It has been too hot to cook, so I made soup/stew at night over the weekend and have been making that last.
I had half a cabbage and (what I thought was) a spaghetti squash in my produce drawer, so I came up with a daring plan to try to make another soup/stew with the two of those, some ham, and chicken stock.
When I went to cut up the squash, however, it turned out to be a random asian melon.
It made a rather wonderful breakfast, but it was a surprise.
Food experiment: Tofu Shirataki
Yeah, so this was a total shot in the dark as to whether they would be edible, but they were both weird and on sale so they fit my standard requirements for a culinary adventure.
Shirataki noodles are made from a root (often translated on the packaging as yam) and – in this case – tofu. They are packaged wet, kind of like sauerkraut.
Because the packaging warned that they are often parboiled to get rid of the smell (other notes included “distinctive texture”), I drained the packaging liquid and set it to marinate in a spicy cooking sauce. Then, I fried it all up in a pan with eggplant and shredded cabbage.
Right after cooking – fairly tasty, but still not as sexy a texture as proper noodles… they ended up having an almost al dente texture. Maybe I should have parboiled, but I was more worried about the flavor.
After freezing – No. Just no. So the website has a warning not to freeze, but the packaging didn’t, and ew! It turned into thin strips of plastic, I swear! So I am picking those out and dropping them in my trash so I can eat the rest of the goody.
Ziti with Roasted Eggplant and Ricotta Cheese
Uses up:
Mashed Potatoes
Uses up
Pesto Chicken
I just have a leg marinating in pesto that I need to cook so I can have random chicken pits in sandwiches or salads (or real food) throughout the week.
food that will still need to be dealt with
Produce
red bell peppers
cucumbers
zucchini
plums
nectarines
strawberries
meat
a huge honking pork roast (leftovers)
chicken stock
a cooked chicken leg
I have agreed to go to an SCA casual outdoor thingy this weekend, so now I have to make a potluck item… a potluck item authentic for prior to 1600.
So you get to help me with the joy of indecision mixed with compulsive planning. [ingredients I need to buy for the recipes will be in bold]
I made a poll to let people pick:
Medieval and/or Roman picnic food: At a picnic – in the heat & humidity – I’d want to eat [note: check the recipes, no really]
Nutty dates – 9 (50.0%)
Pickled cucumber – 5 (27.8%)
Asparagus frittata (served cold) – 7 (38.9%)
Mushrooms – 6 (33.3%)
Stewed Apricots – 4 (22.2%)
Pig liver “sausages” – 1 (5.6%)
Pears in compost – 9 (50.0%)
eh, screw authentic! I’ve a hankering for more strawberries in balsalmic vinegar – 6 (33.3%)
Nutty Dates
Stone dates, and stuff with nuts and ground pepper. Roll in salt, fry in cooked honey, and serve
Pickled cucumbers
Prepare cucumber with pepper, pennyroyal [lovage and oregano], honey or reduced wine, fish sauce, and vinegar. Sometimes asafoetida is added.
Asparagus frittata
Put in the mortar asparagus tips, pound, add wine, pass through a sieve. [note: I have a wee food processor now!] Pound pepper, lovage, fresh coriander, savory, onion, wine, fish sauce, and oil. Put puree and spices into a greased shallow pan, and if you wish break eggs over it so that the mixture sets. Sprinkle finely ground pepper over it and serve.
Mushrooms
Cook mushrooms in reduced (white?) wine with a bouquet of fresh coriander. When they have cooked, remove the bouquet and serve.
Stewed apricots
Take small apricots, clean, stone, and plunge in cold water, then arrange in a shallow pan. Pound pepper, dried mint, moisten with fish sauce, add honey, reduced sweet wine, wine, and vinegar. Pour in the pan over the apricots, add a little oil, and cook over a low fire. When it is boiling, thicken with starch. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.
Pig liver “sausages”
Make incisions in the liver with a reed, steep in fish sauce, pepper, lovage, and two laurel berries. Wrap in sausage casing, grill, and serve.
