Wild Rice, Turkey, and Split-Pea Soup [GF]

One of the most unfortunate aspects of impromptu cooking is that one often creates a magnificent dish which one longs to replicate — or to assist others in replicating — but to which one either added the ingredients too hurriedly, or else in too incremental a fashion to allow for the reconstruction of a recipe with accurate proportions for all ingredients added.  This pea-based potage was such a dish, but one sufficiently tasty that I'm going to attempt a rough reconstruction of the recipe anyhow, in the hope that someone out there will be able to hone a Winged Victory of Samothrace, so to speak, from this proverbial rough, unhewn marble.  I prepared it in a pinch, after the ham for the ham-and-split-pea soup I'd been planning to make didn't materialize, but I think it probably trumps whatever the original concoction would have been.

Again, before I list the ingredients, let me reiterate that the proportions given are at best conjectural.  The only things I know for a certainty are the net weight of the dry split peas and wild rice used.  I made the stock by boiling turkey bones a few hours prior to beginning preparations on the soup, and just transferred the broth in that pot over to the soup pot when needed.  I kept adding water, salt, and spices in increments throughout the cooking process.

• 8 oz. dry split peas
• 8 oz. wild rice
• 5-7 cups unseasoned, unsalted turkey stock
• 2 cups diced roast turkey (light and dark meat)
• 3-4 Tbsp. salt (or to taste)
• 1-2 Tbsp. black pepper
• 2 tsp. sweet paprika
• 1 tsp. dry parsley flakes
• 2-3; tsp. Thai basil
• 4-6 medium carrots, coarsely chopped
• 3-5 cups water
• 1-2 Tbsp. poultry seasoning
• 1-2 tsp. dry rosemary needles, crushed
• 1 tsp. white pepper
• ½-1 cup red wine vinegar
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• 1-2 tsp. turmeric
• 1-3 tsp. ground dry ginger
• 2-3 tsp. dry oregano
• ½ tsp. ground cloves

Soak the split peas overnight prior to preparing the soup.  In a large soup crock, boil the soaked peas in the broth and two additional cups of water for 10-15 min. on high heat.  Reduce to medium-high heat and begin adding the cloves, ginger, salt, (white and black) pepper, turmeric, poultry seasoning, and paprika, lemon juice, and vinegar (doing so incrementally and adjusting the amounts to taste).  After 30-45 min. more, or when the split peas have softened and the broth is beginning to turn mildly green, add the wild rice, rosemary, oregano, Thai basil, and parsley (again, doing so incrementally and adjusting the amounts to taste).  After the wild rice becomes soft (which should take another 30-40 minutes), add the turkey and carrots, turn the heat down to medium, and continue to simmer until the carrots are tender but not overly soft.  While the carrots are cooking, once again adjust the seasonings to taste.  Once they are tender, remove the soup from the burner and serve.

Again, I invite any interested readers who choose to undertake this recipe to weigh in on the issue of what the optimal proportions of the ingredients are.  Otherwise, bon appetit!   

October Fool [V] [GF]

I had remarked in my previous post, a moderately-sized pie pumpkin tends to provide a tad more gourd-flesh than needed for making one or two pies.  Perhaps this remark left certain readers in suspense as to what I would do with the remainder of the cooked pumpkin I had on hand after pie-making was complete.  Then again, perhaps I'm being narcissistic, and the hard truth is that nobody pays terribly close attention to half-implied narrative arcs in an only sporadically updated recipe blog.  Well, that may be, but at any rate, I'm going to satisfy your non-existent curiosity anyhow: I made October fool (to be contrasted with April fool, which is something else entirely).

So, for those unfamiliar with the dessert known as "fool" (the etymology of whose name is somewhat hazy), it's generally a light, summery mixture of sugar, whipped cream, and pureed fruit.  This creation certainly fits the description, though the squash certainly gives it a weight and a more autumnal essence that its berry-based cousins lack.  The nice thing is that it requires little in the way of preparation (other than the initial cooking of the pumpkin, as discussed in the pumpkin-pie post) and equally little in the way of sugar.  In fact, eliminating the sugar from this dish entirely wouldn't drastically alter its character.  The recipe given below serves five.

