What's cooking? part 4

she introduced me to my go-to cake, http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/11/upside-down-cranberry-cake/
and also to pickled vegetables, http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/09/the-great-souse/

PS y'all Bittman's iPhone-optimized How To Cook Everything is searchable, has built-in timers, does grocery lists, and seems to have ALL of the content of the book. Also, only $4.99!! I love it.

I have the book, but that seems like an amazing deal. Thanks for the tip!

I made pesto for the first time! I have no idea why I hadn't before. I had some local fresh basil and garlic that I used and toasted the pine nuts on the stove. Used it on a cold pasta salad w/sun-dried tomato and shredded some baby spinach in with it.

You haven't bcz pine nuts are so expensive and so is acquiring enough basil if you don't have a huuuuuuge plant

I didn't look at the pine nut price last night! I got that, some walnuts, and a container of grated parmesan (lol lazy) and it was $8?

piece of fresh bluefish i had sitting around for 6 days and had frozen/unfrozen once, was convinced it was in the danger zone, but i broiled it with a little thyme and it was still v. good. #cookingrelief

aw yum bluefish sounds good. I had cod at the restaurant last night, it was really good - Mr Veg doesn't eat fish, so I only eat it when I go out or if I have sushi or soemthing for lunch.

yeah bluefish rocks, i should get it more

Yeah why ARE pine nuts so expensive? I once accidentally bought a really large bag (not realising I'd never need anywhere near that many, srsly it was like 300g bag) and it was something insane like $12!

Here's why: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-01/features/sc-food-0827-pinenuts-20100901_1_pine-nuts-climate-change-harvesting

Ah yes that makes sense. I love how one substitute suggestion is macadamia nuts, those are expensive as well!

As one of my father's "hey we are living in UTAH let's do crazy UTAH stuff" activities, we drove a few days into the desert, shook a pinion tree to get the pine nuts out, gathered them in black plastic garbage bags, and drove them home.

Next came many experiments as to the best way to extract them from their shells.

Running over them with dad's blue amc gremlin won the day.

omg i just got off work feeling more ravenous than i have in recent memory. hands literally shaking with hunger (my metabolism is kind of a thing). got home walked in the door and my gf had made soooo much paella.

it was a religious moment.

i bet u were all "pah-YAY-UH!!!!"

I wish for the day I come home from work, and someone has made dinner. It has, basically, never happened to me :(

Maybe, like once or twice. EVER.

FML.

Was thinking of having broccoli tonight...

i found this very similar thing to shakshouka but didn't try it http://english.turkishcookbook.com/2012/06/tomato-with-eggs.html

- firing up the grill today for the houseguest
- lamb chops, half just w/ black pepper and salt, the other half with cumin and cumin seeds
-burgers from scratch, gonna put in feta cheese, soy/worcestershire, maybe some horseradish?
- grilled corn

speaking of, grilling hte corn in the husk - soak or not to soak beforehand?

I want my lamb chops to look like this http://i.imgur.com/1neYi.jpg

xpost - we always soak our corn

good lookin out I soaked the corn

what should i do with eight very ripe mangoes?

advice on corn: the sugar from corn turns to starch immediately when it is removed from the stalk. ideally, there should be no more than 4-6 hours between harvesting and consuming the corn. anything that increases that time leads to diminished flavor; grilling husk-off helps to caramelize the sugar that remains in the kernels for a sweeter (and 'fresher') taste. soaking unhusked corn in sweet brine may help to replace some of the sugars: the salt will carry the sugar through the pericarp to the endosperm, and replace some of the turned starch due to some magical chemical osmosis. emphasis on 'may.'

(sincerely, remy bean, grandson of roadside corn farmers and agricultural engineers)

I have a really deep revulsion at the sound of corn being shucked, and that's been the shitty thing about living on my own. I bought a few yummy ears forgetting I could never peel them open.

remy, is it true that each individual strand of corn silk leads to its own little kernel life pod?

I found a nyt article from 1999 that said people in the south soak their corn in brine before grilling. now I know why!

as i understand it: yes, but they've got to be pollinated. my grandpa used to tell me that if you ate a lot of corn silk accidentally it would make you, and I'm quoting here, "pee like a demon." i assume that means "pee a lot" because that's the only thing that makes sense. it's possible he could have meant that eating corn silk makes your pee boil or turn blood-red or flow against gravity, but WebMD just says it's a mild diuretic, so I guess my first guess is correct.

my mom boils corn silk in water and drinks the corn silk water, says it lowers her blood pressure. she has a blood pressure machine and takes prescription blood pressure medicine so I believe her.

i think that's pretty common in asia? it can't hurt, and it probably tastes pretty good.

