wordless wednesday

This Sunday night, we can expect to see lots of canine hijinks over at Weekend Dog Blogging at Sweetnick's place. Head on over for head shots, tummy shots, jump shots and what nots!

how to store basil

Last night The Huz came home from work really late. Like bedtime late. He was tired and very hungry, and I scurried around to make him a nice toasted BLT, green beans, and summer squash, all dishes straight from our garden. Mind you, it's not a requirement in our house that I do the dinner preparation, especially when I've eaten some hours earlier than him, but when your honey comes home that pooped, you just do. Right?

So, long about 10:30, as he was reading the paper (his favorite form of unwinding), he called out to me that the weather section was predicting a rapid drop of temperature last night, perhaps even as low as the high 20's.

The high 20's? That is just so wrong on so many levels. Not least of which is that I'm not ready for the summer to come that abruptly to an end. But more immediately, because I have an absolute forest of basil out in the garden, awaiting its metamorphosis into glorious pesto. Even though I just harvested quite a bit for a friend who stopped by today, and have had other friends come by to take what they wanted, I've only made a couple of batches of pesto for myself so far, and this is the stuff that needs to last us through the winter.

Thus ensued a veritable Keystone Cops thing of running around getting scissors, bag, shoes, etc, with Simba barking excitedly. I turned on the big overhead halogen light that shines from the peak of our roof, and dashed out the door with Simba on my heels. Ten minutes later, in I came with a LOT of basil. Thank goodness our refrigerator was relatively empty.

I've found that the best way to refrigerate basil is on the stem, wrapped in a damp towel, all encased in a plastic bag. I've heard that you can stick it in a vase of water just like a flower, and I've tried that, but I didn't like dealing with the slimy stems when I finally did get to using it, and I did find there was some attrition if I didn't get to it right away. I find if I store it in the fridge, it will last for up to a week. The leaves will turn brown, but they won't dry out, and it still makes perfectly good pesto.

By the way, I make a concentrated form of pesto for freezing, omitting the cheese and most of the olive oil. You can find my recipehere.

P.S. It didn't get anywhere near freezing last night. Still lots of basil out there! Whew!

P.P.S. Cyndi over at Cookin' With Cyndi has tagged me for the "Five Things To Eat Before You Die" meme. Thank you, Cyndi! I promise I'll blog it as soon as I can. I'm having a surprisingly hard time coming up with the list, but it's gradually coming together.

That dish is named ...

Braised Red Radishes!

Recently I invited you all to guess what this was a picture of. You all came up with some very good guesses, and at least one very funny one. I can't believe it, but I think my almost-never-cooks sister was the closest, with her guess of jicama. Char! I think you have an inner cook in there somewhere!

Maybe you've heard me rave about Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop. It's one of the cookbooks that sits on top of my microwave because I use it so often. It's organized by vegetable, with between 5 and 10 recipes per vegetable, and there are lots of veggies in there that I've never cooked before. The way it's organized, it really helps you to figure out how you're going to use some vegetable that you bought on impulse at the farmer's market and have no clue to how to cook. And, of course, it's a great aid for those of us who are trying to get more vegetables into our diets.

Most of the recipes, maybe all of them, are for side dishes, although of course you can turn any of them into a main dish meal. I have so many pages turned down in this book, it really qualifies to be called dog-eared.

So there I was one day with a bunch of radishes and no desire to eat them raw. I went to the book and found:

• Braised Red Radishes
• Roasted Radishes with Soy and Sesame Seeds
• Radishes, Fennel, and Olives with Creamy Feta Cheese Spread
• Sweet-and-Sour Radishes
• Radish and Orange Salad with Paprika
• Braised Daikon with Ginger and Soy
• Shredded Daikon Salad with Sesame Seeds

I mean, who knew you could cook radishes in the first place, and then ... eight recipes???

The first one sounded good, with shallots and honey in the mix, so I gave it a try, and wow! It's amazing how much the pepperiness of the radishes is tamed by cooking them. Bishop expresses it best:

The flavor of cooked radishes is delicious. When braised, the white flesh turns light pink and the sharpness fades. What's left is pure radish flavor. This recipe is unexpectedly good.

