FoodiePop

It has been rather gloomy here in Minnesota.  It would normally not bother me, but I have been needing some sunshine and hope. This doom and gloom bullshit is killing me. That being said, I am reading a new book. The Foie Gras Wars How A 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired The World’s Fiercest Food Fight by Mark Caro. Not the most pleasant reading so far. The animal rights activists are giving me nightmares. Beware. 

I am guilty of not reading as much I would like and what I was reading was pretty craptastic literature. I am engrossed in this book. There will be a pretty lengthy review once I am done, which should be done in a few days. What I will say is that it is turning out to be some enlightening stuff. My mind is on foie gras overload.

So now I have fowl on the brain. I spoke earlier about having purchased some cool proteins at the local Asian market. One of those was quail. Now I am trying to decide a way to prepare them that doesn’t me to require some sort of Michelin chef inspired skill. I wanna go simple and really taste this bird. I implore you wise food and non food readers: What would you do?

Oh Friday, where have you gone? Instead of having fabulous dinner plans, we are tiling the laundry room. Don’t get me wrong, I would sit in a cardboard box with my man, but I want to go out for a nice dinner. I don’t want to go to Home Depot. Okay, I am sounding like a spoiled brat. Maybe it is the imminent arrival of Spring, but I am antsy. I want to be out and enjoying life. Now I have to remind myself of all the great things to enjoy this weekend and the ones that might send me over the edge.

Pro-Beau trying not to yell at me when I glue myself to the floor.
Con-When I eventually do glue myself to the floor and I blame him.

Pro-Sleeping in.
Con-Having to get my lazy arse out of bed.

Pro-Friends coming over tomorrow night, lots of fun and drinking to come.
Con-I am going to feel like total shite on Sunday.

Pro-I am making Italian Beef sandwiches tomorrow!
Con-I am trying out a spicy chicken dip that may give our guests gut rot.

Pro-Sharing the weekend with Beau, he has nowhere to run. Muah ah ah!
Con-In order to keep me in whiskey he has to go to work on Monday.

I am trying to find some balance in my life. Yeah, I just realised how lame that sounded. Happy Friday! Screw the pros and cons and have some fucking fun.

Oh boy, I drank quite a bit Paddy’s. I was really behaved for most of the night, until we came home and watched the American Idol I recorded. Then I drank til I passed out on the couch. Alone. With a horrible pain in my back and neck. Good times, good times.

In the two days that have followed I have done quite a bit of thinking. About what to eat that is. Nothing makes me want to eat more then being hungover. I have to constantly stuff food into my face. I love leftovers and whenever it is the day after a binge there never seems to be any. I feel like pasta is the best hangover food, but if you ever get any sort of creamy sauce, the next day is seperates and turns into an oily mess. So I did my research and made a big pot of alfredo pasta. The secret to the sauce is cream cheese. I added pork, spinach and peas. For the next 3 days I had leftovers, delicious creamy leftovers.

I looked at some recipes and found this gemof fatty yumminess. The sauce was started with a stick of butter. I know, it’s a lot of butter. I added garlic and red pepper flakes, once the butter is melted, I put in the 8 ounces of cream cheese. After the milk, I added Parmesan until I liked the taste. I used quite a bit, but it ain’t easy bein’ cheesy!

It was good, but even better, it was awesome the next day… and the day after. Happy hangover, no matter what day it is.

Hope everyone is making it through Monday without screaming. I was looking through the various pictures I have from all the craziness I’ve been making. I feel like I’ve been drawn to comforting dishes as of late and I think I just want to give my tummy a hug any chance I can. I’ve been kind of a stressful mess, so cooking has become less about mess and more about the enjoyment of it.

Risotto is a dish that people get kind of freaked out about. It is easy to put together and just as easy to make into hospital food. I was originally going to make a pea risotto, but Beau is a stickler with his peas. He fucking gives me a stomach ache when he gets picky about what I make. Grr. Anyhoo, a friend of ours gave us some pan fish he had caught and I figured that would be just what the risotto ordered.

I used a tin of anchovy when I was coating the arborio rice. I thought the fish flavor would go well with the glass (maybe two) of white wine I used to start the dish. People say you need to have chicken stock or just use water. I used chicken bouillon broth, so those other people can lick my saucepan. With the last cup of broth I added about 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. Since the fish is cooked separately it doesn’t turn into fish flakes and you get some nice chunks of fish. I finished it with a chiffonade of basil. It looks really pretty and green against the red of the rice.

