tuna fish salad

Deconstructed tuna sandwich.

My bad. Oops, I meant to say, my bread. And my mayonnaise.

I had a few slices of bacon in an open package so I fried it in a tiny pan. It rendered a good amount of grease. I added that to the mayonnaise, the bacon bits and grease. Daring, I know, but I cannot stop myself, that's the way I roll. Upped the cider vinegar to compensate for the increased unction from the bacon grease. This is a whole new dimension to tuna salad that would probably get me kicked out of Le Cordon Bleu had I ever bothered to apply and then be accepted. But djya know what I have to say to those kicker outers? "Mordez moi, vous traditionalistes," that's what. ))) pop (((

I have two types of canned tuna. They're both from the same company but one is very bad and the other one is OK. The label on the bad one reads, "Chunk Light Tuna in water." It is so bad there is no redeeming it. Don't even feed it to your cat or your cat will become depressed. There's little worse than a pet that becomes convinced the human they own doesn't love them anymore. The so-so tuna label reads,"Solid White Albacore in water." I'd prefer they were both packed in oil. This low-fat fixation gets on my nerves. I think it's an excuse to make everything worse.

I also have frozen tuna. The idea of using it for something stupid as this didn't occur to me.

So there you have it: canned tuna, mayonnaise, sweet pickle relish, diced onion, diced celery, bacon bits. This is children's food. Designed for those little ones utterly devoid of discriminating culinary taste. I suppose it could be de-sweetened and adultified with fresh tuna, or some other fish, include shrimp or lobster, with a specially prepared sauce that isn't mayonnaise, like maybe hollandaise or some other sauce with lemony goodness, olives, capers, roasted garlic, spinach, artichoke hearts, caviar, scallions instead of onions, that sort of thing, but then it would be something else entirely and no longer tuna fish salad which is decidedly and irrecoverably déclassé.

hushpuppy catfish cakes with fried eggs

Leftover cakes for breakfast. They're already done! What could be better? I suppose what could be better would be somebody else making them up fresh just for you, then cleaning up the mess. Yes, that would be better. In lieu of that, this is the best.

Really, this sort of thing is best deep-fried. These were pan fried then re-heated in the microwave ⚡⚡dzzzzit⚡dzit⚡⚡dzzzzit⚡⚡ZAP⚡⚡dzit⚡zit⚡ for one minute. Not the best treatment for a bread-y cake or for fish. Yesterday I reheated one in a pan but that took too long. I don't have the patience for that. Grew gray hair on my head just waiting for it. I stood there with an instant-read thermometer and kept sticking it in the cake while it cooked watching the temperature slowly rise. It took fooorrrreeeeever and I hate that.

So what to do? I do not know. I suppose the best thing to do would be to keep a covered pot of oil ready on the stovetop, and uncooked prepared mixture in the refrigerator. Then keep heating up the oil over a period of a few days until all the mixture is used or until the fish begins to turn, whichever occurs first. The mixture also has raw egg in it so that too would limit the whole thing to a mere few days, but it would allow fresh-out-of-the-oil fish-infused hushpuppy cakes or balls. Howz that for an idea? Then the oil could be filtered and put away as if this little deep-frying episode never happened.

That's the only way I would serve these for, say, a brunch. That is, straight from the oil. That way they'd be crunchy on the outside, tender fresh fish with lightened cornmeal on the inside.

blackened tuna

In which I totally display my paleo cred. This was it. No side, no bread, no salad or soup, no cheese plate, no smart hors d oeuvres, no tapas, no fruit, no desert no nuth'n.

Boy, is this ever peppery. Tellicherry peppercorns smashed in that stone smusher.

One of my elderly relatives hated coarsely ground pepper. He said the larger particles went under his dentures and irritated. Then he shared that irritation every time freshly ground pepper was the only option. What a drag that must be. But I find it impossible to be sympathetic because the whole time he complained my brain was automatically thinking, "Well you had just taken better care of your teefs then."

Did you know in days of yore, when the spice trade was instrumental in developing the global economy, pepper was so dear it was kept locked up in a cabinet? It was counted out by the peppercorn to a pepper master, probably a regular servant assigned to double duty, who wore a silver pepper holder around his neck and went around to each guest offering pepper much as waiters do today, then counted the peppercorns back to the cabinet. I saw this on TV so that proves it's true.

