Food

Takikomi Gohan

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Experiments in the kitchen of late have generally revolved around Japanese food and techniques, specifically applications for dashi broth and miso paste.

Tonight’s dinner plan was pretty much a take on takikomi gohan, based on wondering what rice cooked in dashi would taste like. Honestly, I can say that there is only one problem with this entire concept—it smells awesome while the rice is cooking!

Like really, not only was the food delicious and uncomplicated to make…but it felt like driving with delicious food riding shotgun,you know where it smells so good that it’s almost a form of torture having to wait for it 😂.

Yes, I think it’s safe to say that the experiment was yummy 😋

The simple pleasures of coffee

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Today, I decided on a pleasure I haven’t been partaking of lately: freshly ground coffee. For the last few months, I’ve mainly ran the pour over with pre-ground coffee. One of the things I like about my Chemex, is I can actually use regular ol’ ground coffee out of the store and still get decent results. Grinding is optional, unlike my French press.

This morning on the other hand: beans, grinder, and the sweet, sweet joy of fresh coffee. Also, a Peruvian blend that I’ve never tried before 😀.

I personally find it calming to grind and brew coffee, but I also find that I so rarely do since swapping from the French press to the pour over as my main brewing method. The key reason that I swapped over was the convenience of the pour-over’s filters, it’s a lot easier than making sure none of the grounds go down the drain. Clean up is a breeze. Yet, ironically I also consider cleaning the coffee grinder part of the personal therapy of making coffee. It’s just a darn inconvenient part, when you really want some coffee in the morning, lol.

With a little help from my kitchen tools

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An idea occurred to me last night that I decided to try this morning: omelet in muffins.

I’m reminded of my mother telling me as a kid that her father managed to destroy several toasters trying to make homemade McMuffins when they came out in the early 1970s. Never really understood how you would do that, short of putting runny egg in the toaster. In my case, I simply put two whipped eggs in a greased tamagoyaki pan and only folded it over in half to finish before cutting that in half. Perhaps this is ironic considering that my grandfather was in the pacific theater during WWII, lol.

One muffin was made with a thick slice of snack-cheddar so that it would melt just enough to get soft and spongy enough to fill the crevices of the muffin and omelette, and the other with the available sandwich cheese at hand (a thin slice of Swiss). Kinda made me wish that I had bothered to grab some ham or pastrami while I was at it, but alas I did not.

Since I’ve been watching the sodium and cholesterol intake with my blood pressure, I’ve tried to avoid the temptation to take a Drive-Thru breakfast on the way to work over this past year. So I found this a rather nice breakfast, if rather large for me. Between the lack of ham and my disinclination to salt the shit out of my food, each probably represents half the sodium content of one McMuffin.

Off to a Good Start

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Despite having very little desire to leave the warm comforts of bed, I managed to open my eyes, get cleaned up, put the laundry on, and head downstairs and begin making breakfast. Next experiment was definitely a success: bacon, egg, cheese, spring onion, and steamed sweet potatoes wrapped up in a burrito. As an experiment, I opted to try a friend’s method of wrapping around the strip of bacon and skip crumbling it into the scramble; and enjoyed the extra slices on the side.

Of course, I wasn’t smart enough to put the coffee on between the bacon and eggs, but alas it means more coffee for right now! Plus as I sit down to coffee, the dryer is now loaded and it will certainly be time for another cup by the time I have to fold laundry.

For me, it’s kind of a rare morning. I almost never buy bacon, so it’s not something that I consume a lot of, but at 105mg a slice the lower sodium stuff was too tempting to pass up. Between the blood pressure of late, and the age old problem of using it all before it goes to waste, I don’t think I’ve actually bought bacon in several years, but it was worth it 😋 even if I shouldn’t make a habit of it.

A roux makes it better

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One of the banes of my cooking experience has always been macaroni and cheese. It’s something that I’ve never been able to make the way that my mother did, and generally don’t make because I suck at it.

In Googling recipes, I encountered an interesting idea for one for a baked macaroni and cheese: using a roux as the foundation of the cheese sauce. That’s definitely nothing like how my mother used to make it, and we didn’t bake it either. I didn’t opt to try the recipe, nor bake it, but I wanted to try the concept. Because it makes sense even if it’s not how I was taught.

Result? Well, a light roux of salted butter and flour meets milk and cheese equals the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever made. Ordinarily, I always find the results lacking or calling for lethal doses when I try to replicate my mother’s methods. Well, a roux isn’t how she did it but it sure makes for a good meal 😋

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One of the past year’s many changes, has seen my shifting from my cast irons to a pair of slightly more conventional skillets. 10″ and 12″ CAROTEs with similar finish to the tamagoyaki pan I’ve enjoyed using, have quite literally become my goto cookware.

A funny side effect, oddly enough is that I’m more inclined to make a roux when it’s convenient. E.g., I might toss a batch of stir fry meat in the skillet, set aside, and then reach for the butter and flour. Combined with the greater use of beef stock in my cooking, this seems to make for a good sauce to cook some macaroni and accompaniments in, and then just reduce until delicious and saucy.

Working off the theory that the various non-stick skillets my mother favored lasted considerably past their recommended service lives, I figure however well the granite style coating lasts, I will have gotten my money’s worth many years before they need replacement. Plus, there is the benefit that when I really need a larger skillet, these fuckers are light enough to one hand the 12″ skillet just fine. As opposed to the hefty weight of the cast irons and risk of making like Barf with a flattened foot largely makes Monstro unwieldy as a 12″ skillet, even with two hands. I love the cast iron, but in practice Geppetto the 10″ is the largest cast-iron that’s practical. Which meant that as a side affect, many times I’ve ended up using my stainless steel pots where a skillet would be more convenient, because my favorite skillets are so damn heavy, lol.

