Summer 2019 Vacation trip, day 2

Second morning, and we got ourselves up at a civilised hour: eight ayem.  The uncivilised part was having to get ourselves ALL the way across Tennessee.  It was like NINE hours of I-40 and I-81 (mostly the former), at least getting to bypass Nashville completely since there is a bypass around Nashville now (I-840).

At breakfast (Cracker Barrel in Jackson, Tennessee) Alyks demonstrated himself to be a “genius” by defeating the pegboard game, best two of three.

On a slightly less intellectual note, he pleased himself by discovering a bag of gummi penguins in a rainbow of hues, and spent an hour or so looking for ones that corresponded to various alternate sexuality and alternate gender flags.

Virginia is very much about landscaping their rest areas.  We happen to be here at the right time for daylilies to be going nuts, which attracted Alyks’s eye.

We stopped in Wytheville, Virginia, our customary second-night journey break.  Lise pushed us on to get there before all the light was gone.  On a previous trip she’d discovered a historic cemetery, and wanted to be sure I got to see it, since I have a maggot for old cemeteries and gravestones.  And this one was well worth seeing: German Lutheran, dating to the first years of the nineteenth century, and full of astonishing gravestones from a German-Swiss stonecutter named Laurence Krone.  His work is found all OVER southwestern Virginia, and some of it is so remarkable that it’s been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.  None of the individual stones in this cemetery (St. John) are listed, but the whole group is a big enough deal to get the church and graveyard into the Register.

Krone died in 1836 and is buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery—apparently there was nobody else around to carve a stone for him!

Grave of Jacob Repass, first pastor of St. John church.  Krone’s inscription was very shallowly carved and badly worn so someone, in an ill-advised move, re-cut the inscription using late twentieth-century letter forms and tools that SO utterly do not match.  The sunrise motif is original.

Fortunately, other examples of Krone’s work are still in original condition, including the gable-lidded grave of Daniel Flohr, second pastor of the church.

Besides the crinkled-ribbon motif on the face of the stones, Krone often decorated the reverse with floral or astronomical motifs.  All of that detailed work took a long time, so it’s remarkable how many he completed and how many of them remain in the present day.  ALL of them, though, are covered in lichen and badly need cleaning by someone who knows how to clean period gravestones (there IS an art and a craft to it).

Another fenced lot contained an example of one unusual gravestone material: zinc.  It was marketed as “white bronze” and almost all examples were made by the Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut for a period of forty years.  While zinc monuments are durable and less expensive than bronze, they were denigrated for their “cold” bluish colouring and how it was obvious, when tapped, they were hollow metal and not stone.  This example has tablets for three family members bolted to the faces.

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Summer 2019 Vacation trip, Day 1

We are out on vacation or maybe not; there are Events in train and we don’t know enough yet to know which way to jump.

A sequence of Murphic interferences kept Lise in Houston for three days last week instead of the budgeted one.  (She continues to believe that Murphy never applies to her, despite being regularly proven wrong.)  This pushed everything else out of place, including getting the yard mown—I’ll have to find a gypsy yardman when I get back—and the bamboo beaten down again.  Alyks and I did some of it, but much more remains to do.  We got packing done Saturday night, but nothing loaded into the car. Looking back, that was an avoidable mistake.

Everyone did their best to ignore the Alarms That Must Not Be Ignored this morning, and getting gas and buying picnic lunch makings pushed us further back.  We left, at last, at ten in the morning, two hours behind.  Making up for that delay meant we couldn’t do my favored strategy of taking US and state highways until we were out of Texas.  Instead, we barreled up I-35 to the south side of Dallas, cut around the southeast corner, and left running up I-30 toward West Memphis, Arkansas, our usual stopping place for the first night.

Despite being late and wanting to hurry, we did stop in a couple of places.  The first was lunch at a rest area west of Sulphur Springs, a very pretty and well-landscaped spot with a new and clean visitors’ centre and a bunch of exhibits about regional pland and wildlife.  I really could have done without the twenty-four inch square photo of a golden orb-weaver (writing) spider that I suddenly came round a corner and faced.  While spiders overall bother me a lot less than they did when I was young, golden orb-weavers are just BIG sumbitches and unnerving at the best of times, never mind when they’re blown up to seven or eight times life-size.

