October 2020 – Cooking the Books

October 30, 2020

It’s my birthday and I’ll geek out if I want to

I recently finished a wonderful YA novel called “Wicked Fox” by Kat Cho. One of my favorite things about it, though, for this foodie at heart, is the descriptions of Seoul food. Thanks to the glossary at the back, I got an even deeper description of each food item and have been making them in the weeks since.

I’m not too proud to admit that the kitchy date night dinner of corn dogs with fried potatoes caught my attention as much as the more traditional fare. Part of the appeal was figuring out exactly how it worked; then, once I knew, another part of the appeal was a whole new way to eat hot dogs surrounded by fried stuff.

There were not many recipes available from my usual sources. Even the (amazing) site I found to make the other traditional South Korean recipes didn’t include this more modern, more urban item. Thankfully, there’s YouTube.

The wonderful Aaron and Claire came through with several recipes, including one that was what I suspected the author was going for based on some additional research.

Now, the first thing to know is that these are not actually made with cornmeal, and that’s important because when the recipe says to roll the fried dough in sugar, it is slightly less unusual than it seems to American tastes. Since the dough more closely resembles bread than the sweeter corn batter, the sugar mostly just makes it taste more like American ideas of corn batter; that said, as a person who’s OK with slightly less sweet things, I tried them both ways and was totally fine without adding sugar.

I also found that I personally liked the way described in the video that skips the fried potatoes and instead uses a mix of panko and dried parsley as a coating. The crunch does it for me, but I also enjoyed the novelty of fried potatoes and “corn” dogs in the same dish.

While I mostly followed the recipes, one concession I did make is that since I wanted to sneak this into my small skillet recipes and recommend Cho’s book (not just for its Korean food items), I didn’t make them on sticks but instead cut the hot dogs and cheese sticks (!!) in half so I could try more variations and have them fit.

Here’s what I did, with the link to the direct Aaron and Claire YouTube video provided because I loved the descriptions:

Ingredients

~6 hot dogs, halved
~4 mozzarella cheese sticks, halved (and preferably frozen for about 10 minutes before cooking)
~1 to 1 ½ c. frozen potato cubes, if assortment preferred
~1 ½ c. panko
2 to 3 T. dried parsley
1 ⅔ c. (400 g) bread flour
½ c. (60 g) sugar, plus more for coating
2 ½ t. (10 g) salt
2 ¼ t. (8 g) active dried yeast
1 ¼ c. (300 ml) warm water
Oil, for frying
Ketchup, for serving
Mustard, for serving

Directions

In a large bowl, mix together the bread flour, sugar, and salt. Stir to combine. In a small bowl, mix together the yeast and warm water, and let sit about 5 minutes, and then pour into the dry mixture until a sticky dough forms, adding more water if necessary.

Let the dough rise in a cool, dry place for about 2 hours.

After the 2 hours passes, mix together the panko and parsley on a plate. If using, place the frozen potatoes on a plate. If using (and recommended), place a little bit (~½ c. additional) of sugar on a small plate to coat the fried food.

Heat up oil in a 9 in. cast iron skillet (or whatever) until it reaches about 275 degrees.

Use your hands (or corn dog sticks, if you have them) to wrap the hot dog pieces and cheese stick halves, individually, in the dough. This is where it really helps to have seen the video to get a good idea of how to wrap the dogs and cheese sticks, but I also feel like after you do it a couple times, there’s not too many ways to catch the dough to wrap it around the meat and cheese.

Once dog/cheese is covered in dough, coat it in the panko or the potato or leave plain to your heart’s desire. Then, fry it for three to five minutes until nice and golden. Place on a paper towel to drain excess oil, and then coat in sugar before serving

Repeat with remaining items, and using the coatings as desired.

Drizzle with ketchup and mustard before serving, or use for dipping, and enjoy!

October 24, 2020

Poverty pie uses on-hand ingredients for delightful dessert

One of the things that my sweetie and I both enjoy is looking at old recipes. Among our favorites are cookbooks collected from a local community; for me, my favorite is one from the church where I believe my grandparents wed (or at least was a one-time hometown for one or both of them).

They offer insights into what’s popular in a given time or given location, and they vary wildly in terms of quality, suggesting uncharitably that maybe not everyone can cook or more charitably that different people have some quite different tastes from me.

In that same vein, we also love discovering recipes that are likely from the Great Depression-era, or maybe just ones stemming from home chefs who have made a little go a long way.

