Cooking is like air to me

Peaches, peaches everywhere

2011-09-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Donut peaches cooking with tapioca, just about ready to go into a sugar cookie tart shell. We get dozens of donut peaches in our CSA basket. I find that fresh they are a bit weak in flavor, so concentrating them in a tart maximizes flavor. And, as you can see, they keep their shape and color perfectly.

Yes, I know I've been MIA

2011-01-20T00:41:00.000-08:00

To tell the truth I am getting overwhelmed with emails and facebooks and tweets and texting and blogs. So something had to give. I am just going to accept that I don't be putting as much energy into this as I used to. After all, it is clear that I'm not going to be making a living doing this. And, anyway, I just started a "cottage" business crocheting and sewing bags for sale on etsy.com. I'm very proud of myself for being able to add the code to this blog for the Etsy button it now sports.

So, enough to do!

But absence here does not mean I haven't been cooking, of course! Most interesting in the past few months is a Meyer lemon and ginger marmalade I made and canned. Lots of work zesting a dozen lemons and peeling and grating ginger but the end was worth the means. I'll make that again. Great on gingerbread, pork, and seafood.

Other highlights this winter have been Dungeness crab turnovers and bacon jam. That bacon jam is killer in a Monte Cristo sandwich, by the way.

Oh, and Happy New Year! I just know it is going to be great.

Some summer adventures

2010-08-27T17:16:00.000-07:00

Dang, all this social media stuff is VERY hard to keep up with! I tweet, I FB, I try to blog, I email...and sometimes I have time to sleep. Oh well.

Some notes about things I've been doing:

Quick puff pastry from Nick Malgeri's "How to Bake" is da bomb. I made great peach turnovers with it. Tossed the peach slices (unpeeled, even) in brown sugar and tapioca. I may never buy puff pastry again.
(But my husband will, for some reason.)

Crab stock + chopped mushrooms + heavy cream = mushroom crab bisque, a wonderful thing. Add some "dumplings" made from the Mascarpone Crab Cakes recipe in "I Love Crabcakes" by Tom Douglas, and you have a great meal.

An Aerogarden is a wonderful thing for having a few fresh leaves of greens with everything. Just need a bit of French Dijon vinaigrette, so easy to throw together. Then serve alongside or on top of most any savory dish.

Sear diver scallops, deglaze and flame pan with brandy, add some heavy cream and reduce drastically. Pour juices off of scallops back into pan, add a bit more brandy, reduce again and serve over the scallops. Be sure to have a lot of scallops, you will want more.

I am going to be selling crocheted shopping bags and quilted brocade totes online later this year. I make them myself, am a bit worried that it will cut into my cooking time. As I tweeted today, maybe I should combine my passions and make/sell cooking bags. I will post here when I actually turn on the sales and where you can find them on Etsy. (It will be ShellysBags.)

I still love fresh roasted beets with blue cheese. I think I was ahead of the curve on this, by a very long time. I was eating blue cheese dressing on salad bar beets when I was a kid. Liked red onions with them, too, for the texture I think. Of course, I didn't grok that way back when.

If you're in Seattle and haven't been to Blueacre Seafood, what are you waiting for?'

I used a dried mix for making mint chutney as a seasoning rub for lamb shanks. Worth doing again.

Time to get ready to go to the baseball game. I'll try to be better about this, really I will!

I really haven't been gone...

2010-07-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

...I've just been a bit overwhelmed with posting on FB and tweeting and email groups. It sure doesn't mean I haven't been cooking! I have also been spending time crocheting, sewing, and learning how to knit. And then, there was the trip to Barcelona...the market was amazing, as you can see:

Our CSA farm basket started just a couple of weeks ago. Already I've made arugula pesto and pickled Walla Walla sweet onions. Romaine lettuce with tiny Oregon pink shrimp. Mustard braised with homemade bacon. Roasted French breakfast radishes and bok choy. This week I made corn tortillas to go with the pork I cooked in cumin broth and turned into carnitas. Yum. Add a bit of Mexican fresh cheese and some chopped sweet onions, and it is heavenly.

For not-so-local stuff I butterflied chicken breasts and stuffed with prosciutto, minced sage, and fresh mozz. Breaded in panko and baked them on a rack, so the bottom got as crispy as the top. Sauteed greens with that.

Tomorrow I need to go up to the market to get some fish to cook with the fennel bulbs we got this week. Probably a bit of halibut, maybe halibut cheeks en papillote with fennel and greens. And then there's the summer squash. Five of those, a lot for the two of us. I will probably cut them into 1/2" cubes, salt and drain them, and saute them with onions. If the corn looks good I can add some of that to the pan, too. And I just remembered I have fresh poblanos, too, and they are great with that mix. Looks like fancy calabacitas is on the menu for the weekend.

Spicy cookies

2010-05-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

This one is copyright 2010 Vivian Johnsen (just for the record )

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

1 stick Mexican cinnamon
2 chiles de arbol
4 C sugar cookie mix
6 T water
2 T honey
6 T cocoa

Grind cinnamon and chiles together until fine. Add 1 T of the mix to a mixer with the rest of the ingredients. Combine the rest of the cinnamon/chile mix with 3 T of sugar and set aside. Form the dough into 1" balls and flatten slightly into the sugar mixture. Bake at 375 for 5-7 minutes.

Recipe testing for Cook's Ilustrated

2010-04-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

I have my fourth recipe to test for Cook's Illustrated magazine. It is fun to do - I certainly felt special when the first recipe I tested, for beef stroganoff, was in the April issue. Today I am doing cookies. This is the first time I have found an error in how the recipe is written. The flour and sugar are given in both cups and ounces. The sugar is divided, but the weight of the division is not provided. And if you measure cups, the total of the parts does not equal the initial amount measured. So I made an educated guess. First tray is in the oven. I think the dough was waaaay too soft, so put the rest into the fridge for a few minutes. We'll see how it goes. At least I am looking forward to eating my results!

Lobster and Dungeness Crab Newburg crepes

2010-03-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

A relative of mine just sent an email about how my cooking is always a "deluxe event." I think what I am trying to do with my cooking is make “deluxe” an everyday thing without it seeming too fussy.

However, the lobster and Dungeness crab Newburg crepes will not be an everyday thing. Aside from being complex and using way too many pans and bowls for one day, they are awesomely rich. Now, I made them a little more rich than the usual Newburg sauce recipe by going back to the original way of making the sauce a lovely pink – instead of paprika, I steeped lobster roe in melted butter and then sieved that through a tamis. A tamis looks a bit like a tambourine, with a fine mesh screen stretched across one side. You pour a mixture into it and then use a flexible pastry scraper to push whatever it is through the screen, making a very fine-textured puree. As lobster eggs are, well, fish eggs, they do have membranes associated with them so to get a nice buttery texture you really do have to get just the essence of them into the butter. The tamis worked quite well. Then you have to use that butter to make a cream sauce thickened with egg yolks. You whisk the butter and heavy cream together in a bowl over simmering water, then whisk a few tablespoons of that into egg yolks you have whisked (with yet another whisk) in (yet another) bowl to warm them, then whisk the egg yolk mixture back into the double-boiler set-up. Whisk constantly for about ten minutes while you strain to read the cookbook you left on the counter too far from the stovetop…because you have all the mess from making the crepes, and the crepes themselves still cooling on a rack on the counter, between you and that cookbook, as well as a cutting board with the lobster and crab you just diced up to go in the sauce when it is ready. And at the other counter you have your partner buttering a couple of little oblong casserole dishes to hold the crepes and sauce. Then he is cleaning the two nice big artichokes you’ve decided will go perfectly with the crepes. And he has never cleaned artichokes so you are directing him to get an oblong glass dish out so they can steam in the microwave oven as well as a cutting board to cut off the top inch or so of the artichokes and a bit off of the stem and, oh yeah, you tell him to get out a bowl as you reach with one hand down into the cupboard with the cider vinegar so he can make a bit of acidulated water to dip the cut edges of the ‘chokes in so they don’t brown…and he understands that he needs to put the ‘chokes stem up in the dish, and that if he is putting plastic wrap over them that they need to be completely covered. And you reach back into your brain to remember how long it takes big artichokes to cook in the microwave. And then the sauce is nicely thick and you concentrate on seasoning, ground white pepper (oops! just spilled some of that on the counter) and a couple of pinches of kosher salt, and is it good? You put a bit into Dave’s mouth to see if he agrees more salt, even though the seafood about to go in is salty. Then bowl of sauce over to counter, fold in the seafood, ooh that is good!, and see if you can roll it up into crepes gently draped into those buttered oval dishes – can’t just lay them out on a cutting mat because the filliing is pretty soft, and you’ll never be able to pick up the filled crepes and put them into the dishes without them splitting and falling apart. You silently thank yourself for realizing this before you try it and make a mess. You get the crepes filled a rolled with minimal hassle. Tell Dave to turn on the artichokes for another five minutes, please. Crepes into preheated oven. Crepes should be in there for less than 30 minutes so…whew!...you grab a glass of sparking cava (Spanish version of Champagne) and go in to watch some of the pretty dresses on the Oscar red carpet show. And are very glad that the lobster and crab were cooked and cleaned a few days before and that mess all cleaned up already. And that you know you’ll make a stab at cleaning up the mess after dinner, but Dave will shoo you out of the kitchen and take care of it.

Hmmm, I was only going to tell you about the right way to make the sauce pink. Those crepes were wonderful, by the way, and the artichokes were the right thing. Got the inspiration from "Two Cooks in One Kitchen" by Jinx and Jeff Morgan, Doubleday 1983.

Been busy

2010-03-04T01:41:00.001-08:00

Wow, guess it's been a while. It's not that I haven't been cooking! My
current project is another try at corned beef. Only one brisket this
time, though! You might recall that a couple of years ago I did three.
I trimmed it very close and cut it into four pieces. Might take a
little less curing time. I also used a premium pickling spice that is
wonderfully aromatic. Might even be ready by the 17th.

Our condo has started taking advantage of a composting program so now
I have something better to do with meat and plant waste. Sure cuts
down on the garbage -- even can put the crab shells from tonight in
there. Nice little compostable bags we use to collect it all.

The crab? Crab salad rolls for dinner. Yum.

Shelly / sent from my iPhone

Comparing chicken

2010-02-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

About ten days ago we went to a local market that had free-range chickens on sale at a great price (.97/lb). Picked one up, rubbed it in and out and under the skin with kosher salt and let it sit for two days. Rinsed the skin and then put some butter flavored with black truffle trimmings under the skin on the breasts, thighs, and legs. Cut out the backbone and flattened it, cooked it in a broil/roast manner. Probably the best chicken we've ever eaten.

Need to see if this is repeatable, and if the chicken was that good because of what it is, or it black truffle butter just makes everything wonderful.

So went back and the chickens had gone up in price but just to $1.29/lb, so picked up two of them. Also went to Costco and picked up two Foster Farms chickens. Have salted all four of them, and Thursday I will prepare one of each in the broil/roast method and the others I will roast and probably glaze with cranberry. Then we will evaluate. And of course I will tell you, just as I promised the meat dept manager at the store I would share the results with him.

Duck posole, pork posole

2010-01-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

Skinned a duck. Put the skin in a roasting pan in a slow oven to render fat and get crispy. Boned breasts are marinating in homemade red chile sauce. Carcass is in the stockpot. Blue corn posole is soaking with Mexican oregano and cumin. Leg/thighs are waiting for the joining of the stock and the posole, along with green chile. Yes, I know I made posole stew on Monday. Oh, I forgot to tell you about that. Trimmed out the leanest tenderest part of a pork shoulder, cut into stewing cubes. Used Hatch green chiles (frozen) that DH brought back from Albuquerque and dried blue corn posole I brought back from Santa Fe last summer. It was amazing, very spicy but the flavor triumphed over the spice. I had a duck defrosted in the fridge, and caught Emeril doing a duck posole on a rerun last night, it inspired both of us. So I am making a deluxe duck posole stew today. It will freeze beautifully, I am sure. Or if there is really a lot I will can it. Gotta go skim the stock....

Trying a chiffon cake today, candied orange sections

2010-01-10T16:09:00.000-08:00

Something one of my mom's cousins mentioned on email a couple of weeks ago has stuck in my mind: chiffon cake. I have all of my pieces in place to make one today, an orange chiffon cake. Am on hold until hubby gets home to get my tube pan down from a high shelf. While I wait, I am going to try candy-coating some clementine sections. I am using the zest from the clementines in the cake. It is kind of a lot of fuss over a cake that I will have to give away, as that's way too much for us to eat. But the eating isn't the point, I guess. I have a quart of thick syrup left over from preserving some plums and while it is not flavorful it has a pretty pink color. I'm heating it up to the crack stage and will dip the clementine sections in that. An orange glaze with bits of zest and some of the sections should make a pretty decoration on the cake.

Ricotta crab dumplings

2010-01-09T19:36:00.000-08:00

I think these might be a bit like gnudi, which are Italian dumplings that are like the filling of ravioli without the pasta: 2 C homemade ricotta 2 eggs, beaten 1.5 C homemade crab salad Mix together. Wrap 1-oz portions in plastic wrap and secure into golf-ball shapes. Poach in simmering water until firm. Blend 1 can chopped tomatoes, 1/2 C heavy cream, a pinch of white pepper, a pinch of salt, a pinch of dried thyme, and a pinch of ground fennel. Bring to a brisk simmer. Ladle over dumplings.

Another great Hawaii food experience - fruit and loco moco

2009-11-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

Well, we're back from two weeks in Hawaii. The time when I always have fried rice on hand and a maitai in hand :)

I think I love all the fresh fruit the best. I learned the joys of champagne mangos this trip. Intensely floral and oh, so sweet. I'm still having a little trouble differentiating rainbow papayas from strawberry papayas. So I just ate them. Best app is just a mixed fruit bowl with Maui pineapple, nice ripe papaya, and of course the champagne mangos. I like to make sure they are all cut to about the same size.

And those apple bananas! Best to get a serving of the fruit salad and then slice a banana over it at the last minute.

Oh, and for fun, a bit of dark rum. Yum yum.

Back to the fried rice. I think I did an entry on loco moco a couple of years ago. If you've never heard of it, in its basic form it is a hamburger patty on white rice with a fried egg on top then covered with brown gravy. Of course I can't leave that combo alone.

First, I want fried rice instead of white. Small dice of carrots, some diced Portuguese sausage, a minced clove of garlic, some grated fresh ginger. Some diced Maui sweet onion and some finely sliced green onion. Start the sausage in a non-stick skillet and cook until it starts to brown. Add some oil to the pan and add the garlic and ginger. When it is nicely fragrant but the garlic hasn't started to brown, add in the carrots and sweet onion. Saute for about two minutes until the carrots start to soften. Put in a few cups of cold cooked rice. I like to use medium-grain rice, the chewy consistency works great in fried rice and adds another texture. Pour in a tablespoon or so of soy sauce, preferably Aloha brand. Cook and stir until you've broken up all of the rice into grains. Move the rice to the sides of the pan and pout two eggs beaten with soy sauce into the center of the pan. Stir it around as it cooks to make small soft curds. Yes, some of it will spread into the rice and that's no big deal. When the eggs are barely set stir everything together. Mix in the sliced green onion and taste for seasoning, adding plenty more soy sauce to your taste.

Next, instead of the burger patty, I like a thin patty of spicy breakfast sausage. So fry up a couple of those or some burgers. Or whatever breakfast meat you want, ham or bacon are also very very good.

The egg needs to be over easy, or sunny-side up if you like it that way. The egg yolk is an important part because it is the sauce. I like to break two eggs into a small nonstick pan that I've rubbed with butter. Add a sprinkle of salt and a small splash of water and cover the pan for four minutes, over medium or medium-low heat (depends on the stove). When you remove the lid the thin coating of whites of the eggs of the yolks will have cooked and the whites will be cooked. Put on top of the meat and season to your taste.

Now, where you go from here is up to you. The traditional sauce is brown gravy from a gravy mix. Sometimes I like that but usually for me the egg yolks are sauce enough. If you want gravy, make it while you are cooking the rice and meat (the microwave is a good tool for this). Then pouritovertheeggsontopofthemeatontopoftherice. (supercalifragilisticexpealidocious)

Yes, it is a little time-consuming to make, which is why I make up a large batch of fried rice at the beginning of our week stay and also cook up the meat and gravy (my husband likes the gravy more than I do). Then it is a matter of heating up the components and frying the eggs.

Learning to cook elk meat

2009-10-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

I am a city girl, so don't encounter game meat a lot. But I have uncles and a sister who hunt and usually get "their elk" every year. Some of that meat finds its way into my mom's freezer, and mom gave me a package of frozen elk meat a while back. I finally got around to cooking it a couple of nights ago.

I've never done anything with elk other than grill steaks, and I thought they had given me steaks. But the 2-lb package contained several 3/4” slices of meat, and I wasn’t sure where on the animal they were from. It looked to me like round steak.

What was important to me was to do a good job, one that honored the hunted and the hunter. In thinking about how to prepare them, I first considered that I wanted to minimize gaminess. If you don’t eat game much, that characteristic can really get to you. So first I made a paste of orange zest, juniper berries, ground coriander, salt, and fresh rosemary and sage. Spread that over all of it and put it in the fridge to chill for two days.

Next I had to consider the cooking method. Elk is very lean. I considered what meats I already knew about that were like elk, and I realized that veal is similar in structure as it is very lean. As the meat was cut across some muscle groups there was silverskin running across the pieces. Silverskin is not like other connective tissue – you can cook it forever and it will still be a rubber band. So some cutting into smaller pieces was going to have to happen. Okay: like veal, not steaks or chops, smaller pieces. That meant the meat needed to be cooked with moisture to get tender. So braising was the appropriate method. I settled on something that turned out a lot like Swiss steak.

