Mmmm... Food!

Recipes, Recipe Carnival, and other food stuff

Now relegated to Blogblivion...

Friday, September 08, 2006

Happy Birthday

To blogger Tim at My Money Forest.  Ah, to be a mere 26 again…

Speaking of being younger, seeing the abbreviation MMF reminds me of the days when we’d all go to Applebee’s periodically after work, or have going away parties there for departing colleagues.  In the early days, the usual bartender was a young woman named Jody.  I was introduced to a drink that was a specialty of hers, best ordered when she was there because nobody else could make it half as well.  It was called a Mongolian Motherfucker, or MMF for short.  It amused the waitresses sometimes to make me ask for it by its full name, rather than its initials.  It was delicious, but very strong, based on Midori, with whatever the blue stuff is called, a couple other alcohols, and I think a bit of sour mix as the only thing that wasn’t alcohol in it.  My alternate drink of choice at the time was their amazing frozen mudslides, better than I have had anywhere else, and probably about 1500 calories each.  Somewhere among my non-digital pictures I have one of our bartender buddy sitting on the lap of one of my colleagues.  Those were the days.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Hey Look, It’s A Post!

For lack of anything better and more time-consuming to post at the moment, Jeff posted not-necessarily-stupid-at-all questions about food and reminded me that I wanted to point out this Cook’s Thesaurus site.  It’s pretty cool and edumacational.

Now off to play with servers… Maybe I’ll post again later about pork chops, working at home, House, Standoff, or whatever.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Mmmm… Pizza

Last night was pizza night; our normal Papa Ginos order of a rustic meat combo and large traditional cheese, with the AAA discount.  Val got her first chance to gnaw on pizza bones, and her first taste of pizza cheese, which was also her first taste of cheese, which we decided after her checkup it was time for her to start trying.  She needs the fat and calories even more than Sadie did.

Sadie hadn’t eaten to speak of all day, and kept refusing food.  She’d woken up too early and had a cranky day.  We gave her a primo piece of the meat combo, which she picks much of the meat off of, but she wasn’t that excited by it.  My theory was that she wanted a slice of plain pizza, so I got her one.

To our amazement, for the first time ever she picked up the slice, held it like a big person and started taking bites point first.  This called for the camera!

The camera all too often disappoints me by getting an awesome shot but making it blurry.  I’ll take six pictures of one of them, get one that has a smile or is otherwise superlative, and the camera will have failed me just on that one.  Focusing is automated, which also means it takes the picture when it’s good and ready so I miss an outrageous number of “snap it now before the moment has passed” shots.  Sometimes video recording refuses to turn on at all, no matter how many times I press the button or how long I hold it down.

The first shot of Sadie with the pizza caught an uncharacteristic smile and was a great picture, but so blurry I wouldn’t ordinarily post it, and wouldn’t make a print out of it.  I was so mad I decided to experiment with touching it up.  I use Paint Shop Pro 5.

Here’s the fuzzy original (which actually isn’t as bad as a lot of the ruined ones I get):

Here’s the result of surprisingly little modification:

Click the pictures above for larger instances in a new window.

Still not perfect, but better.  I was intrigued to see what I could do.  Oh, she devoured that entire slice!

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Carb Girl

The third picture is especially significant in that Sadie hated potatoes.  Even in the mixed veggies babyfood that included potato, she could tell it was there.  It took McDonald’s fries to get her to eat potato in some form.  Maybe it helps that Val’s first potato experience was fries from Mina’s.

Valerie also thinks toast, bread crusts and pasta, even plain, are wonderful.  On the other hand, I am not sure she has ever disliked any food.  Declared it “meh” compared to other things, sure, but not rejected.  She also loves broccoli at least as much as Sadie did.  The bread picture here was actually a bit of garlic bread crust from a meal of broccoli chicken al fredo, of which she’d also eaten the other components.

However well she likes everything else, carbs seem to rule.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Wish I Had Measures

I just made the best (soft) tacos I have ever had.  Because I made from scratch the best flavored meat filling ever.

I’m just astounded.

It was about half a pound or so of cheap 85% burger, flavored with garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, red pepper, chili powder, cumin, cilantro and ginger powder.  I have a good idea the proportions, so I’ll try to replicate it sometime.

We used small flour tortillas, sour cream, grated cheddar and jack cheeses, and lettuce along with the meat.  I’d love to try the same thing with hard taco shells sometime.

Wow.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Black Beans and Rice

So we’ve been experimenting, because it’s gotten tiring eating chicken one night, beef the next, chicken, beef, chicken, beef, chicken...oh, hell, you get the picture.  It suddenly occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that beans are wicked healthy and stupid cheap, so I decided to start there.  I did this for supper last week and it was more than edible, if a bit on the simple side.

1 cup black beans, dried
1/2 medium onion (Vidalia, in this case), diced
1/2 medium green pepper, diced
1 good size clove of garlic, minced
1 Tbsp olive oil

After picking over and washing the beans, I quick-soaked them (beans+ 4 or 5 times their volume in water, bring to a boil and let boil a couple of minutes, then cover ‘em and let ‘em soak for an hour before pouring the soaking liquid off...this worked wonders as far as cutting down the unfortunate bean-y side effects), then added three cups of water and put them on high heat to boil.  Meanwhile, in a skillet, the garlic, onion, and green pepper met with the hot oil and sauteed for a few minutes, then they went in the pot, too.  Covered and set to simmer, the beans took almost precisely an hour to be perfectly done.  We ate these with brown rice and corn, with a bit of cheese and sour cream on top.  Yum.

I loved ‘em just the way they came out.  Jay thought they were a bit “bean-y” and has lobbied for doubling the pepper and onion and garlic next time around, so I think we’ll try that soon.

