Tonight’s fare, which smells so good right now I am going to nap rather than eat it early and screw up the cooking:
a couple cups of great northern beans
a couple cups of sliced yellow squash
a couple cups of sliced zucchini
2 diced onions
a shit-ton of garlic
2 cans Italian style diced tomatoes
a pound of ground italian sausage
Served on steamed baby spinach with a loaf of hard-crust Italian. I can’t decide on the wine atm.
Mary
Mmmm-mmm! I’m making pasta sauce the old-fashioned way on the stove right now, but I should try the crockpot next time.
myiq2xu
Since you’re in WV I assume you will be substituting squirrel or possum for the sausage?
Face
God bless the West Virginian metric system
protected static
Is that a metric shit-ton of garlic, or imperial?
Chuck Butcher
Thunderbird
(do they still make it?)
LiberalTarian
White trash–I don’t think this means what you think it means.
booger
Uh, are those beans canned or dried/soaked?? Enquiring minds want to know. It will affect the quantity of, um, balloon juice.
Willem van Oranje
Pinot Gris? Riesling?
Z
I hope you waited to put the tomatos in. Acidic foods toughen the beans.
EdTheRed
Wine pairings? California Zin (Cline), Valpolicella classico (Allegrini) or any other medium-bodied Italian table wine, Spanish Garnacha or Tempranillo…a shit-gallon of it, of course.
Mike
A wine atm sound great; all the ones here give out are 20-dollar bills.
stickler
Why wine? Why not a nice, chewy stout? Or an old ale?
Mmmm. Old ale.
Dreggas
yeah there’s no balogna in it.
John I hope you poked holes in those beans so you could get the gas out and sure hope you only put 239 beans in.
Andrew
John,
Now that you have a crockpot may I ask if you have a food saver or other vacuum sealer? If so, you are two-thirds of the way to the greatest cooking method since man discovered fire: sous vide!
Krista
That sounds good. I’ll have to try it next summer when we’re always trying to figure out what to do with all the yellow squash and zucchini from the garden.
My crockpot will be taking care of a roast tomorrow. I pre-seared it in my cast-iron pan, and have it in the pot with carrots and parsnip. Tomorrow morning before work I’ll turn it on, and come home to a very nice-smelling kitchen.
bryanD
Aren’t you supposed to be training for something? Then nix the bread. It interferes with proper digestion of everything else. (After you feed the birds you may begin eating.)
For G.P. (first hyperlink):
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2008/01/robertstaubes.html#004821
demkat620
This is also an acceptable Sicilian measure as well.
DougJ
Wine:
Ludovicus (a Spanish red) — so good you can’t believe it’s how cheap it is (10 bucks).
or
Brasserie rouge — so cheap (3 bucks a bottle) you can’t believe how drinkable it is.
grumpy realist
Krista–ever heard the stories about making sure you lock your car doors in New England in the summer otherwise you’ll come back and find someone has loaded a heap of zucchini into the back seat?
Zucchini…the Sorcerer’s Apprentice of vegetables.
mark
Does Dyson make any?
LiberalTarian
I was thinking weenies, but you get my processed-mystery-meat drift. And, don’t forget the lard and ample amounts of brown sugar.
Ugh.
Krista
Indeed. Husband and I were making plans for future vegetable gardens, and my one request was “no zucchini”. Not that I don’t like it, but my in-laws already grow it, and there tends to be MORE than enough. If we grew it too, we’d have nobody upon whom to foist it.
Tomatoes and peppers, on the other hand…
Daniel Munz
Barack Obama can be served with either red or white wine.
(Call me a fanboy, but let no one call me humorless…)
Dreggas
well gotta have the ghetto steaks.
Scotty
Does it tastes as good as “progress”?
Delia
Sounds great. Just as long as you don’t go and spoil your digestion by trying to eat it while watching the SOTU fiasco.
