Smoky Negroni

Substitute mezcal for gin in the Negroni recipe, and what do you get? A smoky Negroni, which is even better than a regular Negroni! I got the idea from Speisekammer's bar. There, it was served with a fancy vermouth, but I only had the non-fancy variety at home. Still, it was delicious.

If you want to make your own smoky Negroni, mix together equal parts mezcal, sweet vermouth, and Campari. I was out of Campari last night, so I made it with Aperol, resulting in a less bitter drink. Hey, since I'm already messing with a classic cocktail, what's one more substitution?

Bottle Drying Rack

Homebrewers are all familiar with the accumulation of beer bottles on the kitchen counters. The bottles can't be thoroughly cleaned in a dishwater due to the beer sediment, and therefore they pile up until they reach critical mass (i.e. someone gets fed up and starts complaining).

Our excuse for letting the bottles pile up is that we didn't have a good place to dry them. I hate counter clutter and we have limited counter space, so anything that needs to be hand washed is dried and put away immediately - we don't have a countertop drainboard. It's hard to dry a bottle immediately unless you want to shove a small rag into it or use a hair dryer.

The boy wanted to weld a bottle rack, but again, it would pig up some room on the counter and it would drain on the counter. We compromised on a simpler solution: a drain board that straddles the sink and holds the bottles upside down. He found some wood scrap, drilled some holes, and problem solved!

(Actually, the problem is almost solved. Someone still needs to clean the bottles out with a bottle brush.)

The rack works well for wine bottles, too. We save those as well because we have a friend who grows grapes and makes way more wine than he can possibly drink, an excellent quality in a friend.

No More Boba Tea Guilt

Today marked another baby step in my quest to create less trash: my cobbled together boba cup!  I love boba (also known as bubble tea), but I get queasy when I get the plastic cup heat sealed with the plastic lid and the giant plastic straw. After inhaling another boba tea, I mentioned to my friend that I really need to stop ordering these drinks or think of a way to get the drink without all that trash. Since I so rarely get single-use cups nowadays, it felt odd and wrong to toss everything. (Yes, I've been living in Berkeley for a long time!)

I started by researching the crux of this setup, the boba straw. I found a glass option and a metal option, and after mulling over the two, I went with the 10" boba straw from The Mulled Mind. Once I had that, I had the other pieces of the setup at home. The lid comes from reCAP, and the jar is a Ball Pint & Half. The reCAP lid is for wide-mouth jars. If I were to buy the setup, it would cost around $15 (jar is $1.50 jar + $7.00 lid + $6.50 straw). Mine boba kit costs a few dollars less than that because I bought the lids and jars in bulk. The lid is the most expensive component, and it certainly isn't necessary - I like mine because I'm usually in my car when the urge to get a boba hits me, so this keeps spilling to a minimum.

For you Bay Area boba fans, County Cheese in Kensington makes a fantastic version. They use high quality tea, real milk (instead of that sketchy powered creamer stuff), and the boba is boiled in sugar water and has the right amount of chew. I always hate it when I order a boba and instead of being chewy, the tapioca balls are old and mushy or, almost equally as bad, the balls are tasteless because they have been boiled only in water. That defeats the whole purpose of the drink! I know there are some other boba places around that don't use the gross stuff, so please leave me a comment if you have a recommendation.

Monte Rio Getaway

Quick vacations are wonderful for getting out of a rut. The boy and I are enjoying our time off, and instead of scheduling a grand trip, we decided to make several small trips around the Bay Area. Monte Rio is less than 2 hours from us, yet it feels far enough away to let some of the daily-life stress soften up. Not having cell phone service, helped, too!

Sesame swam, although begrudgingly. She'll do anything to save her precious ball.

Mingus dug holes in the beach and sat proudly in them.

Sesame posed by the river...

And on tree stumps.

I found unexpected kimchi fried rice for breakfast at Dick Blomsters. This constitutes a successful vacation. Where we'd move if we didn't have to do X, Y, and Z is always a moving target, but Monte Rio is a strong contender.

If you want to see updates on the dogs, cat, and food more than once or twice a month, you can find us all on Instagram. My username is sungoldtomato.

Stingray Fish Cakes

The boy has taken up fishing, and while I do applaud hobbies that are productive and practical, I wish he would stop bringing sea monsters home. His first catch was a 22-lbs halibut, which was terrifying. The picture he took of it before he got home didn't have anything in the background to give me perspective, so when I rounded the corner of our house after he had it laid out, I pretty much screamed and ran back in the house. They look like aliens! His second catch? This 37-lbs stingray. Seriously, WTF? Can't he bring home some Dungeness crab or a nice little striped bass?

