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.

 

Pig latin

It's been ages since I've seen one of my favorite Sachi's. We will catch up and reminisce with the aid of pork dishes. Sachi brings gifts of beautiful irises. Are irises edible?

A bit of wine, some manchego, and a nibble or two of salame while I finish up the other courses.

We will be guinea pigs* to my new invention. Interactive caesar salad. Slightly grilled romaine lettuce for a bit of smokey flavor. And the components of a traditional caesar dressing broken out and treated as their own individual side dishes of fried eggs and warm bagna cauda. Just mix everything together however you wish when you eat it. This was a bit too interactive for my tastes. I'm essentially lazy, so I'd rather not play with my food on the plate and would prefer something pre-tossed. Sometimes, it can be too much work to eat something. But I have to admit it looks nice on a plate.

But the old standby of tomatillo braised pork loin never fails. It's doubly wonderful today because pork is cheap this week due to the Jewish holidays. I have 18 lbs of pork in the refrigerator.

I kleenz krumms auf u.

*there was no lipstick on the above mentioned guinea pigs

Spicy death

Tuna green curry. Post-travel laziness and a disgusting plague caught from snotty disease ridden children calls for throwing the dregs of the pantry and refrigerator into a pot with something strong and spicy. We will battle the plague with spices and fish sauce.

Energy stores

Tiny champagne grapes require much too much effort to eat. I was tired eating just this one bunch. Why did I get the 4 pound carton of champagne grapes from Costco? But champagne grapes may be a good way to tire out sugar frosted bomb enhanced ADHD children.

Increasing the thai yellow curry stockpile. It pays to have curry rice stockpiles lying around- a life saver for when one is too tired to make a meal from scratch. Too tired from eating tiny bunches of champagne grapes. Or too tired from chasing after ADHD children.

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.)

Fiesta!

The long awaited Mexican feast I've been obsessing about all week. Thinking, dreaming, planning for days! Most items made from scratch. Strawberry agua fresca with mint syrup. Serving anything in a tall skinny glass makes it fancy. Grilled corn, potatos, and poblano peppers. Tomatillo serrano salsa. And carne asada tacos with roasted tomato garlic salsa and mango jicama slaw.

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.

Thai peanuts

Red curry and yellow curry with chicken thighs, purple dragon carrots, and potatos. Trader Joe's curry bases were made for delicate white people taste buds, so I'm zinging them up with hot chilies, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves from my sad looking kaffir lime tree (twiggy shrub.) If Charlie Brown was born Thai, he'd adopt this tree.

Fruit bars

Preserving lemons in salt like they do in Morocco. One must be very resourceful to deal with this year's lemon bounty. I've never tasted preserved lemons before, so I have no clue whether these are done correctly or not. My own dried oregano totally trounces the jar from the Spice House.

My impatience and laziness means the pie crust is too warm and squidgy. But that's okay. It's just messy and ugly.

Ugly crust has no affect on the tastiness of strawberry rhubarb pie.

A lovely pine nut basil pesto. And a killer spicy chimichurri sauce. I've forgotten which is which, so there may be culinary failures in the future.

I'm growing heirloom watermelon radishes in addition to the normal purple and pink ones. How awesome are those colors?

Rhubarb sorbet in the future. I love rhubarb.

Chard stems roasted over piperade, and drizzled with vinaigrette. Similar to the insanely complicated rat-patootie dish from the Pixar movie, but with only 5 minutes of effort instead of 5 hours. A little casserole ugliness is an acceptable tradeoff for 5 hours of my life.

Bottling moonshine

Original recipe Kentucky Davy bourbon rib sauce. Reconstructed based upon the ingredients list on a bottle of bourbon sauce at the distillery gift shop. The profit margins on these sauces are incredible. The basic ingredients are relatively cheap. And virtually no labor costs. My blender full of sauce would retail for $50. Mine sauce is even more delicious than store bought bourbon sauce because it's made with Davy Lurve. Lurve!

And delicious ribs ensue. Roasted garlic potatoes are bonus items. Dog sitter Terry says, "Yum."

Hungry like a wolf

The big bad wolf is in town this week. I've lost count how many times this arbor went flying.



I had wanted to make roasted veggies with only purple ingredients. But my purple cauliflower was MIA. The purple onions I had were moldy. Eggplant were out of season. And there were no purple carrots to be found in the garden. So we make do with purple potatoes with yellow onions, parsnips, and normal carrots.

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.

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.