Today's Menu So Far

Woke up earlier than I suspect I ever have on a day off (somewhere between 8 and 9) and thought why the hell shouldn't I make myself breakfast? I toasted a couple thin slices of a Rosemary Batard I bought at Harvest yesterday and fried a couple strips of Trader Joe's Applewood-Smoked Bacon. Then I proceeded to attempt something new: "The Best Scrambled Eggs" from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (henceforth known as HCE) . This is a recipe that should take 40 minutes to prepare and only requires occasional stirring. I turn my back to do a few minutes worth of dishes and apparently it's already done. Next time, I'll know to try it with the tiniest flame possible.
Ran a few errands (buying the camera that's allowed me to launch this blog) and picking up a few more things at Trader Joe's; eventually I came over and had some leftovers from the Sicilian Sweet and Sour Chicken I made last night. The recipe again hails from one of Mark Bittman's cookbooks; this time, The Best Recipes in the World (BRW).
As will be common practice in this blog I will list the ingredients, their amounts, and prep involved in terms of mise-en-place. If you ask me nicely I will type up recipes on a case-by-case basis and then add them to the original entry. However I encourage readers to buy at least the cookbooks I mention (if not back issues of magazines) because I do read each one cover-to-cover and I'm pretty picky as to which I buy. Though at 5 1/2 unread physical tomes (rather than ebooks I can read on-the-run), I really need to put a freeze on it.

Sweet and Sour Rabbit or Chicken

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 rabbit, cut into 8 pieces, or 1 chicken, 3 to 4 pounds, or 2 1/2 to 3 pounds chicken parts, trimmed of excess fat [I used nearly 5 lbs of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs that worked fine. Somehow I failed to read the trimmed of excess fat part; still fine!]]
• flour for dredging
• salt and black pepper to taste [Freshly ground black pepper, ahem, because everything else is substandard. Too poor to consistently use Tellicherry black peppercorns however even though they are superior to the stuff I buy. I've been using grey salt ever since reading Michael Chiarello's Bottega. That guy has also got using a full tablespoon of salt for every quart of pasta-boiling water. Uh, I use kosher salt for applications like those]
• 1 onion, sliced
• 4 celery stalks, chopped
• 3 tablespoons drained capers
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1/4 currants or raisins [Went with currants. They were at Stop and Shop and comparable in price to the raisins. Therefore, why not?]
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup chicken stock, preferably homemade [Yeah right, I'll just used the boxed stuff as usual.]
• 1 cup red wine
• Chopped basil leaves for garnish [I'm notorious for not bothering with herb garnishes. Perhaps when I got some thriving plants going on.]

On the side, I had the Batard I previously mentioned and some packed Mesclun Mix with bottle Italian salad dressing. I realize it's a pretty big foodie rule to not used bottled dressing and make ones own, but I'm giving myself a free pass on this one.

Tonight, I will make Risotto Alla Milanese. This is something I've done at least a couple times before, and I intend on not making the same mistake of using double or triple the butter and cheese recommended like I did last time. Less risotto than a hot, way too rich and cheesy mess. Also the first time I'll be using actual homemade vegetable stock (made earlier in the month for Argentinean Acorn Squash Soup from Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian [HCEV]) instead of merely simmering a carrot, an onion, a celery stalk, and a garlic clove for 20 minutes. Bittman strongly urges people to at least do that if there's no homemade stock available. (Fun Fact: there is hardly any decent commercial beef stock available so avoid it unless you keep current with America's Test Kitchen (ATK) rankings and there is absolutely no decent commercial vegetable stock. You may as well use water.) However, the vegetable stock was just taking up valuable real estate in the freezer that I needed to free up for my Arnold Palmer cake dreamt up by Momofuku Milk Bar (MMB) genius Christina Tosi. More on this in a later post, but here's a photo as a teaser:


















Also meet my pantry, cookbooks, and extensive collection of spices:

At least 90% of the second row from the top is mine as is much of the top shelf. Clearly I will be bumping up against capacity soon, but a handful of items are already occupying the bottom shelf.

Yep, I've hardly used most of the 30 odd herbs/spices/seeds that I catalog in my red Moleskine planner along with the expiration dates, but REAL FOODIES do not buy spice blends. They make them from scratch. Plus, the range of cuisines I'm interested in cooking in are far from narrow.
For the record there are a handful of spices that made it through the extensive pruning process I performed before moving all my spices in. Hey, I'm fine with using ground cumin I didn't personally buy.

All the cookbooks from the orange-bound book to the right end of the top shelf and all the ones at the bottom are my personal collection. I have yet to read any on the bottom shelf nor the green one on the upper shelf. Can you see why I think I have a problem? There are a couple well-rated books on Indian cooking, but other than that I don't really own anything but Top Chef, ATK, and Mark Bittman cookbooks.

My precioussss... The KitchenAid stand mixer my parents bought me for Christmas and I've been using several times a week since moving to Forest Hills a little over a month ago. I haven't even broken out the food processor once! I know my parents have been in love with the MMB cookies I've made so far along with everyone else who has tried them. The Blueberry and Cream cookies I made are close enough to the real thing for me taking into account that I'm a true baking novice, but the Cornflake-Marshmallow-Cookies were far off the mark. And yet everyone still loved them.

Entries about my cooking background thus far and what prompted me to create this blog as well as more info and photos about that Arnold Palmer Cake (First cake ever, and yes, I broke all the layers.)