A Recipe for Laughter and Killer March Madness Food (NYTimes)

The New York Times is a requirement for Sundays in the Inserra house. Its like coffee every day of the week; if its not present anxiety ensues, voices are raised and the iPhone or Android app to locate the nearest Starbucks is employed. Phone calls are made with clear agitation and shaky withdrawal symptoms apparent; even over the phone.

This morning Dad arrived back home after taking a drive in the cold nasty rain.
"Do you have the New York Times?" Mom shouted across the house.
"No. Harris Teeters {a local grocery chain} said they didn't deliver it this morning."
"Did you check Starbucks?"
"No. If they didn't deliver it to Harr----"
"Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. You knowwwww you have to check the Starbucks. They always have it. And if they don't" she turned to me. "We go to the airport" Becuase airlifts of newspapers are clearly vital to the swarms of Northerners down here in North Carolina. Mom then proceeded to call up all the Starbucks within a 10-15 mile radius. The first two were sold out of the paper.

"No!? You don't have it? That is unacceptable. Can I have the number of the Starbucks on Old Chapel Hill Rd.?" Mom looked at me again, since Lish and I are new to the neighborhood she bequeathed her go-to NYTimes secret location. I am sure this was purely self-interest in the event Dad was away and I needed to pick up the paper in his place.

"You have one! Great! Will you save me a copy? My name is Marie. Put my name on it. My husband will be there to pick it up in 5 miniutes."

Crisis averted.

There are lots of informative articles to read. I go straight for the culinary themed pieces. Today there was culinary gold. Sam Sifton replaced Frank Bruni as the food writer/reviewer for the New York Times. He brought fun back to food writing. The Times has not had a food writer with this much style, wordsmithing ability and gusto since Ruth Reichl. The article is from the NYTimes Sunday Magazine and would be easy to miss online, since thats where most of us read it these days.

This article is hilarious. It also contains a recipe that will work for the March Madness fans. Its perfect sports food that requires a beer in hand and many paper towels to be used for cleaning the food madness off your face.

UNC today at 4:55pm EST. Go Tar Heels!

A Recipe for Environmental Improvement & Regeneration using Fungi

This video is entitled 'Paul Stamets on 6 ways Mushrooms can Save the World.'

If you had not noticed already I have become a bit obsessed with mushrooms lately. The more I read about the funghi and whats underneath, the mycelium, the more fascinated I become. The world of mycology (the study of mushrooms/fungus) is widely misundersttod. What do you think of when you hear the word 'mushroom'? Maybe the magic kind? Maybe that they can poison and possibly kill you? Or maybe you just think about those bland button mushrooms that are in the grocery. This video and the speakers book "Mycelium Running" are revolutionary. They convey the importance of fungi and the mycelial mats underneath to the natural world. The video is 17 minutes long. One of the most impressive parts is the sequence on oil and petroleum cleanup. Make sure you at least see that part. Prepare to be amazed.

Mushroom & Sherry Soup

They are known to form primordial bodies overnight. They can heal or be fatal. Some conjure dark magic. Some just taste delicious. Mushrooms are one of the culinary world’s most intriguing foodstuffs. Mushrooms are amazing. At least I think so. My devotion to them began after reading ‘Japanese Foods that Heal’ which lead to a Maitake/Hen-of-the-Woods pasta that is on this blog. They have been used for centuries as remedies and there are still many new discoveries being made. The most beneficial and newest research on fungi is focusing on cancer and HIV/AIDS medicines.
Armed with this devotion, I began searching out local mycophiles (mushroom foragers/experts). I found a NAMA certified group in Asheville, N.C. which is a few hours away. Charlotte Caplan was a great resource but was not as local as I needed. She pointed me in the direction of Robert Sprenger. He has been hunting around the triangle area for a few years but originally hails from Rochester, NY. He is a font of information when it comes to mushrooms. He began the Chatham Mushroom Club which leads family friendly foraging expeditions in Chatham County. Alycia, my Dad and I headed out to Pittsboro to meet the man and hunt some wild edible mushrooms. Solidly built and a bearded man of nature he is one of the most generous people I have met down here since our move. Generousity to strangers is a phenomenon that always surprises New Yorkers. He told us about the rich variety of premium wild fungi in the area; Maitake, Oyster, Puffballs, Lions Mane and Chicken of the Woods. He showed us his most highly regarded mushroom field guides and reference books. “Mycelium Running is the most important book on fungi. Stamets is a maverick and all his supposedly outlandish claims on mushrooms have proven to be true.” The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms was his other most trusted field guide for identification. Its lightweight, has a sturdy cover and fits in a pocket. WARNING: if you do go out hunting mushrooms, pair yourself up with an expert and seasoned forager. Check out the NAMA website for clubs in your area.
Sprenger is also test developing inoculation techniques for farmers to use. He inoculates logs with mycelium and has a small growing operation in his backyard. The goal is for farmers to have one extra crop to sell at a very low cost. He keeps the operation extremely low energy, basically off the grid which gives farmers another advantage. So far he is testing out maitake, shitake, oysters and a few other species. He gave me 4 logs (2 Oysters & 2 Shitake) to take home and try out. There is definitely a demand for mushrooms in this area and everywhere else there are talented chefs and their devotees.

