Jan 01

Getting my Goat

I’ve developed a liking for goat meat over the years. It started with our friend Beverly’s Jamaican curried goat dish. We’ve had it several times when we’ve visited her and her family north of Miami. Since then, I’ve ordered goat in several other restaurants of varying ethnicities.

Goat is not easy to find. Most standard supermarkets don’t carry it. Your best bet is to go to a Caribbean, Indian, or halal (Muslim) grocery store. Although goat is built similarly to sheep (although rangier), butchers usually cut it in smaller pieces with bones. Don’t shy away from it because of the boniness. The bones add body to the dish, along with tasty marrow. The meat has a gaminess similar to lamb, but not overwhelming.

The other night we went to our friendly neighborhood Korean restaurant. This is the place with the umami-bomb broths. I decided to order the goat dish. The broth and meat were great. Also in the stew were seeds that I didn’t recognize. I though they were leftover seeds from somebody’s Christmas Chia Pet Donald Trump. When I asked the waiter what the seeds were, he said they were wild sesame seeds.The seeds looked nothing like what usually graces my bagels. They were spherical and decidedly crunchy. I might try to reproduce this dish at home, if I can figure out the secret to their broth and find wild sesame seeds.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/01/getting-my-goat/

Dec 31

Good Riddance!

Words to live by.

Judging from the cards and letters I’ve received this holiday season, 2016 was a uniformly bad year. My friend Carolyn said it best: “Goodbye 2016 – You sucked!” Her father died and her husband was diagnosed with leukemia. Another friend lost her husband. One of my longest-term friends was in a bad auto accident and is now walking with a brace on one foot. I think it’s part of aging. The cloak of invincibility becomes frayed and is easy to breach.

My wishes for 2017 are summarized on these two little stones I keep next to my computer. These are legacies of my days doing triathlons with a group of women from my church, the mighty Team UUC. The perseverance stone (someone else did the spelling) was from my first year as a “triathlete”, when I was on a relay team with two other women. I wrote resilience on the left stone after a kidney cancer scare the following year. Many of the women in my group got through even worse events. The support we gave each other through group training sessions, monthly potlucks, and coffee hours after services were essential to endure the rough spots and finish the race. May we all develop the perseverance and resilience needed to face the challenges ahead of us. Happy new year.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/31/good-riddance/

Dec 26

Christmas at Casa Sammamish

Our Christmases over the years here have evolved into a pattern:

  • Christmas Eve with our friends for food and the white elephant exchange;
  • A quiet Christmas à deux (actually à quatre, including the cats); followed by
  • “Jewish Christmas” dinner with friends.

I had the morning and early afternoon to myself, given Julian’s propensity to sleep late. I sent out email holiday letters, reorganized my filing system for clipped recipes, called my family in New York, and read the Sunday paper. The river was quiet, except for the ducks and geese. One of our neighborhood eagles was hunting for Christmas dinner. I saw a lone duffer on the golf course across the river from us.

Julian got up, and we had grilled brie and apple sandwiches for lunch. This is a specialty of one of our old Greensboro haunts, the Liberty Oak. We then emptied the cats’ stockings (with predictable ensuing chaos) and exchanged our gifts. I got two cookbooks (no surprise here; see below). Unlike many of the bad-boy chefs who’ve written cookbooks of late, Bourdain can write two sentences in a row without including an expletive. The Short Stack Cookbook focuses on recipes for specific ingredients in each chapter, such as winter squash, chicken, and mayonnaise (EEEUW!!!). I got Julian two Northwest-themed books: Short Nights of the Shadow-Catcher, about the early 20th-century photographer Edward Curtis; and Eruption, about Mount St. Helens.

The cats also made out well. Luka (right) was hogging the toys before this photo was taken.

In past years, we’ve done Jewish Christmas in Chinese restaurants, most notably Facing East in Bellevue. This year we switched to Indian food, as one of the Known Twentysomethings in our group is now a gluten-free vegan. We wound up at Chutneys Bistro, in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle. Dinner was buffet-style, and the offerings I had were very good. I talked food with my former next-door neighbor, and talked shop with the nurse practitioner in our group. We essentially closed the restaurant down.

It was still early when we got home, so we watched a movie, Age of Adeline. Julian categorized it as a science fiction romance. I categorized it as a gemisch of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and Robin Cook medical sci-fi, only with a happy ending.

I hope you all had a Christmas (second night of Hanukkah, or December 25) of peace, joy, good food, and love.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/26/christmas-at-casa-sammamish/

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/26/rebuilding-bothell/

Dec 25

Macaroons et Macarons

This year for the annual Christmas Eve dinner and white elephant extravaganza, I wanted to make something that the maximum number of attendees could eat. The vegetarians weren’t there, but the gluten- and allium-phobes were. Hence, I made macaroons and macarons. Both of these cookies use beaten egg whites as structure and leavening. Macaroons are popular desserts during Passover, when use of wheat (or other grain) flour is prohibited. Macarons are the signature cookie of France, and a hot item here in the States. They’re little sandwich cookies, often flavored and dyed in colors unknown to nature. You can see Parisian macarons in this window from our trip to France last year:

Macarons tucked inside a chocolate pump in a Paris shop.

The chocolate macaroon recipe came off the back of the Bob’s Red Mill shredded coconut bag. Unlike the garish items illustrated above, I made Basque macarons from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi. Both recipes require beating egg whites to stiff peaks, then folding in the flavor ingredients. For the macaroons, that was the aforementioned coconut and melted chocolate; for the macarons, a mixture of almond flour, cinnamon, and unbeaten egg white.

