cook: lemon and onion pizza

It had been a year since I had made my lemon and red onion pizza, and I knew this because my Facebook memories showed the pizza I had made this time last year. My cooking has become seasonal and improvisational, based on what Patrick has harvested from our garden and me making do with only the ingredients in my pantry and fridge rather than running to the grocery store. And the latest harvests are alliums--spring garlic and red onions though I did buy sugar snap peas because the flowers in the garden crowd out the choice to grow even more vegetables. Also my friend, Donna gave me two Meyer lemons though I had one in the fridge leftover from the batch, my friend, Michaela gave me.     

Luckily I had bought a ball of pizza dough a week ago which I had set out Saturday morning to thaw and rise. I also made myself a sumptuous lunch of a seafood Louis salad before heading to the ceramics studio.

After my Saturday afternoon at the clay studio, it was time to assemble the pizza and some kind of salad.                          

I tried to keep my Saturday supper simple. Just arugula and spring greens with balsamic vinaigrette and Parmesan flakes. I parbaked the pizza crust for 10 minutes in a 480 degree oven and sprinkled sliced red onion, lemon peel and wheels of the lemon minus the pith, goat cheese, a bit of mozzarella, a sprinkling of grated reggiano, some of the parmesan flakes, a bit of rosemary and sage, and a generous sprinkling of thyme.                            

I popped the pie back into oven for maybe 20 minutes or until the toppings were golden brown.                           

I tossed the greens with dressing and even more cheese. I drizzled olive oil and Maldon sea salt atop the hot pie.                  

Patrick had to comment about lemon in a pizza which I ignored, but the onions were sweet and savory and complemented the tart goat cheese.               

Our light Saturday supper done, I then dug into dessert and nothing heralds spring to me more than strawberry rhubarb pie.               

Everyone I know who bakes biscuits and pies tells me that these doughs are easy peasy, but I’ve no inclination to master baking. I am happy enough to open a can for biscuits and to buy pie with perfect flaky crust from a good bakery.             

A slice of a sweet and tart pie (because berries and crust reign supreme for me as a dessert) with a scoop of Tahitian and Madagascar vanilla ice cream made me a happy diner on a Saturday night.

cook: bahn mi again, but it gets better and better each time

Before going to the ceramics studio, I gardened. That is, I removed dead foliage from my succulent pots.       

I also admired the olive tree that Meral gave Patrick and appreciated my dog sunning herself beside me.                    

And my rooftop garden in the pottery studio was a more successful attempt. Let’s hope I can finish it next Saturday. Afterwards Cecilia came over in the afternoon with baguettes, and oh heck I needed cook the pork belly, which I roasted while Cecilia grilled pork shoulder. Luckily the carrots and daikon were already pickled.   

  

The pork belly came out crispy.        

As before, I had a sandwich making station where Cecilia split the baguettes, I filled them with pate, grilled pork, roasted pork belly, Kewpie Mayo, hoisin sauce, Sriracha sauce, cucumber, jalapeños, pickled carrot and daikon salad, and cilantro.

I think I constructed 7 sandwiches total including one for myself and Patrick.                                

Fresh bread makes for a superior sandwich and has become a fun way to feed a crowd.

cook & clay: the search for pâté and window shopping as inspo

I forgot all about Cecilia baking baguettes and grilling Vietnamese pork for bahn mi sandwiches this weekend. And so I shopped at my favorite produce shop for cilantro, jalapeños, Persian cucumbers, daikon, and carrots. Since I was downtown, I stopped at the fancy grocery store for pâté since the French grocery store would have already been closed. We are all set for this evening’s Saturday supper. While at Draeger's, I also browsed their awesome kitchen goods store and their floral department.      

I love the hand lettered text look of the cookbook on the above left, and I love the idea of no-recipe recipes or of cooking without exact measurements and improvising with the ingredients you have on hand of the cookbook to its right. And definitely my cooking has gotten a lot more relaxed and casual since returning to in-person learning and work in this pandemic. 

The cookbook above left encapsulates what's important to me while cooking: flavor, and I aim for beautiful food when I try to incorporate color. And of course, I adore Jack Pepin--both his philosophy of not wasting food and being resourceful as well as his watercolor illustrations. I’m on a journey to someday publish my own cookbook, and so the plan is to put all these cookbooks on hold at the public library and incorporate what I love into my own. I love a cookbook with heartwarming personal narrative or an interesting backstory and sumptuous photography. I want my cookbook’s pages on thick paper that’s almost card stock (Chronicle Books has that down pat) and sturdy binding. I would love for a cookbook to lay flat, but I hate those plastic spiral bindings. I’m particularly interested in the Filipino American cookbook below.

I’ll have to find an Eggslut when I go to Pasadena and Anaheim next month. There were planters in the floral shop downstairs that I’d like to try my hand at making in the ceramics studio.            

Okay the vase above is glass, but I like that the rim which resembles the curves found in Cala lilies. Surely I can build that rim and then score and slip it on to a coil pot? And the fluting on the vase below is fantastic.                              

I’m wondering if I could handbuild such a vase, or do I have to get good enough to throw large and then carve? But today my ambition is only to make some pots like the ones below.                    

