Gan-do

I have a recipe that instructs me to use a heavy ganache, I thought ganache was a singular thing, please help. – Ganache is a fun word to say

Sweet Pourable You

A ganache is a combination of chocolate and cream. At its most basic, a ganache is equal parts heavy cream and chocolate by weight. The addition of cream should make the melted chocolate pourable, workable and the fat in the cream should provide a duct tape grade tempering on the chocolate so it doesn’t ‘break’ or separate. For the most part this is true (more on this below), cream/fat stabilizes the chocolate, making ganache luscious, versatile pastry workhorse.

I pulled 4 books from the Saucytorium and found 13 different kinds of ganache listed. Basic ganache, what I think of as just ‘ganache’, is equal weight of heavy cream poured over grated or chopped chocolate. (Instead of heating the cream, whip it, whip it into stiff peaks, using the same 1:1 ratio, then fold in melted chocolate to make a quick chocolate mouse.) Then there is a heavy ganache, this is one that is based on a 2:1 ratio - that is two parts chocolate to one part cream And here is where things get interesting: 2:1 is professional grade ganache, but every author tinkers with the basic formula to make his or her variation on 2:1 more shelf-stable, glossy, velvet-textured or somehow better.

A cook can substitute some butter for cream in order to create a shiny ganache. Egg yolks are a popular addition for gloss, richness and making things, “taste velvety” – Come on; they are pastry savants, not wordsmiths. One cookbook informs that ganache is wonderfully elegant, consisting of only 2 ingredients cream and couverture, then goes on, possibly unironically, to list 3 permeations, containing extra sugar, butter, egg yolks and/or corn syrup.

Corn syrup has a bad reputation as an unnatural, false sweetener that will make a person instantly obese by ingesting as little as 1 tablespoon. It is for soda pop, junior college students and bad parents, not well-informed Pollan-ators. As far as baking goes, corn syrup is actually pretty cool, especially for the avocational baker who doesn’t quite have the experience or tools to prevent sugar from crystallizing or the know-how to temper chocolate. Without getting uber-technical, when working with emulsions, and chocolate is for all practical purposes, is a big, albeit solid emulsion. As with all emulsions, having fat particles stay suspended in the greater mass is your goal. If you have ever seen two-toned or striated chocolate - the fat has separated from the other elements. Corn syrup, is an inverted sugar, a product that readily absorbs excess moisture, making fat separating and sugar crystallizing less likely as the chocolate heats then cools.

Try this for a good to go heavy to medium ganache:

1 saucepan, comically oversized considering the liquid involved           

12 oz semisweet chocolate (better the chocolate, the better the ganache)

1 cup heavy cream

2 Tablespoons corn syrup

4 Tablespoons butter

Chop chocolate into small to fine pieces (Food Processor works good – chocolate chips are cool too). Heat cream up in a saucepan, bring to a boil, let reduce about 1 minute, whisk in corn syrup and let cool for about 15-30 seconds.

Pour mixture through feed tube on Food Processor, use 5, 1 second bursts. Add the butter and blast for 5-7 seconds. Return to saucepan.

Or for the DIY crowd: Add chocolate to pan, whisk until chocolate and cream have melted together. Add butter Tablespoon at a time and continue whisking until butter is incorporated.

You have ganache.

Fresh, Like Me

Save for a handful of exceptions, the federales mostly stay out of the defining what is fresh food and what isn’t. When government officials do get involved, they tilt the other way, extending legal standing to things that would never be considered fresh by civilians. Like frozen French fries: With 2004’s “batter-coating ruling”, where a Texas judge upheld a FDA rule change that amended the definition of ‘fresh’ so that rolling a cut, processed, potato in starch - then par-frying in oil, flash freezing, packing and shipping to restaurants for additional frying, allows said French fry to be considered ‘fresh’ because it “retains its perishable quality”. 

Freshness!

The Frozen Potato Products Institute, whose Virginia address hints it’s more of a lobbying agency than a lab where white smocked, dedicated food scientists are tirelessly working to improve the tater tot (full disclosure; what’s to improve?), were responsible for the aforementioned rule change. While pushing like-minded, Bush II Era officials to ease language that not only resonates with customers but then allows federal dollars to be used to purchase ‘fresh’ frozen potato products may be the very definition of avarice, they aren’t the only ones who are guilty…

Fresh frozen; fresh Chilean asparagus; fresh ocean seafood (kept on ice from catch until preparation); fresh fruits from CA - Controlled Atmosphere cold storage where fruits and veg can spend months before being distributed; “Keep Crisp” salad packs that fix nitrogen levels in plastic to keep baby greens ‘fresh’ for weeks; fruit roll-ups that were processed from, ‘fresh fruit’; milk that has been pasteurized then put into wax cardboard, shipped 100s of miles is also fresh. Even Terry Gross confuses matter with questions that aren’t so crisp and guests who aren’t that timely. It is funny (funny sad, not funny ha-ha) that so many people work so hard to undermine the meaning of freshness when they see so much value in the term.

