Food pron

Luggage cast-off romantical novels in the guest room. Girl porn. I tried reading these and I got bored out of my mind after a couple pages. Where are the pictures? Where's the sound and video? What's with all this needless story and plot thing?



So I played with food and made lasagne. Much more satisfying.



And it keeps on giving for days.

Lonely blahs

Whittling down the giant 3 lb tub of garlic that Nancy left since the Jerry wedding cook-a-thon. Roasted garlic soup. No vampires for sure. No dates either.



And cauliflower leek risotto. Tasted OK. The purple color was awesome though. I could make this better next time.



And a very disappointing honey pear upside down cake. I should have known better. The LA Times recipes are usually really bad. I don't like to waste food, but I tossed this one.

International leftovers

A different take on surf and turf. I needed more space in the freezer, so I'm trying to eat through a giant Costco bag of frozen seafood ravioli to make more room. I would have liked to make a lemon butter sauce for it, but last night's bolognese will have to do. I thought the assorted land animals in the sauce would clash with the assorted sea creatures in the ravioli, but somehow it all worked together.



More recycled food. Leftover white meat chicken from the last roast chicken night. The last of a can of chipotle in adobo. More leftover roasted poblanos from who knows when. And half a packet of cream cheese sitting in the back of the cheese box. Kind of a Mexican meeting Spanish Tapas filling kind of thing.



And the chicken filling gets wrapped by some of the leftover wheat pizza dough for a kind of Mexican Italian Spanish Chinese char-siu bun type thing. The poppy seeds on top make it somewhat Jewish bagel like.



And Ta-Da! International chicken buns.



Extra veggies from my rapatootie adventures get added to MK's thanksgiving roasted veggies dish along with some breadcrumbs and apple pie cheese to make a veggie casserole thing.



And the stem of a purple cauliflower gets sliced and tossed with some sesame oil, soy sauce, and furikake seasoning for a quick little appetizer. I would have liked to squoosh some yuzu on it, but the yuzu tree refuses to flower and bear fruit.

Absent minded cooking

More simmering things. I got bored of meat sauce, so I'm transforming a batch into Bolognese sauce with the addition of procuitto, carrots, celery, and cream. I like simmering things because they require virtually no attention, and it makes the house smell great while I do something else productive. And at the end of it, there are delicious things to eat.



Delicious things like quince jam.



And delicious things like sweet potatoes and chipotle lime butter. One of the bonuses of baking pies is that I get to throw in other things to bake and roast alongside the pies. And then I have more ingredients to play with over the next few days.



Embiggened by the stretchy success of the last batch of pizza dough, I attempt a rye flour flavored one this time.



Bolognese sauce done. Somehow I ended up with more than I started with. I don't remember what I did.

Thankful for pies

It's turkey day! Tasty turkey day. I thought it was appropriate to make an all American apple Pie to bring to Ben's kitchen tonight. No cheese in this one, but it does contain candied ginger and pink lady and matsu apples.



Lots more things that need peeling. I may need a new fruit peeler. As a bonus, there will be quince tarte tatine that wasn't over baked and stuck to the pan. Two desserts I'm bringing. Just because I want to.

Long winded tidying

Super deformed kiwi fruit are awesome!



I'm down one driveway today. It's Mexican fan palm tree trimming week in the neighborhood. I am jealous at their giant wood chipper. But the chainsaw noise all week I could do without.



It's such a nice clear day that between the bursts of chainsaw noises, I've opened up the house. This will be my cubicle for today. As a bonus, I discovered that a leaf blower is faster and better than a vacuum cleaner at cleaning downstairs. No crud to empty into a trash bin, no cords to trip over, and it sweeps out all the little corners and dust bunnies in hard to reach places..



Tidying up in the refrigerator too. Leftover chicken stew gets dumped into the rice cooker with some brown rice.

