Adobo Lab – Part III: Results

Basic Chicken Adobo

(Please quibble with the recipe and make changes.  I’m begging you.)

Equipment:

glass bowl or tupperware for marinating

sauce pan or casserole

baking pan/sheet for broiling (line with foil/Silpat to avoid scrubbing)

tongs/fork/chopsticks for moving hot food around

stirring things

chopping stuff if you need to cut up meat

Ingredients:

2 lbs chicken wings, legs & thighs

1C – 1.5C vinegar (rice or cane or ???)

¼ - ½ C soy sauce (or 1 - 1.5 Tbs salt)

3 bay leaves

1 Tbs whole peppercorns

12 garlic cloves

optional:

(1 or 2 crushed/torn dried peppers – med or hot)

( ½C – 1C coconut milk)

Prep: (super-duper easy)

If you are working with a whole chicken, or quarters, cut the bird at the joints.  (Freeze the breasts for something else – or use them tonight if you are marinating for tomorrow.)

Hit the garlic cloves once with a pot, or that “tenderizing hammer” you got with a kitchen set at some point.  Remove the papery skin.

Into the marinating vessel, add the vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves, peppercorns, smacked and partially crushed garlic cloves (and any optional ingredients).  Stir to combine. 

Snuggle the chicken pieces into the liquid. 

Cover, place in the fridge and marinate for an hour or up to overnight.

(You can peel some potatoes or yams to add in chunks when you start the cooking if you’d like.)

Cook! (if possible even easier)†

Pour all the ingredients into your saucepan/casserole (including optional tubers).  Get the chicken down into the liquid.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes.  At about 15 minutes, turn over or re-snuggle the chicken in the sauce.

(Another optional: In the last 5 min of cooking, add a hard boiled egg or two).

Remove all the big chunks. 

Use your stirring spoon to smash up a few pieces of the softened garlic into the sauce.  Turn up the heat to reduce the sauce to coat-the-back-of-a-spoon thickness.  At the same time…

Place the chicken pieces under the broiler to crisp any skin (about 4 min for each side of wings and legs, and about 5 just on the skin side of the thighs.)

Return everything to the thickened sauce.

Serve over rice or with stir-fried and/or grilled veg (bok-choi or cabbage – always a good idea).

Refrigerate any leftovers for easy food the next day.  Or freeze for much later.  (This is the kind of thing that loves to be doubled – cook 1x, eat 2x)

† I've looked over a bunch of crockpot recipes.  Can't vouch, but the consensus seems to be:

Use 2 or so onions sliced into rings to create a platform for the chicken.

No need to marinate - as Madge the Manicurist used to say, "You're soaking in it."

Use the same recipe, maybe add a little water to make sure everything is snuggled into the liquid.

Cook at Hi for 3-ish hours

Cook at Low for 6-ish hours

Skin on and bone in are essential for this version.

The broil-flip-broil is nice, but not essential.

Attention Paleo-Peeps!  (And other people who are avoiding extra sugar)

No sugar is needed as long you have bones and skin to add richness to the sauce.  The large amounts of sugar in many of these crock-pot recipes is needed to give body and as a thickener when gelatin and fat are absent.

Adobo Lab - Part II: Experiments

Not a complete set - just a baseline.

Not being Heston Blumenthal or Alton Brown, much less Dr. Nathan Myhrvold, there's just no way I can explore all the ins and outs of Adobo like they would, or whatever they are pursuing.  They do that for a living.  I do it to relax.  And their graphics staffs are clearly more awesome than mine (me).

Your basic chicken wing adobo.
YUM!

That being said - I've put a bit of study into the Adobo thing (books, internet, and a lucky connection to a real live Adobo cook.  Even luckier - who was willing to share.)  And now it was time to try.

This particular project got started with a whole mess o' extra chicken wings.  See, last time we ordered wings from our butcher, they came pre-split.  So we got half as many as we thought.  This year, expecting that, we ordered accordingly.  And got unsplit wings, so had twice as many.  Next year - we're ordering by the pound.  3rd time, and all that.

4 vessels for experimentation

I decided to attack a few of the main elements: 

Vinegar type - cane or rice - and lots or less?

