Braisin' Hussy

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Well, I've tried roasting a bunch of vegetables this week, and cauliflower wins as the one I'd be most likely to eat on a regular basis. Broccoli was good, but not as good as cauliflower, and fennel was... well, I didn't like it. I was just trying the vegetables plain- maybe fennel would taste better with something more than olive oil, salt, and pepper. Anyway, I know I don't have any recipes on the front page, and I'm sorry. I'll try and copy some of the Mothra Stewart ones I made (the ones that were at least mildly successful) sometime this week. The icebox crackers, probably, or the yogurt-tahini dip, which no one but me seemed to like.

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Monday, December 27, 2004

Happy Christmas afterglow. I am so tired of eating. We tend to go a bit overboard with the food at the holidays- make too much, eat too much. My appetite has been temporarily exhausted.

After we had finished opening gifts, Jon said, "You know, some people get married." I got a lovely Kitchenaid stand mixer and a Cuisinart food processor (an epicurean Pentium). And a pizza stone! I can't wait to use them. However, that will have to wait for tomorrow, for today I am taking people to the airport, doing laundry at Jon's, and playing video games.

One of my favorite clues this year was (I hope I'm remembering this right) "The sounds that started World War I." I guessed Franz Ferdinand, and I was right, but that was only half of it. It was The Killers of Franz Ferdinand. So I got two CDs. I love clues. Even though I'm usually way dumb at them.

It's raining. I'm very glad. My nose and hands were getting far too dry. Some moisture in the air is a good thing.

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Friday, December 24, 2004

Taking a break from cooking. Why is our Christmas Eve the best Christmas Eve? Because it's filled with hors d'oeuvres! It's a family tradition of ours to make and eat a bunch of hors d'oeuvres for Christmas Eve dinner. I just made the Chicken Liver Mousse. Mmmmm. Also up are the Basil Leaves with Goat Cheese, the yogurt-tahini dip I made for Gingerbreadfest that I'm not sure anyone liked but me, and the icebox crackers that I was supposed to make for Gingerbread but I was too tired and annoyed with the failure of the toasted pepita dip to do so. We've also got a bunch of cheese and crackers and crostinis and vegetables and such. Yay!

In case you're wondering, our other Christmas traditions are: bagels and lox for breakfast Christmas morning, lasagna for dinner, and clues on gifts- the recipient has to work out what's inside the box before they can open it. It stretches gift time out a lot. I suck at writing and guessing clues, so I've been trying some different tacks- charades was kind of a failure last year. I'm thinking about doing a Pictionary-like thing this year for my clues.

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Thursday, December 23, 2004

I went to go see The House of Flying Daggers last night with Jer, after dinner with Jon and Ryan and her family. What a goofy movie. And wow, is Romantic Lead Guy beautiful. Just... yeah. That movie brought the pretty. I thought Hero was better, personally, in terms of music and cinamatography and pretty-fu (er, to describe the choreographed fighting scenes rather than the actors).

I have been busy every night this week. I'm kind of exhausted. Tomorrow, I'm heading over to my parents' house, and my mom and I are going to make tons of hors d'oeuvres for dinner. That's our Christmas Eve tradition. Christmas breakfast is bagels and lox, and Christmas dinner is lasagna, although this year we're going to have a more traditional dinner over at Jon and Ryan's with both our families. The lasagna dinner will be on Boxing Day.

Which reminds me, I need to go buy not only things for tomorrow's dinner, but broccoli, Velveeta, and Ritz crackers for the Death By Broccoli, and green beans, mushrooms, and almonds for... well, green beans. Damn it, and the lasagna makings! Argh, that's so many stores! Whatever, I'll buy my produce at Safeway, not Sigona's. And I thought I was going to have time tonight to clean off the Tivo. Ha! I'll have to set up the mirror to reflect it into the kitchen while I work. Crap, and my kitchen's a mess.

Dumb holidays.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Hm. Well, this week has quickly taken a turn for the worse. My last day of work is Thursday. I was looking forward to a vacation next week. Not so much anymore, now that it's the start of my re-unemployment. Hopefully my temp agency'll scrounge up something quickly. Although I'd still like to have that week off.

D&D tonight.

