Coconut & Lemongrass Shrimp Cakes with a Spicy Mango & Cucumber Salsa

my crappy camera phone pictures strike again.

By Cookbad

Hooray! Royal Food Joust -- My first .

The challenge was to use seafood, lime and coconut. It got me thinking about a recipe I made last year for shrimp cakes, so I thought I would reprise, without peaking at the original version

I made coconut & lemon grass shrimp cakes with a spicy mango & cucumber salsa.

This recipe made me want to write about the easiest way to prepare a coconut. You don't have to smash it on the ground (most fun method!) of take the back of a cleaver to it (grrrr).

Find a coconut that you can hear a lot of milk sloshing around in. Poke out the eyes & drain it. Put in the the oven at 350 for 30 minutes. The heat causes it to split apart --for easy opening and also causes the meat to release from the shell.

Another way way to shred up fresh coconut it to get yourself a kudkuran, which is a bench coconut grater. Here is a picture of one in use:

Dude grating coconut using a bench grater.

And just an apology about photo quality. . . .
Also, damn the fact I keep coming up with new and interesting places to hide my camera from children that prevents me from finding it too. Anyone who can tell me where my camera is-- I promise to paypal you 50 bucks. No Joke. Camera phone does not cut taking pictures of food.

Bear with my recipes. They are just architecture- Flavor adjustment in expected.
And let me know if there is anything that's unclear. I love feedback.

Coconut & Lemongrass Shrimp Cakes with a Spicy Mango & Cucumber Salsa
Serves 2-4

SALSA:
2 mangos chopped. Over ripe works wonderfully
1/2 cucumber diced. Seed and peel if you feel like it
chile paste-- again to taste
handful of unsweetened shredded coconut
handful fresh mint
1 diced shallot
juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons of sugar
1-2 tablespoons fish sauce

But everything BUT half the cucumber into a food processor. Pulse. Just to get it to mix, but not to a pulp. Combine with remaining cucumber.

Let this sit in the fridge for the flavors to marry while you make the shrimp cakes.

SHRIMP CAKES:
1 lb. raw shrimp
lemon grass. . I'd say 1/2 a stalk but I use this extremely convenient shredded frozen stuff I bough in Little Saigon.
1/2 chopped fresh coconut
a hand full of green beans
just a bit of lime zest
chile paste to taste
tablespoon fish sauce
1/4 - 1/2 can of coconut milk
handful fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt
panko, optional

Put everything but the panko into a food processor, and blend. Don't expect the coconut to fully blend, it adds a nice texture in the end. If they mixture looks thin, add some panko and stir.

oil to fry, plenty

Heat a heavy bottomed pan to med-high, add oil. Form shrimp mixture into cakes. Big ones for dinner, small ones make a snazzy appetizer.

Fry them until the are browned, flip, repeat. They don't take much time to cook thru, but it's nice to get them brown.

Serve with salsa on the side and a garnish of chopped mint, cilantro and maybe crushed pistachios, but I skipped that part.

These were good. I ate mine standing up in the kitchen while frying up the next batch I was so all over them.

Just one last little coconut nugget of information:

The milk from green coconuts is supposed to be great for a hangover, among other things. I bought some slightly fermented green coconut juice, called kefir at Whole Foods last week & it was really interesting.

Ratatouille

By Cookbad

I'm a big advocate of cooking in season, so this dish makes me a big hypocrite, but might inspire some garden choices, which it IS the season for.

So, here is a recipe for how to make Ratatouille, just like in the movie!!!

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 shallots, diced
1 1/2 cups canned diced tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes, peeled)
3 tablespoons grated carrots
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 bay leaf
2 roasted red peppers, diced. Rinsed and patted dry if jarred
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 Roma tomatoes
1 zucchini
1 Chinese eggplant
1 yellow squash
1 clove minced garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano
salt and pepper

First you make a base sauce. In a skittle or cast iron pan add olive
oil, garlic and shallots over low-medium heat. Cook until soft, 7-9
minutes. Add tomatoes, carrots, marjoram, bay leaf. Simmer for 10
minutes. Lower heat and add peppers Cook just long enough to combine
the flavors. Remove from heat and discard bay leaf. In either the
skillet you cooked the sauce in, or a round/oval casserole dish (8-10
inches), evenly spread the sauce.

