Duck!

I regard Thanksgiving as the 'birthday' of my stepping up my cooking, so I'd been thinking for several weeks about what I might cook yesterday. I'm subject to periods of grayness in my life, however, and as the holiday approached, I just didn't feel up to a big project. I did buy a duck, however: I can get one this time of year, it's special enough to be festive, and I knew I could roast it without a lot of fuss. I also bought the makings for a side dish I've wanted to try that I didn't think would tax my somewhat-frayed nerves.

As it turned out, it was a better day cooking than I'd had in some time. I wound up doing three dishes, all of which were reasonably successful. This wasn't as much as I've often tried to do, and I didn't end the day frustrated or exhausted.

A Foul Deed

I roasted the duck according to Mark Bittman's recipe in the iPad version of "How to Cook Everything". The method is fairly similar to roasting a chicken, the biggest difference being piercing the skin to render off some of the bird's fat.  (Fat, after all is a big part of how it stays afloat. Duck is a very rich meat.) Basting with a little soy sauce provided both flavor and color.

I found the duck to be quite tasty. I had a leg and a breast with my meal. I used some of the leftovers in a salad this afternoon and plan to use the rest in a hash tonight.

The Root of the Matter

A couple of decades ago, I shared a holiday meal with the family of my brother-in-law. One of his aunts brought a dish of mashed carrots and parsnips. I was hesitant to try it, not even being sure what a parsnip was, but it was good. I've thought about that dish from time to time in recent years, and decided that it would be at my Thanksgiving meal yesterday.

I did look at a recipe online (I don't know where: my apologies to the author) and adopted the method. I chunked up roughly equal amounts of the carrots and parsnips and boiled them until quite tender. I then mashed them with butter, salt, and a little nutmeg.

As simple as it is, this dish is my favorite of the day. It is tasty, and has the warm, comforting feel of mashed potatoes at half the carbs. It's easy enough for a weeknight, and my stepmother  (who, as it turns out, grew up with the dish and used to make it regularly) says it reheats beautifully. (As part of my experiment, I only made enough for my meal.)

A Little Dessert

I haven't done any baking in a long time, and I decided yesterday afternoon that I'd try to find a recipe that seemed doable and didn't call for anything I didn't have on hand. I chose the "Easy Pound Cake" from the America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and used the recipe variation for "Ginger Pound Cake". (I did, after a bit of research online, substitute nutmeg for the mace I didn't have.)

It wasn't quite trouble free. I had almost all the flour incorporated into the batter when I started wondering when I was supposed to add salt. I checked the recipe and found that I had omitted not only the salt but baking powder. (Oops.) The out-of-order addition of the leavener may be why I didn't get all the rise I think I was supposed to. But it was delicious anyway, and felt quite light, in contrast to the heaviness I associate with pound cake.

(I'm sure the pound cake had nothing to do with a certain number I saw before bed. But most of the cake is now in my freezer, destined to be shared with my coworkers.)


As I said: it was a good day cooking.

Pasta, Again, and Dates!

When I first wrote about making pasta a couple of weeks ago, I'd mentioned that I didn't like the flavor of my pasta. Last weekend, as part of an effort to make ravioli, I made pasta again, and again didn't like it. It tasted a little earthy, even a little earthy. I started to wonder if something was wrong.

I did a little research, and I also sought advice on cookingforums.net.  I identified three possible problems. First is that I was using unbleached flour. This didn't seem likely, because there isn't much of a taste difference for most people, but who knows?  My flour could have gone a little bad. I didn't like that option much, either, since I'd bought it only this spring and kept it sealed since, but I couldn't disprove it. Finally, there might be contaminants in my pasta machine - not unlikely, since it had been sitting unused on various shelves for years. I had run it though the dishwasher (a mistake apparently) but again, who knows?

Yes, I probably should have eliminated one possibility at a time, but I didn't have the patience. I figured out how to dissemble my pasta machine enough to give it a good cleaning and did so. I also bought fresh, bleached all purpose flour. Finally, I eliminated one other variable by choosing a recipe using only flour, water, salt, and a little butter.

I made my dough and set it to rest. I faked together a filling from ground chicken, salt, egg, fresh parsley, some fresh thyme I had (see below), bread crumbs, and crushed red pepper.

I rolled out my dough, more successfully than last time, and made the raviolis. I put some of the raviolis in boiling water and the rest on a baking sheet in the freezer. When those in the pot floated, I removed them and dressed them with butter and some commercial spaghetti sauce I like.

My ravioli were tasty, the pasta tasted find, and the use of the bleached flour even made them look more appetizing. 

I love the taste of victory. Also the taste of ravioli.

-----------------

We had a retirement party for a colleague on Thursday, and her boss asked me to contribute something. After looking at a bunch of recipes, I chose to make the bacon-wrapped dates from the iPad app "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman. This was harder than I anticipated. Stripping thyme leaves was not as straightforward as the instructions straightforward, the dates were sticky, and the raw bacon was (surprise!) greasy. I was a mess, and I was sure that as the fat melted during roasting the bacon would fall off the toothpicks.

In fact, it worked great. The bacon tightened up around the dates very nicely, and the thyme inside the dates was a very nice touch. They disappeared instantly at the party, all the praise a beginning cook really needs. Yay!

Remembrance of Goulash Past: Meals and Memories

As it happens, two of my very favorite food memories involve dishes called 'goulash'.

When I was a kid, I belonged to the Boy Scouts for a while, and even attended summer camp one year. On one rainy day at camp, for reasons I don't remember, I stayed back from the planned activity and instead helped the adult leaders prepare for lunch. The meal was what I then thought goulash to be, a combination of elbow macaroni, mild tomato sauce, and crumbled hamburger that had little in common with the traditional dish from Eastern Europe.

It was a great meal nonetheless. Mostly it was the circumstances: I had my portion while standing under the dining fly with the leaders before the other boys arrived, sheltered from the rain, feeling safe and accepted to a degree that was rare for me. The goulash itself was delicious and (for me, anyway) an embodiment of comfort food.

Many years later, I traveled to the borough of Queens in New York City to visit family. By this time, I was vaguely aware that there was a food called goulash that was much different than what I'd grown up with, but had no real idea what the 'real thing' might be. For my first meal in New York City, we went to a largish restaurant that felt much more like a diner than a fine dining place. When I saw 'goulash' on the specials board, I felt compelled to order it.

The dish that was served to me was tender cubes of beef, tasting strongly of what I now know as paprika, resting on a bed of egg noodles. There was a little broth, but not really enough to call a pasta sauce. I can no longer taste it in my "mind's mouth", but I found it stunningly delicious.

As i write, there's an interesting contrast that occurs. Outside the realm of cookbooks, meals are profoundly impacted by the circumstances in which we eat them. Is the meal an occasion, or are we just filling our bellies? Who, if anyone, are we with and how do we feel about them? Are we falling in love with our companion or coming to grips with love that is no longer? In the camp experience, the memories of the meal are powered by its circumstances: the food was good, but I'd eaten identical dishes many times. On the other hand, though my pleasure in the New York City goulash was enhanced by the excitement of my visit to the city, it is the food itself that I think about.

