slkinsey
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Continuing...
It's then just a matter of moving the pasta to the plate...
And here it is:
Another view:
As you can see, we don't have a fancy camera like John and Mitch. These were all taken with Mrs. slkinsey's iPhone.
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Okay... I am way behind, I know! I have some stuff from Wednesday I still have to post, but first to last night's dinner.
As no doubt already explained, we had blood oranges, scallops, baby artichokes, spring onions, lacinato kale and our pantry to work with. Here's what I did:
First, I prepped the spring onions, cutting the bulbs into chunks and slicing the greens finely. I like to use scallion greens and things like that in place of parsley as a finishing herb. I also zested one of the blood oranges and cut it up into little supremes. These would all be used in my first course, which would be scallop crudo with blood orange supremes, minced onion greens, blood orange zest, extra virgin olive oil and Maldon salt. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the prep on this dish. But I do have some pics of the finished product.
I used the other blood orange to make a cocktail, which I must with modestly downcast lash admit is an origination of my own, and which I Christened the Juan Gallardo. It's made with equal parts smoky mezcal, kirschwasser, Cocchi Aperitivo Americano and orange juice. I usually use regular oranges, as I like the resulting color better, but blood orange was what I had. Here's picture of the drink. Extra points to anyone who figures out the reasoning behind the name.
Meanwhile, there was some prep work to do on the kale and the artichokes. I did a simple intermezzo course of shredded, sauteed and lightly creamed kale with a touch of onion greens as garnish. Here I am cutting out the center veins on the kale.
Here it is in the pan cooking down.
And here it is in a little bowl. This went nicely with a little extra Aperitivo Americano.
One thing I love about baby artichokes is that the choke doesn't need to be removed. All you have to do is trim off the tough outer leaves, strip off the rest of the peel, cut 'em down and toss 'em in the pan.
Didn't take long, and they were cooking with the spring onion bulbs in some olive oil.
And here they are finished.
Whenever I see baby artichokes, my mind also goes directly to spaghetti -- and that is where I went this time. Toss in the minced onion greens at the end, and grate on some Pecorino Romano.
Then it's a matter of tossing it around with a little pasta water and an extra glug of extra virgin olive oil.
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Yes, unfortunately a round of Dickel shots made an appearance after Mitch left.
Oh yea. And after you left, a round of Rittenhouse shots made an appearance. I, um, didn't do any cooking when I got home. I can hardly believe you had the stones to work with hot oil.
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For me, I suppose it depends on what I'm doing to the chicken. If I'm simply cutting it into the usual breast/thigh/drumstick six-pack, I'd call that "cutting up" the chicken. I don't do that very often, though. If, on the other hand, I'm cutting out the backbone, removing the breastbone and thigh bones, and cutting the tendons at the end of the legs but otherwise leaving the chicken whole, I'm more likely to call that something like "breaking down" or "processing" the chickens. "Cutting up" doesn't really describe what I'm doing very well in that case.
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More unglorious eating on my part. Today's lunch was with Mrs. slkinsey in Midtown East at this place:
My foodie cred had kept me away from this chain for several years. I have a constitutional aversion to eating from any kind of chain while in New York City, because I always figure I can do better for a lower price at someplace local. And I can. The problem is that I don't need to be eating a tuna salad sandwich that weighs a pound. One of the nice things about Prêt a Manger is that they list the caloric values for everything on the menu. Mrs. slkinsey introduced me to their spicy shrimp & cilantro wrap which is plenty filling and a ridiculously low 290 calories. With a 50 calorie serving of miso soup, I'm out of there for 340 calories. Not bad. Now I have plenty of calories left for cocktails tonight.
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Considering that John's kitchen has approximately half as many square feet as my entire apartment, my "organization" is considerably more haphazard.
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Wow, so John and Mitch are kicking my ass in this thing.
Unfortunately, this is my life these days:
Yesterday I was at the SKDJ (soul-killing day job). Had to run errands during lunch and managed to scarf 6 pieces of mediocre Midtown deli sushi. I'm trying to lose weight (down to around 194 this morning from a high of around 220 a year ago, and I'd like to get down to 180 and see how that looks), so I really only eat one meal each day. Lunch usually has more the character of a snack.
So, after the SKDJ I ran downtown to Jeffrey's Meat Market to pick up a meat order. Brought home six chickens, two bone-in strip steaks and a couple racks of lamb. Cost around 80 bucks. Later this week I'll go back down and pick up a case of duck legs.
Train back to the northern reaches of the Upper West Side where I had to pick up two gigantic bags of laundry and some dry cleaning, or else Mrs. slkinsey and I would have had to wear barrels today. Schlepped all that home together.
