Have you ever tried natto? If so, then you are most likely doing one of two things right now: salivating or plugging your nose and reaching to close your browser. Natto is one of those polarizing foods like cilantro and okra. People who have tried it tend to have extremely strong feelings about it. Natto is a traditional Japanese food consisting of soybeans that have been fermented with the bacteria, Bacillus subtilis. It is stinky in the same manner as some pungent cheeses (think Limburger). It is also known for its slimy, sticky texture. When stirred, natto develops lots of long, gooey strings. People go on and on about the smell, but I think it’s the unusual texture that really gets to folks. Don’t you want to try it now?

I saw “natto gnocchi” on a restaurant menu recently, and it got me thinking about natto. My mom used to eat natto when I was a kid. Of course, back then I thought it was the worst thing ever. I would run out of the kitchen in horror every time she opened up a package. As an adult, I have grown to love all kinds of fermented foods. Kimchi, fish sauce, stinky cheeses – the riper and moldier it is, the better! I decided it was time to give natto another shot.

I picked up a package of organic natto at Uwajimaya. In order to experience the true taste of natto my first time out, I decided to keep things simple by serving it over rice with soy sauce and a touch of spicy mustard. This is one of the most common ways of eating natto; so common, in fact, that most boxes of natto come with tiny packets of soy sauce and mustard inside. I can’t say that I loved it, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. It was surprisingly mild: stinky, yes, but not as much as certain cheeses. The beans themselves were quite bland. I think I enjoyed it less for its flavor and more for the thrill that comes with eating something others wince at. Plus, it is really fun to stir the natto and watch its crazy stringy texture develop. People typically either love natto or hate it, but strangely enough, I fall somewhere in the middle.

Today, I was feeling experimental. I had some extra odds and ends in my pantry, and I thought, “why not mix them all together with some spaghetti and natto?” In a small bowl, I whipped the natto into a stringy, bubbling frenzy. Then I stirred in spicy mustard, tamari and a raw egg. I tossed this with hot spaghetti until it thickened into a sauce and coated all of the noodles. Then I added some edamame and chopped kimchi (because the natto wasn’t quite stinky enough for me). A drizzle of sesame oil and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds completed the dish. It may sound horrific, but it was actually pretty tasty. It reminded me a little bit of sesame noodles, albeit with a slimier texture and a flavor only a natto fan could love. If you like unusual foods, I dare urge you to try natto!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or possibly down in a Dharma hatch) you’ve no doubt heard the news that Lost is ending tonight. People are hosting Lost parties all across the country in celebration of the series finale. I’ve been a fan of the show since the very beginning so I decided to do it justice in my own way: by preparing a Lost-inspired dinner. There are many routes one could take when planning a Lost-themed meal. The most appropriate choice would probably be wild boar cooked over a campfire. You could also do Korean food in honor of Jin and Sun. Or how about Mr. Cluck’s Chicken or Dharma issue ranch dressing for Hurley? Since the show is filmed in Hawaii, I decided to I decided to whip up a bunch of Hawaiian snacks. No Hawaiian snack tray would be complete without Hawaii’s famous surfer treat: Spam Musubi. Sushi rice topped with fried Spam - what’s not to love there? In addition, I chose to make Ahi Poke and Okinawan Sweet Potatoes with Miso-Tahini Dip. Rounding out the ensemble cast were steamed edamame and wedges of fresh mango. To drink, we kept it simple with Dharma-brand micro brews (OK, these weren’t real Dharma beers - Robert made some Dharma labels and slapped them on a couple of Ninkasi IPAs!) It is unlikely that the Lost finale will live up to everyone’s expectations. Regardless of what happens, at least I’ll have a delicious meal to look back on!

Several months ago, I came across this irresistible-sounding recipe for Jamaican Veggie Patties. It comes from Bryant Terry’s new cookbook: Vegan Soul Kitchen. Jamaican patties are traditionally filled with ground beef, but this vegan version features a delectable mix of vegetables cooked in coconut milk and sweet spices surrounded by a flaky, coconut oil-rich crust.

My first attempt at this recipe yielded mediocre results. The filling was great, but I completely messed up the crust (my own fault, not anything to do with the recipe as written.) The crust recipe calls for chilled coconut oil. Having never used coconut oil before, I decided to put it in the fridge to chill overnight - the colder the fat, the flakier the pastry, right? Big mistake! The coconut oil hardened up so much that I couldn’t even get my knife through it. I let it soften for a while at room temperature, but I still had a tough time incorporating it evenly into the dough. Not surprisingly, the crust wasn’t very good. It turned out dry and crumbly rather than flaky. At least the coconut oil made my hands nice and soft!

