I

Irish Lamb Stew and Icebox Cookies

There are hardly any I-themed ingredients.  Almost everything is prefixed with Irish, Italian, Indian or Ice.  Idiyappam is an indian rice noodle dish, but we didn't have the equipment to make it properly.  So we settled on Irish stew and Icebox cookies.

I suggested that we make our regular Irish beef stew, but Mary insisted that we do something a little different than usual.  So we found a lamb stew recipe.  Here in the US, not a lot of people eat mutton or goat, but from what I understand, those two meats are fairly common in other countries.  I like lamb, but not if it's in any way rare.  Lamb made like roast beef?  Bleah.  Cooked into a stew.  Heck yes!  I think the flavor was somewhat off-putting for Mary, but I liked it just fine.  It was really, really fatty, and that was even after Mary cut off a ton of excess from the lamb shoulder we got.  And I'm sure it doesn't help that there was also bacon in there.   Mmm, bacon.  But I'm sure it was somewhat authentic.  Good, hearty, fatty foods for northern climes.

Irish Lamb Stew

adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Irish-Lamb-Stew/Detail.aspx

1 pound thickly sliced bacon, diced
2 pounds boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 2 inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup flour
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion
1/3 cup water
3 cups beef stock
1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
1 bunch carrots
3 yukon gold potatoes
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 cup of Guinness
Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble, and set aside.

Put lamb, salt, pepper, and flour in large mixing bowl. Toss to coat meat evenly. Brown meat in frying pan with bacon fat. 

Place meat into stock pot (leave 1/4 cup of fat in frying pan). Add the garlic and yellow onion and saute till onion begins to become golden.

Deglaze frying pan with 1/2 cup water and add the garlic-onion mixture to the stock pot with bacon pieces, beef stock, and sugar.

Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.  Add carrots, potatoes, thyme, bay leaves, and beer to pot. Reduce heat, and simmer covered for 20 minutes until vegetables are tender. 

---------------------------
The icebox cookies turned out to be really familiar to me.  They were from one of our older cookbooks, back when they weren't called refrigerators, but iceboxes.  And the cookies tasted just like some that my late grandmother Jane Avinger used to make.  Thin, crispy, with nuts in them.  So we looked more closely at the recipe, and it was from Spartanburg, South Carolina, where my grandmother spent lots of time.  I'm going to have to talk to my mom, and see if she has Grandmomma Jane's recipe.  Then we can compare them.

Simple meal.  Plenty good.

H

Hebrew National Hotdogs, Homemade Hummus, and Suji Halwa

Our response was instantaneous when we asked ourselves : What do we want to make for our H-themed meal?  Hummus.  Spell it however you'd like, but it's the same thing, and we like it.

I started putting hummus on my hotdogs as a condiment about a year ago, and I came up with the idea all by myself.  I'm sure someone, somewhere, has done this sort of thing forever.  And I know that meat+hummus+bread is commonly referred to as a Gyro.  It's not much of a stretch, really.  But I'm glad I discovered it, and as a middle-eastern/western fusion food, it works pretty darned well.

How we started eating Hebrew National hotdogs is an odd tale.  I remember my brother-in-law and I were shopping for grillables on one occasion few years back, and we were looking for sausage-like meat that didn't have lactose or casein.  I had noticed that almost every mixed-meat-in-a-casing product had milk products involved, and since I am lactose intolerant this made me a little grumpy.  But then we realized that kosher laws don't allow for the mixing of meat and milk.  Voila!  Kosher hotdogs!  They're skinny, tasty, and they completely screw with the dogs:buns ratio.  Buns always come in packs of eight.  Hebrew Nationals always come in packs of seven.  I guess that just means you have a free bun for your vegetarian friends and family.

So on to the topic of hummus.  As I may have mentioned, I never ate "ethnic" foods until I married Mary.  And hummus wasn't a food I instantly fell in love with.  Not all hummus is created equal.  There are so many varieties and textures, so many vegetable additives, it's easy to concoct one I won't be too fond of.  Sadly, I think the Forty Spices hummus at the grocery store finally made it a permanent part of my repertoire.  That, and the Mediterranean Deli on Franklin Street.  My sister-in-law would claim that Neomonde is better, I think.  But whatever.  Hummus is good.

