Lent is three weeks away

If you don't know from my earlier posted foray last year, I'm some sort of weirdo protestant who's been observing Lent for about 15 years. I won't get into the why's and the how's other than I think it's a good thing to challenge yourself to go without for forty days. Last year I kept to a strictly ovo-lacto vegetarian diet for the duration of Lent. That was pretty easy, and the hardest thing for me to do without was anchovies of all things.

This time, it'll be harder. I'm going fully vegan.

No meat, no dairy, no eggs, no honey, no derivative stuff like gelatin, none of that stuff. I wouldn't undertake it if I didn't think it was possible, but I admit it's going to be a wild ride. Those who've known me for years know I used to be the pickiest of eaters and could barely be bribed to eat veggies on my plate. What a difference a few years make.

Fortunately, my friend Dino has added his metaphorical axe to my quest, so I'm sure that if I ever get pushed against my own personal dinner rush without any ideas left, I've got a lifeline. I doubt it'll be down to that wire, but who can say.

Part of me is also interested in this because I'm keen on veganism not for any moral or ethical reason, but because I see it as a kissing cousin of sorts to kosher and halal cuisine, which is to say that it can be a cuisine that defines itself, diversifies itself, and creates its own world based on its limits. People hear vegan and they think vacu-formed tofu "meat" and garbage like that, and I'd like to make a lot of honest food that's vegan and tastes delicious without putting on pretense.

So for now, I'll be having an extended farewell to the flesh.


Because while my chana masala is vegan, that nice little slice of naan next to it ain't. Bummer!

Happy 2010, belated

Hey y'all.

Glad you're still reading my blog. As of now we're less than a week into 2010 so I hope y'all had some of this:



Followed at some point by some of this:


(and if y'all don't know about greens & the new year, you gotta eat 'em to make sure you bring in the $$$ this year. serious business in the south btw)

I hope everyone had a great new year and a great Christmas / Channukah / Kwanzaa / Eid, etc. My new year's resolution is to pick up the pace that I once maintained here, and to keep this place updated with fresh new articles. Even if I can't cook or snap a picture, I'll do my best.

So how's 2010 been so far? Here's a pictorial review.


This monster entered my kitchen. A fantastic gift from mom and dad, this is the steam driver to John Henry's hammer. I still like to hand-knead, but man this helps immensely when I'm too busy to bother. I hear I can do other things with it besides making bread (ie, grinding meat, making pasta, churning butter from heavy cream to name a few) but I haven't been bothered to do any of those things...yet.


Sometimes, with work and arranging furniture or whatever mad whim we're on, I'm just too tired to cook. Bless the KitchenAid for making the act of baking sandwich loaf a trivial issue. If you've got that, it's second nature to make a sandwich in about five minutes. Nevermind that I'm eating a decidedly non-kosher sandwich with a Jewish beer. I atoned for this...


...with bagels like a true mensch should.


We rang in the new year with a dinner of alligator gumbo, paired with a local Alabama pinot grigio. The pinot wasn't the best local wine I've had so far. For that, y'all better go to Morgan Creek. They love their muscadines.


And I tried my hand at chicken wings for the first time. Never been a fan of buffalo wings, so the sauce is inspired from South African cooking, using periperi chili, and a lot of lemon juice, butter, honey, ginger, and garlic.

Anyways, hope this is a sign of things to come. Looking forward to keeping y'all updated on all sorts.

Hanger steak and why you should eat it.

1. It owns. Texture, appearance, all of it. It's just awesome. It's got little texturey stripes running across it, with the occasional stripe of fat. While fairly lean, the fat comes out nicely in it, so you aren't eating amorphous blobs of blubber in between bites. The whole thing seems to look fairly like a meat xylophone. The unique way the grains cleave lends this thing extremely well to things like a good Italian steak and arugula salad, and even a carne asada taco. It cut cut cuts into nice little strips.

