clay: carving, glazing and throwing

Yesterday I could not help myself: I was at Clay Life from 2:30 PM or thereabouts until 9:15 PM. Most of the time I was carving. Figuring out the positive and negative on a black underglaze canvas from an illustration of artichokes was a challenge for my brain. I thought I’d better take a picture before I fucked the whole platter up.           

And I kept carving. Even though my border is so crooked and even though I touched up the ‘chokes which I probably should have left well enough alone.                                    

And after finishing sgraffito #2 (yeah I’ll be counting all I've done from now on), I also touched up pumpkin and pink underglazes on another platter and set a planter of the same texture (I’ll use Blushing Pink and Tangerine overglazes on that pot) on the greenware shelf. And then I finally decided on the color for a bisque piece that had been on that shelf for a couple weeks.                           

What I really appreciate at Clay Life is the reclaiming of ceramic materials. The rinse basins of clay tools and pans allow sediment to settle on the bottom and get mixed with trimmings which sit in barrels of watery sludge until it's put into the pug mill (the owner, David calls him Fred). There are also 3 rinse buckets in the glazing area, and all the glaze rinsed off tools and brushes likewise gets reclaimed in "mystery" glaze--Old Mystery looks blue with hints of copper and caramel, and I'm hoping those colors emerge on my curio shelf. And then after carving and glazing, I threw 2 bowls and a vase which collapsed a bit on its side, but I let it slump over and remain because maybe it'll make for an interesting glaze surface.

cook + consumerism = a tinned fish collection

It's my birthday month, and I've been spendy.  Yesterday at Costco besides milk for the hubs and poke for me, I also bought socks and undies in my favorite color palette of pinks and tans as well as wine and a large tin of lemon cream panettone. Got home and looked at the dining table filled with stuff I've bought or are in stages of  making and my stacks of tinned seafood. Besides the library book on Tin to Table, I'd also been perusing online articles on the topic. Here's my favorite from Serious Eats.                                

 

I know that Gabrielle Hamilton used to serve as a bar snack a tin of  sardines alongside Triscuit crackers at her restaurant Prune. I like a snack of smoked brislings and if I feel like expending energy, with a small baguette and butter and cornichons. And now, I'm thinking of throwing a tinned fish party. 

Drinks will be easy. I'll just tell guests to bring a bottle of their favorite wine.

And what's also going to be hip and stylish about a tinned fish party are easy sides which come from a jar too or as simple to cook as a pot of beans and slicing vegetables for salads.

And mustn't forget condiments!

As I read this, I realize how easy it would be to initiate a tinned fish club and maybe assign people to bring a can like I do for potlucks. However, in surveying my neighbors, a few are not fans of fish. I'll need to still invite them, but encourage them to bring a small wedge of their favorite cheese or a bottle of their favorite wine and drink their meal. In the meantime I ate my own with smoked brislings Cecilia gave me for my birthday, cherry pepper pickle, dill cucumber pickle, baguette and butter, and an arugula and heirloom tomato salad dressed in white balsamic vinaigrette.                             

I liked my meal, but I suppose others would not. I still want to host a conserva party.

cook: saturday supper of calamari steak

Weather conditions at Oyster Point were calm and flat--1.2 knots winds, but the currents were against us, and so outrigger canoe practice was still a workout. I was pleasantly sore and still high on endorphins when I got to the Central Park ceramics studio--my contemporary candelabra built from speckled buff is getting bone dry along with its catch plate; I adhered the iron oxide decal to my pear along with a little more green underglaze to put on the green ware shelf for a low fire; added a bit more green underglaze to another pear which I'll finish next week in order to bisque fire. Pictures to be posted next week of work hopefully done and works in progress. When I got home, I was ready to cook! I took my time with the calamari steaks. Salted them and then lay in an egg wash and then breaded liberally in Italian and panko bread crumbs before pan frying in olive oil. And then melting butter and adding lemon juice and capers to make a sauce to nestle the calamari in.                           

Likewise I took my time with the salad, emulsifying lemon juice, honey crystals, Dijon mustard and bottled white balsamic dressing before using it to mellow red onions before tossing with arugula greens right before serving. Ditto on the butter garlic noodles, first boiling the noodle for 8 minutes to be al dente and then heating butter and smashed garlic on a low heat and then adding hot cream with liberal sprinkles of black pepper and just a touch of salt before simmering the noodles to soak up the cream sauce with lights sprinkles of Asiago cheese. 

 

And of course, Patrick exclaimed, I thought we were gonna eat leftovers. No, silly man. The leftovers are what I eat for lunch at work.

Tomorrow I'm hosting my in-laws for lunch, and I'm thinking I'll cook Mexican if I don't decide to host at home and instead take them to Pacific Catch. Either Mole Verde with Pork and White Beans with Radish Pico or seafood bowls at a restaurant.

cook: salisbury steak night

This morning I’ll be paddling out from Coyote Point, probably to the tower and around in Brisbane just before you get to San Francisco, which you can see from Highway 101 in the Peninsula. There was exactly an overflow of 6 people on the sign-up, and so yesterday late afternoon I helped my club load another outrigger canoe from the club's cage in Foster City onto a trailer to haul it to the San Mateo harbor and marina for this morning's workout. But before I left, I started our Friday night supper of Salisbury steak.  I didn't remember the recipe, and so looked it up on Recipe Tin Eats. I didn't have panko bread crumbs, but I did have Italian seasoned bread crumbs. The recipe had me grate half an onion into the bread crumbs. And then added all the other ingredients including the 3/4 pound of ground beef leftover from hamburgers for dinner earlier this week: a couple teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, a couple tablespoons of ketchup, a couple teaspoons of dry mustard, and a couple teaspoons of chicken bouillon because I didn't see until later the beef bouillon cubes.         

I also spooned a tablespoon of beef soup base into a small pot of hot water to set up the gravy and started browning the football shaped patties in olive oil in my cast iron. Before I left I also sliced up a package of large brown mushrooms and chopped another small onion as well as peeled two Russet potatoes, cut them up and set in water to boil later. 

 

In the hour that I was gone, I instructed Patrick to cook the small head of cabbage in the fridge. But he didn't want dinner at 7:30 he said, and so he cooked the mashed potatoes and started browning my onions and mushrooms when I messaged him to start my gravy. When I arrived home, I sprinkled flour on the onions and mushrooms and then added beef broth and water and put the "steaks" into the gravy to simmer for another 30 minutes during which my husband pulled out the boiled cabbage, buttered it and re-heated his mashed potatoes while I watched the proteins cook. I love a team effort. 

I would've liked a bit more crunch to the cabbage, but no matter, now I have lots of vegetable to add to my noodles or eat as a side with other leftover dishes. And tonight after paddling and then pottery, I'll cook the calamari steaks I have thawing in the refrigerator.

clay: underglazing and more sgraffito

A couple weeks ago I trimmed all the bowls I threw the couple weeks before, and instead of inscribing text into this one, I decided to not bisque it just yet and to paint black underglaze in the interior. One week later, I finally carved it on a Sunday night after glazing all my other bowls.    

I liked it; a classmate, Al said it was beautiful while I was carving it, and it has drawn some comments of praise on Facebook. Last night, another Clay Life member said she admired when it was on the greenware shelf. And I’ve since hand built a serving platter and want to sgraffito carve that pot as well but with artichokes. Another week later, I adhered overglazes on my avocado/guacamole bowl.  

 

I also spent the evening painstakingly painting pumpkin and pink underglazes on a platter with a texture I consider art nouveau minimalist for its pinstripes and swirls as well as red, pumpkin, yellow, straw, and green underglazes on these autumn leaves that will be tealight holders and embellishments (they're smaller leaves inscribed with "blessed," "grateful," and "thankful" for the Thanksgiving/Friendsgiving table).

I now also remember that I need to look on the bisque shelves the next time I'm at Clay Life for the snowflakes I cut out inscribed with lyrics from "Winter Wonderland" and "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow." And now looking upon that leaf, I wish I was a bit more blotchy as opposed to streaky with my finger painting of underglazes.

clay: “this is not a pear”

I’d been wanting to make a pear for ever. I’d made one months ago with reclaimed clay that I knew contained speckled buff, but it exploded in the kiln. I resumed the project over the summer, finger painted Hot Lips and chartreuse and mixed blue and yellow underglazes to create green. Unfired, the bisque pear was looking good, but with the clear glaze over it, I ❤️ my pear rattle so much.

Unfortunately, during the firing, my clay mate, Mondrian’s fish bumped up against the pear and created a burr, which I sanded off with a Dremel tool, so as not to get cut by glass. Meral said I could fire it again and that’s the plan. Rub some more chartreuse over the exposed clay surface along with a bit of low-fire clear glaze and then bisque fire with my iron oxide decal. And I've two other pears already built, waiting for the same applications of clear glaze and decals.

cook: cauliflower pizza is terrible

Last night I needed a quick meal but was tired of leftovers. A month or so ago I bought frozen cauliflower pizzas. Just to try. I like cauliflower. I like pizza. Surely the two can come together to make a tasty pie.

