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Using up spices

My friends are getting together a communal order for spices to save on shipping, and for some the Thanksgiving season is the time to go through their cabinets and weed out the old spices.

I mostly want to make grabby hands at them and take on any old ill advised purchase because I don’t believe in waste, but I shall restrain myself and instead offer a few suggestions to all you all on how to use up weird spices.

Meat
Pick a spice – almost any spice. Cut up your meat into quick cooking pieces (so you don’t have to think about whether your meat is tough or whether your spices will burn) add about a teaspoon of spices/herbs for every 3 ounces (varying, of course, by pungency and personal palate). Marinate, quickly cook, nom on a salad, sandwich, in a quesadilla, over rice, in rice, with pasta, chilled later in a grain salad – whatevs

Or rub it all over the outside of your whole roast. If you’re worried your animal will be dry, mix the spices into butter first, and then rub it all over the outside.

Potatoes
Potatoes love your crazy spices. potato salad – pick a lipid (mayonnaise, olive oil, coconut oil, some toasted sesame oil, chili oil), pick a seasoning (well… anything, really), and pick your potato.

Shallow fried potatoes also love your crazy spices! If you’re looking for a way to use up chewy rosemary, then this is perfect. My secret trick is to add the rosemary at the very beginning. Let it fry crisp (flavoring the oil deliciously) and then when you eat it, it crumbles into just a tiny bit of crispy texture.

Mashed potatoes? Oh, yeah – go crazy

Other root vegetables
You can just cut up any root vegetables into 1″ cubes (if including beets, be aware that they will color everything they touch), toss them into a dish or a foil/parchment packet, add a tiny amount of butter or oil for flavor, and add any seasoning – put at the bottom of your oven while baking other things (will take a little more than an hour at 350F and maybe 40 minutes at 500f – feel free to occasionally poke at the packet and see if it’s squishy yet – these are very vague cooking times)

Bread
Foccacia was made for this, but really any bread can take an addition of herbs and/or spices. Add in the kneading, or as a swirly layer in shaping, or as a coating on the crust.

Vegetables
Any time you go to sautee some vegetables, feel free to peek into your spice rack and toss something in there. Anything – it doesn’t have to be well planned. But, because vegetables are not as sturdily starchy as my other suggestions, use a more judicious hand with the quantities and taste as you go. (Note – great use of whole mustard seeds)

Spreads
You can be incredibly gourmet and exciting this way! Woot! Mix random ass seasonings into butter, cream cheese, mayonnaise/aioli – all of a sudden you have something delightfully paired/contrasted with the flavors in your meal. Well done, you! And anything left over will be good on a bagel. Everything is good on a bagel.

Nuts
Toast nuts! To get your spices to adhere, use a little bit of melted butter and/or sugar while tossing the spices/herbs with the nuts. You can’t go too weird here.

Or, you can give any you can’t use up to me.

random encounter with Coup de Taco (Philly food truck)

So there I was, walking home after having stayed at work until the place closed at midnight, when I encountered Coup de Taco, one of the city’s reknowned traveling food trucks.

Well, I hadn’t eaten in nine hours or so, and it was a bit late to start cooking (plus the depression from having two close midterm elections not turn out the way I’d hoped), so tacos sounded like a grand plan.

I parted with $6 for two tacos, and a told the guy to pick whatever was exciting or they still had a lot left over from the day.

While I was waitinng for my order, I saw a regular come by to order, and I overheard them warning him that with his peanut allergy he shouldn’t order the thai taco. I was impressed by that.

My order did include the thai taco and a cuban one.

I ate the cuban taco first, and I liked it so much that I stopped halfway through lest the thai one not be as good. The cuban one was similar to dinners I’ve made in the past – soft rice, several kinds of beans (at least small black beans and garbanzos, but there might have been another kind what with it being dark at midnight and all), a little bit of tomatoey goodness to cook in – but crunchy with small pieces of chips. Very tasty.

But the thai taco was even better. Fragrant fluffy rice was beside chicken cooked, not in the easy bought thai curry paste I expected, but in fresh seasonings with a mild hint of sweet and chili. And fresh herbs! There was at least a full sprig of crisp cilantro (still very fresh for it being midnight) and I suspect that if I’d dissected my taco there’d have been another herb there as well (a mild basil?).

So what were they doing there at midnight? I asked. Apparently, the colder weather had led to slow lunch sales, so they are going to try late night sales for a bit near bars closing for the night.

Setting the bar low

So I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been having trouble finding time to post lately. And by lately, I mean an embarrassingly long time.

Then I read this open letter to food bloggers.

And I thought, you know – this not posting probably has an upside. I could offer things, and everyone could win.

So comment on this post letting me know what you can’t/won’t eat or colors you like and hate or something quirky about yourself (and then I’ll drop you an email for a mailing address – don’t put that on the publicly viewable side unless you really do that regularly), and I shall send you something I’ve made. It might be food. It might be paper arts. It might be a rock. It might be some random tea from my cupboard. Who knows? But everybody wins.

That’s the plan at least. I’m guessing that even if I spread this around a bit, there still won’t be more that 20 things to make and send. I’ll definitely do the first 20. If there’s more response, I’ll do my best.

ETA (15 Dec 2010): All packages have been sent out, but feel free to still stop by and leave a comment.

Chickpeas with Browned Butter and Thai Basil

Even though it’s still a time of bountiful farmers’ markets, I’ve been shopping shopping from my pantry in an effort to save money.

Now I’ve always claimed that I could hold of a siege army for 2 months with careful use of my pantry, but even I am impressed with my food budget for this month:

personal food: $146.26
social food: $210.13

I’m defining personal food as groceries and dining out alone and personal food as dining with other people and groceries bought explicitly for food I share with other people.

That’s just extraordinary. We’ll see how well that holds out.

So, I cobbled together something delicious today – a co-worker had brought in massive quantities of thai basil from her garden and all the rest was from my pantry.

Chickpeas with browned butter and thai basil

So I’ve never made a browned butter sauce before, so I looked in my fridge and decided that the ghee was going to waste and was just like butter. So I scooped out some of that, melted it on medium heat, and waited for it to brown. Which it didn’t because the whole reason it’s clarified is so it’ll have a higher cooking temperature.

Right, so I tipped some of it out (I didn’t measure the ghee going in or coming out – it had been slightly more than the minimum to complete cover the bottom of a twelve inch skillet) and replaced that with 3 Tablespoons of butter. It started browning almost immediately and was a lovely sauce base in a minute or so.

I sprinkled in some asafoetida to fry, and then I also sprinkled in some galangal.

To this tasty brown butter I added 1 yellow onion, sliced radially to a medium thickness.

Once the onions had fried enough to be soft, I added chickpeas (drained from a can). I stirred them about and let them cook for about 5 minutes while I stripped the leaves from the basil plant, stacked them, and then sliced roughly through the stack about 4 times. I also grated the zest of one lemon with the leaves.

Once I figured the chickpeas were as soft and cooked as I wanted them, poured in 1 teaspoon of fish sauce (I happened to be using Phu Quoc fish sauce) to give it some saltiness. Just a few stirs, and then I tossed in the leaves and zest.

I’d been planning to also squeeze the lemon’s juice into the dish, but the zest made it lemony enough. So once the leaves had become bright and wilted, I splashed in about an eighth of a cup of apple cider vinegar. I let it cook just until it quit smelling so strongly of vinegar, and then I dished it up.