Salt source - soy sauce or regular salt

Marinate - 1-3 hours or overnight

Coconut milk - yes or no

Spicy or not?

Notice - I didn't even get into the sugar thing.

Lots of garlic.  I don't understand skimping on garlic.
Especially when it gets cooked to mellow and sweet.

Each had about 1.25 lb (0.55kg) of chicken wings  (sorry no pork - but this was more of a sauce challenge)

The basic recipe I started with was
Batch A:
Marinate the chicken for 2 hours in
1/4 C rice vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1 tsp whole pepper corns
4 cloves garlic smashed and peeled
and I wanted to make this one of my spicy ones, so I also threw in
2 small crushed del arbol chiles (sort of seranno hot, not Thai birdseye hot.)

Pour this all into a cooking vessel of your choice.  Add a little water so you can snuggle you meat mostly into the liquid.

Bring to a boil.

Return to a simmer for 30 min, flip the wings half way through to make sure they get plenty of sauce time.

At the end, I put the chicken wings under the broiler for about 4 min on each side to crisp up the skin, while I boiled the sauce to reduce it down to a back-of-a-spoon-coating thickness.  You can smash up some of the softened garlic cloves into the sauce.

Dueling Sauces
first round
Cocoanut Milk or Not

Return the chicken wings to the thickened sauce to coat them.

Almost there -
Just one more step!

And then bat away the grabby fingers as you try to get a picture.  Or just give up, go with the flow and eat.

Verdict:

Yeah.  Uh, I have spent MUCH longer cooking food that was nowhere near as good.  And this was great.  Getting the family to taste test this, and the next three versions was really easy.  The crushed chile only added a pleasant background of spiciness.  If you want “hot, spicy” Adobo, you’ll need to add a whole bunch more chile pepper.  This was a nice subtle amount.

To get a little more baseline data, I did another 2hr marinade with coconut milk -
Batch B:
Marinate the chicken for 2 hours in
1/3 C cane vinegar
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 bay leaf
1 tsp whole pepper corns
4 cloves garlic smashed and peeled

Follow the same cooking instructions as above

And following one version of coconut milk lore, in the last 10 minutes of simmering I added 
about 1/3 C coconut milk (I eyeballed)

Then I did the broil-flip-broil while I reduced the sauce.

Verdict:

I liked this one better because I LOVE cocoanut milk.  The rest of family could have done without the coconut milk (quote, "Didn't ruin it, I just like it plain better.") but all liked the MORE vinegar version.

So onto the overnight marinades.

Batch C:

Marinate the chicken overnight in
1/3 C cane vinegar
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 bay leaf
1 tsp whole pepper corns
4 cloves garlic smashed and peeled

Follow the same cooking instructions as above,
and the broil-flip-broil while I reduced the sauce.

Verdict:

The soy flavor really came through in the overnight marinade, maybe a bit too much.  But the vinegary bite and all the rest of the flavors were amazing.  I can see why this has been captured by enterprising crock-pot cookers.  (To crock-pot adobo recipes, just pop them in for about 6 hours on low - maybe with a little extra liquid to cover everything).  There were no leftovers.  I wish there had been.  So I could have some more.

And this one... I warn you.  I went all crazy and unorthodox, the way I do sometimes.  (Green Curry Crab Chowder, Savory Aebleskivers, Canning jars in a sous vide - OK, that one's becoming normal)

I used some the "suggested additions" to adobo.  The ones where you might end up hearing, "Well that's really not adobo anymore."

I like to live dangerously.  Or eat well.  Or something.

Batch D:

Marinate the chicken overnight in

1/3 C rice vinegar

1 Tbs soy sauce

1 tsp fish sauce

1 bay leaf

1 tsp whole pepper corns

4 cloves garlic smashed and peeled 

1 whole anise “star”

1 crushed medium hot pepper (red-jalapeño hotness)

1/3 C coconut milk

Follow the same cooking instructions as above,

and the broil-flip-broil while I reduced the sauce.

Verdict:

Well, maybe they’re right, the not-quite-Adobo people.  It was more Thai curry-ish. 

