Pesto Blini Prosciutto Cheese Sandwich

This is a sandwich my wife came up with for lunch. We made “pesto blini” some time ago and found out when we toast the blini, because of the olive oil in the pesto, essentially it fries in the toaster oven and makes a nice crispy crust. My wife decided this would make a nice sandwich. She would have used honey ham but we did not have it and, instead, used prosciutto (which we did have). She also added a slice of cheddar cheese before toasting. Melting cheese,  prosciutto and crisp pesto flavored blini are indeed a good combination. I served it with a side of cantalope.

Ingredients:
2 pesto blinis, spilt in half horizontally
Mayo and Dijon mustard
Slices of sharp cheddar or other meting cheese
Prosciutto or honey ham

Direction.
Place slices of the cheddar on one slice of the blini and toast both slices until the cheese melts
Smear the mayo and mustard on the other slices (picture #2)

Add the prosciutto (picture #3)

The prosciutto was a bit on the salty side and this sandwich may be better with honey ham or some other meat but it was still pretty good with nice pesto/basil flavor and crispy blini.

Vegetables in Cold Broth 冷製のトマトの煮浸し

Cold vegetables soaked in broth is the perfect dish for summer. I have posted cold simmered tomato and sugar snap soaked in salt broth before. I made a tomato dish similar to the one I made before but it differed because I did not simmer the tomato (Picture #1). I skinned the Campari tomato (by briefly blanching) and then soaking (but not cooking) it in the hot broth. I let it cool to room temperature and then refrigerated it. I blanched the Sugar snap then soaked it in the broth. I topped it with very briefly blanched “mitsuba ミツバ”. This preparation allows you to taste a fresher tomato flavor. The broth is also slightly sweet containing mirin and soy sauce in addition to kelp-bonito broth.

A few days later, I added simmered daikon and shiitake mushroom (picture #2, right). I also served salmon kelp roll 鮭の昆布巻き and seasoned egg or “ajitama 味玉” (left). The green is arugula sprouts which were growing in the window pot but needed to be thinned. I dressed with truffle oil.

Directions:

Vegetables I used are simmered daikon and fresh shiitake mushrooms, skinned Campari tomatoes and blanched sugar snaps. The daikon was first simmered in water with added one pinch of raw rice for 30 minutes. The seasoning broth is my usual kelp and bonito broth (I made it stronger with two dashi packs with 500ml of water) which was seasoned with mirin and soy sauce (not too strong to bring out the natural flavor of the vegetable). I did not cook the vegetable further, just placed in hot seasoned both and let it cool down and then refrigerated.

This is a very light refreshing dish to serve on a hot summer evening. The veggies have a very fresh flavor but a slightly cooked texture that make them a bit easier to eat. This is the essence of summer.

Yakitori de le Canard 鴨ささみで焼き鳥

Last time we had duck tenders as a cutlet, we said we will make Yakitori using the duck tenders (a.k.a. “Yakitori de le canard” 鴨焼き鳥). Finally we managed to do it. I thought about how to prepare it and decided to marinate it and then cook it in the toaster oven. Since it is duck, and Japanese generally think “kamo” or duck goes well with “negi” or onion more precisely Japanese “tokyo” scallion I also served grilled onion. (digression alert *). Since we recently got some really good green beans (which doesn’t happen all that  often), I also added blanched green beans on the side. The combination worked well and “Yakitori de le canard” was a great success (Picture #1).

* The Japanese expression is “鴨がネギを背負ってくる” meaning “duck flies in with onion on its back”. This expression is used when something fortuitous happens in your favor with little or no effort on your part. Or (if you are a conman) it refers to the perfect victim coming to you with money outstretched in their hand.

Ingredients (2 small serving of 4 duck tenders per serving)
8 Duck tenders
One medium onion cut into small wedges
2 tbs Ponzu soy sauce (from the bottle or equal mixture of citrus juice and soy sauce)
2 tbs sake

Directions:
Mix the sake and ponzu in a ziploc bag, place the duck tenders inside and remove as much air as possible and let it marinate overnight in the refridgerator.
Drain the marinade and pat the surface of the tenders dry
Skewer the tenders using a bamboo skewer (picture #2)
Skewer the onion wedges (picture #2)

Line the toaster oven tray with an aluminum sheet. Place the tenders and onion on a metal grate over the sheet and broil the duck tenders and onion 5-7 minutes per-side turning once until done (picture #3).

This was a good “yakitori”. The marinade (sake and ponzu) made the duck meat very tender and flavorful. I may have over cooked it a bit and the meat was lightly dry. the sweet onion went well with the duck. Next time, I can skip the skewering and  cook it in a frying pan.

