Food Again

I didn't take any pictures, but here's what Lindz and I grazed upon on Saturday night:

An olive selection including Mt. Athos, Picholine and Kalamata olives, with a couple of pickled cippoline onions thrown in

A soft, gooey French cheese (I think it was St. Marsellin or something like that, I didn't keep the label)- very soft, like Brie but more luxurious and earthy.

Wensleydale cheese with cranberries

My own tomato bruschetta topping

Albondigas de Cordero (Lamb Meatballs): I put a healthy dose of garlic and rosemary in these, and then I breaded them with Panko crumbs. Crispy goodness.

We drank a very interesting Montsant from Spain (I should have saved that label too). Mostly Garnacha. Warm, enveloping stuff, with hints of anise and alcohol heat. I really liked it.

We watched Napoleon Dynamite. It was a pleasant evening.

Biscuits in the Morning Sun

 

I work a bit later today, so I had time, after I sent the wife off to work with her tea and her sandwich, to do some dishes and sharpen my baking craft.

I am a fan of Alton Brown. His Food Network show, Good Eats, is literally the only show on television that I give a rat's ass about. He cooks, he explains scientific and historical aspects of cooking, and he's a bit of a nerd. Therefore, I consider him a spiritual leader in this dark and confusing world.

That said, I decided to execute his Phase III Biscuit recipe, as found in his I'm Just Here for More Food. I have been endeavoring to deepen and broaden my kitchen-lore, particularly by mastering basic techniques and making things from scratch that most of the USA now buys at the store. Biscuits exemplify this. More people make biscuits from scratch here in the South than in other regions, I'll venture to state, but it's an under-practiced art form nonetheless.

Here in North Cackalacky, one sees a panoply of self-rising flours at the grocery store (on the other hand, in San Diego, self-rising flour is not easy to find at all). Every brand I've seen has a biscuit recipe on the bag. Unfortunately, I've gotten nothing but forgettable biscuits out of that resource. So I hauled out AB's book and carried out his technique. It's a wet, sloppy batter (I can't truthfully call it dough), and a biscuit cutter is useless; I just plopped scoopfuls of the stuff onto the baking sheet. Seventeen minutes later, I pulled from the oven the best biscuits I've ever had. Fluffy, moist, flavorful (the subtle forces of salt, fat and tangy buttermilk were in balance like a tripod of golden-brown goodness). I'm very pleased indeed. Unfortunately, their glory will not keep. As Robert Frost wrote, "Nothing gold can stay."

Happy Valentine's Day

Ah, yes. I finally enjoy this day because I have someone with whom to ignore it. Lindz and I have agreed to make no fuss over Cupid's Festival of Nonsense.

There will be no trail of rose petals leading to a sudsy bathtub. No bottle of crappy champagne chosen for its label rather than its contents. No reservations at a prix fixe dinner event. No trudging through the rain to get some overpriced red roses. No trying to be creatively romantic at gunpoint.

I've done all those things in my life, and they generally suck (except a prix fixe dinner event, which can be good, if a bit expensive).

Things are as they should be now. Neither Lindz nor I want to do anything out of the ordinary tonight; we're nice to each other all the time. This morning, like nearly every other morning, I made my wife's tea for her while she dried her hair. I made her a sandwich for lunch, using bread that I made myself.

It's not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but I consider that to be a true expression of love, as opposed to some strenuously contrived or storebought once-yearly experience. There are plenty of you out there who understand this.

I love you, Lindsey.

Food

 
Friday evening's grazing: Fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, artichoke hearts, assorted olives, peppered salami, and marcona almonds (Trader Joes). I toasted some of the bread (photographed in the previous post) in olive oil and rubbed it with garlic. It wasn't quite done yet at the time of the photo. The wine is Smoking Loon cabernet sauvignon. The coffee table is IKEA. All very nice. Lindz and I nibbled on this and ended up reading Pablo Neruda poems to each other in both English and Spanish. So cute, you could just puke.


 
Saturday's dinner: Chicken breast stuffed with red peppers and spinach, purple potatoes, and steamed asparagus. The wine is a red Crianza from the Rioja of Spain. It needed an hour to breathe before it behaved itself, and then it was quite good. The table cloth is Williams Sonoma.

Bread and Gadgets: a Still Life

 

Humdrum

I have been sadly remiss in my blogging duties. Life has been fairly humdrum lately. Work has improved a bit, but we'll see if that's permanent. I have been baking quite a bit (It's been many weeks since storebought bread has been in my house), and my father-in-law worked with me to fix a door. He's a marvelous resource for home improvement knowledge. He puts in bullnose corners and crown molding for fun. He's got mad skills, yo.

I baked a loaf of bread with a hefty amount of Muenster cheese rolled into it. It got brown and crispy where the cheese oozed to the surface. I brought it to work for a coworker's farewell. It was well received.

I have given a couple of cast iron skillets away. I have too much crap in the kitchen, so I'm trying to pare things down a bit. I am trying to increase my real cooking abilities, and that includes an understanding of what you need vs. what you think you need. So I carefully chose good homes for the skillets. I hope I get photos now and then.

My rosemary plants are quite dead. I will try again in the spring. My fond dream is to have huge, robust shrubs of it like they have at Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill.

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?