cook: tuscan bean soup

While reviewing the recipe for Arroz con Pollo, I also spied this baked beans recipe, which I made instead into soup.                  

Luckily I had cooked a broth with chicken bones, onion, leek, and celery scraps over the weekend. And also saw this can of Italian cranberry beans in the cupboard, but didn't have a fennel bulb and so made a run to the grocery store.              

 

I chopped a fennel bulb, an onion bulb, a few stalks of celery, and cloves of garlic. I had cooked Italian sausage the week before, but decided to add more to it--a spicy sausage too. I went into the herb bed to snip sage, rosemary and thyme and chopped them finely.    

And then the sautéing and sweating of the onions in a little butter and olive oil along with the herbs. Next the fennel, celery, and garlic.                            

Next the raw Italian sausage and herbs to sauté and sweat (pinches of salt help) for 5 minutes and then the can of beans and bone broth.   

I let it simmer, but it needed more beans I thought and looked for cannellini in my pantry. Found it and it doubled the volume of soup(and had to use my bigger pot) which I boiled for a couple hours.

It looked done and hearty and tasted pretty delicious.               

I poured the soup into jars, and I've meals ready for eating when I’m too lazy to cook.                            

cook: arroz con pollo

I was lazy last week and bought a rotisserie chicken. There was so much leftover that Patrick said I needed to cook into enchiladas, but I was tired of that rotation and decided to make Arroz con Pollo instead. I had chopped a lot of onion and garlic and had on hand: olive oil, rice, chicken bone and vegetable broth, olives, capers, and luckily remembered the packets of sazon seasoning which contain annato, cilantro, and saffron.                     

Thankfully I reviewed the recipe I had in my big black binder from America's Test Kitchen. Because I wouldn't have remembered the bay leaves, the cumin, and the frozen peas. And then it became a matter of sautéing the onions and then adding the rice to the softened onions after 10 minutes. I also added a pat of butter because the rice was not glistening enough, and I wanted the grains to be toasted.

 

After toasting the rice, I added the Sazón, two flavors, one that was Culantro y Achiote and the other, Azufran. I also added the garlic and bay leaves as well as cumin. And because it was looking dry, the chicken and vegetable bone broth.

And then it was a matter of letting the rice simmer for 15 minutes to cook. However, I remembered the leftover chopped jalapenos and cilantro from the other night's tacos and added that to the simmering cast iron.

The rice had 5 more minutes to go, and so then I added the olives and the frozen green peas. 

Lastly, the leftover rotisserie chicken, which I had already sliced into chunks and the leftover lime wedges from taco night. I then folded the protein and citrus in the rice to combine.

Hubs said it was interesting, and I said, but I've cooked this before for dinner.

I interpreted my husband's comments to mean that he could eat the dish, but that it wasn't his favorite. I'm leaving on a road trip to Palm Springs, and so I portioned the leftovers into 3 servings and gave it to neighbors. Well a couple nights later, he asked for that leftover chicken and rice dish. Sheesh.

clay: handmade home vision board

We've a maid coming today to clean our home, which forced me to de-clutter so that she could do her job. Crazy to have to clean for the cleaning service, but I even found an article on the etiquette of cleaning for the cleaners.  And so I did clear my kitchen counters--there's only my Vitamix blender, dishwashing liquid, sponge, drain cover, and the paper towels in its rack on one side of the galley kitchen, and salt, pepper, sugar crocks, butter dish and fruit bowl on the other side. My dining table is likewise clear except for a printer, candlesticks, candy bowl, and a vase of flowers. Ditto for clutter in the living room BECAUSE junk is crammed onto my bookcases. There's no dusting of my bookcase until I get rid of said junk. And in my bedroom, I picked everything off the floor (lots of sewing projects in garbage bags shoved into my closet). Last night I decided I was going to throw away even more stuff than I already have in these past few months in preparation for another deep dusting of surfaces in a few months. The goal is to some day have a home that looks spare but comfortable and soothing like the picture below.

Yeah it's all beige and white and maybe bland, but so soothing and serene. I want that tranquil and rustic simplicity. I've also found pictures of ceramics I could make to create that ambience.

The overlapping slabs remind me of Ann Van Hoey's bowls, and I've fallen in love with a Cone 10 rutile glaze at clay club.

Yesterday I was telling Zan that I'm in love with her autobiographical bottle made with red clay with white slip into which she had inscribed mishima imagery. But the bottle above is also giving me ideas of combining the red and white stoneware clays I've been working with. 

When I came home, I could smell the clean. There still lingered the scent of detergent, surfaces were gleaming, and my fingers glided smoothly on counters and tabletops. We didn't instruct the maid on what to clean, for we wanted to see what she determined needed scrubbing. There were a few surfaces that I did have to attack with a disinfecting wipe like the bottoms of the screens of our sliding door (BUT omg our windows are clear and sparkling!). I'm pretty pleased with the dusting.

Ugh, I hate the printer being on top of my dining table. I'm hoping we'll get rid of it when we both retire from our day jobs. I did buy a printer cart which was just delivered and which I'll assemble to make this tabletop even more attractive. Why yes she did dust my candlesticks!

And my bedroom is spotless. We'll see how long that lasts. I guess a rug would soften the room and make it more cozy.

Even my bedside table has been winnowed down to just one journal and one fiction book and one nonfiction book.

I wonder if the maid had to move the bed to dust underneath it, which I'll check this weekend. I was shocked that she even emptied the refrigerator to wipe down the shelves. Next time, I'll tell her to clean something else instead. 

