CSI: Cucumber Salad Investigation...

The Trader Joe's is open for business. If they were open twenty four hours, it would be more exciting. Because then I could shop with fewer people around, preferably no one. And then I could check myself out and leave. It's small in there, close quarters. Swine Flu is somewhere in there walking around, looking at cheap wine, or buying hearthealthy faux snacks. Trying to make sense of words like 'organic' and 'free trade'. Discovering soybeans anew. Its too busy for me, with people shumbling around, trying to figure out why the place is so popular, why the aisles so small, why the olive oil, so cheap. Bread I'd never heard of before. Its also loud. People are still obnoxious, even or especially the devotees, acknowledging each other smugly, because the food is 'healthy', nodding to one another. I bet there is a hand signal they use. It is deceptively pricey in there, because everything is hand written to look honest, and homespun. Everyday is Black Friday at this place. And I leave having spent much more than I intended to. Now that my expectations have somewhat aligned, it seems reasonable. I go there for specialty items, like roasted red peppers, olive oil(s), sun dried tomatoes, pasta, cheeses (best cheese section in the galaxy, most crowded also), and snacks. Incredible deals maybe. I just know I want and need that stuff frequently. Any weekend draws in flow traffic from the Books & Coffee, and the scene devolves into something evoking remembrances of war torn Kosovo, without the human right atrocities, albeit with very little dignity. Waiting in queue is beyond reason somedays, and this cheap wine isn't going to drink itself.

My favorite item there is tahini. Which is what I used to make this cucumber salad. It just made sense to me. Eureka. This is why I run that gauntlet. I can't find the stuff anywhere really, and when I do, it always seems to amount to more than I wanted to surrender, and I am not about to employ a mortar and pestle to concoct my own. Sesame seeds are for buns. Convenience wins here everytime.

Cucumber salad tastes fresh and terrific and is ubiquitous nowadays. But, it makes for a mighty fine destiny for those ingredients I tend to have lazing around the refrigerator, or in the pantry, just passing the time, being ignored, maybe sad about it. It is quick and easy and never disappointing. It has a coolness to it, and I mean figuratively; its the Arthur Fonzarelli of non-leafy, grocerystoredeli, cold fare. There is a certain malleability to the dish, because the base ingredient of cucumber is willing to embrace many flavors in the flavor kingdom.

Cucumber salad ingredient scribe:

--Red onion, big one, sliced real fine
--Cucumbers, many many. It doesn't matter. Or not.
--Salt & Pepper
--Tahini (I used the whole container, several ounces, or several several ounces)
--Lemon squeezin's
--Flat leaf parsley
--Garlic
--Garbonzo beans
--Extra virgin olive oil
--Red Wine vinegar (not much at all, maybe a spoonsful). I don't know why. Because.
--Cheese. Feta is the standard. Goat cheese could work. Even a member of the bleu
family of cheeses would suffice.
--Fruity Pebbles or ground snickerbar.

That whole mess is then combined until the salad is well coated with the creamy tahini and salt & pepper. Less moisture is good because the cucumbers and onions add some during mixing. But it is a good recipe, really tasty. Off of the bone. Best to get rid of it before it becomes soupy, preferably in the immediate future. If you traveled back in time, it wouldn't be around anyway, because you hadn't yet made it, but I suppose that much should be obvious for most people not familiar with time travel. For those who would like to travel back in time and eat the salad, and then all over again, if you go too far back and haven't made the salad, use that time to make a substantial main dish that would pair well with these flavors. It doesn't feel like dinner, but maybe like a lunch, I could see that. But only with soup.

Smoked Chicken Thighs. Potato Leek Mash.

It is mash potato weather outside, and the atmashphere is doing, wacky, nutty things today. Sometimes, I just want to eat mash potatoes. They make us feel less miserable and cold, as we begrudgingly plod toward winter. Acorn squash serves a similar purpose. I had that special feeling this week, arriving with the early onslaught of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). I used to think it was depression, the normal kind. Predictably, the doctor prescribed heavy intake of mashed potato, a known cure for SAD, and chicken noodle soup. But I had a serious hankering to do some else with chicken, ever since I purchased the smoker. And my flatmate (that's what the British say!) recently retrieved me a lovely gift from Kansas, a bottle of pleasure sauce. There are so many power ingredients listed in the pleasure sauce, that perhaps it should have a more aggressive name, like steven segal sauce, or charles norris catsup, or deranged grizzly bear saliva, or beast essence. Simple math really. Smoker, plus chicken thighs plus pleasure paste = off the bone.

