Category Archives: Home Cookin’

German Chocolate Cookies

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👨‍🍳 Cooking in the Time of COVID 👨‍🍳

It is my understanding that there are four rules which require strict adherence while living through a pandemic: mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and baking.

Now, I have been known to practice the fine art of creating over-the-top cookie porn during the Christmas season (check it out here), but that happens when I’m baking for others and not just myself. Those confections are far too labor intensive to fill the role of a mere absent minded, mood brightening carbobomb with a cup of coffee when the spirit beckons – or when the cats get out of control, for that matter.

Therefore, in compliance with the current mandate, I set out to find a recipe on the interwebs that would satisfy two rules: prep time measured in minutes rather than days, and since it was snowing and I wasn’t about to trudge through waist-high drifts to get to the supermarket, one that only called for ingredients I had on hand – which in this case included oatmeal, chocolate, pecans and coconut (in addition to the universal flour, sugar, eggs, etc. one would anticipate as the conventional anchors of a cookie recipe).

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And behold – German Chocolate Cookies.

Evaluation from the measuring-cup-half-empty POV: German Chocolate Cake is a delicious invention but these cookies did not live up to the promise of their name. They were quick to prepare, didn’t involve a trek over the tundra to get to the supermarket, and were therefore pandemically approved, but I won’t link to the recipe I found because, although they were okay, I suspect you can do better. Then again, given my initial constraints, what did I expect?

Evaluation from the measuring-cup-half-full POV: I saved a fortune because one can go broke buying decent cookies from the organic bodega across the street.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Thai Green Curry

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Spotted some basa at the supermarket yesterday and since that type of catfish is native to Southeast Asia, I thought I’d do something Thai with it, perhaps a green curry. Now, there are two ways to make a Thai curry: the right way (read, “labor-intensive”) or the best I can muster during pandemic times (read, “intensely lazy”).

When I cleave to an orthodox strategy, my recipe calls for grating fresh galangal and ginger, chopping lemongrass, garlic, shallots and cilantro, plus Thai bird chilies, makrut lime leaves, lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar, coconut milk and then some. But lately, I don’t have the energy to even read that recipe let alone make the stuff, hence “intensely lazy” would be the order of the day.

At the market, I remembered that I had some Thai green curry paste in the freezer, so I bought the basa along with an eggplant, a can of baby corn and coconut milk and hoped for the best.

Returning to my kitchen, I heated up the coconut milk and the curry paste. But hoping for the best did not make it so. I considered what components I already had that would fix it – because it definitely needed fixing. The spice level needed to be kicked up and there was a jar of Thai Chili Paste with Holy Basil on the shelf so I added some of that, it needed to be more herbaceous so I added some cilantro and Blasphemous Basil that I had on hand, it needed salty pungency so I added fish sauce and then it needed sweetness so I added palm sugar and then it needed acid so I added lime juice. There was a jar of Thai pickled green peppercorns in the fridge from the last time (when I did it right) and a few mushrooms, so I tossed those in along with the fish and the veggies.

I tasted it. Not bad. Not bad at all.

And as I review what I’ve just written, I recognize that I had actually been halfway along the road to doing it the right way, but since my decisively committed strategy was “intensely lazy” I stopped where I stopped: far be it from me to flout a previously endorsed plan.

Moral: There’s something to be said for quitting while you’re ahead.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

50 Ways to Love Your Liver

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There must be 50 ways, I thought, so I set about searching for some unusual ones. Easier sung than done though.

I confess to being a lifelong liver lover, but I do know folks who are liver leavers, some tracing the trauma back to a childhood experience with a Chaplinesque dinner of shoe leather liver, so I’m always on the lookout for more palatable variations. I wrote about South African Chicken Livers Peri Peri a while ago (one of my favorite treatments for liver) and now I’ve unearthed this Persian dish called Jaghoor Baghoor. You might see it as Jaghul Baghul or any number of alternate spellings where double o’s and single u’s get swapped and l’s and r’s freely do-si-do. And there are as many unique tweaks for it as there are spellings.

