kindkit | Entries tagged with food

I finally went to the Asian market that opened up recently in my town. Spent a bunch of money and I'm now in possession of, among other things, kimchi. Proper Korean-style kimchi. Nicely sour, hot but not blow-your-face-off hot, and above all, not vegan.

The thing is, the store where I work carries 3 or 4 kinds of kimchi. All of them seem to be made primarily for westerners. All of them are vegan. (A lot of Korean kimchis, though I don't think all, contain a little bit of shrimp.) Some of them, I'm fairly sure, use different chiles than the relatively mild Korean ones. I've tried a couple of them and they all tasted wrong to me. So I haven't had kimchi in a while. Earlier today, while I shopping in the Asian market, I hesitated before buying any. "Did I ever really like kimchi or am I just mis-remembering?"

Happy to report that I do actually like kimchi, I even broke out the chopsticks, which is another thing I haven't done for a while. But I would have felt stupid eating kimchi with a fork. And now I'm looking at my empty bowl and wondering if I should have some more.

ETA: The store was missing a few things I hoped it would have--no tianjin preserved vegetable, none of the really good dashi powder that's just bonito and kombu, and weirdly no Pearl River Bridge soy sauce except the mushroom kind. I don't know why I'm having so much trouble finding Chinese/Chinese-style soy sauces. Probably a supply chain issue, I guess. (They're available on Amazon but I'd rather not.) Also they had a vegetable labeled "gai lan" that looked very much like Shanghai baby bok choy to me, and nothing whatsoever like any gai lan I've ever seen before.

1) Today I belatedly ate my Thanksgiving dinner (the main course was stuffed turkey breast en croute--frozen, from Trader Joe's, and I didn't realize until yesterday morning that it had to thaw for 24 hours before cooking) and belatedly watched the final of the Great British Bake Off.

( Spoilery Bake Off thoughts under the cut )

2) I was sorry to hear of the death of Stephen Sondheim. Musicals are not my cup of tea, but watching Sweeney Todd as a teenager nearly convinced me otherwise. His work meant an enormous amount to many, many people, which is the measure of an artist.

3) ETA: I got to do some RPG-ing again! We played a one-shot of Seventh Sea, which is a sort of alt-history + magic adventure game. I played Roberto Gallo, an aristocrat-turned-criminal-turned-scholarly-adventurer, which was enormous fun. In the course of about three hours of play, Roberto got to scare off a bunch of guardsmen by waving a gun at them while describing the effects of gunshot wounds, and (separately) save the day by seducing someone whose heart had previously been broken by another member of the party. We play again in December--another one-shot, to help us get into the groove of playing together before starting a longer campaign. And after December, hopefully everyone's schedules will permit our playing more often.

Why do people always describe stir-fries as "quick and easy"? In my experience, while the actual cooking is quick, the prep takes ages and leaves me with an overflowing sink of dirty dishes. And then the cooking be-greases everything in the kitchen and makes the whole apartment smell of hot oil.

I suspect stir-fries are "quick and easy" to professional cooks, with better knife skills than mine and someone else to do the dishes. Also to people who cook them every day, and have proper equipment such as a wok.

Admittedly, if I hadn't decided to make a stir-fry of pork with spring onions and green garlic and ginger and orange + yellow + green bell peppers and zucchini and chard and bean sprouts, seasoned with doenjang and gochujang and sesame oil, it might have been quicker and easier.

(This was the veg I got cheap from work, and which needed using up. On the plus side, I have at least a couple of meals worth of leftovers.)

Today I've made a sort of pan-Mediterranean salad of farro, Puy lentils, preserved lemon, cucumber, green and yellow bell peppers, tomato, feta, some finely chopped celery, young turnips, and kohlrabi for crunch, green onions, garlic, parsley, olive oil, a little honey, and a little white wine vinegar. It turned out nicely and will be handy for lunches etc. The first big meal-in-a-bowl salad = the true beginning of summer.

1) Stuff I've been watching:

Brooklyn 99, which I started marathoning a couple of weeks ago and am now all caught up on. I was a little dubious about the first few episodes because Jake was such an asshole, but he kept getting his comeuppance for being an asshole, which was encouraging. And then he became much less of an asshole, and all the other characters are pretty damn awesome, and Andre Braugher and Marc Evan Jackson are husbands. I like it a lot.

Broadchurch S3. I finally got up the nerve to watch this. It's much better (by which I mostly mean less frustratingly implausible and contrived) than S2 and not as wrenching as S1, though still plenty grim.( Somewhat spoilery things under the cut )

It was interesting to see two performers I strongly associate with comedy--Lenny Henry and Charlie Higson (formerly of The Fast Show)--take on dramatic roles and do very well in them. I adore Charlie Higson in particular and now need to look up what else he's been in. And, in tribute to my facial-recognition ineptitude (I recognized both Henry and Higson by their voices) I will acknowledge that for the first two episodes, until I looked it up, I thought Trish was being played by Fiona Shaw. Julie Hesmondhalgh, who actually plays the role, is excellent.

Paddington 2, which is even funnier and lovelier than the first one, and which focused on the value and power of community in a way I found pleasing and timely. Hugh Grant nearly steals the show as a sharp parody of himself.

