Bad Home Cooking

drunken roasted veggies and orzo with feta

It's good to know that I'm teachable.

After a laughable last attempt at roasted vegetables with orzo a while back, I managed to make this very simple dish just the other night, completely on the fly. No recipe. No forethought. Distracted and fairly tipsy.

And dang it was yummy the next day.

Wish I could tell you how I did it. The last thing I remember, Doc, is cutting up red peppers, onions, potatoes and garlic in a huff and throwing them into a baking dish along with olive oil, sea salt and cracked pepper. Then I went to dinner. Greek.

When we returned I went to roast those vegetable. Temperature? No idea.

I made the orzo with two parts chicken stock and a crumble of saffron. I added white wine from a bottle as I stirred, one gulp per dollop. I was in a slightly better mood by this time. Less mad, more insouciant.  The flamenco guitarist played palmas while I marked and stirred; marked and gulped.

Can't tell you how long I roasted the veggies. Not clear on why or when I thought the orzo might be ready. When it was all said and done I scooped it all out into separate containers and put them in the fridge, as I wasn't hungry.

Forgot about the whole thing until the next day lunch, when I screwed up my courage and tried the contents of containers no. 1 and 2. Zapped lightly in the microwave. Add feta. A pinch of salt and pepper (I'm trying to be more aggressive with my seasonings) and it was a lunch impressive enough to blog about.

It sort of made my week. This idea that I could make something like orzo with no recipe and only a third of my normal faculties. Maybe my experimenting and reading about these things is sinking in. Or maybe it was just dumb luck. Any insights would be appreciated.

Japanese Breakfast: Take Two

Things bubble up. I am often inert, but my subconscious is a force of nature. I'll mull something over for a long time. Sometimes years. And then one day, BAM. I'll take action.

And so it was with the Japanese Breakfast.

One of my very first BHC posts, indeed, the very inspiration for this blog, was an attempt to make myself a Japanese-style breakfast. This included miso soup, rice, nori, and grilled fish. It was a comedy of errors.

The original post, written, strangely enough, almost exactly two years ago, was titled: Japanese Breakfast, Take One.

A commentator recently asked if there was a Japanese Breakfast, Take Two. This morning, out of the blue, I tried a second take.

The results: Much happier than the first, thank you. Perfect? No.

Several differences came to the fore. Most importantly, I had the ingredients for real miso soup. I made my own dashi stock, to my giddy delight, last night.

Kombu - wiped and cut into four strips
4 cups water
1/2 cup cold water
2 cups bonito flakes

Boil the water with the kombu strips in it. Take them out just before it boils. Add the 1/2 cup of cold water and the bonito flakes and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. When the flakes fall to the bottom, strain into a glass jar and keep in the fridge for later use.

Dashi is clear and sunlit. Its aroma a deep brine. It is a scent of Japan.

Note, please, that you don't a daikon radish.

When you're ready to make your miso soup, heat your dashi up. Take two to three tablespoons of miso paste (red or white...I'm not even sure what kind I have) and dissolve it in a dish with some of the heated dashi. Add this to the mix. Add whatever you want: Tofu cubes, shitake mushrooms, an egg (it'll poach!)

Make your sushi rice. Scoop it into a decorative bowl. Add the poached egg on top if you so desire.

Cut your nori into pieces. If you're lucky, they'll be fresher than mine was.

Grill up some leftover salmon. Make green tea. Breathe it all in...

Itadu-ki-masu!

What I need for Japanese Breakfast,Take Three: Prettier bowls. Fresh nori. Luckily, I live in expensive, ridiculously-crowded L.A., where the giant Japanese supermarket Marukai sits beckoning, just up the 405.

Cookin' up a banner...

The talented, brilliant (and stunning!) Elfini and I are trying to work up a new banner for Bad Home Cooking. One that looks sorta professional. But you know. These things take time, and several efforts.

Patience, my darlinks. And you will soon be rewarded.

Seasonally-challenged

I finally figured out what the problem is.

I have a problem with seasonings.

Why should this be? I can't fathom. It's such a basic problem, and one you'd think would be fairly simple to remedy. Use more salt. And yet I continue to under-season my offerings. Truly, it baffles.

The flamenco guitarist pointed this out to me the other day, as he picked at his bland salmon and rice. "Tell me," he began, "and don't take this the wrong way. But do you have a thing against salt?"

I might have taken great umbrage, if I hadn't had heard this before.

Back in the day, Luke would bring me lunch on a plate sometimes; a sandwich, surrounded by small tomatoes artfully placed around a lettuce leaf garnish. His offerings were always delicious, vastly better than mine. One day I asked him his secret, and he looked at me with great pity.

"Salt and pepper," he said. "You can make anything taste better with salt and pepper."  Left unsaid: "You should consider doing the same sometime."

It's not as if I've grossly over-seasoned anything (on purpose) and am now repenting for my free-salting ways with bland fare. It's not as if I have some medical condition that requires me to watch my sodium intake. I have salt -- several kinds, in fact. And pepper too. And I use them in what I feel is a fairly liberal, open-minded manner. And I have had my experiences with too-salty fare. My dwindling audience of volunteer eaters, however, is suggesting that in general, I am not seasoning aggressively enough.

Apparently, I am seasonally-challenged.

Let's look at my track record. You'll recall, gentle readers, that I recently over-soaked the salt cod, rendering it tasteless (which pretty much guarantees me a place in the record books for bad home cookery) and ruined any chance I had of decent cod cakes. There's my fear of frying...perhaps I'm reticent toward any method that might infuse flavor. Sometimes I try to burn flavor into my food. Alas, this often backfires.

I am guilty as charged. I admit to an irrational fear of over-seasoning. I feel that when there is an 80/20 percent chance that a dish is not going to turn out well anyway, you don't want to take any reckless chances. People can season their own damn food once it's on the plate, can't they? That's why salt and pepper shakers were invented.

I mean, that's my thinking.

But in the interest of bettering myself, I will read up on this topic. Perhaps M.F.K. Fisher has something to say about it. In the meantime, it's probably best I quarantine myself and refrain from meals any more involved than opening a can. Stay tuned.

The shiny guy always worries

I just saw this on Diary of a Food Whore and had to repost here because I'm a mom and I can't help myself. It's Star Wars according to a three-year-old. Not really anything to do with cooking...but she is having herself a little drink, and she is at the kitchen table as she explains it all to us.

Consider this filler while I work up a *real* Bad Home Cooking entry for y'all. Enjoy, and don't talk back to Darth Vader.