Having real garlic in the house has been a boon, too, in that it’s encouraging us to throw it into just about everything.  I made chicken and broccoli alfredo last night and cooked the chicken with some of it, and made garlic bread with some more.  Very good.  Very, very good.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Very Cool Site

Cook’s Thesaurus

Chili: The Results Post

That third picture is more to show the bread I bought than for another angle on the bowl of chili that could properly keep a spoon standing upright.  I saw wheat Italian bread cheap at Hannaford and it looked so yummy I bought a loaf to go with the chili.  The bread turned out to be merely okay; not fine enough to be like white but different, and not strong enough to be strongly flavored wheat.  Plus for all Hannaford make great baked goods, I think Wal-Mart’s addictive white Italian bread is probably better than theirs, giving the wheat an automatic strike against it.

I think the chili would have been great served with injera, which I’d love to try making someday.  It may not be Ethiopian, but it’s similar to the types of dishes served on or with the flat bread.

But I digress.

The chili came out near perfect.  Deb says it’s the best she’s ever had.  I say near because I know it could be improved slightly, but it was damn close.  Sadie enjoyed it, though mainly she picked the meat chunks out.  But they were the bulk of it anyway.

Monday night was when I’d planned to make it, with Deb having pre-cooked plain a bag of pinto beans.  I was late enough and we realized it would take long enough and the beans were abundant enough that we changed plans.  I drained a lot of the water from the beans - more than I probably should have, it turned out - and scooped aout two cups, perhaps a third of the total.  I made those into refried beans, a first for me.  They came out pretty good.

I’d also overbought the steak, already expecting to make something else out of part of it, or so have even meatier chili than I did, so I cut off half of one of them and stuck it in the cast iron pan with spices.  It sealed the outside and left too rare the inside, despite and maybe because of my efforts to cook it fast, so I ended up cutting it into small strips in the pan as it cooked.  It wound up being the most amazing flavored steak I have ever made.  I could barely keep from eating it all before it got into the burritos.  Which is what we made, with the homemade refried beans, steak, cheese and sour cream.  They were yummy!  And I can’t get over how cheap.  It was maybe $2 for the entire meal that left us stuffed.

Meanwhile, I cut the rest of the steak I’d opened into small chunks.  After we ate I cooked them in the cast iron pan along with a clove of garlic and almost half each of a green bell pepper and large Vidalia onion.  Tossed that into the bean pan and then cooked the other, larger steak, cut up in small chunks, with a bunch of spices, cooking until the meat was done and the liquid was concentrated.  That went into the pot.

Stirred and simmered and spice and flavored.  I used a dash of apple cider vinegar, a large can of tomato paste, probably about the same as two of the traditional tiny size, and ultimately ended up adding some ketchup, a fair amount of water, and both white and brown sugar.  At one point all you could taste was concentrated bell pepper and it was very bitter, so I ended up doing an unusual amount of adjusting the other way.  And repeatedly adding chili powder to get that flavor component to come through correctly.  That was the main spice, but along the line it also had red pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, cumin, cilantro and ginger (unless I am thinking of the burrito steak), and cinnamon (in the anti-bitter phase).

In the end it tasted similar to my old faux chili, but thicker and meatier.  It wasn’t as hot as I have sometimes made the faux chili, or at least the heat was covered well, but it was delicious.  As I noted elsewhere, Valerie loved the taste of the sauce, and Sadie declared it good in the face of fussy eating lately.

Doing it the night before worked out perfectly, too.  It cooked until something like 10 PM, then went in the fridge sometime after 11, after enough of a cooldown.

The chili experiment was so successful it’ll probably be a semi-regular thing, especially in the winter as it’s that sort of hearty.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Chili

Since I am not a purist, I am planning to try making chili with beans from scratch, inspired by a sale on “London broil” steaks at $1.59 a pound, and Deb’s recent successful experiment cooking black beans that we ate with rice and corn.

Once upon a time, I regularly made what I call faux chili.  It was based on cheap cans of Campbell’s pork & beans.  I’d fry some ground beef with peppers and onions, garlic powder and chili powder, mix in the beans and usually some tomato paste - soup in a pinch, spicing and sweetening it more later as needed, including possibly the addition of ketchup.  I’d cook the crap out of it and it was yummy, but it was also entirely its own flavor, not something I expected other chili to resemble.  I fell out of the habit of making this when I shared a house with my stepsister, as she frowned on my use of the kitchen for anything that seemed that messy or time-consuming.

For chili dogs now and then I’d use the canned Hormel stuff, which isn’t great but is what it is and is convenient.

We’ve gotten increasingly into the idea of scratch cooking here, and experimenting with outrageously inexpensive yet healthy ingedients like dry beans.  That goes back to when I made pea soup myself for the first time, and was amazed that it was the best pea soup I’d ever tried.

So here I am with a couple cheap yet nice looking hunks of beef and some dry pinto beans.  Deb’s going to pre-cook the beans for me this afternoon.

Now, I’ll wing it and do what feels right, but I thought I’d solicit relatively last minute commentary on technique and ingredients.  I plan to go to the store on my way home, as I forgot to get tomato paste or anything similar, in case I want to through that in.  Probably puree or soup would make more sense, as with my faux chili the paste was as much a thickener and darkener as it was for adding tomato flavor.  (Come to think of it, I might already have paste in the cabinet and have forgotten it...)

