I recently had the good fortune of traveling back home, to the East Bay, California, for a few days. I’ve been living in (or near) Chicago for about 7 years now, and I’ve been home an average of once per year (twice in ’06, none in ’11, by my calculations), so it was nice to see my lovely, elderly pirate dog again, among so many other things.
Like the beautiful, wide open kitchen my mother had installed in the house as I was getting ready to move to Chicago.
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Sarah played a recital recently, in which she played Grieg’s sonata in C minor, Prokofiev’s sonata in D Major, and Introductiona and Tarantella by Sarasate.
I had the privilege of catering it.
I made three things for her: chocolate cupcakes with kirsch buttercream; orange blossom marshmallows; and rice cups with black rice, red pepper risotto, and black olives, topped with micro basil.
For the sake of simplicity (and my own sanity), some pictures of everything are included, but I’m only actually putting up the cupcake recipe now. If you’re lucky, the others may come later…
I’m a pretty big fan of biscuits. I haven’t made them in a while, however, and so that needed to change.
Looking back a while ago, I attempted a buttermilk biscuit recipe which turned out decently. They were a little dry and a little dense, but they were edible. The suggestion was made to use regular cream instead of buttermilk, and to only use baking powder instead of soda. That changed recipe also turned out pretty well, better (to my tastes) than the first.
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A little over a year ago, I found myself wanting to make buttery, chewy cookies. I decided to take my life into my hands, did a Google search for “butter cookies” and made the first recipe that I looked at.
The recipe was on recipes.com and was called “Buttery Toffee Cookies.”
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One of the great simple pleasures of my life lately has been waking up early (between 7:30 and 9) on the weekends and making breakfast and some coffee.
Lots of things are great for breakfast: scones, biscuits, pancakes, donuts, and more. More often than not, recently, I’ve been making scones. Convenient, as it turns out, as there is a scone competition coming up in about two weeks!
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I’ll admit, most dinners I make for myself are nothing more interesting than a handful of whatever meats and veggies I have sitting around in the fridge, thrown in a pan until cooked, and served with rice or pasta. It’s fast and it’s easy, and it requires nearly no advanced planning.
This formula gets a little stale at times, of course, but drawing inspiration from different places can help to keep it fresh. Most of these I make are Asian-influenced; chicken, peppers, gimchee (recently), sesame oil, soy sauce, and so on. Recently, though, an African dish by the name of maschi was brought to my attention.
Quite a while ago, I toyed with poaching a large batch of chicken, and then chipping away at it from the fridge for a few days. Recently, I remembered how awesome that was, and decided to try it again.
Turns out, it is just as great as it was before, and it’s also a really easy way to use up old and leftover wine, champagne, beer, herbs, and spices, too.
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I recently came into posession of a massive smoked salmon fillet. I don’t eat a lot of smoked salmon, though it’s quite delicious (and this one in particular I found exceptionally good), so I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.
So, naturally, I grabbed an avocado and a loaf of sourdough bread (two of my favorite things in the world) and winged it.
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In cooking, much like any other art or science, inspiration is important in coming up with things to do.
Sometimes, it’s the breathtaking view of a garden of flowers; sometimes it’s a can of soup.
Sometimes, it’s the determination to deconstruct and recombine classic elements into unexpected and provative new dishes; sometimes it’s someone saying “hey you should make bulgogi burritos.”
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2011 was a long year. Not considerably longer than any other year, I suppose, but it certainly felt much longer. Maybe I’ve just been that much more busy. Clearly, I’ve been too lazy busy to update this blog with anything resembling regularity.
Thanksgiving, lots of finals, Dead City Productions, Christmas dinner, and more. To get a bit of closure for myself, and finally end the year out, mentally, I’ve decided to once again post a series of pictures (yes, with captions, don’t worry) of things made and done during the last month and a half of the year, without any recipes. All of the things which were good, I will definitely come back to again, and post a recipe then. All of the things which were bad, well, there’s no real reason to share those recipes.
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