The Squash and Me

 Wherein Mr. Ullman cooks a squash and doesn't screw it up

I have never had good luck with squash. I can kill off spaghetti squash which is saying something. However I got a delicata squash in the organic box a couple of weeks ago and it was sitting there looking at me. It could stay there for some time but the lady who I was hoping would cook it for me wasn't going to do such. So I came home one day and decided to do something with it. The question was what?

So this is fun and surprisingly worked out well. I roasted the squash with seafood. It worked out well and only needs more seafood when I do it next time.

The specific ingredients are delicata squash, pine nuts, fresh fennel (both a bit of bulb and a bit of the greens), salt, some red onions, celery root, some paprika and some allspice.

Put some olive oil in a wonk and added the shrimp, scallops and pine nuts. Stir fry until the shrimp becomes tasty stiff. Put the wonk off to the side on a cold burner.

Take about a third fennel bulb and its greens and put on the veggie board. Chop it up. Take about a quarter of a red onion. Chop that up too. Peel about a half a cup of the celery root. Put all this into the wonk, add some spicy peanut sauce to taste (handle with care) and toss.

Remove that seeds from the squash and put them off to the side. Take the concoction from the wonk and put it into a halved squash. Sprinkle some paprika and allspice on top. Cover with squash with foil and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

Remove the stuffing and scrape the meat out of the squash. Serve on a bed of short grain rice, A dull salad for a side.

Free Salmon

Wherein Mr. Ullman traces the curious path of a Salmon steak and cooks same.

Given what I do for a living it isn't all that unusual for me to get free seafood. However, the last salmon I got came in a somewhat round about way. A friend had a bunch of salmon she needed to get rid of and gave some to a mutual friend who wasn't likely to eat it. This mutual friend gave it me.

I was going to cook it for a different friend but that didn't happen. The fish was getting somewhat close to the use it or lose it date so I finally decided to say the hell with it and cook it up for myself.

Salmon sells for between $12.00 to $25.00 a lb. here so getting a pound of free salmon is always welcomed. What makes it even more welcome is that screwing up something you paid $12.00 to $25.00 for is more painful then screwing up something that you paid nothing to acquire. I would just as soon have a tasty meal but the free salmon means you can take a shot at something that sounds tasty but not worth betting $25.00 on.

What I was going to do for my friend was a tried and true cold garnish. You put some fennel and lemon juice on the salmon and bake it. After the fish is cooked you cover it with a salsa made of chopped tomato, diced leeks, chopped tomatillo, sliced celery root and roasted pine nuts.

I had all of this prepped. I had free salmon. The only person I could possibly disappoint was  myself. I decided to try an experiment that I was hankering to do anyway-- turn the garnish into a sauce and bake it with the fish.

I did this by adding some peanut sauce (about ½ a table spoon. This stuff is hot so use with care), some olive oil and, since I had it around, avocado vinegar I picked up somewhere and have been wanting to use.

I added some more fennel and salt to the mixture and put the sauce on top of the fish and baked. I put a very light dusting of a hard goat cheese on toward the end.

It turned out just slightly short of wonderful. Next time I will use a whole tomatillo rather then a half and maybe a bit more peanut sauce. I'll also let the sauce sit overnight.

Wild salmon has a rich taste and this slightly tart sauce did wonders. It would be fun to try this as a stuffing on a whole fish.

Starting something new. Writing about Books.

Since I am no longer blogging every week about food I have decided to take the other week and use it for writing about books. These posts are not necessarily about current books so don't look at these as reviews-- think about them as being an old fart talking about good friends he occasionally meets either again or new friends he is meeting for the first time. There might be new books and they might not be.

Two things inspired this. First is a small group of bookish folks who share books they love on occasion. One of these folks is someone I have known as a friend of a couple friends for a number of years without knowing that he enjoyed fiction. Another of these folks is a woman that, the first time we met, one of us mentioned “A Confederacy of DUNCES.” Since we both liked it a the conversation just bounced forward. “A Confederacy of DUNCES” is one of those books that you either love or find incredibly over-the-top and dull. I have known folks whose taste in books I love that have held either opinion. When I first meet someone who loves DUNCES the conversation turns to why you love the book. When I meet someone who does not love (but has read at least part of it) the first conversation is a matter of finding a book that we both have read and loved. (Bring up “To Kill a Mocking Bird” helps.)

The second reason is somewhat odd. I enjoy Morris West, I have read the entire Vatican series and found them fun but simple books. One of the last books of his I read was Master-Class. I found it fun and like it the most of West's books. I loved the way he develops Max Mather-- he is a cad that becomes a good person.

I loaned this to two friends and they were blown away by it. My take on it was it was the best book by an enjoyable writer. I was somewhat taken aback by their reaction and reread it not in the idea of reading Morris West but by reading an author I had not read before. It is an incredibly good book and I missed a good deal when I read it because I was reading it with a background of other Morris West books. Charmingly I loaned one of these folks West's “Clowns of God”. She is slugging her way through it and not enjoying it at all. Had I started with a loan “Clowns of God” it most likely it would be an enjoyable read. I discounted “Master-Class” because I had read a number of Morris West's books-- she is slugging her way through “Clowns of God” because Master-Class was so good.

Which is why loaning books is great. On one hand I am reading books other people whose tastes I admire love and I would not be likely to find much less read. On the other I am getting different prospective on books I like or love. In a slight way you can do with friend's of the heart but most likely they are going to suggest books that, since they know you well, are good books but likely offered through a filter of your known tastes. “Ciderhouse Rules” is a good example of this. I enjoyed the book but person who suggested it to knew me real well. The person who loaned me “The Story of Mr. Y” and the fellow who introduced “The Nine Dragons” might or might not.

So I hope this will be enjoyable and readable. I will offer books that are loaned to me that I at least like and offer books that I like and have loaned to other people.

