Tangy and spicy, this recipe is amazing.
Cube Steak is cheap and easy to make. This cut of red meat should be cooked "wet", and here is an interesting fact: the Cube Steak was the original "hamburger", before finely ground meat patties could be made. For an old-world hamburger, grill a Cube Steak, soak it in some condiment and put it on a single slice of hearty whole-grain bread with saurkraute.
My go-to for cube steak is to just serve it with German Spaetzle dumplings and an herb-laden brown gravy whipped up from scratch. That is a good, easy meal and one I've never much thought of replacing. However, due to a recent move, and a short supply of condiments, and little motivation to hit the grocery store, I had to get creative with what I had- mostly Asian stuff. My concocutre did not start off smelling too good, and I was just hoping it would be not-disgusting. Well, it was excellent, keeping my streak of off-the-cuff recipes that turn out well going. I might have a new staple dinner when I crave some cheap red meat.
Ingredients: (brands I used in parentheses)
1 lb Cube Steaks
3 tbsp Hoi Sin Sauce (Sun Luck)
1 tsp Chinese Hot Chili Oil (Dynasty)
3 tbsp Classic Wok Oil, with garlic, onions, ginger and safflower (La Tourangelle)
2 tsp Tamari Extra Dark Premium Soy Sauce (San J)
Few pinches Signature Asian Seed Rub (Private Selection)
A pinch each of: onion powder, garlic powder, mustard powder, and ground ginger
Directions:
Start your meat in the pan with nothing but the Wok Oil. Add in everything else after they brown, stir well, flip the steaks regularly, and keep it all on Medium heat for about 7 minutes. Then enjoy. You are welcome in advance.
P.S. This is fairly hot. If that is not your favorite style of food, then reduce the Hot Chili Oil by half. If you want it really hot, then double to 2 tspn. But just remember a little goes a long way.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Asian Cube Steak
Friday, January 18, 2013
I've Gout You Under My Skin
Skyscraper piles of snow, deadly flu epidemics, sub-zero nights, and a good old-fashioned vintage winter with all the added horror of modern smog. AKA I've missed you too, so here are 2 recipes at the bottom.
Gout was a fine word to open a game of Scrabble with the other week, because it reminded me of the need to read about gout symptoms and see if maybe instead of some mysterious new form of pain I just had gout in my feet. Turns out I did. This surprised me as gout comes with a stigma and is lumped in with diabetes in the minds of most; one of those semi-culpability diseases people can cure by just putting the fork down or using it to scoop lima beans rather than jelly ones. I'm not exactly in terrible shape, though by my standards, I've let myself go recently. Well, turns out gout is just a form of inherited arthritis, and if there is one thing I collect, other than hippos, old music, old cartoons, squashes, and several other things, its any kind of arthritis there is. Precocious arthritis is my hobby.
Gout basically is a swelling and stiffening of the feet, also marked by redness, pain or itching or burning, and not wanting to move at all. Its usually in the big toe, but because I'm never normal, mine was in the fourth toes. This is charming to discuss, surely. I had some minor gout, but a little gout goes a long way, as the saying goes. Made famous by Henry the 8th, the late Ben Franklin, and many a comic strip French chef, gout is actually a hereditary disease triggered by diet, and specifically, uric acid from purines.
Purines come from a surprisingly-benign, or even, healthy list of foods. The most taboo food items are: mushrooms, cauliflower, lentils, beans, red meat, and sweets such as honey. (So you can see why gout is synomymous with Henry the 8th, he the man who by force of will power (less-ness) changed the Western diet to a sugar-based one after his first taste of the white powder, and he the man who invented such delicacies as "sugar-crusted roast Turkey drumstrick", and "syrup-dipped pig's feet" with jellied jam sauce.) The expended list adds chocolate, beer, wine, oats, leafy green vegetables, baked goods with leavening agents, dried fruits, and eggs. Also, by the way, peanuts are not really a nut, but a legume, so peanuts and peanut butter also trigger gout.
That doesn't leave me much to eat does it? And if you look back at my most recent posts, you'll notice that I was basically on the perfect diet to discover whether or no I am susceptible to gout. I was practically begging for gout. Hell, I ate like a gallon of wild mushroom soup followed by pot roast chili- fabulous and recipe to come below, and preceded by "Canaan Pie", made with cream and honey and dried fruits. I also satisfied a craving for cauliflower for the first time in a year. Live and learn.
Gout is cured by drinking exasperating amounts of water and avoiding foods which contain purines or uric acid. Protein in the diet should be reduced and pretty much nothing but rice and fresh fruit is acceptable. Go over that list again. Its extensive. Vitamin C is helpful. Also, there is no better medicine than dried cherries. As far as medicines go, this last one is pretty delicious. I now have 3 lbs of dried bings around for flare ups, though this was my only noticeable gout incident to date.
The best treatment is prevention. Spread out the taboo foods, or eliminate them.
Well, after my gout cleared up thanks in large part to several days of hunger, I succumbed to this flu which is apparently ravaging Utah and everywhere else, and had some infected sinuses. I started to feel poorly, then spent a 36 hour period with an animal's wiped mind, laying in a fetal position wrapped inside blankets and still shaking with cold. I slept 29 out of 30 hours at one point, sitting up just long enough to do the necessities and fill in one sudoku puzzle. Now I'm still recovering from that. So I have not been out skiing while failing to post to this blog, I promise you that.
Enough moping. My other news is I registered for college courses and will learn web development, including writing code in HTML and several other languages. This should provide me work, and hopefully that work will be stimulating, or at least, not unbearable. I am curious about programming, but its so new to me, I don't know what to expect. I had some financial aid to utilize or lose soon so the whole thing is paid for, and I will treat this like a job, a job that doesn't pay but should eventually. I will be going full-time, so we shall see how much cooking I do, and whether or no I can offer a recipe every week. That will depend on if I keep trying new things and finding the time to do so. I think I will. I started today and now I get a 4 day weekend. But I can do most of next week's work at home with a tedious text book. Hurray.
