All cooking business today

winter lettuce on the deck: a rare gardening triumph

No bobcat for 3 days. Fingers crossed.

I made one last Homesick Texan shopping list, bought one last load of serrano chiles, cilantro, pork shoulder, fire-roasted tomatoes, and limes. Mark thinks we're having a family Super Bowl party tomorrow, but we're actually having a Homesick Texan finale party.

A list of recent Homesick Texan dishes and how they turned out, with links when available:

biscuits. Very good and basic. If you already have a biscuit recipe you love, you probably don't need this one. Not sure what is accomplished by beating the dough with the rolling pin. Recipe here.

tortilla soup. Rust red, cheesy, packed with crunchy tortillas strips, wicked good. Recipe here.

gorditas with picadillo. The English translation of gorditas is "little fatties." You mix a masa dough, form buns, fry, split, and fill with picadillo. Top with cheese, lettuce and salsa. The buns are adorable and have an amazing crispy golden crust. However, the picadillo, a Latin American ground beef hash, was dry and lacked personality. I used to make a Cuban picadillo with rum-soaked raisins and pimento-stuffed olives that I much prefer. It came from a book called Cooking Caribe and if anyone wants the recipe, I will provide. I served it with rice and cornbread and it was one of the staples of baby Isabel's diet. That makes it sound like pablum, but it's an exciting and delicious dish. I served this to the same friends so many times in a row that it was embarrassing.

Uncle Richard's hot sauce. This is Fain's family hot sauce and entails doctoring crushed tomatoes with onion, garlic, pickled jalapeno, cumin, cilantro, chili powder, and lemon juice. The recipe on her blog is quite different from the one in the book. She implies it's an improvisational salsa, one you make differently every time depending on what ingredients you have around. It was good. Not something I'd go out of my way to make again, but good.

black-eyed peas. Excellent and full of bacon. Again, the recipe on her blog isn't exactly the same as the one in her book, but it's hard to mess up black-eyed peas.

  definitely an 8x8 inch pan next time

lime shortbread. Fain says to pat out the dough in a "large baking pan" then cut into squares. This is awfully vague. Maybe she just means to bake the dough free-form? But that doesn't make sense because it's hard to cut neat squares if the dough isn't tightly packed into a pan. Anyway, it didn't fill a 9x13 pan, as you can see. Next time I'd try an 8x8 brownie pan or an 8-inch cake pan and go with wedges. Great, gritty shortbread, perhaps on account of the tablespoon of cornmeal. Not overly limey. Might benefit from a little more salt.

steak tacos. BLOCKBUSTER OF THE WEEK. I saved this for last to reward patient readers who made it all the way to the end of this list  Mix a simple lime juice marinade and let skirt steak soak for 2 to 8 hours. Cook the steak in a super-hot skillet and finish under the broiler. Let rest 10 minutes then slice your tender, juicy, super-flavorful meat and wrap in tortillas or, if you're on a diet, a lettuce leaf. Just as good cold the next day. Make this. It's easy and spectacularly delicious and I couldn't recommend it more enthusiastically. Recipe is here. 

On my family table

A few weeks ago I decided to purge the cookbook collection and made several towering stacks of  books I might be willing to part with. Couldn't just toss them, though. Each book was going to get a chance. I'd cook a few recipes and then decide whether to jettison the book or keep it. 

I started with Around My Family Table by John Besh. I'd only recently bought the book and already wished I hadn't. Besh is a handsome chef who lives in Louisiana with his wife and their four young sons, whom Besh often calls "lads." Although Besh is a busy professional with numerous restaurants, he is deeply concerned about the decline of everyday home cooking. The subititle of his large, handsome book: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking.

No need to explain what rubbed me the wrong way when I can simply quote:

"For eight years we have raised our own Charolais cattle on rolling, grassy pastures north of New Orleans. It's the beef we have at our house. Of course, a big freezer is the only way to afford and keep good beef. . ."

"If you have difficulty finding a shoulder, use venison shanks instead." 

"Keeping it simple and delicious means deliberate strategies for planning ahead. I make intensely flavored broths, then freeze them in ice cube trays and empty the cubes into Ziploc bags."

"With meat from the neck of our Mangalitsa pigs, ground and seasoned with crushed peppers and cane syrup, sometimes I'll make sausage patties that fit perfectly on a biscuit, the way Jack likes it."

"Shredding the potatoes for these super-crunchy 'nests' is made easy with a clever device called a Benriner Turnning Slicer, or use a heavier Japanese mandoline. . ."

"I am almost never around on weeknights."

Done quoting now.

I'm happy to report that while the text and photographs rubbed me the wrong way, the recipes have been mostly terrific.

lemon ice box pie. Sounds quaint, grandmotherly, humble and delectable, and I loved the actual pie even more than the name. Beat together 3 egg yolks, a can of sweetened condensed milk, lemon zest, lemon juice and pinch of salt. Beat egg whites until stiff, fold into lemon mixture, pour this lovely tangy foam into a graham cracker crust. Freeze and cross your fingers about salmonella. Thaw briefly before serving. I could have eaten the entire pie in one sitting. That is not an exaggeration. The recipe is here; I would serve the whipped cream on the side, not spread on top. Grade: A.

potato dumplings. Orbs of seasoned mashed potato stuffed with bacon and chives then poached and topped with butter and crunchy bread crumbs. Devastating. My silly family said they preferred plain mashed potatoes, but they are unreliable. Grade: A.

lentil soup. I'll let Besh make his case: "I've added cream to this recipe, which I've never seen before in a lentil soup. It gives the soup such a succulent texture." It really went against the grain to put cream in lentil soup, which is supposed to be sludgy, healthy, and dark brown. But why? I don't know. I've always just thought of it that way, as hippie penance food. The first night I couldn't see the payoff of all that cream, but the second night, the soup came into its rich, luxurious own. Don't know about "succulent texture." Grade: A.

angel biscuits. Yeasted. You make and shape the night before serving for breakfast. Tasted like a cross between a buttery croissant and a biscuit. Recipe is here. Grade A.

olive oil roasted cauliflower. As it sounds. Grade: B+.

gingersnaps. Ordinary. You can probably do just as well with the recipe on the back of the brown sugar box. Grade: B.

herb roasted chicken. As it sounds. Grade: B.

carbonara with sweet peas and ham. I've made better. Grade: B-.

sugar snap pea salad with pecans. Excited about this because sugar snap peas sounded like they'd make a crunchy, sweet salad. Didn't quite work, though. Grade: C.

I would keep Besh's book based on the number of excellent recipes it contains, but in the last few weeks my desire to purge the collection has abated. My house will never be a decorator showcase. The cookbooks can stay. They can all stay.

Better cream of tartar biscuits

Every photograph ever taken of Owen would look like this if he had his way. He's eating biscuits, watching League of Super Evil, and no one's making him get dressed. 

Thanks to An Honest Cook, who recommended this excellent recipe, the second batch of Crazy Heart-inspired cream-of-tartar biscuits was stellar, producing 18 tall, tender, very light and fluffy biscuits. Far above average in the biscuit department and I highly recommend.

The kids and I are supposed to start driving to Seattle this afternoon, otherwise I would use the leftovers to attempt this incredibly tempting recipe for biscuit pudding from Salon.