hiatus

Due to unexpected developments, I won't have time to write anything for a while. One month, maybe two, and then hopefully I can spend some quality time with my keyboard. Until then, make tasty food.

Cajun chicken stew

You know how sometimes things get away from you, and even though a task is in your To Do pile, you still lose track of it, and then you see it again months later and think, "oh, shit! I really wish I'd fed the dog!"

Then you're a terrible person. Take better care of your dog.

But if your forgotten task is typing up recipes, then yeah, I totally get that.

Dad likes to plant a garden in the summer. Two years ago, I helped with the planting. That time, it was entirely peppers and tomatoes, salvaged/rescued by my brother from an employer who was discarding the plants. Dad had so many that we started new rows in between the original rows, and his garden was so crowded that we lost track of what each individual plant was. The best we managed was a "hot" area and a "sweet" area for the peppers. Dad gave me almost all of the hot peppers. I think he was afraid they would be too hot, but I made good use of them.

This year's harvest yielded some bell peppers, and some peppers Dad didn't want to use. I don't even know why he planted them, but I appreciate the produce, and I'm entertained by using peppers of unknown ferocity when I cook. These turned out to be pretty mild, but the results were excellent. I used this recipe as my base, but I'm retyping it here FOR YOUR BENEFIT! ALL FOR YOU! because I hate the ads on that website.

Cajun chicken stew
3-6 T vegetable oil
3 to 3.5 pounds chicken. I used skinless, boneless thighs, didn't cut a damn thing, and let the cooking and stirring break it into smaller chunks.
2.5 t salt
1/2 C flour
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
if you like, add a Mystery Pepper or two
2 celery ribs, chopped (I used more than they did. Who buys just one stalk of celery, anyway??)
3 C water
1/4 t cayenne
3/4 C thinly sliced green onion
cook some rice, too.

• heat the oil in a big damn pot (do you have cast iron? use that. Chicken is happier in cast iron), season the chicken with salt, and brown in the oil. Move browned pieces to a bowl somewhere.
• Add enough oil to get about 1/4 C of juices in the skillet/pot, then stir in the the flour and cook over low-moderate heat until the roux (flour-fat mix) is dark. Think coffee-dark, but with just a little milk in the coffee. As it cooks, scrape the roux back and forth with a metal spatula to keep it mixed, and to prevent it sticking to the pan. Add onion, bell pepper, and celery, and keep scraping and cooking until onion has softened and starts to look translucent.
• Add water and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to get the water-roux mix homogeneous. Return the chicken (and any tasty juices that may have run off the chicken) to the pot and simmer, partially covered, 30-35 minutes. Stir int he cayenne and green onions. Serve over rice.

Some day I may write up my love letter to Slap Ya Mama. For now, I'll just add that the Chief Taster has also come to love this all-purpose seasoning, and liberally dosed her stew with it. The stew itself is rich, thick, flavorful, and looks nothing like what is pictured in the link above. Enjoy!

coal miner's dinner

I usually have a pattern in these posts: I tell you what the cookbook said, and then I tell you what I did instead (intentionally or, as is more often the case, because I messed something up). Maybe that's a dumb idea.

I often tell you what cookbook I use, and if it's not a cookbook I recommend, I just don't post anything out of it. I mean, if a cookbook can't justify its existence with at least one good recipe, then what's the point? Besides food porn, anyway, and I'm not reposting that, because showing you someone else's photography is copyright infringement, and as someone who repeatedly (unsuccessfully) hopes to make money from his works, I have to respect copyrights. You want food porn, buy your own damn books. It's certainly less embarrassing than buying the other kind. I assume.

Getting back to food, if you've found that one recipe that justifies the book's inclusion in your collection, and you're comfortable making it, there's one of two reasons. First: it is easy, straightforward, and you have managed to never mess it up so badly that the results are inedible, toxic, or otherwise ill-advised. Second: you have made it "wrong" nearly every single time, but you're still so happy with the results that you don't care, and may have even reached a point where you open the book only to see the name of the recipe, or the pretty food porn, and then mostly ignore it for the rest of the process. Congratulations: you're a cook!

Dad likes to tell the story of something he was making to feed a Boy Scout troop on a campout. One of the moms looked over his shoulder and observed, "that's not what the recipe says." I don't remember what Dad actually responded, because by this point in the story, we're usually both laughing, but it boiled down to: "the recipe is wrong." This is also the point in his story when I often interrupt him by quoting the first time he told me the story: "perfect is not an exact science." I knew that his words had tripped over one another on delivery, but I still teased him by countering that's exactly what perfect means.

Anyway.

Does anyone ever really make a recipe by exactly following the recipe? From now on, I'm just going to tell you what I did, unless something went so terribly wrong that my way was a mistake. Maybe I just won't tell you about those times.

The Chief Taster found a couple recipes recently for pasta carbonara, picked her favorite, and made her dinner request. I glanced at the page, found that the only thing I still needed to buy was the pasta and some bacon, and later got worried at the grocery when I told the lady pouring wine samples what I was making for dinner, and she gleefully told me how she made it; her version had cream. I was fairly certain my book didn't show cream in the ingredient list. Should I buy some cream? I had milk. Maybe that would do? We were heading out of town that weekend, so I didn't want to buy cream unless I knew I needed it; I was already worried I'd have to dump some milk, because there's only so much I can reasonably consume in three days. Dammit. OK, I'll risk not getting cream. Fingers crossed.

I didn't need any cream. Which is the other funny thing about recipes: you can find about 639 different versions for whatever the hell you want to make. I had even spoken with the wine lady about how there are different versions of carbonara, and she said that it's supposed to be a simple dish (the name refers to the coal miners who ate it), but the kind you get in restaurants is all... [hand waving]. "Tarted up?" I suggested. "Yes!" She insisted that her way was the right way, and warned me not to let the cream and eggs curdle.

If she's to be believed, here is the wrong way--or one of them--which is still damn tasty, and probably easier, once I figure the timing a little better.

Pasta Carbonara
1 lb fettucini
3/4 pound bacon, cut hacked torn shredded into 1/2 chunks. I have a lot of trouble cooking raw, unfrozen bacon. The Chief Taster suggested scissors, but she didn't suggest it until I was almost done, and by then I was already frustrated and swearing a lot.
5-6 minced cloves garlic
ground black pepper (the book said "at least 1.5 t." I didn't measure mine, but I used that as a guideline)
6 large eggs, beaten
1.5 C (ish) parmesan cheese. I didn't measure this, either.
salt? (I forgot. Whatever. People salt the hell out of their own servings, anyway.)
chopped fresh parsley

• Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp, or you're happy with it. I was a little frustrated because my pasta water was boiling WAY before I was ready for it, and I was keeping one eye on my popovers, which were also ahead of schedule, because the bacon wasn't cooking fast enough, and was still sticking to the skillet a little.
• At some point, you'll need cooked pasta. I had trouble getting things coordinated, so you're on your own figuring out the timing on that. I also can't help you with stringy pasta sticking together (this is why I almost never use spaghetti or fettucini). I need to work on that.
• Remove the bacon and drain all but 2-3 T grease. Cook the garlic and pepper in the grease for about a minute, stirring frequently. A normal person will smell this. I did not.
• Toss the bacon back in there, give it a stir, and turn off the heat. Dump in the cooked pasta, stir well, and cook for about a minute. If your skillet is too small for this, dump the bacon mix into the pasta. Just so everything's in the same place, warm and cozy.
• You should have your beaten eggs gathered in a separate bowl so you can dump them all in at once. Do that now. Stir it all up, then ignore for a minute or two (remember that the heat is off. Between the skillet and the pasta, there's enough heat to cook the eggs when they're spread all over the pasta like that). Stir in the cheese. That last part was easy for me, because the Chief Taster was ravenous, and hovering over the stove waiting for dinner, so she stirred while dumped what I thought was probably the right amount of cheese into the noodles.
• Top servings with parsley. Or not. I don't care. It's only a recipe, after all.

