The Zen of Tapioca

Beat the eggs well, and strain them so there aren't any cooked chalaza in the custard. Bring it to a boil over *medium low* heat -- this cannot be rushed! Unless, of course, you like little brown bits of dairy. Stir constantly, with a silicone spat or plastic whisk. But don't add a bunch of air, this will ruin the texture. Be patient and gentle. Don't turn up the heat and stir madly. Patience. (Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a particularly patient person...I consider the making of tapioca to be a lesson for me.) Reduce the heat the moment it starts to bubble -- or risk wearing big splops of custard on you and your cook top. This is where a gas range is helpful. Simmer over the lowest heat you can get, and even if your recipe says stir occasionally, take the time and patience to keep it moving. Otherwise the tapioca may clump (is that the reason you took a disliking to tapioca when you were a kid?). This is going to take about ten minutes. Now, wait. The first cooling is so you can add the vanilla and not have it all vaporize. Now, after you stir in the vanilla, you can steal a spoonful. But it's still really hot, so don't burn your tongue. After that, the waiting. Put it into small containers so it will cool faster. The faster it cools, the sooner you can savor that custardy-chewy texture. Put a little in the freezer; it makes great frozen custard. But be careful, you may eat it all before it gets to that frozen nirvana! I know, lots of people call it "fish eyes and glue." But not me!

Grow your own

Somehow this has a different meaning than it did 30 years ago. Sigh. (Pause for a moment to mourn lost youth...) Okay back to reality. I've splurged and gotten a set of Aerogardens. If you haven't heard of them, they are a setup for hydroponic/aeroponic gardening. I'm growing assorted herbs in one, cherry tomatoes and jalapenos in another, and salad greens in the third one. It's been less than 48 hours since I "planted" and I already have 1" high lettuce plants. Many of the other seeds will take as long as two weeks to germinate. However it has been really fun to sit here and practically watch the lettuce grow -- the 1" plant this evening was a barely sprouted seed this morning. One advantage of the grow lights in this setup is that I can move a few of our more tropical houseplants, including a plumeria start I'm nursing, into my office to share in the bright full-spectrum lights. And maybe it's good for me, too, all that nice bright light when it gets dark about 4:30 p.m. Yes, I will admit that with the cost of the setup and the cost of seed pods, etc., it's not very cost-effective -- unless you consider that I'm getting organic produce as fresh as it comes. In addition, living near the waterfront means that my plants on the deck get very dusty and sometimes that "dust" is from the exhaust of container and cruise ships. Not terribly healthy, so that stuff (mostly sage and thyme) requires some significant washing.

Delayed gratification from Thanksgiving

This last Thanksgiving dinner was another deep-fried turkey. It was really great, but that's not exactly what this is about... this is about turkey stock. I put the carcass into the freezer, and a month later made turkey stock for soup out of it. I've never used a fried carcass for this. I could not quite believe what a deep, rich, brown stock this made. It was so great, I'd be temped to deep fry another turkey just for the stock! In fact, I may try frying bones for brown stock instead of roasting them some time to see if it works for other meats. We had also put some leftover gravy in the freezer and so I used that in the soup. Got six quarts of soup, all for my mom because she has her arm in a cast and can't use her right hand. So I did what I could to help, I cooked. I also made them several pounds of pulled pork and some marinara sauce. All so all that needed to be done for a meal was boil pasta or heat up rolls.

Playing with oatmneal cookies

First, sorry I've been "slacking." There are reasons, but they don't have anything to do with food, eating, or cooking so I won't go into them here. I'll just do a few postings today that will kind of cover what's been going on lately in my kitchen and my tummy. Today I have been playing with an oatmeal cookie recipe I've been developing. I've always liked chewy cookies more than crisp ones, and I found an interesting recipe a couple of months ago. But did I follow it exactly? Of course not! First, I added some "Skor" bits (like crushed Heath bars without the chocolate). That added some more chewyness and gave them a little bit of a caramel feel and flavor. But then I was browsing the aisles at the grocery store and saw something new: caramel bits that were essentially Kraft caramels unwrapped and turned into little pea-sized bits. So next I topped each cookie with a few caramel bits. They melted in and added more caramel flavor and texture. That batch got rave reviews from a wide variety of people. Today I mixed the caramel bits into the dough. That resulted in crispier edges, because the bits near the edges melted out and turned into hard candy. I don't think that's better than the previous version, but if DH ever gets home from work today (more overtime) then I'll see what he thinks -- I'm sure he'll need quite a few samples to make up his mind!

