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!

Hot layers of hell

The final chocolate layers are applied to the 7 layer cookies. The shape and form of the cookie slab reminds me of slab bacon. Mayhaps I will attempt a red, white, and pink version that is maple and smoke flavored. With white chocolate.

Sliced into pieces for holiday visitor parting gifts. These are tasty. Almond flavored layers with apricot filling, sandwiched between dark chocolate. These would be even better if the recipe made any sense to humans. Seriously, that recipe writer needs to die a painful death and rot in hell without bacon.

Leftover meat cake potato frosting get recycled into thrice baked potatoes. It's once more delicious-er than twice baked potatoes.

Bacon for more

Great turn out for 2008's Early Turkey Day / Reunion / Job Fair. There was gobble. There was booze. There was merriment. There was bacon. Thanks Dan for getting the ball rolling. Great to see old and new faces. Those of you who didn't make the party, we totally made fun of you behind your defenseless backs. Let that be a lesson to you.

This year's spread gets even more impressive than years past. Deliciousness from everybody. Turkeys and squash and nuts and greens and fennel and sweet potato and ravioli and pasta salad and chocolate cake and crab rangoon.

I contributed a flight of bacon courses. We begin with bacon chocolate chip cookies. Next time, I'd double the amount of bacon bits. Bacon doesn't lend itself well to subtlety.

Bacon toffee. If you like salted caramels, bacon toffee is even better. Bacon candy!

And we close with bacon ice cream with bacon salt. Best ice cream ever! We now have definitive proof that bacon DOES make everything taste better. There will sonnets written for bacon ice cream. Ships will be launched for bacon ice cream. Hillary might be Secretary of State for bacon ice cream. And even Brangelina might get married for bacon ice cream.

Winter stores

It's the tomato sauce time of the year. This year's Summer of Garden Neglect has produced much less bounty than last year. But we will make do and be grateful for with what we have. Thankfully, supermarkets and Costco have been invented so I'm in no danger of starvation this winter.

I went totally nuts at the Super H Mart bulk bins. All sorts of flavored and dried and pickled fish products. The octopus jerky and candied anchovy snacks were especially delicious. All you pasty white people gagging right now need to get over your food prejudices and keep an open mind. Delicious is delicious in any culture.

I only bought this because she reminded me of those WW2 Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It." posters. I had no clue what these were when I threw her into the shopping cart.

Tomato sauce. And crimini mushroom tapenade. If I had a basement, I'd totally have a giant freezer chest. And I'd buy an entire hormone free grass fed cow to fill it.

I made Nancy chocolate toffee chunk cookies for Greg's party tonight. I even followed the recipe. It was painful to do so.

Brown eye

Trying a new interesting recipe for mushroom olive ragu on linguine with pecorino romano cheese. Basically, you blitz up a bunch of brown mushrooms in the food processor with some olives, cook the mush in red wine, and you're done. How could something so simple be so delicious? The sauce freezes well too.

Chocolate sorbet has a very alien texture. Even straight out of the freezer, it has the consistency of liquid latex. Wrong. It's just wrong. Fail!

Will power

I need adult supervision when I go to grocery stores. It's impossible to practice restraint and self control. I want to try everything I see. It's like I'm five years old.

Crazy soda pop. Rather than the usual screw top cap, pressure generated from carbonation forces a glass marble in the upper chamber to seal tightly against the opening. The pinch in the middle keeps the marble from settling into the bottom after it's been forced down by the bundled punch mechanism. A marvel of pointless physics and engineering.

Anything sporting panda illustrations or panda logos will pretty much guarantee a spot in the shopping cart. 

The first of the string beans this season are ready. I started with an equal number of green, yellow, and purple bean seeds. For some reason, the yellow beans have taken off, followed by purple, and the more common green beans are withering away before producing flowers. A lone strawberry survivor. And it wasn't even all that tasty. Slugs got to all the other ones.

Nowhere near a peck of pickled peppers. But we don't need that much quantity as these peppers are intense enough to strip varnish. The radishes will turn a shade of flattering pink as it pickles.

