Sushi, Deconstructed

Okay, not really deconstructed. And probably not really sushi. But I'm sick, and I'm bored, and it seemed high time to put up another post here.

My coworker let me try her version of this stuff the other morning, and it was DELICIOUS. Her salmon was way better than mine, and I think she also used some fancy plum paste - umeboshi? It was tantalizing. Mine didn't have the same kick, but it was still very yummy.

Basically, it's a hollowed-out cucumber partially filled with thinly sliced crisp vegetables, and then stuffed the rest of the way with cooked salmon. Next time, I will probably use an organic and unwaxed cucumber so that I feel good about leaving the skin on, since I think that would make the final sliced "sushi" round look even more attractive to the eye.

I have actually made this for myself two nights in a row now. Last night I used a little bit of avocado; tonight I didn't have avocado, but used some green bell pepper instead.

This can serve two people if served with a small soup, noodles, or rice (I think if you serve it with rice, it comes closer to qualifying as "deconstructed"). Tonight, I had it with some udon noodles with the extra chopped carrots and bell peppers.

- 1 cucumber, peeled (if desired), cut in half crosswise, seeds scraped out with long paring knife or some other skinny utensil
-about 3 oz (1/2 tiny can) canned salmon (cooked fresh salmon, or smoked salmon, would certainly be delicious as well)
- 1/2 small carrot, cut into very thin square strips about half the length of the cucumber (you will probably have some extra carrot to snack on)
-some other vegetable or fruit cut into thin, long strips, such as bell pepper, avocado, daikon radish, regular radish, green onion, etc.
-rice vinegar or other vinegar, if available
-soy sauce, plum sauce, anything else you would like to use for dipping
-black sesame seeds for garnish (totally optional)

1) Toss the salmon with a little bit of vinegar in a small bowl (not pictured below - this is just a gratuitous picture of all the ingredients).

Here are the veggie strips (below)

Here are the hollowed-out cucumber halves.

Take each cucumber half and fill the hollow about one-third of the way with the vegetable strips.

Then, stuff the rest of the hollow with the salmon, bit by bit. Take about a half-spoonful at a time and press it down to the bottom of the hollow with the paring knife.

When no more salmon will go into the cucumber, slice off the end with a sharp knife so that the cross-section is smooth.

If desired and if you have time anyway, store the cucumber halves upright (see below) over a towel in the fridge while you get the rest of your dinner ready. I found that my salty salmon helped drain the cucumber and veggies of some of their water even in the short 15 minutes that I had the cucumber halves propped up.

Now comes the fun part - like peeling the backing off a temporary tattoo, or drying your hair so you can see what color you actually just dyed it, you get to slice the cucumber halves into rounds. The portion below came from half of a cucumber.

...that's it! Serve with soy sauce and/or anything else you like to accompany your sushi.

Stir-Fried Plums with Carrots and Red Cabbage

Hey, I'm back!

A lot has happened since the end of August. We moved (end result=bigger kitchen - hooray!), and then I lost the cable that connects my camera to my computer. Not that that's a sufficient excuse for not posting this recipe until now, since I took the pictures back in... July? Whenever plums are in season. Anyway, here's to more frequent posting.
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I have come into a million plums from someone at work who has a plum tree and keeps bringing them in. I think I will have to eat several for breakfast, then make a couple of pans of crisp when I get home, just to make sure I use them all. It's great! And these plums are gorgeous (see below).

Last night, I made a plum cake (which is now gone). Tonight, I thought I'd try to use them in a savory context. Our produce drawer is running low on veggies at the moment, but the plums at least get us in the same general section of the nutrition pyramid - right??

Yeah, I think so. Anyway, here's what I used:

• 2-3T oil (enough to cover part of the bottom of a medium-large non-stick skillet
• 1/4 small onion, halved and sliced into thin strips (if you magically have shallot on hand, that would probably be cooler)
• 1 boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces (freezing it for 10-20 minutes makes it easier to cut, IMHO)
• 2 carrots, sliced diagonally
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• handful chopped red cabbage
• 3 plums (I used the little Italian ones), sliced into eighths
• enough cooked dried udon noodles (fresh are even more delicious, though!) to serve 2-3. I had planned on this being only enough for dinner, but as it turned out I had leftovers for lunch the next day.
• 2 T soy sauce
• splash of sherry, if you have it
• 1 T brown sugar
• 1 T roasted red chili paste (I use the "Taste of Thai" stuff)
• lime wedges for garnish (you could splash a little vinegar in at the end, instead)

1) First, heat up the oil in the skillet to a pretty extreme medium/medium-high. Then fry the onion for several minutes, stirring a lot, until it is nicely browned. Browner than you usually want your onions. Scoop the onions out into a bowl to save for later, but leave as much oil as you can in the pan.

