bahaha

Fish tacos, I thought, when I put this Lent plan together.  I'll figure out how to make fish tacos.

See, fish tacos are totally outside the Mexican cuisine I'm familiar with.  A fairly recent product of Baja California cuisine, they've been popular in San Diego since the 80s, but Bajan cuisine is as distinct as, say, Oaxacan, and hasn't spread through the US nearly as much as other regional Mexican cuisines have.  So I know of them, but I'd never had one -- I don't think I've even seen a classic Baja-style fish taco on a menu.

But the idea is pretty simple.  You fry some firm white fish -- I used cod -- and wrap it in a tortilla with several sauces.  Cabbage is a traditional topping -- I used sunflower greens instead because I happened to have some, and they're very good but haven't got a long shelf life.

The sauces: sriracha; spicy avocado sauce (avocado, lime juice, Tabasco pepper; more lime juice than guacamole, and thinner/tangier); mayonesa sauce (half mayo, half yogurt, with lime juice, green onion, and dill pollen).

eyes say yes

Goat butter, on the left there, makes the best damn garlic bread I've had.

Butter's always been an interesting thing to think about.  You probably know you can make your own butter at home -- there have been enough Sunday supplement articles on it at this point.  Put cream in mixer or blend with immersion blender, mix and mix and mix, and boom, it's butter.  Culture it overnight -- adding a little buttermilk to the cream -- for better flavor.  It's a good thing to do, but the truth is that you're severely limited in the quality of your final product, because chances are you don't have access to really good cream -- you have, instead, ultrapasteurized cream from God knows where.  You're not likely to save money, either, given the cost of cream.  There are times when it makes a LOT of sense to make your own butter, though, even given those limitations -- you'll see what I mean when I get my hands on some tapioca maltodextrin.

Do you see how the cow's butter on the right is so yellow compared to the whiteness of the goat butter?  That's from beta carotene, same as in carrots.  With cow's butter, the more green stuff they eat -- the more they graze on grass instead of feed -- the yellower the butter, so this butter (Kate's Homemade, out of Maine) is yellower than your typical national brand to begin with.  Back in your grandmother's day, she used to mix powdered food dye into the oleomargarine ration to make it yellow instead of Crisco-white, before people got used to the Crayola jaundice of Country Crock, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, etc.  (World War II and the postwar strength of industrial lobbyists are responsible for the popularity of margarine; prior to that, margarine had at various times been subject to "margarine tax," and even to a requirement to dye it pink in order to make it less appealing, measures enacted at the behest of dairy lobbyists.  It remains illegal to sell margarine in retail packages over a pound, a butter-protection law no one got round to getting rid of.)  I don't know if goat butter is always so white, or what -- this is my first experience with it.

Butter's actually very low in lactose (milk sugar), which is a good test for whether you're lactose-intolerant or have an allergy to or intolerance of milk proteins. 

Unlike other fats, butter's an emulsion of 80-90% fat with water and dairy proteins.  Large-scale manufactured butter like your major supermarket brands -- Land O'Lakes and what have you -- is standardized at about 80% fat.  That's true in both the US and Europe now, though European brands imported to the US, as well as most butters labeled "European-style" tend to be a couple points higher in fat.  It would be possible to manufacture butter with even less fat, but 80% is the legal minimum.  You'd be surprised how noticeable the difference is between an 80% fat and 82% fat butter -- the mouthfeel is definitely affected.  But because commercially sold butter must have at least 16% water -- a requirement intended to limit additives and filler -- the variety of butter available is fairly constrained, and you shouldn't pay through the nose for butter.  You hit the quality ceiling pretty quickly, unless you have access to a local dairy for which making butter is more than an afterthought.

But this goat butter, this is something I've always wanted to try.  The goatiness is noticeable, but not overwhelming -- it's subtler than in fresh goat's milk cheeses, for instance, but because butter flavors are themselves so subtle, it's still definitely there.  It's also a creamier butter, just about spreadable straight out of the fridge.  

The garlic bread is amazing.  I mean, that was lunch -- garlic bread, just chopped garlic cooked briefly in goat butter, spread in a baguette, and popped in the oven for a few minutes.  The question is, what else should I do to explore this butter?  The five things that come immediately to mind, examples of butter-forward cooking:

1: Toffees or caramels.  But I mean, I still have a tub of goat's milk caramel in the fridge.

