Marrow = Wiggly

I've been having a very meaty week. I really prefer vegetables, and I've had great success feeding Cranky non-meat or "meat-lite" meals. But he'd eat meat every day if he could.
Well, the other day I woke up hungry for a steak. My head still lying on the pillow, I turned to Cranky and informed him that we were in for a meaty meal. I knew he'd jump at the chance, and he did.
We went to Boca steakhouse in Novato, where I had a stupendiculatastic hanger steak. I don't usually expect to enjoy eating meat this much, but my steak was guuuud.
On the way out, we ran into an old friend who proposed a dinner date later on at the same restaurant, so it looks like I'll be having another meaty meal tonight.
And what happened in between those two meaty meals?
Cranky, damn him, decided to look at The Fatted Calf's newsletter. He discovered that they'd be selling a Brasato al Midolo, aka Tuscan-style pot roast made from Marin Sun Farms beef, stuffed with marrow and seasoned with rosemary and black pepper.
You can read that description again, and if you don't get absolutely gobsmacked by the phrase "stuffed with marrow," well, here, can I offer you a slice of tofurkey? You just wouldn't understand.
Cranky got all wiggly and wouldn't stand still (this was still really early Saturday morning) and I was defeated. Defeated by Cranky's wiggliness? Maybe a little (I can usually stare him down pretty good). Defeated by "stuffed with marrow," most decidedly.
"OK," I said, "get dressed and run over and see if they even have any left that haven't been pre-ordered." I think he was first in line.
Meanwhile I looked up how to cook this hunk of protein (Fatted Calf recommended a very slow braise in wine and shallots; good idea, and they said it would be even better the next day). In Paul Bertolli's book, Cooking By Hand, I learned that this kind of meat is most successfully sliced cold, so next day it was to be.
Let the cooking commence: First, brown the meat all over in a Dutch oven. Then apply shallots and liquids (we ended up using a kooky but surprisingly delicious combination of red wine, turkey stock and vegetable broth). Place lid on and slide pot into oven. Wait three or four hours, and a most amazing thing happens: your nose suddenly tells you the meat is done. The aromas have been pretty nice throughout, but there's a magic moment when you smell completion. And, yep, the meat is so-o-o tender and the marrow has leaked out and dissolved into the braising liquid and the shallots have collapsed. Oh. (And you slap your forehead and think, "Hey, those Fatted Calf kids must have remembered to salt the meat, because I didn't, but this tastes perfect.")
So the meat gets wrapped in plastic, tightly, and both it and the braising liquid, still in the pot, just go straight into the fridge (after cooling). And the next day you pick off the layer of fat from the liquid and gawk in happy fascination at the jelliness of the former liquid. It's wiggly! Just like you knew it would be. It's so wiggly, you have to reheat it to melt it, in order to strain out the tired shallots. And you reduce it on the stovetop, just a little... And when you finally spoon some into your mouth, it's so sticky, it glues your lips together.
Jeez. Maybe I'll just order a salad tonight.

Serving notes: Each plate got a layer of cooked Sardinian pasta called Fregola Sarda, flooded with a ladleful of the tasty lip glue braising liquid. The meat slices were rewarmed briefly, covered, in the microwave, and then placed on top of the pasta. I think another spoonful of lip glue would go nicely over the meat, don't you?

I'm Mad and I Cheat

I was intrigued by a revelation in Michael Pollan's story in the New York Times magazine yesterday (registration required; link dies in a week, I think — also, it's the #1 e-mailed story out of the NYT at the moment). I'd heard this before, from dieticians and nutritionists, so I knew it to be true. But I hadn't thought about it for a while:
People lie about what they eat.
They lie to themselves, they lie to their doctors, and they lie to statisticians.
I wanted to open up a conversation about food intake: Are you a glutton, a secret snacker, a meal-skipper, pro-ana... whatever? But I realized that if people lie about what they eat, it's probably because they don't want to go public. Nobody would want to leave comments here about being a lame-o lard-ass or a pathetic picky-pick. Well, they might, anonymously. When I wrote about not having any appetite last year due to a bout with depression, I did get lots of comments from readers who shared similar tales, but they didn't want to leave their names.
I am going to be (slightly) honest and say that sometimes I don't want to eat. I love to fool around in the kitchen; I'm good at it; it gives me great pleasure. Yesterday I made not only a pot of chicken stock, but also a braised stuffed beef shank from The Fatted Calf. I didn't eat either — but truly, that was by design. The stock is for later, and the beef shank is maturing into "better-the-next-day-ness." That would be today. I'm eatin' it.
So I would say I eat enough, but hardly ever too much. (For some reason, I am having a too-much-meat week, but the end is in sight.) I would probably check the second button in the poll below.
Whaddya say? Wanna take the poll? The answers can be seen, after you select, by clicking on "vote" (or probably even if you don't select). It's completely unscientific.

