Playing Iron Chef with the fridge

Tonight's session is going pretty typically.

I've been eyeballing my basket of heirloom toms for more than a week - at this point they're saucers, so I've parboiled them and set them aside to peel. I have a big zucchini that needs tending to, so I've cut it in half and scooped out the middle bits & set the halves aside. I've minced the middle bits, a leftover half-onion, the last 5 good cloves of my garlic bulb, and some fresh minced thyme I had saved back from last weekend's project, and sauteed the mixture; I used the parboil water to cook up a little orzo pasta; I peeled the toms and saved the peels and juices (along with leftover onion bits and the garlic cloves that were too small to bother with) for veggie broth, currently coming to a boil along with the bits I had frozen till I had enough for a broth-batch.

I chopped one of the toms and let it burble down to a paste in the sautee; I've added the orzo and stirred it together to simmer briefly together; I rescued the last bit of pesto dressing from last week (which was itself leftover pesto with a little more olive oil & red wine vinegar) and tossed it over the rest of the parboiled, peeled and chopped toms - and put that in the fridge to add to salad later in the week. To snack on, I saved back a scoop for myself and added a handful of overflow roasted pumpkin seeds I had from yesterday's Esalen-style kale salad.

I used the oil clinging to the pesto dressing jar to coat the exposed surfaces of the zucchini and a little baking dish; I scooped the finished sautee into the zucchini in the big baking dish- and the leftovers of that into the little baking dish. I mixed together some breadcrumbs (which I had from a stale baguette I didn't get to while it was still fresh), salt, pepper, and the last of my grated parmesan and sprinkled that over the zucchini and the little baking dish; and set those in the oven at 375 degrees (thinking a little melted butter should have gone over the crumbs, enh).

Once the broth scraps have given up all their goodness I'll remove them from the broth and let it simmer down into a boullion so it's easier to store in the fridge. At some point the zukes are coming out the oven - I doubt I'll be hungry for them tonight, but they'll be easy eats between weekend activities or lunch on Monday.

Presently my neighbor is coming over for a homemade mojito and a little apartment complex gossip. Maybe she'll want a stuffed zucchini.

Lapham's Quarterly Summer Issue: Food

Hours of amusement. Click the title of this post to browse & browse. In this photo: the lovely Erika Adams of Eating Dog Press. 

Food timeline!

Click the title of this post to see when food got to us, from since forever.

Tiramsu Challenge Chapter 2

Get me a damn fine example of tiramisu, dammit! That's the idea.

The story so far: I had an atypical slice of tiramisu from Whole Foods: not much soakiness to speak of, no whipped creamish parts but a nummy buttery frosting; then I had a delicious if cartoonish version from Trader Joe's freezer section: a thin chocolate cake layer sponging up coffee goodness, then an obscene layer of creaminess, then a choke hazard of chocolate powder on top.

Enough of these national chains - let's get local. Gayle's Rotisseria in Capitola will sell you a tiramisu cake for like $32. Woah, okay, I'll have just a slice, how bout, thanks for the change. Now we're in multi-layer territory. The over-all effect is something fairly light in texture, up to the lightest sprinkling of choco powder on top. Pretty? You'll never know, I ate it before I thought to take a picture. Screw you, this isn't one of those shallow depth-of-field sensitive lighting photo-filled ladies-who-lunch vanity blogs. It is some other kind of blog. (That's telling 'em.)

Can we focus on the cake at hand, please? Gayle's tiramisu has a nice balance of white cake, whipped cream, and DAYAM that is some proofy coffee juice!!! I guess that's Kahlua? You guys, I think the coffeeness in tiramisu is supposed to be some sort of coffee liquor. Alert the media!

Anyway, nice balance of the elements, Gayle's. It goes cream, boozy coffee shloop, cake. Cream, coffee shloop, cake. Cream, coffee shloop, cake - in even layers, with the shloopdeshloo kind of hiding out, not looking that obtrusive... But maybe not for alcoholics? Watch out, alcoholics. Booze! You wouldn't think it packs such a punch, since it's not dripping or off-gassing or anything.

This quest is leading to more questions. Like this one: Uh, what is a classic tiramisu *supposed* to be like? Next time: I'll find out. Journalism!

Challenge: Tiramisu

A dear friend and I indulged a craving for tiramisu the other day by buying a single-layer one from Whole Foods. "Don't get me wrong," I told him, "This is a tasty cake. But it's not tiramisu." The bottom cake layer wasn't squishy enough with coffee, for one thing. And there was an awful lot of the cake layer, and a butter cream fosting...yummy & all. It just wasn't all that tiramisu-y.

