What not to eat for dinner

Every once in a while, when they send me a coupon for free delivery, I order groceries from Safeway online and have them brought to my front door. It is a significant convenience, as living here in a condo our parking is underground and it is quite a schlep to bring stuff up. In fact, we have a couple of folding, rolling baskets that we keep around for the chore.

On this latest order Safeway was also offering me a free meal – some new frozen dinner that you merely needed to cook for ten minutes and serve. I haven’t tried frozen meals in quite a long time, so I wondered if there had been any improvements in quality, through new production or storage technology. So I ordered the “chicken and Portobello mushrooms fettucine with alfredo sauce.” Gave that a try last night. I will save you the trouble!

I prepared it according to instructions – dump everything into a skillet and cook covered on medium for five minutes, stir and separate the pasta, and cook for another five minutes until the sauce boils for one minute. The time wasn’t enough, more like 20 minutes, but that was no big deal. The pasta even had a nice texture, so looks like progress on that front. But I thought the sauce was under-seasoned so added salt and some shredded fresh basil and dished it up.

Now for the good, the bad, and the ugly: the pasta had a good texture, it was cut thick enough to stand up to the freezing. The chicken was nondescript. The sauce was still anemic, so we grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano over it. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig! That was the bad. The ugly? Well, the portobello mushroom pieces were gritty. There were tomato pieces, too, and the freezing had caused the meat of the tomato to disintegrate, and what was left were some really tough pieces of tomato skin.

The moral? It really only takes a few minutes more to cook some pasta while you sauté a chicken breast and mushroom pieces and finish it with a little cream, cheese, and chopped tomato. In 30 minutes you can have a very good meal, instead of a high-sodium, high-fat shadow of a good meal.

What's for dinner: Another spin on chili, fruit ravioli

I usually make chili by rubbing a chuck roast with spices and let it sit overnight, then searing and braising it. Shred it up, and add the other ingredients and simmer. This time Dave asked me to try it with the meat cut in small cubes, so of course I am doing that. I figured I need a different cut of beef for this, one that holds together when it’s well-cooked. So I bought some beef bottom-round and cut it into about 1/3” dice. Tossed that with the spice mix last night and let it sit. Also took a half-dozen dried red chiles and put them in water, and soaked 2 cups of pinto beans. Today the beans go on in plan water with fresh epazote, oregano, and dried bay leaf, they get salt and garlic when they are almost done. The meat gets browned in an enameled casserole, then the onions go in until they are translucent, and all the red chile pulp and the soaking juice go in with some cumin and salt. For now both pots are simmering away. My brother Bryan is coming for dinner tonight so I’ll get a little fancier and we will have some cornbread with it; maybe I’ll whip up a little honey butter. I also have some Mexican sour cream, crema agria, and that will be good with it. No tomatoes in the chili today. But it does have the usual cinnamon and cocoa that I like in the spice rub. For dessert, Dave is going to play with the crostada dough and make raviolis stuffed with an apple compote. The concept is his idea, the filling is mine. I think they will turn out like nice little fruit-filled pastry cookies, and be great with a little bit of vanilla bean ice cream. The cornmeal in the crostada dough will be a nice echo of the cornbread served with the chili.

Fun at Elliott's and Steelhead Diner

I like cooking so much that sometimes I forget that it's fun to go out. Today it was a double-shot of fun. First we (me, Dave, and an out of town business guest of his) went down the street to the bar at Elliott's Oyster House. They were having their annual celebration of the fall oysters. Steeply discounted drinks (94-cent beer!), and lots of good free food: oysters on the half shell, oysters Rockefeller, two other baked oysters, smoked salmon with garnishes, prawn shooters, fried razor clams, ancho-grilled shrimp. Quite the spread. But we weren't done! On up to Steelhead Diner for dinner. Our guest enjoyed the gumbo as much as we do, ditto with the kasu black cod. I had yet another rendition of their clam chowder, this one creamy, with razor clams (yum!), fresh corn, and a drizzle of white truffle oil. It was a fun dinner, and gave me some new ideas for cooking. It was also nice to say hello to Chef Kevin, who gave me a giant "Bramble" apple to bring home and try -- it is about the size of a grapefruit. He says it's good with cabrales blue cheese, so maybe we'll just eat that as a salad tomorrow.