The macaroon prep went off smoothly. On the other hand, it took forever for the egg whites for the macarons to reach the desired stiff peak stage. A clear-cut example of RTFR; I added the sugar to the egg whites rather than the almond flour mixture. They weren’t particularly voluminous, but the macarons were better received than the macaroons at the party. Now we have more than enough macarons, macaroons, and glutinous Christmas cookies to last for weeks.

Macaroons (left) and Basque macarons.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/25/macaroons-et-macarons/

Dec 22

One Hit, One Miss

I’d thawed some boneless pork loin chops for dinner earlier in the week. We also had leftover sauerkraut and fresh cabbage. These ingredients whispered in my ear: Eastern Europe. Off I went to the cookbooks. I found a recipe for pork chops with mustard and cornichon pan sauce from Pierre Franey’s More 60-Minute Gourmet. I also found a salad recipe that used both fresh cabbage and sauerkraut in The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors. I didn’t have any fresh peppers in the house for the salad, so I used some of Mama Lil’s spicy pickled peppers. Too many of them. We both enjoyed the pork served atop noodles, but the pickled peppers overwhelmed the salad. When you overwhelm sauerkraut, that’s a lot of capsaicin.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/22/one-hit-one-miss/

Dec 05

Snowflake Freakout

As I said earlier this year, the Seattle area doesn’t do well with snow. Neither do the drivers. This is a source of amusement to my family in the Snow Belt, and a source of frustration to us.

The forecast was for snow today. I opted to take the bus to and from work, since I have to deal with numerous hills on my commute. In the event that I had to do some walking, I wore wool socks and my trail-running sneakers. Many of my fellow commuters had the same idea. The snow didn’t start until after I got to work, and it was mixed with rain. No accumulation, fortunately.

The revised forecast is for 3-4 inches of snow tomorrow. I may wind up walking to the bus stop at the corner in hiking boots. I’ve got an eye appointment in the afternoon, so I’ll have to leave early–if the buses are running on the hills.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/05/snowflake-freakout/

Dec 01

Pinky’s Progress

Some of you will recall that I dislocated the pinky finger on my left hand while we were in France. After I got home, my primary care doc referred me to a hand surgeon. The MRI confirmed the X-ray findings: no fracture. For the last month I’ve been working with a hand therapist at the hospital where I work. She’s fashioned assorted splints and other contraptions to get my first joint to stop hyperextending. I also have exercises. The strategies have worked. My range of motion for both joints is nearly back to normal. “Only 15 degrees to go!” Although, as with the last 15 pounds of a weight loss, those 15 degrees will probably be the hardest.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/12/01/pinkys-progress/

Nov 30

The Apogee of Applesauce

Along with cranberry orange relish and two loaves of bread, I made applesauce on Thanksgiving. It did not go to our friends’ house. A day or so later Julian asked, “What did you do to this batch of applesauce?” Usually when he asks a question like that about one of my creations, it’s because he hated it. Not this time: “That was the best batch you’ve ever made! You’ve got to record this for posterity.” Okay, here it is.

I used Braeburn apples; in addition, there was an unidentified apple in the fridge that needed to be used. We didn’t have any cider in the house, so I used water as the liquid. I threw in a handful of crystallized ginger and a cinnamon stick. Finally, I squeezed in the juice of a whole lemon. Just for fun, I threw in the rinds of said lemon. The rest of the method is identical to my earlier post on applesauce. The lemon rinds got thrown into the food mill along with the softened apples.This was worth repeating.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/11/30/the-apogee-of-applesauce/

Nov 26

Feeding Between the Lines, Hot Pot Edition

Last week our crew got together for Chinese hot pot. Our Taiwan-born friend put out an amazing spread of protein and vegetables to cook in communal pots of broth arranged around the one kitchen that can accommodate us all. One pot of broth was allium-free; another was designated for no fish or seafood. (The vegetarians couldn’t make it.) All of the hot pot ingredients were gluten-free.

For my first go-round, I selected some lamb slices, a slice of tongue, and a piece of tripe. The tongue and lamb were excellent. I can’t say I enjoyed the tripe. Chewing it was akin to gnawing on a pencil eraser. Maybe I’d be more favorably disposed if the tripe were in a spicy bowl of menudo rather than on its own. Tomatoes, cumin, and chiles can mask a multitude of unpalatable food tastes and textures.

Our host, whose wife and two daughters have gluten issues, showed off a gluten-meter. He apparently got it via a Kickstarter campaign.The meter is about the size of a blood glucose monitor. You put a small sample of a food item in a capsule, insert the capsule in the meter, and in 3 minutes you know whether the item contains gluten. He tested the fish balls and confirmed that they contained no gluten. As with glucose meters, the gluten meter’s main cost is in the disposable test capsules. One could starve and go broke testing the menu items at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Other attendees brought assorted salads and desserts. Julian had suggested that I bring some mahogany-glazed chicken wings that he’d tried earlier in the week. They were good; however, a look at the bottle of hoisin sauce confirmed that the dish would not be gluten-free. So I cobbled together a fruit salad with pineapple, Cara Cara oranges, kiwi fruit, frozen peaches, and frozen pomegranate seeds. The salad provided a contrast to the umami overload of the hot pot.

Many of the known twenty-somethings and wish-they-were-still-twenty-somethings were in attendance. The conversations ranged from medical consultations to family fishing expeditions, with occasional furtive glances at the score of the University of Washington football game. As I said in my original Feeding Between the Lines post, the primary purpose of our gatherings is camaraderie. Good food is the (gluten-free) gravy.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/11/26/feeding-between-the-lines-hot-pot-edition/

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