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.
ah, but eet ees waffer-theen
Needed some plain tuile-like cookies to go with the cantaloupe sorbet the other day, and found these at Whole Foods: Jules DeStrooper Crisp Butter Wafers. Turns out they are fabulously delicious: caramelly-sweet, buttery and crunchy. And only 50 calories per cookie, bonus! Everyone who’s had any has raved.
banana rum raisin ice milk
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…..
cheeses is lord
Brian reminded me of this today: the two coolest cheese specialty shops in the world, based solely on name: the one in the Carolinas called What A Friend We Have In Cheeses and the other in Israel, called Cheeses of Nazareth. Given the rise in Jesus-based discourse of late, it seemed fitting to post them for posterity here. *giggle*
san marzano sauce & tomatoes in mainstream supermarkets
Cento has a new line of sauces and cooked tomatoes packaged in jars rather than cans: San Marzano-based marinara and other pre-made sauces, plus some crushed tomatoes ready for use. I got pretty excited when I saw them on the shelf at Victory, because usually I have had to schlep to the North End or to Federal Hill in Providence, or at the very least to some Italian specialty market, to find San Marzanos. And San Marzanos *are* worth the hype; they really do taste different, richer, somehow stronger. Having them available from a mass-market producer in mainstream supermarkets would be just freaking awesome.
So I worried a bit that these new treasures wouldn’t be that good, that they’d be just another marketing label slapped on some mundane tomatoes to move them at a higher price. But tonight a bunch of people came over for dinner, and it was so gorgeous out this weekend that I spent all my time out in the sunshine, not figuring out what to cook for a crowd… so I defrosted some spicy Italian sausages, boiled pasta, and turned to my cupboard for the new Cento treats. The marinara went over the sausages, and the crushed tomatoes went over some sauteed green beans, summer squash & garlic (with a parmesan rind in for some flavor*) for the vegetarians. Both tasted great — and with such simple dishes, I can’t really take much credit; it was all about the tomato flavor. No icky jarred-sauce sweetness or wacko off-flavors, just rich red meaty tomato goodness.
Let the word ring out across the land: San Marzanos in your local grocery at last!
(* I learned this trick, of putting an old hard parmesan rind into tomato sauce while it simmers, from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for cacciatore sauce. It works like a dream, and it saves me from trying to decide whether to keep trying to grate the nasty old rind or feel guilty about throwing it away. The sauce gets a subtle richness and depth that’s hard to get otherwise. Yum.)
oh and ps: the new rigati pastas from Barilla are rocking my world. Those wee ridges look pretty and hold lots of sauce (I can never get enough sauce — i know, i know, the Italians use way less sauce than Americans do, so sue me, I like sauce). My favorite is the bucatini rigati, but they’ve applied the texture to lots of strand-pastas and even some smaller shapes like tubes. I would link to Barilla’s website for more info, but it is an unbelievably annoying collection of popups and other egregious interactivity. Gah!
awwwww….
The Japanese conception of cuteness continues to astound and delight me. The iconic example for me is the smiling, dancing cartoon octopus apparently emblazoned on every takoyaki stand in Tokyo, beckoning you to come closer and eat delicious deepfried fritters containing chunks of his dead brethren. (Oishii!)
Anyway, the newest entry is this box of the most adorable little cookies: wee tiny chocolate-covered cookies in the shape of bamboo shoots. There was another style that was cookie straw-mushrooms with chocolate covered tops. I was unable to resist the cuteness. (Also note gratuitous amounts of high-quality packaging.) The cookies themselves are a little lackluster, dry dusty cookies with waxy chocolate, but who can complain when a humble savory vegetable is anointed with the mantle of cuteness in such a way?
i can cook but i ain’t no chef
Last night we had dinner with our delightful friends S & D, who were very patient with me as I undertook three separate courses for dinner. Everything was yummy (more on that in a minute), but I have learned that even when you are totally prepared, with sauces made ahead and a simple menu, and with a carefully-thought-out action plan, it still takes way too long to cook & plate up 3 whole courses while your guests are kicking around the dinner table waiting. Next time I will just do two: soup and main, rather than breaking up the main into meat+veg, then pasta. And family style at that — plating is a drag when done at home. Oh well.
Anyway: we started with baguette, crostini crackers & cheeses — a tomme (inspired by the photos on The Daily Bread, and they right – it’s yummy!), a nevat (swoon), a spenwood (from Neal’s Yard, a dreamy hardish cheese with a good balance of milkiness and tang) and a caciotta al tartufo, which is a pretty boring semisoft cheese made utterly lovely by little flecks of black truffle. And also homemade dilly carrot pickles.
Then gazpacho andaluz, which was a bit spicier on the tongue than I anticipated. I think there was a bit too much garlic, or the garlic was too strong; it was not as creamy and delicate as what I had in Spain. Lovely, though, and we all liked it just fine. And it makes a nice change from the chunky bright red style so common here in the US (for which the Moosewood Cookbook’s recipe is by far the best).
Then seared scallops and steamed green beans with lemon-chive mayonnaise sauce. Trader Joe’s frozen scallops are just terrific and very cheap, though I do recommend getting the largest size you can for nicer presentation. Lemon-chive mayonnaise is great stuff — I’m definitely making it again, to go on fish, chicken, green vegetables, probably pasta too.
And then (sigh) pasta with wild mushrooms & sherry, from the current issue of Saveur (October 2004). I first made this with chanterelles & oyster mushrooms, at littlelee’s house, and it was very tasty but seemed to lack oomph. I attributed this to the fact that $7 worth of chanterelles wasn’t very many damn mushrooms, and so there wasn’t enough to fill out the pasta. This new batch was made with a huge pile of shiitakes, button mushrooms and oyster mushrooms, plus more liquid in the sauce, plus more parmesan cheese, and it STILL didn’t have enough flavor. Argh! I suspect I didn’t salt the dish enough, and I also suspect that I still had too much pasta for the amount of shrooms. Maybe I overcooked the mushrooms; I don’t know. I ate some cold, sprinkled with salt, for lunch, and this seemed a great improvement; the mushroom flavor came through much more when right out of the fridge. What I might do next time (because I love mushrooms & sherry so much, there *will* be a next time despite the frustrations) is cut back the pasta and also add another ingredient, like meat or seafood, or some nuts, or a stronger herb. And I’ll salt up those shroomies right next time, too.
Last but never least, cantaloupe sorbet for dessert; three cheers for the ice cream maker!
one more reason Alton Brown is cool
He had this to say after seeing Supersize Me:
What shocked me were the gasps I heard from the audience, most of whom seemed generally surprised that big business could be so
the very essence of food porn
dear lord, these pictures are the sexiest, ballsiest food porn I’ve ever seen. Just tight, tight closeups of golden, shiny, crunchy fried potatoes in a sake-soy sauce. No backstory, no soft-focus, no romance — just the money shot. With descriptive and instructive text on how to make your very own at home. I’m in love.
holy crap, watermelon!
We picked our first watermelon today, a bit premature because it split open for some reason. We feared the worst, but it turned out to be sweet and delicious! Tallasiandude is so happy — he’s been trying to grow an edible watermelon for years and been thwarted by so many forces, not least of them our crappy Northeastern climate and our shady front yard. We sucked up the tiny sweet pink fruit for breakfast, and I’m thinking I might take the rinds and pickle them. Heh.
(for the scoop on the inside joke of the title, go here and watch the cartoon.)