Making it from scratch, however, requires a powerful food processor and a lot of experimentation.  We looked up several recipes online, and they varied greatly from one another.  Here's what we used this time.

2 cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
2 tablespoons of tahini
3 tablespoons of red-pepper-infused olive oil
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) of lemon juice
6-7 small cloves of garlic, raw
some fresh-ground black pepper

Anyone who's ever made hummus can probably spot some serious flaws in this recipe.  I'll mention the shortcomings as we noticed them in the final product.  First, using that much raw garlic was a bad idea.  It didn't make the hummus inedible, mind you.  It just made it taste earthy and raw.  There was a slight flavor of dirt.  Not ideal, but not a dealbreaker.  Second, the consistency was pretty firm and thick.  It wasn't smooth.  I'm not sure whether we should have used more oil, whether we should have added a litle bit of water, or whether our food processor wasn't up to the task of nearly liquefying two cans of chickpeas.  Our skill at making hummus is still pretty basic, and has a lot of room for improvement.  So if you have suggestions, let us know.

The end result was still pretty decent.  We fried up the hotdogs in a pan of ghee, and then dolloped on a bunch of hummus once they were in the buns.  Pretty simple.

Dessert was much more interesting.  Halva is a middle-eastern sweet that is made from the balkans to northern India.  It's a confection of sorts, and ranges from a candylike consistency (think butterfingers) in the near east when it's made with sesame or sunflower nut butters, to a more semolina-based formula with fudge-like consistency as you head towards India.  We tried a northern Indian recipe for Suji Halwa.  Suji is apparently what they call semolina.

Now, we had a lot of trouble finding granular semolina.  We found lots of semolina flour, but the recipe called for the larger grains.  We had some questions about what the differences were between semolina, farina, and just plain flour.  Apparently we're grain-impaired.  From what we gathered, farina is to wheat what grits is to corn.  Semolina is either steel-cut common wheat for porridge or coarse ground durum (hard) wheat for pastas.  And as I mentioned at the top of the paragraph, for some reason you can find semolina flour in grocery stores, which appears to be finely ground durum wheat.  Since we wanted the larger grains, we went with a Cream of Wheat, which seems to be steel-cut common wheat.

So anyways.  The recipe calls for saffron and cardamom.  We had the ground cardamom, but we had to shell out big bucks for the saffron.  Four pinches (each in its own ampule) sold for $18 at the grocery store.  Ouch.  But as always, there's something special about a dish with saffron in it.  It's a subtle flavor, and I'm glad we took the effort to do it right.

Suji Halwa

adapted from http://showmethecurry.com/desserts/suji-halwa-aka-sheerakesari-ultimate-indian-dessert.html
1/2 cup Cream of Wheat/Suji
1 tablespoon Broken Cashews

1 tablespoon Raisins
1 tablespoon Sliced Almonds
1/2 cup Sugar
1.25 cup Water
Saffron – pinch
1/4 teaspoon Cardamom Powder

Heat a pan on medium heat and pour in the Ghee.  Allow the Ghee to heat up and then add in the Cashews, Raisins and the Almonds.  Fry them for about 30 seconds till the Raisins plum up.  Add in the Suji and cook until it releases an aroma and has a wonderful light-golden color.

Meanwhile crush the saffron with a little bit of sugar in a mortar and pestel.  Continously stir the Suji till done.  Add Sugar and mix in well.  Heat up the water in the microwave to speed up process and add to the Suji.  Lower the heat, add in the Saffron and keep stirring till it reaches the desired consistency.  Lastly, add in the Cardamom Powder, mix well, cover and allow it to stand for a couple of minutes.

--------------------

In the end, our meal was mostly about granular things.  Ground meat in a bun (which came from ground wheat), topped with granular, blended chickpeas, and a grainy, firm, sweet mush.  I realize that we were missing out on the greens, but oh well.  It was still a tasty meal.

G

Shrimp and Grits (with extra Garlic)

We were low on inspiration this past week, so we only had a single G-inspired dish.  But what a dish it was.