I’m thinking along the lines of cutting the meat into small chunks, cooking it in a frying pan along with some Vidalia onion, yellow and/or green bell pepper, and garlic.  I’ll spice the meat at the time with chili powder and whatnot.  Originally I was thinking little more than searing it, which is what I’d do for a crockpot or slower cooking in a pan.  Which was what I was originally thinking; cooking the beef into falling apart.  Then I’m thinking add the beans (or add the meat to the beans, as size may dictate), along with any liquid being added, be it water, tomato stuff, or whatever.

From there it’s cook and blend and taste and tweak until done enough to eat, and have bread and butter or maybe so cornbread on the side.

Any suggestions?

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Fish

So we did the salmon experiment, learned some things, and want to try something that’s more of a white fish next time.  Apart from preferring less expensive over more expensive, any recommendations out there?

When I was a kid it was all about haddock, but there’s a wider variety of less fished out species available now.

FWIW I don’t count swordfish in the class of fish I am talking about.  It’s okay, but I’ve never been a big fan, so I’d probably not tend to buy it except as a treat for Deb, or so the kids will have tried it, or to see if I can make it taste better than others generally can.

Friday, August 18, 2006

What Good Foods Are Made Of

Speaking of spices, I just counted, and including black pepper but not salt, I have 41 containers of herbs, spices, and standard pre-mixes like chili powder.  A couple of them overlap, like two (distinctively) different varieties of Italian seasoning, but mostly they’re different.  That also doesn’t count bottles of extracts like vanilla and almond.

I recently added the aforementioned lemon pepper, plus chili powder, cilantro, pumpkin pie spice, mesquite stuff, and cumin.  All while I was looking for white pepper, which the Raynham Wal-Mart Supercenter didn’t have, despite its massive selection.

I ended up using the cumin promptly, and making a discovery.

I thawed and shredded a couple hamburgers in a frying pan with some butter, spicing the meat with a little chili powder, a lot of garlic and red pepper, black pepper, this and that, and some cumin.  Hey, it was pseudo-Mexican, so good reason to try it.  I knew it was strong from the smell.  Since I often don’t know what to use in what food, or what goes with what, I open the jars and smell to give me an idea.  Which has convinced me there are certain things that aren’t the same dried as fresh, because the dried versions has little or no scent.

The burger went in with a can of refried beans, and on small flour tortillas with shredded jack and cheddar cheese.  Yum!  In fact, unusually yummy, because of the cumin, which was almost too much and drowned the other spices.

My observation: It tasted like Taco Bell!

I knew Taco Bell had a prominent flavor I’d never identified and replicated, and it’s apparently heavy on the cumin.

I also learned, or re-learned, that cumin is a component of chili powder, curry powder, and garam masala.

I still have spices I am not clear on the use of, or haven’t used ad-hoc based on their scents.  Is there anything one uses mint in besides lamb?  Does dill have a good use besides pickles and beef stroganoff?  Is parsley, speaking of things that lack good scents dried and bottled, good for anything besides maybe parslied potatoes?

What are your favorite spices or flavorings?  What are ones you love but only in selected dishes for which they work best?

Salmon: The Results Post

Yay, Benji won!  Oh wait, wrong results…

So, what happened with the salmon?

Above is a picture of it as a small portion appeared on Deb’s plate.

I used my cast iron frying pan, which I was thinking to do anyway because covering it on a burner creates an oven-like cooking effect.  Heated it a little with some olive oil, put the salmon skin side down, put some lemon pepper - what seemed like a generous amount - and a slight bit of olive oil on the top, and cooked it for a minute or two on the stove.

Then I stuck it in a “425” oven.  Ten minutes later, I was amazed at how slowly it was cooking.  Though the pilot runs pretty warm and it would have slow-cooked through eventually.  Turns out that no gas gets to the burner tube in the oven, and nothing past the pilot will light.  Doh.  Probably the burner tube thingy has to be replaced, which when it had to be done when I lived in Quincy cost the landlord $150.  But gave the stove decades more of life.

So it was that I ended up with the pan on the burner, per my original plan before there was such a chorus of “and then put it in the oven...” from commenters.  Cooked it mostly covered on low heat, and in the end turned it over for a minute, then back, to make the top look more traditionally cooked.  Contrary to my normal penchant for cooking things to death, I got it only just done as one is supposed to do with fish.

How was it?

Very fishy smelling.  I didn’t expect salmon to smell so stridently fishy.  Very strong tasting, if not bad.  The lemon pepper was good, but mostly buried under the taste of the salmon.  When I saw Jen’s pointer to a recipe for cumin encrusted salmon I thought it sounded way to strongly spiced, but this piece of fish could have handled that and would have been good.  I could easily have doubled the lemon pepper, or mixed in or replaced that with some other spices.  Not like I have to conserve the lemon pepper; it was fifty cents for a good sized container.  Heck, I pour on the expensive spices, when I am on familiar ground.

Next we’ll have to try a white variety of fish.  It’s good to know that even though the cheapest of cheap price for fish is $5 a pound, 0.6 lbs was at least a serving more than we needed.

Oh, Sadie hated it.  She wasn’t very hungry anyway, and instead of letting her sit at the table and think about trying a piece of the salmon, we enthusistically told her it was “like tuna,” which is one of her favorite things, and gave her a bite in the living room.  She was all betrayed because she though “like tuna” meant “it is tuna.” Oh well.  As we tell her, all we ask is that she try it, and be open to trying it again sometime in the future when her tastes might have changed or it might be a better version of the food.  Since she eats almost anything, she’s entitled to a few exceptions.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Salmon

Last night I bought a 0.6 pound farm raised salmon fillet to experiment with, so that, along with some rice and peas most likely, will be supper tonight.

I’ve never cooked fish that wasn’t frozen, pre-breaded, and usually reconstituted from shreds.

