witzwurst.

Last posted one of these in 2005, thought it was time for an update.

Hoo, boy, been a while since I posted anything. I'm trying to get back into posting again -- I've been on a kick to eat healthier food the last month or so, after realizing that a few years of the road warrior lifestyle have taken their toll on my fitness level. Thankfully I've been finding that healthy eating more or less means following my instincts in the kitchen, with just a bit of restraint. I've been fairly careful about measuring things and getting a sense of exactly how much I'm eating and when it is I make better decisions.

To make a long story short, though, I've been eating a lot of great food along the way. I was particularly happy with this morning's brunch, which is...kind of like huevos rancheros, but just thrown together. Quick, spicy, and satisfying, and lots of good real food:


(there are eggs under there, I promise!)
( Recipe, of course, after the cut. )
The libation to the left is cold brewed iced coffee -- thanks to sparkymonster for prodding me to try it again. I'm still kind of deciding whether I like it -- I may need to try someone else's to see if I'm doing it right.

Meme from sparkymonster

The Very Good Taste Omnivore’s Hundred:
http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/uncategorised/the-omnivores-hundred/

( Read more... )

One of my great frustrations in cooking is buying a huge, beautiful bunch of fresh herbiage for a recipe that only takes a couple of tablespoons. I've long thought I could never keep them fresh long enough to use up even a vaguely reasonable portion.

I think, though, that I've found a way. I just pitched a bunch of herbs, not because they were dry or wilted or rotten (as is usually the case), but because they seemed to have lost their smell. It was borderline, really; I probably could have gotten more use out of them, but I figured they had done their duty. They looked as fresh as the day I'd bought them, really.

They were three weeks old!

( Find out how... )

Here's a menu I made for some friends a few weeks back. The dinner actually started with the pomegranate-rose sauce, which I made to take along to an Easter dinner this year. I was trying to figure out something to take, noticed an article on Fayruz, or Persian New Year, and the thought of somehow combining pomegranate and rose together popped into my head. A bit of experimentation later, and I had this sauce. It's not authentically Persian — it's not authentically anything — but it tastes damned good.
I served it over lamb, but it would be good over all sorts of things; it's not clear from the description, but it actually has an herbaceous and slightly tannic quality that makes it work really well. The pure pomegranate juice is very tart, so the sugar only really cancels out the acidity. (I didn't actually realize that myself until I stirred leftover sauce into seltzer, which wasn't entirely successful.)
( 06. Pomegranate-Rose Sauce )
( 07. Roast Leg of Lamb with Herbed Yogurt )
( 08. Citrus, Endive, and Avocado Salad )
( 09. Persian Rice with Pistachios, Peas, and Herbs )
( 10. Pomegranate-Port Poached Pears with Creme Anglaise )

This is the first post in what I'm going to try to make a regular series of quick kitchen tips for the busy cook. No matter how grandiose my ambitions, a lot of nights I end up just throwing something easy together; if it's not cheaper and faster than takeout, it's not going to happen. Sometimes it's just sustenance, but other times something pretty amazing comes together. So, "Cheap Trick" will feature things you can make in about half an hour, and for less than $5.




Today's trick is Tomato Confit, a quick and easy way of cooking down a can -- yes, a can -- of good tomatoes into something rich, delicious and versatile. It's more of a condiment than an entree, but it has heft that can make it the center of a meal. Better yet, the specific seasonings can be almost anything you want. I threw in Indian spices tonight, and served it with a simple dal and some brown basmati rice, but you could just as easily make it to go with just about any food where tomatoes could fit in. It'd be great with grilled meat or vegetables, with black beans, atop polenta, or even on a hamburger.

The flavor of the finished confit is intense. It's the essence of good fresh ripe tomatoes concentrated so that every bite tastes like five. Cooking the fruit down like this caramelizes a lot of the sugars for an intense sweetness; this particular method also keeps a lot of bright acid in the flesh of the tomatoes to offset that. It's similar in technique to a Catalan preparation called Sofregit, but the shorter cooking makes a slightly different beast.

( 05. Tomato Confit )

i've been doing a lot of thinking about food the last few weeks. i can credit sparkymonster  for indirectly sending me down this path; someone who commented on her livejournal linked to someone who linked to someone who posted an article by michael pollan, most famously author of the omnivore's dilemma.

the article was a meditation on what one might call the ethical carnivore, which may seem a contradiction. indeed, vegetarians were for so long the only significant voice calling attention to the treatment of livestock that it may sometimes seem that giving up meat is the only realistic option if one seeks to improve animal welfare. i'm not interested in getting into the debate about whether eating meat is inherently evil, here; others have made both arguments quite articulately. however, it's quickly becoming clear to me that if one does choose to eat meat, that choice comes with a certain responsibility. i'm fine with the idea of animals dying for food; i have no problem looking my dinner in the eye. what i do take issue with is animals who suffer before providing sustenance -- a suffering which has become epidemic in america's factory food system.

in the past hundred years, the industrializaton of food has transformed the way westerners eat. sadly, many of those changes are of dubious benefit; one look at a nutrition label in the grocery will reveal that what might look like food often is something else entirely. pollan's latest book, in defense of food, rightfully points out that we've really turned traditional eating on its head. beginning with refined flours and sugars, we've replaced many of the traditional foods eaten by our ancestors for millennia with lookalikes with very different nutritional profiles. while no one's really proven a link, one need only look at the news to see that food-related diseases -- heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, "metabolic syndrome," and more -- have skyrocketed. pollan notes that most of these afflictions are absent from cultures that eat traditional diets. which traditional diets? pretty much any of them.

