Just Poison Me Now

You may have noticed the news stories, and the foodosphere's reaction: Deadly BPA is in lots of food cans, and artificial dye is bad for your brain. You can hardly avoid the stuff, unless you make your own refried beans and eschew gummi bears.
Welp. Somebody's in trouble.
This is what we ate the day before last. Frito Pie. Our clever idea was to use bright-orange Doritos instead of Fritos, smothered with a can of chili (Trader Joe's, but BPA nonetheless).
Oh, and the cheddar on top is so vivid, it must be chemically colored, too.
I just ordered a couple of headstones, because that was one toxic plate of goofy, guilty, good eating.
Hell, fooey. Come on. The cheese was local!

Hashmouth

Will you look at this?
Cranky put this entire thing together. Cranky has never made corned-beef hash. Cranky has never "frizzled" leeks. He can get kinda hasty with a fried egg, so you end up with a plasticky disc rimmed in brown.
But look.
I know, the sun has returned and hash season may be over. Wait, I take that back. Hash season is never over. Chicken hash is a favorite of mine, and there's a fresh, free-range chicken in the fridge.
So, OK. Whatever. I just had to show you this beautiful pile.
Some recipes for frizzled leek strips ask you to julienne leeks. We have an easier way: Slice the leek in half, lengthwise, and then just cut tiny half-rings. They will separate in the hot oil. Some of ours got a little blackish, but "burny" is a flavor I'm rocking.
Brag, brag, brag.

Bastard Cole Slaw

I probably am not the only one to think of this, but I did dream it up myself, so I'm taking credit.
A few weeks ago, a couple of serious meat talents got together to practice some skills on the grill and in the Dutch oven. (I am not naming names. You bastards know who you are.)
These great people — I really like them — made a public, online, impromptu invitation to a mutual friend of ours to join them. I just KNEW my invitation was coming! I even decided what food I would make to bring.
Well, I guess that email got swept under the rug, because I had to stay home and eat canned beans all alone on the day of the gathering.
Here's what you didn't get: Kimchi cole slaw. Yes, and it was delicious. Fiery, nasty, awesome. Homemade kimchi in there, as a matter of fact. Aren't you sorry now?
Well, here's how to put some together yourself. Slice "normal" cabbage (round, smooth kind), both colors if ya got 'em. Slice some of your kimchi — not a lot, it's hot, but you guys like hot stuff, so use your judgment — and stir that in with some of the juice.
With me so far? You bastards. Then scoop out some tahini. You don't have to mix it up if it's separated; just grab some oil from the jar, and some good solid lumps too. Stir that in with the cabbagey ribbons.
Finally, add a dash of vinegar. I used rice vinegar, to keep it a little Asian-y. Taste, adjust, enjoy.
It sounds good, doesn't it? It's THIS good: You ever do a popper and your head just snaps back (good thing you're in a chair) and you are washed with pleasure? That good.
You bastards.

Weather, Weather, Go Away

Eating has reached really needy levels, Chez Crumb. The rain won't stop, and even if it does stop for a few hours, it's still cold and gray. Windy, too. Not what you'd call cheery winter weather. I don't think winter weather is ever cheery in Northern California, because it's always raining. And it's supposed to be spring!
Yesterday's emergency menu consisted of macaroni and cheese, as old-fashioned as we could make it. And in a benevolent gesture toward the neediest Crumb, me, Cranky allowed the macaroni and cheese to resemble Kraft Dinner. (A little; the soft lumps of cheese in our meal were a bit more appealing than that orange cheese powder from the box, that actually dyes the pasta. Yeah, I eat that stuff sometimes.)
I had been toying with the idea of topping the mac'n'chee with crushed Cheetos. All that color, crunch and weird flavor! But in the end, mood maintenance took priority over wacky, retro tinkering. I mean, would you have eaten that? It would have been difficult.
My homemade macaroni and cheese tip for the day: Stir a little cream cheese into the bechamel along with the orange cheddar. It's... creamy!

