Our new apartment in Philadelphia has a rooftop deck. I’m excited about starting a new herb garden (it’ll still be in pots, but I won’t be limited to the number I can reach on the windowsill). One of the first things I’ll plant is rosemary. I like pretty much everything I’ve ever used rosemary for (two favorite recipes starring this flavor are a tomato and pork ragu, and a lamb and lentil stew), and last year I visited the (highly recommended) Piedmont Restaurant in Durham, NC, where I tried a cocktail that combined rosemary with two of my other favorite flavors, grapefruit and gin. It was called a Rose Marie and it was awesome.
So last summer, I infused some gin with rosemary, and the one cocktail I made with that was very good. Then I dropped the container on the floor and it shattered (messy, but smelled good!) so to speed up the time it would take to get the rosemary flavor in, I had the idea of doing it as a granita instead. Here’s what I did:
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 sprigs rosemary
1/2 cup gin*
3 cups pink grapefruit juice
Simmer the water, sugar, and rosemary together until the syrup is slightly reduced and the rosemary is wilted. Remove the rosemary. Stir in the gin and grapefruit juice. Pour into an 8×8 baking dish and put in the freezer. Stir every 30 minutes for about 4 hours; you’ll end up with a granita that is on the soft side and can easily be scooped into wine glasses. It keeps forever in the freezer; just stir it up again before scooping.
*I think this would work fine without gin if you are a gin-hater or want to feed it to precociously-foodie children; adding additional sugar should keep it from freezing too firmly. By my calculation it has about 1/2 oz gin per half-cup serving.
I’m looking forward to making another batch once I have some rosemary! I have also recently been told that three more of my favorite tastes, lime, ginger, and maple syrup, taste great together. That was in the context of a main-dish recipe, but now I’m thinking granita…
These days I spend probably the majority of my blog-reading time on blogs about food and cooking, and as I’ve gained confidence in my own taste and technique, I’ve started doing proportionally more eye-rolling at pretentiousness.
One topic that’s almost guaranteed to be obnoxious is Which Time-Saving Products Should Be Avoided Because They Are Not Authentic Enough, and perhaps the most widely-derided such product lately has been packaged chicken broth. I’ve even seen recipes say you should use water rather than canned broth, if you don’t have any homemade stock available.
Here is what I think: that’s stupid. I make a fair number of things that are a lot better with chicken broth than water or vegetable broth - soups and risottos, primarily. Sometimes I have enough mushroom scraps to make a nice mushroom stock, and that’s good in risotto, but it requires more than one meal worth of scraps. And simple broth-based soups like white bean and kale really benefit from additional flavor. (For things like roasted red pepper soup or lentil soup I’ll make a quick vegetable stock from what I’ve got in the crisper drawer, and that works fine.)
Is homemade stock better than canned or boxed (which I generally prefer)? Sure. But that means you have to (1) make and (2) store homemade stock. In order to make chicken stock, you have to have a chicken carcass. I would say that in the past four years (the time I’ve lived in my current apartment), I have bought and prepared two whole chickens. So I have made homemade chicken stock twice, each batch providing enough for maybe a few weeks’ worth of cooking, depending on what I was making regularly. It was good, but honestly not that much better than the boxed stuff I usually buy at Trader Joe’s. Certainly not better enough to make it worth roasting a chicken every month.
(I have come to the conclusion that I just don’t really like chicken. Whenever I try a version that is supposed to be particularly flavorful, it turns out that that means it tastes more… chicken-y. I have no particular objection to boneless skinless chicken breast, but if I want bland protein, tofu is a lot easier to cook, and generally I don’t want bland protein at all. So if I were to roast a chicken regularly, I’m not sure what I would do with all the parts I didn’t make stock from, plus it’s kind of messy.)
I could potentially make a whole bunch of stock at once, maybe after a dinner party or something, but where would I put it? My freezer is usually full of leftovers I’ve portioned out for healthy, tasty eating later. (Also meat that actually has flavor, and all those mushroom scraps.)
