Eat Pretty, It's Good For You

I know, it's just lunch.
But look. It looks like spring, and I could use some spring.
Best thing, this all came out of the refrigerator, totally unplanned. You know how you get ideas for meals, and you back up your fridge space with things you're not quite ready to cook? Well, I do.
But this was a bunch of leftovers and regular staples. Ad hoc.
It's a fancy quesadilla. I wish you would make one of these. So damn yummy.
Believe it or not, the guacamole was leftover. Whoever has leftover guacamole, and did I call the doctor?
Naw, this was just lucky. Melted cheese between two flour tortillas. Topped with that green gunk, and a fresh salsa made from backyard tomatoes and whatever else goes in there. So pretty.
It's almost October and my mood is NOT crashing.

I Am Easily Amused

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So I Had This Great Idea

If you visit this blog now and then, you may know I like to get jiggy with teh recipes.
The year before last I cooked a "dry minestrone," which was a platter of beans and summer vegetables roasted, but not drowned in liquid. I thought it was clever.
This year, I decided to throw together a dry gazpacho. Everything but the tomato juice (and it really bothers me to use canned tomato juice with all that great produce, so good riddance).
Chunked up tomatoes from the garden. A little onion. Some cucumber. Oh, and bread cubes, a solid version of the bread I usually spin to smoothness in a regular blender gazpacho. Torn cubes, how cute.
Seasonings would be familiar: lovely oil, Spanish sherry vinegar, salt.
This is fun, right? Dry gazpacho, a deconstructed delicacy. No one ever thought of this before!
Yeah. But.
I "invented" panzanella. There it was, right in front of me. Panzanella.
Take a little panzanella and blend it hard enough, you get gazpacho.
Oh well. It was good.

It's All About Shopping

So I'm watching a couple of minutes of the Cooking Channel, and there's this guy cooking vegetables and tofu in a clay pot, real fast, real pretty.
I don't have a clay pot.
But the food looked good. Green things, carrots, mushrooms, tons of thinly sliced garlic, chunks of fried tofu. Ooh, and all simmered in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, water, sesame oil and loads of black pepper.
I don't have a clay pot!
Well, yeah, but.
I do now.
We made our version of this dish today, and it was nice. The vegetables were overcooked (note: no need to parboil). There might have been too much sugar, and probably too much water. But it was a new, exhilarating technique, and for a couple of old white kids, very happy-making. Variations will ensue.
Cool thing is we got scared of blowing up the clay pot on the stove top and ended up buying a flame tamer for the electric burner that cost way more than the dear little pot itself. (A small pot — half a recipe — is good for two people if you also have rice and maybe something else... fortune cookies?)
The pot is supposed to soak in water for 24 hours, but jeepers. I think a few hours would suffice. I'll get back to you if I'm wrong on that, provided I can still type with ceramic shards in my eye.
I will try this again. Have to. Spent money on the rig.

No! She Didn't!

My tongue is still burning. In that good, junk-food way.
Close your eyes, all you purists and phonies. This is eatin'.
Macaroni and cheese with a buttered crushed Doritos topping.
I can't really give you a recipe (and I imagine you wouldn't want one), but I just made my usual mac 'n' chee, jacked it up with a touch of cayenne and dried garlic (gotta be dried) to mimic that Doritos flavor. The topping was one of those small 99 cent bags, whirled in the blender and then sizzled briefly in butter.
Assemble this holy terror and bake as usual.
The crumbs darkened and the smell of ... buttered Doritos ... filled the house.
Was it good eating?
I just did it for a lark, but I'll probably do it again.

This Was Not My Lunch!

It was my dessert.
And I could hardly distinguish the flavors.
Somebody brought me a cold germ. It's not bad, but it messed with my sense of taste (and really jammed up my nose, which is why it messed with my sense of taste).
I am a total stick-in-the-mud yokel when I get sick. I want chicken noodle soup.
And no, dear Cranky, you may not make it with the chicken and the noodles and... You make it with the can.
That is how I get well.
(Besides, Cranky was sick himself a couple of days ago, so how cook-ish would he be feeling?)
I will do my duty as a food blogger and tell you the new, improved "home style" in the red and white can is, indeed, improved. I liked it, even. Totally prefer it to the original, with noodles so strange they squeak on your teeth and taste of tin. Which is what I used to depend on to get well.
So I should be getting really well.
Funny, I just realized that today I dreamed up the best alternative use* for a product accidentally purchased by Cranky, probably because he had a cold.
He shoulda had the soup.

*Deets coming soon. I'm squirming with excitement, actually. See? I'm getting well.

