welcome to camp telophase

Besides sandwiches and salads!

Stir-Fried Garlic Lettuce from epicurious.com.

We made this Sunday night and it was delicious. It was also a bit on the greasy side, so we'll try less cooking oil next time (the sesame oil added to the flavors, so it stays). But the CSA gives us giant heads of lettuce, more than we can consume before it goes bad, and this is a good way for us to use them up.

The recipe calls for hearts of romaine and what we had was a giant head of green-leaf lettuce, but it worked just fine.

We paired it with Chinese Pepper Steak from Serious Eats because we had a pound of flank steak in the freezer, and that turned out fantabulous as well. Also a bit greasy, but I'm not sure how to cut down the oil in this one, since you need to cook everything in batches. Probably best to pair with non-oily things, then.)

Doubt we managed to achieve wok-hei, but we did manage to set off the fire alarm, so that's a step in the right direction!

edit: I'll add that we only used 3/4 of a tablespoon of freshly ground pepper in the pepper steak sauce because I got tired of grinding it, and it was just on the edge of too much pepper for me. We made a note to try half a tablespoon next time and see what it's like.

edit edit: Aha! from the comments:

For those with the issue of too much pepper, this will explain that.

“1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper”

The recipe doesn’t explicitly say it but I assume a coarse grind for this application. When using fine ground (what most of you have at home) as opposed to fresh *coarse* ground you will actually have *more, or most precisely more suraface area of pepper in the sauce and it will be overpowering.

I’ve been a Chef for over 10 years and have had to translate fine ground to coarse ground black pepper more than once. It’s approximately 1 tsp Fine Ground Pepper (what most home cooks have) = 2 tsp Normal/Restaurant Ground Pepper (used in most commercial recipes) = 1 Tbsp Coarse Ground (For Garnishing, Pepper Sauces, or Steak Seasoning)

So a long time ago I posted about my and myrialux's experimentation with a Brussels sprouts recipe, the conclusion of which was that we still both hated Brussels sprouts.

Many of you said that oh no, if we just roasted them simply we might like them. Well, I am here to tell you...nothing about roasting them. But I have, in fact, now eaten a recipe that included Brussels sprouts that I didn't hate.

On Saturday, after the local roaming extortionists shook us down for all our candy, we went to one of our favorite local restaurants, Bonnell's Fine Texas Cuisine. While there, I ordered a new dish from the fall menu, which was a breast of pheasant with, I quote, "house-made bacon, five spice potatoes, brussels leaves, applesauce, demi-glace."

Reader, it was delicious. All the more so because the leaves of the sprouts contained no trace of any Brussels sprouts flavor whatsoever. They were merely texture. I ate half my entree (because I always, always have to get the tres leches créme brulée BECAUSE YES) and had the other half for lunch on Monday and it was still tasty and compeltely free of any Brussels sprouts flavor.

So: yay!

Toby's parents are hosting Thanksgiving this year. I volunteered to make dessert. Suggestions for something semi-spectacular, anyone? The only caveat is that it'll be made up here on Wednesday and driven across the state on Thursday and be consumed on Friday.

I am not afraid of complicated! I've made Momofuku Milk Bar-style layer cakes before! (I'll say, however, that Toby's parents tend to be a bit conservative in tastes, so something like a rhubarb and lime pavlova will probably be eyed with suspicion. Something like a chocolate blackout cake would be more recognizable/welcome to them.)

I'm currently rereading Water Sleeps, the 8th book of Glen Cook's Black Company series. I'm now into the books that I've read only once previously, so instead of noticing the landscape, as I did more on the books I'd read multiple times previously, I'm now actually managing to get the plot. (I read fast and can't slow down easily, and tend to get the gist of things on first reading, more detail on the second, and then various other bits of things on subsequent rereadings.)

And I wanted to talk about the dinner we had at SER (image the E has a line over it) on Saturday night. This is the oofy restaurant on the top of the Anaotle, the hotel that A-Kon was held at. ( cut for food porn )

So Toby and I have a bunch of Mason jars left over from the wedding. When I ran across the concept of salad in a jar on some blog I was linked to, it was a natural.

It's a way to make a hearty salad in advance and store it in the fridge for up to 5 days. You layer the ingredients in a Mason jar with the lettuce on top (to make sure it doesn't touch the dressing), and there ya go. We made 3 each this weekend, and had them for lunch on Monday and Tuesday, and dinner today (we both felt like going out at lunch), and we just made two more each for Thursday and Friday.

( MARVEL at the sight of salads in jars! )