Choose Your Own Adventure: A Photoessay

'Tis time for another photoessay. I am totally short on time and cannot write a proper post at the moment. I also have a massive backlog of photos of the things I eat (I take pictures of close to everything that passes my lips, much to my very patient friends' chagrin) that never sees the light of day. That's just not right. And while my cooking has slowed down as of late, it has not stopped entirely.

So here is the theme for the current photoessay: Homemade Adventure. You tell me which picture speaks to you the most. Not necessarily the prettiest picture or the best composed plating, but what you would want to eat most. Tell me what makes your stomach grumble and that shall be the subject of my next post, provided I don't blow an aneurysm in the next week from dissertation stress. Stranger things have happened.

Help me out. Make the decision for me - tell me what to post about! Please vote by leaving a comment with the name of the dish/picture. Vote with your stomach, less with your eyes (I really do suck at taking good pictures).




Mark Bittman's short ribs, braised with red wine and coffee; lemon risotto, and the supervisor's honey and vinegar glazed carrots.

Breakfast tacos: scrambled eggs with chorizo and avocado, in home made tortillas (a Battling Brunches entry).

Baked cod, breaded with homemade buttered bread crumbs and smoked paprika, with balsamic drizzled avocado (an American Test Kitchens test recipe! They send you a recipe, you test it and tell them what you think. It's neat to be a part of the "test" in Test Kitchens, even if in a small part).

Yellow tomatoes with fresh basil, balsamic, and good olive oil. Simple and summery. (Guess now you know how long that picture has been the depths of my hard drive).

Blini - this one is a bit of a cheat. My grandmother actually made these Russian-style crepes, stuffed with ground beef, onions, and other secret grandmother ingredients that make this wonderful, delicious, and near impossible to replicate. If the blini are selected for the next post, I will beg her for the recipe and try to write it up, although please don't expect the product to taste nearly as good as these did. It's not possible, because you are not my grandmother. (Hi Lina!)

No-knead bread - no work, all the pay-off. It really does taste like it's straight from a bakery. Spread with pepper-blueberry preserves.

Breakfast the morning after - samosa insides fried as potato cakes and fried eggs. Part of the post New Years recovery program. I highly recommend it.

Irish soda bread with pecans and raisins. No kneading, no waiting, slightly sweet and super dense.

Quinoa salad, courtesy of Amanda at What We're Eating, with a thyme and lime vinaigrette.

Paneer : A Photoessay

There is no use in fighting it. Some (crappy) people may deny it, but the truth is that everyone on this earth is the same on the inside (except maybe Clive Owen. He is better). Let's use cheese as an example. Every culture and cuisine has their version of a fresh cheese. There are variations within the genre, just as with people, but the founding principle is the same. Russian people have have fresh farmer’s cheese (tvorog) – cow’s milk that is cultured overnight, then drained. Italians have mozzarella (pulled or stretched curd cheese) and ricotta, re-cooked from whey. Mexican people have queso fresco, Indians have paneer. Both of these are acid set cheeses, meaning that the milk is curdled by the addition of an acid. The resulting curds are separated and drained, and sometimes pressed (as in the case of queso fresco and paneer) to get rid of extra whey.

So you see? They are all the same at heart, and they all taste reeeaally good.

I got a hands-on demonstration of this unifying theory of mine when my old old old (15 years and counting) friend, Archna, came up to Boston for another visit. Seeing as how we were/are both stressed and tired, nothing seemed more appealing than sitting on a couch for hours on end and cooking something that takes ages of waiting but minutes of work. Enter paneer, the main component of one of my most favorite Indian dishes, muttar paneer (peas and paneer).

After multiple phone consultations with Archna’s Mom, and many assurances from her that we will never be able to make it properly we, remarkably, did it. I can’t say that we made it properly, but we made it. And it was delicious.

The basics of paneer making are as follows:

Heat milk (2% or whole milk) slowly over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to boil. Don’t let it boil vigorously or you will have hours of stove scrubbing to look forward to - it always boils over. Always.

