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Category: experiments

food list – it’s summer again!

I may have gone a bit overboard at my produce truck and the farmers’ market and berry picking.

Oh, yes, I went berry picking. Food in Jars had a post about local Pick Your Own berry farms, and I was totally sold on the idea. So a friend and I went out to Rowand Farms (no website?) in Glassboro, NJ to acquire cherries and strawberries. I’ve only picked apples before, and cherries are definitely harder – but then moving on to strawberries was like leveling up once more because you really had to look hard to find the pretty ones… plus stooping, but we knew that going in.

Now I have to make plans for all of this food:

Produce
1 nectarine
4 tomatoes
2 bunches of small asparagus
handful of shelling peas
radishes
slightly less than 1lb lettuce
2lbs cherries
3lbs strawberries
3 lemons
5 limes
2 grapefruits
4 rhubarb stalks
turnips galore
1 yellow squash
1 red pepper
1 carrot
1 parsnip
3 rutabagas
1 celeriac root
7 oz kale
1lb spicy mustard greens

ready to be harvested from my garden
radicchio
swiss chard
nasturtium flowers

processed produce
tail end of a jar of salsa
vodka pasta sauce
1/4 cup rice with turmeric, clove, and sundried tomatoes
Thai sweet spicy garlic sauce
chipotle in adobo sauce
jarred crab apples
pineapple juice
orange juice
fermenting peaches

dairy
sour cream
cheddar cheese
1% milk

protein
beef fajita leftovers (about enough for 3-4 quesadillas)
3lb beef roast
4 eggs

So now I need a plan
Monday, June 8
breakfast: 2 quesadillas with leftover fajitas

~*~

roast: foil packets of root vegetables with various spice mixes and garlic; asparagus

dinner: salad w/ half the lettuce, shelling peas (try one to see if they are good popped out, or if they need to be blanched), roasted asparagus, radishes, and nasturtium flowers – dressing: something mild and sweet – white balsamic and apricot jelly?

prep beef: 1/3 slice into thin strips and marinate with pineapple juice, jalapeno, black bean sauce (for stir fry); 1/3 slice into thin strip and marinate with salsa, chipotle, and lime juice (for something involving tortillas); prep the thickest third for roasting (studded with garlic cloves and tuck in some rosemary) and wrap for freezing

Rhubarb – make candied rhubarb and rhubarb syrup for camping

dessert – strawberries and milk

Tuesday, June 9
breakfast – try Kenyan collard green recipe with kale (uses a tomato); eat some strawberries

9am – meet real estate agent to go see a house I can’t afford

~*~

dinner: stir fry marinated beef with asparagus, red pepper, jalapeno, ginger, radishes; also saute some of the spicy mustard greens with garlic to have one the side. Make rice.

strawberries – try making small batch strawberry jam w/ shredded fresh ginger and 1 ground black cardamom jam

salsa – try making salsas from strawberries and cherries

Wednesday, June 10
meet friend for coffee; take radishes and sexy butter.

do I still want breakfast? – rest of the spicy mustard greens made like roman kale

take any remaining berries in to work

~*~

dinner: (psst: you still haven’t eaten your theoretical packets of roasted root vegetables, the yellow squash, maybe a tomato or two, nor the Mexican-ish beef) That could be an interesting start to a cottage pie…

cream cheese – cut some of my fresh herbs to make a cream cheese spread

pack to go camping – take

  • candied rhubard
  • rhubarb syrup
  • limoncello
  • rum
  • scotch?
  • camping cups and dishware
  • herbed cream cheese
  • hot sauce (but not my salsas)
  • if I feel really ambitious I’ll make a batch of raita, but looking at this schedule – I doubt it
  • again if I’m feeling ambitious, perhaps some of this ginger syrup
  • fig newtons

experiment #2 with mustard oil – Potatoes with onions and peppers

How did you miss experiment number 1? Easily. I hadn’t posted about it yet.

Well, there I was reading A Mad Tea Party‘s back catalog of entries, and I came across this piece about the joys of mustard oil, and I was intrigued. A few months later, I decided to give it a try and dropped her a comment for help finding the piece and looking for suggestions, and she has generously become my guide to this new-to-me lipid.

So I went to my local Indian grocer and located the mustard oil – all of which was explicitly labeled at massage oil, not for consumption. So I went to the guy behind the counter and commiserated with him about the evils of US Customs and their regulations on importing foodstuffs, but I was assured that it was good quality and edible and just the thing I was looking for.

So experiment 1 was going to be with the mashed sweet potatoes served at Cooking with Catladies. Only not only did I decide that they didn’t need any oil, but also I found the taste of the mustard oil surprisingly strong. Straight out of the bottle, it tasted of dark green, earthy things – sort of like gnawing on the very dark tip of leeks. Which I do, so it’s not a deal breaker, but it did put off subsequent experiments.

