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Chief Catering Officer's log, stardate 1039.08 I have been asked to prepare a three-course meal for a group of visiting delegates from around the Alpha quadrant. We recently refuelled on Vulcan, so our food supplies are all vegetarian. I just hope the Klingons won't mind. Starter – Plomeek Soup  For the first course I'm making a Vulcan classic. It's a reddish-coloured soup – Vulcans like to eat simple organisms so I'm using mushrooms, with paprika to get the colour and to add a bit of flavour for the other guests. Ingredients (serves 2-3):  400g mushrooms – I used a mixture of button and shiitake mushrooms 1 red onion 1 stalk celery 1 tbsp tomato paste 2 cloves garlic 2 tbsp plain flour 2 tbsp butter 500ml vegetable stock 250ml milk 2 tbsp paprika ½ tsp five-spice Pepper to taste Apologies for the picture quality, I took these on my tricorder and it's an early model. Chop the mushrooms, onion, celery and garlic. Gently saute the vegetables in a little oil or butter until the onion turns translucent and the mushrooms and celery have softened.  Remove them from the pan and set aside. Make a roux with the butter and flour and heat until the flour grains have all burst (when the mixture stops making bubbles).  Add the stock a little at a time, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Add the milk, paprika, five-spice powder and pepper.  Then return the vegetables to the pan and heat until the vegetables are warmed through and the soup has turned a deep red-brown colour.  Serve with crusty bread.  Main course – Gagh with Hasperat We'll make the hasperat side dish first because it'll take a few days to be ready.  Hasperat is a Bajoran food that looks a lot like some kind of rolled up wrap with bell peppers in it, but Bajorans describe it as very spicy and fermented with some kind of brine. So I'll be making hasperat rolls out of a kind of whole-leaf kimchi, wrapped around slices of bell pepper. Hasperat Ingredients:  1 head of napa cabbage 1 tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp salt 4 tbsps chilli powder (i.e. powdered chillies, not the spice blend) ½ bell pepper Wash the cabbage and make a cross-shaped cut in the bottom of it, so you can pull the leaves apart easily and keep them whole. Reserve the biggest outer leaves, and finely shred the small inner leaves. Combine the shredded leaves, soy sauce, salt and chilli powder to make a paste.  Get a suitable container – a Tupperware or one of Counsellor Troi's empty ice-cream tubs will work. Using your hands, spread each of the big leaves with the paste and layer them in the tub.  Close the lid and leave the kimchi out at room temperature for 2-3 hours, then put it in the fridge and leave it for a day or two. After a few days, the leaves should be soft and pliable for rolling up around the peppers, but still crunchy to eat. I used pointed peppers so the rest of them could be made into long strips for the gagh.  Remember to get the racist jokes out of the way before the Vulcans arrive.  Cut the pepper into thin slices and wrap the leaves around them, and the hasperat is done.  Gagh  We don't have any live serpent worms on board, so our Klingon gagh will be a vegetable version. First step is to make the worms themselves. Gagh ingredients:  50ml water 1 tbsp sambal ulek or similar chilli paste 1 tsp tomato paste 2 tsp salt 8oz flour  Combine everything except the flour, then strain the mixture and add it to the flour. The tomato paste and sambal ulek will give a pink wormy colour and savoury taste to the finished noodles.  Knead it well to combine.  It makes a very stiff dough, so a good way to knead it is to put it into a sealed plastic bag and walk around on it, or do your mok'bara exercises for the day. Roll the dough out flat, and slice it into thick udon noodle-like strips.  Gagh with sauce ingredients:  1 batch of raw gagh Beansprouts Other vegetables (I used mushrooms, peppers and napa cabbage left over from the plomeek soup and hasperat – anything that can be cut into strips and stir-fried can be used.) 2 eggs 50ml tamarind pulp 50ml light soy sauce 1 tsp honey (use more or less for sweeter or sourer gagh) 1 clove garlic 1 tsp ginger paste (or substitute chopped fresh ginger or ginger powder) Chilli to taste To serve (optional): Kecap manis Serundeng Nori seaweed  First, put the gagh into a pot of boiling water and cook for about 5-6 minutes, or until they've turned soft and chewy (and a bit slimy).  Drain the gagh and run them under cold water to stop them from overcooking.  Meanwhile, prepare the sauce by mixing the tamarind pulp, soy sauce, garlic, honey, ginger and chilli.  As the hasperat ferments, a nice spicy, salty juice will collect in the bottom of the tub. I used a few spoonfuls of this instead of chilli in the sauce. If you're not making hasperat, you can add sambal ulek, sriracha or chilli powder instead.  Slice the vegetables into long, thin strips to make them look like thinner worms. Stir-fry the vegetables in a little oil for 1-2 mins.  Add the boiled gagh and a few tbsps of water to help them to steam. Cook for another 1-2 mins, then stir in the sauce.  Give the Vulcans some much-needed protein by pushing the stir-fry to one side and cracking the eggs into the wok. Let them cook for a moment, then scramble them through the sauce. Once the eggs have cooked, serve the gagh. Top with a drizzle of kecap manis to look like gloopy blood and add some more flavour.  Here's some serundeng I made a while ago – it's just chopped peanuts and coconut shavings sprinkled with soy sauce and dry-roasted, with some sugar and lemongrass. You can buy it in some Asian supermarkets or make it yourself – it lasts about a month in a tub or jar in a cool, dry place. It makes a nice extra topping for gagh, and goes with a lot of Indonesian or Thai food. Finally, to make it look like the worms are moving, cut a sheet of nori into very thin strips and place them on top of the gagh just before serving. They will slowly crinkle and curl up in the steam of the finished dish and make it look like the worms are moving! Humans and other omnivorous species could use bonito flakes for a similar moving worms effect. You could also add fish sauce to the cooking sauce and strips of meat such as pork, chicken, king prawns or real gagh to the stir-fry.  