Bear with me, there's a milkshake at the end.

Long time no read!

So, stuff.  First, administrivia.  I've been kinda busy lately, what with dog and work and life and broken refrigerators and, well, stuff.  This blog isn't dead-- I have several partial posts backed up.  But they may come rather sporadically for a few more weeks.

Next-- Exercise!  Penn Jillette, on his podcast (Penn's Sunday School), was talking a couple weeks ago about the "7 minute workout" that's the latest fad.  And he was saying how, you know, he's always felt that he'd exercise if he somehow could only do it in less than 10 minutes.  And so he tried it, because he said he would, after all, and then gave up in horror because it was Teh Hard.

But he's a big fat guy, right, and I'm at least vaguely in shape.  Maybe I can do it!  I downloaded one of the free apps to help you through it, and tried it on Sunday.  And here's a useful tip--

When they say 7 minutes?  That's true-- you're only exercising for about that long, depending on variations.  But that doesn't include setup (minimal, actually), or stretching, or convincing the dog to leave me alone for 7 goddam minutes, or the hour or so I spent after my first session sitting on the floor waiting to die.  Seriously, this is a ROUGH routine.  At least at first.  Allot a bit of extra time.

I've done it a few mornings, now, before my shower.  My legs are killing me, but I'm mostly still making it through (tomorrow may or may not happen, because ow).  We'll see 1) if I can keep it up, and 2) if it actually does me any good.

Oh, and I promised you milkshakes!  So-- boil sugar in white wine to make a syrup.  Add a cup of chopped fresh basil.  Steep, strain, cool-- you now have basil syrup.  Cut the kernels off of 2 ears of fresh corn.  Simmer gently in a little water (or, if you're more like me, accidentally burn) for about 5 minutes.  Combine corn, 6 Tbsp syrup, and 8 scoops of good vanilla ice cream in blender, scraping sides as needed.  Voila-- sweet corn and basil milkshake.  Quite good, really.

ETA: Oh, and milkshake recipe is courtesy of Adam Ried's Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes.

Date night

I return from an unexpected hiatus with a completely banal food post!  Oh well.

So my wife came home the other day with a traditional Spanish cookbook (that is, a cookbook of traditional Spanish recipes, not a cookbook written in traditional Spanish).  Most of the recipes were either not especially surprising (patatas bravas, paellas, etc) or impractical for the typical American cook (jugged hare, partridge pâté).  However, one recipe caught my eye, and I just had to try it out.  The name was Tortilla de Dátiles-- Date Omelet.  It gets weirder than that, though.

Basically-- 2 eggs, a couple of chopped dates, a bit of chopped ham, and 4 medium shrimp, sauteed(!).  Lots of butter.  Mix ingredients in the egg and then dump everything into the pan, cook, fold and plate (or plate and fold if that's easier).  Top with a spoonful of tomato sauce.

Definitely peculiar, but oddly compelling, too.  I may actually make it again, although I may try the alternate "cook the eggs by themselves and then fill" technique.  It was also extremely full, so I might try 3 eggs for a slightly larger portion but with better balance.

Adventures in Baking

So the other night, I was having some cravings for a confection that our local bakery calls "grasshopper brownies."  They're a dense fudgy brownie with a layer of mint buttercream (with some sort of candy mixed in, either mint or white chocolate), and topped with a layer of ganache.  They're very good.  But, of course, the bakery wasn't open at 6:30 on a Saturday night.  So I thought to myself, "Self," I thought, "I know how to make brownies.  And I'm pretty sure I can make buttercream, or at least I'm pretty sure I know what went wrong with the last batch I tried to make*.  And ganache is dead easy.  I should try to make my own!  How Hard Can It Be?"

Well, there were some stumbles.  For one thing, I always forget that when you're baking you have to allow time for things to cool once they're out of the oven.  If you don't, you either burn yourself trying to eat it, or in this case the layers will melt and collapse.  So the whole operation took about 4-5 hours, which was rather more than I had expected, but at least kept me out of trouble for an evening.  Also, I set the oven to the wrong temperature, so the brownies took extra time.  And we didn't have any mint extract, so I used crème de menthe.  Which actually did work, although the mint flavor was pretty mild.  Also, the box that I had thought was a second box of confectioner's sugar turned out to be superfine instead, so I ended up having to MAKE MY OWN confectioner's sugar† to get enough to work with so that the buttercream wouldn't be hopelessly grainy.

And after all that?  They actually turned out pretty damned good.

The color's pretty washed out in that photo, but the buttercream actually is green-- I found some old food coloring in the back of the pantry, and three drops was just about right.

*I did know-- the butter had been too cold.  I let it warm up enough this time, and it worked much better.

†put 1 cup of sugar and 1 tsp cornstarch into a spice grinder or blender and process it for at least a minute, possibly two or more.

Rutabaga Monday!

Or, "Cooking with Rope Burns*†"

No fish today, I'm kind of sick of it.  But our CSA share on Saturday had some lovely rutabagas, so I dug into one of our vegetabley cookbooks and came up with the following new recipe.

1.  Peel roughly 2 pounds of rutabagas.  This may take a while-- the ones I had were remarkably hard to clean.
2.  Cube, cover with water, add copious salt, bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
3.  Meanwhile (or beforehand, if you're an organized sort of person), peel, core and quarter an apple.  Slice 1 medium onion.
4.  Start caramelizing the onion in a little bit of butter and oil.
5.  When the 15 minutes are up, add the apple quarters and continue to simmer for another 10-15 minutes until tender.  Keep the onions browning over medium heat; proper caramelizing takes time and relatively low heat.
6.  Drain the (now) tender rutabaga and apple chunks.  Return to the pot, add a bit of milk and a little more butter, and mash to bits.  Mmm, catharsis.
7.  Check seasoning, top with caramelized onions and serve.

Very yummy.

*Pro tip 1:  Don't.
†Pro tip 2:  Wear gloves.