Playing Around with Soba

December 11, 2012 — Leave a comment

Trying my best to avoid TheMan’s Wheat, I got ahold of some Soba noodles for the kids. Soba is buckwheat. Buckwheat is neither Buck nor wheat. I suspect I’ll learn more about its properties very soon. In the meantime, the noodles were a total hit ( I had to tell Lucy to drop her fork so I could grab a shot ). Served with a dash of olive oil ( I’m trying duck fat next time or tallow ) and a few spritzies if soy sauce.

We followed with a quick, quick chocolate custard that will soon find itself as a fudgey-pop. But look at those yolks! Tell me which two are farm eggs. If you could only hear the thud they make as the yolk drops from your fingers.

Because, Ese, I like To Fry My Stuff In Lard

December 4, 2012 — Leave a comment

There may come a point in your home where you should become cold. It will be gradual, but ultimately healthy for you. At this point, pizza dough will not respond to your usual antics. Which brings you to Plan B. I know! Roti! But without the baking powder and instead resuscitating some powdered yeast that froze to death. That’s it and fry it in lard because Mexicans are on the right track with the lard thing. A multi-fusion-culinary explosion of yum. Then dip it! Yes, dip it in your mexican’t salsa with cheap tomatoes that you quickly breathed a new life as Italian cuisine.

Oh yum, lardy, yeasty bread dipped in tomato sauce starring tomato purée, seasonings and cheap tomatoes. Mmmmm. I should write this up. So good. But no, I’m late to the game. I hit the case where Pizza Hut markets too much dough matched with too much sauce. These “bread sticks” are lovely, but nothing new. All I can offer is a quick out when good yeast goes bad.

Tuna Melts!

November 28, 2012 — Leave a comment

Freshly made rye bread, sliced thin
Buttered
Tuna-ed
Topped with grated Cantal Jeune ( or mild cheddy )
Toasty toasty under the grill

Yum!

Fun for a girl or a boy.

One Roux To Rule Them All

November 27, 2012 — Leave a comment

Take some butter, okay a lot if butter, add some milk and flour and you got yourself some roux. Add some eggs and you have the power to puff. From here you can make cheesy poofs or eclairs or Yorkshire pudding. Really, you can puff anything. Have you puffed today?

Deviled Eggs

November 24, 2012 — 4 Comments

You must appreciate the deviled egg for its minimal effort, cute packaging, lovely texture match and zing. Once you pull out the yolks and get them sorted, you can add darn near anything. This is the basic deviled egg with mayonnaise, dijon, salt and pepper. The only thing missing is a little umbrella with some green olives.

Wait, hold on a sec …

Ah, that’s better

‘N’ Sauce

November 20, 2012 — 2 Comments

If need be, I will ‘n’ sauce damn near anything. Today’s ‘n’ sauce was brought upon by a pork roast that came out a little dryer than expected due to a dodgy meat thermometer ( ” 179, Lo, 139, ‘f’ if I know, 152, the temperature of your meat is idiopathetic, good luck to you! “… my meat thermometer said to me directly ). So I let the roast chillax over night hoping tomorrow would bring brighter ideas.

I then ‘n’ sauced it. Pork ‘n’ sauce came out very nice with all ingredients behaving like a tender, tasty, palatable meal.

You can ‘n’ sauce in minutes like this:

– sweat some onions in butter
– add some pizazz ( thyme or pan juices or bay )
– add a tablespoon or so of flour
– stir a bit to warm and de-flour-taste the flour ( einkorn works! )
– add a splash of wine to deglaze
– add some stock ( cube okay )
– stir, salt, pepper until thickened a bit
– add your load and let simmer on the stove or stick it in an oven.

Check it out, you’ll know when it’s ready. It’ll start to look like something you’ve ordered at Denny’s on a dark and drunkened night … but it will taste sooo fine

Eggs of Some Description

November 20, 2012 — 4 Comments

Most mornings we have eggs for breakfast. Usually served with rye bread fried in lard or duck fat. Omelets, fried, soft, hard, we keep running through the many ways eggs can be served at breakfast.

These are “quiche” eggs. Take some eggs, whip them up, add creme fraiche ( or sour cream might work if you’re in America ) and some salt and pepper. In a gentle, butter filled pan, slowly warm the eggs until they are nice and fluffy. If you start with bacon bits ( lardons ), then add the egg mixture you will have yourself some Quiche Lorraine eggs. Oh and the crowd will go wild. “What an amazing cook you are!” they’ll exclaim. Then you will all break into song.
Quiche Lorraine, darling, Quiche Lorraine. Thank you for [beat] all the joy and pain.

Wayne Newton – K.D.Lang, separated at birth. True fact.

Tuna Casserole for Lunch

November 18, 2012 — Leave a comment

And in the foreground, the beginnings of cream cheese brownies.

Now we are most definitely a pasta-free zone. Due to an amazingly flavorful beef cheek dish, I needed a quick out to enjoy the flavor while simultaneously toning down the cheekage. Standby macaroni ( or in French “coquillettes” ). If I must use noodles, I make them with Einkorn and loads of eggs. Long-story-short, there are coquillettes in this dish. I feel a bit like a slacker, but sometimes you need to react with the raw ingredients you’ve been handed. While you wait for your meat to defrost, you look around and see butter, cream, milk, dash of einkorn, canned tuna and macaroni which all add up to tuna casserole.

– make a cream sauce and make it taste yummy
– add tuna, double taste the flavor
– add pasta
– stick in the oven for twenty minutes until it settles in and makes friends

Should you use fresh, farm eggs for your cream cheese brownies, you must quickly crack into its own cup to check things out. Because Kevin the Cockerel keeps his girls topped up, should they sit a bit too long on their daily gem, things could move along more quickly than you ‘d want in your brownies.

I love brownies because they use lots of eggs, minimal flour and deep dark chocolate. I’m hoping the cream cheese version will entice my husband who holds brownies in contempt along with flour-less chocolate cake.

Quick! They’re Hungry!

November 16, 2012 — Leave a comment

I have tried a few times to get a plated version of “chicken curry,” by the time we get organized and I get my camera and things are less noisy, it looks like this. “More of everything, please,” they say. Then it is gone.

This is actually not chicken curry, but rather Butter Chicken of some description. Madame Jaffrey calls it “Chicken with tomato sauce and butter.”. I’m guessing there is some shorter, hip cool Bollywood slang for this, but mo matter, it tastes very good.

The heart and soul if this dish is quickly made in the blender using the Indian Food Trifecta: onion, garlic and ginger with a splash of familiar friends cinnamon, cardamom and clove.
The whole thing can be easily done while you work on your cassoulet, play with your kids and have a sip or two of wine. There is nothing hard about this dish. I added a few splashes of cream to give it that Indian Take-Out look we used to enjoy when we lived in a city that had take-out places.

I’m sure there is a Patak equivalent of this dish, but there is no comparison. Donchoo even think of opening a jar when you can spend the same effort on a Madhur Jaffrey recipe and come out miles and miles ahead.

Fukui-San, It Appears She’s Melting Butter with Celery

November 14, 2012 — 2 Comments

My sister Laura set me up with this cream sauce. I was so young and not even ready to yield its power, but I listened.

2-tbls butter,
2-tbls flour,
a nub of celery,
a cup of milk
Salt and pepper to yum-ness

And after my first batch, I cream sauced damn near everything. Tuna casserole, Mac-n-Cheese, Gorgonzola hoo-ha there was nothing I wouldn’t pop in a cream sauce. She did this little celery number. She said it gave it a little something ( or whatever babyboomers use for “pop” or “snap” or “x” ). I learned later that she taught me a Béchamel sauce to which forever after made me hum “Béchamel, Béchamel mucho” to the tune of a classic Mexican Mariachi request.

For this cream sauce, I added parsley and the much forgotten herb, Tarragon. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, all equally loved. But poor Tarragon, the Carreras of the herb world, sits in the wings waiting for that blessed “broken leg.” So Fukui-San, what am I making?

And with this I leave you a tune to hum when you stir your cream sauce: Béchamel Mucho-

Girl On Grill Action

Stick a fork in it

Fun and Easy