RCD5:Warm barley, mushroom, and asparagus salad (p.347),Roasted red pepper dressing (p. 574), & Rye berry salad w/ roasted red pepper dressing (p.361)

Rachel Cooking Day Post 5

I don't like most grain salads. I never will. I've tried them in so many ways, so many times, and I just don't like them. It is making progress through the "Grains" chapter a real challenge. So when Rachel told me that we could make a couple recipes and she would eat them, I jumped at the chance. We picked a rye berry salad and a barley salad.

The grains were bought out of bulk bins (rye berries on the left, barley on the right):



TJOC has a very handy chart on pages 364 to 368 explaining how to cook almost every type of grain. I utilized it.

Rachel thought Warm barley, mushroom, and asparagus salad (p. 347) sounded good.

My cooked pearl barley:



I managed not to take any pictures of my barley-salad-making process. I sauteed shallots in olive oil and then added sliced mushrooms. I cooked the mushrooms until they started to soften and added lemon zest, lemon juice, parsley, and salt and pepper. While re-reading the recipe, I think I was supposed to cook the asparagus with the barley but I didn't realize that until too late. The asparagus got steamed instead. I mixed all the components together:



Rachel claimed it was tasty but could have used more asparagus and mushrooms. I think it's obvious from the picture that it has too much barley and not enough "other stuff".

Bell peppers are one of the only foods I don't like (canned tuna is the other one), although I do enjoy roasting peppers (it seems to impress people when I have them n hand as a condiment and it's not difficult at all to do). Roasted red pepper dressing (p. 574) was almost a guaranteed hit with people who like red peppers (Rachel, Mom) and a big ole fail for me.

The dressing was simple--I mashed a garlic clove and salt in a food processor and then added a jar of roasted red peppers, olive oil, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, shallots, cumin, ground red pepper, and salt and pepper.



Rachel said it was incredibly delicious. Smooth, tangy, and very well seasoned. Perfect for people who like roasted red peppers.

The roasted red pepper sauce was for Rye berry salad with roasted red pepper dressing (p. 361).

I cooked the rye berries according to the TJOC grains chart:



I mixed them with the red pepper dressing, diced carrot, celery, radishes, zucchini, yellow pepper, and onion, minced cilantro, and salt and pepper:



A closer look:



BEAUTIFUL! So colorful! I wouldn't eat this on a dare (between all the peppers and grains, it's pretty much a nightmare for me) but I would make it for a party. It was beautiful, spectacularly good for you, and it made an amazing amount. Rachel and my mom said it was extremely good but really could have used even more dressing. This recipe makes a LOT. Make sure you either love leftovers, have lots of people in the house who like grain salads, or are making it for a potluck.

Do you like grain salads?

Random facts related to this post:

• Barley was considered the special food of the gladiators (On Food and Cooking, p. 469)
• The moist climate that is perfect for rye is also ideal for ergot. Ergot is a fungus that can cause St. Anthony's Fire, a disease that can cause mental derangement and progressive gangrene. It also causes hallucinations similar to LSD (On Food and Cooking, p. 470 and Wikipedia)
• Rye has a bunch of negatives working against it when it comes to bread making, it's a miracle that rye bread exists (my personal thoughts)

RCD4: Shellfish cocktails (p. 370), Quick cheese straws or wafers (p. 91) , Remoulade sauce (p. 581), and No-fail boiled shrimp (p. 385)

Rachel Cooking Day Post 4

Rachel pointed out that certain recipes in TJOC are synergistic. In some cases if you make a specific three recipes, TJOC will count them as a fourth recipe. Shellfish cocktails (p. 370) perfectly exemplifies this.

You select a recipe from the shellfish column (No-fail boiled shrimp, raw oysters or clams, cooked crab legs, or cooked lobsters), something out of the sauce section (remoulade sauce, cocktail sauce, mignonette sauce, or tomatillo-horseradish sauce), and a side item to serve (oyster crackers, cheese straws, soda crackers, matzo, rye crackers, garlic bread, or endive leaves) and you have shellfish cocktail (1+1+1=4)!

Quick cheese straws or wafers (p. 91) stood out as looking particularly delicious and they had the advantage of having "quick" in the title which looked even better (SCORE! Especially for when we were cooking a dozen recipes). We combined butter and cheddar in a food processor (we used cheddar instead of blue cheese because blue cheese seemed like it might be a little strong).



