The Married Guy Cook

Not sure I buy the long food chain stuff, but it is pretty sad that bananas will get scarce and costly. Hard to believe more hasn’t been done to diversify and study/fight the plague.

Via Rob Sama, this is a great article on restaurants in China. Some of the food sounds intriguing, and not at all what you might expect of “Chinese food.”

A couple days ago I came up with an idea, inspired by plain old potato hash browns Deb made not long ago, and the zucchini fritters I tried. Why not something has brown/fritter/potato pancake-like with sweet potatoes?

So I risked one modest sweet potato on an experiment. I peeled and then shredded it into a bowl. I diced finely a couple slices of s small to medium onion, guessing correctly that it would go well. I added an egg, just a dab of oil, a couple heaping tablespoons of flour, a glop - probably a couple tablespoons - of maple syrup, and a handful - probably a quarter or third cup - of brown sugar. Also a dash of ginger and about half the size dash of nutmeg. Mixed it all thoroughly, which gave me something about the right texture.

I cooked flat round globs of the mix in some oil in a frying pan until they seemed to be done, which due to sugar caramelizing tended to mean they were unexpectedly dark. Flipped a couple times as needed and then put them on a plate.

I would love to say they were perfect, but they need further experimentation. However, I was on the right track. They were delicious, if too sweet and too caramelized, and got raves from Deb, who thought the onion was inspired and in perfect proportion. Since onion itself tends to fry up sweet, it’s not as weird as it might sound.

Doing them again, I would probably cut the syrup and/or brown sugar out almost completely, relying on native sweetness. I was thinking the sugar would also contribute to holding them together in patties, but it probably wasn’t enough of a factor to matter.

I’ll have to try it again soon, as I still have a few sweet potatoes that will need to be used. It does make a good sweet potato extender. One small to medium potato was enough for the four of us to have plenty. It’s also a taste sub, at least with so much sweetener, for candied sweet potatoes, but with less work. We had them with oven barbecued chicken (par cooked on the stoved, smothered in sauce of my off the cuff making, then baked at length, drumsticks for me and the kids and boneless breast for Deb), mashed, and corn.

In reading A Meeting At Corvallis, mention of fish stew (which would have to be the same as a fish chowder) served in a restaurant made me crave something like that, which seems odd but there you go. Having been into making soups and stews lately, it seems that much more intriguing.

Have you ever made such a thing? Any recipes or tips to share?

I would think that would make it possible to use fish that might not be as good served another way.

Do you have a traditional meal the night before Thanksgiving?

For us it seems to have accidentally become pasta with red sauce. That avoid poultry overload and produces non-poultry leftovers for one meal in the subsequent two days.

Yesterday I made popcorn the old-fashioned way for the first time in many years. I long resisted microwave popcorn due to the absurd cost, until eventually I was seduced by the convenience. It also helped that I was in a position where messy preparation was frowned upon, where I used little enough oil that it tended to go bad before I could use it, and where the price of microwave popcorn wasn’t literally out of reach. When I went through my poorest phase, many days my food for the day was a giant pan of cheap popcorn.

Traditionally, I would use melted butter, maybe a light amount of salt, but usually butter alone.

Yesterday I made a smaller pan of popcorn for a snack. That was between half and two-thirds what I used to make for myself, yet it was a big snack for four of us. We used Deb’s flavoring of choice, besides the butter, sprinkling it with Parmesan and Romano cheese (the combined stuff is way better than parm alone, so that’s what I buy). That was awesome.

That and memories of childhood got me thinking about things to make with popcorn, and ways to flavor it. What’s your favorite?

I once tried a recipe for taco flavored popcorn, which would have been better were it not microwave stuff. I think that’s the only deviation I’ve ever made before yesterday. I can remember once or twice stringing popcorn and cranberries for the Christmas tree, in a non-food use. I can remember having some kind of popcorn balls. I figure inventing something like that would be easy enough.

Any suggestions or recipes?

I am planning to make pie Real Soon Now. As in I have apples, I have unsalted butter if that’s what it takes, etc.

I have never made crust. At least, not since I was a kid, with maternal assistance.

Any recommendations, be it by way or recipes or tips? Mainly I am thinking of traditional pastry crust, though I will want to do a crust more suited to pudding pies or cheesecakes at some point, too.

