The details of my 20th year high school reunion are up. Mid-October, at a place I’ve never heard of, in the town where my high school is located.
It doesn’t really seem like it’s been that long. I don’t feel 20 years older. I don’t look 20 years older. I don’t have 20 years worth of emotional baggage. And I’m quite happy about all of that. I’m going to skip the reunion, as I’ve not really kept up with anyone from high school and I’ve not stepped foot in Maryland since 1988. Besides, I’m going to San Antonio in early October for a week, and I’ll be recovering from that trip.
I wouldn’t mind going up for a visit, though, perhaps to see the Inner Harbor again and take a trip to the Eastern Shore. It would have to be when the crabs are running, though, and when the silver queen corn is coming in. It’s great dumping out a bushel – or two – of steamed (not boiled!) blue crab on a long newspaper-covered table in the backyard, then dumping a pile of boiled silver queen corn down next to those crabs, then having several platters of Eastern Shore tomatoes next to that, and then chowing down while talking with friends and family and drinking some icy beer. And then after eating all that, cracking open an ice cold watermelon and eating it, letting the juices run down your chin, spitting seeds as far as you can as the sun sinks and the fireflies start appearing.
That would be quite a day, and well worth a visit.
And there was pizza, courtesy of a dear friend who fed us tonight.
And boy, was it good.
Not as good as homemade pizza, of course. Nothing beats that. Still, pizza from Pizza Palace runs a close second. It’s been quite a long time since I had pizza – quite awhile before surgery, as it happens. The issue with pizza throughout the months following treatment was of course the crust. Too much bread. Not enough spit.
Tonight, though, I managed half a slice before my jaws gave out. Not a bad return. As a bonus, it forced me to drink a ton of water to get it down.
This afternoon, when we were debating what everyone wanted to eat tonight, my mom said, right off the bat: pizza. Actually, what she said in full was that she wanted me to make some homemade dough, another batch of the sauce I’d made for the pasta, and then make a pizza from those items with fresh veggies and meat. This will have to wait until after she recovers from her surgery, something we thought would be an in and out deal but which will have her in the hospital overnight. None of us is happy about that, but what can you do?
Since it’s month end these next few days, and since we’re going full out on business-related things prior to mom’s date with the surgeon, there probably won’t be a lot of involved cooking as we wind down July. Next Saturday, we are supposed to head out to a beach house owned by some friends, where yours truly will cook something in their kitchen. Seafood, most likely, as they say they have crab legs and shrimp in the freezer. It will be rather adventurous to cook whatever happens to be on hand in a strange kitchen. Somewhere between now and then, there will be more meals, including helping my sister prep the dinner she’s cooking for a group of her friends at the house of one of those friends. A mini-catering gig, if you will. Next week, I’ll also go buy a bin of tomatoes to make a large batch of sauce, suitable for canning. That should be fun, as it will be the first actual use of the canner. It’s also time to start examining this beer brewing thing…
It was pasta night at the old homestead. If I were some inane host on FoodTV, I’d start in on some story about having a movie night and how Goodfellas is one of my favorite movies (it is, actually) and try passing off some horrid combination of flavors as a meal as I yammered away incessantly using stupid baby-like talk and waved my arms around like I was landing a plane.
Fortunately for all of us, I am not one of those hosts. Instead, I’ll just give you the lowdown on the meal.
My plan for the day was to make some baguettes, make the sauce, make some tofu meatballs, and then make the pasta. The “real” meatballs, as you noticed, were already made and they froze very well overnight.
As plans go, it wasn’t terrible. The day, however, did not cooperate as well as it could have. A few people got their sites hacked, there were questions to answer, one of the servers has a primary drive dying a slow and painful death and we had to plan for emergency migrations from it, my tube is just killing me the past few days, and I ran out of gas a little after 3 this afternoon and had to shut down for about half an hour for a nap. Oh, and in the midst of dinner prep, we had to go look at a house, so this introduced another kink in my plans and between fatigue and pain I was a tad stressed in getting dinner completed.
Even with all this, though, I did manage to get everything done except for making the pasta. Luckily, I’m the planner, and I had emergency backup pasta on hand.
The sauce I would judge: excellent. I think it could be used interchangeably on pizza and pasta, and I plan to make a large batch and can it. The meatballs: fabulous. The combination of meats and the seasonings in them give them a great taste. The baguettes: fair. They were in the French style, so were thinner than the usual baguettes you might find at Publix. We also ran into a multitasking problem because the pasta water was boiling over furiously while the bread was under the broiler (smeared with roasted garlic butter, thank you), so the bread got a little crispy. Still edible, though. Our vegetarian friends loved the tofu meatballs and there were a few left over, so we sent those home with them in some sauce. Fresh strawberry ice cream rounded out this meal.
