green onions: it's all good people

i love green onions, from their furry little eye watering feet to their crispy crunchy verdant tops. every bit of them is good. i'm tired of seeing one end or the other get the scrap-heap treatment! clean them, slice them, let them shine! the white part can be a bit strong, i admit. my solution: slice that end finely and add it at the beginning of the cooking process of what ever dish you are making, add the greens at the end so they retain their lovely crunch. or brazen it out, serve them raw all the way with dip or in salad. they're lovely grilled whole and plopped on top of bbq steaks, or sliced length wise in stir fry like multi colored noodles that bite back. to know them is to love them, every inch. you may want to invest in some gum, however.

campout chili

we love chili in this house. all kinds of chili, but especially verde varieties. a word on this: to my mind if i put the basic elements in a pot: meat, beans, chilies, i consider that i have made chili. i don't want to hear about how it's not chili with out blah blah blah like your abuelita or auntie so and so made it. one thing i never do is doctor canned chili, i consider that to be cheating, other than that anything goes. so into this pot which this time happened to be precariously balanced on rocks in a campfire ring at the local lake went 1.5 pounds of ground beef to brown with a liberal dose of salt and pepper. once that had sizzled down but was not completely cooked in went one large can of black beans, one roughly diced yellow onion (if it doesn't make you cry, don't use it for chili!), one diced pasilla chili, three diced cloves of garlic, one teaspoon cumin, one and a half teaspoons paprika, and just for good measure a bit more black pepper. all of this simmered for about to ten minutes, you'll have to adjust time for cursing smoke in the eyes and turning the pot because only one side was getting heat. then four large ortega chilies were diced and added to the pot with their juices, the lid was put on and all was cooked until most of the onions were translucent. note that i specified that the onion be a rough chop. it's more interesting texture wise to have some larger chunks of onion that maintain a bit of crunch if you ask me. so, assuming you agree, some onions are still white at the middle while some others have all but disappeared. in goes a large can of pinto beans, mostly but not completely drained. stir and simmer till you just can't stand it! we dug into ours with some saltine crackers while hail pounded the screen tent over our picnic table, but i'm sure it would be good at a nice, cozy dining table too.

curried chickpeas

well, long time no type! life has been a whirlwind in the cottage, more on that in other news. for now, i have a back log of food to tell you (assuming i have a reader out there) about. first: curried chickpeas! these are not the garbanzo beans that your mother tried to hide in your salad and that you surreptitiously flicked at your siblings, no! these are the chickpeas of the future! these are the wonderful little protein packed veggies that the kids will want more of! (and you will too) so, to start: dice half a red bell pepper, some onion (white or yellow or even a few green ones) and about two carrots. saute all this in two to three table spoons of butter, once they have gotten soft add about two table spoons of yellow curry powder and let it mix for a moment. drain and add one can of chickpeas and just enough water to loosen all the curry powder and allow every thing to mix together. at the last stir in either a table spoon of dried cilantro or two tablespoons of fresh, finely chopped, cilantro. cover and simmer stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes (or as long as you want, really) and serve with rice. you'll never flick a garbanzo again!

gardening madness

life just got a little prettier here at the cottage! i just planted more snapdragons and verbena out front and we have hanging baskets seeded with herbs out back and a new wine barrel with a beautiful cala lilly and alyssum right by the door going from our bed room to the patio. things are shaping up! last year i was just too prego to do half of what i want to do so this is the year of out door improvements!

dinner in the pot

tonight: comfort with a twist. my mom used to make what we called dinner in the pot on cold crumby nights. a big pot layered with chicken breasts, carrots, potatoes, and sometimes cabbage on top. tonight i started with butter and diced onions, i browned two chicken breasts on one side then flipped and sprinkled on garlic salt and pepper. while that cooked i cut up three carrots into large chunks and halved three potatoes. i put about a cup and a half of sauv. blanc in with the chicken and sprinkled on some savory then i layered in the carrots and potatoes in and put the lid on. it simmered on low for about three hours and turned out delicious.