Pears in compost (note: only recipe not from Apicius – and, yeah, that’s what the title said – think compote)
Put 3/4 cup white wine, 1 tsp cinnamon powder, and 1/4 cup sugar in a large pot. Heat, and stir until the sugar melts. Add dates, pitted and sliced into thin strips; 1/2 tsp sandalwood powder [saffron & nutmeg]; 1 teaspoon ginger powder; and a dash of salt. Stir. Remove from heat and set aside. Put 2 firm ripe pears, cored and washed, in a 2-quart saucepan with enough water to cover [+ some wine for flavor/color] to cover them. Heat to boiling and cook for 10 minutes, or until pears are fork-tender. Remove pears from the water and cool. Slice the pears into eighths lengthwise and add slices to the wine syrup. Stir gently to coat the pears with the syrup. Heat the syrup to boiling and cook for 5 minutes, or until liquid is slightly thickened and turns red [yellow]. Remove from heat and pour the pears and syrup into a serving dish. Chill. Serve cold.
There are never enough food lists.
Produce
mushrooms
2 1/2 tomatoes
roasted garlic
spinach
collard greens
eggplant
potatoes
roasted medium-mild peppers
jalepeno peppers
1 banana
apricots
cherries
strawberries
orange juice
lemons
Meat-ish
4 2 eggs
cooked chicken scraps
canadian bacon (frozen)
chorizo (portioned, skinned, and frozen)
bacon
chicken stock
Dairy
random Mexican fresh cheese
sharp cheddar
parmesan
cream cheese
sour cream
bread
tortillas
Last meal I made – Saucy Mexican Potato and Chorizo Saute
So I’ve been reading a mexican cookbook – and I didn’t make a real recipe, but I extrapolated and cobbled together stuff from my ingredients and her methodology.
Okay, so I put in my new (to me) mini food processor: 3 cloves of roasted garlic, the stems from most of a pint of mushrooms, 1 roasted mild pepper (large and pale yellow-green), a tomato – peeled and seeded, a sprig or two of fennel, half a dozen small sage leaves, and a few tablespoons of stock. And I made a sauce.
In a pan, I cooked a couple (3) diced potatoes and a diced onion in a bit of oil… not much oil, but slightly more than my usual minimum amount for sauteing because – potatoes – they make sweet, sweet loving to the oil. And then I remembered I had chorizo, so I put a third of one of the lengths into the pan… and it oozed a bit of grease as it cooked, so I probably would have been fine with less oil, if I had done the sausage first.
So. then. I believe I added the mushroom caps (larger ones were quartered) to the pan with the potatoes and onions. And then, after a bit more sizzling together, I put the sauce into the pan.
At this point I had the epiphany that some nice queso fresca (or whatever, neither the book nor the label is in front of me) would be just the thing melty all over this dish. So I turned the heat way down, and I popped across the street for some cheese and diced up about a third of that.
End result was tasty, not spicy, and kind of way too greasy. Furthermore, it didn’t even occur to me to put a portion aside to freeze for lunches, and that would have been a wise decision. But otherwise, it was pretty satisfying. It would have been good with some greens, but the recipes in the cookbook weren’t doing that kind of mingling.
Future Recipes
I dunno… I’m thinking I need some healthier food for a bit. I’m looking at the strawberries and wondering whether to marinate them with balsamic vinegar or just chomp them right from the box. Meghan also loves strawberries in salad, but she’s crazipants sometimes.
Spinach… Spinach salad… with strawberries? Done – Mmmm tasty
And the eggplant – it’s big and firm and beautiful and plucky with that sound when you tap it like the most perfect round eggplant. I could not resist buying it, but this kind of eggplant intimidates me. I am much more comfortable with the long, thin chinese eggplant that are easy to control – you can just roast them until the skin chars and you have a cooked, easy to peel eggplant with the bitterness cooked out. But this round eggplant? It’s a wild, buxom thing. Maybe I’ll look in the italian cookbook… maybe I’ll buy tofu and make my favorite spicy tofu-eggplant stir fry. With spinach on the side. OOooooo….
Meanwhile, while I’m getting my schedule aligned so that I can stop by the chinese grocer 1 block away while it’s open and I can then go back home to refrigerate the stuff, I can cook up the greens and the chicken and make quesadillas. Possibly with canadian bacon in them. And cherries? I can probably find time to just eat the cherries properly – out under the hot sun with obnoxious spitting noises as I extract the pits.
And that just leaves random potatoes, which probably means mashed potatoes to use up the rest of the sour cream after I finish with the quesadillas.