2) Reduce heat to medium, add chicken to skillet, and cook until no longer pink. Add garlic slices and cook for 30 seconds or so.

3) Add soy sauce, sherry, brown sugar, and roasted red chili paste. If everything is way too smoking hot, you can add some water too, to buy you some time. Cook for a couple of minutes or until it's all melted into a kind of sauce.

4) Add carrots and stir-fry for a minute or so (depending on how thinly they are sliced). Add plums and red cabbage and stir-fry briefly just to coat them with the sauce, and to warm them. Don't let the plums get too mushy.


5) Stir the reserved cooked onions back into the pan. Add the cooked udon noodles to the pan, and stir to combine.

6) Serve with lime wedges, if you have them. If not, put a little splash of vinegar (rice vinegar would be good) in the dish before serving.

Coleslaw

I've never been a big coleslaw fan. I like it just fine once whatever barbecued item I'm eating with the coleslaw has dripped its spicy, tangy deliciousness onto the coleslaw. At that point, it's all just one dish. But enjoying coleslaw in its own right? Nah. As much as I love cabbage, I just don't like that weird fermented flavor that coleslaw in a bag has (for details on why claiming not to like "that weird fermented flavor" of a cabbage product makes me a total hypocrite, see my post on kimchi). And I have a fear of mayonnaise except under very specific circumstances. And did I mention that I don't like buying macerated produce in a bag?

So, now that we all know my coleslaw baggage: I made coleslaw last weekend. The recipe for pork tacos calls for a 16-oz bag of the stuff, and I figured I might as well make it myself, so that I could be sure about the mayonnaise. And here's the thing: it was good! I-wanted-to-munch-on -it good. I-would-offer-to-take-it-to-a-picnic good.

I used the Cooks Illustrated recipe and let the cabbage sit, draining (after having been salted), for the full four hours (they recommend 1-4). It's supposed to leave you with a less watery final product, and I think it did the trick. Here's the liquid that came out of the cabbage as it sat (it gets its orange hue from the shredded carrot that was mixed in with the cabbage):

I used Spectrum canola oil mayonnaise. Last time I faced my fear of mayonnaise (that would be the deviled eggs at Thanksgiving, thank you), I used Spectrum's olive oil mayonnaise, but this time I took a closer look at both labels and discovered that they're both canola oil-based, and the olive oil mayonnaise just has a little olive oil stirred in for flavoring. So, back to canola for me.

Here's the recipe (from Cooks Illustrated - originally published July 1995. I accessed it online):

Creamy Coleslaw

Ingredients
1 pound cabbage (about 1/2 medium head), red or green, shredded fine or chopped (6 cups)
1 large carrot , peeled and grated
2 teaspoons kosher salt , or 1 teaspoon table salt [Carrina's note: I'm pretty sure I used more than this when I salted the cabbage so that it could drain. I didn't have a bowl big enough to toss it around as much as I would have liked, and I wanted to make sure that it all got salted enough to drain. Note that you wash it all off later]
1/2 small onion , minced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
Ground black pepper

Instructions
1. Toss cabbage and carrots with salt in colander set over medium bowl. Let stand until cabbage wilts, at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours.

Here are the cabbage and carrot just after I salted them and set them up to wilt:

Aaaaand, four hours later. As you can see, there was a huge reduction in volume.

2. Dump wilted cabbage and carrots into the bowl. Rinse thoroughly in cold water (ice water if serving slaw immediately). Pour vegetables back into colander, pressing, but not squeezing on them to drain. Pat dry with paper towels. (Can be stored in a zipper-lock bag and refrigerated overnight.)
3. Pour cabbage and carrots back again into bowl. Add onions, mayonnaise, and vinegar; toss to coat. Season with pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Noodle Bowl #3 - Mustard Greens

Can I just say that I don't think I'll ever get sick of noodle bowls? They're the only thing I'm in the mood for on Saturday afternoons, and this week I realized that they also have the side benefit of helping me use up unruly produce that is just threatening to get slimey before I get to it.