#Hashtag

Finally got around to the corned beef hash.
And a blog pal in Australia told me I was cooking up Bubble and Squeak!
This made me happy. I just like the name of that dish, but never really knew what it was. (I told Morgan I was still stuck at Spotted Dick.) It's leftovers, blended and fried up together. Meat, vegetables, potatoes, oniony things.
I was so there. My mashed potatoes were riddled with oniony things. All we needed was a handful of chopped meat, a splat of oil, and Bob's your uncle!
Two ideas I've lately learned worked well: use oil, not butter, and it's great if the potatoes are mashed instead of cubed.
It came out lovely and browned, flavored just right with no added flavorings.
(We have enough leftovers for one more Bubble and one more Squeak. Eek! Happy.)

Food Questions

Why do you go through life thinking you don't like sandwiches, and then realize you like them? A lot.
Why have I never tasted kohlrabi? (My theory: Don't need to.)
Why haven't I made chicken stock forever? Foo.
Have you ever been a victim of "Dirty Cloth" on the table in a restaurant?
Do people still believe Yelp or Zagat?
Maggi. Hm?
Is Tuesday still Red's Tamales day?
Anyone growing zucchini ever again?
Should I make my own Worcestershire sauce? (Don't answer; I'm going to.)
If you make a really tasty dish of wide noodles topped with sour cream, green garlic and chanterelles, is that Beef Stroganoff, hold the beef?

Genetically Modified Organism

So, if you crossed Carl Fredericksen with Russell,

I wonder if you'd get Emperor Akihito.

Sandwich and Two #Hashes

I thought the brisket we corned last week was going to end up too small for multiple leftovers.
What would I want more, hash or a sandwich? (Because I like almost all slabs of meat best in leftovers. But we seriously devoured slices of the delicious protein on day one.)
It turns out there's enough meat left for both.
Out of habit, I went for the sandwich first. Hash still a'comin'.
You got an opinion about those deli sandwiches with three-inch stacks of juicy, paper-thin meat? Yeah. Stupid. You can't put your mouth around that, and Nobody should be eating that much animal product at one meal.
So we cut the meat thinnish and piled it only a couple of layers thick. Mustard. Rye bread. Full stop.
Full belly.
Very satisfying, and now I'm ready to move on to the hash.
Whoops, there's enough meat left for Two more meals. Two more corned-beef leftover meals? Joyous dilemma. Another sandwich and a hash? Two hashes?
(Two hashes.)

Not Your Usual Soggy Plate

Corned beef for St. Pat's Day, of course. Extra special because we corned a local grass-fed brisket ourselves; five days in the brine and — perfection.
The traditional meal usually entails soggy cabbage and soggy potatoes, cooked in the meat-simmering water (where they pick up lots of salt). I have always dutifully re-created this uninspired meal, because... traditional.
But I recently had a dish of cream-braised cabbage that blew me away. So I decided that would be what we'd eat.
And the gates of freedom were thus breached. I could do the potatoes in some different way, too! Mashed, because leftover mashed potatoes make really good hash. (And because sad, boiled potato halves turn cold and sticky and gray on the plate so quickly.)
Cranky weighed in here with a great idea. We would make scalliony colcannon I mean champ from the mashed potatoes. How can ya get more Irish than that? (And it would be hella good in the hash.)
All resulting in this simple, pretty repast of food you actually wanted to eat.
A little buttery, I'll grant you. But the meat was very lean.

The Wearin' o' the Mustard

Anybody else see the New York Times dining section yesterday, the big feature about all the DIY food?
I've already DIY'd a bunch of those items, but the entire article, with directions on how to make this and that at home (and without freezing or canning) was very inspiring.
Naturally, today being St. Patrick's Day, the mustard recipe appealed. It was advised that you let the mix "calm down" overnight in the fridge, and we wanted to use the mustard today. So we made mustard yesterday.
It needed calming down! (There's horseradish in it.)
The recipe, as is, is nice enough, but a bit of tinkering brought it into focus. A tiny dribble of sherry vinegar, and a pinch of extra salt.
Cranky mixed some with a dab of sour cream to smear on the corned beef (but I can't talk about that yet; we haven't eaten).
Excuse me, I've got to go tend to the cabbage.

