“Morir Soñando” Semifreddo

Food phases. I don’t know if any of you have them, but I go through periods of craving where I want the same thing over and over again. In college, I had this extended phase with Dominican food. For dinner, I would trek out to an area of town where there was a big Latin American community. The Dominican spots were amazing! And for like $5, you would get a heaping plate of stewed chicken, saffron rice and fried plaintains with garlic. I was a bit obsessed (and had the resulting 15 lbs to show for it…), and would always order a morir soñando, an orange creamsicle-like drink, to go with my meal.

Morir soñando translates to “to die dreaming.” How romantic is that? That pretty much sums up the deliciousness of this drink – orange juice blended with evaporated milk, sugar and ice and sometimes vanilla and cinnamon. I was thinking about a dessert that captures these flavors best and decided on a semifreddo.

For those of you that don’t have an ice cream maker / attachment (or do but no desire to deal with it…), a semifreddo, Italian for “half cold”, is the perfect, delicate, frozen, ice cream-like treat and requires no extra equipment. The custard requires a bit of finesse, but once you’ve mastered it, it’s like riding a bike.

Here, I spike the custard with concentrated blood orange juice (you can use any orange you like) and cinnamon and then fold in a vanilla-bean whipped cream. A few hours in the freezer and you have an elegant dessert. It’s a great do-ahead item; I plan to freeze it in popsicle forms this summer to grab as a treat out of the freezer. Enjoy!

Ingredients

Yields 12 servings (using a standard muffin tin)

10 small blood oranges or any orange you like, juiced (approximately 1 ½ cups of juice)

1 cinnamon stick

8 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

pinch of salt

½ tsp orange zest

1 ¾ cup heavy cream, cold

1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

Procedure

In a small saucepan, bring orange juice with the cinnamon stick up to a simmer and let reduce 2/3rdsuntil you have about a ½ cup of concentrated juice. Set aside to cool.

Prepare an ice bath and set aside. Bring a saucepan with a few inches of water up to a simmer over medium heat. In a medium bowl, whisk together yolks, sugar, salt, zest and cooled, concentrated orange juice. Set bowl over the simmering saucepan of water to form a double boiler. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water but sits comfortably on top. Whisk continuously until the mixture becomes frothy, thick and creamy. This could take anywhere from 4 to 6 minutes. An instant-read thermometer should register 160 F, but you can also eyeball it and see that the mixture will more than double in size when it’s ready. Set bowl over ice bath to cool completely.

Using a stand or hand mixer, beat heavy cream with vanilla until the peaks are firm. Carefully, fold whipped cream into the cooled egg yolk custard. Incorporate completely but try not to deflate the mixture.

Line a standard muffin tin with cupcake liners. Carefully, scoop semifreddo mixture into cupcake liners and level off the tops. Wrap tin in saran wrap and freeze for a minimum of 6 hours. An alternative would be to freeze in ramekins in which you plan to serve the semifreddo.

Serve soon after removing from the freezer (because it begins to melt quickly) and garnish with a little cinnamon and orange supremes/pieces.

* Remember to refrigerate whipped cream if not using immediately. The custard must be completely cooled before folding in the cream.

Pippali (Long) Pepper

I am on a pepper kick these days – first pink, now these. Pippali is the Sanskrit word for the long pepper and is actually the same root word from which the English term pepper is derived. Again, this is one of those overlooked spices that can seamlessly transition into regular use once you’ve tested it out.

In fact, the long pepper was used over black pepper for quite some time throughout history by the Romans, Greeks and other parts of Europe. There was a trade advantage because the spice was grown in the northwestern region of India and was, therefore, more accessible than black peppercorns further south. Once chiles arrived from the New World and trade to the Malabar Coast increased making black pepper cheaper and more widely used, the long pepper declined in popularity.

Pippali pepper is grown in India, but another version also comes from Java. The spice is used today in South Asian cooking as well as in North African, Indonesian and Malay cuisine. It’s popular in Ayurvedic medicine and has a host of uses – longevity, aphrodisiac qualities, analgesic, and digestion aid to name a few.

The flavor of long pepper is hard to capture. Each cattail-like comb contains dark red seeds, and its smell is reminiscent of good incense. That muskiness combines with a sweet quality, a bit like cardamom or cinnamon, and a touch of floral. It still has heat like the black pepper but is way more complex – a bit more pungent and it lingers on the tongue.

