Even beyond The Hot Dog (already mostly lamb), most of what we ate during an epic December trip across Iceland was lamb or arctic char (14 lamb dishes and 13 with char in 12 days)… The trip was more about the icebergs, the lava, and the hot pools than the food, but a few memorable bits: Salted cod and tomato. But, even better, salted cod pizza from the pizza place with no name: ...
Quick meal from and inspired by the book / cookbook Bitter I received as a holiday present: Beer soup, made with beef stock, homebrew saison, dark rye flour, sourdough toast, cream, and nutmeg. Arugula and radish salad with a vinaigrette made from yuzu shrub. Mint tea (getting over a minor cold).
results of pasta class: hand-pulling orecchiette: agnolotti filled with rabbit and pork
Starting to cook weeknight dishes from Ottolenghi’s Plenty. The salad was simple but surprisingly good.
Peels of each type of citrus (meyer lemon, lime, and bergamot) soaked in vodka for a month in a dark cupboard, swirled gently every few days. After a month, I strained the peels out of the vodka. Instead of just adding a simple syrup, I got another set of each type of citrus (meyer lemons and limes from friends’ back yards, and I was fortunately still able to find fresh bergamot at Bi-Rite) and made each into an oleo saccharum– and then used that citrus-oil-infused sugar as the sweetener. ...
Cooking from Plenty. Excellent. And the Straus plain Greek yogurt is now my favorite brand.
What was going to be “an informal bread, cheese, and homebrew hard cider tasting” expanded a bit, as it always does. Highlights were the small carrots roasted in cider, the hummus made with plenty of garlic and a little cider vinegar in lieu of lemon juice, #3 of the hard cider experiments (made with unpasteurized cider and champagne yeast), the fennel salami mail-ordered from Seattle (which I’ve wanted to do ever since having it on a trip) and the Russian Imperial Stout (rich, coffee-like, well-hopped (not actively bitter but it kept the alcohol in check), 10% ABV, aged 4 months so far since brewing and really supposed to go 6+). ...
Pearl couscous browned in olive oil, then simmered with preserved lemon, cayenne, water. Mixed with toasted pistachios, parsley, mint.
That thing where you bake oiled delicata squash slices in the oven for 40 minutes at 400F, and crack a raw egg into them 15 minutes before the end? Still really good, and easy. +Oven-roasted kale and pancetta.
I’ve finally started reading On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee (1984). It’s not really recipes but more a book about the science, history, and nature of individual ingredients. It’s inspired me to occasionally pick a single ingredient and prepare it several different ways to compare side by side. Taken to a ridiculous extreme for a solo dinner on a busy weeknight, I cooked brussels sprouts and kale four ways each (roasted dry or coated with oil, boiled, raw, raw soaked in lime juice): ...
Unfortunately, a friend I was planning dinner with caught sick, so I had spare pizza dough I’d made yesterday, rising overnight in the fridge… Rather than toss it (but also not motivated to make sauce), I made a quick pizza bianca (olive oil, garlic, rosemary, mozzarella) as the first lunch of the new year: I tried a new cooking method in my somewhat limited electric oven, and it worked reasonably well: Preheating the oven to 500F with pizza stone on the top rack, sliding the pizza onto the stone, then switching the oven to broil and cooking for 10 minutes– letting the preheated stone cook the bottom of the pie while the broiler element cooks from above at the same time. ...
Sliced tangerine, satsuma, grapefruit, lemon, with pomegranate, feta, balsamic vinegar. Spaghetti boiled to al dente, drained, a little water reserved. This pasta water, heavy cream, olive oil, and lemon zest boiled, then tossed with the pasta, along with grated pecorino and two lemons’ worth of juice. Delicious! (hat tip to holly)
A casual summer lunch while homebrewing. Excellent Jasper Hill aged cheddar, Dirty Girl dry farmed tomatoes, candy stripe figs.