Pheasant Farm Hunting, Vale, Oregon

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Originally uploaded by themiliones

My husband took this shot at the end of pheasant hunting on a farm in Vale, OR. They got 16 birds, and the bird dogs were solely responsible for two of those. Apparently the bird dogs that belong to my father in law, who are nuts, got so excited while being on point that they could no longer control themselves.

Celebrate Lunar New Year Vietnamese Style with Banh Chung

Tết Nguyên Đán is the Vietnamese Lunar NewYear, also known as Tết, and translated means the Feast of the First Morning.  The lunisolar calendar determines the beginning of the new year in many countries and cultures including those in China, Korea and Vietnam. At Boise’s local Orient Market, supplies for Tết started arriving a few weeks ago, as Tết is the biggest holiday.

One of the items you may have seen at the local market is the gorgeously packaged bánh chung which is pictured below packaged with New Year card and ribbon for traditional decorative display.

Banh Chung, Orient Market, Boise

Another version is a long, cylindrical bánh that is also wrapped in banana leaves, but is called the bánh tet chuối. This post will tell you about both of them.

Both types of bánh are eaten traditionally during the New Year. During this holiday it is traditional to return to celebrate with family, clean your house, and also celebrate with these special foods. Both the bánh tet and the báhn chung are wrapped in Dong leaves, or banana leaves. The ones at Orient Market are wrapped with banana leaves and tightly held together with ribbon or string.

Once untied, you must unwrap the banana leaves which gave the inside food flavor and will make the rice layer green.

Bahn Chung, Unwrapped

Inside the banh chung you will find traditional and delicious sticky rice, pressed. In the middle is a layer of sweet roasted pork which is flavored with black pepper and a unique, savory spice I couldn’t quite name (but was addictively awesome, and give me time, i might figure it out yet) and a layer of sweet mung bean paste. The rice presses together and becomes glutinous. The pork is held together in the middle, and the flavor is just perfectly wedded with the sweet mung bean paste. Wow, what a combination!

Traditionally the banh is served by just slicing it, but you can also, like we did, slice it and lightly fry it on a skillet.

Banh Chung, Sliced and Frying

Putting in just a tablespoon of oil will do the trick.

While I wouldn’t add any spices  on the banh chung, if my bánh tet has only mung bean paste I would dip it into a chili garlic or chili fish sauce. Bánh tet is cylindrical and will have significanly less pork inside, and may even be completely pork free. Some say that being vegetarian for the New Year is good luck.

The process of making these from scratch is time consuming and preparations take hours. I find it impressive that someone at Orient Market prepares these inexpensively for public consumption. I noticed that they were almost completely gone when I went to check out, though they get restocked often.

There are many varieties of the banh made for this holiday, and the bánh tet chuối includes the azuki bean red bean paste as well.

What I really like about this is that it’s a meal unto itself. The rice and meat and produce are all included and one only needs to slice it and fry it to have a meal. And there are many meals in each one of these tasty rolls.

Although this banh list is not completely comprehensive,  I enjoyed using it because it does mention so many different kinds of banh and I think you might be interested also: http://dina-n-brian.com/Alice/Banhguide.htm

Now you can pick up your own and enjoy them!

If you are so inclined, I fully approve of this recipe: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/01/banh-chung-recipe-lunar-new-years-rice-cakes-vietnamese.html

And also of this book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1580086659?tag=serieats-20&link_code=as2&creativeASIN=1580086659&creative=374929&camp=211189

Enjoy!

The Salt Bagel

This photo was taken at Blue Sky Bagels on Main St downtown Boise. As a child I ate salt bagels consistently and missed them when I moved out West.

I can call ahead and they’ll specially make salt bagels. Totally fresh, they are often still warm by the time I get there.

As a kid, the kids didn’t eat lox – the lox was not wasted on us. Only adults enjoyed lox, and so now my salt bagel comes with lox, not plain, cream cheese.

Our bagel shops were uncool holes in the wall, decrepit flooring, old timers working with ancient recipes. Here in Boise I can’t exactly recreate that atmosphere, but the flavor is as good as can be.

