flowers

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if the weather where ever you are is like it is here

like me... you might need some flowers to brighten your day.

stuffed cabbage rolls

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Savoy,

As you know it's report card time. I wanted to take a moment and write to you about Stuffed. He's a good kid and has lots of potential, but he is lacking a little... oh, what is the word, je ne sais qua? I think he made friends with Spice and Acidity, he would go far in the world.

Mrs. Guerrero

:::

It is report card time around the Evil Chef Mom household. While everything is good around here but when I was a kid 'she has a lot of potential but lacks focus' was bandied about a lot. You can probably still say that now.

Why? All sorts of reasons really. The fact that I am posting this recipe as is instead of perfecting it. Call me truthful, call me lazy but I hate, I mean, HATE with a fire of a thousand suns when recipes get stuck in my head like little earworms, I give in to my inner earworm make the damn recipe and it's BLAH. I hate that all the components taste good but then in the end something is lacking. I hate putting in a lot of time for a fussy recipe and get so-so results. I HATE that bloggers make it all look so easy and so good when sometimes that is not the case. I mean if you come here don't I have a duty to say "Hey! I made this and it was okaaaaay but not like fantaaaaastic. So beware of this recipe and if you do make it maybe just maybe you should consider doing this and this and this." This recipe was good not great. It needs more. I will be making it again with adjustments but for now I want to post it as is. Because me and the cabbage rolls are bestest buds, we lack potential but we can get there with teamwork. (You do hear the snarkiness, right? Because in real life you can not be friend with a cabbage roll. It might get a little messy and stinky.)



stuffed savoy cabbage: martha stewart living, january 2010

tomato sauce:

1 can (28 oz.) of ground tomatoes
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped (1 cup)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt

cabbage:

salt
1 head Savoy cabbage
12 ounces lean ground chuck
12 ounces of ground pork
2 cups cooked brown rice
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped (1 cup)
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 tablespoon hot paprika

(now if this was my recipe, i would take out some of the hamburger and add either chorizo or linguica and add more hot paprika to the mix. and to finish it off right before serving i would squeeze a little bit of lemon juice over the top)

make the tomato sauce:

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring constantly, until onion is tender, about 6 minutes. Add tomatoes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thick, about 20 minutes. Season with salt. Let cool completely.

make the cabbage:

Bring a pot of large salted water to a boil. Add cabbage head, and cook until outer leaves are just tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon. Peel outer leaves and drain. Return remaining cabbage to water, and repeat until all leaves are cooked and removed. (I only had to do this once.) Pat each leaf dry with a kitchen towel. Select 12 large light-green leaves. Reserve remaining leaves for another use.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Using two forks, gently stir beef, pork, rice, onion, parsley, paprika, and 1 tablespoon of salt.

Working with 1 leaf at a time, trim thick part of rib with a paring knife, leaving leaf intact. Arrange about 1/2 cup of filling (less for smaller leaves) in center of each leaf. Fold stem end of cabbage over filling. Fold in sides of cabbage. Carefully roll cabbage over to form a package, overlapping ends to seal. (IN OTHER WORDS.... FOLD IT LIKE A BURRITO) Transfer each, seam side down, to a large, shallow baking dish.

Spread sauce over stuffed cabbage leaves. Cover with foil, and bake until cooked through and cabbage is tender, about 1 hour.

Tasting Notes: Like I said good, as in happy to have a hot meal, but not knock your socks off great. I really thinking adding some chorizo or linguica and some acid at the end will make this dish awesome.

easy pickles

I had never heard about the Christmas Pickle until I was working at Cost Plus World Market. Every year we would stock pickle ornaments and every year those pickles would sell out.

So the story of the pickle is pretty simple...

The Christmas pickle is not really a pickle at all. It is a pickle-shaped ornament that is the last one hung on the tree on Christmas Eve. Because the ornament is green, it is supposedly hard to spot. I say supposedly because with four teenagers nothing is hard to spot, they have x-ray vision of eagles that have always and I mean always have eaten their carrots. You can't get nothing by teenagers. Anyways... the first child to find the Christmas pickle gets an extra gift from Saint Nicholas.

I'll be the first to admit this isn't a tradition in our house. I only bring it up because we made refrigerator pickles in November. These pickles take about a month of sitting in the brine in the fridge before they are ready to eat and when I did the math to know when we could eat these pickles lo and behold... you guessed it, Christmas Day. I made Christmas Pickles. Kismet.




dill pickles: recipe courtesy of my Aunt Cathy

this made 4 - 1 quart jars

bring to a boil a brine of:

3/4 cup pickling salt
4 cups vinegar
7 cups water

in sterilized jars put:

garlic cloves [katie and i used 3 peeled and smashed cloves per jar]
fresh dill, to taste
cucumbers

Put sterilized lids on jars and store in the refrigerator.

