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Hello, GWS! Thanks to LC for the accessible theme. First ICSA for me after lurking forever. My SO got super excited and made a menu. There's some typos but it's just so   When you’re a rural Midwestern youth, detasseling is one of the few and fastest ways to get your hands on cash. Hybrid seed corn takes up a lot of central US farm land. Probably other farm land, too. They never told us what is was for, though! Companies plant seed corn in 1:3-6 ratios, sometimes 2:3-6. One row is “male,” while the other rows are "female" of another variety. They don't want the "female" rows to self-pollinate, so a machine whacks the tassels off the female rows, but isn’t nearly accurate enough. Removing all the tassels to within a tolerable threshold requires human labor. All that meant to me is come early July, I’d wake up at 3am to meet the bus at 4am. We’d get to the field by 6am, work until 3pm. We'd pull into the parking lot between 4pm and 5pm. As far as jobs go, it beats the slaughterhouse. I could get $800 - $1200 in a month, depending on the year and how many rows I picked per day. At 13, that's pretty good. We're going to start with a lot of prep. Given the above story, the first step in towards our meal today shouldn’t be surprising. Seed corn != sweet corn, but I imagine CORN is a fine enough theme to riff on. Let's process some corn!  If you can get a firm grip on the fuzz, you can get it all off in one tear. Smart shuckers will have a paper bag on the counter to aid clean up.  Food is beautiful. Let's admire these kernels for a moment.  Now we quarter them to fit in the steamer. They'll get about 15 minutes. Our corn will return shortly.   Now, however, it is time to do violence to cherries. I have always loved cherries. I try to eat them as much as possible, in as many things as possible. On the Maraschino - Cough Syrup scale, I prefer the medicinal. Surprisingly, I do not have a cherry pitter. This chopstick will do.  These bad boys are getting candied, so into the pot they go with sugar and a squeeze of lemon. I never taste the lemon, but The Recipe demands. It also demands almond extract, which I left out. The vagaries of life.  Ooh yeah there we go. This takes about an hour and 15 minutes, which is nearly unbearable unless you've got other business to get about.  Fortunately, we need to make some B E A N S. Beans were the first dish I made for myself. When I could wield a can opener without lacerating something precious, I'd crack open a can of refried beans, dump it into the pot (enjoying the wet slurp, of course), add cheese, chili powder and cumin. This I would heat, stir and eat with tortilla chips. I helped my mom make other stuff earlier, but refried beans were definitely my first cooking operation. I wanted to elevate that a bit, so we're going with the instant pot. I probably went with this group of individuals because of Kenji's black bean burger, the similarity my guest later pointed out.  Getting the instant pot going, adding the peppers. I don't love the instant pot, but I need the stovetop for other dealings. Besides, dry beans are cheap beans. I'll top this with some stock and the pictured spices, then set it to high for 35 minutes.  ...the cherries grow boisterous.  We also need to get some black lentils softened. These are pretty plain for now, just hitting them with salt and simmering. Story to come.  Corn is done! Hoo boy steamed sweet corn smells good. I'm going to let these drain and cool off before more processing.  It is nearly bean time, and they need to go onto something nearing a tortilla chip. A corn cracker will do! And quite easily, at that.  All of that gets mixed then hit with water 50ml at a time. This took about 150ml, maybe I could have used less if I was patient. Once it could form a ball and I rolled it, my assistant was kind enough to grace me with some straight lines.   While the crackers are going we must enter what is known as The Kiwi Zone. Whenever I went grocery shopping with my dad as a larval stage human, I got to pick out a can of Shasta. Every time, I chose Kiwi Strawberry. Because today needs kiwi in it, and because I forgot to make shrubs, we're using Kiwi Basil Syrup to get us in the door. Sugar, basil from my neighbor who has granted me a Key to the Herb Garden and a little water to get things mingling. Peeler courtesy of Cooking Brain thinking peel = peeler needed. Lol.   Lookit that. I'm feeling very good about myself at this point.  My guests are here and the crackers are done, which is good because I promised prompt food and am feeling behind. Thus is born the first food item. The crackers needed both more time and a thinner rolling, but all parties were well pleased.  Mmm time for a drink. In summer 2019, Helen Rosner loosed a tweet about espresso tonics, and I've been drinking them ever since. Except I don't like how sweet tonic gets so I do mineral water. I've been seeing a lot of the hype coffee shops do these with juice in the last couple years. Probably also good. 2019 was really lovely for me for a lot of reasons, and this cold, bitter thing was always a bright spot in the week. The Moka Pot is going. Fax was kind enough to part with an encore, which I used to grind these very beans. They are not special beans, however.  Ice and glasses are ready. One small, because I know my assistant will hate this, but is gracious enough to humor me.  