Rachel added flour, salt, red pepper, and Worcestershire sauce and processed until the mixture "came together":



The dough was wrapped in plastic and chilled for a half hour. Rachel divided the dough into quarters and rolled it out:



The dough was cut into strips and twisted:



The straws were baked for about fifteen minutes:



These were so good that I almost don't have words for it. They were spicy and cheesy and totally addictive. The cheese straws were both crisp and soft--they reminded me of Cheez-its but better. They were definitely spicy though--the red pepper and the sharp cheddar definitely gave them a kick. If you make these cheese straws for a party, I guarantee they will be the first thing gone. My only quibble is that they really weren't particularly "quick". In fact, they weren't quick at all.

Rachel pointed out that instead of using store-bought mayonnaise for the remoulade sauce, we could make our own and knock out another recipe. She told me that she had made mayonnaise before but it didn't work perfectly. I had made aioli but I wasn't real impressed with it (I don't think it emulsified correctly). We weren't particularly confident that the TJOC recipe would work but we had backup mayonnaise.

I separated two eggs and left the yolks in a bowl to get to room temperature. I mixed white wine vinegar, salt, and a bit of pepper together in a mixing bowl so we would have everything ready when we started. It's vital when making mayo that all the ingredients are room temperature.



We decided that Rachel would do the whisking (I have bad wrists) and I would very slowly add the vegetable oil. Rachel whisked the eggs and vinegar mixture together until "smooth and light".



Rachel whisked like a fiend as I slowly added the oil:



Success! We made homemade mayonnaise! It was perfect. It was a little underseasoned but it seemed perfect since we were just using it to make a sauce. In fact, we were going to use it to make Remoulade sauce (p. 581). We took the mayonnaise and added minced pickles (we could not find cornichons in Ames--it was frustrating because they are easy to get in Fort Collins), capers, parsley, tarragon, garlic, Dijon, and a little salt and pepper:



So good! It turns out I love remoulade sauce. It was similar to tarter sauce and perfect for fish. Wikipedia tells me that people in other countries use remoulade sauce on their fries and I would love to experience the pure ambrosia that must be. The sauce was quick and easy to whip up.

My first question while making No-fail boiled shrimp (p. 385) was if people often normally fail at correctly making boiled shrimp. I never have. Frankly, shrimp is the easiest shellfish to cook. I particularly like the first sentence, "If desired, simply cook the shrimp in plain water", which totally negates the point of having a recipe.

I added celery, onion, lemon, parsley, peppercorns, bay leaves, salt, red pepper, and water in a big pot:



I simmered it all for ten minutes:



I then strained everything out of the broth and threw it away. I hate these steps in TJOC, it always seems so wasteful. It was quite a bit of stuff!



I popped the shrimp in broth and cooked it for two minutes:



And done!



The shrimp was really good. That being said, I don't think it was any better than shrimp that were simply boiled in water. The broth gave the shrimp a very subtle taste that was evident if you just at the shrimp by itself but who does that? I always eat shrimp with some sort of sauce. I wouldn't bother with this recipe again--just bring water to a boil and pop the shrimp in for two minutes.

The final tabeau:



A strange combination. The shrimp and remoulade sauce go together perfectly. The cheese straws were amazing. All three of them? Odd. As I ate the delicious cheese straws over the next couple days I never thought, "Man, I wish I had some shrimp".

Random food facts that relate to this post:

• Crustaceans are "mobile, carnivorous, and often cannibalistic". Makes those shrimp less sympathetic! (On Food and Cooking, p. 219)
• Fresh shrimp are usually frozen shrimp that are just defrosted in the store (On Food and Cooking, p. 221 and personal experience)
• Shrimp live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards (COOL!) (Wikipedia)
• "Crustacean" and "crystal" share the same root word (On Food and Cooking, p. 220)
• Olive oil can screw up your mayonnaise. If you are convinced you need to use it, use refined olive oil instead of extra virgin (On Food and Cooking, p. 635)
• Other countries use different vinegars in their mayonnaise, such as apple cider or rice vinegar in Japan or sunflower seed oil in Russia, which results in different flavors, (Wikipedia)
• The Creole version of remoulade sauce is usually pink because it includes paprika (Wikipedia)

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RCD3: Salty dog (p.58),Harvey wallbanger (p.58),Grapefruit herb margarita (p.62), Herb syrup I (p.43),Fish house punch (p.65),Fuzzy navel (p.63),etc.

Rachel Cooking Day Post 3

Another all-alcohol post! If you disapprove of drinking, skip this post!

I've decided that because my alcohol posts are pretty boring, I'm going to include random tidbits about the drinks. Let me know if you like that addition or not, I'm on the fence about whether to keep it or not.

Rachel's liquor shelf is very random. Interestingly, even though we almost never drink at home, Josh and I have a very well-stocked liquor cabinet (or, more accurately, liquor cubes), almost entirely because of cooking. The randomness made finding TJOC drinks we could make a challenge.



