Satellite Affiliate Blogging

I am taking this humble blog on the road!  Yes, I am coming at you today not from the PHX, but from the TUX, where I am housesitting for the next twoish weeks.  Given the unfamiliar kitchen and my complete inability to find anything therein, the food blogging might be a little light-in-its-loafers, but there are always tamales to be talked about, and I plan on getting my fill.  And perhaps this break from PHX will inspire me to get my craft on?  WHO KNOWS?

This trip to the TUX strangely coincides with the beginning of The Husband's liquid diet, which is convenient in terms of cooking-in-a-strange-new-place situations (hurrah for leftovers!).  Said leftovers were the remnants of the butter and cheese overload that took place last week, one meant to gird The Husband's loins with as many calories as possible to sustain his not-terribly husky frame.

Dish one was bubble and squeak, which has been lovingly detailed here; there was a slight switching of the pitch up, as I used Brussels sprouts and kale in place of the cabbage and spinach.  It was a fair bit heartier than the original (which is saying something, given the original's ingredients), and I think I actually prefer it this way.  The sprouts and kale are just so much more flavorful than cabbage and spinach, and they also crisp up much better under the broiler.

Dish two in the pantheon of foods that are good but not good for your arteries was vegetable lasagna made with homemade noodles (see here for basic recipe).  The general layering strategy here went noodle; thinly-sliced zucchini; ricotta, herbs de provance farmers cheese, and amaranth blend; sliced provolone; noodle; herbed tomato slices; broccolini; shredded mozzarella and Parmesan blend; noodle; basil; provolone; mozzarella; noodle; and finally, fire-roasted tomato sauce.  Put all this fantasticness in a baking pan, cover with aluminum foil, and bake for 20 minutes at 375ºF.  Once it's all good and bubbly, remove the foil, add some shredded cheese (mozz and parm are always good, but don't be afraid to mix it up) and bake until nice and brown, another 20 minutes or so.  Let it sit and cool for 15 minutes, then enjoy!

Both dishes heat up pretty well, though the lasagna is a bit on the dry side—intentionally so, given the small amount of sauce I tend to use—so just make sure to cover it with a paper towel when microwaving.  If you're feeling healthy, a wee salad comprised of things you find rummaging through the fridge is a nice touch, but really, don't kid yourself.  Apart from not eating it, there's little that can transform this orgy of butter and cheese into something that's good for you.

In lieu of cheesy, buttery photography, here's what the view looked like today

and tonight.

Plus sub-100ºF temperatures in August?  I could get used to this.

Ice Ice Coffee

(It's guest post time here in the desert!  The Husband has decided to get into blogging, now [check out his music blogthing here if you're one of those snobby music types who makes fun of the musical choices of others—YES, I ENJOY RICK ASTLEY UN-IRONICALLY, WHAT OF IT?], and even though I still haven't been able to get him to write that chili post, he's deigned to share his thoughts on a few food-related adventures. First up: coffee, the consumption of which I don't personally understand, but hey—different strokes for different folks [or, for those of you lovely readers who are lizards: different drinks for different skinks].)

Hey, look at me: I’m stone-cold guest-blogging up in this joint. Thanks, Wifey, for letting me overtake your blog with a post about, yes, making coffee. Ok, enough dillydallying, let’s get on with it…

Life in the desert can be hot. Really hot.

But friends, I come here not to complain about 110+ degree days accompanied with dire warnings of dangerous heat indices. Rather, I come to help you.

When the temperature is halfway between boiling and spontaneous combustion, it takes a bit of a toll on anything bold enough to venture outdoors to face the elements. Your body heats up very quickly and you soon find yourself sapped of energy—all in all, not a particularly pleasant way to start the day.

However, you are not destined to suffer. For there is a way to partially combat the melting. A very simple way. A way that will not only save your body, but also your wallet.

What is this magical solution, you ask?

Coffee. Yes, coffee. Iced coffee.

Wow, you’re the greatest guest blogger ever. That was a really revolutionary idea there. It’s not like anyone’s ever thought of that before.

Hey, now. Let’s not get too snarky. Ok, sure, there’s nothing too special about what I’ve just told you. You can get iced coffee at any decent coffee shop come summertime. But that is not what I speak of. While your neighborhood coffee shop may indeed provide you with a beverage filled with caffeine, sugar, and coldness, you can do so much better.

Most coffee shops brew up hot coffee at something close to double-strength, chill it in the refrigerator, then pour it over ice when a customer comes in and asks for an iced coffee. Well, that’s bunk. Though that iced coffee may succeed in giving you your caffeine/sugar/coldness fix, why settle for that mediocre product? And why pay two dollars or more for a cup mostly filled with ice—ice that serves to continually dilute your beverage as it melts away?