Pot Roast Chili
This is a very good option for a chili, a little more deluxe than ground chuck varieties. Also its a second recipe to use with roast cuts.
1. Slice 1 lb beef roast or pork roast/loin into 1/2 inch slices, season if preferred, and bake in oven 90 minutes at 375 F. I did not season my beef roast as it was a nice fatty cut and I let the fat do the work and get all melty.
2. On a range top, in a large pot, combine: 1 can black beans, 1 can kidney beans, 1 can butter beans, and 2 cans pinto beans, all part-drained, with 1 can diced tomatoes (or fresh is that is a palatable option), 1/4 butternut squash (pre-baked), peeled and diced into cubes, 1 cup golden corn kernals, 1/2 green bell pepper diced, onion (or powder), and seasonings. I suggest: coriander (coarsely crushed), cinnamon, minced garlic, green chives (if you did not add chopped onion), brown sugar, mustard, and white pepper. Bring to a light boil, then simmer 30 min.
3. Serve as 2 dishes. Its a vegan chili with the meat available to those who want it, as complimentary dish, or to be dipped into the chili.
I will never make a chili again without butternut squash. Its a colorful, healthy, and satisfying addition, helping to replace meat, but not conflicting with it.
Thai Lemon Butternut Squash Soup
Finally found a butternut squash soup recipe I like. Invented this one after finding a markdown deal on some "La Tourangelle Artisan Thai Wok Oil". This oil is good for wok cooking, or as additive in soups, and consists of Thai Basil and Lemongrass in Safflower oil. My roomate claims it smells like Fruit Loops, which I find insulting, as he hates sugared cereals and thus, Fruit Loops, but I think he's just not familiar with the scent of lemon or of Fruit Loops.
For your soup you need:
1 large pot
1 butternut squash, baked or boiled, peeled, and cut into cubes.
16 oz vegetable broth
16 oz water
1/3 cup wok oil
onion powder
nutmeg
white, red, and black pepper
1/8 cup brown sugar
Add all into your pot and boil for 30 minutes. Then let cool, put through blender or food processor, and reheat to desired temperature for consumption. Pretty easy and pretty basic. Might be improved by adding some noodles or fresh leaves, or peanuts, or something else I am not thinking of, but as an experiment, I just made it as basic as possible. The above recipe would reduce to a very thick near syrup and will probably take water before serving, but you can also serve it very thick. Will make 8-10 bowls.
Next post will be about fruit emulsions and how to use them.
Rather than a music recommendation I offer you a book this week: Parnatti's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. Great fun. Delightful 2 page or less stories about where almost everything you've ever touched in your life or heard in your life comes from.
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Monday, December 3, 2012
This Isn't A Party
Your weekly recipe, plus so much more. But not a squash review. I got burned out on squashes, so that will come next week sometime when I try the last 3 varieties.
Well, at least I got practice making cookie dough from scratch. Whipped up 2 large batches of gingerbread and one double batch of spiced "sugar" cookies, which actually I would personally call "Dutch butter" cookies, because I put a BOX of butter into them following the recipe. I was pretty sure this was written down wrong. I'd personally have to say that this is a waste of money. Sure butter is delicious, but a box of butter is like eating a whole pizza at once. This does not in any way enhance the flavor of the first slice. They are good, but so are regular sugar cookies and they don't destroy your heart while also working over your teeth. I think one or the other sort of damage should be enough.
This all produced approximately 200 cookies of palm size. And I will tell you from refusing to use a provided electric mixer (I don't own one) that there is no better forearm and abdominal workout than baking gingerbread. Any kind of kneading and rolling is nice exercise, but gingerbread is a hearty dough, and I woke up Sunday morning with a shredded stomach and no memory of working out. Then I realized it was the full body pressing and rolling that did it. I had to roll everyone's because they thought they would break the table or hurt the dough or something by leaning into it. Plus 9 year olds are not as staunch and buff as you and I were, to be sure. I had the dough ready for guests who by some accident of rudeness came early (who does that?) and not fashionably late, and also, The Mrs showed up 11 seconds before her friends, so all the grunt work was mine.
So it was fun anyway. And yes people could eat cookies before electricity. I have proved this, which even a few several 60+ year olds were trying to argue with me when I suggested I would just stir the dough by hand and knead it instead of mixing. The Mrs suggested this would somehow break the whole baking process and the cookies would not work. Not true. Carpal tunnel syndrome knows no better cure than a good kneading either. And yes, in those pictures above you do see a gingerbread Eiffel Tower, a gingerbread hand-cut teapot, a gingerbread Batman symbol, an authentically frosted Poke-ball (there was a 9 year old here remember), the Liberty Bell with 2 pigment frosted crack, Mario's face, and Salvador Dali as a purple-mustached toddler hippo in overalls. I think Dali would approve of that particular rendition of his person. And all from scratch, except for the frosting. Though we did color it ourselves from white.
I am sure you have recipes for cookies, so I am not offering them, but I do suggest adding nutmeg and extra ginger to your gingerbread. I made mine extra strong and have received no end of compliments on it. The best compliment is watching people pig on it. And for original cookie shapes, I suggest a Viennese, or teardrop spatula, which I have to find a task it is ill-suited to. They are surprisingly hard to find though.
***
Teresa and I made burgers that evening, with some organic grass-fed beef I found on super clearance. They were tremendous. Here are 2 recipes for burgers, one of which I offered before:
1. My favorite
1 lb ground beef
1/8 cup raisins
1/8 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 tsp Onion powder
1 tbsp Urban Accents Mongolian Ginger BBQ mix (mustard powder, sugar, sea salt, minced garlic, orange peel, ginger, spinach powder, pepper, wasabi powder- if you can't find it, you may be able to simulate it off that with a pinch of everything. Or get lazy and just use mustard and ginger. Probably close.)
2. A new great one
1 lb ground beef
1/8 cup craisins
1 tsp onion powder
1 tbsp Herbs de Provence
Herbs de Provence is a delicious aromatic mix similar to Italian seasonings great on pizza, potatoes, and apparently, in hamburgers. The Mrs is wild for them. To pick out a good bottle of Herbs de Provence, look for a glass bottle you can see through and count your lavender flowers. This (and fennel seed) is really what separates the mix from Italian seasoning, and a cheaper mix will have only a few crushed purple bulbs, while a good mix will be rife with them.