2. It's a sensible portion. This is very important. Y'all are probably eating way, way more meat than is recommended in a portion. This leads to over-eating, valuing quantity over quality, props up immoral factory farming agro-empires, and also leads to you being broke when you chuck down ten bucks for a single massive slab of over-fattened, corn-fed, and antibiotics-injected Barry Bonds cow. Make a fist. Hold it in front of your face. This is roughly the size of a serving of meat. Fortunately, hanger steaks come in these nice little strips, which weigh in much more respectably than a sixteen-ounce beef stonehenge.

3. It is cheap. Let me break it down for you. We last made some steak au poivre using a pair of hanger steaks, giving enough food for two folks easily. The cost for the steaks? Five bucks, altogether. For the quality of cut, you can't find better value out there, especially since there's an entire cabal of picky boring people out there who can only pronounce sirloin, ribeye, and t-bone.

4. It's a cut made popular as the one that butchers would reserve for themselves when they took a carcass apart. If you need any better indicator that it's a good cut, that's a winner.

5. It's diaphragm. Eeeeeeewwwww!!! Impress/amaze/disgust your friends. Serve fava beans and chianti and go FTHFTHFTHP. It's not offal, but it's a good bridge between organs and meat, and I'm always a fan of whatever gateway drug gets people into eating livers, chitlins, sweetbreads, etc. They're awesome and nutritious, and not only do they taste great but you have fun eating them. Think about watching animal planet, and seeing lions on the serengeti take down a zebra. You think the lions go for the sirloin first? Hell no, they zip open that belly and get whatever is squishy. Connect with your inner predator today, and you might find new things you enjoy.

So I hope I've helped to sell you on your next red meat purchasing decision.

Thanksgiving.

Yep, it's overdue. Badly. I realize this, and am genuinely sorry. I've been a bad blogger and will endeavor to keep up with the Joneses, so I'll start by recounting my very first Thanksgiving in My New Home.

It began and ended with a turkey, and why not? It's a thanksgiving story.

I started getting notions of turkey day grandeur when I found out that Grow Alabama was taking reservations for buying free range turkeys from them. Now, I'm at least some part vestigial country boy, and the sort of guy who appreciates what wild turkey has and what butterball does not. So when I had a shot at a decent turkey, I latched on. I told the wife, and the rest of the family. We eventually conspired to do the big grub at our new house. Fun!

Hol' up! I have to work on they day before Thanksgiving, and worst off, I work pretty late, getting off at 8:00. To make it more scary, due to other-family issues, we penciled in the meal for lunch. At 1:30 PM. Aaaagh. I had very little time to belt out a lot of food. Fortunately, we all chipped in and made different things. Mom made cornbread, my late-grandmother's famous ugly chocolate cake, green bean casserole, and brought a few little nibbles. My sister made my late grandmother's turkey dressing (hint yankee people, this is southern for stuffing) and a tasty southwestern corn dip thing.

That left me with just a few things. Pumpkin pie with a ginger snap crust & maple whipped cream, french baguettes, mustard greens, country potatoes*, and of course, the turkey, full of yankee stuffing*.

The asterisks denote parts of the process that I nearly drop-kicked my carpetbagging wife from my back deck. She insisted on mashed potatoes with the skins on. Now, in my vernacular, these are country potatoes, lumpy and crudely mashed taters with hunks of skin, and they suck. I was mad that I was making crappy potatoes. I made her crappy potatoes, only to find out that she was wanting something entirely different. She wanted milled, creamed, silky mashed potatoes that are all that is good and just in the free world, only with the skins incorporated into them. I still think it's goofy and that you should just go ahead and peel them, but it was a lot better after a clarification. After we sussed out our creative difference, the potatoes tasted wonderful.

Next came yankee stuffing. She insisted we had to make stuffing, yankee style. Every time I've had this, it's been hot garbage, dry and cakey with too much breadcrumbs and celery and too little anything else. I was mad at the world until she gave me her mom's recipe, which had a cornbread base. Okay, it's only slightly heathen-ey, but cornbread is good grub, so that's fine. It actually tasted good, so I'll admit I'm wrong on that.