Serve with warning labels

Remember our good friend the Model Bakery Cookbook?

We do. The Chief Taster now tells people about running the Napa Valley Marathon not because she got her best time there, but because the next day we bought this cookbook, and she wants everyone to know about this cookbook. Seems weird, coming from someone who loves to brag about herself, but maybe it's her way of bragging about what she gets to eat.

This summer, we went to a friend's birthday cookout. They requested that I bring "something yummy for dessert." I didn't get any further clarification except "brownies?" I couldn't remember ever baking brownies that weren't from a mix (when I want hand-edible sweet treats, I usually bake cookies), but as the Chief Taster tells everyone, "everything from that book is amazing," so I checked the Model Bakery index.

There was one little problem: the book calls for an 8x8 pan, and I was serving around 20 people (plus some smallish humans I hadn't anticipated), so I first made a test batch of the prescribed size, then increased the recipe to fit in a 9x13 for the actual party. Both batches happened in the same week, and by the time we got to the actual party, I was already saturated with brownie, and couldn't bring myself to eat them anymore.

Which isn't to say they weren't good.

I was a little thrown by the texture; it wasn't what I had expected, and maybe wasn't what I had in mind, but they were ridiculously popular, possibly for the same reason. These aren't your usual box-mix, flaky-topped brownies. These are more like fudge and brownies had a baby, and it ate all your chocolate chips. They are thick, rich, a little dense, and as we learned after the cookout, should not be fed to gremlins after 7 PM. I called them:

Weapons-Grade Brownies

3/4 C plus 1 T unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
unbleached all-purpose flour for the pan
1 C cake flour (I used all-purpose)
3/4 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
10 oz semisweet chocolate, finely chopped (the book says "no more than 55% cacao," and wants you to buy a bar and chop it up. I just bought a bag of chips. Their cacao rating was not labeled. I live dangerously.)
1 C sugar
3 T espresso (in my case, 1 1/2 t instant espresso dissolved in 3 T boiling water)
1 t vanilla
3 large eggs
1 1/3 C semisweet chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Butter an 8 inch square pan. Dust with flour, shake to coat, and dump the excess. The book said to line the bottom with parchment paper, but I can't think of any reason to do that.
• Put the the chopped chocolate (or 10 oz of chips, you dangerous rebel!) into a large mixing bowl. We're going to do a slow melt in it later, so make sure the bowl has plenty of room above the chips for stirring.
• Heat the butter, coffee, and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring often. When the butter is melted and everything has blended, pour it over the chocolate and let it set for a minute or so until the chocolate has softened. Add the vanilla and mix until the chocolate has melted.
• Beat the eggs into the chocolate. Mix in the flour, powder, and salt. Make sure you get the bits that stick to the bowl; we want it all blended. Fold in the chips. Spread batter evenly in the pan.
• This is where I ran into problems with my test batch. The book said to bake for 35 minutes. I did. I even did the toothpick test. Everything looked fine until I tried to serve myself a delicious, oven-warm brownie, and a thick, muddy landslide oozed into the space I had opened (see bottom left corner of picture). The "brownie" I tried to pull from the pan was a formless glob of (delicious, decadent, dangerous) goo which flopped wetly from the spatula and onto the counter, plate, and my hand. It was far too warm for my hand, but that's another issue. The pan had been out of the oven 15 minutes by then, but I stuck it back in and waited patiently. I really don't remember how long it finally baked. but I let it cool until after dinner (a few hours) before trying to serve more.
• Since this was my test batch, I was concerned about the "real" batch I was going to make later, by doubling the batch size and using a larger pan. I baked that one for 55 minutes, and didn't touch it until hours later, at the party, giving it plenty of time to finish setting outside the oven and cool to a more cohesive temperature.
• How long should you bake it? Hell if I know. Figure it out. Worst case, cover it with ice cream.

I mentioned that they are unusually thick, rich brownies. On the email chain about food people were bringing to the cookout, I labeled my contribution "Weapons-Grade Brownies," and this naturally invited some questions. Hours after the party, I got this email from a mother of three who attended with her husband and gremlins:

I now understand that "weapons-grade," when used in reference to brownies means "one twin will be so wound up she will throw her bottle on the floor and have pretend conversations on her lego car/telephone, while the other twin will throw her arm around your shoulder and sing ribald songs of the sea while kicking twin #1 and fending off random hits from the car/telephone."  One of them is still talking.  I'm not going in there to find out which.

 In case you are wondering, this was the ribald song of the sea. I did not teach it.

syrupy salmon

Friends got us a cast-iron cookbook for Pi Day (what, you're not observant of math holidays?), and I sometimes browse through it for food ideas guaranteed to be excellent. This time, I was trying to find the Spanish Chicken Stew recipe I knew I'd made, but my efforts were in vain (turns out it was in my notebook, because I'd made up the recipe. I'll get to it soon, really). On my way from cover to cover, I made the mistake of showing the Chief Taster a salmon recipe with a full-page picture.

"Make that. Now."
"Now?"
"Tonight. Do we have a dinner plan for tonight? Can we make that instead?"

I had to buy a couple things I've never bought, but they were conveniently near each other in the "Asian" section of the grocery (four feet of shelves at the end of an otherwise unrelated aisle). And I didn't get the sauce thickened to the "glaze" consistency recommended, but she was still pretty happy with the results. More on the subject of making women happy follows the recipe.

Salmon with balsamic Thai chile glaze
4 scallions (white parts)
4 inches of the green parts of aforementioned scallions (I can never find scallions. Sources I've found say they're the same thing, so I always use green onion when a recipe says "scallion." No one has died, so I guess I was right. I did not see the "four inch" part of the recipe until typing this post, the day after making the food, so we had lots of green onion. I used the rest in breakfast the next day. No worries.)
salt and pepper
4 to 6 (6 oz) salmon fillets with skin attached (I bought a 12 oz slab of salmon and cut it in half. I didn't adjust sauce quantities. That's part of why I had so much sauce, but not why it didn't thicken)
2 T vegetable oil (or canola)
1 T Asian sesame oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 T grated fresh ginger root
1/2 C sweet Thai chile sauce
1/4 C firmly packed brown sugar
3 T soy sauce
3 T balsamic vinegar
1 to 2 T freshly squeezed lime juice (I cut a golf-ball-sized lime in half and squeezed the hell out of it in my hands. That gave me 2 T)