As someone who has been very, very privileged throughout this pandemic to both (so far) keep my job and work from home, I count myself extremely lucky that I do not, and have rarely, *needed* to make a little go a long way. But I am still grateful that these recipes survive to remind me both that poverty doesn’t mean the absence of joy and that cheap doesn’t mean gross.

This week’s recipe, in that sense, was a real revelation.

I knew from looking at its ingredient list that it had to be a poverty pie, born of a need to use what’s on hand to make a simple dessert. However, it wasn’t until I tasted it that I figured out the tricks it used to make its bare-bone ingredients seem like something a little more.

Correctly dubbed a vinegar pie, there’s not much to the insides of this pie, but it does use white vinegar as its most unexpected-in-a-dessert ingredient.

I would have been more skeptical but for two facts: (1) I figured Taste of Home wouldn’t promote a recipe of complete garbage, and (2) my Grandma Crippes’ ditalini pasta salad recipe relies on a very simple dressing of white vinegar, oil, and sugar, and it works delightfully well.

Still, some things about the recipe were confusing, and I doubted it would work well. Until I tried it and realized that everything makes sense once you know that vinegar pie is what happens when you want to make apple pie but cannot get the fresh fruit.

That explained the small strips of dough on the bottom layer, and the use of vinegar to add a citric flavor when lemon juice may not be available, and the extra flour — like in a traditional apple pie — to help make an internal goop while baking.

All in all, it was actually quite a delight and is a reminder that it’s possible, if not ideal (hint: Congress pass a GD bill to help people) to make apple-ish pie out of vinegar. Literally.

It’s not pretty, it’s not fancy, but it’s a good enough, tasty enough pie.

Here’s what I did, following the recipe only making it 9-inch instead of 12 and slightly altering the water level as I found it to be too much for my small skillet:

Ingredients

1 ½ c. sugar
2 ¼ T. all-purpose flour
½ t. ground nutmeg
6 T. butter, cut into cubes
½ c. white vinegar
1 to 1 ½ c. hot water
2 pie crusts (homemade or store-bought)

Directions

Heat oven to 450 degrees.

Whisk together sugar, flour, and nutmeg; set aside.

On a floured surface, roll out one-third to one-half of the pie crusts into a ⅛ in. thick circle. Cut into small 2 in. by 1 in. strips (I was hung up on this idea, but if you imagine the strips are replacements for apple slices, it makes it much easier to envision the size and shape). Layer a 9-inch enamel-coated cast-iron skillet or casserole dish with half the strips. Sprinkle with half the sugar and dot with half the butter. Add the remaining half of strips, and repeat the sugar mixture and butter layers.

Roll out the remaining half to two-thirds of the dough into a ⅛ in. circle. Place over filling and press against the sides of the skillet or casserole. Cut a slit in the top.

Mix together 1 c. of hot water and ½ c. of vinegar. Slowly pour water-vinegar mixture into slit. Liquid may (and almost certainly will) bubble up through the crust. If it’s not completely full, add another ½ to 1 c. hot water (for me, it was full with the original amount).

Since it’s likely to spill over a little, place an oven rack lined with foil or an old cookie sheet below the intended rack to bake the pie. Bake the pie for about 1 hour until the crust is golden brown, perhaps reducing the time or covering edges with foil in the last 15 to 20 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack, and enjoy!

October 19, 2020

Hearty beefy pie for a fall night

Sometimes, you just need an easy homemade dinner. Especially when you already took a week off from blogging. So, when I saw this beef pie recipe used mostly frozen vegetables, saving on chopping, I couldn’t resist.

Plus, the dough — which the recipe says can be store-bought, but after a year of making pies, I just don’t trust any dough but my own — only goes on top so it’s less work and less baking time.

Oh, and did I mention there was beer?! And not just any beer but a Guinness!

The only problem with the recipe was its calling for mushrooms, but that was easily mended by replacing it with carrots, which was the only thing I ended up chopping. And frankly, since the meal nearly overflowed its container as is, even though it called for a 9-inch skillet, the carrot could be skipped.

Otherwise, it was everything that it advertised. Simple. Tasty. Hearty.

Sometimes, you can’t ask for more than that.

“X” marks the spot where there’s a very delicious meat pie filling underneath a yummy buttery crust.