After lunch, Lise suggested we might like to stop in Sulphur Springs to see the Hopkins County courthouse, which she described as “a good one.”  She also mentioned a public rest room standing on the courthouse square made of one-way glass, so anyone using it can see whatever is happening outside.

The courthouse was indeed A Good One, a J. Riely Gordon design high in his Richardson Romanesque period with a combination of pink and gray granites and sandstone trim in decorative Italianate patterns.  I was reminded stylistically of the courthouses he designed in Ellis and Wise counties.  Like the a number of other Gordon designs but unusual for the period, this one had its entry doors set on the corners of the building, not in the centre of the sides.  Also very unusual for Texas courthouses, it sits on one corner of the courthouse square instead of slap in the middle, as most do.  A hysterical commission plaque hinted this was because construction began before the débris of the old courthouse, which had burned, was cleared away.

Northwest corner entrance.  There is a matching one on the southwest corner, but none on the east side.

A medallion displaying the year construction was begun, in deeply carved and decorated sandstone

The courthouse looks out on a prettily rehabilitated public square, apparently part of a 2012 overhaul.  Besides the one-way glass rest rooms—there turned out to be two rather than one—there was a public fountain kids could play in (several were doing just that), a giant chess board, and several military memorials.

SOMEone in Sulphur Springs—I don’t know who, but I suspect one of the businesses on that particular corner of the square—has a Sense of Humo(u)r. A and I discovered the zebra crossing on that corner was marked by signs obviously produced by the Ministry of Silly (Cross)Walks.

We headed east again, detouring to investigate the Titus County courthouse in Mount Pleasant.  We shouldn’t have bothered.  A basically nice 1895 design was ruined in 1940 when the WPA knocked off the tower, flattened the roof and detailing, slathered stucco over the whole mess, and stuck on a couple of minor Art Deco details as an afterthought.  One commentator called it “a cross between the battleship Texas and a geometrically-challenged Mexican pyramid,” crowning it as the Ugliest Courthouse in Texas.  (He’s not wrong.)

The 1895 courthouse design, a perfectly nice late-Vic Texas courthouse

The courthouse in 1940 after the WPA finished ruining it

Fun and games over, we got back in the car and hauled arses across Arkansas, reaching our traditional first-day stopping point of West Memphis, Arkansas.  We did manage to arrive in time to have dinner at our usual Tex-Mex joint. It’s surprisingly acceptable food, though I did have a Discussion with the waitress when I tried to order a margarita straight up only to collide with Arkansas liquor laws.  However, the bartender figured out a workaround that nearly got what I asked for while keeping on the right side of liquor law.

`

Yeah, man can’t.  Neither could I by this time.

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Cooking Things: Highways and Hedges enchiladas

Sometimes you don’t quite have the classic ingredients for a mole poblano, but you have lots of other ingredients which live in the same neighborhood, so you go out into the highways and the hedges and invite them to the party instead.  And then you name the mole in their honour.

The sine qua non of a mole poblano are pumpkin and sesame seeds, and bitter chocolate which gives the sauce a deeper flavour profile.  Guess what I didn’t have ….  But there is such a thing as high-cacao bittersweet baking chocolate, and almonds and pine nuts are excellent for adding a nutty flavour especlally when roasted or fried off.  And guess what I did have … ?

Like most sauces, the mole will freeze beautifully if you want to work ahead by a few days for a party, or even to have something in reserve for dinner-in-a-month.

“Highways and Hedges” enchiladas de queso con mole austineño

Categories: Tex-Mex, Cheese, Casseroles

Serves 8

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient — Preparation Method
————————  ————————————  ——————————————————————————————————
  6                     Chiles anchos   3                     Chiles guajillos   2                     Chlles moras                         Reserved chile water      ½        teaspoon  Salt, or to taste   1           teaspoon  Mexican orégano   1           teaspoon  Ground cumin      ½        teaspoon  Ground coriander   2             ounces  70% cacao bittersweet chocolate, broken up   1              large  Diced onion   2        tablespoons  Lard or oil      ¾             cup  Slivered almonds      ¾             cup  Pine nuts   2        tablespoons  Lard or oil                         Vegetable broth   12            ounces  Shredded asadero cheese   12            ounces  Shredded Swiss cheese   16                    Corn tortillas   4             ounces  Sliced black olives   3             ounces  Crema fresca, thinned slightly with water                         Guacamole, to garnish                         Cilantro sprigs, to garnish

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Place the dried chiles in a large bowl (stoneware is good) and pour over boiling water to cover.  To make sure hydration is thorough, cut a small hole into the side of each chile to let in the water.  Allow the chiles to soak, anything from two hours to overnight.  (This part of the process is forgiving.)  Drain, and reserve the soaking water.

