Vote tomorrow

OK, I figured sooner or later, Google AdSense would come to no good, and today is the day. I hope everyone does vote, but if you see an ad for McDonnell for Governor, rest assured that ad is not endorsed by this blogger.

Hash browns, or hashbrowns, revisited

With company visiting, hashbrowns were again served for breakfast. And again, they turned out splendidly. I do want to pass along a couple of tips that I don't think I stressed enough on my post of Sept. 26, or else the editors of the Washington Post weren't listening. A recipe they ran on Oct. 21 had this to say about the breakfast potatoes:

Making hash browns can be tricky. To get the onions caramelized just right and keep the potatoes crisp at the same time, cook them separately and toss them together with a spice mix just before you’re ready to serve them. This is a good way to use leftover baked potatoes; hash browns made with raw potatoes will turn out mushy.

Wrong! If the photo they ran with their recipe is any indication, what they ended up with were very tasty country potatoes, not hashbrowns. (I like the compound form of this word, since everyone knows that hash does not modify browns; the word is a contraction of hash-browned potatoes, so why not contract it to its logical end?) (Click here to see the Post recipe.)

The secret to using raw potatoes is this: Grate them into a bowl of water. Drain well, then dump the shreds on a clean, absorbent towel, roll it up and wring the potatoes dry. "Dry" is the key to nonmushy potatoes.

Heat the oil on medium heat before adding the potatoes, then, when you have them spread over the pan, lower the heat a little. Add finely diced onions and seasonings then, including dots or slices of butter if you'd like. In about 10 minutes or so, the bottom will be browned and you can turn your hashbrowns over and continue cooking until done.

If you put your onions in first, thinking that they will caramelize nicely, you will end up with burnt onions by the time the potatoes cook. If you put in the onions after the potatoes, they will steam as the potatoes cook on the first side, then when you flip the hashbrowns, the onions will brown as the second side cooks. Yum!

Cajun without a cookbook

Growing up with a Cajun mother, you'd think I would have been eating gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée and blackened steak every night. But no. My mother was a wonderful cook, but my Polish father, with one exception, pretty much called the dinner shots. That one exception was steak night; my mother insisted that we have rice, not potatoes, when she cooked steak, and the au jus flavored the white long-grain rice.

So it wasn't until I latched onto a copy of Paul Prudhomme's "Louisiana Kitchen" that I began eating Cajun food regularly at home. Oh, it was great; finally I didn't have to wait to go to Polly's or some other little greasy spoon near Elton (my mother's hometown) to get my Cajun food fix.

But any cookbook should be a road map, not commandments chiseled in stone. Take my jambalaya last night. Prudhomme has a ham and sausage jambalaya, a rabbit (or chicken) jambalaya, a chicken and tasso jambalaya. They are all pretty good, but most of them call for some tomato sauce or canned tomatoes. That just exposes Prudhomme's New Orleans training; most Cajuns do not cook with tomatoes, most Creoles do.

Tasso isn't expensive in Louisiana; but in many other places, it's rare and dear. And that defeats the purpose of Cajun cooking: making what's available taste wonderful. Tasso, for those of you who aren't familiar with Louisiana ingredients, is a smoky seasoning meat not unlike ham.

What is available here in Virginia is ham chips. They are fairly smoky, very salty, and work well as seasoning. I also had a pack of chicken thighs from the last time I cut up a trio of chickens. Voilà! I could work with that.

Lori K's jambalaya with chicken thighs and Virginia ham chips

Ingredients

Seasoning mix

3 California bay leaves, broken in half

1 teaspoon white pepper

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground sassafras leaves (filé)

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

4 tablespoons olive oil

10 ounces Virginia ham chips

6 chicken thighs (bone in)

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 cup finely diced celery

1 cup chopped bell peppers

2 large cloves garlic, minced

2 cups uncooked long-grain or basmati rice

4 cups chicken broth

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

Instructions

Combine seasoning mix ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large cast iron skillet, heat the oil until it begins to smoke; add chicken breasts and cook until browned on both sides. Turn down the heat a little and remove chicken pieces to a large ovenproof casserole. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cook the ham until it sizzles and add the vegetables and seasoning mix, stir well and continue cooking until browned, about 10 minutes. Add the rice and cook another 5 minutes, scraping and stirring the mixture. Put the broth in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Put all the contents of the pan into the casserole with the chicken. Add the broth, and put in the oven. Cook for 45 minutes to an hour, until all the liquid is absorbed. Remove bay leaves and serve immediately.