What's for dinner: Paella

Today I spent a few hours volunteering on a campaign for a tax levy to support the Pike Place Market. Most of you have never been there, I know, but it is the oldest continuously running farmers’ market in the US, and I live practically next door to it. I bundled up 18,000 pieces of literature today! Anyway, I walked home a different way, taking me past “The Spanish Table.” Spanish Table is a great store, carries Spanish and middle-eastern ingredients, wines, kitchenware, cheeses, sausages. I couldn’t resist poking my head in. While there I realized that if I picked up some dry Spanish chorizo and some special Spanish piquillo peppers, I’d have everything to make paella. So I discarded the notion of roasting fish on a bed of fennel fronds, making paella is fun and Dave loves it.

One of the things that’s cool about making paella is that once you’ve got all the ingredients prepped and lined up on the counter, it goes together quite quickly. I’m using a saffron-shellfish stock for the broth, and chorizo and calamari as the proteins. It also takes really big white beans, only need a couple of dozen of them so am cooking them this afternoon. I’ll also need to add some vegetable interest, and am assuming that the CSA bag that comes home with Dave today will have something useful in it. If not, I’ll peel and dice some carrots. I will literally have 8-10 little prep dishes of ingredients lined up by the stove.

The lineup will be: oil, onions, garlic, tomato, chorizo, rice, herbs, broth, beans, calamari (diced), piquillo peppers, chopped parsley. Not an incredibly fancy paella, but one more likely to be served to family in Valencia, though they might add snails because they are quite common (I can do without them!).

What's for dinner: ribs, chard, potato salad, chocolate cake experiment

The ribs that I mentioned in my last post look and taste like they may be the best ones I’ve ever done. The mustard baste is a nice counterpoint to the brown sugar, smoked paprika, coriander, and cumin in the rub. They are still in the warming oven, waiting for Dave to get home, but I of course have had a little taste – quality control, you know. I put them in the oven before 7 this morning at 250 degrees, and they were already tender at 11.

I had chard from the farm, the kind with pink and yellow and orange stems. I wanted to sauté it in bacon fat, but didn’t have any on hand. But I came up with what I think is a clever solution. I have chunk bacon in the freezer, as I make my own and only slice it as we need it. I used my coarse Microplane to grate a couple of tablespoons of fluffy frozen bacon fat into the pan, then added onions and the chopped chard stems to that and cooked it until the onion was translucent. Then I put in the shredded chard leaves. Worked quite well; we’ll see what Dave thinks.

Cooking potatoes for potato salad was a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve for a while: boil the potatoes whole, then peel and chunk while hot and toss with vinegar, cube the potatoes and boil them and drain them, or what. Today I settled on red potatoes, skin on, cubed and steamed. Then I was able to drizzle cider vinegar over them while they were still in the steamer. I like the results. As I’ve said before, I am kind of a purist when it comes to potato salad: potatoes, eggs, onion, celery, mayo (only Best Foods/Hellman’s will do), and yellow or Dijon mustard. Today I added fresh lemon thyme as I had some of that from the farm.

Finally, I’ve had a craving for chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting for several days now. I was going to make “fake” fudge today, which is choc chips melted with sweetened condensed milk. The last time I made that I realized that it’s not really fudge, it’s a form of ganache. While I was toasting pecans to go into the fudge, I thought that maybe I should make a chocolate buttermilk sheet cake and use the fudge mixture as an icing. So that is what we are going to do this evening. I’ve been on my feet too long today so I’ll have Dave make the cake when he gets home. I’ll add the pecans and also toffee bits to the fudge. It won’t be a thick layer because the fudge recipe normally goes into a 6x9 pan, and this will be spread on a 9x13 cake. I’ll let you know how the chocolate cake experiment goes.

What's for dinner: boneless short ribs

I’ve always wanted to cook short ribs, they are such a good candidate for my favorite cooking technique, braising. The other day I picked up some boneless chuck short ribs at the local warehouse store, they looked beautiful and I just had to have them. Also picked up mushrooms and new red potatoes, with stew on my mind.