Stashed the meat in the refrigerator, put away the laundry. Then it was time to practice. Spent an hour on "La vita è inferno all'infelice . . . O tu che in seno agli angeli" (which goes a little something like
). By the time that was over, it was getting on to 9 PM and I was exhausted. Didn't have it in me to break down a half-dozen chickens and take pictures. Three Old Fashioneds later, and Mrs. slkinsey and I were in bed asleep. Not a very exciting culinary day, I know. But fear not, we're going to take pictures of the chicken prep today and I'll discuss my reasoning behind why I'm doing what I'm doing.Meanwhile, I'm back at the SKDJ. The coffee here is execrable, to say the least, and drinking too much coffee isn't great for my stomach anyway. But I do like caffeine! And it's important to keep myself well-hydrated and my instrument well-lubricated if I'm going to be using it later on in the day. So this is my liquid caffeine delivery system of choice for the moment:
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Okay, I can see that I have very much fallen behind!
My part of this blog will be different from John's and Mitch's -- fundamentally for the reasons that I'm extremely short on time, and Mrs. slkinsey and I have determined to eat only one "full meal" a day so we can lose some weight. Everything else will be snacking (and drinking, of course). Yesterday didn't even have that. We were out of the house most of the day involved in various opera singing-related activities, and came back just in time to see the Green Bay Packers wipe the field with the Chicago Bears. I would have loved to have my heart broken by watching the Jets game as well, but since I love my wife and want to stay married, I could pick only one game to watch.
Today I'll be picking up a big order from the butcher, breaking some items down, processing and cooking some, and vacuum-packing them for the freezer. I'll also roast a pound or two of coffee beans for espresso. Dinner will likely be three cocktails.
We woke up late today, so no time to shame johnder about his espresso skills. Tomorrow. Also like johnder, we are not really morning people when it comes to eating on workday mornings. This morning's breakfast was a cup of press-pot coffee.
This tiny piece of counter between the sink and the stove gives you some idea what we have to work with in my kitchen. Later, if I can get some good pictures, I'll show everyone around my various space-saving devices. When Mrs. slkinsey moved into the apartment, she presided over a fairly extensive reorganization, reconfiguration and redecoration of the apartment, including such projects as tearing out the inside of the hall closet and turning it into a pantry (which I promptly filled up with food, booze and culinary equipment.
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Or, he can keep his shoes in there - WHILE HE'S COOKING!
For those of you that have seen Sam cook, the state of the kitchen afterwards is, how shall I put this kindly... uh, a bit unkept.
Hello? It's not easy to turn out a 5 course meal in a 20 square foot kitchen with one counter.
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Or, he can keep his shoes in there - WHILE HE'S COOKING!
Dude. I've only dropped a knife on my foot, like, twice.
Okay, maybe five times.
But no more than seven.
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Here are my pictures and explanations. Not nearly as crafty as Mitch's and John's:
I have a lot of cocktail stuff. And I drink a lot. I suppose neither of those things comes as much of a surprise to anyone here. During the course of the week I'll be playing around and talking about some of my favorite and some of my more unusual pieces of cocktailiana. That thing that looks like a space alien artillery shell is actually a very interesting cocktail shaker my brother gave me for xmas. I'm in the preliminary stages of working on some cocktail-related writing projects, but nothing I can share right now. Expect to be delighted (or horrified!) at the volume and variety of booze I filter through my liver and kidneys on a daily basis.
I'm working on a cocktail based on Geritol for Mitch. Oh, that's something you should all know about us. When we get together in any kind of cooking-related setting, we give each other a lot of crap. A lot. I hope I'm not spoiling any kind of surprise when I say that Mitch is horrified that I often cook at home with no shoes on.
When my wife and I were married on Guy Fawkes Day 2007, we put two items on our "wish list" that we didn't necessarily think anyone would get us . . . but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? These were a portable dishwasher and a chest freezer. Turns out that some friends (johnder and weinoo among them) came together and got us the portable dishwasher. As someone who has not had a dishwasher since 1990, I don't need to tell you that this was a life-changing acquisition for the slkinsey family.
Well, nowadays we're trying to eat more healthfully and especially more economically and with less burdensome preparation requirements (more on which throughout the week). So we started pining after that chest freezer, thinking that it would be great to be able to take advantage of sales, buy certain foodstuffs in greater bulk, and freeze home-prepared (or partly prepared) foods for faster and easier meals. And thus it was that a nice man from Home Depot arrived at our apartment last week with a 7 cubic foot chest freezer that now lives against the wall in our dining room. Currently, it's somewhat ungloriously covered with a tablecloth. Eventually, we are going to hire our friend Zach to build an open-backm vented shell around it to look like cabinetry.
This week, we're going to turn out attention to filling the freezer with a variety of foods, and I'll write a bit about my strategies for using the freezer with our lifestyle. A big part of what we want to be able to do is to come home late and create affordable, healthful meals, and to be able to spend what little home time we do have together rather than mostly in the kitchen. And also without ordering delivery. We're both practicing and studying a lot on opera-related things (I'm in the finishing stages of switching from a repertoire that centered around works such as Il barbiere di siviglia, L'elisir d'amore and Lucia di Lammermoor to one centered around works such as Pagliacci, Andrea Chénier and La forza del destino, which is a major shift) so that means that we frequently don't get home until 7:30 or 8:00. We'd also like to figure out ways to save money by bringing lunches to our soul-killing day jobs instead of buying, but we're getting tired of sandwiches and they're kind of a pain in the butt to make every morning.