This is a segueway from the main gist of the story. You see, I had a turkey to emergency thaw, and a bazillion other things to make, and on the day before thanksgiving, the only thing I'd already taken care of was the pumpkin pie. I proceeded to don my cook's coat, load myself with enough caffeine and alcohol to make Johnny Cash sweat in church, and essentially turned into Tom Berringer in Platoon. Remember, "the machine breaks down, we break down."

I may not have machine-gunned Vietnamese civilians in a rice farming village, but I did the culinary equivalent of a few war crimes, all the while becoming an avatar of pure piss and vinegar. I cat-napped long enough to get angry at the world, woke up, stuffed the shit outta that turkey, and got it in the pan with just enough time (I calculated like Dr. Strangelove) to get a proper roast & rest in before people were ready to eat. Snipped rosemary, because rosemary owns in poultry, and that went in the mix. While the bird cooked, I thawed pre-made baguette dough and began to proof for baking, then turned to the punishment task of trimming greens for the pot. This brings me to an important rule, and one I cannot stress enough. Profanity is the best seasoning for food. My wife disagrees but she does not understand. Food does not taste as good unless you goad it, yell at is, and say things you'll regret later to it. My late grandmother was a Picasso of the art, and my childhood is a rose tinted paradise of waking up to grandma's house, smelling of bacon and sage sausage, and filled with the sounds of "SHIT HELL FIRE DAMN SON OF A BITCH!!" Nobody believes me, but I swear it wouldn't have been as good if she was nice in the kitchen.

I practiced the inherited art, albeit not with such grace or power as she had. Somehow, despite all opportunities I had to fall into the weeds and totally screw the pooch, I actually got my portions done, just about as the rest of the family came over. I was exhausted, feeling a residual angry beer run's effects, and kind of sweaty, wearing a dirty cook's coat, but it was done.

And it was all worth it. I felt such unreal sense of pride and togetherness bringing my family together at our table. Even now, it boggles my mind that my wife and I were able to pull it off. She helped to clean up after my messy self, and kept her head on straight when I was prone to hyperbole and drama. It's one of those great firsts that we get to enjoy as a new family coming together, and even though we were a trio of couples, we were all one big family. Fitting for a day of thanks, because when we finally gathered around the table, I had a moment to come down from all of the hype and to appreciate everything. Appreciate what I was raised with, what I was given, and what I have now. With all the sleep deprivation, craziness, and chaos, it was absolutely, overwhelmingly worth it, and I can't wait to do it again.

Waterblommetjiebredie

I recently had some company over at my new house for a crazy nerd gathering. One of my friends has traveled damn-near across the globe, but she's originally from South Africa, and we often talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is South African food. I've dabbled in a few things in the past, like old favorites Bobotie as well as my favorite drunk food Bunny Chow. We collaborated on a few of her favorites like Periperi Chicken too. Prior to her visit, I had been browsing over a South African cookbook I bought a while back, and thinking of anything hard to find over here that I could ask for.

The first was Elephant Biltong, which not surprisingly, is near-impossible to get. I did get Springbok Biltong, which was awesome though. It's similar to venison jerky, but imagine a little clove, allspice, or garam masala on it. No real reason for this other than sating a round of post-drinking munchies.

The second thing on my list was Waterblommetjies.



I like typing the word, I like saying the word. Afrikaans is a hilariously awesome language. It translates into "water flower" which is a polite way of saying that it's something that long ago some Voorstrekker (ie, Ted Nugent or Jeremiah Johnson or Bill Brasky) spotted growing in a stagnant ditch full of water and decided it would taste delicious with his freshly-killed Springbok. All it would take would be a little stewing, and it just so happens that the word for stew in Afrikaans is bredie. Hence, waterblommetjiebredie.



