Somewhat
Mar. 29th, 2008
02:06 pm - Foodblogging: Quick Hits
Well, two weeks of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ukelele spring break has been great for my sleep, sanity, and productivity at work. For cooking, not so much: Getting home at a sane time means that I've only got 45 minutes to throw something together (later than that means that V gets tired and loses patience before I get dinner on the table).
So there's not been anything particularly worthy to blog. Fajitas, a reprise of last month's chicken stew recipe (this time over herbed polenta -- way excellent!), burgers, that sort of thing. Nothing liable to be novel to any of you or particularly illustrative.
We did do a recurring salad of mine, which might be worth a note:
1c yellow pepper as 1/4" dice
1c jicama as 1/4" dice
1c pineapple as 1/4" dice
Adequate juice from the pineapple to make everything wet
1t chili powder
Toss together, serve cold.
Today I'm doing Irish Stew, again not particularly novel, but a good spring dish.
Also: these pecans, since I had pecans left over from a couple of weeks ago.
Mar. 9th, 2008
06:49 pm - The price of hubris
Yesterday I noted the absence of my usual drumbeat of failed recipes. Naturally, then, today's dinner was overcooked steelhead under a balsemic reduction, served with the wrong salad and some pesto pasta.
Yeah, I overcooked the fish. Fish and I have serious differences vís-a-vís broiling times. Broiling fish is my personal kryptonite.
And the wrong salad! I had meant to do arugula and roasted pecans with a raspberry vinaigrette. But I get home from shopping only to discover that the raspberry vinegar in the pantry is so old and so off as to be utterly useless. I ended up tossing some store-brand Italian dressing on the arugula.
The saving grace, to the extent there was one, was some Cresti di Gallo pasta with pesto. There's a local specialty foods store, Capone's, whose pasta Whole Foods is now selling. Their Cresti are big floppy oddly shaped pasta half-torus-with-a-wattle things. They are a perfect canvas for thick, flavorful sauces like pesto because their weird shape guarantees that the sauce won't be uniformly distributed, giving a good contrast of sauce and not-sauce that serves to draw attention to flavors.
Overall Rating: Poor
Lessons Learned:
+ Still can't broil fish reliably, just like the last like nine flillion times
+ When brainstorming dinner at the store, do not rely on ingredients that you dimly remember having in the pantry somewhere: Even if you remember correctly that they exist, they're probably bad by now.
Fun Facts: Lillian Harman and Edwin Walker married in 1886 and were imprisoned in 1887 for the crime of... well, it's not quite clear. In the words of anarchist historian Roderick Long: "Judge Valentine...raised the question whether the couple's crime was a) living together as a married couple without actually being married, or b) getting married but in an illegal fashion." Harman and Walker, you see, had used irregular wedding vows in which Harman did not cede all of her rights to Walker, and Walker repudiated any legal but immoral rights the law might grant him over Harman (such as spousal rape).
At the time any couple eligible to marry in Kansas who lived together were automatically married in the eyes of the law. Only those who professed equality and denounced rape, it seems, were criminals thereby. Walker naturally received five times the sentence of his bride.
Mar. 8th, 2008
06:50 pm - Stuffed Pork Chops
Recipe here. I used equal parts chicken stock and cider vinegar for the liquid, as I was embarrassingly caught short of the others.
I omitted the raisins because mixing sweet into savory is a crime.
Overall Rating: Very Good
Lessons Learned:
+ The Alton Brown technique for cutting pork chops for stuffing really works. You don't actually need the plunger, though; a spoon will do.
+ The butter flavor of the outside was a bit intense, and the meat a touch dry (the stuffing may have wicked out the juices?). Both might be addressed by brining.
Fun Fact: I haven't had a totally failed recipe since starting this foodblogging. Y'all are good luck!
Mar. 4th, 2008
05:31 pm - Roast beef
My new guru, Cook's Illustrated, had wisdom concerning roasts. I've always been terrible at roasts, so I was intrigued.
The whole point of a roast is that does magic with cheaptastic cuts, so I grabbed an eye round roast from McKinnon's at $2.50/lb. Salted it heavily and mummified it in plastic in the fridge for a day to start. Then oiled, peppered, and seared the outside. Transferred to a 225-degree oven for an hour and a half until the temp reached 120, then turned off the oven but left it closed for another 40 minutes until the temp reached a nice medium-rare 130. Let it sit half an hour until dinner.
(CI argues in essence that what you would like is to cook at the roast's destination temperature for about a day until it comes up to temp. This recipe is their attempt to approximate that for those of us whose ovens don't go down to 130 and who don't want to leave the gas on for twelve hours. Hence finishing in a cooling oven. dolohov might like this notion.)
Served with a horseradish cream sauce (whip cream to soft peaks, fold in equal quantity of horseradish, salt and pepper to taste), plus a salad of mixed bitter greens.