2) Stuff I've been reading:

Point of Sighs, by Melissa Scott. I had not known this was coming out, so it was a wonderful surprise. Like the previous Fairs Point, it integrated character development with plot really well, but in this one the plot involves tea and underwater monsters instead of dog racing, so it was much more my jam. My only quibbles were ( Spoilers )

A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers. I liked A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet well enough, but this one, not a sequel but set in the same universe and featuring a few characters from the first book, is better. It's still got too much of its plot stuffed into the last 40 pages, but this time there's some build-up, and more importantly, the characters are sympathetic, well-intentioned, decent people who still have conflicts with each other. Small Angry Planet oversold everyone's pure nobility a bit for my taste; Common Orbit feels more real and more complex.

The teaser chapter to KJ Charles's Henchmen of Zenda, which will be released on May 15th. I can't wait!

3) Stuff I've been cooking:

Strawberry-rhubarb pie. I more or less followed this recipe, but with a cream-cheese pastry crust (mostly because I didn't have enough butter) and with a few other small adjustments, namely a little less sugar, omitting the butter in the filling, and using a few drops of orange extract in place of the orange juice. Also, my strawberries had been macerating in a bit of Cointreau and sugar overnight, because I didn't initially intend to turn them into pie. And the strawberries were halved or in thick slices instead of chopped. It turned out delicious, although more watery than I was expecting from a recipe that promises you it absolutely will not be watery.

I was going to post pictures but the DW posting interface is making it waaaaay too much of a hassle.

I have also cooked a pork and kimchi stew (several days ago, before it turned unpleasantly warm here), made a batch of pesto, and made a "kedgeree risotto" loosely based on Nigella Lawson's recipe. I can almost see kedgeree purists cringing, but the one time I made a kedgeree the proper way, I found it dry and dull and not at all enjoyable. The lovely creaminess of a risotto-style preparation is much closer to what I imagined kedgeree to be when I'd only enviously read about it. Anyway I considerably adulterated even Lawson's "inauthentic" version, using smoked salmon instead of smoked white fish, which is hard to find in the US, adding some shrimp (plus simmering their shells with the broth to add flavor), using spiced ghee and a good dollop of Penzey's curry powder, adding some peas, and even finishing with (gasp!) a little cream. Lawson calls for quail eggs, which are both hard to get and, to my mind, ridiculous, so I topped the rice with a plain hard-boiled egg. It was yummy and I regret nothing.

Oh, and because I got some more rhubarb very cheap from work. I have made a rhubarb syrup which, added to plain or sparkling water, will make a delicious cool drink in the style of a Persian sharbat. The recipe is from A Taste of Persia by Naomi Duguid, a fascinating cookbook that I got for just a couple of dollars as an ebook from the Evil Online Commercial Empire. (Take 1.5 lb of rhubarb, cut into half-inch slices. Put in a pan along with a scant 2 c sugar and 1 c water. Bring to a boil, then simmer strongly for 20 minutes. Strain out the rhubarb, add 3 tablespoons of lemon juice to the rhubarb juice and return the juice to the pan. Simmer another 15 minutes until thickened a bit. You should have about 2 cups syrup. I strained my syrup through cheesecloth because it was a little cloudy. At this point you can add a dash of rose water; I didn't, because I didn't have any, but I did add a little orange extract along with the lemon juice. Put the syrup in a jar and refrigerate up to 3 months. Dilute with 1 part syrup to 3 parts water to use. The strained-out rhubarb pulp is tasty and can be eaten by itself, as a topping for yogurt or ice cream, etc.)

I have been writing this post for about a thousand years and it's getting very long, so that's all for now.

1) Did you used to love the Smiths? Has Morrissey's racism and Islamophobia made it hard for you to listen to them now?

If yes, let me commend to your attention Rosegarden Funeral Party, a band out of Dallas, Texas who recently released what seems to be their first EP, The Chopping Block. Some of their songs are astonishingly Smiths-like without being either pastiche or parody; others are more punk/Goth than the Smiths ever were, but even those have a mood and a verbal style that Smiths fans will recognize. Singer Leah Lane has a powerful, androgynous voice and a vocal phrasing that, again, often recalls Morrissey at his best.

"Ill and Getting Worse" could just about be a Smiths song from the Meat is Murder era; here it is on Youtube:

Watch on YouTube

The rest of the EP, and it's all worth listening to, can be played on YouTube and Spotify that I know of, and can presumably be bought from all the usual sources.

2) Tonight I cooked a risotto with fava beans and asparagus. It took almost three hours to prepare and cook, because fava beans have to be peeled and then blanched and then peeled again, and risotto itself isn't fast. But it turned out to be the perfect just-spring food, and I feel I have made a good life choice.

( Not quite a recipe under the cut )
If using fresh fava beans sounds like too much work--and it is a lot of work--you may be able to find them frozen. They're not quite as good as fresh but they're still nice, and much easier, though you'll probably still have to do the second shelling. Markets that carry Indian or Chinese foods are a good place to look for less expensive frozen favas; they may be called "broad beans." Dried and canned favas or ful mudames won't work in a dish like this risotto, alas.

Do any of you have favorite recipes for fresh favas, in case I give in to temptation and buy more?

Thanks to my new job (in a fancy co-op supermarket, where one of the employee perks is being able to buy blemished or slightly old produce very very cheap), I'm learning how much difference it makes to have access to good-quality, super-affordable vegetables and fruits.

