1) Meatscapes - photographs by Carl Warner
...Seriously, this is a photo of meat.
He's not bound to meat either, check out these vegetables:
2) Alexandre Dubosc's Caketropes:
3) Jan Svenkmajer's meat interludes from the movie, Lunacy:
Monday, May 28, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Catching up on my neglected blog!
I've been neglecting this blog and there's two reasons:
1) Between the end of winter and the slow start of spring, it's pretty easy to get jaded about cooking. The farmers market still only has potatoes, kale, turnips, and if your lucky - some onions and carrots. And even the freezer stash of peppers, broccoli, ginger, peas, and corn is starting to become monotonous. It feels a bit like I'm in hibernation, patiently waiting for summer vegetables.
2) Alex and I are getting married this summer!! So I've been totally preoccupied by wedding planning.
Alex and I have also been eating out more than usual - partially because our cooking inspiration is in a lull, and partially because we've had some sun here in Seattle and we chase it any chance we get! Here's some quick restaurant reviews of where we've been hanging out lately:
Skillet - If Alex and I ever created our own restaurant, this would probably be it. Creative breakfast and breakfast-inspired foods all day long. The bacon jam on their burgers is amazing, and we swear there's a secret ingredient in the french fries (coconut oil?!). Also, Skillet is conveniently located on the South-West corner of Union & 14th Ave. and they have floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes this an excellent spot to be on a sunny day!
Captain Blacks - It looks like an itty bitty little ramshackle pirate-themed bar, until you walk out on their gigantic West-facing deck... this is the spot to be on a sunny day!! Oh and also, they have a pretty decent beer selection and you can often find a Skillet truck right next door.
Kimchi Bistro - We went here for our friend, Kris's birthday and OMG this is some of the best Korean food I've ever had! We need to go here more often!
Pinky's Pig & Chips - It's a food truck located in the parking lot of the gas station next to the liquor store in Wallingford. This place is run by two guys from Detroit who seem to have found they're calling in life and they're stoked about it. They will blow your mind with their sassy molassy sauces and their meats will undoubtedly induce a multidimensional flavorgasm. Oh and their sandwiches are huge, especially for the cheap price! I definitely recommend starting with a slider and working your way up to a full size sandwich.
1) Between the end of winter and the slow start of spring, it's pretty easy to get jaded about cooking. The farmers market still only has potatoes, kale, turnips, and if your lucky - some onions and carrots. And even the freezer stash of peppers, broccoli, ginger, peas, and corn is starting to become monotonous. It feels a bit like I'm in hibernation, patiently waiting for summer vegetables.
2) Alex and I are getting married this summer!! So I've been totally preoccupied by wedding planning.
Alex and I have also been eating out more than usual - partially because our cooking inspiration is in a lull, and partially because we've had some sun here in Seattle and we chase it any chance we get! Here's some quick restaurant reviews of where we've been hanging out lately:
Skillet - If Alex and I ever created our own restaurant, this would probably be it. Creative breakfast and breakfast-inspired foods all day long. The bacon jam on their burgers is amazing, and we swear there's a secret ingredient in the french fries (coconut oil?!). Also, Skillet is conveniently located on the South-West corner of Union & 14th Ave. and they have floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes this an excellent spot to be on a sunny day!
Captain Blacks - It looks like an itty bitty little ramshackle pirate-themed bar, until you walk out on their gigantic West-facing deck... this is the spot to be on a sunny day!! Oh and also, they have a pretty decent beer selection and you can often find a Skillet truck right next door.
Kimchi Bistro - We went here for our friend, Kris's birthday and OMG this is some of the best Korean food I've ever had! We need to go here more often!
Pinky's Pig & Chips - It's a food truck located in the parking lot of the gas station next to the liquor store in Wallingford. This place is run by two guys from Detroit who seem to have found they're calling in life and they're stoked about it. They will blow your mind with their sassy molassy sauces and their meats will undoubtedly induce a multidimensional flavorgasm. Oh and their sandwiches are huge, especially for the cheap price! I definitely recommend starting with a slider and working your way up to a full size sandwich.
Wedding planing has largely consisted of foody things so far, of course. I'm totally stoked to be working with Madres Catering, they're a smaller company run by three mothers who simply love to cook and live by the motto, "Find a job you love and you'll never work another day in your life". They focus on local/in-season ingredients, they have strong influences from Latin American cuisine, and they're excited to accommodate all my ridiculous requests like using only Skagit River Valley Ranch meats and severing homebrew made by us and our friends!
For dessert, it's not official yet, but Trophy Cupcakes is the plan.
