Sous Vide Octopus with Tuom White Garlic Sauce

Cooking octopus loses 2/3 of its weight; sous vide captures the liquid. Fiercely garlicky Toum is a barely stable emulsion that can break easily. These are notes on prep and how to do better next time.

Octopus

We had a 500g pack of 3 small octopi, human hand sized, from a Korean supermarket. We knew we would lose a lot of the weight to liquid in the cooking, so we cooked them sealed in a bag, sous vide, to capture the tasty liquid (it's great for making things like risotto, and has enough gelatin that it sets up like a good stock when chilled).  We added just a bit of pepper, lemon peel, and a bay leaf, and cooked 5 hours at 75C.

We ended up with 180g of octopus, so just over 1/3 of the original weight. I  probably should have done a more thorough job of rinsing the gelatinous skin off, but with beasts this small, it was difficult. For service, I cut the tentacles apart and flashed in a skillet with a bit of olive oil.

The texture was OK, tender but not mushy. I think for this size octopus, I might cook lower or shorter to give more bite. These beasts didn't have much flavor.

Next time, we'll hit a restaurant supply store for big octopi -- for texture and presentation. They can run $10/pound, so if you lose 2/3, that's $30/pound by the time it hits your plate!

Toum

We had squid with a fiery garlic sauce that was blindingly white at a small Sicilian place, Caffe Sport, in San Francisco decades ago; that flavor and color have stuck with me to this day. We've tried to create it with various aioli in Catalan, Spanish, and French styles. The French ones use egg, which gave a yellow color and diluted the flavor; Jose Andres does the classic Spanish prep, crushing garlic in a mortar and pestle and adding oil drop-by-drop; we've tried it, only to have it break when we finished 30 minutes later.

We found a Lebanese garlic sauce called "Toum" that sounded right: lots of garlic, plus oil, salt and a bit of lemon juice -- no egg.  We whipped one up based on the Serious Eats recipe, which was similar to many others we found.  Garlic is whizzed in a food processor with some salt to break it down, releasing the juices that contain the weak emulsifier, then oil is added very very slowly to establish the emulsion, then alternate lemon juice and oil to finish. 

We whizzed 2.5 ounces peeled garlic cloves (1.5 heads) with about 1 teaspoon salt, and scraped down the sides periodically to ensure breakdown. This volume was really too small for a full-sized processor so I added 2 teaspoons of the lemon juice and 2 teaspoons of water to provide more volume; finally, it seemed to be a good mush.  Then I dribbled neutral Canola oil very very slowly and watched the emulsion form. I kept adding, and it built very nicely; the total was 1.5 Cups of oil.  I tasted it and was shocked at how very "hot", like chile pepper hot, this was; not for the faint of heart!

Then I destroyed it. 

I thought it could use a bit more salt and lemon, so added a tad of each. When I whizzed it to combine, I immediately heard the sloshing of liquid -- I'd broken the emulsion.  Irene said you can't add anything and process after the emulsion is formed, so next time I won't. Either add all the flavorings at the beginning, or perhaps gently fold in additional seasoning.

We rescued it by whizzing an egg, then drizzling in the broken Toum, and it worked with the octopus and patatas bravas we had for dinner. This made it an aioli rather than Toum.

Next time, don't screw with it.  It makes quite a bit, considering how powerful it is, but the egg-free authentic version will keep for  a month in the fridge.  A dollop on paella, fideuà, steak, or myriad other things will certainly pump up the flavor!

Sous Vide Polenta

Making polenta in a sous vide bag is easy, it just requires a bit of time and the occasional massaging of the mixture. It's a forgiving recipe: it won't overcook, it won't burn, and you don't have to hover over it with your Italian grandmother's wooden spoon.

While we've made polenta many times on the stove top, we've found it convenient to make a large batch using sous vide. You can use almost any liquid -- water, milk, stock; we used skim milk here because we wanted some flavor but not too much richness. The butter and rosemary are optional but tasty.

We made it recently with 900 g Milk, and it was a bit more dense than we'd like: it would set up well if cooled to make a slab to fry, but we wanted it a bit more loose as a base for wild mushrooms; we've increased the liquid here.

This makes enough for 12 as a side dish. It's also easy to transport in the bag: wrapped in a towel in a cooler it will retain the heat for a couple hours.