Good Thai curry – the kind with the sour bite of tamarind and deep, complex, enviably mysterious flavors, and lusciously creamy. 

That overnight soak in all those spices created something more than what went in.  And for the life of me I could barely taste any heat.  I think the chile-ness simple added to the magic.   It was very good, but not Adobo.

What have I learned?

1) Cook Adobo again and more. 

2) Even my household is already subject to division on the coconut-milk-or-not front.  That didn’t take long.

3) Which vinegar is not as important as how much.  A bit more is better than less, just like with the other spices.

4) Marinate overnight if you have time, but still make Adobo even if you don’t. 

5) Use a little more soy sauce for a short marinade, less, or just salt for overnight.

6) I have no input on the sugar debate, except to say I didn’t miss it.

7) A little dried chile is nice.  And it won’t make things hot – just more interesting. (The vinegar does that.)

8) Use meat with some fat on/in it (chicken thighs, legs and wings, pork, stew beef? or stew lamb?) and never ever “boneless skinless chicken breasts.”  I know enough to know that those cooked in this heedless, low maintenance way would be awful.  (Can you imagine putting BSCB’s under a broiler for 4 min on a side after they were already cooked?!!  (choke, cough, so dry)

Check Out Adobo Lab – Part III: Results  for a nice starter recipe.

and in a bit (but not yet)-

Adobo Lab - Part IV: Hacking the Conclusions  for Adobo-Style Crispy Chicken Wings.
(yes, we have lots of frozen wings - yay! food saver vacuum bags.)

Adobo Lab - Part I: Research

Sometimes you just have to get out of the way, and let circumstances lead you.  Or maybe I'm just a Food Fashion Victim.



Either way, cooking with vinegar has been nibbling on the edges of my awareness for a few years now.
There were the Escabeche adventures with zucchini.  (The first time I ran across "escabeche" I thought that was the name of the fish I was eating.)  There was the refrigerator pickling (especially with fruit).    There is my on going love of sherry vinegar as a flavor that smooths out and unites the flavor of savory dishes that are missing that certain something.
And then there's 11 different types (is that 12?  Nope, that one's vanilla) of vinegar lurking in my pantry†.

Spanish/Iberian Penninsula cooking has some really intriguing, vinegar heavy, cooking as well.  And it makes sense in a land that has long had urban populations living in places where it just too hot to "refrigerate" food.  Cooking to preserve is the way to go.  Vinegar does a pretty good job - and was cheaper than salt when there was plenty of sun for growing things.

And the sea-faring thing.  Ship's stores in vinegar were handy too.

Which gets us to Adobo.

First, the disambiguation:
1. You can buy "Chipotle Chilies in Adobo (sauce)."
2. You can eat the Filipino dish Adobo.
Adobo is a Spanish term for cooking in vinegar.
So to find it as a cooking term in 2 places where those Spanish sailors spent a bunch of time leaving boot prints, only makes sense.

1. Adobo Sauce in the Mexican incarnation is chile and vinegar sauce often with garlic, sometimes with tomato - and like all other sauces, rife with local variations.  It is primarily spicy.

2. Adobo (the dish) in the Filipino variation is meat stewed in a vinegar based sauce.  From there, many versions - and their associated traditions, abound.

The pithiest examination of Filipino Adobo's wide ranging variation was in this NYT Magazine Article: The Adobo Experiment.  But you needn't read it, all you need is the quote,
"This is Adobo.  Every man an island."
For snake's sake, you are talking about a country made of over 7,000 islands with over 100 languages (To quote Wikipedia, "between 120 and 175... depending on the method of classification.")  So there's going to be more division on the "National Dish of the Philippines" than the French have over cheese. (Wikipedia says 350 - 400 distinct cheese varieties, that reduce down to a paltry 8 groups, Pah!)

The Spanish word Adobo overlaid whatever the indigenous word(s) for the cooking in vinegar were.  And I'm guessing there were a whole bunch of them, so a nice uniting term won over - or just beat up the longer, harder to remember words.  So the technique is definitely older than the Iberian Visitation, but they brought the current name.

Now that's out of the way.  On to the technique.

For all that variety, the dish Adobo has a backbone, or a set of uniting principles, if you will.