So even stepping back from legally binding terms and industry terminology, it is hard to fathom what fresh actually means as a quantifiable attribute. Susanne Freidberg, author of the not unexpectedly titled, Fresh, posits that fresh has been marketed as a moral idea as much as an actual concept: Throughout the 20^th century, advertisements & editorials reinforced the belief that women who prepare meals made of fresh foods for their family rather than processed foods, were better mothers/wives. Fresh is the bedfellow of the equally allusively defined, healthy. And for those whose vegetarianism or locavorism is their raison d'état – fresh is most certainly more than ideal, it is a core value.

To a certain extent, I concur with Professor Freidberg’s argument (her semantic wrestling is only a small part of her super-interesting book, which approaches the idea of fresh from 6 different foods). But mostly, I just want fresh to mean something – something tangible, or hell something abstract as long as definable standards apply. I used to have a hip-hop inclined coworker who, back in the day, would often restrict his approval to the one word editorial: ‘fresh’. When I’d ask for some clarity, “is that p-h-phresh, or fresh like a vegetable”, he’d respond, “Fresh is always good”. Hard to think, only a dozen years later his very reassuring statement has been called into question.

Future Farmers of America

Spring is slow arriving in the Willamette Valley and once here it lingers for an awful long time. In the Pacific Northwest, March might be the most indecisive of all months, the weather hovers and is pretty steady. I can look for signs of spring - outside the daffodils are few and far between. I can look up at the window above my desk and gray-on-gray horizons, checking the date on a calendar, looking back out the window and focusing on the tree in the yard to see if those are buds on the limbs or the gray is refracting the light funny, no not buds, well maybe. Then temperature, google the term ‘equinox, 2011’ to make sure it was actually the 20th rather than the 21^st.

Put an Egg on it! ( Photo D. Pleva)

A surer sign the seasons are rotating, comes when Portland Farmers Market opens for the season. I tried to prepare people for the inevitable drizzly, 45-degree day by saying if you see your shadow on the first day of Farmers Market, it means 6 more weeks of drizzle. To my surprise, about an hour after the Market opened for the year on Saturday, there was a little sunshine. Then day got warm enough so that the ladies unzipped their Columbia/Gortex all weather jackets just enough to expose a little long sleeved, crew necked undergarments to passers-by. But being Portland, no one shouted “show us your fleece”. 

As someone who extols the virtues of Spanish olive oil, Italian Campari, German cutlery, Mexican coffee, Japanese teas, Californian citrus, Louisiana hot sauce, I am not one to get all Michael Pollan about all things local*. I have been known to state the belief that all these 100-mile diets are the purview of a select few with enough money and options to eat that way. And, I have been known to express displeasure (form of a rant) in long lines; triple-wide, quadruple-figured baby strollers; and professional scolds who worry that coffee and chocolate aren’t local enough to pass their lips.

So other than a sure sign of warmer, longer days why do I heart farmers markets? I like quality fruit and veg: less than 48 hours out of the field, the quality is pretty good. The average age a farmer in Oregon is 57, farmers markets are a very good way to encourage young people to take up the till, utter or tractor. Markets are proof a young grower doesn’t have to be isolated on a farm, dependant on forces outside of their control: Farmers Markets mean farmers can be absolutely entrepreneurial in their ability to create demand and set prices. And along the same lines - Markets are a way to rationally change land policies – if there is more value in land building cheap tract housing on it than feeding citizens, we are going to have tract housing. When we can show that land is more valuable for farming, we will have farms. With gas around $3.80 a gallon maybe encouraging crops to be grown nearby metropolitan areas makes rational sense as opposed to trucking it in from 100s of miles away.

As of last summer there were 6,132 farmers markets in the US. 3 times as many as were in existence since the USDA started keeping track in 1994; up 16% from 2009. I am glad to see for whatever reason I am not the only one who is investing in healthy, local food now and farms in the future. 

* Not that I think Mr. Pollan, who admitted to Stephen Colbert that he was caught in a grocery store buying sugary cereal. Only his most militant followers lack the requisite humor and balance in their lives

March Madness

Being easily distracted and slightly obsessive is not a winning combination: I hit 10 to 14 day stretches where I learn as much as I can about one tiny subject then about the time I think I could ride this interest & passion through grad school, some other (intellectually) bright, shiny object distracts me. Leaving me with just enough knowledge to bore someone at a party.