The other day for breakfast I had blueberry pancakes with a warm strawberry and blackberry sauce, because I just had that many berries that needed using. And today I made a soup of chicken, rice, leeks, a vast quantity of white beech mushrooms, watercress, and baby spinach and arugula. Tomorrow I'm going to make a pasta sauce with sausage, fresh heirloom tomatoes, red bell peppers, and basil. Lots of basil! I love basil, but I could almost never afford to buy it.

Also, I have a fennel bulb that I will probably roast. Also, Meyer lemons are amazing. And ruby grapefruit is delicious, who knew?

Somehow, having access to more fruit and veg means I want to eat more fruit and veg. I don't entirely understand the psychological thing happening, but it has to do with the stakes being lower. It's safe to use things up, instead of hoarding them until they go bad. And if I try something and don't love it, it's not a big deal, because I don't feel like I've wasted money.

It's also kind of fun to grab a bag of whatever's available, bring it home, and figure out what to do with it. It's like being on one of those cooking challenge shows.

*wondering if gin + grapefruit juice + tonic would be as yummy as it sounds*

1) Stuff I've watched

Altered Carbon: The first episode only, because I wasn't that impressed. It looks nice, but the plot is just a bunch of not-very-novel SF tropes strung together, and the characters all seemed flat and uninteresting. I liked the AI hotel better than any of the people, but alas, we will probably see no more of him/it. The male lead is quite physically attractive and had slashy chemistry with James Purefoy's character, but it wasn't enough to keep me watching.

Queer Eye: The new iteration, just released on Netflix. I've never seen more than a few episodes of the old series, but I liked the new one enormously. It's fun, but it's not just fun. Especially in the first four episodes, there's a compelling subtext about toxic masculinity--not the virulent kind that encourages male violence, but the quieter kind that gets men to close in on themselves, trapping them in loneliness because feeling any emotion or reaching out for connections is dangerously feminine. And it's not every makeover show that gives us a black gay man and a white, straight, Trump-supporting cop having a conversation about police violence against black people. Plus, it feels very much like it was made for a queer audience rather than to explain/justify queer people to straight people. All that plus useful (to me) clothing tips = win!

Planet Earth II: Gorgeous, interesting, and not so heavy on environmental gloom as to make me miserable.

Blue Planet II: As you can see, I've been in a mood for nature documentaries. I've only just started this.

Strictly Ballroom: I know it's a cult classic, but I felt pretty meh about it. For one thing, I wanted more dancing and less romance. On the whole, I would rather have watched a movie about Fran's father and grandmother, who were more interesting than anybody else onscreen.

Paddington: Yes, the animated children's movie. It was a lot of fun, surprisingly sophisticated when it wasn't deliberately juvenile, and--perhaps because it's English rather than American--fairly unconventional and not too treacly in its take on family.

Think Tank: New Australian game show hosted by Paul McDermott. A bit too slow-paced; all questions are read out twice and panelists are asked to explain their reasoning for every single damn answer. But it has Paul McDermott. And because there are no prizes except a trophy, there's a friendly feeling I enjoy.

2) Stuff I've read

Not much (well, considerably more if you count reading news on my phone), because my e-book reader came over all brick and the local library system is underfunded as hell. I did read and enjoy The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters, which I bought from the Evil Online Retail Empire discounted to $1.99. The premise is that the world is doomed due to an oncoming asteroid, and all kinds of things are falling apart as people quit their jobs or commit suicide. But the protagonist, a small-town New England cop, decides that one suicide doesn't look quite right and proceeds to investigate. The worldbuilding is really strong and the characterization's good too. I especially liked the exploration/subversion of certain common end-of-the-world tropes. The book has two sequels that I haven't read yet, and I almost don't want to, because the first one ends in a way that feels like a real and proper ending.

3) Stuff I've cooked

Red peppers stuffed with leftover cornbread (tasted good but the texture was monotonous), potato soup with ham, red beans and rice. I roasted a chicken a couple of weeks ago and then made chicken stock with the bones. Currently I've got a pot of white beans simmering in the slow cooker along with some onion, celery, carrot, a piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano rind, and bits of not-authentic-but-cheap "prosciutto". Later I will add beet greens, radish tops, and some arugula that needs using. I haven't been in the mood for elaborate cooking, which is just as well because I don't have the budget for it. Fortunately I am ~~a food hoarder~~ a believer in a well-stock pantry, and I have lots of beans and pasta and cornmeal and frozen leftover chicken and frozen leftover ham and etc. etc. to use.

1) I thought episode 2x09 of The Good Place was the season finale (it helped that I also thought it was numbered 2x10), but apparently there's more, yay! ( Spoilers for the actual 2x10 )

2) Season 4 of Grace & Frankie was released on Friday and I binge-watched over the weekend. It's good, very very funny, and much lighter and more sitcom-y than previous seasons. Usually I wouldn't like that, but these characters have been through so much, and I like them so much, that I'm glad to see them catch a break.

3) I've been trying to read the two-volume Building the American Republic, which its authors (Harry L. Watson--brother of the more famous John?--and Jane Dailey) and publisher (U of Chicago P) have made available for free as an e-book, citing an urgent current need for US-ians to understand their own history better. For a few years now I've felt I should correct my ignorance of American history, which I hated learning about as a kid because of the terrible, jingoistic, uncritical way it was taught. (I have vivid memories of a couple of days in 11th grade, when we were learning about the Constitution yet again, and the teacher showed us a film about the Constitutional Convention. And suddenly it was interesting--instead of some kind of sacred perfect object that fell from the sky, the Constitution was being shown as the product of clashing interests and hard bargains. It was a thing people made and it wasn't necessarily perfect. Alas, we then went back to reading from the textbook.) Anyway, I'm going to keep trying, but at the moment I'm bogged down very early, in some discussion of early modern English politics and culture that, well, aren't wrong exactly, but are so oversimplified that it hurts me. (The Elizabethan Settlement was not a tolerant religious compromise, as I would think the 200+ Catholics executed during Elizabeth's reign would demonstrate. Also the noncomformist Protestants who were suppressed and penalized in various ways.) I know some oversimplification is inevitable, but it does make me wonder what other important things are going to get that treatment.

