Jensen
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Posts posted by Jensen
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I finished up Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, early this morning. It's a natural sequel to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, chronicling a year of living as a "locavore" on a small farm in southwest Virginia.
The book was co-authored by Ms. Kingsolver's husband, Stephen Hopp, and her eldest daughter, Camille Kingsolver. Hopp provides short essays on the science and the politics of foodways, while the daughter's contribution consists of reminiscences and recipes.
I really enjoyed it but, if you're a Monsanto fan, you might want to give it a pass.
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I love the pride they feel when they take a chunk of homemade bread and show it to their parents with a proud "I made this!" I feel like I'm able to make a small difference just by sharing something I love with them, and get them thinking about baking/cooking as something they can embrace.
Wow, I sound really cheesy talking about this. The camp is in two weeks and I can't wait.
Not at all cheesy...passionate? Yes. Cheesy? No.
What a wonderful thing for you to do for those children and your community. I bet it's something that they'll remember for the rest of their lives.
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I use a loosely modified version of the Cook's Illustrated for oven fries. You toss the potato wedges with olive oil, and cook them tightly covered with foil, then uncover them and cook them until they're crispy and browned. Very good, and easy.
Do you recall the reasoning behind the "cover with foil" stage? I love oven fries (when the outside temperatures aren't reaching baking levels) but I've never covered them.
Also, how long for each stage and at what temperature?
(Ta very much!)
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That looks great Jensen! About how long did it take, start to finish?
About ten minutes. While the noodles were cooking, I assembled all the other ingredients. Then it was just a matter of tossing it all together.
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The latest boullion cube fad in my kitchen is Knorr's Onion Mini-Cubes.
When you taste them, they really do taste like minced onion!
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Well, this cook-off obviously came at the perfect time for me! It inspired pasta salad last night and cold noodle salad for lunch today.
My starting point for today's naengmyun (or reasonable facsimile thereof) was this post:
The local Raley's doesn't have buckwheat noodles so I opted to go with Japanese udon noodles instead. I really should have re-read SheenaGreena's post before making the sauce because I made mine just out of gochujang (affectionately known in my brain as MCP, or "magic chile paste", due to its "anti-obesitic properties") and soy sauce, combined in equal parts.
I also have no Korean-style pickles so I saved some chilled green beans from last night's dinner and added them to the mix.
Here are the ingredients for two servings, assembled:
Just before serving, I drizzled each bowl with sesame oil and garnished with sesame seeds:
Fabulous!
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I made up a recipe for Chicken Scallopine with Garlic and Vanilla Veloute for a Spice is Right challenge.
It's very good.
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My shopping mistakes have nothing to do with language differences; rather, they arose out of cultural differences.
The first one occurred in the winter of 1999. It was time to start Christmas baking and that means butter tarts! So, off I went to the local Raley's in search of tart shells. I can actually make good pastry but tart shells try my patience so I use frozen ones instead.
They weren't exactly jumping out of the freezer case at me so I asked one of the employees where I might find tart shells.
Then I had to explain what exactly tart shells were.
Needless to say, my local Raley's doesn't carry them. (I did find out in winter of 2000 that the local Safeway does carry them but the turnover of their stock is questionable.)
So, I began the big pep talk about making tart shells from scratch as I headed off to get some lard.
I stood in front of the cold case, looking at box after box of butter or margarine or tubs of "non-dairy spread", unable to find the lard for the life of me. I must have looked lost because the dairy employee asked if I needed help.
"Oh, thank you! I don't see any lard here..."
The fellow looked at me like I was insane and said "No, it's in the Mexican aisle."
What?
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I made a pasta salad as part of dinner tonight but between the white pasta, the white dressing, and the white plate, the photo was way over-exposed.
At any rate, I cooked some penne rigate until a little past al dente. It was drained and rinsed with cold water. For the dressing, I mixed a tablespoon of mayo, 3-4 T. of plain yogurt, 1 T. of dijon mustard, and then some sprinklings of tarragon. S & P, of course.
That was all mixed together (as well as some cornichons split lengthwise) and stored in the fridge until dinner.
The taste was exactly what I was going for but why, oh why, does the dressing clump up when it's refrigerated?
Tomorrow I'll be trying some naengmyun for lunch!
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There's a very interesting article in today's Sacbee about the entry form for the gold medal-winning Charles Shaw Chardonnay.
