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I think that Demosthenes put it best when he said "You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry. For whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit."
So I'm gonna cook some fish.
Tilapia. Dry, coat with flour, then egg, then shredded coconut and Cajun spice mix. Pan fry. The sauce is a mix of apricot preserves and horseradish (the real stuff.) It was... amazing.
The salad is cabbage & carrot mix, tomatoes, and thinly sliced apple. A dressing of mayo, rice vinegar, and a bit of olive oil and lemon juice, plus minced ginger and garlic. Salt & pepper to taste.
Had I to do it over, I'd have shot the photo with the other side of the fish up. I vainly cooked this side rather lighter than the other, thinking it was more photogenic, but man, the notes which that charred coconut added were sublime.
Soundtrack includes Bush, The Cranberries, Red Hot Chili Peppers, 3 Doors Down, and Stone Temple Pilots.
Uri Tuchman is a German fellow who makes things. The hard way.
A few nights ago, I was watching his video on making preserved lemons from scratch. While he didn't actually plant the lemon tree itself, buying pre-grown lemons is pretty much the extent of the shortcuts taken. His videos are calming and enjoyable.
Now, in the past, I've never made Hollandaise sauce from scratch. I've always used the stuff in the packet, because it's easy, non-time-sensitive, and "good enough" for most purposes.
Tonight is going to be no exception.
So: Tilapia a la Meuničre. A very simple, classic French dish.
There's not much to this one. Start by lightly flouring the fish, give it a little salt and finely-ground white pepper, and cook for a few minutes per side in a fairly hot pan with clarified butter (or ghee.)
Pan #2: melt some regular butter. Brown it slightly, but be gentle. Get it "hot enough." Add some lemon juice and capers. Swirl this around for a minute or two, until the flavors have gotten to know one another. Add a handful of chopped fresh parsley, and swirl a bit more, until it's moderately wilted. (This is very much a "to-taste" decision.) Spoon over the fish.
The side is asparagus and mushroom in olive oil, baked (425°F for about 15 minutes), and topped with the aforementioned Hollandaise from a packet.
If you are like me, then you often find yourself asking questions about the origins of cuisine.
Questions such as "Who are you" and "what are you doing naked in my kitchen?"
I have utterly no idea where the inspiration for this recipe came from. I improvised it a few years ago when I was really starting to feel comfortable in my newly-found freestyle culinary groove.
Start with 1.5 cups chardonnay and 1.5 cups buttermilk.
I don't use milk very often, so I keep a can of powdered buttermilk in the cupboard. Beyond the obvious economic and convenience benefits, this has the advantage of allowing me to adjust the intensity of the milk-ness, so to speak, independently of the water-ness. Dishes which are already liquid-heavy can get a nice buttermilk infusion without introducing any additional liquid at all. For today's purpose, I'm going 50% over the label-recommended dosage, which is 6 tbs of powder and one cup of water. We'll see if that's a good decision.
I have, as of yet, been unable to find powdered chardonnay.
I do, however, keep these cute little bottles in the cupboard, for occasions when I require a white wine. For recipes that demand a serious, heavy-handed red, that's easy; there's always an open Zinfandel in this kitchen. But white is something which I pretty much never drink, I merely cook with. These bottles are 187ml each (what an odd measurement), so two of those.
So, milk & wine in a pan. Get it simmering, introduce some flour a little bit at a time to thicken (a few tbs ought to do it), and simmer over medium heat until reduced by about half. Stir frequently. A whisk is good here. Add a generous dose of ground nutmeg, and some ground black pepper.
Nut. Meg. In that order. Very important ingredient. Megnuts are terrible. Very bitter and, from what the talking owl says, also poisonous. Not sure if I believe it on that last part.
This is not a Béchamel sauce, but it's sort of approximately in that neighborhood. It's more like Béchamel's drunk, rowdy upstairs neighbor who makes a lot of noise at night.
The last time I did this dish, I think I used cubed pancetta. But I happen to have some bacon in the fridge that needs using. The dog-looking fellow at the market basically gave it to me (1 common / lb), so needless to say there's a lot of it. My preferred method is to cook bacon in the oven, on a wire rack above a tray. Since the process moves slowly as compared to pan-frying bacon, it's a lot easier to nail that exact level of done-ness. You can get the bacon nice and firm, without reducing it to a charred mess. So dice that up once it's finished, and toss it into the pan.