In the foreground are the tofu meatballs, at the top the meatballs made of a mixture of beef, veal, and pork. At the left is some freshly grated parm-reg. In the middle are the split and broiled baguettes with roasted garlic butter and at the middle right is the great homemade sauce. At the upper right is some multigrain spaghetti (Barilla, if you’re interested).
Gratuitous happy cat photo.
Your cook, tired and in pain, but happy that everyone enjoyed the meal.
Total meal: 14.79
Total per diner (6, with leftovers): 2.47
Pasta is cheap, cheap, cheap, and would have been even cheaper had I made it fresh. We did uncork a bottle of wine, as well: Chateau Lamargue 2003 Costieres de Nimes Rouge. Quite good, with cherry aromas and a smooth finish (although my sister disagrees with me on the latter, and since I only had a taste and she had a full pour, she may be right).
A good dinner, with good company, at a good price. What more could one ask?
I will admit up front that I am not a huge fan of tofu. Tofu, on its own, has no particular taste to it: it serves merely as a sponge for other flavors and has no inherent life of its own.
This is not a bad thing, of course, as no doubt there is a place for it in this world. I’d never have thought there was a place for it in my kitchen. But we have vegetarians (or sort of vegetarians – they eat seafood but no meats) joining us for our pasta fest this evening, so today I’ll be making tofu meatballs. For the first time ever. Let’s hope that I don’t do any damage to these very nice people.
The question for me now becomes how the heck to make the things. I’m guessing that with some firm tofu, the mix can be very similar to what I did with the beef/pork/veal meatballs, maybe with a bit more bread crumb mixture as binder. Baked rather than browned in a frying pan, then set aside for the veggie minded. Or hell, maybe fried in a touch of olive oil and then set aside. Who knows? The great fun about cooking is in the experimentation, right?
If you’re in the mood for pasta, with either meat-meatballs or faux-meatballs, feel free to stop by. I’m sure there will be plenty. The poolish (starter) for the baguettes is sitting on the counter, evolving into something great. And we have fresh strawberry ice cream for dessert. Who can resist that?
There were a variety of things I was supposed to do today. That “supposed to” is important, as it means I didn’t get nearly as much done as I wanted to – but as we are cleaning up the details from an acquisition that we just did, business takes precedence over cooking. After all, those paychecks are buying dinner ingredients.
The one thing I did manage to get done was making meatballs (and vacuum packing the remainder of the meat). Spaghetti with meatballs is an American thing, as real Italian cooking doesn’t do the whole meatballs with pasta dance. But what’s not to love about tasty meatballs covered in a great tomato sauce atop a bed of pasta?
It’s been a long time since I made meatballs. When I was younger, making them for the store, I seem to recall a recipe I followed. If there was a recipe, it’s long gone, lost in the ebb and flow of time and many moves. Still, the basic meatball is the basic meatball, and sometimes – most times – simple preparation is the best. Our meatballs therefore are composed of ground beef, ground veal, and ground pork, seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, tarragon, basil, parsley, bread crumbs, egg, and grated parm-reg.
As with anything, it’s important to have a little taste so that seasonings can be adjusted. Since stuffing your face with a raw beef/pork/veal mixture (and as an added bonus, raw egg) is not exactly appetizing, you do the next best thing. Make a baby meatball.
Brown it off all around, then keep spinning it so it cooks through. This is very important with ground meats, and even more important for people like me, who are likely to be (for medical reasons) more sensitive to any little bugs that might be running around in the meat. People with normal, healthy immune systems don’t need to worry quite as much, but really, better to be safe.
In practice, these would be browned and then finish cooking in the pasta sauce. I didn’t get around to making sauce today, and since we have a couple of vegetarians coming for dinner, mixing the meatballs and the sauce is a no-no. For our tasting purposes, this allows for adjusting the seasonings, and in this case, the mix needed more salt, more basil, and more garlic. After reseasoning and retasting, it’s time to make the meatball army.
One of the keys to all this is making the meatballs all about the same size. These were just eyeballed, as I wasn’t feeling anal enough to measure pinches of the mix. I think they turned out pretty well. Right now, they’re in the freezer. While the pasta dough is resting tomorrow, the meatballs will be browning so they can go into the sauce.
Something I really need to do right this instant is get the starter going for the baguettes. I’m planning to have an emergency backup baguette on hand, just in case something goes horribly awry with the bread experiment (since I’ve never made a baguette before in my life). I suppose I should also throw a stick of butter on the counter to soften and mince up some garlic really fine so there will be garlic butter to spread on whatever bread we do wind up having.
