French fries and beer. Oh, and faits divers from the kitchen bitch (that's me)
It's an established fact that when I'm tired or under stress I crave sugar. Well, that's not so wierd, I think most people do. However I don't just crave sugar, I start craving all sorts of bizzarre foods, all at once. It's very confusing. Right now I would kill for Monk's french fries coupled with copious amounts of their Holiday Beer I had last time. MMM, cardamon and hops and barley, oh my.
I almost sent B. out to buy potatoes so I could make fries, and then sighed and realized, once again, that french fries are in the sad list of foods I will only eat at a restaurant because they are too. much. trouble. Do you have any idea how much OIL it takes to make fries? And how hard it is to keep it at the correct temperature? And the fear of overturning a huge boiling vat of badness onto your legs?
Not fun. So, instead of French fries and beer, I'm having carrots, homemade hummus, and loose green tea with a slice of homemade multigrain bread. I'm so healthy I make myself nauseous. Gah. Boo.
Haven't had a lot of culinary highlights of late, but I did find a fantastic multigrain bread recipie, which I'll put in the next post, and killed my old rooster and stuck him in a pot with some nice pig fat and a bottle of red.
OK so not really, but I did make coq au vin. It's the single unhealthiest thing I have ever cooked....you never realize how much calories you save not cooking with lard (or schmaltz, come to think).
You make coq au vin the old school way by taking slab bacon, cutting it into hunks, and then rendering all the fat off said hunks. Then you brown the chicken in the rendered pork fat and add a bottle of wine and some vegetables. I tried cooking wine, but next time I'd use something a little nicer. I also left in the chicken backbone to give the whole thing more flavor, which worked splendidly. The whole thing was a tad "meaty" for us quasi-vegetarians, but arcessita seemed to like it well enough. I served it with a mushroom ragout, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Yum!
(I must say I was humbled by trying to cut the whole chicken up. I've never done it, don't have the knives for it, and am ashamed to admit that yanking legs and wings out of sockets squicks me a little. Blech.)
The week before that I did finally manage to make a crispy chicken by using melted butter and oil, plus letting the bird roast at a higher temperature. Worked nicely although it is still not that dark crisp color. Might try honey next time as well. Of course, B. decided to pour the pan juices over the chicken carcass and then refrigerate it, so we ended up with a nice chicken confit by accident....fat preserves meat remarkably well. Of course, it's also impossible to extract bits of meat for say, a sandwich or any other useful purpose without melting the whole bloody thing.
(he promised not to do it again)
My favorite dish of the week was probably the sweet potatoe and chickpea curry I put over rice..soft, flavorful, and comforting.
------------------
Tonight I'm making hamentashen for B., we'll see how that turns out. If it works I'll do a little entry on it and the history of the cookies. Everyone seems to know how to make this mysterious "poppyseed filling" as three different recipies refer me to several filling concoctions OR "the poppyseed filling". Right! Yeah! The Poppyseed Filling! I know just how to make that....thanks!
I almost sent B. out to buy potatoes so I could make fries, and then sighed and realized, once again, that french fries are in the sad list of foods I will only eat at a restaurant because they are too. much. trouble. Do you have any idea how much OIL it takes to make fries? And how hard it is to keep it at the correct temperature? And the fear of overturning a huge boiling vat of badness onto your legs?
Not fun. So, instead of French fries and beer, I'm having carrots, homemade hummus, and loose green tea with a slice of homemade multigrain bread. I'm so healthy I make myself nauseous. Gah. Boo.
Haven't had a lot of culinary highlights of late, but I did find a fantastic multigrain bread recipie, which I'll put in the next post, and killed my old rooster and stuck him in a pot with some nice pig fat and a bottle of red.
OK so not really, but I did make coq au vin. It's the single unhealthiest thing I have ever cooked....you never realize how much calories you save not cooking with lard (or schmaltz, come to think).
You make coq au vin the old school way by taking slab bacon, cutting it into hunks, and then rendering all the fat off said hunks. Then you brown the chicken in the rendered pork fat and add a bottle of wine and some vegetables. I tried cooking wine, but next time I'd use something a little nicer. I also left in the chicken backbone to give the whole thing more flavor, which worked splendidly. The whole thing was a tad "meaty" for us quasi-vegetarians, but arcessita seemed to like it well enough. I served it with a mushroom ragout, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Yum!
(I must say I was humbled by trying to cut the whole chicken up. I've never done it, don't have the knives for it, and am ashamed to admit that yanking legs and wings out of sockets squicks me a little. Blech.)
The week before that I did finally manage to make a crispy chicken by using melted butter and oil, plus letting the bird roast at a higher temperature. Worked nicely although it is still not that dark crisp color. Might try honey next time as well. Of course, B. decided to pour the pan juices over the chicken carcass and then refrigerate it, so we ended up with a nice chicken confit by accident....fat preserves meat remarkably well. Of course, it's also impossible to extract bits of meat for say, a sandwich or any other useful purpose without melting the whole bloody thing.
(he promised not to do it again)
My favorite dish of the week was probably the sweet potatoe and chickpea curry I put over rice..soft, flavorful, and comforting.
------------------
Tonight I'm making hamentashen for B., we'll see how that turns out. If it works I'll do a little entry on it and the history of the cookies. Everyone seems to know how to make this mysterious "poppyseed filling" as three different recipies refer me to several filling concoctions OR "the poppyseed filling". Right! Yeah! The Poppyseed Filling! I know just how to make that....thanks!