Saw this first via Epicurious. It’s worth reposting since the idea is really sweet.
I have an Mac mini in my kitchen for most of the reasons that are shown in the iPad kitchen video – music, recipes, news, etc. Yet another reason to get one (as if I needed any more)
Last weeks Crab Cake recipe reminded me that finger food should be quick to prepare. On that note, and with Cinco de Mayo in mind, I’m turning to a family favorite that’s really quick to make and can be served as finger food as well as the main course. The recipe itself is adapted from one in Cooks Illustrated.
Corn and Black Bean Quesadillas, makes 2
Hardware
Software
Preparation
Heat skillet over medium high heat until hot, about 2 minutes. Add corn and cook stirring occasionally until kernels begin to brown and pop, 3-5 minutes. Transfer to bowl.
Heat oil in the empty skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add red onion and cook stirring occasionally until softened about 3 minutes. Add garlic and chili powder and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in beans, and cook until heated through about 1 minute. Return corn to skillet and toss to combine. Press mixture down with spatula to lightly crush the beans. Transfer mixture to bowl and stir in lime juice. Salt to taste.
Wipe out the skillet with paper towels and return pan to medium heat until hot, about 2 minutes. Add 1 tortilla to pan and toast until soft and puffed slightly at edges. Flip and repeat on other side, 1-2 minutes. Evacuate tortilla to cutting board and repeat with second tortilla. While the other tortilla cooks, sprinkle 1/3 cup cheese, half the corn/bean mixture and 1/2 jalapenos over 1/2 the tortilla leaving 1/2″ border around the edge. Fold in half and flatten. Brush surface with oil, sprinkle lightly with salt and repeat with second tortilla.
Put both tortillas in skillet, oiled side down and cook over medium heat until crisp and brown 1-2 minutes. Brush exposed surfaces with oil and sprinkle with salt. Flip and repeat. Transfer to cutting board and let cool about 2-3 minutes.
For finger food cut each into thirds; for a meal, cut in half or leave intact.
Serve with salsa, sour cream dips or as it. Be prepared to make more!
After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma I’m more aware of buying seasonally local food – I don’t know how anyone can come away from that book and not be effected by it.
I’m not a “green” person but by buying local and seasonal I’m:
Now that it’s May, my local Farmer’s Market is open until October on Tuesdays and Saturdays. If it’s a nice day on Tuesday I’ll get some exercise and walk down to the Farmer’s Market on my lunch break and see what’s there.
On Saturday my wife and I stopped in at the Farmer’s Market and found morels and other fresh mushrooms. I didn’t ask the quantity but the morels were $12 – pricey little buggers. I picked up some locally made mustard – a garlic and a spicy pepper. The mustards should go good on pork as well combine nicely in salad dressings.
Today on my Tuesday “market” walk, the early greens were available: arugula, spinach, and baby lettuce; a nice spring mix. Fresh salad radishes, chives, tarragon, and thyme were all out as well. I ended up getting a bunch of fresh arugula for $2.75. The arugula will go well in my salads. Guess I should bring a shopping bag.
Besides May flowers, this month included the following culinary observation:
I’m thinking the BBQ and Hamburger month go well together. I’ll have to think up a menu that incorporates all of these items.
There are some special food days in May as well:
For a more comprehensive list of daily food holidays, try here
Lately I’ve been wondering if programs on Food Network and articles from Cooks Illustrated and the like are “dumbing down” cooking. If the recipes work the first time, where’s the mystery, the desire to investigate and learn from mistakes? While there’s a certain satisfaction with a dish that turns out right the first time, the desire to understand and adjust just isn’t as strong.
Alas (and perhaps that’s a good thing) my initial attempt a Chef Paul’s Maryland Crab Cakes didn’t quite turn out as scrumptious as I would have liked. However, it afforded an opportunity to test part of a technique from the Cooks Country recipe that I also wanted to try.