Which led me to wonder: where does Whole Foods get off making so damn much of this imposter? Their bakery display case is lousy with tiramisi of 2 or 3 forms every ding dang day I go in there. And to think all of it is wrong, wrong, wrong. Which led him to wonder: where does one go for a good tiramisu around here? [music swells]

And so begins the Quest!

Chapter One: Trader Joe's freezer section
Defrost a couple hours in the fridge, gingerly remove the plastic band around the sides...and get chocolate powder all over your hands, fridge shelves, countertops, everything. I have never seen a cake so well dusted with chocolate. More on this later.

This one hits the tiramisu spot. Pleasantly squishy with coffee on the bottom chocolate cake layer, nummy custardy goop-de-goo making up the majority of the cake, then the Thickest Layer of Chocolate Powder on the Planet ZOMG. It's prevalent enough that you have to do that thing when eating powdered doughnuts, where you don't breathe in as you're biting because you'll cause a (tasty) dust storm in your mouth and start coughing. So, proceed with caution.

Trader Joe's prepackaged tiramisu is now the one to beat. Sad trumpet sounds for you, Whole Foods!

The Care and Feeding of Your Veggie Scrap Broth

I've mentioned a few times that leftovers from your veggie preppin' can make a fine fine broth. This is true. Making veggie scrap broth eases the guilt for those of us who don't/can't compost, squeezes the last bit of flavor and nutrition out of your produce, and puts your neglected freezer to good use.

You will need:
a freezer
a freezer-friendly gallon bag or tub
veggie scrap consciousness
a pasta pot; bonus points if it comes with a pasta colander

As you peel potatoes & carrots & parsnips and onions & etc, add the peels & leftover bits to the freezer container. When you have a 1/2 gallon's worth or so, dump into the pasta colander, slip the colander into the pasta pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for at least 20 minutes but longer = more flavor melding. Lift colander from pot, drain a moment, then dump the thoroughly used-up veggie scraps. Ta-da.

If you don't have an immediate use for the broth, save space in your fridge by continuing to simmer the broth until it is reduced to a reasonable amount. I keep mine in small jar marked "veggie boullion," then measure out a Tb or two per cup of water to re-constitute the broth. If you don't get to it in the first week, better freeze it for laters.

Items for an especially tasty broth:
-herb stems like thyme. sage, parsely, savory, tarragon, etc. Easy on the sorrell/rosemary, a little goes along way.
-potato peels. The Vegetarian Epicure swears by them, and claims you can make a highly satisfying broth from those alone. Avoid green skin, that's poison!
-mushroom stems. A way into the the depth of flavor meat broth's enjoy. Folks from the Fungus Fair inform me mushrooms impart anticarcinogenic properties. Thanks, mushrooms!
-stems from your sauteeing greens. Kale, chard, collards, etc. Go easy on the beet greens--their high sugar content means too many of them make the soup too sweet.
-artichoke leaves & middles. But not the stems. They are too bitter.
-onion ends & skins
-celery bottoms and leaves
-the afroementioned carrot/parsnip peels
-tart apple peels & cores. What? Like the beet green stems, go easy on them. But don't knock 'em. The tart apples will counteract the utter vegginess of your broth, and since apples impart a lot of pectin for jams & jellies, I have a crackpot theory that they improve the velvetiness of broth. That they are the vegetarian's equivalent of broken bones and marrow, which thicken meat broths.

Avoid things you wouldn't cook anyway, like the green potato peels/bitter artichoke stems mentioned above, but also the green parts of leeks (they turn the soup sour--some say the same is true for green onions) and the leaves from rhubarb. Poison! Poison!

Happy soup season!

Winter means citrus

...and specifically, those California Cuties clementines that take over the stores around here. They are snack-sized, easy to peel and sweet sweet sweet. I usually eat three at a time as a tv-watching alternative to popcorn. They are like candy, and it only takes a little to turn them into fancy dessert for entertaining. I bought a kit of the ingredients as a birthday present for my friend Tim, who doesn't eat sugar (but has a sweet tooth):

-peel a bunch of clementines. Get the little extra white strings off, if you can.
-arrange them on a plate or entertainment platter (blue tones offset the orange)
-put your thumb over the opening of a bottle of orange blossom water and sprinkle over the smiles. Just enough to moisten them. I found orange blossom water at the middle eastern market in San Luis Obispo, back in the SLO days, but since then I've found it at the natural foods store.
-if you are okay with sugar, sprinkle powdered sugar over the clementine smiles. I get an even sprinkling by pouring the sugar into a sieve or mesh strainer, then tapping the side of the sieve as I move it over the smiles.
-do the same with powdered cinnamon.

