I’m on Whidbey Island for the weekend, driving towards Double Bluff when I see a simple, hand-painted sign announcing “EGGS.” I’m in a (modern day) foraging-for-food kind of mood so I pull up the drive.

I see a man in the window staring blankly out at me and wonder if I’ve got the wrong house. There are no signs indicating eggs, only a sign that reads “Hippies Enter Here.” I’m having a slow morning and it takes me a second to realize that it’s pointing to the only entrance to the house.

The first thing I see is an old, bearded man wearing a dirty wife-beater, tooling around in a Hoveround chair. The second thing my eye goes to is the naked lady wall calendar and I’m unsure if this is actually a place to by eggs. My attention is diverted back to the man when he says “I know what YOU want…”

My fight or flight instinct has been on the fritz lately and it kicks in. But before I have time to make a decision, the man follows up with: “EGGS! I got ‘em in dozen or 18-packs.” He then motors off into the back room with me calling after him “Eighteen please!”

I’m trying to avoid eye-contact with the lady in the calendar so I look up and find a really great collection of old beer cans lining the top shelves. I pointedly examine them until he returns.

He is carrying a styrofoam tray on his lap and smiling so much that I’m instantly disarmed and charmed. Before I can pay he opens the carton to show me a gorgeous array of pearl, green and brown eggs. He is obviously (and rightly) proud, which leaves me feeling honored that he is sharing his eggs with me. I hand over $7 and continue on to the beach looking for more adventures.

———————

The next morning I announce that I’m making fried eggs with hollandaise sauce. I was expecting enthusiasm but am met with silence. No one actually said “But, we don’t have any bread” or “That sounds weird” so I take their silence as permission to proceed.

Awhile back my mom found this great, fool-proof recipe for hollandaise that, oddly enough, is from a Cuisinart manual. It is SO easy, but I manage to fuck it up.

First my butter explodes in the microwave, coating every surface in a deluge of grease. Then the butter that’s still left in the dish cools too much, so when I pour it into the Cuisinart it doesn’t thicken the sauce. I switch to the stove top method, but with less than 5 seconds of heat it’s the consistency of spackle. My fried eggs are done at this point and since no one really wanted the hollandaise to begin with, I don’t attempt to fix it.

It turns out that crazy thick hollandaise still tastes great. Although it is weird to eat egg sauce over eggs with nothing else. The best thing was the color. The yolks were so fresh that they produced a hollandaise the color of marigolds. Beautiful.

Technorati Tags: eggs, hollandaise, Whidbey

I absolutely love Indian food. Love, love, love it. Which is why I’m crushed that I’m so bad at cooking it. About once a year I’ll try to make an Indian meal, and without fail, I have near catastrophic results. I used to blame it on the recipes, but now I’m starting to see the common denominator in all these failures: me.

Laura at the Seattle Weekly recently turned me on to Suvir Saran of Devi in New York; she compared him to Vikram Vij of Vij’s in Vancouver. I’m a huge fan of Vij’s so I was excited to learn about Suvir’s latest cookbook, and was even more excited to see sample recipes posted on his website—a perfect Indian menu handed to me on a platter.

This is where I’d like to state that even the best recipe can end up horribly wrong when executed poorly… or if you start making weird substitutions.

My first mistake was to substitute goat for the lamb in the Lamb Curry with Coriander, Garam Masala and Coconut recipe. (Yes, I actually had goat in my freezer from my last trip out to Exotic Meats.) The goat was way too fatty and overpowered everything in this dish. Plus I didn’t grind my spice paste enough so it was grainy and caught in the back of the throat.

The second mistake was making a half recipe of the Rice Pilaf with Standing Spices, but forgetting to halve the amount of oil. Oops. The rice was barely edible because of the greasiness, but it would have been incredible had I followed the recipe properly.

My third mistake was buying the wrong yogurt for the cucumber raita. Somehow it was too thin (or my cucumbers were too water-logged) and the raita ended up anemic and thin. Next time I’ll get some thick, creamy, goat milk yogurt. Mmmm.

The Carrots with Cumin and Lime recipe was probably the only thing that I made properly. The only problem was that the recipe called for curry leaves. I managed to find them at Uwajimaya but I have to say that curry leaf is one of the most unusual and bizarre flavors I’ve ever tasted. I’m at a loss for words to describe the smell or the taste—except to say it is pungent. Curry leaves rank right up there with the likes of asafoetida and Szechuan pepper in terms of strangeness. The weird part is that I can’t even tell if I love them or hate them. I suspect that I will grow to truly love them over time, but for now I have to take baby steps and use smaller amounts until I get used to the taste.