Backyard chickens, equipment and techniques

More pictures from the workshop

BUGS Backyard chicken class

Since we’ve been interested in fresh eggs and raising chickens for a long time now, we took Susan Medlin’s amazing class on raising backyard chickens and learned so much. We’re still not certain about whether we have enough time this year to raise them.

The neattest fact has to do with egg color, which is based on their ear and leg color!

Above are some shots from the class. If you are innto chicken sharing arrangements, because we’ll be out of town for about two weeks this summer, please do get in touch asap!

Huevos Rancheros, a la Turkey Ridge Farms

Well, it’s a another post where I’ll have to explain how I  got onto this extreme egg kick, but this post is about my satisfaction with my Huevos Rancheros kick.

Huevos Rancheros

Well, so… through a meandering journey last Saturday I came upon a dozen eggs from Turkey Ridge Farm. Okay, I had bought  them at the Boise Co-op. But I didn’t know what I was going to make with them. Turns out I found a way to use all twelve in less than 24 hours. One of the ways was Huevos Rancheros.

In my house I’ve also been working with the definitive Mexican cookbook The Art of Mexican Cooking by Diane Kennedy.

For the past two weeks I’ve been trying out a bunch of different salsas involving fresh pasilla ancho peppers, dried of the same, tomatillo salsas, moles, and finally I saw “Salsa Ranchero” and I knew what had to be done.

Diane Kennedy’s recipes are exactly how recipes should be. She tells you what to do and when – nothing more and nothing  less. It’s a real book, like a conversation. I can hear her voice in these recipes.

First we roasted tomatoes and serranos in the oven. Next we cooked up some onions and garlic. We blended everything together with some olive oil and a bit of salt. This was the ranchero sauce. Fresher than anything I’ve ever had storebought or at a restuarant.

Next we grated the extra sharp cheddar cheese and chopped up some green onions. We toasted the corn tortillas in a thin layer of butter in one skillet and the eggs were cooked over easy and over hard in another.

Huevos Rancheros with local, organic eggs and fresh ingredients. This is the answer to the question: what’s simple, easy and delicious? The assembled product was just right and so satisfying.

Huevos Rancheros, again

Thai Green Eggplants with Basil

Thai green eggplants, roasting with basil

Back to basics. Thai green eggplants with basil.

So delicious; so simple.

If you need to make the vegan version, replace the fish sauce with soy sauce.

Serve this with hot rice (I’d use jasmine basmati, but I just love that kind of rice).

Ingredients:

7 small round thai green eggplants

1 bunch of thai basil

fish sauce

salt

3 cloves fresh garlic, pounded with the side of the knife

2 T olive oil

1 T white sugar

Chile peppers as needed

First, cut off the green stalk tops of the eggplant and quarter them. Throw them into a large pan with 2T of olive oil and salt. They will roast and turn brown. It will take about 10-12 minutes for them to turn brown on medium-high heat.

While they are searing in the vegetable oil, add the  1T sugar, the garlic (pounded and mostly whole), and, if you are using, the chili peppers. You may also throw some basil in too, but the basil will wilt and add flavor. Reserve at least some fresh basil for the last step – presentation.

As the eggplant cooks in the oil with the spices, if it runs low on liquids, add a 1/4 cup of water and cover to steam the eggplant.

Nearing the end of the cooking (you can tell the eggplants are cooked when they have no more visible whiteness to them – and the whiteness has turned a brown with some crispier edge).

At the point that they are browned and crisped add the fish sauce. When serving, slice up the thai basil with some kitchen scissors (you do have those, right? if not, get some. so handy for herbs).

Beautiful purple colored Thai basil

Present with the sliced basil on top and viola!  A quick and easy meal.

Andouille Sausage

This isn’t Amy, this is Justin Boggs, a member of the Mundovore cooking club. I will also be posting here from time to time.

Last fall I decided that over the course of this winter I was going to perfect my a Red Beans and Rice recipe. It’s a classic southern food, cheap, and incredibly good if cooked right. I found a good recipe on Gumbopages.com and made a few batches before discovering that if I was going to do this right I needed to find some decent andouille sausage. As it turns out, that doesn’t exist up here, and it costs about $10 a pound to import, so I decided to make my own. All I needed was a meat grinder, sausage stuffer and a smoker. I found a used Brinkman electric “bullet” smoker for $50 on craigslist, and after a little research I bought a #22 grinder from Cabelas, turns out they come with the sausage stuffer attachments already, so I killed to birds with one stone. So without further adieu, here is the process of making the andouille sausage, which is a John Folse recipe I also found on GumboPages.com

This is the sausage casing I got from a wholesaler in Nampa. Only place I could find a natural beef middle casing. It seems to take a little while to untangle. I used 15 feet for 10# of pork and it worked out almost perfect. The recipe called for 12′.