Here's the tough part... they won't be ready for about a month. Four very long weeks.

Spoiler Alert: (literally)

The jars should seal even without doing the whole canning deal. Sometimes placing the jars upside down helps that process along. My Aunt Cathy and I (so far) have never had a problem with this recipe but I would strongly caution use your best judgement or at least common sense. Don't eat the pickles if the jar hasn't sealed. Don't eat if they smell bad. Don't make them if you're not willing to sterilize the jars and lids. Eat them quickly once you do open the jar.

Tasting Notes: When we went up to Oregon in October, Katie spied these pickles in my Aunt Cathy's fridge. Katie loves pickles and of course asked her if she could have a few. My Aunt Cathy said, 'Of Course.' After one bite Katie was swooning over pickles, she then raided my Aunt Cathy's recipe binders for any and all recipes that caught her eye.

If you do make these save the brine because in a week I will have a recipe for Pickled Brined Chicken.

brownies with caramel sauce

or the post where i get a little preachy...

Most of the time when I do a post, I try to write a funny little antidote and then hit you with a recipe and then go about my merry little day. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

But today I want to preach a little.

I know when most people hear Thomas Keller they either go, 'who?' or 'I can't make his stuff'. I can say I really don't blame you if you are looking at The French Laundry Cookbook or even his Sous Vide one. I mean the heft of these books, the serious thunk they make on the kitchen counter when you set them down is intimidating and it doesn't help that they are the size of academic textbooks. Those books are just so serious.

So scary.

...or that's what she said. (blame watching a marathon of The Office when I was sick)

If you break them down into a series of steps, it isn't so bad. Sure there is shit you just think is too persnickety to do but trust me when I say it's well worth it in the end.

Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home is home cooking/family meals but brought up to eleven because he could.



Despite it's size and weight, this book is fun, happy, and above everything else easy to cook from. Let me repharse that and say pretty much easy to cook from because the first recipe I cooked from Ad Hoc was the hardest (even The New York Times called Keller out on it.) but resulted in the best chicken soup and dumplings I have ever had. The work, frustration, and more importantly, THE DISHES, were worth it.



When most bloggers cook from a Keller book, they will not type the recipe in their post. The enormous respect for Keller, his food, technique and maybe the shear pain in the ass it is to sit at a computer screen and type a recipe is enough to deter us all. All I know is that it seems to be a unspoken code... which I am going to break once again.

I want to show you, step-by-step, a recipe so you can understand how easy it is to cook from Ad Hoc at Home. Hopefully by the end of this post, you'll be encouraged to spend your hard earned money on this book.

ad hoc at home: brownies with caramel sauce



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9x9 square pan.



Sift flour, cocoa powder, and salt; set aside.



Take 3 sticks of butter cut them into 1 tablespoon pieces. Melt half of the butter in saucepan. Place remaining butter into a medium sized bowl.



Pour melted butter oven the bowl of butter and stir to melt.



In the bowl of stand mixer, mix together eggs and sugar.




It should look pale and very thick.



Mix in vanilla.





Add chocolate and mix to combine.

Spread batter into a pan and bake for 40-45 minutes.

brownies:

3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
3/4 pound, 3 sticks, unsalted butter, cut into 1 tablespoon pieces
3 large eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla paste if you've got it (i do not)
6 ounces of 61 to 64% chocolate, chopped into chip sized pieces (about 1 1/2 cups)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9x9 baking pan. Set aside.

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, and salt; set aside.

Melt half the butter in a small saucepan, stirring occasionally. Put remaining butter in a medium bowl. Pour melted butter over the bowl of butter and stir to melt. The butter should look creamy, with small bits of unmelted butter, and be at room temperature.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together eggs and sugar on medium speed for about three minutes or until thick and very pale. Mix in vanilla. On low speed, add one third of the dry ingredients, the one third of wet ingredients, and continue alternating between the remaining flour and butter. Add the chocolate and mix to combine.

Spread the batter evenly in the pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until a toothpick poked in the center comes out with a few crumbs. If the tooth pick comes out wet. Test again because you may have hit a chocolate chip. Bake longer if needed.

Cool brownies in pan until room temperature. Cut into 12 rectangles and serve with caramel sauce. Recipe below.

caramel sauce:

3/4 cup of plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 cups heavy cream, warmed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Combine the sugar and corn syrup in a medium saucepan and stir in water. Set over medium high heat and bring to a simmer, then adjust heat as necessary to simmer and cook without stirring, for 30 to 35 minutes, until caramel is a rich amber color.



