Going Away Party

In August I decided to hold a going away party for myself, and I cooked up a storm.

I'm always worried that there won't be enough food, and for me, it's the worse thing for someone to leave hungry.

Just looking at all of this food makes me wish I had some of those as leftovers in my fridge right now. Because I have not had much time to cook in the last few days.

My mother's style of Vietnamese spring rolls. They are actually nothing like traditional spring rolls.

I put in fried egg crepe, shrimp, cucumber, bean sprouts (which I painstakingly pulled the ends off of), basil, mint, and vermicelli that I flavored with msg, sugar, salt, and dried Chinese pork.

Roasted fresh corn with feta, roasted tomatoes and cilantro in a simple vinaigrette.

Potato salad with these awesome dill pickles that are so easy to make.

Peach cobbler, this one is mind-numbingly simple. I made it with these white peaches that were a tad juicy. I must say though, I don't understand the addition of warm water to cold butter. I'm with the recipe on the cold butter, just not on the warm water.

Moroccan carrot salad, thank you Mark Bittman. See number 14.

Cool cucumber soup shots. I also had watermelon gazpacho shots.

Caprese skewers. Thank goodness for friends. I called in reinforcements. Both the Bastard Consultant, and someone who I will hereby deem the Dr. Consultant came in to help. They skewered, they peeled, they helped. A lot.

I may have gone a bit overboard on the cream, but I get a little exuberant when making Cajun Shrimp Curry.

All-in-all it was a lot of fun to see people from all the different parts of my life. Stuck out here in the Windy City, I miss all of them dearly.

Discouraged

I'm going to a potluck tomorrow, and my initial plan was to make Sullivan Street Bakery's No-Knead Bread and Barbara Kingsolver's homemade mozzarella.

I think the bread turned out okay, but I horridly botched the cheese, pouring in the rennet when I should have poured in the citric acid.

Then I decided to take the protein-rich whey (due to the super crap amount of curds coming out of solution) and make ricotta. Was successful in making the ricotta, but then I over salted it.

So I decided to cook up some edamame and run those through the food processor, and fold them into the ricotta to balance out the sodium. Drizzle some olive oil and throw in some freshly ground black pepper. Which I did.

Except, even though I tasted a test edamame pod, the edamame were undercooked. So now I've got a huge thing of not too salty, undercooked edamame-homemade ricotta spread.

The only thing I can think of to do with that is to make pizza dough, smear the spread on top, pop it in the oven and hope the heat cooks the edamame the rest of the way through. But I'm tired, and there's no time to make a decent pizza dough before tomorrow, so I'm giving up now.

I guess I'll be the loser that shows up with bread.

P.S. Do you think the pizza would be good with some prosciutto and spinach? Ugh, what would really be good with that combo is some marscapone.

A True San Francisco Meal

On my last night in town, DKB and I managed to squeeze in one of our favorite San Francisco meals. We popped into car and zipped to Fisherman's Wharf, whereupon we quickly scurried to #2 the Crab Station to order some Dungeness crab. DKB has tried the stand to the right and was disappointed, so now we don't dare venture beyond #2 the Crab Station.

It was a little slow that Monday evening, so the vendors got into shouting fests about whose crab was cheaper, fresher, and better -- to no one in particular, just for the pure joy of a little boisterious, but friendly competition.

The crabs are already cooked lined up on a tray. You'd find it difficult to make crab as delicious as these suckers because they've been cooked with dozens and dozens of their cousins, essentially boiling in pure crab broth. It makes for a crabbier experience, in a good way.

Then we headed across the street to order some clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl from Boudin's. Typically, it was too cold to eat outside (ah, those hordes of tourists who perpetually wander Fisherman's Wharf in shorts, making easy targets for the Chinese vendors to sell overpriced $45 sweatshirts emblazoned with a cable car), so we found a corner of Boudin's to enjoy our feast.

Two crabs, some piping chowder, crispy sourdough - the perfect San Francisco meal.

#2 the Crab Station and Boudin's, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, NY

I need to have sons

Sunday I gave myself a meat facial. I decided to use the leftover meat from making beef stock (which I had separated from the bone and frozen for future use) to make my first chili. I also decided to make another huge pot of chicken noodle soup because lately I've been obsessed with savory soupy things: like ramen and chigae and chicken noodle soup and even Joe's soup dumplings.

So the meat in this chili is really meat from the neck bones and oxtail I used to make the beef stock, and it did not even occur to me that this might wig people out until I revealed such knowledge to my coworker J, whose face instinctively recoiled upon realizing what she had tasted.

Most people are getting slowly acclimatized to the idea of ravioli stuffed with beef check ragu or roasted bone marrow starters, but having now told several other people about the source of "meat" in my chili and receiving similar responses, I can see how I've invaded the sacred domain of chili. Chili should be super safe with good old fashioned ground hamburger meat, which admittedly cooks to a different consistency than the stuff I used.