Garlic Spears or Garlic Scapes? Who Cares?

Wherein Mr Ullman shares his passion for garlic spears.

This week's box brought with it garlic spears (a.k.a garlic scapes). I was looking forward to them, a friend told me about them last year and I was waiting for them to come back into season. I had a recipe in mind and it worked. Note that this isn't all the involved but it does use a good number of ingredients. The recipe uses noodles so make some.

Cut up pork into squares following the grain of the meat. Take a couple of garlic cloves and chopped them fine. Add some grapeseed oil to a wok and cook the pork and garlic for about 10 minutes. Once it is cooked drain the oil and retain it. Put the pork and garlic off to the side and add a couple of splashes of vinegar to the retained oil.

Now it is time to workover the veggies. Start by chopping up a green pepper into chunks. While somewhat tricky julienning the garlic spears. Take some kale and a tart parsley and rip these into small bits and then chop them together into small bits. Place all the veggies into a bowl and toss.

By this time the pork should be cooled. Using you fingers rip it into smaller pieces along the grain and toss it into the bowl. Add a generous spoonful of cream of celery soup and fold in the oil/ vinegar mixture. Add the noodles and toss everything again.

Transfer all this into a casserole dish and cook at 350 for twenty minutes. Add a dusting of tarragon and thyme and digin.

Garlic spears are simply great. I got ten of them and ate them raw, fried with asparagus and mushrooms, with fish and used them up in a Mac and Cheese dish.

Stuff cabbage with shrimp and lots of other stuff.

Wherein Mr Ullman gets a good meal of the cheap

This is easy and quick. Stuff cabbage with shrimp, spring onions, normal radishes, rhubarb, avocado and rice. Throw in some grape seed oil and some flavored vinegar and life is good.

You start it by making the rice per instructions and putting it off to the side. Steam good sized leafs of cabbage making sure you steam an even number. The cabbage should be steamed long enough to it easy to wrap around something.

Slice the onions and radishes in a food processor and chop up some rhubarb with a knife. Chop up a garlic clove and quickly stir fry some shrimp in the grape seed oil just long enough to firm it up. Pay attention.

Once the shrimp is cooked put it into a bowl. Take a leaf of cabbage and lay it on a plate. Add four or five shrimp on it. Add the onion, radish and rhubarb in measure. Crumble some goat cheese and grated Parmesan on top.

Fold the cabbage leaf over the stuff and fold another cabbage leaf over the top. Get out a casserole dish, cover the bottom lightly with the flavored vinegar. Heat the oven to 250 degrees, put the cabbage rolls into the dish and cook long enough to melt the cheese and heat the vinegar enough to give up its taste. Ten minutes works for me.

Spread the rice on a plate and lightly dust it with paprika and a pinch of cinnamon (go light here). Put the stuffed cabbage on top of this and place a generous plop of avocado on top.

Plan on two stuffed cabbages per person.

Sunchokes would be good here (not for me, that's a food allergy of note for me). A mild sausage or pulled chicken might work in place of the shrimp.

By the way, Parmesan cheese sold in the US is the poor relative of an Italian cheese called Parmigiano-Reggiano. Check it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiano-Reggiano

Pork/chicken/shrimp cooked in a Veggie Broth (Select any two as long as one of them is shrimp)

Wherein Mr Ullman announces that he will be slacking off

I don't know a number of the ingredients that went into making a part of this dinner. My crock pot runs full time making a veggie broth. Whatever I don't use veggiewise-- be it stems, overly-enthusiastic chopping or things that are not going to last much longer-- I add. I strain it every other week and start over when necessary, usually with regret.  This also adds a permanent wonderful smell to your kitchen.

So this recipe uses the broth. A store brought veggie broth and a bit of experimenting with spices should do the trick.

The recipe also includes rice so make some. I used brown basmati but any short grain should work.

Oh, heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Since I am cool I strain about a cup of the homemade broth.

Cut up a goodly sized pork shoulder or chicken breast, slightly more then you would use if you were going to eat it whole. If nickles were square that would be the size you are looking to achieve. Put the pork off to the side.

Take some citarto (it does not taste like soap!) and two sharp greens (I used red dandelion greens and kale) and chop somewhat finely with a knife. Don't use a food processor since you don't want the greens extremely fine.

Put the pork or chicken in a Pyrex pie pan and add enough broth to cover the meat about 2/3s of the way. Add the greens and mix everything around. Add some Allspice, tarragon and a bay leaf. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar. Cover with aluminum foil shiny side down (no clue if this is important but it was something my mother believed in) and put into the oven. Cook for twenty minutes.

Take about ten medium sized shrimp and remove the tails and , if necessary, devain. Smash a good sized garlic clove.

Once the oven buzzer sounds remove the pie pan, add the shrimp and garlic, cover again and cook for seven more minutes.

Put the rice in a strainer. Pore the concoction in the pie pan over the rice (I recover the broth and return it to the crook pot). Toss and serve. I put a sweet relish on the side and used it as a dip.

This was very good with pork and chicken but next I am going to try a variation of this with a fish.

This is a one of my favorite “Do it quick” recipes. Another nice thing is that it is a versatile as a stir fry so you can do it with damn near anything you have in the fridge.

A Note:

Thinking about this blog over the last couple of weeks I decide that trying to do this weekly was to ambitious. I have been cooking for something to write about rather then the joy of screwing around with food. Therefore I am going to try doing a cooking entry once every two weeks for a while. Might end up doing this only once a month.

A Curious and Largely Untrue History of Bluffton Indiana

As told to me by my basset hound of the time

Howard Lucas Miller died of a massive heart attack at the Main Cigar Store in 1979. He was not a happy or well liked man. He had taken lunch at the Main Cigar Store ever since he was kicked out of the Snug in 1956.

