That, dear blog reader, is the sound of my frustration. You haven't seen a post from me in more than a month. The reason for this? Blogspot hates me. You see, I have done all sorts of delicious cooking so far this year. Spanakopita! Minestrone with five different kinds of vegetable! Oatmeal breakfast bars! The list goes on. But every time I try to upload photos, write a post, anything, the website goes wonky and nothing works right and I get reeeeally frustrated, hurl objects and expletives at my computer, and retreat in utter defeat.
So, that's why I've been a failure of a blogger for the past several weeks. I've been doing a hell of a job cooking awesome foods, and I've actually attempted to post every new recipe here. It's just that my efforts have been thwarted. I'll keep plugging away with this #&$@~^% site, but I cannot promise that anything good will come of it.
Cheers! As of three days ago, I Don't Eat Bacon is a full year old. I certainly haven't been diligent about what, how and when I post here, and I definitely haven't taken the writing process very seriously. But that's what I like about this little blog o' mine, that I approach it much as I approach cooking. The processes are creative, impulsive, not always well thought out, almost always pleasureable.
I will continue to eat and cook new foods in 2010, so I see no reason why not to continue to maintain the blog, too. And though I tend to resist the pressure to make resolutions, I do hope to keep cooking--and blogging--toward the top of my personal want-to-do list. Too often, when I get bogged down with day-to-day stresses, I view cooking as an inconvenience, when almost always it is a real joy, with delicious rewards. The blog is that way, too: more satisfying than I usually think.
Hello, dear reader(s)! I trust that all 1.5 of you have noticed my lack of posting recently. I haven't cooked much in the last week because I was in Jamaica for five days. The trip was relaxing, the Port Antonio area completely gorgeous, the sunshine omnipresent. Perhaps best of all, there were plenty of new foods to try!
A trip to Portland (the parish where Port Antonio is located) wouldn't be complete without sampling jerk, the spicy and flavorful preparation of chicken, pork and other meats that hails from this parish. Although I've eaten jerk-seasoned foods in the states, they don't come close to the real deal. In Jamaica, the meats are seasoned with allspice (aka pimento) and Scotch bonnet peppers, then placed on pimento wood covering a fire and essentially grilled. We sampled jerk at this roadside stand in Boston Bay.
Our first breakfast on the island was a traditional Jamaican dish called ackee and saltfish. The "meat" of the ackee fruit grows inside a pink exterior that opens like a flower and yields three pieces of the fruit, each attached to a large, shiny brown seed that looks like a chocolate-covered cherry. Salt cod is the fish in this dish, which comes served with fried dumplings sometimes called Johnny cakes (second from left) and a fried cassava cake (right). Ours also came with fried plantains (left).
While rafting one afternoon, we stopped at a riverside spot where lunch is served daily. On my plate, you'll see (clockwise from top) rice and peas, another traditional Jamaican dish of red beans, rice and coconut milk; another Johnny cake; breadfruit, which I found delightfully soft, comfortingly bland, but still quite satisfying; cooked bok choy; curry goat (at center); and a salad of lettuce, cabbage, carrots and peppers. For our dessert at the same spot, we were served sweet-potato pudding (left), which had the consistency of a very dense pumpkin pie filling, and chewy, uber-gingery cookies called coconut drops. In the cup? The best lemonade e-ver! Belinda, the cook, told us she had added lime juice to the mixture. On the second night, we dined at a casual restaurant where the first food we were served was an otaheiti or Jamaican apple. It was quite petite (you see I photographed it next to my Red Stripe for a sense of scale), pear shaped, with flesh that reminded me of a cross between pears, plums and apples. The flavor was remarkably floral, almost like the scent of roses. Our escort from the tourist board told us this was eaten before the meal to aid in digestion. One of my favorite food experiences on the trip happened not at a restaurant, but at a small roadside produce stand. After seeing countless signs advertising "ice cold jelly" during our two-hour drive from the airport in Kingston to our hotel in Port Antonio, we asked our escort what the signs were all about. Rather than tell us, he had the driver stop at the next sign for the stuff and told us to all get out so we could try it. The jelly turns out to be the inside of the cavity of a young, green coconut. (The hairy brown things we think of as coconuts are the mature version, smaller than their young counterparts.) In the picture below, the innermost, whitest layer is the jelly. The owner of the roadside stand, who identified himself to us as Watches, hacked off the tops of a few green coconuts with his machete, then passed a handful of straws to us. After we sipped the delicious coconut water out of the center, Watches cut open the coconuts and demonstrated how to use one half to scoop out the jelly from the other half in ribbony sheets. Its flavor was mild, and the consistency reminded me of scallop sashimi.
