More turkey leftovers December 9, 2009

turkey mushroom and bacon fried rice

Last week I finished off the rest of my leftover turkey making a stuffing-inspired turkey fried rice and turkey enchiladas.

For the fried rice stir-fry bacon, chopped turkey, and mushrooms, then add carrots, celery, and green onions. Finally add the rice, a splash of soy sauce, black pepper, and a drizzle of sesame oil.

For the turkey enchiladas, Brooke brought over some delicious El Pinto salsa from New Mexico. I made a filling with sauteed onions, chayote squash, canned green chiles, and chopped turkey. Then we fried some tortillas, dipped them in jarred green sauce or blended salsa, and rolled them up with some filling and shredded cheese. Then we topped them with more cheese and sauce and baked them until they were browned and delicious.

We had some extra vegetables from the filling, so we added some corn kernels, powdered green chile, and more cheese to make some quick calabacitas.

Well, that was the end of my leftover turkey, but I still have plenty of turkey stock to keep me busy for a while.

Turkey Avgolemono November 30, 2009

Avgolemono soup

Last Friday I attended the Gunma JETs’ Thanksgiving dinner for more than 50 local JETs, other foreigners, and friends. As you can imagine, a Thanksgiving dinner for 50 is quite a spread. I’m pretty sure there were 6 (small) turkeys! Not wanting to waste, I volunteered, as in past years, to take the bones home for turkey soup. I’m sure we were quite a sight bicycling home with our two giant bags of turkey bones, an empty wine bottle, and a pair of wine glasses (not that we would bicycle after drinking wine, as, of course, it is illegal… that’s merely a coincidence).

So on Saturday morning I got to work removing any bits of meat remaining on the bones that filled a good part of my refrigerator. After that, I had to nest everything together as efficiently as I could to get them into my two largest pots. Onto the stove went the pots. I filled them to the brim with water and set them simmering.

After several hours the house smelled like Thanksgiving, and I had a quart of turkey meat and three or four quarts of very concentrated turkey stock–it’s like jello once it cools. Ordinarily I would get more stock from so many bones, but my pots are small so they were packed so full that there wasn’t much room for the water. I’m sure it won’t be a problem to dilute it with water before I use it.

And after making turkey stock all day, what would make a better dinner than turkey soup? After I strained the stock I managed to find enough meat still on the bones–but now fall-off-the-bone tender–to make a very meaty soup. And avgolemono is nice and easy. I just cooked up an onion and some celery (I don’t think it’s traditional, but it’s tasty and I had some in the fridge) in a bit of olive oil, added some rice, stock, and meat, and finally finished the soup with lemon juice, egg, and chopped dill. Although this soup is easy, the egg and rice make a thick soup that’s filling enough to enjoy as a main course. And that’s just what I did.

So next time you have leftover turkey bones, why don’t you get in the mottainai spirit and make turkey avgolemono? Of course this recipe is delicious made with chicken too. In fact, the picture above is actually a chicken avgolemono that I made this spring, but trust me, it looks almost the same.

Turkey Avgolemono

olive oil
one onion, chopped
half a stalk celery, chopped finely (optional)
one half cup uncooked rice
white wine or sake
about 6 cups homemade turkey stock (or chicken)
some turkey meat (or chicken), chopped
two bay leaves
juice from one lemon
two eggs or 4 egg yolks
handful of fresh dill, chopped
salt and pepper

Heat some olive oil in a large pot. Add the onion and celery. Sprinkle with some salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft. Add the rice and stir. Add a splash of wine or sake and stir again. Add the turkey stock, bay leaves, and turkey meat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until the rice is very tender.Turn off the heat.

Put half of the lemon juice and eggs in a bowl and whisk together thoroughly; make sure that there are no bits of unincorporated egg white or they won’t make your soup creamy. If you use all egg yolks the soup will be more yellow and taste richer. Don’t use all of the lemon juice at first because you don’t want the soup to be too sour–you can always add more later.  Gradually stir a few cups of hot soup together with the egg mixture to temper the eggs. Once the egg mixture is warm, add it to the pot of soup and stir well.

