11 posts tagged “food”
As something of an apology to some of the people who have had to put up with my deadline crazies this month, I've been making sesame candy. And to make amends to you few dear readers for having fallen off the blogging horse again, I'll also tell you how to make it. If you have a candy thermometer (and if you do not, why in Christendom not?!*), this is a cinch to make, attractive, and delicious. Happy Holidays!
Ingredients
1 c black sesame seed
1 c white sesame seed (I replaced this partly with some pumpkin seed I had)
1 tbs anise seed (optional)
1/2 c honey
1/2 c brown sugar
3 drops vanilla flavoring
butter for pan
Equipment
large skillet
small saucepan
9x9" baking pan
cutting board
candy thermometer
Directions
Grease the baking pan with butter, and set aside. In the skillet, roast all seeds on medium for 5 minutes, or just until aromatic. Set aside.
In saucepan, combine honey, sugar, and vanilla. Either keep the candy thermometer in a cup of warm water, or put it in your saucepan now. While stirring, slowly bring to a boil. Check temperature with candy thermometer. When syrup hits 275 degrees, remove pan from heat and add the sesame seeds, stirring constantly. Turn mixture into the pan. Spread evenly. Let it cool 5 min, then flatten the surface with a spatula.
Let cool an additional 10 min, or until the mix is warm but firm, then use spatula to pop it out of the pan onto the cutting board. With a greased knife, cut into squares (or rectangles, or whatever). Let cool to room temperature.
Place into wax paper or candy cups to serve.
PROTIP: if you misjudge the cooling time for the candy and it gets too hard for you to cut (as I did D:), heat up some water in the skillet and place the baking pan in it to soften the sugar again.
*Earl Grey ftw.
...tastes like nothing. Therefore I am doctoring it with spices to give it something resembling flavor. Lots of cumin, some coriander, fenugreek, garlic cloves, mustard, dried habanero, rosemary and lemon peel. We'll see.
The second phase of the cheese experiment failed. Contaminated by aspergillis! Farewell, little experimental cheese log. We will miss your nutty tang.
I have more luck with a chevre base, so I think I'll stick with making crumbly cheese.
Most of my kombucha jars have mothers, yay! I should move the good ones to bigger jars soon. As is often the case, this makes me wish for something that may not exist: a large glass container with a wide lid on top and a non-metallic spigot on the bottom. It would be perfect for brewing and dispensing large batches of kombucha without needing to touch and potentially contaminate or damage the mother. My first thought was that something similar might exist in chemistry glassware, but it needs to be pretty big, and also foodsafe.
Other food news: Steven has personally challenged me to enter his cold-soup recipe contest. I kind of covet the pottery pieces he's been making this summer, so it would be awesome to win one as a prize. :) Like I don't have enough to do without entering more contests this year, eh?
There will be more drawings. Eventually.
One of the things I've been trying to do in the kitchen is find uses for tilapia, a freshwater, farmed fish. The pros and cons of this fish are well known: cheap and sustainable, but usually bland (WHY do they make sashimi out of this now? Frakking A). Like so many others, I've put it to use in fish tacos. Marinated tialpia filets in lime juice, mirin, salt, and a little curry powder, breaded and pan fried--yields something you can work with in the taco world (as always, I have no recipe for this, I just made it up). For toppings I had fresh salsa made out of pureed sweet red bell pepper and red onion; mache rosettes; chopped cilantro; sweet corn salsa from Whole Foods; and sour cream.
Man, I wish I'd picked up that Scharfenberger chocolate pudding while I was at Whole Paycheck today. I seem to never stop craving pudding anymore. I guess I'm dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb for pudding... (that song is NEVER going to leave my head now. Jeff MacDougall has my vote).
Salmon ceviche. It's a pity that this is a bad season for salmon; this would probably taste better with a bit more belly fat, of which the non-native salmon species tend to lack. Take a slab of good salmon, slice it thin, and marinate in the following mix: juice of one lemon and one orange each, 6 thin slices of lemon, dash of mirin, splash of vodka, 1/8 chopped onion, 1 clove garlic, 2 tsp chopped parsley, a pinch of salt, a pinch of fenugreek, and 2 tsp vanilla extract. Cover marinade container and chill in fridge for however long, I did something like 30 minutes. Could maybe use some mustard or black pepper next time.
Experimenting with slightly healthier and cheaper ways to get my spinach orzo salad fix. $9/lb at Whole Paycheck is a bit indulgent given that I never have leftovers after one sitting. Doing half spinach and half chard for the base, with a little pesto sauce mixed in. Also, half orzo and half quinoa, and Bragg's apple cider vinegar instead of balsamic.
