Dekopon (Sumo Tangerine)

I heard about this fruit on a Good Food podcast recently, and then I happened to stumble across one at Whole Foods after work the other day (I was actually only looking for pie, so it was a pleasant surprise).


There is a really fascinating article here about the fruit, but here's a quick summary: Dekopon is a tangerine variety from Japan that has been incredibly popular there since the early 90s I think. It was so popular it could cost up to $10 per fruit. However, it was illegal to import because of possible exotic diseases, etc. But, someone did managed to smuggle in some branches to graft new trees from.


After that, there's a lot of secret groves and corporate espionage sounding stuff. The article I linked to even contains the quote "I'm not happy that you found out about the Dekopon ... Some heavy hitters I work with are interested in it". And, if that doesn't sound like Chinatown but with fruit instead of water to you, you're totally nuts.


Finally, the fruit is available here in California this year (sold under the name Sumo Tangerine rather than Dekopon). So, after hearing all that craziness on the radio, I really had no choice but to buy one when I happened across it. And, it was delicious. It tastes like one of the best mandarin oranges you've ever had, but it's the size of a navel orange. It's seedless, really sweet, and really juicy. I have to say though that I also bought some Murcott tangerines that I might have even liked a little bit more. All in all, the citrus varieties available this time of year in Southern California are amazing, and you should definitely look into it.

Favorite Corn Muffins

I made this recipe over a month ago.. needless to say, I've gotten a bit behind on blogging. I also either haven't been doing much really interesting cooking or I've just forgotten to take photos of it. But, these corn muffins are amazing. It's definitely the best cornbread recipe I've ever used, and I highly recommend it. The name of the recipe (Peerless Corn Muffins) seems a little sure of itself, but it turns out to be accurate.

Peerless Corn Muffins
from The Breakfast Book, by Marion Cunningham

Ingredients:
1 egg, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk, warmed
1 cup cake flour
2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400. Grease muffin tins.

Beat or whisk egg, melted butter, and oil in a mixing bowl until well blended. Stir in warm milk. Combine cake flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and sugar in another bowl and stir with a fork until well mixed. Add dry ingredients and stir until blended. This is a light, medium-thick batter.

Spoon batter into muffin tins so each cup is three-quarters full. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the edges of the muffins are slightly golden and a straw comes out clean when inserted into the center. Remove from tins and cool a little on racks, or simply serve in a basket, hot from the oven.

Cranberry Oat Delights

During my quest to use a 5-pound of whole wheat flour, I made these cranberry oat delights. I have to say, this is the only recipe I made that used entirely whole wheat flour rather than a 50/50 mix of whole wheat and all-purpose flour that I liked.

The recipe calls for dried cranberries, and I used craisins although I'm not sure I was supposed to. Also, I used some slivered almonds that I had in the fridge rather than walnuts or pecans. All in all, I liked these a lot. It just made a TON of cookies, and after two weeks I just couldn't eat any more and had to get rid of the last few. The cinnamon was also a little strong; I'm not sure it needed two whole teaspoons.

Cranberry Oat Delights
(recipe from King Arthur Flour)

3/4 cup ( 1 1/2 sticks, 6 ounces) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 large egg
1 1/3 cups (4 5/8 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups dried fruit: cranberries, diced apples, chopped dates, raisins, chopped apricots, or the dried fruits of your choice
1 cup (3 3/4 ounces) diced pecans or walnuts

Cream together the butter, sugar, spices, leaveners, salt, and vanilla. Beat in the egg. Add the oats, flour, fruit, and nuts, and stir to combine.

Drop the dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake the cookies in a preheated 350°F oven for 7 minutes; reverse the pans on the racks, and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, until cookies are beginning to brown around the edges, but are still soft in the center. Remove from the oven, and cool on a rack. Yield: about 4 dozen cookies.

Amazing Salad Dressing

If you have never tried making your own salad dressing, I definitely recommend it. It's about 18 times easier than you think it's going to be and so delicious. Just look at those instructions! It's two lines!

This is a sesame vinaigrette I made recently, I've been eating a ton of salad lately just to get to use it. I couldn't find chili garlic paste and didn't have time to venture over to the Asian grocery, so I used chili garlic sauce instead.

Sweet Sesame Soy Vinaigrette
from Cook's Illustrated Magazine

Ingredients:

1/3 Cup rice vinegar
2 1/2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 Cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 Teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 Teaspoons Asian chili garlic paste
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 Cup vegetable oil
2 Teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted

Instructions:

Whisk vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, and chili paste in medium bowl until sugar dissolves. Gradually whisk in oils, whisk in sesame seeds. can be refrigerated up to 3 weeks.