idk, my grandpa had minor health issues (some notional) and did every old wives' tale possible to treat them. the fact that she has prescription blood pressure medicine makes me think that, yeah, something in her life is definitely lowering her blood pressure so drinking that must not ~raise it~

well she doesn't drink it every day, so presumably on the days she does drink it it must make her blood pressure lower as measured

afaict there have been no studies done either way on it either

~shrug~

Abbott just play like KMFDM or something loud like that and shuck them to the beat so you don't notice

Also I'm picturing your version of hell as a giant foam party where they shuck corn over the PA instead of djing

ha just add tickling and that's my personal Room 101

And republicans

naw I can deal with Repubs

Cooking: I've added another staple to my "don't heat the house up" summertime menu, which is chorizo and eggs. I love how sweet the eggs seem next to the chorizo. It's very, very cheap to make, too. One dozen eggs and one tube of chorizo and one little bag of corn tortillas is like $5 and I can get six meals out of that. Plus all I really want my food to be lately is a hot sauce delivery device.

Do you just scramble 12 eggs at once? Or do you hard boil them?

Or do you just cook the chorizo and eggs together??

Squeeze out 2 oz of chorizo, fry it up in a pan until it's all loose and a little crispy, drain off some of the fat, pour in two beaten eggs, stir it together, cook until the eggs are set but still moist. NB it is not a beautiful food but I cover it in Tapatio so I can't really tell. Eat w/warm tortillas!

^^^that is enough for one hungry person

oh I also add salt & pepper to the beaten eggs
you can also cook up some diced onion with it but I'm too lazy and I don't like recipes that only use part of an onion, which I know is silly

Omg want/need

sup

Chorizo + eggs is so good, adding avocado is pretty nice as well. I'm a Cholula man, personally.

In the last week I've suddenly felt sort of invigorated by cooking again, which is nice as over the last dozen plus years it often just becomes something that I have to do every day and don't think about too much. Maybe it's because the farmer's market is starting to really kick in.

Things I've made in the past seven days:

- butterflied leg of lamb, spread with yogurt/garlic/ginger/Indian spices and roasted on the grill, with mint and tamarind chutneys, chickpea and potato chaat, and the Cook's Illustrated naan recipe from a couple months ago that is A+

- chicken wings cooked super crispy and tossed in sriracha / lime / garlic / fish sauce / cilantro, with a thin sliced cabbage salad with peanuts / mint / garlic / lime / chile and sticky rice

- sauteed cod over roast fingerling potatoes and asparagus with some lemon basil puree

- white bean, parsley, and tuna salad (using really good canned tuna in oil) with garlic and lemon, along with roasted kale

- seared tuna, cut in cubes with avocado, tossed with indonesian soy sauce, sriracha, green onion, cilantro, and lime, eaten with the terribly greasy and awesome local tortilla chips

- beef chuck cooked in frozen leftover mole from sometime last winter, with refried black beans, avocado, tortillas, and arugula salad

I could probably go the rest of my life eating just stuff based on Indian, Mexican, Vietnamese, and Italian food.

that all sounds delish!

In the last week I've suddenly felt sort of invigorated by cooking again

i'm the feeling the total opposite of this. the heat makes my day job 10x more exhausting, my commute has lengthened and become more exhausting in the last month, and i'm so fucking tired when i get home, i can't stand the thought of cooking.

i think i'm getting closer and closer to purchasing a big freezer, so i can have a good backstock of home-cooked meals and not feel bad about refusing to cook for a week (or two).

My job hours get easier in the summer and the farmer's markets make it easier to make simple things which is helping to make cooking feel more fun lately.

And a big freezer is a great thing - not just for ready made meals or leftovers, but for giving you lots of room to keep stuff like cooked legumes, complicated sauces, caramelized onions, stock, and other shortcuts around.

I *have* a decent sized freezer now (one of those upside down fridge dealies) and I never think to precook things like just lentils, or rice, or sauces and then freeze them, let alone full meals. I'm always making all my meals from scratch every night and wondering why I never get anything else done and the kitchen is always chaos and I'm tired.

– just made my first batch of yogurt by placing 180° F milk and live yogurt cultures outside in a saran-wrapped glass bowl for eight hours. came out really, really tasty but thin - like kefir. I'm going to use this batch as starter for another batch tomorrow, and stir in a little agar agar to thicken when I bring it in from the heat.

– awesome smoothie today: half cup of my homemade yogurt, one mango pureed, couple of inches of microplaned ginger, a scoop of protein powder, and a little tap water.

- speaking of which, I just made ginger ale: dechlorinated water, yeast, cup of caster sugar, juice of one lemon, two tablespoons fresh grated ginger. lots of fizz so far. anybody have any luck at this?

The yogurt recipes I've seen say to bring the milk up to 180, but then cool it back down to, uh, 115 or so? before adding the cultures.