Tuesday night food
Apr. 12th, 2005 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumSince we expect (at least for the present) to be hosting company on Tuesday nights, it seems a reasonable excuse for scheduled food porn.
Tonight is Chinese (in the syncretic way of Calif. cuisine).
Main dish, a chicken stir fry. I have a couple of breast marinating in fish sauce, soy and crushed garlic. A few more (the list is 3+7~12) thawed and ready to slice. They will go into the wok with some bok choi stems, onions, julienned bok choi leaves, some carrots and onion tops from the yard.
Side dishes will be long beans with oyster sauce and peanuts, and snow peas with water chestnuts. I plan to soak some of the water chestnuts in rice wine vinegar.
I made myself some miso soup last night, and maia asked me to put that on the menu.
Water, somen base, fish sauce, seto fumi furikake kombu (a type of sea weed, used to much as bay leaf is; boil, and remove before serving), some crushed California (i.e. ripe Anaheims which have been dried), minus seeds, crushed garlic and some shaollots. The shallots will turn to much, and probably dissolve before the soup is ready, so I'll sliver a few more and add them just before serving, maybe five minutes after I add the miso paste (the one in the fridge is medium looks like very dry peanut butter).
Maia got some remaindered apples at the farmer's market on Saturday, many of which were in fine shape for the making of pies, sauce, tarts, cobblers, stews and any other thing where the appearance of the peel, and the removal of bruises don't matter, so a Dutch Apple pie is planned for dessert.
I'll boil way too much rice and make a rice custard with what's left-over in the new casserole Maia got in a local thrift shop (four qt. sq. Corning [the white kind with the blue design, which I had a minature 1 qt. as a child, part of some playset, meant for those wooden dolls with no arms or feet. You know the ones with the cars/planes/boats, buggies contaning round cups to hold the people. The kids had heads like Peanuts characters] with lid. Total cost, about two-bucks).
So that will want milk, some cream, a few eggs, nutmeg cinnamon and raisons. Maia will turn her nose up at it; not merely because I call it rice pudding, but because it has cooked raisins, which her family never uses.
In the garden, the Cutting Grape, has two bunches of fruit on it. Tiny little things, not much bigger than individual eggs in caviar. The Birdshit Grape has, finally, decided to leaf out and the Tokay elected to shift from barely leafed, to riot while I was gone this past weekend. I also have a small volunteer grape, overpotted in a 3 gal. pot, so that it can build roots before it ends up in a half-barrel. We broke down and bought four tomato plants (two Stapice, one Isis Candy and a Taxi. The Taxi is determinate, and they are all supposed to do well in coastal conditions). I also bought sweet marjoram, thai basil and a six pack of lettuce (looks like 4 x Black Seeded Simpson and 2 x Red Leaf) of types which were not so variant from the lettuces Maia likes to be termed weeds (she likes sweeter greens, I like them bitter, and peppery and sour. late harvest dandelion is too much for me, but when young even those are good for salad). Those were planted at the base of the Birdshit Grape, inside the leeks.
The leeks will be eaten when they are small, and then replanted to get large, bloom and the seeds harvested.
The Basil in the pot is going gang-busters (I'll be able to make pesto by the gallon in a month) and the seeds I put out (the pot is self seeded, from the plant which was in it last year) seem to be sprouting.
Broke down and bought marigolds to inhibit the snails, (they almost inhibit me, I think they stink, though in the odd way of smells I like them; sort of, because my grandmother used to grow them to keep the mosquitoes away in Cleveland). Some Sweet William, because the snails don't eat them, and Cosmso because they are pretty.
The Golden Poppies are blooming, and the others are still growing.
The recycled onions are blooming, as are some of the leeks.
All in all, the yard is starting to look pretty good.
Tonight is Chinese (in the syncretic way of Calif. cuisine).
Main dish, a chicken stir fry. I have a couple of breast marinating in fish sauce, soy and crushed garlic. A few more (the list is 3+7~12) thawed and ready to slice. They will go into the wok with some bok choi stems, onions, julienned bok choi leaves, some carrots and onion tops from the yard.
Side dishes will be long beans with oyster sauce and peanuts, and snow peas with water chestnuts. I plan to soak some of the water chestnuts in rice wine vinegar.
