Dragonfly and Tomatoes

 

Corn and Scallop Johnnycakes

Lindz found a whole bunch of cool recipes in the June issue of Cooking Light. This is one of them. They are johnnycakes (a pancake version of cornbread, more or less) with fresh corn and scallops in them, and (not pictured) they are accompanied by a scallion sauce. Tasty shit. The sauce is scallions and some mayonnaise, sour cream and other goodies, blasted in the food processor. I didn't have all the ingredients, but it worked - a bit of ricotta instead of sour cream, and a few capers instead of parsley. This was a very nice, fresh dish. The corn is really what made it. Of course, my evil mind naturally came up with other ways to make it: deep-fried corn and scallop fritters with a sauce of scallions pureed with creme fraiche. Perhaps a little pile of caviar on top. A glass of Veuve Clicquot to wash it down...

Actually, we had the sensible version, with Spaten Premium, a delightfully refreshing German Pilsner, to go with it. It was marvelous. Soon, we will make the cherry-jalapeno preserves out of the same magazine and put it on top of some pork chops.

Word o' the Day

Repine
1:To feel or express dejection or discontent: complain
2:To long for something.

Food has been an escape for me, but perhaps I need to try harder in my efforts to pierce the gloom. It seems like sections of me are going numb, thanks to this cubicle farm. My wife is married to a freak!

An Entire Day Spent on One Meal....

And well worth it. Here's the Boston Butt, after about 6 of the 11.5 hours of 210-degree hickory smoke:




SmokeDroid performed well. I tossed a towel over him to reduce lost heat, and it leveled off nicely at about 210 degrees. I also recreated (reasonably well, at least, the roasted potato salad from Childress. I also made cole slaw. Here is the result:




The pork was pretty damned good. Smoky, succulent and a bit salty. It had a tasty crust on the outside. A fine day.

SmokeDroid, The Home-Made Smoker o' Death

 





Can't wait to use it.

The Specifications:
It's a 31-gallon steel garbage can with 1/4" x 4" machine screws threaded into it (reinforced with large fender washers inside and out) 16" from the bottom of the can. An 18 1/2" Webber grate rests on these screws. I poked a hole just below the grate level and inserted a foot-long deep-fryer thermometer. The heat comes from an electric hot plate. I will probably use an iron skillet full of hickory chips, and a pie tin suspended above that to deflect any drippings off of the heat. Fine-tuning may be required, but I'm generally optimistic about the design.

Memorial Day Weekend in Davidson

(Listening to "Waltz of the Mushrooms" by Buddy Rich and His Orchestra, and sipping Jolly Pumpkin La Roja Artisan Amber Ale)

Lindz and I spent Memorial Day Weekend on the shore of Lake Norman with her parents, her grandmother and a friend. The hideous drudgery of work faded quickly:



We did very little outside of eating and drinking. One thing we did do was enjoy an opportunity to play around a bit. Here I am performing a touch-and-go in the Boeing 757 simulator (the hand on the throttles is Lindz's dad; he has umpteen thousand hours logged in this aircraft type):



("Nowhere Fast" by Incubus)

Lindz's gracious mother did most of the cooking, but I got a chance to hog the kitchen on Sunday. I made bacon-wrapped water chestnuts in a mustard barbecue sauce. I had fun with the sauce; such diverse items as a can of Coke, some ginger, cinnamon, a banana and some coffee went in there. Lindz's dad and I cooperatively grilled the pineapple and ribeye steaks. There is a large, gregarious social circle in the condo development there, and communal cookouts occur regularly. People enjoyed the water chestnuts, which I offered to everyone until they were gone. I gave credit to my mother, who was the source of the idea for me. She never fiddled around with the sauce so much, though.

("Year of the Knife" by Tears for Fears)

We all did plenty of nothing, but today (Memorial Day proper, that is), we drove up to the Lexington area and toured the Childress winery. The land is occupied by an impressively beautiful, new, Italian villa-styled facility. The grounds were meticulously maintained, and the pastoral views were impressive to anyone but the blind or the terminally pessimistic. This place was stunning. The vines are so young that they are not yet being harvested (the winery vinifies grapes from other parts of the state, mostly from the Yadkin Valley). NASCAR money made it all possible, or that is my understanding. The newness and slickness of the grounds lowered my expectations ("Frass Canyon," a fictional winery in Sideways, comes to mind). We had a pleasant tour, and the facilities are impressive. We saw stainless steel fermentation tanks, French oak cooperage, a temperature-and-humidity-controlled cellar (with chandeliers and tables, available for your subterranean gatherings) and state-of-the-art bottling equipment.

("Love in Vain" by Robert Johnson)

We decided to have some lunch before tasting. All the slick landscaping and architecture led me to expect overpriced, undersized and pretentious food. Wrong. I had a very tasty panini, but dig this - I had life-changing potato salad. Everyone at the table was talking about it, but I'm writing about my reaction to it. It was a salad of roasted potatoes, scratch-made mayonnaise, herbs, red onion and capers. It was a revelation. It just so happens that the chef was the person serving us (the place was busy), and she was very pleased to discuss the ins and outs of her potato salad with us. Some of her shockingly red hair was escaping from her chef's cap, and she was utterly devoid of pretense or arrogance. She just likes to cook, and she cooks for a living. I sat, eating her potato salad, enjoying the view, quivering with envy. I didn't let it spoil my time; I just enjoyed the experience.

The wine sucked. Well, no, it didn't exactly suck; it was quite drinkable. It's just the first winery I've ever been to where I was unable to distinguish the Merlot from the Cabernet Sauvignon from the Cabernet Franc. The three were utterly interchangeable. Quite a feat, I suppose. No other winery of which I am aware has done it.

That damned potato salad was so good, I'm getting misty right now.

("Limehouse Blues" by the Gene Krupa Trio)