serinde | Entries tagged with food

Farm share started up this week (along with a disclaimer letter about how the weather this winter & spring was terrible for crops, so we are likely to be low on fruit, particularly stone fruits. FEH). Amongst the haul were "garlic scapes", which I wotted not of; they're the long stems and seed pods that grow out of your garlic clove. These being an esoteric item, they kindly included some suggested recipes, including two different ones for pesto. Said recipe requires leafy greens, and oh hey! here's a small head of lettuce.

I didn't manage to take the stuff home til Wednesday, and it was all looking rather sad, so last night I figured I had better get on the stick. I rinsed the lettuce and left it to dry...and then started sewing and forgot all about it until I got up to make coffee this morning and saw greenery staring at me accusingly. Whoops.

1. Roughly chop most of a wee head of lettuce, throw in food processor.
2. Trim the ends off 6 garlic scapes, throw them in.
3. Process the shit out of, yo.
4. The recipes have wildly varying amounts of olive oil. Hmm. Pour a cup's worth into the measuring cup, and dribble into the (running) processor in a fine stream.
5. Stop when it looks about right. (This was about 1/2 or maybe 2/3 of a cup.)
6. Actually, it's a little too oily. Throw in a couple more lettuce leaves and one more garlic scape.
7. Add salt and the TJ's "flower pepper" you've scarcely used. Process more.
8. Oh hey! There's still the tail end of a bag of pignoli in the cupboard! Dump it in! (Maybe 1/3 cup?)
9. It's good and processed and thick (oatmeal consistency, I'd say) (it maybe should be a little more liquid but I hate getting pesto everywhere; this will work better as a spread and that's fine). Debate adding grated Parmesan, which one recipe calls for and the other doesn't. Leave it out for now--if we put this on pasta we can add cheese then.
10. Put in container, put in fridge, hurriedly wash dishes.

I did the finger test and it's pretty good and pungent. I'll be interested to try it in a day or two and see if the sitting made a difference.

Current Mood: rushed
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/531405.html

I was originally going to make a sweet potato bread pudding, but lack of bread. (Then again, I was also going to do my hand-wash, rearrange closet space, and take out the recycling.) The answer is clearly to make sweet potato bread.

I found many and many recipes on the intarwubs, but at the end chucked them all in and started working off Grandma's banana bread, which saw me through my college years (as well as generating all kinds of visits from people on my floor when they saw me walking back from the Hartley package room).

1. Set oven to 350. Butter and flour your loaf pan.
2. Cream half a stick of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar (I cut it down because I had put some sweet in the potatoes already).
3. Add in 2 eggs (upped it) and the cup of mashed sweet potatoes (which had been already cinnamoned and maple-syruped).
4. Combine 2 c. flour (I'm trying half white, half whole-wheat), 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and salt ynogh.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl alternately with half a cup of milk (original uses 3 T. buttermilk, which I haven't).
6. If I had pecans, I would have added them here, but I don't, so I didn't.
7. Put in loaf pan, bake for an hour.

45 min to go yet. So maybe I'll get something useful accomplished tonight.

Current Music: John Lee Hooker, "I'm In The Mood"
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/528220.html

Tomato Soup
Tomato (1), Garlic (1), Leek (1), Salt Pile (1)

