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Tag: egg

Food shopping! – SK’s pasta & cauliflower, Ghobi Bharta,

I bought and made so much food this weekend.

First, there was the farmers’ market out by my parents’, which I had to go to because I’d bought very promising looking butter there last weekend, but found it had gone off, when I tried it as soon as I got home. So I took it back in hopes of swapping for fresher butter, but they hadn’t made any this past week – so I swapped for two butternut squash, instead. And I bought a 4 pound sweet roasting squash on impulse.

And then I bought stuff for the Roman cooking workshop. And some broccoli rabe that looked gorgeous. And what’s a couple (or 7) beets for a buck?

So then I met up with my parents so we could try breakfast at an “authentic British pub”. And, yes, they had sourced the right kind of bacon and there was both black and white pudding. And beans from a can. But the eggs were standard tasteless American eggs and there was no grilled tomato… and the tea was only halfway in between the two countries’. I may sound a little down on it, but that’s less because of the quality of the food and more because the entire breakfast run had only one waitress, so the food wasn’t quite as hot as it could have been.

And then my parents wanted to go to a large, indoor farmers’ market. And there was a gorgeous, large, pristine, beautiful head of cauliflower. Locally picked. And some huge white mushrooms picked locally the day before. And we split 3 dozen eggs (I only took one of them) from happy, pasture raised chickens (with flavor!).

And then… just to tempt me further, they wanted to stop and show me their new fancy supermarket, which was very much like a small, off-brand whole foods. I bought an environment-friendly dish soap so that I can finally declare the Dr. Bronner’s experiment a failure. And then I binged on comforting grains – two kinds of oatmeal and some barley. Also, for you doubters of the corporate benefits of social media – I totally impulse bought an unnecessary jar of salsa because I enjoy following the guy’s twitter feed.

Then I went home.

I had completely run out of frozen leftovers for lunch, so last week I had made some desperate bulk quantities of dinner food:

  • leftover pasta salad suddenly turned into dinners
  • mexican-ish rice with chicken and beans
  • macaroni with (homemade) pesto, chicken, and zucchini

You don’t want recipes for those, do you?

This week – There was the Roman Cooking workshop.

We made a pork loin roast boiled in salt water and bay leaves (now I’ve heard of brining, but there was no mention of roasting this meat or any cooking method other than boiling. So I left it in until it started to shred, but I pulled it out then because it was already quite salty. It makes an okay sandwich with mayonnaise (almost tasting like canned chicken). But this morning I started a pot of red beans on the stove, and I used the pork with no additional salt for the beans.

And then we make the barley stew with pork – it turned out almost like risotto, and despite only having two people come to the workshop, there were no leftovers. I might need to make it again soon.

The mushrooms were very tasty (as almost always) and made a great companion to the barley.

Because it wasn’t entirely clear whether the cabbage was to be made with fresh cilantro or dried coriander seeds, I did each half differently – there was a preference for the coriander, but neither one was really exciting, and I do have a lot of leftovers for those. I’ll need to think of a way to repurpose it into something that will freeze.

The fried carrots in wine and fish sauce smelled like ass – fishy ass – while cooking, but ended up tasty enough that I didn’t get to try the finish product.

And then I was pretty much done, especially with only having two people over. SO I handed over the book, and let them select the last recipe. And sweet egg cakes were chosen. Well, it was 4 eggs to 1/2 a pint of milk (with an ounce of oil) to be cooked in a shallow pan (I don’t have the recipe in front of me for the specifics, but it was distinctly not supposed to be custard because that was the recipe above). Because the mixture was so thin and I happened to have a brand new nonstick skillet, I suggested that we could pour many thin layers and treat them as crepes. While not a single one was removed as a flat sheet, we kind of had to bundle it together into a central pile to move it successfully. Oh, and then it’s dressed with honey and black pepper before serving – and it is some tasty! Well chosen!