Honestly, I crush up these guys and throw them into my pepper grinder. Although they are popular in South Asian pickles and vegetarian stews, I love the flavor with beef and pork. It’s awesome as part of a dry rub for barbecue because it totally jives with smoky flavors. But it works well in place of black pepper too for everything from salads and vinaigrettes to your morning eggs.

Would love to hear if you have tried cooking with it and favorite uses!

St. Lucian Rum Punch

Hope everyone had a fun Memorial Day! I was in St. Lucia this past weekend for a wedding and was awed by the beauty (and cuisine) of the island. Now, I usually post recipes that I create, but I made a special request to learn how to make this delicious cocktail and just can’t keep it to myself. This rum punch will be the signature drink this summer for all of my bbq’s and cookouts.

Now, it’s my understanding that each island lays claim to the original rum punch, and I am not taking any sides! But this version is fruity, a bit strong, but goes down easy (it may have supplied a significant percentage of my vitamins this weekend…). I also wasn’t completely exact with my measurements here (i’ll let you guess why!), but it’s easy enough to do to your personal tastes.

As with all rum punches, it’s best to make this a day or two in advance to let the flavor intensifies. Juices, bitters, rum, and a few key spices make this a gorgeous warm weather cocktail.

Enjoy! and thank you Diane for the tutorial!

Ingredients

Serves 10 to 12

3 cups orange juice

3 cups pineapple juice

1 cup lime juice

a healthy pinch of cinnamon

a healthy pinch of nutmeg

6 generous shakes of angostura bitters

2 1/2 cups dark or light rum

grenadine syrup (will give amount in the procedure)

1 1/4 cups simple syrup

Procedure

In a large bowl or pitcher, mix together juices, spices, bitters and rum. Add grenadine syrup until the punch reaches the color of a flaming sunset. Grenadine syrups differ in sweetness, so I like to add the simple syrup after this point and taste along the way to make sure it’s not too sweet.

Again, it’s great to refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight to let the flavors combine, but it’s also delicious served immediately. Serve over ice.

Pink Peppercorns

Pink peppercorns are an incredible and, I think, a bit underused spice. True, they aren’t the easiest to find, but these little guys have a different complexity from black, white, or green peppercorns that is worth exploring. What’s lovely about this spice is how seamlessly it can blend into different cuisines – Mediterranean, latin, south asian to name a few. It adds its own distinct flavor without disrupting the overall character of a dish.

So the rub is that pink peppercorns aren’t really true peppercorns after all and are unrelated to the black sort we use in everyday cooking. They are actually berries that are found on a specific tree, not vine grown as most other peppercorns are. On the tree, they start out green, turn yellow, and ripen into the beautiful pinky-red you see here.

What do they taste like? I’d say they are closer to a super mild chili pepper. They have a very thin skin, little heat (nothing that lingers), and have a pine-like quality, sweet fruitiness, and a bit of floral all at the same time. Don’t be afraid to sample them on their own – they actually taste interesting on their own and would be great sprinkled on a salad.

In South America, they are used to flavor alcoholic beverages and are also a popular ingredient in French cuisine. They work extremely well with poultry and fish, but I think they make a great substitute for green peppercorns in a steak sauce. I recently used them to create a chutney with rhubarb and strawberries that was also scented with star anise.

Do not grind them in a peppermill. The skin is thin, as I mentioned, and they’ll get stuck in there. Pink peppercorns are delicate (and not cheap) and break apart easily. I like to rub them between my palms to activate their oils and crush them up.

Would love to hear how you might have used these in the past!

Cochon

So if you happen to be on my Facebook or follow me on Twitter, you know all about the trip I took a few weeks back to the Big Easy. New Orleans was hands down incredible – food, culture, fun. I planned the trip well in advance and luckily made a reservation at Cochon before it was nominated and won (!) the James Beard Award for Best Chef : South 2011! I can say after my painfully delicious meal there, that award was so well deserved…

Donald Link, who also helms Herbsaint, and Calcasieu, and Stephen Stryjewski, who officially won the JB Award, conceived Cochon and wanted to highlight Cajun-style, regional cuisine using local ingredients. The restaurant is in the warehouse district in New Orleans, and they followed it up with Cochon Butcher (also fab) next door, which has more of a sandwich / charcuterie / bar food / butcher menu with a lovely wine selection as well. Yes, a butcher that serves wine.

Cochon has an open kitchen layout with simple banquettes and tables. The focus is all food – which is homey, rich, and flavorful. The menu is an all day one, so I went for lunch my first day in New Orleans (and it was packed!).

