Gild the (Voodoo)lily

Oh Shit I Have Moved!

2010-05-31T18:47:00.001-07:00

Howdy, friend. I've pulled up stakes and moved the homestead to my own spot, Voodoo & Sauce. Join me, won't you?

Sesame-crusted seared albacore with maitake, asparagus and soba

2010-05-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

I made this during a warm spell we had a week ago. It was the kind of weather we ought to be having right now, but Mother Nature is being a bit of a premenstrual dysphoric bitch right now, dumping buckets of rain and unseasonally cool weather our way. Don't get me wrong, I'm from Portland, and am a dyed-in-the-wool Great Northwest kind of girl. But when I see tender tomato sprouts getting mowed down by gastropods and can't throw my windows open in the middle of May, I get a little bitter.

Nonetheless, New Seasons had gorgeous albacore loins, and the usual supply of feathery maitake mushroom clusters, and the asparagus was looking just as plump and green as all get out. I'm such a slave to this succubine vernality. I had some soba and other Japanese things at home already, so dinner was an easy idea away.

I rubbed the tuna loin in sesame oil and then rolled it in black sesame seeds. I seared it lightly on all sides while I got some dressing going: a good, fat tablespoon of grated ginger, a little finely sliced scallion; a drib each of mirin, rice vinegar and sesame oil; and a nice splash of tamari and shoyu (you can use Chinese soy sauce but for seasoning rare tuna I think it's worth going a little nicer with a good Japanese brand like Takumi, and save the dark stuff for porky noodles).

Pull the loin from the hot pan and break up and stir-fry the maitake until they're slightly softened, then toss in the asparagus (chopped into bite-sized pieces). Sprinkle in some sesame seeds and then dump in some cooked soba. Stir around a bit then add the dressing, then plate. Slice the albacore into thick medallions, top the noodles and sprinkle on some furikake (I just like a little seaweed, sesame and chile on everything).

Serve with a cold Morimoto Soba Ale (seriously, I can't drink enough of this these days) and dreams of sunnier climes.

Animal Style

2010-05-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

I recently lucked into some free beef, and I didn't even have to buy any tires. My old friend, mentor and high school geology teacher Dick Pugh (yeah, yeah, "what a name," but he's like 80 so shut the fuck up) was coming over to my house for dinner a few weeks ago, and "do you want some beef," he asked. Knowing that he raises Scottish Highland cattle, possibly the cutest of all meats, I vehemently accepted his offer. It's not every day you get free meat, especially not grass-fed (and finished) beef that was raised as a pet. All of his cattle get the sweetheart treatment and are only put down at the end of their natural lives.

He brought us some steak of various cuts and some ground round, and into the freezer it went. I pulled a pound of ground out of the freezer, but by the time it was thawed I hadn't come up with any clever ideas for dinner. I wanted to do the creature justice, but ground beef only has a few applications, and I was sick of eating Spag Bol. I had some pretty nice grainy hamburger buns, but nothing to put on a burger but cheese and iceberg. So even though we don't live in California, I decided we were having In-N-Out for dinner.

In-N-Out is famous for having secret ways to order your food. My favorite way of a burger there is Animal Style - that's with grilled onions, melted cheese and chunky thousand island-type dressing called "spread" (which is what happens to your ass when you eat too much of this shit). Lettuce is also a must, and iceberg is canon for fast food-style burgers. [Editor's Note: It was just brought to my attention that this is incorrect. Animal Style means the patty was cooked with mustard and comes with pickles and extra spread. I was thinking of the toppings on Animal Style Fries, but on the burger. Serious Eats made this same mistake and they won a fucking James Beard Award for best blog, so save your fist-shaking.]

Divide the pound of beef into two - yes two - patties. What are you gonna do with a half pound of ground beef in your fridge? Make a tiny amount of meat sauce? Just stop kidding yourself and use it all up now. I add only salt and pepper to the meat (the only integrity I can muster), and smush a handful of finely minced onions into the top of each patty.

Let the patties sit for a few minutes and come up to room temperature. Aw, jeez, stop worrying about germs, just keep your kitchen clean and you won't have to worry about meat sitting out for a few minutes. Get your grill pan rippin' hot and delight in the high-pitched squeal your patties emit when they sear on that hot pan. You'd better not fuck with those patties until it's time to flip them. Don't you dare smash them with the spatula or make any other fool move. Just...don't. Okay, after 6 or 7 minutes or so, flip the burgers.

Meanwhile, chop up some pickles (I use Krüegermann Mixed Pickle Salad because I have a giant jar of it) and mix this with a spoonful each mayo and ketchup. This is your "spread." Finely slice some iceberg lettuce into shreds. This is your "serving of vegetables."

After the burger cooked on the other side for 6 or 7 minutes, flip it again, turn off the heat, and top your patty with sliced cheese. Normally, I would vote for American for a burger like this, but we only had Havarti (besides, my hippie whole-grain buns ruined everything so I may as well run with it). Put your buns (cut-side down) on the still-hot pan to get toasty and to soak up some of that onion-y fond and grease. Apply a thick shmear of spread to each side of the toasty bun, then add the burger and a handful of iceberg shreds.

Serve with fries and an ice-cold cola (duh).

Pulled pork tacos

2010-05-01T14:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, delicious pork tacos. But first, indulge me for a minute while I embark on some quick link-dropping and tangent-going, and don't you dare pull a tl;dr on me. I never write any more. You'll get to the photos soon enough.

So I was reading Peter's blog (which I actually still do, Peter, even though I'm too busy saving myself from tendonitis to comment from my iPhone) and found out about Ruhlman's stance that "suck it, you all have plenty of time to cook. And what."

To borrow a phrase, I call bullshit. Now, granted, I am currently fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom (err, a work from home mom), so in theory I have plenty of time to loll around the kitchen for long, slow braises and staggeringly articulate yeast-risings - more time, in fact, than when Scott and I were a couple of blithe DINKs with weekends to burn.

To that I say, "you've gotta be fucking kidding me."

Anyways, Peter linked to a response from Married...with dinner, and at the end of Anita's pleasant diatribe, she vows to share time-saving tricks for home cooks on a weekly basis, and implores her readers to offer their own. So we can all eat like we have time to burn, when in reality, few of us have this luxury. And here we are.

Life as the recently-mated consists of a series of two-hour blocks. Two hours of napping (yay! do stuff!) are followed by two hours of attentive snuggling and neuron-firing playtime. Rinse and repeat. Two hours is still a lot of time, true, but did I mention I work from home? Plus, what if I just put something delicate in the oven, then have to abandon it for maternal duties? This has happened, by the way - I had to run upstairs to nurse Zeph back into submission and had to just lay there with my tit out, listening to the oven timer beeping away for 15 minutes until Scott got home from work. The food was saved this time, barely, but I know I won't always be that lucky.

My culinarian identity has been seriously compromised for the past year or so, so as a saving throw, I have become a recent convert to pressure cooking. Yes, old timey, frighteningly sputtery and clattery pressure-cooking. I can spare enough time a couple times a month to pressure-cook poundage of beast or beans (the pressure allows the boiling temperature to exceed 212 degrees, which drastically cuts cooking time), then freeze for easy reheating at a later date. This means I can eat feijoadas from homegrown heirloom beans (dried and stored) with brisket and ham shank an hour after starting it, and again a month later in only 10 minutes. (In fact, when I cook beans these days, I only cook the whole bag and freeze the cooked legumes in 1-cup portions. This takes about 15 or 20 minutes, and saves lots of rupees, too. Canned beans are for suckers.)

So my protip of the week: get over your fear of the pressure cooker. It was good enough for grandma, it's good enough for you.

Okay, so to the tacos already.

Another lazy-evening, time-strapped, just-put-the-baby-to-bed dinner, tacos are such an easy way to deliver protein, starch and a little veg to the sleepwalking. Particularly if one is fortuitous enough to have pressure-cooked a 5lb. pork shoulder the prior evening (which, itself, took only about 45 minutes).

All I needed was to add some cumin, Mexican oregano (actually a verbena, and not even in the same botanical family as oregano) and achiote to the leftover pork shreds. Reheated pulled pork always tastes fine as long as there is plenty of delicious grease to cushion against drying.

For authenticity (and because it is Correct), tacos should contain only meat, onion and cilantro, and be served in two corn tortillas. The second tortilla is for cobbling together a spare taco from any fallen taco flotsam. Hot sauce is encouraged, and a spritz of lime livens everything up.

Serve with an ice-cold Negro Modelo and radishes for coolness.

Japadog meets K-pop

2010-04-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

A nice couple weeks, it's been. Lovely weather, lots of delicious cooking, but nothing really noteworthy that I can think of. I guess I could show you the nettle risotto I made, but I've already blogged that (though this time I made it with ham instead of lemony chicken or artichokes or somesuch). Besides, everyone blogs risotto-y things this time of year. Steaks with roasted tomato mac and chee is also all well and good, but not anything new.

The weather has been so nice that I've been in the garden nearly every free minute. Free minutes, though, are relatively rare these days, as Zeph fussily teethes and his naps have become somewhat longevity-challenged. Therefore, I'm a little ashamed to admit that we eat the odd hot dog and tots dinner (washed down by either root beer or beer beer). And since I still have that pile of Korean pickled things staring me down every time I open the fridge (but no pickle relish or sauerkraut, oddly), I figured, why not make some Korean relish? It'll be kinda like those Japadogs Scott and I had in Vancouver that one time. Besides, if people go nuts over those bulgogi tacos why can't I bastardize someone's culture with a hot dog?

I coarsely chopped doraji (that spicy balloonflower root) and oijangajji (those spicy cukes) and added a little furikake for some seaweed and sesame kick. Relish done. And for the coup de grâce, I made my new favorite condiment: gochujang mayo. I got the idea from Japadog's Misomayo, but since I was going Korean with this I used gochujang instead. I did also add a little shiro miso for sweetness, and smeared on thick, this is the best hot dog I've eaten in memory. The hot dog was a Nathan's 100% beef (like we care!), but I wouldn't kick a kurobuta frank outta bed either. Daikon sprouts woulda been lovely, too, but I didn't miss them too badly as I shoveled this into my maw while standing over the kitchen sink. Manidŭseyo!

Serve with a crispy wheat beer (I really like Rogue's Morimoto Soba Ale these days) and rice crackers.

Bibimbap, revisited

2010-04-07T15:39:00.000-07:00

Just a shorty today, to show off some delicious bibimbap I threw together from ingredients I didn't make myself. I did cook the rice and arrange everything, but unless you ferment your own doraji and kimchi (I didn't), all you're really doing is arranging bits on a bowl of steaming white rice. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I don't even have a stone bowl to make this a proper dolsot bibimbap. In fact, I only made this because I didn't have any bread for the intended roast beef sandwich and realized I had a fridge full of Korean pickled things and a sack of Calrose rice. I warmed up the roast beef with some sesame oil and nestled it among the banchan I had on hand (clockwise from the top): kimchi, a crunchy seaweed salad, pickled cucumber (I had two kinds: a spicy Korean oijangajji and salty-sweet green Japanese aokappa) and doraji (balloon flower root). I guess I did saute some shiitake mushrooms in soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil. Top with an egg and gochujang. I usually use an egg fried over easy, but tried it raw this time. I prefer fried.

Whaddaya know, I cooked after all.

Serve with a glass of soju and since you already added Japanese pickles you may as well sprinkle with some shichimi togarashi.

Beef Pot Roast

2010-04-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

Oh my toe-curling god, am I ever loving my pressure cooker right now. Pot roast, in an hour (well, 90 minutes counting prep). Are you fucking kidding me?

Believe it or not, I am still somewhat a n00b when it comes to preparing hunks of beast. I've only been cooking meat for about 6 or 7 years, and although I can really do some damage with slow-cooking in dry heat (I mean, who can't put a big chunk of meat in a 200 degree oven for 4 hours?), wet heat always fucks me up. It always hits a boil and turns to leather. Enter the pressure cooker: it's going to boil anyways, so why not let 15 pounds psi pulverize that connective tissue until it's butter?

The thing is, I only have a giant 23-qt pressure cooker that I bought for canning. It's a beast (the other kind), and I've used it for cooking only a couple of times - giant vats of beans in most cases - and it's a real bitch to get clean after that. This one's just not meant for everyday household use. So I came up with this neat trick that allows me to cook a 2 person-sized dinner in an army-sized pressure cooker. I make a sort of double-boiler by filling the large crock with a few inches of water, into which I insert a smaller pot that contains dinner. Works a dream.

So the rundown: I hit a 2lb chuck roast with a bunch of freshly-ground pepper and kosher salt, then browned it on all sides. Remove the roast, add two cups of mirepoix (1 part onion to half parts celery and carrot) and a bay leaf and thyme, saute until the veg is browned and the moisture from it deglazes the pot. I didn't have any beef stock so I added some homemade chicken stock (brown, from last week's roasted chicken) with a spoonful of beef bouillon paste, a glug of red wine, and a few squirts of Worcestershire sauce (I added enough to cover the roast). Put the whole shebang into the pressure cooker and let the flame rip. Once it hit my desired pressure (between 10 and 15 psi is my safety zone), I turned down the heat to around medium-low to keep it there. After an hour, I turned off the burner and got the side dishes ready while the pressure cooker wound itself down.

Simple sides are best for pot roast, and mine were boiled new potatoes and some mustard-glazed carrots and Brussels sprouts (glaze: spoonful of stout mustard, a few pinches of mustard seed, a scant spoonful of sugar and a knob of butter, add a splash of water to combine everything then let it reduce back down). When the pressure cooker simmered down enough to remove the lid without garnering third-degree steam burns, I pulled out the pot of roast and strained the jus into a hot pan to reduce. I whisked in a flour slurry and let it simmer into a rich gravy.

Serve with a nice Pinot Noir (hey, it's springtime - no need to go too big) and enough soft wheat rolls as needed to sop up all that gravy. Yes, all of it.

Browned onion and scallion champ

2010-03-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is basically mashed potatoes, shot in a golden spring afternoon. But with the addition of a variety of alliums, it becomes champ - a classic Irish potato dish. I did mix it up ever so slightly for our dinner, but not much. I browned some minced onion and shallots in a small pan with butter, and then deglazed the brown butter and sticky, caramelly fond with heavy cream. I added a blob of butter, some sliced scallions and chives and let this sit on the stove (turned off - the latent heat wilted the scallions nicely) while I boiled some Yukon gold potatoes (preferred over a floury Russet for flavor). When the potatoes were tender, I smashed them with the cream-onion mixture and folded in a handful of grated Irish stout Dubliner cheese.

I read that traditional additions include peas or nettles, and I can testify that peas are wonderful with this (I had them with leftovers the next day). Nettles, though? Ooh, that's a thing. I'll be headed down to the crick this weekend and give that a try.

Apricot-caraway tea bread

2010-03-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

I can't really call this Irish soda bread, or even Irish-American soda bread, since my ingredient limitations forced my creative hand (as they tend to do). This is, though, a basic soda bread - a quick bread leavened with baking soda instead of yeast. Since I ran out of raisins (and was already using golden ones at that), I supplemented with chopped, dried apricots. And since I was already going a different direction with this bread, I baked it in a buttered terrine pan (and added a bit extra sugar and buttermilk to the dough, per Joy of Cooking's direction) to yield a neat, uniform loaf with an elegant crumb. "I may as well," I figured.

I toasted the caraway to draw out the sweet, caramel-y undertones of the seeds, and the resulting aroma of this baking loaf was so powerfully evocative of my mother that I had to take a triple-take with my nose to pinpoint the reason. She never baked this bread, in my recollection, but the bread machine she gave me for Christmas when I was 19 years old came with a mix for this very bread (the standard version of it). This versatile recipe needs no such contraption, though; in fact, it begs to come out of an old-fashioned oven, cradled in mitt-clad hands.

Yankee it may be, we indeed enjoyed this lovely loaf on St. Patrick's Day, along with pressure-cooked corned beef brisket, garlicky roasted cabbage and champ (to be posted later this week). Served with tea (Constant Comment - my mother's favorite) and toasted with butter, leftovers made the pleasantest of breakfasts.

Ebelskivers with blueberry preserves and orange zest

2010-03-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to find the time to post this for more than a week, and I barely have the time to do it now, as Zephyr naps and dinner simmers away on the stove. I should be posting the Irish soda bread I made for tonight's dinner, or the lovely corned beef brisket, roasted cabbage and champ (creamed with browned onions and wilted scallions and chives, topped with grated Guinness Dubliner cheese), or even taking a phone-in post on the Guinness ice cream float I'll serve for dessert. But no, I must finish what I've started, even as Zephyr stirs from his fleeting slumber.

Ebelskivers (a Danish filled pancake) are kind of a pain in the ass to make, so I made a couple dozen and froze what we didn't eat for breakfast. These ones have a dribble of blueberry preserves in the center, yielding a gooey, jelly donut-like effect. I added orange zest to the batter for interest. Dusted with powdered sugar (and served with more blueberry preserves for dipping), these are a special treat that are worth the trouble.

I keep meaning to use my ebelskiver platar to make takoyaki - I even have some Spanish canned octopus I could use. Or maybe another savory donut (corn and cheddar?).

Serve with cripsy, thick-cut bacon and a peach-berry smoothie (because you're purging the last of your frozen summer bounty).

Pork-Shiitake Niku Dango

2010-03-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

Niku dango are Japanese meatballs, and are the perfect accompaniment to beer and noodles (two of my favorite things). Meatballs, in general are huge right now - Bon Appetit magazine recently had a whole issue devoted to them. Shit, 20% of all my (granted, now craptastic) blog traffic consistently comes from people Googling Swedish meatball recipes. I love meatballs, and since I've been fiddling with Asian flavors again these days - mostly Japanese and Korean - I thought I'd make some pork meatballs with a Japanese twist.

Flipping through my cookbooks, I saw a recipe for such "meatballs with a twist" in the Japanese Country Cookbook, and this is very loosely based on that (I prefer fresh shiitake to dried, soaked ones). Mix a pound of ground pork with a beaten egg, a small handful of panko, 2 minced shiitake mushrooms, a clove of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons minced shallot and grated ginger, a small splash each of soy sauce, mirin and sake, a tablespoon or so of sugar and a pinch of salt. I also added a pinch of chile flake for posterity. Some minced scallion would've been a nice touch, had I had any around, and I guess some finely chopped hijiki or nori flakes would've been kinda special. Oh well.

I know people will say there are better ways, and I know that grilling would yield the best flavor, but I just portioned these puppies out using a small ice cream scoop and baked them at like 375 or 400 for about 20 minutes. This is just always the easiest way for me to make meatballs, even if frying in butter or duck fat does taste better. The mushroom and all the seasoning liquids (plus the lovely pork fat) keep the interior of the niku dango so nice and moist that you can get away with a higher temp to get a crispier exterior, but I brushed mine with store-bought tonkatsu sauce (pineapple flavor, though you could use a mix of soy sauce, honey and rice vinegar) and returned them to the oven to get all sticky and glaze-y.

Since I cooked these to sate a trashy izakaya jones, I originally served them with udon soup and gyoza, but I had so many leftover that I enjoyed the rest for a fast lunch the next day (reheated in the toaster oven) with shoyu ramen, soft-boiled egg and sprinkled with shichimi togarashi (Japanese chile powder) and nori goma furikake (seaweed-sesame rice seasoning).

Enjoy with a tallboy of Kirin (Marc suggests Asahi for proper Japa-redneckness) and Keyhole TV.

Sopa del mezcolanza

2010-02-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

...or, "hodgepodge soup".

Yeah, I've already failed at meeting my once-a-week blogging quota. And I don't fucking care! God, it's so liberating to just admit that instead of apologizing and making excuses. I have been cooking here and there, but nothing new or interesting. I can't be a genius all the time.

I made a vat of jambalaya with arborio rice on Monday (not even with any interesting meats, just chicken, andouille and shrimp). Oh, last night I fried some salmon croquettes and made some arancini with leftover jambalaya. That was pretty good. I did have a few failure piles that you would've enjoyed laughing at, but I really just didn't want to go through the rigmarole of the whole food blogging-it thing. One was frozen homemade chili on a pile of boxed mac and chee (hurried together after amateurishly burning the original dinner: linguine with what would've been a carbonara with caramelized onions and collard greens). The other was, in retrospect, eerily similar to Oswalt's original failure pile (served aptly in a sadness bowl): a blob of mashed potatoes topped with a slurry of gravy, shredded chicken and mixed vegetables (the canon Flav-R-Pac mélange of corn, pea, carrot, and lima bean niblets). That the chicken was not in "popcorn" format and lacked a cloak of grated cheese was the only detail that separated this dinner from that KFC abortion.

