Category: Cookery

Time and temperature

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Streetlight and moonlight in daylight.

Didn’t we just have a full moon? Is God overstocked with these things and blowing them out? Or has He finally run out of patience and put His foot to the floorboard on the road to the End of Days?

This latest celestial spotlight is the Snow Moon, which, ha ha, etc. Yesterday’s high was 61, 10 (!) degrees above normal. Today’s may be warmer still. What little remains from last week’s snow lurks in dark corners, like ICEholes waiting for women and children to push around.

But we were talking about time, not temperature, yes?

Lately it seems that the instant I’ve finished washing the breakfast dishes it’s time to make lunch. Then, with luck, a bit of exercise, and boom! Dinner and bedtime.

Not a lot of unclaimed space therein to, as Whitman put it, “loafe and invite my soul.” My soul won’t even take my calls. Straight to voicemail they go.

Now, some may say that I burn an awful lot of dawn’s early light slobbering around the Internet like an ADHD kid working out on a Tootsie Pop — the National Weather Service, The Paris Review, various and sundry purveyors of products that I don’t need and can’t afford — before finally biting into its center, the homepage of The New York Times, which almost always shares a deep brown hue with, but is very much not, chocolate.

That this drives me to lunch is only because (a) I no longer drink, and (2) I desperately need something to take the taste of the NYT homepage out of my mouth.

Having eaten my way through the fridge and pantry, I feel a pressing need for either sleep or exercise. And exercise it is, because Miss Mia Sopaipilla is in the bed, and if I try to share a corner of that king-size bed with that 8-pound cat she will get right out of it and stalk around the house, meowing at the top of her lungs. She’s deaf as a post and her voice carries.

So out the door I go. And sure, if it’s 55 or 60 out there I’m liable to stay out a while, because see “the homepage of The New York Times” and “meowing at the top of her lungs” above. Last week I got 100 miles in, plus one trail run.

When I get home I’m hungry again for some reason as Herself inspects a gas range atop which dinner is very much not cooking itself with that look on her face that says, “Some people have to go to work in the morning.” I strive mightily to swallow a cheery, “Not me!” And get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans.

And soon dinner is served, as is something less toothsome on TV, and since some people have to go to work in the morning (not me) everyone is in bed by 8 and asleep shortly thereafter.

Tomorrow, as the fella says, is another day. That Tootsie Pop ain’t gonna lick itself.

The Pod People

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

OK, I’ve been threatening to resurrect the Radio Free Dogpatch podcast for a while now, and the stars finally came into proper alignment this week, so here we go.

For the first time Radio Free Dogpatch is not a solo effort — my friend and colleague Hal Walter joined me for a chat of about 75 minutes that I boiled down in editing to just over an hour.

RFD-BugCall it “Two Dudes Mystery Theatre.” We talked about the passing of poets Jim Harrison and Merle Haggard; Hal’s autistic son, and what it’s like trying to do creative work while raising a child who is not “neuro-typical”; and cooking.

For anyone who’s interested in the nuts and bolts of this Frankensteinian project, we chatted via Skype (Hal lives in Custer County, Colorado, while I’m in Albuquerque). On my end I was using a Samson C01U USB condenser microphone and an old pair of Bose earbuds plugged into an equally old iMac; Hal went even lower-tech, using a $50 Kindle Fire and some Apple earbuds, the kind that include an inline mic’.

I recorded our conversation using Ecamm’s Call Recorder, then split the convo into two tracks and dragged both into Apple’s GarageBand for editing. Once the thing was more or less the way I wanted it, I uploaded it to Libsyn, which hosts RFD and sends an RSS feed to iTunes.

During our ‘cast I promised to provide links with more information about some of the topics we discussed, and here those are:

Jim Harrison

• Tom McGuane’s “Postscript” in The New Yorker.

• Mario Batali recalls mealtimes with Harrison in Time.

• Jimmy Buffett bids a fond adios to his hermano on Facebook.

• Doug Peacock on Harrison and the art of friendship at The Daily Beast.

Merle Haggard

• A recollection from Patrick Doyle in Rolling Stone.

• NPR’s “Fresh Air” reprises a 1995 interview with the outlaw country legend.

Cookery

• The food of Apulia, from Florence Fabricant in The New York Times.