Remove the stems, seeds, and veins from the rehydrated chiles.  Tear them into pieces and place into a blender or food processor.  Process until the chiles are a smooth, thick liquid, adding some of the reserved chile water as needed to achieve smoothness.  Place into a medium-large saucepan.  Add the salt and spices.  Break the chocolate into pieces and add to the sauce.

Sauté the diced onion in melted lard or oil in a skillet until it is translucent and beginning to brown.  Remove from the heat and add to the chiles.  Simmer the sauce for ten to fifteen minutes over a low flame, to allow the chocolate to melt and flavours to blend.  Add a little vegetable broth if the sauce seems too thick.

Wipe out the skillet and add two tablespoons of lard or oil.  Over a medium flame, sauté the almonds and pine nuts until they begin to brown.  Transfer the nuts to a blender and whirl until smooth, adding enough vegetable broth to make a thick slurry.  Fold into the sauce.  Add a little more broth if the sauce seems too thick.

Combine the shredded cheeses.  Heat the tortillas, six at a time, on a plate in a microwave for sixty seconds to soften them.  Oil a 9 by 13 inch baking dish.  Add a large pinch of cheese to each tortilla and roll them up, placing them seam side down in the dish.  The filled tortillas should be a little bigger around than a frankfurter.

Scatter the sliced olives over the enchiladas, then spread the sauce evenly, using a spatula to fill the edges and corners, cover loosely with foil, and place into the preheated oven.  Bake at 350° for 15 minutes, then remove the foil and bake an additional five minutes.  Allow to rest five minutes before serving.  Plate the enchiladas; drizzle crema fresca in a zig-zag over each serving.  Garnish each plate with a generous dollop of guacamole and a sprig of cilantro.

Copyright © 2019 Sam Waring

— – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – —

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 907 Calories; 79g Fat (66.7% calories from fat); 36g Protein; 53g Carbohydrate; 12g Dietary Fiber; 94mg Cholesterol; 779mg Sodium. Exchanges: 2 Grain(Starch); 3½ Lean Meat; 1 Vegetable; ½ Fruit; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 13 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.

 

The nuts added sweetness to the sauce, while the chocolate increased the depth, adding a bit of femme fatale to the flavour profile. 

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Cooking things in a quandary: Chicken portuguesa

chicken portuguesa as I made it

 

The other night I served up a dish that, so far as I know, hasn’t been made anywhere in the world in at least eight years.

The kitchen of the Hotel Crosby in Cd. Acuña, across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, was famous for two things:  being the second place in the whole world that nachos were ever made (that’s another story worthy of the telling, one day) and the only place ever that Chicken portuguesa was served.

façade of the Hotel Crosby at dusk, 2000s

I ate chicken portuguesa in the Crosby’s dining room when I was a boy in the ’60s and my family would go on trips to the border.  It was the house speciality and renowned, involving chicken quarters baked in not one but two sauces at once, under a blanket of melted cheese.  The dish, served on a platter in a great pool of sauce and with many tortillas for scooping it all up, was complicatedly delicious, almost but not quite too peppery for a middle-sized kid.  The Garza Gonzales family, which owned the hotel, jealously guarded the recipe.  Duncan Hines himself once tried to pry the recipe out of them and failed.  He had to settle for a “worth going out of your way” recommendation in his guidebooks.

Hotel Crosby, maybe 1940s?

My family stayed at the Crosby since before the the Depression, when my grandfather worked as a project engineer for the Texas Highway Department, building US 83 and US 277 up the Valley.  We were on first-name basis with the staff, especially with the manager, Esther Aguilar.  Esther and my grandmother Frances were friends, to the point that Frances once invited Esther to cross the border and spend a vacation with her in Comanche.  (This was a thing which just Did. Not. Happen. in our place and time.)