Free poll by Listomatica.com

How Much Do You Eat?

I might be undernourishing myself. Sometimes, if nobody's looking, I'll skip a meal. Just right! Hah, as if there was a "just right." I think I'm overdoing the nibblies a bit. I eat too much, to the point that I sneak food.

Little teeny, tiny update: When I created this poll yesterday, I chose different wording (over on the listomatica page) than you see here in my final edit... The ranking still applies correctly, however. It's confusing, because the exact same language of choice number 2 here appears as number 1 over on the link. My intention is simple: From one to five, are you eating too little or too much?

A Chicken Stock in Every Pot

Boy, am I lucky.
And the house smells so good.
I concluded today that the smell of "yellow" is chicken stock — and it really helps if you have a two-story house, because you can go upstairs and get a real snootful of the delicious aroma.
I hate to think how many chicken carcasses I threw away in the past, after eating the insipid supermarket flesh off them. Well, maybe I was right to throw them away.
But this? Mmm. I wish I could take a picture of how good it smells.

Food styling by Martinelli Farms, All-Clad, Mt. Tamalpais watershed.
Lighting by Cranky.
Photography by me on a little kitchen stepladder. Cranky held me up with his spare hand.

Ohgivemeabreak

Yes, I stole this photo wholesale from Wonkette, but "she" (actually now a he) didn't give credit for it, so it's an Internetz steal-a-thon.
Yes, I am opposed to the useless, failing, chaotic U.S. occupation in Iraq.
Yes, I do occasionally participate in protest marches and other hippie stuff.
But man, oh, man, I hope I never show up at the same demonstration as Cindy Sheehan. Ew.
She's all doped up on Cindy Me-han. Even Jesse Jackson, Mr. Me, is cringing.
Somebody stage an intervention.

Old Dog, New Taste

Confession: I have just tasted Savoy cabbage for the first time.
I know what it looks like; I've seen it in the markets; I am a devoted fan of ceramic dishes in Savoy shapes.
But I hadn't bought an edible one before now.
It was fairly dinky. I was able to use only six leaves to stuff with a mixture of black rice, mushrooms and onions. I had to augment the meal with a couple of "normal" (i.e., pale, uncrinkly) cabbage leaves.
But it's so cool: flexible, due to its structure. Brilliant green when you first blanch it to soften the leaves for filling. Spooky looking, like sponge or tripe. Ooh! Who wouldn't want that? Spooky cabbage.
A little sweet-tasting, too.
Wow, Cookiecrumb. Get with it.

Life After Wartime

The weather was great today. Good enough to sit outdoors and have a little "something" with lime in it.
Cold, yes. My own lime and lemon trees spent last night in the living room once again.
Then the sun came out and it became totally pleasant. We ran into another old friend, equally as old — friend-wise — as yesterday's old *communal!* friend. Oh, she'd be so jealous. Should I tell her? He's a major food guy, most famous to the newspaper proletariat of a decade ago, in a big city. (Well, food-famous, and — most important, drinks.)
But my icy, limey drink was consumed in another county today... My county. Where this major, former food-and-drinks guy drinks and eats and lives.
We're having dinner with him and his wife next week.
Oh. And he's not in the food business anymore. But he still loves food.

Breaking Breads

The food was middling, but the company was beyond great.
Cranky and I joined an old friend for dinner last night, and made a new friend.
The old friend reviews restaurants, among her many varied talents, so I'm keeping her identity disguised. Actually, she doesn't have eight fingers on her left hand (and she's not an especially fast eater, time-lapse-wise). Blame the photographer. In fact, if any restaurateurs want to spot this writer, she does have a weakness for wild and varied wristwatches. See? (As if any restaurateurs are reading this blog.)
The new friend is also in the food business. As soon as he gives me the Greenlight (hint!) I will brag about him. Funny, smart, and with a propensity toward fur-lined bicycle seats. Well, a long time ago.
It's amazing what a nice, simple gathering of kindred spirits can do for the spirit.
Thanks, friends.