***
Because I, like Homer Simpson, and early East Coast Native Americans, cannot resist cheap pork, I have a freezer full of meat again. I digress here but I read one story during the King Philip's War, where some colonists were able to lure many "savage" warriors to their deaths by offering a pork feast. Not with promises of truce or friendship or under a white flag. They simply put down their muskets and cooked some pork up. The Natives all came trooping in, had a good meal, and then calmly went about being stabbed to death, seemingly considering it a good bargain. Well, we even wound up with some turkey drumsticks, though poultry scares me, as I've mentioned. These were huge too, and probably genetically enhanced and hopped up on drugs. I hope the bird had a nice life, and they were semi-local, meaning from within the state, or so I think. After a raucous Thanksgiving which reminded me what an odd and bastardized celebration it has become, Teresa and I made Jamaican Jerk smoked turkey legs which I thought were great. She felt they were too smokey, though in my limited experience, smoked anythings are for men, Germans, and especially, German men. That includes smoked beer, which is interesting, if not inspired. Along with our turkey we made Patriot Potatoes once again, and I offer the basic ingredients below.
1 red potato, 1 purple potatoes, 1 yukon gold potato
1/4 stick of butter
A little milk
Herbs de Provence or "The Gourmet Collection Roast Vegetable and Fry Mix" (salt, onion powder, paprika, red pepper, sugar, mustard powder, garlic, celery seed, black pepper, coriander, oregano, cumin, sage- again, you may be able to fabricate this if you can't find the real thing or something close, though I expect with this one you can)
1/8 cup Bread Crumbs
Kerry Gold Dubliner Cheese or a well aged cheddar if you can't find that one
Green peas, corn, black beans, or kidney beans (all optional)
I usually eat the potatoes plain the first go around and then to warm leftovers in a toaster oven, I top with some thin cheese and bake the bread crumbs on top. To each his own.
Now why is Thanksgiving so odd? Well, like many holiday get togethers with friends or family I end up at, mostly people just sighed about how tired they were and how thankful they were it would all be over soon. Also, no one needs a feast, vast amounts of food were left over which no one seemed to want, certain people started getting on other certain people's nerves, no one remembers even the phony history we made up to justify the holiday and make our ancestors look good (which is a sweet lie for the children, by the way, and maybe helps them start off as better people), and everyone spent 80 % of the party saying they really had to be somewhere else and that they were going to get their coats and go (I hate long goodbyes. If you are at my place and say you need to go, you'd better get out faster than I can pull off a band-aid, or I will kick you out, be all here or don't be here at all), and the most resounding thing I heard all day was "we've never been able to shop as a family on Black Friday before, so we're all really excited to spend some time together tomorrow." Um, can I even add commentary to that?
***
Your unsolicited musical advice for this week: Arvo Part's Fratres is a serial composition which is very beautiful. You can find it on Amazon under just that title by the label Naxos for not very much money, or perhaps your local library. The story behind the piece is even better: in an occupied/domineered USSR nation, some of Stalin's henchmen were always about meddling and threatening composers, which they masked as compliments and suggestions from the great man, such as "Comrade Stalin advises against getting lost in serial compositions, re-exploring already-completed works. Just get it right the first time." Which in Russian translates to, "do you want to end up in a gulag or a dumpster?" Arvo Part then began serializing his little piece Fratres right after. So the music is both stirring, and the chamber hall equivalent of a pair of raised middle fingers to a dictator. Way to go Arvo, who I believe is still composing.
Friday, February 17, 2012
A Few Belated Dishes
Various recent successes.
I whipped up a quick and delicious salsa with grape tomatoes- which I love, though about 1 in 10 is a bomb when you bite it- sour and gross. So: grape tomatoes left whole, diced jalapenos and chunks of orange bell pepper. Onion powder, a handful of fresh cranberries, cilantro, tomato paste, olive oil, brown sugar. Chunky or thin as you like. Its different, colorful, a mix of flavors, and familiar enough.
Made a good "Rancher's Pie" today. Been craving "Shepard's Pie", which originally was done with mutton, but in America now is more common with pot roast or ground beef. I kept the same principle which is to layer mashed potatoes and shredded melted cheese atop a base of beef stew. Mine was slow cooked stew beef shreds and chunks cooked in red zinfindel wine, tomato paste, and a touch of olive oil and ground white pepper, touch of onion powder, little garlic, then cooked atop a bed of no-boil lasagna noodles (Barilla's are excellent), mixed with green beans, kidney beans, corn, peas, fresh organic cauliflower (which has more flavor and is about the same price), then topped with my Patriot Potatoes (red, purple/blue, and yukon gold spuds with butter and a touch of chives and dill), and then shredded cheddar, baked to perfection at 375 for 35 minutes. Not life-changing, but a deluxe version of an old dish. So I named it Rancher's Pie, as a humble shephard would be outclassed. It could use some coffee bean grounds in the slow cooker with the zinfindel. Just a few. Really. And go with what you have and like on vegetables. In summer, I'd have had golden squash and zuccini in there.
My new favorite seasoning blend on fish is to use cajun butter and McCormick citrus rub. The rub has lemon and orange but needs a little more pep. So I use my trusty flavor injector (a syringe the size of a pistol which is always fun to play with and which I got precisely to make use of this butter marinade, which I bought in a quaint gas station that only had bathrooms open to paying customers a few vacations ago when my girl really really needed one. So I bought this for $8 and hated it- until mixing it with the fruity rub. I have used this blend on salmon and halibut, and someday soon, catfish. Three lucky people heartily approved. Teresa said it smelled good- for fish- which is the first word she's ever had to say about fish other than eeeeewwww, and she even ate a bite. Her opinion then was eewww, but with a lot less emphasis and eeees.