*a vinegar base
*salt
*garlic
*bay (laurel) leaves
*black pepper
*meat

*bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer
*thicken the sauce

Already there is choice/controversy right at the get go - the vinegar.  Cane juice vinegar is the "most" traditional, with rice vinegar running a close second.
Next - what is the source of the salt?  Plain ol' salt or soy sauce?  Clearly soy sauce is a Chinese influence, but (of course) there are questions about how long soy sauce has been making inroads on Philippine cuisine, and Adobo in particular..
I shall skip over the how much garlic & ground pepper vs. whole peppercorns questions as too mundane to dignify.
Meat/Proteins seems to be more of a regional/what you have question, rather than "fightin' words."  Chicken and pork (including combinations) seem to be the most common, and the addition/use of squid has adherents, along with goat, beef, fish, hard boiled eggs and even tofu.
But the big questions seem to be:
*Spicy or Not?  Does one add chilies, and if so, which ones, dried or fresh and how much?
*Coconut Milk?  (or Coconut Cream?)  To add or not to add?  And again, when and how much?
*Additional Spices?
*Sugar? And if so, what kind? And when?
*Add potatoes, yams or green vegetables?  Other plant parts?
(If you mention fish sauce you are likely to get a, "Well then that's not really Adobo any more.")

And then when you get into cooking techniques - things can get really prickly.

*How long does the meat marinate? (Does one even bother?)
*Sauté/sear the meat first?
*When do you stir the sauce?
*Does one reduce the sauce with the meat, or remove it?
*And if the meat is removed, does it get broiled?  And if so, does one baste? Or fried for crispiness?

As you can see there is so much to quibble over.
For me, there is so much to try.

For actual recipes.... Please see Adobo Lab - Part II: Experiments

†In case you are wondering:

Cider
Rice
Sherry
Balsamic
White Balsamic (I know, it still seems pretentious to me too, but I like the light, fruity flavor)
Red Wine
Malt (the fish & chips stuff)
Champagne

-------- new since December -------
Black Magic (I'm not sure, but it tastes of wine & blackberries - it was a gift, and is tasty)
Honey (Really, mead vinegar.  Quite a pronounced "meady" flavor - begging for summer produce)
Cane Juice [Datu Puti]  (In a pinch this and White Balsamic can stand in for each other)

Yeast are Aerobic! Yeast are Anaerobic!

Let me take a moment for a public service announcement.

So it has been years since I was asked, "are yeast aerobic or anaerobic?"  Granted, I've been desultory in the extreme about researching it, but at last I know the answer to this question.  And you can too.

This looks a lot like my first yeast sighting -
when I learned they were single cell critters
Ah... High School.

Experience leads one to believe it is both.  They are submerged in liquid when you proof* the little Saccharomyces sp., but the yeasties work fine in merely damp environments where they are exposed to air.

Look Ma!  Asexual reproduction.
Oh wait... no Ma. Or Pa.
(psst... occasionally yeast will go through
sexual reproduction, that's how variety is propagated.
Certain environmental conditions tend to trigger this.)
[I love the Wikipedia Creative Commons]

So now, at last, thanks to the research and consolidation skills of others, I know that yeast are both.  They are anaerobic during fermentation when they are engaged in chomping up sugars (of all sorts of descriptions) and pumping out carbon dioxide and ethanol (part of that "yeasty smell').  But when they are exposed to oxygen, they can go to aerobic respiration, and produce mainly CO2 and water.

Most yeast are facultative anaerobes.  That is, they can do either depending on the surroundings.  Interestingly it is not just the presence of oxygen that causes the switch.  The tipping point at which they shift to one or the other is something that can be bred for.  It is a complex chemical and energetic calculation dependent on chemical inputs and gene expression in a particular strain.  So this is why you get "fast fermenters" (bread yeast), "slow fermenters" (brewer's yeast), and then variety in the slow fermenters such as "top cropping" (grows on the surface of the liquid) and "bottom cropping."  And then there are yeast that prefer different temperatures, pH's, sugars or mixes of sugars and produce different byproduct odorant molecules†.  It's wild!

