I'm Mad and I Eat

One Local Snickersnack

2009-07-08T17:36:00.001-07:00

Our first Anaheim pepper from the garden!
It was about seven inches long, not counting the stem. It had a little heat in it. It was really, really slender.
But we wanted to stuff it anyway.
We figured the best way would be to slice it completely in half, and each of us would get a little boat filled with good things.
Everything except the avocado drizzle was local (and the avocado drizzle had loads of local items, including homegrown onions, tomatillos and peppers from the farmers market, and Marin County rain-reservoirs tap water — avocados and tomatillos contain a lot of pectin, and can take the addition of a splash of H2O).
Purty little black beans are from Full Belly Farms. The feta is made with goat's milk, by a local company. I don't know where they get their goat's milk (and they have no Web presence), but I'm happy to have it because it's not made from cow's milk, which I'm avoiding.
It wasn't enough food for a full meal, so we had to (had to!) eat fresh corn on the cob, also.
Very New World.
I'm changing my name to Stands with a Fist. (Hey, she was mad, too!)

Please Don't Buy BBQ Sauce

2009-07-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

OK, let's be fair. There are some pretty awesome commercial barbecue sauces for sale. Arthur Bryant's comes to mind. And that special Alabama blend given to me by a good old boy.
But you're not going to find them at Safeway. Megamarkets carry sugary glop, and the sugar is high-fructose corn shit. (Shut my mouth!) They are oddly flavored with artificial smoke, bourbon, peaches, and all manner of stuff that doesn't belong in there.
Don't even get me started on ketchup.
I've always liked brewing my own barbecue sauce, and as recently as the most recent decade ago, I squirted ketchup into the mess for a sweet, tomatoey tang.
Ugh. All you taste is oil of clove.
I don't even have ketchup in my house anymore. I have homemade tomato sauce, frozen in little plastic bags.
So. How I do it: Marinate your pork spareribs in a good home-concocted marinade. (We are talking about ribs, right?) Then save the marinade, boil it down (to eliminate possible pathogens, to concentrate it, and to let the scum rise to be skimmed). At this point you should add tomato sauce or even tomato paste (I use both). A spoonful of honey. Tinker with the flavors. No mustard. I don't even bother with garlic. Let it cook into a beautiful, soupy slop.
You will love it.
Do not apply the barbecue sauce to the ribs until after they're cooked. You don't want blackened, bitter flakes. Ew. Just cook the meat lovingly, and then pass the sauce at the table.
Here's a rough approximation of my marinade: Equal portions of distilled white vinegar (hey, we're going the hick route, aren't we?) and — ohgod, I'm embarrassing myself here — vermouth. I used a highly botanical vermouth, and it adds tons of flavor. A little tomato sauce, but not too much because the sugars will burn in the grill (but meat loves to be tenderized in tomato). A terrific sploosh of Tapatío hot sauce (which reminds me of the Arthur Bryant's sauce). A drizzle of Worcestershire sauce, and an equal drizzle of soy sauce. Put this in a sealable plastic bag with the ribs, overnight in the fridge.
Next day, pull out the meat, save the juice, and follow the above guidelines.
It's good.

UPDATE: There is some discussion in the comments about whether this is a safe method for making sauce. I stand by my recipe, but I totally understand the concern. Use your discretion.

My Karl Malden Story

2009-07-04T18:35:00.000-07:00

Almost ten years ago, I had the privilege of joining a cast of the nipped, tucked and plucked for an evening of fawning gratitude to Michael Douglas.
I so don't belong to this set, but I had an "in." I sucked in my tummy, put on a slinky black dress, and pretended to belong.
Well.
There we were in the lobby of San Francisco's City Hall, when a publicist ran up to me and Cranky and whispered, "No one is talking to Karl Malden!"
Cookiecrumb and Co. to the rescue.
He was marvelous! And his wife, Mona... Well, I fantasized that we were going to be BFFs.
We chatted. Turns out Malden's Serbian uncle left Chicago and moved to San Francisco, the day before the Great Earthquake. He returned home the next day. Damn ground won't hold still!
Karl looked up the grand marble staircase in City Hall, recalling his days on "The Streets of San Francisco."
He said, "God, I can't tell you how tired I got of running up those stairs, take after take." And he was in his 60s during the filming of the show. Jeez.
I really didn't know how old he was as we stood there getting to know one another.
All of a sudden, though, the conversation came to a halt. Karl looked briefly flustered, and patted his pockets.
He fished out a little plastic card, pulled something out of his ear, and transferred a fresh battery to his hearing aid.
The conversation resumed.
It was a very nice evening.
Oh, and the photo. There are at least a thousand pears on the tree in our backyard, ready to start jumping within weeks. Yay, I think.