Oddly, I find myself reluctant to try making Hungarian goulash in my own kitchen. It seems impossible to make a dish of the quality of that I had in Queens, especially given that memory has likely added flavor not on the original plate. Nor could I recreate the circumstances of the scout camp goulash and the comfort that memory brings me.

A number of years ago. I (and my then non-existent cooking skills) were invited to a potluck put on by a group with a VERY culturally diverse membership. We were all invited to bring foods from our own culture that were important to us. I was stumped: I could not think of a single food, other than those everyone would already know, that fit the guideline. It was then that I first thought about this idea of the flavor added to food by a meal's circumstances. Sure, I could have made root beer floats for my friends, but I could not have made a root beer float eaten on a hot Iowa summer day when you're ten years old. That flavoring is not found in my kitchen or yours.

But goodness, that float was delicious.

Matters of Trust

I'd never have thought that trust would have such an important role in learning to cook, but I find that I've been thinking about just that.

There are cookbook authors/publishers that I trust, that I don't trust, and that I trust on some things but not on others. Once I bought a magazine - not from a big-name publisher, but they publish a lot of recipes from home cooks - and made four recipes from it in the same weekend. None of them worked. Although I know I made mistakes, I've not bought anything from them since. This may not be fair - but I just don't trust them.

There are food brands I trust and food brands I don't. This is especially important with ingredients I'm less familiar with, because I'm not going to be able to judge quality for myself.

I struggle, sometimes, with trusting a recipe even when I have every reason to do so. The other day I was following a procedure for making fried eggs, that being one of the everyday cooking skills I have yet to master. This procedure (from the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook) called for preheating the pan over low heat, adding butter, adding the eggs, and covering. About two-thirds of the way through the time designated for the doneness I wanted, I became convinced that the sounds coming from my pan didn't indicate that my eggs weren't burning to a crisp and pulled my pan off the heat. No burning, runny yolks.  (I tried this again a day or two later, maintained my faith, and had lovely eggs.)

(Early on in my cooking adventures, I followed a home cook's recipe for a particular item. The writer noted that, at a particular point, it was going to look like it was going to go horribly wrong, and what was going to happen, and that it was okay. I was grateful, because exactly that thing happened and I would have paniced without the writer's assurance. Now THAT's a well written recipe!)

On the other hand, sometimes I need to trust my instincts and I'm sorry when I don't. I am just not experienced enough to have this kind of instinct on my own hook, but I think sometimes my brain will call up a tidbit I've seen on cooking shows without telling me about it. I broiled some eggplant slices recently, following something I'd seen the day before. Something told me to salt the slices and let them sit to reduce the moisture, but it wasn't done in the previous days show, so I didn't. Annnnnnnd my slices were mushy rather than crispy. I should have trusted my instincts. That's often the case. (Except for those times when I did and shouldn't have.)

It's just a matter of trust.




 

Pasta la Vista

So, I've long wanted to try making pasta.

Make pasta? But aren't you...?

Hush.

As I say, I've long wanted to try it, and I even had a friend give me her manual pasta maker (without instructions). And I've seen it done many times on cooking shows. But handling the long sheets of dough as I used the maker really looked like it would exceed my limited dexterity. My intimidation on this point and my ignorance on the operation of my machine kept my machine hidden away for months.

When my awesome friend Karen mentioned making her own pasta, I was inspired sufficiently to find brand and model on my machine and do a web search for a manual. It turns out to be very common and I found a number of how-tos. I also learned that I was missing a clamp, but Karen (AKA The Pasta Muse) pointed out that I could probably buy one online: three ays later, I had a clamp in my hands.

It was time for the dough-y experiment. I found and made a recipe for a really simple pasta, set up a machine, and got to work.

Technically, and that's the only way that mattered, it was a success. The dough had less tendency to stick to itself than I feared, especially since I dusted it with flour often. The machine was easy to use, and I soon had what I'd describe as thin fettuccini.

Taste-wise, it was something less than a total success.  I think my skill in cooking fresh pasta needs work, and I think I'll look at different recipes. Finally, since I like pasta to have some body, I won't make it so thin next time.

But, as is often the case when I'm doing something really new to me, this was more about proof-of-concept than dinner, and I'm delighted with the result.

Accidental Pozole

In my last post, I mentioned having made what I called an 'accidental pozole'. Since I'm sure you've been consumed with curiosity as to what I may have meant by that, I'm here to meet you're needs. I'm selfless that way.

Pozole is a spicy soup of Mexican origin.  A web search shows that their are many different versions, but the versions I've seen have been made with pork and hominy. (Hominy is corn that has been soaked in an alkaline solution.)  The only pozole I've had was a canned version I ate a month or so ago.

I had thawed a some pork cushion meat, intending to mark green chile stew. I was too lazy to cut the pork up and brown it in batches, so I decided to braise my roast whole. I rubbed it with salt, pepper, and paprika and browned it, then added a quart of chicken stock and covered it to let it cook.

When my pork was cooked, I decided to make a soup with the cooking liquid. I started by adding a jar of Goya brand sofrito. (I specify the brand because sofrito seems to refer to so many different things. I do love this stuff, however.) I also added some diced potato, diced carrot, a can of hominy, a can of diced green chiles, some of the cooked pork, some masa harina (the cornmeal used in tamales), and probably some things I've forgotten. I had no particular plan in mind, I just wanted to take advantage of my cooking liquid.

Once the vegetables were cooked,  I had a pot ful of soup that reminded me sharply of the canned pozole I had had. It was rich, it was spicy, and the masa had added some wonderful thickness to the broth. (A thin soup never really seems quite like food to me.)

It was wonderful. Would someone that knew call it pozole? I don't know. But it made me happy.

Still Alive and Cooking

Early in the summer, I wrote here about my typical failure to do much cooking in the summer -- and fell into the same trap as usual. I did SOME cooking, and even a couple of semi-interesting things, like carrot-green chimichurri sauce and some accidental pozole. But, mostly I didn't cook.

I do see to be gearing up again, though. I hope to have my first try at home made pasta soon, inspired by my friend Karen. And my accidental pozole was yummy enough that I'd like to do it on purpose. I'm mulling other things as well, such as another showdown with my old nemesis cooked sugar. (Maybe I should make a show about doing that in a motor home and call it 'Breaking Brittle'. Or not.)

We'll see what comes out of my Beginner's Skillet.

Tickling My Ribs

I've written a couple of times about finding approaches to hot-weather cooking. I'm guessing that most experts on the subject would not recommend running a 300F oven for three hours.

But that's what I did. Twice.

I've had a little bit of trouble, when I've looked, finding a stripped-down recipe for doing pork ribs in the oven. It seems like home cooks that do ribs all have their own rub recipes, their own sauce recipes and their own set of techniques. While this is fabulous, a beginner like me can have trouble disinterring a basic approach from the layers of details.

