What's cooking? part 4

It's the "convenience" - the angle is that this place, unlike the supermarket, has ten different marinades for you to pick from. The whole gamut from lemon pepper to pepper and lemon. I'm so glad this sounds crazy to other people, because I couldn't believe it when I moved here five years ago, and the place is still in business. (They have a freezer the size of a coke machine where they sell buffalo ribeyes, duck, and occasionally whole rabbits - a weird afterthought, but the reason I've gone back.)

I'm also still adjusting to oxtail being expensive, because when I was learning to cook in New Orleans, it was one of the cheap cuts next to the chicken feet and pigs' ears. I ate a lot of oxtail as a grad student because it's what I could afford. Ditto skirt steak.

I'm not kidding, butchers here simply aren't butchers.

North MS is in pretty much the same boat, except for that one store in Tupelo (and, I'd like to think, somewhere in Oxford, which is gaining traction as a serious eater's destination).

xp -- the last time I saw skirt steak was at the Dekalb Farmers Market in Atlanta, at $9/lb I think. Crazy.

That is sheet madness. Skirt steak is SO BASIC and cheap!

Err, sheer. I'm typing while standing up, should be sorting laundry right now.

Oughta be! It's only - "only"! - $7/lb here, but is hard to find and almost entirely flavorless. Which is kind of a miracle of science for that particular cut. And although New Hampshire is generally more expensive than Louisiana or Indiana were, that's definitely not enough to account for this price difference.

Don't get me started on duck.

No, I'll start on duck, before going back to work. A couple years ago, maybe three or four years now but definitely after I'd lived here a year or two (so it's not simply a regional difference), the local price of duck doubled. I mean, it doubled all at once, because I was buying duck on a regular basis, and all of a sudden they were all $18-20 instead of $8-10. It never came back down.

I can only get whole frozen ducks here, except at Asian markets in Lowell's Little Cambodia - but the duck parts there are now always sold out, presumably because of everyone else getting frustrated by the cost of whole duck. The last time I bought a whole duck under $15, I had to eviscerate it myself.

"Butchers" here are "stores that buy already-cut-up pieces of meat and marinate them for you."

Heh, I'm in the UK, but this is exactly what my local butcher is. Luckily there are some very good traditional butchers in town, but in the suburbs a butcher is basically a place with 6 kinds of sausage, 6 kinds of marinated chicken breast, and a counter full of pre-cooked pies and pre-packaged bacon.

They don't give the impression of having anything more unusual in the back room, but maybe I should try asking; maybe it's just that having large cuts of meat and headless carcasses hanging within sight of the windows is frowned on these days.

I don't know of any grocery-store butchers that get a whole side of meat or w/e, I think they all get parts and cut them down these days. But at least if they have a meat dept with actual staff, you can ask if they have any more skirt steak in the back or can they roll you up a boneless tied pork roast, around 6lbs' worth, and so on.

I'm more grossed out at the thought of someone else making marinades and marinating meat for me than I am at somebody else grinding my hamburger meat. I know what flavors I want and how long I want to marinate the meat, thankyouverymuch.

Curry doughnuts, based on something I ate 10 years ago in Japan. Not my best idea, but not my worst.

~shudder~

how long does miso keep for? i bought a container of it for one recipe, and it wasn't exactly cheap. as per almost every american food, there is no expiry date or suggestion as to how long it keeps once opened.

pretty much forever, since it's fermented i.e. pickled

I have a never-opened container of white miso back in the depths of the fridge, bought a couple of years ago...I figure it's ok.

i have an opened-several-months-ago miso pack in an airtight box in the fridge, and last month tried it tentatively, wondering the same thing: it tasted and looked totally fine, and i wasn't ill after.

oh that's great to know - i have recipe that calls for a second kind of miso, and was a bit dubious about spending the money, but if they keep forever...

hey, you guys recommend any recipe blogs?? i've been following a few - i gave up looking for specifically vegan recipes a while ago and haven't looked back - and my cooking has clearly improved. i feel way less stressed about food now!

I'm going through my freezer and figuring out what to eat in the next couple weeks and what to hang onto to cook for some friends who are visiting. Uni, goose, sweetbreads, squid, octopus (cooked), fava beans, cranberry beans, frog legs, huckleberries. All of it's so potentially interesting/great I feel guilty making it for just me, but Caitlin's out of town for a few weeks.

And I just had a no-seafood request, soooo dinner for me tonight or tomorrow is squid stuffed with chorizo or chaurice, slow-cooked in tomato sauce.

baller

For the miso thing, I had a container of bonito miso in my fridge for well over a year (and thats the one with the bonito ie fish flavour added!). The only reason I had to turf it is because the lid fell off and it dried up, but it was otherwise perfectly fine.

justine, i like reading cooklocal.com. it's good for ideas and features some beautiful produce.

thanking u! in turn, i will highly recommend 101 cookbooks

anyone got tips for delicious usages of battered chicken pieces? maybe a sauce? I have plenty left over that I made for last night's sweet&sour

* end-of-week kitchen sink quiche with potatoes, onion, spinach, fake chorizo
* cornbread
* roasted tons of garlic while the cornbread was cooking

* used oil from roasted garlic to make the world's most delicious salad dressing
* panzanella

Anyone ever made arepas?

