Chemistry of Cream

So, there was a Tasting Table recipe for making butter out of whipping cream, some salt, and a jar with a tight lid. I had to try it.

Though I didn't have an odor-free jar. But I do have an oversize glass cocktail shaker. And some packing tape. Shake it, shake it!

Shake it for half an hour, until your arms burn. Respect those farm women, churning butter much better than my butter.

I turned into whipped cream almost instantly, then gradually into butter. I poured off some butter milk, rinsed with clean water, then shook more. Forgot about the perforations in the top of the cocktail shaker; removed the little metal cup to find a blob of perfectly formed butter.

Transferred butter to a shallow container and chilled. Voila, white sweet butter of the sort you might find in a fancy restaurant. Hard to spread, very light. I'm going to use it in some chocolate butter cream frosting, I've decided. On top of lemon cupcakes. Should be delightful.

Using a smaller portion of the remaining cream, I whisked up some sweet whipped cream to spoon over some organic strawberries. I needed a pick-me-up after reading Water: A Natural History. (It goes into my Top 50 Books Of All Time category, and it was extremely well-written, but also simply devastating.) Thus, organic fruit and cream.

DELICIOUS. Holy shit.

I also made some brown rice and black beans, some spinach and garlic, and more ass-kicking salsa. This time I used:

4 scotch bonnets
4 jalapenos
8 cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic
1 lime

I was sadly out of poblanos. I didn't want to buy more - it was exciting to use leftovers from last week. So my salsa is the hottest I've ever made, but it's very tasty on chips. I am acclimating to the heat. Go, capsaicin!

If I get that job at Pine Manor, I'm going out for a fancy dinner and champagne. Seriously.

Edit: The butter went into a chocolate buttercream frosting, which was itself the filling for Southern Tea Cake sammiches. INSANE. My eyes bulged with pleasure.

Oliveira's Brazilian BBQ - Eastie

Why is East Boston full of inexpensive, delicious restaurants? I am not sure, but I am enjoying my Eastie restaurant crawl. Yesterday, after a 3-hour hike in the Fells, I got a taste of Brazilian BBQ/Churrascaria.

So, like, you walk into the place. Put your stuff down at a table; it's bustling, there's a soccer game on the flat-screen tv, there's a glass case full of coconout-dipped sweets and cookies. So then you pick a plate from the stack of clean plates, then serve yourself from a hot and cold buffet of pinto beans, black beans, rice, broccoli and cauli, thinly-sliced sauteed collard greens, chicken or shrimp salad, chicken stew, beef stew, fried fish, green salad, watermelon chunks, hearts of palm and sliced tomatoes...THEN you visit the rotisserie section for slices of steak, chicken, sausage, or pork.

I just opted for steak - haven't eaten it for a while. Medium-well. The Man With The Large Knife was ever so nice. My steak slices were beautifully pink on the inside, and smelled delicious.

So then I took my loaded plate to the cashier, who weighed my plastic plate on a scale. Then I got a tall glass of orange juice from the...circulating juice tanks? Behind her: cashew juice (?!), orange juice, and guava. All together, about $9.00 for some nice-looking food and drink! Seriously.

My intense hunger helped, I'm sure. But everything tasted mouth-watering. My collards, my pinto beans were tremendous. I ate slowly, to draw out my enjoyment. Then my steak wasn't just good, it was great. Like, I thoroughly enjoyed eating it. And was glad I hadn't got any other meat, because that single serving of steak was almost too much.

No indigestion afterward. My orange juice was weirdly good - pulp-free, but tasted fresh-squeezed or something like that. Overall, I am so excited to go back, or to find a similar Brazilian BBQ around Jamaica Plain. Seriously, awesome cheap eats.

Also, I would like to mention that I had this dining experience with someone who was previously almost vegan, omg. She had, I believe, four kinds of meat and fish on her plate. A parallel universe, I think. A delicious parallel universe.

Dear Sacrificed Cow - I am sorry that the beef came from you in particular. It was nice, though. I hope that your slaughter was humane and very fast. Thank you, Cow.

VeeVee in JP

Now serving lunch on Saturdays, with a more minimalist and affordable menu. I had been wanting to go to VeeVee and have some brunch or lunch or something. The other day, I finally went.

Fancy beers, fancy wines, seasonal and local ingredients when possible...named one of the Boston Globe's Best New Restaurants for 2008. Plus, a really excellent house-made veggie pickle that I recall fondly from my last visit.

I chose the morel mushroom and goat cheese frittata with balsamic-splashed pea shoot salad. Fried sage leaves on top, so crispy. Very good! I enjoyed my meal very much, and wished to draw it out by ordering more little tastes. Alas.

Veevee offers a prix fixe dinner menu on Tuesdays and Sundays: non-vegetarian menu for $24 and vegetarian menu for $19. How awesome is that?