Our friend, the boy's fishing partner, graciously filleted the wings for us. Quick Googling turned up with French recipes for skate with browned butter, and also a bunch of unappetizing facts about stingrays, like how they secrete urea through their skin, so you have to process these suckers and use the meat fast.  We decide to make the brown buttered recipe. The taste of the fish was fine, but it was chewy.

What to do with chewy fish? Asian fish cakes seemed like the obvious choice. I made two versions: one Korean and one Thai (I omitted the white pepper from the Korean recipe and added two tablespoons of Thai red curry paste).

Both versions were delicious, although we need to work on our deep frying technique.  The cakes were bouncy, just like they were supposed to be. I have three tubs of fish paste in the freezer now that I can fry up and add to noodle soups and stir-fries. However, we mutually agreed that a stingray is on the "catch and release" list from now on. It was a lot of work for very little meat.

Superbags for the Masses

I've been hesitating over a nut milk bag for awhile, and not just because of the name. Although they pack up small, the nut milk bags seemed like a one trick pony. Enter the Superbag, a filter bag that is not only useful for straining nut milks, but is large enough to hold a whole chicken carcass and be thrown into the cooking pot. All I have to do is pull the bag out of the pot when the stock is done!

Superbags are super expensive. The large 100-micron bag sells for $42. But guess what? You can buy a similar bag on McMaster-Carr for $10 - I purchased the nylon bag that is 7" diameter and 16.5" height. Since both the McMaster-Carr nylon bag and the Superbag have a maximum temperature of 325 °F, I'm pretty sure the Superbag is just nylon. I got the idea from this discussion on egullet, and now that I've used the 50-micron bag to make hazelnut milk, I'm wondering what took me so long to purchase it. So far, it seems robust and is easy to wash, but I'll use it to make stock soon and report back.

I read that I can make tomato water using these bags, and once summer hits, that'll be my next experiment.

Obviously my "don't buy anything" streak is over, because I also bought two silicone reusable bags. If I ever decide to buy a sous vide, these bags are supposed to be a reusable option. I bought them because I like the convenience of bags for keeping my washed and chopped greens fresh and I also wanted them for storing homemade frozen potstickers, although they are a little too small for the later task. Hopefully, they'll come in a bigger size soon.

Each 1-quart bag held 1 bunch of chopped kale. Today, I made a risotto with kale, chorizo, smoked paprika, and a splash of sherry vinegar. I'm in love with the pressure cooker method of making risotto - same results, but 25% of the time.

Vegan Cheese is the Gateway Drug

Experimenting with vegan cheese has lead me down a a path lined with sprouts, essene bread, raw foods, and vegan yogurts. Anyone who has been around me in the past week will attest at my inability to talk about anything else. A few people have made it over to our house during this high experimentation time, and they've been lucky enough to not have any of these offerings foisted on them, but they can't escape so long as they know me. Yes, I lure people into my lair with cocktails, and then cram vegan cheese and raw crackers down their throats!

The vegan truffled brie experiment went well, although Sesame got first crack at tasting it. I've been drying my cheese near the back of my stove, and she actually pushed a step ladder over to the stove and swiped a huge chunk of cheese while I was at work. Undeterred and much to the boy's disgust, I cut off the bits my dog's mouth touched and continued aging the brie, this time in pet-free zone.

Does it taste like brie? Well, although I do like the taste, both the taste and the texture reminds me of… Condensed cream of mushroom soup. It's like I dumped a can of mushroom soup, air dried it for a few days so it develops a skin, and served it on a cracker. Does this mean I like it? Yes,  I do like it, but I think the next time I make this, I will skip the aging step, reduce the tapioca flour and agar powder, and just run with it as a delicious soup.

The plethora of cheese means that we need crackers and bread to eat with the cheese. (Unless you're Sesame. But, she has a laundry list of questionable favorite foods, so for the sake of this discussion, her opinion does not count.) I had leftover sprouted kamut, so I made some essene crackers. To make the crackers, I put the kamut into the food processor with a dab of honey, salt, and olive oil. There resulting mass was spread onto a silicone mat and dried at 150 F.

The resulting crackers are on the sweet side, so to fix that, my next batch of kamut won't be sprouted for as long and I'll reduce, or even omit, the honey. Essene bread can be bought commercially as Ezekiel Bread, a sprouted wheat bread that is dense in texture and nutrition.  I'm making it because I need more crackers and I don't want to buy them at the store when I have a pantry full of raw materials.

I made another batch of non-dairy yogurt, this time using a thick cashew milk as the base. This yogurt is much better than my last batch of soy and cashew yogurt, maybe because this time I used a spoonful of Nancy's Organic soy yogurt as a starter. The yogurt was tangy in about 6 hours, and it was creamy! The picture below was from when I first made the yogurt, but now that it's been in the refrigerator, it has a lot more body. I'm definitely making this again - the cashews are soaking as I type. We used the yogurt as a topping for a beet risotto, and it was fantastic! I also ate most of it with a spoonful of Meyer lemon marmalade.