And We Were Kids Again

One good thing about this lingering winter weather is that it gives me another week or two to pack in some winter eating.
And if you're feeling a need to be babied, a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup is some damn fine nursery food.
I've never been happy with the texture of my tomato soups. But yesterday I got a silken wonder: The tomato sauce was mixed with plucky chicken stock, maybe more than usual. Less thick and tomatoey, but there was something nice about the liquidness. OK, season any way you like (I used microscopic flicks of dried spices — powdered garlic, ground cumin and smoked hot paprika — don't go overboard; it's nursery food), and then finish with a glug or two of heavy cream.
Serve with warm lacy sandwiches, oozing mild cheddar.
After lunch, we felt like we needed graham crackers and a nap on the floor.

Japanese Monster Legos

New York Times photos
How can some of the horror be so mesmerizing, so beautiful to look at?
It's like an art installation. The artist takes unlovely items and heaps them unexpectedly, in a totally out-of-context context. For your consideration.
And you go, "Oh, so gorgeous!"
Until you remember.

Best Sandwich in the World... My World

A blog friend declared, not long ago, that the best muffuletta in her town could be found at such-and-so restaurant. (I'm keeping her identity private. But I will tell you she does not live in New Orleans.)
The best muffuletta in town? That's so "Portlandia." There is NO muffuletta in my town, unless I make one at home, and suddenly I had to make muffulettas.
I could fib and say we ate these on Mardi Gras, but that would be a fib. All we did on Mardi Gras was get drunk on hurricanes and show our breasts. I don't think anybody peed on a wall. (OK, that would all be a fib too. Except the part about the wall, I hope. Cranky?)
Interestingly, we had all the ingredients we needed for these spectacular sandwiches, except for bread. Yes, I live in a house that sometimes does not have bread. But we had mortadella, prosciutto, provolone and two kinds of pitted olives. Do not trot over to your Quickie Mart for the ingredients. Your meat and cheese need to be as good as you can get, and the olives probably shouldn't come from a can. Cranky found some perfect rolls at the farmer's market.
I followed Emeril's guidelines for muffulettas, including the olive salad, which gets spread over and under the cold cuts. I was especially glad he's OK with plucking out extra breadiness from the rolls, because two inches in altitude of bread can really wreck a sandwich.
Verdict: Really, really good. Not sure if they'd be the best in Portland, but I sorta, somehow think they might have been better than Central Grocery's, if memory serves. If that's possible.

Out Like a Lamb

Beans again. Braised lamb shank again. Same recipe as last time, again. OMG, almost identical photo again.
I guess I couldn't really improve on this one. I checked with Cranky: Am I too hung up on my new "no tomato" braised lamb shank? Nope. He's done with the tomatoey brew for now, too. (And, jeez, have I cooked with tomatoes at ALL this winter? Once. A little dribble of sauce in some cassoulet back in December.)
You can click on the link to see what I used these last two times, but... Eh. It was very good, and it's up to you.
I just liked the picture.
Should I have used tweezers to arrange the bits of meat better? (Mouse?) Well, I never do. Why start now?
The lighting was good, and the focus was superb. Secret: Digital "film" is free. Shoot lots and lots; one of them is bound to be not quite so blurry, Mrs. McShakyHands.

Beans, Beans

My head and heart are skittering toward spring, but the weather keeps saying "Wait."
You know, that's fine, actually.
Because I haven't eaten all the winter food I want.
Beans, for instance. No. I take that back. I will eat beans all year long.
But Cranky had a cranky hankering for a stewy dish of lentils he watched Jamie Oliver fiddling with the other day. And you know how ad lib Jamie can be. Cranky fiddled, too.
What he came up with was this gorgeous mess of lentils, mirepoix and hacked spinach leaves. His innovation was to add some cut-up black trumpet mushrooms. (They are extraordinarily cheap right now, what with being a foraged, wild species that you'd think would cost more.)
You want to call it a simple, peasanty dish. And it is. But it's food to luxuriate in, to savor every flavor and texture.
To not feel bad about winter.

