a dorm-room classic, but better!

I learned from my mother to create menus for each week before I go shopping; it saves you money and never leaves you sitting in the car on your way home "what the crap am I going to make for dinner!?" When I'm having menu-writer's-block I turn to my very small collection of cookbooks for inspiration.

One of my favorite cookbooks EVAR is The Japanese Kitchen by Hiroko Shimbo. She's basically the Julia Child of Japanese cuisine. Out of 250 recipes, none that I have tried has been bad. I love her so. The book is full of helpful illustrations, because some of the techniques are not used by your typical American home cook. And (thankfully) there isn't a single glossy photo. Those dang glossy cookbooks seem to fall apart if you breathe on them too hard.
ANYWAY, I was flipping through the Shimbo book and found a recipe for ramen broth, which I immediately knew I had to try. I have altered it a little (my love doesn't eat pork), but the recipe is essentially the same.
For those of you who love Vietnamese food (hi, Mommy!), this broth is quite similar to the broth used for Pho.

Ingredients:

2 lb beef soup bones (found in the frozen meat section of the grocery store, conveniently in a 2 lb bag) or pork knuckle bones, cracked by the butcher
2 lb chicken thighs, with all the skin and bones and whatnot
1 small onion, quartered
1/2 head of garlic, cut across the cloves to expose all of their deliciousness
the green part of a leek (RINSE WELL)
1 oz ginger, an inch or two square (depending on how much you like ginger), sliced, with skin
10 oz chukasoba a.k.a "Japanese curly noodles" or a couple ramen packages without the powder.

Put the meat bits into a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a hard boil and cook for one minute.


Lots of yucky stuff will float to the top, but we'll throw that away. Drain the meat and rinse off all the aforementioned yuck.

This is the yuck.

*Aside: if you are squeamish about raw meat, this may not be the recipe for you. When I was knuckle deep in bone marrow while rinsing the beef bones when I realized something. After months of working up the guts (no pun intended) to work with meat, my squeamishness has been cured. End aside*

Return to the pot or stick in your trusty slow cooker with all the aromatics. Simmer on low (high in the slow cooker) for seven hours. You heard me. This is another recipe for people with patience (i.e. people who are not me)

These are the tasty bits

Boil up your chukasoba according to the package directions, and rinse well with cold water until they are no longer starchy and slimy. Divide into bowls, pour over as much broth as you want, and garnish with anything you want. A little scrambled egg, some meat, or cold vegetables would be great. I went for fresh cilantro with some water chestnuts. Oh, lordy, how I love water chestnuts. I found it also needed a little tamari or soy sauce for extra salt and flavor.

Crock-Potular success

So...

I received a Crock-Pot for Christmas (thanks Paul and Caterina!!!) and have been ITCHING to try it out. So I present to you a recipe (with a few small modifications) that I found on the Crock-Pot website.


Ingredients
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (halved, as my man doesn't like spice)
1 tablespoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 to 2 pounds beef brisket, scored with a knife on both sides
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/4 cup Jack Daniel’s, or other whiskey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Juice of 1 orange (about 1/3 cup)
2 cloves garlic, smashed
4 slices orange peel, 1/2" x 1/2" (careful to avoid bitter white pith when peeling)

Step 1: Rub
Combine cayenne pepper, ginger, salt and black pepper. Rub all over brisket and place in a plastic bag inside of a bowl (to prevent drippage).


Step 2: Marinade
Mix up the rest of the ingredients except the orange peel and garlic. Add in the last two ingredients and pour into the bag. Seal up, and for the love of God, put it on the bottom shelf of the fridge. You do not want the icky meaty greasy stuff all over your fridge if it spills. Let it marinade for 2 hours or overnight. I pulled mine out about halfway through a 3-hour soak and gave it a little massage.



Step 3: Cook
Stick the whole mess in your slow cooker and cook on high for 3½-4 hours on high or 7-9 hours on low, turning once or twice. Take the briskety goodness out of the pot and let it rest for 5 minutes or so before you carve it up with some of the pan juices spooned on top.

Winter Stew

While I was on holiday in the Northeast, I had my two and a half weeks of winter. Then I returned to Southern California where I walked around in my shirt sleeves after dark and thought about how happy I was to be back. But while I was East, I made a very wintery meal, which I will now share with you, to help you get through all those long, dark, cold days that you may or may not have ahead.

YOU WILL NEED:

4 white or yellow onions

6 or so fair sized red-skin potatoes

2 cloves of garlic

1 parsnip

1 turnip

1 yam

1 pound of carrots

1 large steak

Oregano, thyme, black pepper, tarragon and bay leaf to season.

Olive oil, to cook in.

Begin by chopping your onions and pressing your garlic. In this case, I chose to use a garlic

press instead of just chopping it, because I wanted it to infuse into the broth that I was making.

Chop two of your onions into into small pieces. Set the other two aside. Press both cloves of

garlic. Fry these two things in olive oil in the bottom of a large soup pot.

Next, you will need to cut up your meat.

Once you have done this, add it, and more oil, to your pot.

Fry it until all the meat appears cooked.

Then add six to eight cups of water and a teaspoon of salt. You have magically created beef broth, free of all the extra crap and packaging usually associated with beef broth!

Let it come to a boil as you chop your vegetables.