• Chop the scallion whites and set them aside. Thinly slice the green portions and set them aside. They'll be garnish later. The whites will go into the skillet with the sesame oil, garlic, and ginger, so you can put all of that in the same bowl if you want, but use a spatula to clear it so you get all the oil.
• Season the salmon with salt and pepper. I put on a lot, because that's how I cook steaks, too, but under the sauce I don't think I could taste it. Still, it's good to use when searing, so don't skip that.
• Heat a 12" skillet on high heat. Coat with the veg oil. Put in the salmon, skin side up, and leave it the hell alone for about four minutes. Don't flip them, don't move them around, don't peel them up and look at the fleshy side. Pretend they're your ex at a party and just turn your back on the damn things, ok? Maybe take a look every once in a while to see how they're cooking (you'll see a color change creep up the edges of the fillets). I used this time to frantically finish the sauce ingredients I'd forgotten, like the grated ginger and minced garlic.
• Flip the fish and let it cook skin side down for another 2-3 minutes, then move it onto a warm plate. (I neglected to warm the plate for two reasons. First: I was using the oven to roast some potatoes at 400F. Second, I was a little gun-shy after destroying one of our new pie dishes with a rapid temperature change. Luckily, the sauce cooks up quick, and the fish only cooled enough to be edible.) The book says to wipe out the skillet with a paper towel, but there was nothing in my skillet once the fish was freed, so I skipped that.
• Put the skillet on medium-high heat. Dump in all the stuff that goes with the onion whites. Cook and stir 30 seconds, until fragrant. I have almost no sense of smell, and that sesame oil was still plenty fragrant. Those of you whose noses are more than decorative will have no trouble telling when it's ready to:
• Add chile sauce, brown sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar. Stir and cook 2 to 3 minutes, or until syrupy. Turn off the burner, stir in the lime juice.
• Top each serving of the salmon with a generous dose of the glaze. Mine were practically swimming again, but I had all those roasted potatoes, too, and despite my careful application of seasoning (which amounted to pulling four or five jars out of the spice rack, thinking, "yeah, that sounds like a good idea," and then liberally shaking them over the taters), the sauce soaked in and overpowered everything I had done. We didn't care. It's good sauce. I had some left over, and I'm not sure what to do with it, but I'll find out this week. Top with green onions.

A while ago, I mentioned an idea I had for a cookbook called "How To Please A Woman." It's been a recurring theme of jokes and discussions ever since. One friend in particular has been campaigning hard for this idea. She may be more excited for it than I am. I have two hypotheses as to why. First, her outlook on publishing has not taken the pummeling that mine has. Second, I suspect she hopes to be a taste tester for the featured recipes. Can't blame her optimism.

I had been drifting away from the idea for a couple months now, because I've been disappointed with repeated failed efforts to get my work printed, and because, as I told the Chief Taster and our glass-blowing friend, "Every asshole with a food blog has a cookbook. But every other asshole with a food blog also has a big following. I can count my followers without removing my shoes."

Thing is, I'm pretty much the only person who understands what the title of this blog means. Starting a new site with a title like "How To Please A Woman" makes it much more appealing and accessible. The glass blower believes this will go a long way to attracting more followers. This is where you come in. You had to find this post somehow. However you got here, leave me a comment below (or you can contact me directly) and let me know whether you have interest in a new site with pretty much the same content (it's also been suggested that I could have polls connected to each recipe. I like that idea, too). Still me writing recipes to try, but with a specific goal in mind: scoring chicks!

Stuffing more peppers

I've made stuffed peppers before, and it went really well. Yes, there were some shortcomings; namely, I couldn't taste the cheese. A friend believes that the only properly stuffed peppers are stuffed with cumin. Some variations are meat-heavy, while others are almost entirely rice. Point is, you can stuff just about anything into a pepper with a reasonable degree of success.

When I asked the Chief Taster what she wanted for dinner this week, she found this recipe online. I, in turn, dutifully bought what I needed, then started making changes through conscious effort, mistakes, and sheer laziness. This is my version.

"Mediterranean" Mushroom stuffed peppers (in case every recipe needs a name)
Olive oil
3/4 C chopped onion. I really don't know how much I used. I had half a large onion and used all of that. Whatever. Recipes are suggestions, dammit!
salt
pepper
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t garlic powder (I wanted to mince some real garlic for this, but I forgot)
8 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
8 oz fresh mushrooms
handful of parsley, chopped to bits
1 generous C long-grain brown rice (because I had slightly more than 1 C left). Her version soaks the rice for 15 minutes. I had mine in a bowl for closer to 20, but given the amount of liquid involved, I'm not sure the soaking is really necessary. Experiment at your discretion.
1/2 t paprika
8 oz can tomato sauce (she uses 3 T. What do you do with the rest of the can?)
3/4 C chicken broth
6 bell peppers, tops and ribs removed

• Heat the oil in a big, deep skillet. cook the onions in there until they turn translucent. Dump in the meat and season with salt, pepper, allspice, and garlic powder. Caveat: I only said "1/2 t" because she did. When I made it, I didn't measure the onion, salt, pepper, garlic, allspice, parsley, or paprika. If I did measure, it was all by eyeball, and I purposely overshot on all seasonings because I like strong flavors. Do what you will.
• Cook the beef. Stir in the mushrooms and chop at them a little with the spatula, because small pieces pack more easily into the peppers. Don't go too crazy--you still want to taste the mushroomy goodness (Cindy, I'm looking at you). Stir in the chickpeas and cook a couple minutes.
• Add the parsley, rice, paprika, and broth. I messed up a little here. Her recipe said "add the water," and I looked up and saw "3/4 C broth (or water)" in the ingredients, so I dumped in the broth. Then I saw "2 1/4 C water" listed a little higher. I left it alone with my extra tomato sauce, and nothing bad happened! Plus, I didn't have to simmer the damn thing another twenty minutes while all that liquid cooked off. Anyway. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20 minutes. You want the rice to be cooked.
• While that simmers, cut off the tops of the peppers and scrape out the insides. If you think this is tedious work, imagine scooping the glop out of a pumpkin so some thankless kid can have all the fun of carving it, and it will feel like a breeze (next month: pumpkin pie!) I cut down from the top on five of my peppers because I wanted them to hold together better, and contain more Stuff, but one of them had a nasty spot on the top, so I had to slice straight across for that one. It slimed me. It was gross.
• Stand the peppers up in a baking dish (my 11x7 was a perfect fit). Pack them full of tasty stuffing. (Has anyone tried stuffing stuffed peppers with stuffing? Thanksgiving style? The sausage kind? WHY THE HELL NOT??) Pour water into the baking dish (NOT into the peppers) 3/4 to 1 inch deep.
• Have you pre-heated the oven to 350F? No? Go back in time and do that.
• Tightly cover the baking dish with foil and bake for... I don't know. Half an hour? Everything inside the peppers is cooked, so you really only want to get the peppers softened. Do what you want.
• She suggested serving with Greek yogurt. We just had normal (plain) yogurt. It helped. I think sour cream would be fine, too.

One more note: She grills her peppers. I didn't. Because we only have a Foreman-style grill, and that just won't work. In the past, I boiled the peppers a little to soften and pre-cook them. This time I stuffed raw peppers and baked them 30 minutes. They were tender enough to eat, but firm enough that the Chief Taster used a knife to cut hers apart. I still had no complaints, and she reported high success on the recipe.

No food porn this week. I'm tired of making really good food in my fun-size kitchen and then getting shitty photos because there's only one crappy light fixture which casts shadows on EVERYTHING I DO. You want food porn, go look at the link. There's a dozen pictures of the same damn peppers. At least show the different steps, woman!

phaking pho

Often, my impetus to make a new recipe is driven by a bit of research. The process usually starts when I notice something in the fridge that needs to be used soon, and I think, "I'm pretty sure that's in Thai food!" or "That would be good with beef!" Then I go through our cookbooks, or recipe websites, or at least check Wikipedia to find what the most traditional forms involve. Sometimes, that leads to falling down rabbit holes. Usually, it leads to a grocery list.

This time, I didn't bother with any of that.

I'd made some Creamy Salmon Pasta for the Chief Taster, because it's one of her perennial favorites, and had a bunch of green onions left in the fridge when I finished.  Somehow, that led me to decide to make some pho (the first time I ever saw that link was when I looked it up while writing this post).  It was a risky choice, because I've only had pho once or twice.  I'm not equivocating; I honestly don't know whether one of those was pho.  I'm certain the second time was pho, because a coworker picked the restaurant, told me what we were having, and even suggested a menu choice. The first time I was on my own somewhere in California, and thought I'd go get some authentic cuisine by visiting the place with signs I couldn't read.  I couldn't read the menu, either.  And none of the staff spoke enough English to clarify anything for me.  My selection was based on the mangled English translations of the menu items, and I was brought a bowl of broth and tendons that might have had a boiled hoof in it.

