In our quest for the perfect vegetarian sausage, we decided that a base of bulgur wheat mixed with black beans should pretty closely approximate the “mouth feel” of ground pork sausage. So, to start our first test recipe, I decided to cook 1/2 cup of bulgur wheat and mix in a cup of black beans, which will give us enough of a base to stretch out through a couple of test sessions.

Every step in the process will eventually contribute to the final flavor. With this in mind, and because I’m not a fan of cooking grains in plain old water, I decided the wheat needed to be simmered *in* something. What might add an earthy, slightly bitter complexity to the grains? Vegetable broth would be too sweet, and not quite on the mark in the flavor category. How about…. coffee?

Sounds strange, right? But coffee has a nuttiness that I think just might work in the final product.  So, one cup of brewed coffee and 1/2 cup of bulgur wheat into the pot, boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes, and step one is complete. Upon tasting the cooked grain, I did think the coffee flavor was a bit too strong, but a quick rinse under cold water in a mesh strainer mellowed the excess flavor.

To the mixing bowl! I added the black beans (canned) and, since we don’t have a food processor, smushed them into the wheat with a potato masher.  Next, it was time for the Secret Ingredient:

"'Atsa good buttermilk!"

Although in the last post we thought we might try powdered milk as the binder, the store was out of it. They did, however, have this lovely canister of powdered *buttermilk*, featuring this handsome, red-cheeked chef of vaguely European mien. His charming smile all but called out to me in mock Italian: “Hey, you! Forget about powdered milk, try-a my powdered buttermilk, capice?” Why not give it a whirl? The sournesss of buttermilk might add something traditional vegetarian sausages miss, and anything with butter in the title can’t be that bad, right?

I added the buttermilk, measuring as I went, and it seemed to be working wonderfully. 1/4 cup did the trick. I then added a combination of other  ingredients to approximate that inimitable sausage archetype. Since this is a test recipe, I’m not going to provide their exact measurements here, but I will tell you that I used soy sauce, sage, thyme, nutmeg, pepper and salt. A quick taste let me know I was on the right track.

The Mix, Mixed

Flavor seemed right. Consistency seemed right. So, it was time to toss some of this stuff into the old frying pan and see who saluted.

By the way, I do mean OLD frying pan. Wondering why we’re trying to raise some seed money to get this project started? It’s to replace equipment like this:

Help me! HELLLLLPPP MEEEEE.....

Since our eventual goal is something that will be deep-fried, we need to know that a) it won’t cook too unevenly in oil; b) it’ll hold together if wrapped around an egg; and c) it will taste delicious. To that end, I decided to make a few patties out of half of the mixture and fry ‘em, leaving enough left over to muck with if the first batch didn’t work. I put about 1/4 cup of Canola oil* in the pan and turned that sucker up to 7.5 (out of 8). When it had a nice sizzle, I spooned in three patties of varying thicknesses and let ‘em have it!

I'm Vegetarian Sausage! SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS....

As the mixture started cooking, it really began to develop a distinctly delicious sausage-like smell, a perfume  you’d imagine wafting from the kitchen in a Southern grandma’s house at breakfast time.  True fact: when Emily came into the kitchen, I asked her whether she thought it smelled like pork sausage. Her reply? “That’s not real sausage?” I was on to something.

Then it happened. Before my eyes, the lovely little patties I’d created began to break down into crumblies. I tried to hold them together, to retain their shapes as I inserted the spatula under each one. They simply weren’t holding together. Part of the problem was the condition of our little frying pan, to which even the oiliest ingredients will stick like evil glue. However, I believe that what was happening was that the buttermilk was breaking down and absorbing the liquid as the sausage cooked, losing its consistency and causing the patties to crumble.

Still, holding together is one small part of what we’re looking for from our sausage. more importantly, how did it taste? After it had browned, quite nicely, I used a slotted spoon to remove the sausage to a plate, and called in Emily for a test:

There is no meat in this picture

It is delicious!

The flavor, the mouth-feel, the texture, are almost exactly identical to country-style pork sausage. The ingredients as used, in the proportion they were used, were nearly perfect. It was slightly salty, so I’ll need to cut down on that just a bit, but otherwise it tastes closer to real pork sausage than any store-bought substitute I’ve ever tried. I sincerely doubt that a meat-eater would even be able to notice the difference if unaware. We mixed the crumbles into a tomato sauce and served over butternut squash ravioli, and oh my goodness, you guys! This stuff is REALLY, REALLY GOOD.

