What a bargain!

With nothing else scheduled for this morning, the Spawn and I were able to hit the farmer’s market where I spent all of $18.55. Just look at all that good stuff! From the top, we’ve got a bag of organic kiwis, two small heads of leaf lettuce, cauliflower, Swiss chard, fresh onions, a head of garlic, broccoli greens, baby artichokes (the first of the season!!!), onions, red potatoes, and broccoli.

I’ve already got plans for some of it…

* baby artichokes: these are destined for tonight’s dinner. We’ll have pan-roasted baby artichokes with pasta (and lots of garlic and oregano). We stopped by Dianda’s in the village for lunch and left with a loaf of bread and some Italian pastries for dessert as well.

* the kiwis will be eaten by the Spawn as breakfast throughout the coming week

* broccoli greens: I’d like to cook these like collard greens as a side at some point during the week

* fresh onions: bundle these up along with a bit of Serrano ham in some puff pastry and you’ve got a fantastic savoury treat.

The rest is just “staples” for the crisper; the cauliflower and broccoli may or may not end up in a soup. Who knows?

Having resolved to ignore the plaintive mewling of my family and to start cooking “good stuff” again, I went looking for some recipes I developed several years ago (2005! where does the time go?).

Maybe it’s not such a surprise that I still have them kicking around as I am indeed a self-confessed (digital) pack rat. Sure enough, they were still in their directory on my hard drive, each file containing three recipes for healthy, tasty food.

My original plan for these babies was to sell the files at $1.00 each. I thought they’d fly off the Internet, destined for homes of people who wanted to lose weight without having to eat cardboard. My first attempt at marketing them garnered me tons of hate mail…apparently asking for a small token in return for the imagination, testing, writing, photography, and publishing of recipes is a no-no in the weight loss world. Who knew?

My dream of financing a weekly cup of coffee at Starbucks through recipe sales was crushed. And, as the response really just confirmed my initial impression of humans in general, I let the entire issue drop.

Now that four years have passed and I just happened upon the files on my hard drive, I’ve decided to fling them out there onto the great Interweb-thingie FOR FREE!

Menu 1:

* Blueberry-Yogurt Smoothie
* Curried Broccoli Soup
* Sausage and Potato Bake

Menu 2:

* Salade Lyonnaise
* Mashed Cauliflower
* Scallop Cakes

Menu 3:

* Mediterranean Omelette
* Sunomono Salad
* Lemon Chicken Skewers

Menu 4:

* Corn Pancakes
* Spicy Thai Asparagus Soup
* Shepherd’s Pie

Menu 5:

* Spiced oatmeal (or Do-It-Yourself Instant Oatmeal)
* Tuna Melt
* Stamppot

Any and all positive feedback would be greatly appreciated (I need all the help I can get re-motivating myself to cook “good stuff” again)!

Or…another reason why life is too short to eat crappy food.

A couple of years ago, I had a really bizarre set of experiences over a couple of weeks. Every few days, I’d awaken from a dead sleep by the smell of food. Not just any food, mind you; it was the smell of something I’d eaten the day before.

Lest you think this was just a rather bad case of dyspepsia, let me assure you that the experience was quite pleasant and had nothing to do with the release of any gastric gases. The first time it happened was the night following one of our “corned beef hash cook-off” dinners. There was one serving of hash leftover and, after we’d eaten, I wrapped it up, thinking it would make a fantastic breakfast the next day. I woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of the perfect corned beef hash. I could almost taste the crispness of the potatoes, the sweetness of the onions, and the saltiness of the beef. I drifted back to sleep, muttering to myself fuzzily that it wasn’t fair of someone to eat my breakfast in the middle of the night.

The next morning I pointedly accused someone of doing just that and was very surprised to learn that not only had no one been cooking up the leftover corned beef hash during the wee hours but my breakfast plans could go ahead unmolested, as the corned beef I’d smelled cooking the night before was still wrapped up in the fridge.

I put it off as an odd dream.

That is, until a few nights later, when I was awakened by the smell of the most buttery, rich, and (dare I say it) perfect caramel. If Plato had crawled out of his cave and had some caramel while out in the sunlight, it would have tasted how that caramel scent smelled to me. You guessed it…the day before I’d had a single caramel from a confectionery in Berkeley.

At this point, the chances that it was “just a dream” were dwindling. In fact, I was sure I was dying of a brain tumour.  (I’ve always thought that, if one is going to fantasize in a hypochondriac manner, one should “go big or go home!”)