Fresh Chili

Do you cook chili at home?
I've been making some form of home-cooked chili since I was about 16. I admit it involved canned beans, canned tomatoes, and thawed hamburger meat. It was a great platform for ad libbing in the kitchen, though. I learned how to season the mess just the way I liked it, not by what Irma Rombauer said.
Fortunately, I like chili. Still do. Still cooking it.
But now, because I'm a Boomer Foodie Snob, I like to use better ingredients.
I've used cooked dried beans for decades, and I don't think there's been canned tomatoes in the house for... decades. Better yet, I've upgraded the meat and the seasonings. You know those hokey tins of "chili powder" that actually contain salt, cumin, garlic powder, etc? Those are banished. The meat has mostly been a minced or Cuisinarted thwack of undistinguished stew beef. Boy, I needed improvement there.
So the other day, Cranky was pestering the vendor at Prather for some chuck or shoulder or something. When suddenly he noticed on the chalk board that there were beef short ribs for sale. That's what he bought instead.
I've never cooked beef short ribs before! Collagen, bones, flavor. In a true instance of serendipity, I had just viewed a video for how to remove the silverskin (pesky membrane) from ribs. Ohmagah. All setski.
OK, silverskin off, we just tossed the short ribs into the slow cooker with some dregs of beer. This sounds slovenly, but it was done with a pure heart. A few bay leaves (oh, BTW, the ribs were salted a day before and left in the fridge).
I will not bother you with the rest of my recipe, but I will brag that the chilis were fresh. The beans were tender. The tomato was gardennial. (Advice! Use less tomato; it's better.)
I know chili is supposed to have a pantry flavor, a sense of "we got nuthin'; what should we eat?" But fresh chili was just the sweetest thing ever, and since I'm a Boomer Foodie Snob, I guess that's the way I'm doin' it.
Until winter.

9/11: Markos Moulitsas's Birthday

I'm not too good at anniversaries. If you have crummy, bummy memories of something that happened nine years ago or a year ago, what's the point in dwelling on them?
Moving on. Healthier.
Then, I thought: My little Bean Sprout died a year ago tomorrow, and I've had a weepy face all day. Press on my cheeks too hard, and tears squirt out.
I'm not unhappy. Just remembering, and missing, him. A lot.
But then! There's this tornado, virago, volcano of a new puppy in my house. She's been here almost a year. Bartlett, the pogo stick. She is lovely but not necessarily loving. This morning she demonstrated that she is Perfectly Good at giving little kiss-licks to my nose. She eats her food without prodding (or hogging), and does her stuff outside. Plays with her chase-fetch toy like a crazy lady. (That tires her out, and a tired dog is a good dog.)
She's gonna be great. I just never thought it would take this long.
Bean Sprout was a little pookie powder puff from the day we brought him home.
I'm fine.

Caul Slaw

Why not? It's cruciferous. Cauliflower is delicious raw. (And you think you don't like it raw! Cut it up into cabbagey ribbons; you'll gobble it up.)
I made this slaw with a couple of sliced fresh chili peppers (one was a skosh spicy). Some red onion. Vinegar from my constantly growing and depleting homemade vinegar collection (I am overdue for some new apple cider vinegar). Oil, salt, pepper. No mayonnaise, and jeepers, am I off mayonnaise? (No, I just ate a BLT the other day.)
The result was really crisp, new, clean. Still reminiscent of slaw, but so new.
Cranky wants more, now.

Pig and Vegetable Sandwich

BLT. IBM. ABC. RCA.
Which triad of initials is most important to you?
You are banned from this blog if your answer wasn't BLT.
Here's the sad thing. This was my first BLT of THE SEASON. And it's probably my last.
It's September. Labor Day.
I am only Just Now pulling in a couple of beautiful Brandywine tomatoes from the anemic garden. Darn anemic garden.
And I wasn't particularly proud of the bacon; purchased, salty, smoky. I'd rather make my own, and this experience reminds me that I must. It's easy.
Still! However!
BLT.
Not Fall yet.

Rad

Have you caught the drift on cooked radishes? They seem to be turning up here and there, and as this is my Summer of Radish, I had to give it a try.
First of all, let me explain. Oh, man. I eat radishes several times a week, usually on a snacky platter with other items such as cheese, olives, pate, like that. I admitted my radish love to myself this year, and have totally indulged. Always raw, usually sliced in half and swabbed with lovely butter then sprinkled with crunchy salt flakes. Eat eat eat. Radish radish radish. The radish guy at the farmers market loves me.
Anyway. So these cooked radishes keep popping up in the foodgeist. At first they were roasted (which sounds so elegant for some reason, even though it just means Put Radishes in Hot Box). Then I saw a reference to sauteed radishes, and. And! Why not? Don't have to turn on Hot Box.
These lovelies were quartered, lengthwise, and tossed with butter over gentle heat. You're not trying to get any Maillard on them. Just a trace of transparency. They even still had a little crunch. Salt and pepper.
Oh, my.
I will definitely do this again.
But I will sure as shootin' keep eating them raw, too.

So You Think You Can Cook

What I ate.
I know! Another post about what I ate. Boring.
But so not boring, I have to share it with you.
We wanted to eat corn, but there needed to be more food for it to be a meal.
Potato salad? And why not? So summery, and it's a hot one today.
But. Tiresome, repetitious potato salad...? Must. Be. Original.
Cranky had the brilliant idea of throwing in some fresh English peas. And that set me to thinking: peas and potatoes; sounds Indian.
I'm no Indian cook, so this is total fake-o, but we came up with a Bollywood dish of cooked potatoes, cooked peas, a small chopped tomato, seasoned with a dab of mustard, gobs of olive oil, salt, black pepper, a shake of red pepper flakes, and... and... a pinch of garam masala. Only a pinch.
I'm doing the finger-cymbal dance.