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Too into waffles

Sometimes you buy something good. I did. It's called the Chef's Choice Belgian WafflePro Taste/Texture Select 850. It's a waffle iron. It cooks a four-square, deep-pocketed Belgian waffle in two minutes and thirty seconds, so that I get to actually eat waffles instead of just making them. It was engineered by people who love waffles as much as some engineers love bridges or airplanes. Using the Joy of Cooking 1970 waffle recipe, it makes waffles that are incredibly crispy and light. One thing I learned while researching waffle irons is that a lot of people are really, really into waffles, maybe too into waffles. Check out the reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Chefs-Choice-Taste-Texture-WafflePro-Belgian/dp/B000A3L60A

Quiche Fritatta

Chop up 3 slices of leftover quiche. Fry the chopped up bits in butter in a cast-iron skillet. Pour in a mixture of 6 eggs and 1 cup soymilk. Sink a layer of sharp cheddar slices. Add a layer of sauteed asparagus spears. Cook over low heat until it begins to set, then finish in the oven under a low broil until the top is a little brown.

Corn Cheddar Chowder

Boil half a bag of frozen corn in 2 quarts of water. Chop an onion and a shallot and brown them in butter or olive oil and toss them in the pot. Chop 5 or more stalks of celery finely using 2 or more knives and toss them in the pot. Add 1 cup arborio rice. Lower heat and simmer until the chowder turns creamy. Add water as necessary to maintain a chowder rather than risotto consistency. Add flaked salmon (mine was cooked over applewood smoke). Finish with 1 cup sharp cheddar. Salt and season otherwise to taste.

More on Shopsin's

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/04/15/020415fa_FACT
http://www.google.com/search?q=kenny+shopsin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://www.shopsins.com
http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Me-Philosophy-Kenny-Shopsin/dp/0307264939

I Like Killing Flies

I can't stop watching this documentary about New York cook Kenny Shopsin and his crazy family. Watching him cook has reconnected me to the primal fun of making food.

Here's a NYTimes video of Mr. Shopsin making Mac and Cheese Pancakes:

You can't make yogurt

Just by putting some yogurt in some milk. There's some kind of METHOD you have to follow that involves double boilers, and, um, thermoses, and maybe a cooler with bags of hot water in it.

I find that, in my life, homeownership slides inexorably toward homesteading, as Firefox metamorphasizes into Foxfire, more and more of my Web searches end up on the Web sites of county extensions.

I don't know how far this thing is going to go, but I (with some help from dear friends Ben & Mike) started building a chicken coop last week in the back 40 (more like back 1/3, but it's still impressive for a city lot). So it's going at least as far as chickens.

And in the great battle between husbands who want to eat their chickens and wives who want to name them, guess who won?

http://chetday.com/howtomakeyogurt.htm

Recipe: Red Pepper Marinara

Oh, this is too easy.

1 onion
2 red peppers
1 can diced tomatoes
Big splash of red wine
Salt

Chop the onion.
Chop the red pepper
Sautee until soft.
Add the tomatoes.
Pour in a big splash of red wine.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Run through your food mill. (You have a food mill, don't you?)
Salt it.

Sushi Ettiquette

Dear GTTE,
Whenever I go out for sushi, I feel self-conscious. Is it okay to use your hands? Or should I use mine? Is dipping the sushi in soy sauce frowned upon, or should I pour the soy sauce directly into my mouth? Or yours? How do I use wasabi? Is it a lubricant? An emollient? A form of currency? All my friends have different rules, but what's right?
--Cleberg Skittles, Santa Monica

Dear Cleberg,
Every time I have sushi, some self-proclaimed sushi expert schools me on new etiquette. The latest was a friend who told me I shouldn't be drinking chocolate milk with my sushi. He said it was considered bad form in Japan, I later found out it's a Kosher thing, and most Japanese Jews are not Orthodox. So what are the rules when it comes to eating sushi? I thought it best to consult my Javanese dentist, since there's only one letter difference between Javanese and Japanese.

1. Always sit on the sushi. Make eye contact with the head sushi chef (traditionally the one with the head) as you do so. It's considered masculine. If he does not cut your face with his knife, you have earned his respect. If he does cut your face with his knife, try not to cry--if you do, he won't show you the fresh sheet. Ask what's fresh: this shows you're familiar with classic hip-hop lingo, which is considered very cool in Japan right now.

2. When eating nigiri sushi (rice topped with fish) or irigin suhi (fish topped with rice) or poman sushi (rice topped with rice) or bigumaku sushi (fish topped with fish) or sushi rolls (also known as fish burritos) , use your hands, not mine. I didn't wash mine after I went to the bathroom. For sashimi, read the Material Safety Data Sheet first.

3. Don't drown the fish. Sushi is supposed to be alive and wiggling as you eat it. You know how some people like the skin used for their leather jackets to be tanned instead of fresh? Among sushi fans, the equivalent is a person who wants to eat dead fish. As for what to do with the wasabi: eat it. There are people in poor countries who would sell their feet for the wasabi you carelessly throw away.

4. Bite once, then again, then again, until the sushi is gone. In between bites, move your jaw up and down, smashing the sushi between the hard, bonelike protuberances in your mouth known as "teeth." You may feel a liquid squirting into your mouth from holes in your cheek and under your tongue. This is not normal. Eat more wasabi.

Having said that, the size of slices of fish and rolls in Japan tends to be much smaller and more expensive than the super-sized stuff we get in the States. Take a moment to reflect on how proud you are to live in a country where an honest man can still get an honest meal for a good price. Let's just say that if you can eat your sushi or roll in less than an hour and not have leftovers, you're getting scammed.

5. Eat in order and make lots of faces. Appreciating sushi means pretending you can detect subtle variations in flavor, temperature, and texture, much as with wine. Start with sashimi (that's the salad made of seaweed), then the chocolate milk, then sushi with rice (in the blue carafe), then miso soup (you remembered to order miso soup, right?). Pickled ginger is an excellent way to remove ocular redness when applied directly. And if what you're eating contains cream cheese, pineapple, barbecued pork, or fried chicken--bonus, dude.

http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/bafoodist/2009/02/sushi-etiquette-101.html

Form and Function

You could put duck l'orange with steamed broccoli and turnips on a tortilla, call it a taco, and my son would eat it. It's all about the taco. And the nacho.