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Sunday, December 19, 2004

So, yesterday was spent cooking. I got a Martha Stewart hors d'oeuvres cookbook recently, and I went through and marked all the things that didn't seem to unnecessarily fussy. Ryan asked me to bring something salty to today's 25th Annual Gingerbreadfest. I'll let you know if any of these things pass muster.

One of them did. Ish. Needed some tweaking. I made a yogurt-tahini sauce last night that was pretty good, but a little too bitter. So I added some honey. I don't know why not sugar. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I think it was. I'm not going to bring it to the fest- there's not really enough for... I don't even know what we'd do with it. I'm planning on dipping popcorn in it.

I made a bunch of icebox crackers- Parmesan and rosemary, cheddar and cornmeal, Gruyere and thyme. They will have been in the fridge for 16 hours when I make them, not the recommended 24. Also, I didn't have a food processor, so I just made them by hand, which may result in weird textures or not-combined-well-itude. Whatever.

Oh man, I made frico, and what a MESS! I first tried it the Alton Brown way, in the oven. Didn't work. Stuck like mad to the parchment. So I made them in my lovely, lovely crepe pan, which worked, kind of. These are not pretty at all. Hopefully they'll still be crunchy by the time the party starts.

Let's see, what else? Crunchy, spiced garbanzo beans. Canned beans, dried in the microwave with a bunch o' spices on them. Tasty, yes. Crunchy, not really. I probably won't be bringing these. Or I'll keep them in the car.

Recipes to make this morning include something involving bacon, possibly a mixed nuts thing, and a dip. I should probably get over there.

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Saturday, December 18, 2004

I'm okay now. Sorry for the panic, Mom.

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Friday, December 17, 2004

Oh... this is weird. I don't like this. Gravity is slightly off today. Something's pulling me down and to the right.

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Thursday, December 16, 2004

I think I prefer this description of dragons better than the one I linked to yesterday. Here's red dragons, specifically.

I finally wrote up the last curry recipe! Channa Matar. I also moved up the Spiced Onion Puree, since this is the recipe you use it in.

Stephanie of The Grub Report, better known (at least to TWoPpers) as Keckler, has a new post on her site about the wonders of cauliflower. I was skeptical- cauliflower's not my vegetable of choice. I tried it. Wow, was it good.

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Channa Matar

1/4 cup ghee or vegetable oil
1 large potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Pinch of salt
Pinch of turmeric
Pinch of cumin seeds
2 1/2 Tbsp Spiced Onion Puree
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
Pinch of sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garam masala
Dash of paprika
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup fresh or frozen green peas
2-2 1/2 cups chicken stock
3-4 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1 recipe of Channa, fried and drained, ghee or oil from frying reserved

Using the leftover ghee or oil from frying the channa, fry the potato cubes with a pinch of salt and turmeric. Fry cubes until golden and almost entirely cooked. Remove and set aside to drain.

Heat 1/4 cup ghee or oil in the skillet. Add the cumin seeds and spiced onion and fry gently for about a minute. Add the potatoes back to the pan along with the turmeric, cayenne, ground cumin, salt, and sugar. Cook, stirring regularly, for about 1 to 2 minutes. Add garam masala and paprika and stir to blend well. Remove from the heat and mix in the yogurt. Return to the heat, add the peas, and cook over medium heat until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Reduce heat to low and add the channa cubes. Sprinkle with the chopped cilatro and simmer for 10 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened.

Variation: Tofu would probably work pretty well in this recipe instead of the channa. It'll still need to be cut into a half-inch depth and pressed to get out the extra liquid, then fried. I have no idea whether firm or soft tofu would be used.

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Channa

1/2 gallon milk
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup water

If using for Channa Matar:
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup ghee or vegetable oil (for frying)

Combine the vinegar and water, and line a colander with a few layers of cheesecloth or paper towels. Bring the milk to a boil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon. When a boil is reached, remove from the heat and slowly stir in the vinegar-water combination until the curd and whey just separate. If you use too much vinegar, the resulting cheese will be tough. Pour the curd and whey into the colander and let drain.

If using for Channa Matar, add salt to taste. Take the drained channa and pat it out into about a 1/2 to 1-inch thick rectangle. Put it on a plate or cutting board covered with a paper towel, and place another plate on top with a weight on it. Leave in the refrigerator until hardened enough to cut into 1/2-inch cubes (approximately). In a large skillet, fry the channa cubes in the ghee or oil until browned. Set aside to drain while preparing the rest of the dish.

