Katie Meadow
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Posts posted by Katie Meadow
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,Most unbalanced dinner ever! My daughter's HOA had their annual get together, which for the past few years has involved a wing contest. My SIL won it last year, but didn't enter this year. There were six entries, all spicy. Five were quite good. I passed on the various pasta salads and the pizzas. and just had wings and beer for dinner. Our family contribution to the potluck was brownies, made by me. That was my dessert. The weather was lovely, not hot. The crowd was diverse and interesting and there were hoards of children, most of whom looked to be under 7 yrs old. As you would expect there was abundant talk about the schools in the area. SOO glad I'm done with that!
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Dinner last night was a casual affair since my daughter and SIL went out to celebrate their fifth anniversary at a tapas bar in Atlanta. So my husband and I had a quiet dinner after the girls were in bed: Gaelic Ale on home tap (so fun!), warm boiled peanuts we made from our Dekalb market splurge and Ronni Lundy's fried apples made using a selection of the current crop of mostly local apples. The selection of apples in the south at this time of year is astounding. Some leftover rotisserie chicken and leftover mac n cheese. The boiled peanuts were a huge hit with the twin who likes savory and salty snacks. The other one has a major sweet tooth. She would crash anybody's birthday party for a piece of cake. We call her Miss Congeniality because she will go up to any group of random people and insinuate herself.
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41 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:
I think we need another emoji. Kind of like Green With Envy.
I'm green with envy. I forgot to mention this market is exactly three minutes by car from my daughter's house. There are two downsides to cooking for her family. One, their kitchen has a lousy old range, and is missing a lot of what I consider necessary pots, pans, measuring cups and mixing bowls; there's no toaster and a very old toaster oven that defies human intervention. The second, and more delicate issue, is my son-in-law's chiild-like eating habits. There are a ton of things he won't eat, other things he will only eat if prepared on way and a meatless meal is, to his mind, worthless. So, a challenge. And I'm not the most placid or patient person. My husband's family are mostly vegetarians, and I'm very used that. At home my husband and I typically eat meatless meals at least half the time. I can't get my head around someone who is unwilling to eat a veg meal once in a blue moon.
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Dinner in Decatur with all ingredients from (and a shoutout to) the amazing DeKalb Farmer's Market. This may have been a farmers' market once upon a time, but now it is a giant international grocery. It is unlike any other "super" market. For certain products they contract with only one supplier. For instance just about all pasta products are Delverde,. dozens and dozens of shapes and sizes. There was only one brand of milk, something organic, that is is phenomenally good, and I don't say that about milk very often. The variety of vegetables is remarkable. Four different sizes of collards alone. There was Culantro and Cubanelle peppers, along with just about any other fresh pepper you could name. There was a bin of fresh green peanuts in the shell: it's the season for boiled peanuts! A fabulous fish market. Lots of smoked turkey products that they make in house. Berkshire pork. Tropical fruits you never heard of. A zillion things for making Indian dishes, including curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves. And on and on, with a few very strange omissions.
My daughter says they don't carry any kind of tortillas, which is pretty weird, considering. Of course she shops in similar fashion as her father: fast and furious. and like him, if she doesn't see it right away she assumes they don't carry it. At least she has an excuse, like a full time job and toddler twins. Me, I'm dawdling and gawking. The most diverse bunch of shoppers you could imagine. Some jaw dropping turbans and other headgear and swooping African print dresses and saris.
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So, dinner was put together from our market trip. Cooking for four plus is not something I'm used to on a daily basis, but my husband and I managed pretty well. Mac n Cheese with Delverde small penne. You can't go wrong there with toddlers. Long cooked green beans cooked with heirloom tomatoes, fresh beans and house cut hickory smoked bacon. Thanks to the twins, lots of leftovers there! Rotisserie chicken, one of the best ones I've ever had: spicy hot rubbed, plump. At first we couldn't find the rotisserie chicken, partly because it was such a large space unto itself, and for some mysterious reason, roped off with traffic cones and yellow tape like a crime scene.
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28 minutes ago, Smithy said:
Did you cook them to a soft consistency? If you used any acid, what was it? I could imagine treating those greens and bacon as one would a wilted salad, but I suspect they'd need more cooking than spinach would.