Using a mandolin or very sharp knife, slice tomatoes, squash, zucchini
and eggplant as thinly as possible. Less than 1/8 an inch if possible.

In you prepared sauce dish lay down a strip of overlapping or your
vegetables. Zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes then spring squash. Leaving
a bit of each layer exposed. This strip should start and end about an
inch from either end of the pan. Continue to layer in a spiral
formation around the center strip, slightly overlapping towards the
center. Keep going until either you have used all the vegetables, or
the pan is filled.

Cover with either the lid of the skillet, or a couple layers of foil
and bake at 300 for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Remove lid and return to
oven for another 10 minutes. This dish can be made a day ahead, so
either cover and store or broil for 10-15 minutes until it just starts
to brown. Serve from dish hot or cold.
Makes 4 servings.

Home, Land: cooking.

Its lemon verbena growing right under my mailbox. Who knew? Caroline.

By Cookbad

My friend, also a Caroline -- and fellow alum from the fantastic graduate program at Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunication Program at New York University (which means both of us spent 2 years bound up in code and circuits & making glorious works of art with them) has taken up the challenge of blogging every single kind of plan that grows on her place in Monrovia.

Yes. That was one sentence and I am keeping it.

I digress.

Many of the plants she is blogging you can eat, which interests me greatly. If you are anyplace in the Southern California area and have a plant question, I'll bet she can answer it.

Here is her site.

Scam Chocolate

By Cookbad

This isn't a new story and it's made the rounds on the blogosphere last year. But I'm trying to finish up our chapter on desserts and focusing on chocolate right now and thought I'd bring it back.

It is the best piece of investigative food reportage I've read.

It's an account blow for blow about the most expensive chocolate per ounce is not only bullshit, but poorly prepared.

Here is the full scoop.

Peanut Buttter Truffles

By Cookbad

Dessert or treat wise, I say truffles are the biggest bang for your buck.
They are more foolproof than almost any other dessert or sweet I can think of. Combined with the fact that people are tremendously impressed when you tell them that, yes, you were the one to make them, they are one of my favorite things to make. This is a version of the Thomas Keller, French Laundry recipe:

Peanut Butter Truffles
To make about 50 truffles:
6 oz. of dark chocolate
24 oz. of the best peanut butter you can find
1/2 cup of sugar
1.5 tablespoons of salt
9 ounces of unsalted room temp. butter.
24 oz. dark chocolate
1 cup of unsweetened cocoa for coating (that I consider optional)

Melt the chocolate & butter in a double boiler or microwave.

Put the peanut butter, sugar & salt into a food processor and blend. Add chocolate/ butter combo. Blend for couple of minutes.

Transfer mixture to the fridge until very solid.

Once it is solid, get a plate or baking sheet that will fit in your freezer and line it with parchment paper. Wax paper works to. Take a 1 teaspoon measurer and scoop out the mixture then roll into a uniform ball with the flat of your hands. repeat until mixture is done. Put them in the freezer.

If your hand get ridiculously sticky during rolling and the mixture becomes petulant, return it to the fridge (or freezer) to solid it up a bit.

Melt 24 oz. of chocolate over a double boiler, remove from heat and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.

Line another sheet with parchment, grab some tongs.

Take the peanut butter balls out of the freezer.

Using your tongs, dip the peanut butter balls into the mixture, swirl it around some to coat it in chocolate then put in on the parchment lined pan.
Repeat until finished. Put the truffles in the fridge.

When the truffles are cooled, re-melt chocolate and repeat for a second coat.

Remove from fridge, let them come to room temp. then roll them in cocoa powder.

These will keep in the freezer for months.

You can also make truffles with any sort of ganache. Ganache is very simple. It's 1 part chocolate and one part cream. Heat cream to just before boiling, pour over chocolate (chopped, chunked or in chips), wait 2 minutes for the cream to melt the chocolate a bit, then combine with a mixer. You can also any sort of flavor or liquor you like. Then proceed with the ganache just as you would the chocolate mixture.

How to make Sprouted Wheat Bread: Part 1

The perfect sized sprout for bread

By Cookbad

I'm working on the right proportions to sub in sprouted wheat for wheat flour in bread. Once wheat goes from just a seed to a sprouted seed a whole bunch of it's properties change. They increase in digestive enzymes, proteins, good fats and fiber, overall making a healthier more complex carbohydrate bread.