Pesto Blini

Our window sill basil is still growing very well. Although we use cuttings for pizzas and salads etc, we still need to harvest a relatively large quantity of basil every-once-in-a-while. Although my wife made basil cake/bread, our default to use up excess basils is making pesto. But once the pesto is made, we have to use it in a reasonable time or freeze it. Once we freeze the pesto, we tend to forget about it. We used most of the last batch for pesto and red pepper sauce pizza. My wife came up with this to use up the remaining pesto.  “Pesto Blini”! This is an extension of “Roasted pepper blini”.  We had it toasted as a part of breakfast it had a nice crisp crust and the pesto flavor came through as a savory dimension. We have to enjoy this with other appropriate toppings.

Ingredients(X2.5) makes 17 blini
1/2 cup pesto
5 tbs melted butter
1/2 +1/8 cup cream
5 large eggs, beaten
1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 3/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
In a medium bowl, add the egg, the pesto, the melted butter and cream, then add the flour, baking powder and salt and whisk until well blended. (You may need to add more liquid so the batter is the consistency of pancake batter.)
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pyrex dish. Use the melted butter to grease each of the platar cups of a cast iron platar before adding the batter . Pour the batter into the cups until they are 1/2 full. Cook over moderately low heat, turning once, until set, about 3 to 5 minutes per side. Repeat with the remaining butter and batter.

This makes a lovely savory crumpet like bite. It also provides a nice contrast to the usual flavors that appear for breakfast and it is a great way to use up pesto left over from pesto pizza.

Smelt Fry シシャモフライ

Smelt and Capelin (shishamo ししゃも) are all similar small fish and often (including myself) used almost interchangeably. Rarely I see “smelt” in a U.S. grocery store with head off and gutted. In oriental grocery stores, the whole fish is sold with head, gut and roe intact. If the fish has roe, all-the-better. Weee carries frozen “smelt” (label said capelin from Canada). We tried them twice so far and they are pretty good. The only problem is that it is sold in a package of 600grams (1.3 lb) of fish frozen together. I usually manage to semi-thaw them and divide it up into three or four smaller portions (7-8 fish per pack), vacuum pack and re-freeze them. It turned out these frozen smelt/capelin are quite good, probably best for frying rather than grilling. Japanese style slightly dried Capelin may be the best for grilling.

As suggested above, two common ways of cooking are grilled or fried. Frying can be “kara-age”; fried dredged with flour/potato starch, or tempura and fry with breading. The night I cooked the capelin I was also making arancini, so I breaded the capelin and fried it. I also fried  seasoned quail eggs. In the picture, the left two objects are halved arancini, center two are capelin fry and the right round one (half buried under the capelin) is a quail egg. Some of the capelin had roe and tasted especially good. The arancini was made from left-over shiitake risotto with a center of meting Mozzarella cheese which by definition could not taste bad.

There is no recipe for the Capelin fry. Dredge in flour, place it in egg water and bread it with Panko bread crumb and deep fry in 180F oil for several minutes. We are glad to now have reliable source  of smelt/capelin.

Icelandic Pumpernickel (Rye) Bread アイスランドのライ麦パン

My wife wanted to use pumpernickel flour (whole or dark rye flour) before it gets too old. We have already made “classic” pumpernickel bread and also German Black (Pumpernickel) boule. We found a recipe for “Icelandic Rye (pumpernickel) bread” at King Arthur Flour website. The recipe appeared interesting. Since it is a “soda” bread, my wife took the initiative for making it (soda bread is not my shtick). This bread turned out to be pretty good and the texture/density is something between the classic pumpernickel bread and Pumpernickel boule (picture #1). It is a bit sweeter and made perfect sandwich bread (picture #2).

This was a lunch. We happened to have a hot smoked (in Weber grill) pork roast. I made sandwiches with avocado slices, mayo and Dijon mustard.

Ingredients:
4 1/2 cups (477g) Pumpernickel Flour (original recipe calls for “medium” rye flour)
2 teaspoons table salt
1 tablespoon baking powder 
3/4 teaspoon baking soda 
2 cups (454g) buttermilk 
1/2 cup (168g) honey
1/2 cup (170g) molasses

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325°F with a rack in the center position.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, honey, and molasses.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring to combine.
Transfer the batter to a lightly greased 9" pain de mille (pullman) pan and smooth the top. Lightly grease the lid, and place the lid on the pan. (We do not have a pullman pan so I just used a regular loaf pan. Luckily I put a tray underneath because the batter over flowed the loaf pan big time). Next time I will put the batter into two loaf pans.) 
Bake the bread for 2 hours. Turn off the oven and remove the lid from the pan. Leave the loaf in the turned-off oven for another 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and turn out of the pan onto a cooling rack.

Since this bread is denser than usual sandwich bread, I sliced it a bit thinly and made perfect roast pork sandwiches. 

