pork, grapefruit, apple, breakfast

Gone primal again. Reverted to an earlier state. New American Breakfast, eighteenth in a series characterized by absence of grain.

Last night I cubed a pork roast and fried the cubes then pressure cooked the fried cubes to have around for snacks. I could have skipped that last step, the pressure cooking tenderized them but also added a rather unpleasant 'processed' flavor not nearly as pleasant as straight from the frying pan. The lovely depth of flavor gained by browning was altered and forfeited by diffusion throughout the steaming water. That's my guess, anyway. Plus, it wasn't at all tough to begin with so there was no good reason to pressure cook them in the first place. I will not do that again unless the meat really need it or unless I want to shove some new flavor into it, and that can be done otherwise, by using the Foodsaver®, for instance. My version of the Foodsaver doesn't handle liquids very well, but it could handle a dry-rub, and it does have this neat-o attachment that sucks the air out of an ordinary Mason jar. Anyway, these pork cubes are great, in a primal sort of way.

scrambled eggs

These are the best scrambled eggs I've ever had my whole life. I've been doing them wrong all this time.

I got the idea from the Hollandaise last night. One wrong move, and BANG you've got scrambled eggs. So what about when you want scrambled eggs? I made these scrambled eggs gently the way I'd heat an egg sauce, except instead of whisking in butter, I gently stirred in cream. For a touch of acid, I added a teaspoon of last night's Hollandaise which also has mustard. I did not use a double boiler, rather, a non-stick pan on low as the stove would go, removing the pan from heat whenever I felt it becoming too hot or going too fast. Eggs scrambled and heated gently as sauce, that's the deal.

Here, crushed black pepper, salt, spring onion, and mint, plus that one teaspoon Hollandaise going into three eggs. Warmed the eggs in a bowl of hot water before starting out to sort of temper them from having been chilled. The moral of the story is be kind to your eggs.

broccoli with Hollandaise

Hollandaise is eggzakly like mayonnaise, and I mean zakly ... 'cept differ'nt. Melted butter instead of oil, heated instead of raw. It's totally fun to do with a whisk. Put all the stuff in a bowl except for the melted butter. Until today, I thought you had to add the butter while heating the mixture, but that is not the case.

If you melt the butter in a microwave, it's already fairly warm. This gives you a jump start on heating the mixture in a double boiler. Go ahead and whisk the egg, mustard, lime juice, s/p and cayenne in this case, together. Drizzle butter painfully slowly at first then reasonably slowly to finish, then lift it over the double boiler, whisking throughout. The mixture will magically thicken further at precisely 140℉/60℃, and proceed to thicken further to attractive glop a few degrees beyond. It is so fun! It makes you feel like an alchemist right there!

One note of caution: lift the bowl off the double boiler at the first sign of trouble. That is, while whisking, and never stop whisking, the egg that rides up the sides in a thin film tends to cook faster than the bulk. Whisk that into the mixture as rapidly as reasonably possible, turning the bowl continuously. Remove from heat if necessary to get back on track. If you do that, then making extraordinarily rich sauce is a snap.

Teach your kids! They'll love you for it.

Served on my amazing 100% whole wheat bread, this vegetable dish is a feast fit for royalty. Wait, screw royalty. It's a meal fit even for a precinct chief!

oatmeal with trail mix and soft egg

Oh! Almost forgot. There I was, minding my own business, sitting there on my tuffet eating my curds and whey in a chair eating my oatmeal with trail mix and soft egg, which turned out harder than I intended, I'm no good at that, my aim was for runny yolk, when suddenly I started to pick up a distinctly unpleasant odor. I ignored it. The odor persisted. Smelled like something burning. I ignored it again. Persisted. Getting stronger. THEN I JUMPED UP, TURNED ON THE FAN THAT'S AIMED AT THE SMOKE ALARM TO PREEMPT IT SCREAMING AND FRANTICALLY DASHED INTO THE KITCHEN where I found this sitting on top of the burner beginning to smoke. I tossed it in the water that was chilling the remaining eggs, while smoke wafted up around the burner and from the smoldering pot in the sink with the eggs.

So let that be a lesson for you, about ... um ... something.

macaroni and cheese

There's got to be a hundred ways to do this. This is my way.

pasta	sauce

Cheeses used for topping and for assemblage

topping	assemblage

The pasta dough needs to be exceedingly dry and stiff to work well in the extruding machine. Much dryer than if you were rolling it out because that machine really crams it through the little holes. The dough was corrected with additional flour to make it crumbly. You stand there with a knife at the the Bosch mixer on its side and whack off the pastas as they're extruded before they get too long. You have to feed the machine with crumbly dough and judge each whack depending on how fast they're extruding. It's fun. You can turn it up to fast. Reminds me of kindergarden Play Doh Spaghetti Factory except this time I have a knife. The end pasta is not dried so it cannot be al dente, which I'd actually prefer. I did not boil it in advance of baking and it would absorb more liquid so I made the sauce thinner than regular sauce. I was going for a sort of soupy dish, but it stiffened more than I anticipated. Holdovers can be warmed with yet more milk or cream to correct that without sacrificing flavor. I'll give it that -- it's very flavorful. Probably not kid-friendly.

