Merry Mania!

I've been in full on manic-hermit-mode the past two days and have been cooking up a storm.  I've also been incredibly productive in the rest of my house.  It's taking time for me to make a dent, and I'm currently in the "chaos before the calm" stage, but I'm hoping it will be settled by the time I go back to work on Monday.

I'm desperately trying to decrease the clutter in my home, (and life?) by cleaning out.  If I haven't used it or read it or worn it recently, then it's finding a new home, either with another person or in the trash bin.  This goes for food as well.  I'm determined to make room in my pantry/cabinets/shelves.  I hoard non-perishable food as if the Armageddon is imminent.  Especially pumpkin, and I'm honestly not sure why.  If the second coming does happen to occur sometime soon, you'll know where to find the pumpkin pie...

Today I made some turkey, pumpkin and kale soup.  It turned out wonderfully and it gave me an excuse to use up the ground turkey in my freezer.  I browned the turkey, added seasoned salt, paprika, coriander, a bit of sage, a sprinkle of cayenne and turmeric, and a touch of herbs de provence.  I added a couple quarts of chicken stock, a couple cans of organic pumpkin and then a can of evaporated milk (because I also have a ton of that).  I've never cooked kale before.  It was pretty interesting to work with.  Really crunchy and pretty difficult to wash, but it looked amazing going into the orange soup, and, come to find out, tasted great too.  The soup was very tasty.  I was pleasantly surprised, because it was a complete coin toss.

I followed that up with some fudge, to help use up the fat free sweetened condensed milk I had lying around.  I made three types of fudge; the first was just classic chocolate with pecans, the second had hazelnuts, coriander and cardamom, and the third had, (please suspend judgement), tamari, toasted black sesame seeds and candied ginger.  Mmmmmm.  I can't tell which was my favorite.

While I was sorting paperwork, I decided to put a couple cans of full-fat sweetened condensed milk on the stove in a pot of water and let them boil for about 3 hours, keeping the cans covered with water the whole time.  Thankfully Brandy stayed long enough to get sent home with some dulce de leche, along with a variety of ingredients for Thai food that have been neglected in my cabinets.  I have to thank my friend Laura Simcik for the fabulous  dulce de leche trick!  Great on toast, cookies, ice cream, a spoon... and so simple to make.  Unfortunately I was a bit impatient when opening the first can and I ended up with a geyser of hot caramel shooting across the kitchen.  Totally worth it...

Tomorrow I'll make my mother's recipe for crabmeat triangles as well as two batches of pumpkin bread and two batches of pumpkin pie filling, all of which is destined for my freezer.  Needless to say, my poor freezers required some rearranging.  This is good inspiration for me to either eat the stuff that's been hanging out in there for a while, or throw it out.  I'm currently thawing turkey chili and a batch of cabbage and proscuitto soup.  Those should hold me over for the next couple days.

I also made a huge batch of cucumber and tomato salad with balsamic in the hopes of getting a few more days out those items.  It's what's left from the Costco batch of salad-makings from the lasagna night.

I have another batch of fresh kale in my fridge, as well as broccoli and zucchini.  Apparently I'm craving green veggies.  Not sure how I'll prepare those over the next few days, but I'll have to take a break from all the pumpkin chaos to make something healthy.

I almost wish that I had more people around to eat all this food, however that would mean putting on respectable clothes and partaking in human interaction, neither of which I'm particularly up for at the moment, (Kat and Brandy being the exception since that's pretty much like hanging out with myself anyway) .  When I'm ready to re-enter normal society, I'll have a fridge and freezer stock full of fun goodies for friends.

Lasagna and the Sandra Lee Aftermath...

Two Posts in One!!!

Post One:  The Lasagna

I've been threatening for a few weeks now to make meat sauce, followed by lasagna from scratch.  The meat sauce I've done many times and, as usual, I planned on making a large batch and then freezing most of it.  The lasagna I haven't made from scratch before, but I've made each of the components and figured it couldn't be too much of a culinary stretch.

Unfortunately, I decided to do my meat-sauce-shopping at Costco.  This meant I walked out with 6 large (LARGE) cans of tomatoes and a case of tomato paste, 10lbs of ground beef and 6lbs of pork chops.  I bought my 10 large Italian sausages at Mr. Prime Beef and went home to dig out the 20qt sauce pot from the garage.  Thankfully I found tons of beautiful fresh basil at New Sagaya (a downright holiday miracle during an Alaskan winter), and I still had a wedge of romano left in my fridge, since Costco was, yet again, out of romano.