As for that dehydrator: I still enjoy it, though it is really a harvest tool. But with a two week vacation coming, I dried a celery stalk, a carrot disced, 6 potatoes of 4 colors (red, purple, yukon gold, and sweet) into natural unflavored chips, some kiwis, green beans, a bell pepper, and more of my already stated samples. The carrots and kiwi stay gummy, but are very flavorful. The kiwi is so sour it makes me wince and I cannot keep my eyes open- so this is another in the file of preserved trail mix foods that are sugared or dyed to make them more appetizing in stores. However, I love them anyway. Its like a sour candy slice. The potatoes dry very crunchy and with a touch of oil while hot and any seasonings, would be better than potato chips. Sweet potatoes dry more slowly, stay softer, are harder to slice thin anyway, but are my favorite. So delicious. Green beans and bell peppers shrivel to very crisp stalks and are almost unrecognizable with little volume. They are not preferred drying foods, though they do for travel, and the flavor is still there, mostly, though a little altered. I have not tested them for re-hydration yet. Potatoes should be blanced in a rolling boil before drying, for around 5 minutes to preserve color. I left their skins on. All of this will make for welcome variety on a trip of 12-14 days I am going on. Some weather means I will have to cut dirt road driving I intended out, thus I will not be doing a few hikes I was excited about, though I will be in Arizona and doing what I like and getting a nice little rest from work and the rut. I put together a wild trail mix of dried raspberries, blueberries, cherries, blackberries, craisins, coconut, papaya, pineapple chunks, banana chips, pecans, almonds, walnuts, kiwi, and seeds along with the typical 10 mile trail mix blend of mine. Also I have a fine product called "Just Tomatoes", a mix of freeze dried peas, corn, carrots, tomatoes, and peppers (bell in the mild and jalapeno in the hot: I mix the two varieties to create a mildly hot) which is great in soups or by the handful and a good way to get vitamins while hiking. I added celery, green bells to the red peppers, and also have mushrooms (white and brown), the green beans, and of course, more of the apple chips from the wind storm harvest which should last through June I think. Add them to 19 cent ramen noodles or $1.79 Ready Rice, with whatever else you like- freshly caught fish, or dried venison, or protein candy crappo bars labeled "Meal Replacement Energy" and that's good eating. I have no idea why anyone would pay $6.00 or more for a calorically similar dried meal that takes no less work and tastes no better once they knew how simple and cheap this was. Yes there is the cost of the $70 dehydrator to work off, but I should "turn a profit" (if a penny saved is a penny earned) if my dehydrator, the Nesco American Harvest, lasts more than one year. And that is not accounting my alternative meals at $6.00 per serving, which as an avid hiker, I have never paid. I'd rather starve for two days, and I used to just eat cereal and fresh fruit.
I have no reason to think my American Harvest will not last at least a year -except that after letting my friend and roomate know he could make "SOME" banana chips if he liked, the next day 21 pounds of bananas were on our floor. After a disturbing 7 day binge, 21 more pounds of bananas were on the floor with the promise: "I will make these ones last." 10 days later he asked me to dig out my dehydrator which I had hidden to make "a few more" banana chips before I was out of town. He then, after securing the machine, came in with "a few" bananas. I said it looked more like 50 pounds. He said it was actually only 42 pounds. If you are wondering, that is about 100 bananas. Which is close to 2,500 grams of sugar (though he still in the same sentence tells me fruit has no sugar because it is full of fructose and badmouths high FRUCTOSE corn syrup, and also says I should stop eating sugar and sweeten things naturally with honey- which is a liquid form of sugar.) As I will have to pay to replace the machine should it break, I told him I was putting it away. So he called his sister to borrow hers which has a 10 year warranty. Mine comes with a 1 year, and I have no reason to suspect the product of defect, but I also cannot anticipate that the motor will run forever. I am quite happy with it and still give it a glowing recommendation. I will try after this spring to only use it with local vegetables. I stored what I could this fall, and finally had to buy non-local potatoes the first week of February after my stash was exhausted. Kiwis of course are never in-season or local, but I only dried 3 of them. And we all have to eat something. If I had an acre I would only eat what I grew, but until then, if I want to eat 3-5 kiwis per year, I'll allow it.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Buckle Heard Round the World
AKA The Buckle of the Century.
This is a long overdue post. But what other kind would you expect from me anymore? I closed out Buckle Season, formerly and commonly designated "summer" in some backwoods regions, with a buckle to end all buckles. A peach and 2 berry sweet cornbread buckle. Wowie. That one was good. I did 1 cup corn meal (blue and gold mixed) with 1 cup wheat flour, and threw in 1/8 cup of "Bob's Mill" 8 Grain Cereal Mix (wheatless) too, as I do in much of my baking for some texture. Used the last of the season's peaches- end of October in Utah this year if you believe it, along with raspberries and blackberries. Half stick butter and a mere scant 1/8 cup brown sugar for the whole double buckle recipe. Which makes 2 standard pie trays. I do not personally even notice the absence of sugar, as I keep reducing it in all my baking. I then compensate with vanilla and cinammon. Usually some nutmeg and allspice too. Works in apple crisps, oat bars, you name it. No one else has complained to me either. Buckles turned out to be the only bread/pie I baked all summer. My favorite combos are pear/blueberry, peach/blackberry, and plum/raspberry. But any 2 or three fruits will make for good eating.
I quickly transitioned into fall mode. Stocked up on winter melons as they were once called; spaghetti squash, acorn squash, pumpkins, and butternut squashes. And I whipped up one more apple crisp with honeycrisps and asian pears. I will miss apples, and will probably cheat and buy some "fresh" ones before next summer. Apples and potatoes are just too much a part of our lives. Though I did stock on spuds too. I love fall as well. I spent 2 weeks hiking through the best colors I have ever seen thanks to the late and heavy snowfall, and bought jugs of tangy tart cider, and lamented my lack of a food dehydrator. Would like to make preserves next fall. Really store up for winter like in the old days I never knew existed except in fiction until I was grown up.