I based my recipe on the other version.

This is what I remembered: pho was an aromatic beef broth full of basil and maybe garlic?  It should have noodles, beef, and I decided mine should have vegetables, too.

The Chief Taster is afraid of beef bouillon for the same reason she's afraid of hamburgers, so I couldn't use beef broth unless I made it for real, and I didn't want to invest that kind of time.  I got some chicken bouillon, and on a whim, some vegetable-flavor "Better Than Bouillon."

Phake Pho
3/4 to 1 lb. skirt steak, cut diagonally into thin strips
1 C diced celery
1.5 C sliced carrot
8 oz sliced mushrooms
3-4 green onions, chopped
2 cloves minced garlic
fresh basil (I just bought one of those handy clamshells and used the whole thing. Use however much basil you want.)
6 C broth
noodles (I used rice noodles, because I wanted to try them. I also considered egg noodles.)
fresh chives (because I already had them)
olive oil
salt and pepper

• I used a deep cast iron skillet. If that's not an option for you, use a skillet to brown the meat and cook the veggies, and move them into a soup pot as they're ready.
• Brown the beef in a little olive oil, seasoning it with some salt and pepper, because you really don't need more than that. (Though I admit that I used kosher salt, and ground plenty of pepper in there, because I like pepper)  The Chief Taster was shocked that I hadn't done any more than that to season the beef.

Cows are delicious.

• Scoop the browned beef out of the skillet and onto a plate (or the soup pot, if you're going down that road). Toss the mushrooms into the beef juices so they can soak it up and cook a little.  Just as they're well coated and start to soften, add the carrots, celery, and garlic. Saute until crisp-tender. (you could leave the veggies a little under-done if you want. When we ate the soup, I thought some of the carrots might have cooked too long)

• Put the meat back in the skillet (or move the veggies into the soup pot--from here on, we're all in the same pot), add the green onion, broth, and basil, and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and let it simmer 20-30 minutes.  I just pulled the basil leaves off the stems and never bothered to cut them up. I assumed they'd wither like spinach, and I was right. Do what you will.

It's just started to cook, so the basil still looks like basil.  Give it time.

• While the soup simmers, cook the noodles.  I'd recommend only cooking the noodles you need for the amount of soup that will be eaten that night, and cooking more noodles later for any leftovers.  Soup noodles don't reheat very well; they just go mushy.  When the noodles are ready, serve the soup into bowls, top with a scoop of noodles and some chopped chives if you feel ambitious, or want to clean out the fridge.

My final photographs never look very good, because by that time I'm more interested in consumption than documentation.

Full disclosure: the Chief Taster has never had pho, hooves or otherwise, so she had no idea what it was supposed to be.  However, whatever I served her made her very happy.  She later pointed out to me that she had been too busy shoveling it into her face to say so at the time.  It may not be real pho, but it was really tasty.

Perfect puffs

Many years ago, when the earth was still cooling, dinosaurs roamed the hills, and I was but a wee lad, Mom made us popovers for dinner.  It didn't happen for every meal, but my brother and I requested them often, and as we grew older, Mom realized that a single batch was no longer enough.  We'd start to load our plates for dinner by grabbing two or three popovers each, quickly spotting the largest ones.  It became an unofficial, undeclared contest to see who could eat more, and that was usually determined by who got the last one.

Popovers are light, fluffy, cloud-like rolls, usually hollow inside.  I liked to put butter, jelly, or warm applesauce into their cavernous interiors before I ate them, but they're so good on their own that I had just as many plain.

A couple years ago, my aunt sent me an envelope full of recipes she'd gotten from Mom, written in Mom's hand.  One of them was for herb-cheese popovers.  Wow.

The Chief Taster loves popovers, too, though I've never seen her eat more than three for a meal, and that was only once or twice.  The batch size for the recipe I favor is about nine, and it's an act of great effort for me to not devour the rest myself.  Instead, I eat the last four or five from the batch over the course of the next day, for breakfast, lunch, and snacks.

They're pretty handy, because they have only four ingredients (for the base version), which are usually in the kitchen anyway: eggs, milk, flour, and salt.  If my plan for dinner is a little thin, and it needs some bread, it's a breeze to add popovers to the menu.  I've gotten pretty good at baking them over a wide range of temperatures, in case I have something else in the oven which may be more finicky.

Today, I'm going to stick to Mom's Herb Cheese Popovers, even though I don't remember her ever making them.  I only remember the bare-bones popovers, but they're both really good, and they make me happy, and I like that this recipe, in Mom's handwriting, is now in my file.

2 eggs
1 C milk
1 C flour
1/2 C grated sharp cheddar (I've used a couple different cheeses, including feta)
1/2 t salt
1/2 t dried thyme
1/4 t dried sage
1/4 t dried basil

• Generously grease a muffin pan.  You'll have to find out on your own how many cups (of the muffin pan) you need; this recipe only takes up 9 in mine, but your muffins may be a different size than mine.  I've also heard of popover pans, but mine aren't that specialized.  They do it all.  Muffins, cupcakes, popovers, eggs, whatever.  Anyway--only grease the cups you need.
• Crack the eggs into a medium bowl and beat them a little.  Add the rest of the ingredients and mix to combine.  The batter may be a little lumpy.  No worries.  Pour it into the greased cups, getting each one about 2/3 full.
• Put the rack in the lower third of a cold oven, stick in your popover pan, and set the temperature at 450F.  Bake 30 minutes without opening door.
• Remove from oven, and use a butter knife to flip them from the cups.

There's a bite mark because I couldn't wait until after I took the picture.

I've kept some of Mom's directions here (I like heating the oven once the popovers are in there, because it means it's ok to forget to preheat, and the popovers can be a late addition to the party, if needed), but I changed some and removed others (her writing recommended piercing them after 30 minutes of baking to let steam escape and returning them to the oven to dry for about 10 minutes.  I don't remember her ever doing that, and I haven't, either).

If you want to make "normal" popovers, the recipe I usually use has three differences from the one above:

1. No herbs and cheese.
2. Preheat the oven to 450F.  Put the greased pan in the oven for about 5 minutes.  This is conveniently the same amount of time it takes to make the batter.
3. Bake at 450 for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325F and bake another 10 to 15 minutes.

In either case, you're done when they look golden-brown and delicious.

minty, fresh

Remember last week's pork kheema? I served this as a side, despite what the cookbook recommended.

Minted rice with tomato and sprouted beans
2 T olive oil
6 green onions, very finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 C cooked, cooled Basmati rice*
2 ripe plum tomatoes, finely chopped
8 oz mixed sprouted beans (you might find these near sprouts and fresh herbs at your grocery.  They're usually a mix of bean and lentil sprouts)
small handful of mint leaves
salt and pepper to taste

• Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet/wok/frying pan.  Add the green onions and garlic, and stir-fry them for 2-3 minutes.
• Add the cooked rice and stir-fry on high heat 3-4 minutes.  Add the tomatoes and beans, stir well, and cook another 2-3 minutes, until everything is warm.
• stir in the mint and season to taste.  Eat it now.  It's really good.