Next, add some Gorgonzola. I love saying that word, almost as much as I love tasting it. 4 ounces of savory deliciousness. Also, some dry grated Romano (I wish I had Asiago on hand right now.)
Turn to low and simmer while stirring until the cheese is fully melted. The mixture should be fairly thick by this point. If it's not, you turn the heat up again and reduce for a bit longer. We need this to be thick and sticky.
I've previously boiled a pound of frozen cauliflower florets, then drained them and let dry. Depending on how that goes, I might have tossed them into the oven on a baking sheet at low heat for a while to further purge their moisture. (Again, I'm writing this in advance.)
As a broad generalization, I tend to dislike frozen vegetables, on account of their limp, soggy texture once cooked. But this is one dish where using the frozen kind does not at all detract from the finished product.
Toss in the cauliflower, and stir it all together. Put this mixture into a cake pan, then top with a bit more Romano and some panko. Bake at 425° for about 25 minutes, until the top is nicely browned.
And that's it. My rough guess at what a Milanese comfort-food dish might be, having never visited that region of Italy.
Post-script: the charred bits at the edge of the pan are the best.
Yesterday's dinner was newsroom food, which is a time-honored election night tradition at radio & television stations all throughout the US. The aroma of cold pizza, stress, and the democratic process is one which evokes fond memories in every person who has ever worked at a broadcast news station. They even sell election-scented candles. I swear, I am not making this up: https://www.etsy.com/listing/8645755...d_out_detail=1
Now that News Nation is on the air, our building has two completely separate newsrooms, on different floors. Channel 9 went with the safe, traditional course of Lou Malnati's deep-dish pizza, which I happen to dislike. News Nation, by comparison, brought in Portillos' Italian beef sandwiches, which, while still on the greasy side, actually appeals to me from a flavor perspective.
As the chief engineer of the facility as a whole, nobody really notices or questions if I happen to be walking around when the catering arrives. Or anywhere at any time, for that matter. I mean, why 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 the chief be in or near the newsroom during an election? I'm wearing a wireless intercom headset and holding a signal analyzer and a clipboard, so I must have some legitimate reason for being there which is wholly unrelated to the fact that a literal pallet of hot food just arrived.
It was a long night. I actually got home at around 4am today, slept for a few hours, and then went back into work around noon. Fortunately, today was pretty quiet, so I left at a reasonable hour.
This allowed me to plan and shop for something a bit lighter than greasy beef, covered in cheese, slopped onto a hoagie roll, and then dunked in jus. Yes, that's how they do it in Chicago. The whole, assembled sandwich gets completely immersed in thin gravy before being wrapped in butcher paper.
There's probably a reason why there are no Chicago-themed health spas. No idea what it might be...
Somehow, the concept of Scampi wouldn't get out of my head today. But there was culinary violence in the background of that thought.
As with the cauliflower dish from a few nights ago, I've been typing this gradually in my spare time over the course of the afternoon while developing the shopping list, and I'm going to use it as a reference when cooking later this evening. As the dish takes shape, I'll be revising the text in realtime during the process before posting it. Because, you know, otherwise I might look like an idiot.
I kinda forgot to buy farfalle on the way home, but we do have this Israeli couscous here... Not typically a first choice in this type of dish, though I do *really* like couscous. Gonna cook it to label-directions, but substitute chardonnay for 1/2 the water called for. Because reasons.
So, France, Italy, and Israel walk into a bar. The bartender says "Hey, is this the setup for a joke?" The three countries immediately realize that this situation has the potential to devolve into a highly offensive punchline, and mutually decide to leave and go their separate ways into the balmy autumn night.
Start the couscous.
Now, in a large saute pan, lay down a half stick of butter and get that melting. Add about an equal amount of white wine. Simmer on low.
Dice a couple of plum tomatoes, and also finely chop some prepared sun-dried tomatoes. I like the kind that come packed in a jar in olive oil.
Add the shrimp.
You remembered to thaw and clean the shrimp, right? If not, time-travel back to a few hours ago, do that, and then come back. I'll wait.
Ok, shrimp in pan. Shrimp out of pan. Just kinda getting them up to temp and letting them absorb some of the flavor. Because I’m not really all that confident about what’s happening next.
I have never made pesto before. I know, that may be shocking to some. For those of you: have you *really* not realized how truly lazy I can be?