• Her recipe for orecchiette with cherry tomatoes and arugula (being a barbarian, I add hot Italian sausage).

Final notes

If you find yourself interested in Hal’s writing, you can visit him at Hardscrabble Times (yeah, it’s been a while since he updated the ol’ blog) or order up one or more of his books (check the link in the sidebar).

Meanwhile, let us know in comments what you think. It’s a little rough around the edges, but so are we. Happily, the podcast can be improved.

Hello, trainer, my old friend. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Calm down, all you ring-kissers. We don't have a new pope. That's just the furnace working overtime at Chez Dog.
Calm down, all you ring-kissers. We don’t have a new pope. That’s just the furnace working overtime at Chez Dog.

Whoo. Don’t think I’ll be riding the old bikey bike today. Not outdoors, anyway.

It’s 10:30 a.m. and the temperature has yet to creep above zero. In fact, it’s actually dropping. A short bout of snow-shoveling quickly sent me scuttling back indoors to climb into the oven with the broiler turned on. Now there’s a fine smell of sizzling fat in Chez Dog, as though someone were preparing a repast of pork roast wrapped in bacon.

Speaking of food, it seems a fine day to make a giant cauldron of beans in chipotle, whip up some Mexican rice, maybe toast a couple of chicken quesadillas, especially since none of this will require me to leave the house for any reason.

Even the Boo, who ordinarily is a great fan of cold weather, has taken to peeing on the deck rather than wading out into the frozen tundra to do his little bit of business. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked the cats for a loan of the litter box.

Pass the Indian, please*

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments

Thanksgiving 2012
The remnants of Thanksgiving dinner, and the foundation of many a meal yet to come.

Good God. Seventy-one degrees on the day before Thanksgiving. We didn’t even have to roast the bird; just set the sumbitch out on the deck and let it tan.

When I wasn’t paying attention I found myself committed to three consecutive days of pretending to be (a) a cook, and (2) human. Yesterday Herself’s gal pal Lester popped round for a snack ‘n’ snooze en route from Function Junction to Little Pittsburgh; today, it was the sis and bro’-in-law motoring down from Fort Fun; and on Friday, it’ll be leftovers and whatnot with a couple friends and neighbors.

And leftovers there will be aplenty. Yesterday I whipped up a basic posole with a side of pico de gallo and chips while Herself performed a delicious raspberry cobbler. Today we tag-teamed a 13.6-pound organic turkey, cornbread stuffing, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, an Asian-style stir-fried succotash with edamame from Martha Rose Shulman, a cranberry salsa from Mother Jones and some tortilla roll-ups from The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook.

And tomorrow … we ain’t cookin’ shit.

The roll-ups, salsas and chips were intended to be appetizers, but the kinfolk got caught behind a six-car pileup en route and were delayed quite some, so once they finally got here we more or less ignored the light work and dove straight into the heavy lifting. I should’ve taken a few snaps, but by the time the vittles hit the table I was famished and clicking away with knife and fork instead of shutter.

Instead, here’s a shot of what we’ll spend the next few days gnawing on. Here’s hoping that you and yours had plenty to eat yesterday, today and tomorrow, and a warm, cozy place to eat it in. And thanks for hanging around the joint while we dish up bits of this, that and the other, despite the occasionally sloppy service. You can’t get everything you want, but then this ain’t exactly Alice’s Restaurant.

* It’s a Firesign Theatre reference. “Temporarily Humboldt County” and “Alice’s Restaurant” always come to mind around Thanksgiving. Remember, if you want to end war and stuff, you gotta sing loud.

Chilly means chile

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Green-chile stew, Sept. 29, 2012
A pot of leftovers simmers on the stove.

The first pot of green chile stew is in the books for fall 2012.

I bought four bags of the green goodness — two medium, two mild — and got busy in the kitchen last night. There were plenty of leftovers, so you can imagine what we had for lunch on this cool, breezy Sunday.

And it’s a good thing I went with mild at the top end. Hot summers mean hot chile, and these “medium” New Mexico chiles were plenty hot enough, even though I altered my normal recipe to use two cups of mild to one of medium instead of a 50-50 split.

Seriously, I could feel the medium green dissolving my flesh as I peeled and chopped it. A word to the wise.