21. Several Delicious Scalable Recipes for Posterity

Here are a few delicious and mostly scalable recipes that I’ve made repeatedly with great results. Unfortunately, basically none of them are vegan, though the desserts at least are vegetarian. This is a recipe blog now, I guess. (It’s not. Don’t worry. Or do; I’m not your parent.)

Healing Surge Stew: A delicious ~beef stew, halfway between boeuf borguignon and an English-style beef stew. I made it for Grandma Rapoport in her convalescence in early 2022 and it perked her up considerably; it remains one of my favorites, as it freezes well. Best eaten with good fresh bread and some ketchup on top as a crema. Notably, almost everything in the dish gets cooked twice.


Per kilo of beef/other ungulate red stewing meat: (The meat should be in cubes ~2 inches on a side; beef is what I’ve used so far, but I get a sense that venison would work excellently.)

• 1/4-1/2# bacon/spam/fatty pork
• tomato paste (for browning)

Fry the bacon in the stockpot briefly. Slather the tomato paste over the beef, then fry it in a large pan, avoiding crowding.

Stock:

• 12c water
• 1 tbs better than beef bouillon
• 3-4c red wine, or other fruity winelike drinks - soft and hard cider would both work fine, for example
• 1 packet beef demiglace (only barely optional)
• 1 tbs tomato paste (yes, again)

Add these to the stockpot after the bacon is done frying, and add the meat cubes once they’ve reached a deep brown.

The following three sections can be done in any order, but I recommend aromatics before roux, with the potatoes/add-ins, which can be parallelized easily, at any point.

Roux:

• ¾ c butter
• ¾ flour

Fry the flour in the butter as standard for making a roux. This will form most of the thickening power for the stew. I recommend using another pot to combine some stock and the roux into a thick liquid rather than add the roux directly to the stock, which can cause clumping rather than thickening.

Aromatics:

• 6-8 cloves garlic
• 1 red onion
• 3 celery sticks/hearts
• 3 carrots - aim for 2:3:2 carrots, red onions, celery by volume
• 2 tsp butter (for frying)

Crush the garlic, dice the onion, cut the celery into fairly thin slices, and cut the carrots into half-coins. Or just dice all the large aromatics, which will also work fine. Once done, sweat them all together in the butter, stopping when the garlic and onion smell delicious; dump this all in the stock pot.

Add-ins:

• 2 large russet potatoes, cubed
• 5 excellent bay leaves, paperclipped together and to be fished out at the end
• 1-2 tsps whole black peppercorns (they’ll soften as they cook)
• salt, citric acid, and Worcerstershire sauce to taste
• garlic powder (optional)
• mushrooms (optional)
• barley (optional)

Add these to the stockpot once prepped.

Once done, keep boiling for ~30 minutes, but it’s basically ready when the potatoes have cooked for ~10 minutes. At the end you will want to course-correct with:

• tsps of salt
• 1/4 tsps of citric acid
• tsps of beef broth paste

If you plan to eat some and freeze the rest, I recommend deliberately making the balance of solids too high. You'll run out of broth but that's fine; you can make more later fairly easily.

Heaven Apple Pie: A delicious take on apple pie, so named for the combination of Cosmic Crisp apples, vanilla, and star anise. Fantastic with ice cream.

per each 3 Honeycrisp or Cosmic Crisp apples, peeled and cut to size:

• 1 cup sugar (+ splash of molasses)
• 1 whole vanilla bean (cut lengthwise, steeped, and scraped) and 1-2 star anise (steeped, set the prettier one aside for garnish/vent)
• >1 tbs each cinnamon, allspice, vanilla paste
• ~1 tsp each cloves, nutmeg, salt
• citric acid (= lemon juice) to taste

Combine the filling components in the obvious way; let marinate, ideally overnight but an hour or so is more than enough.

Crust:

• 2.5c flour
• 1c butter
• 1tbs sugar
• 1tsp salt

Knead together well and roll out into pie crusts. Blind bake for 20-30 minutes at 400 - remember to dock or weigh down the crust with pie weights. Then fill the crust, cover with top crust, cut steam vents, decorate with a star anise, and bake at 375 for 90-120 minutes.

Six-spice Buns: A favorite of Grandma Kim’s, who probably pattern-matches them to the steam-buns and spiced treats from her youth. Given that name because of the combination of five-spice powder and cinnamon.


Dough:

• 1/2 c milk
• 1/8 c + 2 c flour
• 1 egg
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 tsp yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tbs butter
• 2 tbs ice water

Filling:

• 1 c sugar + small slug molasses
• 6 tbs butter
• 2-3 tbs cinnamon
• 2 tbs five spice
• cloves, black pepper, dried ginger, and cardamom (all optional but strongly recommended)

Frosting:

• 4 oz cream cheese
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 c sugar
• 1 tbs vanilla (optional if you’re using other flavoring; strongly recommended regardless)
• ¼ tsp salt
• flavoring - I’ve used 2 tbs kyul liqueur and 2 tbs rosewater, both to great effect; I’ve also left the frosting pure vanilla, which was also excellent. Hard to go wrong.
• food coloring (optional but fun)

Scald + tangzhong + mix the dough: Scald the milk. Microwave it in the measuring cup and add it to the flour to tangzhong it. Add the salt and butter, and then the sugar and egg once cool enough. Mix until fully incorporated. Proof the yeast. Wait until cool enough for the yeast to survive, then add the yeast and mix thoroughly. Let the dough rise and chill overnight in a large bowl.

Make and use the filling: Melt the butter and mix all ingredients together. This can be done in advance; the listed ingredients almost exactly fill a jam jar. When ready, press the gas out of the dough and form it into a rectangle around 12"x12"x1/4". Spread the filling evenly over it, then roll the dough up. Cut it into 2" slices. 2c flour worth of dough should fill a standard loaf pan with 8 fair-sized rolls. Loaf pans or the like are required to avoid having the filling melt and run out of the rolls - to some extent, they will be braising in the butter from the filling.

Bake: Line a baking vessel - remember, this should be a deep vessel, and not a pan! - with a parchment paper sling and optionally grease it. Put the rolls in, cover, and let rise for 30 minutes while the oven heats to 350. Bake them for 30-40 minutes - check center ones for doneness. Foil on top works to avoid burning so the middle can cook well.

Make and use the frosting: Mix all ingredients together, possibly in a stand mixer. Don't chill it. Spread it on the warm buns, making sure to get it in the crevices. For transport, you can pack the rolls in layers, with frosting between the layers, ending up with a cubelike packing.

Appealing Orange Dry: A favorite of a certain JSW who tried to play it too cool and might get more of it someday. Orange dry is a soda regional to the Northeast US, and relatively unknown outside of it. Unfortunately, precisely what tangerine savor-syrup is and how to make it are carefully-guarded secrets, and outside the scope of this post.

• 1L soda water (Topo Chico or the like is best)
• 5-6 spoons sugar
• 1/2-2/3 tsp citric acid
• 20 cc tangerine savor-syrup

Pour out some of the soda water to make room to add the savor-syrup and seasonings. Cap securely and invert until well-mixed. Refrigerate and serve.

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