Last week I cut into the first of my three huge eating pumpkins: note to the prospective buyer of pumpkin flesh- measure your oven first. I don't know quite how I will manage the last one. I cleaned off the seeds and got them roasting in a toaster oven while I roasted the hollowed out gourd in the big oven, with the rack sagging under the weight. Due to the size and thickness of my pumpkin and my own unusual lack of any economy of movement, I baked the pumpkin empty, then moved it to the top of the range before filling it and using it like a slow cooker. Secured the lid tight and walked away for 2 hours. When I came back the whole was still hot and everything inside was baked and blended. So what did I make? A "turkey" mole (moh-lay- I do not have the spanish tilda on my keyboard to go over the e), which must be put into quotations as my sophisticated palet can assure you that: turkey does not taste like turkey anymore, turkey has an odd spongey texture rather than the rough and dry texture turkey should have, and turkey is mostly flavored with sodium and chicken stock. Also turkeys are raised so fat their own legs break and they are miserable. Probably. But I am going to avoid turkey even more thourougly than I was already after this due to the poor quality of the general turkey flesh. More on flesh later. For now, let us say the turkey mole was good. This mole was seasoned with achiote, chiles, pepper, cocoa, cinammon, and other spices. I poured in 6 cans of butter beans, kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, and great northern beans, plus diced anaheim peppers, corn, peas, tomatoes, wild rice, and of course, the sides of the pumpkin scraped and shredded. Quite good, spicey and sweet and aromatic, aside from the disappointing calibre of the bird.
Okay, so, I have tested organic chicken, beef, 3 varieties of buffalo meat, milk, and yogurt, and I will now give you the rundown. Organic chicken tastes like chicken. I do not believe I could pick one out from the other blindfolded, despite my honed and attuned taste buds, and the "air chilled difference"- this organic chicken is not stored in vats of shit-filled water that spreads disease and inflates the weight of the poultry so you get less for your money- though I do appreciate the air chilling on principle. Organic beef on the other hand is spectacular. Great smell, taste, obvious flavor difference. You can recognize it too by differences in cooking: the ground patties I formed cooked more quickly and evenly, the fat clung to the pan less as it cooled and was easier to clean. On the whole, I am an organic beef man from here out. No doubt. It still though does not have as much flavor as bison, my meat of choice forever more. I have tried 2 brands of ground buffalo and one of hot dogs. The hot dogs are superior to standard dogs, smell wonderful, but on the whole, are still just ground up testicles and junk meat. High Plains Bison burgers come individually wrapped and pre-formed. I don't like them much. If you are into convenience and don't mind producing a lot of trash, go for them. The flavor though is very pepper and whatever they preserve these with, dulls the taste. Go instead if a connoisseur in hopes, for Great Range Bison, distributed by Rocky Mountain Natural Foods. My very special recipe is included later. Organic milk is magnificent. Shockingly good if you are not a super taster. I remember loving milk once, and now mainly drink it from habit. Its white water, full of protein. But organic is full of sweet, rolling gentle flavor. Teresa made a face and said it tastes like cheese. She was not a fan. But I am won over. You can taste the happy, and the omega 3s animals pick up when their feed is green (as in grass). It is healthier by far and tastier too. Watch for a sale or a clearance as it is about to expire. All of this leads me to believe birds are called "bird-brained" for a reason. They may not be happy, but even happy, how happy is a chicken exactly? You can't notice its misery in the meat. Now cows, they must be a bit clever. I can tell you from a burger if the animal led a good life or not. Pigs, which I do not mention are natural jerks. They would definitely eat you if they had the chance, and they are known to torture smaller live animals by eating them slowly and leaving them half eaten then coming back for more. I do not care if my pork is happy, though I would buy humane pork if I find it. But the guilt is not there. Cows don't hurt anyone, except with methane- and by the way, the next time someone of a Republican nature says to you that global warming is not man made because all the cow farts still account for more greenhouse gases than all our cars put together, counter by saying that the cow is really one of man's first machines; the feral cattle is not an animal that is social, docile, or which could be packed tightly. Steers were territorial brutes. Much tougher and stronger than even modern bulls. They fought like tigers and males did not meet often and both live after. So there would be few cows in the world to fart had they not happened to taste darn good. In fact much of the evil in history has taken place for beef, and wilderness areas are being mauled by livestock rights. Don't believe me? I can send pictures of a herd of cows that surprised the hell out of me by being in the middle of a mountain valley in August, and which nearly felt the need to stampede me. Didn't know they really did that. I can also send you pics of a herd of cows that stampeded for fear of me in another mountain range that is supposed to be "wild" in Utah's desert. Not eating beef would possibly do more good for the world than many hours volunteering for garbage organizations like United Way and Habitat for Humanity, of which I have insider experience and little faith. And to end my soapbox speech for now: giving money to charity is for chumps. Know your neighbors, and your community. Don't send $50 to Georgia, or Malaysia. Find someone who could use it near you. Give it to them. A kid, a mother, whatever. A loan or a present. You do more good in this world by loving a single person well than by getting involved with these giant organizations that get so big they lose sight of what they are doing and just become machines like every other corporation. Big is bad. (And just how do Republicans say big government is evil but shop at Walmart? If you allow big business, you need big government, otherwise the biggest business, is for all intents and purposes, the government. When I see Walmart as a third party, I will worry. Don't give them the idea. They'll get it on their own soon enough.)
Buffalo Burgers:
1 lb ground buffalo
1/4 cup italian seasoned bread crumbs
1/8 cup raisins
ginger, garlic, salt, paprika, (or ideally "Mongolian Ginger Barbecue" seasoning mix sold at World Market Stores and under the brand name "Urban Accents")
Also you could try lamb burgers, another animal that is not eaten in large enough numbers for it to have lost all flavor yet:
1 lb ground lamb
4 dry mint leaves ground
1/8 cup craisins or raspberries
garlic and other desired seasonings
I prefer buffalo by a lot. Lamb just makes me want stew. Lamb owns stew. Although beef stew is pretty good too.
Friday, May 20, 2011
You Mean You're A Vege-Traitor!
Andrew describes the hateful hijinks of Meatriots who love their country, its flag, its boys in arms, and juicy Armor Hot Dogs.
