bluerainroom

chilly/chili

The sun is finally shining after a weekend of chill and misty weather.  Oh the complaints at the cold!  I didn't mind it, really.  I must be ready to hunker down for the winter because the gray and damp days suited my mood.

We've been having football food for dinners on Sunday nights and eating in front of the late game.  Wings, ribs, quesadillas.  This weekend was a perfect weekend for chili.  (Hat tip to my dad for the idea.).  Add shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and fritos (and beer), and we're good to go.  Hunker down.

I still like meat

We don't eat a ton of meat. Much to my son's despair, that is.  But don't get me wrong.  My family likes a good steak or burger.  And don't forget bacon.  Still, we try to be mindful about things in our own haphazard way, and I was tooling around on the internets one day and stumbled across this site.  So Meat Free Monday it is.  I like nothing more than a little structure in my life.

It's taking a bit to get our sea legs under us. (Which means, I kept forgetting for a couple of weeks there)  And after weeks of yogurt and toast for breakfast, Callum asked for bacon yesterday and I had the plate in front of him before I remembered.  But!  After those six pieces were were golden.  And Neel and I carried the banner for the family. 

It's so easy to go meat free in the summer.  This quick, off-the-cuff pasta dish is brimming with fresh veggies.  Mushrooms, zucchini and squash, quickly sauteed in a bit of olive oil, then reduced with a bit of sherry and bound together with a splash of cream.  We tossed some parm in there and we were off.

All it needs is a bit of bacon.

sunday supper, sobo style

So we started talking, round the 'hood, about the idea of having regular, communal dinners.  Once a week, once a month, the particulars didn't seem to matter as much as that we were making a choice to gather together to share a meal.  So this week we started the first of our SOBO Sunday Suppers.  And I have to stop and ask, what the heck is Neel laughing about? 

Our plans were loose, simply that we'd bring some food, whatever each of us had planned for dinner, and throw it all on the grill, sharing everything, family style.

Of course there was wine.

Grilled pineapple was Catherine's call.  It could have been dessert, but it was perfect with the meal.  Note the paint on Neel's index finger.  More on that later.

All over, but the last drops.

We cleared the dishes away, and the kids got up and played.  As Tyler said, "Dinner: dominated."  We were already chatting about what to cook next Sunday.  Jean and Paul and their brood didn't make it this week, but Tyler called it when he said, we know we're going to have them, and if you can get here come and join us.  So, here you are SOBO, we've got it goin' on, come on over.  Family of choice, all around me.  I love having something to look forward to.

still with the sunday supper

We're so civilized.

Callum with his John Deere tractor cup.

Laughing until we fall off our chairs or cry or both.  See all those clean plates?  We did manage to eat some too.

I want to jot the recipe down because it was a perfect Sunday supper, especially for spring time.  I found it out on the internets, a Food and Wine site, and you could too, but why go searching when I'm going to tell you about it right here?

Lemon and Cream Braised Pork Roast (do I have you interested already, or what?)

2-3 pound pork end roast
1 1/2 cups cream
1 head garlic, sliced crosswise
2 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste

Place pork in cast iron casserole (I used my Le Creuset), and add cream, garlic, water and salt and pepper.  Zest a lemon and add the zest, the halve the lemon and squeeze the juice over top of the pork.  Cover and bake in the oven for 3 hours at 300 degrees until meat is tender.

Remove pork from liquid and pat dry.  Strain and skim fat from liquid.  Return liquid to casserole and bring to a boil.  Boil for 45 minutes until liquid thickens and reduces. 

Add two tablespoons cooking oil to a skillet and brown pork on all sides, using tongs to turn.  Slice the pork, pour on the reduced gravy and enjoy with much laughter.

Now I modified this recipe to fit my cut of meat.  The Food and Wine site called for a 7 pound piece of pork, five cups of water and two cups of cream.  The only thing I retained was the whole lemon, and it might have been a touch too lemony.  I haven't been able to decide, because truly, the lemon cream has a lovely flavor.  Perfect for a spring evening.  I'm thinking there are leftovers for lunch today.

seventeen-ingredient dinner

While I was sick, Neel took over cooking duties.  I have a cookbook that my friend Megan gave me called The Four Ingredient Cookbook, but could I plan a dinner out of that on a night I was sick?  No....I thought chicken minestrone soup sounded good for someone with the flu. 

