Today’s Mystery Ingredient: Durian!

In no way can I consider durian “local,” but I did say at the outset that I also like to experiment with unusual ingredients. Durian definitely qualifies on that score.

I found it at the Hong Kong Market, a positively cavernous Asian grocery in Houston’s Chinatown. Durian originate in Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Their claim to fame: the aroma. Some find the odor pleasant, others revolting. Many Asian hotels prohibit durian due to its overpowering fragrance. How could I resist? After determining that the whole fruit had no significant smell (I had to drive three hours with it in the car, after all), I placed it in the cooler and headed home.

Outdoor Containment Unit

Not knowing if it would commence to stinking as it defrosted, I banished it outside overnight, with a plant atop to discourage curious raccoons. We dispatched it on Monday night in order to dispose of the stinky remains in the next day’s trash.

The odor wafted out as Bruce made the first cut. The best way to describe it is “funky tropical.” Kind of like your favorite funky cheese, but with a mango or guava undertone. Some think it smells of almonds, but that does almonds a disservice. We didn’t find the aroma unbearable, although I can understand how it would be gag-inducing for some. (Apparently the iron-stomached Andrew Zimmern, of “Bizarre Foods,” can’t or won’t touch them.)

The glistening flesh had the rather off-putting consistency of a stringy marshmallow and was quite sticky, with a slight yellowish tint. Bruce managed to scoop out about a cup of flesh from the coconut-sized fruit. He also removed several large pits (which apparently can be eaten if cooked. No way I am cooking those things in my house.)

We decided a fruit smoothie would work best for a tasting, so we spun it up in the blender. The smoothie would have tasted better with less durian, as its flavor pretty much overpowers anything else. Banana would have made a good pairing.

And no, I didn’t finish it.

My Four-Day Vegetarian Challenge

 

Bruce and I observe meatless Monday, having learned how to make some tasty vegetarian dishes for a good friend. Recently, while Bruce worked in Florida for a few days, I challenged myself to see if I could go four days as a vegetarian. (OK, pescatarian; our version of vegetarian includes fish.)

(Disclaimer: this outlines my own personal experience. I am not a nutritionist or health care professional. Please you check with your physician before trying such a change.)

	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Monday	Scrambled eggs with flax seed	Fried fish sandwich on a whole wheat bun	Frito pie with vegetarian chili
Tuesday	Spelt bread with blueberry jam	Egg salad sandwich on whole grain, mushroom soup	“Pepperoni” pizza on whole grain crust
Wednesday	Scrambled eggs with flax seed	Grilled cheese with “pepperoni,” mushroom soup	Luby’s fried fish, corn, mac and cheese
Thursday	Greek yogurt with cereal	Hu-Hot Asian stir fry with “krab”	MEAT!!!

When eating vegetarian, I often struggle to find an adequate protein substitute, especially for supper. I learned early on that throwing four vegetables together for dinner made for a rumbly tummy an hour later. So I focus on using high protein meat substitutes. My favorites include:

• Eggs
• Meat substitutes from Tofurky and others, usually based on soy or textured wheat protein
• Beans
• Cheese
• Greek yogurt

Using whole grains also makes a filling meal. Vegetarian Times has some great suggestions for high protein meat substitutes and satisfying vegetarian entrees.
 
I really enjoy cooking with soyrizo. I’ve made some terrific tacos and frittatas where I don’t even miss the meat. In fact, Bruce’s winning Hatch recipe included soyrizo. (I’ll post a frittata recipe soon.)

During day two, I realized that I needed to supplement my meals with a protein shake (almond milk, agave syrup, and whey protein powder). I’m training for a 15-mile bike ride, and if I don’t get enough protein, my batteries fall out.

My verdict: In short, “there’s no such thing as a failed experiment” (Richard Buckminster Fuller). While proud that I completed my goal, I’m not in a hurry to repeat it. My current level of exercise makes protein management (always a challenge) that much more difficult. Plus…I just plain miss meat (in general, and bacon in particular). In the interests of healthy eating and attempting to reduce our meat consumption, we’ll continue with meatless Mondays. But I’m not likely to join Karen’s vegetarian bandwagon any time soon.

Italian Sausage Polenta Casserole

 

 

I combined two of my favorite ingredients, sweet Italian sausage and polenta, to make a hearty main dish. Like most casseroles, it works well as a potluck or “take to a friend in need” offering. Turn it into a vegetarian-friendly dish by using vegetable stock and soyrizo. Spice-heads can crank up the heat by adding chile powder, roasted green chile, hot Italian sausage, or hot smoked paprika. Watch the video on my YouTube channel.