I also quickly found out that Rachel doesn't have any bar glasses--no highballs, for example. I am aware that none of the drinks pictured are served in the correct glasses. They did have one leg up on our house though--ice cubes. Josh and I seem to have an abnormally small refrigerator and freezer. Because of this fact, we never have ice available (not great for cocktails) and Rachel had tons of ice!

We had the ingredients for a Salty dog (p. 58). I shook vodka and grapefruit juice with ice. Apparently, the difference between a salty dog and a greyhound is the salting of the rim.

Interesting and timely anecdote about salty dogs from Michael Barrier:

Speaking of movies: The release of the Coen brothers' new version of True Grit today reminds me of a long-ago encounter with Charles Portis, the author of the novel. I was a young newspaperman at the time, and I knew Portis slightly—we all called him "Buddy"—because his brother and I worked together on the copy desk at the Arkansas Gazette. In those days, you couldn't buy a mixed drink in Little Rock except at a private club, and Gazette people favored a joint called the Officers Club. One night I happened to be sitting at the bar next to Buddy Portis. I was a novice drinker, and I ordered a salty dog (vodka and grapefruit juice). Portis—a former Marine, among other intimidating things—was drinking something darker and much more menacing, and he looked incredulous when my drink arrived. When I told him what it was, he responded with a devastating critique that Phyllis says I can't quote here without bruising tender ears. Suffice it to say that it was Buddy Portis who set me firmly on the road toward my mature preferences for single malts, martinis, and ice-cold Russian vodka.

I poured grapefruit juice in a little bowl, sprinkled giant salt crystals on a plate, and tried my best to rim the glass:



It didn't work.



So I guess what I really made was a slightly salty greyhound. The drink was tasty! I knew this drink but I didn't know it had a name--I always just ordered a grapefruit and vodka. I went through a period of trying to find a new default drink (my current is a vodka cranberry, which seems so boring) and the greyhound was one of the drinks I tested. Unfortunately, it seems like grapefruit might be yet another fruit I'm allergic to (so far, cranberry is fine) so it didn't make the cut.

For some mysterious reason, Rachel got absolutely obsessed with the idea of having a Harvey wallbanger (p. 58). Now, I will admit, I'm spoiled. I live in a town with about a thousand liquor shops. My favorite liquor store has tons and tons of little airplane-sized bottles, which are perfect when you only have a drink or two to make out of TJOC or you just need a few tablespoons for a recipe and you don't want to buy a whole bottle (or the bottle is expensive). Rachel's town did not have that variety of tiny liquors, so Rachel decided to invest in a big bottle of Galliano.

Random facts about the Harvey wallbanger (Wikipedia):

• Invented by the same man who invented the rusty nail (coming in an upcoming post) and the white Russian
• Galliano is named after Giuseppe Galliano, an Italian war hero
• The flavors of Galliano include anise, juniper, musk yarrow, ginger, lavender, peppermint, vanilla, cinnamon, and about a million other ingredients.
• Most drinks with Galliano include the words "wall", "bang", "yellow", or "golden".

I like the Galliano bottle:



It was an easy cocktail to make. I poured vodka and orange juice over ice, stirred well, then poured the Galliano on the top:



The drink was good. To me, it sort of tasted like drinking perfume with a anise-y aftertaste. I don't like any anise flavored drinks--Ouzo, Jagermeister, etc.--so I wasn't on-board with the Galliano.

As Rachel leafed through TJOC, she decided that she would be willing to drink a Grapefruit herb margarita (p. 62) which required Herb syrup I (p. 43).

Random facts about margaritas/tequila (Wikipedia):

• Margaritas are the most common tequila-based cocktail in the US (in Mexico it's the Paloma)
• Blue agave, the base of tequila, is a large succulent that grows at high altitude
• The trend of the "worm" in the bottle of tequila is a marketing gimmick

For the herb syrup we made sugar syrup , sprinkled rosemary in the pot, and simmered it with for ten minutes:



The rosemary was then strained out. The syrup was surprsingly good. It had a sweet herbal flavor and Rachel took to drinking it by spoonfuls throughout the day.

I mixed grapefruit juice, tequila, lime juice, and herb syrup. I gave up on rimmingthe glass with salt because I failed at it earlier:



I did pour it over ice (this is a "before" picture, still in the glass I was measuring everything in to). It was also a double :) I can't stand tequila, so I didn't try it, but Rachel said it was good. The grapefruit juice meshed well with the herb syrup, although it was very strange flavor combination.