A traditional dish from Zanjan province in northwestern Iran, it calls for lamb liver, onions, optional mushrooms, and fried potatoes – fairly prosaic, right? But what attracted me was the unlikely combination of three (and only three) flavor additions that make it distinct: tomato paste, pomegranate syrup (one of those aforementioned unique tweaks), and more turmeric than I’d ever think to use in a single dish.

The overall effect is not one of sweetness; rather it has background notes of umami from the tomato paste, tart fruitiness from the pomegranate, and earthiness from the turmeric.

Most of the recipes I found for the dish (and there really aren’t many) call for lamb liver but they all say that beef or calf liver can be used. Due to COVID, however, I couldn’t get my hands on any of those, so I had to make do with chicken liver. What can I say? During a pandemic, bloggers can’t be choosers.

Of course, while I was making it, I kept hearing in my head:

You just get out the pan, Dan
Toss in the veg, Reg
Then you throw in the meat, Clete
And crank up the heat

Just fry up a spud, Bud
You don’t need to make rice, Bryce
Now the dish is complete, Pete
And you’re in for a treat.

 
 
(With sincere apologies to Paul Simon.)
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Fish & Chips

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I haven’t made beer battered codfish in a long while, and since my local supermarket had both essential ingredients (well, they always have beer but cod is less common there), and the fish appeared to be on sale (I wouldn’t know: like I said, they don’t usually have it), I thought I’d give it another go.

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Everything was fair game for the deep fryer that day, so (clockwise from the left) those are scallions (not bad), fries (chips, call ’em what you will), onion rings (a complete afterthought because I had too much batter left over) and the codfish. Homebrew tartar sauce at the center because I use it so infrequently that it doesn’t pay to buy a bottle since it won’t keep forever and I end up tossing it. (Mine’s better anyway. 😉)


Close up of crispy flakiness – or is that flaky crispness?


Considering they were unplanned, the onion rings turned out surprisingly well.

The perfectly sliced, bright yellow, juicy fresh lemon wedges may still be on the kitchen counter.

Will I never learn? 😑
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Leftover Gravy, Swiss Steak, and a Flashback

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This is not a TV Dinner. Nor does it play one on TV; that would be too meta. (Ceci n’est pas une pipe, either.) Rather, it is a refrigerator magnet measuring 4" x 3" that I bought because it struck a responsive chord in my retro heart, a dissonant chord that reminded me of my culinarily deprived childhood during which my mother’s oblivious ineptness in the kitchen relegated us to a daily sentence of Swanson’s TV Dinners and Morton’s Chicken Pot Pies. (Curious? Read “How I Got Into Cooking” if you dare.)


In any event, this all started because I had been staring at my refrigerator pondering how I should repurpose the gravy from the pernil I had recently made (see post) and since that magnet was in my direct line of sight, an itching, quirky thought of reproducing the nostalgic Swiss Steak dinner rushed into my head. So I set out to replicate the dish in all of its 60s splendor, but in a rendition, courtesy of the aforementioned gravy, that would actually taste better than either the refrigerator magnet or its original subject.

Good thing I couldn’t remember what that thing in the middle was supposed to be or I might have taken a crack at that too. It’s possible that the good folks at Swanson never really identified it as anything beyond a “yummy dessert treat topped with a sweet red maraschino cherry!” or words to that effect. My taste memories of it draw a blank. Can’t imagine why.

Happily, and ghoulish flashbacks notwithstanding, the end result, appropriately presented here, was infinitely better than the ur-dinner.

But I still couldn’t resist throwing the canonical frozen pat of butter onto the mashed potatoes.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Pernil

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Saying that pernil is basically a pork roast is like saying that Christmas is basically a holiday. I mean, it’s true as far as it goes if reductionist understatement is your thing, but I’m confident that if you’re familiar with pernil, you understand why I find it irresistible. And apropos of that analogy, in parts of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without it; fortunately, it’s a year-round treat. Each region champions its own slightly different spin on the recipe. Having experimented with many variations over many years, I’ve developed my own take on it as well; I can’t lay claim to any degree of authenticity, but I can proudly state that it is delicious.

