Cook Day part 1, July 27, 2008

Every once in a while, my wife and I have what we like to call Cook Day. The theory behind cook day is that we can spend an entire day cooking some of our favorite recipes that we know will feeze well. At the end of the day, we freeze most of the meals we cook, resulting in dinners and lunchs for several months to come. We just take the meals out (already packaged into single or double servings -- and I suppose two and a half for the baby soon enough), thaw for a day or overnight, and cook on the stove or in the oven.

Ideally, Cook Day should be thematic. That is to say, the recipes should feature some similar ingredient lists. Preparing meals with some common ingredients saves alot of money for us. This is particularly pracitcal with seasonal foods or herbs that don't preserve very well. When you buy a bunch of Parsely for example, it's nice to make several dishes that have Parlsey in them, instead of using the 3 tablespoons required for your soup, and putting the rest into the Rotting Drawer of the fridge (hospice for veggies I believe).

Thematic Cook Day has not really occured yet here at the GrayClements household, but Thematic Menu week has. Although it only happened once, Nicole thought out our meals for a week in sucha splendid fashion that we were both in awe, and still reminisce about the touch of genius that came with that week. I can work more on that later.

Ok, so this past Cook Day wasn't a Thematic sort per se, although beans seemed to come up quite often. We sort of got our list ready ahead of time with only three real criteria --1. we needed to use some of the side of beef we had purchased (I'll give a whole blog to beef and ingredients) and 2. we needed a little more clean protein in our diets, and beans are so easy and tasty (who cares if they are 'incomplete' proteins?? They sure beat a jr. bacon cheeseburger from wendy's any day) and 3. some of the jalapenos were ripening and I wanted to use them.

Our list came out with the following; Split Pea Soup, Senate Bean Soup, Smoked Salmon, Shepherd's Pie, Chili con Carne, Pot Roast, and Goat Cheese Burgers.

We started cooking at about 8am, and I think we finished up by around 9:30pm (with everything put away in the freezer by 10pm or so). I knew when we started that it was going to be a long day, but since we had some smoking to do, it sort of stretched out longer than I had even anticipated. It was worth it.

To start things off, I had to thaw the meat. So, on Friday (Cook Day was Sunday) I put a 4 pound roast, 4 pounds of precut stew meat and 2 pounds of ground beef into the Beer Fridge to thaw. (The Beer Fridge is normally very sparsely populated as I use beer for entertaining and cooking mainly, with wine being my libation of choice). The Beer Fridge is a mini dorm-size fridge from when my brother went to college, and then I inherited after that. I might give a whole blog entry to the Beer Fridge as well.

On Saturday we made a list of all the ingredients that we needed to get from the store. We always have to go to two stores to buy groceries -- Kroger for most things, and Eat's Natrual Foods for all dried beans and whole foods like that (Yumm!). We also had to go to the garden to pick our peppers (although this wasn't exactly necessary) and some fingerling potatoes (a must have).

So, on Sunday morning we started cooking. The baby went down, and we jumped in with vigor. We started with the pot roast, the split pea soup, and the beans for the chili and the senate bean soup.

For the Pot Roast, we opted for the quick and easy Crock Pot (although I don't really see how it's any easier or better than just tossing the roast in a dutch oven in the oven). I think if we had planned on baking something as well, this would have left the oven open. As it was, we could have done either way. So, we rinsed the roast (I don't know why, but I HAVE to do this, it's like an OCD habit need for me or something), salt and peppered it, and chucked it in the crock pot. Onto that we through an onion (or two) about two shallots (we got about 20 BIG shallots from our garden this spring), some dehydrated carrots (check for an ingredient blog later), some celery (with the leaves, ALWAYS with the leaves), lots and lots of garlic, some thyme (from the kitchen herb garden) and a couple of bay leaves (so elegant I feel dirty using them). Then we set the pot in the dining room to stew. We forgot to plug it in for the first four hours, so it took ALOT longer than it should have. Tip: ALWAYS plug the crock pot in for best results. Ours doesn't have this warning on it, so we learned the hard way.

