Wanderlust & Food Stuff

I’m not even going to pretend this post is about the soup. It’s not. It’s really about the special mixture of miso and sriracha.

Somewhere along the line I became too busy to take photos of my kitchen experiments. Then I became too busy to experiment. I debated about whether I should even continue to update this blog seeing that it is so infrequent. BUT, but, this sauce is so addicting that I just had to share. Ever since I made it, I’ve been using every excuse I can to eat this stuff. In a salad dressing? Yep. Atop yogurt? Yep. By the spoonful… eeeeh, yeah? Yeah.

This recipe was inspired by a $10 tiny bottle of sriracha that I found in Brooklyn. Yeeeah, insert hipster joke here. But it was gochujang sriracha and yeeeeah, I bought it. It’s odd, too, because I frankly don’t really enjoy sriracha that much. But I bought the $10 bottle, enjoyed the hell out of it, then tried to recreate something similar – and much cheaper – on my own. And that really got the wheels turning. What else can make sriracha taste that much better? You know the door of my fridge is filled with all kinds of weird pastes and sauces, but this miso mixture turned out to be the winner.

I made this with granulated garlic thinking that I would be using it for months, but now that I realize I can consume nearly an entire bottle of sriracha in a week when it is mixed with miso, I’m going to make it with roasted garlic next time seeing as I don’t need to worry about shelf life.

Oh, and the soup – trust me, it’s good, too. It’s simple – deeply roasted cauliflower, chicken stock, garlic, white beans, ras el hanout, a touch of yogurt. It got better after two days, and then it got even better when I topped it with miso sriracha.

K – in other news – did you know we bought an apartment! Sort of. I mean, we haven’t closed yet. But we’re thiiiiiis close to having bought an apartment in the Bed Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn. It’s pretty cool.

And we went to Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Russia in the dead of winter because we’re really smart people who like to punish ourselves. Check out the pics on flickr or facebook or instagram. It was fun. And it was really, really brutally cold. So we just drank a lot of beer and Russian bread wine in between 20-minute excursions outdoors to see some of the sites.

Miso Sriracha

2 tablespoons white miso paste
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1 cup sriracha

In a jar or other vessel, combine the miso paste, granulated garlic, and vinegar. Whisk together until combined. Then add the sriracha and stir to combine. You can eat it right away, but the flavor really develops over a day or so when the flavors really combine. Eat it on everything.

A post, finally. We have been home a single weekend in the past six weeks, and on that single weekend, we had guests in town. Needless to say, it’s been tiring. But now we’re home (home!), not working, and chilling. Cooking. Cleaning. Seeing friends. Enjoying.

We’ve been traveling nearly every weekend for weddings and for fun. Wisconsin, Chicago, the Hamptons, DC – we’ve made appearances in a lot of our old favorite joints and some new ones as well. But all the time away has taken its toll – our cats are starved for attention and our fridge could use some restocking. So this weekend included plenty of cuddle time and cooking.

I’ve been making something similar to this salad even on busy week nights. It’s easy, it’s cold, and it’s light – perfect for summer. A variety of vegetables would be great in it. Tofu as well. The hardest part is making noodles out of cucumber and zucchini, but you could slice them any way you want, really. What makes it Vietnamese is the dressing – a version of Nước chấm, a slightly sweet, salty, and sour sauce common in Vietnam. The shirataki noodles – they’ve been a favorite as of late, largely because they require virtually no work. Open, rinse, done. No cooking. No heating.

Cold Vietnamese Noodle Salad

1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 inch piece of ginger, minced
1 serrano pepper, minced
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 medium zucchini, julienned, spiralized, or otherwise cut into thin noodles
1 english cucumber, julienned, spiralized, or otherwise cut into thin noodles
2 medium carrots, julienned, spiralized, or otherwise cut into thin noodles
1 package angel hair shirataki noodles
1 small head boston lettuce, roughly chopped
6 oz cherry tomatoes, sliced
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced

Start by preparing the dressing. Mince the garlic, ginger, and serrano and put them in a mason jar or small bowl. In a pot, heat the fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sugar and stir until combined. Pour the liquid over the minced garlic, ginger, and serrano. Let sit in the fridge until ready to use.

Next prepare all the vegetables. A julienne peeler is very useful in this case. There are some cheap ones on Amazon, but I’ve found it worth the investment to go with a slightly higher quality one. Salt the veggie noodles and let them drain for 5 minutes or so. Rinse the shirataki noodles very well under cold water, then combine with the veggie noodles. Rinse the whole batch one more time under cold water.

Toss everything together with the dressing and serve cold.

If you still have some winter squash hanging around the house but like me are starting to crave a nice, light summer salad, then, friends, eat a transition salad! Here’s the key: warm vinaigrette. On soft, tender lettuce. Yes. I’m serious.

Here it is, guys. I’m short on words tonight.

The Transition Salad: Squash, Lettuce, + Warm Chorizo Vinaigrette

1 whole red kuri squash (or others, they’ll all work), roasted and sliced
1 Chinese eggplant, sliced and roasted
1 bunch red leaf, green leaf, or boston lettuce, washed and torn
8 oz Mexican chorizo
1 clove garlic, minced
1 jalapeño, minced
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

cilantro, to garnish
sliced green onion, to garnish

Roast the squash and Chinese eggplant in the oven. Heat oven to 400, cut the squash in half and slice the eggplant into 1/4-inch coins. Brush both the squash and eggplant with olive oil. They’ll cook at different speeds, so just keep an eye on them. You’ll want to flip the eggplant after about 10 minutes.

