she craves

Midnight Feast at Honey Pig in Vegas

Searing pork belly, kim chi and bean sprouts flanked by an army of ban chan (side dishes).

Midnight, midday, whenever. I'll take it.

What Say You, Carnivore?

The New York Times is curious. So am I. There's no end to the ethical argumentation by vegetarians. But what do we as omnivore/carnivores have to say? Say your peace. Even I know it's more than just about tasting good. 

While I draft a response (maybe), I'll be taking some inspiration from these gems I found on the interwebs. 

1.) Meditation #1: 

Awesome = Ethical

2.)  Meditation #2

I never learned this in Vacation Bible School.

FLASHBACK: Kabocha Squash Risotto

For a shitty week: Kabocha squash risotto with crispy sage, guanciale, and kabocha seeds.

[Blogger's Note:  Cycles rule the universe.  The seasons, good weeks, bad weeks.  This recipe is both salve and sustenance.  An oldie but a goodie.  It's also a good excuse to use the kabocha squash you find in Asian markets and specialty stores.  Just as most people don't touch pumpkins other than Halloween, kabocha doesn't make contact with my knife until the weather turns cold and suddenly, I feel the need for that funky sweetness and the soft silky flesh.  The crunchy topping is essential here.  As comforting as the soft creamy rice can be, a bit of contrast never hurt.  No need to wallow in nursery food.  A bit of salty bite is a good reminder that there's more to life than feeling down.]

I've done it. I've drained myself of words. Or rather, the will to write words for a paycheck; to even string together a thought. As I sit here writing this now, I stop every two words to gather my thoughts for the rest of the sentence. It isn't that I'm completely vacant. Rather the opposite. About a thousand ideas are percolating in this noggin' of mine. Mostly they swim. Sometimes they churn. Other times they collide like tectonic plates, the likes of which have not been seen since Pangea was sick of being one huge chunk of rock.