My recipe only called for 8lbs of ground meat, so I portioned off two pounds and used the rest to make my meatballs.  I rolled all 8lbs of the meatballs, with the parsley, garlic, bread, romano, salt, pepper, etc... only to realize at the last minute that I'd left out the eggs.  With 30 minutes left until I was being picked up for a snowboarding weekend, I managed to squish them all together again, incorporate the eggs, roll them into meatballs again, and then, miraculously, get them all browned and into the sauce before I ran out the door.  

Needless to say, I ended up with plenty of sauce for a tray or two of lasagna.

On Sunday night, following the snowboarding trip, I had a few friends over to help eat the lasagna.  Little did they know that they'd be making it for me as well.  Alisa and Michael were absolute champs about rolling the pasta dough through the machine.  Matt did a fantastic job with spreading out the cheese mixture.  Joe was in charge of tending to and prepping the meatsauce.  Maggie offered quite a bit of moral support.  I hovered.  A lot.  In a very Type-A-ish kind of way...

While the lasagna was cooking, folks stood around the counter, tore off pieces of bread and dipped them in a big bowl of sauce that had been set out.  It felt like being back home.  

The lasagna seemed to be a hit, and I had twice as much as I needed, so we froze one tray of it.  I put the rest of the sauce in containers and now I have a relatively full freezer...

You'll have to excuse the iPhone photo.  I was too lazy to break out a real camera.

Part Two:  The Sandra Lee Aftermath

As for the extra beef, one pound of it was used to create some make-shift tacos on Friday night, and the other pound was still in my fridge on Monday, along with a random assortment of other leftovers which Joe kindly placed in my fridge prior to boarding his flight back east.  These included a small container of some sort of macaroni and cheese.

Understanding that I didn't want to waste food but unsure of how to make use of what was in the fridge, I decided to take some inspiration from the awe-inspiring Sandra Lee and just throw everything in a pot and call it, "beautiful" and "amazing."  It was honestly very liberating, especially since I knew that no one would have to eat it except for me.

I browned the beef and seasoned it with a random cross-ethnic assortment of spices in true "fusion" fashion.  I think there was some Ancho chili and cayenne, some curry powder, some turmeric, maybe some celery seed, a couple bay leaves and a touch of garam masala?  I don't really know.  I just had one of those, "I never use any of my 16,000 different spices!" panic moments, so I started tearing the plastic seals off a bunch and dumping them in.

After the meat was browned, I went searching through my cabinets and found two small cans of diced tomatoes and a can of kidney beans.  Those went in.  I found a can of chickpeas.  Also went in.  I looked in the freezer and found half a bag of frozen diced onions, sauteed and in.  Few leftover cloves of garlic: met the same fate. Chopped up some of the leftover parsley from the meatballs, that went in, and then I added a quart of organic chicken stock.  To my ground beef.  Yeah...

Lastly, I looked at the two tupperware containers in my fridge, one of which had some extra meatballs that didn't make it into the sauce, and the other had the mac and cheese from Joe.  After a moment of hesitation and guilt, I dumped them both into the pot.

What I ended up with with actually quite tasty.  In a "Thank goodness I'm the only one that will be eating this" type of way.  It's almost like an Indian-inspired pasta e fagioli.  

Here's an iPhone photo from the scene of the crime:

And that is what I will be eating over the holidays!  Quite a change from last year's menu but certainly more efficient...

I will leave you with an article that makes me both horrified and grateful (that I've never been subjected to such an abomination), since we're on a Sandra Lee kick:  Sandra vs. Mrs. Cuomo

And this follow-up:  Why, Sandra?  Why?!?

Words Cannot Describe the Carnage.

I've been hearing a lot lately about a certain "celebrity" (not even going to use the word "chef" here because I just cannot bring myself to do it) and her Kwanzaa cake.  I read an article about it on Huffington Post which has since been removed (alright Cuomo, stop throwing your weight around!  I found it here anyway because you can't censor those Europeans) and I saw an interview with Anthony Bourdain in which he challenged me to watch the YouTube video...

So I did.

And it was terrifying.

Anthony advised that my head would explode or my eyeballs would burst into flames.  The physical reactions were actually much less severe, but I honestly had alternating bouts of chills and gagging, followed by the arrival of tears to my eyes and finally, thankfully, the relief of some hysterical laughing.

But really, the chills were the dominant reaction.

Let me just say that the description, ON THE FOOD NETWORK PAGE says, "Semi-Homemade makes a most amazingly beautiful cake for Kwanza [sic]."

