|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MONDAY 27 JANUARY 2003 link
My sister has turned into quite a good cook. Up until a year or so ago, she wasn't very interested in food or cooking - other than that passion for frozen yogurt that I never really understood. She once filled me with horror at her statement that she was planning on giving her (as yet unborn) children Oscar Mayer Lunchables in their school lunches. I thought I was either going to have to sue for custody (does feeding your kids processed food fall into the category of child endangerment?), or live next door to her so that I could make sure that her kids wouldn't get scurvy or diabetes.
All that has changed. I had dinner at her house last week - a vietnamese chicken curry, the spicy tempered by coconut milk, chicken contrasting nicely with sweet potatoes.
It's funny how completely different from me she is in the kitchen. I usually cook vaguely mediterranean dishes- Spanish-Italian-Provençal-Greek. Maybe some North African in there somewhere. I hardly ever use a recipe, so apparently my autopilot brain lives in southern Europe. My kitchen cupboards hold olive oil, canned organic tomatoes, red wine and balsamic vinegars, garlic and onions, lots of citrus. My refrigerator (right now, in January) has cabbage, chard, broccoli, lettuce, carrots. And always olives, capers, mustards.
Jennifer, on the other hand, has peanut oil, rice wine vinegar, light and dark soy sauce, coconut cream and coconut milk in her cupboards. The condiment shelf in her fridge has two kinds of chili paste, shrimp paste, curry paste, and fish sauce. She buys gai lan instead of broccoli, bok choy instead of cabbage. She's never out of lemon grass or ginger. It's such a pleasure to eat at her house!
I've made a New Year's resolution to try and cook more asian food. I like it so well - I've just been too lazy. It takes a little more effort for me to follow a recipe. My mom made me some chili-tamarind paste from the True Thai cookbook for my birthday (didn't I say January was a birthday month in my family?), and gave me copies of all the recipes that call for the paste. So we had Chicken with Red Chilies and Cashews for dinner last night, along with some sautéed gai lan. Pretty yummy!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003 link
Yesterday was my mom's birthday - January is a very birthday month in our family. Other people send flowers or chocolates to their mothers, but I sent a couple of pounds of bacon. She and I are pretty alike, and I sure as heck would love to receive bacon in the mail, so I figure she'll like it, too. Listen to the descriptions:
"Carousel Farms Country-Style Hickory Smoked Bacon (from Iowa): Thick cut. Beautiful marbling. Intense, balanced, elegant bacon with greatness, breed and style. One of the best. Great with your in-laws.
Nodine's Garlic Stuffed Bacon (from Connecticut): Could be the greatest BLT bacon ever. Thick cut, meaty and lovely, subtle garlic flavor, aromatic and intense."
Catherine picked the first one, because of the in-laws comment. I picked the second one - it looks like they stuff the garlic in before they cure the meat, so every slice of bacon is inlaid with slices of garlic. [Saying "larded with garlic" sounds right and wrong at the same time, doesn't it?]
Both bacons are from The Grateful Palate. They list twenty-six different bacons on their website, from small smokehouses all over the country.
My mom's bacon hasn't arrived yet, so I've probably just ruined her surprise. On the other hand, now she knows why she should hurry home from work on Friday. I'm sure that the neighborhood dogs and racoons would be very excited to find a UPS package full of bacon sitting on my parents' porch.
Happy Birthday, Mom - enjoy your breakfast this weekend!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THURSDAY 9 JANUARY 2003 link
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your emails (and phone calls!) to Catherine. She ended up having a pretty good birthday, after all. Not only did she get lots of birthday messages, but she got to go golfing AND surfing. Not bad!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TUESDAY 7 JANUARY 2003 link
Well, we're back from the holidays and starting to settle back into a regular routine. We had a good time away, although we both got sick. I still have a lingering cough - two weeks later! - but that should be gone by tomorrow or the next day.
One of the best presents I was given was some homemade duck confit. I'd been having a craving for it, but I didn't want to make it myself. It's so much trouble - you take a bunch of duck legs, sprinkle them heavily with a salt/spice mixture, and let them sit in your fridge for a day or two. You also have to render enough duck fat to cover the duck legs. You poach the salted duck legs S L O W L Y in the fat until they're tender. It's one of those dishes that are so convoluted to make that you might as well make a lot of it, and there's my real problem with the whole thing - refrigerator space.
That's where my mom comes in. Not only does she have a lot of patience in the kitchen, she also has an extra refrigerator. It didn't really faze her that she'd never made duck confit before. She and my dad drove up to Liberty Farms and bought some duck legs, along with a five-pound bag of duck fat, and then went home and made my Christmas present.
It was delicious.
And today we reaped the extra benefits of having a stash of leftover duck fat in the fridge - some really, really good refried beans. You may think that bacon fat or chicken fat make good beans, but beans made with duck fat - confit fat, specifically, which has a lovely garlic and herb flavor to it - are divine.
(Read more about Liberty Farms on the Saveur website. And here's the recipe for duck confit that goes with the Saveur article; my parents used the one from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook, but the recipes are pretty similar.)
HELP: Tomorrow is Catherine's birthday. From the way she's been moping around the house, you would think that the world was ending. She hasn't been this depressed since... I guess last year at this time. If you have a minute, send her a birthday message. Hopefully some nice emails will cheer her up!
|