Floating day

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Today has been what I would call a “Floating day”, or a day in which nothing and everything got done because I floated between various things rather than tunnel visioned on a specific activity.

This morning saw me finally setting up my nano leaf light panels near the reading nook, which amounts to about half of my hexagon shaped panels. It remains to be seen if they will stay up, or come down, but as long as the drywall and the paint is fine then I’ll be happy enough. The command tabs are probably stronger than the vendor’s original sticky pads.

Insert a bit of zombie slaying and various odds and ends, like cursing giving into double-points weekend on my Kindle reading list, and it wasn’t a bad afternoon either. But the real plan was to take out some meat to warm up and read for a bit. A nice sit, a nice read, and the panels are still on the wall 😅

For dinner, I decided to make something that I haven’t made in ages: Salisbury steak. In the great debate of sides, I ended up making home mashed potatoes and roast broccoli because the potatoes need using up and I’ve got plenty of both. Augmenting this plan was sautéing some onions to set aside, and then making a pan sauce to finish the meat in. Sadly, in my aim to avoid leftover sauce it reduced to nothing by the time the meat was finished, but the Salisbury steak came out perfecto 😘. Nice crusting on the outside and tender on the inside.

Follow it up with a bit of wine while I finish cleaning the kitchen, and I’m inclined to call it a success just the same. All in all, I’ve gotten “Nothing” done as it were but “Plenty” got done, so I’m still contented. More importantly, with it being about -9 C outside this morning: I stayed the fuck in doors!

Dinner managed

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One weekend trend that I have noticed is that dinner either becomes something done early and more involved or done late and more simply, most often this collates to whether or not I spend too much time at my desk (^_^).

Coming across a one pot beefaroni recipe, I decided to try a curious idea from this: using stock in the reduction. In my case, I went with my own way of making beefaroni which is to say a lot more pasta, heavily seasoned to my tastes, etc. But at the point where I would normally add a jar of pasta sauce, I threw in a cup of unsalted beef stock. And I have to say this made for a freaking delicious result.

Since encountering unsalted soup stocks, I’ve been trying to incorporate more of that into my cooking. Mostly, I’ve not used a lot of stock in my own cooking, as most I’ve previously encountered can be summarized as “Salt” and that’s not good for my blood pressure at this point. Plus, as noted previously, I don’t tend to make soups and stews all that often.

In general, I find one-pot style beefaroni makes it harder to get the consistency of the macaroni right compared to the two pot approach, or just setting aside partially cooked macaroni in a collendar. But the beef stock definitely was an improvement over the sauce and seasoning approach alone. I’m not quite sure if the two pot approach would give enough time to reduce enough stock to have the same effect without overcooking the macaroni, but I can’t say that I really mind one less pot to wash either. In any case, I’m calling this experiment a success.

Plus the strawberries and cream for dessert didn’t hurt my dinner plans any either 😀

Ahh, it’s been a decent day

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Saturday’s walk, rather wiped me out to the point that I could barely sleep from the pain in my feet. It wasn’t so bad afterwards but by the end of the day, it wasn’t pretty. About three weeks ago, I noticed that my boots are worn enough that the right outsole has cracked all the way through, such that you can flex it enough to stick fingers through to the sock if you try 😲. For me, that’s actually not so bad, given my history with footwear from before I started to wear boots, but still means new ones are overdue.

In retrospect, going for a 2.5 km walk in the park was probably not the brightest idea, even if my feet haven’t been paining me as part of my regular days. But just the same, after spending Sunday trying to actively stay off my feet to recover, I think buying new boots has gone from “Yeah, I should plan on that” status to “Do I want to do that over vacation” status. Soaking my feet also made a good opportunity to catch up on my reading for the weekend.

Today, on the positive side, I’ve felt well enough to be mostly unencumbered. Sore enough that I wouldn’t be inclined to go for a long walk, but normal enough not to be bothered. To the point that farting around the computer, I didn’t have any problems making routine trips downstairs to refill my water, rather than keeping a canteen handy.

Taking advantage of the day off, I decided to start on early on dinner plans that I drafted yesterday. Mirepoix (carrots, celery, onions), a few leftover mushrooms, and some ground sausage made in the fashion of beef stew using stock and seasonings. I had bought the celery planning on such a meal, but had yet to go for it. Figured, best do it while the carrots and onions were still good.

While such a stew can be accelerated by preparing the vegetables the night ahead, simmering soups and stews aren’t an expeditious cooking experience. Which means more time spent standing in the kitchen, lol.

French Onion Soup Grantiee

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Standing in Publix, noticing that there is surprisingly unsalted broth and stock available as opposed to the lethal dose of sodium, I decided to take a shot at a recipe I came across a few days ago.

As a young boy, there were two staples of my weekends. One was watching Loony Toons in the afternoon because that’s all there was for cartoons. The other, was laying out on the living room floor playing with my toys as my mother watched her cooking shows on TV. There were usually three different programs on that she would watch featuring different chefs.

One of the chefs in those cooking shows was none other than Jacques Pepin. Imagine my great surprise, scrolling across YouTube when one of the suggested videos just happened to feature him! Now a much older man, hey, even I have some grey hairs now ^_^, but seems that he is still cooking :).

Coincidentally, I’ve never had much talent for soups and stews. My mother could make a good stew that would coat your insides. Mine on the other hand, often fall flat and I rarely make soups. Well, thanks to Jacques Pepin, I can now say that I’ve cooked at least one soup that I thoroughly enjoyed 🤤.