If you want to check the color, use a small spoon to drop a small amount on a white plate. You want a dark caramel so the finished sauce will be a rich caramel color.

Remove from heat and SLOWLY whisk in the cream. (IT WILL BUBBLE UP) If the sauce seizes, stir over the heat to slowly remelt any hardened caramel. Whisk in the butter.

Serve over brownies. You will have extra so put it into a covered container and place in the refrigerator, it will last a month. Use it in your coffee, put it over ice cream, eat it straight out of the fridge.



Tasting Notes: Seriously, this is easy. Take the time and make something that is not out of the box and is from a very gifted chef that is trying to make good food accessible to everyone and remember not to stick your finger into hot caramel sauce no matter how good it looks.

house tour: breakfast nook

Welcome to my breakfast nook. It is by far my favorite room in the house. Actually I lie. Any room I am in is my favorite room except for the dining room it needs help (not much) but that's a whole other issue.



So the breakfast nook is 8 feet by 8 feet. Cozy.



And everything is in white and a soft mossy green.



Including the green and white ticking striped wall paper.

I need to talk about this poster for a second. It's cool at first glance until you look at it closely. The mermaids... A.) have no nipples and B.) have no pupils. Freeeeeaky man.

Seriously. They. Are. Scary.

Don't stare at that poster at night when everyone is in bed, the house is eerily silent and your husband is at work. Don't let your overactive imagination get the best of you. Not that I have or anything.



All the way down to the green sea glass curtain finials and the soft green canvas curtains. It's like Martha Stewart personally came down and decorated just for me.



Speaking of which... let's talk about lighting. You know how sometimes you go into people's houses and they are decorated nice enough but then you glance up and there is some horrible out of date lighting? It's like they never craned their neck upwards the whole time they have lived in their home? Not this house. In every case but two, the lighting is matching with the decor. (I just wanted to use the word decor in a sentence.)

Full disclosure: The wallpaper, curtains, finials, and paint were here before we moved in. The people before us had good taste, or at least taste that was pretty close to our own style. All I had to do was bring in my dishes, tea pots, crazy mermaid poster and make one trip to Ikea for a table and chairs, other than that this room was already complete.



I eat lunch, read, write, plan menus, talk on the phone, and take photos in here.



The kids eat, do their homework, talk, joke, argue, play games, and do crafts in here. I would even venture to say this is their favorite room also. It's a good room with a good vibe.

the post with no pictures

...or the more aptly titled: the post in which i share too much information.*

*This might be because of the residual effects of NyQuil, Advil, cough syrup, Midol, and whatever other drugs are in my system.

I thought I understood the term 'adding insult to injury' but I didn't get it until Saturday January 2nd. I mean I can even pinpoint the time. But we need to go backwards in time to understand.

It started Friday, Christmas day. Rich had to work, Katie's dad bought her a car as a present (with only a 1/4 tank of gas and the condition that she can only drive it for 2 months or until she gets a job to pay for insurance). Guess who she lives with? Rich and I. Guess who will probably pay for gas until said kid gets a job? Rich and I. Katie's dad should have just bought us a puppy.) We had other bad news but right now is not the time to get into it.

By Sunday the 27, it was my time of the month...nothing that a warehouse full of Midol, a heating pad, a case of Tampax, and a prescription for pain killers can't handle! Funny thing is, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. Le sigh.

Monday the 28... Rich goes on vacation.

Thursday the 31, New Year's Eve. The Goldilocks of Shoes, Katie, finally tracks down the boots she wants.

These boots are the wrong color... return them.

These boots are the wrong style... let's get store credit.

These boots are just right... but we need to drive an hour to go get them and I already placed them on hold.

Mama Bear could have ate her young right about then because I was already sneezing and my throat and eyes were itchy. The last thing I wanted to do was drive to our state's capital in midday holiday traffic to get a pair of boots. That I can't even wear.

By the time Mama Bear and Goldilocks got home, Mama Bear wasn't feeling so hot. She thought it was allergies and took some Benadryl, posted this on Facebook at 5:59 pm...

"dear 2009, you've out stayed your welcome this year. don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. love, krysta."

and then promptly fell asleep.

Way to tempt fate, dumbass, because I have been sick ever since.

Here's where I can add insult to injury. Twice.

Before Christmas, I cleaned out my unmentionables drawer. I found a bra I hadn't seen in awhile. So while I was sick, I wear newly found bra. I now remember why I don't wear it. It gives me a rash. So Burt of Burt and Ernie fame has a rash and is red and itchy.

And then on the January second, around three o'clock pm Standard Pacific Time. I decide to warm up this dish that Katie had made. It was Bouchons Au Thon, translated: a really good tuna dish.

