I don't know what it is about my brain sometimes, that it just comes up with things seemingly out of nowhere. Not long after I made my last post, which resigned itself with a somewhat melancholy note relating to my sudden reduction in creative kitchen freedom, out of nowhere my mind thought of the thin-sliced pork chops in the fridge, and then came the words: weiner schnitzel.
Weiner schnitzel is of course, a lovely breaded, tenderized meat dish which hails originally from Vienna. It's history is fascinating, starting out, it is speculated, in Italy, where it spread to Austria, then Germany, and eventually, across a pretty healthy portion of the world, evolving in many cases as it went, into such forms as the chicken fried steak in the US, or the tonkatsu of Japan.
Traditionally, it is made from veal, but in my case of course, the thin pork chops which I had acquired as part of my supply gathering seemed ripe for this treatment. It also had the advantage that, when paired with a side of mashed potatoes, I could get away without using my dwindling vegetable supply and still get a pretty full meal out of the deal.
It's also dead simple to make really, just take the thin-cut chops, put a piece of wax paper or plastic wrap on top, pound them out, then dust in flour, dip in egg, then in breadcrumbs, and fry up in about a quarter inch of hot melted shortening with a little bit of olive oil for extra flavor, over medium heat.
For the mashed potatoes, I added some milk, butter, sour cream, minced garlic, salt and pepper, for a nice flavor and a good creamy texture. I keep the skin on my mashed potatoes, as I love the taste of potato skins, which also works out in that I hate peeling potatoes.
To top off the whole meal, I made a quick white gravy with a roux of the excess flour and some freshly rendered bacon fat, to which I added a healthy amount of milk, some salt, and a liberal amount of black pepper.
The texture of the schnitzel was absolutely incredible. Tender, flavorful, still moist, yet just slightly crispy on the outside. The mashed potatoes were creamy and delicious. The only weak point of the meal was that the gravy was a bit lumpy, not a mistake I usually make, but I was feeling something of a rush to get the gravy done before the schnitzel and potatoes got cold.
And for dessert, a simple slice of last night's pound cake.
Pure magic.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Culinary freedom.
So I finally acquired employment, as a cook and dishwasher at a nearby Mexican restaurant and bar. It's going reasonably well so far, except for the part where I was forced to take an entire week off work, not even a week and a half after starting, as I had to watch my sisters while my parents were out of town.
The upshot of this though, is that I got complete control of the menu. Of course, when I went and did the shopping, I was at that time unaware of the fact that I'd have two extra mouths to feed. Fortunately, I'd chosen a menu that hinged on making big batches of dishes, that I could eat over time.
For the first night, I made a big batch of jambalaya, with baby shrimp and Italian sausage. For the second night, shrimp fried rice with cilantro and a chili-lime infused soy sauce.
The piece de resistance however, was supposed to come the third night: The family recipe Italian sausage burritos, made almost completely from scratch, from the refried beans, to the salsa, and even the tortillas.
The last of course, was the one approached with the greatest trepidation, as I'd never attempted such a think before, and I already knew from previous experience that the rolling pin skills upon which successful making of flour tortillas hinges so heavily and which I would thus require, were practically non-existent in my repetoire of cooking skills.
Which of course proved to be just one of many problems. I'm not sure the recipe I acquired was actually accurate: it claimed to yield 12 12-inch tortillas, but there was no such chance with the amount of dough produced. I missed the part of the recipe to let the dough rest. My rolling skills were awful, and resulted in horribly misshapen messes, and my pan and heat were all wrong, so the tortillas weren't cooking right.
Eventually, I gave up after the 3rd attempted tortilla, and wound up feeding most of the failed scraps to the dog, while reserving the remaining dough for, well, something. Not sure what yet, maybe some kind of thin boiled dumpling, as I've seen in one of the Caribbean restaurants Andrew Zimmern visited in one episode.
I was now without tortillas for my burritos, as I had somewhat overconfidently skipped acquiring any sort of back up plan, like some pre-made tortillas, or the masa flour I'd considered buying. Corn tortillas are pressed, instead of rolled, meaning that while I'd have to improvise something to use as the weight, it wouldn't rely on my total lack of skill in the rolling pin area.
After a not insignificant amount of general swearing at my failure, I finally decided to just go with a plate of rice and beans instead. So I set about boiling the pinto beans for the frijoles refritos (look at me with the foreign language reference twice in the same post! Could I be anymore pretentious?).
While the beans boiled with a bit of salt and chopped bacon for a good two hours, I got to work on the salsa. Dead simple recipe, just a 16 oz can of whole tomatoes in sauce, half an onion roughly chopped, half a green pepper roughly chopped, one jalapeno sliced, the juice of one half a lime, and a little salt, all pulsed in a blender, and then mixed in a healthy dose of chopped cilantro.
