Tales from Easement Acres
Sometimes I don’t want to write about my cooking. Sometimes I just want to post a pic, because some dishes don’t need yet another blogger’s recipe. Therefore, I introduce to new blog category: Food Porn.
Today’s entry: Salisbury Steak
–Simon
Okay, so I probably can’t make sushi as well as a professional, but compared to what’s on offer here in Dayton, I can make a damn good attempt.
The trouble with sushi here is multi-fold, and it’s hard to discern the misinformation surrounding a cultural food that isn’t my own. Here are some of the contradictory bits:
Sushi needs fresh fish
Fresh fish doesn’t have any taste
Fresh fish can give you parasites
Freezing the fish will kill the parasites
Freezing the fish destroys its subtleties
Freezing the fish enhances texture
Bluefin tuna is the best
Tuna is one of the blander fish for sushi
It’s all in the rice
If it’s all in the rice, why is sashimi so popular?
Nori adds the flavor
If nori adds the flavor, why are California rolls so popular?
California rolls still have nori
Not always
Cooked fish has more and complex flavor
Cooked fish overwhelms the subtleties of the total flavor package
Says who?
And on and on…
The real problem, I think, isn’t so much that we’re landlocked (if you don’t count access via the Mississippi/Ohio/Miami rivers), but that we’re part of the Midwest. And while Midwesterners certainly know how to fry their freshwater fish, they seem confused with the concepts of seafood. And exotic spice in general. So while the local sushi chefs could probably turn out more flavorful rolls, they don’t because there’s no demand. And they can get away with it.
So with the bar set so low, and prices set so insanely high, we had always considered making our own. And finally, we made the attempt.
First off, the rolling mat. I was not interested in hand-scrubbing a porous bamboo traditional version, so I picked up this silicon one.
Then the fish. Tuna is standard, so that was the choice for our first attempt. I froze it in my blast freezer for a day (USDA says 15 hours at -31F is the minimum requirement to kill parasites).
Followed by a proper workstation setup. The rice was cooked with 1T sugar, 2T rice vinegar, and 2T sugar, according to Alton Brown’s recipe.
And some sliced cucumber and cream cheese. The dog cookies were not included.
Some careful placement and rolling.
And voila! Okay, so it took a few attempts, but this was my best one.
The taste? Pretty close to those store packages. I think there’s some opportunity to get more flavor into the rice, and I can certainly experiment with adjusted levels of (actually good) soy sauce, instead of the dyed salt water restaurants like to give out.
In conclusion, yes we can make something comparable to Dayton-quality sushi rolls (or makizushi, specifically, before the pedants call me out). And I could probably tweak things to make it better. The real cost though is in prep and labor. The execution was a pain. We’ll probably try it again sometime, but I’m not in any rush. Bland sushi it is for the foreseeable future.
–Simon
During the Lubbock years, my mother was very much the displaced Cincinnati German. Missing the cuisine of her native land-or city, rather-she often sought to recreate it. And in the 1990s, product globalization didn’t extend very far into food, so if you wanted something “ethnic”, it probably wasn’t in the dedicated grocery store isle. Some things we’d consider common today were not ubiquitous then. An example: bratwurst. It seems silly now, but she’d actually pack a carry-on with them on her return trip from visiting family. Brats are delicious.
But what couldn’t be bought pre-packaged left only the option of reverse-engineering. I don’t know if Skyline canned their chili back then, but it certainly wasn’t on shelves in Lubbock, so mom eventually developed a recipe for Cincinnati-style chili-a very bizarre concoction for one living in the heart of Texas. Cinnamon as an ingredient, and no spice? I’m glad she never served it up for any of my native friends (even though it was pretty good in its own right).
And one of her recreations that she didn’t get right, however, was something I’ve only just recently revisited, at the behest of others: goetta. I don’t remember this ever coming in packaged tube form. Instead, they were turned out of those small rectangular metal baking pans. Therefore, they must have been homemade.
Here are the ingredients, from Glier’s’ website-an apparently popular brand:
Pork & Beef, Pork & Beef Broth, Steel Cut Oats, Pork Hearts, Pork Skins, Onions, Salt, Spices, Monosodium Glutamate.
A quick reading of that list reveals its obvious origin: more poor people food. Cheap ingredients added to meat in order to extend it, like Hamburger Helper. Plus MSG, naturally. Something that would be created in some fashion by immigrants lacking the means to acquire more expensive food. Something filling and high-calorie. Something that’s an acquired taste.
Mom’s creations slid out of the pans on their own slime, wiggling as they plunked down onto the plate, where they were unceremoniously slathered in Aunt Jemima. A sticky, sweet, slimy loaf. *Shudder*
Glier’s, on the other hand, was…okay. I wouldn’t buy it myself, but I’ll eat it. Slightly crunchy with a nutty taste, it’s a convenient way to get fiber into a meat dish. Beyond making a bigger serving out of a little meat, it appears to have an alternate nutritional function.
Dwelling on the difference in experiences, here’s what I’ve concluded:
Conclusion: More and faster grain saturation combined with more of the cooking liquid being fat due to the method of cooking caused over-hydration (fatification?) of the oats, resulting in no crunch and too much grease retention.
Slime.
And the syrup thing was weird, too.
Mom never much appreciated constructive criticism with her cooking, but some minor adjustments would probably have resulted in a much more palatable result. Liking goetta isn’t exactly a life-changing experience for me, but it’s an amusing way to end a decades-long extreme aversion to a particular food product.
–Simon