Cooking: Cobb Salad in Winter

What to do with leftover turkey?  Fry some bacon, hard boil an egg, chop some vegetables and an avocado and herbs (aim for color), whip up some homemade buttermilk dressing, and assemble a Cobb salad.

Cooking: Mediterranean

I am really fortunate to live in a town with not only Asian and Mexican grocery stores, but also Middle Eastern...as well as Indian, Peruvian, Portuguese, French and other purveyors of ethnic foods.  My favorite in my hometown is Dean's Produce, and I especially love shopping its dollar bins where I get a lot of produce that I cook right away.  Besides my staple of garbanzo beans to make hummus, I also saw pomegranate molasses.  Stay tuned.

Cooking: Vegan Chili

Cooking has been my salvation and so essential to my well-being this past year, and I especially am at peace when I'm undertaking this activity to feed other people.  I also needed to shrink my pantry and freezer a bit.  And so I pulled out all the dried chilies (New Mexican and Guajillo), cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, pinto and kidney beans, soy chorizo and nopales.  First task was to soak the dried beans.

Next I removed the stems, seeds and inner membranes from the dried chiles and boiled them with the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.  I then pureed it and set to boil on the stove.

I'm all about flavor galore in chili.  I chopped onions, garlic, green bell pepper and raided my spice cover for it all to go into the chili.

I  also chopped tomatoes and then continued simmering.  I don't brown the soyrizo beforehand with the aromatics because it sticks to the pan and just add it to the sauce directly.

 

All in all, I was pretty pleased and thought the vegan chili pretty tasty.

Ceramics: Whale Study

Cooking: Friendsgiving

I spent Thanksgiving with my brother and his extended family and didn't think I would end up with any yummy turkey leftovers.  And so I decided to host a Friendsgiving the day before to which I invited my best travel buddies, Kat and Meral.  My favorite dish at any Thanksgiving feast is the DRESSING.  I don't think it necessary to make stuffing or to cook my dressing in the cavities of a turkey.  Sometimes my family just resorts to cooking Stove Top, which I like and appreciate, but I especially love a homemade dressing.  That week, I had in my pantry:  a package of English muffins, a bollilo, a stump of French baguette, and the ends of a sourdough loaf, which I shredded by hand into a bowl to get further stale.  I also save bones from roasting and stubs from carrots, celery, and aliums when cooking to make soup stock, which I also use to add to dressing.  But key to a delicious stuffing or dressing are lots of aromatics and herbs:  onion, celery, sage, rosemary, and thyme.  

The extra special ingredients for this dressing were the leftover breakfast sausage in my freezer and a pint of fresh oysters.

I could tell that the dressing was the favorite with my friends too because I know they love the flavor of fresh oyster liquor and because they kept spooning more dressing onto their plates.  The little glass round of stuffing contained NO OYSTERS for the boring palate of the hubs.

I had wanted to cook a green bean casserole for my feast.  I bought French green beans and a mushroom condensed soup base.  I also printed out these instructions from Cooks Illustrated because I like vegetables to be as emerald green as possible.

Alas I had no time or energy left to make that green bean casserole which will just have to happen at Christmas feasting or another meal needing zhushing.  

What took so much time to cook were my winter squash soups.  I kind of went all out while shopping and bought kabocha, butternut and a couple of acorn squashes.  I thought of slicing them up and roasting with brown sugar and butter, but never did get to them.  That part of the meal like my planned green bean casserole went by the wayside.

I turned to online recipes as well as my big black binder in which I store favorite recipes and recipes I want to eventually try.

 

Kabocha squash is my favorite for Asian curries, and so I thought it would make a delicious soup.  I followed one recipe which called for slicing it open, removing the seeds and then roasting.

I pureed the roasted squash with some of my homemade soup stock and then put into pot along with caramelized aromatics.  I rarely make pies from scratch and stuck a commercial frozen pie into my still-hot oven.  My favorite unusual ingredient in a squash soup is citrus--I squeezed the juice of an orange into the kabocha soup.

I ended up bringing the soups to my brother's home the next day for his Thanksgiving lunch-dinner.

The next labor intensive dish was my Brussels sprouts salad.  I shredded each and every sprout on my mandoline as well as toast pecans I had left in my freezer.

 My short cut was the Delfina lemon vinaigrette that a friend gave me as a gift, but if I hadn't that, I would have made my own with olive oil, lemon juice, shallots, salt and white pepper.  The final touch on my cabbage salad were pomegranate seeds.

My Friendsgiving dinner in the end was comprised only of roast turkey (my bird which I bought premarinated was not picture worthy though delicious); the to-the-nines dressing with pork and oysters; mashed potatoes (which were basic and awesome by the way because you can't go wrong with Russet potatoes, maybe a few Yukon golds, and lots of butter and heavy cream which you have to mash by hand to get tiny lumps of handmade deliciousness); a giblet gravy (also homemade from flour browned in the turkey drippings as well as boiling the heart and giblets and liver and neck and then chopping all that very fine afterward)and lots of glasses of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.  We had no room for dessert, but a fine meal nevertheless was had.  

Hosting a Cocktail Party: Planning

The last party I hosted was a DIY evening of Chinese dumpling making, which I totally want to do in 2020 again to celebrate a new year and to wish people a long life with noodles.  At that February celebration, I bought eggroll or wonton skins, prepared up a filling of ground pork and vegetables, served noodles, served wine, and then cooked up what my guests rolled for our meal.  I sent home the extra dumplings home with my guests.  I had lots of fun of crafting a different kind of party and connecting with my neighbors & friends, and I think they enjoyed the evening as well.  

This Saturday, I'm throwing an impromptu cocktail party, last minute because I just sent out this invitation yesterday, which I downloaded from a free invitation site, customized it with my details and colored it with magic markers because I've only a black and white printer at work.

