Potato Pancakes w/carrots

I've got potatoes, and I've got carrots. Why not? This morning's recipe comes from a desire to eat more healthfully. Less meat should improve my life. Cooking also will induce me to clean up the kitchen.

Over a cup of yesterday's coffee and today's Democracy Now radio, I'll be making Carrot-Potato Pancakes. How, you might ask, do I plan to have them evenly cooked on the inside and out? I have spent a lot of time pondering (no real research to speak of, just thinking) about how the restaurants make picture perfect hash browns. Morning Glory in Ashland, OR, for example, makes the tastiest hash browns. If you have the method, attach it in a comment on this posting, please.

This recipe comes from p. 249 of Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook (by the editors of the magazine of the same name).  Carrots, potatoes, flour, egg, thyme, salt, pepper, and cooking spray. It suggests frying for a total of six minutes - 3 minutes per side. I plan to deep fry them in my new "FryDaddy" my wife bought me for Christmas. This I know will solve the cooking consistency problem. So much for the health stuff. Later on today, I'll be cooking an Indian recipe, I think. More to follow.

Ginger beef and kale

I was going to title this the "Reluctant Vegetarian." Someone already snagged it. Nice pictures, but it has an obnoxious lack of respect for the capital letter. Plus, I'm just a little too reluctant to keep the meat off the page. Speaking of which, it's time to make Martha Stewart's ginger beef and kale recipe.


Let's see - Ingredients:

Right off the bat I can tell you that I'm not getting out of my chair to see if my paprika is "smoked" or not. I did take a look at this food discussion website, and it looks like many agree it is worth the effort to go get smoked paprika.


Filet mignon will be substituted with my leftover rib roast meat.

Bagel break... This is a slightly over-toasted bagel from Market of Choice, where bagels are light and fluffy and made with tasty cheese. There are a couple of bagel shops in town, but at one of them the bagels continue getting smaller and smaller. Actually, I shouldn't say that. Otherwise you'll think I'm stupid for patronizing the same bagel shop over and over as their bagels get smaller and smaller. What really happened is their location is all the way across town, and I had a bagel there that was small.

Anyway, here is my recipe for goat cheese and chive goat cheese (what you see on the bagel):

Get fresh chives. Get a log of goat cheese from Costco unless you have a lot of money to spend on cheese, in which case, get your goat cheese according to your own taste. I find the Costco goat cheese is big and almost half the price, if I remember correctly. Decide how much chive you like in your cheese, put all that in the food processor and hit ON. When it's blended, take it out and spread it on stuff. You can use a fork and a bowl, chopping the chives thin, but I don't have the patience for that now that I have this awesome food processor.

Okay. Looks like I've got everything. Notice my spiffy Microplane shredder. The recipe calls for a finely shredded onion, so I'm going to try it with this until I get bored and toss it in the food processor.

 

Oops. I forgot to include the broth in the picture. To the top left you see the pepper grinder. Absent a knife, a pan, and a box grater, this is what I made the dish with. I forgot to put the salt in, and the ginger was reticent to be finely grated, but all in all it went well. Much pomp and circumstance for such a simple meal. I can see how sliced filet mignon (not previously cooked) might do better. Serve with rice for a more rounded meal.

Now for a nice coffee break and to finish the rest of The Last Vampyre - Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett - the best on-screen Sherlock Holmes ever.

Yamtastic breakfast

Salt, pepper, and butter. This makes the yam. I added a teaspoon or so of molasses to the last bite, which brought the flavor from semi-savory back to sweet again. There - that's all I can do for a yam right now.

It Smells like Yam - Let's Make Biscuits!

I lay in bed reading Fannie Farmer from page to page, and I came across something about biscuits. While I'm not a big baking fan, I miss my mom's flat biscuits. Nobody has been able to figure out why they don't rise; I've seen others take the same recipe and make "perfectly" rising biscuits.

I think it will be more of a challenge to make biscuits that don't rise, but my desire for biscuits is strong enough that I don't care if they rise or not. Perhaps tomorrow I will embark on the biscuit journey...

It's really time to sleep now...

