Chicken wing stock

Chicken stock is the basis of so many dishes. It is also easy to make, and it keeps very well in the freezer. Despite all this, most people buy canned chicken broth in the supermarket, which might approximate the flavor of homemade stock, but it will never do justice to the depth and body real chicken stock can provide. I do buy commercial chicken broth sometimes, but I try to keep a ready supply of homemade chicken stock in the freezer.

We had a surplus of frozen chicken wings that weren't going to get used anytime soon, so I decided to make a luxurious stock made of chicken wings. I heard that chicken wings produce a lot of gelatin, resulting in a chicken stock with incredible body and flavor. I've never done this before, so I put it to the test.

The recipe is simple, and they don't have to be precisely measured. The ingredients below can easily be changed. Every chef has their own preferences. For example, Thomas Keller likes to use leeks instead of celery because he finds celery bitter.

The finished product was a very gelatinous broth that I am sure will enhance any dish. I will post again when I make something with it!

Chicken Wing Stock
Chicken wings
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
parsley stems
thyme
1 garlic clove
2 bay leaves

1. Dump all the ingredients into a pot, cover with water.
2. Simmer for 3-4 hours.
3. Strain.
4. Refrigerate.
5. Once the stock has cooled, scrape the fat off the top.

(Not) Cooking For My Wife

These days, my wife is in cooking school and I am hardly the one cooking around here. However, let me try to break that trend with a new post! Unfortunately, despite the name of my blog, there's not much real "cooking" going on here, but the result is delicious just the same.

I bought some really beautiful fish from Monterey Fish Market at Pier 33 in San Francisco. Their location at Pier 33 is a wholesale operation, but they do have a retail store in Berkeley. They have some of the best seafood I've ever seen or tasted. If you're in the Bay Area, you should really check it out sometime. We bought about 1 pound each of maguro (tuna), sake (salmon), hirame (halibut), hamachi (yellowtail), and hotate (scallop).

The most complicated thing about this was the sushi rice. Contrary to popular belief, sushi has nothing to do with raw fish. It refers to the sushi rice (su meshi in Japanese means "tart rice"). Once the rice is finished (use less water than you normally would use for steamed rice), you are to mix vinegar mixture into the rice while fanning it. I made the full recipe of the vinegar mixture, but ended up only using half. Looking back, I think it could have used more vinegar.

Cutting the fish is a different story. There is a reason why sushi chefs train train for years and why their knifes have to be so specialized. It took me a long time and knife experimentation to skin the fish and cut appetizing peices of sashimi. I am not going to try to explain how to cut the fish here because I am not an expert and I don't want to give the wrong information. Suffice to say, you usually want to cut at an angle across the grain. I ended up messing up a few peices of tuna which became inedible.

At first I tried a sashimi knife given to me by my friends several years back, but the blade was not sharp enough and it wasn't slicing as cleanly as I would have liked. I then used my wife's Global chef's knife, but while that was definitely sharp and thin, the blade was too wide and the flesh dragged on it while I cut. I ended up using a thin boning knife. While it was both sharp and thin, the placement of the blade relative to the handle made it difficult to work with on the cutting board.

To make things easy, we did everything chirashi style. Rolls or nigiri would have taken up even more time, and we wanted to eat as soon as possible! All-in-all, I was most impressed by the scallops and hamachi. I've done sushi at home before, but the quality was never like this! Next time, I want to try ama-ebi (spot shrimp) and uni (sea urchin gonads). (Yes, I wrote gonads.)

Paired with a flight of sake, of course

Sushi Rice
2/3 cup rice vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 sq in kombu (optional)
4 cups warm, steamed white rice

1. Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, and kombu in a small pot.
2. Place over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar and salt are dissolved.
3. Transfer the warm rice to a wide nonreactive bowl. Toss the rice with a rice paddle as you fan it.
4. When clouds of steam are no longer rising from the rice, but the rice is still warm, drizzle in some of the vinegar mixture.
5. Keep tossing and folding the rice mixture and drizzling the vinegar mixture to taste.