I kind of started with chef Tyler Florence’s recipe for “bistro-style short ribs” but, as usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. What I borrowed from him is the use of pureed mirepoix as a base for a braise. (He also uses this in making Bolognese sauce, and I’ve done that, too, with good results.) The boneless ribs (kind of an oxymoron, don’t you think?) did have a lot of outside fat, which I trimmed off, and inside marbling which was going to make the sauce very good.

I cut the meat into 2”x3” chunks and seared it hard on a griddle, to get more flavor into the braise. I then cooked the mirepoix puree - carrots, onions, celery, tomato, garlic – in my oval braisier until it smelled cooked and some of the moisture had cooked off. Added 2 cups of leftover pinot noir. (Yes, I know, how often in my house is wine “left over?” Not often, but that’s beside the point. We’ve found a bargain pinot that we like quite a bit, Pepperwood Grove, and at its price point I don’t mind using it for cooking as well as drinking.) The night before, I had taken 2 pounds of white mushrooms, quartered them, and cooked them in the oven, covered, until I had nice mushroom juice. I reduced the juice by half and added that and a cup of beef broth to the pan, and brought it to a boil. Stirred in the mushrooms and put all the meat into the pan, made sure the liquid covered it. Covered the pan and put it into a 325 degree oven for three hours. I skimmed off the fat that accumulated on top of the sauce, didn’t really need that in there. Served over smashed red potatoes, this was just great. Maybe a little heavy for an indian summer day, but we didn't care.

Tonight we’re having baby back ribs, nine or ten hours in the oven, I rubbed them Monday with a nice seasoning that includes Spanish smoked paprika, to give them a little bbq taste. I will mop them today with a baste that includes cider vinegar, mustard, honey, thyme, and savory among other things. It’s a Carolina-style baste, they do usually seem to use yellow mustard. More on that later, when we see how they turn out.

Four alliums, two nightshades, and a big squid

Tonight's dinner is born out of desperation. The CSA baskets are full of tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash (still!), and I'm still working on onions and leeks from last week. And in a silly impulse, I had my husband buy a box of frozen calamari steaks at the local restaurant supply. I don't have room in my freezer for five pounds of calamari steaks, what was I thinking? So we are having angel hair pasta and julienned calamari with a piquant sauce of julienned eggplant, chopped seeded tomatoes, capers, minced leek, chopped onion, minced garlic, and minced shallot. I've broken the pasta into three-inch lengths to more closely match the 3" x 1/4" strips of calamari. I’m using a small green eggplant, doesn’t have much in the way of seeds so it shouldn't have any bitterness, and also soak up some of the tomato flavor. The tomatoes themselves are quite wonderful, organic heirloom varieties that taste like what tomatoes are supposed to. I'm throwing in a brunoise (very fine dice, 1/16th”) of summer squash just because it's there and it does soak up flavors nicely. And as long as it’s cut very small, it won’t add a rubbery or spongy texture, which does happen sometimes with summer squash. Aside from all the prep involved, it also goes together nice and fast, as we have to dash off to a baseball game tonight. At least this is the last week of the season, no postseason for the astonishingly incompetent Mariners...

What's for dinner: 'but cheeks, sous vide

No kidding, that's how I order them from the fish guy. I love halibut cheeks, they are very different in texture from the rest of the fish, longer strands of muscle rather than flakes. They soak up flavors pretty well, too. I've decided that since the scallops prepared sous vide on Friday turned out so well we should try some other proteins cooked that way. I vacuum packed the ‘but cheeks with a couple of slices of lemon, salt, olive oil, sorrel, thyme, and oregano (all fresh). I thought about adding some veg, even in a different package, but the temp for cooked vegetables is higher than the 140 degrees for fish. So I think I’ll fry some diced potatoes, give us a texture contrast to the softness of the ‘but cheeks. Add a green salad, and it will be dinner.