 200 g Corn meal, coarse
1000 g Milk, skim (or whole, or stock, or water)
  50 g Butter
  20 g Salt
   3 g Fresh Rosemary, minced fine

Combine everything in a sous vide bag and seal. Cook for 2 hours at 85C.  Once it starts setting up, massage the bag to break up lumps every 10-15 minutes; wrap in a towel -- it's hot.

Give it a final massage before serving to ensure it's smooth. Snip off a corner of the bag and squirt onto a serving platter.

Bagels à la Peter Reinhart

We make bagels with All Purpose and add Gluten to give strength, and
boil in an alkali water to give the crust sheen. This recipe is based on Peter Reinhart's in The Bread Baker's Apprentice; we've converted his cups and ounces to grams for easier and more reliable measuring.

The first time we made them, we used only All Purpose flour and the interior was too tender. Rather than buying Bread or High Gluten flour, we add Vital Wheat Gluten here to bring up the protein; we may need to tweak the amount over time.  If you have Bread or High Gluten Flour, use it, replacing both the regular flour and Gluten here. The dough will be quite dense and will give your stand mixer a workout -- my 325W Kitchenaid KSM5 struggled and smelled hot after the knead, and the bowl barely contained the dough.

We boil the bagels in an alkali water solution using sodium carbonate to give them the characteristic outer surface traditionally obtained with food grade lye. Harold McGee came up with the technique of baking the baking soda to create sodium carbonate: bake it for 1 hour at 135C/275F.  If you don't feel like doing that, just use regular baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

Sponge

  4 g  Instant Yeast
515 g  All Purpose Flour
 50 g  Vital Wheat Gluten
600 ml Water


Dough

  2 g  Instant Yeast
500 g  All Purpose Flour
 20 g  Salt
 10 g  Malt Powder (or 15 g Brown Sugar)

Finish

 35 g  Sodium Carbonate

Sponge: combine Yeast and Flours, add water, whisk until it becomes a smooth pancake-like batter. Cover and rise at room temperature, about 2 hours, until very foamy and bubbly; it should double in size and collapse if the bowl is tapped on a countertop.

Dough: Add to the sponge the additional Yeast, stir, then add the Flour, Salt and Malt. Mix with dough hook until it forms a ball. Knead 6 minutes by machine, or 10 minutes by hand. It should feel satiny and pliable but not tacky.

Divide the dough into 16 pieces, about 100 g each, and form into tight balls. Cover with damp towel and allow to rest 20 minutes.

Line 2 sheet pans with parchment and mist with spray oil.

Shape bagels by poking a hole in the center of each roll and enlarging it to be about 6 cm. Place shaped pieces 5 cm apart on parchment pans.  Mist lightly with spray oil and cover loosely with cling film. Let sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Check to see if bagels are ready to be retarded using the "float test". Fill a bowl with cool water, place a test bagel in and it should float within 10 seconds. If it does not float, return to tray and try again every 10 minutes until it floats. 

Place in fridge, covered lightly with film and retard overnight.

The next day, preheat oven to 250C/475F convection.

Bring large, wide pot of water (I used 1.5 L) to a boil and add the Sodium Carbonate or Baking Soda; do NOT use a Calphalon-style anodized pan, the Carbonate will destroy the anodization. Remove bagels from fridge and boil, starting presentation side (top) down first so after you flip them, you can place the bottom on the sheet plan. They should float within 10 seconds; boil each side for 1-2 minutes, more time gives a more chewy bagel.

Sprinkle the parchment with coarse cornmeal and place each boiled bagel back -- they will have puffed up. Top the bagels with salt, seeds, etc.

Bake 10 minutes until bagels turn light golden brown.

Knaakkebrod: Swedish Crisp Bread

I've tried this a number of times, with various results, some intensely flavored with good snap, but none with the laminated lightness you get from the commercial ones at Ikea. This is our latest attempt.

300 g Rye Flour
100 g All Purpose Flour
 10 g Instant Yeast
  4 g Salt
300 g Water (75% hydration)

In a stand mixer, whisk the dry ingredients then drizzle in the water. Knead 5 minutes: it will be loose and sticky.  Let it rise an hour, covered.

Divide into two 355 g blobs of dough. 

Place each blob on parchment, cover with cling film (it's sticky) and roll out as thin as you can. I first laid out masking tape on the counter to mark the size of my sheet pan, so I could ensure my dough would fit.