You will need to peel and cut the turnip, parsnip and yam. All vegetables should be cut to about the size of a quartered, small potato. You should leave the skins on the potatoes and carrots.

The skins add flavor and nutrients to your food. You might want to cut up your carrots into smaller, coin sized rings. That's what I do.

Add the veggies to the pot, and then season it well with Oregano, black pepper, two bay leaves, thyme and tarragon. Don't over do it, but don't under do it.

Then get it simmering and leave it there for a while, uncovered. With soups and stews, I have the following rule of thumb: if you want it to thicken, uncover it. If you want it to keep its moisture, cover it. Stews should thicken out.

Then go do something else for about an hour. I recommend Mario Kart Double Dash.

Once you've totally won against your siblings and become the queen of your household once again, or if you did something else, about an hour later, the soup will be ready. You should check it in between every couple of races... I mean, every fifteen minutes or so, to make sure

nothing is sticking or burning. If it is, reduce the heat.

When the soup is finished, the yam will have cooked into the broth and all the rest of the vegetables will be mushy and tender. The meat, in my case, was tender enough to cut with a

spoon.

Now, I like to eat garlic bread with stew, personally. Garlic bread is easy to make. Its very similar to the recipe for garlic bread stuffing, but here it is again, just in case:

You will need:

About a half a stick of butter

4 cloves of garlic

Oregano and basil, to season

Thick bread, sliced.

Arrange the bread slices on a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to about 375. Then melt the butter in the microwave so it is a liquid. Use a garlic press, or cut the garlic by hand into small pieces, and add all of it to the liquified butter. Season it. Stir it up.

If you have a little brush, you can brush it on the bread. If not, you can sort of pour it on with a spoon.

Bake for about five to ten minutes, keeping a weather eye, to make sure the bread gets to be your desired amount of crunchy without burning.

Dip the garlic bread in the soup. Mmmmmmm.

Penance (without pictures): Garlic Bread Stuffing

I have been a bad blogger indeed. My failure is made less noticeable by the other wonderful women that I share this blog with and their ability to do what they are supposed to do. But I will make it up to you. I will translate "I will update good noms every Wednesday, without fail" into Latin and write it in cursive 500 times!

Or, I could give you a recipe for garlic bread stuffing that made everyone happy and my young neighbor who won't eat vegetables eat celery without complaining.

Actually, I like that idea better.

Unfortunately, I will have to add in the pictures for this when I get back to California, since I left my camera cord there.

YOU WILL NEED:

• 1 roasting bird (chicken, duck or duckling, turkey, goose, pheasant, quail et cetera).
• About half a loaf of ciabatta, or similar, bread. A little stale is OK.
• 1 large cooking onion
• 2 stalks of celery
• 3 cloves of garlic
• olive oil
• oregano, basil (fresh is always the best) salt, black pepper and cheyenne pepper (to taste)
• The juice of half a lemon

To start, heat your oven to 400 degrees (F). Have your bird prepared: defrosted, cleaned out and sitting in whatever it is you opt to roast a bird in. Here's a helpful hint that I picked up along the way: if you get a bird that was butchered in a slaughter house, they may put the giblets in a plastic bag and shove it inside the bird. You should take those out. I heard that somewhere.

Chop your onions and celery first, then start cooking them in olive oil in your largest of cooking pans. I use a wok for this. Your house will fill with a delicious aroma. Make it more delicious by chopping up the garlic into nice, cajun sized pieces, which I define as being about the size of funfetti cupcake sprinkles (or a little larger, if you want to keep mosquitos from biting!) and adding that to the mix. You may need to add more oil to keep things from sticking. Be smart. Cook this until it is soft and all of it is ready to eat. The celery may still be a little stiff. This is good. Add more oil so that the mixture is a bit saturated with it (but not, you know, floating in it. We want to walk away from this meal).

Next, tear up the bread into crouton sized pieces and throw them into the pan. Cook these pieces in the onion, celery and garlic oil. Make sure to get the bread nice and toasty and to soak up the other flavors that are in the pan. At this point, you should add your herbs (but not the salt, pepper and cheyenne, they go directly on the bird).

Set this aside to cool a bit before you put it in the bird. In the mean time, prepare the bird to cook. Besides stuffing it, before putting a bird into the oven to roast I do the following:

• I squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the whole thing
• I rub salt, pepper and cheyenne into all the skin and
• I place a couple of pats of butter on it, so that this will melt and cook into it in the oven. I know, this one isn't particularly healthy, but I love butter.

After you have done those things, you are ready to stuff the bird. Use a large spoon, or, if you are daring, your hands, to shove all your delicious garlic bread into the bird's cavity. It will overflow it if it is a small bird, like mine was. I arranged the rest of it around the bird in the pan. I do not cover birds that I roast because I like them to get very done and I never find them to be dry. My mother covers hers in a tent of tin foil and they come out well, but not golden and lovely as mine. So make your choice there :D

The time it will take you to cook your bird will depend upon what kind of bird it is. For a chicken, as I prepared with this recipe, it took me about an hour and it served about four, two of whom were teenage boys. Always make sure that your poultry is properly cooked and the juices run clear before serving. If the bread starts to get dark before the bird is done, scoop out the stuffing that is outside the bird and cover it until the meal.

Mia cupola. Forgive me.