I decided to attempt the recipe again but this time, instead of making patties, I chose to make pot pies. Pot pies are easier to assemble and provide a higher ratio of delicious filling to pastry (I felt that the flavor of the filling was kind of lost in the patties.) For the crust, I followed a basic butter pie crust recipe which I tweaked slightly to bring it more in line with Mr. Terry’s recipe. I added 1 teaspoon of turmeric to the flour, and I used a combination of butter and coconut oil for the fat. This time, I chilled the coconut oil for only 30 minutes or so – it is already solid at room temperature so it just needed a short time in the fridge to cool down. I followed Mr. Terry’s filling recipe to a tee, although I doubled it to make sure I had enough for two pot pies (I actually ended up with more than enough– fortunately, leftover filling is delicious on its own or over rice!)

I divided the filling into two 2-cup soufflé dishes, topped them with the crust, brushed on a little egg wash and baked them in a 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. Except for my slightly misshapen crust, the pot pies turned out beautiful! The turmeric gives the crust a nice golden color. They were very rich and flavorful and provided some much-needed comfort on our first stormy night of fall. Jamaican pot pies – a unique twist on an American classic!

Last weekend, my sister and her husband threw a big bash in celebration of their 11th wedding anniversary. Of the several desserts served at the party, the highlight for me was the coconut cream pie courtesy of Dahlia Bakery. Chef Tom Douglas has been serving this pie at his Dahlia Lounge for nearly two decades now. It has developed quite a following here in Seattle. Even people who don’t normally like coconut cream pie are said to have become converts upon tasting Tom’s version. When I mentioned to my mom that I had the recipe, she said, “Great, then you can make it for our Easter dinner next weekend.” Doh!

For the most part, the pie was a breeze to prepare. You make a simple pastry cream using milk, sweetened coconut, fresh vanilla bean, eggs and butter. The pie crust - a basic butter crust that is spiked with more sweetened coconut - is blind baked in the oven. Once the crust has cooled, you simply fill it with the pastry cream and top it with whipped cream and even more coconut! The filling turned out great, but my crust ended up a bit doughier than I would have liked. My ingredients might not have been chilled properly or perhaps I simply under-baked the crust. Or, it could be that the shredded coconut in the pie dough results in a softer, less flaky crust. If I ever make this recipe again, I would probably try a plain pie crust instead - the extra coconut flavor in the crust really isn’t necessary.

After a lovely Easter dinner, it was time to try my pie! My family seemed to enjoy it despite the less than perfect crust. Everyone agreed that my pie had an even richer coconut flavor than the version we had sampled the previous weekend. Robert and I ate the leftovers last night – after sitting for a day and a half in the fridge, it still tasted pretty damn good! Tom Douglas’ Triple Coconut Cream Pie recipe can be found in the Seattle Kitchen cookbook and has also been written up here and here.

Looking for a simple snack to eat during halftime today, Robert and I settled on fish tacos. But of course, nothing is ever simple with me. Rather than waste my money on a 200-pack of stale grocery store corn tortillas, I decided to whip up my own. Corn tortillas are actually pretty easy to make. If you have a tortilla press, they are even easier. I don’t plan on making enough tortillas in my life to justify buying (and finding room for) a tortilla press so I would be rolling my tortillas by hand, a slightly daunting task. Fortunately, I only needed enough for a few fish tacos.

I picked up a small bag of Bob’s Red Mill Masa Harina. It’s probably sacrilegious to use masa from Oregon but, again, I really don’t need a 10-pound bag of Mexican masa (even if it is the same price as Bob’s Red Mill.) To make tortilla dough, you simply mix two parts masa to one part water. Then, you form the dough into balls, roll the balls out into thin disks and cook them in an ungreased skillet until browned and pliable. To keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, many recipes will tell you to put it between two sheets of plastic wrap. People who make tortillas often usually use cut up pieces of ziploc bag instead - the ziploc bag is sturdier than plastic wrap and lends more support to the fragile tortilla dough. I didn’t feel like wasting a bunch of ziploc bags so I used a combination of parchment on the bottom and plastic wrap on top. The parchment was supportive while the plastic wrap allowed me to see what I was doing. I was able to use the same piece of parchment over and over, making it a much less wasteful process. My other trick was to use the bottom of a heavy pan to press my dough balls flat (acting as sort of a makeshift tortilla press.) This gave the tortillas a perfect round shape. Then, I used a rolling pin to get them nice and thin.

The tortillas were awesome! So much better than store bought. They were a little thick and crispy in some spots but, surprisingly, they didn’t break apart at all (after browning in the skillet, I steamed them briefly in the microwave to soften them up.) I filled the tacos with blackened halibut, lime-marinated cabbage, chipotle crema and sliced avocado. The filling was good, but the fresh, flavorful tortillas were what really made this dish. I may have spent the whole first half of the game in the kitchen making tortillas, but these delicious halftime tacos were totally worth the effort!