My thought was to cook it in a frying pan with a little lemon pepper*, keeping it very simple and just trying to get the cooking itself right without terribly overcooking it.  For meat I’m a firm believer in nothing less than well done, so I tend to cook things to death, which I understand with fish is more of a Bad Thing.

Anyway, I thought I’d toss this out here in case there were other flavoring suggestions, or cooking tips.

* One of yet another bunch of new spices I bought recently, which is another yet-to-be-written post.  I was looking for white pepper so I’d have it for egg foo yong when I finally try making that, but Wal-Mart had no white pepper.  Weird.  Ended up with other things instead.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Hell’s Kitchen” The Big Finale, Take One

Still collecting my thoughts and mentally composing a post, which is likely not to be written until tonight or otherwise later.

A couple quick thoughts, though.  First, I expected a 2 hour finale that would do more than make it so you didn’t have to see the entire prior season before watching about an hour and five minutes of actual finale… and fluffy at that.

The challenge was cool though.  I’d forgotten that one, and I seem to recall last year it wasn’t close like this year.

Finally, until they opened the doors, it was absolutely unclear who the choice of winner would be.  Neither would have been a surprise.  Either would have been deserving.  We’re pleased with ourselves for having pegged the winner in like the second episode of the season, having only seen her weaknesses, some evident right up through the “three months later scene,” later.  To the extent I had any expectation which one had won, it was the one who lost and will now get pretty much the job of her choice somewhere.

Argh.  I am tempted to just expand this and write it in full now, but I’ll ponder further and expand on this later.  My mental composition included a point by point comparison of things like restaurant design, menu, food, staff issues, etc.

Stay tuned… I may simply edit this post rather than creating a second one that covers part of the same ground.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Sad Val

Valerie is up to three real food meals a day, and pretty much thinks each new food she tries is Best Thing Ever and why were we holding out on her.  Yesterday she tried peas for the first time, case in point.  She’s now had apple, pear, banana, peach, mango/kiwi/apple, carrot, peas, sweet potato, sweet potato/apple, prune, squash, apricot, and quite possibly something I’m forgetting.  She also eats oatmeal mixed into other foods.  Courtesy of Sadie and a more casual attutude and ravenous hurriedness on her part, she’s also probably tasted and even swallowed things we don’t know about.  Probably including peanut butter, courtesy of Sadie.  Yesterday she approvingly sampled a Frosted Flake Sadie had dropped.

Yes, she doesn’t know she’s five months old and shouldn’t have the dexterity to pick up an individual flake and put it in her mouth.  Let alone a sunflower seed.  We got her some banana flavored puffs that will disintegrate readily and serve as a distraction.  She loves those.  When Sadie doesn’t steal them all.

This morning she tried a little real banana.  When we did that to Sadie she thought we were nuts (real bananas and babyfood bananas are entirely different flavors).  Valerie declared it yet another Best Food Ever.

She can’t get enough to eat.  Yesterday evening we finally figured out that was why she wouldn’t stop fussing, and it took a big jar, a small jar, and some of the puffs to satisfy her.  Though she was still unhappy that she got puffs while we got spaghetti, salad and French bread.  Not Fair.

She seems to put all that food into height and motion.  I call her the Squirminator.  During diaper changes she makes Sadie look placidly cooperative.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Hell’s Kitchen: It Really Was A Shocker

Usually when they say Most. Shocking. Elimination. Ever. in the promos, they’re full of hyperbole up to their eyeballs.  But the elimination of the hands-down favorite to win?  That was indeed a surprise.

In the context of the season, anyway.  Not at all, in context of the episode.

So.  The challenge.  A tough one it was, too, but the kind of thing a great chef can hope to do with no help from America’s Test Kitchen.  Taste someone else’s dish, then recreate it based on what you see and taste, with no recipe.

I knew Virginia had it when she used white beans instead of potato; that made far more sense to me.  And grapefruit?  How inspired.  Makes sense, though; citrus and fish.

It says something good about all three of them that they were able to create similar dishes that looked and tasted great, but Virginia got the reverse engineering completely right.  That’s astonishingly good.

Lest we forget that the contest is as much about running a restaurant, about the leadership and business end, this episode culled Keith on that very basis.  We’d wondered if he could run a place, and maybe he could learn, but then… maybe not as readily as some.

Besides the normal food service aspect, this episode was about running the kitchen, calling and keeping track of orders, directing the other chefs, and providing quality control.

To his credit, Keith caught the overcooked spaghetti.  However, he had a total lack of leadership and ability to stay on top of the orders.  I was surprised how bad he was.

Heather was better.  She’s still inconsistent, but it wouldn’t bother me to see her win.  She can learn and improve.  She caught the lumpy potato but didn’t send it back, tripped up on the quality control element.  To Heather’s credit at the end of the episode she had gained respect for Virginia and recognized Keith’s failings, even though she went through with the plan to nominate Virginia for elimination.

Maybe Gordon’s pointers helped.  Maybe her newfound confidence helped.  Maybe it’s what she’s better at than running a food prep station.  Virginia was easily best at the being in charge test.  Salmon versus bass was an easy QC catch, but she did it and reacted decisively.

In the end, Virginia deserved to stay.  Keith didn’t.  You could see how tough it was for Ramsay to send him packing.  I think he expected Keith to win.  So perhaps as well that Keith let his true colors show, with his ridiculous sassing and attitude about being dismissed.

