'tis the season for corned beef

Not only is TPP looking for signs of spring like the snowdrops poking up in places, but an annual rite revolves around making corned beef for St. Patrick's Day. So this Saturday past the pickling brine was made and 10 lbs of beef brisket began its journey.  Fortunately TPP had enough saltpeter for the recipe, but the supply is low so more will have to be ordered to have on hand for the next year's batch.  The recipe has been posted before, here, should you care to try it.  Getting saltpeter used to be as easy as walking into a pharmacy, but now it has to be ordered just in case someone uses corned beef as a cover for building a bomb.  

Fabulous fungus and pesto pizza

It's been awhile since TPP blogged about food, so here's a nice recipe to consider especially if your F1 likes a meatless Monday dinner (except this week she missed it!). Isn't that a pretty pizza? And this is so simple, first just make your usual pizza dough. What? You don't make your own pizza dough? OK, take 2.5 cups flour, 1 cup warm water, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp sugar, 1 pkg/tbsp. yeast, and 2 tbsp. olive oil and mix in a large bowl until you have a sticky dough. Sprinkle with enough flour that you can work with the dough and knead the dough, in the bowl, until it gets nicely elastic. You will probably need to keep sprinkling in more flour. It only takes about 10 min, and you know you're done when you push in a finger and the dough pushes the hole back out. Pour a bit of olive oil over the dough, roll the dough ball around to coat the dough and the bowl, cover with waxed paper and set aside in a warm place for at least an hour. This will make 1 large pizza (10"x 15"). It will rise a bit faster if the yeast is activated in the warm water for 10 min before making the dough. Lightly oil or grease the pan and sprinkle with a dusting of corn meal. After the dough has doubled in size, about an hour, the dough ball can be stretched gently to the length of the pan, placed in the middle, and then gently pushed and prodded until it reaches the edges making a bit of a crust at the edges. No matter what the topping, bake at 400 F for about 30 min. This recipe easily doubles for two pizzas, or use the other half to make bread sticks or bread.
This pizza is topped with fresh basil pesto brushed on moderately thinly almost out to the edges (recipes abound). The fungi are 8 oz of portabellas, 8 oz of shitake, and a big handful of chanterelles collected from under the burr oak in your backyard. Cut up the mushrooms into a large dice, sauté in 1 tbsp. of olive oil until they have shrunk and dried out a bit. If necessary, drain on paper towels (no one likes soggy pizza). Sprinkle onto the pesto. A light sprinkling of red pepper flakes is a nice optional touch. Top with about 12 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese cut into pieces. This is a surprisingly hearty pizza with a sublime flavor. Enjoy. 

Monday morning matters?

Monday is off to a slow start.  TPP has a mid-morning appointment right across the street, so going for coffee or going to the office would just be a waste of time.  Better to waste time blogging.
Item 1: Graded exams.  Quite a bit of time was spent this weekend reading the first exam in my economic botany class.  These are upper class students who obviously find botany interesting, and economic botany does a good job of convincing people of that.  The results were pretty good in fact the best class TPP has had in years (10 of 24 aced the exam).  Had to work hard, almost to the point of quibbling, to deduct 1 point from one exam, in two half-point increments to demonstrate that a perfect paper is a theoretical construct.  You should know that TPP grades one question at a time and has no idea who wrote what and no idea how a particular student or exam is doing.  Two other students will be surprised to find they did not get the highest grade.
Item 2: International Blasphemy Rights Day - Sept. 30.  TPP has never had the urge to hurt anyone's feeling about their particular religious beliefs, but in places with blasphemy laws and a state-supported religion, sometimes just being an evolution-teaching biologist is enough to break such a law because science causes some religious people discomfort.  Boo-hoo.  Glad the people who want the USA to be a Christian nation remain a minority, although it would be a grand fight over which flavor would get top billing.
Item 3: Barely some rain event.  TPP was completely correct. The recent rain totaled a scant 1/4 inch.  Some bulbs needed planting and beneath the mulch is was just dry.  Terrible. 
Item 4: Garden work.  Planted some yellow-flowered trout lily in the woodland garden.  Transplanted some Japanese peony 2-year old plants from a seed bed to the woodland garden.  Decided where to plant the Persian ironwood (look back a blog - too lazy to link it).  Did some weeding. How do they grow so well when it's so dry?  Removed tropical floating fern from the lily pond to transport to the university glasshouse for the winter.  Harvested some very fine oak-leafed lettuce and had a dynamite BLT. 
Item 5:  Mrs. Phactor tried a new recipe, a tian.  A baked casserole of slices of tomato, zucchini, salami (rustic Italian), and mozzarella cheese, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with mixed herbs.  Wonderful.
Item 6: Shopping.  TPP needed some clothes so he went shopping which he does religiously, about twice a year. A more interesting sale was at the local garden shop, which  had an end of season, "under construction" sale, but there wasn't much that we needed.  Mrs. Phactor bought decorative gourds and a couple of colorful mums.  TPP was called on to be the resident expert.  They like me at this establishment.
Item 7: Summer continues.  Highs in the low 80s for the next few days!  It's the end of September and it's still summer.  Tropical plants get to extend their summer outdoor sojourn another few days. 

