Sometimes you throw shit at the wall to see what sticks, and sometimes you just have to laugh at the process.
I had done all of my due diligence before heading to the store on Saturday. It was right before the Polar Vortex1 hit, and with the impending winter weather the emergency French toast run2 was in full swing. I assumed it was going to be crazy at the store, so I wanted to have a thorough grocery list to get me through recipes I wanted to be prepared to cook.
(Today’s source recipes:
1. This recipe3 courtesy of Great British Chefs;
2. This recipe4 courtesy of the Out of the Ordinary blog;
3. This recipe5 courtesy of Lior Lev Sercarz of La Boite.)
As they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I just didn’t realize how quickly that first contact would occur.
Engagement #1:
The first thing I do when I go to the grocery store is head to the deli. I look over the deli counter selection, and someone comes up to help me.
“Do you have pancetta behind the counter?”
“No, we only have it pre-packaged and diced.”
He takes me over to the packaged deli section.
The good news: He’s wrong. They have it sliced. They have it diced as well, but that doesn’t do me much good if I want to wrap fish in it for cooking.
The bad news: Each package contains 6 slices. For four pieces of fish, I need 8 slices. Each package costs $5.99. Spending $12 on pancetta was not in the mental budget I had set up.
I knew the neighborhood grocery store wasn’t great, but it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t have pancetta sliced to order. Ah well, I’m an improviser at heart. I’m sure there’s other options. I can probably work with good bacon, if nothing else.
Engagement #2:
I head over to the produce section to check out the herbs. Unlike Central Markup678910, almost all of the fresh herbs are pre-packaged. I find the (overpriced) basil I’m looking for that will be used in a different dish, but I don’t see any tarragon.
Well, fuck!!! It’s really damned hard to make pistachio tarragon aioli without fresh tarragon.
That’s OK. I pull my phone out of my pocket and start looking for pistachio aioli recipes without tarragon. After just a little bit of searching, I find this recipe11 from the Irish Times that includes parsley instead of tarragon. This works for what I’m looking for. There’s lots of both Italian and curly-leaf parsley there. A bunch of parsley is like $1.50, and I don’t even need to pick up an ingredient for the original aioli.
Engagement #3:
I wasn’t planning on making the entirety of the original fish recipe, but I like the idea of roasted fennel, and I was planning on incorporating it into the meal. Moreover, I had a different recipe I was planning on making that was dependent on the fennel.
I look around the produce department, and there’s no fennel bulbs.
Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do NOW?! I guess fennel isn’t an essential flavor in the meal I was planning to cook…
The remainder of the actual shopping trip was fairly uneventful. I found center-cut bacon available for $5.99, and there was enough to put six half-slices around each of the cod fillets I had purchased. It wouldn’t be pancetta, but it would be close.
I checked out at the grocery store and ordered a Lyft to get home. I’m standing outside waiting for the driver when I realize I completely forgot the cannellini beans for the bean dish I was planning.
The driver pulled up, took one look at the cart full of groceries I had, and said that there wasn’t room for me and my groceries in his car12. He said he’d cancel the ride and get someone else to pick me up.
Engagement #4:
I have a cart full of bagged groceries and a few minutes to go in to grab the beans I forgot to get. It feels awkward as hell, but I take the cart back in to the store to grab cannellini beans.
They don’t carry cannellini beans.
At this point I think the grocery gods are just fucking with me13.
The closest thing I can find to cannellini beans is mayocoba beans14, so I grab a bag of those. I also grab a bag of Carnaroli rice15 and head to the self-checkout. I flag down one of the self-checkout monitors to make sure I’m not going to get in trouble for trying to steal anything, then check out and make it outside to meet the Lyft driver.
Engagement #5:
I made it home without incident. I got all of the groceries put away, then decided to prepare for dinner. The pistachio parsley aioli could be made in advance and refrigerated, so I decided to go ahead and prepare that.
Pistachio cilantro aioli
Ingredients
Instructions
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Using an immersion blender, give the pistachios and cilantro a blitz until a somewhat chunky crumb is achieved. Add the capers and 30mL of the olive oil and whizz until an even crumb is achieved.
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Whisk together the egg yolk and the minced garlic. Slowly add in the remaining olive oil in small batches, whisking vigorously until the egg and oil are emulsified. Add the lemon juice once about half of the oil has been added.
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Combine the pistachio/cilantro crumble with the egg/oil emulsification, then add the balsamic vinegar. Whisk to combine, then add additional oil or water to adjust consistency. Add salt, pepper, lemon juice, and/or balsamic vinegar to taste.
I grabbed the curly-leaf parsley and shoved it into a plastic bag without a thought – only to realize when I got home that I had grabbed cilantro instead.
This probably wouldn’t have been much of a setback if I weren’t one of the unfortunate minority for whom cilantro tastes like soap.
Engagement #6:
I couldn’t make myself buy two packages of pancetta to wrap the cod when I could do it with one package of center-cut bacon.
Bacon-wrapped cod fillets
Ingredients
Instructions
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Slice the center-cut bacon strips in half. Wrap the cod fillets with six half-strips of bacon in an oven-safe cast iron skillet. Cook, seam-side up until the bacon is crisp, 6-8 minutes, then flip. Place the skillet in an oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, then cook until the cod is cooked through, 5-8 minutes.
So, yeah, in this instance bacon doesn’t work nearly as well as it seems that pancetta would. Approximately zero of the fat rendered out of the bacon, and it never got crisp, so the bacon was just cooked pieces of fat. This can, in fact, be tasty, but it is not what this recipe is looking for.