Still, it’s not quite ready. It just needs one more something that will help it stay together as it cooked. What would that something be? Tune in shortly for the exciting conclusion and find out!

And don’t forget to visit our Kickstarter page and help support this lil’ project!

*It’s always tempting to use olive oil, but don’t forget that olive oil has a flavor. I don’t want that flavor in this dish, so to the Canola I went.

- Spaghetti Pie
- Oven-poached fish in olive oil
- Scotch Eggs (hardboiled eggs, wrapped in sausage and DEEP FRIED)
- Picadillo (a kind of Cuban chili)
- Redneck Sushi (involving bacon and asparagus)
- Chao Tom (Vietnamese Sugar Cane)
- and many more!

If, of course, we manage to raise the funding.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1787931793/meat-no-meat-a-cookbook-for-the-biculinary/widget/video.html

Visit our Kickstarter Page for more!

http://kck.st/tRD0k3

So, let’s think about sausage. The kind we use is country style, which I suppose we could categorize as “plain sausage”: think Jimmy Dean, breakfast patties, salty, juicy goodness.  (We don’t want anything too exotic at this point, since we’re just making the basic, so no chorizo (yet)). The best kind is, of course, fresh, purchased from a butcher shop or other purveyor of ground, spiced pork, especially since Jimmy Dean usually has copious amounts of MSG and nitrates, which many find categorically yucky. Typical sausage seasonings usually include sage, maybe some thyme, nutmeg, perhaps a couple of fennel seeds tossed in for good measure.

When we think about our vegetarian version of sausage, we want to compare it to the pork version. Pork sausage is slightly crumbly, moist, fatty, salty, juicy. It isn’t usually consistently textured; in with the ground meat we usually find little pockets of gristle and grease. This is a big difference between store-bought veggie sausage substitutes and the real thing. The kind we find in the store is often smooth and pasty.

For our version, we’ll need some kind of base. Since we want to come close to the texture of the real thing, we’d like to have at least two components to our base, a main ingredient and a secondary. We think crumbly, moist, so a grain of some kind– perhaps quinoa? It would do the trick, especially since once it’s cooked it can be mashed and has an interesting mouth feel. But alas, the store we visit is out of quinoa (only in Seattle) so we need some other possibility. Looking around, most of the other grains are too large to work. Amaranth is a possibility, but it’s kind of obscure, and would need to be ground further at home. We settle on cracked bulgur wheat, familiar to most people from tabouleh.

What about the second ingredient? We’ll want less of it, and it should be interestingly textured and readily mash-able. How about beans? Black beans have a nice, meaty flavor and would add some proteins to the mix, so we’ll go with a can of those.

Now we need something that, when mixed with liquid, will bind it all together.  The problem with many of the usual binding agents– flour, for instance, is that they have a bad habit of drying out whatever you’re trying to cook. Since Scotch Eggs are deep fried, this is an even greater concern; we don’t want our sausage substitute to turn the egg into a crispy asteroid with a sandy interior. We need something that will help retain moisture.

We also want to add some kind of fat to the mixture. This could be oil, but we are going to fry them in oil, so we run the risk of a final product that’s too oily. It could, theoretically, be butter. We can try these as possibilities, but let’s explore other options and think outside of the box a little bit. What kind of binder could both hold our veggie sausage together and add a little fattiness and sweetness to our sausage? How about powdered milk? It’s sometimes added to pork sausage for the exact same purpose, so let’s give it a whirl!

Now we’ve got the basics for our first test batch of veggie sausage: bulgur wheat, black beans, powdered milk. We’ll use water and a little soy sauce as our liquid, since soy salt adds a little saltiness. For seasoning, we’ll use sage, thyme, savory, nutmeg, salt and pepper– traditional sausage spices.  In the next installment, we’ll whip up our first test batch and see how it goes.

Continue to Part 2: The First Test Recipe

Alas, our kitchen equipment is sore lacking, so we are trying to raise $3,000 in seed money to help replace some old pots and pans, and to augment the food budget so we can perfect and refine the recipes. To that end, we’ve started a Kickstarter page where interested parties can back our project.

Help make our dream a reality– vegetarians and non-vegetarians can eat together at the same table at last!