Allow me to let you in on a little secret mathematical equation handed down to me on golden tablets by The Jeebus: cold-brewed coffee + ice cubes made of coffee = WIN. That’s just a stone-cold fact.

In addition to being delicious and refreshing, the advantage of cold-brewing your coffee is that it tastes less acidic, and the flavor profile is far more robust. You’ll notice fruity and floral notes that you didn’t even know were there.

Well then, time to get on with it and tell you how it’s done. Like with all fine foods, it’s all about the ingredients. In this case, some nice freshly roasted beans. (My Phoenician Phriends: if you get your coffee beans from anyone other than Cartel or Fair Trade, you’re doing it wrong.) Also, it’s about doing some advance planning; cold-brewing means you need to start the coffee-making the night before.

Take your beans and grind them as you would normally. Put them into your French Press at twice the amount you would use for hot coffee, add water, and give it all a swirl. Throw it in the fridge overnight, and then plunge your grounds the following morning. In the meantime, you’ve hopefully already made frozen coffee cubes, which now reside in the ice tray in your freezer. Pour your overnight-chilled coffee into a mug, and add your ice cubes made of coffee. Now here’s the final step, taking your very good iced coffee to the realm of Total Awesomeness: cream. No, not milk. Nope, not half-and-half. And sure as hell not that non-dairy creamer crap with carrageenan and corn syrup solids; that’s just nasty. Straight up cream is how we roll. (Cream rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. That’s recursion, y’all!) Heavy cream. Not the slightly de-fatted light whipping cream. I’m talking the full fat (i.e., full of deliciousness) stuff.

Voila, you’re done. And now you can laugh at those suckas paying for watered-down cold coffee at Starbucks.

(In addition to deliciousness that cures your lethargy and cools you down, there are ancillary benefits of making this delightful concoction. Since you’re making your coffee at home, you’re saving cash monies. And since you’re pretty much making this the night before, you’re saving valuable time in the morning — thereby allowing yourself to get a couple extra minutes of precious, precious beauty rest. These are two very important considerations for those of us who are: (a) cheap, and (b) unwilling to get out of bed in the morning.)

 

Souper Duper

My newest post is up at AW80D:  gazpacho!  Perfect for those lazy summer nights when it's hotter than a catamount in a parka shop on the surface of Mercury. 

Or something.

Tiny Plates

We were invited to a small plates dinner party the other day, which necessitated the making of small plates.  Given that The Husband and I rarely partake in any food-related adventure that could charitably be described as “small,” this complicated matters slightly.  In the end, we just decided to make regular plates, only less of them, to varying degrees of success.  (Actually, the only non-success was the eggplant ravioli, which fell apart in the pan and generally caused trouble.  I readily admit that I only half-remembered the recipe, and also skipped some steps in the made-up version of the recipe that exists solely in my mind, so maybe this isn’t much of a surprise.)

As for the more successful plates, The Husband made his glorious hummus, and I whipped up some herbed goat cheese and ricotta-covered figs (which made use of the basil-goat cheese-ricotta blend from the disappointing eggplant failure).  I also made the following bean recipe, which I was really quite pleased with.  It’s based on a dish from a restaurant in DC that was a regular date-night fixture when The Husband and I were wooing (being wooed?  flinging woo?); given that said restaurant is also a tapas bar, it seemed like as good a place as any to nick a recipe for a small plates party.  We originally served it plain, but I discovered today that it goes well in a pita pocket with some tomato, pickled peppers, and feta cheese (some leftover homemade hummus is probably a good thing, too).   

The original dish called for gigante beans, which given our track record, we strangely do not have.  I substituted Christmas lima beans, which aren’t as creamy as gigante beans, but are faintly nutty and, I think, preferable to your bog-standard limas, and they worked well.  Given that I used hoighty-toighty heirloom beans, I cannot comment on the feasibility of using canned or frozen lima beans; I would think that, as long as they could hold their shape and still have a bit of bite to them, they would be fine.  I don’t know that baby limas would work as well, though—you want a hearty bean that brooks no guff and tolerates little-to-no sass.

To start, cook one cup of dried Christmas lima beans (or bean of your choosing) in whatever method you prefer (I advocate the pressure cooker, as always, because I am incapable of forethought in these matters) until tender.  While the beans are cooking, thinly slice eight or nine cloves of garlic (or even 10 or 11—be brave with your garlic, and you can sleep soundly knowing that you are safe from vampires) and chop up a good handful of fresh dill.

