cloth and cook: modern cross block and south in the mouth summer

I had been sewing all morning and afternoon. My sketch (and adjustments to the logs of the block) of a modern cross block was coming to life.      

I have sewn a total of 12 blocks though the picture below only shows 10.

 

However, I needed a break from rotary cutting and stitching and needed to get dinner early on the table, so Patrick could get to his board meeting on time. He had just brought home crooked neck and zucchini, and I wanted to make fritters again. What is it about summer that makes me wanna cook southern comfort food? This time, instead of grating an onion, I just used onion and garlic powder, and chopped a scallion and added frozen corn. I had marinated thin pork chops in buttermilk, paprika, and salt. Forgot to add hot sauce. And then I dredged the chops in Italian breadcrumbs and black pepper.

 

I fried the pork chops first. Three minutes on one side in medium hot oil and two or three minutes on the other side.

 

Fried pork chops sure is a lot easier and less time consuming than fried chicken.

And then I skimmed all the cracklings from the fat and plopped the summer squash fritters next.

The frying of the fritters took five minutes per side.

And because time was of the essence, I didn't make macaroni and cheese from scratch and instead served up Stouffers.

Nor did I make a ranch or goddess dressing for the fritters, but it was delicious anyway. Gotta love one pan frying. Another favorite summer supper until the tomato harvest. And salmon grilling.

cook: birria ramen

I was dubious about the recipe for ramen on the package of birria I bought, but I couldn't see us eating any more birria tacos. I remembered buying my favorite green noodles at Daiso.

My birria ramen bowl was delicious to my surprise. I added a bit of beef broth to which I added the miso seasoning packet from my seaweed noodles, hardboiled an egg and found seaweed in my pantry drawer as well as scallions in my vegetable bin. And I've one more serving of birria in the fridge for another one of these leftover nights.

cook: steak night

Patrick was tiring of all the dishes I was cooking in my efforts to shop my pantry and said the dogs needed steak. And so while he was grilling the rib eyes on our bbq grill, I grated a few zucchini as well as onion and spring garlic, which I had salted and then squeezed all the water out, and then combined it with an egg and flour. I fried the mixtures into zucchini fritters.

 

I also baked a russet potato. I loved a baked potato for dinner in my vegetarian days, but now I split one with the hubs, which I always slather in butter and sour cream and chives. I also always make a sauce of horseradish, sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, and chives for steak dinners.

I sometimes wonder if at the end of my lifetime, there will no longer be steak because of how intensively beef cattle deplete the land of resources that our planet cannot sustain.

cook: kalbi + banchan

I suppose I’m in the mood these days for ethnic, specifically Asian cuisines. I'd cooked Vietnamese and Filipino nights, and a week ago, I had picked up short ribs, already marinated in a Kalbi sauce. We also had just harvested summer squash and cucumbers from our garden, and so I knew Korean night had to be next. I'm not as familiar with the banchan or side dishes that serve as appetizers or the prelude to the grilled proteins of a Korean meal. The fermented cabbage would be easy as you can now buy kimchi at just about any grocery store here in California, even the Grocery Outlet where I bought this jar. And I improvised another banchan with just a green salad with miso dressing.

 

And so with the cucumber, I made a oi muchim.    

And then it was just a matter of frying up the short ribs and boiling some rice.

The last time, I cooked kalbi, my husband didn't care for it, and those ribs had come from Trader Joe's which he said were too grisly. These short ribs had come from Costco and weren't already pre-cooked.

 

I think the last time we ate at a Korean restaurant was years ago with my brother and his wife. I remember really enjoying tiny dishes of not just pickled cucumbers, but pickled bean sprouts, radishes and scallions as well as other types of fermented Napa cabbage before grilling the bulgogi. I really need to trek to the H Mart, which I just remembered opened just a year ago.

cook: sinigang

After the alfresco lunch of Asian rice noodle bowls, I told Cecilia not to cook dinner either because I was going to cook the Filipino dish regularly in rotation of Sinigang. Growing up in Groton, Connecticut, my mother would go to a tiny Filipino grocery store in New London to buy the unripe tamarind or sampaloc that was in the freezer in order to make the sour soup. She boiled onion, pork or beef neck bones, the sampaloc, tomato, taro and cabbage (either white or bok choi or whatever was available). My dad would add okra and eggplant to his Sinigang. I had trekked out to Seafood City in Daly City a couple days ago and bought the Knorr's sinigang flavoring packet as well as bok choi, Filipino eggplant, taro, and long beans as well as pork shoulder attached to the bone. The instructions called for dissolving the packet in quarts and quarts of water and then boiling it. I added the pork bones into the pot too. While the broth heated, I washed and trimmed and cut the vegetables.       

 

I recall helping my mom cook this dish. She would have me skim the marrow and scum and fat at the top of the pot. Whereas I used a big spoon as a child, this time I used just a colander and didn't remove the fat which to me is flavor.

I let the meat and bones and broth simmer on the stove for a couple hours. I didn't add the vegetables, nor started cooking a separate pot of rice until 15 minutes before serving.

The vegetables lost their vibrant emerald color as they got tender. I resigned myself to gray soup though it was delicious. Just as I did in my childhood, I put soy sauce on my rice and vegetables and meat instead of stinky fish sauce. Before cooking dinner, my one mission that afternoon was to find my favorite flavor of Thrifty ice cream: chocolate malted krunch at a Rite Aid drugstore. I had to drive to two in order to find it, and the second store had none on its shelves either. But a store clerk kindly asked if I wanted to order the flavor. Yes! And even better, he found 8 half gallon containers in a back freezer. At 2 for 8 bucks, I had to buy two even though I had already bought pints of cappuccino krunch and mint chocolate chip. Yep, you can also see the 10 pints of Haagen-Dazs. Coffee chip which the hubs eats with his brownies and the 2 pints of vanilla that I want to make ice cream sandwiches with.

