Kohlrabi Salad

Kevin from the stylish new blog Food Junta says that meals don't have to be Meals--elaborate, multi-course things--and I agree. Here is a recipe that isn't a Recipe, but which I make once or twice a week. I've never eaten kohlrabi in the U.S. and don't know how widely available it is, but here it's one of the most common vegetables, and it makes a great winter salad. Use green kohlrabi! Purple kohlrabi isn't mild enough to eat raw, as I unfortunately discovered. This is for two people and takes, oh, five minutes to make.

• one green kohlrabi (a head of kohlrabi? a ball of kohlrabi?)
• some sort of salad dressing

Peel the kohlrabi and slice it into thin (1/8 of an inch or less) wedges. Dress.

So, what sort of dressing to use? I always use a really simple vinaigrette: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper shaken up in a jar. I bet some dill or tarragon would be nice too, but now it's starting to get fussy.

Duck with Dates

I've known how to cook duck breasts for a long time--oddly, it was one of the first things I learned how to cook--but I only recently learned to cook duck legs. You can also make this with duck breasts: just fry them, slice them up, and add them to the sauce at the very end. The sauce is also good with pork chops. This is for two people.

• 1/4 cup chopped, pitted dried dates (measure them by packing them lightly into a measuring cup after they're chopped--for me, it was eight dates)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tbs. dry red wine
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 duck legs
• salt, pepper

Soak the dates in the wine and put this aside. Sprinkle the legs with salt and pepper and put them skin down on a skillet over medium heat. Once they start sizzling, turn the heat down all the way and cover the skillet. Leave them like this for an hour. Check them from time to time to make sure nothing is burning. If you check and see a lot of liquid other than the melted duck fat, take the cover off for a while to let it evaporate (this has only ever happened to me once). After an hour, flip the duck over and cook for another 45 minutes, covered. Then, remove the cover and flip the duck over one more time, and turn up the heat a tiny bit. Cook for five or ten minutes to crisp up the skin, making sure you don't burn it. Remove the duck.

Pour off most of the duck fat--there will be a huge amount in the pan, and it's worth saving. Cook the onions over medium heat in this pan, stirring once in a while, and adding salt and pepper. After about ten minutes, when they're soft, add the dates and wine and turn the heat up all the way. Scrape as much as you can off the bottom of the pan and let the wine reduce until the sauce doesn't taste too winey anymore. Serve with the duck.

The times for cooking the duck are really flexible; at least, I've never overcooked duck legs, and I've cooked them for a lot longer than I said to.

Brined Pork Chops

When I was in high school I read the dining section of the New York Times every Wednesday and was always up to date on what was fashionable among the gourmet crowd. This was odd knowledge to have, because my cooking repertoire was limited to scrambled eggs and a pasta sauce made of parsley and garlic. Back then, the new craze was brining, and every week there was an article about the virtues of meat soaked in salt water. Eventually there was even a brining backlash, as people complained about the texture it gave the meat. I never persuaded my parents to brine anything, so I had to remain neutral in the great debate, until now. And so, my verdict: brining pork chops makes them tender and tasty. I got my basic brining technique from Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork. He suggests many different brines, but the only essential thing is the proportion of salt and water and the temperature, which controls the rate the salt is absorbed. That's why he tells you to add ice cubes to the brine to bring it down to refrigerator temperature. This recipe is for two people and only takes fifteen minutes besides the brining.

• 1 3/4 cups water
• 2 tbs. kosher salt, or slightly less normal salt
• 2 tbs. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon, or a cinnamon stick
• 5 cloves
• 1/2 cup ice cubes
• 2 pork chops
• pepper
• minced fresh rosemary or crumbled dried rosemary
• 1 tbs. olive oil or lard

Mix the water, salt, and sugar in some sort of container that will fit two pork chops. (I used a pie plate. Other options are a big bowl or a zip-loc bag.) Stir until the salt and sugar have dissolved and add the ice cubes, cloves, and cinnamon. Put the pork chops into the container. They should be submerged, or at least nearly so. Put this in the refrigerator for 2-6 hours, depending on the thickness of the chops. Bruce Aidell recommends that you brine 1/2 to 3/4 inch chops for 2 hours, 3/4 to 1 inch chops for 3 hours, and 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch chops for 4-6 hours. I would brine conservatively, since my pork chops are often teetering on the edge of oversaltiness.

Take the pork chops out of the brine and pat them dry. Rub them with pepper and rosemary (but no salt!). Heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat until the oil has just started to smoke. Cook the chops for two or three minutes a side; they should be lightly browned at this point. If the chops are thin--3/4 of an inch or less--then they're probably done. If they're thicker, turn the heat down to medium and cover the pan. Even very thick chops will probably be done in another three or four minutes. They should be 140-145 degrees and should be pink in the middle. Serve with applesauce.

Beer-Braised Brussel Sprouts

No, I can't resist alliterating. I got the idea for this from carbonnade, the Belgian beef stew made with beer. I don't have Mastering the Art of French Cooking with me, but I remember Julia Child saying that the beer gave it character, and the brown sugar smoothed out the beer. Confirming my suspicion that ingredients starting the same letter are interchangable, I replaced the beef with brussels sprouts with delicious results. This takes 20-30 minutes to make, depending on how much work your sprouts take to prepare, and it serves two.