The last mistake never even made it to the table. This was a recipe for tamarind chutney, which I planned to serve with the papadams I found at PFI. The chutney was actually incredible. Until I burnt the hell out of it.

It’s been over two years since I’ve had a dinner go this wrong, but it was a good lesson for me not to try five new recipes in one sitting. Especially in a cuisine where I’ve proven myself to be completely incompetent.

Technorati Tags: cooking, curry leaves, food, goat, Indian, kitchen disaster

As I’ve said before, I love BBQs. I’m not sure if it’s because they epitomize summer or if it’s just the classic grass-is-greener syndrome since I live in an apartment and don’t own a grill. Either way, when K invited me to her family barbecue I was excited to squeeze in one more before the end of summer.

When I arrived, K had already put out a really delicious salmon and cream cheese spread with crackers and her mother had made these cute little appetizers of cherry tomatoes, marinated bocconcini and basil, which were skewered onto toothpicks. It was a brilliant and portable twist on the Caprese Salad.

For the grill, K had purchased chicken drumsticks and tenders from Trader Joe’s and then slathered them with a bottled BBQ concentrate sauce. This was such a perfect (and easy) idea because it was a mid-week BBQ and there were lots of kids who appreciated the boneless cuts. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t; I made a sandwich out of the chicken tenders and it was great. I had brought along some duck sausages from Exotic Meats. They were a little heavy on the liver taste, but otherwise very juicy and flavorful.

For sides, K made a beautiful (pink) salad of beets and cucumbers that were marinated in pickling spices. Considering that I’m not really a fan of beets, this dish was pretty good. K’s dad made a fantastic potato salad with tender purple and red potatoes, lots of capers and bits of celery.

As delicious as all the food was, the highlight of the evening turned out to be dessert. K has wheat allergies so she’s always making things with spelt. This time she made a plum galette. It had a crust of spelt flour, lemon yogurt and lots of butter, then a layer of frangipane filling topped with fresh plum slices. The flavor was nutty and rich and it had an unbelievable crunch to it—almost like a hard-cooked puff pastry.

Even though I’m sad to see summer go, this was a great send off.

Technorati Tags: BBQ, Caprese, duck, galette

After a very successful doufeu debut with pork, I decided to try the doufeu out on lamb. I was feeling a little reckless (… or was it lazy?) and opted not to use a recipe. I chose some survival spice, coriander and cumin out of the cupboard and applied a nice coating to the lamb. I sautéed some onions, ginger and garlic and the browned the roast on all sides. I added a few cups of chicken broth and slid the doufeu into the oven to let it do its thing.

After a few hours I pulled it out of the oven and inspected the lamb. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but when I tried to slice the roast it fell into shreds. Honesty. I never knew lamb could get that tender, but it was also odd because the meat was dry. I think I made the mistake of cooking it like it was a pork shoulder, but the lamb didn’t have nearly enough fat content to cook that long.

Luckily, the flavor was great—although next time I’d use way more survival spice and less cumin (I went nuts with the cumin). I served the lamb shreds with truffled mashed potatoes (potatoes with Casina Rossa Truffle & Salt) and beautiful yellow beans with butter and Sel Gris with Herbs.

Stick with me; this is where it gets good. The next day I thought, “What can I do with leftover lamb shreds and mashed potatoes?”

Shepherd’s pie was the natural choice.

I mixed the leftover stewing juices with the lamb and layered them into the bottom of a casserole. I topped it with a thick layer of mashed potatoes and a fresh sprinkle of truffle salt. Then I spread a layer of panko on top and drizzled it with melted butter. The combination of the crisp topping, creamy potatoes, lamb and truffle salt was outstanding. Plus the potatoes completely masked the fact that the lamb was dry. Rarely have I ever said this, but… the leftovers blew the main dish away!

Technorati Tags: doufeu, lamb, truffle

Tonight I needed an easy and quick dinner. I defrosted the longaniza sausage my brother brought me (from somewhere in Brooklyn) and made a simple Queso Fundido con Chorizo.

The longaniza was AMAZING. I would maybe equate it to… the best chorizo on the planet? It had so much paprika that my hands were stained red after removing it from the casing. It was also a really fatty grind of meat, but had hardly any gristle—which made the texture very soft and luxuriant.

I’m unsure what the technical difference is between chorizo and longaniza—could it truly just be length? If so, then I would say bigger really is better.

Anyone know where to get good longaniza in Seattle? Waiting until my brother comes to town again just isn’t going to work.