What else is edible at a wedding? Flowers, of course! I'm growing all the flowers for our wedding, so I know they're edible and organic. And since there's a lot of text in this post, I think it's high time I posted some pictures. Here's what my edible flowers look like so far - from top to bottom: Marigolds, Red Calendula seedling, Yellow Calendula that came back from last year, Pink Daisy's and Sweet Cicily that also came back from last year. In addition to these, I've also planted Dahlias, Day Lillies, Nasturtiums, Dianthus, Bachelor Buttons, Chives, and all sorts of Brassicas. ...this should be a delicious wedding indeed!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Peas and Pasta
The other day in Mycology class we were studying powdery mildews on hazelnut leaves, this naturally lead to a conversation about Nutella, which somehow ended up in my professor telling stories about various Italian pasta dishes (my professor is Italian). He said chickpeas and pasta were a staple at his house growing up. This was a surprisingly new concept for me. In my head, I always called them garbanzo beans, which means I mentally lump them together with pinto or black beans, and something about beans and pasta together just never occurred to me before. Joe (my prof.) said it's just like peas and pasta - chickpeas, fava beans, really anything in the pea family goes great with pasta, not to mention peas or beans are cheap for the amount of nutrients they contain. So I had to go home and try it. I followed Joe's vague directions of pasta with lots of garlic, olive oil, and chickpeas, plus I added some onions, tomatoes, broccoli, and ground beef. Joe was right, chickpeas and pasta are fabulous together.
Chocolate Salad Dressing
Two weekends ago I flew to California to interview at UC Berekeley for graduate school. It was a whole big interview weekend that included a couple different options for touring the area. I opted for a food tour of Berkeley. Traveling from Seattle, which is currently in the throes of winter with little more to offer than kale and potatoes -- Berkeley felt like the future; I had traveled to summer in a strange and wonderful place with citrus in January! A woman at the farmers market was handing out blood-orange samples, which blew my mind and I decided I had to buy some. Then there were mangoes; voluptuous, curvaceous, and sticky with ripe juices. I brought back as many as I could fit in my carry-on bag.
Somehow I got inspired to make a fruit salad with my mangoes and blood oranges. I whipped up a dressing with equal parts olive oil and canola oil (wishing in retrospect I had used camelina oil instead), raspberry vinegar, dutch cocoa powder, cinnamon, paprika, and salt. I cut up the fruit, dressed it, and then sprinkled toasted coriander seeds on top. Best. Salad. Ever. I could definitely get used to living in Berkeley...
Somehow I got inspired to make a fruit salad with my mangoes and blood oranges. I whipped up a dressing with equal parts olive oil and canola oil (wishing in retrospect I had used camelina oil instead), raspberry vinegar, dutch cocoa powder, cinnamon, paprika, and salt. I cut up the fruit, dressed it, and then sprinkled toasted coriander seeds on top. Best. Salad. Ever. I could definitely get used to living in Berkeley...
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
A Cast Iron Love Affair...
After destroying a high-end non-stick Scanpan, I started researching the original, indestructible, non-stick pan: cast iron. I started, as I often do, chatting with a salesperson at City Kitchens. He informed me that most, if not all of the modern non-stick surfaces are intended to be used with vegetable fats and repeated use with animal fat can actually degrade the non-stick surface. Considering that I cook daily with bacon grease, modern non-stick surfaces are clearly not for me.
So, cast iron. Something about the Lodge brand pans has never impressed me. They're bulky, pre-seasoned with who-knows-what, and their rough texture just doesn't seems very conducive to optimal non-stick. However Lodge is one of the few (American made) cast iron cookware companies that still exists... so I turned to eBay to find some quality old-fashioned cast iron from the early 1900's.
Griswold and Wagner were two American cast iron producers around the turn of the century. They were eventually bought in the 1950's and now you can apparently still find "Wagner" pans that are now made in China. Both Wagner and Griswold pans gained a reputation of being high quality pans - they're light weight and forged in a way that maximizes non-stickness. Interestingly, Griswold pans are hot collectors items while Wagner pans go relatively unnoticed in the antique market. This means it was relatively easy for me to find a prime-condition 10inch Wagner pan for about $30 (Whereas the exact same pan with a "Griswold" stamp might have cost at least $100... economics is silly).
As soon as I got my Wagner pan in the mail, I threw it in the oven to cook off the seasoning so that I could re-season it with bacon grease. What is brilliant about this is that every morning when I cook bacon, I'm doing something good for my pan - whereas before I was just slowly killing my Scanpan with bacon. It's funny how much better I feel about life knowing I'm being good to my cast iron pan and in return my cast iron pan is good to me.
The first thing I made was poutine. I fried french fries in my cast iron pan. Then poured off the excess grease, spread the french fries on the bottom of the pan, covered them with gravy and Golden Glen Farms cheese curds and then I put the whole thing in the oven until the cheese melted.