Gearing Up
I knew it wasn’t going to go well from the time I got home. The kitchen was a wreck, our aging Boston Terrier was having issues and I was feeling out of sorts. Still, when the going gets tough and all that..
After getting the household back in a semblance of order I started prepping the veggies: 2 onions, a bell pepper and 2 celery stalks completed the Holy Trinity. The spice mix I prepped the day before so that was good to go. The day old bread I was going to use for breadcrumbs didn’t pulverize well in the blender or food processor but it was fine enough for toasting. It took about 3/4 of a loaf of french baguette to get 3 cups. As with the way the day was going I slopped breadcrumbs onto the stove where they ended up burning – ug! It was going to be one of those days.
Holy Trinity
Once the breadcrumbs were toasted and cooling, the butter went in (ever notice that every item in this recipe is cooked over high heat?) with the veggies. After they started to brown, in went 1/2 the spice mixture and the first set of liquids. In just a few seconds the veggies went from a semi-liquid state to thick – must have been the cumin. It smelled great – maybe things were looking up!
As directed I cooked the veggie-spice mixture until it started sticking to the pan and then added the clam juice to de-glaze. After the final cooking session it tasted as good as it looked. Now to the crab patties.
I used lump crab from a can and unlike the recipe I drained it good. I couldn’t see adding all that liquid to the patties. I figured I’d adjust the binders down a bit since a lot of the liquid was gone. Starting with about 1 cup of breadcrumbs, I added 1 egg and 1/4 cup of cream and tested the binding – didn’t hold well. Another egg, another 1/4 cup cream and better but wet and not binding.
Adding 1/2 – 2/3 cup of breadcrumbs started to get better consistancy. Rather than another egg, I added more cream bringing the total to about 1 cup. That was enough to get the consistance I was looking for – sticky but not too sticky. Hopefully the heat of cooking would bind it tighter. Time for the rest.
I made up the sauce, which was wonderful! Almost a bisque like texture and the flavor was outstanding.
The Last Mile
As it approached 8:30 PM I was getting hungry and my Friday cocktail was wearing thin. I heated up the pan, made the patties and dredged them in the remaining breadcrumbs – they were a little on the thick side. Into the pan they went. I used tongs to get them in there and they looked to be frying nicely. After 3-4 minutes I tried to flip with tongs. No dice! They started to fall apart when I removed them from the oil. A spatula did much better – must remember to get a fish spatula.
After another 3 minutes I tested the internal temperature and was horrified to see it was barely above 70 degrees! Still “raw” in the middle. No wonder it was falling apart – the eggs, cream, fat and starch had not denatured – grrrr! With the outside done, I couldn’t really stick them back in the oil – think.. Ah! How about under the broiler like the Cooks Country recipe I looked at? Worth a try at this point. While I was at it I figured I do the remaining ones under the broiler as well since the oil wasn’t doing its job.
Fifteen minutes or so later and I had a internal temperature over 135 – time to eat. Plated with sauce, my wife and I tried the ones initially fried in oil. Flavor was great and the sauce, as I already mentioned, was fantastic but the texture wasn’t what we were expecting. Really dense – maybe the oil wasn’t hot enough. I opted to try a pure broiled cake and it was moist, tender and not nearly as heavy feeling. Much better than the oil fried ones.
Close, But…
Thinking back, I can’t see how the oil fried ones would have worked well since the temperature is lowered once the cakes are added. Even with the oil at a good pan fry temperature, the cool/cold cakes – recall they were in the fridge for 1.5 hours – would lower the oil temperature substantially. Too much oil would be absorbed for the cakes to be crisp. Also, the patties should have been thinner. Even if the oil remained hot, the cakes would have been too thick to cook well in 6 minutes.
So, coming away from this:
Since my wife really likes crab cakes, I have a feeling I’ll be trying them again.
