Thats Goan, as in, Goa state, located in the south western part of the Indian Subcontinent. My friend Nandini owns and operates the goanwiki website, a paean to all the wonderful stuff that come from that stunningly lovely corner of the world. She’s an engineer, a marketing guru, and a multi-lingual incredible chef to boot.
Goa, while thoroughly Indian, has deep Portuguese roots than infuse the culture, and especially the food of the region. Goa is the smallest, and one of the least populated states in India; Otis immensely popular with tourists for its beaches that border the Arabian Sea, as well as its rich flora and fauna. The Portuguese influence is certainly noted in the name of the largest Goan city, Vasco da Gama, named for the legendary explorer, and in the city of Margao, where it’s notable in architecture as well. Claimed by the Portuguese in the late 16th century, Goa remained a holding until it was annexed by India in 1961.
Nadini’s post are redolent with the spices and unique recipes brought to fruition by the blending of Indian and Portuguese cuisines. Even this deceptively simple pork and bean dish takes on a whole new slant.
I’m a follower and a fan, and I encourage you to do the same; she’s got a broad range of recipes to work from, and I guarantee that there are a bunch of seriously delicious things here. Dig in.
Basque Piperade, or more properly, Piperrada, is an absolutely fabulous tomato-pepper sauce from the Basque country; the name derives from the Basque word for pepper. As with so many signature dishes, everyone has a recipe and they’re all different. In broadest terms, piperrada contains green and or red, yellow, and orange sweet peppers, tomatoes, and onion. Like that, it may be served as a side dish like a salsa or a base for stews, more like the basque version of mire poix. With the addition of a protein, (Eggs, ham or sausage), it becomes a hearty main course. The generally agreed point is that any version should be powered by red Espelette peppers, Piment d’Espelette in the French, and Ezpeletako biperra in the Basque.
That legendary chile comes from its namesake town and a few surrounding communes in the Pyrenees. For about 12 years now, they’ve had AOC status, meaning that just like Champagne and Dijon mustard, they gotta be grown there to be called the real deal Espelette. Introduced into France by explorers hundreds of years ago, they’ve become a veritable cornerstone of Basque cuisine, and a key ingredient in piperade. An pepper festival is held annually in October, with colorful ristras of drying chiles be decking the towns. Espelettes score around a 4,000 on the Scoville scale, making them about like a Jalapeño in heat output.
Fresh and dried Espelettes are available online, but caveat emptor, there are also a lot of fakes. I get mine ground from World Spice; they’re genuine AOC chiles and the quality is consistently high, https://www.worldspice.com/spices/piment-despelette. Be prepared if you decide to dive in; an ounce will set you back about twelve bucks. That said, if you want to make the authentic dish, you need the real chile; they have a fruity, earthy heat that reflects their terroir; like legendary grapes, that certain je ne sais quoi comes from nowhere else. Here’s my version.
5-7 fresh, ripe Tomatoes
1 large Sweet Onion, chopped
1 Green Bell Pepper, seeded and chopped
5-6 small, sweet Yellow and Orange Peppers, seeded and chopped
1-2 Hatch Chiles, (Hot or Mild as you prefer)seeded and finely chopped
2-3 cloves Garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground Piment d’Espelette
1/2 teaspoon local Honey
1/2 teaspoon Sal de Mer
1/4 teaspoon ground Pepper Blend
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Sauté the onion, peppers, garlic, salt, paprika, black pepper, and sugar, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked through.
Add the tomatoes to the cooked vegetables and simmer the mixture, uncovered, for 15 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce has thickened.
Transfer to a glass or stainless container and allow to cool thoroughly before serving.
Will last for a good week refrigerated in any air tight container.
Great North African specialties you can make at home.
My friend David Berkowitz is a true renaissance guy; on any given day, he might be mixing sound at Wolf Trap, or building guitars of truly sublime beauty and power; often enough, he follows that up with some very inspired cooking. I’ve seen great dishes with influences from French, through Middle Eastern and North African come from his talented hands. The former launched this question the other day.
