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.