foodfluency.com

Ahh, Middle Eastern food. It really has a certain smell, doesn’t it?

When my boyfriend and I made these Persian Beef Kebabs the other day, that was the first thing we said. “Wow, these really smell Middle Eastern, don’t they?”

“Funny though,” I continued. “They aren’t garlicky at all.”

“Do you associate garlic with Middle Eastern food?”

“Yeah!”

I think he thought that was a little weird. But it all made sense later when we had five cloves of garlic left over.

“Where are these supposed to go?” he asks me, keeper of the recipe.

“Oh crap. They were supposed to go in the meat marinade.”

I also forgot to bring my saffron with me. I had been looking for ways to use it up, which was why I had that recipe in the first place. It was definitely an instance of “cooking while spaced out.” Ah well. It tasted good anyway. We had cumin as a saffron substitute, and just slapped the garlic over the meat at it was grilling. No harm done.

Except to the tomatoes. Have you ever just slapped a tomato on a grill? It’s frickin’ weird! “Cook until blistered and soft,” the recipe says. I should have taken a picture of the “blistered and soft” tomato. All the pics I’ve found on google don’t do the warpness justice.

Next time, next time.

Hey… guess who finally located her camera USB cord? Right after she remembered her desktop had a camera card reader?

Let’s start off with this pretty picture of the Miss Albany Diner in Albany, N.Y. Wasn’t it a beautiful day? It wasn’t raining for a change. Ahh the memories…

I’ve actually been postponing this restaurant review, because I feel weird that they don’t have a decent web site. Look at it. Pathetic. It’s part of their charm, I suppose. It’s a dinky, old diner located in the warehouse section of the city. It was once used as a set for the utterly depressing film, Ironweed, which starred some folks you may have heard of: Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, me… Okay, so maybe my part was smaller than theirs. I’ve never actually seen the whole thing you know. I read the book and so was flattened by it, that I couldn’t bring myself to watch the whole movie. Just the first ten minutes, until I show up waaay in the background. Anyhoo, if you’ve seen the movie, the diner still looks like that.

The Miss Albany Diner is a complete greasy spoon. No doubt about it.

And it tastes just like a greasy spoon should! Delicious!!

I think the sunshine went to my head, though, because I didn’t so much grasp the concept when I ordered the lean sausage. Yeah, lean. Non-fatty. A few herbs instead of fat. At a diner. Not good enough. Despite it being made in their kitchen, I wouldn’t recommend it.

My boyfriend, however, has excellent taste. He ordered the Mad Irish Toast. It has pecan cream cheese between the french toast slices, and is drowned in a butterscotch whiskey sauce.

Uhh, yeah. Get that. Definitely get that. I snuck a bite or two, and it was delicious.

It is a shame the website doesn’t have their menu on it though. There is really a lot of interesting, different stuff on there. If you live in the area, or ever visit, you should check it out.

I have the best book club in the world. Once a month, about five to seven of us girls get together at some yummy restaurant and talk about stuff. Sometimes about the book we were supposed to read*, but oftentimes not.

This month, we went to the Stockade Inn in Schenectady, NY (That’s upstate, in the Capital Region, for you folks not aware).

It’s located in the lovely stockade district, which floods a lot so you probably don’t want to live there. But visiting is okay. The Inn itself was fairly devoid of customers. The inn told us this was a summer thing. I’ve been before, in winter, and indeed, people do go there.

Despite the lack of people, it didn’t feel awkward or desperate. The wait staff didn’t hover. That’s really important to me. I hate it when the server is whipping your plate away the second you finish eating, or is refilling the water after every sip. It’s like, I know you’re bored (as I used to wait tables too), but find something else to do. You’re cramping my conversation! Please.

So they didn’t hover. The server did have a little wine spilling incident though.

By some weird coincidence, each member of our party was dressed in black and white. It looked like we planned it or something. I was amused. But… red wine on L’s white pants = unfortunate. I bet next month, we all show up in red. But the Inn apologized profusely and offered to pay up if it doesn’t come out. They also made her a special yummy vegetarian entree because there wasn’t one on the menu. So, accidents happen. It was all handled quite well.