It's a very simple sauce to prepare. And yet the stuff in a jar is just so darn convenient. Well, today I'm gonna change that, even if the raw ingredients do wind up costing 3x as much as the jarred stuff. Very simple recipe here: toss a bunch of basil into the food processor. Add crushed garlic, olive oil, romano cheese, and pine nuts. Puree. That's it, that's the whole recipe.
It’s ok if some of the stems wind up in the mix. Manannan is not watching. Nobody is a cat.
Wow. Just licked the plastic scraper I use to manage the accumulation on the walls of the food processor bowl. Fresh is amazing.
Add that to the pan, along with the tomatoć. Stir. Taste. Add a splash of lemon juice, if that's your thing. And stir in some crushed red pepper flakes. Then some more.
And.... plate!
The pesto was a mistake.
I went way too heavy-handed on this dish. I blame Bryan Adams. (Long story. Pandora was involved, and I got a little off the rails.)
I should have skipped the pesto, and put a bit of cream into the sauce instead. The pesto, while delicious, wound up overwhelming all the rest of the flavors.
But I’m sharing this here, because that’s how cuisine works. At first, you screw up a lot. And then you start following recipes, and you get pretty good at it, and after a while you think you’re a culinary god. And then you start experimenting. And sometimes it’s amazing, and sometimes it isn’t. My point here is that it’s ok when it isn’t, so long as you learn from the experience.
So, yeah… This wasn’t inedible. Objectively, it was a 7/10, which means that I’ll be re-using the left-overs. But I was hoping for more, so expect to see a modified version of this coming around in a few days.
Now that I've sobered up a bit, I shall attempt to atone for the sins committed last week. Going to try to focus on the more delicate flavors. Presenting Shrimp Scampi part deux: The Reshrimpening!
Same basic setup as last time. Only now I have plenty of farfalle on-hand, and zero basil.
And also bacon. It's inconsequential that I forgot about that ingredient previously, as it would have been completely overpowered in the #pestocalypse. But now we're gonna let it sing. Bake on a rack for about 20-25 minutes at 400°F. Your oven and bacon thickness may vary. We're going for "done, but not crisp. Well, crisp at the ends, but not in the middle. Ok, maybe a little crisp in the middle."
Chop.
Half stick of butter goes into a pan, along with ľ cup of white wine (one of the little bottles), and a quarter cup of lemon juice.
I really under-did the lemon juice last time. I tend to be somewhat shy and cautious about this ingredient, sometimes to my detriment. I'm a big fan of lime juice in southwestern and Baja-style dishes, and I know that it can be massively overpowering if abused. It's easy for me to forget that its yellower cousin, while close kin, does tend to dilute rather more in intensity when in the presence of large quantities of rich and savory flavor.
Toss in some red pepper flakes if that's your thing, and also a shot of Worchestire sauce.
Yes, I'm serious. Worchester sauce. I came upon that little tidbit while researching yesterday, and it was a good decision. Just a teasingly small amount of fermented anchovy and tamarind really did something wonderful here. About a teaspoon.
A few cloves of crushed & minced garlic, and some parmesan or romano. The dry, powdery stuff in a plastic jar is adequate for our purposes here.
Stir that around and let it mingle for a while at a simmer. If you imagine yourself being one of the ingredients in the pan, the target vibe here is one involving Frank Sinatra, too many dry martinis, a moderately-priced cigar, and the kind of small-talk which politely avoids matters of serious socio-political concern. Because that would not be proper. Salt to taste. We don’t actually need to reduce this one all that much, it’s already pretty strong as-is.
I’ll add a note here: I’m deliberately keeping the larger solid ingredients out of the pan at this point. I want them to be firm and retain their individual flavor profiles, rather than all being melded together like last time. Gonna put those in towards the very end. Particularly the shrimp, as over-cooked shrimp, like a punch to the face, often offends.
Chop a roma tomato, and a pretty generous amount of sun-dried tomatoes. They're powerful, but that's another flavor which I want to stand out here. I'm trying to balance that desire against the need to not have this turn into another monolithic, overpoweringly one-note dish. Add those to the mix along with the bacon.
And the shrimp.
A little bit of chopped fresh parsley, and I do mean a *little*. I'm trying to be restrained here, after all. Maybe 2 tablespoons, tops.