Howard was something of a Christian but that is beside the point. Howard could have been a Satanist and his god would still not welcomed his company. Mr. Miller was fated to haunt this realm until such point in time that the Gods (Protestant) figured out who should have him. They did not seem to be in any hurry to decide.

So Howard had to spend his time haunting Bluffton. For the most part he was content to annoy Frank Sr. by turning his Main Cigar's Store's Heyerlys'-ham-purchased-slightly-before-the-use-by-date rancid. This wasn't much of an issue-- one no ever purchased an uncooked sandwich from the the Main Cigar Store and the restaurant's rush time was shortly after the bars closed. Diarrhea was dismissed the next day as being caused by alcoholism rather then food poisoning.

Howard occasionally got bored and ventured further afield. Murphy's went out of business largely because someone there had managed to piss him off shortly before his death and then he became deeply offended by the end of the line 8 track selections they were selling for a dollar. Howard had opinions about music and Captain Beefheart, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and the Greatest Hits of Olivia Newton John were not to be found on the plus side of that ledger. By the end of the decade Murphy's was gone and the Dollar Store was selling nothing more offensive then a lonely cassette tape of Benny Goodman's Greatest Hits.

Howard caused other problems. The Kiwanis booth at the 1985 Street Fair paged both Jack Meoff and Wanda B. Laid because their list went mysteriously missing. Ten year old boys went on a rampage with much more success then their fourteen year old brothers had ever achieved. .

However, Howard's major haunt remained the Main Cigar Store.  Things were not going well there. While the food wasn't a cause of much concern other issues came to the forefront. For one thing Howard was a keen pool player when his was alive and liked to hang out around the pool table. That section of the of the restaurant became unnaturally cold and Frank Sr. was accused of turning down the heat back there.

Howard's presence also caused the pool table to become more warped. Three generations of pool sharks had learned how to shoot pool on that table at their father's drunken side. They could no longer count on the geometry of the table to sink a ball and this offended them deeply. They started to go to a new place called Cowboy's which offered, briefly, unlimited soft drink refills.

Finally the Main Cigar Store had to shut down. Since all of Frank Sr.'s kids had went into the military, and did well by the GI Bill, there was a not an heir to the throne. More to the point the bacteria on the grill was beginning to show signs of intelligence and the health department was becoming scared enough to consider calling in the EPA. So Frank Sr.. reluctantly closed and locked the door for the first time, leaving all the unpaid bills inside.

Howard was left inside too.

So should you be in the alley between Market and Wabash streets (certainly on your way to place a classified ad in the News Banner and just taking an unusual route) and peer at the dirty windows of the Main Cigar Store note with joy that those dirty windows no longer mean that Frank simply hasn't gotten around to cleaning them. Should you hear someone pounding on the windows say a quick prayer for Howard and wonder when the hell the Eagles are going to do something about him.

Donuts

Wherein Mr Ullman announces a brief break from Blogging. 

Have a donut.  Really, take two.  They are fresh and yummy.  

This is the start of the silly season at work.  For the next couple of weeks I will be creating 20 + program CDs a day, answering support questions that, to the user, seem dire but are actually quite easy to solve and trying to convince a couple of captains who spend $50,000 on P & I insurance to replace their goddamn six year old PC and not to buy a $600.00 piece of crap from Dell or HP.  I short, I won't have a great deal of time on my until the middle of June.

So unless I manage to get real lucky an make something outstanding I won't be blogging again until the 17th of June. This will also give to time to do some thinking about about this and maybe give it some sort of structure.  Maybe not.

A Good Sweet and Sour Sauce

 Wherein Mr Ullman, having been defeated by a sweet and sour sauce in the past, stumbles upon a good one while Mr Broman attempts to plant subliminal messages onto these pages.

This is a tale of a sweet and sour sauce that, after a bit more refining, will likely becomes a staple for a white fish dish.

I am not a real fan of beef simply because it doesn't interest me. While a nice steak is good with some mushrooms and what not I usually just broil beef and look for fun things to do with the salad and side dish.

Anyway, I got some chuck shoulder with the idea of cutting it up and messing around with cooking with acids. I didn't get around to it and I hate to waste food. Broiling it is then.

So I put it in the oven and spent some time trying to figure out a sauce. It was going to be a cold sauce , not one that would be cooked along with the meat. I also had a half avocado that was starting to go brown on me. What to do?

I occasionally make a salad dressing from my favorite mild horseradish sauce, some soy sauce and olive oil. In a one cup bowl I add a couple of squirts of the horseradish, four or five splashes of soy sauce and then add olive oil to get the mixture up to about ¾ of a cup. You then stir vigorously.

I made this and then added the avocado. Stirred very vigorously so that everything mixed well.

Once the shoulder chuck was cooked I spread the sauce on the meat and let it stand for a few minutes. Very tasty and worth playing around with. Served with baby spinach, snow peas and side salad.

A note from the author 

As I stated in my first post the point is not to present recipes to follow but rather to start you folks on the path to tasty combinations. Someone emailed me and pointed out that a lot of what I post here is stuff that I made on the fly. That's true and sort of the point. I do eat both regular meals that are planned and do a fair amount of what if cooking. The what if cooking is what I am writing about. While few of these things become formal recipes that all go in notebook of things tried and will be used on purpose in some future meal.

Yeah, everyone does this at least once...

 This is an easy one, the way I make camarones al mojo ajo. This is one of the few seafood dinners I did a lot when I was still back home again in Indiana.  Shrimp with toasted garlic.

There are lots of fun things about this recipe-- it is easy to expand to cook for other folk and you can add and subtract flavors when you want to play.

The two most important parts of the recipe are the shrimp and the garlic.  When cooking this for myself I use 10 medium shrimp and four good sized cloves of garlic.  Put the shrimp off to the side for awhile and chop the garlic cloves somewhat roughly, you don't want large chunks but you don't want real small ones either – say slightly smaller then the head of a thumb tack.