2: Buffalo wing sauce.  In fact, I should probably freeze a portion of this butter for afterlent, because I have a Hot Wings post planned for sometime after the Pizza Post, and now it seems like it would be incomplete without an investigation of the effect of goat butter on Buffalo wings.

3: Brown butter.  One of the secret heroes of the kitchen, brown butter is just butter heated until the dairy solids brown.  Think of the difference between regular butter and brown butter as the difference between a slice of bread and a slice of toast. Not just because it's a handy example, but because it's the same freaking difference -- Maillard reactions between amino acids and sugars occur at high temperatures and create new flavor compounds.

4: Butter-mounted sauces.  You can whisk cold butter into a sauce to help thicken it, which I do with a lot of sauces for fish.  And it is Lent, after all.  The most basic example of this is beurre blanc -- reduce a little vinegar or white wine, remove it from the heat, whisk cold butter into it until you have a thick rich sauce.  Commander's Palace does this with Crystal hot sauce.

5: Tomato sauce.  If you read other blogs, you probably caught on at some point that tomato puree + butter makes a much better pasta sauce than you'd expect -- this is one of those things that rippled through the hallways like no-knead bread and toffee bacon.

See, this is why I bought two packages of butter.

stocking my bar

I can't tell you how to stock your bar. Ideally, really, the process of learning how to drink and to make your own drinks would start you off with a certain array of bottles and end with you going into the store and restocking along completely different lines, lines tailored to your tastes.

Maybe you love tiki drinks, for instance. Though tiki attracts collectors of elaborate drinking vessels and complicated garnishes and whatnot, the essence of tiki is the blending of fresh juice and flavored syrup with multiple rums. While that may sound simple -- while at first glance it may even sound dangerously close to the appletini/sour-mix culture we 21st century cocktail enthusiasts are trying to push away from -- the key is the multiple rums, as many as five different rums in a drink. Now, me, I very rarely make any tiki drinks at home -- because that $100+ buy-in just to have enough different rums on hand feels better spent on three liqueurs and a great sipping whiskey, or absinthe and three different bitters, or ... you see what I mean. It's a hefty layout, and my drinking interests go in another direction. I go for variety and flexibility, which oddly means avoiding the tiki option -- because it frees my budget up in so many other directions.

But I also never buy brandy. I'll order a sidecar sometimes in a bar, but for whatever reason, brandy drinks don't interest me much. This is a little odd given that, before becoming a fan of cocktails, I'd drunk gallons and gallons of Remy Martin in my life. But so it goes: I have come to realize I don't have much interest in brandy drinks, and so I don't stock brandy.

The base liquor I am second-least likely to have on hand is tequila, and this is pure economics. A tequila of quality X costs price Y*1.5 to Y*2, where Y is the price of a non-tequila base liquor of quality X. For the cost of a bottle of Patron, I can buy a bottle of Plymouth gin and a bottle of Bulleit bourbon. So, again -- it's hard to justify that tequila, harder still to explore different brands. Sometimes in the summer when I either anticipate making a lot of margaritas, or plan to infuse a tequila with something, I'll buy a bottle of Sauza Hornitos, which is fairly cheap and certainly as cheap as your tequila purchasing should ever go.

It's a shame how much of the liquor market is impacted, defined, by labeling laws. I suspect there would be a strong market for American-made agave distillates from craft distillers.

So. Let's start with ... 10 bottles. A 10 bottle bar. For me, that would be:

Bourbon. Probably Bulleit, which has a strong enough rye character to split the difference between bourbon and rye, and therefore works well in a Sazerac.

Gin. Usually Plymouth, Bombay, or Citadelle.  I don't drink martinis unless I'm out.

Rum. I'm not faithful to any specific brand of rum. I tend to go for aged rums over clear rums. Prichard's is one of my favorites, especially for sipping, and Clement is very good. Pampero Aniversario, an aged rum from Venezuela, is the rum I buy the most often. The rums I currently have stocked are Prichard's, St Lucia Distillers Chairman's Reserve, and my kola-infused rum.

Genever. The only brand I've had is Boomsma's oude genever, but I can't imagine not having it or another genever in my bar now.

Luxardo Maraschino. There is really no substitute, brand-wise.

