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Preserved Meyer lemons

Every two or three years, our Meyer lemon tree has a boom season where all we see are fruits covering and weighing down the branches, as if the leaves have gone on vacation. This is one of those years. Other than using them in nearly every savory dish, not to mention lemon curd and lemonade, what do I with them all? Preserve ’em!

Preserved Meyer lemons and spicesBefore I crammed in two more lemons.

Suggestions for use: Minced and tossed into stews or sautés, sections placed inside the cavities of roasted poultry, puréed in dips like hummus, mashed into a marinade or dressing or sauce, etc.! I don’t know their shelf-life in the fridge, but I’ve been fine using a nearly 2-year-old jar of preserved lemons. (Although they do get somewhat mooshy in texture over time, but still useable and flavorful.)

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The Grand Remodel two years later: suggestions and advice

So. Two years have gone by since the completion of our Grand Remodel. Overall, I must say that while it was traumatic at times, we are both very relieved it is finished(*). I was going to have this post go over some suggestions on how to wrangle out the contract between you and you potential contractor. But I decided to simplify it:

(*)As mentioned in earlier posts on the topic, work on a home is never truly finished. 😉 But projects do wrap up, and we’re sure glad to have an excellent modern kitchen, plus another bathroom, among other things! (Continued)

Carrot soup with cumin

This soup was inspired by the carrot velouté scented with coriander+cumin foam I had at the Musée d’Orsay’s Café Campana in February. Hm, “inspired” isn’t quite the right word; more like “became obsessed with until recreated in our own kitchen.” I suppose this could be made vegetarian, but it tastes best with a well-made chicken stock!

As seen in the picture below, leftovers of this soup freeze and defrost just fine.

bright orange carrot and cumin soup

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Pickled red onions are even better

After posting the pickled radish recipe, I got a hankering for onions made in a similar fashion. You know what? I like them even better than the radishes. They ended up rather versatile, as we found many uses for quickly pickled onions: soups, sandwiches, falafel, pizza, sautés, eggs, rice bowls, pasta, etc.

Red onion pickle, ready to eat.

As an aside, my friend Lisa M. has said that quick-pickling cauliflower (raw, no additional cooking, either!) works out nicely. I should try that. Maybe I’ll work myself up to cabbage one of these days. But for now, here’s what I did with the red onions.

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Quick radish pickle

Back in high school, when my taste in foods was just barely starting to broaden, my friend Kim N. fed me and our friends Vietnamese salad rolls (gỏi cuốn) and spring rolls (chả giò) after school. Ever since then I’ve loved that cuisine! I recently got back in touch with Kim, and during one of our get togethers she taught me how to make simple, quick pickles with daikon and carrots (dưa chua). It was easy, and I’ve applied a similar method for the ruby-red Japanese Long Scarlet radishes we had planted in our garden last year.

ruby radish pickleYes, I reused a jar from a commercial brand of pickles. 😉

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Multigrain Pullman, rustic loaf, or pizza dough from a starter

To make a Pullman loaf, which is a bread shaped perfectly for sandwiches and toast, I use the same recipe as the multigrain sourdough loaf, with these changes:

  • Use a heavy-gauge Pullman measuring 4 by 4 by 9 inches, but without the lid, to encourage height. I like the USA Pan brand made of aluminized steel, coated with Americoat.
  • Use only about 2 pounds of the dough for the Pullman loaf. The rest I freeze for 1 pizza. I do this subdivision after the overnight rising, so that the Pullman can get that final rise of about 2 to 3 hours.
  • Bake at 400ºF degrees for 35 to 45 minutes, rotating midway. The internal temperature should be 200º to 210ºF degrees when done.

As for a more rustic, I-don’t-need-a-pan loaf, I just plop a recipe’s worth of the multigrain dough onto a pan lined with parchment paper or a silicone liner, then bake at 400ºF degrees for 40ish minutes, turning the pan midway. Again, the internal temperature should read 200º to 210ºF degrees when done.

For pizza, I subdivide the multigrain recipe into 3 or 4 pieces after the overnight rising, depending on how thick I want it. Each pizza is roughly 12 inches in diameter. The uncooked dough freezes nicely, too.

