Back in the Kitchen with Michael: Capellini w/Salmon and Mushrooms (and a Salad!)

Has it really been 3 whole weeks since I've posted a cook-along recipe?  Boy, how time flies when one is attending Broadway openings with a renowned fashion model on one's arm, experimenting with French methods of home-scenting, and chasing towel-clad dancers around the locker room.  (Hi, George, if you're reading this — I'll be at the gym later this morning!)

[Note: do not read this caption unless you are George.]  Hi, George — remember me?  If this picture isn't ringing any bells, you could try imagining me in a towel.   (Oh dear, now I'm imagining you imagining me in a towel......)

Not to mention inaugurating a new teaching space, starting a program of working out under the guidance of a personal trainer, and walking the dogs for longer periods now that the weather is getting milder.  Whew!  It's actually a respite to enter the kitchen and spend some relaxing time cooking a meal.  The seed idea for today's project was the container of garlic scape pesto I'd discovered in the freezer yesterday.  What fun, to discover a few tablespoons of this heavenly stuff left over from almost a year ago — garlic scapes appear early on in the growing season, so we get them in one of our first CSA deliveries each year, in late May or early June, and I always make pesto out of them.

Thai-ish Fish Dish

All right — back to the kitchen!  I've enjoyed my weekend of musings about random topics, but it's time once more to cook.  And those flounder filets I impulse-bought from WF (and mis-identified as snapper in yesterday's post) weren't going to stay fresh forever, so I assessed what I had on hand — pretty much everything, thanks to my obsessive-compulsive grocery shopping — and made a Thai-inspired fish stew out of them.

Speaking of food going bad — and what more pleasant way to start out our week together? — I'd always wondered if Kimchi, which is basically rotten cabbage, could ever get too old to eat.  Well, while scanning the bottom shelf of my fridge, looking for the half a lemon I'd stuck in there somewhere, I found not only the lemon, but the answer to my longstanding question.  Yes, Kimchi can rot beyond the point of edibility.  Far beyond.  I unearthed a tupperware containing the remnants of a commercial batch of Kimchi I'd bought at a Korean grocery about — um, this is kind of embarrassing — 4 years ago.

Anyway, the Kimchi was covered in white fuzzy mold — I first mis-diagnosed it as ice crystals — and smelled like Death's favorite cologne.  If Death were a demented old garlic-eating woman sitting next to you at the opera house in Hades, opening little cellophane-wrapped cabbage candies all throughout a performance of L'Elisir della Morte.

I'm not sure that, even after scalding and scouring with soapy water, that tupperware will ever be useable again.  Maybe babushka-woman can store her cologne in there.

Lambburger Helper

Here's how I combined some available ingredients to punch up a simple dinner of lamb burgers.  It turned into a delightfully bizarre (con-) fusion cuisine in which I used Indian ingredients to simulate a flavor created by the British to simulate authentic Indian cuisine and used in modern German cookery.  Got that straight?

Let's tease apart this tangle of cross-culturalism.  My inspiration was a quintessential German snack food known as Currywurst, which involves bite-sized nuggets of Bratwurst served in a sauce made of ketchup flavored with curry.  This delectable treat — it's really one of the most delicious, if not all that healthy, foods I've ever eaten — is most often eaten at outdoor venues off of a rectangular paper plate using a wooden "fork" that looks a little like a deformed popsicle stick.  As if the cholesterol count weren't already off the charts, Currywurst is often accompanied by a paper cone of french fries with mayo.  And a liter mug of beer.  (Oh, why did I ever leave Germany?)

Currywurst und Pommes mit Mayo

Kale and Mushroom Soup with Pasta Elbows

Dear Readers, I gave you a little pinto-bean-free reprieve for the weekend (and holiday, for those of you who acknowledge such occasions) — can you therefore bear to hear about just one more bean w/ham hock reincarnation?  This one is good, I promise, and the most unlike the original dish so far.  And the best part is that it used up all the remaining beans, so you won't be having to hear any more about that enduring dish after this.

Please don't resent me for trotting out bean recipe after bean recipe.  After all, Picasso had his blue period.  Isn't it only fair for me to be allowed to go through a bean period?  (I am not meaning to imply that I am the Picasso of leftovers, but if you'd like to indulge that association, I will not thwart you.)

Maybe these people would cheer up if they ate some beans with ham hock.

What follows is a step-by-step guide to how I converted this

Yuck!

into this

Yum!

