You Are What You Eat

I made deer jerky. It was delicious. I wish I could post a proper recipe, but I didn't weigh or measure anything. About 2lbs venison, sliced about 1/4 inch. around 1/4 cup each of lawry's, pickling salt, and brown sugar. A few shakes of liquid smoke and worcestershire. Red, White, and Black Pepper. Garlic Powder. I put it all in a ziplock and mooshed it around. Then I put it in the fridge for about a day, with periodic mooshing around. At bedtime, I put it in the oven on 175 degrees Farenheit. It was done when I got up. In retrospect, it was insufficiently garlicky. I am thinking that not much harm could come of using fresh instead of powdered. I am also thinking of trying to make some sort of salmon jerky.

Cooking At Work

Ok, the crickets can stop chirping now.

Seems like I've been doing my best cooking at work lately. I have a quesadilla press in my desk. No Lie. We had quesadillas on the last food day and I never took it home.

Monday, someone we'll call Schoonie brought in a metric buttload of apples (same as 2.2 avoir dupois buttloads). I made stewed apples in the microwave. And you can too! If you have spices, butter and honey at work. Just cut a couple of apples up, toss with a little penzey's baking spice, a small pat of butter and a spoonful of honey. Nuke it for 2 to 4 minutes.

I just made a little Caprese salad for my peeps after another coworker brought in basil and tomatoes from her family's gardens, a ball of fresh mozzarella, and balsamic vinegar.

So, keep a knife in your desk, but don't tell HR.

LOST Correction

Well, nuts. I put the wrong link in my post regarding the LOST season finale. Here is the most awesome summary on the internet. And I say that as a long time fan of Television Without Pity.

LOST Lolcap

Ratatouille

Ratatouille is one of those "Man Goes On a Journey" stories. Only there are 2 men. And one of them is a rat. Actually, there are a lot of rats in this movie. If you were made motion-sick by Cars, you might get freaked out by the rattiness of all the rats in the rat-crowd scenes. The other warning about this movie is that it may make you crave cheese. Or is that just me?

Unlike other animated offerings, the character voices were stellar-- seamless and opaque without the intrusion of the performing celebrities. I actually had to watch the credits to identify them all. I cannot say that this is the best part of the movie, because the story and the animation were also great and I would not want to disparage either aspect.

The story begins in the country, where we can see the humble beginnings of our twitchy hero, Remy. Remy's foodie gifts are being wasted as he sniffs food for the colony to make sure they don't eat poison. Well, Remy is quite lucky to have a bumbling brother who gets him tossed down a sewer so that he can float to Paris. The initial Paris scene is dazzlingly animated. It looks like they filmed the scene instead of rendering it.

So, Remy strolls into the eponymous restaurant of his idol, Auguste Gusteau after having a few conversations with the spirit of Gusteau that lives in his ratty little head. No mumbo jumbo like ghosts in this flick! Just a rat who talks and eventually controls the restaurant's hopeless garbage boy, Alfredo Linguini, by hair pulling.

Alfredo's sudden transformation from garbage boy to soup genius soon attracts the attention of the whole kitchen, and makes him dangerous enemies. There are two good villains to root against-- Skinner, the executive chef since the passing of Gusteau and Anton Ego-- a critic. Skinner is motivated by profit, profit, and more profit. Ego is simply a cynical food snob-- made rail thin by his refusal to swallow anything he doesn't love.

Speaking of LOOOOOOVE, no movie set in Paris is complete without a little romance. Colette is Alfredo's human mentor and love interest, voiced by Janeane Garafolo.

There were so many great foodie moments in Ratatouille, but I don't want to spoil it. It's worth seeing, but smuggle in your own movie snacks-- cheese and fruit would do nicely.

What Do You Do With a Deli Chicken?

I could torture you with a Weird Al Style Parody of "What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor?" So be warned.

We often get a rotisserie chicken and attack it with forks when J and I have failed to plan. Augs' favorite part is the skin. Shudder. We rarely eat an entire chicken and so I have started to try to do something interesting with the remainders. Usually, I start by surveying the fridge for things that are about to go dodgy.

Tonight I found a teeny little gladware with a knob of garlic butter, most of an onion, and 2 kinds of mushrooms. Oh yes, and Pinot Grigio. A splash of Pinot Grigio in the cook is sometimes inspirational.

I put on some polenta-- toast coarse cornmeal in a pan with a smidge of oil until it smells corny. Yeah, corny. Then add liquid and turn the heat to low. I like a very creamy polenta, so I use a 3.5:1 ratio. 2 parts of the liquid were milk, 1 part was the now gelatinous juices at the bottom of the deli chicken container, and the .5 was water. Had there been some prepared stock in the house, I'd have used that. You need to use LOW heat, and come back often to stir. If you have a nonstick saucepan, now would be a good time to use it. Otherwise, be prepared to soak the pan and scrape it later. (For that sort of thing, I have about 8 of those little brown nylon scrapers that Pampered Chef sells.) At the last minute, I generally chuck a handful of grated parmesan into the polenta.