My extended family comes from South Carolina, a place I shun for almost everything except its beaches and cuisine.  Grits is definitely a southern dish, and shrimp and grits even moreso.  I know someone is bound to say, "North Carolina is still The South."  That's all well and good, but I first encountered this dish in SC, and I think it's more highly celebrated down there.  A lot of places can claim ownership of barbeque, for instance.  But I think SC can claim shrimp and grits.

Also, we got the recipe from a small book entitled "A Taste of the South Carolina Coast : Restaurant Recipes."  By Phyllis C. Myers.  This was salvaged from some family member's house, and its cover was completely missing.  There's nothing quite like an arcane concoction from a musty tome.

Now, you can use any old grits and be satisfied, but we were lucky enough to have some from a mountain backwoods mill.  I believe it made the dish heartier than the bleached white grits you get at the grocery store these days.

Here's the recipe:
11th St. Dockside Restaurant
1699 11th Street West
Port Royal

Cook two servings of grits according to box directions, let stand until thick and set aside.  Peel and clean 12 large shrimp, wash in cold water and dry on a paper towel.  Heat 4 tbsp of butter in a large skillet.  Sautee1/2 tsp. fresh garlic, 2 oz. chopped green onions, 2 oz. chopped Tasso ham and 2 oz. of fresh tomatoes.  Add a pinch of chopped fresh basil and 1 tbsp. of chopped parsley.  Add shrimp and cook until pink, then add 2 oz. flour and stir for 1 minute.  Slowly stir in 1 cup milk using a wisk to blend.  Cook slowly on low heat for 2 minutes.  Serve over grits.  Makes two servings.

We made a couple of adjustments.  First, I'm lactose intolerant, so the butter was replaced with ghee.  Second, we didn't have any Tasso ham (which does not come from the ham portion of a pig, by the way), so we used some andouille sausage.  Third, we used more garlic than was orignally called for.  And fourth, the shrimp was anything but fresh - we used frozen shrimp.  De-tailed and de-veined already.

But the end result was awesome.  Shrimp and grits is a great comfort food, and we made it on Saturday after a brief snowfall the night before.  The perfect meal for a cold day.  We complimented it with a cheap white wine.  Let me explain.  There is more than one recipe for shrimp and grits in the little cookbook we used, and Mary had gotten some cheap white wine as an ingredient for one of them.  Who wants to use expensive wine for cooking?  But it was the wrong recipe.  We had already uncorked the wine before we started cooking, so there was really only one option - to drink it.

As an epilogue to this tale, we ate the leftovers the next morning for breakfast.  Yum!

F

Shrimp and Frijole Fajitas on Flour Torillas, with Fig Bon-Bons



Starchy food wrappers have grabbed our attention recently, first with the dumpling/wonton incident, and now with our fajita/burrito meal. If blobs of meat mixture are wrapped in wonton wrappers and steamed, can they be called dumplings? And how are fajitas and burritos any different if they are both meat and bean mixtures wrapped in a soft flour tortilla? We solved the dilemma by declaring indifference in the face of flavor.

The shrimp were quickly sauteed with a very spicy chipotle adobo mixture, and then thrown into a tortilla with a cold frijole negro salad containing awesome amounts of cilantro and green onion. Spicy shrip burritos! I mean... ah screw it... nom nom nom.



The fig bon-bons were a nice jump from central america to the mediterranean. Toasted almond pieces were embedded throughout the morsel of fig, and everything was rolled in granulated sugar. Crunchy, figgy, almondy goodness.

Pan-Seared Chipotle-Shrimp Fajitas with Frijoles negros

adapted from Sheila Lukins USA Cookbook (1997)

1 can chipotle peppers in adobo
1 pound shrimp peeled and deveined
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 recipe Black Bean Salad (below)
flour tortillas

Place the chipotles in a food processor and puree until smooth. Combine shrimp with 3 tablespoons of chipotle puree, olive oil, lime juice, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper. Toss and marinate for 15 minutes.
Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until it is hot. Add half the shrimp and saute until cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Repeat with the remaining shrimp.
Wrap tortillas in damp paper towels and microwave for 30-45 seconds. Fill tortillas with shrimp and black bean salad.