Here is the rinsed casing. This was a high quality casing, I got all 15 feet in one piece. I rinsed it on the outside first, and then opened it up and ran tap water all the way through it for a while, dumped the water and did it again. The casing has a mild odor, like alpo at first, after it is rinsed it has a light and slightly unpleasant smell. It also looks like a big bowl of condoms now. Funny how big it gets, 1 1/2″, after coming out of the package looking a lot like a fettuccine noodle.

For the meat I used pork shoulder that I procured from Winco for under $1.50 a pound. I bought some pork fat as well, but found that the untrimmed roast had plenty of fat to satisfy the requirements of the recipe.

Here is the meat after I cut it into 1-1.5 inch chunks before grinding. It is important to prep the meat correctly for the grinder. It is also important to keep the meat and fat cool in order to keep the fat from smearing in the grinder. I put both of these trays of meat (10 pounds) and put them in the freezer for 1.5 hours until they started forming ice crystals, I froze the grinder as well. Turns out I went a little overboard, it’s just important to keep the meat below room temp. So the next time I do this I will still chill the meat, but not quite so long. Another note, this recipe calls for a course grind of 1/4″, my grinder had a 3/8″ plate, which is a little bigger but worked really well

Here are the spices used. I found the cracked pepper (1/2-1/4 pieces) at Cash and Carry, though I thought it a little expensive at $10 a pound.

Here is the ground pork with the spices just before mixing. After mixing I made a patty and cooked it on the stove. I declared it too hot and too salty, but everything was according to the recipe so I took it out into the garage to stuff into the casing. (it worked out perfect in the end)

Kerri helped me by running the meat grinder, that had been converted with the sausage stuffing kit that came with it. This went pretty well. I could only fit about half of the casing onto the tube, so I might get a longer tube someday, but this works good for now. The first half of the stuffing process I stuffed the casing pretty hard, and on the second half I didn’t fill it quite as much. There was a bit of a visual difference, but it didn’t seem to make any difference at all in the texture of the final product. One other piece of advice is, run the grinder until you fill the tube before tying the knot int he sausage casing, otherwise air will blow up the casing like a balloon. Here is the finished product, well at least until smoking. I let this sit in the refrigerator overnight to let the flavors run together a little bit. I averaged about 11″ on the length to maximize the hanging space in my smoker.

Here is the sausage in it’s final form. I modified the smoker a little with some steel dowels so I could hang the sausages instead of putting them on the grates. After smoking them 6 hours I finished them off in the oven to get the internal temp right. I don’t think the smoker ever got over 165.

Zin Dou from Orient Market, Boise, ID

Originally uploaded by themiliones

This little Cantonese dim sum is freshly made at Orient Market on Saturdays ($0.45 each!).

Orient Market

4806 Emerald Street
Boise, ID 83706-2007
(208) 342-5507

This pastry has a thick & chewy shell covered in sesame seeds. On the inside is a sweet, yellow colored filling which is made of lotus root. The lotus seeds are mixed to a paste and then sugar is added to them.

The flavor is quite mellow, and it you like the mix of sweet and savory you will enjoy this pastry.

Burdock Root, Orient Market, Boise, ID

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Originally uploaded by themiliones

In Japan they take these and whittle them down like you’d sharpen a pencil, but using a peeler, into a stir fry. Burdock is a long root with lots of health benefits.

Burdock’s flavor is a little nutty, and slightly bitter. It reminds me of a parsnip, but the pungeance is unlike anything else, really. Is it strong? No, not like ginger. This is a very unique, very root type of flavor.

I chop up burdock and put it into my kimchee because it allegedly has cancer fighting agents in it, but I also like to use it to make pickles.The ingredients are soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, water and sliced burdock root, cut into rounds.

Here’s the outcome!