Since then, the only other style I've tried is roasting them. I threw them in a pan with potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, rosemary, and olive oil, and they turned out great. Nobody ever guesses what they are, even when you leave them whole, because they lose their color and because it's just so unexpected.

Other favorite recipes from the book are braised red cabbage with onions, and broccoli with spicy balsamic dressing and black olives. Note to self: blog these recipes too!

There are 350 recipes in this book, and I haven't hit one yet that I didn't care for. Of course, as a confirmed bell pepper hater (Jack Bishop: "They are bitter and have a strong vegetal flavor." and please don't bother trying to persuade me the brighter colors are better!), I've tended to stay away from those recipes or I wouldn't be able to say that!

Anyway, without further ado, here is the recipe. Comments in italics are my suggestions or modifications of the original recipe.

Braised Red Radishes
From Vegetables Every Day
Serves 4 as a side dish

20 medium radishes, with leaves, stems and rootlets removed (about 1 pound when trimmed)
1 T unsalted butter
1 medium shallot, minced (substitute minced onion if you don't have shallots on hand)
½ cup chicken or vegetable stock
1 T honey
Salt
1 T minced fresh parsley leaves (optional, in my mind!)

1. Unless very small, halve the radishes lengthwise from stem to root end (as you can see from my picture, I julienned mine).
2. Reduce the stock by one half by simmering in a saucepan or the microwave.
3. Melt the butter in a large lidded saute pan. Add the shallot and saute over medium heat until softened, about 2 minutes. Add the radishes and stir-cook until well coated with butter, about 1 minute.
4. Add the stock and honey, cover, and cook until the radishes are tender but not soft, about 10 minutes (a bit less, in my experience. Keep an eye on them). Remove the cover, season with salt to taste, and simmer to allow any juices in the pan to reduce to a glaze, about 1 minute. Garnish with the parsley and serve immediately.

Well, being as this is Friday and Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging is coming up, I think I'll submit this recipe to her event. If you'd like to see more veggie and herb based recipes, hop on over to her website to see the recap of all the recipes submitted to her. And if you try this recipe, please leave a comment letting me know what you thought of it!

more theater!

Those of you who know me only through my blog haven't heard this yet. Those of you who know me in person are probably tired of hearing about it. "This" and "it" refer to the fact that I'm involved in another theatrical production! Yeah! This time with a real part! YEAH! With lines to memorize ... oh yeah ... :o)

It's with a small community theater in a town about half an hour away. Small is good ... I'll try this out without a large crowd and lots of expectations on me, not to mention without having the financial success of a show riding on my shoulders. Half an hour away is not so good at first blush, but it actually works out pretty well, as I've taped my scenes with big blanks where my lines go, so I'm a bit ahead of the curve in memorizing my lines.

So what's the show, you ask? It's the first play of Neil Simon's that ever made it to Broadway, and it was a smash hit. It's called "Come Blow Your Horn." The movie starred Frank Sinatra, Jill St. John, Lee J. Cobb, and Barbara Rush. It's a fun story about a swingin' bachelor (guess who) who deals with a demanding dad, a fledgling younger brother just leaving the nest, a bevy of sexy ladies who keep him hopping socially, and the one woman who's different and who's out to win his heart --- c'est moi. The girl who's different. Yup, that fits!

I'm having an absolute blast with rehearsals. My, oh my, am I ever a ham. And I'm enjoying playing a show from the days when the whole dynamic between men and women was "He chases her till she catches him." Guys were "after one thing and one thing only" and there was a double standard about sex and it was all a big game to try to figure out how a "girl" could get a "man" to commit to marriage. It makes for some very entertaining theater! Layer on top of that Neil Simon's wit, and a nice group of actors and director, and this is really a lot of fun. Even with nightly rehearsals a half an hour away from here.

