Cooking for One

The following is a post I made on Colony of Gamers, to a gentleman requesting advice on how to cook for only themelves.

Get an electric pressure cooker. I recommend this one: Cuisinart CPC 600 Electric Pressure Cooker

It'll steam rice in 10 minutes, cook beans in an hour, make soups and stocks in record time, braise meats, does slow cooker dishes without the "slow" part, all sorts of cool shit. That pressure cooker is the most useful device in my house and would be whether I was one or many.

Also, rice and beans really are a bachelor's best friend. Cheap as hell, and scale well to small or even individual batches. 

When I was alone I also found that the balance of my diet changed. Meat-heavy is out. Unless you buy warehouse-store bulk and freeze large amounts of it, you can't take advantage of the kinds of price scale you can when you're feeding multiples. 

Learn to eat like the Chinese. Little bit of meat, lots of veg and rice and such. That way you can buy a couple pork chops and have them stretch for several meals. Stir fries are your friend, find a wok. 

Your veggie issue is difficult. Veggies are a great source of nutrition and when you're solo, they actually get cheaper, unlike with meat. When it's just you, you can save money and freshness, because veggies are the same price per pound regardless how many you buy often. 1 carrot might be all you need for one person in a dish, and you can get that for like 10 cents. That sort of thing.

Pasta is good too. Find a brand of sauce you like, or make it yourself in big batches in the pressure cooker and freeze/store it. Personally, I tend to go for the inbetween method, and use canned plain tomato sauce and paste, along with some pesto and my own spices to taste, done on stovetop in big enough batches I can get several meals out of it. This plus one package of spaghetti noodles can go 3-4 meals when you're doing single servings, and it's filling. Alfredo is another good recipe to know, you just need some butter, parmesan, and heavy cream and you've got a rich, filling dish with minimal ingredients. Same with carbonara (eggs, cheese, some diced bacon, maybe some peas).

Learn to make real ramen or pho. You can buy the cheap brick noodles, those are fine (more authentic noodles are nice, but usually expensive, unless you're talking rice noodles, which cost pennies a pound), just toss out the season packet, that thing is pure salt. Get a box of hon dashi if you can find it in an Asian market, or make your own stock in the pressure cooker with some cheap bits of oxtail you've roasted in the oven along with a carrot, some onion, and a bit of celery. 

Soup in general is good. It costs little, because it's mostly water, but because it's mostly water it fills you up, which is why poor peasants the world over eat one hell of a lot of soup. The pressure cooker is again your friend here. You can make great soups in no time at all and with minimal prep, just toss in veg and meat and beans/rice, and set for whatever the longest cooking component is. Voila, soup for a week!

Another dish I find goes well for a poor bachelor: polenta. Make a batch of it, eat some that night, then let the rest chill in the fridge. Once it cools it sets up into a block, and you can cut it into slices or other shapes. The slices can be reheated or fried or even grilled and served with red sauce. It's also better than you might expect fried in strips and served with vinegar and ketchup/brown sauce just like chips. 

A grill is nice too, burgers and steaks and such are a nice treat and easy on the cleanup. My favorite though is a good hot smoker, though I dunno how easy they are to come by in the UK. But a big hunk of some kind of cheap pork roast, rubbed down with spices, and smoke-roasted at about 300 F over smoking wood chips is amazingly delicious, and more importantly, makes a lot of meat that keeps very well, and can thus feed you for a couple of weeks after the initial prep. This will of course require a living space with a yard and assumes that your local legislative body allows for the cooking of meat on flame in your neighborhood. If not, there are stovetop smokers, but their results are less impressive, and their size prevents taking advantage of the economies of scale that make them awesome.

This is also a place where having friends is handy. You can entice them to your house with promise of beer and cooking meat, then squeeze them for the funds to split the cost of a big pork shoulder. They get a yummy meal, as do you, but you don't have to pay for the whole cost, and they generally don't notice you keeping all the leftovers for yourself. Anywhere there is smoked pork, there is a party, remember that.

Buy sourdough bread. When you have other people sharing your bread, it goes quickly. When you do not, it has a habit of going south before you can finish it. Especially if you're like me and aren't big on eating sandwiches every day. Sourdough's natural cultures help fend off mold, so it tends to just go stale, rather than go to rot, which means you've still got good bread for toast or French toast or making croutons for soup even after it's exhausted it's usefulness for sandwiches.