We cooked the bacon and put it on paper towels. In some of the bacon grease we sautéed half an onion and. some garlic. Then the greens went it, tossed and briefly cooked until totally wilted. Added salt and tossed a bit more. Added about a third of a cup of water, covered the pan and steamed for five or so minutes. Broke up the bacon, added it back in and cooked for another five minutes or so. Uncovered the pan and cooked off the liquid and served with a generous pat of butter. Really good despite how minimalist it was. A home I would have used ham broth instead of water, and finished the greens with a bit of vinegar and Steen's can syrup. I typically do this with chard, but now I think I will start to branch out and mix up the greens.'
So, these were not long-cooked greens as collards are often done. And certainly spinach cooks quicker, but I'm not a fan of spinach, which would certainly cook quicker. When it comes to long-cooked collards I think that's an art, and when I order them along with BBQ I am always disappointed. But the rare times I find tender baby collards they can work really with this method.
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On 9/25/2023 at 11:20 AM, Ann_T said:
@Okanagancook, I've ordered some. And I'm hoping that it just adds mostly a "salt" taste. Almost every salt substitute is a combination of herbs and spices.
Which is fine, if you are looking to add lemon and garlic, or a tex mex seasoning to whatever you are cooking. BUT, if you want just a little salt to enhance the flavour
of something that you already have the flavour profile you are looking for, none of the other substitutes I have found work for me.
Totally agree that substitutes mostly don't cut the mustard. But one thing I swear to is that after a while on a reduced salt diet your taste buds adjust and you literally don't need as much salt as you once did, or as you thought you did. Give it time. After a few months of using less salt almost all restaurant food tasted over salted. I still love salt, and over the years I've increased my intake, but I still use less than many recipes suggest. Also I find that instead of heavily salting while cooking that a little bit of good finishing salt goes a long way when it comes to flavor.
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Our choices are limited here in the NC hills. I know the selection will be great at the huge international market in Decatur; there's a whole aisle with nothing but different greens. After the remarkable unusual chard we scored at the local farmers' market the best we could do at the big grocery store in town was a bag of pre-washed and cut greens called, simply, Southern Greens. It was a mix of turnip greens, collards and mustard greens, and ,surprisingly fresh and good cooked with a little bacon.
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12 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:
Usually spinach. I mentioned that I live in a pretty small town and things such as esacrole, raddicio, mustard greens, etc are just too durn fancy for our stores!
I've made Italian Wedding Soup with escarole, cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) or chard. All good, but I like escarole best.
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6 hours ago, lemniscate said:
Since I've been taking Naproxen for a pulled muscle, I crave cinnamon and apple. I normally do not like apple pie, apple sauce or cinnamon anything. It's very weird. At least I'm not craving pumpkin spice (ew), which is everywhere at the moment.
Pumpkin Spice haters of the world unite!
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I have to admit that I thought Jiffy was something from the past. I had a rude awakening the other day at a supermarket in NC. An incredible variety of Jiffy mixes take up a lot of shelf space in these parts. Just try and get artisan cornmeal or Bob's Red Mill cornmeal in the all-white moneyed town of Highlands.
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20 hours ago, heidih said:
Nice to have the phood you make or others truly appreciated, and a nice tradition,
Whatever Clara is eating it appears to have put her in a trance. Always a pleasure whether you are in one or watching one. Half the pix of my 2 yr old granddaughters are of them eating, since that's one of the only times they are sitting relatively still.
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13 hours ago, Darienne said:
Mine is not recent, but when I was pregnant for our daughter and first son, it was the Chinese Almond Cookies from the Canton Inn in Ottawa. The Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, used to eat there. The restaurant is long gone. Those cookies were the best.
I do sometimes have a hankering for Miss Vickie's® Original Recipe kettle cooked potato chips. But then we always have in the house...so to speak...Kirkland's potato chips. I say 'so to speak' because they are hidden from me somewhere in the garage.
Pregnancy cravings are a special category. I like sour, but when I was pregnant nothing was too sour. I craved Japanese pickled vegetables above all, grapefruit as puckering as I could get it, and in the realm of the really hideous: those gummies with that weird sour powder on them.
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All my cravings seem to come out of nowhere. Except for root beer floats which are always in the front of my brain.