What's for Dinner: Rack of lamb, stir-fry

I’ll bundle two reports in here for the price of one. We’ve had absolutely gorgeous weather up here (many apologies to those who haven’t) so we had to get up and grill at least once this weekend. We have to use a shared gas grill due to our location in a condo. Not really too bad, but we do have to haul a lot of stuff up there sometimes. But the outcome was very nice, as the rack of lamb picture shows. I rubbed it with an herb paste, all of the herb fresh, using oregano, thyme, savory, parsley and rosemary as well as a little leek all ground together with some salt in a mortar and pestle. The potatoes were coated with the same rub and roasted. The zucchini was brushed with some basil vinaigrette left over from Friday’s dinner.

Yesterday I was planning to have stir fry. Even bought some ground pork which I decided to use in deep fried Chinese pork balls. Made them about a teaspoon size, very cute and easy to incorporate in the stir fry. Used canned baby corn and bamboo shoots along with fresh bok choy, snow peas, green beans, carrots, celery, mushrooms, ginger, and garlic. Dave mentioned that he’d never really stir fried, so I put him at the stove for this one The sauce was a combination of Chinese black vinegar, kecap manis (sweet soy sauce, tastes a bit like molasses), tamari soy sauce, chile oil, and chicken stock. I think we’re having grilled chicken on salad today.

What's for dinner: Bday dinner results

As is usually the case with a menu, I made tweaks to what I was planning for tonite.

First, I decided that instead of searing the scallops I would cook them sous vide (under vacuum). That meant cooking them in a vacuum bag in water at a temp no higher than 140 degrees. Not long ago Dave bought a portable induction burner, and it did a magnificent job of keeping the water between 138 and 141 degrees. I made this menu change for two reasons: 1) I was searing the steak, and wanted some texture variety; 2) Less attention needed to be paid to the scallops while I finished the rest of dinner. A third reason was that I wanted to try it -- and as soon as Dave reminded me we have the induction burner, it was a slam dunk. Incidentally, they came out perfect -- firm but not chewy, very sweet, and great with the Bearnaise.

I also messed around with the salad a bit. Same ingredients, but I tried juicing some of the tomatoes and making a fresh tomato aspic with the pearl mozz suspended in it. I think I went a little too light on the gelatin, so it didn't really hold its shape. But the flavor was fantastic, very intense tomato with hits of the basil vinaigrette. Like a cold jellied tomato soup.

The ahi noodles looked great, and so did the Baked Alaska:

What's for dinner: Fancy birthday dinner

Not surprisingly, I try to fix dinners with “Dave’s Favorite Things” for special occasions. In truth, I try to do that most of the time anyway. But for the dinner tomorrow night, I get to take things a little over the top. Menu for tomorrow night:

• Ahi Sashimi “Noodles” on a bed of daikon radish strings, wasabi cream, white sturgeon caviar. I will take sashimi-grade ahi tuna (raw) and cut it into very fine julienne to resemble red noodles. I have a Japanese tool that cuts things into skinny twisty strings, and will put the ahi on a bed of that. For the wasabi cream I will bring heavy cream to a simmer and add wasabi (Japanese horseradish) powder; it thickens the cream immediately into a nice sauce. That will go around the ahi pile, which I will then garnish with some osetra caviar that should be arriving by air tomorrow.
• Tomatoes and Pearls, Caprese-style. Organic heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella “perletti” tossed with a fresh basil and shallot dressing, with a chervil herb salad and fresh baguette. For the dressing, I blanch basil and shock it, then blend with extra-virgin olive oil to a loose paste. Blanching it helps keep it green, even when exposed to acid that would normally turn it brown. I’ll grate some shallot into that, and whisk in some white wine vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper. I will chop the tomatoes into approximately ¼” dice, so they are about the same size as the adorable little balls of cheese. The tomatoes and cheese get tossed with the dressing, then “spilled” over onto a bed of chervil (an herb we don’t see much of, the flavor is a blend of anise, celery, and parsley but much more delicate) that I grow in my AeroGarden. Along with that we will have bread from a local bakery whose baker won the World Pastry Cup for his bread, beating out the French. It’s a bit of a drive to pick it up fresh on the afternoon of dinner, but a very special treat.
• Surf and Turf au Béarnaise with Sweet Potato Gaufrettes The surf is jumbo scallops, seared to a deep brown caramel crunch on each side. The turf is a prime NY strip steak, seared on each side then finished in the oven to medium-rare. The steak will be sliced to serve two, and fanned on a plate with a drizzle of Béarnaise sauce over the top. The scallops will be plated two to the plate, on a swirl of the Béarnaise. Since the primary flavor of Béarnaise is tarragon, of course I will garnish with a tarragon ruffle of some soft. Gaufrettes of course are just a fancy name for potato chips, but they are usually cut so the resemble a fine mesh screen. I will do that on a mandoline and then deep fry the sweet potato slices and pile them in a bowl, seasoned with fleur de sel, a special French sea salt gathered by hand from marshes, in this case from the south of France.
• Baked Alaska Brownie Sundaes Dave has always wanted to try having Baked Alaska at home, so I’m going to give this a try, making it up as I go along. I’ve baked two 4” circles of pecan-toffee brownies, and in a 4” round pan lined with plastic wrap I have layered one cup of fudge brownie ice cream and one cup of dulce-de-leche ice cream. I will make a soft meringue topping, then layer the frozen ice cream block between the two brownies and cover it with the meringue. It then goes into a 450 degree convection oven for 5 minutes or until there’s a little brown on the tips of the meringue swirls. (Wish me luck!!)