There are a some yeast that are only aerobic (obligate aerobes), but none are only anaerobic (obligate anaerobes) like some bacteria.  Clostridium botulinum bacteria - the bug responsible for both Botulism and Bo-Tox (short for botulinum toxin in case you were wondering what these people are injecting into their foreheads) is a perfect example of an obligate anaerobe.  It dies when exposed to oxygen - and thus can only be found in improperly sterilized canned goods, sausages and other oxygen free environments.

The kitchen yeast in its
domestic habitat.
Docile and approachable.
(Thanks King Arthur Flour)

And now, back to our irregularly scheduled programming.

*  Stir them into some warm sugar water and see if they are still alive - by seeing if they start burping out bubbles.

† Odorant molecules - stuff that is smellable.  Watch out for musings on the musings of Hervé This in this space.

Bamboo Rice Tea & Senbei

I did this one wrong... I know.  But crazy tasty tea and crunchies - sometimes you gotta go where the ingredient leads.

A breath of that bitter-sweet grassy smell of spring...
combined with crunchy-salty-sweet!

Marx Foods sent me some beautiful rice!

I'm supposed to use 2 ingredients in a recipe.  But I couldn't get over the delicate tint, smell and flavor of the infused bamboo rice.
That delicate green of expensive jade and fragile porcelain.



So I went another direction, and went with the two ways to draw the best of the sweet starchiness of this short grain rice, and the gentle bitter of the bamboo infusion.

And I love tea & snacks - especially the Japanese version with the crunchy savory/sweet senbei crackers.  And this... well.

I thought about going with a rice pudding - but I'm not enough of a baking alchemist to figure out how to make that happen without the cream or the eggy flavor taking over the delicate bamboo flavor.  I tried using rice milk - but it's lack of protein to contribute to a matrix made it useless in that context.  And by that time I just couldn't excite myself to separate eggs and go for an egg-white only... Oh never mind.

Because I had remembered the magical fried rice cake.  That roasty, toasty, salty, sweet crunchy indulgence.
Rice cake you say?  How can one of those circles of squeaky, packing peanut substitute possibly be an indulgence?  When it is Fried! That's when.

And nothing goes with fried-salty-sweet like tea, especially my new favorite tea - Gen-Mai-Cha*.  This is the tea blend with green tea and toasted brown rice.  The bitterness of the tea, balanced by the sweet toasted starch of the rice grains is somehow magical.



So I thought I'd send a few tablespoons of this rice on a trip through the oven - and this is what I got:

A lightly browned collection of toasty goodness - and the scent of bamboo was in the air.






I brewed up a bit of the rice all on it's own just to test - and yes, the toasty flavor of the rice was there, but so was a hint of spring - sort of that chewing on a grass-stalk bitterness.


The only problem - if I mixed that with green tea, the distinct astringency of the green tea would mask the delicate bamboo.
So off to the tea shop for some delicate White Tea.

Whoops.  Those are hard to find in coffee crazed Seattle.
Well, not so hard to find, really.  I know of 2.
New Century Tea Gallery - down in the International District and
Savrika Tea  - a new spot in Kirkland.

I didn't feel like parking in the CID or fighting traffic on I-5, and I didn't feel up to explaining my crazy idea to the staff at an amazing, but fundamentally traditional Chinese Tea shop.  I wanted free parking, and hopefully someone who would be sympathetic to this hare-brained scheme.  So to Savrika I went.  And was able to find exactly what I wanted.  A nice gentle and quite lovely white tea.

Then it's just the rice cakes...

Bamboo Rice Tea and Senbei**

Equipment:
small pan - lined with foil
sauce pan with a lid
stirring spoon
baking sheet
Silpat or parchment paper
measuring stuff
oven proof ramekin or other ceramic cup
(optional: ring mold - I used the ring off a small canning jar)
heavy pan/cast iron skillet
heat proof flipping spatula
extra fork or chopsticks
(optional: thermometer - hi-temp, candy or digital)
paper-towels
tea pot w/ a removable diffuser/basket

Ingredients:

Rice Cakes -
1C bamboo infused rice
1+1/4C water
neutral oil with a high smoke point - enough to cover the bottom of your heavy pan with a scant 1/8 inch layer.
salt
Lyle's Golden Syrup - or other thick caramel-y cane sugar syrup.

