Calamity Shazaam in the Kitchen

Sometimes I just can't explain it myself.

Just because I haven't posted about it, doesn't mean I haven't... Yeah, I am a full blown canning addict. How do I know this? Well because when I go to the supermarket I think "hmmmm what can I pickle?" or "hmmmm I wonder if I can pressure can that..." Ah yeah. It's a problem. Oh and also it's a problem because I've run out of storage space. Whoops. It doesn't help that I also read up on canning when I am not in the kitchen. The other day I read over on Cake and Commerce about making hot fudge and of course that's been on my mind ever since. Everywhere I looked online about home canning hot fudge said DON'T DO IT but no one said why. I emailed Linsey at C&C and asked her about this and she reassured me that the stuff would smell really bad if processed wrong. That is the kind of answer that works for me. And holly molly, this stuff IS really fricking good. I made it per Linsey's recipe, ladled it out in eight 4oz jars,...

I have a hate/love/love relationship with kale. For about forever I thought kale was only good as a sort of leafy doily for a slice of orange on a breakfast plate. Or as a decorative plant in a fall garden. Then a Brazilian fellow I worked with introduced me to kale salad with onion, tomato, and a little vinegar, which he promised was good excellent for my kidney. Or maybe my liver. Or possibly my pancreas. My Brazilian Portuguese was pretty terrible and mostly we communicated with pointing and nodding. Nicest guy I ever worked with. So I started thinking about kale as more than a garnish. And then once I tried a kale and bean soup, I was officially hooked. As yesterday was a total washout I decided to make kale and turkey sausage soup. Well really I started it yesterday and finished it today. Yesterday I made vegetable stock because I can't seem to find a brand I like. Today I began by cooking the kale for a few minutes in lightly salted water. While the water was boiling for th...

Ok well maybe not just for me. But ages ago the lovely Flood came to the town of the Bean and the Cod and decided to make dinner for me, the Evil Twin, and the FBiL. This dinner was meant as a thank you to the ET for hosting the Lovely Flood and I was included because, well, frankly I will never turn down a great dinner. And what a delicious dinner it was. Especially since I didn't have to cook a single thing!

Hmmmm..... I am not so sure that this flirtation La Maman has with Thomas Keller is going to work out. I was there with her this weekend, in the kitchen with Ad Hoc. I saw how she treated him. It all began with the chicken with sausage recipe. (Let me just state for the record that La Maman and I have totally opposite approaches to cooking. La Maman take a terribly complicated recipe, buys all the terribly complicated ingredients, gets home, slaves away in the kitchen wrestling the recipe into submission, emerging victorious and usually exhausted and never makes the recipe again. I take a terribly complicated recipe, chop out as much of the terribly complicated ingredients as possible, whittle away as many steps as I can, and hope for the best. If I actually get around to making something complicated that is. ) So Saturday I went over to see La Maman, hoping for breakfast as my electricity was off and somehow found myself in the kitchen with her and Ad Hoc. As she was preparing to mak...

Yes, I did do some canning today. Pickled beets, more tomatoes, and a very big jar of pickled ginger. But I did make a very nice dinner for myself that had nothing to do with canning or pickling or preservation of any kind. In fact it is my most favorite kind of cold weather dish: baked chicken and rice. The beauty of this dish is that it is not only delicious the night of, but it is equally tasty the next day for lunch and the following night for dinner. I have a casserole that I pilfered from a box of yard sale bound items at a friends house. It is the perfect size for a two or three dish meal. First I browned a few chicken thighs with a little sliced onion. I left the skin on one thigh, but took it off the others. Don't get me wrong I love me some fried chicken skin, but I just cannot stand it cold. So I only leave it on the one piece I have for dinner the night I cook it. After I brown the chicken, I remove the pieces to a plate and throw in about four cups of rinsed greens -...

Uh oh, I think La Maman has a thumping new crush on someone OTHER than La Papa. And I think it is Thomas Keller. His recipes have recently been scrawled all over the internet like a dirty girls phone number in a public lavatory, so I can't really blame her for being tempted. And it's all because of his new book: Ad Hoc at Home. I happen to own the French Laundry cookbook, which I love for the feel of the paper and for the lovely photos of the very complicated food. Which is probably why I am personally a little impervious to the hype around the 'hoc. Now, you are probably wondering how I figured out about this new crush of La Maman? Well, let's just say there were a few clues. I know she cooked something out of Bouchon and loved it. And then the other day she asked me if I'd read the article on him in the New York Times. Something about the Leek Bread Pudding she said. But then she actually made the Leek Bread Pudding. I think the recipe turned out so perfectly he...

The Can-o-Rama Challenge Number Two involved pears and alcohol, which makes sense because typically the two go hand in hand. Pears are like apricots to me. I always seem to pick a mushy/mealy one so I rarely eat either one raw, preferring instead to cook it into submission. Two things about this recipe. One: I cannot stand to chop peeled pears. I managed to chop about half of them before getting completely annoyed and switching over to the food processor. Peeled pears get sticky AND slippery at the same time and the juice of them makes the skin on my hands feel peculiar. Pulsing them through the food processor worked well enough, but it has to be done in small doses. And two: I don't know why, but yesterday the final product tasted super sticky sweet and yet magically today the taste has really mellowed out. Where did that sugary sweetness go? Hmmmm..... I made this recipe with cava because that is all I had on hand. Somehow I ended up with about 9 half-pints, I can't tell if ...