4) Did a bit of cooking this weekend. On Saturday I made a stew of chickpeas, lamb, and roasted eggplant with pomegranate molasses, which turned out well. It was entirely improvised, because I found myself in possession of three! eggplants because they were on sale 3 for $1, and even though I'm not a huge eggplant fan I couldn't resist. ( Approximate recipe under the cut )

Today it was unexpectedly snowy and cold, but I went shopping in the morning anyway and bought a chicken, since it seemed like the perfect kind of day to roast one. Every time I roast a chicken I am reminded of why I don't do it very often--the cooking is as simple as can be, but the cleanup's a pain. Anyway, I'm now simmering up some chicken stock in the slow cooker, to become a soup tomorrow with some of the breast meat and some kale and other veggies. And my freezer will be overflowing with leftover chicken and leftover chickpea stew, which is a good thing. A full freezer = safety and happiness.

1) My seven-year-old Sony ebook reader has, after long and faithful service, bricked itself. *sigh* I don't like reading on my computer (plus I'm having some vision problems that make it easier to read on a screen or book that I can hold close to me), but I'm reluctant to put my ebook files on my phone because, um, quite a lot of them were acquired through alternative means because I have no money. And as much as I love my phone and use it all the damn time, I still think of it as corporate spyware I carry around with me. I may need to buy a Kobo if I can ever afford one. I don't want to get a Kindle because Amazon, spyware, etc., plus I have the Kindle app on my phone anyway so I don't need a separate reader.

I'm nearly ashamed to admit this, but I don't think I like paper books anymore. Except if it's cookbooks, or books that aren't available in any other form. But I've gotten used to the light weight of an ebook reader, and the adjustable type size, and the built-in dictionary, the search function, etc.

Plus, it's much harder to find decent affordable secondhand books than it used to be. Maybe it's where I live now (a small town without a university), or maybe it's that ebooks + amazon are killing used bookstores, I dunno. But when I go into local used bookstores I can never find anything interesting.

2) I was a bit startled when the most recent episode of The Good Place turned out to be the last of the season. I liked S2, though I didn't think it was nearly as brilliant as S1. But the premise of S3 is amazing and I'm looking forward to it.

3) Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency got cancelled by BBCAmerica, which apparently wants to air nothing but gardening and antiques shows in the daytime and Doctor Who reruns and 1990s movies at night. Any hope that Netflix (which was BBCA's partner in making the show) will continue it is fading as the weeks go by with no announcement. It's a shame, because it's a really good show and I recommend it a lot. (S2 does have a proper ending, no cliffhangers or anything, so the two seasons make a satisfying watch. I just want more.)

4) I've been watching The Doctor Blake Mysteries (which my brain keeps renaming Doctor Blake, Medicine Woman even though Dr. Blake is a man) on Netflix. It's an Australian show set in 1958, about a mystery-solving police surgeon with a Tragic Past, and it's . . . okay of its kind? Slightly above average? None of it's terrible in terms of objective quality, but none of it's great, and it does this annoying thing where it wants to be socially relevant but doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions, so that, for example, we get queer characters for one episode where queerness is a plot point, and all the main characters get to demonstrate their tolerance, but none of the main or recurring characters is queer. Similarly for immigrant characters and characters of color. And so far there have been no indigenous Australian characters at all. Yet I keep watching. It's very much a popcorn show--like popcorn, there are both tastier and more substantial things you could be consuming, but it's easy to munch down a lot of it.

5) Speaking of consuming, I've managed to do a little cooking and baking. Yesterday I baked some Blue Sky Bran Muffins, using some peach and sour cherry compote from my freezer as the fruit. I fiddled around with the recipe, as I tend to do--I substituted oat bran for a little of the wheat bran, and whole wheat flour and barley flour for a little of the all-purpose flour. And I mixed the compote into the batter instead of making a little pocket of it--I've made the recipe both ways and in my experience, the result of trying to put the fruit in the center is not worth the trouble. Anyway, they came out nice and now I have a bunch of them in the freezer.

I also made some cornbread with bacon, cheese, and green chiles. I based it on this recipe at Serious Eats, but with changes. I used 1.5 cups of cornmeal and .5 c flour, cut the sugar by half, omitted the scallions/green onions and added some roasted chopped green chile. Also I don't have a cast iron skillet so I used a metal pie tin instead, and it worked fine. I should note that I followed another Serious Eats tip and cooked the bacon in the oven (on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, at 425 Fahrenheit for 20 minutes) and it worked great. I will never cook bacon on the stovetop again.

Today I'm going to made stuffed red peppers using things I have on hand, namely rice, some cheddar and blue cheeses, and some of the vast quantity of ham I still have leftover from Thanksgiving.

