I am beginning to understand cooking as a dark art that can perfect or destroy both diner and cook. As a result, I have come to understand how impure my motives have been, how I have cooked for some to seduce or compel admiration, and how I have waged war on others with what I have made.
I've been thinking about my old roommate Bird, and how, in our many cooking adventures, I never got to expose her to anchovies. I proposed an anchovy dish at some point, and while she was freaked out by the thought (she made a face), she was hesitantly willing to try them. But alas, we never got around to it.
To wit: a recipe, at long last. I haven't posted one in a long time. Read the rest of this entry »
Whole Stuffed Camel
1 whole camel, medium size
1 whole lamb, large size
20 whole chickens, medium size
60 eggs
12 kilos rice
2 kilos pine nuts
2 kilos almonds
1 kilo pistachio nuts
110 gallons water
5 pounds black pepper
Salt to taste
Skin, trim and clean camel (once you get over the hump), lamb and chicken. Boil until tender. Cook rice until fluffy. Fry nuts until brown and mix with rice. Hard boil eggs and peel. Stuff cooked chickens with hard boiled eggs and rice. Stuff the cooked lamb with stuffed chickens. Add more rice. Stuff the camel with the stuffed lamb and add rest of rice. Broil over large charcoal pit until brown. Spread any remaining rice on large tray and place camel on top of rice. Decorate with boiled eggs and nuts. Serves friendly crowd of 80-100.
- Shararazod Home Economist, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
I lost this for awhile, but found it again recently. I'm placing it here so I know where it is:
YUMMY FLUFFY BISCUITS
My roommate refers to these as "bomb biscuits."
2 cups flour
4 tsp. double-acting baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut into cubes
1 egg
2/3 cup half and half (give or take)
Cardinal rule of biscuit making #1: HOT oven, COLD ingredients.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place an ungreased cookie sheet in the oven.
Combine flour, baking power and salt. Cut butter into flour mixture until the mixture is crumbly (the little butter bits should be pea-sized or smaller). You don't have to be super-quick about this, but you don't want the butter to melt.
Stir in the egg and mix thoroughly. Add about half a cup of the milk. You might have to add more milk to make a good dough - add it sparingly. You want the dough to be malleable and slightly sticky, not dry as bread dough but not pancake batter either. If it gets too sticky, add more flour; too dry, add more milk.
Cardinal rule of biscuit making #2: DON'T knead - "gather" instead.
Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface. Knead the dough by taking it in both hands, drawing your hands apart, then pressing the dough back together. Imagine the dough is an accordian.
Cardinal rule #3: DON'T overwork the dough. Just knead it three or four times until it's uniform.
Roll the dough out until it's about as thick as a box of matches.
Cardinal rule #4: When cutting biscuits, DON'T twist the cutter. Just press it down and enjoy the satisfying pfffft noise the dough makes.
Remove cookie sheet from oven. Cut biscuits with a cutter or a glass (I use a drinking glass). Place biscuits close together on the cookie sheet, but not touching. Bake for 10 or so minutes, or until they're very lightly browned and splitting on the sides.
Cardinal rule #5: Have at least one biscuit IMMEDIATELy, with lots of butter. You made the damned things, and you should have the hottest, lightest, butteriest one.
Today's late breakfast/brunch thing was a quick kind of pan bagnat, which is a kind of French sandwich. You're supposed to make it with tuna and all sorts of goodies, but I made it with rosemary potatoes.
Basic recipe: thickly slice some red potatoes. Mince three or so cloves of garlic and sautee them in butter with a copious amount of rosemary. Next, add the potatoes and cook for a minute, then add beef stock, salt pepper and a pinch of thyme. Cover and simmer until potatoes are tender. You may wish to spend this time worrying over your Spanish homework, which you haven't touched (it's so much worse because you skipped Spanish Monday in order to prepare for a statistics test). You should have a good ten or fifteen minutes to agonize. When the potatoes are done, remove them from the skillet and reduce the stock under high heat. When the stock is down to a whisper, add a splash of white wine and deglaze the skillet, cooking until the whole mess is fairly thick.
Pause to check your email.
Take a loaf of French bread, cut it in half lengthwise, and scoop out some of its innards. Drizzle olive oil along the insides of the loaf, then spoon in the sauce from the skillet. Layer in the potatoes, fresh sliced tomato, lettuce or endive, and Swiss cheese. Wrap the sandwich and refrigerate for about an hour. You may wish to spend that hour agonizing some more over your Spanish homework, which you still haven't touched, you lazy bum. Remove the sandwich and cut it into slices. Munch away.
If you have a spare moment, make an entry in your journal about lunch, which is so much more interesting than that Spanish homework you're agonizing over. You big lazy bum.