As soon as my mom mentioned that she wanted to throw a pizza party for her and my sister’s birthdays (known collectively in our family as “the January birthdays”) I just knew that I’d be tasked with making the dough. That’s what I get for bragging about my sourdough pizza crust on this blog! Instead of whining about it, I decided to use this as an opportunity to do a pizza crust tasting. I’ve tried many different crust recipes over the years. However, because I am usually only cooking for Robert and myself, I typically just make one dough at a time - I never get to try the pizzas side by side to determine which crust I truly prefer. For our pizza party, we were planning on making five or six pizzas - assuming that one batch of dough makes two pizzas, this meant that I could try three different crust recipes.

I was really curious to see how a sourdough crust would measure up against a yeast-based crust so, for my first dough, I used the sourdough crust recipe that I wrote about in my last post. I followed the recipe as written except that this time I let the dough rest overnight in the refrigerator hoping that the long rest period would allow the dough to develop a more complex sourdough flavor. For my second dough, I used this recipe from Cooks Illustrated. This is an unusual recipe in that it calls for cake flour. Cake flour has a very low protein content which makes it a soft flour - it is ideal for delicate pastries and cookies but not so great for breads and, one would presume, pizza crusts. According to the folks at Cooks Illustrated, the cake flour makes it easier to replicate the thin, crisp crusts found in Neapolitan pizzerias. Finally, I made the basic pizza crust recipe from How to Cook Everything but, to keep things interesting, I followed the variation that calls for replacing 1/2 cup of the flour with 1/2 cup cornmeal. I didn’t have any cornmeal on hand so I ground up some coarse polenta instead.

We made three different pizzas: Margherita (mozzarella and basil), Italian sausage and sweet pepper, and delicata squash with gorgonzola and sage. The sausage and the squash pizzas were the favorites as far as toppings, but I was mostly interested to hear which crust my family liked best. The Cooks Illustrated crust was immediately declared the loser of the three. It was (not surprisingly) much softer than the other two, and it didn’t have much in the way of flavor. The cornmeal crust and the sourdough crust both had better flavor and a pleasantly chewy, crunchy texture. Members of my family were split as to which they preferred. Most agreed that the cornmeal crust had the best flavor overall, but it was too gritty for some (my fault for using polenta instead of true cornmeal - had I used a finely-ground cornmeal, the cornmeal crust surely would have been the winner.) The sourdough crust, while not quite as flavorful as the cornmeal crust (despite my extra long rest period), did have a better texture. Next time I make pizza, I might just have to split the difference and try a sourdough-cornmeal crust!

I’ve been enjoying baking even more than usual since I got my hands on some sourdough starter. Yeast certainly has its place in the kitchen, but using sourdough starter makes me feel like a serious baker. I’ve used my sourdough starter to make sourdough loaves, rye bread, ciabatta and the very festive Red Wine Loaf with Pine Nuts and Figs that I made for the holidays. Last night, I decided to make a household favorite – pizza. Only this time, instead of my regular yeast crust, I thought I’d make a sourdough crust!

Simplicity is the key when it comes to pizza. The sourdough crust recipes that I found online were exceedingly simple: starter, flour, salt and olive oil. In fact, after all the baking I’ve been doing, I was kind of taken aback by their simplicity. Most recipes listed amounts in cups rather by weight. I’ve gotten really accustomed to bread recipes being by weight (a much more accurate way of measuring ingredients) so this really stood out to me. Even more surprising was the fact that they all simply called for “starter.” What kind of starter? 100% hydration? 50%? Fed with what type of flour exactly? I guess I’m turning into a bit of a baking nerd.

I generally keep my starter at 100% hydration which means that I feed it with equal parts water and flour (by weight.) Some people prefer to keep their starter on the firm side by feeding it with a higher ratio of flour to water. Obviously, the hydration level of your starter impacts the amount of additional flour needed to make dough which is why I was surprised to see so many recipes calling for generic “starter.” Starting with 1-1/2 cups of 100% starter as the base from which to build my dough, I mixed in just under 1-1/2 cups of bread flour, a bit of salt and a drizzle of olive oil. The dough seemed a little stiff so I added small amounts of water until I had a nice, soft dough.

Many of the recipes I read said that, for sourdough pizza crust, rising wasn’t required and that the starter was only added for flavor. I was dubious so I ignored those recipes and let my dough rise anyway - seeing dough rise is one of my favorite aspects of baking! I put my dough together after work and, by the time dinner rolled around, it had nearly doubled in size. As I was rolling the dough out, I was struck by how much more elastic it was than my regular yeast dough. On the one hand, this was great because I was able to really stretch it thin without fear of ripping a hole in it. On the other hand, the elasticity made rolling it out pretty difficult – the dough really wanted to snap back into place. Eventually, I got it to relax (and I got the benefit of a workout in the process.)