Pantry Pressure

I can't stop making this dish exactly the same way: whole-wheat spaghetti, anchovy paste, garlic, butter, walnuts and Parmesan cheese.
Cranky made it for lunch yesterday, and he forgot the garlic. He also happened to riff with a dollop of sour cream. It was very good (and the garlic was not missed).
Even so, I'm not eating pasta as much as I would like. I blame it on my sudden, and unexpectedly deep, conversion to a local diet. There is only one source of wheat within 100 miles of my home, to my knowledge. I could use it for homemade whole-wheat pasta — and I think I probably will, because Santa brought a funny, wacky pasta tool.
But there is still a pantry full of foods bought before my conversion, in August of 2005. Now the food is getting old, and I think I ought to use it. I hate to waste food.
Technically, a lot of the larder is designated "earthquake supplies," but it does have expiration dates and needs to be cycled through every couple of years. Unfortunately, "earthquake supplies" is as much a part of my local definition as backyard baby lettuce — my terroir moves.
My taste buds have changed, though. It's getting harder and harder to imagine eating, much less enjoying, canned beans, canned tomato juice, packaged soup powder... I'm not even sure I should confess to the boxes of Kraft "Dinner" (they were on sale! — and they're really handy when finicky kids come over to eat).
There is a lot of dried "grown-up" pasta, too, and I think I'm giving myself permission to eat it. I think I would enjoy it.

I'm (Adjective) and I (Verb)

Happy anniversary, Roe vs. Wade.
I've never had to avail myself of the medical and psychological safe harbor afforded by legal abortion. I hope you never have to, either.
But if you find you are pregnant in a time or circumstance where
having a child is wrong for you, I

Photo: NOW
hope you will be thankful for the tireless work of Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, and so many others who have guaranteed your right to choose.
Your best choice, of course, is to choose wisely. Don't get "in trouble."
Stay out of unstable relationships. Make enough money to provide for an unexpected family... especially if amniocentesis shows that you may be carrying genetically damaged goods.
Oh, wait. These are not choices you can always reasonably make?
Then do whatever you can to protect your right to choose abortion.
Yeah. Abortion. Say it out loud.
Icky word. Icky choice.
Let's call it reproductive freedom.
Let's choose it. Let's protect it.

The Dip Wanted Some Dip

Why does football cause such dietary calamity?
I know there are seasonal foods. I know there are traditional foods. I know there are ritual foods.
But football food? Disaster.
I have an odd habit of thumbing through the slick coupon inserts in the Sunday paper. Less and less will I find anything I want to buy (though some dishwasher soap had me clipping today). However, I look forward to my weekly thumb-through as a sort of culinary anthropology. I say to myself, when flipping quickly past startling "recipes" that call for such atrocities as a can of Manwich, "People really eat this? Isn't that cannibalism?"
It's a fun pastime, though. You can tell what time of the year it is from the coupons. We just got through the green-bean/fried-onion casserole season. And now we're in the preposterous "football diet" portion of our year. Chili. Chicken wings. Quesadillas.
And 7-Layer Dip!
I'm not about to go to the trouble of Googling this perversion, but as far as I know, it's only been on the edible landscape for the past decade or so. Who comes up with this stuff?
I don't know what the official seven layers are, but one of them is refried beans, and the dish is served bone cold. No thanks. Cold beans? Shudder.
However. (Yes, of course there's a however.) Since there are two playoff games on the tube today, and since certain food items are often found (as emergency rations, you understand) in my pantry, I decided to give Cranky a big plate of seven layers.
I nuked it briefly, so that it wasn't totally disgusting.
Heck, I ate a little of it myself, and I didn't die.
I will not tell you how to make it, but I will tell you what the seven layers were: refried beans, crumbled feta cheese, sour cream, totally out-of-season tomato salsa, chopped canned olives, avocado slices and minced cilantro. Served with home-baked corn chips made from commercial tortillas.
It made us happy.

