I made some pretty good chicken pho last night. Muggy heat notwithstanding, the Kid wanted chicken noodle soup because he wasn’t feeling well. So I dutifully trudged off to the weekly market, procured a bunch of chicken wings, and trudged home. Wings make good stock. Normally, I make, you know, wings with them, saving the tips, and then cook the cooked second and third segments with the raw tips to make a wonderfully flavored but still gelatinous stock later on. This time there was no time, so in the pot they went, whole and unjointed, with all the pho-requisite flavors.
Month: June 2013
I haven’t had much time for posting lately, so it’s fitting that this meal took very few minutes to make. Just like this post!
Here’s the trailer for the first video I made in collaboration with Craig and Staci of Handpicked Nation, who are both highly professional and extremely pleasant to hang out with for extended periods. We’ll be putting up short episodes, cutting and shooting as we go, and letting it take shape over time. (We got enough footage from the day with John to last us for quite a while). Lots more wonderful and talented people will…
The Kid loves Caesar salads. He’s keen on salad in general, especially with lots of vinaigrette—heavy on the homemade vinegar, especially blackcurrant—and is an exemplary eater of vegetables in general, especially for an eight-year-old. But he will murder a bowl of romaine and croutons with the eggy, cheesy dressing. Of course most restaurant versions flat out suck, what with the inferior ingredients and all, so I planted extra romaine this spring in order to ensure a steady supply. Leading actor thus covered, the other components were easily secured: homemade apple/sumac vinegar, a duck egg from a nearby farm, the heel of a homemade sourdough boule, pecorino from Dancing Ewe Farm, good oil, and anchovies.
One of the best things about eating animals (ethically raised ones, that is) actually takes place days after the eating, when their bones, carcasses, and sometimes extra cooking liquid become transformed into stock. Homemade stock, whether from raw or cooked bones (or my favorite, a combination) is the single most useful culinary tool you can have on hand. And because it is infinitely variable, sometimes somewhat randomly by the cooked flavors and/or combinations of multiple meals’ worth of bones, it can make every meal uniquely memorable.
And not the computer, neither. I know it’s Sunday, but I just discovered a trove of pictures on the camera that I had completely forgot about, and I thought of you, poor readers, frantically anticipating my next post with the impatient fervor of Ree Drummond praying for Paula Deen to stroke out on national television. So I wrote this because I feel your pain.
I decanted last fall’s vinegar crop over the weekend, and it was a good one. Three kinds, all fully fermented and super sour: straight cider, made from biodynamic apples, cider macerated with sumac for a few days and then strained, and blackcurrant. Half a gallon of each should last us a while. The cloudier bottle of cider was from the bottom of the jar; it has settled now and is quite clear.