The menu for the week beginning April 26th is:
Comments
For some reason the roasted chicken with red potatoes and roasted broccoli sounded really good. I don’t have a single recipe for it all – it’s a combination of 3 different ones that just sounded good together.
Both the tuna croquettes and the pasta with tomato and almond pesto I’ve made before and both were really good. Since I’m just back from vacation I didn’t want a lot of complexity this week so sticking with things I know and I like.
Talking with mom this week about cooking and in particular “coney sauces” got me hankering for hot dogs with Michigan sauce. Takes some time to make but it sure is good!
The crab cakes will be interesting. I’ve never made them before but my wife loves them. I’m going to try Paul Prudhomme’s recipe with a seasoning mixture. I have a Cooks Country version that broils them, but I want to try out the pan frying since I’m a sucker for fried foods.
Outcomes
The roasted chicken hit the spot. Pan seared to give it a nice crust, it roasted in the oven for a nice finish that left it moist and juicy. The sliced red potatoes simmered covered in a lemon-chicken broth before evaporating the liquid and crisping the outsides – yummy! Roasted broccoli is quickly becoming a favorite dish – I tossed the florets in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, sugar and pepper before roasting.
Second time round with the tuna croquettes and despite some binding issues they tasted really good – my wife even said so. My daughter even ate them. The microwaved green beans in almondine sauce were great as well. The best part (depending on how you look at it): no left overs!
As with the tuna croquettes, the tomato almond pesto was even better the second time around. I used a few less tomatoes this time and the basil flavor really came out. Not much left over, a mere mouthful – which won’t be in the fridge long!
I’ve always loved hot dogs with coney sauce and the Michigan sauce recipe I’ve been using just keeps getting better. I used a higher fat content ground beef this time and while a bit more oily it had a slightly better flavor.
The crab cakes were fun to prepare and had good taste. The cooking technique and/or perhaps the recipe didn’t turn out a OMG crab cake I was hoping for. The spice mix left heat on the pallet long after the crab cake was gone, so the spices get an A+. Since my wife likes crab cakes I think I’ll be playing with these a bit.
One more item on the crab cakes – left over ones warmed up make great fillings for omelets!
I’ve got a birthday party to go to next weekend and since the birthday party is the same week as Cinco de Mayo something Mexican/Spanish would be in order.
While I’m not sure what I’m going to bring to eat, I know what I’m drinking – Sangria! Naturally I need to know how to actually make sangria and luckily Alton Brown can step and assist:
Turns out if I follow the emulsion trail a bit there are more clues about binding.
An emulsion is typically about fat and water – one dispersed in the other and they don’t like to stay together, hence they need an emulsifier like eggs or dairy to keep them joined. Sure you can create an oil and water emulsion like a vinaigrette, but that will separate over time. An emulsifier would keep the disparate parts from separating. But too much of an emulsifier can be a bad thing. A stabilizing agent, typically a starch, is necessary to keep the emulsifier from repelling against each other.
So examining “binders” we have fat and perhaps some liquid in the meat, an emulsifier like eggs and dairy containing protein as well as liquid and finally starch in the form of breadcrumbs acting as a stabilizer. Quite the handsome quartet!
That the meat itself contributes to the emulsion didn’t occur to me until I read a post on why fresh ground turkey burgers fall apart during cooking. Fresh hamburger patties don’t suffer from this – you can make stable patties that don’t fall apart just by pressing the meat together. Turkey on the other hand doesn’t have the fat content of ground beef so they can’t form stable patties. Adding salt to denature the proteins in the turkey and a little oil promote better cohesion.
All this got me interested in a little experiment. Given that seafood has even less fat than turkey, I wondered if just adding oil and salt would be enough to make stable patties. Turns out it won’t. Adding salt and some olive oil to a package of salmon didn’t yield substantially more cohesive patties than the salmon alone. Even adding breadcrumbs didn’t help much. Granted I didn’t let them sit for very long but the mixture wouldn’t hold together at all. Since I had very little salmon (7 oz) for this experiment I didn’t want to crack an entire egg on it. Instead I used dairy – heavy cream in fact – and just like that I had a stable patty! I could tell from the moment I stuck my hand in it that it would hold together.
