What's the Chinese for sustainably fished?

It was pouring when I got out of my appointment in Chinatown on Saturday, so I decided to skip my usual farmer's market outing. There are many food stores between the subway and my appointment, so I stopped in to buy my favorite dried plums. I also stopped at the fish store. I could've bought tuna or salmon fillets, but I would've felt ridiculous asking if they were sustainably fished. There were some small silver fish and Bottom Feeders generally recommends eating fish low on the food chain, but I had no idea what kind they were or how to cook them. One of the guys there asked, in reasonable English, "Can I help you?" I asked, "What kind of fish are those small ones?" "Small fish." *head slap forehead*

I think I'll stick to my usual fishmonger, thanks. Read More......

Good thing I had extras

Ever start making something and realize the universe REALLY doesn't want you to do that? Everything was going wrong with my baking last night, from discovering that 3c of flour is a lot - like, most of a bag of flour lot - or breaking the yolk while separating the eggs or running out of vanilla extract while pouring it or discovering the second bag of brown sugar was hard as a rock. I still can't believe I didn't spill the vanilla extract while fumbling for the second bottle and the only thing that did spill was a dusting of flour.

I was baking chocolate chip cookies as a hostess gift for a friend, in large part because she and I had a long discussion about home baked cookies. I was horrified that she'd bought some generic brand of chocolate chip cookies - why not bake them, since they're so easy! Well, now I know: they are easy, but time consuming, between waiting for all 5 batches to come out of the oven (did I mention 3c of flour is a lot?) and washing the mixer. It would've been faster if I had an additional pair of baking sheets, but the end product, while filling the description of large chewy cookie, didn't thrill me enough to go through all that labor. I'm not convinced I could learn to make them so much better than preservative-laden store bought that I should go through the effort. Read More......

Good thing dried is better for the environment too

An accomplished home cook of my acquaintance once chided me for using canned beans, commenting that the dried ones taste so much better. I duly got two books on the topic, The Bean Bible by Aliza Green and The Bean Harvest Book by Ashley Miller. I read the latter cover-to-cover before deciding to try making "Curried Chickpeas".

Soaking and cooking the chickpeas was mostly an issue of logistics - I had to plan for three stages of cooking. Miller said soaking more than 4 hours was a waste of time, Green said that chickpeas require at least 10 hours and sometimes as much as 24. d'oh! After 6 hours of soaking on my counter, I began to hear periodic pinging from the glass bowl; I suspect the chickpeas were splitting. I cooked them after 7 hours of soaking, and it took less than an hour.

As it was, it took me so long to get around to the food cooking stage, the stock had gelled. The recipe called for black mustard seeds and turmeric, onions garlic and ginger, potatoes and tomatoes, i.e. all the things I expect to put in Indian food. Unfortunately, the result is bland and there's so very much of it. It's also too watery, but with that much potato, I don't want to add more carbs.

Oh well, at least it's healthy? Read More......

*shakes a fist at the universe*

... and then, this morning, I burnt through the butter container and it melted all over the toaster oven while my English muffin burnt.

I'm thinking this is the universe's way of telling me to eat takeout for the next two weeks. Read More......

How I Burnt My Foot Cooking

Whenever I start thinking I'm getting the hang of this cooking thing, the universe laughs at me and sends these little accidents.

I'm still not very good at making omelettes. For a while, I'd make them in a little pan, so I could put them in the toaster oven halfway through, but I was very hungry this morning and didn't think all the ingredients I'd chopped would fit, so I used my new skillet. It took a little jiggling to get the omelette to release. I always flip the eggs over the floor, so that whatever spills can be cleaned up easily, instead of hitting the flames or something. (I'm talented see.) I flipped - and lost almost half the omelette to the floor. More importantly, a superhot piece of tomato hit my bare foot, so I was hopping around yelping. Fortunately, the rest of the omelette stayed in the pan and finished cooking quickly.

The omelette is delicious. Good thing I made extra. Read More......