A New Addition

It is with great joy that JustAwesome and I welcome a new addition to the Feral Cook pizza repertoire. Stolen from Roberta’s, the best (hands down) pizza place in New York City, I present:

Salad Nicoise Pizza

Potato pizza with a tuna/egg mixture tossed with arugula, green beans and a sicilian green sauce. So bright and tasty. She makes us smile.

September 18, 2010

7:17 p.m

13 inches

Salad Nicoise Pizza

Sicilian Green Sauce

Tuna-Egg Mixture

Also on the menu tonight:

• margherita

• smoked ricotta, basil, parmesan and mozzarella (2x)

Smoked Ricotta

Serve salad with Karen Skurka’s Lazy Girl Dressing (in the comment).

Drink beer in frosty glasses and homemade blueberry soda.

Young Pizza Lover with Tiny Pineapple

The Works

With less than 10 days until we go on what will undoubtably be a gluttonous trip, I have got to get serious about my waistline.

Tonight I did a ton of prep: I made my famous egg salad (for tomorrow’s lunch). I made a WW’s cabbage and carrot salad to have as sides for a few days (ugly but tasty). I roasted some brussels sprouts and carrots, like I always do. I cut up celery (peanut butter? hummus?). I cut up carrots (I do not like pre-cut carrots. Blech). I washed the lettuce (keeping the leaves whole to use as wraps). I made a salad (to eat for tonight’s dinner with canned salmon and a crusty bread from the New Amsterdam Market).

And then I remembered: I had some uncooked kale that I hadn’t used, already cut up and ready to go... Roasting pan was out from the brussels sprouts and calling my name. WOO HOO! Kale chips!! They were so tasty! I just put olive oil and salt on them and laid in a single layer. Better recipe here.

Kale

And then I thought: Why not eat it all for dinner? At once! I must be some kind of genius.

The Works

So we had: Salad with salmon (with a homemade mustard dressing), crusty bread with homemade pesto, cabbage and carrot salad, roasted brussels sprouts and carrots, and kale chips. With homemade seltzer! A weird mix, but it all worked. And a sensible Weight Watchers meal, I think.

JustAwesome is in the kitchen, right this minute, preparing this panade from The New York Times Magazine. How many POINTS is that? OY! Seriously, I can’t wait!

Oh, what a relief it is!

What a lovely weekend! A visit to The Brooklyn Kitchen yielded a brand new seltzer-maker. We don’t drink a ton of the stuff right now (because we don’t like throwing out plastic bottles) but game-on! Oh, the possibilities! Ours came with some flavor samples plus we bought a gorgeous bottle of Ginger syrup. And now we don’t have to avoid having any teetotalers over for dinner.

So, what flavors sound good to you?

Our Flexitarian Table

JustAwesome grew up eating very little meat. Naturally, she became a vegetarian and thankfully, for practical (read: traveling) purposes later started eating fish. Coincidentally, she doesn’t love shellfish beyond the occasional lobster-roll, so I think of her as a kosher-style pescetarian. And so, we are, flexitarian.

I don’t feel punished by meatless meals. We have tons of variety, especially when adding fish to the mix. I do hate when restaurants have only one vegetarian option and it is usually more like a consolation prize. I eat plenty of meat, usually when we go out, but once in a while I’ll make some meat or treif for myself. I don’t believe people should lose themselves for their spouses—avoiding onions, for example, that their spouse deems “stinky poo-poo”—like Laura Linney’s character on Showtimes new series The Big C.

Last night I decided to follow Berley’s recipe for Grilled Shrimp in Harissa, found in, of course, The Flexitarian Table. This kind of, sort of, went with-ish the cauliflower and corn and pea red curry that I made for our main entrée. (I broiled it).

Then I saw the recipe and rather than improvise and try something else, I kept going. Next thing I know, I am toasting fennel and cumin seeds and then grinding them with a mortar and pestle because we didn’t have already ground spices. WHAT??? WHO AM I?????

The mortar and pestle, by the way, we only own because I saw it at a HomeGoods store, it was really, really cheap and it matches our Le Creuset stuff!

Anyway, this cracks me up. I don’t recognize me. The shrimp was good and the house smelled amazing because of the toasted seeds. YUM!

Shame shame shame...

Chilean Sea Bass

Ok, I have something to confess (hanging Feral head in shame). My favorite fish to cook at home is Chilean Sea Bass. I know, I KNOW! It is not technically on the endangered species list anymore but I probably shouldn’t be eating it. If it was a really dire situation, Whole Foods & Fresh Direct wouldn’t sell it. Right?

