Author: foodnerd

a tuna salad miracle

Yesterday it was rainy and I felt like having a tuna melt and some Campbell’s tomato soup. So I did. And the odd thing was that I put celery — actual raw celery — into my tuna salad. Voluntarily. Those of you who know me know that this DOES NOT HAPPEN.
Now, I will grant you that it was minced up REALLY small, because there is just no universe in which large chunks of raw celery have any place in a tuna salad. *shudder* But for a melt, my usual relish didn’t seem right. I wanted the diner-style tuna melt that I have so often had at greasy spoons… and those always have celery in ’em. So I went for it, making sure to mince up my celery nice and small. And it’s true — the celery tastes good in there, if your tuna salad happens to be consorting with melty cheese and crispy butter toast.
Open minds are fun.

Chilly Cow, Chilli Garden, and two mini-recipes

Sorry, still busy enough to not post much. However:
– The Chilly Cow on Mass Ave in Arlington Center is YUM. Really excellent frozen custard. The pumpkin tastes like frozen pie, but we recommend the vanilla. Tastes almost butterscotch it is so rich and creamy.
– The chicken with vinegar at Chilli Garden in Medford is DREAMY. Comes with celery and bok choy and thin-sliced chicken in a buttery sour sauce. Absolutely fantastic. Also, it is something that can be safely eaten before swing dancing, unlike most Sichuan dishes that are full of garlic and/or spicy peppers, and therefore we will now be able to eat more frequently at Chilli Garden — we are in Medford fairly often to dance and every time we mourn the reality that we can’t take the opportunity to have a Chilli Garden fest.
– Sera brand turkish red pepper paste mixed with mayonnaise (and some spices, but that’s optional) made a really excellent marinade for chicken thigh that went into the grill pan tonight. Easy as hell and really delicious.
– corn off the cob + lima beans + leftover green and yellow beans + lots of dill = yum

li’l busy, sorry

It got a little wacky here, with work and a bunch of dance events and other miscellaneous whatnot. Sorry for not posting, but when it gets like this the LAST thing I want to be doing is sitting at the computer even longer. Cannot be helped.
I just made a batch of chili that kind of wasn’t so hot — i think that unsweetened chocolate is not the way to go. Also needed more tomato. But it was definitely a chili sort of weather we’ve been having, so at least there’s that.
Also a rather nice hungarian sauce of sauteed cubanelles with paprika, tomato and Turkish hot pepper paste. Had it on pasta with pork chops, and again with some sauteed kale and potatoes.
And I need to remember to make more cooked carrot and celery dishes. Braising the two together with chicken broth is a delicious thing, and I am continually forgetting that I can and should cook these vegetables on their own.

new vegetable recipes

The new issue of Gourmet had lots of excellent recipes for produce that was already burning a hole in my pocket, so I went on a cooking bender today. (Gourmet’s A-Z concept issue, btw, is all the things that the Saveur 100 used to be, or at least close enough. Sigh.)
Anyway, for future reference:
– grated zucchini salted, drained, squoze, then sauteed in butter and garlic and topped with bread crumbs fried in butter with lemon rind and thyme
– green / yellow beans cooked then rewarmed in olive oil and garlic, salt and pepper, and then tossed with lemon rind and shredded basil
– a wine and lemon verbena gelee with summer berries
All came from Gourmet and were clever little things I hadn’t thought of on my own. I used lemon balm instead of verbena, and like a dumbass only had half the gelatin needed, so it may turn out runny, but it seemed like a tasty idea with blueberries and blackberries, and a nice way to use up marginal berries without really cooking them. I always like a new idea for beans, and this one is a very nice flavor, but the beans were old ones and they’re a little tough for this preparation. The zucchini came out awesome, and I may grate all my zucchini for cooking henceforward.
I also grilled up a bunch of yellow crookneck and red onion with my steak tips tonight, just to have them around. I also roasted one of the anaheim chilies from the parental plants. Earlier today I made a gazpacho with tomato juice, cubanelle and cucumber, and I may have to do that one again. Ditto the new corn salad I made up — with edamame and vinegared cucumber and chives and lemon thyme. Yums.

opossum!

That wee fucker has been eating the fruits in our backyard. We thought it was the squirrels that had methodically plucked and eaten EVERY SINGLE PEAR on the tree. But tonight I was on the back deck in the dark, shucking corn (long story), and I kept hearing the grapevine rustle. I thought I was knocking it somehow with the corn husks, but then I looked up and saw the ratty gray tail on the gray beast standing in the grapevines. At first I thought it was a giant rat, but then I realized rats don’t have that much fur on their tails. This little bastard had no fear at all. Tallasiandude came out and did a goddamn photo shoot, complete with flash, and he just stayed put. Even when tallasiandude got a broom and WHACKED the little fucker, he hung on that vine, chowing down. We had to whack him a bunch of times and then chase him out of the garden.
Wee fruit-stealing sumbitch. Harrumph.

blackberries and vanilla ice cream

This year the blackberries at the parental homestead have been going apeshit. I’ve never seen such fat sweet blackberries — the really ripe ones don’t need even a grain of sugar.
I stuffed most of those straight down the pie hole either whilst picking or during a blackberry-appreciation moment with B to whom I was giving a bunch of the loot.
As for the rest of them, the lovely but not quite as oozingly sweet ones, they were absolutely gorgeous with vanilla ice cream. Normally I dislike dairy and berries, finding that the creaminess mutes the berry flavors, but this particular combo rocks the house, bringing out the best qualities of both.

All Dressed potato chips

Littlelee brought back a few bags of Old Dutch chips from Montreal and we tried them this past weekend. Ketchup, NOM. Bacon, unexpectedly meh. And All Dressed. WTF All Dressed? I still don’t know, after eating them and after googling them, but sweet holy heaven they taste GREAT!
Apparently it’s a common Canadian chip flavor. A little sweet, a little tangy, quite savory. They’re utterly yum, and everything I could want in a chip, including a nice light thin crisp texture. Definitely in the Top Ten Chips Ever list. If you head north, see if you can score some… and bring some back for me.

blueberry sorbet

I made a blueberry sorbet this week, with the 800 shitloads of blueberries from the parental homestead, and I thought that it might be nice to use a red wine for the alcohol — something about those flavors seemed like it might be complementary.
This simple recipe seemed pretty good, but I followed this recipe with the following exceptions:
– no egg white
– used red wine + a splash of water in place of the water
– i screwed up and used 2x the water called for, ie nearly 1 cup of wine + the splash of water
And astonishingly, it came out tasting great. I gave some to my parents without telling them anything about the recipe, and they said it had intense blueberry flavor. Yay!
(it was a sonoma cabernet sauvignon for whatever that is worth, and i cooked the wine and sugar for a little while, to reduce volume and deepen the flavor a little)