Turn off the heat and curdle the milk in one of two ways, either with the addition of vinegar or buttermilk. Buttermilk will make a richer, creamier paneer but vinegar may yield more curds. Add the buttermilk or vinegar until the milk curdles. For half a gallon, we used two cups of buttermilk (approximate vinegar equivalent would be ¼ - ½ cup).

Let the milk rest undisturbed, partially covered for two hours.

Then:

Drain the curds into a cheese cloth set in a colander. Either suspend the bundle from a faucet to drip the whey into the sink or, say you are kinda clumsy and let the cheesecloth slip open, leave the curds to drain the colander for one hour.



Remove the curds onto a high tech, sophisticated paneer pressing machine. This marvel of technology (my own invention) consists of a cooling rack atop a large pot or bowl...





... topped with a plate and a bottle of wine for a press. Preferably Chablis, preferably chilled, although this portion of the instructions may be modified to suit your individual taste.

Allow the paneer to drain for another hour.

Remove the paneer from the cheesecloth and transfer it onto a plate. Slice into biggish cubes.
At this point, the paneer may be refrigerated or frozen, or it can be fried straight away.

Brown in the paneer on both sides in vegetable or canola oil, drain on a paper towel, and use in your preferred recipe. My recipe of choice, muttar paneer, is forthcoming.

My New Toy: A Photoessay

Grown-ups get to have toys too. They may or may not be of the stuffed animal variety, but they always reflect the spirit of their owner. They are never what you need, only what you want. Grown-up toys can range from huge (car or motorbike) to small (iPhone - I reeeaaally want one). They are frivolous and fun and make life more interesting. You don't need a very good reason for wanting them - that's the good part about being a grown up.

Since I am pretending to be a grown-up, I figured it's alright to buy a completely excessive and partially superfluous toy. I am going to try to take the blog and the restaurant reviews up a notch. My point-and-shoot camera was really not cutting it for me. I have had to physically restrain myself from throwing it against a wall on numerous occasions. Its limitations would take a year to list. I couldn't take it any more. I thought about it for months on end, yearned for it for longer still, took a deep breath, spent a week online, and bought a Nikon D70s, the pet of food bloggers the world over.

I love and despise my new camera all at the same time. I love how fast it is, both in powering up and in getting ready for the next shot - it's practically instantaneous. It is, however, willful and a lot smarter than I am. Every once in a while it refuses to do its job, to take pictures when asked to - this is likely due to the fact that I need a second PhD before I figure out even a tenth of the settings.

The following are a few shots that I have generated with my new toy and time sink. They are still rough, but I will get there, eventually.

Edible:

Fresh strawberries, picked by yours truly at a farm in Northern Mass. These berries in no way resembled the styrofoam pellets on sale at local supermarkets. They were small, sweet juice bombs - one would have to have superhero levels of self control not to eat them all in one go.

Chocolate chip cookies, in progress

Pasta with green beans and hot Italian chicken sausage, recipe to follow


Non-edible:


Chicken wire

Next up on the toy roster: a faster lens. This will allow me to take pictures in low light (restaurants) and should greatly help in lowering my blood pressure (not to mention frustration level).

Beauty Contest : A Photoessay (with audience participation)

Welcome to the first annual Sunday Night Dinner Beauty Contest. The best and the brightest plates from restaurants all around the Boston area have come here to compete for the coveted title of the one, the only, the first ever Miss/Mister Sunday Night Dinner™.

You, the judging panel, are tasked with choosing from among these highly accomplished contenders for the title. We understand that such a decision cannot be undertaken lightly no made easily or spontaneously. To aid you in the decision making process, please consider the following general guidelines:

- Consider all the qualifications of the contestants: plating, originality, perceived smell and taste.
- Be objective: do not let your own food preferences and biases color your decision-making process - this is an equal opportunity beauty contest.
- Look past the imperfections entirely out of our contestants’ control: poor quality of the photograph cannot, and should not, be held against them.