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Another no-name farmers' market melange in the NC cabin. From the market: purple cherokee tomatoes, big and juicy. Shelled purple hull peas, similar to black eyed peas but I like them better. Fresh okra, dark in color and very tender and tasty. Bacon, not local I don't think, but good. Everything sort of sautéed separately and then mixed with rice and seasoned with Cajun Blackening Spice that I brought with me from CA, believe it or not, because all the ones I've tasted so far in Atlanta are ninety percent salt. For dessert, scuppernongs and double dark chocolate Milano's.
How southern can you get? Does this dish have a name? To drink we had Asheville Highlands Gaelic Ale, always available in these parts on tap or in cans. I'm not a big beer drinker, but I like this stuff. Believe it or not my daughter and her husband now have some kind of setup that keeps two kegs cold and you can have beer on tap whenever you desire.. What I love about it is that I don't need a giant glass, and can have a half glass at a time, nice foam and all. Highlands Gaelic Ale is a standard, and the other keg is on rotation, I think. The tap handle is only a few months away from being reachable by the taller of the two year-old twins. The two girls are like mountain goats; they'll figure out a way. Too bad I won't be there to see them get sozzled.
Most astonishing, my husband baked bread this morning. As per usual for airbnbs the selection of pots and kitchen equipment is arbitrary as can be, but there is a bread pan! Four forks, a bizarre selection of bowls and some frighteningly ugly plates with a leapard-skin pattern that makes it just about impossible to see what you eating. There's one gigantic stainless steel skillet and two small pots. A dishwasher that's functional but obviously forks need to be washed by hand. The coffee cups are stupidly wide and unbalanced. There is no dish drain. There is no water kettle for my tea. Behold, there's a quarter sheet pan that's heavy duty and gorgeous. That means biscuits for breakfast using White Lily flour!
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Susan Spungen has several books. The one I have is "Open Kitchen" and although some of the recipes don't seem easy, some are basic and very good and others can be tweaked to simplify. She also has another book called "Veg Forward" but I've never tried it. Since these are not new, they can be found on eBay for a decent price.
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2 hours ago, chromedome said:
I grow a chard called "perpetual spinach," which is bred to stay spinach-sized and spinach-tender even when mature (but which is less sensitive to heat than spinach, and won't bolt). It could be that, or some similar cultivar.
That sounds delicious. But the leaves of this plant were large, like regular chard. It was indeed spinach tender but didn't taste like spinach, and when cooked had a texture I prefer to spinach. If I were planning to be in Highlands on any other Saturday I would go back to see if the vendor was there again. I have a suspicion he would say it was just swiss chard.
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Shame on the town of Highlands NC. Their Saturday farmers' market was mainly a collection of flowers and low rent jewelry. Except for one fellow who had a small selection of vegetables. We got a couple of large purple cherokee tomatoes (a favorite of mine), a bag of fresh shelled purple hull beans and the last bunch of super fresh swiss chard. The chard turned out to be extraordinary. It was unlike any chard I've seen. The leaves were thin and very tender, the stems were so thin they were practically non-existent. Nothing wasted. Having little to work with we sautéed some garlic in olive oil, tossed in chopped chard, and when wilted, poured in a minimal amount of water, a sprinkle of salt and covered the pan for a few minutes, then cooked uncovered until the liquid was gone. I have never tasted anything like it. Sweet, delicate and totally delicious. I use a lot of chard at home, but this was very different. I'm going to look carefully at other markets to see if the same type of chard is to be found. Does anyone have a clue as to what kind of chard this was?
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In keeping with trying to find locally grown foods, and trying not to break the bank, today we scored some fresh, shelled purple hull peas and some chard. We're making do with limited supplies. Tonight we will make sautéed chard in olive oil with garlic and the previously acquired shelled black eye peas. The peas we will do simply as we did the butter beans, lacking anything hammy: just boiled and eaten with butter and salt. Apps, which we are eating right now, include goat cheese and Beemster on Panzanella crackers. Glad to find pansanella! Also some very good fresh lightly salted pistachios. A bottle Italian wine that's better than I would have expected. These kinds of makeshift meals are pretty much how justify going out on vacation. We had planned on being in Decatur with our daughter this weekend, but one of the girls is getting over a cold and the other came down with it today. So it goes. We'll go down midweek and do a lot of shopping and cooking, for which my daughter and SIL are always very grateful. At least the twins love to eat, Well, except for most green vegetables, like most two year olds I have known.