That’s it. Done.
On the pasta side, I'm going super simple. And to be clear: this was happening before the solids went into the saute pan. We want the pasta to be completely done, and warming in the pan, before we’re ready to finish. Don’t be afraid- once the butter touches the pasta, it’ll be just fine sitting in the warm pan for a while.
Prepare farfalle per package directions. Drain, return to the pot, and fold in a bit of butter. Just enough to kind of properly coat things. Sprinkle with ground black pepper, and mix again.
A note about butter: I always use the unsalted variety when cooking. This has nothing to do with health concerns (my heart and blood pressure are just fine), it's all about having control over the flavor profile. I grew up in a home in which mom tended to over-salt everything. I don't fault her. She did a heck of a great job overall raising us, and is now happily smothered in grandchildren and small dogs (and one annoyingly large hound which my oldest niece utterly cherishes), still doing her best in the kitchen. But it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized it was possible for food to have flavors which weren't masked beneath a sodium-haze.
In this case, we're adding the butter to a pan of otherwise largely uneasonsed pasta, which means that it's going to be a tad lacking in that regard. So go ahead and add salt as well.
Plate. If you wanna be all fancy about it, arrange the shrimp fastidiously with tongs in a highly photogenic manner.
And....
Yeah. This one worked a lot better. It’s still a very powerful, in-your-face dish, however I can sense and appreciate each of the more fragrant ingredients individually, rather than just having a single, overpowering flavor dominate the experience.
I seem to go through culinary phases. Or moods, perhaps. Or, even more accurately; fits. This was the term which Douglas Adams used to describe his bursts of writing back in the early era of the Hitchhiker's series, when it was a BBC radio play, prior to novelization.
One month, it's southeast Asia. Another, we're in the Caribbean, which, for me, is soul-food harkening back to childhood. And another puts us squarely into beef country.
This has definitely been a Mediterranean few weeks...
Scallops are happening tonight. Been pondering this one for a while. Wanted to do something a bit lighter than the past few heavy-Italian shrimp dishes, but still feeling that general kinda vibe.
Start with equal parts butter, white wine, and creme fraiche. I'm putting them into the 8" sauté pan which I bought specifically for the purpose of making small amounts of sauces. Nothing fancy, it's a nonstick Cuisinart-branded pan which I think I paid about $20 for at Target several years ago. I don't do heavy stuff in it, so it's held up well.
Mix in a little bit of powdered lemon peel, a shot of cayenne pepper, some dried tarragon (I really wanted to use fresh, but couldn't find it anywhere), and a dash of parmesan.
Get that a-simmerin' on low (just barely bubbling), and… don't tell anyone, but maybe sprinkle in a touch of flour to thicken a tad. It'll be our secret if you do.
Meanwhile, a half pound of frozen bay scallops have been thawing in cold water. Now, I may be wrong, but I'd wager that most people are less familiar with bay scallops than their more photogenic counterparts, sea scallops. Those are the ones you see on magazine covers. Bay scallops are rather smaller; about the size of an adult male grey wolf's ********. And despite being approximately 37/64 the price of sea scallops (this is my form of protest against those who reject the metric system, as an engineer who detests this ongoing trend in the US) have exactly the same texture, and a slightly sweeter flavor. I rather prefer them.
Anyway, forget about those for now. Ok, so go ahead and put 'em in a colander to drain, but forget about them after that. They're not going to touch a pan until the very end. We will NOT over-cook scallops in this kitchen.
Coming up with a side dish to properly compliment this delicate entree took a while. In the end, I settled on a course which, to be perfectly honest, I'm a bit embarrassed by.
Not because of the food itself, but because making it entails a single-purpose kitchen gadget.
Those who know me know that I am an ardent detractor of kitchen gadgets. I hem and haw over acquiring a new whisk or glass bowl, so Asmodeus forbid that I admit to having purchased, completely on a whim, a vegetable spiralizer about two years ago. I've kept it a secret all this time, and I don't use it all that frequently, but there are times when it's just appropriate to reduce zucchini and yellow squash into something resembling spaghetti. And it was cheap. Like: Amazon cheap.
So... yeah.
First, halve a handful of cherry tomatoes, and toss 'em into a pan with some olive oil. Let 'em groove over medium heat for a while. The aim here is not merely to soften them, but to drive out much of the water which they contain. Figure maybe 20-30 minutes in total, turning occasionally. The photo of this below shows them very early in the process. They were a lot closer to mush before I was happy enough with them to proceed.