On the left, collard greens made with salt pork. On the right, collard greens made with eggplant “salt pork.” Can you tell the difference?

Help support Meat/No Meat today!

NATHELESS, I’m reposting my traditional brined turkey recipe for those who are interested in a moist, flavorful, insanely delicious turkey (cooked whole, not chopped into bits prior):

If you’re interested in eating a succulent and mouth-wateringly flavorful turkey this Thanksgiving, you should really consider brining that sucker! It’s very easy, and the payoff is high-quality bird that’s absolutely shockingly delicious.

Here’s how it’s done.

You’ll need:

One (organic, cornfed, free-range, of course) turkey, NOT self-basting or Kosher
Water
A turkey-sized container of some kind
Salt, and lots of it
Boullion cubes
12 tea bags (preferrably yerba mate’, but any dark green tea will work)
Various spices and sundries
Lots of room in your fridge
A cup of butter
A cheesecloth or clean, disposable towel

1. Make sure your turkey is clean and completely thawed!

2. The night before you’re going to cook your turkey, place the bird in a massive container, big enough that the turkey can be completely covered by the brine.

3. Begin boiling your water in a stock-pot. You can also use a number of smaller pots if they’re all you have on-hand.

4. When the water reaches boiling point, turn off the heat and begin adding salt to the water. You’re going for a ratio of about 3/4 of a cup per gallon of water. If you’d like to check whether the water is salty enough, drop in a raw egg (in the shell). Does the egg float? If so, you have plenty of salt in your brine.

5. Add your boullion cubes, about two per gallon of water. Add your teabags. Add whatever other spices you’d like to seep into your turkey. I like some rosemary, some sage, some pepper. Add enough spices that the brine gives off a heavenly aroma.

6. Turn off the brine and (this is important) LET IT COOL DOWN! If you’re in a hurry, you can drop some ice-cubes into the brine, or put your stock-pot in a sink full of ice, or stick it in the fridge, but it’s best to just let it sit and cool off, which takes a while. It has to cool off because you don’t want to start pre-cooking the bird!

7. When the brine is cooled to room temperature, pour it over your turkey. Cover it completely.

8. Let it sit, in the fridge, for 8-12 hours (but not too much longer or it’ll get too salty).

9. When it’s done brining, remove the turkey and wash it off. Discard the brine.

10. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

11. Melt the butter on low, and soak the cheesecloth or towel in the butter.

12. Stick about six garlic cloves underneath the skin of the turkey. Place the bird on the roaster, and cover it with the butter-soaked towel. DO NOT STUFF YOUR TURKEY. Cooking your stuffing in the turkey causes problems. It makes the cooking time all wonky and you run the risk of cold stuffing in a hot bird, which is just gross.

13. When the oven reaches 450, put the bird in for a half-hour. After the half hour, take out the bird and cover it *LOOSELY* with a sheet of aluminium foil. Reduce the heat to 325, and place the bird back in the oven.

14. Baste your bird frequently. Once every half hour should do fine– don’t do it too much or you’ll interrupt the cooking process. This sounds pretty frequent, but if you remember to baste it eash time you go into the kitchen to refill your wine glass, you should be okay.

15. (Optional) If you would like to put a mild glaze on your turkey, here’s a neat one. Mix together about 1/2 cup of honey and 1/4 cup of tamarind syrup with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil. Coat the turkey in glaze about 45 minutes before it comes out the oven. Glazing isn’t imperative, but it can add some extra crispiness to the turkey skin.

16. If you have a meat thermometer, remove the bird when it reads about 180 degrees in the leg joint. It should take anywhere from 3-6 hours depending on how big your bird is. You can estimate an hour for every three pounds or so. Another way to check for done-ness is to stick a fork in the thickest part of the turkey. Are the juices clear? Then your turkey is done!

Enjoy your deliciously brined turkey, and impress your friends and family with your mad brining skills!

Boo to That

Thanksgiving is as much a food aesthetic as a holiday. A whole Turkey with all of the trimmings is an absolute requirement, otherwise you’re not celebrating Thanksgiving, you’re simply cooking food for people on a Thursday in November. By cutting your bird into parts, you’re butchering Thanksgiving’s semiotics. Would you cut your Christmas Tree into seperate branches and decorate them? Would you detach Baby Jesus’s head and limbs and pile them into a manger?