Our tour guide then borrowed Watches's machete and cut open a mature coconut to let us sample the flesh. It was quite firm and required extensive chewing, but I was surprised by how much I liked it. The flavor was much less concentrated or coconut-y than what we find here in the states, perhaps because by the time coconuts reach our shelves (or in the dried, shredded or flaked form) the water content is so much less and, therefore, the coconut flavor more intense.
Not pictured, but also consumed: okra, dolphin, wahoo, Ting (a lightly sweet grapefruit soda), and insanely fresh ginger beer. All in all, lots of new flavors and foods!
Yesterday, the pictured beauties came into my possession. The smaller, a jar of wild Maine blueberry jam, was a gift from my mom who was stocking up on her favorite Stonewall Kitchen mustard and added one of my favorites to her order. The larger was a gift to myself: a salad spinner. I confess that I have long been a critic of salad spinners and those who own/use them; it's just seemed so silly to me to have this contraption taking up space in one's kitchen or pantry 95 percent of the time, when it's not being used to . . . dry leafy vegetables? How lazy are we here in America?
I have reformed, and I now know why I was such a harsh critic of said culinary convenience item. I couldn't understand why drying greens was such a big deal, because I was a BSB (Bagged Salad Buyer) and I never had to dry my greens. I just snipped open the plastic package and dumped the contents into my bowl. Bang, boom, dunzo. But the combination of my recession-induced hyper-thriftiness and my growing interest in buying the freshest, most healthful foods available to me has steered me away from the bagged salads and straight to bag-free (and, when affordable, organic) lettuces, spinach, kale and other leafy veggies. Of course, this abandonment of my BSB status has given way to my being a FSGW (Frustrated Salad Greens Washer), and in recent weeks I have spent what feels like an eternity letting lettuces air-dry after washing. When truly pressed for time, or about to gnaw off my own hand, I've tried to speed up the process by rolling them up in a kitchen towel and squeezing, which has the effect of smooshing, bruising and/or tearing the leaves while still failing to rid their surfaces of excess water.
And don't you even get me started on fresh herbs! Don't get me wrong, I love me some basil on my pasta, some cilantro in my salsa, some parsley . . . right outta my hand (don't judge!), but I have such a hard time accepting that in order to enjoy them, I have to remember to wash them multiple hours ahead of time and leaving them sprawled out over the kitchen counters to dry. We don't have enough counter space for such an arrangement while still trying to use the kitchen for, you know, cooking.
Well, I've had enough. I don't want to be a FSGW. I don't want to be a EoSS (Eater of Soggy Salads), either. And I certainly want fresh herbs to continue to be a presence on my plate. So now I am a PSSO (Proud Salad Spinner Owner). And a bona fide dork, for inventing all these preposterous, unpronounceable acronyms.
I'm having salad for lunch today. And maybe tomorrow. And maybe every day after that, too.
I was wasting time yesterday afternoon watching a show on the Food Network whose name I shall not utter because I really don't like the host, the food the host makes, and the host's ridiculous hairdos. However, toward the end of the episode she made a cocktail, a quasi-mojito made with coconut milk and coconut rum, that inexplicably appealed to me. Inexplicably, because I avoid coconut like the plague. The flavor doesn't appeal to me, and the texture of it makes me feel like I'm chewing dental floss and/or paper. Don't encrust my fish in it, don't top my brownies with it, and don't you dare give me a pina colada, under any circumstances.
