Weapon of Choice

I'm finding that my methodology of doing this blog is a little more difficult than I thought it would be. The generalist approach is leaving a bit to be desired in topics. For example, all my baseball card posts have been about Stadium Club cards since I'm not really a collector and that's all I have lurking around right now. Likewise, the vast majority of my cookbooks are Deborah Madison's so I'm not generating a lot of variety there. Hmmmmmm.....what to do, what to do?

I have some ideas but for today I am not posting a Deborah Madison recipe I sort of did. I went to do a recipe for tofu, zucchini, corn and basil simmered in coconut milk, made everything and just had to add the coconut milk then discovered I had none. Complete craziness. I could have sworn I had. Based on a suggestion from Gaga, I added shredded coconut and the final dish tasted good but not like it would have had it been steeped in coconut milk. Which may be a good thing. What I ended up making was right tasty. In addition to the ingredients mentioned, it also had cilantro and jalapeno for some kick. I should just put up the recipe. Well, again, if you want it, buy a Deborah Madison cookbook (I think I took this one from Local Flavors AGAIN).

There's my problem. I'm not thinking enough about you, the readers. Right now I think I'm OK with that. I'm not trying to generate traffic. I'm trying to write. I'm trying to share things I like. If I really like Deborah Madison and her recipes, so be it. I'm not going to go out and buy Grant Achatz's cookbook just to make something for x number of readers. This isn't a cookbook review site.

I do tend to get all Melvillian when I write. I like to float away from a subject to talk about whaling and while I'm talking about whaling I might get into the history of some building and then come back to whaling and then return to my main point. My main point for today is the most important item in my kitchen:



When I bought my house, the very first thing I bought for it was this, a Kyocera ceramic knife. I LOVE IT! I was scared to death about owning one because I had a long history of cutting my fingers with other knives. Using this one realized it wasn't inherent clumsiness on my part, it was the lack of a sharp blade. My fingers would get cut from the knife sliding from whatever I was cutting and went into my hand instead. I have had no incidences of self-mutilation with this blade.

In addition to being a cool, jet black color, it is extremely light, well balanced and has a really nice grip. It goes through most vegetables with incredible ease, cuts meats well, and if I went to cut an aluminum can, I could probably do that. The only thing that has been problematic for it is cheese. Just your typical blocks of cheddar or colby or what have you. If I let the cheese soften a little, it has no problem but if I remove the cheese from the frig and go to cut it, the cheese for some reason gives resistance. Not a huge amount but enough so that it is a glaring departure from any other substance the knife has encountered.

I really recommend it. The Kyocera's are pricey (which is why I own one and I don't have a paring knife or any other knives to go with it) but man, whenever I'm somewhere else and I have to do or assist with some cooking, I miss it. Those horrible butcher block knives....ugh, they just make me shudder now.

To wrap up the post, I can't talk about my weapon of choice without including one of my favorite videos: Christopher Walken doing his thing in Fatboy Slim's song "Weapon of Choice" (no embedding for this one).

False Impressions

I made a sweet tater flan last week using a recipe from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors. I turned to that cookbook again this week for something that to me exemplifies Deborah's style. I made a leek, scallion and fennel gratin.

I have made a number of recipes of hers where I look at the ingredient list and go "Really? You're going to combine those things and have it taste good?". I'll then make it and without fail, it's good.

That was the case with this recipe. I really questioned the mix of the three main ingredients. All three are really strong root-type vegetables. I was also suspicious because I'm not a big fan of gratins. Most of my gratin experience is tater gratins, oftentimes those horrible packaged gratins from Betty Crocker. Really I had no business even trying this but as I said, it's just those type of recipes that Madison always pulls off. Oh, I also had never cooked with fennel before that I could recall.

Ingredients:
3 leeks, white parts only.
2 fennel bulbs (I used one large)
salt and pepper
1.5 T butter
1 bunch scallions
1/4 c fennel greens
1 t lemon zest (I omitted this)
2 eggs
1.5 c milk
.5 c Parmesan

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a gratin dish (observers will note that my gratin dish is the same as my flan dish. I try to minimize the amount of materials I have. I'll write about that some other time). Chop everything. Simmer the fennel in boiling water. Melt the butter and saute the veggies. Add the greens, salt and pepper. Pour into the gratin pan. Beat the eggs, milk and cheese together (I forgot the cheese and just sprinkled it on the top). Pour over the veggies. Bake for 40 minutes.



I really enjoyed this. The cooking of the veggies mellowed out the flavors and they blended very nicely. Instead of three strong flavors, it was one nice, earthy taste. The eggs and milk also helped mellow it a bit. I could see adding some meat to it. Ground turkey or some pork maybe. It made me think of cabbage in that regard. You know how cabbage has sort of a strong flavor when it's cooked that goes well with those meats. I'd fix it again.

Cooking

I've broken out the camera more times in the past few days than I have probably my entire adult life put together. Not sure how long this will continue. I'm just not much of a photograph guy and taking still-lives of things I've cooked is a little bizarre.

I'm putting up two things. The first was a dish I had been hankering for and decided to fix again. It's a celery soup from the website 101 Cookbooks. As a matter of fact, here's the recipe link. No sense recreating it here. It is also noteworthy when you compare pictures.

Here's my before picture (I like these before and after things) with all the ingredients.


Here's the after:


Mine differs in that my celery had no leaves with which to make the pesto and I used basmati instead of wild rice. Oh, and I used chicken stock. I love my version. It's tasty and has a great celery flavor. Unlike most celery soups, this keeps all the veggies intact - no efforts at turning it into some unidentifiable cream soup. I also think it is more filling this way.

The second thing I made yesterday was a sweet potato flan with sesame cookies. I forget what the exact recipe is called but it came out of Deborah Madison's Local Flavors cookbook. I love Deborah Madison. I was vegetarian for a number of years and relied on her cookbooks and the Local Flavors one was a new one issued this past year.

I give you four pictures. First, when the milk exploded on the stove (yes, I have an electric stove. I hate it). It didn't look like it was boiling and then it erupted. The second photo is the finished product. The third is my assistant helping with the cookies. The final one is a serving with the nicest cookie. The cookies are cool in that they make neat little C-shapes.






The flan is really not much more than a glorified sweet potato casserole. It was really tasty but I'm not enamored with it enough to put it up here. Besides, if you eat vegetables, you should get Deborah's cookbooks. And if you don't eat vegetables, you should eat vegetables and then get her cookbooks.