Saturday our trip to Sauvie's Island for pumpkins was rained out so Ben and I went to look at lighting fixtures. We took the money we'd stashed from the U-Price-It garage sale we had back in August and headed out. New lighting in the dining room has been on my wish list for a long time. Before the early nights of autumn turn the room into a cave I swore we'd have more light to eat by. I do love candles and the white Christmas lights around the window and a blazing fire in the wood stove, but our dining room is so dark you really can't see the food on your plate well enough to know what you're eating. There's no central light in the middle of the room over the table. We used to have one of those halogen floor lamps but I was afraid to plug it in when it started smoking recently.
After traveling to three different lighting stores we decided the light we both liked best was at Schoolhouse Electric and that we'd need at least three more garage sales with better stuff to sell in order to afford it. We stopped by Uncle Paul's Produce on the way home. I bought 3 pumpkins and a Brussel sprout tree--that was the best deal of the day. The tree was $2.49 and loaded with about 2 pounds of Brussels. That night for dinner we had roasted Brussel sprouts and mushroom risotto. At the Asian market you can buy those big bags of dried shitake mushrooms. When I hydrate them I save the broth to use as a base with onions, shallots, garlic and a bay leaf from our bay tree. The taste of fresh bay is soooooo much more wonderous than those tired dried up leaves you get at the store. After all the broth veggies are cooking away I throw in half a bottle of white wine, the mushroom broth and I keep it on the simmer while I start the risotto. On the right kind of day--as was Saturday--nothing is more comforting than standing in your socks in front of the stove listening to Luciana Souza while stirring a wide and shallow (sounds like some boy's I've known) pan of arborio rice (1 cup) in a slab of butter, adding the mushrooms (I'm poor so I used about a pound total of chopped Crimini and the hydrated shitake chopped roughly). The trick is to just relax and stir all on the lazy side. After the rice is coated with the butter and the rice is becoming slightly colored I dump in a goodly glass of the same white wine I used for the broth. This time it was Sauvignon Blanc. Let the wine evaporate and then start adding the mushroom broth that's simmering on the next burner. Everytime the broth evaporates add a bit more. Don't add too much at the same time and keep stirring. All told it takes about forty minutes start to finish. When the rice is tender stir in a good dollop of butter, some parm (half a cuppish) and taste for salt. It's so full of creamy goodness all you need is a glass of wine, some of those Brussels and later on a good, hot bath. Have your kitchen helper do the dishes--the other good thing about risotto is only two pans to clean!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Recent Discoveries/Things to Do With Green Tomatoes
Okay, so I've been Missing in Action for three months. Here's a short list of my new best discoveries:
Zout removes most grease stains. These grease stains are on almost all my clothes because I am a messy cook and an even messier eater. Even the ones that have baked in by repeated washing and drying.
The Rack has angora/wool socks for 4.98 a pair.
The Smart Wool ski socks make excellent kneehighs and stay up even on girls with thick calves--they are at The Rack for 9.98--but they're wool you can wash them and they're warm and they rock!
Check out Carla Bruni--hot French-chick singer. Good cooking music and you don't have to feel bad for not knowing the lyrics because THEY'RE IN FRENCH!
Best book I've read in a bit--"The Gathering" by Anne Enright--won the 2007 Man Booker prize. It's dark but funny in spots and you got to love the whole Irish thing. It's the story of a woman going home to attend her brother's funeral. The Hegarty's have a ridiculouly large Irish Catholic family and plenty of skeletons in every blessed closet starting with their Grandmother Ada. Our narrator is trying to piece together what the truth of her family might be. An excerpt: "The British, I decide, only bury people when they are so dead, you need another word for it. The British wait so long for a funeral that people gather not so much to mourn, as to complain that the corpse is till hanging around. There is a queue, they say on the phone (the British love a queue)."
"Heat" by Bill Buford. The book on CD from our local library is great to listen to while I make dinner. The actor reading the book is a little annoying at first, but the story itself about an aspiring cook who spends a year working for Mario Batteli (?) first as a kitchen slave all the way up to sous chef is funny. I also heartily recommend Sydney Portier's "Measure of a Man" read by him--now there's a voice I can listen to no matter what he's saying.