*I somehow managed to make about twice as much rice as I needed for this, despite following the instructions very carefully.  I set the rest aside and used as a base for some shrimp creole a few days later, made entirely from stuff I had leftover from other dishes.  It was the best fridge-cleaning meal I've made in a long time.

kheema get it

In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that I'm a little embarrassed by that title pun.

Each week, I pick an entree, and the Chief Taster picks an entree.  I'm willing to cook just about anything, but neither of us wants to choose dinner all the time.  This is the best system we've devised, and it really doesn't work that well.  Some weeks I'll have five or six great ideas and won't ask her for any.  Some weeks, she keeps putting off deciding, and I have to resort to a fallback position of lasagna, tuna casserole, or reuben soup.  I feel curiously unsatisfied with those first two options, not because I don't think they're tasty, but because I've made them both so often that I don't really need the recipe much anymore, and it feels like a cop-out.  I can't say anything negative about reuben soup.

Given her reticence to choose, I was intrigued when she pulled cookbooks one morning before she left for work.  She may not have known exactly what she wanted, but she had regional flavors in mind; she grabbed the Indian and Mediterranean cookbooks from the shelf.  She stuck to the first volume, and indicated two choices each for entree and vegetable dishes.  I wanted to try the Bengali-Style Mustard Fish, but I don't think fish make good leftovers, so we shelved that one for later.  I'd already made the Spinach, Red Pepper, and Chickpea Bhaji, and wanted to try something new, so our options were thus narrowed to Pork Kheema with Peas (below) and Minted Rice with Tomato and Sprouted Beans (next week. Maybe when I get ambitious, I'll start posting more often, but that time is not now).

It must have been a successful gambit, even though the kheema recipe recommended serving with flatbread or plain rice, because her reaction when she saw the food (and to a greater extent when she started eating it) was what I would expect if she came home and learned I'd bought her a dream home.  I am now even more convinced that my next long-from work should be the cookbook titled How To Please A Woman.

Pork Kheema with Peas

1 T sunflower oil (or vegetable oil.  Or canola.  Whatever's handy)
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
1 t ground coriander
1 lb. ground pork
2.5 C fresh or frozen peas (the book says frozen peas are more nutritious.  I find them more handy)
3 T medium curry paste (I used hot, because the grocery didn't have medium)
3 T tomato puree (what the hell is that?  I used tomato sauce, and put the rest of the can in the fridge for later use in pasta sauce)
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
1 t raw sugar (I don't have raw sugar.  I used granulated.  I don't think it matters)
1 C boiling water
2 T plain yogurt
large handful chopped cilantro (the Chief Taster is rabid for cilantro, so I bought a 3/4 oz clamshell of it and used the whole thing)
salt

• heat the oil in a big skillet.  Add the jalapeno, garlic, coriander, and meat.  Stir-fry until meat is lightly browned.
• Add the peas, paste, puree, tomatoes, and sugar.  Stir and cook 3-4 minutes, then add the water.  Bring the whole mess to a boil, then cover it and reduce heat to let it simmer 8-10 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and stir in the yogurt, salt, and cilantro.

She got home while the skillet was covered, offered to stir the rice, and used the opportunity to sneak a peek at the pork.  Then she made various happy noises and professed her undying love, but I was chopping cilantro at the time, so she might have been talking to the greens.  My only beef with this pork is that the water never cooked out, leaving the dish a little soupy, and I wonder whether that weakened the flavor of the curry.  I might try it with less water, or none at all.  The tomatoes were pretty juicy, and that might be enough.

talk nerdy to me

Did you know this Saturday is the Pi Day of the century?  I've marked Pi Day for years, and it cracks me up that Dad is guaranteed to call me on two days each year: my birthday, and March 14, just to wish me a happy pi day.

This year, it's not just 3.14, but 3.14.15, and at 9:26:53 (in the morning, for those of you on a 24-hour clock), Pi Day will carry nine decimal places.  How great is that?!  I suggest you make something round to mark the occasion.  Pie, pizza, perfectly formed cookies, it's up to you.  I've made other plans, but here's a couple pictures to inspire you.

Pecan Pi!

Same dish, less Pi

Bluebird Pi! Pizza with barbecue sauce, Bleu cheese, grilled chicken, caramelized onion, and green bell pepper.

Chicken Pot Pi!

Key Lime Pi!

Fun fact: during my first year in college, when I was adjusting to terrible dorm food and really missed Mom's cooking, I sent a postcard home wherein I had filled the message space, in very small printing, with a very long list of foods that I missed.  Every second item in the list was a different kind of pie.

I still miss your cooking, Mom, and I miss you, too.

A conceit of pasta

I hiked the Appalachian Trail last year.  Have I mentioned that?  Forgive me; it's just that I get so many speaking engagements these days that I can't remember who's heard what.

While hiking the AT, you fuel yourself by eating a lot of crap.  Junk I'd never eat in my normal life becomes staple cuisine while backpacking for months on end.  Daily Snickers, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter and Nutella straight from the jar, handfuls of M&Ms, entire pizzas, you get the idea.  One morning I got into a town in Virginia and found one of those Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins hybrid joints, and told them my plan for a new sundae: a banana split on a foundation of three donuts.  They didn't have a dish large enough for my creation, so I just ate the sundae with a side of three donuts.  For breakfast.  That's a normal thing.

During the hike, I learned that I still clung to one of the joys of childhood: mac and cheese.  I hadn't had it in ages, but I learned while hiking exactly how much water to use to cook the noodles so that I didn't have to drain anything, and the leftover moisture made the cheese sauce for me.  Some nights, I'd add chopped summer sausage or torn bits of beef jerky, if I had them, and sometimes I'd stir in some peanut butter, and was always disappointed that I couldn't taste it.  Don't look at me like that.  Peanut butter and cheese WORK together!! (see: Quinn)

Even after the trail, I found that I sometimes craved macaroni, and usually I just wanted that powdered-plastic cardboard box variety I'd eaten on the trail (prefereably in one of the exciting new flavors available that summer.  I'm still sad that I never got to try Three Cheese Jalapeno), but occasionally I'd grow the hell up and decide that if I were going to have mac and cheese, I should put more than seven and a half minutes of effort into it and bake the stuff, with some veggies and other tasty things.

One night on the trail, a few hikers were gathered... somewhere.  I honestly don't remember now whether it was a campsite, shelter, hostel, or even if it was really nighttime.  It might have been the middle of the afternoon.  Point is, we were talking about food, because backpackers always talk about food.  We obsess over it.  We fantasize about it.  We sometimes express our fondness for food by suggesting the performance of really inappropriate acts with it.  Well.  I say "we," but in my experience, it was only that one guy.  Still, the rest of us knew what he meant.  Moving on.  We started talking about macaroni.  I admitted that I craved it, and tried to have it about once a week during the thru-hike, but usually didn't manage that frequency. I also mentioned that I'd tried a couple baked macaroni recipes at home, but hadn't really found one that I liked.  One of the other hikers told me that he liked to layer it in a baking dish like lasagna, with intervening layers of mushrooms, onions, peppers, or bacon.  It sounded amazing.  For the rest of the trip, I couldn't think of macaroni without thinking of it layered with sausage and mushrooms.

When I finished the hike and started cooking in a real kitchen again, I remembered the layered macaroni.  Then I made lasagna, gave it some thought, and decided that I couldn't layer it deeply enough to satisfy my whims, because macaroni noodles take up a lot of space, and my 9x13 isn't deep enough to hold many such layers.

So I did this instead.

Macaryan and Cheese (see what I did there?)