I've discovered lately that many kinds of leftovers can be successfully turned into soup. Perhaps this was only news to me? Anyway, I've made soup from the leftovers of a baked rice + tomatoes + ham dish (added to commercial chicken broth along with some beet greens) and from leftover potato gnocchi in what turned out to be an excessively strong puttanesca sauce--yes, I know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time--once again added to commercial broth along with some spinach and some frozen bell-pepper-and-onion mix. (I've been buying frozen veg because at this time of the year it's as good as the fresh vegetables in the supermarket and both cheaper and easier, which helps me eat more vegetables when my desire to cook is fairly low.) In both cases, dishes that had been no more than okay in themselves made quite tasty soups. This makes me happy, because I take a weirdly strong pleasure in using/transforming food that might otherwise go to waste, and because it's a way to have soup for virtually no effort.

6) And now I should start cooking the rice.

I've only been doing very simple cooking, and no baking at all because I got a little carried away buying sweet treats before Christmas and I still have lots.

On Friday I bought two bunches of beautiful organic beets which were on sale. Yesterday I made another of my beans + sausage + greens stews, this time using dried small fava beans, hot "Italian sausage" (this is a heavily Americanized product that no Italian would likely recognize), and beet greens. The fava beans were not peeled, and by the time I decided I had better peel them it was too late because the beans inside were too soft to hold together. So I cooked them a bit longer and ate them skins and all. They were a bit chewy but fine, and the stew was tasty and provided lots of leftovers to freeze.

Today I'm roasting the actual beets, which I'm going to dress with walnut oil and lemon juice. I'll eat some today with blue cheese and toasted walnuts, and keep the rest for later.

A little earlier today I finally got around to using a half pound of raw almonds that I bought back in October because they were on sale cheap. I used this recipe for Tamari Roasted Almonds. For the soy I used about two parts Pearl River Bridge Mushroom Flavored Dark Soy Sauce to one part Pearl River Bridge Golden Label Light Soy Sauce. I also used a little less butter than the recipe calls for, and sprinkled the almonds with smoked paprika (and no extra salt) at the end. They are so, so good. They are little umami love bombs, with a really deep roasted-almond flavor as well. Now I have a plan for the next time almonds go on sale.

Apart from that I don't have any specific cooking plans. I'm needing to watch my budget quite a bit, and so my cooking needs to be based around what's cheap/on sale plus what I already have in the pantry, so it's hard to make plans. In the near future I'll need to use up the two red bell peppers, two yellow squash, radishes, carrots, and large cucumber currently occupying my fridge. There may be stuffed peppers if I get ambitious, otherwise pasta with vegetables, or vegetable soup, or something. And what I think of as Lazy Salad, i.e. cut-up veggies with dip. /no exciting cooking to see here

What is exciting is the amazing Christmas gift I got from

halotolerant!

( Picture under the cut )

I ended up making plans for Christmas. I asked a friend of mine, who's been having a hard time lately and who I don't think should be alone on Christmas, to see a movie with me. We'll be seeing Molly's Game, which seemed like the best of an uninteresting lot. (I know everyone loves The Last Jedi, but I have not seen a Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi and I have no intention of breaking my streak.)

I confess I'm not feeling all the enthusiastic about the business--it would help if there was a movie I actually wanted to see--but on the day, I'll probably be glad for some company too.

To accommodate tomorrow's plans, I'm having my very simple Christmas dinner today: ham (leftover from Thaksgiving), roasted potatoes, brussels sprouts with chestnuts and boursin cheese. I have some no-effort-required treats for tomorrow as well (smoked salmon! elderflower and rose lemonade!), and a rather shocking excess of sweet things, so I'm set for the holiday. Also possibly for nuclear winter.

I have some m/m romance novels to read (K.J. Charles's An Unsuitable Heir and a couple of Whyborne and Griffin books by Jordan L. Hawk). I'll listen to some Christmas tunes and to the Cabin Pressure Christmas episode ("Molokai"), which has become a tradition for me. I'll have eggnog with brandy in it. And there will be Yuletide fics to read at some point!

I'll be warm, and safe, and well fed, and hoping you are too, and wishing everyone was.

To those who celebrate it: a merry Christmas! To those who don't: at least it's almost over and soon everyone will shut up about it for another ten months or so.

1) This is my eighth Christmas working retail (*sigh*) and the first one in which I've hardly gotten any extra hours. The company is disappointed with sales levels, it seems.

2) Not unrelated to point 1, I've started selling blood plasma to help make ends meet. The process is less seedy and degrading than I had feared it would be. Still not the most fun I've ever had in my life, but money is useful.

3) I'm having one of those spells of feeling generally tired and unwell while not actually being sick. I don't think it's related to point 2, since it was already happening before I started selling plasma and hasn't gotten worse since I started. But it's a serious motivation killer and part of the reason I haven't been around much.

3b) I will have health insurance starting in the new year. Hooray for Obamacare while it lasts! (This is definitely a thing I should have done earlier, although it would have been more complicated at my old job, where employees were offered health insurance but it was expensive and terrible, than at my current job where part-timers aren't offered insurance at all.)

4) Definitely related to point 3, I haven't been doing much cooking and probably won't do much for Christmas. The limit of my ambition is to maybe buy a nice steak or pork chop and accompany it with some easy pre-made sides from Trader Joe's.

