Sep 29
Tomorrow morning I will be on a flight to visit this lovely place:
Where the hills really do roll:
And my 5 year college reunion at Whitman College will rock:
Because we’ll find lots of these signs:
Waterbrook Winery
This is one very easy and delicious weeknight dinner where flavor shines. The only requirement is a little marinating time.
I am moving (slowly) through Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite and really enjoy the recipes. They all feel very homey and taste like Mom’s cooking you grew up with but with more herbs. And butter. Clark has a very realistic perspective on making food, which is that it has to please everyone, has to take less than an hour to cook so you can make it any night of the week, and that bacon is a fine addition. I appreciate this about her.
Cashew Chicken: never had it in my life. I can’t say it’s something that I see on restaurant menus and I didn’t grow up with this, so was intrigued to try something new. After getting the ingredients, I find out that Frank hates Cashews, so it had to be at least a little interesting, right? My argument was to be adventurous and try something new. Turns out, Frank didn’t mind this dish at all as long as the remainder of sauce stayed far away from his plate.
Spicy, Garlicky Cashew Chicken
Melissa Clark, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite
Ingredients:
1 cup roasted salted cashew nuts
6 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro, with some stems
1/4 cup safflower or olive oil
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 tbls soy sauce
2 tsp brown sugar
Juice of 1 lime, plus lime wedes for garnish
1 to 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded or not, to taste
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 pounds chicken thighs and/or drumsticks
Directions:
1. In a blender or food processor, combine the nuts, 2 tablespoons cilantro, the oil, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, lime juice, jalapeno, and 2 tablespoons water. Blend until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. Taste and season with salt and pepper if desired.
2. Season the chicken all over with salt and pepper. Smear on enough cashew mixture to coat the pieces thoroughly, but don’t make it too thick or the sauce will fall of into your grill. Set aside any remaining mixture. Let marinate at room temperature while you heat the grill or broiler. Or refrigerate for up to 12 hours before cooking.
3. Preheat the broiler or grill. Grill or broil the chicken, turning frequently, until it is crisp and golden on the outside and done on the
inside, 20 to 30 minutes
4. Sprinkle the chicken with the remaining 4 tablespoons cilantro and serve with lime wedges and the remaining cashew mixture.
As a side, our neighbors gave us a bag of beans from their garden, so we fried up bacon with chili peppers and sauteed the beans for about 5 minutes, cooked but still crunchy.
I have been listening to Pistol Annie’s album pretty much non-stop for two weeks and appreciate the Rolling Stones review of the album (below). Each song takes on a new subject and different sound, giving the album a lot of big personality.
Rolling Stones, 4 stars review By Chuck Eddy
September 12, 2011
On the debut by their ad hoc trio, Miranda Lambert and friends Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley show off the kind of hard-living wit and hardscrabble class consciousness that have become tough to find in Nashville. Their feisty brand of country mixes Great Depression redneck blues, rockabilly and even a little ’65 Dylan (check the rambling Bringing It All Back Home backbeat in “Takin’ Pills”) without sounding retro. Though they sometimes opt for woozy beauty, they’re best rip-roaring about not making ends meet: deep debt, thrift-store curtains, mufflers tied on with guitar strings, no-good husbands kicked out of the trailer. It’s heartbreaking and hilarious, in equal measure.
Pinterest has lately turned from inspirational ideas to directional leads for goods (which I think is how the site was intended to be used from the beginning). I came across some pins of Linea Carta goods on her Etsy site and had to share. I love her writing style (and am seriously thinking getting the customized stamp…).
Bon Appetit Tea Towel
Linen Coasters
Customizable Rubber Stamp
I really want to learn how to Can, but I can’t find the motivation to do it. So I’m learning the art of freezing. Freezing, as it turns out, is a great way to preserve the ripe flavors, is easy enough to pull out during winter and use, and doesn’t require any special tools or steps to avoid contamination (does anyone else get totally freaked out about that part?). I plucked out a nice variety of tomatoes on Saturday and Sunday (Beefsteak, early girl, cherry) and am a little relieved that they can all go into the pot together. Read more
I love this idea, and it’s so darn easy. This is going straight on the “This is what you do in MN when it’s zero degrees outside” list.
I think about my vegetable garden a lot – what will have grown during the day and will be ripe to pick for dinner, how to make it better, if I should make it bigger (there’s a trend every spring of sod coming out and more plants going in), and how to keep the dog, rabbits and squirrels out. I also think about how to balance the way I want the yard to look (for eventual house resale) with how to keep it functional (backyard to table eating for example). When Frank and I do go to sell the house, I don’t want the backyard vegetable patch to be a turn off. At this point, because the fence is just the cheap wire kind you poke into the ground, it would be pretty easy to see that with some sod and a year’s time, you’d never know it was this:
Veggie Garden, Late July 2011
But if I go with what I want to do this fall, it becomes a permanent fixture, which would look more like this:
Or maybe just dig up the whole backyard for this effect:
Okay, that probably would never happen (I don’t have an acre of land, to start with…) but I do love the look of no sod, and all plants. A few examples of inspiration, from The Pantry at Delancey and their kitchen garden in Seattle:
I love this fence
I’m off today to measure and see if my more permanent veggie home is a possibility, and how much I’ll need to do this fall so it’s ready for planting in the spring (I can’t believe summer is coming to a close, and I’m thinking about next spring). Happy weekend!
I continue to carry on my love affair with butter, cream and cheese, which manifested itself in an adaptation of Melissa Clark’s “Mac and Cheese, a la Jamie Oliver” recipe. I stuck to the recipe, but because we’re still getting peppers in (I’ve eaten more peppers this summer than I have in my life, cumulatively), I added a host of them which kicked up the heat and garden fresh taste. Read more
Did you watch The Pioneer Woman on Food Network last Saturday? No? Okay. I watched it and then made the featured chicken fried steak and here’s what happened: It made my house smell awful for two days and gave us stomach cramps. The upside was that it taught me how to make gravy and heightened PW’s likeability factor by calling balsamic “basalmic” and doing her own makeup (versus a makeup artist) so she could sleep in a little more. Rene Lynch from the L.A. Times wrote a nice article about it here.
Chicken Fried Steak with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
I didn’t use cubed steak because my co-op doesn’t carry it, so I used a top round which Lobel’s Meat Bible said would be okay. For the most part, it was, but I can’t help wondering if I should have made a special trip to Cub for cubed steak. Anyway, another lesson is that frying for more time until deep golden brown (the brown that starts to look like black) is good – that’s what will keep it crunchy.
This it is not a meal I would make often because I don’t think I’m making it right and given I’ve never had a proper chicken fried steak from down south, I’m probably not. Perhaps I should have known better when I asked “why isn’t there chicken in the ingredients list?”
Theme: Linen by The Theme Foundry
