Today I woke up, walked down the street to Antojitos Cafe and had a delicious homemade gordita and an iced coffee, then I went to the farmer’s market. On the way home we stopped to check out the new food court in the basement of the Indian market, and bought a refrigerated coconut and a straw from the nice man with the machete. Cold coconut juice straight from the nut is pretty great on a hot day. And for dinner we are going to check out the — wait for it — new Vietnamese place on Moody St. Yes, my prayers have been answered and if it pans out I will be able to buy pho and banh mi without getting in my car.
I swing both ways
Yesterday I derived equal pleasure from eating an immoderate quantity of Fritos with lunch and from a 7-course tasting at No. 9 Park. A good, good day.
dill mustard potato salad
also, last week I made some hellaciously good potato salad. I have been eating the leftovers all week with a bit of cheddar for lunch.
5 lbs potatoes, cut up and boiled, sprinkled with 1/4 cup white wine vinegar once drained
12 hardboiled eggs, cut up
about 2 plants worth of dill
various mustards & mayo & miracle whip
a minced vidalia onion
salt & pepper
kale salad
This kale salad with feta and avocado and hummus dressing sounds really good and I might try to make it next time I get some kale from the parental homestead.
UPDATE: I made this with shredded kale (maybe 8 leaves), half a small tub of hummus, a slab of feta, half a yellow pepper, 8 olives and some quick-pickled cucumbers and their brine. Remarkably tasty, and astonishingly filling and sustaining. It also keeps just fine overnight, which is kind of miraculous for a salad.
Chicago Italian Beef
The Chicago Italian Beef Sandwiches that I made for Mixed Signals this year were a rampaging success. Making allowances for differences in giardiniera and breads, this stuff tasted just the way it should, the way it tastes at Al’s or one of the other stands in Chicago. Beefy, salty, lightly fatty, fragrant with garlic and oregano, vinegary and spicy from the pickles, and just barely holding its structural integrity due to immersion in the delicious broth.
I used this recipe because there were lots of comments from born-and-raised South Siders who swore it was the genuine article. I followed it closely, though I did double it and make two 5+ pound rump roasts, I studded the roasts with garlic, and I doubled the gravy for each batch to end up with a quadruple recipe of juice.
That juice reeked in a terrifying manner of oregano, to the extent that I was worried I’d overdone it, but after an hour or less of simmering, I sieved out the oregano and the garlic, and added in 4 more bouillon cubes and 6 cups more water. I was worried that canned beef broth would taste of the can, so I used all bouillon cubes, and I’d do the same next time. This wound up just perfect, not too strong of oregano, not too spicy from the hot sauce, not too salty.
The roasts smelled absolutely dreamy, and honestly they would have been delicious just as they were, sliced and served. But I put them through the meat slicer — home meat slicer FTW, again! — and then into the cooled broth to soak. Due to logistical pressures, they were only in for a few hours the day of the party, but I think that was plenty. I didn’t notice any lack of flavor in the meat itself, and it didn’t overcook due to too long a stay in hot broth.
I put the broth and meat into the crockpot to serve it, which worked out well. A quick 4 minute trip in the microwave got it up to temp, and then I left it on low, which kept things hot without toughening the beef.
Giardiniera and hefty rolls were handcarried from Chicago last week, and we augmented with some other sub rolls from Costco that we left out for a day to stale up. Everyone seemed to like it, but the best compliment was from another former Chicago dweller who made a point to thank me for making something just like he used to eat when he lived there, something he missed pretty bad. I know the feeling.
fun with cilantro chutney
On a whim I bought some 3-layer Trader Joe’s hummus which had plain, red pepper and cilantro hummus. It was delicious and I developed a minor obsession with the cilantro layer. My mind wandered. I wanted a whole tub of cilantro hummus, but Trader Joe’s didn’t make one.
Slightly later I was in Patel Brothers buying some red lentils to feed another minor obsession with cooking dal as a way to incorporate more reputedly healthful spices into my diet. And I wandered by the chutney rack, and the lightbulb went off: maybe I could stir some coriander chutney into plain hummus and get something akin to the delicious bottom layer.
Turns out I was right, and the resulting treat is even more delicious than the original, since the chutney lends a bit more tanginess and spiciness.
Now I buy organic plain hummus and plop in unholy dollops of cilantro chutney, and put that stuff on salads instead of dressing, and dip carrots in, and put it on Triscuits. NOMS.
And I’ve also learned that cilantro chutney is fantastic on a ham sandwich. Sometimes I think that is the truest test of a condiment: Does it taste great on a ham sandwich?
favorite springtime breakfast
Ah, the pleasures of a Sunday breakfast in June: Plain well-done waffle at Josephs II in Waltham, with fresh strawberries on the side, plus a plate griddled ham. NOMS.
Lazy Indian(ish) snack
I have been reading that turmeric and other spices used commonly in Indian cooking are very good for you, being anti-oxidant and helpful in fat-burning and so forth. So I have been thinking perhaps I’ll make a bit more effort to cook some more Indian-style dishes rather than my usual oscillation between mitteleuropean, Central Asian and Far Eastern cuisines.
Of course I am lazy, so the first manifestation of that was to dump some Madras curry powder into some cottage cheese and sprinkle in some kalonji that I dug out of the back of the spice drawer, and call it a snack.
And dang if that wasn’t a hell of a tasty snack. So much so that I did it again for breakfast, with a side of the half-made red lentil dal that I started last night. Yums.
delicious breakfast
sliced banana, dried cherries, salted almonds, pumpkin seeds and a sprinkle of cinnamon. yummy and filling. I also ate a hardboiled egg before I tucked into my fruity treat.
mostly retarded but I still kind of want to go
This place in NYC is a fairly ridiculous faux-Japanese/anime theme restaurant serving Asiany burgers and appetizers, with the usual Manhattan excesses and menu for skinny girls, with perhaps a minor whiff of David Chang about it for good measure.
It’s completely idiotic. But still I kind of want to go there anyway.