We started with the amazing wood-fired oyster roast, drizzled with this spicy, soppable garlic butter. The fried gator with chili garlic aioli, spicy grilled pork ribs with watermelon pickle, and fried boudin with pickled peppers were also really killer. Boudin is originally a French, pork sausage. The NOLA version eschews casing the sausage in favor of rolling it into a ball and crisp, batter-frying it. I never said this was a light lunch.

For the mains (I know. can you imagine we ate this much?), we had the oven-roasted gulf fish “fisherman’s style”, smoked beef brisket with horseradish potato salad, mac and cheese, and the most buttery, black peppered grits I’ve tasted. Smoked brisket, by the way, like gumbo or etouffee, is a rite of passage down there. We were sufficiently comatosed from just how filling, perfectly seasoned, well-cooked, and all around delectable the meal was. Oh, and the fresh-baked bread hot out of the oven? Out. Of. This. World.

We obviously couldn’t leave without dessert, and the black bottomed brown butter banana cream pie was the best version of banana cream pie I’ve ever had. Hands down.

This place is a NOLA must and WILL be a stop the next time I head down there!

Mandazi (East African Donuts)

One of my earliest cooking memories was when I asked my aunt to teach me how to make mandazis. I think I was about 8 or 9 years old, and I was very serious about learning how to do these. For some reason, we wouldn’t make these delectable little donuts at home. I got to eat them when I traveled to see my family, and only the old school grandmas and aunties knew the secret. Of course, East African restaurants were pretty much nonexistent in Florida where I grew up (not that I can find any now that serve these in NYC…I’m just saying). So I felt I had to carry on the tradition!

Of course, the dish was a bit ambitious for an 8 year old (in one ear…and out the other!), and I was more focused on enjoying the fruits of my aunt’s and my labor than on getting the technique down. As an adult, however, I decided I wanted to perfect my own using the tad more culinary knowledge I now have.

I should be clear: mandazis are savoury. They shouldn’t be too sweet or too salty. One of my most treasured food memories is sitting, facing the Indian Ocean, in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, using the (hollow) mandazis to scoop up a tender stew of pigeon peas in coconut milk with fresh chilies and cilantro (called barazi). But, of course, you can eat them however you like; I’m partial now to having them for breakfast.

These are very easy to make. A little yeast leavens the dough, and I use a combination of all-purpose and rice flour to make them even lighter. A touch of sweetness, lightly coconut-scented, and that signature cardamom flavor. Heavenly…Enjoy!

Ingredients

Yields 2 dozen donuts

¼ cup sugar

1 ½ tsp yeast

2/3 cup warm water

½ cup coconut milk

1 ¾ cup all purpose flour

¾ cup rice flour

¾ tsp salt

3 tbsp dried grated coconut (preferably unsweetened, adjust sugar if not)

¾ – 1 ¼ tsps ground cardamom*

oil for frying

salt & powdered sugar

Procedure

This can easily be made in a stand mixer or by hand.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water and let bloom 5-10 minutes. It should become foamy and frothy. Turn the mixer on low and add coconut milk.

In a separate bowl, sift flours together and mix in salt, grated coconut and cardamom. Add contents to liquids in the mixer and knead on low for 5 to 10 minutes. Conversely, you can also knead by hand – the dough should get pretty smooth (except for the grated coconut) and relatively sticky.

Transfer dough to a greased bowl, cover, and let rise for a minimum of 2 hours.

On a floured work surface, divide dough into 4 even pieces. Form each piece into a ball and flatten to a disc. Roll each circle out to about ¼” thick and cut like a pie into six triangular pieces. Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet while working on each piece.

In a dutch oven or pot, heat 3 to 4 inches of oil to 360 F. Working in batches, carefully drop a few triangles into the oil. Don’t overcrowd or the oil temperature will drop. As soon as the triangles puff, quickly flip them over. This will ensure that both sides cook – if they become lopsided, it will be hard to keep them on the less inflated side to brown. Cook for a few minutes, flipping at intervals until golden brown. Remove to a paper towel-lined plate or baking sheet and lighltly salt.

Before serving, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

They are best served warm as they can get a touch chewy once they’ve cooled. If you need to reheat, do so in a very low oven or on a low power in the microwave.

*Traditionally, cardamom is roughly ground and added to the mandazi batter. This results in biting into delightful pieces of cardamom while eating the donuts. I add about 1 ¼ teaspoons when I’m using roughly ground cardamom and more like ¾ teaspoon when I use the powdered / ground form.

