'Tis the season

Shhhuuush.  Be verwy, verwy quiet.  It's tax season and that always make Mrs. Phactor a bit edgy, so on those few occasions when we do see each other, TPP tip toes around. This particular weekend TPP  \mainly tip-toed around the kitchen.  On Saturday he was cooking the main dishes for a quite nice Cuban menu for our dinner group: ropa vieja and Moros y Christianos, beef stew Cuban style and rice with black beans.  On Sunday TPP harvested his annual batch of corned beef a few days late for St. Patrick's Day. You simmer it until it's quite tender, and somewhat de-salinated. And then it's baked with an orange marmalade-whole grain Irish whisky mustard glaze (yum!) served with a lovely mushroom soup, colcannon, and apple sauce.  This year's batch came out quite well  according to those what were fed (hint: don't hurry the process; use good spices). You cannot buy corned beef like this in a store. That was a lot of cooking, but TPP did stay out of trouble by keeping the kitchen untrashed more or less and making some nice cocktails: Irish whisky - sweet vermouth (1:1) on a big rock and a dash or two of bitters.  There won't be any more entertaining until after April 15th!

Cooking up a storm

It's a stormy winter weekend here in the upper mid-west. And it's Stupor Bowl this Sunday, and little but college basketball otherwise. Neither one generates any interest, and if you don't know, dumping on basketball in the heartland of the USA is a sacreligous in the minds of many. Sorry, but us hockey guys never understood how a game without sticks where hitting is against the rules could be called a sport. So what do gardeners do? Well, you cook up a storm. A dinner party for 6 close friends had the Phactors roasting a marinated leg of lamb (raan) with a potato-cauliflower stir-fry, a cucumber raita (yogurt), flatbreads (naan), a vegetable (kohlrabi, carrot, parsnip) mulligatawny soup (dynamite!), some spicy shrimp in coconut milk sauce, and a passion fruit mousse (neither of us like Indian desserts) to finish things off. Today TPP made a roasted potato soup for Mrs. Phactor's womens' group coming for din-dins tomorrow and pizza dough and sauce for our own dinner tonight (saving the left over lamb later in the week). Wow, how did so many pots, pans, and dishes manage to get dirty?  How did so many bottle of win manage to get empty? OK, if you knew our friends you could answer that one. Needless to say, the Phactors spend a great deal of time in their kitchen, which is also the room in our house with the best view of out gardens, now re-cloked in white as this storm moves through. A cold blast will follow this front, so that potato soup will be darned comforting 24 hrs from now.  

What do gardeners do when they can't garden?

When gardeners can't garden they cook. Nothing on TV but foot/basketball and old movies, so that leaves the kitchen to keep us winter gardeners amused. Even then it's been nothing too amibitious. The last of the northern spys were made into apple sauce. They normally would keep much longer and much better, but they were not in best shape when picked and it shortened their useful life. They were browning up rather quickly, so a bit of ascorbic acid helped lighten the color. Having gotten our usual Christmas present from OK friends, pecans, a new cookie recipe, pecan bars dipped in bourbon chocolate. What's not to like? Keep those pecans coming! A recent visit to an Indian grocery has left us with a lot of very nice spices and things, so a spicy beef buffad is planned for dinner, and it always tastes best when simmered slowly. Maybe a shredded carrot salad on the side will round things out.  While working in the kitchen, at least one cat remains under foot until its kibble titer is sufficiently raised to get her out of the way at least until closer to their dinner time.

Wintery weather

A light dusting of snow and the gathering dusk has produced a rather cold-looking landscape study in black and white. After the lushness of the tropical rain forest this stark coldness is particularly hard to deal with.  TPP has spent much of the day cooking, preparations for some Tico food for his students' "picture party" to cap off the semester in a few days and some curried meatballs for din-dins today.  Corms and rhizomes drying and curing in the basement were packed into some cocoa shells and stored in a cool spot. For some reason, TPP has had a very difficult time reconnecting to the calendar and upcoming events.  Mrs. Phactor has taken to giving me a daily briefing, to-do lists, and then a quiz. When given direct orders, he's doing OK.  Will you make me a New York cocktail, please?  Yes, my dear.  What a good choice.  First, take 2 oz of bourbon, 1 oz lemon juice, and 1/2 oz simple syrup and shake with ice.  Then pour on the rocks.  Then float an oz of dry red wine on the top.  It's super nice looking and pretty simple to make. As you drink the mixing changes the taste. Will you please feed the kitty-girls?  Yes, my dear. Kibble equals happiness.  If TPP stays helpful, he may not get put out in such nasty weather. 