I added my toppings: roasted red bells, olives, and Italian Field Roast. Then I baked my pizza on a hot stone in the oven. 12 minutes later, I had a crunchy, bubbly, beautiful pizza! Although the dough was made with sourdough starter, it didn’t have a sour flavor at all. You really have to work at developing that sour flavor and 2 hours of rise time isn’t going to do it (refrigerating the dough overnight would probably work.) The crust had a nice clean flavor and a good contrast of crunchy bottom and chewy interior. Robert said he could detect a difference between this and my yeast crust. I think both are good, with the sourdough crust having a slight edge over the yeast crust simply because it was easier to put together.

Click here for my Sourdough Pizza Crust recipe >>

Looking for a festive bread to make during this holiday season? Allow me to suggest this Red Wine Loaf with Pine Nuts and Figs. This bread is originally from Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf, but I made the adapted version on Wild Yeast (a great resource for anyone interested in learning how to bake delicious bread; the recipes are all accompanied by gorgeous photos and very detailed directions.) The flavor base for this special and rather unusual bread is formed by dried figs and pine nuts that have been soaked overnight in red wine (how can you possibly go wrong with that combination of flavors?) Despite the fact that it calls for both sourdough starter and instant yeast, this bread doesn’t rise much. It is a dense bread, but the denseness is well matched by the rich, sweet flavor of the figs. I love the wacky cross-hatch pattern on top! Red Wine Loaf with Pine Nuts and Figs is delicious toasted and slathered with cream cheese or goat cheese. We’ve been having it that way for dessert all week long with the last of our farmer’s market apples. A true winter treat!

Miang kum is a popular Thai dish consisting of coconut, peanuts, ginger, lime, chilies, shallots, and dried shrimp topped off with a sweet sauce and wrapped up in a fresh betel leaf. The entire bundle is eaten in one bite creating an amazing burst of flavor in the mouth! When Robert and I were in Thailand last March, we discovered miang kum candy. Like the dish it is based on, this miang kum candy was sweet, salty, spicy, crunchy and totally addictive. We bought all of the packages we could find to take home with us even though I fully expected that I would be able to find it at Uwajimaya. Unfortunately, I was wrong! I haven’t been able to find my beloved miang kum candy anywhere!

Since I can’t find miang kum candy in Seattle, I decided to experiment with making my own. I know next to nothing about making candy so I wasn’t really sure where to begin. A search for coconut candy on the internet resulted in many recipes for soft, red and green dyed coconut squares - not even close to what I was looking for. Then I remembered those light and crispy sesame candies that you sometimes find in Mexican and Asian stores. That was exactly the type of candy base I needed. I quickly found a sesame candy recipe that couldn’t be simpler: heat brown sugar and honey in a pot, add sesame seeds (or, in my case, miang kum ingredients) and then spread out on parchment to cool. For the most part, I used fresh ingredients just as you would use for real miang kum: fresh ginger, fresh lime zest, etc. My only concessions were to replace fresh Thai bird chilies with cayenne pepper and to use caramelized shallots instead of raw shallots (nobody wants raw shallots in their candy!)

I was doubtful that these would turn out on my first try, but the flavor ended up being spot on! My candies tasted even more like real miang kum than the candy we had in Thailand (probably a result of my using fresh ingredients.) The only downside is that they never hardened up as I expected they would. I wanted something crispy, but these were more like miang kum “chews.” Maybe the fresh ingredients that I used added just enough moisture to the mix to prevent it from hardening fully. Still, they tasted great and I found myself snacking on more than I probably should. Robert went crazy for them and took the leftovers to work to share. If you are craving a mixture of spicy and sweet, take a walk on the wild side with this exotic and unique treat.

Click here for my Miang Kum Candy recipe >>

Check out the scary cheddar spread that I made for my company’s Halloween party. Okay, so there isn’t anything all that scary about the spread itself (I mean, the recipe is a little white trash which, in a way, is scary.) The truly creepy part of this dish is my kalamata spider garnish. The spiders weren’t nearly as labor intensive to make as last year’s skull and bones crostini, but I think they’re just as cool. Simply use half an olive for the body, and then cut thin strips for the legs. If you wanted to up the creep factor, you could even use a couple of peppercorns to replicate those gross bulging eyeballs that spiders sometime have. I didn’t go there - the shiny, black kalamata skin gave these spiders enough of a menacing quality for my taste! Happy Halloween!