Nutella-Filled Chocolate Death Star

We at the Whiskey Forge are familiar with Kotobukiya's Death Star silicone tray. Ostensibly for making Death Star-shaped ice, its appeal is twofold. Whiskey geeks understand that large, spherical pieces of ice keep our whiskey cocktails cool without undue melting (hence dilution) while Star Wars obsessives get to make all the groaners, in-jokes, and puns a bartender could stand. But its uses don't stop with simple ice spheres.

Don't try to frighten us with your confectioner's ways, Lord Vader.

Now, you could go all super-cocktologist by freezing fresh flower buds or petals in the space station-shaped ice ball and floating the finished spheres in a bowl of punch. Or take the blogger mom approach and freeze fresh, healthy orange juice for your kid's birthday breakfast. Give it a swirl of Angostura bitters for extra tastiness. Maybe even go full Ferran Adrià and spike the pre-frozen water with squid ink to create a darker, more realistic-seeming Death Star...and then make a drink recipe incorporating that flavor. Call it, oh I dunno, Headed for that Small Moon.

Or you could ditch the drinks concept entirely as Imgurian echoflight did recently and make Nutella-filled chocolate Death Stars. It's true that earlier this Autumn photos of Bombom de Death Star, a maraschino cherry-filled chocolate Death Star from Brazilian company ZeeK Confeitaria began circulating, but they don't ship to Southern California. Besides, who wants cherries when delicious chocolate-and-hazelnut spread is as close as your grocery store?

Eat with care, however; the more you tighten your grip, the more Nutella will slip through your fingers.

Goes well with:

• For echoflight's easy step-by-step directions, check out the post on Imgur. 
• Didn't get a silicone Death Star mold for Christmas? Well, bucko, that's easy to fix. Online vendors sell them. 
• I like silicone molds a lot. I use them for ice, forming flavored pats of butter, baking and other things around the Forge. But sometimes an odd white film appears on the surface of those I use exclusively for ice. The details on that (with plenty of reader comments) are at What is that White Film on My Silicone Ice Trays? 

Cooking with Lard, Potash, and Hartshorn: 1932 Lebkuchen

A little royal icing with rum is no hateful addition

I've just returned from a week in Kansas City where, among other errands, I delivered a small load of German yuletide spice cookies known as lebkuchen. Don't know it? You've heard of gingerbread? Same deal. Well, close enough to get the idea, anyway. Like its Anglo-American and French cousins, gingerbread and pain d'épices, lebkuchen has been around for centuries. A tipoff that it hails from another age is the ancient use of honey rather than sugar for sweetening. Not that lebkuchen is terribly sweet — just enough to satisfy a late morning/mid-afternoon craving with a cuppa tea. The glugs of rum in the icing and dough itself don't hurt.

The cold dough is stiff

Made with ground almonds and candied citron, the fancy version I baked is more properly dubbed Elisenlebkuchen (perhaps St. Elisabeth's lebkuchen, but German bakers have no consensus on the meaning). The recipe comes from a Weimar-era German cookbook: Frau F. Nietlispach's Das Meisterwerk der Küche  (Bong & Co, Berlin, 1932). If honey weren't sufficient, the cake-like cookie calls for three additional ingredients that firmly anchor it in another age: potash, hartshorn, and lard.

As I reviewed Nietlispach's recipe, I flipped through the contents of our pantry in my mind. The lard (Schweinschmalz) was no stranger in my baking repertoire. For the candied citron (Zitronat), I used a diced mix of homemade candied orange peel and the last of my candied Buddha's Hand/Cthulhu Head citron.

A quick check with my old pal Michael McGuan revealed that he had just rendered lard the day before; within 40 minutes I'd gotten my hands on 200 grams of it. More than enough for this recipe. The cooked pork smell rolling off the creamy white lard gave me pause. Would it be too strong for cookies? I forged on anyway without any attempt to refine it. The porkiness, in fact, faded away to the barest nothing after baking, a faint savory porcine whisper that complemented the spices.

Thinner shapes cooling on the rack

But what about the potash and hartshorn? Potash is a particularly old ingredient and may refer to a number of substances that include potassium. Originally made from leaching wood ash and reducing  the potassium-rich residue in pots, potash was a important source of income for colonial Americans who cleared and burned forests as if the trees were without end. The alkaline salt is used in glass-making, fertilizer manufacturing, and occasionally to inhibit certain enzymes in beer brewing, but its use in baking is what interests us here. Along with hartshorn (see below), potassium carbonate (K₂CO₃) is a chemical leavening agent that helps give loft and lightness to somewhat stiff doughs. Baking soda commonly substitutes for it in modern recipes.

