Boots in the Oven

Sweet Corn Pancakes

Sweet, sweet, sweet corn. So delicious, so in season.

But you can only eat so much of it on the cob. Even if it’s grilled, spritzed with lime juice and served with chile and salt. At some point, it just calls out to be cooked up into something awesome.

The most recent recipe to catch my attention was this batch of fresh corn pancakes from Gourmet magazine. (Or more accurately, they caught Girlie’s attention and she got to thinking that it might be a good idea if I whipped up a batch for dinner. She’s so smart.)

Since we’re currently in a vegetable wonderland here in our Texas gardens, I figured that I could whip up a little meat-free feast to accompany the warm, buttery, lightly caramelized flap jacks. You know, like some roasted okra, tomato and goat cheese salad, and a tangy pan-fried eggplant mash. Mmmm… mash…

Anyway, check out this recipe. Not only does it rock for dinner, but you can have the leftovers for breakfast with thick drizzles of maple syrup and fat pats of butter. What? Not sayin’ you have to- just throwing it out there.

A Fridge Too Full.

Have you ever wondered what it looks like the night before me and Rachel go out of town after we have totally failed to plan and bought way too much stuff at the farmers’ market? Of course you have.

Basically, it devolves into a veggie cooking frenzy; a fire sale where Everything. Must. Go.

It started with the very last of the trout from the previous epic fishing adventure. I steamed it en papillote, the easiest and possibly most delicious way to cook a whole fish. Just lay the little guy on a piece of foil that’s about 3 times its size. Pat him dry, give him a liberal sprinkling of salt inside and out, stuff the cavity with some sliced garlic, a couple lemon wedges, and a sprig of whatever herb you need to get rid of.

Top with some sliced onions, and a hearty pour of good olive oil. Fold the foil over and crimp it all around to make a nice little pouch. Throw it into a 425°F oven for about 20 minutes (depending on the size of the fish) and you’re in business. Once you get the general idea, you can substitute, really, an almost infinite number of vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices.

To give our sea friend something to swim through (and to get it the hell out of my fridge) I cooked up a mess of lamb’s quarters, roasted some baby squash, poached cherry tomatoes in garlic butter, and tossed some small, baked new potatoes with a light mustard vinaigrette. My oh my.

Sure it may be enough food for me, the wifey, both cats, and a small but hungry sun bear, but that’s never stopped me before. I’m pretty sure the bear didn’t like the squash though.

-L. Pants

Furikake Please.

What’s the most recent obsession in the Boots household? Ponies? Designer drugs? The Jonas brothers? No, not this month. This month is all about furikake.

One producer proudly describes it as “crunchy powder rice topping,” as delicious as that sounds. At its base, it’s usually a mix of little nori strips and sesame seeds. The two are augmented by anything from dried Japanese mustard to carrot pellets to shaved bonito to any number of various vegetables, sea creatures and flavorants. 

I’m rather partial to the crispy yolk bits and the salmon myself. The stuff is really good for spicing up stirfrys and leftovers. It’s kind of salty, kind of sweet, full of umami and bursting with different texture combinations. Sometimes I steam rice just as an excuse to eat it.

Oddly enough, we were introduced to furikake in Tuscany- a land almost completely devoid of any hint of the Orient. You could find sushi but it cost as much as a new Vespa and tasted only slightly better. Luckily for us, an adorable Japanese girl in Rachel’s language class smuggled some over from the homeland.

She must have liked us because she would bring over packets and we’d sit around our loft with the lights dimmed passing a bowl of rice and umeboshi plums, trying not to let the floorboards squeak lest we alert the pasta police.

Back in the states it’s much easier to come by. Any asian grocery around stocks at least a few varieties. Do check the ingredients though as some companies tend to get a little gung ho with the additives. At about 4 bucks a jar, I highly recommend adding it to your pantry collection. Or buying me some.

-Logan

Who Said The Depression Wasn't Delicious?

About a week ago a friend of ours wrote and asked us what our naughty food indulgences are. He was inspired by this article that revealed the gastronomic weaknesses of some of San Francisco’s foodie elite.

I got to thinking about my own soft spots. (I’m not bitching, but it’s a total cop out to claim that jamón ibérico and homemade apricot pie are your food sins. Those aren’t meritless indulgences- those should be mandatory.)

I’m a fairly unmoored eater. I don’t have a lot of attachments; foods that I need to consume daily or weekly to feel fulfilled. As long as a dish is prepared with a little love and good ingredients, I’ll eat it and probably like it. New and different gets me all tingly.

That being said, for years I have secretly been icing saltine crackers and eating them tucked away in a kitchen corner or lurking beside the pantry door. Yup, my favorite is cream cheese frosting with Premium brand saltines. Original flavor.

I got it from my mom when I was a young kid helping her out with baking projects. Any leftover birthday or cupcake topping didn’t get tossed and we didn’t just lick it off the beaters. Nope. We would carefully pry open a new package of crispy, salty crackers and slather thick spoonfuls of super sweet creaminess on top.

A Dutch Baby Reunion.

Do you like baked goods? Do you have an affinity for unusual amounts of butter? Do you enjoy eating things named after young people from the Netherlands? If you answered yes to any of these questions, there’s a good chance that you, me, and this Dutch Baby can be friends.

About ten years ago, my wife (hot girlfriend at the time) introduced me to this strange hybrid between a pancake and a popover at the Original Pancake House. I was smitten. For whatever reason though, it sort of fell off my radar and I have encountered them only rarely in the years since.

