The happiest recent news in Gastroblogia is that Owen of Tomatilla has revived Paper Chef after a six-month hiatus. Paper Chef was our introduction to the food blogging world, and it’s always been Chopper’s favorite event. He loves the excuse to play.
For this episode, Paper Chef #25, the four ingredients are:
Smoked Swordfish (or [...]
Is English food a joke?
No! It’s not a joke, it’s an adventure!
I happen to believe one should firmly embrace one’s ancestors’ culinary traditions. Especially when one has ancestors who interbred, had bad teeth, killed one another off on a regular basis, and consumed far too many unnervingly rich, meat-based dishes.
I am, of course, talking [...]
Prologue:
At first, I was horrified. Cookiecrumb and Kevin hosting a Mac-n-Cheese event? But I can’t! You don’t understand. I just can’t. I cried to Chopper: Look what they’re doing, I said. How cruel. How evil. Can I ever forgive them? If you make mac-n-cheesy goodness and [...]
It was the event that almost wasn’t. The event that re-emerged from the abyss, from the long lost annals of Gastroblogian history, stifled by photographic traumas, by the death cries of a computer far past its prime, and by the evils of a creature known only by the minacious name Blogger BETA.
The event, Paper [...]
This is our last Paper Chef in this house.
In two and a half weeks, we’ll be moving back to Portland after 20 months of camping out and caregiving on an island we only occasionally called home. I can’t say that we’ll miss this disastrously tiny and ill-equipped kitchen, but we will have [...]
Finally!
For the past three months we’ve had a hankering in the worst way to participate in Barbara’s The Spice is Right over at Tigers and Strawberries, and for the past three months, our cooking schedule (such as it is) has failed us. But not this time! Not when chiles are on the [...]
(In our so-tardy-it-shouldn’t-count second entry for Paper Chef, we stick close to home for our tale of Independence. How close to home? Oh, about 400 yards up the road. And as for that tardy thing — what was it the late, great Douglas Adams once said? Oh yes: “I love [...]
Paper Chef, July Independence Edition
The ingredients
Corn
Ground Coriander
Pine Nuts
And (from Kevin at Seriously Good): The wild card for this event is Independence Day. Whether you’re American, Ethiopian, Chilean, or Thai, create a recipe that celebrates your nation’s emancipation from its previous rulers or form of government or whatever other thing celebrated to honor nationhood. [...]
Our tiny kitchen in this home away from home of ours is rife with tragedies (don’t get me started on this week’s flood), but during the hottest of summer days, perhaps our greatest sadness comes not from the kitchen itself but from our lack of an ice cream maker. True, ice cream with actual [...]
… Chopper made all four of these dishes at once so we could have a true tapas spread (and I could go a little nuts with the photography). I garnished everything with herbs from our garden, quickly snapped away, and then we dug in. And oh, was it good. …
… And we here at Belly Timber, being rather nautically inclined to begin with, believe that nowhere else can one find dishes more quintessentially English than aboard the great ships of the British Navy during the Golden Age of Sail. …
… The scariest wagers are the ones you make on yourself and on your own future success. It’s so much easier to just take what you’ve got and make the best of it, but what it came down to for us was this: The best of it had sunk us deep into a pit of stagnant muck and we had to risk something crazy to dig ourselves out. …
… They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but Miss Dominique Araucana, she nailed my ticker without cooking a lick.
Maybe it was that voice, all silky chocolate, or maybe that cherry-lipped pout of hers, sweet as a basket on Easter Sunday. All I knew is one look and I was toast. …
… But, where the vindaloo mutations on board the good ship Red Dwarf are quite dangerous and must be dealt with (Leopard Lager into the beast’s maw generally does the trick), here on Earth, and at Casa Belly Timber, we find the notion of vindaloo mutations quite intriguing and potentially delicious. …
… Here, we shared the excitement of approaching carts together. Is that ginger chicken? Yes! Oh, and yu chee gow. Score! We sampled our favorites together and together we came just inches away from the big dim sum Do-We-Dare Challenge: Chicken feet. …
… Now, I have a personal favorite aphrodisiac. It’s a combination of dark chocolate and Barry White. Gets me every time. …
… Well then, it appears I must complete my chairmenical duties and announce the winners for this month’s Paper Chef Competition. Oh, shut up. I know chairmenical isn’t a real word. Do I look like I care? …
…The yog(H)urt (okay, okay already, I’ll ditch the H!) and cashews sent many entrants in the direction of Indian cuisine. Cumin, coriander, and curry powder abounded (yum!), but we found some complete surprises in the mix as well, and for all of those (and for the baby)… well, read on! …
Babies? What were you people thinking?
