Blog Update!

Because I know that several of you read this blog via blaggregators, I thought it prudent to inform you of some minor changes that this humble blog has undergone.  Actually, it's just a single change, but it's new and only appears on the blog proper, so it clearly warrants its own post.

I've (finally!) gotten around to adding labels to all my old posts, and also added a little tag cloud so you can see what I think of everything I've written.  Happily, I haven't been using this space to rant very much, though I apparently ramble and talk about my cat a lot.

That sounds about right.

In addition to this minor bit of housekeeping, I have several posts percolating about my cat-obsessed brain, including some about crafts and cactuses, those two ignored blog elements from the subtitle (I don't include tumbleweeds, because I still have not seen one out here, but rest assured that as soon as I do, I will let you all know).  Also, The Husband assures me he is diligently working on his musical contributions (though if you know him, you know that playlists are not things to be tossed off nonchalantly, and months [even years!] of preparation go into selecting the perfect songs/artists/albums); I'm hopeful he'll have the United Kingdom playlist ready sometime around recipe 43.  Fingers crossed!

And, to close, here's a photo of Pannekuchen looking quite dashing in his blue ribbon (and also like quite the little hunter with his decapitated ninja).

fearsome, this one.  rawr.

AW80D - Preserved Lemons

I will be honest:  I'm not sure how I feel about this installment of AW80D.  Maybe it's because preserved lemons aren't something that you enjoy out-of-hand — they're a condiment, and thus really only come into their own when combined with something more substantial.  It's like a recipe for ketchup (which, admittedly, I've also already discussed), and as such, using this as one of the recipes almost feels like cheating; it's not really a dish, which is what the title of this series suggests I am promising.  Also, I'm posting about it before I can even confirm that the preserved lemons are a success, and that seems a little risky.  These things take at least three weeks to ferment; what if, at the end of the process, it turns out that I made some horrible mistake and the lemons become sentient and attempt a hostile coup?  That's clearly something I should warn you all about, lest you make the same mistakes; I can always update as time goes on, but by then, it might be too late.  And I certainly don't want this humble blog to be Patient Zero, infecting you with binary zombie lemon disease, resulting in some terrible dystopian futureworld.

However, I finally decided to do a little write-up, because 80 dishes is a lot and I shouldn't be too picky and should fill up the recipes slots with whatever is available, and besides, the possibility of my creating a new life form seems negligible (though I am not good at statistics, so don't ask to see my data on this matter).  Also, preserved lemons are an integral part of North African cooking, something I will almost certainly need for other dishes, and I like the idea of attempting to make all parts of the food I discuss be as from-scratch as possible (one of the many benefits of my privileged life of leisure as the trophy wife of a...grad student?).  Also also, preserved lemons seem pricey, and regular lemons are dirt cheap during the Arizona citrus season (which is coming to a close), and this seems like a nice, relatively inexpensive way to keep a little bit of the phx winter with me as the blazing summer months approach.

OK, so, to begin, gather ye lemons while ye may, along with a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, a few whole cloves, kosher salt, and a suitable boy jar.  As you can see, I am using an old sauerkraut jar, because we (I) are essentially packrats who do not part with anything that could potentially be used as part of a grand storage scheme.

If any of the Frank's people are reading, I am open to endorsement deals.

You should always be sure to sterilize your jar before use, because even though the vast quantities of salt should be enough to keep any critters at bay, you don't want to risk contamination with any food that you'll be leaving to sit out for weeks.  I filled the jar with boiling water, covered the jar lid (sitting next to the jar in the plastic dish) with additional boiling water, and let them both sit while I prepared the lemons; this admittedly seems like a half-assed sterilization method, but it's worked for me so far.  (You can also use a dishwasher, or submerge everything in boiling water, or use a low heat setting on your oven [though I would be careful of this last option if the jar lids are not fully metallic]).  Once the jar seems acceptably germ-free, drain and dry, and then add the spices.