---

Result of repetitive motion The source of these ideas: work. I make it a point not to dwell in too much detail about the day job. I like it that way—that's the whole point of this blog. I get to write about what I want to write about. Gives me another focus than what I didn't get done in the workday... Without going into it too much (this would require a bottle of wine and a lot of time, which I don't have), the upswing of the deadline curve leaves me with little time and a lot of stress. Not just the chronological sort. There's plenty of the emotional baggage like self-doubt, suspicion, and good old job insecurity to make a girl lose sleep. Even her appetite. This, ladies and gentleman, has never happened before. It partly has to do with the supremely bad meals I've had in town lately and that thanks to roommates with an apparent dishwasher-phobia I can't even cook in my own goddamn kitchen. So everything swims, bounces off of each other, and they are just noisy. Not the thing you need when you're dying to finish draft three of a piece you have completely no faith in. Or do you? Oh the indecision! The cacophony got to be a bit too much when my friend Amber called. "Do you have dinner plans?" I asked. She answered. "No, I'm just staying home." "Good," I replied. "I'm coming over for dinner. I want to make you something. Well, us." So with that, Friday evening turned into The Therapy Kitchen Sessions. It turns out that we were both having supremely shitty weeks. We each took our turns at bitching, just letting a lot of verbal steam that's buit up pressure within our little diaphragms. Such release is so much more effective when you punctuate points with the chop of a chef's knife and throwing bits of aromatics into a pot. Before you know it, you've disemboweled and prepped an entire Kabocha squash and started a batch of some badly needed risotto. When we were discussing what to make earlier Amber, who's a wonderful pastry chef at a restaurant in town, read my mind. "We need comfort food." The creamy rice was a no brainer. But to coddle such stress and fragile egos, there needed to be something else. Slightly sweet. The presence of which would immediately uplift our spirits. Kabocha squash, baked and mashed, stirred in moments before you spike the pot with a chunk of butter and a blizzard of parmesan. The color alone hinted at sunshine and warmth. But we were grown women. Adventurous, sophisticated, beautiful, cool, intelligent, talented, passionate—it's all part of the pep-talk, you see—women. So, there's gotta be something extra to sex it up lest we risk creating a big heap of baby food. Albeit, delicious baby food. A chunk of guanciale caught my eye at the market. Blessed pig. It gives me bacon. Pork chops. Ham. Sausages. Pork cheek sandwiches at Salumi. Hell, even chittlins on an adventurous day. But thank you, thank you, you porcine God-send for your jowls. Cured with salt and spices, it's the most revered part of the pig in Lazio, around Rome. Mostly fat, it's used like pancetta in just about everything. I cubed my stash and tossed it with whole fresh sage leaves, the seeds from the disemboweled Kabocha (time FLIES when you're recounting painful details of the week!), and a little olive oil to get it going. Then you roast the whole thing in a hot oven and hear it sizzle so that it practically talks to you. It sounds angry. It sounds bitchy, what with that constant sizzling and occasional pop from a seed. But the mixture crisps up, cubes of bacon fat, sage leaves, roasting seeds and all. The result is a crunchy aromatic confetti to top the risotto, tableside, with lots more parmesan. Because it's been that kind of week. By the time we were ready to eat, Amber's son, Nick was starving and lamenting that it was 9 p.m. Yeah, I totally believe the emotional osmosis stuff. I worried that all of our stress may have melted into our food and the dish would taste, well, worried. But that intense turmeric yellow pool of silky rice on the tongue was like a hug. The crunchy bits you got every so often on a forkful snapped you back into a here and now only conjured by smoky bacon fat and the oddly medicinal sage leaves. "If you can craft a dish like this," I thought to myself. "Then you can do anything." Yes, ladies and gents, it was a risotto meditation. Kabocha Squash Risotto with Crispy Sage, Guanciale, and Kabocha Seeds I don't remember where I came across this recipe. I didn't find it in any of my cookbooks at home. I suspect it came about during a previous job, also extremely stressful, but luckily supplied with an arsenal of cookbooks that I could bury myself in. There's some charm in using just about every bit of the squash. If you compost the peel, then hey, big karma points to you. You can sub a small pumpkin if kabocha isn't available. And those of you overachievers who have pureed squash or pumpkin lying around, this is SO the dish to put it in. 1 Kabocha squash or small pumpkin * 1/4 pound guanciale or pancetta, diced * a generous handful of fresh sage leaves * olive oil * 1 small yellow onion, chopped * 1 clove garlic, minced * 2 cups carnaroli or arborio rice * a glass of white wine * 6 cups of simmering chicken or vegetable stock * dab or slab of butter * pinch of grated nutmeg * LOTS of parmesan You can prepare the squash ahead, use squash you've got, or prepare it all in go. To do the latter: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Start with the squash. Cut it in half, scrape out the seeds (save these) and then cut into eights. Using a knife peel the skin from the flesh. Cut the flesh into cubes and place in a roasting dish or aluminum packet, sealed. Place in the hot oven and make sure the stock is still simmering. Now with the lovely crunchy stuff. Combine the guanciale, sage, and seeds in a roasting dish and sprinkle with just a touch of olive oil. Place this in the oven next to the squash and let it do its thing. When you start to smell the guanciale mingling with the sage, check on it and give it a stir. Leave the squash alone. Keep an eye on the crunchy confetti as you tend to the rice. When the bacon's done (about 15 to 20 minutes later) retrieve the chunks out with a slotted spoon and place it all on a paper towel to drain and cool. Let it hang out there until you're done with the rest of the dish. Saute the onion in a bit of olive oil over medium heat. When it's translucent (you're not browning anything here) add the rice and stir to coat each grain with a slick of olive oil. Add a little more if you need to here. When the rice is shiny and warmed from two minutes in the pan add the glass of wine. Stir and keep stirring until the wine dissolves. Now it's time to use that stock. Add a ladleful and stir. At this point, everyone has their theories on when to add the next bit of stock and what to do in between. My way—just don't let anything scorch or the starch stick to the pan. I give it a few stirs, but the risotto is very forgiving when you need to talk with a friend about mean bosses, weird office dynamics, and her crazy work load. Repeat this cycle (conversation optional) until you're out of stock. If you get to this point and the rice isn't quite done just add hot water. It won't kill it. Promise. Have a friend (or you can do this during one of those rounds where you don't stir the rice) mash the now baked squash until it's smooth. Don't bother with the food processor. A fork works wonders. Add this mashed goodness to the rice after the last of the liquids. Grate in some nutmeg just until you smell it and start to feel better. Add the butter and as much parmesan as you'd like. Give it a stir. Cover and just leave it alone for a second. Now's a good time to set the table and open another bottle of wine. To serve, spoon as much of the risotto as you'd like onto your plate. Sprinkle a handful of the crisped sage, guanciale, and seeds. Add more parmesan. NOTE: If you don't want to bother with the seeds you can leave them out. But we're talking bacon fat roasted seeds. Why the hell not?

