sneak peek at the McNerneys' St. Patrick's Day late bloomer...

Here's what we're having for dinner tomorrow!

Actually, that's kind of a trick photograph. The pile-o-broth has been weighting down some brisket that has been corning (is that the verb?) for 6 days now. It'll finally be ready tomorrow, and I'm PUMPED! I picked up the cabbage, brussels sprouts, carrots, new potatoes, and pearl onions (fancy!) today. Our dinners (and my work lunches) for next week are set!

More tomorrow!

Kimchi!

My kimchi had it all - it was spicy and salty, with just a hint of scandal!

...Daikon radishes!

Now, I know next to nothing about kimchi. All I know is that Big Kahuna's BBQ in St Johns offers it as a condiment for their saimin (Haiwaiian-style noodle soup - I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's the quick description), and when we lived in St Johns, I learned to like both - a lot. It's spicy, crunchy, tangy, salty, and a teensy bit sweet.

I'll now cut straight to the Wikipedia definition, so I don't screw it up: Kimchi is "a traditional Korean pickled dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings. Its most common manifestation is the spicy baechu (cabbage) variety. Kimchi is the most common banchan, or side dish. Kimchi is also a common ingredient and combined with other ingredients to make dishes such as kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae) and kimchi fried rice (kimchi bokkeumbap)."

I saw some big, beautiful daikon radishes on sale at the store a couple of weeks ago. I don't really like radishes, but I had read that daikons are sometimes used in different varieties of kimchi, and seeing them reminded me that I'd wanted to try making kimchi. So, I picked up a bundle... of three. Huge. Radishes.

When I got home and looked up some kimchi recipes online, I discovered that just to get by with basics (so leaving aside powdered dried shrimp and all that good stuff for the moment), I'd also need Napa cabbage, onion, ginger, and garlic, and maybe some bottled kimchi paste. In fact, it sounded like the daikons were a bonus, and actually turn the kimchi into a different variety. In other words, you can make kimchi with cabbage or radishes (or cucumber, etc.) as the only crunchy veggie - you don't have to have both. The recipes also called for a Korean red pepper powder called kochukaru, but since I started this insane quest on a Sunday, it seemed that all of the groceries that might have sold it were closed, and I wasn't about to trek across the river to Uwajimaya (though it was tempting - maybe next time!). So, I ended up using regular ol' red chili powder, and while I am the first to admit that the result was not identical to the bliss I experienced at Big Kahuna's, it was still better than I expected.

Much like my recent experience with shepherd's pie, I was nervous about putting all of my recipe eggs in one basket. So, I went back and forth between two recipes I found online: this one and this one.

I used:

• 2 large Napa cabbages, quartered and chopped into a combination of 1/2-inch little ribbons, and little squares. It's okay if the cabbage doesn't all look the same. It should definitely be a meatier cut than for coleslaw, though.
• 2 large daikon radishes
• 6 cloves garlic
• 3-inch knob ginger
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 cup red chili powder
• 1.5 cups sea salt or regular salt, plus extra for the first step
• 1.5 tablespoons kimchi base (I found a brand called Momoya at Fubonn)

Instructions (again, these are cobbled together from the two sources whose links I included above):

1. Place the cabbage pieces into a couple of gallon-sized bags, layer by layer, sprinkling a fair amount of salt between layers. So basically, add some cabbage to a bag. Reach your hand into the bag to sprinkle salt over all the cabbage. Repeat 2 or 3 times for each bag. You will probably use about 1/4-1/2 cup of salt total.

2. Let the cabbage and salt sit in the bags for a couple of hours (one of the recipes I read asks for the cabbage to sit for 5 hours. I found another one that asks for it to sit for 12 hours. I may try this next time, but I was doing this on a Monday night! I hedged my bets with 2.5 hours). Shake the bags around a couple of times.

3. While the cabbage is resting in the salt, prepeare the other ingredients: fine-chop the onion, mince (or press) the garlic and ginger, and peel and chop the radishes into 1/2-inch cubes.