5) I did, however, cook a nice lentil and sausage stew yesterday. Browned some garlicky sausage plus three cloves of garlic, took it out of the pan and cooked an onion and an orange bell pepper in the remaining fat, added Puy lentils, chicken stock, bay leaf, and water to pan, simmered until lentils were about half done, added chopped mustard greens and radish tops, simmered until everything was almost done, put sausage and garlic back into the pan and simmered another 5 minutes or so. Oh, and at various cooking stages I reinforced the flavor with a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, a few drops of soy sauce, and a bit of ham dripping from my Thanksgiving ham, which has since resided in the freezer. (Seriously, if you cook a ham, pour out all the cooking juices into a shallow pan, refrigerate overnight so that you can skim off the fat, and then cut the lovely flavorful gelatinous dripping into bits and freeze it. It adds tons of flavor to soup stocks and even to vegetable dishes that would benefit from hamminess and saltiness.)

Variations of beans + sausage + greens are some of my favorite things in the world to eat.

6) The two shows I was currently watching, The Exorcist and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, both had their season finales this weekend (and both were very good). There's no word yet on whether either will get another season, and The Exorcist's situation is now even more fraught because of Disney buying Fox. Though The Exorcist's executive producer has said he'll try to take the show to Hulu or Amazon if Disney doesn't renew it.

Anyway, I feel like I've got OMG nothing to watch until The Good Place comes back from hiatus. It isn't actually true, because there's tons of stuff on Netflix, but I'm attached to those two shows and want to see more of them. There doesn't seem to be any good fanfic for The Exorcist and I can only find one good Dirk Gently writer on AO3 (it's Lavellington and I've already read all their fics).

Am I just nostalgically imagining that there used to be tons of great fanfic and now there isn't anymore? Or am I unlucky in my recent--by which I mean the last ten years or so--fandoms? My first two fandoms were Buffy and then due South, both of which had a high proportion of excellent writers, so maybe my experience since then has been regression to the mean.

7) I should go to the laundromat but I really really don't want to. I may end up hand-washing something and trying again tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving to US folks who are celebrating. I decided to go for the easiest meal I could think of that was still adequately festive--ham, a potato gratin, creamed peas and onions, and Pumpkin Marble Mousse Bars from Trader Joe's for dessert. I'll have enormous amounts of leftover ham, which suits me fine.

Besides food, I've dedicated today to resting up for Black Friday. I'm actually starting work tomorrow later than I normally would, but it'll still be a ridiculously busy day.

There may be napping today, and there will definitely be the most recent three episodes of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I started watching this last week and I'm loving it. ( A little bit more under the cut, but no spoilers )

No new episode of The Exorcist this week, alas. But I can understand them not wanting to air a struggling show on Black Friday. Plus, I fear that I may not be happy with the direction this episode goes, which makes waiting another week easier.

1) Something I've cooked recently:

Soup and stew weather is gloriously here, yay! Last weekend I made an autumnal white bean stew with escarole and sausage. ( Recipe under the cut )

A few days ago I bought a 1 lb bag of frozen mixed seafood (squid, octopus, mussels, and shrimp) because it was on clearance. Today I used it in something I'm calling ( Seafood and Chickpea Stew with Spanish Flavors )

I haven't baked much, but last weekend I did make my favorite apple cake. I've eaten about a quarter of it and the rest is in the freezer, awaiting the hour of need.

2) Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future:

Today, to go with the stew, I bought a loaf of bread with herbes de provence. I forgot, if indeed I ever knew, that "herbes de provence" in the US includes lavender. Yes, lavender-flavored bread. Imagine my surprise. Now, I do actually like lavender, although not in bread and not with seafood stew, so I'm hoping to salvage the bread by turning it into a bread pudding with a lavender caramel sauce.

3) Something I'm vaguely thinking about cooking someday: US Thanksgiving is less than three weeks away (how did this happen?) so I should probably decide if I'm going to cook anything, and if so, what. I might make a savoury pie the weekend before and freeze it, or I might decide to repeat last year and buy a frozen lasagne--because, to be honest, I tremendously enjoyed doing nothing on Thanksgiving but resting up in preparation for Black Friday.

1) Something I've cooked recently

Yesterday, inspired by a pie that somebody (I can't remember who, Wikipedia isn't helping, and I'm too lazy to go back and rewatch) made on this year's Great British Bake Off, I made a butternut squash and blue cheese pie that turned out fairly well. The flavor is great, but I had some Onion Issues. ( details under the cut )

Today, inspired by a craving for soup, a craving for veggies, and a feeling that I should really use my bag of bonito flakes that is three months past its sell-by date, I'm cooking a soup of vegetables and eggs simmered in dashi. Right now I'm simmering the eggs in some dashi flavored with Japanese light (light-colored) soy sauce and some sherry (I didn't have mirin or sake). When the eggs are ready, I'm going to simmer yellow squash, some butternut squash chunks I didn't roast yesterday, a sweet potato, maybe some regular potato, and some Chinese cabbage in plain dashi and then add the simmered eggs--I'll keep their simmering liquid to eat with noodles another time--and some miso paste at the end. No tofu, alas, because I forgot to buy any, but basically this is a cross between a Korean soybean paste stew and a Japanese oden, and to further disrespect both traditions I'm probably going to eat it with soba noodles. I expect it to be deliciously wrong.

The last sweet baking I did was this upside-down pear gingerbread. I mostly followed the recipe, apart from adjusting the spices (more powdered ginger, no cinnamon, and a little nutmeg) and using blackstrap molasses. Blackstrap is the kind that recipes advise you not to use, because it's less sweet and more bitter and mineral-y than normal molasses. But I had some that needed using up, and I actually really liked the result. If, like me, you tend to find cakes too sweet, that's the way to go. The cake freezes quite well, by the way.

2) Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future:

This fantastic apple cake, probably next weekend.

3) Something I vaguely intend to cook someday:

More apple things, such as apple dumplings, which I have longed to make for years but never have because I did not own an apple corer. But I do now!

I need to figure out some kind of way to use the peach-and-cherry compote that's taking up space in my freezer. And I should make a pie with the jars of sour cherries I bought a while back because they were cheap.

Plus I want to make all the soups and all the savory pies. I'm feeling enthusiastic about late autumn and winter cooking.

Something I've cooked recently: Not a lot. I've been on a mission to eat all the summer peaches and tomatoes, and so there's been a lot of bread + tomatoes dressed with olive oil, and bread + tomatoes and mozzarella dressed with olive oil, and bread + tomatoes and ricotta dressed with olive oil. Also I have been "roasting" lots of red bell peppers under the broiler; I should freeze some, because I don't love the jarred kind.

I have baked a couple of nice things with peaches. Last weekend I made this peach and almond upside-down cake. I made a few modifications, as I tend to do: I increased the almond meal to 100 grams and cut the flour down to 155 grams, reduced the sugar in the cake batter to about 180 grams, omitted the almond extract since I didn't have any, and added about half a teaspoon of cardamom to the batter. It turned out very well despite the changes; the cake is a bit crumbly due to the extra almond meal but I don't mind that, and it's definitely sweet enough for my taste despite the reduced sugar.

Today I finally made a recipe I've wanted to try literally for years: Peach Slump with Ricotta Dumplings, from The Joy of Cooking.

( more info and recipe under the cut )

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: I don't have any concrete plans, except to keep eating tomatoes and peaches while they last.

Something I vaguely intend to cook someday: tomatoes and peaches aside, I am looking forward to autumn cooking. I want to bake my favorite apple cake again, and maybe a pumpkin roll or pumpkin muffins, and cook chicken with olives and preserved lemon, and make soups and bake bread. And maybe I'll try that Ottolenghi recipe for roasted vegetable tart, although I should probably do that soon while the veggies are still in season.

1) Something I've cooked recently: the cherries I pickled in May are now ready to eat. Googling did not provide a wealth of suggestions for what to do with them, so I made something up.

( Bulgur Salad with Chicken, Greens, and Pickled Cherries )

I'm contemplating other things to use the cherries in. I still want to try them with duck, but the weather's too warm to want to eat duck. I did end up roasting a chicken for the salad--I did it at nine in the morning to avoid the heat, and thus had a late breakfast of roast chicken at about 11 am--but a rotisserie bird from the supermarket would be fine.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: I have corn in the refrigerator that needs cooking. I meant to cook it right away but that didn't happen, so now I'm doing an unplanned test of the proposition that modern corn is so damn sweet that a couple of days of refrigeration won't do it any harm. I'm probably going to cut the kernels off the cobs and cook them with butter and green chiles, because that was good last time and then I'll have some leftover corn to add to another loaf of the cornbread I made last week. And I will save the cobs in the freezer to flavor the broth of a corn soup/stew that I know I'll cook eventually. Otherwise I don't have any cooking plans.

Something I vaguely plan to cook someday: I recently gave into temptation and bought a nonstick skillet, so at some point I want to make crepes. Um, maybe in the autumn? #toodamnhot

I haven't done a huge amount of cooking, because on Tuesday it's my turn to host the potluck and Buffy watch, and I've been trying to get my place ready. Yesterday I thought I'd give my kitchen a quick clean, believing that it was fairly clean already. But once I started cleaning attentively, my views on the subject . . . adapted, and so there was wiping down of cupboards and cleaning under the stovetop and washing the windowsills and scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees (luckily it's a small kitchen, because ouch). I'd never realized how many little dirt-trapping crevices and nooks my kitchen possessed, and I badly want to know what fool thought it was a good idea to install cupboard doors with lots of paneling detail--sort of like this, but a much cheaper, uglier imitation--instead of nice flat ones that would wipe clean easily.

Anyway, let's talk about food.

Something I've cooked recently: The lavender shortbread and lemon-lavender posset I mentioned last week were a big hit at the potluck. The posset in particular is exquisite; I decided to strain out the lavender rather than leave it in, and the result was gorgeously creamy and smooth. I found the lavender shortbread a teensy bit dry--the dough was dry, but I was hoping it would be all right after baking--so next time I'll use a little less flour. I live in a very dry climate, so the recipe might work fine elsewhere. By the way, the recipe will easily serve eight, rather than the four to six that Hollywood specifies, and I say that as someone who loves rich things and usually scorns tiny portions.

Yesterday after cleaning the kitchen I did my best to dirty it again by making one of my favorites, pasta with a sausage and tomato sauce. The sauce is basically: brown some hot Italian pork sausage links in olive oil, set aside, use the oil to cook an onion chopped fairly small, when the onions are pretty well cooked add some finely chopped garlic and cook just until the garlic is fragrant. Then add a big tin of tomatoes--I usually buy tinned whole tomatoes and cut them up myself--a bay leaf and any other herbs you like, return the sausages to the pan and simmer for about half an hour. Yesterday I gussied it up a little bit by adding two diced peppers, one red and one yellow, to the onion, and adding some wine to the cooked vegetable mixture and cooking it down before adding the tomatoes. I rarely use wine in cooking because I rarely have wine around, but a couple of weeks ago I impulse-bought a bottle of wine, didn't like it enough to drink it all, and so I froze it in ice cube trays. It's a useful trick for all those annoying recipes that call for half a cup of wine.