To the surprise of no one who checks in here, for the last week my mini-mania has been cabbage, particualry, the Napa cabbage. Did you know that cabbage was formerly referred to as cole cabbage or colewort, and that the modern coleslaw derives from that word. See, it is true; not enough to inform, just enough to stupefy.

Sure, I knew about Napa, one of the 400+ varieties of cabbage cultivated around the world. Napa is the golden, barrel-chested member of the oleracea classification. Besides being taller and fairer than ‘drum’ red and green cabbages that are getting boiled this week for St. Patrick’s day feasts, the Napa offers a milder, sweeter taste than more traditional counterparts, lending itself well to salads or being lightly cooked.

Ethnofoodtorians, professional ethnofoodtorians, are pretty convinced that cabbage’s homeland is the eastern Mediterranean coast. They also believe the plant known to the Etruscans, Greeks and early Romans would have probably resembled leafy kale or Chinese broccoli. A well-traveled plant, Confucius mentions the cabbage around 500 BCE. Later the cabbage left Imperial China, seeds often transported throughout Asia by Buddhist monks.

In the west, Pliny mentions round cabbage in the Roman Empire, whether this was a form of the modern cabbage or something closer to the hypertrophied buds of a Brussels Sprout, we aren’t sure because Pliny used his words, not images. In the east, little is known about who ‘improved’ the cabbage. Some speculate that its modern shape, color and flavor originated in Japan, since 'Napa' comes from a Japanese colloquialism for leaves. Napa cabbage is also known as Chinese cabbage, but so is bok choy. The cabbage of many names, Napa is also known, although more rarely as Peking cabbage, a term that didn’t follow the naming convention to Beijing cabbage.

However it came to be known as Napa, the cabbage is most likely Chinese in provenance. Especially considering that the Chinese, who used both word and image, (hear that Pliny?) have immortalized the Napa in art, where it serves semiotically as a symbol of prosperity. The Koreans, who use the Napa for kimchi, believe it arrived on the peninsula with Buddhist monks in the 15^th century. About the same time as the chili pepper arrived from the new world, the rest is kimchi history.

Last year, Korea experienced a cold summer, which in turn, caused a low yield on the Napa cabbage crop. Kimchi, which despite Korea being a modern, industrial, affluent country, is still largely handmade, the poor bounty on Napa drove prices from a 2009 average of $4 per head to a usurious $14 a head.

And on that note we close out cabbage week. Tune in next week for more stories of fruit, veg and food. And Portlandia, the 20^th season of Portland Farmers Market opens this Saturday at Portland State (Go Vikings) at 8:30 am. I’m guessing there are going to be some locally grown wintered cabbage available.

Link, Link, Linking Away

Happy St. Patty's Day.

Just as we did earlier this week, 2 years ago, we looked at the mighty cabbage. Only in its more traditional, un-kimchi-d form; you can read or perhaps for long time fans, reread that post here. Speaking of kimchi, I wrote a feature on the Oregon family making Korean-style kimchi in the greater Portlandia metro area. You can read that feature on the Portland Farmers Market Blog. Also on the blog, is a video interview with the Market's new director. You can view that by follow this link.

As a retail worker, the idea the customer is always right is a theorem disproved on a daily basis. Need more proof than my snarky a posteriori empiricism that the customer is generally malinformed? Or at least wrong 17% of the time? That 17% represents the 170 British carnivores who believe that 'pig wing' is a cut of meat one can obtain from the butchers. Worse than the average number of Brits who believe pigs can indeed fly, a more alarming 23% of the same group believe chicken chops and lamb drumsticks are viable meat products.  (H/T; The Slog).

Pass the pig wings.

As any citizen of the States knows, it is the chicken who has the wing and a few will be eaten this weekend as the NCAA tourney. I haven't done a bracket in a few years. For a couple reasons, the sad realization that there is no east coast bias, west coast teams that aren't named UCLA do not do well or more benevolently, they underachieve. Well that and the last time I ran an office pool, I filled out a real bracket, then coughed up 5 more bucks, entered again, picking teams based on uniform colors - Blue beats red, red beats green, all lose to orange; that is the entry I almost won with - coming in 3rd to the winning obsessive hoops fan and 2nd to a coworker who had never watched a game before, but made her choices based on the relative scale of how much of a party happy town the college was based in or near - Apparently, and fortunately for her bracket, she zeroed in on Raleigh and Tempe as the destination points of fondly remembered debauchery. Had she been drinking/flirting her youth away in Spokane, South Bend or Philadelphia - I would have snagged the 2nd place trophy/$25 Starbucks card.

