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!

Butt but

Garlic roasted potatoes. With rosemary. I miss Ro.

Simple herbed roast chicken, enema style. I didn't have any beer cans, so I threw herbs and wine into a IKEA stainless steel pencil cup and shoved it up the chicken's ass. Twas definitely one of the more flavorful and moist roast chickens I've made. But the skin not as golden as I would like. Perhaps I need to play with the oven temperatures a bit and coke up the herb rub with sugar. But definitely tasty. The chicken should be like Donatella Versace. Crispy golden skin with herbs and booze flavor running throughout. 

Gobble de gook

The living room sofa has entered the Duck Tape stage of it's life-cycle. Lately, my own stuffing has been spilling out of my pants too, so I can empathize. Sadly, using duct tape to keep my pants up may have painful consequences. Luckily, human ingenuity has invented solutions just for this issue.

Some early prep work for tomorrow's Early Thanksgiving 2008. Cranberry persimmon relish. Because we have oodles of jiggly hachiya persimmons this week. I have to admit, I have a gooey soft spot in my heart for the ridged cranberry tube that comes out of a can. And how awesome is that "splort" sound when you dump out the cranberry tube?

Rum spiced pecans. Warm salty nuts. Heh heh heh.

It's quince tarte tatine season again. This year's quinces have been much less fragrant than last year's. I will go yell at them next time at the farmer's market. Farmer Fix it!

Sometimes regular

It's almost time for my Sometimes Annual Orphan Thanksgiving Potluck. I'm planning ahead and have started clearing out space in the freezer. Hunk of pork loin frees up a cubic foot. Woo Hoo! Will you be joining us for Early Orphan Thanksgiving this weekend?

Roast pork loin with rosemary prune gastrique. The sprig of parsley means I've attempted to have green vegetables this week. Delicious prune sauce will be awesome paired with duck. We will be having duck in the near future. And maybe bunny.

Treats, no tricks

The best part of Halloween is Boo Berry cereal. Since Boo Berry cereal is only available at this time of year, it fits the definition of a seasonal food. And it's made with whole grains now. So it's healthy. And boo berries are a fruit. And boo berry trees also absorb carbon dioxide.

A lovely limoncello risotto. It's pink because I also splashed in some rosé wine.

Preston will always choose treats over tricks.

Texas toast

I was going to get some cheap ass vodka for pie baking and other nefarious purposes. But I was suckered by marketing yet again. How could anyone resist vodka made in Texas?

This week's Dinner with Davy guest is Flip. Tonight, we have rosemary garlic potatoes. Half baked bread with roasted garlic spread.

And stracoto with porcini mushrooms. The sprig of rosemary counts towards our green veggie requirement for this meal.

Sadly, Flip wasn't under the influence of Tito's Texas Vodka. He's normally like this.

Preston thinks licking fingers does not count as begging for food.

Green tree sloth

I'm making a ginormous vat of Agua de Jamaica drink (pronounced Hah-My-Kah- not Gee-ah-May-Kah.) Otherwise known as Sorrel in the Carribean, Karkady in the Middle East, Bissap in West Africa, or Hibiscus Flower Tea to the pale people of the world. I make mine with piloncillo sugar and canela (Kah-Nay-Lah aka cinnamon.) And this time I added cloves, ginger, and tangerine peels. Sometimes I spike my Agua de Jamaica with rum because that makes me more handsome and attractive.

Fusilli pasta with basil pesto- sloth style. My lazy meal prep tip of the day is that I don't bother heating up the pesto sauce in another pot, I just plop the pesto into the final serving bowl and then plonk the bowl over the pasta water instead of the lid. By the time the pasta is done, both the bowl and the sauce are warm and heated through.

Butterflies in my stomach

I filtered out all the fat and solids from bacon infused vodka. When I get my courage up, there will be bacon bloody mary's. Scared. Very very scared.

Once again it's Pesto Festo time. Tonight we make three different kinds- pine nut basil, walnut arugula, and pumpkin seed cilantro. Always good to have pestos around the house as a sauce for pasta, or sandwich spread, or stirred into a soup, or a marinade for seafood, or floor wax and glass cleaner. I am not sure I labeled all the identical looking pestos correctly, so I may be putting together some ill-conceived flavor combinations in the future.

Height of tomato season is upon us. We will be eating a lot of caprese salads over the next month.

This batch of pizza dough is especially perky and eager. It didn't get the memo about me being a failure at yeast things. Sssshhh... nobody tell.

Spinach and sausage farfalle. They don't really look like butterflies to me. There must have been a lot of vino when they invented farfalle.

Drunken pork

3 words. Bacon Infused Vodka. Be scared. Be very very scared.

Reducing consumption

Ramen noodles with indented space to hold an egg. Like a nest. Very good product semantics. Too bad the noodles taste icky.

10 lbs of garbage and 82 lbs of back seat removed for better fuel economy. Damn $5 gas. The non-aerodynamic box now gets 26 mpg. Not bad for a rolling shipping container.

My grocery purchasing decisions are often influenced by being matchy matchy with my kitchen. It's now become subconscious that I don't realize I'm buying orange things.

Grilled calamari suffered from extreme shrinkage. Sigh. What seemed like multiple portions, turned into one.

But at least I have summer corn. Corn doesn't shrink much on the grill.

And summer peaches. These peaches are only "meh." Grilling it makes it somewhat tastier. But what I wouldn't give for a juicy sun ripened yellow peach right about now.

Pining after

The world's best-est limoncello ever! Beautiful chartreuse jewel toned colors from the Aaron method- combined with the delicious piney rosemary flavors of the Ed method. And the super aromatic kick from an armful of Davy lemons. Is good. Is very good.

No minors signage hung outside my bedroom. To help me stay out of trouble.

Woodie wagon is back in action. This time sporting fashionable Korean pine planks.

Plane crazy

The airport "limousine" is optimistically named. Sigh. Less than 3 days on the ground, and I'm heading back to California already. I'll just have to squeeze all my restaurant hopping in the limited time I have at the airport. 

Korean draft beer is good.

So-so bulgogi. I guess most airport food is of similarly overpriced quality all over the world.

I found a gelato stand in Korea! Black sesame and yogurt flavoured gelato. Surprisingly good. And the yogurt gelato texture was spot on. I got two spoons so I can share with myself.

Black bean tea tastes like dirt. The dirt that the beans grew in. Blech.

Colonel Sanders looks Asian. I'm not sure this will go over well in Kentucky.

And one last fiery seafood tofu stew pot. Then onto the airplane for the 12 hour flight back to LA! Aie! (And yes Meg, I did eat all that.)

Explosive tails

Squirrel tail. Sans squirrel. Carnage in the backyard again. There sure are a lot of tail-less critters in the neighborhood since Preston moved in.

Trying a new limoncello variation. A love child of Ed's rosemary limoncello proportions, and Aaron's pre-mixed fermenting booze sugar method. I hope it doesn't explode while I'm in Korea.

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.