The Hirshon Polish Jelly Donuts for Fat Tuesday – Pączki

January 16, 2019 by The Generalissimo Leave a Comment

Pączki Image Used Under Creative Creative Commons License From seasonsandsuppers.ca

My Citizens, few things delight the palate of your supreme Suzerain – the sucrose-loving TFD! – more than a good sugary jelly donut fried in lard and dripping equally with history and jam!

This recipe from Poland absolutely fits the bill at every level! I first learned about this dessert from the amazing food newsletter Gastro Obscura, and I will now share my version of this treat with you! It’s especially apropos given that Fat Tuesday is rapidly approaching, which is the traditional time of year to eat these.

As noted on Gastro Obscura:

The clock counts down as the crowd goes wild. A row of competitors push toward the finish line. It’s not a bike race or a 5k. It’s a pączki-eating contest. Every Mardi Gras, from Tappan, New York, to Hamtramck, Michigan, these fried, sugar-dusted fluffs of pastry have become an occasion for celebrating pre-Lent excess, Polish culture, and of course, gastronomic athleticism.

Golden-brown with a characteristic light ring around the middle, these yeast-risen doughnuts are deep fried and covered with powdered sugar or fried orange zest. They were first made by Polish people using up the last of the sugar, lard, and fruit in the house before the austerity of Lent.

In Poland, they’re filled with rose petal, prune jam, and even fried rose buds, and are eaten on Fat Thursday (the Thursday before Lent) as part of the zapusty, or “carnival season.” These pre-Lent festivities continue to the present day, and bakeries making pączki are known to be the site of hours-long lines on Fat Thursday.

Pączki immigrated to the United States alongside their Polish creators and became ubiquitous in Polish communities on the Eastern seaboard and in the Midwest. In the United States, they’re eaten on Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), the day before Lent begins.

While some pączki are filled with the traditional rose and prune, they’ve also become a vehicle for more inventive fillings, ranging from banana cream to charred rosemary. To be clear, TFD considers these to be abominations.

They’ve also become a vehicle for some serious celebration. Fat Tuesday has officially been dubbed “Pączki Day” in Hamtramck and Chicago. Celebrations in Hamtramck include beer, music, dancing mascots in Pączki costumes, and of course, the annual pączki-eating contest. Meanwhile, Chicago bakers estimate that they sell tens of thousands of the fried treat each day between Fat Thursday and Fat Tuesday every year.

While your average Chicagoan has no problem eating a pączki or 12, they disagree on how exactly to pronounce the beguiling bread’s name. For the record, pączki is the plural form of the singular, pączek, and the proper pronunciation is “pownch-key,” though “delicious” works just fine.

Pączki have been known in Poland at least since the Middle Ages. Jędrzej Kitowicz has described that during the reign of August III, under the influence of French cooks who came to Poland, pączki dough was improved, so that pączki became lighter, spongier, and more resilient.

The Polish word pączek is a diminutive of the Polish word pąk “bud”. The latter derives from Proto-Slavic *pǫkъ, which may have referred to anything that is round, bulging and about to burst (compare Proto-Slavic *pǫkti “to swell, burst”), possibly of ultimately onomatopoeic origin.

From Polish, the word has been borrowed into several other Slavic languages, where the respective loanwords (ponchik[a], ponchyk[b] or ponichka[c]) refer to a similar ball-shaped pastry.

As further elucidated in the Polish-American Journal (published since 1911!):

While the practice of Pączki Day is traditionally observed the day before Ash Wednesday in the United States, in Poland, pączki sales are the highest on Tlusty Czwartek, or “Fat Thursday.” (The Thursday before Ash Wednesday). This day marks the start of the final week of the pre-Lenten celebrations.

In Old Poland, the zapusty or “carnival season” reached its height during this period. Elegant balls were held in well-to-do manor houses, attended by young men, women and their parents. Country-folk, on the other hand, would make merry, drink, dance and flirt at the village inn.