1. Wash and chop bundle o' greenmarket leeks. Leeks are hard to chop, and also hard to get clean, and also I really really need to take my knives to be professionally sharpened again.
2. Melt some butter in dutch oven. OH HEY I REMEMBERED TO USE THE POT THIS TIME
3. Still chopping leeks. Oops, the butter is browning. Turn that shit right down.
4. Chop a disturbingly large clove of garlic. Put that and leeks in pot and start to saute.
5. Crap. Forgot that we need to blanch tomatoes to peel them. Put a saucepan of water on to boil.
6. Put six Holland tomatoes in to blanch.
7. Haven't had afternoon snack. Eat handful of almonds. Start choking on dry almonds. The answer to this is clearly a cocktail!
8. Start noodling through PDT cocktail guide. Realize that this will end perilously. Quickly decide to try a May Daisy (brandy, chartreuse, lemon juice, simple syrup).
9. But why is all the brandy (almost) gone?
10. Hey idiot, there's stuff on the stove. Rush in to extract tomatoes, since blanching is supposed to be, y'know, about a minute. Have a Three Stooges moment trying to find colanders or slotted spoons or any goddamn thing.
11. In the middle of this, have the Time Warner robot call to confirm or deny tomorrow's technician appointment. Frantically punch keypad on iPhone while trying not to get tomato blerk everywhere.
12. Peel and chop tomatoes; add them to the rather over-browned leeks.
13. Add about 1.5 c. water, some bay leaves, your Salt Pile, pepper, and thyme.
14. Cover and let simmer for awhile.
15. Immersion blend a bit, but not to a complete homogenous pulp.
16. Stir in a bit of cream, because why not?
17. If you are ambitious, make a grilled cheese sandwich with herbed goat cheese. The rest of us will have a slice of toast spread with said cheese.
18. OM NOM NOM

It's good; a little thin perhaps (unsurprisingly, as there's not much there there in the soup; no protein or starch to speak of), but flavorful. Goes poorly with the cocktail but well with a vinho verde that was opened last week when it was NINETY FUCKING DEGREES.

Current Mood: avoidance behavior
Current Music: Afro-Celt Sound System, "The Silken Whip"
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/527973.html

I didn't stop for groceries last night, which turned into a ride on the drama llama; for I got up this morning, and it is a long day ahead, and there are NO EGGS. Oh, the humanity! (Yes, I do eat other things for breakfast--I am particularly fond of Irish oatmeal--but I wasn't in the mood for that, and I don't have a toaster oven at present so cheese-on-toast is out, and yogurt & granola doesn't keep me going for long enough.)

In my head place, it is simpler to spend effort finding some random recipe on the intarwubs and tear the kitchen apart to make it than it is to a) just go up the block to get eggs or b) just go up the block to buy breakfast. We are not at home to Mister Logic, here. So! To the internetmobile!

I searched around mashed sweet potatoes, since I already have a surfeit, and believe it or not I found a fair amount of recipes. Most of which require eggs. -_- However, I did come across a vegan's sweet potato breakfast casserole! Vegan! No eggs! Huzzah! Sold! Now, the recipe has you cooking the oats in soy milk, then adding the cooked but not-yet-mashed potatoes in, so we're already off the rails...

1. Start 1/2 cup of steel-cut oats. Hope that this is roughly equivalent to 1/2 cup rolled oats.
2. Dig around for a 4-cup casserole or ramekin. Realize you only have 2x 8-cup entities. Sigh. Pick the narrower of the two.
3. When the oatmeal is done, glorp it into the casserole, and add 1.5 c. of last night's mashed sweet potatoes. Stir 'em up real good.
4. Recipe calls for banana and seeds you've never heard of and other weird vegan shit. Suff on that. Add a double-handful of dried cranberries and a handful of chopped-up crystallized ginger. Stir 'em up real good.
5. Prepare the pecan topping, only you have no pecans. Walnuts or brazil nuts? The walnuts are older, so use those. Chop up a handful and a half.
6. Recipe says to mix nuts with butter substitute and brown sugar and cinnamon. Use instead real butter, cinnamon, cardamom, and MAPLE sugar because we are some STUDLY KITCHEN BITCHES RIGHT HERE.
7. Sprinkle topping over casserole.
8. Put casserole in 350-degree oven for about 20 minutes. Make a note that it might be wise to pick up an oven thermometer, because who knows what temperature this is really at?
9. When done, go to put casserole under broiler for 2 minutes. Realize that the broiler is under the oven and full of stuff. Fuck that, and dish it up.

It is pretty good, though I expected it to become more solid, not less so; I can't imagine what it'd have been if I used all the soy milk they called for. To be honest, even with the oatmeal it isn't very breakfast-y to me--I would happily eat it for dessert--but it fills the corners.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: le couch
Current Music: The Black Keys, "Everlasting Light"
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/527368.html

I am starting to surface from the mental wharrgarbl of moving + work + work trips + life drama, and also the kitchen is in a reasonable state to be used, and I had a bunch of sweet potatoes looking increasingly questionable; so.

