He who controls the spice controls the universe!

NPR aired a story yesterday about the bloody history of nutmeg.  It's about as bad as you can imagine from the colonial era.

The spice must flow, apparently.

Holiday negligence

Hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving yesterday.  I didn't post anything about making turkey or T-giving sides because I didn't make any.  The wife and I went to the in-laws' Thanksgiving dinner and I haven't been in the family long enough to do anything besides plate some butternut squash soup (which I garnished with croutons and smoked paprika, as instructed).  Besides, most of my efforts were diverted toward entertaining my 3-year old nephew, who is going to grow up to be some kind of evil warlord.

Heading up to my mom's house for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner/Ohio State-Michigan gorgefest.  My family has grown quite a bit in the past few years with cousins getting married and having kids, so I've been helping Mom out since she usually ends up feeding around 30-40 people now.  I know there are going to be at least two turkeys, possibly three, and probably around 10 sides not counting what other people bring (it's a host-heavy potluck).  In addition to helping with Mom's sides, I'm making brussels sprouts roasted with maple syrup and white balsamic vinegar as well as a bratwurst & cream cheese dip.  I'll do my best to snap a couple photos and issue a full report.

Then, a week later, I'm doing my annual TurkeyFest party, basically a "friends Thanksgiving."  I usually try to do them before actual Thanksgiving (so people won't be tired of turkey by the time my party rolls around), but this year I had to set the date for the weekend after Thanksgiving.  I'm cooking three turkeys with a common smoke theme: one cooked in the smoker over bourbon-soaked oak chips, one brined in smoked stout, then spatchcocked and grilled, and one traditionally oven-roasted but infused with chipotle peppers.  That adventure will be well-documented, I assure you.

Quick Pitch #2: Steve Albini's Ramen

If you're like me, you were probably at one time a broke college kid, broke post-baccalaureate bachelor/bachelorette, in-between-jobs/finding-myself twenty-something, just-spent-my-entire-savings-on-a-see-through-guitar-even-though-I'm-old-enough-to-know-better young adult, or something similar.  If that's the case, you've probably had five or more packages of ramen noodles in your house at some point and you're probably hoping that you never have to eat them ever again.

Here's the thing: that cheap, boring ramen soup can be transformed into something palatable - dare I say, even good - in the three minutes that it takes to cook those noodles.  Now I've never had authentic ramen noodle soup, but recording engineer/musician/punk rock provocateur Steve Albini has and his quickly dolled-up approximation certainly hits the spot, even if - by his own admission - it's not as good as the real deal.

The key ingredients here are everyday kitchen staples: garlic, soy sauce and an egg.  The other ingredients are a little less common (fish sauce, vegetable boullion, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sriracha) but can be substituted easily with common ingredients if need be.

Start like you normally would by boiling 2 cups of water.  I use the "original" flavor Sapporo Ichiban packet or the "oriental" flavor Top Ramen instead of vegetable boullion.  I've used the beef and chicken flavors with this method, but I prefer the original/oriental.  Mix the packet into the water and then add the soy and fish sauces (a little fish sauce goes a long way, mind you).  This is a "to taste" addition and you can always add more to the finished soup.

While that's working up to a boil, separate an egg yolk from the white and drop the yolk into your bowl.  You can dispose of the white or fry it up, julienne it and mix it into your finished soup.  Whatever you feel like.  The world is your egg white.

When the broth reaches a boil, drop in the noodles.  You have three minutes.  You will probably only need two or two-and-a-half.

Mince or press a garlic clove and put into the bowl with the yolk.  Give a modest squirt of sriracha (or chili-garlic sauce as pictured above, or another hot sauce of your liking, or even just some red pepper flakes), again "to taste" and you can always add more later if it needs it.  Drop splashes of sesame oil (optional, but delicious) and rice vinegar (I suppose white vinegar would be OK here too, but rice vinegar has a distinct flavor and is milder) into the bowl, then beat the whole mess together to form a suspension.

By now your noodles should be about done.  Here comes the trickiest part: while whipping the egg mixture with a fork, pour in the boiling broth.  Try to get the broth out before the noodles plop in the bowl; you want the hot broth to cook the egg without curdling it and the best way to do that is to keep the beaten egg in motion while the broth is added.  When it looks uniformly mixed, plop the noodles into the bowl.

You're pretty much good to go now, though you can garnish the soup with some fresh ginger, cilantro, basil, bean sprouts and/or scallions (like I did).  The egg-thickened broth is a huge improvement over plain ramen in consistency alone, but also, as Steve says:

The egg has the effect of holding the flavors in suspension in your mouth so they linger a little longer, particularly the garlic and sesame, and combined with the fish sauce and soy, gives the soup a nice umame quality.

