The Great Garlic Experiment

Let's get this out there right away:  I'm no chef.  About 2 years ago I decided to start teaching myself how to cook, and so far, I have a dozen dishes that I would say are pretty down pat, and some general talent in the kitchen that has resulted in almost no need for a fire extinguisher.  I'm proud of that.

But I do love a good "kitchen trick".  And today, I came across this video:


How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com

Now this is intriguing!  I don't hate peeling garlic (I love garlic too much to hate it) but if there's a way to avoid the flakes of parchment-like skin that float around the kitchen; the sticky fingers after hand-peeling each clove and the general time-consuming process it usually takes, I'm all for it.

Here are the results of my experimentation:  Here's my garlic:

One head of garlic.  Slightly old, but hey, whatever. Step one:  Smash with the heel of your hand. Notice in the video, the way his garlic head splits apart into many pieces and the papery peel goes every-which-way.  Notice mine...which didn't do that. At all.  I just sort of smooshed the top of it: 

My first thought on this was that it is too humid - the garlic skin isn't crispy-paper like I think it should be. (To be fair, my first thought after smashing the garlic unsuccessfully was "Oh, ^@(*^$@)# that HURT!")  So I peeled the garlic open a little instead: 

Ah, that looks better.  Next, I put it in two bowls and shook it like crazy, just like he said.  Ten seconds later, here's the result: 

Of the 10+ garlic cloves, two were peeled! Just like in the video!  The rest were still wrapped in a little paper, but I'm thinking that fresh, dry garlic might actually work a bit better than my old garlic did.  Still, this is a pretty cool trick!  I did notice that the garlic cloves were a little bruised afterwards, but if you use it right away, I'm sure it's totally fine. Yay!

Lions and Pizzas and Sake, oh my

sake du jour

The weekend draws to a close, and you will need to forgive me if this post rambles a bit. I have had some wine (sake, to be precise) before and during dinner, and it's gone straight to my head.

No one will ever be able to accuse me of being someone who can hold my liquor.  I remember meeting a friend of the boy's for drinks one night at a bar, and we were chilling, and I didn't feel much like drinking.  So I just went up to the bar and asked for cranberry juice in a martini glass.  The friend was so impressed that I put down 5 or 6 "Cosmos" and told the boy that he really appreciated the fact that he had found a woman who could drink like I do. Hee!

Anyway, the weekend was great.  Yesterday was the boy's birthday and we went into the city to have lunch and see a show  We had a pizza and burger at Bobby Flay's Bar Americain in midtown... and it was devine!

Bar Americain, in NYC

Grilled pizza with bacon, onions, and other healthy stuff

And then a quick tour of Times Square, including the M&M store (yep, there's an entire M&M store, complete with a wall of M&Ms in just about every color you could possibly imagine)

Times Square... and the tourists

Wall of chocolate

 And our final destination.... to see The Lion King at the Minksoff Theatre.  I saw this about 15 years ago and it was just as good this time as I remembered....

The Minskoff Theater (sorry..."Theatre")

Overall it was a fantastic journey to the city, despite the forecast for rain.

Some cool costumes

Some more cool costumes

Today was relaxation time.  I did a huge amount of laundry (whoah, this blog is getting SO exciting now, isn't it?) and made a tofu/broccoli/red pepper/garlic/fresh ginger stir fry for dinner from my favorite cookbook in the world, the ATK's Healthy Family Cookbook. I think I've found the perfect summer stir fry sauce... here's the recipe!

Lemon Stir Fry Sauce 
(makes about 1 cup)
6 tablespoons low-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice from 2 lemons
1/4 cup Chinese rice cooking wine (I use sake) or dry sherry
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Whisk ingredients together, and add after you stir-fry the veggies and let it all simmer together for anywhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, until it starts to slightly thicken.  It's totally delicious and would work with chicken or shrimp stir-fry too.

Shroomies and other (questionably) edible things

In case you haven't heard, there's been a little rain here in New England this summer.  Record amounts. More rain than in recorded history. In fact, it's pouring right now. There's a pretty little waterfall cascading down the front of the house (which probably means the gutters need some cleaning.) It doesn't bother us too much - we're on top of a hill and so far, nothing has leaked in the house or pooled in the basement.  So I can't really complain about it... the grass has never looked this good in the late summer months!

The rain has also given us quite a few new lawn ornaments.  This popped up yesterday (the mushroom, not the dollar bill. Though it would be nice if my yard suddenly started sprouting bills of any denomination.)

mega lawn shroomie

I spent a good chunk of time this afternoon trying to figure out what type of mushroom it is (and if you ever need a mushroom identifier, this site is pretty cool:  MycoKey Mushroom Identifier)

So what I think we have here is a very tightly clustered group of Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca (a.k.a. a "False Chanterelle".)  Some sites say that it is edible and tastes very mushroomy.  Other sites say it's poisonous and will kill you. First off, don't you think there would be some general consensus on this kind of thing? Second, erring on the side of caution, we're going to pass on eating it, and hope that the cats, rabbits and groundhogs in the neighborhood do the same. Also, if it starts taking over the entire yard (entirely possible with the amount of rain happening right now) I'll post photos of that, too.

On the flip side of the edible issue, today I got this in the mail:

Happy!!!  In case you aren't aware, I am a huge fan of the entire America's Test Kitchen line of products - magazines, websites, blogs, cookbooks... you name it, I'm addicted to it. My two go-to books thus far are the ATK Healthy Family Cookbook and ATK Slow Cooker Revolution (this is the boy's favorite, too.) But this monster book arrived today and I can't wait to get started!  Not only has every recipe I've ever tried from these guys worked gorgeously, but they have lots of tips that are pretty cool, too.  Again this is one of those things you'll be hearing a lot about as I experiment with cooking and foodstuffs.

But today was also a baking day. Neither the boy nor I are very keen on cakes, so for his birthday-baked-goody, I made chocolate chip cookies.  (Lucky for me, he doesn't care for batter, so the bowl and spatula was all mine!)  Happy early birthday to you!

Birthday baked goodies