What to do With Leftover Standing Rib Roast

(Aside)
It's 4:06am, and I just happened to have two good-looking yams. Before putting them into the oven, I disregarded the scrubbing advice and just rubbed them with my hands under some water. The outside will be baked enough to kill off any germs or dirt, not to mention I'll probably not eat the skin. Though I did cut a small amount off both ends instead of poking them with a fork, I did not preheat the oven. I'm sure that's a no-no in the cooking world, but I don't have the patience for it. I hope this doesn't affect my application to the CIA. See, I told you it wouldn't be very exciting.

In the fridge is some very tasty standing rib roast that I brought over to my wife's family's house for Christmas Eve dinner. I made another beef loin roast because I knew nobody would go for the tasty, fatty meat. Which means I have a quantity of this stuff that needs to be consumed somehow. Yesterday morning I made a hash using our AWESOME Cuisinart. It is quiet and beautiful. I dropped a few potatoes and an onion in the slicer, then sliced the beef by hand. Frying in a cast iron pan worked out well with a dash of olive oil.

So that I don't become bored of eating hash, I figured I'd use the kale in the fridge somehow. It was $2.59 for a bunch. I was told I should eat more dark, leafy-green vegetables; kale always seems to do it. Options:

Cooks.com has an ample selection of recipes... Sometimes you uncover a gem, such as the recipe for Beef Cecil. ?! After reading 70 or so recipe titles, the beef with rice options look good to me.

Martha Stewart has a ginger beef and kale recipe. Thanks Google!

One Beggar's Recipes has a beef and kale soup.

I'll probably go with Martha Stewart. We have everything except the chilies, which I'll probably just substitute with some hot sauce.

... I have to hand it to Julie Powell. I am definitely too lazy to undertake anything like what she did. I am too lazy to plan a trip to the grocery store for the proper ingredients half the time! More tomorrow on the ginger beef. I'm going to try not to fall asleep before I burn the yams. Maybe I could put them on low and leave a note for my wife to have a nice breakfast!

Julie and Julia

After the inspiring "Julie and Julia," I thought to myself, "Why not create a blog and become famous? I could use the same idea, except a different cookbook. Then I looked at potential cookbooks I had on the shelf. Fannie Farmer, The Joy of Cooking, and a various assortment of more specific books. Opening to a recipe page I find the following on page 405 of my copy of Fannie Farmer (if you want to know what edition, you are reading the wrong blog).

Baked Sweet Potatoes or Yams
(ALLOW ONE MEDIUM POTATO PER SERVING)

Preheat the oven to 375•F (190•C). Scrub the potatoes and cut a small piece off one end so the potato won't burst during baking. Place the potatoes, slightly apart, on the oven rack. Bake for about 1 hour or until tender when pierced with a knife. Fork open and put a pat of butter inside to serve.

...

I've never looked at Julia Child's cookbook, but if it's anything like this one, I would die of boredom doing recipe after recipe. I'm not as charming as Julie Powell, so there's no way you're going to enjoy reading about me making baked potatoes and boiling eggs for 365 days. Best find a different way to become famous. I suppose I should let someone know I'm doing this blog, that way in the off chance I do become famous, you can say you got in on the ground floor.

I did take a quick look at Julie Powell's blog (see: juliepowellbooks.com). It's pretty good! It's refreshing to read a well-written piece of work. I only looked at for probably about as long as you're going to look at this, which means you might not even read this sentence!

It's 4am. Shall I dare make plans to cook something from Cook's The Best Make-Ahead Recipe? I love this book.

The World Doesn't Need Another Cooking Blog

Yes, it would be great to be picked up by some famous publishing company and turn my ramblings into a book, but the likelihood is low due to boundless competition. For example, this was going to the "3am Chef," but there is already a 3am chef. In fact, I will doubtfully be preparing any food at 2am or 3am, but it's a good time to write when I can't sleep.

With this blog, I hope to document the process of recipe perfection. Some of this could involve:

1. Eating something in a restaurant and trying to copy it at home.
2. Taking a recipe from my family or family friends and copying it or improving on it.
3. Trying to make something that you have suggested and turning it into a project.

This could all change, of course.

While Cook's magazine has a test kitchen and a number of seasoned and educated chefs to work out there recipes, I have me and my spiffy new digital camera. I'll use an electric stove because that's what I've got at my disposal. That is, until I become rich because you can't keep your eyes off this blog.

Though your regular readership would stroke my ego greatly, it doesn't really matter if you read this or not. I'll try to stay on task, and if I delve into something else, I'll try to preface it with adequate warning.