perspective

i was approaching that dangerous precipice with thing one, where the joking was over and i really was about to put him outside with a sign around his neck saying "free to any home". what i mean is this: i spanked him angry. i was steamed and fed up and i gave him his usual three swats but i felt that panic creeping in "oh man, i don't even know how hard i got him" and the tiny part of me that any honest parent confesses to said "i don't care, i've had it." we were supposed to be having some quiet time because i was reaching the end of my rope, and so was he. the weather was bad, we were just getting our footing back from a week of recovery from tonsillectomy, he was hyper, and i was tired. he wouldn't quit squirming and poking me and screwing around and in my head i could hear my husband accusing "he always trashes the bed, he twists the sheets all up and pulls the blankets crooked." i lost it, i sat up, jerked down his pants and let him have it. he wailed and cried and looked terrified of me and i thought "when did i lose my perspective?" i conceived him at a terrible time in my life. if i wasn't alcoholic, i was close and i was in a bad relationship. it was because of him that i got my life together. i used to lay in bed at night alone with him and cry while i was singing to him, i would clutch him close and promise to be better for him. i screwed up ALOT along the way but now he has a good home, i get to stay home with him, and we have a wonderful man in our lives to be a papa. suddenly *poof* i take him for granted, i can't wait for my mom to take him off my hands once a week for the night so i can have a break, i send him to his room just to get some space. once i calmed down i asked him if he wanted to cuddle me and, by the miracle of childhood, he did. i looked down at him and remembered all those lonely nights and said "thank you".

duck a la cottage

maybe in my next life i'll be able to follow a recipe. to Julia i can only say, i tried, i tried. due to the overwhelming vote turn out (all three votes were for a la orange) i set out to make duck a la orange per Julia Child. what i found was this: i am not cut out to be a french chef. i meticulously read and re read all the directions and before i ever set foot in the kitchen was sick to death of all the fiddling and heating then cooling then re heating. i'm sure it would have been delectable if i had followed the directions, but i didn't. and you know what? it was delectable anyway. besides the fact that my duck weighed in at 6.4 pounds and Julia's cooking table only goes to 5.5 pounds. apparently i committed the base sin of purchasing a duck too large to address in an effort to feed everyone i had invited. so, i read the label on the duck for cooking times and directions but found i didn't like the ring of them either.... what to do? i recalled a goose recipe that i had tried with some success on Christmas (with what turned out to be a capon, incidentally) and decided to go with that for stuffing and take an average on cooking times. so, the duck got rinsed and salted inside and out early in the day and left to think about it in the sink. the neck and giblets went into a small pot with some butter, salt, and pepper to brown with some onion and carrot slices to make stock. per Julia i added herbs but later decided i didn't really need to, if you want to throw in a bay leaf and some parsley and thyme just be sure to take the bay out after a bit then strain everything else out after a few hours. after a while i peppered the duck too, just on the out side. two oranges got pricked all over with a fork then quartered and a ginger root got sliced length wise then into the duck went ginger and orange mixed about so that there was both ginger and orange aplenty in contact with the inside of the duck. here we revisit Julia, the duck went in on a rack at 425 for about twenty minutes, the heat was then reduced to 350 and the duck was turned on it's side for 30 minutes. it was then turned breast side down and left, due to it's size, for 45 minutes, then on to the other side for another 30 minutes, then back breast side up to finish, all together it was in the over for about two hours and 45 minutes with the heat on then rested for about fifteen minutes before it was served. i put some zucchini sticks in the pan under the duck to roast about halfway through the process and they cooked beautifully in the duck fat.

as to sauces, Julia calls for a mix of liqueur, zest, stock and butter (fiddle fiddle fiddle). for our table i put some of the drippings from the roasting pan in my skillet, got it hot and threw in the zest of about half a large orange which i had peeled off with a vegetable peeler then julienned. when this has sizzled for a minute i added the entire contents of a cute little sample bottle of grand marnier and lit it, once the flames died down i added two ladles of stock and reduced to make a sauce. in homage to Julia i did add cold butter whisked into the sauce after i removed it from the heat. i also prepared a dried fig port wine sauce as follows : one clove of garlic and an equal portion of red onion (a mix known as poor man's shallot) finely diced and caramelized lightly in butter, three dried adriatic figs chopped added post light caramelization, perhaps two thirds of a cup of port wine (wonderful zinfandel from terra del oro for us) in but not lit when things are getting moderately caramelized and reduced to syrup, then add stock and reduce to a sauce consistency you like. this also got cold butter whisked into it before it hit the table.

we enjoyed our feast with a nice jammy zinfandel from renwood winery compliments of uncle andrew and some creamy mashed potatoes. i hope at least one person who reads this gives duck a try, it's worth it.