exhausted (pork v)

i am exhausted.  i have been sleeping poorly all week, probably from attempting to wake up well before my body really wants me to.  so then i'm half asleep for anywhere from half an hour to three hours, and i'm sure it's messing up my sleep cycle.  i should really learn to leave well enough alone.

but more to the point, i was going to make the hainanese chicken recipe from mark bittman's column last week, but decided against it because it would take too long.  of course, i still ended up cooking for a good three hours or so, roasting pork v.  nothing too fancy, just regular dinnertime fare.  

i'm being facetious.  it's true that it wasn't that fancy, but it also wasn't regular dinnertime food.  it was friday night relaxation cooking: roast pork tenderloin stuffed with sage and coriander seeds, and wrapped in bacon; roasted potatoes; sauteed spinach; and pumpkin pie.  this sounds a lot more involved than it was, really, and i've made all of these things before so that's where it's not so fancy.  nothing experimental, nothing i hadn't tried before, because i really just didn't feel like i had that much energy to expend.  the biggest flourish of the meal was the pumpkin pie, which i decided to make as i was lying on my bed working during the day, since it was cold and rainy outside.  

i love fall and winter because they're the cold months, and i actually prefer the comfort factor of cold-weather foods to the abundance of produce you get in the summer.  i mean, i like a real tomato just like all of the other food snobs out there, but it's just not as good as getting home when it's really cold outside and having something warm to eat or drink.  winter is full of hearty foods - stews and mashes, things simmered for a long time over low heat, pies and roasted things - and the weather forces everyone to huddle around in blankets on the couch.  the smell of fall makes you think of pumpkin pie, and all is good in the world.  i guess that since the fall and winter are occupied so squarely with thanksgiving and christmas that i associate them more closely with family and camaraderie, for lack of a better word, than i do the spring or summer.

a couple of notes on the other stuff - the pork was cooked just correctly, which was a surprise because my meat thermometer has gone missing (which is a real problem because it also goes high enough to candy-making temperatures) and i didn't know any other way to test if it was done.  i did the bacon-wrapped pork loin again, but instead of just putting sage under the crust, i also put a layer of sage inside it, with coriander seeds.  so i think that the middle layer is definitely a good thing, but in general i actually prefer pork sirloin to pork tenderloin, because it's just more savory.  i discovered coriander seeds when i made a slow-cooked pork shoulder with just onions, wine, and coriander seeds, and i like them with pork a lot; however, they weren't quite as good with pork tenderloin, probably because they need a longer cooking time.  last but not least - well, actually it was the least good thing - the spinach was cooked correctly, until it was just wilted enough, but i accidentally oversalted it because i wasn't paying enough attention.

so this was an informal type of thing, my usual friday cooking when i have time for it.  i really like the idea of making it a regular part of my schedule, where whoever is free just comes over on a given week, and have whatever i'm making.  kind of like a rotating supper club, because i need to cook, but then i also need people to eat what i've made.  the notion that people would just drop by is also inexplicably attractive; it's like we've reached that level of neighborliness that they know they can just come by.  it's like having all of your friends living not necessarily with you, but in the same general area.  the idea of people coming over and that there would be hot chocolate or tea-infused apple cider on the stove for them?  somehow very appealing.

so, to keep track, these are the things that remain on my food list to do when i'm feeling more adventurous:

1. puff pastry -> palmiers

2. successful popsicles

3. bacon-pear bread from this month's bon appetit

4. that hainanese chicken!  google it - it sounds really good

5. traditional steamed english puddings, like a sticky toffee pudding

6. winter pies: pumpkin, chocolate walnut, just any kind of wintertime pie.  but especially pumpkin pie.

there are more things on this list, but i've forgotten them.  as usual.

