1. I want to make macarons, and prove that I can get the meringe dry enough to not spread out all over the cookie sheet. (Thrice bitten, fourth shy.)
2. How much can the meringue for macarons be toyed with? I imagine a basil meringue cookie – chiffonade of basil leaf, not basil oil – with a black pepper lemon curd in the middle.
3. This requires egg whites at least a day old, that will have dried out somewhat. Can I dry them uncovered in the fridge, or will they pick up the scents of whatever else is there?
(4. Aside – can’t wait for the pork belly to finish curing into bacon. Tomorrow, maybe.)
(5. On the same tangent – never smoked a bacon, maybe roast half and smoke the other half over lapsong souchong, a smoked black tea? —Focus.)
6. Where am I going to come up with that many egg whites? What can I do with the yolks?
6a. Pastry cream – vanilla custard thickened with cornstarch.
6a-1. Ooh, cream puffs and eclairs….
6b. Lemon curd uses yolks, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s my answer.
6c. Wonder what effect egg yolks would have on chocolate ganache.
6d. Hey, I’ve got pancetta from Greatful Bread in the fridge. Maybe I can make a nearly-authentic spaghetti carbonara.
6d-1. Yeah, and I biked a bunch today – maybe that offsets the carbonara.
7. Oops, almond flour. Need to get more from the store.
8. Why am I baking all of this, mainly just to prove to myself that I can (and to have it ready to go when I decide I need it down the line)? I may just have to eat this all myself. Hm, not the best idea.
9. Why didn’t I stop to get the awesome local flat iron steaks I saw earlier today at Revival Market? 45 minutes until they close, but we may be going out to eat for dinner tonight instead.
10. I wish I knew how to make buttercream. I mean, I can read and follow recipes, but that’s different from *understanding* buttercream.
11. Why do I care about buttercream? What am I going to do, eat a bowl of chocolate buttercream?
11a. Yes.
12. Flat iron steak, green beans and shallots, and … and … and what? Noodles? Rice? some kind of starch?

This is the constant noise in my brain. This is why I obsess about food.

My passport expires today, two days after 9/11. I could write a whole retrospective on where I was on the day (in a meeting in London) or how it impacted me (Mom had come to visit, stayed a couple of extra weeks), but I decided that there was enough rehashing already on the internet. As I wasn’t nearly as traumatically affected by that day, I thought it best to write about what my passport and I had seen together.

Ten years and four months ago, I had left my first passport in my jeans and put it through the wash. The front cover separated from the picture page, and amazingly I managed to fly internationally four more times on it with only some stern looks from ticketing agents. Then 9/11 happened, and I decided it high time to renew my passport at the US embassy.

So. Ten years ago…

… I was living, however temporarily, in London, England.

… I lived off of restaurant food and could make a mean risotto. I was only just a year or so into my soon-to-be-obsession with cooking.

… chicken stock was an exotic preparation.

… I collected comic books. Every Wednesday, when the new books came in, my comic store would pull my subscription aside, and I would buy the stack and have a binge reading night at a coffee shop. Most times, I’d forget to eat dinner.

… I discovered Japanese cuisine meant more than sushi, and that ramen doesn’t have to be cheap from a packet.

… I sang (however awkwardly) with a semi-professional a cappella troupe.

… I had never been to SXSW. Hadn’t really heard of it, actually.

… had really no damn clue how to dress myself. I was aiming for the thickest goatee I could grow, let my hair grow as long as it would (almost to my shoulder!), and – being in London and all – wore a black trench coat that made me look as if Crosby, Stills, or Nash had joined the X-files.

Since then…

… I’ve learned to cook more. Competently, if not always well. My challenge now is finding enough time and willing subjects to really practice what’s rattling around in my head.

… I moved back to Houston.

… I got married.

… I discovered, to my surprise, that I’m more of a cat person than a dog person.

… I don’t collect comics anymore, although I do miss it and try to keep up from afar.

… I became a homeowner.

… twice. (Temporarily, we hope.)