It was kind of a romantic meal, which I used during the week to change it up a bit. It will be fun to try different combos and variations of risotto. Casual risotto with spam maybe. “I’m mad at you” risotto with frozen peas. The possibilities are endless, I’ll keep you posted.

I consider the kitchen a fun place. A really fun place. But since the house is in upheaval because of repairs, I have to walk through the madness to get there. The kitchen is no longer a safe place, it has become a sanctuary. Somewhere to run when I feel as though I am losing my mind. As a result, I haven’t been cooking, more pulling my hair out and crying into dishtowels. Seriously, the past few weeks have been stressful. Maybe I should take up meditating before I start eating my hair.

Being sick or having to move some piece of furniture has stopped me from doing anything fun recipe wise other then the sandwich/soup combo. (snoring) So now that I am back to 100% health wise, I am pulling out the big guns. I have a fridge full of fun proteins and I am determined to get back into the kitchen. It has been hard to cook and take pictures and remember what the hell I put in the dish to begin with. Part of spring cleaning is going to go towards cleaning out my cluttered mind. There are so many things I am working on that I want to share. I’m off to go plan dinner, hopefully I don’t break a leg on the way there.

There have been a few requests for the pork belly recipe I used that fateful night.  I loosely followed Gordon Ramsey’s pressed belly recipe.  Seeing as how we got the pork from an Asian market rather then a butcher, the piece wasn’t even on all sides.  Wonky, wonky.  Needless to say, pressing the pork belly became kind of impossible for me.  I tried weighing down the pork with every heavy can in the kitchen and it just got too ridonkulous.  Ugh. 

They say the belly shouldn’t sit on the bottom of the pan, so I used some carrots and celery to keep it lifted along with the head of garlic.  Don’t forget to convert the temp from Celsius to Farenheit.  The crispy skin is the best part, so let it sit in the oven for the last stage of cooking till it gets nice and crackly.  Some bubbles will pop up.  Pork rinds… yum.

I hope you like this as much as I did.  It is a fatty dish, but it’s pork belly, live a little.  I am working on doing some Asian dishes with pork belly.  Will keep you posted! 

Recipe from Gordon Ramsey’s the F Word.

Since coming off the juice I have been wanting to chew something, anything. I would wake up chewing… nothing. So I figured I would utilize the tofu we purchased and make something that would give me something to chew on. That required some thinking seeing as how tofu has the consistency of pudding at times. I hit the web and scoured until I found something I could get behind. 

We got medium firm tofu and it is best if you press out the liquid before you marinade. Stick it between two plates and put something heavy on top. A lot of liquid comes out, so more room for yummy, non juice marinade.  I marinaded the tofu stuffs for an hour.
 

Preheating the oven at 300 degrees, bake the tofu flipping when the tops start to get dry. The smaller pieces I cut came out a bit chewy on the ends. Cooking at such a low temp can stretch out cooking time to about an hour. I liked it because the garlic and ginger that stuck to the tofu didn’t burn, but caramelized really nicely.
 
I cut up some broccoli and sauteed them in the leftover marinade after adding a tablespoon of honey and equal part olive oil. Just cook for a few minutes until it starts to get tender. I really love beef and broccoli when we get Chinese food because the florets soak up whatever sauce they are in, hence the broccoli in this dish.

Beau was not a fan of the tofu. When I cook for someone I love, it drives me mad when they don’t like the food, regardless of whether it was because of my cooking or the ingredient. So rather then leap over the table and strangle him, I really tasted the tofu and came to the conclusion that it was awesome. I ate his leftover tofu and couldn’t have been happier. I was the fullest I’d been in weeks. In regards to my better half, back to the drawing board

Szechuan Marinade
1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce
1/3 cup of water
4 cloves of garlic minced
1″ of ginger, pealed and minced
2 tablespoons of cayenne

adapted from about.com

We broke the fast!!! The two of us are eating grown up food and everything. Our V-Day, which we are officially celebrating later, was filled with munching on hummus and popcorn. Beau got me a new popcorn machine for Cupid’s Day, so I used it dammit. So yesterday I thought I should make Beau some hummus while he was ice fishing, he loves hummus. I was blending tahini, which is sesame seeds and olive oil, and juicing a lemon and working WAY too hard on hummus. So he gets home and I tell him it is done. The world’s best hummus is ready for ingestion. Since we can’t have bread yet, he piles up a cucumber and digs in. I was sitting there thinking, “I am so good. Best girlfriend ever.” His face looked like I shat in his eyeballs. “It smells like peanut butter.” That’s what he tells me. Well fuck that. I dragged his arse to the kitchen to see of he could do better. He (cough) did. I am a woman of my word and you heard it here. Beau’s hummus was better then mine. DAMMIT!!

