Camping, Princess Style

[kayb]

I've done it both ways. Depends on whether I pour too much oil in the skillet to start with. I suspect the pre-cooking is fairly minimal.

 

I have also fried cornbread in fritters (hoecakes, in the South) when I didn't want to deal with baking. It seems to hold together better if you want it to do that. I also like to make cornbread in my Belgian waffle iron. Of course, I like the ratio of outside crunch to inside crumb, too.

 

[slschnur]

Doesn’t anyone use bacon grease for the frying pan?  

[Smithy]

6 minutes ago, slschnur said:

Doesn’t anyone use bacon grease for the frying pan?  

 

I think a lot of people do.  I didn't have any at the time.  Next time I'll fry up a bunch of bacon first.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Smithy
Grammar (log)

[kayb]

3 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

I think a lot of people do.  I didn't have any at the time.  Next time I'll fry up a bunch of bacon first.

 

Cornbread's much better both made with bacon grease and cooked in bacon grease. Which is one of many reasons I save bacon grease. Liquid gold. Well, solid when you keep it in the fridge.

[Smithy]

13 minutes ago, kayb said:

Cornbread's much better both made with bacon grease and cooked in bacon grease. Which is one of many reasons I save bacon grease. Liquid gold. Well, solid when you keep it in the fridge.

 

I was sure I had some with us in the Princessmobile, but I haven't been able to find it in the fridge or freezer. It'll probably come rolling out of one of those compartments when we get home and I'm unpacking the remnants. 

[Smithy]

Some treasures picked up at various shops, and hoarded all this time from home, made our Valentine's Day dinner.

 

As the previous entry notes, it's easy even with a small freezer for me to lose track of what-all is in there.  This time, I remembered the deliciously ripe tomatoes I'd roasted last summer based on @ElainaA's recipe for Slow Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce.  This sauce had been frozen since I made it, waiting for a special occasion.

 

 

I thawed the "New York Style Calabrese Italian Sausage" from Stater Bros, last seen here:

 

 

I pulled down from a high storage/hiding spot the bag of Campanelle I'd bought at the World Market.  An onion and a small bulb of garlic joined the mix.

 

 

The sausage and onion were cooked, then the garlic and tomatoes added, in a skillet while the campanelle was boiled to near-al dente.  The campanelle and some of the pasta water went into the skillet to finish cooking.  I like the ruffly spirals of the campanelle!  It reminds me of furled petticoats.

 

 

While all this was going on, we enjoyed the bubbly that I'd bought for New Year's Eve and never opened.

 

 

Dinner, before we added grated cheese...

 

 

and after.

 

 

There are plenty of leftovers, too. Yay!  Friday has become a no-cook night for me, and we'll have several choices for this Friday night.

 

[Smithy]

Update: I've been puzzling over what made this Calabrese sausage "New York Style".  Was there some New Yorkish aspect of which I was unaware?  The folks I asked at Stater Bros couldn't tell me.  I finally worked out the answer today: it's the brand name. The New York Style Sausage Company sells to multiple California grocery store chains, including Stater Bros.  Their products include several varieties of Italian sausage, a Louisiana Hot Link and a Chorizo.

 

So much for this sausage being a proprietary Stater Bros recipe! 

[Okanagancook]

Kinda takes the charm away.

[Smithy]

An Avalanche of Avocados

 

One day when I got home from a trip to town (we were still at the ranch at the time) I found a box full of avocados next to the doorstep.  Haas avocados.  Ripe Haas avocados!  I'm not talking about a small box, either: this was about the size of a 2- or 3-gallon bucket.  There must have been 6 dozen avocados in there!

 

Our host's tree had started dropping them abruptly due to the previous weeks' cold.  He'd shared some with his dad, and then brought a bunch to us.  "Don't worry if you can't use them all; they probably won't last long and some may not be all that great," he said.  Still.  This was a gift not to be wasted, if at all possible.

 

I shared a dozen with our cousins.  That left 5 dozen avocados.  They've figured heavily in breakfast. They've worked their way into burritos, enchiladas and salads. 