This pan made the best french fries I've ever had. Needless to say, I'm totally head over heals in love with cast iron.
So, cast iron. Something about the Lodge brand pans has never impressed me. They're bulky, pre-seasoned with who-knows-what, and their rough texture just doesn't seems very conducive to optimal non-stick. However Lodge is one of the few (American made) cast iron cookware companies that still exists... so I turned to eBay to find some quality old-fashioned cast iron from the early 1900's.
Griswold and Wagner were two American cast iron producers around the turn of the century. They were eventually bought in the 1950's and now you can apparently still find "Wagner" pans that are now made in China. Both Wagner and Griswold pans gained a reputation of being high quality pans - they're light weight and forged in a way that maximizes non-stickness. Interestingly, Griswold pans are hot collectors items while Wagner pans go relatively unnoticed in the antique market. This means it was relatively easy for me to find a prime-condition 10inch Wagner pan for about $30 (Whereas the exact same pan with a "Griswold" stamp might have cost at least $100... economics is silly).
As soon as I got my Wagner pan in the mail, I threw it in the oven to cook off the seasoning so that I could re-season it with bacon grease. What is brilliant about this is that every morning when I cook bacon, I'm doing something good for my pan - whereas before I was just slowly killing my Scanpan with bacon. It's funny how much better I feel about life knowing I'm being good to my cast iron pan and in return my cast iron pan is good to me.
The first thing I made was poutine. I fried french fries in my cast iron pan. Then poured off the excess grease, spread the french fries on the bottom of the pan, covered them with gravy and Golden Glen Farms cheese curds and then I put the whole thing in the oven until the cheese melted.
This pan made the best french fries I've ever had. Needless to say, I'm totally head over heals in love with cast iron.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Poutine and Beer-Yeast-Sourdough Bread
We just had three snow-days in a row in here in Seattle. Which means Alex and I have been spending a whole lot of time sledding down Capitol Hill, sleeping in, and eating ridiculous things. First of all, poutine is now a breakfast food. Especially when breakfast is at 1pm. Alex made gravy out of beef au jus and chicken demi-glace while I fried up some french fries and onions in bacon grease... we thought about topping everything with an egg, but that just seemed excessive and we opted for the more traditional cheese topping instead.
Last weekend, Alex bottled a pumpkin beer that he made. We've often talked about cultivating the dormant yeast that end up at the bottom of the carboy as a method of saving a few dollars on beer brewing. Though I got inspired to use the yeast for a sourdough starter. After just a few days of feeding the yeast, I had a pretty fragrant starter going, so I used one of our snow days to make bread. I've never been very successful at bread making, but I'm happy to say this is my best attempt yet! I loosely followed Julia Child's recipe, which called for violently kneading the crap out of the dough in a mixer with a dough hook. When this first knead was done, the dough had an amazing smooth, moist, sticky texture.
I stuck it in the warmest room in our house to rise for a couple hours, then a light knead, second rise, and then it was ready to be shaped for the final rise immediately before baking. I used a technique that Julia suggested: put a pan on the bottom of the oven and just before you put the bread in, pour some water into the pan - it will immediately turn into steam and increase the humidity inside the oven. A humid oven makes a crusty bread. I also periodically added water to the pan in the oven and used a spray bottle to spray water into the air in the oven. Here is my lovely loaf of bread!
This bread has a fantastic texture! Fluffy, soft, and moist with a thin, crisp crust. The flavor however will need some work, it has a wonderful earthiness, but then it also definitely has a strong essence of bottom-of-the-carboy sludge from which it's yeast was born. It does make fantastic french toast though!
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Biscuits & Duck Gravy
There's something about snow that inspires me to make biscuits. Conveniently, we also have a glut of duck stock at the moment. So I made biscuits with duck gravy and a side of bacon for a glorious snowy Sunday breakfast!
There are two things that make the gravy absolutely magical; first, I used stock made from Stokesberry Farms duck, and their ducks are divine. Secondly, the stock was almost entirely duck and leeks, and then I started the gravy by sauteing leeks in butter. Few things are better than the simple deliciousness of leeks, butter, and duck. When the leeks began to turn translucent I added a bit of flour and then enough duck stock to get the perfect gravy consistency (with a bit of stirring and patience,of course). Here's breakfast in the snow!:
There are two things that make the gravy absolutely magical; first, I used stock made from Stokesberry Farms duck, and their ducks are divine. Secondly, the stock was almost entirely duck and leeks, and then I started the gravy by sauteing leeks in butter. Few things are better than the simple deliciousness of leeks, butter, and duck. When the leeks began to turn translucent I added a bit of flour and then enough duck stock to get the perfect gravy consistency (with a bit of stirring and patience,of course). Here's breakfast in the snow!:
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