Mmmm. Hollandaise.

I managed to rock Thanksgiving leftovers for a solid week, but I'm over it. Enough with the soup, casserole and the sandwiches.

Bring on the eggs and butter!


It is crab season in Humboldt Bay. A friend recently brought over several fresh ones.

I couldn't think of anything more attractive to my palate than crab and advocado Benedict.

It was delicious.


A couple of notes:

I started with this recipe:

http://mobile.foodnetwork.com/details.do?id=7873&pr=1&text=Hollandaise&search=all

It turns out that making Hollandaise from scratch is pretty simple. Don't be afraid of the double broiler or breaking the sauce. I broke this one twice before getting it right.


If the sauce curdles there is a easy trick. Merely pour the curdled mixture out of the double broiler. Next, add one additional egg yolk into the empty bowl. Whisk the yolk slowly then add the curdled mixture slowly back in.

This smooth sauce appears to be pure decadence but some current research indicates that eggs are an amazing source of protein and Omega 3 fatty acids Butter is much better for our bodies than any margerine or other engineered oil. These whole foods shoul be key parts of our diets. Do not feel guilty about this one. Share it with friends.

And bless the French for this wonderful brunch treat.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A year ago I began blogging on food. The past year has seen many changes but good food and (normally) healthy eating are still a major focus.

Last year Thanksgiving was just three of us. We pushed ourselves into the realm of the gourmand and shared an intimate dinner amongst family.

This Thanksgiving we served a traditional menu, with some Northern California touches (what meal is complete without garden fresh kale and pumpkins?)

Another change was the guest list. This year we cooked for 15. I would like to express my extreme gratitude to all who brought dishes, did dishes and complimented dishes.

Thanks also to those who have followed my cooking and eating exploits over the past year. More is to come. Look for future entries in health; food and body awareness; corprate agribusiness; and organic food production.

Happy cooking and eating!

Now THIS is Blogging on Food....

http://notitleyet.tumblr.com/

Wow. Thanks, Mama.

Wedding Fare

What do you take to a vegetarian pot luck wedding? It needed to be portable, servable without bowls or exotic utensils. There was no way to reheat anything and the event was a two hour drive away from the kitchen. Another consideration involved using some of our fresh garden produce.

A roasted vegetable rattatouie fit the bill very well and went over nicely. It was actually better once served cold than it was fresh off the stove.

Yes, I have A fetish for southern comfort food.

My favorite thing this time around was using the grill for frying. I set the two large pots right sown on the grill surface. The wind made consistent heat levels a challenge but the benefits were clear. I saved two spots on the stove for the kale, mashed potatoes, etc. I also saved a lot of cleanup work as all of the oil stayed outside with th grill.

Happy cooking and dining!

Beginning a day well

My favorite breakfast in a while.


Fried Salmon with leftover BBQ sauce

BBQ Season

This one was fun. Grilled endive and radicchio served as the base. Steaks of tofu and garden fresh zucchini hold down the plate. Grilled corn and spicy bbq finished it off. It was a perfect summer dinner.

Tofu and veggie curry

Yes, I'm still cooking. It's just the life has become way more interesting than the interwebs!

This simple curry makes for a great mid week meal.

Elk tri tip, roasted root vegetables and fresh mozzarella burritos

Mmmm. Don't forget the Rooster!


-- Post From My iPhone

Epic Weekend

All I've got is, Wow.

It was a great couple of days.

It started with breakfast....



Humboldt Bay cod and sweet potatoes...



I love that agave ketchup!



Maple syrup and ice cream mix quite well.





Never quite expected Northern California beaches to be this inviting and warm.




Restorative Sunday dinner.

All weekend long I kept thinking, "Wow, things are really looking up. And everything was fine to begin with."

Thanks to friends, old and new for sharing the table, the spirit and the cherry beach spot.

-- Post From My iPhone

I don't follow directions well

I wanted Pad Thai. I wanted to cook it. I wasn't about to let a lack of ingredients or experience stop me. Pistacios worked for peanuts. Spinach replaced the bean sprouts. All from a recipe i couldn't follow on the back of the noodles box.

-- Post From My iPhone

Feeling like Summer

After a brief hiatus and a complete relocation, Cogito returns.

This blog is now based in the pastoral beauty that is Northern California. I am surrounded by rolling hills, green vines, fresh ingredients, knowledgeable cooks, and top shelf libations. I get my milk, rawand whole, from the nearby dairy. Our eggs come from under hens, not styrofoam containers.

This should be fertile ground for a food blog.