Place the garlic in a small skillet and add enough olive oil to fully over the bottom of the pan. Heat this to medium.  Stir from time to time until the oil starts to simmer (bubble sightly).  Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook until the garlic becomes soft (a ½ an hour or so).

Take a lime and cut it in half.  When the garlic is soft squeeze the juice into the garlic and oil and stir.  Let this cook for about four minutes, again stirring occasionally.

Get out a larger skillet  and spoon out some of the oil, but not the garlic, into the larger skillet and heat to medium.  Add a splash of white vinegar. Once the skillet heats up add the shrimp (shelled and cleaned if you haven't yet) sprinkle with salt, add some chopped cilantro and cook for about for four to five minutes.  Place this on a bed of rice or noodles (or lettuce for that matter).  I might also add some chopped orange at this point.

Take the other skillet and strain the oil from the garlic.  I take the some of the garlic and sprinkle over the top of the shrimp.  I usually retain the oil for future use.

Serve with a hearty bread.

Two Beans or Not Two Beans

Wherein Mr. Ullman admits to defeats and offers beans as a stuffing while Mr. Broman labors under the misconception that I will have a good deal of hair.

I had planned a sweet and sour sauce for a white fish. It sounded tasty. It wasn't-- it was dull. Next was a tempura with what remained of the white fish. No clues how but I managed to screw that up . Finally I tried a breaded lamb chop. That was good but I could also see how

it could be better so that is for another day.

I was talking to a lady I know and she gave me the outline for a two bean stuffing that sounded tasty. I was getting ready to do a chili so I divert some of the beans.

Following the directions on the bags I let the black and red beans soak overnight and through the work day. Once I got home I put them into a pan and added a good deal of tarragon. Tarragon is a slight herb so use a lot. I crushed and added four cloves of garlic and brought it to a boil.  I cooked it for a half hour (until soft).

In the food processor I grated two radishes, half a carrot, about a fifth of an onion and another garlic clove. I then transported them to the blended and waited for the beans to finish cooking.

Once the beans were finished I collected about a ¼ cup and put it into the blender with with carrot, radish, etc. I added a small bit of soy sauce, a small dulup of teriyaki, some oregano and spoonful of avocado. Blended until every became a chunky paste.

The only stuffable meat I had around was , sorry, chicken breast. I did my chicken book trick and stuffed. I sprinkled some cinnamon on top, closed the book and broiled for 15 minutes a side. Served with rice and cucumbers. Very tasty in itself and suggests a number of

other possible combinations.

By the way, I used the left-over bean paste in a cheese toastie the next day for lunch. Very tasty.

Making do or rather Making a Potato Dish

Wherein Mr Ullman proves he still hasn't got a hang on properly formatting these pages and Mr. Broman seems to  suggest that Mr. Ullman talks to his fridge.

One of the fun things in cooking is when you have to change what you

are doing in the middle of it. This happened to me the other night.

I had started to prep a pork meal. When I got the pork out of the

fridge I discovered that the bottom of the pork was badly freezer

burnt. I tossed that puppy out.

However, I had already started to boil the potatoes for mashed potatoes (I was trying a skin-on version) and had started the glaze I

was going to use. The potatoes could be used for anything but the half done glaze was a problem. I didn't want to toss the glaze but it

doesn't keep well.

The glaze is tasty on pork. I chop up about half an apple, some fresh chive, whatever color of chard I have, and then I dice half an onion and two cloves of garlic. I put that into the blender, add some sweet BBQ sauce and my usual two squirts of a mild horseradish sauce. Hit the chop button.

However, since the pork was out of the question what to use? I had nothing thawed. I did have a ½ pound of what a middle-brow

local-chain-owned-by-Kroger calls “cooked Shrimp-meat” (bay

shrimp).What the heck.

I turned off the heat under the potatoes to keep them somewhat firm.

I then got out the wok, put a small bit of oil in it and heated it up. Threw in the shrimp, added some fresh lemon juice and cooked the shrimp until it started to firm up. I added a couple of spoonfuls of condensed cream of celery soup and some paprika.

I put the potatoes into a mixing bowl and coarsely mashed them. I added the blender concoction and shrimp concoction with the potatoes and added some tarragon. I mixed this all together, placed it into a baking dish. I baked it for fifteen minutes at 350.

As a make do entree it was quite tasty. I think in the future I would use it as a side dish. After baking it comes out quite green. It would be a surprising tasty potato dish for a St. Patrick’s day shindig. Note after the fact that it included no food coloring.

More then a bit random....

I spent a few minutes looking up if the idiom was make do or make due.  Google seems to occasionally bless me with something totally off the wall -- second suggested link was this:  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110206165942AAD1fpF  Felt I had to share....  

Err, well...

No post this week.  I didn't get a meal worth talking about until Thursday which wouldn't give me enough time to write about it, check it, think about it and what not.  On the plus side I did get two good meals in a row so I'll have one in the hopper should this happen again.

Cheeks So Good I could Kiss 'em

Wherein Mr Ullman forgot to do his usual titchy Wherein Statement 

I really love cod and halibut cheeks. 

The problem is that they are

expensive -- $20+ a pound isn't unusual or outrageous. When I do cook them it is usually to impress someone. Since they are so expensive I use a tried and true recipe. I don't experiment here.

But I got lucky the other day. A fisherman who uses our software was

significantly grateful to give me a pound of halibut cheeks. I

decided to take a half pound and see what could be done. The other

half pound is being reserved to impress someone.

I bread and fry when I cook cheeks. I use a chickpea flour. So I

decided to use different flours and breading. Since I had them around

I used TVP, oat flour, masa harina (a corn flour used to make

tortillas), and cousous.