“Do you have a good recipe for lamb merguez? The ones I’ve found around here are mostly beef and then end up having kind of a gritty texture. Not sure why that is.”
As always, big thanks for asking; first, let’s look at that grainy issue. Merguez is highly spiced, and on top of that, if those makers close to Dave are using mostly beef, I can see a few potential issues. My first suspect would be not processing at cold enough temperatures – With as much dry spice as merguez boasts, you need to make sure that everything is really cold – Meat semi-frozen, spices fully chilled, and all vessels frozen throughout production. If those steps aren’t taken, then I’d think the chance of ingredients separating is quite high, and that’s the number one reason sausage will get grainy. Secondly, beef is quite marbled compared to lamb, or at least the most common sausage making cuts are, so potentially one could have a meat/fat ratio issue there. And finally, for a relatively heavily spiced sausage like this, you pretty much gotta add a bit of liquid after grinding and work that into the mix before stuffing.
Merguez is a French derivation of the Berber word for sausage, mirqaz. This is a fresh sausage, bright red before cooking, made from mutton or lamb, and heavily laced with North African spices – chiles, garlic, fennel, and cumin are dominant notes. The characteristic red color comes from paprika and harissa, a Tunisian chile paste. While some recipes just add chile flake or powder, as far as I’m concerned it’s not the real deal unless it includes harissa, and that too should be home made. We make ours with roasted red Hatch and Serrano chiles, and it’s got all the heat you need – Knowing David as I do, I’ll bet his version will have Habaneros in it, if not ghost chiles – He’s that kinda chile head…
Traditionally, Merguez is stuffed in lamb casing, and you can get those online from Butcher & Packer, Amazon, etc, but frankly, there’s nothing wrong with using beef or even synthetic if that’s what you like. Served with a nice couscous and a cucumber salad with yoghurt sauce, you’ve got a truly fabulous meal.
First off, here’s the harissa; refrigerated, it’ll last a couple weeks in an airtight container. It’s great with all kinds of meats, veggies, and even eggs.
Urb’s Harissa
5 red Hatch New Mexican Chiles
5-7 fresh Serrano Chiles
3 cloves Garlic
2 Tablespoons Avocado Oil
1 teaspoon Coriander
1 teaspoon Caraway Seed
1/2 teaspoon Cumin
1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
Set oven to broil and a rack on the highest setting.
Place whole chiles on a dry sheet pan and roast, turning steadily, until skins are blackened uniformly.
Pull chiles from oven and set aside to cool.
Combine coriander, caraway, and cumin in a spice grinder and pulse until uniformly blended and powdered.
Remove skins and stems from cooled chiles. If you’re a heat weenie, use gloves when processing them, and you might want to remove some or all of the seeds, (but you should feel shame for doing that, because this stuff is meant to pack a punch.)
Smash garlic, peel, and remove nibs from both ends.
Load all ingredients but the salt in a blender or processor and pulse to a uniform paste.
Add half the salt, pulse again and taste; adjust salt as needed.
Store refrigerated, in an airtight, glass container.
And here’s the sausage. If you have access to local grass fed lamb, that’s what you want; the benefits of that far outweigh commercially packed stuff. Whatever you get, make sure it’s as fresh as can be. Lamb gets a bad rep for being funky, but to be honest, that has far more to do with how the animal is raised and fed than it does the meat itself. Lamb fat is more piquant than beef, but the beauty of lamb is that the fat isn’t marbled into the meat nearly as much, so when you trim, you can remove exactly as much of the fat as you like, and end up with beautiful, lean meat to work with. Lamb fat is traditional for Merguez; you can add some pork or beef as well, if you like. I use 50% – 50% lamb and pork fat; that balance makes a sausage that many folks really enjoy.
NOTE: I use a Kitchenaid grinder and stuffer attachment, so I’ve got a stand mixer basically set up when I build this sausage. If you have a dedicated grinder, prep your stand mixer with a paddle blade attached before you start.
