Recipe: Lemon Verbena Lemonade

With summer approaching, we are entering lemonade season. A glass of lemonade is a welcome drink most times of the year, of course, but there is something about drinking fresh lemonade from a dew-coated glass on a hot day that makes it even better.

My standard lemonade is whole lemon lemonade , a recipe I found in Cook's Illustrated. The lemon juice is extracted by mashing thin slices of whole lemon with sugar before adding the water, a technique that releases the oils from the zest and makes an intense and complex drink.

Lemonade can also be infused with herbs. Lemon verbena (Lippia triphyllo, in the same family as Mexican oregano, Lippia graveolens) is a great choice for its floral aroma and delicate flavor. To extract flavor and aromatic compounds from the leaves, I steep them in mixture of hot water and sugar for at least ten minutes (this also helps to dissolve the sugar), let it cool, then add lemon juice to the "tea syrup" to complete the recipe. A recipe is below.

One of the more delicious appearances of lemon verbena is in a chocolate ganache made by San Francisco-chocolatier Michael Recchiuti (available by mail or at his Ferry Building shop).

---

Lemon Verbena Lemonade

2 c. water
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. lemon verbena leaves (about 10-15)
4 T. lemon juice


Make the lemon verbena syrup:
Bring the water to a boil, then turn off the heat. Add the sugar and lemon verbena leaves. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Let it steep for 10 or more minutes. Pour through a strainer and chill.

Finish and serve:
When the verbena syrup is chilled, add the lemon juice, stir, and serve.

The ratios of the ingredients can easily be adapted to your preferences.

Makes about 2 1/2 cups.

---

Random link from the archive: Oak Tree Galls

Technorati tags: vegetarian : Food

Edible San Francisco has my numbers - Abalone and Dungeness Crab harvests

For the latest issue of Edible San Francisco -- "The Fish Issue" -- I contributed some interesting and revealing statistics about seafood in general and abalone in particular. For example, about one-third of the wild fish harvest is used to make animal and fish feed (the source of this figure is at the bottom of the post). The fish are generally ground up, mixed with other ingredients to make pellets or a granular substance, then fed to farmed fish, hogs, chickens and other animals.

The abalone numbers are an 'infobox' in an article about abalone farming by Marcia Gagliardi (author of the Tablehopper e-newsletter). Marcia writes about abalone biology, recreational abalone hunting, and the abalone farming industry. It turns out that farmed abalone is one of the few aquaculture products that you can feel good about eating -- it's a low input animal (they eat kelp, which grow at alarmingly fast rates, perhaps a foot a day) and produce little waste. But it takes a long time for abalone to reach market size, so when they appear on restaurant menus or fish counters the price can be as shocking as the water off the coast of Mendocino County (one of the best places to hunt for abalone).

Numbers alone do a decent job of showing how California abalone stocks were destroyed in the 20th century, but a graph is much clearer (worth a thousand numbers, so to speak). The figure below shows the annual commercial harvest from 1920 to 1996 using data from a 2003 report from the California Department of Fish and Game. (click on the graph to see a larger version)



Without any regulations to slow them down, harvesters caught abalone as fast as they could, decimating the population in a few decades. The large dip in the 1930s and early 1940s is the result of the Great Depression and World War II (most of the abalone fishermen were of Japanese descent and were imprisoned by the U.S. government soon after Pearl Harbor). It's worth noting that abalone are somewhat more vulnerable to overharvesting because they spend their entire lives in a relatively small area attached to coastal rocks.

As a comparison, consider the Dungeness crab. Thanks to careful management of the fishery by state regulators, good behavior by the crabbers (observing the limits, taking only male crabs, etc.), and the nature of the crab (they are caught in traps, not hand harvested), the population is relatively stable.




Reference: "Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies," R.L. Naylor, R. J. Goldburg, et al. (2000), Nature, volume 405, pp. 1017-1024.

Photo of abalone from nugunslinger the classic's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

---

Random link from the archive: Winter Salsa

Technorati tags: abalone : seafood : California

An odd juxtaposition in the newspaper

The back page of Friday's San Francisco Chronicle's "Bay Area and California" section had an odd -- but possibly intentional -- juxtaposition of article and advertisement.

The article (first photo below) is about how thieves are stealing guardrails, signs and other metal objects from state and federal roadways in Southern California (unfortunately, the article is not available on-line at the Chronicle, probably because they got it from the Riverside Press-Enterprise. The LA Times has a similar article if you're curious to see the whole story.).


Immediately below the article is an advertisement from Aaron Metals, a buyer of scrap metal.