So the recipe…since Careme, Escoffier and maybe before, Sherry has been the ultimate pairing for mushrooms. It is just one of those perfect marriages like butter and popcorn. This soup is simple. While the mushrooms in the recipe were wild, the recipe does not require that. If you do head out to forage after a frost, the mushrooms can be a bit dried out, a rinse with water perks them right back up. Like with all soups, a good long simmer really draws out the flavors. I used organic chicken broth. I love this brand because of how rich the color, flavor and texture are. I first tried out this recipe with Marsala wine; not as good. Then I picked up Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. It’s a sweeter sherry and adds another flavor component to the soup. We also picked fresh baby scallions as seen in the photo below and used them as a garnish. They were growing a few yards apart from the Oyster mushrooms. What grows together goes together.
My favorite wine pairing with mushrooms and mushroom dishes is a Falanghina or a Fiano de Avellino; they simply don’t let the mushroom fade away.

Ingredients:

1 ½ quarts Chx Broth (preferably Imagine Organic)
¼ cup of Harvey’s Cream Sherry
½ medium sized Onion
5 Sage leaves
1 lbs./16oz. Mushrooms
Salt & Pepper
Baby Scallions, Chives or Parsley for garnish

Procedure:
1. Pour chx broth into the same pot you boil pasta in. Let come to a boil.
2. Add mushrooms (we used oyster since that’s what we found. Portobello’s will work. I would not make the whole soup out of Button Mushrooms. Their flavor is mild so mix and match a few different mushrooms; Portobello, button, shitake, maitake,) etc. Destem if necessary. Add the onion, half the sherry, sage leaves some salt and pepper and let simmer for 25 minutes.
3. Add a bit more salt and pepper to taste. Cook for another 10 minutes at least.
4. Let the mixture cool. Puree in a blender.BE CAREFUL. Its hot liquid (if you didn’t let it cool enough) so have a dish towel ready. Puree in batches. Do not fill up the blender more than half way. Once half the blender is full, place the top on and a dish towel over that. Blend and puree. If there is a vent on the cap of the glass/plastic blender, have it open and have the dish towel over that. A blender works so much better than a food processor for soups. The soup will have a much smoother consistency from a blender. If you are feeling fancy strain the soup through a fine mesh sieve.
5. There is no cream or butter in this recipe. I found you don’t need it. By all means add it if you like. Pour the soup into bowls and garnish with the chives, parsley or scallions.
**The pictured soup was not pureed w/ a blender (it was temporarily out of service)

Simply Sauteed Mushrooms

So this really does not count as a recipe but it does show off another excellent way to eat mushrooms; simply. The picture also shows the perfect color of sautéed mushrooms; lightly browned and crispy with a sprinkling of salt. Butter…anything with butter on it is usually delicious. At FCI if enough flavor was not coaxed out of a soup (usually do to time constraints), a stick of butter was dropped in. The French have always employed this sacred maneuver. I call this technique ‘The French Fix.’ The oil is added to ensure that the butter does not brown too quickly.