And so it’s Virginia versus Heather!  Seeing Heather in the finale is no surprise.  It has seemed almost inevitable from the beginning.  Keith wasn’t initially obvious as a finalist.  Virginia was never obvious as a finalist, but she’s come into her own.  I have serious doubts Heather can beat her.  I expected Heather versus Keith, with Keith winning.  Had Sara hung on, I’d say Heather versus Sara, Heather would win.  Heather versus Virginia, though… I’d probably put money on Virginia winning it, if I were required to place a bet.  And no way I’d have seen that coming a few weeks ago.  It’s a close competition.  Can’t wait to see what happens next week!

Monday, August 07, 2006

Have you ever noticed…

that Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup doesn’t taste like chocolate?  It tastes like Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup.  It bears no flavor relationship to anything else on the planet.  It just is.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Valerie’s First French Fries

And yes, she really was eating them, after sufficient mastication, enough to have consumed a couple good-sized fries worth.  She was thrilled!  Until she snagged part of an onion ring off the table and no longer wanted fries…

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Hell’s Kitchen: Ding Dong, Sara’s Gone

Hell, yes!  No. More. Sara.

Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!

I practically did a happy dance.  We both clapped and cheered.  For something on TV!  How lame is that?  But it was Sara.

Okay, the challenge.  That was cool.  In retrospect, given that each construction worker was supposed to sample each dish and vote, as opposed to selecting what sounded good to them, the result was entirely predictable.

Heather went totally lowbrow, but chicken sandwich and fries is so… McDonald’s.  While I love McDonald’s and it has a revered place as part of any normal person’s diet, it’s not going to win a “which is best” vote against, well, lots of things.

Conversely, Sara, whom I’d bet got the second lowest vote count, went weirdly highbrow.  Quail?  Hello!?  Who eats Quail?  Surely not many construction workers for lunch.

Keith had a shot, with his lobster and greens, but not everyone likes lobster, and fewer like greens.

Virginia, though… how all-American is a turkey sandwich?  Without being traditional fast food.  Take something most people love, fancy it up, but not over the top, and you’ve got a winner.  Smart.  She may fall apart every time she’s on the vegetable station, but apparently she can plan a menu people will enjoy, and relate to the public personably.

Every time she does something right, then she gets goofy.  That was a cool prize, though; almost a grand worth of stuff.  On top of a guarantee at the final three!

For the dinner service, Heather was amazing and showed why she was an early favorite.  Keith only messed up in a minor way.  I still see those two in the final, yet… the teaser previews for next week said we’ll be shocked (again) at who is eliminated.  That would have to mean Heather or Keith, because Virginia wouldn’t be shocking.

Sara was bad.  Really, majorly bad.  Justifiably the one to go home even if Virginia weren’t safe bad.

Fascinating tactic, telling Virginia she was no longer safe.  We assumed that was more ploy than true, and that turned out to be the case.

In the end, Virginia had only herself to challenge, and she did it.  She’s at that “still growing up” age.  When she had a choice to take herself out of it, or not, sending Sara home, she agonized but then you could see the mental switch flipping.  We witnessed a life-changing moment right there on camera, in which everything changed for her, not just externally, but in her mind and her self-perception.  Virginia lit up with it.

I may be rooting for Keith and expecting him to win.  I may be impressed with Heather and not at all unhappy if she wins instead.  But watching Virginia at that moment was one of the most compelling things this season.  If that gives her the momentum and fortitude to compete as if she really belongs, who knows… The others are human too.  Heather, especially, can break under pressure.  Maybe it’ll be a completely unexpected Keith and Virginia finale.  Maybe the trip to Vegas was indeed foreshadowing.

By the way, did I mention Sara’s gone?  And I’m thrilled?  Yes!!

Update:

Excellent commentary along similar lines, via Jen, who let Beth speak for her.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Hell’s Kitchen: Anger Management And The Ex-Con

If someone showed me a pile of ingredients and said “make me something great in 20 minutes” my reaction would be “20 minutes?  You have to be kidding!”

And so it was a great job they all did on the challenge in last night’s episode of Hell’s Kitchen.  The compliment for Garrett’s veal sounded like a death knell to me, though, even before it became clear where the episode was going.

For what it’s worth, I have never used saffron, but I know enough not to overuse it.

Keith just keeps pulling ahead, further out of the same league as everyone else.  He showed himself to be the obvious winner last night because he remembers “it’s about the food.” I can remember a challenge last year where Elsie was second place and deserved to be picked by the winner, Michael as I recall, to join him in the reward.  She wasn’t; a game-playing choice was made.

Keith went right ahead and picked Virginia, the second best, because she desrved it.  Michael was a slimeball.  Keith is a nice guy, but appears to have some requisite backbone.

Sara continues to impress, for “damn you Garrett for being the unquestionable elimination this week and keeping Sara safe” values of “impress.” I was sure the two choices would be Garrett and Sara, but Virginia was not out of line.  The thing is, Virginia had difficulty with a more challenging station than Sara’s.

I was concerned, when they put Keith’s veal chop on the menu, that it would sabotage him.  That worked out great.  It really was complementary, rather than “let’s mess you up.”

Heather was right.  Garrett is scary.  The editing, itself an entertaining part of the show to watch, surely doesn’t help.  He almost needed to go before he could land himself back in jail.

The editing is also an entertaining part of the previews.  Really?  We won’t believe who’s going home?  Ohmygod!

The only one I would have trouble believing going home next week would be Keith!  I’d be kind of surprised at Heather, though she really is inconsistent.  The breathless assertion of the preview might be aimed at the people who have voted Heather favorite chef each week in that goofy text messaging contest.  If all those people keep voting for her, they’d no doubt be surprised.

Sara?  No problem believing she could go any time.  She’s not only a total bitch, but also she’s getting over her head.

Virginia?  No problem believing she could go.  She’s actually not that bad, but keeps winding up on the chopping block with someone else who just happens to be worse or a clearer choice that week.