Of course, it COULD mean I'll be posting a bit less frequently ... but I already know you guys, you're a patient lot! :o)

But I do know I owe you a post about the mystery dish, and I promise it will be up by tomorrow! Till then ...

wordless wednesday

This Sunday night, we can expect to see lots of canine hijinks over at Weekend Dog Blogging at Sweetnick's place. Head on over for head shots, tummy shots, jump shots and what nots!

mystery solved!

In my previous post, I wondered aloud about why my hit counters were suddenly showing dozens of hits on my February post about the Barefoot Contessa's Indonesian Ginger Chicken recipe. It turns out that on August 31 the Barefoot Contessa show on Food TV featured this recipe, but their website didn't have the recipe online. No wonder my hits pretty much exploded! It's already one of the most popular posts I've done (the other one is this one on London Broil, go figure), so when you google the recipe my post comes up on the first page. Bingo! Many thanks to "Anonymous," who responded to my puzzlement with the answer. I figured TV had to be in the answer somehow.

indonesian ginger chicken

In the past day, my hit counter has exploded with people searching for the recipe for Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Indonesian Ginger Chicken. I blogged about it back in February. If you came here looking for that recipe, will you leave me a note and tell me what's sparking the sudden interest? Was it featured on TV recently?

See my blog post, which includes the recipe and my comments on adjustments I chose to make, here.

GRAND Central

This post is an homage to Paz of The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz. She always is so generous with her pictures of "The City," and those of us who love Manhattan are refreshed in our love for it all over again. I had the pleasure of returning "home" to the city a week or so ago, accompanied by my beloved sister who had never been there, and it was just so great to be there and to share it with her!

Grand Central train station is completely gorgeous, inside and out. Not only that, there's a world class restaurant that you MUST EAT AT once in your lifetime, the Oyster Bar Restaurant. And no, it's not only an oyster bar, it's fabulous, fabulous foods of all kinds. Trust me. It's worth several trips.

We were so disappointed when we returned there on Sunday to find it closed. On a three-day trip to the city with a million restaurants, we'd have had two dinners at Oyster Bar if we could have. And I guess that's all I need to say about that.

make-ahead spinach-and-gruyere strata

This picture doesn't do this dish justice, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment "I ought to blog this" picture, if you know what I mean. I cooked for a largish group last weekend, and for breakfast one morning we had this strata, with fruit salad and frizzled ham and yogurt.

When I do these groups, I always share my recipe website URL, so that anyone who is interested in a recipe can go find it there. Often, I don't know if anyone ever does follow up, unless they tell me. In this case, though, a couple of people said this was their favorite dish of the weekend and they were going to go find the recipe and try it at home. So I knew it was a hit, hence, its appearance here!

The word strata means "layers," so technically you could call something like lasagne a strata. In cooking terms, though, it has come to mean some sort of layered bread dish, often with an egg-and-milk component to moisten the bread. In this case, the bread layers are filled with spinach, shallots, and Gruyere cheese (I often substitute Jarlsberg or swiss when my budget is tight.) The egg component has cream, reduced wine, and the ever-popular S&P to taste.

The whole thing is assembled the night before, covered and stuck in the fridge overnight ... a blessing for us morning-challenged types! You refrigerate it with another pan on top of it, weighted with whatever is handy so the bread layers are compressed, which much improves their texture. The next morning, take it out of the fridge and pop it in the oven for 45 minutes or so and voila! A most impressive morning feast.

Some tips, if you do decide to make it:

• Unless you know your crowd adores spinach, cut the recipe amount in half.
• Be careful when you pour in the egg to not completely fill the dish. When you put the weights on top of it, you don't want egg seeping out of the pan onto your refrigerator shelves. I know whereof I speak.
• The recipe calls for two layers, but you can use a smaller pan with taller sides and make it a beautiful three layers, as shown.
• If you want to go from an 8x8 pan to a 13x9, the recipe should be one-and-a-halved.
• The wine is critical! Otherwise it's just a fancy french toast.
• The recipe says to use 2 tablespoons of butter to butter all those slices of bread. I don't know what magic those folks are able to work with that little butter, but try as I might, I always end up using a little more.
• If you let it cool for 5 minutes before slicing, not only will it be easier to slice, but the puffy sides will have settled down to the height of the center and it will look better.