Next I peeled the onion, sliced it on the prime meridian and then sliced it thinly. I put that in the skillet with a smidge of olive oil and salt to soften and get a wee bit brown. Then I sliced up the forgotten baby bella mushrooms and button mushrooms and chucked them in with the forgotten garlic butter. I cooked that down a bit, then lowered the heat and shredded the remaining chicken. You can do that first, but I prefer to do the vegetables first, then the meat since I don't want Jason to wash 2 cutting boards later. Truly, I am the Best Wife Ever.

I added the chicken with a little vino (3-4 oz?) and water (about the same), another sprinkle of salt, some herbes Parisienne from Penzey's and a grind of pepper. I reduced the heat to a low simmer and let it cook until umm, the table was wiped down and the easy mac for my ungrateful children was ready. About 7 to 10 minutes.

The chicken, wine and herbiness were light and delicious for summer. The polenta added elements of creaminess and heartiness. The mushroooms and onions grounded it with earthiness. It could have used more pepper but it was quite delicious otherwise. Something green and slightly bitter would be nice with it, like mustard greens with shallots, pine nuts, and golden raisins.

Dinner Redemption

Much like with comedy, timing is everything in cooking. It makes the difference between everything hitting the table at one time, golden brown and delicious and everything just plain hitting the fan. Last night, I totally pooched dinner. Charlie helped by throwing multiple kitchen- and mommy - centric tantrums. I had planned on serving shrimp scampi, mustard greens in the style of Bianco Ristorante's spinach, and butternut squash ravioli with sage-brown butter and parmesan.

Sadly, we ended up with chewy shrimp, watery greens, and sad looking ravioli. Other highlights included a fine layer of sage all over the kitchen counters and a buttery handprint on my shirt. In the end, we went to Sonic for consolation sundaes and then I had a major cleaning frenzy before LOST (which was COMPLETELY AWESOME, BTW. )

Tonight, using the same marinade from the lamentable shrimp, I made scallops. Basically, salt, lemon juice, olive oil, a handful of teeny little chilis, and a buttload of garlic in a ziplock with a pound of scallops overnight. I use frozen because most of the so-called fresh ones have been frozen anyway, plus they are soaked in a preservative called TSP, which makes my mouth swell up.

I made an artichoke with my usual garlicky dip. The dip is just a dollop each of yogurt and mayo, a squeeze of lemon juice, a pressed clove or 2 of garlic, and fire salt). Artichokes are just so beautiful. And fun to eat. In a stunning victory, I got both kids to try a leaf! They hated it, but still! Tried! A! Vegetable!

The star of dinner though was Clotilde Dusoulier's Cauliflower Gratin The cauliflower was soft, the sauce was creamy, the cheese was nutty, and the breadcrumbs were crunchy. Dusoulier's cookbook is in my cart at Amazon as we speak. I can't wait for the leftovers.

L O S T Finale

First of all, if you watch L O S T, you should check out this season recap at LiveJournal:

http://ack-attack.livejournal.com/370261.html

Now, I am a fan, but I also believe in mocking the hell out of JJ Abrams and crew because, well I'm a mean, mean bitch. I judge the writing crew to be comprised of 12 year old boys who can't meet girls outside of the debate team. There's some seriously weird gender stuff on this show. First of all the women who get laid die on this show (Shannon, Ana-Lucia, and even though she just LOOKED at Hurley, Libby). If they don't die, apparently they get pregnant, which will kill them, so they will die 20 weeks later (Sun and probably Kate). The men just have super Island enhanced sperm so they get to father the doomed, doomed island spawn. There are also strange properties at work keeping all the women smooth and hairless while the men sport rugged looking stubble. It's like the Island of Nair. They actually had 2 girls mud wrestle this season. PLEASE. If they must do this, then can we please have Sawyer, Jin and Sayid lose their pants permanently?

I have some theories on what is going to happen tonight-- supposedly a 'fan favorite' is going to die. After some watercooler debate, I think it will be Desmond or Sayid. The two main components of the eyecandy. It seems too obvious that it would be Charlie. And they don't have the guts to kill Jack. Hurley's character seems to have reached the end of his arc though.

I further predict that one of the underwater Bond girls holding Charlie hostage is Benry's Annie.

Also, I predict that Juliet is up to no damn good. And Jack will cry. He's such a baby.

The Right Call

Stopping at Sinbad's for naan was an EXCELLENT IDEA. I am a genius! It rounded out the meal wonderfully. The price was definitely right at 99 cents each. The naans were fresh, fluffy, and delicious. Charlie even ate them without butter!