Rolly Food, and a Couple New Things

2009-07-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

Really, it was just leftover risotto.
But there's this neat dish you can make from it: Roll it into balls, dredge the balls in egg and flour, and then fry.
I used garbanzo flour because it fries so nicely, and because we might have to talk about wheat flour sometime soon. It tastes a little beany, so I'll be experimenting with mixtures of "alternative" flours next time.
And I fried the balls in butter, rather than inches of hot oil. I don't deep fry. They came out... cute, not precisely round.
This is called arancini in Italian, but mine were much, much smaller than little oranges.
First time I've ever tried this preparation, and it was easy. If I have leftover risotto in the future, I will definitely do this again.
Oh, and the other thing I tried for the first time? That arty smoodge across the plate. It's basil-arugula pesto applied with a rubber spatula in just the perfect quantity.
I know. Arty smoodges are probably already passé.

My Michael Jackson Story

2009-06-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

It was 1983 or '84. The Jackson Five was doing a reunion tour.
Cranky and I lived in Florida at the time, and I had a freelance job as a rock video reviewer for the local paper. Really. I was totally attuned to the MTVideos, 24/7. Michael Jackson was huge then, and I was not going to miss this show, even if we had to drive up to Jacksonville. ("Jacksonville!" Cute.)
The show was great. Michael got star billing, and he did a wicked moonwalk.
When it ended, they set off fireworks. Ooh. That meant as soon as the fireworks were over, there'd be an encore! You'd think.
We didn't think.
Cranky and I bolted out of our seats and dashed out into the completely deserted streets, on our way back to where we had parked.
Just then, a big van careened around a corner, Hollywood movie style, all tilty and weavy and speedy.
We were doomed.
But it missed us, by inches. Zoom.
You know what? We believe, to this day, it was carrying the Jacksons away from the arena, before the fans figured out they had Left The Building.
And we also believe that if the van had hit us, it would never have stopped.
Oh, and the picture? Lobster risotto for our 28th anniversary lunch today.

Nothing New Under the Sunnyside Up

2009-06-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

This is an old, old dish from my childhood. I thought I'd make some, and trot it out to jog your memory.
These are eggs cooked in bread that you cut (or tear) a yolk-sized hole out of. Did you eat these as a kid? What did you call them? I can't even remember what we called ours, but at some later point I learned the name Cowboy Eggs, and it stuck.
Any time you do something silly with food, like putting faces on it, or chopping the green beans into inch-long segments, kids are supposed to get over their usual avoidance, and give it a fair and square try. Especially if you give it a cool name.
And then you outgrow it. You eat beans at their natural length, and your toast intact.
But I wanted Cowboy Eggs. Cranky was not treated to this non-novelty growing up. Never encountered it. So the first time he tried to make some on his own, he cut a hole in the bread large enough to hold the entire egg.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Unless, of course, that is they way you always had it. Results may vary.
This time he attained perfection, including the use of clever grown-up bread instead of those soggy white squares from the plastic bag.
The secret, we believe, was that the pan was a leetle hot, and the butter browned a bit. The bread toasted right in the pan, melding with the butter. Toast the first side, flip, drop the egg in the hole, and wait until the bottom of the bread gets toasty.
This was nothing like what you'd get from using a toaster and smearing the results with butter. Nope, you want that fusion in the pan. Intimate artistry.
And toast the pieces you tore out of the bread. You can pop them on top of the cooked eggs like a... cowboy hat!

