Shot Weed - as Local as it Gets

Meet Shot Weed!  The new darling of weed season.

These are the guys in the summer that get a thin, wiry stem with seeds
that shoot themselves all over your yard when you try to pull them out.

I bet you have this in your yard.  And I bet it drives you NUTS!  Guess what.  You can stop hating it NOW.

Why?
1. It is edible. (whoopee…. so what?)
2. It is tasty - a local water cress taste alike!  (It is a brassica sp. - that is a broccoli, cabbage and mustard relative).
3. It has a shallow root system, so if it growing in your garden, it makes great green mulch, protecting your soil without stealing water from your deeper rooted veg.

So would I really eat it?

Yes!

SO-o-o-o-o-o good with the roast beef sandwich.
The pretzel roll made it extra good.

How to harvest?

Pull up the rosette, bring all the branches in.  Twist them off the root near the base of the stems.
Give them a wash and a spin.

Goes great in salads as well.

Sure, pull them out of where they don't belong, but don't let them make you crazy any more.  Eat them up.

Where did you learn about this?

From the informative and interesting Melany Vorass Herrera and the Front Yard Forager
This is exhaustively researched, and the Bibliogtaphy has lots of material if you'd like to follow up.  But color pix are helpful… AND recipes.  My kind of book.
http://www.amazon.com/Front-Yard-Forager-Melany-Vorass-Herrera/dp/1594857474

Yogurt Containers make Self-Watering Pots

Making herb growing even more stupid proof.

Grow herbs!  They are pretty stupid proof, grow better when plucked often and make everything tastier.

For me the biggest stupid is forgetting to water them. 

OK this is basil that died of cold, not under watering,
but dead is dead.

I've sorted the baby-stage.  From seed to seedling (aka “micro-greens” in certain Fancy Places), these repurposed  lettuce containers work as green houses that keep in most of the water, and create a cozy, toasty environment.

But when the herbs are transplanted from the baby-bed, but it is still the too cold to go outside, they are in danger of my neglect.  On more than on occasion, I've killed the fragile little guys.  Not wanting to have them up end up as the base for frost flowers, they stay in.  Good.

But then I'll forget to water them.  Bad

They dry up and die.

Once they make it outside, they are usually in good shape.  The rain usually continues quite dependably, so for a while yet, watering solved.

I've even gotten around to hooking up a drip watering system.  That certainly helps with the arrival of the 2 (shifting) months of no rain.   And makes life sweet for the herbs that did survive the dangerous indoor weeks. 

But between the years I fiddling about with more herbs than my drip system can handle, and the needless indoor deaths by artificial drought, I realized I needed to get creative. Possibly even Crafty.

Capillary Action to the rescue!

Old yogurt containers, All you need is 2 containers that nest well with a pretty good sized gap underneath (for the water).

and some sort of artificial fiber that gets wet.  You can use cotton or wool, but they will disintegrate faster.  It needs to be wet-able so water will travel or “wick” up it from the lower level into the upper.  Certain nylon and polypropylene ropes don’t get wet very well, and can’t wick.  However acrylic yarn and any other fiber that gets wet will work just fine.

Punch a few small holes (cork screw eliminated “stabby” type injuries)

Cut your yarn/rope.  Knot in one end so it stays where you want it.

Push the yarn through the small holes.  The mini screwdriver was handy.  Plenty of other tools work fine too.

Now your self watering pot is ready for business!  Plant the top pot like a regular flower pot.  Add water to the bottom pot – but only enough so your top pot isn’t floating.

Now your transplanted herbs will water themselves for a week or longer.

Fewer casualties all around.  Yay!

February Freezer Challenge

Over the end of summer, the bountiful fall, and the ambitious celebration season, I tend to fill my freezer.  It gets the overflows of produce at it's peak, greens blanched our otherwise cooked down from enormous batches ready all at once.

turnip & chard & mustard

 It gets fruits frozen for use in smoothes and baking.