For the beans, you need fat. Many of the traditional recipes I've read use mountains of straight-up lard, though my recipe goes a lot lighter than that. A couple strips of bacon, rendered out into the pan (save the bacon itself for your own snacking once it's cooked, we only need the fat), to which we add a pound of hot Italian sausage. Once that's good and browned, in go our cooked beans, drained, but conserving the stock.
Then we start mashing them up. I just used a good potato masher, I used to use a fork a lot. I think the fork gives you better control over the texture, but for a large batch of beans it really isn't practical. If I weren't cooking the meat in with the beans, and I actually owned one, I'd imagine a stick blender would work pretty well for this too.
Throughout the mashing process, you're also adding back some of the stock from the beans. This keeps them from drying out, and also helps us get to the right texture we want out of the beans. I like mine a bit thicker than is the standard in most Mexican restaurants, but remember, if you add too much liquid, you can just keep cooking until it thickens up again, so you really can't go wrong. At the restaurant I work at, the beans just sit on low heat all day, with the cook adding back water periodically over the course of the day if the beans get too thick or too dry.
For the rice, I just boiled some long-grain rice, with some sprigs of cilantro, some chili paste, and minced garlic.
For the final plating, I topped both the rice and beans with some grated cheese, giving it a minute or so to melt, before topping off with some of the salsa.
The result was quite delicious, and filling, and ultimately served to wash away any and all frustration left from my failure at tortilla making.
Last night's meal was simply the leftover jambalaya, which reheats remarkably well in the microwave for a rice dish, with a side of garlic toast. So, I guess to make up for the lack of actual cooking that day, I decided I wanted cake, and after some digging around for a recipe for a simple cake, finally decided on the pound cake recipe out of the Betty Crocker cookbook.
It came out fantastic, and lighter in flavor and texture than I expected. I'm used to pound cake being a pretty dense, rich sort of cake, but I'm not sure if it was a product of the recipe, or me over whipping the ingredients, but it came out with a texture that was firm, yet pillowy soft, with a slightly crispy crust, and a much lighter, gentle flavor than I normally expect. Fantastic.
Not sure what I'll do tonight. My stepfather had to return due to a work emergency, so I guess my plan of making a second batch of jambalaya, this time with pork in place of the shrimp, won't work, as he refuses to eat anything with rice.
Alas, the shackles have returned, and I am again constrained in my options. But it was sure fun while it lasted.
The upshot of this though, is that I got complete control of the menu. Of course, when I went and did the shopping, I was at that time unaware of the fact that I'd have two extra mouths to feed. Fortunately, I'd chosen a menu that hinged on making big batches of dishes, that I could eat over time.
For the first night, I made a big batch of jambalaya, with baby shrimp and Italian sausage. For the second night, shrimp fried rice with cilantro and a chili-lime infused soy sauce.
The piece de resistance however, was supposed to come the third night: The family recipe Italian sausage burritos, made almost completely from scratch, from the refried beans, to the salsa, and even the tortillas.
The last of course, was the one approached with the greatest trepidation, as I'd never attempted such a think before, and I already knew from previous experience that the rolling pin skills upon which successful making of flour tortillas hinges so heavily and which I would thus require, were practically non-existent in my repetoire of cooking skills.
Which of course proved to be just one of many problems. I'm not sure the recipe I acquired was actually accurate: it claimed to yield 12 12-inch tortillas, but there was no such chance with the amount of dough produced. I missed the part of the recipe to let the dough rest. My rolling skills were awful, and resulted in horribly misshapen messes, and my pan and heat were all wrong, so the tortillas weren't cooking right.
Eventually, I gave up after the 3rd attempted tortilla, and wound up feeding most of the failed scraps to the dog, while reserving the remaining dough for, well, something. Not sure what yet, maybe some kind of thin boiled dumpling, as I've seen in one of the Caribbean restaurants Andrew Zimmern visited in one episode.
I was now without tortillas for my burritos, as I had somewhat overconfidently skipped acquiring any sort of back up plan, like some pre-made tortillas, or the masa flour I'd considered buying. Corn tortillas are pressed, instead of rolled, meaning that while I'd have to improvise something to use as the weight, it wouldn't rely on my total lack of skill in the rolling pin area.
After a not insignificant amount of general swearing at my failure, I finally decided to just go with a plate of rice and beans instead. So I set about boiling the pinto beans for the frijoles refritos (look at me with the foreign language reference twice in the same post! Could I be anymore pretentious?).
While the beans boiled with a bit of salt and chopped bacon for a good two hours, I got to work on the salsa. Dead simple recipe, just a 16 oz can of whole tomatoes in sauce, half an onion roughly chopped, half a green pepper roughly chopped, one jalapeno sliced, the juice of one half a lime, and a little salt, all pulsed in a blender, and then mixed in a healthy dose of chopped cilantro.
For the beans, you need fat. Many of the traditional recipes I've read use mountains of straight-up lard, though my recipe goes a lot lighter than that. A couple strips of bacon, rendered out into the pan (save the bacon itself for your own snacking once it's cooked, we only need the fat), to which we add a pound of hot Italian sausage. Once that's good and browned, in go our cooked beans, drained, but conserving the stock.