Terroirism

Anna invited us to post about terroir. Local flavor. The taste of the earth where you live.
I thought about it, and I fell into a blasé self righteousness: Hah, terroir is so damn easy in Marin.
Then I went to my vendor at the Marin Farmers Market, and asked: Is this stuff local? I'd recently read that some of their stuff was grown down south; something I didn't know before now. Yup. He said, "It's from our southern operation, mostly, except for the chard."
Ooh. That changes things.
Think about it: I'm buying produce from Star Route Farms, a Bolinas-based farm, and... well, if you don't ask, you don't know that the produce is not local. Ask!
My take on it, though, is that I want to support my local farmer, even if he (she) has to farm off the local grid. And so I did.
(Details: Little Gem lettuces, golden beets. Not local.)
Still, I wanted to participate in Anna's "terroir" challenge. So despite all the vegetables, which are not local, I more than made up with serious, super, local terroir in the form of a dressing for the veggies: Wine, honey and butter.
Come on! Has anybody ever put a butter-based dressing on salad? Well, I did, and it was superb.
My thinking: Nothing is more "terroir" than wine. My Pey-Marin Pinot Noir
is totally local, and a fine wine it is. We drank a little glass with our salad, and my mouth detected local minerals (I hope I don't sound like a total flake) — it was like tasting the natural residue of my county. In a good way.
OK, then. I reduced down some wine by at least half, and then stirred in some local honey — and I'm going to go on record as saying I think you can't get a lot more local than local honey. Man does not intervene to create this fabulous product. Enjoy.
Finally, I kicked up this wine-honey dressing with some local butter. I have two choices of local butter in my foodshed (heh), and I think the tastiest is Clover... But I chose Straus today because it's in my county.
And so I made this salad, and it was — OMG — really wonderful. Really.

Technorati: A Taste of Terroir

The Cat and the Butter: a Parable

It goes like this. You walk into the kitchen and see the cat, up on the counter, licking the butter that you had left out to soften.
The cat knows darn well you see him, but he does not stop licking.
The closer you get to the cat, and the louder you yell — the faster he licks.
He licks furiously, because he knows he's been caught, he knows you're going to fling him across the room the minute you get your hands on him — but what's the use of quitting licking before he absolutely has to?
Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick.
Bad cat.
Very, very bad cat.
Well. That's George Bush in his remaining two years in office.
He's wrecking the Constitution as fast as he can, even though he knows we see him. The closer we get, the louder we yell...
Wreck, wreck, wreck, wreck, wreck.
Bad president.
Very, very bad president.
I feel a flinging coming on.

Cottleston Pie

I'm a lousy food photographer. Crappy. Stunningly lame.
I work at it, and one parameter at a time, I'm chipping away at the skills it takes to get good food pix. I'm not even going to make a list of what those p-words are. I'd forget something crucial, like focus or composition or...
Lighting.
Actually, lighting is parameter Number One. In the dead of winter, I'm not about to go schlepping plates outside to get a good natural-light shot. There is no good light, and there is, at the moment, no furniture out there to place dishes on. I'm too creaky to crouch down on a frosty, leafy patio (and boy, would the food cool off fast out there).
Incidentally, I've come to the reluctant conclusion that the plummeting temperature of my food, as I jiggle and angle and zoom and pray, should not be an issue of paramount consideration for a food blogger. What's more important: the food or the blog? (If you answered "the food," you are wrong.) Even so, cooled-off food just doesn't look as good; congealed grease is less pretty than melty grease. Word.
Ah. So there are considerations. Many.
But back to lighting. I was finally persuaded by one of my photography mentors to buy a cheap shop lamp with a 100-watt bulb. Two such rigs would be better, says my mentor, but I'm cheaper than a cheap shop lamp, and for now I have just the one.
Verdict: Wow.
Here's your pictorial lesson: 100-watt bulb on top; automatic camera flash on the bottom. Both pictures are crudtacular, and I did as much editing on them as I could without turning them into totally faux, Technicolor Harryhausen outtakes. The composition on the top is perhaps better than the other mess, but I confess I cropped it some. I couldn't figure out how to crop the other mess. (And what is it about using flash that makes you want to just aim the lens down onto your plate? Ew.)
In case you are perplexed by the psychedelic nature of the mashed potatoes atop the meat-vegetable mixture, by the way, I will tell you we used pink potatoes. Yep, pink skins and pink flesh. Tasty as heck, but really spooky on a cottage pie photo.
And yet. Look: Much more successful focus on the 100-watt shot. Scary, explosive glare and strange scatter-shot focus on the flash shot. Better color on the 100-watt shot. Blown-out, utter "braaack" on the flash shot.
I'm not going to tell you never to use your flash again, but you've been enlightened.
Now, excuse me. I've got other parameters to work on.
Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um.

OK, Yes, I'm Weird; Aren't You?

I will never know how most readers of this humble blog arrive on my doorstep, but I do think I know how Beccy, who tagged me for the "Five Things Most People Don't Know About Me" meme, came into my world. I suspect it might have had something to do with her mum. Or maybe even her sister.
However I happened to acquire my new "family," I'm very happy about it.
And I'm pleased to play.