Seems as though most folks who recommend deconstructing the bird do so for one of two reasons (or both): it takes less time, and it cooks more evenly.

Regarding the amount of time it takes to cook a bird, if you’re that pressed for time on Thanksgiving, why cook something that takes a lot of time and attention in the first place? Most grocery stores these days sell perfectly reasonable and often tasty enough precooked turkeys that you can pick up the day before and toss into the oven on the day of. If you can’t commit, don’t cook the bird. No wonder you’ve been having such a bad time on Thanksgiving– you’re fretting over how long the turkey is taking, trying to pay attention to the friends/family you have over at the same time, trying to get outside to toss the old pigskin around, and it’s just not fun, and it’s ALL THE TURKEY’S FAULT.

If this is your thought process on Thanksgiving, you would enjoy it SO MUCH MORE if you just invested in having someone else cooking the bird for you. If, however, like me, you ENJOY the cooking aspect of Thanksgiving, EMBRACE the fact that cooking takes time and effort, you have to EMBRACE the amount of time it takes to cook the bird, and plan around it. Yes, you’ll need to baste once every so often (“self-basting turkeys” are also for the culinarily challenged), but when you bring out that bird after having devoted hours (sometimes days) to the preparation, IT’S ALL WORTH IT. People, if you like cooking and are not a professional cook, Thanksgiving should be your favorite holiday of all.

Regarding the issue of whether or not each part of the bird cooks through, WHAT KIND OF A THANKSGIVING COOK ARE YOU that you’ve been serving undercooked bird even this long and it’s now a concern so you have to chop it up? People, the first rule of cooking poultry should always be NEVER LET UNDERCOOKED BIRD LEAVE YOUR KITCHEN. If you don’t know how to cook poultry whole, and you’re worried that some of the bird may be undercooked, either Learn How to Cook A Whole Bird Completely, or buy it from somebody else. At least with the second option, if your guests get salmonella, you can sue the grocery store. Don’t, however, take the lazy and unaesthetic way out and chop your bird into bits prior to cooking.

Look, if you’re cutting your turkey into parts prior to cooking, you may as well serve the bird in a five gallon plastic bin and dump it onto a trash bag in the middle of the table. You’re saying, “I don’t care enough about the aesthetic of Thanksgiving to learn how to properly cook a whole bird.” You’re saying, “here is some meat.” You’re not honoring the bird or your guests or the Thanksgiving tradition.

“Well, smart guy,” you’re likely saying at this point, “if you’re so insistent that a chopped-up Turkey on Thanksgiving is heretical, why not put your money where your mouth is? Tell us how *you* propose to cook a whole turkey and have every part not only cooked through, but cooked deliciously.”

To which I reply, Okay, but not in this post. You’ll have to check back later for all of my secrets.

Spoon What Thou Wilt....

Rather than repost the PDF, I think it’s worthwhile to transcribe it, because of what I find the most intriguing aspect of the recipe. Prior to Fanny Farmer’s standardization of the recipe format, instructions for the cook could come in any variety of forms, from the vague and measurement-less paragraphs of the Roman Apicius (“Put pieces of kid or lamb in the stew pot with chopped onion and coriander. Crush pepper, lovage, cumin, and cook with broth oil and wine. Put in a dish and tie with roux”), to the verbosity of the medieval A Book of Cookrye, the enterprising home cook could count on very little other than (maybe) a list of ingredients and (perhaps) the order in which they were to be cooked. In other words, prior to using many of these recipes, the curious cook had to know… er… how to cook.

Although precision and measurement had already begun to sneak into many texts prior to its 1896 publication, Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book changed all of that. Although still not quite in the format familiar to most modern recipe readers (list of ingredients, step-by-step instructions), the Boston gave background information about each main ingredient, including its “composition,” and included fairly standard measurements within the text of each recipe:

Select potatoes of uniform size. Wash, pare, and drop at once in cold water to prevent discoloration; soak one-half hour in the fall, and one to two hours in winter and spring. Cook in boiling salted water until soft, which is easily determined by piercing with a skewer. For seven potatoes allow one tablespoon salt, and boiling water to cover. Drain from water, and keep uncovered in warm place until serving time. Avoid sending to table in a covered vegetable dish. In boiling large potatoes, it often happens that outside is soft, while centre is underdone. To finish cooking without potatoes breaking apart, add one pint cold water, which drives heat to centre, thus accomplishing the cooking.