The marmalade was gifted to me, and now that I'm out, I want more! I found this recipe and I have all the ingredients, so hopefully I'll have some more marmalade tucked away for future yogurt topping.

Ballerina Dreams and Vegan Cheese

When I saw Sesame taking over the chair, I thought she was dreaming of being a goofball. My friend Jenni, however, said she was dreaming of being a ballerina. I like Jenni's description better than mine.

I've been dreaming of vegan cheese since tasting the lovely non-dairy cheeses from Miyoko's Creamery. Cheesemaking has always been something I wanted to try, but the boy is allergic to dairy and raw milk is hard to come by (and a pretty penny). Nuts, however, store better and are a bulk bin away.

I checked out Artisan Vegan Cheese by Miyoko Schinner, and I've made two cheeses from her book. The first was the basic cashew cheese mixed with sun-dried tomatoes. It was good, and it would have been even better if I mixed in basil and some pine nuts. Since I had so much cheese, even after halving the recipe, I used some of it to make raviolis, and those were delicious! The filling held up well to boiling.

The second cheese was the vegan Gouda. This cheese was air dried, with a little bit of salt spread on the outside to keep it from molding. It's now been aging for 4 days, and although I want to age it longer, I don't know if it is going to last. It is so delicious! The texture is creamy on the inside with a semi-hard rind. For this recipe, I made my first batch of soy/cashew yogurt, and that yogurt is also a treat, especially when mixed with lemon verbena marmalade. As a side note, my Vitamix and my foldable proofer box (incubator) are two kitchen tools I cannot live without.

Today's experiment is going to be a vegan truffled brie, this time from Miyoko's website. I don't see the recipe currently up, but I was able to find a link to it on the Wayback Machine (update: link no longer works because I suspect this recipe is very similar to the truffled cheese sold my Miyoko's). I have high hopes for this brie!

While at Berkeley Bowl, there were two of us staring at the 6 different truffle oils. The other person had his smart phone out and was furiously typing away, and he was still trying to figure out which truffle oil to get for his scrambled eggs when I left. I wonder if he's still there? I grabbed the second smallest bottle that was around $10, because in my experience, I don't use the stuff up fast enough to pay anymore than that for my oil. The volatile compounds that make it so good dissipate after a few months. I also found agar powder, bulk cashews, and an economy sized jar of refined coconut oil.

The boys are hanging out a lot together, I think mostly because they are stubborn. Greaseball was the first one on the couch. He barely cracked an eye open when Mingus wanted to get on the couch, so I think they've assumed these positions before.

March Happenings

Since the big purge that I just can't stop yakking about, every unused item in our house has a target on it. Lately, I've been eyeing the string hopper press and steaming trays that we brought back from our November trip to Sri Lanka.

This meant that it was time to use the items, or ditch them. I wanted to use them. For the first string hopper attempt, I made a dough of rice flour, water, and a pinch of salt. Since there are hardily any ingredients, the resulting dough tasted just as bland as the rice flour that we used. Yes, steaming hot, those string hoppers were fantastic, but I notice that neither of us have touched the leftovers, so it's time for them to go into the circular file. I was also informed that I made the dough too stiff, and unnatural noises were coming from the boy as he pressed the noodles onto the trays. 

For the next string hopper attempt, I want to make red rice flour. The red string hoppers were my favorite, and it seems impossible to find red rice flour here. However, I can find red rice, so I think what I'll do is make the flour myself by soaking some red rice and possibly germinating it for added nutrition and taste, drying it out, and then blending it up with my Vitamix (I love that blender so much).

Sesame has finished another round of Canine Circus School, and that meant that we were going through dog treats quickly. Since I'm picky about what every creature eats in this household (although I cannot say that I have much control over the largest creature's food and drink consumption), the prepackaged treats I was buying were so expensive for how fast we were going through them. So, I actually baked for my dogs. For the first treats, I used this recipe for Tuna Training Treats (scroll down), but I didn't add the Parmesan cheese because my dogs don't need to be that gourmet. They were a hit!

For my second recipe, I made it up, which is why it turned out really ugly. I had a ton of roasted butternut squash pulp in the freezer, so I defrosted it and blended it with eggs, peanut butter, and rice flour. I need to work on the proportions, but I'm happy to say that the dogs also liked these treats (although Greaseball thinks they are crap - he much prefers the tuna treats). The two batches of treats should last us for a few weeks, and they are much cheaper than the $11 per small bag I was paying.

On a lot of the dog treats, they list brown rice flour as an ingredient, so I want to make some brown rice flour, too.  Maybe April will be the rice flour experiment month. I also found some old chicken fat in the freezer, another ingredient in dog treats. Cleaning out my freezer by making dog treats makes my frugal heart swell.