The chicken stock is cooling in the garage fridge. The bread? Out of the oven and cooling.
The ice cream? After a quick puree of some of the batch, all the ingredients were mixed.
Then poured into the machine for about 25 minutes or so. The remaining strawberries were added a few minutes before the end of the churn, then the entire batch put into a container destined for the freezer.
The ice cream is a pale rose color, not like those ultra-red, fake versions you can find at the store. There are some nice chunks of strawberries throughout the batch, and you can really taste the strawberries in the ice cream, rather than tasting mostly sugar with the strawberries as an afterthought. I think a batch of peach may be in order…
And now, it’s time for a nap, as my day’s work is done.
Some days are just meant for cooking. Not necessarily for a crowd of people, but just in general. And some days are meant to restock the fridge, the freezer, and the pantry. Some days are fit for both. Today was one of those days.
Since I had to be at the NOC to change a drive, reconfigure a couple of servers, and look at the space for the new buildout for our expansion, I headed over to Costco for a few things. What I was after specifically was sugar, paper towels, and ground beef. Those things I did get. I also replenished our limes, lemons, romaine, spare ribs, laundry stuff, chicken, tomato paste, and paper plates/bowls. Mother Nature decided to try and make up for two and a half weeks of no rain all in one day (she failed), leaving some people with temporary memory loss about that most important function: driving. I managed to make it home without getting run off the road by a white-knuckled driver and then turned around and headed back out to Publix for the remainder of things I needed: celery, carrots, onion, leeks (for stock), tomatoes, tea bags, ground pork and veal, avocados, butternut squash, and bananas. Not a bad haul for two brief trips. All the ground stuff will be going to make meatballs, of course.
In between bouts of working, I worked on this, for stock.
And this, for ice cream.
And dough for two loaves of bread, which is now on the first rise.
Tomorrow will be mixing and shaping meatballs and experimenting with a pasta sauce. And trying out a maple-oatmeal bread along with a baguette since my mom thoughtfully found my baguette pans. And perhaps taking a quick trip to the farmer’s market for cukes for pickling. And working the real job, of course, as always.
Oh, and I picked up a starter brewing kit today, because I’m just a sucker. There is actually a place right here in town – and not too far from my house – that has kits, supplies, yeast, bottles, and anything else you’d need to brew your own beer or make your own wine. It should be fun. Just in time for football season!
An idle thought I had the other day while driving past a gas station converted into a sandwich shop: how do these people come up with the funds to open these places? While I was kneading the bread, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sell it, really. I do think it would be quite a good thing to be able to make money at another thing I enjoy doing, just as I do now in the geek arena. I told a friend today as we were talking that I’d rather cook than sleep, and this is entirely true.
When you think about making a loaf of bread just to use it for croutons. Even worse is when you consider a second loaf – rye or pumpernickel – for the same purpose, to have a colorful mix of those crunchy cubes. Particularly bad is when you’re well aware that if you do this, and make these critters, you won’t be able to eat any of them. They’ll only be for the enjoyment of the other diners at your table.
Homemade pasta has always been my nemesis. Not because it does something nasty to my digestive system, not because it tastes bad, and certainly not because it’s something I won’t eat. No, despite all my attempts to make fresh pasta, the dough has always laughed in the face of my efforts, refusing to evolve from separate ingredients into something edible.
Until now.
Yes, I can report now that yours truly has conquered the pasta demons that have haunted me lo these many years.
We begin by making a ball of dough, made of just all purpose flour and egg. In my case, because this was a test batch, this means a small ball of dough, suitable for making enough to feed two hungry people. I won’t bore you with the kneading and passing of the dough through the ever-smaller roller settings on the pasta machine, nor with the passing of the cut sheets of dough through the attachment. But I will say that making pasta is a sort of messy business.
I cut two types of pasta: fettuccine and spaghettini (angel hair). This was for no particular reason other than that these are the two types that can be cut with this machine’s attachment.
This is where I’ve generally run into trouble in the past. The pasta is supposed to sit for 10 minutes or so – and in some cases, must sit while you cut the rest of the dough – and during this time, it dries a bit. With previous batches, the pasta has been dry when it was cut and then turned into brittle sticks that snapped in half. In those previous attempts, even a damp paper towel over the already cut strands wasn’t a lot of help. When one of those strands was placed in boiling water, it instantly disintegrated. That might be useful for getting rid of water-soluble trash, but it isn’t conducive to good pasta.