This is an obvious improvement, for obvious reasons. When we look at Crowley’s recipe (or the recipe from Apicius above, for example), we find that Farmer’s is clearest, likely easiest to use for the home cook, and certainly most reproducible. Applying what was generally considered a “scientific approach” to recipes was essentially a revelation (measurements, wow!).

Still, and this is the point I’ve been trying to get to, I personally tend to think that what we gained in accuracy via the standardization of recipes, we may have lost in creative narrative value. Crowley’s recipe is a perfect example, so here it is, in full:

RIZ ALEISTER CROWLEY

(to be eaten with curry)

Use pilaff rice (best 5-7 years old).

A.

Throw into quite boiling water, with a little salt in it. Stir with wooden spoon or fork.

After 8 minutes test it by taking a grain, and pressing between finger and thumb. It must be easily crushed, but not sodden or sloppy. Test again, if not right, every two minutes.

When quite right, pour a lot of very cold water into the saucepan.

Empty the rice into a cullender [sic], and wash well under cold tap.

Put cullender on a rack above the flames (gas) and let it dry.

Stir continuously with a fork, using a lifting motion, never pressing down. During this process remove carefully any black specks or hard discoloured grains.

Shake the cullender every minute or so until the rice moves freely, almost as if it had not been cooked at all.

Empty cullender into saucepan B. (see next page).

Stir until all is uniform, a clear golden colour, with the green pistachio nuts making it a Poem of Spring.

B.

Take Sultanas
Jordan Almonds
Pistachio Nuts
Cloves
Cardamoms (very few)
Turmeric powder (enough to colour the rice to a clear golden tint).

Stir all well together, in an ample amount of butter, in a large saucepan, and warm gently.

Keep warm until the rice is ready to add.

ALEISTER CROWLEY

I don’t doubt that this rice “pilaff” dish is likely quite tasty, though your average beginning modern home cook would be hard-pressed to sort through the dish exactly as Crowley describes (for one thing, he or she would have to figure out that “Sultanas” are white grapes, or the raisins thereof). That said, what interests me the most is the line, “Stir until all is uniform, a clear golden colour, with the green pistachio nuts making it a Poem of Spring.” Reading through the recipe, it really smacks into you– a nice surprise indeed (if a bit heavy-handed from the standpoint of poetry).

Although one can certainly appreciate the accuracy of a Farmer, it’s rather pleasant to come across a little creative narrative in an otherwise mundane instruction. I rather think it’s missing from a lot of modern food instruction. We who cook know from experience that there’s more to sweating onions than, “heat to medium low, add the onions, stir occasionally until droplets begin to form.” Why not, “stir occasionally until the onion cries fragrant tears, becomes the softness that lives beneath its pale skin”? Okay, not my best work, but you get the idea.

Obviously, not every writer of recipes is interested in creative writing, which is fine, but I think it would be nifty if we started playing a little more, making recipes more descriptive, more creative, more interesting to read. Of course, I’m whole-footedly in the “cooking is art” camp, so I’m biased. The “cooking is skill” crowd can soundly argue for the reliability of standardization. But surely we can maintain accuracy while acknowledging the music of the recipe, or at least toss in the sometime surprise, like Crowley’s “Poem of Spring.”

First thing’s first, grate your wedge of delightful, high quality parm, and mix in about a tablespoon of crushed black pepper.

Bowl o' cheese, about 1.5 cups after grating

One of these

Shiny!

...like so.

Now comes the tricky part: put your bowl mold into the center of the pancake, and flip the whole thing over. The cheese should drape over the bowl, remaining after you’ve removed the crepe pan. You may need to shape it manually a little, but as long as the basic shape is there, you’re golden.

Next, put your cheese-covered bowl mold into the fridge, and leave it for at least an hour. If all worked well, after the hour is up, you can remove the mold, and you’ll have a really nifty, quite impressive bowl made of cheese!

How frickin' cool is that?

Deeeelicious

This would also be an excellent— and impressive– way to serve salad at your next function.

Make some parmesan cheese bowls today!

