let’s get fat and sassy
Chris stumbled upon this recipe in a spam blog while searching the worldwide intertubes for “fuck spaghetti.” For posterity:
You could try making this, if you can figure out what “1 crapper spaghetti sauce intermixture – (26.5 oz)” means. It does claim that “This instruction module help most quaternary people.”
A friend in NY told me she used to have lavender a lot in food as a kid, and that I should look into lavender bread (pursuant my continual rosemary bread obsession). This is based on the first good-looking lavender bread recipe I could find, though, and it’s a somewhat sweet non-yeast bread that relies on eggs and baking powder to rise–not quite rich enough to be cake. Some people seem to find lavender in food unappealing as it’s largely an aroma thing, but I like it, especially with tea. After some searching, I got culinary-grade dried lavender flowers from Penzeys Spices, which has a branch in Grand Central, conveniently!
Modified from this Allrecipes version.
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease two smallish loaf pans thoroughly–this bread likes to stick.
Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Raise to just barely a simmer–you are looking for tiny bubbles around the edges, but not a full boil–then remove from heat, and allow to cool some.
Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs until the mixture is light and fluffy (I did this first with a spoon and did not achieve fluffiness, and it was sub-par. Use a mixer!)
Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; alternate adding the dry ingredients and the lavender-milk to the creamed things until just blended. Pour/scrape into the prepared pans.
Bake for 35 minutes, or until a testing thing comes out clean. Cool pretty thoroughly in the pan before attempting to turn out onto a wire rack. When it’s cool, you can add a citrus glaze if you like. My last one was 1/4 cup powdered sugar / juice of about a third of a lemon / splash of vanilla, but this did not quite seem ideal.
The next few posts are going to be from the backlog, since there are several posts I’ve been meaning to make. The following dish I’ve made twice, and it’s turned out pretty good both times.
Pork belly is a cut of meat that’s not often used directly in Western cooking, though it’s the cut that’s used to make bacon and pancetta. It usually has the skin attached, a layer of fat under that, and then tender, marbled meat under that. Any Asian grocery store with a butcher’s counter will stock it, it’s very cheap, and it’s really, really good. The only thing I’d add to the recipe is to be careful when you’re scoring the skin to put the herb/spice paste in. Pork skin is tough to get through, so either use a sharp knife, or a serrated one, and be careful to let the serrations do the cutting, rather than pushing down and sawing the skin back and forth. The deeper into the top layer of fat you can get the herbs and spices, the better. As the pork belly roasts, the flavors from the rosemary, thyme, and fennel will be carried down with the melting fat, seasoning the rest of the meat as it drips into the pan. I didn’t take any pictures, but below is the image from the recipe page, and it’s turned out exactly like this:
If you haven’t already seen this, you MUST check out this recipe for oven-roasted broccoli:
http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2008/11/the_best_brocco.html
You basically just mix up broccoli, garlic, pinenuts (optional), salt and pepper and roast in the oven, and then squeeze lemon juice over it all. Somehow the combination of the caramelization and the citrus is insanely delicious. Try it even if you don’t like broccoli — it will change your mind!
Today I made risotto so good I could not believe that I had made it. It was an epiphany.
I know, I know, George already posted a risotto recipe, and mine is not that different from his, but it’s simpler, and has things in it I like. So there.
Ingredients
* You need about four times as much liquid as rice. I split mine up like this: 4 cups vegetable broth; 1 cup water; 1 cup wine. I’ve seen recipes that suggest only 1/2 a cup of wine, and all the rest broth… the main reason I put water in is because the easy-to-buy container of broth only has four cups in it. You could also, obviously, use chicken broth.
Directions
This recipe is deceptively simple. The drawback of amazing risotto is that it takes about an hour of constant stirring and pouring.
I have been trying to cut down on meat lately for health reasons, which will go one of two ways as far as you all are concerned:
So far I’m still being relatively un-lazy, so I modified my mom’s White Chicken Chili to be veggie-ful. I love white chili because I’m not a big fan of tomato sauce, onions, or peppers, all of which are usually heavily present in traditional chilis. This chili is spicy but light, and as soon as I eat up a batch I want MORE.
Ingredients:
Directions:
In case you were wondering, Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon IS that complicated. Spelling it right is, too. Kim and I set out to recreate this epic dish and, even starting as a two-person team, it was still about a six-hour process. I also don’t know how Amy Adams had time to fall asleep, because there was no point at which I got to stop doing things. On the other hand, it was awesome.
You can find a pretty good transcript of the recipe here (but not quite complete, annoyingly), if you don’t have the cookbook. Note that you will also need her instructions on sauteing mushrooms (this one is a direct, complete copy) and brown-braising pearl onions (close enough), even if you think you know how to do these things.
Some notes:
Use caution, or perhaps better beef stock.For extras, here is the rosemary bread recipe I have been fussing with of late. It’s sort of long but that’s because the procedure is the complicated part; sorry. Start this ~3 hrs before you want to eat it.
Dissolve yeast in the warm water and sugar. If it’s NOT instant/fast-acting/bread-machine yeast, give it <5 min to froth up. Otherwise, immediately add flour, salt, and 2 tsp rosemary and stir until blended. Do not knead! Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until double in size; bonus points for putting it someplace slightly warm and moist.
Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle with corn meal. Perhaps try oiling your hands instead of flouring them, as the dough is super sticky, then divide it in half, shape each half quickly and loosely into a round by tucking the edges under, and place on the baking sheet. Cover and let rise another hour. The stickiness is again a problem; cooking-sprayed plastic wrap is the only thing I’ve managed to use that DIDN’T stick horribly and make the top of my loaves lumpy.
With bread, some last-minute rising happens in the oven and for that you want things hot and steamy (har). Start heating your oven early, maybe half an hour into the second rise, to 450 or “lots.” My oven here has no numbers on the dial between 350 and 500 so I use my imagination, but I don’t think getting it too hot is a possibility. If you have a pizza stone, put it in now. Also put a cast-iron skillet in the bottom of the oven (or something else which can be raised to high temps empty, then have cool water thrown in it without exploding).
When bread is again about doubled in size, brush with olive oil and top with more rosemary and plentiful crushed sea salt. Get yourself some water, maybe 1/4 cup, on hand near your oven as now you must act quickly! Put the bread in (just stick the pan on the pizza stone if using one, unless you want to get fancy and try to slide the bread onto the stone directly), dump the water on your previously-heated skillet or whatever where it will send up exciting clouds of steam, and close the oven door quickly. Bake 10 min, adding more water for steam if it runs out. Then turn the oven down to 375 and bake another 20 min or so until it’s golden-browny.
I couldn’t decide between two openers for this post, so this is now a choose your own adventure blog.
OPTION 1:
I think it would be easy to reduce crime if you told people that heaven were like dining at Orange Shabu.
OPTION 2:
I HAVE HAD WAGYU BEEF SHABU SHABU: BEHOLD MY WORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR.
SO GOOD
A few blocks away from Taipei 101, this place is a chic Japanese take on traditional Chinese hot pot. The receptacle was a copper pot heated over a gas stove in the center of each table. Tables were separated by linen blinds. While I’m not entirely sure I am even qualified to list all of the stuff that went into the hot pot, a couple of things stand out.
I was treated to hot pot because my aunt insisted that I should go easy on the greasy disaster on day one. Taiwanese food is less flavorful and more gentle than mainland Chinese food–she was worried that the broth would be too light for my boorish American taste buds. However, the broth we made (using, among the other ingredients, a combination of napa and white cabbage) was aromatic and complex, and made an excellent porridge at the end of the meal.
Tomorrow: the adventures of Chinese barbequed sea cucumber, aka, Jo’s most favoritest dish in the world.
Lunch bonus!: Taiwanese beef bourgignon is not nearly as good as Sophiese beef bourgignon.
N.B.: I make this all the time and we have no photo documentation of it because it gets eaten real fast. I have supplemented with an artist’s interpretations of what the potatoes are like.
Ingredients:
Gloria will tell you that I am a measure-twice-cut-once kind of cook. I am very careful with quantities, and I don’t improvise very well. This is the one exception, so I’ll go over quantity pretty carefully.
HOW MANY POTATOES?
It’s hard sometimes to gauge how many potatoes you need. You really need to judge what the rest of the meal is like and how fat your diners are.
They are all different sizes! Fuck you!
I usually go for around half a pound of potatoes per person, if you have time to measure. If you don’t, about four people is four potatoes that you’d chuck to ward off a medium-persistent robber.
Step 1. Roast some garlic. I think we’ve gone over this in an earlier post, so here is an MS Paint synopsis:
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUU--
Step 2. Boil potatoes. I usually cut the potatoes into 2″x2″x1″ cubes, but it’s not an exact science. Gloria likes it when I leave the skins on, so I am lazy and leave the skins on. Boil them until they cut like butter with a fork.
Step 3. When your potatoes are soft enough, drain them really well, then put them in a mixing bowl. Drop 1/2 a stick of butter in there for around 4 potatoes. (Actually, regardless of how many potatoes I use, there’s usually a 1/2 stick of butter in it.)
Step 4. While the butter is melting, retrieve your roasted garlic and pop the soft cloves out of their pods. Put them into the mixing bowl with everything else.
Step 5. Take an egg beater to your potatoes, low speed. While the eggbeater is going, pour some whipping cream in. Usually I use anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 cup, but it really depends on the texture you want. We used 1/4 cup for about 3.5 pounds of potatoes last week, and it made a smooth, dense mashed potato.
Step 6. Season. You want to use some salt, definitely, but it’s at your discretion. I love throwing some pepper into mine, and maybe some Lawry’s seasoned salt. But if you’ve got only one bulb of garlic in there, less intense flavors are necessary. Remember, the base is creamy and buttery.
It does.
Here are some facts about clams:
This is a very simple and traditional way to prepare them, and the most expensive part is the bottle of wine, of which only about 1/2 cup goes into the cooking… so you get to drink the remainder with dinner! Serves you + 1 fly honey.
Linguini with clams (basic)
Melt the fat in a large pot on medium, add the minced garlic and shallot and sauté until fragrant and beginning to soften (about 2 minutes). Add the clams to the pot, the wine, and about half the diced tomatoes. Bring to a boil, then cover and let steam until the clams open (about 5-8 minutes). Meanwhile, cook the linguini to your desired specifications. Remove clams to a bowl (discarding any that do not open… that means they were dead when you got them :/) and cover with foil. Drain the linguini and throw it in the pot, which should have a nice thin layer of broth at the bottom. Throw in the remaining tomato and toss it all together over medium heat for a few beats. Serve the linguini with clams on top (either you can remove them from their shells or the diner can… your choice!) immediately.
This recipe of course begs for additions and variation. I was planning on tossing some arugula in as well, but my stock had gone extra-bitter so I decided against it. I also added some grated chestnuts as an experiment, but I do not recommend this, as chestnuts are a pain in the ass to prepare and they didn’t add much to the dish.