Down Home Cooking

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This week was pretty busy. After several twelve hour work days (for both of us) we drove up to Rhode Island on Thursday after we had an unfortunate death in the family. After the funeral I decided to go out get some ingredients to make dinner for the family that was staying the night.



There was some nice Parrano cheese and Chilean grapes on sale so I picked them up along with some hazelnuts which I crushed on top of the salad with a little lemon and olive oil. The Parrano reminded me of this recipe I created a few years back in honor of an Italian gentleman that I worked with who was relocating. The salad featured some of his favorite ingredients and I made it in tribute to him. Seriously.

Everything that I just wrote is true but I didn't really realize how weird it was until I wrote it down.



I also roasted leg of lamb which I had stuffed with thyme sprigs and whole cloves of garlic. I also chopped up some fennel and roasted it alongside the lamb. I also roasted some butternut squash and steamed some broccoli crowns.



I also made some roasted red potatoes. For reasons unknown these potatoes took about 45 minutes longer than the lamb to cook. After two hours they had barely browned up. I've roasted quite few potatoes in my personal and professional cheffing career and I can think of no culinary explanation why these potatoes took so long to roast. It's a mystery for the ages.



For dessert I made a little whipped cream which I served with strawberries, blueberries, and angel food cake. My mother made brownies which we also enjoyed with coffee.

Tonight we got home around 8:00 after a hellish trip through White Plains. If you get the chance to visit White Plains, New York I would highly suggest passing on the opportunity. Maybe we're making snap decisions but that place sucks.



For a salad we had mixed greens, anchovies, capers, kalamata olives, tomatoes, balasmic vinegar, and olive oil. Why these particular ingredients?



Because we decided to have Pasta Puttanesca for dinner. Getting home as late as we did we didn't have time for much. Jen made the sauce while I looked for parking. The longer I drive in New York the better I am at detecting subtleties in a pedestrian's gait that allow me to determine they are walking towards a particular car. Then it's just a matter of waiting by their car while they take their sweet time vacating their parking spot and I'm in, baby!

Tomorrow there is snow and sleet in the mix and we aren't planning on leaving the house at all. I'm so tired right now I'm contemplating sleeping through until Monday.

Sundays are overrated.

Getting Our Shrove On

First off a couple of things:

1.) Follow our blog for cripes sake!

2.) There has been rumblings from two camps. One camp has no taste and does not recognize the visionary nature of my fantastic Science Fiction saga, Space Phalanx: The Human-Zzintar Wars. That group clearly has no taste in fine hard science fiction in the tradition of Asimov, Heinlein and Kube-McDowell. The other group is far more intelligent and recognizes this tale as the modern mythology that it is. In order to satisfy both groups I have created a dedicated site for the story which will now be updated separately. Enjoy: Space Phalanx: The Human-Zzintar Wars.

Now, on to the cooking.

Today was Shrove Tuesday (or so Jen tells me) so, in keeping with tradition, we had pancakes for dinner.



Along with the pancakes we made dueling bacon (American and Canadian -- we were unable to procure any Mexican bacon), and orange ginger skyr yogurt with fresh fruit.

That's the way we like to do it. Traditionally one is supposed to make crepes which evolved into pancakes which evolved into breakfast to dinner. By the time our grandchildren inherit this tradition it may have been bastardized into breakfast burritos.

And that will be the happiest Shrove Tuesday of all.

Flanks For the Vegetable Memories

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With quite a few late nights this work week there has been precious little time to use up the remainder of our final 2008-09 farm share veggies. Luckily for us the remainder of the vegetables are all of the root variety allowing for a long time left alone in our shabby fridge's crisper.

Tonight was the first night this week I got home before 8:00PM so I wanted to use this experience to actually do some cooking. Last night we were both home so late that we ended up ordering from Plum Pomidor. While it was annoying to not get a chance to cook I got over it quickly after a few forkfuls of Parpadelle with Bolognese.

Tonight, howerver, I cooked.



I started off by making a beet salad with some Honeybell tangerines which have been delicious lately. I used the juice and some olive oil as a dressing and finished it off with a dollop of goat cheese.



For dinner tonight I boiled some of the farm potatoes, turnip, golden beets, white beets, and carrots. I served that with some roasted broccoflower, wilted beet greens, and a simply seared flank steak with carmelized onions. The whole reason I wanted to make flank steak tonight was to match the wine we opened yesterday:



Earth, Zin & Fire was s real winner. It was an extremely tasty zinfandel which justified the slightly higher price than I normally pay despite the enigmatic message on the bottom: "With Special Guest: Old Gnarly." What the hell does that mean?