This is, for all intents and purposes, minestrone. But I wanted to tweak things a little by going Spanish with the flavors instead of the classic (read: run-of-the-mill) Italian minestrone. I used my canned homegrown heirloom tomatoes (supplemented with a bit of leftover arrabiata sauce), so it's even got a little hoity to go with my as-of-late, lackluster toity. I rendered some linguiça (yeah, yeah, but I didn't have any chorizo) in a little olive oil with diced carrots and a sofrito of garlic and onions, my aforementioned tomatoes and some piquillos that were on the brink of growing a beard in the fridge. I dusted the whole lot with some pimentón and some thyme. In went a handful of Trader Joe's Harvest Blend (a melange of Israeli couscous, baby garbanzos, orzo and red quinoa) to soak up some of the flavorful orange grease. A glug of budget tempranillo supplemented the chicken stock, salt and pepper to taste, and away we go.

Serve with a tempranillo and some appropriate toasty, cheesy bread product (ours was a cheesy breadstick, similarly procured from Trader Joe's).

Buffalo Chicken Sandwich with Celery-Roquefort Slaw

2010-02-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

Since it was the Super Bowl recently, I've been jonesing for wings something fierce. There's something about fatty chicken wings coated in sticky, spicy hot sauce, chased with the cool, mineral crunch of celery and the cave-y funk of blue cheese. But do any of those flavors - so perfect together - actually require a chicken wing, as delivery system or matchmaker? I think not.

Instead, I put these flavors together in a sandwich. I tossed together some buffalo sauce by melting a few tablespoons of butter with a good 1/4 cup of Frank's Red Hot, a couple cloves of minced garlic, and about 2 tbsp of sriracha. I poached about a pound of skinless, boneless chicken thighs in the hot sauce until shreddy-tender (this makes enough for four sandwiches), then pulled them out and reduced the sauce to a sticky goo. I shredded the meat and tossed them back in the sauce to soak it up.

Meanwhile, I slivered a few stalks of celery on a mandoline and mixed a dressing of a few tablespoons of mayonnaise and sour cream, a splash of sherry vinegar and a handful crumbled Roquefort, and a little salt and pepper. Tossed together, this is a delicious, cooling slaw for any spicy meat, I'd hazard. But for these intents and purposes, blob it on a pile of the shredded chicken, rock this mess on a lightly toasted brioche bun, and you're laughin'.

Serve with your preferred fried potato product (we fancied our taters in the tot variety) and a Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale.

Feijoadas grandes

2010-02-02T18:08:00.000-08:00

Last summer I was totally knocked up and not good for much. Thank god I still had the presence of mind to a) grow a vegetable garden that included scarlet runner beans and b) utilize some of October's nesting instinct to harvest all of the beans and dry them instead of squandering all that precious energy on retarded shit like vacuuming all of the lampshades.

Scarlet runners (Phaseolus coccineus) are one of my favorite garden plants. I've been growing them for awhile, both for their beauty and their flavor. Hummingbirds love them (in flower), and they make a tasty alternative to flagiolets for cassoulet. They resemble a butter bean or a cranberry bean in flavor, but for this application - in fact, Brazil's answer to cassoulet - I was shooting for a more fashionable alternative to a black bean.

Feijoada is the national dish of Brazil, but variations exist in Portugal as well. Brought to the country by slaves, it traditionally uses black beans and less-popular cuts of pork such as snouts, ears, and trotters. As is typical of peasant fare, the dish has evolved over the years to include a wider variety of meats (depending on the cook and the country in which she lives), though still primarily features pork products cooked with black beans. Mine uses smoky piggy meats such as linguiça sausage and smoked ham shank, a Mexican langoniza (like chorizo, but with beef and pork), bacon and corned beef brisket (looked for carne seca, but was unsuccessful).

Since mine had only been dried for a few months, they didn't need much soak. I let them sit long enough for the skins to wrinkle, though I could've left them overnight. I didn't see the need, though, since I was planning on using a pressure cooker for at least part of the cooking. I think I probably had about 2 or 3 cups of dried beans all together (they filled a pickle jar 3/4 of the way).

I heated my large crockpot over medium-high heat and added 1/4 lb of bacon, one whole linguiça sausage, 1/2 lb of langoniza (left whole) and a 1/2 lb corned beef brisket (without the corning spices) placed fat side down to render out that tasty fat. Meanwhile, I chopped a large onion and minced 4 cloves of garlic and added them to the pot to brown in the rendered fat. I tossed in 4 bay leaves and a dried red chile and then the beans, the ham shank and about 3 or 4 cups of water (I didn't think to measure). You really don't need to add any salt because the meats contribute plenty, but besides that, salt toughens the beans and stalls cooking. You can always season at the end if your arteries really need a stiffy.

I cooked the whole lot at between 10 and 15 psi for about 30-45 minutes, until the beans were tender and the ham shredded off the bone. The beef should be tender enough to yield to the slight pressure of a knife; slice it and the sausages into thick slices and luxuriantly drape the meats over the beans.

Serve with rice, collard greens, orange slices and caipirinhas (a cocktail of cachaça, sugar and limes).

Cornmeal-crusted trout with mashed root vegetables and crispy leeks

2010-01-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

So I was wandering around New Seasons, as is my wont these days, wondering what to make for dinner. It's citrus season again, so I grabbed some blood oranges. Even though they're not particularly sweet, I'm always suckered into buying them for their novelty. It's an orange! That isn't orange! Here, take my money.

I was sort of hankering for seafood, but after a recent flirtation with food poisoning (waited a day to cook fresh mussels, ate one or two, and realized they smelled like ammonia - luckily, came away unscathed) I wanted to play it safe with a nice salmonid. Salmon, steelhead and trout are so ubiquitous in these parts that kids growing up here get a shot at catching their very own at least once. My grandpa used to take me and my brother fishing at Rooster Rock State Park in the Columbia River Gorge when we were little. We'd always giggle at the fact that there was a nude beach at this park, and never caught anything but brown bullhead catfish. My grandpa usually ended up swinging us by the rainbow trout farm at the end of the day so we wouldn't come home empty-handed.

My mom would dutifully dredge the cleaned trout in some cornmeal and fry them up in a cast iron skillet. I think this was the only way I ate fish (or in fish stick form) until I was a teenager. Some wheels need no reinvention, and this is one. That said, I did want to doll up the cornmeal a bit, and so to it, added blood orange zest and fresh thyme.

I got about a half inch of grapeseed oil hot, then tossed in some sliced leeks to get nice and crispy. This is an idea I totally stole from Peter, and it's a good way to use a leek that languishing in the crisper. Also on the verge of going to waste was a bag of parsnips and a few carrots. Feeling the sweet root veg vibe, I simmered these in milk and mashed them with lots of butter. I fried the fillets of Idaho trout in the leek-flavored oil and in only a minute or two, dinner was ready. It was totally worth the mess.

Serve with a Pinot Prosecco and wedges of tart blood orange.

Moroccan Chickpea and Carrot Stew

2010-01-21T18:33:00.000-08:00

...or, Back in the Saddle Again

Zephyr is now 8 weeks old, and I'm starting to get the hang of having him around. That said, cooking still takes me a bit of planning (unless I opt for yet another "pasta night" or "takeout night"). This is why I've decided to start doing what busy moms and dads have been doing for generations: the one-pot meal. Yes, I feel like a failure admitting it, but the one-pot meal is kind of a Thing.

Not just for cowboy camping anymore, a humble pot of beans (chickpeas, in this case) can be elevated to something you actually want to eat with the simple addition of a few choice ingredients. Carrots, shallots, garlic, homegrown heirloom tomatoes (that I canned during my nesting frenzy last fall), ginger, cumin and cardamom all combine easily with garbanzos to make a hearty, warming stew fit for a dark January Thursday.

I started mine early in the day and let it simmer over a low flame to thoroughly soften the dried chickpeas. The softly spicy scent of ginger, cumin and cardamom floated through the house all day, stimulating my postpartum appetite and filling me with a sense of Having Done Something.

Enjoy with warm, buttered flatbread and a chewy, raisiny garnacha.

*****

Unless you take it to its hallucinatory extreme, sleep deprivation is not great for creativity. Preparing meaningful food, presenting it artfully and writing about it thoughtfully require both a rested mind and free time, for which new mothers are seldom known. Zephyr occasionally grants us a 4-hour chunk or two, but my evenings are generally broken up into 2-3 hour naps, interspersed with dozy, twighlit nursing. Being a good blogger means getting a good night's sleep, and this rarely happens these days. At this point, it's either slowly getting better or I'm slowly getting used to it.

As days lengthen, though, I'm finding myself more interested in thinking about things like combining ingredients instead of just filling my time with such enthralling activities as staring at the baby or waiting for Scott to get home from work. I am setting a goal for myself to update both of my blogs once a week - let's see how I do.

Back in a minute, hon

2009-12-16T14:00:00.000-08:00

Quick chit - I had the baby, and you can read about it at my new blog, The Legend of Zephyr. I am back in the kitchen periodically, but this time of year is still hard on photographers who rely on natural light, so I haven't started shooting my food yet. However! I plan on coming back again at around the start of the new year.

Happy holidays! See you next year!

Living off the fat of the land

2009-10-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

I guess it's fairly obvious that I've got a lot on my plate these days, so to speak, and my writing has taken a back seat to more important ventures. I do still cook, once in awhile (last week produced a kabocha and eggplant mulligatawny of sorts, spicy with curry and cardamom, with coconut milk for body), and this time of year I still think about treks to spongy woods, even in my compromised mobility and subsequent preference for the sloth of a warm couch and chenille throw.

Thank goodness, then, for store-bought chanterelles and Langdon Cook. Some of you might know his blog, Fat of the Land (I've had him linked on my sidebar for some time now). His new book of the same name has recently been published and is now available for sale on Amazon.

Cook is a modern, urban male indigenous to an opposite coast where clams are fried, not dug. Relocated to the Pacific Northwest for graduate school, he met a fascinating young poet with an ear to the wind and an eye to the ground, and by her beauty, found himself rapt. In a comically-told recollection of her contempt at his efforts at a woo with a reconstructed fast food breakfast sandwich (""I don't do McDonald's", she said dryly"), his now wife and twice-babymama opened the door to a world that would clearly become a new passion for Cook.

Langdon Cook is no latter-day Euell Gibbons, and Fat of the Land - Adventures of a 21st Century Forager is no Stalking the Wild Asparagus. More than simply a field guide to modern locavory, FotL is a series of witty vignettes that are really about the people and places that have informed his passion - they all just happen to involve the hunt for "foods that don't run away." These are forthright tales of character-building trial and error (smashed shells of many razor clams before hitting limit), of humility at the smallness of men in an unforgiving landscape (and fast tides that fill slow boots with icy water), and thankfully, of hard-won triumphs (even if those triumphs are later rudely stolen in the middle of the night by greedy raccoons and must be re-won the following day). And more than a gatherer of popular and less-loved wild foods alike, Cook is clearly a writer.

Each story is about one ingredient and ends with a recipe for that ingredient. This afternoon, as I finished reading Fat of the Land, I was stricken with the coincidence that tonight's dinner, for which I had shopped only an hour earlier, was only one or two ingredients away from the last recipe of the book: creamy chanterelle pasta. Instead of peas to add color, though, I added pea shoots, my pasta was a gnocchi and I added toasted pumpkin seeds for added protein and seasonal crunch (Lang uses bacon and bowtie pasta in his rendition, and while this year I happily coughed up $8/lb for my chanterelles, I doubt he ever pays for a mushroom).

Gnocchi with Chanterelle-Pea Shoot Cream

Saute a minced shallot and a clove of garlic in a bit of butter and olive oil. Add a handful of clean chanterelles, torn into bite-sized pieces. When mushrooms have released their liquor and start softening, add cream, a few tbsp of fresh thyme, a few good scratches of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for a minute, then add a handful of pea shoots and an 10oz package of gnocchi (cooked), and toss together until pea shoots are wilted. Top with toasted pumpkin seeds and copious amounts of Parmigiano Reggiano.

Buy Fat of the Land.

Lobster mushroom, sweet corn and watercress risotto

2009-08-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is the best time of year. The weather is up to its typical late summer bipolar antics, and while I still have sweet Silver Queen corn down here in the Valley (thanks to sunny days), the mountains are cooling off enough in the evenings that lobster mushrooms have made their way into my neighborhood fancy grocery store.

Scott had a bee in his bonnet for some lemony chicken and risotto, and even though those are a springtime jones, such is his wantlessness that I tend to cater to his every (infrequent) craving. And despite the fact that our garden is a cornucopian money-shot of nightshades (six tomato varieties for a dozen plants total, four chile varieties and an eggplant), this third trimester heartburn started kicking in today, and I just didn't feel like one more helping of spaghetti Margherita (with a masochistic craving for extra chile flake).

I melted some butter in the pan while I thawed some homemade chicken stock (frozen in June), and sweated a quarter of a tiny red onion with two minced garlic cloves. I added a drib of olive oil to prevent the butter from browning and added one fist-sized lobster mushroom, sliced and broken into bite-sized pieces. I tossed in a couple handfuls of arborio rice and stirred it around, doing the "making risotto" thing until time to add a glass of chardonnay (now that I'm getting late in the pregnancy, I'm not afraid to taste the wine that goes into my cooking). I added splashes of the rich chicken stock, stirring lovingly, and then added an ear's worth of corn cut fresh from the cob.

A few fat pinches of lemon zest went in at the end, along with some fresh thyme and a few handfuls of chopped watercress. The peppery, nasturtium verdure of the watercress slapped the sleepy, smalltown white carbs right in the kisser, the mineral parsley gave it some backbone, and a sprinkling of crumbly fat and salt Parmigiano Reggiano gave it cheeks.

Enjoy with a crispy pear cider, or I suppose a nice Gewürztraminer, if you had one laying around.

Millions of Peaches

2009-08-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

The little white peach sapling that I planted last fall shot up about 6 feet this spring, splashing out a crown of wavy, crescent-shaped leaves and slutty, hot pink blossoms like too much rouge on a little girl that got into her mother's makeup. When, in June, the spindly branches began to bow and creak under the weight of all that fruit, I naturally assumed I would be inundated with mealy, hard, sour peaches (I couldn't possibly luck into so much of a good thing). Over the past two weeks or so, though, this little tree proved her spot in my crowded garden was warranted.

These are small peaches, slightly smaller than a tennis ball, with ample red blush and pearly white flesh that is as sweet as the last days of summer. I am hogging them all to myself, freezing and canning, or just slopping them directly into my mouth over the sink. The ants and greedy neighbor ladies have taken notice, and I have been relegated to just picking all of them before they can steal my Precious (judiciously trimming away nibbles from birds and insects as needed). This morning I'll have succulent slices over thick, whole-milk yogurt with a sprinkle of granola and daydream about the myriad other ways to enjoy them.

Three parts love and seven parts forgiveness

2009-08-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Who says a wedding cake has to cost hundreds (or thousands) of dollars? For under $25, some friends of ours got a beautiful, whimsical and delicious wedding cake that they'll never forget. Leonard and Caireen recently got married, and being an intimate affair (only six guests, plus the bride and groom) I was happy to provide the photography as well as the cake. The night before the wedding I told Caireen about our having a croquembouche at our wedding after she joked that having doughnuts would be a laugh. I demanded that she let me build her a tower of pink doughnuts for her wedding cake. She was tickled.

The morning of the wedding I called Acme Doughnuts, located a few blocks from my house (their website has obviously just been thrown up from a template and is not useful yet), and was delighted that they needed no more than a couple hours to hook up two dozen doughnuts. They even made pink icing from scratch, when it's not normally one of their toppings (the nice gal whipped some up by mixing berry juice with white icing). Due to my no-notice call, they could only do a dozen of the raised doughnuts, so the order was supplemented with a dozen cake doughnuts. A few hours later Scott was able to pick them up and paid only $18. I also sent him to our neighborhood fancy grocery store for pink roses ("the tiny kind, if they have them"). The flower lady looked at him funny when he asked for baby pink roses, but that's her problem. For $5, a regular plate of doughnuts was transformed into something rather special.

Never be afraid to think outside the box. Or inside it, if it's a box of doughnuts.

Pork tenderloin and warm succotash with heirloom tomatoes and bacon

2009-08-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

Damn, I'm rusty. I've almost completely forgotten how to use my camera. I should probably just restore it to its factory settings and start over. Stupid blurry corn. Sigh.

Hey, I cooked! The week of 105 degree temperatures followed by the week of 90+ degree temperatures has been chased by the pleasant partly-cloudy and low 80s that I can really get with. My garden is exploding with corn the size of my forearm and state fair tomatoes, my scarlet runner beans are hanging heavy on their vines and the peppers are nearly ready. I feel reinvigorated (being thoroughly sick of Vietnamese takeout gave me a much-needed kick in the ass, too).

A perfectly-cooked pork tenderloin surprised me after not having cooked meat in what feels like forever. I brined it quickly in Kumquat Dry Soda with a tablespoon of salt and a pinch sugar. I seared it on all sides and finished it in the oven, pulled it at medium (to the touch test), rested for five minutes and was delighted to find it rosy and juicy when sliced into thick medallions.

"Mmm...Heather cooking," Scott approved as he dove into the succulent pork bedded down on a bowl of summer warmth: corn cut from the cob and sauteed with red cipolline onions, bacon and sliced scarlet runners (pods and all). When the beans were al dente*, I added some lemon zest and a fat knob of butter, some chopped thyme and summer savory, and a couple of handfuls of chopped black brandywines (the garden's first!) and sliced cherry tomatoes. They brought a nice twang of acid to the fatty, creamy succotash.

Enjoy with a crunchy Reed's ginger beer. Here's to hoping that a new-found nesting instinct includes getting my sealegs in the kitchen again.

*These scarlet runners were probably a week older than what would be ideal for eating with the pods - the waxy cuticle needed to be removed from the pod and the skins on the beans could've benefited from a longer cooking time. I'll look forward to letting the rest of them completely ripen and shell them for cassoulet or feijoada. Never eat scarlet runners raw - they are high in phytohemagglutinins and can cause stomach problems like nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

A Letter to Anonymous

2009-07-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

"ew..i hope this happens to your unborn child as well" - Anonymous

This was a comment left by one "Anonymous" regarding my recent Pig Roast 2009 post. I let that one marinate for awhile, wondering whether or not I should ignore it, delete it or if/how I should respond to it. I was actually surprised that it was the first time a militant (if a bit chromosomally-affluent) vegetarian has left a comment for me. A few of you have either emailed me about it or replied to it in the comments section. Thanks for the support and kind words, but I've decided to go ahead and respond.

Dear Anonymous (if that's even your real name),

Nice chickenshit comment. Did it take you all day to think of that? You are a true wordsmith. I also love your cummingsian refusal to capitalize any letters in your sentence. Nice touch. Artsy.

Okay, first of all (this really gets my goat), it's not an unborn child, it's called a fetus. Say it: fee-tuss. A child cannot, by definition, be unborn. That's your biology and semantics lesson of the day. Besides, my fetus doesn't even have enough meat on him to fill a baguette, and would be a complete waste of fuel to try to barbecue. That fuel comes from trees and produces smoke which is bad for air quality. Try to think about the environment, m'kay?

Something like 95% of the world's population eats meat (probably more). In much of the developing world, meat consumption is only limited by economics (i.e., more people in the world would eat meat if they could afford to). Vegetarianism is a fine dietary choice for many reasons, but it's extremely ignorant and narrow-minded of you to suggest that every culture in the world that ingests animal protein is ethically wrong. Seriously, who the fuck are you? It reminds me a lot of how Christian missionaries coerced indigenous people into abandoning their culture and history by using fear and violence. You're no better than those people. Here's a tip, though: learning to accept that the world is a big, crazy place full of different types of people that you can't and shouldn't even want to change is the first step to growing as a human.