• 1/2 pound brussels sprouts
• 3 tbs. dark beer
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• 1 tbs. olive oil
• salt, pepper

If the sprouts need it, trim off their outer leaves and cut off their stems. Cut them in half if they're big and you have the energy for it. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet that can be covered. Add the well-salted sprouts and stir occasionally (about every thirty seconds). Grind some pepper on them. Regulate the heat to make sure they brown nicely. When they're browned all over, add the beer and brown sugar. Give it a stir, lower the heat, and cover. Cook until the sprouts have lost their crunch but are still firm, which was about seven minutes for me, though my brussels sprouts were smaller than usual.

The stew that inspired this recipe has onions in it. Maybe they would be a good addition. I'm also interested in varying the fat. Butter is the obvious choice, but I bet it would be good with goose fat or lard too.

Trashy Coleslaw

This dish is a disturbing shade of pink. I call it trashy because it resembles some disturbing concoction of marshmellows and food-coloring. Despite its unusual vegetables, it's really just coleslaw. Cabbage and other traditional slaw vegetables would fit in as well, I think.

• 1 carrot
• 1 beet
• 1 green kohlrabi
• 1 celery root
• the juice of a half lemon
• salt, pepper, sugar, mayonnaise

Peel and grate all the vegetables. Put them in a bowl with all the other ingredients and refrigerate for an hour or two.

So, how much salt, sugar, and mayonnaise? You need a lot of salt, but I didn't measure. Maybe a half teaspoon? I used one or two tablespoons of sugar. I assume you'd want less if your beets are very sweet, which mine never are. And for the mayonnaise, just keep adding it till it looks like coleslaw, which takes a while.

Cuts of Pork in Hungarian

This won't be the most interesting post, but I hope that like this list of fishes in Hungarian and English, it will be useful.

• hosszú karaj
  blade-end loin (the part of the loin closest to the shoulder).
• rövid karaj
  rib-end loin (the back end of the loin).
• szűzpecsenye
  tenderloin
• tarja
  Boston butt (the top of the shoulder)
• lapocka
  picnic shoulder (the top of the front leg)
• oldalás
  ribs
• comb
  fresh ham (the back leg)
• csülök
  hocks (the bottom of the legs)
• tokaszalonna
  pork belly from the front of the pig
• dagadó
  pork belly from the rear of the pig
• farok
  tail

Lentils with Sausage

I was waiting on line at the butcher when the woman in front of me asked about the different kinds of sausage hanging in the back. She left with with a few kilos of garlic sausage. (It's rare that I see someone walk out of the butcher with fewer than two kilos of meat.) I decided to copy her and took home a link myself.

The sausage was dry but much softer than the typical cured sausage. I ate some on bread. It was dully bland; its fat took over my mouth, but without any strong flavor but a bit of smokiness. Giovanna commented that it wasn't her favorite sausage, and I wondered if it would be better cooked. We put this experiment into action. The cooked sausage made a crunchy, intense morsel. The sausage was so much better, and the difference in flavor so reminiscent of the difference between raw and cooked meat, that now I'm not sure if that sausage was intended to be eaten raw.

I adapted this from a Mark Bittman recipe by replacing its bacon with this sausage and decreasing the proportion of lentils. (Sorry to be so Mark-dependent. When I come back home, I promise to broaden my horizons a bit.) I'm not sure what to replace the sausage with if you're outside of Hungary. It should be the softest, fattiest cured sausage you can find. This makes enough for about three people, or two people with lots of leftovers. It takes 45 minutes to an hour, not counting lentil soaking time.

• 1 cup lentils
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 12 dkg fokhagymás páraszti kolbász or other sausage
• 1 large onion, or 2 smaller ones
• 1 carrot
• 1 parsnip
• 2 cloves garlic
• less than 1 tbs. olive oil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 tsp. vinegar
• salt and pepper

Put the lentils, stock, the bay leaf, and some salt in a small pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for two minutes and turn it off. Let the lentils soak, and refrigerate if necessary. Or skip this step.

Chop the onion, carrot, and parsnip. Cut the sausage into 1/2 inch chunks; they should be really small since the sausage is so powerful. In a medium pot, put the oil over medium heat and fry the sausage pieces, shaking them around only after they've crisped on one side. Put the sausage aside, turn the heat down slightly, and fry the vegetables in the fat that remains in the pan. Add some salt to them. After five minutes, add the lentils and stock, cover, bring to a boil, and turn the heat down to maintain a simmer. The lentils should be done in about thirty minutes, though I'm not very good at estimating lentil-cooking times. Add some more stock or water if necessary. When the lentils are soft, add the lemon juice or the vinegar. Mark Bittman suggested red wine vinegar. I didn't have any, so I used white wine vinegar and unthinkingly added about a tablespoon of it, which wasn't good but didn't ruin the dish. I figure lemon juice would be good too.