What's cooking? part 4

you certainly do. what's your pate recipe? i'm always looking for good ones.

by the way, mark bittman's scampi recipe (from his fish book) rules. the double dose of garlic is a great touch:

saute thinly-sliced garlic in 3/4 of cup of good olive oil until golden
add 1-1.5lbs jumbo shrimp, several cloves of minced garlic, and 3/4 of a cup of chopped parsley
when the undersides of the shrimp turn pink, flip 'em, add a tablespoon of sherry vinegar, and cook a few more minutes until done.

i wasn't planning on have that for dinner last night, but since the freezer melted down we had to save what we could (including a bag of giant prawns). looking forward to the leftovers (with spinach/feta/olive orzo) for lunch.

i use a similiar bittman recipe for scallops - quick soak in olive oil/sherry vinegar/chopped garlic then flash-saute in hot pan and finish with parsley. it's a favorite.

Ooh that DOES sound good. And basic. I have shrimp as well, threw them into a pot w/ spaghetti, snow peas, & a shitload of grated parmesan. Topped w/ fresh tomato.

I'm roasting a chicken for dinner tonight. Inner debate is raging: layer cake vs. brownies w/ cake having a slight advantage. I LOVE working at home!

layer cake is more fun to decorate.

true, and more special somehow.

Also, layer of raspberry between layers of white cake covered in chocolate glaze = totally yum

so, layer cake WINS!

So the dinner turned out pretty good, with just a couple of bumps in the road. The aioli needed A LOT more lemon juice then I thought, but after I added it until it tasted right, the consistency was way to liquidy. A lot of last minute time and energy was spent trying to get it back to the thickness of mayonnaise (mostly by my wife, it must be said, who was quite fixated on it being too thin). I didn't mind at all; it still tasted great on the hard-boiled eggs and veggies, even though it was drippy. The pate turned out great, smooth, rich, and well-seasoned.

After starting paella for six in the super-huge pan I've never used before (this was after the guests arrived, mind), I realized that it does not fit in our little British oven (the handle is way too big). I only panicked a little before (again) my wife came to the rescue and we transfered it into two smaller pans--they fit, just. The paella was fine, but not as great as it's been when I've made it for just the two of us. Possible reasons include the chorizo not being as good (I've never used this particular kind before), my saffron being old and a bit dried up, and the uneven heat in the crazy hueg pan leading to some blackening early on, which led to some bitterness, I think. Everyone else seemed to like it, though.

The apple tart was awesome, as always :)

The pate recipe was from Amanda Hesser's book; it's really easy:

Saute half an onion and a whole, smashed clove of garlic in olive oil on medium-high for a minute. Add a pinch of red pepper (I used pimenton instead, to go with the paella), and continue cooking until the onion and garlic are soft. Add 1 lb chicken livers, cook for a minute, add salt, then turn over to cook for another minute. Add 1/2 cup of sherry, then reduce heat so that it gently simmers. Cook for 20-25 minutes until livers are just cooked through. Put everything in yr cuisinart and puree, adding olive oil to get the right consistency.

tonight we had goose hash pie, supoib.

Browning some lamb and pine nut sausages, to then be braised in red wine.

making popovers now, with this ridiculously simple james beard recipe. i'll post it if they turn out well.

well, i left them in the oven for just a minute too long (fuck!), so they're a little overdone on the outside, but the insides are delicious. they taste like popovers.

easiest popover recipe ever:

2 eggs
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 Tablespoons melted butter

Beat the eggs lightly and beat in the flour and salt. Stir in the milk. Blend to make a fairly smooth batter. Add melted butter. Pour into buttered muffin tins, filling each about 2/3 full. Place into your unheated oven, close the door, then turn that sucker to 425 degrees. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. (mine would have been perfect at 29 min!)

