Lamb Ribs; or, The Tears and Suffering of Innocent Baby Animals ^____^

Tears and Suffering taste good, real good. Very tender.

This was actually an impulse buy (I don’t usually eat lamb), but I am very happy with it.

By the way, the entry I made in moon language just expresses my resolution to practice moon language (and French) more often, so that they don’t deteriorate. I will try to keep English language posts at a majority, though, as that is a language common to almost all my readers, even ones that understand moon language or French. Actually, I think wordpress.com may be blocked in China.

It looks more charred than it actually is. In fact, the thicker pieces were still rare.

Ingredients: Rosemary, garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper, and 4 pieces of Tears and Suffering. I went and bought the most expensive bottle of balsamic vinegar I could find, but it was still only $12. It’s hard to be gourmet when you do all your shopping at Ralph’s… This now brings my vinegar collection to 6 bottles (I also have some rice vinegar which I’ve been experimenting with to get a peanut salad dressing)…

Chop garlic and rosemary finely.

Combine.

Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I used 2T and 4T. This balsamic vinegar is a lot thicker than the other bottle I have, probably on account of all that fig paste they put in there. Oh yeah, in case you can’t read the bottle, it says “Autumn Fig”.

Seal lamb chops with marinade in a plastic bag.

It is very important that you arrange the lamb chops in a 69 position.

翌日…

Oh my what a fine day it is to be grilling on my BALCONY!

Since I’ll be moving out soon, I want to make as much use of my balcony as possible. I own a grill and I’ve probably used it no more than 5 times. This must change!

Form a pyramid with the charcoal.

Oooooooooo.

While the fire burnt, I washed the grill, which had lain dirtily in a corner since the Yosemite trip last fall. Washing a grill is one of the worst things in existence, right up there with hernias and local truncation error analysis. Because, you know, it’s not a surface. You can’t just scrub it as you would a dirty plate. You have to get into each bar. It’s awful.

After the fire goes out, push the stack over to let the charcoal sit uniformly over the surface. The charcoals are not all grey but that is okay. They will continue to burn.

This is pretty fun, I have to say. I could do this every weekend. I could even have friends over. But they have to bring the beer.

Close up. I have placed the meatier part of the ribs in the centre where it is hotter. Don’t mind the other pieces of meat sitting on the grill. I am just testing out my kalbi recipe. There will be another entire post about that.

I also grilled some vegetables after this was over. I like this picture a lot for some reason. It’s like… art… or something.

Conclusion: lamb is very tender. We should all increase our consumption of baby animals.

Big Ass Trout

I did not realize how huge this fillet is until I plated it and it blotted out the whole plate, much as your gigantic ass blots out the field of vision of small children. Perhaps I should have cut it in half and made two servings? No matter, there is no way huge quantities of fish isn’t good for a mathematician.

It surely is a thing of beauty.

I wasn’t sure what to do with my trout. If left to my own devices I would probably have done what I usually do, a simple salt and pepper, and fry it up, possibly with some onion. But as I perused some recipes, I came across one called “Lime and Thyme”. You can’t pass up a name like that.

Lime and Thyme involves a marinade consisting in part of… get this, lime and thyme. NO WAI

Salt, thyme, pepper, and garlic.

Mix with olive oil and juice of a whole lime.

I put everything in a zip lock bag, cleverly submerging it under water, using the pressure to squeeze out all the air. I’m supposed to let it marinade for 2 hours, but I was hungry, so I just went ahead and made other dinner plans. Thus, a 2 hour marinade turned into a 24 hour marinade. That just means all the flavors got in there really good, right?

Fry, fry, fry. Are you beginning to grasp how geniusly apt the choice of the title was? I fry everything.

I made a sauce for the linguini with some wine and cilantro, and the marinade, and thar you go.

Shrimp and Avocado Salad

By that I mean (Shrimp) and (Avocado Salad), not (Shrimp and Avocado) Salad.

Here is the shrimp:

Here is the salad:

It’s also got some orange in it. I had a lot of trouble slicing the orange pulp from the rind, but I think I’ve got it down now.