Such a long friendship had its fruits over the years, and finally included the one thing Duncan Hines never got:  the famed recipe for chicken portuguesa.  Esther entrusted it to Frances, enjoining her that it was only to be prepared by her during her lifetime and then passed on only to her children on her death.

As it happened, Frances handed down the recipe sooner than “on my death,” but she passed it to her son Joe, who passed it to me.  I tried making it once in my thirties, but I didn’t have enough experience and technique yet; my mother made me throw it out halfway through cooking as inedible.

But now I am old and have experience in a kitchen. When I got out the recipe this week it all made sense and I succeeded at it.  I made a couple of changes—notably substituting shredded Longhorn cheese for the Velveeta called for in the original—but when the cazuela came out of the oven, everything smelled and tasted as it had in the Crosby dining room in 1969.

And now I come to the quandary.  Usually when I write about cooking something I’ll post the recipe for it, BUT! Chicken portuguesa has been handed down only in our family since the 1970s, as Frances promised we would, but it seems to me that promise was maybe predicated on the continuing existence of the Crosby Hotel, its dining room, and its secrets.  And the Crosby closed forever at the end of 2011, the victim of terrorist and border-wall hysteria.  So am I now absolved from the promise of secrecy, since the thing which required the secret to be kept is gone?  Or does the promise have its own life, independent of the things that occasioned it?  I don’t know quite what I think, so I’m going to ask for your input on it.

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Cooking Lessons: Double Chocolate Scones

Not very long ago, I made my first batch of scones from a recipe I found at Baker by Nature, and I was very happy when they turned out to be both easy and delicious.  (Lise has made me promise to do them again soon; she adores cranberry things of all sorts.)  Alyks, however, was unimpressed until I said “Well, I could show you how to make chocolate chip scones,” at which point they were all over the idea.

I duly bought chocolate chips (please, guys, do get high-cacao chips when you buy; they aren’t THAT much more expensive) and one evening this past week I told A cooking lesson time had come, and I would coach them all they needed but they had to do the work.

And that was how we got to have these glazed chocolate chip scones.

Double Chocolate Scones

Makes : 8 scones
Preparation Time : 0:20
Start to Finish Time : 1:10
Categories : Pastry, Chocolate

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient — Preparation Method
————————  ————————      ——————————————————————————————
  3               cups  Pastry flour, or all-purpose flour
     1/4           cup  Granulated sugar
  4          teaspoons  Baking powder
     1/4      teaspoon  Salt
     1/2           cup  Unsalted butter
  3              large  Eggs
  1                cup  Milk
     3/4           cup  Mini chocolate chips
  1         tablespoon  Grated orange zest
     1/4           cup  Mini chocolate chips
     1/4           cup  White chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 450° F.  Liberally butter a ten-inch cast-iron skillet and set aside.

Stir the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl to mix well.  Use a pastry blender or two knives to cut in the butter until coarse crumbs form. (Or if you’re dexterous enough, use your fingertips only to rub in the butter.)

Beat the eggs and milk in a small bowl with a wire whisk or a fork; when thoroughly blended, stir, along with three-quarters cup of the mini chocolate chips and the orange zest into the flour mixture just until blended.

With lightly floured hands, pat the dough evenly into the skillet.  Score the top of the dough into eight wedges with a sharp knife.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden.  Allow to cool in the pan before glazing.

Meanwhile, stir the remaining quarter cup of mini chocolate chips and the white chocolate chips in separate small, heavy saucepans over very low heat until melted and smooth.  Drizzle each chocolate from the tip of a spoon in random lines over the top of the scones.  Let stand for 15 minutes to set the chocolate.  Cut the scones into wedges along the score lines.

Source : Redbook magazine, November 1990; modified by me
S(Original poster): Fred Peters

— – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – —

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 380 Calories; 17g Fat (39.5% calories from fat); 9g Protein; 48g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 114mg Cholesterol; 360mg Sodium. Exchanges: 2 1/2 Grain(Starch); 1/2 Lean Meat; 0 Fruit; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 3 Fat; 1/2 Other Carbohydrates.

After tasting them, I decided the original recipe was a little drier than I liked, and A concurred.  (They’d go grand with a cup of tea, though.)  A also thought there weren’t enough chocolate chips in to suit him.  So what you see here is modification based on that test batch.  I’m willing to bet Alyks makes another batch before too long; we have chocolate chips left over.)

Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich discovers that women whose name begins with the letter R do not exist, and goes mad.  Fnord.

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Cooking Things: Scones (and Getting to Work from Home)

My work situation has changed.

When I began working in the Global Command Centre in 2014, I found a lot of things that were good (not having to talk to a Great Mass of Outside Persons all the time, being the Subject-Matter Expert at a LOT of essential things you learn how to do in technical support; almost no one in there but me is a tech support veteran) and some that were not:  CNN shown on multiple screens with their continual diet of Doom and Disaster, and continual clickbaity Holocaust-y political headlines. The latter just got. on. my. nerves. 9×5, and left me feeling depressed and distressed despite my good anti-depressants (and make no mistake, the ones I’m taking are good and effective).

It used to be that all of us in GCC had one day a week to work from home, which provided a respite.  However, our most recent great-grandboss (The Irishman, from Limerick) believes in standardizing practice across ALL the worldwide command centres.  And Circulith was the only one had work-from-home.  So the Irishman said we weren’t allowed work from home any more, because none of the other centres had it nor had asked for it (no surprise, they don’t have the kind of ubiquitous broadband we do).  And it was back Doom and Disaster from CNN nine by five.

I spoke to my boss and my grandboss both about the diet of disaster, and what could be done.  My grandboss agreed yes, it really is bad and she has to restrict her own diet of news for the same reason, and said she had been thinking anyway of switching from CNN to the BBC, which doesn’t have a continual diet of clickbaity headlines on the crawl, and didn’t focus exclusively on the US.  She did that, and it made things more pleasant if not ideal.

But the one very germane thing both she and my direct boss recommended was that I ask my headshrinker to write a letter saying he thought it would be a good idea for me to work from home full-time as an Americans with Disabilities Act accommodation.  Both said they would happily sign off on it and take it to Human Resources for approval, and after that the Irishman couldn’t do a thing about it.

And I did that.  I asked him to write the letter at my October visit and explained why, and he said he would write it for me, and he did.  I took it to work and handed it in, my managers approved it and ran it through HR as they said they would, and as of about the second week of November, I’m working from home full-time.  I get to sit at the dining table, pull back the curtains, and watch the life of the neighborhood go past all day as I work, and I don’t have to listen minute-by-minute to the disastrous things the Cheeto-in-Chief and his minions are inflicing on the country daily.

But the one thing I don’t get from it is to go out and have breakfast or lunch that I didn’t have to make myself, and that gets boring.  The result being, I’m starting to rummage in MasterCook for breakfast and lunch things to make and eat that aren’t the Same Old Thing every day.  It’s become quite a journey and a search.

I’ve thought for a while that I wanted to have scones, which are almost ubiquitous at Austin bakeries.  I have a lot of recipes, but never ventured into actually trying to make them—until today.  I’ve had a couple of boxes of sultanas (AKA golden raisins) in the cupboard and when I rummaged in my scone recipes I found a couple that specifically called for raisins rather than currants.  That was all the invitation I needed.

Raisin Scones

Categories : Pastry

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient — Preparation Method
————————  ————————————  ——————————————————————————————
      2           cups  Flour
      ½       teaspoon  Salt
      1     tablespoon  Baking powder
      2      teaspoons  Sugar
      ¼            cup  Cold unsalted butter
      ½            cup  Sultanas, soaked 30 minutes in hot water then drained
      ½            cup  Half and half, or cream
      1                 Beaten egg

Sift the dry ingredients together.  Cut the butter into the dry ingredients, using a pastry blender.  Add the drained raisins to the flour mixture. Mix the half-and-half with the beaten egg and stir into the flour mixture.  Use a fork, and Do Not overmix.  It should take only a few turns to get a dough.

Generously butter a ten-inch (#8) cast-iron skillet.

Pat the dough into the buttered skillet, making sure there are no gaps or hollows.  Bake at 450° F. for about 12 minutes, or until golden brown. (Convection oven: reduce to 425°.)

Allow the scones to cool for a few minutes in the skillet after removing from the oven; cut into eight wedges.  Serve with butter and raspberry jam.

Source: Jeff Smith – The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American
Original poster: Garner Miller
Yield:  8 servings

— – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – —

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 153 Calories; 6g Fat (32.8% calories from fat); 3g Protein; 23g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 32mg Cholesterol; 222mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; ½ Fruit; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 1 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.

