Vermouth #2 with Tinctures

We got hooked on Vermouth in Barcelona, a tasty nip served chilled, sometimes with a spritz of seltzer, with an orange peel and frequently an olive. A bit of sweetness balanced by herbaceous bitterness, a mild 15% alcohol, refreshing and perfect for a long afternoon -- and much more interesting than the insipid stuff you find in liquor stores. Many were artisanal, made locally. We had to try it.

We made one a while back but for this one we used a different approach. We made 17 tinctures of various botanicals, some from the garden (bay leaves), with exotic ones ordered online including the critical wormwood ("Wermut", in German) and gentian for bitterness. We soaked these in a clean, affordable vodka (Sobieski here, but I'd be fine with Luksusowa or Frïs) for a month, then strained through a fine mesh sieve and returned to their jars. This allows us to tweak the profile even after mixing a batch, something our previous bulk process did not. See the table below for proportion of botanical and vodka, then the amount of the tincture we added to the wine for the finished vermouth.

I first made a caramel, going for a bit lighter color than last time because Irene said it tasted too burnt (I thought it was fine, playing off the bitterness of the herbs).  Combine 200 g sugar and 67 g water, and bring to boil.

I broke a cardinal rule of pastry chefs and caused crystallization. Fortunately, I wasn't making a sauce, so I kept stirring after the water evaporated and let the chunks melt into a caramel.

The recipe I was starting from suggested a final temperature of about 185C/365F so I watched it with a Thermapen.

When it reached temperature (or go by color, a orangey maple syrup shade) pour it out onto a non-stick sheet like a Silpat and let it set up until hard and glass-like.

Heat 125 ml of wine gently and add the broken up caramel, stir until it dissolves. I tried to keep the temperature below the boiling point of alcohol (78C/173F) so I didn't lose the good stuff. This was achingly slow, so I bumped up the heat, comforted by the fact that the tinctures would add back precious alcohol.

While the wine syrup cooled, I measured out the tinctures with syringes; you could weigh them too with a small scale accurate to 0.5 g or so.

Botanical	g botanical for tincture	ml vodka for tincture	% (g/ml) tincture	ml tincture in vermouth
angelica root	20	200	10	15
bay leaves	10	100	10	15
black cardamom	20	100	20	1
cinnamon	20	100	20	8
clove	20	100	20	0.5
coriander	20	100	20	15
gentian root	20	200	10	2
juniper	20	100	20	15
nutmeg	20	100	20	5
bitter orange peel	40	200	20	15
vanilla	7	100	7	5
wormwood	20	200	10	4
black walnut shell	20	200	10	5
fennel	20	100	20	1
ginger	40	100	40	5
mace	10	100	10	5
rhubarb root	20	200	10	5

I added another 375ml wine and the wine syrup, then declared victory.

This batch has more body, more mouthfeel, and the caramel flavor is more caramel-ly and less burned than our first attempt. It tastes more like the vermouth we indulged in while in Barcelona.

Next time...

The dissolving of the caramel glass into the wine is tedious. Next time I think I'll put all the wine (125 + 375 = 500ml) into a jar, add the caramel shards, and hold in a water bath just below the boiling point until it dissolved of its own accord. Then I'd add the tinctures, to avoid any further loss to the angel's share.

Oh, so what did we do with all the seeds and stems, leaves and twigs, shells and roots from our tinctures? They have intense smells, and I bet a lot of intense flavor left in them. I collected them all in a jar and added enough clean vodka to cover. In a month, it should turn out to be a "garbage barge" amaro -- a bitter digestif. We've made these before, with intentional flavor profiles (e.g., "sweet" spices like for the winter holidays) and liked them. We'll see how this one turns out with all its random flavors.

Aguaymanto: my new favorite fruit

Irene's work with the World Bank brought her to Peru, where they put on a fiesta in the Parque de Reserva -- famous for its fountains.

They put on a huge spread of Peruvian food at multiple tents throughout the park

including a bunch of fruits I'd never seen.   I was really impressed by a small orange fruit about the size of a grape but with a papery husk like a tomatillo -- it was firm and tart with an intense citrus taste.  I wasn't able to get its name.