Moka pot is one thing, but if you (or a barista) pulls a good shot, the fizz gets with the foam and does wonderful things. You can kind of extrapolate how that might be from this image.  Woo! Corn has cooled. We're gonna need the kernels for a couple dishes.  First, creamed corn/corn meal biscuits. I removed the kernels, then failed to record the cream step, but it's just heavy cream, a little flour, salt and heat for 10 minutes until thick. The creamed corn goes into the dry ingredients with some eggs and we're rolling.  Boom. In my haste I forgot about overworking biscuit dough, but these are loose enough they'll turn out fine!  To accompany our biscuits, we're going to need to do some messy things to an eggplant. I saw a horrible asmr TikTok by Vegan Bunny on a miso eggplant dish. As horrible as the mooshing asmr was, the food looked incredible. But I needed something mapley to go with corn biscuits. First, we're roasting garlic and onion with butter and maple syrup.  Get most of the papery flakes off, chop it, drizzle olive oil and maple syrup, then wrap in foil.   Onions get cut into 1/2" ish slices. Melted butter/maple syrup go in the pan, then into the onion pan.   Both happily in the oven. I enjoyed my foil garlics, though I could have done those a bit neater. One leaked. Oh well.  Eggplants get scored, seared on each side 2 - 3 minutes, then the flat side again. This opens them up a bit, which allows for max roasted garlic/onion mash coverage.  Here they are done. Could have smacked these with the broiler, but I'm happy.  Laid down some lacto blueberries I blended w/sugar. They weren't ready, basically just blueberries in brine even though they got 5 days in a warm cupboard. Still worked out pretty well with this. Not sure why I chose the dish rack as the background here, but the busy brain does funny things. Regardless, the eggplant was abhorrently delicious. Like too drat good, could have eaten so much more. This all worked well together, but a few notches better on the biscuits and bloobs, and this would have been bonkers. Onto the next while the guests chow down!  Many summer moons ago, I was watching some food thing, probably Ugly Delicious, with a good friend, and saw Nadine Redzepi serve up some immaculate looking panna cotta. I wished out loud that I could make that, and my friend got us up, and we made the most perfect panna cotta I've ever had. In keeping with the theme, we're going with sweet corn panna cotta. My guests are vegetarian, so we're going to try Agar Agar powder, which is a first for me! I am skeptical and my inner perfectionist is furious, but we'll speak kind words to him, all the while choosing hospitality, and press on. We use the rest of the kernels we removed for the biscuits and gather the dairy.  Some reserved cobs go in the "heat the cream" step to get some of the corn flavor out.  Blooming the agar, with which I am pleading, "Please set."  Kernels get blended. Look at this stuff. Behold the corn aesthetic. Breathe the corn atmosphere.  Agar goes into the cream after the cobs are banished. Blended kernels in, too. Everything gets blended, then strained, then ramekined for later. (please set)   Next, watermelon. How can you summer appropriately without watermelon? My mom taught me that the best watermelons feel too heavy and sound hollow upon knocking. My grandfather also taught me this any time we encountered watermelons. I don't know if it's true, but it worked for this one. This is a watermelon and tomatillo salad. I sliced red onions Very Thin and diced some jalapenos. Pinch salt. That's it. Put simply, this was a gorgeous salad. Delightful in every way. The spiciness made you go back for more watermelon, then the spice set in, and a deliciously vicious circle was established. As good as everything was, the simplicity here really caught me off guard!  For the next dish, the story goes that I got to spend a few weeks in London way back in college. I ate pate for the first time in the St. Paul's Cathedral crypt restaurant. It was so drat good. So here we have some veggie pate that we're going to eat with the rest of the biscuits and crackers. Butter gets hot for the shallots and herbs.  Walnuts get simmered to soften. Grated shiitakes for flavor.  Tons of other mushrooms get sauteed.  And thus, mushroom pate. My guests really loved this, but it was a little too dirt-adjacent for my tastes.  The Kiwi Zone returns! At this point, fatigue was setting in a bit. So it was time to drink. Why not a Kiwi Basil Gin Fizz, in the fun way that gets all foamy? Too bad I don't have hi ball glasses!  This was immaculate. Some more basil in the syrup might have bumped it into heavenly, but it may throw off the balance, too. Will be making this often.  Sweet corn panna cotta time! Did it set???? lol, lmao I have some in the fridge that I will try tomorrow. The last time I did it with gelatin, I got a perfect set in 4 ish hours. The lacto blueberries were going to go on this, but since they didn't work (yet), I left them off. It was delicious by itself. Delicate, as panna cotta should be. But not set, so.  