Xan and Catherine: Monarchs!

Check out these monarch cupcakes!  Their annual fall migration from Canada to Mexico passes straight through our kitchen in Chicago:

Not all will complete the arduous 3000 mile journey.  Many will be eaten along the way, even despite the fact that they are loaded with toxins.  You see, these monarchs sport bright colors to warn would-be predators that they contain milk products.  (Monarch cupcakepillars feed on evil lactose-rich milkweed, toxifying them for life).

Anyway, the butterflies were made by melting "candy melting wafers," using an icing bag to form the wing and antenna shapes, and then resolidifying them for a few minutes in the freezer.  Cool, huh?

Linden's Turkey Meatballs

The last six months have been a bit splurgey for me, foodwise. After the time of darkness last winter (when I acquired a taste for lentils, brown rice, and cauliflower) while I was trying to identify my new allergy (methinks it's soy, but further tests to come this fall), I was in need of a little weight gain. Hence the abundance of cakes, chocolate, cheeesy lasagnas and deep dish pizzi, and savory tarts in my history.

However, this summer my fastwalks through Oxford (to lectures, seminars, and choir) have been replaced by sitting in a chair writing my thesis and moaning to everyone who will listen, which only exercises my hands and mouth (alas, not the bits that keep your tummy trim). So I am slowly trying to edge out the delicious-by-means-of-butter-and-cheese and edge in the not-as-delicious-but-makes-me-feel-virtuous.

So, because quitting cold turkey (hah!) would be too much to endure in the weeks before my thesis is due, I am taking the middle road. Last night, I made delicious spaghetti and meatballs, but instead of the traditional beef and veal and pork, I went for healthy turkey.

In my way, I combined two recipes from the internets, and opted for baking the meatballs rather than frying them (see? look at that healthy alternativing!) For the last five minutes of pasta cooking, I moved the meatballs into the sauce to absorb some delicious sauciness. Then, a bowlfull of pasta and zucchini (it may not look like much, but that is because this is Chris' plate, which is always slightly less green than mine, which we will put down to my jealous vegatative nature.).

 

The recipes:
http://thekitchensinkrecipes.com/2008/05/08/try-it-youll-like-it/
http://www.dinneralovestory.com/great-grandma-turano%E2%80%99s-meatballs/

Linden's Panang Curry

If you go to www.oed.com - that would be the Oxford English Dictionary's website, for those of you not in the know - and search "potato effect", you will find three entries. The first is spelling-related, pertaining to the 'e' introduced when pluralizing the word. The second has to do with Ireland, and thus is of little interest here, as their cuisine is not predominantly what you would call photogenic. Our family has a historic, if tense, relationship with the third.

When Papa cooks plain baked potatoes, his thoughts go something like this: There are five of us, and these are big baking potatoes, so reckon 3/4 each (maybe a whole one for me), better make four and hope someone isn't hungry. There are usually two left.

When he roasts potatoes, he can cook the same amount and only have one or two little potatoe eighths remaining (the runts of the litter). When he makes french fries - which, I would like to point out, he hasn't done in years, a major failing of his kitchining - he uses the same number and we all complain that he didn't cook enough.

His response is always to retaliate with baked potatoes, and then complain that we aren't eating them. He says, "I don't know how you expect me to estimate how many potatoes people will eat when one night you want more than a whole one each and the next all of you together barely manage one", and feels very righteous about his own consistent intake.

However, this is easily explained by what is commonly known as the potato effect, which refers to the phenomenomenon whereby delicious food is less filling.

I have found that chicken experiences the potato effect when cooked in the form of Panang Curry. I will cook enough raw chicken that I expect enough leftovers for another full meal, and there will be absolutely nothing left, or maybe enough for a small snack the following day. Unlike Papa, however, I am an adapter. I just double my quantities.

Linden's Delicious Vengeful Desserts

Well, I was certainly not happy to hear that the entire family Conspired Against Me regarding the pizza at the beach (except for Papa, who shows his love in other ways).

So I guess it's time to bring out pictures of my delicious cakes. Of all the desserts I make, these are the most requested and most delicious.