However! I like chocolate-dipped macaroons. Riddle me that! I don't like coconut's flavor in most foods and beverages, but slap a whole ton of the stuff together, dunk it in some chocolate, and I could eat it all day long. Later yesterday, I was picking up some food for dinner at Whole Foods and, lo, I discovered this Larabar flavor:
That befuddling coconut found its way into my life for a second time in less than a day, and something about it sounded good. I bought the bar and ate it for breakfast this morning, and it was awesome. What gives, coconut? Why do I hate you so much, except for when I adore you? My theory right now is that the chocolate/coconut combo is what makes it great, but I also think that sounds ridiculous, even when I consider the magical properties I know chocolate to possess. If chocolate can make me like coconut, could it also make me like bacon? Wow, that sounds nasty. (Also, the chocolate theory doesn't explain my interest in the coconut mojito I saw on TV.)
In conclusion, this post is in lieu of one about actual cooking, because I've not done much of it this week, other than a batch of wheatberries on Monday (some of which I added to my oatmeal with chewily delicious results) and roasted beets and my very first omelette on Tuesday (I sauteed the beet greens and threw them in the omelette with shredded pecorino romano and a little bit of storebought olive tapenade). A bunch of leftovers in the fridge means I probably won't do much cooking again until the weekend ... but that doesn't mean I can't start thinking about what to make.
Last night I decided to try out Mark Bittman's polenta pizza recipe from How to Cook Everything. I was reminded of my desire to try this recipe earlier in the week, when I spotted a variation to the HtCE recipe in the Wednesday dining section of the Times. Given that the variation included pancetta, which clearly breaks The Pork Rule, I chose to follow the original, although somewhat loosely, as I wanted to top it with spicy sauteed broccoli rabe and aged provolone—a match made in heaven, if you ask me.
So I was ambitious: I made red sauce from scratch, I prepared the broccoli rabe (sauteed with garlic and red pepper flakes, then braised with water until the stems were tender), and I made a batch of polenta. All of these were first-timers for me, and I'm proud of myself for doing each one. But the end product, the pizza itself, wasn't what I'd hoped. The crust wasn't firm enough to hold up to a spatula sliding underneath it as I tried to plate each piece. I suspect that one of these facts may have contributed to this disappointing result:
I might have flattened the polenta too thin in certain spots
I should have let the polenta rest and firm up a while longer before topping and baking it (this step was included in the published version of the recipe, but not in the HtCE version, though it should be noted that MB used different ingredients, such as milk, in the polenta in the published version, too)
I may have topped the polenta with too many wet ingredients
I'm not sure what is to blame, but I do know that I have more experimenting to do before posting my adaptation of the recipe here. Because while everything was exceptionally delicious, it looked a lot less like pizza and a lot more like a mess on a plate.
Tonight my dad and I are making: salmon baked with lemon and dill, potatoes Poupon (recipe to come tomorrow) and wilted arugula. I am also enjoying, as I type this in fact (!), a homemade margarita: lime juice, tequila, Cointreau, a splash of lemon juice. I'm still figuring out how the proportions, and until I do, you don't get the recipe. I think the best version was one I made over the summer and included some lemonade.