Only one more nocturnal olefactory awakening occurred for me and, as I’d eaten nothing particularly fantastic the day before, it was the smell of coffee that woke me. Now, I love the smell of a good pot of coffee brewing but as I do tend to associate it with the smell of skunks, the experience wasn’t quite as wonderful as the corned beef hash or caramel hallucinations.

After that…nothing. If I’d had a brain tumour, I’d gotten better awfully quickly.

Until this morning, that is. Last night I’d braised some pork shoulder in sauerkraut and white wine and, sure enough, in the wee hours this morning, I was awakened by the archetypal smell of that meal. It smelled so good…

This time around, I’ve decided that, rather than wandering off in some sort of hypochondriac haze, I’m going to make the most of my brain’s synesthetic confusion. Until it stops, I plan on eating only the most wonderful things I can think of, in the hopes that I get to experience their essence the night following.

So far today, I’ve gone with carnitas (alas, this batch wasn’t as good as the usual carnitas from this source so I’m hoping that it’s not on the short list for nocturnal smells) and an orange and ginger-flavoured fruit gel.

I’m rooting for the fruit gel…

Alton Brown once said that pork wasn’t suitable for making broth as it was too “porky”. (Or something like that.)

I say, there ain’t no such thing as “too porky” and a pork-based broth can be heaven. Besides being the perfect starting point for Korean-style soups or ramen, I reckoned pork broth had to be a good addition to pork stew. (It makes sense, right?)

Yesterday I decided to try making a pork stew that did not include chiles, tomatillos, or hominy in the ingredients list. (In case it wasn’t obvious, my normal repertoire of pork stews is made up of: New Mexico-style green chile, chile verde, and posole.)

I wanted a stew that was all about porky goodness and so, with the help of some pork broth and a bunch of onions, I came up with this:

Pork braised in pork broth. Thickened with a roux made of bacon fat and flour. Caramelised yellow onions and sliced green onions for additional flavours. Served atop grits cakes fried in bacon fat.

There’s no such thing as “too porky”.

This past weekend was partially spent trying to save the flavours of summer.

It started with a trip to the farmers’ market on Saturday morning where I purchased (among other things) several pounds of Roma tomatoes and a variety of chiles, including jalapenos, habaneros, serranos, and sweet gypsies.

The plan for the tomatoes was to oven-roast them and then freeze them. I did this for the first time last year and, believe me, using them for a meal in the dead of winter is like serving summer for dinner.

To roast them, the tomatoes were first cut in half lengthwise and put in a glass baking dish. A few garlic cloves were smashed, peeled, and tucked in around the tomatoes then almost 500 ml of olive oil was poured over all.

After roasting in a medium-hot oven (375 F) for one hour, the pans were removed and the tomatoes were put on cooling racks to cool¹ and to drain. Once cool, they were put in the freezer until a miserable winter day…

While all that was going on, I also fired up the smoker and smoked about a dozen chiles. Some of the larger ones were still relatively fleshy after a day in their smoky sauna so they’ve been frozen too.

The sweet gypsy peppers were stuffed with a chicken/ricotta mixture, bathed in a homemade tomato sauce, and then covered with grated mozzarella cheese. After a wee bit in the oven, dinner was served:

Mmmmm…cheeeeeeese!

My next project will be roasting corn for freezing. I’m already dreaming about the roasted corn chowder I’ll be eating this winter…

Even though there was local racing this weekend, Rogie is in no shape to be running his little doggy heart out:

As you can see, he’s a wee bit on the chubby side these days…

¹ Yes, I have a keen sense of the obvious. Believe me, it’s a gift.

The Spawn and I watched a Bobby Flay show this morning in which he and his guest made bibimbap. As the Spouse has been muttering about bulgogi lately, I thought that bibimbap might be a good thing to make for dinner.

Never mind that I’ve never made it before.

Never mind that I didn’t bother to look at a recipe. I saw the show, right?

I have no idea whether it was authentic or not but, damn, it was good:

The rice is hiding underneath all that yumminess but you can see the other ingredients. Starting with the meat and moving clockwise, we have bulgogi, kim chi, marinated fresh zucchini, sesame bean sprouts, and then the fried egg and sauce in the middle.

I served it with a Bittman-inspired hack at a Korean-style cucumber salad:

All in all, it was a wonderful meal!

For those who didn’t know, my mum has been visiting since before (American) Thanksgiving. W took her to the airport this morning for her trip home.

What we’ve been cooking/eating

Besides the usual Thanksgiving fare, we had a goose last week, smoked in the electric smoker. Yum! Another memorable meal was had at the Anatolian Table out in Rocklin.