That's it! The platter looks festive, it smells great, and it's equally well received at potlucks, holiday parties, or by the coterie of regulars who come over for a casual night of cards.

Food Prep Miscellany

Wutt?? How did I forget about my cookin' jones/this blog? Uh. I went away to Seattle for Thanksgiving, and after being hosted for a great meal/macking on the leftovers for the rest of the weekend, I have just sorta coasted on a tryptophan coma (MYTH) ever since.

Still, I have made a few things & can report on them.

For one thing, I advised my rat sitter that she could make quick & easy popcorn in the microwave without using microwave popcorn. This is true. My old housemate Keri discovered this as a neglected & hungry youth after school, and experimented till she got it right for the benefit of all of us. Her formula:
-lunch bag
-3T popcorn
-2:30 minutes on high in the microwave. (I sometimes go 2:45)
Ta daa. And you can reuse the bag--the cleaner your microwave is, and by the way, clean out your microwave (gross), the more you can reuse it before the old food stains make it spotty.

Now you can butter your popcorn with less guilt, right, because so far this is a fat-free food (and we can't have that). The marketers of coconut have successfully reached my local natural food stores, so now their shelves are stocked with coconut water drinks and coconut oil. "Why are you talking about this now? We were just getting to the good butter part!" Because they got to me, too: "Better for you [less bad for you] than butter." So I scoop out a Tb or 2 out of the jar, put it into a li'l microwave dish, maybe with some garam masala spice or Chinese five-spice, because I am that gourmet, or, for you spice babies, cinnamon, and melt it 30 seconds on high for over the popcorn.

Or try:
-olive oil heated with dried oregano
-butter heated with crushed garlic
(same thing, 30 seconds on high)
-brown sage butter (see the soup recipe a couple posts back)

Also, I live in Hippytown USA, so I am obliged to sprinkle nutritional yeast flakes over the popcorn too. Fortunately it is very damn tasty, so I can recommend it to you.

I make popcorn for myself a few times a week for watching Netflix on my laptop in bed.
I am not a single sad sack
I am not a single sad sack
I am not a single sad sack
excuse me.

Also, for Make Good Thanksgiving with my Mom, who does not live in Seattle, I contributed the following Roasted Beet Salad:

Get together two bunches of fresh beets on their greens. About 6 beets total. If you are feeling fancy, get a red beet bunch and a golden/striped beet bunch. You won't use the greens till later in the week for yourself, but look who is a smart shopper? You are! (You can slow-cook sliced leeks over med-low heat in olive oil, then add chopped beet greens & cover till they are the wiltiest. Meanwhile, heat oven to 300 and dry roast some shelled pumpkin seeds for 10-15 minutes on a baking sheet till hear you hear them pop. Remove & observed their puffed-up light & crispy goodness. Once the beet greens are respectably limp, turn off the heat & kill the pan with some splooshes of balsamic vinegar & s&p to taste. Stir in crumbled goat cheese or feta, sprinkle in the pumpkin seeds, and serve warm or room temp. Our beet dish will incorporate these same ingredients.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

-Peel the beets, & chop into 3/4-to-1-inch chunks. Toss in a bowl with a little bit of olive oil & salt & pepper, and set aside.
-Slice a couple leeks and a fennel bulb , and spread out along the bottom of an olive-oiled baking pan. I used a 9x9, it was plenty big.
-put the shiny beet chunks on top, and bake for mmm, 30 minutes or so before checking on them and tossing every ten minutes till a fork goes easily through a beet chunk.
-while beets are still hot, sprinkle in balsamic vinegar to taste, and if you have the feathery parts of the fennel, mince some of that up & toss it in, too.
-while beets are cooling, roast some pumpkin seeds (see parenthetical, above). When they have cooled and the beets are room temp, toss them in with some crumbled goat cheese or feta. Then go wow your mom.

Also:
My rat sitter left some zucchini in the fridge, so tonight I sliced them into centimeter-thick chunks on the bias, drizzled a TB of olive oil into the bottom of that 9x9, and spread the slices out in a single layer. Then I turned them all over so there was olive oil on both sides, salted & peppered them, and put them in a 375 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. Then I turned the slices over again, sprinkled with shredded Parmesan cheese, and returned to the oven for 10 more minutes or so. If all goes well, as it did for me, you will have savory zucchini chips that are chewy-crisp golden on the outside, melty on the inside. I put them into sammiches or over quinoa with some kind of goopus.