Printable recipe

 

Ingredients

• 4 C chicken broth
• 4 C milk (more as needed)
• 2 C polenta
• 1 C crème fraiche
• 1 C grated parmesan
• Salt/pepper
• 3/4 lb sweet Italian sausage
• 3/4 lb chorizo
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, diced
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 3 T tomato paste
• 3 T butter, melted
• 3/4 C panko bread crumbs

Bring the stock and milk to a boil. Slowly whisk in polenta and reduce to a simmer. Add salt/pepper to your taste. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes until smooth and creamy. Carefully watch both the polenta and warm milk to ensure they don’t boil over. If the mixture gets too dry, add more warm water and/or milk. Right at the end of cooking, stir in crème fraiche and parmesan and combine thoroughly. Taste for seasoning. Set aside.

 

On the far left is cornmeal, then grits, then polenta. I use cornmeal for baking, like cornbread and muffins, grits for breakfast, and polenta for side dishes. I prefer my polenta finely ground and my grits more coarsely ground. Here's a good explanation of the three.

Preheat oven to 350°.

 

While the polenta is cooking, brown the sausage and chorizo. Drain and set aside.  My local grocery stocks both Italian sausage and chorizo. If yours doesn't, just buy uncooked, pre-packaged brats (Johnsonville, for example) or chorizo, and cut open the casing.

 

 

In the same skillet, heat olive oil. Sauté onion for two minutes, until translucent. Add garlic and pepper and sauté for another two minutes. Set aside.

 

In a large bowl, mix together the polenta, sausage mixture, vegetables, and tomato paste. Temper the eggs by mixing in small amount of the warm polenta, then stirring back into the mixture. This will keep your eggs from scrambling when you add them to the warm polenta.

Spray a casserole with non-stick spray. Pour in mixture. Bake in oven for 30 minutes.

 

While baking, mix the melted butter and panko. Sprinkle on top during the last five minutes of cooking. Return to oven until browned.

Fresh Pinto Beans with Tomatoes

Fresh pinto beans arrived recently in my Greenling @greenling_com Local Basket. (More on Greenling in a later post.) Time to experiment!

Printable recipe

Ingredients

· 2 medium tomatoes, quartered
· 3 T olive oil
· 1 1/3 C fresh pinto beans
· 3 C chicken stock
· 2 slices bacon, diced
· 1/2 C onion, diced
· 1 clove garlic, minced
· 1/2 jalapeno, stemmed, seeded and diced

 

Preheat oven to 400°. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with a silicon mat or parchment paper. Coat with olive oil; salt and pepper to taste. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the skin begins to char. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Roasting the tomatoes brings out richer flavors, especially if your tomatoes are less than perfect.

 

Bring the stock to a boil, and add the pintos. If you don’t have fresh, use dried; just soak them overnight. But the fresh ones taste much more vibrant. Cook for 25-30 minutes, or just until tender. The beans taste best when they still have a little “tooth” or al dente texture. Drain well.

After the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, remove the skins.

While the pintos are cooking, render the bacon until crispy. Set aside. (Sorry…no photos of the bacon. I decided afterward that crispy bacon would add a nice crunch and saltiness.)

 

Sauté the onion in the rendered bacon fat for two minutes, stirring frequently, until translucent. Add the garlic and pepper and sauté another two minutes. (Yes, the photo has celery. It didn’t add much to the dish, so I removed it from the final recipe.)

 

Add the tomatoes and pinto beans. Stir gently until heated through. Salt and pepper to taste.

I hope you enjoy!

 

 

 

Baked Acorn Squash with Brown Butter and Herbs

Usually a sweet and earthy acorn squash warms souls on cool winter evenings. But I enjoy the rich flavors year-round. I find the tender squash, scraped into the oozy melted butter, hard to resist the other nine months of the year.

(Printable recipe)

Ingredients

· One acorn squash

· About 1 C  water

· 4 T butter

· 2 sprigs fresh rosemary

· 6-8 sage leaves, chopped

· Salt/pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 400°.

Using a large chef’s knife, carefully cut the squash in half. Squash often resist easy cutting, and their shape makes them prone to rolling about. I usually ask my husband to tackle this task.

Scoop out the seeds. I use my favorite kitchen multi-tasker: a grapefruit spoon. Even if you don’t eat grapefruit, the spoon’s serrated edge quickly and neatly scoops seeds from melons, squash, and cucumbers.

 

Carefully slice a small divot off the base of each half of the squash, so they don’t roll around in your baking dish (or on your dinner plate). Don’t cut off too much, or you’ll puncture the inner hollow, and all the yummy butter and herbs will run out into your baking dish!

 

Pour the water into a casserole or baking dish. Place the squash halves in the dish face down. The water should come up the sides of the squash about ¼ inch. Bake for 30 minutes.

 

I snipped this rosemary and sage right from my container garden. If you don’t grow your own, many grocery stores carry fresh herbs.

