Crummy Cook to the rescue last night, since I was home earlier and Debbie later (with a lot on her mind).

We’ve used for some time curry mixes from Curry Simple, thanks to Debbie’s brother Tom, who quietly researches great food on line and lets us (and others) know what he’s found.

Three kinds of curry: Green, Yellow, and Red.  And a Lemongrass/Coconut soup.

I used our last Curry Simple last night, a Yellow pak.  And, since Debbie is sick of brown rice and I’m reluctant to eat white we compromised on Thai red rice.

(Debbie and I are trying to get better at food porn.  Pardon the blobs of sauce at 3 o’clock.)

Debbie made Caesar salad.

A recipe Debbie remembered with great fondness from Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cookbook”, which we got as a wedding present from Andy and Cathy back at the dawn of time.

The recipe is all over the web, but relatively few give MH credit.  Here’s one.

Josh and I made it (he’s home for the weekend), and it didn’t look as good as Marcella’s for the first outing, but not too shabby.

The milk solids tasted fantastic, despite being somewhat darker than the prototype.  The pork, however was kind of bland.  It tasted like it’s bland cousin the pork tenderloin, despite all the fat on it and all the braising.

Criticism and Self-Criticism

Not sure where the responsibility lies for the bland pork.  You know, I still don’t brown things enough, and maybe that had something to do with it.  The sin in my case is the sin of impatience: “Goddam it, surely it’s browned by now!”  You could almost say that if you have to ask, it’s probably not done.

But maybe Whole Foods had something to do with it.  They have a hard time making even their fatty cuts fatty, if you know what I mean.  Too many Social X-rays shopping there.

It will not have escaped the attentive reader that a large number of my Crummy Cook episodes happen when Debbie is away, although on paper the core purpose of Crummy Cooking is to spell her at the point of sweat.

So you will be pleased to know that my latest recipe from Epicurious, although prepared on Saturday the night before Debbie came back from her trip, was also served on Sunday for her homecoming dinner.

There it is (not a very pretty picture) in the pot a-cooking.

Boneless country pork ribs, it turns out, are really slices of pork shoulder.  Looked pretty fatty when I started, but the miracle of braising turned lard into umami.

(And Debbie said she loved them.)

Criticism and self-criticism

Nothing major.  It turned out really well.

I’ve fallen a bit behind here.

I made the penne recipe on Thursday.  Debbie had just gone away (again!  Is there no balm in Gilead for her travel?) and I searched in Epicurious for “feta and bacon”.  Scratching my salt itch, to put it mildly.

It went well, and certainly looked normal.  And, since there was no one but me, criticism and self-criticism was a bit attenuated.

Crit Self-Crit

For all the forbidden pleasures of salt I was expecting, it was a bit bland.  Somehow the penne outweighed (in the flavor sense of course) the bacon and feta.  Or maybe it was the tomato; tomato can smother most anything.

Anyhow, nice comfort meal

On a previous Debbie trip, I made stir-fried shrimp and vegetables.  No recipe, just Crummy improv.  Of all the things I make or have made, I’m most comfortable with stir-fried dishes.  It’s because years ago I got a book from a Chinese expat in Canada who described the theory of stir-fried.

Give the Crummy Cook a theory, and he knows what to do: apply it in variations.  Give him a set of instructions, and he’s just intimidated.

Here’s the mise, or the bulk of it.

Here’s the ensemble in the wok.

And here it is in the plate.

Criticism and Self-criticism

None.  I do it pretty well.

As Debbie and I were casting around for the proper CrummyCook project yesterday, I put out the idea of making fajitas, since we were near Wagshal’s Market and could have picked up some amazing Prime flank steak.

Well, we let it slide and ended up back home, but Debbie still swung Latin American, so we decided on picadillo using ground pork, since we had a pound or so on hand.

Well, naturally, Epicurious obliged with this recipe for Picadillo Tostadas.  I even ran out and got some corn tortillas.