Looing assorted items. This is the start of a master loo juice sauce base that can be passed down many generations. Each time it's used, you add a little more spice, a little more water, a little more soy sauce. It's supposed to darken with age and bloom with complex flavor like a fine wine. If you treat me right, I will bequeath this sauce to you upon my death.

Loo lo. Loo gee. Loo zhu. Loo hsiang goo. 

Sautéd dandelion greens. My mulching efforts over the past year have cut down the number of weeds growing in the yard. So I actually paid good money at the farmer's market for these weeds.

Chocolate blood orange sorbet refuses to freeze. The flavor is incredible, but WHY WON'T YOU FIRM UP?

Tonight's batch of chicken stock yielded over a gallon and a half. I'm not going to will this to anyone upon my death, so you'll have to make your own.

Seeing red

Lilypads! Cross your fingers, maybe the water lily will flower this year. Will it be red? Or yellow? Or white?

Warming temperatures make cannas more colorful. I totally want a necktie with this color scheme. This is one of the few non-edible plants left in the backyard.

This is kind of scary looking.

Chorizo black bean molé chili. I wish there were limes on the tree. This could use a touch of lime juice and queso fresco.

2 lbs of lentils for 50 cents! Some mirepoix, chicken stock, a smoked hamhock, and bay leaves. Lentil soup warms the soul.

Pie pie pie pie pie

Shaved fennel, scallion, and meyer lemon pizza. Everything sliced super thin with a drizzle of olive oil. An original Davy concoction. Is good. Is very good.



3 cheese pizza. With davy tomato sauce, and davy dough. At some point in my life there will be davy sheep and cows to make davy cheese. But Costco sheep and cows will have to do for now.



And a normal pepperoni version.



And another inspired Davy invention- sun dried tomatoes and garlic confit pizza. The green onions will get all wilt-y from residual heat from the pizza pie, tempering the sharpness of the green onions slightly. This one was really good. The garlic confit completely transformed in texture to be potato-like. How very interesting and delicious. I wonder how that happened?



Chocolate truffle tart with fuyu persimmons. Decent first attempt. The chocolate overwhelmed the persimmons, so next time, I'd use the more flavorful hachiya persimmons instead of fuyu. And I'd incorporate the persimmons in puree form into the chocolate truffle, perhaps whipping in more air for a less dense texture before setting in the chocolate pastry shell. And I need to track down some Dutched cocoa powder. The pastry could be better with dutched cocoa and more butter. Let's sleep on that.

Root root root for pie

Apple rhubarb streusel pie. I was expecting to be underwhelmed by this pie, and maybe even toss it out after a few bites. But Oh So Incredible Pie! What a happy surprise! I didn't think pies could be this delicate and sophisticated. Is this really rhubarb? Not too sweet, citrus flavor without the sharp acid bite, subtle aroma from the gooseberry glaze. Great contrast in texture between the rhubarb, gala apple chunks, the walnut streusel topping, and the flakey pastry crust. The walnuts in the streusel tie the buttery crust together with the earthy rhubarb. All in perfect harmony. And I have no clue what I did to create this, so I'm never going to be able to reproduce this.



There was a time not so long ago when I'd say, "Why the hell would I need pie weights?" "In this day and age, who the hell bakes pies and tarts regularly?" But here we are today. The beginnings of a chocolate truffle tart, and a set of ceramic pie weights.



Tonight is all about roots and tubers. I'm preparing horseradish root.



I wound up painstakingly peeling fingerling potatoes because I didn't want to get in the car to get normal sized yukon gold potatoes. I managed to not mangle my own digits. Sadly, my recent relationship with this peeler is one of my longer term relationships. Sigh.



The taters get cooked in milk with celeriac. The unpeeled celeriac was so hideously ugly that I didn't bother taking a "before" picture for fear of scaring babies and puppies.



A three burner night. I feel proud when it's a 3 or 4 burner night.



Glazed short ribs with mustard cream sauce and red wine reduction. Celeriac potato puree. Foods to warm your soul during chilly winter nights.