Save the Gulf oyster

Federal officials plan to ban sales of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico unless the shellfish are treated to destroy potentially deadly bacteria, the Associated Press reports.
The Gulf region supplies about two-thirds of U.S. oysters.
About 15 people die each year in the United States from raw oysters infected with Vibrio vulnificus, which typically is found in warm coastal waters between April and October. Most of the deaths occur among people with weak immune systems caused by health problems like liver or kidney disease, cancer, diabetes, or AIDS.
"Seldom is the evidence on a food-safety problem and solution so unambiguous," Michael Taylor, a senior adviser at the Food and Drug Administration, told a shellfish conference in Manchester, N.H., earlier this month in announcing the policy change.
Some oyster sellers say the FDA rule smacks of government meddling. The sales ban would take effect in 2011 for oysters harvested in the Gulf during warm months.
The anti-bacterial process treats oysters with a method similar to pasteurization, using mild heat, freezing temperatures, high pressure and low-dose gamma radiation.
Treated oysters are "not as bright, the texture seems different," said Donald Link, head chef and owner of the Herbsaint Bar and Restaurant in New Orleans.
"This is an area the government shouldn't meddle in," Link said. "What's next? They're going to tell us we can't eat our beef rare?"
Until the 1960s, raw oysters were rarely eaten in the summertime. (The old adage was never eat oysters in the months without an R in them.) But changes in harvest patterns and advances in refrigeration and post-harvest treatment have made the industry a year-round business. About three-fifths of the Gulf's oysters are harvested during the warm months.
The FDA contends treating oysters would not affect the taste and would save lives. In 2003, California banned untreated Gulf Coast oysters and since then the number of deaths dropped to zero. By comparison, between 1991 and 2001, 40 people died in California from the infection.
The rule would not affect oysters harvested outside the Gulf. Oysters are harvested up and down the West and East coasts, but the bacteria is not found in such high concentrations there.

Lemons, and their well-preserved punch

Preserved lemon is an easy condiment to make, and can a punch to usually bland dishes such as baked fish, chicken or veal. It makes mayonnaise taste yummier in a tuna fish sandwich, and can be used anywhere you need an essence of lemon and salt. Somehow, when the lemon sits in its brine, it becomes at once more lemony and less tangy, and you can eat the entire lemon, rind and all.

Your homemade version probably won't look as pretty as the tiny lemons in a jar from Morocco, but you won't be paying upwards of $8 for them, either.

Easy preserved lemon

You'll need:

1 half-pint jelly jar with good-fitting lid

2 lemons (no wider in the middle than the inside of the jar)

Kosher salt

Instructions

Sterilize the jar with boiling water and cool. Slice one lemon thinly; throw away the ends. Put in a teaspoon of salt in the bottom of the jar. Put each slice in one at a time, sprinkling each with kosher salt, until the entire lemon is in the jar. Sprinkle a little extra salt on top. Juice the other lemon and pour the juice over the sliced lemon and salt. Put the lid on tightly and shake to mix well. Keep out on the counter for about a week, shaking and turning upside down at least once a day. Put the jar in the refrigerator and the slices will be ready to use in about two weeks. When you're down to the last couple of slices, it's time to make a new jar. The lemon will keep in the refrigerator for at least 6 months.

Here's a simple recipe from blogger Kerry Saretsky to get you started once your own preserved lemon has mellowed:

Parmesan, Preserved Lemon, and Thyme Wafers

Serve these on top of a salad of baby spinach dressed lightly with lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, salt and pepper. Lemon heaven.
- makes 9 wafers -
Ingredients
2 tablespoons finely chopped preserved lemon
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Place the finely chopped preserved lemon pieces in a mesh strainer, and rinse very well. Dry on paper towels, and pat very dry.
Mix together the dry lemon pieces, the Parmesan, and the chopped fresh thyme leaves. On a Silpat- or parchment-lined baking sheet, heap little tablespoon mounds of the cheese mixture, leaving room for them to spread as they melt, and bake in the oven for 4 or 5 minutes, until golden. Allow to cool completely on the baking sheet, then lift off with a spatula and allow to rest on paper towels until cooled and hardened. If you're ambitious, you can form them into tubes while they are still hot.