In addition, you could make a multigrain focaccia by prodding the dough into jelly roll pan lined with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Sometimes I feel round and make two loaves in two non-stick 8 inch (or 9 inch) circular cake pans, without liners.

Books read in 2011

Once again, 💡 denotes my reading recommendations. I read a lot of excellent fiction in the past year!

The Good Stuff

The surprise goodies for me were the Hunger Games trilogy and Santa Olivia. My brain usually turns off at anything hyper-popularized by the media. Nor is boxing exactly a topic I’d care to hear much about. But these, whoa. Go read them! And, well, any of the other fiction I’ve denoted with the bulb icon. 😀

As for cookbooks, if you like Mexican food, get your hands on The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. If you like Mediterranean food, check out Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. Both are inspiring, yet approachable, and offer weight measurements, whee! If you want the book on chocolate cookery, obtain Bittersweet — by the woman who introduced the concept of truffles to the United States. Finally, if you share my obsession with food pairing and substitution reference tomes, you’ll see that I’ve discovered, uh, more.

…And The Bad

I endured really horrible erotica written by Autumn Dawn and Tina Folsom. Although some of the erotic bits weren’t bad, it was the anti-feminist theme of the women protagonists getting married and knocked up — because no matter how independent or assertive they were to begin with, that’s what they truly wanted and needed in order to become fulfilled. What… the… fuck? (As it were? Haha.) Forgivable for some individuals, I guess, but for hot fiction written in the 21st century? Eegad, give me some anthologies edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj or Susie Bright, please, to clean out my poor neurons. Moreover, if I wanted werewolves or vampires thrown into the mix, I’d happily recommend books by Maggie Stiefvater and Robin McKinley as far superior. Anyhow, my lesson is to be more wary of stuff from Smashwords. But, hey, if they have high quality publications, do let me know.

For easier list jumping:

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A crusty, multigrain sourdough loaf of bread

For the past few years I’ve been playing around with a couple sourdough starters I created, and I’m amused to note that, except on a very few occasions, I’ve ended up using starters instead of packaged yeast for my yeast-based baking needs. It’s really nice to be able to produce one’s own bread. It’s especially nice to be able to create a crusty, fluffy bread that approaches what one could get at the farmers’ market or restaurant. True, it won’t be the same as the awesome sourdough from Pescadero’s Arcangeli Grocery Co., but they’ve had years to develop their bread!

I’ve been intimidated at the supposed labor and tricky technique involved with making crusty bread. But Jenifer’s recipe makes the process approachable, as it involves a heavy cast iron pot and lots of patient (but easy!) oven preheating. Don’t need a special oven or well-timed water spritzing, either.

Multigrain crusty loaf, sliced in half

I call this recipe “Miranda’s bread,” named after Morrisa and nj’s daughter who enjoyed some I recently baked. That loaf didn’t contain buckwheat flour, so I’ve denoted it as optional.

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Sweet creamy yogurt dressing

This sauce is perfect for fruit salads, puddings and cakes which need just a hint of sweet moisture.

A note about the yogurt: I use lowfat yogurt that’s smooth in the Australian/European style, e.g., Wallaby Yogurt. It doesn’t contain any thickeners like pectin or gelatin.

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 3/4 cup plain yogurt
  • 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar

Method

  1. Put all the ingredients in a jar or jug.
  2. Stir, but do not whip, until the sugar has dissolved.
  3. Serve, or refrigerate until needed.

Preserved green satsumas

Our bush-like satsuma tree had so many fruit on it that the branches were threatening to break. “Time to thin down.” The prospect of throwing out, even into the compost, nearly half of the satsumas made me feel guilty. That is, until I realized I could treat the underripe fruit like lemons, and preserved them.

preserved satsumas in a jar

What follows below isn’t so much a recipe as Rather Vague Guidelines, mind you. My first and current batch are curing, so I’ll need to update this post as to how the preserved satsumas actually turned out. But it’s a start.

Update, 8 January 2012: These go nicely stuffed inside a roasted chicken, as well minced and cooked with roasted vegetables. Also provides nice seasoning in stews like vegetable tagine.

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