Ok, back to the kitchen with me. I have a lot of prep to finish today so that Dave doesn’t have to sit down to dinner tomorrow with a sweaty, frantic, exhausted wife. And in truth, today is his birthday so I do need to do something a little special today as well – probably mojitos and a Korean-style flank steak with rice, garlic glazed carrots.

What's for dinner: Macaroni and Cheese

I will never try to tell you that my mac and cheese is good for your heart.  It’s not.  But sometimes you need comfort food, and this can fill the bill.

Cook 1 pound of pasta. Twisty shapes grab the sauce best, I used cavatappi tonight.  It is important to cook the pasta well, almost over-cook it.  Al dente pasta is not a good thing in mac and cheese. 

Sauté 2 T of grated shallot and 1 clove of grated garlic in 4 T butter.  Whisk in 4 T flour and cook over medium heat for about three minutes.  Add 1//8 t cayenne, 1 t dry mustard, and a pinch of nutmeg. Whisk in 2 cups of half-and-half (okay, you can use skim milk here if you want to!) and one cup of chicken stock or broth.  Bring to a simmer.  Reduce heat and stir in by handfuls 2 C sharp cheddar cheese and 1 C jack cheese.  Stir each handful until it is melted before adding the next handful.  Stir sauce into drained pasta.  Serve as is, or pour into a casserole dish and top with sharp cheddar and breadcrumbs, bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until bubbly.

My next “What’s for dinner” installment will cover a big project: a birthday dinner for my dear husband.  Dinner is on Friday, but prep starts tomorrow.  I’ll tell you the menu tomorrow.

What's for dinner: Chili, part deux

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about getting a beef chuck roast on sale and using a spice rub on it. I braised it, picked off all the fat, and froze the meat and the broth separately for a future batch of chili. The future is today. This morning I started with one very large onion, chopped; four cloves of garlic; chopped; and because it was hanging around, a couple of summer squash, chopped. I sweated all of that in a dutch oven and then added a couple of cups of uncooked pinto beans, a cup of diced green chile (from the freezer), ½ cup of ancho chile paste (also from the freezer), and four parts water to the one part beans. I do not usually soak my beans, I just cook them longer. I also do not add salt at the beginning of the cooking, as I find it makes it hard to get nice creamy beans.

When the beans were nearly cooked (about 2 hrs), I added the 2 C broth left from braising the meat, the chopped meat, and ¼ C of the same spice rub I used on the chuck roast. The spice rub has the usual suspects in chili powder, plus cocoa, cinnamon, and allspice. I also added a generous measure of salt and some harissa paste, about a tablespoon. Harissa is a Moroccan hot chile paste, and I wanted a quick hit of heat and I saw it hanging about in my refrigerator. You can use any other hot sauce or cayenne. Now the pot is on very low heat on a back burner, to simmer slowly until time to eat it. We’ll have it with sharp cheddar cheese and sour cream. A nice quick meal on our way out the door to yet another baseball game.

