guacamole

I used to hate avocados (their horrible, unctuous sliminess!), but have grown to like them in my old age, as long as they're not mushed up too thoroughly--there must be lumps to mitigate the slime. Anyway, I got some nice bargain avocados at Annie's favorite store, so decided to make guacamole out of them.



Ingredients:
2 shallots, 1 coarsely chopped and 1 finely diced
2 serranos, stemmed and coarsely chopped
3 tomatillos
4 radishes, 2 finely diced and 2 thinly sliced
handful of coriander
pinch of salt
3 avocados
juice of a lime


Toast the unhusked tomatillos on a hot griddle till the husks are covered with charred spots, then peel and coarsely chop them. Put them in your molcajete or mortar, along with the coarsely chopped shallot, serranos, tomatillos, about 2/3 of the coriander, and the salt. Grind it all up till you get tired of grinding, then add the avocado. I scoop the flesh from the shell then mush it through my fingers, leaving plenty of lumps. Add the finely diced radish and shallot, the remaining coriander leaves very coarsely chopped, and the lime juice, mix it all together, and decorate with the radish slices.



I ate it for my breakfast with tortillas and fried duck eggs, along with some really good watermelon (with seeds!) that I got at Annie's favorite store.

lunch

Here's the nice lunch I had yesterday--fried duck eggs on a toasted demi-baguette with lettuce and HP, and a broiled peach. The peach was under-ripe and I thought cooking might improve it, but it only warmed it up. My HP brown sauce's label says it's a 'NEW improved recipe,' but I think the only improvement is that now high fructose corn syrup is a top ingredient.

Café Presse

Rachael, Jake, and I went to Café Presse on Wednesday--poor Rachael was sick, so ended up eating only a couple of asparagi from her salad, but Jake and I liked our Croques Monsieur et Madame and the French fries with mayonaise. We ate Rachael's salad, too--it had goat cheese vinaigrette that was mysteriously tasty. Even though Rachael couldn't eat her food, she seemed to have a good time and said she liked it better than Le Pichet, as it seemed less hip and more approachable.

cherry jam

Way last Wednesday Annie and I picked pie cherries for jam, but by the time I got home I was too tired and hot and achy to do anything with them but stick them in the refrigerator and hope for the best. I worked for the next five days, so jam-making was on hold till Tuesday.

I went to our cherry spot (a formerly abandoned building which now seems to be a school), and to my dismay the yard was filled with aged Japanese gardeners (it sounded like they were speaking Japanese, though the only word I recognised was 'hai'). I was limited to picking from the tree that hung out over the sidewalk, but still managed to get another quart-and-a-half. I supplemented this with some nice raspberries from an alley on my way home.

My cherries from Wednesday were about 95% good, so I pitted them along with the new ones with my Cherrymat. The Cherrymat works better for large cherries like Bings--smaller ones require individual attention to ensure that they don't roll through unpitted--but it's still quicker than doing them with a bobbypin, plus the juice is contained.

I ended up with 1162g of fruit, including 180g of raspberries. I cooked this, along with a few cherry kernels and the juice of a small lime, with 870g sugar till it was 221F, then added a few mint leaves and bottled it. The next morning it was still really runny, so I opened up the jars and boiled everything up with a jar of apple pectin till it got to 222F.

I ended up with seven half-pints, and this time it set up nicely.

posole

I didn't have enough leftovers for 6 1/2 days of work, so one night I came home and made myself posole with mole verde. The mole had pepitas; tomatillos; poblanos and serranos; and parsley, coriander, and radish leaves. I'd roasted the peppers and pressure-cooked the posole and runner cannellinis in the morning, so it didn't take too long, and then I had enough for three more days of work lunches. I ate it with cabbage, radish, avocado, dried Mexican oregano, and lime juice.

work lunches

I'm in the midst of a six-day stretch of work, so have been mainly been eating nice leftovers, like fried rice (with Trader Joe's Soycutash)

and Indian food in my Cookjoy.

There was a 4th of July potluck today, though, so I brought limey coleslaw, adapted from this recipe. I forgot to get tomatoes so used bell pepper and radishes instead, and added some agave nectar because my lime was particularly sour.

Japanese food

I made a nice dinner for myself from Washoku, a new-to-me book of Japanese home cooking. Before I even opened the book I somehow gave myself a terrible papercut, I think with its very sharp cover.

I started out by making kombu-jiru, vegetarian dashi using only kombu and shiitake (I used Chinese black mushrooms instead), as it was an ingredient in my two main dishes. I used the kombu and mushroom to make Kelp and Mushroom Relish.


When I opened the konyaku packet for Carrots and Konnyaku Tossed in Creamy Tofu Sauce I was momentarily overwhelmed with its fishy smell, and had to check the ingredients on the label to be sure that I hadn't accidentally gotten some sort of fish cake. It was all down to the seaweed flecks, so I continued on to cutting the carrots and konyaku into batonnet (the recipe said matchsticks, but I was lazy). I fried them briefly, braised them with a little dashi and sake, them tossed them with the tofu sauce (tofu whizzed with dashi, miso, and mirin).

Finally, I made Miso Soup with Fried Tofu, Leafy Greens, and Scallions. I couldn't find daikon tops, so I used teenage turnip greens. I ate it all with brown rice from Chico cooked in my wonderful rice cooker, which makes brown rice better than I've managed with any other method (the trouble is, it takes 1.5 hours).