Posts Tagged ‘Food’

Welsh Cakes – Wales

Stop# 5

We left England and are now headed over to Wales for stop #5 on our global food trip.

Welsh Cakes

Despite how they might look, these are not breakfast pancakes as you may know them, they are a bit more like a hearty, lightly sweet dessert than anything. You can still have them with breakfast, just don’t expect buttermilk pancakes to drown with maple syrup. I was a little excited to make this because I seem to really be partial to dark fruit and berries like blackberries or currants. Currants are an awesome accent (I love the flavor in a good strong black tea) and they aren’t difficult to find.

Again, I referenced two recipes that took different approaches. One was pretty much straight-forward batter, and the other called for caster sugar and lard…so of course I went with the lardy one. I didn’t have any caster sugar, so I made some. The process is very simple, dump granulated sugar in the blender, set to medium high, pulse until powdery. Do not confuse this with powdered sugar!

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup caster sugar (not powdered)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground mace
1/4 tsp of salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
2 oz chilled lard
2 oz chilled butter
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup dried currants
cold milk - a couple Tbsp
granulated sugar for coating
Notes
  • Sources of inspiration: Most of the process and planning comes from The Daring Gourmet, but I also referenced King Arthur flour.
  • Some recipes use Nutmeg, but Mace is traditional. I might have used a hint more.
  • Currants can be found with the raisins at your supermarket. Sun-Maid makes some that I have seen fairly frequently, but I bought mine in bulk at Whole Foods.
  • Chill the lard first for sure. It makes it way easier to mix into the flour.
Process
  • Mix the flour, caster sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and mace in a bowl.
  • Mix in chilled butter and lard until it is a coarse, crumbly texture.
  • Stir in currants.
  • Add egg, and enough milk to mix and make a soft, smooth dough.
Welsh Cake Dough
Welsh Cake Dough
  • Wrap dough, refrigerate for 30 minutes.
  • Roll out chilled dough to 1/4 in. thick.
  • Cut into 3-4 in. rounds.
  • Hot buttered pan.
Welsh Cakes Frying
Welsh Cakes Frying
  • Fry for a few minutes per side til golden brown.
  • Coat with granulated sugar.
  • Cool and eat.
Stack of Welsh Cakes
Finished Welsh Cakes
Results and Adjustments

These little cakes were amazing. It was surprised how many of them I wanted to eat right out of the pan. A few notes to make them better. Don’t roll out the dough too thinly, you want enough for a nice thick cake. Cook over a slightly cooler burner. It is a bit easy to burn these guys because of the fine sugar in the mix. I cooked them a bit higher than medium, so my net result was a quickly cooked crust…close to burning…then the inside was every so slightly under-done. The cakes that I cooked slower had a far better consistency and looked incredible.

Don’t be stingy with the granulated sugar coating, it makes them look great and gives them a fun extra crunch. Cook them in butter…not oil, just because it is better. Spice mix was pretty good, and the mace gives them an interesting flavor. If anything I would probably bump up the cinnamon a little bit, but only slightly. Maybe a drop of vanilla.

How to eat them? Plain is great! I tried a couple different things and think that melted butter is good, but trying with fruit jam seemed to be my favorite way to enjoy them. We had a nice blueberry jam that turned out the best.

Welsh Cakes with Jam
Welsh Cakes with Blueberry Jam

So, what’s next? I have another dish to try from Wales; cheese and leeks, what could go wrong?

Pork Pie – England

Stop# 4

We are still in England and making Pork Pie for the next item on our global food trip.

Pork Pie

I seem to recall a lot of references to (actual) meat pies from literature and stories about England that I read or saw when I was growing up. But none of them really stuck in my head that actually talked about how to make them, at least that I have seen and can remember anyway. There are pot pies that we seem to make a lot in the US, but they seem more like meat accented vegetable pies rather than a hefty meat pie. Pork seemed to be the go-to for these kinds of pies and I found a few traditional looking recipes that were the template for this.

I had a few challenges and firsts on this one. I had never used lard in a recipe before, never made a hot water pastry, never used gelatin outside of Jell-O stuff, and never added a fully cooked item to another fully cooked item to complete a recipe. That last one is a bit vague, but will make sense if you go through the whole thing. It was also a little surprising to me that, despite all the hot prep, this is supposed to be served cold.

# EXTRA EQUIPMENT #
small funnel
small jars for pastry forms
string or twine

# PASTRY #
7 oz water
5 1/2 Tbsp butter
2 3/4 oz lard
16 oz all purpose flour
pinch salt
1 beaten egg
1 tsp vegetable oil

# MEAT #
6 oz pork shoulder
3 oz pork belly
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground mace
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg 
1 egg 
Pinch salt

