13 posts tagged “food”

Every recipe that I make is something my friends just call "thing." Spinach thing, mushroom thing, shrimp thing. I should do a Thing Cookbook. IMPORTANT IMPORTANT: Things do not include measurements. They do accept substitutions/suggestions.

Miso Thing, below, is for salad dressing, but would probably rock as a sauce for grilled veg (eggplant comes to mind) or for salmon/chicken too. I'd imagine you could bump this up with scallions or a thai chile.

Miso Thing

1 spoon white miso
1 spoon honey
1 count olive oil
2 count rice vinegar
salt
finely minced/pasted garlic
lime (zest and juice)

throw in a jar and shake until at the consistency you like. Taste. Adjust. Apply to yer pie hole.

Over the weekend, we had some nasty weather. Which makes me want to get all domestic and whatnot and putter around the kitchen. Like Nigella, I prefer puttering when things are "fiddly, not difficult".

I really, really love tomatoes, and my favorite grocery guy at Lionette's Market knows it. He convinced me to buy a 20 pound box of tomatoes to try my hand at home canning. "Just make a decent tomato sauce and follow the directions. It's not hard." And it wasn't!

Steps:

Buy tomatoes. Haul home. Make sauce. Follow directions for canning. Devour leftovers with lots of bread, forsaking all notion of low-carb eating. Send the rest to friends. (Requests welcome!)

I made two kinds - one an improvisation on this arrabbiata with lots of peppers/cayenne/parsley, and another that was more freeform with loads of roasted garlic. Plus a tomato jam that makes me crazy.

Here's a few photos:

I ordered 20 pounds' worth of tomatoes and peppers for my first adventure in home canning. My very favorite food is a tomato in any form, but the summer here is so brief and the winter tomatoes so sad. I also have marinara sauce with everything (Scarpetta from Somerville MA makes my favorite), so I figure it makes sense. Sort of.

So, next weekend, I'll be doing a pretty standard marinara sauce, as well as this tomato jam from Mark Bittman. Any other suggestions, my DIY-ing Voxians?

Required - one new noodle shop in Boston (preferably T-accessible) that knocks your socks off. I've gone too long with just visits to other cities for my bowl of noodle-y goodness.

please?

I bought a little chicken from my local butcher, which prides itself on local, grass-fed meats, which are without fail expensive and delicious. They also have the best eggs I've ever eaten. A bold sign outside declares "New England Can Feed Itself", and despite the freezing temperatures and how tired I am of turnips and kale, I almost believe them.

Given this fierce local/organic approach to their wares, I should have expected what happened. When I got home with a little chicken marked - get this - "Buddhist Style". And indeed, little chicken looks heart-meltingly serene: its little feet were tucked underneath it in a perfect lotus pose, and its head, still very much attached, bent prayerfully to one side. Hello, little chicken! (Typically, they ask me if I want it butchered, but I think they forgot and I assumed.)

I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Do I confess that I am a sissy and take it the mile walk back to the butcher, and make them lop off its extremities? Or man up (as it were) and butcher the thing myself? It brings back memories of my dad saying the reason he never eats chicken is watching his mother kill one by catching it and breaking its neck. My husband certainly doesn't want to play Barber of Tremont Street.

I'm not sure if this will turn me back into a vegetarian, or teach me to finally Get Over It, that my delicious roast bird ones had a face and feet. The rest of the world would surely sigh in impatience that I would even be thinking twice about this.

I think I'll call her Marie Antoinette. The beheading is scheduled for 5pm this evening.

all in a pretty row

Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays. I nearly always have at least two Thanksgivings to attend, one of which is typically cooking for large groups of my friends, with a good percentage of vegetarians. Cooking a traditionally meat-heavy holiday for discerning veggies is always a challenge, but one I enjoy: it involves a lot of side dishes, and there's more meat for the rest of us.

A good balance in a mixed herbivore/omnivore crowd is usually 50/50 meats and non-meats, because there's always one or two vegetarians who break after the 3rd glass of gluwein.

I have a bunch of things bookedmarked at del.icio.us, including the now-famous butternut squash lasagne. I find having a main course style dish for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike gives it the all-important inclusiveness.

I'm trying my hand at pecan pie this year for the first time - I've never been much of a baker since it's too precise for me, but it's worth a shot!

Do you have favorites, non-meaty or otherwise? (I'm sure this will be a QOTD this week, but...)

I do eat healthy, I swear, despite my Girl Raised In The South upbringing. Well, mostly. Brown rice, wheat pitas, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, tra la.

And then there is Oven Fried Chicken Thing.

Ingredients:
chicken pieces (thighs would be decadent)
panko
butter
mustard
parmesan
garlic
salt and pepper

Mix up in a bowl some panko bread crumbs and crappy powdered parmesan, add some herbs and salt and pepper. This is your breading.

Melt anywhere from 1/2-a full stick of butter, depending on how many you're feeding. Add a bunch of minced garlic and a dollop of dijon mustard. This is your binding. Also, yum.

Take chicken pieces (breast, thigh, whatever is on sale) and make into nugget size.

Dip in garlic butter, roll in parm/bread crumbs, pour leftover butter on the top, bake at 375 until yummy. About 20 minutes did for very flat chicken bits.

Updated to add a photo:. If you look, there is a piece missing from the middle. I had to make sure it wasn't poison before I photographed it. If only I could add a scent/taste to Vox posts.

Heart attack

Well, then, go outside and find the damn thing yourself.

After searching for a Stitch-N-Bitch type thing around here to see if someone would teach me more than one kniting stitch, I found the South End Farmer's Market.  Loads of little handbags covered in robots and skulls, jewelry made of paintings in actual galleries, wallets with evacuation plans, and oh, the darling things that were there! But I can't go shopping for food and come home with a bunch of beads. (Yet.) Instead, I got lemon verbena honey, heirloom tomatoes, fresh corn and a basket of blueberries all for about $8. I wore my favorite Mule shirt which was a big hit, so expect to see some Boston orders soon. And then they have this:

indie craft smackdown

punk rock farmer's market

It was all the best things about the Laney Flea, but with no dust and italian ice instead of snow-cones. (No elotes, though.)

what does one do with the leftovers of a roasted chicken? Bearing in mind it is warm weather here on the East Coast, and I'll be damned if I'm turning on the oven again after roasting said chicken.