Aperol. Yes, I'm picking Aperol over Campari -- even though I can buy Campari locally but have to mail-order Aperol. The reason is pretty simple -- although Aperol works in every Campari drink (which is not to say it's always an improvement, but an Aperol Negroni, for instance, is a perfectly good drink), Campari doesn't really work in Aperol drinks like the Shaddock or the 2 to 2. Aperol is fantastic in combination with genever, for instance, leaving visible malty notes that Campari would overwhelm.  So picking Aperol here simply gives me more options.

Punt e Mes. My vermouth of choice, though I know it barely counts as a vermouth.

Absinthe. There are only a handful of absinthe drinks that I drink with any regularity, but a bar in which I cannot make a Sazerac is no bar at all.

Angostura bitters. The best go-to bitters, though Fee's whiskey-barrel-aged -- which is actually what I have in stock right now -- are a good substitute.

Peychaud's bitters. Less versatile than Angostura, but necessary to make a Sazerac, and good in Trinidad Sour type drinks.

Highlights of drinks you can make with this bar: Old-Fashioneds or Sours with four different base liquors, Sazerac, Punt e Mes Bulleit Manhattan, Aviation, Daiquiri, Aperol Negroni and Boulevardier, modified Shaddock (normally equal parts genever, Aperol, St Germain, and lemon, you would need to double the Aperol or sub Maraschino for the St Germain), various drinks made on the Trinidad Sour template, 2 to 2 (1.5 oz Aperol, 1 oz absinthe, 1 oz lemon, 1/4 oz simple, bitters). (While we're modifying the Shaddock, I actually usually make it with 2 parts genever, 1 part each of the other elements, so our 10-bottle Modified Shaddock would be 1 oz genever, 1 oz Aperol, 1/2 oz lemon juice, which I suspect is a terrific drink.)

A 20-bottle bar? Add these:

Rye whiskey. I know it's heresy to put it in the 20 instead of the 10, but I haven't got many rye whiskey options: Old Overholt and Jim Beam year round, and a few at the $50 price point at Christmas. Now, the Papa Saz currently in my bar is probably the best-tasting liquor I own, but I couldn't afford to make it a mixing staple, nor do I have year-round access to it anyway.

Tequila. It's not that tequila is a bad base liquor in the slightest, of course. It's kicked down to the 20 for the economic reasons I already mentioned.

Corn whiskey. The reason I don't have this in the 10 is because I had to include both absinthe and Peychaud's bitters for the sake of Sazeracs. I'm a proponent of unaged corn whiskey and its cocktail possibilities, and am working on a post about exactly that.

JDT. My own thing, Jack Daniels infused with Luzianne black tea. The JD is so mild and mellow that it gives you a good space in which to put those tannins. I nearly put this in the ten but couldn't find anything to take out.

Clear Creek douglas fir eau de vie. There's just nothing else like this, and yet when it works in a cocktail, it really works -- and the taste straight is amazing.

Ransom Old Tom gin. Post forthcoming about Ransom, which is a midway point between genevers like Boomsma and light London-style Old Toms like Haymans.

Campari. So weird to have that on this list instead of the other. Of course, I say that about almost everything on this list, don't I? Campari is the best of the amaros, even if you don't consider it an amaro. Like gin and tequila, it is also an exceptional shot to add to potable citrus juice -- orange, grapefruit, tangerine, etc -- and is useful in fruit gelatin preparations or maceration.

Green Chartreuse. I really only use this for The Last Word, but that's a cocktail you can make a million different ways.

St Germain elderflower liqueur. Bartender's ketchup, useful as the sweet element in anything built on a Last Word or Aviation template -- less assertive than maraschino or creme de violette, it blends with basically anything. (Though I find this is also true of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur.)

Cynar. Cynar has a terrific affinity for both huckleberries and muskmelons, so in the summer I go through a lot of this mixed with gin and those juices.

The list of drinks made available by the 20-bottle bar is extensive and I'm nowhere near finished exploring it myself (I would guess I have about a 30-bottle bar myself, though it gets complicated when you figure in the various infusions -- huckleberry gin, coffee-cherry-orange liqueur, kola rum, white cassis, etc etc). But here's one:

2 oz Aperol
1 oz JDT
1 oz lemon juice

The JDT is easy to make: pour half a bottle of Jack Daniels over a family-size Luzianne teabag and keep an eye on it for the afternoon. You want it to be noticeably tannic. You're basically making sun tea with whiskey instead of water. The Aperol really plays well with those tannins, and makes this drink surprisingly similar to a lemonade iced tea/Arnold Palmer/half and half.

whiteboard

The camera's acting up again, it took me way too many tries to get this not very good shot of the Lent whiteboard.

the sour and the sweet

I'm gonna need some new vinegar, I thought to myself, when the Lent plan came together.