Anyhoo. The food. The first adjective that comes to mind is ENORMOUS. The portions were huge. Holy crap. Most of us got appetizers in addition to our entrees, and we got two desserts in the end too. I think we are all set on leftovers for a week.

This was my lunch today, half of my Surf & Turf Bruschetta appetizer.

It was good, but I was full after eating half an appetizer. Look at the size of that thing. It’s hanging off my plate. And there were two of them. It was very pretty in its original plating though. This place seems to like drizzling glaze all over everything. I liked it, but not everyone did.

I also tasted the Crispy Calamari. It was delicious. Light and not slimy. I see now that the sauce had that lemon-butter thing going on that I love. Not surprising.

I stuck with the steak for dinner. I was in that kind of mood. The Prime Sirloin came with monterey jack & bacon mashed potatoes, broccolini, warm gorgonzola cream, and shallot bacon shiraz demi glaze. Most of the sirloin is in my fridge right now, frankly, but I managed to get the mashed potatoes down. I was told that the Seared Sea Scallops were tasty as well.

For dessert, we ordered two huge pieces of pie. There was a peanut-buttery one that wasn’t too sweet. And a coconut one that was simply divine. I love coconut, so that was right up my alley. But even the self-professed coconut-dislikers thought this pie was great. Again, the portions were huge and most of it was brought home in a doggie bag.

* This month I did very well and finished “The Thirteenth Tale” well ahead of schedule. I thought it was a bit squicky at first, but ultimately an entertaining, if soap-opera-ish, read.

** I was going to take more pictures of the food, but my camera battery died. Sorry ’bout that.

Before I blather on for a bit about planning a complete meal, I have to share tonight’s dinner. One of my favorite food memories is eating crab cakes three ways. I don’t recall exactly how each crab cake differed from the next, but, I remember it they did, and it was delightful. So, I’ve slowly been trying to recreate that.

Not all at once. That’s too time-consuming and crab is freaking expensive! But, a new kind every few weeks or so sounds good to me. It’s my summer thing.

About two weeks ago I made some baked cajun crab cakes. It’s a weight watchers recipe, so I’m not sure if that link will work if you aren’t a member. They were quite tasty, but I had a hard time getting them into cake shape. They just kept falling apart and breading them was a nightmare.

Tonight, I made mini corn bread crab cakes, from Cooking Light. Again, baked, and again, delicious. And this time they stuck together pretty well.

The big deal here is that now I have some Tabasco-like product in my pantry. *curse you mini corn crab cakes, for turning me into one of those people* lol. I have no idea what I’m going to do with this jar of hot sauce in the future. I’m not a fan, generally speaking. I actually picked this particular bottle of hot sauce because it was the prettiest, and I thought it should have at least that going for it.

Food Pairing

I paired this with a Tri-Colore Orzo recipe from that Everyday Italian show. My logic in doing so? They both use lemon.

Now that I seem to have some cooking basics down, one of my biggest challenges seems to be planning a complete meal. I really have no clue what I’m doing there. I can pair together meat and potatoes, but that’s about it.

Tell me, how do you plan a meal?

Do you stick with a certain cuisine? Do you go one complicated dish, and two simple? A protein, starch, and veggie? Do you mix up colors? Tell me your approach.

It’s a goal of mine to be able to plan a meal of complementary foods, but I don’t know where to begin.

*help*

I can only call this diet cake.

I hate that word… diet. And the way it is sneered about whenever I grab a low-fat version of something,”Oh, are you on a diet?”

I dunno. Sort of?

I’ve lost about 20 pounds since Easter, and the reasons for it vary. A lot of it is just cooking for myself. It hardly even matters what I’m cooking either; it’s all better for me than a steady diet of McDonalds. Cheaper too! I’m kicking myself for not realizing this sooner. Oh well. I’m also on weight watchers, which hasn’t forced me to do anything except track what I’m eating, which keeps my portions under control. But it’s also given me access to a lot of “low-point” recipes, which taste pretty awesome in lots of cases. And frankly, the “diet” differences have taught me a lot about how food works, and that there are many different ways to make a certain sauce, for example.

I prefer to think of the whole thing as re-learning how to eat.

