With all the travel I've had to do the last couple of months, the garden's not looking so great here at the House of Casa de la Maison. Fortunately, the perennial stuff we planted in earlier years is coming back. And in some cases, still paying some dividends. We have a few artichokes in the garden bed by the side of the house and tonight I was able to harvest enough for one nice dinner. I just roasted them with some olive oil and lemon juice. I think they were pretty good.
Unrelated to artichokes almost completely: while I'm writing this, the TV's on in the background and I just noticed FSC's showing a match between Man U and Juventus. I didn't remember them playing any time recently. Then I look up and notice Beckham running down the pitch for Manchester. Vintage futbol, indeed.
Unrelated to either artichokes or David Beckham, again almost certainly: found this via boing², a nice set of photos of NYC storefronts. I can never decide if I'm depressed at how much of the NYC of my misspent youth is gone or amazed at how much of it is still hanging around.

Participated in hosting a baby shower today. So that was a new thing. It was for los Allens (lovely and charming, as always). And I think a fine time was had by all. Twas a small gathering o' friends and family. Food and drink was consumed, presents were oohed and ahhed. There was a cake. Sarah and S. did most of the organizing. We had the event at Casa del S & D. Not enough space at our place and it seemed somehow inappropriate to bumrush the Charming English Cottage of Death (hey, we're throwing you a party... can we have it at yr house?) I made Joe's Famous Hominy & Sausage (well, it should be famous), and biscuits and sweet rolls. Which were basically cinnamon rolls but with most of the cinnamon taken out. For one batch, I cooked up some bacon, ran it through the food processor and mixed it with the brown sugar filling for the rolls. Yes, bacon sweet rolls. Honestly, I think the dough didn't quite rise enough (I'm not sure if it was the first or second rise that wasn't long enough). I'd have liked them to be lighter and a bit less dense. But the filling was stonkin'. I'll definitely need to make them again at some point. There was also fruit salad from Mary and salad w/ local greens from the farmer's market and an excellent eggy, cheesy frittata (from S.) and I might be forgetting something. But anyway, Too Much Food (tm). Which, as someone pointed out, is absolutely a first world problem. We got enough people to take some cake home with them that we didn't have to resort to some sort of dessert trebuchet to launch cake into the neighbors' yards.

good times...

Happy belated solstice y'all. I think in keeping w/ Norse traditions I was supposed to drag an entire fir tree into the house and set it ablaze. Maybe next year.
And maybe (since we're about to get a short break from the below-normal temps we've been having), I can stop having to hear people complain about how cold it is. News flash: we live in the same place therefore I am aware of how frikkin' cold it is. And I get that you don't like the cold. I got that the first 50 times you said it. Also. (Pro-tip: if you are reading this, it's not about you).
Missed the lunar eclipse last night. Dang. Sucks cos I still didn't get any sleep. The non-drowsy Dayquil woke me up early but not early enough to see the eclipse.
So is Xmas the Cookie Holiday or the Fruitcake Holiday? I'm pretty sure my cousins (who came up w/ this nomenclature) would say it's the Cookie Holiday. And in that spirit, we baked some shortbread last night. Turned out great. Not quite the same as the auld family recipe (from my Scottish grandmother). (Note to self: get brother to send me another copy of the auld family recipe).
Oh and speaking of dessert-y things, I highly recommend this new Ben & Jerry's flavor - Snickerdoodle Cookie. So good. It really does taste un-nervingly like a snickerdoodle.

Back on Monday I tried making some gelato di riso. Or, rice ice cream. It turned out okay. Tastes really good -- basically like frozen rice pudding -- but the rice stayed a little crunchy. Maybe I used the wrong kind of rice. I tried the recipe with arborio. Maybe next time I'll try sushi rice. What I realized when I was taste-testing on Monday was that it's been so long since I tasted rice gelato that I don't clearly remember what it tastes like. I think I'm at least in the ballpark but that's about all I can say. So I'm going to give up on actually trying to re-create the taste memory and just go with trying to come up with something that tastes good.
In other food geek news, awesome article in the NYTimes about Durham's own Scratch. Nice to see them getting more good press. Hope this doesn't mean the lines will get really long again.

