Cooking Debauchery

BBQ Shrimp

It is far different animal to feed eight people instead of our usual three or four.  While I can normally manage just fine to both cook dinner and take pictures… this is assuming of course I have all my little ducks in a row… with eight people baying for food this becomes nearly impossible. 

So while the last six weeks have been a revolving door of culinary bliss, photos never quite seemed to make the list of to-dos. 

The reason for all this activity of course, was a descent but still not long enough visit from my family from the Ukraine.  The same family which I visited last August.  For a whole six weeks, my kitchen was much like I remember it as a child.  Filled with happy people making incredible food.

It was also a fairly interesting cultural exchange.

5 Minute Bean Dip

Every have one of those days where you just run around all day only to realize that you have to go somewhere that night and didn’t prepare a thing?

The other Friday a I was getting ready to leave to go to a friend’s house for the evening, I realized that I had nothing to bring.  And while I stock baked pita chips in the house I didn’t have any dip.

So as I scanned the pantry, tossing my heels aside in the process, it came to me.

All I needed was a can of black beans.

Cherry Vareniki

There are things that one misses from childhood.

Remembered flavors; favorite dishes.  For most of us, those flavors are reproducible.  They are our mother’s and grandmother’s recipes lovingly passed from generation to generation.

But for me, capturing the fleeting flavors of my childhood is not as easy.  I was 7 and a half when I left the Ukraine with my family.  Leaving behind the gregarious circle of the women who shaped my impressions of food and cooking.

These were the kind of women, like most of their generation that cooked well but did so by feel and taste.  And because back then communication was limited, my mother came with only the recipes that she cooked often.

And so my absolute childhood favorite was lost.

Hummus

There are two parts of my brain.  The passionate impulsive part and the scientific part.

The passionate part of my brain falls madly in love with recipes.  It courts them with great fervor, spending hours upon hours day dreaming about what the recipe would be like.  Writing its name plus mine in cute little hearts upon the back of my cook book covers.

In the mean time the scientific part of my brain wants to dissect a recipe.  It wants to turn the recipe around, unscrew the cover poke around the insides and rearrange the inner workings.  My scientific mind wants to know why a recipe works.  Why choose this combination of ingredients or that?  What does this flavor do with that?  What makes the recipe tick.

Either way, between these two halves of my brain, I can’t ever seem to make any recipe that I see until I have thoroughly dissected it.

Mushroom Pate

When I was little I was the kind of kid that was happiest taking things apart.

I wasn’t destructive per se, though that was the end result of what I did, I was simply curious to see how things worked.

So it surprises no one that my first memory of mushrooms involved me tearing them into little pieces in a vain effort to understand what it was that made them so good.

I must have been about 5 or 6 at the time.  And as per our usual pass time, my parents had taken the boat up the river to our favorite camp site.

Being experienced mushroom hunters, they had found a small amount of edible wild mushrooms and had placed them on a shelf to be made into dinner.

Unfortunately they did not account for my determined ingenuity in getting into trouble.

Sharp Cheddar Pennies

At 3 years old, a cheddar has an almost acidic bite. 

Tangy and assertive, it is difficult to imagine a more intense cheese experience.  Arguably, a good member of the blue cheese family packs a powerful wallop and there are certainly cheeses that are more pungent; but few cheeses have the mouth puckering quality of a good aged cheddar.

Which is why it is incredibly difficult for me to imagine a recipe that can not only take advantage of this acerbic bite but enhance it.

But that is exactly the promise on which this recipe from Gourmet Magazine delivers.

OMG Garlic! Shrimp & Parsnip Puree

OH MY GOD!  Garlic!

That was the first though that raced into my head as I popped little pink curl into my mouth.

It is hard to imagine so much flavor from something that amounts to little more than a mouthful.

Salty, tangy, sweet and oh so garlicky.  The shrimp were an explosion of garlic flavor.

Garlic was the first flavor that hit and the flavor that lingered.

It was then that I realized, what I had invented was in fact; a garlic orgasm.

It did not start out that way.  It was not my intention!

But when it comes to garlic I have no self control.

Chicken Liver Pate with Mushrooms & Apples

I often and readily admit to being a picky eater.  Not in the sense that I won’t try anything new.  Far from it.  I seek out new food experiences.  I am however picky about everything else.

One of the most problematic areas for me in food is texture.  There are certain textures that are very off-putting.  Though often times, it is not the texture of the article itself that is problematic but rather the difference between the perceived texture based upon appearance versus the actual texture of the item.

Liver is the head of that list.  It is meat.  It appears solid.  And yet when you bite into it, liver is oddly spongy.  Almost moussey… and yet dry.  YUCK!  The blatant disparity of this is enough to turn me right off of liver completely.

But what I actually don’t mind about liver is its taste.  I am perfectly happy with the flavor of liver.  So how do you reconcile the two?  How do you make peace with liking the flavor but nothing else about something?

Shrimp Toasts

(click on image to enlage it)

I have a bad habit. 

While I often don’t cook from recipes, I have a magpie approach to recipe ideas. My mind goes around gathering tidbits of ideas and putting them in little hidey holes until… one of them overflows and I suddenly HAVE to make what ever it is. 

Something it clicks immediately and I have to make something right away. This was the case with last weekend’s tuna tartar. But even that waited for 4 days while I plotted and planned. 

Other dishes percolate in my head for months or sometimes even years before I manage to make them into reality. Sometimes it’s because the last shiny bit hasn’t dropped into that particular recipe hidey-hole. Other time it’s because I am afraid to try the recipe and then face a mound of leftovers for days on end that are OK but everyone seems to just forget to eat. 

The bad habit comes into play when an idea suddenly catches my interest. 

Tuna Tartar with Avacado Cream

I will probably get lynched for this, but I am not a fan of Giada De Laurentiis. 

She makes me nervous. 

I guess it has to do with the adage “never trust a skinny chef.” Her recipes certainly look good. But there is always this part in the back of my mind that keeps whispering... “What could she know about good food? She doesn’t eat.” 

Of course I also know that I am wrong. She takes huge bites of food on “Everyday Italian” and she snitches bits on “Behind the Bash.” It’s all right there on tape. But even that still leaves me slightly suspicious. 

This doesn’t by any means stop me from watching, but it is rare that I look at one of her recipes and immediately need to make it. But that is exactly what happened with this tuna recipe. 

Once I saw it… I had to make it!