Dessert - Sweet Leola Root Tart  Leola root looks like it's related to Terran ginger root, so I'm using that instead, with some apples and pears for different flavour and textures. Ingredients:  1lb pears or apples 75g demerara sugar 75g butter 75g plain flour 1 tsp baking powder (or use 75g self-raising flour) pinch salt 1 inch ginger root 50ml milk 3 eggs 75g caster sugar 1 tbsp honey 1tbsp lemon juice First make the ginger sponge for the bottom layer.  Cream the butter and sugar together. Separate the eggs – add the yolks to the butter mix and reserve the whites. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt and add it to the cake mix.  Peel and finely dice the ginger root and soak it in the milk. If you want a less gingery cake, strain the milk and discard the ginger, or use candied stem ginger or ginger powder – I added the milk and ginger to the cake.  Pour into a pie dish and bake for 15 mins at 190C/gas mark 5.  Meanwhile, core and slice the fruit and gently cook them with the honey and lemon juice and a little water. After about 20 mins they should be nicely stewed and softened and the juice will have made a syrup with the other ingredients.  Make small holes with a knife or a skewer all over the cake surface to help the syrup soak in, and layer the fruits on top of the cooked cake.  Whip the egg whites until they reach the soft peak stage. Add half the caster sugar, whip them again to soft peaks, then add the rest of the sugar and whip them one last time to soft peaks.  Spread the meringue mixture in a thick layer on top of the fruits.  Finally, bake the whole thing for 10 mins at 180C/gas mark 4, until the meringue topping has turned golden and set and the whole dish is cooked through. Drink – Romulan Ale 1 shot blue curacao in a tall glass, topped up with ginger beer.  There are a few Vulcan-friendly versions of this: make an infusion of lavender to make the blue colour, and add some grated ginger. You can add lemonade or carbonated ginger beer, but since lavender is an indicator, it'll turn it pink – do this just when you're serving it, it makes a nice effect. The version I had was just a mix of equal parts of a blue citrus-flavoured energy drink and ginger beer.  Cmdr Riker's cousin got the last beer in the replicator to go with his gagh.  He explored the final Frontier after all. 
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Aug 25, 2014 23:14
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:08 |
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Ahh amazing! I love the gagh especially but all of it looks really good!
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Aug 26, 2014 01:07
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This is super-creative - really well done  But I must know if the Gagh was true to its roots and tasted revolting or if, as I suspect, it was tasty and you enjoyed it...Also: Stottie Kyek posted:Apologies for the picture quality, I took these on my tricorder and it's an early model. 
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Aug 26, 2014 11:50
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Thanks! The texture was authentically slimy from the noodles, egg and tamarind sauce, and there were strong hot, sour and pungent flavours in it, especially with the hasperat on the side, but the honey and serundeng took the edge off and I admit I did like it... Then again, Federation citizens should probably get to like Klingon foods if we're to have an alliance with the Empire.  I think if I were to make it again, I'd put strips of rehydrated wakame seaweed in the stir-fry with the vegetables to add to the salty, fishy taste from the soy sauce and seaweed toppings and make up for the lack of fish sauce or trassi in the mix. Back when I ate meat, I'd use sambal trassi (like sambal ulek, but with powdered dried prawns mixed into it) in sauces like that one, and while soy is a good replacement for the salt and umami flavours, it doesn't quite have that seafood taste.
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Aug 27, 2014 16:04
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Ahahaha, this is all fantastic.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:33
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I just want you to know that I think you best and most followed the spirit of making things that seriously have probably never been eaten before, and if they have, I've never heard of it. Whole leaf lightning kimchi wraps? Super thick noodle stir fry? What? You're pretty much my favorite entry and are not getting enough attention in this contest. Bravo to you.
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Sep 14, 2014 05:10
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Thanks! I really liked yours, it used the sort of ingredients that woodland creatures could conceivably get hold of if they wanted to do a fancy dinner, like herbs and mushrooms, and working with that kind of restriction and making very cool and tasty-looking food was inspired.
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Sep 14, 2014 16:31
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 15:08 |
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I really want to make that leola root tart, my husband loves ginger and I love apples (and it's the perfect time of year for it!). This is a really cool entry, well done!
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Sep 17, 2014 03:16
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