4. Dump the cabbage from both bags into a colander and rinse really, really well.

5. Mix the chili powder, remaining salt, kimchi base, ginger, garlic, and about 1/2 cup of water together in a bowl. You may need to add more water - it should be sauce-y when it's all mixed up.

6. Dump the rinsed cabbage, onion, and radishes into a bowl big enough to hold everything when it's getting tossed around. Add the pepper sauce to the bowl, and stir, stir, stir!

Now comes the uncertain (for me, because I don't know any kimchi experts, or if I do they haven't revealed themselves) part.

I'm pretty sure the mixture needs to be fully immersed in liquid in order to ferment/pickle. My mixture didn't contain enough liquid as it was, so when I spooned it into the three containers I used, I added a little more water, salt, and kimchi base to each container and stirred the heck out of it until the mixture was pretty much covered in liquid.

Then, I crossed my fingers and let the containers sit on the counter for two days.

And, a week later...

Hey, it's pretty good! (below is a picture with flash - the red color shows up a little better). I stirred it into a noodle soup I made for dinner one night. It gave the soup the perfect amount of kick!

The Good Shepherd's pie (with Guinness!)

I first made shepherd's pie about a year ago, and we've had it three or four times since then. I'm not normally a huge fan of lamb, but I do like it in the context of stew (and while this isn't exactly stew, it's pretty darn close). My husband loves lamb, though, so we both win: I get to make something like a stew, where I don't have to worry about whether the meat is done or not (because after 2 hours in the oven, it'd better be done), and he gets lamb. So there.

Every time I've made shepherd's pie, I've combined some techniques from this recipe with most of the ingredients of this one and this one (I found them all on epicurious). Each recipe alone seems to have some little twist that sounds like way too much work (such as the venison the first recipe calls for - what now? I'm not on the Oregon Trail here! [although Johnny does have dysentery]). But from the three of them, I've been able to cobble together a process that works for me. And frankly, although I always toggle between the recipes to make sure I'm not forgetting something, I would have to do something horrendous to screw up shepherd's pie. Like, put in soy sauce instead of Guinness. That's literally the only thing I can think of that would make it bad.

Anyway, I thought I'd do myself a little service here and write down what I actually do, so that I don't have to go between the three recipes anymore. Next time I can just refer to... my own notes! Hey, there's a novel idea.

To make this recipe, you'll need a heavy dutch oven or some other pot that you can throw into the oven after cooking with it on the stovetop. Or, if you have two mutually exclusive pots, you could simply transfer the lamb stew mixture from the stove pot to the oven pot.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 3/4-inch cubes. Already, we face some ambiguity here. One of the three recipes calls for 2 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder. Well, 2 pounds seems like a lot of meat to me. I've used 1 pound before with no sacrifice to flavor. In addition, I'm only able to find bone-in lamb shoulder, and the last time I used bone-in shoulder for shepherd's pie, I shaved some bone into the meat with my knife before I noticed what I was doing. So this time I picked up some lamb from Sheridan that had already been cut into large stew-like hunks. Honestly, I'm not sure what part of the lamb it was from, but it looked good and fresh, and it was delicious. I'll figure out the anatomical origin next time. ANYWAY, once you figure out what cut of lamb you're using - probably something that starts out all tough but softens with extended cooking is best - then cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. Or, if you don't mind happening upon enormous hunks of meat mid-bite, then make them 1-inch cubes like the epicurious recipes say. I myself find that to be a little too big.
• 5 tablespoons flour
• olive oil to brown the lamb in
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup beef broth (reduced sodium works great, if you have it)
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup Guinness, or other stout/porter
• 1.5 tablespoons tomato paste
• Fresh thyme from 3 or 4 sprigs
• 2 pounds baking potatoes
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup milk (enough to mash the potatoes with - you might need a little more, or less)
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 5 carrots, peeled and sliced diagonally
• 4 leeks, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices
• 2 turnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1/2 cup of cheese curds, or medium cheddar cheese if you can't find cheese curds (Trader Joe's sells them, as does New Seasons and probably any grocery that has a fancy cheese section).
• 1 cup frozen peas, or whatever quantity is left in the frostbitten bag you need to use up

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. If necessary, move oven racks around so that your dutch oven will fit into the oven when the time comes.

