Lentils ( and chicken)

Wherein Mr. Ullman uses up some chicken parts and notes the lentil

I love lentils.  They are a tasty bean, cook in twenty minutes and don't keep you from polite company.  So let's go there. 

I had a couple of boneless chicken thighs and part of a breast around the house that needed to be used before to much longer. I put the chicken into the oven and baked it at 350 for about twenty minutes on a side. While that was cooking I checked my lauder to make sure I had everything else I wanted to use and discovered I did have most of it. I would have to wing a bit but that is the fun of cooking.

First things first-- the parsnip. I had read a recipe a few days ago about deep frying parsnip. I took a parsnip, thinly slicked it and fried it in my number 8 cast iron skillet. I fried them in olive oil until the edges got brown and then reduced the heat to low. I added a fair amount of diced leeks and carrot greens to the parsnips and let everything slow cook while I prepared some some lentils.

When the the chicken was done I added some clam juice into the stuff in the skillet and proceed to pull apart the chicken (ouch, ouch and ouch-- I'll let it cool a bit next time). As I pulled the chicken I added it to the skillet and upped the heat to medium low. Once the chicken was pulled I added about half a can of pretty good condensed cream of mushroom soup, about a fifth of a cup of brine from a jar of pickled artichoke hearts and a couple of spoonfuls of horseradish sauce. Added the lentils (which were about three quarters of the way done), some all spice and a couple of shakes of oregano and stirred . I covered good old number 8 with its lid and let the concoction reduce for about twenty minutes.

The recipe is a keeper but needs a slight bit of work in the Daniel Ullman test kitchen. There was a good sweet taste that needs to be pulled out. What jumps out to me is that corn season is starting. I might add some sweet corn kernels or, more likely, dice up some post eaten cobs and put them into the mix while it is reducing. Maybe some almonds?

Chicken thighs!

Wherein Mr. Ullman poaches some chicken thighs

For reasons known only to Albertsons HQ the grocery store was having a damn fine sale on chicken thighs. This is cool by me, I like chicken thighs better then chicken breasts so I purchased 2 and a half pounds which set me back a $1.99 since I have an Albertson's Preferred Savings Card (they don't require you to fill out a form so it is the only one I own). So, what to do with them?

That was an easy question to answer. I had made a mayo a couple of days back. I used a peanut oil base , cukes and toasted corn kernels, It didn't work well as a sandwich spread but it might work well here.

So that is where I started although I did dilute the mayo with some of the marinade from a jar of baby carrots . I also chopped up some celery root, English parsley, carrot greens, a couple of roasted garlic cloves from the night before, a bit of a leek and a baby carrot  I put all of this into a Ball jar, add some soy sauce and a small bit of something marked only as Hot Sauce and got out my single handed toastmaster mixer. Added some cinnamon and pepper under the assumption that it couldn't hurt.

I then heated the oven to 350, got out my trusty Pyrex and placed about five thighs into it (two for tonight, the rest for a chicken salad I want to attempt).I  sprinkled some  uncook (but shelled thank god) sunflower seeds on top of the chicken. I poured three quarters the above concoction on top of the chicken and baked for twenty minutes, basting when the mood struck. Flipped the chicken and added the rest of the concoction, basted, and cooked for twenty more minutes. Served with rice and, because of the state of the lauder, a simple salad.

Very tasty. In fact it was tasty enough that the two meant for the chicken salad didn't make it. They were eaten that night.

Rolling Pork

Wherein Mr Ullman goes a round with a pork chop and makes a sweet concoction

I should note that I have a serious weakness for anything pickled and in a jar.  Cocktail onions are my friends.  Give me a folk and some marinated artichoke hearts and I will be on your side in any argument even if you are out of sour cream.   This recipe calls for baby corn-- the tasty ones preserved in vinegar. 

To my surprise there is no word for pounding meat. There should be and I would have thought that the French would have come up with one by now.  However, a search for “pounding meat thin” returns a lot of cooking sites (used safe search of course) that say “pound the pork (or chicken) thin” rather then “Aword, which means pounding the meat to make it thin.” 

So with that in mind you start your prep by taking a boneless pork chop and pound it as thin as possible.  I just wrapped it in wax paper, put it between my cutting boards and wail on the pork.  You can use a tenderising hammer if you want to but I didn't want the texture a tenderising hammer gives the meat.  You need to get the pork thin enough to be able to roll it up.

You will need the following:

About a quarter of a sweet onion
About a quarter of an apple
A couple of ounces of pecans
An ounce or so of celery root.
A clove of elephant garlic
A whole tomatillo
A small bit of all spice.
Three or four tasty baby carrots and small bit of the fluid.
Apple cider vinegar.

Take the onion and celery root and chop them up.   Put the onion, celery root and the pecans into a blender and hit the grind button.  Once that is done take the apple and chop it up into small pieces.  I tend to slice it lengthwise and then work it crosswise.  You are aiming for apple chunks about the size of a round button on your cell phone although not as thin.  Slice the elephant garlic into strips. Chop up the tomatillo.

Place all of this into a bowl, add about a ½ teaspoon of the liquid from the baby corn bottle, some all spice and toss.

Chop up the baby corn but don't add it to the mixture. 

Lay out the pork on your cutting board, add the mixture across the entire spread, splash on a shake of soy sauce and roll it up.  Put this into a Pyrex baking dish covered with olive oil and a splash of apple cider vinegar.  Put half of the chopped baby corn on top of the pork, cover the dish with aluminium foil and bake for 15  minutes at 350 degrees.  When the buzzer goes off turn it, add the rest of the baby corn and cook for 15 more minutes.  Serve with your favourite green.

Roasting veggies

 Wherein Mr Ullman weighs in on cauliflower

I really like cauliflower. It is fun to work with and lends itself to experiments. It seems to absorb just enough of the other juices to improve itself slightly but doesn't allow these other favors to overcome it. This is a fun recipe because it includes roasting, stir fry and baking.

This is what you need:

A good deal of cauliflower, cut into florets about the size of a grape.

I use small or medium shrimp (41/50 or 51/60) however any size will work.

Four or five cloves of garlic or shallots, minced.

A couple of teaspoons of olive, grape or coconut oil depending our your tastes

A sharp parsley, chopped finely.

Six or seven green beans (organic if you are wise).

Half a lemon.

Ground pepper.

A hard cheese, A hard goat cheese or a cow cheese such as Piave, a

good aged Mozzarella (if it is powered it isn't good) or an aged

Gouda.

Rice (jasmine is a winner here)

First, roast the cauliflower. Put the cauliflower, garlic and the oil in a good sized zip lock bag. Shake victoriously:). Place the mixture in a bowl and put in the parsley and toss. Let the oven to get to 400

degrees, squeeze the lemon on top and place the concoction in a pyrex bowl and roast for about 25-30 minutes (until the tops of the cauliflower's tops are brown and are easily pierced with a folk).

At about 15 fifteen minutes into the roasting stir-fry the shrimp and beans. If you have some the garlic or shallots still around throw them in. Once the shrimp can be easily sliced with a spatula take it

off the heat and put it aside.

Assuming that everything is done put everything into a the mixing bowl and toss. Return to the

pyrex and put the oven on warm. Cook up a short grain rice on the stove and grate the cheese.

When the rice is done put everything into the mixing bowl, add the cheese and toss (add the pepper at this point). Serve with a salad with greens and a sliced apple.

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.