It's really a shame because while I was frugal in using the leftover meat from making beef stock, I was more generous with the other ingredients. Instead of adding water to get the chili to the right consistency, I added the homemade beef stock, some leftover red wine and leftover white wine. After I ran out of wine, I threw in maybe a cup of water, but for my "cheap chili" experiment, there were some nice things in there.

*sigh* Guess I'll be eating chili for awhile. I really need to make something palate cleansing the next time I do a weekend cooking spree. I'm getting overwhelmed by meat.

And of course I made more bread, which really "balanced" out the lunch menu for the week.

At least I've gotten into making gigantic fruit bowls, now that it's finally hitting me how cheap it is to purchase fresh fruit from Chinatown. I'm starting to eat fruit for breakfast.

The only problem is that I pack the fruit in so tight because I'm running out of saved plastic takeout containers, that I smooshed the fruit a little, so I threw in two tubs of fruit into the freezer to turn into smoothies later.

In that one day I made way too much food for one person to eat, especially considering that I misjudged that I would have to eat all of the chili, and there was enough in there to feed a family of eight. Then there was the soup and the bread and the fruit. I was also intending on making Caeser salad, but thankfully I ran out of time again.

I am incapable of cooking consistently for one. When I have a family, I am going to need to do some voodoo-hoodoo dances and wish me some boys because I can't imagine girls being quite as adept as boys at plowing through obscene amounts of food. I mean, maybe I'll luck out and have some truly energetic and athletic baby girl who will grow up into some young lithe colt who can just consume and burn calories like nobody's business, but judging from the fact that I dread the three flights of stairs it takes to reach word processing at work, that is probably unlikely.

My brother on the other hand, will sometimes snack on an entire family-sized bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Candy while watching television. (BTW, I just went to the company website, and just seeing the trademark bag immediately brought the scent of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to mind, and for a moment, I seriously was trying to figure out how my monitor was spewing chocolate/peanut-butter aroma.)

Christmas Cookies

Sometimes I wish I was into sweets and liked baking more. Christmas would be so much fun. And so would Easter and Halloween. Heck any holiday.

Then again, watching C's mood swing depending on how pretty her most recently decorated cookie looked makes me think twice about pursuing cooking baking endeavors.


These are K's cookies. Actually, I think just the dark ginger cookies are hers. The rest might be store brought. The cookies were really tasty, soft, moist, spicy.


D's cookie assortment. That's a fruit cake cupcake. What's your opinion on fruitcake? They seem to last forever. My guess is that they became popular because people probably didn't have ready access to fruit, and it might have seemed like a real treat to have a heavily spiced cake with candied fruit in it.

Holiday Cocktail Party: Sweet and Savory

C made Spicy Candied Pecans, Sweet Potato Baked Chips, Cheesy Phyllo Rolls, Gingerbread Cookies, and Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.
This year, she decided not to experiment and stuck to the recipe. Verdict, don't stick to the recipe. It was good of course, but tastes really soared when she trusted her instincts.

Mmm, these were so good. I was both indignant and proud as a peacock when a guest asked where we had ordered our food. I don't think a lot of what I made looked anything but homemade, but I think these chips look positively professional.


This picture does not do this dish justice, it's all those precious phyllo scraps that have been piled on top. It's twice baked with a variety of cheeses sprinkled between each phyllo layer.

Gingerbread cookies with candied ginger, mini meringues and chocolate crinkle cookies with peppermint frosting. Now that looks like Christmas!

Holiday Cocktail Parties: Baked and Fried

I decided not to strain myself this year and do things that I thought would not be too hard. The menu included: Mushroom Risotto Croquettes with Fresh Mozzarella Centers, Fried Baked Mac N Cheese, Lamb and Currant Meatballs with Mint Yogurt Sauce, Pan Fried Chorizo on Crostini, Buttermilk Biscuit Bites, Bacon Wrapped Dates, and Cajun Cream Shrimp on Crostini.

Mushroom Risotto Croquettes with Mozzarella Centers. I soaked a hearty handful of dried porcini and morels overnight before chopping them up and adding them to diced plain white button mushrooms. For stock, I used a combination of homemade turkey and chicken stock, and the leftover mushroom water. It killed me that I had to use store-bought fresh mozzarella now that I finally know how to make it myself and have realized it's not that difficult, but there wasn't time. I made a huge put of risotto in the morning and shoved it into the fridge to cool.

Fried Baked Mac N Cheese. After baking, cooling, and slicing the mac n cheese, I rolled it in flour seasoned with chili powder and salt, then in egg wash, then in Panko. After a deep fry in Canola oil it was ready to go. Another thing that kills me is that these croquettes look so ugly on the plate. Normally we do a better job on presentation, but there just wasn't time.

People love these Lamb and Currant Meatballs. They're really easy to make. You basically dump the ingredients in, moosh, roll into balls and bake. The Mint Yogurt sauce is also simple. Just take some Greek yogurt that's already been drained, add some chopped mint, and season.