… I’ve managed to help shepherd a kid through middle school, high school, and into college. I’ll take a victory lap wherever I can.

… I still work for the same company.

… I’ve seen friends come and go. Thankfully, more came than went, and those that went really didn’t leave, they just went somewhere else for now.

… I don’t introduce myself by my website anymore (“Don’t worry. You’ve never heard of it.”) but instead by my twitter name.

… I’ve stopped blogging twice officially (three times, if you count this hiatus – so much to say, so little time to organize it into linear thought).

… and I’ve eaten well.

Saturday was the blog’s 11th birthday. In the middle of trying to move out of our old house into our new one. I spent the day painting. Haven’t cooked a meal in a month.

So, yeah. Content is a bit light. Lots of ideas, all of them just around the corner. Keep your feed readers handy.

Well, that was an unplanned hiatus. Irregular blogging will recommence, as I find myself having more and more to say. In the intervening time, I’ve gotten to know many more excellent people in Houston’s food scene, had more than my share of excellent meals, cooked some exciting stuff, and am even more excited about trying to get people into the kitchen to cook.

But that’s not what prompted me to come back now. I’ve been a friend of Fave for some time now, and was privileged to have met and spent some quality time with the late pug Fender. Fender was one hell of a cool lil’ dog, who passed away suddenly and has been memorialized in the outstanding web comic A Pug Named Fender. Add it to your feed readers.

As a COMPLETE surprise, Fave included me in today’s strip! I’m floored and honored to be included in the comic alongside this hip pup. That was the birthday surprise that made my week, y’all.

So, a BIG THANK YOU to Fave for the awesome artwork, to Fender for being cool, and to all my friends for showing some love on my birthday week!

I’m doing Weight Watchers this year. Anybody who knows me knows that there’s probably a little more of me to love than there ought to be, and I could do with better eating habits anyway. This was spurred on by Christine joining a WW competition among photographers; I’m certain I’ll get the details wrong so I’ll let her explain in the comments.

We’ve done WW before, with more success for her than me, as well as a few other programs – we did, for example, South Beach for four or six months a few years ago. (I shudder now to think of that time. I’ve made pizza out of nothing but ground beef and mozzarella. No, really. The meat was the crust. God, I missed bread.) But, nothing like solidarity for support, and me trying to focus on eating classic, from-scratch foods just wasn’t getting the job done on its own.

In a nutshell, the program tries to change your habits both about the makeup of the food on your plate as well as the amount. No surprise there. Points are assigned to foods based on the caloric, fat, and fiber contents of the food (Wikipedia provides some decent background here). Your points allotment takes into account age, gender, weight, and typical daily exertion, as I recall. Track and eat your points every day, and watch the weight disappear at a healthy and safe pace until you reach your goal.

I’ve never been one to do thing by halves. My problem with WW before was that if I had to stay within a certain point range, I made sure to stay WELL within the point range. Overachiever and all that. Problem is, this doesn’t work unless you do eat all your points – you don’t do better by eating less than your points, you just remain heavy and hungry. So, while “diet” to me has meant “eat a bag of carrots for lunch” in the past, I’m having to make sure I eat all of my points each day.

Here’s where my problem comes in. Because I’m fat, reasonably young, and male, I get a good amount of points. Not enough to keep eating like I was, but enough. (39, for those of you keeping score at home.) I am trying to learn better eating habits, so I’m leaving my comfort zone and eating lots more vegetables, less meat, more beans, whole grains, and so forth. I manage to keep my meals to single digit points, occasionally to double digits. This means that, at the end of the day, I find myself playing the game “How much butter does Mike have to eat to cover all his points?”. Oy.

What I’m learning as I track is that by normal behavior, I actually undereat in the day more than I expected. I’m not a big breakfast person on the workdays (caffeine and stress, normally), quick lunch, and dinner. There may have been enough points in those meals to make up the difference, perhaps, but basically I need to pace myself better and start eating more.

Klondike no-sugar-added bars are three points apiece. I’ve got to stop using them to pad my points total for the day.