FIVE THINGS
1) When I was about five, my mom was outside hanging laundry to dry. I took the opportunity to peek into the larder, where the first thing that caught my eye was the bottle of vinegar. Mm! I got myself a little juice glass and poured about half an inch of vinegar, which I planned to sip and savor in a most sophisticated way. Until my mom walked into the kitchen unexpectedly.
Good god, I couldn't let her know what a weirdo I was, could I? I would have to destroy the evidence. So I gulped the entire contents of the glass (probably no more than a tablespoon or so) — and then the tears started running down my face.
I wasn't crying. I was reacting. Ohmygah. Sour! Hot!
But it didn't cure me. It reinforced me. Still got that sour tooth.
2) I turned down an opportunity to party with Depeche Mode — all of 'em — back in the '80s one night, and it happened to be Martin Gore's birthday. Hell. Actually, it was Cranky who turned down the opportunity for us both, it being rather late at night when the invitation came. Killjoy.
3) Up until the age of 10 or 11, I firmly believed that I would grow up to be a professional ballerina. I have no rational basis for this.
4) Eric Ripert once fed me a buttery grilled sandwich of smoked salmon and caviar, in a Mill Valley private kitchen. I think I swooned.
5) At the age of about 13, I broke my front tooth with a yo-yo. Not a happy scenario, especially considering I had just come out of braces — which didn't really work, because I was too young when they came off, and my mouth kept growing, and the gap returned. Anyway, I went all through junior high school being called "witch" by the cruddy boys (who at least were unaware, due to the huge snaggletooth, that I was also gap-toothed) — great for my budding self-esteem. Finally my parents arranged to have the tooth repaired in 10th grade... but the gap remains.

Should I tag you? I'd love to spread the fun, so I recommend you just join in on your own. But for you stragglers, I pick: Tammy, Stacie, Anna and Sean. (It's cool if you cop out, you losers.)

Mo Tasty, Mo Betta

Bland diet? Feh!
I've been on a flavoring kick for a little while now: 5-spice powder, dried oregano, ground ginger. Sure, some days a nice, easy dish of buttered noodles is just what the dietician ordered. But as I look over some of my recent creations, I see I've been jacking up the taste-bud factor.
I remember hippie food, back when none of us really knew how to cook; we figured if we just knocked the entire contents of the spice shelf into the brown rice, all would be good.
It wasn't. Besides, the contents of the spice shelf were ancient, dried-out, and sometimes just weird. ("Seasoned salt"? What is that? "Lemon pepper"?)
Years later I've finally learned a few things, one of which is restraint. I've also learned to use natural, often local, flavors, which generally means "no spice shelf." That doesn't mean my food is bland — for complexity, I rely on citrus, chiles, fresh herbs; and there are times when the taste of a pure, ripe tomato needs nothing else.
How pristine of me; how holy.
Not really. Yesterday I baked a batch of crackers to take to a party. The recipe (Alton Brown's if you must know) calls for a mixture of white and whole-wheat flours as well as a riot of poppy and sesame seeds. But I wanted more in my mouth. I'd made Alton Brown's whole-wheat crackers in the past, and they were sweetish and mild... yesterday's mixed-flours batch was going to get a kick in the pants, dammit.
So I knocked in a couple of the contents of the spice shelf — garlic powder and mustard powder, and I added a shake of mustard seeds to the other seeds. That, plus the salt the recipe already called for, gave just the right upward tick away from "nice." Now, the crackers were a little closer to "nasty" — in a good way, you understand. Heck, they might have even benefited from a little cumin or cayenne, too.
Yep, I'm re-exploring my spice shelf. Wow. There's some pretty old stuff in there. I'm not saying how old, but the price stamp on a jar of dried oregano I just used up said ".49." But that's cool. I'm going to replace it.

Party Fun! Don't worry about losing a party dish; make one you can leave behind. This works great with dry foods, or you can choose to line the homemade paper dish with a throw-away plastic container for anything drippy. Since Cranky and I have a little bit of journalism in our DNA, I thought it would be neat to take sheets of newspaper and fold them into pressman's hats. Turned upside down, the hats are now disposable baskets. Wanna try?

