Simply red

Trying to cook simply, so we makes a basic beet ravioli with brown butter sauce tonight. Though I probably hurled any notion of "simple" out the window when I made my own pasta sheets. The sage was flowering today, so I threw some of the flowers in there too.

There were a few bursticated beet ravioli, so I recycled them back into the pasta dough to make Hello Kitty pink parpedelle.

So my attempt to cook simply tonight gets completely fo'cocked when I remembered it's day 2 of Yule Log 2008. I'm veering off the recipe completely when it comes to assembly and decorating the yule log. The yule log recipe writers have obviously snorted way too much cocoa powder and have never seen a fallen log in real life. Their bark is all wrong, and the branches would never grow that way in nature. If you're going to be inspired by a fallen log, you need to either do an artistic impressionist interpretation, or go for realism. None of this half-assed melted elephant poo lump that Cooks Illustrated showed in the book. So me, being me, I'm going to make anatomically correct yule logs.

Davy 1. Cook's Illustrated 0. Take that Cook's Illustrated beeyotches!

Kitty surprise

In honor of Hello Kitty's 34th birthday, I make beet and walnut dip. Like hummus, but with beets instead of chickpeas. This should make a good sammich spread too. Hello Kitty won't be able to eat this because Hello Kitty has no mouth.

Pretty pink pizza dough results from being too lazy to wash the food processor bowl after making beet dip. Hello Kitty serendipity has gotten me thinking about making a baguette that's pink inside. How awesome would that be? Now that we have pizza dough, we're ready for tonight's pizza flight.

Vegetarian surprise pizza. It only appears to be a gorgeous late summer vegetable pizza. But one bite into it... SURPRISE! A hidden layer of prosciutto! Surprise bacon! Your eyes say it will be delicious, but your tongue tells you it's even more delicious than you first thought. Surprise Bacon!

This one is made with mushroom paste, caramelized onions, artichokes, pecorino and gruyere. Home made pizza crust is so incredibly crispy chewy delicious that I stretched the dough out so each piece has two crusts. This is the most incredible crust I've ever made. I tweaked the dough recipe with rye flour for a more substantial flavor. And of course, I made it pink.

Seriously, this is the bestest most super number one pizza I've ever tasted in the 34 years of Hello Kitty's existence. Perfect thin crispy chewy crust, fresh ripe heirloom tomatoes, pancetta, mozzarella, fontina, and parmesan cheeses. Even tastier than the coal baked pizza I had wandering around the canals of Venice. This is now the new gold standard. The secret is a drizzle of olive oil. Olive oil with a surprise anchovy whisked in.

 

Beet with pretty stick

A pilgrimage to the ceramics store mecca yields items such as sponge on a stick. $2.65. I spent many minutes at the shop inappropriately fondling the pottery wheel I've been lusting after. Alas, I can not afford the thousand dollars to buy it. Pottery wheel! How you tease me! My attempts at marrying wealthy have so far failed miserably. Marry me please? I'll feed you.

So like most of America, I drown my sorrows by eating an entire rack of baby back ribs. This time, hickory smoked with a cilantro bourbon molasses glaze.

And roasted beet, radish, and gorgonzola salad. My current kitchen gadget obsession is the mandolin slicer. So far, I've managed to keep my fingertips. But it's only a matter of time before I slice off something important.

And for healthy-like snacking- Jewel toned beet chips! These turned out very beautifully translucent. I might not have sliced off my finger tips going overboard with the mandolin slicer, but my hands still wound up bloody beet red.

And then I made an empanada for dinner #2. Because I felt peckish.

Some pig

Coffee spiced braised Wilbur with jus. Like they said in Charlotte's Web. That's "Some Pig." Pork belly so tender it's essentially pig jello.

And for suppers #2 and #3, I roast cornish game hens. One rubbed with olive oil, lemon, and thyme. The other bourbon barbeque over caramelized onions. Game hens are great because they're the perfect size to eat an entire bird in one sitting. My stomach was very greedy tonight, so I roasted two.

Since the oven was already on, it never hurts to throw a few heads of garlic in to roast alongside the chickens. One can always use roasted garlic. The kohlrabi lump in the center is an experimental technique I'm trying to invent. The thought was to lightly "smoke" the kohlrabi with roasted garlic color and aroma while it cooks. I think the technique is solid, I will try this with some form of squash or root vegetable in the fall. The texture of cooked kohlrabi was a bit too fibrous for me.