What?!?

It's hard for me to type with all the shaking going on right now.

I can't tell which part of my consciousness is most offended; the humanist, the foodie or the written-language-enthusiast.  There is nothing "most amazingly beautiful" about this cake.  Northern lights, amazingly beautiful.  The Caucasus mountains, amazingly beautiful.  Sistine Chapel, also amazingly beautiful.  This cake is, well... it's this:

Please, watch the video though.  But be warned, it is not for the faint of heart.  If you need to distract yourself from the carnage, perhaps you could just try to count the number of times she uses ridiculous descriptors like "amazing" or "nice" or "incredible" or "wonderful" or "delicious" or... "amazing."

And did anyone ever teach this woman how to stir items in a mixing bowl or use a teaspoon measure?!  I had to look away.

And the "acorns"...  Oy vey.  It's a train wreck.  I'm just hoping the images do not haunt me in my dreams tonight...

International Appeal

Apparently Blogspot tracks various statistics for its blogs, mainly traffic statistics.  You can see which posts are receiving hits, how many hits you're getting in a given time frame, which sites the traffic is being directed from, what country the hits are coming from and what browsers people are using.

I started to notice that, although the vast majority of traffic to my blog comes from within the USA, I definitely have folks checking in from a few other countries as well.  Below is a screen shot of one of my stats pages.  

I've also received hits from Latvia, Netherlands and Norway.

In all honesty, I'm not sure how people are finding this page if not through my Facebook posts or from a link directly provided by me.  I've tried to search Google for this blog with no luck.  I'm especially surprised that anyone from outside the US would manage to find it.

So here's my offer, courtesy of my friend Alyssa:  if you're viewing this page from any country other than the US, please either post a comment or drop me an email and I will cook a meal from your country and document the results in a blog post.

For anyone viewing this page from within the US, you can also feel free to leave a comment or send me an email with suggestions for culinary feats I should attempt to tackle.  If nothing else, it may lead to an amusing commentary with photographic evidence.

I'm currently planning to attempt Japanese this Friday.  I chose Japanese for a few reasons:

1)  It's mildly exotic without being too "scary" for the less adventurous diners

2)  It will be easily scalable in the event that my invite list unexpectedly grows

3)  It will provide a sake-drinking venue to hopefully clear out the many bottles of high quality sake I have sitting in my fridge, their flavor slowly deteriorating.

The proposed menu:

Appetizers

 - Shrimp and veggie tempura

 - Homemade potstickers

 - Miso soup

Main Course

 - Chicken teriyaki with sesame-soy glazed baby bok choy

Dessert

 - Choice of either green tea or red bean ice cream

I'm looking forward to finally using my deep fryer for the tempura, even though the idea of large amounts of hot oil scare me only slightly less than molten sugar.  As for the potstickers, they should be relatively easy if I use pre-made wonton wrappers.  Clearly, I am not planning on this approach, but will likely have them available in case the "potsticker dough experiment" yields disastrous results.  It's likely that I won't entirely know whether the dough was a success until after I've cooked them, so the whole ordeal is a bit risky.  I'm planning on making the miso soup from scratch as well, which will entail making my kombu dashi first as I can't bring myself to use a packet.  The rest of the meal should be pretty straightforward.  I'll braise the chicken in a homemade teriyaki sauce and steam the bok choy before searing it in some sesame oil and basting it in glaze.  I'm going to have to wing it for the ice creams.  I'll probably just use a simple base ice cream recipe and add in the macha for the green tea and red bean paste for the red bean.

Should be fun...

And Finally... We Have A Demi-Glace!

I have successfully completed the demi-glace right-of-passage.  To be honest, I'm not entirely sure of the quality of my demi-glace since I have yet to sample a demi-glace on its own, but I have a feeling that this is pretty close to the real thing.  I now see just how much easier this would have been with just a touch of cornstarch, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  So I reduced.  All the way down.  It took me two stages.  After the first session of reducing, I ended up with probably 4 cups of liquid which, after refrigeration, was nearly solid.  I heated that back up again and reduced it down to 2 cups, an effort which seemed to take quite a bit longer.

Needless to say, after all the roasting of bones, prepping of mire poix, bundling of bouquet garni, endless skimming and simmering and skimming and skimming, reducing and reducing, I ended up with my beautifully dark, velvety rich demi-glace.

The finished product was added to ice cube trays and will be frozen for later use in soups, sauces, etc...

And on that note I'm going to bed...