• 1¾ cups cooked pumpkin
• 2½ bananas
• ½ cup soy milk
• 2 tsp. brown sugar
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
• ⅛ tsp. nutmeg
• ⅛ tsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp. finely chopped pecan pieces

Place the pumpkin, soy milk, spices, salt, and bananas in a food processor and puree until the resulting mixture is smooth.  Spoon directly into small bowls or wine glasses and garnish with the chopped pecans.

Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Pie [GF]

The climate in which we dwell, and in particular that in which we spend our infancy and youth, yields the bulk of the timber from which the metaphorical architecture of our weltanschauung is constructed.  For those dubious of this assertion's veracity, I heartily recommend residing in some far-flung location whose climate is as close to diametrically opposite that of one's provenance as possible, and then returning to one's native land during a particularly captivating season, such as Autumn in the Upper Midwest.  Indeed, the word "autumn" is all but superfluous on the Hawaiian Islands, where the standard deviation in temperature appears to be in the single digits Fahrenheit and the difference between summer and winter has more to do with precipitation than temperature.  In the greater Minneapolis area, however, autumn is nothing less than the symbolic requital of spring's myriad promises: it is a harvest celebration in which nature herself supplies the banners the confetti, and the music (from the throats of Canada geese volant to the crepitation of workboots upon leaf-strewn pathways), coupled with an annual acknowledgment (that you can bet pervades the Minneapolitan psyche) that human lives themselves have their seasons and cycles, that those seasons have a dramatic arc to them, and that none of them lacks its industry and purpose.   

These sentiments (bear with me here: the anthropology's nearly done and the recipe's coming...) are embodied in the region's traditional harvest foods: baked squashes, ears of gold-tasseled corn, roasted fowls packed with myriad forcemeats replete with nuts and dessicated cherries, and raw, tart apples to be broken vociferously between the teeth.  These are foods which heat the kitchen, foods far too cumbersome to prepare when only one lone diner is to sit at table and which therefore urge companionship and communion, foods rich in starches and sugars to sustain the eater through the coming dearth.  As trite as these symbols have become to most of us as a result of our collective elementary-school experience with Thanksgiving decorations and woefully historically inaccurate fables about pilgrims and helpful natives breaking bread, their symbolic power tends to get reinvigorated quickly after one is thrust into a Minnesotan autumn after many moons roaming abroad in lands without similar seasonality or seasonings.  In that spirit, one of my first culinary endeavors after arriving in Minnesota this fall was to produce from scratch perhaps the most hackneyed of the season's symbolic foodstuffs: pumpkin pie.

Making a pumpkin pie from scratch is not particularly difficult, but a few tidbits of wisdom (gleaned from cookbooks of various sorts over the years) should be passed on to the reader who has never attempted to do so before.  As far a pumpkins go, seek out pie pumpkins rather than carving pumpkins — provided you can find them.  If you're physically located in Hawaii, or some other location in which pie pumpkins aren't east to come by, I've read (though have not personally verified) that kombucha do quite well in their stead.  The only thing keeping this recipe from being vegan is the eggs, for which many apt substitutes also exist.  The recipe I've provided below makes two smallish pies.  Pie pumpkins, unfortunately, are quantized in units which tend to yield far more pumpkin flesh than require for even a pair of pies, so feel free to do what you will with what remains.  As a final comment, if you're not particularly keen on steaming as a method for cooking your pumpkin (do to time constraints or any other reason), several alternative methods (including one involving a microwave oven) can be found here.