 

Still, it's difficult for 2 people to work through that many - especially when my darling is indifferent to them.  What to do?  I've read that they lose their flavor when they're cooked.  I'd heard that they could be frozen, but I couldn't remember where, or whether special steps were needed.  One refrigerator drawer's worth was all I could manage in cold storage.  It was time for an experiment.

 

I scooped out the flesh of each avocado, working around the parts that were already going black, and packed them in freezer containers.  I covered them with plastic wrap to block out any air, and froze them.  I kept looking at those containers in the freezer.  The green remained green.  How would it taste?  Would the texture suffer?

 

Today I opened a container to find out.  Green color, check.  I scooped out some of the frozen flesh and tasted it.  Good taste, check.  Texture?  Well, maybe that's suffered a bit, but it's certainly usable.

 

I added some to tuna with capers, riffing off an idea from the Cooking Light Diet.

 

 

I don't recommend freezing avocado if you don't have to, but if you are avalanched with them as I was, this isn't a half-bad way to save the bounty.

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

I've heard that freezing excess avocados--did you ever think there could be such a thing as excess avocados?--is a reasonable way to preserve a bountiful harvest. I believe the technique is to puree them with  a big pinch of  salt and the juice of a lime or 2, though I would like something chunkier, or even slices for sandwiches. The puree would suffer less deterioration of texture, I think. Think smoothies, green goddess dressing, even guacamole, though we prefer our guac more on the chunky side. Ice cream is quite wonderful because even without dairy the richness of the avocado makes it deliciously creamy. Soups, cheesecake, cookies, sauces--the ingredient can benefit a lot of baked goods, among other things.. I think it substitutes very nicely for some if not all of the fat in baked goods. I make a quite tasty chocolate fudge that uses avocado as well as a small amount of butter.

 

In your case I'd start pureeing and freezing because the puree is very useful in many other applications. I find avocado needs salt, and a generous squeeze of lime never hurts. We like them sliced and dressed with lime, coarse ground sea salt, and bit of fresh black pepper. Save the best ones for using fresh--the others will be just fine in other applications, like puree.

 

It's a lovely thing to have too many avocados. Admittedly it starts to feel like an obligation and you may despair of being able to use all of them. But with a little creative giving away and having enough freezer space to accommodate the puree, you'll find a use for them.

 

There's a restaurant in Morelia almost directly across from the Cathedral that serves a fish fillet coated in coconut with a slightly piquant avocado sauce. There are many delicious items on the menu but I find I always order that fish. Partly it's the coconut and partly it's the sauce. in fact I'm going to give that recipe a try one of these days. It's not a complicated dish, but the flavors work together brilliantly. In the past the fish has been dorado (mahi mahi) but now it's trout. I think I'll try it with grouper fillets (frozen of course).

 

So rejoice in your windfall. And enjoy the many good things you can do with avocados. We have a tree that has been very good to us.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

[chromedome]

The commercially frozen ones (Welch's in the US, and President's Choice in Canada) are typically treated with citric and/or ascorbic acid to inhibit browning. That's about all the special preparation involved. Your plastic wrap seems to have done the trick on that front, though. 

 

I'd suspect if you have a FoodSaver or similar, just vac-packing would probably keep them from browning too much as well.

[heidih]

This avocado cornbread caught my eye as a way to combine your future cornbread experiments with your avocado bounty  https://food52.com/recipes/17979-avocado-cornbread

[Smithy]

On 2/18/2018 at 10:41 AM, heidih said:

This avocado cornbread caught my eye as a way to combine your future cornbread experiments with your avocado bounty  https://food52.com/recipes/17979-avocado-cornbread

 

What a great idea!  I am sooo doing that - perhaps without the honey.  Hmm, one of my favorite variations on the classic BLT is to add avocado.  I'll bet that cornbread with bacon and avocado would be a good combination.

 

I went shopping yesterday - good thing, since the wind is howling and rocking the trailer today - and picked up more cornmeal as well as some buttermilk.  Experiments to continue soon.

[Smithy]

Yuma now has a Middle Eastern grocery store!

 

 

I've been watching that space for at least a year, wondering whether the signs were going up or coming down.  Last fall there seemed to be activity.  This spring there appeared pennants.  Now open!  I strolled in yesterday to check it out.

 

There's a deli section and a meat counter.