February blueberry waffles - FTW!

It gets portioned out beets from a large roasting session so planning ahead is an unattended thaw, rather than session with the oven I have to be there for (and the peeling, and the clean-up and…).  And it gets all the parts and bits of stuff leftover from my ambitious winter cooking - but the portions of awesome leftovers, but also the parts of convenience food I've purchased for those days that appear to be 14.5 hours long instead of the standard 24.

Oh yes, I LOVE Trader Joe's, and even some Costco items.  I finally grew out of trying to be perfect.  The hours are better, and you meet a better class of people.

And right about now I find my freezer(s) - the one in my fridge, and the chest one in the garage, to be a higgledy-piggledy hodge podge in need of some serious discipline.

Further more, the next produce season is rolling around.  I need to use up the old stuff, clean the accumulated out of the chest freezer, and make room for the next summer and fall bounty.

And the fish heads at the bottom that were due to be crab bait are REALLY ready for it now, and must not miss their chance this summer.

Last night was easy - Chicken soft tacos with leftover rice, shredded cheese and Mexican style sauerkraut with carrots (cumin & jalapeño spiced - very similar in flavor profile to the the vegetable escabeche you can get in the "ethnic" aisles - but way WAY better.)

I will thank TJ's for their cryo-vac'd pre-spiced chicken and Oly Kraut for my long keeping crunchy veg.  And corn tortillas for going through the freeze thaw so well.

Tonight?  We shall see.

A Visit to Miyabi 45th

The IT Guy in my life recently decreed date night once a month.  Pretty good idea as these things go.  The boy genius can now be left at home for such a thing, so the whole baby-sitter (“Kid-sitter MOM!”) headache does not come up.  The kerfuffle of getting out the door has lost some of the ‘fuffle.  I’m amenable.

One problem.  And it is admittedly a confabulation of White Whine and my own madness, but I really don’t like to go out to eat unless it is something I can’t make at home (due to knowledge or equipment or ingredient access), or is so time consuming and/or complicated I would never do it.  So regular run-of-the-mill roast chicken, pasta, steak, house salad and undercooked bread pudding keep me out of a large number of restaurants due to eye-crossingly tedious ennui. 

But, I live in Seattle.  Darnit.  One of the best food crossroads of the world.  And full of experimental restaurants, fusion – both good and horrific (Irish Cajun???), home cookin’ of the Pacific Rim, and now burgeoning with flavors from India (there are a lot of flavors from India), the troubled but lemon and garlic laced Middle East, the spice laced Fertile Crescent, and the tantalizing but so far elusive Western side of Africa.  Now this is stuff I don’t know how to make.  Look here! 

Ta-TA New American!  I’m lookin’ old world.  And to that end, the first restaurant the new rule took us to was Miyabi 45^th.  A Japanese/French Fusion joint.  (2208 N 45th St, Seattle, WA In the heart of the Wallingford restaurant row.)
 ‎

“WHAT?”  you say.

Yet it is a pairing that works surprisingly well if you stop and think on the food sensibilities of both cultures.  The French obsessiveness with appellation controlée or the awareness and protection of the characteristics of a given food item, makes them a perfect match with the Japanese love of exacting (might I say obsessive?  c.f. Jiro Dreams of Sushi) standards.  Both have fastidious and precise food preparation techniques that seem excessive, but prove to be essential to their unique taste.  Neither culture is much in for heavy flavoring or spicing, depending instead on the ingredients and exacting preparation to determine the flavor.  All said – there is much to be said for an aesthetic in common. 

And it all comes out as a wild success at Miyabi 45^th.

We started out with Oysters.  There were 4 types.

3 varieties were cold water, 1 was not.
I bet you can tell from the shell size.

We knew we were on to something great when the oysters were excellent and tasty, enhanced by a yuzu mignonette, and were so darn visually appealing after they had been eaten.