The first has its roots in the humble American coffee cake - a confusing name in this country, since all of their cakes tend to have the dryness which distinguishes coffee cakes from other cakes and makes it good for tea time. But this one adds rhubarb, and lots of cinnamon and a hint of ginger, and makes a not too dry, not too dense, not too sweet, but very delicious cake. Topped with big crumbs of cinnamon and brown sugar and butter. Then, while the cake is in the oven, the cakey bit rises up over the crumbs, subsuming them and making a lava-field looking top, which results in what you might think of as Cake Surprise. When you fork off another bite, you don't know whether it will contain a chunk of rhubarb, a buried big crumb, or both!

The second cake is even more delicious, and much richer. It is a torte, made by whipping eggs for half of eternity until they get light and fluffy and ten times their original size, and then browning butter over the stove, for a nice round nutty flavor. Then, to top it off, there's large chunks of chocolate and pears. It is  delicious, and by the time I got my camera, two thirds of it was gone.  Not a great picture, but if you look at the sides you can see chunks of pear and chocolate hiding inside the delicious moist dense cakiness.

 

(Oh, am I making those of you on diets want some? I'm sorry, maybe you should have thought about that before you Conspired.)

And you know what else, because I'm feeling a little vindictive about the Lies, we're not going to stop with cakes. Here are my delicious raspberry-topped lemon muffins, an excellent balance between sweet and lemon, with raspberries perched on top for some extra zing.

Oh and in all of my hard work on my thesis, I almost forgot my double dark chocolate chunk muffins, which are deliciously moist and densely chocolatey, with big chunks of chocolate lurking inside, just waiting to attack you with deliciousness. Some even say they are the best chocolate muffins they have ever had, and I am tempted to agree.

There, I'm feeling a bit better now. Back to work.

Xan: Pulled Pork Pizza?

Lin is going to hate me for posting all the things she missed at the beach this year, but I also made a bunch of pizza dough to bring down to the beach.  I made an assortment of mini pizzas: cheese, pepperoni, Hawaiian, and pulled pork pizza:

It turns out that barbecue sauce and pulled pork make a really good pizza!  People loved it so much that I made a bigger one another day:

Maybe next year, Lin.  I'm sure you'll agree this whole England thing is not worth it. Give it up already!

Xan and Paul: Pulled Pork!

Oink.

Oink?

Oink! Oink Oink Oink Oink Oink Oink Oink!

That's ten pounds worth of oinkers, which is actually the smallest amount you can get at Costco in the form of pork shoulder.  Ah pork shoulder, the intersection of two most delicious things.  Oink!  Read on for the Saga of the Most Delicious Way of cooking the intersection of two Most Delicious Things...

A detour for those who want to learn more about meat science.  You know, there was a time when I didn't understand meat cuts.  I thought it was just a bunch of random pieces to learn the characteristics of.  But actually there's a simple logic to meat properties. (Oh, speaking of meat properties, please take a detour from the detour and watch this excellent short film.  Or perhaps this visual guide to Mr. Oink is more up your alley, brought to you by The Onion, America's finest news source. ). Anyway, let me lay it out for you:

• Plants don't move much, so they can store their energy reserves in tough, relatively inert starches.  But animals must react quickly to their surroundings, which means they are made up of more volatile, reactive (read: detectable to our tastebuds!) chemicals...and in particular, fat packs more energy per pound than starch, so that's how they store fuel.  In making energy more readily available to themselves, animals thus make themselves more flavorful to us.  Eat that, vegetarians!

• In particular, the parts of the animal that do a lot of work need to have a stand-by energy store in those places, i.e. fat.  On the other hand, they also need a denser support structure of connective tissue to hold everything together.

• Thus, you can loosely reason from "part of the animal" to "properties of the meat."  In particular, animals use their shoulders a lot, which means they're very fatty (delicious) but also full of connective tissue (not so delicious).