Aaron Metals is a regular advertiser in the Chronicle -- and often in the "Bay Area" section, I think -- so it's likely that the location was coincidental. Or perhaps the layout editor was having some fun.

---

Random link from the archive: Choc-ing the Rubicon

Recipe - Roman-style Carrots

As a follow-up to my post on the use of spices in ancient Rome, here's a recipe derived from that era that appears in Deborah Madison's "The Savory Way." Although she doesn't specifically state her source, the book in her bibliography that looks like the likely source is "Ancient Roman Feasts and Recipes," by Jon and Julia Solomon (E. A. Seemann Publishing, 1977).

I don't particularly like carrots -- you'll never catch me snacking on carrot sticks -- but this is a recipe that I truly enjoy. The subtle flavor of cumin and mint, the hint of sourness from the vinegar, and the sweetness of the carrots meld into something delicious. And to cook a recipe that might have been enjoyed by Caesar, Cicero, Augustus and other prominent Romans is pretty cool too...

Carrots, Roman Style
Adapted from "The Savory Way," by Deborah Madison

1/2 pound carrots
8 small mint leaves
1 lovage leaf or several pale inner celery leaves
2 t. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 t. cumin seed
Salt to taste
1 cup water
1 T. Champagne or white wine vinegar
Ground black pepper
Chopped mint or lovage leaves for garnish

Peel or scrape the carrots. Cut into pieces 2 to 3 inches long, then cut the pieces lengthwise in quarters, sixths or eighths, depending on the size of the carrot. The goal is to have each piece be roughly the same size (so that they all cook at the same rate). Tear or chop the herbs into pieces.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the oil, cumin seeds and herbs. Cook for a short time until the fragrance of the spice and herbs are noticeable, then add the carrots and toss well. Add the water, vinegar, salt. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer until the carrots are tender (20-40 minutes). Ideally, the liquid will evaporate and form a glaze on the carrots. If all of the liquid evaporates before the carrots are tender, add more water, 1/4 cup at a time.

Season with freshly ground black pepper and chopped mint and/or lovage leaves.

Serve hot, at room temperature, or cold.

Serves two.

Madison's notes on the recipe say that the original recipe contained a fermented fish paste that the Romans added to many savory dishes. Leite's Culinaria describes this fish paste:

Garum (or the similar Liquamen) appeared as an ingredient in most Roman dishes. It was a prepared sauce made of fish entrails and trimmings fermented in strong brine. It is an ancestor to our Worcestershire sauce, but is more closely approximated by the fish sauces of Southeast Asia, such as nam pla and nuoc mam. They provided a savory saltiness in Roman cookery, much as soy sauce does in Chinese and Japanese cooking today.

As a modern substitution, Deborah Madison recommends adding a finely chopped or pounded anchovy with the water at the beginning of the recipe.

On the subject of pepper, it's worth noting that the early Roman diet did not use the same pepper that we use today. The Leite's Culinaria article gives this explanation:

the pepper used by Apicius was probably not black pepper (Piper nigrum), but long pepper (Piper longum). It has a more resinous flavor than black pepper, with a lingering burn at the back of the throat.

If you're seeking an authentic Roman experience, long pepper can be found in specialty spice shops (like San Francisco's Le Sanctuaire or the Whole Spice Company at Napa's Oxbow Market).

Photo of carrots from Jen Maiser's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

---

Random link from the archive: Moong Dal Soup

Technorati tags: Rome : Italy : vegetarian : Food

Spices in Italian cuisine: the very old is new again

A recent New York Times article by Ian Fisher described how foreign-born chefs are working their way up the restaurant hierarchy in Italy: a man from Jordan is running a chain of pizza restaurants; a chef born in Tunisia makes the best carbonara in Rome, according to a prominent restaurant reviewer. It's a common story in an era of migration. (The same phenomena surely applies in the United States. I recall seeing an article about how every different ethnic restaurant in Los Angeles relied on chefs from Mexico to do the cooking, generally with high levels of competence. Unfortunately, I am unable to find the article.)

I found this part of the article to be interesting:

With this mixing of cultures only in its early days, there seems to be no major shift in Italian cuisine, even if foreigners are doing the cooking more and more. Unlike in France, where foreign flavors have blended well over time with native ones, attempts here at some fusion of Italian and other cuisines have not caught on. There is, as yet, no equivalent to curry in Britain.

Still, there seems some leakage. Food experts say that foreign chefs, here and there, add spices not often used in Italy, like coriander and cumin.