L and I were both charmed by them with only butter; I expect the same from Alyks, who said “Now you’re making me want to go to Quack’s” before they left to crew the theatre performance this afternoon

 

In Seattle there is a tulip which has petals in the shape of sleep.  Fnord.

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Cooking things: Pickled Okra

It’s okra time.  (So sorry, Taylor, but it is.)

Fresh okra is in the supermarket, and the farmers’ markets, and as a loyal son of Southern cooking I think it is time to make and eat fried okra and can pickled okra.  (I will let those people eat filé gumbo and stewed okra who can stomach mucilage.  I’m not among you.)

Last week was the first time that I saw fresh okra at H-E-B this season, and I promptly glommed onto two pounds.  I already had two whiskey bottles full of rosemary-red pepper infused vinegar steeping away and I had run a bunch of mason jars through the dishwasher to sanitize ’em, so I was SO ready to start doing pickle-y stuff with the okra.

I took this recipe and did most of the things it says (left out the Thai chiles, since I was already using pepper-infused vinegar), and ended up with two quarts and two pints of okra that ought to be ready about September 1st.  Gonna think real hard about whether I can afford to buy a peck of okra at the Mueller Farmers’ Market next week.  (I have already kinda committed already to buying a peck of second-quality peaches, not pretty enough for the table but just fine for making jam.)

If it is okra season where you are, I really think you should be canning some pickles.  It’s too easy, and tastes too good to pass it up.  And your friends will will love it when you come with your pickles to the cocktail party.

Cocktail Okra Pickles

Categories : Pickles, Vegetables

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient — Preparation Method
————————  ————————————  ——————————————————————————————
      2         pounds  Okra pods, fresh and tender
      5                 Thai chiles
      5                 Garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
      1          quart  White vinegar
      1            cup  Water
      6    tablespoons  Kosher salt
      1     tablespoon  Celery seed
      1     tablespoon  Mustard seed
      2    tablespoons  Black peppercorns
      ½       teaspoon  Ground cumin
      1     tablespoon  Red pepper flakes

Wash okra and pack into clean jars with screw tops.  Into each jar put one red or green hot pepper and a clove of garlic.

Bring remaining ingredients to a boil and pour over the okra, filling the jars to overflowing.  (Note: I don’t believe this; leave half an inch headspace ….)

Seal while hot, process for ten minutes in a boiling water bath, and let age for two months before using.

Original poster: –=> This recipe comes from the bottom of the files of Shelley Rodgers <=–
Yield:  3 quarts

— – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – —

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 88 Calories; 1g Fat (7.2% calories from fat); 4g Protein; 21g Carbohydrate; 5g Dietary Fiber; 0mg Cholesterol; 4248mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; 1½ Vegetable; 0 Fat; ½ Other Carbohydrates.

 

A clairvoyant turns over a tarot card with a compass on it.  ‘Your destiny is to be eaten by a monster,’ he says to you.  Fnord.

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Cooking Things: Braised Pork Heart

I like organ meats.

All the weird-ass “specialty meats” in the cooler at the supermarket (or the butcher shop, if you’re so lucky as to have one of them) tend to have no bones, tons of usable muscle, and low prices because of the “ew, squicky” factor. They usually taste very good, and are only cheap because of the squick factor—which bothers me not at all.

Tonight’s recipe is one of those, arising from the meat counter at one of my preferred Oriental markets.  Asian cuisines, particularly Chinese and Southeast Asian, tend to have a lot of “delicacies” that come down to “we learned how to make leftovers and rejects taste good ’cos some rich bastard got all the good bits.”

(The infamous Scottish Haggis is in the same line of country; sheep heart, liver, and lights (lungs), cooked with cheap oats and barley, ’cos the English ran off with all the nice roasts and chops and such.)

Heart, which I used today, is nothing BUT muscle.  No bones, small amount of connective tissue … so much usable meat it ain’t funny, price at $2.00 a pound … just don’t think about exactly what it is.  (Or do think about it and eat it anyway; I ain’t your dad.)

Like any muscle that gets a lot of work, heart needs a lot of cooking to tender it up, which makes it a great candidate for braising and a slow cooker.  I cannot recommend this highly enough for a next-day pasta main dish dinner.

