Waste Not, Want Not: Denver Potatoes

My second week without a Ceramics Saturday.  I needed comfort and also to not waste food.  A few years ago, I read An Everlasting Meal:  Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler.  Her prose and prosaic approach to cooking stuck with me. Her tips and techniques and having a husband who doesn't like to go out to restaurants made me fall in love with home cooking.  I also had a fond food memory of Sunday breakfasts with a boyfriend, and we continued those companionable meals even after we broke up.  I forget the name of the waterfront restaurant of those breakfasts in Benicia, but I remember my half order of Denver Hash Browns (and really they were home fries) with a poached egg.  

Yay for leftovers.  I had sliced and fried a small bag of Yukon gold potatoes for a roast chicken dinner last week. Half a green bell pepper from a Greek salad. Grated cheddar, Swiss and jack from macaroni and cheese making. Red onion. Eggs. A package of Irish bacon discovered at the Grocery Outlet.

I chopped the onion and green bell pepper and Irish bacon and fried them in my a mini cast iron frying pan with a bit of vegetable oil.  I then nuked the potatoes and then plopped them in the pan, stirring and flipping all the ingredients so the potatoes were on the bottom for browning and vegetables on top in order not to burn. I sprinkled the cheese on top and continued cooking the potatoes to melt the cheese and then started to fry an egg in another pan--poached eggs though I love 'em--is not in my skill set.

I can't believe I used to hate eggs as a kid and a young adult, and now I love eggs whether sunny side up or poached or hard boiled.  My Denver Potatoes were delicious and satisfying.

Quilting: Campfire or a modern log cabin

I've become a grandaunt to a newborn named Isla Rae, and her mother expresses a preference for pale pink and rose pink in a baby quilt.  I had pulled Kona cotton bolts of melon and baby pink, as well pink fabrics from other lines.  And then I remembered a kit I bought from Craftsy comprised of Boundless solid fabrics with a similar color palette but punched up with yellow and purple brown.  My ceramic studio is on hiatus for the next two Saturdays, and so I spent that first Saturday shopping for silkscreen medium and brown clay.  And then came home and pulled the fabrics out.  I'd been reading the instructions and felt ready to cut the strips.  On Sunday, I finally started stitching.  I said I would stop after stitching the melon strips, but aaargh I discovered a mistake and ripped out the seam of the fig stripe on the right of this block and then trimmed down the melon strip on top to align with the other horizontal strips and the vertical and horizontal porcelain strips on the right side.

I'm trying to take my time on this quilt, so I don't have to fix any more time-consuming mistakes like my Sunday evening to produce what you see below.  And I had time enough this morning to pin a fig strip to the bottom to stitch on to this medallion tonight.

Cooking: Saturday Night Supper

I think I confided that the husband and I don't go out to a restaurant unless it's a meal that I could not re-create at home. One staple I cook is a porcine main with a starchy side:  pork belly adobo and rice, Porchetta sandwich, Pernil and Arroz con Gandules, and American barbecue spare ribs and macaroni and cheese.

Patrick especially loves his mother's macaroni and cheese that I've also come to enjoy even though it was not a dish I grew up eating and initially found disgusting as a child.  Her recipe calls for making a roux with a tablespoon of butter and a couple tablespoons of flour followed by two cups of milk, grated cheese and boiled macaroni.  Super easy and a dish I can cook fairly quickly. Recently, I viewed on Food 52, Baking Sheet Macaroni and Cheese and wanted to try Amanda Hesser's recipe and technique.  However, when Patrick viewed the cooking video, he said, no roux?  no way!  The recipe calls for pouring the milk directly on to the macaroni along with a sprinkle of cayenne--also a thumbs down from the hubs.  I'm always wanting to revamp, and so I did decide to make as usual but bake in a different vehicle.  Also as usual, I needed to use up leftover cheese blocks:  Cheddar, Swiss, and Monterey Jack.

I love pork as a mainstay with mac 'n cheese, and in this case, I boiled a bunch of spareribs for an hour on the stovetop and then laid them out on another quarter sheet pan slathered with bottled barbecue sauce.  Yes, I've made homemade barbecue sauce, but the commercially prepared is equally delicious and so easy--Heinz brown sugar hickory and Kikkoman teriyaki--sound strange but hey both really meld deliciously.

I had cooked my macaroni and cheese as usual, with roux sprinkled with a bit of nutmeg and a squirt of yellow mustard, and then whisked it more with milk and grated cheese into a cream sauce before combining with precooked macaroni pasta (boiled 2 minutes less than the recommended shortest cooking time) and poured it into the sheet pan.  I also reserved some of my grated cheese for topping.  I was so happy that I had made just enough to not overflow the pan.

I had grated way too much cheese and saved the extra for a quesadilla.  And the side dish already looked scrumptious.

I then popped my ribs and mac 'n cheese into a 375 degree oven and set the timer for 40 to 45 minutes.

I've become a fan of sheet pan dinners. I made Patrick cook the vegetable--swiss chard sautéed in olive oil with garlic.

I worried that the spare ribs would become dry.  Nope, they were fall off the bone tender and moist despite what I thought was overcooking.

