Clay: Spoons

I did clay club on Thursday afternoon into the early evening. While Zan glazed her Obsidian clay plates (she’s calling them Horizon, and so I just might call mine Eclipse), I rolled out a slab for another of my plates with the same clay.               

There’s a hairline crack in the bisque of my very first plate of Eclipse, which will likely get bigger upon additional firing, but I’m going to glaze it as a test. I’ll need to remember when scoring those stripes on the underside to not continue them all the way to the edge or to ease up on the at the edges, so that I don’t crack my plates. I’m bringing my bag of Obsidian to the parks and recreation studio this Saturday to slab out yet another plate. This dinnerware will be my slow plate series before my porcelain series. Zan also showed me her Navajo Wheel spoons.      

Oh my golly are they cute! And so I pinch potted a ball of scrap Obsidian which Zan told me would crack and that the handle would likely break off. And so I wedged it back into more scraps of clay and then rolled it out into a thick slab and cut out the outlines of whole spoons.                      

I don’t know how functional these spoons will be—maybe they’d be suitable for sauce spoons for chimichurri or aioli. One is going to be a soup spoon though. But I’ll definitely be making more of these while rolling out plates. And yes! Another black plate ready for the kiln!                        

Check out Zan’s plates behind my large one in which she filled in their undersides with white underglaze and painted wax resist. Next she’ll dip them in the bucket of Colonial White gloss glaze on one side and then rotate to its opposite side to dip but leave a vertex or a very acute triangle of raw clay unglazed. And there’s an edge of each of her plates which is very rough or very unrefined to accentuate that raw imperfection. When Zan saw my plate, she said too perfect, which made me laugh. I’m always lamenting over my handmade versus handcrafted pots, but these plates exemplify the wabi sabi I’ve been seeking. And always I’m anticipating lunch before craft or clay on a Saturday:                        

Life is good when there’s sushi. Or poke.                                      

Next week I think I’ll attempt to make my own poke rather than buy it from the warehouse or grocery store. I’ve sushi grade ahi tuna in my freezer.

Cook: Taco Tuesday

My husband maintains that it’s not my job to cook for him and gotta love him for that. BUT I cook for him because it’s how I demonstrate care, concern and affection. And most of the time, I find cooking fun and meditative. When I make tacos for Patrick, there has to be cheese and salsa, which I’ll usually also load up with lettuce like a Taco Bell food product even if the shell is not crunchy. But when it’s just me, I like my most favorite Mexican food, taco truck style. Just onion and cilantro and hot sauce on carne asada or carnitas. And I find cheese even more WRONG on a fish or shrimp taco. Tonight when I got home, Patrick was headed into a Zoom meeting which meant dinner was by myself.        

I kept it simple, taqueria style. Just fried the carnitas in a mini cast iron.      

Chopped red onion (no white onion in the pantry), chopped cilantro, green sauce, sliced lemon (no lime either), and sliced avocado.                                

And I treated my bigger cast iron as a plancha.                                

And added sour cream too.                    

Again I could eat a taco every night for dinner. And if I lived alone, I likely would as I don’t mind the same meal on consecutive evenings.

Cook: Mapo Eggplant

I’ve cooked Mapo Tofu, and I’ve cooked Sichuan Eggplant. And recently (as in yesterday) found a recipe for Mapo Eggplant. It was the flavor profile I wanted for last night’s dinner. 

And luckily I had all the ingredients in fridge and pantry. Eggplant. Which I sliced into bite-sized chunks and sprinkled with Sichuan salt. Sichuan peppercorns.

Chicken broth. Ground meat (pork). 

Scallions, ginger, and garlic. Which I chopped or ground in my mortar and pestle. 

Doubanjian paste. Shaoxing wine. Sugar. Soy Sauce. 

Your starch of choice: jasmine rice or noodles. Corn starch to mix with water for a slurry and thicken the sauce. And for good measure, tofu. 

I simmered the rice and microwaved the noodles and steamed some shumai dumplings for our appetizers and set up the work station. 

And settled in with a glass of wine to review the recipe.

And oh my gosh, I had forgotten to put out chili oil.

And the cooking was a blur and happened fast because it had to and because I had a mise en place. Once you brown those peppercorns and remove them from the hot peanut oil, it's a matter of dumping in the ingredients and browning and deglazing. And don't forget a lid to contain all the steam and cooking juices as the eggplant cooked for 7 minutes.