Technorati Tags: chorizo, longaniza, sausage

“Leftovers” is such an unappealing word; it leaves an impression of undesirable, unwanted food. So when I invited my brother over for leftovers, I don’t think he had any lofty expectations. Of course when he found out the leftovers consisted of the pork I Doufeu’d (yes, I’m inventing new words) last Sunday, he was pretty excited. He made a comment about my leftovers being better than most restaurant food, which made me smile. I love my brother. He knows how to butter a sister up.

I gently reheated the roast in its tea sauce and the pork managed to become even more tender and succulent—a thing I wouldn’t have expected to be possible. To accompany the pork, I cooked some fresh, young green beans and slathered on a bit of butter and a beautiful herbed salt from Salt Traders. I also made a package of tarhonya which I had purchased from PFI a while back.

Tarhonya is a Hungarian pasta made from flour, eggs, salt and water. It’s shaped like tiny hard nuggets of barley and is an odd, not-quite-found-in-nature yellow. After some research, I discovered it’s best to brown the nuggets in butter or lard and then add broth to finishing cooking—kind of like a rice pilaf.

I browned the tarhonya in duck fat and then added chicken stock. I was worried that the pasta would get too mushy so I only cooked it for about twenty minutes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly long enough because some of the nuggets were still hard and crunchy. It was good, but I think with an additional ten minutes of cooking, tarhonya might turn out to be my favorite pasta.

It all started with my main dish. I really wanted another roast leg of lamb—it’s just so easy and impressive. This time I found a beautiful, Moroccan Spice-Rubbed Leg of Lamb recipe on Epicurious. When an Epicurious recipe has that many glowing reviews, I feel confident that the recipe will turn out well. So completely ignoring my first rule of thumb for dinner parties, I proceeded with an untested recipe. Now one untested recipe is usually okay, but since I’ve had zero experience cooking Moroccan cuisine, I ended up with an entire menu of untested recipes. Typically this turns out one of two ways: a complete and total disaster or, much less often, amazing.

With a Moroccan theme nailed down, it was an easy leap to couscous for a side dish. Of course I didn’t want to make just any couscous; I wanted to make proper couscous. One that’s been steamed multiple times, with each grain lovingly separated by hand. I found the perfect thrice-steamed couscous recipe in the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook. Even though the recipe sounded elaborate and time consuming, it didn’t send out any alert bells because everything I’ve made from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook has been exquisitely delicious.

For the veggie I wanted something colorful (since everything thus far was brown). Moroccan carrot salads kept popping up in my research and I narrowed it down to one. The winning recipe was chosen because of its use of asafetida. Asafetida (a.k.a. “Devil’s Dung”) is known for its pungent, rotting smell. I’ve had a jar of asafetida languishing in the cabinet for a few months now and every time I open the door, the smell knocks me down and assertively reminds me that I need to cook with it. (In case you’re keeping track: new recipe #3).

The typical Moroccan appetizer is Bastilla, which is a savory-sweet phyllo concoction, but it looked too time consuming. Nothing else caught my eye until I started looking at Egyptian dips and spreads, which changed my dinner theme from Moroccan to North African. Du’a (or Dukka) is an intriguing mixture of ground nuts and spices that is used like a dip for bread (new recipe #4) and for my second appetizer I chose an Egyptian Fava Bean Dip (Foul Mudammes) solely because I’ve been obsessed with fava beans lately.

Some of the more traditional Moroccan desserts seemed difficult to make and most of them were deep fried (and couldn’t be made ahead of time). I started thinking about phyllo dough and the nutty, sweet, layers of baklava, and as if to reinforce this choice a few people had randomly told me that it’s quite easy to make. I did more research and discovered that there is an Egyptian version of Baklava, which is similar to the Greek except for the omission of honey and the addition of orange blossom water (new, and final, recipe #6).

Two nights before the party, I’m dripping with melted butter and swearing at the phyllo sheets that refuse to come apart, trying to remember who it was that told me making baklava was easy. I have little patience (or skill) when it comes to making desserts, so choosing to make baklava was a little like playing Russian roulette. After more than three hours of assembly and baking, I pulled the baklava out of the oven. On a whim, I had doubled the amount of nut filling so they were chock-full, but they were gorgeous! In fact, so gorgeous that I didn’t automatically swear off making them ever again, like I usually do.