But then I balked at frying them.  Too many calories.  So we broke open a package of taco shells sitting in a cabinet, and used them (belatedly it occurred to me that we had simply accepted fried tortillas from someone else’s kitchen, but let’s let that go).

Here’s the picadillo and the fixings.   Both of us enjoyed.

Criticism and Self-Cricitcism

After we both had praised the dish, Debbie added some criticism:

“You know, you couldn’t really taste the olives.”

“I know,” I said.  “I didn’t put enough of them in.”

“We ran out?  I thought we had that whole bag [a bag of pitted green olives we had around from something, vacuum sealed, etc.].”

“We did; we still have some.  But I scaled down the ingredients for fewer portions and then scaled them back up again but didn’t scale up the olives.”

She laughed.

“Why the hell not?”

“Too much work to slice them.”

Well, that’s the way it goes.  Laziness bring consequences.

Well, CrummyCook night last night, and Debbie and I decided to do a Black Salt run coupled with braised-in-butter Brussels sprouts.

I got swordfish, and saw a ujiki salad at the fish market, so I impulsively picked it up, hoping to recreate my magic with the original oeuvre.

Sadly, reality intervened.  We didn’t have any capers or anchovies, just green olives and anchovy paste.  Almost good enough, but not very savory or piquant.

And the ujiki – I’m sorry to say – pushed Debbie’s seaweed button too hard.  She said it wasn’t “just” the taste, it was the texture as well: “seaweed squeaky-crunchy doesn’t whet my appetite”, she said, or words to that effect.

Here it is.  I thought it was OK, but she was right: not piquant enough.

Here’s the fish.  Great as usual.

The Brussels sprouts also were challenged.  The idea of them is to slowly cook sprout halves in a stovetop pan in butter.  But we had too many halves to fit into the pan, put them in anyhow, and ended up with half braised ‘n browned and half steamed.  Debbie put in some chopped pecan, which improved things, but not the best we’ve ever had.

Sigh.

Debbie made a salad, which was tasty and didn’t come in for criticism and self-criticism

Criticism and Self-Criticism

Well, pretty obvious stuff, I guess:

1. Don’t improvise until you’re a Less-Crummy Cook
2. Don’t be carried away by “mere” impulse
3. Respect the seaweed orientation of your culinary audience

Surprise CrummyCook outing this morning.

Debbie and I decided to make something a bit out of the ordinary for breakfast.

There are some frozen health spinach pancakes she buys at Whole foods, and she wanted them with eggs on top.

I said, “poached eggs?”

She said, “why not have Eggs Sardou”?  (Eggs Sardou is Eggs Benedict but on top of artichoke heart and spinach instead of English muffin and ham.  Emeril recipe here).  We would have deconstructed spinach from the health-food spinach pancakes, and deconstructed (well, really, store-bought) artichoke bottoms.  But at least we’d have poached eggs!

OK, why not?  She had some artichoke bottoms in the fridge.  I knew how to poach eggs, or so I thought.

I start to poach, and Debbie says, “wait a minute, Hollandaise sauce is a big hassle.”

Ever the Crumster, I reply, “why not just let it curdle and then blend the c**p out of it?”

She says, sensibly, that that will just make pulverized scrambled eggs and butter.

Debbie says, “why don’t we make tomato sauce and cheese instead?”

I say, “you mean like Eggs Sardou Parmagiana”?

And thus a dish is born.

Here’s the result.  Looks like a Parmigiana dish (that’s toast on the right).

Well, we’re going to add a section to these blog entries:

Criticism and Self-Criticism

We did a lot of this in my misspent youth.  But it can be a good tool if you’re not determined to extract a confession at any cost but rather determined to improve a process.

1. Parmigiana sauce makes anything taste like pizza.  So, sadly, you couldn’t taste the eggs and artichokes
2. Covering a pan makes eggs poach too fast unless you’re very careful about heat.  Bottom liine: the yolks seized up on the poached eggs.

Oh well.  We had a great time, and they tasted pretty good despite all that.