Yesterday, on a long walk along the coast we came across a municipal market and some of the vendors were selling them -- success!   I asked the name, and had to have him repeat it a couple times: "Aguaymanto".  As I tried to pronounce it, the vendor said "gooseberry", which Irene had said earlier, "cape gooseberry". At 8 sols (under $3) for a quart, they are a bargain.

Wikipedia tells us the fruit's native to Peru, and has a variety of names including Inca berry and Aztek berry, but doesn't tell us the name that local Peruanos use, and we find on the Cooking in Peru site.

At last night's dinner, we started with a Pisco Sour made with pisco that had been macerated with Aguaymanto -- the bright citrus edge was a welcome addition to the drink.

Sous Vide Smoked Brisket

We wanted something like slow-smoked corned beef brisket without the work, and this comes close. The effort is almost nothing, especially since you can prep everything months in advance; you just need a couple days notice before guests arrive.

We've done this a couple times with good successes, but without taking any notes. Well, dammit, we've done it again: almost no notes. This is the only evidence:

It's a 1.2 Kg brisket, cold smoked with the A-MAZE-N pellet tube we've written about before. We then rubbed it with a spice mix, then sealed it in a vac bag. We did several at the same time and then froze them until ready.  Then we cooked it sous vide, low and slow.

We heated a water bath to 57C/135F, then dropped the bagged brisket straight from the freezer, and left it for for a couple days -- well, 40 hours.

I'm really annoyed I didn't take pictures of the finished product. There was a fair amount of jus that came out of the bag which we used to moisten the meat on the platter. I sliced the meat thinly across the grain.

The meat had an deep red color not unlike corned beef. The fat was tender and provided a richness.  The meat itself could be a little more tender, but I wouldn't want to go so far as to make it "fall apart tender", I'm not looking for shredded beef here.  Maybe more of the fat would melt into the meat too.

So I could bump up the temperature, maybe 60C/140F, or give it another day.

Vermouth #1

We drank a lot of vermouth in Spain: all the restaurants were selling it, the wine shops had barrels of local wine and artisanal vermouth, even late-night walk-up dives sold it by the large glass. It was a great way to take a break or start a meal. There were bottles of Spanish vermouth at the grocery store for not much money, and many bars sold locally-produced artisanal vermouths at very reasonable prices. At about 15% alcohol, it's just a bit more than wine-strength, so no big deal -- especially as it was usually served on ice, and sometimes brightened with a bit of sparkling water from a soda siphon.

The recipes I'm seeing have two variations: steep spices and herbs in boiling wine, or make a vodka-based tincture of the aromatics separately then add. Some boost the alcohol with sherry, and the booze in the tinctures will bump it up of course. Most add sugar for body, typically by creating a caramel to provide more depth of flavor. This first one uses the quick, direct boiling method, but you don't want to boil long and drive off the alcohol.

As Wikipedia says: "The name "vermouth" is the French pronunciation of the German word Wermut for wormwood that has been used as an ingredient in the drink over its history." I got the wormwood and other exotic aromatics online, and have used them to make amaros in the past.

To calculate the alcohol: 750ml * 13% + 150ml * 40% = 157ml alcohol in a volume of 900ml, so 157/900 = 17.5% alcohol.

Ingredients

750 ml Pino Grigio wine (Bota Box, 13%)
1 g Wormwood
0.5 g Gentian root
0.5 g Rhubarb root
4 g Bitter Orange peel (dried)
0.5 g Bay Leaf
0.5 g Clove
0.5 g Coriander
0.5 g Juniper berries

200 g Sugar
60 ml Water

150 ml Vodka (40%)

Wine and Botanicals

Crush the herbs and spices in a mortar and pestle.
Add to the wine and bring to a simmer.
Turn off heat, cover, and let steep until cool.
Steep refrigerated overnight.
Strain the wine through a coffee filter to remove herbs.

Caramel 

Add sugar and Water to pot and make a caramel, I went to a rich copper color for flavor.
Pour out onto a non-stick Silpat sheet and allow to cool and set into a glassy texture.

Crack and shatter the caramel glass into vodka.

Heat the Vodka gently to help dissolve the caramel shards; keep the heat below the boiling point of alcohol (80C/176F). I had problems with this so added the flavored wine and vodka/caramel to a jar then set that in a 57C/135F water bath to heat gently until dissolved.

Chill, serve over ice with an orange peel garnish and a meaty olive.