Brokeback Lebkuchen

Hartshorn or hartshorn salt [Hirschhornsalz, (NH₄)₂CO₃] is also known as baking or baker's ammonia. With the advent of baking soda and baking powder, it fell from favor in the US, but traditional baking recipes from northern Europe, Poland, and Scandinavia still employ it. Although it was once actually obtained from shavings of deer antlers, industrial sources assure that woodland animals are no longer culled for cookie ingredients. At least not on a commercial basis. While baking, hartshorn releases ammonia gas that expands the dough. Although the gas dissipates fairly quickly, the lebkuchen may have a whiff of smelling salts about it right out of the oven. Don't be alarmed; it doesn't last.

Royal icing is one of the traditional decorations for these cookies and I doled it out in blocks, lines, stars, and other shapes on the thick slabs I made with half the batch and on the thinner stars, gingerbread men, and open-palmed hands. A little bit of rum in the icing isn't a bad thing. Alton Brown has as good a recipe as any. He uses vanilla extract, but a similar amount of lemon juice or —my choice — rum also works to loosen and flavor the icing.

For those who can read the old German script, here's the recipe:

Gunter glieben glauchen globen. Doesn't make any sense to you? Check out below.

And if reading that doesn't come easily to you, here is my transliteration and adaptation for modern kitchens. The text of Frau Nietlispach's recipe follows for those who like to check against the original.

Elisenlebkuchen

(Rowley )

½ pound honey

½ pound sugar

100 g pork lard

1-1.25 pounds flour

½ pound peeled and grated sweet almonds

125 g finely cut mixed candied citron and orange peels

2 eggs

4 g each of ground cinnamon, ground cloves, cardamom

15 g of potash (potassium carbonate, 2.5 tsp), dissolved with 2 Tbl of rum

4 g hartshorn (ammonium carbonate, 0.75 tsp) dissolved with 2 Tbl of rum

Let the honey, sugar and fat boil in a pot. In the bowl of a stand mixer combine the spices, almonds, and one pound of the flour. Carefully add the hot honey mixture and mix slowly to blend. Then add the eggs, potash, and ammonium carbonate and continue mixing until the dough is smooth and shiny. Add additional flour if necessary to achieve a dough that’s just barely tacky to the touch.

Let it rest, covered with plastic wrap, overnight in the refrigerator.

When you are ready to cook, heat the oven to 350°F. Roll out the dough, using flour as necessary to prevent sticking, in large slabs [5-10mm thick] and cut into rectangles about 8 x 5 centimeters or round cakes roll about 5mm and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper a silicone baking mat. Transfer individual cookies to the sheets. Bake slabs 18-20 minutes or cut-out shapes 12-25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. After cooling, coat them with different glazes to such as chocolate, sugar and raspberry glaze and decorate each cakes differently: with [royal icing], finely chopped almonds, colored granulated sugar (nonpareils), chopped, green pistachios, halved almonds, etc. [As an alternate to lining cooking sheets] before baking, you can put the cookies on Oblaten [baking wafers].

Elisenlebkuchen  

(Nietlispach)

1/2 Pdf. Bienenhonig, 1/2 Pdf. Zucker, 100 g Schweinschmalz, 1  Pdf. Mehl, 1/2  Pdf. geschälte und geriebene Süß Mandeln, 125 g feineschnittenes Zitronat, 2 Eier, 4 g gemahlener Zimt, Nelkenpulver, Kardamom, 15 g Pottasche, 4 g Hirschhornsalz, beides in etwas Rum aufgelöst — Honig, Zucker und Fett laßt man aufkochen, fügt  Gewürze, Mandeln und Mehl zu dem heißen Honig, verrührt gut und kochen. Dann kommen Eier, Pottasche und Hirschhornsalz dazu, worauf man den Teig sehr gut verkneten muß. Ist er glatt und blank, rollt man in aus, sticht große, runde Kuchen aus und bäckt sie aus gefettetem Blech schnell bei guter Hitze. Nach dem Erkalten sind sie mit verschiedenen Glasuren: Schokoladen-, Zucker- und Himbeerglasur zu überziehen und jeder Kuchen anders zu garnieren: mit feingehackten Mandeln, buntem Streuzucker (Nonpareilles), gehackten, grünen Pistazien, halbierten Mandeln ufw. Man kann die Kuchen vor dem Backen auch auf Oblaten legen.

Goes well with:

• Elise Hannemann's Liverwurst, another old German recipe from the library here.
• Ginger comes up a lot at the Whiskey Forge. From Soulless Ginger Lemonade to Kentucky Mules, check out some of the other recipes.
• Want to make your own lard at home? It's easy as pie. Easier, even. Here're directions.
• Look for potash (Pottasche) and hartshorn (Hirschhornsaltz) among the baking ingredients at grocers catering to a German clientele; the brand I use is Alba Gewürtze. No German delis in your neighborhood? Try ammonium carbonate and potassium carbonate from GermanDeli.com.