I have a (borrowed) house all to myself and thought I'd cook a masterpiece...but I'm in the house of a health-conscious vegan, I can't even find any sugar for my morning tea, and she doesn't have a roasting pan, a sauce pot with a lid that fits, or, apparently, a cheese grater.

God help me.

Oh dear. Trying to cook in a kitchen like that would drive me crazy. Also, I would want to fry bacon and stuff.

I found a giant canning-style spatterware stock-pot, covered in dust. I wonder if I should even try braising beef in it....

Will it fit in the oven? Keep the temp low (the pot walls are sure to be thin) and it should work okay.

I actually think it might be too big for the oven! I have to go try but it's a little "efficiency" stove. This is what happens when real estate goes up: kitchens go down.

hah yes. 0 counter space here. so sad.

i was going to make a pasta sauce that ended up being slightly ratatouille-ish in texture and full of zucchini and really delicious this week. i should do this every week with slight variations!

omg, I made mayonnaise by hand tonight with a whisk. owowowowow. Also, the only oil I had was extra virgin olive, so it ended up really cloying. Cravings must be served though.

i think the 'blog should have a 'favorite mistakes' or 'biggest kitchen cock-ups' theme this week

what oil do you usually make mayo with? out of curiosity, i've never made it.

A blend of a lighter oil with some olive oil is pretty good for mayo, like 1/2 canola and 1/2 olive. You want oil that tastes nice on its own because that's the flavor that really comes through in a mayo (this always surprises me).

remy, I like that idea :)

Oh, you mean like the time I put piping hot black bean soup into the food processor and ended up scrubbing it off my kitchen walls for weeks?

Did the lid blow off Laurel? or did the bowl explode?

in the oven right now, another tagine-like stew - 1.5 lb cubed and browned beef stew meat, 1/2 a chopped and browned onion, cumin, coriander, cloves, paprika all ground up, a small handful of currants, a small handful of pine nuts, 4 quarters of preserved lemon scraped and chopped, water to cover and socked covered into a 325 F oven for a good long while.

No, the hot liquid just seeped out of every seam and crack to splatter across the room. lol basic materials science

Jaq, I made something similar (tho less detailed) the other day with cubed stew beef, chickpeas, tomato paste, onion/garlic/carrot, lemon peel, cumin, etc. Supposed to have raisins and kalamata olives but I couldn't find the olives at Polish grocery and as the kitchen belongs to an Australian there was no cinnamon in the cupboards. Maybe just cos I cut too many corners but I rly don't like the flavor v much? Maybe I try again w/ pine nuts, olives, and proper seasonings. Less lemon.

If you can find preserved lemons (basically just quartered lemons packed in salt), try those instead of fresh lemon peel. The lemoniness is still there, but earthier and subtler. Rinse some of the salt off first though, I didn't do that the last time I used some and the stew was way over-salted.

I think for this one it would have added something to toast the pine nuts first, but it was tasty and plenty left over. I thought about chucking in some olives too, but only had giant green martini ones and that seemed a bit much. Do Australians have something against cinnamon?

I'll have to hit a Middle Eastern area for the lemons, I guess? The fresh peel is kind of jarring. I think I'll trade the chickpeas for pine nuts, they're not adding any taste and I don't like the grainy texture.

Apparently cinnamon is rly rare and not much used in Australia? Some Aussie on another thread was just bitching about the grossness of apple pie w/ cinnamon, which is obviously insane in the brain talk.

My hostess has about 4 kinds of flavored salt and 3 different curry mixes and 12 other random jars of spices but no cinnamon at all.

lamb meatballs with cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg, corn meal, dried plum and walnut served w/ aromatic rice

(i sorta think flavored salt is a scam)

I'm totally trying again with dried cherries or something, I hate raisins. And maybe red wine? We're so on the same page, suddenly.

