Sweet potato, Anasazi beans and rice
The sweet potato is fine by itself. It makes it's own sugar, it's moist enough to not need any gravy. It doesn't need anything to help it.
But if you did add something then butter and and brown sugar would do.
The beans and rice are un believably delicious, if you ate them you'd go, "What? These are beans? I don't believe it." They're fine by themselves they don't need any sweet potato to jazz them up. They're fortified with butter and sweetened with a touch of brown sugar, and vinegar too at the end to adjust toward faint sweet/sour. Who knew gruel can be this delicious?
A nutritionist told me rice and beans together form complete proteins. This is 50/50, next time I'll use less rice.
Serrano, cheddar, panko latkes
Latkes are made with shredded potato, this is coarsely mashed potato, so, a potato pancake if you prefer.
I can see why these are served with applesauce. They need something like that. All I have around here are dill pickles cut for sandwiches and that works okay too. Mexican crema is bland.
bone-in rib-eye steak, mashed potatoes
Is life fantastic or what?
Fried in a regular pan so that it sticks somewhat and leaves behind stuck on mess that is worsened a bit with roux and all lifted off with liquid for a scant half cup of gravy.
This went fast, 1.5 minutes first side and 45 seconds the second side then 4 or so minutes in the oven. The pan that I'm using has a plastic handle. The oven is low at 300℉.
If I owned a torch then I would use to sear the fat around the edges for perfection all around, as it is I don't care so much for the lesser cooked fat and that is trimmed off as I go realizing the whole time it is wasted inefficiently and unacceptably. Dogs would love these scraps and bones.
Sausage McMuffin
Starts with an English muffin. I don't have any of those around here so the dough for one is whipped up in a cereal bowl.
I want to use about 1/4 cup four. So that would be about 1/8 cup milk. Plus yeast and sugar and salt and olive oil. Flour by the teaspoon stirred vigorously to develop gluten then additional flour for dough that can be handled without sticking. It's rolled around, roughed up, formed into a boulle and flattened in a pan and covered.
The burner is turned to hot without the pan on so the pan will heat quickly then down to toasting heat low enough for the bread to rise in the pan. I use a lid and steam by the tablespoon to ensure the inside of the bread is cooked. It's like a fat pancake and cooks more delicately than grocery store brands.
I looked out and thought, now that's lovely. It looks a bit like Italy somehow.
This is the morning.
And this is the evening.
White beans, bacon
It's very good bacon.
- white beans
- bacon
- water
- sea salt
- cilantro
That's all.
I don't know why the food snobs like it cut so thickly. Maybe they have a technique to cook the fat crispy and attractively but I find thick chunks of jiggly bacon fat gross.
Apple pie with Asiago and fig, triple sec ice cream
I don't know what came over me. Chunks of cheese inside an apple pie.
The thing is, I made chicken soup and dropped a dozen small cubes of cheese inside the bowl when it was done heated and the way the chunks melt in the liquid soup in molten globs while remaining chewy and satisfying and it is a bit weird and I like it a lot. With more cheese almost burned on top. Now the same thing with apple pie and it sure turned out good.
But I only have one apple and I thought I had three.
That changes things but does not ruin the plan. I used a small pie dish and spread homemade fig jam, the same goo used successfully for Fig Newtons earlier. It is very good preserves or whatever. Boiled fig paste.
Light buttery dough made with vodka instead of water so that it evaporates without flavor, fig paste spread, sweet apple pieces with Asiago cheese chunks and homemade triple sec ice cream. Very nice.
Potstickers
Napa cabbage is called for but I have this green cabbage instead.
My filling is cooked green cabbage to make it shrink and raw Italian sausage with my favorite seasonings and little soy sauce.
My filling is cooked green cabbage to make it shrink and raw Italian sausage with my favorite seasonings and little soy sauce.
Dough for pot stickers uses boiling water similar to pate a choux dough.
I don't know how to pinch them closed. There is a method to it, I've seen it, but cannot do it myself so mine come out a natural mess.
They are fried in oil (here butter) then steamed in one cup chicken broth to cook through. When the liquid boils away the potstickers resume frying in oil left behind.
Potsticker sauce
- soy sauce
- rice vinegar
- mirin
- sugar
- garlic
- ginger
- toasted sesame seed oil
- chile powder or sauce
- chopped green onion if you have any