With all those good things in mind, I'm not sure what replacing regular wheat flour with sprouted wheat will do to the dough. I'm curious to see how the gluten is effected.

BUT FIRST, I need to sprout some wheat, which is pretty much as easy as growing mold on bread.

I invested 8USD in a sprouting jar --it's just a large glass jar with a lid that is made of wire mesh. You can easily improvise one by replacing a large regular jar's lid with either cheese cloth held in place with a tight rubber band. Easier still, poke a bunch of holes in the lid of a jar. Don't use too small a jar. The seeds need room to breath.

Next, I put to use some wheat berries that have been sitting in the back of my pantry for 5 months. Wheat berries are wheat flour before it's ground down and processed.

What I did was:
Throw a handful or two in the jar with 3 cups of water and leave them to soak overnight, 8-16 hrs. Then, empty out the water, and rinse the berries by adding some more water to the jar, swishing it around some and then pouring it out. Do that twice.

Rinse them once or twice a day for the next 48-72 hrs.

In about 48 hours some will show tiny spouts. When most have 1/8-1/4 inch shoots -- like in the picture they are ready for bread making.

I'm going to try 2 different things with my sprouts. I put half in the freezer and the other half, I'm going to mill into flour.

To mill then into flour they need to be dehydrated, which is you can do in an oven at low heat. Spread them on a baking sheet and put them in your oven at 200 max. My oven is ancient and doesn't want to go below 300 no matter how low I set it, so I just left the door slightly open and checked them every 5 minutes, stirring them each check so the ones on the outside didn't get toasted. It took about an hour for them to dry. I checked by taking one berry out, letting it cool and then biting it. If ti was soft, they were still damp.

Eventually, one cracked under my teeth, so I turned off the oven and let them continue to dry. There they sit, waiting to take a turn in my soon to be very cleaned out coffee grinder/ flour mill.

Stay tuned.

S

Super Food Strata with roasted red pepper and tomato coulis

Healthy, hearty, and as simple as popping in the oven in the morning.

By Cookbad

I thought up this one for the Weekend Breakfast Blogging Balanced Breakfast Challenge!

A strata is a kind of eggy bread puddinngish breakfast dish that you make the night before and let sit overnight so the bread becomes almost custardy. It can be sweet, savory or both. It is perfect breakfast if all you want to do is pop something in the oven and don't want to do any prep. in the morning.

I've been working hard at getting my strata recipe down and think I have it.
For any kind of strata you want to make, a good guideline is:

For every 3 eggs you want use 2 cups of shredded bread and 3/4 cups of milk.
For a 3 egg strata use about 1.5 -2 cups of filling, and all the herbs and spices you like.

A couple more strata tips:
Cook your strata in a deeper souffle of oven ready sauce pan, not a flat casserole dish.

If the egg doesn't cover the bread, add a bit more.

If you are going to use a vegetable, cook it down first so it doesn't drown your strata and make it end up soggy.

Stratas do not photograph well.

Here is the recipe:
Super Food Strata with roasted red pepper and tomato coulis
FOR THE STRATA
In a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat:
2 tablespoons olive oil
Cook until soft:
4 clove crushed garlic
1 diced onion
Add:
5 oz. cremini mushrooms quartered and browned
Then cook for 3 minutes:
6 oz. baby spinach
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Let it cook a bit then in a souffle dish or deep oven proof bowl mix the vegetables with:
4 cups shredded whole grain crusty bread
1/3 cup of your choice of cheese, grated of crumbled (optional)
Beat together:
6 eggs
1.5 cups of milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper cayenne pepper
ground black pepper to taste
Pour the eggs over the bread and vegetables mixture, cover and set in the fridge overnight.

THE ROASTED PEPPER AND TOMATO COULIS:
Put all of the following into a food processor and pulse to blend:
1 roasted red pepper
1 tomato that has been chargrilled and peeled. You do this by just setting the tomato over your gas flame until the skin pops and turns black.
1 clove of garlic
juice of 1 lemon
salt to taste
1/4 cup EVOO
1/3 toasted walnuts

Take the strata out of the fridge 30 minutes before you want to cook it. Take the coulis out to so it has time to get to room temperature before serving.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Bake 45 minutes covered.
It should be puffed up and starting to brown.
Serve with a dollop of coulis.