Let us console ourselves with haggis. During my time in London, I was going to spend my free weekend around...London. My buddy convinced me we should actually do something, so we opened a map. I was looking at Scotland, and remembered I had heard of Loch Lomond in a song, and that's about as good a justification I had to go anywhere rather than somewhere else. So off we went, and I had a magical time. My buddy had his birthday, I ate some incredible haggis, even the water there tastes incredible. Sights were seen, food was had, and Loch Lomond's bonnie, bonnie banks were enjoyed. Then, I read Moby Dick on the train back to London with the cliffs and the ocean after them out the window. Good days. Didn't know how to knock this up properly, but I found a recipe that looked fine on the Pesky Vegan's site. I dunno, let's try it. Onion and carrot goes in with butter.  Black lentils reappear with some mushrooms and more butter. It was at this point, I felt my inexperience with a big menu. I just made a very similar dish, and realized I was about to end with two desserts in a row. Ah well, we're having fun and life is good when good food is happening.  This went into a loaf pan and baked a good while.  And since we're partying, why not break out the special occasion morels. I found these on my birthday. I also got a new job offer which saved me from serious misery and opened up a lot of opportunity. Best share these with friends. Rehydrate, then hit with oil with some lemon and soy sauce, then finished with stock and butter.  Whisky sauce is obviously necessary here, though I have no true whisky. I apologize to the Scottish. This ol' bottle of Weller should suffice.  Right?  Hmmm....  Well it's the flavor that counts, even if you can't set it on fire.  Veggie haggis, mashed potatoes (unphotographed oops), morels and "whisky" sauce.  Summer hot. Drink cold. Nuff said. I froze most of my watermelon and all the strawberries, thus shorting myself on watermelon for the salad. Oops. But this was good. Nothing fancy, just cold, bright and refreshing. Blend it all up with some white rum, plus a little water to break it a bit into something slurpable.   Can you handle some blasphemy? Maybe, if you're not from Florida. If you are I'm sorry. Key lime pie is not good to me. Key limes are not good to me. It's all so one note, and that note is overly tart and bitter. I had to eat a lot of it when I visited my grandparents in Florida. They were not pushy at all, but it was my grandmother's favorite dessert, and I wanted to make my grandmother happy. In all honesty, I like plain old regular limes more. And I like them even better with something else to cut the tart. Enter those candied cherries from the very beginning. When they were nearly done, I slapped them with some blackstrap rum and cooked them down a bit more. Sheesh... these were incredible.  Lime mousse time. This is super easy. Whip heavy cream to stiff peaks.  Whisk 1/2 Cup of lime into 14oz sweetened condensed milk. Fold both together.  Cherry gelee from the candying process goes in the bottom.  Mousse and cherries on top. This was bonkers good. Tart, sweet, rich...it shut my brain off for a moment. If I tweaked it, I'd go for a lighter mousse. Still, it was magical. Magical enough to eat another dessert, even.  I took the nickel from my pocket, then an orange. Read that poem about oranges, please. It is easy and quite nice. Speaking of, oranges are the Floridian citrus export that I really enjoy. I love oranges almost as much as love cherries. My grandfather always sent us a box of oranges for Christmas, and I miss receiving that from him, then calling to tell him we got the oranges. My SO also loves dreamsicle ice cream, so orange ice cream seemed a good fit. Added cardamom to make it a little more interesting. Also made this one dairy free so the sorta sensitive to dairy, but eats it anyway guests could go ham. Sub the heavy cream for cream of coconut and the milk for alternatives of your choosing, ezpz. Missed pictures of the base-making, but the ice cream maker did a good job.  Gud.  Despite some hick ups and planning I'd revise, I had a ton of fun and my guests had a blast. Thanks GWS! ThePopeOfFun fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Aug 15, 2022 |
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Aug 15, 2022 05:20
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drat, you knocked it out of the park! Do you work in the industry? I'd gladly pay a stupid amount for that meal. These in particular I feel like I need in my body. Also, espresso tonics are one of the best things you can drink in the world, good job.
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Aug 16, 2022 06:09
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Those cherries look so good!
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Aug 16, 2022 14:22
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BrianBoitano posted:drat, you knocked it out of the park! Do you work in the industry? I'd gladly pay a stupid amount for that meal. Thanks! I have managed quick service restaurants, but that's more manufacturing than cooking. If I have any skill, it is blind confidence over a long period of time. Yeah, that eggplant slayed. I didn't expect it to be so good.
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Aug 16, 2022 16:37
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As an Iowa kid, this hits close to home. If there is a Hell, I'm convinced it's being handed a corn knife and pointed at a corn field at 6am the day after a rain. If I could enter my own ICSA, it'd be corn on the cob, pork chops, potato salad, and cherry cobbler. I am insanely jealous that you found morels this year too, I had zero luck.
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Aug 17, 2022 02:27
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