# FILLING #
1/2 envelope of gelatin
1 cup of ham broth
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
Notes
  • Sources of inspiration: The Spruce Eats and Saveur
  • The two examples above are fairly different approaches. One is mostly meat, the other is meat and vegetable mix. Pick if you want to have one or the other first.
  • Seems like there are lots of options for the pork to use in this dish. I went with shoulder and pork belly. Well actually, shoulder and uncured bacon.
  • I minced up the meat by hand with 2 knives. This isn’t required, but I really wanted to do the 2 handed knife wielding trick.
  • Hot pastry was actually kinda fun to work with.
  • A point on the jars or forms for the pastry. I used Ball canning jars with a fancy design on the side. That was stupid. When you form the dough up around the sides of the jar and chill it like you are supposed to, the dough loves to stick to all those pretty designs. Use a smooth jar.
  • Original recipe I followed called for sheets of gelatin. I couldn’t find that and I went with Knox unflavored envelopes.
  • This is supposed to be served cold. The gelatin needs to set!
Process
  • Pastry
    • Water, butter and lard into a saucepan.
    • Heat to a very low boil.
    • Mix flour, egg and salt in a heat-safe bowl.
    • Add in the heated water, butter and lard.
    • Mix and then knead on a floured surface til smooth.
    • Divide dough – 1/3 set aside, covered.
    • Roll out the 2/3 to 1/4 inch think.
    • Cut 6 inch circles.
    • Oil the outside of the jars.
    • Place jar in the center of the circle and form the dough into a bowl around the base. Repeat for other circles.
    • Wrap dough with a strip of wax paper and tie a string around to hold the dough in place.
    • Put the forms into the fridge.
Pork Pie Dough
Form the Dough
  • Fill the pastry
    • Preheat oven to 325.
    • Mince the meat however you see fit. I chopped mine with 2 knives.
    • Mix meat and spices in a bowl.
    • Add meat mix to the chilled pastry. Don’t fill all the way.
    • Cut lids to fit the tops from the remaining dough.
    • Seal lids by crimping into the pastry wall tightly.
    • Poke a small hole in the top of the pie (to fit your funnel).
    • Prepare an egg wash – beat the egg, add a bit of salt.
    • Wash the pastries thoroughly.
    • Bake for 50-60 minutes.
    • Cooking is done when pork at center is 175.
Pork Pie
Hot Pork Pies
  • Broth gelatin
    • Follow instructions to prepare gelatin.
    • Prepare and add ham broth and season with white pepper.
    • Add a pinch of salt if needed.
    • Let the mixture cool somewhat.
    • Pour the liquid into the pies using a funnel.
    • Leave the pie to cool and gelatin set.
  • Something else: I decided to make a side to go with the pies.
    • 3 large carrots
    • 2 Tbsp butter
    • A couple pinches of smoked salt
    • 1/2 tsp brown sugar
    • 1/4 tsp crushed fennel
    • 1/4 tsp lime juice
    • 1/4 tsp black pepper
    • Saute all the above until carrots are almost soft
Sauted Carrots
Pork Pie
Finished Pork Pie and Glazed Carrots
Results and Adjustments

Almost all of my changes would be in the process.
Use smoother jars so the dough doesn’t stick. Also, letting the pies cool is actually a pretty important step. I poured warm gelatin/broth into hot pies. The result is that it spilled out of the pies and leaked through weak spots and seams. Some of the pies held it ok, but then I tried to pull them up off of the cookie sheet and I broke the bottoms…so a bunch leaked out that way. The cookie sheet probably should have been greased a bit better too.

Truth be told, I kinda freaked out a little bit when I cut into the first pie. As you can see from the photo, the pork is quite pink. I’m not really sure why mine ended up that way, but I can confirm that the temperature was at least 160, which should be more than enough. The pink really threw me off, but after I was calmed by the wife, I went ahead with claiming a success.

Let the pies cool! They are designed to be eaten cold and it is practically required in order for the gelatin to set correctly.

The taste was great! Somehow very comforting and satisfying. Some of the best, soft dough I have ever tasted. Thanks pork fat. The leftovers were awesome as well, and the wife counts this as the favorite so far.


So, what’s next? We are done with England now, so it is time to move on to somewhere else in the UK. Wales.

England – Global Food Trip

Background

We unfortunately had to leave Ireland behind on our global food trip, but we have made just a quick hop over the Irish Sea to arrive in England. Once again, I started off where others had already done research and I looked up some compilation lists of food that are thought of as uniquely English. I pulled out a couple things that I thought would be a bit of a challenge and wouldn’t be completely cliche. A few things do come to mind when thinking of English food, but since I said we want to steer away from cliche, at least a little bit, we won’t be doing fish n’ chips.

Toad in the Hole

Toad in the Hole to a lot of people, mostly American people, is simply toast with the center cut out and a cooked egg inside. However, it seems that Toad in the Hole is very different to our friends across the pond. When it comes to having things the English way, it turns out to be a two-for-one deal. It is basically a Yorkshire pudding that has a bunch of bangers that are nestled into the middle of it. If you saw my last post on Ireland, you’d know that a banger is a very specific kind of sausage that I sought out for Dublin Coddle, so I decided to use them again here. I’m not sure if I’ll offend anyone using Irish branded bangers in an English dish, but I’m sure that I’m not the first to do so!

I looked up a few recipes on this dish specifically, and on Yorkshire pudding in general. There seemed to be a lot of options for seasoning, but there are very definite ideas about how to get the pudding to behave correctly. I picked one recipe to follow for the methods, and did a mashup of ideas for the seasoning. I always seem to find recipes, and then don’t follow them. So here is mine for you not to follow!

