DC Culinarian

Wild Ruffian

I love the name of this cocktail, though I don't know that it's particularly well suited to the drink itself. "Wild Ruffian" conjures some sort of grain alcohol-based knee-buckler made with, I don't know... root vegetables and tree bark, maybe?

The reality is an altogether classy libation of cognac, peach preserves, and mint. Almost like a mint julep. It's less "Wild Ruffian" than it is "Waggish Popinjay."

But that's a stupid name, and this is an excellent cocktail, and I'm not really sure where I'm going with this so I'll just stop here and say you could certainly find worse ways to spend your Friday evening than with a few Wild Ruffians in hand.

Recipe after the jump.

Balsamic Peach Raspberry Zabaglione

The occasion of peach week gives me the opportunity to share one of the more valuable cooking lessons I ever learned, imparted to me by my younger brother. He's far and away a better cook than I am, and succeeds at pretty much everything, which is thoroughly irritating. The flip side to this irksome trait is that his rare moments of failure stand out and become the stuff of legend. Such is the case with his infamous kitchen experiment: peach-raspberry cornbread.

Cornbread. With peaches in raspberries in it. In theory an excellent idea: cornbread is good, peaches are good, raspberries are good. Put them together and NEXT STOP FLAVORTOWN WOO WOOOOOO! Right?

Heh... no.

This happened a long time ago. We're something like 15-18 years out from the incident, and my brother was just a kid at the time. But it was such a transcendent disaster that comes up at family gatherings to this day. The lesson learned is that when it comes to cookery, the whole is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts. Peach and raspberry go together wonderfully. They just don't play well with cornbread. The same could be said of chocolate, orange, and tuna.

So here we've kept the peach-raspberry combo and, in place of cornbread, added a little zabaglione, a whipped Italian custard made with egg yolks, sugar, and alcohol (in this case, white wine and Chambord). To cut it a bit we throw in a little bit of balsamic vinegar, which adds tang and brings down the sweetness a touch.

A few tips: the custard is light, but rich. Super rich. A little goes a long way so be judicious. That lightness is achieved by vigorous, sustained whisking. Like 10-12 minutes of straight whisk action. Be ready, or use a handheld electric mixer.

Whatever you do just be sure to keep things moving. You want custard, not scrambled egg, which, like cornbread, does not go well with peaches and raspberries.

Recipe after the jump.

Peach-Stuffed Pork Loin

It's only right and proper that after stuffing something into a peach yesterday, that I stuff a peach into something today. It's poetry, ebb and flow, perhaps even comeuppance -- of what I have no clue.

But still, the stuffee has become the stuffer. I've written previously about how pork and fruit go together like rum and Christmas, and how peaches in particular seem to get along quite nicely with pig's meat. This recipe (borrowed from excitable Brit Jamie Oliver) utilizes peaches in two ways: in the stuffing, and roasted as a garnish.

Not gonna lie: this isn't quite healthy. Pork loin has its due complement of fat and one of the primary components of the stuffing is butter. On the other hand, the inclusion of fruit cancels all that out. Probably. But even if it doesn't, there's nothing here a few laps around the block can't fix and they'll be well worth it because hot ninja hell is this good. Sweet and garlicky, redolent of thyme. Throw in a little sauteed kale and you'll have a sure-fire winner on your hands.

A couple of quick words of advice. First, make sure your peaches are good and ripe. You can get away with using slightly underripe peaches for the roasted garnish because they'll sweeten as they caramelize, but that won't fly with the stuffing. If they go in sour, they'll come out sour, and that's not the flavor you want. Second, kitchen twine. You're going to need it to tie up the roast after stuffing, and trust me when I say you'll find more uses for it in the kitchen than you could ever dream up. Get some, and be thankful you did.

Recipe after the jump.

Melocotones Rellenos

Now that you've had your fill of early '70s jam-band Southern rocking, it's time for dessert. Line up and prepare to receive one of the finer peach desserts around: melocotones rellenos.

This recipe comes from Spain, though you'd be forgiven for finding it to be a little... French. The name means "stuffed peaches," and in this case the peaches are stuffed with an eggy custard and meringue. As such, there's a whole lot going on in each bite.

Flavor-wise, you're combining the lightly carmelized sweetness of the meringue with the heavier flavor of the custard and the comparatively tart peach. On the texture front, the meringue is airy and light, the custard is smooth, and the peach is fleshy. Even the temperatures will vary, as you refrigerate and then blast the peaches in the oven. Different flavors, textures, temperatures -- this is the stuff of an excellent dessert.