 

While the squash bakes, melt the butter in a skillet. Stirring frequently, cook the butter until the foam subsides and you see some browning. “Brown butter” (or buerre noisette) is simply butter cooked until the milk solids start to turn brown. It concentrates the flavor by burning off most of the water and creates a warm, nutty flavor (also delicious on other vegetables and fish). Stir in the rosemary sprig and the sage. Set aside.

 

Remove the squash from the oven and place the dish on a trivet. Using tongs, turn the squash so the cut side faces up. Be careful! That water in the base of the dish is hot, and you do not want to splash yourself. Brush the squash with the brown butter/herb mixture.

 

Let the extra butter and herbs drain down into the scooped-out portion. Bake it in the oven for another 30 minutes.

 

When done, remove rosemary leaves and stems. When plating, don’t spill any of the butter and sage—it’s too tasy to waste!

 

 

Have You Visited Groomer’s Seafood?

Since we’re eating more fish these days, I frequently visit our preferred local provider—Groomer’s Seafood (9801 McCullough, @groomerseafood).

Tucked away on McCullough off of E. Ramsey Rd., their shop is a bit challenging to find. Today, I missed the not-well-marked turn and sailed halfway down Ramsey before realizing my mistake. And I’ve been there before!

The company started with commercial fishing in the Gulf (in the late 1800s) and opened their San Antonio shop in 1982. They move over 250 tons of seafood a month, so you know what you’re getting is fresh.

Their weekly email lists specials for the weekend. (Sign up on their website.) I’ve taken advantage of sales on cobia, blue crab, and snapper. Their extensive menagerie includes normal fish (such as striped bass and flounder), as well as harder to find items, like branzini and uncleaned squid. You can purchase whole fish or fillets. I haven’t asked, but I’m sure they’d also sell fish bones if you wanted to make stock.

Their cavernous refrigerated processing area buzzes with bundled-up workers deftly filleting, cleaning, and prepping fish for both retail and wholesale customers. I enjoy watching them while I wait for my order. The service folks out front can recommend the best way to prepare your purchase.

The recently expanded shop stocks grilling supplies, Asian ingredients, frozen specialty meats (such as antelope filets), and a variety of rubs and sauces. They even have quail eggs!

Their popular “Lobster-Mania” event takes places this weekend. They’ll have 1,500 cold water Maine lobster tails for $5.95 on Friday, and another 1,000 on Saturday. They sold out of 1,000 in two hours on Thursday, so get there early!

I’d love to hear about the fish you prepare from Groomer’s!

Introducing the 2012 San Antonio Hatch Contest Winner!

For those of you not "in the know"...our favorite grocery store (Central Market) sponsors a Hatch chile recipe contest in conjunction with their Hatch festival every August. They've selected Bruce or I (one entry per household, please) as finalists for every year of the contest. (I've posted lots about Hatch on Alamo A La Carte.) I won in 2008 with a Hatch Key Lime Pie; Bruce won the following year with a Hatch Fudge Sundae. To our knowledge, we're the only family that has participated each and every year in San Antonio.

Bruce's entry this year was a Smoked Hatch Penne Casserole with a Hatch Corn Salad. They made us sweat bullets for a bit; they didn't make the phone calls until after this year's festival had wound down. But we did indeed get the call, and Bruce whipped up a batch for the contest on September 1. (I've posted a video on my YouTube channel.)

Many of our friends (who help us select the recipe to enter; we come up with five or six every year) stopped by to root us on. One by one, the nine finalists presented their dishes to the panel of five distinguished judges (from the local food world).

Entries always run the gamut; this year's participants prepared three desserts (which have won the past four contests), a quiche, and tabouli, among others. (You don't cook there at the store; you bring the prepared dish. So unfortunately, the earthy aroma of roasted Hatch chiles is missing.)

Bruce presented his dish next-to-last. He explained how we choose our recipes. We always prepare a vegetarian version of all our dishes (for one of our best friends). In this particular case, the vegetarian version tasted better than the version with meat. So he submitted his recipe with soyrizo (a soy-based chorizo).

Finally, the scores were tallied. Third place went to the quiche, and second place to the "hot kisses." At that point, Bruce said he had written it off; he didn't think he had a chance against the desserts.

Then Patric announced, "The 2012 Hatch chile winner is .... Smoky Hatch Penne Casserole!" Our cheering section whooped and hollered, and Bruce went up to accept his prize basket and chile crown. (And 75 pounds of chiles; no kidding. We're still trying to foist them off on friends.)

We brought extra so audience members could have a taste after the contest (only the judges get to taste every dish). It was all gone by the time we left.

People ask us when we start coming up with next year's ideas. The answer: NOW! My notebook is full of scribbled ideas to try next summer.

I hope you enjoy the recipe!