Smithy

I spotted this a few days ago and it tickled my funny bone: a Magnum Mini! (No, I didn't buy any.) Forgot to include the moonrise photo from a few nights ago. There won't be anything like that tonight; the dust is too thick!

The northward march of the sunrise is accelerating. I didn't get a picture, but this morning the sun came up at the tippy-top of that leftward peak. This is yesterday's sunrise. For those of you in the far cold north, take heart! The days are getting longer! I wrote about the oven-baked breaded fish success a few posts ago. On the one hand they were quite the hit with both of us; on the other hand he kept wishing I could find ocean perch - which is even thinner, he said, and which came out crispier. I wondered whether he actually wanted to taste any fish between the breading, but I went looking during my last trip to town. I couldn't find although I'd gone to the local Walmart. (Incidentally, they also had large gaps in their stock.) I came away with what I thought was a different Gorton's coating on the pollock. It, er, turned out to be more of the same as I'd bought before. No matter! We both like it, we'll get through it... ...except this time, I wasn't as crazy about it. I can't imagine what might have been different. Maybe last time around I just had lower expectations! The hash browns were good, though, and got a package of shredded potatoes (from last October!) out of the freezer finally. The wind is howling today, and we'll either hunker down in the trailer or go on a road trip. Whatever we cook will be inside tonight. Last night was calm, clear and beautiful, and I finally got my strata! I cooked the chorizo and onions on the camp stove outside, then assembled and baked everything inside in the oven. It seems I forgot to take a money shot. Trust me, it was good. The leftovers will be good too.

Thanks for the explanation about the Johnny cakes; I'm glad to know my memory of the New England version wasn't off. Thanks also for these beautiful and inspiring photos. So many interesting and delicious combinations of food! Coconut mango panna cotta! Now why didn't I think of that? Chimichurri with fish! Why haven't I thought of that? and so on. I need to come to topics like this when I'm looking for inspiration.

I've never had (or seen) Johnnycakes, but from a New England contact I thought they were much flatter than what you show! Can you describe the Johnnycakes in your last post more thoroughly? What was a the exterior like? Was there a filling?

Eggs?

I recognize that long brown handle with the pusher. Gotta love a guy who'll sacrifice part of his rifle cleaning kit to make a meat press!

That's called the "money shot".

I agree about bacon. Kiolbassa must have a broader distribution than I thought. Thanks for the good news; I'll keep an eye out for them!

Thanks, Kim! Yes, I just meant any sort of meat stuffed into sausage shapes. Hot dogs, Polish sausage, brats, and their ilk.

It will be clear to any readers of this blog that my darling favors simplicity in cooking. Since we more or less take turns cooking, we've been eating a lot of hash, Superburgers and tube steaks. Most of it has been cooked inside for the last few weeks, due to cool outdoor temperatures, but recently we had a campfire again. I'd forgotten all about the Kiolbassa brand Polish sausage! Those sausages are far better than any others I've tasted. I hope I'll be able to find them again when we start heading east. The vegetables were the remnants of a curried vegetable dish I made sometime last week: well worth repeating, if I can remember what I did. In the name of simplicity he's been campaigning for us to keep frozen breaded fish on hand that can be put under the broiler and cooked quickly. I've resisted the idea, partly because I'm a scratch cook and partly because we still have a LOT of fish in the freezer. But I acquiesced, and went looking on one of my solo shopping trips. I'm out at the east end of Yuma at least once a week these days, and the Fry's grocery store at that end of town is quite upscale. I looked, and found a wide variety of frozen seafood, some looking quite tempting... ...but no frozen ocean perch. At last I found, and purchased, this: Not ocean perch, but flat and thin, breaded. Convenience food. We put it in the freezer when I got home. Now, in the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie, I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Yesterday I surprised him by announcing that I was cooking even though it wasn't my turn. We have chorizo. We have stale bread in the freezer from our stay in Texas(!) last November. We have shredded cheese, and eggs. I wanted a frittata. What we didn't have was milk, unless I was ready to settle for canned condensed milk. We could have done that, but I was also out of half-and-half for my coffee and I didn't want to settle. We left for town in the afternooon, with a list of errands: buy groceries, post mail, return a DVD to the library, drop off recycling. Get haircuts if we could. It's a 70-mile round trip at minimum, and we should have left earlier than we did. Can you see where this is going? It got late. We managed to get all the errands run (including haircuts, the most difficult part of the trip) but I was tired. I announced somewhere along the way that it was going to be tuna noodle hot dish, never mind the frittata. He was amused. We got home, did our late afternoon chores, unpacked everything. I was VERY tired. It seemed a good time to try the fish filets. He was VERY amused at the way my plans and ambition degenerated as the day wore on! 😄 ("Hurry," he said when I was snapping this photo, "I can't keep my gut sucked in forever!") The verdict: as a matter of fact, these were quite good, dead easy, and delicious. They were even easier than his hash and quicker than his tube steaks or burgers, and (don't tell him I said this) a refreshing change from any of them. We'll be keeping these around! But he was still tweaking me this morning for my elastic ambition! 😄

