The Gastrocast

This coming Tuesday is alternately known as Fat Tuesday,  Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. It is the last day in the Traditional Christian Calendar before Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. So here is my addition to the countless enteries popping up across the web for this day.
It is a day for using up all the things which would not keep over 40 days, which were forbidden by custom to be consumed during the lenten fast–meats, butter, eggs and other dairy. It has become the spectacle which is Mardi Gras, but in there is still a great tradition whether you are Christian or not–making savory and sweet pancakes.
These are not the Flapjacks which Americans usually think of when one says "pancake", but are more like French Crepes. They were and are the perfect vehicle for using up eggs, milk and butter with the economical addition of flour. These days it is popular to fill them with raspberry jam and sprinkle confectioner’s sugar over them, or to eat them with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of sugar. However, in the spirit of using things up and still making something delicious I think we should dig deeper in our pantries and create some more interesting fillings–for dinner and after.
In the UK it has been a tradition since 1445 to have a race on Pancake Day involving flipping a pancake over several ropes tied above the racer’s heads as the racers run along. Originally limited to women in traditional dress, I believe it is open to both sexes now. The race originated when one woman was running late for the Shrove Tuesday service and ran all the way to the chapel still in her apron and kerchief  with  skillet in hand.

Here are a few easy, favorite recipes for your Pancake Day Celebration:

Basic Pancake Recipe:
8 ounces All Purpose Flour
a large pinch of Kosher Salt
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups of milk
2 ounces melted butter
vegetable oil for the pan

Sift the flour and salt together into a large bowl. Whisk the eggs into the milk and stir into the flour and salt. Mix in the melted butter. Let sit for at least a half an hour, but 45 minutes is better.

Meanwhile preheat a small non-stick skillet or 10 inch crepe pan. Swirl a drop or two of vegetable oil on the pan. Add two tablespoons of the batter to the pan and swirl the pan about to coat the bottom of the pan. Cook over medium heat for 30 seconds and then snap the pan down on the range, or counter, to loosen the pancake and flip. Cook on the second side another 15–20 seconds. Remove the pancake to a plate and repeat until the batter is finished. You can stack the pancakes up as you go.

Bacon and Mushroom Filling:
Saute 4 ounces of chopped smokey bacon until lightly browned. Add 1/2 an sliced onion and cook until the onion is soft. Add 1 handful of sliced mushrooms and saute until they are cooked and fragrant. Add a good dollop of Bechamel Sauce and take off the heat. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Fresh chopped thyme is a good addition.
Place a few tablespoons of the filling in a pancake and roll it up. Place these rolls in an oven-proof dish. Cover with more of the Bechamel and bake in a 425 degree oven for 30 minute or until the top is browned. (This can be topped with some fresh bread crumbs and chopped parsley)

Bechamel Sauce:
2 ounces butter
2 ounces flour
1 cup milk plus extra

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan and immediately stir in the butter without pause. Slowly pour in the milk, whisking all the while, until the roux is smoothly mixed in. Cook over low heat until thick. Season with salt and pepper.

Banana Toffee Pancakes:
2 tablespoons butter
2 bananas, peeled, thickly sliced

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the sliced bananas and toss to coat. Saute until lightly browned.  Take a pancake and fold in half. Add some of the sauteed bananas to the pancake and fold into a quarter. Allow two or three pancakes per person. Pour toffee sauce over the pancakes and serve with whipped cream, if desired.

Toffee Sauce:
3 ounces butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons Rum
3/4 cup heavy cream

Heat the butter with the sugars and rum. Stir while everything melts and is thick. Whisk in the cream and cook over medium heat until the cream is fully incorporated. Do not allow to boil or the sauce will separate. Set aside.

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Sustainable Table Blog has reported that LinkTV (Dish Network: Channel 9410; DirectTV: Channel 375) is presenting 4 hours of food and sustainability related programing this Saturday. Check the LinkTV site for times and program names so you can set your DVR to capture this extravaganza. If you eat or cook food you should be watching these shows.

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The Great Corned Beef Experiment phase two! This week’s show sees us experimenting with Bokashi, and tasting the corned beef cured in Gastrocast #42 with a tasting panel of “experts”. Got extra Corned Beef–take a look at my very first show for ideas on how to use it up.

