serinde

I still have some of last week's soup yet, and three winter squashes staring accusingly at me, so it seemed that the traditional way to deal with this was to put some in pickle. Therefore:

1. Peel, eviscerate, and cube 1 butternut squash.
2. Peel, eviscerate, and cube 1/2 acorn squash. Peeling raw acorn squash really, really sucks.
3. You now have about 8 c., or a little under 3 lbs, of orange vegetable. Put it in a bowl.
4. Put in a saucepan 3 c. cider vinegar, 2 c. water, 2 c. sugar, 20 peppercorns, 15 cloves, 15 allspice berries, and some cinnamon bark. Heat gently while stirring 'til the sugar is dissolved.
5. Let it come to the boil. This will take a bit.
6. Look around for something to put the end result in. There's a 1L mason jar, but what to do with the rest?
7. Start turning out cupboards and fridge and what-not. Put the remaining maraschino cherries in a pyrex bowl, and wash out the 3/4L jar they were in.
8. Take the two empty jars and put them in boiling water to sanitize.
9. Oh, the brine is starting to boil. Let it boil for a few minutes, then turn down to simmer.
10. Find a 3/4L jar that is mostly full of lavender simple syrup. Look around for something else to put that in.
11. Pour out the last bit of Benedictine, from a bottle that you don't even know where it came from but it was at least since you lived in Jersey City. There's only a half-ounce anyways. Wash the bottle.
12. The brine's done. Pour it over the bowl of pumpkin, which makes it more full than the measuring bowl. Oops.
13. Wipe that up.
14. Strain the lavender syrup into the Benedictine bottle. Wash the jar that the syrup had been in.
15. Extract the now-sterilized jars from the pot and put the syrup jar in it instead.
16. Fill up the sterilized jars with pumpkin and brine, and chuck them in the fridge.
17. Drink the Benedictine Shot of Victory.
18. Time passes. I think. I am not sure how long one waits before eating some.

Recipes differ as to whether one cooks the squash before or not. I am trying not, since I don't want mushy things.

First pickup of the farm share was today. Included was a bundle of leafy green called "dinosaur kale". I had no idea what to do with it, so went to the intarwubs. The result is rather loosely based on the Portuguese calo verde; I didn't have chorizo, for instance.

1. Chop up about 1/4 - 1/3 cup of onion. Start sauteeing it in garlic-infused olive oil.
2. No chorizo but there is one remaining strip of slab bacon in the freezer. Pull it out, dice it, throw it in the skillet.
3. There are also spuds in the farm share. Take 3/4 lb. of them, scrub, chop into 1/2" dice. By this time the bacon is reducing nicely, so go ahead and throw the taters in.
4. One might add broth now, but one has no broth. Pour in 1/3 cup of rioja to get on with.
5. Put the kettle on quick and produce 1 1/3 c. of mushroom bouillon. Add to pan.
6. Hey idiot, this is soup. Maybe you should use the POT, not the SKILLET. Rectify the error.
7. Let cook ~15 min. until the potatoes are cooked through. Meantime, cut the kale (3 oz of it) into fine julienne. Kale HATES to be cut, by the way. Particularly the stems.
8. When the potatoes are done, bring out the immersion blender and start blending.
9. Rinse spatters of boiling liquid off self, tools, counter, stovetop, and cat.
10. Perhaps the potatoes, though soft, are too much. There is possibly a tool for this. Apply potato masher.
11. Round 2: Go! Immersion blender still not entirely doing its thing; perhaps insufficient liquid. Eventually bodge it into a stewlike state.
12. Input kale, stir around. Stare in astonishment as it inhales all the liquid. Keep stirring for a few minutes as the kale wilts a bit.
13. Add salt and a bit of fresh ground red pepper flakes because why not? Serve it forth.

The result is a thick porridge rather than a soup. But it is really, really tasty, and exactly what I needed after a rotten commute and a burgeoning cold and wah. The kale stems are a little over-crunchy, but it provides tactile interest, kinda like having nuts or something in. A+++ would cook again.

0. Have a bunch of de-fatted ground almonds left over from making orgeat during a hurricane. Wonder what to do with them. Ah hah! Crusted fish.

1. Fall into a fugue state at Gourmet Garage. Wake up with .36 lb of hake fillet. What's a hake? Well, the Monterey Bay Aquarium says it's a "good choice", so fine.

2. Combine ~1/4c. of the almonds with ~1 Tbsp of leftover flour-salt-pepper-thyme mix from an earlier breaded thing.

3. Crack an egg into the bowl. Realize the whole thing is not needed to gum up this fillet, and that the white could go into a Ramos Fizz later. Extract the yolk, beat with a little milk.

4. Dip the hake into the egg, then into the almond/flour mix. Stare in astonishment as the entire thing gloms onto the fish side. Whip up another batch for the skin side.

5. Press the hake skin-side down into the new almond mix. Stare in astonishment as none of it sticks. FINE.

6. Put the hake nut-side down into a heated skillet that has some olive oil in on eh, medium heat or so.

7. Pour a glass of a remarkably acidic viognier.

8. Start writing this post. Five minutes in, OH HEAVENS MAH NUTS ARE BURNIN'. Flip the fish.

9. After a few moments, realize the fillet is probably cooked through anyways. Yep. Extract to plate.

10. Wow, that's really good! Spinach Cat likes the cat yums, too.

Ninety Day Sour, a Long Island rosé, pickled vegetables that were awesome (I say this, I who do not like pickled foods), duck rillette, grilled sardines, duck confit, pork belly sandwich, duck/veal/shortrib meatloaf sandwich, duck breast. Donuts and ice cream to follow, which donuts were powerfully reminiscent of the rare occasions when Mom would fry up doughnuts of a weekend morning. Cabernet Franc with the second course. Milk punch with dessert.