Browning (aka Burnt Sugar “Sauce”)

I mentioned browning a few weeks back when I was creating my spicy creole ketchup, where I used it as a base. I thought I would talk a bit more about this “sauce” and how it’s used in a lot of West Indian cooking. This is one of those down-home, secret ingredients that can make or break just how good a dish turns out and also help you flex knowledge when talking to someone who knows about West Indian food (don’t you just love that inside information)?

So what exactly is browning? Quite simply, it is burnt sugar. Sugar is heated either by itself or with a little oil or water until it’s taken to a stage of caramelization where it’s smoking and almost black. At that point, more water is added or ingredients are tossed in to stop the cooking process. Browning is often bottled and can be bought at most West Indian grocers, but, as you can tell from my description, it’s fairly easy to do at home (just don’t even THINK about touching it when it’s cooking unless you want the burn of your lifetime…).

If you’ve ever had Jamaican oxtail stew or Trini peas and rice, browning was probably the foundation of it. It’s additive to both color and taste and coats a dish’s ingredients with sweet goodness. Once the sugar is cooked to that stage, it develops a really rich flavor, molasses-like with smokiness and depth. It’s used a lot in savoury dishes, but it’s also a key ingredient in West Indianblack cake, a boozy, wine-soaked fruit cake that’s super dark and served around the holidays.

As I mentioned, I used it to form the foundation of a ketchup (why not?) because I love the flavor. But that’s a pretty unusual way to use it. Next time you are talking to someone who says they know West Indian food, see if they know as much as you do!

Fava Purée Topped with Sumac Onions

The terms spring and vegetables really go hand-in-hand – earthy artichokes, thick, luscious asparagus, comical fiddleheads and, one of my personal favorites, fava beans. Yes, they are a bit labor-intensive as they have to be shelled from their pods and then each individual fava has to be peeled…but the taste, the creamy butteriness, makes all of that work worthwhile.

Fava beans, or broad beans as they are sometimes called, are actually very popular in the Middle East, North Africa and Mediterranean regions. In fact, ful medames, a dish consisted of slow-cooked favas with garlic, lemon and spices, is a typical breakfast dish in Egypt often served with eggs and pita. Seasonally, fresh favas may be available, but year-round, dried favas are a staple in the Egyptian diet.

Fava purée is a great way to enjoy the seasonally abundant, fresh favas at the greenmarkets. I like to add similar ingredients to the Egyptian dish – garlic, lemon, spices, but I also add potato to give the purée a bit of body. For a silky mouthfeel, I gently stir in extra virgin olive oil at the end; blending too vigorously with the rest of the ingredients can make the oil bitter. To top this puree, I soften sweet onions in a pan with tart spice sumac. The result is a beautiful side dish or starter that’s creamy, luscious, and bright. Enjoy!

Ingredients

Yields approximately 1 ½ cups of puree

Fava Puree:

2 cups shelled fresh favas (from about 2 lbs unshelled)

3 tbsp butter (1 tbsp is optional, melted)

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped

1 yukon gold potato, peeled and shredded

¾ tsp ground cumin

pinch of chili powder

5 garlic cloves, minced

juice of half a lemon

½ cup chicken or vegetable stock

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

salt and black pepper to taste

Sumac Onions:

3 tbsps butter or olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 tbsp ground sumac

Procedure

For the fava purée, bring a medium pot of salted water up to a boil over high heat. Add favas and cook for 90 seconds to 2 minutes (they should be bright green). Drain and shock in an ice bath or run under cold water to stop cooking. Peel outer layer of skin from favas – they should slip out pretty easily. Discard skins and set peeled favas aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter and olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, potato, cumin, chili and favas (and a pinch or two of salt) and cook for 4 to 5 minutes until potatoes and favas are softened. Add garlic and cook for another 30 seconds until fragrant. Add lemon juice and chicken stock and bring up to a simmer.

Transfer fava mixture to a blender and purée to desired texture. Add a bit more stock if necessary to achieve a smoother texture. Remove to a bowl and stir in extra virgin olive oil and 1 tablespoon of melted butter to get a creamy, mouthfeel. I like to stir in the oil, rather than blend, so that it doesn’t get bitter from overprocessing. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For the sumac onions, heat butter or oil over medium heat. Add onion and sumac and cook until softened.

Serve fava purée warm, topped with sumac onions and a side of pita or toast points.

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