There was so much baffling temptation on the menu, we went Omikaze.  (That’s functionally Japanese for “Tasting Menu”, but with the extra twist of no printed menu, Chef Decides!  ) 

The meal started with a superb proof that French/Japanese fusion may sound crazy, but boy does it taste good.  Foie Gras Tofu.  

The sample I had of this dish earlier, got me in the door.

It is flavored tofu, but instead of a chalky or silken-slippery texture it somehow has that silky, fatty, melting texture of foie gras and a mysterious, rich flavor that while not exactly foie, convinces you that it is luxury.  Served as an amûse , yet presented with definite Japanese style it convinced both of us we were in for the goods.

The roasted shiso peppers with spicy mayonnaise were a refreshing follow up.  The bitterness of the green pepper (these are 90 out of 100 times not spicy at all, but you occasionally get a fiery mutant) is completed by the sweet/savory of Japanese Mayo, with a lemony spicy twist.

love this plate!

And then the dish we nearly stabbed each other over – Uni Tartare.  Uni over beef tartare, real, freshly grated wasabi standing in for the horseradish.  Just dizzingly spectacular.  All I can say is the taste lived up to the presentation.

Notice the hands hiding each other back!

And roasted sardine.  Tender on the inside, crispy on the outside.  Nom.  
Oh, if you get one of these, cut along the back-bone, and slide the knife along the ribs to lift off the whole side.  You’ll look like you know what you are doing.

Stop for a little beefy soup.  The broth so rich in flavor, the tongue obviously with a trip through a skillful pressure cooker.  It fell apart like the tenderest best cooked brisket.  And the accompaniments took it the rest of the way to excellent.  Impeccable clear both, incredible cooked tongue, so very French, and Japanese flavors supporting the whole show. 

The duck hearts in place of snail in the traditional escargot preparation?  I was a big fan.  The sizzle of the butter, and the ridiculously garlicky panko crumbs – I’ll be back.  And the duck hearts had that same earthy-chewy experience as the snails.

We were blessed with a bowl of the famous house-made tender soba.  Nope… no picture.  It pretty much looks like a great bowl of noodle soup.  The extra exceptional part about it - the noodles.  If you've never had fresh soba noodles (I hadn't) they bare only the most passing resemblance to the dried kind.  So tender and flavorful - the buckwheat taste shines through and becomes an essential part of the flavor.

Our “pre-dessert” was a stack of blinis, crème fraiche and ikura (salted salmon roe).  Pretty to look at, and worth chasing down every last egg, smear of cream, and consuming the shreds of shiso leaf.  I give the Japanese sensibility of the plate’s style points way over the French on this one (the actual physical plate, not the plating).

And for dessert, another one of those – well, never saw that coming – moments.  Purple mountain yam “cheesecake”.  No cheese at all, but the texture was cheesecake.  The taste was exotic sweet potato.  Not too sweet, and very Japanese at the end.

And fulfilling both my requirements – all sorts of things I don’t know how to do, and plenty I would never take the time to do.

Oh Miyabi 45^th may you get the devoted clientele you deserve.  (Along with me.)

P.S. Completely LOVE the plates.  One of those little things that makes the whole thing that much better.  

The Dangers of the BBC – Masterchef: the Professionals

Over on BBC they have a version of Masterchef that has nothing to do with Gordon Ramsey, has no parting shots and is all about the development and testing of professional chefs.  These are the people you watch to be impressed.  Forget comparing myself to them.  They’re better.  They’ve trained for this and it shows.  Well, mostly.

There are the skill tests.  They are presided over by the awesome and formidable Monica Galetti (this woman knows how to use an eyebrow!)  These are things I can do if I go look it up in Julia Child, or Boston Cooking School cookbook or Brillat-Savarin (Old School Stuff),  but not in the 8 or 15 minutes that the chefs have.  Quite often, and to our vast entertainment, they can’t either.

