Maybe I'll actually update.

I've spent some very sweaty hours today seasoning my wok. It's not quite ready yet, but I have all the time in the world since my layoff, and I intend to finish it tomorrow. (in addition to sewing up an apron, some medieval garb for my roommate and a cat bed, but since that's off the subject of culinary adventures, I'll not elaborate.)

In the meantime, I cooked a mediocre stir-fry in .... a frying pan.

Throw in:

Some sesame oil

Get it nice and hot. While that's heating up, chop ... err, no, slice... some tofu and throw it betwixt paper towelies and smush it a little to get the extra water out. IF you fail to do so, you'll end up splattered with hot oil, which isn't very nice at all, and the tofu won't get crispy.

Alright, after the tofu's been smushed, lay it gently into the nice hot oil. While that's frying, chop up some:

broccoli (rhymes with e-coli, for the fun of it)

garlic

flip the tofu when one side is nice and crispy, and do the same to the other side. When crispiness is at its apex, remove tofu from frying pan and replace with broccoli and garlic. Throw in some chinese cooking wine and soy sauce. Turn the heat down lest the broccoli get gnasty and burninated.

Kay. You can season your wok a little more while that's cooking. If you don't have a wok, go get one. When that gets nice and warm, throw the tofu back in and heat it up a tad.

Nom it with some sriracha chili sauce (Rooster sauce!) then get your butt to kung fu.

Tasty Beer

Opa Opa! Blueberry! In a growler, in my fridge, no less. Best with some frozen blueberries... or fresh if you want to shell out.

You know you want a taco.

I've spent the past week in Santa Paula, CA where Lemons and Avocados come from, and I'll admit I stole part of this recipe from my aunt. It's GOOD though, that is the second most important part and of course the most important is that it is TACOS. Best enjoyed with some sangria, but if your sangria hasn't set enough, add some triple sec to it. YES.

OK.

So start with some ground beef (I bought the grass fed type from Whole Foods because I am a useless hippie like that). You need chorizo too, prolly 1 link of it.

Actually it starts with olive oil. Drizzle some in a pan and put the fire under it. Good. Now chop up some garlic and onions, and throw that into the oil. Try to do the garlic last - I never do, and it ends up brown and crunchy.

Cool, so then once the onions caramelize, throw in the meaty bits. You'll likely need to mash up the chorizo with your fingers a bit to get it into nice pieces. There you go.

Heat it up

Add an envelope of taco seasoning because who are we kidding. That stuff has some kind of crack in it and I can't complain.

Throw in a bit of water too.

Then, chop ye up some tomato and avocado.

Good.

Take some corn tortillas and get them hot in a fry pan with some oil. Mmmmm


Add the cooked meat to the inner bits of the tortilla, throw in tomato, avocado and cheeeese.

Now. While you were cooking the meat, it would be wise of you to make Sangria!!

One bottle of some bit of red wine
one bottle (the bitty ones) ginger ale
some oranges- like 2
a lemon
a lime
more if you can fit it in your pitcher

chop up the fruit, pour the wine over it. I did this backward. Pour in the gingerale. Stick it in the fridge for a long bit. If you don't have a long bit, have some with a splash of triple sec.

Win.

Today's Fruit Serving

Cameo Apples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameo_(apple)

I found them at the local Whole Foods (in Bedford, MA).

Honestly, they taste a lot like a Braeburn apple. Most of the time this is exactly the type of apple I want - the rest of the time, I want an orchard fresh McIntosh, Empire or Courtland!

Inspiration for dinner tonight

Though I am not grinding my own meat. Z and I are taking the lazy way out, and I think I can convince him to cook.
http://www.donniepinkston.net/2008-07-21/the-perfect-burger.html

My instructions to Z, in case you're curious on how I'm trying to make it easy, and therefore convince him to cook:

1. Put 2 big pots of water on to boil. Add salt to one for corn. Add salt to the other for Salt Potatoes. The salt for those is in the cabinet with the potatoes, to the lower right of the stove.
2. Slice an onion.
3. shuck the corn. http://www.ehow.com/how_2072862_shuck-corn.html - save the husks in a paper bag so I can start composting.
4. Once the water has boiled, put the potatoes in one pot, the corn in the other.

If you want to get really into it...