Cooking with Jerry Traunfeld

Well, maybe not cooking exactly, as this was a demonstration class. Rather, it was having Chef Traunfeld, known for his 17 years running the kitchen at The Herbfarm, prepare a meal for 14 people while we watched, listened, and learned. The class was at Dish it Up!, a local kitchen store that has a very nice facility for cooking classes.



I've eaten at The Herbfarm several times, and meals there are always memorable. I loved standing at the counter where they plate the courses to talk to the chef about what he was doing (that kept me from drinking too much of the great wines Ron Zimmerman serves). Chef's last night there was last weekend, and he's getting ready to open his own place in Seattle, hopefully by the middle of next year. He does already have a name picked out: "Poppy," after his mother.

Anyway, the theme in this class was local and seasonal -- and around here that means lots of wild mushrooms and crab, among other things. Chef had some beautiful matsutake mushrooms, a huge cauliflower mushroom, immaculate porcinis, and the usual chanterelles and other fungi. He made a crab flan with a roasted slice of matsutake and greens that was delicate and delicious.


A great demo was making strudel dough for a lentil and goat cheese strudel. It actually looks like I can do it, and I plan to give it a try. And the strudel was good, I think that filling would be really good doing vegetables farcis, too.

This wild mushroom and farro risotto, I swear, had $100 worth of mushrooms in it. I don't think I'd had farro before, which is a pretty ancient grain. It's nutty flavor and chewiness was a good match for all those 'shrooms.



We ended the class with a fresh huckleberry cobbler with rose geranium ice cream. And espresso. I get so excited when I get to watch someone with Traunfeld's passion work. It was very inspiring. Definitely looking forward to his new place!

Wine dinner at Elliott's Oyster House

Last week we had an incredible dinner at Elliott's Oyster House when they brought in wines from Terra Blanca (Washington State) and let Chef Jeremy loose on matching seafood with them.

We started with oysters on the half shell (duh) but a real treat was having the tiny Olympia oysters, the only ones truly native to the Northwest. The first course was a white prawn and grilled stone fruit Napoleon with a pomegranate beurre blanc, paired with a 2005 Yakima Valley viognier. Yummy!

But it got better. I'm not much of a chardonnay person, and especially not with a salad. But that's what we got, and it was heavenly. Actually, it was a lobster and wild mushroom tart served with frisee. (2004 Red Mountain Chardonnay)

Next came two courses of "surf and turf." The first was a seared scallop with oxtail, on a slice of seared butternut squash with veal jus. This was paired with a merlot (2002 Red Mountain), which had just the right level of fruitiness to compliment the sweetness of the scallop and squash.

The second surf and turf was just off the map -- the chef used some body meat of the king crab that is actually shaped like a pocket, and inserted a seared beef filet into it. I've never seen anything like it -- sort of like a reverse steak Oscar, served with a classic Bearnaise sauce. Of course for this you have to have a rich red, and we had a 2002 Onyx, a Bordeaux-style blend.

And after all this? Apple fritters (made from choux paste) for dessert with a 2005 late harvest Riesling.

After all that wine, we were really glad we only had a short walk to get home!

A beautiful Tarte Tatin of my very own

Baking class last Saturday, focus on layered doughs (croissant, puff pastry, pate a choux). We made a tarte tatin in class, and it was very nice. So I decided to try my hand at it with a mass of puff pastry that still needed its "turns" and so needed to be rolled and folded six times.

