Christmas Rumtopf

At Christmastime, the German in me really comes out. Maybe it's because some of my fondest memories involve baking stollen in my Oma's kitchen, or maybe it's just because there are so many awesome German Christmas treats. Put a glass of gluhwine and a pfeffernusse in my hand and steer me toward the nearest Christkindlmarkt and I am one happy little Mädchen.
The reason I mention this in June is because I realized the other day that there are only six months until Christmas. Six. Damn. Months. I already feel unprepared. Although I love the holidays, searching for gifts for everyone is, frankly, a trial. Perhaps there exists a person who likes driving all over town, searching for a million "perfect" presents, but that person is not the Bear.

Last year my family and I became so tired of the emphasis on gift-giving that we made a pact not to buy presents at all. Small, homemade gifts were acceptable, but we collectively refused to partake in the shopping madness. And you know what? It was a relief. While others made spreadsheets and budgeted their November and December paychecks, I kicked back with Harry Belafonte's Christmas album and an uncomfortable amount of eggnog. I had one baking night where I cranked out about twelve loaves of stollen and gave those to my very favorite people as gifts.
But since I'm inherently lazy, and winter is a time for bears to hibernate, this June I'm already done making gifts. And you can be too!

Do you like sweet goodies? And liquor? And tasty fruits? Look no further for the perfect Christmas treat, rumtopf. It means "rum pot" because it is a pot of rum. A delicious pot filled with your favorite Spring and Summer fruit preserved in rum. You can make it in the Spring and it will last for you to enjoy it in the Winter. There are as many uses for rumtopf as there are people who enjoy it. Use it as a cake topping, pour it over ice cream, make fruitcake out of it, or don't mess around and just drink the stuff straight. 
Currently, mine has cherries, nectarines, and plums in it. Traditionally, different fruits are layered into the rumtopf as they come into season. I may do that if I can summon up the energy, or I may just leave it in my cupboard and forget about it. I'd love to hear about what you put in yours if you make some!
xoxoxo
A

                                                                         Rumtop 

3 cups of fruit 

1 cup of dark brown sugar

1 1/2 cups dark rum

• Remove pits from fruit (if needed) and cut into bite sized pieces. Gently mix in brown sugar and place in a mason jar or crock. Allow fruit and sugar to sit for one hour. Afterward, cover with rum, seal and keep in a dark, cool place. Make sure the fruit is completely submerged, as the rum will act as a preservative. Add more fruit throughout the year if desired, adding rum to cover additional fruit. Store at least six weeks before eating. 

Kitsune Udon Soup

Kitsune udon is Japanese for "fox noodles". It's not made with real fox though. In Japan, kitsune (foxes) are mystical beings who can shapeshift into beautiful women.  Some stories portray foxes as tricksters or seductresses, leading lone travelers astray at night, or bringing gifts of treasure which turn out to be sticks, paper, and other garbage.  But in other tales foxes are loyal companions, and frequently good wives. Folktales about fox wives follow a similar pattern to Irish myths about selkies, or seal women; a young man marries a beautiful woman, but when her secret identity as a kitsune is discovered, she shapeshifts back into a fox and runs away. In one famous story, she returns to her husband nightly as a woman, and leaves in the morning as a fox.  Additionally, kitsune will sometimes adopt a human family, visiting their house and watching over them. Unfortunately, they frequently bring presents to their chosen family which they steal from neighboring houses, so people are suspicious of a house thought to harbor kitsune.  

Sometimes they're though to possess women instead of-or in addition to-shapeshifting into them, and as late as the 20th century there was a medical disorder specific to Japan in which sufferers became convinced they were possessed by kitsune. People with this disorder fell on the ground, yipped like foxes, and refused to eat anything but the kitsune's favorite foods: sweet adzuki beans and fried tofu, called aburaage.  

Therefore this soup, with its chewy fried tofu, lightly sweetened broth, and soft udon noodles, is truly fit for a kitsune's dinner. A sprinkling of finely minced scallions over the top lends a little brightness to the whole dish.

Although by no means essential, I also like to add a pinch of shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice blend consisting of red pepper, orange peel, sesame seed, seaweed, and ginger. The flavor of shichimi is difficult to describe. The best way I can is to say it's spicy in a warm way rather than a painful way. You can get it at an Asian foods market, or order it online. Or I suppose you could try to mix up your own, using the ingredients above! The kitsune udon has a delicate, easily overwhelmed flavor, so careful not to add too much shichimi!  

