Good evening, fellow repasters and thanks for opening what three hungry kossarians hope to make a regular Saturday this time diary---recipes and cooking without the trolls. There are always so many good recipes posted here day and night that I have personally made and each of us hope you have tried some of ours so the idea became to draw them out some and get you to share more by sharing what we make for our families and ourselves.
Some weeks will be single meals that are meant for one and other weeks will be family dinners.
Cookiebear,
Kate Petersen and I will rotate mostly on a weekly basis to vary what gets shared as a way to keep it interesting. This week we decided on a collaborative one as an introduction to ourselves and some of our tastes. Just like anyone else, we all have different tastes and styles of the way we eat. The plan is not to focus on the politics of food---OC does such a kick-ass job on that every Sunday nor are we planning on talking much about growing of our food unless incidental to what is in our gardens and is included in the recipes that week---Franki's got that covered so well and we have no desire to barge in with something similar---we don't really want to start
deserving those recipes.
Normally we will have pictures in each diary but that didn't happen for this week as only got hers together---I think it is that wine she drinks! We encourage you to take pictures of your food and share them with everyone too.
Me:
I'm not sure if either of my fellow diarists are vegetarians or have health restrictions on their diet. I am not although I don't eat much meat unless I can find either local or at minimum organic. One thing I do eat a lot of is seafood and veggies---some of them prepared in a not so healthy way. None of us are professional chefs except to our friends and families who love what we cook for them though Kate and Cookie have more experience in commercial preparation than I do.
I fell in love with cooking as a young teen. Both my mom and dad worked shiftwork---he at Bethlehem Steel, and my mom as an OR nurse. After a day standing on her feet, the last thing she wanted to do was come and prepare and meal for 6. On the days she did work, she wasn't that great of cook (forgive me mom) and I had developed a curious taste of good and varying food, preferably fresh from the garden. So I started to learn how to make simple things---sauce, chile---basically one pot meals. Eventually I got more bold and by then had my driver's license so I ended up doing the shopping too which was fine by me. My older siblings had already moved out for college or career so it was just the three of us.
I've continued to enjoy exploring different foods and cooking styles since then. In college I would prepare Thanksgiving and holiday meals for the house. As an adult, I learned how to eat really cheap but fresh. Now with a small family that adopted me (my partner and her two children), I've learned how to cook for kids who used to prefer chicken nuggets from the toaster oven. One night not long ago, the older one said she asked her dad if he would marry me so that I could cook for them there. That gave me a broad smile and it gives me such pleasure to be diversifying their palate. There's even an ex-girlfriend or two who constantly is writing and asking how to cook something or other.
One note about how I write recipes---I tend not to write them in measured amounts as I rarely measure stuff but I will try to be as accurate as I possibly can with everything.
Tonight if I was cooking, it would be soft-shell crabs, fried green tomatoes, and a crispy salad. We are doing dinner out tonight (sushi!---yum) so this will actually be for tomorrow since I picked up some huge crabs today and have a ton of huge green tomatoes in the garden. Fried soft-shell crabs are one of my favorite summer time foods.
Soft-shell crabs
Each July and August I get lonesome for picking my own off the tabs on the back of boats at the near the marina which was my neighbor in Norfolk, VA. There's a million ways to cook them but I prefer fried or grilled. This weekend I am frying them. Figure on about two crabs per adult as a main course and one per as an appetizer.
Clean them if the fish market did not do that for you...just ask them and they will.
Soak in milk for about an hour in the fridge. I'm convinced this makes them fluffier.
Prepare a milk and egg mixture for dredging. I usually put a drop of tabasco in it.
Prepare another bowl with flour and add some black pepper and old bay.
Dredge twice---milk, flour, milk, flour and set aside for about thirty minutes in the fridge uncovered.
For a sauce---
Juice of one lemon.
1 clove garlic palm crushed.
1/2 stick butter.
Use a heavy skillet to fry them in using very hot clarified butter for about 3 minutes per side. Resist the urge to flip more often or over fry. Remove to warm plate and stick the butter in the pan along with the garlic and lemon juice. Brown it and drizzle over the crabs. Pretty it up some with scallion greens or fresh chives.
Fried green tomatoes
Use large meaty green or nearly green tomatoes cut into 1/2 inch slices.
Cornmeal
Using the leftover milk/egg mixture, dredge them in the flour. I usually add cayenne and some lemon zest to the flour after doing the crabs. You could just use the same mix as it is. Then dredge a second time in the cornmeal.
Fry about 5 minutes per side in very hot peanut oil---flipping every few minutes. Make sure your coating is crisping up before flipping however as the flour comes off easily.
Serve it all with a fresh salad of cucumbers drizzled with fresh minced dill.
Enjoy!
