brain munch

ok, so i like to cook right? but there's cooking, and then there's cooking duck legs. that takes some attentive-loving-care that i don't really have day to day. but kevin gave us some duck legs that were left over from a class and i finally decided to give it a try after looking at the in the freezer for weeks. i searched for a recipe based on whether it only required ingredients i already had (because the grocery closes damn early and it was already 9pm when i started!), and whether it took less than 2 hours. and there are a lot of duck recipes that take many hours/days. this is what i found: honey balsamic roast duck legs.

even then, i had to improvise some cooking materials. while the duck slowly roasts, drippings from the marinade and fat need to fall through a rack into a pan of water. i didn't have a rack but i had a cheap aluminum pie baking pan that i had used enough times to not feel guilty stabbing some holes in.



i'll spare you the details, but i can tell you it's not fun keeping the oven on for 1.5 hours in an unconditioned top-floor apartment with no ventilation system in the middle of summer in new york city. add to that opening the oven every 15 minutes to bast the suckers.

anyway, they turned out alright, not restaurant quality, but pretty decent. the skin wasn't crisp enough and the meat was too chewy. i chalk it up to it being my first time and the fact that the meat was frozen for weeks and hastily defrosted in a kmart microwave (aaaand that it asked to be marinated for 3 hours and i gave it a good 20 minutes before popping it in the oven).

duck isn't for those poor at planning. :D

delicious cherries being prepped for a crepe filling. looks a little macabre huh?

the weather this weekend has been so very nice, the summer we've been waiting for after a month of rains. i think it's time to go hang out at the long island city water taxi beach...

this week's treasures. not pictured is a potted sage plant!

okay so i guess this has turned into a food blog. i just get so excited to get this food every week because it's usually stuff i wouldn't buy from the grocery store and i learn about new vegetables, and every week there is a newsletter with simple recipes to use your vegetables in. plus, the fact that we paid for this up front months ago makes it seem like we're getting bags of free food every week! who doesn't like the feeling of free?

i was very tired today but knowing we have all this fresh produce and only a week to eat it in drove me to cook. first i made a cucumber salad from a recipe in the newsletter. you just chop up 2 cucumbers into 1 inch chunks, crush 2 cloves of garlic and toss them together in a bowl with 2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tsp vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, fresh ground pepper and then let it sit for a half hour. i also added some chopped green onions because i had some leftover.

while that sat, i made some mashed potatoes with kale (yes, MORE kale. i have a feeling we'll be eating kale all summer). i didn't even know this was a thing, but apparently it's an irish dish called colcannon. i found a recipe online that i liked here. instead of shallots and parmesan, i just added some sauteed garlic scapes and sliced radish.

lastly i grilled some chicken that i had sprinkled with salt and pepper a half an hour before cooking.

it was yummy of course :)

i used up a lot of our csa vegetables tonight because we have a surplus due to being away for a few days, and also to prepare for getting the whole share this week (our friends will be away and won't be able to use their half before it goes bad).

first, i made beans and rice. in the rice cooker i put a cup of rice with a cup of chicken broth and a cup of water plus a little duck fat i had leftover. in a pan i sauteed onion and garlic scapes before adding a can of black beans. seasoned with red chili powder, salt, and pepper. when the rice was done i added it to the beans and mixed it all together.

the japanese turnips i cut up into wedges and tossed them together with olive oil, salt and pepper. then those were roasted at 425 degrees in the oven. turn once after 15 minutes, and cook on the other side another 15 minutes until soft inside and slightly browned outside.

the kohlrabi i sliced into sticks. in a saute pan melt some butter, add the kohlrabi. after 10 minutes add 1/4 cup parmesan and chopped parsley.

the swiss chard i parboiled for a couple minutes before adding to sauteed onions and garlic scapes. season with salt, pepper and a little red chili powder.

i don't have a picture, but it looked and tasted very good and was filling too!

had to use up that kale! so i got creative and made a quiche with leftover ingredients.



ingredients:
eggs (4 i think?)
a little cream that was left in the bottom of the container
a splash of chicken stock
a little soy milk
kale
red peppers
garlic
onion
hot italian sausage
parmesan cheese
pastry dough
-1.25 cups floud
-stick of butter
-water to hold together

make the dough. chill and roll out, place in pie pan. brush with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. while that is baking, saute the garlic and onion. add the peppers and kale for a few minutes until wilted. brown the sausage in another pan, then slice up. in a bowl mix together eggs, parmesan, sausage, soy milk, cream, stock (i made do with what i had, but you can actually just use cream and milk). add the cooked veggies and mix together. pour mixture into baked crust, and bake at 400 degrees for 20-40 minutes, checking every so often until the top is slightly brown. cool for a few minutes before cutting.

today in the farm share we got:

romaine lettuce
garlic scapes
strawberries
japanese turnips
radishes
cucumbers
red swiss chard
eggs
dandelion greens
broccoli
a potted basil plant

so far we made a salad with the romaine, dandelion, cucumbers and radishes. i also made some fried rice with the broccoli, chard and a couple eggs (and some other stuff like carrots, onion and ginger).

we are off to ohio tomorrow so the rest will have to wait till monday!

last night we made yummy pasta using some of the kale and garlic scapes. i adapted a couple recipes found here and here.