Goopus like mole negro. Get one of those jars of the stuff in the "Hispanic Foods" aisle*, a quart of broth, an extra Tb of powdered unsweetened chocolate, and half a banana. Heat the jar contents in the broth and smoosh it around till you have a smooth consistency, then blender with the extra chocolate & half banana. Serve over roasted veg, nopales, or the traditional chicken.

*don't make it from scratch--at least, don't start the project when you are already hungry. A college pal & I tried to make it from Diane Kennedy's recipe in advance of our post-graduation trip to Oaxaca. We were confounded by the 30 ingredients (half a slice of french bread? Five almonds? Really? WTF?) and neglected to properly secure the blender lid, so instead of eating in 15 minutes like we thought we were going to, we were swabbing brown shloop off the walls 90 minutes later and still hadn't eaten UGH. Treat yourself better!

Vichyssoise

There were just enough potatoes in my sack to make potato leek soup tonight.

Pshew! I'd've kicked myself if, after all that Meg Fry-making, I had shorted myself on a key ingredient for one of my Favorite Soups Evarr. So I am a happy Kitschenueberfrau this evening.

There is no point in getting fancy with Vichyssoise. The name is fancy enough. And the blending of flavors is so perfect that why mess with that? So pretty much straight from the Joy of Cooking, the 1975 edition, here is what I did:

Mince:
*3 medium cleaned leeks, white only
*1 medium onion
and sautee for 3 minutes (I had mine on medium heat &, stirring them occasionally, let them sautee as long as it took me to mince the potatoes.) in:
*2 Tb butter (you vegans already know to check for milk product in your margerine, right?)

Add:
*4 peeled and minced medium potatoes
*4c chicken stock (or, you know, veggie stock)
and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until veggies are very tender.

Puree, in whichever manner your faith dictates.

Back over medium-low heat, add:
*1/4 teaspoon mace (I had whole mace that I mortared & pestled, then added before pureeing. It is so good with whole mace, OMG! Or if you don't have that, grate from a whole nutmeg; it's from the same plant. Or if you don't have that, then used powdered mace or nutmeg, but I hope it's less than a year old. Or if you don't have that, go with the spice sand you've been carrying with you through several moves, but use a mite more because that crap will taste like nothing. Nothing! Then get yourself to the natural food store and stock up from the bulk bins, because Jeez you deserve better!)
*S&P to taste
*1-2 cups cream (or better for your heart, half and half. Or even better for your heart but less better for your taste buds, whole milk. I believe, when I worked for the Saturn Cafe, I made successful vegan Vichissoise by adding unsweetened unflavored soymilk at this stage. )

Heat until super steamy or even simmering. Ladle into bowls andsprinkle with fancy-pants minced watercress or chives. Because "if there's no green flecks in it somewhere, it ain't gourmet."--what I bet authentic big time cheffy types really do say.

Serve with salad and a Nass Watt Juan (because French accent.)

Scratching the kitchen itch

Tonight I had a couple friends over for dinner, and used the excuse to take care of some recent cooking urges.

Cauliflower Apple Soup with sage & brown butter
Couple weeks back I went to visit my friend Jane in San Francisco, where she has just moved, and we dined at Spork, a fresh-local-ingredients hipster joint that took over a KFC location. On the menu they had a soup as described above, and it looked so interesting that we ordered it. But the execution was meh. It was too salty, and the promise of tart apple was drowned out by the pungence of the cauliflower. Still, the idea was fabulous. So I made a better version at home, as follows.

Sautee in a soup pot on medium low, in olive oil:
*1/2 onion, diced (or one li'l onion)
*a couple stalks of celery, diced
Stir every so often, for 5 minutes or so; you want the veg to be soft and translucent, but not browned. This is key.

Chop roughly and add to the pot:
*one head cauliflower (to make a colorful soup, I used orange cheddar cauliflower)
*same volume of peeled tart apples ( for a medium head of cauli, I used three little apples)
sautee that for a few minutes, stirring now and then. Again: no browning!

Add
*1/2 a quart-size carton of chicken or veggie stock, cover.
Once it boils, reduce heat to low, and let simmer 15 minutes or more. When veggies are super soft and liquid is reduced, remove from heat.

While the veggies are cooking, put
*2-3 Tablespoons salted butter
in a small skillet or pot over low heat and slowly, slowly brown.
While the butter is browning, mince
*2 teaspoons fresh sage
and add to bowned butter right as you take it off the heat. Sage should sizzle for a moment or two then settle down and make your nostrils happy. Set aside.

After you take the veggies off the heat, puree them. Blender, blending wand, potato masher, or old fashioned ricer. You want a smooth consistency. Return to heat.