Easy end-of-workday meal: Spaghetti "Cake"

What's a food blogger to do at the end of an exhausting workday when he is too pooped to cook, but he has spoiled his D.P. with so many good meals that the D.P. no longer sees any advantage to dining out?  This sad situation transpired in our house on Friday night, and I was forced — admittedly not exactly against my will, as I grabbed my camera and my ingredients and prepared to engage in the Joy of Cooking — I repeat, I was forced to come up with the following easy one-dish meal.

I may be bone-tired (and a bit blurry), but I can still feed my family!

"Easy" may be a little misleading.  If you don't already have the right ingredients on hand, you're in for a rather long slog.  Remember this, my friends, and freeze bits of this and that for when YOU are to pooped to cook.  So what are the ingredients I used to throw this meal together?

Now I'm Cooking! — London Broil w/Vegs & Sesame Cole Slaw

Welcome to the new week!  I hope you all had a nice weekend.  I must have been in a traditional mood yesterday, because I decided to do the quintessential Sunday-evening dinner: Pot Roast w/Vegetables.  But I'm never TOO traditional — in this case, I served my meat & potatoes with a kicky Asian-inspired salad using red cabbage and daikon radish.

In this meal, I used several ingredients that are not usually in my [metaphorical] pantry.  Blogging about what I cook has gotten me thinking about expanding my culinary horizons.  Not that I tend to make boring food or typically American or New York or Voice-Teacher or Gay Food.  I have a pretty creative style all my own, which has emerged over 3 decades in the kitchen.  (Don't worry; I haven't been continuously in the kitchen for 30 years.)  But I am always interested in trying new things and not getting stuck in cooking habits.  (It's an Alexander Technique thing.  Check out my other blog if you don't know what that means.)

Anyhow, the non-habitual ingredients tonight are London Broil (a 0.8-pound slab of beef about an inch thick), daikon radish, and sesame oil.  These latter two items used to be habitual for me when I was in my Korean phase, but it's been a while since then.  So long, in fact, that the first bottle of sesame oil I opened today turned out to be slightly rancid.  Thanks to Peter for sniffing it suspiciously and discovering the "off" aroma.  Otherwise, I might have ruined a whole bowlful of delicious veggies by drizzling them with fetid oil.  (Peter has a preternatural ability to detect "off" flavors and smells that zip right past my radar.  He also claims that he can taste plastic wrap if food has been wrapped in it, but I don't notice this, probably because 78% of the food I consumed growing up had come into contact with la Wrappe du Saran at some point.  Does anyone else out there have a princess-and-the-pea aversion to plastic tastes — or does my Peter have a rare gift?  In any case, I'm very lucky to have him around.)

Let's get cooking. . .shall we start with the salad?

Sesame Red Cabbage Slaw w/Daikon Radish

Now I'm Cooking! — Sausage & Sauerkraut 1-Dish Meal

Today I'm going to expose a limitation of counter-top convection ovens as well as a rare example of my own misjudgment.

That's irony, friends; I am always trying out things in my cooking that don't go the way I envisioned.  In coming up with solutions — trying to salvage the mess in that pot — I have learned a lot about cooking, challenged my creativity, ended up doing seemingly crazy things that actually worked, and had a few good laughs as I fed unsalvagable messes to the dogs.  (Or to the garbage, when even the dogs wouldn't touch my results — those Chihuahuas have highly developed palates.)  I encourage all cooks to welcome their mistakes as windows into the unexpected.

Here, Willy -- Daddy messed up in the kitchen. . . .

The Bad Seed

A look back at yesterday's meals — A Tale of Horror

Hallelujah!  I slept through the night (a full 8 hours) and woke up feeling almost back to normal.  [The rainforests breathe a sigh of relief as my tissue usage drops precipitously overnight.  One more day of this cold could have deforested Brazil.]  Apparently my optimism in not canceling today's students — as I had done Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday — was not unfounded.   I was even feeling sufficiently healthy to return to my old breakfast stand-by, fruit and nuts with yogurt.

Happily, the meh fruits I'd been eating all week without enthusiasm (perhaps they were feeling under the weather too) gave way to a truly delicious bartlett pear, banana, and navel orange today.   They were accompanied by a few tablespoons of the world's most excellent yogurt (yay, Amish grass-eating cows!), some raw walnuts, and, as a rare treat, roasted cashews.  (Don't tell my friend Laura, who worries about my salt intake, but these nuts were salted as well.)

A Look Back at Today's Meals

I'm feeling paradoxically better and worse today.  My energy level has improved and nothing hurts today, but my nose will not stop running.  (I am so blog-crazed that I actually just now contemplated including a photo of my tissue-filled trashcan.  You can breathe a sigh of relief that I decided you would probably be happier with a shot of Freddy and Willy.)

Better than a hot water bottle!