Thursday, March 17, 2011

some staples

This is a short post, because there wasn't any drama in the acquisition of ingredients.

I made preserved lemons. A couple of cuts, some salt and some juice. the recipe says to put in a jar, but I tried that and it was going to take too much salt to cover everything, so I put them in a zip bag. I put them in the bottom of the fridge, and in a month, I plan to look like a genius.


I made the basic tomato sauce. I looked at the recipe for this, and was like, well, yeah, tomato sauce. Yawn. It isn't a lot of ingredients, and I was expecting really basic tomato sauce. But when it was done, it was really good. Like, stunningly. I suspect it was partly because I started with San Marzano tomatoes, and partly because it reduced a good bit, but I can't wait to use that stuff.

I made brown chicken stock. Actually, there was a little acquisition drama here. I asked the guy at Whole Foods if they had any chicken backs, because I didn't want to buy too much chicken to basically boil away. He said they did, and they were 69 cents a pound. The drama: I FOUND SOMETHING IN THE WHOLE FOODS MEAT DEPARTMENT THAT COST LESS THAN $1 PER POUND!!!!!!!!!! It felt like magic.

I used the backs and some drumsticks, as well as the herbs and aromatics. Then when it was done, I picked the meat off the bones and made chicken salad with it. It felt like it was free at that point. And it was good chicken salad.


Oh, and when it came time to freeze the stock and the tomato sauce, I learned something: The silicone cupcake pans that I bought way too many of a couple of years ago hold exactly one-half cup. So now I have them perfectly portioned in the freezer. And I am keeping December open so I can go collect my Nobel prize.

Up next: snapper tartare

2 comments:

Kristen said...

it's like an urban legend.

web said...

much better than using ice cube trays to freeze stock.