P I C N I C

I’ve been cooking Indian recipes from Madhur Jaffre lately. Normally I don’t cook with recipes and so my intuituve limits for combining this with that follow old and satisfying memories. The various complicated and foreign combinations of ingredients in Indian food is refreshing. I made a chutney to go with semolina pancakes, fresh cheese and spinach. 

I sauteed yellow lentils in oil until they turned brown. They picked up a popcorn or cashew taste. I pureed them with parsley, serrano pepper, coconut juice and coconut flesh. 

They only had one type of coconut at the grocery store. It wasn’t the normal kind that looks like a monkeys head. It was white and cut to a point on either end. I assumed the outer white flesh was what I should use and I tried to grate it. That didn’t work, there was too much fiber. In frustration I wacked it with a cleaver, it split open and the juice began flowing out. This made sense. Kate knew all about it. These are young coconuts, the shell is thinner and the producer leaves on the outer husk, which is normally discarded. The white flesh was very tender, almost like jello, and the juice was intensely sweet.

I’ve been thinking about several different things and I ended up cooking them all in very simple, spur of the moment way.

For one variation on Jens pancakes I used buckwheat flour and ground coriander to make the dosa-like flatbread. Coriander has a chicken/lemon aroma to it, buckwheat has a sour/rye taste, I think it went pretty well. Chickpea flour sautees to a crisp cracker texture, buckwheat has a more bready and thick texture. As for baking it in the oven with an herb or cheese, I haven’t been able to think of a good combination.

‘…at high temperatures, fructose and glucose in the honey react with amino acids in the duck, producing a variety of new molecules that add flavor and color.’ Here is another passage I read in the 6th of January New York Times article. I mixed up a marinade of white wine vinegar, clover honey, pepper, and lots of salt and let it soak into some hanger steak. Later I sauteed the meat on the highest heat in a cast iron skillet. It put on a nice char, but it didn’t seem as if the steak had aquired any particularly rarefied species of sear.

The shrimp were marinated in lemon zest and garlic; the green beans roasted with ginger and onion.

Lindsey sent me a link to another blog run by some guys who have a food cart at MIT called Clover. I’ve only read a few posts but I’m totally into it. They write about figuring out the menu, how to brew coffee, how to make the food quicker, how they get stiffed by small time con men, how they build the cart… I’m not sure when they plan to reopen, but maybe some of my crew down in Boston – that’s you, Jen and Sophie – can check the place out.

The hens have been underperforming since early in the winter. 33 hens were producing about 2 eggs a day. Patrick and Holly got some more hens, I don’t know where, some very pretty golden girls. They also got these pullets and built a pullet house. (A pullet is simply a young hen.) Things are a little crazy in here, as you can see, but soon they’ll be out of the little house and into the wide world of the chicken run!