Make your own vinegar pepper sauce at home

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Make Your Own Vinegar Pepper Sauce

Our well-used bottle of Trappey’s pepper sauce and the Cajun Chef which replaces it.

After we cooked up our batch of Southern-style collard greens the other day, we needed some pepper sauce to douse them with. We’re not talking Tabasco, or Frank’s Red Hot, or one of the many niche sauces that are everywhere today. In Texas and across the south, “pepper sauce” can only mean one thing: small, spicy green peppers that have spent a long time soaking in vinegar which is now flavored and ready to lubricate your foods.

A relentless survey of local supermarkets and gourmet boutiques established this product is unavailable in our corner of Upstate New York. There are many jars of peppers in vinegar, in respect to our strong Italian-American/red sauce tradition, and pouring out the liquid in those might work ok, but out of respect to our Benton’s ham juice we wanted the real deal. We’d settle for Trappey’s, the defacto brand that costs less than $2 for a little jar down south. But what we really wanted was Cajun Chef, the brand used at the dearly missed Highland Park Cafeteria.

Pepper Sauce Label

Looks like we bought our last batch of Cajun Chef products from a company that is now out of business, possibly because they didn’t charge enough for shipping…

We found a bottle of Cajun Chef Sport Peppers for just under $10, shipped, at Amazon. We ordered it immediately, knowing the same thing would be just a couple of bucks down south. Then we discovered a dusty jar of Cajun Chef Jalapeno Peppers in our basement. Close enough and we cancelled the Amazon order. (It’s funny that the top Amazon review for Cajun Chef Sport Peppers is from a reviewer who doesn’t realize this is sauce and thinks you are supposed to eat the peppers; he talks of his difficulty in getting the peppers out of the jar and knocks it down a star.)

Are you ready to make your own pepper sauce at home? This recipe is probably closest to what we grew up with: peppers (artfully arranged in a shaker jar, since you know better than to try and pry them out), salt and vinegar. This one is a little fast and loose with the ingredients (garlic? sugar? rice vinegar??) but there are some good ideas in the comments. It does take a while for the peppers to release their flavor into the vinegar, so get started now while there are still good fresh peppers in the farmers markets.

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Food for Thought: Bill Buford’s Dirt

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers


Bill Buford is a lucky guy. He loves to cook and is good at it. But his true talent is persuading world class chefs to take him under their wing—as a student, a stagiare, a baker. He does the job well and puts up with long hours without complaint and also without pay—it is even possible (and certainly true in the case of the school, which charged three thousand euros for a short course in cooking fish) he pays out of his own pocket for the privilege. In the 1990s he did this in the kitchens of Mario Batali in New York and the result was Heat, our favorite cooking book of all time.

Bill Buford’s Dirt is just as good, though a bit less focused. At the end of Heat we left him in Tuscany, learning traditional butchery from the great Dario Ceccini, who became a tourist attraction with his own restaurant in part through Buford’s accolades. Now back in the U.S., Buford decides to finish the job and move to Italy and learn how to produce fine cuisine from the ground up. The problem is, every chef he talks to says he must go to France, not Italy, if he wants to learn to cook and specifically to Lyon, a gritty industrial city which is also the capital of French cuisine. And so he does, planning to stay one year but living there for five.

Bill Buford’s Dirt follows his adventures through the cooking school, then as apprentice to the local baker, then—the longest and most interesting section of the book—as stagiare at La Mere Brazier, a Michelin-starred restaurant. The kitchen is full of characters who delight in abusing this peculiar American writer, and Buford likes it so much he negotiates to stay on far longer than the 17 days he originally asked for.