Chicken minestrone soup.  The Seventeen Ingredient Dinner.  Poor Neel.  I do most of the cooking in our family.  Well, let's face it, I do pretty much all of the cooking in our family.  Neel does lunches and breakfasts for Callum, but planning, shopping and preparing dinner falls on me.  We occasionally have these grand schemes of sharing duties.  My parents both worked and split the week, and part of me would love that, but it never manages to materialize around here.  I always assume this is true for two reasons.  The first is that I really do love to cook.  True, I get in funks just like anyone else, and tired of it and bored, and all I want to do is go out every night, or have someone hand me a big old plate of homemade macaroni and cheese that I didn't make.  But the truth is that cooking to me is very satisfying.  I've figured out that the key is to know what I'm doing when I walk in the door at the end of the day, and as long as I do it's a way to unwind, feed my creative energy and tend to my family.  Plus I'm bossy. 

That, I always figured, was the second reason.  It's hard for me to let someone else have my kitchen.  When in doubt, blame me.  It's my fault that Neel doesn't cook more.  I can't seem to let him.

But when I feel like this, he can have the kitchen.  No problem.  Get on with your bad self, Neel. 

Except.

After the Seventeen Ingredient Dinner, I actually had an ephiphany about why Neel doesn't cook.  It ended up being quite important, really.  Here's what happened.  I get out the onion, the carrots and look around feebly for the broth.  That's pretty much as far as I get.

Me:        Do you think you can handle dinner tonight, Babe?

Neel:      Sure!

Me:        I think all you need to do is get this stuff chopped.  The spinach is in the 'fridge, oh, and I wouldn't worry about pre-cooking the pasta the way it says. I'd just add that about ten minutes before we're ready to eat.

Neel:     Okay!

Silence while Neel chops and chops and chops.

Neel:     Do we have any rosemary?

Me:       There's fresh in a pack in the 'fridge.

Neel:     It calls for dried.

Me:       Fresh will be fine.

Silence while Neel chops and chops and chops.

Neel:    When it says, "diced" what does that mean, exactly?

Me:       Chopped, like squares.

Neel:     How big?

Me:       Like, little squares.

Neel:     ??

Me:       One inch.

Silence while Neel chops and chops and chops.

Neel:     It calls for oil and butter.  Why does it call for oil and butter?

Me:       (worn out, now) Can I explain it later?

Neel:     Do I need oil and butter?

Me:       Yes.

Neel:     Where's the corn oil?

Me:        Use olive oil.

Neel:     It calls for corn oil.

Me:       *--*

Okay, so here's the thing.  Neel's a scientist.  Which means when he's not writing grants asking for money to do experiments, he's in the lab actually doing experiments.  And what are experiments or lab protocols but really bizarre, complicated recipes?  Recipes that you can't fudge.  In my recipes you can use fresh rosemary instead of dried and it tastes better.  And your one-inch diced chicken or squash or whatever needn't be exact.  Corn oil-Schmorn oil. 

Here's what Neel's recipes look like.

Preparation of 10 liters of TC-100 Culture Medium (Neel points out that this is food you feed insect cells and would be a lot like soup.  Hmm.)

NOTE:  Use tissue culture supplies for everything (beakers, cylinders, bottles, stir bar, etc.).

The day before making the medium, make sure the following is done:
● Rinse 24, 500ml bottles with DI H2O, sterilize in autoclave and dry.
● Wrap approximately 40 spatulas in foil, autoclave and dry.
● Clean bench-top with 10% bleach and put down new bench paper and stir plate.
● Fill 12L PC carboy with exactly 9.5L of tissue culture grade water and incubate at 37C overnight.
(1)    Add stir bar to carboy and begin stirring.
(2)    Weigh out the following dry ingredients and add to carboy:

...and here there's a list of a jazillion things in a table that you add, Neel stresses, one at a time.  I said, "Whatever, dork, I skimmed that part."

(3)    Let stir 0.5-1h.  If ingredients are floating on top of the water, shake the carboy a little.  Adjust the medium to 10L final volume with tissue culture grade water.
(4)    Adjust pH to 6.2 by slowly adding (over a 15-20 min period), 10N KOH.  To monitor pH during adjustment, remove 5ml of medium, measure pH, then dispose (do not throw back into carboy).  To make 10N KOH solution, add 11.2g KOH pellets to 50ml conical vial and add tissue culture grade water to a final volume of 20ml.  Put on Nutator to dissolve pellets.
(5)    To filter the medium into bottles, place all the bottles into t.c. hood and remove caps.  Use the Sterivac 10 0.22μm filter unit (Millipore/Fisher) to filter sterilize medium.  The tubing for filtration should be wrapped in aluminum foil and sterilized by autoclaving before use.  Add 450 ml of medium/bottle to leave enough room for 10% FBS to be added.

