Weekend Evaluation: Hear that Funny Sound? It's My Hooves!

When Gretchen bought me this t-shirt for my birthday a few years back I don't think she expected me to actually cook all of the parts that are delicious.

Weekend Wrap-Up (May 22-23)

Pig Trotter Terrine

This weekend was a quiet food-weekend in our house. It was almost disastrous on a major level- our oven stopped working on Sunday. Tom was braising a pig foot in the oven, when it suddenly shut off and the digital display went black. I expected a melt-down of epic proportions, but Tom shocked me and didn't seem to mind too much. The burners on the stove still worked, so maybe that helped ease the situation. Tom had been planning to bake bread, but instead had to turn the dough into English muffins, since they're cooked on a griddle. I guess when life hands you a broken oven, you turn it into English muffins.

(Note: we were able to get the oven working several hours later. All we had to do was unplug it and plug it back in, and it worked! It's amazing how many things can be fixed by unplugging it, pulling a battery, or just whacking it really hard.)

Airing of Grievences: Just Because Its Local Doesn't Mean Its Good

We’re not waiting until Festivus -We've got a lot of problems with people, and now, you're going to hear about it.

So Gretchen and I are going to start regularly posting things that annoy us or don’t make any sense.  Let’s face it, you’re going to see a lot more from me in this category. 

I try to buy everything at the greenmarket and through my CSA.  We’re talking about products that need to be consumed fresh so the quality is going to be better if they haven’t been transported from California or Florida in a truck; and in a lot of cases the greenmarket vendors are no more expensive than the supermarket and you get to spend your shopping time outside.  

These are great reasons to get your product from the greenmarket. It doesn’t necessarily mean you can just show up at your local farmers market, co-op, or store and buy something labeled ‘local’, ‘organic’, or ‘artisanal’ and expect it to be good.  In a lot of cases you're going to pay way too much for food that isn't as good as it should be.

With this in mind I’m going on the record about food that I think doesn’t live up to its billing. 

Weekend Evaluation: I Was Hot and I Was Hungry

Sometimes cooking is a great feeling.  There's an awareness and confidence that you can feel while cooking, it seems like you can't make a mistake. You know exactly what is happening and why - the cause and effect are completely linked.  Your evaluation of the ingredients, the plan you put in place, and the techniques you apply to achieve the final product is all are very clear.  

You feel in complete control of what's happening and everything works out exactly how you want with very little effort.  

This effortless feeling is why I cook.   

This weekend was not effortless.

Weekend Wrap-Up (May 15-16)

Sometimes things just don't go as smoothly as you'd like, even though you've planned for days to make sure everything goes ok. Sometimes you accidentally cut yourself when you're only washing the knife and not actually cutting. Sometimes you use the wrong ingredient. Sometimes the blade on your Kitchenaid food processor gets jammed, and no amount of hammering, drilling, pulling, heating, soaking or other form of destruction will get it off (seriously, why is this so hard to pry off?). Sometimes things just go wrong, and unfortunately this was one of those weekends in our kitchen. A lot of beer was consumed in the aftermath.

Here's what Tom made this weekend:

- Harissa (a North African hot chili sauce)
- Biscuits (for the bangers)
- Sausages - Merguez; Bangers (pork); Mint, Thyme, and White Wine Mutton Sausage
- Mutton Chop with Mint Spring Onion Burre Blanc, Potatoes a la Boulangere, and Sugar Snaps
- Sourdough Rhubarb Whole Wheat Coffee Cake
- Rolls (Kolsch, Pale Ale)
- Asparagus and Spring Onion Tart, with Carrot Top and Pea Pesto
- Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
- Roasted Radishes
- Hummus (for my lunch during the week)

And now for the problems:

Weekend Evaluation: In Theory and Practice

I'm not sure if I cook a lot on the weekend; it seems like it, but it's all about having a basic plan of when you're going to do things, and then sticking to it.

I just like to spend my time away from work doing what I enjoy, being productive, and swearing at inanimate objects.  Not that I'm above doing that at work too; I'm pretty sure I've told a computer, phone and copier all to f-off on company time.  Is that stealing time?