Roasted Bamboo Rice White Tea -
4 Tbs bamboo infused rice
loose leaf white tea - (I picked out Bai-Ho Silver Needle for this adventure)

Prep:
In the saucepan, add 1C bamboo rice and 1+1/4 C water.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Turn down the heat a little, and stir occasionally while cooking covered.  When the water is absorbed and the rice looks sticky and pretty dry - and has a biteable, but clearly undercooked texture it is "done."

(Think - that texture I always imagine that gets contestants kicked off reality TV cooking shows, when they try to convince the judges that they meant for their rice to be "al dente.") About 10 minutes, give or take.
Oh - and DO NOT rinse this rice.  It's as rinsed as it needs to be.




When you finish under-cooking your rice, put it aside to cool while you line a small pan with foil, and pop in the 4 Tbs of bamboo rice.
Put about 1/4 C of the Lyle's Golden Syrup in a small ramekin or coffee cup - set aside.

Set you oven to heat to 350˚F, and make cute little rings of rice on your Silpat/parchment paper.  Put a little over a Tbs of rice int a small ring canning jar lid ring, and pat it down flat with your fingers.  Be sure to do this with damp hands or you'll get rice grains stuck to everything.

Cook!
When the oven is hot, pop both the dry rice in the small pan, and the little rice circles on the baking sheet into your oven for 15 minutes. Or until the rice circles are firm enough to hold together - but do not look brown at all.†
The dry rice in the small pan should have a nice light toast on it - and smell amazing.
Pull both pans out and turn off the oven.
Put the Lyle's Golden syrup into the oven to warm up.
Set up paper towels for the rice cakes to drain on.

Let the rice circles cool down while you put some fresh water on to boil (OK Tea people, calm down, I'm not going to bring boiling water in contact with white tea.  It's OK).

Into a teapot, add 1Tbs roasted bamboo rice for each 6-8 oz. of water you are going to brew tea with.

Heat the oil in the heavy pan until a left over "undried" rice grain fries up to fluffy in a count of 10.  (Or about 425˚F for those of you with thermometers).  Place a few rice circles into the hot oil.  They should sizzle merrily.
The rice will fry and expand - sort of fluff up.  Flip over after about 45 - 60 seconds.  Use the extra fork/chopsticks to help the flipping go smoothly and prevent splashing oil.
When all the rice grains have lightened and the very edges take on a little bit of a light toasty color, your cake is done.  Remove it to the paper towels to drain.  It should be so delicately crispy it'll be a bit fragile.

When the water comes to a boil - pour it over the roasted rice in your tea pot - and set a timer for...
3 min if brewing 1C of water
5 min if brewing 2C
8 min if brewing 3C
12 min if brewing 4C.

At the end of that time - your water will be down around the 180˚F range - perfect for white tea.
For each cup of water you are brewing, add 1tsp of loose leaf white tea to your basket/diffuser and steep for 2 minutes.

Then assemble crispy rice cakes, give them a light sprinkle of salt, and then a drizzle of the warmed Lyle's Golden syrup.  (If you need to serve tea later, pop the fried rice cakes into a air tight container for a day or two.  Only drizzle on the syrup when it is time to serve them.)

hey Wait!  I need 1 more picture!

*Yes, tea people are can be crazy, obsessive, detail oriented snobs.  I know, I have been them.  But wade through the off putting smak-talk and they're no worse than wine people, coffee people and other (overly) knowledgeable experts who can show you amazing things.  Ask them about tannins and food pairings, flush, pickings, rains and other things that sound like wine terms.  Just don't say "tea bag" or tell them the water "needs to be boiling" and it'll be fine.

**No - these are not traditional senbei, but they hit that same magic of cruchy, salty, sweet, complex - and go great with your tea.  They're actually somewhere between senbei and Thai crispy fried rice cakes (nang led, khao tan).

† Don't get distracted and leave them in for 30min.  This is bad.  The only test case/failed attempt my son wouldn't eat ("Wow, bitter Mom.")