½ Tablespoon of Butter
1 Tsp. Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
4-5ozs Mushrooms

Procedure:
1. If you have oysters or shitakes don’t slice them. For King Oysters, Buttons, Portabella’s and cremini’s slice thinly.
2. In a sauté pan melt the butter and add the oil to a mid-high heat. Add the mushrooms and coat them evenly. Cook for 5 minutes
3. Add 2 pinches of salt and let them sweat out their water. Cook for another 5 minutes. They should start to brown nicely. Once they are browned on both sides, put on a plate lined with a paper towel to drain up excess oil. Sprinkle some salt, pepper and chives on top.
Use these mushrooms as a topping for a salad, with rotisserie chicken, game meats or just leave them out and watch the grazers devour them. You can also make a quick pan sauce with chopped herbs and white wine or sherry to drizzle on some chicken….

Wild Foraged Mushrooms from Pittsboro, NC ...recipes to follow.

The Secret Recipe for Coca-Cola...

This was just too good to ignore. The amount of writing, conspiracy theories, hidden notations in previosuly long-lost notebooks is endless when it comes to 'Merchandise 7X' or to the non-executives and consumers 'Coca Cola'.

Ira Glass is one of my favorite journalists and the amount of traffic his story generated on the web crashed his site.

Here is the recipe by the founder of Coca-Cola, John Pemberton who was a close friend of Joe Jacob:

More fascinating to me was the 'de-cocaine-ing' of the coca leaves that still occurs TODAY. Shipments of the coca leaf come into NEW JERSEY. Surprise, surprise. Once arrived they are brought to the de-cocaine-ing warehouse. No convicted felons working there I imagine. Then after their journey from illegal to legal, the leaves are used in the flavoring. You can buy Coca leaves online very easily.

I think we all owe it to ourselves to give this recipe a shot.

Ingredients:
*7X Flavor
Grain Alcohol (Everclear) - 8 oz
Orange Oil - 20 drops
Lemon Oil - 30 "
Nutmeg Oil - 10 "
Corriander Oil - 5 drops
Neroli Oil - 10 drops
Cinnamon Oil - 10 drops


F.E. Coca(Fluid Extract of Coca) 3 drams = 4 oz
Citric Acid - 3 oz
Citrate Caffeine - 1 oz
Sugar - 30 lbs. !!!
Water - 2.5 gal
Lime Juice - 2 pints
Vanilla - 1 oz
Caramel - 1.5 oz or more to color Color sufficient

***Use 2 oz flavor (above) to 5 gals syrup

How to Make This Recipe

As we said in the radio story, this recipe includes two parts. The recipe for the syrup, and the recipe for the 7X flavoring formula. You can scale down the recipe for the syrup if you don't want to make gallons of the syrup. You will need one ounce of syrup mixed with 5 ounces of carbonated water to make a serving of soda.

When you buy your ingredients be careful that you buy FOOD GRADE. There are lots of things you can find on the Internet that can be used in this recipe that are not food grade and will make you sick.

1) Make the 7X flavor. To make this, you'll want food grade essential oils at 100 percent strength. They can be found by searching for food grade essential oils in the grocery section of Amazon.com and other places (this orange oil, for instance).

For a home recipe, you can get an eyedropper and count drops the old-fashioned way, but if you want to be more precise, Steve Warth at Sovereign Flavors says he estimated each drop was .025 grams, which means you want 0.5 grams of Orange Oil, 0.75 of Lemon Oil, 0.25 grams of Nutmeg Oil, 0.125 grams of Coriander Oil, 0.25 grams of Neroli Oil, 0.25 grams of Cinnamon Oil (historian Mark Pendergrast says the original Coke recipe was made with a kind of cinnamon called Cassia).

Combine those with 8 ounces of food grade alcohol. This ingredient, we'll be frank, will be kind of a pain in the ass to find. Important: Do NOT use Ethyl Rubbing Alcohol or Rubbing Alcohol or Denatured Ethyl Alcohol. These will make you sick. You need food grade ethyl alcohol. Sometimes people swap Everclear or other neutral grain spirits for this, and our beverage guys suggest this as an easy, cheap substitute.

2) Make your fluid extract of coca. Buy whole leaf coca tea. Instructions for making coca extract from this can be found online. You don't need much. The recipe calls for 3 fluid drams, which is equivalent to 1/8 of a fluid ounce or – an easier measurement for a home kitchen – 3/4 of a tablespoon.

