Camera Cleanup #9

I've got a lot going on right now, so I'm afraid my posting will be a bit sporadic. But I do have some cool stuff I'm planning on doing, so don't forget about me! And since I'm already posting something, here is a pic of egg salad with salami. Seriously, it's wicked good.

My Favorite Tuna Melt

So my brothers house is a mixed bag, lighting wise. Sometimes the lighting is awesome, sometimes it sucks. The problem is the lighting is best in the morning, when I'm not really doing much cooking. So that's why these pictures of this kick ass tuna melt are kind of crappy. But it was still wicked good, doesn't it look it? Instead of doing it grilled cheese style I took a roll and put the tuna on one half and the cheese on the other. Then I popped it into the toaster oven until browned and delightful.
When you do it this way the tuna gets some browning too and it's just lovely. Hm, I just realized I don't think I've shared my tuna salad recipe here. Well, that's a post for another day. I'm tired and need more coffee.

WTF, Ham Salad.

No, that's not what it's called, it's more my reaction to said salad. See, I had never had ham salad before I made this and I have to say for something that is loaded with stuff I like I really wasn't impressed. Although it might have been my fault, which is why I'm asking you, my readers, for help. Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

I had a chunk of ham and I wanted to make salad out of it. So I did. I looked up several recipes, realized it was just like any other mayo based salad and just kind of whipped it up. It had mayo, mustard, pickles, some chunks of cheese, you know, good stuff like that. And it was way, way too rich.

I don't know if I added too much mayo, if I should have put the ham in a food processor to make the chunks smaller (I cubed it originally) or what but it was just too rich. I do think part of it is that I used too much mayonnaise. When I make chicken salad I expect the chicken to absorb a certain amount of it, but ham doesn't seem to do that so I miscalculated how much I needed a bit. I think. I also might have wanted to use a less smokey ham, the one I used was pretty strong. So, does anyone have a good recipe for ham salad? I want to not let one bad experience with it ruin it for me, but damn, it just wasn't very good.

Deviled Egg Salad

6 eggs, hard boiled and shelled
2 1/2 tbls mayo
1 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Put everything in a bowl and mix it with a fork until it's the consistency you like. Let it chill for at least 2-3 hours, overnight is best.

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We seem to have skipped the best part of spring here in Boston. We went straight from cold and rainy to hot and muggy. Now I actually like cold and rainy (call me nuts, you won't be the first), but hot and humid is something I just don't need, especially so early in the year.

See, once the temperature reaches a certain point then I start getting... irritable. It's not pretty. Local villagers hide in their closets, root cellars and whatnot once it hits about 80, terrified that I'll come to town looking for a sandwich so I don't have to turn on the stove, or worse, an ingredient for what I've finally decided to cook, which they surely don't have.

That's when I pop and go off on a rampage. I spend the afternoon stomping on cars, throwing trains into buildings, breathing atomic fire and separating plucky children from their loving (and most likely single parent) families, sending them off on madcap adventures which end with a minor tragedy, two people finding love and everyone learning a valuable lesson. Then they are all reunited in an excessively sentimental scene, possibly involving a giant lizard, where they all vow not to take each for granted and be good, good people. At least until the sequel.
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Sooo, that doesn't really happen. But it is true that when it's hot I don't want to cook, which is why I decided to make some egg salad the other day. I mentioned deviled egg salad back in the beginning of last year in a post about egg salad in general, but didn't really elaborate on it. And that recipe up top is the reason. There's not really much to it, although it is greater than the sum of it's parts. It's just my basic egg salad (which I finally took down measurements for) with paprika in it. As I mentioned before, I like my egg salad nice and simple (not to mention a bit light on the mayo). The only thing I would add to this is a little diced shallot, but alas I had none.

Oh and yes, those are potato chips on it. Potato chips are a good time on sandwiches, even if they don't subtract calories like lettuce does.

Ponzu Tuna Salad

1 5 oz can of tuna, drained
2 tbls minced shallot
3 tbls diced red pepper
2 tbls mayonnaise
1 tsp ponzu sauce
pinch of red pepper flakes
black pepper to taste
salt, if needed

Mix everything well, serve on a roll, bed of greens, sliced bread, whatever. Letting it chill for an hour or two wouldn't hurt.