Stuff you'll want:

• 2 1/2 pounds of roasting meat (ideally, lamb, mutton, or game, but I used beef short ribs to great effect too.
• 2 pounds waxy potatoes (ie, don't go makin no damn mashed potatoes son), diced
• 1 giganto onion (or, 2-3 smaller ones), diced
• About 2 pounds of waterblommetjies (you can get em on Amazon if you can't hop on the dakadak to Pretoria)
• 1 granny smith apple, peeled and grated
• 1/2 cup of white wine
• 1/2 cup of water
• 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
  
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tsp periperi (african bird's eye chili powder, again, Amazon) or cayenne pepper (at minimum you weenie. You want to add more, I know you do)
• 1 tsp black pepper

You'll want your dutch oven for this. Crank up the stovetop to about medium-high heat. While you're doing this, towel off your short ribs and rub them down with a bit of salt. Start to brown them on each side. All we want is the look and the smell really. They'll get cooked fully later.


Once each piece is browned all over, remove from heat.


In the juices left in the dutch oven, add your butter and then your onions & salt, and turn the heat down to low. Cover and sweat those for a good 20 minutes, then return your meat to the fray.



Add the water & wine. Put your lid on, preheat your oven to 350, slap it in there for 2 hours, and forget it exists till your time's up. Remove again to the stovetop. Your meat should be getting tender enough to come apart a bit, and you can shred it with your spatula or spoon as you go.



My picture of the stupid shredded apple survived, but not my picture of the waterblommetjies themselves. They look somewhere between swamp thing and a leopard, and smell like a wonderful cross between good olives and asparagus.


Thanks, Google image search! Mine looked pretty much like that, yeah!

Too bad I didn't get a snap, because after that, I tossed the apple, potato, and waterblommetjies into the melange.


To this hearty mash, I added my nutmeg, pepper, bay leaves, and periperi. I tasted it, and added more periperi still. When my particular heat affinity was reached, I simmered for another 30 minutes with the cover on, killed the heat, then tossed in my raw garlic at the end.


I topped the "stew" over another Afrikaner dish - funeral rice, which is basically a pot of rice fried into some butter, turmeric, cinnamon, onions, shredded carrot, and raisins.

What I love about South African food is that it's completely unsophisticated stuff that seems very familiar to any of us who have or had a grandmother who liked to cook. So much of it is old timey and homey, but it's also coupled with a few exotic flavors to remind you that you're eating something just a little different.

Skin

So, I've procrastinated this long enough. Time to roll up my sleeves and get back to blogging. Yes, I'm still in the long process of settling after the move. No, I'm not done yet. I'm having camera issues in the interim, so if I do get some snaps off, they will be of dubious quality, be warned. I just can't neglect this any more, and I love sharing the work I'm doing, even if I don't have pictures at hand.

My mom, dad, and sis came out to the house this weekend, which was a treat. I got to cook for everyone, and mom helped out as my sous-chef fry lady. We rocked out a never-ending stack of ruffle-cut kettle chips & fried okra fingers (with homemade remoulade, because I love making it). We also had a bit of black-eyed peas, which mom also helped with, and some trout I bought from Grow Alabama.

This is where the story is funny. See, I knew my trout was whole, and I figured it would be a snap to fillet it out. Well, not quite. I'm not at that level of awesome quite yet unfortunately. Instead of fillets though, I decided to stuff the trout with herbs, squash, and shallots and pouch steam them with some brown butter. There was just one catch - I underestimated my sister's aversion to icky fish skin! Now, if you don't like the stuff you can easily peel it away so that's not a problem. Still, it got me thinking.

We're living in a boneless, skinless dystopia, and in a world where people put bacon on all sorts of inappropriate dishes, how are people still hesitant about eating fish skin and chicken skin? It's connective tissue, salt, and fat. It comes together to not only form a deliciously crunchy layer on pan-seared and roasted dishes, but it also holds in moisture. People opt for skinless meat, realize they're often eating dry meat, and overcompensate with sauces and marinades. I would shrug it off if so many of them weren't looking down their nose at skin and the added fat in it, when their sauce is often loaded with the stuff.

