holiday. celebrate.

in the words of a very wise woman who once may have had conical boobies and rubber bracelets: “holiday.  celebrate.”  the days are getting shorter, the shoppers are getting that crazy look in their side-eye, and the cooking magazines are enticing us with glossy pictures of perfectly roasted birds and glistening cuts of prime rib.  honestly, if you get rid of all that stuff about togetherness and joy and cheer and whatnot, what are the holidays all about?  food.  truly, i am thankful for the room in my stomach for the food that i am about to inhale.  god bless us, every one.

i joke, but to be terribly honest, i do somewhat buy into the holiday spiel.  not the industry-sponsored, overly-schmaltzy, Rob-Lowe-Stars-In-Hallmark-Holiday-Channel’s-A-Very-Special-Christmas-Shoes part 
(for realsies, by the way)

but the magic of the season does make my toes tingle a wee bit.  i remember as a child setting out the glass of whiskey and mince pie for father christmas (santa said “screw the glass of milk, it’s happy hour” in my house) and busting at the seams with excitement that it was gone in the morning.  (and i’m only marginally sure that it wasn’t my older brother nicking st. nick’s cocktail.)  christmas trees still stand proudly atop my Top Five List of favourite smells, the “charlie brown christmas” CD never gets old, and though now i’m the one sipping a mimosa and watching my kids tear into their stockings, the magic still lives on.  i’m a whore for the holidays.  a ho ho ho... ho.

so, with two down and one still to go, let us talk about those fabulous winter holidays and count down The Top Five List of THannukahGivingMas!

1) christmas mornings.  
these should be about excitement, about stockings, and about absolutely zero faff.  enter your new favourite christmas breakfast recipe: cheese & onion strata.  easy as pie, completely do-ahead, amazing with or without sriracha to spice it up.  you’re welcome.

1 baguette, cut into 1/2-ish" slices and left to go stale

6 spring onions, roughly sliced

10 oz-ish cheese, grated (mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan, whatever tickles your fancy)

1/2 cup sour cream

6 free-range eggs

arrange the stale baguette slices in a layer in a shallow dish.

place the spring onions and cheese into a food processor.  add the sour cream and eggs, then blend until smooth.

pour the cheese and egg mixture over the bread in the dish, cover with cling film, and leave in the fridge to soak overnight.

when ready to cook, preheat the oven to 375, then bake for 30 minutes, or until completely cooked through.  

eat as stockings are demolished and mimosas are downed.  boom.

2) hanukkah.  
as of a while back, team Jo proudly celebrates hanukkah.  this was at middle menschkin’s behest, but gladly adopted by the five of us.  

jewish-by-association we became, and i couldn’t be happier to welcome mensches and latkes into my home.  yes, british people might traditionally have a different bent towards fried potatoes, but latkes might just be my favourite yet.  let's turn to my old friend yottam for the recipe...  http://tinyurl.com/lozljtg

3) the pacific northwest.  

okay, not terribly themed towards the holidays, but still.  i am proud and delighted to live where i do where the beaches look like this:

and the oysters look like this:

by the by, at a recent house rental in oregon, without the means to shuck oysters nor to grill them, we had to resort to a quick roast.  my clever dad, with nary a culinary bone to his body, suggested we use a muffin tin to balance them.  

genius.  never doing them another way, done, boom.  move over macklemore and minaj, i might just have another sous chef.

speaking of...

4) my sous-chefs

i am thankful for 18 months of constant support from my excellent imaginary sous chefs nicki minaj and macklemore.  without you i would be lost in my kitchen, desperately searching for a hoppty hoop hoop and putting my hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us.  all of us function better with a good supporting cast, imaginary or otherwise.  word.

5) my community

perhaps most of all, and especially at this time of year, i am thankful for friends old and new; those people who always have my back, who are there for me no matter what, and who make this place my home.  you awesome people, you complete me.  

now let us gather around the droopy charlie brown christmas tree, let us carve the roast beast, let us sing as if the best way to spread christmas cheer is by singing loud for all to hear (or perhaps like the ceiling can’t hold us) and let us realise that the holidays don’t come from a store, they mean a little bit more.  goddammit, people, happy bloody THanukkahGivingMas, INNIT!!

