Posted by Anita on 02.18.07 1:59 PM
Happy Lunar New Year to all! We wish you prosperity and good luck for the coming year.
Today’s the first day of 4705, so what better way to celebrate the Year of the Fire Pig than with some our our favorite porky recipes…
..from the MwD archives:
New Year’s Cassoulet
Pear and Arugula Salad with Guanciale
Not-Spam and Eggs
Carnitas Tacos
Cochinita Pibil
..from swine-lovin’ friends and fellows:
Homemade sausage from Cookiecrumb at I’m Mad and I Eat
Milk-braised chops from Dr. Biggles at MeatHenge
Devils on Horseback from Sean at Hedonia
Tartiflette from Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook
Senate Bean Soup from Steve at Rancho Gordo
Larb from Molly at Orangette
Ants on a Tree from Matthew at Roots & Grubs
As soon as we start cooking and/or eating anything noteworthy again, I promise we’ll be back with some original content.
And stay tuned for another remodeling update, too. (I’ll be home on the 22nd, and Cameron says the kitchen is looking “so beautiful I want to sleep in it.”)
holidays & occasions, meat, other blogs, recipes
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 02.05.07 9:19 PM
When I was a little girl, my dad was my first food buddy, the adventurous eater who constantly egged me on to try new things — one of my first childhood memories involves Pops bribing me to eat blueberries. His years in the Marine Corps left him with an unquenchable Tabasco addiction, which I’m sure shaped my spice-loving soul; I became a fan of all things picante at a young age, under his watchful eye.
As I grew up, he’d let me cry on his shoulder when the boys were mean. “I know it’s not the same, but I love you…” he’d say. And then he’d take me out for ice cream.
And on that point, he never wavered: Ice cream soothes all pains, salves all indignities. So its fitting, perhaps, that the last thing he wanted, the last thing he ate, was a scoop of Nutty Coconut from 31 Flavors.
As we sat around this afternoon, holding his hand, a surprising number of “Dad stories” centered around food. We never let him live down the time he made us waffles using sesame oil, creating a crazy (dare I say inedible?) supper and filling the house with the lingering scent of stir-fry gone crazy.
We jokingly refer to my mom’s friends here in Henderson as the Asian Food Mafia — they’re forever getting together on some pretense or another to share food. They’ve been keeping us well fed, taking turns cooking for us. It’s actually been quite lovely to dip into curries and boo chim gae and gai gkaprow, instead of the usual assortment of chuch-lady casseroles. Pops had a generous heart, and it’s no surprise to me that this steady stream of friends and neighbors stopping by with covered dishes looked genuinely distraught by his grave state, and now by his passing.
He always sent me a valentine each year, and I always reciprocated. I sent my card early this year, and I’m glad that I did. Even though I’m married to a wonderful man (who my father dearly loved), I can’t imagine Valentine’s Day will ever be quite the same.
family, holidays & occasions, Vegas
23 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.29.07 11:33 AM
As part of Meeta’s Postcards Around the World event, I just shipped off a valentine to …well, I can’t tell you who, but I can say that she’s a foodblogger who lives in a country that I love to visit, appropriately enough.
I’ve never been to this blogger’s town, but — as I now know from Googling — it shares many similarities with San Francisco, including “a superb choice of restaurants” (according to the local tourism council), an historic waterfront, and a brewery that’s been turning out well-regarded ales since the Victorian era.
The valentine I’m sending is a photo I took a few weeks ago at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market — featuring radishes in reds, hot pinks, and other valentine colors — with a postcard sticker on the back. (Not surprisingly, finding a food-related postcard is hard enough, but finding one that’s holiday-specific is impossible! And besides, it was fun making my own card.) Of course I’m using some of the Crops of the Americas stamps that I’ve been hoarding, too.
Somewhere out in the blogosphere, another food blogger is getting ready to send a valentine postcard to me, too. I can’t wait to get it!
holidays & occasions, other blogs
6 Comments »
Posted by a Special Guest on 01.26.07 7:05 AM
Editor’s note: Over the next couple of months, we’ll be delegating Drink of the Week duties to a few of our cocktailian friends from time to time, as our bar supplies and equipment are rather limited in our temporary space.
