BACK below the borscht belt

I realize that Sophia's great recipe does give ALOT of options - perhaps more than a Neophyte would be comfortable with. So I'm giving a streamlined version. Pros should roll withe original and newbies - can master this, then upgrade.

Making the Broth [perfect as is]
"I toss every scrap into a container that lives in my freezer. (Skip stuff in the cabbage/broccoli family though). Onion skins, ginger peel, potato peelings, carrot ends, bell pepper stems and cores, bones and animal organs (obviously omit the animal bits if yr a vegetarian) until you collect about a quart (or one full sized plastic freezer bag),
dump the collected bits into big soup pop and add water to cover and then have about 2 inches of water on top

I also add cumin/fennel seeds, a few peppercorns, dried mushrooms and dried lemongrass.
Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer about 2 hours and strain all that, retaining the liquid, composting the rest

Making the Borscht
Suggested Music: I'm sure my sainted mother would be appalled but the only stuff I've got in my CD collection of Polish derivation would be Frankie Yankovic's The All Time Great Polkas and Greatest Hits -- which is cool enough in a certain sense; a more high brow selection could be The Music of Armenia: Volume 2; Sharakan, Mediaeval Music.
Now this dish is coming from someone of Ukranian descent and ain't Polish or Armenian. Within folks of Eastern European descent the cultural differences are pronounced enough and guarded jealously. But realistically, we do realize to you honkies we all look the same and eat the same shiz (boiled cabbage, root vegetables and flesh) -- so don't sweat playing Pollack music while ya make Ukranian-oriented chowzers.

Ingredients:,
2 cups cubed raw peeled beats
2 cups cubed raw carrots (leave the peels on)
2 cups peeled raw potatoes or yams
1 stalk celery
1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb cubed mammal flesh
1 Tablespon paprika,
2 teaspoons cayenne,
2 teaspoons cumin,
1 Tablespoon salt,
2 teapspoons thyme
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 Tablespoon tomato paste 3 Tablespoons vinegar

To start the borscht saute veggies + flesh in a big soup pot in 2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil (olive would be nice)
Then add the broth you made, (you'll want to have enough to fill yr soup pot up 75%)
add all your spices
Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer until meat is tender (say, 2 hours).
Add a tablespoon tomato paste or some tomato sauce (in a pinch you CAN use ketchup - actually there are Indian restaurants that make just this substitution),
a few tablespoons vinegar (I suggest red wine or apple cider,

DUMPLINGS
throw 1 cup of flour into a bowl
add 1 tsp salt, 1 egg and some water (I'd start with a quarter cup and add drizzles till you get the consistency you favor)
and mix up thoroughly (I use a big wood or steel spoon but if wanna use some fancy mechanical shiz, feel free - more clean up tho!)
basically you want this to be the consistency of cookie dough, all though it's fine to make it a bit wetter which just give you a different final product
then you drop this by the spoonful into the borsht; when it floats to the top, it's done
[if yr dough was the consistency of cookie dough, the dumplings will be firm and dry-ish - sorta like baked potatoes; if you made the dough wetter it'll come out more like thick pasta i.e fettucini or shells]

hitting below the borscht belt

I spent the passed weekend in New Orleans and strangely, the best chow I had was courtesy of our pal Sophia Horodysky who served up an amazing borscht. Living in the mid-Atlantic region - I'm used to the store-bought borscht that comes in a glass quart container -- very purple/red, kinda sweet...mainly a beet consomme with some bits of veggie in it. This was NOT that. This reminds me of the

"paprikach" we'd get at the Cafe Budapest in New Brunswick NJ a long time ago. This place catered to the local Hungarian populace and English was only spoken begrudgingly; and hell, this was their hang out so fair enough that these are the rules of conduct set there -- if ya had a problem with it you could always walk down the street to Greasey Tony's sub shop. ANYWAY - this was hearty, delish as fug and classic garbage gourmandry and thus I share Sophia's recipe with thee.

