Nothing exciting, but I DID cook…
June 11, 2011
Egg porn. Runny yolk par excellance, at least on one, because I broke t'other one.
Today, we are going to speak about the making of huevos rancheros. You saw the finished product before; here’s the process.
First, you get your mise-en-place ready. Grate some cheese, get out your tortillas, get out your eggs, open your chile sauce, if you’re not going to make your own, which I was seriously considering, but, y’know, I didn’t.
Ready to road trip again
May 8, 2011
Huevos rancheros. Over easy for me, scrambled for NS.
Well. It’s been a busy Sunday. I have done laundry, clogged up and unclogged a sink drain, cooked enough to feed my starving young’uns while I’m gone for a week, and packed.
NS’s birthday is Tuesday, while I’m in Chicago, whence I am headed at oh-early-thirty tomorrow. Where I will go to the American Girl store and purchase my granddaughter her first American Girl doll, as well as to the Levis store to purchase her — well, you know. And where I will eat at Bistro 110, because I don’t care how out of style it is, I love it. And will have a drink at the Signature Lounge. And will eat breakfast at the Pancake House. And have a cocktail at the Violet Hour.
I love Chicago. More specifically, I love to just eat my way through it.
Then I’m off to Atlanta, where the dining is still decent, though not nearly what it ought to be in America’s what, fifth largest metroplex? A preponderance of chains. If I can recall where I ate in December, we’ll go back there; it was good.
And then I’ll be home Saturday, and home for a week, until I head back out to go see Child B and Stunningly Gorgeous And Intelligent Granddaughter. And THEN I’m home until the middle of June, so I can catch my breath.
Meanwhile, we have cooked. We have cooked huevos rancheros for breakfast, and brisket and sauteed sesame snow peas and roasted potatos for dinner, and a chocolate pound cake birthday cake in between. It has been a profitable, if tiring, day.
Yum. Good dinner. I'm still stuffed.
This brisket, I might note, is one of the better briskets I have ever cooked. I browned it, sliced and caramelized three onions and four cloves of garlic, added some tomato paste, some mustard, some brown sugar, a bottle of Guinness, four or five fresh sage leaves and two cups of beef broth. Put the brisket back in, clapped on the lid, and into a 325 oven he went for some 3 1/2 hours (he was about a 3-pound brisket). He could have been pulled earlier; he was so tender he was difficult to slice. I put the slices in a baking dish, pureed the gravy with my handy-dandy immersion blender, and poured that over it.
Yep. Sweet Baby Jesus brisket, that is.
Where am I, and what day is this?
May 5, 2011
Answer No. 1: I’m at home. I know this because the dog has nestled her slimy, soft, rawhide chewy against my bare instep and is lustily gnawing on it. This is preferable to when she does same when the chewy is hard, because then it stabs my ankle or my shin.
Answer No. 2: It’s Thursday. I think. Although I would not swear to this. The effect of travel is that I have problems keeping up with what day it is when I get back. That problem is compounded when I’m calculating what all I have to do before I leave again, which is Monday (Chicago, then Atlanta).
Albuquerque was pretty. Santa Fe was pretty. These were good.
This is not huevos rancheros. I can't find my picture. This is the Jemez Mountains in the snow, taken about two hours and several thousand feet elevation removed from the huevos rancheros. Use your imagination.
They were, in fact, about the really exceptional meal I had the entire time I was gone. Part of this was due to eating weird banquet food, part was a function of airport/snack food, and part was a function of a weird schedule.
