I think I’ll make mushroom risotto for dinner tonight – so the big question is whether I want to stick with what I know’ll be tasty or whether I want to try to add bacon and a tiny bit of maple syrup to change things up a bit.
I’m not usually a fan of maple syrup, but I think the bacon I usually use (for breakfast and stuff, I haven’t tried it in risotto yet) will taste… classier… with a bit of syrup drizzled about.
ETA: a drizzle of maple syrup worked even better than I expected.
So I have occasional dates with a chef. It’s lovely.
And he brought gifts! I might have mentioned that I would occasionally like flowers, but this was better – he brought me salmon and eel and cucumber salad. That’s true romance.
Then he cooked the salmon for me (powdered garlic and ginger, 5 spice powder, ground nutmeg, and cracked brown mustard on the fish cooked in just a little olive and sesame oil, deglazed with rice vinegar and soy sauce, with sticky rice on the side), and we had some islay scotch to go with.
So usually I try to cook for him, instead of the other way around, because there’s less fun in doing for your down time what you do for work. But every now and then, it’s rather fun – and he’s generous about it.
Adventures in Spaghetti Squash
Ever since I was in Weight Watchers (senior year of high school) and some cookbook or pamphlet tried to sell me on spaghetti squash as a healthy alternative to pasta, I have been fairly pissed at that whole cooking trope.
Sure, it may cook up into stringy bits that are morphologically like spaghetti, but that doesn’t mean it tastes the same or should function the same – it’s a squash! A little marinara sauce on top is just gross.
I’ve ranted on this point many times over the years, just not before to you.
But then today I somehow managed to cook spaghetti squash so that it tasted just like cheap ramen. Kid you not. No idea how. I just sliced it in half, removed the seeds, filled the hollow with homemade stock, and baked it for an hour or so (cut side up because it’s tidier that way and doesn’t get as sodden as cut side down in water).
End result? just like ramen. So I added a drizzle of sesame oil, some soy sauce, and a bit of pepper.
***
Chicken wings
All right, so they weren’t chicken wings – they were cornish hen wings. See, my parents don’t eat as much as they used to, so after my mother made a dinner where each of them had a wee cornish hen my father had eaten half of one breast and my mother had eaten most of one breast and one thigh. The rest went to me.
And while I boned the chicken, I wasn’t going to strip the meat off the wee little wings because that was too little return for the effort – so I just pulled them off whole.
So you’d think a cookbook that was all chicken all the time and nothing but chicken would have a recipe for wings. Not so much. But I found a likely recipe for random chicken bits. I ended up summarizing the pepper, cilantro, garlic, lime, whatever, paste for the marinade as a heaping teaspoon of the thai paste I had leftover in the fridge. After a couple hours, I cooked the marinated wings in a bit of oil and then right at the end drizzled oil and say sauce over them for the sauce.
Tasty!
Yesterday, I had soup issues.
It was far too hot last night to try to deal, so I got leftover pasta & meatballs from the deli counter – and somehow my local grocery store managed to almost exactly reproduce the flavor of Chef Boyardee.
Anyway, the weather broke overnight (now the high is only 90, and not nearly as humid), so I did some tinkering. Orzo was a brilliant suggestion, unfortunately I didn’t have any and my brain had already substituted Arborio rice for orzo, so rice went in instead of rice-shaped pasta.
I also added some ketchup and a dash of cayenne because ketchup is just like tomato paste, except with sugar and vinegar, and those sounds like things that might perk up the flavor, too.
I’ll be testing that hypothesis tonight.
So now I just have the following perishables in my fridge:
carrots
1/8 of a head of cabbage
1 zucchini
and some stock.
I reboiled the stock, so it’s good for another week in the fridge.
I’m thinking that carrots, zucchini, and cabbage would make a pretty nice thai stir fry with Prik Khing paste. And then I think I’d put that over noodles instead of rice because I have a box of noodles I want to finish up.
Meanwhile, I bought a package of ground turkey because it was less than $2/lb (my requirement for buying meat). So I seasoned it with the last of my roasted garlic, some worcestershire sauce, ground thyme, ground nutmeg, and ground white pepper. I debated putting some crushed mustard seed in because Penzey’s has that listed as an ingredient in their Bratwurst seasoning I’ve been meaning to try – but I chickened out of putting it in.
So, took that and made up hamburger patties, wrapped them in waxed paper, and put them in the freezer in freezer bags.
After I had filled two bags (10 patties), I added some bread crumbs and a little more than half of a scrambled egg, and made meatballs. The finished meatballs almost all fit into a little pint container. I was forced to eat the stragglers. *MMmmmm*
This past weekend at moot, [redacted] made what were possibly the second best ribs I have ever had. (the first being, oddly enough, the ones made in my college cafeteria. Even the people from Texas raved about them.)
The rib recipe started out from Southern Cooking by Beverly LeBlanc & Philip Back, but was modified
For moot, we were starting with two honking huge sides of ribs, so [redacted] tripled the rub recipe, and quadrupled the barbecue sauce recipe. I shall give those measurements.
Ingredients
tennessee rub
3 Tablespoons cumin seed
3 teaspoons garlic salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons dried mixed herbs: sage [and what else did you add?]
3/8 teaspoon cayenne pepperbourbon barbecue sauce
3 Tablespoons corn or peanut oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
8 large garlic cloves, minced
generous 1 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
4 Tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
4 teaspoons cumin seeds
8 Tablespoons tomato paste
24 Tablespoons (woot!) ofbourbonJim Beam
8 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
8 Tablespoons apple or white wine vinegar
a few drops of hot pepper sauce to taste
Put all the whole spices for the rub into a mortar and have a slightly tipsy Molly pound it. Add that to the bowl with all of the rub spices that come already as a powder. (have [redacted] grate the cinnamon stick on the bias for maximum efficiency. Then, have a licensed massage therapist slowly and methodically massage the rub into the rack so that every surface is covered with rub and the ribs are completely relaxed and tender. Wrap the ribs and refrigerate overnight.
To make the barbecue sauce, heat the oil in a pan over medium high heat. Add the onion and then the garlic, and cook it until the onion is soft and translucent. Meanwhile, put this next batch of whole spices into the mortar and let [redacted] have a go at them, too. Once the onion is ready, toss in all the rest of the sauce ingredients. Slowly bring the sauce to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then reduce the heat and let simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally, until dark brown and very thick. Stick that back in the fridge, as well.
About half an hour before you are ready to cook, pull the ribs out and let them come to room temperature. [put the oven at what temperature?] Brush the barbecue rack with a little oil and put on a pan lines with tin foil (which helps cleanup more than you would believe). Cook with also a covering of tin foil, turning a few times, for 40 minutes [longer?]. If it seems to be drying out, brush with water.
Next time you take the ribs out to turn, coat them with barbecue sauce and let them cook uncovered for 10 minutes, turning and basting a several more times. When finished, the ribs should be dark brown and glossy.
Cut apart and serve.
~*~
There were also fried chicken bits and sangrias made by [redacted], but I wasn’t watching those being made.