Beans, Beans, the Frugal Fruit

You may be hearing more about eating within a budget in the next few months. Over at Belly Timber it is indeed on the menu.
In fact, living frugally is all the talk nowadays.
Well, we here at I'm Mad and I Eat are nothing if not early adopters.
Only around here, it's known as "eating leftovers."
I hate wasting food, and it's fun to devise new ways of turning a dish that had a distinct personality yesterday into an entirely new beast today.
It's even more fun when some of the food is free.
I had two kinds of cooked meat in the fridge, gifts from two different people. Together these two meats would provide the synergy for a great pot of white chili.
I have to share the basics with you, but (yawn, heard this before?): "This Is Not a Recipe Blog."

PROCUL HARUM CHILI (A Whiter Shade of Yum-O)

OK. In a pot, cook presoaked white beans (I used Great Northern) with a bay leaf or two and a pork bone if you are so lucky to have one that you have trimmed off the free slab of pork roast, in water just to cover. A little salt. Cook to near-tenderness; check the water level (it can dip down slightly toward the end, but I like mine a little soupy). Remove the bone at this point.

Meanwhile, in a sauté pan, toast some dried herbs and spices over medium heat until they smell fabulous, a minute or so. I used oregano, thyme, cumin, chili powder (just pure, ground, dried chiles, not that flavored mess from the chain market), and — a pinch of Chinese 5-spice powder. (Trust me. Don't overdo it, but do it.) The spice flavors are allowed to be a little potent at this point; they will be absorbed by the beans later.

Now add some olive oil to the spices in the pan and stir; toss in chopped onion, minced garlic, chopped green pepper (one with a little heat would be good) and chopped, de-husked tomatillos. A little salt. Cook gently until you have a smooshy, gooey mess (it's important to get the tomatillos to melt down), but with still-discernable pieces of vegetable.

Next, stir the vegetable-spice mixture into the beans. Let the whole mess simmer gently until the beans pick up some of that flavor. (I just turned off the heat, covered it, and left it alone for an hour or so.)

At mealtime, cut up the free meat. Mine was sausage and pork, and since it was already cooked, all I wanted to do was heat it, not vaporize it. Add the meat to the beans, warm gently, check seasonings (I added some habanero powder) — and eat.

The two must-haves in this dish are the tomatillos, for the smooth, almost slippery texture they add — the mouth-feel is pure, frugal luxury — and the 5-spice powder for that kick-ass je ne sais quoi. I liked it a lot.

Bush's Iraq Strategy

FAIL HARDER!

Did Anybody Catch This?

Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone Tuesday by playing "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid," a Beatles song.

You can't get Beatles songs on iTunes!
Sure, you can get "Beatles" songs. But not real Beatles songs.
Is that whole Apple Corps/Apple Computer legal dustup still going on? Or was Jobs hinting of a new playlist to come?

I see that an AP story has addressed this curiosity today, finally. But not solved it. Damn. I thought I was the only crazy person here. Good. OK.
Update: Derrick and Melissa clue me in to some insidery clue-ininess. In Comments.

Aw, Nuts

Is there a pattern here?
The last three gatherings of food bloggers I've been invited to, I concocted some sort of strange pickles.
Last summer, for the Bay Area Food Bloggers' Picnic, I pickled peculiar produce.
Last month, at the Forkies' Daring Dinner, my contribution was brined eggs.
Tonight, I'll be meeting with old friends and new, sampling roasted meat served up by a blogger who was raised a vegetarian (shh; it's a wicked experiment)... and I'm bringing nutty nuts.
The nuts are local almonds and walnuts, made even nuttier by the fact that I brined them overnight in a variety of flavorings.
I'm refraining from nibbling on them too much, because I didn't prepare very many. So I can't report for certain, but I think it has been a semi-success. Brining nuts definitely moisturizes them, so they need a lot of careful roasting the next day to achieve a browny, crunchy effect. Some of the walnuts swelled up so much in the juice, they wouldn't spill out of the jar they had been soaking in.
But, the flavors! Gah. Primo. Such a difference from slathering spices and salt on the outside of nuts, and then tossing them in a skillet for a few minutes.
These nuts drank in their baths, through and through. Even after roasting, you can see that they are a bit translucent, a little tender, nothing like your usual canned salties.
The salt was there, though: My four brines were 1) homemade dill pickle juice; 2) jarred Trader Joe's kalamata olive juice; 3) mustard/Tabasco/champagne; and 4) fish sauce/black pepper/champagne/soy sauce. Yeah, crazy.
The house smells wonderful from the wacky, roasty aromas.
Will I be invited to any more blogger gatherings? Look, I promise I'm running out of pickle ideas.
Update: OK, slower, longer roasting at a lower temperature is the technique. First time around, I gave the nuts an hour at 375º, but they were still too moist. My oven only goes as low as 170º, and I just now gave the nuts another hour or two, and now they're dark, toasty and deeply flavored. Recommended.