That lump of orange stuff is the coulis

I opted out of the cheese, but next time I make this I'm thinking fontina.

Also, the coulis is really good all on its own. I put it on a sandwich and turned it into a dip all while waiting for my strata to get down soaking.

Pizza + Beer = fun

I'd had more than a few spicy & sweets before I got took these less than awesome pictures.

By Cookbad

I made a really good pizza the other night. Maple Chipotle Soaked Pineapple & Ham Pizza and I served it with a beer cocktail that I named the Spicy & Sweet Shannon. the pictures are pretty bad. I'd had a few drinks, I was quivering with hunger. . . .

The Pizza:
Slice up some fresh pineapple. About 1 quarter a pineapple is enough for 1 pizza.
Cut into 1/8s and then slice them about 1/4 inch thick. Put them in a bowl with 1/4 cup maple syrup, 1/4 cup water and a chunk or two of canned Chipotle peppers.
Marinde for 30 minute or more.
When they have marinaded, put the pineapple in one layer on a baking sheet, pour over some of he marinade and broil until the tops start to brown a bit.
Get some ham and slice it up into strips.
Dress you pizza


Next, go here for detailed directions on how to make grilled pizza or do it however you want. Top with sauce, cheese, the roasted pineapple and ham. We made this pizza on a particularly shitty grill so it took forever and I eventually just decided to finish it up in the oven.


The Spicy and Sweet Shannon:
All these flavors can be adjusted to your taste.
Pour all this into a pitcher:
1/2 cup of lemon juice
1/4 cup of maple syrup
a few shakes of cayanne pepper
Ice
4 light beers

Pour over more ice.
If you are thinking that it sounds an awful lot like the master cleanse with beer, you'd be right.
Sounds gross, but everyone that tried it really liked it.

The pizza, was terrific. I have been thinking about it for days.

WTF?

suddenly a thing of the past.

By Cookbad

First the bees and now this.

Remember all those clips on public television you'd see with streams so thick with salmon heading to spawn it looked like rush hour in L.A.?

No more.

Yesterday the New York Times reported that Chinook aka King Salmon have all but vanished.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council is calling this unexplained event unprecedented.

How to make Hollandaise Sauce & Eggs Benedict

A superfast and easy version of eggs benedict

By Cookbad


Hollandaise is so easy, I could make it hungover - and I will, next time because Eggs Benedict is a potent hangover cure.

All it is is butter, egg yolk, salt, pepper and lemon. It is a lot like mayonnaise, but made with clarified butter instead of oil.

In theory, it could be pretty easy to fuck up because you are trying to get the hot butter and eggs to emulsify without cooking he egg yolks, which cook pretty damn easily.

Here is my pretty hard to fuck up method:

Makes about 1.5 cups

4 egg yolks
1 1/4 cup butter
salt, pepper to taste
the juice of 1/2 - 1 lemon

Beat the egg yolks until they are pale.
Heat the butter in a small sauce pan and skim the white foamy stuff off the top. Keep it pretty hot but do not let it bubble. Let the milk solids in the butter sink to the bottom.

Melted butter after most of the foam has been skimmed.

discarded butter foam

Keep beating the egg yolks and very slowly pour in a bit of hot butter. Let it emulsify, then add some more, then a bit more until the butter is gone. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice, and you're done. Serve immediately. If you can't and you want to keep it hot, put it over a very low double boiler and stir often.

the finished unbroken product

It didn't break? Did it.

Now to put it to good use:

Eggs Benedict:

Makes 1 serving

Toast up an English muffin. If you don't have one, a nice thick piece of toasted good bread will do. If you want to make some english muffins, go here.

Poach 2 eggs.

Fry up some canadian bacon, ham or rashers of bacon. If you are making rasher and have some asparagus laying around, toss it in the pan with the bacon, It takes them about the same amount of time to cook and the asparagus is nice side.

Make the hollandaise.

Place ham on bread or muffin, place poached egg on pork, slather with hollandaise.

Eat.

Atethat, who lives in the UK told me that there are no English muffins there (makes sense!) and also, she had only seen eggs benedict at restaurants that cater to tourists.

I think that is a crime.