I still had space in the oven, so we make balsamic glazed cipollini onions. Toss some peeled onions with a smidge of salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Bung it into an oven until luscious onion candy emerges.

Shelf #3 in the oven housed salt crust assorted items.

Salt crust beets, daikon, and kohlrabi. The beets turned out tender soft. The daikon and kohlrabi could have used some sort of barrier so as not to soak up too much salt. Perhaps wrapped in a lotus leaf before baking in salt.

Cherry tree produced only two tiny cherries this year. Less than one bite. Disappointing harvest. Still hungry.

Fluffy bunnies

I'm just not a salad person, but once in a blue moon, bunny food graces my kitchen. For me, salad greens are very inefficient in it's fluffiness and low energy density. I need calories to get through my ADHD days. On the rare occasions I do make a green salad, I tend to skew heavier on the denser vegetables and fatty proteins. Baby arugula, yellow beets, dragon carrots, red peppers, and chevre goat cheese. Dressed with roasted garlic chervil vinaigrette. Walnuts optional.

Prep school

This year's entire loquat harvest was consumed within an hour of picking. Very juicy and fresh. But all gone. No more delicious loquats until next year.

I'm practicing my Top Chef skills by cutting roasted beets into centimeter cubes. The ugly ones went into my stomach. At some point in my life I'd like to go to cooking school and learn these things for real instead of watching TV and making things up as I go along.

Searing a roast for stracoto with porcini mushrooms. A little care in the beginning yields a lot of delicious later.

Extracting flavor from the peeled shrimp shells. The broth may wind up in a sauce, mayhaps. Or the beginnings of a bisque, perhaps. Maybe a poaching liquid of some sort, possibly. But certainly, I'm getting my money's worth from this handful of shrimps. I'm skipping composting the spent shells after I'm done. For they be super stinky for long time.

Shrimps will marinate overnight in a chimichurri.

And for even more Top Chef fun, I will be breaking down two Costco chickens tonight.

Chicken building blocks sorted and organized for dishes yet to be imagined.

I may have gone overboard with the food prep and pyrex containers.

Laying it on thick

Sunchoke gratin. Late spring and summer produce are about to show up at the markets. Fall and winter items must be cleared out of the refrigerator to make room for the new seasons.

Carrot apple ginger soup. With a smidgen of cilantro. The idea is to take advantage of pectin locked away in unpeeled apples to help give the soup an unctuous texture without muddling up the plant flavors with dairy or gelatinous meat broths. The texture turned out great, but I'm not really sure I can credit the apples. I didn't make a batch without the apples to compare. And pectin's jelling effect probably doesn't do much at warm soup temperatures. Tastes good though, so no matter. These would be great with some toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top, but I didn't want to wash another pan.

Roasted orange beets and garlic- possibly for a salad later in the week, or some sort of marinade or sauce. Orange beets don't stain fingers and cutting boards and clothes and walls and napkins and dog noses like the more common red beets. I think orange ones are also slightly milder and more subtle in flavor, but that may be psychological. I'm easily swayed by pretty colors.

Today's bounty from the Super H Mart includes items such as Ca Ca flavored glazed chip snacks. Assorted shaped and filled mochi. Traditional Chen Pee plum candies, and coffee drinks named "Let's Be Bitter." In addition to being swayed by pretty colors, I am easily tempted by entertainingly named things. I will also be conducting comparison tests on cans of coconut milk.

And I couldn't resist trying the little crabs at the giant kimchee bar. Cute little itty bitty crabs! I'm such a sucker for little kawaii things.

A sucker for things like mini-me bananas. These mini bananas sliced and served with melon baller scooped ice cream would make great banana split sundaes for toddlers and dieters. I would top it with a tiny swedish lingonberry instead of a full sized maraschino cherry.

Sambal grilled corn. And Davy sauced ribs. Sometimes, there's nothing better on a weekend than grilled corn and a frosty beer. I had forgotten how good grilled corn can be. We will aim to grill more corn this summer. The pork ribs were so tender that it fell apart like pulled pork. Messy and delicious. This batch of Kentucky Davy Bourbon sauce included dried mangos and oregano. Now that I've realized bbq sauces are incredibly easy to make, there's really no reason to buy sauces and marinades that include xanthum gum and lecithin.

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.