I wiped off most of the rub, trimmed the meat of silverskin and then dredged it in flour. I used a “jacquardizer” with 47 razor-sharp blades to run across both sides of the meat. This worked the flour into the meat a little more and provided more tenderizing. It is similar to using the edge of a saucer to pound floured round steak. Then I cut the ½” thick cutlets into 1” squares and tossed them in the flour left from the dredging. From here on it was a pretty classic braising job: brown all of the meat in a dutch oven (two batches) and remove from the pan. Put in one chopped onion and sweat that while scraping up all the brown fond from browning the meat. Add ½ cup of water to speed it up. Then add 1 clove of minced garlic and a can of diced tomatoes with juice. Put the meat back into the pan and bring it to a simmer. Put into a 350-degree oven for an hour, serve over egg noodles.

It was very good. The flavor of the marinade can through and the orange and juniper flavor with the tomatoes was a real treat. It really did look like swiss steak, really tender meat (“like buttah”) with a nice gravy of the tomato juice and meat juices thickened with the flour. Dave was very happy to take what little was leftover for lunch the next day.

Making Fresh Ricotta

2009-10-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to make "real" fresh ricotta for a long time. Then, a few months ago, I was in one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants. I was talking to the sous chef, and he introduced me to a cheesemaker for one of the premier artisanal cheese makers around here. The cheesemaker told me I could come around any morning during a certain time frame and he would give me whey that normally goes down the drain. Whoopee! Many people make "ricotta" using whole milk, but that's not really right as ricotta means "re-cooked." This morning I picked up five gallons.

The whey is now on the stove with a small amount of cider vinegar added. When it comes to about 185 degrees, the curds will start to form and I will take it off the heat. After letting the curd develop for a little while I will ladle it into a china cap lined with a flour sack towel. It won't make as much as whole milk, but will be the real thing.

A day for large pots

2009-10-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

Today is a day for large pots. But, not surprisingly, in the garden. Six as of now.

I am canning Mediterranean vegetable soup and mustard greens with lima beans and homemade bacon. That means the biggest pot, the pressure canner. And two soup pots for reheating six+ quarts of the greens and four quarts of the soup. Really both are soups but for clarity I am distinguishing them. Right now there are three quarts and four pints of the greens and four pints of the soup in the pressure canner. Has to go for 90 minutes because the processing time for greens is 90 minutes. I have two quarts of soup still, not in jars. I am holding off freezing that because...

...the cast iron Dutch oven is in the oven cooking roux for gumbo. Since I tend to make too much of anything of the nature of a soup or stew, I am sure there will be plenty of leftovers. So we'll dig out some more jars and probably have one more canner load of soup and gumbo. That one will go faster because I will do them all in pints. Dave loves having those to take to work for lunch -- and I will admit it is cool to give Campbell's a run for their money! Of course it is more expensive to make, but my canned soups and stews leave commercial in the dust when it comes to flavor and quality.

Another pot has the shellfish stock I am making for the gumbo, and the last isn't really a big pot but a sauté pan in which I dry-fried the okra.

Right now I have to go and dice all the vegetables for the gumbo. Tempis fugit!

Fall arrives, so do comfort foods

2009-09-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

This evening I’ve been making two comfort foods for future meals. We’ve gotten a couple of bunches of mustard greens in our CSA basket and also got some bunches of tatsoi, an Asian cabbage that looks quite a bit like a bald African violet. I pulled out a couple of the last chunks of my home-cured pork belly and made a stock with it, just a quick 30 minute visit with some water. Half of the pork belly I sliced down and put aside to brown on Saturday, it is beautiful and will make a great entrée. The rest I cut into lardons (1/4x1/4x1”) and put back in the pot with onion, garlic, a couple of dried red chiles, and all of the greens. Cooked it the old-fashioned way, for a couple of hours. Have adjusted the seasoning and that “pot likker” is really good. I’m thinking to have that with some cornbread later this week.

The other item is a Mediterranean roasted veg soup. This is part of all the eggplant, squash, onions, and tomatoes I diced and roasted a while back. Six cups of that were in the freezer so I put it in a pan with a quart of concentrated chicken broth, oregano, thyme, bay leaf, and salt. It has simmered for a couple of hours also, letting the vegetables add flavor to the broth and vice-versa. That will get put into freezer containers for Dave’s lunches. Sometimes I don’t even label those; we use a specific 2-cup container for those so sometimes he just gets to grab a container and be surprised, always pleasantly.

It continues to feel like fall here. It came so suddenly three days ago - 78 degrees one day, 60 the next. I have a lot of friends on Facebook who are complaining about it, but I don’t really mind. You see, it really doesn’t rain all that much in Seattle (more in Boston and Chicago, in fact) but we have many more cloudy days.

I have included a photo of our dinner from Monday. Those potatoes were twice-fried so they puffed up quite nicely, I guess they are pommes souffle, kind of neat. The Spanish “tortilla” of course is known as a frittata in Italy. Filled with homemade sausage, onions, and jack cheese. Those orange heirloom tomatoes are just so full of flavor and were a perfect accompaniment, just enough acid to balance out the fat of the sausage.

Back to package up my kitchen results.

Another year, another birthday dinner

2009-09-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Dave’s birthday. He’s not much on presents, but we do try to eat well on his birthday. This year he has opted for eating in instead of out. So I worked with him to develop a menu that includes many, not nearly all, of his favorite things. You know, some years it is duck, others lamb. This year it turns out is a pretty traditional steakhouse dinner, and I am pretty much making everything from scratch that can be, including the bread, the salad dressing, and the ice cream:

Mussels and clams steamed in white wine with baguette for dipping

Iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing and tomato concasse

Chateaubriand for two with green peppercorn-cognac sauce

Steamed haricot verte (skinny green beans)

Individual purple potato casseroles

Rich chocolate cakes with chocolate velvet ice cream

I have been doing shopping for the past two days and lots of the prep work today:

- Tomato concasse are little tiny cubes of tomato flesh, no skin, no pulp, no seeds. You fillet the tomato much as you skin a fish fillet, taking pieces of the tomato and running a knife between the skin and the flesh with your knife parallel to the board.

- The blue cheese dressing is a recreation of one Dave loves at one of our local restaurants, mayo, sour cream, lemon juice, grated garlic, minced parsley, minced chives, and lots of chunky blue cheese.

- Tonight I will “butcher” the meat. I bought a whole tenderloin as the price has dropped to $8/lb, and there is so little waste. For $50 I will get at least ten portions of meat for us, including trimming I can grind up for luxe hamburgers. We were watching an old rerun of “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home” and they were doing beef dishes. Jacques took the “head” of the tenderloin, wrapped a towel around it, and beat it with a pan to make the thickness even. Dave wants us to do that.

- I also still need to make the cooked part of the ice cream base tonight that blends semi-sweet chocolate, cocoa, and milk; tomorrow I will beat eggs and sugar with cream and blend both parts together. Have to do that in the morning. The ice cream will take about an hour in the machine then it needs six hours in the freezer to firm up.

- The cake is one that I’ve been making for years, it uses a dark chocolate mix but you don’t fix it according to the package. You add sour cream, oil, chocolate chips, and walnuts to it. It is usually baked in a Bundt pan but I am going to cook it in 8–oz Pyrex dishes. Only after making it for a dozen years or so did I see the recipe printed somewhere else, it was called (no kidding) Chocolate “Better than Sex” cake.

- I’ve picked out a Champagne to go with the first course and a Chateneauf-du-Pape we brought back from France for the main course.

Been busy canning

2009-08-20T23:25:00.001-07:00

If you are wondering where I have been for the past couple of weeks, it's where I usually am: the kitchen. The current big project is fermenting cucumbers for kosher-style dills. It seems to be going fine, though a little slower than I would like. It is also a little labor intensive. I have to open up the 5.5 gal pail every day and skim off the scum that comes from the fermenting. Because of that, and the fact that it is a very heavy pail, it is living on the kitchen counter beside the sink. After almost three weeks it is getting a little old. But still kind of magic. A few hollow cukes but apparently to be expected. A little garlicy, a bit of chile burn. Probably need another week. I decided this year that fermenting pickles in the house might smell better than curing pork and beef in the wine cooler. That was one stinky project.

Other “fruits” of my labor:

- Honeydew syrup (left from candying honeydew melon. It really does taste like honey!

- Blueberry pie filling, dark cherry pie filling, and cherryberry pie filling. Was a bear to find ClearJel, and had to buy it in a 25-lb bag! ClearJel is a modified cormstarch that holds its jell even at pressure canning temps.

- Stone fruit compote. Just too much stone fruit in our Tiny’s CSA basket, hated to have it go to waste.

- Blueberry butter. Spiced like apple butter, you use the liquid component to make and can blueberry syrup. About a dozen of each.

- Jalapeno-mint jelly. It is made for pouring over cream cheese! Have done that for two parties and everyone sucked it up like kids at a party when they know the punch is spiked.

- Sweet-and-sour pickles. More vinegar in the syrup than for plain sweets, these are processed like you are candying fruit or making sweet gherkins. Avowed sweet-pickle haters are fans.

- I got a big pressure canner this year and so am canning my stocks, including lobster, shellfish, chicken, and beef as well as the "juice" for Italian beef sandwiches. I think I am also going to preserve my veal demi in half-pint jars.

- Tomato sauce. Just from one box of Romas but may pick up some more at Cash&Carry and do some more.

- Green chile salsa. Charred the chiles myself, mix of poblano and Anaheim. Muy delicioso!

I'll say it again: Preserving is just kind of magic. Despite the fact that I have picked all of the hottest days of the year to run my canners!

Something different

2009-07-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

This week I did something I've only ever done once before: enter a cooking contest. This time, the "Build a Better Burger" competition, in the alternative burger category. A wonderful creation of pork and seasonings. Guess I'll find out in three weeks or so -- not that I expect any good news, there are tens of thousands of recipes sent in. But it was interesting testing and reformulating the recipe. I think it was in about 2000 that I entered the PBS "Master Chef" regional competition. My recipes, this time for a three course meal, got me selected as a regional semi-finalist. So I had to go to the cooking school at a nearby community college and cook the dinner, main course and dessert only, for a panel of judges. I didn't win, but I sure had a great time. What i remember most was singing nearly the entire time I was cooking. Anyway, I just threw my hat in a ring again. I just got the cookbook that has all of the Pillsbury Bake-Off winning recipes; I shall study it and maybe I will enter that someday, too. Oh, and yesterday I canned 11 half-pints of mixed stone fruits in light syrup. Today I took delivery of 40 pounds of pickling cukes. Guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

A canning blizzard?

2009-07-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

So far today I have skinned and boned out two dozen chicken thighs. I even got picky and removed the blood vessels because I think they are unattractive in the cooked chicken. All of those thighs (almost a gallon in volume) are in a nice brine now, waiting for the canning storm. All of the trimmings are in the stockpot with the quart of broth I made two days ago. I plan to use this broth in the canning process. A few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme, bay leaf, and peppercorns to perk up the flavor a bit. I'm planning to can these in pints, better portions for two people or two lunches for DH. I will use the raw pack method as described in the USDA Guide. What I have will probably make 10-12 pints. While the chicken is brining and the broth is brothing, I am making blueberry ice cream. Or more like blueberry yogurt ice cream. Some thick yogurt, some heavy cream. The mix tastes quite good. Back to the kitchen...

A flurry of canning

2009-07-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

'Tis the season, I guess. Blueberries go on sale and I buy nine pounds. For what? Dunno. Cherries are 97 cents a pound, so I buy five pounds. What for? I dunno.

But what I did know was that all this fruit had to be processed PDQ. Look through canning and preserving cookbooks for ideas. Cherry chutney? Maybe. Blueberry bonanza, where you get two products from 12 cups of blueberries? Absolutely. Oh, and there are recipes for blueberry pie filling and cherry pie filling. I think we have our winners, folks!

Both pie filling recipes call for a thickener called ClearJel. Both books I'm looking at (USDA Guide to Canning, Ball's Complete Guide to Home Preserving) say that it isn't widely available. So why are you including a dozen recipes that require it? Turns out that ClearJel is a modified cornstarch that can take high heat and not thin out, like most thickeners will. Only good choice for preserving pie fillings. I send DH out to find it, not at any of the local grocery stores. Then he is a "Cash & Carry," store mostly used by people who run bars and restaurants for all things in bulk and many frozen foods and very large primal and sub-primal cuts of meat in vacuum bags. Well, C&C has it. In 25-lb bags for $40. Well, it's a cornstarch so it won't spoil...I do need several cups for the pie fillings...DH has a work associate whose mother does a lot of canning, maybe she'll welcome some...so just buy it. Worry about storage in our little condo later.

The magic ingredient acquired, on to the pie filling. You make a batch of this stuff by mixing with sugar, then with water and bringing it to a boil. What you aren't told is that this stuff turns into something thicker and denser than library paste. Stirring it gets to be an adventure in arm strength. DH is stirring one pot, over the induction burner, for the cherries and I am wrestling with the larger batch for the blueberries. Finally it is ready for fruit to be folded in and go into quart jars. A couple quarts of each with two pints of cherry-blueberry mixed to use all of the filling mix.

And, the "Blueberry Bonanza." End products are blueberry syrup and blueberry butter. No, not dairy butter, but something more like apple butter in seasonings and consistency. Put berries and water into blender, turn into puree. Pour puree into fine chinoise, collect juice for syrup. Puree gets blended again to smooth, cooked with sugar and seasonings. Canned in 4-oz jelly jars. Those jars are so cute! Syrup gets cooked with sugar, lemon juice. Oops, I read recipe wrong and think I am cooking this to sheet stage. Only to "thickened" stage. Oh, well, my syrup will probably be blueberry jelly, and there's nothing wrong with that. You want syrup? Warm it up before you pour it on your waffle. No harm, no foul.

Today I plan to put the new pressure cooker through its paces doing raw-pack canning of chicken thighs. Dave will like that for chicken salad. I will like it for throwing into a sauce for instant dinner. Also like it because I got them for 99 cents/lb and they aren't southern-grown.

So off to bone out thighs and put on a pan for stock, which I will then use in the cans of chicken. During breaks I shall sit down and do a little crochet.

Pineapple "Dump" cobbler, orange sherbert

2009-07-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

Several months ago one of my relatives sent along a recipe for a pineapple cobbler. I'd nver heard of a pineapple cobbler, much less one made like this: Put a stick of butter in a 9x12 pan and put it in the oven until it is melted. (No temp given, I used 350). Then pour in a batter of flout, sugar, baking powder, and salt mixed with enough milk to make a batter the consistency of pancake batter. Pour a can of pineapple (I used tidbits) and juice over the top and bake until golden. It works. And it is good. I also made pineapple sherbet to go with it, and since we were down at Mom's I left all the leftovers with them. So when we got home after dinner I made a batch of orange sherbet, recipe from Good Eats. It is very good, and easy enough to make every day. Guess I should tell you the rest of what I made for Sunday dinner down there. I brined two sides of sockeye salmon in a soy-apple juice mixture then grilled them with some hickory chips. Also put some halved and salted zucchini on the grill. Made a potato-cucumber salad with sour cream-dill dressing. It all turned out very well.

Oxtail tamales with red chile sauce, lavender rose gelato

2009-06-20T01:02:00.001-07:00

Oxtail was on sale the other day and I picked up about 2.5 pounds of really meaty pieces. I roasted them and a couple of carrots for an hour at 400 degrees, then put them into a pot and covered them with water. They simmered overnight and most of the rest day, because I was busy. Saved the broth and picked all of the meat, got about four cups as well as three quarts of broth. Put all away for tamale day.

I'd already made red chile sauce, recipe from Rick Bayless. No tomatoes, just dried red chiles, onion, and garlic with chicken broth. I needed almost two cups for this meal. Perfect, that's what was in the jar. (I think I'm going to make a really big batch of that and can it.)

Put the broth on to reduce by about a third with about 2 T salt, three sprigs thyme, and 2 t cumin. The meat goes into a heavy skillet with some heated olive oil. Fried the meat until it was starting to get crispy. Added about a half-cup of minced onion, 2 t of Goya adobo seasoning., 2 t cumin, 1 t ground guajillo chile, and about 6 T of the red chile sauce. Stirred and cooked that until it was fragrant, then adjusted seasoning. Ladled in about a cup of the broth, 1 T roasted peeled and minced jalapeno and 1/4 C roasted peeled minced poblano chile. Cooked until dry, set aside.

I buy paper "husks" made especially for wrapping tamales, and put 30 of them into hot water to soak for about ten minutes while making the masa.

For the masa, beat 2/3C lard in a stand mixer until fluffy. While it beats combine 2 C maseca for tamales, 1 t baking powder, 1/2 t salt, and 2 C of the broth, which by now had reduced and cooled to lukewarm. Put this mixture in with the lard and beat it on medium speed until it is light. It should be about the consistency of cake frosting.

Prepare a steamer with about an inch of water in the bottom. A pasta pentola works well as long as the inner basket does not sit on the bottom of the pot. Bring the water to a simmer but don't put the basket in until you have filled it with tamales.

Construction:

The husk is roughly triangle shaped. Put it on the counter in front of you with the point at the top. Using a teaspoon, put about 1/4 cup of the masa in the lower left corner of the husk, spreading it into a rectagle that runs about halfway up the left side of the husk and about halfway across the bottom. Spread it with the back of the teaspoon; if you start trying to spread it with your fingers you will not have much success. Spread lightly, getting a 1/8-1/4" layer. Don't worry if it isn't perfectly even or smooth -- it will swell during cooking and hide many "imperfections." Use about 1-1/2 T of the meat and arrange it in an even stripe top to bottom, with the right side at about the midpoint of the masa. It can go all the way to the top and bottom of the rectangle. Carefullylift the left side of the husk and fold it over to meet the other edge of the masa. Continue to roll the husk to the right, then lift the roll up gently and fold the "point" down against the loose end. Place the tamale in the steamer basket with the fold down. Yes, you leave the top open. This recipe makes 24-30 tamales. Once they are all standing in the basket, put the basket in the pot and cover it gently with a cloth. Cover the pan and bring the water up to a simmer. Steam the tamales for one hour, checking occasionally to see that the water level is okay and adding boiling water if needed.