And they're really not too much of a pain in the ass to make, provided you allow yourself enough time and know the basics of meringue.

So we start with dessert. Tomorrow, we'll be making a detour to the savory.

Recipe after the jump.

Eat A Peach

Summer is reaching its end. Quite rudely, I might add, in that I don't recall any of us giving it leave to depart. Heliocentricity is often depressing.

The best way to cope with the grisly descent into automn (or fight back, if you prefer to lose your battles) is to make the best use of late summer's impressive bounty. So that's what we're doing all this week. We're going to cling like grim death to juicy, succulent, sweet peaches.

Peaches in desserts, savories, drinks -- we got it all covered. The first offering (which is knock-you-on-your-ass good) will pop up later today. In the meantime...

Lemon Tart

Each and every time you get something going in the kitchen, you know what's happening?

SCIENCE.

Cooking is chemistry. Delicious chemistry. I was a chem major at one point in college before the rigors of organic chemistry and Wednesday night drinking shunted me off into the humanities. But I never lost the bug. For science, I mean*.

That's why I dig blogs like Not So Humble Pie. They'll give you the recipe for a fantastic lemon meringue pie, but also hit you with the science behind it. I borrowed their recipe for the lemon filling to make this tart, and I suggest you take the time to read NSHP's explanation for ideal gelatinization of said filling. It's both interesting and useful, and it contains the phrase "hot bloated starch granules," which is a bonus. 

Having the science down is essential, particularly when baking, which is all about precision in your measurements, temperatures, and timing. Temperature is the key factor when making this lemon tart, specifically the effects of heat on starch. Corn starch's thickening prowess comes from its ability to absorb water when heated. However, if you heat the starch for too long at too high a temperature, it will break down and release that water back into the mixture, ruining the texture.

The tart itself is, well, tart. Because lemons. To cut the sour a little bit, a simple blackberry syrup haphazardly drizzled about the dessert plate area. The recipe for the pre-baked tart shell is the same one used in tarts past.

*Also for Wednesday night drinking.

Recipe after the jump.

How To Keep Acid Out Of Your Eyeballs

What happens when you cut into an onion? Stand around long enough and your eyes start to water and burn. This happens because the onion is, in effect, waging chemical warfare upon you.

When the knife passes through the onion it rends the cell walls and releases volatile chemicals, one of which is a fun vapor called sulfinylpropane. This lachrymatic little bugger wafts up from the cutting board and adheres to the wet surface of your eyeball, where it swiftly transforms into dihydrogen sulfate, which you probably know by its street name: sulfuric acid.

To repeat: when you chop an onion, SULFURIC ACID IS BURNING OUT YOUR EYEBALLS. In a way, each onion chopped is a mini-reenactment of the Second Battle of Ypres.

There is, however, a way to prevent this. Be sharp, be fast, be efficient.

BE SHARP. This is all about your knife. The only thing a knife wants to do is your work for you. When you use a knife to slice, it's doing the work. When working with a dull blade, however, you press down on the knife to force the blade through the onion, which means you're doing two things: 1) the work the knife should be doing, and 2) releasing a shitload of sulfinylpropane into the air. A sharp knife will pass more easily through the onion and release less eye-burning acid gas.

BE FAST. No matter how sharp your knife, you're gonna have sulfinylpropane flying around. The sensible thing to do, then, is to get your onion choppery over and done with as quickly as possible to minimize the chance of getting some in your eyes. A sharp knife will help, but the best way to achieve this is to...

BE EFFICIENT. Make your cuts count, and USE THE ONION. It has layers: exploit them. Knowing where and how to slice will get you an entire onion chopped in no time.

So how do you do that? Like this.

Step 1: Slice the top off the onion and halve it lengthwise through the root. Peel off the skin and set it cut-side down on the cutting board.

Step 2: Make a series of narrowly spaced vertical cuts down the length of the onion that go almost all the way to the root end.

 

Step 3: Now make a series of cross cuts, keeping the knife angled toward the center of the onion.

Still not clear? Well here's some slick video with super-high production values demonstrating the technique.

 

An entire large yellow onion reduced to a fairly small dice in less than 90 seconds. None too shabby.

Now, there are other ways to keep acid out of your eyeballs. Goggles, for one. Though rumor has it that they do nothing.