Real Deal Merguez Sausage, (Makes 4 pounds of pre-cooked sausage)
3 Pounds Lamb Shoulder
1 Pound Lamb, Pork, or Beef Fat
1/2 Cup Harissa
1/4 – 1/2 Cup Ice Water
6 cloves Garlic (pick uniformed sized ones)
2 Tablespoons hot, sweet Paprika
2 Tablespoons Sea Salt
2 teaspoons Fennel Seed
2 teaspoons Cumin
2 teaspoons Coriander
1-2 teaspoons Sumac
Natural Casings, 28mm to 32mm
NOTE: Sumac has a tart, citrusy flavor that is potent and complex. Try a dab on your fingertip and decide how much you like it, then add either 1 or 2 teaspoons.
Have all spices and Harissa refrigerated and thoroughly chilled.
Meat needs to be semi-frozen prior to production; I usually trim and size it, then lay it on a small sheet pan and put that in the freezer. All bowls need to be frozen as well.
Trim all gristle and connective tissue from lamb and fat.
Trim meat to size so that it’ll feed smoothly through your grinder.
Set grinder up with a coarse plate for your first run.
Casings should be thoroughly rinsed, inside and out, then soaked in warm water for 30 minutes prior to stuffing.
In a heavy skillet over medium heat, add fennel, cumin, and coriander; toast spices, (staying right with it, ’cause they can burn really quickly), mixing with a fork for 1 – 2 minutes until their fragrance tells you they’re done. Transfer to a small bowl to cool.
Smash, peel, trim ends from garlic, then mince and set aside.
Transfer cooled spices to a grinder and process to a uniform powder.
Transfer ground spice to a small mixing bowl, add sumac, paprika, and sea salt, blend thoroughly, and set aside.
Set one of your chilled bowls up inside a slightly larger bowl with plenty of ice in it – snug your receiving bowl down into the larger so it’s well iced.
Run fat and meat through your grinder.
Add spice blend, harissa, and garlic to ground meat and combine thoroughly by hand. Return grind to freezer.
Set your grinder up for a second run with a fine plate, with the same iced set up for your receiving bowl.
Set a small sauté pan over medium high heat.
Transfer bowl with sausage grind to your stand mixer with a paddle blade attached. Add half the ice cold water and process at fairly low speed, (2 or 3), until you’ve fully incorporated the water, about 1 minute. Sausage should be moist and slightly sticky; if it’s not quite right, continue mixing and add more water, a tablespoon at a time, until you get there.
Hand form a small patty of the sausage, (about 3″ around and 1/4″ thick), and return the rest to the fridge. Cook the patty through, 1 – 2 minutes per side. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired. If you add more seasoning, blend with the paddle on the mixer. You can add another teaspoon or so of water, if needed.
Set up your grinder for stuffing; fill about 3/4 full and twist into 6″ links. Coil and refrigerate for at least 4 hours prior to cooking.
Merguez stands out with its bright red color
Merguez should be cooked over wood or charcoal. Once you’ve got nice, glowing coals and a preheated, brushed, and lightly oiled grate, grill to an internal temperature of 155° F. Allow a 5 minute rest prior to serving.
Here's another great question from reader Pauline all the way over in New Hampshire, on a topic that probably doesn't get asked all that often;
“So, I bake infrequently, and I've got containers of baking soda and baking powder that have been in my pantry forever; do these things go bad? And while you're at it, was is this stuff anyway?
Glad to help, Pauline, and thanks for asking.
The quick and dirty answer to the former question is, yes, they can go bad. Baking soda and powder are chemical leavening agents that promote rising in baked good recipes that don't employ yeast. While the end result is much the same with all three leaveners, the primary benefit imparted by baking soda and powder is speed; they can and should be used right away after mixing, while yeast takes time and really can't be rushed much. The active constituents of both do have a shelf life, albeit a long one. Fortunately, there's a couple of quick test you can do to see if yours still makes the grade.