Cardamom Tomato Lentils and Savory Aebleskivers

[This meal was part of an ingredient challenge from Marx Foods.  Can you make something tasty with at least 2 of these green ingredients?  dill pollen, green cardamom, green lentils, mint crystals, bamboo rice.  Thanks all of you who voted!]

Cardamom and Lentils.  It's a trivia bonanza!

1.  Lentils - are so much a part of European cuisine, you can't escape them, past, present or future.  Heck, there were a series of consuls in the 150 years BCE all with the family name of "Lentulus"(listening to E. Gibbon's _Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire_ is doomed to leak into your life.)  Future tense...? Don't talk farm subsidies.

2. Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland & Iceland) has an approximate population of 24 million people or about 0.3% of the world's population, yet consumes 16% of the world's cardamom!  In their baked goods, in case you were wondering.
(India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia consume about 29% - but it is from around there, and some of the Saudi's mix it 50-50 with coffee!)

3.... oh just get to the food.

The whole thing was clambering for some yet to be invented Fried Pancake meets Dal (daal, dahl, the BEST iteration of lentils) ultimate meet up.  Between the pancake throw-down, and the dill pollen making everything smell like dill pollen, there seemed one natural 1st stop.

dill, tomato, lentils and crispy spicy aebleskivers - warm and happy tummy.

When you make this right, with fresh cardamom, there will be enough spice in the aebleskivers (those pancake ball things) to give your lips a little tingle.

Equipment:
chopping stuff
sauce pan with a lid (or 2 if you want this to go faster)
aebleskiver pan (or a skillet*)
stirring spoon
whisk
small bowl
larger mixing bowl
fork
disher or small measuring cup for aebleskiners/pancakes
toothpicks or skewers
mortar & pestle or spice grinder

Ingredients:

tomato sauce -
14.5 oz can PLAIN tomato sauce (or some of your own)
2 Tbs oil, butter or ghee
6 green Cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
1 medium spicy dried chili (e.g. japones, del arbol, serrano, aji amarillo)

lentils for dal -
1 Tbs butter
1 Tbs olive oil (or replace these fats w/ 2Tbs ghee)
1.5 C Green Easton lentils
1/4 purple onion - diced (white or yellow could work too)
1/2 tsp dill pollen (+ a bit more for sprinkling)
water
salt to taste


aebleskivers/pancakes
1 egg
1 tsp sugar
1/4 t salt
1/2C milk
1/2C tomato water** (or 1/2C water or broth w/ 1Tbs lemon juice)
2 T melted and cooled butter - or ghee
1C AP flour
1/4 C whole wheat flour (it can be all AP, but this creates a richer flavor)
1 t baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda†
1/2 tsp fresh ground cardamom seeds from 2-3 pods
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Prep:

In a sauce pan, melt/heat the fats over medium heat.  Add the spices (cardamom, cinnamon, bay and chili) and heat until they sizzle and the cardamom pods swell.  Turn the heat down to low, and with the lid in one hand, pour in the tomato sauce.  Use the lid to tame the splatters.  Tune the heat until you get a simmer, and let it go for 25 - 30 minutes.  It is ready when you can taste the spices in the sauce, and a little bit of an oily sheen may develop on the top of the sauce.  (This is a completely "do ahead" task, and double or more this - freeze extras for later, and other things.)

I used this puppy to pop open the
pods then, take the seeds out,
discard the pods and crush the seeds

Dice the onion.

Pop the little black seeds out of the cardamom pods, and crush them in a motar & pestle or spice grinder.
Measure out all the ingredients for the aebleskivers, whisk together the wet stuff (egg through butter) in a small bowl, and in another bowl, mix all the dry stuff (flour through pepper)
And have extra butter on hand for the pan fryin' of the batter.

Cook!

Dal - In a sauce pan, heat the fats over medium heat, and add the purple onion, and sizzle it until it starts to get brown edges or translucent, add the dill pollen and stir in the lentils.
Add the water up to the top joint of your pinky.  Adjust the heat to simmer the lentils with the lid on.