I’ve found a multitude of recipes online set off by stunning photos more tantalizing than any I could ever capture, but I can’t help but be a little circumspect about some of them. For example, one suggested working in the garlic and rubbing in the spices just before cooking; my interpretation (like so many others) marinates the pork in the fridge for about 48 hours. That may have been the same recipe whose snapshot included a kitchen knife presumably responsible for those freshly carved picture-perfectly smooth slices. Again, I’m no expert, but I’ve never seen it served like that. You don’t carve pernil. You pull it apart with tongs or forks but never cut it into elegant slices. And I suspect that that was also the recipe that called for roasting it at 350° for three hours. Three hours? No wonder they had to use a carving knife! After three hours, pernil is cooked, but it isn’t done. What you see here came from a pork shoulder that spent fully 8½ hours in an oven that limboed as low as it could go (what’s the opposite of 11?) until the final minutes when I cranked up the heat to crisp the skin. (Mmmmm….chicharrónes!)


I serve it with arroz con gandules (the time-honored accompaniment of rice and pigeon peas) and maduros (fried ultra-ripe plantains: if a potato and a banana had a love child…well, you get the idea). Tostones are traditional, but I can never get enough maduros.

I’m pleased with my ultimate combination of herbs and spices that collaborate with all the garlic that goes into the marinade – cumin, oregano, Goya Sazón with culantro y achiote, and also with cilantro y tomate, adobo, black pepper, paprika, fresh cilantro, plus a little chipotle in adobo (totally inauthentic) and naranja agria (bitter/sour orange juice) for the all-important acid component, olive oil, and lots more. As a matter of fact, that marinade, after cooking, transmogrifies into the most amazing gravy. But since I’ve never seen gravy served with pernil, I always reserve it: waste not, etc.

If you’re curious about how I repurposed it this time, stay tuned for the next post!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Home Brew Char Siu

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One more from the Year of the Ox dinner.

Nothing fancy but very tasty: homemade char siu, Cantonese style roast pork. Marinated to make it flavorful and tender, steam roasted over hot water to keep it moist, then a searing stopover under the broiler for a crispy-edged finish. Leftovers destined for fried rice…or perhaps a noodle dish…wait, maybe a stir fry….

(Guess I’ve gotta give this more thought. Watch this space!)

Here’s to a healthy, prosperous, and happy New Year of the Ox!

新年快乐!

Xīnnián kuàilè!
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Chinese New Year 4719 (2021)

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The Chinese observation of the Lunar New Year is upon us: it’s 4719, the Year of the Ox, known for his determination and strength. Fortuitously, the Ox also possesses great patience, and I am positive that he will be standing by us diligently throughout these distressing times until next year charges in like a raging Tiger and we can all celebrate together as we once did.

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But even a pandemic can’t stop us from embracing all of the traditions that make this holiday so extraordinary. One that I particularly enjoy is the way in which wordplay and homophones factor into the selection of traditional foods specially prepared to mark the occasion. For example, at festive gatherings a whole fish will be served, because the word for fish (yu) is a homophone for surpluses.

Now frankly, I could use some surpluses these days and the notion of a whole steamed fish festooned with fresh ginger and scallions appealed to me. However, I knew I wasn’t going to make it to any Chinatown fish markets this year and since I’m cooking for one, the idea that I might find a small enough whole fish locally seemed to be a lost cause. But as I traversed the aisles of my neighborhood supermarket, what to my wondering eyes should appear (I know, wrong holiday), just lying there all alone, curiously out of place in the meat case, was this diminutive porgy, the only one to be seen.