6 bangers
I cup of all purpose flour
1 cup (just shy) of milk, with a few Tbsp of cream to make 1 cup
3 eggs beaten
1/4 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp ground mustard
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp rosemary
1 Tbsp beef Better than Bouillon - straight out of the jar 
Notes
  • Sources of inspiration: Simply Recipes, Great British Chefs, The BBC, and The Daring Gourmet, 
  • Same thoughts as a previous recipe about the bangers. You can use other sausage, but to be traditional, you should use sausages with rusk in them.
  • Rising of the pudding is super important, so get a deep dish.
  • The pot I used was deep, but wasn’t really very wide, so my proportion was a bit off. Adjust the number of sausages to fit the pan
  • I’m sure there are lots of things I did wrong if I wanted a perfect Yorkshire pudding, so follow those better instructions from someone with experience!
Process
  • Make the batter
    • Whisk flour, sugar, mustard, nutmeg, thyme and rosemary
    • Add beaten eggs, milk/cream, and Better Than Bouillon
    • Whisk until smooth
    • Leave batter to set for at least 30 minutes
  • Brown bangers in buttered or oiled pan
  • Prep baking dish
    • Casserole or deep baking dish
    • Oil the inside to let the pudding rise easily – I used safflower
    • Preheat oiled dish at 425
  • Add bangers to dish and put back in the oven for 5 minutes
  • Add batter
    • Pull hot dish from oven
    • Pour batter in hot dish around the bangers. It should almost cover the sausages.
Bangers ready for Toad in the Hole
Browned Bangers
Toad in the Hole Batter
Add the batter
  • Put the dish back in the oven for 20-30 minutes
    • The pudding should start rising in a few minutes
    • Watch til the top of the puddings gets a nice golden brown
  • The pudding will settle as it cools, but it is best served hot
Toad in the Hole
Finished Toad in the Hole
Adjustments

So, if I am making this again, what would I do differently? I don’t know that I would change too much. I was honestly a bit surprised I was able to get the pudding to rise so nicely on my first try. The spices and bouillon I added made the color of the batter darker, and I think it would be prettier if it were a light batter…however, that means less flavor. I think I would have increased most of the spices a bit if I were going to try something different. But honestly, it seemed quite good as is.

One thing that I totally forgot to do was add fresh rosemary sprinkled on top of the pudding. It would have made added a nice fresh flavor, and I as kinda annoyed that I missed it. I would try a wider pan, like a baking dish that wasn’t as deep, but would allow me to spread out the bangers a bit more. But flavor-wise, it was awesome.

As I was investigating this dish, it seemed like it wasn’t something that you had just by itself. If you have Toad in the Hole, you need to have it with onion gravy. So, now we need to find a good onion gravy!


Onion Gravy

I didn’t have to go very far to find some recipes for onion gravy since it seems to be one of the more popular things to eat with it. one of them even had a recipe attached to the Toad in the Hole recipe.

1 onion 
1 clove of garlic
A couple Tbsp butter for saute
2 Tbsp all purpose flour
2 Tbsp cooking sherry
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 cups beef broth (Better than Bouillon made to instructions)\
Fresh ground black pepper
Notes
  • Sources of inspiration: The Daring Gourmet and Allrecipes
  • Use white onions. I used a red one, and it was way too big and the slices didn’t disappear into the gravy. Flavor was good though.
  • Worcestershire sauce is fantastic in this.
  • Don’t use broth that is too salty…taste it as you go!
Process
  • Slice garlic and onion thinly
    • Saute in saucepan with butter until translucent
  • Add sherry, Worcestershire and flour to the pan and stir until mixed evenly
  • Add beef broth
  • Increase heat
  • Stir until thickened
  • Add pepper
  • Bring heat to low and simmer for 3-4 minutes
Toad in the Hole
Finished Toad in the Hole with onion gravy
Results and Adjustments

Overall, I think the dish was a big success. The onion gravy goes great with the Toad in the Hole and when we sat down to eat, I scarfed it down. Definitely would add the rosemary, and use white onions in the gravy, other than that…I approve!

So, what’s next? More England!
Another popular English thing is a meat pie, so, we have to give that a shot!

Ireland #2 – Global Food Trip

Background

If you need the back-story please see my first post. But to catch you up quickly, I’m cooking my way around the world through a global food trip.

Last post we kicked off with our first destination, Dublin, Ireland and this is dish number two on the visit. For the first dish of the trip, I was talking about barmbrack, but I also wanted to do something a bit more substantial than a bread. Stews with meat and potatoes are a pretty commonly mentioned item in best-of lists for Ireland. A few lists mentioned coddle and I hadn’t heard of it before, but it showed up several times, so it seemed like a no-brainer to try.

Dublin Coddle

Coddle is basically a one pot stew. There are a lot of stews and one pot creations designed for the crock pot, but Coddle is a dutch oven dish. There are a few things about it that make it uniquely Irish but I could easily see this as an Americanized crock pot meal as well. Here’s the list of ingredients that are designed to cook the Irish way.