The tamales are done when they pull away cleanly from the husk. These tamales are pretty delicate; they can in fact be kind of a lacy covering over the meat rather than a "masa bomb." If you want a sturdier tamale, you can make the masa layer thicker.

While the tamales cook, reheat your sauce. Serve the tamales over and under the warm sauce. This recipe makes a pretty mild tamale, as I like to be able to taste all of the components rather than battling heat. You can add more hot red or green chile to the meat filling, to the sauce, or even hot chile or chile sauce into the masa mixture.

Oh yes, the dessert. I got fresh lavender in the CSA basket this week (yea the farm season has started!) and a friend made the brilliant suggestion that I make ice cream. I still have lavender honey and Moroccan roses I got when we were in Nice and decided all of those things belonged together. I put 3-1/2 C whole milk, 1/4 C heavy cream, a pinch of salt, a 1/4 C each lavender honey and light corn syrup into a saucepan and brought it just to a simmer. Took it off of the heat and added 2 T fresh lavender flowers and three roses (crumbled). Use less of the lavender if you have dried, of course. Put a lid on the pot and set it aside for 30 minutes, then strained it into a container and chilled it for eight hours. Freeze according to your machine instructions. I was surprised how much I could taste the lavender honey, and pleased that the flavors were not overwhelming.

NY strip "roast"

2009-06-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

When I was at the store the other day I watched the butcher set out some massive NY strip loin steaks. They were about 2-1/2” thick. When I went closer to see if they were as good as they looked from a distance, I saw that not only did they look very good, they were on sale for $10.99/lb. Now that is a good price, especially for a well-marbled and trimmed NY. Even though that wasn’t in my meal plans for this week I picked one up – I never let a meal plan keep me from buying great ingredients :-) Since this piece of meat looked like a small roast, I decided to treat it that way. I’ve told you before how I like to brine chicken and pork before I cook it. Brining isn’t appropriate for beef – I can’t exactly tell you why, I really do need to go read up on that, but my instincts tell me that. And I trust my instincts when it comes to matters of culinary import. However, there is another way to seal in flavor with beef and that is by koshering it. All that really entails is coating it with kosher salt and letting it sit in a way that allows any juices that come out drain away. You end up with a nicely seasoned piece of meat. I don’t do it for religious reasons, but removing any blood from a cut of meat is good for flavor, too. I “drifted” some salt over the meat and set it on a rack in a quarter-sheet pan, then covered it loosely with plastic wrap. That went into the fridge for a few hours until I was ready to bring it to room temp before roasting. With a small piece of meat, you really need to have a hot oven so that there is an opportunity to get some browning before the meat is cooked. That meant 450 degrees, and I let it heat for another 15 minutes after it beeped ready. I rubbed the meat with a little olive oil and sprinkled it with ground green peppercorn. It went back on the rack/pan on its “side” so that it was taller than wide. The meat roasted for about 25 minutes, until the internal temp was about 122. Then I tented it with foil to let it rest and the internal temperature even out though the meat. I cut it in thin slices crosswise, so the pieces were about 2x2. Nicely medium-rare. We had a salad with a balsamic-Gorgonzola vinaigrette I whisked up, used a little Dijon mustard in it. Some aromatic popcorn rice and the rest of the whole braised mushrooms I talked about the other day. The juices were great drizzled over the meat. Tonight we are having pulled pork and salted cabbage. Sort of a Hawai’ian kalua pork and cabbage meal. I cooked the pork shoulder yesterday in a covered pot in the oven at 250 degrees for about six hours. Dave was kind enough to pick out all the fat and shred it for me. Of course, that was for him, too!

Grinding tenderloin burgers, yesterday's jerk pork sausage balls

2009-05-31T13:20:00.001-07:00

When I broke down the whole tenderloin last weekend, I saved the “good” fat and all the random meat trimmings and froze them together in a one pound package. I am thawing that today with the intention of grinding it together with thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper, and garlic for burgers.

The plan is to make very thin patties and sandwich some crumbled gorgonzola between two patties. With tomato and some baby romaine on whole wheat buns, I am looking forward to a very good dinner.

Yesterday the ground pork mixed with a jerk seasoning paste made good sausage balls. Why were they not meatballs, you ask. I beat this mixture in the mixer until the myelin threads developed to bind the mixture together without any “fillers” like breadcrumbs and “binders” like egg. We roasted the sausage balls in the oven. I made a spicy mango-coconut sauce with fresh mango, unsweetened grated coconut, jalapeno, onion, fish sauce, soy sauce, habanero sauce, salt and long pepper. Simmered the sauce for a while then added the meatballs and let that simmer together while the party we took them to got started. I paired the spicy sausage and sauce with a “malted milk punch” that included dark rum. The pairing was received very well. In addition we brought along some malted milk balls and it was funny to watch everyone munch those right down. And the sausage balls? Not a single one was left. I love it when a plan comes together.

More adventures in sous vide

2009-05-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

Sous vide -- cooking under vacuum at a controlled temperature -- is fun to experiment with. If you've ready any of my earlier posts about this technique, you already know that an induction burner is your best friend when you are trying to do this and can't (or won't) spend way too much money on all the fancy gear.

For this try I used two six-ounce beef filet steaks, freshly cut from a whole tenderloin. Into the bag with the steaks I put in a bit of fresh rosemary and thyme, and a 1-oz cube of frozen veal demi-glace. It is so much easier to vacuum process the bag when you don't have any liquids in it, so the frozen demi was wonderful to use. I set the control to keep the water temp at 125 degrees and let time and temp do their work. About 40 minutes later, after we had our side dishes done we pulled out the steaks. They were soft and supple, with a faint hint of rosemary in the sauce. And they tasted great, soft and silky on the tongue with flavor that was delicate yet robust. I think the strength in the flavor came from some mushroom caps we sauteed in butter and finished with a bit of oxtail stock. We allowed the stock to reduce and caramelize, and so got Maillard reaction taste with the beef without browning it. Yum.

Milk punch?

2009-05-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Or milk with punch? I blended milk, sugar, malted milk powder, crushed ice, and Meyer's rum. Wow, a frothy fun drink for a warm sunny day. Think I'll have another...

What's for dinner: Roasted halibut with mango salsa

2009-05-21T17:54:00.001-07:00

I love it when halibut is in season. It is robust enough to take to many cooking methods but is delicate enough in flavor to work in so many different dishes. Today I am rubbing it with olive oil, salt, and white pepper and roasting it at 500 degrees for about 15 minutes, then serving it with a mango salsa I made. The salsa includes mangoes, tomato, sweet onion, jalapeno, and some cider vinegar. I shall add some cilantro just before serving.

With the fish I am making a simple fried rice, with scallions and carrots. Already have cold cooked medium-grain rice on hand. Add a salad with a vinaigrette that has a drop of sesame oil in it, and we have a nice pan-Asian themed meal.

Dessert will be brie with pears and a bit of port.

The weather is supposed to be wonderful this weekend, with temps in the mid-70's, so I suspect we will be grilling beef all weekend. We got a whole beef tenderloin for $7.19/lb, an amazing price. I will break it down into a roast, steaks, and some kebab cubes and go from there wherever inspiration takes me.

Cooking projects stacking up - lobster, beef

2009-05-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Many cooking projects still in progress around here. The nine pounds of lobster (only 2 lobsters!) yielded enough meat for several meals, and I made some very nice stock, about three quarts, for lobster bisque. We already had sliced tail meat gently poached in clarified butter with some great bread. I have pasta sheets prepared and will make lobster ravioli with fresh herbs (parsley, tarragon, and chives) and serve them with the bisque. I’ll make some extra and freeze them for a quick deluxe dinner. Before I make the bisque I will remove a cup or so of the stock and freeze it so that I can make a sauce for the extra ravioli.

Then there is the oxtail. They made a nice broth, and Dave was kind enough to pick all of the meat. I plan to make an oxtail hash with red potatoes and sweet onions, and serve it with a gravy made of some of the oxtail broth. I will then use the leftovers of that, hash and gravy, and add the rest of the broth to make oxtail soup and freeze that in containers for Dave’s lunches. You might have guessed by now that I like to start with a protein and create a series of meals out of it.

Finally, there is the Chicago Italian beef sandwich project. This one has only one outcome, the sandwiches. I went to Chicago a couple of years ago and fell in love with the Italian beef sandwiches. Dave grew up on them so has a very clear taste memory. I am using a recipe that sounds like it could deliver that taste. Yesterday I rubbed two bottom round roasts (about 5# total) with a mix of dried oregano and basil, onion and garlic powders, and crushed hot peppers. Then they got roasted over a pan of beef broth (in this case, commercial with a little of the oxtail broth added). They roasted to rare, and I shall slice them and reheat the meat in hot broth to put on sturdy rolls that can take an extra bath in the broth. The plan here is to run both roasts through my slicer, and package beef and broth for 2 sandwiches in a package to freeze.

Cooking flurry and multi-grain epiphany

2009-04-24T17:12:00.001-07:00

It is a gloriously beautiful afternoon up here in the Great Northwest. A little bit cool but bright and sunny. My tulips are blooming up a storm – when you pack them close together in a pot they make a dense flash of color.

With mom in the hospital I haven’t been doing as much cooking as usual, at least until this afternoon. I was finally able to take my painkillers after spending time at the hospital and at physical therapy, so felt like I could tackle a couple of things. (I suppose I also felt more like cooking since mom is doing better.)

Last night I took my bread starter out of the fridge so it was ready to be used this afternoon. I mixed up the sponge for some multi-grain bread, and that is where I had my epiphany. I reasoned that since the sponge sits and rests and allows the white flour to absorb plenty of moisture, and I always hydrate my cut or rolled oats before adding them to the mix, that perhaps I would get an even better result if I put all the coarser grain ingredients into the sponge instead of later in the mixing stage and allow them to get a better chance at full hydration. So that is what I have done – added the whole wheat component (instead of the white flour component) as well as the flax and dark rye. And I put in some of the molasses so that the grain can absorb a little of that, too. The rolled oats I hydrated separately and then added them to the sponge. We shall see how that all turns out.

(And a side note: when I fed the starter and set it aside to grow a bit, I must have been too generous. It popped the top and overflowed onto the counter. The starter that ate Seattle!)

I’m definitely on a molasses kick right now. I had pulled down the bottle the other day to add some to my morning oatmeal and noticed a gingerbread cookie recipe on the back. I love soft and chewy molasses cookies and this looks like it might have that potential. I shall start with their recipe (done, and in the fridge to firm up before cutting) and see how I need to tweak it to get what I want. I plan to top the cookies with some coarse raw sugar. They will be a nice snack for watching baseball tonight.

The Midnight Canner

2009-04-18T10:31:00.001-07:00

“…

And I’ve got one more case of Masons

So I’m not gonna let that spoil, you know

Not gonna let that spoil, the Midnight Canner

”

Okay, you either get that, or you don’t. You have to grok the Allman Brothers Band.

Yes, we were canning at midnight earlier this week. It started simply enough with a defrosted bag of homemade Italian sausage. I needed to do something with it, so I put it in a soup pot with a can of San Marzano tomatoes and some chicken broth, thinking that I’d add some peppers and onions from the freezer and cook it down for Dave’s lunches. But from there it became a “stone soup” project and took on the look and feel of minestrone. Some garbanzos, some green beans I’d blanched and frozen, assorted other vegetables, leftover onion soup. Then some farfalle. By this time I had over a gallon of something that tasted really good, no place in the fridge or freezer to keep it, and a ball game to go to. Dave and I agreed to keep it simmering on the stove and just pressure can it when we got home. And that is what we did.

That is how after midnight I was monitoring the pressure on a pot of five quarts of minestrone soup. And started channeling the Allman Brothers Band.

Adventures in canning, part n+1

2009-04-09T14:34:00.001-07:00

Today I am pressure canning Chili Colorado. An outcome from buying two chuck roasts on sale. Well-cooked but still firm pinto beans, red chile puree from dried chiles that came from New Mexico, 1” chunks of very tender stewed beef chuck. And some “warm” spices like cumin, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, cayenne. The chili is very spicy but not spicy hot. We have hot sauces (a couple of dozen) to add that to the diner’s preference. The canning part is a little messy but when you’re only canning one batch (up to seven quarts, in my case) it’s not really an overwhelming project. I made the chili yesterday and let it cook slowly overnight so canning is the only task today. I’m learning to make those accommodations; some lessons are more painful than others.

I will be happy to have some “jars of red” on the closet shelf to go with the chili verde. Green chili, red chili, green salsa, red salsa. I guess if I ever get to New Mexico for an “eating” trip I will have to answer the “red or green” question with “Christmas”.

More than just cooking around here

2009-04-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

Woo-hoo! I finished crocheting a baby blanket a few minutes ago. Yes, I know I'm supposed to talk about food but I just taught myself to crochet a couple of months ago, and I am very proud of it. I put a nice lace edging on it.

In addition to the crocheting the kitchen has been busy. Yesterday I made oatmeal-whole wheat bread. I used steel-cut oats that I soaked in hot water to soften them up, and a combination of graham wheat and AP flours. I added some wheat gluten for texture and it turned out soft and fluffy even with all the whole grain stuff. I turned the dough into sandwich buns – more on that in a minute.

Yesterday’s dinner was paella with halibut cheeks, shrimp, and clams, with some asparagus left over from Saturday’s steak and salad dinner. The steak was a flatiron steak, which comes from the chuck and is really marbled even though it’s just a “choice” cut. I sear it and put it into the oven until it’s medium-rare, then slice it down on the plates. Salad was baby shrimp and blue cheese with mixed greens and herbs, and steamed asparagus with sauce Maltaise (a hollandaise made with orange juice and zest instead of lemon). The sauce was good with the steak, too.

Tonight’s dinner will be grilled lamburgers (really 2/3 lamb, 1/3 beef). We are grinding the meat ourselves, so I have cut it all into small pieces and seasoned with cumin, oregano, garlic, and salt. The beef is chuck roast, it was on sale 2 for 1 so we picked up a couple. That’s what the sandwich buns are for. While four days ago it snowed, today it is supposed to get up to 70! That means we will probably take all the dishes and a tablecloth upstairs and eat up on the terrace. Dave wants sweet potato chips so I will have to get busy on those shortly.

I also have a pot of beef stock cooking. When we went to Cash & Carry (the restaurant supply store) we picked up some sliced Swiss cheese and a bag of onions. Dave asked for French onion soup, so of course that is on the menu for this week and I need a good beef base for it. I will add some of the veal demiglace that is now in the freezer to up the richness component.

And finally, I have cubed beef in a seasoning rub for chili. That’s where the rest of the chuck roast went. I’ll make that up tomorrow, probably, and we will can it with the pressure canner. Then we’ll have quarts of my chili on the shelf, and that tickles me no end.

I’m sitting here at the computer with the closet door open, and I can see all the canning jars – pickles, pickled carrots, pickled asparagus, jalapeno mint jelly, apple butter, honeydew syrup, applesauce, pork chile verde, cherry-plum sauce, tomato puree, green salsa, red salsa – and I feel pretty good about myself. I may not be “bringing home the bacon” but I can make it and preserve it.

Losing a good friend

2009-03-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to a wake of sorts, to celebrate the passing of a friend. Does it matter that the friend was a cooking school? Nope. Culinary Communion was a place where I discovered and embraced my inner food geek. I learned to be a fearless home chef. While I don’t need CC for that anymore, I might not have ever gotten to where I am now without it. The founders created something that did truly develop into a community bound by love for cooking and cooking for love.

A high-school friend wrote in my annual “A friend is someone who knows you and still likes you.” That is the way I feel about Culinary Communion. I knew them, they knew me. Though there were days when I would see things that made me chuckle and shake my head, I always went back. And there was always someone there to welcome me and make me feel welcome - even as they occasionally chuckled and shook their heads over me.

The people I met, the meals we shared, and the learning along the way will never leave me. So RIP, Culinary Communion. Your spirit, and your recipes, will live on.

Pressure canning boo-boo

2009-03-31T01:20:00.001-07:00

No, I didn't blow it up. Though I did allow it to do damage to me. I dropped the pressure regulator on my toes. Broke one...ack! Oh well. It could have been worse, it wasn't my big toe. The things I do for my art...

Taking a pass at passata

2009-03-25T23:06:00.001-07:00

Passa-what? As I have learned in the past two days, passata is tomato puree. At least that’s the basic idea. Two things got me to this point: first, my darling husband got us a long-term loan of a pressure canner. Second, yesterday he was standing staring longingly at cases of roma tomatoes at the local restaurant food-supply store asking, “Have you ever made tomato puree, or sauce or something?” Well, not really because I don’t count being labor at a tomato-canning session against my will. Hey, are there that many 15-year-olds who are happy about being drafted into a marathon of tomato juice and steam? But I was game and told him that since we have the pressure canner we can, indeed, make something from those tomatoes.

Yesterday he washed and halved 22 pounds of tomatoes while I did a literature search in my cookbook library. Ah, tomato passata. And in a recipe for pressure canning novices! Put all the tomatoes in my biggest Calphalon pot and cook overnight. Today after cooling I ran them through the food mill attachment on my KitchenAid mixer. Oh, I forgot to mention that, didn’t I? I never would have agreed to do this if I didn’t already know that I have a mechanized food mill – none of that turn, turn, turn business for me.

The milling exercise only tood about an hour, if you don’t count setup and cleanup. And cleanup was a doozy, because there was tomato everywhere. Sort of like that butter-making incident I had a while back.

Right now I am cooking the puree down some more, I’d like it a little thicker. It will simmer very slowly overnight, then tomorrow I shall make my first foray into pressure canning. It’s not a worrisome thing; I use a pressure cooker all of the time. But still when you’re preserving food, you do have to be cautious in order to produce a safe and quality product and so I shall follow instructions carefully.

