True confession: Barbeque chicken bores me to tears. Maybe, as someone who doesn’t eat beef (except for the beef sushi incident), I’ve had too many mediocre chicken sandwiches in bars and restaurants across the greater Boston area. So when no egrets suggested that we have BBQ chicken for the Fourth, I was underwhelmed. After some soul-searching, we came up with spicy peanut chicken. (more…)
Strawberries make life worth living July 3, 2009
Up here on the North Shore, we haven’t seen the sun in….a long time. It’s achieved record-setting proportions.
Strawberries are the last sweet shred of life I am clinging to. We picked up some Marini’s strawberries from the Marblehead Farmer’s Market on Saturday. On Sunday, no egrets made strawberry shortcake.
Strawberries
Slice up the strawberries, add a tiny bit of sugar (maybe a teaspoon) if the strawberries are not very sweet. You can add lemon juice if they are excessively sweet (if you believe in excess in that department).
Pound Cake (from Joy of Cooking, ca. 1964)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Mix 4 c flour
1 ts salt
4 ts baking powder
Set aside.
Mix 1 cup milk
2 ts vanilla
2 Tb yer favorite likker (that would taste good in a pound cake. No sour pucker. Ew.)
Set aside.
Cream 1 1/2 cups of butter, and then add
3 cups of sugar (gradually).
Add 8 eggs, one at a time; beat thoroughly after each one.
Keep mixing and alternate adding flour mixture and wet mixture. Stir until thoroughly blended.
Baked in a greased loaf pan for 15 or 20 min, or until a toothpick comes out reasonably clean.
Whipped Cream
Take a pint of heavy cream. Whip it up in your mixer, and add (slowly) up to 5 Tb of sugar and 2-3 ounces of your favorite dessert-embellishing liquor (we prefer bourbon or Grand Marnier in these parts). Once it looks like whipped cream, you are done.
Combine and pretend it is summer.
-goldlentil
CSF and the WSJ June 17, 2009
See what the Wall Street Journal has to say about Cape Ann Fresh Catch! I believe this is the first CSF near a big city (and which also drops off in a city) in the US. Evidently we are cutting edge, up here on the North Shore (who knew?).
-goldlentil
The Obsessive Canner and the Zombie Apocalypse May 27, 2009
[New York Times, we are way ahead of you.]
It could just be that I’m an obsessive personality. Instead of buying a complete bike, I buy a frame and spend 2 years tinkering to get 10 speeds out of a 28-speed gruppo. Instead of waiting and saving for a hot tub, I drag an old one out of someone’s yard so it can beautify mine. A pattern has been established.
So, I think about BPA being in all of that “organic” food I buy in (plastic-lined metal) cans, and decide to buy some nice, inert Ball jars and a pressure canner. Maybe you can see where this is headed. (more…)
Pork and Apple Pies May 22, 2009
Yes please! No Egrets won my eternal devotion for making pork and apple pies, also known also as pork pasties, but if I put that on the blog title, lord knows who would have shown up. This is not a summer dish, but it is very very yummy.
(see more below)
Community Supported Fisheries in Gloucester!! May 5, 2009
Exciting news! This is a little lukewarm off the presses, as I’ve been distracted by other things, but sign up here for Cape Ann Fresh Catch. A twelve-week assortment of fish is available in whole shares (6-8 lbs. a week for $360) and half shares (3-4 lbs. a week for $180). Pickup may be available in Ipswich, Gloucester, Marblehead, and Cambridge, depending on interest.
Support your local fisherman and learn how to cook new kinds of fish!
-goldlentil
Beef Sushi April 27, 2009
Before you run away screaming, let me explain. Always on the lookout for something with which to culinarily impress his friends, No Egrets began to think about ways to modify the sushi formula. What he came up with was beef nigiri, a perfect dish to take to our friend’s surprise birthday party.
The evening before the surprise celebration, we cooked a vat of sushi rice (which is nice and sticky) with a little rice vinegar and put it in the fridge. No Egrets also marianated the filet mignon (it’s true) in soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and garlic.
The next morning we got up and sprung into action. No Egrets seared the beef and cooked it until it was (to my non-beef-eating eyes) quite red. He shaped the cold rice into little oblong shapes, and put a thin slice of beef on top. Next time he will add a dab of wasabi between the rice and beef.
The rare steak resembled rare tuna, which was a nice effect, and almost broke my non-beef-eating ways. (OK, I confess, it looked so good I tried a piece.) It was an overall success, and may be a great way to introduce sushi to your midwestern friends and family when fresh seafood is merely a fantasy.
-goldlentil
PS Our friend was taken completely unaware. Ha!
Five Gallons of Carroty Goodness April 12, 2009
I went out into the garden for the first time this year. Well, I had passed it while gathering firewood, or bringing something heavy around to the back of the house, but today was the first day I actually put my hands in the dirt. I got in touch with my inner weeder, because don’t you know, the herbs were straggling up but the dandelions and long-haired-weed-number-seven were so green and lush it could have been June (I wish).
One of our surprise gardening successes last year was the five-gallon pot of carroty goodness. I had received a packet of carrot seeds as a favor from a wedding a few years back; but I’ve never been much of a gardener. (In my bachelor days, I kept one spider plant and one pot of basil in the window of my JP apartment, and considered myself a success.) I had been using the carrot seeds as, um, a bookmark, when No Egrets saw them and liberated them from a life of dormant literacy.
Not having a clear idea how old the seeds were, No Egrets proceeded cautiously. He filled a five-gallon pot one-third with sand and two-thirds with rich beautiful soil and sprinkled the carrot seeds. We waited. A month later, we had scads of baby carrots. We harvested a few, and many grew in their place. Every time we were in the garden, we picked one and ate its fresh, almost peppery, carrot self, reminding ourselves why it was worthwhile to weed out the dandelions. Again.
-goldlentil
Canning Beans! April 7, 2009
Yesterday, I saw daffodils while I was walking through the rain, and believed, for the first time, that it was spring. (See, I’ve become a hard-bitten, cynical New Englander after all.) In preparation for farmers market season, No Egrets and I bought a pressure canner.
We decided to practice a little before we had pounds of heirloom tomatoes, green beans, peppers, and okra to waste. So, as I sat at the table doing my day job (that would be corraling commas and wrestling homonyms to the ground), I watched No Egrets can beans. We decided to begin with plain beans. Our first idea had been to make Mexican beans, salad beans, etc., but then we realized at the end of the season we would want Mexican beans, but have nothing but cannelini beans with basil.
No Egrets boiled the turtle beans, stuck them in mason jars, and put them in the pressure canner. (There may have been more steps, but I was too busy matching references and citations to notice.) Then he spent an inordinate amount of time staring at said canner, watching the metal pin that releases pressure bounce up and down.
After an hour or so of boiling, we turned off the heat. We waited for the pressure to go down from 11 pounds to zero pounds, and then gingerly opened the canner. There was bean liquor boiling in the jars. We took this as a good sign. One by one, I heard the glorious pop of the mason jars sealing themselves.
Here’s hoping we don’t die of botilism!!
-goldlentil
The Globe chimes in too… March 18, 2009
I’m on the road (again), but I saw in today’s Boston Globe (thanks internet!) another article about Community Supported Fisheries. Keep the clamor going!
-goldlentil