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Spiced Onion Puree

2 medium yellow onions, quartered
1-inch cube of fresh ginger
4-5 cloves garlic
1 large peeled tomato
2 green chiles
1/4 cup tomato juice
1 Tbsp white vinegar

Puree in a blender. Use in curries. Kept in a container with the lid tightly closed, will keep one week in the refrigerator, or a really long time in the freezer. Also tastes good mixed with scrambled eggs.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Last night's D&D session contained one of the most wonderfully cinematic moments in RPG history. No, seriously.

We were tromping around in the woods outside of Manifest, trying to find the tree of an elf who had just been murdered. (Yeah.) Anyway, what should swoop out of the sky than a big-ass red dragon. This was a not-entirely-unrandom random encounter. This dragon's name was Jaynog, and we had killed his brother while mucking about in the astral plane. (Come to think of it, there should be a pissed off githyanki dragonrider somewhere.) So he had a personal grudge against us. Anyway, he very smartly stayed far away from Cooper and Mynnyd's ability to hit him with melee weapons. So, we were reduced to using arrows- good for Sagittarius (because that's pretty much all he uses), not quite as good for the rest of us. And then Jaynog cast spells of repel arrows and shield, which meant we were doing very, very little damage. Thankfully, someone cast a targeted dispell and got rid of those just in time for Jaynog to swoop down and pick up the only person who had been doing damage to him- Sagittarius.

So, Sagittarius is hanging about 55 feet in the air from the claws of this dragon. The dragon decides to drop him, because falling? HURTS. However, Sag has a plan. He has readied an action to shoot the dragon with an arrow while falling if he's dropped. (His bow was already out, and at an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared starting from a zero velocity, he'd have... over one second but less than two? Physics is not my strong field.) He lets fly an arrow while falling! The arrow strikes a critical blow! The arrow does 52 points of damage! If you deal a single attack that does over 50 points of damage, the creature has to make a fortitude save vs. immediate death. The save isn't tough to make, especially for this dragon, whose fortitude save is already higher than the DC. The only way to fail it would be to roll a 1 on a d20. And it rolls that 5%. Sagittarius takes 24 (5d6) points of damage from hitting the ground! The dragon dies! And falls! Onto Sagittarius! He takes another 26 points of damage, is at 0 hit points (not dead, but "staggered," and about to start dying), and pinned under a dragon that weighs 18,000 pounds! The rest of the party panics, Merreck casts reduce on the dragon (getting it down to 2,000 pounds), and Cooper and Mynnyd drag the carcass off of Sagittarius, who Cooper hit with the wand of cure light wounds so we could get back to town and find a cleric.

Good. Times.

And later we fought a human necromancer, a flesh golem, and an abyssal ghoul.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

That Deep-Fried Cheese Thing
Eddie

1 cup grated parmesan
1 cup grated swiss cheese
3 eggs
A bunch of cubed bread

Beat eggs. add to cheese. Mix into a thick batter- well,
thin might be better, but good luck with that. Take cubes of bread,
dip in batter, form into coherent balls, deep fry till golden brown.
Eat.

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Monday, December 13, 2004

I was checking my stats, and over the weekend, I was getting a lot of referrals from Salon's Table Talk. Anyone want to post a link in the comments so I can see what that's about?

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I think spiced nuts may become the new salsa/hummus/biscuits. I tried another recipe last night. I'm not going to post it, because it was not good. Using Old Bay for Cajun seasoning was the mistake- the pecans had the unpleasant aftertaste of celery seed. It was a big goof on my part. I should have investigated "Cajun seasoning" online. My bad. Thankfully (I guess), I only wasted a half pound of pecan pieces on the recipe.

Oh, dude. That's my hair. The smell of cumin and Old Bay has been bugging me since last night, and it's IN MY HAIR. Ugh. I'm showering as soon as I get home.

Bud and Eddie's Holiday Hoo-hah was this weekend. It was much fun. The best snacky food item there was, in my opinion, a bread-cheese-butter combination deep-fried. I mean, seriously, how can that not be good? Only way for it to be better would be to add bacon. Other things there... sangria and punch, risotto muffins, tiny meat pies in puff pastry (I think). Oh, and cheesecake thingies- those were really good.

