mamster

Poblanos California This is a variation on a family casserole recipe, made respectable by its conversion into stuffing. 2 T vegetable oil 1 green pepper, diced 1 medium yellow onion, diced 1 tsp chili powder 1/2 tsp cayenne or 2 serrano chiles, sliced 28 oz can diced tomatoes, including juice Two 14.5 oz cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed 1/2 c Minute Rice 2 c shredded sharp cheddar 4 large poblano chi 1. Preheat oven to 350 F. 2. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the oil and saute the green pepper, onion, chili powder, and cayenne (or serranos) until onions are translucent, about 6-8 minutes. Add the tomatoes, beans, and rice; salt to taste; and stir well. Remove from heat. 3. Meanwhile, put the whole poblanos on a cookie sheet and place under the broiler for about six minutes, turning once, until skin is puffy and charred. Place the charred peppers into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit for at least ten minutes. 4. With your hands, skin the peppers. The skin should slide right off; if it doesn't, just do your best and roast the peppers longer next time. Using a sharp knife, cut a slit on one side parallel to the length of each pepper. Carefully reach in and remove the stem and seeds. Unless you're a lot more coordinated than I am, you'll need to reach around and fish out some of the seeds. 5. Stuff the vegetable mixture into the peppers (get as much in there as you can, but you'll probably have some left over). Place them on the cookie sheet and top with the cheese. Bake 20-25 minutes or until cheese starts to brown. Keywords: The Daily Gullet ( RG496 )

Pollo con Rajas Serves 2. The recipe below features boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which are the antithesis of cool. The average foodie will tell you that BSCBs are tasteless, overpriced, and impossible to cook without drying out. That sounds like a challenge to me. Tasteless? Add flavor with a brine, then flour and saute until golden brown. Can't cook them through before the thin part is overdone? Pound them to an even thickness. Expensive? Shoplift. Do this, even with ordinary supermarket chicken, and people will wonder whether you have some secret, free-range chicken operation in your basement. For the rajas: 3 medium poblano peppers (about 1/2 lb) 1 small onion, halved pole-to-pole and sliced thin 1 T vegetable oil 2 T whole milk or half-and-half For the chicken: 2 c water 1/4 c kosher salt 1/4 c sugar 2 T juice from one lime OR 2 tbsp flavorful vinegar (such as sherry or cider) 2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves flour - 1 tbsp vegetable oil 1. Trim the chicken breasts and remove the tenderloins. Reserve the tenderloins for another use. 2. Stir the salt and sugar into the water until dissolved. 3. Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound to 1/2" thickness with a pounder or mallet. Place the chicken in a gallon Zip-Loc bag, pour in the brine, and seal. Refrigerate. 4. Slice the chiles in half lengthwise and remove the cores, seeds, and ribs. Place skin-side up on a cookie sheet. 5. Broil the chiles 5-10 minutes until well-charred. Place the roasted chiles in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit ten minutes. 6. Skin the chiles and discard the skin. Slice the chiles into approximately 1/4"x3" strips. 7. Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add chile strips and onion and season with salt. Cover and cook 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the milk or half-and-half and remove from heat. 8. Drain the chicken breasts and dry well with paper towels. 9. Heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a skillet (not non-stick) over medium-high heat. Dredge the chicken breasts in flour and shake off excess. Saute 3 minutes per side or until cooked through. Top with the rajas and serve immediately. Keywords: Main Dish, Chicken, Spanish/Portugese, The Daily Gullet ( RG495 )

I get the discs at my local Asian grocery. They're more like pucks.

Jinmyo, why don't you tell me what you really think? Suzanne, it makes the rajas a bit more like a sauce rather than just a pile of peppers. Not that there's anything wrong with a pile of peppers--feel free to omit the milk/cream if you like.

Wait, Szechuan preserved vegetable is different from salted radish. It's a different plant, for one thing, and much less dry than the salted radish. It's pickled rather than just salted. By all means do go ahead and substitute them, but not in the same quantity--I'd use half as much salted radish as Szechuan vegetable.

vengroff, you're nothing but a scale shill. Also, you're right, of course.