Impressions

Irene thinks the caramel went a bit too far to dark, that a burnt sugar edge comes through. I think it's got a slightly too-bitter edge that may come from wormwood or gentian, and not enough complexity from the other aromatics. But it was pretty easy.

Daily Dinner #7: The last supper

We've been showing off our "daily" home cooked meals and figured we'd continue while we were living in Barcelona for August -- to see what we could turn out in this small kitchen devoid of all our knives, tongs, and other tools.

2015-08-28 Ñora blackened Tuna

I've been working long hours and knew we wouldn't be able to get out in time for dinner, so we picked up some deeply-red tuna from the fish monger.  I've not had flavorful tuna in the states in decades; I suspect all the good stuff is sent to Japan, or our consumers are happier to pay less money for farmed stuff from Asia (oh, the irony of transnational shipping). This tuna looked awesome, a deep almost beef-like red, glistening garnet.

The moon was rising as I took a break from the laptop and started to prep; cooking relaxes me, a good change from coding.

I cast around to see what we had bought that we needed to use up or toss before we left. Ah, some Spanish ñora peppers, dried like chilis are. I whizzed them up in the house's blender, which made a racket like someone threw frozen turkeys into a jet engine.

It turned out ok: I was looking for a fairly fine powder to dust the tuna with.

We had also picked up some small potatoes. Irene par-boiled them, then finished them in the last of the schmaltz (rendered chicken fat); sadly, I can't find a translation in Spanish -- they meaning the dictionaries provide is for "sentimental", not yummy fat.

We bought some asparagus from the market, too. I need to learn to be a more attentive shopper: these were not local at all but from Peru, and their quality had suffered on the long trip here. I should have known better: it's a spring vegetable, not a deep summer crop.  Irene par-cooked these too.

The mise-en-place at the ready:

I gave the tuna steaks a good slick of nice olive oil, then pressed the ñora powder into it evenly. Then I heated a skillet with some more oil until barely smoking, and slapped those steaks onto the hot surface where they quickly developed a bit of a crust.  We used to do this all the time -- blackened pork chops -- but haven't used the technique in a while.

While the potatoes browned, I gave the asparagus some skillet time with just a touch of oil and some lashings of good sherry vinegar that we'll have to abandon here.

On the plate the steaks had a char-looking blackness from the chilis and a a sheen from the oil.

We sat out under the nearly-full moon and finished off the last of the wine with dinner.

Unfortunately, I had overcooked the tuna steaks. I'd hoped to get an exterior crust and leave the interior pink-to-red. Nope, this was gray throughout. I apologized to the tuna for disrespecting it; I'm not used to this electric cooktop's lag-time.

The tuna, however, and an intensely fish-y flavor. It was meaty, almost bordering in a liver-y taste. Holy crap, that's some seriously tasty tuna. I'd love to do this again, but with more care on the cooking.

Daily Dinner #6 with Paella

We're extending our month of daily dinner postings, but petering out a bit as I've been working stupid long hours on a deadline here.  We did a couple Spanish things this week including another fideuà and a fishy paella.

2015-08-17 Chicken and Endive

We had left-over chicken breast from the bird we roasted. We were thinking of doing a cold salad, but I decided I preferred it warm.  Irene made chicken stock from the carcass and cooked bones, some onion and garlic. We had the rendered fat -- schmaltz (I wonder what they call it in Spain) -- so I sautéed some endive until softened, then warmed through the chicken, and moistened with some of the stock.  Irene crisped up the skin until is was shatter-y and we crumbled it on as a garnish, and used a large piece as a decorative "sail".  Really easy, and quite good. 

2015-08-20 Fideuà with Mussels

Bummer, no photos of this one. While I toiled away, Irene made a fideuà of mussels she got at the grocery store on her way home from Spanish class; they were some ridiculous price, like only €2 for a half kilo or so. Unlike the farmed American ones, these were sandy and fully bearded, so it took a while to clean and prep them. Quite  a few of them were broken; I do recall that's how mussels used to be, before farmed mussels became the norm in the U.S. 

She also got our first decent stick of bread at the grocery store.  We need to find a source of two essentials we're missing here -- good bread, and good coffee.

