Xan: A very Colorado celebration!

I wanted to put together a themed feast in honor of my good friend Tony, who is moving to CU-Boulder.  So naturally I consulted my good friend Brendan, a Colorado native and creative.  Look what we came up with:

Tony will be leaving the geologically vacant Midwest for the Flatiron Mountains!  Behold, the Mountains of Celebration Ham:

This was supposed to be maple-glazed, but for some unknown reason I used honey instead.  It was not planned, my brain just checked out while I reached for the honey.  The honey was totally crystallized (tail end of a Costco bottle...) so it was a major production to get it out of the bottle.  At no point did I realize that maybe I don't even need the honey.

Not that honey-glazed ham isn't also awesome.  We managed to eat almost all of the 7-lb ham between the five of us!

Next up, Boulder Potatoes!

These sort of disintegrated into pebble potatoes, but they are fried and therefore delicious.  They did not last long.

Because CU-Boulder's rival is the Colorado State University Rams, whose mascot is a bighorn sheep ram, I also made this Decapitated Big Corn Sheep:

We consumed it in effigy, for good measure.

There was also bread and, for dessert, Mile High Partially Eaten Rum Cake of Destiny, and also Hot COCOa.  Brendan even suggested that I infuse the hot cocoa with coconut so it would be COCO COCOa.  I will have to try making hot cocoa with coconut milk instead of regular milk some time.

After dinner, we played Colorado-themed bananagrams in which everyone had to come up with a Colorado-related word.  I was victorious, if uncreative:

Linden's First Roast Bird, and Leftovers

Well I have finally gotten moved in and settled down and internetted up in my new flat, and I am starting to get to do some cooking, for the first time in a while!

Now, I'm living with Chris, and as we all know he is a little bit English. Which means, different food his entire life! I mean, there's the similar things, like sandwiches and pasta with tomato sauce, but much of his diet has consisted of shepherds' pies and cock on the van and beef barging on and of course roast dinners, some of which I had never heard of, and none of which I have ever made.

But compromises must be made, and so I have started cooking other foods - last weekend I roasted my first chicken! It was very delicious, and I didn't really take any pictures, so you will have to settle for this dark and close up picture of the already-plated meal.

Then, with the leftovers, I made tortilla soup! Which went very well and was very colorful.

Yum yum.

Kathleen's Punjabi Aloo

This Punjabi Aloo, from my Madhur Jeffrey's world vegetarian cookbook compilation. It came out absolutely fantastically--such wonderful flavours, nice and spiceful. I suppose that's from the ginger, garlic, turmeric, cayenne, and garam masala. And I used only 1 tbsp of oil, instead of 3, so it is so healthy, I was actually allowed to eat lots more than a serving! That's a rare indulgence. This will definitely go on my permanent recipe rotation. The only trouble is that it takes a while to make. But I guess it's not so different from curry in that respect.

Kathleen's Pataks Curry

This is one of my main staple dishes, easy to make and lasting for four or five meals, so perfect to cook on a Sunday night and have for lunch all week. Healthy, too! I just use potatoes, chickpeas, cauliflower, onion, and a wee bit of oil and Pataks Madras curry paste.

Linden's Quiche

I have been fixin to make a quiche for a long time - weeks, in fact. Bacon was on sale at the grocery story a few weeks ago, and I bought a load of it. Then there were these eggs that were hanging around in my fridge, waiting to be used, and this butter saying, "use me, use me, I am space consuming!", and a block of gruyere. And I thought, right, clearly, quiche is in order. Unfortunately, in my life I am surrounded (here and at home, at everywhere!) by egg haters, milk haters, meat haters, all kinds of haters. Which means that when I make quiche, I always end up eating most of it. Which is okay! Especially because it can pass for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

But for this reason it got delayed and delayed until this weekend when I said, "right. This butter needs to go. These eggs need to go. This milk needs to go. I want fridge space again!" (For you see, my flat has a tiny fridge shared by four of us. I get about 1.5 square feet of fridge real-estate and things that hang around for weeks make me antsy.) Of course, I promptly filled up my fridge with vegetables, so now it is even more cramped in there, but such is life.

