SUMMERTIME AND THE COUSCOUS IS EASY

Let’s come to terms with this: I am a suckfest of a blogger. Lately it’s been trivia, and poker, and movies starring the young Robert Downey Jr., and morning yoga with James, and struggling with pie crusts in the stupid hot Florida summer.  It’s true that I am terrible at updating blogs, but it’s also true that I am not half bad at making lavender eye pillows (for shavasana). Say the word and I will sew one for you! The pillow is muslin, filled with flax seeds and dried lavender, and comes inside its own eye pillowcase, for easy washing. Pillows can be microwaved or frozen and placed on your face or popped open and eaten!!! Own a pillow today (or soon)!! Namaste!

Fourth of July peach pie. Cold hands, warm heart, can't lose...pie crust

Birthday belly

Cold soba: many a lunch

"guest blogging"

Shrimp and oyster gumbo a.k.a. death by okra

Fa la la la la, la la la la

Sorry. Not a lot going on over here.  I got another twin egg?

cute

That kale thing was- olives, curly kale, radishes, purple cabbage, carrots, sauerkraut, a whole avocado, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, and probably other stuff I’m forgetting. It’s always tempting to eat the whole bunch, until I remember what a horrible idea that is!  The raw kale hangover is AWFUL, way worse than the aftermath of too many cookies.

Basically this is my idea of the ideal Sunday: special church service (it’s palm Sunday, yo!), hanging out in my small, windowless “graduate study carrel” at the library, escaping in time for a Michelada on the porch. Now it’s nursing this thing (lime juice, salt, Worcestershire, Tabasco plus Tecate) and contemplating dinner.  Ever since watching The Hangover I have been craving a big, raw steak with roofies poked into it. Another thing I’m craving, probably because yesterday we were sitting in some onion grass, is a bagel.

Wasn’t weird enough, I guess: I had to throw those radishes in, too.

Also, it is impossible to tell from that picture, but the egg was twins!

After a week spent eating good things, Saturday was a harrowing I-don’t-know-how-many-hours at the airport, and Sunday night was sleepless. Now the problem is my body’s over here but my soul is hanging out somewhere west and yet to join it.  Meaning I can’t do any real thinking, and I’m not aware or alert enough to do anything but blend chicken livers.  Which is something, at least. Because you can almost not spell “party” without “pâté”!  Or actually: You can’t spell “parties” without “pâté”!  Except more accurately it’s: You can’t spell “pârtiés” without “pâté”!  ANYWAY, this is my favorite recipe. It’s easy and zombie-proof.

After the pâté my brain remained hopeless so I thought: Why not get the beef bourguignon over with, too?  It’s for a thing tomorrow eve, along with the liver purée.  The bourguignon required 2/3 of a bottle of wine, and the rest I incorporated into dinner just now: red wine braised lentils— Deborah Madison’s genius idea, not mine (from Vegetarian Suppers From Deborah Madison’s Kitchen).

Not pictured: the lentil mountain that was my real dinner. Also: the many milligrams of melatonin I am going to eat, so help me God.

Finally, if you ever need to remove rust from a stainless steel pot all it takes is baking soda and some water. Then you rub aluminum foil all over it.  Let something rust and try it!  It is magic.  It’s one of those tricks you learn and can’t believe you ever survived without (e.g., the best way to retrieve bits of egg shell is with another egg shell).

By “this” I mean the fried rice Mark Bittman has a crush on. And other good peoples. And now me too. Mine looks extra leeky because it is.

Also: doesn’t it seem as though there is a direct correlation between number of eggs in the refrigerator and one’s anxiety about impending travel?  Yesterday there were eight in the carton and I was losing my mind.  Now it’s mostly under control: I depart tomorrow in the AM and the egg count is down to a manageable two.

Recently I interviewed translator/author/kilimologist John Batki. We talked cabbage and writing, two of my favorite things.  The featured recipe tastes like spaghetti-o’s and also pizza!

1) Payday pot roast. The day money appears magically in my checking account happens also to be the day the public gets to purchase formerly educational meat at the University of Florida meat processing center (a.k.a. “the meat lab”).  Win-win!  This coincided with my finally breaking down and buying Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, new, off Amazon, after years and years spent clinging to stubborn hope that I would find it, used, at a book sale or store. Something that occurred to me: nobody ever wants to part with this book, as nobody ever should.  Something else: $23.10 is not so steep a price on happiness.  Go buy it now. BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

That was a good onion

The above pot roast was based super loosely on Marcella’s “Pot roast of beef braised in red wine.”  Brown chuck roast on all sides (that there was 5 lbs, plus bones) and remove. 1/2 onion, 3 carrots, 2 parsnips, 3 celery stalks, 3 garlic, 2 bay leaves go into the pot, then return the beef, add 1/3 bottle of California shiraz, can of plum tomatoes, top off with some beef stock.  Then throw the other 1/2 onion in, because why not?  Then you let it ride (turn the flame to smallest it goes and put the lid on it; mine went something like 4.5 hours, plus an hour of rest.  It’s wise to flip it a couple times).  Then you serve it over mashed potatoes alongside green beans (favorite way to prepare them is this Cook’s Illustrated way) with the “gravy” poured over everything.  Eat an obscene amount of this.  Even with the obscene amount you eat, it can feed six people, mostly boys.  (N.B.: A big part of this good thing was peeling potatoes and snapping the tops off green beans while watching Netflix DVDs and polishing off the rest of that wine. Also, retrieving the onion half and eating it.)