Because it came from a chain operation, I expected it to be prepped and ready to face my culinary endeavors head on. But no. Removing it from its plastic wrapped Styrofoam tray, I found it very much unscaled, ungutted, uncleaned – in other words, totally intact! It’s not that I’m averse to prepping a fish – I’ve done it plenty of times – but I was surprised that this was how it was packaged at my local white-bread American supermarket.

Since it was the only one if its ilk in the case and seemingly untouched by human hands to boot, it occurred to me that it might have been freshly caught, straight out of the Gowanus Canal, perhaps. (“Hey, let’s see if anybody’ll buy this!”) I mused that it might lend a certain aromatic je ne sais quoi to its flavor profile. Since this is the Year of the Ox, a bullhead catfish might be a more appropriate choice – after all, it would cover both bases – but this rogue porgy was all I could land. In any event, I obviously lived to tell the tale and I’m happy to report that it turned out to be quite tasty.

But how that porgy got there is still a complete mystery to me. Which reminds me of another Lunar New Year tale when my inner ox was thwarted in attempting to access a particular nian gao (the traditional sweet rice cake and a homophone for high year) no matter how much determination and strength he could muster – and what should have literally been a snap became a classic mystery.

Curious? Please read my very short story, “The Case of the Uncrackable Case!”

新年快乐! Xīnnián kuàilè!

 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Dal Palak

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It was one of those days when I didn’t want to put a lot of thought into what I’d make for dinner; I opted for easy vegetarian fare: masoor dal (red lentils, aka football lentils) – orange in the package but yellow after cooking – prepared with chopped onions, garlic, ginger and a bunch of Indian spices and herbs including curry leaves, plus fresh spinach (palak) to greenify it. On the side, two kinds of papadums, thin Indian crisps that fry up in a trice.

It was also one of those days when I didn’t write down which spices and herbs I had used because I was too hungry to care and then the dish turned out to be great.

I’ll never learn.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️
 
 

Ackee & Saltfish

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Ackee is the national fruit of Jamaica and Ackee & Saltfish is arguably its national dish. You may have heard that parts of the plant can be toxic if improperly harvested and this fact might give you pause, so allow me to put your mind at ease: canned ackee is never poisonous and you just can’t get fresh ackee around these parts. (If you go foraging in Jamaica, you’re on your own!)

Straight out of the can, it looks a bit like scrambled eggs, but don’t let appearances deceive you; the texture is delicate and fragile and the flavor is mild, making it the perfect foil for the more robust saltfish.

Saltfish is cod that has been packed in salt and dried as a means of preserving it. I won’t go into a history lesson here but it’s been around for about a thousand years (the technique, not the fish itself). Alternate names are bacalao, bacalhau, or baccalà, in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian respectively – because I will always go into a language lesson here 😉. It’s readily available in neighborhoods where those languages can readily be heard; one of my favorites is the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ, largely but not exclusively Portuguese and Brazilian, where you’ll find stores that specialize in its many forms. But if you shop elsewhere, fret not: it’s usually obtainable in the fish section of refrigerator or freezer cases at a supermarket near you. And it’s incredibly versatile.

Not only is Ackee & Saltfish delicious, but it’s simple to prepare. Cover the saltfish with cold water and let it soak in the fridge for about three days (but at least 24 hours), changing the water periodically. If the water is clear and if you taste a tiny bit of the fish and it isn’t salty, it’s ready for prime time.

The basic recipe, abbreviated: Sauté diced bell peppers (red or green or both), onions, minced garlic, fresh thyme, Scotch bonnet peppers (to taste) and seasonings in oil (I use bacon fat), then in stages add diced tomato, chopped scallions, and the fish, broken into chunks. The final step is to gently fold in the ackee, attempting to keep it in large pieces (like I said, fragile).

It’s served for for breakfast or brunch with any of fried dumplings, plantain, breadfruit, avocado, johnnycakes, or, in this case…

…callaloo (amaranth or taro leaves).

I kick it up with Jamaican Pickapeppa sauce and it’s shown here with Guyanese mango achar simply because I had it on hand.
 
 
Stay safe, be well, and eat whatever it takes. ❤️