This Is Just To Say: Butternut Squash And Blue Cheese

The CSA is deep into winter squash mode and they’re starting to pile up on the counter, so I figured we should make a dent in the backlog. I looked up “butternut squash” in Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus and saw blue cheese and butternut squash as a good combination. Also, it seemed like it could work nicely with the pork chops we were having. Also, I had a hunk of blue cheese left over from the other night when we made a wedge salad, so . . . you see where this is going.

Jen was immediately taken with the combination: “How’d you figure this out?” (I gave credit to the book, obviously).
Definitely worth doing again.

This Is Just To Say: Fucking Around With Carrot Chips

In the cabinet I found these old vegetable chips I got from Fairway that I was trying to foist on Mr. Kiddo at one point about four months ago: sweet potato, squash (zucchini), taro and carrot. I got this notion to look up (again, because I will never, ever remember) what carrots go with in Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus. Found two right off the bat (indeed, I switched to baseball after Game 1 of the NBA finals): cardamom and hazelnuts. The cardamom tasted good (whole shaved with microplane) as did the hazelnuts. You could do a high-concept trail mix and blow minds probably.

This Is Just To Say: Garam Masala In Meatballs

I make meatballs pretty frequently, mostly because, duh, they’re good but also because the boys both will totally eat them. I try to think of stuff that I can goof around with that won’t necessitate scuttling dinner, because that would be disastrous, so I keep the experimentation within a safe orbit.

So this last time I went into Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus and worked the angle of tomato, being that we were eating pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce. Sure enough, a lot of the components of garam masala are in there for tomatoes: anise, cloves, nutmeg — like ketchup, I guess. So, anyway, I figured we should try it. It worked. It was good. I would do this again and again, in fact.

Brassica Oleracea

I’ve been making this Alton Brown broccoli recipe a lot lately, probably because it ranks high in searches for “roasted broccoli” or something.

Actually, I should clarify that I use this recipe for the temperature (425 degrees) and time (10 minutes). A lot of it I ignore, omit or change. For example, I don’t ever use cheese, mostly because I have this idea that it “takes a lot of effort” to unwrap cheese and grate it. This is strange because I already have the microplane out, but for some reason it’s “a lot of extra effort” to unwrap cheese. I also don’t use bread crumbs, mostly because I don’t understand why. So we’re left with broccoli, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

The one tip I appreciated from this recipe was to mix the stuff by hand in a bowl before spreading it on a baking sheet (or cake pan, as specified in the recipe). It’s better to do this than mix it in the pan; better coverage.

Anyhow, so starting with the base of oil, garlic, salt and pepper you can then add other elements; this is what I’ve been goofing with. I’ve looked at The Flavor Thesaurus to get ideas. The other day I mixed some anchovies in with the garlic/oil/salt/pepper stuff; this worked well. Today I goofed with the broccoli and garlic recommendations in the book, adding ginger and oyster (flavored) sauce. I think it was good.

Here Are Some Things I Think I Need To Say About Sous Vide Carrots

I definitely love the immersion sous vide thingy Jen got me as a gift. And just to be upfront, I won’t talk about it like so many sous vide blog entries seem to: with a big disclaimer at the end that the gear they use is sponsored by one of the major manufacturers of the home cooking sous vide machinery thingys. All those posts freely admit that the gear is sponsored, but it never stops being strange to me. And the thing is that if you google “sous vide [blank]” nearly every goddamn post is somehow related to this one particular manufacturer. It beats you over the fucking head and while I’m perfectly willing to believe this is all rolling out according to plan, agencies involved in social media campaigns never seem that competent. So it’s crazy to me that [X] brand has cornered the market on information about sous vide recipes online.

And yet, so many of the posts are so relevant and useful that I don’t really mind so much.

Anyway, our sous vide thingy is not the same one that seems to dominate the googlescape. Jen paid full price for it. And it’s really cool and fun to experiment with and worth talking about.

So with that, carrots. I already mentioned before that I continue to be frustrated by a quest for super-sublime steak. The thing that is unimpeachable, however, is carrots. I first learned about this from one of J. Kenji López-Alt’s posts, and have made sous vide carrots pretty regularly since then. Everyone seems to like them.

(Just to be clear because two disparate thoughts are following in the above paragraphs, I don’t know if — and am not intimating — J. Kenji López-Alt gets complimentary sous vide gear but it wouldn’t matter to me because I always trust his writing.)

(As an aside, pork tenderloin is also pretty rockin’ with the sous vide thingy. Pork chops are unnecessary. The experiments continue.)

The sous vide carrots recipe is pretty straightforward: dill, salt, pepper and butter. I actually always forget about the sugar, but I don’t think you need sugar. It’s good. Tonight I looked at The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit, which was a gift from Goober and got the idea to substitute garam masala for dill after seeing cardamom and cumin mentioned as good matches with carrots. I thought the garam masala recipe I used included anise but I was mistaken. Oh well. Anyway, GARAM MASALA TASTES GREAT IN SOUS VIDE CARROTS. I just needed to report that.

Incidentally, I’m obsessed with this book. As I write this I’m dipping shitty Babybel mozzarella “style” cheese in dried basil, JUST BECAUSE I READ THAT MOZZARELLA AND BASIL GO WELL TOGETHER, WHICH IF I THOUGHT ABOUT IT FOR HALF A FUCKING SECOND WOULD HAVE BEEN OBVIOUS. But that’s part of what’s cool about Flavor — the inspiration is so great. Without that book I would have just been pilfering my kid’s shitty Babybel stash. This way, it’s elevated. Like an elevator. Or blood pressure.

The other thing tonight was chicken sausage. I make it a lot, mostly because I assume that Mr. Kiddo will eat it. He actually hasn’t touched it for months, but I’m not quite sure what to do and I have no time to think about other proteins.

Anyway, the recipe I tend to default to is probably a combination of a bunch of recipes that are forgotten to browser histories and then also the Frankies Spuntino cookbook, which Jen did get for free a few jobs ago. I would like to mention that it’s good. I use it a lot. I don’t totally get their obsession with white pepper, but whatever.

Some recipe, I can’t remember which, calls for marsala wine, which I keep on hand and use but which I skipped for a wine that’s been in the fridge for several weeks from when we had people over. It’s Baron de Seillac sparkling rose (thanks, MS!), which [googling] is a sparking wine made from 100% grenache grapes which is not particularly expensive. Let me tell you this, though: that wine with some tomato paste, oregano, salt, black pepper (sorry, Frankie, et al.), onion, mushroom and that’s it was really wonderful tasting. More research needed, for sure, but what the fuck am I tasting? I need to know!