The other thing that's on my list are GREEN TOMATOES! Last weekend I pulled two of my tomato plants--the ones with plenty of green fruit left on the vine. I know the tomatoes would ripen if I left them alone (you can pull the whole plant and hang it upside down in a cool dark place and the tomatoes will ripen slowly giving you ripe fruit all the way into December) but what I want are GREEN tomatoes. Last year I experimented with green tomato chutney and it was so delicious I decided that this year I would plan for it so I grew two of my plants in a spot that didn't get as much sun and I had a ton of greenies. I used the basic chutney recipe from the Joy but it wasn't spicy enough for my jaded buds. Here's what I did:
Chop up 5 cups of green tomatoes, 1 onion, 3-5 cloves of garlic, 2 jalapeno peppers, 1/2 cup candied ginger, 2 red peppers. Put them in a big old pot with 2 cups brown sugar, 2 cups apple cider vinegar and a cup of golden raisins. Bring to a low boil and cook for about 2 hours until the juice is syrupy. You're going to want to open the windows--it's a pungent bastard. After it's done you can cool it and freeze in baggies or all those empty yogurt containers you should put in the recycling and don't, or while it's still hot you can put it in clean hot mason jars with lids that have been submerged in boiling water. That should make the jar seal and then it will keep until the Second Coming of Christ. The recipe is easy to double. Excellent on turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving or on a grilled sharp cheddar cheese sandwich. I've made tuna salad out of it too. Excellent with a bowl of rice or a curry. Excellent by the spoonful. I've made a bit more than a gallon and will make another batch this weekend. Giddy up!
Zout removes most grease stains. These grease stains are on almost all my clothes because I am a messy cook and an even messier eater. Even the ones that have baked in by repeated washing and drying.
The Rack has angora/wool socks for 4.98 a pair.
The Smart Wool ski socks make excellent kneehighs and stay up even on girls with thick calves--they are at The Rack for 9.98--but they're wool you can wash them and they're warm and they rock!
Check out Carla Bruni--hot French-chick singer. Good cooking music and you don't have to feel bad for not knowing the lyrics because THEY'RE IN FRENCH!
Best book I've read in a bit--"The Gathering" by Anne Enright--won the 2007 Man Booker prize. It's dark but funny in spots and you got to love the whole Irish thing. It's the story of a woman going home to attend her brother's funeral. The Hegarty's have a ridiculouly large Irish Catholic family and plenty of skeletons in every blessed closet starting with their Grandmother Ada. Our narrator is trying to piece together what the truth of her family might be. An excerpt: "The British, I decide, only bury people when they are so dead, you need another word for it. The British wait so long for a funeral that people gather not so much to mourn, as to complain that the corpse is till hanging around. There is a queue, they say on the phone (the British love a queue)."
"Heat" by Bill Buford. The book on CD from our local library is great to listen to while I make dinner. The actor reading the book is a little annoying at first, but the story itself about an aspiring cook who spends a year working for Mario Batteli (?) first as a kitchen slave all the way up to sous chef is funny. I also heartily recommend Sydney Portier's "Measure of a Man" read by him--now there's a voice I can listen to no matter what he's saying.
The other thing that's on my list are GREEN TOMATOES! Last weekend I pulled two of my tomato plants--the ones with plenty of green fruit left on the vine. I know the tomatoes would ripen if I left them alone (you can pull the whole plant and hang it upside down in a cool dark place and the tomatoes will ripen slowly giving you ripe fruit all the way into December) but what I want are GREEN tomatoes. Last year I experimented with green tomato chutney and it was so delicious I decided that this year I would plan for it so I grew two of my plants in a spot that didn't get as much sun and I had a ton of greenies. I used the basic chutney recipe from the Joy but it wasn't spicy enough for my jaded buds. Here's what I did:
Chop up 5 cups of green tomatoes, 1 onion, 3-5 cloves of garlic, 2 jalapeno peppers, 1/2 cup candied ginger, 2 red peppers. Put them in a big old pot with 2 cups brown sugar, 2 cups apple cider vinegar and a cup of golden raisins. Bring to a low boil and cook for about 2 hours until the juice is syrupy. You're going to want to open the windows--it's a pungent bastard. After it's done you can cool it and freeze in baggies or all those empty yogurt containers you should put in the recycling and don't, or while it's still hot you can put it in clean hot mason jars with lids that have been submerged in boiling water. That should make the jar seal and then it will keep until the Second Coming of Christ. The recipe is easy to double. Excellent on turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving or on a grilled sharp cheddar cheese sandwich. I've made tuna salad out of it too. Excellent with a bowl of rice or a curry. Excellent by the spoonful. I've made a bit more than a gallon and will make another batch this weekend. Giddy up!
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