Sadly, on my bespoken quiche day, I had a bit of a life crisis in the morning but a very productive afternoon, so as dinnertime loomed, I kept working instead of stopping to quiche up the kitchen. Which is why it is slightly undercooked, as you see:

But still delicious! This quiche has bacon (although bacon here tends towards Canadian bacon, which is unsurprising given the Canadian's brown-nosing habits), zucchini (here they call it courgette, because they never really got over that 1066 debacle, personally I think they should call it the freedom vegetable), asparagus and gruyere (cheeeeese).

Aside from the crust, the making of quiche is very simple. You cook up all your individual ingredients, put them in the par-baked crust, and then pour a mixture of eggs and milk (or, you know, cream) on top and stick it in the oven for half an hour. Actually, I had some left over that wouldn't fit in the crust, so I just did an additional little crustless quiche. Fairly quick, fairly healthy, especially if you subscribe to the Linden school of quiches, which says, No Cream, and delicious! (I believe it's basically the same as Xan's egg contraptions, except the milk makes it less cakey.)

Thus, my dinner the next night was potato wedges, asparagus, and crustless quiche.

The quiche was the last in a long detour into making unhealthy things that were low on vegetables (sadly, I forgot to photograph the curry puffs I made a few weeks ago, which were squarely in the middle of this detour). I'm now pushing my little (admittedly heavier) boat back towards the smooth waters of vegetables and balanced diets. (With occasional baked-good induced choppy seas.) See that asparagus there? Alas, only the beginning.

Xan and Catherine: Please join us in not celebrating Valentine's Day

I have been busy.  So some of this food was made a bit late for Valentine's Day, and all of it is late to the blog.  But better ever than never.

First of all, I am blessed to live in a household where valentine's day is not a real holiday.  That said, we did accidentally appear to celebrate it over the course of several weeks.

It started with a...what to call this? Let's go with Orange Upside-Down Brownie:

So we found a heart-shaped silicon mold in the dollar section of Target.  It doesn't matter that it's heart-shaped, what matters is it was in the dollar aisle.  And this brownie was just to test our new pan out. Okay?

Catherine also managed to buy an entire crate of probably the sourest clementines I have ever tasted.  In an attempt to fix this, I decided to caramelize a couple of them them (i.e. slice them up and cook in sugar water).  Then I put them in the pan with some of the liquid and poured the brownie batter over them.  Problem solved?  Honestly, no.  The clementines were somehow still sour, and in any case we still had a mostly full crate of sour clementines.  But it was an interesting experiment.

For those who would doubt my conviction, let it be noted that if I celebrated valentine's day, I would have made this cheesecake, not a brownie.  As it is, I refuse to grant cheese amnesty for such a lame holiday.  Incidentally, at the link you can find the recipe for caramelizing your own oranges if you're interested.

Okay, moving right along.  I think the following may be the meal that we just so happened to eat on the 14th, which is a regular day in February.  That does not make it "celebrating" Valentine's Day, but it coincidentally happened to be a good meal so I am sharing it here because that's what we do on Vongsafood.  First, these potatoes deserve their own closeup:

You say potato, I say patata: Behold Patatas Bravas from Serious Eats

I'm pretty sure they were cooked in enough oil to qualify as deep-fried.  Therefore they were crispy and delicious, especially after being coated with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika of greatest awesomeness.  Can't really go wrong here, right?  Unless of course you don't like potatoes.  (Actually, most people don't like potatoes, if you believe Tammy. Indeed, Tammy apparently believes so few people like potatoes that she will actually be shocked if she ever discovers you like potatoes.  I DIDN'T KNOW YOU LIKE POTATOES!!!!!!!! she will cry, mouth agape.  Therefore guard your secret closely; as you may know from one of those unfortunate incidents with childhood pets, small creatures can only handle so much shock).  By the way, regarding the aioli you see on the potatoes: more trouble than it's worth, I think, but it certainly was interesting.

NEXT UP: Lamb shoulder chops? This has probably been my most amazing ingredient discovery in the last couple months.  Watch closely:

Yes, for just a few bucks you too can obtain this steak of lamby awesomeness.  Wait, what's this I just pulled off?  Is that...?

OMG DOESN'T THAT BELONG ON A RACK OF LAMB?!?!? 