What better way to celebrate a move than with some old friends and a some new ones? The old friends: Sauteed spinach and a flank steak with Dad's old school marinade. The new was a recipe I ran across in one of my favorite vegetarian cookbooks, Fried zucchini and feta patties.

It was a good meal in a good place.

Look for future posts on organic gardening and my regrettable slide towards vegetarianism....

Spring Travel and Food

Cogito has hit the road.

While Atlanta has been good for food and fun, the time for a change has arrived.

But just because one has no kitchen is no reason to stop enjoying eating, cooking, and good friends.

Over the next several weeks, the food and fun will travel cross country, with the bow pointed west, eating and writing all the way.

The first stop was at the home of relatives in Michigan. The menu consisted of grilled pork tenderloin (imagine) with a blueberry maple syrup sauce, sauteed spinach (a Cogito favorite), roasted potatoes with rosemary and some grilled bread.


Upcoming cooking and eating destinations include Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City.......

This Omnivore's Dilemma

Prime or Choice? Grass or Corn Fed? Organic? Local? Dry Aged?


Yes, yes, and yes.

The more I learn about food, the more I understand that we just don't need beef that often. This simple reality makes me want to appreciate it when I do indulge. When I eat steak I try to do it well. This local dry aged rib eye was just the thing to cure my craving this weekend.

Given all the questions and the interest in the details of our food, these days, it can be difficult to make good, informed decisions. Saveur has a piece that helped me to wade through it all and also made my belly rumble. http://www.saveur.com/food_new_recipes.jsp?issueID=200706.

Enjoy your steaks...

Fast, Healthy, Seasonal and Delicious (or It took longer to do the dishes than to cook)

No real recipes or magic, here. This one is as easy as it gets.
Spaghetti squash has directions on a decal Right On The Squash!
While it cooked, I sauteed some shrimp in some sliced shallots, scallions, garlic and oil.

That's it.
Simple.
Easy.

Many thanks to one Lindsay for reminding me of the taste and timeliness that is the spaghetti squash. More thanks to another Lindsay for the cost/benefit analysis of organic fruits and vegetables. Give up a coffee a week. It's worth it and more!

Sunday Breakfast

Nothing extravagant. Just delicious.

Ready For Spirng

Last week I went to a nearby tapas restaurant with a friend. While perusing the menu, something caught my eye. Shrimp in a honey chile sauce sounded perfect. It has been warm in Georgia over the past few days and this has me longing for spring, with its blustery weather, budding trees, warm aromas, and the return of fresh foods.

The problem was that I was left underwhelmed by honey chile sauce.

Of course this got me thinking...

So, I invited my friend over for dinner later that week and began scouring recipes for something that still held the comfort food values of winter, but with the promise of a spring to come. This is what I found.

Seared Scallops with Mango and Melon Salsa

This didn't satisfy my longing for honey or chiles, but it was close. When making the Salsa I began by whisking together some honey and Sriracha sauce, learning a valuable lesson about the strength of the rooster! A Little goes a long way when it comes to Sriracha. Consider yourself forewarned.

I followed the recipe for the remainder of the salsa. It is definitely beneficial to leave this in the fridge for a while to let the flavors combine. This salsa was good with dinner but fatastic the next day. I found myself in front of the fridge, spoon in hand, more times than I would care to admit.

When discussing this recipe in advance, with eyes to a starch, someone at work quipped, “Well, I think just about anything is divine served on top of mashed potatoes." Such words of wisdom are not easily ignored.

Dinner was great. The company was better. It was a good recipe and fun evening.

...and I got both my spring and my chile fix.

Maybe eat is a metaphor for live and this isn't just a food blog.

From A Softer World. I love their aesthetic.

Words of Wisdom

"Preparation of good food is merely another expression of art, one of the joys of civilized living." ~Dione Lucas

"We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine gun." ~George Orwell

Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread. Without it, it's flat.”~Carmen McRae, Jazz Great (1920-1994)

“Iced tea is too pure and natural a creation not to have been invented as soon as tea, ice, and hot weather crossed paths." ~John Egerton

“I understand the big food companies are developing a tearless onion...after all, they've already given us tasteless bread”~Robert Orben

“Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.”~Fran Lebowitz

“Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past.”~Old Dutch proverb

"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again."~George Miller

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."~Mark Twain

Quotes from Foodimentary, a comprehensive, topical food blog.

Cogito Home >>>

Pot Luck Soup and Chili lunch at Work.

It's COLD in Atlanta. Is it Indiana cold? Colorado cold? Of course not.

But for Georgia, this is dead of Winter cold. The wind is howling and we will not get above freezing today.

On Monday, after a look at the weather forecast, a lady at our office suggested we throw a soup and chili pot luck lunch to insulate ourselves from today's chill.