Want to waste not? Tips to use leftovers

Making a great pot of chili last night, my thoughts wandered to recipe cooking vs. instinctual cooking. Most everyone, who has basic cooking skills and instructions that make sense, can cook from a recipe and have a dish that turns out well. (Of course, everyone who conveys a recipe hopes the instructions make sense, but you'd be surprised at how many don't, even ones that make it into a cookbook.) But the instinctual cook uses his or her senses on how a dish should be and goes on to make it unique. The advantage to this method is that one can use what is at hand, the freshest produce and most inexpensive meats, even bits and pieces of previous dinners, commonly derided as "leftovers."

The dishes that lend themselves most easily to this are melanges, and almost every cuisine has one or two of them. My standbys are chili, jambalaya, gumbo, spaghetti, curry and soups (five options can get most anyone through a week; if you have others, please let me know).

For the chili, I started with a pound of ground turkey and a tablespoon of olive oil. Turkey is bland, but much like tofu, it picks up the flavors around it. I season it as it's cooking with garlic, onions, cumin and oregano. And of course, chili.

I prefer straight chili. Prepared chili powder is OK, but it's a combination of chilies, cumin, oregano, salt and sometimes other spices, and you don't know how old the other spices are that go into it, since the smell of chili overwhelms the others. I use ancho powder if I'm in a hurry; otherwise, I like to use dried whole chilies (a combination depending on how hot I want it) stemmed and seeded, soaked in a little boiled water for 45 minutes, then puréed.

If I'm preparing a bowl of red, I add a can of beer and stop right there. But turkey doesn't hold up nearly as well as beef for that. So my turkey chili is what the sainted Frank X. Tolbert would refer to as "a rather tasty vegetable stew." (Those were the fighting words that led to the first chili cookoff, which gave birth to a cultural phenomenon that will continue this year in Terlingua, TX, Nov. 5-7.)

I added a 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, then found in the refrigerator the following: 1 eggplant, which I had sliced and salted in preparation to sauté, but had a change of plans; 1 1/2 yellow bell peppers, which had been charred and the skins removed; a lonely carrot; a half cup of refried black beans. I rinsed the eggplant slices, trimmed the skins off them, then chopped them and the peppers coarsely before adding them and the beans to the pot. I peeled the carrot and shredded it into the pot. Then everything cooked for about three hours. The texture, no doubt thanks to the refried beans, was just right; usually if the chili is a little soupy at the end, I add a little masa harina to thicken the stew.

One taste and you, too, would know why it drives me crazy when people say they'd rather eat fast food than leftovers.

Now, no discussion on chili would be complete without a little travelogue on Texas, so here's one on Big Bend National Park, which will give you a little taste of Terlingua country.

"Clueless"? Silverstone's "Diet" is kind, but kinda naive

Here's a short cookbook review that got rather short shrift in the Washington Post's redesigned Health section yesterday:

The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet (Rodale Books, $29.95)

Alicia Silverstone is famous for her role in the '90s teen film "Clueless" and as a real-life vegan activist. In "The Kind Diet," Silverstone provides three approaches to cooking vegan: "Flirting," for people trying out meat- and dairy-free foods; "Vegan," for experienced flirts; and "Superhero," which is basically vegan with fresh, local foods grown in-season. The book feels straight out of La-La Land: lots of exclamation points, italics and such sentences as, "Get ready to meet the beautiful, delicious, God-given foods that will rock your world." Her intentions are good, if a little naive - "I believe that following the Kind Diet can lead to world peace" - and, to her credit, she gets preachy only when criticizing the "Nasty Diet" of meat, dairy, sugar and processed foods. The book is like a hijiki-tofu croquette (a seaweed appetizer that Silverstone recommends in the recipe section): People already interested in veganism might like a bite, but for everyone else, it's easy to turn down.
- Rachel Saslow