Please enter two votes (Ms/Mr SND and runner up) by Sunday, April 29, 2007 (or whenever you feel like it, really). Please indicate your choices by listing the restaurant name. Do not forget to include what you consider to be the gender of your chosen contestant, indicated by Miss or Mister, and your reasons for the assignment of the gender.

Remember that your votes are non-confidential and non-anonymous. Please be advised that the organizers of the first annual SND Beauty Contest™ reserve all rights to make fun of you based on your response, should the appropriate opportunity present itself. [Incidentally, this holds true for any and all posts presented here, at SND]. The winner will be announced once all the votes are counted.

We appreciate your participation and patronage of the SND Beauty Contest™ and look forward to many more thought-provoking, captivating, and challenging beauty contests in the years to come.


Happy Judging!

Goat cheese croquette on a roasted beet salad, dotted with flavored oils at Lineage - so named because the restaurant is located on the corner of Sewall Ave and the chef/owner's name is Jeremy Sewall. No coincidence - it's the same family.

Roll with salmon, asparagus, shallots, fresh jalapeno, and daikon at Gari Fusion

Warm gorgonzola custard with arugula, walnuts, and pears at Sorriso

Sushi salmon with golden caviar, truffles, truffle oil, and edible gold leaf (an odd combination that works remarkably well) at Oishii

Sea urchin with butter lettuce, celery leaves, fried chickpeas and black squid ink dressing, at Neptune Oyster (Wow)

Addiction: A Photoessay

It's time for another photoessay. It's been a while since the last one. The theme is equally depraved: addiction.

Now, for the soundtrack... I suggest something (anything, really) by Velvet Underground or Babyshambles. Those guys know addiction.

My deep dark secret, my addiction - bread. Any day, any time, any kind. Well, maybe not any kind.

*

This guy right here? He's the dealer. I break down every time, no matter how much I try to resist him. The shop is all light and shiny and pretty... I just can't walk by. The carbohydrate heaven that is Truly Jorg's** holds an unnatural and magnetic power over me.

All the bread above? That's the gateway drug of baked-good addiction -- the pot, if you will, to the heroin that is pastry:

Flourless chocolate cake and pumpkin cheesecake tart.

I stay away from the hard stuff. Once in a while is ok, but I don't need any more bad habits. Bread is addictive enough.

How's this for trippy - the owner and namesake of the shop, Jorg Amsler, takes part in an annual chocolate fashion show in NY where he designs an outfit made of at least 30% chocolate to be walked down the runway. The focus of the shop is not bread - it's pastries. They are gorgeous and indulgent but not so architectural and complex as to be off-putting. The shop also makes wedding cakes to order - you can ask them to make pretty much anything. If you would like your wedding cake to look like a big tractor, they will be more than happy to oblige, and it will be gorgeous... for a tractor.

On a more serious note, I realized recently that I cannot go a day without eating bread. My meals don't feel complete without it. There are few things better in this world than tearing into a fresh loaf of bread, crusty and chewy on the outside, covered with a bit of flour, moist and fragrant on the inside. That has to be one of the top ten most fantastic sensations. The other sensations? Those are topics for other photoessays of depravity.




* In the interest of full disclosure, the last loaf of bread - the spiky one - was actually Iggy's from Whole Foods. It was fantastically good and I couldn't leave it out. The crust to flesh ratio on that loaf was awesome... Crust is the best part, after all.

**Warning: website contains highly graphic pastry material - not for the faint of heart.

Striptease: A Photoessay

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last week and decided that I need a routine of my own. It took me forever to work it out.


And here it is, set either to N.E.R.D. "She Wants To Move" or The Raconteurs "Level," whichever your pleasure. Pleasure being the point here, of course.










Get comfortable.














Ready?













Press play.













Turn it up.































That's all you get. Don't be greedy.




Please note: no cheese was harmed in the making of this post. In fact, I think it rather enjoyed itself.