A couple of Fridays ago, I impulsively bought a pack of short-end pork ribs at the store. Once home, I looked at a couple of dozen recipes and finally found a recipe that worked for me. It was, in essence, as follows:

 

1. Sprinkle the ribs with your rub of choice. (I used a rub from Gates, a local restaurant.)
2. Douse the ribs in your sauce of choice. (The sauce was also from Gates.)
3. Seal the ribs in an aluminum foil packet and cook at 300F for three hours.

That’s what I call a recipe.

The first attempt was good. The ribs were very tender and it was no problem to separate them.  They were a little dry, but not so much that a modest amount of sauce didn’t completely fix the problem.

I live in Kansas City, which is the epicenter for one of the major styles of barbecue. There is a LOT of good barbecue here. The restaurant from which I’d gotten my rub and sauce is probably my favorite, but it’s in no way an easy choice. So, as I sampled my ribs, I discovered that I really expected the familiar smoke flavor, even though I knew it wouldn’t be there.

And, thinking about smokiness, I immediately thought of chipotles.

You’re probably familiar with chipotles, which are jalapenos that have been dried and smoked. They are most commonly sold reconstituted in a spicy sauce called adobo.  The plan that formed was to get a can or two of chipotles in adobo, puree them, and use that as my cooking sauce for my second batch.

However, my local marked was out of chipotles in adobo last Saturday. So I got a packet of dried chipotles and a jar of adobo concentrate. I toasted the chiles in a dry skillet then tore them into large pieces and soaked them in hot water. I then threw them into a food processor with the adobo and added some molasses for balance and enough water to make a thick sauce.  I then followed the recipe as above.

The second batch was really good. I was afraid it would be too hot, but it wasn’t too much for me. Again, sauce was needed, but I really enjoyed eating these ribs.

Neither batch was up to Kansas City standards, but I think it’s a fine approach for a weekend treat.

Beginner's Notebook: A Hail of Bullet Points

In my last post, which seems like it was months ago, I wrote of my trouble in adapting myself to hot weather cooking. Despite some progress (detailed in part below), that's continued to be a struggle and I've been eating out more than I'm comfortable with. That's limited my kitchen time, as did a period when a temporary health challenge had me eating as low-carb as I practically could for a while.  Nonetheless, I have done a few fun things.

• In a previous post, I mentioned having started the process of preserving some lemons. During the waiting period, I heard an episode of "America's Test Kitchen Radio" in which the problems with that process were discussed, the conclusion being that it works so rarely that it's better to just buy preserved lemons. So it was with trepidation that I cracked open my jar: they looked okay. So I cut off a quarter, trimmed away the flesh, rinsed off the excess salt, and tasted. I was good, and I was still healthy a few hours later, so I chopped some up into some spinach I was sauteeing -- in that application, it was FABULOUS. The lemon pretty much disappeared, leaving behind a bright lemon flavor that didn't have the acidity of lemon juice. Delicious. (Admittedly, I sometimes have a little problem taking credit. This, however, is clearly a case of 10% good method and 90% luck.)
• The okra I pickled also tuned out quite nicely. The recipe I used was a bit more vinegary than I'd prefer, but the okra itself is quite tasty and has none of the vegetable's infamous sliminess.
• As far as heart weather cooking goes, even the cooking I'm doing is involving more assembly and less heat application. I'm eating a fair number of 'wraps", for example. (If you're not familiar with them, wraps are basically burritos that contain almost anything other than burrito filling.)  For me, these are typically containing some sort of meat, some cheese, some fresh veggies, some hummus or other sauce, and maybe some fresh cilantro. Pretty good.
• I'm eating more vegetables in general. Often this is just carrot or celery sticks dipped in hummus, but I've been cooking veggies, too. The other night I thinly sliced a small yellow squash and sauteed it with salt, pepper, and a little garam masala. It was very tasty.
•  Could I have made my own hummus? Yes. SHOULD I have made my own hummus? Yes. Would it have been easy? Yes. But I thus far haven't. I'll never be an Iron Chef at this rate!
• Avocados. 'Nuff said.
• I have roasted a chicken and a hunk of pork on relatively cool days. The key is to hide in the air conditioning during the roasting time rather than staying in the kitchen to work on other dishes.
• Cheese. Garlic cheese. Hot pepper cheese. Cajun-spiced cheese curds. All of these give joy to the mouth and staying power to light meals.
• This morning, before my apartment got too hot, I cooked a flank steak on my iron griddle. I used a tip from cooking show host Daisy Martinez and gave my meat sprinklings of salt, pepper and vinegar and let it sit for a while before cooking. I can't really define the difference the vinegar made, but it certainly did make a difference.
• While my meat was sitting, I did some sweet corn on my griddle then (after cooling) sliced the kernels off the cob. However, I don't think I left the corn on the grill long enough, though, to really make much difference in the flavor.
• Finally, I made gazpacho today, more or less from this recipe. It's good, it was easy, and it involved no use of heat. (Other than the pepper flakes I added.).

 So, I'm feeling my way forward. Slowly. And with frequent breaks to sit in the air conditioning!

Is Summer Cooking Vacation Avoidable?

I have trouble getting excited about cooking during the summer. And the last two summers, after winters filled with all manner of culinary experimentation, I've done essentially no cooking, instead falling back on old habits of eating out, ordering in, and basically living la vida sandwich. In other words, I was on cooking vacation -- unplanned, unwelcome, and unwise summer cooking vacation.

You see, as I've noted before, Kansas City is not the hottest part of the country (or the world) by any means, but it gets plenty hot and humid for me.  And, my kitchen is a long way from my window air conditioner. Additionally, I'm finding as I age that I don't regulate my body temperature as well as I once did, and several weekend cooking sessions recently have ended with me feeling a little bit icky. Last weekend I put a small fan on top of my refrigerator and drank ice water frequently, and still felt icky when I was done.

I can't have a summer cooking vacation this year. Perhaps I should say that I can't CONTINUE to have one, since this past week has not had too many meals at home. That kind of vacation isn't good for my body, my skills development, or my wallet.
 
I have a few ideas. Veggie salads should be my friend. (Not leafy salads, though: leafy salads are okay, but more than one or two a week make me cranky. OK, crankiER.) I know a little bit about quick-cooking meat cuts, and sandwiches are a good option if not made with cheap white bread and processed cold cuts. Outdoor cooking is not a practical option for me.

But I'm just not feeling inspired.

So, I'd appreciate ideas: how do YOU feed yourself during the summer?

Beginner's Notebook: Dazed and Infused

I don't have a lot to report from this weekend's cooking. I didn't take on any projects, mostly contenting myself with throwing some dishes together out of stuff in my refrigerator that needed to be used. But I did pick up one fun little trick.

For a couple of decades, the one recipe I knew that seemed a little fancy was one my brother-in-law had taught me. It consisted of pasta tossed with olive oil, sliced black olives, and feta cheese. The thing that made it a little fancy is that, before the dish is assembled, the olive oil is flavored by warming sliced or minced garlic in it for a few moments. (If you hear any sizzling, turn the heat down.) The garlic is then disposed of before the oil is used.