Bill Buford’s Dirt is full of tips and trucs—if you want to taste from a firehose of food nerdishness pick up the book in a book shop and turn to p. 255, where he is making Bearnaise, or p. 300 when he and Michel Richard (the father of nouvelle cuisine) are on a train riffing about their various food experiences. There is also some wonkiness—Buford cannot let go his love of Italian cooking and becomes increasingly convinced that the French cuisine came from Italy, a claim which is derided by his French hosts who of course hate Italians. This only makes him dig deeper, reading historical cookbooks in the old languages and walking the route over the Alps by which Catherine de Medici allegedly brought her personal chef to Lyon in 1533.

If you have read Heat, then you know you have to read Dirt. (If you have not yet read Heat, you have two great feasts ahead of you so get that first.) Check it out.

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Recipe: Southern-Style Collard Greens

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Southern Style Collard Greens

Southern-Style Collard Greens

If you ordered collard greens (or mustard greens or turnip greens) at the now-defunct Highland Park Cafeteria in Dallas, the server would ladle them into a little bowl and add several spoonfuls of the pan liquid. This is the beloved pot liquor, a way to rescue the greens which have been cooked to the point that most of the flavor and nutrition has transferred to the juice. We have published a number of sautéed greens recipes on Burnt My Fingers using little or almost no liquid, but the deliciousness of our Bentons’s Ham Juice made us try a more traditional approach. To preserve taste and a bit of texture they are steamed rather than boiled, but you should end up with a generous amount of liquid and can add more if needed.

Ingredients:
1 bunch collard greens, coarsely chopped (about 4 c)
1 c ham juice or other rich, flavorful chicken, pork or ham stock
Salt to taste (the ham juice is plenty salty on its own)
1/2 c chopped ham bits and pieces from the ham juice
1 t sugar or honey (optional)

Method: add the greens, ham bits and stock to a large saucepan and cover; simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and making sure the liquid doesn’t boil away. (Add water or more stock if it does.) Taste for seasoning and add more salt as needed; if greens are bitter add just a drop of sweetness. Serve in a bowl with the ham juice/pot liquor.

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Making ham juice with Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Ham

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Benton Ham Pieces

Ready for the stockpot: ends and pieces of Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Ham

A gift of collards from a friend’s garden made me realize I was out of the odds and ends of a smoked ham needed to make rich, flavorful southern-style greens. Time for an order of Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Ham. I had previously purchased HSCHDS which is a whole ham pre-sliced and cryovac’d in several packages; this time I decided to purchase HSCHDT which is deboned and trimmed but not sliced.

Benton's Unboxing

The unboxing: the tears in the butcher paper are because the cat got to it while I was looking for my boning knife.

In my previous post, I noted that this distinguished product is just as smokey and salty as you expect; it’s also an excellent value compared to some competitors. I later found out, when a reader ordered her own ham and had some problems, that Benton’s also has kind and generous customer service.

Benton Bits and Pieces

Bits and pieces of skin, fat and meat as they were retrieved from the stock pot. This is about half the total output; the cat and cook snitched the rest.

This time my ham took a week to ship but then just two days to reach me in upstate NY, and the package when it arrived was not chilled but not spoiled in any way. I popped the big chunk of trimmed ham in the fridge and turned my attention to the ends and pieces which were wrapped up in two sizable packages of butcher paper. The first thing you want to do is take a sharp knife and carve out a few morsels of meat as a treat, just as you would sitting in a bar in Spain. But the rest of one package went into a pot which was then covered with water and allowed to simmer for maybe 3 hours.

At the end of that time I fished out the meat and skin, which had mostly fallen off the bone, then trimmed out gristle and remaining bone bits to leave maybe 3 cups of savory bits to use for seasoning greens and black eye peas. The meat bits retained their salty flavor and the skin was chewy and rubbery but entirely edible when chopped into small pieces.

Benton Ham Juice

Ham juice after a night in the fridge, with jello consistency due to the collagen in the ham bones

The bones were discarded and the pot went back on the stove to be reduced by about 1/3 over another hour of simmering. We now had ham juice… a concentrated elixir which set up solid over a night in the refrigerator. This is the foundation of the “pot liquor” beloved of Southern cooks. How would we use it? To be continued….