The main connective tissue protein of interest, collagen, you really don't want to eat.  Fortunately it has the nice property that at high temperatures it dissolves into gelatin, yum!  But if the temperature is too high (i.e. in the vicinity of 212) too much of the water in the meat will up and leave.  So typically we cook shoulder at something like 200 degrees for a long while, to give the collagen time to get up to temperature and melt away.
Because shoulder is so delicious (and cheap!), I make a lot of stews and braises with pork and beef shoulder; these cook for maybe a couple hours.  But pulled pork is cooked a lot longer -- like all day -- and it ends up much more falling-apart-y.  Which is good, since you have to pull it afterwards.

Anyway, so moving along with the Saga, I decided to make a big lot of pulled pork to take down to the beach with the family back in June.  The first step was to find an awesome recipe.  Accomplished!  The next step was to find the meat; the recipe calls for a 4-7lb shoulder.  7 pounds is a lot of meat, in case you aren't clear on this, but I figured we need to feed a lot of people at the beach.  And I figured, Costco will sell pork shoulders on the big end, because it's Costco, right?

But when I got to Costco, I realized they had outsmarted me.  Costco's goal isn't to sell big, it's to embiggen.  And because pork shoulder is already sold in large sizes at regular supermarkets, the only way Costco could embiggen it was to pack two shoulders together.  So I ended up with two 5-pound cuts, which was absolutely the smallest they had.  Ah well, like I said, we had a lot of people to feed.

Next, the cooking.  The recipe called for cooking it in the oven, but of course dad wouldn't hear of it.  So he fired up his grills (not a typo) and off we went.  We started the pork on the old Weber.  And this is where things started to go wrong.  

A grill is not a plant, okay? So will someone please explain to me why the sprinkler system came on and watered it liberally when I wasn't looking?  

You know, that's exactly what you would do if you wanted to cool off a hot piece of metal as fast as possible.  Like, if there was an overheating reactor core in there somewhere, SOLUTION=WATER IT!  But like I said, a grill is not a plant.

In any case, that wasn't fatal because it was only supposed to be on there for a couple hours of initial cooking.  Next we put it on the gas grill for the main cooking.  The gas grill is nice because you can hold it at a controlled temperature for the hours and hours needed to cook the pork.  

Unless of course the gas runs out at some unspecified point in the evening.  I'm actually getting really tired of this story so let me just say that the pork wasn't done until we were getting really tired early the next morning.  And then we had to get in a car and drive to the beach. And then it was time to pull it.  Here's before:

And after:

Finally, to go with, I made some Eastern NC-style vinegary bbq sauce and dad also made some delicious Kansas City bbq sauce.  And then it was time to eat it!  And boy was it good.

So there you have it.  I keep a spreadsheet of all the food I've made, and to date this is the first and only food I awarded a full 5 stars.  For those of you who loved this, which is everyone who ate it, you guys should be able to replicate this pork exactly with the right equipment, now that I've given you such detailed instructions.  You will have to ask mom about the proper schedule and positioning for a sprinkler system though.

Catherine: Mum's the word

Catherine's mom was here in the vicinity of mother's day, so she made these chrysanthemum cupcakes.

Pretty, aren't they?  Those petals are mini-marshmallow halves.

A happy mother

Kathleen's Food in Greece

A few sensational highlights:



Mmm, yummy. Octopus. Need I say more?




Have you ever seen such a slab of feta cheese? It was enormous! This was my first Greek salad in Greece, and I was like, whoa. That slab there, was at least four inches long. Actually it turns out that's very normal for Greece--Greeks are actually the largest per capita consumers of cheese in Europe--but I was astounded to have such a mass of cheese placed in front of me, to eat with just one salad. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.



I thought I'd give that lemon soup that Xan made over the holidays a try. His version was pretty good! It tasted very similar to this. And in the background is the rest of my dinner: a tomato and pepper stuffed with a yummy rice mixture.

Kathleen's Fruit Salad

While traveling, my ability to prepare food is extremely limited. However, I do have one advantage that most of you do not share: ready access to very fresh tropical fruit. This evening I took advantage to make a fruit salad with mango, banana, and passion fruit. I decided against pineapple, as it has a slightly acidic taste and I wanted something warm, with the tang of passion seeds. Not to mention the difficulty of being tidy about chopping up a pineapple with my limited resources. I am sorry to say that I did not have quite enough passion fruit--but otherwise, it was yummy!