If you're in B'burg, go to Rye.

0. Stare blankly at about 1.5 cups of cooked brown rice.
1. Take a glob (~1 Tbsp) of the duck fat that has been sitting in the back of the fridge. Melt in cast-iron skillet.
2. Chop a bit of onion and garlic. Start it frying up in the duck fat.
3. Cut up two boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Add them to the pan.
4. Chuck in a bunch of fresh thyme that's reaching end-of-life. Grind some pepper in, too.
5. After the chicken is browned, add in the rice. Let it all fry up a bit more.
6. Add 1 cup of mushroom bouillon. Turn up the heat, let it reduce.
7. Realize that's still a lot of liquid. Chuck in a handful of dried lentils (about 1/3 c).
8. Cover and hope this works. Distract self with list of Rock Band download choices.
9. Liquid is almost gone, lentils are a bit firm yet. Add a splash of white wine.
10. Wait til that evaporates. Dish up.
11. Yes, that will do nicely.

syringavulgaris: !!!
syringavulgaris: Nigella has a recipe that she came up with after having Nobu's cod-in-miso.
elibalin: Nifty.
syringavulgaris: And it's scaled for 1 or 2 people.
elibalin: SUBSCIRBE!
syringavulgaris: I don't know what mirin is. Please hold.
syringavulgaris: Oh, it's like sake with a lower booze content.
elibalin: "O'Doul-San"

Failing to escape the gravitational pull of the Hungarian Meat Market on 81st and Second, I entered one of those fugue states and came out with a half-pound of an unlabeled paprika-dusted entity described by the shop girl as "bacon, but you don't have to cook it". (Research indicates that this might be some variant of szalonna.) It's more than 50% fat, and the meat bits are rather shreddy in the way corned beef gets. There is no rind.

Not being a starving Hungarian peasant, I'm not gonna just eat the stuff--I think it will make a better flavor-enhancer (shechameleon has already proposed using it as a base for potato soup, and I was seeing it in a pot of beans)--but I can't be arsed to make soup tonight. Therefore, my intent:

~2 Tbsp of maybe-szalonna, diced fine
1/2 of a red pepper, sliced in strips
1/4 or a bit less of onion, sliced in strips
A potato, which happens to be rather lambently purple-red, scrubbed and sliced thin

Render the maybe-szalonna in a skillet, nice and slow. When it's good and drippin', add the potatoes, then after a few minutes, the other veg. Serve as soon as the taters are nice and brown, or whatever color they get when they start out porphyros, with a hunk Brooklyn Brewery Dark Rye bread.

I shall report results anon.

Edit for results: The veg didn't really take up the bacon flavor (or the paprika flavor), unfortunately. I am perhaps executing the rendering stage incorrectly. It's fine and all, but the units are not, in the words of one of the plaques we saw at the Saarinen exhibit today, entering into a dialogue.

I didn't pack a lunch today, and was intending to just eat a Curry Inna Packet or something, but spride persuaded me out to get Indian takeaway from a place I'd noticed close to my apartment, which I'd wanted to try therefore; so I ditched yoga (it was going to half be end-of-semester tea-and-cookies anyways) and walked out. I admit the beautiful day had something to do with it, too.

However, we did not make it as far as the takeaway, instead being sucked into the gravity well of the Nanoosh Mediterranean Hummus Bar, which I had also taken note of. It is as good as it sounded. I got Hummus Chicken, which is hummus with some grilled spiced chicken and onions and a dollop of tahini in the middle, and also two beautiful, fluffy, warm, delicious pitas with which to manage your glorp. I had more than sufficient to take back half for tomorrow's lunch. I can also say that the mint iced tea was refreshing and nice; "lightly sweetened" as described. All of this was not cheap, but it was awfully good. And it's less than a five minute walk from my front door. <3

I really want to go back for the rice pudding with cardamom.

Take ye a package of ground turkey that needs eatin'. Mix it with 1 egg (beaten), thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs ynogh (maybe a generous slice). Glob well and form into biggish but not gargantuan meatballs.

Slice one orange pepper, 1/3 c onion, and a couple cloves of garlic. Put in skillet with a bit of oil and a bit of butter; let slowly cook on lowish heat, getting all nice and aromatic (my Italian cookbook calls this "insaporire"). When bored, put in the meatballs. Let that cook, turning occasionally. Phone sweh, forgetting what you're doing, until the smell of caramelizing onions grabs your attention. Splash some of the Chardonnay you're drinking into the skillet to loosen things up and put a lid on. Wait some ten minutes, then OM NOM NOM NOM.

I'd like this in a more sauce-like substance, but a) I don't have what I want to make one, and b) it'd be bad for me anyways. Still awfully good, though needed a bit more salt.

Join us as we explore the winding tree-lined streets of the historic West Village. Seek out classic "mom and pop" specialty food shops, Italian eateries, and charming neighborhood restaurants. Learn about the history, culture, architecture, and entertainment offerings that makes Greenwich Village so unique from the rest of New York City. Discover a literary speakeasy from the roaring 20's, the old Italian neighborhood, hidden gardens, the narrowest house in NYC, plus much more!

audiovile: it seems that Murray's is on the list of explorations. Ahem.