BBQ Sauce I

Two medium onions finely chopped

Two stalks celery, finely chopped.

6 cloves of garlic, minced.

Saute the onion, celery and garlic until brown.

Add...

50oz canned diced tomatoes.

1c balsamic vinegar

1/3 cup red wine

1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce

2 cups brown sugar

3tbsp Dijon mustard

1tbsp chopped rosemary

2 bay leaves

lemon zest from half a lemon

lemon juice from half a lemon

2tsp salt.

Let simmer for an hour. Fish out the bay leaves. Take a stick blender to the rest.

Strain.

Chocolate Sauce

Very easy...

1 cup coco powder.

1.5 cups sugar.

mix the sugar and coco powder together.

Heat 1 cup water till just boiling. Add 2tbsp corn syrup to the hot water.

Slowly pour the hot water and syrup into the sugar and coco powder. Stir constantly. until well mixed and smooth. If the sugar crystals don't dissolve then microwave the mixture for 30 seconds and stir a little more.

Pizza Dough IV

Finally, I've made good pizza. It's the no-knead recipe from FoodWishes.com I wouldn't say it's the best pizza I've ever had, but with practice and the right ingredients, it could compete. As a friend said "This is the kind of recipe you could use for the rest of your life."

Ingredients...

1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/2 c tepid water
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 c wheat flour
2 1/2c bread flour

What follows is all basic stuff. That's where I went wrong. In the past my pizza turned out mediocre because I was trying too hard, being too fancy, doing what I thought a professional pizza man with a pizza pallet and a pizza stone would do.

Simplify to make great pizza...

Mix all the ingredients until smooth. They should form a sticky, but not runny dough. If the dough is runny, add a little more flour.

Don't knead the dough. Let the dough sit twelve hours in a warm (70F-ish) room.

Pour the dough out on a well floured board and flour both sides. Don't worry about using too much flour, you can always shake it off later.

Cut the dough into four equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball.

Roll each ball out into a pie about 9 inches in diameter. If the dough sticks then add a little more flour. You can use your hands to form the pie if you want, but a rolling pin is easier and the pizza is just as good.

Sprinkle corn meal on one side of the pizza. Gently press the corn meal into the pizza.

Flip the pizza over and onto a metal baking sheet, corn meal side down.

Brush a little olive oil on the dough to seal it and help it brown.

Dress your pizza up. Use your ingredients sparingly. This is not deep dish pizza. A tbsp of tomato sauce, a little cheese, maybe some sliced ham or other meat. A little goes a long way here.

Put the baking sheet into the oven. Forget about the pizza pallet.

The recipe calls for baking the pizza at 450F for about 10 minutes. My oven is a little on the cool side so I tried 475F. It still needed 12 minutes. Next time I'm going to try 500F for 10 minutes.

Meals that turn out well...

Linguini with peas and tomato sauce.

Cut four chicken thighs to bite sized pieces. Saute with a diced onion and two minced cloves of garlic.

Sprinkle 1tbsp flour over the chicken and onion. Stir the flour in and cloat the chicken and onion.

Add one 28oz can of diced tomatos and one 14oz can of chicken broth. Stir well. Wait till the mixture starts simmering.

Add salt, pepper, basil or other herbs to taste.

Add 16oz peas. I use a bag of frozen peas. Brussel spouts, or snow peas also work.

Boil the Linguini.

Serve up.

Frozen veggies

I generally only buy 'ingredients' when I grocery shop-- no prepared food and nothing with chemical additives. I'll make an exception for ice cream.

So convenience foods are few and far between. At meal time, everything has to be cleaned, prepared and then cooked. Nothing I can pour out of a bag, heat and serve.

Except for frozen veggies. This is a surprise discovery. I've stayed away from frozen foods my whole life. My mother did much freezing and canning when I was young. And while I appreciated her efforts, the results were always mushy and bland.

On impulse, I tried out a bag of frozen veggies-- a stir fry medley. I poured them over a chicken while it was roasting. The results were very, very good. The veggies roasted in the chicken fat making them extra tasty.

Fresh veggies in your grocery store are really several days old and bred to survive the shipping process. After purchase, they may lay around my fridge or on the counter for several days or even a week before I get around to serving them. By that time they are fresh in name only.

Frozen veggies on the other hand were flash frozen hours after being picked and if you handle them properly they will stay well frozen for weeks.

If you cook them properly, it would be very difficult to tell they were not fresh. The trick is to not let them thaw before cooking. Take them straight from freezer to the fire, so to speak. The quick temperature change prevents ice crystals from forming and damaging the cells.