And then after they left on Sunday, I made two more dinners that I could pack up for lunches:

  • Smitten Kitchen’s pasta with Cauliflower, walnuts, and feta – for which I did substitute regular pasta for whole wheat because I have boxes sitting around that I’m using up before I buy more pasta – and I’m not 100% sure that either the walnuts or the feta will take well to freezing, but the recipe was too tempting to pass up. I did taste a small portion that was didn’t fit evenly into the containers, and it was amazing fresh. I’d almost forgotten the few drops of lemon juice and vinegar (apple cider), but they really brought the flavors together.

    ETA: when she says this reheats well as leftovers, she wasn’t kidding. I was seriously dubious about freezing this one on account of both the nuts and the feta – but thawing it before microwaving has produced consistently tasty leftovers

  • gobhi bharta – inspired by the recipe in my favorite Indian cookbook, but then I took a left turn with the seasonings when I saw an opportunity to use up more of my mother’s extraneous Penzey’s spice mixes – so I used Rogan Josh seasoning with sumac instead or pomegranate powder to tartness and some extra hot pepper. The recipe also called for mustard seeds, so I toasted them in a little bit of my mustard oil I keep meaning to experiment with more. For all of that, it still wasn’t particularly strongly flavored, and it might have been a mistake to put up with rice, but I’d started making it when I started cooking, and I didn’t want to have to think up another use for it.

And then this morning I made one more: pasta with stuff

First, I cooked down a diced purple onion, 2 large mushrooms having been diced, and a bunch of (homemade) turkey meatballs I have in my freezer. Once everything was softer and the meatballs were browner, I splashed some sweet red wine in the pan.

As soon as the pan was dry again, I added 2 small-medium zucchini and some cauliflower (all diced small). Cook cook cook. As soon as it started to soften, I poured in 1/3 cup pasta sauce from a jar. Stir, cook, cook. And then I added macaroni (the pasta box in front, not my first choice of shape) and another 1/3 cup of sauce. And then I took it up into containers. Would be good with cheese.

Oh, and I also did laundry this morning.

And then I pondered whether I wanted to make another set of lunches or whether I wanted to start turning over dirt for restructuring the flower bed out back. And I decided to take a nap, instead.

Now I want soup, and tea, and hot chocolate. And another nap.

I think I’m going to use the remaining stock to make risotto to use up all the surplus mushrooms, so I need to also put on more stock so I can make soup with some of these winter squashes.

I also need to make the brussel sprout and beef stir fry before the brussel sprouts go off.

And I need to figure out something to do with the beautiful broccoli rabe before it starts to taste like nail varnish remover, like the last few bunches I bought did because I didn’t use them right away.

Anyone want to come over for random dinners at 10pm this week?

OMG food!

I bought and made so much food this weekend.

First, there was the farmers’ market out by my parents’, which I had to go to because I’d bought very promising looking butter there last weekend, but found it had gone off, when I tried it as soon as I got home. So I took it back in hopes of swapping for fresher butter, but they hadn’t made any this past week – so I swapped for two butternut squash, instead. And I bought a 4 pound sweet roasting squash on impulse.

And then I bought stuff for the Roman cooking workshop. And some broccoli rabe that looked gorgeous. And what’s a couple (or 7) beets for a buck?

So then I met up with my parents so we could try breakfast at an “authentic British pub”. And, yes, they had sourced the right kind of bacon and there was both black and white pudding. And beans from a can. But the eggs were standard tasteless American eggs and there was no grilled tomato… and the tea was only halfway in between the two countries’. I may sound a little down on it, but that’s less because of the quality of the food and more because the entire breakfast run had only one waitress, so the food wasn’t quite as hot as it could have been.

And then my parents wanted to go to a large, indoor farmers’ market. And there was a gorgeous, large, pristine, beautiful head of cauliflower. Locally picked. And some huge white mushrooms picked locally the day before. And we split 3 dozen eggs (I only took one of them) from happy, pasture raised chickens (with flavor!).