Considering my bracket woes, I admire Endless Simmer's ranking of the tourney teams by notable food found on campus. Be interesting to see how the combination of St. Patty's day, Tourney Thursday will play out - Corned beef pizza? Or lots of empty classrooms today an tomorrow? Me, I have my ritual of pizza, beer and basketball planned, but still plan on posting again tomorrow. New content too, not this warmed over link-heavy page.

I just met a Cabbage called Kimchi

Kimeh, Kimeh, Kimeh

Right now I am nursing a little food crush. These infatuations happen, I discover a food become completely entranced, and for a few short weeks forget about all other foods. Worse, I act like the object of my affection never existed before I got hold of it (I know it is a little stalkery). In years past, this introduction to a new food has included my 'discovery' of Thai cuisine - which apparently no one knew about until I stumbled upon it. 5 ish years ago it was Pho, again a completely unknown phenomena even in Vietnam until I experienced and subsequently wrote about the beef and noodle soup. More recently, I’ve focused my discovery on all things Italian, with my 'eureka' moments focusing on specific products like farro or Campari. I can’t wait until I discover sliced bread or maybe rice, then I can tell every one else about it.

But for the time being, my new food is kimchi. Most of us think of kimchi as something analogous to sauerkraut: A fermented, albeit spicier, preserved cabbage. And that is true enough, similar techniques and lactic bacteria are used in both preparations, but something gets lost in translation. Kraut (the preserved veg) ends up being 1.5% salt by concentration and the final product's acid level is also 1.5%. Kimchi doubles the salt to 3%, but the final product is only about 1/3 as of acidic(plus it is kept about 20 degrees lower temp for storage). Germans and their Alpine neighbors may love their kraut but for Koreans, kimchi is the staff of life. 


There are 187 different kinds of kimchi in South Korea, possibly more in North or more realistically - only one called Kimchi Jong Il - a recipe which dear leader created himself, not much is know about day to day living there. In the southern half of the peninsula, Kimchi accounts for about 12% of daily calories, (40lbs per person, per year). It turns up ot only as the spicy cabbage side we are most familiar with but iin soups, served over rice, countless version made from summer time vegetables and in coastal areas, kimchi style pickling is used to preserve fish.

My infatuation started about a month, maybe 6 weeks ago when I was part of a food jury for Portland Farmers Market, one of the new vendors who submitted their stuff was a small, brand new business called Choi's Kimchi. They let us sample 4 of their products but it was kimchi that made from the vegetable that I know as Bok Choy (no relation) and the preserved radish that have started me on an investigation of all things related to Korean cuisine. How did I miss a food culture that embraces noodles, veg, chilies and pickled things? My loss, and one that, one that I intend to make up for starting this weekend. 


The way I see it, and visualization is an important part of being success, this Saturday after the season's first market, I am going to load up on fresh veg I am going to make Jun, little pancakes, this variety made of green onions, then mix up a vinegar soy sauce and maybe a little fermented radish on the side. 


Then I am going to act like I invented it all... 

Ghee is the word

Do I really need to use ghee or can I use regular butter?

Short answer; yes/no. Yes, you need to use ghee if you are frying or cooking in high temperatures. No, butter is not a substitute for ghee as far as flavor goes.

Butter is a compound that is about 80% fat, 18% water and 2% milk solids. Like drawn or clarified butter, Ghee is made by melting the solid butter and skimming off the solids, but ghee requires the extra step of slowly evaporating off the water, raising the temperature and slightly browning the remaining portion of fat into a nutty, rich, rich, rich butterfat that is used in Indian food. Which you know a country of 1 billion people spread over 100s of climates populated by an endless diversity of customs and religions, it is a little more complex than picking one food or ingredient to represent a national dish. So more specifically, but also aggressively and stupidly reductionist, ghee is the backbone of Vedic cuisine.

Why ghee? Butter goes bad in a few days a room temperature. Maybe you can stretch the shelf life in the Himalayas, but along costal, equatorial India, butter isn’t going to make it too long. Even with the relatively new invention of refrigeration there is the problem of affording appliances and building an infrastructure to supply electricity to all those homes. Fortunately, the population made accommodations for preserving butter long before IKEA, Mumbai set up shop. The process of making ghee, including the browning, an action that produces antioxidizing agents, will help ghee keep for 4 to 6 weeks, unrefrigerated.