Actually, it's interesting to me that you've targeted my blog, of all blogs. Ever hear of Tony Bourdain, dumbshit? Is it easier for you to see meat when it's in a square or patty form? Is that a little easier for your delicate constitution to take? My blog is not the only omnivorous food blog out there, but it's pretty clear to me that you've never read it before. If you had, you'd know a few things about me, such as:

This is not the first pig roast I've had. Last year, we roasted a 100lb sow that we named Laura Palmer. She fed 50+ people, plus leftovers. She was, like this year's pigs, raised sustainably, slaughtered as humanely as possible and treated with the utmost respect in death by being prepared with love and great care. True, buying and preparing meat en carcasse is not for the faint of heart - it forces you to come to terms with the fact that you're eating an animal, not a tidily-packaged piece of protein. I'm fairly certain that if everyone had to buy meat this way, there'd be a lot more vegetarians in the world, at least in developed nations. Of course, there are plenty of vegetarians who, in something of a contradiction with their ethical choices, eat bizarre animal-like meat-substitute vegetable proteins (Tofurkey, Boca Burgers and "Chik Nuggets" come to mind) that are more processed than Velveeta and contain as many ingredients. At least I'm not in denial about what I eat.

Your whole life is a phase I went through in high school. I became an animal rights activist when I was 15 (card carrying ALF and PETA member), and I was a vegetarian for ten years (though I craved meat the entire time). But instead of tossing lame comments from behind a shroud of internet anonymity, I actually did real animal rights shit like superglue and mace the doorknob of a local taxidermist and protest the circus by handing pamphlets that showed tortured elephants to children. Your technique is perhaps a bit more subtle, granted, but I'm still pretty sure I was a better animal rights activist than you'll ever be.

I don't take bullshit from pussy internet fucktards like yourself, not even when I'm awash in the nurturing glow of maternity. This one is so obvious to everyone (I mean everyone) who knows me (on the internet and in real life) that it's almost cute that you didn't know.

To close, a quote from Patton Oswalt: "I enjoy steak too much because I hate hippies so much."

Enjoy life at the bottom of the food chain, you fucking shitweasel.

Love, Heather

Pig Roast 2009

2009-06-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

After two weekends in a row hosting parties at our house (and all the fretting and prepping and feverish house-cleaning that it entails), I needed a few days' recovery to revel in inactivity. This quickly descends into crippling laziness, as is its wont, until I just sit my ass down and at least download the photos off my camera. First hurdle cleared.

This year was different. First off, I'm pregnant, and that makes me heavy, slow and quick to tire. Also, we wanted to do two smaller pigs this year instead of a 100lb sow, for ease and timeliness of cooking - we ended up with two 40lb roasters. The main factor, though, was definitely the pregnancy and its function of shifting my priorities quickly. Do I really need to get ham and cheese and make extra pickles in case someone wants a Cubano, requiring yet another run to the store and a reshuffling of the contents of the fridge? Ehhhh.

After we picked up the pigs, Scott's bro and I needed to figure out where to keep them for awhile. The chest freezer that we used last year was pretty much shot (sitting in a driveway throughout a Portland winter will do that to an electric appliance) and had been carted off by the 1-800-Got-Junk guys along with an old door a few months back. So we just placed them in the bathtub for an hour or so (they were still partially frozen) until I could send Scott to the hardware store for a couple of plastic garbage cans, which we filled with ice.

Last year, I made a sticky-sweet-hot gochujang barbecue sauce to rub into the cavity of the pig, and slashed the skin on the hams to apply some dry rub. This year, I made a huge jar of the dry rub (homemade Berbere spice with salt, mustard powder, paprika and ancho chile powder) and smeared it into the interior, then sprinkled some parsley flowers and fresh coriander berries (the seeds that were still juicy and green). I used the branches of parsley and coriander to hold the pigs' mouths open - I don't know what function it serves, but it seemed like the thing to do.

Joe and Shin hoisted the piggies onto the warm grill and we covered them with foil to keep the heat in and the flies off. This year, we had much better control of the heat (and didn't use three bags of mesquite right off the bat). I tossed some green quince branches onto the coals for some sweet smoke and got to work in the kitchen.

I did end up overdoing it again somewhat, and that's another change I'll make next year - people don't really care about having banh mi or tacos when they have the option of eating hot pork sliced directly from the beast. However, the roasted corn-mango salsa was delicious in its own right and was heartily devoured with tortilla chips. The pasta salad is a cookout stand-by, as are the plate of crudites (not pictured) and baked beans (not pictured; Norm provided these and they were moist and delicious). Tammy brought a yummy sesame-y Asian noodle salad, and Susan brought platter upon platter of desserts, including some wonderful cherry petit fours and a plate of Buckeyes (a chocolate-covered peanut butter confection that Ohioans eat).

Since it was raining most of the day, I was afraid to use my camera outdoors where photography really sings. Indoors, the photos were harder to come by because of the crowded conditions and poor lighting. Regardless, I took one of one of the cocktails that I made: strawberry lemonade with rhubarb Dry Soda. Dry Soda is a discovery I made when I first learned I was pregnant and needed a replacement for cocktails and wine. It's not too sweet (only 50 calories per bottle but not artificially sweetened) and it comes in fancy flavors like juniper berry, vanilla and lavender. They're also based in Seattle so I can support a NW-based small business. I used the rhubarb, lemongrass and kumquat sodas to craft some family-friendly cocktails: sweet tea with kumquat, limeade with lemongrass and coconut milk and the aforementioned rhubarb-strawberry lemonade. Dry Soda people, if you're reading, you can totally steal these ideas.

Speaking of Seattle, Brooke and Brittany came all the way down from Seattle to say hi. Tragedy struck when they had to turn around and drive home before the pigs were ready - they had a father's day engagement the following day that was to begin traumatically early for a Sunday morning (8:00am - gasp!). It was so nice to see them, though - they're so pretty and hilarious. Brittany totally isn't dead, btw, she is just finding herself in a similar "I'm too busy for this shit and none of you sons of bitches gonna guilt me into it" situation in which I've been finding myself lately.

It was great to see so many old friends and catch up, even if it meant I had to flit from friend to friend like some socially-retarded hummingbird and perform half-assed hostessing. Scott drank about 30 beers over the course of the day, and spent his first (unofficial) father's day sick in bed until 5:00pm. Next year, we'll stick with one little 60lb fella, we won't do any of the extra banh mi/Carnitas/Cubanos fixins, I'll have my prep done days in advance (making about half the volume of sides that I usually make), and I will be able to have a drink.

Poutine Galvaude

2009-06-17T19:47:00.001-07:00

...Now, with more confit!

Awhile ago, I made poutine with sweet potatoes and veal demi glace gravy. Oh, man, was it ever a delight. A bit more recently, my good buddy Marc at the stellar (yet erroneously-named) No Recipes made it also, but one-upped me by photographing it like a genius (seriously, steam shot and everything). When I noticed the linkback in my Sitemeter readings, I took a look at my old post from last November and remembered that I'd threatened to make this with turkey leg confit leftover from Thanksgiving. Of course, I totally forgot to do that, and hi. Here we are.

Technically, this probably can't be called "galvaude" because I used duck instead of turkey or chicken, and I omitted the peas (some asshole is also probably gonna swing his/her peen around about this not really being poutine, either, since I used sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes), but honestly, who gives a shit? It's French fries with gravy and cheese curds. It has duck confit on top. SUCK IT. And after I confited the duck, I oven-roasted the fries in the hot duck fat. I used sweet potato again because they really are just more nutritious and tasty, but I have to admit that they have a hard time holding their shape after they've been essentially poached in duck fat. Next time I'll fry them on the stove top to get the proper crispness. Beef demi gravy and local white cheddar curds, and we're laughing.

********

If anyone has noticed or cares, I've been lagging on the blogging in a big way. I just can't pretend to care that much right now, but it's not you, I swear. I just am such a dipshit these days. It's strange what hormones do to the female brain, but each time I do cook, I forget to shoot it. For fuck's sake, I made mac and cheese with brie last weekend and forgot to photograph it. I have a couple things lined up, but who knows when I'll get around to it. I'll try to at least be present when I can, but I just have a lot of other shit going on right now, and ice cream makes a fine dinner.

Sweet Black Sesame Butter

2009-06-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

Smear this on a toasted (and buttered) English muffin with strawberry preserves or marmalade. Imagine sweet tahini, but black. It's like Taiwanese Nutella, or a non-grainy adzuki paste. I bet it'd be great rolled up in some strudel dough with pears and a little cinnamon.

A F&%@#ing Salad

2009-06-01T08:06:00.001-07:00

Yes, this is what I have to show for my weeks of absence. It's all I can muster. I don't know why I feel like I have some 'splaining to do every time I take off for awhile, but I guess that's just how committed I am. Ha!

I really haven't been cooking much at all. I'm just too fucking lazy! All I want to do is sit on the couch with my feet up, eat ice cream and watch Jon and Kate careen nose-first into complete loathing and contempt. I have eaten Cinnamon Life cereal for dinner twice in the last week (I amended it with an apple and some peanut butter), and have only set foot in the kitchen about twice. I did make some delicious risotto with morels and garlic scapes last week, but I've been so off my game that I actually forgot to photograph it. I think what it really boils down to is that when I'm hungry, I'm hungry and I don't want to pussyfoot around with prettiness and creativity. I need food in my gob and I need it now.

This salad was decent. At least it was nutritious. It reminded me a little of a classic chopped salad, for all of the veggies I draped over the top of the lettuce, or of bibimbap in salad form. I realized after I'd done it that I chopped the cukes into stupid little bites instead of elegant spears like the rest of the vegetables, so I ended up doing the same to the beautiful heirloom tomato. French breakfast radishes, red bell pepper, cherokee purple tomato, plain ol' cukes and some shredded chicken breast on Romaine lettuce, dribbled with store-bought salad dressing and sprinkled with torn basil leaves and cilantro flowers.

In a few weeks is the pig roast, so at least there'll be that to look forward to.

Pulled chicken sandwich with apple slaw and sweet corn

2009-05-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes good barbecue doesn't reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it doesn't even require you to go outside. I shredded some leftover roasted chicken (it had been marinated in a garlicky gochujang barbecue sauce) and warmed it in some basic hickory barbecue sauce with a little apple juice and a splash of sweet balsamic vinegar and served it on a soft wheat bun with a slice of good ol' Tillamook cheddar and some sautéed onions. So simple and unassuming.

Okay, the slaw isn't literally made of apples, it just contains some apples. This is the way my mom always made it (she added raisins, too), and it's the way I like a basic cabbage slaw. A nice, creamy mayo-vinegar-sugar dressing, shredded cabbage and chopped apples. Yum.

Corn is totally not in season yet, not here anyway. But I can't get enough of the fresh ears showing up in the store. And lord knows I love a good compound butter, but sometimes a girl only needs a little butter, crunchy salt and pepper on her corn.

Serve with an ice-cold strawberry lemonade (mix fresh strawberry puree with Newman's Own virgin lemonade).

Grilled eggplant and heirloom tomato panini with chevre and kalamata tapenade

2009-05-17T13:21:00.001-07:00

Yay! Summery weekend weather started on Friday, and the lovely log of French goat cheese that's been languishing in my fridge got its day in the sun. The first good heirloom tomatoes starting showing up in stores, and I was powerless. An eggplant and a loaf of fresh sea salt-rosemary focaccia would complete the train of thought, and this would be dinner.

I marinated the sliced eggplant (salted and left in a sieve in the sink to drain the bitter juices, then squeezed of the last drops of leachate) in a basil-balsamic vinaigrette: olive and walnut oils and balsamic vinegar; Dijon mustard and a drib of mesquite honey; then a good, fat chiff of basil, some flaky Maldon and cracked pepper. I let it soak up every atom of flavor while Scott readied the grill and I worked on the ultimate condiment.

I'm kind of picky about my chèvres - so many of the affordable ones from Trader Joe's are just like a crumbly cream cheese and lack the depth of tang and grass and goat that distinguishes a good French cheese. Ile de France makes a really nice one that meets my exacting standards. I mashed it with some finely chopped basil, summer savory and a quickie kalamata tapenade (chopped olives with shallots, S&P and a little lemon zest and chile flake) to spread on the toasted focaccia.

We grilled the eggplant (gas flame with some hickory chips in a foil pouch - so much faster and less wasteful for the grilling needs of just two people) until roasty-soft with crispy edges, and then toasted the focaccia over the flame. I soaked the sliced tomatoes in the warm vinaigrette drippings from the eggplant, then assembled the sandwiches.

Just perfect with a lemony mixed spring green salad and sparkling grapefruit juice.

Don't Call it a Comeback

2009-05-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

Yay! I'm over the (first) hump and can eat real food again. I can cook it too, without being too tired or tummy-achy to stand or smell food aromas hitting my face. But I've had to start out slow. I've sort of lost my groove, a little.

On Tuesday I really wanted a pot pie-type comfy food, since it's been a typical cold, wet Oregon May. The slugs have annihilated my vegetable sprouts and even sawed halfway through my beloved dragon arum (Dracunculus vulgaris) - a devastating blow! I thought about making a pot "pie" inside a loaf of bread, and picked up some organic bread dough. Scott chimed in about making them single-servings like hum bao, and I heartily concurred. I whipped up a batch of chicken pot pie filling, taking care to reduce the gravy somewhat to avoid utter soggage. But oh, the calamity. They fell apart before I could even pinch them together. I threw the whole mess into a casserole and just baked it with the bread dough strewn lazily across the top.

Tragically, the bread part ended up completely leaden, and my gravy reduction yielded a dry interior to the mess. Sigh. I think my lower lip stuck out the entire time we ate.

The next day I was craving soup, and even wanted something spicy. I tossed around a few ideas (one of which I'll save for another time - it might be a Thing) and settled on a variation on the highly plastic minestrone. I made a hearty tortellini, sausage and cannelini minestra with a piquant arrabbiata broth simmered with onions, carrots, garlic, zucchini (sauteed first in the flavorful Italian sausage fat) and best of all, a thick Parmesan rind to enrich the whole affair. I tossed in some cheese tortellini (and a can of cannelinis at the end), et voilà. Top with a thick piece of garlicky bruscetta and finely grated Parmigiano Regiano, and I think I'm back.

This weekend: grill therapy.

Almost ready, I swear.

2009-05-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lag in blogging over the past few weeks. It's not even that I'm too busy this time, it's just that I've cooked exactly twice since the halibut post (grilled cheese with tomato soup and penne with jarred tomato sauce, though that hardly counts as cooking). I am nearly over my first trimester and should be getting back to normal very soon. God, I hope so.

People are always interested to know what a foodie craves when she is pregnant. "God, what does Heather crave," people ask Scott. Well not much, I'm sad to say, not yet anyway. Here is some of what I've eaten over the past few weeks:

1.5 pints of Haagen Daaz strawberry ice cream (last night with those chewy chocolate crinkle cookies - a winning combination)
about a pound of Jelly Bellys, opting alternately for Juicy Pear and Black Licorice (but gah, not together - gross - I'm not an animal)
a corn dog from a questionable gas station deli in BFE
a piece of supreme pizza from a questionable gas station deli in BFE
a cucumber and chili Mexican frozen popsicle ("paleta")
ham and cheese hot pocket (whole wheat! it's good for the baby)
Nong Shim Kim Chee bowl noodle spicy taste good job
2 cans of Spaghettios in cheese sauce
approximately 4 chili dogs (with the cheese and onions) and tater tots
tuna salad sandwich on a non-sick day
3 cantaloupes, salted, each eaten entirely in one sitting
5 pints of strawberries, eaten over the sink
4 mangoes, salt and peppered
10 or 20 apples, sometimes with salt, sometimes with cheese
a half a giant tub of Carnation Instant Breakfast (chocolate) with 1% milk - usually the first thing in my stomach in the morning
three bowls of pho
a half a Hawaiian-style pizza with green peppers
three servings of pasta with red sauce (nothing fancy)
iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing (a healthy "salad"!)
a giant bowl of radishes with salt
Ethiopian food (the lentils were the craving, and sticking with vegetarian was a really good choice for me)
2 breakfast burritos
3 of those mini boxes of cereal from the variety pack: Corn Pops, Rice Krispies and Crispix (I foolishly let Scott have the Fruit Loops)
a movie-size box of Hot Tamales
a movie-size box of Junior Mints
approximately 5000 Cliff Bars (while in the field)
a 6" veggie sub with extra pepperoncini
10 bottles of Reed's ginger beer

I guess that's enough confession. Try not to judge me. Progesterone's a helluva drug.

Halibut with tomato-curry cream (Machhli Tamatar)

2009-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

It always pleases me when I fiddle around with ingredients and find out that it's already a Thing. The curried fish with tomatoes and creamy sauce I was thinking about turned out to be the Indian dish machhli tamatar, fancy that. I've been craving Indian spices - anise, cinnamon, fenugreek, ginger - all traditionally used medicinally for stimulating the appetite and aiding digestion. Plus, I'd picked up some amazing young ginger and fresh turmeric at the Asian grocery over the weekend, and was eager to use it. The halibut at New Seasons looked good, and I had a half pint of cherry tomatoes left in the coffers.

I carved out a curry paste from fresh curry leaves (in the freezer), a garlic clove, grated ginger and turmeric, mustard and fenugreek seeds, dhana jeera (a ground cumin and coriander blend), a little of my homemade seven-spice and a squirt of lemon juice (pound the shit out of it in the mortar and pestle until a paste forms). I smeared this into salted and peppered halibut fillets and let it marinate for a bit while I got the rice cooking.

I melted some butter and olive oil (instead of ghee) in a hot pan and tossed in sliced onions and the cherry tomatoes (halved). They hissed and sputtered for a bit, then in went the fish. After I flipped the fish (5 minutes or so) I added the tub's last couple of tablespoons of crème fraîche. I think it's more traditional to use yogurt and cream, but I didn't have those and besides, crème fraîche is just another cultured cream product and this worked really well. Top the fish with micro-cilantro from the garden.

I also whipped up a quick chutney of mango, red chili and golden raisins (add a pinch of garam masala or seven-spice, plus a drib of lemon juice and honey) and this was refreshing with some warm naan.

Serve with peppermint sweet tea and basmati rice.

Strawberry Shortstack

2009-04-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

I can't seem to get enough strawberries these days. I cruised through 4 lbs of them in about a week, just eating them raw (stemmed and halved, with my fingers), and then had to pick up another flat of them over the weekend. It's insidious. I never was a real big fruit eater until recently. I guess I always felt like fruit was a little too on-the-nose. "Oh, you're so sweet and delicious, fruit." It's like, we get it. I usually opted instead for vegetables, which are under-appreciated and therefore have way more street cred.

Berries are great, though (no doy). They're kind of tart, loaded with Vitamin C and other antioxidants, and are low in calories. And they make an excellent frou-frou breakfast of strawberry shortcake. In pancake form.

I whipped up a batch of basic buttermilk pancakes, adding a scant tablespoon of crème fraîche for a bit of twang (add a little extra sugar to the batter to offset this). I made a quick strawberry compote by stemming and halving about 2 cups of strawberries and simmering them in about a half cup of sugar, a tablespoon of butter and 3 tablespoons of kirschwasser.

Top with fresh vanilla whipped cream (do this yourself - it's worth it), and since you aren't drinking mimosas these days have a nice bubbly apple cider with a splash of mango nectar (float a strawberry in there for show).

Frito Pie

2009-04-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

My southern friends know this little beaut from their moms, aunts and grandmas, from Baptist church lady potlucks, from friends' house dinners. This, my Yankee friends, is Frito pie.

It is exactly as complicated as it sounds - chili on Fritos. Other accoutrements are optional. I made my own chili by browning some ground turkey with onions and garlic, added copious cumin, chili powder and paprika, then tossed in a can of chili beans (the kind that come in a tomato-based sauce). Layer a casserole (preferably the one your grandma purchased in the 70s with Green Stamps, then bequeathed to you upon her passing) with Fritos, then pour the chili over, add a little grated cheese, more Fritos, more cheese. Into a hot oven until the cheese melts. Total phone-in.