Bacon and salt pork. There are practical reasons for these ingredients, not just the tastiness. They are dirt cheap, and they keep for ages, and you can put them in anything. A couple of strips of fatty bacon will add flavor and protein to anything from pasta to fried rice, and salt pork is practically integral to the making of good soups and beans.

Pork in general, is your friend. Chicken can be cheap too, but only if you buy it on the bone, which means learning to butcher it or cooking it whole, the boneless shit costs a fortune. Pork tends to cost about the same with or without bones, and can be had in larger bulk roasts and things that can be stretched pretty far.

This is generally the guidelines I have lived by when trying to go it alone on a cook's wage by myself. In general, I find the simplicity and low ingredient count of Asian and Italian foods, paired with homey large batch casseroles and soups, is a good strategy for keeping your money lasting and keeping you well fed on minimal funds.

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Thai curry is insanely easy to make if you can get the curry paste. Just saute a couple tablespoons of paste in a wok or fry pan, add raw chicken or pork, and some sliced mushroom and onion, stir fry quickly, then add a can of coconut milk. Serve with rice for pure awesome. Look for Mae Ploy paste, Google tells me Tesco sometimes carries it. I prefer the yellow, it's the most versatile, green and red are spicier and have more distinct flavors.

For pickles, I love homemade vinegar pickled veggies. Cut up chunks of carrot, onion, bell pepper, green bean, radish, and add dried chili peppers, toss with salt and pepper and spices if desired, then stuff them in a jar and fill with rice vinegar. They'll keep for at least a month and still be as crisp as the day they were cut, but with a nice extra bite. Instantly turns a bowl of rice into a meal.

Another good one to have around is pickled red onion. Slice red onion nice and thin, then toss with salt, pepper, and celery salt and put in a bowl or a jar. They start to get nice and soft in just an hour or so, you can make them up as needed, or save for a couple weeks. They make a great condiment for all kinds of things, rice, tacos, sandwiches, burritos, even a sushi ingredient. 

Sushi's a dish that is nice to know as well, and cheaper than you'd think. Stripped of the expensive ahis and yellowtails, it's just rice and vinegar and nori. Try some fake crab, cooked white fish, some salad shrimp tossed with mayonnaise and sriracha sauce, I even highly recommend a Hawaiian favorite: Spam. Get creative, and don't feel bound even to seafood, maki is almost as flexible as the sandwich. One of my favorite rolls is turkey pastrami and cream cheese.

Honestly, I love cooking alone, I get to make whatever I want and be as creative as I want without dealing with finicky eaters who might otherwise hold me back.

Beef Miso Ramen

One of my favorite things about my time spent at Yoko's, lo these many years ago, was the ramen.  As a young guy who'd only ever ate "ramen" from a packet that came in "chicken flavor", it was quite an eye opening thing to experience ramen that didn't basically just taste like a bullion cube dissolved in too much liquid.  

In particular, there were two varieties that stuck out for me: the pork, and the beef.  The pork was a quick-and-dirty concentrate of the classic tonkotsu stock, which I fell instantly in love with for that milky, salty, porky goodness.  The other, the beef, was a dark, rich miso beef broth (also a concentrate) that we did up in a wok with freshly stir-fried bits of New York strip and vegetables.  

It was the beef ramen I found myself particularly craving last week, after we came into some glorious bits of scrap tri-tip from Ray's, and I even bought some miso paste with the intent to make it.  Sadly, things got in the way and the meat went south before we could use it, but the idea stuck in the back of my mind until yesterday, when I was back at the Ray's again and saw some gorgeous hunks of ox-tail.

Now, the Yoko's beef ramen was just a paste from a jar you added to water and voila, beef ramen.  It was tasty, and good quality for an instant stock (along par with that "Better than Bouillon" stuff, with some miso in it), but not really available to me.  But those ox-tails put me in mind of the idea that I should just make my own stock, and build a ramen from home-made.  I seldom, if ever, make my own stocks (I know! A crime in foodie land these days), so this would be a good experiment, and one more use for my pressure cooker.

So, cobbling together bits of advice from my pressure cooker manual, Alton Brown's pressure cooker broth recipe, and the brilliantly elemental instruction of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, more specifically it's advice on stock making, and of course some inspiration from Yoko's cooking methods, I came up with the following recipe:

J's Beef Miso Ramen (Serves 2)

For the stock:

1 Lb section of meaty oxtail

2 carrots, cut into 1-2" chunks

2 stalks of celery, cut into 1-2" chunks

1/2 an onion, cut into 1-2" chunks

1 handful of Italian parsley

5 cloves of garlic, whole, peeled

1 tsp peppercorns, lightly cracked

5 cups cold water

For the ramen broth:

1/4 cup red miso paste

2 Tbsp. ginger/garlic paste

1/8 cup soy sauce

The rest:

1 lb boneless beef spare ribs, cut into small strips

1 lb assorted favorite stir fry vegetables (recommend broccoli, carrot, onion, and green bean or snap peas)

8 oz. chuka soba noodles

Salt, pepper, soy sauce or Bragg's, and nanami to taste

Green onion and/or bean sprouts, for garnish

Making the stock

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F.

2. Salt and pepper each side of the oxtail and place on a baking sheet.

3. Roast the oxtail in the oven for 30 minutes.

4. Add roasted oxtail, veg, parsley, garlic, pepper, and water to your pressure cooker pot.

5. Cook under high pressure for 50 minutes, then quick release.  

6. Drain the stock through a fine-mesh sieve or strainer into a saucepan. Discard meat and veg. 

Building your ramen:

1. Place the saucepan containing your freshly prepared stock on the stove over medium heat.

2. Add miso paste, ginger/garlic paste, and soy sauce, and whisk vigorously, ensuring that the miso paste has been fully dissolved into the liquid.  Leave on medium-low heat, whisking occasionally, until ready to serve.

3. Fill a large stockpot or pasta pot with enough water to cook the chuka soba, and salt liberally, then place over high heat to boiling

3. Heat 2 Tbsp of oil in a non-stick skillet or wok over high heat.

4. Add cut spare ribs and stirfry until cooked, seasoning with the nanami if desired

5. Once the meat is cooked just about medium, add the vegetables, and stir-fry, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper and soy sauce if desired (I like to use a garlic salt grinder for a little extra flavor).

6. Add your chuka soba noodles to the boiling water in your stockpot and cook for about 2-3 minutes on a high boil.  Drain.

Serving:

1. Divide the noodles between two large ramen bowls.

2. On top of the noodles, divide the stir-fried beef and vegetables between the two bowls

3. Pour ramen broth over noodles.

4. Garnish with green onion and bean sprouts as desired.

Voila!  Delicious, home cooked ramen.  It's the homemade stock that really seals the deal, all that stuff the chefs keep saying is true: you simply can't expect anywhere near this kind of flavor from a canned or an instant stock, no matter how good it is.  Even the expensive stocks like Stock Options just won't compare to the real thing.  

This recipe is more or less exactly how I cooked it.  You could probably simplify it a bit, if you've got a wok with good volume, by adding the stock directly to the wok after stir frying the meat and veg (maybe even a little early so they get simmered a bit in it), and building your broth flavor from there.  That's how we did it at Yoko's, and how I would've done it, if not for my cheap wok completely rusting over within minutes of cleaning as we were preparing dishes for the night's cooking.  

An Open Letter to McMenamins.

Greetings,

I am a long time fan of your McMenamins establishments. Your restaurants and pubs have built a well deserved reputation for quality gastropub-style cuisine and excellent microbrewed fare. I've been going to the McMenamins located here in Bend since it opened, and have generally been nothing less than pleased with my experiences.

However, the last two visits my friend and I have made to the Old St. Francis location have been off-putting to say the least, and I am deeply concerned by what I see as one of my local favorites slipping severely in quality, and unless steps are taken to significantly improve the standards of the place, neither of us foresee ever returning.

The first of these two visits, which occurred a few weeks ago, we walked out almost as soon as we entered, as from the moment we walked through the front door, we were immediately assailed by the pungent reek of what I can only identify as raw sewage. So repulsed was I that I insisted to my companion that we leave immediately, and we wound up dining elsewhere that afternoon.

Tonight however, I decided to give the place another chance, in part because it was a rather late hour, and few establishments were open at this time. This time we entered through the rear hotel entrance, and once again, upon entering, I picked up a distinctly toilet-like reek, though much milder than my previous encounter, and while my initial reaction was to leave yet again, my companion wrote it off as perhaps an overflowed toilet in one of the guest rooms, so we pressed on to the dining room proper and were relieved to be greeted with the smells of cooking food.

After a delightfully short wait we were seated, but from there, the problems began to pile up. The service was terrible. Once seated it took at least 10 minutes for our actual server to come around to take our drink orders, and it took longer still for them to actually arrive, despite the fact that both of us, from our vantage point, could see them waiting at the bar for the vast portion of this time. Our drinks themselves, a couple of root beers, were remarkably unpleasant, brackish things which I only stomached simply because the water, which didn't arrive until sometime after the soft drinks did, were significantly worse.

After a good wait further, our server again reared his head to take our dinner order. We ordered the Cajun tots as an appetizer, and two "Communication Breakdown" burgers with bacon and fries.

The Cajun tots arrived and were, for the most part, as good as always, if a bit unusually crumbly. Our burgers, on the other hand, were spectacular in no respect but in the magnitude of their mediocrity. My burger was utterly and completely tasteless, and my friend's was, in addition to tasteless, apparently dripping with a ridiculous quantity of grease. The fries, in both cases, with the same, which is to say utterly soaked in grease, and completely soggy. They honestly seemed rather more like they'd been boiled than fried, and then quickly tossed in a cold pan with some old fryer oil from the week before.

Disappointed with the quality of our meal, but still optimistic enough to brave the inevitable long wait it seemed to take the staff to accomplish anything whatsoever, we decided to order the bread pudding, a menu item that, like the tots, we've both traditionally almost always ordered, because it is generally fantastic.

It wasn't. In fact, it was the single most unpleasant thing we were served the entire evening. Presentation wise, it looked like a plate of baby vomit. Rather than the firm texture I have come to expect, it was rather a mushy pile, sitting in the midst of some curdled cream and crowned what appeared to be a to be a hastily added topping of ice cream that had completely melted to soup in the massive wait before it arrived at our table, and yet, despite it having melted, upon tasting it we were rather alarmed to discover that the dish was still ice cold in the middle. While we were warned the dish would be rather rich, an observation that bore out with previous experience and made me quite hopeful in fact, it was in fact, so mushy and bland as to be almost insubstantial.

I wish to mention further, at this point, because it surely played at least a part in how unpleasant some of the dishes served were, just how truly awful the service was through all this. Our "Server" we only encountered but a few times in the course of the evening, and only in the interest of occasionally bothering to come round with the rather ghastly excuses for beverages. Our actual food was delivered by a man who appeared to actually be one of the kitchen staff picking up the slack. Most of the waitstaff could be visibly seen gadding about socializing with their friend or other waitstaff, among them our server who at one point took a break to huddle up with several others for a long chat session that took up most of the time we were there. At another point, thanks to the visible window, we even witnessed another waitress (at least we assumed she was a waitress, even though she didn't appear to be dressed or equipped for the occasion) hanging about in the kitchen having a beer while she chatted up the only two cooks in the place, who similarly seemed to be spending most of the time horsing about.

And the resulting long waits were also all in spite of the fact that despite it being 10pm on a Saturday evening, and the downtown area being packed with people, the dining room was almost completely vacant. Not counting the waitresses socializing at a table near the entrance, I counted at most four tables besides ourselves.

As the final capper to the evening, my dining companion, whether due to the grease in his burger or the curdled nature of the dessert, or worse, some sinister and unseen microbial agent allowed to fester in the meal during it's frequent long waits under the heat lamp, became rather violently ill, and very shortly after leaving the establishment proceeded to evacuate the meal out of himself at a rather alarming rate.

Needless to say, I was mortified by the experience. The server was, at least, kind enough to credit us the amount of that truly godawful dessert, but the whole of the experience left me feeling more than a bit burned, and I am disappointed to say I will not be returning until I hear some form of report indicating that the restaurant has put due effort into mending its ways. I am sad to lose such a once wonderful spot in the Central Oregon dining scene, but it seems as if it is already on it's way out, if tonight's turnout was any indication.