Wiggly Wigglers

Photos:

• This Week’s
• Gastrocast #42
• Gastrocast #1
• Bokashi

Music:
Intro: Another Brass Rail by Amadan
Inbetweens & Outros: The Fermoy Lasses by The Nettles

Technorati Tags: gastrocast, podchef, culinary podcast, food, cooking, corned beef, st patricks day

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While I battle placement and ratings in our own US iTunes Store, thanks to Heather of the Wiggly Wiggler’s Gardening Podcast for pointing out in their latest episode–#20–that The Gastrocast made the homepage on the iTunes UK Store! It was gone by the time I got there, but Hurray! A blip of recognition is better than no blip at all. Meanwhile in Ireland Conor O’Neill has rounded up and reviewed the Food Podcasts he listens to. Pretty much the same bunch I do. I should mention Conor was a crucial resource for the Corned Beef Experiment and may be responsible for some sausage making episodes to come.

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Cookies! As suggested by a listener I dust off my stand mixer and whip up three flavors–Apricot Pistachio, Cardamom; Candied Ginger Coconut; and White Chocolate Macadamia Mango.

Also I discuss Chicken Biosecurity and the ingredient of the week is all about Sugar. At the end some special guests come in for a cookie tasting.

Music:
Intro: Mon père by Bézèd’h
In betweens & Outro: CORRESPONDANCE by Happy House

Flicker Photos

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An interesting, but impractical idea–recipe copyrights.  I struggle with this notion, both because I use lots of other peoples recipes to develop my own, and even just to use because they’re good, but also as a cookbook author.  While it is a great notion to protect your work, I just don’t think it is practical. Somewhere I’ve read about the disconnect big name chefs have with writing cookbooks and the dining experience in their restaurant–is a meal at the restaurant, cooked by professionals, going to be impacted when a frequent patron take the book home and cobbles their way through a favorite? Or does it give them a fuller sense of all which goes into preparing a high-end meal? How does it impact the experience, and what happens if some lesser chef takes a signature dish and uses it at their place but doesn’t get it right–will Gordon Ramsey’s Vichyssoise cease to be signature and special and return to plain old cold, potato and leek soup?

To me, a recipe is a blueprint. It outlines what the dish should be like. There are many ways to get to the same end, and certainly the same ingredients can be applied to numerous, different dishes. While it is unfair to wholesale steal someone elses intellectual property and turn it into your own, even if you give them credit. The world of cooking is different. Recipes are built on ideas and techniques which are common ground. The ingredients, too, are common but can be varied slightly for nuance. The only real copyright-able part of a recipe then is the individual’s flair and wording in the text of the recipe. Hard to control.

There are really no new dishes under the sun. Certainly new techniques are applied to old standards, but if you dig deep enough into history much of what is hot and trendy now has been tried in some form at some time. If recipes were copyrighted 85% of restaurants, at least, would have to go out of business. It would be chaos. I think a much better model should be a Creative Commons Attribution license–which is more or less what I have released my cookbook and recipes and podcast with.

One other way to view a recipe and dish is that they are more like performance art–it is the act of creation which brings the magic. Sure, anyone can gate Central Park in Orange draperies, but Christo brings the eyes of the world to Manhattan. You and I can both use the same ingredients to make a Turkey Pannini for our computer repair dudes, but attitude, timing, quality, and passion determine the final outcome no matter how exact the recipe is we are following. This is something no copyright can control or contain and what truly distiguishes great chefs and their work from the rest of us–no matter how many of their cookbooks we buy.

Inspired by a Boing Boing Article

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Track the proliferation across the web of the Scoble’s word: brrreeeport

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Ah I’m so glad Mo’time is back on line and everything appears to be working so much smoother.
I am also happy to report my lowly eMac has had its surgery and now with a new heart/brain appears to be working better than before. This return to original speed will greatly help reduce post-production show time and help keep the quality a bit tighter.

The repair technician who showed up in Kitchen Studio was friendly and efficient. He had, apparently, been out to the island before to repair computers–he does all sorts. He told me my problems weren’t unusual and that Dell computers were also having massive problems with blown capacitors. Let’s hope it won’t happen again, with this new motherboard.

He was a bit taken aback when I offered him lunch. He politely rufused but tucked in heartliy when I set a turkey pannini in front of him. He lit up at the Blood Oranges in White Chocolate Sauce for afters. He was very pleasant, but on the whole didn’t seem to know what podcasting was about–or didn’t let on. He fell in love with my dog and mostly wanted to ask questions about the breed.

My dear (long suffering) wife said perhaps the computer should break more often if it would get me to clean the office as thoroughly. I even got rid of the cardboard I stuck to the window with tape to keep the sun from glaring on the screen  and replaced it with blinds. This will let even more light into kitchen studio. WIth computer worries out of the way, the polytunnel finished for now, and my chicken yard well on its way, I’m off to line up a tasting panel for next week’s Corned Beef Taste Off.