Grilling, Indoors

2009-06-23T15:36:00.001-07:00

We've been meaning to make this smashed potatoes dish since the recipe ran in the NYTimes last month.
You can cook the potatoes on a grill outdoors, but even so, you're supposed to use a griddle over the heat.
Instead of wasting charcoal (is it ever really a waste?) we cooked indoors, using an antique griddle that just keeps getting better and better the more we use it. (I think it used to belong on top of an old stove, one with a cut-out you can set the griddle into. I'll photo it some time.)
Basically these are boiled potatoes that you squash slightly, and then smear olive tapenade on them. Over to the hot-hot griddle you go, where you sear the bottoms of the taters for a while, and finally you flip them and sear the tapenade side.
They tasted smoky! Like they'd been cooked outdoors.
Turns out the tapenade burned a little, in a very good way. This might be part of the plan; I don't know. But I wouldn't do it any different from now on.

Braised Goat Shanks

2009-06-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

First of all, what? You can buy goat meat and cook it and eat it? Well, probably not everyone can. But we are lucky to have a purveyor of fine, young, succulent goat from Marin County.
Second of all, succulent? Isn't goat meat like Charlie Chaplin's boiled shoe? "No, my goats are tender," says their shepherdess (goatherdess?), Julie. And they are.
So just what exactly did I want to do with a couple of sinewy, meaty leg bones? Braise, of course, to coax out all that sticky collagen. And the resulting liquid in the pot is pure gold.
But. I had this sort of chile verde thing in my mind.
So after the initial browning in oil, and about an hour of simmering in a bottle and a half of Pacifico cerveza, I tossed in a chopped melange of tomatillos, mild green Anaheim peppers and some unripe green tomatoes out of the freezer (from when last year's crop finally refused to ripen). A little cumin, diced green garlic, dried Mexican oregano, salt... that's it.
The fantastic juice that leaks out of braised meat went straight into the green stuff. This simmered for maybe another hour, hour and a half. I didn't want to cook the hell out of the green stuff; I wanted natural texture.
And the flavor was insane.
I kept thinking, "Should I add jalapeños? Heat it up a little?" And I kept thinking, "No."
My initial plan was to serve this with dried hominy from a vaunted, legendary, local proprietor of dried beans. After soaking and a little time on the stove, though, it became obvious that the hominy was horribly rancid. I wasn't going to put that on the plate with the beautiful goat verde.
So we got some perfect corn tortillas. Which was cool, because we made impromptu burritos at the table.

Is This Junk Food?

2009-06-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

It looks like I've been on a goofy food kick lately. I'll blog about something, and then get a wacky suggestion in comments, and — boom, I've got to eat that, too.
My post on Trader Joe's pot stickers led to an attempt at tortilla-wrapped hot dogs. Which led to a couple of suggestions for sandwiches, one of which I haven't tried yet. (Oh, but I will.)
This is the Chip Butty. I am like a blind person with a cookbook I can't read, assembling a dish I've never tasted.
I didn't even know what a "butty" was until two pals steered me toward the light. A butty is a sandwich. It's a locution from northern England, but you are welcome to pronounce it in the south, the southern hemisphere, and even over here in the far west.
(Oh, and a "chip," of course, is a French fry.)
Jeez. French fry sandwich? It sounds frightening!
Naturally I had to have it.
Did I get anywhere close to the real thing? I don't know. I kinda think so, but I'd be just flattering myself.
Cranky procured some HP sauce, and he stoically crafted French fries in a skillet, with a minimum of oil. None of that twice-fried in horse fat stuff. These were crisp, golden, and creamy on the inside.
Our bread was a bit stale so we toasted it lightly.
Piled on the chips. Salted 'em. Great lashings of butter. That sticky dribble of HP.
Slapped on the top layer and munched away.
Let me say, this is very filling. It is a carbohydrate sandwich with sodium.
Kind of like carnival food: a savory funnel cake or something (which, to my off-shore friends, I am not recommending.)
It made me happy. It made me wish I'd had a hangover that needed stuffing.
Urp.