Coriander and cumin might not be part of modern Italian cuisine, but they were both common during the days of the Roman Empire. Spices -- most of which were brought from the East at great expense -- symbolized status, and so the upper classes used them with abandon. Coriander and cumin are both natives to the Mediterranean, but they were still part of the mix, as an article at Leite's Culinaria about food in ancient Rome explained.

The earliest known cookbook from the Roman era was written by Marcus Gavius (or Gabius) Apicius, who lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (an English translation of the full text can be found here).

Several recipes mentioned in the Leite's Culinaria article call for cumin or coriander:

[399] Locustum Elixam cum Cuminato
Real boiled lobster is cooked with Cumin Sauce [essence] and, by right, throw in some [whole]…sentence missing in surviving manuscripts…pepper, lovage, parsley, dry mint, a little more cumin, honey, vinegar, broth, and if you like, add some [bay] leaves and malobathron.

[116] Spondyli (boiled parsnips)
Boil the parsnips in salt water [and season with] pure oil, chopped green coriander and whole pepper.

[61] Lucanicae (Lucanian sausage)
…Crush pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, condiment, laurel berries and broth; mix well with finely chopped [fresh pork] and pound well with broth. To this mixture, being rich, add whole pepper and nuts. When filling casings, carefully push the meat through. Hang sausage up to smoke.

The bold spicing of savory foods continued in Europe throughout the Medieval period (an extensive description of that era can be found in Jack Turner's "Spice"), but eventually faded away (possibly as a result of the deprivations of the Dark Ages). Modern Italian cuisine evolved after the era of spices had ended in Europe. Could it be that the recent rise of non-Italian-born chefs in Italy could push the cuisine towards its ancient roots?


Photo credit: Photo of Roman ruins from Savannah Grandfather's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

---

Random link from the archive: Cinco de Mayo and Food Traditions

Technorati tags: Food

Another No Knead Bread

When Mark Bittman wrote about Jim Leahy's "no knead bread" in the New York Times in 2006, it caused a frenzy in the blogosphere, leading to hundreds of posts about attempts to make the bread. I tried it myself and deemed it to be bimbo-esque: beautiful but shallow.

I recently started baking another kind of "no knead bread," but I really doubt that it will be sweeping across the blogosphere, even if Mark Bittman writes an article about it in the Times food section. This no knead bread is a German-style rye bread called Kornbrot or Vollkornbrot, (meaning "kernal bread" or "full kernal bread," respectively). Unlike the 2006 Leahy blockbuster, this bread takes a lot of effort, including several days of preparation, a strong arm and a lot of patience.

An Early Start
Unlike the batter-type starter I used for the La Brea Bakery sourdough, this recipe uses a stiff starter with a consistency of soft bread dough and an incredible stickiness and elasticity. The photo to the right shows the inner structure of the starter 12 hours after it was fed. Starting out as an airless blob of dough, it rises to become a lacey network of gluten strands. It smells like a loaf of classic sourdough bread.

The starter requires a few days of feeding before the bread baking day. I keep my stiff starters in the refrigerator when I'm not preparing to bake, so I removed one of them and began the refreshment process. Twice a day over the next few days, I combined 10 grams of starter, 25 grams of water, and 45 grams of bread flour, kneaded it into a smooth mass of dough, and placed it in a covered container.

I have been following a recipe from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking Across America" (also sold as "Artisan Baking"). The bread is mostly healthy whole-grain ingredients: rye flour, cracked rye kernels, whole rye kernels, and sunflower seeds. The balance of the ingredients are the refreshed starter, water, salt and commercial yeast. Yes, the bread contains yeast in the form of sourdough starter and commercial yeast. Although sourdough starter has been a critical part of rye bread for centuries (see the "Bread Science Note" below for details), sourdough starter is in this recipe to improve the bread's flavor.

About eight hours before baking, I start preparing some of the ingredients. The whole rye grains are mixed with hot water. Cracked rye is mixed with lukewarm water. The refreshed starter is mixed with water and cracked rye (to create a "rye starter").

No Knead Doesn't Mean No Effort
Putting all of the ingredients together is where the "no knead" part comes in. The first step is to combine all of the pre-mixed ingredients from the night before (or from that morning) with rye flour, water, yeast, and sunflower seeds. Then it's time to mix -- not knead -- the dough. Glezer instructs to

...mix this stiff, heavy dough for as long as you can with a wooden spoon. Cover the dough and let it rest for 15 minutes. Stir the dough again for as long as you can and let it rest again for 10 minutes. Stir the dough again for as long as you can. When the dough looks pasty and is quite sticky, the mixing is complete.