Overall Rating: Excellent. Perfectly uniform pink medium rare, nice salty-beefy yumminess.
Lessons Learned:
+ Total drippings were less than two teaspoons -- the long salting really locks in those juices.
+ My oven is not as heat-tight as CI's. Not really surprising when you think about it.
+ Whipping cream by hand is much easier if you have angry shouty music turned up too loud on your iPod while you do it. Thanks, Corporate Avenger!
+ Verity loves horseradish cream sauce. Buh-wha??
+ With good time-management, this would actually be a very easy recipe. Good weekend food.
Fun Facts: I'm pretty sure that McKinnon's store scale is off. There's no way that roast was only 3 lbs -- I'd say it was closer to 4.5.
Mar. 2nd, 2008
07:13 pm - Cheap eats
McKinnon's had hanger steak for $3/lb. Mmmm, cheap eats.
Salted for an hour, then marinated (balsemic vinegar, worcestershire, dried anaheim chilies). Broiled, served under onions, peppers, and mushrooms.
Overall Rating: Very good
Lessons Learned: None. I flipped the coin on hanger steak, and it came up heads this time. Good luck teaches no lessons.
Fun Facts: Voltairine de Cleyre became an atheist as a result of her being forced into a Catholic convent as a teen. Her first escape attempt from the convent -- which involved swimming a mile across a freezing river and then hiking, waterlogged and hypothermic, for seventeen miles -- resulted only in her being captured and sent back by friends of her family. Her second attempt succeeded, however. Later in life she would have her son stolen from her by the state because of her political views opposing marriage. Unlike many of her anarchist contemporaries, however, the only assassination attempt against her was by an insane friend of hers, whom she forgave.
Feb. 28th, 2008
09:19 pm - Garlic shrimpies!
I cannot easily describe this recipe, which I got from the incomparable Cook's Illustrated, nor is it on their website. Suffice it to say: Shrimp, plus sixteen cloves of garlic prepared three different ways. Tasty tasty tasty!
Served over wilted spinach in garlic olive oil because, hey, I had this garlic olive oil left over from the shrimp...
Overall Rating: Very good
Lessons Learned: Heed Cook's Illustrated. Revere Cook's Illustrated. Follow Cook's Illustrated.
Fun Facts: I meant to serve this with dinner rolls. They are still sitting on the counter where I forgot them.
Feb. 23rd, 2008
07:20 pm - Chicken Stew
The January Cook's Illustrated had a page on stew theory. The things it had to say -- mostly about the order in which stew components should be added -- was something of a revelation to me. I'm an avid stewer, so it gets harder and harder to learn anything new even as I still suffer the alarmingly regular failures of any regular amateur stewer.
( We'll go with unusually much detail this time, as this was a bit of a variation from (at least, from my) conventional approach. Please pretend not to feel patronized. )
Overall Rating:
+ Excellent.
+ With a sourdought baguette: Profound.
Lessons Learned:
+ Building a roux around the savories in stew prep is an excellent substitute for the rather unpredictable buisness of thickening it by boiling it down
+ Adding herbs at the end of cooking is rather nerve wracking -- it's hard to tell if the stew is balanced while you're making it -- but really pays off in taste. The delicate flavors really shone through.
+ The long thin sour baguettes that Whole Foods sells are absolutely excellent.
Fun Fact: Taking the stew out of the oven, I was sure it was a total failure. Some of the roux had gotten stuck to the side of the pot above the stew and burnt, so although the stew looked beautiful, it smelt burnt burnt burnt. Fortunately, a false alarm.
Feb. 20th, 2008
05:13 pm - Lame-out
Too tired to do proper meal-planning, so I picked up some boneless chicken thighs on the theory that I've always got something lying around to do with them.
Unrolled them flat, seasoned each side generously with salt and spanish paprika, rolled them back up, let them sit. Then roasted them over carrots, onions, and garlic (400 degrees, 15 minutes just the veg, then 45 minutes chicken and veg). Sliced the chicken, served plus the veg over warmed, oiled pita.
Overall rating: Good, might have been better with rosemary and sage, perhaps a lemon slice wrapped up in the thighs.
Lessons Learned: None -- this was a lame-out meal of boring ingredients interacting in known ways.
Fun fact: Individualist agitator Ezra Heywood was imprisoned five times and died at hard labor in prison for publishing articles critical of marriage laws. As soon as his judicial murder was complete, the same Attorneys General attempted the same against his intellectual successor Moses Harman, who however managed to survive years of hard labor sentences despite being in his seventies.
Feb. 18th, 2008
06:45 pm - Kheema Paratha
So I have this chapati flour, and I'm still having fun, let's turn things up a notch on the difficulty scale and see if I can't get a horrible recipe failure...