What I’ve been knitting

While continuing on with various Christmas gifts, I’ve been working on my Stockings with Clocks from Nancy Bush’s book, Folk Solks. One is finished and the second has about three inches done on it (photos to follow when both are done). Quick knits have been a pair of slippers for Mum from Interweave Knits’ Holiday 2008 magazine, a pair of guest socks (pattern by Raggi), and muffs for the tile guy’s headphones.

Yes, you read that correctly. Wayde was making jokes about my knitting and the young guy’s headphones and so I rose to the challenge, knitting up a pair of muffs for the headphones. His earphones (and hopefully ears!) will stay nice and warm now.

After months of being very busy and not on the computer for long stretches at a time, it took me about four minutes to get hooked on surfing the web again. So, when my connection got all dodgy these past few days, I had some serious withdrawal issues. Luckily, they were assuaged by my knitting addiction…

I knitted up a bunch of dishcloths:

And a wonderful little aviator cap for a friend’s new grandson:

(The pattern for this cap is available free from designer Justine Turner’s website: click.

I also spent time making a really nice meal one evening. Of course, I ended up eating it by myself since the Spawn was working and the Spouse was out of town but it was still great. The recipe was an adaptation of a recipe for Chicken Paprikas in Gundel New Hungarian Cookbook (the book being direct from Gundel’s restaurant in Budapest via my mum). Here’s my adaptation:

Chicken Paprikas

2 T. vegetable oil
1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sweet Hungarian paprika
1 cup chicken broth
1.5 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
salt
hot Hungarian paprika

flour
water
sour cream

Heat oil in large saucepan. Saute onions until soft then add garlic. Cook for a minute then remove from heat. Add sweet paprika and stir until well blended. Add chicken broth, return to heat, and bring to a low boil. Add chicken thighs to pot, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. Turn chicken pieces and simmer for an additional 20 minutes.

Season to taste with salt and hot paprika.

Increase heat to medium. Thicken sauce with slurry of flour and water. Cook for at least 5 minutes (unless you like the taste of raw flour) then reduce heat to low. Add as much sour cream as you’d like and continue to heat on low until sour cream is warmed through and well-blended into sauce.

Serve over broad egg noodles.

My favourite thing to do on Saturday is go to the market. Now that I’m working, I don’t always have Saturday mornings off and, at other times of the year, I have other Saturday morning commitments (dog events or book club) but today I leapt out of bed, ran through the shower, and headed off to the market.

One day I’ll remember to take my camera to the market but, until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was PACKED! Lots of fruit available now…plums, peaches, and nectarines primarily with our melon vendor featuring their Ambrosia  melons. Lots of summer squash is available and I saw a couple of vendors selling peppers. As always, there were fresh cut flowers for sale:

We’re just starting to see tomatoes come into the markets and, as is my habit, I bought some heirloom tomatoes from the Watanabe Farms stand and Romas from the Lagorio Farm stand. The heirlooms are for eating fresh and the Romas are for the freezer.

Last year I oven-roasted slices of Roma tomatoes and then froze them or would blanch them to remove the skins, puree them, and then freeze them. There’s nothing in this world like reaching into the freezer in February and bringing out a taste of summer.

Today, the Romas, along with a couple of peppers and some cilantro, were destined for salsa:

Normally, I’d make this salsa with tinned tomatoes but with Romas only 75 cents a pound…

Here’s what goes into the basic salsa:

2 lbs. tomatoes, blanched and peeled
2 small hot peppers (I think the ones I got today were serranos…they weren’t labelled)
garlic powder
salt

Hold the peppers over a flame until they discolour slightly. For example, jalapenos will turn a dull avocado colour. Cut off the stem and, if you like, remove the seeds and pith. Roughly chop.

Puree the tomatoes in batches in the blender. Don’t make them into tomato juice; you want some chunks left in there. In the last batch, add the peppers and puree until chunky.

Stir all the batches together and season with garlic powder and salt. Put in two or three times as much garlic and salt that you think you should. Seriously. For this batch, I used about 2 T of garlic powder and maybe 1/4 cup of salt. Really.

So that’s the basic recipe. I have recently started adding cilantro and sometimes a squeeze of lime when I make this but they’re not necessary for a great salsa.

After weeks of looking at great photos on Smarts and Crafts, I finally sent a photo to share. Of course, the theme was food: lunch, to be specific.

A ploughman’s lunch is one of my favourite summertime meals; lunch, dinner…either one works for me!

For anyone who is curious, the plate contains: (starting at the top) a slice of sourdough bread, rare beef sprinkled with Stilton cheese, cornichons, grapes, cantaloupe, red plums, heirloom tomatoes, white cheddar, Brie, and a couple of pickled onions.

Yum!