I found some spuds from across the state, near home. They were irish yellow potatoes, from the potato belt of washington, with exactly nothing irish about them. I purchased some organic leeks, because I love the earth, myself, and sasquatch. Leeks are doing it for me lately. So a leek and potato mash is not a new concept, but I wanted make this a food you might serve to visiting alien ambassadors, so I added a bunch of other stuff that make me feel warm, secure, and optimistic about life and the future of the human race. So I added some butter, some heavy cream, some Parmesan cheese, some rosemary, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper and more butter, and then some brie that was hiding in the refrigerators cheese enclave. It was a stick and a half of the butter, and the entire pint of cream. The whole dish was excessive, but if you are going to take the time to boil, saute, and mash, you might as well go over the top, just snapping arms off at the elbow, and adding garlic repeatedly, as if it simply disappears. And I used the whole bag of spuds, but it was still barely a balanced ratio of potato to everything else. Perfect, in other words. Filthy rich, whole ingredients, plenty of dairy, a three headed hydra of dairy products. The whole thing was satisfying, if not embarrassing, to eat. I made so much that I have had many subsequent bowlfuls, two days out. The leeks saute in the butter forever, then the velvety yellow potatoes (skin on) get a rough mashing before the cream and the oil is added. Then the cheese and the salt and pepper get mashed in. The core of the potatoes is still warm enough to integrate the shaved parmesan and the dollops of brie quickly into mixture. And it is a lot of smashing after that. The leeks provide what they normally provide, making this simple potato mash so much better and more interesting that it would have been without them. They are not very egalitarian. A dish without discrimination, traditionally served to the common folk, available to all, cheap, fortifying, and delicious, everyone in this country eats them on holiday (i think the british say that too, say holiday. Ha.) The ingredients for this mash remove it from the lower rung of the socio-gastronomic-economic strata. Brie? Leeks? The luxury of butter, heavy cream, and parmesan arregiano? Well, nearly all of these can be found on a farm, I suppose. They are fantastic, and have a tang from the leeks, which also adds to the naturally rich yellow of the potato.

The chicken was brined in brown sugar and salt for around four and a half hours. I buy thighs because they have the softest, tastiest meat. Thighs are the yin and yang of chicken meat, not quite dark meat, not quite white meat. Basically grey meat. They are also great for stock because they drip so much of themselves when cooked. The thigh meat is secretful, full of chicken flavor secrets. These came from local chickens. After the quick brine, I put them in the preheated smoker, for the ceremonial sweatlodge visit, during which they have a savory revelation, and the future of they're bleak yet delicious afterlife is foretold. I used three pans of cherrywood chips, enough to slightly color, not nearly enough to cook or preserve. Then, they went into the preheated oven, on 325 degrees. I drizzled the pleasure sauce all over them, until they were blanketed in love and fear. I gradually increased the heat over about 45 minutes, hoping to crisp up the skin. The aroma of smoke and bird juices permeates the kitchen, and my clothes. When they looked like the picture on this post, I shut off the oven and let them sit in the chicken thigh's own precious juices, to continue cooking. I made sure to add more pleasure sauce before closing the oven. So wise.

The smokey flavor was perfect, not overwhelming, just a nice complement. The bones fell right out of the bird legs, effortlessly. The baked-in, glazed pleasure sauce was all these delites would ever need. The gustatory experience was religious, as each thigh represented a sacrifice to my own exalted happiness and gluttony. It was also very powerful in that the combination of flavors and spices, the taste of concentrated effort, was all over my fingers and clothes, and mustache. To whom much is given, much is expected. Supply me with chicken thighs and have great expectations. I would not have cooked these differently. It was a testament to time, process, and faith, and I lead a richer spiritual life because of this meal. Hyperbole. But, there were some radical moments of savoriness. Slow cooked meat worship. It was an excellent, insightful dinner, and the perfect cure for barbecue lust, seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, an acronym for gustatory ambivalence.