The four oldest ones I peeled, cut out all the ucky bits, boiled, and mashed with a little butter, a bit more maple syrup, and some salt and cinnamon. That's easy. You don't need me for that.

The two from the most recent batch were in better shape, and gave me more options; and since I have been feeling yearnings for salty crunchy things, I thought I might try making chips out of them. Thus:

1. Preheat oven to 400. Line baking sheet(s) with foil.
2. Peel the sweet potatoes. (You probably don't have to ordinarily, but I didn't have anything that would do to scrub them--and they needed a lot of scrubbing.)
3. Slice the sweet potatoes, 1/8" or less.
4. Toss the lot with about 1 Tbsp of olive oil.
5. Lay them out on your baking sheets. Each potato took up one sheet, so it was convenient that I have two of them.
6. Sprinkle with STUF. I did one sheet with garam masala + salt, and the other one with a randomly-discovered jar of Paul Prudhomme's Blackened Redfish Magic[tm] + a wee bit of extra cayenne.
7. Bake for about 10 minutes.
8. Flip all the chips (they now take up only about 2/3 of the sheet. SCIENCE!!) and sprinkle on the other side too.
9. Bake for another 5-10 minutes.
10. Take out, let cool, store.

I am unsurprisingly crap at making slices of a uniform thickness (and likewise at judging size in the first place), so it is equally unsurprising that some of the chips are crisp and chip-like while others are a little squidgy in the middle. They taste good, though. The garam masala is maybe a little too subtle. The other is...not. I intend to take them in to work, along with almonds and fruit, which when added to the cheese and oatcakes I usually stock should keep me from being gustatorily bored.

Now is to make headway against the terrifying list of Things What Have To Be Done. Which, I must confess, "dealing with questionable vegetables" was very not near the top of.

Current Mood: calm
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/527154.html

Cabbage Potato Soup
Potato (1), Leek (1), Cabbage (1), Salt Pile (1)
Redaction totally made up.

1. Start some bacon fat rendering in the pan. (This may not be defensible. I note that there are no visible pork products in Skyrim. But, they undoubtedly smoke and brine fatty meats, so.)
2. Chop a smallish onion, throw it in.
3. Core and shred your Cabbage (or half of one, leftover from the last adventure). Add in to wilt.
4. Take the white and pale-green parts of your Leek, slice them, add to pot.
5. Extract the bacon parts that are wholly rendered, and break them up for cat yums. Spinach Cat is much appreciative.
6. OH HEY GUESS WHO FORGOT TO START THE SOUP IN THE SOUP POT HERP DERP
7. Grumble, move everything out of skillet to pot, clean skillet.
8. Chop your Potato, about 1 lb worth. Add to pot.
9. Add 2 c. of water because it's starting to get a bit scorchy in there.
10. Add the Salt Pile.
11. Cover, let simmer while you fix a cocktail.
12. Spend an inordinate amount of time to find the cocktail that required fresh rosemary. Give up and make a Newark instead (apple brandy, sweet vermouth, Fernet Branca, Maraschino), because you can.
13. Realize it's smelling awfully...cabbagey. Sniff, ponder, add more Salt Pile and some caraway seeds.
14. Continue to let simmer while on the phone with a boy. ^_^
15. Figure it shouldn't be immersion-blended, so serve it forth.

Wow, this is pretty good. The caraway was absolutely the right note to tone down the cabbageosity.

Current Mood: pleased
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/524740.html

I stopped at the store on my way home last night in quest of a leek, so that I could continue the Cooking With Skyrim series (because for some reason they put leeks in damn near everything). And lo, there were no leeks to be had, which greatly discomposed me and sent me wandering through the aisles in a woeful and confused fugue state. There was nothing else smallish that I wanted for dinner, so I ended up with a 3lb chicken. Well okay then; it's not the most diet-friendly thing on earth but it's been awhile since I roasted a chicken and why the hell not (and also I can eat off it all week).

When beginning preparations, it occurred to me that I also had some parsnips from the farm share that could use eatin'; and while at

sweh's parents' for Xmas, one of his mum's staple veg offerings is honey-roasted parsnips, which I found that I absolutely adored. So...