Yea... so this is some small percentage of my cookware collection. But I figured people around here knew I was a pots-and-pans geek. Those are some of my favorite pieces : Falk Culinaire copper and heavy gauge carbon steel.
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Is anyone finding the Scrappy's celery bitters to be overwhelming? I just got a bottle of Death's Door gin and tried to make a 2:1 Martini with the bitters, old style NP vermouth, and a lemon twist. Egad: it was overpoweringly celery... ish.
Yea, you have to go short with it -- especially compared to the BT celery bitters, which I find a bit lacking in celery flavor and overall oomph (although still a quality product). As a general rule of thumb for Scrappy's, I use 1 drop = 1 dash.
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I recently had the opportunity to sample some Bacardi white from the early 1950s. One bottle was in pristine condition and was an absolute revelation. The other two bottles had damaged corks, and definitely had some "corked" aspect to the spirit (although I should hasten to point out that even the corked 1951 Bacardi white blew the doors off of any Cuban-style white rum on the market today).
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Post-SV poultry skin never really does crisp up quite right IMO. Unless you completely chill the chicken, air dry the skin and then put it under the broiler.
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A friend of ours has recently become pregnant and very tired. She also does 100% of the cooking in her family, so this has been somewhat difficult. I'd like to make her a bunch of prepared dishes that can be dragged out of the freezer, defrosted and bunged in the oven. Things like cassoulet and lasagne al forno, etc.
So, I'm in the market for some cheap ovenproof casserole dishes I can use for this project. Any firm ideas where these might be found in Manhattan?
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If they remove the taste of chlorine from the water to your palate, then they work. Whether they do a whole lot more beyond that, how long and well they do what they do is a matter of some debate.
Personally, I found the whole pitcher thing to be expensive and an unnecessary pain in the butt. So I ended up buying an under-the sink two-stage sediment --> GAC (Granulated Activated Charcoal) filter from these guys and never looked back. It's quite a bit cheaper over time compared to a Brita-type filter, the filters hardly ever need to be replaced (equals less trouble for you and less plastic waste overall) and you only need to open the little tap to have instant filtered water with no waiting for it to percolate into a pitcher.
The sediment filter is especially interesting and valuable. It is true that we have great municipal water in NYC, but it is equally true that we have old pipes. The ceramic sediment filter I use filters 100% down to 0.9 microns and 99.9% down to 0.5 microns. This is fine enough to filter out things like E. coli and Cryptosporidium cysts. What I discovered is that we have a fair amount of rust and other particulates in the water here. Every month or so, the filtered water tap would start slowing down and it was time to take out the ceramic filter and wash it off. It was usually covered with a fairly thick layer of brown gunk, which I was glad I wasn't drinking.
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Nicely done.
When you have a chance, it would be interesting for you to re-do the test without the 4-hour rest.
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Not necessarily. But it is certainly easier if you have one. Luckily, they are cheap and not hard to find (and then you have a reason to make more!). But you can always make the dough/batter a bit stiffer and run it through the large holes in a food mill or even a colander.
Once I hipped to spaetzle, I never thought of serving a braised beef or lamb type dish with noodles again.
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I've been asked to make fresh noodles to go with the daube. I always use Moby's failsafe fresh pasta recipe. Any thoughts on shapes? The current tagliatelle vs pappardelle topic has me thinking about width and thickness, in particular -- though I don't think I want anything as long as those two.
Your thoughts?
It all sounds delicious!
I'd be tempted to make spaetzle instead of rolled-out noodles. They are pasta-like (they are actually probably technically pasta) and people who like Italian fresh pasta inevitably love them. Spaetzle has the added interest that it may be unfamiliar to many guests, so it's a surprise discovery of something awesome. They are also, more to the point, dead easy to make with no advanced preparation. And the leftover spaetzle plus a little cheese makes an awesome gratin.
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Aren't trans fats banned in NYC? And doesn't shortening have trans fats?
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None that I know of right now. I haven't seen any new bottles of it on the shelves for a while.
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I think it's interesting. The strong rye character is nice (the mash bill is around 95% rye). But it's still too young, and thus not sufficiently assertive for most cocktails with strongly flavored ingredients. My understanding of their thinking is that they decided they would rather start releasing some of it a bit too young while waiting for the rest to age up than go the usual route of entering the market with a vodka or gin. I'll be interested to see what their product tastes like at 6-8 years in the barrel.
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They will last forever.
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Yesterday I was in Astor Wines & Spirits picking up some necessities (aka stocking up on Rittenhouse) and ran into a fellow there pulling bottles off the shelves one after the other with a copy of Punch in his hand for ready reference. I directed him to the shelf of Batavia Arrack.
eG Foodblog: johnder, slkinsey, weinoo (2011) - A tale of two boroughs
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
More or less, it's pronounced "cokey." To bring a little bit more Italianita to it, you could hold the "K" part of the sound in the middle of the word a split second longer than usual.