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

1 T. olive oil
1 lb. lean ground beef
1 carrot, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
3 T. tomato paste
1 c. frozen pearl onions
2 t. thyme
3 T. all-purpose flour
8 oz. Guinness
1 c. frozen butternut squash pieces
1 c. frozen peas
1 pie crust, store-bought or homemade and chilled
1 large egg, beaten

Directions

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a 9-inch skillet on the stove top over medium heat. Add the beef, carrots, and salt and pepper, to taste, and cook, breaking up the beef with a spoon until browned, about 6 minutes. Add the tomato paste, and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in the onions, and thyme, and then sprinkle with flour, stirring, for about 30 seconds.

Add the stout and simmer until the liquid has thickened, about 1 minute. Add ½ c. water and bring to a simmer. Add the squash and peas, return to a simmer, and then remove from heat. The dish will be fairly full, but it’ll make a nice hearty pie.

Roll out, or unroll if using store bought, the pastry dough into about a 10- to 12-inch round, and place on top of the still-hot filling, tucking in the remainder of the dough around the edges. Cut an “X” in the middle, and brush with egg.

Bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the crust is golden. Let rest for about 5 minutes, and then enjoy!

October 4, 2020

The trashiest, tastiest toastie

This week’s recipe partially feels like a cheat. After all, it’s just a grilled cheese sandwich with a few extras.

But it’s been a long year and I needed some comfort food. Besides, it *is* made with a few additions that make it at least a little unlike any grilled cheese I’ve made before, starting with coating the outside in mayonnaise.

Before I get to any additional weirdness, though, I want to explain how I came to make this recipe to begin with. It’s a fun story time, I promise.

I came across a click-baity article a couple months ago that was about the kind of conspiracy theory I can get behind, one that is quite harmless and mostly meaningless. That is, the theory that the Nando’s brand medium peri peri sauce is in fact spicier than its hot variety. I’ve long been a fan of peri peri sauce, as it’s a not-too-hot hot sauce for my tastes and its extremely flavorful beyond just spicy. And Nando’s is the brand I typically buy.

So, I went ahead and bought a bottle of both and conducted a taste test with some quite tasty chicken wings. My sweetie, who had not seen which was which when I placed it on the plate, was fooled into thinking the medium was the hot sauce. While I could not likewise do a blind taste test, I shared his opinion.

The wings, however, did not use up all the sauce and we had two bottles (actually four, because I also sampled some other varieties) in our fridge, looking for an excuse to be used. So, I perused the recipe booklet that came with the bottles and couldn’t resist the toastie (read: grilled cheese) recipe. It had chicken, peri peri, cheese, and then was supposed to be coated in peri peri-based mayonnaise; while I didn’t have the Nando’s brand mayonnaise, I did have some powdered peri peri lying around, so I mixed it together with mayonnaise.

The result was more or less what I expected: spicy grilled cheese with chicken. And a lot of filling for two sammies. Which means, it was a frickin’ delight!

The mayonnaise cooked the outside a little too well, but I should have turned the stove down when the first side came up a bit blackened. Otherwise, though, I loved every unhealthy bite.

Slightly burnt but the tastiest toastie I’ve ever made.

Here’s what I did, following the booklet recipe other than faking the “perinaise”:

Ingredients

1 ½ c. cooked chicken, cubed or shredded
1 ½ c. shredded sharp cheddar
½ c. peri peri sauce (whichever level of spice you prefer, but remember, the medium may be hotter!)
¼ mayonnaise
Peri peri powder, to taste (optional)
4 slices of bread
Vegetable oil

Directions

In a medium bowl, mix together the chicken, cheese, and peri peri sauce. In a small bowl, stir together the mayonnaise and peri peri powder, if using.

Spread the chicken and cheese mixture over two slices of bread. Top with the remaining two slices of bread.

Spread the ½ the mayonnaise mixture on one side of the top of both bread slices.

Heat a 9-inch skillet over medium to medium-low heat. Add a splash of vegetable oil.

Place one sandwich, mayonnaise side down, and spread half the remaining mayonnaise on the top of the bread in the skillet while it cooks. Cook for 2 ½ to 3 minutes until golden, and adjust temperature as needed. Once golden, flip the toastie and cook on the other side for another 2 ½ to 3 minutes until golden and the center is warmed and melty.

Repeat the process with the remaining sandwich, using up the rest of the mayonnaise to coat the last bare slice of bread, and enjoy with a healthy salad to counterbalance this delectable dinner!