Here’s a fantastic article from the Guardian (from 2005) all about the substance and whether or not it’s yuck:

When you next grate parmesan cheese onto some dull spaghetti, what you will have done in essence is add a shed-load of glutamate to stimulate your tongue’s umami receptors, thus sending a message to the brain which signals (as one neuro-researcher puts it) ‘Joy and happiness!’ Supper is rescued – and your system has added some protein and fats to a meal that was all carbohydrate.

Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, as are tomatoes. Parmesan, with 1200mg per 100 grams, is the substance with more free glutamate in it than any other natural foodstuff on the planet. Almost all foods have some naturally occurring glutamate in them but the ones with most are obvious: ripe tomatoes, cured meats, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, Bovril and of course Worcester sauce, nam pla (with 950mg per 100g) and the other fermented fish sauces of Asia….

It’s not surprising that the MSG-makers are so busy on their product’s image, because MSG-phobia still shows no signs of subsiding. This despite the fact that every concerned public body that ever investigated it has given it a clean bill of health, including the EU, the United Nations food agencies (which in 1988 put MSG on the list of ‘safest food additives’), and the British, Japanese and Australian governments.

In fact, every government across the world that has a food licensing and testing system gives MSG – ‘at normal levels in the diet’ – the thumbs-up. The US Food and Drug Administration has three times, in 1958, 1991 and 1998, reviewed the evidence, tested the chemical and pronounced it ‘genuinely recognised as safe.

Of particular interest is the chart at the end, which I’ll duplicate here in full because it’s worth checking out. It’s a list of ingredients found in many processed foods that are actually MSG in disguise:

So you think you don’t eat MSG? Think again…

Some of the names MSG goes under

monopotassium glutamate
glutavene
glutacyl
glutamic acid
autolyzed yeast extract
calcium caseinate
sodium caseinate
E621 (E620-625 are all glutamates)
Ajinomoto, Ac’cent
Gourmet Powder

The following may also contain MSG natural flavours or seasonings
natural beef or chicken flavouring
hydrolyzed milk or plant protein
textured protein
seasonings
soy sauce
bouillon
broth
spices

Free glutamate content of foods (mg per 100g) roquefort cheese 1280
parmesan cheese 1200
soy sauce 1090
walnuts 658
fresh tomato juice 260
grape juice 258
peas 200
mushrooms 180
broccoli 176
tomatoes 140
mushrooms 140
oysters 137
corn 130
potatoes 102
chicken 44
mackerel 36
beef 33
eggs 23
human milk 22

Me, I’m on the fence. I can’t imagine ever buying any for use in the kitchen, but since I don’t tend to get the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” the question is more academic.

That said, I do keep a package of kombu on hand in the kitchen. I add a piece to rice while it’s cooking, or to any ‘one-pot’ stew or simmer, and the difference is notable. What’s really easy and fun is to make a kombu dashi (broth), which can be used as a base for miso soup, added to savory dishes that require liquid or deglazing, mixed in with rice, or used instead of water to steam vegetables.

Yum Kombu Awesome

(Great Kombu Photo by “Kok Robin,” found at http://www.aziatische-ingredienten.nl/kombu/
Check out the rest of the site, too, which has some excellent information on Asian Ingredients!)

This version is quick and dirty, and largely improvised. It’s a little different than the usual kombu/fish-flake I’ve provided veggie and non- variations. Enjoy!

Kombu Dashi

2 large pieces of kombu (let’s say 3-4 inches)
4 cups water
1/3 cup Mirin (a Japanese cooking wine)
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 Tbsp bonito flakes OR 1/4 cup chopped dried and reconstituted shiitake mushrooms for a veggie version (or both, if you’re inclined to a stronger flavor)

Soak the kombu in the water for 30 minutes. Add the Mirin and the vinegar, and turn the heat up to medium high, but keep an eye on it. Right before the water starts to boil, turn off the heat and remove the kombu. Add the bonito flakes/shiitakes and simmer for an additional 10 minutes (or to taste). Strain the liquid, and you’re golden.

Eat some Glutamate today!

My favorite market in the greater Seattle area is the 99 Ranch store at the (I did not make this up) “Great Wall Shopping Mall” in Kent. From their delightfully earnest website:

For thousands of years, the Great Wall of China was known to have been created to fend off the nomads and barbarians of Outer Mongolia. Today, we find the Great Wall Shopping Mall as a relic of not defense, but of gathering.

Awesome.