Traditional kitsune udon calls for homemade broth called ichiban dashi. But this is my own kitsune udon for busy people, so I simply use chicken broth. If you use vegetarian broth it will be vegan friendly!   

The first time I made this recipe I made sushi at the same time, thinking that the soup would not be very filling on its own, and that I would have ample time while it was cooking to make rolls. DO NOT DO THIS.  Although this recipe doesn't take too long, it's hands-on the whole time. If you try to make something complicated like sushi at the same time, you could potentially get really overwhelmed and start to cry, and then drop a huge handful of rice on the floor since your eyes were blurred by tears which caused you to trip over the cat who was begging for imitation crab at your feet, and now your floor is plastered with rice, and even your cat has rice on him, and the other cat has now run in and is eating rice off his brother and they are beginning to fight and spray rice all over and you are still crying at the futility of your attempt to make California rolls while your udon water boils over.

That might happen. 

Just take my advice. This soup is so filling and delicious it can absolutely be served as an entree, maybe with just a little white rice or salad on the side.

Kitsune udon has a complex flavor that's simultaneously exciting and comforting. The broth is savory and warm, with a slow burn that's slightly hot. Inside are fat, soft noodles, tangy scallions, and tofu that's spongy and slightly sweet.  It has serious wow factor, and it's absolutely terrific for somebody with the sniffles. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it twelve billion. Itadakimasu!
xoxoxoxoxo

A

Kitsune Udon

-6 oz extra firm tofu            -Vegetable oil

-14 oz udon noodles            -7 cups broth

-3 tbsp sugar                       -2 tbsp soy sauce

-2-3 scallions                                   

-OPTIONAL 1/8 tsp shichimi togarashi

-15 MINUTES BEFOREHAND, wrap tofu in paper towels and press excess water out by putting something heavy on top of it. I routinely use a wooden cutting board, a casserole dish, or a large book protected by plastic wrap. You can also buy a tofu press, but why bother if you've got a dictionary or a world history book lying around? You can leave it like this for several hours in the fridge, but at least 15 minutes will make it much firmer.  

-Pour about 1 1/2 inches of vegetable oil into a skillet. Heat over high heat until the oil shimmers. Slice your tofu into bite sized pieces, and fry them in the oil for 12-15 minutes.

-While frying, bring a pot of water to a boil, drop in the udon noodles, and cook uncovered for 20 minutes until very soft. After 20 minutes, remove from heat, cover, and let the noodles rest in the pot for 5 minutes.  

-Drain the fried tofu on paper towels, then put them in a bowl of hot water to get rid of excess oil. Strain the water out and set the tofu aside in the bowl (or strainer if you have two).

- Strain the udon noodles and run cold water over them until they stop steaming. Set aside in strainer.

-In the same pot you cooked the noodles in, combine 1 cup of broth with 2 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp soy sauce. Bring to a boil, drop in the tofu and boil for 5-8 minutes. Set the tofu and liquid aside in the pot.

-In a second pot, combine 6 cups of broth with 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp soy sauce. Bring to a boil, add udon noodles, tofu, and shichimi togarashi.  

-Garnish with chopped scallions and serve immediately.

Picnic-Ready Pretzel Salad

I have probably misled you by labeling this as a salad. But its creator, my mom, has always called it that. After some time pondering about it, I've come up with several justifications for calling it a salad:

1. It's a bunch of good things mixed up

2.Usually picnic or barbecue fare

3. It has fruit!

4.  Ambrosia is also a salad

5. That's it

 Make no mistake, this sweet, cream-cheese-Jello-strawberry amalgamation is nothing but a dessert. At my childhood Independence Day celebrations and pool parties, pretzel salad always had a place on the table.  It's a summery, outdoorsy sort of dish, served cold to compliment a hot summer day. I wanted to make it for Easter, but I made a small calculation error and brought home two hams and 10 pounds of potatoes, and had to be coaxed into not making any extra food. In my defense, I was serving a house full of guys, one college football player, and my own boyfriend (who, despite looking like an American version of John Cleese, has been politely asked to leave the all-you-can-eat Canton Buffet for actually eating all he can eat.)  

 

This really saddened me, because the next holiday where pretzel salad could reasonably be expected to make an entrance is the 4th of July, and it's only April.

But then I remembered that I'm an adult, and one of the only benefits of being such is the ability to make any dessert I want any time I damn well please.

So please give a lovely welcome to the pretzel salad! It's delicious! It's pink! It wants to grace your icebox with salty-sweet strawberry flavored goodness! It's so 1950s that you'll want to use words like "icebox" when talking about it!