The Egg and We

It's not so much that the photo sucks, but the food didn't come out as pretty as I wanted. Couldn't have got a better picture with this strange, fractured, leaky-looking stuff. There wouldn't be one.
But blogphotoproblems aside, I really loved this dish.
Cranky and I have a long history of eating little bowls of polenta for breakfast. (We don't have jobs to go to; there is time in the morning to start the tiny slow cooker where the corn meal and water have been soaking all night long, and to wait a couple of hours for creamy success. No stirring!)
For years, we added chopped jalapeños, along with a handful of grated cheese. Really good, in a sí, señor, but Gastric Reflux kind of way.
Anyway, the other day we simultaneously realized we didn't want the chiles anymore (cheese, yes).
Cranky proposed a poached egg. But I wasn't keen on a dripping, ghostly blob of cluckberry. I wanted the egg cooked IN the polenta.
So as soon as the polenta was soft and smooth, we put it in our bowls and spooned out little holes (which doesn't work because: molten) and dropped fresh cracked eggs in. Then put the bowls into the microwave to help the ambient heat of the polenta to cook the eggs.
You see that oozing of liquidy egg white? That ain't right.
I guess the eggs were kinda old, even though we haven't had them long. (It's winter. The hens don't lay as much. I can't really gripe at the farmer for selling oldish eggs.)
This is really nice food. We just haven't figured out how to do it properly.

Miso Horny!

We all know Marmite is nice on toast. Vegemite, even better, according to some. See, that's old news.
But my mind has been swirling with tiny, useless, random creative ideas lately, and I'm actually putting some of them into play.
Here's how this one came about. Zoomie bought her first tub of miso, grilled up some miso-maple fish, and then wondered what to do with the rest of the Paste of the Umami Gods.
I ventured a couple of little suggestions. Then, Zoomie did a later post on the utter joy of plain buttered toast, and I thought: Miso on toast! Why not?
Right? Am I right?
She didn't exactly jump for joy, so I tried it myself, today, for lunch.
Ohmahgah. Seriously. #hashtag good!
On the right, some red miso that's been in the fridge for ages. On the left, new white miso. Both spread very thinly (scraped, actually) on buttered toast, and then topped with microgreens (purchased; a mixed medley).
We preferred the white miso, but either will do nicely.
This was a delicious, face-stuffing orgy of snack. Simple as can be. You could taste the dairy in the butter; the bread was fresh and golden-crunchy; the miso was a thrill of salt and substance and... you know. Youmami. Yo mama. The greens added the veneer of health food, and mild flavor and mouth feel as well. Very nice.
Gonna do it again, every day. That good.

@tinyrecipes

You may be seeing this book, Eat Tweet, zooming around the webz. Apparently some of the A-list bloggers were sent review copies plus a spare to give away.
Maureen Evans, the author, Tweets by the name of @cookbook. She has given herself the daunting task of writing actual recipes on Twitter squished down to 140 characters (including the title!). The goal is to present a viable bit of directions that might even appeal a little. You need to decipher some code. "Cvr" means cover; h2o is water. Some words even get fully spelled out. "Molasses"! I know what that is.
So her recipes go like this:

SALSA FRESCA Mexico Peel,seed 4tom; mince+¼c wtonion&cilantro/1-2jalapeno(seed for milder salsa). Toss+2T lime/s+p to taste. Yld c.

You catch those little tricks? "c" is a cup. "wtonion" is a white onion. There's a glossary in the book (and even so, I admit to still being stumped on some of the hieroglyphic terms).
I got a copy of the book because I bought it, the old-fashioned way.
I tried to win a free one by entering Tammy's contest for a giveaway. She asked readers to submit their best 140-character recipe. Groan! You know me and recipes. We have to sleep on separate floors because we quarrel.
Well, I gave it a try.

SPAGBOL Make spaghetti; make sauce. Put sauce on spaghetti.

I did not win.
(But you should see the "real" Tweet recipe for spaghetti. Jeez, almost the same as mine! Hah.)
Cranky bantered with the bookstore guy, telling him the brief absurdity of my recipe (while I blushed and kicked). It got a big laugh, and the guy suggested I could tighten it even further by abbreviating "put sauce on spaghetti" as PSOS.
But you and I know that might not work. You could end up putting the spaghetti on the sauce.
It isn't easy.