Add:
*the other 1/2 of the stock carton
and cook over low heat for further flavor melding. After 15 minutes stir in:
the brown sage butter
and stir a few times so it's all swirly but not completely incorporated. Then when you ladle it into bowls it's still kinda swirly, and your friends will call you fancy.

This worked out well. The ratio of apples to cauliflower was right on. I avoided the bitterness of the cauliflower by sauteeing the veggies on lower heat, and the brown butter contained all the salt the soup needed. The chicken stock acted as a flavor bridge between the cauliflower & apple. And with the earthy sage, it tasted like autumn in a bowl. Serves 4. It's nice with steamed artichokes.

Featherlight Kale Chips
The collard version I made last week turned brown in spots, so I checked back with Mike at my favorite farm stand. He advised me to cook the greens longer over lower heat. So:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Wash & dry:
*one bunch of greens. (collards = good, and tonight's Lacinato or "Dino" kale was also a winner)
Cut the leaves lengthwise along either side of the spine. (You may want to save the spines back for veggie scrap broth.) If you like, cut the lengths of leaves in half crossways. Or whatever shape seems good.

Toss in a big bowl with:
*1-2 Tablespoons olive oil
*salt & pepper to taste

When the leaves are all coated, spread them over 2 cookie sheets and bake for 30 minutes.
Out of the oven, they will remain green but be much smaller, like veggie shrinkydinks. Slide into a bowl & serve as "mouth occupiers" for appetizer, card games, movie time, etc.

Variation on Meg Fries
My friend Meg makes the best fries. That is just The Facts, so there is no point in disputing it. Anything I do frieswise will necessarily be a tribute to her frites prowess.

How she does them:
-peel too many potatoes
-cut them into genrous fry-shaped chunks
-dry off the slices (KEY STEP FOR BROWNING)
-toss in olive oil, salt & pepper
-and toss with optional goodies: sliced garlic, rosemary.
-spread out in baking pans
-bake for a good long while, like an hour, at 350 or so.
-munch mightily and weep bitter tears when they are all gone.

The variation I tried:
-cut up some potatoes & prep as above. AND
-peel and cut some parsnips, too. (Add any veggie peels to the running scrap bag in your freezer, and make broth later.) The 'snips were drier than the potatoes, so didn't need to be hand-dried. Advantage!
-My old boss the farmer has a friend who swears that duck fat is the best thing to cook fries in. I had some schmaltz leftover from a chicken I cooked down for stock, so I tossed the fries in that along with the salt & pepper. The farmer's friend: "That is not a duck!!" Me: [shrug] Vegetarians: "!!?!"
-salt, pepper, baking pans, same time and temp.

Big hit at dinner tonight. I cooked the taters and snips together, and maybe oughtn't to have done so. The snips cooked quicker that the taters, and were a little tough. So sweet, though! Mmm. So next time I will cook them in separate pans, and take the 'snips out sooner.

Update: farmer Amy says she cooks em at 400 degrees 30 minutes or so. I tried that, and at just shy of 40 miutes (in my oven, anyway) they were perrrfect.

I quit driving the farm truck and became a mediation coordinator. I got kicked out of my Coastal dreamscape (thtoopid "I can't afford to rent when I own a place" landlord) and moved to an apartment on the cliffs of another Coastal dreamscape. Blah blah, my life is unpredictable/charmed, whatever, I don't have time for these catch-up details! It is soup season, dammit! And at a good friend's request, I am posting the cooking details of the season.

Already I have cooked a chicken down for stock, saved back the shmaltz for parsnip fries and matzoh ball soup, shredded much of the chicken for mole verde or amarillo of the future, cracked the bones and cooked the stock down further for velvety texture, made chicken soup from that, then fed the cooked bones to the pet rats Pickle and Caper (for their teeth) (now there are pet rats, rest in peace my Bobba cat).

I have pulled the veggie scrap bag out of the freezer and dumped it in the pasta pot colander to make more stock, soaked the barley overnight, boiled the mild chicken Italian sausage in the veggie stock, then made mushroom-barley-beet green-sausage soup.

I cut some sort of green (collards? It was in the CSA share I got for being Free Wheelin' Farm's Raffle Grrl) off the spine, tossed them in olive oil salt & pepper, laid them out on cookie sheets, and baked them at 350 for a few minutes until they were feather-light crispy green chips. That was a tip from Redman House farm stand's guy Mike.

That's all in the past three days. I am Li'l Miss Kitchen Mania over here. And I still have to get to the leeks & potatoes waiting their turn to become Vichissoise, and what about the winter squash? There Will Be Pie. And there will be more details about all these things later. I am assuming those dishes will get done later, too. Pickle and Caper better get on it. There are a lot of dishes. Lazy rats!