I'm Mad and — Hey, Look! Cool!

Photo by John Montgomery
Oh, those wacky San Franciscans. Lying on the sand at a beach in January. Over a thousand of them, and so orderly, too! What was this, some kind of be-in?
For a wordier diatribe on what to do about our disastrous, deluded Decider, an editorial in today's New York Times skates deliciously close to using the word those beach bums spelled so succinctly.
And you thought I was just being a nutcase with that blog banner up there for the whole past year. Seems I'm not alone.

Lunch

The red beans and rice we put together the other day turned into a little bit of trouble. Too much salt, and in the repairing of that, a little bit drier than we wanted. I think it tasted great, but it was thick.
Next day, Cranky reheated the seized-up red beans with a healthy half-bottle of Milwaukee's Finest, and I poached a couple of Petaluma's finest.
Poaching eggs is easier than you think. The trick is bravado. Believe in yourself. And pull the eggs out of the simmering water a little sooner than you might suspect – they will continue to firm up in their own heat. We'll have a lesson on that some day.
But for now, I just want to brag that we resurrected the red beans and rice by giving it a glass of beer and dropping boiled hen product on top of it.

Little Pots of Cheesy Redemption

A little background: Several months ago I was reading about a couple of restaurant meals enjoyed by a blogger with a weakness for macaroni and cheese. She lamented that the servings are always too big (especially when you consider that it's never, really, your main course; you've ordered one of those too).
I suggested in a comment to her that restaurants ought to offer mac 'n' cheese "cupcake-style," that is, in small, individual pots with maxed-out flavors and pretty toppings and all.
She liked the idea so much, she wants to put it on her "imaginary restaurant" menu. Imaginary restaurant! Great idea, but a whole different subject.
Today the subject is macaroni and cheese. And, taking a hint from me, I made mine in individual pots with maxed-out flavors and pretty toppings and all.
Briefly, I'll describe them, but you're on your own for concocting a recipe. Not only are these recipes Cookiecrumb-style, they're lazy (oh, wait, that is Cookiecrumb-style). No bechamel. Just noodles, cheese and flavors, melded with a spurt of cream, every one of them topped with buttered breadcrumbs, and baked until done.
1) Dungeness crab chunks stirred into cooked elbow macaroni with heavy cream, cream cheese, a pat of truffle butter, tarragon, salt and pepper. Crab was the star here, though goat cheese might have worked instead of cream cheese.
2) Point Reyes Farmstead blue cheese stirred into cooked elbow macaroni with heavy cream, sautéed sliced scallions and sautéed chopped maitake mushrooms — plus salt and pepper.
3) Pizzaroni! This was made from chopped pepperoni stirred into cooked elbow macaroni, with egregious proportions of chopped mozzarella, a little grated dry Jack cheese, some heavy cream, sautéed chopped maitake mushrooms, a squirt of tomato paste from a tube, a squirt of anchovy paste from a tube, dried red pepper flakes, a good pinch of dried oregano, and a drizzle of kalamata olive juice. (You ordered olives, right?) Grated parmesan cheese over the crumbs.
OK. Verdicts? The pizza mac wins for over-the-top tastebuds-jangling weirdness. Just awesome; it tasted exactly like cheap-ass pizza, and it makes me want to dream up a cheeseburger mac next. The crab mac was silky and subtle with a truffled thrill; perfect for January and very grown-up. The blue-cheese/mushroom mac was perhaps the easiest and least expensive bang for the buck: swanky and mouthy.
Next time I'm thinking something with feta and olives. Well, after the cheeseburger mac.
Technorati: mac-n-cheese-off
Update: Oh, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, my mac 'n' cheese partner in crime. You think you've been so pure, using bacon, when all I'm "cheating" with is this dumb slide show? (I'm disabling the slide show tomorrow, by the way; it's really munching my computer's memory.)