Get the lettuce ready in what serving bowls you’re using. Top with the squash slices, eggplant slices, cilantro, and green onion. Then start the dressing. In a pan, begin to sear the chorizo, breaking it up as it cooks. As the oil starts to sizzle, add the garlic and jalapeño. When the chorizo is fully cooked, add the vinegar. Let warm through, then immediately pour over the salads. Eat immediately.

This salad post has been a long time in the making. My first iteration of this salad was nearly two summers ago when I first started sprouting lentils. Now, two years later and with a bit of development, I give you one of my favorite summer (winter?) salads.

For some reason, I took a break from sprouting for a while. I just was not in the mood. Perhaps that mood was replaced with fermentation for a while – I just made an insane batch of berbere sauerkraut that I barely shared with Eric, not to mention all the beer we’ve been churning out of this kitchen. But I recently saw a recipe for very simply cooked lentils with vinegar and was re-inspired to throw some wet lentils in a jar. And really, that’s all there is to sprouting lentils. Rinse them. Put them in a jar with a piece of cheese cloth secured on top, and let them sit. Rinse them every day and keep them moist. After a day, you should see a tiny sprout starting to emerge from the lentils, and after two or three days they should be in really good shape.

Once you see the sprouting action happen, you can eat them right then and there, raw and all. You can cook them, also, if you desire. Once they’re sprouted to the point that you like, rinse them a final time and dry them completely. They’ll keep in a jar in the fridge for at least a week.

I have also been putting fish sauce in a lot of my salad dressings lately. I have learned to not be afraid to use it even when my flavors aren’t veering toward the Asian continent. It really adds a nice depth that compliments so many flavors. It works nicely with the boiled egg yolks in this recipe to add a savoriness and richness to an otherwise simple salad.

Swiss Chard Salad with Sprouted Lentils and Egg Yolk Vinaigrette

1 bunch swiss chard, green, red, rainbow, whatever
1/4 cup sprouted lentils
2 eggs, hard boiled
1/2 avocado (or a whole one!), thinly sliced
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons olive oil – one for the dressing, one for the breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons red wine or apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
salt and pepper

Remove the stems of the chard and finely slice it by rolling up the leaves and shredding it with a knife. Set aside in a bowl.

Bring a pot of water to boil. Once boiling, carefully place the eggs in the water and set a timer for 11 minutes. When done, run the eggs under cold water. You may need to adjust the time based on your altitude, but I find 11 minutes to be a perfect hard boil in NY.

In a pan, add one tablespoon of olive oil and the breadcrumbs. Toast over high heat until the crumbs are browned and golden. Remove from heat and set aside.

To make the dressing, remove the yolks from the eggs and mash them in a small bowl. Roughly chop the egg whites and set aside. Add one tablespoon of olive oil along with the vinegar and fish sauce to the egg yolks. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To assemble the salad, toss together the chard, lentils, avocado, egg whites, and bread crumbs. Drizzle on the dressing and serve immediately.

Our new pet, Roomba, is noisily but dutifully roaming the house right now. Talk about a quality-of-life improvement. I am constantly in awe of how much cat hair this little robot picks up, even after we’ve cleaned. If robots end up taking over the world, I’ll be ok with it as long as its Roomba.

Sadly, our other pets – the ones producing said cat hair – have not taken to Roomba. It’s not exactly an antagonistic relationship, but it’s not the riding-on-Roomba one I was hoping for. Alf will not be playing DJ Roomba anytime soon, unfortunately.

In other random musings… how did I not know that Ace of Base released more than a single – mind-blowing, but single (or so I thought) – album? I think we all remember our very first compact disc, and mine, my friends, was Ace of Base, The Sign. With the recent release of The Sign – Remastered, I was looking through the entire (huge!) Ace of Base collection on Rdio. Wow. It all sucks besides The Sign, by the way, but I still dig that album.

Ok, food now, yes? As many of you probably know – mostly because Eric loves talking about it – I gave up vegetarianism a few years ago in a weak, influenced-by-alcohol moment after twelve years of strict non-meat eating. Eric loves this story because his beloved Jim’s chicken finger sub broke me. So it’s pretty clear by now that the sweet sweet vinegary hot flavors of Frank’s Red Hot and blue cheese have some sort of ungodly force over me. But Frank’s Red Hot combined with shit tons of roasted garlic? It’s crack, I tell you. Crack.

And that’s how we eat our veggies around here, folks. Crack-laced veggies.

Buffalo Cauliflower

inspired by Lottie + Doof

1 whole cauliflower
1 whole head of garlic, roasted
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup Frank’s Red Hot
2-3 tablespoons blue cheese, crumbled
2-3 tablespoons peanuts, roasted and chopped

Preheat the oven to 400. Trim the cauliflower of any leaves and cut in half. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and coat it with oil. You can throw the head of garlic on the same baking pan. Roast the garlic until it is soft inside the papery skins (approximately 20 minutes, depending on the size of the cloves). When the garlic is soft, remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Continue to roast the cauliflower until crispy brown on the outside, approximately 40 minutes.

Once cooled, remove the soft garlic cloves from the skins and mash into a paste using a mortar and pestle. Add a touch of olive oil to keep it from sticking. Add the Frank’s Red Hot and combine until smooth.

To serve, crumble the blue cheese over the roasted cauliflower. Smother with the Frank’s sauce and top with peanuts.