Add a handful of chopped dill or other green herbs like parsley and green onions. Stir soup and taste. Adjust your seasoning with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Daigaku Imo November 25, 2009

What’s for dinner tonight? Well, it’s fall, so I’ve been getting lots of vegetables from teachers who have big gardens or small farms. I got some sweet potatoes last week, so I thought we should have daigaku imo with dinner (along with a grilled hokke, rice, and salad).

While the recipe on Just Hungry looks delicious, I can’t be bothered to deep fry at home, so I really liked the look of the recipe at Food Lover’s Guide to Tokyo. It was really easy- just chop up a large sweet potato, put it in a frying pan with the rest of the ingredients and cook it until the water’s gone and the sugar makes a nice syrup. Then sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bali: A day at the market and cooking class September 15, 2009

On our first day in Ubud we took a cooking class at Bumbu Restaurant. The class began with a tour of Ubud’s market. The market is busiest earlier in the morning so we went back for an earlier visit on another day. Our chef-instructor Gus showed us around the market and explained some essential ingredients of Balinese cuisine. I really enjoyed the tour, where we learned a lot of things that we probably wouldn’t have learned on our own. On the other hand, if you’re going to do some shopping, don’t do it with your tour group. The vendors know they can really stick it to you when you’re with the group. You’ve got a lot more freedom to haggle and shop around when you’re on your own. Another tip is to steer clear of the vendors in the areas that get a lot of foot traffic-they charge more than the vendors further back in the market.

Near the market entrance you can find sellers with spices for basa gede (the basic spice paste that finds it’s way into nearly everything) like greater galangal, and the smaller and spicier lesser galangal, fresh turmeric roots, garlic, ginger, shallots, and chiles. The woman above is also selling palm sugar, tomatoes, and green bananas.

These small, slightly wrinkled green chiles are spicy. The larger red chiles (no picture) are called lombok chiles, and are not very spicy, more like a flavorful sweet pepper.

Vibrant purple mangosteens–a vendor showed us a trick to open them without a knife. Just clasp your fingers together and put your palms on either side, then give it a good squeeze. The fruit will pop right open with no mess. This works on passionfruit too.

This ramp leads downstairs from the courtyard to the meat and vegetable sellers. Vendors alongside the ramp are selling peeled and sliced fresh fruits.

The view of the vegetable and meat vendors’ area.

A vegetable seller with greens, eggplants, carrots, potatoes, and long beans. On the right you can see the hand of our chef-instructor, who is explaining the vegetables that we’ll use in our class later.

Walk inside from the vegetable area and you will find cooking wares like mortars and pestles, wooden spoons, and coconut graters and then a maze of hallways leading to vendors with spices, dry goods, and dried fish. Here you can see dried fish, garlic, chiles, and rice. In the background are sauces and other essentials like fermented shrimp paste.

A woman walks home from the market with her shopping. Later, a watermelon fell out of the basket and started rolling down the street. Luckily we were able to catch it and return it, or who knows where it might have ended up.

After the tour of the market we went back to Bumbu, where we started the lesson by making basa gede. Basa gede is a basic spice paste that each household can use in many different dishes. The recipe we made had fresh turmeric root, shallot, garlic, ginger, greater and lesser galangal, lombok chiles, candlenuts, white and black pepper, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, sesame seeds, and cumin ground together until almost smooth in this stone mortar and pestle and then fried with a tiny bit of fermented shrimp paste. Once you’ve prepared the paste you can use it to season a number of different dishes and it’s very convenient because you can store it in the refrigerator or freezer (if you do this leave out the shrimp paste until you’re ready to cook with it)

This is sambal goreng, or fried hot spices: chiles, shallots, garlic, and shrimp paste. It is mixed with grated fresh coconut and then cooked vegetables to make sayur urab, mixed vegetables.