That said, I don't really expect anyone else to share my interest in the whole thing. But since I've started taking pictures of them, I think I'll just keep doing it. I'll try to title the posts appropriately, so that anyone reading knows it's not an actual recipe.

I had some turkey lemongrass broth, left over from this recipe, sitting in my freezer for the last 4 months. Honestly, I had forgotten to label it and so wasn't sure if it was chicken broth, or turkey lemongrass. When its thawed scent revealed it to be the latter, I used it for a noodle bowl. Yay!

I used:
-2 cups broth
-1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder
-dash soy sauce
-a few drops Sriracha or some other spicy ingredient
-a few drops dark sesame oil
-1 carrot, peeled and sliced thin diagonally
-about 2 cups chopped mustard greens
-1 green onion, chopped
-1 wedge lime, squeezed (or dash seasoned rice vinegar)

Instructions:
Bring broth to a boil. Add five-spice powder, sesame oil, Sriracha, soy sauce, and carrots, and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Return to a non-spilling-over boil, and ramen, and cook for two minutes. Stir in mustard greens and cook for another minute or until wilted. Pour into deep bowl. Squeeze lime into bowl (or splash with rice vinegar). Sprinkle with green onion.

Corned Beef, continued

Well, life has been busy and it's been forever since I've posted something. I left off with homemade corned beef. A corned beef posting on April eighth isn't actually quite as outdated as it seems, because we didn't have it until several days after St. Patrick's Day. But still... it's been awhile.

This was my third try making my own corned beef. I wouldn't make it all the time, because it creates a lot of leftovers that we have trouble using up (especially since we don't have a microwave). But when I do make it... oh, man. Corned beef is addictive, isn't it? And the broth makes the best danged vegetables you've ever tasted.

You'll need a beef brisket for this. The recipe I use (citation below) asks for a 4-6 pound brisket, "preferably point cut, trimmed of excess fat, rinsed and patted dry." The author adds:

"If you prefer a leaner piece of meat, feel free to use the flat cut. In fact, we found more flat cut than point cut briskets in supermarket meat cases, so you’ll probably have to ask the meat department attendant or butcher to bring you a point cut. Leave a bit of fat attached for better texture and flavor."

Sure enough, I've always just used a flat cut, and I can't imagine the result being much more flavorful than it is (and I'm not bragging - it's all about the goodness of beef that has been covered in salt and spices for seven days). The flat cut seems to have plenty of fat on its own.

I use a recipe from Cooks Illustrated. Here's the recipe for the stuff that gets rubbed into the brisket to allow it to cure (originally published March 1997):

Ingredients for salt mixture:
-1/2 cup kosher salt
-1 tablespoon black peppercorns, cracked
-3/4 tablespoon ground allspice [Carrina's note: I was running low on ground allspice but, surprisingly, had some whole allspice berries, so I went halvsies on the ground allspice and cracked some whole berries as well. Seemed to work out fine]
- 1 tablespoon dried thyme
-1/2 tablespoon paprika
-2 bay leaves , crumbled

Here are the instructions on preparing the brisket. Note that this all happens 5-7 days before you serve it.

1. Mix salt and seasonings in small bowl.
2. Spear brisket about thirty times per side with meat fork or metal skewer [Carrina's note: don't forgot the spearing step - but if you do, just spear the brisket before you throw it in the pot to cook it, and it will be fine. I speak from experience]. Rub each side evenly with salt mixture; place in 2-gallon-size zipper-lock bag, forcing out as much air as possible. Place in pan large enough to hold it (a jelly roll pan works well), cover with second, similar-size pan, and weight with two bricks or heavy cans of similar weight [Carrina's note: yeah, we live a 700sqft apartment and we DON'T have bricks. Just pile a bunch of heavy stuff on top of the second pan, and you'll be fine]. Refrigerate 5 to 7 days, turning once a day.

Here's the brisket on day 2 or 3:

And here's the brisket on the morning of day 7... or maybe day 8. Even though I only had a half-brisket (3 lbs) to begin with, I still had to cut it in half to make it fit in the pot I used. I love pictures of cross-sections!

