I do like veggies, Sam I Am!

This week’s topics include a discussion of my childhood issues with veggies, a fabulous way to make broccoli (the WF and broccoli?!), a good day for the WF and Thing 1, a blast from my childhood (hint – the General Lee), and the WF is getting schooled!

The Wannabe Foodie and Veggies.  So, I admit that I’m not the biggest veggie eater.  I eat enough to have a diversified diet and I’m always trying to eat more.  However, I never think “Wow.  I’d love a plate of veggies.” 

I think that the core of my issues with veggies comes from spending a fair amount of my childhood in Mississippi.  I don’t know what it is with traditional Southern cooks and veggies.  They seem to think that only way to cook veggies is to cook them into mushy oblivion.  Most veggies taste horrible when they’re overcooked.   Example – lightly sautéed green beans are crisp and taste sweet.  Overcooked green beans have a nausea-inducing texture and an overpowering bitterness.  

I have many fond memories of Southern cooking.  Fresh veggies are not one of them.

As a young adult, I associated all veggies with the nasty flavors of my childhood.  Going to college in California, I was introduced to vegetables which were only slightly cooked so that there’s still some crunch and which didn’t taste bitter due to overcooking.  As it turns out, I like some of the vegetables that I hated them as a kid.  Shocking.      

I admit that I’m still not the biggest vegetable eater on the planet, but I’m getting better. 

The Best Method to Cook Broccoli.  Ironically, one of the vegetables I really like is broccoli, if it’s cooked well.      

I have cooked broccoli almost every way you can.  Steamed (not my favorite), boiled (nasty), sautéed, grilled, roasted, etc.  The only way I haven’t cooked it is throwing it in the smoker, which perhaps I’ll try soon.

Recently, my friend T suggested I try his favorite method, which is as basic as basic gets and now my favorite way to prepare broccoli.

Toss the florets in olive oil, some kosher salt, and some whole  or ½ cloves of garlic (the more the merrier).  You want big chunks of garlic.  Put it in a baking dish and cover it with aluminum foil.  Bake at about 350 for 10-12 minutes.  Uncover it and cook for another 10 minutes or so, depending upon how well cooked you like your broccoli.  I like mine with a lot of crunch, so I don’t cook it more than 20-25 minutes total.

The garlic permeates the broccoli and the roasting without the aluminum foil puts a little browning on the broccoli.  Absolutely fabulous.  Try it and I promise you won’t be disappointed. 

A Good Day for the WF.  On a recent Sunday, I started cooking at about 11 and stopped about 6:30 or so.  I wasn’t cooking the entire time, but certainly most of it.  And watching football, of course.   That’s a very important part of cooking on a Sunday!

Here’s what I prepared.

A double batch of my barbeque sauce.  Doesn’t sound like much, but my sauce is a pain in the butt to make.  Lots of ingredients and it needs to be cooked.  I always double the batch when I make it and freeze most of it.

2 racks of spare ribs and 2 racks of baby back ribs. 

2 gallons of brine for my smoked chicken. 

I prepped 4 chickens and started brining them.  Saved the nasty bits for the stock I’m going to make with the smoked chicken carcasses.  Made 3 gallons of stock the following day.

A salad with butter lettuce, baby yellow, red, and orange bell peppers, carrots, and some balsamic vinaigrette.

3 heads of roasted garlic with rosemary, which I turned into a spread with olive oil, a little dried rosemary, salt, and pepper.  I put the spread onto some fresh sour dough bread, which I browned under the broiler. 

Corn on the cob tossed in butter, salt, and fresh lime zest. 

Lots of dishes and clean up, but a great day for the WF.  7 hours of cooking and prepping, and a fair amount of it with Thing 1, who’s recently showing a strong interest in cooking.

Not a bad day at all.

   

A Preview of Upcoming Blogs – the WF Gets Schooled.  As some of you may recall, I recently had a big birthday and the Red bought me a 5 day culinary boot camp at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, CA.  5 days of cooking and instruction from 7 a.m. until 2 or so in the afternoon. 

5 days of real cooking school.  Can’t wait.  

I suppose I’ll probably blog about it……..

Random Travel Note. So, the night before my cooking class, I’m at a hotel in St. Helena, CA with the Red.  We’re walking through the parking lot, and I can’t help but notice… the General Lee parked right in front of me! 

The General Lee, as in the car from the Dukes of Hazzard.  Perfect replica of the car.

I started chatting with the guy who owns it and he proceeds to tell me that it is indeed for sale for the right price.  Plus, he’s got a couple more of the same, plus 5 Knight Rider cars, and a Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am.  

How does a man convince his wife that he needs those toys?!  If you know, please let me know.   I’d be happy to just have a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox.  To have the General Lee parked in the garage, alongside KITT and the Bandit’s Trans Am?  I would walk into my garage and giggle every morning.