Obviously, substitute thighs if you want. I've been known to. I still like the idea of serving chicken breasts and making people wonder, "How come the chicken breasts at mamster's house taste so much better?" By the way, I think I forgot to mention it in the article, but this particular brine formulation came from Cook's Illustrated, with some modifications by me. And you're right, I forgot to mention how long to brine them. Half an hour is fine.

And I just tried the Niman Ranch bacon from Trader Joe's. It's great. I tried the cured; they also have uncured, which I'm skeptical of but will try next.

elyse, I'd direct you to the article on aluminum in Harold McGee's The Curious Cook. The jury is still out on whether dietary aluminum contributes to Alzheimer's, but whether cookware is a significant source of dietary aluminum is well understood: it isn't. I'd agree with the nonstick recommendation for muffin tins. I've never had something stick to a Magic Line cake pan that wasn't easy to get off, and rectangular pans are a pain to clean no matter what--things always get stuck in the corners.

Wow, this was a great piece. It reminded of The Supper of the Lamb Now I feel slightly guilty that the column I'm working on has a recipe involving boneless chicken breasts.

There's a Thai grocery store (Mekong) on Rainier, but it's kind of seedy. When I've seen the granite mortar and pestles at Asian stores, they haven't been any cheaper than at City Kitchens. They're cheaper in Thailand, if that helps.

Nightscotsman, I warped one of my aluminum pans last time I did this, so I figured cast iron would be hardier. It didn't seem to affect the seasoning. To prevent rust, I took the pan out about halfway through baking, poured out the remaining water, and rubbed it with oil.

Sounds great, jackal. I've been wanting to experiment with sourdough, so I may well try your recipe next.

It wasn't the first time I'd made bread, but it was the first time I'd made good bread. Recently I was asked to test a recipe for an upcoming book, for a Flute Gana-type loaf, with a poolish starter and some cornmeal in the dough. I followed the recipe, formed the loaves, baked on a stone, and out came the same disappointing bread I've always made: looked fine, perfectly edible, but bland. I was about to conclude that all the books claiming you could get good rustic bread out of a home oven were bogus. But I was determined to give it another shot, so I turned to The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It has a Pain a l'Ancienne recipe that promises great results. It seemed too simple to work at all: it's a straight dough, with no starter or sponge (this is very uncommon in modern bread books), and after retarding overnight, you shape the loaves and pop them in the oven without even proofing. It's an extremely wet dough, and the best I could do was shape it into some flattish baguettes. The recipe does call for generating as much steam in the oven as possible, which I did by pouring hot water into a heated cast iron skillet and also using a spray bottle. About 22 minutes later, out came some gorgeously brown, if misshapen, loaves. Somehow I forced myself to let them cool completely before diving in. I couldn't even believe what I was eating at first. Was Laurie playing a trick on me, substituting some bread from Dahlia or Grand Central? No, this was my ugly bread. The crust to crumb ration was a little high, but that's the worst thing you could possibly say about this loaf. The crust was crisp, and loaded with flavor, and I got great gelatinization through the crumb, leaving it moist with irregular holes. If you're chary of homemade bread, like I was, try this recipe. You could mix up the dough tonight and pop it in the fridge, then bake the bread tomorrow morning. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy a pound of yeast.

My dad and I just shared a durian shake at a Malaysian restaurant. He liked it. I'd had it before. A little durian goes a long way--the smell doesn't bother me, and I like the flavor, but the onion taste catches up with me after a while.

A sparkle cookie warning: do not use 70% chocolate in this recipe--or if you do, up the sugar. I made what I thought would be the ultimate in Sparkliness, with 70% Scharffen-Berger and real almond flour, and they were downright sour. Stick with semisweet.

No, but they have a croissant filled with pork fat, piped from a pastry bag. Okay, actually they do have P au C. MsR, I will definitely try the place on 15th. I could have tried it yesterday when I was up at Sonic Boom hearing the Long Winters. That would have meant croissant for breakfast and croissant for mid-afternoon snack, but I'm dedicated.

