Lots of food words here…
Love it.
Also love the remember, know, cook, David, best section.
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Monthly Archives: June 2013
Saturday, Link Day
Best Bacons!! Now that is my kind of article. Farmland makes #2, but my own have, Nueske’s applewood smoked is nowhere to be found. That? That bacon should be #1.
I am thinking I need a logo. A brand. A friend introduced me to 99 Designs. AWESOME concept.
Cronuts. Need I say more?
So this article dissects the trick of levitation off a double decker bus in London, but I say skip the article and just enjoy the trick (as part of a Pepsi commercial, which you can see if you scroll down to the bottom of the story)–enjoy magic for what it is: an illusion.
Shells…the start..
Today’s efforts were short…rough morning. But it’s a start and I like where it’s going…It’s interesting to me to see the painting next to the photo in this space…I need to learn something here, although I am not sure what it is (yet..).
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| What I painted (not finished yet!) |
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| What was there… |
Watercolor Friday: Vision of Things to Come
I am heading out to paint this morning and will post the results later…but in the meantime, I wanted to put this sunrise up for your viewing enjoyment.
Re-Post: Looking Back
The Blogathon links, forever for me, to my brother’s death two years ago in May. There is still a hole in our family where he should be. On the upside, when Blogathon rolls around, I revisit the posts I made during that month and remember David. Blogging became one reliable thing for me and almost meditative. I want to repost two things today. One is the haiku from that month and the other is the post I made on the last day of the blogathon, because I think it always rings true:
Life Goes on
Simple routines get
us through the days. Moments are
now more difficult.
Looking back..
It is difficult even to think about what to say. In the middle of this very fun exercise of daily blogging, my brother died. I did my best to continue, and I did well every day except for the very day of his funeral–frankly, the routine of doing the blog helped. Every routine helped.
To those of you who visited and sent condolences, thank you so much. It means a lot, this little connection.
You didn’t know David, but he was a quirky, smart, SMART guy. So smart that many of us didn’t even understand everything he did and we all seemed to butt heads with him often. But when we did, short hours (minutes) later would find us contentedly sharing some of his bread, some extra-virgin olive oil that he likely hand-carried back from Italy in a suitcase of his own design, kitted out with foam padding and cut-outs for bottles of wine and cans of olive oil (I came across the design plans as I went through his papers this week).
He was famous among family and friends for the bread–he worked hard on those recipes and, in true science fashion, his recipes are really formulas–vast spread sheets with variables, equations, questions, constants…
He always made great bread.
So today, please go open a bottle of wine you may have been saving for a special day. Pitch the sliced bread and either bake a loaf or go get REAL bread, good bread. Drizzle out a bit of really good olive oil, and savor it all with family and friends. Because today is a special day.
A Great Experiment…
Remember when I told you about Japanese Pizza, a.k.a. okonomiyaki? Last night was the experiment night…after reading a bunch of recipes, I settled on a basic plan–I would sauté shredded cabbage with onion and carrot. Coat it with a batter of flour and egg, salt and pepper. Fry it up, top it with green onion, hoisin and Kewpie Mayonnaise…Consume.
The general consensus? Mine was good, but not the same. My base was much heavier and not as crispy as the one we had at the sushi bar…and looking back at that photo in the link above, I can see how much more FRIED the one we had out was..
I aslo learned that in addition to the Kewpie mayo, there also exists okonomiyaki sauce. Now I must find both. (I made my own kewpie mayo from an online recipe here.)
Barb’s Japanese Pizza (Refinements to come)
4 cups shredded cabbage
1/2 large onion, sliced thin.
1 tablespoon oil
1 carrot, grated
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
Splash soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
6 eggs
2/3 to 1 cup flour
S and P to taste
Oil for frying.
Thinly sliced scallions
Chopped cilantro
Almonds
Fried “crispies”
Kewpie Mayo
Hoisin Sauce
1. Saute the cabbage with onion in oil over medium high head. Add carrot and ginger and cook until cabbage is wilted. Add garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Remove from heat and stir in soy sauce and sesame oil.
