fish finger "fantasia" sandwich

J has been lowering the bar with this little number recently:

• fish fingers, baked according to package instructions
• cheese, preferably sharp cheddar
• bread, preferably wheat (J likes it untoasted, I am more of a toaster)
• generous amounts of mayo, preferably Kewpie
• lime pickle or mango pickle or marmite or other hot/spicy condiment

Assemble sandwich (J likes perfect planar symmetry, I like chaos and large-scale heterogeneity).

baked potatoes

Here's tonight's main course. Sure wasn't rocket science, but it sure was good!

Put large russets into the oven at 400 F for about an hour; check for doneness with a fork. Eat with butter, sour cream, grated cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil, or etc., and add a green vegetable (and maybe some leftovers) for balance.

soup with white beans and kale

The festival of beans continues. This is from the article on the "subsistence diet" in Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything and is credited to Daniel Boulod. I couldn't believe how good this was. Of course, I was famished and in need of comfort after supply teaching grade 1 gym (!) and grade 4 homeroom today. I had left a pound of white kidneys out to soak almost 24 hours earlier.

• cut up and fry off a few strips of bacon in a soup pot
• chop a large onion and sweat in the bacon and bacon fat
• add one or two cloves of garlic minced, stir, then add 8 cups of light chicken stock and the presoaked beans
• bring to a boil and simmer for about 45 minutes until the beans are tender
• add a pound of chopped kale or Swiss chard (ribs removed), S&P (and some nutmeg). cook for another 15 minutes

Serve topped with a cheese crouton (thin slice of good bread—O Sullivan Street filone, how I long for thee—spread with ricotta or fresh goat's milk cheese and sprinked with grated parmesan and pepper then broil). Very, very satisfying.

fish stew

I wanted to make bouillabaise the other day, but couldn't get my hands on the fish heads, racks and/or whitebait or other small fish to make the base, so I went with a sort of bouillabaise-inspired veggie potage with poached fish. It was pretty good—isn't everything when you slather on the aioli?—but didn't have the depth or (ahem) mouth-feel of the real thing.

• sweat chopped onion, celery and fennel bulb in olive oil
• add minced garlic and, after about a minute, canned chopped tomato
• add water to cover, bay leaf, a big piece of orange peel, (some saffron), S&P
• simmer for 30–40 minutes then adjust seasoning with S&P and lemon juice (Add a splash of Pernod, pastis, ouzo, sambucca,... you get the idea). Fish out the bay leaf and orange peel and then mash or blend the rest. Immersion blender, I love you. Adjust the body with more water. Everything up to this point could be done "before the show", even frozen.
• cook some big chunks of potato is this soup.
• 20 minutes before you want to eat and when the potatoes are almost tender, throw some big hunks of fish in to poach. I used cut up fillets of monkfish, cod and red snapper, allowing about 300 g per person. These fish are firm and mild flavoured; I wouldn't use salmon here, for instance, because it would fall apart and overpower the other flavours.

You eat this with slices of baguette brushed with olive oil and toasted in a hot oven and garlic mayonaise: mayo + about 1/8 tsp of garlic puree per tablespoon of mayo, (a few strands of saffron), S&P.

chili

Again inspired by Serious Pig, I tried a Texas-style meat-only chili, adapted from Thorne's simple recipe to:

• a 1.5 lb flank steak (I wanted to go even cheaper and nastier, but it's a long story) cut into smallish pieces
• about 2/3 lb bacon, cut into smallish pieces
• 1 large-ish onion
• 3 tbsp chili powder
• salt and hot pepper flakes?

I seared the meat and bacon until it was cooked all over the outside, and then some. I added the chili powder and onion and cooked it until the onions got translucent. I added some salt and a pinch of hot pepper flakes and enough water to cover it. I simmered it (covered) in a 250 F oven for a couple hours (the meat got super-tender). Then I roughed it up a bit (to make the meat fall apart) on the stove and reduced it down a bit (and added more salt to taste).

Delicious with cornbread and beer! Thorne suggests boiling beans separately and then mixing them when you serve. The chili is so rich, it can be the minority ingredient in your meal. When we eat leftovers we will use it as the filling for Sloppy Joes.

It warms you up, gives you indigestion, and makes you feel like you live in a Texas prison; I love it!

baked beans

I have long had a fantasy that I would be a bean baker. After PMC (bless him) gave me a copy of Thorne's Serious Pig, my fantasy had a chance of becoming a reality.

Of course, despite the fact that Thorne's recipe had only five ingredients and three steps, I felt that—in the spirit of F,NRS—I had to simplify. After all, Thorne recommends pre-soaking the beans, but then mentions that he finds no evidence that it helps. He also requires par-boiling, but he does it in the bean-soak water, and then uses that bean-soak/par-boil water in the bean pot, so I can't see any reason for doing it in advance of the main bake. Of course my objection is a theoretical one (you ain't throwing off the par-boiling water, so you ain't getting rid of anything, and if it is just boiling them, well they can just boil in the oven, dammit).

Well, I was wrong and a disaster ensued. Will post again when I get a recipe that works.

ants on a log

Ben recently taught me how to make this excellent snack and now he can teach you in this HUGE video clip (18M, but worth the wait for fans of Ben). You may want to test the waters with the compressed version. Raisins are to ants as celery is to a log, but what about the pb?

B: ... the peanut butter is like the thing who sticks, who's sticky in the tree.

G: The bark?

B: Y'know, the cire...the sear...the seal.

G: The seal?

B: No, it's... I don't know the word, but can I taste this one?...

Growing up in maple syrup country, he's probably talking about sève or sap, because I don't think he's ever heard of résine. Never let language get in the way of enjoying a snack.