The first test is to find and read the expiration date; at the risk of being flippant, there are printed dates on the containers of both products, though they may take a bit of sleuthing to find. If yours is past its date, discard it and buy a fresh replacement. When you're at the store, check that expiration date on what you're about to buy; in a professional kitchen, we check the dates on every case that comes in, because it's not that uncommon to find expired product in your just-made delivery, and your local grocery is no exception to that rule.
The second test is for a chemical reaction, and is therefore a bit more definitive. Take a good pinch of baking soda and drop it into some fresh vinegar; if it fizzes actively, you're in business. For baking powder do the same thing into hot water. If either just sit there, toss them
On to the latter question;
Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate, an alkaline or base in chemical terms. Combined with moisture and an acidic ingredient like dairy, chocolate, or honey, you get a mild chemical reaction akin to the freshness test you just did. The resulting tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide, (CO2), remain trapped in the batter matrix. Exposed to baking temperatures in your oven, they expand and cause your baked goods to rise. baking soda is a pure chemical base, so it can impart a bitter taste note if you add too much; that said, a little extra is actually a very good thing, for a most interesting reason. Just a bit more baking soda than that needed to neutralize the acid in your recipe contributes in a very positive way to browning and flavor in your finished product. This has to do with the Maillard reaction, named after Louise-Camille Maillard, who first described it about a hundred years ago. What Maillard detailed was a complex set of reactions that lead to such culinary wonders as the luscious crust on your steak, the sweet beauty of caramelized onions, and the golden brown outside of a cream biscuit. On top of the lovely color added, the reaction also produces hundreds of aromatic compounds that add savoriness and complexity; in other words, it's a very good thing indeed. The key is moderation; an eighth of a teaspoon above a stated recipe amount is enough to hit the sweet spot.
Baking powder is a mixture of a base and an acid or acids; sodium bicarbonate is the base, while cream of tartar and sodium aluminum sulfate are the common acids. There's typically a bit of added starch as a carrier for the active ingredients as well. Baking powder is a more complex and balanced leavener than baking soda, since it contains both acid and base; it is completely inert when dry, but when introduced to moisture, the base and acid mix and generate CO2, and you're in business. The reason baking powder is called 'double acting' is the presence of the two different acids. When added to your recipe, the first acid, cream of tartar, mixes with the baking soda and goes to work right away. The second acid, sodium aluminum sulfate, is temperature activated; when your batter or dough hits roughly 175° F, that acid combines with the remaining base and contributes a bit more rise.
You can make basic baking powder at home by combining,
2 teaspoons Cream of Tartar
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Corn Starch
The obvious benefit is fresh product, assuming your constituents are, of course, but this will not be a double acting powder and as such, won't have quite the lifting power of the commercially prepared stuff.
If the aluminum makes you nervous, maybe it should. Aluminum has been found to adversely affect reproductive and nervous systems in animal studies. Some human studies have suggested a possible connection between aluminum and Alzheimer's Disease. The health effects of aluminum on humans are not definitive, but nonetheless, the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) significantly lowered the tolerable intake of aluminum as a result of such studies.
Some recipes call for baking soda, others for baking powder, and some employ both. The leavener(s) called for is governed by the over-arching recipe. The straight base chemistry of baking soda dictates does well with more acidic ingredients, like buttermilk pancakes, or cake recipes that employ vinegar. Baking powder commonly gets paired with more neutral ingredients like plain milk or non-dairy alternatives.
So how about the interchangeability of these two? You can substitute baking powder in place of baking soda using a ratio of 3:1 powder to soda, but it's not a desirable substitute; the significant amount of added acid will impact the taste of your finished product. On the other hand, you cannot sub baking soda for baking powder, since baking soda lacks the acidity needed to make things rise.