Spoilage is one part of ghee, the other is the problem of smoke point. The smoke point is the temperature that fats begin to smoke – not exactly terminology masked by jargon. While the smoking is visible, the fat breaking down at high temperatures isn’t, by the time the smoking starts and/or the fire alarm notifies you that your heat is too high, the oil will impart off tastes on anything it comes in contact with. Vegetable oils reach their smoke point at 450ºf  - Animal fats at about 375ºf. Don’t think that 75 degrees is all that big of a difference? Try baking a batch of cookies at those 2 temperatures then compare and contrast.

Aside from flavor, storage, custom and practical use is the issue of symbolism. Ghee represents wealth and purity – both as the color of gold and a purified food from the most sacred animal. Ghee is the fuel for pyres and the fat used for feast and sacrifice. But those aren’t are issues here in the US when we want to make Indian food, nor is shelf life really: It comes down to flavor and richness, will an oil add enough of each? For me a little ghee goes a long way, for you, well at least now you can make an informed decision.

 

Show Us Your Shrimps

Who you callin' Spyboy?

Busy week, yet I think I will get 3 posts up this week. Too busy to make bread pudding and almost too busy to post for Mardi Gras, because I decided I need jambalaya. Sausage and shrimp, nothing too fancy just a little dish to celebrate the day.  I wish we could legally drink beer in the breakroom. Soda pop is actually not horrible, the sweet offsets the balance of the spice but its not an ice cold lager.

Nor is Portland, which is in its own way Food City USA, a place to linger 3 hours over lunch - How did that happen? How is that fair? 

Back to Mardi Gras - One of the first posts was Crystal hot sauce, we have taken a look at some New Orleans cocktails here. Jambalaya twice, trying to answer what goes into the rice based dish here and here. somehow the editorial staff here has mostly avoided the featured the greatest of all puddings, the bread, but we do have some info here. Gumbo, a fun word to say was talked about on this page. While we linked to the NY Times article on Po'boys a few years ago. And Charles Seluzicki wrote about oysters for us a while back, on this page. 8 links in one paragraph should keep you busy and full of ideas.

I will be back Ash Wednesday with a meatless question. Enjoy your day. 

Blue, Blue, Electric Blue

Gorgonzola – dolce or non-dolce: What is the difference between them, which one do you like, what do you use it in?

Dolce, AKA sweet gorgonzola is a young cow’s milk cheese. The milk is placed in 9k, (thats kilo, kilograms; about 18 lbs.) molds, the curds are inoculated with the mold producing bacteria penicillium gorgonzola. The cheeses are then pieced with long needles to allow oxygen into the interior of the cheese (the more holes, the more color and flavor the cheese will exhibit). Dolce is traditionally aged 45-90 days, though sometimes 6 months. After aging, the cheese is cut in half, wrapped and foil and distributed around the world.  Dolce is a sweet, buttery cheese that is often compared to its French cousin, Roquefort, an odd comparison considering Roquefort is a salty, sheep’s milk cheese but both are young, washed in brine and pierced with needles in a similar fashion.

Non-dolce gorgonzola, AKA naturale, piccante, di monte, or stagionato is the same cheese, only aged for a year or more. Like its younger sibling, the naturale is also distributed in foil packaging. This is what the kids call a marketing decision, since the thicker rind protects then interior much like the foil does on the dolce. The aged gorgonzolas, drier and more assertive in flavor are different not only in taste, but appearance as well – the body fades from a buttery color to a chalky white and the veins of mold are a rich blue.

Until demand and technology caught up with Lombardian cheese making, all gorgonzolas were aged in caves where they developed green veins of eborinato or Lombardian slang/dialect for parsley. Modernity has removed the actual cave/casere from aging process, it has also changed the way the cheese is made. Originally, the cream from the night’s milking was strained and combined with the next mornings milking, producing layers of taste and texture. Variations of this practice still exist when dolce getting layered with fresh mascarpone to make one uber-rich dessert cheese.

I prefer the dolce – younger cheeses are more affordable and I can be cheap. Plus personally, I don’t need a strong blue flavor, subtle and understate mold are enough for me. However, Cheesemaster Max Maccalman feels the dolces don’t offer enough flavor or personality, while the ultra-aged stagionato’s offer too much. He prefers a medium aged piccante.

Not quite TMZ material, but recently, I could be seen eating dolce on a piece of bread, then licking the butter knife clean. Gorgonzola and pears (sometimes honey and walnuts) are often suggested as a dessert combo. I am not all that Euro about my desserts, but can attest that walnuts, pears and gorgonzola makes for a killer salad – really good tossed with a big, crunchy romaine. Occasionally, dolce gets swirled in polenta, but not so much these days since I decided polenta is best served with sautéed black kale and a poached duck egg.