I’m rooting for a Keith versus Heather finale.  I could live with either of them winning, though I’d rather see Keith take the prize.  Keith leaving before the finale would be a surprise.  Nobody else.  Unless they’re talking pleasant surprise, or the “it’s about time!” factor and Sara is out next week.

Because, as you all know by now, Sara must go!

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Happy Birthday

To blogger Steven Taylor, who lucky for me brings us good coffee news.  Now I can think of it as 2… 3… 5 cups of antioxidants.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Mmmm… Food

So today Valerie got introduced to banana, which is the first babyfood not to get the initial “what are you trying to poison me with?  Mmm… give me more please!” reaction.  Just went straight to the “yummiest food ever shovel faster” reaction.

Apples are good.  Pears are even better.  Squash is as good as apples, or at least close.  Prunes are awesome, maybe even as good as pears.  Sweet potatoes?  Bring it on!  But it may be that bananas beat them all.  Which is different, because Sadie never more than liked bananas.

Meanwhile, today Sadie got introduced to watermelon.  The farmstand had cut sections 59¢ a pound, so I grabbed the smallest one they had just for giggles.  I am not a big fan myself, though it used to fun to grow watermelons, which is touch here because of their long season.  Unless you grow the non-traditional smaller ones.

While I was making supper, I gave her some chunks of it.  She seemed to like it, and I found it unusually tasty as watermelon goes.

A short time later, when the corn on the cob and burgers were almost done, I look and there’s Valerie, in the exersaucer in the middle of the kitchen floor, with bits of watermelon on her head, hair damp in the front with juice.  More watermelon was on the floor and the saucer tray, looking as if Sadie had thrown up.  But not exactly; looks like she’d chipmunked it and then spit it out, probably smooshed some of it before we noticed.

So today Valerie got introduced to watermelon.  Juice, anyway, which she thought was yummy to get off the tray and lick off her fingers.  So much for one new food at a time!

But wait, there’s more!

While Deb was at the doctor, I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch.  For Sadie I took one slice of bread, smooshed it doughy flat, put on some mustard, slice of ham, a layer of cheese, slice of turkey, rolled it all up tight, and sliced it into thin wheels.  I ate the two crust ends.  Sadie ate almost every bit of the rest, leaving mainly a few bits of bread that got free… and one uneaten roll, which she got on the floor.

Deb later found Valerie gumming Sadie’s uneaten rollup slice.  She’s determined she too will have the good stuff as soon as possible.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Hell’s Kitchen: Sara Must Go But She’s No Rug Either

The preview ads last week for Hell’s Kitchen this week blared “you won’t believe who’s going home!”

I was eager to see last night’s episode to find out whether that meant Sara (yay!) or Heather (unyay!), which would have been the real shockers-on-some-level coming at it from last week.

This week was indeed interesting.  Maribel going home was indeed a surprise.  Part of me is pissed it wasn’t Sara, both because I loathe her and because she was Just That Bad.  So bad I’m actually surprised, since I thought she at least had some competence, however full of herself she may be.

They were impressive for the challenge.  I can’t imagine planning three semi-fancy courses on the fly while spending 20 minutes buying the groceries needed for them.  Ironic that the winning team for the challenge got utterly blown away at dinner service.  Despite the blue team having to stop to unload a truck!  Now that was mean.

Garrett’s sign language… Is it just me, or did Ramsay react just a tad too strongly?  The finger was directed at the girls on the winning team, not the chef, I would presume.  How is that any worse than cursing in the kitchen?  Is it a British cultural thing, to take that especially badly?

That said, Garrett never impressed me and he just keeps doing it less so.  Kind of the anti-Keith.  I could see Keith winning it, and he didn’t stand out in the beginning.  Be interesting if it came down to a Keith versus Heather finale.

I don’t remember it ever being so lopsided before as it was last night.

Sara has to watch it.  She is convinced she knows better than the chef… and anyone else.  That got her in major trouble.  The reds weren’t being a team.  Two strong leaders - if they are leaders and not mere bosses - drowned out Mirabel and stepped on each other.  Keith and Heather are leaders more than bosses, especially Keith, and are more capable of teamwork.

In the end, Ramsay made the right choice.  I was sure it’d be Sara for being so bad and obnoxious, but it was Maribel for a lack of fire, assertiveness, leadership, but complimentary to her otherwise.  I remarked that she was this season’s Elsie, but without the ability.  Then I had to explain not because she was a token brownish person, but the mild-mannered, homesick family woman.

Sara at least has fire.  She dares, even when she’s a wrongheaded bitch.  I can’t see her running a restaurant unless she mellows a bit, but he was right to give her another week, after coming that close to leaving.  Maybe it’ll put the fear of Gordon into her.

I would have liked to have heard the nominations.  My expectation was that Sara would nominate Maribel, and the other two would nominate Sara.

Anyway, next week should be interesting, as they collapse into one team.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Yikes!

Sadie opened the refrigerator herself for the first time ever this evening.

She is overly fond of standing in the door, holding it open, pointing at stuff in the fridge, and possibly even attempting to communicate in an only partially ambiguous way that she would like something specific.

Speaking of which, her favorite fruit seems to be blueberries.  When I took her to the farmstand, she was an angel, and the one thing she really asked for was a pint of blueberries.  Which were on sale really cheap and looked great, so easy decision.  She proceeded to prove that she knew exactly what she was asking for, including eating more than half of them in one day.  With the colorful result you might imagine.