Demi-Glace: The Journey Continues...

Yesterday's festivities began with roasting the veal bones.  

I'm glad I picked up two roasting pans as I ended up having exactly the right amount of floor space for the ten pounds of bones.  The bones I'd received from the butcher were a mixture of marrow bones and knuckles.  I used a bit of salt and pepper on them, but just a tad since I'm fairly nervous about how concentrated that salt will be once I reduce it down.  When I made those glazed ducks for Thanksgiving, I decided to use the carcasses to make a stock, but it ended up being so horribly salty that despite my many efforts to recover, I ended up just ditching the whole thing.  I've heard that you can't fix stupid.  Well, you can't fix salt either.  The irony is that diluting an overly salted stock is counter-productive since the whole point is to reduce it back down again.

But I digress...

With the veal bones roasting away in the 500 degree oven, I moved on to prepping my veggies and bouquet garni.  

As I mentioned in the previous post, I opted for carrots, leeks and shallots.  When I think mire poix, I picture a finely chopped mixture of three savory vegetables.  I knew that trying to navigate around "finely chopped" veggies while skimming the stock would be nothing short of a nightmare, so I went for the "big hunk of plant matter" approach.  In hindsight, I might even take it a step farther if I ever decide to do this again.  Shallots and leeks have a way of separating their many little layers and multiplying their own surface area exponentially.  This is fine for a soup, but for a stock, it made the process a bit tedious.  I also ended up with some fairly charred pieces of leek/shallot/unrecognizable-pieces-of-carbon once they'd been through the 45 minutes of roasting.

As usual, the shallots had me crying.  A lot.  Like a hormonal adolescent post-break-up girl.  Whenever I cut onions or shallots I end up with tears streaming down my face, blinding me to the process below, involving a very finely tuned sharp knife.  My eyes will usually just shut, on their own, without my permission and without any response to my attempted interventions.  I've tried everything, all the wives tales, and I'm sorry but they just flat out don't work.  The closest I've come to relief is my snowboarding goggles.  I'm sure it's a sight for my neighbors.  I have a theory that my body has a chemical sensitivity to raw onions.  I know you're scoffing.  People chastise me for tediously picking out every little last bit of finely diced raw onion from my food, but this just shows me that they clearly don't have the same reaction in their mouths that I do when I eat onion.  I literally want to remove my tongue.  I'll taste that terrible taste all day too.  There's nothing crueler to me that getting a dish that I've been really looking forward to, only to find HIDDEN raw onion in it, (especially common with salads and sandwiches and slaws).  Even picking it out doesn't really remove the flavor, but it does manage to make my fingers smell like onion for a day.  And yet again, I digress... (but that's why you're reading this anyway, isn't it?).

So, onto the bouquet garni... (who doesn't love saying that word?).


I went with a pretty simplistic little bundle.  Parsley, bay leaf and peppercorns.  I added a few springs of thyme after this photo was taken.  I'd read a few suggestions about using the outer layer of the leek to wrap up parsley stems, thyme and bay leaves, (something about being resourceful?!) but I was pretty sure I wanted to include peppercorns and just couldn't picture the origami feats I'd have to accomplish with those leeks to keeps those little peppercorns encased.  Plus, I'm going to be honest, at this point in the process, I'm just not that concerned about using up that outer leek layer or reducing my cheese cloth usage.  I bought a 20qt pot and two roasting pans.  Frugality went out the window very early in this undertaking.  

I was happy to find an excuse to use some more bay leaves.  It takes me far too long to make it through a purchase of bay leaves.  I wish I'd think to use them more often.  They always add a nice layer of flavor to soups, stocks, gravies.  Maybe that will be one of my New Year's resolutions:  use more bay leaf.  I think it's an appropriate goal.  That, and perhaps vacuum more often.

 Last night, a few friends and I were watching the movie Babies, which I'd highly recommend.  At one point, they took this adorable little Mongolian baby and wrapped it up super tight and then tied it up around the shoulders and legs.  All I could think was, "it's like a little bouquet garni of cuteness!" at which point I realized how grossly girly I was being and shushed myself.  Looking back at the photo though, there is definitely a resemblance...

The roasting veal bones filled my house with a really amazing smell.  

Unfortunately, though, that smell made it all the way up to my bedroom and saturated the house.  As a side note: I woke up this morning smelling roasted veal fat and thinking, "I want to eat a small cow."  This is generally not a great way to start your Sunday morning, a) because veal really is pretty inhumane and I shouldn't develop a craving for it, and b) because who the hell is going to be there, roasted veal in hand, ready to serve you on a Sunday morning?  I settled for a self-prepared soy latte.  It wasn't quite the same.

