Year: 2008

January 14, 2008

Patton Oswalt, who is famous because I mentioned him here, wrote a review of the new KFC “Famous Bowl” that is worth a read. If you disagree, just be glad that I didn’t link to the Squirrel Melt video. Oh, wait. I did.

January 13, 2008

John and Debi brought Tim (up for the weekend from FL) for a decadent dinner. I made the food; John brought the wine. That was the deal. Normally with multi-course meals I can see the dishes in my head beforehand, but in this case they were a little blurry until just a few hours before dinner. Most of it came out pretty well, though I had to scrap one course and I forgot to add…

January 10, 2008

Our local market has good fish, but the only kind we’ll eat is the wild salmon, since it’s not yet overfished and is safer to eat than other varieties. So we’re lucky that it’s just a mile down the road, but it means I have to work at coming up with new ways to make salmon (today I’m going to the better market 10 miles away for some variety tomorrow.) I rubbed this filet with…

January 9, 2008

The garden gave us more bounty today, in the form of celery root, collards, and cabbage. I shredded the greens and cooked them low with a bit of salt pork, and cooked the celery root with a broccoli stalk and the last of the parsnip-burdock mixture in the fridge. Once soft, I puréed it all together with a pat of butter and a drop each of white truffle oil and Mexican vanilla extract. I had…

January 8, 2008

First off, it’s warm here for a few days. Really warm- flirting with 60˚ today. So yesterday afternoon I grabbed the scissors and headed out to the garden. Here’s the result: about a dozen different kinds of greens, all happily defying the winter under the plastic covers (with Milo helping to wash them.) And to further illustrate the inspiration that the warmth has brought, here’s a quick summary of all three meals today. For breakfast,…

January 6, 2008

Sunday seems like a good day to use the remains of the week’s meals in an efficient and delicious way. Tonight will be fridge soup, but first brunch. Homemade smoked salmon, Greek yogurt, and pesto combined to make an omelet filling; leftover roasted potatoes (and the whole cloves of garlic they roasted with, sliced) made home fries. It’s honestly impossible to imagine a more delicious omelet: unctuous and creamy inside, with the deep yet delicate…

January 6, 2008

Josie and Kees- of sambal oelek fame- and 2 of their 3 kids joined us for dinner. Kees brought a tortilla with sweet potatoes and chorizo, plus a spicy tomato sauce, and I smoked a side of salmon over our applewood since it was actually above freezing outside for the first time in what seems like ages. Other dishes included sweet potato “noodles” marinated in a Thai dressing (peanut butter, sesame oil, vinegars, sambal, soy…

January 5, 2008

This is some Southern-style cooking, but done a little differently. Country pork ribs, rubbed and then vacuum sealed with espresso, salt, garlic, 5-spice, and pink peppercorns cooked sous vide at 66˚C for 5 hours; it would have been longer, but I didn’t get to it until after noon. Later on, I put sweet potatoes and quartered red kabocha in the oven and cooked collards with onion and a bit of salt pork. Once the meat…

January 4, 2008

There’s a vegetarian place in Williamsburg called Bliss that we used to go to when we lived in that part of Brooklyn, in large part because it was cheap and featured the “bliss bowl” which consisted of brown rice, beans, greens, tofu or tempeh, and a tahini-miso sauce. Over the years, it has become a more malleable idea in our kitchen, but essentially means the same thing: a perfect meal in a bowl (there’s also…

January 1, 2008

We left Vermont a day early, since everyone felt crappy and we wanted to sleep in our beds. I did bring back some of the chicken broth and meat, figuring it would come in handy for dinner, and remembering the coconut milk in the cupboard. In addition to the coconut milk, I also added lime juice, a big smashed thumb of ginger, and a bit of green yuzu kosho (I keep meaning to order some…