Dinner, Again - Monday 6/1/2009

Cooked up the last of the garbanzo beans. Steamed them and added a little very good olive oil. Wonderful farmer's market tomatoes and fresh basil. Fresh baby artichokes sauteed with onions and garlic and topped with a little Parmesan cheese.

I found the recipe for the baby artichokes at Simply Recipes. I'd never used fresh baby artichokes before. It does take a while to clean these, but they don't have well-developed chokes, so you can just eat the whole trimmed artichokes.

I love artichokes, really I do.

Hydra's Heights and Fresh Garbanzos. - Sunday 5/31/2009

So of course, the first time I decide not to accompany Hydra on his hike, he goes and scales his mountain! That's him waving his crutch above his head after calling me on the cell phone to alert me to his feat.

Boys cannot be trusted!



Tomato and artichoke progress, just so you know.


I just heard Evan Kleiman sing the praises of fresh garbanzo beans on Good Food recently, and what should I find at my local Vallarta market?

The very thing I was looking for!



There are 1-2 beans per pod. Usually one.

They aren't beige. They're green!


See them in there? They're yummy fresh or steamed and drizzled with some good olive oil. On the radio, they said that people roast them over grills.

The pods are fairly tender, but not tender enough to eat. Not bad shelling... I pressed on them till they popped open like little balloons and then took out the beans.

Hydra Hits the Trail! - Thursday 5/28/2009

Look at that intrepid explorer! Just 10 days after surgery to repair that meniscus tear (Ooh! Look, ma! No spellchecker!), he's on the trail again. They write songs about stuff like this!


Admittedly, the going was about half of our usual pace, but really really good for a guy who had a camera and a knife in his knee joint so recently! Beautiful day for it.


Around the far side of the neighborhood... Is that fire road looking a little long to anyone else?



As I was taking photos of these cactus flowers, bees kept diving into them and burying their faces in the middle. Can you see the one that took a header into this bloom?


Oleanders down by the mailboxes.


The neighbor's coreopsis. The neighborhood is lit up with flowers these days!


We arrived home to discover ground squirrels nibbling on the tender cucumber sprouts I planted. And this container has herbs in it that I started from seed. Herb soup. Sigh. Hopefully I saved some of them.



Found about six ounces of beef in the freezer and used up the carrots, celery and some of the red potatoes making this soup. Also called in the help of Better Than Boullion to flesh out the soup, so to speak. Used fresh thyme and mint for seasoning.

Hint: When using fresh herbs that have stems in soups and stews, don't bother nipping off all the leaves. Just put the whole sprig in the soup. The leaves will cook off and you can easily pull out the stems before serving.

How to Become a Redneck in 4 1/2 Hours - Monday 5/25/2009

A) Put your hair up in a ponytail.

B) Go out and do a bunch of yard work on a sunny day and remember to put sunscreen everywhere but the back of your neck.

I don't know why it always seems to take me till the end of a long weekend to think of starting a physically demanding project, but it often does. I decided to tear out the two rose bushes at the far end of my herb garden. They were here when we moved in and I've never liked them.

The blooms aren't particularly pretty, only last a couple of days on the bush, and can't be cut and brought inside-- all the petals fall off.

The first one came out pretty easily, but look at the trunk on this guy! It was something else digging this out.

There were 1-2 inch think roots running all through that end of the garden and even down to the end closest to the back door. It was a lot more work than I expected. I started at 9:30 in the morning and finished getting the roots out, digging in garden soil and planting until a little after 2pm. Don't know about you, but when I get started on something like this, I have a hard time stopping till it's really done.




I did pause, though, once I finished wrestling with the roots, to clip a little fresh sage, rosemary and thyme and put a pork tenderloin in the oven. I was working up an appetite!


I thought I took more photos of the progress. This is after I added in the fresh topsoil.

Man, I had a lot of clean up to do. I'd had most of the tools out of the shed to work on those roots: shovel, trowel, long-handled and short-handled garden forks, small leaf rake, hoe, edger (which didn't really work), flat blade shovel, long handled clippers, hand clippers.

Every time I went into the house for water I realized just how aerobic my efforts were. I had to catch my breath in order to drink. I kept thinking about my pal Los Angelista who was running the L.A. Marathon today (so exciting!) I think I would have felt about as beat up if I'd tried to run the first three miles with her!



See the rainbow in the sprinkler water?

I didn't mind getting wet while adjusting the sprinkler heads. Whew!

All the herbs are in! Good sized parsley, sage and thyme (I never knew how good thyme was till I started growing my own and using it.) Small chives, parsley and basil (I think) that I started from seed are in the little planter.

I also planted three cucumbers that I started from seed. I'm not sure any of them will take. They look really tender and vulnerable, and it gets pretty hot out there. K warns that they take a lot of space, so I guess if only one survives, I'll be okay!

Still didn't get the new red rose bush or the lavender in. I'm not sure where I want to put them!

And I think I want to get some of those stacking brick colored blocks to put around the edges of the herb bed. Or at least dig the bricks that line it out of the grass.

Sundry to Hydra: You got your grass on my dirt!

Hydra to Sundry: You got your dirt on my grass!

Not exactly a Reeses Cup.

Great day. I feel accomplished.

And tired.

Do You Frittata? - Friday 5/22/2009

I've been making what I called frittatas for a while, but they were just basically open-faced omelets. What's the difference? You actually finish a frittata in the oven.

Wow, was this easy and delicious! Five eggs scrambled in a cast iron skillet started on the stove top and cooked until almost done but still a little runny on top. I had a mixture of tomatoes, artichoke hearts and garlic leftover from last night's pasta, so I topped it with that and some string cheese (the only mild cheese I had on hand) and Parmesan cheese. Popped it under the broiler for a few minutes until the eggs set.

Served with fresh coffee, toast and the rhubarb preserves I made yesterday.

Mmm, it's nice to have time off during the week!

Innocents Lost - Thursday 5/14/2009

Yes, in a few minutes, these innocent vegetables will be chopped and blended into an inedible batch of gazpacho.

First off, there was too much onion, so I added some canned tomatoes in an attempt to fix it. But I think the cucumbers might have been bitter.

Lesson : taste the ingredients.

Sigh.

Blackberry Compote - Saturday 5/9/2009

I've been getting tasty blackberries from Costco recently, and wondering what to do with them other than enjoy them fresh. Our friends BikerChick and Capo are going to stay over with us tonight after going to a hoot together and we'll have pancakes with blackberry compote for breakfast tomorrow.

I went online and looked at a bunch of recipes and then made up my own. I made a double batch, but here are the basics. You could do this with different berries, and adjust the amount of water and cornstarch depending on how juicy the berries are.

2 cups berries.
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
2 Tablespoons cold water
1/4-1/2 cup sugar (to taste, and depending on how tart the berries are)
1/4-1/2 cup water (like I said, depending on the juiciness of the berries)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
a few shakes of powdered cinnamon

Mix the corn starch and the 2 Tbs of cold water. (Preferably in the same pink melamine cup your mom used to mix up corn starch in when you were a kid.)


Put the berries, sugar and fresh water in a non-reactive pan and heat them to a boil. Reduce to a simmer for about 5 minutes or until the berries seem cooked to you. In this case, they seemed to become redder as they cooked. I wanted to leave mine with a little body.

Stir in vanilla extract and cinnamon. (This pairing is my twist on the recipe.)

Keeping the mixture bubbling, slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture until you reach your desired consistency. Mine was about as thick as pie filling. You may not use all the cornstarch...sort of depends on how much liquid you have. If you want it to be more saucy, you can add more water before stirring in the cornstarch mixture.