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Recipe: Smoked Salmon Roll-Ups

Posted on August 19, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Smoked Salmon Roll-Ups

Smoked Salmon Roll-Ups

Thanks to longtime reader and frequent commenter llcwine for sharing this recipe for Smoked Salmon Roll-Ups. It’s refreshing and summer-y and just right for a socially distanced porch party where everyone is served their own plate. Each roll-up feeds 1 as an entree, 3 or so if served with other hors d’oeuvres.

Ingredients (per roll-up):
1 burrito-size flour tortilla
Softened cream cheese
1 large scallion, sliced thin (including some of the green part)
1 T red onion, finely chopped
½ t dried dill weed or 1 t fresh
2 T capers
1 t Everything Bagel seasoning (optional)
¼ c smoked salmon trim, chopped fine
¼ c cucumber, seeded and peeled if necessary and chopped fine

Smoked Salmon Roll-Up Assemby

Smoked Salmon Roll-Up Assembly

Method: spread cream cheese in a thin layer to cover the surface of the tortilla, then distribute the other ingredients evenly except salmon and cucumber. Place the salmon trim in a line down the middle (see picture) and top with the cucumber. Roll tight, jelly roll-style, and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until cheese stiffens, at least 2 hours and ideally overnight. Remove plastic wrap* and cut roll into 1 ½ inch sections. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Salmon Roll-Up Seasoning

If you like Everything Bagel seasoning, try sprinkling some on the surface of the cut rolls.

*Our first rolls were a bit loose when we unwrapped them, but we found we could carefully peel them open then re-roll without damaging the insides.

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Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica is the real deal

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Trader Joe Salsa Autentica

A bowl of tortilla chips goes nicely with Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica.

One of the lost pleasures in the pandemic is the communal bowl of salsa at our favorite Mexican restaurant and the experience of filling up on dipped tortilla chips before our entree arrives. Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica to the rescue! This stuff somehow has the perfect viscosity to coat a chip without making it soggy, even if you dump a cup of the stuff into your socially distanced individual bowl.

It also has just the right spice level for most folks, a kick of heat without being really hot. A minor quibble: previous jars had a hint of cumin (the signature spice of a Tex-Mex flavor profile) while now the flavor is more tomato-y. And indeed a look at this Amazon listing shows the ingredients as tomatoes, fresh yellow chile, distilled vinegar from corn[!]), salt, onion, spice while the ingredients in our current jar are tomato puree, yellow chili pepper, salt, distilled vinegar, dehydrated onion and garlic powder. But there’s an easy hack to fix this: just stir in half a teaspoon of cumin powder when you open a new jar.

At under $2 in our local store for a 12-oz jar, this is also one of the more affordable choices. The Trader stocks over 20 different salsas (we counted) including refrigerated varieties but this is the one to buy. Trader Joe’s Salsa Autentica is the real deal.

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Recipe: Utica-Style Tomato Pie

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Utica Style Tomato Pie

Utica-Style Tomato Pie

Utica-Style Tomato Pie is a gooey, unctuous treat made with lots of tomatoes and very little cheese; it is traditionally served at room temperature. We started with the Sal Detraglia recipe but did a lot of tinkering to get the balance we wanted: sweet juicy tomato topping on a sturdy but not over-bready crust. Makes one 11×17 pie; the recipe can be multiplied which you will probably want to do on future bakes after you taste your first effort.

