Anne and I moved into a new house that’s about 3 minutes from a PCC Natural Market. I’ve never lived that close to a grocery store, and now I know I’ll have a hard time living further than this. Why? Yesterday I went to PCC three times for a day full of cooking (instead of skiing sadly, which absolutely blows right now in the PNW) and loved it.
The day started with trip to PCC in the morning to pick up ingredients to make waffles. I cooked damn tasty waffles on our new Presto Waffle Maker courtesy of my brother Eric and his wife Pamela. I stole the recipe, like most, from Food Network. I was surprised that waffles, unlike the pancakes and french toast I’ve made in the past, contain butter. But maybe that’s why I like them so much. They did take more effort than their breakfast brethren, but they’re worth it to me.
I then spent the next hour figuring out what I wanted to make for dinner. I settled on a Mexican meatball soup from the Earthbound Farms (you know, the guys that make the boxed lettuce) cookbook. I was in a soup mood, a Mexican mood, and a mood to finally make two scratch supplements to then use in the recipe: stock and chili powder. So back I headed to PCC for round two of groceries.
I first tackled the stock. I pulled out the two bags full of chicken and duck bones I’d been saving in my freezer, tossed them into the largest stock pot I own, filled water over the top of them, and set the stove on high. After ten minutes scum from the bones rose to the top. I ladled it off for about ten minutes, then threw in some leeks, carrots, celery, onion, and a cheesecloth bag full of tasty herbs. I then spent the next five hours micromanaging the burner which couldn’t achieve Alton Brown and Julia Child’s directive of only a few bubbles on the surface at time. The end result was delicious, however. It tasted fresher than boxed stock, but to me, the jury is still out on whether it was worth the effort.
While the stock was simmering away, I tackled the chili powder. After I saw Alton Brown’s show about creating your own chili powder, I knew I had to make it for I’d hated store bought chili powder longer than I’ve been watching Good Eats. The problem is that I couldn’t find the chilies he recommended at any store in Seattle, and I didn’t feel like ordering the chilies online. But I was feeling lucky yesterday (even though the Patriots had already gotten whipped), so I headed to PCC a third time to try my luck. Sure enough, this time I found two of the three recommended chilies, so I winged it on the third one. (Thank you PCC manager for being kind enough to print off a description of the Cascabel chili so that I could find a similar one in your store.) Now the actual process of making the chili powder is pretty easy. De-seed and de-stem the chilis, throw them plus some cumin in a non stick pan, heat them for about 5 minutes, let them cool, put them in a blender with some paprika, oregano, and garlic, grind the shit out of them, let ‘em settle, and then bottle them. The flavor it gave the soup was phenomenal. I needed to use way less powder and got way richer and more complex flavor. I was absolutely sold, and I will never buy pre-made chili powder again.
The culmination of the day’s cooking was the Mexican meatball soup, which in hindsight, was the least exciting part of the meal. Making the meatballs was fun as I got to use my stand mixer and ice cream scooper (insanely clutch), but the end result was the standard run of the mill soup that you get from the standard run of the mill cookbook, in this case the Earthbound Farms cookbook. That is, the soup was good, not great. It definitely had a fresher taste thanks to the homemade stock, but it didn’t blow me away. In fact, I think I’d prefer my chicken tortilla soup. But I would take the meatballs from this recipe, which were delicious, and use them in a pasta dish.
I also made some good homemade cornbread. I have no idea why people buy the boxed stuff. It is so easy (maybe takes 5 more minutes) to make healthier, scratch cornbread (or any kind of bread).