I have!
What would you like to know about them?

- picked strawberries from my patch and had them for dessert with balsamic vinegar, a little black pepper, and softly whipped cream. Food you grew yourself always tastes great!

Well, what I would like to know is, just how tasty are arepas? Are they worth the effort? Is it a lot of effort? What is your favorite arepa filling? I have never eaten them but I am intrigued. I found Harina PAN for sale, too, at the Asian grocery of all places, so my mind is really thinking about them often.

Well, here's my experience. I have had delicious arepas and really bland ones. They're basically polenta cakes, so anything you would put with polenta, you could have with arepas. I like to top them with tomato-based simple vegetable stews, or some shredded chicken and vegetables, whatever. Alone, they're not that exciting because they're just cornmeal.

I have had the most delicious success adding salt, a little sugar, and a spoonful of Earth Balance to the masa when I add the hot water, then putting some cheese in the middle (any melting cheese will do -- smoked gouda if you're feeling fancy, chihuahua or mozz if you're not) and fashioning a little palm-sized pancake. Then I grill them on my cast iron stovetop grill pan. Make sure you use masarepa, not just any old flour. I like Venezolana, and I prefer the yellow to the white by a wide margin.

Pictures forthcoming...gimme a sec

With grilled veggies and a tomato sauce
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5282/5345077970_c53bcf5eb1.jpg

Not the best picture, but here's another vegetable stew (the one i make most often, super easy)
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4065/4364343914_2fa25b2c3e.jpg

Here's one with green beans and chicken (i think this was leftover chicken from something i made the night before)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/2685047731_936ec9248f.jpg

Also you do not need a grill pan -- any frying pan will do

This is inspiring! Thanks LL. WIll be picking up some yellow masarepa soon!

hey! what is your favorite pork tenderloin marinade?

on a slightly similar topic...i just made this: http://www.chow.com/recipes/29195-slow-cooked-carne-adovada

it's in the oven now, but like a guy in the comments section, i have massive trepidation it's going to be inedible due to spiciness. i followed recipe to the letter but when i tasted the sauce it blew my fucking head off...maybe cooking will make it milder but i doubt it.

watch this space for an exciting update...

That looks delicious. Lol at the spelling error in the title though. I see govierno a lot too.

hmmm maybe i could do that that with a less fiery chili (i have some dried guajillo that are reasonably mild)!

wow this looks yummy: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/grilled-pork-tenderloin-recipe/index.html

I have little packets of chile ancho and guajillo that I use all the time to dress up salsa verde from a jar, make salad dressing, and/or grilled fish/meats. It's very handy!

For a while I was making chile paste and it was really really delicious, but such a pain in the wazoo, and I had to wear protective gloves and goggles because I am clumsy.

Lol at the spelling error in the title though.

??

I've never seen adobo spelled with a v, but maybe it is in the southwest?

Yeah, carne adovada is a real thing out there -- in between the green chile cheeseburgers on my NM trip last fall, we were sampling the carne at various breakfast places in ABQ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobada

interesting -- adovada was the only spelling I saw out there

damn, I want to go to the Frontier for breakfast now.

this may be related to my experience in peru, where b/v substitutions were rampant. cebiche! sis said b is frequently subbed for v in dialects/regional spellings, usually by those from poorer/lower classes.

Yeah that's what I was referring to with govierno -- it's a spelling error I see ALL THE TIME tbh.

b/v are contrasting sounds in English, but not in Spanish. At least not in Latin America afaik.

It's actually this sound and not a bilabial stop (b) or a labiodental fricative (v)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilabial_approximant

what kind of dried chillis did you use in that recipe local garda? im guessing you couldnt find new mexico ones over here? or am i wrong

I saw it as adobada in NM!
Also in NM I lived down the street form someone who had a homemade sign in their driveway ending in thw rods "por fabor."

thw rods
the words
amazing

used indian ones...it turned out okay, i didn't use the liquid or sauce at all tho as it was like scorching, the meat itself was quite spicy. prob could have cooked it a little better, it wasn't as tender as you'd like, but i had it in for 2 and a half hours and was hungry! it took a lot longer than i intended to prep everything else. made a salsa to go with it, overall pretty nice but i'd love to know why the pic shows the sauce all over it. i think you would die if you ate that.

just made a curried lentil (w/coconut milk soup) and i think it's about the best soup i've ever made (i've made about a metric fuckton of soup in my life).
red lentils, mire poix and garlic, veg. stock, curry powder augmented w/ cayenne, freshly ground fenugreek and coriander, some "tomato product" and finished with coconut milk. cilantro garnish. gonna hafta give some away (grudgingly)