Since I wanted extra crunch (two kinds of crunch always being better than one), I spooned my Frito pie over some iceberg lettuce and topped it with sour cream and a julienne of radishes and those spicy carrots from the jar of jalapeños en escabeche. This way you've got the whole city mouse/country mouse thing, all in one bowl.

Rigatoni Bolognese with olives and chiles

2009-04-10T08:39:00.001-07:00

It's been so hard to muster the energy or interest to cook, what with fatigue and nausea running the show. Pasta with red sauce seems to be accepted without a hitch, and requires nearly no effort, particularly when I have one last, treasured jar of homemade Bolognese from the homegrown heirloom tomatoes of last summer, canned with homeground beef chuck and fresh herbs. This last jar of sunshine was the end of an era.

This bastard lovechild between puttanesca ("the whore's") and Bolognese came from my need to taste red sauce with a little bit of saline fattiness of olives and the protein punch of beef. Chile flake (Korean, for flavor in addition to moderate heat) kicked it to a high hum.

Lots of grated parmesan and crusty bread to swab out the last smear of sauce is a no-brainer.

Orecchiette with pancetta, asparagus, peas and lemon balm

2009-04-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

It's so good to be back in my kitchen, I can't even tell you. After the nettle dinner (those 24 things are so much work!) I was in the dry, dusty field for a week (botanical surveys in the western Central Valley, California), and spent the weekend alternately recovering on the couch with my feet up and the remote control ruthlessly cutting commercials from Tivo'ed programs, or playing Rune Factory Frontier, or turning and seeding my warming vegetable beds. Even though it was inspirationally gorgeous out, I didn't really feel like cooking. Not one whit.

The funny thing about being pregnant is that every two hours you are starving. Your blood sugar drops so fast that you simultaneously want to puke and faint. But as famished as I feel, when I finally get around to getting some food in front of me, I can only muster a few bites before I am completely stuffed. Baffled then, am I, that I am gaining weight so quickly. I've been putting on almost a pound a week since I found out. It's going straight to my belly, upper arms and tits, which are rapidly transforming into jugs (I can't stop staring at them, which is probably why I can see them growing before my very eyes).

But holy shit, this is so not about me. This is about the simple flavors of springtime, about the vernal Holy Trinity (peas, asparagus and ham), about meals that are free of fetter and hamper. In the time it takes to boil water and cook pasta you can have, in your very mouth, a perfect balance of crunchy, sweet, virid, salty, fatty, bright and creamy. Yes, all in one bite.

While you're waiting for water to boil, string about a half pound of peas and peel the stems of a small bunch of asparagus. Slice these coarsely on the bias into bite-sized chunks. Mince a shallot and three cloves of garlic finely. Chop about a quarter pound of pancetta. Your water is nigh at a boil, so add a fat pinch of kosher salt and dump in nearly an entire pound of orecchiette (leave about a cup in the bag for another time, this'll still be enough for leftovers).

While the pasta is cooking, render the pancetta in a drizzle of olive oil, and add the shallot and garlic. When the pancetta starts to go crisp and the shallots begin to turn golden, add the peas and asparagus and cook over medium or so, lazily stirring things about with a wooden spoon because it feels so good to hold that spoon (the one with burn marks up the handle from setting it against a hot pan too long, too many times). Salt and pepper things a bit for good measure, and while you're at it, go ahead and scrape in some lemon zest. Have a bright idea to go pick some lemon balm, since the sunny weather has started it aflush near the little pond out back. Chiffonade that lemon balm and pick some thyme off the tender stems.

Drain the pasta and dump the vegetables and pancetta in, swabbing out the bacon grease with a spoonful of pasta. Since it still could use a little something, why not stir in a knob of good cultured butter and maybe a scant tablespoon of crème fraîche. Stir in the sliced lemon balm and picked thyme, and grate in some grainy Parmesan.

Be so happy that you can eat more than a few bites because this is exactly, exactly what you wanted.

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Out of This Nettle, We Grasp This Dinner

2009-03-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

Spring has officially sprung, and I was so tickled to take my first little stroll down to the forested wetlands at the nearby Reed College campus during an early break in the vernal rains. This time of year is my chance to shake the last of the doldrums of the wan winter pallor, to ditch some of the root vegetable stodge and to taste the first bosky flush of the equinox.

I was delighted, then, that my proposal to prepare a nettle-based dinner was sponsored by Foodbuzz. Having spontaneously submitted my idea as a sudden burst of inspiration, I'm thrilled that our friends at Foodbuzz wanted to help me share it with the food blogging community for the March 24, 24, 24 event.

(from left) Me, Carolyn and Greta

Although I am a botanist by training (and the trade pays the bills), I take so much pleasure in my city life when I'm off the clock. I love going out to fancy dinners with Scott, going out for a movie or to see a favorite band. But I especially love putting on some hot pink lipstick, a skirt and heels and hitting the bars with my similarly city-loving girlfriends. My girls like good food, but don't necessarily love the idea of grubbing around in the swamp to pick their ingredients.

Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) grow in swampy places and riparian corridors along streams throughout North America, Europe, Asia and northern Africa. They resemble a mint, though they're in their own botanical family (the Urticaceae). They're easily identified by their pairs of deltoid (slightly triangular), dentate leaves (opposite-decussate in orientation) with fine spines covering the stems and leaves. In the Pacific Northwest, March is when they first poke their little heads out of the alder and cottonwood duff in search of spring's first warming sun. This time of year, too, is when they are at their most tender and nutritious. Nettles are an excellent source of protein, iron and vitamins C and A.

True to their moniker, they do pack a potent sting, delivered mercilessly by the fine, silicate trichomes which act as tiny syringes. The sting comes from the combination of histamine, serotonin and formic acid (similar to the venom injected by stinging and biting formicine ants). The pain is a sharp, tingling sting, and on my skin, leaves small white bumps with reddish swelling. To avoid this, always wear gloves when picking, use a salad spinner and tongs to wash, then blanch the greens in salted water to neutralize the venom before eating.

Rather than haphazardly add nettles to ordinary foods to bolster their nutritional content, I really wanted to showcase the nettles as a primary flavor in a variety of dishes. I put together a menu that would spotlight the stinging nettle in myriad ways:

nässelsoppa (Scandinavian nettle soup) with dill and chive crème fraîche
mixed greens with Granny Smith apples, crumbled smoked fontina and honey-nettle vinaigrette
lamb steak and pan-roasted baby potatoes with nettle pesto
nettle gratin with Pecorino and nutmeg cream

While I prepped dinner, we enjoyed a light cocktail that I created and named the Caddisfly Nymph (after the little water bug upon which salmon and trout feed, and an indicator of healthy streams): 6 oz of Prosecco with a half ounce of elderflower syrup (sold as Flädersaft at Ikea) and a tiny splash of Peychaud bitters (for pinkness and herbal twang). It's flora and girlishness in a glass.

Nässelsoppa is a traditional Scandinavian nettle soup, though I tweaked it slightly by adding cream to the freshly-made chicken stock for richness and body. I sauteed onions and garlic in cultured butter until softened and translucent, added the nettles and chicken stock and simmered until tender (about 15 minutes). I added a glug of heavy cream and some chopped fresh dill, ran the immersion blender through it until smooth, and then returned it to the stove until warmed through. Salt and pepper to taste, then top with crème fraîche mixed with minced chives.

The salad followed the standard formula: mixed greens + fruit+ cheese (tart Granny Smith apples and crumbled smoked fontina from Willamette Valley Cheese Company). The vinaigrette was a loose pistou of nettles, honey, walnut oil, balsamic and sherry vinegars, minced shallot and Dijon mustard. A crunch of salt and pepper finished the salad.

The main was a grilled lamb leg steak (my favorite cut - less commitment than a whole leg and a cinch to cook) and pan-roasted baby Yukon golds smeared liberally with a thick pesto of nettles, garlic, olive oil, pumpkin seeds and the last nub of Manchego (the nuttiness of which nicely complements the smoky earthiness of the nettles).

The gratin was made by layering the blanched nettles into a buttered casserole, then pouring on some hot cream and milk, a generous scratching of fresh nutmeg and then a thick layer of Pecorino Romano. I covered the crock loosely with aluminum foil for the first 45 minutes then browned, uncovered, for the final 20 or so minutes. Rich, creamy, nutty - it was perfect with the meat and potatoes and will be delicious served over pasta as a leftovers lunch.

I was initially going to make a dessert (not using nettles - this isn't Iron Chef for fuck's sake), but Greta had cardamom molten chocolate cakes with ginger-rum ice cream waiting for us at her place, and who can really argue with that? No one, that's who.

I hope you live near some wet woods or a soft streambank. If you don't, then maybe you'll be inspired to take a drive to the country for a free taste of fecundity and nature's produce section. Don't be afraid to get your feet wet, and you might find yourself a tasty dinner.

Mushroom-Cheddar Patty Melt

2009-03-26T08:05:00.001-07:00

I know, I know. I take off for a week, and this is all I got to show for it (especially since the last post was a total cop-out, even though I spent hours constructing that chocolatey cave from 2lbs of chocolate truffles)? Don't worry, things will get exciting again real soon, I promise. I'll be in the field off and on every week for a few weeks, and I'm going to try earnestly to find little roadside gems for you during my travels. Until then, I make my own diner food.

Pardon my photos, I'm trying to learn to properly use this camera instead of just clicking it over to the macro setting and letting it auto-focus. Adjusting the f-stop is an embuggerance, but will be worth it once I get it right! It's a bumpy road to perfect mastery, but I'm trying to enjoy the ride.

Behold, the illustrious patty melt. A burger, for all intents and purposes, though open-faced. This one came on a thick slab of French batard (the King of Breads) with chopped green tomato pickle relish, mayo, hot mustard, a 1/3 lb patty of ground chuck and pork, grilled mushrooms and onions, and gooey, melted cheddar (hence, patty "melt").

If you're feeling conflicted about the fat and cholesterol (ha!), serve with lightly sautéed snap peas and a curry pickled okra spear. An ice-cold ginger beer wouldn't hurt, either.

Easter Candy

2009-03-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

"Who dares approach my chocolatey cave?"

"NOOOO!!"

Get your Easter candy now, on sale at See's!

Sweet potato salad with green tomato pickle relish

2009-03-16T22:06:00.000-07:00

This is supposed to be about the sweet potato salad, but I really want to talk about the sandwich. Is it even okay to blog about a sandwich when I didn't bake the bread or cure my own charcuterie? Is that allowed?

We paid a visit to the Berlin Inn the other night, to grab an early dinner and a sturdy mug of chest hair-inducing, dark German beer (a bock is my favorite way to drink bread). We were truly raring for it, but then decided to go ahead and stop into Edelweiss for some things while we were in the neighborhood. I've been having exigent (nigh monthly) cravings for the odd meat product (I literally stared at the olive loaf for ten minutes before talking myself out of it). My Grandma Laverne used to serve me olive loaf or Braunschweiger and mayo (or sometimes the Fleishman's/Hellman's sandwich spread) on white bread when I was a small child, and I still get the congenital jones for this stuff.

We came home that night with a 1/4 lb. each of Jagdwurst (a spicy beef and pork sausage that resembles a firm liverwurst with larger meat bits) and Sülze (a vinegary/mustard seed-y headcheese made with beef tongue). We got a half pound of cooked beef salami too (Scott isn't as "German" as I am for the cured meats). Tonight, I really just wanted a sandwich for dinner. I toasted some Bavarian rye and smeared it with homemade sandwich spread (mayo mixed with minced green tomato/shallot pickle), some spicy brown mustard, greenleaf lettuce, a few slices of sharp cheddar and layers of cured meats.

The potato salad was really a basic thing: cubed, steamed (not boiled) sweet potato, minced celery, minced red bell pepper and onion (sauteed lightly with some minced bacon so it wouldn't overpower), chopped green tomato pickle, mayo, mustard, salt and pepper and a little chopped parsley. The sweet potato didn't cloy; rather, it stood up nicely to the spanky pickle and fatty bacon/mayo dressing.

Delightful with potato chips and a cold Weltenburger Kloster Asam Bock (it's awesome).

Gratin Dauphinois

2009-03-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Gratin Dauphinois is a basic thing. So basic, in fact, that I can't imagine any reason why people would eat the boxed shit. The garbage dehydrated crap isn't even cheaper. Okay, I'll admit that it is marginally easier to open a box and a couple bags, but you end up having to boil water and milk to pour over the dehydrated potatoes anyway, when you could just slice a couple of real potatoes on your mandoline (or in the processor), dump them in a glass bowl and microwave them in the milk. Then all you do is dump the whole lot into a buttered casserole with a slice garlic clove, top it with cheese, and whack it into the oven for an hour. Easy peasy.

I used 50-50 milk and half & half (so I guess it was 75% milk, and 25% cream), a few pinches of salt and some pepper, and a few scratches of nutmeg. I topped it with the last of the Madrigal cheese and tented some foil over the whole pan to keep the cheese from browning too early.

Serve with a medium-rare ribeye (grilled with only crunchy salt and cracked pepper) and a bitchy red (I like 2006 Three Winds Syrah these days - a little brash and ign'unt, but she calms down if you give her some space. Plus, the label looks like a Kurosawa movie poster).

Cardamom-scented Dover sole with orange and braised fennel

2009-03-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I can make this look any prettier. It's a lot of monochrome visually, but the flavors were anything but one-note. I half-filled an olive-oiled baking dish with shaved fennel, layered on some milky-fleshed Dover sole filets (they smelled only of the Pacific and made me long for a gray day at the Oregon coast) the zest of an heirloom navel orange and some lightly crushed cardamom pods. Crunchy sea salt and black pepper, top with a protective layer of fennel fronds and into a hot oven. It's done when the translucent fish goes porcelain-opaque.

Serve with a willowy Gewürztraminer and an ort of wit so obviously forced that it may as well be salami.

Hey, so I guess I feel like I've been doing a half-assed job at the blogging these days, and it 75% because I just don't give a shit about food or cooking right now. I could probably eat a burrito or a bowl of noodles from a sketchy Chinese joint alternately and be perfectly happy. I guess part of it is shaking off the last bit of winter (unpredictable weather is causing a bit of learned helplessness) and some of it is the hassle of hobbling around in an orthopedic boot, but I just feel creatively tapped out.

How ironic, then, that I've been getting requests from marketers wanting me to blog about their product that they're delighted to send me for free (chocolates? cheeses? sure, I'll bite), and I've even been contacted a couple times to do a bit of real writing. The validation feels great, but unwarranted. When I feel the most proud of what I do, I feel my talents are being squandered and I'm unappreciated. When I blog through my self-loathing about a fucking grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and a fried egg, my traffic goes through the roof (it's like the fucking Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model from Ecology 101). So I'm faced with an actual conundrum: do I whore myself to the traffic (and the sweet, sweet cash that it funnels into my PayPal account, thank you Foodbuzz), knowing that the people clearly want This Is Why You're Fat SFW pornography? Or do I keep challenging myself creatively, accept that people's eyes will glaze over if they can't immediately relate, and resign myself to obscurity?

These questions don't need your answers. I know the answer: you can't force creativity and bacon fucking tastes good.

Tallarines con guasanas y carnitas

2009-03-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Don't be afraid - it's just pasta with fresh chickpeas and shredded pork. I threw in some calabacitas (a small, rounded zuke relative), too, just 'cuz. I also found out that there is a Spanish word for pasta, and decided to use it instead of "spaghetti" to make my meal appear to be more cogent than fusion.

Imagine my delight at finding fresh chickpeas at Winco foods. I never shop there, but was helping a friend bargain-shop and I was actually really surprised at their variety of Latin produce and wealth of bulk bins (though I still think Cash & Carry has better meat deals, if you don't mind buying in 10lb increments). Normally steamed and shelled directly into the mouth (like so much edamame), guasanas are an interesting Mexican vegetable. I don't know of any other legumes consumed as a fresh vegetable in Latin America, come to think of it. The lanuginous pods bear one seed, though the occasional twin is present. I'd never seen them before, and brought home a bag of them to try.

I sautéed the shelled chickpeas with minced onion and garlic, some minced red chili and sliced calabacitas. I added generous pinches of fresh-ground cumin, achiote and Mexican oregano, salt and pepper. Then I shredded the leftover pork steaks from last week (I made this dinner last week, too, but am just getting to it), added a few unctuous spoonfuls of the tomato-caramelized onion gravy (similarly leftover) and simmered until the shreds of pork buckled under their own weight. I ladled the mixture over cooked spaghetti, and sprinkled on some crumbled cotija and torn cilantro. The spicy, silky carnitas married well with the nutty, lightly crunchy guasanas and the salty, dry cotija and verdant cilantro brightened the whole plate up nicely.

Serve with a spanky Pinot Noir and a hot date with a stationary bike.*

*I finally made a trip to the gym after more than a month, with a taped-up broken toe and a permission slip from the orthopedic surgeon. The bike is okay as long as I keep my foot straight, and so I kicked back and enjoyed a magazine while I did the exercise of the lazy. I will, however, feel the upper body strength-training tomorrow.

Bacon-Grilled Cheese Egg-in-the-Hole

2009-03-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

Less may be more, but so is more. I thought it would be a great idea to make a egg-in-the-hole for breakfast awhile ago, but instead of the usual toast with an egg fried into the middle of it, why not use a grilled cheese sammich? With bacon in it? Why the fuck not.

I made a coupla grilled cheese sandwiches (with Provolone and crispy bacon), punched a hole in the center and cracked an egg into it. I nibbled the cookie-cutter mini-sammies while I nervously paced back and forth, worrying that I'd over-toast the sandwich waiting for the egg to cook, then flipped it gingerly. Perfection. Though delicious, next time, I'll add a little something to brighten it up - tomato slices? Slivers of sweet onion?

Serve with The Believer and a fiery Bloody Mary.

(Note: thank you to this sassy bitch who corrected my original title, a misuse of toad-in-the-hole. Toad-in-the-hole is bangers in Yorkshire pudding, not an egg in toast. It was cool of her to call me out - it's how I learn!)

Chicken Pot Pie

2009-03-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Hey, I know I can't bake. I hate making pastry dough, and pie crust, and all that. Too much work. But one I thing I can do right is make fun of myself. I decided it would be absolutely hilarious if I used the scraps of dough to form a penis shooting a projectile onto the top of the pie, a la the foursquare folded paper fortune teller in Eastbound and Down the other night.

A delicious chicken pot pie with potatoes, carrots, celery, peas and corn and some dried "gourmet" mushrooms for good measure, in a savory chicken gravy, baked in a buttery, flaky pastry.

Suck on it.

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Celebrating Black History Month - African Contributions to American Cuisine

2009-03-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

February is Black History Month. Last year, to celebrate, I introduced myself to blogger Courtney Nzeribe from Coco Cooks and interviewed her about her cultural identity, her cooking style and her favorite childhood foods. This year, I chatted a bit with my buddy Donald Orphanidys from Mr. Orph's Kitchen on how being black has influenced his culinary identity (not much), where he learned to love food (his Grandma's house), and how food in Philly differs from food in the South (wildly). His experience growing up on "helpers" (of the hamburger and tuna varieties) and gub'ment cheese are familiar to me, as are the Southern inflections to his cooking that stem from his time spent stationed (and later living) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Like me, Don finds inspiration in many places, and this year, to reflect on the contributions black people have made to American culture, I was inspired to create a celebratory meal, with a soundtrack. And I'm so pleased that our friends at Foodbuzz wanted to support my celebration by accepting my proposal for their February 24, 24, 24 event.

As they have with music, black people have informed the American culinary vernacular by bringing elements and ingredients from their homeland in Africa to the genesis of their tumultuous history in North America. Many ingredients heavily associated with the South - black-eyed peas, watermelon, greens, sweet potatoes, okra and peanuts - were brought directly to the US by slaves. As a German-American, my perspective on African-American culture and cuisine is based almost solely on the experiences of other people, and over the past few months I’ve begun to explore the African roots of some of my favorite foods. I wanted to share my newly-gained insights with some old friends. The menu I created is an attempt at honoring these contributions:

Green Tomato and Watermelon Pickles
Black-eyed Pea and Corn Fritters with Sweet Pepper Chutney
Duck and Shrimp Gumbo “Ya-Ya” with Okra
“Smothered” Pork Chops with Caramelized Onions and Tomato Gravy
Swiss Chard with Braised Pork Hock
Spicy Sweet Potato Fries
Cornbread
Hominy Grits Pudding with Bananas Foster and Peanut Praline

The pickles were fast fridge pickles, in a sharp brine of white and sherry vinegars, shallot, salt and sugar. The watermelon rinds took sweet spices like star anise and fennel seed, while the tomatoes got a little hot chili and coriander. Both were bright and acidic, cutting through the rich, fatty meal and cleansing the palate. Mike (writer and occasional artist of film review blog and occasional webcomic Culture Pulp) kept grazing on them after the meal, plucking juicy spears from the chilly jars, happily crunching and regaling us with stories of Ravioli Day.