Ingredients, for the dough:
1 ½ c all-purpose flour
1 c durum flour*
1 t sugar
1 t yeast
3 T extra virgin olive oil
2 t Kosher salt
1 ¼ c ice water, plus more if needed

For the sauce:
28-oz can crushed tomatoes, preferably San Marzano or another quality Italian Roma tomato
6-oz can tomato paste
Additional tomatoes (optional): 4 fresh Romas roasted until soft OR half a smaller (about 14-oz) can of crushed tomatoes**
½ t or so Kosher salt (depending on how salty your tomatoes are out of the can)
3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped (about 1 T)
1 T balsamic vinegar
2 T sugar
1/3 c finely grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
½ t dried oregano
Additional Extra Virgin Olive Oil as needed***

Method: add flours, yeast and sugar to the bowl of a orbital (eg Kitchenaid) mixer with dough hook, and run a few seconds on first speed to blend. With machine running, slowly add ice water and oil and mix until no dry flour is left, about 2 minutes. Dough should be cohesive but not sticky at the end; if needed add just a bit more water. Rest 10 minutes, then add salt and knead on second speed till dough is well developed, 6 minutes or a bit more. Transfer dough to a bowl liberally coated with olive oil and turn to coat all sides. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least overnight and as long as 48 hours.

Utica Style Tomato Pie

Dough will rise slightly during its 90 minute rest

On bake day, take the dough out of the refrigerator and bring it up to room temperature. Make the sauce: mix crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, balsamic vinegar, sugar and salt in a saucepan and simmer 20 minutes until slightly thickened; remove from stove and reserve. Transfer the dough to a floured surface and form an 11×17 rectangle. You may need a rolling pin but you can probably push the dough to the edges with your hands. Transfer to a half sheet pan or silicone pad which has been coated generously with olive oil. Sprinkle a little more olive oil on top then cover with plastic wrap and rest 90 minutes during which time the dough will have a slight additional rise.

Utica Style Tomato Pie

Ready to go in the oven

45 minutes before baking, preheat oven to 500 degrees and place a pizza stone on a middle rack. (If you use a silicone mat, you can preheat the half sheet pan directly, foregoing the pizza stone, then carefully transfer the formed dough on the pad into the pan [which you have temporarily moved to an insulated countertop surface] before adding the sauce.) At bake time, spread the sauce over the top of the dough, using a spatula to distribute it evenly, working with care to avoid deflating dough. Evenly distribute the cheese and oregano over the top, sprinkling with your hands.

Utica Style Tomato Pie

The finished product

Place pie in oven, in preheated sheet pan or in cold pan on hot pizza stone, and lower the heat to 450 degrees. Bake 10 minutes, then rotate 180 degrees and bake another 10 minutes. Remove from oven when the bottom of the pie is an even golden brown. Cool until the tomato topping solidifies (at least an hour), then slice into squares and serve.

*Sal Detraglia uses semolina flour for a sturdy crust and he uses more of it, which in our earlier tests caused the dough to tear. We used durum flour which is very similar to semolina but a finer grind. You could also make the pie with only all-purpose flour, but the result won’t have quite as much chew.

**The contents of the 28-oz tomato can and the tomato paste will give you sufficient sauce, but adding a little more tomato will make it extra-rich. Sal wants you to roast the tomatoes in the oven with oil, salt and pepper which is a lot of trouble; cooked tomatoes in a can will work fine.

***Utica pie places tend to use a lot of olive oil, which makes the pie crispy but possibly a bit greasy. A light coating on the surface of the sheet pan/silicone pad and more on the top of the dough is enough for us. You might want to drizzle a little more olive oil around the very edges of the pan after the pie is formed; this will give some extra crispiness to the outside edges, a treat for those who prefer these cuts.

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You’re invited: Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation Celebration

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation

Famed chef Thomas Keller will be your host and instructor at the Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation dinner

In the mid-aughts we did some work on the Niman Ranch website. We were guests of famed pig farmer and natural husbandry advocate Paul Willis in Thorton, IA. We toured his grounds, ate at his favorite coffee shop, even got to stay in his guest house. But the one thing we were not offered was an invite to the annual Farmer Appreciation dinner, where legendary chefs consider it an honor to be asked to travel to Iowa to cook for local hog producers as the community breaks bread together.

