Arty cooking photos

Today I made the ragu bolognese, which is currently simmering and slated to be dinner later this week. Some photos are uploaded at my flickr site and I’ll do a write up in a few days.

I got a couple good shots, though. One of them is a very narrow depth of field looking at the veggie mis en place with some pretty thyme flowers.

New header

The other was noticing the oil droplets in the jug. I used the jug to measure the oil, then later to measure white wine. The oil droplets formed perfect circles floating on the water.

Reflections

Tonight we’re nibbling chips with salsa and guacamole, some veggies and dip and cheese and crackers. Good football food. Of course, we watched the puppy bowl (PUPPIES!!) rather than the Super Bowl, but hey close enough.

On the photo front, everything is very short depth of field because I don’t have good lighting in the kitchen. Closing the aperture, in order to get a more even depth of field, cuts the incoming light enough that the shutter speed slows so far I can’t hold steady enough. The solution is either a tripod or photo lights. Actually, I suspect the solution is both. OTOH, there’s the issue of keeping food off the camera and keeping up with food hygiene and not cross contaminating everything which makes me less inclined to pull out the tripod tripod while I’m trying to cook. I’m thinking some lights won’t be too intrusive and I won’t need to handle them much, so they won’t get too contaminated.

Pork chops

Today we hit the grocery store to buy meat to make a bolognese tomorrow. We needed pork for the sauce, and were planning on grinding our own anyway so we took advantage of the sale on pork roasts.

I cut one of the loins into chops for dinner. I pulled out the big book of pork to find something nice to do with it. We settled on the mustard rub with basic pan sauce.

The rub was easy:
.5 tsp each dry thyme, rosemary and sage.
1 tsp dried mustard powder (we use Colemans)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp ground pepper

mix and rub on chops. Let sit for about an hour.

Pan sear the chops in oil (I used canola ’cause I wasn’t sure of the flavor profile of the rub and wanted something neutral).

When the chops were finished, I pulled them out to rest and started on the sauce. Sweat 1/4 cup of finely chopped onions in the oil in the pan. After the onions are soft, I dumped in 1/4 cup of chicken stock (I’m out of pork stock at the moment so I had to settle for chicken). I used the stock as a deglazing liquid to scrape up all the fond off the bottom of the pan. Once the bottom was clean, I brought it up to the boil and reduced it by half.

After the stock was reduced I flavored it with a bit of Worcestershire sauce (2 or 3 shakes). I thickened with a little bit of cornstarch in water and then added 1.5 – 2 tablespoons of butter to finish. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of cream, but we don’t have any at the moment, and, hey, what is butter except really concentrated cream?

The rub seasoned the sauce well, and I didn’t need to add salt or pepper to finish.

I steamed some fresh green beans and buttered my cooked noodles and served.

It was an incredibly satisfying meal. A good mix of flavors in the rub. And the pork and pan sauce carried enough flavors that there wasn’t any need for a complicated starch prep or veggie prep. It would go well, too, with mashed potatoes, I think. But I really like egg noodles. Egg noodles covered in pan gravy are really good, too.

Tomorrow: Ragu, starting with grinding the pork.

Applesauce

It’s winter, which means our CSA box has apples. And more apples. Did I mention apples?

In an effort to use up the apples, I decided to make applesauce. Nothing special, I took 3 – 4 pounds of the apples we had (fiji’s, red delicious, and others) chopped them and cooked them down. I did add a cinnamon stick, a little nutmeg and 2 – 3 tablespoons of sugar.

Apples

I cooked until they were mushy and then processed for canning.

Even better, last night I used the applesauce as the filling for some apple turnovers. We usually have squares of puff pastry in the freezer so I defrosted 2 of those. Add a little bit of apple filling, make a triangle, crimp, milk wash, bake at 400 for 20 minutes or so. Serve warm with a little vanilla ice cream.

It worked well. The pastry was savory rather than sweet, so next time I might sprinkle some coarse sugar on the outside before baking. But it was very tasty.

Have at least as many apples again, so will probably make more applesauce this weekend. Particularly given we’re getting another big rainstorm and the weather is going to be miserable.

Marketers. Pah.

Just a small hint to those marketers out there. If your social marketing strategy involves repeatedly barging into other people’s conversations on a social networking site in order to advertise whatever it is you’re selling then you’re doing it wrong!

I’ve dropped you from my twitter feed for doing this. I’ve blocked you from facebook for doing this. You continued. I’ve told you multiple times directly to quit it. You still continue. When are you going to stop inserting yourself in conversations that aren’t about your product? I don’t want to use your software, I’ve sent you detailed explanations of why. Still, you try and use me to sell your crap. I’m not interested in being a sales channel for you. You contribute NOTHING but advertising to any conversation. NOTHING.

Go Away.

Shopping

I’m not a very good shopper. My body shape is non-conforming to what most clothing manufacturers believe a woman is shaped like. However, we’re going to a cocktail party tonight and I had nothing appropriate to wear. So yesterday I spent the afternoon trying on various cocktail dresses.