Then we start mashing them up. I just used a good potato masher, I used to use a fork a lot. I think the fork gives you better control over the texture, but for a large batch of beans it really isn't practical. If I weren't cooking the meat in with the beans, and I actually owned one, I'd imagine a stick blender would work pretty well for this too.
Throughout the mashing process, you're also adding back some of the stock from the beans. This keeps them from drying out, and also helps us get to the right texture we want out of the beans. I like mine a bit thicker than is the standard in most Mexican restaurants, but remember, if you add too much liquid, you can just keep cooking until it thickens up again, so you really can't go wrong. At the restaurant I work at, the beans just sit on low heat all day, with the cook adding back water periodically over the course of the day if the beans get too thick or too dry.
For the rice, I just boiled some long-grain rice, with some sprigs of cilantro, some chili paste, and minced garlic.
For the final plating, I topped both the rice and beans with some grated cheese, giving it a minute or so to melt, before topping off with some of the salsa.
The result was quite delicious, and filling, and ultimately served to wash away any and all frustration left from my failure at tortilla making.
Last night's meal was simply the leftover jambalaya, which reheats remarkably well in the microwave for a rice dish, with a side of garlic toast. So, I guess to make up for the lack of actual cooking that day, I decided I wanted cake, and after some digging around for a recipe for a simple cake, finally decided on the pound cake recipe out of the Betty Crocker cookbook.
It came out fantastic, and lighter in flavor and texture than I expected. I'm used to pound cake being a pretty dense, rich sort of cake, but I'm not sure if it was a product of the recipe, or me over whipping the ingredients, but it came out with a texture that was firm, yet pillowy soft, with a slightly crispy crust, and a much lighter, gentle flavor than I normally expect. Fantastic.
Not sure what I'll do tonight. My stepfather had to return due to a work emergency, so I guess my plan of making a second batch of jambalaya, this time with pork in place of the shrimp, won't work, as he refuses to eat anything with rice.
Alas, the shackles have returned, and I am again constrained in my options. But it was sure fun while it lasted.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Well, they both start with "I".
Sometimes, you have an idea, and you just don't know where in the hell it even came from. I'm sitting here, immersed in a marathon viewing session of Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. My simple breakfast of yesterday's soda bread toasted with butter, cheese, and apple, finally having digested enough to make me again crave food, and the idea hits me: bruschetta.
And I mean for real this time, not cheap toast with Johnny's garlic spread, but done the proper way, toasted under a broiler, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil, with a single twist, in that I'm fairly certain soda bread is not really a traditional bread for this dish.
But why not? Soda bread apparently has a reputation for toasting well, and my breakfast this morning had proved that rather effectively. Why not jazz up some simple toast with an Italian flair? I'm generally reticent about all this "fusion" nonsense that's all the rage at the yuppie troughs, but sometimes this sort of cross-cultural pairing just works, it seems, in fact, so natural that it could easily have been thought of centuries ago if only their respective cultures had been closer neighbors.
So, I decide, bruschetta it is. My mind then begins wandering to a relish, and I find in the fridge a small cup of sliced pickled banana peppers, leftovers of a stop at a Quizno's on the way home from a visit to the hairdresser's with my family. I chop those up, toss them with a quarter onion, about a half teaspoon of chili garlic paste, a few cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper, and paprika. The whole mixture then goes into a frypan with some olive oil while the broiler heats up to toast the bread. After it's been cooking a while, I add a splash of the vinegar from a jar of pepperoncinis and cook just a bit longer, before setting aside.
The toast goes in the broiler on low heat, and after a good crisping, I rub it down with the fresh garlic and drizzle a little olive oil across it, before topping with the pepper relish and a little fresh grated parmesan cheese.
The result is fantastic. Rather than being overly spicy, instead, the sauteeing has brought out some of the sweetness locked away in the peppers and onion and garlic, and there's a subtle, multi-toned flavor to the mix that is absolutely perfect. At one point, I even catch a rather surprising hint of something like apple, so faint and out of place I am tempted to dismiss it as perhaps just my nose pulling back the smells from this morning's breakfast.
The bread itself is, indeed, wonderful when toasted just right, in fact, it seems to have toasted better in the broiler than it did in the toaster when I made my breakfast this morning. It's got just the right crunch, without being overly hard or difficult to chew.
I'm now wishing I had more already, merely an hour after my meal, but alas, I have no more of the peppers. I think perhaps I might still try a similar recipe with some pepperoncinis at some a future date, and this will certainly become a favorite treat in the future every time mother sneaks another cup or two of peppers out of the sub shop . . .
And I mean for real this time, not cheap toast with Johnny's garlic spread, but done the proper way, toasted under a broiler, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil, with a single twist, in that I'm fairly certain soda bread is not really a traditional bread for this dish.
