Pizza and chicken feet

The AeroGarden is really thriving. The salad greens are doing well, overall, though they seem a bit wilty. They are super-tender though. I had to buy some salad greens to account for all the salad we were eating and I was surprised at how tough they were in comparison. The cilantro is doing the best of all, taking up as much space as it can. The chives are thriving and the basil is just starting to pick up. The parsley is battling with the cilantro for space, but overall, everything seems to be doing well.

AeroGarden sent me a replacement base for the tomato AeroGarden. I am pleased with their response time and also the ease with which they sent me the new base, even if they did a weird thing and shipped UPS which suddenly was diverted to the USPS. Perhaps this had to do with our snow storm. Anyway, I put the new base in and am very happy there is no more flickering. I put the tomato seedlets back in, and hopefully they will sprout soon. Apparently, tomatoes need a large window of black-out time. I'm not sure that I have planned it properly with both AeroGardens being next to each other and slightly different light cycles, but I have my toes crossed.

After my last mess with trying to make pizza dough, I was able to score some from H since she's working at Holeman & Finch's bakery. This is quite a pile of pizza dough, in case you didn't know. It had definitely risen and was sticky and pliable. I looked up how to stretch it out properly and set to work.

As you can see, I am really not the best pizza shaper. But it turned out okay, even though my light kneading seemed generally horrible. We started off with a margherita (mozzarella, basil) and a Pine Street sausage with caramelized onion.

They turned out okay, but I wasn't terribly impressed by the crust, which I didn't eat. For the margherita, I wished that I had used more cheese. For the other, the flavor of the sausage and onions was really good.

For my second batch, I went all out with sausage, caramelized onions, mushrooms, and mozzarella.

Josh said that this one came out better, and that the crust was good. I thought it was meh again. I attempted to make more pizzas the next day, but still wasn't very pleased with how they turned out. I did make a sauce with the leftover tomato sauce, mushrooms, sausage, and onions though. It smelled quite nice. At least I can still make sauce.

Josh went out of town, so I made chicken feet, the ones that I got from Heritage Farms. It's not that Josh is squeamish about chicken feet (or so he says) but he doesn't like the smell of star anise that I put in.

Well, I guess there isn't much that looks appetizing with raw chicken feet with the claws still on and the light from the window isn't helping. Overall, the chicken feet look like most chicken feet that I've seen except there were no odd yellow areas like you sometimes see. I cut off all the claws and swept them off the board. (Originally, I planned to take a picture of those, but I didn't, so you can thank me.)

My mother's recipe calls for either broiled the feet or boiling them in water, presumably to get the oil out of them. After broiling, you must wash them in cold water.

For years, I watched my mother cook and when I started cooking in my own kitchen, I naturally did whatever I had learned by watching her. But over the years, I've started modifying some of that behavior. For instance, I no longer wash meat when I bring it home from the market, though I still wash meat that just defrosted. I debated over this practice for a long time when Julia Child insisted on washing meat and Jacques Pepin said he doesn't. (He also said that if bacteria ends up surviving the cooking process, they deserve to survive, but I digress.) Other readings have also indicated that washing just spreads bacteria around, especially in poultry.

So anyway, that was my way of saying that I'm not sure if this broil and cold-water wash step is really essential, but I stick to it every time.

While the feet are browning away in the oven, you prepare the braising liquid. Two cups water, soy sauce, whole black peppercorns, salt, and star anise. I don't know why it's two cups of water specifically, especially when there is no noted quantity of the chicken feet, but in general, it has always worked well. I was also surprised at how pungent the star anise were when I opened the container. As you probably know, you are supposed to replace your spices every year. So around new year, I throw out all the containers and we go to the market to buy new ones. This year, I only replaced those things that we use very often or are not whole (allspice berries, nutmeg, star anise) so these are pretty old, relatively speaking. I guess it's powerful stuff!

You bring the mixture to a boil, add the feet, bring back to a boil, and lower to a simmer. Then, according to my recipe, you simmer for one hour. I actually always simmer for more than an hour, and come back to stir relatively often (every 30 min) so that there is equal cooking.

I did end up adding more water, by the way, an hour into the cooking because the water was so low. I almost covered all the feet, but the level was lower again when the feet were done.

As you can see, I maybe cooked them TOO long. And looking at the clock, I think I cooked them for about three hours. This is what happens when you are working/watching tv and just getting up to stir every once in a while. Anyway, they tasted good, even if I only ate one bowlful. I guess I will subject Josh to their smell on the lunar new year.