Next came the soaking of the beans. For Senate Bean Soup, we needed a pound or so (about 2 cups) of navy beans (or other small white beans). For the Chili con Carne, we wanted to add some Kidney beans (although the recipe doesn't call for it). So, in two separate pots, we dropped the different beans. Then, we filled the pots to two inches above the beans with boiling water. Let that sit for about 2 hours or so, and the beans are 'soaked'.

Since the peas for the split pea soup require no soaking (I don't believe peas are actually beans), we just went ahead and started the dish after the beans had started soaking. The recipe I use for this is from the Joy of Cooking and is wonderful. I HATED peas as a kid, but those were those nasty, sweetly bitter sticktoyourmouthanddryyouout things in a can. Yuck! Actual fresh peas are like dipping your hand into a Halloween candy bag and getting something healthy for you. After you eat a fresh Sugar Snap pea, you have to look around and see if the cops are coming because it tastes so good it should be illegal. Anyways, split pea soup tastes of pepper and ham, with a thick, green (or yellow -- i'll explain) sauce that doesn't taste like what everyone thinks peas taste like. There are little hints of onion and carrot and a blend of aromatics that meld together into something that can only be described as 'heartily good'. MMMMM!!

Basically, to make split pea soup, you boil the peas with a smoked ham hock (that they pretty much give away in the grocery store) for about an hour or so. Then, you clena up the ham hock (chop it, remove the fat, and discard the bone). Chuck the meat and some celery (again, with the leaves), some onions, carrot and garlic back into the pot with the peas. Add some spices and simmer for another hour. During the second simmer, the peas start to disintegrate and change into a thick pasty sauce. The soup will separate a little when cooled, and again when reheated on the stove or in the microwave. Not a problem, just stir and enjoy.

If you can handle the extra calories, a good hunk of bread with butter goes a long way with a bowl of split pea soup.

Some good books

I thought another thing I should touch on are some of my influences in cooking. While most of my gardening lore comes from trial and error and some luck and intuition, I am always hungry to learn about the science of cooking. I like to use recipes as general guidelines, and I relish a good cookbook that can tell me why they are doing what they are doing.

The first and most important cooking resource I use is The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer. This is my ultimate guide and a source that I almost always trust. When I want to cook something, I will check with Irma first and see what she has to say. The book discusses the ingredients, the cooking methods, some of the history of the culture of the dishes. She might not explain a great deal of the science of a bain marie, but she does go into such details as where the brisket comes from on the cow and how roasting hens are different now than they were a few decades ago. Many of the recipes I will use in this blog will come from The Joy of Cooking, and I will be sure to credit the book. So, if you could only buy one cookbook, this is the one I would recommend.

The Joy of Cooking sometimes makes me a little sad. I feel that there has been a certain loss of tradition in cooking here in the US. Reading the book makes me nostalgic for memories I do not really have, of large Easter dinners, and extravagant homemade Christmas banquets. I also lament the change in the quality or availability of some of the ingredients. I understand that our agricultural practices and our social tastes will change with time, but reading this book sometimes makes me wonder if all of those changes are actually good.

The next book I like is The New Best Recipe from the editors of Cook's Illustrated. These guys really hit the science behind cooking. I have some gripes with this book on many levels, however the value that the contributors add to my repertoire cannot be denied.

Firstly, in my opinion, this cookbook is the Joy of Cooking rehashed. The organization is very similar, and many of the recipes exist in both books. I also feel that the techniques often skim quality for convenience. While sometimes acceptable, I do not normally advise this sort of exchange.

My plagiaristic criticisms aside, there is a good deal to be learned from this book. One of the most helpful aspects of this book is the trial and error approach to cooking. Every recipe is tested in a variety of ways, from changing cooking times and temperatures to selecting the best brand of canned tomatoes for a certain application. I like to go to this book to understand why Rombauer has me roasting for 60 minutes at 450 rather than 30 minutes at 475. I also check these guys for brand name suggestions. They do have some different recipes than Rombauer as well, and the variety is nice.