Oatmeal included in the topping was an afterthought. Seemed like a good idea. I like it. Coated the dish with the topping. Now, where do you ever see that, huh? Nowhere, that's where. I got that idea from soufflés. It's purpose in a soufflé is to give the mixture a surface to cling to and crawl up, but it also makes a tasty crust.

You'll notice butter in both the topping and the sauce. Of course not a whole stick in both, but rather, just a nob. I'm showing the word "butter."

Cheese in the topping and the assemblage. That's what gives the topping a nice crunch.

Assemblage: It occurs to me now the photos are not clear. Layered, like a lasagna. The alternative is to mix it all in the pot of sauce and pour it into the dish. Either way seems fine.

That little triangle of cheese is something something something or other soft cheese I nabbed from the imported cheese section at the local grocer. They're trying to class up the place over there, but the store is in a section of town that generally would rather just have their bean burritos. I predict it won't last. I looked for something possibly mild and soft to counter the strong and hard cheeses I would be using. The black package is aged cheddar. The other is imported Parmigiano. Actually, they're all very good. Ricotta added directly to the sauce to lighten it up a bit. I could have added it all to the sauce but chose not too. My pasta is delicate because it was not dry that meant I had to be gentle with it so that it wouldn't all go to mush by excessive stirring.

At assemblage, the whole thing seemed a bit stiff. I doused it with additional cream and trusted it would filter down. Then sprinkled the topping.

As to the sauce; using two spoons, one for dipping and to transfer to a second spoon used for tasting, (as if anybody was around to be offended by double dipping) I sampled the sauce and it seemed to lack oomph. Added scant salt mindful the cheese to be layered later also contains salt, but even with that in mind it was still oomphless. I could taste the cayenne, but it lacked a rounding body that even the cheese would not fill, but still. Then I noticed the bottle of saki. * ding * Splashed some in. It worked magnificently. Now I ask you; who in the world adds saki to their mac and cheese? Nobody, that's who.

I'm kind of proud of myself for not going overboard with spices. I must be maturing or something.

In the end it's much easier to open a box and dump out a flavor packet. But where's the fun in that?

shrimp and scallop polenta

protein and sauce	popcorn polenta
Thai curry, chipotle, garlic, mustard ↑
pineapple and mango ↑

Oh, my God, I almost forgot to put in a tomato! That would have left me tomatoless.

The pineapple and mango up there was frozen from fresh, and it sure comes in handy.

Notice butter and chicken broth is in both columns? I also added a little bit of wine and a tiny bit of sugar but I didn't show that. Also salt and pepper.

If I had coconut milk, then I'd have used that. [note to self: buy coconut milk]

This has become one of my favoritest things in the whole world. Popcorn polenta. With chicken this time. I do not know why. The chicken breast, pardon me, 'chest,' was thawed and must be used and because I wanted this to have a little bit more substance on account of I've been feeling very thin lately. Now that I have some discernible body fat, I want to keep it. It's fun. I like jiggling it. I set up little army men on my stomach and pretend they're taking the hill. I push it out and go around pretending I'm preggers. No srsly, I had a dream last night where I was showing off my six-pack abs, posing seductively and acting all sexy, then I woke up and thought, "You know what? That's disgusting. Stop it."

chicken breast scallopini

Dadgumit I missed the chance to use one of those limes. That's okay. I defrosted three chicken chests (I'm too demure to say 'breasts'), used two, so I'll do that tomorrow. * looks around * If there is a tomorrow. I tend to forget tomorrow is not promised.

Chicken breast, oops, I mean chest, pounded, dusted, and fried quickly in bacon grease. I wanted that bacon grease coursing through my veins thickening it up, and to get rid of it, and because I felt like it, but mostly because I felt like it. I added saki and a trace of sugar to the gravy just to be different.

Then I forgot to turn off the stove and didn't notice until after lunch. Oh boy.

So I read a few pages on food-photography and now I'm an expert in my mind. The pages agree, they make a point of it, there is nothing more boring than a dead-on overhead shot. Therefore, here's a dead-on overhead shot of Brittany sel gris gross. It's too chunky for its own good and must be brought down a few notches. The coffee grinder is not good for this. The mineral-laden salt is too wet and the machine grinds it to a consistency resembling wet sand. Even if you bake it dry, it dampens up again like it's hydroscopic or something. Luckily, it grinds in this thing with ease.

See? Now that there's ART!