2. Heat a tablespoon or two of the olive oil on medium heat, or lower if your stove is hot and your pot is thin.

3. Put the flour and some salt and pepper in a plastic bag large enough to hold the lamb. Put the lamb in, seal the bag, and shake it around until the lamb is coated in the flour.

4. Once the oil in the dutch oven is hot, add half the lamb and brown on all sides, about 6-8 minutes. Transfer the browned lamb to a plate and repeat the process with the other half of the lamb (if your pot is huge, you might be able to brown all the lamb at once).

5. When all the lamb has browned, reduce the heat to medium-low, put the plated lamb back into the pot, and add the 5 minced garlic cloves. Cook, stirring well so the garlic doesn't stick and burn, for 1 minute or so, until the garlic starts to smell good. Remove the lamb-garlic mixture to the plate once again, retaining the cooking liquids in the pot (if possible).

6. Add the Guinness to the pot. Boil over high heat for 1 minute, scraping up any brown bits. Stir in tomato paste and boil until mixture is reduced by half - 2-3 minutes.

This seems as good a space as any for a brief intermission of produce photos - yay, turnip! Hurray, leek!

...and, we're back.

7. Add beef broth, water, thyme, lamb with any juices on the plate, leeks, carrots, onion, turnips, and a little salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Bring mixture to a simmer, then remove from heat.

8. Cover pot with foil before putting the lid on, if your dutch oven is sneaky like mine and allows a good amount of air to get through. If you have a fancy Le Creuset casserole dish with a lid that weighs more than the average household pet, then you probably don't need to bother with foil.

9. Put the pot into the oven. Simmer for 1.5-2 hours, stirring once or twice (I usually let it take the full two hours).

Here it is: your last chance to opt out of having shepherd's pie tonight! (not that you would want to do that). At this point, if a better offer comes along you can just cool the lamb mixture once it is done, refrigerate it, and reheat it the next day to add the frozen peas and assemble the pie.

Otherwise, carry on to make the mashed potato topping:

10. When the lamb mixture has about 45 minutes to go, put on a pot of water to boil for the potatoes. Peel and chop the potatoes. Add them to the boiling water, or heat them up in the cold water - however you normally make mashed potatoes. When the potato chunks are soft enough for mashed potatoes, drain them, return them to the pot, and mash in the butter, a little milk at a time, and some salt and pepper. Note: you do want the potato topping to end up slightly soupier than you might prefer your mashed potatoes to be normally, so that you'll be able to spread it over the lamb mixture. Normally I don't like over-processed mashed potatoes, but I force myself to make an exception in this case.

11. When the lamb mixture's two hours are up, pull it out of the oven and stir in the frozen peas. If you do it right away, you shouldn't need to put the dutch oven back on the heat. If the mixture looks really soupy, you can put it back on the heat and stir in a little flour. Otherwise:

12. Move the oven racks around (AGAIN) so that whatever (broiler-safe) baking dish you use for the pie will be about 3 inches away from the broiler. Preheat the broiler.

13. Spoon the lamb mixture into a traditional broiler-safe pie pan, if that's what you're using, or into multiple smaller casserole dishes. Really, you might just need to eyeball the quantity of lamb mixture you ended up with and compare it to the various sizes of baking dishes you have lying around. It's pretty flexible.

14. Spoon the potato mixture over the lamb mixture, spreading it around with a spatula or spoon until the mixture is covered. If you want, use a fork to make fun little hatch-marks in the potato - it looks cool once the broiler has done its magic.

15. Grate the cheese curds or cheddar over the potato topping (note: if you have a grater that will produce microscopic chips, instead of long strings that cling together, that would be best. When the cheese gets shredded instead of grated, it tends to ball up in clumps, which produces the unevenly-broiled appearance that appears in my picture below).