1 lb of bangers
1 lb of rashers (Irish bacon)
8 medium Russet potatoes
2 white onions
32 oz ham stock
4 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
Ground pepper, a lot if you like it, or light to season
Salt, only if your bacon or broth isn't salty
Notes
  • This time I got a lot of inspiration and guidance from Irish American Mom, but I also referenced Genius Kitchen and House of Nash Eats
  • This dish is all about good meats. You need two things Irish bangers and rashers, or Irish bacon.
  • Irish bangers are a very specific kind of beef/pork sausage with a rusk filling…basically twice-baked breadcrumbs.
    • The slang “bangers” refers to the they way they burst open when they are cooked.
    • You can’t find them everywhere, but there is a great Irish market in Tinley Park called Winston’s Market that has them and they are quite good.
    • Don’t overcook them in the pot or they get mushy!
  • Irish bacon is its own thing too.
    • American bacon=belly, Canadian bacon=loin, Irish bacon=back.
    • American bacon is cured and smoked, Irish bacon is brined.
    • Also, it is not super easy to find, I again recommend Winston’s Market.
    • You want fat…fat is good!
  • Ham stock. This stuff is magic! I’ve had beef, chicken, vegetable, etc. but never ham. Get it! I found LB Jamison’s ham soup base at Meijer.
  • I kinda guessed on pan sizes and it was almost too much for my dutch oven. Have a big one on hand or halve the recipe.
Process
  • Cut:
    • Rashers into 1 in strips
    • Onions into 1/2 in rings
    • Potatoes into chunks
  • Brown bangers in butter
  • Layer:
    • In order, onions, rashers, bangers, potatoes, salt/pepper, parsley
    • Repeat to make 2 layers
  • Pour in the broth
  • Heat to boil
  • Lower heat to simmer, covered for 2-3 hours or until potatoes are soft

One thing that is pretty obvious from the photo above, this is not a pretty dish. The browned sausages and parsley improve the appearance a little bit, but honestly, looks don’t really matter. Once you start to eat it, you won’t really care what it looks like. The browned banger sausages have a unique flavor that is much milder than Italian, Polish or sage sausage. The rashers cook down and the fat renders into the ham broth. The potatoes and onions soak up all that flavor as it simmers away. Serve it in a bowl with the broth, like a stew, or just eat the meat and potatoes. Either way, it’s great. Leftovers are pretty amazing too and it seems to maybe get even a bit better for round two…and three if you make as big of a batch as I did.

Adjustments

So, if I am making this again, what would I do differently? A bit smaller size for sure, I barely got everything in the pot and the lid on. Fresh parsley…I actually used dried and I’m sure it would have tasted better fresh, and it would have been a bit more pretty to look at. I think I cooked it too long. The bangers get a bit mushy if they cook too long, and I think that is something that you need to monitor. I’d say cook until the potatoes are soft, and not longer.

So, what’s next? There is a lot more to do in Ireland, but I’m headed to England next. Yes, that is still the UK, but there is a lot of different stuff to try across the UK, so we’ll be making several stops before we stray too far.

Ireland – Global Food Trip

Background

If you need the back-story please see my first post. But to catch you up quickly, I’m cooking my way around the world through a global food trip.

My first destination is Dublin, Ireland…or thereabouts. What does everyone think of when they think Irish food? Right…mint ice cream.  Nonono, it is really corned beef and cabbage…but that would be wrong too. Believe it or not, most Irish people don’t really eat corned beef and cabbage, for some reason that is an American Irish thing. Sure, they serve it in Ireland when you go to visit, but it is mostly for the tourists. My searches led me far and wide for my first dishes and I saw a lot of traditional Irish stuff like breads and stews, but not really much around corned beef at all. Cabbage makes it into stews for sure, along with plenty of potatoes but the US St. Patrick’s day staple is not as common where people seem to expect. The general specialties seemed to be fish, stew and bread, so it made sense to pick something from those general categories to get started. How about we start basic…bread!

Barmbrack

Fruitcakes seem to be the butt of a lot of jokes around Christmas in the US, but I’m pretty convinced that the fruitcakes we see at the holidays now are the Taco Bell Waffle Taco of fruited desserts. Somewhere back in time, there used to be amazing fruit breads, but the side trip down the stuff-everything-possible-into-a-decadent-cake road has seen ingenuity process most of the delicious out of it. No offence if you love fruitcake…but I think the audience there is small. The fruit bread I found from Ireland didn’t seem to be anything like the fruitcakes of your imagination, and the result was anything but, so don’t bail on me yet.

I found a lot of mentions of barmbrack (or just brack), which is a leavened and lightly spiced dough with citrus and currants. It seems like barmbrack is mostly made around Halloween for celebrations and they even like to hide little treasures baked inside like gold rings or trinkets! I saw a bunch of mentions of it, and even saw it listed as a quintessential Irish recipe, so thought I’d give it a whirl. Here’s the list of ingredients.

5 cups all purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 tsp kosher salt
3.5 oz. (about 2/3 cup) Thompson raisins 
3.5 oz. (about 1 cup) black currants
8 oz. strong, fresh brewed black tea
1/4 cup unsalted softened butter
1 tbsp dried yeast
1.5 cups water (100 degrees F)
1/4 cup sugar (for dough)
1 tsp sugar (for yeast)
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
1 tsp mixed spice (see below for formula)
Notes
  • I’m not going through all the steps because it is done more artfully on my main source The Spruce Eats. I also borrowed ideas from The Irish Times, The Guardian, and the
    Penn State Extension Philadelphia Master Gardeners for reference.
  • The main adjustments I made to The Spruce Eats recipe were 1) adding currants, 2) soaking fruit in tea 3) zest in place of candied peel and 4) adding spices to the dough.
  • Citrus zest was a replacement for candied peel, mostly because I didn’t have it, and it turned out to be a great substitution.
  • Currants and raisins are common, but I also saw other fruits used like cherries and blueberries.
  • I used a good strong tea, Bewley’s Dublin Morning.
  • It is important that the tea is hot for soaking the fruit.
  • I let the dark fruit soak in the tea for an hour, but would have been way better if it were 4 or 6.
  • Mixed spice is a blend of some common baking spices that seems to be referenced a lot in the UK. See the Daring Gourmet for the formula I used.
    • 2 tsp allspice
    • 3 tsp cinnamon
    • 2 tsp nutmeg
    • 3/4 tsp mace
    • 1 tsp ground cloves
    • 1 tsp ground coriander
    • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • I had no mace for my attempt, so I think the spice balance was slightly off.