Tip: I made space in the middle of the berries with my spoon and poured the cornstarch into that. It will thicken a lot in that area, but before it gets lumpy you stir in the thinner juice from amongst the berries. Repeat that several times so you can control how thick the sauce is.



The finished product, ready to cool and pop into the fridge to await breakfast.

I have to say, this was really good on the pancakes.

Which was a relief, since I burnt some of the pancakes, undercooked some and flipped one down between the stove and the counter. We ended up with just barely enough good ones to fill us up, along with some scrambled eggs. I guess I got cocky with my cast iron cooking skills and didn't really pay enough attention to the temperature of the pan. Sheesh!

I told BikerChick and Capo that they have to come back so I can make them a frittata or an omelet. I'm better at that.

Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti - Thursday 4/30/2009

I bought 3 pounds of fava beans for $4.00 at the farmer's market last weekend. I have no idea if that's a good price, but it sounded okay to me.

I've been hearing about the much-revered fava on Evan Kleiman's Good Food on KCRW. It's one of the culinary harbingers of spring.

The woman who grew these beauties opened one and let me have a taste. They have a unique pungency that I like.


Isn't that one of the most gorgeous things you've ever seen? I mean, look at the blend of colors! The pod is lined with nature's version of foam and velvet. These things must be special.


They are described as labor-intensive. The chefs I've heard extolling their virtues also admit to letting a kitchen assistant prep them. First you take them out of the pods.


Then you blanch them to make taking the soft inner shell off easier. I guess that's a redundant sentence, since the definition of blanching is the process of immersing food in boiling water and then cold water for the express purpose of removing the skin.

Ew! So then why do we say things like, "The very thought of it made her blanch"?

Or, maybe it's "The very thought of it made her Blanche." As in Blanche DuBois. Now, that I'd like to see.

Wait a minute. Where were we?

Pay attention, will you?


Apologies for the blurry photograph. It's not all that easy to peel fava beans with one hand and man the camera with the other.



It took me a while to find the way to do this. Getting that skin off is easier if you detach the skin by rolling it back and forth between thumb and finger while pinching. See how the skin is kind of loose there?

Then use your thumbnail to pierce the skin, and it will slip right out. I don't know how to make this easier if you don't have a thumbnail handy. As you may have noticed, I tried using a knife in the previous photo. But that didn't work terribly well and felt a little dangerous.

Not that "whee it's a roller coaster" type of danger. More the "I don't want to spend tonight in the emergency room with a bloody dishrag around my thumb" type of danger.



There are probably tons of recipes out there, but I wanted something simple after all that toiling away, so I made pasta with fava beans.

Sauteed garlic in olive oil, added tomatoes and cooked lightly. Added in fresh basil and the fava beans, just enough to heat them up. Tossed them on the pasta with Parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper.

Ooh, good! Hydra made himself a hamburger, so there are leftovers for tomorrow.

I'll bet if you had a creative cook in the house, you'd eat what she prepared, wouldn't you?

Self-Watering Planters II + Herb Gardening - Sunday 4/26/2009

Went to the College of the Canyons Farmer's Market in the morning, but forgot my camera. Sigh. Bought some fresh free range eggs from a farm located in Acton! (Maybe they'll let me stop by and pick up from them directly without having to drive 20 miles to the market.) Also went a little nuts with fresh herbs and veggies.

Ready to load with dirt. The pipe is so you can add water to the reservoir after it's filled with dirt.


Layered in the potting mix, adding water as I went along.



Added the weed-proof plastic, which also helps reduce evaporation, which is a big problem out here in the heat of summer. (I'm talking 110+ degrees now and again.)

Getting the plants planted through the plastic was one of the more tricky parts of this project. The hardest part was cutting the tubs down and cutting out the lids, just because the material is not terribly stable and it kept binding up the jigsaw.


Four kinds of tomatoes! And that's an artichoke in the pot in the middle. Not sure how much the artichoke will like being in a pot, but I'm gonna give it a shot.






