Category food

Here is my dinner. Having too much salt throughout the last few days I figured I needed some fresh veggies to help sort me out. Yes, I know there is actually a reasonable amount of salt in this, but it sure seemed to help.

This is half of a piece of pretzel bread (a “walking stick”) from Nino Salvaggio with Dill Havarti, sliced Roma tomato, and cucumber on it. I also ate it along with some of the olives I picked up, as the olives are really tasty.

This was a very, very good dinner, and just the right size.

Charred Chili Relleno w/ Green Rice

Danielle made these Charred Chili Relleno w/ Green Rice for us for lunch/dinner today. I stuffed the chilis and plated everything, but she actually did the prep work / cooking. They were very, very good.

The recipe used is basically this one from Food Network, with a few slight changes. (Veggie stock, there was enough rice that we served it on a bed of rice, etc.)

Except for the cheese it’s actually a vegan dish, and rather healthy. It’s quite tasty, too. Mmm…

Here is a photo of Danielle about to take a bite of the oh-so-tasty food. Mmm.

Hmm… What should I do with around a pound of Habanero chilis? I’m thinking I could make a sauce, or I could chop them and pack them with salt in a sealed container for a month or so, then maybe make a sauce from that…

Rice Pudding

Here’s some rice pudding that Daneille and I made based on a recipe from good eats.

It is good. To make it:

Cook one cup of rice in a rice cooker.
Put that rice in a wide pot with one cup of milk.
Bring it all to a boil, stirring regularly.
Add 1/2 a cup of heavy cream, 3/4 of a cup of coconut milk, and around four ounces of sugar.
Stir everything together, letting it boil gently and thicken.
Sprinkle in 1/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom and stir in thoroughly.
Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap pressed tightly against the surface.
Put in fridge and allow to cool overnight.
Eat.

The recipe also called for golden raisins and chopped pistachios, but we didn’t feel like putting that in.

It’s thick, almost as solid as Jell-O, but with a creamy texture and amazing flavor. Mmm.

I swung by IPM on Saturday, consumed a bit of bacon, then consumed a Bacon Salt-covered Bacon Bandage.

Photos of the entire incident are available here (photo gallery retired).

Placing a bunch of yogurt on a coffee filter and then on a strainer is a good thing. However, I should not have tried to turn this thickened savory dish into sweet with the addition of cinnamon and honey. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t taste very good on an english muffin. :(

Cultured butter cooling in the fridge.

Yay! I now have two large ramiken of Butter++^† chilling in the fridge.

Here’s how I made it:

1) Put a pint of heavy cream in a clean container.
2) Stir in a large spoonful of fresh, plain yogurt.
3) Cover and let it sit at room temperature for ~24 hours.
4) Put the cultured cream in a water-tight container and shake the container until solid butter forms.
5) Pour the butter / buttermilk mixture into a bowl and work with a spoon until as much buttermilk runs out as possible. Pour the buttermilk off and save it for pancakes.
6) Fill a large bowl with a mixture of ice and water.
7) Spoon the butter into the bowl in clumps.
8) Break the chilling butter into smaller clumps with your fingers.
9) Stir the butter around to wash it.
10) Form golf ball sized clumps of the cold butter with your hands, ring it out, then put it back in the water. Repeat until all the small clumps are in larger clumps and generally rung out.
11) Take a larger clump out of the ice water, shake it off, then squeeze it a few times to remove any remaining water.
12) Pack the cold butter into a ramiken.
13) Invert the ramiken on a pad of paper towel on a place and place in the fridge.
14) As the butter is chilling, occasionally press on the butter to squeeze out more water / buttermilk. Change paper towel if necessary.
15) After the butter has chilled, cover tightly and use lovingly.

I have no idea how long this keeps for, but I figure that it’ll last for about two weeks if tightly covered. If you salt the butter (after step 5) it’ll keep for a bit longer.

Any flavoring (herbs, honey and cinnamon, etc) can be stirred in after step 11. Oh, and Danielle first told me how to culture butter, and since I love making butter I thought I’d give it a go. I also read that washing butter is common in commercial production, so I tried that as well.

^† Cultured butter.