Making the Broth
"I toss every scrap into a container that lives in my freezer. (Skip stuff in the cabbage/broccoli family though). Onion skins, ginger peel, potato peelings, carrot ends, bell pepper stems and cores, bones and animal organs all work great, I also add cumin/fennel seeds, a few peppercorns, dried mushrooms and dried lemongrass.
Boil and strain all that on occasion.

Making the Borscht
Suggested Music: I'm sure my sainted mother would be appalled but the only stuff I've got in my CD collection of Polish derivation would be Frankie Yankovic's The All Time Great Polkas and Greatest Hits -- which is cool enough in a certain sense; a more high brow selection could be The Music of Armenia: Volume 2; Sharakan, Mediaeval Music.
Now this dish is coming from someone of Ukranian descent and ain't Polish or Armenian. Within folks of Eastern European descent the cultural differences are pronounced enough and guarded jealously. But realistically, we do realize to you honkies we all look the same and eat the same shiz (boiled cabbage, root vegetables and flesh) -- so don't sweat playing Pollack music while ya make Ukranian-oriented chowzers.
Then to start the borscht saute veggies in the pot: beets, carrots, mushrooms, potato/sweet potato, celery, leek, onion, garlic, fennel, turnip, pork/lamb/beef...
Then add the broth you made,
add paprika, cayenne, cumin, tumeric, salt, sage, thyme, rosemary, dill, black pepper, ginger, and whatever else strikes your fancy.
Let cook at a low simmer until meat is tender.
Add a tablespoon tomato paste or some tomato sauce, a few tablespoons vinegar (I suggest red wine or apple cider, I've also put the liquid from black olive jars), a teaspoon sugar/maple syrup/honey, more seasoning (also try sassafras),
I also like to add a can of beans (any type, I often use creamed navy beans).

That's the gist of it. I put all kinds of stuff in, it's often just what is around. It's different every time. If you'd like, I'll teach you about making it with homemade dumplings cooked into it. It's super easy!"

OK, I'll add a dumplings recipe:
throw 1 cup of flour into a bowl
add 1 tsp salt, 1 egg and some water (I'd start with a quarter cup and add drizzles till you get the consistency you favor)
and mix up thoroughly (I use a big wood or steel spoon but if wanna use some fancy mechanical shiz, feel free - more clean up tho!)
basically you want this to be the consistency of cookie dough, all though it's fine to make it a bit wetter which just give you a different final product
then you drop this by the spoonful into the borsht; when it floats to the top, it's done
[if yr dough was the consistency of cookie dough, the dumplings will be firm and dry-ish - sorta like baked potatoes; if you made the dough wetter it'll come out more like thick pasta i.e fettucini or shells]

Fixing a foul-up

I received this anonymous post via FB the other day:

Dear GG -
I have a hot mess - literally - on my hands. I tried to make butternut squash soup in my Vitamix. After adding all the ingredients I thought it tasted bland. In my newbie cook wisdom, I added a packet that you use to make chicken stock. Now it's a weird. salty disaster. Please come take it off my hands!
Harried & Hopeless

I took at look at a Vitamix cookbook and see that this dish is composed of Butternut Squash, chicken stock, pumpkin pie type spices and maple syrup. Hmmm.
The first step in salvaging this dish is to undo the damage made via H&H's improv. Things like chicken (or beef or veggie) bouillion cubes or packets of powdered stuff of this ilk tend to be heavy in sodium (I just peaked at a packet of HerbOx and "Salt" indeed is the first ingredient listed) -- that's why they taste so yummy simply added to hot water! In this case we simply add the cup of water that the directions say a packet of bouillion ought to be dissolved in to create a "tasty hot beverage."
This bring us back to your basic bland soup (now a bit more chicken-y than at the very start).