It is SOOOO yummy. And I really don’t eat very much of it. And, I’m a very good person. As a New Yorker, my carbon footprint is practically minute. Sometimes I remember to offset my carbon emissions. I recycle, I use green products, I’ve removed myself from mailing lists. I’ve reduced my plastic waste dramatically (since my Lunch post). I carry bags, I shop locally. I tell everyone I know to rent No Impact Man (available on Netflix). Really, I’m good. But I love me some Patagonian Toothfish. I am a flawed human person.

A standard dinner in the Feral rotation is Chilean Sea Bass (broiled), potato (boiled? roasted?), greens (usually sautéed in garlic), maybe a salad. But, alas, I have just “discovered” potato salad. Bittman has an easy recipe with scallion or onion, parsley, and a mustard vinaigrette. I hate mayo, so I never really considered adding potato salad to my repertoire. Until now. Really easy and perfect on a hot day (and for lunches later in the week).

Potato Salad

I’d give you the recipe but I am not a copyright infringer—just a fish killer. And really? You should own at least one Bittman cookbook. JustAwesome swears by the iPhone app, too. Hopefully, I didn’t overcook the potatoes and she likes my potato salad.

Tofu or Not Tofu?

Proper tofu custard from Hibino — YUM!!

The Plan:

• Tofu custard

• Dashi

After taking a tofu-making class back in June, I’ve decided to give it a go at home. I really love tofu custard which is a little easier (um, well) to prepare than regular tofu. Of course, as I sit here typing this, I don’t really know if it is going to work. I screwed up a million little times and I’m pretty sure all of my measurements are wrong. Too many steps? Yeah, probably.

The short of it:

Soak beans, purée, boil with water and then strain through a cheese cloth. That makes soymilk. The milk is then mixed with a coagulant (nigari). Then you pray. If you’re not religious, you think good thoughts at it.

I made milk!

Lesson #1

You have to soak the soybeans (bought in bulk at WF’s. Cost $.75. Organic.) for 10 hours before you make the soymilk that becomes tofu. So my batch will be ready at 9pm? Oy. Next time I’ll do that part overnight. Then I panicked that it was going to go rancid and stuck in the fridge to make the next day. Might’ve just messed everything up right then and there.

Lesson #2

Save the water that you soaked it in. I read that line after I tossed my water. Might’ve just messed everything up right then and there.

Lesson #3

Pay attention in school. My math is really bad. I suspect this is a bit like baking and needs to be exact. Might’ve just messed everything up right then and there.

I think this is actually really easy to make but you need to plan a little better than I can manage these days. And then I was improvising a bit using this recipe plus what I got from the Tofu making class at Brooklyn Kitchen. I will try again if this batch doesn’t work...

A Final Word:

It sort of came out. It looked really gross. I should tell you that in the class only 3 out of 30 portions came out right (mine was one of them!). We ate with dashi, scallions & wasabi.

JA’s opinion:

It looks like curdled snot but tastes delicious, clean, fresh and delicate. I hope Feral tries again.

The Verdict:

I’d rather have someone else make it for me. I haven’t been but I hear that EN Japanese Brasserie makes a really nice one, like, every hour. I thought the one at Hibino in Brooklyn was delish, hot or cold. But I think any upscale-ish Japanese place should do it well.

Curds for Dinner! No whey!

Ever since my very first poutine in Montreal back in ’07, I’ve been hooked. Traditional poutine uses beef gravy (as well as pork fat for the fries), but JA & I do a tasty version with mushroom gravy. A real winter treat. Tonight we are going to turn on the AC (and dust the cobwebs off of our stove) and try yet another version utilizing some of the crazy-colored carrots from the Farmer’s Market.

The recipe comes from a great blog called Everybody Likes Sandwiches, which of course, everybody does. We use frozen french fries. No shame in that. We changed the recipe quite a bit—the first try was too spicy and too thin. The second try was just right.

real poutine from Montreal

An early iteration. I can’t find a photo of our usual which is darker.

The cheese curds are from our favorite cheesemonger. Do they squeak? Probably not, but really yummy.

crazy carrots

Tonight’s veg’d up version. Mmm, mmm good!

The Verdict? It was good but I’m something of a purist. I missed my mushroom gravy. (Not shown)