Over dose of cooking, but guests pleased, sated

Yesterday was the day the Phactors cooked a margarita and tapas dinner having auctioned off this event to raise money for church remodeling.  In general TPP regards cooking as fun, but when you are cooking for 12 and preparing several newish recipes, it's also a lot of work.  The menu consisted of the following dishes: 1st - banderillas with olives, cheese, chorizo, pickles, salami, marinated mushrooms, etc. in various combinations of 3, sauted portabello mushroom and goat cheese quesadillas, and grilled, marinated shrimp.  2nd - roasted sweet pepper salad, asparagus wrapped in Spanish ham, and sherried eggplant.  3d - "Russian" potato salad, salmon in mojo sauce, and lastly, almond tacos (think thin cookies shaped like taco shells) filled with seasonal berries and topped with whipped cream.  Of course you want it all to look nice and be prettily presented, and not use a lot of last minute preparation; after all you have guests.  The first course was served with margaritas; the rest with a white sangria.  The weather all day was on-and-off rain, and it was off for the evening, so the party took place in our garden pavilion, but it was a bit cool, not really the best setting for summery food and cold drinks.  Nonetheless, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and the dinner fare, or were at least polite enough to say so.  The four most liked dishes were the roasted pepper salad, the asparagus wrapped in ham, the grilled shrimp, and the berry taco.  This dinner took considerable planning and preparation, and it kept us busy for a full day having started the evening before.  TPP has great admiration for people who do this, and do it well, on a restaurant sized scale. So enough cooking for a day or so, and enough left-overs to allow that. 

Saturday winter fun - cooking

In a strange departure from normal, a Saturday arrives when the Phactors had no pressing errands to run and no other activities of note, and of course, with the outside temperature in the teens and a 6 inch snow cover, gardening activities were much curtailed. Lacking any motivation to take on or start any major projects, nothing left to do but cook. So what better thing to do than make some curried meat balls, or try a new chocolate chip muffin recipe, and the matter was settled by the newest addition to the household, a visiting graduate student from Germany. Let's make both. How sensible! And so the Phactors found themselves with a willing sous-chef. The curry recipe uses an amazing amount of spice, especially coriander and its juvenile alter ego cilantro. Problems arise in the conflict between a metric person encountering antiquated recipes leaving to yours-truly, the one who flips back and forth daily between the metric and English world of measurements. Why the USA lacks the spine to simply adopt the metric system is a mystery. The discovery that teaspoon and cup are actually standardized measures and not just approximations based on spoons or cups in your kitchen helped explain why some attempts at cooking using USA recipes was less than successful. The next discovery, a measuring cup with dual metric/English markings adds a must buy item to the shopping list. Both the meatballs and muffins were very successful. And it was easier to explain than football.

Relief from winter doldrums: 4. Fun in the Kitchen

Yes, the Phytophactor likes to cook and make things in the kitchen having had the fortunate childhood background of parents who cooked and still did lots of "old fashioned" things like canning fruits and vegetables, making katsup, jam, & jelly, and smoking their own bacon and ham. Once you know what the real stuff is like, and have the satisfaction of having made it yourself, the commercial facsimilies seldom compare well. A surplus of red currents and cranberries long stored in the freezer were turned into a wonderful jelly. A stash of black and yellow mustard seeds and a bottle of stout that was not to my liking were combined into a stout mustard. A big pot of mulligatawny soup was made to keep us fed a couple of days during our busy week. And lastly a whole array of items were combined into a batch of home made Worchestershire sauce, and even more amazing, everything needed (tamarind concentrate, molasses, soysauce, anchovy fillet, cardomom, chile de arbol, cinnamon stick, garlic, ginger, onion, sugar, pepper corns, cloves) was in the cupboards! This amazing recipe came from Saveur magazine (Jan. 2009), and is well worth the effort, but the 3 week wait while it all steeps challenges the patience. And the frigid weekend passed without hardly a moments boredom.