On to the lemons.  First, slice off the ends of the lemon.

Cutco people!  I will totally shill for you if you send me a new knife block.  (Corey:  this means you.)

Next, you want to slice the lemons into wedges, but leave the base intact. 

Like this.

The lemon should be cut into six wedges, then gently pulled apart to facilitate salting.  For six or seven lemons, you'll want about 1/2 cup salt (sea or kosher seem to be the preferred varieties; I used kosher salt that may very well have made the trip out when we moved cross-country).

Pre-salting.  Tip:  Do NOT salt the lemons if you have a paper cut.  Ouch.

Rub the salt into the wedges, covering as much of the flesh as possible.  Once sufficiently salted, add the lemons to your jar, pushing and squeezing them to extract the juice and pack as many in as possible.  Juice any extra lemons and use the juice (or bottled lemon juice) to cover the jarred lemons.  Any leftover salt can also be added now.  Use the rind from one of the juiced lemons to help push down the lemons (they should all be completely submerged), then screw on the lid.

Ready for the pantry, or perhaps the citrus rebellion.

And there you have it.  Pop these bad boys into a cool, dark place and let the salts and acids do their thing.  The lemons should be ready to go in three to four weeks; in the meantime, you'll want to give the jar a good shake every day or so to help re-dissolve any salts that precipitate out.

Expect to see these little balls of sunshine-in-a-jar in a near(ish) future post, at which point I will let you know how they've turned out.  That, or my fears will be realized and I will be welcoming our new citrus overlords; just in case, I would like to point out now that, as a trusted blog personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Not British, but certainly an invasion.

Recently, The Husband and I have had the distinct displeasure of playing host to a marauding band of grain beetles that set up shop in our pantry.  Grain beetles, as the name suggests, are tiny beetles (only a millimeter or two long) that like to hang out in grain-related foods, especially flours.  Fortunately, our flours seem unaffected, probably because we keep most of them in the fridge or freezer, but that did not stop our little uninvited houseguests from making themselves at home in the rest of our food.  At last count, beetles have been found in the following:  two grains, five pastas, one box of cereal, and several dried chiles.

Fortunately, being of a sunny disposition (ha!), I realized that there was a positive side to all of this:  PANTRY REORGANIZATION TIME!  (Yes, I have a problem.  I know.)

As mentioned previously, we are rich in dried goods.  Unfortunately, we weren't particularly rich in storage systems, because apparently our hearty Gladware containers weren't hearty enough to keep these beastly little beasts from colonizing our rices and grains.  Part of the problem seemed to be that faux-Tupperware does not close well (or The Husband is just too lazy to close things adequately, because this is obviously not my fault); even in what appeared by be well-sealed containers, we kept finding critters.

Enter Goodwill and its collection of cheap mason jarrery!

I have been wanting to re-do our grains for a while, since before arriving in the desert, but was dissuaded by the prospect of transporting a couple dozen glass jars across the country.  But now!  Now I had a legitimate reason to indulge my pretty organizational whims.  (And, with Saturdays being EVERYTHING 50% OFF days at Goodwill, it was a relatively painless financial investment.)

 

Here is the result of several hours of grain shifting.  I sort of didn't want to eat any of them, for aesthetic reasons.  Then I remembered that food is good and all my notions of visually-appealing organization went right out the window.

this is about as artsy as I get.

In addition to being pretty, the grains are now much easier to use, and surprisingly easier to navigate.  The use of glass also makes the food much more visible, which would allow for quicker diagnoses in the future, should the beetles return with reinforcements.  The surviving chiles have been jarred, too (though I take some consolation from the face that all the beetles I discovered in the chiles were dead, perhaps killed by their hubris and/or over-estimation of their Scoville-handling capabilities), as have some particularly vulnerable pastas.  

So, for now, the pantry is at peace.  It seems that our little beetle friends only thrive when there is humidity, so I suppose I can count my blessings that triple-digit days of triple-digit temperatures are nigh, as that should kill anything left in the pantry.  It might kill me, too, but hey — at least the rice will be safe.