When I looked up 1950s slang to put here, Google came up with "backseat bingo", which apparently means to get busy in the back of a car. I did not know this.

This is the most fun you'll ever have eating a salad, guaranteed.

xoxoxoxoxo

-A

Pretzel Salad

2 2/3 cups broken up pretzels       1 1/2 cups melted butter or margarine

9 oz cream cheese, softened         1 1/4 cups sugar

1 cup whipped topping                 6 oz strawberry gelatin

2 cups pineapple juice                  2 1/2 cups cut strawberries

Directions

-Place pretzels and butter in a baking dish and bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Let cool.

-Beat cream cheese and sugar with a hand or standing mixer, and spread over lukewarm pretzels.

-Dissolve gelatin in boiling pineapple juice. Stir in strawberries, pour into a separate bowl and allow to thicken until almost gelled.

-Spread over topping and refrigerate

-When firm, spread whipped topping on top. Garnish with strawberries and serve.

Mongolian Barbecue Style Beef and Broccoli

I'm on a bit of a Chinese food kick recently. But this last week was absolutely killer as I was slammed with an anatomy and physiology final, so fun in the kitchen played second fiddle to memorizing portal circulation and trying to remember the Latin name for syphilis. (It's treponema pallidum, in case you were wondering, and it is a bacillus).
It all turned out for the best though, because I got an A on my final and decided to celebrate by...not even entering my kitchen and going out to Mongolian barbecue instead!

The Mongolian barbecue is a magical place. As usual when I go out to a favorite restaurant, I started to get a little competitive and wanted to try to recreate the excitement at home. But my boyfriend put the kibosh on gutting our kitchen and installing a Mongolian grill. What's a girl to do? Try a new stir fry method of course!

Stir fry is one of my go-to meals because it's easily customizable and difficult to ruin. Vegetables getting old in your crisper? Throw those bad boys in a hot pan with some sesame oil and cover it all in sriracha, mae ploy, or teryaki sauce. Done.

Although any stir fry will probably turn out edible, there are some tricks to making a truly great one. My top three rules for making mouth-watering stir fries are these:  prep your veggies and cook them in batches, don't bother using a wok, and cook meat over very high heat.

Firstly, different vegetables cook at different speeds. To get the best tender, flavorful vegetables, cook different types separately, and combine everything at the end just before you serve it. It sounds like more work, but it really doesn't take much extra time, and you will really taste the difference.

Second, you don't need a wok to create a great stir fry! In fact, you're better off without one. Woks were designed for cooking in traditional Chinese pit stoves, where the wok recessed into the stove and the conical sides were completely surrounded by heat. On a conventional burner, a wok is inefficient; the flat bottom of your trusty skillet creates a greater heated surface for you to cook on.

Lastly, the flavor and texture of the meat is infinitely better when cooked over high heat, taking advantage of the phenomenon known as the Maillard Reaction.

French scientist Louis-Camille Maillard first described this in the 1900s. The chemistry behind it is so complicated that it's actually not fully understood today, but the basics are these: the proteins in meat are made of amino acids, and those amino acids react with sugar to create compounds called dicarbonyls. Dicarbonyls multiply faster than a group of bunnies listening to Marvin Gaye until they make molecules called melanoidin pigments. With a little bit of Latin (Melan/o:dark or black, -oid: resembling), you can see that these pigments  create the deep, brown crusts on seared meat.

However, the Maillard reation won't take place until the surface temperature exceeds 300 degrees, which is why boiling or blanching food will never brown it. Water boils at 212 degrees and won't get hotter than that, so the reaction never has a chance to work its magic. Even steam will prevent the pan from reaching the required temperature, so make sure to leave the lid off and cook over nice, dry heat.  As a side note, don't do this in a nonstick pan! You will ruin the nonstick coating, which is not designed to handle very high heat. Get a nice, stainless steel skillet and never look back.

To do this properly, you must build heat in the skillet before you start to cook. Once you start, though, the reaction happens quickly, so you can brown a pound of beef in under ten minutes. I recommend cooking your beef in batches so it maintains as much contact with the hot skillet as possible. Don't crowd it by adding too much at a time; just be cool about it and give it some room.

I have to go now. I think I hear the delivery truck pulling up with my new Mongolian barbecue. Hopefully I can squeeze it in my tiny apartment kitchen. Four walls are optional, right?

xoxoxoxo

A

 ~Best Beef and Broccoli~

SAUCE:

1/2 cup chicken broth           1/4 cup oyster sauce

2 tbsp mirin (rice wine) or cooking sherry 

1 tbsp sugar                          1 tsp corn starch

STIR-FRY:

2 tbsp soy sauce                   1 tsp sugar

12 oz flank steak, cut into 2-inch pieces

2 tbsp sesame oil                 3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp grated ginger            1 head of broccoli

1 red bell pepper                 2 tbsp water

FOR THE SAUCE: Stir all ingredients together and set aside. Easy!