I use a rolling pin with 1-2 mm thick cross-section O-rings on the ends for spacing. I may look a bit dorky in the hardware store with a rolling pin, but this works perfectly (for pasta, too).

Dust with flour so your tools don't stick, then section with fluted cutter, and poke holes with fork (I made a little block of nails with my initials :-)

Bake at 200C/400F for about 15 minutes until crisp. Let cool and dry. Snap on the fluted scoring lines.

Octopus Terrine #1 with gelatin

This terrine uses gelatin to capture the tasty liquid cooked out of the octopus, but I rushed things a bit so it's not as clear and dramatic as I'd like. The texture of the octopus was excellent, tender but not mushy; the aspic tasted of octopus liquid and was not too bouncy.

A friend mentioned having "octopus terrine" which I'd never heard of, but then recalled a chef's table meal at Galileo where we watched one of the cooks slicing something about the size of a mortadella but was clearly comprised of octopus tentacles.

Most preps I found simply cooked the octopus then tightly pressed the legs together in a mold while still quite warm, where the internal gel would set them overnight.

The version I'm doing here is based on a British site where they use gelatin combined with the juices exuded by the octopus to bind everything together. I had only small, hand-sized octopi and didn't want to waste the tasty liquid, so I cooked the beasts sous vide to capture the rendered liquid in the bag.

I wasn't very careful about this prep but would like to repeat it, perhaps without the gelatin, saving the juice for another dish like risotto.

1 pound Octopus, cleaned and thawed
Pimenton
Salt
Meyer Lemon Zest
1 envelope Knox Gelatin

Add the whole cleaned octopus to a sous vide bag. Add some Pimenton, Salt, and Meyer Lemon Zest. Seal and cook 5 hours at 77C. The octopus will shrink quite a bit and release a lot of liquid -- I figure we usually lose 1/2 to 2/3rd the weight of the octo to the liquid.

Strain a small portion of the octopus liquid into a bowl and set in another bowl of ice water: we need to cool it to prevent Gelatin from clumping. Add Gelatin powder to the cooled liquid, and let hydrate 5 minutes. Add the rest of the strained juice while still hot and stir well to combine.

With cling film, line a mold, ideally just big enough to contain the octo and liquid. Cut the tentacles from the octo, and slice the head. Add all the bits to the lined mold, then add the gelatin liquid.

Wrap the film around as snugly as you can, which won't be much as the gel is still liquid at this point. Weight the top to press firmly and chill overnight in the fridge.  We used little cutlery trays for kitchen drawers: they were about the right size and stacked neatly for the weights.

The next day, remove from fridge, unwrap carefully and tip out to a serving plate. To serve, heat a very sharp knife in hot water, and slice cleanly.

What Worked, What Didn't

I didn't rinse the octopi when I removed them from the sous vide bag, so the gel was muddied by the spices left on the beasties.

There's too much aspic, I think I'd prefer doing it without the gelatin, just saving the liquid for another use.

Cooking sous vide allows me to dial in the time/temperature I want, and captures all the tasty octopus juice, even if I don't use it in this preparation.

Seasoning was good -- just salt and pimenton -- but I didn't record what I used.

Next Time

Rinse the cooked octopi in hot water so the gel will be clear.

Use larger octopi with big legs.  Use about twice as much to fully fill the mold. 

If not using gelatin, we may need four times as much for the same size. Some recipes sans gel here, here, along with Chef Steps suggestions for sous vide time and temp.

Sous Vide Bacalao Pil Pil

Cooking the Bacalao sous vide allows us to use much less oil than our previous modernist approach, while perfectly cooking the fish and capturing the essential gelatin that gives us the Pil Pil emulsion.

Bacalao with Pil Pil sauce, Catalan style greens, Pa amb tomàquet

Previously, we'd used the science-based technique we learned from Basque chefs: they completely submerged the Bacalo in enough oil to cover and gently cooked to release the gelatin required for this sauce. This is much less work and much more reliable than the traditional method of sliding the fish back and forth in a pan with a little oil to release the gelatin, but it left us with a huge amount of fishy oil that we had to find a use for.

This time, we reasoned that we could use much less oil if we cooked the fish in a sous vide bag, and it would be trivial to capture the released gelatin.  It would also allow us to cook the fish very gently in a controlled manner.