1. Pull parsnips from fridge. Notice two farm-share carrots that are getting withered and should be et. Pull them too.
2. Peel and quarter your veg.
3. Take note that the parsnips only probably need about a half-hour in the oven. Realize that the chicken will take longer, but how much longer? because you are chiefly accustomed to roasting the big commercial chickens in former life, which are twice the size.
4. Google for spatchcocked chicken recipes to get an idea. Find mostly instructions on how to spatchcock. -_-
5. Come across a Nigella recipe for chicken roasted with lemon and garlic and thyme. It's for a whole chicken not a spatchcocked one, but that don't signify.
6. Realize you still don't have a cooking time. Figure on it being about 50-60 minutes and stop caring.
7. Spatchcock the chicken, put in roasting pan.
8. Make a rub of thyme, lemon peel, salt, and Auntie Arwen's Garlic Insanity blend. Get it up under the skin of the bird.
9. Drizzle lemon-infused olive oil over the bird.
10. Pull some farm share garlic. Separate the cloves, but don't peel, and put them around the bird.
11. Cut a lemon into eighths, put around bird too.
12. Put pan into 400-425 degree oven. Somewhere in there.
13. Sample the interesting new liqueurs obtained from Astor. What idiot would drink Fernet Branca by itself? Blecch. But see how it could work in a cocktail.
14. At the half-hour point, get some of the chicken fat from the pan, toss the veg in it, drizzle with honey (or maple syrup, if you feel moved) and add to pan.
15. Page through the PDT cocktail book to see what you can do with the new stuff.
16. Make a "Hanky Panky" (gin, sweet vermouth, Fernet Branca). *koff koff* Soften it with four drops of Cherry Heering and two homemade maraschino cherries.
17. Realize you won't finish the cocktail before dinner's ready. Hey ho.
18. Check chicken at 1 hour. Looks done. Parsnips are a little tough but that's okay.
19. OM NOM NOM

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Music: Calexico, "Roka"
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/524289.html

My farm share last week included, among other things, a cabbage and four apples. As I unpacked it, my thoughts immediately shot to "Apple Cabbage Stew. Restore 10 points Health. Restore 15 points Stamina". Because I am just that dorky as to see Skyrim everywhere. (Though to be honest, I don't see how this is really that different from

audiovile's urges to run through the CVS punching people in the back of the head after playing too much GTA:Vice City.)

Ground rules:
* All ingredients listed must be used, but proportions can be played with a bit. (One tomato, one head of garlic, and one leek would make a damn peculiar soup.)
* Ingredients can be added, but only if they don't exist in-game. (Broadly. Don't add Cheddar to your Grilled Chicken Breast and claim it's okay because it's not goat or Eidar cheese.)
* ...And they should be appropriate for a northern, semi-medievalish land. (Yes yes they have tomatoes and potatoes. They also have dragons. STFU.)
* When we get to it, suitable replacements for non-existent ingredients will be selected and defended.

And so, without further ado:
Apple Cabbage Stew
Cabbage (1), Red Apple (1), Salt Pile (1)
Redaction based on an Epicurious recipe

1. Take half a Cabbage, core it, and shred (4 c.)
2. Take a smallish onion, dice, start frying in 1.5 tsp butter.
3. Throw in the cabbage, let it wilt.
4. Add thyme, Salt, pepper; toss.
5. Add 3 c. water or, if you're rich enough to have bought a house, broth (I used mushroom bouillon).
5. Let simmer for a little while.
6. Core and chop your Red Apple (I used one and a half). In another pan, fry it up in a bit more butter.
7. Before the apple gets mushy, put into the soup.
8. Let it cook down however much you like.

My result looked less contiguous than the picture, so I immersion-blended it a bit. (Because that's the labor-saving equivalent of "pushing the food through a sieve over and over until it's pureed", which is period appropriate.)