Yes, my friends, yes it does. Well, technically no, but as far as I can tell, the difference is mainly a question of how much work you have to do to get at the meat.  Here's the lowdown: Numbering the lamb's ribs 1-12, with 1 being at the front (shoulder) end, it appears that the "rack of lamb" specifically refers to ribs 6-12 (and sometimes 5).  The lamb shoulder chops then presumably contain ribs 1-5 (there may also be lamb shoulder chops that don't have a rib component...I haven't found one yet though).  I'm pretty happy with 1-5 so far; the shoulder meat is more flavorful while slightly less tender, though by far the biggest question is just whether you're willing to do more work to extract the meat from the surrounding fat and bones that are always found in shoulder cuts.  For those of us with sharp teeth and knife skills, it's not a huge deal...and it's not like you should be rushing through a lamb dinner anyway.

If that's not your cup of tea, you can always get yourself some regular lamb chops from either the loin or rib sections.  Personally though, I'm happy with these cheaper and more delicious shoulder chops. I know this might not be a big deal to those of you who have moved to England and all, but lamb is sorta expensive here in the states :(


OK, fastforward to just this past week.  These things appeared on our countertop:

This is the moment in the plot where an improbably chain of events leads to an unfortunate misunderstanding. IT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!  Should I bother explaining how these icing-coated-heart-shaped-poundcake-topped cupcakes found their way into our heart pan from Target?  Should I tell you it has something to do with Catherine's friend Sneha the Indian boxing swing dancing computer scientist museum volunteer first year grad student runner?  It would sound like a fiction.  If I were to claim the existence of any such person -- and I am not -- you would scarcely believe me.  More likely I am a liar.  I will settle for the outside chance that maybe, just maybe, you will at least believe these cupcakes weren't my idea.


Actually, I've been joking Mr. Perkins.  Pardon me, it's my strange, academic sense of humor. In truth, this year I did celebrate Valentines Day: I got Catherine some flours!  Specifically, bread, wheat, and best of all, all-purpose unbleached.  Best Valentine's Day Ever.

Christmas Food

I thought it was high time I put up some of the photos of food I was asked to take over Christmas break!


Daddy's trifle.


Mama's blackberry pie


Daddy's weird nut thing


Daddy's banana bread


My trifle and Mama's pumpkin pie!


Christmas Dinner


Xan's Potato


Christmas Eve dinner


Monkey bread



Mama's Ribs


Xan's Furtada

Linden: Emptying the Pantry, Part One

I have been shamefully remiss in posting up my food adventures here, but so has everyone else. Last night, though, I was on my own for the first time in ages, and I made myself a little feast. I have a bit of a problem in that when I went shopping two weeks ago, I didn't realize I would be spending four days in London and Brighton, and thus bought more food than I can really eat in this time period. So I am eating cooked meals for every meal from now until I leave, in the hopes that all my onions and potatoes and sweet potatoes and garlic and vegetables can get consumed.

Last night, I was working on potatoes and the green beans that froze in my fridge. (Our fridge is currently having some temperature confusion, but we are working through it.)


I did potato wedges, with just a bit of salt and pepper (and some olive oil), put in the oven at around 400F for around 30 minutes, flipped halfway through. (Just in case anyone in the family doesn't yet know how to make potato wedges.) Because of the sad shape of the green beans, I popped them in some boiling water, and then put a little balsamic vinegar and pepper on them. And then I pan-cooked some paprika-coated chicken with lots of garlic, put it all on a plate, and watched tv while I ate it. Delicious!

Linden's potatoes au gratin

Last night, instead of doing my statistics assignment, I made dinner. It looked like this.





It tasted okay, although if anyone has any tips on the chicken, they would be welcome!

The potatoes are potatoes au gratin, which loosely translated means potatoes that smell like cheese, and are made, unsurprisingly given the name, with potatoes and cheese, and a bit of milk thrown in for good measure. The chicken was salted, peppered, thymed, and floured, then cooked in a bit of oil, which spattered everywhere and I had to protect myself with a frying pan. It reminded me of that time Papa fought a bear with a tin bowl. The veggies were all I had, and were cooked a la Vongsathorn, which translates as to the wagons!.

I had the leftovers today for lunch.