The rich would feast on fancy hors d’oeuvres, roast game, and fine wines. Peasants enjoyed their zimne noge (jellied pig’s knuckles), kiszka (blood and groat sausage), and kielbasa z kapusta (sausage and cabbage), which they washed down with beer and gorzalka, the least expensive vodka available.

Common to both groups, however, were pączki, which were consumed in huge quantities.

Citizens, the dough part of this recipe is from the Polish Heritage Cookery book, but I’ve used my own rose jam filling that also includes a goodly hit of Wiśniówka, a sweet Polish liqueur, or cordial, made by macerating (soaking) cherries in vodka or neutral spirits. Typically, the alcoholic content ranges from 30% to 50%. It is drunk from a shot glass and said to help boost the immune system.

Instead of using the traditional fried orange peel to the donuts as a garnish, I’ve updated the recipe to instead use microplaned fresh orange zest mixed with the granulated sugar that coats the donuts for a more substantive hit of orange flavor.

Battle on – The Generalissimo

The Hirshon Polish Jelly Donuts for Fat Tuesday – Pączki

Ingredients

For the sponge:
2 cakes crushed yeast
1 c. lukewarm whole milk
1 c. flour
1 T. sugar
***
For the dough:
8 egg yolks
⅔ c. powdered sugar
2 T. vanilla sugar
2 ½ c. flour into bowl
2 T. grain alcohol
1 stick melted lukewarm butter
***
Rose jam:
1 cup rose petals (free of any chemicals or pesticides)
¾ cup water, with 3 tbsp removed and discarded
3 tbsp Wiśniówka (strongly preferred) or kirsch
juice of 1 lemon
2 ½ cups sugar
1 pkg powdered pectin and ¾ cup water
***
1 ½ - 2 lbs top-quality lard for frying donuts
Granulated sugar mixed with microplaned orange zest for garnish after cooking

Instructions

ROSE JAM: Pick clean, chemical-free roses.The color roses you chose will determine the color of the jam. Pull the petals from the roses and clip off the white ends.
Pack a one cup measuring cup with rose petals. Put petals in a blender, add water, Wiśniówka and lemon juice.
Blend until smooth, then gradually add sugar. Run blender until sugar is dissolved.
In a pan, stir pectin into water. Bring to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour into rose mixture, ⅛ cup at a time with the blender running on low, until you achieve the desired consistency.
Pour into clean glass jars, cover and refrigerate. Will keep for one month.
DOUGH: Dissolve crushed yeast in lukewarm milk, sift in flour, add sugar, mix, cover, and let stand in warm place to rise.
Beat egg yolks with powdered sugar and vanilla sugar until fluffy. Sift flour into bowl, add sponge, egg mixture, and grain alcohol and knead well until dough is smooth and glossy. Gradually add melted lukewarm butter and continue kneading dough until it no longer clings to hands and bowl and air blisters appear.
Cover with cloth and let rise in warm place until doubled. Punch dough down and let it rise again. Transfer dough to floured board, sprinkle top with flour, and roll out about ½” inch thick. With glass or biscuit-cutter, cut into rounds. Arrange on floured board and proceed in either of the following ways:
SMALL PĄCZKI. Place a spoonful of fruit filling (rose-hip preserves, cherry preserves, or other thick jam) off center on each round. Raise edges of dough and pinch together over filling, then roll between palms snowball fashion to form balls. Let rise in warm place until doubled.
LARGE PĄCZKI. Place a spoonful of fruit filling as above on only ½ dough rounds, cover each with another round, pinch edges together, and roll between palms to form a ball. Let rise until doubled in warm, draft-free place.
Heat lard in deep pan so pączki can float freely during frying. It is hot enough when a small piece of dough dropped into hot fat immediately floats up.
Fry pączki under cover without crowding several minutes until nicely browned on bottom, then turn over and fry uncovered on other side another 3 minutes or so.
Note: If using electric fryer, set temp. at 360-375 degrees. If frying in stove-top pan and fat begins to burn, add several slices of peeled raw potato which will both lower the temperature and absorb the burnt flavor.
Pączki may also be fried in oil, but lard produces the tastiest results.
Transfer fried pączki to absorbent paper and set aside to cool. When cool, dust generously with powdered sugar and microplaned orange zest.