The fritters, based on the west African succotash adalu, were simple and delicious: black-eyed peas (also called cowpeas), corn, a couple eggs, S&P and a pinch of sugar, and a dusting of flour to stick the batter together. Fried in a little oil until browned, they were perfect with the sweet pepper chutney (minced yellow and red bell peppers and a cayenne chili slow-sautéed with onions and a pinch of my seven spice, a splash of balsamic vinegar and a little salt and sugar). The Swiss chard was braised in a splash of red onion vinegar (homemade from red onion pickle) with a pork hock, cooked until the greens were tender.

The gumbo is worth a post on its own. Being roux-based, mine is Cajun. I made a roux from duck fat and flour, cooked for two hours until rich caramel-brown and fragrant. I scored the skins on four duck legs and pan-fried skin-side down until the fat was rendered out, then flipped them and roasted them in the oven until tender. Meanwhile, I removed the heads and shells from two pounds of spot prawns and got some stock started. When the duck legs were done, I pulled out the bones, cracked them up and tossed them into the pot of vermilion stock. The next day, I started the gumbo by sautéing the Holy Trinity until glossy, then adding bay leaves, the roux and the stock (stirring to dissolve the roux), a can of chopped tomatoes, lots of chopped garlic and thyme, cayenne and S&P. I tossed in the shredded duck meat and let the whole thing cook low and slow for a couple hours until the duck was nowt but tender, filamentous hunks. When we were all ready to eat, I added the prawns and okra to cook for five minutes. Technically, gumbo yaya doesn't have okra, but I like okra and wanted to enrich the dish with an egg. I poached the eggs in the hot gumbo broth until the whites were set. David (the mastermind behind BadAzz MoFo and writer/director of such cinematic classics as Black Santa's Revenge) was reluctant to try the gumbo - being unfamiliar with some Southern ingredients, he mistook the okra for jalapeños and was getting heartburn just looking at it. It didn't take much convincing to get him to taste it once the confusion had been cleared.

The pork chops (from our quarter hog) were slow-braised in chicken stock amended with crushed tomatoes, caramelized onions and ginger, with a few shots of Maggi sauce and a few spoonfuls of my homemade Berbere spice mix. They braised for about three hours until the meat was falling from the bone.

Awhile back I made the dish kelewele, a spicy fried plantain from Ghana. This time I adapted it to a sweet potato fry, and it definitely translated well. Chopped ginger and Berbere spice, salt and pepper and a massage in some oil, then into the oven until crisped on the edges. This afforded me time to bake some cornbread (baked in cast iron, greased in bacon fat). Tanya (my beautiful, pregnant Scandinavian princess from Madison, WI and the joyful wellness diva behind Recess and frequent diner at Casa de Voodoo and Sauce) had a southern grandpa and was eager to expose her spawn to some of his/her culinary roots. I was happy to oblige.

The dessert was a new creation, fudged on the fly. My friend Eric (a doughy Jewish kid from Maryland) told me about grits pudding he'd had once, and I wanted to figure out what that should taste like, and how to make it. I started by making basic grits, whisking stone-ground cornmeal into simmering cream (to which I'd added sugar and homemade bourbon vanilla). When it had set up moderately well, I added two whisked eggs (tempered to avoid an omelet) and spooned it into a buttered souffle dish. I baked this for awhile, covered, at 350, until the edges were set up and slightly browned. I spooned it into little serving dishes and topped it with sliced bananas (browned in a hot pan with butter and brown sugar, flambeed with bourbon), vanilla whipped cream and some crushed peanut praline. I guess it worked pretty well, but next time I'll add more eggs to and bake it in a shallower pan to get more of a spoonbread consistency.

I'm having a hard time concluding this post. I've been away awhile on a conference and a broken toe, and two days of cooking is exhausting. So I hope you enjoy this special food-based mixtape I made for you in lieu of a proper closer. It consists of R&B and jazz greats of the 1940s and 50s, and like with food, proves that pretty much everything good about America is because of black people.

Fideos in saffron-pimentón broth with mussels and linguiça

2009-02-20T08:33:00.000-08:00

This is a variation on a dish I made awhile back, and though breaking up capellini to make a version of fideos seems more legit, I think the clams were a better addition than mussels. The problem with mussels (always) is that their thin shells buckle under the weight of their neighbors, and a good handful seem to be broken right out of the bag (this time, the nice fella at New Seasons even inspected each handful, but missed 6 or 7 that had little hairline cracks). Buttery littlenecks are just tougher. Oh well.

I sliced up the linguiça and some onions and browned them up in a little olive oil with some minced garlic. I threw in the broken capellini-as-fideos and stirred them around the savory, orange oil as one would for a risotto, then added about a cup of white wine, a crumbly pinch of saffron threads and a fingertip-sized bump of pimentón, a few pinches of kosher salt and some cracks of pepper. Dumped in the last jar of my home-canned Dr. Wyches Yellow orange heirloom toms and a rinse-out jarful of water, then covered and simmered for about 15 minutes. When the fideos were al dente, I tossed in the scrubbed and de-bearded mussels and reapplied the lid. Sprinkle copious chopped parsley and break open some baguette for soppage.

Serve with tiny tumblersful of cheap Tempranillo and the old tango records that you got for fifty cents at a yard sale years ago, yet are just now listening to for the first time.

Lychee red curry

2009-02-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

This is my spin on one of my favorite Thai dishes, a classic pineapple red curry. Not that it needed spinning, I just had some canned lychee, but no pineapple. The bromeliaceous tang of the pineapple was missing a little (and no amount of lime could mitigate that), but the slightly savory, sweet pop of juicy orbs was really perfect in its own right. My curiosity was rewarded.

I've been sitting on this for a few days, on the fence about whether or not to even post it. I thought about revisiting it in the summer, when I could use fresh lychee and get glare-free photos, when I'd make time to make fresh curry paste from scratch instead of scooping it from a tub.

I remember a time when to me, this was really authentic Thai cooking. Knowing where to buy Mae Ploy, at one time, meant I was braver than the rest of my friends. It required an adventure into an Asian market that smelled of dried fish, incense and moth balls, and bringing home a tub of red or green curry was like sneaking a secret weapon into my kitchen. My friends would ooh and aah at how much my curry tasted like the "real" stuff at the restaurants.

Nowadays, an adventure into an Asian market means I come home with armloads of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal rhizomes and chiles, jars of shrimp paste and discs of palm sugar and tamarind. These are the bases from which I construct my nowadays curries, and for me, it was a major phone-in to make dinner from a tub (even though I'm pretty sure that's what the restaurants use).

But it was so tasty.

Meatball sandwich with sautéed veggies and provolone

2009-02-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

Did everyone have a nice Valentine's Day? That's good, me too. I haven't been around that much lately on account of not giving a shit about blogging, but I did make some nice meatball sammiches with sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms last night.

I made the meatballs by mixing a pound of ground beef (I got the less-lean kind but should probably start paying better attention to that stuff); a quarter of an onion and two cloves of garlic (both minced); a few fat pinches of dried oregano and thyme, salt and pepper, a few squirts of Worcestershire sauce, a slightly-beaten egg and a handful of breadcrumbs (I make my own but you can use panko or the shit in a can if you want). Mix until just combined. Using the same technique as for the Swedish meatballs, just scoop, scoop, scoop with your little 1/8 cup-sized ice cream scoop until you have 15 perfect little meatballs on your Silpat. Bake for 15 minutes at 425, until golden.

Whilst the meatballs are roasting (and five minutes later, you added some parbaked pan au levain loaves to the oven), warm up some of the tomato sauce you canned last summer, but add more garlic and herbs, and some grated parm for good measure. Simmer until warmed through. In another pan, sauté some sliced onions, sweet peppers and mushrooms in a little olive oil.

Pull the meatballs from the oven and roll them around in the warm sauce to coat. Load the meatballs, sautéed veg and extra sauce onto the bread, then top with a couple slices of provolone. Slide the whole thing back under the broiler for a minute or two to get the cheese melty and browned.

Serve with a green salad and Nathan Petrelli's self-righteousness.

Chicken enchilada soup and kabocha squash taquitos

2009-02-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

I pulled some leftover soup from the freezer the other day, to make room for a tub of ice cream, and got around to heating it up for dinner. You can scarcely contain your excitement, right? Well sit tight, pretties, it actually gets interesting.

The soup was some of my spicy chicken-chile soup, or what I like to call sopa del fuego (aka "soup of fire", or Napalm in a Bowl). Holy shit, you know what? When I was pulling up that link just now and saw the recipe and photos of that Napalm in a Bowl post from January 2008, I came to the realization that the soup we ate tonight was literally the same soup from 13 months ago. I need clean out my freezer more often.

It was still good though! And slightly improved. Here's how, in a winding tangent: I was craving a crunchety taquito-type thing, had some leftover roasted kabocha that needed eating, and figured hey, squash - properly spiced and seasoned with cumin, achiote, Mexican oregano (actually a verbena) and diced chipotle* en adobo and onion - would be an excellent taquito filler. I hadn't, however, planned for the epic fail of rolling stiff corn tortillas without proper steaming, and ended up with several cracked and torn tortillas which were summarily tossed into the soup. Hence, enchilada soup. Besides, the broth is pure enchilada sauce. Top it with a dainty quenelle of crème fraîche (the last of it, I swear) and torn cilantro.

The rest of the tortillas were fail-free after microwaving them in a bowl (with another on top as a dome lid) with a sprinkle of water to hydrate. Scott helpfully suggested rolling them like streudel, so I gave the tortillas a complete smear of the squash mixture before rolling them up like cigarillos. Spritzed with some cooking spray (I only use the pure canola oil version that Trader Joe's makes) and baked until toasty in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Rotating halfway helps address the hotspot in my oven and ensure even browning. Next time I'll totally add black beans and sweet corn to make them more nutritionally complete, then someone will comment that they look like Southwest Eggrolls from Chili's and I will get hell of Google traffic from assholes who want to recipes to cook garbage chain restaurant food at home (you think I'm kidding? More than 10% of all of my traffic comes from people Googling the Olive Garden's chicken gnocchi soup.)

Serve with a lime margerita (on the rocks) and Pepto Bismol (straight up).

*I'm taking this opportunity to spank everyone who insists on spelling and (pronouncing) it "chipolte". Let's get it right, people. Say it with me: chee-pote-lay. Chipotle. And remember, when in doubt, Google is your friend.

Strozzapreti with curry-kabocha cream and paneer

2009-02-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

...or, I ain't mad at a little fusion once in awhile, did I ever claim to be made of stone?

This sounds so wrong. I'd probably have been a little less off-base just putting this on basmati rice, in retrospect, but I wanted the toothiness of pasta with a squashy-curried cream sauce and squeaky paneer (purchased as a fool's substitute for cheese curds for my Super Bowl poutine). Kinda like north Indian mac and chee, I guess. I dunno. It's cold out n'shit.

I initially planned to leave the roasted kabocha in chunks, but it disintegrated upon a fingertip's touch and I ended up folding it into the creamy Béchamel instead. I added some hot curry powder, a scant pinch of my Seven Spice™ and some dhana jeera (a blend of coriander and cumin seed). Lots of fresh grated ginger and a pinch of crushed fennel seed, then I folded in some butter and crème fraîche to finish with extra dairy twang. Top with another googe of crème fraîche and some chopped cilantro (and S&P to taste), and it's like your Indian mom made you her best attempt at trashy American comfort food.

Serve with warm garlic naan and Madlib the Beat Konducta.

Yaki gyoza

2009-02-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to make gyoza with some of the ground pork from the quarter hog we bought, but having never made them before, had to thumb through my (only) two Japanese cookbooks for help. One of my books is just a pretty sushi book, but my favorite Japanese cookbook (maybe one of my favorite cookbooks, period) is the Japanese Country Cookbook by Russ Rudzinski. Funny, I never noticed a gaijin wrote that book until just now when I cited it, but it's really moot because these are authentic home recipes. Unfortunately, there's no recipe for gyoza, so I decided to shoot from the hip (my always wont).

Scott and I had gyoza in Tokyo that were incredible (Hakata hitokuti gyoza, a specialty of the Fukuoka Prefecture), and though I knew I'd never recreate the perfectly crusted sheet of potstickers, I figure the worst I'd end up with would be cooked pork meatballs. I could live with that. I got started.

I mixed together the ground pork, a chiff of napa cabbage, some finely sliced scallion, (too much) minced garlic and some grated ginger and a little finely-minced shiitake. I added a splash each of tamari, Chinese black vinegar, sake, sesame oil and mirin, and some pinches of salt.

I just sort of went on instinct as to how to actually make the gyoza, but it worked okay. My Asian friends are probably squeamish at the lack of proper folds - I'm sure their grandmas' nimble fingers get fifty creases along the top edge - but I think I did okay for a gaijin on her first try. I just took the gyoza wrapper, added a spoonful of filling, wetted one edge with a fingertip of water, and then pressed and creased until it was sealed. I steamed them in my bamboo steamer for about ten minutes (next time I will line with parchment to avoid the sticking) until they looked soft on top, then pan-fried them to get a nice crust on the bottom. I served these with a basic dipping sauce of tamari, rice vinegar and mirin and a quickle sopai no daikon that looks like every other sunomono I make, but with daikon instead of cucumber or green muskmelon.

Serve with a cold Sapporo and classic J-Pop hits.

Putting things into perspective

2009-02-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

Last night Scott and I were wandering downtown after a couple drinks and some comic book shopping, and stopped into a new little French bistro for dinner. We took a seat in the half-full Chez Joly and ordered up a few items from the modestly-priced menu, had a glass of wine and a pleasant chat with the maître'd for a minute about business and whatnot. I gave him my card and assured him I don't review restaurants (I don't, really).

One thing that struck me as a little odd was that the place was only half-full, on first Thursday, in the Pearl. One of the owners (M. Joly himself) came to greet us and apologized for the loudness. It wasn't busy enough to be considered loud by anyone under 70, and it seemed to me that he was really coddling this image of a bustling bistro when in fact, it was kind of a sad little place that reeked of trying too hard. For the price point, I would've preferred a little more grit, more tattoos on the staff, and any music other than the soundtrack of La Vie En Rose.

Conversely, I'd happily have paid $10 more for any of the items if they had been prepared more thoughtfully. The duck was a skosh past medium-well and any flavor remaining after the skin was removed was obliterated by the surfeit of pink peppercorns dashed across the dish. The moules frites Scott ordered were fantastic, though, and worth it alone. They arrived propped on hunks of baguette, ready to sop up the sexy bivalve liquor and wine broth. The escargots were similarly pleasant, though the pâte (a rillette of chicken liver with pistachios) was unremarkable.

It occurred to me on the way home, my stomach stretched in painful distention, that I can afford to bitch that my fancy dinner in a French bistro wasn't good enough. Somewhere along my life's path, I became some entitled cunt who looks down her nose at frites that aren't shoestring-thin. I wasn't always this way. (There is a point that I'm going to make, here, I promise.)

When I was a kid, as I've mentioned myriad times, I lived in poverty. My family received every form of government assistance offered, and our meals frequently came from the Oregon Food Bank when the food stamps couldn't be stretched all month. The Oregon Food Bank, unlike many other family aid non-profits and food banks, is not affiliated with any church and does not proselytize the recipients of their services. They just feed hungry people. With the downturn in the economy, requests for emergency food are skyrocketing to record levels, and they need your help.

In the name of staying true to my roots, and maintaining whatever shred of street cred I have left, I've decided to participate in the Blog For Food campaign (in addition to making a donation myself). Please click the logo at the top of this page or any of the links I've inlined in this post and make a donation.

To be part of the official Blog For Food tally, please enter "Blog For Food" in the tribute section on the OFB donation page. Donations may also be mailed to the Oregon Food Bank at PO. Box 55370Portland, OR 97238-5370. Please mention "Blog For Food." The campaign will run from February 1 to February 28, 2009. They're trying to raise (a modest) $5000.

Thanks, you guys! Just think, your donation today may help another precocious little girl grow up to be a snarky food blogger like me.

Spaghetti alla Bottarga with Meyer lemon and parsley

2009-02-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

I was going to call it "Spaghetti alla Bottarga con Limone e Prezzemolo" but that seemed too fussy, so I broke half of it into English. That way I can confuse the Italians and English-speakers who find me accidentally through Google. Plus I don't know how to say "Meyer lemon" in Italian.

So, I got some bottarga. Color me smug. I didn't win any during that auction last Christmas, but was able to procure some anyways through a combination of whining and extremely good fortune. A generous Floridian fisherman took pity on me and sent a little sunshine my way, and I didn't even have to show him my tits.

Bottarga is a sun-dried, salt-cured mullet roe sac (though tuna is also used in Sardinia). This stuff is intensely flavorful, and little shaving is all you need. It's like the flavor of Mother Ocean and rich egg yolk fecundity concentrated down to a briny little ochrecake, and begs for citrus, olive oil and minerally herbs (I'm also interested in tasting it as karasumi to enjoy with cold sesame soba and premium sake but that's another day).

This hot little bitch doesn't play second fiddle to anyone (the bottarga, not me). I merely shaved it over some fresh spaghetti that I'd tossed aglio e olio with the zest and juice of a Meyer lemon, some chopped parsley and lots of good, crunchy sea salt. I warmed the garlic and lemon zest/juice in the olive oil before tossing it together to volatilize the fragrant essence, but other than boiling pasta, I didn't even have to cook to do this dish proper justice.

Serve with a chewy French batard (to sponge up the crumbles and drips) and humble indenture (thank you, Robert).

Lasagna Bolognese

2009-01-29T18:07:00.000-08:00

Lasagna always seems like such a fuss, and I'll admit it, I usually just go for a frozen one. It always seems like too much work to make a real one, from scratch, and frozen ones aren't that bad (if you avoid the orange grease stain that is Stouffer's). So it's kind of ironic that I made this last night, because real work at my real job was eating my figurative baby and I needed to be able to put something in the oven for an hour and forget about it.

This is why I took the time to can my tomatoes last summer. It was precisely for this reason. I can totally shirk my duties without feeling like a lazy wife or a shitty blogger, because technically, this is homemade sauce. (Not that any of you should ever feel bad about using store-bought sauce. I'm just an over-achiever.)

This is why I grow and sauce my own tomatoes, grind my own beef and can my own Bolognese sauce. I'm banking my time and energy in canned food form, to withdraw at a future, overworked date. A good thing, too, is a box of no-cook lasagna noodles, already snuggling in my pasta drawer amongst my jars of summer sun. A bag of baby spinach and a cube of extra firm (silken) tofu got blitzed to stand in for ricotta (adding a spoonful of creme frâiche for dairy twang, and a little sea salt and fennel seed for flavor).

A nutmeggy bechamel layer, noodles, Bolognese (heated through with some leftover sausage and mushrooms), noodles, spinachy-tofu smoosh, noodles, then all remaining sauce, topped with shredded mozz and parm*. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Wait, it looks like I had to cook after all...

Serve with a juicy Spanish grenache and unmitigated languor.

*Note: this got a little on the extra-browned side of melty, but was still good. I just added extra cheese when it came out of the oven. Next time I'll cover to bake.

Bacon cheeseburgers on green onion brioche

2009-01-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to see the Department of Eagles play at the Doug Fir. I love that band so much, and it was a really great show (though they pretty much stuck to In Ear Park and mocked my cries for Forty Dollar Rug). Before the show, I didn't really know what to make for dinner, but had a pound of ground beef (the last of the grass-fed beeve we bought last summer) and two days-old green onion sweet buns from the Vietnamese bakery. I kept forgetting to take them to work for breakfast, and boy howdy! Am I ever glad about it.