I know for sure I want to spend my time in the kitchen mostly before the party, and so a couple of cheese boards for sure.  I've already got a couple nice wooden boards, acacia and olive wood, which I'll oil up plus I'm borrowing a slate board from a friend.  I've an aged gouda, for which I'll need a knife like below, and I'm definitely down with being grown-up and owning a cheese knife.  

Below are the kind of knives you need for soft cheeses like Brie, but I can wait on getting this specialty tool.

And I always seem to have semi-soft cheeses on hand for which I'd need a slicer like the one below.  And maybe I'll be fully grown up when I finally have a whole set of cheese knives.

Ceramics: Mug Retrospective

While at Arrowmont, I drank my coffee, iced tea, water from as many different vessels on display and for use in the dining room.  I would feel each cup's heft in my hand and examine it for all its charming details, which I vowed to reference and re-create in my own hands once I returned to California.  Some of my re-creations were utter failures, especially because I used reclaimed clay for each one which sometimes leads to unpredictable and not so pretty results.  Below, however, are the ones I am fond of.

I call this one my Form and Function cup, where I started to make a handle to resemble brass knuckles and played with a pouncer and underglazes to make geometric shapes in my favorite color palette from modern quilting and of course, had to include text.

This one I kept even though I dislike it because I want to remember to repeat the technique of leaving parts of speckled buff unglazed whose rough surface is so pretty in contrast to the white gloss.  Next time I plan to use tape resist on the flat slab to get a cleaner line and maybe just use the texture roller on the bottom.

A lot of the mugs I've sold have this wave surface I make from a commercial texture roller, and it contains my favorite Isak Dinesen quote (“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.").  I'll make more of these sea mugs because I love 'em so much and continue to refine my underglazing of light blue, sky blue, royal blue, and marine blue.

With these two mugs I played with stencils.  I pounced the color on this reclaimed Bmix with a little bit of Sculpture and a tiny bit of Speckled Buff slab in the body when the clay was not so soft, but more suede in order for the color to not smear and then dry enough to leatherhard in order to construct the cup.  It's all about timing and curbing impatience.  I'll probably price these two mugs kind of high because I like them so much and sometimes feel unsure that I can repeat the sharpness of detail.  I'm also thinking too of adhering decals on them.

Cooking: Shrimp and Grits

During my stint at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I ate shrimp and grits for the first time.  I love Southern food and remember my first time eating an oyster po'boy, but that'll be for another post.  And so I found Bobby Flay's recipe.  It's awfully rich.  The key to cooking for me is the mise en place, and so I prepped all the ingredients beforehand:  peeled and de-veined shrimp, minced garlic and chopped scallions and bacon, grated cheddar cheese, butter and stone ground grits or polenta.  I forgot to have the 4 teaspoons of lemon juice ready, and such unctuousness really needs that hit of acid.

First, I sauteed the chopped bacon until crisp and drained off the fat except for a tablespoon.

Next I boiled 4 cups of water, poured in the grits, and kept whisking until the water was absorbed about 20 to 25 minutes.

Next I added the butter and grated cheddar cheese, still whisking furiously.

Once the butter and cheese are incorporated into the grits, I set it aside.

In the reserved bacon grease, I added the garlic and shrimp and cook for 3 minutes.  Not only did I forget to have lemon juice ready, I should have also added the white parts of the scallions at this stage too.

I had poured the cooked grits into a casserole dish already and then topped it with the cooked shrimp, which I probably should have cooked for a minute less longer because the shrimp continues to cook in the residual heat of the pan and the grits.

I then topped the shrimp and grits with the crisped bacon and chopped scallions.  We squeezed lemon on the prepared dish, and next time I'll cook the whites of the scallion with the shrimp as well as the forgotten lemon juice and reserve the chopped green tops for the final dish to serve with additional lemon.  I'll make it again for sure, but shrimp and grits is one of those dishes I think we'll only eat once or twice a year because it's so decadent.  However, I'm now a fan of polenta and want to try it with braised short ribs in wine.

Cooking: Chile Rellenos

As if attempting to cook my husband's pot roast dinner of his youth for a Sunday supper weren't enough (which turned out just okay), I also cooked Chile Rellenos for Mexican Monday.  Very labor intensive.  First I roasted two Anaheim and two Pasilla chile peppers and fried tortillas to make chips to embellish my dish.

After I roasted the peppers, I peeled off their black papery skins and removed the seeds and membranes after slitting them open.  I took out a block of Monterey Jack cheese, frijoles, red enchilada sauce, and chorizo leftover from huevos ranchero the week before.

I then layered the beans and salsa roja in the glass baking dish on which to lay the stuffed peppers on.  I also took two eggs out and separated the whites from the yolks.

I cut the cheese into smaller blocks and then stuffed them into the peppers along with leftover chorizo.  I used 3 toothpicks to skewer the peppers over the cheese and chorizo.  I had also turned my oven on to preheat it to 350 degrees.

Next I whipped the egg whites as stiff as I could get them and then folded in the yolks.  I then submerged the stuffed pepper into the beaten eggs.

And then the frying.  I heated a half an inch of vegetable oil in my cast iron pan and kept it at medium high heat.  The oil needed to be hot enough to hear a sizzle when I slid the stuffed pepper in, but not so hot that the egg batter golden browned too soon to burnt.  It's especially tricky turning the peppers over to its other side--a spoon helps and you can spoon hot oil over the egg batter to help it along.

We were pretty happy with how tasty the chile rellenos were, so happy that we ate them before I could take a picture of the completed dish though here's a shot before I submerged the tortilla chips in the sauce around the peppers and before they went in for 30 minutes in the oven to melt the cheese and crisps the tortilla chips some more.