https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-polish-jelly-donuts-for-fat-tuesday-paczki/

The Hirshon Chinese Pot Stickers – 锅贴

January 14, 2019 by The Generalissimo Leave a Comment

Pot Stickers Image Used Under Creative Commons From sucaidao.com

My Citizens, in a little bit more than 2 weeks, the Chinese New Year of the Earth Pig will be upon us!

In celebration of this mightiest of holidays, allow me – the always festive and thrice-blessed TFD! – to teach you a classic, must-have dish to help you ring in the New Year with proper good fortune! I speak of nothing less than pan-fried dumplings – also referred to as “pot stickers”!

As noted on vietworldkitchen.com:

Have you ever wondered how pot stickers got their name? Most of us know them as a dumpling that’s panfried in a skillet, not a pot. For years I thought about why the heck the dumplings are called pot stickers.

My Chinese language is passable in a charming pinch but doesn’t come to me in a flash. It took me a while before I realized that the dumpling’s Chinese name, guotie literally means “wok stick.”

It totally jives with the dumpling’s legend, which dates pot stickers back to the Song Dynasty (960 – 1280 A.D.). They were initially regular boiled dumplings cooked in a wok (guo) – the go-to Chinese cooking pot. A chef who was boiling dumplings forgot about them and after the water had boiled away, the dumplings stuck (tie). Not knowing what to do, he pried the dumplings from the wok and served them.

His guests loved the contrasts between rich filling, tender skin, and crusty bottom. Thus the pot sticker was born. Over the years, the Mandarin name for pot sticker, guotie, stuck and was translated into English as pot sticker since woks are the basic pot in a Chinese kitchen.

Pot stickers are of course simply a pan-fried and partially-steamed version of the classic Jiaozi steamed dumplings, whose recipe I posted this time last year.

To recap from that recipe: Jiaozi are a kind of Chinese dumpling, commonly eaten in China and other parts of East Asia. They are one of the major foods eaten during the Chinese New Year and year-round in the northern provinces.

Jiaozi typically consist of a ground meat and/or vegetable filling wrapped into a thinly rolled piece of dough, which is then sealed by pressing the edges together. Finished jiaozi can be boiled (shuǐ jiǎo), steamed (zhēng jiǎo) or pan-fried (jiān jiǎo).

In China, there are several different folk stories explaining the origin of jiaozi and its name.

Traditionally, jiaozi were thought to be invented during the era of the Eastern Han (AD 25 – 220) by Zhang Zhongjing, who was a great practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine.

Jiaozi were originally referred to as “tender ears” (Chinese: 嬌耳; pinyin: jiao’er) because they were used to treat frostbitten ears. Zhang Zhongjing was on his way home during wintertime, when he found many common people had frostbitten ears, because they did not have warm clothes and sufficient food.

He treated these poor people by stewing lamb, black pepper, and some warming medicines in a pot, chopped them, and used them to fill small dough wrappers. He boiled these dumplings and gave them with the broth to his patients, until the coming of the Chinese New Year.

In order to celebrate the New Year as well as recovering from frostbitten ears, people imitated Zhang’s recipe to make Jiao’er. Other theories suggest that jiaozi may have derived from dumplings in Western Asia.

Jiaozi may also be named because they are horn-shaped. The Chinese word for “horn” is jiao (Chinese: 角; pinyin: jiǎo), and jiaozi was originally written with the Chinese character for “horn”, but later it was replaced by the specific character 餃, which has the food radical on the left and the phonetic component jiāo (交) on the right.

