Food Blog:
Cook In.
Eat Out.
Miss Tenacity.
New Mexico.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Thursday, November 25
No Fish for You!
I am off for the weekend (and may or may not be posting from the road), but I will leave you with this great marquee from the last time I ate at the Range Cafe on Menaul.
Time posted: 07:13 [permalink]
Wednesday, November 24
Report back on the Soup Series
I made 3 soups a few nights ago. I tried the Zuke-apple one, and that was tasty. The cream of shiitake..... eh, passable. The shiitake flavor was too strong (duh!), so it might have been better to strain it 20 times or so in the Keller fashion, and then serve it as a 4 bite portion size. A regular serving of this is a bit too much. As is, C-.
But the mulligatawny.... although very different from the first time I made it, the flavor was a joy. Strong spice but not hot, and creamy texture from the pureed lentils. I give it B+.
Time posted: 13:58 [permalink]
Tuesday, November 23
Poor Poor Pitiful Colleagues
...to my cube-mates, I am deeply sorry. Today as you ate your lunch of Pop Tarts and Ramen noodles out of the vending machine from work, you were subjected to the odiferous cloud coming from my lunch: leftover crispy salmon and bacon-braised brussels sprouts.
I do not feel your pain. Eat some food that hasn't been sanitized for your protection, for god's sake.
Time posted: 14:13 [permalink]
Sunday, November 21
Puree Pastime
I hope I still like pureed soups when I'm old. It may be one of the only things I'm able to eat, so with luck I won't use up all my "puree karma" now when I'm young and have teeth.
Tonight (no photos, sorry!) I made a Mad Mulligatawny, a tiny batch of Zuke soup w/ apple, and a large batch of Shiitake Suprise. Yes, I'm making all of this up as I go.
See my previous exposition on mulligatawny for the gist of the thing. This time I omitted the regular potato, apple and carrot, and used sweet potato instead. Further, the amount of cloves was reduced, as the last batch was too clove-heavy, and I added a dried Chile Mulato. Other than that it was the same, and once pureed, was good and spicy.
Because I am taking a trip for Thanksgiving, I'm using up some soon-to-be-furry produce. The next soup was meant to be cream of mushroom (using shiitakes), and I thought about adding apple and zucchini. Once the apple and zucchini were cooked, I pureed them together as the shiitakes steamed. The result smelled good enough that it was just packaged up as is for lunch this week.
So, on to the shiitake soup. This couldnt be simpler. Cook 1/2 pound of shiitakes (or creminis would be nice, too) without fat - braise, steam, roast - whatever. When they are squishy, tip them into the blender with 3-4 cups of boiling water, 1 garlic clove, and 1 tsp of butter. Puree until you have a smooth, thick liquid about the color of a latte. Add salt to taste, and that's it. It tastes incredibly rich and the whole 5 cup batch is probably in the vicinity of 100 calories. Yikes.
Time posted: 21:52 [permalink]
Friday, November 19
Drawing the Line and Hot Beverages
Where do I draw the line? Somewhere between lefty Patagonia and righty Wal-Mart.... two companies that couldn't be more different, and yet they both do things that I disagree with (see the links above for details), so I do not patronize them.
Starbucks, on the other hand, I have NO problem with as a company. I think they have done wonderful things for the proliferation of Fair Trade coffee, not to mention raising the bar for what consumers expect in the quality of their java. They are also terrifyingly convenient, so much so that I just added money to my prepaid card in anticipation of spending lots of time in airports over the coming holidays.
So what's their problem? There are 2. Their coffee AND espresso suck; their prices are, frankly, comical. A neighborhood place up the road from my house gets a total of $2.63 for one small coffee and one medium coffee, freshly brewed from local beans, with all the half & half you dare to add. Today I had a small cappucino at Starbucks: $2.73. That's a SMALL. (To compare apples to apples, Starbuck's small coffee is $1.75 plus tax, compared to $1.00 at the neighborhood place.) If the espresso was exquisite in that cappucino, $3 isn't a horrible deal. Needless to say it is not good espresso. Its drinkable. Barely.
Bottom line? Its drinkable, I've got the money on the card, and sometimes not going crazy in an airport requires hot dairy and/or caffeinated beverages.