16. Broil the pie for about five minutes, until it's golden-brown and bubbly on top. Don't pay any attention to the anemic appearance of the pie in the picture - it suffered the cheddar-clumping fate described above, and was also under-broiled the first time around, and then reheated the next day.

Spoon onto individual plates, and enjoy! This recipe makes 6-8 servings.

Hey, guess where I went yesterday!!!

That's right -

PENZEYS!

This place is like a toy store! This is actually only the second time I've been there, but it's been way too long!

It's a small store, but spice jars are small merchandise, so it all works out. Generally, I buy my spices in bulk so that I can buy just what I need, and use it before it loses its flavor. Penzeys doesn't sell spices in bulk, so I have to really consider which new spice I'm going to invest in as a treat.

There's a chili and pepper section, a cinnamon section, a baking section, and some more I'm forgetting. You can also just follow the alphabet as it snakes around the store, accomodating the herbs and spices that don't fit into the sections I listed above. And, every single spice has a detailed description of where it comes from and what it's used for. And, of course, you can SMELL every single one of them.

Last time, I went with some coworkers and came out with pink peppercorns, smoked Spanish paprika, and "Bangkok Blend" (oh yeah, that's the other thing about Penzeys - they make a zillion interesting blends and mixes. It's fun to read the ingredients blend, and then try to recreate the mix at home).

This time, I got annatto seeds, savory, and black cardamom pods. They smell so smoky! I'm excited to put them in a spicy stew, or lentils, or something.

Oh, and I also got mace!

So, I had always assumed mace was, you know, in the pepper family. As in, pepper spray. But no. Here's the description that came on the bag. I was like... nutmeg skin? Really?

So, now the challenge is to figure out ways to use my new toys. I'm thinking I'll make some pink polenta with the annatto. At least, I hope it turns out pink. Pink-ish, anyway.

Pasta, continued: the applications

Hey, so here's my professional-looking (well, kinda) pasta!

I'm not sure what kind of pasta it is, actually. Tagliatelle, maybe? We had it with toasted pine nuts (I just stir them around in a saucepan on medium until they look toasty),

And broccolini! My favorite!

It was a low-stress dinner! I just heated up some olive oil in a skillet, cooked some garlic and crushed red pepper in the oil (on pretty low heat so the garlic didn't burn), blanched the broccolini in boiling water just until it turned bright green, then threw it into the skillet with a little of the water, put the lid on, and let it cook from the steam in the skillet while the pasta cooked in the boiling water.

Once the broccolini and pasta were both cooked, I stirred everything together, and that was that! Mike grated a little parmesan to put on top.

and winning the least-photogenic award: Cabbage-Potato Soup with Bacon, Beer, Smoked Ham, and Cheddar (16-hour part optional)

I've made this soup a few times, and cooked some up again last week. I'm going to say this right off: this most recent batch did not live up to my standards. I have an explanation, though: I started making it at 3 in the afternoon on Saturday, but still thought I would try cooking it in the crock pot on low. I knew it wouldn't be done in time for dinner, but I figured I'd cool it down and put it in the fridge just before bed, for us to have the next day (and the next, and the next... this recipe makes a lot!) I also hedged my bets and put the chopped potato hunks into the crock pot completely raw. I just really, really didn't feel like boiling water, and told myself that, given enough time, the potatoes would have to soften. Right? Well, NO. At 10pm they were a nice tan color to match the rest of the soup, but were just as tough as when I'd thrown them in. And - the real test - I left the crock pot on low OVERNIGHT - so, for sixteen hours - and the potatoes still might as well have been raw. They would have been okay for a stew intended to be eaten with a knife and fork, but they just didn't cut it for a soup that relies on crumbly baking potatoes to give it a creamy texture.

So, lesson learned, I've been bringing each batch to an almost-boil and letting the potatoes break down for twenty minutes. Then, I whisk in the cheese right before serving. But the instructions I will be providing below are for the non-crock pot version of the recipe. If you use a crock pot, boil the potatoes and cabbage together in water, then drain and add to the crock pot with the other ingredients. Yeah... I think that'll work. And be prepared for your house to smell like CABBAGE!

