Please check out the Home Skillet website for more information about what we do.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Bitter

In the quest toward a more homegrown bar, we started our bitter herb infusions in mid-February: a fat pinch of said herb covered with a few ounces of high proof alcohol. The goal was to end up with a highly potent extract of various bittering elements which we could then either mix to form cocktail bitters or add to a batch of house vermouth.

Checking the infusions every few days for the first month was not reassuring: they were picking up color from the herbs, but still smelled only of alcohol. So we left them alone for awhile. Coming back a few weeks later they had a faint whiff of herb, but still mostly alcohol. It wasn't until I dipped my finger in one and licked it that I realized it had worked: I was overwhelmed by the flavor of the herb, a miniscule drop packing a whollop of flavor. It was the same for all the others: wormwood, mugwort, gentian, orange peel, angelica, quassia, and warm spice. A panoply of flavors and colors, ready for the straining.


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

An Extemporaneous Grill

It hit 80 degrees on Sunday. I walked out of work with a handful of kale raabs, knowing that I wanted to grill, but clueless as to what else to eat.

As I roamed the New Seasons aisles, having already grabbed a filet of sablefish, I spotted the avocado pile. Weaving my way through carts loaded with charcoal and watermelons, I snagged a dimpled green orb, tender enough to be eaten tonight (surprisingly, as usually I have to buy avocado rocks and wait a week to eat them).

I didn't want guacamole - I'll be making plenty of that when true summer arrives - but it had to be refreshing and satisfying, summery enough but not obnoxiously so (it was still April, after all). I made a couple of circuits through the produce, uninspired, until I landed on something I usually walk right past - portobello mushrooms. This dish was shaping up to be an odd one, but I trusted my (hungry) gut and picked up a bunch of parsley and a lime.

I cut the mushroom into fat wedges and grilled them until golden brown and tender, but still decidedly toothsome. I tossed in the avocado wedges, piled on the torn parsley leaves, and gave the whole a big dose of good olive oil, fresh lime juice, and plenty of Maldon salt. Odd, perhaps, but so delicious: meaty, creamy, vibrant, and fresh.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Home Skillet 2.0

Finally got ahold of some time to start setting up the Home Skillet website. It's an ongoing effort, but go ahead and check it out!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Pizza! Pizza!

Of all the categories of cooking that I someday hope to master, the one that has long lingered in the back of my mind, never quite taking center stage, is pizza. I've eaten it in Naples, all over Italy in fact. In New York I worked at a place that served what was arguably the best pizza in town, and I helped my good friend get his brick oven pizza business off the ground. But I've never really made it at home; without a brick oven, I thought, what's the point of even trying?

With my sourdough starter flourishing over the last month, though, I thought it was time to really give it a go. I used some yeast to augment my sourdough, and over the course of about 16 hours made a respectable dough: sponge in the fridge overnight, soft dough in the morning, slow rise, punch down, second rise, portion, final rise. Of course I failed to take any notes - a necessity for the serious pizzaiolo I'm told - but those days in the pizzeria trenches ended up serving me well. I could, with a fairly high degree of confidence, recognize when the dough looked and felt right, and could stretch it out efficiently.

Besides a good dough, the one missing piece of the puzzle - short of a backyard oven (someday!) - was a stone. So I bit the bullet and bought one, figuring now was the time to try to do it right. After a 45 minute pre-heat in a 475 degree oven (smoke alarm be damned), I used an inverted floured sheet tray as a makeshift peel and slid the lightly dressed dough onto the floured peel. Eight minutes later - not quite the 45 seconds of Da Michele, but respectable - out came a bubbly, crisped but chewy circle of happiness.

There is definite room for improvement (maybe play with the broiler to try to get some blistering), but for a first serious attempt, it was pretty darn delicious.







Thursday, April 12, 2012

A Lunch fit for a (Thai) King

Finding myself with a whole trout (de-boned) in the fridge and a jar of white rice in the pantry, it was only a few steps and a couple dollars before we had the fixings for a quick jaunt to Southeast Asia.

I seasoned the fish, coated it in corn starch, and dropped it (gently) into a pan of hot oil. The salad was just what I love about Thai cuisine: fresh vegetables and herbs coaxed into a finely tuned balance of sweet (palm sugar), salty (fish sauce), hot (Bird's Eye chilies), and sour (lots of lime juice). Crispy skin, warm rice, cold salad, it was a flavor punch directly to the palate.




And in that odd way that only certain cuisines (S.E. Asian and Japanese, in particular) are capable of, we felt totally satisfied and not a bit full. Ready, in fact, for dinner.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Sunny Day Fish Fry

Since moving out to Portland, one thing I have learned to do is to take advantage of nice weather, because you never know when it will be back. So as I left work on Sunday and stepped into the warm glow of the late afternoon sunshine, I thought: Tonight, we eat outdoors.

The sudden and unpredicted 36-hour spell of summer weather got us thinking about Southern food, but to keep it simple, we limited the menu to a few reliably delicious dishes. Sarah took charge of the mac 'n' cheese and, despite our ongoing battle of methods (she layers and uses egg, whereas I take the Bechamel route), knocked it out of the park.

I spearheaded the fried cod batter, using a bottle of our very own home brew and thickening it with flour, corn starch, and baking powder, with some cayenne thrown in. And we teamed up on the hush puppies, folding in a minced jalapeno and a lot of onion and then frying them until deep brown.





As for drinks, we went with the 2009 Naucratis Lost Slough Vineyard by Scholium Project. This winery was started by a Philosophy professor turned winemaker, a guy who makes wines that are definitely not for everyone, but definitely appreciated by most wine geeks I know. It weighed in at a whopping 15.3 degrees alcohol (did I mention it's white?), but we took our time with it.

The best ingredient, of course, was the backyard. The sun on its way down, long rays slanting through the blossoming trees, the cool of the evening wrapping up our first glimpse of the summer to come.


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Hello, Mother!

After a beautifully warm and sunny yesterday, when I managed to log a couple hours in the garden, transplanting most of my overgrown, tired seedlings (I had been waiting for the first glimmer of sun for weeks), I rose today to the return of the cold, gray rain. "Fine", I thought, "no backyard grilling; soup it is".

Reaching into the dry goods cupboard, I smelled the distinct aroma of acetic acid creeping around from the dark corner where my vinegar experiment had been (I thought) hibernating for the last five or six weeks. I pulled out the jar in which I had previously found only stale red wine remains, to find a glossy, slimy veneer floating atop the red juice. The Mother! That internal organ-looking thing, that miracle of cellulose and mycoderma aceti bacteria that works the magic of transforming fermented alcoholic substances into vinegar, had arrived! I had forgotten about my vinegar jar, relegating it to the shameful but all too populous corner of failed fermentation or other DIY experiments, when that is just what it needed: a little dark, a little cool, and a little time to get comfortable.




Mother Nature, in the guise of Mother Vinegar, had seen fit to give me a little consolation in this season of Spring rains and sluggish ferments.

Oh, and I used my mezzaluna for the first time today:



making these:



to follow that aforementioned soup.