Preserved Lemons

Have made these many times but the recipe wasn't on the blog when I needed it last night! Sweet BBQ and pluot jam and preserved lemon making party at Nicole and Jono's. From the New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden. The ratio is 5T salt to 1lb lemons. Stuff them into a jar and let them go for 4 days, after that add more lemon juice to cover. Can eat after a month.

Lebovitz

Fun David Lebovitz post about a kitchen knife

Bittman

cleaning up tabs on my browser, this is a Bittman column with links to some of his favorite columns. useful.

Tempeh with Eggplant preserves

no pic. super tasty. tempeh is a fermented soy food. the marinated sliced tempeh that the co-op sells is tasty. the neutral flavor brick is pretty boring. sauteed up onion/garlic/jalapeno, added tempeh. ate it with eggplant preserve from the back of the fridge. Really the perfect combo as tempeh needs help and the eggplant is almost too much.

Kumquat Ice Cream

I've pretty much stopped eating sugar, so have cut way back on desserts and jams and stuff like that. But my office mate was telling me about a whiskey kumquat ice cream that she had on her honeymoon in Chile and I wanted to give it a whirl. This was my inspiration, but I thought the cooked kumquat aftertaste was overbearing, so basically doubled the dairy/fruit ratio. A solid addition to the sorbet chronicles.

1lb kumquats, sliced, so you can take out the seeds
1c raw sugar
pinch salt
1c good yogurt
2c cream, whipped
1T or so vanilla extract

cook kumquats and sugar for ~10 min till they are shiny, add salt, cool
stir in yogurt and vanilla
whip cream and fold in
put in a low wide pyrex dish

freeze, stickblend, freeze, etc

the last bite

Southern Carrot Salad (Koosmali)

We had another indian food party. Made a simple dal, and also a carrot salad and a beet salad following the same technique, but subbing chioggia beets for carrots. Muscade carrots, beets, curry leaves, jalapeno, lemon homegrown. Recipe from Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain cooking. The beet version was particularly non-photogenic, but still tasty!

1lb carrots, grated
1T oil
1t brown mustard seeds
2 jalapenos
pinch asafoetida
1/2 T sugar
8 curry leaves
salt
juice 1/2 lemon
1/4 c or so yogurt

heat oil, add mustard seeds, lid if they pop super vigorously
chilies, asafoetida, sugar, curry cook 30 sec
add carrots, cook 2-3 min, take off heat
when cool add the rest.  super good.

Sauerruben 2016

I really liked making/eating sauerruben last summer. Ruben is german for turnips. I made a batch May 1 and just put it in the fridge. Made another just now, except it was turnip free, I planted more rutabaga than turnips this year. So, rutabaga, black spanish radish, muscade carrot, chioggia beet, bulls blood (I think) beet; carroway, dill, celery seed.

Chile Colorado

Marty in the Climate Hazards Group got interested in chile colorado for a superbowl party, and got me and Laura hooked. I made a batch around then and filed the recipe away. Had a nice big roast in the freezer waiting for Sara to visit. I used these 2 recipes: bon appetit, a blog. I mostly followed the first one, adding an onion to the sauce. Solid.

Lacto Fermented Daikon +

Nice. Followed a recipe from Cultures for Health. Gonna grow more daikon next year! I really liked the pink hue the beets gave it. Should have taken a timeseries of pics as the pink grew.

Daikon Pickles
Enough daikon to fill a 1Q mason jar, cut into spears
some beet (used chioggia)
couple cloves garlic (peeled, whole)
couple serrano chilies (stemmed, halved)
2T salt
2c water

stuff tightly into jar, dissolve salt in water, pour over. keep veggies below water line. cover jar with a coffee filter + rubber band. i fermented it about 3 weeks, probably a little too long but alright.

Misc Food

 romanesco + mozz

 ok pizzas, red sauce/beet greens, greens/onions/anchovies

 indian potluck w/ team fun

 beet greens, collard greens

 veggie

 machaca de res (dried beef from Baja, it reconstitutes when you cook it with veggies)

Kaanji

Our friend Bharat was recently visiting back home in India and posted a pic of the Kaanji that his mom made. It looked interesting, so I have it a go. It's fermented carrots and beets; you drink the liquid and eat the pickled veg. Pics are day 1,2,3. It probably could have used an extra day but was still good.

I followed this recipe, but in case the link disappears here it is:

Kaanji
3 medium carrots
1 beet
1.5 T sea salt
2T ground mustard seeds
2t chile powder
2Q water


wash, chop veggies
put in jar, toss with salt, spices
pour in water
loose lid or coffee filter + rubber bands
put in sun for 3 to 4 days

Pasta Rolling Action Shots

 pasta rolling with team fun

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

Millet Fried "Rice"

I've finally started being social again after Sara moved to Santa Cruz for her postdoc. Had Steph and Erik over for vietnamese crepes last weekend, and Erin over for this this week. I was looking through recent cookbook acquisitions for an interesting vegetarian dish, Fried Millet, hmmm. I have alot of millet as it goes on sale pretty cheap. I throw it into soupy/stewy things in small amounts. But millet is weird, it always seems really dry. Anyway, Erin was game to try it. This is what I did

Inspired by Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson
Millet Fried "Rice"