Other than the tea soaked fruit, spices and citrus zest, this ended up being similar to several other yeast breads I had made in the past. As soon as the dough starts to form, the leavened aroma fills the kitchen and it creates a ton of anticipation. When the baking was done, I wanted to cut right into it. But I restrained myself and let it cool.

The recipe makes two pretty decent sized loves of Barmbrack like these I photographed here, recently out of the oven, but cooled and freshly buttered. The citrus flavor is light and mild, and the dark fruit flavor comes through in small bursts with just a hint of the rich tea. It is pretty good plain but is downright fantastic when it is lightly toasted with butter. In fact, that is exactly how we ate most of it. This is an undoubted hit right out of the gate, and will definitely be making it again.

Adjustments

So, if I am making this again, what would I do differently? Not a whole lot really. I do think that the spice ratio was probably a little off, and I’d like to see how it works with mace. Maybe a bit too much allspice. The currants and raisins were very good, but I might even add a bit more of them, and/or possibly some other kinds of dark dried fruit. The tea soak was really interesting and it gave the fruit a deep, rich flavor, even so, I would let that soak a couple more hours. The last thing I’d do, not that it was in many of the sources, but maybe I’d add a drop or two of vanilla.

So, what’s next? I still have one more Ireland dish so maybe one recipe per post? Not sure yet of the long term plan, but the short term plan is Dublin Coddle next.

Global Food Trip

TL;DR – I’m going to cook something from every country.

The Genesis of The Idea

Everyone loves a vacation. It is certainly one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. In my mind, I am super adventurous in the places I want to see and am a big-time world traveler. But the reality is that I am so much less than that and I barely ever get past the idea stage. The romanticism of taking a world adventure sounds fantastic in my head, but then I think about stupid stuff like…having money to do it. I do love going somewhere new to explore and try new things, but I am also somehow left earthbound with practical and sometimes self-imposed roadblocks.

I went to Ireland with my sister over 15 years ago and have been talking about going back ever since. Every year, I find myself thinking that this will finally be the summer that I get to go back…maybe. But, it never happens and I just keep dreaming. This past year, my wife and I did get past the talking-about-vacation stage, and actually planned some things ahead of time, but the furthest we got for a world trip was Galena, IL.

Now, not that there is anything wrong with Galena! It is a fine place visit, has great history, and scenery (I still need to share some pictures from there), and I intend to go back…likely several times…but it isn’t quite Ireland, or Norway, or Laos is it? There is always a deeper hunger to travel someplace really far away, take some time to live in someone else’s shoes; see their part of the world and appreciate the things that they see every day. Like…food. I do love food. Perhaps there is some way to see and experience another part of the world, without actually going anywhere. The answer was obviously through eating! This idea started formulating in my brain well over a year ago, but took until now to turn into a full plan. Yeah, I am a little slow.

I have always loved to cook but I get bored with the same old things, so I don’t do it as often as I would like. In order to keep myself interested, my original idea was to take a cookbook and go through the whole thing, making every dish as described. But then I thought of Julie & Julia and about 17,000 other blogs and decided that concept had probably been done to death. Plus I couldn’t decide on a cookbook that would hold my interest without getting bogged down in doing 11 versions of tuna casserole or 83 ways to cook lima beans, yes, that is an actual cookbook.

The Almost Trip

So this quasi-ambitious thought just kinda sat in the back of my head and I kept revisiting it now and then to see if I would actually do something about it. Sometime this past month, in between Christmas revels, I got one of those promotional emails, that I usually ignore, from Scientific American (great publication…you should read it!). The email was about their summer Bright Horizons 38 science cruise where you could learn about cool science stuff while going to visit extra-cool history stuff! This sounded very interesting, so I read on. 13 days of a cruise starting in Amsterdam, then Dover, then to Scotland; Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh on to Belfast, Liverpool, then Dublin.
Are you kiddin’ me? I could learn great information, see incredible places, and get to try all kinds of great food in these places. This sounded like my kind of trip, a cruise that I don’t have to plan. I could try haggis and real shepherds pie!


I clicked on the booking and estimating tool.

  • Number of passengers? 2, because wife.
  • Cabin type? Sunset Verandah vs. Interior, because I’m not a complete animal!
  • Attending Seminars? Yes, because science.
  • Nights in Hotel Before and After? Well…I want to be cheap, but it makes sense to take 1 night each to prep and recover respectively.
  • Calculate price? Yes please…click.
  • $13,708…food not included, and I still would need to book flights to Amsterdam.