Here's a small excerpt:
"We are not putting Napa or Sonoma wine into Charles Shaw," Moody says.The source of the grapes that go into the wine would seem a minor point if not for speculation that Bronco could have submitted to the State Fair a very limited release of Charles Shaw chardonnay made from fruit grown in a prime appellation for the varietal, such as Russian River Valley.
That sort of speculation wasn't exactly discouraged by the entry form Bronco submitted with the wine, which listed the chardonnay's production at 50,000 gallons, which is about 21,000 cases.
The full article is here.
If it's true, then the Two-Buck Chuck winning all those medals isn't the same plonk available at Trader Joe's, that's for sure!
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It was interesting that there wasn't much of anything on PubMed about "the dangers of eating sushi" though.
I ate a ton of sushi (and other Japanese food) when I was pregnant, as well as a large amount of Greek food. The only result I ever saw from it was that the Spawn loves Japanese and Greek food.
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This is probably too late but there is an abstract on PubMed linking consumption of raw fish by pregnant women to perinatal listeriosis.
Search using the parameters:
pregnant "raw fish"
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Sure, but I'd probably go for their lengua tacos...
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One more reason why it's probably more expensive: economies of scale (or lack thereof). The level of production of lamb for meat must be dwarfed by the production of beef.
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The ratio of the cost of production to yield is probably higher. You don't get the same amount of meat from a lamb as you do from cattle or hogs.
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It looks like a prawn to me. Okay, a prawn that took a lot of growth hormones but still a prawn...
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Do you think it would work with a chuck roast? I took the last roast of my winter supply out of the freezer this morning, thinking I'd grind it up and make burgers for dinner.
Then you came along with this Baltimore pit beef idea...
Maybe the chuck wouldn't slice well though. Hmmmm...
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According to an AP article, the educational programmes designed to combat childhood obesity don't work.
The federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on nutrition education — fresh carrot and celery snacks, videos of dancing fruit, hundreds of hours of lively lessons about how great you will feel if you eat well.But an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success in changing the way kids eat — or any promise as weapons against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.
I wish they had said what was working!
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Well, this Canadian celebrated Dominion Day (remember when it was called that?) with barbecued tri-tip, white and wild rice melange, and a big ass green salad. Oh, did I forget to mention the beer?
My American friends were very supportive of the effort (read: they drank lots of beer too). The Germans around the corner will be hosting the fesitivities on the 4th...
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To bring this back to my original beef:
How about we produce meat that tastes good to most people. How about we let the market place speak.
I love the flavour of grass-fed beef, preferring it far more than the flavour of grain-fed beef. The Spouse is the opposite. I grew up on an island where there wasn't the land available to grow the large amounts of grain needed to raise grain-fed cattle. He grew up on the edge of the prairies where grain (and the land needed to grow it) was plentiful.
Flavours aside, there is one very good argument for not letting the market place speak for all, an argument that was tragically highlighted recently with the pet food contaminations. When the market place speaks, cost becomes a higher priority than safety.
The safety of our food supply should not be contingent upon a fiscal bottom line. Unfortunately, when one relies on market forces to drive what we eat, then that is exactly what happens.
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Great info on your trip, Therese!
I wonder if there were any surprises in the foods? Obviously, fish plays a big role in the diet but were there any ingredients or foods that you weren't expecting to see but did?
In your posts, I was surprised to read of "bland cheese". For some reason (unknown even to me!), I thought there'd be a fair amount of goat cheese in Portugal.
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My sister sent me a little book on Dutch cooking (in English), which has more chat than recipes. It mentions white beans with green beans - "blote billetjes in het gras" (and translates that as "bare bums in the grass").
I would make that recipe simply because of the translation!
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UPDATE:
I'm happy to report that, as of 10:45am, neither of us has experienced the aforementioned GI distress. The fish was delicious and we would both be delighted to eat it again.
I've made escolar twice, eating the same amount each time. The first time I ate it, I had no problems whatsoever. The second time, I didn't get off so easy.
I collect bouillon cubes and concentrates
in Kitchen Consumer
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I have the tomato stuff in a little jar, not cubes. There are some recipes I've tried making with "real" broth and, to be honest, it's just better made with cubes. Number one example for me is semolina dumplings in broth (Grießnockerl Suppe): click