Now we tackle that problem. Because the sweetness has already been emphasized, the additions should harmonize it or add a subtle juxtaposition.
* We start by taking a good sized onion (just the biggest one from a regular bag of yellow onions is fine); cutting it in half, dicing up one half fairly fine, and then cutting the other piece in half again and then slicing that.
*saute all that in 2 TBLS of cooking oil (which adds some fat content which should also alleviate the blandness) until the onion's all nice and brown i.e. carmelized
*add that to your soup
*also add a tsp of either cayenne pepper or Chile Morita (I think the latter would be esp. cool because of it's smokiness - which will complement the maple syrup)
let the whole schmegeggee simmer 30 minutes so that these new flavors work their way through everything

This should be fine the way it is but if yr shovelling snow and need to replenish some calories you could add some lightly buttered toast, or unflavored or butter flavored croutons, etc.

On Top of Ol' Smokey

This won't count as these week's blog - it's more an observation and I guess an object lesson of making rice wine outta spoiled rice...

My mother-in-law likes eating food she hasn't had to cook. She likes eating out, having Amy bring her take-out or restaurant leftovers...so periodically I'll make her a pot of soup. Often she eats this up right quick, other times it languishes in her freezer. For months. And a stockpile builds up.

Recently I went on a clean-up schtick - making a point of using all the stuff sitting in my freezer and my wife's freezer (yeah, we both have fully outfitted kitchens) and asking Amy to check and see if any soup was clogging up her mom's freezer and indeed there were two batches of soup I likely had made last Spring that she brought back.

The first one turned to be a "creamless" soup (see blog installment #1 re: soups) made with butternut squash. The first time I had some I could smell that it had been slightly burnt and I recalled that when I was making this, I started by steaming the squash and that (as happens, I left the pot untended so that the water all boiled off and the sugary juices that'd run off the squash carmelized and smoked a bit. Also the bottom layer of squash burnt a little. And ya know what -- the results were GREAT - the soup had just a touch of smokiness and the carmelized bits added a different kind of sweetness than the rest of the squash had.
The lesson here is - if something apparently goes wrong with a dish, don't automatically trash it - check it out - it might well be acceptable and in fact your accident might have added a special twist.

In the meanwhile, a good friend who's been making his own bread for the past month or so brought over a loaf of sourdough that he'd made. We've had his bread before and it's topnotch, but this one turned out to be overdone and hard as nail - basically it was probably what "hard tack" was back in the daily of ocean travel by sailing ship. It tasted fine - but was really tough to chew up.

SO...I sawed off a piece of bread, put it in a bowl, spooned over a some of the soup -- which was kinda concentrated so I thinned it with some water -- and nuked it for 2 minutes.

At the end, the bread soaked up enough liquid to soften up to the consistency of corn bread and I sprinkled the whole thing with some Chile Morita (a present a friend send from Spice Station in Silverlake). The smokiness of the Morita complimented the smokiness of the soup, offsetting the inherent sweetness of the squash...and frankly I can't imagine having a finer lunch.

Second lesson - if some foodstuff is perfectly fine on some levels and problematic in others, try and think of preparations that ameliorate that problem - and in this case improved the other dish as well.

MUSIC WHILE EATING New York Dolls Too Much Too Soon

Faux Boyz

"Do you know what it means, to miss New Orleans?"

I know I'm a carpetbagger. Visit yearly, maybe twice yearly. That's all. But I have come to found that contemplation of, and some indulgence in the culture of this longstanding repository of individuality, eccentricity and pleasure seeking to be a lifesaver at the worst points in my life. There's something about the acknowledgement and embrace of life and death, newness and decay, richness and poorness -- all of it celebrated in due course that brings me joy, engages my imagination, and delights my tastebuds...coz cuisine is an important part of the culture at most strata of its socio-economic complexes. And thus I take great joy in making and eating classic New Orleans fare - in renditions that fit with my dietary pecularities, time available for cooking and financial resources.

SO... in recent memory, one of the signature meals of that great town is the "Po' Boy" sandwich which is a favorite of locals and visitors, pretty universally indulged in and on offer throughout the town in a wide ranges of styles and levels of quality. And like such fare in other places, locals get quite passionate about their favored purveyors of this delicacy and competition between same has led to the establishment of an annual "Po' Boy Festival" held on Oak Street, WAY Uptown http://www.poboyfest.com/

But for all its mystique and undeniable delectability, a Po' Boy is basically hot flesh on a long crusty roll, trimmed to taste. So it's actually a great way to deal with a wide range of leftovers with minimal expense.