Phooey patootie

The Ratatouille movie just releaseed on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. To celebrate, we make the ratpatootie Thomas Keller developed for the Disney Pixar movie. To which I have to say, "Chef Keller, you are an anal retentive masochist. And I admire and applaud you for that." This recipe is just so completely labor intensive. If I didn't cheat on some of the steps, this would take 5 hours to make. Instead of roasting 3 different kinds of bell peppers for the piperade underneath the layers, I used a jar of fire roasted peppers from Trader Joe's. And I used canned tomatoes. Blasphemy! I know!



And rather than using the broiler to crisp up the veggies before serving, I whipped out the blow torch. I did use fresh chervil and thyme from the backyard for the vinaigrette though. Hours and hours of work to make this, and I ate the entire thing in less than two minutes. Darn ye French portion sizes! This truly was eye openingly delicious. Just like the one in the movie. And I hate the stewey mess that is normal ratatouille.



More boiling big pots on the stove to keep warm. Making my own chicken stock.



Lots and lots of home made chicken stock. It's crazy difficult to track down canning supplies in Southern California. I finally found jars at the hardware store where I got my windshield ice scraper from.

Southern Italian - way way south

I made some incredibly elastic wheat dough today. We make calzones/empanadas Mexican style. Filled with poblano black beans I found in the refrigerator.



And roasted poblano and chicken pizza/tortas. With cheddar from my Pushing Daisies cheddar crust apple pie efforts.



And another batch of meat sauce. 3 quarts this time.

Happy Birthday Davy

Not only did Davy get a Dim Sum birthday involving chicken feet at the Empress Pavilion with the Josh and the Flip and the MK and the Megan. But I found super deformed kiwi's at the farmer's market. I especially like the ass-shaped one. And we saw Mrs Rossini from Who's The Boss a few tables over.

Happy Birthday Doug

Quince pound cake, sliced.



A bit of down time lets me re-jigger the media closet. Some color coded velcro cable ties allows me to tie up loose ends so to speak.

Beet this

Shuffling furniture around and tidying up a bit after a couple month's of client madness. The sofa may be on it's last legs. The cushions are falling apart and I may have to resort to duct tape.



Oh quince. How I love thee. I will make quince tarte tatine again.



But I left the quince tarte tatine in the oven 10 minutes too long. Aie ya! So now it's quince crumble.



I plucked out some beets from the garden and roasted them with the poblano chilies dangling nearby. I didn't realize that there'd be such a difference with really fresh beets. These were very good- better than the beets from Whole Foods. And completely different from the canned stuff that have destroyed the beet's reputation in most people's minds. If the canned stuff is the only frame of reference, of course most people are going to hate beets. This is completely different.



A quince pound cake.



And the roasted chicken makes it's debut.

Keeping warm

It's time to recycle the ingredients in the refrigerator into a meat sauce. Some of the pot roast, some maters, some jalepenos, onions, and basil. Very little food is wasted in this house.



Chilly nights means a big pot simmering away on the stove.



And some brussel sprouts with bacon while the simmering continues.



And then some bucati with the simmered meat sauce. Simmering warms the house, and it warms the soul.

Double delicious

Easy like sunday mornings means pulling out the crock pot to make some chickeny stew cooked with roasted tomato garlic salsa. The crock pot means I can smell delicious things all day.



And then brining the other chicken for roast chicken later in the week. The clams. I still have more clams. Clams in the refrigerator means an entire day's worth of anticipation of delicious things.



And I anticipate linguine ala vongole.



Eaten fireside outside now that the nights are getting chilly. Sitting fireside means cedar smoked Davy.



And a second dinner with the chicken stew. We should all have two dinners in a day.

Sing songs of quince

Oh how I love the quince. It fills the air with delicious fragrance when warmed by the morning sun. I want to carry quinces in my pockets just so I can smell like quinces all day. I want cologne that smells like quinces so I don't have to walk around in public with strange bulges in my pockets. As a bonus, nobody knows what to do with quinces, so they're only $1.50/lb vs $2.50/lb for apples at the farmer's market.


New England clam chowder. Fresh clams, bacon, cream, and potatoes. What's not to like? Instead of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Julie Andrews needs to sing about Littleneck clams and hickory smoked bacon. Now those are a few of my favorite things.