Oops, I missed this three weeks ago. The way I did it was to look on the package, which almost always gives contents by weight but serving size by volume. If I didn't have the package handy, I could usually find the information online, on a grocery delivery site such as albertsons.com.

The plain croissant is not only the true test of a pastry shop's mettle, it's one of my favorite foods. Sure, I'm happy with pain au chocolat or an almond croissant, but a morning with a good plain croissant and a cappuccino is about as good as it gets. Has anyone ever devised a better butter delivery mechanism? So I've been informally surveying the Seattle croissant scene in search of pastry nirvana. I've tried all of the most recommended places except one (Le Fournil), unless you've got some secrets for me. I went to Le Fournil one day and they were out of croissants. It's inconveniently located for me, in that I go by it on the bus almost every day, but it's halfway through my bus ride and I'd have to get off and catch another bus or walk across the bridge. The bridge is rickety, and I could drop my croissant. I have one criterion for croissant excellence: it should be as much like the croissants served at Poujauran, in Paris, as possible. The Poujauran croissant is an exercise in balance. You can taste the yeast, but it doesn't beat you over the head with it. The exterior is brown and flaky, and leaves crumbs on your shirt (this is very important), but it yields to gentle pressure. When you take a bite, the croissant resists just slightly, like al dente pasta, and then absolutely disappears in the mouth. The crumb is impossibly delicate. Briefly, I considered trying to make my own croissants. Then I asked nightscotsman whether he'd ever made them, and he said, "Yes. Badly." If nightscotsman thinks they're hard, forget it. Here's where I've been: 1. Hiroki. Good flavor, but the texture was like a dinner roll. Someone (was it nightscotsman again?) told me he's stopped making them until he can automate the process. I'd be willing to give them another try when they return. 2. Grand Central. I should note that I didn't even realize they made croissants until I got a press release about them. This is a very good croissant in a kind of Big Flavors American style: it's extremely flaky (not quite yielding enough) and quite yeasty. It doesn't show a lot of restraint, but not bad. 3. Essential Baking Co. Taking the opposite tack from Grand Central, this croissant is quite large (too much crumb), lighter in color, and with only a hint of yeast. A bit too subtle. Recommended in a pinch. 4. Cafe Besalu. Bells ring and celestial trumpets blow. This is easily the best I've had in town. Halfway between the Grand Central and Essential styles, this is near-perfect. (Laurie and I went this morning, and I'd never been before.) If I had to make a criticism, it would be that they don't make a very good cappuccino. Anything I'm missing? I'll get to Le Fournil next week.

Southeast Asia is such a wonderful mishmash of dishes borrowed, stolen, and crammed down eager throats, that you can find twelve opinions on the origin of any dish. As for Panang curry, the name sounds Malay, but the curry as currently constituted is closer to a Thai red curry than anything else. Although I guess it would be kind of like rendang if you used stewed beef. I'm not saying it didn't come from Malaysia, but it would be hard to prove either way.

What FG said about the coconut milk, and for panang I'd use a tender cut of beef, sear it over high heat, and just throw it in at the end.

When you prepare panang curry, use a little more sugar, make it with beef, and garnish with a chiffonade of lime leaf and a drizzle of coconut cream. If you want to be traditional about it.

Neither. Get aluminum. I haven't used their loaf pans, but the all-aluminum Magic Line round cake and rectangular baking pans are by far the best I've ever used, and they're not very expensive.

Another City Kitchens bargain is at hand. I was in the other day (bought an Exoglass spoon, which is pretty cool, like a wooden spoon only blue) and they have a Salter electronic scale for $30. It's a really nice one, better than the Soehnle I have, which cost twice as much. It has the grams/oz button on the top, a fairly large platform, and good precision (1/8 oz or 1g, I believe). If you've been putting off getting an electronic scale, now's the time. I use my scale every day.

I also vote for B. Frites, although I haven't surveyed the field since 1999. They double-fry.