Okay, when the brisket has reached at least day 5 and you're ready to cook it, here are the instructions. Of course, if you're just cooking the meat by itself (no vegetables or cabbage), you can just rinse it off, through it in a pot of water that completely covers it, and simmer it for 2.5 hours or so. But if you want to cook it with cabbage and/or other vegetables, Cooks Illustrated comes up with this deceptively complicated set of instructions that basically boils down to these steps: 1) Cook meat in water. 2) When meat cooked in water is done (nice and loose but not totally mushy), keep it warm somewhere and cook vegetables in the meat water. Put root vegetables and other tough vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions) in 10 minutes or so before more delicate vegetables (cabbage, brussels sprouts).

Here are the instructions for cooking the meat and veggies. I'll include the list of vegetables that CI includes, since they refer to "Category 1" and "Category 2" vegetables. The recipe calls for 7-8 pounds of vegetables total.

Category 1 Vegetables
carrots, peeled and halved crosswise, thin end halved lengthwise, thick end quartered lengthwise
rutabagas (small), peeled and halved crosswise; each half cut into six chunks
white turnips (medium), peeled and quartered
new potatoes (small), scrubbed and left whole
boiling onions, peeled and left whole

Category 2 Vegetables
green cabbage (small head), uncored, blemished leaves removed, cut into six to eight wedges
parsnips , peeled and halved crosswise, thin end halved lengthwise, thick end quartered lengthwise
Brussels sprouts, blemished leaves removed and left whole

Instructions
3. Choose 7-8 pounds of vegetables of your choice from categories 1 and 2, prepared as described in the ingredient listing.
4. Rinse the brisket and pat it dry. Bring the brisket to boil with water to cover by 1/2 to 1 inch in large soup kettle or stockpot (at least 8 quarts), skimming any scum that rises to surface. Cover and simmer until skewer inserted in thickest part of brisket slides out with ease, 2 to 3 hours.

5. Heat oven to 200 degrees. Transfer meat to large platter, ladling about 1 cup cooking liquid over it to keep it moist. Cover with foil and set in oven.
6. Add vegetables from category 1 to kettle and bring to boil; cover and simmer until vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Add vegetables from category 2 and bring to boil; cover and simmer until all vegetables are tender, 10 to 15 minutes longer.

7. Meanwhile, remove meat from oven and cut across the grain into 1/4-inch slices.
8. Transfer vegetables to meat platter, moisten with additional broth, and serve.
9. Serve this dish with horseradish, either plain or mixed with whipped or sour cream, or with grainy mustard.

We had our corned beef and vegetables with soda bread. I used a Cooks Illustrated recipe for this, too! I'm not a fan of baking, but this bread was super easy, once I decided to ignore the instructions telling me to knead the dough (maybe it's because I used all regular flour insted of part regular, part cake flour, but the dough was so RIDICULOUSLY sticky that half of it was stuck to my knuckles after a single kneading motion). This bread also froze really, really well. A couple of minor words of wisdom: I vaguely remember using this same recipe a couple of years ago. The bread came out like an injurious rock. So, don't do these things: 1) substitute milk for buttermilk, 2) over-stir or -knead the dough, or 3) leave it in the oven until the top looks toasted. Just be gentle with it and it'll be fine.

Here's the recipe (originally published March 1997):

Yields 1 loaf.

Ingredients
-3 cups bleached all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
-1 cup cake flour
-2 tablespoons granulated sugar
-1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
-1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
-1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
-3 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 tablespoons softened + 1 tablespoon melted)
-1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Instructions
1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Whisk flours, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt in large bowl. Work softened butter into dry ingredients with fork or fingertips until texture resembles coarse crumbs.
2. Add buttermilk and stir with a fork just until dough begins to come together. Turn out onto flour-coated work surface; knead until dough just becomes cohesive and bumpy, 12 to 14 turns. (Do not knead until dough is smooth, or bread will be tough.)
3. Pat dough into a round about 6 inches in diameter and 2 inches high; place on greased or parchment-lined baking sheet or in cast-iron pot, if using. Place the loaf on a cookie sheet and cut a cross shape into the top.
4. Bake until golden brown and a skewer inserted into center of loaf comes out clean or internal temperature reaches 180 degrees, 40 to 45 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with melted butter; cool to room temperature, 30 to 40 minutes.

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!

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.

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:

Sunsmoke Salsa with Soba Noodles

Hey, a recipe that I didn't get from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper!

I can't claim that I came up with this idea on my own, because there are many delicious-sounding recipes out there that call for jicama ("HEE-kuh-muh" - there should be an accent over the "i" there) with mango and some sort of grilled or smoky ingredient, and I've drooled over all of them at one time or another.

