April 1st’s Chicken

It’s Monday so it’s time to make my weekly chicken. I started this in January when I first read Samin’s book and realized how easy and cost effective it is to make a delicious roast chicken. Plus, Bear likes eating leftovers. Plus, you can do so much with it (like above).

I got slightly de-railed when I went to Trader Joe’s to get my bird and saw in their meat section, they have a NEW “Santa Maria” tri tip roast. It’s not easy to find tri tip here and I’ve had it on my mind since eating a Firestone sandwich in December in California. In fact, I’ve tried the only other tri tip sandwich I can find in Seattle (at HoneyHole in Capitol Hill) and it’s good but it’s not the same. They use aioli rather than mustard, add peppers, etc.

My tri tip roast was incredibly good. I seared in then roasted for about 30 minutes and it’s a perfect medium. I made the sandwich according to a recipe I found on Pinterest and it was PERFECT. So good that I had the same sandwich for breakfast today. And I’ll probably have another for dinner.

I couldn’t wait for the photo to take a bite. It’s so simple! Bread, garlic butter, steak and BBQ.

Back to the chicken. I’m dying to confit something. I think it will eventually be tuna in olive oil but I’d really like to try duck confit. Duck fat is not easy to come by. They sometimes sell it at Uwajimaya but not always and I’m far to lazy to drive down there just to see. The compromise, naturally, is chicken. And it turns out chicken fat is not that easy to accumulate either. I thought I could get the most by cutting all the skin off my chicken (thank God no pictures of that) so I was searching for recipes that wouldn’t mind the missing skin. I love soup, all day every day, so I tried Samin’s pho and it’s excellent! Roasting the onions and ginger over an open flame on my stove top wasn’t great but the soup flavor made it totally worthwhile. Plus, with vermicelli noodles in the pantry, chicken stock in the freezer and basil in the fridge, the meal hardly cost me anything. Successful chicken this week! But next week, probably back to the basic roast.

Something Spring Sauntered In

Despite being torn off-track by the beer-battered fish, I still made it through a few recipes with early spring veggies from “Six Seasons”. Up top – Pea, mint and green onion melange on toast with a hefty whipped ricotta smear. Side note – I immediately ate all my whipped ricotta and had to buy another ricotta to make more the next day. So good. So many possibilities…

Whipped Ricotta, Katz Rock Hill Ranch Olive Oil and flaky salt on Carta di Musica

What I don’t get is the love for these Carta di Musicas. I followed the instructions exactly (I mean weighed the flours exactly).

Don’t mind the fact that this is 4.02 ounces of semolina when the recipe most certainly calls for 4.

He’s right, they are fun to make. But then they are kind of boring and I haven’t figured out how to spice them up. Jeff isn’t around this week for me to force feed any so I’m stuck eating like eleven of these suckers. I’m getting creative. I’m doing breakfast on a carta.

Fried Egg, Mama Lil’s Peppers (always have on hand) and yogurt on a Carta di Musica. Also, this was the picture I sent to my husband that made him say – Why don’t you start a food blog? Awwww.

I even did Carta dipped in aioli (see previous post “First Friday Fish Fry”). It’s just boring. So back to the fun stuff:

This is a raw asparagus salad from “Six Seasons” with bread crumbs from the leftover loaf I used for the pea bread. (Haha! Pee-bread! Yuck!). It’s the seven seed “Batard” from Trader Joe’s. Made great breadcrumbs though they took over an hour to dry and still weren’t totally dry (first try, so what can you do?). More mint, cause it’s still hanging out in my fridge. This was great. Even a day later, it’s great. Less crunchy, but so bright and spring-y.

I’m head first into early spring and if I could just find some fava beans or pea shoots I might be able to move on to the next vegetable. 🙂

First Friday Fish Fry

The only way explain ordering a gallon of oil, vodka and beer (see recipe!) on Instacart at 10AM on a weekday.

Sometimes you read something and it speaks right to your heart. That thing, most recently, for me was under the Beer-Battered Fish recipe in “Salt Fat Acid Heat” by Samin Nosrat. It said, “considering the way frying had always intimidated me the way the fish turned out [was a miracle]”. I am already inspired by EVERY RECIPE IN THE BOOK but this was a deep inspiration. It was time to fry fish.

I started down the slippery slope to battering cod that Friday afternoon in the way I often do. I started my week by reading the first three “Early Spring” vegetables that Joshua McFadden recommends in my other favorite cookbook “Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables”. Then I promptly went to the store and bought eight artichokes, two bundles of asparagus and some green onions. Cooking the artichokes was itself a big thing (last time I cooked them, completely inedible, all parts. I believe I steamed for 3 minutes rather than 30 and strayed away ever since). In addition to the instructions in the cookbook, I watched four or five YouTube videos on how to prepare them. (I’m still confused about why I see recipe pictures that include the leaves and the leaves ARE NOT EDIBLE).

Notice that good olive oil back there. 2018 harvest from Rock Hill Ranch. I’ve used the whole bottle in three days.

The artichokes were begging for a dipping sauce. Specifically, they were begging for garlic aioli, which I have on LOCK because I’ve been making my own mayonnaise for at least three months. I added an extra step and roasted the garlic heads and added a few more ingredients (Parmesean, Dijon, Worcestershire) than my go-to Samin recipe and it turned out a-maz-ing! So good, in fact, that I cooked some mushroom caps and broccoli florets to dip in it too. Nothing like a dinner of vegetables and sauce ;-).

But all good things must come to an end and that aioli was gone far faster than it should have been and I was dying for more aioli-focused foods. I went back and forth for about 8 hours between a steak sandwich or fish sandwich and praise lord Samin, landed on the cod.

I hit a few road blocks. Like, why can I all the sudden not make mayonnaise?

This one broke THREE TIMES. But I saved it!! Alas, the benefits of passion and perseverance (a recent topic of mine in a commencement address to graduating nursing students).

I don’t have a fryer. I’m not even sure I have the right pot/pan to fry. I dunked my trusty (not!) meat thermometer in some vegetable oil and turned up the heat, battered up some fish (cod, why did I choose cod?) and hey-O! It’s good! Oh the things I now I want to fry…