So I wrote a comment to the original inspiration for the experiment, and I asked her if it was supposed to taste like that (just in case). And heard back that it was indeed, and that high heat cooking mellows out the flavor.

Well, I do surprisingly little high heat cooking. It’s the combination of my love for electric ranges and my love for non-stick cookware. Yes, I know I have no class. I’m okay with that, and it’s easy to make rice and wash dishes.

But I’m still excited about the mustard oil.

So when I was looking for something to do with two scrawny remaining potatoes, I reached for the mustard oil.

Potatoes with onions and peppers

I poured 2 teaspoons of mustard oil into a pan, and turned up the heat.

When the oil had spread out, I added 1 tsp mustard seeds (and propped a larger skillet over top because they pop up and get everywhere otherwise).

After the mustard seeds were popping away gleefully, I threw in 2 potatoes, cut into pieces just a bit larger that 1cm squared; 1 diced yellow onion; and 2 jalapeno peppers, de-seeded and sliced.

When the onions became limp, I added 2 minced cloves of garlic and a frozen cube of minced cilantro.

I added some curry powder, and that dried things out a bit too much, so I added water. I had the feeling that dicing a fresh tomato into the mix would have been the perfect option here, but I didn’t have any fresh and a can would have been too much.

The end product was tasty. Actually, it was a little too oily, but the oil flavor was mild and delightful and it was not strong at all.

Foodbloggers pot luck

So I have some leftovers from the Catladies event that really need to leave my house. I have an incredibly tasty loaf of vegan challah I have been devastating (and have sliced and frozen more than half of it, like a responsible person.

And I have two ramekins of flavored butter: honey butter (a little too weak) and chipotle butter (a little too strong).

And I have a pint of heavy cream. From the farmers’ market. From happy cows. *clings*

I really must not eat all of these on my own.

However, for the foodbloggers potluck, I think I shall be making more cabbage/beet shred that was so tasty and healthy.

Can you think of anything else I could make that would use up a lot of dairy products? Without also making bread to go with it because baking is not my forte, and while I’ll go it in front of friends, I am not going to do it for food bloggers.

And I just don’t think a spicy, buttery bread pudding would work too well. …huh.

Okay, so if you got a tough multi-grain bread… like the spelt from Metropolitan Bakery, perhaps… and then cream, eggs, honey, dried cherries, and vanilla from a bean. Brown the butter? Ooo… kind of like with the toasting?

That’s an insanely complex recipe for bread pudding. And it’s something that I’d have to be able to take to work and still have tasty at the end of the day.

Right, so no experimental bread pudding for the pot luck. Does anyone else want to experiment and try a spicy heart attack of joy sometime? The butter can keep, but the heavy cream won’t last more than a month I don’t think.

Cicero

Damn – I love my own cooking.

I could totally convince a chickpea hater (me) to love chickpeas with this thai chickpea dish. It is some awesome.

ETA: My co-workers continue to be philistines who do not get excited over savory foods.

Dear Nigella,

Yes. The purple salad would be slightly better with some fish sauce. Bother, vegetarians. But it’s still very exciting without it. You should try it with beets.

love,
Purple Fingers

tomorrow morning

To Do List

Cooking with Catladies – experiment 1

  • Thai beet slaw/salad (needs a better name)
    • peel and slice thinly 1 beet
    • shred a complementary amount of purple cabbage
    • halve a purple onion and slice one thinly
    • Jalapeno, seeded, sliced into thin matchsticks (core reserved for stock)
    • make dressing of:
      • 1 clove garlic, minced
      • 2 tsp sugar
      • 1 teaspoon vinegar (still haven’t decided between rice vinegar for the thai theme or red wine vinegar for the color theme)
      • juice of 1/2 lime
      • 1 tsp good olive oil
    • toss together with some generous grinds of black pepper
    • give a further toss with 1 Tbsp chopped cilantro
    • ETA:decided on 1 teaspoon of each kind of vinegar – needs more lime juice!
  • Thai-inspired chickpea taco filling (version 1)
    • Drain a can of chickpeas
    • fry 1 tsp shredded fresh coconut (no really, from a coconut – no sugar added), purple onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro stems, jalapeno flesh in 1 tsp olive oil.
    • Add half the can of chickpeas, juice of 1/2 the lime, 1 bay leaf, and some lime zest
    • Add a mixture of vegetable stock and water and cook until no longer thin.
  • Thai-inspired chickpea taco filling (version 2)
    • fry 1 tsp fresh coconut in 2 tsp olive oil
    • add 1/2 tsp thai green curry paste
    • Add the rest of the chickpeas and a similar mixture of vegetable stock and water
    • cook until no longer thin
  • ETA: Instead of one or the other, it should be both – add some green curry paste to the first recipe to give it a yummy base flavor. And don’t forget to add a little salt in the cooking

Vacuum floor
Hang up stuff in closet
Clean off kitchen table
1 hr pilates
shower