The first thing the Dutch and English ever agreed upon in America was that the Natives were not using the land properly and should be divided from it. They did not improve the land, "improve" being defined by charter law as "to keep livestock on it." Thus, in a nutshell, or perhaps, in a collarbone would be more appropriate, the red men and their pudgy long-haired babies were gunned down first for not eating hamburgers. Don't snicker that I am exaggerating. You can be lynched for the same reason today in Texas and no jury will convict. This is a beef-loving country, strangely, since the more beef people eat, the worse its quality. And since, all non-organic hamburger meat in this nation now contains ash for thickening and fake coloring, and beef is no longer marbled or flavorful. More like tough and stringy and bland. The other day I went to a Mongolian grill with friends and the only difference in the lamb, beef, chicken, and pork, was a slight dye job. None had any flavor. I closed my eyes and did a taste test. My lady slipped in a piece of cardboard and a piece of plastic and a piece of leather, and the only one I thought was actually meat was the cardboard. They were really more like slivers of texture replacement, to appease the teeth. But who can complain when all the vegetables and fruits were refilled before our eyes from huge cans? At least the food was not expensive. I guessed after the first time through the line why the "house" recommended six ladels of sauce per bowl. When people say they like good food or strong flavors or this or that dish, what they really mean to say is: I like the texture and shape of my homogenous salt and sugar to be...
But that is just the usual. What I mean to say is I am not being vegetarian anymore, though I did go nearly two months meat-free at one stretch and I often go a week without meat without noticing. I try to eat organic fowl and meat now, as that is clean (er), more properly treated, and probably ate something it would have eaten 200 years ago and enjoys. It will also taste good and since it costs more, I will eat less of it and savor it more. Thomas Jefferson advised to use meat like a condiment, usually over a dry martini and a suckling pig, if not a dry cocktail of pureed ham and a big meal of ale-soaked tobacco leaves. It was good advice, even if he did not take it himself- well, he had to entertain, and the French would have thought America poor or weak were its president dangling his slippers AND eating mountains of collared greens. "Where's the beef" might have been the slogan the British were sneering as they burned the president's mansion down to its plain white walls. Of course, Jefferson also had the sound policy: there's plenty more where that came from. He believed in riding the land hard and moving west. Hey, if we farmed efficiently, there would be plenty of land for Brits, French, Indians, Canadians, and who knows who else. Can't have that. Torch it and shake a leg. Let's waste our way to the Pacific.
So I eat some meat again. A few problems cropped up when I stopped. One is that I got boring. I just started eating the same things all the time. As I was also avoiding out of season produce, this wound up being rice and beans, pasta with red or green sauce, bread, and oats. That is not a very healthy diet, as it is pretty much pure carbohydrate, with limited nutrient profile, and I have begun to branch out again. The other problem was harder to deal with, and it is that people might be okay with vegetarians, but not with sudden vegetarians. It is like coming out of the closet. People start looking back at old memorized scenes and painting you pink in them. They start to wonder: did he really like my turkey at Thanksgiving? No he must have lied! Now I can't trust him! Or: Ooh he's fickle. He might not love me by next Tuesday! This makes them angry. And too, its like losing a team member. They have some inkling that animals are not treated so well, and probably don't consider our "deal": we take care of you, one day, we'll split your head open with an axe: to be a very good one anymore. They would walk out the gate and not come back, but they don't have many options at this point. Well when someone quits their meat eating team, that makes them feel bad. So they get angry for that too. I got either confused looks, or suspicious ones when I said I was trying out vegetarian eating. Had I just been diagnosed with coronary heart disease, this might have been acceptable- I say might, because many men believe they get their fat trucker virility from a mixture of chaw, naked silhouette mudflaps, contact with the steering wheel of a diesel pickup truck, and steaks. The redder the better! These sort would rather die than eat a stem of brocolli. Of course they also drink bad beer, but what few thoughts they have, they do have loudly, and so pass for our culture around here. Also, even carnivores can tell they are getting lower grade flesh these days, and know it is swimming with bacteria, or maybe more accurately, that they are buying bacteria infested with small quantities of particular animals when they buy meat at the market. It is all the same mess of little amoebic monsters, just with a bit of bird or hog to differentiate it. When I quit eating meat, it makes them feel a bit like a sucker. They want everyone to get conned at the same time. Safety in numbers.
The only person who was positive about my experiment was my little work concubine, a vegetarian convert herself, who was getting hazed by her family, pretending to be supportive. The old: Justina, dinner is ready- oh no, whoops, I forgot you don't like drumsticks anymore, I guess you'll just have to eat a can of corn. No time to make something else now, sorry. And according to several co-workers who labeled themselves as "incapable of reading body language", the two of us screamed silently: you're favorite dimly lit vegan restaurant, or mine? Whatever that means. So she might have approved of any experiment I made, even if it were horrible. I say she was my work concubine because that is how people started looking at her, and she being shy, religious, and you know, caring what people think, this bothered her, despite my appeals and best efforts to have her play along with some scandal-mongering. I for my end of things, tried to look smitten around her (a minor effort) and act possessive, and to dress as "old" as I could around her (she was 18 when we started "work-dating"). One lady really took it too far. She sat down at our table o chat and gave Justina an up and down scan and we could both see the wheels in her head say, "huh I wouldn't have taken you for a whore." Really offended the kid. She quit not too long after, probably out of boredom and because she is young and not dead or dreary enough for government work. If you don't need a job, why keep going? Stay in school, and that sort of thing.