While that's happening, spiralize one zucchini and one yellow squash. If you're more restrained than I (eg: you didn’t buy a spiralizer on a whim several years ago while intoxicated), slice 'em thinly. If you have a mandoline, use that on the thinnest setting.
Once the tomatoes are all well and good, toss in the zucchini and squash, spritz again with olive oil, and add a shot of black pepper, a little lemon juice, and some finely chopped fresh mint leaf. At this point, having not turned down the heat, stir frequently for another 3-4 minutes or so, until they reach a consistency which you judge to be desirable. Plate, and sprinkle a tiny bit more fresh mint atop them.
Meanwhile, you've been stirring the simmering sauce in the other pan, right? It should be slightly thickened at this point. Not watery, but also not precisely anything other than slightly watery either. If it resembles the stuff which the Chinese restaurant on the corner pours over deep-fried chicken bits, then you've gone way too far.
Into the small pan go the scallops.
Turn the heat up to medium-high, since we've just introduced a bunch of coldness into an area that we wish to contain hotness. It should return the bubbling quickly, and once it does, modulate the heat to keep it bubbling moderately, but not riotously.
Stir frequently for five minutes. No more, no less. This is one of those rare occasions when I'm not going to be deliberately vague for artistic purposes. You don't want undercooked seafood, but you also don't want overcooked scallops. Five minutes at this level of intensity is literally the exact amount of time needed.
Plate the scallops (independent of the sauce), and then drizzle a little bit of the sauce over them. There will be a lot left in the pan, which you can refrigerate for later. Sprinkle a bit more tarragon over them, and...
Done.
This one worked perfectly to expectations on the first try, which is a rare treat. It's a good reward for a long study in restraint. Not too much spice in either dish, and not too much acidity in the side. A very well-balanced pairing.
We find ourselves here, once again at this impasse. I'm getting bored of shellfish, though I'm still being pulled in a seafood direction, with a Cajun leaning.
This is sort-of approximately what some might call Catfish Acadiana, though I'm eschewing the more customary cream-based sauce for one based on a roux, as would be typical of an Etouffee. Now that I think about it, this might actually turn into an Etouffee, excusing the lack of a shrimp / crawfish ingredient.
Anyway...
A big ole' yellow onion is coarsely chopped. Ditto a red and green bell pepper. Many cloves of garlic are minced. A tomato is chopped. And some celery happens to be chopped as well, maybe 1/2 cup. The total quantity of vegetables pictured here is really too much, as I discovered after combining them.
The bell peppers go into the large saucepot with some olive oil, to get mingled around for a few minutes on medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Then the onions and celery join them, for several more minutes, until they just barely start to brown as well. At this point, I turned the heat down to low, and just let 'em reduce for a while. About an hour, maybe a little more, stirring occasionally. The garlic went in towards the very end of that, because burned garlic is not our friend.
Ultimately, I wound up putting half of that into a bowl in the fridge, to keep for later in case I decide to do this one again soon.
Now, in a small sauté pan goes a stick of butter on medium-low. Blend in about 1/2 cup of flour, slowly. Whisk constantly. We are making a proper, old-timey Roux here. The conventional rule for Roux is equal parts butter and flour by weight. A common stick of butter in the US is exactly 4 ounces, so that's how much flour went in. Takes maybe 15-20 minutes, depending on the heat, but don't over-do it. There's a really fine line between when it starts to get slightly brown and develop that lovely nutty flavor, and when it starts to develop a burnt taste. In the case of this photo, I think I actually went just a few minutes over. So don't do that.
Into the large saucepot, add one of the convenient little juice-boxes of chicken broth, the tomato, and about two cups of water. Yes, that makes it runny as hell, which will change the instant the roux goes into it. Which is what we shall now cause to happen.
At this point, things slow down. This mixture is gonna simmer for a about another hour on looooow. While that's happening, spices go in, and this is purely a to-taste thing, so I'm not gonna preach measurements at you. I'll merely suggest that paprika, thyme, oregano, cayenne pepper, and white pepper ought to be in the playlist. And go small. Like, fractions of a teaspoon at a time. This is the part where you have to actually dip a little spoon into the sauce, blow on it for a bit, and taste it, in order to decide what to do next. A dash of Worchestire sauce also helped out.