3) Make the syrup. Once you have your 7X flavor, and your fluid extract of coca, you are ready to mix them with your other ingredients to make the syrup. Mix your ingredients in this order: water, sugar, then coloring, then coca extract, then vanilla extract, then caffeine, then lime juice and citric acid.

Several Notes:

-- If you do not want to make several gallons of the syrup, you can adjust the recipe by reducing all ingredients by the same rate -- one half the original amount, one quarter, and so on.

-- Another important thing about this step, as we said in the radio story about the recipe, the Sovereign Flavors chemists concluded that in order to compensate for the intensity of contemporary essential oils (125 years of advances in food technology means it's possible that they're much stronger than the oils Pemberton used in his lab in 1886) the 7X flavoring addition should be reduced by 75 percent. That means, if you make the full size batch, you should only use 1/2 ounce of 7X formula instead of the 2 ounces specified in the original recipe.

-- You might want to cut down on the caffeine. We all got a strong buzz from the soda we made with the recipe, and then one of the beverage professionals pointed out that it was because it had five times the amount of caffeine of a modern soda.

-- Some ingredients are measured in fluid ounces, others are measured in ounces by weight. The team at Sovereign Flavors says if an ingredient is liquid -- coca extract or vanilla extract -- it should be measured in fluid ounces. If it's a dry ingredient, like citric acid, it should be measured by weight.

4) Make the soda. Once you have mixed the syrup, it should be combined with carbonated water at a ratio of 1-to-5 (one part syrup to five parts bubbly water) to make the soda.

Legal language we have to include here: If you're making this soda, it's entirely at your own risk. The soda companies and radio stations involved in this story make no claims about the safety of this old recipe.

-'How to Make' reprinted from 'This American Life'


Its a big batch...for your next potluck party maybe?

Tomatillo Cilantro Chili

Its been a while since my last post. A lot has happened. Alycia and I relocated to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. I will be starting up a mobile food truck to service the Durham area. Ideally, to be launched in September of 2011. In the meantime, ruminations on recipes and wine...

Tomatillo's are delicious. I didn't know how delicious until I found them in a grocery store for a salsa verde. I grilled pineapples, diced them, tossed in some cilantro sauteed onions and garlic. I then sauteed the Tomatillos and was instantly hooked. They are now an official obsession. Eggs in the morning with salsa verde, the above salsa on any meat (mostly pork) and now this chili. I was recently in White Salmon, WA watching my two cousins. One in particular is a classic growing boy that consumes food and milk with an insatiable appetite. He needed to be stopped. A big bowl of chili was in order; I could ladle this stuff endlessly. However, they expected more from me than just any old chili. It had to be different. Enter the tomatillo, this would be the substitute for the usual red chili they were used to. It was also Sunday and my uncle Frank had friends coming over; lots of mouths to feed. I also whipped up a homemade french onion dip that I remembered Jennifer Nelson making for a super bowl party. Perfect game day grub.

Recipe:
2 lbs. of Tomatillo's, diced
1 large Onion, diced
2 small Jalapenos, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 Green Bell Pepper, diced
1 Can White Navy Beans
1 Lbs. Ground Pork
1 Bunch of Cilantro, diced
1/2 Tbsp Ground Fennel
2 Tsp. of Dried Oregano
1/2 Tbsp of Ground Cumin
1/2 Cup Chicken Broth/Stock
Salt to taste

Grated Cheese for garnish (I used Parmesan since it was in the fridge, cheddar is obvious but great, monterey jack with red pepper flakes...)

Serves 6 healthy portions

Procedure:
1. The dicing is the bulk of the work. Use anyone close by to help. After that, drizzle some oil at the bottom of the pot and place the tomatillo's, onion, garlic, bell pepper, chx broth and jalapenos into large stock pot, creuset, sauce pan or other 3.5-5 quart pot.
2. Put the cover on and cook at medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Stir.
3. Add pork, navy beans and all the spices. Increase temperature to med-high and stir. Cook for 10 minutes.
4. When the Chili is finished, turn off the heat and add the cut cilantro. Always do this last. Cilantro cooks and wilts quickly and its best served fresh. The minute this herb hits heat the flavors start to dissipate. Top with grated cheese and go at it.