Experimenting with bacon

Bacon...mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

It's hard to find someone who hates bacon, unless of course that someone is vegan. I love it, and my wife enjoys it too, although she prefers to limit her intake of this fatty protein.

I saw a review of different bacon cooking techniques on Cooking For Engineers, so I decided to try a method I've never used before--baking at a low temperature for a long time. Babysitting the oven for 3 hours wasn't really my idea of fun, however. Cooking while I sleep seemed to be a better option. I arranged the bacon nicely on a rack that night, popped it in the oven, and set the oven timer to go on at 200°F, 3 hours before it was time to wake up.

I woke up to the delicious smell of bacon. When I tried it, I found it very crispy with a purity of flavor that comes from not having been charred. The pieces were perfectly straight, with minimal curling at the edges. This is the way my wife likes her bacon. I prefer mine slightly charred on the edges, with a bit of softness to balance the crunch, but this method is certainly a nice way to have your bacon, and eat it too.

Really simple bruschetta

It's heirloom tomato season! This is very exciting for me because some of my favorite simple dishes become much better with heirloom tomatoes. It's time for bruschetta, caprese, and panzanella (bread salad). Even my old Chinese home cooking staple, tomato and egg, is better with heirloom tomatoes.

First, allow me to give a lesson on pronunciation. Italians pronounce "ch" as a "k" sound. So to properly pronounce bruschetta, it should be sounded out as "broo-skeh'-ta". It's not pronounced "broo-sheh'-ta" like everyone in America says. As for the definition of bruschetta? It's a toasted bread with olive oil and garlic.

Anyway, heirloom tomatoes can be really expensive, up to $5 / lb at Whole Foods and Safeway. Don't buy them there! To save money, go to your local farmer's market. On one visit to my local farmer's market, it was $3 / lb. My coworker was able to find some for 75 cents / lb at her farmer's market! What a deal! She was kind enough to buy some for me.

My wife wanted to eat something simple, so I thought of bruschetta. It seems like most of these simple tomato recipes call for a combination of the same ingredients: tomatoes, bread, basil, mozzarella, olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. It's crazy the number of dishes you can make with just those ingredients!

Anyway, I promised it would be simple, so here you go!

Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta
1 baguette (wife is partial to Acme...), sliced
2 medium sized heirloom tomatoes, small dice
10 leaves basil, chiffonade (thinly sliced into ribbons)
1 clove garlic, sliced in half
extra virgin olive oil
salt (preferably sea salt--I like Maldon)

1. Brush olive oil onto bread slices.
2. Toast bread in a toaster oven until golden brown and delicious.
3. Rub the cut half of a garlic clove on the toast.
4. Sprinkle some salt lightly on the bread, set aside.
5. In a mixing bowl, combine tomatoes, basil, some olive oil, and salt.
6. Spoon the tomato mixture on the toasted bread slices, and serve immediately.

Cooking for my sister in law

I recently had the pleasure of cooking for my wife and her sister, who came over to visit. I decided to make pork loin, and found a recipe for Pork Tenderloin with Apricot Fennel Ragout from the Martha Stewart Living 2002 Annual Recipes book. One thing that I like about Martha Stewart's recipes is that they have been tested and are generally foolproof. They are made for the average homemaker who doesn't necessarily know all the fanciest French techniques. Consequently, you can assume cooking times and portion sizes have a fairly wide margin of error.

I took some liberties with the original recipe. Instead of using 2 pork tenderloins, I used one, and I only used one type of mustard (Dijon) instead of the two. It was still delicious. I've posted the modified version below.

Putting the crust on the pork

Trust me, it's 145°F. You don't want pork to be well done!

Reducing the sauce.

The finished product!

Wine pairing. We had this with a 2005 Hogue Cellars Chardonnay, which was a great deal at BevMo for $11 (plus 5 cents more for a second bottle). The wine was a good match: slightly buttery, a little oaky, and medium bodied with refreshing acidity through the finish to cut through the richness of the pork and the sauce.