This year, with the pandemic, the 22nd Annual Hog Farmer Appreciation Celebration is going virtual. To quote the website, “we are inviting YOU to this special dinner, with a virtual cooking class taught by seven-time Michelin award winner and farmer advocate Chef Thomas Keller.  With your ticket, you will receive a meal kit shipped to your home that includes a recipe, the proteins needed for the dish and special additions hand-curated by Chef Keller. You will then be able to join for a LIVE virtual cooking class to participate in an interactive demonstration with Chef Keller himself.” The class/dinner will take place on Thursday, September 10, from 7:00 to 8:15 Central Time. The cost is $204.99 per person including meal kit and Fedex shipping. Register here.

Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation

Niman Ranch raises free-range pigs with humane animal husbandry practices.

And that’s not all. On August 20, you can learn to build masterful charcuterie boards with James Beard-nominated Chef Kelly Whitaker during a live virtual demonstration. The cost is $76.86 and includes a Fedex shipment of a variety of Niman Ranch charcuterie products which will be used during the demo as well as live access to an interactive class with Chef Kelley. Register here. All proceeds from both events benefit young farmers through the Niman Ranch Next Generation Foundation.

There are also a number of online forums which are free as far as I can tell. You can sit in on the keynote by renowned animal welfare expert Dr. Temple Grandin, which happens just after the Farmer Appreciation Dinner on September 10. On September 11, you can take a virtual tour of a Niman Ranch hog farm. There are also educational panels on a range of topics including improving farm animal welfare and how to achieve resilience throughout the food system in the time of COVID-19.

It’s quite a smorgasbord and, judging from the quality of other interactions we’ve had with the Niman Ranch team, everything is likely to be of the highest quality. And we’re all invited, so take some time to check out the schedule and learn about Niman Ranch here.

 

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Taste test: Hot Crispy Oil

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
Hot Crispy Oil Choices

Participants in Hot Crispy Oil taste test

Hot Crispy Oil is having a moment. A local version is taking the upstate NY culinary scene by storm, the original “grumpy housewife” is back at the helm of her factory in China, and food god Kenji Lopez-Alt somehow came up with the idea of putting the stuff on ice cream. It’s time to do a taste comparison, and see which hot crispy oil reigns supreme.

Hot Crispy Oil

Hot Crispy Oil

The concept is brilliant in its simplicity: add texture, as well as heat, to spicy chili oil and tone down the fire so you can enjoy it in volume. The local product does this with “garlic, shallot, hot peppers and spices … for a condiment that has flavors like a hot sauce but a consistency akin to a dipping oil,” according to Deanna Fox in the Times Union. John Trimble, the originator, says it’s something he tinkered with for years at his COVID-shuttered La Serre restaurant. It can be considered the aristocrat of the group if for no reason than its price: $10 for 6 ounces, vs under $4 for a larger quantity for the other sauces. But it was the only sauce where we could taste the flavor in the oil, as well as the ingredients, and the only one we’d actually use for dipping a slice of baguette.

Spicy Chili Crisp

Spicy Chili Crisp

The original Spicy Chili Crisp was invented in a Guizhuo province workshop by Tao Huabi, the widow whose dour portrait appears on every label. It’s true (at least according to Wikipedia) that the product has made her a billionaire, also true that she put her son in charge of the factory, then kicked him out when he changed the formula and sales dropped. Another morsel was recently reported in the Wall Street Journal: fraudsters pretending to represent Lao Gan Ma attempted to scam Tencent for product placement on its social network; the company offered free bottles of chili sauce to those who tip it off to similar scams. In our product comparison, Spicy Chili Crisp had a neutral but pleasant taste without a lot of heat; the large amount of crispy fried garlic chips is its most distinctive attribute.