THE END.

So, duh, no wonder the poor man doesn't cook.  I wouldn't either if I had to pay attention to that stuff all day.  I am, however, thinking he'd make an excellent baker.

epilogue

 I've been working on the palak part of the palak paneer too, trying to perfect it.  I almost have it.  This is the onion, spice mix part.  Cardamom, cumin, coriander, paprika, salt.  The garam masala comes at the end.

This is the spinach.

Here's everything bubbling happily away on the stove.  Neel's stirring tamarind paste.  We'll work on perfecting that next.  By this point we've added the cream to the spinach, and we both agreed that we got the spinach/cream/paneer ratio quite right with this batch, but that we needed more garam masala/paprika/salt.  Live and learn. 

And here's my family patiently awaiting dinner and not muttering things under their breath like, "Oh God, here she goes again.  Come on, Mama."  Oh, and one last thing about paneer.  When I first tasted the paneer (made by me!), I had to admit I was a little disappointed.  It was not quite as good as that which came from the Indian grocer.  Alas.  But, you know?  Once in the palak, it tasted really good and authentic.  Not superior, but definitely as good.  I could see myself going either way.  Sometimes I'll want to swing by the Indian grocery, and sometimes I'll want to curdle some milk.  Who wouldn't want to curdle some milk?

how to make paneer in one easy lesson

1. Get out your favorite apron.  I chose the lemons because of the lemon juice I'd need for acid in the paneer.

2.  Have lunch.  You don't know how long this will take or how stressful it might be, so you may need sustenance.  This is my standard go-to-the-grocery-store-lunch of roasted corn salad and tofu with sun dried tomato pesto, straight from the Harris Teeter salad bar.  Pomegranate juice and seltzer.  My plate does not always coordinate with my apron, but today it did.  That was nice.

3.  Choose music.  Technically I should have picked some nice sitar music, but let's face it, I'm not a fan.  Wilco radio on Pandora.

 4. If your printer is broken or out of ink, or both, jot down the recipe so you don't have to keep walking back and forth to the computer.  It's so far away.

 5. Face it that you've stalled long enough and get ready to not boil a quart of milk.

6. While the milk is coming to an almost-boil, squeeze enough lemons to make about three-four tablespoons lemon juice.

7. Line everything up to reduce risk of panic.  Milk, lemon juice, cheesecloth-strainer, teaspoon.

8.  When the milk is almost at a boil, add the lemon juice, a teaspoon at a time (and stirring after each addition) until the milk curdles.  This will take about three tablespoons of lemon juice.  Call everyone in to see.

9. Sit on your tuffet and knit patiently while the curds and whey cool.

10.  When cool enough to handle, strain the curds in a strainer lined with cheesecloth and rinse.

11.  Squeeze as much moisture as possible from the cheesecloth and shape it into a round.

12. Place something heavy on the cheesecloth-wrapped paneer and let it sit as long as possible.

13.  When ready to prepare, slice into cubes.  It should be pretty firm by now.

14.  After you slice it up, fry it up and eat it up, YUM! Get ready to do it all again.

15.  Eat a great dinner and rest on your laurels.  It only seems like magic.

I did it!

See that?  There on the plate?  Actual, homemade paneer! Made by me!  Homemade in my own home.  By me!  Number Five  is done and dusted!

not bittman, but...

New cookbook = YUM.  And I haven't even opened it yet!

in a bittman frame of mind

You'd never believe this, but I can go for months without thinking about Mark Bittman.  I know.  Crazy, isn't it?  We have a couple of his books, and he has a new one out.  It's wending its way towards me.  I like cookbooks with pictures, so I wasn't sure at first about How to Cook Everything, but I love it.  I've had it for years, and it's a staple.  When I remember it.  We used to have the coconut chicken all the time.  I need to go dig that book out again.  That's one I can just sit down with and browse through.  Our Sunday Dinner this week was from The Minimalist Cooks Dinner.  Roast fish and leeks.  Couldn't be simpler.  A bit too simple, perhaps for even my fish-loving boy.  I probably should have laid in on a bit thicker with the salt and pepper.  I loved it though.  The bright green taste of the leeks and the lightness of the fish. Minimal, even.