I don't throw many events where punch would be appropriate. This is a problem because TJOC has a rather large number of punch recipes. Rachel thought we should make a punch even though it was essentially only the two of us and I agreed. We could drink it throughout the day.

We decided on Fish house punch (p. 65).

Facts about Fish house punch:

• The drink was invented at the Schuylkill Fishing Company in 1732, which was known as the "Fish house" (Wikipedia)
• Instead of club soda, it is sometimes made with strong tea (TJOC)
• Usually served with a giant ice block (Wikipedia)
• The word "punch" comes form the Hindi word "panch"

We mixed equal amounts sugar syrup, lemon juice, brandy, dark rum, and peach schnapps, with two parts club soda.



The punch was delicious and it would probably be a crowd pleaser. I would say that fish house punch is deceptively easy to drink because it doesn't taste nearly as strong as it actually is. The peach and lemon flavors melded perfectly with the brandy and rum and it was diluted by the club soda. Tasty! I recommended that we not start drinking it until we were almost finished cooking--I was pretty sure the cooking would suffer if we started drinking early. A good choice because the punch was certainly stout.

Since we bought peach schnapps for the punch, it seemed like a perfect time to make a Fuzzy navel (p. 63).

Fuzzy navel facts (Wikipedia):

• If you add vodka to a fuzzy navel you get a "hairy navel"
• "Fuzzy" refers to the peach and "navel" refers to the orange

I poured peach schnapps and orange juice in a glass and stirred. Super easy!



I think almost everyone who drinks mixed drinks has had a fuzzy navel at one point or another. I like them. The never seem very strong and the peach and orange flavors go very well together.

Rachel's husband was going to a basketball game with friends during our cooking and one of the friends happened to be a non-drinker. A perfect person to test out some of TJOC's virgin drinks! We whipped up a Cranberry Collins (p. 64). I mixed cranberry juice and lemon juice in a glass and then filled the glass with club soda.



The drink was fairly bland--it seemed like it needed to be stirred, even though it was very pretty. I recognize that if it was in the recipe-specified glss (a highball) there wouldn't have been nearly as much club soda involved. The recipe confused me--you would think it was a virgin version of the Tom Collins but a Tom Collins doesn't include any cranberry juice...

Rachel's cats insisted they were trying to help us:



Their role was mostly supervisory, although it did include some janitorial work.

Check the comments, I'm going to email Rachel and Jon for their opinions on all of these dishes.

RCD2: Breaded smelts (p. 408),Seasoned flour or crumbs for breading II (p. 962), and Whitebait or smelts (p. 411)

Rachel Cooking Day Post 2

Sometimes something just hits me funny. It can be a joke, a word, a picture, just about anything. I can giggle about these things--often things nobody else finds funny--for hours. Rachel thinks most of the same things are funny, too, which is probably why we are such great friends.

Smelts are one of the things we both find funny. The word alone--"smelt"--just makes me smile. On top of that, they are iridescent and rather pretty. I know almost nothing about smelts except that my friend Brenda, who comes from Wisconsin, used to tell me about huge smelt fish fries. For some mysterious reason that always stuck in my head.

When we stumbled upon this package of them:



We knew we had to get it. The store had two packages, we happily bought one of them, and giggled about them for hours. When we went to the store the next day, the other package had been sold! So it's a good thing we picked them up. After some pondering, I'm pretty sure I ate smelt in Japan. They are fried whole in Asian, with their head and tail still attached, and they are often full of eggs (according to Wikipedia). I totally ate a fish like that. In fact I was told to "eat the fish and not look inside" which is a slightly disturbing statement.

I figured that you were just supposed to eat them whole, like sardines or anchovies (another thing that both Wikipedia and The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink agree is true), but that absolutely disgusted Rachel. Something about the idea of eating bones really grossed her out. She took it upon herself to debone them. In the picture you can see a pile of boneless smelts, bone-in smelts, and a pile of smelt bones (let that be a warning to future smelts in case they want to attack!):



She opened them up and just pulled the spine and related bones out:



It was pretty impressive. They made nice tiny little fillets. The cats were mesmerized.



There are two smelt recipes in TJOC and it seemed like a good idea to knock out both while we had the smelt on hand. The first recipe was for Breaded smelts (p. 408).

I sprinkled twelve smelts with lemon juice and let them sit for fifteen minutes. I then dipped them in heavy cream:



We whipped up a batch of Seasoned flour or crumbs for breading II (p. 962). We mixed fine bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, and a little thyme and tarragon.