But, I won’t deny that making your weight go backwards is a challenge. You have to learn what you can live with in terms of cutting corners. For me, it’s low-fat mayo instead of the real stuff. I can also let go of french fries. And I think I lost ten pounds alone by substituting my morning breakfast sandwich and doughnut for some cereal.

However, I have a sweet tooth. I refuse to let chocolate go.

So my ears perked up at my ww meeting this week, when the leader said, “You all know about making cake with diet soda instead of oil, right?”

I had never heard of such a thing, but most of the people there had tried it. You just take ordinary cake mix, and dump in a diet soda instead of the water, eggs, and oil. Sounds simple enough, and there are lots of flavor combos you could try. I used a dark chocolate cake mix with a vanilla cream soda, because that sounded safe to me.

And it tasted great!

I was so skeptical, but it just tasted like ordinary, store bought cake. Hardly gourmet, but, excellent for the people who insist on chocolate daily. And the best part is, if I made it the ordinary way, that one piece of cake would have contained an extra 200 calories. I am SOLD!

A few more pointers:

• Use the Waist Watchers brand soda. It doesn’t contain any aspartame which can be weird to cook with because the aspartame breaks down when heated, so I’m told.
• Don’t use an entire can. Dump a little bit out or take a gulp first.
• Top with fat-free whipped cream instead of frosting for additional “diet” goodness.

My next test is to see if my bf likes it. He’s more skeptical than me, but I think he’ll be surprised.

Cake please!

I feel like I’ve been slacking. Sorry ’bout that. It’s a combo of it being a busy time at work, and this damn rain sucking the life out of me (New Yorkers, you feel me, right?). I haven’t exactly been drooling on my coach eating cheetos, but I haven’t been cooking all that much either. That shall change!

In the meantime, I wanted to share this video on knife shopping. The two guys in it are bloggers for my local paper. The expert is Steve Barnes, who writes a weekly restaurant column. And the other guy is Matt Baumgartner, who, despite owning three successful restaurants, seems to be more clueless than me about food. It’s subtly hilarious and informative. I think Steve should have his own TV show. I’d watch it.

For his birthday, I got my bf a Wusthof Santoku knife. He knows what he’s doing and won’t accidentally cut his finger off like I would. He seemed quite pleased.

I don’t have any ridiculously nice knives myself. I got a real bread knife for Christmas though, and a hand-me-down chef’s knife. They made a world of difference to me. But I have to admit, I was terrified of them at first.

Here’s an anecdote for you. 11th grade. Some friends of mine decide to come over and watch a movie. After much debate, they settle upon “Children of the Corn.” Being my friends, they knew I wouldn’t like it. I don’t do scary movies. But being bastards, they brought it over anyway. Like the time they made me watch “Silence of the Lambs.” Heh.

The movie starts. The eerie music is playing. The kids are looking creepy. And then…

“AHHHH!!! THE SILVERWARE!!!!”

I honest to God ran out of the room. The forks and knifes were too shiny and were glinting menacingly. I could put two and two together. I’m no fool.

I am, however, still made fun of for “the silverware incident.” I also still keep my chef’s knife in its plastic covering, tucked deep into the drawer. I’m happy to report that I’m not scared to wash it anymore though. That’s progress.

I need to get the disgusting picture off the top of my page, lol. So here’s what I had as a snack last night: Zucchini with oregano and parsley, with feta cheese.

It was my first time eating zucchini outside bread, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. To me it tasted like a broccoli stalk. I like broccoli, but I wouldn’t want to just eat the stalks. meh. So I can’t say I’m super excited about zucchini, but, I do want to try it again in a fritter-type of way with different ingredients.

And one last thought for those of you who don’t follow my twitter: There is an evil conspiracy afoot regarding zucchini. All the recipes call for zucchini, but the grocery store refers to it as “green squash”. This little mix-up wasted about 10 minutes of my life yesterday, lol. I guess elsewhere in the world, they are called “courgettes.” Man, that’s annoying.

This may be grosser than my non-bake tuna casserole, but I’m posting it anyway.

So I’m working at home today. Come lunchtime, I decide to snazz up one of my regular meals: Peanut butter on a toasted english muffin with a banana. That’s a regular, boring lunch, right?