sandwich brunch I

just to start with an aside: i added a pork tenderloin (one of the big ones, you know, ~2' long or so) to the collection of frozen meats in the freezer. to date, i have: 1 pork tenderloin, in quarters; 1 lb bacon; 1 large pkg chicken thighs; 1 chicken. probably plus some miscellaneous things. in case it wasn't clear before, i am one of those people with a compulsive need to stock up on things. i'm that girl who buys tons of chipboard so she has it when utrecht is closed or it's raining; that girl who signs up for lasercutter time all the way into december when it's only september. hey, i just like to be prepared.

anyway, for those who insist on logic, we'll pretend that the above digression is really a preface, albeit one totally unrelated to what will now follow. the point of this post, as its title suggests, is really a discussion of this past sunday's sandwich brunch. when i sent out the invitation i wanted to say something witty, or at least use someone else's witticisms - for a tea party, for example, i usually use something from "the importance of being earnest," which has great lines about muffins. however, i forgot, and so the invitation was rather plain. i suppose there's always next time. i actually had great plans for this brunch; instead of my usual text-only invitation, i was going to make a poster with tons of little icons of iconic sandwiches. but i frittered away the summer, so i didn't have time in the end. not quite on top of things this time, unfortunately.

however, the brunch itself was really fun! i love themed brunches and potlucks, goodness knows why; this one is a good idea for many reasons.

1: creativity. i do think that for the less food-inclined, making a sandwich is more fun and less daunting than trying to make your mother's home fries for a more traditional brunch.

2: quantities of food. you know how, when you have potlucks, you always end up with too much food? and then it's not clear whether the proper etiquette is to accept all of the leftovers, as the hostess; you don't want to step on anybody's toes but it's impossible to tell if your guests want you to keep what's left, or whether they want it for later to snack on, and if everybody is too polite/passive aggressive, then you've got a problem. the sandwich brunch - everybody brought 3ish sandwiches, which we cut up into smaller pieces - is a pretty effective way to moderate how much food you end up with, while still ending up stuffed as is a requirement for brunches.

3: utility associated with eating small things. i feel that you can never underestimate how much pleasure you gain from how you eat, in addition to what you are eating. there's a reason why people like finger foods so much; you get to eat a lot of different things without eating too much, and somewhat perversely, it's easier to eat more because you don't notice all the little things that you eat over the course of a few hours. grazing on small things is also nice and informal. plus grazing is, for me at least, a very pleasing way to think about eating.

and in case you're wondering what we had, this is the list:

roast chicken/pear/dill-ricotta spread
pastrami sandwiches from zaftig's
pb+j with yogurt
openfaced smoked salmon with some sort of spread and dill
smoked salmon and grape tomatoes on triscuits
tuna melt

and for dessert, ice cream sandwiches - i made a brownie sheet and a blondie sheet for the outsides, as well as these dense chocolate cookies from foodbeam that i cut in half to fill with ice cream.  kind of like a solid, chocolate profiterole.  ice cream was inexplicably cheap at star market, so i bought a package of blackberry, one of fenway fudge, and one of peanut butter nation.  for those not in the boston area, the latter two are hood brand, red sox-themed flavors.  peanut butter nation is vanilla ice cream with semi-solid fudge ripple and little peanut-butter-filled chocolate socks, and is my favorite commercially produced ice cream besides vanilla/chocolate.  somehow none of the cookie bases froze all the way through, and were still chewy out of the freezer; i know this pretty well because i've been eating them all week.  the best combo, by the way, was the brownie sheet base with the blackberry ice cream, which turned out to be surprisingly good and non-artificial tasting.

so there you have it - sandwich brunch no. 1, hopefully to be followed by no. 2 when it gets colder - and it'll be soup and a sandwich, i think. 

tovolo, my love

just some quick reportage on some recent and ongoing experiments - last-day-at-the-office cupcakes and my newly acquired popsicle molds (see awesome image to the left).

so my departing gift to the office wasn't really an experiment - after all, this is the third time i've made them - but i've continued to finetune the recipe, or at least the logistics of making them.  i had been planning to make them for quite some time because i knew people would like them, but had been rather leery of doing so because of the problem of transport.  i mean, i can make lots of cupcakes no problem, but how do you transport them after that?  because the container has to be portable, not too big because there's not much space in the kitchen, closed sufficiently so the cupcakes don't dry out, etc.  and it's a bonus if the container fits into the fridge too, so there's no need to build a box after storing them somewhere else overnight.

