Sourdough, leek, corn, and quinoa pancakes

Pancake breakfast! A Sunday classic. Well, not where I grew up 😀

I will admit that I find standard American pancakes somewhat bland. Add ricotta, or sourdough, now we are talking. And in particular, I am developing a taste for savory pancakes - no sugar spike, good fiber content, and much more interesting flavors than straight out sweetness.

Today's experiment turned out particularly well. I set a goal for myself that I want a low-fat fare, with a broad nutritional content, and an explosive taste. Quite a challenge! Immediately, sourdough came to mind, as it makes everything taste better. I have whose super sweet corn kernels in the freezer that I use to provide sweetness, and I'd balance it for color and flavor with leeks. Add some umami in the form of miso paste. For protein and fiber we can throw in some quinoa. Seasoning, keep it simple with just a bit of salt and pepper. Remember, miso paste packs a punch. For decadence, serve it all with a poached egg. I had a plan!

Here is how the pancakes turned out. Both Jasna and I had to reach for seconds!

Procedure

• Feed your sourdough starter the night before. Also feed the starter that you took our of your starter jar, and leave it covered on the counter overnight. In the morning, it will be super active.

The next day:

• Take 1/2 cup dry quinoa. 
• Toast quinoa in a sauce pan, tossing it periodically so that it does not burn.
• When quinoa starts to release fragrance, add 1 cup of preferably boiling water. Maybe a bit more than a cup, because the hot pot will immediately cause water to evaporate.
• Add 1/2 TSP miso paste, bring to boil, and stir to dissolve miso paste.
• Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about 10 minutes, until quinoa absorbs the liquid.
• Take off the stove to cool down.

While quinoa is cooling, or sooner if you want a jump start:

• Add 1/2 cup of frozen super sweet corn kernels to a medium sized bowl.
• Thoroughly clean and thinly slice about 1/2 of a medium sized leek. Use both the white and the green part of the leek.
• Add the sliced leek to the bowl.
• Add somewhat cooled quinoa. I eyeballed about 1/2 of cooked quinoa.
• Add a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper.
• Mix well, this will cool the quinoa some more.
• Add 1 egg, and about a cup of souordough starter.
• Mix well. Taste for seasoning if you wish, or fry up a small piece to adjust seasoning.

To cook pancakes:

• Add a touch of high-smoking-point oil to a non-stick pan, and spoon in 4 dollops of batter. The size is your choice. Spread the batter a bit in the pan.
• Fry until golden and the bubbles appear in the middle of a pancake. Flip, and fry until the other side is golden, and take out. Repeat until you have used batter.

While you are frying pancakes:

• To a medium-size pot add water to 3/4 height, a good pinch of salt, and a TBS or three of vinegar.
• Bring that to a simmer.
• Crack an egg in a small bowl.
• With a spoon, go around the edge of the pot to create a vortex in the middle. No need to be too aggressive.
• Slide the egg in the middle of the vortex. The spinning water will keep the egg nicely together.
• Keep the water barely at the simmer for 4-5 minutes.
• Take the egg out with a spider strainer, dry it on a paper towel, and serve on top of a pancake.

Note:

• The vortex for poached eggs is not really needed, and it gets clunky when you are poaching more than one egg. But it is a gentle vortex, so you can create it with other eggs already in the water.
• The critical part is that the water should be barely at the simmer, or barely under the simmer. That way, the egg will not get destroyed when it is tossed around by boiling water.

Ayocote negro beans, millet, and tahini sauce

Our love affair with beans has been going on for a long time. It started slowly with a desire to eat healthy, and especially to find food that does not cause blood sugar spikes. Beans are at the top of the list. It was OK, though not at the top of our list of gourmet foods.

Then, years ago, I found myself in Chicago and went to eat at Rick Bayless's Frontera Grill. I still find it hard to grok that in the Bay Area I still have not found Mexican food as good as what I had in Chicago. Admittedly, I have not looked too hard. The most memorable part of the meal in Frontera Grill were basic black beans. They were savory, had great texture, one could not have enough. I started to look hard for instructions for how to cook beans properly. Clearly, there was a trick I had no idea about.

The quality of our beans improved dramatically, and we ate them more and more. And just loved the flavor and texture of freshly cooked beans. Yet, were only able to make a few kinds of beans taste good, no matter how hard we tried. Clearly, we have no figured out the art of the bean.

Jasna learned about Rancho Gordo and their fresh beans. Apparently the beans we were buying in the stores were prehistoric, up to 10 years old. Imagine your cell phone was of that age - today that would have been the original iPhone. Freshness of the beans, the sheer variety, and improved cooking instructions elevated our bean to a new level.

