Author: foodnerd

Have you ever wondered how they get baked potatoes in restaurants to be so deliciously simple, and to have that magically sturdy crust that you can scrape every last starchy morsel out of? I have. And now I know.
I was baking some russets (good ones from the farmer’s market, bonus) and I forgot to really time them, so I was paranoid about raw innards, so I left them in there for like 80 minutes at 400F. I went to poke one & test it, and the skewer was rebuffed — for a second I thought it was raw. But no, just sturdy: when cut open, they were just as fluffy and gorgeous as the ones in a steakhouse. And crust, my god, there is crust. Which is perfect for what I was going to use them for: Baltic Stuffed Potatoes, from what has to be the Funnest Cookbook Ever.
Bake big potatoes as above, cut open in such a way as to leave nice potato cups, scrape out insides. Saute finely diced onion and wild mushroom (dried, fresh, whatever) in butter. Smash a can of smoked sprats (usually available in Russian or Slavic markets, and sometimes regular supermarkets) to smithereens with a fork. Mix all of this together with some chopped dill (or whatever herb, i had no dill so used parsley & thyme), ground pepper, salt, a couple tablespoons fresh lemon juice, and enough sour cream to get the party started right.
You’re supposed to stuff that back into the potato shells and put a little parmesan and bake at 375F till nice & golden, but I couldn’t handle it and just macked it down out of a bowl. I’ll put a picture up later on, though it’s not very photogenic. Yum! Seriously — even if you don’t really like canned fish, you’ll like this: sprats have a nicer flavor than sardines, and that flavor goes *really* well with mushrooms and butter and sour cream and potato. Not kidding. Try it.

We grew long beans in the garden this year, because tallasiandude likes them (i do too, but duh). The first few batches I cooked in nonstandard ways, like with chopped walnuts and walnut oil — which were yummy, but not scratching tallasiandude’s itch. So I started cooking them chinese-style, but the first couple of attempts failed: they weren’t the flavors he was looking for. We saw a plateful in a restaurant that looked right, so I used that as the basis, and I’ve finally come up with a recipe that we both like a lot. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I don’t have fresh long beans in my backyard anymore. Oy.
It’s a pretty adaptable recipe, as it turns out, and can handle substitutions & variable quantities pretty well:
Take some chinese long beans, cut into bite size pieces (or you can use regular green beans) and fry them over fairly high heat in a very little bit of oil. When they’ve started to blister and soften, add some ground pork and break it up as it fries. You can also substitute finely diced ham, like I did tonight because I didn’t have any more pork in the freezer. The proportions don’t matter — be guided strictly by your preference or what you happen to have. Sprinkle with black pepper. Once the pork is cooked, sprinkle with about a teaspoon of sugar. Take about half a 3.5 oz packet of pickled turnip/salted spicy radish, or however much you like, cut it into small bits, and add it. (Not sure how to specifically describe this stuff, except that it is the stuff you get in pork & pickled turnip noodle soup. Use whatever salty pickly chinese turnip stuff you like.) Add about a tablespoonful of spicy bean paste, and stir to blend. (There’s a whole other post to be written about spicy bean paste, which I’m sure we’ll get to eventually.) Add about a teaspoon of chinese black vinegar, and stir it around to distribute it before it evaporates. When it’s dry and looking ready, serve it. Add salt if it needs salt (probably will if you used pork, and won’t if you used ham), and chili oil if it needs more spiciness. You definitely want white rice with this, as it’s pretty savory stuff.
This has become my favorite companion dish for Pei Mei’s beef & broccoli, which is very rewarding to cook because it makes tallasiandude so happy. *grin*

Posting really late, but who can resist a picture like this? The last of the magic bacon, on wheat toast with lettuce, mayo, and a late-summer garden tomato. It was brunch on Saturday morning before going rock-climbing. I love early fall. Please note that we were halfway through the sandwiches before we remembered to photograph their lusciousness for posterity. A BLT waits for no man.
And since I am too lazy right now to tweak my MovableType code to handle floated images better when the text is smaller than the image, I am just going to write some more stuff and hope you don’t notice.
Really, you should be distracted by the picture anyway.

I woke up a couple of days ago dreaming about how to make banana rum raisin ice cream. Like, not just how yummy it would be, but actual steps and ways to make it work. Not at all sure what triggered it, other than the ripening banana on the counter, but I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, so I just made it. I didn’t feel like buying cream so I went online for an icemilk recipe to check proportions, and adapted it for my purposes. Here’s what I did:



2 cups 1% milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
3/8 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 ripe banana, smushed
cup of raisins
Gosling’s spiced rum to cover raisins
Put raisins & rum in a bowl to soak. I microwaved mine 30 seconds to speed the process.
Put the egg yolks in a small bowl & beat lightly.
Whisk sugar & cornstarch together in a pan, then whisk in milk. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring frequently, and boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Slowly, slowly drizzle about a third of the hot milk into the eggs, whisking or stirring. Stir the tempered eggs into the rest of the milk.
Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, about 10 minutes or until slightly thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pull off the heat. I almost always wait just a second too long, and my custard splits — if this happens, do not panic. Just do what spleen does and whisk the living crap out of it off heat until it smooths out — it’ll be fine in the icecream. Pour the excess rum off the raisins into the custard & stir to blend. Cool then chill about an hour till it’s cold. Stir in the smushed banana.
Run custard through ice cream maker, adding raisins toward the end when it’s firmed up a little. This will thin it down, because of the extra rum going in, but it’ll firm right back up. Put into plastic tub & freeze.
I guess you could consider this a very late, totally non-official participant in IMBB8, since it has booze in it. *grin*
It came out really well — it could be creamier, of course, but for 1% butterfat, whaddaya want? It’s smooth and scoopable, it tastes faintly of banana and stronger of rum, and it has juicy raisins all through it, and because it’s not heavy cream I can eat way more of it, which is nice for a change. (foodnerd is attempting the nearly impossible: growing smaller without giving up cheese or bacon or pasta. It’s all about kickboxing and DDR, really.) I’ll make it again, for sure, and i might put 2 bananas in next time for a stronger flavor… and for company I might use whole milk. It really is quite luxurious and rich even in the 1% version, because of the custard and the rum. Mmmmmmmm…..