Sunday Cooking

Last weekend we were camping; next weekend we are running up to Arkansas to check in with the mother-in-law.  So this weekend, I thought I'd do a little cooking.

(Also, my to-try recipe list has jumped up to twenty-eight. I swore off collecting recipes last year, so how did this happen?)

I find myself pounding little wads of raw pork sausage, soy sauce and garlic into hollowed-out cucumbers. Pretty darn near impossible and stupid to boot.  I can't believe this is going to taste good enough to be worth the hassle.  Here's the picture, pre-cooking.


After cramming in as much pork as you can (and swearing in frustration as it oozes back out), you simmer these things in chicken stock for a half hour; add mushrooms, simmer some more, and decorate with green onions. And here it is:



Chrissy Tiegen's Mother's Pork Stuffed Cucumber Soup



(forgot to sprinkle with chopped green onion but I'll do that in a bit)

Indeed, it is a light and refreshing dish, although almost unbearably bland until I embellished my bowl with a slug of soy sauce. If I ever again feel a need to torture myself by cramming bits of ground pork into tiny cucumber cavities, I'll do this:
1. Substitute cooked rice and chopped shitake mushrooms for half of the pork
2. Roll them into tiny meatballs
3. Seed the cucumbers and chop into chunks
4. Throw them all in the broth together. It would taste just the same (or better)

Prior to making the cucumbers, I was exploding an eggplant in the broiler. Hint: if a recipe tells you to place a whole eggplant under the broiler and roast on high for one hour, you should heed the little voice in the back of your head that says, but shouldn't I cut it or something first? Else after fifteen minutes you'll hear a muffled "pfloof" from the oven and open the door to find your eggplant has split and spilled its guts all over the place.

Exploded eggplant:


After that I was supposed to close the eggplant up in the foil and let it "sweat" for a little while. And I totally forgot that step. So when it came time to squeeze out all the juices and then add enough water to make a cup of liquid, I didn't have to mess up a measuring cup. I simply scraped the two or three teaspoons of liquid into the water.

To this liquid I added a piece of dried kombu (Pacific kelp seeweed), brought it to a simmer, then added a quarter cup bonito flakes.  After this had steeped for five minutes, I was supposed to strain it--oops again. My eggplant liquid had been strained through a large-holed seive, so it had some of the eggplant solids in it. But now they were strained out along with the bonito flakes. (Bonito flakes are smoked skipjack tuna--if you smell them or taste them, they're grossly fishy. But added to a dashi like this, they're fine.)

Now the liquid received a dollup of soy sauce and mirin and was reduced.  And that was it--add the reduced liquid to the eggplant solid and sprinkle with toasted sesame seed, and i had made:

Smoked Eggplant for Ramen [eggplant stuff]
J. KENJI LÓPEZ-ALT

Sadly, it wasn't very good. I added a little more soy sauce and tried it on top of some ramen. It's a change...but not all that much better than ordinary dashi on ramen.  Eggplant is a wonderful thing but this recipe did noting for it. It will not be repeated.







Next, and last other than roasting some potatoes for breakfast hash, I created



One-Skillet Cod and Kale With Ginger and Garlic
from Serious Eats

I had collards rather than the Lacinato Kale they requested, so I pre-cooked them in the microwave.  Saute the collards with garlic, ginger, and rice wine. Put fish pieces on top and steam. Decorate with soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds. It couldn't go wrong and it didn't.

But oddly, it was "too" rich.  A real chef would probably have added a sprinkle of lemon juice. Maybe I'll try that later. But eaten with a bowl of plain rice it turned out be just right.



And guess what I did next (after trucking out to the field to track down a lost cat)? I put all this food in the fridge and ate my leftover Golden Chick fried catfish.