First behind the stick is our friend and neighbor Erik, a talented amateur mixologist who’s currently working his way through the Savoy Cocktail Book, trying each drink in alphabetical order! Today, though, he shares the results of last night’s Robert Burns-influenced experimentation.
I had an idea to drink a Scotch-related cocktail last night, in honor of Burns Night, and Audrey Saunders’ Dreamy Dorini Smoking Martini was the first that occurred to me.
I composed the elements — 2 ounces of decent vodka, a couple drops of Henri Bardouin pastis, and a half an ounce of Jon, Mark and Robbo’s “The Peaty One” Scotch — and stirred them together.
Nope.
I didn’t like it.
I just kept thinking, this would have been better with vermouth instead of vodka. And how do I get this Band-Aid taste out of my mouth?
Maybe Islay-style malts just aren’t my thing.
I hated to be boring and retro, but I stirred together a hard-to-beat classic cocktail that’s even more fitting to the occasion.
Bobby Burns
1-1/2 oz. Italian Vermouth (I used Carpano Antica)
1-1/2 oz. Scotch whisky (I used Compass Box Asyla)
2 dashes Benedictine
Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
Drink of the Week, drinks, holidays & occasions, recipes
5 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.22.07 6:08 PM
Yesterday, the Bald Guy celebrated his thirty(mumble) birthday — an occasion worthy of pulling out all the stops… and half of the pantry bins. But when you’re baking in a toaster oven countertop convection oven, your patisserie options are a wee bit limited. In one of those “only in the food-blogosphere” coincidences, Chockylit and Garrett are hosting a cupcake roundup this week — and yours truly just happens to have a little six-cup muffin tin that’s perfect for a half-batch of mini birthday cakes.
Not content to follow a request for “yellow cake with chocolate icing” to the letter, I started thinking about fancier alternatives. A series of chats about classic New England fare got me wondering how I could make Boston Cream Pie in a cupcake format. So I whipped up a batch of vanilla sponge cake [link removed*], some pastry cream, and a simple chocolate glaze: a cup of heavy cream, a quarter-pound of dark chocolate chips, and a tablespoon of Karo syrup.
One of the things I love about Boston Cream Pie is the way it combines a trio of simple Home Ec 101 recipes into a fun, old-timey dessert. But, as I soon discovered, the original format — cake sliced in half, pastry cream between the layers, chocolate glaze over the top and dribbled down the sides — doesn’t work very well in miniature. If you add enough cream to make a distinct filling layer, the pieces won’t stay together. You end up with a (delicious) mess, rather than a cupcake.
Undaunted, I tried a new method: Using a doughnut hole-cutter, I punched halfway down each cupcake, and dug out the center, ever so gently. Then I dipped the top of the cupcake in the chocolate glaze, far enough that the center got coated. I added a tablespoon of the pastry cream to the well, and filled the hole with the top half of the cut-out round. After a little more experimentation, I realized that it was easier to dip the center piece of cake in chocolate before placing it over the cream, rather than drizzling more glaze over the almost-finished cupcake. (If all this is too much to visualize, I’ve documented it all in a Flickr set.)
An excellent side benefit of dipping the unfilled cupcakes and their “stoppers” — rather than pouring glaze over the completed cupcake — is that the chocolate keeps the cream filling from soaking into the cake. And, it also makes a whole lot less mess.
—-
* Edited to add: We removed the link to the Cook’s Illustrated recipe in July 2008 in protest of their bullying tactics.
baking, dessert, holidays & occasions, other blogs
16 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.01.07 4:22 PM
We’ve had a crazy mixed-up holiday season this year, getting ready for the remodel and spending copious amounts of time away from San Francisco. There was no tree this year, no holiday baking, not even a wreath on the door. I consider myself damned lucky that we even got cards in the mail, and only a little embarrassed that they were store-bought (and bore postmarks precariously close to the 25th).
One of the holiday traditions I’ve been craving the most is a relatively new one for us: On New Year’s Day 2003 — during the Seattle Experiment — we made our first cassoulet, and served it to five good friends. Our sit-down meal started with three dozen oysters and a big green salad, and ended with a long walk!