If you decide to make it, drop me a line and let me know what you think!

Hey, wait a minute! Without even trying, I just published an entry worthy of Sweetnicks' ARF 5-a-day! Woo hoo!

name that dish!

Can you guess what this is?

It's a divine side dish, I'll tell you that, and when you've had a chance to make your guesses I'll blog the recipe!

wordless wednesday

Way too cute

My pal Stew sent me a link to this picture, which got lots of attention when he posted it over on Flickr. Even in this smaller format, you can see why! Click on the picture to go to his Flickr site to see lots more cute goldens and other really great photography.

not-contest #5 recap

A belated recap of the recent caption not-contest. We had just a few entries; either my choice of pictures wasn't very inspiring this time, or it's the summer vacation doldrums for the contest. But the responses we did get were very fun! Thanks, everyone, for participating.

Here is our contest and the recap:

Can you help Simba express himself? He clearly has something very important on his mind ... what do you suppose he is muttering to himself? Or what will he say when he lifts his head and looks you right in the eye?

Eva engaged three-year-old Acadia's creative input and got the following:

He's eating leaves and grass and saying "Woof, woof!" to the sky.

"WOOF!"

Like that.

Barbara (Biscuit Girl) said...

"Ok, if I remember correctly, the bone I buried last month is four paces from the back porch, then ten paces east towards the trees. Aha, is this the spot?!"

Lynne said...

"Oh yeah, this smells like the perfect spot. I would look absolutely majestic lying here amongst the dandelions."

Stew said...

"Ooo a nice smelly spot to roll in!

Mom doesn't like it but she can't see me, right?"

(wrong, Simba, Mom's taking the picture, remember? Bad dog!)

And here's my entry:

"Gee, I'm not sure, but I don't think I'm doing too well at this bomb-sniffing class. I've been sniffing all day and haven't found a single one. Just that funny-looking piece of metal over there ... boring!"

Previous caption not-contests:
#4 roundup
#3 roundup
#2 roundup
#1 roundup

baby moose!

So ... I promised a story about a sweet baby moose and a loony Huz. I regret that there are no pictures to accompany this post, but I hope you will read it anyway. It's a doozy.

While my sis and her family were visiting, The Huz had to be away for a few days. On the day that he returned, I went to pick him up at an airport a little over an hour from here. We got back to our neighborhood about an hour before dusk, and we decided to take a slightly different route home, because there had been a lot of construction on our road and it was recently finished and we wanted to see how it looked. So there we were, driving up the back side of the hill, when The Huz carolled out "Moose!"

Sure enough, there on the other side of the road, about 100 feet ahead, was a very small moose, looking toward us with its ears straight up. Well, we've seen lots of wildlife on our hill, but we've never seen a moose there. I thought we never would, because they like bogs, which are few and far between on good-sized hills like the one we live on. So we were pretty excited, and I immediately slowed way down in hopes it wouldn't run away too far from our car. By the time we got near it, we were barely rolling, and I had already rolled down my window so we could see it well.

It was a really small moose. We figured it had been born this past spring, making it about 4 months old. So we looked all around to see if there was a protective mother moose nearby. We don't want to irritate a protective mama moose. She'd come right through the car to get to us if she thought we were a threat to her baby.

But we didn't see one. Closer inspection revealed that the little moose was a girl. She had withdrawn maybe 10 feet from the road, watching us carefully. We just sat there, directly opposite her and the tiny bog she had been feeding in. I spoke to her quietly, in a wee elfish voice, saying, "We won't hurt you, little girl" and other such foolishness, but surprisingly it did seem to soothe her. She started walking back toward the road. Closer. And closer. I began to get nervous. Was she going to come right up to the car?

But no, she stopped right at the edge of the two-lane road where, as it turns out, there was something particularly delicious to a moose. She kept watch on us, but eventually she began pawing at the ground and dropped her head to nip at whatever she unearthed.

Then I realized that my sis and fam needed to see this. "Call them!" I urged the Huz.