I think vegetarian cooking can be delicious, though I need to learn more meal options before I commit to it fully. And I should try it at peak of summer. I think winter is the time for meat. Eating flesh raises body temperature, puts on "insulation", and used to fill in when plants were not available. People often preferred produce and certainly craved it crossing the great plains and shivering through hard winters without furnaces. For example, Lewis and Clarke and company had to subsist on 9-12 pounds of elk and puppy flesh per day at Fort Clatsop. They dreamt of cabbages. I am going to go to Fort Clatsop in one week's time on vacation with the Missus, to bring this up on the tour. I love social terrorism, and Teresa does not believe me that The West's spiritual and symbolic founders were probably homosexual and puppy eaters to boot. "Where did they get the puppies if they didn't have any food anyway" she asks, naively. "Did they bring them along so they could eat them? Why not just bring jerkey instead then?" Well jerkey does not walk on its own legs and cows scare easy, but they actually bought them from the Indians who wouldn't sell the white men any fish or elk or corn because it was scarce and they needed it for themselves, I explain. And also because they hated the whites secretly and liked to tease them about how only cowards and fools ate dogs and failed to pack real food into the wilderness. They rolled their eyes at those poor starving explorers, and patted their bellies while holding their noses over steaming cauldrons of labrador stew while visiting. We'll see what the tour guides have to say to my quotations from the diaries such as "if there is a more delicious steak than one carved off a fresh young puppy, I haven't found it". I may be thrown out. We'll be visiting on Memorial Day.
But social terrorism and vegetarian inklings do not mean I harbor terrorists, as some of you carnivores were probably muttering under your breath while reading this. No, don't tell me. I like to pretend I have an audience, though when I find out I do, I get squeamish. They say Mark Twain was the same way. He also liked to lie through his teeth as a hobby.
Stromboli Baby
I have a new favorite word, and perhaps a new favorite food.
Can you tell it is raining, and hailing? Yes we just as of five minutes ago set a new record for latest snowfall in Utah at valley elevations. Five straight weeks of precipitation, and moping, my usual coping method, got old, and I just don't have the young energy anymore to drink hard as a hobby, so I decided I'd better start cooking. I figure I have a lot of hiking to catch up with in June, so I might as well store a lot of good stuff to eat now. Preferably portable. And also I started to make muffins from scratch (3 kinds), am baking more breads, and invented some recipes to try soon, I hope.
Stromboli is an Italian dish defined on Wikipedia as being a calzone with the sauce inside. This tripped me up as I thought I was making calzones to throw in the freezer, but as I was over-ambitiously trying to put tomato sauce inside them without rupturing their thin skins, I learned I was making stromboli. Stromboli can be made in a swirl log shape too though, and I wanted to try that. The pics are above.
To start, just make a pizza dough as you normally would. Throw down a lot of flour on your counter and roll it into a rectangle. Then put down whatever you want, roll it up as you would a yoga mat or a sleeping bag, coat the edges with egg, seal, sprinkle with something good on top, bake, and carve it like a roast with a big bread knife. It is delicious, artistic, structurally sound, stores well in freezer, and will make you seem like you are an actual Italian in a way pizza will not, even when you make it from scratch.
My first roll stromboli was: tomato paste, black olive, red bell pepper, spinach leaves, whole basil leaves, slices of provolone cheese, roast beef, and salomi, mustard, garlic powder and sprinkled with asiago, romano, and parmesan cheese, and oregano on top. My dough was half whole grains- a mix of rye and whole wheat flours with unbleached standard baking flour. I think this is one sturdy food you could get away with all whole grain flour- it doesn't need to rise much, you are coating it with egg anyway, sprinkling it with good things, and stuffing it with sandwhich fixings and pizza toppings. No one will mind.
Some other ideas:
Vegetarian: tomato paste, bell pepper, olives, whole basil leaves, eggplant, squash, onions, provolone, sprinkled parmesan, romano, and asiago.
Vegetarian 2: tomato paste, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin strips, crushed red pepper, minced garlic, onions, mozzerella, sprinkled with oregano and parmesan on top
Pink Lady: Ham, mayo, mozzerella, tomato paste, olives, spinach or lettuce, crushed red pepper, a touch of ranch, ground rosemary, sprinkled on top with oregano and parmesan
Hot Italian sausage would be good too. I like parmesan cheese, if you cannot tell.
Now as to calzones, in their crescent shape, they will certainly make better easier to eat stored food, if you are in the habit of keeping tomato sauce around to dip them into, or some other condiment you prefer. They will be dry to travel with though, which for hiking and car trip purposes, is why I wanted them to be complete, with sauce inside, like a Hot Pocket.
I used to consider "Hot Pockets" one of mankind's greatest inventions. Then I got clued in a bit to the way the world used to be, you know, for about 4,000 years until the microwave and massive grocery markets, and realized they were just the corruption of every nation's old lunch pail stand by, the enclosed sandwich, calzone, stuffed na'an, empanada, pasty, etcetera. The coal miners even built a handle into theirs, which they would eat around and then discard, so birds could pick at the filthy black bread stick and die instead of them. Clever. So the original lunch pail was edible, and now it does not decompose for 25,000,000 years- approximately. Now, Hot Pockets are not very good, but I kept buying them in college, on the hopes they would be good, or really, the conviction that they SHOULD be good. I mean they were so convenient and clever and self-contained. Every food good right there, little spillage, eat it hot or just let it thaw as you sleep in class and then eat it coldish.
A better idea: buy a $6 dough press set (mine is by Progressive and can be found at TJ Maxx, Ross stores, and Amish farmers markets) and just make the things yourself, without preservatives and with a lot more flavor and real ingredients. You could make do without the dough press kit. If you can roll dough into a circle then you can fold it over itself. Paint the edges or lips with a little egg yolk, and press them with a fork if you want that artisan's touch. Almost anything can go in them, and you can make empanadas, mini dessert or fruit pastries, calzones, stromboli, and anything else you want to call them with one kit. The largest size my kit makes is about the size of a Hot Pocket, which I know is good to cut down hunger on the run, but not quite fill me. Simple eh? I have not tried empanadas yet, which I think I will fry in corn oil to make them a bit different, or mix in some masa to my dough. But here are some calzone tips, or stromboli tips, depending on how technical you want to be.
Do not overstuff them. That will be the temptation because everything going in them is good, and you like good things. But overstuffing stretches your dough and creates weak spots. They will leak- no big deal, or explode- which may be.
Use tomato paste, rather than tomatoes or tomato sauce. The paste is drier and will not weaken your dough or add to leakage. Then again, the most delicious part of the calzone experience is peeling that crispy patch of mozzerella and tomato goo off your pan after you lift off your calzones.