Turning to On Food and Cooking page 628, I read that:
The yolk proteins in eggs and the casein proteins in milk and cream are the best protein emulsifiers.
I guess On Food and Cooking did cover the topic after all – I just needed to look in the right place! It also means that dairy/cream at the mix stage does contribute to binding by acting as an emulsifier.
In looking at this fat-liquid-stabilizer-emulsifier quartet that make up “binders” in meat mixtures, it’s no wonder tables and ratios don’t exist. Too much depends on the fat content of the meat, the amount of liquid in it, the type of stabilizer and how much it can absorb, not to mention the type of emulsifier and the other ingredients in the party, i.e. salt, acid, etc. It is defiantly a touchy/feel-y process.
Between On Food and Cooking and CookWise you would think one would cover the topic of “binders” but NO – I’m left to my own devices. Internet searching for “food binders” gives some interesting results but no definitive reference – not even a Wikipedia article.
Binders are used in a number of meat mixtures – meatloaf is probably the best example in my mind. Not surprisingly I found an article about making meatloaf in which Alton Brown talks about binders – finally! However, beyond the basics there’s no discussion on ratios, applications, etc. Even before reading the article I was starting to think about binders like I would emulsifiers – their job is to hold together a mixture that otherwise would fall apart.
After reading the article and browsing a few recipes that included binders – meatloaf, crab cakes, etc. there seem to be only a few “natural” items that are considered binders – eggs, dairy products, and starch. Like double action baking powder, there are two kinds of binding that need to happen – one at mix time and the other at cook time. After all, if you can’t get it into the pan as a unit, you can’t cook it.
Starch, in the form of breadcrumbs, crackers, etc, would be active in the mix phase since they will soak up moisture, swell and stick to the foods that surround it. I’m guessing that too much starch and the mix will crumble apart since all the moisture will be gone. When cooked, the starch will expand and perhaps explode spewing the starch grains in the mix and tighten things up further.
Dairy, milk and cream in particular, seem to denature during cooking, although I suspect that acids and salt can get the process started sooner. Unlike eggs, I don’t think air alone can cause denaturing in dairy. It would seem then that other than providing moisture, dairy doesn’t contribute much at the mix phase, but can play a roll during heating/cooking. Dairy can also be an emulsifying agent.
The proteins in eggs will start to unravel, tangle and thicken somewhat in the mix phase, especially if exposed to air, acid and salt. This denaturing process will allow the egg proteins to tangle with each other and thicken the mix. Since they are a natural emulsifier, they will bond to watery and oily substances. When cooked they will tighten and pull the items they are bonded to together. Salts and acids also cause eggs to thicken at lower temperatures, but dairy raises their thickening temperature. Humm…
Chef Paul’s recipe calls for all three binders – bread crumbs, eggs and cream – all at mix time. No doubt that cream is being absorbed by the breadcrumbs but those crumbs are also absorbing liquid from the eggs, crab meat (the recipe doesn’t call for draining), and other liquid items hanging around. All 3 binders are added at the same time – right at the end before letting the mixture rest for 1.5 hours. The resting phase would seem to be there for the starches in the breadcrumbs to absorb the liquids and swell as well as give the eggs a chance to denature and begin to bind with each other and the surrounding mix.
Whew.. almost as complex as baking, which is probably why binders are not an exact science. Too much is dependent on the kind of liquid, the absorbency of the starch, what the eggs are exposed to (and when) and the temperature at which the dish is cooked.
An interesting experiment would be to add breadcrumbs to a wet meat mixture and see at what point it begins to “fall apart” – if it does. I think I’ll give that a whirl with tuna and some ground crackers.