AW80D - Scones, Two Ways

You didn't think I was kidding when I said I would just post scone recipes, did you?

Actually, I was.  (Hopefully.)  But that doesn't mean that a scone or two can't wend its way through this little experiment, right?

I have already written extensively and ramblingly about scones before, but they are a fairly important part of my baking repertoire, so I think it is acceptable to talk about them again.

Generally speaking, I am not much for baking.  I am fairly incompetent when it comes to fruit-based desserts (your pies, crumbles, crisps, etc.), and I dislike baking cookies (I don't like the batch concept — I only enjoy baking if everything can fit into the oven at once, a preference that becomes a necessity in the desert summer when the temperature inside the oven is roughly equivalent to that outside my building and opening the oven door becomes physically dangerous).  My baking style favors breads (both of the quick and not-so varieties).  Fortunately for my cookie-enjoying self, The Husband picks up my baking slack, being both a tough cookie and the baker of tasty ones.

So, scones are essentially my only contribution to the bake-o-sphere that is our apartment, especially given that it is getting a bit too warm to crank the oven up to bread-baking proportions (sigh).

The first batch of scones, a chocolate chip-blueberry blend, was made using my standard scone recipe:  the cream scone recipe mentioned in my earlier sconepost.  They were tasty, go read that other post and make some, etc. etc.

The second batch was a riff on an oatmeal scone recipe I found in The Best International Recipe, one of those best recipe books from Cook's Illustrated where they make a dozen of everything, with tiny tiny tweaks to each recipe, until they've wasted enough food/found the perfect version (depending on your worldview).  I am always on the lookout for new and exciting scones, but oatmeal scones have a special place in my heart (and cookbook), being the first type of scone I ever baked myself (thanks, Joy of Cooking).  I fancied these up a bit with chocolate butter and cocoa nibs, which offset each other nicely and also made me feel quite posh and fancy, which lasted until the cat threw up (probably) and I was jolted from my reverie and had to go scrub the carpet.

Cocoa Nib Chocolately Oatmeal Scones

Preheat your oven to 450º F.  In a large bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups oatmeal (your standard rolled oatmeal will do nicely), 1 1/2 cups flour (I used 1 cup spelt flour to 1/2 cup all-purpose), 1/3 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Add cocoa nibs to your liking, perhaps 1/3 cup?  Dice 10 tablespoons of butter, then mix it into the dry/nib ingredients with your hands, smushing and rubbing the butter until the mix resembles crumbs.  (It is really quite important that you use your hands, here, because it's the best way to ensure that all the butter gets fully integrated into everything.  However, don't muss about at this all day, because the butter shouldn't be so kneaded that it melts.)

In a separate bowl, beat together until well mixed 1/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup heavy cream, and one large egg.  Add this to the flour-oatmeal-butter-nib concoction, then mix it all together, starting with a fork and eventually using your hands.  It should be fairly moist, but still a bit shaggy 'round the edges.  Scoop everything out onto a well-floured board, then pat into a circle roughly one inch tall.  Cut into wedges, pop into the over for about 12 to 14 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack.  Attempt to resist the temptation to tuck in until they have completely cooled, otherwise they will still be rather soft and will probably fall apart (though you could certainly sneak a small taste, if no one is looking — you have to make sure they are acceptable, of course).

fancypants oatmeal (for me) on the left, commoner cream (for the husband) on the right

(By the way, the first scone I ever ate was a scone called Sconehenge, which I purchased at the snack bar at Stonehenge when I visited it in 2002.  It was huge and expensive and rather disappointing.  Stonehenge was cool, though.  Unrelated, I have also visited Foamhenge, which is somewhere in Virginia.  They didn't have any scones there, but hornets had made nests in pretty much every one of the foam blocks.)

EVERYBODY GETS BEES!!!!!!