Those Vietnamese really know how to bake. They don't, however, seem to be too fond of printing the name of their food on labels or the internet, because I have no idea what they call these buns. They're slightly sweet and tender like brioche (or Hawaiian sweet bread), and come in a variety of flavors like sweet bean, ham and cheese, hot dog and corn (a personal favorite), or green onion. I usually go for the green onion, because I'm a slave to green onion on sweet pastry (which reminds me, I'm overdue for some dim sum).

I sliced the bánh-something (I'm pretty sure these are actually Chinese in origin, but who knows) in half cross-wise and assembled them: first, a little mayo and mustard; then the mammoth gluttony burgers (a whopping half pound each); a slice of thick, smoky bacon; sauteed mushrooms and onions; a slab of Madrigal cheese and barbecue sauce. If they weren't $2 each, I'da put some avocado on there too. I know the purists are giving me that look. Don't look at me like that, this is my way of a burger. Besides, if you're using fancy scallion buns you've already ruined everything. Fucking live a little.

Serve with blue box and not a shred of irony.

Pork fried rice with kimchee and dou miao

2009-01-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

...or, What To Do With Leftover Shogayaki and Rice.

Hey, Xin Nian Kuai Le, everybody! I really hate posting this bowl of beige and blur after all the pretty and the comfy, but it's Chinese New Year and I'm making burritos for dinner tonight. I was gonna post it on Thursday (when I made it), but my mouse AND my keyboard shit the bed at the same time, then our internet connection was being a dick, so here it is, later.

I got my wok rippin' hot with vegetable oil, and tossed in some sliced leeks (I need to use them), garlic and onion, then threw in the leftover rice and stirred it around ostentatiously. Tossed in the dou miao (pea shoots; I chopped them for manageable bites, because otherwise you're chewing that cud for an hour) and a chiffonade of kimchee. Let the dou miao get a little wilty, and add the thinly-sliced pork (per Peter's suggestion, I pulled the bones out of the chops and simmered them to a rich stock, to which I added soy sauce and sake of my own volition). When everything was getting toasty, I added the flavorful jus and a couple eggs, and scrambled everything around until the liquid was absorbed and the egg was set.

Serve with a drib of hoisin sauce and a healthy disdain for technology.

Lemon-cornmeal ebelskivers with blackberry preserves

2009-01-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

Scott and I were up so, so late last night, finishing an evening celebrating Norm's birthday with friends and 20-year old syrah that smelled like goat testicles (and Saxum Rocket Block (2005?) - a grenache that was like making out with black cherries and literally made me giddy). We got home late and then hung out for a few more hours until it was eventually 4:00 in the morning and we reluctantly collapsed from so much ado.

We woke up at around noon, ravenous and rheumy-eyed. A light dusting of snow covered the ground outside our window and we didn't hurry out of bed, despite our rumbling tummies. Planting kisses upon his bearded face, I promised pancakes with blackberry jam and whipped cream. Once in the kitchen, I decided to kick things up the proverbial notch and busted out the ebelskiver pan that he gave me for Christmas.

I whipped up a basic pancake batter, but subbed a third of the flour for cornmeal and folded in lemon zest and a little juice, and some sour cream. This made a very thick, yet porous batter (the acidic lemon juice reacting with the baking soda really kept things airy, despite the thickness of the sour cream). This was my first time using the ebelskiver pan, but it's really pretty easy. I just filled them 3/4 way full (allowing room to expand), and when they started smelling nice and the bubbles started to look dry, I flipped them in their little divots with a fork.

When they were all ready, I gave them a little pool of blackberry preserves (warmed with melted butter) and whipped some cream to a light froth. I dusted the ebelskivers with powdered sugar to mirror our snow-sprinkled day and we had a lovely brunch.

Serve with pink grapefruit mimosas and marital bliss.

Swedish meatballs with buttered noodles and nutmeg gravy

2009-01-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a week. Not even a (much-needed, and well-spent) paid holiday or a sexah new president could shake the funk of cold weather and crampy ladytimes. I made it to the gym again, to try to run off some of my shitty attitude, but it just made me more tired. When push finally came to shove, dinner had to come with gravy.

You love those Ikea Swedish meatballs so much, don't you. Of course you do, you're not made of stone. You don't, however, love driving through traffic to circle the 50-acre parking lot, or swimming through the crowds of mouth-breathers that hoved in from the suburbs to buy exquisite plywood shelving with sleek birch veneers. What in the fuck can you do, though? You love those meatballs.

So make them your damn self already. Mix together some ground chuck and ground pork (about 3:1, respectively, for about a pound total), an egg, a half-handful of plain bread crumbs, a quarter of an onion (minced), more nutmeg than you think you should (at least ten scratches across your microplane zester), four or five good cracks of pepper, and a few pinches of crunchy salt. Mix only until combined, and use a little ice cream scoop to perfectly portion out meatballs onto a silpat. Roast these at 400 for about 20 or 30 minutes, until they're browned and lovely.

Whilst the meatballs are roasting, get a roux going. When it's nutty, whisk in milk until the lumps are all gone, and it is creamy and gravylike. Add some cracks of pepper (white is nice, if you have it), salt and 10 or 15 scratches of nutmeg. After it's bubbled for a spell (and the floury taste is gone), add some minced fresh thyme and a generous spoonful of creme frâiche, and taste. Whilst the gravy is simmering, boil some egg noodles. When they're done, toss in a knob of butter to coat. Toss a squonch of chopped parsley at it artfully.

Serve with a mug of hefedunkel and bork bork bork.

Roasted parsnip soup with bacon and caramelized leeks

2009-01-22T18:29:00.000-08:00

I am so into the toasty-crouton-on-soup thing right now. It's the reason for soup, almost, to get crispy bread and buttery, melty goodness into my gaping maw. This soup is of typical creation myth: too lazy for a trip to the store, too much good shit going bad in the fridge (this time, leeks and a bag of baby parsnips) and cold weather. This one was delicious and even worthwhile in its own right. But it didn't come without snags. Does anything good ever?

I got this soup started on Tuesday. Tuesday was a gym day, and I always try to eat something somewhat conscientious on gym days, so "a roasted vedge soup it would be", I'd decided. We got home from the gym, and I rushed to the kitchen to peel an entire bag of baby parsnips (20 minutes), shallots (prolly only 5 minutes but I swear it feels like the lifetime of ten thousand kings) and a few cloves of garlic, and then washed and washed and washed the leeks after splitting them and chopping them into rough spears (another 15 minutes). It's going on 7:30, and I'm just now getting this shit into the oven for its requisite 45 minutes of roasting.

GAH. Finally, the roasting is done. The house smells amazing. The leeks are crispy like they've been in a campfire, all ashy and shit. Not good. I try to simmer the whole thing in chicken stock and a little bacon, but it occurs to me that I'll need to flesh this soup out a bit, but have nothing to add any body (not even motivation to go the store). It's 8:35, and I almost start to cry with the realization that it'll take another hour before this soup is really edible (let alone good).

I stick the soup, pot and all, into the fridge and we go to the trashy Italian-American restaurant around the corner for tortellini and pizza instead.

The next day, I pull the pot out. I'd gone to the store this time, for a little loaf of seeded baguette, a pint of cream and some more leeks. I pull out the bacon, and simmer the soup for an hour (it's only 6:00 this time!). Clean the one of the new leeks, slice into a near-chiffonade and slow-sauté with a pinch of salt over low heat until completely creamy and melted. Add a splash of cream to the soup (maybe a couple) and whiz it smooth with the immersion blender. Add the leeks and the chopped bacon, a splash of red wine vinegar, some salt and white pepper.

I sliced the baguette thick on the bias, and toasted both sides in the buttery leek pan, then floated them in the bowls of soup, topped with shredded Pecorino and Madrigal (and some French-fried onions for shits and gigs), then put the tray of bowls under the broiler for a minute or two.

Serve with a brambly Côtes du Rhône and smug criticism of Top Chef contestants.

Shogayaki with sunomono

2009-01-19T18:54:00.000-08:00

I just lost some of you, didn't I. It's just gingery pork chops and cucumber salad, nothing weird. I have noticed that I get a lot more comments on classic diner favorites and American comfort food than on the Asian food I make, but I'm hoping some of you will come around on that. There's a whole world out there, people.

Some of my friends, blog and real-life, are still mystified by Asian cooking. I was once, too, but started small: Thai curries (with store-bought curry paste, added to coconut milk). Hippie stir-fries flavored only with hoisin sauce and garlic. Pad thai made with ketchup and peanut butter. I eventually picked up Asia: the Beautiful Cookbook and made a real massuman curry from scratch, and it was all downhill from there.

Japanese food is so simple and clean, there's no good reason for you to not be making it yourself, and from scratch. "But I don't have your pantry," some of you are whining. Well, quit yer bellyachin'. All you need to make shogayaki are three ingredients (besides pork): shoyu (soy sauce - I used tamari), mirin (sweet rice wine) and grated ginger. I added a pinch of sugar to hit that sweet spot without being too boozy, but that's optional. Marinate for 15 minutes, then grill.

Sunomono is just any little vegetable dressed in vinegar, salt and sugar, and differs from tsukemono (pickles) only in that it's eaten soon, while it's fresh (not fermented or pressed). The ingredients for mine are all basic: a cucumber, the same mirin (I use Koku Mori, a Taiwanese brand that is pretty good), rice vinegar (an aged version that is malted, also Koku Mori), salt and sesame seeds. Again, you can add a pinch of sugar to sweeten it up a skosh.

Serve with steamed rice and a premium hot sake such as Momokawa Diamond, whose subtly cucurbitaceous, canteloupe sweetness and nectary mouthfeel complement the sunomono.

Beef sirloin meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy

2009-01-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

There's just no way to make meatloaf look pretty, is there? Too bad.

In an attempt to make room for all the pig that I just bought, I had to pull a couple things from the freezer, among them a 3-lb sirloin tip roast from the half beeve that I split with Greta and Matt last spring. Matt is always good for going in on meat en carcasse - it's good to have coworkers and friends who give a shit about where their food comes from.

Normally, I'd never do such a thing as grind a lean cut of meat like sirloin tip roast, but I also didn't want to wait another day to roast it on the weekend, nor did I want to slice steaks off it. And I have meat coming out of my ass right now anyway, so why not a meatloaf? It's cold out, and gravy is the cure.

I ground the roast (and some ends of bacon for fat) on the coarsest grind, added an egg, a slice of stale wheat bread and a small onion (these went in the grinder, too), the last blob of gochujang and some squirts of Worcestershire sauce, some fresh thyme and parsley, some paprika and lot of salt and pepper. Mix gently and just enough - overworking makes a tough meatloaf. Form into a babyloaf shape and bake on a sheet in a 375-degree oven for about 45-60 minutes.

I never use a loaf pan to make meatloaf anymore because that juice will sit in there and boil the meat, which is not tasty. Also, when you try to cut a slice, it falls apart like loosemeats. The baking sheet technique is just way better, trust me on this.

I mashed some boiled white and russet potatoes with cream and butter, then folded in some grated cheddar because I am evidently trying to get a big, fat ass. I honestly don't know why I added cheese, I was like on autopilot or someshit.

Serve with an ice cold Coke and The Office.

Idaho trout with macque choux and Meyer lemon beurre blanc

2009-01-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

Since I split a half a pig with Matt, I had to pull a lot of shit out of the freezer to make room. Miraculously, my already-packed freezer could fit a quarter hog. Must be my mad Tetris skills.

I always buy seafood several pieces at a time, when the hankering hits hard, but then I cook one piece (or don't) and the rest has to go to the freezer. This time, one had to come out. This little brown paper package contained two trout fillets.

Some astute readers will notice my flagrant substitution of fingerling potatoes for bell peppers, making this a mountebank macque choux, but don't hate. I didn't think to call this macque choux until I got to writing it up. Besides, macque choux literally translates as "brakes cabbages", making potatoes the least of this dish's problems. I don't know (I've been saying that a lot lately, haven't I). I just kind of knew how this was supposed to taste and named it later.

I sliced these giant banana fingerling potatoes and gave them a hot water bath to parcook, then drained and pan-fried them with minced shallot in olive and rendered bacon (the first taste of the pig, and it's good). When they started to brown up on the edges, I tossed in a cup of frozen white corn and halved grape tomatoes. Then a squonch of chopped thyme and Meyer lemon zest, crunches of flaky sea salt and black pepper. Let it get brown and crusty, and then pull everything out of that pan, turn off the heat and deglaze with half the lemon's juice and a splash of white wine. Whisk in a couple knobs of butter until creamy-dreamy. That's your sauce, baby.

Now just rinse and pat dry the trout fillets, and salt and pepper the flesh side. Get the pan pretty hot (not quite rippin', but hot), and lay the fillets in skin-side down. Now the most important step: walk away from the pan for a few minutes and don't fuck with it. It'll take all of your strength to not poke it or try to move it, but you gotta just leave that shit be.

Okay now you can flip it. Turn off the pan (the pan is still hot enough to cook the other side of the fish, so don't freak out). Stir a sexy little wad of crème fraîche into the macque choux, then stir in the beurre blanc and a few fatty pinches of chopped parsley. Top the wee piles of sweet-crunchy/dense-crusty/tangy-juicy with a crispy trout fillet.

You know you're dying to, so go ahead and throw some crunchy pinches of sea salt at it.

Serve with a bright chard and smug self-satisfaction.

Honey-tamarind chicken with rice vermicelli

2009-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

Today, Scott and his broworkers went to Green Papaya to get some delicious Vietnamese food, as was their daily wont until the bulk of them relocated to an office further away than across the street. Today was Green Papaya for old times'. They sat down at their table, took a glance at the menu, and noticed that it had been totally chopped since their last visit months earlier. "The fuck?" Scott recounted to me, as we walked downtown's mizzled, brick streets, our gym gear in tow. He'd has his heart set on his Green Papaya favorite: honey barbecue chicken. Instead, he was relegated to the fare of a clunky, meatball sports club owner trying to phase out "seafood foe" and phase in "TVs".

I grew livid at the thought that my wantless husband was denied. His cravings are so humble and infrequent that he deserves to have every one slaked. And some stupid motherfucker thinks another sports bar is what this town needs instead of good Vietnamese food. I had to take matters into my own hands.

Okay, no, I didn't go break that dude's kneecaps, but I figured I could cook Scott his denied honey barbecue chicken. We already had skinless/boneless chicken breasts, green beans and red bell pepper that needed eating, and half a bag of fresh rice vermicelli. A bag of lettuce that I saved from the brink of compost (washed and cut, bagged for easy use) could flesh things out and provide a refreshing crunch.

I don't know if you can see the julienne on those carrots, but I did that by hand. Just so you know. (I just got my knife sharpened and am showing off.)

To make the barbecue sauce, I combined honey and tamarind (soaked and pressed through a sieve) lime zest and juice, a few squirts of fish sauce and a drib of soy sauce, a little palm sugar and a splash of rice vinegar, and some sambal oelek and crushed garlic. Slice the chicken breasts into thirds width-wise (fillet them into thin sections) and marinate the pieces for at least 15 minutes. Grill until sufficiently charred, then toss some red bell pepper and green beans on there. Scott said it tasted pretty much the same, and was happy. Yay.

Serve with rice noodles and lettuce, nước chấm, and righteous indignation.

Shanghai-style nian gao with soy-braised short ribs and broccoli

2009-01-11T20:46:00.000-08:00

I dunno. I totally made this up. A few weeks ago Scott and I ate at Castagna, in the more casual cafe (we save the restaurant for fancy occasions). Scott had the cassoulet (of course) and I had their pasta dish de la saison: maltagliati with braised short ribs and turnip greens. It came sauced in butter thickened with Parm Redge. It was fucking insane, and a perfect toe-curl, and I knew I had to recreate it with Asian flavors. It was such a logical translation - the bitter greens with the sultry beef and chewy, stubby noodles.

A few months ago, Claudia (the sylph behind cook eat FRET) tried some nian gao in Cleveland right about the time I first saw them at Fubonn. I knew then that I needed to try them, but wasn't really feeling the arbitrary purchase at the time. It took me this long to get around to actually picking some up to experiment.

I also picked up a couple pounds of rough-cut flanken-style beef ribs (labeled "back ribs" - I think these were the castoffs from cutting galbi), which were comprised primarily of sinew, tallow and bone. The meat that remained was sufficiently laced with connective tissue and marbling that a 4-hour braise melted it to goulash. I browned the ribs in a Dutch oven with a knob of young ginger and half a head of garlic, a couple bay leaves and some peppercorns, then covered it in soy sauce (laochou that I thinned with some water), Chinese black vinegar, mirin and a spoonful of veal demiglace. When it came to a simmer, I plunked it into a 250-degree oven and went about my day.

I actually shopped for this dish a week ago, and it took me this long to muster the motivation (and time) necessary to properly execute a braise. During this time span, I used up almost all of the Shanghai pak choi (qingcai ). I buy these greens by the bagful, and usually never use up the whole thing until they're almost compost. My garden greens got pwned by snow, and I didn't want to make another trip to the store just for greens, so I gave a "meh" and used broccoli.

The nian gao cooked up in about a minute, then I tossed them with the beef, broccoli, and a ladleful of the braising liquid to coat. At the last minute, I decided it needed a shred of omelet on top. I cooked the egg with a little sugar and chile flake, and it lightened up the dish nicely.

My mental picture of nian gao as the Asian answer to bite-sized maltagliati (translates to "badly cut") proved eerily accurate, and this odd dish worked, rendering this disjointed, disorganized conversation about it a propos. I'll try this again, with an easier cut of meat (maybe pork - we bought a quarter pig yesterday) and the shred of greens for which the nian gao's density yearns.

Split pea soup with pancetta and ham

2009-01-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

I should just go ahead and change the name of this blog to Soup and Brekkie, cuz I'm on a fucking kick. Soup is a basic thing, though, and anyone can make excellent soup if they're willing to keep bags of bones and carcass in their freezer. If they're not, though, they can still crank out a reasonably fantastic split pea.

Split pea soup doesn't even require stock to be awesome. The peas bring plenty of flavor of their own, particularly when combined with a (celery-less) mirepoix of minced carrot and onion, ham and pancetta. Render the pancetta in a drip of olive oil, then brown the mirepoix in the bacon fat. Add the diced ham and the split peas, and stir them around to coat in the fat (sorta like making risotto). Add a couple bay leaves and thyme sprigs, then a bunch of water. Simmer for an hour (stirring once in awhile), or until the peas are softened but still retain their shape when stirred. Salt and pepper to taste, and stir in lots of chopped parsley and mint. I like extra mint and black pepper in mine.

I made some fatty croutons from some leftover pugliese (although I lied to Peter and told him it was ciabatta, just to fuck with him). Just cubed and browned in butter with a crunch of salt and some thyme, and there was a nice textural contrast always welcome in a bowl of soup.

Enjoy with early pajamas and a mug of budget chardonnay.

Minestra al pomodoro e pesto

2009-01-07T20:31:00.000-08:00

It's finally soup weather. We've gotten back to the sodden, gloomy, winter weather that makes people slit their wrists when they move here. I love it. It's damp and moldy, and it smells like warm compost and fecundity again after all that stupid Arctic Blast nonsense. Snow and ice doesn't make me crave soup, it makes me crave hard liquor and sweets, preferably combined. Soup in rainy weather, however, is the pink in my cheeks.

This is Soup. It is a rib-sticking bowl of salubrity that chases the hate away. I wanted a minestrone-type affair, but don't really care about beans enough to make room for them among the sausage and tortellini. If you want a vegetarian-ish version of this, by all means, omit the sausage. But everyone knows that vegetarians will lose the fight against the zombies when the end times come, so you may as well start building your strength and perfecting your aim.

This is a soup of leftovers and fridge-purge. Bulk pork Italian sausage got browned with leftover chopped onions, red peppers and chopped mushrooms. Tubs of fire-roasted tomatoes (puree with a half a can of tomato paste and a glug of budget Syrah) chicken stock from the freezer sauced it up all brothy. Tortellinis in, and after they softened up a bit, Blue Lake green beans and choy sum joined the party. A moment later, half a tub of leftover arugula-pumpkin seed pesto enriched the broth and brought some much-needed garlic. Soup's on.

