Catching up with Cooking

Like much of the world, I am staying in lockdown.  While I don't have any of the medical markers requiring self-quarantine, I am staying home to avoid dragging the virus around.  I go out of my neighborhood by car about once a week; I get mail at a post office, not at home, so I have to collect it.  This past week I went out on Thursday because I had a discount coupon for Walgreens that expired that day, and it turns out they didn't have anything I wanted, so I'll be back to a Saturday trip next week.

When the weather is good I try to go for a walk outside the neighborhood.  On Friday I put an out-of-office message reading "Following the recommendations of our leadership for self-care, etc., I have gone for a walk.  It's lovely out today and the weather this weekend is supposed to be drek.  I'll respond to email and review things when I return, which will be before sunset."  And indeed the weather this weekend is not conducive to walking:  From sunny and mid-60's(F) on Friday, it's been between freezing and low 40's(F) with waves of sleety rain alternating with heavy rain all weekend.  I was very glad I'd gone walking when I did.  I walked down to the reservoir and back, about three miles, and I saw a lot of cars parked on the north side of the road.  It seems they had decided enough people were there and they closed the reservoir and were turning away even people on foot.

The strangest thing to me about being at home All The Time is not having to constantly pack a suitcase or overnight bag for each week's travel.  It was odd enough before to have a week when I didn't travel, although I enjoyed being home to do local activities.  Now I've put away the suitcases into the closet, and I'm participating in some local activities that have moved online; SWAN DAY shifted to ten nights of online concerts from some of the performers.  It's fun to do even further away things that I might not get to see or hear, such as the Metropolitan Opera's daily stream, or Paris Opera, or touring museums, and going back in time with Playbill's weekly showing of a musical.  I'm hugely excited about some of the shows the National Theatre (of Britain) is going to show.

All of this does mean that my reading has slacked off considerably.  Oh, well.

Since I posted last, there have been several holidays for which I've done cooking.  First up was St. Patrick's Day, and since I don't do corned beef and cabbage, and I had to work with what I have in the house, and work was going NUTS because we had to figure out how to respond to the COVID-19 effects on our customers, I didn't have much time to do anything elaborate.  Of course, I did make soda bread:

Whole wheat flour, oatmeal, baking soda.

Stir in buttermilk, form.  One half had caraway seeds added,
then cut into quarters or "farls", the other dusted with oatmeal.

Finished!  Hot and buttered and YUMMY.

When I finally had time to prepare supper, I was too hungry to bother with pictures.  It was supposed to be a venison casserole, but I made it as a stew because I have ground beef.  So instead of flouring and browning chunks of meat, I browned the ground beef in some bacon fat, added onions (should be browned in the fat, but I'd missed getting fresh ones in the panic stockup people did so had to use dehydrated) and the rest of the ale from the Apicius cooking a few nights before, plus the seasonings: juniper berries, allspice berries, orange rind, ground pepper, cider vinegar, and a bit of stock.  The upside of ground meat is that it cooked fairly quickly this way.  I have a photo taken the next night, when I ate leftovers:

Stew on soda bread with roasted brussels sprouts,
because they look like miniature cabbages.

The last bit of pear and
blackberry pie for dessert.

I had a bit more time on St. Joseph's Day to make "Carpenter's Pasta".  It should be spaghetti or something similar, but I'm not fond of long noodles so used rotini, which I have on hand.

Step 1:  Brown breadcrumbs.
They are supposed to represent
a carpenter's sawdust.

Step 2:  Soften onions and
garlic until they are golden.

Step 3: Add chopped tomatoes,
basil, and oregano.

Pasta cooked, tomato sauce over, breadcrumbs on top.
Steamed asparagus and fresh figs, the latter of
which is also associated with St. Joseph.

It was easy and rather tasty.  I used soda bread crumbs, of course.  When the bread got a bit dry, as it does due to the lack of fat, I toasted slices and put butter or cheese on top.  Still rather yummy.

I've done some cooking since, but nothing very photogenic.  I tried making pumpkin waffles, to use up the pumpkin from the Ides, but my waffle iron is old and not cooperative.  So the batter became pancakes and I added the rest of my fresh blackberries:

As you can see, I was eating "at work".