Omg, I just looked at their current menu. Not only are they serving maitake ("Hen of the Woods") mushrooms, but they're also serving the elusive ramp - mysterious vegetable of spring!

I must go again, for dinner. After my stomach calms down. Yeah.

Upset Stomach

Um, maybe I tortured my stomach today? Oops. Lunch was half of a lamb burger (tasty!) and half of a turkey burger (meh), plus a beer. Followed by a disappointing dry chocolate cupcake with pleasing chocolate-stout frosting.

Then dinner was grilled tuna, homemade black bean patties, cheese dip with chips, grilled pineapple = BBQ! Plus another beer, and 4 ounces of whiskey. Oh, and vanilla ice cream with hot fudge sauce and Cool Whip (wtf), and chocolate-dipped bacon pieces.

Wow. Just, wow.

Yesterday I seem to have eaten the greasy meat off a fried chicken's neck bones, plus some over-salted Spanish rice with pigeon peas and maybe...carrots? And then I had some mint Oreo ice cream, to soften the discontent of my dinner.

So, little wonder that I have the runs today. Otherwise I feel quite perky. Tomorrow I'm eating cereal, maybe a pear. A salad? I'm okay with the extra protein (buildin' muscles oh yeah), but I'd like to avoid the chicken neck bones and anything exceptionally unctuous. Hopefully the grilled-in-advance tuna is not causing these problems, but I have had poor experiences with grilled-in-advance fish.

Oof, uncomfortable memories. Where's the Immodium.

Salsa Improvements

So what we've got here is:

3 poblanos (big, blackish-green and shiny)
3 jalapenos
3 habaneros scotch bonnets
1 lime
some good tomatoes
some salt

Blacken all the peppers on a grill or over a burner - i use forks and wooden skewers to do several at a time. Indoor BBQ! Smells good, too. Clean the seeds out of the peppers, but don't scrape away the veins (full of heat?). Throw the tomatoes and cleaned peppers and the juice of one lime into your food processor. Did you burn yourself handling those hot forks? Be careful. Don't touch yourself after touching the peppers, btw. Particularly the habanero element.

Pulse until you're satisfied with consistency, adding more lime, some salt, or more tomatoes to taste. This salsa has great sizzle to it, and the heat build-up after several chipfuls is tear-inducing. SO GOOD. I need to think of a suitable name for it.

Lemon Peel and Coffee Ice Cream

My English Breakfast tea was getting pretty boring. That is, before I added strips of fresh lemon peel to the steeping. Now my mornings are full of excitement. Word.

My last pander to my ice cream addiction was buying a 2-for-1 pair of Edy's containers. Whatever that large cylindrical size carton is...a gallon? No, a quart? Whatevs. I bought one regular and one low-fat carton. I ate the regular carton, of course. In a surprisingly short amount of time. But you see, I purchased coffee ice cream as my second flavor. I needed to inject a little negative feedback into my addiction!

Successful negative feedback: after twice trying to enjoy 1/4 cup of coffee ice cream at night - and then staying up until 2 am dancing around or lifting weights - I decided to try putting three spoonfuls of ice cream into my morning cereal. So I can finally be rid of the crack they call coffee. And I can be extra perky in the morning.

These are spoonfuls, not scoops, mind. A very small serving - more like the true serving size on the ingredients list.

Coffee ice cream and a sliced banana in my cereal reminds me of a milk shake. A milk shake before the blending. But it's very tasty, and I am thankful for that. And I feel like I'm tapering off the ice cream addiction - it's working! I'm out of the evening ice cream habit. That is huge progress. I feel thinner already.

No more purchased containers of ice cream. I may have small servings when I go out, but I cannot buy large containers of it. I wonder if they put heroin in ice cream. Seriously.

Pizzery

The results are in, ladies and gentleman. I have no innate talent for pizza making. Whatsoever.

My dough was baked through, as I had hoped, but it was also...tough. Not that tasty. The layering of thinly sliced tomatoes, spinach leaves, and fresh basil + white bean puree was not substantial enough. (I couldn't get the jar of pizza sauce open. This is why I need to date a really strapping butch lady. Who can make good pizza. A butch pizza-maker is all I want from life. Aside from, uh, Fame and Fortune.) The mushrooms and cheese were okay. Overall: Pizza fail.

Lame!

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Edit: The pizza wasn't really that bad. In fact, it improved with some time in the fridge. I ate it over two days, as my work entree. Dough was still tough, but the taste was fine. Perhaps the secret is making my own dough, treating it right (stretching it effectively), and assembling a thinner layer of ingredients. There's still hope for my pizza.

Goya Tortilla Chips

Well, I bought the Goya yellow-corn tortilla chips because they were cheaper than Tostito's. But you know what? These chips only have three ingredients: yellow corn, canola oil, and salt. WHAT. And they're really tasty: thin, so crispy, and so salty. There's a fine salt dust happening, and it coats all surfaces of the chip. Hypertensive people, beware. This is some pretty fabulous sodium intake.

And these chips are awesome with my salsa, and with cream cheese, and by themselves. I am a new convert.

Also, I had some tomato leftover from layering slices on a pizza. I diced up some nice fillets of tomato, and added them to my remaining salsa. Yes, yes, YES. I'll do this with every batch, fuck yeah. With cilantro. It'll be unstoppable.

Grass-flavored Vodka, Lemon Popovers

So I heard about this Polish vodka from a friend. The vodka is flavored with Bison Grass, and even comes with a blade of this grass floating in the bottle. It's called Zubrowka; Wikipedia tells me that "Zubr" is the root word in Polish, meaning the European bison, or wisent. As you may imagine, the wisent enjoys chowing down on this particular type of grass, etc, etc.

The vodka supposedly has flavor notes of "woodruff, vanilla, coconut, and almond". Sounds pretty delicious? Apparently this is the new rage in vodka cocktails? I've already seen a variation involving coconut and pineapple, and another involving unfiltered apple juice (this latter cocktail may count as a traditional mixture).

According to Wikipedia, bison grass vodka has been banned in the U.S. since 1978, because it contained a toxic compound called coumarin. New distillations of the vodka have somehow removed the coumarin element, and thus the bison grass vodka can now be drunk on this side of the pond. Interesting, no? Absinthe, bison grass vodka, what's next?

So this morning I baked 8 sweet lemon popovers, but did not preheat the pans first. I disregarded Ruth Reichl's advice! Oh my god. So my popovers were not quite popped, but they were pretty good. I realized too late that I have actual lemon extract, which would have tasted more lemony. Next time. I ate all the popovers with blackberry jam and a little butter, plus some tea. When they had digested somewhat, I went for a 6 mile run. Yee-haw!

Long Time Coming: Asinine Whisky Reviews!

Okay, so far - these are my thoughts on some bourbons and Scotch whisky.

Maker's Mark Bourbon - Took my whiskey virginity? Sweet, easy, and a giver. I have positive feelings, despite the awkward bottle.

Knob Creek Bourbon - Super scrump, I might like this a bit more than Maker's Mark. Has more oomph, less sweetness.

Bulleit Rye Whiskey - Augh! Take it away. My spit tastes like Clint Eastwood's stubbly jaw. AUGH.

Glenlivet single-malt Scotch - Maybe took my Scotch whisky virginity? Now I can't remember. Featured prominently in the movie Bound. At first I found it difficult to drink, but now somehow I can sip it up like a hummingbird. Isn't that sweet.

Glenfiddich single-malt Scotch - Fine, just fine, but my favorite part might actually be the deer in their logo. Glenfiddich translates to Stag's Glen, I'll have you know. What I need is a side-by-side tasting of different whisky-ness.

McCallan's 14 (I think) single-malt Scotch - Tasty! Smoky, complex, substantial. Made me think of butch things like creaking leather jackets and battered wallets in back pockets. Sexy, fancy, flavorful. I like!

McClelland's Islay single-malt Scotch - Yep, it's smoky. I think that might be all. A little light, seems to lack depth of flavor. Not my favorite. (Wow, I sound like such a pompous asshole. Maybe this review business was a bad idea.)

Oban 14 single-malt Scotch - Current favorite! Sexy, substantial, so pleasing to sip. All kind of flavors creeping in. I thought about it while I swallowed. I felt pleasure. Maybe I just like vintage adult beverages.

Highland Park 12 single-malt Scotch - not as sexy or interesting as Oban, but still much better than McClelland's Islay. I may be developing an arbitrary liking for whisky of dark amber hues. This is pleasant stuff. I have no trouble sipping it. I'm probably an honorary Scottish person by now.

I would like to sample Talisker, Laphroig, Glenmorangie, and other single-malts I can't pronounce. Who knew that Scotch was such a sexy drink. With all those consonants and all. (Now I have to be a power lesbian so I can afford this habit.)

Dewar's blended Scotch is harsh by comparison. Ditto the Chivas Regal, in spite of all that shiny foil packaging. I was not pleased.

Mexi-crazed

Not swine-flu related. No N1H1 in here. Yet.

I've recently come back to Mexican food. I am currently obsessed, and in particular I am having a salsa kick. Tonight's salsa consists of:

3 charred jalapenos
3 charred poblanos
1 charred cubanelle (maybe adds too much water, though)
2 charred tomatoes (should've used roma tomatoes)
2 cloves smashed garlic
1 lime, juiced
salt to taste

It's good, it's really tasty. Next time I'll add some cilantro, more jalapeno, maybe more crazy peppers - whatever I can find. But definitely cilantro, lime, salt, the charred jalapenos and poblanos. Nice to eat on chips, in a quesadilla, on huevos rancheros...alternating cream cheese on chips and salsa on chips was very nice, too.

Yo quiero mucho DIY salsa? For my next trick, maybe I'll try Acapulco restaurant down the street a bit.