2. Whisk eggs with flour to relatively thin batter. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Heat oil for frying in non-stick skillet over medium high heat. Drizzle in some of the batter to get the “crispies” to mix with scallions for the topping. Fry to golden brown and crispy. Remove from heat and drain. Crumble into bits.
4. Add cabbage mixture to batter. Stir to coat well. Heat oil again over medium high heat and place about 1/3 of mixture into skillet (about 9- or 10-inch skillet). Fry until bottom is golden brown. Flip pizza and cook second side.
5. Slide pizza out onto rack to cool slightly and drain any excess oil. Place onto cutting board. Top with scallions, cilantro, some sliced almonds
and bits of fried batter. Drizzle all with mayo and hoisin. Slice into wedges and enjoy.
5 More Things Everyone (You, I mean) Should Know How to Make
So I couldn’t stop at just five essentials to make. Here are five more dishes I think can get you through …life.
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| Perfectly Scrambled. I could eat this every day. |
1. Omelett and scrambled eggs. This is a two-fer. I happen to think a perfectly scrambled is pretty..sublime. No, really. Soft, not dry. Pretty (yellow AND white, not overly scrambled. A touch of butter…Here. Have at it with this post. Perfect Scrambled Eggs. As for omelets, try Alton’s recipe. What is better than a cheese omelet? (Alton’s is a chive omelet. Pretty awesome..)
2. Pancakes. Okay, please. Pancakes don’t come from a box. They don’t come from a bottle that you just have to squeeze into a hot skillet. They are simple to make. So learn. I lean on Cook’s Illustrated for their best recipe pancake. (For the record, CI is one of very few websites I pay for. Technique, ingredients..what a jumping off point…and pretty spot-on recipes.) If you can’t find it there, google CI pancakes..You’ll learn what you need to know.. Ps. You can make buttermilk by adding white vinegar or lemon juice to regular milk. “Clabbered” milk, but perfect substitution.
3. Chile. Okay, look. Party=Chile=Hit of the crowd. You can feed a crowd with chile. (a.k.a. chili)…I spent more than a decade in Louisville, KY, where I learned to love chili over spaghetti (Cincinnati Chili)…Lot’s of cinnamon, plenty of GOOD. Here’s a Food Network recipe for Cincinnati Chili.
4. Chicken Salad. Okay, here’s the go-to: chicken. mayo. sour cream. Mango chutney. golden raisins. onion. celery. curry powder. garlic or garlic powder. S and P to taste. Cilantro. And if you love crunch (I do) toasted almonds. Not up for curried chicken salad? Leave out the curry powder and mix it up…
5. One Awesome Dessert–Pick your favorite and then go to town and be THE expert at it. My son once made a creme caramel that I remember to this day. I think should make that HIS go to recipe. Another friend turns out a fruit crisp without a second thought (can you say easy AND delicious?)…do you love pie? Memorize Dorie Greenspan’s perfect pie crust and then work on the filling. Me? I like simple desserts, so I can make a killer brown butter shortbread and this awesome AWESOME Lemon Ginger and White Pepper Pound Cake from Maida Heatter. Or wait, how about Martha’s Upside Down Cranberry Cake…I can’t pick just one..What do you make?
Today I am working on perfecting my own Japanese pizza with a friend. I’ll take photos and let you know how we do.
Blogathon 2013 Haiku: I Paint
I mix a color.
Brush to paint and to paper.
Not what I had planned.
In Memory: Flowers Out to Sea
Flowers out to sea for Tea and her dad, my brother, David. They are missed.
Saturday, Link Day
Ha. Classic statues dressed as hipsters.
Wow. This video of a moonrise brought tears to my eyes, it is that beautiful.
The ridiculousness of having a conversation with a 2-year-old.
I would like to find myself on this site one day. It will mean I was seen in NYC and that makes a lot of things right with the world. He is drawing “every person in New York…” Cool.
Do you love maps? Me too. Awesome special maps..
If you don’t read Orangette yet, you should. Check out the cream cheese pound cake from her May 2, 2013 post…I am so making this