There are two main steps I learned: The first one is to boil beans without salt until they are soft. Apparently salt toughens them up. The second one is to boil them vigorously for 15 minutes, and then simmer ever so slowly until the beans are done. No idea why this is needed, but the result is really good.

Today we made a super simple supper: millet, acoyote beans, and tahini sauce. We looked at each other and decided that steak has gotten some stiff competition. The beans were cooked in freshly made dashi with off-the-chart umami level, millet added a nice texture complement, and tahini sauce kicked it all up a notch or three.

Tahini sauce:

• Mix a coup of yogurt, 3-5 finely chopped garlic cloves, a pinch of salt, juice of one lemon, a few TBS extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp of ground cumin, and 2 TBS tahini.
• That was it. What you don't use, refrigerate. It makes a great salad dressing!

Millet:

• Mix 1/2 cup millet and 1 cup of water, leave in a fridge overnight, or for a couple of days if you change your plans :)
• Put millet in a pot along with the soaking water.
• Add 1/2 TBS miso paste.
• Bring to simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, until millet absorbs the water. 
• I like millet grains to retain its shape. If you want it mushier, use more water.

Beans:

• Soak 2/3 cups of beans in filtered water overnight. Use enough water as beans will double in size.
• Soaking is not strictly needed, but will cut down on cooking time, I highly recommend it.
• Tough-skin beans like ayocote negro that we used can be forgotten in a fridge, soaking for a few days. 
• Strain the beans and wash them. This is supposed to reduce the gas action after eating the beans, though some say it doesn't help. I do it. More importantly, when you eat beans regularly, your digestive track adjust and the gas goes away.
• Put beans in a pot and cover them with fresh liquid. You can use water or dashi if you have it - note that no salt was added to dashi. Add a few TBS of extra virgin olive oil, some chopped onion and carrots, and 5 or so peeled whole garlic cloves. You can also discard the soaking liquid - some claim that reduced flatulence. My experience has been that eating beans and fiber reduces gas.
• Cover, bring to a hard boil, and boil hard for 15 minutes.
• Bring to slow simmer, and simmer for about 20 minutes until the beans soften. Check here and there if you are short on liquid - add more water or dashi in that case.
• When the beans are soft, add salt - to taste. If you are using dashi, you'll barely need a pinch.
• Simmer slowly for another 15 minutes to let beans absorbe some salt. You will end up with beans in some bean liquid that will be super tasty.

To serve, plate some millet first. On top of that, spoon beans and the cooking liquid. Top with a dollop of tahini sauce. Ascend in food heaven.

Dashi made in fridge

Japanese swear by dashi, their base soup stock made from kelp and bonito flakes. When one eats a soup in Japan, it is clear why: umami is off the chart. So I always wanted to learn how to create that magic. I tried recipes from the web, and the result was OK, but not the real thing.

Until I finally had an obvious idea. I was in Tokyo, and I realized that I could ask locals how they made dashi! So brilliant and original, I could hardly believe myself. I even picked a really smart person, my colleague Ryoichi who has invented tons of things, so making dashi should be child play to him. He shocked me when he explained that the easiest and most reliable way to make dashi was to soak kelp in water in a fridge in two days, heat it up, and then pour it over bonito flakes that one packs into a coffee filter.

I politely promised to try this method and stayed quiet about my doubts. How wrong I was - the result is liquid umami that one can use for all sorts of things, usually even without adding any salt.

Procedure:

• Obtain kombu (dried kelp), and bonito flakes in a Japanese store.
• Take a plastic container. I use 1500ml. Add two small pieces of rinsed kombu, and fill with filtered water.
• Leave in a fridge for two days, or more, I have done up to 5 days. The kelp will expand dramatically and the water will draw goodness out of kelp.
• If you want a vegtarian dashi, you are done - use it in a few days. If you want to add bonito flakes, there is a little bit more to do:
• Pour the kelp water into a sauce pan, it will look like this.

• Start heating the water until it almost boils. If it boils the world does not end.
• Outfit a pour-over coffee dripper with a wet filter, and pack it with bonito flakes.

• Set the dripper over a jar that can hold all of the kelp water. Slowly pour the hot kelp water over bonito flakes, just like when making a pour-over coffee.

• When you are done, you have perfect dashi. 
• It keeps in the fridge for a few days.
• I am learning to start a new batch immediately when I made the previous one.

You can drink dashi, use it to make soup or sauces. I even use it to boil beans!