And then… just to tempt me further, they wanted to stop and show me their new fancy supermarket, which was very much like a small, off-brand whole foods. I bought an environment-friendly dish soap so that I can finally declare the Dr. Bronner’s experiment a failure. And then I binged on comforting grains – two kinds of oatmeal and some barley. Also, for you doubters of the corporate benefits of social media – I totally impulse bought an unnecessary jar of salsa because I enjoy following the guy’s twitter feed.

Then I went home.

~*~

I had completely run out of frozen leftovers for lunch, so last week I had made some desperate bulk quantities of dinner food:

  • leftover pasta salad suddenly turned into dinners
  • mexican-ish rice with chicken and beans
  • macaroni with (homemade) pesto, chicken, and zucchini

You don’t want recipes for those, do you?

This week – There was the Roman Cooking workshop.

We made a pork loin roast boiled in salt water and bay leaves (now I’ve heard of brining, but there was no mention of roasting this meat or any cooking method other than boiling. So I left it in until it started to shred, but I pulled it out then because it was already quite salty. It makes an okay sandwich with mayonnaise (almost tasting like canned chicken). But this morning I started a pot of red beans on the stove, and I used the pork with no additional salt for the beans.

And then we make the barley stew with pork – it turned out almost like risotto, and despite only having two people come to the workshop, there were no leftovers. I might need to make it again soon.

The mushrooms were very tasty (as almost always) and made a great companion to the barley.

Because it wasn’t entirely clear whether the cabbage was to be made with fresh cilantro or dried coriander seeds, I did each half differently – there was a preference for the coriander, but neither one was really exciting, and I do have a lot of leftovers for those. I’ll need to think of a way to repurpose it into something that will freeze.

The fried carrots in wine and fish sauce smelled like ass – fishy ass – while cooking, but ended up tasty enough that I didn’t get to try the finish product.

And then I was pretty much done, especially with only having two people over. SO I handed over the book, and let them select the last recipe. And sweet egg cakes were chosen. Well, it was 4 eggs to 1/2 a pint of milk (with an ounce of oil) to be cooked in a shallow pan (I don’t have the recipe in front of me for the specifics, but it was distinctly not supposed to be custard because that was the recipe above). Because the mixture was so thin and I happened to have a brand new nonstick skillet, I suggested that we could pour many thin layers and treat them as crepes. While not a single one was removed as a flat sheet, we kind of had to bundle it together into a central pile to move it successfully. Oh, and then it’s dressed with honey and black pepper before serving – and it is some tasty! Well chosen!

~*~

And then after they left on Sunday, I made two more dinners that I could pack up for lunches:

  • >Smitten Kitchen’s pasta with Cauliflower, walnuts, and feta – for which I did substitute regular pasta for whole wheat because I have boxes sitting around that I’m using up before I buy more pasta – and I’m not 100% sure that either the walnuts or the feta will take well to freezing, but the recipe was too tempting to pass up. I did taste a small portion that was didn’t fit evenly into the containers, and it was amazing fresh. I’d almost forgotten the few drops of lemon juice and vinegar (apple cider), but they really brought the flavors together.
  • gobhi bharta – inspired by the recipe in my favorite Indian cookbook, but then I took a left turn with the seasonings when I saw an opportunity to use up more of my mother’s extraneous Penzey’s spice mixes – so I used Rogan Josh seasoning, with sumac instead or pomegranate powder for tartness, and some extra hot pepper. The recipe also called for mustard seeds, so I toasted them in a little bit of my mustard oil I keep meaning to experiment with more. For all of that, it still wasn’t particularly strongly flavored, and it might have been a mistake to put up with rice, but I’d started making it when I started cooking, and I didn’t want to have to think up another use for it.

And then this morning I made one more: pasta with stuff

First, I cooked down a diced purple onion, 2 large mushrooms having been diced, and a bunch of (homemade) turkey meatballs I have in my freezer. Once everything was softer and the meatballs were browner, I splashed some sweet red wine in the pan.