I think decent packaged broth is a great compromise on taste, convenience, and non-wastefulness. And hey, at least it’s not bouillon cubes!
Like Mark Bittman’s, my pantry is an embarrassment of riches. He writes that he started on a buy-fresh-food-only plan six weeks ago and still has a full pantry.
I can outdo that - I started the same plan in September! True, I spent November and December out of town, so it has really only been four months, but I still have a LOT of food in my freezer and pantry. In my defense, the impetus for this plan was that Tim and his roommate both moved away in September; there was a lot of packaged food left in the apartment and I didn’t want to waste it, so I took it. So most of the jars in my fridge, and many of the items in the pantry, were not purchased by me.
In addition to saving a lot of money, I’m really enjoying the challenge of cooking only with ingredients I already have (plus fresh produce, milk, eggs, and that sort of thing). It’s helping me branch out and cook different cuisines, or at least cook new dishes on a regular basis. I did have to expand the definition of “fresh” to include canned tomatoes and chicken broth.
(Yes, that’s right - Mark Bittman’s chicken broth is going to stay in his pantry forever, and I’m still buying new. I don’t really like chicken, so it is extremely rare for me to have an actual chicken carcass to make stock out of. I make vegetable and seafood stock, but not chicken. And there are some soups and risottos that really taste a lot better with chicken broth, even if it’s the canned variety.)
Whenever I use up a package and get to throw it away, I feel very accomplished. Today I finished a bottle of Trader Joe’s orange champagne vinegar (excellent combined with a shallot and some walnut oil to make salad dressing). I expect to finish a bag of bread flour and a canister of oatmeal tomorrow when I make another batch of oatmeal toasting bread. I may also make cardamom and dried cherry scones, which will finish up a package of dried cherries and make a dent in both all-purpose and whole-wheat flour. And I’m about to make biscuits to go under stew I made with lamb (from the freezer), vegetables (odds and ends from other recipes), lentils (from my enormous stash of dried lentils), rosemary (dried from my own plant), and tomatoes (bought canned; I lose!).
This post from The Kitchn was interesting because it’s something I’ve thought about myself.
I’ll admit it. I like to eat critters but I get a little squeamish …. So there’s a tension here for me because I also think that this makes my relationship with the meat on my plate removed, privileged and not a little hypocritical. Is it OK for me to eat something I’m not willing to kill myself?
I have a hard time coming up with a justification for why it’s completely OK to eat meat, and yet it’s something that’s accepted in our culture and clearly doesn’t make you a bad person. At various times I’ve considered becoming a vegetarian. I haven’t done it, although I don’t eat much meat and when I do, I buy humanely-raised meat when possible.
One reason I’ve remained an omnivore is a little difficult to explain. This reason initially surfaced as a feeling that if I became a vegetarian, I’d be one of those obnoxious vegetarians who criticize everyone else’s plate. I am pretty sure that’s true, and I have gradually figured out why.
I have come to think that there’s value in ambivalence - we can’t know the perfect moral solution to every problem, because our moral sense evolved in response to pressures, and can produce conflicting results or results that seem to be clearly wrong on logical examination. I think that’s a very important thing to remember. We need to try our best to do right, but realize that we don’t have all the answers, and look out for opportunities to adjust and make our moral sense better. Thinking that you have all the answers, forgetting that questions exist where you can’t say what’s right or wrong, cuts you off from those chances to improve.
For me, the question of meat-eating is a reminder that I can’t know everything. If I did choose vegetarianism, the option where I deny myself pleasure but remove all moral qualms, I think it would be very easy to become self-righteous about it (maybe more so because it’s not an easy choice to make). So I would be obnoxious, and maybe also satisfied with myself and forgetful of the imperfection of my moral sense.