Tastes pretty good, actually--and I tend to loathe cabbage. The apples make it a little too sweet, though. In my curried pumpkin-apple soup the curry comes over top and evens that out; I'm not sure what the defensible choice would be here.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: John Lee Hooker, "Dimples"
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/524138.html

Tonight's creation is very, very loosely based on a vegan (!) intarwubs recipe for "Cajun-style rice and beans with collard greens", the latter being the operative ingredient I was trying to use up. I had no black beans, but I did have chickpeas; and fuck olive oil when you have andouille sausage. Thus:

1. Chop up about half a link of andouille and toss in the cast iron dutch oven, and let that get goin' while fending off the cat who has suddenly, miraculously got over his snit from having his paws washed because he is too Goddamn stupid not to step in his own peed-on litter on his way out of the box. Ahem.
2. Chop up some onion and red pepper (both farm share items too! whee!) and put into the pot. If the sausage isn't rendering enough delicious spicy fat, put in some olive oil anyways, fine.
3. Wash, de-stem, and coarsely chop up a mess of collard greens. Throw into pot and toss.
4. Once the greens have wilted somewhat, throw in half a cup of brown rice.
5. Add a can of chickpeas (include the liquid, we need some for the rice anyways).
6. Lacking crushed tomatoes, add a can (15oz) of whole peeled tomatoes, and just sort of moosh them up until they're sort of bite sized bits.
7. PAPRIKA, YO.
8. And some salt (but not enough, needed more later).
9. And some of the Auntie Arwen's Garlic Insanity blend, because why not?
10. Let simmer until the rice is done, adding water now and again because the rice is soaking up more liquid than you get from the chickpeas and the tomatoes.
11. About 40 min. later it will be all done. Consume while watching Young Justice on the YouTubes.

I really don't love the coarse leafy greens, but if one is going to eat them, this is a good enough way.

Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/523158.html

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.

Current Mood: listless
Current Music: Rainbow, "Vielleicht Das Nächste Mal"
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/522842.html

I thought pumpkin would last awhile, like the other squashes. Not this one. So, it was needful to deal with it. In addition, I have a terrifying amount of apples from apple-picking yesterday. There is an obvious solution to these issues.

1. Take thy pumpkin. Halve it, de-seed and de-pulp it, brush with oil and a little salt and pepper, and roast til done (I think I gave it about half an hour at 400 degrees).
2. Extract roasted pumpkin flesh, which was about 2 c. worth.
3. Peel, core, and chunk 1.5 large Jonagold apples, also about 2 c. worth.
4. Dice about, eh, 2/3 c. onion and a clove of garlic.
5. Take a 1" piece of ginger and grate it.
6. Fry those three items gently in some butter til they're all nice.
7. Add 2 c. of broth (I used mushroom bouillon), the pumpkin, and the apples. Stir up good.
8. Add salt, garam masala, thyme.
9. There's the tail end of some hot madras curry powder. What the hell, throw that in too.
10. Stir in maybe 2/3 of a can of coconut milk (I used lite, it works fine).
11. Let simmer 30 minutes or so.
12. Immersion blend to a nice soupy glorp, without splattering boiling liquid all over oneself for a change.

It is very nice indeed, the more so with a dollop of yogurt on top. I wish I had had real broth to use (whether chicken or vegetable)--the bouillonosity was coming through the other flavors, which is not preferable. Also, I may have gone a curry too far. Choose one, not both.

Current Mood: relaxed
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/522268.html

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.

Current Mood: sick
Current Location: le couch
Current Music: something moopy by the Cure
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/521893.html

The general agita of the past week has led to some fridge cleaning, which leads ineluctably to "let's use up some stuff that is a few days from messy decomposition".

1. Chop up some old garlic, carefully removing the center bits which are sprouting, and also some slightly-withered red onion. Add to skillet with olive oil for gentle frying.

2. Quarter a half-dozen withered but still juicy cherry tomatoes. Reserve for the moment.

3. Step away to do something else for a few minutes. Come back to realize the garlic is now blackened. IT WAS ON LOW HEAT, DAMMIT. Curse a bit and dump in a cup or so of cooked brown rice from last week. Stir it round a bit.

4. Add the tomatoes, and maybe about 1/2 cup of leftover hake from last Thursday. Stir again.

5. Put in a splash of vinho verde because why not?

6. Season with salt, pepper, thyme, and a pinch of herb-blend-for-lamb that

nedlnthred brought back from Istanbul. Let cook a bit more.