The rosemary got way out of hand while I wasn't paying attention! Also moved the savory (in the foreground) to another part of the yard, since I don't really use it much. The organo? There's no getting rid of it, even if we wanted to. Thank goodness Hydra uses it in his spaghetti sauce!


After.

I know, it's not all that pretty and it needs more shaping, but after an hour with the hedge trimmers and hand clippers, this is where I needed to stop. Now there's room for more herbs!




I think I may have harvested almost enough rosemary to season the fingerling potatoes I bought at the farmer's market this morning!


Fresh sage, parsley and thyme. The first bunches of these I planted 8 years ago are either gone or too woody to be of much use.

Hey, I should write a song about my herb garden....


Hydra pointed out the way this ornament was catching the evening light as I finished up my day's work. Much to his credit, bum knee and all, he trimmed all the grass in the yard, which is a job I most sincerely do not enjoy.


End of day treat: watercress soup. Which is actually not all that great as it turns out--a bit of a bitterish aftertaste, but it's what's for lunch this week. I used some of that chicken stock from Friday. When else am I going to get enough watercress for soup with leftovers for salads for $1.50?

Also had an amazing salad with leaf lettuce, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, celery, Persian cucumbers, basil, dill (it's sooo good in a salad!), a little bleu cheese, tarragon vinegar and olive oil. Crunch!

Poulet Vous? - Friday 4/24/2009

While working at home today I made chicken stock with the bones from a rotisserie chicken we had last night (along with a little onion, garlic and celery), then froze the stock for future use.

This will be great when I make the Chicken Martinis that are sweeping Los Angeles right now!

More About Food? - Friday 4/10/2009

Yeah, I'm still fixated on the stuff. This is what I had for breakfast today. I figure that cheese is better on bread than butter because at least I'm getting a little protein. Plus, this Irish Blarney (white cheddar) cheese we get in blocks at Costco-which you pay more for at Trader Joe's and a lot more for in the specialty cheese section of your local grocery store--is delicious.

And these grape tomatoes from the farmer's market are outta this world.




See? See?

The vintage Pyrex refrigerator set is not just lounging around in the cupboard eating grapes. It's actually working for it's keep.

Made a double batch of that evil artichoke Parmesan dip to take along for part of the appetizers we bring for our family's Easter Saturday dinner.


These? Well, I am 98.99 % sure that these will make more sense when they're laid out on a nice plate.

They're the result of Hydra and I both tossing celery into the shopping basket, and they actually taste very good.

Into the celery I have stuffed a mixture of cream cheese, bleu cheese, walnuts, and garlic. I wouldn't have added the chopped parsley if I didn't have to transport everything two hours south of here. (The parsley will keep them from sticking together.)


And here's your grand finale! The UFO-like hovering pineapple/pecan upside down cake!

Why hovering? Because the sun's going down and it's blue in the back yard, that's why!

Are we in retro heaven yet?

Biscotti di Frioli - Sunday 4/5/2009

My nephew, Beans, shared his almond biscotti recipe with me this past week, and I decided to dive right in today. There are surprisingly few ingredients. It surprised me to find that the only liquids are the eggs and the extracts.

I double the recipe because it stands to reason that if 12-20 biscotti are good, 24-40 are better!


The "loaf" ready to go into the oven.


The first batch, by the time I was done with the initial baking time, then flipping on one side and then the other for 10 minutes each, was decidedly overdone.

I blame the dark baking sheet, my faulty oven, and my own silliness for not checking the progress at around 30 minutes.


The second batch is perfect! Except I might like a little drizzle of white chocolate on them...something I hadn't thought of when shopping.

Next time, pistachios. And I'm wondering if pine nuts would be interesting!


Hyrda and I tag-team cooked a nice chicken stew.

I also made a mushroom risotto and a celery salad (we both put celery in the shopping basket and ended up with three bunches!) to take to my writing group tomorrow night.

We are good to go for the week!