Time posted: 13:45 [permalink]
Thursday, November 18
Green Chile Stew
....of DEATH! Today for lunch I am having leftover Green Chile Stew that I made about a month ago. I made it in the crock pot, with beef stew meat instead of pork, potatoes, and that's about it. The chile that I added was literally 1oz of green chile sauce from Horseman's Haven - their "Level 2". Read a first-hand account of eating Level 2 from Chowhound (3rd paragraph down).
For 6 cups of stew, this amount of chile still produced an ass-kickingly hot end result. It will be some time before I ever have a tolerance to eat that stuff straight up.
Eating the stew will be painful, but exquisitely so. Mmmmm....
Time posted: 10:31 [permalink]
Tuesday, November 16
Raab/Rape/Rapini Soup
Take 1 bunch of broccoli raab (also know as broccoli rape, and rapini). Cut the tips off the stems, and then stem the leaves. Use the leaves to saute and toss with pasta, or whatever.
Chop up the stems. Heat 1T fat in a kettle. Add stems and saute for a few minutes until they are bright in color. Pour in 2-3 cups of liquid - water, stock, or a mixture. Add 1 or 2 cloves of smooshed garlic. Cover and simmer until the stems are soft.
Dump the whole lot into the blender and puree until smooth. Add S&P to taste. Garnish with cream.
This could have been a good soup, but I think my rapini was too old, so it ended up being a bit more bitter than I would normally like. But undoubtedly it was very nutritious, and sometimes that's all I ask of my food. *gasp*
Time posted: 13:50 [permalink]
Down "N" Out with Tenacious Flog
I apologize for any connection problems any of you may have seen over the last few days. Me an' Network Solutions had a little bit of a administrative discrepancy, which resulted in them blackmailing me out of $35 for an additional year's registration (seriously, when was the last time you paid $35 for 1 year of domain reg???). After 2 months, I am "free" to move my registration elsewhere, which I will be doing as soon as humanly possible.
I already have other domains on GoDaddy, and they've been most reasonable and helpful, unlike NETWORK SOLUTIONS, who seems to control their account holders with a mixture of poor service and outright dicketry.
Ok, rant over. Let the food blogging continue!
P.S. I find it highly amusing that the #1 search result if you Google for "dicketry" is a rant page about Bobby Flay. Ha!
Time posted: 10:09 [permalink]
Monday, November 15
Burger w/ Mushrooms
Catching up again.... this time to show a quick spread of a dinner I made a few weeks ago. Burgers for all, but while the other occupants of my house like theirs very strictly assembled, I tend to do something weirder each time with mine.
So, while the burgers went on the grill (which takes up what could be 2 extra burners in stove space... but at least we use it),
...I started a peppery white sauce
....and sauteed some cremini mushrooms.
Creminis have become my favorite mushrooms as of late. They are just as cheap at white shrooms, but far tastier. I have yet to acquire the wallet-palate for things like chanterelles and other foofy mushrooms. It will happen eventually, I imagine.
So when the burgers were done and bunned, I smothered mine in the mushroomy white sauce and declared it a weird success.
Time posted: 21:32 [permalink]
Tuesday, November 9
Breakfast Quesadilla
I make this a lot on the weekends. Why New Mexican greasy spoon restaurants don't have this on their menu, I'll never figure out. So basically you assemble the ingredients you want in your quesadilla: cheese, chile, bacon, spices, whatever. Now beat 2 eggs with some milk and pour that into a GREASED 9" skillet. Let it cook about halfway through, making sure its not stuck at all to the pan - you need to be able to get it out of the pan in one piece.
Now, sprinkle on to the runny egg your runny ingredients - cheese, chile sauce, etc. Take 1 "regular" or 8" or so tortilla and put it down onto your runny egg pancake. Now put your hand on the tortilla, flip the pan so that the tortilla is being held in your palm, and then put the contraption back in the pan, tortilla side down, cooked egg side up. Add your dry toppings, cook a minute on high heat, then fold the tortilla in half and cook on each side until the desired crunchiness.
I hope that made sense. Here's what it looks like, in the end:
Time posted: 21:24 [permalink]
Potato Veggie Oatmeal Soup
Yeah, you read that right. Here's what I did:
BOIL some chopped up potatoes for some other use. Save about a half cup of the cooked cubes for your soup, use the rest for that other use. SAVE the cooking water - this is your soup stock.
CHOP some celery, onion, leek, and carrot and lightly cook until softened in 1T of fat. Add the potato cubes, turn the heat up, and add the stock:
SIMMER until the veg are all soft, about 30 minutes. Then add some instant oatmeal to thicken the mixture up a little bit, and then puree a little, a lot, or not at all. Season to taste. Yummy!
