Tag Archives: Baking

(Re)cooking With Love

Episode two in the series about how to cook great meals from last night’s great meal.  Love it.  This (re)cooking with love was brought to us courtesy of the Castro Farmer’s Market.  As I’ve mentioned in a couple of posts, shopping at the market is a great source of inspiration.  On this occasion, I kind of went overboard.  I grabbed bunches of braising greens, tiny eggplants, vibrant squash, fantastic mushrooms, free range grass fed beef, you get the picture.  We had a huge family style meal that night, and there was plenty of fodder for this episode.  Enjoy!

I’m working with a couple of friends who want to cook big meals once or twice a week and fold those meals into different meals for the rest of the week.  In this endeavor, I hope to highlight different ways to use your food to your advantage.  M.F.K. Fischer notes that she always cooks ‘with one canny eye on the leftovers’.  This resonates with me, and I hope it makes sense to others was well.  It certainly provides a wealth of opportunities.

My years of working in professional kitchens also informs my decisions here.  In that environment, nothing should ever be wasted.  Even though this ideal is often sabotaged (by spoilage, error, and so on), I still have the motivation to utilize every salvageable bit.  And I encourage that posture!

Use it or loose it!

Many Thanks-

-Scotty


Chicharrones Cookies!

For all of you who can’t jam enough pig in your pie-hole, here’s another little treat from the Howells, NE Centennial Cookbook.  I thought this would be a nice treat for my former chef, Ryan Farr, now at the helm of 4505 Meats here in San Francisco.  (N.B. non-Latin, non-bay area residents, follow this link – chicharrones)   My sidekick and I dropped by chef Ryan’s workshop last night with a bag of these little gems and added a little fuel to the pork-crazed fire.  If only I had made them with Ryan’s pork candy…  Next time for sure.  Enjoy!

A few little notes – The recipe as written was too dry for me.  I added a little more dairy.  I also took the following liberties; I added lemon zest instead of lemon extract because I like zest (and we didn’t have any extract) but I replaced the lemon extract with vanilla, these cookies seemed to want a little cinnamon (so i gave it to them) and I also nudged in a little ground chipotle peppers (seemed like a good idea).  The recipe asks for nuts, raisins, or coconut.  I caved, and put all three in.  When you bake these at home, be sure to press them pretty flat (like 1/4″ or so) before baking as they will rise quite a bit, but not spread.  Right from the oven they are really crisp and chewy.  As the even out, they become soft, and retain a nice toothsome quality with an occasional little piggy crunch.  Oinkers Away!

As I remember it, there are a lot of family farms that raise pork in the Howells area.  This seems like a creative and resourceful way to help make sure that no part of the animal gets wasted.  Or, it could be some home cook’s answer to ‘what the hell am I going to do with all of THAT?’.  Either way, we benefit from Mrs. Mayme Hilz’s contribution to the cause.

Eat Well and Be Well -

-Scotty


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