Red Beans and Nice

Now, I'm not trying to brag or anything. (Yes, I am.) But I invited a friend over for lunch yesterday, and he came to my house and cooked.
True, I am a bit of a slouch in the hostessing department (and he knows it from the last time he had a meal at my house). I had food on the premises, although there were problems with its palatability quotient. We did eat it, in fact, and it was — edible.
The meal was saved because this guest taught me and Cranky how to rescue a dish that has become too salty: stick a couple chunks of cut-up potato in there and let them suck away the extra salinity (and then take them out — all of them, heh). Et voilà, red beans and smoked ham shanks (it was over-usage of shanks that had resulted in over-NaCl-ness). Salvaged, the beans were decent, if a little leaden, sloshed over rice. (Should have been more sloshy, but exuberant sloshes of champagne helped wash it down.)
But the good eating, the "dessert," was yet to happen. Our guest brought it: An obscene length of homemade sausage created by the mad meat genius Chile Brown, and a perky knob of tri-tip of beef, slathered in Dr. Biggles' own Hillbilly Jerk rub.
He made it look effortless, popping the beef into a pan in the oven and the sausage into an iron pot on the stove. Ignore, ignore, turn over, take temperature, take out, let rest, slice, drool, eat, cry.
Oh, wait, take picture first. He took this picture, because he's as good a photographer as he is a meat master.
I should have just asked him to write my blog today, too, come to think of it. He'd have done a good job.

C'mon, It Ain't Rocket Science

Whew, that mess is over. No more turkey, roast beef or hoppin' john for a long time to come.
The kitchen is coming back into a semblance of order; space is beginning to open up on the refrigerator shelves...
So what's for supper? A body's still got to eat, but it just doesn't want all that meat (or all that banging around with basters and racks and carving knives).
How about the homely, lowly macaroni and cheese?
Kevin at Seriously Good and I are teaming up in the loosest of ways on Friday, with simultaneous postings of our macky-cheese, and you're invited to join in the fun.
Fancy, plebeian, mess-hall sized or petitely portioned, it doesn't matter.
It's not a contest; it's a lifestyle choice.
We'd love to see your macaroni and cheese on Jan. 5, with the Technorati tag mac-n-cheese-off.
Get cheesy.

Happy New Year

A few years ago, before I started this blog, I downloaded a free recipe organizer called YUM!
It's simple but cute and effective. I hadn't realized until I went and looked for it again today that it's a Mac OS X app. Sorry, Windows, but {00h} it gives me thrills to promote Mac software. Freeware!
The only recipe I have ever saved in YUM! is one I dreamed up for black-eyed peas, shredded ham shanks and chopped cabbage, way back when I downloaded the recipe program. I don't especially like Hoppin' John, the traditional New Year's Day meal of black-eyed peas and rice. Too sludgy. But I was wild about my own dish. I was so taken by it, I had to do an Internet search to learn if black-eyed peas, ham and cabbage was "real."
It is. I somehow channeled a genuine keeper, and it's got New Year's good luck written all over it. And it was so good, I had to archive it.
At the end of the recipe I stored in my YUM! I wrote, "You will cry, it's so good."
We had some today, and... It's that good.
THIS IS NOT A RECIPE BLOG, but here's my New Year's gift to you. Warning: It's a "Cookiecrumb-style" recipe, so there are no measurements.

BLACK-EYED PEAS AND CABBAGE

Ingredients:
Dried black-eyed peas
Smoked ham shanks
Green cabbage
Celery leaves
Carrot
Onion
Bay leaf
Dried oregano
Dried parsley
Cayenne
White pepper
Garlic powder

Proportions: Beans are the basis of this dish. Use about a quarter or a third, by volume, of ham shanks to soaked beans. Use about a third, by volume, of chopped, plain green cabbage (before cooking).

1. Soak dried, picked-over black-eyed peas in water for a few hours (or use fresh, or fresh-frozen).

2. Cook smoked ham shanks (sawed by the butcher into 1” rings would be nice) in water to cover with some celery tops, a split carrot, some chopped onion, and generous pinches of the following dried spices: a bay leaf, some crumbled oregano, garlic powder, cayenne, white pepper, (salt — careful), and maybe even some hokey dried parsley. Cook a long time, until really tender (adding boiling water if needed).

3. When tender, remove meat to cool. Strain broth into a bowl and discard vegetable slush (but save bay leaf).

4. Return broth and bay leaf to pot and add drained, soaked black-eyed peas. Cook until tender. Correct seasonings.

5. While beans cook, clean and shred the meat. Poke the marrow from the bones, if possible, into the beans and broth.

6. Add chopped cabbage and the meat. Cook, with lid off, until cabbage is just right, probably just a few minutes.

7. You will cry, it's so good.