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Motime–my blog site host–is doing some major upgrades Monday and Tuesday and will be down for about 14 hours starting at about 8am Monday. So just a heads up, if you try to access the site, it will be non-responsive. A small price to pay for improved service, I think.  Meanwhile my eMac g4 is going to have open heart surgery during this time. My logic board fried last week and I was fortunate enough to secure replacement parts and on-site service for tomorrow. I hope it will all go smoothly, as I am tired of running my main system through my slower laptop and not being able to network to the information I keep stored on the laptop alone. So, phone the voicemail line, email, send your love, and have a Great Valentine’s Day.

Neal

Keep on Cookin!

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This week’s show is here. We survived a late winter Gale, the new baby chicks have arrived and it is really feeling like spring. This week we’re cooking with Sauerkraut and making a Choucroute Garni.

Music–Intro & Outro:
El Rusko Torero by Drallibotrop

Photos: Flickr Set

This week’s Gastrocast was sponsord by
The Great Lakes Kraut Company

The world’s largest producer of Sauerkraut

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Here we go again. The sunny morning has given way to torrential rains and the darkening sky bodes doom. The force 9 gale of Tuesday was but a baby brother to the brute pressing in on us now. That’s life twenty miles out in the sea. . . . Time to don the sou’wester, the wellies and my mantle of courage and head out to the woodshed for a bit of heat and light. If the power went out in but a breeze, this storm could put us in the stoneage for a few days. I guess I won’t go to the mainland this weekend either. Even if the ferry’s aren’t cancelled I don’t feel brave enough to weather heaving and swelling seas in an underfunded 30 year old vessel.

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A Special Valentine’s Day Gastrocast. In this week’s show we talk about the storms we’ve been having here, what’s going on with livestock, we introduce the new Podchef Gastrocast Hotline– 360-283-5528 — and we make this spiffy Valentine’s Day Dessert– White Chocolate & Bailey’s Mousse Filled Hearts on a bed of Raspberry Coulis.

This week’s show is sponsored by: The Kitchen Garden Company

Photos of this weeks cooking can be found here.

Music
Intro: The Chocolate Song by RoadTrip
Inbetweens and Outro: My Only Sweet by Dylan In The Movies

THE RECIPE:

Mousse

5 ounces White Chocolate
2 tablespoons Bailey’s Irish Cream Liquor
1 cup Heavy Whipping Cream

Place the chopped White Chocolate and the Baileys in a double boiler and melt over low heat. Stir continuously, keeping an eye out to prevent scorching, for 4-5 minutes.
Meanwhile whip the cold cream in a cold mixer bowl with a cold whisk. Whip until stiff.
Blend the melted White Chocolate and Baileys together. Allow to cool. Whisk in 1/3 of the stiffly whipped cream until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Fold this mixture carefully into the remaining whipped cream. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours before using.

Coulis

1# fresh, or thawed frozen Raspberries
51/2 teaspoons Cornstarch
1 ounce granulated Sugar

Puree the berries and press through a fine meshed sieve to remove the seeds.
Mix a bit of the resulting juice with the cornstarch in the bottom of a saucepan. Add enough water to the remaining juice to make 2 cups. Add this to the cornstarch mixture and add the sugar. Stir to mix. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook for a minute until thick, stirring continuously. If this is too thick it can be thinned with water. Refrigerate until needed. Will keep one week.

Chocolate Hearts

4 ounces Dark, Bittersweet Chocolate
1 sheet Inkjet Transparency Paper
a few Paper Clips

Chop the chocolate into pieces and melt over a double boiler.
Meanwhile cut the transparency film into inch and a half strips across the width of the film. You need two for every heart.

Lay the film out on parchment paper and spread a thick layer of the melted chocolate over the smooth surface of the film with an offset spatula. Work on one strip at a time. Immediately fold the chocolate coated surface to the inside and secure the ends of the strips together with a paper clip to form a tear drop. Repeat with the remaining chocolate and strips of film. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

To complete

Once the individual components of the dish are prepared and chilled you can begin to bring them together. Remove the chocolate teardrops from the refrigerator and using a piping bag, fill them with the mousse. Place the filled teardrops in the freezer for 5 minutes to help loosen the film and firm up the mousse which may have begun to soften while filling the shapes.

Remove the teardrops from the freezer. Remove the paperclips from the ends of the film and use the tip of a sharp knife, carefully separate the ends of the film and peel the film away from the chocolate shells. It should come off freely and leave a smooth and glossy chocolate surface behind.

Using a spatula carefully lift two of the teardrops onto a plate, arranging them side by side to form a heart shape. Using any extra mousse, coat the top so the two pieces appear as one heart.

Place a pool of Raspberry Coulis around the base of the heart. Garnish with chocolate shavings, mint or any special touches you can think of.

Technorati Tags: gastrocast, podchef, cooking, food, culinary podcast, dessert, valentines day

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