Well, after a lovely Christmas and New Years, Kristin wanted to start doing a reboot of the South Beach thing. So, today we (well, mostly just her) started. I made some Chicken Cacciatore with some small modifications, and sauted asparagus, as well as a romaine salad with a homemade vinaigrette, thanks to a recipe from one Ms. Child.
Note: Beer is not South Beach friendly. This is my plate 
Like our Christmas Tree?
From Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook. Fricking great. Two lessons:
Side note, I love watching really flavorful stuff reduce slowly for a long time. Reminds me of the recipe for “Weapons Grade Ratatouille” that I want to try sometime soon…
Lambs.
Cute. Frolicky.
Delicious.
I like to eat a lot of different species. Is that so wrong? I’m not content with white potatoes, chicken, beef, and (if you’re lucky) pork. So I hauled my butt down to the local meat market (we actually still have one around here and I’d like to keep them in business) and bought an obscene amount of leg of lamb. I made an intense roux, and mashed in some roast eggplant, more or less following this recipe.
Of course I had to modify it a bit. The recipe called for lamb shoulder, but the market only had leg, so I switched from braising to roasting (seemed to be the M.O. with this cut). But the eggplant paste-crap (say it in French at it will sound good, i swear) was one of the coolest food things I’ve ever done. Delicious and fun to make. Anyone else do lamb out there?
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.
I was reading this book by Michael Pollan called “In Defense of Food” that a whole bunch of barefoot NPR-loving hippies were going on and on about a while back. Sorta kinda being one of them, I had to pick it up and give it a go. I was talking to my bud Ian about it the other day, and trying unsuccessfully to explain Pollan’s position articulately, so I promised to write up a longer (and presumably more well thought out) blog entry about it.
And boy, did I do a good job when it comes to the “longer” part. Read More
