Corn & Cornish

Today was a good day. It started with a trip to the DMV where I had the ambitious task of simultaneously attempting to get a New York State license (for the fourth time) and registering our new car. Equipped with several dozen pieces of paperwork proving that I am who I am and with an arsenal of psychologically prepared small talk I was able to trick the people at the DMV into giving me both my license and car registration. Of course there should have been no trickery necessary but I think we all know that that is not how the game is played.

I returned home around 11:00AM realizing that no matter how many more failures awaited me today the day would overall be declared a major victory.



As soon as I got back from the DMV I took last weekend's turkey bones out of the freezer and started up a turkey stock. One of my favorite things to do in October/November is to make turkey stock all day long. Not only does it make the house smell delicious but it's a great day to warm the house up on a cold day.



For dinner I started out by putting out some snacks. I made a hummus out of edamame and tahini with olive oil, lemon juice and cayenne pepper. I put that out with some carrots on a bed of arugula.



For dinner I made some cornbread using some of the massive amount of corn we had on hand and a little bit of bacon from the freezer. I also roasted some Cornish hens which I'd gotten from Pollo Rosso. I roasted them on a bed of carrots, onions and celery. I also made an apricot and honey glaze for the hens. Even without the glaze they were really tasty.



We also enjoyed some Riesling with the hens. I'm not exactly sure where this particular Riesling came from (I think it was given to us by someone) but it was an excellent accompaniment.

With tomorrow's farm share I knew I needed to clean out the greens from the fridge so I figured I'd steam some arugula with a little olive oil. However, I accidentally left the fire on and scorched the bottom of the pan. A small setback but nothing was going to get me down after my triumph at the DMV.

Even with copious amounts of leftovers we're still in good shape for tomorrow's veggie pickup. Who knows what wonders will await us? Whatever it is I bet it will be more corn than I care to deal with.

Pan-sitting Around

So tonight I'm on my own (it's me and David Ortiz -- as I write this, the Sox are up 3-1 after three), and with no one around to witness if things go south, I thought I'd try out a recipe I've watched my friend Melanie make to delicious result many a time: pancit. According to Miss Mel (the mother of one of the best-looking babies around), the recipe is a Filipino classic -- it's definitely delicious, with all the best kind of home-cooked flavors a classic should have. As Mel makes it, it combines poached chicken breast with carrots, celery, onion and celery in a stirfry with chicken broth, a splash of lemon juice and soy sauce and rice noodles. Served with rice, of course -- Mel is second only to Debbie in rice-consumption evangelicalism.

Anyhow, in some ways, I was perfectly placed to make pancit: there was a chicken breast thawed in the fridge, and I had rice noodles. In other ways, I was terribly placed to make it: no carrots, no celery, no lemon, no cabbage. So I improvised: I sauteed onion and garlic in a pan, and added pieces of chicken, then some farm-share veggies: green peppers, turnip and vitamin greens (I figure they're actually a long-leafed cabbage, so why not?). I also, after consulting the Internet, added some shrimp we had in the freezer (some home versions seem to include it, so I figured we'd bulk up the protein). I let it simmer, added some veggie stock (all we had) and soy sauce, and spritzed it with fresh orange juice (citrus is citrus, right?). I then set the rice noodles on top and covered it.



And served it over rice, obviously.

Overall, I was actually pretty happy with my ersatz-pancit -- it wasn't as good as Mel's, but it wasn't too bad, either. Making this again, I would definitely follow Mel's lead in poaching the chicken -- it really got dried out using in my method. And I underseasoned it, too -- more soy sauce, more citrus (the OJ was pretty good, I think), more salt and pepper. And I would DEFINITELY cut the noodles up -- they were unwieldy to eat. But in general, my first foray into the culinary world of the Philipines wasn't bad -- can't wait to try it when I actually have all the ingredients. Or better yet: to have it again at Mel and Jules'.

. . . And The Potatoes Were Delicious

If there's one thing Jen and I like it's watching a sporting event while we dine. It seems that the less we like the sport the more we enjoy it. I think it's the fact that if it's a sport we aren't that invested in (let's say baseball) then we are able to do other things without feeling bad. For example, Jen can spend several hours playing Text Twist after dinner and just look up whenever the commentators raise their voices.