1 c millet
3 c water
salt

a couple of good sized shallots (or 1 medium onion)
2 gloves garlic, sliced
3/4" piece of ginger, minced
1 carrot
couple stalks celery
couple peppers

couple handfulls of greens - collard, chard, arugula
2 small sweet potatoes
lb tofu

2T butter
2T toasted sesame oil
1T soy sauce

Bring water to boil with a little salt, add millet, cook covered 25 min.
Cut up sweet potatoes into half moon slices, put in a pot with a little water and cook 10 min covered so they steam.
1T butter, oil in a non stick, add diced tofu, cook 5 min or so. When done add to sweet potatoes, add some soy sauce, toss.
Put greens in same skillet, dry, cook covered 5 min or so, stir into sweet potatoes.
1T butter, oil in same skillet, onion/garlic/ginger, then carrot, then celery/peppers, cook 10 min or so. Stir in millet, add some soy sauce.

 The pic is of a leftovers dinner, with everything mixed together. When we ate it fresh we had a bed of millet with the tofu/sweet potatoes/ greens on top. Either way is good.

brisket a la mexicana, canned salmon fish tacos, NPR Christmas

two good meals. no pics. probably better that way anyway.

had a 1.5 lb brisket in the freezer for a while, also some roasted hatch chilies. took my cue from 'Mexico One plate at a Time' by Rick Bayless. Brown brisket 5 min on each side. You're supposed to take it out, don't remember if I did. Add an onion and 6 cloves garlic. Cook. Add ~2lb roasted chilies. Add ~2c tomato puree. Salt, pepper, oregano, meat back in. Bottle of beer. 325 3 hours. I ended up adding a second bottle of beer half way through. Let it cool and refrigerate a couple of days before you eat it. Shred meat, warm it. Eat with good bread or brown rice.

i gave Lizzy the cat some canned salmon today but there was no way she could eat the whole thing, so brought home the rest. wanted to cook it in some way so that the small bones would be disguised. they freak me out even though they are totally edible and good for you. warmed up some refried beans, threw in some salmon and some cheese. italians don't mix fish and cheese in recipes, but cal-mex food definitely does. chileans do, too, in seafood empanadas, for instance. anyway. delicious with little organic corn slider tortillas and some emeril salsa.

the NPR Tinsel Tales (1, 2 & 3) are so good; santaland diaries of course, there's a cool wolf one in #2 . the pink martini christmas show was great, too.

RIP Paul Prudhomme

I'm sure I've mentioned him before on the blog. Dude was a massive influence on the way I cook - he was a big proponent of high heat / letting things stick / deglazing. My folks had 'Seasoned America" on their cookbook shelf and it, along with Moosewood/Enchanted Broccoli Forest and Sonia Uvezian's the Cuisine of Armenia were my faves. Blackened anything......

Recent Food Pics

 fried green tomatoes and wild sockeye

 typical crappy photo. california mexican - catfish dredged in cornmeal and sauteed. leftovers warmed back up with salsa and cheese.

friend Steph makes kimchi. yum

Banana Maple Froyo

Banana pancakes were the inspiration. Frozen bananas, cinnamon, maple syrup, "cinnamon whiskey" for the booze anti-freeze properties. Kinda funny, for Sara's going away party our friend Nicole got a pinata and filled it with all manner of things, including those little airplane-sized bottles of booze.

2c yogurt
1/2 c maple syrup
3 frozen bananas
cinnamon
salt
~1T cinnamon whiskey

stickblend freeze stickblend

Sauer Collards

Took me a while to get on the vegetable fermentation bandwagon, but i'm good to go, now. also, we have ~10 collard green plants, so even with giving some away i'm drowning in them. The basic proportions are 5 lbs veg, 3T salt. I simply cut the collards crosswise and stirred in the salt in a big bowl, added some caraway and celery seeds, then stuffed in a 1 gallon jar. Make a brine that is 1.5T salt in 1Q water, and pour in the jar so the liquid covers the veg. add either some yogurt whey or some liquid from the previous batch (add active cultures). put the remaining brine in a ziploc bag and put on top of the collards so they are kept below the surface. Put the jar in a tray, it will overflow. I aged for a month. I love the collard stems. the leaves are healthy ;) Yet another amazing food pic... update: it took me forever to eat this, again, loved the stems, otherwise not worth it.

Froyo

I've had some extra yogurt laying around lately so did some experimenting with frozen yogurt. This seems to be a good place to start. The basic proportions are: 1Q yogurt, 1 c sugar, pinch salt; a little booze 1-2 T helps it freeze less hard so is good. You treat yogurt as a liquid, the gel property of yogurt disappears with freezing, so if you do 2c yogurt + 2 c fruit juice it's the same amount of sugar. Maple frozen yogurt is 1Q yogurt, 3/4 c maple syrup, pinch salt. I liked it, but think I made it in the wrong season. Plus I made the mango one below and that is freaking awesome. Here are five fruit recipes, the three most interesting ones to me are mango (2c pulpy mango juice, 2c yogurt, 1c brown sugar, salt, zest/juice 2 limes, rum), orange creamsicle (Laura H made, delish, 1/2 c brown sugar instead of 3/4c white, 2T triple sec), and blackberry. If you don't have an icecream maker a pyrex pan and a fork to stir works, though pyrex + a stick blender is much better.

 mango

 maple

David Lebovitz at Le Creuset

this is just awesome. lots of great pics, here is one.