Pork Tenderloin with Apricot Fennel Ragout
5 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 16 oz pork tenderloin
salt and pepper
1/2 cup bread crumbs
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter

4 large shallots, large dice
1 small fennel bulb, sliced thinly
1 1/2 cups homemade chicken stock
12 dried apricots
1/4 cup brandy
1 tsp fresh thyme

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Season the pork with salt and pepper, rub with mustard. Coat the pork with bread crumbs. Set aside.
2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 2 tbsp oil and sear the pork on all sides until brown. Remove from pan; set aside. Add the remaining tablespoon oil and butter to the pan. Add the shallots and fennel. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup stock; cook, stirring, until the liquid evaporates, 1 to 2 minutes.
3. Return the pork to the pan; add the apricots, 1/2 cup stock, and brandy. Roast in the oven, stirring the vegtables occasionally, until the internal temperature of the pork reaches 145°F, about 20 min. (Yes, it is safe and delicious that way!)
4. Transfer the pork to a cutting board; place the pan over medium-low heat. Add remaining 1/2 cup stock and thyme; stir with a wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits on the pan. Simmer 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper; slice the pork. Serve with sauce.

Quickfire Challenge: Shrimp Chips

My wife gave me a challenge the other day: cook something without going to the grocery store, using at least one ingredient from the pantry.

I stared at the pantry for a long time and couldn't figure out anything, so we watched an episode of Top Chef for inspiration. I had my "Eureka!" moment when I found a bag of Shrimp Chips, the delicious snack I grew up eating, to the bewilderment of my Caucasian friends.

We had frozen pork chops in the freezer, so I was going to use them to make Shrimp Chip crusted Pork Chops. For a second dish, I was thinking something along the lines of a savory custard. That way I could take advantage of leftover frozen spinach and the eggs we usually keep in the refrigerator. I didn't have the pie crust necessary to make a quiche, so I used a ramekin instead. I also didn't want to wait forever for it to bake, so I chose to steam the custard instead (a decision that turned out poorly, as you will find out).

I took out a mallet and hammered away at the shrimp chips inside a plastic bag until they became crumbs. Afterwards, it was simply a matter of dipping the chops into flour, then an egg wash, and then the shrimp chip crumbs, before placing them into a shallow pool of oil to fry. They came out golden brown and delicious. I'm sure the extra MSG in the shrimp chips didn't hurt, either.


The custard was not so tasty. I steamed the custard mixture (mixture of an equal portion of eggs and milk, plus a handful of frozen spinach) until it set, which did not take much time at all. I then topped it with some more shrimp chips and placed it under the broiler for a minute until it browned. The result? A crispy top, but an unfortunately watery inside. Oh well, the chops made up for it.

Lemon curd

My wife likes anything with lemon in it. Lemon tarts, lemon meringue pie, key lime pie--okay not exactly a lemon, but it's close. We had some extra Meyer lemons that were on the verge of going bad, so she asked me to make lemon curd.

When I first heard about lemon curd, I thought it sounded gross. Isn't curd the stuff that coagulates in milk and becomes cheese? Anyway, I used Alice Waters's recipe a few months ago, and it turned out great. I decided to use it again this time, but I think I kept it over the heat too long. The result was something that wasn't as silky smooth as the first time. The flavor seemed a bit too sweet, also. I may have reduced the sugar last time without remembering it.

Once your curd is done, use it as a spread for anything from English muffins to scones.

Lemon Curd
2 eggs
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice (about 2-4 lemons)
6 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 tsp salt (unless butter is salted)
zest of one lemon

1. Combine eggs, egg yolks, milk, sugar, salt, and beat until incorporated.
2. Stir in lemon juice and zest.
3. Add butter one at a time until incorporated.
4. Cook the mixture (I like to use a double boiler) until it is thick enough to coat a spoon.
5. When thick, pour into a container, cover with plastic wrap touching the curd, and refrigerate. (The plastic wrap prevents a film from forming on top.)