November 13th, 2007
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I have an inspiration: I want to do a series of dinners based on historical legacy. For example, a Roman meal composed entirely of foods available in the Roman era, cooked with Roman methods. A medieval dinner in the same vein. Perhaps a meal of Renaissance Italy? France in the 18th century? Fun times!
Tags: cooking, want
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November 13th, 2007
So I always thought eggs had to be kept in the fridge until I lived in
England for a while and found that, in grocery stores, eggs were
stocked out in the aisles alongside cereal and bottled gherkins and
the like. This kind of surprised me. So…is the need to refrigerate
eggs just a myth?
I just got Bob’s Red Mill 11-grain cereal in my keyboard.
Tags: eggs, england
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November 12th, 2007
Last night I got all weird and creative and decided to make some adventurous pizzas, topped with stuff I found in our pantry and fridge that needed to be used up. Fortunately there wasn’t quite enough dough for me to use the kippered herring I found, but there was some significant creativity nonetheless.
My first mistake was that I tried to make the dough a bit healthier by adding 1/3 whole wheat flour in with the bread flour. Bleh. Whole wheat pizza dough just doesn’t taste that good. Mr. Pencil disagreed, but all in all, the fact that I started with blecky dough kind of ruined the whole experiment.
Here are the pizzas I made:
- Basic: Tomato sauce, basil, mozzarella, olive oil
- One egg, parmesan
- Sliced potatoes blanched in truffle-salted water with truffle-infused olive oil (have I mentioned how much I like truffles lately?)
- Pizza bianca: Rosemary, olive oil, crushed garlic (we just planted a bunch of rosemary in our yard–tastes amazing)
- Using up some feta: feta, rosemary, crushed chilis, olive oil, black pepper
- Using up some feta, part II: feta, rosemary, garlic, black pepper, olive oil
- Carpaccio of black truffle, truffle oil, parmiggiano
- Sliced potato, mozzarella, parmesan, olive oil
- Pesto (from this summer, in the freezer), pine nuts, parmesan
- Feta, Part III: Feta, spinach sauteed in garlic and olive oil, garlic
Next time I am going to try to use Chris Clark’s 24-hour pizza dough recipe. I just didn’t have 24 hours to wait this time!
Tags: cooking, pizza
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January 18th, 2007
After my vitriolic spewing about how much I hate Nostrana and other non-reservation-taking restaurants and their snarky wait staff, I feel somewhat vindicated that Nostrana ran away with the “worst service at a good restaurant” vote on the awesome blog An Exploration of Portland Food and Drink.
Link
p.s. It’s too bad I live, like, three blocks from Nostrana now.
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January 15th, 2007
I realize I rarely, if ever, actually mention here what it is I do that occupies my time. You know: hobbies, parties, events, major catastrophes. Perhaps I will remedy that, but as warning: it could be boring.
One thing my Sweet Mr. Pencil and I do a lot is cook. I learned a couple of things in the past week that are most likely completely useless to my readers, but here they are:
* We attended a cooking class/meal at Mama Mia Trattoria downtown to benefit Morrison Child & Family Services last week. I learned something new: if you have a gas stove, you can roast red peppers by simply putting them on the burner and turning them every so often. Yikes, slash awesome. I wouldn’t recommend trying this anywhere near a smoke detector, but it’s entertaining and feels rather primitive and generally rad. Our new house has a gas stove, yay.
* If you’re looking for dry active yeast–and who isn’t, I recommend heading over to the Sheridan Market over here on the eastside. There, next to the typical bottle of yeast you see in every grocery store, you will find a vacuum-packed chunk of yeast that is easily five or six times more yeast–for the same amount of money. If you bake a lot, this is win. Plus it feels all restaurant-sized and cool.
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November 13th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I have been told, though it’s quite possible I am circulating a myth myself, that American eggs have been washed, thereby removing some protective layer on the eggs’ surface, and thereby necessitating refrigeration. They don’t do this in Europe, so their eggs are just fine on the shelf.
… Okay, I was annoyed at the possibility of my only contributing half-truths, so I googled it, and found this blog post, which references Cook’s Illustrated, which may very well be where I got my info from, but there is no way to check online.
Anyhow, I think the short story is that you need to refrigerate any eggs you buy at a store (that is, ones that were refrigerated when you bought them), but probably not eggs from a farmer or friend who didn’t wash them.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Maybe it has to do with duration. Eggs available in Europe might be more recently laid than the ones in American grocery stores? I also like to imagine Europeans visiting their local market each morning, buying just the eggs they need for that day (before they head off to their grueling six-hour work days). Me, I’ll buy a dozen eggs, stick them promptly in the fridge and eat them over the course of a month or so.
Something else egg- and refrigerator-related that’s creepy. Store-bought mayonnaise doesn’t require refrigeration, even after opening. Which I find especially odd given that home-made mayo will give you a nasty case of food poisoning if you leave it somewhere warm for even a few hours. Maybe it’s because I don’t make mayo out of oh, whipped SOY.
November 17th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Here’s a forum thread from recipezaar.com that might shed some light..
http://www.recipezaar.com/bb/viewtopic.zsp?t=231779
November 21st, 2007 at 6:53 am
Not sure why but they don’t refrigerate them here in Ireland either. Thought that was because they were fresher and didn’t need to be. On my recent trip I was shocked by how very very white American eggs are. Have got too used the regular old brown (almost always free range) eggs I get here. For another custom, in the Cork English Market you can still get buttered eggs which was (I’m told) an old fashioned way of keeping eggs fresher longer. Although the ones I see in the market look like they are in a cold case. Does cage free in US mean the same as free range in Ireland?