First Tomato, Yah!!

2009-06-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

Mid June. Tomato plants have been in the ground for about a month.
They must have really wanted to grow, because look, this is the earliest first tomato I've ever picked (from the mouth of a miniature dog who wanted it for himself).
It's a teensy-weensy tomato, grown on a midget plant called Tiny Tim. The plant has attained, oh, maybe eight inches in height. And yet it is already covered with little globes. It's a toy plant; it will probably poop out if I forget to wind the key or change the batteries.
But it's always fun to get your first tomato, and your first tomato is always a cherry tomato.

Shepherd's Pie, For Realz

2009-06-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

I think this is the first time I've ever made what can be authentically called shepherd's pie. Because shepherds herd sheep. I used lamb.
When you use beef, you have to call it "cottage pie." Whatev. Why can't you call it cowboy pie? Oh, too American.
But this was lamb, truly.
We braised a couple of lamb shanks a while ago when the weather wasn't behaving in a temperate manner, and saved the leftovers in the freezer.
Sure enough, the weather is still misbehaving. We felt entitled to warm, comforting, stew-y food.
I don't even think I need to tell you how easy this is. How bracing. How nice.
(OK: Make a gravy. I used leftover lamb goozle from the braise. Lightly cook some vegetables: onion, carrot, peas. Stir the gravy, vegetables and meat together in a baking dish. Top with mashed potatoes. Roast for half an hour.)
Since I've quit drinking milk, this was the first time I've made mashed potatoes without a good glug of buttermilk. They were great! Their intrinsic potato-ness was not smoothed out of existence by a dairy flavor. Though we did use butter, heh.
I've just made myself hungry, and it's only a couple of hours since I ate lunch.
It's so great to have an appetite again!

Yo, Dawg!

2009-06-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Can a food be a guilty pleasure if you've never eaten it before, and then you try it once and...? Ya know what I mean?
The other day I was talking about some famous chefs' guilty pleasures. It fomented a bunch of confessions in the comments, some of which appealed to me a lot.
Ready for this? A hot dog wrapped in a tortilla.
I heard from TWO readers that this was the bomb, and... I had to try it.
I succumbed to Kate's version: A hot dog rolled in a tortilla with decadent garlic-cream sauce.
She didn't tell me how to make this evil sauce, so I improvised. First of all, I'm avoiding cream. Second of all, I was steeping a mince of green garlic in olive oil on the stove, for a soon-to-come artichoke dip.
So I swiped a little of the garlic-oil, and blended it (with a fork, not a blender) with a little mayo and yogurt. Hefty crack of black pepper, some salt.
Now, look. I would never, in a million years, think of wrapping a hot dog in a tortilla (I assume Kate meant flour tortilla; that's what I used). If I was desperate for a hot dog, but didn't have any buns in the house, I would NOT have thought to use tortillas. Dumb me.
But we had to go there.
Cranky was all, "This will keep the junk you stuff in there from falling out!"
I said, "We owe it to the originator to do the original version."
And we did.
We are still talking about it. Craving it.
So silly.

More Tofood

2009-06-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

Asparagus is already out of season where I live.
I kept one final bunch in the fridge a little past its shelf-life — stalks still vibrant, but the bud tips were beginning to get soft.
And, since I happened to have half a tub of silken tofu left over from the chocolate-tofu pudding, I employed an old Mollie Katzen trick, and made a "cream of" soup without cream.
Let me make this as simple as can be.
You cook your vegetables. I cooked the asparagus in an oiled pan with minced green garlic, adding a splash of liquid to help soften things. You could put your aromatics in the pan at this point, too. Bay leaf, salt, whatever you like. A bit of dill is surprisingly good with asparagus.
You put your cooked vegetables into the blender (I cut up the asparagus spears into handy pieces) with a big splat of silken tofu.
You blend. Really, you should blend really hard. I never got past the first button on the blender, and there were actually still chunks of asparagus. I should have set it on "cement mixer." (And I think that's why the tofu looks a little curdled in the photo. It's not curdled; it just wasn't blended hard enough.)
You return this mixture to the stove, heat it, and adjust the seasonings. I added lemon juice and I forget what all. Definitely some liquid to get the texture right.
Put the soup in bowls. I topped mine with a dab of Greek yogurt; Cranky is responsible for cleaning out the fridge of dairy items I can't eat, so he got a dab of sour cream.
My point is just that making a cream of vegetable soup is really easy, and you don't need cream.