A week or so ago, my neighbor lady asked me to make shrimp tacos for her. The shrimp I was using was precooked, so I decided to just flavor it with a saute with olive oil infused as I described above. Today, though, I though the zest of a lime in with the garlic. Although the result was a bit subtle and was buried by the salsa verde I used as a taco sauce, it was very nice right out of the pan. I'm thinking it might be very nice to cook fish or chicken.

Geocooking

This weekend I made dishes from Louisiana, the South more generally, from Morocco, and (sort of) from Ireland.

Gumbo

I mentioned a previous attempt to make gumbo that was foiled by suspect shrimp. Sunday, I had better luck. Gumbo, if you're not familiar with it, is a spicy roux-based stew from the Cajun country of southern Louisiana. However, the roux is not a thickener here: it is cooked to a copper color and contributes flavor instead. Traditionally, thickening is provided by either okra or file' powder: I used neither and it was fine.

The tricky part of gumbo is cooking the roux to that copper color but not past it. The recipe I used had the roux doing most of its cook time in the oven, providing the cook with a greater margin of error and freedom from near constant stirring. However, I screwed it up anyway and the first batch burned.

(Free tip: if you ever burn a roux, don't pour it out in the sink. What a horrible mess!)

The proteins I used were chicken, shrimp, and andouille sausage. Beside the sausage, the only seasonings were a little cayenne powder, a little thyme, salt, and pepper. Nonetheless, the finished dish has an intense, complicated flavor.

It makes me happy.

Okra

One of the things that spurred me on to do the gumbo this weekend was that I had been able to find some fresh okra. I was conflicted about using it, however – the neighbor lady I sometimes share with really dislikes okra, and I’d once had a different application of okra for which I had been wanting to try.

So I took that okra, and I pickled it! Here's the recipe I followed -- I'll let you know in a month how it turns out.

Roasties

OK, I confess: there's nothing that I know of that makes this dish especially Irish. But I learned about it from my friend Kate, who LIVES in Ireland, so it's SORT OF Irish, right?

Saturday evening, Kate was telling me about the polenta crusted roast potatoes she was planning to do for her mother's birthday party. I was intrigued and did a web search, and she confirmed that this recipe was indeed what she was talking about.

I used lard instead of duck fat - I don't even know where I'd BUY duck fat. (Kate says that she uses vegetable oil except at Christmas.) The amount of potatoes called for works out to around 4 lbs. (I cut this in half), and I used russet potatoes. The oven temperature works out to around 400 F.

They were delicious after salting! Crusty yet tender. Next time I make them (and there WILL be a next time), I'd like to try a dusting of parmesan and maybe some fresh herbs when they're right out of the oven.

Preserved Lemons

Years ago, I read about preserved lemons, an ingredient often used in Moroccan cooking, and always wanted to try it. I'm not even sure what I'll DO with them, but I often find the combination of "easy" and "exotic" to be nearly irresistible.

The procedure I used is on americastestkitchen.com. Basically you're cutting Meyer lemons so they're not quite quartered lengthwise, rubbing a LOT of salt into them, and putting them in a Mason jar and covering with fresh lemon juice. I'll shake them once a day for 4 days then let them continue sitting in the refrigerator for another 6 weeks. Again, I'll let you know how they turn out.

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Whew! And I don't even have a passport! 

Time Heals All Pies

Well, actually, time probably DOESN'T healed all pies. But it healed this one.

The other night, I set out to make the Icebox Strawberry Pie I'd seen made on the "Cook's Country" television show. The filling was made by cooking down 2 lbs of frozen strawberries, adding some sugar and some softened gelatin, then folding a pound of sliced fresh strawberries immediately before folding into the baked pie crust. (I used store-bought pie dough this time.) The big thing in this recipe was working with gelatin, which I'd never done before except for commercial Jell-O.

After the pie had set in the refrigerator for the specified four hours, I discovered that I had, well, strawberry soup. And, because I'd overfilled the shell, I had a strawberry soup mess. I took another look at my recipe and discovered that while I had added the lemon juice to my gelatin powder, I was supposed to add water. I figured that my pie was doomed to staying soup, but it was reasonably tasty soup, so I cleaned up a bit and stuck it back in the fridge.

24 hours later, I had actual pie. Go figure.

Beginner's Notebook: Quick Lessons From the Day

1. If you're going to make a dish (oh, say, gumbo) that relies on shrimp (in the recipe I was using), it's a good idea to sniff the shrimp BEFORE you chop your veggies.
2. On the other hand, meals made from abruptly orphaned ingredients have the potential for accidental fabulousness.
3. In the process of making cake doughnuts, I overworked the dough. I thought the final product was a little tough, though my neighbor lady didn't think so.
4. I still need to figure out how not to get overheated in summertime cooking situations. I don't think I stayed adequately hydrated today. I didn't get sick, exactly, but I wasn't feeling all that well when I finished up today.
5. I am unconvinced that deep frying is worth the hassle. I guess the smaller amount of oil my multicooker used would be easier. I'm glad I tried the stove stove top method, however.

Small Fry

I picture a scene from a cheesy war movie with the German officer preparing to torture the downed pilot. "Herr Pedersen, we have someone here you've been avoiding for a long time. His name is Frying. Deep Frying."

Deep frying. Kitchen fires. Unhealthy food. Oil to dispose of. Improperly fried food turning into a grease slick. Yeah, that deep frying. Did I mention kitchen fires? Greasy french fries. Overcooked chicken. Odors that stay around for days. Oily mist over the entire kitchen. Plus, the risk of kitchen fires. Who needs it?

I don't. Except I do.

One of the things that drives my kitchen adventures is the possibly baseless belief that I'm better off making for myself those foods that aren't good for me but which I can't lay aside completely.

And, every once in a while, I really-really-really want doughnuts.

And, while there are recipes for baked doughnuts, seriously: doughnuts are fried.

And, tonight, I made some. Sort of, anyway.

(I have deep-fried once before, the target food being tofu. I like tofu, prepared well, but that's hardly what deep-frying is for, now, is it?)

I think I'll spare you the saga of my search for a recipe and why I chose the one I did. But I settled on  Orange Sugar Fried Doughnut Holes,  from Food Network host Sunny Anderson.

I think I'll also spare you the play-by-play. But I didn't start any fires. And the doughnut holes were tasty. And, mixing orange zest into the sugar is a neat trick.

I will tell you that I'll be obtaining a doughnut cutter and that I don't intend on using pre-made biscuit dough again if I can avoid it. It's just not right.

But I deep-fried.

"You see, Herr Pedersen? It is YOU that have your methods."

Beginner's Notebook: Sampler Platter 2

It's not that I've not cooked recently: it's more than I haven't done many of the kind of project that seemed to merit a post by itself. So, here's a mixed bag of recent endeavors.

A Piece of My Grind

One thing that I've been wanting to get into is making my own sausage. However, my first experience was less than a total success. A couple of weekends ago, I used the lessons I'd learned the first time (and my food processor instead of my stand mixer's grinding attachment) to try again. I ground some beef for a chili-like substance and pork shoulder to make breakfast sausage patties. The keys proved to be to get the meat cubes good and cold (by putting them in the freezer until quite firm but not frozen), to use some added fat (fatback is what I used) in the sausage, and to use the 'pulse' button on the food processor to carefully judge the grind desired.  The beef (which I ground more coarsely) worked really nicely in the chili, and the breakfast sausage was really good with the dried thyme, dried sage, allspice, and maple syrup.