Yes, yes, I know: no beans in chili, and who ever heard of summer squash in chili. The squash has cooked into nothing recognizable but does add a sweetness to the chili. I also feel better knowing it won’t go bad in the produce drawer.

What's for dinner: Cooking from the pantry

Today, because I was doing canning, I didn’t feel like running to pick up groceries.  I do, however, have a well-stocked pantry so dinner prep wasn’t too bad.  I buy eye of round roast when it is on sale and slice it into ½” slices, freezing them 2 slices per package.  I pulled out one of those, it thaws quickly in a water bath.  I had sour cream on hand, not an everyday occurrence, so I immediately thought I would do a beef Stroganoff.  No fresh mushrooms, but I always have dried shiitakes that I grind to a powder, and dried porcini mushrooms as well.  With an onion, some garlic, a little Dijon mustard, and some commercial beef base (not at all like bouillon cubes) I was set.  But – oh no! – I did not have egg noodles.  Sure I could use pasta, but with a nod to the “Russian” origins of Stroganoff, I decided to cook up some barley.  Three to one ratio of water to barley, well-salted, and tossed in some of the shiitake powder for more earthy flavor and a little olive oil.

The barley cooks for nearly an hour, so I had lots of time to get the rest of the meal ready. Slice the beef into julienne strips, toss with a little salt.  Chop a cup of onion, use the microplane to grate a clove of garlic.  Mix about a tablespoon each of the different mushrooms into a cup of boiling water (love that instant hot water faucet!) and add a teaspoon of the beef base.  Cook the onions in a skillet over high heat until most of the moisture is gone and they just start to brown.  Add beef strips and cook until pink is gone, add garlic.  Stir in 2 T flour and stir to cook the flour for a minute or so, then add the mushroom/beef broth and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.  Scrape down the skillet and make sure it mixes with no lumps.  Add in some chopped fresh thyme and parsley, simmer for a few minutes to be sure the flour is cooked.  Turn to very low until ready to serve.  When barley is nearly done, add ½ c sour cream to the beef and stir to combine, be sure it doesn’t boil or it will curdle.  Serve over barley.

If I were using fresh mushrooms, I would slice them and cook them with the onions.  This would of course be just fine over egg noodles; the barley gave a wonderful chewy texture and earthy complement to the mushrooms and beef.

We had a nice Washington Hills Gewürztraminer, I think it was a 2006. 

 

Canning syrups today

I have already mentioned (more than once) that I've been experimenting with glace fruits this summer. Today I canned all the syrups left over from the cherries and the melons. I got 2-1/2 pints of cherry-plum syrup, and five pints of honeydew syrup. I can't say that the honeydew syrup tastes just like melon, because it is sort of caramelized. In the jars, it looks kind of like honey. But it does have an enchanting taste. It would be really good on waffles, in fact good with chicken and waffles if anyone is familiar with that semi-peculiar dish. The cherry-plum has already been proven to be great with sautéed minced shallots in butter as a sauce for pork. I'm also thinking of swirling some into homemade ice cream.

I suspect several jars will be Christmas gifts, along with the pickled carrots I did earlier this summer.

Loco Moco

If you’ve been to Hawaii you probably know what loco moco is.  But bear with me while I tell everyone else. 

Loco Moco supposedly originated at a drive-in called Café 100 in Hilo on the island of Hawaii.  In its purest form, it is white rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy.  In more deluxe renditions, the rice can be fried rice, the meat can be a sausage patty, some sliced linguisa sausage, or even a small steak. 

We fell in love with loco moco many years ago on an early visit to Hawaii.  I make it a lot when we are there (usually every other Christmas) and sometimes at home.  This week we had Chinese takeout and I ordered fried rice just so we could have loco moco this weekend.  It really is not a healthy choice, but once a year, well, it’s okay.  And on many occasions, like today, I leave out the brown gravy so it’s not quite as much of a fat bomb.  Sometimes it’s just really good Japanese fried rice with one sautéed egg on top.