I've been delinquent in this blog, partly because of many (mostly good) non-food events in our lives and partly because I've posted elsewhere about triumphs like my first pecan pies, my first cinnamon rolls, my first chicken wings. (If you haven't checked out eG Cook-Off #88: Wings, please do so!) Still, those of you who are stuck in the cold and/or snow might enjoy a glimpse of life here in the desert. This is today's sunrise. At the Solstice, the sun cleared the mountains on the right side of that big notch. The days are getting noticeably longer. I have in mind several shopping trips to show you what's happening in Yuma grocery stores, but they will likely come piecemeal as so many of my posts do these days. We're starting to see gaps in the grocery store shelves. Whether that's due to the increasing supply chain difficulty or staffing difficulty or simply our bad timing, I don't know. It's startling, nonetheless. We're hardly in danger of starving, but haven't always been able to get what we want. The amazing and rising cost of beef took us aback yesterday. It's a good thing he prefers pork. There isn't likely to be a corned beef brisket this March! A favorite restaurant that had closed last year has reopened, and a favorite taco stand I discovered last year has disappeared. The pandemic continues to affect us all. I may be able to write about the restaurant later. Next up: convenience foods, and flexibility.

Suppose you wanted to make shellfish fritters in an attempt to approximate conch fritters. How would you go about it? And what sort of dipping sauce would you use?

Oh, I need this virtual trip! Thanks for the gorgeous photos!

Dang it, Kim - I've been heading off in the direction of Mexican food and the Wings Cook-Off. Now you have me wanting Middle Eastern! 😄

You'll know from the Wings Cook-Off that I'm a novice at this, so my advice may not be worth much...but here goes. They claim in that article that the spices are there to add flavor, but they also note that it's the salt that really matters for penetrating the meat. I doubt that the pepper flavorings will penetrate very far, and we know that the flakes themselves won't. I'd guess that if you pat the wings dry as they suggest, you'll probably get a lot of that pepper off the surface of the wings. I have some quibbles with that article, though. They say not to brine something longer than 48 hours, lest you end up with mushy meat. I suspect that if mush will happen it will happen much more quickly than that! Depends on the meat in question, I suppose. Good luck! I look forward to seeing what you do and how it comes out!

Many thanks, @sartoric! I'll have to try that. It looks really good, and certainly less work than what I did last night. I used half of my wings yesterday, as planned, to try the recipe from Buttermilk & Bourbon (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) that I mentioned above. That is, I set out to try that recipe. I ended up taking some liberties with it. The method is interesting. You start by giving the wings an hour-long bath in 300F oil, in the oven. I'll note that this tenderizes and essentially cooks them beautifully, but the skin is quite soft and pale. Next, marinate the wings for at least 4 hours (or, he says, preferably overnight) in the marinade you've made according to his recipe. This is where things broke down: in order to make that marinade, I first had to make his Cajun spice blend. I began looking around for the ingredients. I did not have dried thyme, ground bay leaves, file gumbo powder or cayenne. I decided that, since the recipe called for 1 tablespoon of this mix in 4 cups of buttermilk, I could (heh) wing it on the seasonings. The marinade also includes hot sauce, and that accounts for its pinkish color. While that is happening, and before heating oil for the final fry, you mix up yet another recipe, this time for the seasoned dredge: flour, masa harina, lemon pepper, granulated garlic, Creole seasoning, black papper, red pepper flakes, oregano, cayenne. I had about half of those ingredients - including the flour, but not the masa. I used corn meal instead, and wung winged it again on the spices. Then you dredge the drained wings and fry them in 350F oil until they're golden brown. They were great! They were the most crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside wings we've ever had. I wouldn't use corn meal next time, however: it made a mess of the pot and I'm not sure the texture of those grains added anything to the chicken. I was supposed to have made a few dipping sauces too, but ran out of motivation before I got that far. We used buttermilk ranch dressing (also from that book) and called it done. I think the technique is a keeper although it had the usual problems of leftover oil that go with deep frying. (I strained and saved what I could. The rest, and the crunchy bits in the pot, are going into tonight's campfire.) As for the seasonings and multiple recipes: if I try this exact recipe again, I'll be sure to make them all ahead of time. I'll be more inclined to keep the double-fry method and use another dredging mix altogether.