ScottS
Peasant food calls for peasant wine. Something Grenache based from Spain, a Cote du Rhone, or if the sausage has some zing to it, something from Provence not too high in alcohol, would fit the bill (fit my bill). I haven’t had much success matching Riesling with tomatoes but if the dish isn’t too acidic overall that actually might work the best. Riesling is the boss of me.
HumboldtBlue
Drop the zucchini (blecch) and the squash, cut waaaaaayyyy back on the garlic, add two hamhocks along with celery and onion and cook all day. 20 minutes before serving, add some turkey-sage meatballs and go to heaven.
John Cole
I am detecting a good deal of anti-squash anti-zucchini bias here, and I do not like it.
What I wouldn’t do for some of my dad’s squash from when we were kids (and I turned my nose up in disgust). MmmMMmm.
Krista
Anti-squash, anti-zucchini? I think not, sir!
I love the stuff, but if you’ve ever grown it (or known someone who has), you have to admit that the stuff is incredibly prolific, and tends to grow faster than one can find enough recipes on Epicurious for it.
Anybody know a way to increase wild mushroom yield? I have chanterelles growing wild on my property, but just enough to tease me, really. I’d love to find a way to encourage more to grow.
Dug Jay
Sounds great and delicious. However, a ten ounce serving of just the soup without the bread, probably has about 45-55 net carbs.
HumboldtBlue
Nah, just a pro-celery, pro-carrot sorta dude. Although I do admit to a serious problem regarding squash. Mom grew it and we had it all summer/early fall. I couldn’t stand it then, can’t stand it now.
amylew
Here’s a yummy recipe to try. I made it last week and it was delicious!
[url]http://www.recipezaar.com/89204[/url]
libarbarian
If GWB was the “Decider” will Obama be the “Transcender”?
paradox
I know this is sightly gauche to the refined palate, but try the big bottle of Twin Valley Gallo cabernet sauvignon.
It’s quite the very acceptable table wine, a house wine, if you will. One could do far worse, and it is frugal.
chopper
sous vide is pretty cool but a bit overrated. i went on a binge a few months back and came up with a crazy contraption in my kitchen. certain things came out fantastic, some things were mostly meh (tho fish is *awesome* if you do it right).
right now i’m making some beef bourguignon in the pressure cooker. nothing like a fancy-ass french stew made in an hour and change.
paradox
Holy shit, this totally reminds me I could plant vegetable boxes this year. It was decided the scamper space is now superfluous.
If I do it I will plant zucchini, John. Plus the yellow banana, crookneck, summer, a some gourds.
Mmmmmmmm, peppers, fresh crunchy jalapeno, I like to eat them off the plants. Tomatoes! Herbs galore.
Fresh corn, hot damn! Fuck man I’ve been the master in front with the roses for a decade now, it’s finally time to grow some food.
chopper
grow food. seriously, wherever you can. i live in brooklyn and i have to grow shit on my roof and fight the squirrels but when the first tomato of the summer comes in it’s all worth it.
trying some eggplant and squash this year, maybe some peas and beans.
Chuck Butcher
Mushrooms in the wild are incredibly difficult to fool with. The cap is the bloom, the fungus is spread widley underground and that is what you’re trying to encourage. Providing a buried food source might encourage it, but the darn stuff is really particular. Some buried manure and rotting wood might give you a shot.
HumboldtBlue
Or, if not, try a bottle of Barefoot Cab. Great price and it’s an excellent table wine.
Jake
Squash and zucchini are both divine provided they aren’t cooked until they become rind covered circles o phlegm.
demimondian
I have transcended curcurbits. We can do it!
myiq2xu
Zucchini is the road-kill of veggies.
myiq2xu
How do you cook that?
myiq2xu
I prefer a naked Zinfandel
Cynthia Ackerman
In my tiny suburban garden, I actually grow each of the veggies now simmering chez Cole. Even the dry shelling beans (mine are Tarbais, a french type very close to great northern, but better). Even can my own tomato juice (steam extracted) for just this kind of meal — and yes, tomatoes DO toughen the beans, so I soak 24 hr+ then pre-cook beans in salted water before adding to the crock.