Gingerbreadfest is next weekend. I need to find something appropriately salty to offset our diabetic comas.

I need to make something, period, because I'm not going to have a recipe on the top page soon. Most recently, I made the not-good pecans, Jonsauce (already posted), and chicken soup (already posted, although I make it different every time). At last count, I was up to 67 recipes posted. Some of those were just cribbed off of Food Network's site, but I figure those are offset by the times I simply linked to them (not counted in the total). Maybe I'll do something when I hit 100. Maybe I'll have a party, like Ryan and Leigh did for their 100th review.

Last weekend, I spent Sunday over at Lydia's. We went out for an excellent brunch at La Note in Berkeley. She had an omelette, I had eggs scrambled with goat cheese on toast. Later, we watched episodes three and four of Yakitate!! as well as some episodes of Card Captor Sakura. It was a day of much cute.

On Friday, the family went out to celebrate my mom's birthday. We went to the Oak City Bar and Grill and had a fabulous meal. Mom and Dad got the scallops, I got the pork porterhouse, Ryan got the salmon, and Jon got the pork tenderloin special. It was a fantastic meal, but I have to ask, what is up with waiters not writing down your order anymore? It's so friggin' annoying! Our waiter must have come back to our table twice to make sure everything was right when, if he had written it out in the first place, he would have known. Seriously, I don't think you're less of a person if you can't memorize five orders on the spot!

I think I've covered everything that's been nagging me to write about.

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Thursday, December 09, 2004

I bought some plain yogurt the other day at Trader Joe's. It's not as tangy as I'd like (I guess I prefer the Greek kind- it's über creamy and tangy), so I decided to make yogurt cheese, using a colander, bowl, and two layers of paper towels. Now I have to figure out something to do with the cheese. I'm thinking some sort of dip or spread to serve tomorrow night as an appetizer before we go out to dinner for my mom's birthday. Maybe I'll go over to Jon's and swipe some of his pesto. That'd probably taste good mixed in.

Made Jonsauce last night. Woo.

My car is riding awfully low today (just using hyperbole, Dad, don't panic). Last night I went to visit Sara at St. Ned's. Her friend, Peggy, was trying to get rid of a bunch of cookbooks so she could have shelf space to fill up with... well, newer and better ones, I guess. Anyway, wow. I have a crapload of new books. Including The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook! It doesn't have the soup recipe Aunt Peggy gave me in it, but it's got a lot of other good-looking food.

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Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Last night's D&D session was fun. And hard. And hilarious. Mynnyd came really damn close to dying. His hit points are 100 normally, 126 when raging. I was raging and down to 13 hit points before I killed the damn thing. If I hadn't been hasted, I would have died when I lost my 26 temporary rage hit points. Thankfully, because of the haste, I had extra time and was able to pull a potion and get my health back to 1 before my turn ended. And thanks to the other players who told me that once you kill an undead creature, it's dead, no need to coup de grace on it. Which is what I wanted to do, but then I would have been dead-dead-dead.

Oh, and who's dead-dead-dead? Yeah, that's right, everyone but Mynnyd and Cooper. We finished the area of our campaign dealing with the undead menace in Manifest, but then we decided to check out the rest of the crypt we were in. Phaedra was felled by a dread wraith which had a tendency to remain hidden in walls with 9/10 cover. She tried to fool it by playing dead when she was merely almost dead, but it had the ability to sense a creature's life force, so no dice. We were all fooled, though- she's an excellent actress. Then it killed her, she turned into a wraith, and Mynnyd had to kill her. Hee! That's two of our party members who have been turned and Myn's had to kill. Then, we found a secret chamber with a chest in it. Sagittarius said "I'm going to go check the chest for traps," and we all walked into the room. However, the chest wasn't trapped, the room was. It was a cry of the banshee or something, and Sagittarius and Merreck failed their fortitude saves and died. It was pretty funny. I would have been PISSED, though, if after all that we had fought, I died because of a failed fort save.