Jen and I spent most of the day in Brooklyn today. Jen was at a baby shower and I was helping friends move and then later helping them eat sweet potato fries and drink some Dogfish Head Punkin Ale. By the time we got home we were not very hungry but felt we had to have some sort of dinner.

Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats. Tonight's culinary marvel . . .



Boiled potato! Yeah, that's right. I cut up some of the potatoes from the farm share, boiled them, drizzled a little olive oil and melted butter on them and added some ground black pepper. The result was delicious. Much like the carrots the potatoes have a very rich flavor and very creamy texture.

The baseball game tonight started off oddly. TBS apparently had a technical error and was showing the Steve Harvey show instead of the baseball game. At one point they scrolled a message across the Steve Harvey show explaining that they were experiencing technical difficulties and gave an update with the score of the game. It seemed to me like if they were able to scroll words across the Steve Harvey Show then they should just be able to switch to the baseball game. Eventually that fiasco was fixed and we joined the game already in progress.

And then we were able to return to playing Text Twist without having to listen to Steve Harvey.

And the potatoes were delicious.

That's Corny

All right, ladies and gents, tonight was back to the basics. After some holiday fare it was time to return to our largely vegetable-based way of life. On Tuesday we got another big batch of vegetables that we hadn't gotten around to using due to our surplus of Thanksgiving leftovers.



I started by using one of our giant, orange-purple carrots alongside some ginger miso dressing. You can tell the carrots are huge since they are cut more into large wedges rather than long skinny sticks. They also happened to be remarkably flavorful with a softer texture than your average supermarket carrot.



If you're wondering how many more times I can cop out by combining beets with feta cheese then the answer is: at least one more time. I added some dill which has been in our fridge for a remarkably long time. So long, in fact, that I'm a little scared to actually research it and see when we initially purchased it. That being said, it's in excellent shape. I think I can probably get a few more months out of it.



After our salad we were able to enjoy some of the Piave which I foolishly forgot to put out for Canadian Thanksgiving. Our guests' loss became our gain as we devoured an unhealthy amount of the delicious cheese before moving on to our main course.



Our freezer is pretty full and about 50% of it is corn which I have cut form the cob and frozen for later use. The tomalito we made last weekend used some up but there's still more corn than you can imagine, with little indication that it will be stopping any time soon. I used some of the onion, garlic, peppers and three ears of the corn to make a corn bisque. I added some shrimp and scallops at the last minute and gave it a little heat with some very potent cayenne.

One of the ears of corn was cooked with the peppers and onions while I pureed the other two ears with the immersion blender, cooking it in a little vegetable stock. At the end I put in a tiny amount of half and half.



For dessert we had some roasted potatoes with ketchup. When you're dealing with the amount of produce we have on hand you need to start getting creative about how you define dessert.

Today was my first day off in a long, long time. At least the first day that I did not have to travel out of state, attend a wedding, or fulfill some obligation I had. Therefore I used it doing chores but mostly by just hanging out and doing nothing. So unfortunately I only started dinner about 20 minutes before Jen came home.

I guess it could have been worse. We'll see what tomorrow brings as far as inspiration. Right now I'm feeling inspired to sleep in.

More Leftovers

Today was a long day. Not long in the sense of time, more in the sense of mentally taxing. Jen had an invitation to hobnob with some foodies and, unfortunately, I was unable to attend due to professional obligations. That left me to come home and fend for myself.



With plenty of Canadian Thanksgiving leftovers I was able to assemble a quick turkey-free turkey dinner, a cheese plate, and a helping of our pumpkin pear caramel trifle.

Complete with a Blue Moon and some now ancient TiVoed episodes of The Daily Show it was the perfect meal.

Tomorrow I have the first full day off free of obligations in a long, long time. I plan on using it to do something interesting with our farm share and our leftovers. I hope to have something interesting to report.

If I get lazy, just read this entry again because that's what we'll be having for dinner.