With both these leavening agents, it's important to keep in mind that the reaction produced is relatively short lived and begins as soon as you mix ingredients. It's always best practice to have your oven preheated and to bake promptly, otherwise you'll miss the window of efficacy and your goodies will fall flat. Unlike a yeasted dough, which is relatively low in moisture and kneaded until a tough, elastic gluten network is produced that will trap massive amounts of carbon dioxide, quick batters and doughs are made with an extremely moist batter, because baking powder just doesn't generate enough gas to effectively leaven a thicker dough. Additionally, batters have relatively little gluten formation, so they're not that meaning that great at trapping and holding bubbles.
We've had a bunch of requests for “that glaze” on our Thanksgiving turkey, so it's time to stop procrastinating and bring it out.
Bourbon Maple Pecan Glaze is a truly decadent delight. It adds a sweet, smoky, savory touch to poultry, ham, or pork, as well as on veggies such as Brussels sprouts, green beans, carrots, or cauliflower. Make the glaze so that it has about an hour to sit before it's applied; this will allow the flavors to marry nicely, and also generates the perfect state to simply brush it on your chosen host.
You can make this a day or two ahead and refrigerated as well; just bring it back to room temperature before you baste it on.
If you do decide to cook the glaze in, set your oven temp at 325° F, and bake for about the last 15 minutes of whatever you're making; watch it closely, as the high sugar content can burn quite quickly.
3/4 Cup Apple Cider, (local, fresh)
1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 Cup Pecans
1/4 Cup Maple Syrup
1/4 Cup Bourbon
3 Tablespoons Brown Mustard Seed
1 Tablespoon fresh Sage
In a sauce pan over medium heat, combine cider, bourbon, brown sugar, and maple syrup. Simmer until the mixture is reduced by about 30% and coats a spoon well, about 5 minutes.
Chiffonade Sage. Process pecans into a rough crumb mix.
In a sauté pan over medium high heat, combine pecans and sage and dry sauté, stirring steadily with a fork, about 2-3 minutes, until the nuts have a nice toasty scent.
Process mustard seed in a spice grinder until evenly powdered.
Combine all ingredients in a glass mixing bowl and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes prior to basting.
We've been delving deeper into oils and fats, springing from a couple of questions Christy posed back a week or so. Her tongue in cheek caveat for asking was that she's “always looking at that little bottle of sesame oil and wondering…” She hits the nail on the head with this observation; sesame oil is one many of us have but use quite sparingly, and as such, it's prone to being well past its prime when we next reach for the bottle. Fortunately, you can make your own at home, and enjoy a fresher, more robust product completely free of additives as well.
Sesame oil is derives from sesame seeds; the nutritional value of the oil closely mirrors the seed form, containing important trace elements like calcium, copper, zinc, iron, and magnesium. Extracting your own oil is a bit labor intensive, but also a fun exercise in cooking chemistry. Here's how to do up a small batch without the need for a $150 manual oil press.
1/4 Cup fresh white Sesame Seeds
1 Cup fresh Sunflower Oil
In a preheated 350° F oven, dry roast fresh white sesame seeds on a clean, dry baking sheet. After about 10 minutes, give the seed a good stir, then continue roasting, watching carefully, for another 5 to 10 minutes. When the seeds have turned light golden brown and release a distinct nutty scent, remove them from the oven, and place them on a plate to cool.
Non-pressed, reasonably effective extraction of sesame oil is achieved with moderate heat and sunflower oil, at a ratio of .25:1 cups sesame to sunflower. In a heavy sauce pan over medium-low heat, combine the oil and seeds. Stir occasionally and allow to heat through for 10 minutes.
Remove the mix from heat and, while still warm, pour carefully into a blender. Process in short pulses until the seeds are evenly broken up into a slurry with the oil.
Transfer the slurry to a glass bowl, cover with a clean cloth or paper towel and allow to steep and cool for 2 hours.
Strain the oil blend through butter muslin into a clean bowl. You may require two straining passes to clarify the oil adequately if you use a cheesecloth of lesser density.
Store the extracted oil in an airtight glass container for up to 3 months.
Copyright 2015 UrbanMonique Lummi Bay, WA
UrbanMonique 