When I was four years old, I used to watch Jeff Smith on PBS cook. I guess I fancied myself something of a chef, so one day, while sitting on the toilet, I came up with the following recipe for chicken, and yelled it from the bathroom to my mom, who was dictating frantically:
It reads, “Take 6/4 of milk, 2 pistachio nuts. Take some flour and tuck the flour in there. Take 3 butter pecan nuts and add some licorice to it. Take 2 loads of baking soda and add that. Take 6/4 of salt and 7/4 of sugar. Backe 26 minutes. It turns into a chicken and you can eat it.”
Needless to say, I’ve never tried it, and can not confirm or deny the magical transformation to a chicken.
From a while back. Used the delicious pork stock made from some pork rib bones. Fantastic.
Rooster sauce!
You will nevermind, please, the intense mess behind the food. And the fact that we’re always eating on TV trays. Dinner time is about the only time Kristin can take a break from school work to relax and watch some tube, so no judging, okays?
Steak, sweet potato “frites,” frisee salad w/ homemade vinaigrette, a really nice (and cheap) 2009 bordeaux (which I will be buying more of), not to mention fresh whole wheat bread and brie. Holy North Carolina South Yet Somehow French, Batman!
I swear, sooner or later I’m going to stop with these probably jealousy-inducing posts and get around to some good old honest food talk, maybe share some recipes, that kind of thing. Sorry folks. In the mean time, I am in the process of planting one heck of a container herb garden. More updates to follow!
By Matt Good
on March 18, 2011 at 11:40 pm
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Posted in Foodporn
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Tagged dinner, Foodporn, french food, herbs, homemade, real food, red meat, steak, sweet potatoes, wine
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I still kind of suck at poaching eggs. I’ve seen lots of people say that your water should be around 160-180 F when poaching eggs, but I’m starting to think this is too low. I did them at 170F today, for 3:30 minutes or so, and the yolks were okay, but the whites were less firm than desirable. So I watched Jacques Pépin do it, and judging by the activity of the water, he starts much higher than that, a bit under boiling, and then lowers the heat after adding the eggs. So maybe next time I’ll try that.
Or I can just get one of those little egg-cup things Katie G. had that sit under the water and let you pour the eggs right into them. They worked quite well, actually.
Made with a 1/3 batch of Julia Child’s hollandaise recipe from Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom. My arm kinda hurts now 
By Matt Good
on January 29, 2011 at 4:05 pm
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Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn
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Tagged breakfast, eggs, eggs benedict, Food Talk, Foodporn, hollandaise, homemade, poached eggs, real food
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I was in Orlando a bit ago for some technology training for work, but before I left, I wanted to make Kristin some black eyed peas. For those of you who haven’t been following a long, slow arc southward, black eyed peas are not really peas, but beans. And when a southerner speaks of making black eyed peas, she’s going to do a heck of a lot more than boil them.
The recipe my bud John told me was roughly, ” oil, Cajun trinity, andouille sausage, garlic, salt pepper, bay leaf, ham hocks, a bag o’ peas, some stock, cook for an hour, hour and a half.” Now, it’s not really necessary, but I thought it would be rad to make some pork stock for this, and I just so happened to have some rib bones I saved from some past gorging… So here it is:
It smelled awesome. Stay tuned for more details on the black eyed peas.
By Matt Good
on January 23, 2011 at 12:15 am
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Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn
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Tagged beans, black eyed peas, dinner, homemade, pork, real food, soup, soup beans, stock, tips_and_tricks
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Bean broth?
I was reading this recipe for Drunken Beans from my favorite food porn radio show, The Splendid Table, and I got myself all confuserlated. It calls for four cups of cooked beans, in their broth. I guessed correctly that the broth means “liquid you cooked the things in, dummy,” but was confused by the absence of any sort of quantity. I guess whatever fills in the cracks of 4 cups of beans. But I wasn’t sure, so I did some Googling.
And came across this fascinating article about bean broths or bean stocks on a site called Culinate. The article takes the idea of a bean stock to a more elevated level, suggesting that perhaps you add in some carrots, onions, bay leaves, and the like to the beans while they cook, as if you were making a more conventional vegetarian stock.
This is a real win, guys. A twofer. While you’re making beans for a recipe, you can add a few more ingredients (with no extra work), and end up with more flavorful beans, and a delicious, useful, and unknown byproduct! Fantastic. Again, measure out the stuff into bags and freeze for later.
I’m going to have to start reading Culinate, I think…
In the words of Pepin, Happy Cooking.
By Matt Good
on March 15, 2010 at 6:35 pm
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Posted in Food Talk, Try This Now
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Tagged beans, Food Talk, health, herbs, homemade, real food, soup, stock, tips_and_tricks, vegetables
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So Bekah and I have started our hands at cheese making. These pictures are an assortment of our first and second try. But either way both cheeses ended up being delicious. (Bekah’s was a more accurate representation of mozzarella though.) We used this instructable http://www.instructables.com/id/Great-Mozzarella-Cheese/
First added the citric acid and then rennet.
Then you wait for the curds to form.
Then you cut the curds, (notice how it is nice and think, almost gelatinous)
Then you heat it back up and the curds start to shrink and mush all up.
Then you strain. You can use the yellow stuff to make ricotta and then after that you can use it in biscuits or bread recipes that call for milk. I find it really cool that you don’t have to leave any of it to go to waste.
Our final product! They say you get about a pound to a pound and a half of cheese per gallon. I think we got somewhere around that. This mozzarella is better than any dry store bought mozzarella I have ever had. It is not as good as the fresh mozzarella we can get in brine but its our first attempt. We followed the microwave directions for this guy and I think next time we are going to try using hot water to work it instead of the microwave. They say that microwave gives it a stringier texture, which we appreciate, but would like to try other ways as well. This cheese melted amazingly though. On our way to being able to make a pizza from scratch.
Some thoughts: Cheesemaking looks to be one of those things that is hard to perfect, but even if you screw up you wind up with something good tasting. For cheeses other than mozzeralla and a few farmer cheese it is also a process that requires having starters on hand. I would like to one day grow and maintain these starters. It would be nice to be able to get into the habit of making sourdough and cheese twice a week. I have been making focacci the last two days and it is super easy, but more on that in the next post.