Strictly speaking, there is no kneading involved, but I can testify that it is almost as much work as kneading a ball of dough. The Kornbrot dough is thick and viscous -- it has more in common with stiff oatmeal or cake batter than bread. For example, after scraping the dough into a bread pan, you actually use an offset spatula to smooth the top before letting it rise.

The dough rises for about one hour after mixing, then is baked for about three hours at 300 F (150 C). Some of the patience I referred to above is required after the bread comes out of the oven. Glezer recommends letting the finished loaf rest in a plastic bag for twelve hours before eating.

I have baked this bread four times, with better results each time. Sliced thinly, lightly toasted, and smeared with butter, orange marmalade, or gruyere cheese, the bread is delicious. The combination of whole grains, cracked grains, and sunflower seeds provide interesting texture, while the matrix of sourdough starter and rye flour offer structure and hearty rye flavor.

Kornbrot Blegs
I have a few blegs related to this bread that I hope can be answered by my readers:

1. If anyone knows where I can buy "cracked rye" (rye kernels that have crushed so they look like bulgur wheat) in the Bay Area, I'd appreciate a tip. I resorted to mail ordering the cracked rye from Bob's Red Mill, an easy enough process but one that almost doubles the price of the product (and requires additional planning ahead).
2. The top crust of the loaf has been too hard and generally inedible. Could I improve the result by covering the loaf with aluminum foil for part or all of the baking?
3. The recipe calls for a firm starter, but Glezer says you can use any kind of sourdough starter. How could I convert the recipe to use a batter-type starter? Is there a simple formula that adjusts the water content to account for a different type of starter?
4. Can you recommend another Kornbrot recipe? I saw one in Peter Reinhart's latest book but haven't studied it to know what is required.
   

Bread Science Note
It turns out that the sourdough starter is a critical ingredient in breads that made from rye flour and kernels. Rye has been grown for millennia in northern and central Europe. The cool and wet weather of that region can cause rye kernels to sprout while in the field or just after harvest. Sprouting causes an increase in the enzyme alpha amylase, which breaks down the starch in the grain (these smaller sugars are more easily used by the sprouting seed). Too much alpha amylase will cause the loaf to collapse and be gummy and inelastic. By using a sourdough starter, the pH of the dough is lowered (i.e., made more acidic) and the alpha amylase is deactivated. The rye that is sold in American stores is grown in drier climates (probably the plains of Canada), so the sourdough isn't a necessity for making an edible loaf, but it gives the bread a more complex flavor, longer shelf life, and moist texture.

---

Random link from the archive: Wraps around the World: Rendang Wrappo, Kuala Lumpur

Technorati tags: Bread : Baking : Germany : Sourdough : Vegetarian : Food

Recipe - Sourdough Pancakes

Once I established a viable sourdough starter, I needed to find some things to use it in besides bread. I love baking and eating bread, but its not something that I can fit into my schedule very often.

Pancakes are my first simple non-bread use for the starter. They take a little bit of planning ahead -- you need to add flour to the starter the night before and let it sit out overnight -- but the final mixing of the batter takes just a minute.

I keep my starter in the refrigerator between bread projects and I have found that using starter straight out of the refrigerator works fine for this recipe -- no multi-day refreshment is needed.

I'm generally not much of pancake person, but I like these a lot. They are fluffy, tender and have a nice sour tang. Typically I make two half-recipes using a different flour in each one. This weekend, for example, I made a half batch with buckwheat flour (so the starter contained 125 g starter, 75 g water, and 50 g buckwheat flour) and a half batch with Bob's Red Mill corn flour and some Full Belly Farms corn meal.

---

Sourdough Pancakes
Adapted from "Breads from the La Brea Bakery," by Nancy Silverton

For the starter
250 g batter-type sourdough starter (About 1 cup. See notes below.)
150 g water (About 2/3 cup.)
100 g flour (About 3/4 cup. See notes below.)

For the pancakes
The starter from above
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
2 eggs
3 T. oil
1 T. sweetener (maple syrup, honey, sugar, etc.)

Start the night before by combining the ingredients for the starter. Stir or whisk until well mixed. Leave at room temperature overnight.

Pass the salt, baking powder, and baking soda through a fine mesh into a small bowl to remove clumps.

Stir the starter, then add the eggs, oil, and sweetener. Mix in the dry ingredients.

Cook on a lightly oiled griddle or skillet.

Notes:

• The sourdough starter used in this recipe is a thin "batter type" starter, with the consistency of pancake batter, not a "levain type" stiff starter.
• Try experimenting with different flours like buckwheat, whole wheat, kamut, or amaranth.
  

---

Random link from the archive: Featuring Spring Vegetables

Technorati tags: Sourdough : vegetarian : Food