Putting aside the choice of flours, this is how I usually cook cheeks.

I put the fish on a cookie sheet and liberally salt both sides. Then

the cheeks are dredged through the flour making sure the cheeks are

will covered.

I cook some pasta-- usually Capellini ,Capelli d'angelo or Pillus.

Heat a cast iron skillet to high. Once the skillet heats up reduce to

medium and add enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet. Cook

the cheeks for five minutes flipping as necessary.

Take a sweet onion and cut off two fairly thin slices. Take a mild

chard, I use green chard, remove the green leaf from the white stem.

Put the chard and onions into the blender and hit the chop button.

Put the veggies in a bowl with the pasta and toss.

At this point the fish should be cooked. Reduce heat to low. Squeeze

a half a lemon over the cheeks. Add the pasta to the skillet and

squeeze the other half of the lemon on the mix. Cover and let the

mixture warm for a couple of minutes.

So what conclusions did I come to? The oat flour was great, when I

cook the rest of the cheeks for a friend I am going to do a ½ oat

flour, ½ chickpea flour mix for the breading.

The masa harina was surprising tasty but needs a sauce of some sort.

If I were going to use the cheeks as an appetizer with a white sauce

dip I would consider using the masa harina again.

The couscous was fine but not worth repeating and the TVP (Textured

Vegetable Protein – a trademarked product that is clearly in need of a

skilled marketing professional) was pointless since it didn't adhere

to the fish well.

An update:

When I cooked the rest of the halibut cheeks for a friend I managed to screw up the pasta. Rummaging through her pantry I found some basmati rice, an aromatic rice from India. This turned out to be a winner. In fact, I plan to replace the pasta with basmati rice in my tried and true recipe.

Finally, a friend of mine has a blog about weight loss, exercise and related items.  She interviewed me which was fun. 

See her blog (and the interview with me) by clicking here

Macaroni and Cheese: A dish that is usually only ok when I make it.

Wherein Mr. Ullman cooks a meal that is not on his "A" list and has to take it seriously this time

Mac and Cheese is something that I am usually not going to write about. My Mac and Cheese, like its lowlife (mine anyway) brother known as stir-fry, is not something you should mention in polite company. In my extreme youth I knew a woman that did a damn good casserole. However, my stir-fry and Mac and Cheese are made for the same reason my mother made casseroles: It is hardy, somewhat tasty and, frankly, easy.

The other day I looked into my fridge and discovered very little in the way of supper. All meat and fish was frozen. Mac and Cheese was it for want of anything else.

So not being toasty, worse from drink or tired meant taking this seriously. There were veggies of various types available, one plain and one tasty pasta, garlic of course and various spices. Two types of cheese (actually three).Macaroni and Cheese

First I started the good pasta. It takes 18 minutes to finish so it had to be started first. While I was waiting for the long pasta to cook I finely chopped up two cloves of garlic, two stalks of celery, cilantro and Italian parsley with stems.  Added some apple cider vinegar for some zestiness. I mixed them all together and placed them in a Ziploc bowl and shook vigorously.

By this time the long cooking pasta was long enough along that I added the plain pasta and continued to boil. I sat down and had a beer.

Once the beer was complete I drained the pasta and put it into a mixing bowl. I then added the mixed stuff from the Ziploc bowl and tossed. Since I still had some pine nuts around I added them. I folded in some olive oil mayo I made earlier in the week for some tuna salad. I added two squirts of a mild horseradish sauce.

The two major cheeses were a mass market cheddar and a mass market Swiss. Both are tasty but nothing to write home about. I used my cheese grater to add some cheese to the bowl, tossed, added some more cheese and tossed again. Added a bit of dried Rosemary and a bit of dried Thyme. Put in some pepper oil a friend made for me and tossed again.

I turned the oven to 350 degrees and let it heat up. I put the mixed concoction into my Pyrex, grated some more cheese on top and, after noticing that I had a small bit of goat cheese, crumbed it on top. Put it in the oven and thirty minutes later I had a very tasty supper.

Serve with nothing. However, consider replacing the noodles with a baked potato.

Knives

I recently purchased a ceramic knife. A friend was praising these to heaven and, since I needed a paring knife, went ceramic. I am a believer and this same friend got me a larger ceramic knife for Christmas. These knives are terrificly sharp and keep their edge. Put a tomato on your counter for a day or two until it is soft. A ceramic knife will still go through it like butter and you can get extremely fine slices.

Cilantro. It does not taste like soap!

Wherein Mr Ullman attempts to remove the soap slander from the leafy green while Mr Broman panders to the "soapy"  intelligentsia.

Cilantro is apparently unloved mostly. I got some with my last organic box and, as is my habit, searched the web to see how to use it. The first hit was an NYT story about how it tasted like soap. The next three hits made the same observation. A search of Recipe Cilantro wasn't much more of help. So I posted on facebook.

A friend had some suggestions. While I didn't use any of the specific recipes I did get enough clues to wing it. So this is what I did.

First, boil a good pasta. In this case I used large Orzo pasta, specificity ARHEON pasta from 100% pure semolina. It is tasty but its real charm is in its cooking instructions: “In plenty of salted and boiling water add pasta and stirring occasionally.

Boil it for 18 minutes, drain it and serve.” Be prepared to have to scrape a fair amount of it out of pan when it is time to clean up.

The next step is to toast some pine nuts. Cast iron is your friend here. Put the pine nuts in a skillet, nude, no oil. Set the burner to low, you are toasting and it real easy to burn them rather then toasting them.

Once the pine nuts are toasted add the following to the skillet in this order:

1. Shrimp
2. Finely chopped green onions
3. Some snow peas
4. Chopped cilantro.
5. A chopped red radish.
6. Garlic, smashed
7. A bit of tomato
8. The pasta.
   
