Leftover Salmon

We got salmon about 7 times this summer. Mostly filets, though we got a whole sockeye once and grilled it outside. Pretty much just did the standard skin-side down in a hot pan and then flipping it. Once or twice did the skin side down and finish in the oven without flipping. Here are a few salmon pics:

 over cooked, fat oozing....

 Sara's indian 'bento box', I don't know the real name

 frying up the skin from the salmon we grilled

 got the timing right on this one, still lovely red

Apricot Chutneys

I made alot of apricot preserves this year, so towards the end of the season I broadened my horizons. The first recipe is for any fruit, the 2nd specified apricots. Both are good.

Apricot Raisin Chutney --My Bombay Kitchen
6 lbs apricots
1c ginger
1c garlic
1c vinegar
4c sugar
3T chile powder
cinnamon
8 cloves
1T salt

cook for a couple of hours. the author said she didn't can hers because she ate it so fast. i canned mine, boiling for 10 min

Apricot Date Chutney -- Summer in a Jar

2.5 lbs apricots
10 cloves garlic
2" ginger
1c cider vinegar
1c honey
1/2 t chile powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 t cinnamon
1c dates

boil, simmer 30, add dates, simmer 30. process 10 min

Mac 'n' Cheese

The proportions are from Jamie's America. Good, on the healthier side. I added a zucchini and quite liked it. Note that it's particularly good if you add chopped cauliflower to the noodles so it cooks with them and then is baked with them.

Macaroni and Cheese
Jamie's America by Jamie O

3T olive oil
3T flour
4-10 cloves garlic
1 leek
1Q goat milk
salt pepperbay leaf
1/2 c hard cheese
1.5 c pepper jack
1lb whole wheat chiocciole pasta
1 medium small zucchini

boil pasta
saute garlic and leek in oil
add flour, cook a couple of minutes more
add milk, salt, pepper, bay cook 5 min or so
when thickened add cheeses
drain pasta, add
add chopped zucchini
400, 30 min covered

Tzatziki

So damn good! I had issues with overcooking salmon at the beginning of the season, this helped the dryness a ton.

Tzatziki Sauce
from the Olive and the Caper by Susanna Hoffman
3/4 t salt
2-4 cloves garlic
1.5 c yogurt
1 small cucumber
1T fresh mint or dill
1/4t black pepper
1T red wine vinegar

Random Roles x9 / OnionAV

I don't know if they are doing more of them, or if they re-did their website so that it's easier to find them, but there have been some great Random Roles lately. Bruce McGill from MacGyver!, Barry Corbin, Ed Asner, Lesley Ann Warren, Ed Lauter (particularly good), Fred Willard (surprisingly only ok). Ralph Macchio (the video at the end...), Newman, Lou Diamond Phillips -- Longmire sounds like an interesting show.

Zucchini Orange Marmalade Quick Bread

Yum. I was googling for stuff to do with zucchini a while ago and someone made this zucchini marmalade cake thing, following a recipe from the Tartine bakery cookbook. Bells went off in my head, zuke (check - garden full of it), marmalade (check - pantry full of homemade stuff) Tartine cookbook (check). To top it off oatmeal hasn't been on sale at the co-op for forever so I'm out of other breakfast stuff. I made 2 changes to the recipe: 1) I cut the sugar way back, their recipe is for cake, I wanted a healthy breakfast bread 2) I don't follow rules well, so I don't really measure things when I bake. That said, here are the proportions you are supposed to use:

Zuke Marm Cake

adapted from Tartine
1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons canola oil
3/4 cup sugar (I use ~ 1/4 cup of honey)
1/2 cup orange marmalade (I use more)
2 1/2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

mix wet, mix dry, mix 
350. 9x5 pan, an hour or so. low/wide pan a bit less...

Update: a version using Hamburg parsley root is pretty good, too

Time Series Photography

5 guys take the same photo over and over since 1982. neat. check out the video at the end of this Feist interview for a similar project.

Cooking Pasta with Minimal Water

I got on this kick with fideos, but we also starting cutting way back on water when making mac & cheese in Baja cause water is precious down there. This is 1/2 of a box of whole wheat spaghetti, sauteed in a little olive oil, then salt and a beer bottle full of water. Cook it like risotto. Tasty enough and no waste.

Bee Balm

 More fun with the D200

Stewed Rhubarb

Yum. This batch was rhubarb, honey, a vanilla bean, some orange marmalade. Maybe too much marm, but it's all good, it's in the garden so I can make more.

Frog in the Front Patio

 I dig the eye

New Nikon D200

So I sold my D700 in anticipation of getting a D800. Got tired of the waiting list, and realized it is too much camera for me anyway. Now I want a D600 when it is released, which will be alot cheaper. To tide me over I got an old D200 off of ebay. It's great, and I'm learning the tricks of digital photography now. It seems like if I use color temperature for white balance at ~2700K I get no yellow cast from the CFL bulbs. Another nice thing is the D200 has the DX sensor, so wide angle lenses don't work on it, but telephotos and macros get an extra zooming boost. Here are a couple of pics of veggies from the garden. There will be more...

Apricot Preserves 2012

 Last year was a major bust. This year I canned over 26Q, 1 jar every 2 weeks! Recipe is here.

