For about 3.7 seconds today, I was asking myself if I have, perchance, been spending a tad too much time on Twitter lately. But, seeing as how said dallying then led to a deftly jazzed-up ramen recipe, courtesy of the author of one of my favorite food memoirs of the recent past, I don't see how any of us could afford not to. Kathleen Flinn is no stranger to the tireless, if sometimes penniless, pursuit of the delicious; The Sharper Your Knife The Less You Cry chronicles her loss of a lucrative corporate lifestyle and subsequent savings investment in a degree program at Le Cordon Bleu. While the the corner shops of Gay Paree may not have been chock-a-block with student budget-friendly ramen bricks, Flinn picked up a flavor trick or ten between puff pastry and boning lessons and shares her method for infusing the noodles with the brightness of miso, green onions, fresh herbs, Sriracha and citrus, as well as other light-wallet recipes.
Clearly, at-home ramen can be a reward rather than a last resort. How are you gussying them up, or are you hooked on the packet? Please share with the rest of the (broke...oh, so painfully broke) class, why don'tcha?
When I was growing up in Virginia, my babysitter often referred to my family as "the carpetbaggers." This wasn't all that surprising; my parents were from New England, and the folkways of rural Virginia were somewhat bizarre to them. Even so, they quickly adapted and even learned to embrace the culture of the area. Because of their zealous adoption of all things Virginia, many of our major holidays were celebrated with a huge, salty Virginia ham.
When I undertook the reverse migration from Virginia to New York, I worried that I would not be able to get hold of real Smithfield hams. Luckily, however, one of my local butchers carries them; it seems that they are a standard Italian dish on the feast day of Saint Nicholas. As the butcher rang up my sixteen pound chunk of pork, he and I had an interesting conversation about the art of cooking Virginia ham. Interestingly, many of his customers are actually scared of Smithfield ham.
In truth, this isn't really all that surprising. After all, Smithfield hams are exceedingly salty, very ugly, and take a long time to prepare. However, they are also amazingly delicious, and constitute one of the most truly American of dishes. Luckily, they are also fairly simple to cook, freeze beautifully, and pretty much all of the leftovers are delicious.
There are a lot of different kinds of pots and pans out there, and everyone's singing the praises of one or the other. Ignoring makers, Harold McGee of The New York Times put the different metals to the test.
We know aluminum pans to be the cheapest and lightest. Stainless steel looks beautiful forever and functions well at very high heat. Cast iron holds heat longer and is safe for popping in the oven after you've done what you need to on the stove--and it's even rumored to add nutritional iron to foods! Copper, the usual cream of the crop; typically the most expensive and prettiest, conducts heat evenly and quickly. Most copper pots and pans are coated with stainless steel (older copper pans coated with tin or nickel may be harmful, check your pans).
According to McGee's home test, electrical or open flame on your stove doesn't make much of difference, but the pans definitely all behave differently. His conclusions? To each his own.
Chris Cason is Tavalon's tea sommelier, and in this clip, he explains out to create simple syrup infused with tea, which can then be turned into a tea soda that sounds really quite tasty! I'm looking forward to trying this out on my own at some point. Have any of you created a unique beverage with tea?
1- 7 to 9 lb. Smoked Pork Shoulder 1 Cabbage 1 Rutabaga (Sometimes called Yellow Turnip or Horse Turnip) 1-2 lbs. of Carrots 2-3 lbs. of Potatoes (Plain White, Yukon Gold, Fingerlings, Peruvian Purple- whatever you like.) 4-6 Sweet Onions 1-2 lbs. of any Root Vegetables of your choice (Parsnips, Turnips, Celery Root, Sweet Potato or Yam, Sunchokes, Radish or Daikon, Beets, etc.- Beets need to be cooked separately) 4-6 Garlic cloves 1/2 tbs. of Black Peppercorns 2-3 Bay Leaves 1 tbs. pickling or other cooking spices (Allspice, Cloves, Mustard Seed, Coriander, Ginger, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, etc.) 1-3 Bottles of Dark Beer
Total cooking time is 3-4 hours. (apx. 25-30 minutes per pound)
Yesterday I asked the question, "Corned Beef or Smoked Pork Shoulder for dinner?" and now I have an easy recipe for a St. Paddy's Day feast of a Boiled corned Beef and Vegetables dinner. Tomorrow I'll have the same for the Boiled Smoked Pork Shoulder dinner.
So get yourself out to the store and grab some meat and veggies, they should be on sale and if you hunt around you can put together a feast for your friends and family for relatively little money. I got enough to feed 10 people for around $25.
1-2 Corned Beef- get twice or even three times as much as you think you'll need so that you have tons of leftovers for sandwiches and hash. 1-2 lbs. of Potatoes- Small boilers or Yukon Golds, I like the small Peruvian Purples for their combination of floral and earthy taste that goes so well with this dish and the great color too. 3-6 Sweet Onions- like Vidalias or Peruvian Sweets 1 Small Cabbage 1 lb. of Carrots Any other root vegetables that catch your fancy like turnips or rutabagas, parsnips, beets, etc. Assorted spices- Pickling spice or make your own with black peppercorns, bay leaves, mustard seed, coriander seed, allspice, clove, etc. Six Pack Guinness Extra Stout
I got in a long phone conversation last night with a friend of mine, Chef Josh Gamage, about St. Patrick's Day. I asked about how it's celebrated here in Maine from a food and drink standpoint. Growing up in NY I am used to enormous partying, eating mediocre corned beef and cabbage, and drinking many pints of stout; while grooving to the madness of the Upper East Side and the Parade. No green beer for me, thanks. Then the next day I buy a half dozen corned beef when they go on sale and freeze them for later use.