From carnitas to posole

2009-03-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

Very often one or two great ingredients can drive my cooking for several days. This week, beautiful avocados and poblano chiles are taking that role. I’ve always loved Mexican border food, and when I discovered “Santa Fe” or New Mexico-style cooking I was over the moon. Mind you, I’ve never been to New Mexico to eat. But I will be, for sure. My discovery came back in about early 1986 when I forgot to return a book club shipment notification and received, unwanted, “The Taste of Santa Fe” by Buckley Dent. There were no photographs, but boy, could I see what he loved to eat. From that I taught myself how to make flour and corn tortillas, tamales, and carnitas. With great carnitas and the broth from cooking the pork it was a short step to a great bowl of posole. You can use canned products for nearly all of the making of posole, in fact many cooks do, but of course when you can use some key fresh ingredients the brothy stew of meat, hominy, and chiles in a cumin and garlic-scented bath goes over the top. And you can use chicken thighs instead of pork if the mood strikes you.

Yesterday I made chicken carnitas. Today we have posole. How did I get there? Yesterday I threw half a dozen frozen whole chicken thighs into water to cover, added about a tablespoon of whole cumin, a couple of dried red chiles, and a few whole garlic cloves. Then I pulled three cups of rich chicken stock from the freezer and added that. All that cooked for about three hours then I strained the stock and picked and shredded the chicken. Stock, about five cups, went to the fridge. The chicken went for a quick sauté to get crispy edges, then rolled up in flour tortillas that I had trimmed to 10x6 from giant locally-made tortillas. (I go for authentic but I am also pragmatic; these days I can’t stand in the kitchen all day without a lot of pain so I don’t always make my own tortillas these days.) I brushed the flautas with oil and convection roasted them for about 20 minutes until they were GDB. Served them with some guac (my nod to St. Patrick’s Day) and green salsa mixed with sour cream.

Today I am making a quick posole. Posole means the stew but also the hominy that goes into it. I am using canned today, a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Frankly, I forgot to put the dried hominy on to soak yesterday. Six more chicken thighs into water with garlic, red chile, cumin and a cup of yesterday’s broth. That cooks for an hour or two then the same routine as yesterday: strain and shred. While it cooks I roast and peel two big fresh poblanos and dice them. Then chicken, poblanos, hominy and onion go back into the pot with today’s broth and the rest of the stock from yesterday. If it doesn’t look like there is enough green chile in it, I add a can of chopped green chile as well. Simmer for an hour or so and serve with diced avocado, jack cheese, chopped onion and flour tortilla crackers. For the crackers, brush pieces of tortilla with oil, sprinkle with salt, and convection bake at 425 for couple of minutes until just golden at the edges and crisp.

Tomorrow? Leftovers. Oh, darn.

I love split pea soup

2009-03-12T17:05:00.001-07:00

I really do. It’s the ultimate stone soup. Throw in a handful of split peas for just pennies, three times as much water (by volume), a little salt and you have a fine soup. Add some thyme, some pepper, maybe a little hot sauce. Or use chicken broth instead of water. Even better, use a rich homemade chicken stock. And we haven’t even started talking about adding pork, usually pork with plenty of fat. Fry up some bacon, crumble it, and set it aside. Sauté some chopped carrots, onions, and celery (mirepoix) in the bacon fat, then add your stock/water, the split peas, and your seasonings. Be a little more careful about the salt because the bacon fat will add some. Cook the soup for about an hour then sprinkle the bacon bits over the top when you serve it. Of course there is the traditional ham hock, in which case you should sauté the mirepoix and then add the ham hock and plenty of water to cover. Do this first thing in the morning, and when you get home from work throw in a couple of handfuls of split peas. By the time you’ve changed into something comfy and unwound with a glass of viognier (about an hour), your soup will be ready for you. I don’t even bother picking the meat off of the ham hock until after having the “first day” soup. When you put it away for leftovers, that’s when you pick off all of the meat so you have a very different soup the second time around.

Today I got a little fancy with the vegetables and cut carrots and celery into brunoise, a very fine dice that is pretty in the soup and gives some texture contrast. I used some rich chicken stock I made from roasted chicken bones. It’s filling up the house with a nice comforting aroma, and I know Dave will smile when he walks in the door. He says he doesn’t really like split pea soup, but I know he’ll like mine.

Your investment accounts might look a little poor these days, but you can still eat rich on a budget.

Swimming in chickens, and chickens swimming

2009-02-16T15:25:00.000-08:00

The grocery store had roasting chickens for 79 cents per pound this week. I can’t resist a sale like that, and neither can Dave. I sent him off to the store and he brought back three five-pound birds. We are planning to roast all of them in our rotisserie oven (yes, it is from Ron Popiel and we like it just fine). They are so big that I will have to roast them one at a time. But before roasting the chickens have to go swimming. In brine, of course. The usual base recipe is ¼ cup each salt and sugar to a quart of water. I wanted more flavor in the brine so I took about a gallon of water and simmered it for 30 minutes with 2T dried rosemary, 2T dried thyme, 1T coriander seed, 2T mixed peppercorns, and two bay leaves. I also added in the salt and sugar for that gallon of water.

Now all the chickens are about to complete their little bath; they get a full 24 hours. They have been in a 20-gal capacity plastic tub with a lid, the same one that I use for making corned beef and pastrami. The tub is out of the deck with a lot of ice in it to keep the temperature under 40 degrees. That isn’t hard with all the salt in the water, and the outside temp is only 45 (it was near freezing overnight). I take an hourly temperature with my laser gun – with that “toy” I can absolutely say that I have an “arsenal of cooking tools.”.

I’ll get a picture of one of our roasted chickens later – for now I just have to figure out where I am going to put all the cooked chicken!

Never turn your back...

2009-02-10T16:12:00.001-08:00

…when you are making butter in a high-speed mixer. The whipped cream changes to butter in just a couple of seconds, not enough time to sprint across the kitchen and get the mixer turned off before something like this happens. I, too, was covered in buttermilk and butter bits. You can bet that during the second batch I never moved away from the mixer!

There's a first time for everything: making veal stock

2009-01-29T20:45:00.001-08:00

We were walking through Uwajimaya the other day and Dave noticed some packages of veal bones in the freezer case. At first I was not swayed. Then I turned around and, Dave swears with a twinkle in my eye, I loaded five pounds into the cart. Why not? It's not hard to make good stock, just time-consuming. And time, I got.

I'm using Jacque Pepin's "Complete Techniques" as my guide. Might as well learn from the best, right? Actually, I don't consider this learning as much as experience. I've made a lot of stock, a lot of good stock. Chicken, duck, beef -- but never veal.

Tonight is the prep, roasting and starting the boil. I'll get to the first major skimming tonight before bed, and let it percolate the rest of the night.

My plan is to reduce it at least to a demi-glace.

Funny interlude here, Dave comes home, smelling nice roasty meat smells and thinking there is something good for him to eat tonight. Ah, too bad, it's only bones...

More sous vide: dijon-maple pork chops

2009-01-29T18:43:00.001-08:00

I am playing with sous vide again. Started with thick pork loin chops that I rubbed with salt and let sit overnight. Gave them a rinse and put into a vacuum bag with a paste of a teaspoon of dijon mustard and two teaspoons of maple syrup. (Yes I know maple syrup has carbohydrates, but using a small amount of a strong flavor is absolutely the right thing to do.)

I pulled out the induction burner and put the bag in a pot of water and set the control to keep the water at 140 degrees. A while back I tested each of the settings so that I know how hot each keeps water (114, 140, 172, and 203 for the first four settings, in case you are curious).

What I really like about sous vide is that if you can hold food at a known temperature you can avoid overcooking it -- for a very very long time. This make it useful when you are not sure when your partner will get home from work, and may need to grab dinner in a hurry.

To finish the dish I shredded green cabbage very fine and salted it lightly and let it sit for about an hour. Gave it a little rinse and drain then turned into a saute pan with some very hot bacon drippings, a bit if dry mustard and a bit of ground ginger. I don't know quite why I chose those two seasonings except to say that it felt right. A few turns with the tongs and then I piled the cabbage into the center or pasta bowls. Sliced down the pork chops and fanned them on top of the cabbage and ladled the meat juices (with all that nice maple and dijon flavor) around the cabbage. Because the cabbage was shredded so finely it soaked up the juices, a nice benefit since we did not get to have any bread or noodles.

Putting together a recipe: injera

2009-01-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

Injera is an Ethiopian flatbread that is used both as a plate and a spoon for their rich “wat” or stews. We are having a berbere-seasoned beef, butternut squash, and cashew stew tonight so I thought I would look into making a little injera. Normally I would not have bread, as it’s very high on the glycemic index, making it unsuitable for our diet. However, injera calls for two parts whole grain flour and one part white flour. So a little bit of it to soak up the juices from the stew will be okay. It is also somewhat acidic, which lowers the glycemic index even more as it changes the way that the body metabolizes the carbohydrates. In traditional Ethiopian cuisine, a layer of injera is laid down on a platter or right on the table, and the stew is spooned over it. More injera is served on the side, and each person uses the bread to pick up bites of the stew in a communal meal.

As I usually do when making something new, I did a literature search. To my dismay, none of my baking books mention injera and I don’t have any books on African cooking. I will have to rectify that; I checked on “The Good Cook” online (the Book of the Month Club for cooks) and they didn’t have any. I’ll work on that task later. An online search turned up a half-dozen recipes and so I got the concepts: a pretty sour batter, with a mixture of whole grain like wheat and buckwheat or teff with some white flour, that uses yeast and baking powder/baking soda. Some of the recipes call for letting the batter sit and ferment for up to three days. That signals to me that using my starter, which is nice and sour, would be an okay place to start. The batter is cooked like a crepe, and is supposed to be thicker than a crepe but thinner than a pancake, cooked only on one side and not browned. It is supposed to have lots of small bubbles that break on the surface, resulting in a sponge-like look and texture. Sort of like cooking a crumpet, if you know what crumpets look like.

The research leads me to the recipe I’ve come up with. A cup of starter, awakened with a cup of very warm water. A teaspoon of sugar, a half-teaspoon of yeast. One half cup each of rye, whole wheat, and AP flours. Whisk together. Add ¼ t of baking powder. Add enough more warm water to form a thick batter. Cover and let stand for an hour or so. Then when I am ready to cook, whisk in ½ t baking soda and ½ t salt. Cook in a 10” non-stick skillet (I am using my omelet pan). Heat over medium heat until a water droplet skitters across the surface. Pour in 1/3 cup of batter and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Look for bubbles to appear on the surface and then break. Remove when the bread is firm, before the bottom starts to brown. Of course you can use a different size pan, just modify the amount of batter you put in. Someday I may try to make a dinner-plate sized bread, like I got in a restaurant. As you can see from the photos it got the open bubbles just like it is supposed to.

One thing that fascinated me as I cooked the injera were the chemical reactions I knew were happening: I put the baking soda in right before cooking, so it was still reacting with the acidity of the batter and making bubbles, and more bubbles were created as the baking powder reacted to the heat of the pan. This was in addition to the bubbles from the yeast.

I am not claiming that this is authentic, as I am not Ethiopian nor did I learn it at my momma’s knee. But it does work, and it is like what I have been served in an Ethiopian restaurant. It made a great base for the stew.

A note on my recipe search: when I am looking for ethnic recipes, I start with www.recipesource.com. It used to be called S.O.A.R., the Searchable Online Archive of Recipes, and was hosted at Cal Berkeley. It started as an online database project. Anyone can submit recipes, and I have found that a lot of college students from outside the US who are hungry for “home cooking” post the recipes their mom gives them. It is one of many resources I use for recipe development.

What's for dinner: Thai seafood curry

2009-01-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

This was dinner last night. We were near Uwajimaya, an Asian store that has great seafood. So of course I had to have some. W picked up a pound of rockfish (snapper) filets, half a pound of medium shrimp, and half a pound of beautiful bay scallops. I made the base by frying a tablespoon each of red and yellow Thai curry paste in the cream off a can of coconut milk, mashing the paste until it was smooth. Then added about 1.5 cups of chicken stock and 1.5 cups of coconut milk, one onion julienned, four pieces of dried galangal root, a couple of tablespoons of minced cilantro stems, one green onion sliced thin, a can of straw mushrooms and a large can of sliced bamboo shoots (both drained). I seasoned it with a packet of splenda, about 2 T of fish sauce, and about 2 T of lemon juice. I also steeped some dried lemongrass in boiling water and added that water, about a half cup, to the pot. That simmered for about 45 minutes while we cut the fish into 3” pieces and shelled the shrimp. (Then I took out half of the contents of the pot, about three cups, and set it aside to use in another meal, probably with chicken and zucchini.) The fish and shrimp went in for about six minutes, then I added the scallops and simmered another two minutes. When I tasted it I added a little salt and a T of lime juice. Then garnished with some chopped cilantro and green onion.

Unfortunately our diet doesn’t allow us to have the jasmine rice that would be perfect with this, but oh well. It was really good, the seafood was perfectly done, and the scallops were very tender and sweet.

What's for dinner: Pork chops with almond masala

2009-01-22T23:50:00.001-08:00

This was one of those meals when I had a really nice protein, thick pork loin chops, and wanted something with a lot of seasoning. I think low-carb diets do that to me; I seem to like things spicier than usual.

I did my usual brining routine on the pork. I guess it is a bit of a crutch to be sure it will be moist if I mess up, but I use it to add flavor, too. This time I added cumin, white pepper, and cinnamon to the brine. After about an hour in the brine I rinsed and dried them and while the pork chops came to room temp I tackled the side dishes. I wanted a curry of some sort, and with a sauce like that I would normally want a pilaf of some sort. In its place I zapped half a spaghetti squash in the microwave oven. While that cooked I heated 1 T of garam masala powder in a couple of teaspoons of oil until it was fragrant, then added about a half-cup of chopped onion and cooked that until the onion was translucent. Then I added a big pinch of cayenne and half a cup of coconut milk. Brought that up to a boil and added about two tablespoons of almond butter. I thought that was a good way to get in the nuttiness I wanted since I can’t eat peanuts. I simmered that for just a minute or two, it thickened up fast. Added a little salt to taste and set it aside.

To cook the pork I heated the oven to 400 degrees and a skillet to very hot. Coated the chops with oil and put them in the skillet, got that great sizzle that told me the skillet was hot enough. Two minutes on each side gave the chops a nice brown crust, then I put a thermometer probe into one of them and put them in the oven. Set the thermometer to beep when the temp hit 150. When that happened I put the chops on a plate and tented them and added the juices in the pan to the sauce and reheated it. Removed the spaghetti squash from its shell and put some in the center of the plate, sauce in a broad stripe across it, and the pork chop leaning up against the squash and sauce. Rounded out the meal with a romaine salad with blue cheese and cucumbers.

It was good enough that I had to write it down in this detail so I can do that sauce again. I think it would be good on chicken skewers.

Learning from Jacques

2009-01-22T21:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, I do think that Jacques Pepin is an amazing man. Not just because he has such "classic" French training but because he's figured out ways to apply that to cooking for home cooks. I think that his series "Fast Food My Way" is so practical and I can't believe how many times I have an "aha" moment when watching that show. Tonight I was watching a recorded episode where he was making a seafood soup as a first course. What did I learn? A simple way to get a great julienne of leeks. Cut a 4" section of leek in half top to bottom, flatten out one half of it and fold it top to bottom. Then do a julienne cut, and you have a great result. In the same episode he thickened his seafood soup with instant potato flakes. While I would never have those things in the house, it is certainly a practical solution and much easier for most folks than making a beurre manie or a roux. I also saw him using a non-stick All-Clad skillet and today I got an email about a sale on said skillets, not related to the program. I was due to buy yet another pan...I always need more pans...can never have too many pans...my cooking will be so much better with this pan...see I can justify this six ways from Sunday!

What's for dinner: Miso-rubbed flatiron steak and grilled zucchini

2009-01-20T15:06:00.001-08:00

In keeping with the theme of low-carb meals, we are having protein and veg for dinner. I have a beautifully marbled flatiron steak (it really could be graded Prime with all this marbling) and am rubbing it with some white miso. The miso seems to make it taste meatier, I suspect that is from natural glutamates in the miso. I am cutting a couple of small zucchini in half lengthwise and salting them for a couple of hours to get out some of the moisture and concentrate the flavor. Both the steak and the zucchini will go on the grill. It is cold outside, but not raining today so we will brave the cold and go up to the roof and use the grill.

I’ll slice down the steak and serve it at room temperature over greens and cucumbers with a miso vinaigrette. Bon appétit!

What's for dessert: Low-carb ricotta cheesecake

2009-01-17T22:19:00.001-08:00

I had some ricotta hanging around the fridge, and thought that maybe it could make a semi-healthy cheesecake (at least for those of us on low-carb diets). I’ve heard of them before and to me it’s a pretty simple formula. I beat two eggs and one egg yolk with ½ cup of granulated Splenda, 1 t vanilla, the zest of one lemon, and three cups of low-fat ricotta. We have three small springform pans and I thought they’d make nice four-serving cakes. Just sprayed them with some cooking spray and divided the batter between them. Into a 325 oven for 20 minutes, then 225 degrees for 40 minutes. About 20 minutes before they were done I spread each with some of a combination of 1 C sour cream, 1 T lemon juice, and 1 T granulated Splenda. Next time I will wait until the cheesecakes are a little firmer before I do that because some of the sour cream mixture sank down into the middle of them. However, they are good anyway.

What's for dinner: Chicken mushroom soup

2009-01-14T12:37:00.001-08:00

Hubby is out of town today L so I’m not cooking anything elaborate. I usually cook too much for two of us, and that’s way too much for just me. I seem to ascribe to the notion that if you’re going to work at it, you might as well make as much as you can.

Okay, off-topic. I’m sticking to the low-carb regimen so this soup is going to work for that., and it is not a bad thing to have several servings on hand for when cravings hit for nice soft fresh bread (or whatever your carb of choice may be).