Black Bean Salad (Frijoles negros)

adapted from Sheila Lukins USA Cookbook (1997)

DRESSING
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/4 teaspoon cuminSalt and Pepper to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
SALAD
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon olive olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
2 teaspoons dried parsley
1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced
2 scallions, sliced1 teaspoon garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Whisk together all the ingredients for the dressing except for the cilantro. When everything is mixed well add in the cilantro.Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until it is hot. Add the olive oil and saute the garlic, onion, and parsley. Add the black beans. When they are warmed transfer to a bowl and toss with dressing. Shortly before serving add the red bell pepper, scallions, garlic, and cilantro. Stir well.

Fig Bonbons

adapted from The Good Cook Candy Time-Life Books (1981)

1/2 lb soft dried figs, finely ground in a food processor, operated in shorts spurts
1/3 cup slivered almonds, toasted
about 1/2 cup of sugar

Mix the ground figs and the almonds. Shape into walnut-sized balls. Roll in the sugar to coat them. Let them stand until the sugar is partly absorbed, about 10-15 minutes. Roll in sugar again.

E

Evil Jungle Prince, Egg Fried Rice, and Tea Eggs



We love our Thai cookbook. Flipping through it, Mary came across a recipe called "Evil Jungle Prince." It was apparently a famous dish at Keo's restaurant in Hawaii not too long ago, so we decided to give it a go. We had fresh thai peppers from the asian market, and some preserved lemongrass and keffir lime. This should have been ground up into a paste, but we ended up just finely chopping it in an underpowered food processor. This worked fairly well, but I can't help but think it would have been better if it had been fulled pureed or mashed in our mortar.

Sufficed to say, the dish was pleasantly spicy. We added some zucchini, which also proved to be a bit of a mistake. Not for the zucchini itself, but for the cooking time. The chicken was only supposed to cook for five minutes, but it ended up in there longer. Once the chicken was done, I added the zuch slices and left 'em there for a few more minutes. As a result, the chicken wasn't as tender as it could have been. It was still pretty darned good, but I know it could have been better.

Instead of putting the EJP over cabbage or even thai rice noodles, we opted for a heavier rice dish. I stumbled across a fried rice recipe at some point, I can't even remember where, and it's been a standby dish ever since. Ginger and garlic powder, oil, onions, eggs, and slightly dry, old rice. It's easy to make, and super-tasty. We even had fresh ginger root left over from last week, which enhanced the flavor quite a bit.

Putting the Thai food over the fried rice was a bit rich, but it was still tasty. I separated them for seconds, and put sweet (and thick!) soy sauce over the fried rice that time around. Good stuff.



The tea eggs came from some old 70's cookbooks, I believe. Hard-boiled eggs, shells intentionally cracked, simmered for two hours in an infusion of cinnamon, orange peel, and black tea. It made the house smell wonderful, and the flavor was subtle and pleasant. But in the end, they were still hard boiled eggs. Fancy, yes. But it's questionable whether it was worth all of the effort. I'd probably rather put sweet soy sauce over a regular hard-boiled egg, and it'd be a lot easier to make.

I ate leftovers of the Evil Jungle Prince, and the chicken had become nice and tender again after marinating in the spicy sauce for a couple of days. Good stuff!

Evil Jungle Prince with Chicken and Vegetables

adapted from Keo's Thai Cuisine Revised by Keo Sananikone (1999)

1/2 pound of boneless chicken cut into small pieces
1/4 pound of zucchini, sliced thin
1 can sliced water chestnuts
6 small red chile peppers
2 kaffir lime leaves
1/2 stalk fresh lemongrass
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 can coconut milk
1 tablespoon fish sauce
15 sweet basil leaves

Grind together chile peppers, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves in a food processor. Heat oil to medium-high and saute peppers mixture for 3 minutes. Stir in coconut milk and cook for 2 minuntes. Add chicken and vegetables and cook for 5 minutes, or until cooked. Reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in fish sauce and basil.
Tea Eggs

adapted from The Everything Chinese Book by Rhonda Lauret Parkinson (2003)

2 hard-boiled eggs
1/2 cup brewed black tea
peel of two blood oranges (1-2 days old)
2 cinnamon sticks
3 1/2 cups water

Tap each egg very gently with the back of a spoon, until tiny lines form. Try not to actually crack the eggs.

Add eggs, black tea, orange peel, and cinnamon sticks to 3 1/2 cups water to bring to a boil. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours. Turn off the heat, and let the eggs sit in the liquid for a few more hours before serving.

D

Dumplings, Daikon Radish pickles, and Date Bars

I think our first thought for a D-themed meal was roasted duck.  We didn't want to roast the duck ourselves, mind you.  That would be a lot of work.  We knew that the Grand Asia Market had nice roasted ducks hanging up in their restaurant area, and were sorely tempted.

We decided that we needed to cook the meal ourselves, however.  At least this time around.  Our mind was still on asian food, and dumplings sprang to mind pretty quickly.  Daikon radishes soon followed.  We thought about deer, but decided that it was really venison, which will almost certainly be used in the V-themed meal later this year.  Dates were a no-brainer.  And then we stalled.  What else starts with D?  So we stopped our brainstorming session in its tracks and went with what we had.

Mary found a nice nepalese curried pork dumpling recipe that looked pretty easy.  I couldn't help wondering if the people in Nepal had pigs.  But no matter - we made them anyway.  Instead of dumpling dough, we used wonton wrappers.  So perhaps we're on really shaky ground here.  Did we make dumplings or wontons?  I'm still not sure.  But they were tasty.

What we discovered is that steamed dumplings are an industrial process.  It doesn't seem to be worth the effort to make them unless you're going to make a LOT of them.  The recipe called for a pound of ground pork, plus almost that same volume of onions and cilantro*.  We made about two dozen dumplings before we ran out of steaming space, and there was about two-thirds of the meat mixture left over.

What to do with all of that seasoned meat?  We put it into a 8x8 pyrex dish and covered and baked it at 350 for an hour.  We ended up with a sort of curried meatloaf Wellington.  Or something like that.  It tasted just fine, though the dough was a little tough.

Mary made the Daikon radish pickles ahead of time, so I don't know exactly what went into them.  I'll let the recipe do the talking here.  Daikon radish doesn't taste like much, really, but their crispness lent some good contrast to the meal.

There was a dipping sauce for the dumplings that was pretty good, and spicy.  But the spiciness overshadowed subtle flavors of the dumplings themselves.  I had two dumplings with the sauce, and then ate the rest plain.  I did, however, start dipping the daikon radish into the sauce.  So everything worked out.

Mary made the date bars in advance too, so I don't have much commentary on their manufacture.  I do know, however, that we were short one egg for the recipe, but it turned out fine anyway.

* Chinese Parsley is the same thing as Cilantro, according to something Mary read online.  Interesting!

Here are the recipes!
North Indian Nepali Curry Dumplings

adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/North-Indian-Nepali-Curry-Dumplings/Detail.aspx

1 pound ground pork
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 teaspoon curry powder
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon ginger paste
salt and black pepper to taste
square won-ton wrappers

Combine the ground pork, 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped onion, green onions, garam masala, curry powder, 3 cloves of garlic, ginger paste, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Place a heaping teaspoon of the pork mixture in the center of a dumpling wrapper. Moisten the edge of the wrapper with a few drops of water. Fold the dumpling in half and fold into nurses hats. Repeat with the remaining dumplings.

Place a steamer insert into a saucepan, and fill with water to just below the bottom of the steamer. Cover, and bring the water to a boil over high heat. Add the dumplings, recover, and steam until cooked through, about 15 minutes. Serve with the dipping sauce.


Sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, sliced
1 tomato, diced
salt and black pepper to taste
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper, or to taste
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

To make the dipping sauce, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the garlic and the chopped onion; cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Cover and reduce heat to low and continue cooking for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 1 tablespoon cilantro. Pour sauce into the food processor and carefully blend until smooth. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.