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2 hours ago, liuzhou said:
Today, I bought a pizza. Pizzas are not vegetables. But this one was delivered to my home accompanied by a vegetable I've rarely seen in markets or supermarkets in China, but occasionally in restaurants. I'm talking about Eruca vesicaria or Eruca sativa Mill., popularly known in Commonwealth English as rocket, from the French roquette which in turn is from the Italian ruchetta. It was adopted into English in the early 16th century. In the USA and Canada, it known as arugula from the Calabrian dialect word, aruculu, although this seems to be a mid-20th century innovation. Whatever you call it, it is native to the Mediterranean lands.
In Chinese, it is bizarrely known as 芝麻菜 (zhī ma cài) or 芝麻叶 (zhī ma yè). These are misnomers. They translate as ‘sesame vegetable’ or ‘sesame leaf’, respectively. Sesame is a totally different plant, Sesamum indicum, and I have seen no evidence that its leaves are eaten other than being used in TCM, mostly as a laxative.
I was surprised that the rocket was delivered separately to be eaten uncooked or just wilted in the pizza’s residual heat. When it is (only occasionally) used in Chinese cuisine, it is usually lightly stir fried like any other green vegetable rather than being treated as a herb. Occasionally it is added to soups.
Eruca sativa Mill.
I think it's pretty common to throw fresh arugula on a pizza after it comes out of the oven. Ideally, at least from my perspective the pizza should be really hot so the arugula wilts a bit on top.
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On 9/22/2023 at 2:03 PM, blue_dolphin said:
I took my guidance from this article, The Making of Maneki's Black Cod Collar Miso about how it's done at a Seattle restaurant. I also tried to improve my photos from round 2 but I lack the skills to make black food look appetizing. At least, they should give you a better idea of what I did.
I'll start with a photo of the finished plate. Anyone squeamish about raw fish parts should stop here.
This was an excellent, finger-licking meal. Kinda like black cod wings!
I did the rice again, mostly to catch any juices from the fish. Since this is very much finger food, I figured corn on the cob was a good combo. Same shiso-vinegar pickled watermelon radish and pickled ginger as I had yesterday, both nice to cut the richness of the fish.
These guys got an O/N marinade in same miso/mirin/sake marinade I used for a short time yesterday and the longer time made a nice difference. Even some of the charred fins were tasty.
In the article I mentioned above, it sounded like the restaurant is rinsing the collars after the marinade so I tried both rinsing and then adding a sprinkle of salt and just blotting off the marinade.
In the photo below, they've already been marinated but look pretty much the same as they did before that step.
The two on the left just got blotted so you can see some little flecks of miso, the other three got rinsed and then blotted. I couldn't taste much difference in the fish itself but I think fins that still had some marinade on them were more tasty.
They do look like birds, don't they? For scale, that's a 1/4 sheet pan. I weighed the 4 collars that I cooked yesterday and they came to 240g before cooking or about 60g/collar. They do vary in size so I should have weighed the whole bunch for a better estimate. They were $3.00/lb and I ordered 2 lbs for $6.00, which was pretty inexpensive for such a tasty treat.
Here they are after 2 min under the broiler:
I flipped them and gave them another 2 min. I was trying to see if there was a difference between starting skin-side up or skin-side down. I think I got crispier skin with the skin-side up start but both were good. Yesterday, I just cooked them all skin-side up and didn't flip for fear of drying out the meat but I think cooking them on both sides makes them a bit tastier and they're so fatty, there wasn't a risk of overcooking.
KMN. That sounds amazing. It's possible the collars could handle cooking on both sides. It's pretty hard to overcook black cod.
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I never post in the Lunch topic, mainly because I don't really eat lunch. We typically eat a late breakfast and an early dinner and a late snack. But on vacation we must adjust. Yesterday was a rehab day of sorts, so we stuck close to home in Highlands NC. We had some hardware store shopping to do and maintenance tasks. The hardware store in Highlands is so huge it made me dizzy. We needed brighter lightbulbs and a flashlight; the shelf space devoted to both was amazing. Since by the time we managed to get ourselves into town it was already after 2:00 pm we decided to try lunch outside at the place that had the fabulous grouper, so I had fish and chips, which I rarely eat, partly because I don't really deep fry anything and, and mostly because places that make it in the Bay Area rely on Tilapia, which I hate. This fish was cod, thick and very fresh. The batter was light and crisp, really delicious. I can't say the same for the fries, which I believe were battered instead of double-fried. They were tasteless and boring. Why is it so hard to get good restaurant fries? Really, I may have to learn how to deep fry in my dotage. Yes, I always wear shoes in the kitchen.