The homemade cheese is standing in for feta. It's aging in interesting ways. Still kinda crumbly though not as much, very tart on the tongue, but finishes on the palate with that distinct sweet-earthy brie flavor. Guess the brie bugs are still hanging on, although a rind never formed. Heh, I have culture wars in my cheese! Next time I'm going to try a different brand of kefir and see if that makes a difference in the curd texture. For now, I'm adding a little brie rind to the ends of the cheese log just to see if it'll take.
Mental day today. At home, although I can't really afford to be. Which is why I'm cooking. I dunno, I'm starting to debate the merits of cooking. It takes up far too much time, and with the rising cost of food these days, it may be more economically sound for me to suck it up and buy my meals from the Whole Foods deli, spending the rest of the evening on drawings for my portfolio, with the objective of selling art in the not so distant future. Of course, on the other hand, the economy is such that it's going to be difficult to convince people to buy art at the moment, unless I can latch onto a sub-group or genre of art appreciators who are consistently willing to buy even in more difficult times.
I just feel like I've got to do something towards that end, especially with my health being iffy. It seems entirely possible at this point that I will end up leaving my current job sooner than I'd ideally planned for, and that it will be too soon for me to have my comic going by the time that happens.
Well, I tasted my log o' cheese the other day and it's very definitely not brie. It's super-sharp and still crumbly. I think it's not faring so well in the fridge and I may take it out to age at room temperature now that it's firmed up and all...
I've made myself some kefir too. I had some milk that was approaching its expiration date and I didn't want to drink it all because plain milk is kind of gross (I usually only use it for cooking these days). So I poured it into my two-thirds-empty kefir bottle, shook it up, and left it out on the counter for two days, shaking it and venting the gas from the bottle whenever I could remember to. Popped it back in the fridge for a few days, and I have a new batch of kefir again. I know that whole leaving milk out on the counter thing might sound gross, but you gotta remember that the reason kefir and yogurt were invented in the first place was to preserve milk back in the days before refrigeration. So long as you use all-natural kefir with live culture in it, you can totally do this, and in theory never actually need to buy bottled kefir again, only milk. I'll probably forget to replenish the bottle with milk sometime down the road and have to get a new one, but whatever.
Meanwhile in kombucha-land, I'm getting a good, floaty mat on two out of my four bottles. I have to clean out my old tea leaf jars and transfer everything into there so I can have one nice big mother culture. That will be tomorrow, I hope. Sometime this weekend anyhow.
Woo, I'm tired. I left work early today since my boss took a day off, hiked about 6 miles mostly along the shore, wrote down some good ideas for my script, and bought some ice cream on my way home. I've really got to do that more often. Now I'm going to go lie the heck down because my feet are tired.
Well, my cheese has taken an interesting turn. Apparently my improvised cheese press (by which I mean a contraption devised of a bamboo steamer, wax paper, cardboard, and a bucket of sea glass) did not press a sufficient amount of whey out of the curd and the resultant overly-moist cake fell to bits when I tried to dry it. I took a moment to taste it as I was gathering up the pieces and noticed that it is not particularly brie-ish. I've never heard of anyone making straight-up brie from kefir and I wonder if the microbe mix from the kefir is simply destined to turn this into a feta-like cheese (I've made kefir cheese with chevre starter before and it pretty much instantly turned into something feta-like, but I wasn't sure if the chevre or the kefir had more of a hand in it). So I mashed it back up, rolled it into a log with thyme, sage, and sesame seeds on the outside, wrapped it up and tossed it into the fridge to forget about for a while. If the brie culture wins, it'll hopefully rind over within the next two weeks. If the kefir culture wins, I'll have a sharp spreadable cheese. Either way, I win because I get cheese.
Oh, right! Also, I made two batches of kombucha starter out of loose leaf tea and a bottle and a half of GT's in hopes of growing my own mother colony. I know, I know, one more thing to carry on the move. But that thing is friggin' three bucks a bottle at Whole Paycheck! Can you blame me?
ETA: yes, this is how I procrastinate. Fox is very puzzled by how my procrastination is so productive. Usually blogging or cooking are what I do when I'm agitated or out of inspiration, and I think I've earned it this past week. I'll be hearing back from my doctor hopefully soon...
Oh yeah, I went there again. Slightly more palatable not-quite-food-pr0n shot.
Don't ask me why the kumquats are involved. Never ask why kumquats are involved.
And with what was left of my energy, I spent it on preparing soup with homemade egg noodles and canned alphabet pasta.
Yeah, I went there. I went right there and I came all the way back. :) I apologize for the ugly flash; I'd redo the picture but my camera battery died right after I took this. *sigh*