I made an amazing chicken stew concoction based around the fairly meaty leftover carcass of a roast chicken. Part of the impetus was a confluence of remembering when my mother made us chicken and dumplings when I was a kid, looking for something different, and noting the dumpling recipe on the Bisquick box. Basically it was an excuse to try dumplings for the first time in decades and at the same time make efficient use of my 59 cent a pound roaster.

Essentially it was like making chicken soup, but I used potatoes and barley as I would in beef stew, not rice or noodles. I hope I can recreate it someday, because it was almost perfect.

The point of the post is to ask if anyone has thoughts on making dumplings without Bisquick, on optimally cooking them, and on storing them if any remain. We ate the majority of the stew and all nine dumplings. Well, two of us did. Sadie wouldn’t even taste hers, and Val only ate some because I spooned some into her and reminded her how much she’d loved the pre-meal tastes. We had an early supper so I can go do some stuff and everyone can just snack later.

I wasn’t sure if I should simply leave them in with the stew when I refrigerated it, or instead pull them out and store them apart.

Short of having a root cellar, what is the best way to store potatoes so they keep optimally? We also don’t have a cellar to use for the purpose, as I have known people to do when buying in bulk, like 50 lb bags.

I know they don’t need to be refrigerated, and it sometimes has struck me that doing so keeps them less well.

We were keeping them in a cabinet for a while, but after an unfortunate liquifaction incident with a squash, we haven’t returned to using the cabinet for such things. So almost ten pounds of potatoes sit on the counter. Which doesn’t strike me as the end of the world, except for a while they were adjacent to the stove, which can’t possibly be good. As always, using them fast enough eliminates all problems.

Thoughts?

I made the best chili yet yesterday.

While my mother-in-law was here, I made the best refried beans yet.

The secret to both seems to have been unusually large quantities of fresh garlic, which surprised me.

I could go on at length about how I made this particular batch of chili, just as I could write something about each time, as all are different. Trouble is, and part - but only part - of the lack of posting has been the boring sameness of the overall diet. How many times can I write about cooking refried beans, chili, beef stew, roast chicken, and various taco, burrito or similar concoctions before it gets ridiculous? So I started spicing the beans earlier. So I added a tiny amount of real maple syrup. So I made it beefier than normal. So I was out of tomato paste and used ketchup only, as opposed to paste and ketchup or tomato soup and ketchup, plus some paprika mainly for color. So I used far less chili powder than normal, more black pepper, and some white pepper for the first time ever. It remains yet another batch of chili.

Part of it has been the hecticness of the new baby, having another person in the house, and pecking at tasks associated with closing down an old business and office, and organizing my home office and seeking new business or work before this can turn into a blog about pinching food pennies until they melt from the pressure-induced heat. Still, I can at least try to post some of the more generic content I’ve had in mind, like brand and store matters, and repost some old recipes or experiments. I shall try to keep on it better.

My mother in law enjoyed her stay, not having to cook much. On a cool day, I made a roast chicken by special request. That was good. We had chicken burritos, then had them again by special request before she left. We had plain old cheeseburgers a couple times. We had pasta. It all got raves. We also had some takeout, introducing her to the D’Angelos Number 9 sub, which is steak, cheese, pepper, onion and mushroom, and to Papa Ginos pizza. We always order a Rustic style meat combo and a large cheese in the traditional style, which feeds us at least two meals worth and satisfies everyone. We had pizza a second time by special request. Oh! I remember; I made barbecue shredded beef, which came out especially good. Another request. And another thing I don’t really need to write up over and over.

I also need to fix this blog. It needs a blogroll and such, and that needs to be on all the pages. The template this is based on is hard to modify, so it’ll be back to the drawing board. Getting all the blogs right is on my master list of stuff to do, and has more connection with making a living than is immediately obvious. People see them and it reflects on me if they look better. Looks impact traffic. Where there is search traffic to individual posts, cross-links to things like Deb’s shop and the business and our other blogs increases everything’s potential. More traffic on the blogs means ads are more likely someday. While I’m not a “do anything to boost the traffic and create a true blog empire” person, I’m not going to turn down money for blogging I’d do anyway.

Stay tuned. I’ll try to keep up better with posting, but there’s not likely to be a lot of experimenting. On the other hand, we will soon be getting into cooler season foods…