Anyway, now we’ll see if she can be trained, or if a refrigerator lock will be needed.  Ugh.  Then again, she can be surprisingly trainable when I whip out the “obey or die” voice I seem to do so well.  It used to work on dogs, too.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Hell’s Kitchen: Clearcut Loser Edition

This has been an ambiguous-feeling season of Hell’s Kitchen so far, with the exception of Sara being a total bitch and Heather being the apparent leader.  In this episode, and now that we’re down to six players, the individuals are feeling more distinct, and their quality is becoming clearer.  Plus the chef is actually handing out compliments!  He seemed disappointed that Rachel stumbled.  Now it’s clear why Keith is there, and remains there.

I was surprised they did so badly with the spread of “fake” foods.  I’ve never had caviar, nor do I plan to, so I don’t know what that would have tasted like to me.  However, shouldn’t paté faked from ground hot dogs at least taste a bit… odd… compared to what you might expect fowl liver to taste like?  I dunno; maybe it’s a psychological thing.

Which led to the blind taste test.  Mostly they did pretty well, and where they failed, well… who has ever tasted sea urchin?  Who would want to?  And short ribs?  I’d have probably tasted them and said “beef.” Hey, it was okay to say “chicken.” Nobody expects you to say “chicken breast.” Heh.

Good episode, at any rate.  I find it surprising they seem to have so much trouble cooking meat to the appropriate done-ness, if that’s a prime focus of their station.  Guess it’s the pressure.  My problem would probably be the urge to cook everything well done because it seems wrong otherwise.

I don’t think Virginia got any brownie points for unloading about Sara, which if he actually did miss it originally, he probably knew about by that point after the fact.  They had fun editing the scene though.

Heather was really thrown by being yelled at, after usually being perfect.  Finally some weakness.

The promo for next week’s episode said “you won’t believe who goes home!” Since the only person there who would provoke that level of excitement is Sara, I have my fingers crossed.  Though Heather would also be a shocker, but a negative rather than “ding dong the wicked witch is dead” positive surprise.  Please be Sara… please be Sara…

Monday, July 10, 2006

Mmmm… Squash

Which Valerie liked as well as apples, but maybe not as much as pears, which as you may know are the Best Thing Ever.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Flowers and Berries

I don’t remember what the flowers in the second picture above are called, but their shade of purplish rose-red is one of my favorite colors.  Once upon a time I had double impatiens in approximately the same shade and they were like Best Flowers Ever.  My mother has to keep pulling up and tossing away some of the above plants because they spread like weeds.  The lillies, in the top picture, are something we had in the yard the whole time I was growing up.  Along with some tiger lillies.

Sadie tried a couple of these and seemed to like them.  I ate a whole handful, but most of them were pretty sour, even when they appeared quite ripe.  I was thinking they were thimbleberries, but apparently those are always red.  Turns out they are black raspberries, which I always thought was a silly term people used for blackberries, which are different.  At any rate, they were bearing impressively.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Odd

The Wal-Mart in Raynham recently stopped carrying Cain’s mayonnaise.  Just… stopped.  It seems to have coincided with a change of store managers and modest subsequent reorganization of what went where.  (When I worked at a big convenience store chain they called it “programming,” which I always thought was funny terminology.)

Since that’s at least as popular as any other mayo available in the region, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.  I have to wonder if they got in a spat, didn’t get a sufficiently low price, didn’t fit with Wal-Mart’s IT systems, or what.  I keep forgetting to confirm whether they still carry other Cain’s products, and whether Cain’s is also out at the Plymouth store.  If they do, or it isn’t, all the stranger.  If they don’t, then probably one of those reasons.

Speaking of oddities, I long meant to blog about left-sided Wal-Mart entrances.

From the time I was a kid, I learned the “walk to the right, just like you’d drive” rule of pedestrian traffic.  If people tried harder to do that in stores, even when they are “the only one in the store,” things would flow more smoothly.

I noticed a long time ago that the entrance to Wal-Mart in Raynham was left-handed and felt completely unnatural.  You see a lot of people simply using the right side anyway, which causes traffic jams when people coming in the opposite direction try to comply with the signs and go through the left door.  Then I noticed it at Target in Taunton too!  Except there it’s more appropriate to the layout of the store.  Left feeds you directly up the main left aisle of the store, with the checkout area to the right.  At the Wal-Mart left is adjacent to the checkout and right feeds up a main aisle that’s the demarcation between grocery and the rest of the store.

To my great relief, I see the new Plymouth Wal-Mart is correctly designed, and it’s not a chain policy to be backward.  Just one more way in which the Plymouth store is superior.  But the Raynham store is still on my way home from the office rather than off in the other direction…

Friday, June 30, 2006

Sorry, No Recipe

Tonight I made the best fried rice I have ever made.  That’s what I did with the 3/4 pound of thin pork.

What really seemed to “make” the batch of fried rice was the use of green pepper and Vidalia onion I’d bought on the way home, not knowing they’d get used that way.  While I was cutting the pork into little pieces, some onion and pepper, diced small, were cooking in butter on low heat.  It wasn’t too different from the way I’d start out if I were making the sweet & sour pork dish my mother and sister used to make.  Then some black pepper, garlic powder, red pepper, celery salt and especially powdered ginger and the meat, stirred enough to coat the meat somewhat.  Covered and partially cooked, stirred/flipped the meat and added a couple teaspoons or so of brown sugar, cooked until done and a bit more to cook off a little of the liquid.

Piled the pork mixture to one half of the pan, added butter, added the rice, spritzed with some soy sauce, mixed slightly, then broke two eggs onto the rice, mixed that in, more soy, pulled the pork into the rice, mixed it up, a little more soy and I think I added another shake of ginger.  Dumped in probably a cup of frozen peas, mixed those in, then did a series of cook covered a while, stir, cover and cook more, enough so thre are a couple or so instances where some of the bottom rice browns.