When the beans are good and ready, heat up a good couple of sloshes of olive oil in a sauté pan.  (Note: When cooking with olive oil, don’t use some fancypants, expensive oil, because the heat will ruin it; I always keep a bottle of mild, moderately-priced Italian extra-virgin olive oil on hand for the few occasions where we are either using (a) a lot of olive oil [see hummus] or (2) cooking with olive oil.)  Be generous; you want these beans to be slick.  When the oil is ready, add the garlic and stir, cooking just until the garlic is fragrant, then add the beans and stir to coat.  Once the beans are glistening, add three-quarters of the dill, along with a good, large pinch of salt, and stir.  Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low, and let simmer for five or so minutes.  Taste for additional salt (beans can take a good amount), and add the remaining dill.  Mix together and serve.  

Depending on the flavorfulness of your cooking oil, you might want to drizzle some good olive oil over top, to get that lovely grassiness (which goes so well with the nuttiness of the beans).  For a slightly more substantial take, a dollop or two of yogurt (or labneh) mixed through would certainly be welcome, but there’s really no need to gussy this up; your beans are beautiful just as they are.

Also, on the same day I learned that these beans go well in a pita, I learned that Pancakes does not like being near a pool.  Have you ever seen a cat hyperventilate?  It's disconcerting.  However, high on the list of things Pancakes does like is his new tunnel.  

I'm starting to regret giving him yet another place from which to launch guerrilla attacks at my ankles, though.

Everybody Gets Beans!

I am in love with heirloom beans.  Having grown up severely bean-disadvantaged (kidney beans and chickpeas being the only beans my family recognized), I have overcompensated in my adulthood by purchasing massive quantities of beans of many styles and stripes.  Of course, as with any infatuation, I still want more, but have managed to convince myself that I can acquire more beans only when the current stock has run out.

However, in spite of our heroic attempts, the bean situation remains largely unchanged.  This could be on account of villiany, but it's mostly because I've been unsure of the best way to deal with them.  Beans are frequently a part of the total dish, but very rarely are the total dish, and so using the heirloom beans in curries or chilis or tacos seemed almost like we'd be missing out on the things that make the fancy beans so fancy.  I needed some way to let the very beany essence of the beans shine through.

That's where this recipe comes in.  It's based on Jamie Oliver's Humble Beans, with a few tweaks.

First, get your beans.  You want meaty beans for this dish, ones that plump up and are full of flavor.  I used six different varieties: Ojo de cabra, Rio Zape, Cattle, Anasazi, Roman, and Borlotti.  If you also plan on being absurd and using multiple bean types, be sure to confirm that they have the same cooking time.  This isn't a huge deal if you like some of the beans mushy, but if you're looking for the beans to retain some kind of structural integrity, this is important information.

All told, I started with approximately one cup of mixed bean.  Into the pressure cooker they should go, along with a dried chipotle morita, three or four bay leaves, and a slurp of olive oil.  Cook until tender (these will simmer for a bit later, so if they are just a wee bit crunchy, don't panic) and set aside, reserving the cooking liquor.

Next, in a large saute pan, heat a tablespoon or two of grapeseed (or other neutral) oil and, when hot, add a couple of good pinches of black mustard seeds.  After they've been allowed to sputter for 10 or so seconds, add some diced onion (around half a small one) and five or six cherry tomatoes, quartered.  Stir until the tomatoes begin to disintegrate and the onions go translucent, then mix in several cloves of garlic (finely chopped).  Once the garlic is fragrant, maybe 20 seconds, pour in the beans, along with 1/4 c. of the cooking liquid.  Stir in a pinch of thyme and rosemary (for a smidgen of earthiness) and let all this goodness simmer together for 10 minutes or so, adding more cooking liquid (or water) as needed to keep everything from getting too dry.

Once all the flavors have melded, add a couple of sloshes of cider vinegar (the exact amount depends on how tangy you want it to be) and a couple of big pinches of salt (they can take it).  Taste, re-salt or vinegar as needed, then mix in a drizzle of good olive oil to make everything shiny and luscious.  These not-so-humble-anymore beans get on with a good hunk of crusty bread like a house on fire, though fresh tortillas or pita will also do in a pinch.  I've made this a couple of times now, and I like to keep some on hand for a quick and hearty snack.  It may look like cat food, but listen here, meow—it's good stuff.

Another One!

There's a new post up at Around the World in 80 Dishes, this time talkin' 'bout pasta.  Check it out!

Also, I promise I am not neglectin' this 'umble blog.  There are a few posts knockin' about this ol' noggin'—it's just that I am partakin' of GOOD's 30-day no-Internet-after-8pm challenge, and since most of my bloggin' took place post-8 o' clock, I've been tryin' to adjust to daytime bloggerel. 

Soon!

via ICanHasCheezburger.com

(Also, I have no idea where all those extra apostrophes came from.)