Warm tuna, when I am sick, what was I thinking? Why I didn't just make myself some chicken noodle soup is beyond me. I wasn't thinking clearly...having a 102 temperature and NyQuil will do that. I warmed the Bouchon Au Thon in the microwave.

Beeeeeep, Beeeeeep, Beeeeeep... the microwave is telling me Hey you sicko! The one spreading your germs all over the kitchen. Yeah you... come get your food.

I open the microwave and pull out my little ramekin of bouchon au thon (sounds better that warmed tuna because the words: warmed tuna, kinda skeeves me out) Next thing I know the bouchon POPS and spatters onto my face and hands.

I now have a pencil eraser sized burn on my cheek.



So let's recap...

red and itchy boob ☑
a pair of boots I can't wear☑
a car that I didn't buy and will end up paying for the gas of said car that I did not purchase☑
coughing, sore throat, itchy eyes, 102 temperature ☑
a burn on my face ☑

Don't you think this has all the makings of a great year to come?

so... i have been unhappy with my blog, for all sorts of different reasons but one reason really kept coming back at me. it was hard to establish contact with a lot of people. (no, not in that i need comments, come read my blog type of way) but in a way that if someone had a cool link they wanted to share, a recipe they wanted to know about, or a question... they either had to leave a comment or send me an email. then wait for an answer. who wants to go through all that rigamarole? it seemed to me that facebook might be a good answer this quandary. it seems like everyone has a facebook page but might not feel comfortable asking to be a 'friend' to some wacked out lady they read on the internet. so i figured i have a facebook page, you have a facebook page, we'll meet somewhere in the middle... which is right on facebook.

so now you can become a fan (with a very heavy eyeroll)...

favorite photos of 2009

bean hollow state beach- 2/2009



clouds- 9/2009



clover- 3/2009



cellist- golden gate park- spring 2009



searching for the perfect wave- winter 2009



sf skyline- spring 2009



all in a twist- 01/2009



happy- 2009



oregon- 10/2009



hearst castle- 07/2009



rain- 12/2009



11/2009



me-12/2009

mustard-slathered grilled flank steak w/smoky jalapeno-honey sauce

so here i am prepping in the kitchen for last night's dinner when an unexpected guest arrived...



thumbelina (the de-clawed-yet vicious-size of a kitten-all fur-no body-14 year old-chatterbox-of a cat) decided to drop off a little present for us. i guess she thought i'd grill him up just for her. roxy, the dumb and scaredy dog chihuahua just sniffed and ran away after the lizard snapped at her. silly kids don't want to catch the damn thing to keep it as a pet. oh no, no, no! they grab my camera to take pictures.



say hello to bobby! he was decidedly unhelpful with prep work so i kicked him off the line and dropped him off in a demilitarized animal zone so kitty couldn't have fresh lizard sashimi for dinner.



mustard-slathered grilled flank steak w/smoky jalapeno-honey sauce: (adapted from let the flames begin by chris schlesinger & john willoughby)

serves 4-6

1/2 cup grainy mustard
2 tablespoons ground cumin
3 tablespoons chili powder
2 flank steak, about 1 1/2 lbs. each
kosher salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons catsup
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh oregano
1 red onion, peeled and sliced into disks about 1 inch thick
4 jalapenos, left whole
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

prepare your grill and charcoal.

in a small bowl, combine the mustard, cumin, and chili powder and mix well. sprinkle the flank steak generously with salt and pepper and spread the mustard mixture all over them on both sides. place the steaks in a shallow baking dish and refrigerate for 1 hour.

in a small saucepan over medium heat, combine catsup, honey, vinegar and garlic and mix well. bring to a simmer, stirring to blend, and remove from heat. stir in oregano and set aside.



rub onion slices and jalapenos with the vegetable oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. place on grill and cook until nicely browned. remove from grill and chop them fine before adding to the sauce. (if you want less heat, remove seeds and ribs from jalapenos before chopping them.)

grill flank steaks until cooked to your desired temperature. remove steaks from grill, cover loosely with foil, and allow them to rest for 5-10 minutes.
while steaks are resting, reheat sauce. Slice steaks thinly against the grain on the bias. Serve with sauce on the side.

tasting notes: there's a lot going on with this dish. good, spicy, some sour notes with the vinegar, bites of mustard and onion, garlic and jalapeno but it takes some prep and is messy grilling also it leaves you with, to put it mildly, very strong breath. invest in a bottle of mouthwash. i served this with some crispy potatoes -out of the urban italian cookbook- but i think some warm tortillas would be good or this steak in a salad would be tasty.


:::no lizards were harmed in the making this post or dinner for that matter:::