Allow me to suggest two additions: a shit-ton of chopped leeks; and one whole celeriac, or celery root, the ugly knob no one seems to buy, but which is unbelievably good diced/pureed in soups and crocks (I don’t bother peeling celeriac, as long as it’s going to cook down to mush).
Oh, and a couple strips of bacon and a cup of dry white wine in the crock will add just the right depth to this meal. Bon appetit, tout le mond!
Krista
True. There are always a few that the slugs catch before we do (the bastards). I read that if we break them up in tiny pieces (the mushrooms, not the slugs) and strew them around and the cover them up with leaves, that they’ll spore. Worth a shot. Sauté them up in butter, and ohmygoodness they’re incredible.
caustics
Noble rot. They’s some money in fancy mushrooms. I wonder if anyone has given psathyrella aquatica the taste test yet.
Car Ramrod
Strawberry Boones, dude.
YellowJournalism
Whatever you choose, make sure it’s in a box, or else it’s not true white trash cuisine.
All this talk of zucchini makes me long for my mother’s homemade zucchini bread and zucchini bars. Mmmmm….
Jake
As annoying as it may seem, you may just need to wait until the underground system spreads out on its own.
I’ve intended to hunt those in the fall but I’m still a bit wary of anything more difficult to identify than a morel.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
“White Trash Gourmet”…….sounds like a good title for a local cable access program. And the tiremarks on the ‘possum (or raccoon, or rabbit, or whatever) just mean it’s been pre-tenderized (and pre-tenderized, and pre-tenderized) for you already, just toss ‘er in the pot.
Actually got some black beans and sausage simmering away atm myself…….
Krista
Chanterelles are hard to misidentify. When you pick one, split the bottom of the stem a bit and give it a good whiff. If it smells of apricots, you’ve got a Chanterelle.
myiq2xu
Your shame will be preserved for posterity
bodiddley
Man, white trash eats well. Who knew? I think a nice Chianti would work with this. Or a glass of beer.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
Yep. Didja know it turns your tongue black?
I’d have recommended a nice MD 20/20, perhaps the Kiwi Lemon flavor? It’s “interestingly citric”.
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
F*dge!
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
My “yep” above was to answer this question. I hope I’ve clarified things to everyone’s satisfaction. And no, I haven’t been drinking any tonight, although from the way I’ve been posting it might seem so.
Darkness
I’d say a real in-your-face south australia shiraz for that dish as listed. If you took out the tomato and used ghee (clarfied butter) and vege stock instead which would make it a bit more sophisticated that way as a white sauce, I’d say a savignon blanc, a young minerally, grassy one from south africa. That would bring bring out the notes in the beans nicely.
Darkness
Chopper, you want fish to die for (or better yet kill everyone you know so they don’t come over for dinner and try to share it)?
Salt-backed whole fish. You take a box or two (buy an extra, just in case) of that kosher salt they sell in your grocery where you think who in the heck needs that much salt? You take your whole, cleaned fish, anything as long as your cookie sheet will work. You put some sliced onion and ginger in the belly cavity. You take the salt and mix in an egg per cup (yolk removed if you are color-sensitive, I’m not) plus enough water to make the salt moldable (if you hate wasting eggs, use more water, less egg) You press down a 1/2 inch of this salt in the shape of said fish with overlap. You lay down the fish, you (and this is where kindergarten come is REAL handy) pack salt 1/2 inch think all around the fish. Pack snugly so it is sealed, sorta.
You preheated the oven to 450, right? oh, well, do that now. Nothing bad will grow on that fish while you wait. tick tick. Okay, bake the fish based on the thickness (you measured it right?) okay, so eyeballed from memory. 15 minutes per inch thickness, plus 20 minutes getting going time. Error on the high side, the fish will NEVER get dry. (Honest Injun, my friend misunderstood and cooked it 3 hours based on length instead of thickness and she said it was amazingly moist, but complained that it all fell apart.)