See, I figure a lot of salads are in my future.  I am fairly simple about my salads -- lettuce, cucumber, sometimes radish, and dressing.  But I don't like much dressing on my salads, so it makes sense to make some more interesting vinaigrettes available.  And that got me thinking about vinegar.

What vinegar is, and you may not have thought about this much before, is a sour liquid produced when low-alcohol liquids have been exposed to acetobacter -- a commonplace bacteria, which, like those responsible for sourdough and pickles and wild beer, is floating in the air all around you right now.  Acetobacter eats ethanol and turns it into acetic acid, the acid that gives vinegar its tartness (it's good to be aware of different acids -- malic acid in apples, citric acid in oh-you-guess-what, and so on, because "acidity" comes in many flavors).

So vinegar tends to come in types based on low-alcohol starters -- malt vinegar (unhopped beer, generally), wine vinegar, cider vinegar.  You can make any of these at home -- simply by leaving the solution uncovered (diluted to 5-8% alcohol if necessary) and hoping some of the acetobacter land, or by adding some "mother of vinegar," which is a bacterial culture made up of acetobacter and cellulose, which will occur naturally in any vinegar and remain there if it isn't pasteurized.  The most foolproof way to make vinegar at home seems to be to pick up a bottle of unpasteurized vinegar -- Bragg's apple cider vinegar is the most common brand in the US, and is often in the health food aisle -- and add a few spoonfuls of that to whatever it is you're turning into vinegar.  I have a highly hopped beer vinegar zooming along on my kitchen counter right now, made with a bottle of Dixie Blackened Voodoo, a bottle of Hop Wallop, and a bottle of Sam Adams Imperial Pilsner.  

The cider vinegar in the photo there is from Pierre Gingras, in Quebec.  Like Bragg's, it's unpasteurized.  Like most good cider, it's made from a blend of different apples (four in this case), but unlike most cider vinegars, it's aged for a minimum of two years in oak, which both develops the flavor (cf. bourbon) and apparently has some health benefits.  Pierre Gingras is big on emphasizing the health benefits of its products.

This is a good vinegar.  And incidentally, I should mention that I got it from Zingermans, and that when the first bottle arrived leaking from being banged up in transit, customer service had a replacement to me within a few days.

The other vinegars, though?  Now these are wild.  Gegenbauer, an Austrian company, makes vinegars unlike anyone else's.  Usually when you say "raspberry vinegar," for instance, it's one of two things: (grape) wine vinegar to which sugar and raspberry flavoring have been added (such as in a lot of supermarket vinegars); or (grape) wine vinegar in which raspberries have rested for a while, contributing juice and color and flavor (such as in a lot of gourmet vinegars).

Gegenbauer's raspberry vinegar is made by fermenting the raspberries into a wine, and then fermenting the wine into vinegar.  That's it.  Those are the ingredients: raspberries, acetobacter, and time.  No grapes.

This is more resource-intensive, and the vinegars aren't cheap.  But you get a type of flavor you simply can't produce any other way.  Some day I'll try their quince vinegar, for instance, which I'm damn curious about, but for now I thought vegetable vinegars would be more practical.  The tomato is very sharp-tasting, golden colored, sort of fresh-tomato-juice-tasting.  I'm looking forward to trying it with some fresh tomatoes in ... five or six long months.

The red pepper is a revelation.  It's very sweet, surprisingly fresh tasting, and the acidity combined with the flavor of paprika pepper gives you a little illusion of spiciness without the burn.  It's very cool.

A vinaigrette's real simple.  Oil and vinegar.  Combine in proportions to taste, stir to combine.  A little mustard helps them stay emulsified.  A little salt helps bring out flavor.  Additions like herbs, spices, or chopped vegetables add other flavors.  

