Monday was pantry day and I spent most of the day puttering in the kitchen. I needed to refresh a few simple staples: namely a personal care item, and some mayonnaise but neither of those is a big deal. Mayonnaise takes 3 minutes and is better than anything I can buy. The hard part is remembering to take the egg and lemon out of the fridge in advance so that they can come up to room temperature, and then remembering to use them before they go bad. A timer helps.
But I felt like doing something more. I also thought that while I was there, I might as well make a day of it, and play around a little bit. A couple of spice blends were running low, and there were some things I had been meaning to make or try. I had started some Szechuan Peppercorn Oil on Sunday because I knew it needed to steep overnight, but I realized that I had enough Szechuan Pepper left over to make a salt blend as well, so I started toasting some Szechuan Peppercorns with kosher salt while I got out eggs for both breakfast and the mayo. While I cooked breakfast I laid out my plan of attack.
While onions and spinach sautéed I melted the coconut oil and got the deodorant out of the way and put aside where it could cool. I toasted the Szechuan peppercorns and salt until the salt was just turning a creamy golden white, but not yet gold, before grinding it to a fine powder with the peppercorns. I also strained the Szechuan peppercorn oil to remove the aromatics and bottled it for storage. By that time breakfast was about ready, and I drizzled a little bit of the Szechuan oil over my eggs which had been scrambled with onion and turkey breast.
Next up were spices.
I toasted the whole spices for Five-Spice Powder. If you are observant, you will note that there are actually six spices in the skillet. Yes, it is true, my five spice blend contains six spices.
Once the spices are toasty and lightly browned and the house is filled with a fragrant sweet/spicy aroma, I pulled the pan off the heat to allow the spices cool a bit before pulverizing them into a fine powder. The star anise browns better if you break it into its points before toasting in the skillet.
Next up was curry powder. This was the first batch of curry powder I have made any since I moved into this house. I don't tend to use a pre-mixed blend when I am cooking Indian style food, except for my own garam masala blend. But I missed curry powder when I was making deviled eggs over the holidays, and since I sometimes enjoy it with my eggs in the morning, with vegetables, or a mayonnaise dressing it was time. The process is the same as for five-spice. Toast the spices, then blend. Here the toasted spices are in the spice grinder ready to go. Turmeric is hidden underneath to give the blend that familiar curry color and round out the flavor.
After whipping up the mayonnaise, it was time for lunch. I had seen some interesting purple sweet potato noodles in the oriental market when I was there on Sunday, and I decided to try them out for lunch. While a pot of water came to a boil, I shredded half of a largish baby bok choy and a radish.
The noodles only had to cook for 1 minute and came out of the water fascinatingly gelatinous and slippery and somewhat translucent. The color seemed slightly mottled, although that could have just been the light through the translucent noodles; I couldn't capture it in a photo. The color, and the speckled translucence reminded me of squid skin on the translucent white bodies. Not such a bad thing. I tossed the noodles with a teaspoon of my Szechuan peppercorn oil to keep them from congealing into a gelatinous mass.
Although the original intention was to make a noodle dish, it was quickly apparent that there was more bok choy than noodle, and a salad was created by tossing the warm noodles with the bok choy, allowing the greens to soften and wilt slightly while I quickly crisped up a little duck confit that was sitting in the fridge. The resulting salad was a pleasing mix of texture and flavor. But although I enjoyed this lunch, I'm not quite sure what to do with the entire package of noodles. It says it makes 12 (small) servings, but the noodles function better as an accent texture than as a noodle base. Perhaps they will absorb flavor from a base, but then I might lose the color. They were certainly good in the salad, and would probably be good in a broth as well and they might fry nicely. Both bean threads and yam noodles tend to be lovely when fried, not that I tend to fry anything at all regularly. How long will these fresh noodles keep in the fridge? They are already pretty dry, can they be air-dried to prolong storage? Can they be frozen? Considering that the entire package cost $1.38, it is all a cheap enough experiment.
In the afternoon I made some Chinese style fermented black bean sauce. This is a staple of Chinese cooking and difficult to find in a gluten-free version. Mostly it consists of beans and aromatics, but there is a little soy sauce in the mix, the reason it is not gluten-free. Since I've been making my own, I think I may like it better than anything I've bought, but it could just be that I don't remember what the stuff in jars tastes like. The photo above shows the bean sauce at about the mid-point of the process. Everything has been sautéed together and next I will puree about half of this mixture with some oil and then stir it back into the mixture and let it cook a little more before cooling it down and storing it. I made a large batch, about six cups, because I also need it for making hoisin. Gluten free Hoisin is available, but I find most of terrible, all sugar and salt and little character.
The final project was to make a batch of Serrano-Lemongrass Vinegar, from Barbara Tropp's China Moon Cookbook. In fact, the two infusions, the Szechuan Peppercorn Oil and the Lemongrass Vinegar, bookended my kitchen experiments and both techniques came from Tropp. I had actually been inspired to make the Szechuan Peppercorn Oil by an article in Milk Street Magazine, but I found the Milk Street version to be uninspiring. I remembered loving the version I had made in my 30's and 40's and so had decided to give it a try, wondering if my memory was accurate, or if my tastes had simply changed. Memory served me well, and the new, Tropp-Inspired batch of Szechuan Peppercorn Oil was nuanced and complex, inspiring me to try the vinegar.
While the vinegar cooled and steeped, I was overcome with a mad urge to experiment with making some mushroom soy sauce. I always loved mushroom soy when I was young, but I have never found a gluten-free version. I have no idea how it will turn out, and apparently it will be a few weeks before the results are in, but there is a pint of (hopefully) future mushroom soy, sitting in the back of a cool closet waiting for the magic to happen.
A simple supper of roasted chicken breast, carrots, and bok choy ended my day. I sautéed the bok choy in the chicken drippings and then tossed them briefly with the Lemongrass-Serrano Vinegar. It was light and brightly refreshing, a perfect way to end a day in the kitchen. That chicken breast is really tiny. Two bone-in breasts from that chicken weighed 7.5 ounces. Although only one is shown in the photo, I'll admit I went back and at the other one as well. I figure that means I ate 5 ounces of chicken. Yes I weighed the bones afterwards. I am indeed that much of a nerd.