- take some hamburger outta the fridge
- put it in a bowl, break it into little chunks. DO NOT handle the meat too much or it will end up tough!
- add salt, pepper, and other spices! Cayenne pepper is good, paprika is good, cumin is good, curry powder if you are adventurous.
- Mix the burger meat lightly.
- form into patties.

let the meat rest until I come home :-) then we grill and nom!

I've got some Strongbow Cider and Smuttynose Hanami Ale (http://www.smuttynose.com/beers/seasonal_beers/smuttynose_hanami_ale.html), which is rather tart, like real cherries. If you don't have smuttynose or strongbow anywhere near you, sad sad sad. You could substitute a Blue Moon I suppose. Not the same, but tasty in its own way.

I'll let you know how it pans out.

Sunday Triple Whammy

I'll keep this as brief as I can. It's Sunday night and you're all getting ready to go to work (or ding a level on WoW, as I am).

But SINCE it's Sunday, there was plenty of time for cooking stuff. Pancakes --> Stuff Tempura --> Kettle Korn

You will likely suffer one or two burns.

Pancakes.

- Dig out the Joy of Cooking
- Turn to the Pancake recipe
- get your frypan wicked hot and toss in some Smart Balance.
- Between getting the recipe and heating the pan, follow the recipe to make the batter. I can't remember it and I didn't invent it, so I'm not going to quote it back here.

So make your first two HUGE pancakes with regular batter. Stir in frozen blueberries for the other two. Here's the kicker - you find your roommates (probably) have devoured all of the maple syrup. Break out some more Smart Balance, confectioner sugar, and some strawberries (yeah, sliced, sugared, and lemoned) that happen to be hanging out in the fridge. Toss that on, get it all melty and tasty and nom away. That takes care of breakfast. Since we had that at 2, that also counted as Lunch. Brilliant!

Stuff Tempura.

So the night before, get all ready because you think you're going to make it then. Slice up (or have your boyfriend slice for you, because he is awesome at cutting stuff):
- 1 chinese eggplant (the long thin ones. Check the asian store if you can't find one in ye olde hypermart)
- 1 yam (sweet potato?)
- Some red and green pepper.
- An onion (yeah he's definitely doing that one)
So when you realize you're out of oil, put that in the fridge to do tomorrow.

Otherwise ready:
- Some shrimp. Mmm

If you're adventurous:
- ground beef
- panko
- Salt, pepper, the usual
- Some soy sauce

Get together for a batter:
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1/2 cup club soda (cold)
- 1 egg

You also need:
- a shitload of oil. Like half a jug of wesson.

And if you don't have a deep fry thermometer, you're screwed.

So put the oil in the wok (or big old pan) and get it heated to 350. That's going to take a bit. While that's getting warm (hot hot hot), get the burger meat and mix it with the panko, salt, pepper, soy sauce, and whatever else looks appropriate.

Then make the batter RIGHT BEFORE you intend to fry. Mix the club soda and the egg. Whisk it pretty good. Then dump in the rice flour and mix it ever so slightly - lumps are OK. Mixing it too much is going to activate too much gluten and it just won't taste right.

So now your oil is nice and hot. Dip something in the batter. Good. Now throw it CAREFULLY in the oil (or place it gingerly with a chopstick). When it's kinda golden (this is rice flour, it's not going to brown much) fish it out. Eat that stuff right away. You can also make a nice sauce but it's doubtful you have dashi on hand. If you do, combine some dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and I think that was it (Z made it) and boil it. When it reaches boiling, take it off the heat and let it cool down.

If your night was anything like mine, the stuff you cooked first will be wicked cold before the last bits are done, so it's completely acceptable to snack as you go. Just make sure you pick the pieces that've been out of the oil for a while...

And finally, Kettle Korn!

Get your Popcorn Pan ready (if you don't have one, get ye to the kitchen supply store for a bigass sauce pan, like 2 gallons or whatever. Has to be a kitchen supply one - that crap at Wal Mart isn't fit to cook mac and cheese).

Put enough oil in it to cover the bottom of the pan ever so slightly, then throw in 3 popcorn kernels. Put the lid on. When one pops, open it back up. Dump in some sugar - I eyeballed it but it must have been around a cup. Add some salt, and enough popcorn to JUST cover the bottom of the pan. TRUST ME - otherwise you will have WAY too much popcorn. That seems like a good idea, but really - no.