2) Tuna casserole

Fish noodles

In all likelihood this is may have been my 1,000th time making Cathy’s “better tuna noodle casserole,” but why fight it?  It’s the best.  I always use 1 cup milk and 1/2 cup sour cream and a whole can of oil-packed tuna, and everything wrong with the world becomes instantly better.

3) Meat that tells you what to do with it

"Lamb neck for stew"

Which is awesome, because February’s been tough enough.

Cool, OK

]]> http://wafflesongs.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/good-things-weekend-edition/feed/ 4 wafflesongs potroast potroastcookin tunacasserole lambneck lambstew http://wafflesongs.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/felix-horrorwickys-catfish-curry-stew/ http://wafflesongs.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/felix-horrorwickys-catfish-curry-stew/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:30:11 +0000 wafflesongs http://wafflesongs.wordpress.com/?p=116 ]]>

If there’s anything my friend Felix is proud of it’s his fish stew prowess, and for good reason: there’s this thing he does with lentils, white fish, and spices that can really knock a person’s socks off.  Probably this has something to do with the surprising disparity between the phrase “fish stew” (unpalatable) and the the thing itself (delicious).  Whatever the case, there’s a lot to like: it can be made fancy, with halibut, or the opposite, with any cheap white fish; won’t cause your one-bedroom/ practically studio apartment to reek of fish (but smell sweetly of curry instead); is not only tasty, but also nutritionally comprehensive (Omega-3s!  Vitamin A!  Lycopene!  To name a few!); and is the perfect thing for chilly, rainy, wintry spells.  (Also, the leftovers are killer, even as cold, straight-out-of-fridge fish mush.)

What we have here is Felix Horrorwicky’s Catfish curry stew turned into Waffle Songs’s curryish whiting and accidental-sprout stew.  The “whiting” because it was on sale and not glaringly unethical (if you are at the market and unsure about the species in question you can always text Fishphone, Blue Ocean’s sustainable seafood text messaging service!).  The “accidental-sprout” part was my fault (also God’s).

Oh hi, guys. Welcome

My habit is to soak the living daylights out of beans so they cook faster and digest better but sometimes all they want to do is germinate!  Lentils when they sprout, resemble outsized quinoa, with their funny tails.  These babies can be sprouted accidentally, by soaking too long, or deliberately, with a mason jar and some cheesecloth rubber banded over the mouth—left to drain at a slant.  Rinse them by swishing around and draining twice a day, and in two days you’ll have sprouts.  As sprouts they are sweeter and “plantier” than the normal lentil.

Felix Horrorwicky’s fish stew, the Waffle Songs way

• yellow onion
• carrots
• celery
• bay leaf
• garlic
• a largeish sweet potato
• canned tomatoes
• white fish filets
• spices: cumin, turmeric, cayenne
• cooked lentils or lentil sprouts
• chicken stock
• sweet corn

Heat olive oil in a large pot.  Sauté a yellow onion with a couple carrots, some celery, and a bay leaf or two, and cubed sweet potatoes.  Mince four (or more!) cloves of garlic and throw those in the pot too.  Cut the filets up into friendly sizes, fry them to “firm them up,” according to Felix.  Once they begin to turn from translucent to white, add cumin and tumeric—about a tablespoon of each for now (you can always add more later).  Add cayenne, too, if you like things spicy.

See that fish? It's firm

Add tomatoes, cooked lentils (or lentil sprouts!), chicken stock.

When life gives you chickens, make lemonade

Add frozen sweet corn, if you have it, which I always do.  Let it all simmer until the sweet potatoes are soft.  Pepper generously and adjust the seasoning (Felix likes the turmeric).

A+ leftovers

Pretty much I am like goldfish to flakes when it comes to chips and guacamole and, really, who— but the weird, resilient few among us— is not?  Which is why, come any sort of party-time, instinct #1 is to set about rounding up every soft avocado in this city, smushing up the biggest possible bowl of them, and— last/ not least— devouring with tortilla chips or carrots cut length-wise or hamfists.

But!  When, weeks ago, the lovely Terita of Veggie Mine and corn chewing/ spitting virtuosity sent W. Songs an invitation to a non-denominational dip soirée (“Let’s all enjoy this timeless tradition of dipping things into stuff!” said Terita), there seemed no better occasion to make the descent, so to speak, into the wide-underworld of cheesy-vegetable dips.  Because I had also been fretting mildly (as I am wont, etc.) about this can of artichoke hearts sitting pretty in the pantry, a can I’d at some point impulse-bought or perhaps sleep-purchased, it was this artichoke plus spinach dip that came into being.  Delivered via Triscuit and washed down with whiskey-lemonade (thank you Scott!) is, I think, the proper, most ideal, most delicious way to go.

• Big yellow onion, chopped
• 5 or 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• frozen spinach (one box)
• artichoke hearts (one can; quartered is cheapest, and what I used)
• cream cheese (6 oz)
• sour cream (1/2 cup)
• two spoons of mayonnaise
• red pepper flakes
• 1/3 cup parmesan

Blanch the spinach in salted boiling water and drain.

Frozen spinach! A first for everything

Heat oil (canola or olive) in a heavy bottomed pot, and add the onion firstly, the garlic secondly, with some salt and the red pepper flakes.

Once these things are good and fragrant, throw everything else in, too: all cheeses and creams and cream cheeses and so on.

And MIX!  Add salt and pepper, too.

Transfer this to an oven-proof dip container.

Set the oven to 250 degrees and leave dip for oh, 45 mins to an hour, until slightly browned and certainly warm.

Dip it! Dip it good.