Baby's Best Friend - Charlie and the Tatertot

We were a bit worried when the baby came out  - would it be healthy? would all the things be in the right place? no arms out of the head? All the toes and fingers? and most importantly, would Charlie, our cockapoo, be able to get along with the baby?!?!?!

As anyone who has met him will tell you, he is the sweetest of dogs. He loves to be petted, scratched, waggle his butt and be incredibly close to Kathleen and me. He is obsessive compulsive when it comes to chewing his paws and loves playing chase the towel. He can also be very protective of Kathleen, once trying to bite me in the face when I got a bit too close during a camping trip around three in the morning (hubba hubba). When the midwife would do her visits and take blood pressure and the like, he would get his curly little butt in a twirl and have to be sent out of the room so as to not bark.

So when the baby came he was not allowed: Diego came and picked him up around 12:30 AM and the next evening, with much getting the baby ready - making sure he was asleep and wrapped and warm and all that, we let Charlie in. He sprinted into the room butt-a-waggle, he sniffed me, sniffed Kathleen, jumped on the bed, looked at the kid and then ran to his bed and stayed there for the next TEN HOURS. He wouldn't go anywhere near him. Zero interest in seeing him, sniffing him, or being near him.

The next morning he jumped on the bed but literally positioned himself as far from the baby as possible.  And then about midday he changed. He hopped on the bed and smelled him and then sat about two feet away.  Theo yawned in appreciation

Then about once every fifteen minutes he would come up and give him a little sniff.

He's crying because he wants more Charlie. And now they're bosom buddies.

  He can't stop licking his head. Not that I can blame him. I constantly smell his head (and maybe lick it a little).

HIs favorite place to sit is with mama and the baby. I take him out for a walk and when we come back he is immediately between them and with them. 

Love and friends forever.

Recipe: Buffalo Wings (2nd night at home) 10 minutes prep and 45 minutes end to end.

2 sticks butter

1 large jar Frank's Hot Sauce

24 large chicken wings (cut em in two if you want for a drummette and a wing or leave 'em whole).

Flour

Smoked Paprika

salt

pepper

1) Mix a bunch of flour (3 cups) with a 1/2 tablespoon of paprika, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon pepper.

2) Coat all wings and let sit in fridge for one hour. 

3) Heat oven to 425

4) Single layer wings. Bake for 25 minutes and turn. When fork tender, remove from oven.

5) Melt butter and add bottle of hot sauce. Taste and season. 

6) Toss wings and enjoy. 

Italian wine and pepper stew

I've been going through this phase lately: less is more. The less ingredients in a dish the better (salt, pepper, and butter don't count). The above is a dish I've made for years (ever since reading about it in Heat).

1-2 beef shank (can use lamb if you want, but the beef is just so unctous in comparison)
one bottle red wine
copious amounts of cracked pepper
leftover parsley or onion

Put the shank in a pot. Cover it with wine. Crack pepper till your arm fat can jiggle no more. Bake for as long as you can stand to smell it and not take it out (I've gone anywhere from 6-10 hours). Garnish with onion or parsely or leave plain. Serve with bread.

Be sure to eat the marrow from the shank.

Takashi Offal - the dynamic duo reunited

Scott Dahlie enjoys some fresh veg before the offal

Rib eye beef tartar? Yes please.

Natto with Japanese mountain yam and chuck flap. Not again.

Practice makes progress

Two types of stomach, sweetbreads, liver, and heart. All spectacular. I mean, who knew that offal could taste so good.

Sizzle stomach sizzle!

Heart on the left and beef liver on the right. Liver was a silky metal explosion of the grill and the heart was like a just the tiniest bit chewy. Wish I had pictures of the beef belly we ordered for dessert. This place is highly recommended.

Homemade udon miso

Is udon miso allowable? I always feel a bit overwhelmed when trying to cook Japanese at home. It seems that the rules are so strict and that certain things shouldn't go with other things - like udon and miso. But in reality, I imagine just like anywhere, whatever you want to put together that perks the tate buds is fine.

Above is my udon miso with purple potatoes, yukon golds leeks, spring onions, thai chiles and cilantro. I threw some dried shrip in at the end for my bowl, leaving Kathleen's deviod, of course. For her we put in some smoked jalepeno firm tofu from a local place in the East bay - better than the shrimp.

I parboiled the potatoes before hand, heated the miso up and then threw everything in to steep for 10 minutes. Start to finish, 20 minutes.

Lamb Curry - South African Style

Me, Lucas Behnke and Anna Hargreaves. Six months in and no lamb curry in sight.

 I lived in South Africa for a year when I was 21. Well much of that year remains a blur in my memory, this recipe has stuck with me and takes me right back to curry pies, curry roti and the black label afternoons of Dewotshof, Pietermaritzburg.

It must have been my second week in country and I was walking downtown with Lucas Behnke, a fellow NorCal bud, exploring the sights and getting a feel for Maritzburg, our home away from home in the foothills of the Drakensburg. Being from Northern California, or maybe just being who we were, we were all about the food and Maritzburg was great for food because it had a huge Indian population, British South Africans (who doesn't like a fried tomato now and again), Boer boerwars and African spices and veg.