And just in case, I amped them up with Italian sausage on one and bocconcini and more fresh basil on the other along with a chopped chianti tomato and basil blossoms on both.             

And the verdict is nope, nope, nope.

I'm not going to say that cauliflower pizza is even acceptable. Even with additional gourmet toppings, the pies were not good. I like a frozen pizza, but these were terrible. I looked at the ingredients on the box--corn starch being the star ingredient followed by cauliflower and potato starch. No fucking wonder. I didn't know that the product was aiming for gluten free. I'd rather eat one slice of a wheat flour pizza with heads of roasted cauliflower atop marinara and melting cheese rather than a whole pie of this awful crust. So that is my mission--to create a cauliflower pizza but not a cauliflower crust to ban this awful memory.

clay: copper red + peppermint cream glazes on kurinuki box

I’m slowly glaze firing the kurinuki boxes I carved last spring. They’ve become lovely test pots for glaze combinations.                           

I thought I’d see a glimpse of pink in this box, but it’s more cream than peppermint.                       

Kinda wish I had layered blushing pink instead though I still like the final box. I let no clay in the bag go to waste. I'm sure I'll be carving more boxes from scraps (if not throwing them into itty bitty test pots for air plants) and reclaimed dark clays on which blue and green glazes are so striking.

cook: breakfast for dinner on repeat

I’ve cooked Denver O'Brien potatoes before, but breakfast-for-dinner bore repeating because of the wonderful breakfast my neighbors treated me to on my birthday, where I wolfed a bay shrimp omelet with avocado, jack cheese and hollandaise sauce as well as home fried potatoes and two hotcakes with lots of butter and syrup. I had heirloom potatoes in my pantry that Patrick brought home from the community garden as well for my clean-the-refrigerator meal. Green bell pepper (de rigueur for this dish), tomato, ham, cheese, onion, garlic mise en place on my cutting board.        

 

I also had strips of bacon intended for a Cobb salad which never happened, and so that was going into the dish also. In the bacon fat, I fried the boiled potatoes. I thought they were red potatoes, but the flesh was yellow and tasted like Yukon Golds.

 

Once the potatoes were crisp, in went the bell peppers and then tomatoes and onion and garlic into the cast iron.

 

Next the ham and green onions and lastly the cheese and more green onions sprinkled on top.

And this was my cooking really for the week because Patrick is complaining about too many leftovers in the refrigerator though that includes the macaroni and cheese to go with the grocery store fried chicken for Friday dinner.         

I've one serving left of the potatoes for a fried egg for another dinner this week while I make breakfast sandwiches with the brioche buns in my cupboard and ham and cheese still in the fridge.

cook: asian invasion in my kitchen

Did I mention that it's hot as heck in the Bay Area? Despite my kitchen being as warm as an oven, I needed to not let vegetables molder and decided that they needed to be tempura.

And if I was going to batter and fry kabocha, sweet potato, eggplant, and broccoli, I was also going to make chicken karaage.

I must've stood over hot oil in a skillet for over an hour already, and there were still lots of vegetables to be cooked.

I got it done and there was Japanese food to share with all the neighbors. All that frying because I still had half a kabocha squash in the fridge leftover from a previous Japanese dinner.

Patrick brought home more eggplant, and I still had the zucchini and yellow squash that I hadn't fried as tempura. Thai was next. All the ingredients below turned into a chicken and vegetable green curry with jasmine rice. I also happened to have a lot of peppers, both bell and chili to add with the Italian basil into the curry...

 

....but then Cecilia said I needed to thin her Thai basil plants when I said I was adding the Italian basil and holy basil to my curry and sharing with her.

 

All that herbaceous goodness definitely amped up the flavors of my curry. I wished I had remembered the kaffir lime leaves in my freezer, but.... 

....Cecilia said my green curry was the best I'd ever made and it made for a good lunch the next day at school.

I also still had a couple of pork chops from the bahn mi I made the previous week, which tonight turned into Vietnamese noodle bowls. Cecilia grilled shrimp and culled more Thai basil and mint from her garden while I tossed the leftover chops in Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, hoisin sauce, soy sauce and lemongrass. I also chopped Napa cabbage and cucumbers and shredded carrots along with cilantro and green onion.

 

The surf and turf proteins along with the rice noodles and vegetables melded deliciously with a Laotian coconut chili dressing.

And Cecilia wanted to make noodle bowls for the neighbors, but thankfully they declined and so I have what's left for my lunch at school today.