We had four encounters tonight- the first with the mummy lord that nearly killed Mynnyd, two other mummies, and a summoned girallon; the second with an atropal scion that resembled a huge naked fetus with Tyrannosaurus arms (which, thankfully, we killed fast, because it had gaze of slay living which would have finished us off quickly in a few rounds [and, in fact, hit Mynnyd once and did a crapload of damage]); a huge hulking corpse guarding a pool of water; and the dread wraith and Phaedrawraith.

I think it's time for us to level, Jer.

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Tuesday, December 07, 2004

It's weird to lose someone you were friends with, but never met in real life. Eric was the moderator of a television message board I used to visit in 2002 - 2003. He had created this haven for fans of a few TV shows (Angel and Buffy, mainly) who were fed up with the crappiness of Ain't It Cool News but not keen on the draconian levels of moderation at a place like Television Without Pity. I met some great people there- it was my favorite place to hang out online during the horror of my semester in Los Angeles. Anyway, eventually the boards got kind of unwieldy, some of the posters started annoying me, and I wanted to find a place where staying on topic was more rigidly enforced. (Also, I was the only person who loved cooking shows.) So I left for the draconian levels of moderation at Television Without Pity. I visited occasionally, but didn't post anymore. Now tragedy has struck, and I feel awful for ditching those boards and the people on them. I guess that's my own guilt and selfishness dealing with the situation. I'm sorry. Here's to Eric. He was a good friend.

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Monday, December 06, 2004

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything recently. I just haven't been in the mood. One of my online buddies died this weekend, and I'm sad and out of sorts. I'll get back to posting in a day or two.

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Friday, December 03, 2004

Peppered Pecans
Zingerman's

12 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper (or more)
1 1/4 tsp fine sea salt (I used 2 tsp kosher salt)
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
Pinch of ground cardamom
2 large egg whites
2 pounds raw pecan halves

Heat the oven to 325. In a large bowl, stir together the butter, sugar, pepper, salt, and spice (a pastry blender works well for this if your butter's not quite at room temperature). Add the egg white and mix well. Add the pecans and mix thoroughly to coat well.

Spread the spice-coated nuts in a large roasting pan (or deep jelly-roll pan). Roast for 18 to 25 minutes, or until they are toasted through, turning every 5 minutes or so with a spatula.

Remove from the oven and continue turning every five minutes until the nuts reach room temperature. Will keep in airtight containers for 4 to 6 weeks.

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Thursday, December 02, 2004

Salon praises Good Eats and America's Test Kitchen. Read it.

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Wednesday, December 01, 2004

You know what sucks? Having a nightly habit of waking up at 4:30am, worrying. Usually, it's about people breaking into my apartment, at which point, I get up and turn on the light over the dining room table. Last night, it was carbon monoxide. Since the dumb incident, I haven't been using my heater at night. (Or really, much at all.) We're in the middle of a cold snap over here in California (and yes, I can feel your tears, East-coasters), and I've been loading up on comforters and sleepwear to keep warm. Anyway, I wake up, think about turning the heater on, listen to my upstairs neighbors argue (seriously, people, at 4:30am?), get a headache, wonder if I'm suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, consider airing out my apartment, decide against it because apparently I'd rather be dead than cold, move my carbon monoxide detector into my room, spend the next fifteen minutes wondering if the detector even works, and then decide that my headache's because my damn neighbors are arguing at 4:30am. I go back to sleep. I wake up, not dead.

Speaking of not dead- and how pathetic is that for a segue- no one died last night in D&D. Er, no players died. We killed some stuff. Phaedra returned to us. I have a feeling Mynnyd shouldn't really trust her, because he only knew her for a couple of days, and the next time he saw her, it was actually a succubus impersonating her. So, Phaedra's disguised herself while in town because people think she's a demon. The party doesn't, but I think Mynnyd shouldn't be entirely believing Phaedra's really herself. Of course, Mynnyd's also only slightly smarter than a rock, so he may well believe she's who she says she is.

Stupid Trader Joe's hasn't had refried beans these last two Tuesdays. I wanted to make some Spicy Bean Dip quickly for the session. I did make it, but it's not really quick when you have to go to two stores.

Ryan made damn tasty spiced peppery pecans last weekend. They were really good. The recipe was from the Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating. I want to make them and, like, bring them into work. Because if they are in my home, I will make myself sick on them. So good.

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