This morning I made another loaf of beer bread because (a) I really liked the last one, and (b) I still had a couple of bottles of Smithwick's that are probably too old now to drink with pleasure but are perfectly good to cook with. I used this recipe again as a base, but altered it a lot to make cornbread. I used 2 cups of medium stoneground cornmeal from Bob's Red Mill and 1 cup of bread flour, and I added about 4 ounces of grated cheese, roughly 3/4 cup of leftover corn kernels that were cooked with green chiles and a little cream, and about three tablespoons of additional green chiles (roasted and chopped, from a jar). I reduced the salt a little because of the cheese, and as before I stirred about 3 tablespoons of the melted butter into the batter and brushed 1 tablespoon on top before popping the pan in the oven. The resulting cornbread is seriously, seriously good. It's got a beautiful moist texture and a strong corn flavor, with sweetness from the corn kernels and honey and a bit of kick from the chiles.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: For the Tuesday potluck I'm going to make a potato-and-spinach curry from Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries--it's a nice easy one with panch phoron and coconut milk, and I'm going to buy some supermarket naan to serve it with. And I've got to buy some gin for g&t's, because I told everyone I had gin and someone else agreed to bring the mixers, and then it turned out I didn't have nearly as much gin left as I thought.

Something I vaguely intend to cook someday: No idea. The weather's supposed to turn hotter again after a blessedly cool weekend (by which I mean, high temps of about 80F/26.6C rather than 95F/35C). I don't want to cook. I want a beautiful man to bring me delicious salads and perfectly ripe fruit, and preferably to fan me while I eat them.

Something I've cooked recently: Lots of salads. Earlier in the week I made a bulgur wheat salad with peppers (capsicums), cucumber, tomatoes, green onion, chickpeas, and feta, dressed with olive oil and lemon, which I took to a potluck-and-Buffy-watch with friends. Over the weekend I made a version of this sugar snap pea salad with sesame-miso dressing from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. I changed a few things, because it seems I always do. I didn't have Napa cabbage so I used a couple of small cucumbers, and I didn't cut the vegetables small, partly out of laziness and partly because the dressing was so thick and rich that I thought it might overwhelm finely cut veggies. So I left the peas whole, sliced the cucumbers on the bias into nice ovals, and cut the radishes into fourths. It's a very tasty salad, though if I make it again I'll probably use one green onion instead of the three called for (and I like green onion). The dressing is delicious and I love it with the snap peas; Napa cabbage probably would have been better than the cucumbers.

I also made my favorite potato salad with blue cheese and bacon. I can't remember if I've ever said how this is made, so here goes. Boil some potatoes cut into chunks (red-skinned potatoes are best because they hold their shape, although this week I used a mixture of red-skinned and yellow potatoes). Meanwhile, cut some bacon crosswise into strips and fry until crisp, and make a dressing by combining roughly equal amounts of mayonnaise and Greek yogurt*, mashing in as much strongly flavored blue cheese as you like, adding a tiny sprinkle of garlic powder and a few drops of cider vinegar, and then adding in some finely sliced green onions/spring onions/scallions. Once the potatoes are done, drain them and let them cool in the colander for a few minutes until they're warm but not hot, then combine with the dressing and top with crispy bacon pieces. It is delicious. The bacon isn't essential to the recipe, if you don't care to eat bacon, but oddly enough the green onions are. I've had it without and it just seems stodgy. If you hate green onions, though, you could try substituting something else fresh, bright, and preferably pungent: lots of parsley, or some peppery greens like arugula or watercress, or even some grated radish. (*I use half yogurt purely for taste reasons, because I find all-mayonnaise dressings overwhelming and I like the yogurty tang, but you could certainly use all mayo if you prefer.)

Today the weather was relatively cool, an interval between two hot spells, so this morning on impulse I made a loaf of this beer bread. I used Smithwick's for the beer, used 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2 cups bread flour, and mixed most of the butter into the dough, reserving about a tablespoon to grease the pan and go over the top of the dough. It made a very nice, flavorful bread.

Today I also put together the dough for some lavender shortbread biscuits I'm going to bring to this week's Buffy watch.

Something I have concrete plans to cook in the near future: For the Buffy watch I'm going to make some hummus with cooked chickpeas I have in the freezer, and a lemon and lavender posset to go with the shortbread, from this recipe by Paul Hollywood. I'm a little worried about the shortbread dough, because it was very crumbly when I made it and I couldn't form it into a cylinder even after adding a few drops of cream. Maybe it'll be better after a day's refrigeration, and if not I'll just pat it into a round and cut it into wedges.

Apart from that, my plan is more salads, and bread and cheese and maybe pasta, because it's going to be stinking hot. Oh, and ice cream. I've been avoiding store-bought sweets, but only within reason, and ice-cream deprivation in this weather is unreasonable. Mm, I want ice cream now.

Something I have vague plans to cook someday: Ugh, too hot. If the monsoon starts (yes, we have a monsoon season here in semi-desert New Mexico) the afternoon rains will cool things off and maybe I'll feel like cooking again.

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something queer going on

Entries tagged with food

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