crafty_packrat

I went to see Rams at the AFI last night. The description is: 'In a remote Icelandic farming valley, two brothers who haven't spoken in 40 years have to come together in order to save what's dearest to them - their sheep'.

My initial reaction was 'my god, it's Norwegian Bachelor Farmers!', except they're Icelanders. But I was with ellen_fremedon; and the Vegan Knitter, and she agreed it was totally Norwegian Bachelor Farmers. Though when we got to the end, she pointed that once you've run away to the mountains, that's the last step to becoming an outlaw and your story is over; so the ending was perfect, at least in the context of Icelandic sagas.

This afternoon I went to see Chandu the Magician with greenygalas part of the William Cameron Menzies retrospective. It had a good bit of painfully dated orientalism, and a good bit of raygun gothic with a 'death ray' as the central macguffin, but it also had some amazing set design consider it was made in 1932, some nifty special effects (and lots of van de graaf generators and tesla coils) and correct use of 'thou' and 'you' between a master yogi and his student Chandu. You could definitely see the seeds of both the Jedi and Indiana Jones in the movie.

Next up, there's short run of Harryhausen films, including King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts at the AFI that I'm going to go to, and a two-day only run of Project Itoh: Empire of Corpses, which is a steampunk anime alternate history -- 'Ever wonder what the world would be like if the British Empire had been built upon a working class of reanimated corpses?' -- so I will go see it even though it's only showing weekday nights.

Splendid Table is talking about lard this afternoon, and mentioned lard caramels. I have several tablespoons of leaf lard in the freezer, and this sounds like a tempting recipe -- lard caramels.

I'm also considering that the next time I get a pork shoulder from Many Rocks farm, I should just trim and save the fat and wet-render it for later.

I made this for Thanksgiving, and it's excellent.

( Ingridients )
( Directions )

Shortly after I arrived at the new apartment, I planted hibiscus in front of the hedge with the hope of harvesting them for red zinger and agua fresca making. However, they were shortly weed-wacked out existance by the groundskeeping staff.

So, my solution -- since tenants are allowed to plant in the flowerbeds and even lay out raised beds if they spring for the supplies themselves, was to buy supplies and make a bed for my plants that was unambiguously a maintained, not to be weedwacked, in-cultivation bed.

I did it this morning -- with some help from holli last night to get the bags of topsoil, compost, tools and such to my place ( she has a car. )

Also, I went with a neighbor up to Behnke's Nursery, and came back with fish fertlizer, microrhyzia innoculatant, and some pamphlets on amaryllis care. We had fun looking around, and she might go back for some indoor paperwhites. If that happens, I might go with her for saffron crocuces and maybe a few more amaryllis bulbs. They had already sold out of all the fall vegetable seedlings they carry, which surprised me. But I picked up two dill seedling and planted them when we got back. At the very least they'll give me fresh dill for a while -- they might seed and give the caterpillars something to eat next spring, if I'm lucky.

Surprisingly, all the work on the flowerbed (including cleaning up) only took two hours. We'll just have to see how sore I am in the morning, to see if I'm up to digging up all the mint some ex-neighbor planted in that bed -- it has to come out, but it might be next weekend.

Just bought eggs, apples, nectarines, and red pluots today. Because of Hurricane Irene I went to the SS market yesterday, picked up 3lbs of bone-in pork shoulder, some donut peaches, nectarines, apples, white bread, tomatillos and cherry tomatoes -- which was a good idea, because the entire business district here is blacked out, which means my bank's ATM is down.

I did make chili verde yesterday, which was just as yummy and sinus-searing as I remembered. Next time, I'll make sure the chiles are seared black before I set the to cool; if they're not totally blistered over, it's hard to get the skin off in spots. I need to pick up more sour cream sometime this week, and get ready for Labor Day.

We had to set these in a skillet with water as a double boiler of a sort to loosen up the caramel bottoms of these, but these Orange-Vanilla Caramel Cremes turned out wonderfully when we upended them.

Basically, we made flan with a melting orange caramel top by flipping them out. Next time, I'd slice the orange peel into much thinner slivers, but ellen_fremedon pointed out that they really nicely countered the rich sweetness of the custard, so using the peel so aggressively worked out.

( So tasty! )



So the great Cook-In was a great success, though we both wished several times for a bigger, better laid-out kitchen. And more people to eat all the food, because seriously, it seemed that we Cooked All things.

And I seriously want to try more recipes from Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume -- these are fabulously tasty recipes.

Bloated with all the food we made and consumed, ellen_fremedon and I scooped out cones of the Strawberry-Hibiscus ice cream I set to set this morning and went for a post-prandial walk.

( Sweet and purple )

The ice cream itself was somewhat soft, and I think I might modify the custard next time to use only yolks instead of whole eggs -- and use smaller bits of strawberries. I think on the verge strawberries gave the best flavor, considering I used both them and some bought from the co-op on Saturday.

ellen_fremedon and I wisely got together on Saturday and figured out our meal plan for today, so we could get the best ingredients and split cost.

Of course, we chose Jidi Bel Zet -- Veal Shanks with Saffron and Seven Spice -- before realizing that first, no one was selling veal shanks, and second, the goat shanks (the recipe is adapted from a recipe for goat) were two-and-a-half-dollars more per pound than osso bucco from the bison ranch. Otoh, there was no guarantee that the bison people had osso bucco availabe either, but their saleswoman promised she'd be able to sell us stew meat and a marrowbone if the osso bucco wasn't available. Which was why I bought a marrowbone on Sunday.

The first thing we had to do this morning was make Baharat -- the blend of sweet paprika, cumin, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, hot paprika, and coriander -- which is the titular Seven Spice. Hand grinding 4 tsps of black pepper is a chore, especially with a mini-grinder, and I finally resorted to cracking the black pepper with my mortar and pestle. After dredging and browning the meat, we stuffed it in the oven and worked on prep work for other dishes, with just a timer to keep us going.

Cooking the shallots, garlic and saffron in one skillet and the sweet potatoes in another, and then dumping them all back in the dutch oven to cook on the stove top worked well. Once they were cooked through, ellen_fremedon showed me how to get the marrow out of a marrowbone with a butter knife, and put the blood and juices she saved when we opened the meat packages to enrich the dish. Adding a half a lemon's worth of juice, we set back and let the whole thing rest.

Instead of serving with saffron rice, we just ate it with the pita bread left from the first course... ( omgGOOD )

It doesn't look like much in the pot, but trust me, it smelled wonderful and tasted fabulous.

So, the pink peppercorn meringues are finished -- they came out unexpectedly huge, and I will probably give many of them away.

The orange vanilla caramel cremes are finished, but I think I went past caramel into 'butterscotch hard candy', so the bottoms have a crust like a creme brulee. Ooops.

The strawberry-hibiscius ice cream is in the freezer setting up, and it tastedfabulous.

The white bean dip is half done -- the spices, oil and lemon juice are the only thing that needs to be added. The chard for the falefel is cooling now, after being blanched.

The meat is thawed, so after the parade, I'll get that started.

batard of white bread, bacon slab ends (half the price of cut bacon, destined for soup), quart of creamline milk, garlic cheese curds, red bell pepper quark, pink lady apples, cheese danish, onions and asparagus.

Guess who is going to try making mushroom asparagus risotto this week?