I chopped half an onion and two stalks of celery and sautéed them in a soup pot with a little olive oil and a teaspoon of fresh thyme. Took one pound of mushrooms and chopped half of them; ran the other half through the fine julienne blade of a v-slicer. (The julienne will make me miss noodles less, giving a little of that mouthfeel at least. Of course you can just chop them all.) Added all the mushrooms to the pot long with a quart and a half of chicken stock (low sodium canned broth will work, too). Soaked a handful of assorted dried mushrooms, broken up small, in two cups of hot water, then added the ‘shrooms and the water to the pot, being sure not to pour in the grit at the bottom of the soaking liquid. At this point I stop to taste and season. Salt and pepper are good; I like to use ground dried green peppercorns instead of black, because they add a great flavor without being as harsh as black pepper can be.

This simmers for an hour or so, then I add two or three cups of chopped cooked chicken meat and turn off the heat. If you are using chicken thigh meat, you can put it in at the beginning of the simmer. Today I have breast meat so it goes in at the end. Cool the soup and refrigerate overnight, as this will infuse the chicken meat with mushroom flavor and let everything get well-acquainted. Reheat to serve. Of course you can serve it the same day! Or if you want to serve it immediately and you are using chicken breast, add the meat and simmer it for about ten minutes before serving. You don’t want to turn that chicken breast into erasers, now, do you?

A variation using raw chicken is to sauté raw chopped chicken with the vegetables and proceed with the recipe.

What's for dinner: stuffed mushrooms, salad

2009-01-12T19:30:00.001-08:00

Today is the start of some perhaps less interesting dinner briefs. Today we started cutting carbohydrates out of our diet. Sigh. I know it works for me, but it sure puts a crimp in my cooking. Or at least my baking, for sure.

Dave had a meeting to go to right after he got home from work so I made us something to keep the blood sugar steady. I precooked some large mushroom caps (salted and cooked in the Advantium until the juices collected) and then stuffed them with diced mushroom stems, diced salami (one slice per mushroom) and shredded mozz (about ½ T per ‘shroom). Roasted them in the Advantium with 80% light and 40% microwaves for about three minutes.

They were good, and gave me the idea for making a “pizza” with a Portobello mushroom as the base. I’ll try that next week, I think.

After Dave gets back we’ll have a nice salad with blue cheese, tomato, bacon, and avocado. Thus will pass our first day back on this regimen.

What's for dessert: vanilla gelato

2009-01-10T23:01:00.000-08:00

Back on my gelato kick for a day – more on why only a day sometime next week. I was finishing up some dulce de leche, had too much milk left over when we were in Hawaii and a lot of sugar, I did the long slow cook to reduce them and essentially get a milk caramel. Wasn’t able to cook it quite long enough over there so I put it into a ziplock and brought it home to finish it. Dave said we needed ice cream to go with it. Since I didn’t feel like making a custard base for ice cream, I decided on trying a simple vanilla gelato. I could not find the kind of recipe I wanted but tonight I felt up to experimenting. I took 1 cup of white corn syrup, 2 tsp of vanilla, 1 ¼ cups of heavy cream, ¾ cup of milk, and a pinch of salt. Whisked that all together and froze it in my machine. It came out with a wonderful texture, more like a soft-serve ice cream, so I guess I can’t call it gelato. But I’ll be making this again!

What's for dinner: Butternut squash soup, cobb salad

2009-01-10T19:32:00.001-08:00

I still have a bunch of different squash from the farm season sitting out on my deck, seemed like the time to use some. I picked out the biggest butternut squash, a little more than four pounds, for soup. I made the soup base by sautéing onion, celery, and apples, about a cup of each, in some olive oil. Added turmeric, powdered ginger, thyme, salt, white pepper, allspice, and coriander. Then the peeled and cubed squash went in with about eight cups of chicken broth and three cups of water. Cook for an hour or so until the squash is tender, blend smooth with a stick blender, and adjust the seasonings.

Cobb salad is one of my favorite things, since it includes so many of my favorite flavors. I have good avocados, which is the hardest thing to get, so it all came together beautifully. I tossed the greens with blue cheese dressing because we both love blue cheese, so having the dressing and the crumbles is a good thing to us. Of course, you can hardly see the greens for all the toppings – bacon, poached and chopped chicken, roma tomatoes, and chopped egg.

Watching turtles and fish, eating loco moco

2008-12-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't been writing in my blog because I have been out of wireless range in Hawaii. We just moved to an oceanfront place and it has wireless, so here I am. We are about halfway through a very relaxed trip, and I am doing a couple of my favorite things, cooking with local ingredients and watching sea life.

There are a few sea turtles that frequent the tidal pools and rocky shores under our lanai here. They like to come up in the afternoon and sun themselves while munching on the seaweed growing there. About 50 feet out in the deeper water there are several schools of yellow tangs that are easy to pick out when the sun is shining on the water. Their presence tells me that there are a lot more cool fish hanging out there around the lava shelf. But there is a lot of surge down there and it would be challenging to get to, so we shan’t climb down to snorkel there. We will, however, walk south about 100 yards on a path to a little sandy beach and walk into the water to see what we can see. I am scared to death of the water – nearly drowned when I was about 10 – but my desire to see the neato fish pushes me forward anyway. Probably tomorrow.

Brunch this morning was loco moco. This is a very Hawaii-specific dish. In its basic form it is white rice topped with a hamburger patty and a fried egg, covered with brown gravy. Sometimes served with a scoop of macaroni salad. (More on mac salad, Hawaiian-style, in a minute.) Our version was a little more luxe. Last night I made fried rice with diced Portuguese sausage, carrots, egg, and green onions. It was a huge batch, meant to last for a week of breakfasts or lunches. So I heated up two portions of fried rice, and cooked some patties I made by mincing tenderloin trimmings. I also made some Knorr brown gravy and fried some eggs. (Knorr is closest to the traditional gravy I get.) I cook the eggs sunny-side up but cover them to ensure that the white is still cooked with a runny or very soft yolk. Rice goes on the bottom of the plate, then meat, eggs, and gravy. Put a scoop of mac salad on the plate and VOILA! A deluxe loco moco.

Hawaiian mac salad is quite different from macaroni salad you may have had. It consists of a grated carrot, a pound of overcooked macaroni, and a cup or more of Best Foods/Hellman’s mayonnaise. Some salt and pepper, and let it sit until everything is well-absorbed. Then add a little more mayo if you like it moist. I happen to like it very much, and Costco here on the island used to sell a very good version. I couldn’t find it this time so once we got to a place with a wireless connection I did some research to find some recipes that resembled what I wanted. The result was very close to what I have enjoyed at the greasy spoon “plate lunch” places around here. If you’ve never heard of “plate lunch,” it is an entrée like fried chicken or fish or teriyaki beef or curried beef stew served with two scoops of white rice and a scoop of mac or mac/potato salad. It is usually an inexpensive, wickedly bad for you, and quite yummy meal.

Back to turtle watching and working on a “healthy glow” on my face, while sipping some champagne.

Canning tomatillo salsa

2008-12-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Tomatillos looked really good at Cash and Carry this week, so I bought a 2-pound bag. That made a lot of salsa, even after taking some to a couple of parties. So I decided to can it. It always seems like canning is going to be a hassle, and why only can three jars of something? But every time I start on canning with a small batch of something it really isn't a hassle, nor does it generate a big mess. And now I'll have some good salsa in the pantry. That makes me happy.

Multigrain bread

2008-12-15T11:52:00.000-08:00

One of my weekend cooking projects was bread with some "oomph." This bread includes hazelnut flour, whole wheat flour, and dark rye flour in addition to bread flour. It looks a little dense but the texture is great and it's not heavy at all. It tastes nutty and a little sweet from the honey I used in it. Great for toast!

What's cooking: Rice pudding

2008-12-12T14:27:00.001-08:00

With this nasty wet and windy storm outside, I started thinking about comfort food. Just so happened that I had four cups of leftover popcorn rice and some half-and-half that needed to be used up. I’ve never made rice pudding before but I really like it. So I reviewed several recipes and settled on this:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. In a small bowl, whisk two egg yolks with 1/3 cup sugar. Whisk in ½ cup half-and-half until smooth. Whisk this mixture in a large oven-safe saucepan with 3 ½ cups of half-and-half, another 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla, and 1 teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon. Add four cups of cooked rice. Stir constantly over medium heat, breaking up lumps of rice, until the mixture comes to a simmer. Put pan in oven and cook for 1 ¼ hours, stirring once. Allow to cool and serve at room temperature or chilled.

Just the ticket for a cold blustery day.

What's cooking: spicy chocolate fudge marshmallows

2008-12-10T19:42:00.001-08:00

This experiment started in October when I decided to fulfill a commitment to my nephew James – to make chocolate marshmallows. I went through a few rounds and came up with something that was quite good, using a fudge syrup in the gelatin. For a champagne tasting we’re going to tomorrow night, I wanted something a little more “adult.” So I have taken the base recipe and added some pasilla chile powder for flavor, a bit of guajillo chile powder for flavor and heat, and some freshly ground cinnamon. Kind of a Mexican chocolate thing going on. Right now the KitchenAid mixer is whipping its little heart out; it takes at least 15 minutes on high to get the mixture whipped up nice and light. Then I’ll pour it on a buttered sheet pan dusted with a mixture of powdered sugar, cornstarch, and cocoa and let it sit overnight before cutting it up with a pizza cutter.

What's for dinner: Ruth's lasagna

2008-12-07T09:56:00.001-08:00

Ruth is Dave’s mother. Unfortunately I never got to meet her. He says she was a big fan of Julia Child, so I suspect we would have gotten along pretty well. Last night was my first time making this recipe, though in the past I have enjoyed this lasagna when Dave made it for a crowd. You can feed 8-10 people with this easily.

Ingredients A: 2 lb hamburger 1 lb Italian sausage 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 T parsley (I assume dried, but we use 3 T minced fresh parsley) 1 T basil (dried, we use 3 T fresh or frozen) 2 t salt 2 - 14 oz cans tomatoes or puree (or one large can) 2 - 6oz cans tomato paste 2 t sugar 1 C grated Parmesan cheese

Ingredients B: 1 10oz pkg wide lasagna noodles (you’ll need 12 noodles)

Ingredients C: 24 oz ricotta cheese (the original recipe uses large curd cottage cheese; I prefer ricotta) 2 eggs, beaten 2 t salt ½ t pepper 2 T parsley flakes (I use 6 T fresh minced parsley) ½ C grated Parmesan cheese

Ingredients D: 1 lb mozzarella cheese, sliced very thin or shredded

Directions:

A: Brown meat slowly, spoon off excess fat. Add rest of “A” and simmer uncovered until thick, about 45 min, stirring occasionally.

B: Cook noodles until tender, drain and rinse under cold water.

C: Combine ingredients

Put a bit of sauce on the bottom of a 10x13 deep casserole, just to cover. Place half of noodles in pan (about six noodles). Spread half of C over evenly, add half of the mozzarella cheese and half of A. Repeat layers. Top with a little shredded mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil. Bake in moderate oven (350) for 45 min then uncover and bake another 15 min. Let stand 10-15 min before serving.

Preserved lemon recipe

2008-12-06T13:34:00.001-08:00

I got several requests for this recipe after posting my carrot salad recipe. So here is what I do. 2 dozen medium size fresh lemons Sea salt or kosher salt 1 quart glass jar with lid

Slice half of the lemons from top to bottom into quarters, but don't cut all the way through so that the lemon has four "petals." In a mixing bowl, toss the cut lemons generously with salt, packing some inside each lemon. Place the salted lemons into the quart jar. Juice the remaining lemons and pour the juice into the jar. Fill the jar to the top. Secure the lid and let sit in a cool dry place for at least 3 days. The lemons can set longer and will keep in the refrigerator. I keep mine for a very long time so I cover the whole thing with some olive oil. You don't have to make so many, you can just do a couple, once you have them covered in salt then just put in lemon juice to cover. Also note that if you are using a canning jar and a canning flat as a lid, you should cover the jar mouth with plastic wrap before putting the lid on to avoid corrosion of the lid.

To use, remove a quarter lemon and pull out the pulp. I usually put the pulp back in the jar to keep the volume of liquid up. Dice or thinly slice the peel. These can be used in chicken stew, even dice up the peel and put a little in tuna salad. I make ahi tartare (minced fresh raw tuna) and add some to that along with my other seasonings. And of course in that carrot salad. Any time you have a savory dish that calls for lemon zest or juice and has salt, you can use some of this for an interestingly different flavor.

What's for dinner: Moroccan-style carrot salad

2008-12-05T18:20:00.001-08:00

Well, really it’s miso-marinated flatiron steak and Russian banana potatoes (fingerlings) and the carrot salad. But the carrot salad is the interesting part. And it makes a pretty picture.

I took 2 cups of sliced carrots and tossed them with ½ t each salt, cinnamon, and cumin and ¼ t ground white pepper. Then I microwaved them for three minutes until they were just tender. Added 1 T juice from preserved lemons and 1 T chopped preserved lemon while they were still hot. I know most of you haven’t even seen a preserved lemon – you can use fresh lemon juice and lemon zest, you might need to adjust the salt a little bit as the preserved lemon is salty. Once the carrots are just warm, add 1/4 C minced sweet onion, ½ C minced parsley, and enough olive oil to barely bind it all together and give it a sheen.

What's for dinner: Braised lamb shanks, chanterelles, and butternut squash

2008-12-01T19:25:00.001-08:00

Lamb shanks are on our list of “favorite things.” All that connective tissue that gets so yummy when you cook them low and slow in moist heat. I use some north Africa-inspired seasonings, some dried apricots, raisins, carrots, and tomatoes in the sauce. After browning the lamb, I just put all the rest of the stuff in the pot and put it into a slow oven (300-325 degrees) for 3 or 4 hours. In this case it’s longer because Dave’s working late, so I reduced the oven to 200 after the meat was tender, like it is in the photo.

I picked up some very clean chanterelle mushrooms at the farmers market today and will do a quick sauté with some shallots – when the mushrooms are really good, you want to mess with them as little as possible. I’m also roasting some butternut squash cubes, and we’ll start with a little salad.

More experiments wth rye bread

2008-11-30T17:09:00.001-08:00

I am bound and determined to come up with a rye loaf that is rich and moist and is not solid as a brick. Last night I made a sponge:

1 T yeast
2 t sugar
1 cup AP flour
1 cup water

Whisk together, cover with plastic and set aside on the counter overnight. Next day, make the dough:

Sponge
1 cup milk
2.5 cups high-gluten flour
1.5 cups dark rye flour
3 T oil
2 T molasses
1 t salt

Mix all ingredients in stand mixer with dough hook. Knead with dough hook for 6-7 minutes until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. It will be very soft but should also be stretchy and pliable, not sticking to your hands. Oil a bown and put the dough in it, let it rise until doubled. Gently fold dough, don't punch it down or you'll lose too many air bubbles. You just want to deflate it a bit. Shape into a 12" loaf and put onto a peel dusted with cornmeal. Cover and allow to rise again, about an hour. Heat oven with baking stone to 400 degrees. Slash top with razor or sharp knife, about five diagonal slashes. Bake until internal temp is 205-210 degrees.

This turned out moist, with great flavor. Next time I will preheat the baking stone longer, as the bread stuck to it just a bit.

What's for dinner: fried chicken, potatoes, broccoli

2008-11-26T16:54:00.001-08:00

I bought a chicken yesterday and disassembled it. Boned out the breasts and the thighs and put them in an salty/spicy buttermilk marinade. Put everything else (trimmings, legs, wings) into a pot and added a couple of cans of chicken broth and a couple of cans of water, some onion and celery, and some savory. Simmered the pot for a while, and fished out the legs and wings for eating later. Strained the broth and put it in the fridge along with the marinating meat.

Today I shall make a seasoned flour and add a couple of tablespoons of buttermilk to make it kind of lumpy (this is a recipe from Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country). Then I will coat the boned chicken pieces with the lumpy coating and shallow fry them. Theoretically the chicken will come out very crispy due to those lumps. I will peel some Yukon gold potatoes and make mashed potatoes, and use the rich chicken stock I made yesterday to make gravy. Some steamed broccoli, and we'll have a nice dinner. I'll send along some pictures if it is pretty.

Hope you all have the Thanksgiving you are wishing for. As for me, I am one of the 7% of Americans who are traveling instead of going to a family dinner, and running off to the coast to spend some quality time with my overworked husband.

Update: As you can see, dinner did come out pretty and tasted even better.

What's for dinner: fried sole and sweet potato chips

2008-11-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

I'll admit this up front: I do have fear of frying. Deep frying just seems so involved and messy. But every time I do it, I say to myself that I will remember that it's not so bad. Maybe today it was easier because I didn't decide on frying for dinner until about 4:00 today. Was running through the grocery store and saw some beautiful sole, at a great price. So I postponed our crispy shallow-fried chicken dinner until tomorrow and grabbed the fish. On the way home I realized that I have lots of fry coating, from our trip to New England last summer. Might as well try a shallow fry of fish, I thought. Then when Dave got home from work, he asked if we were frying fish then could I maybe make sweet potato chips, too? Heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I discarded the idea of pulling out the big iron skillet and went for a wide pot instead, thinking I might as well use the same pot for both things.

I used the mandoline to get nice evenly thin slices of sweet potatoes, and we got the pot of oil (2" deep) heating up (starting target, 375 degrees). My plan was to put Dave in charge of the chips, which was silly because since neither of us have ever done them before you know I'm going to be hanging out and "supervising." First batch was a little dark, but after that we got it just right. As you can see from the picture, we were able to make a half sheet pan do double duty as a landing pad for the chips and the fish. Breading the fish was easy – I used a one-step approach, not the three-step flour/egg/breading. The fish picked up the corn flour and spices of the Zatarain's Louisiana Fish Fry quite nicely. Two minutes in the hot oil and it was GBD – very tender and juicy with a softly crisp coating, crunchy around the edges.

For us, a nice spin on fish and chips!