Thanks to the variety and convenience I'm adding them to everything. I've easily doubled my intake of vegetables. Pasta sauce with with peas and Brussels sprouts was good as was roast Boeuf bourguignon with roasted veggies.

Of course they do have their limits. They will never replace a fresh green salad and they tend to be a bit wet which means they don't brown well in a saute or stir fry. But when I look at my fridge, at the things that have molded, gone soft or just plain rotted and when I think over the times I wanted to eat more veggies but didn't because they were too much work to prepare, frozen veggies now have a well deserved place in my kitchen.

Pan fried roasts

Boeuf bourguignon do it. Cornish game hen's do it too. The result is tasty and tender meat.

The idea is that you brown your mean in a fry pan before you roast it. Some recipies say it's to 'seal in the juicies.' That's not true. Browning meat just makes it taste better.

Pre-heat your oven to 400F

Heat up a good cast iron skillet to medium heat with some oil or butter.

Dry off your meat. It won't brown properly if it's wet. Also, make sure your meat is cut so that it can properly brown on all sides. This means splitting a game hen into two.

Brown your meat on all sides-- two to five minutes a side. While you are browning, throw in some onions and spices.

The recipies for the B.B. and the game hen diverge here. With the BB you add a simple sauce with flour and butter to the beef.

Finally, put your meat (The B.B. or the game hen) into the oven and roast for an hour.

For extra goodness, pour a bag of frozen veggies over your roast. before you put it into the oven.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

I'm enjoying Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I'll admit I won't make many of the recipes-- calf brains anyone? But the chapter on sauces is excellent.

I'm pleased with how easy vinaigrette are. I will never use plain ol' olive oil and vinegar again. The trick is to use a little ground mustard to emulsify the oil and vinegar.

Till now, I sprinkled my salads with separate oil and vinegar-- simple and tasty but this has problems. Vinegar won't cling to leaves. It pours off the salad and pools on the plate. A vinaigrette on the other hand, stays nicely on the leaves.

For a good vinaigrette, use a ratio of two to one oil to vinegar. Add one eighth a teaspoon of ground mustard for every tablespoon of vinegar. Shake the ingredients in a bottle until combined.

Use any salad-worthy oil. As for the vinegar, you could substitute wine or lemon juice. Olive oil and white wine vinegar make a traditional vinaigrette. I substitute in balsamic and have no regrets.

The Forbidden Zone

The Forbidden Zone... The Forbidden Zone... Who recommended that I watch the Forbidden Zone? Step forward and get your spanking.

As a movie, Forbidden Zone is bad. It succeeds as a musical, or as an act of unrestrained creativity. The music is very good. The screen is full of the bizarre and original. This is what happens when very talented, very creative people get together and make a movie with no budget and no script. As I watched Forbidden Zone, my jaw dropped and I constantly thought "What the Hell!" But, I never wanted to stop looking. It's endlessly inventive.

I finished watching the included documentary about the Forbidden Zone. It makes a little more sense now. The Forbidden Zone is a series of musical numbers and performance art pieces. The plot was added afterwards.

Mark and I saw the Forbidden Zone through Netflix which recommends movies based on your ratings. We couldn't decide what to rate Forbidden Zone. Should it be one star, or five? Five stars because it is distinct, original and endlessly watchable. One star because it is a piece of crap. It's like watching an accident that doesn't end. You know that what you are watching isn't good, but you can't look away.

Roger Ebert likes to give great trash two and a half stars. The idea being that great movies come along so rarely that there must be room for great trash. In that spirit RO and I gave Forbidden Zone three stars.

Tomato Sauce

I finally bought "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." It's a great reference on technique and tricks as much as it is for recipes.

Case in point... tomato sauce. My old recipe is good, but the sauce is dark and more liquid than I'd like. I've always assumed that premade sauce from the store could be light and thick because they use industrial food additivies.

Skimming through MAFC, I ran into a tomato sauce recipe. What's different about this recipe is that it calls for sweating the veggies, not sauting and for the addition of some flour. These two changes seem to have lightened and thickened my sauce. I double checked with the "Joy of Cooking" No mention of adding flour.

Good job Julia.

Meals that turn out very well...

Pan sered salmon with roast asparagus, onions and mushrooms, served with quinoa or brown rice.

Prepare the quinoa, or brown rice.

Clean and trim the asparagus. drizzle with oil, salt & pepper. Broil for 10 minutes, turning after 5.

Saute the onions and mushrooms for 5 minutes. Mix with the asparagus under the broiler for the last five minutes.

