Udon Noodle Salad

This meal came about because I had a lone zucchini in the fridge. I like to use fresh Udon noodles because they cook faster than dried noodles (severe patience problem). Other vegetables and other noodles may be substituted.

Udon Noodle Salad

1 pound Udon noodles
4 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon grated ginger
¼ cup chopped scallions
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 ½ cups carrots, zucchini, and cucumbers cut into matchsticks

• Cook Udon noodles as directed. Rinse with cool water, drain, and set aside.
• To make the sauce mix: rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili garlic sauce, sugar, grated ginger, scallions, and sesame seeds in a bowl.
• Add carrots, zucchini, and cucumbers to sauce. Stir to coat vegetables with sauce.
• Add the cooked Udon noodles to the sauce and vegetables. Toss noodles to coat.
• Serve immediately or chilled.

Labor Day Pig-Out

I did some serious carb-loading this Labor Day weekend. First, I cooked a butt-load of mac and cheese -two large pans to take to two parties and three small pans to freeze for myself.

I tried out Paula Dean’s recipe for mac and cheese. It’s very similar to my mom’s recipe. In fact, Paula is very similar to my mom. Slap some black hair on Paula and give her a breast reduction and that’s basically my mom after she’s had one glass of wine. The only difference in Paula’s recipe and my mom’s is Paula’s inclusion of sour cream. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference. There were some other tweaks I added to Paula’s recipe - like more cheese and more milk. I could just tell that there wasn't enough cheese or milk.

I attended three! potluck-style dinners where I ate a month’s share of pasta salad. Oh, I loved it, though. I also ate coleslaw, deviled eggs, and loads of different homemade desserts - all my favorite.

Yeah, that’s what holidays are for! I'm fat and happy.

Fun Food

I found some fun things to make this holiday weekend. First is faux-fun sushi made from cake and candy over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.Next up are the super cute caramel apple cupcakes at Cupcake Bakeshop.

One day I'll get to these, but not this weekend. I have about 20 pounds of mac and cheese to make for two parties. Yep, I'm getting my procrastinating ass off the computer right now!

Heinz's Thai Mean Beanz

While grabbing the canned mac and cheese from the selves of Waitrose, I also grabbed a can of Heinz’s Thai Mean Beanz for curiosity’s sake. Mean Beanz is a line of beans sold in the UK that add different ethnic spices to traditional baked beans. They also have Jalfrezi, Mexican, Sweet Chili, and Tikka.

Baked beans remind me of lunches prepared by my brother when he looked after me in the summer. Had I been born twenty years later, I think my parents could technically have been arrested for letting my brother baby-sit me. Never the less, when he wasn’t farting on my head or flinging ninja stars at me – bet you forgot about those bad boys - he would do sweet things like open a can of baked beans, throw in some cut up hot dogs, and we would eat beenie-weenies together. Good stuff!

After suffering a disappointment with the canned mac and cheese, I wasn’t too sure about the Thai Mean Beaz, but…they rocked! The beans were sweet like all baked beans, but had strong hints of ginger, lemongrass, and coriander. I can’t say the baked beans tasted anything like Thai food, but they had a very intriguing flavor. These are baked beans inspired by Thai spices. Good Stuff!

Don't Fear The Caper

I can’t say that I’ve encountered too many capers in my life. Restaurants claim to put capers in my food, but I’ve never noticed. I’ve actually never cooked with them until the other day. A jar of capers has been coldly glaring at me from the fridge door for about two years. I couldn’t take the evil eye anymore, so incorporated the capers in couscous stuffed peppers. (No, those capers aren't huge. The pepper is tiny.)

Photo by Stuart in Brighton
What is a Caper?
Oh, this is fun stuff! A caper is the pickled or salt preserved, unopened flower bud of a shrub (Capparis spinosa) originally from Western and Central Asia. Capers grow wild in the Mediterranean (a.k.a. weed), and are also cultivated in Southern Europe. When allowed to flower, the resulting fruit is called a caper berry. Caper berries are larger than capers and similarly preserved.

Flavor and Use
Capers contain bitter oil similar to those found in cabbages and mustard, and this flavor may peak through the pickling. Don’t let this put you off trying capers. Capers are slightly spicy, and tangy and salty due to pickling. Caper berries have a stronger flavor. Be sure to wash the brine from the capers to get a truer flavor.

Capers are most commonly found in Mediterranean cuisine. I like to think of capers as funny, little olives. Capers are peppery, pungent, piquant, tangy, and tart. They can be added to sauces, salads, meats, and vegetable dishes.
Caper Recipes

Size Does Matter
The smaller buds are tender and aromatic, while the larger buds are stronger in flavor and less aromatic. The smallest are Nonpareille (from France) and the largest, Grusas (from Italy), are the size of a fingertip.