Anyhow, the 99 Ranch Store is the normal person’s version of awesome-but-touristy-and-crowded Seattle institution Uwajimaya. 99 Ranch is to Uwajimaya as, oh, let’s say Katz’s is to the Stage. They’re both terrific, but I think part of the appeal of 99 Ranch (other than the notable absence of wealthy middle class food snobs) is that it’s part of a chain, as opposed to a ‘specialty megastore’ like Uwajimaya.

Right. Well. Back to the title of the post. One of the nicer things about the 99 Ranch is its exceptional seafood section, far more varied and interesting than the same at similar markets. Although they have the usual selection of in-season fishies in tanks and a veritable tidal pool’s worth of shellfish and urchins, they also often feature nifty delicacies in fresh form that aren’t often found at your neighborhood fishmonger’s. The other day they were stocked to the gills (ha ha ha!) with freshwater eel, whole or pre-sectioned (recipe forthcoming in a future post). They also had skate wings the size of skateboards which I’m dyin’ to try on the grill sometime soon.

On our most recent foray, whilst perusing the pre-wrapped seafood section for cheaper fishy delights, I spied a fairly inexpensive but delightful looking package of bone-in catfish steaks (cut wide, perpendicular to the spine, instead of long like a fillet). Now, as a native of the American South, I loves me some catfish, but where I’m from it only comes in two forms: deep fried fillet in flour batter, or deep fried fillet in cornmeal batter. So, curious as to how it might taste unbattered but grilled, I adopted the package and brought it home.

I knew it was a gamble, based on the fact that these suckers can get pretty bony, but it looked so nice and didn’t have any noticable fishiness in the market– it was very obviously relatively fresh, as far as these things go. Alas, can anyone guess what happened when I opened the package? Yep, it was the dreaded catfish muddiness.

It Smelled Like This

Into On Food and Cooking, where we find the following:

[Muddiness is] most often encountered in bottom-feeding fish, especially catfish and carp that are raised in ponds dug directly in the earth. The chemical culprits are two compounds that are produced by blue-green algae, especially in warm weather (geosmin and methylisoborneol). These chemicals appear to concentrate in the skin and the dark muscle tissue, which can be cut away to make the fish more palatable. Geosmin breaks down in acid conditions, so there is a good chemical reason for traditional recipes that include vinegar and other acidic ingredients.

A-ha! So, get rid of the skin and bathe in acid. Right. So, I took two of the eight smallish steaks, trimmed and chucked the skin, and sat them in a bath of lime juice and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos for a couple of hours. No luck!

This had me stumped, since I still wanted to use the fish, but if an acid bath didn’t kill the muddiness, what could I do? Finally I hit upon an answer: instead of getting rid of the muddiness, why not try to incorporate it into something as a flavor?

I asked myself, what tastes good when it tastes a little like dirt? I guess maybe some kind of earthy salad would work, with a strong acidic component to cut into the muddiness even more. What if I did a faux-tuna salad, with the catfish and a nice bunch of wild sorrel I’d picked up at the Farmer’s Market for acidity and a mayo dressing? That should be pretty good, and easy, and tasty if it’s done right.

OK, so, let’s start by getting rid of as much ‘eau du peat bog’ as we can by covering the fillets in oil and baking them at 250 degrees for a couple of hours. When that’s done, we’ll change the oil and crank it up to 400 for an hour or so, so the flesh falls nicely from the spine. When the fish is well-cooked but not dry, we’ll shred it up, add the chopped sorrel, some chili oil, some mayo, black pepper and Sriracha to taste, mix well and stick it in the fridge overnight and voila!

The final product? The muddiness is still there, but definitely more of a component of flavor and less a deterrent. It’s good! The sorrel (stems and all) is like the more traditional dill pickle in flavor, and the more traditional celery in texture. Its tanginess mixes well with the flavor of the fish, making it more like earth and less like the bottom of a slough. The catfish is moist and flaky, and holds together in just the right way– it tastes and feels like a decent whitefish. Not miraculous by any stretch of the imagination, but passable for a week’s worth of lunches.

So, on Monday, I sit down to eat it for lunch, spread on Wasa bread, and find that, although fairly tasty, it’s FILLED WITH TINY PIN-BONES! Now while I eat lunch this week I have to spend half the time pulling little bones out of my mouth. Catfish, you have defeated me. You, catfish, win.

*Sigh.*

In conclusion, Just Throw The Damn Fish Away Next Time!