We all shared and compared notes. My personal favorite was a delicious and earthy Chicken Tortilla with chunks of Avocado floating in it; followed closely by a very rich Mashed Potato Broccoli Cheese Soup.

For my contribution, I decided on a roasted root vegetable soup. I get the urge to make these about once or twice a year, always in the late Autumn into Winter. I don't have a recipe and it is never the same twice. This time I started by filling a baking sheet with butternut squash, turnips, carrots, leeks, and some garlic. These were liberally drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper then popped into a 450 degree oven for about 40 minutes.

I took them out of the oven and chopped them roughly before adding them into a blender. I added just a little chicken stock (you could use vegetable stock and this dish would be 100% vegan). I kept the blender on and continued to add stock, Little by Little until I got the consistency I wanted.

Next I seasoned the soup with additional salt and pepper. I also added cumin (fresh and toasted, if you please), paprika, ground up red pepper flakes and a few grounds of FRESH ginger from the Microplane.

For the office event I put the mixture into a Crock Pot which I turned on about an hour and a half before lunch. If I was serving this at home, I would either use warmed stock or move the soup from the blender to a sauce pan , stirring until warm enough to serve.

For the presentation, I placed a dollop of plain yogurt (of course you could use sour cream) in the middle and sprinkled on some minced chives and more cracked pepper. The devil in me required the I also add some Sriracha chili sauce. The color brings some good contrast and it adds a great kick.

Some previous variations I've had success with include:

• Using less stock but adding in some cream to give it some richness and smooth it out.
• Adding some bacon fat. It also smooths things out and really punches up the flavor (plus you can garnish with chopped bacon!)
• I nearly always use parsnips, as well, but Kroger really let me down, here.
• Add plantains! This idea was put forward to me, today and sounds great.
  

Dinner and Debauchery, at Liberty

I've been wanting to have a dinner party for a while, now. Now that the holidays have passed, the timing seemed right. I managed to con a couple from work and some new friends from the Liberty Lofts to join me for a meal this last Saturday.

While I had some ambitions to wow the crowd with wild mushroom risotto or an authentic paella, I took the wise advice of one of my guests and kept it simple.

I've been wanting to try a Steak Au Poivre. Beef and I have always gotten along well in the kitchen so this seemed just the thing.

Alton Brown has never done me wrong. I began with his recipe.

Alton's Recipe

But of course I can never leave anything alone. I added a Little porcini mushroom and some shallots to the pan for the cream sauce. I also don't generally keep congac around but I found some white wine worked quite well.

Laying all of this on top of some mashed potatoes seemed a perfect comfort food move for midwinter.

All in all I think we did pretty well. Dinner was tasty. The company was exceptional. Everyone pitched in with kitchen and DJ duties. There was plenty of wine.

It was a good night. Thanks to all who came to play. It was a genuine pleasure to host.

The leftovers were pretty good, too.

Furthering Food Education

I Love this web site. From it's look to its functionality, cookthink.com has a good grasp on food. It has a great user interface and initially, their recipes seem varied and attractive. My favorite part is that you can have it query its recipe database with very abstract search terms like, "peasant food," "gingery,""restorative,""sensual", etc.

Take a look.

Heathy Dining in the New Year

Yep.

That's right.

It's a Totino's Party pizza. I had a craving. It was Delicious. I apologize for nothing! I'll do it again.

Christmas Roast, Man Style

It was decided, with reasonable foresight that we would serve a traditional Standing Rib Roast (also known as the Prime Rib Roast) this Christmas. We started with an Alton Brown Recipe.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/dry-aged-standing-rib-roast-with-sage-jus-recipe/index.html

The key to this recipe is the dry aging of the beef. This is something that quality steak houses do to all of their cuts for around four weeks. Some steakhouses will go as long as eight weeks. This process involves evaporating out the water in the roast, and breaking down the connective tissue in meat, resulting in more concentrated flavor and a more tender cut. Alton recommends a 3 day age. We did nine days with good results. You just need the fridge room and fresh towels.

In this recipe Alton uses a ceramic pot in the oven to maintain a stable oven temperature. We could not find a pot that fit both the oven and the roast and were not particularly keen to use one, anyway. The oven did just fine.

The sawsall? Well, the best kitchen tool to carve the roast is the double bladed electric knife. Given a lack of this tool and no lack of beer, Uncle Eric and I decided that the sawsall was the perfect tool. We set up shop in the driveway to spare the kitchen any debris related consequences and went to town. In retrospect, I highly approve of the sawsall. This is simply the best tool for the job. Every kitchen needs one.