I made myself some miso soup last night, and maia asked me to put that on the menu.
Water, somen base, fish sauce, seto fumi furikake kombu (a type of sea weed, used to much as bay leaf is; boil, and remove before serving), some crushed California (i.e. ripe Anaheims which have been dried), minus seeds, crushed garlic and some shaollots. The shallots will turn to much, and probably dissolve before the soup is ready, so I'll sliver a few more and add them just before serving, maybe five minutes after I add the miso paste (the one in the fridge is medium looks like very dry peanut butter).
Maia got some remaindered apples at the farmer's market on Saturday, many of which were in fine shape for the making of pies, sauce, tarts, cobblers, stews and any other thing where the appearance of the peel, and the removal of bruises don't matter, so a Dutch Apple pie is planned for dessert.
I'll boil way too much rice and make a rice custard with what's left-over in the new casserole Maia got in a local thrift shop (four qt. sq. Corning [the white kind with the blue design, which I had a minature 1 qt. as a child, part of some playset, meant for those wooden dolls with no arms or feet. You know the ones with the cars/planes/boats, buggies contaning round cups to hold the people. The kids had heads like Peanuts characters] with lid. Total cost, about two-bucks).
So that will want milk, some cream, a few eggs, nutmeg cinnamon and raisons. Maia will turn her nose up at it; not merely because I call it rice pudding, but because it has cooked raisins, which her family never uses.
In the garden, the Cutting Grape, has two bunches of fruit on it. Tiny little things, not much bigger than individual eggs in caviar. The Birdshit Grape has, finally, decided to leaf out and the Tokay elected to shift from barely leafed, to riot while I was gone this past weekend. I also have a small volunteer grape, overpotted in a 3 gal. pot, so that it can build roots before it ends up in a half-barrel. We broke down and bought four tomato plants (two Stapice, one Isis Candy and a Taxi. The Taxi is determinate, and they are all supposed to do well in coastal conditions). I also bought sweet marjoram, thai basil and a six pack of lettuce (looks like 4 x Black Seeded Simpson and 2 x Red Leaf) of types which were not so variant from the lettuces Maia likes to be termed weeds (she likes sweeter greens, I like them bitter, and peppery and sour. late harvest dandelion is too much for me, but when young even those are good for salad). Those were planted at the base of the Birdshit Grape, inside the leeks.
The leeks will be eaten when they are small, and then replanted to get large, bloom and the seeds harvested.
The Basil in the pot is going gang-busters (I'll be able to make pesto by the gallon in a month) and the seeds I put out (the pot is self seeded, from the plant which was in it last year) seem to be sprouting.
Broke down and bought marigolds to inhibit the snails, (they almost inhibit me, I think they stink, though in the odd way of smells I like them; sort of, because my grandmother used to grow them to keep the mosquitoes away in Cleveland). Some Sweet William, because the snails don't eat them, and Cosmso because they are pretty.
The Golden Poppies are blooming, and the others are still growing.
The recycled onions are blooming, as are some of the leeks.
All in all, the yard is starting to look pretty good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 01:31 am (UTC)Other random bits and pieces:
those wooden dolls with no arms or feet. You know the ones with the cars/planes/boats, buggies contaning round cups to hold the people. The kids had heads like Peanuts characters
Fisher Price Little People. They've been since redesigned because they seem to have turned into a choking hazard since we were wee tots. (Don't get me started.)
I think [marigolds] stink
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one; I think they smell more than a little bit like skunk.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 05:24 am (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 10:21 am (UTC)I happen to like it, actually.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 07:27 am (UTC)Not in its favor, the recipe is very fiddly, and can't be made in advance. But, the heat of the sugar cooks the apple pieces, and the burnt sugar carapace (sp?) gives this lovely "crunch!" and a contrast in textures as one bites down. (Being careful, of course, not to burn one's mouth.) The time I'd had it, at the end of a Chinese meal, I thought it made a brilliant finish.
Mind, in adding this to your already wonderful menu, I fear I'm being impertinent and trying to guild someone else's lilly... but I couldn't resist at least making sure you were aware of it.
Crazy(have a great meal!!)Soph