Without hesitation, he commenced a long, slow moose call! He was about 2 seconds into it when I realized what he was doing. "Not the moose, the house!" I was cracking UP. I reached for my phone, keeping my eye on the moose, and handed it to the Huz. Sheepishly, (moosishly?) he dialed the phone and told them where to find us.

Meantime, I spotted another car coming up behind us. We were stopped dead in the middle of our lane. I worried that they might just pass us without realizing what we were doing, which would totally spook the little girl before my sis had a chance to see her. But he also slowed way down and stopped behind us and, chin in hand, proceeded to admire the little moose, too.

She was very pretty, for a moose. She had big soft eyes, and her muzzle looked amazingly soft. I swear she looked me right in the eyes whenever her nose wasn't in the muck, which took her eyes below the level of the road.

Soon my sis and her family slowly rolled up in their car. I looked to see if they had thought to bring a camera, but they hadn't. We all sat there, three cars in the middle of a country road, watching this little moose as she calmly had her dinner before our admiring eyes. We watched her for a long time. For so long, in fact, that eventually we got tired of it and said a soft "Goodbye, little girl!" as we headed up the road. The fellow behind us followed us, and eventually so did my sister.

So now, "Call them!" is a catch-phrase at our house, invoking guffaws and head shakings. I asked him later to do a full moose call for me; I had no idea what he was going to come out with that day. What he produced started out with a deep "mmmmoooooo" as if he were calling a cow, followed by an "s"! "Mmmmmmooooooose!" he was going to say. What a nut.

I couldn't live without my ....

Cate over at Sweetnicks is hosting a fun blog event, asking us foodies to fill in the blank, "I couldn't live without my ___." Honestly, I don't know where she comes up with the great ideas for her blog events, but I always like them even if I can't always participate! If you're interested in participating too, check out her post explaining the event. The deadline is Aug 31.

We moved into our house nearly 15 years ago. It's the first time I've ever owned a house, and it's been a really interesting experience, ownership versus rentership. There are good and bad things about it, and I probably should muse over the experience someday. But, not to wander too far afield from the topic at hand, I will say that one of the good things is that it made me more willing to invest in really good kitchen equipment. Over time we've replaced all the major appliances in the kitchen, and if you've been reading my blog you know that we've just recently invested in new countertops, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

One thing that I had always wanted was a good stand mixer. There are some recipes that are really hard to make if one of your hands is tied up holding a hand mixer, and besides, stand mixers allow you to mix things that would leave most handheld electric mixers red-faced and smoking and cussing, bread doughs, for instance. So when The Huz gave me a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas, I was very excited. (No lingerie or perfume for this gal. The best present is something I can use in my kitchen!)

But I have to say, when I later got my Kitchenaid food processor, I truly found the appliance that I cannot live without. Well, OK, not literally. I'm not that materialistic. But I do find myself reaching for it constantly.

Perhaps my favorite use for it is to make scones. I whir the dry ingredients in it to mix them up, and then add the cold butter pieces. A few pulses, and I've got perfectly chopped butter, still cold as heck so it will leave nice little pockets in the dough. I turn the butter/flour mixture into a bowl to add the wet ingredients gently, and off we go to kneading, rolling, cutting and baking. Or freezing! Did you know you can freeze scone dough? Yep!

This past weekend I made some scones with golden raisins and a sweet wash of powdered sugar and milk for a largish group of folks. One gentleman commented that he'd never had such moist, light scones. It was so easy, thanks to my beloved food processor!

I use it to crush chocolate wafers for pie crusts. Grate cheese. Make pesto (using the small bowl that rests inside the large one). Puree soups (until I got my immersion blender, also a very handy tool!) Chop nuts, veggies, etc. I am constantly reaching for this thing. My mixer sits out on the counter because it's too bulky to be moved into a cabinet easily, but it's the food processor that I use the most.

By the way, I can heartily recommend my Kitchenaid, but I'm sure the Cuisinarts are also excellent, and there are probably other excellent brands. I do think it pays to invest in a heavy-duty food processor. In my experience, the less expensive ones tend to not do a good job with one or more of the tasks you care about.