As soon as the pan was dry again, I added 2 small-medium zucchini and some cauliflower (all diced small). Cook cook cook. As soon as it started to soften, I poured in 1/3 cup pasta sauce from a jar. Stir, cook, cook. And then I added macaroni (the pasta box in front, not my first choice of shape) and another 1/3 cup of sauce. And then I took it up into containers. Would be good with cheese.

Oh, and I also did laundry this morning.

And then I pondered whether I wanted to make another set of lunches or whether I wanted to start turning over dirt for restructuring the flower bed out back. And I decided to take a nap, instead.

Now I want soup, and tea, and hot chocolate. And another nap.

I think I’m going to use the remaining stock to make risotto to use up all the surplus mushrooms, so I need to also put on more stock so I can make soup with some of these winter squashes.

I also need to make the brussel sprout and beef stir fry before the bussel sprouts go off.

And I need to figure out something to do with the beautiful broccoli rabe before it starts to taste like nail varnish remover, like the last few bunches I bought did because I didn’t use them right away.

Anyone want to come over for random dinners at 10pm this week?

Brainstorming – roman cooking recipes

Okay, so here’s a tentative list of dishes I could make for the Roman Cooking Workshop I’m hosting on October 25.

All recipes are from the Flower and Rosenbaum translation of Apicius.

liber VIII Tetrapus; I in apro; 2 aliter in apro
Boar, another method

boil the boar in sea-water* with sprigs of laurel until it is tender. Take off the skin. Serve with salt, mustard, and vinegar.

*Cato (De Agricultura, 106) gives
directions for the treatment of sea-water: “Take 6 gallons of sea-water from the deep sea, where no fresh-water comes in. Pound 1.5 lb of salt, put it in, and stir with a stick until a boiled hen’s egg will float on it, then stop mixing. Add 12 pints old wine,

So I’ve made carnitas, but I’ve never brined a pork roast. I have had great success with using pork loins in carnitas even though they have less fat than the recommended recipe. But, if I’m going to cook off most of the water for maximum flavor and shred-ability, I probably want to cut back on the salt and just make a mild saline solution to put the bay leaves in. Since I already have a pork loin in my freezer, this recipe will definitely be made.

liber VII Polyteles; xv fungi farnei vel boleti; 6 boletos aliter
Mushrooms, another method

Chop the stalks, place in a new shallow pan, having added pepper, lovage, and a little honey. Blend with liquamen, add a little oil. [Cook.]

For those just turning in, liquamen is a salty fermented fish sauce.

I’d need to buy mushrooms, and since I have nothing planned for the caps, we might as well make this out of whole mushrooms.

liber IV Pandecter; iii minutal de piscibus vel isiis; 6. minutal ex praecoques
fricasse with apricots

Put in the saucepan oil, liquamen, wine, chop in dry shallot, add diced shoulder of pork cooked previously. When all this is cooked pound pepper, cumin, dried mint, and dill, moisten with honey, liquamen, passum, a little vinegar, and some of the cooking-liquor; mix well. Add the stoned apricots. Bring to the boil, and let it boil until done. Crumble pastry to bind. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.

I’d use dried apricots, but all of the wet cooking should do well by them. And I just happen to have diced shoulder of pork cooked previously already sitting in my freezer. I’ll have to see if there is any mint left growing. I do not think I have dill.

liber IV Pandecter; ii patinae piscium holerum pomorum; 37. patina de cydoneis
patina of quinces

stew quinces with leeks in honey, liquamen, oil, and defrutum and serve; or boil with [just a little water and then very slowly in] honey.