After skipping the festivities in 2004 — we were moving into a new house — we decided to revive the cassoulet tradition two years ago. On January 1, 2005, we invited our entire crew over for an all-afternoon open house, which was simultaneously easier (for not having to find a dozen chairs or matching plates) but also more difficult (keeping cassoulet hot but accessible over the course of the afternoon).
I suspect that party made a deep impression, because one of my Seattle friends asked me for my cassoulet recipe last summer, 18 months after the fact. And then another asked me, just last week, whether I’d be making cassoulet for New Year’s Day this year. Alas, I told him, we’ll be packing up the kitchen for good on January 1 — not a good time to be nursing a giant pot of pork-and-beans a la francais. And anyway, I’d be at my parents’ house through the 29th, leaving me no time to prep duck confit or perform the multi-day mise-en-place that my usual recipe requires.
You see this coming, non?
I’m not sure what got me so obsessed, but I think seeing both Toulouse sausage and duck confit on the Fatted Calf newsletter last week might have been the trigger. Yeah, they’re both on the list every week, I suppose, but my subconscious is working overtime. I became fixated on making cassoulet, somehow: Perhaps if I bought some of the hard-to-make ingredients, rather than making them myself, it wouldn’t be such a crazy idea?
In the back of my mind, I remembered my sister mentioning a “cheater’s cassoulet” she and her husband had made a while back. I checked the usual places for a recipe that seemed to fit that bill, to no avail. I dropped her a line, and asked if she remembered the shortcut I was taking about.
“I think it’s Bittman,” she answered. “We’ll email it to you tonight.”
Sure enough, when it arrived, the recipe was classic Bittman, embodying everything I loathe about his Minimalist shtick, complete with unnecessary substitutions (Italian sausage?? pork tenderloin??) and an outrageously short cooking time. And let’s be honest — there’s no way any bean stew tastes good in less than an hour. That recipe’s no cassoulet; it doesn’t even play one on TV.
Stuck between my old standby — which takes three days, from start to finish, not including the month-long process of making and curing the duck confit — and this 45-minute abomination, I decided there must be some middle ground.
Starting from the 72-hour version, I reduced quantities to keep leftovers in check, then pared down the steps to the essentials, and eliminated some of the crazier ingredients. I ended up with a dish that can be prepped over the course of a lazy morning, leaving enough time for a long, slow braise that coasts into an early supper as the winter sun wanes.
Of course, if you’ve the luxury of time, feel free to break things down into more-manageable blocks, as noted below.
One-Day Cassoulet
1 pound dried white beans that hold their shape when cooked
1 large yellow onion, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1/4 cup duck fat or chicken fat or lard — divided use
1 meaty ham bone or ham hock (about 3/4 pound)
3 small sprigs fresh thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 pound fresh garlic pork sausage, cut into 2-inch chunks
2 to 4 whole confit duck legs, drumsticks and thighs separated
additional unsalted duck, chicken, or ham broth, or water
1/2 to 1 cup toasted breadcrumbs, or panko
Rinse the beans, and soak in your usual manner; drain and set aside.
In a large saucepan or bean pot, saute the onion in 2T duck fat over medium heat until soft. Add the beans, thyme, and the ham hock or ham bone, and cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat.
Reduce to a low simmer, and cook until the beans are tender but not fully cooked — about 45 minutes for heirloom beans, longer for store-bought. Remove ham bone or hock from the broth, and set aside to cool. Season beans and their liquid to taste with salt and pepper, and set aside. When cool enough to handle, cut meat from the hock or bone into large chunks. Discard the bones (and skin, if you’ve used a smoked hock) and return the meat to the bean pot.
Heat the remaining 2T duck fat in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the duck confit pieces, and cook until browned. Remove from pan and set aside on a plate. Add the sausage pieces to the pan, and brown on all sides, approximately 10 minutes. Deglaze the pan with 1 cup of the bean juices, scraping to dislodge the browned bits; return the enriched juices to the bean pot.
(This makes a nice stopping point, if you’re preparing the cassoulet over two or more days. Be sure to store the beans in their liquid, and remember to bring all ingredients back to temperature before proceeding.)
Preheat the oven to 350F.
