Now what?

1. A friend sent me a recipe for Chai Ice Cream last summer, but I never got around to making it.
   
2. Another friend, Megan, made lemon ice cream for book club last week, and went on and on about how easy it was, how she just threw it together after work, blah, blah, blah.
   

1 + 2 = unwarranted confidence.

I don't do caffeine (I know, I'm a freak) so I grabbed a box of Tazo decaf chai concentrate from the store and some heavy cream. I figured I'd follow the directions for a chai latte, equal parts milk and concentrate, but substitute heavy cream for the milk. Toss it all in the machine, plug it in and go have a glass of wine, a la Megan. So I did that, but that's where my experience and hers part ways. It did freeze, and did resemble ice cream, in a way. But it really tasted like I'd mixed shave ice with hard butter. Chai flavored ice crystals with small bits of butter suspended in them.

1+2= inedible

Round two

When all else fails, turn to a recipe. I found a recipe on line and followed it. Almost exactly. It wanted 2 cups of heavy cream and I only had 1.5, so I topped it off with half and half. It is a custard-based recipe, and there's always that difficult moment when making custard. The moment after you have mixed the eggs and warm cream together, when you are trying to get it warm enough to thicken but not so warm that it scrambles. That has historically not been a good moment for me and yesterday was not an exception.

After I strained out the tiny bits of scrambled egg with 2 layers of cheesecloth and a fine mesh strainer, I set the whole thing to chill. Later on, as we prepared dinner, I tumbled the mix into the bowl and turned on the machine. It set up beautifully, smooth and creamy. I knew the flavor was good from the requisite sampling earlier. Scooped out 2 bowls and settled in, ready to be delighted.

1+2+ a recipe = only marginally edible

Same thing, only the lumps of butter where smaller. I left it on the counter over night and threw it away this morning.

2 days, 2 quarts of cream, 1 liter of chai concentrate, 1 c of milk and 2/3 cup of sugar = down the drain.

So what went wrong? And what do I do now?

reconsidering pork

Maybe I don't like pork. I think I do, and at some point I did, so I still have that emotional flashback when I think about pork. Pork chops in the windowless yellow breakfast nook in the Newtown house. I've never been able to recreate those pork chops, I've never recaptured that particular porky, fatty, crispy flavor and I blame the new lean pork, this other white meat crap. We already have chicken, I don't want a pork chop that tastes like an especially bland chicken. Chicken is bland enough.
When I was vegetarian, the first meat I ate, when I decided to stop being vegetarian, was bacon. I fell off the wagon for bacon. The second time I lost my virginity, it was to bacon.
But the pork shoulder, that I keep slow braising, keeps letting me down. There was the stew with milk and tomatoes. And then there were the carnitas.
My sister had a sort of fajita taco meal that she told me about, but hers was with chicken, the less bland white meat. And, having an emotional pork flashback, I thought, that would be really good with pork. So I found a recipe for carnitas. It was from cooks illustrated and as I read it over, I recalled that I had made it once a few years ago and not especially liked it. But my emotional flashback was overwhelming and I disregarded that memory and thought, NO, it sounds delicious, caramelized and crispy with orange and cumin and a freshening squeeze of lime. How could I possibly not like that?
So I made it, braise the pork, (the thing I like about pork, is that no one ever wants you to brown it ahead of time and I appreciate that). Then remove the pork and shred it, cook the liquid down to a syrup, fold this syrup back into the shredded meat then stick it all under the broiler. And it was just OK. Not enough flavor, or enough crisp, but the biggest problem is a greasy, sort of coagulated, mouth feel. It is as if pork fat has a particularly high melt point and the temperature of my mouth doesn't quite reach that, so there is always some congealing pork fat. It is really not good. Maybe it should be saved for very hot summer days and only eaten outside. My house is heated to 66 which seems perfectly warm enough, especially if you wear three layers, and who doesn't wear at least three layers this time of year? But maybe pork wants you sitting around in a wifebeater, swigging cold beer as sweat runs down your back. Actually, that doesn't sound that appetizing either.
I have a new culprit, really, the old culprit. The new pork. I get it from Whole Foods, so it is natural and at least somewhat humanely raised, but now I am thinking it might not be enough. It might still be a genetically modified anxious and skittish pig, just in a slightly larger pen. And, if you believe your Humane Society mailings, the ones where they say the pigs drop dead from fright if they ever see the outdoors, because to make them so lean they have bred them to be particularly twitchy and tense, that larger pen would only be a torment to this porcine bundle of nerves.
So I have a new plan. Back on the hunt for a local pig farmer. One raising a heritage breed, a pig that is stuporous, languid, and sanguine. And until I find that indolent pig, I'll stick to bacon.