What's for Pudding?

2009-06-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of desserts, but I had to try this one.
It's a chocolate pudding made without any eggs or dairy.
It surged into my consciousness at exactly the same time I decided I'm probably lactose intolerant.
All credit goes to Mark Bittman for inventing it (and if he didn't invent it, he ain't talking).
And extra credit goes to Zoomie for following this recipe and blogging about it. I was tempted.
In case you haven't stumbled across this pudding yet, it's made with... gasp... tofu. Silken tofu.
OK, ick, right?
But, no.
Yum.
It's smooth and creamy and smooth and creamy. And chocolatey.
Use the best silken tofu you can find. We are lucky to have a local artisan tofu maker (even if the soy beans are not local), Hodo Soy Beanery, so we were certain to have a fresh, luscious batch to work with (though the shelf-stable kind in the cardboard box is perfectly decent).
Also, use the best bittersweet chocolate you can find. Mine was a Scharffen Berger 82% bar.
Bittman's recipe incorporates cinnamon (I used Mexican canela) and chili powder. It was fine, but not my favorite taste, so I might tinker next time. I'm thinking rose and white pepper. (You melt some sugar in water; I would sub a little rose water in that step.)
Also, there is no salt in the recipe.
So, I sprinkled these with a teensy pinch of crunchy Maldon salt flakes. Not sure I would do it again, but it was pretty.
Here's the deal, though. This recipe is Dead Easy. If you can nuke a candy bar for a minute or two, you've got the skills to make this.
One more thing. As Zoomie pointed out, the recipe makes an awful lot of pudding, far more than the four-to-six servings specified. I simply reduced the ingredients proportionally, based on the weight of one Scharffen Berger bar. Roughishly. It came out fine. Trust me, even though there's no cream, you can't really eat more than a little dab of it.
If there's a downside at all, it's that this pudding doesn't form a skin.
I call that an upside.

Gary Danko, Gummy Worms, and Me

2009-06-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

So I figure if Gary Danko can own up to gobbling gummy worms as a guilty pleasure, I will not be struck by lightning if I admit I like the frozen pot stickers from Trader Joe's.
Come on! Do you cook every single meal you eat from organic, local scratch? Sometimes you just need some nourishment, pronto, and it wouldn't hurt if it tastes good.
This is a recommendation, I guess, then. You buy a bag or two (we tried chicken first, but I like the pork better) and toss them in the freezer for emergencies.
Open the bag, take out as many as you want, and reseal the rest.
The label suggests two ways of heating the dumplings; we've tried both, and the microwave version is meh. Go to the extra trouble to sizzle them in oil on the stove, and then dump in some water, cover, and steam for a few minutes. Nice browned crunch on the bottoms (they're called pot stickers for a reason) and softened wrappers on top.
You would be prudent, industrious and clever to serve some rice and vegetables on the side (something Asian-y would be perfect). And you would be forgiven if all you ate for your meal was the pot stickers.
Do NOT omit a lovely dipping sauce, though. That would be bad.
What would be good is a mixture of half soy sauce and half rice vinegar stirred with a teeny dribble of chile oil. And what would be better would be to sprinkle the sauce with sesame seeds and minced chives. This little touch ramps up the magic in your mouth, without adding any unwanted flavor-skew.
I could also say that the chives are organic and local. I picked them in my backyard. Am I redeemed, just a little?
Anyway. TJ's pot stickers are not a guilty pleasure, because I don't feel guilty about them.
I don't feel guilty about my occasional ingestion of gummy bears, either.
But gummy worms? That's crazy, Danko.