 

Tonight for dinner: braised pork heart with pasta .

A post shared by Jon Cosmos (@jmcosmos) on

 

Slow Cooker Braised Pork Hearts

Recipe By : Sam Waring
Serving Size : 6     Preparation Time :1:00
Categories : Pork, Crockpot

  Amount  Measure       Ingredients — Preparation Method
————————  ————————————  ————————————————————————————————
  3             pounds  Pork heart, trimmed of outer fat, arteries,
                        and inner connective tissue
  8             slices  Diced bacon
  ½              pound  Sliced fresh mushrooms
  1                     Diced yellow onion
  ½         tablespoon  Dried thyme 
  4        tablespoons  Olive oil
  2        tablespoons  Balsamic vinegar
  1           teaspoon  Dijon mustard
  ¼           teaspoon  Dried basil
  ¼                cup  Red vermouth
  1             packet  Goya ham flavour granules
  2               cups  Boiling water
  3                     Minced garlic cloves
                        Fresh herbs of your choice
  2        tablespoons  Cornstarch
  1         tablespoon  Sriracha

Trim the hearts, removing any connective tissue and the outer layers of fat as they are not palatable.Split open the heart and remove any inner connective tissue as well from the chambers.  You can use a meat mallet or a chicken-fried steak tool to tenderize the hearts at this point (strongly recommended), which also lets the cooking juices penetrate the muscle more thoroughly.

Soak the hearts in a bowl of cold salted water for 30 minutes to an hour (this process not only cleans them, but brines them as well for good flavour).

Towards the end of brining, fry the bacon in a large skillet until it is crisp.  (Personally, I keep a bag of already-cooked baked bacon in the freezer for occasions like this.  It’s a magnificent solution to having cooked bacon always ready for anything, baking gives you slices that are very evenly cooked, and you get a lot of very good bacon dripping in the roasting pan to use in other dishes.  Takes ten seconds per slice in the microwave to thaw and be ready for use.)

Sauté the onion, mushrooms, and dried thyme for five minutes or so until onions and mushrooms are tender.

Remove hearts from the salt water and pat dry.

Slice the hearts into half-inch wide strips.  At this point you can dredge them in seasoned flour and sauté in a large, very hot skillet for three or four minutes to brown.  This is optional, though.

Create a vinaigrette by whisking together the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and dried basil.

Place the heart strips in a slow cooker and pour the vinaigrette over them.

Dissolve the Goya ham granules in boiling water. Add to the cooker along with the vermouth and beef broth.

Add minced garlic right on top of heart and lastly, the fresh herbs tied in a bouquet garni.

Set the slow cooker on high and cook for one hour, then turn the cooker to low and cook an addtional 7 to 9 hours (overnight is ideal for this).

The next day, strain the solids and decant the liquids into a two-quart saucepan.  Allow the cooking liquid to cool completely.  Take a cup of the cold liquid and whisk in the cornstarch.  Add back to the pan and whisk together.  Bring to a simmer until the sauce thickens.  Add the sriracha and stir to combine.  Pour the sauce back over the heart strips and other bits and give a stir.

Serve over wide pasta or rice.

Start to Finish Time: 8 hours or overnight

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 378 Calories; 20g Fat (49.9% calories from fat); 37g Protein; 9g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 265mg Cholesterol; 483mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 5 Lean Meat; ½ Vegetable; 0 Fruit; 2;½ Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.

 

This was amazingly good, sorta like Swedish meatballs or stroganoff but a trifle chewier.  It is easy, needs little attention, and tastes really wow.  I say try it. (If you don’t want to run out to the Oriental supermarket for pork hearts, most supermarkets have beef hearts, which will work too.)

 

A scholar of Dravidian linguistics writes a poem about every crime that has taken place in New Orleans.

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Cheese caused a trip I could have done without

I just went to the urgent care centre because cheese.

A couple of days ago I bought two nice mini-wheels of baby Brie, and today decided I’d have some for a mid-afternoon snack.  One of them went down pretty well with some Triscuit, and I finished the eight-ounce wheel over about an hour.

Half an hour after that, hives sprouted all down the back of both thighs, across my lower back and sides, itchy patches on my thumb webs and finger joint skin, and wheezes—all the classic symptoms of food allergic reaction except for palatal itching and throat swelling.  I looked in the mirror and my face was a cherry-like shade that didn’t bode well either.  We recently finished off a box of Triscuit by itself without any trouble, so the Brie pretty much had to have caused all this whoop-te-do.