AW80D - United Kingdom + Ireland

For the purposes of this little internet experiment in international cookery, singling out the British Isles for some sort of special focus seems an odd choice.  After all, those little islands aren't particularly well-known for being culinary hotspots; in fact, they are actually known for being culinary wastelands — foodie laughingstocks, the butt of many a tasty joke.  If I really want to highlight a country, why not pick a one with a long, storied food tradition, like France, that mecca for food lovers?

Well, there a few reasons.  For one, I find French food — or, more accurately, people who like to talk about French food — almost unbearably pretentious.  Not all of them, of course, but as a whole, people who bring up French cuisine in food-related discussions always seem desperately insufferable.  I also don't much care for French food; in my experience, it's not terribly vegetarian-friendly, but even when it is, I find it all very dull.  I love watching Julia Child, but I don't know if I've ever seen the finished product of one of her shows and thought, "Yes, eating that seems like a very good idea."

Of course, the same thing could be said about the Two Fat Ladies, originators of both one of my all-time favorite cooking shows and some of the most terrifying foods every committed to film.  Seriously — peas with lettuce?  Lobster and mayonnaise?  Jugged kippers?  You should not be allowed near a kitchen if your recipe for a delightful breakfast dish is, "get smoked herring, put herring in a jug, pour boiling water over said herring, let sit, drain, serve."

NO.  THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR.

Not all British food is terrible.  It's true that, during my semester abroad in London, I subsisted primarily on corn flakes, clementines, digestives, and Cadbury caramels, but that's just as much a product of preferring to spend my limited money on sightseeing as it was quality of food.  Yes, things like black pudding are horrifying, but pasties (which I've discussed before) and shepherd's pie and fish and chips are perfectly tasty things.  I had a delicious cock-a-leekie soup on the Orkney Islands, and the haggis I had in Edinburgh was...all right; it wasn't bad, but I was surprisingly unimpressed and don't really feel the need to visit that stop on the Sheep Innards Express again any time soon.

One of the things that the British Isles excels at, in my opinion, is anything to do with fruit, specifically jams and desserts.  The climate is perfect for an abundance of brambleberries (blackberries, raspberries, loganberries, etc.); the best blackberries I have ever eaten were those gathered along the side of the road during a hike in the Scottish highlands, wherein I stumbled into two different thunderstorms and got lost (all was well in the end, though — I found my bus stop and got to ride back to town with a belly full of berries).  I just may get over my fear of baking fruit-based desserts for the purposes of this challenge.

Maybe it was my love of all things British that inspired me to set these countries apart.  Perhaps this is my way of correcting my past food mistakes from back when I was in the UK.  Or maybe I'm just a masochist who enjoys a challenge.  But that's kind of the entire point of this little exercise in food geography:  to explore new dishes, to abandon my culinary comfort zone and preconceived notions and try something new.  Maybe I'll discover a wealth of treasures hidden amongst the organ meats and gravied vegetables that populate British food.

Or maybe I'll just get weirded out by all the herring recipes and bake five different types of scones.

Around the World in 80 Dishes - An Introduction

If you actually visit the site to read this humble blog, you may have noticed something a little different, perhaps even new and exciting, happening.  (For those of you who read this via Google Reader or some other blaggregator, you should go to the site and look at it; I did not futz around with the widget creator for over an hour so that you could just ignore my hard work.)

I will wait.

(Did you look yet?)

Ok, ta-da!  My new (and overly ambitious) blog conceit, Around the World in 80 Dishes, is up and running!  Or, at least, the filing system is.  16 regions x 5 dishes = 80 magical meals.  Hopefully seeing all those little headings along the side will inspire me to get cooking, now that I have a public shaming system in place where everyone can see my progress (or lack thereof).  I am aiming to add a post or two per week to the tally, but that is highly dependent on a number of variables; however, given our previous experience with said variables, that's looking like a pretty manageable goal.  My plan is to make each post something more than just ingredients and recipes, to also explore the region and culture and cuisine as a whole.  Ideally, each region will get its own mini-introduction, which will talk about the food and flavors, as well as give an idea of what to expect from the dishes themselves. 