Pork Belly Redux (AKA That Rocked My World)

 

My beloved pork belly was reincarnated thanks to a mixture of my laziness and curiosity. The gargantuan pork roast we made one weekend was still lingering in the fridge a couple of days later, albeit in a smaller but no less formidable chunk. Hesitant to just slice and re-heat I opted to test my ingenuity and exhaust other leftover bits and bobs.

The result was superb. Cooking like this makes me think sometimes we take recipes and our attitudes in the kitchen way too seriously. Don't misunderstand, this isn't about not thinking about the food -- quite the contrary. You think and care so much about the time you took into it, you feel obligated to respect it to the very last morsel. This is serious passion. Worrying is an optional addition. Gratuitious waste is an all too accepted sin.

Most talented cooks I know stand out for two reasons: 1.) They usually don't cook with recipes. And 2.) They are sorceresses with leftovers.

But the true success of this recipe -- and a certain degree of vindication -- only comes when The Voracious One actually eats the damn thing. He-who-normally-eschews-and-curses-leftovers downed every shred of braised pork LEFTOVERS.

He even ate the leftovers of this reincarnated leftover. Victory. It tastes mighty fine.

Braised Left-Over Pork Belly in a Cupboard Sauce

Thankfully, this is the type of dish that really doesn't - shouldn't - come with a recipe. The name doesn't allude to the taste of the dish, rather the contents of. I literally looked in my fridge and added it to my chunk of pork belly I placed into my enameled cast iron pot:

approx. 2/3 cup stale Virgil's Root Beer * 1 cup of cold black coffee from earlier that morning * the last bit of life squeezed out from a tube of tomato pasta * a lone yellow onion peeled and cut in half * a tablespoon each of Domori Apurimac cocoa powder and ground almonds * a teaspoon each of ground cumin, coriander seed, sichuan peppercorn and a touch of ground cinnamon * a bay leaf from my little potted tree * and some of the remnants of the packaged chicken stock sitting for God knows how long in my fridge (it passed the smell test)

I mixed it up as it came to a boil so that the liquid was somewhat uniform, reduced the heat and covered it to let it do it's thing for about three hours. Then I forgot about it for another hour. And when I remember it again, I uncovered the pot and used a fork to flake away the tender strands of meat into the deep, earthy sauce.

The moral of my leftover story:  Every little bit can contribute flavor, especially in a braise. I have a feeling that what we know as mole (forgive me, but I cannot figure out how to get the accent over the "e" on my new keyboard) is a result of frugality, an interesting pantry and a love of flavor.

The ingredients are only OPTIONS, not the rule. Play around with some liquid, some seasoning, maybe something for texture. Have it swim up half way up a piece of meat, bring it to a boil, cover and give it a steam room treatment. The aromatic bubbles should appear only once in a while -- no vigorous boiling however small the bubbles.

I've had great luck with a small hunk of beef, onions I caramelized and some veg broth mixed with water to create enough volume in the pot. After a few hours, I had what I can only call French Only Pot Roast. Heavenly with buttered noodles. Remind me to tell you about that one ...

So, tell me. What are some of your leftover tricks?

Roast Pork Belly

For as much pork belly I eat, I've cooked very little of it. Partly because up until recently, finding pork belly at the store was just as likely as finding a genuinely ripe avocado. But the bulk of my avoidance was purposeful. Pork belly is a sublime thing. How could I, an imprecise kitchen being, ever come close to achieving the same level of mouth-watering greatness that made me love it in the first place? How could I dare to come so close to perfection, like reaching out your fingers to the most supreme of beings in your mind without the faintest trembling, nevermind controlling the drooling.

My knees shook. My palms sweat. But reality trumped hesitance and fear. The freezer was crammed with things intended. Pie crusts. Sunday roasts. But mostly the huge piece of pork belly supplied by a fellow pig lover who thought I would enjoy a bit of play. If Ben and Jerry were to cohabitate in the new freezer (or anything new for that matter), I would have to cook the damn/blessed thing.

So I did.

Where Necessity and Un-necessity Meet.

Oh. My. God. Why didn't anyone think of this sooner?

[Thanks to EatMeDaily for the heads up and eventual loss of money...]

 

The Fleeting Good Times of Favas and Such

"How thin do you want this pasta?" My friends stood next to the flour-dusted pasta crank, holding up fresh sheets of precariously long pasta. It looked as if they were going to hang up a "Happy Birthday" or "Welcome Home" banner.