But why not? Soda bread apparently has a reputation for toasting well, and my breakfast this morning had proved that rather effectively. Why not jazz up some simple toast with an Italian flair? I'm generally reticent about all this "fusion" nonsense that's all the rage at the yuppie troughs, but sometimes this sort of cross-cultural pairing just works, it seems, in fact, so natural that it could easily have been thought of centuries ago if only their respective cultures had been closer neighbors.
So, I decide, bruschetta it is. My mind then begins wandering to a relish, and I find in the fridge a small cup of sliced pickled banana peppers, leftovers of a stop at a Quizno's on the way home from a visit to the hairdresser's with my family. I chop those up, toss them with a quarter onion, about a half teaspoon of chili garlic paste, a few cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper, and paprika. The whole mixture then goes into a frypan with some olive oil while the broiler heats up to toast the bread. After it's been cooking a while, I add a splash of the vinegar from a jar of pepperoncinis and cook just a bit longer, before setting aside.
The toast goes in the broiler on low heat, and after a good crisping, I rub it down with the fresh garlic and drizzle a little olive oil across it, before topping with the pepper relish and a little fresh grated parmesan cheese.
The result is fantastic. Rather than being overly spicy, instead, the sauteeing has brought out some of the sweetness locked away in the peppers and onion and garlic, and there's a subtle, multi-toned flavor to the mix that is absolutely perfect. At one point, I even catch a rather surprising hint of something like apple, so faint and out of place I am tempted to dismiss it as perhaps just my nose pulling back the smells from this morning's breakfast.
The bread itself is, indeed, wonderful when toasted just right, in fact, it seems to have toasted better in the broiler than it did in the toaster when I made my breakfast this morning. It's got just the right crunch, without being overly hard or difficult to chew.
I'm now wishing I had more already, merely an hour after my meal, but alas, I have no more of the peppers. I think perhaps I might still try a similar recipe with some pepperoncinis at some a future date, and this will certainly become a favorite treat in the future every time mother sneaks another cup or two of peppers out of the sub shop . . .
Saturday, August 11, 2007
I made bread!
So, for some time now, even before the baking bug hit me, I've been wanting to make some bread. But I've been lacking both yeast and a decent bread flour, and hadn't motivated myself to request it, given it's limited utility outside of, well, making bread.
Then yesterday it dawned on me: Irish soda bread. Having pretty much been adopted in part because of a lack of harder wheat making yeast-risen breads infeasible, it was thusly a perfect option for a bread I could make without going out of my way to get a bunch of stuff I didn't have in my house.
I dug around for some recipes, and was initially deflected by the requirement of buttermilk, but then I again thought back to the words of my great teacher, on how to substitute it with some normal milk, acidified with some vinegar or lemon juice.
The Wikipedia article led me to a wonderful site with the lofty title of The Society for the Preservation of Soda Bread, whose author has dedicated himself to disseminating actual authentic recipes for traditional Irish soda bread.
So going on his recipe for white soda bread, I set to work, making only the substitution of vinegar-spiked 2% milk in place of the buttermilk. So I suppose I've probably lost points for authenticity thus likely disqualifying me for membership, but hey, isn't making the best of what you have sort of the true spirit of any country cooking, regardless of nation, including soda bread?
Philosophical points aside, after some initialy difficulties in handling the extremely sticky dough, I managed to get it in the oven, and after 45 minutes of baking and about half an hour of cooling time, I can say that regardless of whether it's authentic, the one thing it definitely is, is damn tasty. Denser than I expected, but still fluffy, with a unique flavor and aroma entirely unlike any bread I've ever consumed.
It succeeds at what I think of as the ultimate test of any bread: You can eat it plain. Yeah, I probably will experiment with a little butter or jam or maybe something really wild, but when it comes right down to it, I can and have just eaten it cut right off the loaf.
In fact I think I may just go do that now.
Then yesterday it dawned on me: Irish soda bread. Having pretty much been adopted in part because of a lack of harder wheat making yeast-risen breads infeasible, it was thusly a perfect option for a bread I could make without going out of my way to get a bunch of stuff I didn't have in my house.
I dug around for some recipes, and was initially deflected by the requirement of buttermilk, but then I again thought back to the words of my great teacher, on how to substitute it with some normal milk, acidified with some vinegar or lemon juice.
The Wikipedia article led me to a wonderful site with the lofty title of The Society for the Preservation of Soda Bread, whose author has dedicated himself to disseminating actual authentic recipes for traditional Irish soda bread.
So going on his recipe for white soda bread, I set to work, making only the substitution of vinegar-spiked 2% milk in place of the buttermilk. So I suppose I've probably lost points for authenticity thus likely disqualifying me for membership, but hey, isn't making the best of what you have sort of the true spirit of any country cooking, regardless of nation, including soda bread?
Philosophical points aside, after some initialy difficulties in handling the extremely sticky dough, I managed to get it in the oven, and after 45 minutes of baking and about half an hour of cooling time, I can say that regardless of whether it's authentic, the one thing it definitely is, is damn tasty. Denser than I expected, but still fluffy, with a unique flavor and aroma entirely unlike any bread I've ever consumed.