Crusty the Beginner, Part 2

I recently signed up to be a volunteer recipe tester for a cookbook publisher. (I qualified for this honor by passing a rigorous demonstration of my ability to type my e-mail address.) Last weekend I tested a recipe for an easy pie crust (details are confidential), and the company included a recipe for French Silk pie filling. The pie was good, and my neighbor lady thought it was delicious. But the filling was a LOT of work, much more so than the crust, and involved a long period of beating a custard in a makeshift double boiler with an electric beater. I really would have enjoyed some additional flavor, perhaps some cinnamon or some chili powder. And, since neither my neighbor lady nor I need much chocolate pie and I didn't want to carry it to work, I threw most of it out. I don't regret this: I got the experience, which is what I most wanted.

Tortillas, Again

After my success making flour tortillas, I decided to try a recipe I found that used whole wheat flour and vegetable oil instead of lard. I also decided to invest in a very inexpensive tortilla press. Between lacking some tortilla technique and maybe needing to tweak the recipe, I didn't get quite the results I wanted. But I did want you to know that I'm working on it.

Chill Out, Dough

I've been a little worried about how I could continue baking bread with the arrival of summer. My area of the world is not exactly tropical, but it does get hot and humid, and my kitchen is at the opposite end of my apartment from my window air conditioner. I've been concerned that if I assembled a dough in the morning when I got up, it would often be too late in the day to run my oven by the time the rising periods were done. So I wanted to follow up on the notes in a couple of recipes I've seen that one of the rises could occur in the refrigerator.

So I made a dough last night, put it in a bowl, covered it in plastic, and stuck it in my refrigerator to see if I got any rise. This morning I found that my dough had more than doubled and outgrown its covering of plastic wrap and I had a crusted-over area to remove. But, even with getting a later start than I'd have like, my bread was out of the oven by around noon and was good. Next time, I'm going to try doing the first rise the night before and do the in-the-pan rising in the refrigerator.

Flour Tortillas

One of the things I made over the weekend (or tried to make, in this case) was a fritatta. I've made several, but this time I tried to do it without a recipe. The result was, well, scrambled eggs with sausage and potato. When I tasted it, it said "breakfast burrito!" (It really did. I heard it distinctly.) But, I had no tortillas.

But, an idea formed, and tonight I put it into action. Using this recipe, I made my own flour tortillas tonight. It seemed audacious when I thought of it, but it was mostly pretty easy.

Here is the dough - flour, lard, salt, water - at rest.

And here are the cooked tortillas. "Round" is such an arbitrary concept, don't you think?

The unroundness is related to the bit of trouble I did have. I found it difficult to roll out nice-looking rounds, and I also had trouble laying them nicely in the pan. I suspect both these things are matters of practice.

And practice I will. Although the difference is not huge, I did find my tortillas to be tastier than store-bought. (And, of course, I'm thinking about flavor that could be added to the dough. A little cumin, perhaps? Lemon zest?)

I also found mine to be stiffer than what I'm used to from the store: they will work just fine for a soft-taco approach, but I don't think I could wrap a burrito.  But their small size (about 7" in diameter) is probably too small for that anyway. (Can a shapeless blob have a diameter?)  I could make the dough balls bigger, but that would also increase the difficulty with managing them.

Tomorrow morning, I will have a breakfast burrito with egg, potato, and my own breakfast sausage. Yum.

UPDATE: I found this morning that, having fully cooled, the tortillas were much softer than when first out of the pan. I don't quite understand this, but I'll certainly go with it!

Beginner's Notebook: Sampler Platter

A few things on my mind (and on my stove):

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Today I attempted a somewhat complicated dish, using a recipe from a noted chef who I don't blame at all. The net result was a kitchen that looked like a war zone, four bland chicken thighs, and a vast quantity of undercooked rice. Contributing errors included both I-should-have-known-better mistakes, I'll-know-better-next-time mistakes, impatience, and possibly picking a recipe too short on precision for a beginning cook.  Key take-aways for me: 1) I now know how to blanch and peel tomatoes, and 2) 'coring' a tomato just means removing the little nubbin the stem attaches to, not removing all the guts.

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I am having this weird mental block on dessert baking. Though I have found that packing a homemade goodie with my lunch keeps me out of the vending machines, I am disinclined to do the kind of baking to produce those goodies. It's as though the things of this kind that I've done successfully have done nothing to give me confidence that I can do the next thing. Tonight I made a chocolate sheet cake from a box mix, hoping that the shortcut would help. The result is okay, though I made the non-fatal mistake of frosting a bit too soon. (I did make my frosting, because I associated canned frosting with tasting like shortening.)

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I am learning that I really like a variety of tastes and textures in many foods. I recently made a cole slaw with cabbage, carrot, a low-acid vinaigrette, raisins, capers, and some roughly-chopped almonds. To me, this was a great improvement over what's usually served as cole slaw. (Tonight's trivia: the 'cole' in 'cole slaw' comes from an old Gaelic word for cabbage, and is related to our word 'kale'.)


The discovery of my fondness for contrasting elements points to way to how I could approach other foods that I find good-but-boring, such as tomato sauce or macaroni and cheese.


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For me, the symbolic payload of making my own bread is enormous. It's much more powerful than with anything else I make for myself.


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Speaking of making things for myself: last night at the store I bought some pita chips and some hummus. As I ate, I grumped at myself a bit, wondering why I hadn't made my own hummus. It's easy, and I even have tahini. (Not making the pita chips didn't bother me at all. While I've done this, it's much more of a production.

Beginner's Notebook: Still Life With Avocado

OK, here's what you're going to do. Next time you go grocery shopping, you're going to take a quick peek in your refrigerator to make sure you have a little lemon juice or a fresh lemon. (I think lime juice would also work.) Then, when you get to the store, you'll go to the produce section and check out the avocados.

The avocado you want is ripe but not overly so. If you're new to this, the one you want will give a bit to gentle pressure but not feel squishy. (GENTLE pressure - no need to harm anything.) For this application, a little squishy is okay.

When you get home with your prize, you're going to cut it in half lengthwise, working around the large pit in the middle. You'll then rotate one half against the other, and one of the two halves will be freed from the pit.

There are a number of suggested methods for removing the pit from the other half, most of which have the potential for serious injury. I sometimes use one of those, but often I just work around the with a spoon. (I deal with more avocados than most home cooks, I'd guess. Two - and now three - of my favorite things to make include them. See here and here.)

Next, put your avocado halves on a plate. Salt them and drizzle them with lemon juice. Then just eat those suckers, scooping bites out with a spoon.

I did this for the first time 20 minutes ago, and that first bite was A Moment. The tartness of the juice perfectly balanced the unctuousness of the avocado, one of those great combinations of acid and oil. (Think salad dressings, or pickles on cheeseburgers, or ketchup on french fries.)