(Lest anyone ask -- this particular self-destructive streak may be a product of self-paced elementary math: My 2nd and 3rd grade teacher took the view that if you can ace the test, you stayed in that unit too long. Failure means you're keeping the pace; success means you're falling behind.)
If you watch Manjula make aloo paratha, or read a recipe for kheema paratha, you will see a Sidney Harris "then a miracle occurs" step. A 6" diameter dough round is wrapped around half a cup of filling, the result is then rolled out with a rolling pin, and mysteriously it doesn't fall apart into pieces. Huh?
Overall Rating:
+ Enh.
+ With a chutney, perhaps, very good
Lessons Learned:
+ On paratha #1, we conclude: No, it really is ridiculously impossible. What we need here is a theory.
+ Whole wheat is slow to form a gluten. Perhaps if we let it sit for a while? ...
+ (But only after we form the ball -- if the gluten forms before we roll it around the stuffing, we'll never pinch it airtight and the stuffing will blort out the side!)
+ On paratha #2, we conclude: Good. Rolling it out forces the filling through the top layer of dough, but not the bottom, so it doesn't stick to the prep surface. Improvement!
+ On paratha #3, a clever idea: If rolling it out forces the filling through the top, roll it twice as big and fold it over on itself!
+ Paratha #4 is actually beautiful.
+ Oh yeah, flavor. Bland -- the paratha swamps the flavor of the meat. Needs a topping! Maybe I need to make onion chutney soon...
Fun fact: Verity believes that masala kheema is the Bestest Thing Evar. Useful to know!
Feb. 17th, 2008
04:31 pm - Let Us Now Praise Famous rhean
Red lentil pancakes. That is all.
I made them with green chilies, served them with some marinated shrimp.
Overall rating: Very Good
Lessons learned:
+ These can -- and should -- be spread very very thin. Thinner than I did, for sure. But the oil needs to be pretty shallow for that to work.
+ Food processor not required; blender works just fine.
+ Decent leftovers, if reheated in a skillet -- but not a microwave, they tend to sog.
Fun fact: This is similar enough to the Manjula's Kitchen recipe for dosa that you can use that as a rough visual guide.
04:16 pm - Steak poivre
dolohov says that I should use this LJ for foodblogging. Enh, we'll give it a try. The major notable food occurrence around here is recipe failure, of course, but that can be interesting in its own right.
My most successful recent recipe was steak poivre. No two recipes for this are ever even slightly the same, but this did not dissuade me. Got a truly beautiful 2" strip steak from Whole Foods, cut it into two 1" steaks, covered it in a paste of garlic, cracked pepper, cracked brown mustardseed, salt, and bacon grease. Let sit for a few hours. Then pan-fried it, removed steak, added cognac, set on fire. PILLAR OF FLAME! That's a good thing in this case. Tossed in some shallots, a touch of sherry vinegar, some heavy cream; whisked vigorously. Miraculously, the sauce mounted perfectly, something which never ever happens for me. Poured it on the steaks.
Served with a salad -- blanched bok choy sliced thin, grated carrots, and chopped peanuts, splashed with a champagne vinegar. I had meant to do bok choy mignonette, but I forgot.
Overall rating:
+ Steak: Excellent
+ Salad: Okay
Lessons learned:
+ Our stove hood is not powerful enough for dramatic flames to appear reassuringly safe.
+ Something made this sauce mount perfectly. Burnination?
+ Grated carrots are too sweet to take a very sweet vinegar with good grace.
Fun Fact: Because I don't drink, I don't know cognac from Gatorade, so I asked my mother for a recommendation. On hearing my plans for the rest of the recipe, she recommended that I wait a little while and maybe she could make it up to Boston in time for dinner. Alas, she was joking, but perhaps I shall repeat this recipe when my parents next visit.
Sep. 21st, 2005
06:58 pm - Meat
This is one of the more fun things that I cook. It is easiest with some assistance from ukelele, but the rest of you will just have to find someone else, or do without, because you can't have her.
( Ukelele calls this 'meat parfait' )
Sep. 19th, 2005
08:43 pm - Arrr! ...
Arrr! Aye! Sea! Eee!
Roughly based on a recipe for "Persian baked rice" I found online somewhere.
( Rice )
I served leftover lamb stew over this, and it was delightful.
Jul. 15th, 2005
11:10 am - Quinoa pilaf
So, I got this box of quinoa. I'd heard quinoa described as culinarily useful, and I figured I'd check it out.
( Out it is checked )
( A recipe )
Jul. 6th, 2005
05:04 pm - Chicken Adobo
Per deadpuppy5's practice and suggestion, I'm going to
dump more-or-less successful recipes here in my lj to prevent myself
from forgetting them and to make them available to anyone who happens
for whatever misguided reason to care.
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