It succeeds at what I think of as the ultimate test of any bread: You can eat it plain. Yeah, I probably will experiment with a little butter or jam or maybe something really wild, but when it comes right down to it, I can and have just eaten it cut right off the loaf.
In fact I think I may just go do that now.
More fake "BBQ".
So my new favorite sandwich comes by way of a bit of culinary necessity. My stepfather had cooked up a large batch of boneless beef rib strips, or rather, overcooked. They were reasonably well seasoned, but extremely tough, almost like jerky.
I decided to try and experiment with some ways of bringing some life and some tenderness back into them. The first, largely failed, experiment, was to reheat them slowly in an oven inside a foil pouch with some sauce, sliced onion, and garlic, and then wrap the result up in a warm tortilla with some cheese. The ribs wound up still tough though, which made eating them whole in a wrap an overly difficult proposition. I also wound up with some very undercooked, but potent garlic, as I'd left it whole, underestimating the amount of time and heat it would need to cook it through in that state.
So, thinking back to something I remembered seeing on Alton's show about how toughness is largely the product of the length of the meat fibers. But the grain of the ribs was a bit tough to guage really, especially after fully cooked and then chilled in the fridge. So, I decided to go for a brute force approach.
I took one of the rib strips and cut it into small thin slices, and put that in a small saucepan,
with some BBQ sauce, a little sriracha, and some minced garlic, put a lid on it, and heated it on a medium-high burner for a few minutes. Put that between two pieces of bread with some ranch dressing and shredded cheese.
Damn tasty. The sauce is delicious, and finally the meat is actually chewable. Heating it up helps bring out some of the sweetness in the sauce, which tastes damn good with the spice of the sriracha. It actually reminds me of the garlic chicken I used to get from one of the local Chinese restaurants, so much so that the next day, I actually made a similar meat mixture with tonkatsu sauce in place of the BBQ sauce, and tossed it with ramen noodles. It just seemed like a natural combination.
I decided to try and experiment with some ways of bringing some life and some tenderness back into them. The first, largely failed, experiment, was to reheat them slowly in an oven inside a foil pouch with some sauce, sliced onion, and garlic, and then wrap the result up in a warm tortilla with some cheese. The ribs wound up still tough though, which made eating them whole in a wrap an overly difficult proposition. I also wound up with some very undercooked, but potent garlic, as I'd left it whole, underestimating the amount of time and heat it would need to cook it through in that state.
So, thinking back to something I remembered seeing on Alton's show about how toughness is largely the product of the length of the meat fibers. But the grain of the ribs was a bit tough to guage really, especially after fully cooked and then chilled in the fridge. So, I decided to go for a brute force approach.
I took one of the rib strips and cut it into small thin slices, and put that in a small saucepan,
with some BBQ sauce, a little sriracha, and some minced garlic, put a lid on it, and heated it on a medium-high burner for a few minutes. Put that between two pieces of bread with some ranch dressing and shredded cheese.
Damn tasty. The sauce is delicious, and finally the meat is actually chewable. Heating it up helps bring out some of the sweetness in the sauce, which tastes damn good with the spice of the sriracha. It actually reminds me of the garlic chicken I used to get from one of the local Chinese restaurants, so much so that the next day, I actually made a similar meat mixture with tonkatsu sauce in place of the BBQ sauce, and tossed it with ramen noodles. It just seemed like a natural combination.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
On life, and what matters in it.
Today marks a somber and regrettable moment in my life. The storage unit that has for the last half-decade house the various collected belongings culled from 25 years of life on this Earth, has lacked payment for the last time, and will soon be auctioned off to some dispassionate junk collector who will, in all likelihood, throw out the vast majority of it.
Old books, old computers, countless games, a complete collection of the writings of my early school-age years, and plenty of just plain old junk. The first computer I ever owned sits there, the first thing I ever wrote that was worth half a damn sits there, and a whole host of other nostalgic things, are all now but a short breadth of time away from finding their way into the hands of someone who will rummage through it, salvage what might serve as decent eBay or junk store fodder, and likely toss the rest into the nearest landfill.
But, strange as it may sound, there's an odd sort of liberated feel to the realization that almost everything you had gathered in life will soon be gone. In many ways, for good or ill, that storage unit has served as an anchor about my heels from the moment I acquired it. Very often miles away even when I still lived in the city that housed it, I still held on to it all, always with the apparently vain hope of finally getting a place of my own one day where I could get all of it back out again once and for all. It was a symbol of a hope for a better life, with a nice house and the money to afford it. I dreamed of a place with a nice big room where I could finally set up my own personal antique computer museum, and a dedicated gaming room, and all sorts of fancies of that nature.
Yet as I reflect upon that dream, I wonder if perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way. I think of a world out there that I have largely never experienced, living my relatively sheltered life in the Pacific Northwest's least interesting cities. Places I have loved in spite of themselves, but still nonetheless lacking the vibrancy and culture of so many places in the world.