Expect to see more, healthier foods soon. I’ve been doing whole wheat breads, veggie pizza, and sandwich wraps for lunch. It’s new habits that I’m trying to learn.

Wow. Aspic (or, “flavored gelatin” these days) has so much potential. Consider the following: An entire meal created from gelatin cubes. Mix five parts chicken gelatin cubes (chicken broth set with unflavored gelatin) and one part tarragon gelatin (plain gelatin with dried tarragon added when heating the water, then strained before it sets – not the greatest color, but the flavor is cleanly tarragon). Or, barbecue chicken – mix four parts tomato gelatin (tomato water – squeeze tomatoes and strain out the seeds – and gelatin) with one part spice gelatin (add cayenne, cumin, etc. to unflavored gelatin), then mix with chicken gelatin, et cetera.

The possibilites are endless. It would be an amazing buffet of different cubes of flavor, and everybody can mix their own. I can’t decide if it’d be better to remelt and reset the gelatin once the mixes are done, or just put together a bowl of cubes…

(There is a logical reason for this. Driving down our street, in the span of about four houses, my train of thought was: “I should have leftovers for dinner. I have a leftover pork pie, I could cut up the meat and put it on pizza … I still wish I could have gotten the aspic in the pork pie … I was talking about aspic a few weeks back, when we talked about doing a ‘Mad Men’ view-a-thon … I did manage to make tarragon gelatin … hey, I could do chicken! ooh, and barbecue sauce!” See? Perfectly reasonable.)

I’ve been in all-day workshops at work for the last copule of weeks. This has the effect of COMPLETELY knocking me off of my cooking rhythm, and I haven’t slowed down enough to get back on the wagon.

So, while I was preparing the cure for Homecured Bacon, Round 2 (a gorgeous 3.5lb pork belly from Pete’s Fine Meats), I decided to write down the ideas in my head. Let’s see what sticks.

• The world needs savory muffins. Garlic and herb? Spice and carrot? Mirepoix?
• Another pork belly will become rillettes.
• I really need to make another loaf of brioche.
• The ice cream machine bowl is now ready. Starting with a basic vanilla custard, will I make better chocolate ice cream using cocoa powder or melted milk chocolate?
• I need to branch out fast breakfasts past pancakes and eggs (despite the awesome tower of power below).

And that’s just off the top of my head. I’ll think of more as I drift off to sleep.

Let’s jump straight to the punchline – it was GOOD. Damn good. Very clean, unmasked pork flavor; not surprising since it was unsmoked and the cure didn’t have much in the way of flavorings added, but still outstanding in its simplicity. Because the pork isn’t injected with a wet cure, it isn’t waterlogged, doesn’t shrink nearly as much as supermarket bacon, but also doesn’t tolerate as high a heat as the prepackaged stuff. This is something I’ll be doing again, and probably not in the too-distant future. Now that I have the basics under my belt, I can start to play with flavorings in the cure (garlic and black pepper!), and if I get super-adventurous I can de-pollenize the Weber grill and smoke the next belly. So many options from such a simple thing!

Now let’s back up a bit. When last we left our pork belly, it had been dredged in a basic bacon cure (225g/0.5lb kosher salt, 113g/0.25lb sugar, 25g/1oz Pink Salt #1) and left in a plastic bag in the fridge for a week, flipping every other day to redistribute the cure. About a quarter cup of the cure was enough for a 4lb. pork belly. The pink salt, 6.25% by weight sodium nitrite, is colored pink to keep you from eating it directly. Its purpose in the cure is to allow the belly to be cooked for a long time at a fairly low temperature without risking bacterial spoilage, especially the case if this is to be cold-smoked. I finished mine in a 225 F oven to an internal temperature of 150 F, which would have killed the bacteria anyway, but better safe than sorry. I’m not worried about the small amount of sodium nitrite that might be in the food at this point; in large quantities, it may be unhealthy, but in this case it’s fine.