This was one of my favorite dishes that we made: opor ayam, curried chicken. It was easy to make and delicious. I have made it a few times since we’ve returned to Japan–it took me a few tries to get the basa-gede right without fresh galangal, lemongrass, and turmeric but I think I’ve found some substitutions that work. I made sure to increase the amount of dried turmeric since the fresh root is much stronger. I added a yuzu half to the simmering curry; the aromatic citrus flavor replaces the scent of lemongrass. Finally I used ginger instead of galangal. Of course it’s not the same, but it’s the best I can do for now.

Here’s the rest of the menu from our class:

Basa Gede – Basic Spice Paste

Sayur Urab – Mixed Vegetables with Sambal Goreng (fried sambal)

Tuna Sambal Matah – Tuna with Raw Sambal

Tempe Manis – Sweet Tempe

Opor Ayam – Curried Chicken

Bali Sate Lilit – Balinese Sate Skewers

Opor Ayam – Balinese Curried Chicken
by Bumbu Bali (my updates in parenthesis)

about 5 tablespoons basa gede
1 chicken (2 chicken legs and chicken thighs)
1 tsp salt
2 stalks of lemongrass
1 carrot (2 or 3 carrots)
1 potato (2 or 3 potatoes)
(eggplant)
3 salam leaves (substitute bay leaves)
1/2 cup coconut milk

Cut chicken into large chunks. Put chicken and basa gede in a pot and mix well. (Cook for a few minutes until fragrant.) Add enough water to cover chicken. Cover pot and simmer for 10 minutes. Peel the carrot and potato (and eggplant) and cut into chunks. Add to pot with salam leaves, lemongrass, and coconut milk. Cover and simmer for 15 more minutes until sauce is thickened and vegetables are cooked through.

Basa Gede – Basic Spice Paste
by Bumbu Bali

10 shallots, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
4 lombok chiles (substitute mild red peppers)
5 cm laos root (greater galangal), peeled and chopped (substitute ginger if necessary)
5 cm kencur root (lesser galangal), peeled and chopped (substitute ginger if necessary)
5 cm ginger root, peeled and chopped
10 cm fresh turmeric root, peeled and chopped (substitute generous 2 tbsp powdered turmeric)
6 candlenuts (or macadamia nuts)
1/2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp sesame seeds
1 tsp white peppercorns
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1/2 tsp cumin seed
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
4 cloves
4 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
1/2 tsp dried shrimp paste

Pound all of the ingredients except oil and shrimp paste together in a mortar and pestle. Alternatively, grind dry spices in a spice grinder and then puree the remaining ingredients except shrimp paste in a blender (with oil in this case). Add oil (if you haven’t already) and cook in a skillet, stirring, about 5 minutes. Store refrigerated up to 3 weeks or frozen up to 1 month. When ready to cook, stir in shrimp paste and cook a bit more.

Shiso Juice August 5, 2009

shiso juice

After making ume jam last month, I got caught up in what I call “the cycle of gifting.” You see, a gift isn’t just a gift in Japan. Often, there is an unspoken obligation to reciprocate with another “return gift,” usually worth about half the value of the previous one. Depending on the manners of the parties involved, this can develop into a long series of exchanges.

So after I gave Mr. Y two jars of jam made from his ume, he brought me some homegrown plums as a return gift. Unfortunately, I was on vacation that day, so I got some frantic calls from my supervisor wondering when I would be back and where was a good place to leave the plums. In the end it was decided that a bag of immaculately ripe plums was not going to be edible after three days of Japanese summer heat, so I imagine they were passed around the staff room or met some other delicious demise. (I took the call at a rather noisy train station, so I actually thought he said “a plant” not “some plums” so I was really surprised when they told me they’d been eaten).