Speaking of playlists, still loving these bluetooth headphones. Tonight is very much about Dire Straits, Billy Joel, The Proclaimers, Don Henley, REO Speedwagon, The Eagles, Kansas, Eddie Money, Journey, and, of course... Aerosmith. It's a little-known fact that Brad Whitford, now in his elder years, dabbles as a hobby chef and grows his own chili peppers.
(Ok, I totally made that last bit up. But I like to believe that it's true.)
Continue to reduce.
I also find myself in possession of the remainder of a bunch of fresh parsley from a previous quest, which isn't gonna last much longer in the fridge, so... yeah. That also happened. A generous handful.
At some point, remember to start some rice in the cooker. Preferably before this stage in the conversation.
Now, we have this fresh catfish here. Pat dry, season with your preferred Cajun spice blend, and then cook on high heat in a small pan with ghee for about 3 minutes per side, given this level of thickness. Basically, blacken the surface, without over-cooking it
Remember to disable the smoke alarm first. I forgot that step.
Finding myself in the mood for something a bit lighter tonight, I decided to re-visit a recipe which I did about three and a half years ago, according to my notes. I want to see if this one, from earlier in my culinary adventures, lives up to my memory of it.
It's not often that kale gets to be up-front and center, and it's not often that I use it in general. Start with a bunch of Lacinato kale. It has broader, flatter leaves than the stuff which usually comes to mind when one envisions kale, and has a more delicate flavor. The leaves are solid, with a pebbled texture, unlike the frilly, curly sort which is more commonly served by evil wizards, in bitter, unpalatable salads, to their indentured servants.
After rinsing it well to knock off the dirt and such, lay the pieces out and separate the stems from the leaves. Chop into manageable pieces. By "manageable," I mean "just small enough to fit into your largest soup pot." We'll take it down to final size after the next step, which is to blanch it. Keeping it in large pieces at this point will make it easier to work with during that process.
A bunch of fresh kale (bunch = the quantity which is wrapped up as "one unit" at the grocery store) seems like a lot when in its raw state. It isn't. This stuff reduces by a staggering amount when cooked. The amount shown in the prep photo is enough for exactly one serving.
Double that if cooking for two.
If cooking for three or more, maybe pick a different dish, as it's likely that smaller mouths will react with hostility to kale & onions. Having been raised on Spanish-Cuban cuisine, it puzzled me as a child how most of my Anglo-American friends stubbornly refused to eat anything which was in the least bit interesting or delicious. My Indian friends, of course, were another matter entirely. I owe Praveen and Anzir's mothers a debt of gratitude for the indoctrination into a universe of incredible flavor and aroma.
The amount of onion shown is good for about three servings. I'll be using a portion of this, and putting the rest into the fridge. The amount of garlic, well... I like garlic.
So, a big pot of boiling water, a big bowl of icewater. Boil for 3 minutes, then quickly remove with tongs and quench in the ice water to arrest the cooking process. Work in batches, assembly-line style. Out of the ice bath, squeeze out the water by hand, pat dry with a towel, and tear into smaller pieces by hand. Put aside in a bowl.
Coarsely chop a red onion, and mince some garlic. I'm crushing it flat with the knife blade and then chopping it on the board, rather than using the garlic press, as I want to retain the chunky texture.
I've also got some packaged chicken sausage here. This specific one is Apple & Bourbon infused. I find that chicken sausage tends to be quite inconsistent from one brand to the next as to the casings. Some are thick and loose like a traditional italian sausage, others are barely present at all. If yours is of the thick and easily removed sort, then remove it. Slice into chunks.
Add the onion and sausage to a pan with some olive oil, grind some black pepper over it, and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Maybe a little longer, as per your judgement and stove settings.
Be gentle; we're not going for caramelization on the onion here, it needs to retain a decent amount of texture. Once the sausage starts to brown, toss in the garlic, stir for another two minutes, then the kale and a good shot of lemon juice; 3-4 tbs. Mix well. Cover, and let that cook for 2-3 minutes (al-dente on the kale), and...
That's it. That's the entire recipe. Plate & serve.
Yup, that's pretty tasty. Honestly, it's 90% as good as I think I remember it having been, and that says a lot, given how much I tend to mentally disregard so many of my earlier efforts as the work of a boorish novice.