If I had a rating scale for how much I wanted you to try something, this would be WAY up there.

You could argue that this isn't even cooking. Fine. But it is most certainly eating.

Beginner's Notebook: Won't You Be Brine?

I took last weekend almost entirely off from cooking, feeling a great need to engage in some sloth. But, just to give myself sandwich makings, I decided to do a small pork roast in the slow cooker. I further decided to brine my roast - that is, soak it in a saline solution before cooking - to try to get the enhanced moistness the method is said to provide. I found a brine recipe on the Internet and enhanced the brining solution with a couple of tablespoons of chile-garlic puree. I left the roast in the brine for about 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Result 1: The cooked roast was nicely moist, and has remained so throughout the week. I don't know for sure that the brine was the biggest difference, but I am inclined to think it was.

Result 2: If the hot sauce I'd spiked my brine in made any difference to the taste of the cooked meat, it was too subtle for me.

Conclusion: In the future, I will brine raw pork on most occasions when I have the time.

Pizza Again

I described making homemade pizza in this post, and I've made pizza more or less the same way every weekend, refining my method.

I've arrived at the conclusion that the way to go is to make my crust as it is done in the recipe, except I (1) use only half the dough, (2) roll it out as thin as I can, (3) let it rest for a while, and (4) roll it out as thin as I can get it again. This produces a crust that is very thin and also a little bit smaller.

Tonight the toppings were roasted onions, roasted tomatoes, and goat cheese. Here's a shot of the whole pizza and a close-up:

The crust was nice and crispy, almost cracker-crisp. I meant to try docking the crust, but forgot, so I had the big bubbles you might expect from water becoming steam VERY rapidly. (Being laid on a cast iron griddle that's been brought to 500 degrees will do that.)

The flavor was good, but missing a little something. I think it needed something herby, and maybe some more salt.

However, with this pizza I'm confident that I can consistently produce pies as good or better than I can get delivered and for a fraction of the fat. Win!

Big Trouble for Little Onions

For all the cooking shows I've watched, there are only a few times I've attempted to directly reproduce something I've seen made on a TV show. I've learned a vast amount about ingredients, techniques, and combinations, but have rarely attempted to take a specific recipe from screen to table.

I did it tonight.

I've wanted to make balsamic glazed onions for some time, since a friend mentioned loving them. I've looked at some recipes, but not really been called to action by any of them. But tonight I was watching the Cooking Channel with my neighbor lady, and Giada De Laurentis started making them. Giada's shows aren't my favorite, simply because little of what she cooks fits with what I'm trying to do right now. But what she did to those onions looked like JUST what I wanted to do, so I came home and did it.

I chopped the ends and outer peels off a handful of cippolini onions and a handful of pearl onions. (The show hadn't used pearl onions, but I didn't have enough cippolini onions to make it worth it.) I made a dressing of about 2/3rds inexpensive balsamic vinegar and 1/3rd olive oil. I added salt, pepper, and dried oregano to my dressing. (The show had used fresh thyme rather than dried oregano.).  I lined a small baking dish with parchment paper (to ease cleaning) and threw in my onions and my dressing and got everything coated. I then put the pan in a 450 degree oven, and left it there for an hour.

(I -love- roasting things. Am I really a cook or a slow pyromaniac?)

The results are delicious. When I first pulled my onions, I thought many of them were burned, but that proved to be crusted love. What little liquid was left was simply concentrated fabulous. (You didn't know that "fabulous" was a substance that could be concentrated? You do now.)

I'm thinking pizza with these onions. More specifically, I'm thinking pizza with these onions accompanied by goat cheese and roasted tomatoes. I may be thinking this well into the night.

POSTSCRIPT 4/4/12, 11 PM When I removed the parchment paper from my dish, I found a mess underneath it. Next time, I'll use aluminum foil. 

A Tale of Two Doughs, and Other Notes

Saturday night, I made chocolate shortbread. The dough was pretty much made of flour, butter, and cocoa powder. The dough was ultimately kneadable, but was unbelievable soft -- I felt like my dough ball might explode at any moment and leave me nothing but a mess.

Sunday, I made bagels again. My food processor gave up about five seconds into the kneading, so I had to knead by hand. The aim, in the words of the recipe, was a dough that was "tough and elastic". I certainly achieved that.

I cannot imagine two doughs being more different. As I put it on Twitter, if the shortbread dough was a person, it would give flowers to strangers. The bagel dough would take your lunch money -- and then beat you up anyway.

The oddest thing was that after rising and resting, the bagel dough had become very soft and pliable - not delicate like the shortbread dough, but a delight to form into rounds.

I made this particular batch mostly as a gift to a friend from work, a native of Baltimore. He emailed me that they were delicious, much better than he had frankly expected.

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A week or so ago, I had an emotional experience that brought me face to face with the fact that I -really- want something sweet with my lunch. That being the case, it made more sense to make my own treats. I was attracted by the "bar" category because of the portability factor. I really don't want something I have to carry in yet another plastic container. My first effort was the "Oatmeal Butterscotch Bars" recipe from the "America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book."  I was alarmed when I put the batter in the pan: it was quite thick, and I expected it to either burn or turn out dry. In fact, they were really good - and a fabulous way to end a lunch.

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In the last twenty-four hours, I have made eggs four times - three shots at a poached egg and a batch of hard-boiled eggs. The three poached eggs each were made by slightly different methods. The last one worked pretty well, except that I think I want the yolk on my poached egg to be firmer than most people. (My method of choice is to add a splash of vinegar to the water, bring the water to barely simmering, then stir the water in one direction before carefully adding the egg. The recipe called to simmer it for 4 1/2 minutes: I'll try longer than that next time.)

The hard-boiled method was more successful. Put the eggs in the pan, add enough water to cover by an inch, bring to a boil, cover and remove from heat for five minutes. Then you put it in ice water for 5 minutes. The texture of the cooked eggs was great, there were no green rings around the yolks, and they were easy to peel.

As a self-taught cook, I often find that I need to go back to something that's very basic.

Ducks in a Row

There's one kitchen practice that I've followed with increasing consistency, to the point that I essentially always doing it when cooking from a recipe. That's the practice of having my ducks in a row before I get started.

(The pros have a fancy term for this, but we needn't trouble our pretty heads about them.)

Having my ducks in a row means that I have everything gathered before I get to the recipe's first step. I get all the ingredients not only measured, but prepped. If the recipe calls for a cup of minced onion, I mince a cup of onions. If the recipe calls for softened butter, I dig the butter out the very first thing.

(On the cooking shows, you'll see displays of cute little bowls, each containing a separate ingredient. Because I don't especially like doing dishes, I'll usually add ingredients to the same bowl if they come into play at the same time. For example, many baking recipes call for adding the dry ingredients all at once, so for those recipes I'll measure those ingredients into the same bowl.)

There are a number of big advantages to having my ducks in a row:

1) There's no discovering when it's way too late that I'm out of something. If I discover such a lack while I'm still in the prep stage, I can either make a store trip or make another plan.