Cooking the apples is interesting, in that you have to take a couple of leaps of faith: first that the skillet you've just put a stick of butter, a cup of sugar, and six sliced apples can really hold it all. It did - barely at first, then just right as the apples cooked down. Then also faith that boiling all this stuff on high heat isn't going to create a burnt sugar mess. It didn't. As you can see, it turned out beautifully! I did not do the concentric layout of the apple slices -- I didn't see any like that when I was in Paris, and you can get more apples in if you let them settle themselves into position.

A twist on eggs benedict

What do you do when you have Dungeness crab meat, tarragon, and puff pastry just begging to be used? I don't know what you do, but I made a nice brunch dish today:

Made puff pastry shells, and a "real" Bearnaise sauce out of Peterson's Sauces. Moistened the crab meat with a little sauce, put it on the shell, topped with poached eggs, sauce all over, asparagus on the side. Yum...a little Champagne never hurts, either...

The Bearnaise was the challenging part, as I had to whisk the egg yolks and 1T water per yolk over simmering water until it turned into a very thick foam (a sabayon). The nice thing about doing the sabayon, though, is that you don't have to worry about the sauce breaking when you put in the clarified butter, so you don't have to dribble it in, just pour in slowly and stir gently with the whisk off heat. Then add the seasoning reduction and salt to taste. I'm glad it turned out well.

Homemade Mexican - one of my labors of love

I've always loved Mexican and Southwestern food. I've been cooking from "Feast of Santa Fe" by Huntley Dent for more than twenty years. Homemade tortillas and tamales and refried beans are just so incredibly different from the stuff in cans and most of what you get at "Mexican" restaurants. I haven't made these things in ages, and got a hankering for some of that this week. It was triggered by the nice meaty pork spareribs I bought on sale -- all I could think about was marinating them in mojo, cooking them low and slow, and shredding the meat. Shredded pork has so many yummy applications. First, soft tacos. Homemade tortillas, homemade red chile sauce (basically a Rick Bayless recipe), and guacamole. There's nothing like a freshly made tortilla! Except homemade tamales are even better. Take the shredded pork, add some red chile, some raisins, cinnamon, cumin, and toasted chopped almonds. Make the masa (with real lard, not shortening) and beat it until it's really fluffy. That's how you get really light tamales, not those heavy concrete ones that sometimes show up on my plate in a Mexican restaurant. Now, this is not a quick-prep meal. Making 16 tamales is time-consuming, then you need to steam them for about 90 minutes. I also put pinto beans on this morning, and while the tamales steamed I seasoned and mashed them up for frijoles refritos. During that time I also finished the chile sauce for the tamales -- red chile paste, tomato puree, some guajillo chile powder (for more heat), and simmer until the raw flavors are gone. Shred up some lettuce and jack cheese, slice a few radishes, and you've got one heck of a meal. Best thing about homemade tamales? They keep and reheat wonderfully. So I can look forward to some more tomorrow! I'm sorry about no photos today, we ate everything up before I even thought about taking a picture ;-) P.S. The weather is nowhere as nice today -- cold wind, rain, thunderstorms, and hail. And the soups turned out really well. Added diced red pepper to the beef barley, since Dave likes that and it's for his lunch. He says it's really good. (I can't eat bell peppers, even though I can eat chiles.)

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

End of September already. And it's a gorgeous day -- 65 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. The sun is sparkling off of the bay across the street, and sailboats are drifting by. This is the view from my home office:

So much for my budding dreams of hearty winter soups, at least for now. I was contemplating some borscht, maybe some beef barley. But for a few more days, we'll stick with salads and grilling while we still can.

I will make the borscht this weekend anyway, as I have the beets already cooked. I used some of them diced in a salad with diced carrots and red onion, with a little lime juice. It was surprisingly good. All the leftovers from that are a perfect base for the borscht. I've got a big slice of beef shank to make the broth, which I'll end up using for the barley soup as well (along with the meat from the shank).

Beautiful buns

Baking, especially bread, has never been my strong suit. But I am steadily working at correcting my deficiencies in that area. A few days ago Dave wanted hamburgers for dinner. I had ground beef in the freezer, but no buns. I didn't want to go out, so I decided to try once again to make soft white bread from scratch. At 1pm, no less.