Either of the Gegenbauer vinegars -- maybe in combination -- seem to me like they'll make a good Catalina dressing, with the addition of oil and tomato puree and onion, which is another reason I went with them.  So far, though, I've been perfectly happy just combining them with oil and one or two spices -- like sumac and (the smallest shake of) cinnamon with pistachio oil, for a sort of faux-Persian vinaigrette.

carnival

So like I said, I'm giving up meat for Lent.  Here's how that breaks down:

Duration: Ash Wednesday to Easter.  February 17 to April 4.

Exceptions: Sundays and St Patricks Day. The traditional Lenten fast applies to meat and poultry, but not fish.  It was often extended to eggs and dairy, but not always, and I'm allowing them. 

Those are the Catholic rules.  My addition: no fake food.  Tofu is fine, for instance -- tofu isn't imitation something-else, it's real tofu.  But no textured vegetable protein, no quorn, no tofu dogs, no meatless hamburgers, no imitation chicken.  That's all nonsense.  I have a blog to run here.  I'm not going to stock up on horseshit junk food and all that college kid crap.

This isn't some sophomore fling with vegetarianism, after all.  This is about Lent.  I've been neglecting both seafood and vegetables since moving to New England, because my options are so much poorer in both departments than they'd been in the past, but committing to do this will force me to explore what options I do have, and come to terms with them.  There's nothing wrong with meat ... but sometimes it's too easy.  Sometimes "sear this, with a side of sauteed that, and some sauce of the other" is a little lazy.  There's nothing wrong with good beans.  You don't have to put a sausage next to them or mix them in with ground beef.

So.  Coming up in the next seven weeks: Pistachio and camelina oil.  Vinegars: red pepper and tomato from Gegenbauer, unfiltered aged cider vinegar from Pierre Gingras, beer vinegar from my own kitchen.  Minestrone.  Gumbo z'herbes.  The underappreciated carrot and radish greens.  Eggs.  Cheese.  Pasta.  Peanuts.  Platonic fish.  Courtbouillon.  Fish tacos.  Patatas bravas.  Three- or four-bean chili.  Lampascioni.  Clams.  Erstahs.  Maybe a lobstah roll.  Who knows what else.  I've got notions.  There's plenty to talk about.  We'll be back to pork belly and burgers later on down the way.

there's this girl that's been on my mind

It seems possible that I was the only person to start the day with yogurt and sudachi for breakfast. Despite the 20 or more different kinds of homemade marmalade in the house, that's the admittedly unexciting task to which I tend to assign them.

The sudachi is a Japanese citrus fruit which is likely a hybrid of the mandarin and the papeda subgenus, making it a relative of the yuzu and the kaffir lime. It's fairly lime-like, the flavor of the juice sharper and less complex (or "more focused" if you like) than that of the yuzu, the rind less perfumed than the kaffir.

You can occasionally find bottles of sudachi juice.  You may be able to find the fresh fruit at the farmers' markets of citrus-growing parts of the country, or stores with an especially good selection of Japanese produce.  I bought mine from the White Dove Passion Fruit Farm, so they weren't cheap thanks to the shipping -- but on the other hand, they came out to about a dollar each, and even navel oranges cost nearly that much at my supermarket.  You know how I am: I hadn't had them before, so didn't really have a choice.

I have a mental list of things to try, with any citrus I pick up that you can't just eat.  I mean, there are a million things you can do with citrus, but if you're trying something new, you want to try it in something where it's the most prominent flavor.

Things to do with citrus that's too sour to eat out of hand:

Cocktails: Aviation, Whiskey Sour, Margarita

"Lemon" bars

"Key lime" pie

Shaker "lemon" pie (if you think the rind is palatable enough)

Curd

Liqueur: straight (vodka + peel), sweetened (vodka + peel + sugar), bitters (vodka + peel + botanicals + bittering agent such as gentian, cinchona, grapefruit pith, etc), infused spirit (Seville orange + gin is traditional)

Candied

Marmalade

Flavored sugar (zest + sugar + time)

"Lemon"ade, lemonade iced tea

Salad dressing

Mojo criollo (juice + olive oil + garlic + Cuban oregano, use as dip for fried yuca, fish, etc)

I also tend to dry a lot of the zest, and freeze a lot of the juice.

With the sudachi, I made a sudachi cream pie, two flavored sugars (one with yuzu and sudachi, one with Seville orange and sudachi), a quart of marmalade to have with yogurt, and am left with a cup of juice -- some of which I think I'll use for mojo criollo.