Note: I end up using two large pots for this recipe - one to boil the potatoes and cabbage, and one to saute the vegetables, to which the rest of the soup is eventually added. If you want, you can use a large skillet for the vegetables and then transfer everything to the pot with the potatoes and cabbage. Just be sure to add some liquid to the vegetables and bubble away any brownness on the vegetable skillet, so you don't lose any flavor.


• 1/2 of medium or 1 entire small head cabbage, chopped into two-inchish ribbons
• 1 smoked ham hock
• 6 oz light-colored beer (I used an entire bottle this last time around and the soup turned out too sweet, so I'm turning it into a teaching moment: easy on the beer)
• 2 strips bacon (optional, but yummy for flavor). If not using bacon, you'll need a couple of tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1.5 large onions, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 3/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar (smoked if you can find it!)
• About 48 oz chicken broth
• About 48 oz water
• 3 small baking potatoes

Instructions:

1. Bring the chicken broth and water to a boil with the potatoes in a large pot. Once it comes to a boil, stir in the cabbage and turn down heat to a healthy simmer. Simmer for 20-25 minutes or until potatoes are softened enough to use for mashed potatoes. MEANWHILE...

2. Heat a dutch oven or other big pot (big enough to hold 102 oz of liquid plus all of the solid ingredients in this recipe...) to medium-high heat and fry the bacon. Lower burner to medium; remove dutch oven from heat. Remove the bacon and chop it up. Return the dutch oven to the burner and return the bacon to the dutch oven (which should still be coated with the bacon fat) along with the carrot, celery, and onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 8 minutes. Add minced garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Remove dutch oven from heat until the potatoes and cabbage are softened.

3. Add the potatoes, cabbage, and their cooking liquid to the dutch oven. Add the smoked ham hock and the beer. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to a low simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for 2-2.5 hours or until the potatoes are completely tender and/or disintegrated into the soup, and the ham hock is falling apart.

4. Remove the ham hock, shred, and return the meaty pieces to the soup. Whisk the shredded cheddar into the soup, stirring constantly until way after you think it's all melted. Otherwise, you will end up with fatty cheddar globules.

5. Serve! Your soup will not look as brown as mine did (below), unless you go the insane and regrettable 16-hour crock pot route.

I found some butterleaf lettuce on sale at the Sheridan Fruit Company, so we had a salad with minneola and that chipotle-honey glaze I used on that jicama salad with the soba noodles a couple of weeks back.
Here's what the soup looks like once the potatoes and cheese are properly distributed into the broth:

PASTA!!!

So, I've made pasta at home before, but I've always used the same whole-wheat tagliatelle recipe from an old Cooking Light. It's good - and it got even better after I realized that I'd been using a broken kitchen scale to measure my flour, using three times the amount of dry ingredients (back to the measuring cup for me!) I've always wanted to try making pasta with regular old semolina, though, and today I did! I used the recipe off the back of the Bob's Red Mill semolina flour that I bought for the pasta:



Basic Pasta Recipe (from Bob's Red Mill)

• 1 1/2 cups semolina flour (I used 3/4 cup semolina and 3/4 cup regular white flour - the recipe notes said "many people prefer" this, so I thought I'd try it the cheap way first)


• 1/2 teaspoon salt, optional


• 2 eggs or 3 egg whites, beaten


• 2 tablespoons water


• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine semolina and salt. Add beaten egg whites (or eggs), water and oil. Mix to make a stiff dough. Knead 10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Wrap dough in towel or place in plastic bag and let rest 20 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out to desired thickness and cut as desired.

I added the liquids to the dry ingredients by pouring them into the food processor while it was running (on the lowest setting - "stir," I think).

I made half of the dough into nondescript linguine-like noodles (the skinniest I could make them while still keeping them in one piece).

I decided to turn the other half into orrechiette, but not before I had already rolled the dough out flat. So I cut it up into little squares (doesn't it look like it's going to become Cinnamon Toast Crunch?), then pressed them into little ear-shell things.