This isn't in any way a slight to my sister. She thought what I thought the first time I was confronted by skin on a fish. (1) Ew gross and (2) How do I get it off. All I'm hoping for is that more people give skin a chance, and pack their bags to Flavor Country.

I'm still alive, take two

Hi guys, sorry it's been damn-near a month without any updates. Moving's complete and we're just in that never-ending task of unpacking and getting things just right. The good news is that I've got my dining room set put in and I'll be expecting my pots and pans rack soon.

I've been very busy with other things too. Having a lot of company over to enjoy Dragon Con, plus hosting a lot of hungry nerds at my new abode. Everybody seemed to love tacos de lengua and hommous. Today, a friend of mine from Hawaii but originally South Africa will be schooling me on Afrikaner cuisine. If you read my blog at all, you know that this is going to be awesome. Expect Peri Peri chicken, Waterblommejiebredie, Bunny Chow, and other things shortly.

Bye for now!

I'm still alive

...just moving, is all. We closed on our house yesterday and this weekend is a mad and exhaustive dash toward getting things into and eventually out of boxes. I'm going to be a little beside myself for a while so bear with me.

I promise to resume your regularly scheduled programming (and with a bigger, nicer, gas-powered kitchen) in the very near future!

Mandolines are the bees knees. Also, red bells!

I really don't have much going on right now, and I'm pretty hand-to-mouth with my cooking while we prepare to close on our house. I've had to divide my kitchen into sections that I can pack away and things that I will subsist on until we pack everything else.

That's beside the point though. I want to talk about my mandoline, and why it rules. I have about five hundred pounds of squash thanks to the CSA, my wife's friends, my grandpa, and anybody else who's given me very tasty and seasonal squash. I'm sort of at a loss on what to make with all of this great squash, and then I remembered I had a mandoline, so I set out to make gratin out of a few squashes.

For those who don't know, a mandoline is an inclined plane with a super sharp guillotine blade on it. You vary the thickness between one side of the plane and the blade side by fractions of an inch to get very thin slices of food very very very fast by just sliding your food item along the plane back and forth. I wasn't quite prepared for how awesome it was at slicing the hell out of squash, and I think I blacked out during the process because when I came to I was less three goose-neck squashes and there was a huge mound of potato chip thickness squash slices. Oops!

Of course, I used up every bit of it to make a gratin with asiago cheese, rosemary, and breadcrumbs. Tasted so nice I made it twice, even.


Now, what's that scorchy-lookin red bell pepper doing in this picture? Glad you asked (if you did!) Remember way back when I planted peppers? Well, my red bells matured last week, and I finally got to trim 'em and use 'em. I was excited because in my opinion its my first real bit of produce that I've grown. I don't really consider the hot peppers and herbs as the same because they're more of flavor additives. A big juicy sweet red bell is it's own zip code of importance. I wanted to have fun with it.

I made a risotto, using grease from cooking lardons to soften the onion. To that I added rosemary & mozzarella, then returned the lardons to the dish to stir. I carefully cut the tops off the peppers, de-seeded them and removed the inner ribbing, then filled them to the top with risotto. Put each pepper in a ramekin, and into a 500 degree oven for 12 minutes to get this:



The sweet bell was fantastic against both the pork and the rosemary. It was softer in parts and firmer in parts, but still all fork tender and I'd honestly put that against any bell I've bought at the store in terms of how potent the flavor was. It was very serious business.

I just wish I had more bell peppers now. I'll have to plant more later.

Rosemary baked chicken, and I didn't make it.

So we decided to have a late dinner the other day of roasted chicken with rosemary and some beans with lardons and herbs. I handled the beans, and my wife took care of the chicken. She cleaned it, she stuffed it, she baked, basted, the works. I gotta say, after roasting a few birds of my own, she's a better touch at it. It was tasty beyond words. The breast meat was still tender and moist, the skin was perfectly crackly, and rich fragrant rosemary and aromatics just filled every bite. So just as a word of warning, the next poultry served up as a roast is probably not my handiwork!


She also made peanut butter cookies this weekend but, alas, that is another tale to be told!