Today’s loco moco was deluxe fried rice, topped with a 3-oz burger patty seasoned with green onions and onion soup mix.  I usually keep a supply of burgers in the freezer, so just used of the 6-oz patties and split it for two.  Then two eggs, sunny side up.  I do insist on making sure all of the whites are cooked, with the yolks still runny.  That takes some careful watching, but with a tsp of water and a lid on for a few minutes, they do turn out the way we like them. The runny yolk makes up for no gravy. 

So that was our brunch today.  I even had a nice glass of Argyle sparkling wine (can’t call it champagne anymore, that’s illegal!).

 

What's for dinner

I thought we’d have rack of lamb today. But it is nicely vacuum packed so will keep until next weekend. I have some homemade goat cheese and herb ravioli in the freezer that should get used, and a couple of basil plants that need pinching back. I am planning to blanch and skin a couple of tomatoes, then use the boiling water to cook the ravioli. I will serve the ravioli at room temp with a sauce of basil/parsley pesto and tomato concasse (peeled and seeded tomatoes cut into very small dice). As I am already going to boil water, before I use it to blanch the tomatoes I will blanch six big peaches so we can slice them for a crostata. I’m planning to get a lot of use out of one pot of boiling water!

Baking bread and other kitchen projects

You know, I never thought I’d be one of those people who prefer to bake their own bread to buying it. But somehow I became one of those people. Today I am making whole wheat sandwich rolls and one loaf. I probably wouldn’t except our leftovers demand bread: I made some really great baby back ribs the other day, spice rubbed and then cooked at 200 degrees for about 12 hours. Didn’t even need sauce, but I made some anyway. The point is, I always make too much, the Costco package of ribs has three full racks. So Dave picked off all the rest of the meat and now he wants a pulled pork sandwich. It’s the least I can do for him. The rolls are baking right now and starting to smell good.

I’m also making cherry-plum syrup today. So many of my projects are a domino effect of other projects, and this one is a classic. I might have mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was using up extra cherries by glace-ing them. The by-product of that was about a quart of cherry syrup. I also had way too many black plums, so I threw those in the blender the other day to get a nice puree, to maybe make freezer jam. I had to use that puree by today so decided to cook it together with the cherry syrup. I’m thinking that it will be great with duck or pork, as well as on yeast waffles. I think I’m going to end up with about six cups, so I will probably pour it into jelly jars and process it.

Project #3 today is a beef chuck roast. The other day I rubbed it with a spice rub of red chile, oregano, cinnamon, cocoa, allspice, thyme, garlic power, etc. Now it gets to slow-cook in the bottom oven for 10 hours, and I’ll pick out all of the meat and turn that into chili. I have some ancho chile paste in the freezer, I think left over from making enchilada sauce, and it will help make a nice rich chili. Good thing it’s a long weekend, we might have time to eat some of it; Dave is leaving on business on Tuesday so we’ll be stocking the freezer with chili for his lunches in the future.

I also have to finish baba ganoush with squash and eggplant, but I need to go get more garlic and lemons for that.

Pastel Potatoes

As I’ve mentioned more than once, we get weekly produce bags from a semi-local farm, all organic. For the past few weeks, we’ve gotten potatoes but not really enough to do what I really like, potato salad. Today I decided I had accumulated enough. And I had red potatoes, pink potatoes, and purple potatoes. So here’s what my potatoes for salad looked like, cooked, peeled and cubed (see photo). I thought they were kind of funny so decided to share. White, pink, lavender.

I’m kind of Spartan in my potato salad: just potatoes (waxy type), eggs, sweet onion, celery, white wine vinegar (to soak the hot potatoes), mayo (only Best Foods/Hellman’s will do), a little yellow mustard, salt and pepper. Pickles on the side, only (homemade dill slices and sweet gherkins).

Playing with pizza

We were going to go out for pizza tonite but I really didn't feel like going out. So I made a whole wheat pizza crust for two pizzas. One pizza was sauced with homemade bbq sauce and slow-cooked pork butt with onions and mozz. The second one was spread with goat cheese with mixed herbs and topped with minced fennel, minced sweet onion, minced sun dried tomatoes and drizzled with a little oil from the sun dried tomatoes. It also got a little mozz, can't have too much cheese. They were both really good and I think Dave was happy we stayed in for pizza!