What's for dinner: Beef with mushroom and bacon gravy

2008-11-24T17:49:00.001-08:00

Had about 4 oz of tenderloin scraps and 8 oz of thin-sliced eye of round in the freezer. Cut that into ¼” dice and seared it in a little bacon fat and ½ t dried thyme. Removed that from the pan and put the juices into a small bowl. Added 2 T of chopped dried porcini to those juices and topped it off with some hot water, letting it steep. To the skillet I added ½ a medium onion, chopped, 3 slices of cooked bacon, chopped, and 8 oz of chopped mushrooms. Cooked until the mushrooms were limp and the onions were translucent, seasoning with salt and pepper. I make shiitake mushroom powder and so I added about 2 T of that, too. Poured in the rehydrated porcini and juices and cooked for about a minute. Added 1 T tomato paste and stirred in, then added 2 T flour and cooked and stirred until the flour was incorporated, about four minutes. Stir in cooked meat and one can of chicken stock, bring to simmer. Stir until thickened and simmer for a few minutes until the raw flour taste is cooked out. Just before serving, stir in ½ C of sour cream. Serve over long-grain white rice.

I’m serving it with peeled sliced asparagus stems. I guess you can almost call it beef Stroganoff, the flavors are very similar.

New thing to try: Gelato

2008-11-16T22:36:00.001-08:00

While we were out the other night, we stopped in at a gelateria in the neighborhood. Now, while gelato is "just" Italian ice cream, it has very intense flavors. After our treat, Dave decided that we should try making some for ourselves. I found a half-dozen Italian cookbooks in my collection that had recipes and background info. The keys to gelato seem to be a very intensely flavored syrup, and much less fat from the dairy component.

For example, the lemon gelato that I made tonight. I made a very fragrant syrup by poaching the peels of three lemons with their juice and sugar. Strained out it was flavorful as well as aromatic. The recipe made almost 2 cups of syrup which were to be combined with 1/2 cup of heavy cream and frozen in the ice cream machine. All that worked just fine and the gelato is pale yellow, smells of fresh lemons, and has a really creamy texture.

Oh, and the gelato experiment went on while I was canning five and a half pints of apple butter and six pints of "plum good" applesauce. And made up the fancy cioppino with the base from Friday with clams, mussels, large shrimp, halibut cheeks, big fat scallops, and a Dungeness crab. Served that with fresh bread. I think Dave has cleaned the kitchen at least seven times this weekend -- I think we need a few days off from major kitchen projects!

Don't want to waste the apples!

2008-11-15T23:35:00.001-08:00

Over the past weeks we have gotten quite a few apples in our farm basket. In fact there were twelve pounds of apples and two pounds of pluots awaiting consumption. Dave and I decided we need to make apple butter, and with that many apples we’re also making applesauce. Have I made either before? Of course not! But that’s never stopped me…

Today we peeled, cored, and sliced the apples and sliced the pluots. All went into a pot with some water and got cooked down. I ran them through a food mill and got six quarts of puree. Perfect – I need 12 cups of puree for the butter and 12 cups for the sauce. With the pluots it is a beautiful shade of pink. Last thing to do tonight was add the appropriate sugar, spices, and lemon juice to each batch. Tomorrow I will cook down the apple butter, using the induction burner as I think that will give a very even heat on the pan and reduce the likelihood of it scorching as it gets thick. I will also cook the sauce a little bit and then jar them all up and process in a water bath.

Some days it cracks me up that a city girl like me spends time canning and preserving. Guess whether you grow up in the city or the country, if you grow up poor you learn to not waste the apples!

What's for dinner: calamari steak in cioppino broth over linguine

2008-11-14T20:28:00.001-08:00

Dinner tonight was born of the need to use up ingredients. I had fresh tomatoes, lots of fresh basil, a bit of fennel, a bit of leek, some celery. I also had the lobster/crab stock I made at the beginning of the week. And a bit of tomato paste. All those flavors screamed Cioppino! So I followed their siren song. The only seafood on hand is frozen calamari steaks, which Dave really likes.

So I chopped up an onion, the fennel, some celery, some leek, and crushed red pepper and sweated them in olive oil. Added a few cloves of chopped garlic and stirred for a few minutes, then the tomato paste and let it caramelize on the bottom of the pot for more flavor. Then the six cups of shellfish stock, and about four cups of seeded chopped tomatoes and a cup of chopped fresh basil. Corrected the seasonings, and simmered for a while.

Meanwhile I cut two calamari steaks into large pieces and rubbed them with salt and lemon juice. The reason I used large pieces is that there’s quite a bit of cioppino base so I want to use it for a full-on stew on Sunday. This way I can poach the calamari in it and be sure I can get all of it out of the broth. Otherwise I’ll have some rubbery overcooked calamari on Sunday.

Then we made some linguine and boiled that up while the calamari poached in the broth. Linguine into big pasta plates with calamari on top and some broth ladled around it. A Washington Barbera to drink. Not bad for a pantry meal.

Cooking projects for today

2008-11-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

I’m working on crab cakes today, and Dave wants chocolate ice cream and we have all the ingredients so that is next. He’s doing all the vacuuming today, and he already did the laundry, so he deserves a treat. The crab cakes will be a first course for duck prepared “sous vide.” I'll use the induction burner for that. Sauce will be a duck stock reduction, probably with some of my cherry-plum syrup added. Some nice carrots from the farm on the side they will like that sauce, too.

Last night we made fettuccine and had crab fettuccine. That involved 2 T minced shallot, ½ clove minced garlic, 1 T tarragon sautéed in butter, then add about 1 C cream and simmer to reduce a little bit. Add 1.5 C crab and ½ C grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Add cooked pasta to pan with sauce and toss. Serve with a little more parm on top, and a Chardonnay/Pinot-based sparkling wine. Then those red wine-poached pears for dessert.

Yes, dinners next week will be light to offset the richness of this weekend!

Weekend dinners: duck and bean soup, seared duck breasts

2008-11-07T14:47:00.001-08:00

It’s been raining hard for two days straight and while we might get a break later this afternoon it will start again tonight. Time to pull down the soup pot and clean out the supplies of stock in the freezer.

Today Dave is picking up a duck for me at an Asian supermarket. I’ve put small white beans on to cook with savory, thyme, and garlic and pulled out a quart of double-strength duck stock. This will be the start of a duck and bean soup that takes its source flavors from French cassoulet. I love cassoulet but don’t keep all the bits on hand that go in for a really authentic one. I'll add some onions cooked with homemade pancetta to the pot when the beans are tender. The cooked beans will rest until Sunday. In the meantime, tonight I will cut up the fresh duck. I will put a curing rub (salt, sugar, pink salt, lavender) on the legs and season the breasts, and refrigerate both.

Tomorrow afternoon I will poach the duck legs in duck fat for about four hours, making duck confit. The duck breasts we will have for dinner on Saturday night, with blue cheese polenta, carrots, and a green salad. I’ve been poaching some pears in a red wine syrup with vanilla and star anise, and I suspect we’ll have those for dessert if we don’t gobble them all down tonight.

On Sunday morning I will add some tomato paste and the duck confit to the beans I cooked today. I also have a chicken breast and thighs that I poached in duck fat that I will pull out of the freezer and add to the pot. I will slow cook this in the oven for several hours, and then add a breadcrumb crust to the top of it and cook it some more. After the crust gets really crisp, I will stir it into the rest of the beans. This is a pretty classic part of a cassoulet recipe. By dinner time on Sunday, it should be ready to eat. Some crusty bread and a green salad with some cheese, and we’re good to go.

What's for dinner: Prime NY steak w/brandy cream

2008-11-06T20:23:00.001-08:00

Major score at Costco this week: fresh Brussels sprouts and USDA Prime NY steaks.

I realize that the little cabbages aren’t on most people’s list of favs, but I’ve converted more than a few people when I braise them with bacon and maple syrup, a trick I learned in a cooking class. Just slice them in half so they can soak up all that nice flavor, and if you finish cooking them without a lid you won’t end up with that nasty sulfur aroma.

These steaks had the most beautiful marbling, and were almost 1 ½” thick. I rubbed them with kosher salt and mushroom powder and let them sit out until they were room temp. Then I rub them with a little olive oil and into a really hot skillet for three minutes on a side. Don’t touch them until the three minutes are up if you want the most beautiful caramelized surface. Then into a 400-degree oven for four minutes. Put them on a plate to rest and made the pan sauce: add a couple of tablespoons of minced onion to the skillet (back on the heat) and stir until the onion is translucent, scraping up the fond in the skillet. Then pull the skillet off the heat and add a couple of tablespoons of brandy; tilt the pan as you put if back on the burner and the brandy will flame. I used more like ¼ cup of brandy (4Tbs), and got flames mostly up to the kitchen ceiling (and we have high ceilings!). But no damage, even kept my eyebrows and I didn’t drop the skillet when it happened. I guess I’m getting used to flambéing. Once the flames went out I added some salt and about a tablespoon of flour, since I wanted the sauce to cling a bit to the meat. Stirred until the flour was cooked and then added heavy cream until I got the consistency I wanted. Did I mention that this meal was designed to harden your arteries even as you prepared it? Anyway, once the sauce was done and I corrected the seasonings, I put the steaks back in the pan for just a bit to coat them in sauce, and plated it up.

You could almost cut the steaks with a glance. Incredibly buttery and tender, and a perfect medium rare all the way through.

We had a nice salad of baby greens with blue cheese crumbles and candied pecans in a raspberry vinaigrette to round out the meal. No leftovers tonight!

The Joy of Oysters

2008-11-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

Like your first kiss, I believe you always remember your first raw oyster. Where you were, who you were with, how your stomach did a little flip-flop as you contemplated it, how easy it was to have another after that first one.

After spending a few hours with other oyster lovers at an oyster harvest/beach BBQ last weekend, I'm even more convinced that I'm right. I overheard several people reminiscing about their first oyster, and it did sound like they were talking about their first kiss. So you heard it here first: first kiss=first raw oyster.

We actually didn't eat raw oysters that day, but there were plenty of barbecued ones.

It was an absolutely gorgeous, picture-puzzle kind of day.

Gathering oysters? Not so glamorous. This black "primordial ooze" sucked me in up to my knees. Not pretty, and it smelled less than pristine.

What's for dinner: Beef tenderloin roasted in salt crust

2008-10-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

Have to make room in the freezer for all that sausage, so I pulled out a small (1lb) beef tenderloin roast I cut the last time we bought a whole tenderloin. I had leftover egg whites from making frozen custard and pastry cream, and we’d bought a big bag of table salt to use to try out salt crust roasting. So tonight seemed like a good time to try it.

I had seasoned the beef with green and pink peppercorns before I froze it. So I just mixed the egg whites with 2 pounds of salt, then made a1/2” deep base layer on a foil-covered sheet pan. Beef goes on top of that, insert a probe thermometer so I know for sure when it’s done (looking for 125 degrees). Spooning the salt over the top and sides was like working with wet sand, and went very smoothly. Put into the oven on 450 degree convection roast. Also put in a foil pouch of new potatoes with just salt, butter, and parsley and thawed out some gold and pink beets I’d roasted and put away last week. Dinner will be late (Dave worked today, and worked late) but good.

The Great Grind: Italian Sausage

2008-10-26T12:47:00.001-07:00

This sausage project started because of Dave’s monthly card game with his buddies. He hosted it a few weeks ago and I made them Italian sausages with peppers and onions for dinner, and had mixed the peppers and onions into a homemade tomato sauce. Dave wanted more, he loved it. And we’ve been getting piles of bell peppers in our CSA basket, I can’t eat them, and we needed a way to not waste them. This week I made more than a gallon of homemade marinara with roasted peppers and onions, which has gone into freezer containers. It just seemed like it would be fun to make our own sausage for it, especially since I have a lot of fresh sage right now.

We then picked up a whole boneless pork butt, this one was a little smaller than I usually get, only ten pounds. Certainly enough for plenty of sausage, though! I started making sausages after I took a class at Culinary Communion a couple of years ago. Then I bought “Charcuterie” by Ruhlman and Polcyn, a great reference book for so many things preserved. I made their Italian sausage recipe the first time, probably two years ago. Since then I have tuned the seasonings and method, doing my usual literature surveys in my collection and online. And before anyone emails me about this, yes, I know that “true” Italian sausage doesn’t have paprika, parsley, and anise seed, at least to the purists. However, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with improving flavor. I use a heavy-duty KitchenAid mixer for this, with grinder and sausage stuffer attachments. You can use a hand grinder, too. If you use ground pork from your butcher, be sure to beat the seasoned pork to develop the myocin as described in the first paragraph of the recipe – your results will be so much better, even if you are only making a breakfast sausage with salt, sage, and pepper.

Shelly’s Italian-style Sausage

Three pounds of pork butt, cut into ½” dice (do not trim fat off!)
½ t anise seed
1 ½ t black peppercorns
4 t fennel seed
4 t salt
1 T minced fresh sage (or 1 t dried)
2 t hot paprika
2 t sweet paprika
2 T puréed fresh garlic
1 ½ T chopped parsley
2 oz dry red wine
About 5 feet of hog or artificial casings, if you want sausage links, cut into 3- to 4-foot lengths

Grind anise and peppercorns together, then add the fennel seed and crush it but don’t grind it to a powder. I use a mortar and pestle for this but can be done in a spice grinder or coffee grinder, of course. Add all ingredients to the pork and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate overnight. Next day, run the pork through a grinder with the medium plate. Grind it into a bowl set in another bowl filled with ice. It is important to keep the fat cold, if it melts your sausage will have a curdled texture and the fat will all drain away when you cook it, leaving it dry and with a lot less flavor. Fry about an ounce and taste to check for seasonings. Adjust as needed. Then either in one big bowl with your hands or a wooden spoon, or in batches in a heavy-duty mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the meat until you see it get sticky and it looks like threads are developing in it. This process develops a protein in the meat called myocin, and it’s what makes sausage more than just some seasoned ground meat. The myocin gives the sausage a smoother texture and helps it hold together instead of being crumbly. Do not skip this step if you want really good sausage! Put the sausage back into the refrigerator for an hour or so until it is cold again.

In the meantime, if you are making links prepare the casings according to the instructions on the package. If there are no instructions, soak natural casings in cold water for about an hour until they are soft, then run water through the casings. Set up your sausage grinder with a stuffing tube, great the outside of the tube, and feed a couple of the lengths of casing onto it. Pull the casing until you have about 2 inches hanging off of the end of the stuffing tube. Do not tie this off. Cut yourself twice as many 4” pieces of kitchen twine as you have pieces of casing. Put a big sheet pan under the stuffing tube and rub about a tablespoon of water across this. The water makes the sausage slide easily on the pan while it rests as it comes off the stuffer. Start feeding the pork into your stuffer, and stop as soon as the meat begins to appear in the casing. With your fingers, smooth the casing over the meat and push out any air from the end of the casing. Then tie off the end of the casing next to the meat. Continue to feed pork into the stuffer, making sure the casing is evenly filled but not stretched as tight as it will go – you’ll need a little bit of give to twist the links. The sausage will be about 1 ¼” in diameter as it comes off the stuffing tube. When you can see that you have about two inches of casing left on the tube, stop feeding and gently ease the end of the sausage off the tube. While the sausage sits on the sheet pan, smooth out any uneven spots, and then squeeze all the air out of the open end of the casing and then tie it off with one of your pieces of kitchen twine. Continue with the rest of the pork and the casings.

To twist the sausage into links, begin from the left end of the sausage. Move your left hand in six inches (or as long as you want your links) in from one end, and place your right hand the same distance farther in on the sausage. Squeeze with your thumb and forefinger on both hands to divide the sausage, then grasp the link that is between your hands and twist it toward you two times. Move your left hand six inches in from the rightmost twist, and your right hand six inches to the right of your left hand. Once again squeeze your thumbs and forefingers together to divide the sausage, but this time twist the link away from you two time. Repeat this process, twisting toward you the next time and away from you the time after that.

Of course, you can just form the sausage into logs, wrap them in plastic and chill, then freeze them and slice off what you need in patties, or make patties and freeze them on a sheet pan then put into freezer bags.

Store the sausage in the refrigerator overnight before cooking. The sausage will keep about three days refrigerated or a month or two frozen. When you cook them, cook to an internal temperature of about 160-165 degrees. I put them in a skillet with six ounces of water, and cover to steam them gently for about 15 minutes, then uncover and brown them or put them on a grill.

Rum balls, in advance of the holiday season

2008-10-26T11:27:00.001-07:00

These things last forever. Seriously, I've kept them on a shelf in a sealed container for two years and they were still great. And they don't taste like raisins, good thing since I'm not wild about raisins. The original version of this came from my ex-mother-in-law, Doris. I've tweaked it since then, but still want to give her credit as I think this recipe has been passed down for several generations.

2 C raisins
2 C walnuts or pecans
1 lb vanilla wafers
2 C powdered sugar
2 T cocoa
3/4 C rum or bourbon, or other flavorful liquor
1/3 C light corn syrup
More powdered sugar, for coating

Grind together raisins, nuts and cookies. Mix in remaining ingredients. Roll into 1" balls and roll in additional powdered sugar. Makes dozens.

Notes: I put half the raisins, half the nuts, and half the cookies into my food processor and grind them together then repeat with the rest. Pour everything into a big big bowl, it will make it a lot easier to get your hands or a big wooden spoon in to mix everything together. Sometimes (okay, most times) I use more liquor than called for. I also double the cocoa sometimes, which would make a lot of sense if you are using a flavored liquor like Sabra where you want to bring out the chocolate flavor. Also if you are using Sabra, you could use a couple of tablespoons of finely grated orange rind.

Today's cooking projects: corned beef hash and pepper and onion marinara

2008-10-23T14:51:00.001-07:00

Once again, I am consumed by a request from my better half. Wants Italian sausages and a marinara with peppers and onions. Today I am taking care of the sauce. Giant can of diced tomatoes in juice. Two cans of organic tomato paste. Two giant yellow onions, ½” sliced Lyonnaise-style (pole to pole). One quart of frozen roasted assorted peppers, ½” slices. Five cups of diced fresh bell peppers. (Why five cups? Because that’s what I need to use up!) Assorted dried Italian herbs, fresh rosemary and fresh sage. Three tablespoons of chopped garlic. Chop lots more garlic because I’m making ten pounds of sausage tomorrow, but that’s another story. I have a silicone trivet that I use to roll the garlic cloves in, takes the skin right off. Then I use a coarse Microplane to process the garlic, five minutes or so and I have a big pile of chopped garlic. Lots of fresh ground black pepper. Crushed red pepper. Saute onions in olive oil, add peppers and garlic, stir to coat, toss in everything else. Simmer all afternoon. It’s tasting good – even to me, and I have a serious dislike of, as well as an allergy to, bell peppers.