I did find a recipe for a milk bread, and for once I had milk. It was a simple recipe, really, and even without taking any shortcuts I had hamburger buns before 4pm:

Beautiful fine crumb, not chewy but robust enough to stand up to a burger and all the trimmings. Yippee!!!

The mystery of gumbo

Until yesterday, I'd never eaten gumbo. Nor had I made it. I think I haven't eaten it because my aversion and allergy to bell peppers puts a lot of cajun cooking out of reach for me.

But it is Dave's birthday, and he loves gumbo. And I did just see it prepared on "Good Eats." And I had a quart of crab stock in the freezer, and okra is in season around here. I reasoned that I could use a poblano chile in place of green bell pepper, and get a passable facsimile of gumbo. So I decided it was worth a try.

One thing I do when cooking something new or using a new ingredient is a literature search. I comb through my cookbook collection and the Internet for a set of recipes that seem to be what I'm try to get to. With gumbo I discovered that there are as many different gumbos as grains of rice in the pot! Lots of recipes that don't use okra, but since "gumbo" is derived from the West African word for okra, I decided that okra needed to be part of my recipe. So that narrowed things down some.

For the roux, the oven method seemed the most foolproof, and it worked perfectly. For the sausage, I had made some andouille-flavored sausage (using smoked paprika for the smokiness) and cooked it in small balls the day before, and I used that. The seafood was frozen large shrimp.

I didn't want slimy okra, and I found a technique that calls for sauteing the sliced okra until the slime is all gone. So I did that and just added the cooked okra to my pot. The file powder went in at the end, and it sat for a few minutes to make sure all the flavors were melded.

One challenge when you're cooking something that you've never eaten is that you don't have a taste memory to compare with. So since Dave has eaten a lot of gumbo, I used him a lot. Eventually he proclaimed it good, and we wolfed it down with steamed white rice.

Not bad for a first try, even if I do say so myself!

Later today we tackle foie gras...yum....

An amazing birthday dinner

Dave is celebrating a "significant" birthday this month. I'm spending most of the week cooking many things that he enjoys, but on Sunday we decided to go out to dinner. But not any dinner -- Chef Celinda at 94 Stewart (and her sous chef Jeff) planned and prepared this one especially for us. She seems to have had a pretty good time taking the budget I gave her and putting together a five-course meal with paired wines.

We started off with figs with an ale-washed cheese and balsamic. The wine, which was quite sweet, paired really well with it, even with the balsamic.

I think my favorite course may have been the "soup" -- a red and yellow tomato gazpacho with Dungeness crab and fresh horseradish. It was both beautiful and tasty. The Graves we had, which tasted of a lot of wood initially, harmonized perfectly with it, and the play between the tangyness of the tomato, the spice of jalapeno, and the sweetness of the crab was just plain fun.

Next we had two different meat courses -- veal medallions with poached pear and wild muchroom risotto, and moulard duck breast rubbed with pistachio and spices. The risotto was subtly scented with allspice, and it all went with a 2001 Chatea Ste. Michelle Cold Creek Merlot. With the duck (which you can see was cooked perfectly) we had an Australian Shiraz.

Finally, we closed with a dense vanilla cheesecake topped with a Colheita port caramel sauce, and a glass of the same 1980 port alongside it. Overall, we had a great time and a great meal, and I think Chef had about as much fun as we did.

Sauteed ling cod

The fish turned out perfect, nicely crisp and not at all oily, and the beurre blanc had a nice acid note.

Oddly, harder than it should have been

I've fileted more than a few fish. So why would this one be harder than any other? Technically, it wasn't. But it just feels so weird to filet a fish I caught -- it makes me queasy, sad. The filets are just fine, and I'll do a nice saute with them, probably with a saffron beurre blanc. However, I have a feeling I will also be sad when it comes time to eat. I guess that's the cost of being an aware omnivore.