One thing I've learned about the mountains in September is that it's too chilly to eat dinner outside, especially for a wuss like me; these folks don't believe in outdoor heaters until winter. So lunch outside is a great luxury. It's so dark in the cabin that by the time we get out of bed it's practically lunch time anyway. Of course we are staying up late, because we have a big TV here and we are re-watching all of Breaking Bad for the first time. But now thYat we have better lightbulbs and have rearranged some of the furniture I now have a cozy spot I can read in. In Highlands we have nothing but time and have limited ourselves to one waterfall a day.
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3 hours ago, heidih said:
I orgot to mention the ever adaptable "green soup". Sometimes I am seduced by too many lovely greens and don't want them to go limp and lose their oomph. Liike the link but no rice, sometimes bit o potato. The salt element chicken powder.. Rather than lemon juice I stir in some plain yogurt. I welcome this at B, L or D. With a cheese toastie - I'm happy. https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/250333/basic-green-soup/
keyboard still being a pain...
This or something like it will go into heavy rotation once we get back home. I've added a veg stock to my freezer arsenal recently and that's been really useful for a variety of things. I cooked RG beans in it and that was excellent. A change from my usual ham broth beans.
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48 minutes ago, TicTac said:
Sounds awesome.
And it is always enchanting and mystical to wake up deep in the woods surrounded by nature.
Well, yes, but this cabin in the woods is deep enough in that it doesn't see sunlight. So it's problematic sitting out on the deck as September is chillier than I expected. Next time I do a mountain vacation it will be in high summer. I'm more of a seaside or desert person, so this is novel for me. The darkness in the cabin isn't a problem for my husband, but I have a particular retinal condition that demands a lot of light. Every Friday thru Sunday will be spent at my daughter's place in Decatur, GA, where it is currently 80 degrees. The rest of the week will be spent looking at waterfalls and checking out small towns. This is Cherokee country. There must have been a lot of Scots settled here, because the Tartan Museum is in nearby Franklin. Besides the museum, for which they charge, there's more merch than you can shake a stick at, especially if you need to wear a tie showing your clan pattern. If you love plaid, this is your happy place.
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Here I am in apple country in September. I'm in the mountains in North Carolina. One of my absolute all time favorite apples is the Arkansas Black, which we have always referred to as a Black Ark. And here they are! Part of a farmers' market haul. I haven't even tasted them yet, I'm just living in anticipation. They used to appear for a very brief time in our Bay Area market but we haven't seen them in years. Another favorite apple is the Black Twig from Tennessee, even more elusive. Maybe we will go into Asheville for the day soon and check out their huge farmers' market and see if they can be found. In mid October we will be in western MA and I'm hoping for a hot fresh apple cider doughnut. And speaking of doughnuts, which is clearly off-topic, I'm also looking forward to my favorite doughnuts in the world: Hole Doughnuts, in Asheville.
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Dinner 2023
in Cooking
Posted
My oldest friend in the world (from 4th grade!) came down from NY to spend a week with us in Decatur and Highlands. The night before last we made them shrimp 'n' grits. At home in Oakland we pay about $20 or more per lb. for wild gulf shrimp. At the amazing Dekalb market they were were super nice, for $13 lb. My daughter claims her husband really likes shrimp n grits, so I'm trying hard to accommodate his eating preferences. Anyway, if I do say so myself, I make an excellent version. This trip I went as far as to bring my favorite Cajun spice mix from home all the way to the South, since every mix I've tasted from local GA sources takes like nothing but a mix of cayenne and salt. Mostly salt. The twins like grits, and one of the girls ate a bucketload of shrimp.
What do toddlers eat these days? The juice box has morphed into the Puree Pouch with an opening the size of a boba straw. It's supposed to be mixed vegetables and fruit, the assumption being, I am guessing, that the apple juice in it masks the taste of carrots and green stuff. The twins love these things, so I suspect the great percentage is apple juice. They like apples and talk about applesauce all the time, and yet neither of them liked my fried apples made with butter, sugar and Steen's syrup. More for me!