These chorizo slices I pan fried in olive oil, bacon fat, cloves and cinnamon. I really had wanted to soak some white cannellini beans, cook them in some chicken stock with sage, and then purree up the whole mess that I could pipe onto crostini and then lay a slice of fried chorizo on top. Stupid Whole Foods doesn't have white cannellini beans though, and I never got a chance to visit the mother ship otherwise known as Dean and Deluca. *sniff*

These Buttermilk Biscuit Bites came out much better than the ones I made for Thanksgiving. This time I mixed the dough in the food processor and stopped when the butter particles made the dough look like grainy sand. Then, since the refrigerator was full, I ended up stuffing the bowl of dough in the freezer to keep it cool. These things rose three or four times in height in the oven. I ended up folding a lot of layers into subsequent batches of dough as I smooshed the remnants together.

The only problem is that I made way too many. Maybe five times as much as what you see in the picture. I also had aspirations for these suckers. I was going to split them in half and smear some jam on each little bite. Alas, also no time. *waah*

Bacon Wrapped Dates. Instead of getting the super thick cut bacon from behind the meat counter at Whole Foods, I just got the prepackaged bacon, which is sliced much more thinly. If you are making this at home for just a few people, I'd advise going with the thicker bacon. Soaking the toothpicks made a huge difference, they hardly got charred at all.

Thanksgiving: Trying Not To Go Overboard

I rounded out the Thanksgiving menu with a few accompaniments. Nothing too crazy as the turkey was my focus, and I'm trying to familiarize myself with the concept of moderation.


The cranberry sauce was an orange ginger concoction. I used fresh squeezed orange juice and zest and fresh ginger.
Then some chopped candy ginger went on top of it. The sauce was probably a bit too piquant for the menu. I made it for a holiday party last year to rave reviews, but it was for h'ors d'oeuvres: thin slices of turkey over small slices of rye or pumpernickel with a dab of cranberry sauce.

Here's the gravy. I went a bit heavy on the roux (lots of flour). Then I poured in the pan juices and some homemade chicken stock.

Roasted beets and beet tops with horseradish creme fraiche. I dumped the leftover sauce this morning, made me sad.

Buttermilk biscuits. Rolled these out a tad too thin so they didn't puff up as much as I would have preferred. I was pretty neurotic about keeping the butter cold though, so it was properly flaky and buttery.

I also made some garlic mashed potatoes. Two and a half pounds of potatoes. One celery root. Two heads of roasted garlic. Cream. A stick of butter. Yum.

For dessert, in addition to C's apple pies, I made some Meyer lemon buttermilk sorbet. Still haven't successfully made ice cream yet as the custard eludes me, but sorbets are a cinch.

My plate: round 1. I'd miss it if it weren't the fact that only a day or two ago did I finally finish working through the leftovers.

No Knead Bread

Mark Bittman published a revised No-Knead Bread Recipe. It's faster, which of course meant all of a sudden I was inspired to tackle the original recipe which requires about 20 total hours of rising time.

Sometimes I forget the bread is just flour, yeast, salt and water. Incredible, no?

Dry Ingredients. This recipe is mind boggling easy, except that I'm so excited to be finally embarking upon making real bread with my two hands that I treat it like it's some big ordeal. Sort of like a pared down version of how I act when I make fois gras. It's actually quite simple, but it's so nerve racking to be handling a $100 lobe of liver and actually possessing the presumption to approach one of the most divine things to eat, that I am extremely jumpy and snippy.

Ingredients all mixed up. Cover and let rise for 18 hours. Honestly, it's so easy a four year-old could do it. This woman bribed her son with dolphin temporary tattoos to prove it.

Here's the dough after 18 hours, looking like an unappetizing glop.

I put cornmeal on the bottom and flour on the top, forgetting that you have to invert the sucker into the dutch oven, so the bottom becomes the top. All I mean to say is I wanted a floury top and a cornmeal crusty bottom, but it ended up reversed. Because apparently besides not knowing North/South/East/West, left or right, I also don't know up from down.

Ta da! The finished bread. Look at how real it looks! Perhaps you could even imagine it on a bread rack at the sort of snooty French/Belgian bread spots I adore.

Verdict on the bread? It was hole-y and somewhat elasticy, but nowhere approaching the sublime texture and depth of flavor of a truly artisanal loaf. But aside from time, it's so bloody cheap to make, and so far superior to even Whole Food baguettes (yes, I know I'm not making a baguette), that it makes sense to keep at it.

Besides, I find cooking rather soothing in these turbulent times. Heck, we might all have to go back to subsistence farming soon. Friends, I've got a backup plan for you. We can liquidate our measly 401(k)s and buy a farm in cash someone in the fertile lands of the midwest. You can till, and I will cook. Honestly, I started daydreaming this morning about running some Internet searches to study which areas of the country have the most naturally fertile ground. I suppose we'd have to also research access to water and the maximum growing season.

Back to the bread, I took a hunk and turned it into garlic croutons. One medium bowl full of cubed bread. A whole head of garlic minced. Add olive oil, salt, pepper and a hot oven for a few minutes. Make your kitchen smell like there's a grandma puttering behind the stove.