Top with copious amounts of Pecorino Romano and a spoonful of pesto. Serve with olive ciabatta and Les Hérétiques. Buon appetito.

Pub Grub

2009-01-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

Doesn't this look like a happy picnic of all of your favorite fried foods, fresh from the pub, all laid out on a blanket of glee and sunshine? Don't be fooled, it's rainy and sardonic out there. This new lamp burns my retinas until I see only magenta and green splotches, and I can't adjust the white balance on my camera if it's on the macro setting. The bloody fuck?

When Scott and I quit smoking a year ago (next week), we knew there was only one place that we'd miss terribly: the Horse Brass. We had our commemorative send-off into ex-smokerdom there, to add one last wisp to the raw umber patina on the walls and to engage in what would be our last blissful respite in overt self-destruction. Not being ones for doing things half-assed, we had to order the halibut fish and chips (Scott's favorite) and the Scotch egg (my downfall).

In case you haven't surmised, a Scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg that's been wrapped in sausage and deep-fried. I made bite-sized ones with quail eggs. It was a total hassle, but worth it. I made a honey-horseradish dip for them and it rocked me like a hurricane.

Just as big a hassle, but similarly worth it, were the halibut fish and chips (in a Boddington's ale batter) and sweet potato fries. With plenty of homemade tartar sauce (store-bought mayo thinned with a little red onion vinegar, Dijon, lemon zest, chopped homemade pickles and S&P). The fries were alright, not awesome - they could've been a little crispier. We joked about making onion rings too, but there was so much golden brown on the plate already. To be honest, after eating the first perfect Scotch egg, I wanted to eat only those and didn't need anything else.

I also made a batch (actually, a restrained bowl) of simple slaw by finely slicing savoy cabbage and scallions, and whisking together a dressing of mayo (opting again for store-bought), Dijon, white balsamic, honey, lemon juice and zest, salt and lots of pepper. It would've benefited from a denser crunch in retrospect, and I wish I'd added some apple or kohlrabi to the mix.

My cravings for fried, crispity goodness having been thoroughly slaked, it'll be a long while before I wreck my kitchen again doing this (and at $18/lb., halibut was a real once in awhile treat to buy fresh). Besides, bars are smoke-free now. Horse Brass here we come.

Napoleon Complex

2009-01-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

I get a wild hair up my ass for weekend breakfasts. I'm never in a very big hurry, and I have the rest of the day to burn off the calories, so I can really splurge on two or three proteins and as much dairy and starch as I want. I can always, I dunno, go shovel snow or someshit.

This little treat is a testament to that philosophy. I wanted pancakes, but was really craving savory flavors, like salty ham, melty cheese and drippy yolks. I didn't want to phone it in with a Ham and Egg McChee™ (my go-to weekend brekkie), so I thought about making blini. Without buckwheat flour (or caviar), though, blini seemed pointless. But think about it: blini are just a savory pancake. Why can't I make a basic pancake recipe that's savory? I couldn't think of any reason why not, so I did.

Halving Joy of Cooking's basic pancake recipe, I omitted the sugar and added minced onion, chopped thyme and parsley, salt and pepper and a handful of grated Madrigal cheese (a French baby Swiss). I cooked little silver dollar pancakes, poached two eggs, and browned some shaved Niman Ranch applewood-smoked ham and some sliced mushrooms. When everything was ready (45 minutes later, including pre-cooking cleanup and prep), I stacked the little pancakes with a layer of ham, a layer of mushrooms, and a poached egg on top.

Served with some boiled potatoes tossed in crème fraîche and herbs (and the requisite mimosa), it was a luxuriant and elegant brunch. Let the diet start on Monday.

Salade Niçoise on Belgian endive

2009-01-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

I picked up these beautiful little quail eggs at Fubonn. I was thinking of what little appie I could bring over to Carolyn's house that wasn't crackers and dip (she was making Amy Sedaris' Lil' Smoky Cheese Ball) or something that would require heating in situ, so I thought about mini deviled eggs (excellent idea, but way too cumbersome) or a little salad of some type served on endive leaves. I know, 1989 called and wants its hors doeuvres back. Fucking sue me. Greta had given me some gorgeous albacore that she canned, and I had some lemons and olives, so this seemed like a no-brainer. And after all the holiday stodge, a crisp, citrusy salad sounded perfect.

This is the difference between starting your photography at 3:00 and finishing at 3:30. Night and day, innit? It gets dark early, and all of the shots of the salads in natural light were migraine-inducing blurry (I really should get in the habit of using my tripod, but like I need one more thing in my kitchen), so I had to resort to my new lights (thank you, darling husband!). Unfortunately, I broke the reflector umbrella when opening it so I've been directing the eye-piercing lamp directly at the food to simulate daylight, but it's just harsh and red and obvious, even after shopping the fuck out of it. Look at the size of those shadows. Okay, stop looking.

I blanched and slivered haricots verts, cut a brunoise of olives and home-made pickles (sharp as cornichons, they are, but from full-size Persian cukes), and finely diced a boiled red potato. I added these, with minced shallot and parsley, to the flaked albacore. I loaded the whole mix up with lemon zest, and a vinaigrette of olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, anchovies and S&P. I added extra luxuriant crunches of Maldon over the top for flourish.

I forked a little of the mixture onto each endive leaf and then topped with a little softboiled quail egg. I wasn't trying to be stingy, it was just such an extreme pain in my ass to peel each of these wee eggs and I was in a hurry (and the whole thing was getting to be waaaay too precious), so I opted to quarter the eggs instead of serving halves. This ended up being the perfect amount of egg anyway.

Tomorrow night I'm making tiny Scotch eggs and Boddington's-battered halibut fish and chips (fagging pub grub up a little more with sweet potato fries and a savoy slaw with a creamy lemon vinaigrette).

Misoyaki Maki

2008-12-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

We'd been invited to a champagne-tasting party, to which we were instructed to bring an appie or somesuch. Easy, right? Except that I totally procrastinated, and it started snowing. Hard. I didn't want to press my luck and brave a drive to the store for flour (I really wanted to make little empanadas, but couldn't make dough - who the fuck runs out of flour? Pioneers?), so I had to really wrack my brain. What in the hell could I scrape together? I didn't even have something fake to cook and sauce up. Like that one time when all I had was some quince jelly in the freezer and a thawed-out boneless leg of lamb, and hastily threw together "ooh, how 'bout some Moroccan-spiced lamb kebab with cardamom-quince glaze" that were doled out onto a platter with toothpicks and greedily devoured. Turns out a lot of people did their part, thought ahead and brought hummus to that party. A lot of different hummus, and my one platter of spicy, last-minute meat.

I am, if nothing else, the Queen of Pulling One Out of Her Ass. I looked through the cupboards. Nothing. Some fucking cans of fish and tomatoes, a can of lychee and coconut milk, and a can of mock abalone. Gross. Look again, see the jars of starch lined up all soldierlike: cous cous, bulgur wheat, barley, lentils, some aged jau mein (that's ay-jed, not to be confused with the savory patina of proper storage), arborio rice and calrose rice. Sigh. Look again. Grab cans of smoked black cod and sturgeon (from local waters), jar of calrose, then shuffle across the kitchen to the "Asienne" cabinet and grab the teriyaki-flavored nori sheets, the black sesame seeds, tamari and sesame oil, some sake and mirin and gochujang. To the fridge for shiro miso, some scallion and young ginger.

I was going to make mini onigiri, it turned out. With misoyaki filling. I forgot about the jar of umeboshi in the fridge, evidently. I cooked the rice on the stovetop, and then pulled it off to cool in the snow. I chopped together the drained fish, and blobs or glugs of everything else until it was perfectly seasoned and gingery. I sprinkled in some togarashi to give that proper umami, and then we mashed up little fish-filled rice balls until the rice was all gone, wrapping a little fingertip sheet of nori over each. Half the fish was still left. The party loved it, and the hostess even proclaimed it better than the onigiri in Tokyo. It worked well with the champagne, which cut through the rich, salty smoke of the misoyaki, the effervescence pushing past the huge starch molecules on its way into the tickly cilia of the olfactory system.

The next day, while Scott nursed a wicked champagne hangover (I never knew those even existed), I twisted up a fatty nori maki from the last remaining regular sheet of nori in our cupboard, with freshly cooked sushi rice (stirred and fanned with a pinch of sugar and salt, and a splash of rice vinegar). It was a tasty and quiet lunch, and a great way to pat myself on the back for thinking on my feet. It's good to be Queen.

Rumple Minze hot chocolate

2008-12-28T17:33:00.000-08:00

I got your Holiday Cheer right here. Ghirardelli Double Chocolate cocoa with Rumple Minze peppermint schnapps and marshmallows. Serve with Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate-Covered Peppermint Joe Joe's for dunking. They taste like a cross between Girl Scouts Thin MInts and Oreos, with crushed candy cane on top.

This tastes like the holidays.

Pannetone French toast with orange-bourbon syrup

2008-12-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

...or, Special Christmas Breakfast

I really haven't gotten into the holiday spirit this year. No baking, no candy, nothing. I still have time to pretend I'm Russian, though, in which case the New Year celebration is more important. Technically, my people were German-Russian for a hundred years or so, and I'm calling that close enough. Ooh! Also, I found out recently that my great-grandmother was half Tatar (my father claims her conception was nefarious, but I can find no information that supports the claim that Mongol raids of the Volga were still happening in the 19th century). My first reaction was not surprise, or shock, but "omg, really? I'm part Asian? I knew it!" Now the slight almond shape to my eyes, my Nipponophilia and my hard-on for Stephen Chow makes so much sense. Being 1/16 Volga Tatar makes me practically Chinese, right?

But that's neither here nor there, and is typical of my digressions. On my journey to Trader Joe's (partly for sustenance, partly to escape cabin fever), I picked up one of my favorite holiday treats, pannetone. They didn't have any of my real fave, the orange and chocolate chip (I honestly haven't seen that kind in about a decade), so I grabbed the cranberry instead. Then I proceeded to forget that we had it for a couple days, just long enough for it to go a little stale.

Then I had the stroke of genius to make French toast with the pannetone (of course, now I find out that Giada deLaurentis makes it). I whipped up a quick batter of cream and eggs, orange zest, my homemade seven-spice and bourbon vanilla, a pinch of salt and a spoonful of sugar. I browned it in butter, then topped it with powdered sugar and a syrup of orange juice and zest, sugar and Maker's Mark, simmered until thick and good.

Serve with a little holiday cheer (in this case, mimosas, but I'll also accept "screwdriver", a propos of Russia). S Novim Godom!

Elk sirloin chili with Beans

2008-12-23T08:13:00.000-08:00

Any more, whenever I cook or even eat beans, I think of my buddy Ken Albala over at Ken Albala's Food Rant. He doesn't get as much traffic as all the Foodbuzz and Foodie Blogroll folks, which is a fucking shame, because he's actually a real writer. Of actual books.

One of such books is Beans: A History.

You ever find yourself reading some Pollan and thinking to yourself, "sure, this is entertaining, but I really wish he didn't dumb everything down for the lay audience"? Yeah, me too.

If Michael Pollan is coffee, Ken Albala is espresso. Ken is an award-winning food historian and author of such effervescent reading as Eating Right in the Renaissance; Food in Early Modern Europe; and Cooking in Europe 1250-1650. More recently though, he dabbles in what he deems to be "pop" food writing, but is, in my opinion, a meticulous examination of individual foodstuffs.

Beans is one such exploration, in which Ken chronicles the cultural and culinary significance of one of our most basic forms of sustenance, the humble legume. From the crippling classism faced by Medieval bean-eaters, to the role of toxic vetch seeds in combating famine in the 12th-century, to the bacterium that distinguishes natto from hamanatto, Beans delves into depths rivaling a thesis for its attention to detail, and for leaving no stone unturned. Beans is, in a word, thorough.

It's also pretty fucking entertaining, although I'll admit that the thing I like most about this book is its unflinching nerdiness. This is an entire book about the seeds of a single plant family. It's not just for scholars and botanists, though - Ken's enthusiasm is contagious.

Some of you are still doing your holiday shopping, and I scold you for your procrastination. However, you can satisfy the academic foodie on your list (or yourself) by picking up a copy of Beans or Ken's latest tome, Pancake: A Global History.

**********************************

Oh, hey, and speaking of beans, I made it to the store yesterday. It really wasn't that terrible - without that nasty sumbitch Old Man East Wind, it was actually kind of pleasant, bordering on magical.

Since I knew I had to carry everything I purchased, I made very edited choices. Milk, eggs and flour are already heavy, so everything else really had to count. A couple containers of frozen juice concentrate to drink with our vodka. A bag of pink beans.

We had everything else at home, so this wouldn't be too difficult. Catherine sent me a huge elk sirloin roast a few weeks ago (have I mentioned that I love that woman?), from which we'd eaten a couple of steaks and then refroze. I'd normally never refreeze a meat, but I was going out of town and figured it'd be better to risk freezer burn than for the whole thing to rot in my absence. Rubbed and double-bagged with the air smooshed out, it was absolutely fine rethawed, without a single indication of freezer burn.

I finely diced the elk and browned it with an onion and a few spoonfuls of homemade ancho chile powder, half spoonfuls of pimentón and garlic powder, and a good few pinches of homemade Berbere spice. I dumped in a can of tomatoes and the leftover tomato-roasted pepper soup from last week. Then I added a dribble of soy, a spoonful of gochujang and a few good pinches of MSG. Oh, don't look at me like that - it is pure, crystalline umami. It makes everything taste really good and I'm not sensitive to it.

I let everything simmer and stew while the (presoaked) pink beans cooked in unsalted water. Never cook beans with the tomatoes or in salted water, or they'll go tough. When the beans were tender, I drained them and added them to the pot, then added more salt and pepper to taste. While the beans were soaking up some of the good chili flave, I whipped up some cornbread.

Top with cheese, sour cream and minced shallot for best effect. I'm heading to the kitchen for some leftovers right now. Not too shabby, this "working from home" business.

Broccoli rabe, potato and ham frittata

2008-12-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

I am losing my fucking mind in all this snow. We were able to drive through it on Saturday night, when it was just a few inches, but yesterday chains officially became required on all roads and the highways are closed. I don't have chains, and I can't go get any, either. We're trapped in our 2-foot drifts, with only our cupboards and fridge to sustain us, and there's nothing we can do about. Well, I guess I could shuffle through all that snow to the grocery store (a half mile away), but come on. Shuffling through snow is for suckers.

Anyway, I was frantically tearing through the fridge to find something to make for breakfast, and I found some eggs, broccoli rabe, ham, and a squidge of buffalo mozz. I sauteed a diced potato and some minced shallot, then dumped in the chopped ham and broccoli rabe (perfectly green-bitter, with lovely, cruciferous horseradish notes on the upper palate). I let it cook for a second to brighten up the greens, and then dumped in 4 (salted and peppered) beaten eggs and topped it with torn-up blobs of mozz. Into the oven for about 15 minutes. With good grainy wheat toast, it's a perfect breakfast. With a salad, it'd be a nice lunch or light supper.

Thanks to this lovely frittata, we're out of eggs now. We're out of a lot of things, come to think of it. No eggs. No milk. No flour. I can't make biscuits, or cornbread, or cookies, or anything of any value to a snowed-in person. Shit, I might end up walking a mile in the snow today.

Chicken and Waffles

2008-12-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

Chicken and waffles. The first in a series I call Monochromatic, Yet Delicious. Some of my readers (particularly the ones who hail from exotic locales) have blank looks on their faces. It's a real thing, I assure you, to eat fried chicken on waffles. And it's really fucking good.

Chicken and waffles is an American dish that was invented by black people in the 1930s to serve the needs of Harlem's hungry jazz cats after a show. They often played so late into the wee hours that by the time they were done, it was too late for dinner and too early for breakfast. Anyway, that's the most widely-accepted creation myth. I think it might have a little more to do with the amount of grass those dudes were smoking, but that's just my theory.

Chicken and waffles are a Thing. They are a thing for which I hanker, and only one joint in town (that I know of) sells them, and then only on Sundays at brunch. Even those waffle carts that are popping up all over NoPo are missing the boat on the chicken. As usual, I had to take matters in to my own hands.

Granted, my chicken is merely oven-fried (I hate frying, especially in a freshly-cleaned kitchen) with a corn flake crust, but it comes close. I like it spicy and crunchy, on a fluffy waffle (a basic baking powder-leavened recipe instead of Belgian for simplicity - I didn't feel like waiting for a yeasted batter to do its thing). Smeared with maple sugar spread and butter, a little syrup for good measure, and you're havin' kittens, baby.

Enjoy with a screwdriver and Dizzy Gillespie.

Roasted red pepper and tomato soup

2008-12-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

Working from home has its pluses and minuses. Minuses include feeling like you might literally explode from not having moved from the same few hundred square feet in more than 24 hours. Another minus is the constant distraction of cool shit like daytime TV, adorable cats and husband. A major plus, though, is being able to just walk to my kitchen to cook lunch instead of bringing crappy leftovers or shuffling over to cart row for a burrito (although I could really go for summa those insane perogi and schnitzel from the Tabor cart right about now).

With regards to feeding myself, I'm starting to get my sea legs in this whole snow day tip. I went from "holy fucking shit, we'll all starve," all manic stocking up at the grocery store and bingeing on tater tots and tacos lest I freeze from lack of blubber, to eating normal shitty weather winter food. And what better example of icky weather, thick-socks-and-blanket food than grilled chee and tomato soup?

Problem was, we didn't have any tomato soup. I had to make my own.

This would only pose a problem had I not canned all my dozens of pints of heirloom tomatoes last summer. This was the first chance to really appreciate the fruits of my labor. I pulled a pint of my golden Pineapple and Yellow Taxi tomatoes (blanched, seeded/peeled and canned with a few basil leaves), and a half-pint of roasted red bell pepper in olive oil and got a happy shiver when the vacuum seal made that delightful pop and sucking noise upon deflowering.

I heated up a pot with a drizzle of the red pepper oil and sauteed a minced garlic clove and shallot for a minute, then added the peppers and toms. I simmered for 5 minutes or so to heat all the way through, pureed with a couple pinches of salt and sugar, a tiny half-spoonful of good pimentón and a drib of balsamic vinegar. All together, it took maybe 10 or 15 minutes to bring this completely together.

Add a hunk of fresh mozz, a drizzle of red pepper oil and a pinch of chile flake. Serve with grilled chee sammiches. I did sharp cheddar and Swiss on wheat.

Totchos

2008-12-16T18:48:00.000-08:00

Quebec may have poutine, but we in Portland have a wondrous thing called totchos. They are effectively nachos, intelligently substituting the mundane tortilla chip with tater tots, and they are as good as they fucking sound. Suck it, Quebec.

Totchos have many uses: first, doy - they're nutritious and gluten-free; second, they cure PMS and SAD; and third, they're the perfect gift for that special Atkins dieter that you've been dying to piss off.

Mine are the high-falutin'est totchos you'll likely see, but that's okay. They're good old Ore-Ida Tater Tots®* (are there even any other kind?) sprinkled liberally with Lawry's, then topped with a mélange of Mexi-esque goodness: refried beans, pre-grated "Mexi" cheese (a combo of ched and jack), sour cream, chopped cilantro, onion and scallions, sliced black olives and a goodly glug of salsa (we were actually out of salsa, and i had to make some by pulsing some of my canned heirloom toms with a couple serrano chiles, some chopped onion and garlic, some cilantro and S&P. I added a little splash of vinegar for good mezh).

*omfg did you see that there is actually a link there to a recipe called Tater Tots Tuna Pie?!? I'm totally dying over it. The link is broken, but I might hafta reinvent this for the sake of Science. Also, did you know that Tater Tots come in two sizes: 32oz or FIVE POUNDS.

Serve with bong hits, Coke Zero and Super Mario Galaxy.

Chicken Gnocchi Soup

2008-12-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

...or, Snow Day

We don't get much snow here in Portland. We're nestled so snugly between the Coast Range to the west and the Cascades to the east, and all that noise gets buffered out in our quaint little Willamette Valley. But once or twice a year, we get the veritable shit...er, snowstorm of Weather. And the city shuts the hell down.