Overnight Chinese Daikon Radish Pickles

adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Overnight-Chinese-Daikon-Radish-Pickles/Detail.aspx
1 1/2 cups chopped peeled Daikon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil

In a mixing bowl, toss daikon with salt. Cover, and refrigerate until 1 to 2 tablespoons of water is released, about 30 minutes.

Drain and rinse daikon, removing as much salt as possible. Pat dry with a paper towel, and return to bowl. Stir in rice vinegar, black pepper and, if desired, sesame oil. Cover, and refrigerate at least 8 hours.


Date Nut Bars

adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Date-Nut-Bars/Detail.aspx

2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups chopped Dates
2 cups chopped walnuts or pecans
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons of water (had to add this because we were short an egg and the batter was dry.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, dates and nuts. Add the eggs, butter and vanilla; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened (batter will be very stiff).

Spread in a greased 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool bars on a wire rack.

C

Cod, Chips, Carrots, Cheese, and Candy Bars - all fried in Canola oil

A while back, when we still watched cable TV, the Food Network was a staple for us.  Jamie Oliver had a show called the Naked Chef, or something like that, and he did a simple fish and chips show one time.  Now, I love real fish and chips.  And I found that I especially love cod when cooked this way.  There are exactly four ingredients, plus the stuff to be fried:

• 1 cup of flour
• 1 bottle of beer
• 1 egg white (or two if you want)
• oil for the deep fryer

The egg whites require a little attention, since you have to be able to break an egg into two parts without destroying the shell or losing the yolk.  I take great pride in my ability to transfer the yolk between the halves of the shell, dripping the whites into the bowl.  It's a delicate process.  And it's followed by a lot of violent whipping.  The egg whites need to be whipped into soft peaks (or until it won't fall out of the bowl, even when upside down).  I used to do this by hand, but Mary got a big mixer a while back, and it does the trick quite nicely.

So essentially, you just add the beer to the flour, whip up the egg whites in a separate bowl, then fold the egg whites into the batter right before you start frying things.  The puffy egg whites are what allow the batter to get all fluffy-crisp.

We cut up about four yukon gold potatoes, which turned out to be a LOT of chips for just two people, and we had about a pound of Alaskan wild cod.  Mary sliced up a big carrot too, for good measure, and she picked up some cheese curd lumps at Trader Joe's.  The potatoes got blanched for about four minutes in 300 degree oil, then set aside on a paper bag to drain.  This makes the potatoes softer for the final fry.  Then we were ready for the real stuff.

Frying may seem easy, but there are certain tricks.  Like dredging the fish in flour before battering it.  We fried everything at about 350 degrees, except for the candy bars.  A handfull of blanched chips went into the basket and then lowered into the oil.  The fish, however, was gently dropped into the oil.  The trick here is to let is slip into the oil at low velocity, to do it in a direction away from you (so the oil doesn't splash on you if you're a little rough), and to not get burned.  If you can keep the fish from immediately hitting the side of the frying basket, all the better, since it'll stick in place pretty easily.

After a couple of minutes, we dumped out the basket onto paper bags, and sprinkled some regular iodized salt on top.  And here's the real trick to cooking and eating fried food - start eating almost immediately.  Our fryer has about an 8x6 inch basket, so it took about four batches to get all of our fish and potatoes done.  As soon as the second batch went in, the first batch was cool enough to start eating.  If you wait too long, it gets cold, and it *will* get soggy.  So this method is not for neat dinner parties.  It's full-contact, huddle around the kitchen, fun food.  It's oily, messy, bad for you, and delicious.  We used canola oil, which is pretty decent, as oils go, so I'm not feeling too awfully bad about it.

The carrots went in a separate batch, and we did them just like American chips - thin sliced.  It's easy to over-cook thing things like that, but we did okay, and they ended up tasting a lot like fried sweet potatoes.

The cheese curds were each about the size of a walnut, and we had about a dozen of them.  Sadly, they sank to the bottom and stuck there.  When Mary dumped them out, we found that the bottoms had broken out, and the cheese had just streamed away into the oil, leaving what looked like hatched alien eggs.  A few survived, however, so we each got a couple.  Not too bad, but not as good as the fish, in my opinion.