Not this time, though. A lot of people will make fresh pasta, dump it into boiling water, and then walk away for eight to ten minutes, as if it’s the same as dried pasta. It isn’t. Don’t leave your pasta unattended! Check it after about a minute and a half for doneness, and if it isn’t done, keep checking it every 10-20 seconds or so. You’d be surprised how quickly it will go from too firm to mush, with the al dente stage passing you right by.
Since I am rather gun-shy about fresh pasta, I obsessed over my little batches while they were cooking. The fettuccine took about two and a half minutes.
The angel hair took about a minute and a half.
Oh, and did I mention that I finally got a loaf of bread made? I’ll need to make more, as a friend of mine is heading out of town for about ten days or so, and I expect people on the road can always use a little home-cooked goodness, eh?
Both samples of pasta were dressed very simply, with a dash of olive oil and a little shredded parm-reg, and my mom was the taster of about a quarter of the total of each type. Now that I know that I can indeed make fresh pasta correctly, the next step will be to make some fresh tomato sauce and some meatballs (when I was younger, in junior high, I made all the meatballs for the sandwiches we sold in our family’s convenience store down in the Ft. Lauderdale area). If I can find my baguette pan in the midst of the remaining boxes that are still packed, Wednesday’s planned menu of spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread will be entirely homemade except for the salad that will be served alongside.
Next pasta experiment: ravioli.
What do you do with fresh multigrain bread (whole wheat flour, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and almonds)? Why, you make a sandwich, of course. My sister did just that. Boar’s Head Salsalito turkey, a slice of cheddar, mustard, mayo, salt, and pepper between a couple slices of bread that was made just hours ago.
I am a self-admitted junkie when it comes to cooking and food-related shows. FoodTV, PBS, Discovery Home, Fine Living: I’ve seen just about every show at some point or another. Some of tthe shows are quite good – Rick Bayless’ show is one, even though his manner of speaking can get on my nerves, and Lidia Bastianich is interesting – and some are just disasters worthy only of snarking – Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee tops this list. Most are somewhere in the middle.
But let me tell you one thing that is truly annoying: whenever a host or voiceover talks about how so-and-so takes pride in what they do, or how some producer talks about their secret being quality ingredients. This must be written down somewhere in the Manual Of How To Be On TV. When was the last time you heard of some business owner declaring that they’re doing the least possible they can, or that they use the crappiest ingredients they can find to make their food? It’s ridiculous. That said, if I were ever interviewed for some reason whenever this food business gets going, no doubt I’d say the same thing. How do you answer “What’s your secret”? You can’t very well give away any secrets you do have for the food you make – after all, that’s your intellectual capital. I suppose I just wish they’d find a different question to ask.
Speaking of food – and the only time I seem to not be speaking of food is when I’m speaking geek – I’ve decided that we’ll have to have some tastings around here after mom recovers from her surgery. And you know what that means: ribs! I figure I’ll take myself out to Costco, pick up some slabs, and then break down those slabs into smaller portions for tests of the rub combinations. That way, I can fire three or four portions from a single slab and test multiple rubs simultaneously. Then I can build on whatever my taste testers have to say. Of course, I keep reminding myself that it’s time to start writing down whatever it is I’m doing on a daily basis as I cook so that if something is a winner, it can be recreated consistently and eventually can be packed. Naturally, for the marinade the shrimp swam in, I wrote down nothing at all…
What’s on the to-do sheet for Sunday? More “real” work, of course, just as with Saturday even though the only part I wrote about was server setups. There’s always maintenance to be done, always something to update, always something to do. But, in the in-between moments, I do want to bake some bread, and I wouldn’t mind testing out a couple of pasta doughs to see how they do. I still have a couple of chicken carcasses in the freezer, and it may be time to break those out and go ahead and do some stock. Oh, and laundry, before I run out of clothes that actually fit. For dinner, I’m not so sure, as we have leftovers that need to be eaten, so my food output for the day may just be experiments rather than a meal. The best thing about experiments, though, is that they’re rarely completely inedible – or fatal – so the people acting as my guinea pigs won’t wind up as bodies I have to bury behind the fenceline. And my sister has specifically requested another batch of bread and butter pickles, so I’ve added that to my list as well.
Future plans: I’d like to try my hand at brewing some beer. I’ve always wanted to try it, and still do, even though I’m currently unable to drink anything with alcohol in it (it burns! it burrrrnnnnsss!). I think it’d be fun to do that and to make some wine as well. I’d love to take one of those intensive 2-3 day courses on wine at someplace like the FCI. Putting together a good tomato sauce and canning it – this will also take some testers, naturally, although one of my tasters doesn’t like tomato sauce. Grissini. Lemon curd tarlets with meringue. And on and on and on.