Yeah, probably have to hit a specialty market for the lemons - I think they are mostly Moroccan. I've been making them myself, but it takes 4 weeks before they are really ready to use. A mix of whatever those standard lemons in every US market everywhere + Meyer lemons, leaning toward more Meyer ones, turns out pretty well. Quarter, pack in kosher salt in a big glass canning jar, leave on the counter for 4 weeks, shaking every once in awhile.

Nice, remy, I like the idea of dried plum w/ lamb.

I could do worse, I suppose, than read ILCooking and Is That...Pie? before going to the market, but the influence was really obvious today: 6 big sea scallops (for that Bittman quick marinade and sear mentioned above), garlic, tomatoes, and pasta to go with the lamb shank I've been meaning to do something with (Gooblar's pasta w/ lamb riff), cabbage and crimini mushrooms (to try out my ham sub thoughts for Casuistry's cabbage noodles, except I forgot the cheap parm sprinkle and imitation balsamic).

i am really intrigued by this preserved lemon-ness!
i have never made a beef stew. i may have mentioned this previously, but i'm deathly afraid of cooking most meats because at the time i learned to cook for myself, i was vegetarian and so never really learned how to cook it properly. i would love it if a meat expert could blog something about basic meat preparation/best techniques/etc.

Yesterday I made baked salmon with a soy & honey glaze. It was divine.

That sounds good, Brainwasher. I did up those scallops last night - didn't have any sherry vinegar, so marinated in chopped garlic, lemon, olive oil for 10 minutes, then seared. The centers were warm but barely done - just right. I realized as I was marinating them I hadn't bought any vegetables to go with, so we had them with chunks of buttered pumpernickel on the side.

what's cooking? NOTHING. our fridge totally, completely melted down while we were away! save for a few condiments and a half pound of coffee beans, everything went in the trash (frozen ribeyes, i weep for thee). we're starting from scratch, grocery-wise, which is exhilarating in a very small way.

My biggest food failing is that I don't like the taste of olives, but I made a big batch of olive salad yesterday so I could make my wife a muffaletta. I ate a spoonful of it today and it was actually pretty good! I took a bite of the sandwich and it was pretty good too. So I think I just don't like olives straight, but as one ingredient in a larger work, maybe green olives aren't the antichrist after all. (Black olives, still awful.)

A typical muffuletta consists of one muffuletta loaf, split horizontally. The loaf is then covered with a marinated olive salad, then layers of capicola, salami, mortadella, emmentaler, and provolone. The sandwich is sometimes heated through to soften the provolone.

Wow.

oh they are so so so good!

I should have mentioned that the mushroom thing might work, but I don't like mushrooms, personally.

It was a modified muffaletta -- wheat hoagie roll, smoked turkey, ham, salami, olive salad, provolone. Nobody here knows what the hell capicola, mortadella or emmentaler are.

just some pasta with baby spinach and a ton of garlic and olive oil. i'm trying to be frugal.

rock if you are going to venture into olivedom, i would like to recommend black or calamata olives in a tomato sauce because lately i can not get enough of this. puttanesca, baby.

emmentaler? really? that's the first recipe i've seen that calls for it. mr lauren brought back olive salad from central grocery earlier this year, so we had a few great muffalettas.. we used a mild smoked ham instead of the mortadella (neither of us are fans), but did everything else pretty traditionally. for me, a really spicy cappicola is key.

Listening party tonight, the first one I've been able to attend in over a year of being invited! So I baked a batch of Ruth Reichl's artpark brownies,with my standard variation of 1 c butter and 1 scant cup dutch process cocoa instead of 5 oz of bakers chocolate.

I was so enraged by the shoddy Italian restaurant we went to for an office lunch on Friday that last night I cancelled it out with an It-fest dinner.

- Big plate of bresaola, salami, mozzarella, prosciutto, artichokes and sunblush tomatoes (cheat's starter)
- Meatballs and spaghetti
- Whipped thing of double cream, lemon curd and crushed amaretti
- Bottle of really good chianti

It was appreciated by the other half :)

Washing up took an hour this morning though :(