   
   

Add a small amount of oil and saute briefly. Move the skillet to an unheated part of the stove and let it sit ,covered, for a couple of minutes. Add a couple of squirts of lemon juice, mix and let sit for for another minute.

Serve with a good bread

This is one of those recipes that is quite tasty but not quite good enough. Should any of my readers (including the two spam bots from the EU) improve on it please let me know. 

P.S.  I haven't a clue what is up with the "Add a small amount of oil and saute briefly" section.  Tried to fix it twice and it didn't fix. Odd.

Stuffed Chicken and Chicken Salad

Wherein Mr. Ullman discusses the limitations of a whole fowl and Mr Broman draws a zombie chicken.

Fowl lends itself well to stuffing.  If you doubt this I suggest you
think about Thanksgiving.  While I do cook myself the occasional
Cornish hen this usually means a chicken breast.

The problem with a full bird is that it is very difficult not to waste a lot of it.  While you can use it both for dinner and lunch you have to devote your week to it. I rarely want to do this  so a chicken
breast it is-- two actually since I got a good deal and purchased four.  The second two were about to get freezer burn so you get a recipe and half here – the half being lunch over the next couple of
days.

Like two weeks ago this recipe includes Italian parsley.  I really cannot get enough of this stuff. It does not include kale which might be something of a relief to my six readers (Carl, my sister, maybe my
brother's wife, two unsuccessful spammers from the EU and myself.
There is a good reason why you don't see ads here.).

Ok, lets work the veggies and greens.  I took a half of tomato, a
goodly amount of the Italian parsley leaves and a shallot clove.
Roughly chop them all individually.  Put them all in the center of
your cutting board.  Vigorously chop them into finer bits so that they
mix up well.

Take the chicken breast you are going to eat tonight and slice it
through the center as described in my first post (a la chicken book).
Sprinkle some apple cider vinegar onto both sides. Put as much of the chopped veggies into the chicken as possible.  Close the book.

Take a  Pryex dish of suitable size and put some oil (dull vegetable
oil is fine here ) on the bottom of the dish.   Add a bit more of the
cider vinegar to the oil.  Note the word bit here.  If I were a
professional I would say “to taste” and it would still be a cop out.

Put the oven on broil and let it heat up.  Put both breasts into the
Pryex and use half whatever is leftover from the stuffing and put it
on the chicken breast you didn't stuff.  Cook for 15 minutes.

When the timer calls flip the chicken breasts over sprinkle a bit more
of the cider vinegar on the top (put the rest of the leftover stuffing
on the unstuffed breast).  Cook for ten more minutes and reduce the
heat to 350 while you spend five minutes steaming the asparagus and
making the salad (at 48 roughage isn't as amusing as it was when in
college).   Serve to yourself until you learn how to properly handle
apple cider vinegar.

By the way, the residue oil, chicken broth and cider can be used for a
great gravy but we will deal with this later.

So what to do with the second chicken breast?  Chicken salad for sandwiches!

Cut the chicken breast into strips and pull it apart.  It is usually a
good idea to do this the next day after the chicken has been cooked so
it has had time dry a bit in the frig.    Get a couple kosher dills
(vlasic stackers are my favorite) and chop to a desired thickness.
Cut up so celery and carrots!  Maybe a bit of fresh shredded garlic!
Hell, throw in a some of raisins!  Put this all into a mixing bowl,
add a squirt of a mild horseradish sauce and spoon in a tasty mild
mayo and fold, stir and worry until you have the desired consistency.
If you over do it add some cabbage to bring it back.

Place in the frig at least overnight, put on bread with a bit of
lettuce.  Make fun of your co-workers who went to Subway by noting
that anyone can be a foodie at lunch.  Lunch isn't something that you
share for Christ's sake.  It is simply about making something you
like.  How hard is that?  Be smug.  Share a bite if necessary.

More then you need to know about Pryex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex  I offer this simply to prove that
Corning Glass was once as interesting at 3M was in the 1960's.

Btw, Every time I get a box of veggies I search for how to properly store them. I am thinking about starting a page devoted to links to proper storage.

Not feeling okey dokey? BROIL!

Wherein Mr. Ullman salutes the pork tenderloin in an odd way-- it is easy

Not a great week.  Basically spent most of it feeling vile and had no
real desire to eat.  However, one must.  So this is going to be a real
easy one.

I love pork tenderloin.  I was going to do a stuffing I love.  That
didn't happen.  I was going to do a sweet and sour sauce.  I didn't do
that either.

So what is easy?  How about a more or less straight-forward broil?  Sounds good.

So this is what I did.   I had some green and red kale.  I had some
mushrooms.  I had some baby leeks.  I had an orange.

So I chopped up the kale and the mushrooms.  I peeled the orange.  I
took a couple of slices from the orange and rub the tenderloin and
sprinkled some thyme on it.  I then took the kale, leeks, mushrooms
and two more orange slices into the blender. Hit chop.

By this time the oven should be about to broiling.  I rolled the pork
in the blended mixture and put into an over safe pan with a bit of
oil.  Whatever of the blended mixture that was leftover I tossed into
the pan.  Broiled for 15 minutes, Flipped and add some goat cheese on
the upside (goat cheese tends to toast rather then melt).  And I also
noticed I screwed up the rice which should give you an idea about how
bad I was feeling.

Served with a salad.

Not bad but it needs a little work.

Bell Peppers – They are actually botanically fruits which explains a lot!

Wherein the character of bell peppers are questioned

Bell peppers exist to offend no one. The choice of red, green or golden bells has more to do with your taste in colors then your taste in flavor. No one would mistake these things for apples.

But stuffing them does give them a bit of a shine. The bells really don't add anything but but are pleasant enough and seem to encourage better conversations between the other flavors. I know people who provide the same service at bars.