The night before the party I picked up a beautiful five pound leg of boneless lamb from A&J Meats, which went straight into a Ziploc with the so-simple-to-prepare-I-wonder-if-it’s-any-good marinade. I also assembled the carrot salad so that it could marinate overnight. I wanted to give the salad a face lift, so I hand shredded raw carrots into long strands on my Japanese benriner; they were infinitely prettier than uneven hunks of carrot. I also made quick work of the two dips in my food processor. The Du’a nut mixture was driving me crazy (in a good way) because it was so fragrant while toasting and the fava bean dip barely made it to the party; I couldn’t stop eating it. It was creamy and luscious from the combination of fava beans and olive oil, and the curry tomato flavor was undeniably addictive.

This left the roasting of the lamb and couscous preparation for the day of the party. Unfortunately, the couscous was decidedly more complicated than I ever could have imagined. This was mostly because I don’t own a couscous steamer (a.k.a. a couscousiere) and had to assemble a makeshift one. And by makeshift, I mean really makeshift. The idea is to steam the couscous over flavored water three times, fluffing and separating the grains between each steaming. In order to steam properly, you need a tight seal between your water source and your couscous holder. I took a large pot and fit my largest colander inside. It was a perfect fit, except the colander touched the bottom of the pot. Excellent for boiling, not so good for steaming.

I tried a variety of items to lift up the colander and finally settled on a large biscuit cutter, but this left a huge gap at the top. I had read the proper way to create an airtight seal is to take a tea towel, soak it in a flour and water paste and mold it into place; I did the best I could with foil. This may seem like common sense, but I would like to point out that it’s important to watch the water and make sure it doesn’t boil over. I ended up with a bottom layer of gummy couscous and a stove stained bright yellow from turmeric. Luckily the ruined part of the couscous congealed into a solid mass so it was fairly easy to remove and discard.

The party started off great with the guests bringing a surprising array of cocktails from all around the globe. We had a wonderful twist on a Caipirinha (Brazilian), which was made with cachaça and a mint infused simple syrup. We then moved on to the all-American fuzzy navel. The best cocktail of the night (and maybe closest to being Moroccan) was a concoction of strong brewed mint tea, pomegranate juice, mint simple syrup and vodka. It was incredibly refreshing and the perfect summer drink.

The appetizers were a huge hit—despite the fact that my stove top went out and I couldn’t fry the pita breads. Oddly enough, this was a blessing in disguise because as I waited impatiently for the burner to heat up I realized that the pita breads I had bought the day before were moldy! I happened to have also purchased Lavash flat breads so no one was the wiser.

After cocktail hour we sat down to dinner. The broiled lamb was cooked perfectly and sported a nice brown crust. The lamb was juicy and tender and the flavor was outstanding. None of the marinade ingredients stood out on their own, but blended together they were complex and complimented the lamb. Despite the pains I went through for the couscous, I have to say it was worth it. Steamed couscous is an entirely different animal than boiled couscous. It’s light and fluffy with fully separated grains perfumed with the barest hint of turmeric and coriander. The cold carrot salad had a great crunch and a wonderfully exotic flavor (luckily asafetida tastes much better than it smells). Dessert was easy and delicious, albeit a bit messy. The baklava were flaky, sticky, sweet and fragrant with orange blossoms.

So six for six. Never before have I been able to successfully turn out that many new, untested recipes in one night. And not only did each recipe turn out well individually, but as a whole, the meal came together beautifully. The colors, textures and flavors were well balanced and had enough of a similar thread to tie them all together—and at the same time were unique enough to not be boring. I seem to be saying this after every Hostess Project party, but… this really was the best one yet. Either I’m getting better and better at this Hostess Project thing, or I’m damned lucky. I like to think it’s a little of both.

Like last time, I only used salt and pepper, but this time I added a touch of Danish Viking-Smoked Salt, which imparted a lovely smoky flavor. The ridiculously easy, so-simple-that-even-I-can-remember-it-by-heart recipe can be found here: Dry Ribs.

Bon Appetit!

Despite the very brief marinating period, the chicken came out full flavored, rich and delicious. The pandan leaves imparted a wonderful, almost floral scent to the chicken which paired nicely with the slightly sweet and fishy marinade. Next time I want to grill them, as I’m betting they’d be absolutely sublime.

I bought a nice looking rack of short ribs from Uwajimaya, sprinkled them with coarse salt, lots of fresh cracked pepper and put them in the oven at 350. After 45 minutes, I flipped them and cooked another 45 minutes. I then turned off the heat and let them cook/rest in the oven for another 30 minutes.

When I pulled them out they looked amazing. Perfectly browned with the very edges starting to turn dark and crispy. As I tried to lift them off the broiler pan, they fell apart. They were so tender that I couldn’t move the rack without the meat falling off the bones. They looked and smelled so luscious, that I couldn’t even take the time to snap a picture. They went directly into my mouth and were the best ribs I’ve ever tasted.