With a slotted spoon, place half of the bean-ham mixture into a wide casserole, preferably earthenware or enameled cast-iron. Cover the beans with sausages, then a layer of the duck confit. Cover with the remaining beans, and add just enough of the bean juices to reach the top layer of beans, leaving their top edges exposed. Reserve the extra bean liquid. (Depending on your pan, you may need more liquid, either at this stage or during the moistening process. You can use unsalted chicken broth or — if you’re confident in the flavors of your ingredients — water, but make sure the liquid is warm before adding to the pot, or you’ll slow the cooking process.)
Bake the cassoulet, uncovered, until the mixture comes to a simmer and a crust begins to form, usually about an hour. Break the crust with the back of a spoon, and push the crust under the liquid. Reduce heat to 250F, and cook for as long as you can bear the aroma (2 to 5 hours more), checking every 30 minutes to make sure the cassoulet is still bubbling, and adding more warm liquid as needed to keep the mixture moist but not sodden.
(If you have time, you can cool the cassoulet completely at this point and then refrigerate it, covered with aluminum foil, for a day or two. As with most stews, this resting period will improve the cassoulet, not harm it. If you take this route, warm the cassoulet to room temperature the day you’ll serve it — at least 45 minutes — and heat for an hour in a 350F oven before proceeding to the next step. Again, remoisten as needed.)
Top with the bread crumbs, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes longer. Remove the cassoulet from the oven, and allow to rest 10 minutes before serving.
holidays & occasions, recipes
4 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.31.06 8:38 AM
I mentioned my 2006 culinary resolutions in passing last week, and it seems only fair to see how well I managed to pull them off.
I will eat more food that I can trace to its source.
I spent as many Saturday mornings as logistically possible at various farmers markets, and I can honestly say that I could count all of our 2006 trips to Safeway on one hand. We turned to Whole Foods and Tower Market for any needs that couldn’t be managed at the Ferry Building.
The experience was, frankly, eye-opening: We’ve developed relationships with farmers, gotten a much better feel for the rhythm of seasonal crops, and enjoyed observing that — although better food does, often, cost more — we’re more satisfied with a smaller quantity of good things as we used to be with an abundance of mediocre stuff.
I will make time for entertaining friends at home.
We did better this year — especially in the summertime, when it’s so easy to create an amazing spread from all the great produce — but there’s plenty of room for improvement in 2007.
I will find a talented architect to remodel my kitchen.
Check!
I will learn where to find better lunch possibilities near my office, and not just lazily fill my belly with convenient crap.
I definitely put my heart into this one, although I can’t say I was particularly successful. The best thing that happened to my lunch hour in ’06? Hands down, it’s the new “Foodie Court” and Bristol Farms grocery at Westfield SF Centre. (I didn’t say it’s good for my budget, however.)
I will teach the basics to my friends who want to learn to make Thai food.
Well… nobody asked. 😀 I think we got a little Thai’d out after three straight weeks of three five Thai meals a day on Kasma’s trip — we probably cooked less Thai this year than any in recent memory. But, once the new kitchen’s finished (and we have — hallelujah! — an exhaust fan) I hope that will change.
I will read cookbooks from the library before I buy them.
Boy, did this one take off in a big way. I’ve had a steady rotation of three (or more) cookbooks checked out all year. My local library makes it so easy! I just find the ISBN on Amazon, paste it into the library’s search engine, click “Request”, and wait. A few days or weeks later, I get an email telling me my book’s on the hold shelf at my local branch.
I’m having so much fun exploring new cookbooks that I’m working on a Bookshelf page so you can peek at what’s on my kitchen counter each week. (Please be gentle… I’m still beating my head against the monitor — Amazon and WordPress don’t like each other much, so I’m pretty much coding things by hand in my non-existent free time.)
This is the year I will try to cook at least one new recipe a week.
The library-book project pretty much made this a given, although there were definitely good weeks and bad weeks here. Lots of great new recipes made it into our regular repertoire, namely Pear and Arugula Salad, Bleu Cheese Cauliflower Soup, Peach Bruschetta, and Salted Caramel Ice Cream.
I will taste anything that’s put in front of me, no matter how ‘weird’.
See also: Thailand. And also last week‘s Drink of the Week.
I will use my new smoker (you know, the one I hope to get for my birthday) often enough to justify its purchase.