Walking along the downtown we followed our noses to the spice shop and there was this beautiful (BEAUTIFUL) Indian woman with about four children crawling in and about her and jars and jars of spices, packages of spices - the sorts of things I had never seen before and made me drool. We got into a conversation and ended up buying this dank musty curry powder that was just the darkest red and spicy spicy spicy. Not only that, the woman gave us a recipe that she said was a can't miss. We bought some other powders of varying heat and took them home, ready to cook.

That night we invited all of our other study abroaders to my abode and made a veg curry and a meat curry. It must have taken us five hours to get the curries ready and it was summer there at this point and wicked hot outside. When everyone showed up the dorm was well over a hundred degrees, there were no fans and the beer was warm. The cooks were covered in curry oil and scorched from an afternoon of cooking and drinking and then we tried the curry. Still, to this day, I haven't had anything as hot as that curry. I think we(by that I mean I) added probably added four or five ounces of this curry powder to what we were making and it just exploded in your mouth, coated your insides and either made you lay down, take a dump or run around in circles trying to scream while saliva ran down your face because your mouth was so hot you couldn't close it. But as soon as your mouth did calm down and you could close it, and you learned to pick at the curry and soak it in some bread, the taste was delish and I've been making it ever since.


1-2 lbs stewing lamb, bone in and cut into eating sized pieces
One gigantic yellow onion
Three yukon potatoes
Hot peppers to taste (not jalepenos or serranos)
Ginger piece - as long and wide as two fingers
Three cloves garlic
Two shallots
Two regular cans whole tomatoes
Curry powder - preferably red, but yellow will do
Curry spices such as cardomon, fennel seed, cumin, peppercorns
Fat (ghee, canola oil - or today I used bacon fat and left over chicken fat)

Heat a cast iron dutch oven over medium heat. Add in the fat so there is about 1/4 inch in the bottom of the pan. Generously cover the lamb with curry powder, rub-in, and let sit for five minutes. When the oven is heated, gently lay the lamb down and cook on each side until crusty.

While the lamb is cooking, cut the onion into quarter inch pieces, smash and cut garlic, peel shallots (leave whole), grate ginger, coarsely chop the peppers (you can also leave them whole to more easily pull them out later), and chop potato into one inch cubes

Ginger grater, curry powder and the mess of curry

Aromatics cooking.

 When crusty, remove the lamb to another pan. Lower heat to medium low and in the hot oil, add curry spices whole and let cook for thirty seconds. Add all the chopped materials and cook until the potatoes are just a little soft. Add back in the lamb, pour the tomatoes over the top, lower the heat to low and let cook for 3-4 hours.

Dank

For the original recipe, add twice as much oil, use fresh tomatoes, and instead of frying whole curry spices, just fry the curry powder.

Done.

Well I do apologize to all of our readers out there who have been so anxiously awaiting our next post. It has been too long, and really, it isn't fair to you or to us. Without further adieux.

Indonesia certainly wowed us with the different type of spice and food on hand. Everywhere had its own version of chicken soup and the two I tried were soto banjar and soto ayam. The difference being the banjar is a bit spicier and made with a duck
egg. Check the pics below. The first is ayam (courtesy of Ibu Is, Larry's cook of all colors. And let me tell you, I had ayam made from necks and knuckles and feet. This one is straight breast) and the second is banjar - banjar menas soup from Banjarmasin in Kalimantan and ayam means chicken in bahasa.



The most interesting meal I ate in Indonesia was ate at a street stall in Joyokarta. The lady served me up jackfruit curry, which tasted like smoked beef loin, steamed greens and chile buffalo skin. I loved the jackfruit curry, was intrigued enough by the buffalo that I asked for seconds and gobbled the greens before Kath could lay a hand on them.


Another favorite of mine in Joyokarta was deep fried quail, possibly chicken, that had its eggs left in it. Cover the whole thing in sambal peanut sauce and digin. Watch for the bones though, they are sharp!

And I leave you with this. What is it? What were they? I didn't try them but they just sat there ready to be bought and eaten.

General Greatness in Ahmed Bali

Postcard perfect Kath.

One thing we have discovered on this trip is that if you find a place you like, don't go somewhere else just because you said you would, and especially don't go somewhere else because whatever book you have says it is a can't miss. The people make the difference and the views turn into one another after a while. This very thing happened to us in Ahmed Bali. We showed up for a couple of days and stayed over a week. The people we were staying with were kind, the lifestyle relaxed and the diving terrific. We could rent a scooter and travel out into the fishing villages and up the mountains and come back in the evening to a great little Warung where we could drink cold bintang, eat fresh fish and play cribbage by candle light.

One day I went fishing at five in the morning and saw the sunrise over Lombok. I also fished out of the boat below that has outriggers along with a longtail motor.

Another day we took a scotter and ate curried rice in the rice fields and climbed Lempunyang and were nearly attacked by rabid monkees.

This dude is vicious. Don't let him fool you.

Another day we did nothing and on another day I ate gado gado and fish satay that I thought would kill me.