I wonder if he has the Delorean from Back to the Future.....?

No.  I didn’t buy the car, though I wanted to.  “Honey – why don’t you go back to room?  I’m just going to chat a while with this nice gentleman….  Of course I wouldn’t buy something like this without discussing it with you!”

Happy cooking.

WF

Why Martha, Please Tell Me About your herbs

This week's topics include my impersonation of Martha Stewart (the horror), why my herbs are better than yours, I rank fresh herbs and their general wussiness, cooking on a slab of rock, and champagne Thursday!   

My recent hiatus.  Yes, I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last post.  It's like my grandma used to say:  "If you can't blog about something good, don't blog at all."  

Ok, it was actually about saying something nice about people and nothing to do with blogging.  Grandma was not, shall we say, a blogger.

Whatever.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Nothing good?   No blog.  

A Martha Stewart moment?  Every spring I grow (or regrow, as the case may be) an herb garden, and each year it gets bigger and has more herbs.  Fortunately, I live in an area where the growing season is fairly intense.  Unfortunately, the growing season is also somewhat quick and when it’s over, it's over.  Like "night, night termite" over.  Winter sets in and that is, as they say, that.

We recently had a cold spell, so I brought the herb garden into the house to protect it and let it live a little longer.  Check it out.  

During the last few years, here’s what I’ve learned about herbs:

Once an herb starts to get big, it needs to be dramatically trimmed down.  I know this makes logical sense to the gardeners who read this.  You have to trim the big pieces so that the sweeter and smaller sprouts have a chance to grow.  If you don’t do this, the plant will get too big and die.  Don’t ask me how I know this. 

Rosemary – looks all butch and tough and you’d think it would survive the winter.  You’d be wrong.  The thing’s got branches as big as small bushes, but it flat out dies if it’s left out during the winter. 

Oregano – it’s got delicate limbs, that are almost like a flower’s stalk.  Frankly, it’s a delicate herb all around.  It doesn’t die during the winter.  It goes dormant.  Go figure.

Basil – an all around wimpy herb.  It’s got limbs and stalks which look almost like a small tree.   However, it shrivels up and dies at the slightest hint of foul weather. 

Sage – the heartiest of the bunch.  Seriously, I cut this thing back significantly 4 or 5 times each season and it grows back like a weedy bush.  At times, it’s two feet across and as healthy as it can be.  It’s the irony of growing stuff.  Sage is the herb I use the least of, yet it grows the most.  It also goes dormant during the winter and comes back with a fury in the spring.

Ok, WF, this is all fine and moderately interesting at best.  So, where’s the Martha Stewart moment?

If growing my own herbs wasn’t enough, I also cut them and dry them for future use.  I get to use my own herbs all year long, even if the fresh herbs have gone dormant.

Drying your own herbs is not difficult at all.  I say that, though I live in a very dry environment, which makes it easier.  I cut the herbs, wash them, and lay them whole onto a cookie sheet lined with paper towels.  Check out the photos.    

I come back a week or two later, strip the leaves off, and store them in a plastic bag or reuse an herb container.

Like I said, a Martha moment.  Then again, I bet my dried herbs are better than yours and I know here mine came from!

Cooking on Salt.  Yes, I said cooking on salt and not with salt.  As some of you may recall, I recently received a slab o’ Himalayan pink salt as a present.  It’s meant to be cooked on, as opposed to being ground up and used as, well, salt. 

The concept is that you put the salt block on a heat source and slowly bring it up to a searing temperature.  I used my cooktop.  Here it is warming up.  Apparently, if you heat the block up too quickly, the block will crack. 

So, I decided to cook king salmon and thin strips of rib eye steak.  I didn’t brine the fish.  I figured the salt block would impart more than enough salt onto the fish.  Here they are cooking. 

The block wasn’t hot enough to brown the meat, though it was hot enough to cook the fish and the meat. 

For the salmon, I prepared a pan sauce with butter, champagne, lemon thyme, garlic, and a little salt.  I let it reduce and drizzled it over the salmon as I served it. 

Why champagne?  It was Thursday night.  Can you think of a better reason to have champagne?

The Review?  A unique way to cook, to say the least.  The salmon was very nice, with just a hint of salt flavor.  The skin on one side blocked some of salt from getting into the fish.  The strips of steak were awesome.  Salty, beefy goodness, though it wasn’t what you think of when you think salty.  Himalayan salt imparts a complex flavor.  Imagine really good sea salt, but much more complex.

All in all, a pretty good start for a new way of cooking.  I can’t wait to try other things, like veggies tossed in olive oil (broccoli, mushrooms, bell peppers, etc.), shrimp, and scallops.  I think a delicate white fish, such as tilapia, would also be great cooked this way. 

Happy cooking.

WF