Dessert was divine last night after my sinigang dinner, and the stomach ache from all the lactose was worth it.

cook: asian noodle bowl

For whatever reason, I do not make good meatballs. I had 80/20 ground pork, to which I had added spring garlic, onion powder, lemongrass, fish sauce, soy sauce, a bit of chopped cilantro and mint, tamarind and Palm sugar. But I overworked (don't do what I did) the meat when mixing, and then the sugars burnt when I was frying the meatballs in coconut oil. Sigh.                              

The noodle bowl was salvaged by the rest of the ingredients: chopped cilantro and mint. Thai basil leaves. Sliced jalapeños. Shredded iceberg lettuce. Pickled daikon and carrots. Cucumbers, de-seeded and cut into chunks. A couple of leftover broiled shrimp which I tossed in sweet chili sauce.          

And mustn't forget vermicelli rice noodles which I boiled for 4 minutes and then shook in the colander to drain all water.           

Lastly I made a dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, Sriracha, and sliced Serrano peppers and a bit of water. Safeway didn’t have Thai chilies.            

I didn't artfully arrange or compose the salad....

But once we mixed and tossed it all together with our chopsticks, it was delicious especially because of the holy basil. Next time THOUGH I will marinate and grill fatty pork shoulder instead of meatballs. Maybe some day I'll attempt meatballs again.

(re)creation: beach respite

Our Palm Springs getaway made my neighbor, Helen want to do it again, but she said she didn't want to drive as far as San Diego and so I said look for a vacation rental in Morro Bay for the last week of July before I start work again mid-August. And beach house she found! She found a VRBO in Cayucas, between Cambria to the north and Morro Bay to south and just a 3 and a half hours drive from the Bay Area. Her criteria for the vacation rental was that it be right next to the ocean.

And the pics of the beach house look amazeballs. I plan on claiming the bedroom with the patio since I'm the early riser and will need to hang out there in case our other neighbor, Nancy joins us and takes up residence on the sofa bed. 

Helen says she wants to tour a winery or two and lay on the beach while I told her my priorities were to boogie board and hike a seashore or nearby park trail. And because this is vacation, and not travel, I plan on living in my swimsuit and packing just boogie board, coverup, sunscreen, flip flops and a beach hat. Okay book, t-shirt and shorts too.

cook: how I make an oyster po'boy in california

My favorite dishes when I traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana had been the barbecued shrimp (which to my surprise contained no barbecue sauce, but was shrimp braised in beer, butter, garlic and cayenne)at Deanie's Seafood Restaurant and an oyster po'boy at the French Quarter Jazz Festival. While I don't have access to fat oysters from the bayou, I can buy West Coast oysters from a seafood purveyor which are smaller and so flavorful and sweet that they're best eaten raw. This weekend, the Japanese grocery store had a special on kaki, panko-breaded fried oysters, which I bought, along with a bolilo roll and a head of iceberg lettuce from Safeway.        

When I was at the festival, the lady at the food booth told me that she likes her oyster po'boy with mayonnaise and ketchup. I decided instead to make a remoulade sauce with mayonnaise, stone ground mustard, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and scallions. I was too lazy to also chop capers.

I heated the already fried oysters in a 350 degree oven for five minutes and then topped them over the chopped lettuce and sliced tomatoes laid on my roll slathered with the remoulade sauce.

 

Omg delicious even without a backdrop of Cajun and zydeco music.

cook: pea salad

Saturday lunch of a Seafood Louie salad while while my husband baked the birthday cupcakes, dark chocolate with dark chocolate buttercream frosting for a neighbors' birthday party.      

I had volunteered to make a Broadway Pea Salad to go with pulled pork sliders for the party’s potluck. I had eaten this salad at someone’s party and loved loved loved it and so scoured the internet to discover that a Seattle restaurant, Clinkerdagger serves a Broadway Pea Salad that's very popular among its diners. Super simple salad to make. Just thaw frozen green petite peas. Chop onion finely and some water chestnuts in quarters, combine with mayonnaise, sour cream, white pepper, and salt and then fold in the peas to make a vegetarian version. I've seen this salad with grated cheddar cheese (yuck) or tiny cubes of ham, but I prefer the original recipe with crumbled bacon, which I add to the salad just before serving.                        

 

I don't measure ingredients precisely when I cook these days and might have used a bit too much mayonnaise. But use a couple tablespoons enough to coat the ingredients.

 

I had forgotten to use white pepper (I had used black pepper)and sour cream called for in the original recipe, but I did roast bacon (the easy clean-up way).

I was in a hurry to get to the clay studio and covered the salad sans bacon with plastic wrap and stuck in the fridge. And then before the party, crumbled all that bacon above, folded in half and then sprinkled the other half on top of the salad. And forgot to take a picture of the finished dish. Luckily, I had bought two bags of peas and still had water chestnuts and 4 strips of bacon leftover from the first batch to make a half batch on this leisurely Sunday.          

 

My neighbor, Cecilia said she normally does not like green peas, but that she liked my salad. And so I shared the other half of my second pea salad. I made this once also for a family celebration, and a sister-in-law raved over this pea salad. Make this salad, and you'll see.