One of the recipes I looked up (coincidentally, for a (shrimp and avocado) salad, but I didn’t use it) called for the avocado to be scooped out of the skin in one piece. I was wondering, how do you scoop it out in one piece? The answer: be as cool as I am.

But it doesn’t matter for this recipe because it’ll get cut up anyway.

I don’t have a salad bowl so I mixed it in my rice cooker. How crazy is I! LOL!

The dressing is made from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lime juice (between this and the shrimp I used a whole lime), and cilantro. Then I remembered I have sesame oil and figured that would be good too, so I added that. Also I didn’t know how much of everything I was supposed to put in so I think I made too much dressing.

The shrimp was delicious but it was such a hassle deshelling all of it (in addition to the decapitation). When I make it asian style (lazyman style?) I just cook it with the shell and then deshell them as I eat.

The moral of today’s story is: oh cilantro, what can’t you do?

All White Dinner #1 (Chilean Seabass)

Moneyshot:

When my dad was here we went to Ami Sushi, and the Chilean Seabass was the most expensive thing on the menu, so I had it. I liked the flavor, so when we went shopping at 99 Ranch, and i saw that they had Chilean Seabass, I bought some. Or rather, I had my dad wait in line to buy me a piece while I went to look for loot. I had wanted a filet, but I guess they only had steaks or something.

Since it was fresh, I didn’t want to freeze it. Since I didn’t freeze it, I needed to act fast. So I cooked it for dinner tonight.

I had gone out looking to buy a nice fancy plate (because this is kind of a fancy fish–I mean usually when I do fish it’s tilapia or salmon), you know, like those square plates that are tipped up at the edges, but couldn’t find any. So, I figured I’d use the black plates. Which led me to think that I should do an all white dinner. Then it would look really cool, like… like a tuxedo.

Ingredient: the seabass, ample parsley, white mushrooms, and soybean sprouts. Then I changed my mind and nixed the sprouts, because I am fickle, like women.

King Oyster mushrooms. They are 10$ a pound at ralph’s, but much cheaper at the asian supermarket, so I bought 2 packages. I should also mention, that the seabass cost $10.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the fish. Well, what I had at Ami was pretty simple, I think it was a simple pan roast. I decided to just season with salt and pepper and sear.

Moneyshot again. The fish is on a bed of parsley.

I tried to make a white sauce, because then it would look even cooler, but half ‘n half keeps curdling. I tried 3 times, and the last time I even tried to reduce the half ‘n half first. Epic fail.

Mussels

I didn’t want this blog to become dominated by fob cooking, and I haven’t had shellfish in a while, so today we made mussels, roughly following this recipe that’s French, I suppose. I actually bought them yesterday, but Justin’s friend who was here had made dinner, so I postponed my mussel plans, betting that you can keep them overnight with impunity.

[Edit: I was not violently ill up to 48 hours after this meal, so in fact, you can.]

Ingredients:

Apple cider, basil, parsley, shallots (and garlic), apple, and, oh, yeah, a fuckton of mussels! Actually, one fuckton turns out to be 1.5 pounds.

I scrubbed the mussels for almost half an hour. I guess this recipe is for you if you are good at cleaning and not good at cooking, because it is muy easy. 3 of the mussels turned out to be dead, which is about a 9% death rate.

A fascinating lesson in anatomy:

The beard is apparently attached to what seems to be a stalk coming out of the heart of the mussel. The only way to kill a mussel is by stabbing it there with a silver cross. But it’s interesting that in the live mussel, the meat covers the entire surface of the shell. I’ve only ever seen it cooked, where it’s all shrunk up, but I guess this makes a lot of sense!

[Edit: This was a dead mussel. Don't do this with the ones you actually want to eat!]

Shallot and garlic in butter. Mmmmm

Then, some wine and apple cider is added, as well as the apples.

It simmers for a while, et puis the mussels themselves and the parsley.

Finally, the moneyshot:

Bonus! More foods!
Breakfast from a few days ago: