two recipes down, two to go. Refrigerate one of the pies, and I'm leaving one out as we plan to enjoy them together as a family, via Zoom, in a few hours.
Mom sent this photo a few minutes after I took mine out of the oven.
(She has more mouths to feed, so made a larger batch.)
Sadly, none of the cousins have a complete, solid recipe for this one. Only bits and pieces of memories from when tia Emilia was preparing it back in San Juan. The true, original recipe appears to have died with her.
So I've been researching "Puerto Rican rum cake" the past few days, which turns up quite a lot of results. I've picked one recipe which seems to best align with my childhood memories, and will prepare it in her memory.
This is a total cheater-recipe, but truth be told, Emilia was fond of shortcuts. She reminded me a lot of Julia Child in many ways. Julia famously said "I enjoy cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food!"
So while I don't recall which specific brand of yellow cake mix she bought at Puebla, I do recall that one was involved. So... yeah.
One box yellow cake mix. The cheap stuff. Avoid the ones that claim to be "extra-moist," because we're gonna bury this thing in liquid deliciousness.
One packet vanilla pudding mix.
1/2 cup oil, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup golden rum, and four eggs. All that into the mixer, and blend well.
Grease a bundt pan, and scatter a half cup of chopped pecans into it. (Pulse them in the small food processor for a few quick bursts.)
Pour the cake mix in, and bake at 325°. Start probing it with a bamboo skewer around the 45 minute mark, and remove once the skewer comes out clean. Took me about 50 minutes.
In a small saucepan, melt a stick of butter. Add 1/4 cup water and 1 cup sugar. Simmer until everything is homogenous, and then add 1 cup rum. Just a little at first- if it bubbles, it's too hot. Turn down the heat, wait, and add a little more.
Once the cake it done, turn it out onto a plate, and then flip it over so that the "bottom" (which was the top while it was cooking) is up. Trim it flat with a knife. This is mostly an excuse to create some trimmings that you can munch on during the rest of the process.
Pour half of the sugared rum mix into the bundt pan, and then very carefully put the cake back into it. Pour the remainder of the rum mix over the bottom (which is presently the top) of the cake.
Refrigerate.
After it's cool and the liquid has been totally absorbed, flip it back over and knock it out onto a plate. Because of the liquid, the cake will really not want to come out of the pan at this point, so some violence will be required.
And that's it.
Having tasted just a little bit, I think I nailed this one. I can't say that I followed the exact same procedure as Emilia or Sonia would have, but the end result pushes all of the right childhood-nostalgia buttons.
Another old timey Spanish-Cuban recipe last night: Picadillo.
This one is a great example of the Mediterranean / Caribbean culinary fusion which took place in the early 20th century, as a wave of Spaniards rushed to the islands seeking refuge during the revolution which ultimately led to the Spanish civil war in 1936.
This, incidentally, is how my own family inched its way closer to the US. (It'd take another 20 years, and another revolution, for them to make it the last 90 miles.)
It's clearly a Latin-American dish, but with flavors influenced by the old-world European palette.
.
. .
1.25 lbs mixed ground beef and pork
1 large yellow onion, diced
2 bell peppers, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry sherry
15oz can diced tomatoes, drained
8oz can tomato paste
1 cup halved pimento stuffed olives, with 1 tablespoon brine from jar
1/2 cup golden raisins, soaked in rum overnight, then drained
1 tbs capers
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
2 packets Sazón Goya
1 tsp sugar
1 tbs white vinegar
1/2 tsp cayenne (optional)
2 tsp paprika (optional)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
Brown the beef & pork in a skillet, chopping it up finely. Drain the fat, and set aside.
In a large pot, sauté the onion & bell pepper over medium-high, stirring frequently, until softened and partly translucent, reduced to about 1/3 its original volume. Add the garlic, and a minute or two more. Don't burn the garlic.
Add the meat to the pot, along with everything else not labeled "optional." Stir.
Raise to a simmer. Adjust flavor to taste with optional ingredients. I used the paprika and cinnamon, and a little extra sugar.
At this point, I'm going to split the recipe into roughly 1/3 and 2/3 portions. To the 2/3, I'm going to add some Edmundo (golden cooking wine) and beef broth, as I wish to make it a bit more liquid for serving over rice. The 1/3 is going into the fridge, and will be used as empanada filling tomorrow.
As befitting the occasion, this is the ultimate "𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴" solution in the Puerto Rican kitchen.
You can buy empanada dough rounds at the grocery store in the frozen section, but I'm doing this from scratch. Its basically just a pie dough. Start with 300g flour, 1.5 tsp salt, 3 tbs sugar and 1.5 sticks butter chopped into 1/4" slices. Work that with the pastry blender in a large bowl until it has the consistency of wet sand.
Form a void in the center, and add two eggs and 1/2 cup warm water. Mix the center bit first, then start folding the flour into it with a fork. Work that until it's a nice, sticky ball, then cover and refrigerate.
A few hours later, roll small handfuls of the dough out on waxed paper. I made these a bit bigger than is usual, mostly because I was being lazy. The end result is more like a Calzone, but I'm not at all unhappy with this.
Fill with yesterday's picadillo, the chicken from last week, and a new sweet mixture... Guyava y queso crema is a Puerto Rican classic pastry filling. The recipe couldn't be simpler. Equal parts guyava paste and cream cheese. (I did 8oz each here.) Mix well.
Seal 'em up, coat lightly with egg, and bake 25 minutes at 400°F.
forgot to post this bad boy when i was eating it... 40's era diner, super cute waitress (she's vegan, but we'll let that slide for now). every monday after work...
pics of waitress next week.
Nine years and a bit, and still waiting, @devin mac .
Location: Detroit (the part with no rules or laws)
Posts: 5,677
Total Cats: 800
I struggle with making a full "dish". My meal usually consists of main meat or fish done up in some way. Then steamed veggies, usually broccoli or asparagus. Sometimes with or without rice. In the summer when the garden is doing good i'll have garden fresh veggies to add. I do a lot of chili and stew. The smoker has been getting a great workout, i enjoy experimenting with different rubs, bastes, sprays, and brines.
Sometimes i take any number of the combination above and plate it up on a tortilla and call it a taco.
Usually the finished product isn't very visually appealing. But the in between steps are cool. Like this brown sugar & bourbon glazed salmon. (this was actual candy)
I've also been going CRAZY with the beef jerky. Finding top and eye of round for buy one get one free. Can't pass that up. This is 5 minutes ago.
It's been a while since I posted anything of substance here. Since Christmas, I've been in a bit of a rut, preparing the same half-dozen Cuban dishes over and over. Chasing perfection.
The one which had really been eluding me was the guava y cream cheese pastry. The flavors were all there, but the texture was missing something. No matter what I did to the dough, It wasn't what I remembered from childhood, walking down to Panaderia la Viña with my father to pick up fresh in the morning.
Tonight I nailed it. Ordinary puff-pastry dough. Plain ole' French-style pâte feuilletée. That was the missing element. The one that made it into the dessert that brought on a wave of nostalgia.
Puff-pastry dough turns out to be extraordinarily tedious to make, but it's what sealed the dish. I have finally mastered this one. And now I can move on.
Haute cuisine will return in a few days. I really need to get back to my usual, rather lighter fare.
So it's kind of interesting, in retrospect, that I perfected that pastry last night, and was finally able to duplicate the one from my childhood memories.
12-20-2020, 10:30 AM
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