At the same time, jiaozi look like yuan bao silver or gold ingots used as currency during the Ming Dynasty, and as the name sounds like the word for the earliest paper money, serving them is believed to bring prosperity. Many families eat these at midnight on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Some cooks will even hide a clean coin inside a jiaozi for the lucky to find.

Citizens, my recipe for pot stickers are more complexly flavored than most and incorporates several different ingredients from across China, but they are not difficult to make.

I wish you all a happy and prosperous Year of the Pig, my Citizens! I have gratefully cribbed the best cooking instructions I know for pot stickers from my mentor in Chinese cuisine, the inestimable Barbara Tropp – may she rest in peace. Please note that you will need 1 or 2 large cast iron frying pans to make these – don’t bother with the recipe if you don’t have them.

Some of the more unusual ingredients including Sichuan preserved vegetable and Sichuan peppercorn oil can be purchased from the links.

Battle on – The Generalissimo

The Hirshon Chinese Pot Stickers – 锅贴

Ingredients

40-50 round dumpling wrappers
½ lb ground pork, half fat - add additional chopped cold Lard to pork if needed to bring to 50/50 meat/fat ratio
1 ¾ cups Napa cabbage, finely chopped
¼ cup finely minced Sichuan preserved vegetable - if unavailable, use plain old Napa cabbage
1 ½ tsp salt
2 ½ tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil (Kadoya brand preferred)
3 tsp Shaoxing rice wine
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp white pepper
½ tbsp. oyster sauce
½ tbsp. minced ginger
1 large egg (duck egg preferred)
¼ cup chopped scallion
¼ cup chopped garlic chives, including flowering heads
1 tbsp. hot chili oil (Kadoya brand preferred)
1 tbsp. Sichuan peppercorn oil (if unavailable, use chili oil)
½ tbsp. water
1 tbsp. flour
***
For cooking:
½ cup corn or peanut oil for pan-frying
2 cups unsalted hot chicken stock plus 2 tbsp corn or peanut oil for steam-cooking
***
For the dipping sauce:
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
2 ½ teaspoons sugar
½ medium scallion, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh gingerroot
½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil
½ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes

Instructions

Combine pork, salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, sugar, white pepper, oyster sauce and water in large mixing bowl.
Stir in one direction for a couple of minutes until the pork mixture stops looking like separated pork pieces and more like a paste.
Add flour and egg and mix in. Add the cabbage and Tianjin preserved vegetable and stir in one direction until thoroughly mixed, fluffy and smooth.
Let rest in fridge 1 hour to combine flavors.
Heat the chili and peppercorn oils until smoking. Put scallions and chives on top of meat mixture, pour smoking oil over the greens to maximize their aroma. Stir, again in the same direction, until incorporated.
Prepare working area with dumpling wrappers (keep covered until use), a small bowl of water, pork mixture, and a clean plate for placing of wrapped dumplings.
For each pot sticker, take one dumpling skin and place one scant tablespoon in middle. Keeping your fingers as dry as possible, wrap and pleat the pot sticker, then close.
For the dipping sauce:
Bring soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and ¼ cup water to boil in small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.
Pour mixture into bowl and stir in scallion, ginger, oil, and hot red pepper flakes (Sauce can be refrigerated in air-tight container for several days.
To cook potstickers:
Heat the skillet over high heat until hot enough to evaporate a bead of water on contact. Add enough oil to coat the bottom with a scant ¼ inch oil, swirl the skillet to glaze it an inch up'the sides, then adjust the skillet on the burner so that the oil is evenly deep.
Reduce the heat to medium. When the oil is hot enough to foam a pinch of dry flour, pick up the dumplings by their tops and quickly arrange them smooth side down in the pan.
Make concentric rings starting from the outside of the pan and working into the center, putting the dumplings directly next to and hugging one another. (The crowding will cause the dumplings to stick together in a pretty spiral when they are turned out onto the platter, which is the traditional presentation.} As you arrange the dumplings, adjust the heat so they sizzle mildly.
Once the dumplings are in place, raise the heat slightly to bring them to a merry sizzle and brown the bottoms. Check frequently, lifting them carefully with a spatula, and when the bottoms are evenly browned give the stock mixture a stir, and add enough to come halfway up the side of the dumplings. Expect the liquid to hiss loudly as soon as it is added.
Adjust the heat to maintain a simmer, and cover the pot. (These are the moments when the wrappers and filling will cook through and absorb the flavor of the stock.)
After about 7 minutes, lift the lid to peek inside the pot, and when the stock is almost all absorbed remove the lid. Lift one dumphng with a spatula and check the bottom. If it is not crisp enough to "clink" against a flngemail, then continue to cook for a minute or so more.
If there is not sufficient oil left after the steaming to crisp them, add a bit more oil from the side of the pan and swirl to distribute it under the dumplings.
When the bottoms are crisp, turn off the heat, move the pan off the burner, and loosen the bottoms of the dumplings with the spatula. Invert them onto the serving platter, browned bottoms up. If you have done the job well, they will cling in a spiral.
Eating pot stickers:
As soon as you have turned the dumplings out of the pan (and neatened them up if they did not emerge exactly as planned), rush them to the table.
Part of the traditional fun is for the guests to pull them apart with their chopsticks, then, the eating begins: Pick a dumpling up with the help of chopsticks and a small Chinese porcelain spoon (a metal soup spoon will do, though it gets too hot to be perfect).
Pick the dumpling up out of the spoon long enough to dunk its bottom in the dip, then return it to the spoon. Raise the spoon almost to your chin, use the chopsticks to complete the journey of the dumpling to your mouth, then after you have bitten off a neat half (carefully, so the steam and hot juices don't bum you), deposit the remaining half in the spoon until you are ready for the next bite.
Dumpling eating is designed to be fun and informal, so feel free to lose a dumpling here and there, splatter a bit of the dipping sauce if you have not perfected the art of dunking, and demand more dumplings in the spirit of a good party.
Cook only as many dumplings as will be eaten (which is usually more than you anticipate if you have assembled the appropriate audience). Cold pot stickers are beyond rewarming or at least beyond my taste.

https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-chinese-pot-stickers-%e9%94%85%e8%b4%b4/

The Hirshon Durgin-Park Indian Pudding With Vanilla Gelato

January 13, 2019 by The Generalissimo Leave a Comment

Durgin-Park Indian Pudding Image Used Under Creative Commons License From newengland.com

My Citizens, today is a dark day for the New England-based members of TFD Nation and I mourn with them. Today, one of the oldest restaurants in America closed its doors forever – the bastion of Faneuil Hall, Durgin-Park!

As noted two recipes ago in my posting of the famed Durgin-Park baked beans, there is a ludicrous amount of gastronomic history that is now lost forever with the restaurant’s closing. Still, at least their 2 most famed recipes live on here at TFD, including this one for their justly-renowned version of Indian pudding!

As noted in an article from The NY Times:

Indian pudding was a compromise. A mass of cornmeal, milk and molasses, baked for hours, it was born of the Puritans’ nostalgia for British hasty pudding and their adaptation to the ground-corn porridges of their Native American neighbors. Originally served as a first course, it grew sweeter (but not too sweet; Puritanism runs deep) and migrated to the end of supper.

For a proper historical re-enactment of the dish, you need meal stone-ground from Rhode Island whitecap flint corn, a hard, tough-to-crack corn, less sweet but more buttery than hybrid strains. One of the oldest incarnations of the plant, it was cultivated by the local Narragansett and saved from extinction by a few equally flinty Rhode Island farmers.

As further elucidated on Slow Food USA:

White Cap Flint Corn is a quick growing crop, averaging 110 days to ripen, and the traditional yield ranging from 50 to 60 bushels per acre. Originally a landrace flint corn cultivated by the Narragansett Indians, White Cap Flint was adopted during the 17th century by Rhode Island settlers for milling and for fodder.