Hot Chili Sauce

Hot Chili Sauce

If you like Spicy Chili Crisp and want to expand your horizons, try Lao Gan Ma’s Hot Chili Sauce. The flavor profile is similar but the crispy garlic bits are reduced quite a bit and replaced by little chunks of rutabaga and whole shelled peanuts! We may like this better than Spicy Chili Crisp but, as with the flagship product, are a little unclear on how to use it. It’s too mild to be a spicy offset to Sichuan flavors like Lan Chi, our favorite chili condiment; these sauces are more of a flavor refresher along the lines of munching a pickle while you eat your Roma’s Italian Mix sub. Meanwhile, here is a recipe for peanut brittle made with Lao Gan Ma product.

House Made Chili Oil

House Made Chili Oil

The final component of our taste test was our own chili oil made according to instructions from Fuchsia Dunlop: chop or grind mild Sichuan dried red chilis and toast them in a wok; then slow-heat with neutral oil to infuse the flavor. This is designed as a cooking ingredient, not a condiment, and it paled in comparison to the other products, but now we’re wondering what we might end up with if we used a flavorful oil (but not sesame, which would burn) and mixed in garlic chips and maybe some grated ginger.

So do we have a winner? The olive oil in Hot Crispy Oil gives it flexibility compared the other products and it is a natural for dolloping over grilled salmon or using as the sauté oil for a mess of greens Italian style. That makes it the sauce we’d reach for first and you can order it here.  On the other hand, try a couple of spoonfuls of the Lao Gan Ma sauces on a charcuterie plate, along with your bleu cheese and fig jam, and you might see some heads spin.

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Recipe: DIY Lox and Bagel

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Burnt My Fingers
DIY lox and bagel

DIY lox and bagel may not be as pretty as a deli version, but you’ve saved a bunch of money and it’s all yours.

Lox and bagels are a favorite deli treat but it’s very easy to make your own DIY version which is better and also cheaper. The ingredients are mostly familiar but there are a few secrets along the way. Makes one open face DIY Lox and Bagel sandwich.

Ingredients:
Lox trim*, about ¼ pound
Everything bagel
Everything bagel seasoning (if needed) **
Cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese***
Capers, about a T
Two thin slices red onion
Two thin slices tomato (optional)

Toasted Bagel

Bagel should be lightly toasted, like this.

Method: while sliced lox is $20/lb or more in the seafood cold case, lox trim* is under $10/lb and will suit our purposes just fine. If some pieces are a bit thick for your liking, it’s easy enough to trim them yourself. Get that ready and assemble the other cold ingredients while you cut your bagel in half crosswise and toast it until it just begins to brown.( If you don’t have access to a good source of NYC-style bagels, supermarket bagels will work fine but you may need some everything bagel seasoning** in case the seed coating on the bagel isn’t to your liking.)

Lox Mis en Place

DIY lox and bagel mis en place

As soon as the bagel comes out of the toaster, start spreading the cheese on the inside surfaces; it will soften and slightly melt into the crumb in a very satisfying manner. Also satisfying: being able to apply as much schmear as you want rather than letting the deli counter person do it for you. At the minimum, you need a nice universal coating with no crumb showing through. Cream cheese and Neufchatel are the same thing, but our market sells them in separate boxes at the same price so you can use whichever strikes your fancy.

Lox Bagel Assembly

The assembly

Now, the assembly. Start with capers, evenly distributed on each half of the bagel. Press them slightly into the cheese so they don’t fall off. If needed, shake on a little everything seasoning (which is toasted poppy seeds, sesame seeds, onion flakes, garlic flakes and salt; we use Trader Joe’s but you can easily make your own). Add red onion slices, opened up into rings and covering about half the surface area. Add a very thin slice of tomato if you like (we think it waters down the other flavors).

Finally, on goes the lox, evenly distributed and pressed down a bit so it holds down the other elements. As with the cheese, you can put on as much as you want. Now eat and enjoy. You’ve just made a DIY lox and bagel… see how good that is?

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