If I can find quinces at the farmers’ market this weekend, I am totally trying this.

liber IV Pandecter; ii patinae piscium holerum pomorum; 2. aliter patina versatilis
translated as turnover. *sceptical face*

toast pine kernels and chopped nuts, pound with honey, pepper, liquamen, milk, and eggs. [cook in] a little oil

I have a lot of pine nuts in my freezer. And I have pecans and almonds (and maybe some walnuts). I’d have to buy milk.

liber III Cepuros; XXI Caroetae seu Pastinacae; 1. Caroetae frectae and 2. Aliter caroetas
Fried carrots and Another method

fried carrots – serve with a mixture of wine and liquamen
another method – [serve raw?] with salt, pure oil, and vinegar

I’d need to buy fresh carrots, and since none of the recipes in the section mentioned pasnips specifically, I could probably use a mixture of the two for the cooked one. For the second one, I’m thinking of shredding the raw carrots.

liber III Cepuros; ix cymas et cauliculos; 2. aliter
Another method

Boil and halve the cabbages, mince the tender parts of the leaves with coriander, onion, cumin, pepper, passum or caroenum, and a little oil

Since you are boiling it whole, I’m thinking more like blanching would be best.

Roman Cooking – Meatballs, Kale with Poached Eggs

*note: this entry was never finished, but it has some fun recipes nonetheless, so here’s the partial thing*

So last weekend I had people over for a workshop on Roman Cooking. Here are the recipes we got through (translations from the Flower & Rosenbaum translation of Apicius:

Meatballs?

Isicia Omentata
liber II (Sarcoptes), i (isicia), 7

pulpam concisam teres cum medulla siligine * in vino infusi. piper, liquamen, si velis, et bacam myrtae extenteratum simul conteres. pusilla isicia formabis, intus nucleis et pipere positis. involuta omento subassabis com caroeno.

Forcemeat Sausages
II (The Meat-Mincer), i (forcemeat), 7

Chop up meat and pound with white bread without crust which has been steeped in wine. At the same time pound pepper, liquamen, and, if you like, seeded myrtle-berry. Make little forcemeat balls, inserting pine kernels and pepper-corns. Wrap in sausage-skin and cook gently in caroenum.

Right – so that sounds nothing like meatballs at all, does it? Well originally this was just a step to create the isicia that a whole other recipe called for – only we got distracted by the yumminess and ate all the meatballs plain – so I figured there had to be a meatball recipe somewhere in the book, and this was the closest I found.

When researching this recipe on the internet (hee!), I even found one guy who uses this recipe to make hamburgers. So those sausage casings the recipe is named after? Let’s forget about those. And I didn’t stick peppercorns into the center because if they were in another dish, I thought it might be too much of a texture surprise than if they were standing alone.

Right, so, what did we do?

I put on some wine to reduce by 1/3 = caroenum. And I dunked 3 or 4 slices of bread (crust cut off) into the wine and then squoze them out. The squishy bread was mushed in with roughly 2 pounds of 80%lean ground beef. We pounded (with a mortar and pestle because why not go all out?) some pepper and some dried elderberries (because I didn’t have myrtle and it seemed no fun to just do pepper), and then we added some fish sauce to turn it into a paste. Added that to the meat/bread mixture. And then we made teensy tiny meatballs (1/2″ diameter) and tucked a pine nut into each one.

I preheated the oven to 350F, put the tray of meatballs in the oven, and then poured in just barely enough of the reduced wine to mostly cover the bottom of the tray. Roughly 15 minutes (untimed) later, we had some of the tastiest meatballs ever.

~*~

And then I alternated with a vegetable – Kale with poached eggs

Patinam ex rusticis, sive tamnis sive sinapi viridi sive cucumbere sive cauliculis
Liber IV (pandecter), ii (patinae piscium holerum pomorum), 7

item facies: si volueris, substernes pulpas piscium vel pullorum.

** #6 – Aliter patina de asparagis: adicies in mortario asparagorum praecisuras, quae proiciuntur, teres, suffundes vinum, colas. teres piper, ligusticum, coriandrum viride, satureiam, cepam vinum, liquamen et oleum. sucum transferes in patellam perunctam, et, si volueris, ova dissolves ad ignem, ut obliget. piper minutum asperges .