7. Eat, accompanied by the last of the vinho verde, and while reading one's favorite translation of the Odyssey.

(Pretty good; in future I'd either make it the all-garlic channel, or go further along the lines of diverse green herbs, thyme and rosemary and maybe a touch of oregano.)

Current Mood: listless
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/521384.html

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.

Current Mood: full
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/520774.html

Gourmet Garage is wont to have eye round steaks for super-cheap; this is appealing to me, because a) nice lean cut of meat (she said, looking sadly at the scale), and b) they come in single-serving packages, and c) no really I mean cheap. However, the couple of times I have gotten this cut, it's come out very tough and unpleasant, even when using recipes Adapted for the Meanest Understanding To Make It Nice.

This time I decided, for a change, to plan ahead. I was tolerably sure I'd be home for dinner most nights this week (thank heaven, considering the weekend's impending Bataan Death March), so I bought the item...and instead of cooking it when I got home, I had something else I'd picked up and prepared a marinade to ready it for tonight's dinner.

Vide:

1. Take ye a .41 lb. eye round steak.
2. Take ye the last lime (guess what I forgot to pick up more of). Juice it into a bowl.
3. Mince a clove of garlic; add to bowl.
4. Grind up some salt, and add that too.
5. Put in about that much cumin. 1 tsp, maybe?
6. Stir it all up then put in a quart Ziploc.
7. Insert the aforementioned steak.
8. Leave in the fridge until tomorrow's dinner. Turn it before you leave for work in the morning.
9. Heat the skillet on medium, with a little oil.
10. Fry the steak for a couple minutes each side.
11. Serve with a nice rioja.

Oh, it was nice; so very very nice. I look forward to infinite possibilities with this SCIENCE!.

Current Mood: calm
Crossposts: http://syringavulgaris.livejournal.com/518129.html

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.

(I think just about everyone here is on teh facebookz too, but in case you're not: Yo! I am having a housewarming on Saturday! Come any time after noon!)

So after much greater mental labor than is quite right--I've gotten lazy from having a house with a grill where it was just a matter of laying in burgers, buns, and beer--I think I know what snax shall be passed at various points in the afternoon/evening:

* gougères (I have Artisanal's recipe!)
* crab dip (w/crackers)
* chili cheese dip (w/chips and fresh veg)
* bleu cheese dip (same)
* spiced nuts
* ginger chicken salad (cold, on baguette slices)
* shrimp salad (broiled, on baguette slices)
* rosemary loaf cake
* walnut cookies
* burnt-butter cupcakes (those with which I won the coveted Gold Cupcake award at

erinfinnegan's birthday competition last year)

Because I shall be entertaining from noon til midnight, in theory, it occurs to me I should prepare some easily-dished up lunch for myself too. I'm just dithering about what. My inner crazy person wants to make the picnic fried drumsticks I tried a couple years ago, which were really good cold, but they are labor intensive. Dither dither dither.

I concocted this list and realized that anyone who cannot tolerate dairy is in for a woeful time. Maybe there should be a salami.

Now I must decide on beverages. Sangria? Pimm's Cup? Try for one of the fancy punches and risk embarrassment? (I am going to fill the tub with ice and chuck beer/soda in it, too.)

Current Music: Catherine Wheel, "Sparks Are Gonna Fly"

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.

Current Music: Neil Young, "Rockin' In The Free World"

last night's dinner, a birthday celebration with (and courtesy of)

sweh, at Gotham Bar & Grill:

YELLOWFIN TUNA TARTARE
japanese cucumber, shiso leaf and sweet miso
asian ginger vinaigrette

SEARED FOIE GRAS
tangerine marmalade, roasted cranberry, pain d'épices
maple sugar consommé
[this was the BEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD]

ROASTED RACK OF BERKSHIRE PORK
wild boar crepinette, caramelized endive and sweet potato
pear cider reduction

MASCARPONE CHEESECAKE
apple linzer tart
cassis sorbet

With a Last Word before, and a bottle of Viognier during, and coffee after.

Thank you, belovedest pet!