About 20 years ago I wrote a small story for the Dallas Morning News on how to season cast iron pans. It was a good story.
What I didn't grok at the time was the science behind reconditioning cast iron. Here it is, broken down by a brilliant food nerd. The key is repeated applications of flax-seed oil. But read for yourself:
Vlasic, the pickle company, strikes a blow at the home pickle maker with a new-ish product line. Farmer's Garden. And they're good.
These pickles are so good that at 5:45 in the morning, I'm eating pickles instead of sleeping.
They're so good that I have to ask myself, "why do I waste my time making pickles when I can just buy the f**kers at the store?"
Good question.
These pickles may not be as good as my pickles (I keep telling myself), but they'll do in a pinch. I'll buy them again in March when my pickles are all gone and we're months away from new cucumbers at the market.
I was on my way to the grocery store this morning when it hit me. I'm hungry for Vietnamese Spring Rolls (aka salad rolls).
I love Vietnamese cuisine. It was the first International cuisine to make a mark on my psyche as a young woman, living in Washington DC. Oh the phó we ate at a little joint in the Clarendon neighborhood of Northern Virginia. Sublime.
Anyhoo, I was hungry for salad rolls, so I made some.
Vietnamese Salad rolls (Gõi Cuón) with Peanut sauce.
The most difficult part is the peanut sauce. I'm happy with this recipe but it took a lot of tweaking.
Peanut Sauce
3/4 c peanut butter (I used Adam's)
juice of 2 limes
1/4 c water (or more to taste)
1 Tbsp + 1/2 tspn soy sauce
1 Tbsp chili garlic paste
1 Tbsp fish sauce
1 garlic clove finely chopped and mashed with the side of a knife
1 tspn (heaping) brown sugar
1/2 tspn sesame oil
Mix all ingredients and beat vigorously with a whisk. Allow flavors to marry while you make the...
eight shrimp cleaned, split the long way, tails removed
four chunks of pork belly, sliced thinly (optional -- I forgot to add it although I had pork belly made and ready to use -- silly me)
1-1/2 cups shredded lettuce
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
2 Tbsps julienne basil
2 tspns mint leaves
bowl warm water
Cook the vermicelli for 3 - 5 minutes. Strain and rinse in cold water. Slide onto a towel to absorb excess water. Separate into four bundles and chop slightly.
Wet a rice paper wrapper in a bowl of warm water for 2 - 5 seconds. It should feel soft and pliant. Lay on a flat surface, cutting board or a dinner plate.
Working quickly, lay four pieces of shrimp across the wrapper, just slightly closer to the top. Top with cilantro and basil. Top with one bundle of pasta.
Top the pasta with 1/4 of the lettuce and a few mint leaves. Bring the bottom up to the top and gently, using eight fingers, walk your fingers towards you, snugly tightening the oblong bundle. Fold the sides towards the center and finish rolling the roll. Set aside.
At lease one will tear. Either undo it and move the contents to a new wrapper or soak a wrapper and re-wrap the torn roll. It'll be a little tough but barely noticeable.
I used a recipe from AllRecipes.com to master the basics of spring rolls. Actually it's like rolling a joint but you close the sides. Like so...
She uses whole leaves of lettuce and pork (which I forgot). I like that she tightens the roll then adds the shrimp.
Either way, it takes practice. But even making peanut sauce from scratch, the entire recipe took me less than one hour.
Midnight snacks are an art form. Every cook I know has a different take on the late night meal. Some like 24-hour fast food or food carts. There's a McDonalds in my neighborhood with a late-night walk-up window.
Oh, and Voodoo Donuts. Everyone loves Voodoo donuts and the kooky pink box they come in. Everyone hates the lines that forms at Voodoo as the Old Town bars close.
Another friend makes pasta as a late night snack.
Me? I like eggs. Fried, scrambled, omeletts, hard boiled, soft boiled (and mixed with buttered bread -- mmmm). Kinda like the omelette scene from Stanley Tucci's "Big Night."
There's a beauty in scrambling eggs and Tucci does a good job of it. Beating them with a fork, hot pan, plenty of olive oil, a little salt..... perfection.
But I add a few twists. Tortillas, mushrooms, cheese and jalapeño
I heat the tortillas on the gas burners, flipping a few times, then top with cheese, mushrooms and piping hot eggs.
Late night, date night food. Good enough to share.
On a personal note...
I'm getting ready to move. I'm tired of paying NW Portland rent. A lovely woman named Lisa and I are looking for a house in SE Portland.
I have every inch of my small apartment packed with stuff. I need to purge. So, every day I'm tossing five things from each shelf in my apartment. Most of my books are about cooking.
This morning, I counted cookbooks and cooking history/reference books. I have about 150 actual recipe books and 60 reference, history, biography, and food anthology books. A far cry from the thousand I thought I had. I gleaned three books. That's all, just three books.
Damn, I forgot to count the cookbooks I picked up Sunday night at Powell's... make that 152 cookbooks.
I'm a cookbook junkie with a cookbook monkey on my back.