I watch Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern wander the world, experiencing exotic foods, while I can only look on in rapt jealousy, and I suddenly understand the term the food blogging community seems to have latched on to: food porn. It is inherently voyeuristic, gazing on at things we wish we had, a pale if occasionally satisfying substitute for the real thing.
But surely, like one might say about the more traditional variety of fleshy cinema, the real thing is so much better than simply watching it. It must be experienced, tasted.
And this is where I start thinking that I've had it all wrong. I may fancy the sedentary life quite often, but at the same time, I'm bloody miserable living like this, making do with my culinary experimentations with what I can manage to learn from recipes pulled from the internet. One of my greatest thrills in life is finding something new, whether it's a place or a food or a game or just the right group of new friends.
And here I've had, by twist of fate and my own bungled life management skills, removed the only physical anchor that still tied me down to a more stationary lifestyle. Could I not, now, with so few possessions to my name, be free to travel the world, experiencing all those things I have until now only dreamed about and drooled over on the television screen?
Certainly it would be a far more fascinating way of learning the arcane art of cuisine. Like the adventuring wizards of so many fantasy stories and role playing games, I could be searching the world not for new spells, but new foods and tastes and techniques. I've never been one for classroom learning, and I'm not likely to ever be able to afford the kind of tuition a top culinary school offers.
So this seed of an idea has formed, of becoming the wandering cook. Start here in my own backyard, save up enough cash for a passport and a ticket to who knows where, and start looking for a job opening in some restaurant where ever in the world it might be available. Work long enough in each place to save up for a ticket to the next, and work my way around the world, and just keep going, recording the sights and sounds and tastes of each new place, before moving on to the next.
That's the theory anyway. The practicalities, as is often the case in these sorts of fancies, remain to be seen. Can a person even live like that anymore? So many countries seem to have such exacting standards as to who they will allow to stay and work in a country, so many other countries might simply not present the opportunity for a foreigner like me to simply walk into the kitchen and start working. Most countries aren't exactly jumping at the chance to import more cooks, it's not even considered a "professional" field in the parlance of many immigration authorities. What about language and cultural barriers? Can I even manage to fund this kind of lifestyle on the salary of an ordinary cook? What if I find myself trapped in a place where I simply can't afford a ticket on to the next place?
Or, how much of this sudden onrush of questions is simply the scared, coddled little mama's boy in me trying to come up with excuses to continue with the same dead-end life I've lived for so long now? After all, this is an adventure we're talking about, the kind of thing that certainly requires some thought, but also relies intrinsically on some level of sheer impulsiveness.
The opportunity here to learn about the many foods across the world is just too tempting. There's so many places in the world I want to go simply for the food, and likely so many other places that I'd never even think about for food, that could have a host of surprises in store.
There's a feeling I get sometimes, with food, where I just sit and think of all the things out there that I just haven't tried yet, and it drives me absolutely batty that I haven't tried hardly any of them, and I want to try them all. I can easily see making a life's work out of doing nothing but going out, and doing my best to reach that unattainable goal.
Step one of course, is to go down to the local saloon, whom I've just learned is hiring, and do my best to talk my way into the kitchen. As with so many journeys, this one really starts at home, and in the preparations that will have to made for this adventure to truly begin, and I truly hope that this most recent dream, unlike so many in the past, I can will into reality.
And maybe get a nice fat book deal out of it.
Old books, old computers, countless games, a complete collection of the writings of my early school-age years, and plenty of just plain old junk. The first computer I ever owned sits there, the first thing I ever wrote that was worth half a damn sits there, and a whole host of other nostalgic things, are all now but a short breadth of time away from finding their way into the hands of someone who will rummage through it, salvage what might serve as decent eBay or junk store fodder, and likely toss the rest into the nearest landfill.
But, strange as it may sound, there's an odd sort of liberated feel to the realization that almost everything you had gathered in life will soon be gone. In many ways, for good or ill, that storage unit has served as an anchor about my heels from the moment I acquired it. Very often miles away even when I still lived in the city that housed it, I still held on to it all, always with the apparently vain hope of finally getting a place of my own one day where I could get all of it back out again once and for all. It was a symbol of a hope for a better life, with a nice house and the money to afford it. I dreamed of a place with a nice big room where I could finally set up my own personal antique computer museum, and a dedicated gaming room, and all sorts of fancies of that nature.
Yet as I reflect upon that dream, I wonder if perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way. I think of a world out there that I have largely never experienced, living my relatively sheltered life in the Pacific Northwest's least interesting cities. Places I have loved in spite of themselves, but still nonetheless lacking the vibrancy and culture of so many places in the world.
I watch Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern wander the world, experiencing exotic foods, while I can only look on in rapt jealousy, and I suddenly understand the term the food blogging community seems to have latched on to: food porn. It is inherently voyeuristic, gazing on at things we wish we had, a pale if occasionally satisfying substitute for the real thing.