Home Coffee Roasting 緑コーヒー豆の自家焙煎

I do not remember when I started home roasting green coffee beans but it was sometime ago. I started with  an electric popcorn popper, then over time used 4-5 different hot air roasters (many broke, some were discontinued. Only one hot air roaster is still working but I am not using it any longer). I also had a drum  roaster (Behmor 1600) on which I upgraded the control panel and it is still working but is a bit unreliable.  I am currently using a “Gene Cafe” roaster (picture #1).  I am not sure this should be classified as a drum or hot air roaster. It is probably more along the line of the hot air roaster.

General summary: Most roasters are too loud to hear the both the first and second cracks which are important determinants of the stage of roasting the beans have achieved. The roasters also produce a lot of smoke so they have to be used outside or in very well ventilated spaces. Over time, however,  I have discovered that the shape of some of the roasters make it possible to temporarily attach a drier vent duct to the roaster to channel the smoke directly up to the vent hood over the stove. With this temporary set-up the roaster can be used indoors under the hood. All the roasters, especially hot air roasters, are quite sensitive to ambient temperature as well as the voltage fluctuation. Some models have, although limited, programable temperature profiles. For some roasters the amount of green beans you can roast is also limited.

1. Hot air roasters: This type is easy to use but you cannot hear the first or second cracks to judge the roasting stages due to the loud noise made by the machine.

2. Drum roaster: Behmor 1600 (the current model is 2000AB plus) is the only drum roaster I have used. This is composed of a wire mesh drum and a radiant heat source in the back of the drum. This is a very quiet machine and I could hear both first and second cracks. There are some roasting programs you can choose or you could use your  own temperature profile. This worked well but their “smoke suppression system” does not really work and there was no way to attach a drier duct for venting so I could only use this machine outside. In addition the chaff collector is not very convenient and, in general, cleaning is not easy. The capacity is unusually large and it can roast up to 1 pound. The newer model appears to have more controls and other improvements. Over time and with much use the machine became unreliable. The drum would stop turning in the middle of roasting. I would have to shut off the machine and then restart it. As a result I would lose control of the timing of the roast and the beans would come out over or under roasted.

3. Current roaster: Gene Cafe, It has an off-axis glass cylinder drum and you can clearly see the beans while roasting (picture #1) . The chaff collector is large and quite good and allows the attachment of the clothes drier duct and can be used in-doors under the hood. When used outside without the noise of an exhaust fan under the hood I can hear the first crack very well but the second crack is difficult to hear. When used in-doors with an exhaust fan going, I cannot hear either of the cracks. It can roast up to 8oz of coffee in one batch. I am reasonably satisfied with this roaster but cooling takes a long time and chaff removal is not perfect.

To compensate these two short comings, recently, I added another coffee roasting contraption which is the “coffee cooling tray” (picture #2). This is rather simple device but works well. The fan and motor are located at the bottom layer sucking air from top and out. The top sieve has a coarse metal screen where the hot coffee beans get placed (#3) and the middle sieve has a fine metal screen to catch the chaff (#4).

A tiny metal “shovel” is included for stirring (#3).

While cooling, stirring the beans further removes the chaff which is collected in the second sieve (#4).

The hot coffee beans cool down very quickly and quite more chaff comes off. One of the major difficulties is that the Gene Cafe is not designed to be used with an external cooler. After it goes into the cool down cycle, the temperature has to come down below a certain level (I have not determined the exact temp) before you can stop and remove the cylinder/drum which defeats having the external cooling tray. The only way you can remove the cylinder while it is hot is to force it off (by unplugging the machine), removing  the cylinder and dumping the hot coffee beans into the cooling tray. This may not be good for the roaster, however. So, this is what I came up with.

1. I line up an extra roasting cylinder and the cooling tray turned on next to the roaster.

2. After the roasting is completed, I put the roaster into the cooling cycle. Wait about 1 minute until the temperature comes down below 400F then unplug the machine (making sure the cylinder position allows me to remove the cylinder when it stops). 

3. I remove the cylinder and dump the hot coffee beans into the cooling tray and place the spare cylinder back into the roaster(You could put back the original cylinder after dumping the beans but this is difficult since the cylinder is hot and seemingly expands enough to make putting it back more difficult.)

4. Plug the roaster back in and turned it on.  Start “roasting” and immediately turn it to the cooling cycle and let it cool down until it stops. (I am hoping this procedure is the least harmful for the roaster).

So, is all this effort worth it? Although I think I know what I like in my coffee/expresso drinks, I am not sure I can differentiate beans cooled quickly vs slowly in the roaster cooling cycle.  Other factors such as beans, roasting level, grind, how the espresso is brewed may make more significant differences. Never-the-less, I try to do everything in the right and consistent way so that I can have coffee we like.