I was loathe to use my newly polished stove, but I did anyway. Cecilia gave me a parbaked crust from her sourdough which I turned into a meat lovers' pizza. I had trekked to the grocery store just to buy and brown Italian sausage for this pie. I also added salami, soppresata, and pepperoni.                          

Seriously better than any Papa Murphy's pizza I ever brought home, and I really miss their take ‘n bake pies.

I told Cecilia that I loved, loved, loved this pie. The crust was in between the light, crispy Detroit and the chewiness of a foccaccia. I may not have used Wisconsin brick cheddar, but there was still a butteriness to this pizza that I LOVED from all the olive oil in the dough and in the crushed tomato sauce to which Cecilia adds garlic, fresh oregano, and balsamic vinegar. Molto buono.

cook: kare kare

I grew up eating rice with every dinner and would get tired of the starch and of my mom's rotation of sinigang, adobo, beef stew and other Filipino dishes. And then sometime in my teens, my mom started cooking Kare Kare. I bought oxtails months ago, nostalgic for that Filipino stew thickened by peanut butter and rice flour, redolent of shrimp paste, full of Asian vegetables like bok choi, eggplant, and long beans. I went to Ranch 99, hoping to buy the seasoning packet for kare kare, but nope--they were out, that and a can of banana blossoms though I did come away with beef neck bones, Japanese eggplant and green beans to supplement my Napa cabbage from the garden. Maybe a trip to Seafood City in South San Francisco would not be necessary the next day. After my workout that Sunday, I decided to resort to what ingredients were on hand and cook it like my mother would have had to back in the day. Dayum it was a lot of meat that brimmed to the top of my stock pot. I boiled it for 2 hours, and then threw in a whole onion into the pot along with a few small cloves of garlic. Note to self. Add lots more garlic next time.

 

I prepped the vegetables for the stew, and Cecilia brought over her larger stock pot. I removed the meat and its bones and kept them in my stockpot and put the stock from all the boiling meat into Cecilia's larger pot. 

 

I boiled the Napa cabbage, green beans and eggplant for 5 minutes in the hot broth and then moved them into my stock pot. 

Gravy next. I made a slurry with rice flour, shrimp paste, peanut butter, and annatto powder. At the last minute, I remembered the fish sauce.

 

Into the stewing broth went the slurry. 

 

And then I divided the stew between two pots.

I served it with steamed brown jasmine and long grain white rice. I should’ve have cooked the liquid down more because it was a bit too soupy.

But I found the supper comforting though the hubs put Louisiana hot sauce on his. Hmmph.

clay: bone-dry candelabra and crafting questions

It’s been a week. A professionally busy five days of teaching, open house, chairing a meeting, reading and writing for book talks and moderating a panel of young adult authors for a convention at the public library as well as personally losing my shit. No comment on that. 

But I managed to roll a slab for a porcelain plate, made a tree-textured porcelain plate, and refined the edges of two Obsidian salad plates that are all on the green ware shelf. Yesterday in the community studio, I moved my candelabra from a studio shelf to the green ware shelf into a shelf in the kiln room. Nerve-wracking. And before that I crafted delicate candleholders from round shaped cookie cutters. Too delicate. I know next Saturday I’m going to throw those clay cutouts into a bucket to rehydrate and start over. I’m going to make the slab at least three times thicker. And burnish the circles and apply white glaze maybe to parts of them. 

And then I had to leave and get to the public library. What a whirlwind of an afternoon. I was starving and had bought a teriyaki salmon bento box at the Japanese grocery. Got to the library, checked in, returned library books, picked up schwag as a thank you from Carla, the youth librarian at the San Mateo Public Library, and learned from Susan, a librarian at the San Bruno Public Library that the panel I was moderating had switched out one author for another. Wha-wha-what?!? And so Susan was then googling the synopsis of the author’s novel and my mind is trying to take it all in and figuring out what fucking questions I’m gonna be asking these three authors as well as trying to tie them altogether into a theme about identity and courage. And whew I got through those 40 minutes. I did the usual and had the authors introduce themselves and if I could do it over again, I would've asked these 3 questions: 1) To what extent does YOUR identity inform the identity of your protagonist? 2) Can you explain if and how an event, experience, something you read or heard impelled your book? 3) Side characters and foils are so essential to the challenges and fears that hindered and helped your protagonist find the courage to meet and conquer them, please describe the friends, family members, and maybe even enemies in your novel. I rambled and sort of asked those questions and generally flailed around as a moderator, but I'm glad I did it.

Afterward, I collected signings from 4 authors and stood on the sidelines, trying to decompress.

And the authors were all so gracious, and I was so grateful for them being themselves.

And wow did it take a while to get Randy's signature on my books. After the event, I was invited to Wursthall for a drink. I left the library and parked and got to the restaurant early. I walked around downtown San Mateo to see close up the changes to businesses and the city in this pandemic.

My favorite Japanese restaurant had new signage, but I didn't venture in to see if there were also changes to the interior. At Wursthall, Susan split her currywurst, which was just okay. However, I loved my beer.

 

I had still a headache from the day before, and so I pondered just sipping wine and drinking a lot of water with it. Susan suggested that I drink the radler, which is like a shandy. Only the lemon in my radler is brewed in the IPA. Twas delicious and I wanna return to Wursthall. And eat a wood-fired pretzel or a Cubano or preserved lemon slaw or chicken schnitzel or porchetta. Sign me up.