I guess we found other ways to spend that particular chunk of money. 😀
I will give my time to the food bank, and not just when my company gives me time off to do it.
I did volunteer (with the office crew) this summer, but never made it over on my own, except when bearing bags of donations. I resolve to do better in 2007.
I will fill my new garden with as many edible plants as possible.
Another rousing success, thanks in large part to the persistence of my wonderful husband. He sourced some gorgeous edible specimens, pouring over Internet resources and picking the brains of some talented local experts. I’m tickled that we have a garden that’s as tasty as it is beautiful. Stand by for a citrus update in the next week or so…
We will finally take our long-awaited culinary tour of Thailand.
What a wonderful way this was to start our year. One of my resolutions for 2007 is to finally pare down my 1,500 photos into something manageable, and post them to share. If all goes well, perhaps I can dig up our notes and write a few ‘backdated travelogue’ posts next month…
How about you? Any food-related resolutions for 2007?
I’m truly curious… this isn’t just a lazy way to end the post. 🙂
holidays & occasions, locavore, other stuff
8 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.26.06 4:27 PM
Although the origins of Boxing Day are somewhat murky, many of the historical theories include the traditions of providing food or other sustenence to those less fortunate than ourselves. English households apparently boxed up Christmas leftovers for servants’ families, and churches distributed alms collected from the ‘poor box’ on the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day. And I’m sure you know the carol about Good King Wenceslas…
So it seems appropriate to celebrate, today, by thanking everyone who participated in the Menu for Hope charity drive: We raised $58,000 $60,925.12 — that’s more than three times as much as last year — a lot more useful to the recipients of UN World Food Programme aid than day-old leftovers.
If you’ve got a little more time off before the new year, why not tidy up your pantry and take a box of canned goods to your local food bank? Most of the holiday donation barrels seem to have disappeared from grocery stores and office lobbies already, but the San Francisco Food Bank offers a handy list of locations that happily take your donations all year ’round. Or, even better, take a shift as a volunteer food sorter — I’ve done it twice, and it’s hard work, but also a lot of fun.
If you’re outside San Francisco, check out Second Harvest‘s search engine: Plug in your Zip code, and they’ll connect you with a nearby food bank.
holidays & occasions, Menu for Hope
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 12.25.06 10:48 AM
…and a happy holiday season to everyone. May your day be filled with delicious food, the love of friends and family, and a dash of unexpected beauty.
holidays & occasions
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 12.18.06 1:05 PM
Still searching for the perfect holiday gift? I’ve got a few ideas for you that I guarantee won’t just collect dust, or get relegated to the re-gifting shelf.
First off, a cool little idea called Giftybox. The Classes & Workshop Giftybox ($49) includes a pass to a workshop — including food- and drink-related classes at Seattle’s Culinary Communion and San Francisco’s Compassionate Cooks, among others across the country — plus nice discounts at five other locations of the recipient’s choice.
If you’ve got a better handle on your giftee’s tastes, you might opt instead for the Wine Tour & Tasting Giftybox ($59), with options for California, Washington, Oregon, New York and other wine-producing regions. With this box, your lucky friend gets a gift pass for a winery tour & tasting of her choice, including a bottle of wine, plus tastings and discounts at 5 additional wineries in the region.
You can order either Giftybox as late as Tuesday morning (9am PST) to receive it by the 21st, via 2-day FedEx… plenty of time to wrap it up and sneak it under the tree.
If neither of these presents strikes your fancy, might I humbly suggest a gift that combines the warm, fuzzy glow of altruism with the dream-inducing rush of a lottery ticket? I’m sure you’ve already bought plenty of tickets for the Menu for Hope raffle — we’ve raised more than $25,000 already!! — but consider buying a handful for your friends and family.
A ticket makes a nice stocking-stuffer: Pick out a prize that suits your giftee’s personality, print out the page from the donor’s site with a note explaining you’ve bought a ticket on their behalf, and tuck it into a pretty envelope. (Sam explains it all much better at the bottom of this post.)
There are so many great prizes up for grabs, and some of them (not naming any names, ahem!) don’t have very many bids at all… so your odds of winning are incredibly good.
holidays & occasions, other blogs, shopping
1 Comment »