The base of the stuffing is important but a little experimentation will be your guide. I have used sausages, pulled pork and chicken with great success. Rice or potatoes work well. Tofu too.

I am going to use Bulgar wheat simply because I am eating to much meat recently. It is a friendly grain for someone who cooks for themselves. For the most part you use 2 parts of water to one part of wheat. This makes it easy to prepare as much Bulgar wheat as need. What makes Bulgar even more friendly it that it can be soaked rather then boiled.

One of the problems with a lot grains is the difficulty in using them without some waste. Short grain white rice is equally friendly ratio-wise (though not necessary tasty). Brown rice is a good example of the problem.

Take a look at the instructions on the back of the package of brown rice. One cup of rice, 2 ½ cups of water to make 3 ½ cups of rice. However, all I usually need is a ½ cup of rice. The rice to water ratio won't work in this case – most of the water will boil off before you can use it to simmer the rice. If you try to add more water there is a good chance you will add to much and end up with soggy rice. Not that big of a deal with rice since you can use it in a number of ways. Other grains are not so useful.

Cook the Bulgar wheat per the instructions on the package. I usually just soak it but that is a personal choice. Since I am going to make two peppers I would make about a half a cup raw, a full cup when the water is adsorbed.

Grab an apple and mince. Get a sweet onion (Walla Wallas are great) and finely chop up about a third of it. Take a couple of good tasting mushrooms and slice them. Mince some flat-leaf parsley and mix in a bit of cumin and rosemary. Take two cloves of garlic (or one clove of a shallot) and finely chop.

Get a pan and add some oil. Turn the knob to medium and allow it to heat up. Toss in the onion and mushrooms into the pan and saute for about four minutes. Toss in the garlic and let cook for about 30 seconds. Add in the parsley mixture and chase it around the pan for a lap. Place all the items, except the bell peppers, in a large bowl and mix heroically.

Heat the oven to 350f. Slice off the top of the peppers and remove the seeds. Fill the pepper about half way with the Bulgar wheat mixture, add some cheese (I would suggest a soft cheese), fill it most of the rest of the way, more cheese, and put a hat of the mixture on the final layer of cheese.

Place in the oven on a baking pan and cook until the tops are brown and the peppers are soft.

I usually eat with cottage cheese & oranges as the salad.

Roasted Garlic and the Breast

Wherein Mr Ullman professes his love for roasted garlic while Mr Broman appears to express some doubts.

Chicken breast. This isn't that sort of Blog.

There is nothing bad to be said about roasted garlic. I eat it alone. I spread it on crackers. I use it on salads. I have used it on fish, beef, pork, lamb, potatoes and corn. Should someone start a religion that worships roasted garlic I will be the first to the baptistry pool.

Let's start with roasting the garlic because this is where heaven is announced. This is the very definition of simple.

Heat your oven to 400 F.

Remove the outer layer of skin – the packaging so to speak – so that the individual cloves, still in their skins, are exposed.

Chop the top ¼ inch off the top of the cloves.

Drizzle olive oil on the heads of cloves. Don't over do it but make sure each clove is covered. By the way, feel free to go crazy here. I have used seed oils, nut oils, veggie oils. I have yet to meet a oil that that garlic didn't like.

Place the garlic into a muffin pan (or, if you are like me and view baking as someone else's problem, a cupped bit of aluminum foil).

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the cloves are soft.

Let those suckers cool enough to touch-- if you raise a blister it is to soon.

Reserve two cloves to be spread on wheat cracker or if you have a date – sorry about that, it is not that sort of blog (as an aside of you are blending it with mayo make certain the mayo is allowed to get to room temperature).

Create bread crumbs. I usually just toast some bread and crush it into fine chunks and dust. In this case I used whole wheat since I didn't want the bread fighting with the garlic.

Chop up some leeks, a bit of mint and mushrooms as finely as possible and toss them into a bowl with the bread crumbs. Throw is some thyme just for the hell of it. A zest would be good too but I haven't tried that yet. Toss.

I should have mentioned that this should all be done while the garlic was roasting. However, I got distracted.

While the garlic is still warm squeeze the garlic out its skin and rub it on the boneless chicken breast . I use about two cloves per side and only leave a few chunks behind. Put the breading mix into a plastic bag, throw in the chicken breast and shake vigorously so that the chicken if fully covered.

Heat the oven back to 400 F. Cook for thirty minutes, 15 on aside. I usually serve with coleslaw for no particular reason.

 

Halibut that (Or you have my phone number damnit!)

There are certain people in my life who I find breathtaking interesting but with whom the relationship is confined, slightly creepily, to a certain location. There are other folks who, on brief occasions, I wish were bit more location specific.

I know a 46 year old who is brilliant, smart, well read, funny, outlandishly beautiful and (damn it) a lesbian. She also has a weakness for appearing at my doorstep a couple times a year with a small group of people and an entree. She doesn't call in advance.

 

So this is a story of such a visit. Halibut was the dish. Skinned thankfully but one large fillet.

Unexpected fish is something of a pain. Bring me unannounced lamb, pork or beef and I can wipe up something up regardless of the state of my larder. With care, something that tastes good on pork will taste good lamb or beef. This isn't really true with fish. 

Fish is all about textures. Throw a tilapia into boiling water with a good selection of herbs and I am with you. Do the same with salmon or trout and I'll not only pity your guests but I am likely to hunt you down and make the last hours of your life notable.

When I have guests over I will usually do a recipe mainly because the quantity of the food involved. If I want to wing it I would cook something that has individual servings like pork chops. No big deal about making sure the meat is not going to taste wildly different on different areas. Each has a pork chop and I can do each pork chop the same way.

Halibut is a shared dished so I would usually do a recipe. This assumes that the halibut and three diners don't show up out of the blue. It assumes you have some time for prep and for shopping.