Those waiters always come around with a giant mill to deliver it directly to your plate, I suppose to avoid bodily hovering too near to your salad. But it hardly delivers any pepper at all with each crank of the mill. Isn't that stupid? I like lots of pepper on my salad but I feel guilty making the guy stand there cranking away and I can't even see any black dots on my salad so I go, "That's fine" Even though it's not fine. As soon as he leaves I reach for the pepper shaker and pick up where he left off with pre-ground pepper. At home I use a Middle-Eastern coffee grinder. 1/4 crank nearly coats the plate. <--- possible exaggeration.

Iced tea is Celestial Seasonings, a Boulder company that prides itself on its earth-friendiness. It has always been a thing with them since forever. They brag about their innovation of foregoing string on their teabags. Once the company owner remarked how much they saved the environment quantitatively by not attaching string to their bags. The irony is they put so few tea bags in each box so you have to buy a million boxes just to match what Lipton's puts in one box. It's good stuff though. I like to combine them.

fish cakes

Anonymous' comment down there ↓ on the fish and chips post got me craving some catfish and hushpuppies myself. Then I thought, "why must they be separate?" I did this sort of thing before with tuna fish and with salmon from a can.

I have no corn meal, but I do have popcorn. I also had the remnant of a small package of polenta. Same thing. So I used it. It wasn't enough so I milled some popcorn. The coffee grinder kept stopping, which is weird. Also the kernels look desiccated, and many of them are black. This is so freak'n weird. I never had popcorn turn like that -- get so hard it stops the coffee grinder. Eh, I picked out the black ones and the rest milled easily enough. I just didn't want to drag out that thing for such a small amount. Now I have to clean it.

As usual, I did this completely drawkcab, I mean backward. It went like this:
Egg into a bowl. Two short celery stalks diced and into the bowl. 1/4 a large purple onion diced and into the bowl. Remnant polenta powder, about 2 tablespoons into the bowl. More milled popcorn, about 2 tablespoons. Whole wheat flour into the bowl, two tablespoons. I'm not mixing anything, just adding things into a bowl.

Salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, habanero powder (tiny amount) 3/4 teaspoon baking powder.

I don't have buttermilk which counts for an acid and so as an acid throws off the balance that is baking powder (baking soda + a powdered acid), therefore, since I intend to add lime, rice vinegar, or some other acid in lieu of buttermilk, to retain the balance that will lighten the fish cakes, I added 3/4 teaspoon baking soda. At the last minute I switched to cider vinegar

So baking soda.

Then the pice of diced up catifish.

Then vinegar.

Then, finally mixed it all up. See how strange that approach? The catfish chunks are all coated with the mostly dry ingredients I tossed into the bowl. The egg on the bottom is finally getting mixed. I can see I don't have enough dry ingredients so I add more ground corn and now white flour by the tablespoon (I switched to white flour because I didn't want the cakes to be heavy with wheat bran.) I added back and forth until I was satisfied the fish pieces were sufficiently coated to form cakes.

At this point I considered dicing up some shrimp, or some other seafood and mix it in there too, but I dropped that idea.

I added milk incrementally directly from the carton. The vinegar already mixed in will sour the milk to the equivalent of buttermilk and react with the baking soda, so these cakes have three forms of leavening: egg, baking powder (acid +alkali) plus baking soda reacting with the vinegar. The egg is heat-activated, the baking powder is both heat-activated and immediate, (it's considered double-action). The baking soda and vinegar reacts immediately.

Mixed with my hands so I could feel with my fingertips how much milk to continue adding then formed into patties. This mixture turned one large catfish filet into six hamburger size patties. Served with my own aioli, they're delicious.

Update: I forgot to mention, I fried a few slices of bacon, diced and added it along with the grease for increased unpardonable decadence.

blt

Avec fromage et l'oignon. And my own mayonnaise, of course. Loaded with mustard and garlic to the point of not being mayonnaise anymore. It's ... it's ... aioli! That's what it is.

This sandwich is so good I can't stand it. Know why it's so good? Because I used my own bread, that's why. Buahahahahahahahaha. I always think to myself, almost always, while eating a sandwich made at some other place by some careless non bread elitist in possession of no sense of bread-snobbery at all, " Too bad. This thing would be much improved on my own bread." That thought happens automatically. I cannot help it.

Judge not, lest you be judged. Except when it comes to bread. In that case go ahead and judge away. There's no point in putting up with unhealthy icky foam-bread made at someone else's convenience when you could be soaring in the stratosphere of breadery with very little effort at all. Like me.

My bread is sort of small, a little bit fatter than a baguette, so I need two sandwiches to make up for it, and that suits me just fine.

recovered bead fail

Buy store-bought bredzez? Ah PITY da foo!