Hope all of y'all had an enjoyable 4th. We did not engage in the main American pastime of blowin' shit up (or the closely related "watching other people blow shit up") instead opting for the less explosive grilling of cheeseburgers on ye olde Weber. After some misadventures caused by poor planning that involved two separate trips to two separate grocery stores by two separate people to secure all the necessary components. But in the end burgers were grilled and enjoyed. I kicked off the evening with an oh-so-veddy-British gin & tonic and then declared my freedom from colonial rule by switching to local microbrews. Now we're watching 1776. Which I seem never to have mentioned is a favorite of mine. Not so much cos it's a great movie but because it was the first musical I ever saw on Broadway. One of the advantages of having grown up in NYC is that I got to take school trips to see Broadway shows. Well, only twice (probably would've been more if I'd ended up being a theater geek instead of a band/orchestra geek) but still not too shabby. I had the Playbill from that show kicking around my folks' house for a long time but I'm pretty sure it got tossed in some mad frenzy of cleaning at some point over the decades.
One thing which I first noticed last year when TCM showed 1776 with the restored footage of "Cool Considerate Men" (apparently cut from the movie at the request of Nixon) is that the number (which I'd forgotten about after multiple viewings of the movie had gotten in the way of my memories of the play) is anachronistically using the right/left political spectrum. Dickinson and his boys sing that they're "to the right, ever to the right, never to the left." But the idea of left and right as we understand it today is generally thought to have come from the French Revolution. Or about 13 years after the movie takes place. Oh well. The number is rather obviously more about the political realities of the 1960s than the 1770s. But if it's not a great song, it is a pretty good number with all the minuet-ing and then everyone driving off in horse drawn carriages waving walking sticks in the air.

So we decided to skip going out for Valentine's Day. Instead we're hanging out at home -- got a fire going, watching ski jumping (and other variety sports from this afternoon's Olympics which we recorded), and making home-made steamed pork buns. Actually we've been working on those on and off since yesterday morning when I started brining the pork belly for the filling. Everything has gone pretty smoothly other than this AM when the Fiesta baking dish exploded in the 450 oven, spilling a mix of water, chicken stock and melted pork fat all over the floor of the oven. That was exciting. At least nothing burst into flames. Sarah got me a new Wüsthof knife (a santoku, which we were lacking) and I got her a new Ella Fitzgerald box set. So, yeah, maybe we know each other a bit at this point.
And for dessert? Peanut butter & bacon truffles from Scratch.

Here's a current fave side dish for these wintry months: spicy sweet collards. The recipe's by Aaron McCargo and, yes, I did see it on an episode of his show. What I like about it is that it's a collards recipe that doesn't take all day to make. I have few notes and things I've adapted after cooking it a couple of times. It's definitely important to cut the collards super-thin if you want them to cook quickly. Think chiffonade. I roll up 5 or 6 leaves and then cut them. I've also cut back on the amount of heat -- a hefty teaspoon of chili-garlic paste worked well, a full tablespoon of aleppo pepper was a bit too much. Also, I've kicked up the sugar (1.5 or 2 Tbsp). And, altho they are edible in the 8 min. cooking time in the original recipe... c'mon, they're collards... it's tough to overcook them. I got results I liked after about 20 min.

Having a nice lowkey day. Sarah got me this kit that converts a Weber grill into a BBQ smoker so I decided to test drive that today on some country ribs. A pretty good first run. The smoke was great and the meat got cooked. Maybe a bit dry and not as fall-apart tender as I generally like my ribs. Need to work on regulating the heat better. It seemed to fluctuate a bit too much between too hot and not enough to cook anything. Tried to smoke some potatoes to recreate the amazing smoked potato salad I had a 12 Bones back when we were in Asheville but they steadfastly refused to get cooked in time for dinner.

It's spring. Which means it's asparagus season. I saw this recipe for prosciutto-wrapped roasted asparagus. And I thought, hey, I'm in the South. I should try that with country ham. Finally got around to trying it tonight and it was damn good. I think next time I'll try wrapping 4 spears in each slice of ham instead of 5. And maybe roasting for another minute or two. Something to adjust for the difference in thickness between prosciutto and country ham. But, like the original post says, you don't need to do anything like steaming or blanching or tossing with oil. Just wrap with ham and pop in the oven. Next time I'll also try to get a picture.

Here's another link I lost track of in my mailbox. An excellent article on science and cooking. MG hataz be advised -- these are not the droids yr looking for. Also covers some of the history of science in the kitchen, including McGee and This. And includes This' chocolate chantilly recipe, which I really do need to try at some point.

Speaking of "there's nothing about that I don't love" -- bacon-infused bourbon old-fashioned. I still think bacon ice cream will be my next bacon project, but I may give the infused bourbon a try as well.