Which basically means that it's a 9/10 dish. Light, but satisfying.
Breakfast. Fresh warm crepes filled with mixture of cool ricotta and a little shaved 85% semisweet chocolate, covered with homemade blueberry compote, fresh mandarin wedges, and a dusting of shaved chocolate. Quite good.
This won’t hold a fork to any of Joes work in this thread, but last week I had quite the culinary experience.
I ate an animal raised from infancy on my own mini-farm/ranch...and he was delicious.
Sautéed some garlic quarters in olive oil in a cast iron skillet then cooked the lamb chops in said skillet. Chops were lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and Italian seasoning.
Made a red wine reduction with the drippings, garlic quarters and some dried oregano.
Recipe was simple and absolutely delicious. Paired with an affordable 2018 Malbec.
Our lamb was also absolutely delicious. This was my first time having a four legged animal from our “farm” butchered and I was a little apprehensive about how he would turn out. This lamb was raised by his mommy, free ranged on ~7 acres of good quality pasture, and was 99% grass fed. He was butchered at ~9 months and the butcher (of Middle-Eastern descent) was very impressed with the size and quality of the lamb.
I’m looking forward to having more lambies to take to butcher next year...this year we only had the one to take, next year should be more like 3-5 as our heard grows.
This won’t hold a fork to any of Joes work in this thread, but last week I had quite the culinary experience.
I dunno about that, man. Literally raising the lamb itself is a level beyond anything I can touch. And I mean that seriously. That's the kind of thing dream about, and then dismiss as unobtainable.
The City of Chicago has some weirdly specific rules about sheep-farming in residential neighborhoods within city limits. I like to believe that this is rooted in the 1945 Curse of the Billy Goat, which was broken only four years ago.
And that's some killer presentation. I can only assume that the flavor and texture were on par.
Also, your countertops look really familiar. Marble FTW. And that's not an aesthetic judgement, it's an "I set a skillet full of bubblingly hot butter down on my prep area tonight, much as I do every night, without giving it a second thought" thing.
Anyway... I've been feeling crabby lately.
I enjoy crab, however I don't often cook with it, mostly because crab is expensive and I am cheap.
A few weeks ago, at the supermarket, I noticed for the first time that canned crab is a thing which exists. I don't mean "𝘬𝘳𝘢𝘣," I mean actual crab. Turns out that it's the meat which is removed from the main body, after the more costly legs have been separated. Unlike the beautiful, big, solid, expensive leg meat, this mostly comes out in small flakes. But it turns out that it has the same flavor, at a fraction of the cost.
You'd never use it in a dish where that chunky texture is essential, but that's not where this is going.
So I picked up a few tins, and then set about finding something to do with them.
I have never done stuffed mushrooms before. But they're one of the dishes which popped up while doing an ingredient-based search at allrecipies.com. I love that site- it's a wonderful research tool.
So... crab-stuffed mushrooms it shall be. Since this is a first for me, I'm going to stick pretty closely to one specific recipe which I settled on after reviewing a dozen or so.
To start with, these tins, which cost $2.49 at the local Mariano's, are advertised as having a net weight of 8oz. The recipe I'm looking at calls for 1 cup of crab meat, which is also 8 ounces. Figuring that a large part of the canned product would be water, I did an experiment. First, I weighed a whole tin. Came out to 8.2oz. Now, I figure that the metal here weighs a lot more than 0.2oz, which (after dinner), I tested and found that a completely empty, dry can weighs 1.35oz. So definitely some shenanegans going on here, unless my kitchen scale is way the heck more out of calibration than I realize.
Post-script: I later tested the scale with 225 ml of water, as measured by my very nice 500 ml borosilicate graduated cylinder, and determined that it's within 2.7% accuracy at that range. The cylinder itself is rated for +/- 1% at 20°C.
(At standard temperature & pressure, 1ml of water weighs exactly 1 gram. That's the kind of crazy, nonsensical **** you get with the metric system.)
I then further validated the 500ml cylinder by filling it five times with my 50ml borosilicate graduated cylinder, which also has a 1% accuracy rating, and it was dead-on-***** to within my ability to eyeball the depth of the meniscus.
So... yeah.
Anyway, I opened one can, pressed out most of the water, and weighed the remainder. 3.35oz.
Hmmm.