Damn, it was tasty.  And potent, but without any overt taste of being “spicy.” If that makes any sense.

We’d actually decided just to cook the pork as a meat dish, with sides of rice and veggies.  Deb thought I was attached to the idea of fried rice, though, and pre-cooked the rice to encourage me to do that.  That worked out great.

The sad thing is, try as I may to duplicate it, the stuff will never turn out the same again, even if it somehow is just as tasty.  This happens when I make what we’ve dubbed “random chicken.” Which implies it’s never the same, but it came out so perfect a couple weeks ago that I tried to repeat the flavor combination and failed.  In fact, the attempt to repeat the super batch resulted in a merely acceptable batch, just from not getting the spice mix exact and having a smaller quantity of chicken.  So I went back to random after that.  Basically it’s chunks of chicken, cooked in butter and/or oil (started experimenting with olive oil, which really changes how the flavors carry and how it browns), with some combination of some or all of black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, red pepper, ginger, sage, rosemary, and savory.  I started leaving out the celery salt as I started experimenting with the last three on the list.  Sage seems to lose its flavor, or impart a bad flavor, if added too early and cooked to much, but done right it makes the chicken especially complementary with chicken Rice-a-Roni, which is heavily sage flavored.  Savory has become my latest favorite, and seems more subtle than the sage.  But I digress.

Egg Foo Yong and What to Do With Pork

One of my favorite dishes from Chinese restaurants is egg foo yong… when it is done right.  It’s one of my tests of “is this a good Chinese place,” along with General Gao’s chicken and the appetizers in general.  Thought that last one it’d be mainly about the ribs and the chicken wings.

I never thought about it, but that’s ironic when compared to my test of a good breakfast restaurant.  I almost always try a ham and cheese omlette the first time I go to a place for breakfast.

When I read Deb the recipe for egg foo yong that I found on rec.food.recipes, she noted that it was basically an omlette.  Indeed.  She thought it even sounded good, but not with the sauce.  I’ve never tried it without, but most restaurants do serve it on the side.

What was funny is I found one egg foo yong recipe and a sauce recipe with it, along with three other posts with three entirely different sauce recipes.

I’d need a couple of ingredients - or more, if I used one of the fancier sauce recipes - but I am tempted to try making pork egg foo yong with the 3/4 lb of thin boneless pork I bought last night.  I am open to other ideas, though, or I could use it in fried rice.  Heck, again I’d want a couple other ingredients, but I could make stir fry.  I never would have thought of making egg foo yong had I not seen the recipe, but it looks like the height of simplicity.

Here’s the egg foo yong recipe and the sauce recipe posted with it:

Egg Foo Yung

4 eggs
1/2 cup diced pork or shrimp
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 cup bean sprouts, cut to 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. white pepper
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Crack eggs into large bowl.  Do not break yolks yet.  Add pork or shrimp, onion, peas, sprouts, salt, and pepper Coat a large nonstick skillet with oil and heat over high heat.  While skillet heats up, use a large spoon to break eggs. Mix eggs and vegetables thoroughly.  Ladle egg mixture into hot skillet, making 6 pancakes. Reduce heat to medium. Cook until brown on bottom, about one minute.  Flip cakes over and brown the other side for two minutes longer.  Place on platter. Cover with egg foo yung sauce (below).

Egg Foo Yung Sauce:

3/4 cup chicken stock
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. sesame oil
2 tsp. oyster sauce

In a small saucepan, mix all ingredients. Stir until cornstarch is dissolved. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring until sauce is thick and smooth (about one minute).

To make that I’d need onion, sprouts, and white pepper, which ought to be in my spice collection anyway.  For the sauce I’d need chicken stock, sesame oil (which I’ve also long meant to have on hand), and oyster sauce.

Just to have them handy and for comparison - it’s no doubt possible to play around and make your own preferred variant - here are the other sauce recipes I found:

Egg Fu Young Sauce

3/4 cup chicken broth
teaspoon soy sauce
teaspoons sherry wine
teaspoons oyster sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
teaspoons cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons water

Bring all ingredients except water and corn starch to a boil. Dissolve corn starch in water, stir into mixture, bring to a boil until thickened.
Serve over Egg Fu Young.

taken from www.recipezaar.com/140361

Chinese Homestyle Gravy

1 cup soy sauce
1 can chicken broth
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup hoisin
3 Tbsp sherry or sake
1 cup water
1/8 tsp white pepper
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
3 chopped green onions
3 Tbsp corn starch—mixed with 1/3 cup cold water
1/2 tsp ajinomoto (optional)

Combine ingredients in a saucepan and thicken with cornstarch slurry. Use for noodles or eggs fu yung.

* Exported from MasterCook *

I had to look up ajinomoto to see what it was.  It’s actually a company name, and apparently refers to MSG, for which they are best known.

Chinese Gravy for Egg Fu Yung

2 cup sliced mushrooms sauteed in 2 Tbsp bacon fat & 2 Tbsp oil
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1/8 cup sliced green onion
1/2 cup Superior soy sauce
2 cans chicken broth
2 1/2 Tbsp corn starch—dissolved in 3/4 C of the chicken broth
1/8 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp MSG
1 tsp meinsee (bean sauce)
1 Tbsp hoisin
1 tsp Kitchen Bouquet

Heat the oil. Add the ginger, garlic, and green onion, then the mushrooms.  Saute until soft; deglaze the pan with the soy sauce. Gradually add the chicken broth and remaining ingredients, adding the cornstarch solution last. Simmer until thickened. This produces a rich brown gravy that is slightly sweet