i'm happy to say that i've got the production time down to about 3 1/2 hours, from 6 hours the last time i made these.  unfortunately, some of the increased efficiency is due to the fact that i almost destroyed the ganache - i heated the cream much too fast, and as a result the chocolate almost seized.  it didn't quite seize, but it solidified to spreadable consistency really fast (about 5 minutes instead of 45) - too fast!  also, the texture tasted fine, but looked a little funky.  and i was hoping people wouldn't notice that on the cupcakes that were refrigerated, the ganache had actually broken (separated) a little bit.  how embarrassing!  the last time that i made these, the ganache was beautiful as ganache is.  

fortunately, these cupcakes are a surefire showstopper, so my technique issues didn't detract from flavor.  i like the cake recipe i use for these in particular, partly because they have a nice deep chocolatey taste from the beer and cocoa powder, and partly because they develop a bit of sticky crustiness from the high sugar content.  this time, i didn't have any bailey's and didn't feel like buying any just for this one thing, but it turned out that unflavored whipped cream is just as good as the real deal.

and, logistics.  i ended up refrigerating the ones that had to be refrigerated - namely, the ones with the whipped cream filling.  i left some plain and some filled with marmalade, to accommodate differing cupcake preferences.  so in the morning, i made stacking trays out of some cardboard boxes i had from pots i bought for the summer - just cut them in half horizontally, tape as needed, and stack.  i taped them all together to stabilize the whole deal, and carted them off to work.  actually, it was easy to build the box - a lot easier than i expected it would be - but harder to carry the box.  i didn't have the foresight to build something that would fit into the bag i had from whole foods - one of the recycled plastic ones that's kind of stiff.  the bag didn't really have enough give for me to hold the bag by its straps, so i ended up putting the box into the bag sideways and holding the bag in my arms the whole way to work.  slightly inconvenient, but what can you do.

so that was then, and this is now; or rather, the popsicles are now.  i went to pick up the knife i had sharpened at kitchen arts (it cuts like a dream - thanks, kitchen arts!) and these popsicle molds caught my eye.  i've been thinking about popsicle molds in the back of my mind for a while, and these were pretty inexpensive - $10 for a set of 6 - so i went ahead and indulged myself.  i currently have a test batch of peach iced tea-flavored pops in the freezer, to see how much i can fill the molds and how they freeze and unmold.  they seem pretty great - i also have ice cream sandwich molds by this brand that work well, but popsicles are much easier to make than ice cream sandwiches, so i think the molds will see some good use.  i think the future of the molds include yogurt pops and some sort of attempt at fudgsicles, at the very least.

hot and crusty

r is leaving for australia for three months, so we had brunch on labor day.  assuming that most places would be closed, i made popovers.  i can't recall ever having made them successfully before, so this time i wanted to get them right.

of course, it turns out that it's really not that hard to get them right; i suppose i was on crack or something when i made them last.  these popovers were so attractive that i don't quite know what went wrong the first few times.  all you do is mix the ingredients together, pour the batter in the pan, and let the eggs do their thing in a rather hot oven.  i think the trick is to leave them in the oven long enough to get crispy and brown on the outside, as you can see is what happened here.  

popovers are good on their own - i mean, you can't really go wrong with eggs, butter, flour, and milk - but i made scrambled eggs to go with them for the savory, and whipped cream and cherry preserves for the sweet.  the scrambled eggs were good, but i think i prefer the cherry preserves; at any rate, i think that the wetness of the jam and whipped cream is a better complement for the crustiness of the popover than the scrambled eggs.  i think shredded rotisserie chicken would be good as a savory filling, but that might just be me and my current obsession with rotisserie chickens.  