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Once again Foodbuzz has come through with an awesome product sample for me. This time it's Kikkoman ponzu sauce. It's basically soy sauce with lime in it. The lime flavor is pretty subtle but it definitely does good things, I like it a lot. I figured I'd make some tuna salad with it. Not sure why, but that's what came to me. Heh. Anyway I did it and it was awesome. I even made it all fancy pants with shallot and stuff. It was quite different from my normal tuna salad and a really nice change. So who out there has used ponzu sauce? This was the first I had heard of it, what other stuff do you do with it?

Red Potato Salad with Bacon and Duck Eggs

All measurements are estimates I'm afraid, this was whipped up on the fly. Just adjust everything to taste.

2 lbs new red potatoes
1/2 cup diced sweet onion
2 hard boiled duck eggs
3 cloves of garlic
4 slices of thick cut bacon
2-3 tbls jarred pickle brine
1 tbl dijon mustard
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp dried tarragon
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the bacon and cut into 1/2" pieces. Peel the garlic and boil it and the potatoes until they potatoes are cooked. Pull out the garlic and mash it into a paste. Cut the potatoes into 1" cubes. Sprinkle the pickle juice evenly over the potatoes while they are still hot then let them cool completely. Mix together the garlic paste, onion, mayonnaise, mustard, tarragon, salt and pepper. Chop the eggs and fold them, the bacon, the potatoes and the dressing gently together until everything is coated. Let chill for at least an hour, overnight is best.

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Here's a weird thing: I think this is the first potato salad I've ever made. How does a dude who has been cooking for virtually his entire life and loves barbecue manage to go this long without making potato salad? I'm not really sure and I was there for most of it. Part of it, certainly, is that my sister in law makes a kick ass one, which limits my need to make my own. But as for the rest... I just don't know.

So when my girlfriend comes home with some duck eggs (which are a post by themselves, they are from the same source as the fresh chicken eggs I got some time ago) and a request for potato salad I was kind of at a loss. She wanted me to make a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, but I couldn't find the magazine it was in and I'm not paying for a website that has the same recipes as the magazines I already have subscriptions to. But that's a rant for another time. What we could remember is that they sprinkled some pickle brine on the hot potatoes. And my girlfriend is a bit nutty about pickles. So I took that idea and made this.

First, of course, potatoes. I took a page from my moms mashed potato method and boiled some garlic cloves with them. This softens and mellows them and makes it easy to mash them into a paste. Mixing a little kosher salt in there helps the mashing too.In fact, it mellows the garlic a great deal so if you do it this way use at least twice as much as you would if it were raw. Once the garlic was soft enough to mash and while the potatoes were finishing cooking I made the dressing. It was a bunch of mayo, that garlic paste, diced sweet onion, mustard, salt, pepper and tarragon. I love tarragon in mayonnaise based salad dressings, it's such a great combination. I also like sweet onions the best for these things, but use whatever you like.I also didn't measure anything. Again. And it sucks because the proportions came out perfect. Anyway, I chopped up the egg. Look at that. See how much yolk there is? Duck eggs are my new favorite. I pulled the yolk out of the white and chopped them separately. I wanted the yolk in bigger pieces so they wouldn't break up all the way when I mixed it up. But before I could get to mixing I had to chop up the potatoes. And then sprinkle them, while they were still hot, with pickle brine. You could use vinegar if you wanted, but the sweet zinginess (I used some from bread and butter pickles) from the brine was really good. Putting it on the potatoes hot makes it soak right in and not water down the dressing. Which is good. Then you need to let the potatoes cool completely before you mix it all together. Oh, I also made bacon. It doesn't really matter when it's made for stuff like this, you could make it the day before if you wanted. Since it's going to be soaking up the dressing for several hours the texture isn't going to be perfect no matter what. So why stress it? Anyway, once the potatoes have cooled, you want to mix it all up. Well, fold it gently so everything doesn't get all mushed. Unless you like it like that, then mush away. I briefly toyed with completely mixing the egg yolk into the dressing, but decided not to. I bet it would have been good, but I wanted chunks. Maybe next time I'll do half and half. Then it was chilled for several hours and that's that.Simple and awesome. My girlfriend said it was the best potato salad ever. She might be biased because of the bacon though.