2015-08-21 Paella with Shellfish and Squid

We got proper "Bomba" rice from the store (very affordable here) and Irene hit up her favorite fish monger in the Mercat de Sant Antoni for some fish on her way home from Spanish class. After inquiring what Irene was making and for how many, she recommended four giant prawns, for giant crawfish-like beasts, and a squid. She cleaned and cut the squid for Irene; the entire batch of fresh fish cost under €8. 

After a grueling day working, I needed to relax with some cooking. Paella's just the thing; I'll step through the process here. Off camera I cut up some "xoriz fuet" (an intense sausage, sold naked and hanging loose in the store, unrefrigerated), and sweated some bulbing onion with a big red bell pepper and some garlic. We used more of Irene's chicken stock, enriched with some Ñora chilis and some saffron.

I then sauteed the rice in a bit of olive oil: 

Added the stock:

 Some flat beans, which we've found need a fair amount of cooking, so I started them early rather than waiting until the end as I usually do when cooking at home:

And here are our "bugs" and squid.  We don't have beasts like this in our stores in the States. We've got your basic shrimp (almost universally from far east farms run by slave labor -- look it up). Here we've got a range that we simply don't have names for.

 First the big ones, since they'll need a bit more time to cook:

Then the smaller ones:

And finally the squid, which is very thick in body, more like what I'd call cuttlefish at home:

 A dusting of charcoal salt flakes for flavor and contrast and we're done.

The rice came out beautifully, fully cooked with individual grains, not a gummy mess, the squid was tender, and the big shrimpy-things were cooked through. The crawfish-like things were, perhaps, a bit overcooked. Next time, we'd cut through the shell of the crawfish to make it easier to get in -- those shells are tough!

2015-08-22 Spanish Carbonara

Casting around in the cupboards, not much came to view. Frozen chicken breast, a couple eggs, one endive, a bit of red pepper, and some cheese.  Irene started out making a version of Mac'n'cheese but the lack of a suitable pan for browning the top (teflon's a no-no at high temperature) changed the end result. 

Boil some pasta, sauté some veggies, grate some cheese, beat up a couple eggs, and there you go -- carbonara, after a fashion.

Daily Dinner #5

We embarked on Shannon's challenge four weeks ago: post a month of daily dinners, not just the fancy stuff we do. We're still in Barcelona living in a flat that in its entirety is smaller than our kitchen at home; needless to say, cooking can be difficult. But we're up for it, and really like shopping at the markets frequently. We may not bother posting dinners we have out so there could be some gaps.

2015-08-09

After a weekend in London, we didn't have anything in the house so we headed out for something local, simple. We ended up on Paral·lel which has a ton of cafes, but many were too noisy to sit outside on a great night -- it's a main street. Just off, we found Cachitos which had an appealing menu.

First, I noticed the price of one of my favorite Spanish wines, a Muga Reserva at €24, which would be thrice that at a DC restaurant.

There was a starter that sounded odd, intriguing, so we got the Broken Potatoes Anna with foie gras. It didn't look like much, but imagine a pommes anna as grated potatoes fried together, topped with a soft-cooked eggs, then a sauce of foie gras.  Rich? You betcha.

Irene ordered goat (Espaldita de cabrito al horno hecho a fuego lento):

and I had a Spanish pork tenderloin that was delightfully flavorful.

2015-08-10 Fideuà

Everyone knows about Paella, the rice dish from Valencia, but we first had fideuà with local friends in Barcelona. It's similar, in that a starchy base is cooked in a tasty broth, with various vegetables and proteins added. But where paella uses short-grain rice, fideuà uses pasta, shaped like regular old straight spaghetti. The ones I've had used a fairly fine noodle, and they're always short, like an inch long. In paella, the the individual rice grains should be separate when cooked, not a creamy mush like risotto; fideuà is the same here.

At the grocery store, we found bags of three different thicknesses of the noodles, and we chose a fairly coarse one so we wouldn't accidentally over cook it.

We also had some dried cod roe from the Mercat that we'd been trying to use; it's intensely fishy, fairly salty, but had a somewhat wax-like texture. It seemed perfect to provide a big hit of flavor. We froze this to firm it up then grated it on a box grater. Ick, the color here's awful: picture a lime-green cutting board with dark rose colored shaved bits.