Here's a couple observations from this weekend's cooking. 

Weekend Wrap-Up (May 8-9)

This past weekend was a non-project weekend, but that doesn't mean that Tom wasn't busy in the kitchen. I'm a 'late' sleeper on weekends (until 9 am) but Tom is up at the crack of dawn- sometimes before. When I wake up, Tom's already gone running, been to the farmers market and the grocery store, baked a loaf of bread, ground some meat, and made us breakfast. I'm not exaggerating, its pretty unbelievable how productive he is while I'm still sleeping. This works out for both of us- I'm not in his way while he's doing all this, and I don't have to hear the inevitable swearing or freak outs. If you've never heard someone yell 'F*** you!' to a fridge, come on over Saturday morning around 6 am. You won't be disappointed.

This weekend, we went to a Mets game, Tom had a basketball game, and we rode our bikes. But here's what he still managed to make on a non-project weekend...

Cook's Complaints: Duck Confit w/ rhubarb gastrique over mint/coriander israeli couscous, peas, and lentils

What I hate about blogs is that the writer's tend to make their lives sound perfect, or how they were always thrilled with how great they are a something.  I am not a great cook, I'm not even good - I'd like to think working at something daily and striving for a higher level will make you better, but I make the same mistakes over and over.  In the interest of improvement, I think that writing them down will keep me from repeating them.  So this is where I'll complain about the food, and follow that by a brief description by how I prepared it.

The biggest problem here was timing....

The Weekday "Usual"

When we eat dinner at home, Tom always cooks. My cooking skills are very limited (I get excited when I properly fry an egg), and Tom enjoys it. He has roughly an hour to prepare dinner since I work out when I get home from work, and we eat when I'm done. (By the way, I do realize how absolutely lucky I am to have a husband that cooks!)

A typical weekday dinner consists of grains (lentils, couscous, quinoa, etc) with additions (usually veggies and a meat), and some kind of saucing. The meat additions are typically something that was a weekend project, like duck confit, lamb neck rilette, or bacon. Another common weekday dish is some sort of open-faced sandwich on bread that Tom has baked. (Did I mention he bakes too?)

Thursday night, we had one of these typical weekday dinners. He made Israeli couscous and lentils, which he topped with peas, mint, duck confit, duck cracklings, and a rhubarb/honey sauce.

Welcome to my blog!

My husband, Tom, is kind of obsessed with food and cooking. He reads books and magazines about food, is online for hours reading blogs and websites devoted to food, watches tv shows about food, and has recently taken a few cooking classes. He talks about food, thinks about food, and even wakes up in the middle of the night after dreaming of food. The dude likes food.

I like food, too (who doesn't?), but it doesn't control my life like it does Tom's. We plan our weekends around his 'food projects.' If I want to use the oven to bake cookies, I have to clear it with him to make sure he's not planning to smoke meat that day. After I've made the cookies, I just eat them and enjoy them. That is not the case with Tom, who tends to discuss (obsess over?) a meal for hours- sometimes days- after it's been eaten.

Tom's interest in cooking started when he realized it was just as easy (and tastier) to make his own food instead of making something frozen or out of a box. Why use a pancake mix when you've already got flour, salt and baking powder in the cupboard?

We live in New York City, which has some of the greatest restaurants in the world, a perk we try to take advantage of. Eating some of the most amazing food on the planet at these restaurants has also inspired him.

This interest in cooking, and Tom's skills, have blossomed over the years. He started out simple, making dishes like roasted chicken with pan sauce, but lately he's been getting into making 'fancier' stuff like terrines, sausages, duck confits, and even rendering fat to make lard. I've had all sorts of gross things in my refrigerator- jars of animal intestines (for sausage casings- they are still in there), pig hearts, chicken feet, pork cheeks, lamb necks, and a hunk of pig skin with hair and the USDA stamp right there in your face.

Everytime he orders meat from our CSA vendor I worry what we'll end up getting. A whole bone-in ham to put in our already stuffed freezer? A cow heart? More chicken feet? They're all coming soon.