Salad, Ha, Ha

2009-06-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm still here. I'm mad as hell, but there's nothing blogging is going to do to help out.
And I eat.
But nothing fancy.
The other day I razzed Heather for posting about the salad she had made. Salad.
But see, she's busy with other things. Like growing a baby inside her body. I imagine a lot of that's pretty passive work, but still, we forgive her for not banging out an entire feast for twelve, the way she has done in the past. (And there's still that pig roast coming up.)
Me? No excuse. Whatsoever.
Just passive. Lazy. Yearning for perfect weather, and instead getting the threat of rain.
Well, the eight little seedlings I planted in the garden yesterday morning would like the rain, so bring it on. (Or did Bush so irretrievably taint that phrase that we must retire it, along with the surname Hitler?)
Anyway. This "salad" is modeled on tabouleh, but it's made with brown rice. The rice adds a wonderful flavor. The onions, parsley and mint are from the yard. The tomatoes are hothouse from the market, and probably the cukes too.
What a maddening season.

Geek Salad

2009-05-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Some of my meat-space friends know I don't always have an appetite.
I love to taste your food, but I can't get too much of it in my mouth without feeling... full. Queasy. Unwanting to eat.
I was lying in bed yesterday, with the New York Times and a big glass of buttermilk. I love, love, buttermilk. Cranky brings me a glass every morning because he wants me to get enough nutrients, and he knows I can't always feel enthusiastic about supper.
I turned to him and said, "Isn't it neat that we wake up so happy together?"
And then in about half an hour, I felt sick.
It was a usual pattern. My dairy "breakfast," unwanted lunch, and unwanted dinner.
I think I'm not a total dumbass, but it took me years to get to this. I whimpered to myself: "Why do I wake up feeling good, and then I drink a glass of buttermilk — what's the harm? — and start feeling bad."
BOINK! BINGO! BREAKTHROUGH!
The milk!
I looked up lactose intolerance symptoms on the Internet, seriously expecting not to fit the profile at all. It would be too easy, and nothing is ever too easy.
But. I fit the profile, even though I'm a white person of Northern European extraction. We don't GET lactose intolerance. Except a few of us do. And more, as we age...
Jeepers.
OK, disclaimer. I have not been checked out by a physician on this matter. I took things into my own hands, and today, I skipped the buttermilk.
Well! Hungry for lunch was I!
Cranky wanted to make a Greek Salad, but not hungry for feta cheese was I.
Yoda, I mean Cranky, toasted up some local walnuts and made a beautiful platter. Why aren't we all eating more walnuts? (Except for you who are allergic to tree nuts; gosh, now I understand.)
It was good.

Garden Update

2009-05-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

No, we didn't grow the potatoes.
Wait, I lied.
We grew that tiny, pale, little one on top with the chive slice on it. The rest came from the farmers market.
We've been digging up the yard, putting in new food plants, and we decided to use last year's potato patch as this year's potato patch. (I hope it's OK. I know you're not supposed to put tomatoes in the same place in consecutive years.)
And, whoops! Up out of the dirt comes this petite little specimen. It was never going to grow any bigger, because the plant part above the ground has been dead and gone for months. But who knew cold storage underground would support the freshness of a baby tater for so long? We were thrilled. (Yeah, gross. Like being thrilled about your six-year-old's expelled teeth.)
Also, look at those monster chive flowers. The chive crop is still robust, but the seed heads are nearing expiration. If you have flowering chives, please eat the pretty blossoms. I doubt we'll get around to all of ours; so many.
Finally, the dressing on this potato salad was made with a sweet pear vinegar. I'm sad to say it was a purchased vinegar, because the bottle I fermented two years ago developed a little mold. I might still be able to save it. But a sheetload of new backyard pears is due in a few months; I could just try again.

