It’s a grey damp day, best for hunkering down. After rinsing, I’ll hot-soak these dried beans, then freeze half. I’m poking around the freezer for ideas for a bean dish for dinner tonight using the other half of the beans. So far, a ham shank and mirepoix are lined up. Fresh garlic, bay leaves, and cumin should punch up the flavor. Brown rice and stir-fried Swiss chard will balance the meal.
Category: Cook
Early season finds at the Mill City Farmers Market
Our local farmers market was busy this morning. I walked away with asparagus, baby kale, bread, and honey. It’s too early in Minnesota’s growing season for anything cruciferous, except a few types of leafy greens.
Rainy day comfort food
Rained all day, inducing a mild case of cabin fever. Made a mushroom sauce for leftover polenta, heavy on the mushrooms: finally, a task with a beginning, middle, and end that I accomplished today. Finished the sauce with heavy cream, shoyu, and Dijon. An immersion blender and some water revived the polenta.
Making the most of stale bread
For a few days it’s tip-the-fridge time. Here, I’ve assembled ingredients for a strata egg bake. We collect stale bread in the freezer, then periodically incorporate it into bakes, Italian bread salads, stuffings, etc. For the strata, I cubed the bread then dried it in the microwave.
Sausage Saturday: Caribbean cabbage creation, with a bit of help from AI
It’s Sausage Saturday, Winter Edition, and today I’m braising sausage with cabbage. I typically use green cabbage, but I opted for red today and decided to give the dish a Caribbean twist. As planned, I incorporated cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. To enhance the flavor profile, I consulted Google AI (Gemini), which suggested balsamic vinegar and ginger (I had some fresh ginger in the freezer).
The Secret of the Chef of the Duke of Lévis-Mirepoix
Today, I’m feeling lazy, so I took a shortcut with my pot of beans. I used half a container of mirepoix from Trader’s, saving me from chopping carrots, onions, and celery. I don’t know of any other store selling mirepoix, which always mystifies me. Dwight used the rest of the mirepoix to make a pea soup, adding a handful of his homegrown pea shoots and bringing it all together with an immersion blender.
Needs Must
When I woke up, it was a frigid 6°F outside. There was no way I was going outside today. To get some exercise, I spent 45 minutes on an exercycle in the workout room. It’s Sausage Saturday, but we’re missing the main ingredients: sausages and ice cream. Instead of sausage, I’ll make chicken pot pie using chicken from the freezer. And instead of ice cream, Dwight baked apple crumble, which is cooling now.
Wot No Turkey?
Spent most of the afternoon making veggie moussaka as the main dish for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. Porcini mushrooms, lentils and chickpeas nicely fill the meat space. The dish required red wine (3 cups); the cook required some too, but a much lesser amount.
Book and Biscotti
While Dwight baked these almond biscotti, I stretched out on the couch with a novel I’d checked out from the library on my Kindle, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. The Remains of the Day is still my favorite, but none of his novels has disappointed. Early samples of the biscotti didn’t disappoint either.
Comfort Food Foundation
Made a 24-hour chicken bone broth which I filtered four ways this morning. Now it’s setting up in the fridge, waiting for me to skim off the fat. I’ll freeze it in smaller portions to use in dishes where I want the flavor and smoothness to shine. On Friday, I picked up chicken parts from an Asian market; of course, I couldn’t resist grabbing some Japanese KitKats while I was there.