ingredients:
1 box pasta
half a bunch of kale
1 garlic scape, minced
half an onion, minced
3 hot italian sausages
half a can of chickpeas
1 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup chicken broth
2 tbsp olive oil
sprinkles of red pepper, basil, rosemary, salt, pepper
fresh oregano

get a big pot and boil water in it. blanch the kale for a couple minutes, then remove it with a sieve, saving the water. then boil the pasta in it. heat a big saute or sauce pan and add the olive oil. saute the garlic and onions until slightly browned, then add the kale and stir around. let cook a couple minutes. get the chickpeas and rinse them, season with salt and pepper, add to the kale and stir around. meanwhile in another pan brown the sausage then slice up and add to the kale. add the heavy cream and bring to a boil. after a couple minutes add the chicken broth. season the sauce with the spices and let cook on low for a few minutes. when the pasta is done, drain and add to the sauce and mix around. you're done!

some pictures from last weekend at figment nyc 2009.

in the first week of our farm share we got:

romaine lettuce
purple and green kohlrabi
swiss chard
kale
snap peas
garlic scapes
green onions
dozen eggs
strawberries

now we have to figure out what to do with it!

we already had some of the romaine and kohlrabi in a salad. tomorrow will be pasta tossed with kale...

OH YEAH! and we also got some oregano and thyme potted plants!

i made some lentils that i really enjoyed last week. i adapted some recipes from the joy of cooking. here's what i did.

ingredients
1 cup dried yellow (or brown, or green) lentils
1/4 cup wild rice
1 small onion, minced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
3 1/2 cups boiling water
cumin
coriander
salt
pepper
red chili pepper
thyme
parsley
1 clove
1 bay leaf
bit of vegetable stock if you have it

rinse lentils and discard the floaters and shell bits. drain. heat a deep saute or frying pan, add olive oil and saute onion, garlic and clove until lightly browned and aromatic. at the same time, boil water in a kettle. when it is boiled, pour 3.5 cups of it into the saute pan and add the lentils and wild rice. stir around. add the bay leaf and stock. add spices to taste (i don't remember how much i put exactly, so it is up to your personal taste). bring to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer. cook for 45 minutes or maybe even more, checking up every 10 minutes to stir and check done-ness. it's done when the lentils are soft enough to eat. then, you can use a potato masher and roughly mash the mixture in the pan to get it to a more lumpy soupy consistency.

serve with buttered toast! mm.

clint eastwood is a pretty cool old man. i recently watched gran torino and million dollar baby and i enjoyed both of them.

i recently decided to look at the contents of some old floppy disks after realizing that it will only get harder to find a computer with an actual floppy drive. a guy who just defended his phd shared an office with me and just before they carted away his old pc to be recycled i was able to copy the files off. i found a lot of emails from 1997, just about the time when i moved from the bay area to truckee. teenager writing is hilarious and full of exclamation points!!!1@!1 people sign off with "love always" even if you barely knew them. i also found old assignments and stories and articles i wrote for the high school paper.

i started reading the botany of desire today where michael pollan writes about apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes and how they co-evolved with humans. i thought it was sweet how he opened with saying he had grown all of them in his garden. i can imagine 4 soil beds with these 4 plants and him standing proudly with gardening shears and a knee mat. i want a garden. we recently got a cherry tomato plant and in less than a week it's grown triple its size. i've been disappointed with produce, i think, since i left california, so it'll be nice to have some fresh tomatoes. and soon our farm-share will start and then we'll have too many vegetables! i need a stock pot so i can make lots of one thing and save it in the freezer for later.

i also recently re-read the great gatsby. i've never been sure why it was such a classic and why they make you read it in high school. sure it's a good book, and having lived in new york for a little while i can more easily imagine some of the places and the people in it. but i still don't know what an average 14 or 15 year old would get out of it. thoughts?

some photos i uploaded to flickr not long ago:

photos from the conference i went to a few weeks ago
a lab boat trip around manhattan

So much geekiness flying out of newark. If we go down, vision science goes with it.

michael j. fox is going to be in my lab tomorrow, filming a documentary with ABC on optimism where he will be doing an experiment devised by elaine fox (no, she's not related to MJ), a psychologist who studies optimism and who happens to be friends with my advisor. apparently it's because he's optimistic about his parkinson's? pretty random.

I'm posting this from my crackberry, a mere 10 feet from my computer. How decadent.
I got my master's diploma this week so that was a nice little boost. Not much else to report other than the slow arrival of spring is making me angry. (:
I want to lay in the sunshine for hours and not think about things I should be doing and am not.

just peeking in to say i should update but i'm really tired so i'm wimping out. but today i skied for the first time in many years and i had a really great time (even though it's icy east coast skiing). i'm going again tomorrow morning!

this one spans about 2 years

this is a banner liza sewed me for christmas!



happy valentine's day :)

i went to a chinese new year parade.

pics here!

we went to the bronx museum of art tonight because they have an exhibit on street life/street art until sunday. it was really cool! there were pictures of kids from the 50s-80s in the bronx, documentation of street performers and various other art projects that take place on the streets.

by jamel shabazz

my favorite was this one guy (teh ching hsieh) who lived outdoors in nyc for an entire year and documented what he did and where he went each day. he never went into a building and didn't have a tent, it was just total outdoorsness for a year. there was some video too. another favorite was this woman who had someone hire a detective to follow her around for a day (he didn't know she hired him) and she recorded what she did and where she went and the people she saw, and it was side by side with what the detective wrote down and the pictures the detective took of her. their accounts of her day are very different needless to say. sometimes i think i want to do that one day, or at least when i saw this it implanted the idea. half the time i have paranoid delusions i'm being watched or followed anyway.

anybody know of any good livejournal backup software that will work on a mac? i want to archive the last 7 years...