Rrrrribolita Rrrrrrrocks!

More tales from the farmers market.

Searching the cupboards for inspiration last weekend, I found a small package of white beans I bought from a farmer last fall. After the antique lentil experience over New Year's I thought I'd better use them up. So I set them to soak overnight and asked my sister what to make. Once we'd discussed the usual white beans, escarole and sausage stew (which is totally amazing but somewhat boring right now) she suggested Ribolita, using the recipe from the Junior League cookbook from San Francisco.

I followed the recipe closely, but not exactly because that would be silly. You make a vegetable swamp with onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, kale, spinach and fennel in chicken broth. Cook the white beans and puree about half of them with more chicken broth. Put the swamp and the bean mash together, add more chicken broth and let it sit over night. Not essential, just the way my life was working that day.

When you are ready to finish it, you put half of the soup in a casserole, layer slices of crusty bread on top, grate a mess of parmesian on it, then top with the remaining soup and another slug of parmesian. The recipe wants you to top it with thinly sliced onions but I thought they might get dried out, so skipped that part. Bake for an hour or so.

Holy catfish, Robin, this is amazing. You will not believe how silky smooth the bread gets, and how rich and flavorful the vegetables are. How can vegetables taste this good?

Photos are in the camera, not the computer so will try to edit later to include them.

PS I miss the Olympics…

Sunchokes, or take that you root vegetable, you!

I bought them at the farmers' market last week, partly because they seemed so farmers' marketie. Odd, lumpy brown things of indeterminate origin, they seemed to be challenging me. You want local? Here we are, they said with a sly smirk. Oh yeah? You wanna play that game? Well I can cook your ass. So I bought them.


 
Google yielded a number of recipes, but most of them had to do with soup or gratin. I wanted to roast them. Maybe it was the potato likeness, the very root vegetable-ness of them, but I had it in my head that they should be roasted.


 
So I cubed them (unpeeled) into pieces roughly ½ to 1", tossed them in olive oil and salt and pepper and roasted them at 400 for about 10 minutes. Tossed them again, and roasted another 10 or so. It's hard to say because we were watching the Olympics and my timer only speaks sotto voce. Not a good trait in a timer.


 
They were deelish. Soft and kinda sweet, with a richer flavor than potatoes. Next time I'd pay more attention to the tossing so that there would be more of the brown crispy parts. 

Mark Bittman is not writing for me

It has happened several times now. I am reading the paper and I check out dining and wine and peruse the recipes and very often I'll find something that sounds good. I might even print the recipe and then very occasionally, I'll actually make it. I made the Chicken Bouillabaisse for a Crowd and it was excellent. But if it is a Mark Bittman recipe, it always disappoints. And it is a big disappointment, because his recipes sound so good.
Illustration- Fried Chick Peas with Chorizo and Spinach. In his description he says that the chick peas become crunchy and mealy and he claims that the chorizo melts and colors the oil a lovely orange. He says the spinach will release its moisture and then that will evaporate into an wonderful iron-y flavor. He says it will be amazing. Let's face it, he says a lot of things.
(Now perhaps you are thinking, crunchy and mealy? orange and iron-y? What sounded good about this? Well, it has 2 superfoods and it is a one pot dish and that counts for a lot lately)
The chickpeas did not get crunchy, the chorizo was too hot, I used kale instead of spinach because it was what I had and I didn't detect the iron. I added a cup of chicken broth at the end or the whole thing would have been dry to top it all off. Now, in Mark Bittman's defense, I used too much chorizo because it made sense to use it up and there was that kale substitution and I forwent the breadcrumbs and extra 1/2 cup of oil altogether because who needs the extra work and calories, so maybe I cannot wholly blame him, but I still do. (my sister has a refrigerator magnet that says, "I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was going to blame you."
When my bf asked what I had for dinner, I said a disappointing chickpea and sausage stew and he said, "Is 'disappointing' part of the title?"
It could be. Dinner tonight will be disappointing stew, a not quite living up to expectations salad and hopes crushing cake.
For tonight's creative reinterpretation of the disappointing stew I added some chicken from a carcass that has been a round for a few days, (a disappointing carcass, because the bird itself came from Wegman's and even though it was organic, I have a deep suspicion of Wegmans so I thought all along there was something "off" about it and then my cheap supermarket baster melted when I was basting it, and then I was sure I detected a sinister chemical flavor) and some Rao's marinara. I'm starting to think that Rao's marinara is a balm for all wounds. It is the savory equivalent of whipped cream.
It was better, but I'm not making it again.