I added the veggies to the pan and roasted for an additional 45 minutes.   

The roasted veggies and veal bones then went into the pot while I deglazed the pans and added the liquid to the pot.

I added the 8 quarts of cold water to the pot, brought it to a simmer and reduced the heat.  As the liquid reduces, I'm adding more water to keep the bones covered, and I'm skimming.  Lots and lots of skimming.  I started off with an oil-continuous layer on the top of the stock, which made it hard to tell what was actually oil and what was water.  I was fooling myself.  It was all oil.  I'm now to a point where I can keep up with the fat as it rises to the surface.  I'll be doing this for another 8 hours, while also preparing dinner for a friend that is coming over tonight.  

I did say that I was excited about this, right?

I'm sure the final product will be worth it.  I have a feeling that I'll end up doing the five hours of reduction tomorrow after work, so the final product photos will finish out the trilogy...

It's That Time of Year Again...

I live my life in sinusoidal waves, distinct peaks and valleys of energy, inspiration, motivation...

Lately I've been taking a bit of a back-seat approach and just riding it out, going with the flow, feeling a bit guilty about my lack of contribution to the world at large, but knowing fully well that when the time was ready, I'd be back at it again.

Things at work have been pretty busy. Most people would consider this a good reason to basically let the rest of their life settle down. I, however, end up being pushed up the accelerating side of my energy curve. The result? I, of course, decide to make a demi-glacé. The weather is getting colder and it smells like autumn outside.  It's the perfect time of year to use roasting pans and stock pots.

I've been thinking about taking on the challenge of the infamous demi-glacé ever since reading Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential (wonderful, hilarious read for any foodie out there).  I approach these types of culinary adventures in the same ritualistic way people approach an event like the prom, planning, list-making, preparation.  I woke up today at 7am, excited to go out and buy a 20 quart stock pot (in this analogy, the equivalent of a prom dress).  I treated myself to two new roasting pans and a new fine-mesh strainer as well, (the shoes and the jewelry?).  I bought some bubble-wrap to use as a diffuser for my new fancy-dancy flash on my camera and I bought some big sheets of white paper to reflect flash off of.  By the time I left the store with my new toys in hand, I was nearly giddy with excitement.  I haven't cooked, really cooked, in a very long time.  I haven't photographed the efforts in ages.  Pretty poor form for a self-proclaimed food-blogger.  

I moved on to New Sagaya and bought the ingredients for the mire poix and the bouquet garni.  Arriving  home, I took the ten pounds of veal bones out of the fridge to let them finish thawing and started to pre-heat the oven.  I should note that, after researching the various methods of making a demi-glacé, I've decided to opt with the more modern approach.  Rather than making a brown stock, splitting it in half, making an espagnole sauce and then recombining to reduce by half, I'm instead creating the stock and reducing it in one step.  Rather than use a brown roux, I'm going with the purist approach of using only reduction as the thickening method.  I'm skipping the celery in the mire poix and using leeks.  I've substituted shallots for the onions.  The carrots remain unaltered.  The bouquet garni will be parsley, bay leaf and peppercorns, and I'm not using madiera or any other wine.  My thought is that I'll keep the flavors as straightforward as possible since the result should be a base ingredient for a wide range of uses.  Adding layers of flavor now would only limit my options later.  We'll see how it goes.

I'm going to take a moment here to plug Mr. Prime Beef.  What an awesome little gem of a butcher.  Not only did they have frozen veal bones for sale, but they're already cut into two inch pieces.  I had had images of trying to saw the bones myself in my garage with what was sure to be disastrous results.  Not only to they carry relatively impossible-to-find items like veal bones and elk meat, but they also have amazingly high quality, fresh meats and their homemade Italian sausage (which can be bought in bulk), is pretty damn fantastic; this coming from an irritatingly picky Italian.

So now the oven is preheating, the veal bones are in the final stages of thawing, and I'm sitting here blogging in an attempt to relieve some of the giddiness.

Next steps: clean this mess of a kitchen, unwrap my new camera flash and take a few practice photos, prepare my mire poix and bouquet garni, and then get those little bones in the oven to get this process rolling.  

One small advantage of making a sauce which requires 24 hours of attention:  you end up with a really clean kitchen.  Needless to say, I have the mop out and the stainless-steel wipes are poised and ready for action.

I can't wait!

Photos and fiascos to follow...