Pan seer the salmon for 90 seconds a side.

If your timing is good, everything should be ready at the same time. Serve with a sprinkle of parsley and enjoy.

Sweet Potato Pie.

I want to make more pies. Not entirely from scratch, but that will come.

When I made beef wellington, I learned that I can buy pre made pastry. This opens a whole new world as I can make pies without having to make the crust.

My first pie was sweet potato pie. Google for the recipie. It turned out wonderful.

Cream pies seem easy and I know I love them. Cheese cakes are just a twist on cream pies, so maybe I'll make more of these.

Beef Wellington.

I made Beef Wellington as a birthday gift. The Wellington recipies are a bit more fussy than I usually go for. None the less, it turned out well and I will make it again.

Beef Wellington is a recipie that can be tweaked in many ways. At it's most simple, it is a tenderloin roast, covered with pate and fried mushrooms and onions, wrapped with pastry and then baked.

Expensive version-- use a very high quality cut of meat. The pate should be foie gras. Use truffels for the mushrooms. Make the pastry yourself.

Cheap version-- use a lower quality roast. Instead of pate use minced or chopped chicken gizzards and chicken breast. Use frozen pre-made puff pastry.

Egg Whites and Angel Food

I had a dozen egg whites sitting in my freezer since October 2007. I kid you not. When I need yolks, I'll save the whites in a dark corner of the freezer. Today I stubled on a zip lock bag of yolks dated to 2007.

So, I thought I'd try them out in an angel food cake-- Alton's recipie. I substituted regular flour for the cake flour and everything turned out fine.

Let me make that more dramatic-- I made an angel food cake with two year old whites, a flour substitution, an electric beater cranked to high and it still turned out great.

I love angel food cake. Especially with peanut butter and chocolate sauce.

Kennydale Beach Park After Dark

To stave off the heat, last night we went to Kennydale Beach Park to swim, to have a light picnic and to watch the sun set.

What a great place. After the life guards left, the beach came alive. People kept showing up, mostly teenagers, but many families as well. You could hear laughter everywhere. Of course, the best part of swimming someplace without a life guard is that you can do whatever you want. Lots of people were swimming outside the buoyed off swimming area. People were jumping off the rails, playfully pushing each other off the dock, playing tag in the deep water, floating on air mattress and all those other officially unsafe, yet fun, activities.

The sunset was beautiful and broadly red. Then the sky turned a deep dark blue. Perfect for swimming.

What goes around comes around...

Lard is making a comeback. It's mostly monounsaturated fat. Also, the food you eat with it is more rich than without, so you eat less.

White Sauce

I've been experiementing with white sauces over pasta. I've found an easy way to make them. I just have to get used to the proportions.

Last night I melted 2 tbsp butter into a small pot at medium heat. I sprinked that with 2 tbsp flour. After the flour and butter are combined I added 1 cup of milk. Then I whisked until thick

Mixing the flour with the butter to form a roux is what makes the sauce easy. For years I've added the milk to the pot immediatly after adding the flour. This makes clumps. Mixing the flour with melted butter first makes the additon of milk go easy.

My sauce was good but a bit thick. I'm going to cut it back to 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp flour.

Cafe Lure, Tapestry Saloon & Calico Cheesecakes

917 South Third Street Renton, WA

Cafe Lure, the Tapestry Saloon and Calico Cheescakes are three establishments, right next to each other, all owned and operated by the same couple.

The food is great. The decore is so-so. But the food is great. Did I mention that the food is great?

I've been to the Lure three times now. Everything we've ordered has been beautifly presented and very tasty.

Of course there are always a wide variety of cheese cakes for dessert.

Nettles II

Cooking with nettles is fun. I've made a great Nettle lasagna with them. It's just a spinach lasagna with nettles substituting for the spinach. The nettles are thicker and tastier than the spinach so they go well in the lasagna.

Stinging Nettle Lasagna

Stinging Nettle Lasagna is just my regular lasagna with stinging nettles instead of spinach. I turned out very good. The nettles have more texture and taste than spinach.



Get a 9 x 12 baking tin. Ready three layers of lasagna noodles. That's probably nine regular noodles.



You will also need a good thick meet sauce and a nettles and cheese layer.

Amazon Fresh II

A bit more on Amazon Fresh.

They tend to run out of products a bit more often than I'd like. So far I've missed thick cut bacon, the large Jiffy brand crunchy peanut butter and lemon grass. In all cases I could sign up for a notice. The item was re-stocked within a week.

The produce and meats have been high quality.

Delivery has been punctual.





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