Memorial Day foods!

Friday I had a half day, so on the way home, I stopped off at the farmer's market and picked up littleneck clams and some fresh linguine. For dinner, I made a tasty linguine with white clams which I have been wanting for weeks. Sadly, the wine was a little off, and though I noticed it when I opened it, it has smelled too strong before and was fine. This time, I'm a little disappointed. I should probably pour it out and refill. (Typically, I buy the gallon jugs of miscellaneous-cheap-white-wine and fill a bottle that I keep in the kitchen.) Normally we go through wine much faster than we have been.

Saturday morning, we headed over to the highlands to check out the Morningside market. We have actually been trying (but not very hard) to go to this market for a long time. It's open from 8am-12pm so as obviously late sleepers on Saturday, it's rare that we make it. I have to admit that based on everything I have read about this market, it was surprisingly small. There was a vendor with nice tomatoes so we bought some of those. There was also a rep there for grassfedcow.com and they also sell berkshire pork. In general, she noted that it's best to pre-order if you want to pick up. But honestly, if I want to pre-order meat, I'm best off just calling Star Provisions who is open from 10-10. That's me: lazy. We'll check out the market again in June. Hopefully, it was just because it's relatively early in the season.

After checking out the market, we headed over to Alon's to check out their expansion. We don't go to Alon's often (obviously, since I think they expanded a long time ago) mainly because their cakes are too large for two and we don't eat much bread. They now carry olives and a large selection of prepared foods. That's good for them. You should have seen the killing they were making on the prepared foods. I cannot believe the prices that some people will pay for things like... asparagus or salmon. Anyway, we picked up sandwiches to eat outside. I got a "veggie" which was roasted eggplant, roasted red peppers, and fresh mozzerella on whole wheat with a pesto mayo. It was incredibly good. J got the "tuscan" which is roasted eggplant, arugula, goat cheese, and probably pesto mayo also. It was good, but mine was better. :) We also picked up a small (two inches across) lemon raspberry mousse, which is my favorite cake from there. We ended up eating this with some decaf Illy coffee (J's favorite) Sunday night.

Saturday night, I made fried chicken. I'm sure I will hear a lecture about this one. I bought the chicken to make this several weeks ago, but we never made it either due to time constraints or something. My fried chicken starts with a day soaking in buttermilk and then gets drained and coated in a flour, cornstarch, s+p mixture. Scott Peacock says that the secret is to pat off all the extra dredge and I think it's true. This batch was more crispy than any of my others. You know, I don't think I should ever order Scott Peacock's fried chicken from Watershed though. He cooks it in a lard/butter mixture with bacon fried in it to add taste. WOW! I just do a simple crisco fry.

Peacock says that if you fry it properly, chicken absorbs hardly any fat at all. And I was reading Diana Kennedy's From My Mexican Kitchen: Technique and Ingredients where she talks about lard and quotes Paul Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France, "An interesting fact I discovered in a U.S. Department of Agriculture Publication: Handbook 8-4 revised 1979 -- is that rendered poultry fat (goose duck and chicken) contains 9% cholesterol, and lard contains 10% compared with butter with 22%. Since one needs less poultry fat, oil or lard than butter to sauté meat or vegetables, one will ingest far less saturated fat ... one needs less of these because butter breaks down and burns at a high temperature, whereas the others do not."

Of course, there is also the argument where you should not use poultry fat (even if Julia Child says that duck-fat-fried potatoes are divine and they are) or butter when you cook, there it is. We've been trying to cut down. In the summer, we'll eat as healthily as we can.

Anyway, I made extra chicken so that I can give some to E&K. I should also give them some fresh frozen dumplings (oxymoron?) when I drop off the chicken.

Sunday afternoon we met up with J's sister for lunch. She was in town just for the weekend. We headed over to La Fonda where I had tasty paella del mar (one of my favorites) and maduros. I am not sure if I have mentioned that I tried to make paella. I found it to be a very long process. However, we have decided that it's much like a cross between fried rice and risotto in preparation. Although I spent all that time making the fish stock, next time, I will use a partial fish, partial chicken stock, similiar to what I use for gumbo.

Sunday, I made chicken stock. We had probably four carcasses in the chest freezer along with some chicken wing tips. So I roasted them all in the oven and made a dark stock. They still need to be de-fatted and I'll cooking one of them down for a demi-glace, but they are pretty and rich tasting.

Sunday was also our anniversary so we celebrated by having king crab legs and lobster. We actually have a lot of the lobster meat left over. We were not expecting the king crab to be quite as filling as it was. And we also have a ton of shells now too!

This morning, we had huevos. I know that just means eggs in Spanish, but to us, it means that we eat them in corn tortillas with guac, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. For dinner tonight, we are having fish tacos with grilled mahi-mahi. Yum!

I think we are going to try to concentrate on eating some frozen goodies instead of buying meats today at the market. Filtering through the freezer is always a string of exclamations, wow, I didn't realize we had this! Obviously, I need a better freezer-tracking method. I've read about those freezers/fridges that will track what is inside. That would be way cool as a digital display on the outside of the fridge. :)

Oh, I did want to mention that we picked up Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook at Costco ($28, cover price is $45). I've only made it through the intros so far. He states that it's an egotistical cookbook with only 100 recipes, but these are the 100 that count, that he makes the most at home. He writes at length about how this cookbook is meant to be like a storytelling between friends and that the recipes are not traditional recipes, but more like ideas with somewhat vague instructions.

Jacques' beliefs in cooking and cooks have always made me somewhat uneasy. I suppose it's because in reading all of his introductions, he typically says that real cooks don't use recipes. Instead, you never truly begin to cook until you no longer need the recipe and make the recipe your own. I suppose that's the part that makes me uneasy. I agree enough that even in making a recipe twice, a cook starts to make a recipe her own, tailoring it to her tastes and preferences. And I suppose I have always comforted myself in saying that if J and I enjoy what I cook, then the dish is successful. But Jacques mentions that many cooks who have techical skill but are not actually talented will only turn out a couple "very good" dishes ever. It makes me kind of sad. I don't even think of myself as having good technical skill. After all, I don't even use the proper techniques for dicing an onion. Am I just stuck then? Somewhere between the housewife cooking out of boxes and a mediocre recipe reader?

Oh well. In the end, I guess it doesn't matter much. I'll keep cooking from cookbooks and if that makes me happy, that's enough for me.