no shishito, sherlock

you know that kind of meal that changes everything?  that makes you feel like somehow, in some way, your life shall never be the same again?  that makes you want to escape saturday morning detention and do crazy 80’s dancing in the school library instead, as you defy stereotypes of simple terms and convenient definitions?  the kind of meal that makes you find yourself, months later, sitting at your desk typing in such absurdly dramatic fashion that you almost don’t believe it yourself?  enough, let us holster our hyperbole, stash our john hughes references, and talk about rice cakes…

asian rice cakes are, let’s not mince words here, awesomesauce.  (and i don’t use words ending in “–sauce” lightly.)  now, these aren’t the crunchy, airy discs of near-cardboard you’ll find in the snack aisle, dredged in dust and a complete dearth of flavour.  no, no.  these are like noodles to the nth degree; rice compressed into a single bite that is at once dense, chewy, toothsome and delicious.  i have a weakness for rice cakes in the same way that i do for dumplings: for me, one is george clooney, the other is matt damon.  no matter which one ends up on your plate, either way you’re watching ocean’s 11, someone’s awfully dishy, and you’re one happy camper.

i had a spectacular night out at Joule this summer; one of my favourite restaurants.  less breakfast club, more dinner club, but just as life-changingly awesome.  i now know, for one, that should i ever be in the dire situation of choosing a last meal, it’s going to be crispy rice cakes with chorizo and pickled mustard greens.  done and boom.

the food at Joule (and its sister restaurant, Revel) is beyond amazing; the kind that lives on in your taste memory, igniting appetites and yelling rousing battle cries, “to the kitchen!  stand by your spatula!”  never one to ignore my appetite, i decided that, by gum, if i couldn’t eat at these restaurants every weekend, then i would just bring the mountain to me.  a food detective i became, jotting down scrawled (more scrawled the more wine i drank) notes breaking down what i believed the flavours to be. 

some chili, for sure.  salty: perhaps soy?  the sauce was sweet, but also pungent.  it was almost miso-like in its somewhat fermented, funky way.  armed with my pages of notes and conspiracy theories, i donned my deerstalker and headed off to my local asian supermarché.  middle menschkin agreed to be my watson, dressing in what she deemed an appropriate way. 

hmm.  perhaps more ron swanson meets dolly parton, but still.  off we went, regardless.  after scouring the aisles of uwajimaya, i discovered a chili paste made with…  fermented beans.  ding ding!  slap my bum and call me sherlock, i think we’ve cracked it!  home we rolled to 221B baker street, armed with ssamjang, doenjang, gochujang, some other things ending in –jang, and by george we set to work…

crispy rice cakes with chorizo and pickled mustard greens (attempting to live up to the wonderful original that you can order from Joule)

sauce:

½ cup water

¼ cup sugar

1 cup ssamjang (fermented bean & chili paste)

2 tbsps soy sauce

2 tsps rice vinegar

1/2lb good-quality bulk chorizo (local peeps, i like the kind you can buy from ballard market)

1 pack frozen rice cakes, thawed

¼ cup finely-chopped pickled mustard greens

2 tbsps thinly-sliced shallots

to make the sauce, heat the water and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves.  add the ssamjang paste and stir until it’s incorporated and smooth.  stir in soy sauce and vinegar, then simmer for 5 minutes or a titch longer until it has reduced & thickened somewhat.

in a skillet over medium heat, sauté chorizo until cooked through.  remove chorizo from pan, leaving 1-2 tbsps of oil behind.  add rice cakes and sauté until cooked through and crispy on the outside, 3 mins or so on each side.  (take care to not cook too long, as i have been known to do, or they can become a bit stodgy.)

add sauce to the pan with the rice cakes, add chorizo, and stir to coat.  sprinkle the pickled mustard greens on top, then the scallions, and dig in.  (if eating the real thing in Joule, try not to order a 3^rd or 4^th portion.  it’s hard…)

for those of you who might be interested, and want the short-hand recipes, the other dishes at SleuthFeast were as follows: 

Revel’s braised short rib dumplings:

shred meat from braised short ribs, mix with some sautéed ginger, garlic and shallots.  add some finely chopped scallions, soy sauce, and sesame oil.  stuff dumpling wrappers with 1 tbsp filling.  

pan-fry and serve with chili oil.

david chang’s cured hamachi with horseradish-edamame puree and furikake:

i used the more sustainable black cod, and it still tasted great.  pound some peppercorns and coriander seed, add some salt and sugar, and coat your piece of fish.  leave to cure in fridge for 2-3 hours.  puree cooked edamame with grated horseradish, soy sauce, and water, then strain.  thinly slice fish and serve sprinkled with furikake seasoning and sauce, with some pea shoots to garnish.

shishito peppers:

wash shishito peppers and sauté whole with a glug of olive oil for 10 minutes or so until slightly charred and wilted.  sprinkle with a little salt and serve.  (i ate these so fast, i have no photo of them.  love these bites of happy spicy goodness.)

and momofuku pork buns:

i’ll let the good people of epicurious explain this one.  we used pre-made buns from the freezer section of our asian supermarché, but they were still heavenly.  