But surely, like one might say about the more traditional variety of fleshy cinema, the real thing is so much better than simply watching it. It must be experienced, tasted.
And this is where I start thinking that I've had it all wrong. I may fancy the sedentary life quite often, but at the same time, I'm bloody miserable living like this, making do with my culinary experimentations with what I can manage to learn from recipes pulled from the internet. One of my greatest thrills in life is finding something new, whether it's a place or a food or a game or just the right group of new friends.
And here I've had, by twist of fate and my own bungled life management skills, removed the only physical anchor that still tied me down to a more stationary lifestyle. Could I not, now, with so few possessions to my name, be free to travel the world, experiencing all those things I have until now only dreamed about and drooled over on the television screen?
Certainly it would be a far more fascinating way of learning the arcane art of cuisine. Like the adventuring wizards of so many fantasy stories and role playing games, I could be searching the world not for new spells, but new foods and tastes and techniques. I've never been one for classroom learning, and I'm not likely to ever be able to afford the kind of tuition a top culinary school offers.
So this seed of an idea has formed, of becoming the wandering cook. Start here in my own backyard, save up enough cash for a passport and a ticket to who knows where, and start looking for a job opening in some restaurant where ever in the world it might be available. Work long enough in each place to save up for a ticket to the next, and work my way around the world, and just keep going, recording the sights and sounds and tastes of each new place, before moving on to the next.
That's the theory anyway. The practicalities, as is often the case in these sorts of fancies, remain to be seen. Can a person even live like that anymore? So many countries seem to have such exacting standards as to who they will allow to stay and work in a country, so many other countries might simply not present the opportunity for a foreigner like me to simply walk into the kitchen and start working. Most countries aren't exactly jumping at the chance to import more cooks, it's not even considered a "professional" field in the parlance of many immigration authorities. What about language and cultural barriers? Can I even manage to fund this kind of lifestyle on the salary of an ordinary cook? What if I find myself trapped in a place where I simply can't afford a ticket on to the next place?
Or, how much of this sudden onrush of questions is simply the scared, coddled little mama's boy in me trying to come up with excuses to continue with the same dead-end life I've lived for so long now? After all, this is an adventure we're talking about, the kind of thing that certainly requires some thought, but also relies intrinsically on some level of sheer impulsiveness.
The opportunity here to learn about the many foods across the world is just too tempting. There's so many places in the world I want to go simply for the food, and likely so many other places that I'd never even think about for food, that could have a host of surprises in store.
There's a feeling I get sometimes, with food, where I just sit and think of all the things out there that I just haven't tried yet, and it drives me absolutely batty that I haven't tried hardly any of them, and I want to try them all. I can easily see making a life's work out of doing nothing but going out, and doing my best to reach that unattainable goal.
Step one of course, is to go down to the local saloon, whom I've just learned is hiring, and do my best to talk my way into the kitchen. As with so many journeys, this one really starts at home, and in the preparations that will have to made for this adventure to truly begin, and I truly hope that this most recent dream, unlike so many in the past, I can will into reality.
And maybe get a nice fat book deal out of it.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Holy crap, I baked something.
Last night, for the first time, I actually baked something that did not come in the form of a mix in a box. This may come as a shock to the reader, but by and large the oven has always been for me, a place to which I did not go.
The art of baking has never been something I really got into, I think perhaps due to the exactitude involved in it's practice. I'm a very "eyeball it" kind of cook, I just throw what seems right into the pot, and see what happens. Generally all the measurements for my recipes come afterwards, during an introspective phase in which I think back on it and try and remember just how much of any given ingredient I put in it.
The preheating process is a sublime agitation to me, this idea of having to wait for the device to finally getting around to producing the requested temperature. I tend to have a similar complaint with electric ranges too, though to a far lesser extent.
I don't even use the oven for any non-baking/pastry type recipes. Basically, if it can't be made on a grill or a stovetop, I don't cook it. The general exception has been frozen pizzas, boxed cake or brownie mixes, and Bisquick biscuits.
However, I think my attitude on this is starting to shift, as I continue my desire to search out new avenues of experimentation.
A few nights ago, I made biscuits and gravy for the household. Now generally, when I make biscuits, I buy a box of Bisquick, add milk, and spoon onto cookie sheets as per the recipe on the box for drop biscuits. But this time, I was feeling a desire to actually try to make them from scratch for once. In the end, I sort of wussed out on the scratch-built way to go and bought another box of Bisquick. But this time, I decided to improvise and buy some buttermilk to use instead of the normal milk. I also decided to actually put in the effort of properly kneading the dough and cutting it into rounds, rather than half-assedly spooning them onto a cookie sheet and calling it good.
And to my surprise, I found I rather enjoyed it. Something about just digging in and getting my hands dirty and working the dough appealed to me.
So last night, when I found myself craving something sweet, I wound up deciding to just bake something. I expressed a desire to try my hand at baking in my IRC haunt, and someone mentioned making shortbread, which then led my thoughts to shortcake.