Bookshelf: Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook

Ever since Japan’s triple disasters earlier this year, I’ve been getting in as much as I can about Japanese cuisine; this new direction is reflected, predictably, in a growing accretion of books and bottles.

To my pile of books, I recently added Mark Robinson’s Izakaya. It’s a few years old now, but the book is so engrossing that I read it cover-to-cover on a flight to Salt Lake City. The future of Japanese whisky in the wake of this year’s tsunami originally sparked my interest in that country’s distilleries. That initial concern has grown into a broader interest in Japanese eating and drinking habits — in which I am far from expert.

It’s not that I am wholly unfamiliar with Japanese food. After all, friends live in Japan and we have a handful of Japanese markets nearby. But I lean to big, bold flavors and would rather eat any number of Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, or regional Chinese dishes than yet another Southern California sushi roll. Of course, Japanese cuisine is more than sushi, sake, and Sapporo — but it’s a pity we don’t have more authentic izakaya to help us understand the bigger picture.

Robinson is an Australian journalist based in Tokyo. He clearly has spent considerable time in izakaya (pronounced roughly ee-ZAH-ka-ya), small Japanese pubs that are as much about food as they are drink. In fact, he offers “pub” only hesitantly as a translation. Here he sets the scene for one of his favorites and the first of eight profiled in the book:

Every neighborhood deserves a Horoyoi.

Amid the babble of nighttime Ebisu, in southwestern Tokyo, among the mind-numbing array of flashy restaurants dueling for customers, their touts playing the streets, this diminutive semi-basement izakaya has been a fixture in my life since the early 1990s.

I never consciously made it so. Indeed, it was years before I realized that Horoyoi had grown on me — or I had grown into it — to the extent that I relied on it as much as the average Japanese might his or her own “local”: as a modest, welcoming place that came instantly to mind whenever I was arranging to eat and drink with friends and colleagues; to casually celebrate birthdays and New Year’s; to entertain relatives; or to introduce newcomers to izakaya. Over time, I found that it had transcended its status as an occasional destination to become a regular venue for marking some of my life’s milestones: a personal repository of good memories. With minimal décor, reliable, simply seasoned food and cool-headed service, it was a place where I felt at the same time comfortably well known and sufficiently anonymous to be completely myself. I could bring whomever I please, stay as long or short as I wanted, ask questions about the menu, be gregarious, or simply sit and observe. And that’s what the best neighborhood izakaya should be.

He goes on to give about a dozen recipes from Horoyoi and about as many again from each of seven other spots. The recipes range from almost down-home comfort food to a handful of more complex dishes. It would be a mistake, however, to describe any of the recipes as particularly complicated. Pork, noodles, clams, tofu, and potato salad (yes, potato salad) are almost old hat to Western eaters. For ingredients that may not be so familiar, Robinson includes photos and descriptions — wood ear mushrooms, gardenia fruit, yuzu, daikon radish sprouts, wagarashi (Japanese hot mustard), shichimi spice powder, lotus root, and more.

Some of the highlights include asparagus and pork tempura rolls, soy-flavored spareribs, chicken gizzards, cucumber pickles, duck breast with ponzu sauce, miso-cured tofu, steamed and grilled pork with salt, deep-fried tilefish, and the bizarre —but no less intriguing — Raclette-stuffed deep-fried tofu. There’s not one single thing in this book I wouldn’t eat.

This year’s tight travel budget means I have no immediate plans to visit Japan, but I am laying plans to come drinking and learning what to eat with those cocktails I’ve been hearing so much about the past few years.

From the Tokyo izakaya Buchi, sweetened glazed walnuts take on the fermented tenor of the esteemed aged Chinese tea, pu-erh. No pu-erh? Robinson suggests substituting Earl Grey.

Pu-erh-Glazed Walnuts

8 oz. (230g) walnut halves
5½ oz. (155g) granulated sugar
⅓ oz. (8g) pu-erh tea
Vegetable oil for deep-frying

In a sauté pan, lightly toast the tea over low heat until fragrant. Pulse to a powder in a food processor. Bring water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Blanch the walnuts for one minute and strain. Toss with sugar while hot.

In a large saucepan, heat the oil to 430ºF. Have ready a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Deep fry the walnuts until the sugar caramelizes, about 4-5 minutes, then transfer to the baking sheet. While hot, sprinkle with the tea powder and toss well. Separate the walnuts and let them cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Mark Robinson (2008)
Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook
160 pages (paperback)
Kodansha USA
ISBN: 4770030657
$25.00