I think of jicama as a cross between an apple and potato (and am sure that I'm not the first one to make the connection - heck, maybe that's its actual lineage), because it's crisp like an apple but leaves your knife all starchy like a potato. Oh, and because it burns my hands just like potatoes burn my hands - but that's just me and my weird hands.

I was really getting a craving for some kind of salsa on Saturday morning, and found myself in the fortunate (for me - I love grocery shopping when it's quiet) position of having half an hour to kill at Safeway. So I picked up most of these ingredients without knowing exactly what I'd do with them, but knowing that they all sounded good together, at least.

Here's most of the star produce in a group shot - except for the ginger, which is like that guy who can be seen in the back of at least one family photo per vacation, scratching his nose or contorting his face to yell at someone unseen by the camera. What I mean to say by all this is that I ended up not using ginger in this recipe. I think it would have tasted weird.

Here's the jicama! I avoided jicama for a long time after my first experience with it, because it is so difficult to peel with your average-to-dull regular peeler, and I wanted better things for my knuckles than to die a bloody death in their twenty-somethings just because their master wanted to take a shot at "Gracie's Pepper Salad with Jicama" or whatever it was. Jicama skin is tough, or at least it is by the time it gets to the grocery stores where I live! But now I have a serrated peeler, which I think is meant for fruit, but it also does a great job of peeling anything tricky.

And not to show off, but here is my adorable Microplane grater! Actually, I have now invested in three of them total, but here is the one that proved to be the perfect size for grating a little zest off the blood orange. Here it is pretending to be a skyscraper in the most recent "Godzilla" flop:

Convincing, huh? And to the left, it reveals its true stature. I got it for a dollar!

To our right we have the dried chipotle

chiles that figure in the dressing/liquid component for the salsa.

Get a look at that texture on the chipotle! Doesn't it just look like the paper bag that got left in the backyard, partially sheltered by the roof or a garbage can or something, and proceeded to get rained on and dried out by the sun repeatedly for five years?

Anyway, enough yammering about paper bags. Here's the recipe:

Sunsmoke Salsa with Soba Noodles (or other grain of your choice)
For the dressing/liquid part:

• 1/8 cup honey
• Juice from one blood orange (or regular orange! I just think the blood oranges are pretty), about 1/4 cup
• Juice from 1/2 lime
• 1/4 teaspoon zest from orange
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 or 2 dried chipotles chiles (I used 1 but wish I'd used 2), chopped into 4 or 5 easy-to-fish-out pieces
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
  
  Instructions for dressing:
  1. Heat honey and olive oil in a small saucepan (as small as you have, really, so that the chipotles get covered up as much as possible) oon low, or whatever will heat the liquid without burning the honey on your stovetop.
  2. When the honey and olive oil are warmed and thin, add the cumin and the pieces of chipotle. Cover and let the mixture sit a little above low for 15 minutes or so, so that it smells smoky from the chipotle. If it starts bubbling angrily, turn it down.

3. Once the mixture smells nice and smoky, stir in the juice and zest from the blood orange and let the mixture simmer for a few minutes. When it seems "combined" enough and a little syrupy, take it off heat. When it's cool, take out each chipotle piece and squeeze the honey mixture stuck on the inside back into the pan. Let the mixture cool completely before adding the lime juice. You could really just add the lime juice right before you put the meal together. If you put in the lime juice before you are ready to toss the vegetables with the dressing, be sure to whisk the dressing mixture again before combining it with the veggies.

For the salsa and soba noodles:

• 1 carrot, grated
• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed (or soaked and cooked dried black beans)
• 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed through garlic press
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1.5 tablespoons finely chopped shallot (or not, if you hate onion breath and think the garlic and green onions will be enough for you)
• 2 red bell peppers, diced, sliced, or whatever you prefer - I did a combination
• 1 medium jicama, peeled and cut into matchsticks
• 1 mango, peeled and diced
• 1/2 serrano pepper, seeded, deveined, and finely chopped
• 1 avocado
• Cooked and cooled soba noodles for however many people you are serving - or rice, or pasta, or whatever else you think would taste good under the salsa!

Instructions for the salsa:

1. Combine all ingredients except the black beans and the avocado in a large bowl. Toss to combine. Drizzle dressing into bowl, adding it in two installments if the bowl is on the smaller side. Toss salsa to coat with dressing.