I appreciate your time, and hope that in due haste your organization can remedy the deep problems that seem to be apparent in this once fine establishment.

Sincerely,
J Arcane*
jarcane@gmail.com

This is the actual letter sent to both McMenamins in Bend, as well as the home office, minus my actual name, which I do not use in public online discourse. Needless to say I was less than pleased with my experience.

I'm back on Blogger.

Well, it seems that not only did the Mac I was using to build the website at jarcane.info die, but my server host apparently died as well, and I can't even get ahold of the owner right now to find out what the hell's wrong.

So I'm back on blogger, and working to set up a redirect to bring jarcane.info traffic back here.  

I'm also back cooking again, so maybe I'll start writing about food and such again.  

The site to end all sites.

So, I have a new website.

It's at http://jarcane.info

It is, essentially, an attempt to consolidate all my various scattered blogs and web presences, as well as serve as a single repository for any future writing, of which I hope to make quite a lot more, as I intend to actually keep up with content updates in this new venture. I've also added a forum, with the hope of making it a great place to hang out and talk about food and games and things with all my various online friends and readers, and anyone else who happens to pop by.

Check it out, add it to your bookmarks, subscribe with your favorite feed reader. See you there!

Puerco al disco, sorta.

Last night, I caught a snippet of the Argentina episode of No Reservations, in which he visits a sort of commune there, where they prepared a rather magnificent looking dish, carne al disco, a dish of sliced beef, onions and peppers, cooked in garlic oil over an open flame in a shallow cast iron pan.

It looked absolutely amazing. So, naturally, I had to rip off the concept as best I could, and create a dish of my own inspired by what I saw. After a bit of fruitless searching on the internet for a recipe, I ultimately decided to just wing it, and we headed off to the store.

I wandered about, rounding up ingredients as inspiration struck me. I grabbed a yellow onion, a red bell pepper, one each of anaheim, habanero and yellow chiles, a can of coconut milk, a bag of key limes, a pound of linguica, and some corn tortillas.

The vegetables all got thinly sliced with a mandolin, except the habanero, which I diced. The linguica I cut into thin rounds as well. I also took out 4 thin sliced pork chops from the fridge, pounded them a bit, then seasoned with salt and lime juice and left to rest.

Come cooking time, I quickly seared the chops, then took them from the pan and tossed in the linguica, heating them a bit before tossing in all the vegetables, reducing the heat, and letting them sweat a bit, just long enough for the juices to start deglazing the pan. Then, in went the can of coconut milk, the juice of 4 of the key limes, and the pork chops. I threw a lid on top, and let them simmer on about medium heat for a bit.

For serving, the pork chops were served just with a bit of the resulting coconut sauce, while the remaining mixture of sausage and vegetables was served on tortillas as tacos. The pork was a bit dry, I think it would've been better if I'd basically poached it in the cocount milk without searing first, but the tacos were absolutely excellent. Rich, flavorful, truly a dish to be proud of.

Something to make again, that's for sure, and another pork recipe for that restaurant concept I've been pondering about lately . . .

A peace offering.

http://xkcd.com/418/

I haven't posted in even longer than usual. I haven't honestly done much lately I felt worthy of writing about. I've been on tighter finances than usual, and it's left my diet consisting of a hell of a lot of pasta and ramen.

There have been a few highlights. Homemade orichiette with butter and parmesan, for instance, probably the best damn pasta I've ever had, and I didn't even do that great a job with it. The esteemed Mr. Batali is right on when he says it's always better homemade with love, and he's equally dead on when he talks of the beauty of simplicity. Of all the pasta dishes I've prepared of late, that one was, without doubt in my mind, the absolute best.

I've also been playing with a Yucatan inspired ramen soup, made with shrimp broth and a healthy dosage of achiote. It develops this amazing, rich flavor and texture, and a gorgeous deep red color. It actually coats the side of the bowl. I also made a pretty damn nice turkey ramen with black pepper the other day.

I'm hoping soon to actually finally find a new kitchen to cook in, it's just a matter of finding the right opportunity. I stupidly let a shot at the Blacksmith slip by me out of lazyness and I'll regret that one forever. I'd really like to get a spot in a real haute cuisine sort of establishment, somewhere I can really learn the ropes, instead of the amateur fumbling about in the dark I do now.