Nobody goes to work or school on snow days. We all turn on the TV to check for road closures anyway, just to see some asshole on the news careening downhill, perpendicular to the road, taking out innocent parked cars in his wake (do yourself a favor and cue up Yakety Sax in another tab so you can watch the vid with a soundtrack). People always try to drive in this shit. People from sunnier climes (cough*Californians*cough) who think that driving up to Ski Bowl a few times a year qualifies as "driving in snow" experience. It's comedy gold, really, for everyone except the owners of those parked cars getting pwned on the side of the road. Here's to good insurance.

During inclement weather, I'm not so keen on leaving the house. I've been a bit slumpy anyway lately, and this doesn't really increase my motivation to leave my couch, let alone step foot outdoors. I don't feel like doing anything that doesn't involve a blanket and sweat pants, and am eating mostly total garbage like totchos (yes, that is nachos made with tater tots) and Blue Box with ketchup. I'm not pregnant, I think it's just the weather and the darkness. I spent 8 hours playing Chibi Robo yesterday, for fuck's sake. Ain't no cure for the wintertime blues.

Except maybe some hearty chicken soup with crunchy green beans, peas and carrots, chunks of creamy fingerling potatoes, cremini mushrooms and succulent chicken, and some tender gnocchi. The dumpling-like gnocchi sort of melt into the soup after awhile, making it nice and creamy-chowdery, and the broth is just shy of melted chicken demi glace, so rich and velvety, with plenty of fresh thyme and black pepper.

Serve with oven-warm rolls and Tivo'd episodes of How Clean is Your House.

"Chinese" Chicken Salad

2008-12-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've put on a few holiday pounds that are kinda stressing me out, because it's not even cookie and fudge go-time yet. I haven't really felt much like cooking lately, or even eating, which is kind of weird. I was craving salad, however, and decided to make a healthier version of that awesomely trashy "Chinese" chicken salad . I'm using "airquotes" because, to my knowledge, this salad has never been consumed or prepared in China or by any Chinese person, ever (and those turncoat Panda Express employees don't count). It's "Chinese" because it has sesame seeds and those deliciously ghetto, trans fat-having chow mein noodles (which is redundant, since chow mein is already a type of noodle, and not a fried, crispity thingy that Chun King sells in cans like so much Pik-Nik - it's like saying "spaghetti pasta"). I guess if you were in a effort-y mood, you could use slice and fry wonton skins to use instead. It would probably be rather kickass if you did.

The salad wasn't even composed of Asian greens; rather, it was a mix of romaine and that bagged, shredded broccoli/carrot/red cabbage slaw. To make it extra "Chinese" I added scallions sliced thinly on the bias and juicy nuggets of satsuma oranges (no, not the canned mandarin oranges - I'm not that ironic), and dressed it in soy sauce (the thick, black kind), mirin, rice vinegar, orange juice, sesame oil and a little salt and sugar. I bought a half a lemon-pepper rotisserie chicken that Scott graciously shredded for me, then I tossed it in the dressing and sprinkled on some more sesame seeds for good measure. I slipped the last few inches of a hothouse cuke in there, too, sliced on the bias to make it extra Chinese.

I have some trout fillets and am thinking about a lemon balm beurre blanc. Whether or not I feel like making the effort remains to be seen, but at least I'm thinking about food again.

Beef Stew

2008-12-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

You know when you're feeling kinda tapped out, and multitasking isn't doing you any favors, and you just wanna curl up in a bowl and call it a night? Yeah, it's that time of year, isn't it. Scott made this stew the other night (he actually cooked!) for when I got home from the field, and after the gym I thought it'd be nice to just reheat a bowl of something instead of cooking. There wasn't quite enough for two full servings, so we decided to eat it on some nice, buttered egg noodles.

I was totally gonna make some croutons to go on top, but the batard was way too stale even for that, and I had to process them into crumbs and fry them to render them edible. The night Scott made the stew, I made thick croutons broiled with shredded fontina, but it was much soupier then and really needed it. The sad thing about stew is that although it tastes so much better a day or two later, the peas go all peaked and look like really sad shadows of their verdant selves.

Pickle-making isn't really a one-day feat, is it? I've been doing small batches every day, but the eggplant chutney set things off on sort of a bad foot. It's too thick to really get all of the air out, and so of course one of the jars blew out its bottom in the pressure cooker. I didn't realize it until I went to vent off some of the pressure when I smelled the chutney that should've been sealed up in the jar. Finally, everything cooled down enough to handle, and I was able to see the carnage of oily eggplant shreds floating around inside the pressure cooker. Ick. I had to wash all the remaining jars in soapy water to get the oil off, and scrubbed the pressure cooker before getting the next batch in last night. Tonight will be the red onion pickle.

Fry-Up Breakfast Pizza

2008-12-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

I spent last week in Coos County, and haven't been in my kitchen since last weekend. I usually come home from these forays hungry for my own cooking, but we had plans on Friday and Saturday and so I still haven't really had any QT in the kitchen. After the marathon of Thanksgiving and a week of absence, I guess I'm still getting my groove back.

I hate to take a break for a week, and then return with some mess on a plate like this. It's not a sexy comeback, it's just breakfast. I made most of the components of an English fry-up: eggs, a couple rashers of bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes (just missing the black pudding and beans, really), and baked them on pizza dough. I also added some diced fingerling potato, chopped red onion and cheese curds for good measure.

I have a list of pickles and chutneys to crank out and can for holiday gifts, so that should keep me busy for awhile today. Here's to getting things back to normal.

Turkey Phở

2008-11-30T20:31:00.000-08:00

This is such an easy way to run through that half-gallon of turkey stock you have gelling in your fridge, and it's a nice change of pace from the casseroles and sammiches. I'm sick of eating turkey, bread, mashed potatoes and gravy, and I'm sure you are too.

On Thanksgiving, we had a 16-pound turkey (for only 5 people), and I made 2 gallons of turkey stock from the carcass. This was way too much to store in my fridge or freezer, so I simmered the stock down to a scant 6 cups, and it really ended up with that velvety mouthfeel you normally associate with the unctuous oxtail broth typically used for phở. The large turkey also left us with a bag full of the confit legmeat and an entire roast breast with which to contend, and since turkey noodle soup is the third spoke of the Holy Trifecta of Thanksgiving Leftovers, I whipped up a version of phở gà, subbing turkey for chicken.

It takes a bit of time to prepare the broth, but it's worth it just for the way your house smells while it's simmering. Into a large pot, toss a few star anise pods, a 4" cinnamon stick, some charred/roasted shallots and ginger, some peppercorns and a couple of cloves, and two or three bay leaves. Toast these quickly in the pot until fragrant, then dump in the turkey (or chicken) stock. Simmer over low heat for an hour or so, replacing the water that evaporates. I also squirt in a tablespoon or so of nước mắm, and add a good pinch of salt and sugar.

Fill a bowl with fresh rice noodles (dried ones should be reconstituted in hot water for a minute first) and a fat wad of turkey meat. Ladle in the boiling-hot broth - this will heat the turkey and noodles and result in the perfect soup-eating temperature. Serve with mung bean sprouts, Thai basil and cilantro, lime wedges and sliced jalapeño, and I like a little sriracha hot sauce or sambal oelek and hoisin sauce on mine. Bon appétit!

Foxy Brown

2008-11-29T17:59:00.001-08:00

Some of you have been asking about this Hot Brown that I declared I would make with leftover turkey, and I'm gonna tell you all about it. The Hot Brown is a sandwich created at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, created in the 1920s by the one of the hotel's first chefs, Fred Schmidt. It's now an institution, and is commonly served during the Kentucky Derby. It's an open-faced turkey sandwich covered in a Parmesan Mornay sauce and bacon. An ideal way to use Thanksgiving leftovers, really. I bet you're wishing you still had some, aren't you.

I, however, used a combination of Parm Redge, extra sharp cheddar and Gruyère (I had a lot after the mac & chee cook-off, I don't usually keep pounds of it around). I also added a nice fat pinch of paprika to the Mornay, and served it on a thick slice of toasted French batard. I've decided that I altered the recipe for a hot brown just enough to give it a newer, sexier name. I dub this sandwich the Foxy Brown.

Don't mess aroun' with Foxy Brown. It's the meanest sammich in town.

This sammich is easy to prepare. Just layer sliced, roasted turkey breast onto a nice thick slab of good bread (I love the organic French batard from New Seasons). Prepare a Mornay sauce (my recipe is here), stirring in a 1/4 tsp of hot paprika. Spoon copious amounts of the Mornay sauce over the turkey, and top with two slices of bacon. Garnish with grated Parm Redge and finely chopped parsley. A slice of tomato, were they in season, would really set this off.

Enjoy with Maker's Mark (or other fine Kentucky bourbon) and lemonade.

Turkey Confit Hash with Sweet Potato Latkes

2008-11-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, since yesterday was such an ordeal (and I missed the daylight cutoff for decent photos), I'm parsing out the leftovers to eke out as much blogging as possible for my trouble. This morning we enjoyed the leftover sweet potato latkes (more like a large hashbrown) with some of the shredded turkey confit and the ubiquitous fried egg. I spooned over some of the king oyster mushroom Béchamel from the haricots verts au gratin (some of you may have figured out that this is just green bean casserole).

This is just the beginning, and dare I say I'm likely to have more fun with the leftovers than with the original meal. I just want to declare now, in case anyone beats me to the post, that I'm totally making hot browns for dinner tomorrow. I called it. Then will come turkey phở, then I'll be in the field for a week fretting over my leftovers.

A-Game 2008

2008-11-26T16:08:00.000-08:00

I've got so much work ahead of me, but I'm making some progress. It's not too late! I spatched my turkey and the legs and wings are confiting in the oven, the breasts are tied and chillin' in a brine of coriander and fennel seed (from the garden), satsuma oranges and kefir lime leaves (with a splash of old Pinot), and the kabocha and kuri squashes for my tart are roasting along with the quinces and cranberries for the chutney. I have prepped my carrots and am gearing up to make the custard for my ice cream - if I could only decide which ice cream to make! It's a toss-up between black peppercorn (with a sprinkle of Bolivian pink salt) or young ginger and honey.

Menu (subject to change without notice):

Rosemary-Concorde pear focaccia with cheese curds
Chanterelle bisque with fresh turmeric and caramelized onions
Mixed green salad with honeycrisp apples, Brindisi and balsamic-honey vinaigrette
Haricots verts au gratin with king oyster mushrooms
Glazed carrots with young ginger
Turkey confit hash with sweet potato latkes
Roasted turkey breast with quince-cranberry chutney
Mashed potatoes with roasted shallot-thyme gravy
Garlic and herb savory bread pudding
Kabocha and kuri squash tart with ____ ice cream (I'm leaning toward the peppercorn)

I guess that looks like plenty after all. Okay, back to the kitchen with me - the wine's starting to kick in.

One of those casseroles, revisited

2008-11-25T22:49:00.001-08:00

I am hell of tired after working a 12.5 hour day, 6 hours of which were spent with the client (and although this is a good client that I like, I tire of my own good behavior and mouth-watching after about 45 minutes). I came home after driving three hours with a raging headache and a bit of nausea, and needed a little horizontal couch time before I could do anything.

But some of you seemed genuinely interested in my ham and cheese orzo casserole (gluttons for punishment, you lot), so I'll write the recipe for you as best as I can. This was a hip-shooter, so forgive me if it yields a slightly different picture for you. This, by the by, is why I rarely post any recipes, ever. I don't cook from them, and I don't write them as I go.

Ham and Cheese Orzo Casserole
Serves 4-6

I dunno, like two cups of orzo? I shook some out of my huge jar.
4-ish cups of chicken stock?
3 tbsp butter
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup half & half + 1.5 cups hot water (or 2 cups milk, which we never have)
2 big handfuls of grated cheese - I used sharp cheddar and Gruyère
S&P
8 oz-ish of diced ham (I cubed up 3 slices that were 4" in diameter and 1/2" thick)
2 cups(?) chopped broccoli florets (it was one crown's worth)
2 baby bok choys sliced into chiffonade (you nudge this into every meal these days because you bought a huge bag, which is the only way Fubonn sells it)
a handful of green beans that you really should use up before they go bad
French fried onions (Trader Joe's makes good ones), or panko, or seasoned bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 350. Cook the orzo in the stock, simmering gently and adding more hot water as needed, until all the liquid is absorbed and the pasta is just a nit past al dente. Remove from heat.

While the orzo is cooking, prepare the Mornay sauce. Melt the butter over medium heat and add the flour, whisking until blended and cooking until golden and nutty-smelling (this is roux, for the noobs). Remove from the heat and add the half & half/water (or milk), whisking until flawlessly creamy and lump-free (this is Béchamel, for the noobs). This step is expedited by the use of an immersion blender, FYI. Yes, I'm admitting it, and don't look at me like that. When the sauce is perfectly blended, return to the heat, reduce temp to low, and simmer and bubble for about 10 minutes, or until the floury taste is cooked out. Turn off the heat and stir in the cheeses (save some to sprinkle on top) and S&P.

Mix the Mornay sauce into the cooked orzo and stir in the ham and veg. Pour into your favorite hand-me-down casserole that your Grandma Laverne used to use (and was probably purchased with Green Stamps saved up from all those trips to IGA). Top with the remaining cheese and crispety topping. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the sauce is starting to bubble over and leave those nice browned bubbly streaks down the side of the crock, and the crispety topping is all golden and crispety.

Like I said, I can't guarantee your results. It takes a little finesse, this casserole business. If you try the recipe and it fails miserably (I doubt that will happen - it's ham and cheese and pasta, for fuck's sake), just let me know and I'll help troubleshoot.

A Tale of Two Casseroles

2008-11-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

I've been cooking and eating a lot of casseroles and gratins lately. My little white Corningware vessel hasn't seen this much action since the Ford administration. Out of all of my crockery, it's by far my favorite. Not just because of nostalgia for Grandma Laverne's celery-cheddar-water chestnut casserole (which I flawlessly reenacted one Thanksgiving for my wistful dad, just for him to admit that he'd always hated it), but because it is virtually stain-proof. Nay, it is literally stain-proof. Okay, I also love it because it used to belong to Grandma Laverne.

Obviously, this time of year begs for bubbly shit coming out of the warm-your-house-up oven, but there's something far more primal about making and eating casseroles in cooler weather. It connects us to our aproned, canned soup-having ancestors in a way that DNA just can't. I was a frumpy housefrau in a previous life, I just know it, and casserole was my weapon.

Tuna Casserole

There's just no way to make this look good, is there? Maybe that's why so many kids hate tuna casserole. I always loved it, personally, which is a good thing since my mom made it on a semi-regular basis. Now, I make it pretty much exactly like she did, but I use a better brand of cream of mushroom soup and solid albacore. Everything else, though - frozen peas, wide egg noodles and crunchy topping - is just the same. Though I normally like to fuck with everything I grew up eating until its foundation is unrecognizable, tuna casserole garners my subscription to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of recipe adulteration.

The best part is the crunchy edge noodles. Or the sweet peas. Or the briny, flaky tuna.

Ham and Cheese Orzo Casserole

I know what you're thinking. "Again, with the melty cheese and French-fried onions." Well I can't help it, okay? I need to see shit coming out of my oven with bubbly sauce and crispety topping. I can't help it. Norm and his (adorably gawky) tween son Connor were coming over, and this kid's picky. Normally, I believe in punishing pickiness by sneaking loathed ingredients into every dish, but I like Connor (and Norm), and decided to play nice. I know Connor likes broccoli, if nothing else that's green, and he likes meat. And all growing boys like melty cheese and pasta. No brainer.

Okay, I went ahead and snuck in some chiffonade of baby bok choy and sliced green beans just to be a bitch. He didn't seem to notice.

So, casseroles. I probably have one or two more in me, probably for Thanksgiving, and then I'll seek help for my addiction.

Brussels Sprouts Almandine

2008-11-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's in the water, but I've been craving foods that are much maligned by children across the nation. Brussels sprouts and tuna casserole were both on the menu this week, but rather than risk losing valuable readership busting out both at once, I'm parsing this out.

The fruit stand by our house (not a farmer's market, mind you) has a giant box of Brussels sprouts, still on the stalk, sitting out on SE 28th. I was out for a stroll last week and decided to bring a stalk home. I do love Brussels sprouts, and Scott recently admitted that ones he'd tasted didn't disgust him (and he'd just learned about the novel stalk-growth), so I figured I'd strike while the iron's hot.

I trimmed a bowlful of them off the stem, and started shaving them on the mandoline to make that salad in the November Gourmet. WAY too much work. I got through about 5 of them and switched gears. I just quartered the rest of them, quickly steam-blanched them and tossed them with walnut oil and salt. I incorporated the shaved bits and some finely ground almonds, and stuck the whole lot into the oven until the shaved bits and almonds were crispy-toasty brown and the sprouts had gone tender and nutty.

I never met a food I didn't like when I was a kid, but isn't it funny how some dislikes really stick with us as adults? Amy and Jonny's veal liver really brought out the picky kid in a lot of foodies, and I'm sure I'll get my share of people admitting they never liked Brussels sprouts. But isn't part of being a grown-up the power to try doing things your own way? Roast a Brussels sprout instead of boiling it all to fuck, and tell me it's not damn tasty.

Ham Bikkies

2008-11-19T21:50:00.000-08:00

The other night we were talking about how to use the too-much ham we had (why do they only sell it in huge hunks?), and Scott mentioned something like "what about ham sliders on biscuits?" It's not often that he actually a) suggests something for dinner, especially when it's b) something that isn't fried chicken or fish and chips. I always honor his suggestions as a way of encouraging him to come up with more dinner ideas, but it's still a completely random event, and my coddling is really patronizing.

This time, though, he really fucking nailed it. I elaborated upon his idea by baking fresh buttermilk biscuits (adorably called bikkies by our good friends down under), and topping the ham with caramelized onions, aged fontina, lettuce and some good, grainy mustard.

We didn't even have any leftover for breakfast the next day. Surprised?

Sweet Potato Poutine

2008-11-18T17:07:00.000-08:00

For those of you who didn't know, there's such a thing in this wonderful world as poutine. As far as I can surmise, it is only found in Canada (though some asshole in Jersey is trying to pass off some bullshit Disco Fries as a facsimile when it is a totally different thing). Poutine is - wait for it - French fries topped with cheese curds and smothered with rich beef gravy. Did your arteries just slam shut in blissful "whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis" ecstasy? I thought so.

Scott and I hunted some down in Vancouver, but it wasn't that great. It was kidney stone salty, and the gravy was runny and sogged the fries. I didn't give it much more thought until yesterday, when I got a big old bee in my bonnet about poutine. I wanted desperately to eat poutine after going to the gym (hell, I wanted to eat it at the gym). Oh, this was on.

Last night I made my own, from scratch. With real squeaky cheese curds that took a phone call to source. And salty, homemade sweet potato steak fries for umami-sweet. And homemade gravy from beef and veal demiglace for consummate boner induction. This was so good, I feel like throwing an extra "motherfucking" in. Motherfucking.

It was incredibly fast and easy, too. I hand-cut the sweet potato into thick steak fries and microwaved them with a splash of water for 4 minutes to parcook (this saves a LOT of cooking time). Then I tossed them in a little vegetable oil and kosher salt and baked them at 450 for about 15 minutes. Whilst the fries were getting brown and crisped of edge, I whipped up hella fast gravy by spooning a couple globs of demi into a small pan and adding a jam jar of water shaken up with a few spoonfuls of flour. Simmer for 10 minutes until glossy and thick as a gravy wanna be.

We enjoyed this healthful dinner (it's actually only like 250 calories for half of the whole bowl - not that I'm counting) with a nice green salad and ham-and-biscuit sliders. Oh don't worry your pretty lil' head, I'll tell you all about that tomorrow. Also, stay tuned for future installments of my new poutine obsession. I'm thinking a post-Thanksgiving Poutine Galvaude with turkey confit.

Cooking Mama Kills Animals

2008-11-17T14:55:00.001-08:00

I love Cooking Mama. It's better on the DS than on the Wii, but still hell of fun. Enjoy this fun Flash version, compliments of our good friends at PETA! (I removed the game from this page because the screaming and music are annoying after the twentieth time.)