Aug. 31st, 2004

muckefuck: (Default)
Do authority work on romanised Ukrainian names long enough and you'll be struck by the critical lack of y's and ligatures when you go back to reading English again.

Today there was no one in the vast carpeted space and a team of half-a-dozen or so workers restoring the bathrooms. Only two honeys: The aforementioned scruffy bohunk, with his winning smile, and bulging battering ram of a man with a bald pate, thick features, and a ring salty dark hair. Also, the cute, classic bear from the moving company's moustache is going from gray to white in the most attractive fashion. I've been busted by him so many times already that it doesn't matter if he catches me staring again. Oh, and our power was out for about ten minutes, but the dark-haired BIT was apologetic and promised to have it back on shortly, which he did.

I had to laugh at one of Giuliani's [note spelling, friends! The *Guilianis are beginning to grate on me again] cheap shots last night, namely his suggestion that the purpose of Edwards' "Two Americas" is to allow for one in which Kerry votes for a certain piece of legislation and another where he votes against the selfsame one.

I want to talk about last night's dinner/cooking, but only once I can remember what the thing was that I wanted to ask for y'all's help in cooking. Ah, yes; I remember now! Fresh post comin' up!
muckefuck: (Default)
Last night's experimental new recipe, escabetx de gallina, was so dirt simple I can recite it from memory. However, you might want to wait to try it yourself until we've eaten the results tomorrow.
Put 4 cups of olive oil, 2 cups good red wine vinegar, 4-6 scallions (trimmed at both ends), 2 tablespoons of black peppercorns, 5 bay leaves, 2 heads of garlic (separated into cloves and peeled), and a bunch of fresh thyme into a large pot or (preferrably) a terracotta casserole. Bring to a boil and add fowl. (The recipe said 6 pigeons [yeah, right!] or two small chickens; I used one large chicken, cut up, and that seems to have worked out well.) Reduce heat and simmer for an hour. Cool for another hour or so. Put in fridge for at least 24 hours before eating. (The author recommends slicing the breast meat and serving the other pieces whole.)
Of course, this will leave me with about a quart of heavily-seasoned vinegary chickeny oil that I hate to simply pour down the drain. Does anyone have suggestions for what to do with it? When making sauerbraten, standard operating procedure is to cook down the marinade, thicken it with crumbs, and serve it as a gravy, but I'm not sure that would work as well with the escabetx and, further, I don't know what I'd put it on.

I came across the recipe over the weekend while reviewing my various romesco recipes. (Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] foodpoisoningsf for the inspiration.) One recipe uses it as a dressing for salt cod/tuna salad, which I might persuade [livejournal.com profile] monshu to try by eliminating the salt cod. We were looking for good, tasty plan-ahead-and-serve-cool recipes for the coming weekend anyway, which explains how I came around to giving the escabetx a whirl. If we can find good mint, I'll actually go through the trouble of fixing favas in order to try out the Catalan-style bean salad, too.

Chef Jeff came over to watch me cook, so I gave him a thigh to marinate at home. Fortunately, pickling isn't foreign to the Thais; like the Vietnamese, they also serve versions of ceviche utilising lots of lime juice. Realising I needed to feed him, I picked up some No Name brand salmon filets and threw together a no-frills dinner by pairing them with plain white rice and sauteed green beans. They were perfectly decent pieces of fish, but I wish I'd known that they were pre-marinated. The seasoning wasn't bad, but--like virtually every prepared seasoning mix--it was saltier than I like it. I was planning on a light marinade of soy sauce and ginger wine until I discovered this. Also, he said he likes thyme a lot, so I served Farigoule as digestif, which I think overwhelmed him a bit, either through syrupiness or alcohol content.
muckefuck: (Default)
  • The road out back has been asphalted and is now being steamrolled flat. Bear factor: One portly Hispanic daddy driver with curly hair, glasses, and a moustache and one tall, sandy-haired, moustachioed overseer-type.
  • Another huge clump of junipers back of the building has been hacked out and uprooted. Fuck you, rodents and birds! Find your shelter elsewhere! Bear factor: None. Another reason why I hate groundskeeping projects.
  • Another brief blackout. Bear factor: The BIT came by to apologise again, assuring us this was the "last one today". You know, if each one comes with a visit from him, then they're almost worth it.
  • The Yellow Cap Daddy is one of the men rewiring the connexions to the electrical closet in the Marking Room. I am so doomed! That is to say, I've just recalled a lot of very important work that must be done in the Marking Room as soon as possible. Bear factor: [faints]

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