"Not too thin," I dictated quickly. The pasta was in capable hands and by now, there were sheets and sheets of stretched out dough, generously dusted with flour and ready to be cut. All the messy effort was for what I was attending to in the pan -- deeply fragrant gems of crisping guanciale -- cured pig jowl -- favas, peas, shallots and ... who knows what else we decided to throw into the pot.

Emboldened by a few glasses of wine and the coaxing of good friends, anything is possible. Take recipes. Most people are slaves to them. They plan. They organize. They worry and fret. But inebriation and hunger are prime motivators to toss the whole regimented lot in favor of some past knowledge, intuition and most importantly, bacon.

Breakfast for Lunch

Try as I might, I am not a morning person. I am known to abuse the alarm, both verbally and physically. My brain doesn't quite work so making a decision such as which fiber-loaded rational cereal should I have for breakfast is on par with should I choose the blue pill or the red one? For the first few minutes of being awake, the coffeemaker is my only friend in the world.

Still, I am a fan of large breakfasts. Starch. Protein. More starch. Cups of coffee. Hard to achieve when you've got a late start and loads of work to do. Even harder when you've procrastinated in your workout clothes, determined (half-assed) to do the next series of weight training and plyometrics.

Solution: Breakfast for lunch.

Lamb Ragu

Ground meat often gets a bad wrap. Often associated with meatloaf, forgotten rather than rhapsodized about, or those unassuming grey burgers of school lunches, we tend to forget it's often the basis of the most comforting, filling and easy recipes. Most of its life, it lives in the dark cold of the freezer. Case in point: Lamb Ragu. I know. I cheated. But that's part of the deal when you're on a budget: you forage into the icy crevasses of the freezer and in the dark corners of the cabinet to figure out what else to transform into your next restorative. In my case, it was a couple of nests of fresh pasta, delicately frozen, and a block of good, organic, grass-fed lamb.

Who knows what would've happened to that lamb had I never been hit by this economic wake-up call? It could've remained untapped, like a wooly mammoth under yards of ice, undisturbed until something cataclysmic finally revealed its priceless remains. Perhaps I'm being dramatic about the emotional effects of the freelance life, but at times, it sure as hell feels like the earth beneath your feet is giving way. When that feeling kicks in, it's time for ragu AKA bolognese.

FLASHBACK: Kabocha Squash Risotto

I hadn't quite realized how long I've been writing the blog -- since 2005, or the commencement of what's become known as the quarter-life crisis. No one wonder I sound so dour. So, now you know. I bitch. I cook. I eat.

But this recipe is a staple in my kitchen, especially now when hard squash our coming out of our ears and things like risotto are precisely what we need. Below is the recipe. For a complete flashback you can read the original post here. Otherwise, enjoy my version of a time machine.

Honeydew, Scallop & Bacon Salad

The craving: A quick meal. Spare moments are as rare a good apricot around here. Has to be something cool and light. The air is heavy enough with heat, I don't need a lead weight in my belly to feel satisfied. But something substantial enough that I'm not starving in the heat an hour later.

The solution: Greens, ubiquitous as they are, need a bit of fun. Dill fronds for some flavor and an edible rose petal or two because I've just thumbed through Claudia Roden's rose petal preserve recipe. Not enough petals for jam but plenty for salad in a frivolous (and optional) way. Thick-cut smoky bacon (as much as you'd like) still sizzling from the pan add substance. As do a few sea scallops sauteed in the bacon drippings. The shellfish is just as sweet and tender as the cubes of honeydew, heady and sweet with summer ripeness. No salt. No acid. Just a built-in vinaigrette from the warm bacon fat and cool, sweet honeydew juice.

Breakfast of Champions with a Friend

On the menu: Lemon-Ricotta pancakes * Tomato-Bacon Hash * Chicken-Apple Sausages * Fruit Salad

Nine a.m. Okay, maybe 10. We've established that I'm not a morning person. A groggy Sunday morning and the luxury of lingering in bed. It lasts as long as a rumble in the belly. Hunger sets in and comes the proverbial Sunday morning question: what to eat for brunch? It nags me once a week like clockwork. And it nags my friends, too. We're champion brunch-goers. We've been to pretty much every venue in town that offers scrambled eggs of various quality, stacks of pancakes gluey or perfect, and coffee weak as dishwater or thick as mud. Our options were close to up and the idea of waiting in a crowded front room and fighting for a bitchy waiters' attention wasn't as good as staying in bed. In fact, "staying in" sounded perfect.

But what would I eat? That would be up to me, the kitchen, and my friend, Amber.