Basic ingredients:
leftover meat/fish/fowl
a long roll
AND THAT'S IT

Now, if you're looking to go the traditionalist route and "dress" your sammich you add some lettuce, pickle slices, tomato slices and yr condiment of choice.

Sounds too easy, right? Well, yeah - coz without attention to a few crucial details, and without a bit of strategizing, the results can be pretty meh. So here's a few simple tips:

BUT FIRST - musical accompaniment - hmmm, how about the Meters' Look-Ka Py Py?

Prime restaurant leftovers to use in Po' Boys would be chicken tenders, battered boneless fish (from an order of fish n chips for inst), battered deveined shrimp, oysters, rattlesnake etc.

Prime home leftovers would be ANYTHING without bones in it that's been sliced thin or chopped up to be readily bit off. If this comes with gravy ALL THE BETTER.

KEY TIP ONE - DON'T USE A MICROWAVE! All too often, microwaving does weird thing to the texture and sometimes the flavor of meats reheated thereby.

You do much better reheating battered goodies as well as chunked up leftover salmon, etc. (wrapped in aluminum foil to prevent it drying out) in a toaster oven (one of my favorite kitchen tools!), or a regular oven (tho to fire up an oven to heat up meat for one sandwich seems incredibly wasteful - might make sense if you were doing this for a party), or, in a pinch you could use a frying pan in which case if you can cover it to capture/reflect the heat onto the grub -- all the better. I'd give it 30 minutes at 350* or 20 minutes on medium heat on a frying pan

Sliced or chopped meat + gravy are best to heat in a covered pot at medium heat for 20 minutes.

KEY TIP TWO - the bestest roll for this would be CRUSTY on the outside and soft on the inside. In New Orleans baguettes of this exact configuration are ubiquitious (and thus naturally wind up being the accepted vessel for the Po' Boy). At least round my region most rolls seems either crusty all the way thru or soft all the way through. If this is what you're working with you're best advised to find a nice soft roll and then TOAST it lightly, BEFORE CUTTING IT, for like 4 minutes. In toaster oven, oven, etc.

These would be the basic strategies but you can let your imagination run wild as to how you wanna fancy this up. You could top it with things like slaw, sauteed onions, appropriately sized onion rings, potato sticks, tartar sauce, tamarind sauce, chopped avocado, leftover guacamole -- IN FACT IF YOU LEFTOVER fajita fixings you bring home this is a perfect way to recyle them in a cool way -- all you're adding is a roll for a very different kind of meal (I will note that CHEESE does not appear to be a regular additive/topping to the Po' Boy...but mebbe I just ain't et enough to have encountered any done that way), remoulade sauce. JUST USE A LITTLE COMMON SENSE in mixing up stuff that clearly harmonizes.

But while harmonizing ingredients is most likely going to yield nummy results, strange experiments are always allowable (as long as you're ready to accept occasional failures) and in fact standard operating procedure for cutting edge chefs (and I think they have their failures too - though I'd observe that their foodie acolytes accept even these as interesting and worthwhile experiences - I recall a meal at Trussardi alla Scala in Milan featuring "liquid salad" - all the vegetables having been prepared to be totally emulsified whilst holding their basic shape - salad dressing was misted over them by the waiter - OY!)

When you're trying a dish, working from a recipe, or trying to replicate something you ate at a restaurant, there's really nothing that's "wrong" as long as it tastes good to you. In fact, fortuitous mistakes are the engine of innovation. So if you stumble onto some strange wrinkle (coz you mis-measured, or had to substitute for some ingredient you didn't have on hand) and you LIKE IT - take notes and incorporate it as a part of your recipe in the future.

I'll point out that you are free to prepare the meat/fish/fowl fresh and then put it to use in your sandwich. That'd be cool and very much encouraged. But the basic premise of this blog is how to take leftovers and make them into something special...