2. Peel and dice avocado. Spoon 1 cup or so of salsa over each person's plate of cold soba noodles; sprinkle black beans and avocado over each serving. Or, if serving family-style, place the black beans and diced avocado over the rest of the salsa in the bowl. Serve promptly.

The "serve promptly" is so the avocado won't brown. As long as you save the avocado-chopping step for last, you've got oodles of time. I'm anticipating this salsa will keep for days (and will report back if that proves not to be the case. And hey, check out the nifty avocado-saver ("saver" - I hope) I MacGyvered together so I can have more avocado at work tomorrow. Right now, it's sitting in a mug in the fridge.

Of course, only after creating the limado (as I plan on calling it) did I remember that we're going to my brother-in-law's for dinner tomorrow, so we won't get to use the leftover avocado for dinner. So, a true test: a 48-hour avocado?! We shall see.

One final note: I described sprinkling the black beans and avocado separately on top because my black beans were a little on the mushy side and were going to be crushed under the weight of the rest of the ingredients. Beans of a springier nature should be able to handle the incorporation just fine, and adding them to the leftover salsa will do wonders for their taste, I'm sure.

Economical Swedish Furniture Makes Me Ravenous

... so I was ready to eat when I got back from Ikea at CascadeStation (ha! A mall that thinks it's an insurance company, by the sound of its name) this afternoon. When I drive back from the airport on Sandy, I go past soooo many intriguing noodle places - Ohana, Got Pho?, Thai Lao Bistro, Pho Gia - and those are just the ones I can think of right now. There are literally at least five more, and those are just the signs in English. I really, reeeeally wanted noodles - but I really didn't want to stop or spend money. So, I dressed up some Top Ramen! I brought water to a boil with a few tablespoons of leftover chicken broth, part of the spice package, and half of a leftover carrot, quartered. Once it got to a boil, I added the noodles, a handful of frozen corn (whew! Finally used up the last of the bag), a clove, and some Five-Spice powder (cinnamon, anise, fennel, ginger, clove, and licorice root. Hey, wait... Sun Luck, are you sure you want to call it Five-Spice - yes? Well, okay...). I have no idea if four minutes of simmering was enough for the whole clove to make any contribution, but the five-spice powder certainly did its share!

Once the carrots were soft enough to stick a fork through, I put it all in a bowl, added a dash of rice vinegar, a dash of soy sauce, and a couple of drops of toasted sesame oil, and some sesame seeds on top just for sass. And it was great, and psychologically so much more filling than a regular bowl of ramen!

My cheap and oh-so-good noodle bowl got me thinking. A couple of years ago, I discovered the USDA's online recipe-finder tool (http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/). It features a sizeable database of easy, generally healthy, and very economical recipes. Each recipe has been analyzed for cost and nutritional content. Many of the recipes are submitted by nutritionists who are trying to get people to eat healthily while using food stamps. This makes it a great place to go to find basic, bare-bones recipes that cost between 30 and 90 cents a person (some more). Then, if you decide that you want to splurge on kale or use leftover green onions, you can do that - but in most cases, you don't have to go out and buy something crazy just because it holds the recipe together. And, the database is incredibly searchable, since it's partly intended for social workers to use to get their nutrition messages across.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can search:

-Nutrition Education Topic (Calcium-Rich Food; Whole Grains; Less Saturated Fat, Trans Fat and Cholestorol)

-Theme (Ready in 30 Minutes Or Less, Food Resource Management)

-Menu Items (self-explanatory)

-Ingredients

-Ratings

-Audience (Parents of young children, Middle Eastern, Southern, Vegetarian)

-Cooking Equipment (Microwave, Wok, No Cooking Required, Stovetop/Hot Plate)

-Aaand: recipe cost! Yes, you can actually specify that your search results cost less than a certain amount per serving and/or recipe.

There are even official-looking Nutrition Facts with each recipe, as well as a shopping list feature (you can browse through recipes, click "Add to shopping list" when one looks good, and then view your list to see what you'll need).

In honor of our crappy economy, I've decided to start using this website a lot more. It's such a great tool! In fact, I may try to cook things from it every day this week. I'll let you know how they turn out.
So, tonight we're having Spaghetti With Lentils, which is kind of cheating because it's the first recipe I ever used off of this site when I first discovered it.