16 oz macaroni (or some other pasta shape.  I don't care.)
good-sized bunch of fresh spinach.  A handful? I guess?
olive oil.  Just a tablespoon.  Two, tops.  We just need it to keep the spinach from sticking to the pan.
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 C red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 C chopped onion
1/2 C butter (that's a stick, unless you buy weird butter.  Or, I guess, weird sticks?)
8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
4 oz can sliced black olives
1/2 C flour
1 T ground mustard (the dry powder stuff)
1/2 T lemon pepper
1 t pepper
3/4 t salt
12 oz (about 3 C) shredded Monterey Jack
2 C milk

• Boil some water.  Cook the macaroni.  While you're at it, get that oven preheating to 350F.
• While your water comes to a boil and your macaroni cooks, get started on the rest of this stuff.  Start by heating the oil in a skillet with the garlic.  Add the spinach, stir to coat, and cover over low heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the green stuff is all wilty.  Move the spinach and garlic to a plate.  We're going to keep using the skillet and oil.  I'm a big damn fan of my Lodge combo cooker, so I used that, and when it came time to bake, I didn't even need another dish.  Which is good, because I'm super lazy, and it meant fewer dishes to wash later.
• Add the butter and the rest of the veggies to the skillet.  Cook them.
• Add the flour, mustard, and seasonings to the skillet.  Keep stirring.  The butter and flour will form a roux, which helps to thicken the sauce.  Toss in the cheese and milk, then remove from heat.
• By now your pasta should be done.  Drain it, and stir it in to the cheese mixture with the spinach.  If you're using a separate baking dish, make the transfer now.  If you're lazy like me, use that time to do a little dance.
• Stick the whole mess in the oven for 40 minutes.  The Chief Taster thinks crumb toppings should be applied whenever possible, so I added that for the last fifteen minutes of baking.  If you want a crumb topping, melt 2 T butter, and mix in 2/3 C crumbs (I bought a carton of panko for the occasion) and 1/3 C parmesan (because why wouldn't I want more cheese?), and apply as directed above.

This version just happened to be vegetarian, but I think it would be good with some ground sausage or cubed ham.

Another one bites the crust

I may have mentioned this before, but in my Quest to learn how to make bread, I once spent an entire year never buying a single loaf.  If I had bread, it was because I baked it myself, and that was at a time when I had a sandwich for lunch pretty much every day, so I went through plenty of bread.  Different recipes, different shapes, different flours; I tried steaming the loaf with a pan of ice cubes under the baking sheet, and I tried different washes before baking (salt water is nice, and handy when you don't have an egg available for an egg wash).  It was a lengthy experiment, doomed to failure.

I wanted the loaves I could buy.  I wanted that stretchy, chewy crumb inside and that hard, crunchy crust outside.  I wanted a great loaf for sandwiches, and I wanted a loaf that was so good that I could just sit down with a slice of it and enjoy it all on its own merits, savoring the different textures and the contrast between that light, airy inside and the hearty crunch outside.  Instead, I got a lot of densely-crumbed loaves with weak, disappointing crusts.  If they were close to what I wanted when I first pulled them out of the oven, they had softened by the next day.  I was disappointed in my efforts and myself.  A year of dedicated work, and no progress to show for it.

I called my dad one day and admitted defeat.  He tried to console me with the fact that I still liked the bread I made; it was still good stuff.  "Yeah, but it's not what I wanted to make."

In Oregon, I mentioned the experiment once to a baker in, of all places, Safeway, and she told me that I'd probably never get what I wanted at home, because my oven just wasn't made for the temperatures required for those results.  I still toy with the idea of letting the loaf proof (a secondary rise after shaping) until it's really big then baking as hot as my oven can go, but I haven't tried it yet.  These days, someone else is buying the groceries, and I ration my consumption of them by eating much more conservative lunches.  The bread I bake now is for the Chief Taster's breakfast, and she likes it seedy, because she's one of those weirdos who thinks bread should taste like granola, and only be eaten as toast, and she won't eat a sandwich unless it's grilled, and full of cheese.

But I get bored making the same bread all the time, and I still want to find that crusty loaf, so I keep trying new recipes.  This one looked like it might satisfy both of us.  I'll give you the version from the book, and add some notes to show where I diverged.  As usual.

South African Seed Bread

unsalted butter, melted.  Maybe a tablespoon?
3 t dry yeast
1 2/3 C warm water
4 t honey
3 C whole wheat flour
1 C bread flour (unbleached all-purpose will be fine)
3 T each sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and chopped mixed nuts (Sometimes I decide that I want to bake, and also that I don't want to go to the grocery, so I have to make do with what I have on hand.  Believe it or not, I had plenty of flax, poppy, sunflower, pumpkin, and caraway seeds, but only 1 T sesame seeds.  All I had for nuts were pecans and some sliced almonds.  My version of this bread had 3 T each poppy, flax, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds, 1 T sesame seeds, and 1 T caraway seeds.  Don't use more than 1 T caraway unless you really like that flavor, because the flavor is STRONG.  I didn't use any nuts.  I'd recommend using unsalted sunflower seeds for bread.  Keep the salted ones for snacking.)
1.5 t salt
1 T milk (see note below)

• Melt the butter and brush it around the inside of an 8x4" loaf pan.
• Sprinkle the yeast into 1.25 C water and add the honey.  Stir it, then ignore it for 5 minutes.  I just eyeballed the honey as I drizzled it in.  Us untrained non-professionals can get away with delinquency like that.
• While you're ignoring the yeast, mix the flours, seeds, (nuts?) and salt in a large bowl, and make a well in the center of it.
• Are you done ignoring your yeast now?  Does it feel neglected?  Whisper soothing words of encouragement, give it a stir, and dump it into that well.  Start stirring in flour from the sides of the well.  For those of you who have your own copy of the book and are following along at home, you've probably read ahead (CHEATERS!!) and noticed that the book tells you to add the remaining water, as necessary, to form a cohesive dough that "just begins to leave the sides of the bowl clean," and that you won't have to knead it.  Maybe that'll work for you, but I'm calling bullshit.  I added all of my remaining water, but the mixing stick just wasn't doing the job, so I rolled up a sleeve, took off my watch, and stuck my hand in there.  SHIT GOT SERIOUS.  I had to work the dough a bit, squeezing and stretching (one might even call it "kneading") and turning it over to collect all the seeds and bits of dry flour that fell to the bottom of the bowl.  I got it all worked in, but it took a few minutes, and it looked a lot like that k-word we weren't supposed to do.  Whatever.  I like kneading, dammit.
• When the dough has gobbled up all of the seeds and dry flour bits through "stirring," you can put it in your buttery pan.  The book says to spoon it in, but I think the book ended up with a much wetter dough than I did.  Your results may vary.  No big deal.  Point is, I picked up a single doughball and squished it into the pan, patting it flat across the top as though I were following the book's instructions, then I covered it with a clean dishtowel and left it on a sunny counter to rise for an hour.
• At the end of the hour, have an oven preheated to 400F.  I don't know how long your oven takes to do that, so work it out on your own.  When the dough has risen above the top of the pan (it doesn't need to be much, but remember that oven heat kills yeast, so it won't get much bigger once you start baking), stick it in the oven.  After 30 minutes, reduce heat to 350F and bake for another 30 minutes.
• Remember int eh ingredients list, when I mentioned milk, then said "see note?"  This is the note.  When you get the loaf out of the oven, remove it from the pan and set it on a wire rack to cool.  The book says to brush the top and sides with the milk, but that will give you a softer crust, and we know how I feel about crust.  I didn't use the milk.  You can do whatever you want.  It's really not my business what you do with that loaf.  Personally, I sliced off a heel and ate it while typing these instructions but that's just me.