Engagement #7:
The source recipe is for “Tuscan white beans”, not cannellini beans specifically. I can probably get 90% of the way there with the mayocoba beans I purchased instead.
Mayocoba beans with charred spinach
Ingredients
Spice Blend
Beans
Spice Blend
Spice Blend
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Grind the bay leaves, fennel seeds and cumin seeds together finely, then add the ancho chile powder.
Beans
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Set Instant Pot to sauté mode. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to the bowl and heat until shimmering. Add diced onions and cook until softened and browning, 4-6 minutes. Add the mayocoba beans and 10 cups water to the bowl of the Instant Pot, then set to Pressure Cook and attach the lid, locking it into place securely. Set the pressure cook cycle for 2 minutes, then let it pressure and cook. Let the pressure vent naturally until safe to open.
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While the mayocoba beans are venting, place a Dutch oven over high heat and add the remaining olive oil to the pot. Heat until shimmering. Add the spinach to the Dutch oven, smoothing out such that as many of the leaves are subjected to the olive oil and charring. Stir the leaves, adding more olive oil as necessary to make sure all of the leaves wind up charred black and the olive oil is dark green, about 10 minutes.
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Drain the beans and onions into a colander, then rinse well. Add the beans and onions to the charred spinach and oil, then add half of the spice blend and salt to taste. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring continuously. Add the balsamic vinegar and enough water to cover the beans (3-4 cups), then cover and turn the burner on high. Once the contents of the Dutch oven are boiling, remove the cover, reduce the heat to allow the beans to simmer, then cook until beans are cooked thoroughly, 40-60 minutes.
I get the mayocoba beans into the pressure cooker for the soak, then start heating up the oil for charring the spinach…
…and the smoke alarm goes off. I go to reset the smoke alarm, open the doors to the patio…
…and the smoke alarm goes off again. I go to reset the smoke alarm and fan the smoke away from the alarm…
…and the OTHER smoke alarm goes off. That one is not at a height I can reach standing on the ground, so I have to get up precariously on a chair with my CROW boot and press the button…
…and it won’t reset. One of the members of the tasting panel comes in and asks if she can help, Because she has fingernails, she’s able to get that smoke alarm to reset while I go get the spinach to char, then complete cooking the beans.
Thoughts:
1) The good news is that the meal tasted a lot better than it looked. That’s good news because the meal looked pretty awful.
2) My favorite component of the meal was by far the aioli. I still think cilantro tastes like soap, but prepared in this manner, not only does it taste good, but it goes very well with the bacon-wrapped cod.
3) One member of the tasting panel tells me that the cod is the worst thing I’ve cooked since starting this project. I ask for clarification, giving a reminder of the pork curry and coo coo fiasco; they say that the main issue with that was the consistency, whereas the cod doesn’t go well with the other flavors in the meal I cooked.
Verdict:
Taste: 6.5/10. I really liked the aioli. I liked the cod, and could live with the beans. Given the other feedback, this particular recipe/combo needs some additional rethinking.
Accessibility: 6/10. This is the first time I’ve purchased any fish other than tuna from the seafood counter at a grocery store. I also don’t routinely stock cilantro.
Story: 9/10. I mean, you’ve got the protagonist fighting through progressively more and more absurd issues in order to get a decent meal on the table. It may not be high drama, but at least it’s funny.
Administrivia:
Nothing much new to report. I’ve engaged with a Fiverr designer to help me come up with a logo, typography, and style guide so I can make the site look a lot more like I was hoping it would. The designs are not due for a week, however.
Two meals in the backlog now.
- So named because it reminds us all of how much ERCOT sucks. ↩︎
- Bread, eggs, milk — the three things grocery stores always sell out of when there’s white stuff in the forecast around here. ↩︎
- https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/pancetta-wrapped-cod-fennel-risotto-recipe ↩︎
- https://outoftheordinaryfood.com/2014/02/12/pistachio-almond-and-tarragon-mayonnaise/ ↩︎
- https://www.laboiteny.com/blogs/recipes/white-beans-with-charred-spinach ↩︎
- Central Market is derisively known as Central Markup. It’s a subsidiary of H-E-B, and it is an amazing grocery store where it’s not uncommon to spend $200 on two paper bags’ worth of groceries. ↩︎
- H-E-B has migrated north to DFW, but that doesn’t mean they’ll deign to put an actual H-E-B store in Dallas County. There are Central Markets, and there are other H-E-B brands that are opening in other portions of the county, but no actual H-E-B stores, despite the fact that they own a property less than 5 miles from where I live. ↩︎
- I’m not bitter. Please don’t put in the newspaper that I got bitter. ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU-k_sxb7S0&list=OLAK5uy_mKN0pCwkW1XNoViqlntiRMQrfAu9TiVkY&index=5 ↩︎
- https://twitter.com/dril/status/549425182767861760?lang=en ↩︎
- https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/recipes/pistachio-aioli-1.1343051 ↩︎
- It’s me and one cart of groceries. Should I really have to reserve anything other than a basic Lyft to carry that?! ↩︎
- Either that or I’ve been cast in some alternate-universe version of Cutthroat Kitchen without my knowledge. ↩︎
- https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/mayocoba-beans/ ↩︎
- https://www.johncooking.com/2024/01/15/a-meat-a-starch-a-veg/ ↩︎