2) If things get going fast, I won't have garlic burning in a hot pan while I'm measuring out chicken stock. This is especially important when stir-frying.

3) It helps me keep my small kitchen less cluttered. When getting my ducks in a row, I will get out my flour canister, measure out what I need, and put the canister away. If I try to measure out the flour when things are moving fast, I won't have the time to put the canister (or anything else) away and what little counter space I have will quickly disappear.

4) If I need to use a measuring cup or spoon more than once in prepping a recipe, I have the time to wash and reuse.

Your ducks. In a row. Put them there.

Crusty the Beginner

My area of the United States is hardly in the tropics, but it does get hot and humid here. Since my kitchen isn't in the air-conditioned part of my home, the time of year during which I'll want to do a lot of baking will be ending during the next month or so.

That's why I got to thinking recently about what baking projects I wanted to get in before the hot weather. And the answer in my heart was pie crust.

This may seem odd: good quality crusts are available in both frozen and refrigerated forms, and there are a number of creditable alternatives to traditional pie crusts for a person like me who doesn't need to bake many pies. Still, as part of my basic approach of building skill and confidence through terrified audacity, I really wanted to try the traditional approach. And last weekend appeared to be the time to do it.

I chose the "Traditional Single-Crust Pie Dough" recipe from "The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book". Since I'd need something to put into the crust and didn't want that to be a project in itself, I decided on the "Simple Cheese Quiche" from the same book.

I also sought advice from online friends, especially Princess Ladybug. It was emphasized to me that success lay in keeping both ingredients and equipment cold. I got a mental picture of spraying my kitchen down with liquid nitrogen.

Armed with information, I began the cooking day by refrigerating my dry ingredients and fats, my food processor bowl, and my rolling pin. (I didn't think about a mixing bowl and spoon.)

Stepping through the recipe, my first real problem came in rolling out the dough. My sheet of dough wanted to develop cracks at the edges. (I've learned since that this is to be expected.) I dealt with this by patching and rolling, patching and rolling, patching and rolling. At length, I had a dough sheet of the requisite size. To my astonishment, moving the sheet from countertop to pie plate occurred without disaster. I gently nudged the dough into fitting the pie plate, trimmed it, and crimped the edge with a fork.

Time for parbaking. I covered the crust with two layers of aluminum foil and filled it with dried beans. I then baked it checking repeatedly for the browning the recipe wanted. I also used this time to assemble the filling.

The only frustration I had with this recipe had to do with needing to repeatedly uncrimp foil from the edge of my crust to check doneness.

Once the crust was out of the oven, it was all over but the shouting. I let the crust cool (but not completely), added the filling, put it back in the oven, and removed it when it seemed to be done.

Look, I realize that, as a beginner, there's usually a limited amount of credit I can take for a dish that turns out well. I can choose a good recipe and follow it carefully, but beyond that there's a good deal of luck involved. Nonetheless, I feel that my crust (and the quiche it contained) were a triumph. I thought it was delicious, but I was anxious to see what my neighbor lady thought. She loved it and pronounced the crust to be 'light and flaky'.

To paraphrase Tom Petty, even the beginners get lucky sometimes.

 

Beginner in the Rye

While I've allowed myself to be diverted by cakes and such, my main goal in taking up baking has been bread. I want to make my daily bread, and I also want to make special breads. I want to make basic breads, and I want to make breads with grains many people have never heard of.

I'm pretty comfortable, also, with the notion that learning to bake bread is going to have stumbles. There are a lot of variables, a lot of judgment that has to be developed, and a lot of things that can go wrong.

Still, it was with optimism in my heart that I proceeded with the "Deli Rye Bread" from "America's Test Kitchen Baking Book". This was the first bread I've made that called for a "sponge", AKA "starter", that needs to be made 8-24 hours in advance. The sponge is sort of the recipe in miniature, and the purpose is to allow the yeast to develop flavor.

The trouble appears to have started with the first rise. The recipe called for the dough to rise until doubled in volume, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. I usually let dough rise in my oven, where just the gas pilot light creates a temperature that yeast and yogurt both seem to really like. But when I checked it after an hour, the dough had tripled, maybe even quadrupled. Perhaps there was some residual heat from baking my cake, perhaps something else was happening. Though I knew I was probably in trouble, I formed the loaf and put it back in for the second rise.

The result was a bread that smells good, tastes goo, and has a crust that would make a turtle proud. When I first cut it last night, the crust was hard but edible. Tonight, I could barely saw through it.

The little bit of investigating I've done suggests that the over-rising is likely to blame for the over-crustiness. (No comments about the baker being overly crusty, please.)  The suggestion I read was to knead it some more and let it rest for a while.  Mostly, though, I think I need to be more vigilant and not take naps during rising times.

It's a good thing I have a rye sense of humor!

Recipes and Non-Recipes

Many years ago, while a college student, I rented a room in a big old house near campus. My housemates there included a young man from China. (He was a great guy. I took him to my family's Thanksgiving dinner, where his sweet nature evaporated our usual "humor" of trading insults back and forth. Best Thanksgiving ever.)

One day, my friend asked me to teach him how to make a sandwich. I was completely baffled (and thus, I fear, completely unhelpful). In more than twenty years of sandwich making, I had never once considered sandwich construction in a way that allowed me to convey anything useful to my friend. I just knew how.

In my pursuit of good food that I don't have to think about, I have come to really love recipes that aren't really recipes at all, but more like approaches. If I want a sandwich, I don't grab a cookbook, I just get some bread and see what I've got to put in it.

In February 2011, I began experimenting with frittatas, which are a sort of no-fuss omelet that (in this version) are started on the stove top and finished in the oven. (I wrote about them here.) I've made six or eight of these now, and no longer consult a recipe, because the recipe is just some eggs, some cheese, and whatever I want to put in it. Sure, there are limits to that whatever (such that it needs to either be cooked before it goes in or small enough to cook really fast), but I'm comfortable with what those are. Last night, in my need to produce something actually tasty after a day of iffy results, I threw together a frittata with shallots (because I had some I needed to use), some reconstituted dried shitake mushrooms (because I'm on a kick for them and like to use the soaking liquid for other things, and goat cheese (because it sounded good). It was tasty, though the goat cheese disappeared: I may have to look at a couple of recipes.

Twice, now, I've made a simplified paella that (again) starts on the stove top and finishes in the oven. It has struck me that just leaving out the saffron produces a pilaf, and opens a world of possibilities. Once I've learned the rice and liquid amounts (or written them on a note inside my cupboard door, there are hundreds of possible no-need-for-planning suppers.

But I'm still not sure how I'd teach someone to make a sandwich.

Modest Success, or No Success at All?

I've been kind of wanting to make red velvet cake. I've looked at some 'regular' recipes, but decided at length to try this reduced fat and calorie version from Bobby Deen's show, "Not My Momma's Meals". (I really like this show, in which Bobby produces healthier versions of his mom's classics, with her full approval. It's fun.)