And I especially enjoyed how the macaroni and cheese baked in a sheet pan turned out.  More surface area for browning than my usual glass casserole baking dish resulted in a still tender, creamy and cheesy noodles with more crust and crispy bits than usual.

 Gorgeous greens.  Enough said.

Yummy leftovers for the work week even if we polished off all the Swiss chard.  However, we've more organic vegetable harvests to supplement the ribs and pasta leftovers.

Cooking: The Sandwich

I love a grilled eggplant, roasted bell pepper and provolone cheese sandwich and next in line is turkey and avocado.  I could eat a sandwich every day of my life and be content, but it has to be deli-worthy.  A red onion with bite sliced thinly is de rigueur.

Next you gotta have the flavorful moist factors of mayonnaise, pesto, and sometimes yellow mustard on fresh bread(and if not fresh or slightly stale, toasted)--in this case, herb foccacia.

And I love a sour element, and in this case two:  pepper rings and cucumber pickles (but I reserved these pickles for the side as I didn't want my sandwich to spill out its parts).  And because it was a turkey sandwich, avocado!

I like luncheon meat to look like it was from a large roast, so turkey that's a bit thick sliced, and for a little funky flavor, provolone cheese, very thinly sliced.

Potato chips are awesome crunch, but I love crisp too from spring lettuce and lately, I can't get enough sprouts which really complements the creamy and rich avocado.

I think for my last meal on earth, I would opt for a deli sandwich, mortadella and provolone or a spicy Italian of salami and capicolla or turkey and avocado and sprouts.

Ceramic Ambition: Huge Serving Bowl

Someone left behind a ceramic bowl for a potluck that I loved so much that I almost stole it.  I'm guessing it was about 14 inches in diameter and was glazed in gloss white on a Soldate body.

The Japanese potters in my studio also loved its aesthetic and simplicity.  The bottom was distinct in that it was spiraled and had these awesome handles underneath the rim in what looked like a cream rust glaze.

I loved its shallowness and envisioned it as a salad bowl or a serving bowl for a stew.

I love the spirals, and so my plan this spring or summer is to re-create it but with coils.

Happy Cooking and Happy Hour on Friyay

I'd worked arduously this week teaching freshmen how to research for slide presentations on Elizabethan England and also book talking to them about my young adult favorite reads like Elsewhere and The 57 Bus.  And so I was ready to kick back with a glass of wine, crackers and cheese, and happily ever after last episodes of Sex and the City.

A couple weeks ago I also felt compelled to put lasagne back into my rotation because of a column in Milk Street on bolognese romagne, and so I spent a couple days making the ragù, boiling spare ribs and browning ground beef, chopping onions, celery and carrots and simmering it for hours with my summer tomato preserving.  It culminated in buying fresh lasagne pasta from Draegers and then whisking butter, flour, milk, and nutmeg into a béchamel.  

This lasagne was not my usual gut bomb of ricotta and spinach and Italian sausage and thick pasta--just layers of the delicate fresh noodle, ragù, béchamel, and sprinklings of pecorino romano.  Not what he expected, said my husband, but good along with some Swiss chard sauteed with garlic and olive oil on the side.  My refrigerator is now empty of most of the leftovers including this lasagne.  Onward and onward.

Ceramics Saturday: And Yet Even More Surface Decoration

I had brought all my pieces that had been in the kiln in the week before, but I also knew on this last day of the winter quarter that I wanted to make some mugs.  I've been thinking of doing a pop-up plate and then adhering a slab round on top to make a mug, and that was the first mug of the day:  he's a granddaddy, H U G E with a 6" diameter.  Definitely, it will shrink when it gets fired and more vitrified.

I had rolled these speckled buff slabs the week before, and so next was the "Mama" mug after I had constructed "Papa."  Her diameter is about 3".  And of course, there was enough clay left to construct a "Baby" mug and a catch plate.  I'm guessing the diameter of the lil'un to be 2.5"

The kiln had also revealed my latest offerings.  I especially love my red rice paper decal on B-Mix.  In the background, you can see my blue floral rice paper decal mug on which I adhered a gold luster butterfly on the marred rim.  I forgot to upload to this blog another mug I rescued from the trashbasket, a mug that my claymate Patsy made and on which I "watercolored" many blue glazes and then overglazed and then adhered a whale decal.

I was careful to use a dry brush to apply the first coat of overglaze over the rice paper decal.  I might have even used a sponge for the first coat.  And then let the layers completely dry before brushing on the second and third coats.

I was pretty pleased with my lipstick red-accented mug.  On my yellow-striped mug, I really liked the beetle on the bottom.

I had also constructed a teal striped and sky blue mug on which I affixed a spider in the interior.

I love the subtle contrast between the yellow underglaze and yellow rice paper floral decal I adhered on the mug below.

But once these overglazed mugs were out of the kiln, I couldn't resist embellishing them more.  On the blue striped mug, I adhered this commercial flower decal.

On my pink-striped mug, I adhered gold luster butterflies.

And on my yellow mug, I adhered this big yellow flower decal, which layered over where the rice paper floral decal had smudged and blurred.

And the petite pink striped mug also called for floral embellishment or roses.