My scientific shepherds pie and historical haggis dreams died a swift and painful death with that simple mouse click. I am WAY too cheap to be paying that much for a vacation. It brought me back to reality on booking big trips, but it did start me thinking about grouping travel differently, and looking at a couple travel plan websites I never saw before. A few mental detours later, I came up with a new idea for world travel, that while much less science-y and tactile, would be a whole lot cheaper to pull off.

The Flight Plan

If I “can’t” fly to visit Ireland, Scotland and the others, maybe I could at least eat some food from there. Every great journey begins with a single step, and I began by stepping into my kitchen to grab a cookbook. The trip was short because I didn’t really find much listed in the index under “Irish”, so I went back to the web and started doing some research. In no time, I found a slough of recipes from Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, and more. But, I didn’t really have it organized in any meaningful way. Perhaps it would make sense to organize the recipes as if visiting different regions on an actual trip! That’s when I went back to the flight planning web sites and mapped out a 10 city trip. But why stop at 10 cities? I got ambitious and plugged a bunch more info into a nifty site and started plotting a semi-logical, country hopping flight path. Eventually, I had a daunting, glorious, utterly implausible, chain of stops across ALL the countries in the world.

Some of these countries obviously have more regions, more people and more cuisines than others, so we couldn’t just make one stop in places like, France, Italy, China and India. It was pretty clear we’d have to have multiple stops in quite a few places. I added a few extra hops to pick up additional regions and by the time I was done, I had a total of 262 entries in my increasingly detailed Excel spreadsheet. Just for fun, I used the site to estimate the cost for two plane tickets to all these places. I think it is safe to say that the rough cost of $170,000 was a bit out of reach, but imagine how many ingredients that could buy! For now, I’ll stick with my imaginary world trip through cooking.

The Rules…sort of

I know that I’ll never be able to do justice to the food for people that know better, but it would be an adventure to try! There needs to be a few basic ground rules, and I’m sure to make some of this up as I go, but here we go.

  1. Make at least one thing from every country.
    • If possible, make things that might go together in a meal.
    • Add more meals or “stops” where needed to cover cool stuff.
  2. Follow a path that would make a logical trip from country to country.
    • This is relative and I’m going for best effort.
    • I’ll bounce back and forth a little bit to make it varied.
  3. Be brave!
    • If I can get adventurous ingredients, I will use them.
    • Even consider using mushrooms.
  4. Try to go traditional instead of cliche.
    • This might be a little hard, some cultures have ancient traditions and some are more recent. I’ll try to pick good representatives.
    • Sometimes things are cliche because they are good!
    • I will do a bunch of research (can we say Google?), but I’ll try to be quick too. Otherwise, I know I’ll get bogged down in searches.
  5. Give credit
    • I am sure others have done this before, so props to them!
    • I will credit all the sources I can. I’m certainly not inventing this.
  6. Give it my best shot.
    • I’m going to screw up these foods. But the adventure is in the attempt, and trying new things.
    • I might not be able to get some of the exact ingredients, but I’ll get as close as I can.
    • Realistically, I am going to tweak some ingredients and swap some stuff around. But I’ll try to keep it based on the real thing.
    • No offense meant to any purists.

The Start of It

So, where to first? I am going to start where I would likely start a real world adventure, Ireland of course. It is also a good place to start for ingredient familiarity as well as realism. From there, I’ll hang around the British Isles for a bit, then swing across Iceland, Greenland and Canada before heading over to Russia.

I don’t have a fixed schedule, but I am going to try for at least one dish a week. Assuming my plan doesn’t break down somewhere that calls for seal meat or insects of some kind, I’m going to be at this for a while.

I know this project isn’t going to have a huge audience, and If you read this far, thanks Mom. I’ll keep you posted.

So now I’m off to the Emerald Island, for some Barmbrack and Dublin Coddle. Don’t know what that is? Tune in next week 😉

Time for Some Brisket and Chili

Original recipes included further below.

Sometimes things come last minute, other times it takes a bit of planning. For me, I find that I manage to make it a little bit of both. Last weekend I had a Saturday full of plans. The biggest project was repairing my mower that had a bit of trouble at the end of my previous lawn care session when it somehow decided to completely rip a wheel loose from the deck! A little investigation and I found that one of the other wheels was ready to do the same. All the parts needed to be purchased for repair before I could start, so a trip to Menards or Lowes was first on the list. The repair itself would involve some steel sawing, drilling and bolting, so I figured a good couple hours for the full repair plus a blade sharpening while I had things apart.

After repairing the mower, the grass was obviously waiting to be cut, so that would take a good hour and a half or two. I had some minor fence repair that had been bugging me, so that was another half hour. Clean out of the gutters would take another hour, if I tacked on sweeping up the sidewalk afterward. A bit of raking, some tree trimming, some minor deck repair, some garage clean up, a few other odds and ends, and I was looking at a full 8 hours so I knew I needed to get started if I expected to get some laundry done too.

Of course before starting all this, there is the requisite moment where I stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open and absent-mindedly stare at the stock of food while pondering what there possibly could be to eat. I happened to open the freezer and saw several packages of meat waiting for their turn to be used, and I had the bright idea that brisket would be just the thing for later. “I’ll smoke some brisket today!” I foolishly said to myself as I threw the 2 lb package into the fridge to thaw.