I sighed, as well as I could for the wheezing, got dressed, and drove to the nearest urgent care centre.  The doctor looked me over, noted my pulse was racing (well yes; I’d just taken a shot of my albuterol inhaler) but other vitals were normal, and agreed this sounded like a classic food allergy episode.  She reluctantly (her word) prescribed a cortisone injection over giving me a five-day prednisone dospak, which would have monkeyed with my diabetes worse than the injection would. I told her that sometimes she didn’t get to have good choices in medicine, only less-bad ones and let’s go on with the injection.

She made me sit around for ten minutes after the shot to see whether the cortisone was going to blow up my heart rate. When it didn’t, she gave me several pages of advice about allergies (things I already knew) and sent me home with a recommendation to take Claritin and Zantac for their antihistaminic properties, Benadryl at bedtime if I had any, and make sure I started carrying my Epi-pen at all times.

I intend to follow the Claritin and Zantac advice, but am not going to start shlepping an Epi-pen.  I have to carry too many other things with me already, and I think (we’ll start conducting some controlled experiments) that I’m going to find the problem is green cheeses and aged ones will still be OK. In which case I’ll do what I do about my shellfish allergy: make a mild commotion with waiters to impress the idea on them that having a patron carried out dead is bad publicity, so make sure there isn’t any [x] in what I order.

Now, three hours later, the great majority of the itching has gone away and left only the hive-y bumps, and those will cool off in a day or so.  But really—all of this because cheese???

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Cooking things: Arugula, Potato, and Leek Soup

Pictures of this dish have been sitting on my phone for weeks and now, down here on the banks of the Colorado it’s almost too warm to be wanting to make soup, but I do understand that other people in other places are a little chillier and might still entertain the idea.

As watercress changes potato soup into something that doesn’t taste quite like any of the individual ingredients, so arugula transforms this traditional soup base. Flexible, the soup can be puréed to a chunky or a smooth texture, and served hot, as a main dish, or chilled, as a first course.

Arugula, Potato, and Leek Soup

Recipe By     : Elizabeth Schneider
Source          : Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables
Serving Size  : 12
Categories    : Soups

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient — Preparation Method
————————  ————————      ——————————————————————————————
  3        tablespoons  Oil
  4             medium  Leeks, trimmed, cleaned thoroughly,
                        and chopped
  2               cups  Sliced onion
  1           teaspoon  Ground fennel seeds
  2½            pounds  Potatoes, peeled and coarsely cubed
  6               cups  Chicken broth
  3               cups  Water
  20            ounces  Arugula, washed, trimmed, to yield 4 cups
                        packed
                        Salt and pepper, as needed
  ¼                cup  Ricard or Pernod
  1½              cups  Plain yogurt
  4                     Finely slivered arugula leaves; garnish

Heat oil in a large pot.  Add leeks and onion; cook over moderately low heat, stirring often, until softened, about 10 minutes.  Sprinkle with fennel and stir 30 seconds.

Add potatoes, broth, and water.  Simmer 25 minutes, until soft.  Add arugula and cook about 10 minutes longer, or until stems are soft.  Add salt, pepper and liqueur to taste.

Purée to rough or smooth texture, as you like.  Adjust the seasoning.  Serve hot or chilled, topped with yogurt and garnished with arugula slivers.

Mix the evaporated milk and water and pour into a medium saucepan over a medium-low flame. Simmer to reduce. While the milk is simmering, add the pressed garlic, white pepper, thyme, nutmeg, and turmeric.

— – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – —

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 189 Calories; 5g Fat (26.3% calories from fat); 7g Protein; 28g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 4mg Cholesterol; 418mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1 Grain(Starch); 1 Vegetable; 1 Fat

I got a little enthusiastic with the sea-salt grinder; be sure you don’t repeat my error or you’ll have to double the batch to even things out.  Not that that’s a bad thing; it just means you’ll have plenty to freeze for another day when you feel too tired to cook.

The soup may curdle after freezing.  If it does, just hit it a lick with a stick blender or a food processor and it’ll smooth right out.

 

A giant elf walks the streets of Hong Kong. It has come to steal regret. Fnord.

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