Live ferns and dead jokes

The Chief Taster is a big fan of the CW show Arrow. I watched a few episodes with her, but soon discovered I couldn't tolerate all the aspects which I perceived as tremendous shortcomings in writing, acting, and characterization, and which she perceived as not existing.  Now I generally go to another room to read while it's on, passing through only to get a drink of water from the kitchen, or when I remember that I still have dishes to do.  Occasionally, when she gets home late on a Wednesday, we don't get to have dinner until the show starts, so I'll sit in until my food is gone before going to do the dishes. (Clean dishes, much like hot meals, are one of those things she has come to assume "magically appear.")  That's how I learned that on any given episode, there is not just one, but up to four or five different archers.  Most of them are on the same secret vigilante team, hanging out in the same "arrowcave," which was spruced up with a live fern by the only person in Starling City who doesn't own a goddamned bow and arrow.

"Why did she buy a fern?" I asked.  The Chief Taster made the sort of noise she makes when I'm talking and she doesn't care, because she's trying to follow the intricate plotlines of who's giving whom the shaft (another joke I made which she refuses to add to her online forums of Arrow fans).  "She should have gotten a pet chicken," I added.  This apparent non sequitur broke her reverie.  "Wait, what?  Why a chicken?"

"Because then they could be Arrows con Pollo!"

Then she made the noise she makes when she heard me, but wishes she hadn't.  I told her to use the joke on her fan forums so I could gain Internet Celebrity and be really rich and stuff, but she has so far refused or forgotten.  I assume she's worried about losing me to my legions of new fans.

Every once in a while I make this as a reminder, but it doesn't do any good.  However, it is very tasty.

Arroz con Pollo

I use this recipe, because somewhere in my research I found something that said "true" arroz con pollo should be cooked with beer, and that seemed like a great idea, and this was my favorite recipe from the search for "arroz con pollo with beer."  I've made a few changes, though, so I'll go ahead and rewrite my version below.  Keep in mind that because I'm a gringo, it is unlikely to qualify as "true" arroz con pollo with the most exacting foodie in your life, but it's damn tasty, and you don't have to tell anyone you got the recipe from a white boy from Oregon.

4-6 strips bacon (I made it once without any bacon, and substituted some vegetable oil to saute the veggies with no problems)
8 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on (the three guys from Miami insist that if you use boneless skinless thighs, you will ruin the dish.  I tried it, because I like to challenge convention, and the results were still tasty.  Do as you will.)
salt, pepper, and cumin to season the chicken
1/2 C olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 chopped red or green bell pepper (I've never been able to find cachucha peppers)
4 cloves minced garlic
12 oz bottle of beer.  Any beer, but pick something you like, because then you can drink the other five with dinner.  Or, if you choose, share them with whoever's eating dinner with you.  Whatever.
3.5 C chicken broth
8 oz can tomato sauce
1/2 t Bijol powder (I've never been able to find this, either, so I subbed 1/2 t each of paprika and turmeric.)
1 bay leaf (following Dad's rule, whenever a recipe calls for one bay leaf, I use two.)
2 t oregano
2 t cumin
1.5 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3.5 C brown rice.  Wild rice.  whatever you have handy, really.
1/2 C frozen peas

This is where I diverge further from the Miami guys' instruction and end up just telling the story of how I made it, and why I did it that way.  If you've ever read any of my previous posts, you already knew that.

Chop the bacon into bite-size chunks.  Toss it into a good-sized skillet or saute pan.  I used something big and cast iron, because that's how I roll.  My original plan had been to use this pot for the entire process, but I quickly realized that it was nowhere near big enough.  For me, that was good news, because it meant I finally got to justify owning the enormous eight-quart stockpot that came with my original set of pans.  I'd used it a couple times for apple butter and pumpkin, but it usually just hides in the back of the cabinet, out of the way.  Now I use it for arroz con pollo and a Spanish chicken stew which I plagiarized from Panera.

Cook the bacon in whatever you're using.  We're using the fat to cook other stuff, so if you're one of those "microwave bacon" people, don't do that.  Skillet, dammit.  When it's starting to crisp nicely, transfer it to your Big Damn Pot (if you do not have a Big Damn Pot, consider reducing the recipe, or buying a Big Damn Pot).  While the bacon is cooking, season the chicken pieces with salt, pepper, and cumin.  Rub it in there good.  Then stick the chicken pieces in the hot bacon fat and brown them on all sides before putting them in the BDP with the BCN.  Keep that skillet hot, because now you're going to cook the onion, bell (or coocoocachoo) peppers, and garlic (you might want to add the garlic a little later than the veggies, so it doesn't overcook, but I've never had any trouble) until crisp-tender and the onion is translucent.  Guess where they go next?

...I hope you guessed the BDP.  Add everything else except the rice and peas.  Crank the heat, bring it to a rolling boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and cook it for 15 minutes.

Add the rice, bring it back to a boil, then reduce heat and cook it for 30-45 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed and the rice doesn't crack your teeth when you steal a bite.  When the rice is ready, stir in the peas and give it another 5 minutes of low heat.  Turn on the tube to your favorite archery-related program, open one or more of those five remaining beers, and enjoy.

Like, totally rad

I've been working my way through the Model Bakery cookbook, in no particular order.  So far, I have completely failed to find a recipe therein which does not meet with high praise, muffled by being spoken with a full mouth.  The book is outstanding, and not just for the full-page shots of food porn.  The recipes themselves are great, although they sometimes call for weird ingredients, or have directives I don't understand (I always work by hand, but the primary directions are for food processors. The oven temperatures are conveniently listed with three settings: Fahrenheit, Celsius, and "gas," which is always a single digit number.  I have a gas oven, but this digit means nothing to me.)

One of the recipes I've wanted to try since buying the book finally got its day this winter.  The picture of the Chocolate Rads shows an enormous, highly textured macro shot of a single cookie, whose diameter nearly spans the page.  I came to discover that this is a life-size shot.  Be warned: these cookies are not only very large, they are very rich.  They're not cookies so much as blocks of chocolate and sugar supporting a thin matrix of flour.  That's the good news.  The bad news is, I think they dry out too quickly.  My recommendation is to either bake them in batches as needed, or bake them for a large gathering.  The book says you'll get "12 large cookies."  I think my count was closer to sixteen, and they were still plenty big.

Chocolate Rads

2/3 C flour
2.5 t baking powder
1/4 t salt (the book says "fine sea salt," but I'm not that picky)
1 lb semisweet chocolate (55% cacao or less), chopped.  I used a bag and a half of chips.
4 T unsalted butter, room temp.
1 2/3 C sugar
4 large eggs (the Model Bakery is really big on using eggs at room temperature.  I usually forget that part.  Do as you will)
1 T cold brewed espresso, or 1 t instant espresso dissolved in 1 T boiling water, cooled
2.5 t vanilla
2 C chocolate chips
1 C chopped walnuts (I was out of walnuts, but we had some "white baking chips" left over from another recipe that I wanted to get out of the kitchen)