That looks wonderful! Recipe, or at least rough instructions, please!

@Shelby, more about those sprouts, please. Steamed, boiled, roasted? What about the tomatoes? What other seasonings?

Yes, I thought of Toliver also when I spotted this article about Oreo's 110th birthday special release: https://www.today.com/food/oreo-releasing-chocolate-confetti-cake-flavor-110th-birthday-t244753 I didn't realize the last Birthday Cake version had been to celebrate their century mark, but I enjoyed those. (As I recall, @rotuts thought them vile. 😉) Although, looking at the timing I have to think that when I tried them it was not for the 100 year birthday, regardless of what my linked article claims.

I was surprised too, but the wing bar (which had disappeared last year during the first lockdown) is back in action, and it's still self-serve. I think any further discussion would be too likely to stray into politics or medicine, so I'll stop here. I'd love to be able to buy organic wings from a local source, but I haven't found one yet except the market I mentioned 100 miles away. These that I bought don't contain carrageenan, at least. I wonder what purpose it serves? Thickener, to help keep the broth or brine from oozing out of the chicken and into the package? The collage above shows the package ingredients and a close-up of the pieces I'm thawing for tonight's dinner. The individual ice glaze shows up a little.

Delighted to hear it!

Butchers still exist, if you know where to look, but the major grocery chains don't seem to hire them. We know of a small market that has a surprisingly good meat counter, about 100 miles from here. If we pass that way in the next month or so, I plan to buy one of their special bags of wings: $10 for 10 pounds, or some such. They won't be as nicely prepped and trimmed as the "Party Wings" I bought (note that those are already separated into flats and drummies) but they'll be very fresh.

@Shelby , that looks wonderful! I'm glad you didn't settle for the Heritage Farms chicken, for the reasons @btbyrd and @chileheadmike cite below. chileheadmike, thanks for confirming my suspicions about that particular brand. My experience in looking for chicken wings for this Cook-Off was slightly better than Shelby's, but it was a search. As others have noted, wings have become quite pricey, beginning (I think) in the 1980's or '90's when the Buffalo Wings craze began. Right now, at Game Time, they might be even more expensive than at other times of the year. My search took me into a very nice grocery store in Yuma (Arizona), where I first spotted their Wings Bar. Here are some of the flavors they offer: There were a couple of other flavors that I didn't photograph: a spicy Thai chili version, I think, and boneless chicken tenders but the trays were empty anyway. Maybe that's a clue about the best sellers. I didn't buy any. I tried some a couple of weeks ago and was unimpressed. I thought he mango-habanero had too much habanero and too little mango, and the straight-up buffalo wings were okay but not great. They weren't crisp and the sauce balance didn't suit me. I then wandered to the meat department, where I discovered that there were no wings to be had in a brand I would buy. I briefly considered the Heritage Farms packaging that Shelby spotted, but the carageenan, package size and price were off-putting. Then I found these in the frozen section: These would do, maybe, but then there was this package: "Party Wings!" I'd never heard or thought of such a label before, but it's a good description. The wing sections in this package are individually glazed and look really good. At long last I found a smaller package of this brand and brought them home. I'm set to join the fun in a day or two. The cookbook Buttermilk & Bourbon: New Orleans Recipes with a Modern Flair (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) has a recipe titled "Literally the Best Fried Chicken Wings in the History of Chicken" so I think I'll start there. That recipe is one of the reasons I bought the book, oh, over a year ago. 😄

I too love smoked oysters, and haven't found kindred souls with which to share them. Once upon a time I had friends to whom I'd bring extra-special food treats when I came to visit for the week: smoked oysters, lemon curd, I forget what else. It was when I trotted out the lemon curd that my dear friend Joan gave me a funny look. She said, "You always were an adventuresome eater!" I got the message, and the curd came home with me. 😄 My recent fun acquisition is this Alaskan Ulu Knife that a friend gave me. It's the Alaskan (Inuit?) version of a mezzaluna, and it's sharp. It took me a while to get the rocking motion for chopping herbs or garlic. I don't know what it will take to use it to skin a seal or deer, but rather doubt I'll be using it that way any time soon. I also like the "Damascus finish" on the blade, though it gives me a bit of cognitive dissonance.

Chris, everything looks enviably delicious and I'm glad you brought us along. I have a few belated questions, beginning with this dish at Herbsaint What exactly is breaded egg? I can't make it out from the picture. Oh, and do you remember what sort of sauce was with that spaghetti?