Pie filling:

• 1 small pie pumpkin
• 2 cups vanilla soy milk
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp. Torani hazelnut syrup
• ½ cup white sugar
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. nutmeg
• ¼ tsp. dry ginger
• ¼ tsp. nutmeg 

Slice the pumpkin in half and remove the seeds and strands of pumpkin innards.  (If you don't want to waste the seeds, I suggest cleaning and roasting them, but this is a subject for a subsequent post.)  Wash the halves off and further slice each into five or six large slices or chunks so that all can be fit together into one large pot.  Place the chunks into such a pot with a cup or more of water at the bottom and steam the slices in this manner on medium heat for 30 min. or so, or until the pumpkin flesh is soft and can be removed from the rinds with a spoon.  Separate around three cups of the pumpkin flesh from those rinds, place it in a food processor with the soy milk, and process the two together until the puree is of a uniform consistency and all chunks of pumpkin have been broken up.  Pour into a mixing bowl and combine with the other ingredients.  Stir the mixture vigorously, taking particular care to mix the eggs into it thoroughly.   

Prepare the (rice-flour based) pie crusts by following the recipe given in the my pineapple-pie post from back last December.  Once the pie crusts are satisfactorily pre-baked, remove them from the oven to cool and turn the oven temperature down to 375°.  When the pie crusts have cooled sufficiently, pour the filling into them, cover each pie with aluminum foil, and return them to the oven for 25-30 min.  Remove the foil cover from each pie and continue to bake for another 25-30 min. or until a knife stabbed through the center of each pie remains clean when withdrawn.

Indonesian Squid Broil [GF]

Last month, while attending a conference in the greater Chicago area, I had the opportunity to drop in on what is fast becoming one of my favorite restaurants.  This would be JoyYee, an establishment which does better than any other to dispel the "jack of all cuisines, master of none" stigma that plagues (and admittedly, in most cases, deservedly so) pan-Asian eateries.  Having dined there (if partaking in boba smoothies and appetizers counts as dining) there three times in the span of a week, I had the opportunity to explore vast tracts of their extensive menu and came away with a burning desire to replicate one particular dish, which consisted of a whole grilled cuttlefish adorned with a thick black sauce.  Soon after I returned to O'ahu, a friend's visit afforded me the opportunity to try my hand at what I am guessing was probably inspired primarily by an Indonesian dish called cumi kecap.

The results... well, suffice it to say that I rank this as one of the ten best dishes I have ever created.  Two other parties offered similar, glowing reviews.  While the dish did not precisely replicate JoyYee's cuttlefish, all unanimously agreed that it surpassed the dish which inspired it in nearly every way — which given the already high quality of the original, is high praise indeed.  But enough vaunting: let's get to the recipe.

The Squid:

• 1 whole medium squid
• ½ tsp. soy sauce
• ⅛ tsp. salt
  

The Sauce:

• 3 Tbsp. gluten-free soy sauce
• ¼ tsp. fish sauce
• 2 Tbsp. water 
• 1 Tbsp. cooking sherry
• ½ tsp. sesame oil
• 2 tsp. raw cane sugar
• ⅛ tsp. salt
• 1 pinch cinnamon
• 1 pinch cardamom
• 1 small pinch cumin

Set the oven to broil and preheat it to 375° Fahrenheit. Rinse the squid under cold water and remove the eyes, beak, and digestive organs with a knife.  Grease a suitably-sized cookie sheet with sesame oil.  Place the entire squid on it, sprinkle half of the salt and soy sauce over it, and broil for 15-20 min.  While the squid is cooking, combine the soy sauce, fish sauce, oil, cardamom, cumin, and cinnamon in a small saucepan and simmer on medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture attains the consistency of molasses.  Remove the squid from the oven, flip it over with a spatula, and sprinkle the remaining soy sauce and salt on the newly exposed side.  Return the squid to the oven for another 15-20 minutes or until the exterior is browned but the flesh is still tender.  Add the remaining ingredients to the sauce and continue to reduce the mixture, while stirring frequently, until the squid is done.

Place the squid in a shallow bowl or serving dish and pour approximately half of the sauce over it.  Transfer the remaining sauce to a small bowl for dipping the rings and tentacles in.  Serve with rice (which can also benefit from the use of the remaining sauce as condiment).