 

 

The shelves are pretty well stocked.  There are 4 different varieties of zaatar.  They have an impressive suite of pickles and spices, as well as canned and dry goods.  Best of all, they carry the Greenland feta cheese that we like so much!

 

 

It isn't as large or as ethnically varied as the Babylon Market in Tucson, but it's only been open about 6 weeks.  The people are at least as friendly and helpful as at the Babylon Market.  I asked about asafetida, given the current topic on Cooking with Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian India.  They didn't have it but were willing to try to get it in.  I told them it wouldn't be worth it unless a local asked for it.  They did have an impressive selection of Indian teas.

 

I ordered a chicken shawarma sandwich.  It was huge.  It was very, very good...better than this photo might suggest.

 

 

I hope they do well with the Yuma Queen market.

Edited February 20, 2018 by Smithy
Added topic link (log)

[kayb]

2 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

What a great idea!  I am sooo doing that - perhaps without the honey.  Hmm, one of my favorite variations on the classic BLT is to add avocado.  I'll bet that cornbread with bacon and avocado would be a good combination.

 

I went shopping yesterday - good thing, since the wind is howling and rocking the trailer today - and picked up more cornmeal as well as some buttermilk.  Experiments to continue soon.

 

Which brings to mind my tomato cobbler. The recipe is one I adapted from one that appeared in the newspaper a few years back.

 

Dice, salt and drain tomatoes, and stir together with some sauteed onion and garlic.  Make up a basic (non-sweetened) cornbread batter, but make it thinner than usual. Pour it into your heated and greased skillet, and dollop the tomatoes all over the surface. Sprinkle with cooked, crumbled bacon, grated Parmigiano or other hard cheese, and some green onions, and bake.

 

I see no good reason avocados ought not be a fine addition to that.

 

Depending on how thin you make the batter, this is either a casserole one eats with a fork, or it could be sturdy enough to cut in wedges. Fine flavor, though.

 

Edited February 20, 2018 by kayb (log)

[gfweb]

5 minutes ago, kayb said:

 

Which brings to mind my tomato cobbler. The recipe is one I adapted from one that appeared in the newspaper a few years back.

 

Dice, salt and drain tomatoes, and stir together with some sauteed onion and garlic.  Make up a basic (non-sweetened) cornbread batter, but make it thinner than usual. Pour it into your heated and greased skillet, and dollop the tomatoes all over the surface. Sprinkle with cooked, crumbled bacon, grated Parmigiano or other hard cheese, and some green onions, and bake.

 

I see no good reason avocados ought not be a fine addition to that.

 

Depending on how thin you make the batter, this is either a casserole one eats with a fork, or it could be sturdy enough to cut in wedges. Fine flavor, though.

 

 

Got a photo?

[kayb]

11 hours ago, gfweb said:

Got a photo?

 

Not great, but you get the idea. Part of dinner (Meat loaf, roast potatoes, broccoli). I don't think I put bacon in this one.

 

Here's a more tomatoey one.

 

 

And this one, on the plate, from the above skillet.

 

[gfweb]

@kayb looks great. did all the photos load?

[kayb]

Apparently not. On the roadvforvwork now, but will repost tonight.

[Smithy]

A Sufficiency of Citrus

 

It's probably not news to anyone that I adore citrus fruit.  My earliest memories are there: wandering the groves, helping Dad fertilize the young groves (or, later, suckering those suckers - oh, the pain!) and reveling in the smell of the blossoms on a warm spring day. Dad made a brief excursion into grapes, but after a few years he'd had enough and returned to oranges and tangelos.  He preferred the rhythm and relative ease of citrus, compared to other crops grown in the area.

 

Although I had no interest in continuing the farming myself, I love going back to visit - rambling the orchards, seeing new crops and getting the news.  "Tangos" and their ilk are all the rage now, and along with Minneolas and blood oranges they command high prices.  Nonetheless the good old navel orange is the workhorse. Taken for granted, worth less per pound, the navel orange makes up the bulk of the orangey citrus production in our area.  It's a bit like lemons: the Meyer lemons command the higher price because of their exotic nature and sweet flavor, but where would we be without the classic tart Lisbon and Eureka lemons?