We then cranked up the heat to 375 for the candy bars.  I was already stuffed by this point.  A half-pound of cod and two small potatoes were sitting on my stomach.  But we went ahead.  Mary froze the bars for a day ahead of time.  We had a dark chocolate Milky Way bar, and a Lumpy Bumpy Bar from Trader Joe's.  Both got battered and fried.  The Lumpy Bumpy bar was better, texture-wise, because of the peanuts inside, but the chocolate was better on the Milky Way bar.  I still can't believe I ate as much as I did.

Oh, and so everyone will know, as I was pouring the oil into the fryer - a dog hair drifted down from the bottle of oil, which had been sitting on the floor of the pantry.  I fished it out before we heated things up, but I'm almost certain that at least one hair wafted into the batter too.

As a final note about frying, we like the paper bag method pretty well.  In the past we have used paper towels lining a brownie pan, and a cooling rack with paper towels underneath.  The cooling rack is okay, but the paper towels just aren't really great for oily cooking.  Paper bags seem to be the way to go, for some reason.  We just tore up a couple of them, making two trays from each bag.  Works like a charm.

B

Bison and Black Bean Burritos with Beet Salad, and Bread Pudding for dessert

We eat burritos all the time, both at home and as fast-food. A can of beans, some tomatoes, ground meat of some kind (or not, if we're feeling slightly vegetable-aryan), and a blend of spices that is a little heavy on the cumin. And peppers, of course. Fresh ones. I mean, a fresh jalapeno or red chile pepper is dirt cheap at the grocery store, and adds so much to a dish like this. You just can't go without it. Wrap it up in a mircowaved flour tortilla shell, and voila! Oh, and sour cream. I'm lactose intolerant, but I love sour cream. That's why they made Lactaid.

Mary also tends to add baby spinach leaves to hers, and I've done that at some point too. Not this evening. I was already trying hard to taste the bison through the spices without some leafy green getting in the way. I would have liked some cilantro, however, but we didn't have any at the time.

Here's the recipe :

• 1 pound ground bison
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 2 teaspoons each garlic powder, ground cumin, ground chipotle peppers
• 1 chili pepper, diced (seeds removed if you don't want it to spicy)
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• approximately 1/4 cup water
• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
• tortilla shells
• Baby spinach, shredded cheese, sour cream, etc
  

Brown the meat and drain off the fat.  Add the olive oil to the pan to warm and then add the oregano, spices, and chili pepper.  Heat for 1 to 2 minutes and then add the can of tomatoes.  If it seems to dry add the water.  Then add the black beans and simmer uncovered for 5 to 10 minutes.
 
Place tortillas on a plate covered with wet paper towels and warm in the microwave for about 30 seconds.  Spoon on your meat mixture and fixings and wrap up.


Beets are a new favorite at our household. It started two thanksgivings ago, when my younger sis-in-law went to the trouble to roast, peel, and slice garden-fresh beets. Soak 'em in basalmic vinegar and a touch of oil, add crumbled feta and chopped, toasted pecans. Boom. Instant hit. And they keep very well for leftovers.

But I digress. We tried a different recipe this time. Instead of basalmic, we used malt vinegar. Instead of feta, we had ghee (the recipe calls for butter). And instead of pecans, we had onions. And instead of a cold salad, this one was boiled up in it's own juice. We ate it warm, sort of like a german potato salad. It's good stuff, but the ghee immediately floated to the top and congeal as soon as it started to cool. The leftovers look unappetizing, but taste just fine.