Time posted: 21:17 [permalink]
Sunday, November 7
3 Bell Salad
I have some catching up to do! Finally I am taking photos of much of the food I cook, so I have a few days' worth of pics to get around to putting up here. Right now I'll start with the salad I made yesterday afternoon as a pre-dinner snack.
I chopped 3 bell peppers - one each of yellow, orange and red - and tossed them with a dressing that I pulled out of my arse. If I remember correctly, it had in it sour cream, goat cheese, olive oil, hot pepper sauce, pickapeppa sauce, and salt. It was a weird tan-brown color, but when tossed with the pepper bits, it looked OK:
Oh yeah, and it didn't taste bad either. I have previously made a fabulous creamy dressing that had goat & feta cheese in it and jalapenos that was meant for a watermelon salad. If I could find that recipe again, I'd make it next, because that dressing was addicting.
Time posted: 20:44 [permalink]
Mojarra Frito
I ate again at Los Arcos restaurant on Central, near San Pedro. This place is very dumpy and generally half the cars in the parking lot have Chihuahua (Mexico) license plates; obviously a good sign.
The food, as expected, is real Mexican - lots of fish, lots of green bell peppers, and tons of garlic. The quality is high, and also the prices are medium. Most fish entrees are $9-12, definitely not cheap working class food.
I ordered the one thing on the menu I couldn't translate AT ALL, so I truly didn't know what I was going to get. I think a Japanese restaurant would be the only place where I wouldn't try that technique, knowing their predilection for not just raw, but LIVE seafood.
Mojarra Fritos al Los Arcos, al Ajo. Here's approximately what I saw on my plate when it came out (not my photo):
So it was a whole fried perch with garlic. Damn tasty, especially the head meat (much fattier). I am happy with my strategy, but now I know spanish for garlic (Ajo), and I know everything on Los Arcos' menu, so I might have to go somewhere even less Gringo-friendly.
Time posted: 20:26 [permalink]
Friday, November 5
Deviant Newton
I found this individualist Newton marching to the beat of a different drummer:
Time posted: 22:55 [permalink]
Purple Soup
Sometime last week I made a few different things with the head of red cabbage that was in my fridge. One of those things was slaw, of course. The other was a pureed soup that ended up being a nice shade of pinkish-purple at the end.
Here's what it looked like cooking. The whitish chunks are granny smith apple:
Off to the blender for a quick spin:
And then finally, garnished with more apple chunks and some blobs of goat cheese:
I don't remember everything that I put in it, but I remember the cabbage, chunks of apple, brown sugar, mild chicken stock, and probably some red wine vinegar.
Time posted: 22:29 [permalink]
Thursday, November 4
Long week no posts, and then there was Chorizo
I apologize! I've been a combination of: out of state, slammed at work, and too tired to care this past week. However, I did actually cook a few things, so I'll report on them now.
My weekend was great. I ate lots of food (though the usual assortment of non-gourmet sugary crap that I get a 'pass' on when I'm running), got lots of sun, and got my money's worth out of my EZ-Cart at the airport. I even had a shake at In N Out, but wasn't hungry enough for a Double Double. Silly me. Thanks to my brother for carting my butt around Phoenix in search of greasy fast food and the afforementioned EZ-Cart.
Now, when I returned I was still incredibly tired, but that didn't stop me on Monday morning from making myself an omelet with goat cheese, chives, and carmelized onions. Gotta have protein, you know. Monday evening I made:
Penne w/ Chorizo Cream Sauce (for 2)
1/4lb dried penne or other pasta
1/4lb "wet" chorizo (the slimy fresh Mexican kind, not the hard Spanish salami kind)
1 cup milk
cornstarch
Cook the penne. While boiling, cook the chorizo like ground beef, breaking it up as it goes. Lots of grease should be released. Either save it or give your pooch a nice treat. Return the chorizo to the pan with the milk and warm to just short of boiling. Add a 1:1 cornstarch:milk mixture to the sauce about 1t at a time (stirring for a minute or more after each addition to let it cook) until the sauce has thickened enough. Season to taste with S&P, and toss with the penne.
Time posted: 09:56 [permalink]
|
|
| |
CONTACT ME: tenacity -at- gmail.com
|
|
|