1. First thing is melting the chocolate.  There are many schools of thought here, but I think the prevailing method is some sort of double-boiler arrangement.  I don't have a double boiler, I finally succeeded in convincing the Chief Taster to get rid of hers to gain some room in the cupboards, and I've read that double boilers really aren't that good at double boiling, anyway.  If you have a metal mixing bowl that will rest over a saucepan of simmering water, use that.  If you don't (my mixing bowls are all glass), then wrangle something else.  I found that I can rest my smallest saucepan inside the next largest, and the protruding lip keeps it from resting a bottom edge in the larger pot, which would make a hot spot.  But I digress.  Melt the damn chocolate.  Stir occasionally, just until smooth, then remove from heat and stir in the butter.
2. Beat the sugar and eggs together.  Add the espresso and vanilla.  It should be pale yellow and a little fluffed before the bean-based ingredients, and darker after.  Stir in the melted chocolate, then the flour, baking powder, and salt.  When the batter is homogeneous (and honestly, kind of gross-looking), add chips and nuts.  Or chips and chips, if you're cleaning out the fridge like I was.  This dough is really soft, so let it stand 20 or 30 minutes so it can firm up a little.  By the way, I hope you  (I told you n're not excited to eat these bad boys right away, because...
3. Lay a big piece of parchment paper (about 1x1.5 feet) on your counter.  Spoon big globs of dough onto it in a line parallel to the long side.  Get it all on there.  Spatula your bowl clean, if you have to.  Wet your hands, then form the dough globs into a big smooth log, about a foot long and 3 inches in diameter.  Smooth the ends so it's a nice, neat cylinder.  I'm laughing as I watch you do this, because it will be a big, sticky mess, and you're going to do your best, but you'll have doubts about the entire enterprise by now.  Stick with it.  It's worth it.  Wrap the paper around your goo-log and twist the ends shut.  Put the log on a baking sheet and stick it in the fridge 2 to 24 hours. (I told you not to get anxious)
4. Heat the oven to 350F (gas 4, if you're curious).  Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Pull the log out of the fridge.  It will be a little flat on the bottom side, so roll it a little to smooth it and re-round it.  It won't make a difference in a moment, because the shape will get mangled when you slice the log, but just fight the good fight as long as you can, ok?  Unwrap the dough and wet a thin, sharp knife.  Cut 1" slices and arrange them on your baking sheets.  This is important, so listen up: the book says four cookies per baking sheet.  They are not fucking around.  I think I managed to get 6 on my sheets, but a couple of them became a mega-cookie, and these are already really big cookies.  You get four, maybe six to a sheet.  That's it.  Whatever doesn't fit on the baking sheet goes back in the fridge.  The sheets bake about 20 minutes.  The tops of the cookies will crack and the edges will crisp.  Swap the sheets top-for-bottom and rotate them 180 about halfway through to get more even cooking.  When you pull them out, let them set on the pans about five minutes before moving them to whatever cooling surface you prefer.  Repeat with remaining dough.
6. NOW you can eat.  Pace yourself.  It's really easy to make yourself sick by eating only five or six of these.

That's my hand for scale.  You probably haven't met my hand, so I'll tell you that the palm part is about 3" by 3".  The cookies were bigger.

to hell with Maryanne

The Chief Taster has this thing where she likes to have a slice of toast, an orange, and a soft-boiled egg for breakfast every day.  Except on weekends, when I'll sometimes make omelets or Dutch babies or muffins or waffles or... something.  Usually, the toast is from a loaf I've made, unless I've been lazy, and just bought her a loaf of multi-grain.  Therein lies my problem: she is a creature of unwavering habit, and I like to play with my food.  And, I guess, hers.  I mean, there are a LOT of bread recipes out there.  Why should I stick to just the one?

I tried something called black bread from one of her books last week.  It was terrible.  We were both unhappily chewing a piece for breakfast when I gave up and threw the rest of the loaf in the garbage.

I did much better this week.  I found a recipe (in one of MY books) called Gingery Whole Wheat Bread.  The doughball was really big even before rising, and (obviously) much larger an hour or so later.  After baking, I was thrilled to see that the loaves were big enough to make lunch sandwiches--and that was before I tried the bread.

I always slice off a heel and eat it fresh from the oven.  She doesn't like the heels (one of the many things about her I'll probably never understand--my brothers and I used to fight over heels.  That's why there's only two of us left).  I spread a little butter on it, intending to have that one slice, then go to the grocery for the berries I needed for dessert that night, but HOLEY MOLY, THAT BREAD.  There's only half a teaspoon of ginger in each loaf, but you can still taste it.  It's just sweet enough to be a great choice for breakfast, but not sweet enough to dissuade me from making sandwiches for lunch (I added lunchmeat and lunchcheese to my grocery list), and that ginger flavor is in every damn bite.  I had another slice, then left before I ate the rest.

Gingery Wholewheat Bread

2 packages (4.5 t) dry yeast
1/2 C lukewarm water
2 C milk
1/2 C molasses
1/2 C butter (I didn't realize until typing this post that I screwed up here; I read the recipe as "1/2 C," but it's really "1/2 stick (1/4 C)."  Also, they used margarine, and I won't buy the stuff.  If you want the bread I made, do what I did.  If you want whatever they made, do that.  Using their amount of butter probably would have kept me from adding the extra flour while kneading, but I'm happy with my choices.)
2 T brown sugar
6 C flour (when I say "flour," I always mean "unbleached all-purpose," unless I say otherwise.  Don't buy self-rising flour.  Just don't.)
2 C whole wheat flour
1 T salt (they said 3 t, because I guess they didn't do the math?)
1 t ginger

1. Combine flours, salt, and ginger in a large bowl.
2. Sprinkle the yeast into 1/2 C water.  Set that aside to dissolve while you put the milk, molasses, brown sugar, and butter (however much you used) in a small saucepan over low heat.  Stir constantly, until everything has melted and blended together. Don't boil it.  Besides making the milk go all funny, it will kill the yeast in the next step.  Most of the blending will happen by stirring, so the heat here is really just to melt the butter.
3. Make a well in the middle of the flour bowl and pour in about half of the milk mixture.  Stir that in, then add the dissolved yeast.  Keep stirring.  Add the rest of the milk mixture.  Things will clump together in big gooey globs (especially if you used twice as much butter, like me).  You can add more flour to get the right consistency, but I usually do that while kneading, so let's move the dough glob onto a clean counter (you can dust it with flour first, if you want.  I don't care.) and knead it for a few minutes.  This is when I added about another 1/4 C of flour, a little at a time, until I was happy with the dough.  If you're a bread baker, you'll know what I mean.  If you're new to this... I promise to make a generic "bread" post sometime, like I did with cookies.  For now, you want to be able to pick up the dough and handle it without it sticking to every damn thing it touches and leaving bits of itself behind.
4. When you're happy with the dough ball, put it in a greased bowl, cover with a towel, and let it rise until doubled in size (about an hour.  Mine went a few minutes longer, because I got caught up in something else.  No big deal.  Bread is much more forgiving than people think.).
5. Grease two 9x5 bread pans.  Punch down the dough, divide in half, and form it into two 9x5 rectangles.  Put 'em in the pans to rest under the towel while the oven preheats to 350F. (This secondary rise is called "proofing."  I let mine go about half an hour, until it looked like they were getting close to the tops of the pans, because I wanted nice, tall loaves.)  Bake for 35-40 minutes.  Brush tops with a little melted butter before removing them from pans to cool on a wire rack.
6. Try, very hard, to not eat all of the bread now.  It will probably make a good sandwich later.  Or maybe toast.

future foods

While listening to the Chief Taster moon over a batch of cookies, I told her, "I have an idea for a book.  It's called 'How to Please a Woman.'  It is a cookbook."

She said she thought it was the most commercially lucrative idea I've ever had.

Shortly after I finished my Big Hike, a friend suggested that I write a Thru-Hiker's Cookbook.  It wouldn't be the food I ate on the trail, but the food I dreamed about on the trail.  All the things I wanted to eat and cook, but couldn't.

Since then, I've had several ideas for both books, and I'm toying with the idea of actually putting something together, if only to entertain myself for a couple afternoons.  Despite the Chief Taster's assertions, I'm certain that my lingering fantasies of being published will only ever be fantasies.

Still, it's a fun idea.