 

 

At the left and upper right are Tangos. I'm amazed at the size of the crop those young trees carry.  At the lower right is a very unusual navel orange, worth photographing for its novelty.  

 

This year, in addition to the usual selection, we added blood oranges - Moros, specifically - to the mix.  I learned that the Moros and other blood oranges, with their startling deep red, are still navel oranges, as opposed to being in a class by themselves.  The red pigments are a marketing advantage because of their (supposed) antioxidant properties. I've been enjoying the juice.

 

 

 

That isn't Hawaiian Punch, nor is it pomegranate juice.  It's the juice from one Moro, mixed with juice from its paler cousins.

 

 

I also enjoy cooking with citrus.  Lemon is easy for me to come by, but when I have access to really good oranges I like to make the Citrus-Marinated Roasted Chicken from Fine Cooking.  This time I was able to mix the varieties more than usual.  Aren't those colors beautiful?

 

 

I also had a chance to use the cleaver that I acquired a few years ago with supermarket points during a Christmas stay.  (That may give an idea of how much we spent that trip, stocking up before leaving the area!  Sometimes those supermarket marketing ploys draw me in.)  This cleaver makes short work of chicken bones and joints, and is the perfect size and weight for my hand. 

 

 

Alas, I forget just how sharp it is.  I have the small finger cuts to prove it - nothing deep, just enough to make their presence known when I'm handling acids.  Like citrus juice. 

 

By the way - is anyone else seeing mutant-sized shallots this year?  Their flavor is good, but their size is astonishing.  This is typical of shallots I've seen in the stores since Christmas.

 

 

The chicken, in my new terracotta baking dish from World Market, just before it went into the oven:

 

 

While that was roasting I cooked up Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Thyme, as described in the Cooking Light Diet topic.  The citrus segments were my own flourish. They wouldn't fit into the baking dish with the chicken.  

 

 

Dinner wasn't especially photogenic, but it was good.  The cooked breast meat will figure in tonight's dinner.

 

 

[heidih]

9 minutes ago, Smithy said:

At the lower right is a very unusual navel orange, worth photographing for its novelty.  

 

Its an "outie" navel!

Gorgeous images. Those citrus are such workk horses.

Edited February 20, 2018 by heidih (log)

[Porthos]

My FIL's orange tree is blossoming, and I'm afraid that it is too early and not much fruit will appear. But for now, it's filling our noses with the intoxication scent of those blossoms.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

@Smithy shallots here are comparatively rather small.  Pretty sure I have one in the bedroom but I don't feel like getting up to take a photograph.  The shallots sold here are produce of France.  Where do yours come from?

 

I despise navel oranges.  I just had a bag of navels rot and molder.  And not for the first time.  I love Valencia oranges but the local Shoprite almost never carries them.

 

[heidih]

Well citrus are winter producers so maybe you are experiencing a global warming quirk. The ripe fruit should be now and flowering/fruit setting much later. Oh my....

[Smithy]

11 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

@Smithy shallots here are comparatively rather small.  Pretty sure I have one in the bedroom but I don't feel like getting up to take a photograph.  The shallots sold here are produce of France.  Where do yours come from?

 

I'm not sure where the shallots came from.  I'll check, next time I see them.

 

11 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I despise navel oranges.  I just had a bag of navels rot and molder.  And not for the first time.  I love Valencia oranges but the local Shoprite almost never carries them.

 

  

This, to me, is a tragedy that should be avoidable.  There is something in the packing process that mutes or kills the flavor of the sweeter citrus fruit, in my opinion.  It isn't just the navel oranges: it's also the clementines, tangelos, tangerines and to some degree the grapefruit.  The best way I can describe the flavor is "tired" - as though the fruit has been sitting around forever and has lost its bright, acidic zing.  Is it the sweating process?  The fungicide? I don't know, but I wish someone could identify and correct the issue. There's no comparison to the fruit as it comes off the tree, and that's a shame for both the growers and the consumers.

 

What this means, of course, is that most people never get to know the taste of a truly good orange.  My best friend, who was from Colorado, claimed not to like oranges when we were in college.  It took a single orange that I'd brought from home to convert her.  

 

The Valencias are more difficult to find because they're generally grown for juice. It's so long since I had one that I can't comment on how much their flavor changes from tree to market.