We had gotten a big frozen chunk of skin-on, bone-in Bacalo from a Portuguese market. We believe it was salted like traditional Bacalao but it had been rehydrated to desalinate before freezing.

370 g     Bacalao (rehydrated to desalinate)
4   clove Garlic
1         Chili Arbol, seeded
250 ml    Olive Oil, good quality
1   pinch Salt

Seal Bacalao, Garlic, Chili, and Olive oil in sous vide bag.

Cook sous vide at 78C/172F for 30 minutes. When you remove the bag from the bath, you should see the white liquid gelatin below the fish and oil.

White gelatin elixir below Bacalao, oil

Pour off the liquid into a tall narrow container and allow to separate. Use a turkey baster to extract the gelatin from the bottom to another tall narrow glass. Repeat separation until you've got one container of oil and one of gelatin; it's all right if it's not perfect.

First settling

Second separation, mostly gelatin; oil is in the bowl on the right

To make the Pil Pil sauce, add 10-15 ml (2-3 tsp) of the white gelatin liquid to a pan and turn on very low heat.  Whip to incorporate air; I used a mesh scum skimmer which worked very well, but a fork or whisk should also do.  When frothy with fine bubbles, drizzle in a few drops of the oil. Continue whipping until a stable emulsion forms. Add more oil, a little at a time, and incorporate until you have the volume you need. If the emulsion starts to break or if it becomes too thick for your taste, add a splash of hot water and whip to incorporate. I took the pan off the heat and did most of this on the counter, as it seemed even the low heat was encouraging the sauce to break. Adjust taste with salt.

Whisk oil into gelatin with mesh skimmer to form emulsion

Plate cooked fish, and top with Pil Pil sauce.  We served ours with mustard greens cooked Catalan style with sultanas, toasted pine nuts and garlic; and Pa amb Tomàquet (toasted bread rubbed with garlic and topped with -- in our case -- tomato pulp instead of being rubbed with fresh tomato).

Save the rest of the precious gelatin; we froze ours.

What Worked, What Didn't

Everything worked beautifully with this technique: we got a bunch of precious fish elixir to use and to save for a future batch; we didn't end up with liters of excess fish oil; the fish was nicely cooked, and the Pil Pil sauce had a good texture.

Now that we've figured this out, a simple search shows us we are not the first to do it this way; duh.

Next Time

How low can we drop the heat and still extract the gelatin elixir? 78C seems a bit high to cook fish, can we drop it to 55C/131F where the gelatin is supposed to first start releasing? Does Bacalao need the higher temperature? Would other fresh (unsalted/rehydrated) fish be better at lower temperatures? One recipe we found recipe uses 65C/150F for 30 minutes.

Try traditional dry salted Bacalao; we have noticed that none of the boneless pieces had skin on, and the skin may be where all the gelatin lives.

Since we use so little oil and there not much effort, we can try other fish species; we've already ascertained Mahi Mahi works (and Sea Trout did not). What others will release gelatin for an emulsion?

Other Work

In 2022 we recreated this in our Barcelona apartment, at 55C for 30 minutes but pointed out 45-60 might be better. 

While looking for other sous vide bacalao recipes, I found two videos which provide more ideas. 

This first, which was done in 2015 and therefore predates mine, cooked at 65C for 30 minutes, and used the same strainer-in-skillet technique I did to create an emulsion from the "fish water", what I called "elixer. 

The next, from 2021, streamlines it even further: she cooks the fish sous vide at 60C for 20 minutes, but without adding any oil. She then drains off the fish liquid elixir into a cup, no oil separation required, and creates the emulsion with a stick blender, adding in the garlic-oil to build the sauce -- brilliant. She adds a bit of honey to each bag.

This one from 2020 is nearly identical, but he cooks at 48C for 20-30 minutes before emulsifying the fish liquid with a stick blender, then adding oil. He cooks the garlic in oil in a jar in the same bath as the fish, so he doesn't even need a sauté pan. He adds some membrillo to each bag. 

Peter Reinhart’s Bagels #1

These had a great slightly crunchy and chewy crust but the interior was too light, probably because I used all purpose flour rather than bread or high-gluten flour. I'd try them again with a higher protein flour.  I substituted brown sugar for the traditional diastatic malt, and added baked baking soda to make the water an alkaline -- I believe this contributed to the excellent crust.