Guacamole Chicken Salad and the Giveaway Winner

The winner is... Vegannewbie! Because she started it off with "There once was..." and that's just awesome. Shoot me an email at bobcooksstuff@gmail.com with your shipping info and we'll get your salsa package out to you. Oh, one thing. They ran out of the coupons so they're going to toss another jar of salsa in for you. Just so you know.

Here's a quickie for you guys. I made this chicken salad with some guacamole that my girlfriend bought. It's just chicken, 3 parts guacamole, 1 part mayo, some diced onion, salt and pepper. It was really good. We made wraps with it (that I didn't get a shot of). We just put some salad we got from a pizza shop on them, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, the whole deal. It was wicked good.

Ok, I'm Back!

For real this time. And although I didn't get to do any of the blog housekeeping I wanted, I have been cooking. And despite all the cooking I've done I didn't get a single good instructional set of pictures. So I'm just going to show you guys some of what I did get and babble about food photography for a while, no recipes today.

I'm getting better with my new camera, but I'm still not getting as many good shots as I want. Some of it is that I often don't have time to set up (or want to deal with) my tripod, some of it is that I've been into photography for less than a year so I still don't really know what I'm doing, yet another part of it is that my new camera wants a different kind of light than my last one and some of it, too, is that I'm still (sometimes) trying to take my pictures quickly so my food doesn't get cold. Heh, I need to get over that. But here is the main lesson I've learned about photography: lighting is key. Here, I brought some visual aids.

Bad lighting. Better lighting. Still not ideal, but the second is much better. The difference was tilting the dish a bit so it was facing the light source more. You know what else would have made it look better? Setting it up on a stable surface and using my tripod instead of holding the dish in one hand and the camera in the other. That's a habit I need to break if I want to get good food shots. Oh, that's some broccoli salad for those who are curious. One of my favorite summertime sides. I made it a bit differently this time, I swapped the onion for shallots and the sunflower seeds for pine nuts. I think I did something else too, but I really don't remember. Anyway, it was wicked good, I used some thick cut pepper crusted bacon. Of course, I got a shot of that. Mmmm, bacon. Speaking of lighting (we were, a while ago) I'm not sure what made me put this shot of the roast beef up the other day. This one is really much better. Because of better lighting.

Another thing I've learned, just because the little rectangular focus indicator is where you want it doesn't mean it's actually focusing on what you think it is. For example, the rim of the glass instead of the strawberry shortcake itself. And yeah, that's the wrist strap in the upper right hand corner. I'm known for my attention to detail. Heh.

Well, that's most of the stuff I don't have plans for. I have a bunch of reviews coming up, so Saturdays are full for a while. I've got some new cat pics for Sundays, too. My girlfriend is eating dinner with coworkers tonight, so I'm finally making some lamb. Hopefully I'll get some good shots and have that up on Wednesday.

Chicken Salad with Caramelized Onions, Apples and Pine Nuts

Sorry, this is one where I can't list a real recipe. Proportions for dressings for this kind of stuff is really a personal thing, what I like might not be what you like and vice versa. Plus I have no idea how much of each thing I put in. Heh. But here is what is in it, with some estimates on how much:

cooked chicken, about 1 1/2 pounds (I braised it in chicken broth with parsley, black pepper, sage, rosemary and thyme)
caramelized onion, 3/4 of a cup before caramelizing (I'll do a how-to post on that soon)
pine nuts, no clue
a golden delicious apple, it was kind of small
fresh black pepper, lots. At least a dozen twists on a grinder
sage, maybe a half a tsp.
tarragon, maybe a 1/2 tsp
mayonnaise, quarter cup or so? Probably more.
dijon mustard, about a tsp

So, I've covered chicken salad before. But this one is not only pretty different and that was an old post that wants updating. Of course, I didn't manage to get pictures of the whole process this time. Somehow. I thought I had. But here we are. So there will probably be at least one more chicken salad post, some time in the future. Probably in the summer, to make it more topical.