Oh, wait. That was us. …
…Now, if you’re feeling a bit scary adventurous, we’ll also allow any food that’s got the word “baby” in the title! (Though, if you go for either of those last two in our photo set? You’re weirder than we are, got it? Weird.) …
… The photo accompanying this post, I should note, contains a huge hint relating to our secret fourth ingredient.
I should also note, that the photo is of Chopper’s niece and if we have anything to say about it, it will remain on the internet for all to see until she’s old enough to date. …
… So, just ‘cuz, here’s a gratuitous food photo of sushi. Neener, neener. …
… Well, it’s like this. It’s midnight before first frost and I’m reading, and the plot thickens and then it thickens some more, and then more after that, and then it’s two thirty in the morning and Chopper asks what happens next, and I check the next chapter title and I tell him, and he says, Hagrid’s back! You have to keep reading! …
…Oh, wait. I got it. I’m going to talk about something else, something more important. It’ll be the heartwarming moment at the end of the show, you know, like when the kid turns to the camera and says, “but most of all today I learned that cuttlefish have feelings too, and if you chop their heads off to eat them, their tentacles will retaliate and drag you down to a watery grave.”
Dude, that is so heartwarming. …
What is this year’s A Menu for Hope? It’s the international food blogging community’s campaign to raise money for earthquake relief in Pakistan. October’s devastating earthquake in Kashmir registered 7.6 on the Richter scale and the death toll stands near 87,000 with another 80,000 injured and 3.3 million left homeless. …
Wait a sec. I’ve got that cool Cuban oregano I brought up from Portland. Now where did I leave that pot?
Uhhhh…. whoops. …
… Whoa. Okay, okay, we’re not really going to cook penguin. They’re too cute and fluffy, and honestly where is one supposed to find penguin meat on this short notice? …
Now, I could tell long, agonizing stories of food photos gone horribly wrong, but instead I think I’ll just let the photos tell their story. A story (with brief, out-of-focus interludes) of what it’s like to be the photographer when someone else is doing the cooking…
… This intriguing foursome took our participants on a culinary trip around the globe with influences from the Mediterranean to South East Asia to right here on our home turf of the Pacific Northwest. …
… Mrs D. says: I think I died and went to Thai curry heaven. Seriously, this one rocked our little culinary world. We loved it so much, Chopper made it twice. (And I will force him to make it again, and again, and again…)
KERTHUNK!
This is the sound our brains made after yesterday’s long, exhausting day on the mainland. A day that ended, I might add, with a flat tire on the ferry boat. …
… And speaking of round-ups and time, we’re busy tomorrow, which means no round-up till later in the week, which means — you guessed it — there’s still time to enter! Quick! Race to the market before supper! Lamb, basil, oranges, and fish sauce. You know they go great with Monday Night Football, right?
… That’s right. Lamb. Cute little fuzzy lamb. Say it with me now: awwwwwww……. yum. …
Just one more day for Paper Chef ingredient nominations! Post ‘em here if you’ve got ‘em. …
…So now, bloggers, show me the ingredients you so desire for the creation of your culinary masterpieces. Remember, you may only nominate once, so choose wisely. Let Paper Chef Ingredient Nomination Week begin!
Submitted for your approval: The tale of a chef and his doppelganger, separated by a continent, each devoted to his own unique culinary path, yet driven together, inexplicably, time and again, by a mysterious force. Some might call it fate, some might dismiss it as the natural result of expert training and the synchronicities of our modern age. …
… This was the point when we (Mrs. D and I) thought: “How can we make this dish even more fancy?” When we spotted the oregano growing in our yard, the idea came. We took our pasta dough and rolled it out almost as thin as filo, thus allowing one to see things through it. …
His name is Chopper, he cooks a breakfast
With yellow over-easy eggs, it looks so good the puppy begs.
He adds chorizo, and a tomato
For this September Eggs on Toast, a little hot sauce is the most.
He tosses cheese with flair. This dish is debonaire!
But he cuts the toast and goes for tortillas
So now is this fair?
… Now, don’t get me wrong, we eat tofu and attend peace marches with the best of ‘em, and hell, I’ll even say thank you and mean it if someone calls me a socialist, but we are not about to say goodbye to fresh fish or eggs or bacon or … Augh! How do you vegans do it????