Over at The Kitchn, the linked entry had several really good comments. This, from “latenac,” I thought was particularly good:
I’m an omnivore. I can’t quite come to terms with viewing any subject as black and white. If you’re going to put animal rights above all else then a lot of other grey area comes into play. If you still eat dairy, how do you feel about what happens to the calves that are a by-product of making that dairy? If you’re a vegan that keeps pets how do you justify that it’s not exploitation of that animal and what do you feed them? After all, cats are obligate carnivores for example. What are you doing about the migrant labor that comes into play with you food choices? How do you feel knowing nothing you eat is truly animal cruelty free? You can’t just hide in a black and white view of the world b/c life rarely is.
I love food, I love the experience and ritual of it and I try to be mindful of where all of mine comes from. And I want to be part of the world rather than trying to rise above it. And I want my body to get everything it needs through the food I eat rather than having to take supplements. And with that view comes the grey area of knowing what we eat and where it comes from. We all have to find our level of comfort.
I’m not sure that I will always eat meat, or that I will always eat as little meat as I do now, but I will keep thinking about the question.
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution asks, what is the proper pairing with dark chocolate? He offers the following schools of thought:
1. Wine
2. Spirits
3. Strawberries
4. A pinch of red chili powder
5. A quick swig of mineral water immediately afterwards
I can get behind any of these except perhaps the mineral water (I have never heard of this school of thought and suspect it exists primarily in Cowen’s mind, not that that’s a strike against it); I am all about potentiating the chocolate effect, not washing it out. With wine I like big reds; port is frequently recommended with chocolate but I don’t find it to be a great combination, and whites seem to be either too acidic or too sweet.
Strawberries are good; raspberries are better.
It was near the end of the comment thread before anybody suggested stout; Guinness and chocolate is one of the great flavor combinations as far as I’m concerned.
Many people suggest oranges; my favorite truffle flavoring is orange, but I am not so sure about actually eating chocolate and eating oranges/drinking orange juice at the same time. I prefer having the orange essence infused into the chocolate rather than as a separate entity.
I can’t leave out my lowbrow favorite: plain potato chips. Salt plus chocolate, yum. I don’t waste very good chocolate on this combination, though.
I knew I had too many cookie recipes to bake each and every one. So like any good geek, I averaged the recipes to make the best cookie recipe ever, or what I call a Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie. Get it? Mean? Ha ha ha.
It gets funnier. And I think I might actually make these cookies!
This Saturday I went to the farmers’ market to get produce for the week. I bought as much as I could carry, but couldn’t find anybody selling Thai basil, so I decided to check out Jay’s International Grocery, which is relatively close to my house. It was very exciting; there were lots of things I couldn’t name, and I got a giant bunch of basil for under $2. Also, frozen samosas, and coconut juice. I wanted coconut milk to make mango sticky rice, but I didn’t see any.
I thought coconut juice might be the same thing, but now I don’t think it is. It looks clear in the picture on the can, and according to the nutrition information it’s fat-free and fairly low in calories, which is definitely not the case with coconut milk! It does have a lot of electrolytes; I see from Wikipedia that coconut water (which I assume is essentially the same thing) has actually been used for intravenous hydration! I think I’ll consume it via the alimentary route.
Also - and I swear I am not obsessed with reading nutrition information - I think the Nutrition Facts on this can might be a little off. It claims that a serving is 1/2 cup, and that the can contains about 2 servings. It’s a 14-ounce can, which sounds to me like 3.5 servings. This makes me a little concerned that they just slapped a sticker on a package that’s not actually approved for sale in the US, but I will drink it anyway.
Hostess 100 Calorie Cupcake pack, one serving (3 mini cupcakes): 5 grams of dietary fiber (20% of the RDA).
Trader Joe’s Venezia salad mix, one serving (3.5 cups of lettuce): 1 gram of dietary fiber (4% of the RDA).
How can 3 little blobs of sugar and fat pack in more fiber than an entire bowl of salad?
[passing the cafeteria] Something smells tasty. I think it smells like Frank’s Red Hot.
Ooh, Mom’s recipe for chicken wings features a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot and is super yummy.
I should make chicken wings.
Tim and I probably can’t eat a whole batch. Maybe there’s an occasion for which I could make them.
I think the Superbowl must be coming up soon; I remember seeing that the first-year auditorium was reserved for that purpose while I was scheduling CPR training. Wings are a good Superbowl food.
But if I went to a Superbowl party, then I would have to watch the Superbowl. It’s not worth it.
Maybe I could throw a non-Superbowl party, in which we eat chicken wings and other messy and unhealthy foods but do NOT watch the Superbowl or think about football at all! This sounds awesome.
The set of my friends who like messy and unhealthy foods, and the set of my friends who would want to skip watching the Superbowl, may have an extremely small intersection. Tim and I may be back to eating chicken wings on our own.
Since I got to spend several weekends in a row at home with no visitors to entertain, I’ve been going to the farmer’s market for fresh produce most Saturdays. I’m always astonished by how cheap it is - I usually spend less than $15 and get as much as I can carry.
Then I come home and use my produce to cook things I’ve always wanted to make from scratch but not been willing to spend enough money at the grocery store to buy the ingredients. (At least, that’s what I’ve been doing so far.)
The first few weeks, I turned my haul into Italian food. Everything was good, but definitely a learning experience.
First I made pesto with green beans and potatoes, according to this recipe from Radagast. It was very tasty and it smelled so good while I was making it. I have improvements in mind for next time, though. It wasn’t quite as strongly-flavored as I would like. I think this is partly because my one bunch of basil didn’t quite make three cups, so I’ll use more next time. I’ll also add an extra clove of garlic and salt it before it gets to the table.
I might not make pesto again until I get a food processor, though. I used a blender and it didn’t work that well - the very bottom ingredients got whirred to a paste, and the top 90% didn’t move at all. I tried pushing them down, but I wasn’t very coordinated and I ended up destroying my wooden spoon. (I picked all the wood shards out before continuing.) So I would not recommend using a blender.
Next I made the classic tomato sauce from Joy of Cooking. It was definitely tasty, though I think I was a little short on tomatoes. Also, I am pretty sure I got the wrong kind of tomatoes - they were juicier and not quite as red inside as romas, so the sauce was an interesting pinky-orange color and kind of thin. (This would probably also have been helped by adding tomato paste, which was optional.) But the peeling process worked exactly as the cookbook said, which was reassuring. I’ll make it again with roma tomatoes and some tomato paste.
The final Italian-food experiment was making Marcella Hazan’s tomato-butter sauce with fresh tomatoes (I got romas this time). I’d made it several times before with canned tomatoes and really liked it, and I figured this could only be better. Unfortunately I got a little impatient that it wasn’t thickening up (fresh tomatoes are way juicier than canned!) and decided to add tomato paste. I don’t know if I added too much or it was just low-quality tomato paste, but it kind of overwhelmed the other flavors. Don’t get me wrong, it was still good. I might try this with fresh tomatoes again and cook it for longer, but I might just stick to high-quality canned tomatoes and call it good. Besides, if I’m going to go through all the work of peeling tomatoes, I might as well use them in a more labor-intensive recipe.
Last week was supposed to be Thai food, but we lost power and my Thai basil, eggplant, and green beans all went bad in the fridge. Also I’m having trouble tracking down all the right ingredients; I need to find an Asian grocery. I miss living in Northern Virginia where there was a whole aisle in the Giant full of packages I couldn’t read.
Update: In addition to a food processor and a new wooden spoon, I also really want a kitchen scale. While it was fun trying to figure out how many pounds of tomatoes I had by submerging one in a measuring cup full of water, seeing how much water it displaced, and assuming that its density was similar to that of water (the tomatoes were sold by the box not by the pound), I would prefer not to have to do that every time. Also, that method doesn’t so much work for dry ingredients.