I've always kept my chicken salad simple in the past, this is actually the first time I've ever put fruit in it. Or nuts. Both were quite good, I was most pleased. I don't remember when I got the idea to caramelize the onion, but that was probably my favorite part. It gave a lot of great, mellow onion flavor, plus a bit of sweetness. I usually add tarragon to chicken salad, but figured if I was adding apple I should really put some sage in there. A little bacon would have been good too...

Anyway, here is what I did. I took everything but the apples, chicken and nuts and mixed it all up. Then I peeled, cored and cut the apple and tore the chicken into bite sized chunks. I tear the chicken instead of cube it because you get more texture that way. Plus I don't have to re-dirty up my cutting board. Then I added the pine nuts. Then the dressing. And mixed it. And didn't take a picture other than the one in the ramekin and the sandwich. But I got a picture of how evenly toasted my sub roll was. That's something, right? But this was a great chicken salad, I would definitely make it again. Next time I want to use cashews instead of pine nuts, I bet that would be even better. Some prosciutto would have been nice, maybe even some melon instead of apple. A bit of fresh squeezed lemon juice or maybe some zest would add some nice brightness, especially if adding meat. Well, more experiments are clearly needed.

Sunday Cats and a Sandwich

First things first. Since this is a food blog, here's the sandwich. It's chicken salad with caramelized onion, apple and pine nuts. I'll post the recipe tomorrow. It was wicked good. Especially on a toasted roll with some spinach.

Now, the cats. Here's the thing. Like I mentioned last week, I'm all out of posts from my old blog. So if the Sunday cat posts are a bit more rambling than usual for a while it's because I haven't written about them in ages. But all of these pictures are reasonably new, Bob and Noodles have settled the pecking order (Noodles is in charge) and things are pretty much settled. Some of the pictures won't be so hot, mostly because they're often cutest at night and I can't get decent lighting in this apartment at night. But since I'm not trying to make them look appetizing I'm a bit less concerned about the light quality. Some of them are good though, here's Bob looking particularly regal. And Noodles pretending to be a seal or something. Then there is this one. See, Bob is being really cute, cuddling up with my girlfriends foot. But the lighting isn't very good at all. This one is Noodles in the cat carrier that we were trying to get Bob into. He had to go to the vet and she wasn't helping. Heh, Bob looks more invaded than normal here. I had never seen them share a box before this. Not to mention Bob sitting still for kisses. Of course if he goes to sniff Noodles she smacks him. And if she wants to sleep in the chair while he is she just sits on top of him. He doesn't seem to mind, but he might just be thinking "If I ignore her, maybe she'll just go away. She just wants me to react."

Broccoli Salad

4 cups fresh broccoli, cut into florets
1/2 lb bacon, cooked crisp and cut into 1" pieces
1 cup sliced raw mushrooms
3/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup red onion

Dressing:
3/4 cup mayo
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
2 tbls lemon juice

Mix up the dressing. Toss everything together till coated evenly, let chill for at least 1 hour.

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I hadn't had broccoli salad in forever, and forgotten about it completely, when I saw this post over at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother. Then I remembered it was wicked good and I had my mom's recipe for it. So, I made some. I swapped out the raisins for craisins, which I like a lot more. And I left out the mushrooms, obviously. Now that, while not unexpected for me, actually caused a minor problem. I should have also cut out some of the dressing or added a cup of something more. There was a lot of it for the amount of stuff in the salad. But I didn't even think of it. So, if you're thinking to yourself "damn, that's a lot of dressing on there", you're right. If you leave in the mushrooms, add an extra cup of broccoli, cut down the dressing or add something else and it won't be as saucy.

First, dressing. Sour cream, sugar and mayo, which aren't the most exciting photo subjects, especially in a milky plastic measuring cup. I, er, forgot about the lemon juice. Whoops. Now dice some onion, you need a quarter cup. I apparently used a half cup. But it was still good. I added the onion to the dressing to make sure it was evenly distributed. Then I mixed that up and let it sit till I had the rest of the stuff ready. Next you need some broccoli. Four cups, five if you are omitting the mushrooms. If you haven't already, I suggest cooking your bacon because you need to toss that, the seeds and the dressing in the pot and mix it up. Now toss in the craisins, since you forgot to before. And there you go. Now just let it chill for at least an hour and then you will be ready to consume the deliciousness.