As it's popping, shake it shake it shake it. Shake it like mad. That makes it good. When the popping doesn't "ping!" the lid so much, take the lid OFF (it'll help the steam escape, giving you crunchier popcorn! very important) and keep shaking as much as you can. If you know anything you know that when the popping stops, or at least tapers off really slow-like, it's done. Turn the burner off and get that pan offa it. You have to let the corn cool a little before you go a-snackin - otherwise it's not as crunchy and OW OW OW burn.

That's a delicious day.

Sardinhas Assadas - or the only good thing about having dated that Portuguese B*st*rd

It's starting to feel like summer in New England. Yesterday I skipped the gym after work to go to Lowe's so I could grab an adapter for my grill. Yep, an adapter. Z and I bought a grill for 25 bux off Craigslist, but sadly it wouldn't hook up to any modern, decent gas tanks. Our roommates were on the hook for the adapter, since we bought the grill and propane, but it didn't look like they were going to pick one up any time soon. Le sigh.

Summer conjures up other memories for me, besides grilling. Mostly dating this idiot jerk, who happend to be straigh-up from Lisbon. Long story short, he's a sociopath, but I did get one (ok maybe 2) decent things out of dating him. The possibly decent thing is a fairly OK understanding of written portuguese. (I studied it in case I'd ever meet his parents. I never did. His next girlfriend [lots of disgusting drama there] met them 2 weeks after they started dating. I wonder if he tried to pass her off as the same girl he'd been dating the whole time.)

OK but the really good thing about it all was going to stupid Portuguese street fairs around New England, mostly in Providence RI, but we went to a few in New Bedford, Provincetown, and maybe a few other places in MA. The thing that was good about these fairs (because he wouldn't dance with me to the live music, sigh) - and I mean the thing that was TOP NOTCH THE BEST was Sardinhas Assadas!

Giant grills outside with not hamburgers, not hot dogs - Sardines.

These are not my dad's canned sardines. Oh no. Don't even start looking for crackers and mustard.

These are big, and these are good. Crispy, grilled, not a bit fishy.

To accomplish something similar, don't even try broiling. They just won't come out right. You have to use open flame.

So set up your grill, and get your (decent, loving, sweet, perfect, Chinese, geeky) boyfriend to help you when the stupid gas won't freaking work. Then, go get the sardines outta the freezer. If you have fresh ones you're a lucky dork, but if not, the Stop and Shop in Bedford MA (oddly, quite far from New Bedford, MA) stocks them in the frozen fish section. No kidding.

So, they're all frozen. You're not going to grill them like that! Put them in a bowl, no wait - don't. Get a bowl and put some salt in it. I used Kosher, but you could do with sea salt too, I bet. Then, put some cold water in yon bowl. Add the fish. Pretend they're swiming along nicely in the ocean. This takes a good imagination, because those bad boys are frozen solid.

OK when they're in the bowl, go chop veggies or something to grill up with this because srlsy, you don't want just fish. OK maybe you do. Or you could go buy some portuguese bread. I didn't but it's how they serve it at the festas.

Sweet. Now you've waited 15 mins or so. Dump the water. If you want to try it out, brush them with some olive oil and sprinkle on more salt. I didn't do this, and they still ended up awesome. Throw those suckers on the grill. Leave them there for a bit. Go turn them over - the cooked side should be nice and crispy!

Grill them a bit more.

When they look done, take them off the grill and resist the urge to dig in right away - they're hot little buggers. When they're finally cool enough to touch, dig in -- with some reservations. You can flake the crispy skin off if it icks you out a little. I tend to do this. Also, and this is *really* crucial - DON'T bite right into the belly! Oh my god no! Do you like bitter disgusting fish innards? Because that's what you'll get a mouth full of. Eww. Even the flesh that touches it gets a bit of aftertaste. No, no no! ick. So yeah, be careful. Also, sardinhas are quite bony, but the bones are mostly edible and probably a decent source of calcium. They just suck if you get one stuck in your throat (yeah that happened to me).

Aww yeah. You ever going to buy them in a can again? That's what I thought! I'm having more of these tonight.