Now, at the time, I didn't realize that I'd made a mistake by discarding the liquid directly into the sink, rather than reserving it in a bowl. That'll come up again later.
Anyway, on with the recipe. Butter, 1/2 tsp dill, lemon juice, egg, finely minced green onion, 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, Monterey Jack cheese, and that ubiquitous white wine.
Oh, and also mushrooms.
I shredded about 3/4 of that block of cheese. Minced about 1/2 of a bunch of green onions (1 bunch = the amount wrapped in a rubber band at the grocery store.)
Melt 2tbs butter in a small skillet (I used the dainty little 8" skillet which is reserved for such things), and cook the onion for 2 minutes at medium heat, stirring frequently. Bubbling, but not riotously so.
Remove to a large glass bowl. To that bowl, add the dill, a healthy shot of black pepper, the breadcrumbs, one egg*, about 2/3 of the cheese (that's 2/3 of the 3/4 block that we shredded), a few tbs of lemon juice, and the crab.
* = I don't use egg all that often, so I keep a carton of this pasteurized egg blend in the fridge. It's 99% egg, nothing sneaky going on there, but has a phenomenal shelf-life, unlike the variety which comes in the shell. A carton this size lasts me a month or two.
Also, this is chicken egg, not owl egg. As much as I constantly try to the the latter, purely out of spite and repressed childhood frustration, I always fail.
Here's the part where my earlier mistake comes into play. By pressing all of the water out of the tinned crab, I made it much drier than fresh, shredded crab would have been. Even after I added the entire contents of the second tin, water and all, the resulting mixture was still far too dry to work easily. So I wound up adding about another egg's worth of the egg mix to get it to a workable consistency.
In retrospect, this actually turned out to be what Bob Ross might have called a happy little accident. If I'd have used two full tins, then I think the resultant mixture, after baking, would have been far too watery. After tasting the finished result, I think this one actually came out just right. Were I to do it over, I think I'd use two tins fully squeezed, plus one with the water, and then use the egg to adjust to the desired consistency.
Anyway, mushroom prep. The recipe says to remove the stems, but I find that action alone leaves far too small a cavity. That'd be fine if you're a restaurant trying to save on costly ingredients in what's probably meant to be an appetizer, but in this kitchen, we do things all the way.
So slice around the periphery of the mushroom cap with a sharp paring knife, then use a butter knife to scoop out the looser bits of the inside, resulting in a nice, large cavity.
Meanwhile, another half-stick of butter has been melting in the same skillet as before. Using a fork, roll the mushroom caps in the melted butter, and transfer to a baking pan. I then poured the remaining butter from the skillet into the crab bowl, and mixed again.
Fill each mushroom cap to about level with the crab mix, and top lightly with the remaining cheese. Pour some white wine into the baking pan, just enough to fully cover the bottom.
Bake at 400°F for 30 minutes. I then finished them for a couple of minutes under the broiler on high, rotating continuously, to get a nice finish on the top.
The asparagus is just tossed lightly in olive oil and black pepper, and baked for 15 minutes. Then finished lightly with Hollandaise.
And plate.
The quantity of crab mix is enough for 4 servings, as depicted here.
We try a lot of new recipes all the time. I'm usually not sure it will go well so I don't take pictures. This morning's breakfast included beef chunks marinated with cloves, dill, and such. Wasn't great. Sauteed eggplant and zucchini with onions was good, though.
We also raised turkeys this year on the “farm” for the first time. One Tom and one Jenny. Had them both processed yesterday. They are some sort of heritage breed (my wife picked them...), black in color. The Tom was giant...he’s like 30lbs dressed. He’s gonna barely fit in the oven on Thursday...
Is there a specialty butcher in your area of the "I process your wild game" variety, or is this the usual butcher shop down the street?
I recall seeing advertisements for the former in the rack-o-brochures at a hotel in SC, not sure how common that is.
No, specialty butchers/processors that have been hard to find, even in rural NC.
The lamb I took to a small rural processor that does cows, lambs, goats, pigs, etc...they’re about an hour away.
The turkeys my wife took to a small town processor that specializes in poultry. She had to drive almost two hours one way to them...
In the future we’re just gonna have to learn how to do the chickens, turkeys and ducks ourselves. We were running out of time on the turkeys so we decided to use someone else this time around.
10-27-2020, 09:54 PM
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