Czech Mashed Potatoes

Posted on September 15, 2011 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

The Czech’s are good with a potato.  This simple recipe is a pleasant complement for an infinite list of meals.

  • Peel 4- 5 medium potatoes, preferably Yukon gold, or russet
    • Rinse and quarter, rinse well again (to remove excess starch)
  •  For the pot: use the smallest pot possible- you want the potatoes just covered by water, with about an inch of space for boiling:
    • cover the potatoes with cold water
    • bring to a boil over high heat, covered
    • add salt- more than for rice; less than for pasta
    • reduce heat; simmer for approx 10 minutes, partially covered, until a knife can be easily inserted into the middle of a potato
  • Strain into a colander; using the same pot (do not even rinse out the pot), press the potatoes through a ricer (or just mash the damn things), back into the pot
  • Make a well in the middle of the potato matter; add between one and two tablespoons of butter (adjust for how rich/fat/creamy); add a quarter cup of milk; put back on stove over low heat until butter softens; then mix into the potatoes. They are now done, or, at this point, you can add: a tablespoon of sour cream, and/or any herb you like (we love fresh basil) and mix.
    • serve with rizky, karbanatky, (I don’t know Czech for ‘serve with any thing’; leftovers are great with breakfast- make a patty, cook in hot oil and butter; takes a little longer than frying an egg).
Posted in Czech Food, Czech Potatoes Mashed, Starch (potatoes, rice, pasta) | Leave a comment

The God Forsaken Internet (glass food storage)

Posted on September 12, 2011 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

We have been buying bulk food lately. For some items, it seems insane to not buy bulk. By way of example, at Smart and Final, we bought 25 pounds of salt for five dollars; we have kosher salt, and gourmet salt (a friend gave me some of her homemade, Hawaiian salt), but simple, plain old salt serves the majority of purposes. The issue for us, is how to store the food. We are trying to get away from plastic storage- while I admit that this is a goal whose success will be limited for the foreseeable future, it cannot hurt.

I am no idiot, and I have been using the internet for a bloody long time. One might think that the internet would be a great ‘place’ to find glass food storage containers. I spent a half an hour. I was directed to sites, high on the list, under glass food storage, that had little to do with glass food storage. Perhaps because today is 9/11, I found plenty of items to stock my underground bunker.

I (finally) found a site called freundcontainer.com; the bastards let me crawl through their entire site, choose the containers I wanted, and ‘proceed to checkout’; at ‘pay’, I was informed that orders for less than $75 have a $15 processing fee. Our $20 case jumped to $35. I had not even added the shipping yet.

Do I actually miss the flea market? I know that I regularly hate the god forsaken internet.

Posted in Food Storage | Leave a comment

Labor Day Lamb- And then some

Posted on September 10, 2011 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

We found ourselves with guests coming late on Labor Day, and nothing to cook. So, we went to a local grocer and bought a pre-marinated boneless leg of lamb; I usually find pre-marinated meats way too salted, but this was really good (Bianchini, San Carlos). With time an issue, we started the meat in the oven at 325ºf, for 35 minutes (fat side up), while the grill prepped.

Then- a few minutes (seven?) over the hot coals, fate side up; moved the meat off the high heat to a cooler part of the grill for about 2o mins (I have a thing for flipping meat as infrequently as possible); then, fat side down over the hot coals for about five minutes, and then another twenty on a cool part of the grill.

We let the meat rest for about 20 mins.

The results were fantastic; the meat had medium-well done pieces at each end, and pink/red medium-rare in the middle, with a seared crust all around.

…And then some:

We had leftovers- always the goal. Thursday evening, we were heading home, too tired for a cooking commitment, and remembered the lamb. We had some leftover meat/tomato sauce (the recipe is posted here: “Meat and Tomato Pasta Sauce”, under pasta), and re-heated it, with the following: we ground-up the lamb in the Cuisinart, harvested a couple of tomatoes (the only ones ready that night were cherries, but still great), added some red wine, a squeeze of tomato paste, and some pepper- we ate it over wide egg-noodle pasta, garnished with fresh chopped Italian parsley. Damn.

So, we had a fantastic, healthy, fresh dinner, for a couple of dollars, and it took about a half an hour- could have been faster, but…

Posted in Barbecue, Lamb, Pasta | Leave a comment

Meals of the last few days

Posted on September 4, 2011 by SlowDownAndCook with Meals not So Fast

My grand plans for food took a back seat to my health this week, and that my wife was called away with her boss at the same time. Thankfully, we had some left-overs, and we live a short distance from everything one could ever really need.

That said, it was our anniversary (1st) on Friday; me exhausted wife and I tried a new restaurant based solely on the recommendation of our friend, Arthur- it was so damn good: Panda Dumpling on Laurel. They serve everything dim-sum style; the poor guy (one waiter and at least 25 guests), ran his ass off. The only thing we did not both love was the Singapore Style ribs- I was happy; Lenka less so. That said, it would have been excellent at twice the price.

No planning, last minute, no energy to cook, and our anniversary dinner was fantastic, and totally affordable. Yumm

DB

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