guest post: jshu

A guest post from my friend jshu. He's the apple, she's the tree.

When I'm on the road looking to do a little cooking for breakfast, I like to find a few simple ingredients and hunker down in the kitchen. Today I started with some butter wrapped in some attractive paper. Then I took a loaf of bread (pre-sliced) and used it as the main ingredient for Toast (put bread in toaster oven, set to medium, wait for ding, remove, put on plate with pattern that matches butter paper for a little extra flair). The trick here is to put the butter on the newly made Toast while it's as hot as it can be (I use a rounded knife that isn't sharp so I don't cut through the decorative butter paper).

guten morgen, bitches

Sometimes I worry that people who don't see the inherent hilarity of the word bitches won't understand why on this bl*g they're frequently addressed as bitches. Other times I don't worry about this at all.

Some Monday morning reading, bitches.

[Via jshu.]

the mark bittman minimalist club: solid food for milk babies

My friend jshu is the best: funny and smart and generous and clever (if not particularly good at Boggle) and generally up for anything, except for the long list of things he is not up for. Which brings me to my next point: My friend jshu is a milk baby. If you've read the comments on this bl*g, you know that jshu doesn't think I post enough (waaah), and jshu doesn't like it when I post recipes (waaah waaah). In fact, jshu doesn't like recipes at all. As far as I can tell his cooking repertoire consists of toasting bread, boiling water for tea, throwing random items from the fridge into a blender and calling it a smoothie, opening bottles of beer, adding frozen peas to Amy's Mac & Cheese, and making Rocky Mountain Toast.

If he were less of a milk baby, this next recipe would be perfect for jshu: He knows how to fry an egg, he should have half the ingredients in his fridge, and while it's simple, comforting food, Ginger Fried Rice is worthy of a dinner party (though jshu thinks Amy's Mac & Cheese with frozen peas is worthy of a dinner party, so that last point is probably moot).

This recipe is definitely perfect for me: Simple enough to whip up on a weeknight but Saturday-evening delicious. There are a couple of secret ingredients:

Toasted ginger and garlic

Really good, really fresh eggs

The former I made by following the recipe, the latter I acquired through marriage: My mother-in-law has access to the best eggs in the whole world, and she generously shared a dozen with me last week. You may not be able to get your hands on the best eggs in the whole world (the yachtsman's brother is already married), but this recipe is worth finding better eggs than what you can get in the grocery store (unless you're a milk baby, in which case stop whining and just buy them at the bodega by your house).

Ginger Fried Rice
from the New York Times

½ cup peanut oil [I used canola]
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced ginger
Salt
2 cups thinly sliced leeks, white and light green parts only, rinsed and dried
4 cups day-old cooked rice, preferably jasmine, at room temperature
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons sesame oil [toasted]
4 teaspoons soy sauce

1. In a large skillet, heat ¼ cup oil over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp and brown. With a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels and salt lightly.

2. Reduce heat under skillet to medium-low and add 2 tablespoons oil and leeks. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until very tender but not browned. Season lightly with salt.

3. Raise heat to medium and add rice. Cook, stirring well, until heated through. Season to taste with salt.

4. In a nonstick skillet, fry eggs in remaining oil, sunny-side-up, until edges are set but yolk is still runny.

5. Divide rice among four dishes. Top each with an egg and drizzle with ½ teaspoon sesame oil and 1 teaspoon soy sauce. Sprinkle crisped garlic and ginger over everything and serve.


A few notes:

* The first time I ate this I made it with my Greek stepmother. We cooked the full quantity of rice and ginger/garlic but only fried two eggs, using the remaining rice and ginger/garlic the next day for leftovers.

* I didn't have day-old rice, so we went to the crappy Thai restaurant near my house and got a takeout order of rice and let it cool down before we cooked it.

well, hello

The Puppy Who Hath No Name and I just returned from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where we spent a long, sunny weekend on the Sassafras River not celebrating jshu's birthday with 35 or so people who made me want to move to DC or Maryland or San Francisco or Oklahoma City or Chicago, where they're from: These people were f-u-n, which is how you spell fun.

Over the course of 72 hours there was a massive bonfire,

two whiffle ball games on a regulation, mowed field in nonregulation team outfits, which I was told are actually called uniforms,

Nonregulation outfits, game 1; faces have been blurred to protect the short shorted

Nonregulation outfits, game 2

an actual square dance, complete with a live band and caller, and an outdoor screening of Jaws.

There was also some ill-advised drinking and shooting shit,


ill-advised drinking and boating, and ill-advised drinking and setting off fireworks,

Almost all of these photos, by the way, were taken by others

which devolved into the highly recommended drinking and throwing of firecrackers at each other.

Basically, it was the best weekend ever. And in addition to all of the combustion, dancing, and wearing of outfits, there was the food, which was plentiful and delicious. Everyone brought or made food to share, including a lovely peach and crème fraîche pie that I will try making in about ten months, when I can lay my hands on some peaches. In the meantime I'll be eating soup, and I now have another recipe to add to my why-do-we-live-in-Vermont winter repertoire.

Jshu's mom, Sue Shu, is an amazing cook who can whip up a meal for 12 with the groceries she has on hand, which she did last night. She's one of those people who barely looks at the recipes she uses, rarely measuring ingredients, improvising along the way, never making the same thing twice but always turning out something wonderful. So this recipe for Cauliflower-Cheese Soup, from the original Moosewood Cookbook, should serve as a guide, not a set of strict rules.

Cauliflower-Cheese Soup

2 cups potato chunks
2 cups cauliflowerets
1 cup chopped carrot
3 medium cloves of garlic
1 cup chopped onion
1½ tsp salt
4 cups water or stock

Place above ingredients together in a pot. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer 15 minutes (or until veggies are tender). Let cool 10 minutes. Puree entire mixture in the blender until smooth and creamy. Transfer back to a kettle (double boiler if available) and whisk in the following:

1½ cups grated cheddar
¾ cup milk
¼ teaspoon fresh dill [Sue used more fresh and no ground dill.]
¼ teaspoon ground dill or caraway seed
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
black pepper

Heat gently (don't let it boil!).

Steam or saute in butter 1½ cups more cauliflowerets. Add these to the soup. Just before serving, whisk in ¾ cup buttermilk [Sue didn't have any buttermilk so she whisked in some cream in the previous step]. Serve with chopped scallions and extra cheese.

look!

It's jshu!


Dangling...


...from a banner hung over the side of a bridge in Pittsburgh!


He's crazy! He's also the guy on the far right (I think).

When's the last time you were arrested for civil disobedience committed on behalf of our planet? Huh? I thought so. Me, too.

blame it on the rain

DC was...rainy. And cold. Yes, we were there for the two days between October and June when it was nicer in Vermont than it was in DC. But it was lovely to see old friends and new babies, and not a speck of gruel was eaten (except by John Shumaker, who is currently a vegan due to a lost Super Bowl bet; he appears to be subsisting almost entirely on white foods -- grits, home fries, tofu, hemp milk, pretzels, oatmeal, toast -- because according to John, fruits and vegetables are for the weak).

Chris and vegan gangbanger jshu

Did I mention that there was lots of coughing?
And lots of hand sanitizing by tha vanilla chris milla.