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From Kate:
I'm Kate, and I cook every day for three people who have very different tastes and nutritional needs. On a less regular basis, I also cook for my sister and my daughter, both of whom work long hours and don't always have the time or energy to worry about shopping and preparation of fresh, local, seasonal food.
I'm aiming at readers who are short on time and working on a budget; people who are not happy with eating just take-out Chinese or those heat-'em-up containers of sodium-laden meatloaf or roast beef now found in the fresh meat cases of the grocery store. People who are concerned enough about prepackaged manufactured food products and what they're doing to our health to be willing to learn about cooking and to spend a little extra time (but not a lot of extra money) to feed themselves and their families well.
Maybe most importantly, my approach to cooking is that it's creative and it's fun! Just as a musician seldom plays the same tune twice in exactly the same way, once you learn the basics you can play all kinds of riffs off flavors and textures without slavishly following a recipe.
On the other hand, it pays to be flexible! It isn't always possible or desirable to go buy completely fresh, completely local ingredients and spend hours in a hot kitchen making a masterpiece. I hope to show you some shortcuts here and there to help put together meals quickly or cheaply (or both!), depending on your needs of the moment. So what am I feeding my gang tonight? Because it's been so hot, I won't want to do too much in the kitchen. I'll stop by the grocery on the way home and pick up a prepared roasted chicken from the deli for this no-cook meal.
Chicken Salad Pita Pockets
* 2 cups cooked chicken, chopped
* 4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
* 3 ribs celery, sliced thinly
* 1/4 cup mayonnaise
* 1 tablespoon lemon juice
* 2 teaspoons prepared mustard
* 2 tablespoons chopped green onion or chives (optional)
* Salt and pepper to taste
* Green leaf lettuce
* 2 pita rounds
1. Combine all ingredients except lettuce and pita in a large bowl and stir to coat evenly.
2. Cut pita bread in half and separate layers to form pockets. Line pita pockets with green leaf lettuce. Spoon 1/4 of chicken salad mixture into each pocket.
Serves 4.
Please visit me at Jazz Cooking for more information and lots more recipes.
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From Cookiebear:
I'm cookiebear, it's 4:30 in the morning, and I believe in simplicity, planning
and locally grown when it comes to dinner --- despite company.
The simplicity comes from experience. Several lifetimes ago, I cooked
professionally --- further evidence of my inherent knack for annoying the
pigeonholers. My first professional experience included preparing a dessert of half
a papaya filled with ricotta and covered in a sauce made of only raspberries and
sugar. It was then I learned simple is better, when it comes to food.
This lesson has been invaluable because my life is insane, so simplicity is crucial.
And so is planning, which I don't do well. But I have to plan because, not only is
time lacking, the nearest decent grocery is 25 miles away. My planning, however,
isn't a matter of daybooks and intricate lists --- it's a matter of keeping a
running list in my head of have to dos and really should think about doings.
I've tried lists. I lose them. Worse, they distract me from what's really going
on. Besides, I'm a proponent of The Oral Tradition, and there's no lists
there, or so I tell myself.
As for local, that goes without saying and, if you follow farmerchuck or
OrangeCloud, you know why. But my taste for local emerged long ago because I grew up
on it: tomatoes, strawberries, succotash, bass, trout and crappie, wild turkey,
venison --- and the occasional crawfish pie or praline from fishing trips in Cajun
Country.
Now, dinner this week has been especially simple because life at Chez
Cookiebear has been especially insane. On top of house painting, heat, drought
and the seasonal all this crap has gotta go!, this is the time of year that
all the bruises and chigger bites finally pay off.
First, butterfly gardening. On Tuesday, I received notification from Monarch Watch that I now have a resident
monarch population. They join the sulfurs, Painted Ladies, Black and Yellow Swallowtails, and countless others I haven't yet identified.
Then I found billions of Gulf Fritillary butterfly caterpillars.
Then, the frogs. Everywhere. In the composter. Swimming in empty pots. Napping on elderberry and gourds and echinacea.
And finally, weeding and harvesting and cutting and mowing in boiling heat. My first
grapes, although I left the cardinals some. Tomatoes and squash. Enormous bags of
basil. And painting interior ceilings and sorting --- stuff. Too much stuff!
So dinners stayed pretty simple --- a bunch of freshly picked grapes with some goat
cheese or a single tomato. In fact, the best dinner this week was a Brandywine
tomato. A monster. Huge. I first noticed it over a month ago, hidden at the bottom
of the bed, and picked it a week or so ago. I worried a monstrosity like that
couldn't possibly taste good.
I was wrong. I served it Thursday with salt and a side of Vegenaise. It yielded two
layers of juicy, bright red slices on a large dinner plate --- and it was fabulous.
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Kate and Cookiebear will stick around for discussion and commenting. I have to run but look forward to joining in later this evening.