There I was, minding my own business, scribbling little hieroglyphic sentences as you do, with the patio door wide open, when I thought, "dayum, that wind sure is windy." It was really gusting hard too. Then it occurred to me that's the perfect situation for collecting airborne yeasties and beasties within just a few hours. Either that or fly a kite. So I prepared a thin slurry of flour and water and set it out on the bench. No cheesecloth cover or anything. Then I left it through the next day even though the wind stopped. Didn't bother to stir it, or even check it. At some point a crust formed over the top effectively preventing new organisms from entering. Oh well, at least it had those few gusty hours and that's all that mattered. I brought it in. Fed it. Set it by a heat source. Allowed it to proof at 95˚F / 35˚C for 12 hours. It bubbled a little. Fed it again. It foamed. Removed it from the heat. Then it stagnated. Smelled like crap. Reduced it, then fed it again. Back to the heat. Still smelled bad. Fed it again. Still not working. So I thought, "Fugget about this!"

I'm nearly out of flour and I didn't want to waste the effort so I switched to commercial yeast. What I had would amount to approximately 50% of the total finished dough. It's aged by a few days off and on the heat. It's freshly fed but only slowly active. That portion is nearly all A/P flour, but not entirely. The new fresh portion was 1 cup heated milk, 1 super duper large egg, about 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, 1 teaspoon commercial yeast, about 2 cups A/P flour, and 2 cups whole wheat flour. This time I didn't use my own milled grain but rather King Arthur whole wheat, mostly to get rid of it. I'm tired of it taking up space in the refrigerator. I was surprised how well the dough responded to the new influx of ingredients along with the boost of commercial yeast. I thought I had loaded it up with enough elements that tend to inhibit rising that it probably would not double. I was wrong about that, it foamed right up to the top of my largest bowl within a few hours. I used the clay cloche and baked on as hot as my stove will go which is 500˚F / 260˚C. The loaves baked in 25 minutes + 6 minutes uncovered until the edges burned. I detected a burnt odor before the timer went off. They turned out perfectly dark. We bakers like the edges to be burnt. It's an artisan thing.

I can not wait to try this.

Hang on. It's been long enough.

OH MY GOD THIS IS GOOD !

It's not sour. But it's definitely not NOT sour, if you know what I mean. It's also not wheaty as you could reasonably expect considering the large amount of wheat flour put into it. That tells me King Arthur whole wheat just isn't as tasty as my own milled grain. That surprises me. There's a noticeable difference. And that tells me the mill was totally worth it.

Ya know what? I've been going out to some very high-end restaurants lately and I do judge them on their bread. It's a key indicator. I realize this sounds arrogant, but good as their bread is sometimes, it's never as good as my own. Never. Just last night we went out to an expensive place and the bread was good, no criticism here, but good as it was, and I did finish the basket, you could tell it was the type that comes to the restaurant frozen where they proof it and bake it on site. You can tell because the baguette is never a true baguette. The crumb is dense, uniform and spongy. And that's just wrong!

Now I have that sourdough aftertaste lingering in my mouth that indicates the pH has changed in there and that causes me to crave a glass of wine or a cocktail. I'm self-conscious. Now would be a inopportune time to kiss me so don't try it.

fish and chips

The thing is, I had a huge sack of gigantic Idaho type potatoes left over from a dinner party I hosted. To avoid having them go to waste I decided to cook them and freeze in Seal-a-Meal bags. I made a double batch of crisps (two huge potatoes), and a triple batch of chips (three huge potatoes) That took care of that.

The potato crisps are still there. Pictured above is one potato worth of the chips. The fish is marketed as Swai, a type of catfish from SE Asia sold in the US under another name due to legislation protecting the catfish market. It's very good, and you'll be pleased with the price. I have a ton of it. OK FINE! Three pounds of it.

The breading is my own breadcrumbs seasoned. The fish was deep-fried in the same oil following the potatoes. Now it's all gummed up bread-crumby fishy oil. They were cooked at 350˚F / 175˚C for a mere two minutes. They are delicate, flakey, and barely cooked, I dare say, perfectly cooked. Pretty much everybody I know would consider them undercooked. But every fish-complainy person I know, and they are legion, here in the heartland a thousand miles from the nearest shore, is wrong. Period. And I'm right. How's that for fish-arrogance? That's right, I said it, I'm right and everybody else I know is wrong.

Officially, the fish in fish and chips is haddock, cod, or flounder, coated with a batter. I did not do that so this is not official fish and chips.

Boy, this makes me want to eat some more. Good thing I made extra.