… In my own personal actor’s nightmare, it goes more like this:
Thomas’ mother enters: “I’ve brought you a custard,” she says and stumbles slightly causing the custard to fly up into the air and land, face down on the stage in front of the gathered cast. …
Chopper and I have never been to New Orleans and in fact just two weeks ago or less we were brainstorming a potential trip around the country and naming our must-see cities. New Orleans was at the top of my list. I still want to go, though I know it’ll be a while yet. I want to see the New Orleans that once was and will be again. I want to fall in love with her as so many of my friends have. …
(Since we, the notoriously last minute, broke our record for tardiness during Dine & Dish #3 and posted a full two weeks late, for Dine & Dish #4 we offer up this Three Act Drama as an apology, and plead forgiveness for any past transgressions. As for our current transgressions, let us just say that we kid because we love. Honest, we do… Sorry, Rachael. We couldn’t help ourselves.)
… So, here I am, flying solo. Granted, Chopper came home for a brief respite between lunch and dinner shifts and spun me some sugar, but the rest of it is mine, all mine, baby.
And, as usual, I got a little carried away. …
… The first of the two Estate grown wines wasn’t available for tasting, so we zeroed in on the second, eager to discover what a truly local wine could offer us — and we were not disappointed. …
… But what to do about ingredient #4? We had ripe items in our garden, but we wanted something other than a vegetable and Chopper was getting this serious hankering for a Caribbean-themed meal. That’s it, I said, let’s go to the farmer’s market and see if Spot Prawn Guy is there. …
…Hagrid, oblivious to the significance of Trelawney’s pronouncement simply said, “Well of course I’ve got four eggs and four pieces of toast and yogurt and paprika. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are dropping by for a fine Turkish breakfast of Cilbir!” …
…I had a bucket of the puppies crying to be shucked, he McGuyvered up a smoker with drying rack, pie tin, and skillet lid, and provided us with some to-die-for Jasmine Tea Smoked Oysters with Garlic Green Tea Emulsified Vinaigrette. …
… Steps, just two months old on July 13th, is tucked into an alley half a block from the ferry line in downtown Friday Harbor. You wouldn’t know what to expect from the street; this isn’t one of those places that announces itself to the world with massive signage or gaudy architecture. A simple banner hangs above the door, and the alley-side footprint is as narrow as an office cubicle. All in all, this is a most unlikely place for a high-end restaurant. …
… Then (our first trauma), Chopper Dave had to remind me that soft boiled egg yolks are slippery, and the salmon roe would probably glumph into oblivion two seconds after contact. Damn. So much for this week’s crazy idea. …
… Our choice for fruit: blueberries. I had this brilliantly silly notion that we’d make the whole thing blue. Blue-tinted meringue, blueberries… (Okay, they’re purple, but hey, work with me here.) The idea: A cloud of blue meringue, and on top of the berries, another cloud, this one silver and puffy and all of spun sugar. …
… And now, insult added to injury: My captors spent yesterday evening concocting a dish using buttermilk and eggs and heavy cream, and (despite my yammerish demands) they have not shared a single drop of it with me! …
For this, our new culin’ry quest,
We’ve cooked up some eggs, as you’ve guessed.
We took bread for this vittle,
And carved out the middle
And behold, we’ve got Eggs in a Nest!
… But since we are, as we said, weird, we believe that instead of ignoring food blogging events when we’re pressed for time, we should embrace them. Both at once. With zeal.
And with (yes, you’ve guessed it by now) weirdness.
And so, with a cupful of grapefruit juice and a sea of aspic (ocean blue, of course), we christen the Sweet Fleet …
… We cook to take our minds off the burdens we carry outside the kitchen. We cook so we can lose ourselves in the near-synesthetic experience of an extraordinary meal. We cook to discover the unexpected. …
… Front Street Ale House, our main default, sits just a block away from the ferry dock, overlooking the port of Friday Harbor. On the off season, it’s a great place to sit at the bar and jaw with the bartender (and the assistant brewer who’s there more often than not), and collect our all-the-time happy hour discount by wearing our “bar wear” — two quite stylish Front Street baseball caps. (The bar wear, I should note, extends to boxer shorts, though I couldn’t tell you if patrons are required to drop trou to get their discount.) …
… Trouble is, my notion really was loony. As in (and I’m quoting Chopper Dave here) “This is a harebrained scheme and it’s not going to work.”
But trouble with that is, I’m the Peter Quincy Taggart of harebrained schemes. You know, never give up, never surrender? That’s me. …
Molasses. Color me strange, but I really like the stuff. Maybe it’s those fond memories of home baked gingerbread cookies at Christmas time and me sneaking a spoonful straight from the bottle, or maybe it’s just the label with that grand old rabbit …
… As soon as we see the list — goat cheese, sherry vinegar, prosciutto, green garlic — he’s talking pizza. For about five minutes. Then the brainstorm hits. A new creation, half quiche, half frittata. That’s it! We’ll make a Quittata! …