Combine all of this with the fact that you can literally have this put together in the time it takes to make a decent sandwich and you've got a reason to reacquaint yourself with ramen that doesn't involve personal financial disaster.

Revealed!

Time to reveal the identity of the mystery food object!

A couple of you guessed ramen, which is a great guess since there are no contextual clues about the size.  However, the object above is actually quite small.

Dan guessed Long John Silvers, but I think that he was just hoping this was one of his beloved chicken planks.

Thank you Bobby for the Chickenfoot reference (I will not link to their music as this is supposed to be an appetizing food blog).

The closest guess was by Ryan on Facebook who surmised that this was some kind of fried cheddar cheese.  Oh so close, but not quite right.

The correct answer is...

...

...

...

...

...

...

A deformed, mutant Cheez-It.  My wife said it looks like its composed entirely of holes and edges.  Really makes me wonder how they're made.

Thanks for playing!

Guess what got past quality assurance...

Anybody wanna take a guess what this?  I will reveal the answer Monday at noon.  First person to guess correctly gets, uh, something...

Take a hack at it in the comments.

Posole revisited

A few years ago when I was writing for the other food blog with the ridiculous name, I wrote a piece on posole, the traditional Mexican green chile and hominy stew.  The batch that came from that article met with some pretty high praise; one person even said it was the best chili they ever had in their life, which made me proud enough to bite my tongue and not explain the differences between chili and posole.  Despite the success, I never made it again.  Then, one day, my former colleague at the old food blog said he makes it according to that recipe several times a year and it's a household favorite.  I decided to give it another shot.

I asked my wife if she'd be into some posole and she said "eh, I don't know, I don't really like hominy."  So I asked her if she thought she'd like it better with corn instead of hominy (since hominy is just nixtamalized corn anyway).  We decided that a corn batch and a hominy batch would make sense and even be decent fodder for a comparison taste test.  We do keep it extra nerdy in the Braise Jebus household.

First step is to prep your veggies: onions, green chiles and garlic.  Onions and green chiles get a 1/2" dice or "rustic chop" (it is stew, after all), garlic gets minced or pressed.  I know it's cheating but I love the jars of pre-minced garlic when I need to use a lot for a recipe.  Throw it all in the pot with your hominy (or corn).

 I'm all out of long pig at the moment*, so I thawed out a 4 lb. pork loin roast I had in the freezer (left over from this excursion into deliciousness) and cut it into little cubes.  I didn't bother brining the meat beforehand since it was going to simmer in a pot for 6 hours and absorb all of the other posole flavors while staying tender.  I did want to give it a quick brown though, so into the skillet it goes with some salt and pepper.

Once you get all sides tanned, into the pot goes the pork.  You want to add water and season the stew at this point.  The recipe I used calls for menudo spice or chili powder.  Went I went to the Mexican grocery, I discovered that there is menudo spice (an herb heavy mix, mostly oregano, onion and pepper flakes) and menudo chili spice (which is more like a traditional chili powder with ground chile, cumin, and other goodies).  I bought both but opted for the herb mix, wanting to avoid the colorado appearance of a red chili.

And that's pretty much it.  Simmer it for 6 hours or so and adjust flavors as necessary.  In the original recipe that inspired my post, the author says "don’t be stingy with the salt and pepper in this recipe – you’ll need it."  When I made my first batch, I found this to be true.  However, this time around, I aggressively seasoned the stew from the outset and it ended up way too salty.  Lesson learned: you've got 6 hours dude, relax, taste it when the pork is safely cooked and adjust as you go.  You've got all day, no need to rush.

If you want to thicken it up at the end, a little masa flour does the trick, just pour a little bit in at a time and let it cook in until you get the thickness you want.  I found that the corn version needed a little more than the hominy version since the corn is not a starchy to begin with.  As far as how the two stews stacked up side by side, they were very similar in flavor (since they were made exactly the same way) though the corn posole did seem a little sweeter than the hominy variant.  If you like that sweetness but prefer hominy in your posole, you can always add a splash of corn syrup at the end of the stew to round out the flavor.

Posole is a beautiful thing: unique, flavorful, inexpensive and simple to make.  I really should revisit this more than once every couple of years.

*For the record, the Braise Jebus blog does not practice, endorse or condone cannibalism or human sacrifice.  Beware of the hairless goat.