We cooked the fideuà in the last of the flagon of white wine we had, and a bit of liquid exuded from some tomatoes we cooked down. Then we added the grated roe once the noodles were al dente; below, it's turned a pale white color.  Fideuà is cooked in a low, wide paella pan, and broiled to finish to crunch up the top.  We only have a Teflon skillet and these can outgas toxic PTFE fumes when heated to very high temperatures, so no crust for us. :-(

 We served this sautéed Spanish peppers that act like Padróns but are long and slender.

2015-08-11 Butifarra and Mushrooms

Irene picked up some Butifarra (what a great name for a sausage!) that included mushrooms, and also some wild mushrooms. Sorry, no finished photos of the dish, but it was simple and very satisfying. 

2015-08-12 Monkfish and Leeks

Irene picked up some monkfish (here the name is "rape", pronounced RAH-pay) at the market on her way back from Spanish class.  This fish is exceptionally popular here, all the fish mongers and grocery stores carry it; it's usually displayed on ice without the head, because it's a bit ugly and fearsome.  It's got a good meaty texture and fine taste. Not the best photos here, the lights in our flat are pretty dim.

Irene sautéed onion then added the fish, then tossed in some leeks and their greens.

It was garnished with parsley the fishmonger gave Irene.

2015-08-13 Spinach, Raisins, Nuts

There's a simple classic Spanish dish made with spinach, raisins and pine nuts.  For some reason, only one of the vendors in market had it and it was pre-bagged; there were plenty of other fresh greens but we wanted something more tender than chard-like greens. We also bought some seriously huge raisins in hues from golden, through orange to russet. 

Instead of pine nuts, we picked up some Marcona almonds, a specialty of Spain to which we sometimes treat ourself at home. "Natural?" asked our fruit and nut vendor? "Si."  Oops, a mistake: "natural" meant undried and unsalted -- a yielding texture rather than a pleasing snap, and these really needed salt to make them interesting. I heated some water with salt to dissolve, then soaked the nuts in this for a few hours, then drove off the water in a skillet. Ah, much better: a crunch and a slight zing from salt.

We cooked the spinach simply, assembled the rest, and -- very untraditionally -- served it on some elbow pasta to give us a meal's-worth. The package seems confused: is it rooster (gallo) or shark (tiburón)??

A glug of good local olive oil and we're done. Not bad at all.

2015-08-14 Merluza, Green Beans, Potatoes

We hit the market on a Friday before a holiday here, and the place was packed with folks buying fish. We returned to the fishmonger from whom Irene had bough the monkfish earlier and asked her about a fish it seemed everyone was buying; she said it was merluza (hake), and gestured that it was line-caught. We asked her to filet and skin it which she did expertly with a scalpel-like knife the size of her head; it's a beautiful thing to watch.  We also got some deeply flavored black olives and chopped up some parsley.

We got a half kilo of attractive thin beans. Turns out a half kilo's a hell of a lot.  Our flat's tiny cooktop doesn't have enough room to cook the fish, the beans, and the potatoes we wanted, so we put them in a big glass dish and figured we could steam them in the microwave, covered with cling film with a couple vents.  Oops, the microwave's only big enough for a small pot pie.  We scrounged around the cabinets and found a smaller dish we could improvise.  Oddly, after steaming for about 15 minutes, the beans were still too crunchy; perhaps next time I'll finish them in a skillet.

 And the potatoes... simply sautéed in olive oil with salt and pepper.

I heated our good olive oil in the skillet, added capers and black olives for a briny flavor, then the merluza. I was able to get a slight crust on the fish despite the Teflon. Straight-forward prep, the fish was excellent.

2015-08-15 Chicken

We'd been seeing these beautiful, golden-skinned chickens in the market so we picked one up to roast on Saturday. It was supposed to rain all day so I figured we'd be trapped inside -- me working and Irene doing her Spanish homework. Surprise -- it turned out to be a beautiful day and we ended up walking a 10-mile circuit around the city, along the beaches, and by the waterfront. 

While I tried to focus on some nerd-work, Irene prepped and cooked the chicken.  We stole some rosemary from the plantings of a waterfront restaurant, and had a bunch of garlic that Irene stuffed the chicken with.

We found a skillet that we could remove the handle from and baked it in the oven. It turned out really well, a good flavor, a fine texture (not dried out and stringy), and a burnished skin. Sadly, the skin didn't stay crispy long and we missed the crunch it had when it first came out of the oven; professionals must have a technique to keep the crisp skin, probably involving unhealthy amounts of butter.