The regions are fairly arbitrarily determined:  I essentially broke each continent down into manageable chunks, trying to keep regions united based on my preconceived notions of geography, culture, and cuisine.  I could be totally wrong on some of these; only time will tell.  Each region will be represented by five dishes, which I am hoping to make as diverse as possible.  The only real outlier here is the British Isles, which I included because I am a huge Anglo-/Scotsophile, and have no problem with all five dishes being varieties of scone or whisky tastings.

Also, in an attempt to make this as much of a family affair as possible (without any hateration or holleration in this dancerie), The Husband has been placed in charge of selecting good music to accompany the preparation and/or consumption of each dish.  I hope he remembers that we discussed this way back when and reading this paragraph doesn't surprise him too much.

Also, does anyone know if there are any Scandinavian dishes that do not include jellied, fermented fish?  Seriously.  I'm a little scared of that one.

We Now Return to Your Regularly-Scheduled Blogging

(This is a blog post I started writing way back in January, right after we'd returned from our Christmas/India vacation.  The point of it was to summarize our entire trip, but it was just as the sickness and doctor's visits were starting, and so I was frequently distracted and never got around to finishing it.  I've considered attempting to restart the story, but my memories of the trip are dimmer, now, and I sort of like this little snapshot in time, saved right at the point where we knew something was afoot, but had no idea what it could be.  So I'm leaving this as is; perhaps at some point I'll go back and record my impressions of India for posterity [maybe a little prosperity].  For now, enjoy a short story about our cat and a brief glimpse into home life in New York.)

So, rather than prattle on about the intricacies of The Husband's gastrointestinal tract, let me instead share some stories about family, holidays, and the joys of traveling with an angry cat.

PHX-->BUF
Given that we would be gone for over a month and didn't have anyone to cat-sit the little hellbeast for us, we decided to bring Pannekuchen to New York, where I could foist him off on my mother while we did our little bit of globetrotting.

Now, I have to give Pancakes credit, as he wasn't absolutely terrible to fly with.  In all fairness, he was probably less trouble than many children.  Once we got him onto the plane and stowed safely underneath the seat in front of me, he calmed down, only howling uncontrollably during takeoff, landing, whenever we encountered turbulence, and anytime he could either see or hear us.

After the Dark Times of flight were over, Pannekuchen got to enjoy all that winter in New York has to offer, including snow (consensus:  he is not a fan), indoor puddles of melted snow (also not a fan), my younger cousin (probably a fan, given how much they chased each other around the house, possibly encouraged by my suggestion that Pancakes likes to eat children), and, most importantly, other cats.  After a rough start and much growling (a noise I wasn't aware he could make), he eventually reached a truce with two of the cats and actively befriended the third, Algaecat.

BFFs

We also got to enjoy all that winter in New York has to offer, including snow, cold, limited internet access, and nothing but Christmas songs on the two radio stations that work (thank goodness for my mother's new car and the free Sirrius radio, which was still always set on one of its 20 Christmas stations).  There were Champion of North America Wii bowling tournaments and I repeatedly bested my mother in pretending to play music while also pretending to be a Rabbid.

One of the best parts about going home during the winter is the fact that hearty, winter fare tastes much better when it's blizzarding out, so we made chili and vegetable barley soup and mushroom risotto and Brussels sprout salad and bruschetta and spiced gingerbread and Christmas cookies (the only time of year my mother consents to bake).  I ate my requisite bag of cheese puffs and learned that sourdough pretzels are fantastic with hummus.  We snagged some lovely, new, hard anodized pots and pans (which I have used and love) and an enameled cast iron dutch oven (which brings our total of heavy-cast-iron-dishes-that-will-be-a-pain-to-move to five).  And then we left.