Dinner tonight will be corned beef hash. The other day I pulled the last chunk of homemade corned beef out of the freezer. I was contemplating the cooking method when I realized that the FoodSaver vacuum bag it was in would be a wonderful cooking container for a long slow trip through the oven. So I threw it in the oven at 200 degrees overnight. No muss, no fuss. Then I refrigerated it in its juices. Today I will dice up the corned beef and some red potatoes, steam the potatoes to parcook them, and then fry up the whole mess with some onions. A little horseradish on the side, some boiled turnip greens or maybe arugula, and a real comfort-food dinner for us. Guess we’ll have beer or iced tea to drink, can’t imagine the wine I’d pair with this one. I’ll keep back some of the corned beef and slice enough for a couple of Reuben sandwiches, and freeze it for another day. I will have to set aside some time to cure some more corned beef sometime. It’s been really good.

Now, I just have to figure out where to keep more than a gallon of marinara…

Coconut cream pie outcome

2008-10-22T19:47:00.001-07:00

Well, the crust with the coconut was certainly a challenge, and the filling is a little time-intensive, but the result is quite nice, as you can see. The toasted coconut flakes and white chocolate shavings make a very nice finish.

So, here’s the overall recipe with my tweaks and lessons learned. The garnish is straight from the triple coconut cream pie that Tom Douglas’ restaurants serve around the Seattle downtown area.

Crust: 9” baked deep dish pie crust, optionally add 2 T of sweetened flake coconut to the pastry dough 1 oz white chocolate, melted with 1 t heavy cream (also optional)

Spoon melted white chocolate into cooled pie crust, brushing it up the sides of the crust. Set aside to harden.

Coconut custard: ¼ C sugar 3 T cornstarch ¼ t salt 2 C whole milk 2 T butter 2 egg yolks 1 t vanilla ¾ C sweetened flaked coconut

Whisk sugar and cornstarch together in a medium saucepan or in the top of a double boiler. Whisk in milk, add butter, and heat over medium heat, stirring or whisking constantly, until mixture thickens. Whisk egg yolks until blended. Ladle about a cup of the thickened mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then add the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan, mixing thoroughly. Cook stirring constantly, until thickened again. Set aside to cool, stir in vanilla and coconut, then refrigerate.

Fill crust with custard. Top pie with lightly sweetened whipped cream and garnish with toasted unsweetened coconut flakes and white chocolate curls.

More dessert fun: Frozen custard

2008-10-22T13:00:00.001-07:00

Yes, I am very good to my husband. He mentions he'd like ice cream, I make some. In between tasks with the coconut cream pie, I decided to try making some frozen custard. Now, I can only imagine what the "real thing" tastes like, as that seems to be an East Coast product that I've not encountered. But hey, I can make a custard. In fact, I can make one up:

3 cups whole milk 3/4 cup of sugar, divided 1/2 vanilla bean, split 1/4 t salt Four egg yolks 1 T cornstarch

Mix the milk with 1/2 cup sugar, the salt, and the vanilla bean in a medium saucepan. Slowly bring to just below a simmer, stirring occasionally. Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar and the cornstarch. When the milk is hot, whisk about a cup of it gradually into the egg yolks (this is called tempering and will keep your egg yolks from scrambling). Pour the egg mixture back into the pan with the rest of the milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Do not boil it. I recommend you use a silicone spatula to stir will so you can thoroughly scrape the bottom of the pan. If you do get the custard too hot, it may curdle. But since you are going to freeze it, this really isn't a dreadful problem.

Strain the thickened custard into a container and cool, then refrigerate it at least eight hours or overnight. If you skip this step your final product won't be as creamy. Freeze the custard according to the instructions with your ice cream maker. When the ice cream maker is done, pack the soft custard into a container and put it into the freezer to finish hardening. When you're ready to serve it, put it into the fridge for about 15 minutes so it can soften just a bit.

If frozen custard doesn't taste like this, it should.

What's for dessert: Coconut cream pie

2008-10-21T17:04:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was channel surfing on a Saturday and ran across Tom Douglas, a well-known local chef, making his signature triple-coconut cream pie. I’ve had this wonder more than once at his restaurants, and I think I could eat a whole pie at one sitting. Since then, Dave and I have been gathering the ingredients for a coconut cream pie. I don’t have Tom’s recipe, but the filling is a pastry cream with sweetened flaked coconut added. That’s not hard to do, and I used a recipe out of one of my favorite cookbooks, a first edition of the New York Times Cookbook, edited by Craig Claiborne. A lot of times when I do a literature search through my cookbook collection, I try to be sure to pull in a “vintage” cookbook for comparison. It helps me get perspective sometimes, especially when I run across something like the squirrel stew in the White House Cookbook from the late 1800’s. Once again I am using the vodka pastry recipe from Cook’s Illustrated with the addition of flaked coconut. The pie gets topped with whipped cream, toasted coconut flakes, and white chocolate shavings. I’m thinking about brushing a layer of melted white chocolate on the crust before putting in the filling – I think it will help the crust stay a little crisper and add a nice rich flavor.

You know, I’ve always said I'm not a baker, but I sure seem to be writing a lot about baking these days. At least I’ve gotten to the point where I have more successes than failures, and that feels pretty good. In the end, the way to get comfortable with any kind of cooking is to not worry when something doesn’t turn out – as long as you learn something in the process you can carry forward to the next project. That’s been hard for me to accept sometimes because of course I want everything perfect the first time. But accepting failure is key to becoming fearless in the kitchen.

What's for dinner: filet au poivre, brisket chili with winter squash

2008-10-19T18:54:00.001-07:00

We bought a whole tenderloin at Costco this week. If you consider the price of steak, it’s actually kind of economical to buy a whole roast and cut it up yourself. With this abundance, I’ve cut a roast off of it and am letting it marinate in a rub of herbes de provence, minced shallot, ground peppercorns, kosher salt, and olive oil. Once it’s had some time to think about its fate, I will tie it up into a compact roast and put it into a 425 degree oven for 25-35 minutes, then immediately into the freezer. This results in a great texture and amazing juiciness. We’ll slice that and serve with dandelion greens sautéed in bacon, garlic, and shallots and smashed potatoes. Probably start with some sliced heirloom tomatoes as some of them are beginning to look like it’s time to be eaten. I have great piles of fresh basil growing in my AeroGardens so we have no shortage of tomato seasoning.

We’re also making dinner for tomorrow. The cover recipe from the new Bon Appétit is “Texas Brisket Chili with Winter Squash.” Dave looked at the recipe and got a hankering for it, so we also bought some brisket at Costco. Already had all the other ingredients, in fact I’ve been looking for ways to use all the winter squash that’s been in our CSA basket. Calls for a red chile sauce from dried chiles, cumin, garlic, oregano, chili powder, tomatoes, and fresh green chiles. Now it’s in the oven for three hours until the cubed brisket is tender, then add the squash and cook for another hour. I’ll chill it out on the deck for a little while, then refrigerate for dinner tomorrow.

Another chore today was cleaning out the vegetable bins in the fridge. Now I have a pot of vegetable stock cooking on the stove, with carrots, celery, onion, fennel, celery, and other bits and pieces tossed in. No, I don’t know what I’ll make from the stock, but whatever it is, it will start with a tasty base. With the fennel in it, a minestrone might be a good idea.

If you like Cook's Illustrated or America's Test Kitchen...

2008-10-15T00:11:00.001-07:00

...then you might get a kick out of this. Tonight we went and met Chris Kimball, the host of America’s Test Kitchen show on PBS and the founder and editor of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines. Dave and I have been fans and subscribers to Cook’s Illustrated for many years. It was fun to hear him talk about some of the experiences he’s had, including his encounters with Julia Child. He has his “patter” and his funny stories down pat, but it didn’t feel like he was rehashing something he’d been saying dozens of times. Perhaps the funniest stories were of tricks his staff has played on him when they are taping ATK. Like the time he was supposed to be taste-testing butter on bread, and they smeared hot chile paste under the butter. Then when he reached for a glass of water and drank about a third of it, he realized he was drinking gin. I even got him to autograph one of my cookbooks. (I have a nice collection of autographed cookbooks. Even two autographed by Julia Child.)

Anyway, if he ever comes to your neighborhood and you have a chance to go hear him, I recommend it.

Inventing a new cookie!

2008-10-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s true, there is nothing really new under the sun. But there are many variations, and I think Dave and I have collaborated on something with real potential.

As you’ve read before, we’ve been doing a lot of things with a crostada dough that we really like. It has cornmeal in it for a nice texture and a bit of citrus zest. Dave came up with the idea of using it as a ravioli dough to make sweet ravioli. I was intrigued. We had (again) lots of apples from the CSA basket, varieties well-suited to cooking. He made up a batch of the dough and put it in the fridge, and we debated the filling. I thought the best way to deal with the apples was to cut them into small dice, that way they would fill the ravioli a little better, fewer air pockets. We pre-cooked the apples after letting them sit in sugar a little while so we had some apple juice in which to simmer them. Then we added some herbs – for reasons I’ll explain below I will not tell you what we used.

The dough got rolled out to the dimensions of our ravioli plaque. If you’re not familiar with this tool, it’s a sheet of metal on little feet, divided into 12 ravioli shapes. The center of each shape is cut out, so you can lay a piece of dough across it and use a plastic plate with 12 round bumps just the size of the cutouts to press down and get a “top” layer with indentations for holding a filling. We filled each indentation with about a tablespoon of our apple filling, the laid another piece of dough across the top after brushing it with an egg wash. Then you just roll a rolling pin across the top to press the two layers together and separate the ravioli.

We brushed each piece with egg wash and sprinkled them with raw sugar, and baked them. All we can say is – YUM.

Why am I not publishing the recipe? Because for the first time we have something that maybe I’ll enter in a recipe contest. So stay tuned for info about that, when/if it happens.

If you want to see pictures, you can go to my blog where they are published. I thought that might be a more polite way to use photos, particularly for those of you with dial-up connections.

What not to eat for dinner

2008-10-14T17:03:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while, when they send me a coupon for free delivery, I order groceries from Safeway online and have them brought to my front door. It is a significant convenience, as living here in a condo our parking is underground and it is quite a schlep to bring stuff up. In fact, we have a couple of folding, rolling baskets that we keep around for the chore.

On this latest order Safeway was also offering me a free meal – some new frozen dinner that you merely needed to cook for ten minutes and serve. I haven’t tried frozen meals in quite a long time, so I wondered if there had been any improvements in quality, through new production or storage technology. So I ordered the “chicken and Portobello mushrooms fettucine with alfredo sauce.” Gave that a try last night. I will save you the trouble!

I prepared it according to instructions – dump everything into a skillet and cook covered on medium for five minutes, stir and separate the pasta, and cook for another five minutes until the sauce boils for one minute. The time wasn’t enough, more like 20 minutes, but that was no big deal. The pasta even had a nice texture, so looks like progress on that front. But I thought the sauce was under-seasoned so added salt and some shredded fresh basil and dished it up.

Now for the good, the bad, and the ugly: the pasta had a good texture, it was cut thick enough to stand up to the freezing. The chicken was nondescript. The sauce was still anemic, so we grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano over it. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig! That was the bad. The ugly? Well, the portobello mushroom pieces were gritty. There were tomato pieces, too, and the freezing had caused the meat of the tomato to disintegrate, and what was left were some really tough pieces of tomato skin.

The moral? It really only takes a few minutes more to cook some pasta while you sauté a chicken breast and mushroom pieces and finish it with a little cream, cheese, and chopped tomato. In 30 minutes you can have a very good meal, instead of a high-sodium, high-fat shadow of a good meal.

What's for dinner: Another spin on chili, fruit ravioli

2008-10-12T14:33:00.001-07:00

I usually make chili by rubbing a chuck roast with spices and let it sit overnight, then searing and braising it. Shred it up, and add the other ingredients and simmer. This time Dave asked me to try it with the meat cut in small cubes, so of course I am doing that. I figured I need a different cut of beef for this, one that holds together when it’s well-cooked. So I bought some beef bottom-round and cut it into about 1/3” dice. Tossed that with the spice mix last night and let it sit. Also took a half-dozen dried red chiles and put them in water, and soaked 2 cups of pinto beans. Today the beans go on in plan water with fresh epazote, oregano, and dried bay leaf, they get salt and garlic when they are almost done. The meat gets browned in an enameled casserole, then the onions go in until they are translucent, and all the red chile pulp and the soaking juice go in with some cumin and salt. For now both pots are simmering away. My brother Bryan is coming for dinner tonight so I’ll get a little fancier and we will have some cornbread with it; maybe I’ll whip up a little honey butter. I also have some Mexican sour cream, crema agria, and that will be good with it. No tomatoes in the chili today. But it does have the usual cinnamon and cocoa that I like in the spice rub. For dessert, Dave is going to play with the crostada dough and make raviolis stuffed with an apple compote. The concept is his idea, the filling is mine. I think they will turn out like nice little fruit-filled pastry cookies, and be great with a little bit of vanilla bean ice cream. The cornmeal in the crostada dough will be a nice echo of the cornbread served with the chili.

Fun at Elliott's and Steelhead Diner

2008-10-09T23:15:00.000-07:00

I like cooking so much that sometimes I forget that it's fun to go out. Today it was a double-shot of fun. First we (me, Dave, and an out of town business guest of his) went down the street to the bar at Elliott's Oyster House. They were having their annual celebration of the fall oysters. Steeply discounted drinks (94-cent beer!), and lots of good free food: oysters on the half shell, oysters Rockefeller, two other baked oysters, smoked salmon with garnishes, prawn shooters, fried razor clams, ancho-grilled shrimp. Quite the spread. But we weren't done! On up to Steelhead Diner for dinner. Our guest enjoyed the gumbo as much as we do, ditto with the kasu black cod. I had yet another rendition of their clam chowder, this one creamy, with razor clams (yum!), fresh corn, and a drizzle of white truffle oil. It was a fun dinner, and gave me some new ideas for cooking. It was also nice to say hello to Chef Kevin, who gave me a giant "Bramble" apple to bring home and try -- it is about the size of a grapefruit. He says it's good with cabrales blue cheese, so maybe we'll just eat that as a salad tomorrow.

What's for dinner: Paella

2008-10-08T16:18:00.001-07:00

Today I spent a few hours volunteering on a campaign for a tax levy to support the Pike Place Market. Most of you have never been there, I know, but it is the oldest continuously running farmers’ market in the US, and I live practically next door to it. I bundled up 18,000 pieces of literature today! Anyway, I walked home a different way, taking me past “The Spanish Table.” Spanish Table is a great store, carries Spanish and middle-eastern ingredients, wines, kitchenware, cheeses, sausages. I couldn’t resist poking my head in. While there I realized that if I picked up some dry Spanish chorizo and some special Spanish piquillo peppers, I’d have everything to make paella. So I discarded the notion of roasting fish on a bed of fennel fronds, making paella is fun and Dave loves it.

One of the things that’s cool about making paella is that once you’ve got all the ingredients prepped and lined up on the counter, it goes together quite quickly. I’m using a saffron-shellfish stock for the broth, and chorizo and calamari as the proteins. It also takes really big white beans, only need a couple of dozen of them so am cooking them this afternoon. I’ll also need to add some vegetable interest, and am assuming that the CSA bag that comes home with Dave today will have something useful in it. If not, I’ll peel and dice some carrots. I will literally have 8-10 little prep dishes of ingredients lined up by the stove.

The lineup will be: oil, onions, garlic, tomato, chorizo, rice, herbs, broth, beans, calamari (diced), piquillo peppers, chopped parsley. Not an incredibly fancy paella, but one more likely to be served to family in Valencia, though they might add snails because they are quite common (I can do without them!).

What's for dinner: ribs, chard, potato salad, chocolate cake experiment

2008-10-01T18:01:00.001-07:00

The ribs that I mentioned in my last post look and taste like they may be the best ones I’ve ever done. The mustard baste is a nice counterpoint to the brown sugar, smoked paprika, coriander, and cumin in the rub. They are still in the warming oven, waiting for Dave to get home, but I of course have had a little taste – quality control, you know. I put them in the oven before 7 this morning at 250 degrees, and they were already tender at 11.

I had chard from the farm, the kind with pink and yellow and orange stems. I wanted to sauté it in bacon fat, but didn’t have any on hand. But I came up with what I think is a clever solution. I have chunk bacon in the freezer, as I make my own and only slice it as we need it. I used my coarse Microplane to grate a couple of tablespoons of fluffy frozen bacon fat into the pan, then added onions and the chopped chard stems to that and cooked it until the onion was translucent. Then I put in the shredded chard leaves. Worked quite well; we’ll see what Dave thinks.

Cooking potatoes for potato salad was a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve for a while: boil the potatoes whole, then peel and chunk while hot and toss with vinegar, cube the potatoes and boil them and drain them, or what. Today I settled on red potatoes, skin on, cubed and steamed. Then I was able to drizzle cider vinegar over them while they were still in the steamer. I like the results. As I’ve said before, I am kind of a purist when it comes to potato salad: potatoes, eggs, onion, celery, mayo (only Best Foods/Hellman’s will do), and yellow or Dijon mustard. Today I added fresh lemon thyme as I had some of that from the farm.

Finally, I’ve had a craving for chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting for several days now. I was going to make “fake” fudge today, which is choc chips melted with sweetened condensed milk. The last time I made that I realized that it’s not really fudge, it’s a form of ganache. While I was toasting pecans to go into the fudge, I thought that maybe I should make a chocolate buttermilk sheet cake and use the fudge mixture as an icing. So that is what we are going to do this evening. I’ve been on my feet too long today so I’ll have Dave make the cake when he gets home. I’ll add the pecans and also toffee bits to the fudge. It won’t be a thick layer because the fudge recipe normally goes into a 6x9 pan, and this will be spread on a 9x13 cake. I’ll let you know how the chocolate cake experiment goes.