I dredged the fish in the seasoned cornmeal:



I melted a half stick butter in the skillet and popped the smelts in:



They immediately started disintegrating. As I flipped them, the soggy crust started melting off. Maybe the skilled was too large, maybe we should have used less butter, I have no idea what the problem was. By the time I pulled them out they were pretty sad looking:




But they were delicious! Honestly, Rachel and I had very low expectations for the smelts. Very, very low expectations. I thought they would at least be really fishy, like other little fishes such as the aforementioned anchovies or sardines, but they were very mild. The cream and lemon juice gave the fish a nice flavor. I think it would help if we had just used seasoned flour instead of cornmeal--the cornmeal was too substantial for the fish. We ate them all (we honestly expected not to like them and to end up throwing them out).

The second smelt recipe was Whitebait or smelts (p. 411). There is just something off-putting to me about eating fish that are called "bait".

We heated oil until it was about 375 degrees Fahrenheit (although the oil might have been a little too hot, it's hard to control the oil heat). We dredged the smelts in the seasoned cornmeal and then popped them in the oil:



TJOC says 2 or 3 minutes until they are cooked. Well, at two minutes they looked like this:



Overdone. We ate them but they tasted like nothing. Honestly, there could have been anything in there. Crickets, heart, who knows, it would all taste the same when fried to a crisp like that. I can't give much of an opinion because they just tasted like "fried". I think they would have been good if cooked correctly.

Random minutiae related to this post:

• Wikipedia insinuates that you can catch smelts by standing in a stream and swinging a net between your legs
• Smelts swim upstream like salmon and live part of their life in freshwater and part of their life in salt water (Wikipedia)
• Smelt eggs are bright orange and often used as sushi garnish (Wikipedia)
• Smelts are a traditional fish in the Northern Italian "Feast of Seven Fishes" (Wikipedia)

RCD1:Boiled beef (boeuf bouilli) (p. 478)

Rachel Cooking Day Post 1

"Let's get together and cook lots of stuff out of Joy. We can even make the gross stuff!" said my best friend Rachel.

Well, that's paraphrased, but essentially what she said. At this point in my life, it's about the nicest, most helpful thing you can say to me--especially the willingness to eat dishes that I have been putting off or to cook out of under-preforming chapters. Rachel lives in my home state so I try to see her every time I go home (in fact, she lives where we both did our undergraduate work, so it's always fun to go up to her town) and doing a TJOC-cooking bender seems to becoming a tradition (see: NYE 2010 posts). I really appreciate how helpful my friends are in this endeavor!

Rachel and I made a giant list of the dishes we were going to try to make but the first thing on the agenda was to cook the giant chunk of starting-to-freezer-burn beef that had been sitting in Rachel's freezer for who knows how long. I leafed through TJOC but I've really made the vast majority of the stews. "What about Boiled beef (boeuf bouilli) (p. 478)?" I said (well, I sort of said. I certainly didn't say the parathetical section). Rachel agreed that she had all the ingredients to make the recipe.

We stuck an onion with three whole cloves.



We combined the beef with six cups of water in a large pot and brought it to a boil. We then added the onion, a bay leaf, carrots, celery, and salt to the pot:



The whole thing was cooked for four hours. I honestly don't think there are many things easier than this boiled beef recipe.

We removed the meat from the point, strained out the vegetables, and then added butter to the bottom of the pot. We added chopped onion and cooked until the onion browned. A little flour was added, whisked until smooth, and two cups of the broth were poured back to the pot, along with horseradish, salt, and pepper:



The meat was so tender--it was fulling right off the bone:



TJOC insinuates that you should just throw out the veggies but Rachel and I couldn't bring ourselves to do that. They made a perfect side dish to the meat.



And the leftover juice was essentially just great, flavorful beef stock. We ended up using all of the stock throughout the rest of the day cooking (better than canned or bouillon!).



I'd put off making this dish because it seemed so boring. Boiled beef? What is interesting about boiled beef?

THIS DISH WAS DELICIOUS! I can't say it emphatically enough--I think this is truly one of the best recipes I've made in a long time. The beef was flavorful and tender, the horseradish/butter sauce was the perfect compliment, and the vegetables were tasty. On top of all of those pluses, it made a lot of stock, which makes the recipe even better. This is a truly frugal recipe--you can use a cheap cut of meat, it makes a ton of food, and it produces a richly flavored stock.

We fed this dish for lunch to five people (including Rachel and myself) and it was a huge hit. Everybody loved it and came back for seconds. In fact, just typing this post is making me very, very hungry and I want to eat boiled beef again (something I thought I would never say).

Random facts:

• In the UK, canned corned beef is sometimes called "bully beef", which is based on the French term boeuf bouilli (Wikipedia)
• This is a great use for traditional tough cuts of meat, like those from the round, or beef from older animals