Nonpareille – 0 to 7mm
Surfines – 7 to 9mm
Caupcines – 8 to 9mm
Capotes – 9 – 11mm
Fines 11-13mm
Grusas 14mm and larger

Other Edible Unopened Flower Buds
The most familiar are artichokes, and the tops of broccoli and cauliflower. Cloves are also unopened flower buds that have been dried. Not so commonly eaten unopened flower buds are pickled daisy buds, pickled nasturtium buds, pickled chicory buds, dried dandelion buds, dried daylily buds, and steamed sunflower buds.

Evil Weevil

Pantry half empty?
I found weevils in my pantry today while I was baking. Maybe they were beetles? I didn’t fish out my hand lens and kill jar for scientific exploration. I just opened up all sorts of packages and ditched those crawling with critters, then emptied my pantry and cleaned the shelves.

This happens every few years. Throwing away food is more of a disappointment than finding the bugs is a shock.

Perfectly good food – well, minus buggies - thrown away:
2 bags of all-purpose flour
1 bag of flour made from southern wheat (I can’t replace this until I visit home.)
1 bag of whole-wheat flour
1 box of grits
1 bag of nutritional yeast
1 bag of sushi rice
1 box of long-grain rice

Or pantry half full?
My pantry is now clean and better organized.

Bug i.d. for future entomologists and control for aspiring domestic engineers.

Toscana and the Fig Pizza

Pictures are poor due to low light and my refusal to use a flash at restaurants.

A while back I thought I would make a fruit pizza. My imagination and efforts resulted in a sugary pie of repulsiveness. I held hope that a fruit pizza – something other than pineapple - could be pulled off. In my next experiment, I let someone else try their hand at melding fruit, cheese, and bread into a pizza.

I’ve been thinking of trying Toscana Kitchen and Bar, an Italian restaurant in Wilmington, on recommendations from a friend. It has taken me almost two years to get there because I don’t get too excited about Italian restaurants. Why? Because I’m jaded. I once dated an Italian chef. I’ll tell you right now that, with few exceptions, food at a "great" Italian restaurant is humdrum. I don’t know if they’re keeping secrets or if they’re just churning out what Americans think is Italian food. (The one Italian restaurant that I can truly recommend is La Ruota in the tiny Chesapeake Bay town of Chestertown, Maryland.)

Back to Toscana…I had heard that the restaurant was kind of happening and could be busy on Fridays and Saturdays. The restaurant has a snazzy bar, but who doesn’t? The dinning room certainly had many diners, but was not full. This brings me to my gripe of sitting couples at two-top tables. Two-top tables are very small. Once you get water glasses, wine, and appetizers on the table, all must be arranged like a jigsaw puzzle to fit. Bring out the oversized entrée plates and you’ve got a puzzle that can’t be solved. So, please don’t sit me at a two-top unless the restaurant is truly crowded.

Toscana not only sat me and my partner at a two-top when there were plenty of other tables open, they sat us in a corner behind the wall of the server’s computer station. I’m not that ugly, nor was I inappropriately dressed.

While perusing the menu, we started with a bottle of wine that took it’s sweet time arriving. We chose an appetizer special of smoked mozzarella that the server hyped by telling us it was flown in from Italy daily. I can take mozzarella or leave it. It doesn’t have much flavor, but how could we resist really special mozzarella. The mozzarella had no smokiness that we could detect and the really fresh stuff is quite squishy.

I ordered their figaro pizza. This pizza comes with fig puree, Gorgonzola, crisp pancetta, and truffled honey. I passed on the pancetta. The pizza set down in front of me wasn’t actually mine. Another server apologized and whisked it away to return with my fig puree pizza. With the first bite I could taste and smell the honey and Gorgonzola. I actually like this combination. The honey and cheese together was subtly sweet. The fig puree did not cover the pizza entirely, thank goodness. The pizza would have been too sweet if it had. The fig puree combined with the honey was verging on too sweet for me, and I like sweet things. One of the two, honey or fig puree, needed to be removed from the pizza.

My partner had the fettuccine with English peas, Gorgonzola cream, and shaved Reggiano. There could have been stronger flavors of Gorgonzola in the sauce, as it tasted more like a bland cream sauce. Reaching for pepper to spice the fettuccine, he found no salt or pepper on the table. We scanned nearby tables thinking that our table was just too small to include such standards, but there were no shakers to be found. We had to ask for pepper and our server had to grind it for us. Please don’t make me ask for pepper and salt. Salt and pepper is not exotic, so I’m not falling for the haute image you’re trying to create. Plus, it makes me feel like a child.

Toscana – it’s an Italian restaurant. Probably better than most, but I’m jaded.

Review addendum. I changed my mind. I can do that.

Toscana Kitchen and Bar, 1412 N. DuPont St., Wilmington, DE, 19806, 302-654-8001
Lunch: Mon.-Fri. 11:30a.m-2p.m., Dinner: Mon.-Wed. 5p.m.-10p.m., Thurs.-Sat. 5p.m.-11p.m., Sun. 5p.m.-9p.m.