It's not always about the food -- but somehow it comes back to it

I love thunderstorms. They always make me feel so cozy; that's the best way I can think of to describe it. In Seattle, we very seldom get thunderstorms. But we have one tonight. More than two hours ago we started watching flashes, and discovered they were 60 miles away. But they marched toward us, and I was fascinated. What a rare treat. When the thunder rolls on for ten seconds, it can seem like forever. Then a few minutes ago I realized that exactly a week ago I was staying up late to watch a total lunar eclipse. Yet another occurrence that is so powerful, yet untouched by the hand of man. Indeed, thunderstorms and eclipses are pretty much oblivious to us, except that we do give lightning some attractive targets -- but it would find a target with or without us. Another thing that happened today also reminded me of my place -- I caught a fish. Not a big fish, but one that will make a decent meal for two. And I felt bad, because I was killing the fish, and sad. That poor fish was oblivious to me, until I tricked it into eating something it shouldn't. But I also felt fulfilled, satisfied somehow, using my own skills (or those of my husband, probably) to provide a meal for us. And I was reminded of something very basic -- I always need to be mindful of where my food comes from and not take it for granted. Anyway...ling cod for dinner tomorrow!

Potatoes on the balcony

Last spring we had a small mesh bag of fingerling potatoes, and forgot about the last six or so in the pantry. By the time I found them, they had sprouted. For a kick, I planted them in one of the pots on the balcony (much as I did with an overripe tomato two years ago). Well, this afternoon I harvested enough new potatoes for dinner tonight! Purple, pink, and yellow potatoes. I'm just going to steam them and have them with lots of butter. Yum. Entree tonight is a very small beef filet roast rubbed with salt, pepper, herbs de provence, shallots, and olive oil. And some roasted zucchini, because the nice little ones are all over the farmers markets right now.

Summer tomatoes

I don't think I ever knew how different heirloom tomatoes taste until today. The local supermarket had a special on heirlooms, and I couldn't resist picking up a few:

They make a really pretty display, don't they? I tasted them and all have different flavor profiles, acid, sugar, and "tomatoey-ness" are pretty distinct. The ones that look orange, in the bottom left, are my favorites. They are really varigated orange, red and yellow. These are going to be served with a side of a vinaigrette made with fresh basil oil and sherry vinegar. But I think I'm just going to have them with a pinch of fleur de sel.

Postscript:

I ended up using the basil oil to make a basil lemon mayonnaise to go with the tomatoes, and it was absolutely perfect with them (if I do say so myself). Put two egg yolks, juice and zest of one lemon, and a big pinch of salt in the blender, then dribble in about 1 cup of basil oil while the blender runs. Taste for seasoning. (The basil oil was one cup of loosely packed basil blended with about a cup of olive oil (not EVOO) and strained.)

If I'm going to eat something sweet...

...these days, it's got to be incredible. The dried peach and pistachio baklava we made in "Peachy-Peachy Quack-Quack" class absolutely fell into that category. The theme of the class was combining duck and peaches in a full-course dinner. So for the baklava, we brushed the phyllo sheets with duck fat instead of butter, and duck stock formed the base for the sweet syrup that you pour over the baklava. Absolutely irresistible! I brought a piece home for Dave to try, and he seems to ask every day when I'm going to make it. Unfortunately, I won't make that unless we've got a crowd coming, because I know we'd eat it all and that's just not good for us, even if we weren't cutting out sugar and wheat. Maybe I'll have to add that to the Thanksgiving menu...

Chili on a low-carb diet?

Of course -- beans are very high in fiber, and have a low glycemic index (which means that they don't have a big effect on your blood sugar levels). I made the chili with black and white beans, with a high proportion of meat (nice lean sirloin, cut in 1/2" cubes). For those of you who say "real chili doesn't have beans," well, not all of us believe that :) I do believe that chili needs to have plenty of chiles, though. Fresh green chiles, dried red ancho chile powder, soaked New Mexico dried chiles blended to a puree -- I like a nice smorgasbord of flavors there, to mix culinary metaphors. I have quit thickening my chili with masa, because that is a no-no on our diet. And with the lean sirloin, and only a tablespoon or so of olive oil to saute the onions and other aromatics, it ends up being low-fat, too.