8/23 Evanston Farmer's Market

not feeling particularly well today thanks to my new classmates and their tequila drinking habits. in any event i decided to walk it off by going to the farmer's market this morning. when i arrived last week, i was pleasantly surprised to find out that the evanston farmer's market is only a couple blocks away from the house. so, at least through october, i wont have to rely on whole foods for my food. the market is actually quite large - they claim to have about 30 vendors - and seems very popular, always a good thing to see. the farmers seem to come from pretty far away, michigan and indiana for example, though some are more local. unfortunately i couldn't buy much of anything since i'm leaving on a big jet plane tomorrow. i did pick up a few tomatoes and some arugula to enjoy for lunch however. overall, i couldn't be happier to have this essentially next door. good news for me!

8/22 Cajun Shrimp&Bacon Ravioli

my fridge and pantry are still rather empty as i fill out the kitchen. however i did have some bacon and frozen shrimp on hand and so decided to make full use of the herbs and spices in the pantry. i made a quick tomato pasta dough (1 egg, 3/4 flour and a squirt of tomato paste per serving) and rolled it out to make some ravioli. i've determined fresh pasta is actually easier to make for one person than for multiple people since the amount of time it takes to make is directly proportional to the size of the group. in any event, for the filling i cooked up a couple slices of bacon - not too crisp - and whizzed that together with some defrosted shrimp, cooked onions&celery, and what amounted to a cajun spice mix. this already looked and smelled delicious. then i just put the ravioli together using a little egg wash to bind the two sides of the pasta dough together. Nothing tricky here, you just need to avoid overfilling the raviolis.

at this point i realized i had way too much of the filling and decided to mix in some of the egg wash and bread crumbs into it. this allowed me to make a small cajun shrimp and bacon cake of sorts. fried that up to golden crispy goodness and made a little chipotle-lemon mayo to serve along side. the pasta was topped simply with some good olive oil, fleur de sel and parseley.

8/20 southwest-like corn + potato soup

not sure what the inspiration was here, but i had some corn and potatoes and thought to myself - southwest! the end result didn't exactly taste like something you might find in albuquerque, but it was pretty good none the less. started off sweating some onions/celery/jalapenos in olive oil seasoned with coriander seeds/lemon/pepper/salt/ancho chili powder/bay leaf. let that go for a while while i cut up three yukon golds into medium sized cubes and added them to the pot. covered the whole thing with a chicken broth and let the potatoes get all soft. before adding the fresh corn and kidney beans i gave the potatoes a proper mashin' to get everything all gooey-like. then i let everyone get acquainted in the pot while i pondered what was missing. ideally a squirt of lime and cilantro, but a spoon of yogurt and parsley did the dirty work tonight. finished everything off with some fresh ground pepper for a surprisingly heather-like meal. my favorite part was crunching into the occasional corriander seed - i definitely need to play with this flavor some more.

return to (circular) form

It just isn't fun to post without a little friendly back and forth, so many happy returns to Tom. Last weekend I was feeling a bit pizza-obsessed so I made two. The first was inspired by a pizza I had at the ever-delicious Pizzaiolo. This requires slicing fresh summer squash very thinly, a job that would be a lot easier to do with a mandolin but I still haven't gotten around to buying one.

• raw, thinly sliced zucchini
• cherry tomatoes
  
• mozzarella
• lemon zest
• olive oil
• salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and parmesan for topping

In addition to my pizza obsession, I've been loving grain- and bean- based salads. They keep well, make delicious lunches as leftovers, and they're so healthy it makes me feel better for eating pizza non-stop. This pizza was accompanied by a lentil (mixed french green and umbrian brown), basil, onion and tomato salad.


The next day, I tried to pare down the pizza even further to highlight some amazing red and yellow tomatoes I've been getting in my CSA box. This pizza had:

• thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes
• thinly sliced garlic
• mozzarella and gorgonzola
• italian parsley, salt and pepper to top

Serve with a green salad.

8/8 Smoked Brisket

Since I'll finally be getting my own kitchen back in just a couple days (for the first time since the end of April), I figured it's high time we get this blog up and running again. Now I'll certainly have to adjust my cooking to a slightly reduced budget and more importantly an unpredictable schedule. Plus I'll have to find out where all the good food stores are... But that should all make it that much more fun. In any event, for now I'm still in Boston and feeding the entire family, so here we go...

So this one was quite simple, though time intensive. I started off by looking through recipes to gather some ideas on how to smoke this half brisket. Here are a few conclusions I drew:

1) Virtually every recipe uses a spice rub, however not a single spice rub mix is the same.
2) Most recipes suggest refrigerating the brisket overnight with the rub on it. Probably helps, but I've decided it's not critical.
3) Some Texans like to put an open can of beer in the smoker in order to provide humidity. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good beverage to me.
4) Internal temperature needs to come up to about 180 or so for the brisket to be done however cooking times and temps were all over the board and my grill doesn't have an internal thermometer anyway.
5) Some recipes say to flip the brisket while cooking, others say not to. For obvious reasons, I chose the latter option.

With that in mind I made a spice rub which I could not duplicate if you paid me to - essentially taking whatever spices from the spice cabinet that seemed like they could be tasty. Cinnamon, curry, paprika, chile, cumin, coriander, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cayenne, oregeno are the ones that I can remember right now - there were at least a few more.

Now apparently some people have "smoke boxes" for their wood chips. I'm not sure what a smoke box is, but I'll bet it's roughly cube shaped and allows smoke to escape. Since I do have aluminum foil however, I made a little aluminum tray for the hickory wood chips. Now I paid 3.99 for a small bag of Weber chips at Whole Foods. That probably means I got ripped off 4 times over. It also means that wood chips are cheap, so don't be afraid to use them. (A small bag is enough for 2-3 smoking "sessions")

After soaking the chips 30 minutes, I got them smoking on the right side of the gas grill (burner on low) and placed the rubbed brisket on the second shelf of the left side of the grill (burner turned off). Why the second shelf? I don't have an answer. Seemed like a good idea. I also placed a can of water on the second shelf to provide humidity. I'm skeptical that this did anything, but if the Texans do it, it must be good... Finally I placed the thermometer probe into the beef to help me figure out when it was ready and that's pretty much it folks. After that it's just wait and drool for four hours.

As I'm sure you can tell from the pictures, the final product was rather delicious. Sure there's room for improvement, but I'd happily eat this on a daily basis! Oh and I know you're all wondering whether that second picture makes a great desktop wallpaper. Well it does.