Fried eggplant spaghetti

The Phactors are great fans of the long narrow Asian-type eggplant that come in a variety of skin colors, purple to white or green, and white or greenish flesh.  Fortunately, although late, the eggplant have been producing, and when we get a goodly number our favorite way of eating through them is to make fried eggplant spaghetti.  For these small eggplant, we generally plan on at least two eggplant per person.  Peel and cut eggplant into eight "fingers".  We usually will toss them in an egg wash (a beaten egg thinned with a tablespoon of water) and then coat then with cracker or bread crumbs into which some seasoning salt has been added.  These are deep fat fried until golden brown.  Drain them on paper toweling and keep warm in the oven.  Top your sphagetti with a tomato sauce, a basic basil tomato sauce goes particularly well, cover with pieces of fried eggplant, and generously sprinkle with grated parmesan-romano cheese and some shredded fresh basil.  We often serve this for a meatless meal.  Even people who say they aren't particularly fond of eggplant like this dish. 

Kibble and bits

The Phactors like to cook, especially when we can't garden, for our general amusement and to get food you just can't buy out on the town.  Like all foodies, recipes accumulate, and sometimes sit around a couple of years before you give them a try, and this was no exception.  This recipe came in the Bon Appetit cooking magazine in 2009.  Last night was the first time we gave this a try, a stir fry of pork loin, baby bok choi, and whole clementines cut into 8ths, skin and all.  The picture shows the clementines cut into wedges, but we cut the whole fruit in half cross ways and then quartered the halves.  The dish is flavored with minced ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, and Thai-style sweet chili sauce.  It was fast and easy and amazingly good, a real taste sensation. Fantastic!  Try this; you'll like it.  Let us know what you think. 

Za'atar grilled chicken

Some time back a Turkish recipe for our dinner group called for za'atar, roasted thyme with sesame. After quite a search the package acquired had about 20 times as much as needed, so what to do with the rest? When this recipe turned up the condiments-imperative required that it had to be tried. The results were quite good, in fact excellent, so especially if you find yourself with lots of za'atar.
3 cloves of garlic (or use roasted garlic)
1/2 tbsp fresh rosemary chopped
1/2 tbsp fresh marjoram
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp lemon zest
a few dashes of Tabasco
1/4 cup za'atar
4-5 tbsp olive oil
salt & fresh ground pepper
Blenderize into a paste. Spread on onto 2 chicken breasts or chicken thighs and marinade for 30 min. Grill chicken. Slice and serve with cumin aioli (Whisk 1 tsp ground roasted cumin, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 small clove garlic minced, & dash of salt into 1 cup mayo.).
Enjoy.

Your Christmas Present - Bourbon Pecan Truffles

Didn't you know the Phytophactor would think to get a present for all of you? Bourbon Pecan Truffles are very American composed as they are of chocolate, pecans, and bourbon. Sorry, some assembly required.

Bourbon Pecan Truffles
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate bits (680 g)
1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk (425 ml)
3 Tablespoons Bourbon (50 ml)
1 cup chopped pecans (225 G)

Melt chocolate pieces in top of double boiler over hot, not boiling water. Stir in condensed milk; combine until smooth. Remove from heat; stir in bourbon. Chill for 2 hours. Shape into 2 cm diameter balls. Roll in pecan pieces. Chill until firm. Store in cold; serve at room temperature.

The easiest, but rather messy way to form the balls is by rolling balls between the palms of your hands. In a pinch or act of sheer desperation congnac or rum could be substituted for bourbon, and walnuts could be used instead of pecans.

Botancial recipe - Zucchini pickles

Here in the great midwest, August always means the same thing to gardeners, way too many zucchini. Neighbors, even vegetarians, even starving graduate students, will run and hide if they see you coming with a basket, and they should if you let them grow to more and 7-8" in length. The trouble is that when you're away for a few hours, and the squash go untended, zucchini can grow to the size of torpedoes. After making the obligatory zucchini bread, 6 loaves, out of just one torpedo, best to just admit the error and toss the rest. Even when picked at an optimal size, zucchini have a way of overwhelming you, so for decades now, any zucchini recipe that made something new was given a try, and most have been, well, less than exciting. And that's how it is with recipes, and cookbooks, and the Phactors know because when it comes to exotic cookbooks, containing all those culinary promises of gastronomic delight, we have no will power, and most of those recipes go untried, but every now and then you get a truly remarkable cookbook that yields 4 or 5 really outstanding recipes that get added to your cooking lexicon. My point being that many get tried, and few measure up, and when offering up a recipe to my readers, whose response to my initial recipe offering was rather disappointing, a result that can perhaps be attributed to people being creatures of habit and not willing to readily change their dietary staples, it has gone through a filter and passed the test; something that's really good, really easy, and in this case uses up those excess zucchini. These zucchini pickles don't take long to make, and piled on top of a grilled sausage or hotdog, they are simply outstanding. One small change: add 1 tsp of pickling spices to the vinegar mix for a bit more of a complex flavor. In a recent batch of these pickles, two long, thin green hot peppers were thinly sliced and added to the zucchini and onions for bit of zip; after all when you get that old food processor whirling away, it's hard to stop! Sorry to Mrs. Phactor who had other plans for those peppers, the old two cooks in one kitchen problem. This recipe can also be doubled without any problem. And it also works for cucumbers.