Some are clear shows of the culinary divide between here and London – Uni is not a thing there, but over here us lowly home cooks are taking on the Sea Urchin.  This was a particularly painful episode to gasp and giggle through.

And then the challenge was Crêpes Soufflé.  The boy saw that, and said, “Can we make that?”   Next thing I knew I had the dynamic duo making a soft meringue with crème patisserie  and crêpes,  All I had to do was warm up the oven and break out the bottle of tayberry syrup I’d been saving for something good.  (And help with the cleanup, but that’s neither new, nor exciting.)

But this is what we got out of it.

Here’s how: 

(Fortunately we didn’t have to do it in 15 minutes, and neither do you.)  I've simplified things a bit by leaving out the crème patisserie, and substituting powdered sugar, because these won't have to sit around and need "stabilization" from the crème.

And what do you do with extra egg yolks?  Crème Brulée, Sauce Bérnaise, Hollandaise, or something similarly luscious.  Or gingersnaps.

Crêpes

Make these 1st.  Make tons, separate them with wax paper (or similar) and freeze for later use.

Ingredients: (you can easily make 1/3 of this recipe if you want to go small)

1 C flour (instant blending if you have it)

2/3 C cold milk

2/3 C water

3 eggs

1/4 tsp salt

3 Tbs melted & cooled butter (+ more for the pan)

Equipment:

blender or large bowl and whisk

non-stick pan

large, non metal flipping spatula

plate for stacking crepes

(optional - wax or similar paper for storing crêpes) 

Prep: 

All the ingredients in the blender.  Go until smooth (or whisk until same result is reached)

Let it sit in the refrigerator for 10 min - 48 hours.  This will let the flour swell up and make sturdier crêpes.  (If you don't have time, it'll still work, they just might tear).

Cook!

Place about a tsp of butter in the pan over medium high heat.  (Putting the butter in the cold pan helps you keep from overheating an empty pan!)  When the butter melts and then sizzles, then subsides, the pan is ready.  Spread the butter around.  Then while tilting the pan to spread the batter, add 2Tbs - 4Tbs of batter.  Enough to cover the bottom in a thin layer.  Cook about 1 minute, or until lacy brown patterns form on the bottom.  Flip and cook about 30 seconds.  Place on the plate.  Continue through the batter and make a stack.  

These can be used right away.  Refrigerated, or separated and frozen in a zip top bag.  Until you're making crêpes every day, don't be afraid to fuss with times and temperatures until you have it exactly right!  And then when you change cook tops and pans, you'll have to futz around all over again.

Soufflé Part

  

Ingredients:

prepared crêpes (see above - 2 per person)

1 egg whites per crêpe (you can get away with 2 egg whites for 3 crêpes)

2 tsp powdered sugar per eggwhite

fruit syrup (optional)

Equipment:

cookie sheet

silicone baking mat/parchment paper/greased cookie sheet

large flipping spatula

large bowl

soft scraping spatula

mixer with whipping attachment

Prep:

Separate the eggs.  Set the yolks aside for something else.

Place the egg whites in a large, very clean bowl/bowl of a stand mixer.  Start beating the egg whites on a slow speed, until they are bubbly.  Turn up the speed a bit, and sprinkle in the powdered sugar carefully - so it doesn't fly around.

Continue to beat the egg whites until they won't fall out of the bowl if you flip it over (semi-stiff peaks).  

Cook!

Heat the oven to 350˚F.

Place the baking mat/parchment paper on the cookie sheet.

Lay on crêpe flat on the cookie sheet.  Use the soft spatula to spread a layer of egg white on half the crêpe (about 1/2" to 3/4" inch thick).  Fold over (half moon shape).  Spread another, thinner layer of egg white on half the crêpe again.  Fold over again (triangle shape).  

Repeat with as many as you want (6 is a good number for a cookie sheet).  Pop in the oven for about 8 minutes, or until the egg whites puff up or "soufflé."

Yummy!