I decide I want to make a kind of cookie-type sandwich out of it. Can’t you picture it in your head? A flaky little peanut-butter infused cracker topped with banana? Beautiful! Too bad that’s not what happened.

Achieve the fail yourself:

1. Toast the english muffin. Crumble pieces into bowl.
2. Add two spoonfuls peanut butter. Or go outside the box and use nutella.
3. Get inspired and use that cookie press your sister got you for xmas all those years ago.
4. Get your “dough” stuck in the cookie press because the crumbs are too big.
5. Form the “dough” into balls, stick them on the cookie sheet, and bake them at 350 anyway.
6. Get distracted by email and burn them.

Yep. I didn’t even get to the banana in that version. So I decided to persevere.

1. Toast the english muffin. Put it into bf’s food processor that he kindly lets live at your house.
2. Cut yourself a few times trying to put together the food processor. Remember that you are persevering.
3. Admire the teeny tiny crumbs the food processor makes. You worked hard for those.
4. Add a banana and form goo.
5. Try the cookie press again. Laugh at the big blob you’ve made.
6. Form the “dough” into balls again, and place in the fridge to cool.
7. Realize you are out of plastic wrap, and use a baggie instead.
8. Eventually figure out that the “dough” is not hardening, only getting cold.
9. Decide the whole thing looks like throw-up anyway.
10. Console yourself with the opinion that nine-year olds who win peanut butter sandwich contests make gross things too.
11. Go to Taco Bell.

AKA: Loving Those Lemons, AKA: The Search for Saffron, AKA: Like Buying Condoms in Ireland

Which dish sounds more appealing to you?

• Wiener Schnitzel
• Cotoletta alla Milanese

What if I told you they were pretty much the same thing? Would you be surprised? Startled? Demand photographic evidence?

Which one is which? You tell me.

Loving Those Lemons

Allow me to back up a bit. When I started cooking, I quickly realized that I was a huge fan of lemons and lemon zest. I am a zesting fool. It tastes good, and I get a weird little thrill out of eating the part of the citrus fruit that normally isn’t ingested. It’s like cheating death, or, at least indigestion.

So I browsed through some recipes, all containing the ingredient “lemon.” To my complete and utter shock, wiener schnitzel came up.

Wiener schnitzel? Isn’t that supposed to be some German-esque dish with potatoes and saukraut and other forms of cabbage? Not that I had ever had it, but, that’s sure what it sounds like.

Boy, was I mistaken. It’s Austrian, for one thing — an Austrian breaded veal cutlet. Yum. Some food historians (lol, I don’t know what else you would call them) believe that it came to Austria via Milan, Italy, because of it’s similarities to Cotoletta alla Milanese. The only difference is that cotoletta means cutlet with the bone attached, and schnitzel just means cutlet.

Personally, I think “Wiener Schnitzel” is a lot more fun to say. In fact, if my employer monitors my internet usage, they may be a little confused at all the visits to the dictionary.com entry for wiener schnitzel today. I was constantly clicking on the little speaker icon, because then it would say “Wiener Schnitzel” into my headphones. I would have said it to myself, but, then my co-workers would think I was strange, and I don’t need that in this economy.

So, yeah. For a few weeks now I’ve been determined to make some wiener schnitzel. My bf is getting some dental surgery done tomorrow, so I figured this would be a good last meal. Except he prefers the term Cotoletta alla Milanese. I don’t know where to find veal with the bone attached. I hardly know where to find veal. So, I decided to Italian-it-up and serve it with Risotto Milanese instead of the traditional potatoes. We both win.

I didn’t use a particular recipe for the veal. Just breaded it up (well, double-breaded it for extra crunchy goodness), stuck it in the pan, and then coated it with a nice sauce that was really half a stick of melted butter with some lemon juice thrown in. But for the risotto milanese, I used this recipe by Mario Batali.

There were two new cooking things going on here for me.

1. Cooking with wine. That was fine. I took some of what I was drinking and dumped it in there. I can notch that one off the list.
2. Using saffron. Actually, a more accurate statement would be: tracking down some saffron to use, which brings us to our second AKA.