At about 20 minutes, check the liquid level and the doneness of the lentils.  If the lentils look dry, add a little more water.  If the lentils taste done (unlikely), pull them off the heat.  Keep an eye on the lentils over the next 10 - 15 minutes - they should be approaching done.
When the lentils are tender and creamy to the bite, take off the lid and dry them out (let liquid boil/simmer off until it look like they are too dry/gummy) and add 1C of the spiced tomato sauce.  At this point also taste for salt, and add what is needed.

Aebleskivers - Heat the pan over medium heat.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry.  Whisk them together to get a pretty smooth batter (need not be perfect).  Put a little bit of butter (about 1/2 tsp) into each well in the pan.  As it sizzles, fill the wells almost full.  Wait about 3 minutes - until there is a firm crisp shell on the bottom.  Use the toothpicks/skewers to turn the aebleskiver "dome-up."  The other side takes about 3 minutes too.

Serve up the lentils, maybe sprinkle on a tiny pinch of pollen, tear open a crispy hot cardamom spiced aebleskiver and eat up!

*This all still works if you only have a skillet.  Just make this batter in to pancakes about the size about the size of the palm of your hand.

For the record:

This is an aebleskiver pan

** It's winter.  How am I to get tomato water?
I cheated.  I sent a can of tomatoes through the blender, and let it drain through a suspended tea towel/jelly bag.  You can also freeze ice cubes of tomato water in the summer and seal them in a zip-top bag.  Or use your own canned tomatoes.  Just know the left-over pulp is pretty flavorless.  And the canned tomatoes will have some extra salt - so adjust your recipe accordingly.  Oh, and if you do use canned tomatoes DO NOT use the water in cooking beans or lentils.  Calcium citrate is used in the canning process (to keep the tomatoes firm).  The resulting calcium ions in the water reinforce the pectin and starch bonds in the lentil's cell walls stopping them from softening.

† You are right, there is not normally baking soda in aebleskivers.  However, since these are savory, and use much less sugar, the batter needs a different tenderizer.  Baking soda with it "basic power" (it is alkaline rather than acid) help make all the starches more tender.  And the acid in the tomato water (or lemon juice) reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to give a little extra lift.

Ramen Re-Post - I need to eat out more often!

Remember, how I made the excuse that, "I'm not in San Francisco, so I'll just settle for dried ramen noodles?"

Lame, lame, lame.

There are several perfectly respectable noodle bars in the Seattle area. (Mike's Noodle House - CID, and many others, Aloha Ramen - Greenwood, Wonton Noodle House in Edmonds... the furthest North I can find, and I don't know the South End - but I bet there's something good in Georgetown).  But for "all we do is Ramen, because if yer gonna do Ramen, you should do Ramen RIGHT" check out Samurai Noodle.

Like I did today.

And this is what I learned:

I learned I CAN get fresh ramen noodles - both thin style - starch based, and less firm, AND wavy style (more traditional) egg noodles.  But I have to go out and LEARN things to know this.  The ramen fairy will not come tell you.

$1 for this ball of skill and knowledge?!
A steal I tell you.

So now I have 6 noodle balls lovingly packaged and frozen in my freezer for my next ramen iteration.

AND for you Seattle peeps who get Amazon Fresh grocery delivery - they have Ramen kits, and will soon be selling them at Uwajimaya AND other local groceries.  (I hope they do a noodle-and-broth-only kit for us Whackos out here with sous vide pork belly in the freezer).





AND they send you home with incredibly excellent instructions.

In my dream world of everybody getting together to make the best food for the best world... Samurai Noodle would get a big kitchen space to make their ramen kits - and sell little frozen vacuum packs of broth in ALL the grocery stores.  And they would get their pork bones from local pig producers.  Because this would make pork bones an asset, rather than a waste product - helping local meat be more sustainable by becoming more profitable and more part of the community, making the the circle of local production even more AWESOME.
And if Samurai Noodle is in need of funding to build this broth kitchen - I bet a Kickstarter with awesome coupons as a rewards would make it go.

I mean if I were in charge.

All in all, not a bad day's work:
1.  Super Delicious Lunch on a rainy day;
2.  New Awesome takeout place for A's work;
3.  Now I have no excuse for not using fresh ramen noodles when I go to that much trouble for the pork belly in my soup;
4.  Real ramen broth is in my future.