Peter Reinhart's recipe in Bread Baker's Apprentice uses a mix of Imperial volumes and weights but I found very little correlation, e.g., he says 4 Cups flour was 18 ounces, but I got everywhere from 18-20 ounces depending on how I fluffed and scooped the flour. He also doesn't use metric, which is a shame since it's so much more convenient. I'm adding the metric-ized values I used, but should recalculate based on his bakers percentages which are more scalable anyway.

Sponge

1   tsp    0.11  ounce    4 g   0.31%  Instant Yeast
4   cup   18     ounce  510 g   51.4%  Flour, high gluten(I used AP)
2.5 cup   20     ounce  600 ml  57.1%  Water, at room temperature

Dough

0.5  tsp   0.055 ounce    2 g   0.16%  Instant Yeast
3.75 cup  17     ounce  500 g  48.6 %  Flour, high gluten(I used AP)
2.75 tsp   0.7   ounce   20 g   2   %  Salt
1    Tbs   0.5   ounce   15 g   1.8 %  Brown Sugar

Boiling Water (my additions)

2    Tbs                 30 g          Brown Sugar
1    Tbs                 15 g          Baked Baking Soda

Make sponge by whisking yeast into flour in stand mixer bowl then adding water and whisking until smooth like pancake batter. Cover until bubbly and nearly doubled, about 2 hours. 

To make dough, add in second batch of yeast, flour, salt, and sugar. Mix in stand mixer with dough hook until it forms a ball. Knead in machine 6-10 minutes -- it should be stiff pliable but not tacky. This is a dense dough and will give your mixer a workout.

Divide dough into 16 even pieces (about 100 g each), shape into balls, cover with a damp towel and let rise 20 minutes.

Line 2 sheet pans with parchment and mist with cooking oil spray.

Shape bagels by poking a finger through the center of each ball and enlarging the hole until it's about 6 cm / 2.5 in diameter.  Lay each on the parchment, mist with spray oil, and cover with film for about 20 minutes. 

Test the rise by placing one bagel in a bowl of water: it should float within 10 seconds. Remove the bagel, pat dry and return to parchment and cover. If the bagel doesn't float, rise 10 minutes more and try again.

Retard in refrigerator, covered, for 24-48 hours to develop flavor.

Preheat oven to 250C/475F convection. Get another cookie sheet, add parchment and mist with oil; dust with corn meal.

Bring wide pot of water to boil with brown sugar and baked baking soda.  Place bagels top (presentation side) down into the water bath and boil gently for 60 seconds; flip gently and boil for another 60 seconds. Place on corn mealed sheet, and boil the rest of the rounds the same way. Mine puffed up so I was not able to fit 8 bagels on a sheet, so I used the extra sheet pan.  Top with coarse salt, seeds etc if desired right after you take the bagels out of the bath.

Bake for 5 minutes, drop heat to 220C/400F convection and bake 5 more minutes. Let rest at least 15 minutes before slicing or eating. 

I cooked one tray of 8 bagels after a 24 hour retard, then the second tray the next day after a 48 hour retard.

Opening Act cocktail

Pleasantly bitter from the Campari. For each:

2 oz Domaine de Canton
½ oz Campari
½ oz fresh lime juice

Shake with ice and strain into the glass.
We garnished with Irene's dehydrated orange slices.

Chocolate Angel Food Cake

This is an intensely chocolatey cake but it's quite light; a Sybarite could eat a quarter of it himself.  It's impressive but not that difficult to make well.  Use top quality cocoa for this since it's the primary taste.

It goes exceptionally well with a tart Belgian Bier such as Liefmans Goudenband, or Lambics such as Gueuze, Kriek and Framboise from Frank Boone, Cantillon, Liefmans or Lindemans.  Barolo Chinoto is excellent as well. Coffee is OK; we haven't found a wine that can work anywhere near as well as the Belgian Bier.

We recently added freeze dried raspberries and like the addition, but we might double the amount next time. We got them from Trader Joes.

Chocolate Angel Food Cake: we couldn't wait to eat it!

160 g      3/4 C        Sugar

 90 g      3/4 C        Cake Flour

 65 g      2/3 C        Cocoa powder, excellent quality

 34 g                   Raspberries, freeze dried (optional)

400 ml   1 3/4 C        Egg Whites, room temperature (about 11 eggs)

 10 ml       2 tsp      Lemon Juice

  1 pinch    1 pinch    Salt

210 g        1 C        Sugar

 10 ml       2 tsp      Vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375F.