Because I only had 3 eggplants and used only half a pound of the ground pork, I didn't share with Cecilia, but I should have...

...because Patrick declared it too spicy. And so I'll have to eat the leftovers or extend it with the rest of the ground pork and a packet of mapo tofu sauce that Cecilia had given me and maybe get a couple more Japanese eggplants and share it with her. It's that spicy and yummy.

Clay: Dinnerware Ambitions

I had gone to my local charity shop looking for a clay form, specifically a round platter with a coupe rim. Most of the platters were oval and the chargers had too big a rim or some ugly decorative element that wouldn’t work as a plate mold. And then I saw this kitschy tray.                                          

Tacky am I right?!? But I think it’s the perfect mold. I measured—at least 11” in diameter. With clay shrinkage I might end up with a dinner-sized plate and not a salad plate after two firings than if I used a regular plate.                          

I was ever so patient after pressing Obsidian (formerly Cassius) Clay into this tray. I removed the plastic I had over it after smoothing with a rib and buffing and refining the edges. And when it was almost bone dry, I even used sand paper to smooth rough edges even more but let some uneven texture remain for that handmade obviousness. And I rather love it. Wabi sabi for sure.            

I’ll remember to measure its diameter after the bisque firing. The plan is to put white underglaze into the bottom striping and in my name, then wax resist the bottom and the rim for that contrast between raw and glazed. And then dip into Colonial White or Gloss White overglaze. And I can’t wait to use this form for porcelain. But since I’ve only the one mold, it’s slow plate making. I’m hoping to slip into the studio Tuesday afternoon to press another slab of dark clay and maybe take home some clay balls to pinch pot into spoons. And if this plate fires to the right size, I'll want to make at least 4 plaster slump molds to make multiple plates at a time.

Cook: Arroz con Pollo

At Antilles Elementary in Puerto Rico, the school lunch every day was black beans and rice. Every. Day. Sometimes I’d tell my mom that I was tired of the school lunch, and she would let me bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a roll of fruit Lifesavers for dessert. And Thursday night I got nostalgic for that Latino Caribbean lunch. And finally was in a mood to cook and to get comfort and cozy because the weather was rainy. However, I had no black beans in my pantry, neither dry nor canned though I did find a package of yellow rice as well as the long grain white rice I was going to cook and these spice packets.   

I also had a lots and lots of bunching onions and peppers still from our late summer and fall garden.                        

And leftover rotisserie chicken as well as the bone and vegetable broth I made from it. I broke out the cast iron and olive oil and started preheating.             

I also got to chopping which took up most of the cooking of my Arroz con Pollo. And had found a recipe in our America’s Test Kitchen cookbook which has become my Joy of Cooking tome at this stage in my home cooking career.           

The recipe was only a rough guideline for this chicken and rice dish because I wasn’t going to marinade boneless and skinless chicken thighs required in the recipe. But the recipe made me remember the green olives, capers, and roasted red bell peppers in my refrigerator.                  

Mise en place, I was ready to sauté. First the white parts of the spring onions.         

Then the peppers. 

Then the toasting of the long grain rice and coating each of its grains in the oil. Next minced garlic and halved cherry tomatoes. 

And then I started cooking it like a risotto and adding the bone broth in stages for the rice to soak up and start steaming. And put in the contents of the spice packets to start coloring the dish red and yellow. And tasting. Always tasting. The rice was still too firm to the teeth, and so I covered it and let it simmer.

And then I was constantly lifting the lid to see if the rice soaked up more cooking liquid and tasting and biting the rice to see whether I needed to add more broth.

And I was easy on the salt. Only half a teaspoon. Because I knew. It was then time to add the salty bites of capers and green olives.

And let the rice simmer some more to meld all the flavors. Finally it was time to put in the rotisserie chicken and red bell peppers, which I didn't want to overcook, but let the dish heat through.

Serving time.

And one of the spice packets contained culantro, but fresh cilantro can only enhance the dish more and add that beautiful green pop of color. Cecilia, with whom I shared dinner, loved it. She said it was nothing like the arroz caldo she grew up eating. And I replied that this chicken and rice was not Filipino, but my version of Puerto Rican. No matter. We ate and enjoyed.