Yesterday, I woke up with an extreme hankering for something sweet that I could bake in cast iron. (Yes. I know I have strange hankerings. Don’t change the subject.)

After an inadvisable period of estrangement, the Dutch Baby is back on my social calendar.

Nothing Says Salad Like Fried Sausage.

I’m playing a game of Telephone with a Thai-style Chinese sausage salad.

Yep, last week I borrowed a recipe from Gastronomy who took it the week before from Eating Asia who in turn stole it from themselves 20 years earlier. Crazy sausage technology.

A fortuitous junction of ingredients and circumstances drew me to this particular dish. First, I happen to have some incredible lap cheung from a recent trip to San Francisco. The partially dried, wizened little tubes of sweet, fatty pork bits are a new obsession of mine. Any novel ways to cook them up gets my attention.

After.

I’ve also been hording a small bottle of the best fish sauce I’ve ever had, from our last outing in Vietnam. In the back of a Saigon market, a tiny, 132 year old lady (I’m guessing here) pressed the thick, bubbled-glass bottle into my hands with a huge smile and a quick hug. I felt like I had adopted a child. It’s been part of my secret kitchen arsenal ever since but I like to have inspirational dishes to use it with.

Finally, as the other blogs mention, this is a good hot weather dish. Since it is currently 132 degrees (I’m not guessing) here in Austin, I was immediately interested.

This salad is the perfect blend of sweet, sour, spicy, and salty. It’s also quick, easy and super satisfying. Don’t get too bogged down in the details though. All of the proportions are really just recommendations. (Find the full recipe here or here.)

Before.

Since I was just cooking for me and the wifey, I only used one cucumber and a couple of sausages. You can scale it up or down really easily.

I also made some ingredient substitutions. I used dried arbol chilies and a Hungarian hot wax pepper for the heat. Not traditional, but tasty. I also used some palm sugar instead of white sugar for a little more caramely depth.

Man this was good. It really showed off the lap cheung but I couldn’t help but think that any number of other items would work great as well. If you don’t have sausage you could just as easily use some strips of steak or pork, or even serve it with some grilled fish. Mmm.

Thanks Cathy, Robyn, and David!

-Logan

Vichyssoise

On a hot Texas afternoon, what’s better than a nice chilled soup brimming with the flavors of fresh dug potatoes and leeks right out of the garden? How about the same soup that isn’t half cream.

I’m talking, of course, about the famous Nazi collaborating potage, vichyssoise. It really is perfect for this time of year around these parts- all the ingredients are in season, the mercury is hanging out closer to the triple digit mark, and it’s so easy to make you can train your cats to do it for you.

(Editor’s note: Under no circumstances should you attempt to train a cat to make vichyssoise. Gazpacho sure, but let’s not kid ourselves.)

Like I mentioned though, most of the recipes that I found for the old classic involved inordinate amounts of sour cream or heavy cream. Some folks suggested I “lighten it up” by substituting half-and-half instead. Nothing says light and refreshing like a carton of half-and-half.

Unsatisfied, I took it upon myself to craft a new version. One that would highlight the potatoiness of the season’s first tubers and that I could eat more than a few spoonfuls of without feeling like I was sucking down a pint of melted Häagen-Dazs.

Radishes, Eggs, and Misdemeanors

Nothing gets a lovely spring Sunday kicked off quite like a bit of thievery. It’s true. I’m extremely incorrigible with very little social conscience.

If you, like our friend Kristi over at Austin Farm to Table, happen to put up an extremely delicious sounding recipe and blithely leave it unattended, I will jack it post-haste with no regrets.

Mwahahaahah!

This particular heist involves radishes.

I’ve eaten them raw off and on for years (mainly off to be honest) but in the last few months I’ve really come around to the spicy, earthy, slightly sweet little guys. They’ve been flooding our local farmers’ markets, so I’m always on the lookout for some new insight in preparation and consumption.

Badass Beet Salad!

God I love beets. Beets were one of those childhood foods that I encountered rarely, mushily, and in disgusting ways. Luckily for me I spent my young adulthood with a band of fiddle playing gypsies who subsisted entirely on root vegetables.

Under the tutelage of the wizened Grandma Marin I learned the mysterious ways of the beet- its versatility, the range of varieties, the multitudes of complimentary textures that can be coaxed from them.

Yes, I’m a dirty liar. No gypsies, no Grandma Marin, very little fiddle playing. Regardless, at some point along the way I did develop a keen appreciation for the oft-scorned beet.

Little bundles of them have been filling the markets for the past couple of months so I’ve had lots of opportunities to play. I just wanted to take a minute and share my most recent favorite beet assemblage.

Za’atar Grilled Lamb with Fennel Confit, Raisin Emulsion and Fried Capers

All this swanky restaurant eating we’ve been doing recently has been a bit of an inspiration. It’s made the fine dining part of my cooking brain a little twitchy. Why should those chefs get to have all the fun? So in a huff (tizzy?) I’ve been back in the kitchen with my fancy pants on.

Lamb is one of those delicious meats that’s really underutilized here in the States. And spring is the perfect time for it. For you Austinites, if you haven’t heard of Loncito’s Lamb, you’ve got to check him out. He raises the happiest, grass-fed, most tasty animals around.

If you don’t live near Loncito’s I would urge you to look around your local markets and do some research to see if any fine rancher in your area is doing something similar.

Now I’m going to do something almost unheard of in Boots history. I’m going to print a real honest to goodness recipe. Remain calm.

Note: This dish is easy and will make you look like a complete badass.