The Search for Saffron

This was an adventure. Saffron, a lovely spice historically used in medicine, dyes, perfumes, and food flavoring, is a bit hard to come by.

The first grocery store didn’t have any. Neither did the second. I did get a jolt out of actually looking in the “gourmet” section for the first time in my life, feeling both proud and like I was going to get kicked out any second.

I don’t know of an actual gourmet store in my town. I should look into that.

But we do have quite a few ethnic specialty grocery stores. I had already been on a few adventures to the asian market, but this was my first time in the middle eastern market. My bf and I pull up… and it’s closed on Mondays. But no need to panic, there’s an Indian/Pakistani one nearby. It was HUGE actually, which was cool. But it took us a good 15 minutes to go through each aisle. I swear, there was an aisle full of chile powder and curry alone. We’re looking around and around, but no saffron. Out of desperation, I ask the guy working if he has any saffron.

“Oh, sure,” he says, reaching behind him to pull out a small container.

Like Buying Condoms in Ireland

They kept it behind the counter. That’s hilarious.

Although saffron has been used as an aphrodisiac in the past, that’s not why it was back there. Allow me to present another picture:

Yep, that say $8.99. Saffron is one of the most expensive spices you can buy, because it’s a pain in the ass to extract.

Ironically, when I first made the joke about the condoms, I was just referring to the behind the counter bit. I have since heard that Ireland imposes a luxury tax on condoms, making them expensive. So then I did some internet sleuthing and, indeed, it costs about $14-16 (US dollars) over there for a box of 12. Interesting. Anyhoo.

Enough Already, How Did the Food Turn Out?

It was yum!

I was so excited to have wiener schnitzel that I forgot to add my greens to my plate, but you get the idea. I also forgot to save some lemon for a garnish, and used it all up in the sauce. Whoops.

Double breading the veal was def. the way to go, and I think you just can’t go wrong with a sauce made from butter and lemon juice.

The risotto actually tasted really good with some of the parsley mixed in. The saffron turned it yellow, but I couldn’t really taste it in the final product. When I was infusing it the chicken stock though, oh my god, did that smell wonderful.

So I’ve been thinking really hard about this food thing, right? While most of my thoughts has been forward-thinking (I hope), it struck me the other day that I should look backwards as well.

I’m actually a cancer survivor, about six years now. I can’t complain about the experience, because treatment worked very well for me and I’m quite healthy today. But I did start to remember how I ate during that time — ugh. I don’t mean that I ate crap leading up to cancer (even though that’s true too), but more the fact that during four months of chemotherapy, I pretty much lived on Ensure.

Not to rag on Ensure, because it’s designed specifically for folks with compromised immune systems and compromised digestive tracts. It certainly did its job. But day after day it seemed like my only choices were chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.

I thought to myself, if only I knew then what I’m learning now… How great would it be to have a nice stack of chemo-friendly recipes?

For those of you who don’t know, chemo tends to wreck havoc with your eating habits. First of all, you are killing off all the fast-growing cells in your body - the pesky tumor, your hair, and also a good chunk of your stomach lining. So nausea is a common side-effect.

So is an increased, super powerful sense of smell. Trust me, there is nothing like it. One day, everything is normal, and the next you are able to pick out what’s hidden in your neighbor’s garbage can. Chemo treatment rooms generally ban the use of perfumes and scents for that very reason. What’s nice and subtle normally is gag inducing to a cancer patient. Again, this is due to killing off the fast-growing cells in your nose.

And everything just tastes funny. Ironically, a lot of food loses its flavor, so the first impulse is to add more spice and seasoning, which is the last thing your stomach wants.

Another problem is that certain chemo cocktails can cause severe allergic reactions in people. To prevent these reactions, patients are put on steroids. So you have nausea and the steroid munchies at the same time. It’s infuriating.

Eating well on chemotherapy is challenging, to say the least.

So one of my new missions is to come up with a bunch of recipes that are chemo-friendly. I’m currently surveying a bunch of folks to see what they could and couldn’t eat during chemo. The answers are sometime predictable, but sometimes surprising! Like the one girl who wanted everything pickled. I wasn’t expecting that!

I’m doing a lot of research and promise I’ll come up with some good stuff. Stay tuned.