Cooking Romanesco

Romanesco is a variety of cauliflower that is just gorgeous. It is actually a natural fractal, which is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole" (thanks wikipedia!) In this case, it is a logarithmic spiral, and each bud consists of a series of smaller buds that are also logarithmic spirals. As soon as I saw it at the farmers market, I of course thought: Awesome. But what does it taste like?

I took it home and considered what to do with it. Here's another view, of me contemplating this strange vegetable:


Ultimately, I decided on cooking it the same way I do cauliflower. So I chopped it up. At this point, it looks like a tiny felled evergreen forest!


I roasted it on 450, tossed with olive oil and salt. I used a grey sea salt that I had instead of regular kosher salt. Then, when it came out, I grated fresh parmesan over it. I understand that it looks a bit burned. That is called caramelization, and it tastes delicious.


Sidebar: ignore that fish. It tasted like the void, as Travis says. It's as if the fish had negative flavor, so that it not only was bland, but it pulled the flavor out of the bacon and sent it off into some abyss. I ate a lot of romanesco.

Red Lobster Biscuits?

Every month, Food Network magazine does a feature on recreating a restaurant menu item that they cannot get the recipe for. I usually don't pay much attention, until one time, it was Red Lobster's cheddar bay biscuits. These are traditionally one of Travis's favorite things ever, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

They actually came out amazingly, which is sort of miraculous since I'm not generally good at breads and such (other than cornbread I suppose). The only thing I would change if I made them again would be to add a little bit of salt to the garlic butter mixture. I really didn't think that cooking a smashed clove of garlic in some butter for 60 seconds would do anything, but I was shocked. I should do that more often and brush it on rolls or something. Amazing.

I was also really surprised at how easy they were. This recipe taught me a nifty trick that I've used a few times now - use a food processor to cut in the butter! It's so much easier, I can't believe I ever tried to cut butter into flour in other ways. It also keeps the butter cold, because you aren't touching it, which is important in biscuits. So, here you go.

Almost Famous Cheddar Biscuits

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-Purpose flour
1 Tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
3 Tablespoon vegetable shortening at room temperature
4 Tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
6 Ounce grated yellow cheddar cheese (about 1 1/4 cups)
3/4 Cup whole milk
FOR GARLIC BUTTER
3 Tablespoon unsalted butter
1 Clove garlic, smashed
1 Teaspoon fresh chopped parsley

Instructions: Position a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 425. Lightly mist a large baking sheet with cooking spray.

Make the biscuits: pulse the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Add the shortening and pulse until combined. Add the butter, pulse 4 or 5 times, until the butter is in pea-size pieces. Add the cheese and pulse 2 or 3 times. Pour in the milk and pulse just until the mixture is moistened and forms a shaggy dough. Turn out onto a clean surface and gently knead until the dough comes together. Do not overwork the dough or the biscuits will be tough.

Drop the dough onto the baking sheet in scant 1/4 cup portions, 2 inches apart, and bake until golden, 15 or 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the garlic butter. Melt the butter with the garlic in a small saucepan over medium heat, cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and stir in parsley. Brush the biscuits with garlic butter and serve warm.

Waffles for Christmas

For Christmas, I got a waffle iron! So, New Year's weekend, I decided to tackle the waffle iron and my ongoing whole wheat flour experimentation in one fell swoop. I settled on a recipe for Nutty Whole Wheat Waffles that was in the Cuisinart instruction booklet.


It was so much fun! I've never made waffles before, unless you count in the cafeteria at UT in college (where the waffle irons imprint a UT logo on your waffles). I thought it might get sort of boring, like the time I made pancakes, but it was really fun. It took some experimentation to get the batter amount right, as you can see below.


But, overall, they turned out amazingly. I didn't bother trying to keep them warm in the oven while I went, because I was just planning to eat the last one and freeze the rest. I loved how the nuts made the waffles sort of crunchy. You can use several different types of nuts, but I love almonds and already had some on hand. I honestly couldn't tell that there was whole wheat flour in them, but it did make me feel sort of superior for eating it, and isn't that the point? I felt like this was a success all around.

Nutty Whole Wheat Waffles
makes eight 6 1/2 inch round waffles

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups reduced fat milk
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts

Place ingredients in a large mixing bowl and combine until well blended and smooth. Let batter sit 5 minutes before using. Preheat your waffle maker.

Pour 1/2 cup batter (in my case less, unless you love cleaning waffle batter off the counter) onto the center of the lower grid; spread evenly using a heat proof spatula. Close cover. (My waffle iron has an indicator light to let me know when they're through. If yours doesn't, just play with it, but don't leave it more than a few minutes at first I'd say.)

Open cover and carefully remove baked waffle. I used a spatula for this, but it did split a couple of the waffles through the middle, so emphasis on "carefully" I think. Repeat with remaining batter.

Serve immediately or keep waffles warm in a 200 degree oven until ready to serve.