Last night I made a Tuscan Stew using a packet of herbs I'd gotten some time ago.  The idea is that you follow the recipe using the premeasured amounts in the packet, and then keep the recipe (it's on a punch-out card) so you can remake it later.  I had everything on hand except chicken, so I used some extra-firm tofu that has been waiting in the refrigerator.  I also subbed frozen greens (put in the freezer last summer) for fresh spinach, and swapped half the beans with some potatoes that needed to be cooked and eaten.  Overall, the result is very good.  It does make a LOT of stew, so I have meals until well into the workweek.

On the first Monday of spring, we had a snowstorm:

       

It didn't daunt the crocus:

Pi Day and the Ides

The title sounds something like a one-hit-wonder band, doesn't it?

Yesterday, I made a pie, as I do on Pi Day:

This year's is pear and blackberry, combining recipes from an old favourite cookbook and baked in a 6"x3" springform because I don't have small-sized pie plates and didn't want a full-sized pie.  Not for just me.  I used the recipe for a single crust, mixing:

• One cup whole-wheat flour
• One half-cup all-purpose flour
• Half a stick of cold butter
• Enough cold water to make a paste

Then I rolled out about a third and cut a lid, using the pan as a measure.  The remainder (and trimmings) rolled out to fill the pan.  I chopped up about three cups of peeled pears to about the same size as the blackberries, and mixed them with not quite all of a six-ounce box of blackberries from the shop; a few went into the cook to determine sweetness of the filling.  I added about a tablespoon of lemon juice, a tablespoon and a half of sugar (quite a bit less than the recipes said, because I do not like sweet pies), and about two tablespoons of all-purpose flour.  Filling in, lid on, sealed, and the traditional π cut for juices to escape, although as you can see, they ran out around the seal as well.

Today, Ides of March, and I decided to pull out Apicius.  Often I do roasted carrots, but I've had a carrot-based curry this weekend, so I decided to do something else.  First to figure out what I can do with what's in the larder; a recipe for Pumpkin and Chicken intrigued me (ditto a more Thanksgivingesque option), but couldn't find poultry in the freezer.  I did find a package of ground bison, and decided to split it between Roman food for the Ides and something for later in the week.

Some more browsing turned up recipes I may try in the future (especially a nut tart) but being limited to what is onsite, I decided to substitute a patty of bison for roasted meat, make a sauce for it, and have pumpkin on the side since I've got pumpkin.  Changes I had to make was using ale instead of wine (because I have the former, and need a partial bottle later in the week) and skipping some of the greens I don't have, such as lovage, which to be honest I never have.  The result is:

• Broiled bison patty with a sauce of ale (4-5 oz), honey (about 2T), allspice (5 berries), and pepper (about 9-10 peppercorns), based upon a recipe for Roast Neck.  Many of the recipes include cumin but since I have it in the vegetable, I looked for a different combination here.
• Pumpkin (one cup) mashed with oil (1T), oregano (1/2 tsp.), cumin(1/2 tsp.), caraway (generous 1/2 tsp.), and onion (generous 1T minced), a combination of recipes 74, 78 and 79.
• Salad, because I have a little, and the Roman dressing is oil and vinegar, much as today.  I used olive oil and red wine vinegar.
• Asparagus, because I have some, and Apicius mentions it just cleaned and boiled.

Overall, it's nice, although as noted the two green things didn't have much done to them.  I simmered the sauce to about 3T and strained it over the meat.  In the future, I would use half the cumin and caraway, as they overpowered the rest of the flavours in the pumpkin, but it wasn't unpleasant.  The photo shows about half the pumpkin; the rest went into storage for lunch tomorrow.

It's definitely a week for creative cooking, since I'm staying home except for once or twice a week, important things like the dentist (an old crown needed replacing, with some infection underneath) and post office.  Upcoming are St. Patrick's Day, and y'all know I don't do corned beef and cabbage, and St. Joseph's Day.  Catching up a bit, I made boxty for the first-Sunday brunch this month:

..... remembering too late that it was St. David's Day and I should have done bara brith or some other Welsh thing instead.  These, being similar to American biscuits, were well-received.  Most boxty are a sort of pancake,  but I have a scone-like recipe and used it.

A few days later was the North Texas Irish Festival, and despite COVID-19 becoming serious, I went.  Good thing, as Performer Products (the area where I work) was understaffed - not enough volunteers, one manager flaked out, and another ended up in hospital with an allergic reaction.  The rest of us pulled together and it all worked, and I got a few minutes to go out and see dogs in costumes, and stormtroopers in kilts, and hear music at stages other than the one next to our booth.

  
I will say, there's a benefit to being a manager, when you go to the staff-and-performers-only hospitality area: