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Category: Food

Scotchy Scotch

So I am trying to encourage a friend to host a scotch tasting party, so I have put together a list of scotch I (well, my mother) could contribute:

Shareable? Name Variety Age Region How much left
Y Balvenie Doublewood 12 speyside 3/4
Y Bruichladdich 10 northern islay almost full
Y Bunnahabhain 12 northern islay 3/4
IFF Caol Ila 12 islay 1
IFF Dalmore 21 northern highland 1
N Dalwhinnie 15 Speyside/Highland 1/2
Y Glen Keith 10 speyside 1
IFF Glendronach 15 eastern highlands 1
Y Glenmorangie mediera wood 12 northern highlands 1 + 2/3
IFF Glenfarclas 17 speyside 1
IFF Glenfarclas cask strength 105 ? speyside 1
just opened 1 Highland Park 18 northern highlands 1/2 (+ 1)
Y Laphroaig 10 southern islay 1
Y Laphroaig 15 southern islay 1/2
Y Lismore BLEND! n/a highland almost full
N Longmorn 15 Speyside 2 + 7/8
N Macallan 18 Speyside 1
N Macallan 25 Speyside almost empty
just opened 1 Macallan Cask Strength 10? Speyside 1/2 (+ 3)
N Macallan Elegancia 1990 12 Speyside >3/4
Y Strathisla 12 speyside almost empty
Y Talisker 10 Skye – western highlands 1

IFF = iff and only if my mother ends up willing to go to the tasting, which I think is totally fair of her
Most of the regional info from here

Cream cheese and Coconut. Though not together. But that’s an idea

But where has all the cream cheese gone?
I am out of cream cheese. And almost out of cheddar cheese. But I refuse to pay more than $1 for 8oz of cream cheese or $2 for 8oz of cheddar cheese, and they haven’t been on sale lately.

I might go into withdrawal soon.

~*~

my tale of woe with the time change
So there I was Sunday morning, having a leisurely breakfast of bacon, mexican hot chocolate, and amazing fresh coconut (I’ll tell you about that soon), with a charming person who had spent the night, with plenty of time until my 11:20 massage appointment… when I remembered the time change.

We packed up quickly (with him leaving behind his grocery sack with fun ethnic yummies from my grocery store across the street) and barely made it across Broad Street and the surprise marching band parade (for St. Patrick’s Day, apparently) to get there 20 minutes late. Woecakes!

So they only docked my half the price of the session for not showing without notice (and the session was only $35, so not bad. That’ll just make the fee for the next one about on par for professional prices) and I rescheduled for the same time this next Sunday.

~*~

White Coconut
So a couple weeks ago, my grocery store started carrying white coconuts. I more or less ignored them because I figured they’d be just like the brown ones, which I tried doing once from scratch and it just wasn’t worth the trouble. Luckily, I was convinced to experiment this weekend. WOW!

So white coconut – apparently it’s softer and tastier and has more water inside. Once you pull out the meat with a fork, instead of having to gnaw on it for a bit, it was completely chewable and tasty without any processing. I’m going to get another one to take to my mother this coming weekend because it’ll be a dream to shred over cake.

What do you mean when you say it’s a squash?

So I am preparing another workshop on Roman cooking, and I’m trying to include more of the vegetable dishes.

But I have a translation problem.
Book III (The Gardener): Section IV Cucurbitas

See – that is the genus name for squash (summer & winter). But I’m pretty sure that squash was native to the western hemisphere.

So what would the Romans have been talking about?

~*~

Okay, so I was ashamed to post this without a proper googling, first.

This page explains that what I’m really looking for is called a calabash, and I think I am reading it correctly that the easiest substitution would be a zucchini, right?

ETA: Here is a picture of the calabash split open. I am dubious.

~*~

Okay, so when the calabash is less mature and in Italy, it is known as a cucuzza. Here is a good guide on picking and cooking one. Actually, this vegetable (straight, not bulgy, about 1 foot long) is frequently available at my produce truck. SCORE!

Here agrees that the calabash and the cacuzza are the same gourd.