In the early 19th century much of Rhode Island corn was processed by the local slave population. In the early 20th century improved strains of White Cap corn were developed in Rhode Island by the staff of the Rhode Island Experimental Station.

The 1920s marked a turning point for New England corn when the Connecticut Agricultural Station published a report in 1924, evaluating 42 different varieties of flint corn. Although it was not the intent, this report was the obituary for flint corn. In fact, one of the primary authors, geneticist D.F. Jones, was one of the engineers behind the F-1 Hybrid Corn Belt Dents that dominates modern corn production.

White Cap Flint was the invariable ingredient of the quintessential Rhode Island dish, the Jonny Cake. A dish native to the Narragansett Indians, the Jonny Cake was made from milled corn meal and was often eaten with butter and/or maple syrup.

Rhode Island White Cap Flint has a large local band of followers who are intent on keeping up levels of production and consumption. As an improved landrace corn that does not thrive under conventional agricultural regimens, Rhode Island White Cap has been excluded from mass cultivation.

Its survival has depended on the devoted work of isolated individuals who view White Cap Flint as a historic grain of the foremost importance and a treasure worth any amount of labor or inconvenience to preserve. It has been kept on the landscape by small plot farming and the work of seedsmen. The demand for White Cap Flint products is very local, and therefore at risk. The Jonny Cake festival in Rhode Island was canceled in 2014 after 40 years.

There has been a devoted band of farmers, millers, and citizens who have defied the dictates of agronomists that they should grow high yield dent corn for nearly a century because they revered the taste that the Natives of the region had taught them. We should do everything in our power to ensure this gift from pre-colonial times survives through the 21st century.

This recipe is a deserved classic, Citizens – go the authentic route and buy the right corn here. My adaptation of their recipe is to use the proper cornmeal, duck eggs (I find them to be far richer and superior to chicken eggs in this recipe) and also garnish it with homemade vanilla gelato instead of the cheap ice cream they used to use. If you’re so inclined and of a scientific and methodical bent, make your own vanilla gelato (far better than the cheap vanilla ice cream served at Durgin-Park) from the spectacular and hardcore recipe here.

An excellent and certainly easier substitution is to use Haagen Dazs vanilla bean ice cream, which is the best commercial vanilla ice cream you can easily get. Don’t use the regular vanilla, be sure it’s the vanilla BEAN version – it’s far superior.

My Citizens, whilst we may mourn the passing of Durgin-Park, let us also celebrate its centuries-long impact on American cuisine!

Battle on – The Generalissimo

The Hirshon Durgin-Park Indian Pudding With Vanilla Gelato

Ingredients

1 cup granulated White Cap Flint cornmeal
½ cup black molasses
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup top-quality lard (preferred) or unsalted butter, softened, plus more for baking dish
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs (TFD prefers duck eggs as they are richer)
6 cups (1 ½ quarts) warmed whole organic milk, divided
Garnish: homemade vanilla gelato (recipe link in text above) or Haagen Dazs vanilla bean (NOT plain vanilla!) ice cream

Instructions

To start, preheat your oven to 450° and generously grease a 2-quart baking dish, preferably one made of porcelain or stone.
Then, whisk together the cornmeal, molasses, sugar, butter, salt, baking soda, beaten eggs, and 3 cups of the warmed milk.
Pour into the greased dish and bake until the mixture begins to bubble, about 10 minutes; then stir in the remaining 3 cups of milk. You may feel a few lumps.
Reduce the heat to 275° and continue baking another 5 to 7 hours. It’s this long, slow bake that gives the pudding its silky smooth texture.
After it’s baked, you may find that your pudding has a “skin” on top. If it does, just run a knife along the edge, then peel back and discard.
Spoon the pudding into a bowl, then serve warm with a scoop of vanilla gelato or ice cream.

https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-durgin-park-indian-pudding-with-vanilla-gelato/