So I did some digging on the Food Network site, and started pulling up recipes, and found one for sour-cream shortcakes. This would be perfect I figured, because I didn't have any heavy cream, as was called for for most of the recipes I'd found, while this one only wanted the sour cream.
I ran into a few snags as I prepared my ingredients. Right after I'd just got done mixing the dry ingredients, I discovered to my dismay that we were out of butter. but I soon discovered that apparently the butter-flavored Crisco can be used as an even substitute. I also found that the recipe was actually missing an ingredient in it's list, as the directions mentioned combining egg with sour cream, yet made no mention of how many, which lead to a frantic googling for similar recipes, which eventually revealed that the standard amount seemed to be a single egg.
However, I am pleased to report that, despite these setbacks, I successfully produced some pretty damn tasty little treats, which I have been slowly consuming, split in half, with a bit of jam on each side. They are rather like an odd mid-point between a yellow cake and a scone, and the combination is very, very pleasant, and may indeed become a regular staple.
I will I think do some experimenting further. For one, I'd like to see how it comes out with real butter instead of shortening. Butter has a certain percentage of moisture to it that shortening doesn't have, and I think it might make the different in making a moister cake. I'd also like to try actually kneading and rolling it out, and cutting it into rounds like biscuits, to get a more regular shape than the rough balls as per the written recipe. I'd also of course like to try some more elaborate toppings than just simple raspberry jam, maybe even that old standby, the strawberry shortcake.
But even as they stand, they're wonderful little cakes, and serve well both as a dessert base, and actually do well as a breakfast pastry, thanks to their similarity to scones. I will be making them again.
The art of baking has never been something I really got into, I think perhaps due to the exactitude involved in it's practice. I'm a very "eyeball it" kind of cook, I just throw what seems right into the pot, and see what happens. Generally all the measurements for my recipes come afterwards, during an introspective phase in which I think back on it and try and remember just how much of any given ingredient I put in it.
The preheating process is a sublime agitation to me, this idea of having to wait for the device to finally getting around to producing the requested temperature. I tend to have a similar complaint with electric ranges too, though to a far lesser extent.
I don't even use the oven for any non-baking/pastry type recipes. Basically, if it can't be made on a grill or a stovetop, I don't cook it. The general exception has been frozen pizzas, boxed cake or brownie mixes, and Bisquick biscuits.
However, I think my attitude on this is starting to shift, as I continue my desire to search out new avenues of experimentation.
A few nights ago, I made biscuits and gravy for the household. Now generally, when I make biscuits, I buy a box of Bisquick, add milk, and spoon onto cookie sheets as per the recipe on the box for drop biscuits. But this time, I was feeling a desire to actually try to make them from scratch for once. In the end, I sort of wussed out on the scratch-built way to go and bought another box of Bisquick. But this time, I decided to improvise and buy some buttermilk to use instead of the normal milk. I also decided to actually put in the effort of properly kneading the dough and cutting it into rounds, rather than half-assedly spooning them onto a cookie sheet and calling it good.
And to my surprise, I found I rather enjoyed it. Something about just digging in and getting my hands dirty and working the dough appealed to me.
So last night, when I found myself craving something sweet, I wound up deciding to just bake something. I expressed a desire to try my hand at baking in my IRC haunt, and someone mentioned making shortbread, which then led my thoughts to shortcake.
So I did some digging on the Food Network site, and started pulling up recipes, and found one for sour-cream shortcakes. This would be perfect I figured, because I didn't have any heavy cream, as was called for for most of the recipes I'd found, while this one only wanted the sour cream.
I ran into a few snags as I prepared my ingredients. Right after I'd just got done mixing the dry ingredients, I discovered to my dismay that we were out of butter. but I soon discovered that apparently the butter-flavored Crisco can be used as an even substitute. I also found that the recipe was actually missing an ingredient in it's list, as the directions mentioned combining egg with sour cream, yet made no mention of how many, which lead to a frantic googling for similar recipes, which eventually revealed that the standard amount seemed to be a single egg.
However, I am pleased to report that, despite these setbacks, I successfully produced some pretty damn tasty little treats, which I have been slowly consuming, split in half, with a bit of jam on each side. They are rather like an odd mid-point between a yellow cake and a scone, and the combination is very, very pleasant, and may indeed become a regular staple.
I will I think do some experimenting further. For one, I'd like to see how it comes out with real butter instead of shortening. Butter has a certain percentage of moisture to it that shortening doesn't have, and I think it might make the different in making a moister cake. I'd also like to try actually kneading and rolling it out, and cutting it into rounds like biscuits, to get a more regular shape than the rough balls as per the written recipe. I'd also of course like to try some more elaborate toppings than just simple raspberry jam, maybe even that old standby, the strawberry shortcake.
But even as they stand, they're wonderful little cakes, and serve well both as a dessert base, and actually do well as a breakfast pastry, thanks to their similarity to scones. I will be making them again.
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