Second Place Hummus
1 can of chickpeas (water reserved)
approx. 1/3 cup of lemon juice
1/4 cup of tahini
4 cloves of garlic
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
dash of cayenne
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Tahini
2 cups of sesame seeds
little more than 1/3 cup of olive oil

Toast sesame seeds, but be careful because they can burn if not watched closely. It makes quite a bit, but you can use it for dressings as well. Food pro is a must, these little bastards will not blend in a blender.

Now with hummus, everyone likes there’s different. I made my own tahini and it comes out wicked strong, hence the peanut butter smell Beau was bitching about. Some people roast the garlic, it is all preference.

Smug Hummus
1 can of chickpeas
1/8 cup of tahini, seriously what is the point?
juice of whole lemon
6 cloves minced and sauteed garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes
small handful of sunflower seeds

Beau’s came out much creamier because he had an indentured servant hulling his chickpeas for him. Where I used a food pro, he used a blender. Reserving 2 tablespoons of garlic, he took the reserve and sunflower seeds and mixed it into the final blended product whilst drizzling olive oil on the top. It looked pretty even though it was in an old Parmesan plastic container. We are nothing but classy.

image by sota767

I am a bit of a piggy.  I am the girl that wakes up ravenous and makes some ridiculous non-breakfast meal, sits on the couch to turn on CSI Wherever and then proceeds to stuff said food into my face.  And I love it.  It tastes so good when it hits my lips!!  But I love myself as well.  It took me awhile to get to this place, but I care about my body.  You would never know by the amount of booze and cigs I suck down.  So when Beau told me about his juice fast I was intrigued.  I wanted to support him and I figured making dinner for myself while juicing his was not the way to go.  So I was on board although I had no clue what I was in for.  I figured this experience would bring me closer to my healthier, more wholesome self.

I am now on the last day of my prefast and I feel pretty great.  I have rekindles my romance with frozen peas.  The fruit and veg we juice always tastes pretty scrumptious.  I haven’t really posted too much, because I didn’t know how I felt about it or if I would run screaming for the nearest Fat Donald’s.  Now that I am in the trenches of juicedom, I feel kind of ashamed.  Ashamed for how I ate and how disconnected I felt from my food.  There are so many of us who love to cook and love the taste and spice and colours.  But I realize I had lost that loving feeling.  (cue Everly Brothers)  I had become a semi-foodie whore.  Of course I always want the food to taste good, but I was drifting to the dark side where Darth Vadar is a pretty presentation and Darth Maul is the latest foodie trend.  I am not an expert nor a professional chef, so what the fuck is my problem?  Why has my food become so serious and I along with it? 

I am tasting my food these past few days and the biggest change hasn’t been the amount of snot that has been dripping from my nose (which has been an obscene amount) or the weight I have already lost cause I’m an oinks, but how excited I am to jump start the team that cooks with me, my stomach and my heart.  Little did I know, but this juice fast is giving me the sort of clarity that will help me be a better cook, eater and all around cuddly person. 

I haven’t even started the hardcore part of the juice fast, but I feel confident.  I may feel completely different at the conclusion of JuiceFest 2009.  I know the physical benefits will be a big plus which is always a good thing, but I want to have learned something, anything and if it takes a bunch of juice so be it.  Bring it on!  When all this is said and done I am ready to get back in the kitchen, if she will still have me.

image by MyAngelG

I am bitch slapping Day 2 of Juice Fest.  Granted it is still pre-fast, but I haven’t started speaking in tongues or tackling people for their bagels. Yesterday ended in a meal of steamed brussels, pears and peas. Finished off with lemon juice, garlic and ginger, it wasn’t too bad. I wish I had left out the ginger. You win some, you lose some.

Today I can only eat raw fruit and veg with water and juices. Seriously, juicing is kind of fun. Making all the flavour combos makes you taste each individual ingredient. I have been really careful to make sure I get all the nutrient rich combos without it tasting like elephant bottom. Everyone knows how bad elephant butt tastes.

What I’ve eaten today: A juice of carrots, spinach, alfalfa sprouts and grapes. Handful each of grapes, celery and carrots.

What I wish I was eating: Hmm. A nice creamy soup. Maybe of the chowder variety. Crunchy Italian bread. Mmm.