Memorable Day

2009-05-23T15:22:00.000-07:00

What do you mean, this is Memorial Day Weekend?
We have to start wearing white shoes now?
I'm not finished with spring yet!
We decided to heap great mouthfuls of spring on our plates: green garlic, morels, and fresh, bright eggs. There is also asparagus on the premises, but we figured three spring icons in a mouthful was heavy-duty enough. We'll do the asparagus in a few days, with green garlic and whatever else I think of.
Meanwhile, I alone am responsible for the drab color of this scramble. I know the rule, but I didn't follow it. When you scramble eggs in the pan with the cooked vegetables, the eggs are going to absorb all the greeny, browny juices. Bleah. I should have used two pans, and then combined the food after.
But everything brightened up considerably with the tiny sprinkling of minced parsley. Backyard parsley, bursting with chlorophyll and the elusive taste of anise. (Or is that just me?)
OK, let's see. White shoes.
Nah. I don't have any.

We All Sri for Sriracha

2009-05-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Once again, captivated by a food story in the New York Times.
Today it was about my favorite hot sauce, Sriracha. It's Asian, but it's made in Southern California. It's peppery but not too. It's garlicky, and yum.
Some people call it Rooster Sauce because of the image printed on the bottle, but the rooster simply happens to be the birth sign of its manufacturer, David Tran. (There are also shark, unicorn, and other logos on other brands; must try.)
Since I first discovered Sriracha, back in the 1980s, I've been putting it on tostadas, which are not Asian at all, though they happen to thrive under a squizzle of garlic-chile sauce.
But back in the 80s, Sriracha was hard to find. You might have wanted to resort to stealing a bottle of it off the table in a Vietnamese restaurant, but good manners prevented you. You remember visiting a friend who lived in a seamy South of Market loft, next door to an Asian market, and hoping it was still open so you could dash over and buy some. (It wasn't. Your friend tended to entertain rather late at night, past business hours.)
Eventually Sriracha became more widely available, and I've had some in the fridge ever since.
Yes. You actually do get to the bottom of a bottle now and then.
I do.
I did my best today, by drizzling some all over tostadas for lunch.
My lips are hot.

The "A" Vegetables

2009-05-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

I love artichokes.
I'm trying to grow a couple of plants in my front yard, and so far they're not dead. No harvest yet, though. I give it a few years.
We eat artichokes a lot at my house; often as the sole basis of a meal. We invent madcap dips for them, even though as a child, I only ever ate artichokes with mayonnaise as a dip. (Hey! At least I was eating artichokes.)
I've gone beyond mayonnaise toward flavors like bagna cauda, simple yogurt with mustard mixed in, or (ooh) hummus. Never really did like the melted butter phenom.
I don't know how this came about, but the other day we needed to eat some artichokes, and we needed a new flavor.
Ohgah. Miso! There's been a plastic tub of miso (sort of brown-colored) in the fridge for — oh, just fire me now — years. All it needed was some loosening up (I used buttermilk), a little Asianing-up with a few drops of toasted sesame oil, and then some tightening up with thick Greek yogurt. Top with shichimi togarashi, for looks, mainly. Cute flecks.
Then eat.
It was very, very cool.
We used the leftover goop the next day as a dressing to pour into avocado halves. Another "A" vegetable I adore.

Picante en mi Boca

2009-05-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

I'm just too proud of this. Surely something is going to go wrong, and I will be punished by the gods of Hubris Caliente for my overweening arrogance. But for now I'm basking. And boasting.
It all started about two years ago, when the Rev. Dr. Biggles brought a huge tray of homegrown jalapeños to my house. You can't eat them all at once (well, maybe you can), so you figure out how to preserve them.
I will admit (nah, I'm boasting again) that I just made up a method for pickling the peppers. Hot salty brine mixed with stupid white vinegar. Season it with whatever you like; I've used cumin and cinnamon (go gently there). Dump the hot bath over the sliced chiles in a clean jar, and you're done. Well, stuff it in the fridge for a few days and let it meld.
This turned out so successful and tasty that I grew a couple of bushes of jalapeños myself the next year. But it was a skimpy crop, and I had a hankering for heat.
So I bought a sack of fleshy green chiles at the farmers market; they resembled jalapeños but the farmer called them pimientos de padrón (note: not at all like the Spanish tapas snack that is so trendy). They pickled up just fine. But before too long, I fell off the sliced pickled pepper wagon in favor of prepared salsas. We can get some pretty good bottled hot sauce in Northern California; Tapatío need not apply. I was most enamored of the jalapeño salsa from Triple T Ranch, coincidentally the same guys who sold me the pimientos de padrón. Bought bottles and bottles of it, and it isn't cheap.
I saved all the empty bottles, of course. I am a hardened bottle saver; aren't you?
Then one day a few weeks ago: IDEA. Take the sliced pickled peppers (seeds and all) and grind them up really, really well in the blender. Add brine as needed to get a nice soupiness. Funnel this sauce into the saved (clean!) bottles. Be happy. Give some to friends. Be proud. Arrange to have a blog pal write about you.
Steal a photo off his blog without permission.
PHOTO CREDIT: CHILEBROWN, THE MAD MEAT GENIUS