Then with your guests a agog at this salt monstrosity on a cookie sheet you bring to the table, take your cleaver, or ax or something, and chop that baby open table-side. This will be the most scrumptious fish you have ever had, seeping moisture and flaking to perfection, perhaps as your fancy dangerous French cooking method renders it.
God, I’m drooling on my keyboard.
LiberalTarian
Dude, honestly, if your white trash cuisine has no macaroni, you just don’t know your white trash.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
Now, make yourself some sourcream rhubarb cake, and yer from my neck o’ the woods.
stephen
???
!
Darkness
Okay, so after you have tried to cover a slimy, cold fish the size of a cookie sheet in packed clay-like salt, you come back and say that. To my face.
Zuzu
I just broke in my new Cuisinart slow cooker with a lovely vegetarian minestrone recipe. Yumilicious.
But it made a LOT. Good Lord, it made a lot.
Fortunately (?) I’ve been down with the flu for the better part of a week, unable to shop for food, so scooping out a bowlful now and then was just the thing. I still have some left.
Bombadil
Did anyone else read the title of this thread as “Crackpot Madness”?
Bob In Pacifica
A pinch of oregano in there somewhere?
canuckistani
I went to an Iron Chef White Trash party a few years back, and the theme ingerient was spam.
I would have had the people’s ovation and fame forever if the astrologer had thought more highly of Spam au Velveeta.
aschupanitz
Don’t listen to the zucchini-haters, John. Also, if you’ve never had it, zucchini bread is delicious; the taste is similar to banana bread (surprisingly), but more subtle.
Sensitive Pony Tailed Girly Man
If you’re using the correct wine glass what you put in it scarcely matters. Can almost never go wrong pairing Reisling or Pinot with food. In this case I’m thinking a cheap Beaujolais would work and keep with the Peasant theme. Or maybe a Sangiovese. But definitely a red, it’s cold outside.
Sensitive Pony Tailed Girly Man
Okay, where the hell did my link go to the essential glass. This podunk 1987 SW has got to go!
http://www.fansedge.com/New-England-Patriots-Wine-Glass_1519269695_PD.html
Sensitive Pony Tailed Girly Man
My kingdom for an edit feature. I just noticed the sausage ingredient, bag the Pinot, but the others still work.
ThymeZone
I get such a kick out of crockpot cooks. In 30 minutes of real cooking, you could take your ingredients and make something better. But you guys will spend 30 minutes stuffing the food into a crockpot and then wait all day for it to cook something less good.
Strange, strange indeed. I hate to tell you all, but cooking is not rocket science. Even you guys can learn to do it.
ThymeZone
Oh, and if you think I am wrong, just check the yellow pages for all those popular Crock Pot Resaurants out there.
Real food gets cooked by people taking pains to do real cooking. And here’s the beauty part — it’s easy. It’s as easy as preparing your food to be stuffed into a crockpot.
Krista
I agree with you to a certain degree, TZ. I prefer actually being present while my food is cooking, and getting involved in the actual process. But if you know you have a really busy day ahead of you, it can be awfully nice to prep your ingredients the night before, plug that puppy in before you leave for work, and come home to supper being completely ready. I’m going home tonight to a nice roast. There’s just no way I’d be able to do that on a weekday without the slow cooker. Some days are just so hectic that the only other alternative is to pick up a pizza on the way home, which is tasty, but isn’t really a habit one wants to get into.
ThymeZone
Sorry Krista, I have to watch a few shows on the popular Crockpot Channel. Talk to ya later.
Ah, there’s a nice shot of the thing emitting steam for ten minutes ……
Oooh, was that a bubble? I think it was!
Right over there next to the carrot.
ThymeZone
After a few hours of the crockpot show, I like to relax with The Wire.
Krista
You know, I’ve stuck many herbs into my slowcooker, but this is the first time I’ve been tempted to stick a slowcooker into Herb.
ThymeZone
Wait, is that another bubble?
There, by that onion?
4jkb4ia
These ingredients are a good candidate for cholent, with some substitute for the sausage of course.