Patina of wild herbs, black byrony, mustard plant, cucumber, or cabbage
book IV (many ingredients), ii (patinae of fish, green vegetables, and fruit), 7

Prepare in the same way, and if you wish add fish fillets or chicken meat. (So this book and another agree that this recipe should come after the Patella with horse-parsley, but I saw no reason why the recipe directly above it wouldn’t work as well. So here’s the recipe above, too)

#6 – Asparagus patina, another method: Put in the mortar asparagus tips, pound, add wine, pass through the sieve. Pound pepper, lovage, fresh coriander, savory, onion, wine, liquamen, and oil. Put puree and spices into a greased shallow pan, and if you wish break eggs over it when it is on the fire, so that the mixture sets. Sprinkle finely ground pepper over it and serve.

So here’s what we did –

Since it seemed a drying shame to use dried onions, I diced the onion first and put it in the skillet with 2 teaspoons of olive oil.

When they were just starting to caramelize, I added 3-4 big leaves worth of kale, cut thinly in a chiffionade (cause I wasn’t turning it into a paste, that’s for sure).

After a few seconds, I splashed a decent quantity (1/4 cup?) of fish sauce into the pan and let it cook down.

When the kale was bright green and a little relaxed but still perky, I added the pounded spice paste (pepper, dried lovage, cilantro, and powdered savory, mixed into a paste with wine), gave it a quick stir to distribute everything, and cracked three eggs over the top. I turned the heat down a bit and covered the pan to let the eggs poach.

When the egg whites were solid and the yolks were pinking up, but still a little runny, I finagled it all onto a plate mostly together and still looking pretty. I topped with a grind of pepper and a sprinkle of salt. Om nom nom!

(Here is someone else’s reconstruction of the asparagus one)
~*~

back to meat – I set up for a beef roast

Poached Egg over Tomato and Spinach, Salad with Za’tar salad dressing

I made an amazing breakfast.

The initial plan was to cook down some spinach and tomato and then scramble an egg in it – pretty standard.

And it started out simple enough with about as much fresh spinach by volume as the tomato (so there ended up being a lot more tomato once everything cooked down).

But this was a big, luscious tomato from my mother’s garden, so it released a lot of liquid. So I poured off some of the liquid (into a jar to keep since I could put it in rice or soup or something – and it’d be wasteful otherwise – and don’t judge me because just wait until the depression or the apocalypse hits because then you’ll all want me to be managing your foodstuffs so you won’t get scurvy), and then I poured off some more. And then I realized that it was just willing to cook down into sauce.

I added a bit of 5 spice powder for fun.

So instead of scrambling the egg, I just cracked it in and gave it a lot of channels into the goody and poached it right there, covering the pan occasionally so that the top would steam cook, too.

And I ground some pepper and sprinkled kosher salt on top.

And oh my, it was like pudding – tasty savoury egg, tomato, and spinach pudding. Only sexier.

I have enough spinach to try it again and see if the results are repeatable.

~*~

And there was a salad with za’tar

I went home last weekend, and I ended up cleaning out and organizing my mother’s space cabinet. A while back, she had purchased a tiny container of zatar from Penzey’s because it sounded unlike any of the other stuff in her cabinet (we’ve never cooked with sumac much). A few years later, it still hadn’t been used, and it wasn’t sounding like anything my father would enjoy, so it came home with me.

My initial plan was to soak it in lime juice and then taste it and build a salad dressing from there. Luckily, however, I looked it up online before I started, since apparently it has a sour taste that can replace lime/lemon/tamarind in recipes. So once I knew that was how it slotted in, it became easy and I’ll be able to use it regularly.

Cold bits
spring mix
spinach
sliced tomato
serrano pepper

Hot bits
roasted zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and bell pepper (rewarmed in the microwave)

Dressing
3/4 tsp za’tar
1/2 tsp crushed mustard
2 Tbsp white balsamic
2 tsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp red wine
3 small scallions, sliced