I recently purchased the Bread Bible by Rose Beranbaum. She does a wonderful job of explaining what those little yeast granules actually do. The breadth of the recipes is staggering, and each one gives several little twists (refrigerate overnight here, add a little old bread there) that can improve the flavor or shave off a half dozen hours from the prep time.

I have been focusing on the Hearth Breads section of her book. These breads are run of the mill commercial yeast breads. The taste of the recipes is wonderful, and the preparation is broken down into easy to follow steps. I make two of her Basic Hearth bread loaves each week for snacks and sandwiches.

I have been working on getting my sourdough together, which is actually the reason that I bought her book. My sourdough starter (named Baby Larry) has been going strong now for a few months, with moderate success in bread. The labor involved in sourdough is immense, but the rewards make the effort worth the while. I have about a 20-30% success ratio in making sourdough. The failures are not edible and end up costing two days of kneading, rising, feeding, expanding, etc. I think it will 'click' with me soon, but until then I am trying to find a two day block every once in a while that I can try to slip my foot in the door of sourdough perfection.

The last book on my recommendation list is How to Grill by Steven Raichlen. I own a Weber Bullet smoker, and I usually smoke instead of grill nowadays, the main difference being the time for smoking is usually 4-6 hours at 250F, while grilling is several tens of minutes are much higher temps. Raichlen often includes tips on smoking as opposed to grilling, so you can swing either way.

Raichlen covers nearly all the possible foods that can or should be put on a grill, and several that I don't really think actually should be grilled (lettuce and cabbage??). I was inspired by Raichlen to make grilled pizza for the first time, and for that alone I am eternally thankful (as grilled pizza is my penultimate best recipe). Among my favorites in this book are smoked salmon, chimichurri, beer can chicken, and grilled bananas.

Most of the recipes I will cite come from these sources. I don't go in much for cooking magazines, or randomize recipes from the internet. I like to know my sources and build on the trust that they have established through my experience with their ideas. I'll be sure to reference where I get my recipes so that others can buy the books or find the sources themselves.

intro

Ok, this is my first shot at this. We'll see how it goes. I am doing this because Amanda asked me to, and I think it might not be a bad idea. While it is possible that something I have done or am planning to do might help someone else, I imagine that I will get much more out of this than any readers would.

So, I am an avid gardener, on the verge of dropping out of my PhD in Engineering to start a full scale farm somewhere with a nice little Inn or Tavern to get the food out to people. I doubt it would ever really happen, but here in cyberspace I can dream anything I wish. So, this blog will be sort of a discussion or history of what I grow, what I want to grow, what I cook and some of the ideas I would like to try along these lines.

The picture above was taken from a tree next to our community garden. My plot is the one in the upper left, hightlighted in red. I am the rightmost figure in the Center in this picture. This picture was taken in April 08, when we were starting our second year as a community garden. Our plot is about 20 feet by 40 feet, roughly 800 square feet (out of an 11000-15000 sq ft communal plot).

The next picture is a shot of our little backyard house garden. We've had it for about 6 years now, and we have spent alot of time and effort getting the soil conditioned. Everything we do is organic, but the methods have changed within that boundary over the years. We started out with organic fertilizers, like bloodmeal, bonemeal and potash, with lime if necessary. But, recently we have moved to simply emptying our entire compost heap into the garden each spring. Our secondary 'fertilizer' is just to give the plants more than ample space. We very rarely water (2-4 times per year). This garden is about 15 by 20 feet.

Finally, we have a set of herb gardens on either side of the side porch to our house. These get nice, full afternoon sun. The foundation of the house (concrete) absorbs alot of heat during the afternoon and keeps the beds really hot. Also, either the warmth from the heater or solar collection during the day somehow keep these beds warm enough during the winter that some tender perennials seem to last through the freeze.

I'll get cracking soon on what we did on our last Cook Day, what we made, what I wish we had changed, etc.