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pork-Belly-Buns-240258#

in conclusion, i don’t know which of these recipes was the brain, the athlete, the princess, the basket case, or the criminal… but i do know that my weekend in cooking detention was worth every bloody bit of it.  and i, for one, can’t wait to do it all over again. 

does that answer your question?  

sincerely yours, the dinner club.

leftovers, feat. j-jizzle

i was never a headliner.  now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a post mired in self-loathing or self-deprecation or self-doubt (or any others of those self-attributes with bad connotations).  no, no.  i just always felt that i slotted in better as a supporting act.  the understudy.  the “feat.” to a new release pop song.  (side note: jay z, if you need anyone to be “feat.” on your new track, i am available.)  let me clarify: this is not a “waahh, woe is me” comment.  far from it.  sometimes those supporting roles are, in fact, the most memorable.  shit, judy dench won an Oscar for 8 minutes of screen time.  true story.  and i AM way hotter than her.  (on a good day…)

i digress…  as the wise snoop dogdy (typo, but it stands) once said: back to the lecture at hand.  sometimes the lead actor isn’t what draws you to the theatre.  sometimes there’s something about peeling back layers over layers, and then suddenly someone’s an onion.  sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  (and THIS, my sweet four readers, is the first time in history that snoop diddy (word) and aristotle have been quoted together in the same paragraph.  boomba!)  bloody hell, let’s stop beating about the bush and let’s talk about LEFTOVERS!

many moons ago, my fridge was the death of all food.  it would arrive, amazing produce, fat and plump from the market, full of vibrancy and succulence and the promise of feasting to come, and then…  some would find a dish with its name on it, sure, but the rest of it would wither…  shrivel…  wrinkle and fade…  until it only left the hint of a brown shadow on the glass of the vegetable drawer.  not just a waste of money, but a terrible waste of food (surely with these and the leftover goldfish crackers strewn about my minivan, we could end world hunger??  i’m serious, somebody call sally struthers.)  i even arrived home from work one day in my mid-twenties to find a dear pal cleaning out my fridge.  she just couldn’t take it anymore.  well, those days are over.  now, and perhaps somewhat propelled by three small people slowing my roll, i am all about making something from a refrigerated nothing.  give me a collection of random, seemingly-conflicting leftovers, and by GUM i shall find something interesting to do with them!!  it’s time for the supporting act to shine.  somebody get judi dench on the phone and tell her she’s an onion, too.

now, the trick to making leftovers shine is having a few ingredients on hand that make you a little weak at the knees.  you know, the ones you want to call the morning after, without waiting the obligatory three days.  for me, this is chili bean sauce, pickled mustard greens, fermented black beans, and kim chi.  they might not all make the same appearance in the same movie each time (every dish can’t be “the expendables,” after all (side note: thank goodness)), but they certainly bop around and star alongside each other in many a feature, telly show, and PBS special.  if tonight's dinner of soba noodles, leftover chicken, and pea shoots were a harry potter movie, the fermented black beans would be maggie smith as professor McMacklemore: a little saucy, a little spunky, and they left me wanting a bit more of her next time.  boom! 

so there is no recipe for this post, readers one, two, three, and four.  nothing but a manifesto, if you will.  scour thy fridge, take your staples of protein, of veg, and potentially of carb, and then by gum you tart them up!!  a hint of acid (no, not a hit of acid, walter white) with a squirt of lemon juice or vinegar, a dab of something pungent and savoury (think fermented black beans or miso paste), a bright smattering of thinly-sliced scallions or preserved lemon to make it dance, and suddenly you've created something special.  something worth remembering.  eat every forkful knowing that it cost you nothing, and that sally struthers and judi dench (and possibly even snoop dizzy) are cheering your every bite.  (“so just chillll, ‘til the next episode…”)