So it was a time to open some wine and give the fridge a cold, hard look. There were some onions, some kale and some other very sharp veggies and roots. Halibut is a sweet fish so you don't want to overpower it. However, I did have a good supply of fruits. 

This is what I did. I cut up a Honeygold grapefruit and put it off to the side. I also vigorously chopped up two mandarin oranges, canned pineapple (eek), a bit of mango,two green, red or yellow peppers and put them off on a different side. I gave the avocado a serious looking at and decided to pass (ripeness issues).

Most fish cooks fast so you have to prep things before you start cooking the fish. I took the mandarin oranges, pineapple and mango and put them in a mixing bowl. I added some lemon juice ( a couple of squirts), a bit of chives and some lime zest. For some shapeness I added three cocktail onions that were drained, rinsed and chopped finely. I added a dash of oregano simply because there was no reason not to add it to the dish. Thought about some honey and decided to pass again. I tossed this together.

I got out a baking dished. I took the Honeygold grapefruit and squeezed some juice on both sides of the fish. Then I took some grapeseed oil and rubbed it on the fish. I placed the fish into baking dish and peeled the skin off the remaining grapefruit slices and placed it around, not on, the fish. Heated the oven to 350 F and tented the dish with some aluminum foil to slightly hold in the essence of the grapefruit slices.

You should cook the halibut for about five minutes (it depends on the thickness, see the internet). For the last two minutes stick the mandarin orange, chives, pineapple et al into the oven in a covered dish to heat that mixture slightly.

Divide the fish and put the fruit mixture on top. On the side, offer sour cream with a some grated cucumber, dill weed and minced garlic just in case. The veggie in this case was lightly fried asparagus (that will be addressed later) -- the fiber was wild rice.

Just a note about the art.  Carl Broman did the drawings.  With a bit of luck this will become a feature. I certainly hope so.

First Post: Some Random Noise and a Chicken Recipe.

Iwas drunk when I signed up for this blog in 2009. That explains the name. If I remember correctly I was pissed at the S-57 navigation standard and was going to do something about it. I didn't.

I had forgotten about it until my niece started a food blog Eli's Food Project. When I commented on a post I was surprised to learn I was a blogger. What the hell, maybe I should do something about it. Hence this.

The plan at the moment is to post a recipe once a week or so. While this isn't overly groundbreaking I do have niche. I am a single man barking at my 50s who is currently without anyone in a regular sense and have been so for about a year and a half. However, I do enjoy good food and enjoy cooking. So this is going to be a blog about cooking for myself, occasionally for friends and maybe for possible lovers.

It is fairly easy to cook well for yourself. For the most part it is a matter of looking at recipes written for four or more servings and figuring out how to cook it for yourself. It isn't a matter of simply reducing the ingredients, that never works. You should look at the recipes and figure out what to do with the ingredients. If something written for four servings calls for 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary you will have a hard time reducing this for something you are making it for yourself. Be prepared for such measurements such as “a bit”. This should be defined as a amount that, through experience, tastes good to you. 

There are also a number of recipes that that will work well over a couple of days. There is a dill sauce I make that lasts for a number of days if the left overs are stored in the fridge. It is great on fish and chicken. Quite surprisingly, it also tastes great occasionally on the quick and easy have-to-use-up-stuff-before-it-goes-bad stir-fry and wasn't bad, much more surprisingly, in a non-repeatable but not that bad sausage mac and cheese.

Every other week I get a box of organic veggies from Full Circle Farms. This is fun because it includes veggies that I would not think to buy at the local grocery and, frankly, it tastes better (organic rainbow carrots are something that the gods snack on when they are watching game shows). I have no clue if this stuff will taste as good using regular veggies.

The major point of all this is not so much to present recipes to follow but rather to start you folks on the path to tasty combinations. Two-thirds of the stuff I eat are things that are somewhat unplanned. I buy something not because it is on my list but rather because it is something that might be cool with something else I found. That is the joy of the organic box I get, I have a bunch of stuff I might not be all that confident with using. I look up recipes to see how to use it and then figure out how to make it work when I go to the grocery.

A stuffed Chicken breast.

Let's start with a dish Popeye might fix if he and Olive Oil were going through a rough patch. A boneless chicken breast stuffed with spinach, Chioggia beets, shallots and goat cheese. The only spice you need is dried dill. Very simple and tasty.

The first step might be a bit hard to describe. Take a knife and slice the chicken breast lengthwise along its thin side. Don't cut all the way through, you basically want to be able to open it like a (very short) book.

Take the beet and use a veggie peeler to skin it. Once you get the outer skin off continue to peel it creating some thin slices. You want to have enough to cover the chicken.

Take the spinach and just rip it with your hands. Again, you want these bits small enough to stick inside the chicken. Usually you would only need one or maybe two leaves. Don't use the stem.

Chop the shallot finely.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Let it heat up while you prep the chicken.

Open the chicken breast like the book noted above. First, lay the beet slices in. Then next add the spinach and finally sprinkle the shallot pieces on top. Close the chicken book.

Get a Pyrex baking dish, one large enough to hold the chicken breast. Cover the bottom with olive oil. Place the chicken in the dish and sprinkle dried dill lightly on top. (This is one of those experience things.)

Bake the chicken breast for fifteen minutes. Take it out of the oven, reopen the book and LIGHTLY sprinkle some goat cheese (remember that?) over the top of the shallots. Goat cheese is really rich so less is better. 

Flip the chicken over, sprinkle dill on this side and bake for ten more minutes.

And that's it. I eat it with a salad (usually a spinach salad since I have it around for the recipe) and boiled potatoes seasoned with a mild horseradish sauce.

By the way, Olive Oil's father was named Cole Oil. Her mother was Nina Oil but if that was ever a pun it isn't any more.