i've decided, then, to start changing the way i eat. this is no fad diet; i'm not going to be subsisting on cabbage soup or anything of the sort. but i'm aiming to eat real food, most of the time: the least processed, most ethically raised, most traditional diet i can. it's going to be tough for me; it's hard to make good decisions when you're on the road as much as i am, and i fully admit not all of my meals are going to be out of some slow food utopia. my commitment, though, is to do two things: think about all the food i eat, and to make the best choices available to me.

i thought i might start with a list of things i'd like to try as part of this change in my diet. what would you d

• investigate locally raised meat, including from 100% pastured animals
• purchase only humanely raised meat for my own cooking
• buy a chest freezer, and start preserving local produce in season
• eat out less -- much less -- when i'm at home
• eat a lot more vegetables
• eat more whole grains

ok, i've been totally slackful about both cooking and posting my recipes. here's a few.

( 02. Fennel and Apple Soup with Fourme d'Ambert )

( 03. Goat Cheese and Onion Quiche with Tarragon Shrimp )

In the last 36 hours?

My day-and-a-half:



Flown: 2,795 miles, SFO-LAS and LAS-BOS

Driven: 321 miles, Boston, MA to King of Prussia, PA

Slept: not enough.

As promised, here's my first recipe for 2008, proudly featuring the ham bone from our Christmas party.  I love to use ham bones for soup, and usually make up a pot of split pea, but this time I wanted to use up some heirloom beans I bought last year.  I was mistaken about what beans I had left, and ended up using Scarlet Runners for this recipe.


The soup turned out very well.  The cinnamon was a lucky addition; for some reason, when I smelled the broth at the beginning of the cooking process, it just smelled like something cinnamon should be in -- I think perhaps it was just a great complement to the mexican oregano I used.  The soup is very mild, with a thin, rich broth that makes everything else taste better.  Adding the kale stems with the onion adds sweetness to the soup, and the leaves at the end introduce a nice herbaceousness and slight bitter note.  You could easily use olive oil instead of the bacon drippings to saute the onion.

The ham bone is really the key to this recipe; it adds a very quiet richness and sweetness to the soup.  For a lot of fuller flavored bean soups I tend to use ham hocks or shanks, but I think that'd be a mistake here -- they're too smoky and greasy.  I'm told that Honeybaked Ham stores will sell you a ham bone cheap -- might be worth checking out.

All in all, a good start to the year, and a great way to spend a winter evening.  I don't know that I'll photograph everything I make, but it seemed like a nice touch.  As I'm starting with soup, I will have to make a nut recipe last, I suppose...

It strikes me that food and cooking are a blogworthy obsession, so i'm going to start trying to post more about cooking and eating here for folks to read.  I think I'm finally going to jump on the 50 recipes bandwagon in 2008, and try to hit that number by year's end.  I'm also going to try to post some favorite recipes with commentary.  This seems like a new year's resolution I can make without getting too close to self-deprivation; I've long resolved that my only such annual sacrifice is to give up restraint each year for Lent.
( More prattle below. )

my office building, it is v. geeky.

in most office buildings, people leave the sports page in the men's room.

in ours?  a world of warcraft magtheridon survival guide.  sixteen pages of strategy!

hoo boy.

today is neither, but it might as well be.  i hate post-holiday tuesdays.  there is not enough coffee in the world.  and why does my life not have a karen carpenter soundtrack? bitches.

days like these i feel like watching a fassbinder movie.  something with an uplifting title like "fear eats the soul" or "the bitter tears of petra von kant."  but always with hanna schygulla.



actresses' faces are less interesting than they were twenty years ago.  no one would pay attention to bette davis today.  i think it has something to do with the lousy roles for women in today's hollywood.  to play generic parts, you need generic faces.  to hell with that, give me bitter, whiskey-swilling, man-eating women who don't all look the same.

don't even know what to type here...but, uh, that doesn't stop anyone else.  so bored.  ugh.  i've already distracted myself looking at car blogs, computer blogs, used cars, and other assorted geekery.

installing windows updates has to be a circle of hell 2.0.

metagnat isn't even in the office for me to distract with lolcats.  woe!

Which airport do I hate more?

I am writing this post from Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL), one of my candidates for my least favorite airport on the East Coast.  The contender in the other corner?  The much less interestingly-named Philadelphia International (PHL).

Now, to many of you this may seem like a stupid geeky rant.  You may be right.  But as someone choosing between airlines to patronize next year, it makes a big difference.  I flew about 70,000 miles last year, and when you fly that much it makes sense to concentrate on one airline so that you get cushy first class upgrades and priority boarding.  It makes traveling that much a lot less stressful.

My two candidates for next year?  US Airways -- my current airline -- and Delta.  Hubs?  ATL and PHL, respectively.

Ding!  The race to the bottom is on...

( ...below the jump. )

I wear glasses.

Some of you may not even know this, since I rarely actually put them on. I'm mildly nearsighted, and spend so much of my time staring at a computer screen that I don't often really see the need for them. However, those of you who have seen me in glasses of late know how desperately I was in need of a change. My last pair broke so many times that I eventually gave up on them. The pair before that fell out of a warped glasses case somewhere in Harvard Square. Which left me with the pair from 1997. And oh, boy, were they from 1997.

So I have finally broken down and replaced them. Check out my new specs...
( ...after the break. )

the list of things i do not enjoy includes heading back to the office at 1am.

that is all.