The bread pudding was a two-stage process. I got a bottle of "beer bread" mix from my in-law's parents for Christmas, and Mary baked it up on Friday. We ate a couple of slices, and it was a dark, heavy bread. Pretty decent, really. Then Mary chopped up the rest of the loaf on Saturday, and soaked it in what I think was heavy cream (more lactaid needed). Dried cranberries were also added to the bowl. It sat there for most of the day, and then got mashed down into a square brownie pan and baked for a while. Mary whipped up a hard sauce with the dregs of a bottle of Cap'n Morgan's, some powdered sugar, and ghee. Not a bad dessert at all.  Here's the full recipe from Mary:

Beer Bread Pudding with Rum Sauce 
adapted from Bread Pudding with Cognac Sauce The Good Cook Classic Desserts Time-Life Books

4 cups cubed day-old beer bread (made with a Milk Stout)
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons ghee
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup dark rum
8 tablespoons ghee
2 cups confectioner's sugar

Preheat to 350.  Scald the milk.  Melt the butter in the milk and stir in the sugar.  Pour the mixture over the bread and cranberries.  Let them stand for 15 minutes.  Add the beaten eggs, salt, nutmeg, and vanilla.  Bake in a well-greased 1 1/2 quart dish for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the top is browned and a knife inserted into the center of the pudding comes out clean.

Make the rum sauce by creaming the ghee and sugar, than gradually adding the rum.


All in all, a diverse meal, easy, and yummy. Just the way we like 'em.

A

Artichoke hearts, Asparagus, and Alternative Salmon

We started the year with something I had never willingly eaten before - artichoke hearts.  I didn't start eating vegetables until well into my 20's, and only encountered artichokes on gourmet pizza or in creamy dip.  Neither sold me on the concept of artichokes as a food.  But Mary convinced me to give it a whirl in a limited and innocuous way - chopped up in Mediterranean Couscous.

We took two standard boxes of couscous, and added a can of chopped artichoke hearts, some rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes, a fair amount of crumbled feta cheese, and possibly a splash of lemon?  Mary may have to correct me here.  Regardless, the end result was yummy and simple. (edit - added a link to the recipe above)

The asparagus was simply steamed and then lightly sprinkled with kosher salt.  I've liked asparagus ever since Mike and Karen's wedding in '94, so this wasn't really an adventurous dish for us.  Nor was it particularly difficult to make.

 Mary gives her "recipe" for this: Rinse and weigh asparagus.  Place in a covered bowl and steam in microwave (I used the "Cook Fresh Veg" setting which requires the weight.)

The alternative salmon was essentially a stuffing-like crust packed on top of two large salmon fillets, which were then broiled in the oven.  Mary was originally going to use some all-purpose spice for the crust, but noticed that it was about a year past its best-by date, and looked more like dust than spice.  So we chunked it, and she improvised.  From my recollection, the crust was bread crumbs (pancho?), onions, garlic, oregano, basil, black pepper, and miracle whip.  I know, that last ingredient seems wrong somehow.  But the tang of the 'whip combined with the fresh spices - very nice.

I'll see about adding an inline picture here soon, and perhaps links to the recipes I just added the links to the recipes.

2010 Alphabet Soup

There are 52 weeks in the year, which is double the number of letters in the alphabet.  I remarked to Mary that we ought to do a weekly meal using a letter of the alphabet as the theme.  We'd hit each letter twice in a year.  She liked the idea, and so here we are.

There are no rules,only guidelines.  Ingredients or recipe names should start with the letter of the week.  Not all of the dishes in the meal need to conform to the alphabet theme.  That's it.

Why did we call the blog Cooking With Dog Hair?  See, we have three dogs.  Their hair ends up everywhere.  Floor, clothes, windows, and of course, our food.  It is impossible to cook anything in our house without including at least one stray dog hair.  We'll be stirring a simple curry - a single hair will waft down on top.  Icing a cake?  Dog hair.  Meatloaf?  Dog Hair.  You get the idea.

It sort of turned into a joke.  We try our best to keep everything clean.  We are fully aware of the dangers of food poisoning.  We wash our hands and cooking surfaces.  I sometimes resemble a character from an SNL skit.  But no matter what we do, or how careful we are, a dog hair will inevitably end up in our food.  C'est la vie.

So hopefully we'll make a weekly post to this blog with a description of the dishes we made.  Sometimes there will be pictures.  Hopefully we'll post recipes.  To avoid copyright problems, we'll probably just post links to the places we found them.  We tend to frequent All Recipes and Epicurious.  Alton Brown's recipes (or guidelines) also feature prominently.  But we often just wing it, in which case we can post the recipe however we'd like!

So read on and enjoy!  First stop: The letter A.