After dinner we tended to our garden which, as you can see, has developed to the point that we are now using a nickel (instead of a dime) as a frame of reference. Any day now we may be able to herb rub a chicken. A tiny, four ounce chicken.

That's what I call progress.

Birthdays & Pinto Beans

Hey, Bub, be a chum and follow our blog, won'tcha?

We had precious few updates this weekend because we went to Rhode Island and totally surprised my dad for his 60th birthday! We thought that maybe we might not have surprised him but he's not the world's best actor so I think we were able to catch him by surprise.



As is often the case with trips home to see my parents I was regaled with stories of my father's delinquent youth, like the time he stole this sign from a bar -- a bar from a college he did not attend and should not have been allowed access to.



For dinner my mother made roast turkey, meat stuffing (a French Canadian favorite), roasted butternut squash, broccoli with cheese sauce, and mashed potatoes. It may strike you as odd that we would have a Thanksgivingesque dinner for a birthday but there was nothing odd about how delicious the meal was.



We got a cake from Wright's Dairy Farm. While I generally do not condone the use of inedible cake or food garnishes, this cake was delicious enough to let the weird streamers slide.



Jen was left home alone today while I worked which meant two things: 1) she spent a good deal of the day cooking and 2) she made a terrific mess of the kitchen. This is a pretty typical sink job a la Jen. Using her patented bowl-plate-bowl technique she is able to fill a sink with a great deal of speed. If there were an Olympic event for filling up a sink with the minimum number of objects I'm pretty sure Jen would not only proudly represent her country but would likely secure a podium finish.



Jen made a salad of avocado, herbed salad greens, and goat cheese. As is her signature she served the salad in a bowl. We have long had the debate over whether salad should be served on a plate or in a bowl. This debate remains unresolved so we just accept whatever serving vessel the salad preparer chooses. Marriage is all about compromise.



For dinner Jen used the pinto beans, onion, and garlic from the farm along with some sweet potato, tomato, and chipotle to make a vegan chili. Vegan before we added the sour cream. I guess we could have gone out and gotten some sort of sorry tofu-soy sour cream alternative but considering that neither of us are vegan (or even vegetarian) this didn't seem necessary.

We thought that Oprah might have enjoyed this chili:



We certainly did.



Jen also baked my favorite banana chocolate chip muffin recipe.



One of the muffins was this joyous little fella. I think it makes him happy to think about how much I am going to enjoy eating him very, very soon. Jen also made apple muffins. The apple muffins, however, did not assume a human form.

There's always next time.

Root Root Root For The Home Team

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For those of you that aren't interested in clicking on links there are always tales of salads:



Today the salad was simply greens and avocado and olive oil. The avocado reminded me of the time that Kintaur Rosenbaum was fighting that space crab . . .

Kintaur Rosenbaum had to act fast. The giant space crab had his ship, The Magnetar in its galactic pincers!

"Stormbot," Kintaur said, leaping up from the cockpit seat. "Activate the airlock sequence, and prepare my spacesuit!"

"Sir?"

"That's right. I'm going to meet this crab head on."

After a few minutes Kintaur was buckling up the final straps on his space boot. He then raised his zap pistol to his helmet visor. "Alright. Open the hatch." He cocked his zap pistol. "It's time to fry some crab!"

Kintaur hooked up his safety line to airlock exterior then used his magna-gloves and magna-boots to climb across the exterior of the ship. He slowly took aim with his pistol until he had one of the crab's giant bulbous eyes in his sights. "In your eye, crabby!" He growled as he began to squeeze the trigger.

Suddenly one of the crab's pincers gripped Kintaur around the waist and he lost his grip on his zap pistol. The space crab lifted Kintaur towards its needle-like teeth. As Kintaur struggled to break free from the crab's grip he caught the distant reflective glint of light from his zap pistol as it hurtled into the vastness of space.

Will the crab win or will Kintaur win? Find out in the next exciting installment of: Space Phalanx: The Human-Zzintar Wars!

For dinner we had chicken, raviolis, pan-roasted delicata squash and beets from the farm.

Our bag of vegetables is beginning to dwindle. When it is finished we will be faced with the harshness of winter. We do not have the ability to store or grow vegetables in our basement because it's actually made of concrete. And because the super lives there with his family. Damn pesky super. Maybe if I'm really nice he'll let me store a fifty pound bag of potatoes in his living room.

It can't hurt to ask.