Josh told me that here in Maine it isn't celebrated as much as I am used to, but at home there is usually a New England boiled dinner on March 17th. The question is, what meat is boiled for the dinner? It seems that according to Josh there is a 50/50 break on whether it will be boiled Corned Beef or boiled Smoked Pork Shoulder.
I immediately ran to my library and the internet to do some research. I found that boiled pork is much more likely to be an authentic Irish meal. Beef wasn't a traditional Irish food, but pork was and is. With bacon, basically any cut of pork or smoked pork the choice for St. Patrick's Day dinner. It seems that beef was exported to England but too expensive for the Irish, but pork was a plentiful food.
To repeat an often used phrase, soup is good food. Especially this time of year, when soup warms the body, soul, and can be good if you're watching what you eat too.
January is National Soup Month, so that's a good opportunity to link to some great soup recipes, like this one for Chicken Noodle Soup over at Yahoo (though I never put onion in mine!). Food & Wine has this recipe for Sausage and Mushroom Soup, and Alton Brown has this one for Garden Vegetable Soup. Of course, there are so many soup recipes that there are usually entire sections devoted to soup, including this one over at AllRecipes.
I keep four delightful chickens in my backyard for their plentiful fresh eggs and overall charm as pets. Here in Portland, Oregon, backyard chickens are somewhat in vogue, and I subscribe to a lively Yahoo! group dedicated to all that is urban chicken farming. (No. We don't eat our chickens. Because I knew you would ask.)
Yesterday, one of its members, Lori, gathered some eggs from her Ameraucana, and boiled them up for breakfast. Imagine her surprise when she peeled one that had cracked in the pan -- the perfect image of the Virgin Mary!
Lori's trying to figure out if she can preserve the egg. In the meantime, let us know what you think: is God once again speaking to us from our food? And is he reminding us how we should all treat our chickens better? I think so.
I had the opportunity to taste some very expensive and seriously delicious coffee yesterday. Peet's Coffee is bringing some of their blends to grocery stores in Philadelphia, and so they've come to town with their coffee educator Erica Hess to promote the availability of their products around the City of Brotherly Love.
My first exposure to Peet's coffee was Christmas when I was 14 years old. My cousins, knowing that I was getting an espresso maker from my parents, brought with them a pound of espresso roast from Peet's down from Berkeley as a gift. I remember it as excellent coffee and the fact that its availability was sort of limited in those days made it seem that much more special.
Well, I told you about the cherry smoothie I made from the summer cherries I put into the freezer for safe-keeping. A lot of good those will be to me in the fall since I subsequently used them all for a liquid breakfast every morning thereafter until they were.
What I didn't tell you is what I did with the cherries I kept fresh on the counter. You, my Slashfood faithful friends, suggested clafouti to spare my fingers the chore of pitting cherries, as well as a multitude of recommendations for what I should do with the result of my gluttonous run at the market. I took the advice of a few and made...
My Slashfood friends, I am a sadist. Or is it masochist? I never knew the difference between the two.
Either way, for some reason known only to, well, to no one, I decided to do the most punishing thing ever on a hot summer day: turn on the oven. I know, I must be crazy. The inexplicable thing is, however, that I turned it on to roast something that doesn't need to be roasted. If I needed to make a roasted garlic puree, I could justify it. If I felt like roasting a lemon herb chicken for Sunday supper, it would make sense.
My friends, I roasted tomatoes. Tomatoes! At this point in the season, there is absolutely no need to roast produce that is practically dripping with fresh flavor right off the vine!
However, I couldn't resist after I came across a recipe for Roasted Tomato Soup while flipping lazily through Marcus Wareing's Cook the Perfect cookbook.
After a day spent roaming the byways through farm country I had picked up some nice produce and poultry: fresh, tender, sweet, carrots; young yellow summer squash and green zucchini; and a package of fresh from the farm, pasture raised chicken thighs. I had just made a quick trip to the big city a few days ago to stock up on Asian ingredients, so I had new bottles and tubs of various things like cream of coconut, fish sauce, Thai green curry paste and Tom Ka soup paste; and small, vividly orange colored dried shrimp, as well as some nice, hot Thai peppers, Key limes, and a big, fat, young, galangal root.
I was thinking of making a Thai-style curry but it has been just too hot out and I wanted something spicy, but light, packed full of electrolytes, and full of liquid to rehydrate me. A summery vegetable and chicken version of Thai Tom Ka soup sounded perfect. This style of soup has a mild to medium heat, a strong citrusy tartness and tang to it, and can be made quite quickly. Just the thing for a warm summer day.
Yup, that picture isn't a joke. Hobo Soup actually exists. In fact, it's been around since the 1950s. A newspaper publisher in Ortonville, MN did a story on someone named Mr. Hobo, and had some "Hobo Soup" while doing the story. The publisher and his son decided to make the soup and market it, and the soup hit store shelves in 1960.
The web site has the full history of the soup, links to the Hobo Railroad, and info on how to order the soup (you can get a whole case of it!) and t-shirts.
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When I was growing up in Virginia, my babysitter often referred to my family as "the carpetbaggers." This wasn't all that surprising; my parents were from New England, and the folkways of rural Virginia were somewhat bizarre to them. Even so, they quickly adapted and even learned to embrace the culture of the area. Because of their zealous adoption of all things Virginia, many of our major holidays were celebrated with a huge, salty Virginia ham._thumbnail.jpg "Burlap Ham")
_thumbnail.jpg "Dry Ham")
To repeat an often used phrase, soup is good food. Especially this time of year, when soup warms the body, soul, and can be good if you're watching what you eat too.
I keep 
Yup, that picture isn't a joke. Hobo Soup 
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