Yes, I know. Did I really think that frozen brisket was going to thaw by the afternoon just by putting it in the fridge? Well, I suppose I did at the time, but I didn’t give it the required amount of thought, I had stuff to do! Needless to say, the thawing time wasn’t nearly sufficient, and I still had frozen brisket by the end of the day. Not to mention, I had a few leftover items from my to-do list that I didn’t get done as well. But, I did have a fully wheeled mower and a fully cut lawn.

Thursday came around and the brisket was still sitting in the fridge. It was getting to the point where it needed to be used, but I kept forgetting. At 7:50 am that morning I remembered, and determined it HAD to be used that day. I needed to leave for work, but how can you cook a brisket without a good rub!? I grabbed the brisket out of the fridge and tore off the packaging…meat still looked good. Time to make the rub. I threw together some ingredients and coated the meat generously before covering it back up and shoving it back in the fridge. I wouldn’t make work by 8:00 like I was supposed to, but the rub was made.


Rub Mix
Measurements are VERY approximate
1/2 c brown sugar
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp cocoa powder

Rub into meat vigorously and completely cover brisket on all sides. Set in fridge for 8 hours.


Now with the rub in place, the plan should be to smoke the same day right? Of course! However, I worked late and didn’t get home until about 7:00 pm. The smoker hadn’t been used for a while, so I needed to do a little setup. I finally had the flames going and heating up the box a little bit after 7:30. Usually, I like to go for low and slow, so I got the smoker up to about 220 degrees and a batch of apple wood chips in the smoker box. Brisket, in, fat side up, middle rack.

Off and on I checked in on the meat for the next couple hours. When the apple chips were used up, I added a couple helpings of peach chips until the meat reached about 140 degrees. At that point I was going to let it go smokeless until 180 degrees. But now it needed a good mopping of additional flavor.


Mid-Smoke Baste
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp black raspberry jam
2 tbsp water
1 tsp orange marmalade
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp lime juice

Melt butter, add other ingredients. Warm in microwave and stir until all ingredients mix evenly.


At this point in the process it was getting quite late. I had to leave early in the morning, but this was important to get right. I basted the brisket once and turned it fat side down for the next 45 minutes at 250 degrees. Then another basting and back to fat side up for another 45 minutes at…300, because honestly, I did need to get to bed. Once the internal temperature was 180 degrees, I took it out to rest on the kitchen counter til it was cool enough to slice, then cool enough to put in the fridge. I finally finished at 1:30 am, and had some glorious smokey goodness.

This weekend I wanted to use some of that glorious meat in another application; slow-cooked chili. Most of the time when I am cooking, I don’t use hard-set recepies and go from a general idea, then pick elements here and there that feel right to go with it. I wasn’t under pressure to get this meal completed, so I took my time and thought out the ingredients.


Slow Cook Brisket Chili
5 strips of smoked bacon
Cook up the bacon in a frying pan until it is just shy of crispy. Remove bacon and set aside.

1/2 c. chopped celery
1 c. chopped red pepper
1 1/2 c. chopped red onion
5 cloves garlic, chopped.

Sweat the vegetables minus the garlic in the hot pan with the bacon fat until onions are almost translucent. Add the chopped garlic on top and continue cooking for several minutes.

In large crock pot add:
2 tbsp olive oil
28 oz can (1) crushed tomatoes
27 oz can (1) red kidney beans
15 oz can (2) black beans
16 oz can (1) cannellini beans
12 oz can (1) tomato paste
6 oz smoked brisket, chunked or cubed
5 slices of bacon (cooked above) chopped
2 tbsp chili powder
2 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp ground black pepper
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground mustard
6 ground allspice berries
1/2 tsp hickory smoke flavor
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp Better Than Bouillon, Beef
2 cups water
1 cup apple juice or apple cider (optional)
Vegetables and garlic (cooked above)

If I had it available, I would have added:
1 tsp ground fennel seed

Set crock pot on high, uncovered for about an hour. Covered on high for another hour. Then covered on low for another 4-5 hours. Total of 6-7 hours in the crock pot...stirring occasionally.


So what was the end result of a messy mix of some half-baked planning and some reckless spontaneity? Hopefully a bunch of halfway decent meals. I got some positive reviews from the wife, and she had the suggestion that I share…so…here ya go! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the process, so you will just have to imagine how tasty it looks.

The Thirteenth Option

The other day my wife and I decided to go out for a dinner at the local Lone Star Steakhouse. This was the first time in quite a while we had been tempted to go to that particular place. There were several reasons for our absence, but since the recent revamping of their menu, and quasi-update to the decor, we decided to give it another shot.  There were quite a few very interesting new things to try, the prices were better and overall it was a very enjoyable meal out on the town.  We were finishing our dinner and the glasses of tea were getting very nearly empty when something happened that I found completely derailing to my inane dinnertime banter. It kicked off a bit of self psychoanalysis that completely preempted our crucial discussion of whatever our cat was doing just prior to leaving the house.

A waitress (not our own) was passing by, carrying a stainless steel pitcher. She stopped by our table, gesturing with the pitcher towards my one-third filled glass of tea in the universal gesture of “would you like a refill?”. She supplemented her motion with the fairly simple question “you had regular tea, right?” 
Believe it or not, I froze for a moment while I had to process her question. I verbally stumbled for a moment, and then replied in a way that she didn’t understand at all.  But before I get into that, I need to supply a little back-story.