FOR THE STIR-FRY: 

1. Mix soy sauce and sugar. Add beef and marinate for at least 15 minutes, up to one hour. 

2. Mix 1 tsp sesame oil, minced garlic, and ginger in a separate bowl. 

3. Heat 1 tsp sesame oil in a stainless steel skillet over high heat until just smoking. Cook the beef in batches (discarding the marinade) for one minute. Stir, and continue to cook until browned, 2-3 minutes more. Set aside and tent with foil. 

4. Add remaining 1tsp sesame oil and heat until just smoking again. Add broccoli and bell pepper and cook until vegetables begin to brown, 3-5 minutes. Add water and cook until vegetables are just tender but not too soft, 1-2 minutes more. Remove and set aside. 

5. Add the garlic-ginger mixture to the skillet and cook about 20 seconds. Return vegetables and beef to skillet, along with any juices. 

6. Mix your sauce up and pour over stir fry. Cook until thickened, about 30 seconds. 

7. Serve over hot rice, or on its own! Don't forget the fortune cookies! 

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

I just got back from visiting my cousin in her new home in Gilroy. Gilroy is a small, basically unknown town in Northern California.  Well, not unknown actually, just...specialized. When you say to someone, "this weekend I was at my cousin's house in Gilroy. We played wine pong with a crumpled up piece of tin foil because we didn't have any ping-pong balls." that person says back to you, "Gilroy? Isn't that where they have the Garlic Festival?"

Yes. Oh yes it is. I didn't get to go this year, but my cousin has enthralled me with the Tales of 1001 Garlic Nights. There's the Tale of the Garlic Shrimp Scampi, the story of the Garlic Ice Cream, and even (gasp) The Great Garlic Wine Saga.
The idea of garlic ice cream made me cringe. I have a limited tolerance for spicy foods. Although I have been known to put Sriracha on my macaroni and cheese, I draw the line when I start to cry and sniffle. Food shouldn't hurt! But it turns out creamy garlic is a wild idea, but it just might work.  Garlic can taste completely different depending on the way you prepare it. I mean COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

40 shades of garlic.

You've surely minced or pressed garlic before; it tastes good in practically anything. But you can also make garlic so sweet and buttery that you can dip crackers right in it or use it as a sandwich spread.

The garlic recipe I want to showcase today is: chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Yep, 40 cloves! Don't shy away from it because it sounds painful; I assure you it's creamy and delicious. It will be your favorite crock pot recipe from now on because it's so easy and hands-off.

Garlic is an allium, and family to onions, scallions, chives, and leeks. Alliums get their distinctive, spicy flavor from sulfur-based compounds. When you break the tissues of these plants by crushing or cutting them, they release the sulfur as a defense mechanism. Although humans can withstand-and even enjoy-eating the plant, other creatures like insects, dogs and cats can be seriously harmed by it as it damages their red blood cells. Don't ever feed garlic to your cat or dog no matter how much they beg.

Because the reaction happens so quickly, it also doesn't last very long. Once the cut allium sits out for a few minutes, or when you cook it, the sulfur begins to react with other chemicals in the plant and becomes less spicy and more sweet. Knowing this can give you some freedom to change the flavor of your garlic depending on what you're cooking. If you want spicy, chop or press to release the sulfur compounds. If you want sweet and buttery, cook those babies whole!

Enjoy experimenting! And let me know how that garlic ice cream turns out!

xoxoxoxo

A

 ~Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic~

2-3 heads of garlic             10 bone-in chicken thighs

1 tbsp fresh rosemary        1/2 white wine

2 tbsp lemon juice

1. Separate the garlic into heads. As the name suggests, there should be about 40. DO NOT PEEL THEM. Scatter them in the bottom of the crock pot. 

2. Remove the skin from the chicken (if skin on). Finely chop the rosemary and sprinkle it on the chicken along with some salt and pepper. Place the chicken in the crock pot with the unpeeled garlic. 

3. Pour in the wine and the lemon juice. 

5. Cover and cook 5-6 minutes on low, until chicken is tender and falling off the bone. 

6. Remove the garlic cloves and squish them out of their peels. With a fork, mash the garlic into the cooking liquid. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and boil. Cook until slightly thickened. 

7. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve!