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recipe Friday
Something I've cooked recently: Yesterday, which for me was a weekend (I have Thursdays and Fridays off), I cooked an actual Western-style meal with several components, which is the sort of thing I don't usually bother with. I'm typically more more the "one pot meal plus rice or bread" type. But yesterday I marinated some chicken in olive oil, garlic, and lemon zest, then oven-roasted it over some lemon slices (the chicken was nice, but the pan juices were bitter from all the lemon); oven-roasted diced potatoes with smoked paprika and smoked salt; and boiled some brussels sprouts until just tender and then briefly sauteed them in bacon fat and topped them with crisp bacon pieces. Num.
Also recently I made some curried squash soup with half a leftover butternut squash, mashed up, plus some Thai red curry paste, water, a bit of Japanese instant dashi crystals for more flavor, fish sauce, coconut milk, a few shrimp, and a few dried shrimp (cooked in oil until brown and crisp) on top. Dishes like this are why I try to keep a decently stocked pantry. It wouldn't have been possible without the things I just had around: the curry paste (Mae Ploy brand), the dashi crystals, the fish sauce, the dried shrimp, and even the regular shrimp, of which I bought a frozen bag on sale a few weeks ago and which I've been using sparingly ever since. And actually the squash had been in my cupboard since Christmas, at least, until I finally remembered it was there and that I'd better use it before it went bad. I feel weirdly guilty about the pantry sometimes, as though it's an unjustifiable luxury. But the truth is that I almost always buy on sale or in (relative) bulk, which is cheaper, and thus I have a good stock of things that I will eventually need and use.
Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: Today's plan is mac and cheese with bacon and tomatoes, topped with crumbs (from the stale bread-end I have in the freezer) and baked. And a half batch of these peanut butter chocolate bars, which I've never made before but which sound great. (ETA: Don't use that recipe. What a disaster. Unfortunately my NoScript blocked the reviews of it; if I'd seen them first I would never have tried to make it.)
For next week, my plan is to use up the things in my freezer, which include chicken soup, mung bean and coconut milk stew, and a couple of containers of some kind of dal. And then it will be payday!
Something I'm idly thinking about cooking in the future: I still want green chile stew. Made with tomatillos--I've been craving tomatillos for some reason.
I've discovered that the place to go for hard-to-find ingredients for some things I've wanted to make is, shockingly, WalMart. I don't like giving them my money, because I feel like I'm contributing to exploitation (and more than that, to the exploitation of my own class, which really leaves a bitter taste in the mouth). But I can buy beef feet there to use in stews, and I've never seen them elsewhere. And everything is so much cheaper than anywhere else. It's the trap of capitalism: if you don't have a lot of money you have to buy cheap, and thus you contribute to the cycle of low wages. *sigh* (Note: Please don't come back at me with suggestions that I buy at the farmer's market--which in my town is hugely expensive, and which is also only open during hours I'm working--or whatever. I have explored the options, trust me. I have a ridiculously detailed knowledge of where to get the best bargains on various kinds of groceries. I know my budget, too, and my tastes. The bind I am in re: cheap shopping depresses me, but I am genuinely in it, and I don't have the heroic virtue necessary to live only on organic fair-trade lentils. If I want a varied and interesting diet, and I do because I love food and because frankly there's not enough pleasure in my life that I can afford to eliminate a source of it, then I have to make compromises in order to afford it.)
Okay, so that got a bit more intense than Recipe Friday is probably supposed to. But it's hard to talk about food and cooking without talking about the economics of it. At least it is for me, because when I post about cooking and eating nice things, I worry that people look at those posts and think, "But doesn't Kit talk elsewhere about crappy job/no money? What a lying hypocrite!" Which is partly a result of my own issues about money and food, but it's partly our toxic culture about both money and food, and how if you're poor you're not supposed to eat nice things even though you will also be browbeaten for supposedly not cooking and not eating good/healthy things. And I've seen enough horrible, horrible internet vileness on the subject that it's not surprising I'm wary.
Anyway. Beef feet. Crucial ingredient, apparently, in tripe a la mode de Caen, which I really want to try, and whose ingredients, although obscure, are mostly inexpensive apart from the Calvados. If I cook it, I will definitely post about it.
Also recently I made some curried squash soup with half a leftover butternut squash, mashed up, plus some Thai red curry paste, water, a bit of Japanese instant dashi crystals for more flavor, fish sauce, coconut milk, a few shrimp, and a few dried shrimp (cooked in oil until brown and crisp) on top. Dishes like this are why I try to keep a decently stocked pantry. It wouldn't have been possible without the things I just had around: the curry paste (Mae Ploy brand), the dashi crystals, the fish sauce, the dried shrimp, and even the regular shrimp, of which I bought a frozen bag on sale a few weeks ago and which I've been using sparingly ever since. And actually the squash had been in my cupboard since Christmas, at least, until I finally remembered it was there and that I'd better use it before it went bad. I feel weirdly guilty about the pantry sometimes, as though it's an unjustifiable luxury. But the truth is that I almost always buy on sale or in (relative) bulk, which is cheaper, and thus I have a good stock of things that I will eventually need and use.
Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: Today's plan is mac and cheese with bacon and tomatoes, topped with crumbs (from the stale bread-end I have in the freezer) and baked. And a half batch of these peanut butter chocolate bars, which I've never made before but which sound great. (ETA: Don't use that recipe. What a disaster. Unfortunately my NoScript blocked the reviews of it; if I'd seen them first I would never have tried to make it.)
For next week, my plan is to use up the things in my freezer, which include chicken soup, mung bean and coconut milk stew, and a couple of containers of some kind of dal. And then it will be payday!
Something I'm idly thinking about cooking in the future: I still want green chile stew. Made with tomatillos--I've been craving tomatillos for some reason.
I've discovered that the place to go for hard-to-find ingredients for some things I've wanted to make is, shockingly, WalMart. I don't like giving them my money, because I feel like I'm contributing to exploitation (and more than that, to the exploitation of my own class, which really leaves a bitter taste in the mouth). But I can buy beef feet there to use in stews, and I've never seen them elsewhere. And everything is so much cheaper than anywhere else. It's the trap of capitalism: if you don't have a lot of money you have to buy cheap, and thus you contribute to the cycle of low wages. *sigh* (Note: Please don't come back at me with suggestions that I buy at the farmer's market--which in my town is hugely expensive, and which is also only open during hours I'm working--or whatever. I have explored the options, trust me. I have a ridiculously detailed knowledge of where to get the best bargains on various kinds of groceries. I know my budget, too, and my tastes. The bind I am in re: cheap shopping depresses me, but I am genuinely in it, and I don't have the heroic virtue necessary to live only on organic fair-trade lentils. If I want a varied and interesting diet, and I do because I love food and because frankly there's not enough pleasure in my life that I can afford to eliminate a source of it, then I have to make compromises in order to afford it.)
Okay, so that got a bit more intense than Recipe Friday is probably supposed to. But it's hard to talk about food and cooking without talking about the economics of it. At least it is for me, because when I post about cooking and eating nice things, I worry that people look at those posts and think, "But doesn't Kit talk elsewhere about crappy job/no money? What a lying hypocrite!" Which is partly a result of my own issues about money and food, but it's partly our toxic culture about both money and food, and how if you're poor you're not supposed to eat nice things even though you will also be browbeaten for supposedly not cooking and not eating good/healthy things. And I've seen enough horrible, horrible internet vileness on the subject that it's not surprising I'm wary.
Anyway. Beef feet. Crucial ingredient, apparently, in tripe a la mode de Caen, which I really want to try, and whose ingredients, although obscure, are mostly inexpensive apart from the Calvados. If I cook it, I will definitely post about it.
no subject
But being wary is not surprising. I always feel wary about posting what I'm eating and cooking even with a fairly fat-positive flist/circle just because of the whole "she eats that, no wonder she's fat"/"she says she eats that, but it's so healthy, she must be lying" dichotomy. I know exactly where it comes from (my mum!) but I see it in so many other places that I'm always alert for it, even when I don't want to be.
no subject
*nods* I often feel that too. I think food may be surrounded by more taboos and moral panics and other weird cultural issues in the modern West than sex is.