No one wants to eat garbage

Our brother in law is a professional chef. When he was starting out he worked in some swanky San Francisco restaurant for some very renowned chef. Not being coy here, really don't remember who it was. They were having a kitchen meeting, discussing what sort of specials to do for that day and Jamie, our brother in law, looked in the huge storage fridge and made a few suggestions involving food left over from the previous days, maybe a composed salad from the left over roasted vegetables and a soup from the leftover chicken tagine. This renowned chef gave him a stern look and said "no one wants to eat garbage!"
Apparently not all chefs feel this way, bc I am listening to Bill Buford's book, Heat, and much of it is about his time working at Babbo for Mario Batalia. MB apparently goes through the real garbage, in the actual trash bins, and pulls out sheep kidneys and celery tops that then make up that evenings special.
I ate garbage the other night; the last few shreds off a chicken carcass, the final 2 spoonfuls of white beans with the remaining 3 forkfuls of broccoli rabe, the scrapings from the pot of mashed sweet potatoes. It was good, but I wouldn't serve it to anyone, and not just bc there was barely enough for me.
Tonight I had leftover braised cabbage which I have been working on for 4 days, left over roasted carrots that I overcooked initially bc the bf and I got in the hottub with specialty cocktails and time sort of melts when you do that. The carrots cooked down to almost chewy nubs, very flavorful, but they stick to your teeth like a stale gummy bear. I mashed up some more sweet potato and then browned some ground beef and dumped some Raos marinara on it. This was all served together in a bowl with grated parm. And it was fabulous.
I think what differentiates leftovers from garbage is maybe a creative reinterpretation of the original dish and also quantity. When there are only 3 spoonfuls left, I don't care how creative you get, it's still garbage.
Which, apprently, some of us like.

What to eat after 12 hours in the car

12 hours of driving is how long it takes to get from Idaho to Seattle. It is a long time. A long, boring time. Since I severely injured my shoulder last time we did the drive by knitting for 11 of the 12 hours, yesterday I restrained myself. This made the drive significantly more boring.

Solution?

Snacks!!

Carrot chips, apple with cheese, cookies, dried mango, leftover chicken, a thermos of tea cooling to lukewarm by Pendleton, pretzels, dried cranberries and almonds with sea salt. By the time we hit the I90 bridge into Seattle I was full, tired, stiff, sore and bored. With a slight headache and a sore throat from yelling at my BRAND NEW DELL LAPTOP THAT WOULDN'T BOOT BEFORE WE LEFT IN THE MORNING. But that's another story.

So there you are, home after 12 uncomfortable hours. It's dark, the house is cold, you're tired, you need something warm and comforting and preferably healthy feeling, but you have no appetite. What you gonna make?

Poor man's souffle, as Amos calls it. This is slowly scrambled eggs with an ungodly amount of Parmesan cheese grated over them as they cook. Which is why I say healthy feeling. Hot, salty, fresh, a dash of protein to combat 12 hours of carbs, not too much bulk since there isn't much room anyway. Perfect.