Type of pan does not seem to matter. I tried pale and dark metals, flat and high walled. What you want is to work your dough as little as possible. My early calzones in each batch were more stable than the ones I formed from the scraps of left-over dough I re-rolled out. Also, don't grease the pan, put down a little corn flour, it will add to your crust and works just as well, and is easier to clean off. Just shake it over the garbage can.
Coat your calzones with egg even if you don't want any herbs or cheese on the outside. It will make the crust less dry and taste better. I put herbs in my dough, which is a fair idea also. And garlic powder will work better than minced garlic. That too can go in your dough for safe keeping.
Bake around 400 degrees, and watch them close. They finish faster than you might expect. I left mine in the oven for 10-12 minutes. They will cook a bit more even after you've removed them, which is true of meat and any enclosed dish or food too.
Ricotta cheese is great in stuffed shells, but I think it is too hard to find good ricotta with the flavor you need to stand up to the crust of a calzone. Stick with mozzerella or provolone. Parmesan and cheddar in little touches will help to enhance either cheese.
Watch out when hot- they spit!
If you are really ambitious, try selling them. Who doesn't love a good portable meal?
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Forty Dollar Lamb
If you have 40 days and 40 nights to spare, try making this meal.
I exaggerate a little. It is mostly done in a slow cooker. And if you can chop even a little, you can make this delicious, perhaps, even, heavenly lamb tagine. Or stew. Or curry. Stewgine. Well, I combined a fruit tagine heavy on curry powder and a classic tomato and pepper stew recipe together because I could not decide between them, so I am not sure what to call it. I was thinking Miracle Manger Tagine, but Forty Dollar Lamb sounds good too, as you could easily charge that in a restaurant if your table cloth is white enough and well starched and you have a maitre-de with the proper upward tilt to his disdainful and superior chin. I left everything big, because that is a more classic slow cooker feel to me. I thought this collision of flavors would jump and jive well, but it could have fallen on its face and not shocked me. You will need:
1.5 lbs lamb stew meat or shoulder roast
4 potatoes (I used red and left skin on)
4 large carrots
1 green tart apple (leave the skin on)
1 unripe green banana
8-12 oz cut green beans
1/2 can coconut milk
1/2 can tomato sauce (plain)
4-6 mint leaves (fresh if possible, or try peppermint extract, or failing even that, anise extract)
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp cardamom
1.5 tsp black pepper
1 clove garlic minced
1 diced tomato, or 1/4 can diced tomato
3-4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
Medium to large slow cooker
Quinoa, cous-cous, rice or barley
Lamb is an excellent meat to work with in today's meat world, because it is not eaten enough to get the full fast-food treatment and have its life streamlined to a short, sad, scary efficiency. The flesh is full of flavor that rolls around all over your tongue, and it melts and still has fat in it. Imagine that: marbling! Beef gets worse all the time. Any slow foodist knows it. Chicken is too disgusting to think about and turkey can be worked with, but only if you hit yourself in the head with a mallet or the bottom half of a bottle of kalua first. You don't want to know what percentage of chicken can be feces legally by weight and volume. Oh wait, I think I told you once already in a blog.
Start by braising or searing your lamb. Use your slow cooker if you have a high setting, by chopping your meat and putting it in along the bottom, alone and dry. Let it brown, but not char. You will want the contrast of well-done lamb in this curry stew. While that starts, chop your vegetables. Use all the fat, it will melt into the body. Don't trim lamb. If a person complains the meat is fatty, they shouldn't be eating lamb. The fat will not be chewy like with some other meats and is part of the delicacy of lamb.
Once your meat is brown and mostly cooked, put in your potatoes and carrots, and coconut milk and tomato sauce. Let go on low for 2 hours or so. Then add your apples, green beans, spices and seasonings, garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, and butter. Let it go another 2 hours or so. Check on the vegetables for desired tenderness with a fork. The butter is optional at any point as a thickener if you need it. Slice half your banana as a last step and put it in for just a half hour at most.
Boil the grain of your choice and put the lamb and vegetables and sauce over it. I used quinoa, and they went very well together. This was one of the best things I have eaten in a long time. One of my favorite dishes. I think a gourmet would have a hard time identifying all the flavors but would approve heartily. It was excellent, delicious, and mouth watering. It would have been perfect had I not put my apples in so early and made them mushy. I corrected that above and suggested to not add them with the potatoes and carrots as I did. Mesmerizing. And if you think I am merely tooting my own horn, try to find other such words in my previous posts. Or ask Camila. Pretty good on my scale is a darn fine compliment. If I tell you your dish is very good, it probably means you should expect me to have diverted a parade route through your bedroom by tomorrow morning.
The above recipe will feed 6 people one full size portion each, unless they are pigs. Though that will leave them wanting more. You could satisfy 4 without a dessert. It does not recapture everything with reheating.
And now for dessert:
Apple Pear Raspberry Granola Crunch
You need:
3 apples (any variety: skin them only if you want to. May I suggest zebra tanning them? That's half skinning)
2 pears (skin them)
1.5 cups apple-raspberry granola or as close to that as you can arrange
1/2 cup whole oats
1.5 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup brown sugar
cinnamon
allspice
nutmeg
touch of lemon juice
8X11 casserole dish
You can reduce your sugar usage a lot by substituting vanilla. This almost qualifies as a health dish, but will be sweet enough for any tooth with some vanilla ice cream on top.
Grease your dish, slice your apples and pears, toss them in a big bowl with everything else. Pour it into the cassarole and smooth and flatten it as you can. You could try a bit of corn syrup if you want it to stick together like bars, but it should hold somewhat together after baking. Use the vanilla and spices to smell: if it smells delicious while you are tossing it, then they are probably right. If your mouth is not watering, shake in a bit more of whatever you fancy. Its hard to overdue vanilla, though a little goes a long way. Cinnamon also. Hold your nutmeg as large doses cause a) nausea, and b) peyote-like hallucinations, and c) vomiting after the visions. Or if you want to have a really interesting game of Pictionary after dessert...