Place ungreased angel food (tube) cake pan on cookie sheet to catch drips.

Process 3/4 C Sugar, Flour, Cocoa Powder and optional dried Raspberries for two 10-second bursts.

Dry ingredients (including free dried raspberries) about to be whizzed

In a very clean 6 quart mixing bowl (a 4 quart Kitchenaid mixer bowl is too small) combine Egg Whites, Lemon Juice, and Salt.

Beat at high speed until white and foaming.

Gradually add 1 C Sugar, one Tablespoon at a time, beating constantly.

Add Vanilla with last spoonful of Sugar.

Continue beating at high speed to stiff peak meringue stage.

Egg whites and sugar with stiff peaks

Sift 1/4 C processed dry ingredients gently over beaten egg mixture;

use a sieve fine enough to trap any of the optional dried raspberry seeds.

Fold in gently with large spatula, trying not to deflate egg whites.

Continue adding 1/4 C at a time, gently folding to barely mix.

Gently folding in the dry ingredients

Turn batter into tube pan gently.

Gently level and clean off any dribbles from inside of tube pan,

otherwise the cake won't rise well and you'll get burnt bits.

In the cake pan ready for the oven

Bake 35-40 minutes until a skewer comes out clean; there will be large cracks in the surface.

Cool upside down with tube pan over neck of wine bottle.

A good rise, a bit over the edge of the pan before cooling

Corned Pork shoulder

we've made "corned beef" many times, starting out with those pre-pickled packs in american supermarkets around st patrick's day that one just has to boil, gradually moving on to completing all steps of the curing process ourselves with, generally, a standard pickling spice mix and "pink salt" for both it's flavour and preservative properties.   we find a hunk of brisket, dry rub it and let it sit in the bottom of the fridge for a while, curing away.

they've all been fine, tender juicy brisket cut across the grain and served with potatoes and other boiled vegetables.  an important discovery was that the vegetables were far too salty (and frankly odd flavoured and coloured) when cooked with the meat and since we occasionally used the pressure cooker it was impossible to work with the various cooking times needed so we separated the cooking of the cabbage, carrots and whatnot from the meat.  a little of the "pot liquor" can be used to flavour the vegetables for serving.  it can also be used moisten the meat when reheating slices which are easier to cut the following day as the flesh tightens up on cooling.

i've been curious about "corning" meats other than beef for some time now, turkey breast comes to mind, so when i had a couple of pounds of pork shoulder left over from another project i found a recipe for a pork rub and left the meat for the full two weeks in the back of the fridge despite some misgivings about the length of the cure - this was supermarket pig after all, not someone whose provenance i knew.  for safety there was pink salt in the cure mix but beyond that the original recipe post has disappeared so i've no idea what else :-(

during an outdoor jerk pork party i put the cured pork off to the cooler side of the barbecue and it baked away for the many hours that the charcoal was burning, truth be told i pretty much forgot about it in the bustle of the gathering so i've no idea how long it actually cooked.  after chilling overnight we sliced it thinly and took a tentative bite.  damn, it's good!

as you can see the cure didn't penetrate all the way to the center, the greyish as opposed to the pinkish flesh, but the flavour didn't seem to change all that much across the slices.  next time i would choose a less fatty piece of meat or trim more carefully - the mouth feel of the fat wasn't too pleasant.  

A Tonic for the Dog Days of Summer

Steamy DC summers call for plenty of gin and tonics, but the commercial tonics are sticky sweet and not very flavorful; trendy tonics like Fever Tree and Q are tasty but cost more than the gin -- awkward. So we made our own tasty tonic base -- a syrup -- following Jeffrey Morgenthaler's updated recipe from 2014.

Since we were working on our vermouths and chinatos we had the critical Cinchona -- quinine -- in powdered form. We made a tincture of 30g to 600 ml clean cheap Frïs vodka, a bit higher concentration than he uses, and strained through a coffee filter to produce a clear copper bitter elixir.