What's for dinner: boneless short ribs

2008-10-01T08:12:00.001-07:00

I’ve always wanted to cook short ribs, they are such a good candidate for my favorite cooking technique, braising. The other day I picked up some boneless chuck short ribs at the local warehouse store, they looked beautiful and I just had to have them. Also picked up mushrooms and new red potatoes, with stew on my mind.

I kind of started with chef Tyler Florence’s recipe for “bistro-style short ribs” but, as usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. What I borrowed from him is the use of pureed mirepoix as a base for a braise. (He also uses this in making Bolognese sauce, and I’ve done that, too, with good results.) The boneless ribs (kind of an oxymoron, don’t you think?) did have a lot of outside fat, which I trimmed off, and inside marbling which was going to make the sauce very good.

I cut the meat into 2”x3” chunks and seared it hard on a griddle, to get more flavor into the braise. I then cooked the mirepoix puree - carrots, onions, celery, tomato, garlic – in my oval braisier until it smelled cooked and some of the moisture had cooked off. Added 2 cups of leftover pinot noir. (Yes, I know, how often in my house is wine “left over?” Not often, but that’s beside the point. We’ve found a bargain pinot that we like quite a bit, Pepperwood Grove, and at its price point I don’t mind using it for cooking as well as drinking.) The night before, I had taken 2 pounds of white mushrooms, quartered them, and cooked them in the oven, covered, until I had nice mushroom juice. I reduced the juice by half and added that and a cup of beef broth to the pan, and brought it to a boil. Stirred in the mushrooms and put all the meat into the pan, made sure the liquid covered it. Covered the pan and put it into a 325 degree oven for three hours. I skimmed off the fat that accumulated on top of the sauce, didn’t really need that in there. Served over smashed red potatoes, this was just great. Maybe a little heavy for an indian summer day, but we didn't care.

Tonight we’re having baby back ribs, nine or ten hours in the oven, I rubbed them Monday with a nice seasoning that includes Spanish smoked paprika, to give them a little bbq taste. I will mop them today with a baste that includes cider vinegar, mustard, honey, thyme, and savory among other things. It’s a Carolina-style baste, they do usually seem to use yellow mustard. More on that later, when we see how they turn out.

Four alliums, two nightshades, and a big squid

2008-09-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

Tonight's dinner is born out of desperation. The CSA baskets are full of tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash (still!), and I'm still working on onions and leeks from last week. And in a silly impulse, I had my husband buy a box of frozen calamari steaks at the local restaurant supply. I don't have room in my freezer for five pounds of calamari steaks, what was I thinking? So we are having angel hair pasta and julienned calamari with a piquant sauce of julienned eggplant, chopped seeded tomatoes, capers, minced leek, chopped onion, minced garlic, and minced shallot. I've broken the pasta into three-inch lengths to more closely match the 3" x 1/4" strips of calamari. I’m using a small green eggplant, doesn’t have much in the way of seeds so it shouldn't have any bitterness, and also soak up some of the tomato flavor. The tomatoes themselves are quite wonderful, organic heirloom varieties that taste like what tomatoes are supposed to. I'm throwing in a brunoise (very fine dice, 1/16th”) of summer squash just because it's there and it does soak up flavors nicely. And as long as it’s cut very small, it won’t add a rubbery or spongy texture, which does happen sometimes with summer squash. Aside from all the prep involved, it also goes together nice and fast, as we have to dash off to a baseball game tonight. At least this is the last week of the season, no postseason for the astonishingly incompetent Mariners...

What's for dinner: 'but cheeks, sous vide

2008-09-15T19:13:00.001-07:00

No kidding, that's how I order them from the fish guy. I love halibut cheeks, they are very different in texture from the rest of the fish, longer strands of muscle rather than flakes. They soak up flavors pretty well, too. I've decided that since the scallops prepared sous vide on Friday turned out so well we should try some other proteins cooked that way. I vacuum packed the ‘but cheeks with a couple of slices of lemon, salt, olive oil, sorrel, thyme, and oregano (all fresh). I thought about adding some veg, even in a different package, but the temp for cooked vegetables is higher than the 140 degrees for fish. So I think I’ll fry some diced potatoes, give us a texture contrast to the softness of the ‘but cheeks. Add a green salad, and it will be dinner.

What's for Dinner: Rack of lamb, stir-fry

2008-09-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

I’ll bundle two reports in here for the price of one. We’ve had absolutely gorgeous weather up here (many apologies to those who haven’t) so we had to get up and grill at least once this weekend. We have to use a shared gas grill due to our location in a condo. Not really too bad, but we do have to haul a lot of stuff up there sometimes. But the outcome was very nice, as the rack of lamb picture shows. I rubbed it with an herb paste, all of the herb fresh, using oregano, thyme, savory, parsley and rosemary as well as a little leek all ground together with some salt in a mortar and pestle. The potatoes were coated with the same rub and roasted. The zucchini was brushed with some basil vinaigrette left over from Friday’s dinner.

Yesterday I was planning to have stir fry. Even bought some ground pork which I decided to use in deep fried Chinese pork balls. Made them about a teaspoon size, very cute and easy to incorporate in the stir fry. Used canned baby corn and bamboo shoots along with fresh bok choy, snow peas, green beans, carrots, celery, mushrooms, ginger, and garlic. Dave mentioned that he’d never really stir fried, so I put him at the stove for this one The sauce was a combination of Chinese black vinegar, kecap manis (sweet soy sauce, tastes a bit like molasses), tamari soy sauce, chile oil, and chicken stock. I think we’re having grilled chicken on salad today.

What's for dinner: Bday dinner results

2008-09-12T21:07:00.000-07:00

As is usually the case with a menu, I made tweaks to what I was planning for tonite.

First, I decided that instead of searing the scallops I would cook them sous vide (under vacuum). That meant cooking them in a vacuum bag in water at a temp no higher than 140 degrees. Not long ago Dave bought a portable induction burner, and it did a magnificent job of keeping the water between 138 and 141 degrees. I made this menu change for two reasons: 1) I was searing the steak, and wanted some texture variety; 2) Less attention needed to be paid to the scallops while I finished the rest of dinner. A third reason was that I wanted to try it -- and as soon as Dave reminded me we have the induction burner, it was a slam dunk. Incidentally, they came out perfect -- firm but not chewy, very sweet, and great with the Bearnaise.

I also messed around with the salad a bit. Same ingredients, but I tried juicing some of the tomatoes and making a fresh tomato aspic with the pearl mozz suspended in it. I think I went a little too light on the gelatin, so it didn't really hold its shape. But the flavor was fantastic, very intense tomato with hits of the basil vinaigrette. Like a cold jellied tomato soup.

The ahi noodles looked great, and so did the Baked Alaska:

What's for dinner: Fancy birthday dinner

2008-09-11T14:32:00.001-07:00

Not surprisingly, I try to fix dinners with “Dave’s Favorite Things” for special occasions. In truth, I try to do that most of the time anyway. But for the dinner tomorrow night, I get to take things a little over the top. Menu for tomorrow night:

Ahi Sashimi “Noodles” on a bed of daikon radish strings, wasabi cream, white sturgeon caviar. I will take sashimi-grade ahi tuna (raw) and cut it into very fine julienne to resemble red noodles. I have a Japanese tool that cuts things into skinny twisty strings, and will put the ahi on a bed of that. For the wasabi cream I will bring heavy cream to a simmer and add wasabi (Japanese horseradish) powder; it thickens the cream immediately into a nice sauce. That will go around the ahi pile, which I will then garnish with some osetra caviar that should be arriving by air tomorrow.
Tomatoes and Pearls, Caprese-style. Organic heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella “perletti” tossed with a fresh basil and shallot dressing, with a chervil herb salad and fresh baguette. For the dressing, I blanch basil and shock it, then blend with extra-virgin olive oil to a loose paste. Blanching it helps keep it green, even when exposed to acid that would normally turn it brown. I’ll grate some shallot into that, and whisk in some white wine vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper. I will chop the tomatoes into approximately ¼” dice, so they are about the same size as the adorable little balls of cheese. The tomatoes and cheese get tossed with the dressing, then “spilled” over onto a bed of chervil (an herb we don’t see much of, the flavor is a blend of anise, celery, and parsley but much more delicate) that I grow in my AeroGarden. Along with that we will have bread from a local bakery whose baker won the World Pastry Cup for his bread, beating out the French. It’s a bit of a drive to pick it up fresh on the afternoon of dinner, but a very special treat.
Surf and Turf au Béarnaise with Sweet Potato Gaufrettes The surf is jumbo scallops, seared to a deep brown caramel crunch on each side. The turf is a prime NY strip steak, seared on each side then finished in the oven to medium-rare. The steak will be sliced to serve two, and fanned on a plate with a drizzle of Béarnaise sauce over the top. The scallops will be plated two to the plate, on a swirl of the Béarnaise. Since the primary flavor of Béarnaise is tarragon, of course I will garnish with a tarragon ruffle of some soft. Gaufrettes of course are just a fancy name for potato chips, but they are usually cut so the resemble a fine mesh screen. I will do that on a mandoline and then deep fry the sweet potato slices and pile them in a bowl, seasoned with fleur de sel, a special French sea salt gathered by hand from marshes, in this case from the south of France.
Baked Alaska Brownie Sundaes Dave has always wanted to try having Baked Alaska at home, so I’m going to give this a try, making it up as I go along. I’ve baked two 4” circles of pecan-toffee brownies, and in a 4” round pan lined with plastic wrap I have layered one cup of fudge brownie ice cream and one cup of dulce-de-leche ice cream. I will make a soft meringue topping, then layer the frozen ice cream block between the two brownies and cover it with the meringue. It then goes into a 450 degree convection oven for 5 minutes or until there’s a little brown on the tips of the meringue swirls. (Wish me luck!!)

Ok, back to the kitchen with me. I have a lot of prep to finish today so that Dave doesn’t have to sit down to dinner tomorrow with a sweaty, frantic, exhausted wife. And in truth, today is his birthday so I do need to do something a little special today as well – probably mojitos and a Korean-style flank steak with rice, garlic glazed carrots.

What's for dinner: Macaroni and Cheese

2008-09-10T21:07:00.001-07:00

I will never try to tell you that my mac and cheese is good for your heart. It’s not. But sometimes you need comfort food, and this can fill the bill.

Cook 1 pound of pasta. Twisty shapes grab the sauce best, I used cavatappi tonight. It is important to cook the pasta well, almost over-cook it. Al dente pasta is not a good thing in mac and cheese.

Sauté 2 T of grated shallot and 1 clove of grated garlic in 4 T butter. Whisk in 4 T flour and cook over medium heat for about three minutes. Add 1//8 t cayenne, 1 t dry mustard, and a pinch of nutmeg. Whisk in 2 cups of half-and-half (okay, you can use skim milk here if you want to!) and one cup of chicken stock or broth. Bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and stir in by handfuls 2 C sharp cheddar cheese and 1 C jack cheese. Stir each handful until it is melted before adding the next handful. Stir sauce into drained pasta. Serve as is, or pour into a casserole dish and top with sharp cheddar and breadcrumbs, bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until bubbly.

My next “What’s for dinner” installment will cover a big project: a birthday dinner for my dear husband. Dinner is on Friday, but prep starts tomorrow. I’ll tell you the menu tomorrow.

What's for dinner: Chili, part deux

2008-09-09T13:43:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about getting a beef chuck roast on sale and using a spice rub on it. I braised it, picked off all the fat, and froze the meat and the broth separately for a future batch of chili. The future is today. This morning I started with one very large onion, chopped; four cloves of garlic; chopped; and because it was hanging around, a couple of summer squash, chopped. I sweated all of that in a dutch oven and then added a couple of cups of uncooked pinto beans, a cup of diced green chile (from the freezer), ½ cup of ancho chile paste (also from the freezer), and four parts water to the one part beans. I do not usually soak my beans, I just cook them longer. I also do not add salt at the beginning of the cooking, as I find it makes it hard to get nice creamy beans.

When the beans were nearly cooked (about 2 hrs), I added the 2 C broth left from braising the meat, the chopped meat, and ¼ C of the same spice rub I used on the chuck roast. The spice rub has the usual suspects in chili powder, plus cocoa, cinnamon, and allspice. I also added a generous measure of salt and some harissa paste, about a tablespoon. Harissa is a Moroccan hot chile paste, and I wanted a quick hit of heat and I saw it hanging about in my refrigerator. You can use any other hot sauce or cayenne. Now the pot is on very low heat on a back burner, to simmer slowly until time to eat it. We’ll have it with sharp cheddar cheese and sour cream. A nice quick meal on our way out the door to yet another baseball game.

Yes, yes, I know: no beans in chili, and who ever heard of summer squash in chili. The squash has cooked into nothing recognizable but does add a sweetness to the chili. I also feel better knowing it won’t go bad in the produce drawer.

What's for dinner: Cooking from the pantry

2008-09-08T20:47:00.001-07:00

Today, because I was doing canning, I didn’t feel like running to pick up groceries. I do, however, have a well-stocked pantry so dinner prep wasn’t too bad. I buy eye of round roast when it is on sale and slice it into ½” slices, freezing them 2 slices per package. I pulled out one of those, it thaws quickly in a water bath. I had sour cream on hand, not an everyday occurrence, so I immediately thought I would do a beef Stroganoff. No fresh mushrooms, but I always have dried shiitakes that I grind to a powder, and dried porcini mushrooms as well. With an onion, some garlic, a little Dijon mustard, and some commercial beef base (not at all like bouillon cubes) I was set. But – oh no! – I did not have egg noodles. Sure I could use pasta, but with a nod to the “Russian” origins of Stroganoff, I decided to cook up some barley. Three to one ratio of water to barley, well-salted, and tossed in some of the shiitake powder for more earthy flavor and a little olive oil.

The barley cooks for nearly an hour, so I had lots of time to get the rest of the meal ready. Slice the beef into julienne strips, toss with a little salt. Chop a cup of onion, use the microplane to grate a clove of garlic. Mix about a tablespoon each of the different mushrooms into a cup of boiling water (love that instant hot water faucet!) and add a teaspoon of the beef base. Cook the onions in a skillet over high heat until most of the moisture is gone and they just start to brown. Add beef strips and cook until pink is gone, add garlic. Stir in 2 T flour and stir to cook the flour for a minute or so, then add the mushroom/beef broth and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Scrape down the skillet and make sure it mixes with no lumps. Add in some chopped fresh thyme and parsley, simmer for a few minutes to be sure the flour is cooked. Turn to very low until ready to serve. When barley is nearly done, add ½ c sour cream to the beef and stir to combine, be sure it doesn’t boil or it will curdle. Serve over barley.

If I were using fresh mushrooms, I would slice them and cook them with the onions. This would of course be just fine over egg noodles; the barley gave a wonderful chewy texture and earthy complement to the mushrooms and beef.

We had a nice Washington Hills Gewürztraminer, I think it was a 2006.

Canning syrups today

2008-09-08T17:30:00.001-07:00

I have already mentioned (more than once) that I've been experimenting with glace fruits this summer. Today I canned all the syrups left over from the cherries and the melons. I got 2-1/2 pints of cherry-plum syrup, and five pints of honeydew syrup. I can't say that the honeydew syrup tastes just like melon, because it is sort of caramelized. In the jars, it looks kind of like honey. But it does have an enchanting taste. It would be really good on waffles, in fact good with chicken and waffles if anyone is familiar with that semi-peculiar dish. The cherry-plum has already been proven to be great with sautéed minced shallots in butter as a sauce for pork. I'm also thinking of swirling some into homemade ice cream.

I suspect several jars will be Christmas gifts, along with the pickled carrots I did earlier this summer.

Loco Moco

2008-08-31T17:04:00.001-07:00

If you’ve been to Hawaii you probably know what loco moco is. But bear with me while I tell everyone else.

Loco Moco supposedly originated at a drive-in called Café 100 in Hilo on the island of Hawaii. In its purest form, it is white rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy. In more deluxe renditions, the rice can be fried rice, the meat can be a sausage patty, some sliced linguisa sausage, or even a small steak.

We fell in love with loco moco many years ago on an early visit to Hawaii. I make it a lot when we are there (usually every other Christmas) and sometimes at home. This week we had Chinese takeout and I ordered fried rice just so we could have loco moco this weekend. It really is not a healthy choice, but once a year, well, it’s okay. And on many occasions, like today, I leave out the brown gravy so it’s not quite as much of a fat bomb. Sometimes it’s just really good Japanese fried rice with one sautéed egg on top.

Today’s loco moco was deluxe fried rice, topped with a 3-oz burger patty seasoned with green onions and onion soup mix. I usually keep a supply of burgers in the freezer, so just used of the 6-oz patties and split it for two. Then two eggs, sunny side up. I do insist on making sure all of the whites are cooked, with the yolks still runny. That takes some careful watching, but with a tsp of water and a lid on for a few minutes, they do turn out the way we like them. The runny yolk makes up for no gravy.

So that was our brunch today. I even had a nice glass of Argyle sparkling wine (can’t call it champagne anymore, that’s illegal!).

What's for dinner

2008-08-31T16:38:00.001-07:00

I thought we’d have rack of lamb today. But it is nicely vacuum packed so will keep until next weekend. I have some homemade goat cheese and herb ravioli in the freezer that should get used, and a couple of basil plants that need pinching back. I am planning to blanch and skin a couple of tomatoes, then use the boiling water to cook the ravioli. I will serve the ravioli at room temp with a sauce of basil/parsley pesto and tomato concasse (peeled and seeded tomatoes cut into very small dice). As I am already going to boil water, before I use it to blanch the tomatoes I will blanch six big peaches so we can slice them for a crostata. I’m planning to get a lot of use out of one pot of boiling water!