It wasn’t that bad, to be fair. There was a lot of nice stuff that didn’t fit, but a lot of stuff that was OK. I ended up with 2 dresses: a little black number I’ll be wearing tonight and a rust colored dress that fits perfectly and will be great for work events or evenings out.

Of course, after the dress shopping comes the shoe shopping. Shoe shopping is one of those things that I absolutely loathe and detest with a fiery passion. I have small feet that are very, very wide across the ball and narrow in the heel. This means I can rarely find shoes that fit.

But, we do have a Nordstrom’s here so I stopped by and asked for “any shoes in black in a 6 1/2 wide.” They brought out 5 (FIVE!) boxes of shoes. I tried them on and found two pairs that fit perfectly and were really cute on. (Pair 1, Pair 2).

Shoes that fit! Dresses that look awesome! I’m looking forward to the party this evening.

Cheese and onion pie

I did quite a bit of cooking while Mum and Mike were here. At one point we were discussing meal plans and “cheese and onion pie” came up as a topic. Eyes lit up. Ears perked. Everyone was pleased at the idea. Steve found a recipe at Gourmet that looked good and reasonably easy.

Now, it’s been a while since I’ve actually made pastry and I was a little concerned about how it would turn out. Particularly when cooking for guests and all. However, not only did it taste yummy, it came out looking very professional.

Golden brown and delicious

The four of us ate the whole thing. And it was very tasty.

I am a good cook, but sometimes something comes out even better than I expect. This was great. The bottom crust wasn’t soggy at all, the top was flaky. The dough was also very easy to make, and I will probably keep this as a all purpose pastry crust.

A new friend…

Momma cat has a new friend… Steve’s step-dad. A day or so ago she started letting him pet her and right now she’s all curled up on his lap reveling in the chin rubs he’s giving her.

It’s really been amazing to watch this cat flower from a scared feral that would run if someone looked at her through a window, through to an indoor cat that trusts us and now has adopted another human. A lot of credit has to go to Mike, who has been quietly making friends with all our cats. He is cat-people and they seem to know it.

All the kitties seem to have decided that company is not as scary as it was. It will take them more than a few hours to decide this, so they will still hide while we have dinner guests. But house guests here more than one day… well, it’s no fun hiding upstairs all the time and y’know, these strange people aren’t that scary actually.

I’m guessing if we have dinner guests over more often they will stop being ghost cats and start interacting more. This would be good.

Zoe the Cat

Zoe is not my cat, she is Neil Gaiman’s cat. Last week they took Zoe to the vet and discovered an aggressive malignancy that was blocking her esophagus. The vets could offer no hope, and they brought her home to keep her comfortable while everyone said goodbye. One of Zoe’s humans, for it appears she loved many, even flew in from far away to say goodbye.

Today, at some point, the vet will come and Zoe will receive the shot, surrounded by people she loves and the people who love her.

I’ve never met Zoe, heck I’ve never even met anyone who has met Zoe. But it is clear to me, in the way the humans talk about her that she is one of those very, very special animals. One of those who enter our lives and change us forever.

My heart and thoughts go out to everyone who was touched by Zoe. It’s never, ever easy to lose an animal, and it is particularly difficult in cases like this.

Zoe related blog posts:

Zoe
Zoe (by Olga)
A small cat story
Zoe Part 2
Love your 4 legged beasties
Zoe update
Olga’s Arrival
Tonight (2000 miles for a cat)
Just Zoe at the end
And in the end…

(While writing this post, I discovered the vet has already come. Reading the final post pushed me into tears over a cat I never knew. )

Random cat thoughts

We stopped by petsmart in Mountain View today to pick up some kitty litter and visit the cats up for adoption. If anyone is local and is looking for a cat, there was a beautiful brown tabby boy in the back. He looks like a cross between our Grover cat and our friend’s Tommy cat. He needs a home. (His picture isn’t up on the Bay Area Cat Rescue site, or I’d link to him directly.)

The cats, particularly the feral ones, are getting so much better about strangers being in the house. Steve’s mum and step-dad have been here less than 24 hours, and the cats have all visited. Valeria has let Mike pet her, Momma Cat has been downstairs just randomly wandering and sniffing people. Amelia is in her bed behind the chair, but it’s one of her spots and she is down here with us. They amaze me with how far they’ve come dealing with humans.

It’s really great, though, that they’re feeling safe and secure enough that they’ll come meet other people.

A day without rain

Today was supposed to be the one day this week that wasn’t forecast for rain, but I just checked the forecast and the sun with some clouds has been replaced with … yup, more rain. Ah, well, it was a hoped for break that may not happen.

As it goes, though, I can see some blue sky out the back window and it’s not raining at this very moment. It’s been an extremely damp week, though. Bits of San Francisco have received 25% of their average annual rainfall. The Sierra snowpack (which is critical for water in this area) doubled in the last week. There are bad mudslides down south. Airports have been shut down. An apartment is falling off an eroding cliff.

And there are 4 more days of rain forecast. On one level it’s good as we are in the middle of a 3 year drought. We’ll need more rain, but it would be nice to have a few days of dryness.