30 g Cinchona powder (mine's a very fine powder)
600 ml Vodka (clean-tasting)

Mix well, let sit a few hours, stir, and strain through a coffee filter -- this could take an hour or more

The rest of the recipe we followed pretty closely, adding a bit more citrus because denuding a grapefruit produced a bit more than the 30 g requested, and we had a half a lime lying around. We had the citric acid from Irene's cheese making and other kitchen experiments.  It was pretty easy: simmer the aromatics with sugar and water; off heat, strain then add some of the quinine tincture. I've decreased the sugar a bit and added a little fresh ginger.

20 g Citric Acid
10 g Gentian Root
2 g Cinnamon, broken into pieces
30 g lemon zest (2 lemons)
30 g grapefruit zest (1 grapefruit)
15 g Ginger, fresh, sliced very thinly
350 g Sugar
500 ml Water

Bring the aromatics, sugar and water to boil, reduce heat, cover, simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Strain, cool.

Add 45 ml (1 1/2 ounces) of the Quinine Tincture to the cooled aromatic syrup.
Refrigerate up to 2 weeks.

Straining simmered aromatics through sieve and coffee filter

Measuring ingredients that went into the tonic syrup

For a single drink, use 1 ounce tonic syrup, 3 ounce sparkling water, 1 1/2 ounce gin. Easy.

The payoff: beautiful, fresh-tasting G-n-T.

It has a fresh citrus taste, Irene got orange right away. It's flavorful without the chemical taste of commercial tonics, and it's not nearly so sticky.  We can also adjust the taste, perhaps lightening it up with a bit more sparkling water on hotter days.  

Good stuff, not hard to make. Nice color too, but we haven't tested to see if it glows under blacklight. :-)

Merloto Chinato, a riff on Barolo Chinato dessert wine

We recently opened a bottle of Barolo Chinato, a dessert wine made of Barolo and various herbs and spices: Chinato refers to "Cinchona", the quinine used in tonic water. I think it's my new favorite drink, redolent or cherries and maybe chocolate, some herbs; on the taste, it was very full bodied, rich. These are said to go really well with chocolate, and indeed they do. This bottle, by Damilano, was pretty pricey -- $66 for 500 ml, but we liked it so much Irene got me another brand for Christmas, from Cocchi, similarly priced.

Since we've been making our own vermouth, we figured we'd have a go at making our own approximation: could we make something for $10 for 750 ml?

Two commercial and two home made, with Irene's chocolate angel food cake

Recipe

The big difference between Barolo Chinato and Vermouth (aside from red vs white wine) is that vermouth is based on the bittering agent "vermut" or wormwood, while Chinato uses Cinchona.  I soaked 30g cinchona powder in 600 ml clean but inexpensive Frïs vodka for a few hours then strained it through a coffee filter; it came out a pleasant clear copper color.

When making vermouth, I use 300 ml of bitter herbal tinctures to two 750 ml bottles of wine, so did the same thing here. I started with about 75 ml of my cinchona tincture, and added other tinctures I'd made for vermouth: rhubarb root, nutmeg, clove, bay leaf, angelica root, cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom, black walnut, fennel, juniper and others. I didn't measure these for this first experiment.

For my vermouth, I make a caramel, cooking to 188C/370F, but this one got away from me and came out a bit darker with a more burnt edge than usual.

I wanted to try an experiment so I split the 1800 ml of wine and tinctures into two jugs. To the first, I added the caramel (200 g sugar to 60 g water), and to the second I added agave syrup (133 g because it's 50% sweeter than sugar).

Tasting

We let them sit overnight to chill with the commercial bottles in the fridge, then did a blind taste test in the morning when our tastebuds were fresh. I lettered the bottoms of the glasses so I could determine which was which, then randomized them and assigned the fronts numbers so we could take notes. We served with this some of Irene's chocolate angel food cake. Our notes are below, and we reveal which is which.

Caramel: partly cloudy, caramel edge, perhaps slight burnt note, herbal.
Agave: cloudy, cinnamon; brighter and more winey than the caramel one.
Damilano: clear, brownish; fruity smell, thick body, taste of cherry pits, perhaps chocolate, maybe licorice.
Cocchi: clear, ruby; no fruit aroma, some woody aroma; fruity taste, caramel and wood flavors.

Of the four, I preferred the Damilano -- the fruit aroma was seductive; Irene preferred the Cocchi. We both preferred the caramel homemade to the agave one, but maybe the burnt taste was a bit too burnt. The commercial ones had thicker bodies that felt right for an after dinner drink, a digestivo.