I need to seek out patterns for rolling texture or carving. Okay lunch time and then off to the clay studio.

clay: rooftop garden practice

I never did get around to sowing the Thai basil seeds, but I did plant three succulents in the new speckled buff clay pots that came out of the kiln this past week and eyed my flower bed. I'll deadhead next weekend.

And there are three more succulent planters I still have to make. Whom I kidding? I’ll be forever making planters, but they are useful and good practice for joining seams. And I think the wee pots made from scrap slabs are cute. I also got to fucking around on Saturday with making planters I’m calling my rooftop garden.                       

I liked the width and the height of the planter, but my staircase needed to be narrower and the steps less high, but I brought it home anyway to perhaps finish.                         

The weather was gorgeously sunny, but the wind and lack of humidity was drying my clay beyond leather to almost bone dry. I already quashed this house to reclaim later and remake. I’ll make paper templates to make a better looking staircase and ponder the measurements of the whole building. Cecilia was in the garden too reading and said vines would look terrific hanging over the house. Oh yeah! Also fire escape-like stairs on one side of the building with windows on the opposite side would look cool too. My brain is spinning with ideas on how to execute that design.

cook: asian noodle bowl

I had leftover lemongrass pork from bahn mi sandwiches last week and decided to make a salad noodle bowl yesterday for lunch. I took some of the leftover grilled pork and pork belly and reheated in the oven to crisp up the belly.       

Next I boiled the soaked noodles in boiling water for 2 minutes before draining.

 

While I had been waiting for the water to boil, I had made a dressing of fish sauce, Palm sugar, lime juice, sriracha and water.                          

Lastly assemble all the ingredients and toss with the dressing.          

I like the contrast between the hot meat and noodles with the crisp, cool vegetables and herbs. I wish I’d had used more mint and made more dressing. I did not have any holy basil either for the salad, and so I’ll be spending some Sunday sowing these seeds.        

Huh? I didn’t know my seeds had come from Missouri. I thought I ordered from a seed company north of me in Petaluma. Alrighty then. My friend, Cecilia just bought pork shoulder and wants to make bahn mi sandwiches again, and so I’ll chop up vegetables and boil rice vermicelli noodles to include this dish into her rotation. Satay chicken and fried Indonesian tofu with peanut sauce too for this noodle salad bowl next.

cook: leftover rotisserie chicken done two ways

I try not to buy rotisserie chicken or only resort to the convenience food when I need to get dinner on the table that night without hours of cooking. Last week was one of those occasions. I've seen cookbooks with recipes incorporating rotisserie chicken, but who including my dogs can eat that much chicken? Note to self, if I ever write my own cookbook, it won't be about how to cook dishes from rotisserie chicken as an ingredient. I've also heard Patrick complain about his mom cooking chicken so often that he felt like he could pluck pinfeathers from himself. Which is why we supplement our diet of vegetables and grains with steaks and ground beef and fish more than chicken breasts or thighs. The last time I brought home a rotisserie chicken was before spring break a couple months ago, and I cooked Arroz con Pollo after the initial roast chicken and vegetables dinner. And by the way, a rotisserie chicken just doesn't compare to a roast chicken home cooked without the brining. Rotisserie chicken is so chock full of chemicals and salt that I'm sure is not healthy. While at the produce store last week, I shopped with the intention of making use of all this chicken.  

Hence, my mise en place included the usual suspects of shallots and lots of garlic.

 

And I always have scallions and with the warmer weather, basil, on hand.

 

I also bought a yellow squash, a few green beans, 

a red pepper, and some snow peas.                             

I lamented that there were no sugar snap peas, and so I took out some frozen petite peas too. I was all set to cook a Thai chicken curry, but then what would Patrick (who does not like Southeast Asian cuisine) eat? And so I set aside the coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce and palm sugar for the next night.

And then it was a flurry of boiling linguine, draining and setting it aside before sautéing the chopped vegetables in butter and olive oil and then adding heavy whipping cream and chicken to flavor into a sauce before tossing with pasta. I also sprinkled atop the pasta, fresh torn basil.

Patrick deemed the pasta primavera okay. Insert eye roll here.

And so the next night, I used the same vegetables plus the rest of the bamboo shoots from another Asian meal to make a Thai chicken curry. I had also added kaffir lime leaves and a jalapeno to the curry, and then removed the vegetables which had leached their water into the sauce so I could boil the sauce down some more to infuse it with that sweet and salty deliciousness of fish sauce and palm sugar.
         

I was first introduced to Thai food in San Francisco when I went to Marnee Thai in the Richmond District while still a college student. I loved, loved, loved whatever curry dish I ate, surprised that it didn't resemble a South Asian curry. And then a few years later would cook Thai chicken curry (both red and Panang) with a boyfriend and his friend for dinners after a day of woodworking and crafting. I had forgotten how easy it is to cook Thai food if one has access to those Southeast Asian ingredients like coconut milk, chilies, Thai basil, lemongrass, fish sauce and palm sugar though back then we used brown sugar instead. And our Thai dishes were maybe not as flavorful, using the curry paste without the lime leaves at a Ranch 99 and lemongrass which I can even find these days at a Safeway.

Thirty-five years ago, I would never have guessed that Thai dishes with all its raw ingredients and heavy use of fresh herbs would become so popular outside of Thailand. But I am vowing to not buying another rotisserie chicken for at least 3 months.