~*~

ETA: 9/9/08 : Looks like someone has already done this research

Have another food list – Mexican Corn Soup

food I have
Produce
1 grapefruit
oranges
2 tomatoes (1 urgent)
3 roasted bell peppers
2-3 bell peppers (yellow & red)
broccoli
mixed small lettuces

Dairy
3/4 container of sour cream
1% milk
1/2 pint heavy cream
goat cheese

Starch
1/3 loaf of brown bread (ETA: just heels left)
1/2 round of pumpernickel
small amount of leftover white rice

Protein
carnitas
some leftover cooked chicken (from the breasts marinated in peaches & cowboy rub)

Miscellaneous
some prepared enchiladas that need to be baked
sauce to go with them

meals
Tuesday, February 19 *done*
take 1 link of turkey sausage from freezer to thaw.
take container of small cut pork from freezer to thaw (with black bean & pepper sauce?)
put enchiladas into the freezer
Make a sandwich with chicken leftovers, tomato, and lettuce (and goat cheese?)

Wednesday, February 20 *done*
make a “bread pudding” with some of the pumpernickel bread, eggs, cream, cheese, tomato, and grilled turkey sausage with onions and peppers. Possibly bacon, too. With a little side salad, of course.
*freeze some of this for lunches*

Thursday, February 21 *done*
stir fry of pork, broccoli, onion, and peppers over rice.

Friday, February 22
leftover rice needs to be used up. So do carnitas. Would it be sacrilege to dump them together with cream of chicken soup? Probably. So it would be slightly more respectable to… make burritos! with lots of cheese and sour cream – and maybe a zucchini. And all the rest of the lettuce.

plus bonus recipe – Mexican corn soup
Oh, and I almost forgot to give you the recipe for the soup I made the other day.

If you remember, I had some stock with tomato paste mixed in (let’s say a 3-4 cups of stock with 1/2 a little can of paste).

I also had some liquid I had drained out of the carnitas at the very last minute because I didn’t have the nerve to see what happened to my cooking pot, if I let the pork get completely dry. This was only about 1 cup of lovely pork/citrus/spices essence.

So I went looking in my Mexican cookbook, and found a recipe for corn soup I could use as a starting point.

So I boiled the stock/tomato paste mixture for 20 minutes to kill any bacteria.

Then I combined in a blender:

  • 1 onion, cooked down in some of the fat skimmed from the pork liquid (there wasn’t much, really – I was using pork loin instead of the fattier cuts the carnitas recipe recommends) and then seasoned with paprika
  • 1 can of corn, drained
  • 1 tomatoes, peeled and seeded
  • enough stock to make everything juicy and blending smoothly

In a saucepan, I think combined:

  • everything from the blender
  • the rest of the stock
  • salt & pepper

If I were following the recipe, I would now add 1/2 a cup (a whole cup? I don’t remember) of heavy cream. But since most of this would be going into the refrigerator and getting reheated, I decided to add the cream right before serving. And then I found that lumps of sour cream were more satisfying than cream.

I also considered adding chicken at that time, but I ended up also just adding cut up chicken to the bowls while reheating so that I could have the option to swap in carnitas instead of chicken (though I never for around to trying that). It was also a good soup without meat.

It has been a while since a food list

food I have
produce
1/2 pt fermented peaches soon to die of oxidation
3 wintery roma tomatoes
butternut squash
2 jalepeno peppers
1 yellow bell pepper
4 roasted red & yellow peppers

dairy
I need to buy milk and/or heavy cream
cream cheese
sour cream
goat cheese
parmesan

protein
a little bit of leftover roast chicken (1 sandwich worth)
2 chicken breasts marinating in onion, fermented peaches, white balsamic, and cowboy rub

meals
So I need to go ahead and make the chicken, but I haven’t decided whether I’m just popping it in the oven, or whether I want to cut it up and saute it and turn it into real food (maybe fajitas, and that would use up the bell pepper, too. Oh, and a tomato.).

I also need to go ahead and make the butternut squash. I think I want a soup, and I have thousands (slight exaggeration) of butternut squash soup recipes, but I’m not feeling inspired about it yet. I think it’s that I’ve been wanting food I can chew, lately.

I’d been looking for something to do with the bits of fermented peach after I’d strained the liquor off… I thought of making little tarts with peaches and goat cheese, but if I don’t make it either tonight or tomorrow morning, I think the peaches will end up in the compost, instead. I’m wondering whether a little dab of tamarind sauce would make those tarts even better, but I won’t know unless I get off my ass and try.

I’ve been eating a lot of mexican (inspired) food lately. I had tasty carnitas quesadillas (and I still have half the pork left in my freezer), mexican corn soup, a few trips to the mexican restaurant, and I’ve also been making some of my sleazy cheezy dip.