Next Time

I'd use caramel next time but back down the color to my normal 188C/370F temperature; I might try another split batch, using honey instead of agave, since it will bring some flavor to the mix. I really love the fruit aroma in Damilano so I'd add bitter orange peel, maybe some crushed cherry pits, perhaps licorice root. The sweet spices remind me too much of mulled wine, so I'd back down the cinnamon and cloves to a barely perceptible level. I'd probably use a more heavy bodied wine, but to keep the cost in check, go with something like a California ancient vine Zinfandel, or maybe one of the affordable Ripassos from Trader Joe's.

There are some recipes for homemade versions on the interwebs including Stefan's with a reference to an Italian one from 1932, and a "secret" recipe that shows photos of the ingredients list. The handwritten secret recipe uses coriandoli (coriander), garofani (carnation flowers), quassia, noce moscata (nutmeg), and vanilla, in addition to the requisite Barolo, cinchona and sugar. Two of these use raisins, cocoa beans and elderberry so I might add cocoa nibs, raisins and elderberry flowers.

I might also try oak aging it by letting it rest on some oak chips for a week to round out the flavor.

Old Bay Crab Stock and Risotto

On the 4th of July, Summer got a big bushel of Eastern Shore crabs, cooked the way they do things 'round here -- steamed or boiled in plenty of Old Bay seasoning. A bunch of us sat around at Dee's, pickin' crabs all day, and we saved all the bits we didn't eat -- shells, small legs, even all the guts and gubbins. At the end of the day, she and I split up the spoils to make stock.

We had some qualms about using the "mustard", "lady fingers", etc -- they're things we don't eat. But I figured that those masters of stock -- The French™ -- wouldn't waste anything so neither would I.

I got a giant pot I used to use for homebrewing, about 8 gallon capacity, and loaded it up with all the shells and offal; it came nearly to the top of the pot.  I added some carrots and celery, and some trimmings of fennel and onion we keep in the freezer for making stock. I added enough water to cover, and it came right up to the edge of the pot.  I brought it to boil then backed it off to a low low simmer.  After a while, I skimmed the scum with a fine mesh skimmer.

Crabs and aromatics, most of the water added, heating up

Usually, fish stocks only simmer for about 45 minutes -- that's all you need to extract the flavor and you don't want to impart a cooked taste. I tried it at about that time, and it seemed a bit weak, so I let it ride another hour or so: crab shells are thicker than fish frames.  I then had to strain it -- no easy feat! I pulled out the bigger shells and set them into strainers over bowls, then pulled out the small stuff to strain, then finally strained the liquid itself.  Whoa, a bit cloudy that!  I ran it through our finest chinois to filter out all the particulates I could, then gave it a taste. Still a bit thin.

I put the now residue-free stock back on the burner and boiled another hour to reduce and concentrate the flavor. Strained it again through the chinois, then set it to to chill in a sink full of ice water. After cooling I covered it and put it in the fridge overnight; it was about 2am by this point.

Next day, I did what we always do: ladelled out the stock into 2- and 4-cup ziptop baggies, laid flat on a cookie sheet, and froze them solid. This gives us good sized packages for cooking with later. I think I got about 3-4 gallons of stock.

It was still a murky greenish brownish color, not particularly appetizing.  I needed to cook something with it to see how it tasted in context and how it looked. I initially planned on doing a seafood risotto, but figured the color might be better for a dark roux gumbo.  But it's summertime here and risotto seemed a better dish, so that's what we made.

I sauteed some shallots and garlic in some nice olive oil, then added the Arborio rice and sauteed it a bit until it turns a bit translucent. Then I added the preheated stock a bit at a time to cover, and cooked and stirred until the rice exuded starches and began to turn tender (no, you don't need to use your grandmother's wooden spoon, or always stir in a clockwise direction; it's pretty forgiving). I kept adding hot stock until the rice was the right texture, with just a bit of a bite left.  We threw some shrimp in at the very end to cook through, then served, garnished with a bit of paprika.

Risotto with shrimp

"This is really good!", exclaimed Irene. It had a definite seafood taste, but not like fish -- it had the sweetness of good Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.  There's a slight hit of heat from the spicy Old Bay, but not overwhelming; the salt level is in check, too. The color was a bit off, not something you'd serve at a white tablecloth restaurant, but I'm willing to overlook that.

Now I'm really glad we saved all the crab bits and made so much stock!