Unbeknown to me previous to this fated evening, Lone Star had augmented their menu of drinks to include several fancy flavored iced teas.  As our waiter was running through the list of flavors, I practically pounced when his list reached “Blackberry”. I didn’t really care what else was on the list, I would float away on a river of blackberry iced tea and would be unnaturally happy for doing so. On hearing the list of flavors, my wife, also pleased by the options, changed her drink order from water to Prickly Pear Iced Tea. I will freely admit, prickly pear cactus as a flavor was quite intriguing to me, but not enough for me to change my order. Besides, it would be very simple just to try a little of my dinner-mate’s drink without losing any precious blackberry.

As dinner went on, I was provided with an additional glass of my chosen beverage before even half of my wife’s was gone. By the time the meal arrived, hers was also ready for a refill. A manager that brought the meal noticed the empty prickly pear glass and said she’d get it filled right away. However, our waiter efficiently noticed the same thing as well and in no time at all, my wife had two new glasses of prickly pear iced tea that she could never possibly finish. Being the chivalrous gentleman that I am, I kindly offered to help with one glass and we both spent the remainder of the meal happily sipping on the cactus flavored goodness. 

This brings us back to my moment of mental incapacitation. When the kind waitress stopped by to pose her question and fill my glass with tea, my brain tried to determine what the correct answer was and it had an hour-glass moment. The simple question of “you had regular tea, right?” shouldn’t really be that difficult to answer, but I might as well have had a “Loading…” sign over my head like a lagging computer.
Ahhh, Vacation! by Chris O'Brien - Ellipsis-Imagery, on Flickr
I ordered blackberry tea, so that is technically what I had. But, I switched and was now drinking my wife’s extra prickly pear tea. I never really ordered it and our waiter didn’t know I switched, and she wasn’t our waitress. How were either of them to know? On the other hand, I could have just had her fill it up with regular tea at this point and drank that instead.  In reality, this girl didn’t really care what I ordered, she saw an empty glass and thought she had the right stuff, so she was going to fill it.
Why was I hesitating?
Trying to pick the “correct answer” was more difficult than I anticipated. So what were my options here?

  1. Answer directly: “No, thanks though!”

  2. Answer directly but tell her what I actually had ordered: “No thanks, I ordered blackberry tea””

  3. Answer directly but tell her what was in my glass: “No thanks, I have prickly pear tea””

  4. Answer her implied question of “do you want me to pour this in your glass?”: “Yes thanks!””

  5. Answer her implied question, but explain anyway: “Yes! I had a different flavor, but regular is fine.””

  6. Answer the larger question if I actually wanted any more to drink: “No thanks, I’ve had enough””

So there are six options…and each one could have led with a positive or a negative response, so that’s twelve.  The way my brain works, I had to pick the “correct” one. I had to pick the one answer that was the most precise.  The problem was, they were all fairly similar, if spoken correctly.
She stood there patiently as the gears of my mental engine clicked, sputtered and coughed. I turned the key and cranked the cranial starter again and again as the minutes ticked by, the poor girl’s arm weakening and lowering from the weight of holding the full pitcher as I stumbled through my intellectual stall.   Ok. It wasn’t really that bad, but it is pretty crazy how long a couple seconds can feel in that kind of scenario.

Of course what really happened is that I paused thoughtfully for a moment, selected the right answer and calmly replied.
Right?
Nope. I panicked.
“Uhmmm……” I eloquently replied, “I had the cactus one”
“The what?!”
At that moment, I realized that it was very possible that this poor girl probably had no idea that prickly pear was supposed to be a cactus flavor instead of some sweet tree fruit.
I had fumbled, but I tried to recover.
“The prickly cactus tea…”
Blank stare. Another fumble.
“Err…the prickly pear cactus tea”
She paused, very bewildered, clearly wondering what I was really drinking.
“Um…I don’t know what that is…”
She sheepishly shuffled away.

If I hadn’t been a complete socially inept buffoon and had I selected any of the other twelve answers, we could have avoided some unpleasant awkwardness, and we both could have gone on happily with our respective days.  Somehow though, I had managed to pick the thirteenth option from the list…the one that makes practically no sense at all. A mild case of internal panic kept me from just being conversational and answering a simple question.

I know others can relate to that feeling as well, but I seem to have a close personal relationship with the awkward, paralytic pause over the inconsequential. 
I need time to process! 
Is it a matter of being slow? 
Is my cpu missing a core or duo? 
Or am I just getting old?
Actually I know it’s not age since I have been this way ever since I can remember. I remember thoughtfully filling out long essay questions on tests with simply six or seven words.  Each word carefully chosen to say exactly enough to be correct, but not an extra word more. 
Precision should be efficient! 

Precision in conversation though can be quite annoying. The pause for thought breaks up the flow and can be awkward. For some reason, I feel the need to divine exactly the correct words. Typically I don’t find them, so it comes out awkward anyway! You’d think at some point I’d try to give up on precision and just say stuff. You might think that is what I’m doing here by writing this, but, no. You’d actually be laughing at how long ago “the other day” (from the start of this story) has turned into….so, I won’t tell you. I’ll give you a hint though, it wasn’t this week.

One day I hope to master this thing you humans call “conversation”. 
Clearly I still have a bit to learn. 
Latest lesson: when someone offers to refill your tea, just say “yes”.

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