oddly enough, i made the last batch of popovers after the batter had been sitting for several hours (possible health risk, i suppose, bacteria-wise, but given that the popovers bake for 15 minutes at 450F and longer at 350F, i figured we'd kill all the bad stuff off) and that was the best batch.  the popovers rose higher and had more consistently hollow interiors - a couple of the previous ones were a bit solid in the middle.  the best ones are the ones that turn over while they're cooking; i don't know why it happens, but they curl and climb the sides of the pan and produce mutant popovers that are impossibly tall.  (these popovers were already huge because i made them in a huge-muffin tin.)

so there you have it: popovers aren't that hard to make.  just be sure that you don't curdle the eggs with butter that's too hot.

popovers

adapted from the joy

1c flour

1/2t salt

2 eggs, room temp

1 1/4c whole milk, room temp

1T butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm

1. it's important that the ingredients are all at room temp for maximum volume, so don't skip that step.  grease your muffin tin - i just melted some butter and brushed it on with a pastry brush.  preheat the oven to 450F.

2. combine the flour and salt in a bowl.  in another bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk, then drizzle in the butter slowly, while continuing to whisk.  this is to avoid curdling the eggs with the butter, which is hotter than the egg-milk mixture.

3. add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together.  don't overmix - a little lumpiness is fine.

4. fill each cup in the tin 2/3 to 3/4 full; if any cups are empty, fill them a third full with water.  bake in the middle of the oven at 450F for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350F and continue baking until the popovers are nicely browned, about 20-25 minutes.  don't open the oven until the last five minutes or so, lest your popovers deflate.

5. take the popovers out of the cups and puncture the sides with a sharp knife, to let the steam escape.  you can recrisp these in the oven if you've let them sit for a while, but you should really eat them as soon as they're out of the oven.

[makes 6 large popovers or 12 cupcake/muffin-size popovers]

no rest for the weary

sometime towards the end of last week, i got an email titled "corn is 4 for a dollar."  and right away i knew that this was an email i would like, because who doesn't like emails about food?  true, i was a little curious because after all, at the height of corn season (still continuing now!) it's usually more like 12 for a dollar at star market.  turns out mary had bought corn at whole foods because it looked and tasted that good, and so we made dinner.

that's dinner cooking away on the stove.  we met at star market in porter square, bought groceries, then walked back to mary's.  i had brought arborio rice with me, so we (ok, i) decided that we were going to have risotto with corn.  i dunno, people, i was a little scattered because i'd just gotten back that afternoon, so i didn't have any grand ideas.  however, while we were at star we passed by the rotisserie chickens.  c has been waxing poetic about rotisserie chickens that sit in the heating pans all day, touting their flavor and texture.  so we bought 1.5 rotisserie chickens to go into the risotto.  and as you can see in the photo, there is a pot o' chicken stock behind the risotto that holds water, chicken better-than-bouillon, and rotisserie chicken bones, and a good hunk of thyme.  as i have recently become a huge fan of warm risotto with a crunchy, raw-veg "relish," we made one with tomatoes, corn, and cilantro, with a very light balsamic vinaigrette dressing, to go with the risotto.  we also added some of the corn into the risotto to get cooked, along with a bunch of frozen peas.

there's blanched broccoli in the back left, for nutritional value.  actually, i'm pretty sure most of the nutritional value disappears into the cooking water because a lot of vitamins are water soluble, so i don't know how much benefit you get from blanched broccoli.  personally, not a fan, i guess because i'm so used to my mother's sauteed broccoli, which she does with garlic and ginger, and which we would have at least once a week.  

and, in the front is the cast iron pan with sugar and peaches caramelizing for the lavender-scented peach upside-down cornmeal cake that we had for dessert.  i think more peaches next time, but it was surprisingly good for such an odd combination of flavors.  

it was rather nice to come back and relax while cooking; i fell right back into the communal cooking patterns that are so ingrained among all of my lmf friends.  i think it's enough of a unique arrangement that i really miss the post-lmf cooking patterns we adapt to after we graduate; we prefer cooking in/for groups, and can really cook together very comfortably because we're all so used to cooking with each other.  that's it for this.