The Happy Tastebud

Sun 12.06.09 - At many of the taquerías in SoCal there will be a salsa bar with a small container of pickled carrots and peppers to put on the side of your plate. My absolute favorite carrots are the ones at El Camino Real in Fullerton, as I love how crunchy and spicy they are. Many other places has over cooked carrots or they have very little flavor.

Today, I decided to try to make my own. I searched the net for various recipes and the recipe over at About.com sounded closest, minus oregano, to the carrots at El Camino Real.

Due to what was living in my refrigerator and some leftover cauliflower, I did alter the recipe to my taste, here is my version:

* 6 big carrots, cut on the diagonal a bit thicker than a 1/4"
* 1 head of cauliflower separated into biggish florets, stem sliced like the carrots.
* 2 cloves garlic peeled and crushed with the side of a knife but not chopped
* 1 1/2 cups vinegar
* 1 1/2 cups water
* 10 bay leaves, whole
* 8 peppercorns
* 2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1 fresh jalapeno, sliced in half lengthwise and seeds scraped out
* 1/2 teasp. marjoram (sorry no oregano in the family, and marjoram is otherwise known as sweet oregano).

1. Saute the garlic in a wee bit of olive oil in a good pan, add the carrots and the cauliflower after a couple of minutes, saute until coated.
2. Add vinegar, water, bay leaves, peppercorns, salt. Bring to a small boil and then reduce to a simmer for about 5 minutes.
3. Pop in that jalapeno pepper and the marjoram. Boil for a wee bit more. Check for carrot consistency. All total, I barely let mine boil for 10-12 minutes before the carrots were on the verge of too soft.
4. Put lid on pan, pull off burner. Let cool. Put in a covered container in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Make sure the carrots, et al, are covered in the liquid. I had to add a bit more water at this stage, which is fine as the liquid was a bit vinegar-y.

I will report back tomorrow on how they taste.

Sat 11.07.09 - Hadashi and I met up at her and the Husbanator's house this evening and we made a delightfully large pot of Pea-a-Palooza Risotto. When she said she had peas - then a bag of Trader Joe's bag of frozen peas got opened and the whole of the bag poured into the pot at the end of the cooking, I was very surprised, as I would have used about 1/3rd of the bag, but Hadashi was in the right, a whole bag of peas was *Amazing* in the risotto.

Moral of the Story: Don't be afraid to be free with your peas.

Today I was looking through the recipes in the last issue of Gourmet Magazine (*shakes fist at Conde Nast*), when I read the recipe on Vegetarian Shepherds Pie which called for seitan as one of the main ingredients.

Seitan is an Asian protein-rich, meat-free food stuff made of wheat gluten that is very popular for creating meat substitutes for vegetarian and vegan cooking.

If you are gluten-free for health reasons, such as gluten-intolerance or celiacs disease, or for diet reasons, also very valid, then navigating the world of vegetarian and vegan cookery can be very tricky as it can be very gluten-full.

After reading the recipe in Gourmet tonight, I decided to Google "gluten-free seitan" to see if there are any good gluten-free, meat-free seitan substitutes. And there are. Not packaged to be bought at your local health food store, but here are a couple of sets of recipes for gluten-free seitan to be used in various veggie recipes:

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/healthy-cooking-article/gluten-free-gluten/472515
http://www.meatandeggfree.com/gluten-free-seitan.html

If you have made gluten-free seitan, please comment and let us know what you thought of it.

Sun 10.04.09 - Today Jeremy and Jessica took me to brunch at i gigi's cafe on Western Rd on Hove, Josh Russell and Nik F met us there for a truly delightful brunch.

The food was a fresh riff off the usual breakfast and brunch foods. Each dish was well considered and beautiful as well as tasty. The best part is that each of the servers prepared the dishes on the sideboard right next to us. Fresh. Tasty. Moderately DIY.

Now when is i gigi going to open a Long Beach, Calif. cafe? ;o)

[posted with permission from Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, by me (Jenifer Hanen).]

hadashi's peach tree was very very productive this year, thanks to responsible watering and the judicious use of a bird net. what to do with all the bounty? enter Ms. Jen and her box o' Ball jars! she's great at research, so after consulting several sources -- including a canning savvy grandma (always the best source) -- all we needed were the right tools. a quick trip to cooking mecca Surfas yielded a cheery red-accented set of tongs, funnels, and more! between all the boiling, chopping, sterilizing, and funneling, we not only had a great time, but produced a half-dozen jars of absolutely delicious peach jam. well, it's more like peach compote, but who cares? it tastes like sunshine and will be a welcome topping to breakfasty things or ice cream especially once winter rolls around. happy tastebuds all around!

(meaning "little snacks.")

i've just returned from a family visit in Germany, where the asparagus & strawberries are in season. no photos of asparagus, but the first photo shows the berries...so luscious. so sweet. so addictive.
next photo: this night shot is of the excellent late-night snack o' choice of drunk (okay, sober too) Germans all over. it's called currywurst, which is basically sausage covered in some kind of curry ketchup and eaten with a hard roll. this is from an infamous Imbiss shack called "The Curry Sau" (curry pig). it's right down the street from the father-in-law's medical office; he regularly finds the remains of currywurst trash in the mailbox meant for pathology drop-offs. after we took this photo we staged a whole photo essay of the husband pretending to stuff our trash in his dad's mailbox. no one questioned us; i guess the sight of people giggling hysterically while taking nefarious photos is kind of normal around a late-night post-bar munchies snack stand.
finally, this isn't exactly a snack per se, but it's a light dinner that we always have when we're with the parents-in-law. we bike the 10km or so to a little guesthouse in the woods where the bratwurst is made fresh by hand every day. here's the brats (in the lower right corner) with homemade sauerkraut, a glass of local white wine, and of course some strawberries (some random local farmer came by and sold them to whoever was outside eating). in the upper left corner, you'll see a very German dish called Mettbrot or Hackepeter; i call it "pig sushi." yes, it's essentially pork tartare; raw ground pork with some onions and seasoning, served on bread. it's quite popular, and plenty of Germans scarf it down regularly and don't get sick or get worms or have their insides explode. (most likely this is because the meat is locally raised, butchered, and prepared in small, clean places, not in freaky industrial feedlots/slaughterhouses. i mean, i've gotten badly sick from American fast food; no German i know has ever gotten ill from eating Hackepeter. draw your own conclusions.) on top, the tube of wasabi is a California import; my mother-in-law is addicted to spiciness and has created her own fusion cuisine as she now regularly squirts huge amounts of wasabi on her Wurst or pig sushi.