If you've been living under a rock at the bottom of the ocean, beyond the reaches of Internet access and general knowledge of the happenings of the world, you might not be aware of the pandemic of notes infecting Facebook users everywhere. It seems that every day when I log in, the news feed on my main page reports to me that yet another of my friends has posted yet another note with some sort of list—a list of random personal traits, a list of books read and not read, a list of facts relating to one's being a mother, etc. I succumbed to the 25 Random Things one myself, as I have always loved things like that and have never not passed along an email like that where you fill in answers to questions about yourself like "Vanilla or chocolate?" and "Glass half-full or half-empty?" Nevertheless, all the Facebook note-posting is getting out of hand, so I've sworn to myself that I would fill out no more of these things. (I also like to avoid posting too much personal information about myself in my profile, not because I'm fearful for my privacy/safety but because I have this weird interest in maintaining some sort of secrecy about myself. I think, partly, I try to reserve some personal details for the actual in-the-flesh parts of my life. But I bet my therapist might suggest that this has something to do with trust issues. And I would agree with her.) That is, until I saw that my friend Anna had posted one about her personal food quirks/preferences/dislikes. Not wanting to break my posting rule, I decided to post my personal version here, where I can be as self-divulgent as I want because no one reads this! (Although I think I will share the URL with Anna after I post this. I think she might actually be interested in these nonsensical food-related ramblings.)
1. Firstly, I hate bacon.
2. Related to the above: I eat a wide range of foods, and there are few things I absolutely do not like, but many of the foods I dislike come from pigs: pork sausage, pancetta, pepperoni, cappicola, speck, pork chops, spare ribs and baby-back ribs, salami, regular ol' ham, prosciutto. When I was a child, some of these foods were my favorites, such as bacon and pepperoni, but proscuitto is one I've always hated. These dislikes are collectively referred to (only by me) as the Pork Rule.
3. Whereas the pork aversion is not a holdover from my brief fling during college with vegetarianism, this one most certainly is: I don't want bones on my plate. I find it incredibly off-putting to have to navigate the anatomical structures of the creature I am consuming.
4. I strive to always know what it is I am hungry for and to feed myself that thing when possible. This is sometimes challenging, because I also try to feed myself whole, nutritious foods—and sometimes what I truly desire is neither whole nor nutritious.
5. When I was a child, my favorite food was hot dogs. Now, I have many, many favorite foods: salmon, eggplant, granny smith apples, peanut butter, short-grain brown rice.
6. I cannot eat fried foods (or hot dogs) without getting really bad heartburn. This is unfortunate, because sometimes I crave eggplant parmigiana.
7. Most of the time I drink my coffee black. In high school I put sugar and 1% milk in it; in college, I switched to Sweet 'N Low and ditched the milk, but about two years ago I weaned myself off the artificial sweetener, too. A few times in the last month I have experimented with 1% milk and evaporated cane juice crystals, and sometimes after a hard run I refuel with a soy-milk latte, which I find heavenly.
8. I started cooking in my second year of college, when I took a semester off and lived at home. I like that it is a physical activity that balances out the mental/intellectual activities that dominate my life.
9. Fond food memory: When I was little, my mother would give me a small bowl of chickpeas or thawed frozen cavatelli to nibble while she made dinner.
10. Compared to what I know about food, I am dumb about wine and beer. What I do know is that I like: pinot noir, merlot, any variety of Sam Adams, Blue Moon or Hoegaarden with a squeeze of orange or lemon (or mixed one-to-one with lemonade). If we're talking liquor, I will always take a not-too-sweet margarita (rocks, salt) or vodka with lemonade.
11. I probably will never voluntarily try foie gras, sweetbreads, tongue or pig's feet.
12. Foods I don't want on my plate (because I dislike them or find them stupid): cake, sour cream, macadamia nuts, coconut, creme anglaise, foams of any kind, shrimp, mayonnaise, flan, Swiss cheese. My friend Erica recently pointed out to me that I don't like a lot of foods that are white. I've also realized that I hate white wine.
13. My favorite pasta is orechiette.
14. I eat red meat only once or twice a month, and when I do, it is in the form of a medium-rare burger or filet mignon.
Cheers! As of three days ago, I Don't Eat Bacon is a full year old. I certainly haven't been diligent about what, how and when I post here, and I definitely haven't taken the writing process very seriously. But that's what I like about this little blog o' mine, that I approach it much as I approach cooking. The processes are creative, impulsive, not always well thought out, almost always pleasureable.