For now, I've quit my CSA. I had so many melons in the summer and so many winter squashes and turnips in the fall/winter, things that I like in moderation but I cannot choke down on a daily basis. While I love the idea of a CSA, especially when I'm too slammed with work to go to the market, it wasn't working for the household. Partially because begin slammed with work means that we eat out more, so things in the refrigerator were staying there past their prime and ending up in the compost bin. I hope I can join again someday, but it's not working for us right now.

Vegan cheese, or as the state of California makes you legally call it, cultured nut product, is now on my radar. I had a delicious round of smoked farmhouse cheese, and I want to make similar cheeses myself.  Miyoko Schinner, the person behind Miyoko's Creamery, has a recipe book called Artisan Vegan Cheese. Fortunately, my library had a few copies available, so now my kitchen counters are littered with soaking grains and nuts. Her recipes start with rejuvelac, a liquid made from sprouted grains. In my pantry, I had millet and kamut, so those are the two rejuvelacs fermenting on my counter.

Rejuvelac is a stupid word, and when I read the wiki about it, I found that it is a tonic that was popularized/invented in the US by Ann Wigmore. The word is too hippy for me, although I'm sure it will do just fine for my cultured nut product. 

Sandor Katz has a section on nut cheese in The Art of Fermentation. He says to simply add some sauerkraut juice to start the culture, which sounds easier than what I'm doing since I have a vat of sauerkraut bubbling away right now. However, I read that after I started the rejuvelac, so I'll follow the recipe, for once.

Instagram is quickly becoming my online time waster of choice, so if you want to see what I'm up to in real-time, click here: .  There are more dog and cat photos there. Most of these pictures are recycled Instagram photos.

Post Tidy Vacuum

Lagavulin and hipster ice 

It's been over a month now since we've reduced the amount of stuff in our house. Amazingly, it's still tidy around here despite both of us going back to our regular work schedules (and then some!), continuing Canine Circus School, and resuming exercise routines after the nasty colds both of us caught in January. Less stuff equals less stuff to clean and a place for everything. For our place, we can whip it into "company is coming!" shape in 15 minutes.

Because I knew that getting rid of stuff would create a vacuum that would pull us to buy more things, I decided that we shouldn't buy anything non-work related for a month so the house could equilibriate. The pull to buy things is huge right now, although it is diminishing as the month wears on. What do I want? A cast iron pan made in Portland that has milled cooking surface, stackable Japanese dishes that are uber modern and spendy, stainless steel chain mail for cleaning cast iron skillets and woks, a new fish spatula that's all metal, and a number of other kitchen things that I can't decide on. The boy is no help. He already cheated and bought gear to go crab catching ("it's for food!").

My urge to buy things was diminished when a Kickstarter campaign I joined months ago delivered the goods. I bought an ice cube maker, both spherical and cube, that makes crystal clear ice. Sure, I was called out for wanting hipster ice, but it's so pretty!

This time of year makes me restless, so I immersed myself in some kitchen experiments. The first was ginger beer using a ginger bug (the starter for the ginger beer). The verdict is still out on this one because I'm impatient and I drank 3 of the 6 bottles of beer I made already - they had little to no carbonation. I think I need to tweak my ginger beer recipe some more.

The second kitchen experiment turned out slightly better, although unsightly. After reading about Chad Robertson in Michael Pollan's book Cooked and trying bread that my friend made using Robertson's Tartine Bread, I wanted to start baking bread again, this time using Robertson's recipe.

With a dough hydration at a whopping 80%, it was the stickiest dough! It was so sticky that there was no need for a stand mixer since you stretch and fold the dough in the bowl while it's proofing. This dough required babysitting, especially since the recipe was fussy and I was unaccustomed to working with such a wet dough. Maybe if I surfed and meditated like Robertson I'd be more zen about the dough, but as the boy can attest, I was swearing up a storm whenever I had to interact with it. I was especially irritated when it was time to put the dough into the glowing hot Dutch oven. As you can see, it wasn't a clean release. I think it was when the dough plopped into the oven that I declare I was going to feed all of the bread to the dogs. Am I a little stressed right now? Perhaps, perhaps.

The boy intervened and insisted we let ugly loaves cool down and taste a piece before chucking it into the garbage (at this point, I thought that not even the dogs should eat it).

My, what an open crumb structure! It was delicious: slightly tangy (just enough to make it interesting, but not puckery), chewy, but not dense texture with a crackly crust. If I looked at the bread slice by slice, it was beautiful. When toasted, it was even better!

This week, I'm attempting the bread recipe again, but this time only making 1 loaf. And to prepare myself, I'll do yoga beforehand. Maybe that's the trick.