Feeling guilty for causing stress to my supervisor and Mr. Y over my absence, I made sure to bring them both some dadacha-mame omiyage from my trip to Yamagata. Omiyage is another longstanding gift-giving tradition where you bring your coworkers a small edible treat from wherever you’ve just returned from. This has led to a profusion of mediocre individually-wrapped cakes in pretty boxes from every town in Japan, but there are some good ones out there if you can get some advice from local folks. For example, this dadacha-mame cake was quite tasty.

dadacha mame

In return for the omiyage (a gift with so little value it never obliges a return gift), Mr. Y brought me a bottle of his wife’s homemade shiso juice. “It’s very healthy,” he told me. You just mix the concentrated juice with some water and enjoy. The resulting drink is a beautiful ruby pink and tastes refreshing and summery. It’s also a good way to use up the forest of aka-jiso (red shiso) that many people grow to make umeboshi with if there’s a bad ume harvest like this year.

I enjoyed this new taste so I asked for the recipe for the juice. A search online produced a few alternative recipes too. Since aka-jiso grows like a weed here and it’s used in great quantities for making umeboshi, it’s very cheap—a big bunch is typically only 100 yen or so. Following the recipe, I stemmed and washed the leaves and boiled them in 2 liters of water (I had to split the recipe into two pots since even my biggest pot can’t accommodate 2 liters of water and 2 bunches of shiso leaves). The leaves blanched from maroon to green in the water’s heat and the liquid turned a murky purple hue (dried splashes turned a bright violet, but in the pot it wasn’t very appealing). I stirred in a teaspoon of citric acid, and the color instantly brightened to a lovely deep pink. Finally, I was about to add the sugar and citric acid when I took a look at the 1-kilo bag of sugar in my hand. I couldn’t bring myself to use the whole bag, so I quickly reduced the amount of sugar that I’d use by 30%. That still meant that my “healthy drink” had almost the same amount of sugar as my other favorite cold beverage (which has earned me the nickname Coca-Lora).

I bottled up the juice into two 1-liter jars (which are also great for iced tea and mugi-cha, another delicious summertime drink). If you take a look at the top photo you can see my favorite storage jar. I love that it’s Pyrex, so I can fill it up with hot liquids or brew tea right in it and that there’s no handles or hardware to catch nasties in the sink or get rusty. What a great design, and it was only 500 yen. I think everyone could use one of these. The last surprise was that the finished juice was significantly more than two liters, so some of the liquid must have come from the shiso itself.

After we’d finished drinking most of the first batch, I thought I’d try again to make a more healthful version. I mixed up the juice (this time just a half batch to save room in the fridge) and slowly tinkered with the ratio of sugar and citric acid until I was satisfied with the flavor. The final amount was 225 grams of sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons of citric acid. I’m not sure if it’s really healthier or if I’m just diluting it less when I serve it, but it’s a change that I can feel good about at least.

To serve the shiso juice, you just dilute the concentrate with 1 or 2 parts water. Mixing it with club soda instead makes a refreshing summer sparkler, and the soda somehow gives the drink a more berrylike flavor than water alone.

aka-jiso

Shiso Juice

1 big bunch aka-jiso (red shiso) leaves
1 liter water
pinch salt
225 grams sugar or honey
1 1/2 teaspoons citric acid

Your bunch of shiso should be quite large, about 350 to 500 grams. Remove and discard the large, woody stems (the remaining leaves should weigh at least 200 grams). Put the leaves in a large bowl, bucket, or sink, and wash them thoroughly with cold water. Bring one liter of water to a boil. Put the shiso leaves and water in a large pot and boil them together for about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the leaves steep in the hot water for at least 10 minutes more (the longer you wait, the more intense the color will be). Stir in the citric acid and sugar. Strain the juice into jars, squeezing the leaves to extract as much of the juice as you can. The juice can be stored in the refrigerator for several months, if it lasts that long.

To serve, mix with water or club soda and drink chilled.