Right. The pork belly comes out of the fridge and is rinsed of any excess cure, then put into a low oven to slowly cook. (Above: Before and after; sliced.) This helps set the texture and flavor of the bacon. If this were proper American bacon it would be smoked, but I don’t have a smoking setup easily at hand and this was too simple to pass up. Once it comes out of the oven, use a sharp knife to remove the rind, let cool, then chill to allow it to set, and presto! You’re done! Slice it up or cut into lardons (1/4 in sticks) and enjoy some seriously piggy goodness.

I really don’t intend to buy supermarket bacon anymore. This has a reasonable shelf life (from what I’ve gleaned, about two weeks in the fridge or three months in the freezer) if you can keep it that long. The flavor and texture is head and shoulders above anything I’ve eaten, and it worked out to a little over $2 per pound, compared with $3.50-$5 at the supermarket. (This would certainly go up if I were sourcing my pork by mail order from a boutique farm that raised organic, specially-fed pigs, but I’m not there yet, much happier to support a local butcher.)

Try this at home. It’s easy. For more ideas, check out Charcuterie from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.

(Oh, and the finished product above? A bacon sandwich on a slighlty malformed homemade onion bagel. Yeah. YUM. But that’s another post.)

I drew these up in the wake of online discussions about why “nobody cooks anymore”. A few disclaimers at the end.

First, I must apologize for a simple French goof; the caption on the first picture should read, “Ceçi n’est pas un poulet”, not “une poulet”. I couldn’t cleanly edit my gaffe out of the picture. (If you don’t know, it’s a play on the most famous of Rene Magritte’s images in “The Treachery Of Images”.)

Second, I have nothing against Rachael Ray. If she’s convinced more people to go out and cook something instead of buying ready-made meals or fast food, then I’m all for it. There’s just something in her style or approach that puts my hackles up, that treats cooking like a paint-by-numbers exercise rather than promoting understanding and confidence. If you don’t understand why you do a certain step, then you’ve got nothing to go in if you deviate from those steps. And if you’ve cooked with enough recipes, you’ve learned that they’re far from foolproof.

Lastly, I mean what I say about throwing how-to dinner parties. Yes, I suppose Christine and I could host, but that’s impractical for a variety of reasons. Have cookbooks, will travel.

Let’s get something straight up front: I am not a morning person. My son’s school and my own job conspire to get me up somewhere around stupid o’clock in the morning. My morning ritual, then, needs to be something simple that my brain can handle on autopilot. Let’s take a peek:

In the center at the back is the scale and a small press pot. I use the press pot to measure out beans, because after a lot of trial and error, I decided that pouring coffee beans into the grinder is very error-prone for me and I need something easy. Forty five grams of coffee – check. (One time, with another grinder that had a clear plastic bowl for the beans, I managed to pour beans onto the lid of the bowl, sending them all over the kitchen. Jason nearly snorted cereal through his nose.)

To the right is the grinder. Yes, I grind my beans by hand – I can get a coarser grind out of this than I do with a normal coffee grinder, and it’s gentler on the beans. We picked this up on a trip to New Orleans years ago, before Katrina, in a little shop across from the Café du Monde. It takes filling the bowl twice to get through forty five grams of coffee. It’s repetitive. Mind numbing. Perfect for the morning.

To the left of the scale is the press pot. I use this to measure out water (plus a bit more) for the kettle, then put that on to boil while I’m grinding the beans. Once the water boils, pull it off the heat and wait thirty seconds – the best temperature for making coffee is around 180-200 degrees Fahrenheit, I believe, just below a boil. Put the grounds in the press pot, pour water over, stir to make sure the grounds are evenly wet, and set a time for four minutes.

Remember that “plus a bit more” water? That’s what you see in the coffee mug at the left. Pre-warming the mug with a little of the boiling water is a bit of gilding the lily, but I swear it actually does make a difference. So, while the coffee is brewing, I pour the last of the water in the mug and dump it out when the coffee is ready.

Plunge, pour, adulterate if necessary – a little cream, a little simple syrup – and enjoy. I can handle this in the morning.