Frontgrounding Meat

2009-05-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

I got in trouble the other day for backgrounding meat.
Of course, my tormentor was a meat magician.
He knows I often pad my diet with plants.
Still, he expects me to eat muscle now and then.
Today was one of those days.
A small, cozy gathering of fellow bloggers and fressers gathered at Meathenge Labs for a smoke-a-thon. I still stink, but so good.
Chicken, sausage, tri-tip, bacon, pork ribs. Lamb sliders! Oh, hell, even the asparagus was smoked.
I did sneak a little potato salad and guacamole, but the main message was meat.
Can you imagine juicy, dripping-juicy, smoked chicken?
Hah.
Still licking my fingers.

Putting Things in Perspective

2009-05-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

After my amazing vegetarian birthday lunch, we figured we might need a little cow on the premises, as an antidote.
I had first tasted the cut called Flatiron Steak a couple of years ago; it's billed as the second-most tender piece after filet mignon. But the cool thing is, it's way flat, and it reminds me of skirt steak or flap steak or... you know, those fun, chewy ones.
I read a story in the New York Times last week about butchers rummaging around in all that heretofore misused animal tissue, seeking out succulent new bits they can give a clever name to and put on the market. Beats throwing all that good muscle into the meat grinder.
So I wanted a flatiron steak. Cranky was stunned, but he's no fool. He dashed down to the farmers market and scored a nice specimen from Prather Ranch. We tossed about ideas for making an herb melty, or maybe a rub, possibly a marinade. But in the end we decided the meat should be treated respectfully, which meant a quick sear in the grill pan and a smear of butter.
Still. We had our hearts set on all those chives growing wantonly in the backyard.
Idea?
Chive mashed potatoes. When you are growing a wild field of chives, you find you can be so much more generous with them than if you just had a few dinky sprigs in a pot. We went nuts.
Thus, the perspective. Because in truth, I really did eat more potatoes than meat. Even though the meat was dandy.

The Herbivore's Delight

2009-05-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

This is what I had for lunch on my birthday yesterday.
Cranky is sensitive to my reluctance to do celebratory meals involving undifferentiated slabs of mammal muscle, so he suggested we return to Ubuntu, in Napa, a vegetable restaurant.
It was a gray, rainy day, but the place was filled with bright, happy people enjoying their plants. The vibe is not weird. It's unbelievably normal, even if there is a yoga studio upstairs.
But, enough. I just want to tell you what I ate, and vow that I will try to get a close replication at home, no matter how many tries it takes. It was that good.
It's a bowl of yellow corn grits. I know. Dull dull dull. I think the grits were infused with goat's milk whey. Not dull!
Into the soft, flowing grits was dropped a fresh egg, to cook gently in the ambient warmth. You can see some of the pierced yolk on the left.
Finally, the grits were showered with shaved cheese (parmesan? something good), sprinkled with herbs, and topped with [bugle fanfare] "trumpet crisps," essentially crisp fried slices of trumpet mushrooms. Why didn't anybody tell me you could do this with mushrooms? Snappy and crackly as snack food, with amazing flavor. I still haven't decided if the kitchen sneaked a little truffle oil in there. Or, no, wait, maybe the flavor was more like vanilla. Maple!
See, this is going to be hard to replicate.
It doesn't matter, though. I'm just so thrilled to know this meal, I suspect anything that comes even close will be divine.