4th of July BBQ

There was a big push to re-do the front patio, it's quite nice now. So we had people over for the 4th. Quite a few of the things made have found their way onto the blog already: strawberry daiquiris, baked beans, apricot cobbler. Here are some more pics.

 ha

 organic dogs, so good

 big bag of charcoal

 we found this portable picnic table, flimsy but convenient

 A&I brought 'patriotic' eggs, unfortunately blue + yellow = green yolks

Mmmmmmm

Grilled Peaches

We've busted out the grill a couple of times now. I wanted to do this roasted apricot salsa from Bittman but the grill grates are too wide. Peaches worked great, though I lost a couple thru the grates. Amazing with vanilla ice cream or even yogurt. Cut peach, drizzle with some olive oil, 5 min/side or so.

Potato Salad

 It's so easy to make good potato salad using the Jamie O method. Boil them whole, drain, cut to expose flesh, dress while warm with olive oil, an acid, salt, pepper, dill. Good.

 with over-cooked salmon... took me a little bit to dial in the salmon

Cobbler

Mmmmmm. I love blackberry cobbler. When we came back to Oregon in the summers my maternal grandma would send us out along the ditches to pick berries and then she'd bake up a cobbler. I made it alot when I got older. Made a apricot cobbler for the 4th of July party, and a peach one more recently. The dough recipe is basically buttermilk biscuits from Joy of Cooking.

Cobbler

2 c ww flour
2t b powder
1/2t b soda
salt
1/3 c olive oil
1/2-3/4 c buttermilk

roast fruit with a little sugar in a pyrex dish 350, 20 min
mix dry ingredients, cut in oil, mix till have 'small peas' of dough
add in buttermilk till a dough forms
 drop spoonfulls over fruit, 350 30 min or so

the apricot one, the peach one is above

Baked Beans

Made these for a 4th of July BBQ. Proportions and such came from Bittman's How to Cook Everything and Joy of Cooking (I think). The ingredients were pretty free-form and weren't necessarily ideal -- the apricots were cute and I had a ton, but they are by no means necessary.

Baked Beans framework/proportions
4c dried navy beans, bay leaf, ancho, 2 chipotle
butter, 2 onion, garlic
4t dry mustard, dill, salt
1 c molasses, 14 apricots, soy sauce, red sauce

Soak beans overnight, cook with bay and dried chilies
Saute onion, garlic in an oven-proof pan, add spices and everything else
300 3 hrs covered, uncover 30min more

Roasted Eggplant Preserve

Alot of eggplant preserve recipes call for cooking it in vinegar, but then you drain off that lovely stuff and toss it. Not my kind of recipe. This one doesn't waste anything, AND it tastes divine. I only made 1 pint summer 2011, will be making lots of it this year for sure! 

The Glass Pantry, Georgeanne Brennan, p.61

2 lbs eggplant
3/4 - 1 c olive oil
2T salt
2T pepper
6 cloves garlic
6T chopped thyme
1/3 - 1/2 c balsamic

brush eggplant with a little olive oil, roast 400 or BBQ, cool.
layer with salt/pepper, garlic, thyme, pouring over oil, vinegar as you go, too. store in fridge, flipping it every day for a week to insure oil/vinegar get everywhere.
they say it keeps for 6 months, mine was fine for 9.
makes 1 quart

Preserving 2011 Review

Preserving season 2012 has begun, so I thought I'd summarize what worked last year, to highlight the good recipes.

Will do again for sure:
Escabeche (1st recipe)
Chile Pickle
Roasted Eggplant Preserve
Cilantro Chutney
Pickled Peppers [yellow bell pepper + serranos]
Emeril hot sauce
Green Zhoug
Fig - Citrus Jams 1,2
Apricot Preserves -- done already
Melon Jam

Citrus Marmalades -- done already

Meh:
Raw Eggplant preserve -- ok, but not mindblowing
Escabeche (2nd recipe) -- cooking technique a little different, not as good
Tipsy Tangerines -- waste. they are offseason of other fruits, so the ability to eat them in the summer isn't all that interesting
Pickled Peppers [other combos] -- texture uninteresting. bulky / not space efficient in fridge
Eggplant Pickle -- just way way too sweet

RIP Donald Sobol

I LOVED the Encyclopedia Brown books when I was a kid. I read all of them in the public library in Setauket. Sorry to hear the author died.

Cao & Perrot / NPR

interesting NPR interview with these landscape artists. also, their website is amazing.

OCMS / NPR

great great interview, the new album sounds like a winner

Strawberry Daiquiri

 This recipe is killer. For my new Nikon D200 I can only use macro lenses, so I'm a little limited in subject matter...

Nutrition / Carbs / On Point

good On Point episode

Mmmmmmmm Sockeye

nice

Dam Road Closed

On the day my dad goes under the buzz saw & triple bypass surgery, an interesting mini-history of the beginning of the dam removal movement in America. The title of the post is from a sign, I think in Nebraska, at a campground we stayed at a time or two while driving cross-country.

Disarm

When I started at UCSB in '92 my roommate Kevbo introduced me to all sorts of bands, the Smashing Pumpkins included. They even came in '93, although memories of that concert aren't great: lousy seats, being from Chicago they didn't seem to like being in SB, and not having gone to college he seemed to resent playing at one. C'est la vie. But damn if this video doesn't get the juices going. Some serious audience signing along at the beginning of Disarm, and the band & audience are amazing throughout. In the Civil Wars post I had a link to them doing Disarm on their North American tour, here it is again (stage banter ends/music starts 3:39) so you can compare the versions. Great song.