The only huge change I made to the recipe was that I decided to make a sheet cake instead of cupcakes. Other than that, I followed the recipe to the best of my ability, and encountered no real problems.  The biggest difference in this recipe from most is that the batter gets its color (and, I assume, some of its sweetness) from roasted beets rather than food coloring..  (It seems to me that I've red that the earliest red velvet cake recipes used beets.) The frosting also uses a reduced fat cream cheese and less sugar than would be typical.


The results were quite good, though not great. I do taste beet, but I'm not sure I would if I wasn't looking for it, and it's a bad thing anyway. I did find the frosting to be goopier than I expected, so I think it'll be a challenge to transport.

The mixed feelings hinted at in this post's title come from my realization as I ate my piece of cake that I'd worked all afternoon (much of it on another baking project I'll write up in due course) and didn't really have any "real" food prepared for the week to come.  I was exhausted, and what I had to show for it was 90 square inches of cake that I shouldn't eat much of - a disappointing outcome from that respect.

I think perhaps I've gotten off course a little bit -- the amount of time and effort to make this cake was a distraction from my main goal of making myself tasty and nutritious food for my life. I just need, when planning future projects, to make sure they leave me with enough time and energy to make 'real food' as well.

As I planned, I'll be taking the bulk of my cake to work. And my refrigerator is not devoid of things I can eat - I made a frittata tonight that turned out pretty well. (Yum.)

Butternut Squash Oven Fries

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a recipe for sweet potato oven fries and came across this recipe and finally got around to making it this evening.

The recipe calls for salt to be mixed into the oil you coat the fries with. I did that, and also added about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and maybe half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

I also found that mine cooked much more quickly than the recipe indicated - I skipped the reduced temperature baking entirely.

I found them to be really good. Not really crisp, but they had a texture much like a good-but-not-great steak fry. And, I think my intuition on seasoning was a good one. I'd set aside some to share with my neighbor lady, and if I hadn't run out of the ketchup I'd put in a little cup, she wouldn't have gotten hers!

I'm not a huge french fry guy, but it's really nice to have an alternative.

Free Food

I am not a thrifty person. But something deep within me dislikes throwing away what I trim off food as I cook. I sometimes get downright cranky about it. So, I often try to find a way to use, say, the liquid in which I've reconstituted dried mushrooms or the central stalk from a head of broccoli. Doing things like this feels like I'm eating free food - and there's no seasoning quite like free.

Today, I bought a half dozen beets (for a secret plan that may or may not actually happen) and decided that I just didn't want to throw the tops away. After looking at a few recipes on the web, this is what I did.


Cranky Bob's Beet Tops 

Makes 2-3 cups.

1/2 dozen beets
1/2 cup sliced onion (approx)  (Note: quite a bit more would have been fine.)
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup (approx) oil (I used part olive, part canola)
Zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon
Salt and pepper


1. I trimmed the tops off six beets and set the beets aside for another dish.
2. I cut the stalks where the leaf began and carefully washed the leaves and dried them in the salad spinner. .
3. I cut the stalks into one-to-two-inch pieces and carefully washed them and dried them in the salad spinner.
4. Heated my biggest frying pan and added the oil.
5. When the oil was hot I added the onion and the beet stalks and added salt and pepper.
6. I cooked the stalks, stirring frequently, until they were somewhat softened, 5 to 10 minutes.
7. I added the garlic, lemon zest, and greens. I added more salt and pepper.
8. When the greens were tender (like cooked spinach) I added the lemon juice, put the lid on, and turned off the gas burner. (If using electric, move it off the heat.) The goal is to steam the veg in the lemon juice a bit.
9. Add more salt if needed and serve hot.

I think it's delicious. The stalks weren't completely softened, so there's a nice variety of texture. It's garlic-y and lemony. I won't hesitate to make this again.

Chimichurri, Part 2

When I made chimichurri the other day, it occurred to me to try it with chicken breast. Because, you know, chicken breast can be a little bland. And maybe a little dry. (In your heart, you know it to be true.) So, I tried it tonight. I made a double batch: half for marinade and half for sauce.

Oh. my. goodness.

The beneficent universe must have caused chimichurri to be, knowing that someday people would want to eat and enjoy boneless skinless chicken breast.

The olive oil certainly counteracted any dryness my chicken might have had. And flavor? Yes. Emphatically yes.

Not that I didn't have difficulty. You're remembering, aren't you, that I don't claim to know what I'm doing?

I chose to make chicken cutlets, produced by cutting the breasts in half horizontally. I then put them in a bag with the marinade and squished it around until everything seemed to be covered and put it in the refrigerator.

Note: while my chicken was marinating, I did some web browsing for suggestions on how long I ought to marinade. The same document that suggested two hours also said that marinades impart the most flavor when there's as much acid as oil - this is not true of my chimichurri recipe.  So next time I might make a low-oil version, take some of the mixture for my marinade and then add more oil to what was destined for sauce. (You really can't use marinade for a sauce unless you cook it after the meat is removed.  You know, the whole food poisoning thing.)

The difficulty came when I removed my chicken from the marinade. Since I planned to saute the cutlets, I thought that I ought to get pretty much all the parsley off under the assumption that it would burn. Wiping the marinade off with paper towels proved ineffective, so I wound up rinsing my chicken and drying it with paper towels. There's got to be a better way:I just don't know what it is.

I think, though, that the chimichurri would have made my cutlets delicious had I not marinated at all.

Give it a try.

Chimichurri, and Other Things

I didn't put in the kitchen time this weekend, but there were a few things worth mentioning. Here are a few bullets:

• Have you ever tried chimichurri? It's Argentinian and is sort of a counterpart to pesto. I made this version and found it fabulous. I used it as a marinade for a sliced round steak, and really enjoyed the result.
• As a side note, I'm beginning to accumulate a lengthy list of foods I've prepared without ever having them as prepared by somebody that knew what they were doing. Chimichurri is just the latest example.
• A pizza place in my area does a cheeseburger pizza I've enjoyed, and I decided to try one on my own. I cooked up some ground beef and made a sauce from catsup and mustard. The pizza, which also included a few pickles and some cheese, was pretty good. I could have been more heavy with the sauce, which I'd applied lightly because I was a little afraid of the mustard dominating the flavor.
• I used the food grinder attachment for my mixer to take a first shot at making sausage. I made an Italian sausage which I did not put into casings. The result was okay, if a little dry when cooked into patties, but I had some problems. I'll write more about sausage making at some point. 
• I made another attempt in the great tomato sauce quest I mentioned in my last post.  This version featured anchovy paste (I'll use less next time) and the soaking water from reconstituting shitake mushrooms. I even wrote down what I was putting in! The sauce was pretty good, but I'm not home yet.
• Tonight, I used the hamburger left over from the pizza, the rest of my sausage, and some of my sauce to make an un-lasagna casserole. I also put in whole wheat pasta, the mushrooms I'd soaked earlier, and several cheeses. It's very good, the tastiest thing I made this weekend.  (Okay, second tastiest: that chimichurri steak was delicious.) Plus, it's a win because I hadn't needed a recipe to make it.   

Now, quit reading blogs and go make chimichurri sauce! (Hmm...what might a chimichurri chimichanga be like?)