Fish and Kasha and Hardcore Heroes

So the little daughter, now out of college and a Certified Adult in her own right, has been cooking things. Cooking, from the look of the pictures she’s been posting to The Instra-Gram and other young-person places, delicious gourmet sorts of things.

Which is really cool. :)

This weekend she is home visiting, it being the weekend after her birthday and a convenient weekend for visiting, and she asked me to show her how to make Fish and Kasha, which was one of the things that I used to cook for the family back when I was myself young and energetic enough to cook on weekends. (Age is of course a feeble excuse; maybe I will start doing it again!)

I couldn’t find a written-down recipe on any of the many recipe cards in the various recipe-card collections in the kitchen, but I thought I pretty much remembered how, and M helped remembering the ingredients, and so the little daughter and I went out to the local vast cavernous A and P, and we bought fish and kasha and chicken broth and bread crumbs and broccoli and cauliflower and cheese and stuff, and came home and cooked it all, and it was all very yummy and nostalgic and successful.

(They didn’t have any really familiar-looking fish varieties, but the little daughter looked up “swai” on her “cellular phone” and found that it’s basically a kind of catfish, which is what it looked like, so we got that, even though it was “re-fresh” (that is, frozen and thawed) rather than actually fresh.)

Then while we were eating and talking about when we had first, and last, had Fish and Kasha, I remembered where the recipe of course was, and found it in the old weblog, in the entry for 7 November, 1999. A while back! And reading the recipe, it turns out we followed it pretty much exactly, down to getting Wolff’s kasha at A and P, and it being Sunday. (Although we didn’t do the extra skillet-involving steps with the kasha, and it still came out perfect.)

Here it is again, just for fun (note somewhat twee Rocky Horror reference at the beginning there):

Sunday Dinner: Fish and Kasha

This is a great dinner, because it doesn’t have many ingredients. I don’t like a meal with too many ingredients (did somebody yell “slut”?).

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cut two catfish fillets (about a pound) into bite-size chunks. Take two bowls, pour some milk into one, and some bread crumbs into the other. Dip each chunk of fish into the milk, and then into the crumbs, and then put it onto a baking dish (mine is clear glass or pyrex or something; I don’t know if that matters). Cook 25-30 minutes, until tender. Do not overcook.

While the fish bakes, take about one cup whole-kernel kasha (a.k.a. buckwheat groats). We used to get this in five-pound sacks from Walnut Acres, but they don’t seem to have it anymore. Now we buy two-cup boxes of Wolff’s in the “funny furrin foods” section of the A&P. You can just boil it in chicken broth for about 15 minutes, but for a fluffier result: in a small saucepan, melt two Tbs butter in two cups (one can) chicken broth, with a dash salt and a dash pepper. At the same time, heat the kasha in a frying pan or heavy skillet over high heat, until hot and toasty. Pour the boiling stuff carefully into the kasha, lower heat to simmer, and cook covered about 10 minutes, or until the liquid has vanished and it all seems sort of done.

Steam some broccoli. That is, cut off the parts of the stem you don’t want to eat, and arrange for the top parts that you do want to eat to be exposed to steam (preferably in a steamer rather than just sitting in boiling water), until it feels right when poked with a fork. “Right” is entirely up to you.

While all that’s going on, melt another two Tbs butter in another saucepan (yeah, you’re going to have some dishes to wash, later). Dump in enough flour to mostly soak up the butter. Gradually add milk, a little at a time, stopping between each addition to stir until smooth. When you’ve got a good amount (use more milk for more but thinner sauce, less for less but thicker; it will thicken up somewhat when you add the cheese in any case), grate in some cheese (we like sharp Cheddar for this, but anything gratable that you like will work). Stir until the cheese is all melted.

Pour the cheese sauce over everything else, and eat.

The only hard part about this is getting everything to be done at about the same time. That, and cleaning up afterwards. But it’s all very yummy! The little daughter eats everything but the broccoli. The little boy used to eat the kasha back when he was a baby, but won’t anymore.

Tonight, all four of us ate pretty much everything. :)

On entirely other fronts, I’ve been playing Diablo III more, which surprises me somewhat given my not very enthusiastic first impressions. Turns out there’s something soothing (or something) about wreaking havoc through the same landscape and the same story multiple times, with varying character stats and types and varying nastinesses of monsters.

Most recently I’ve been playing in Hardcore mode, which means that if the character you are working on dies, it stays dead, and you need to start another one (or go back to leveling your comparatively unexciting non-Hardcore characters).

My first one, Ulf The Doomed, made it to level 30 before I got careless and he ended up surrounded by monsters, which isn’t usually a problem, except that multiple ones were taking turns freezing him so he could neither fight not heal himself, which definitely was a problem.

The second one, and my first what do they call them Wizard or Magic User or whatever, was Mary Death (a brilliant name, I thought), and she made it only to level 14 before dying due to my not having swapped the latest level of potions into her action bar, and left-clicking rather than right-clicking on the potions in inventory once I realized that, arg.

And that was all good fun, but I think I might be tired of Diablo III for awhile now, we’ll see. And I haven’t been in WoW or Glitch or anything that I used to play alot and have now temporarily forgotten about entirely, for some time.

On the other hand I’m still in Second Life for at least an hour or two, at least five or six days a week, even when real life is moderately stuffed with things (as it’s tended to be). Which says something. :)

The D’Lish Dish

I stopped on a whim today, between the post office and the UPS store, because there was a food truck that I didn’t remember seeing before, parked at the bottom of the big park / soccer field / walking track / gathering place in town (at the other end of which is the town stage where the little girl’s ballet performances used to be, back in Ancient Times). In the summer there’s an ice cream truck that parks up closer to the other end, by the little pavilion, but today there was a food truck down at this end. And the sign looked interesting, and I’d told myself I would treat myself to something novel and lunch-like while I was out doing errands.

So it was perfect.

And it was a great surprise. :) Not just a hot dogs and “do you want sauerkraut or onions on that” and soda truck, although that would have been enough for me, but instead it was Sharion’s D’Lish Dish, and I expect that was Sharion herself telling me what they had and asking if I wanted lettuce and tomato, and saying that it would take awhile because everything was made fresh. And she was most definitely right there behind her eyes, as you’d expect from her story of herself there.

And the BBQ’d Beef Sandwich (with lettuce and tomato, and cheese, and waffle-cut fries with ketchup and a pickle slice on the side) was very very fresh, and extremely delicious, and worth every minute spent leaning on the metal stair-railing, listening to passing cars and to Sharion’s little gasoline generator chuffing to itself, and watching people walking and jogging and wheeling baby carriages by on the track, and feeling the sun and the wind, and closing my eyes and half-dozing standing there.

Every minute.

Expedition

So for the little daughter’s birthday we went into New York City (again! just a few days after last time! probably some sort of record for us!) on the train, and took the New York City Subways down to SoHo (the area South of Houston Street, whence the name), and idled patiently about while said daughter indulged her unaccountable taste for clothes shopping (even though, as I pointed out, she already has clothes).

Whilst idling about, the little boy and I went to the Opera Gallery New York which had some fun stuff to look at (I do not remember seeing the comfortable-looking sofas in that one picture on the web site, or we would probably have sat in them; unless they were part of the art). And then later M and the little boy and I all went over to the Evolution Store, which also had fun stuff to look at, much of it consisting of the remains of dead things.

After all that when we were hungry, we wandered around Little Italy a bit looking for a restaurant, and the little daughter’s telephone told her about one called “Peasant” that was nearby, so we went there.

It was very good!

They did not have the Razor Clams (which sound dangerous anyway). I had the Risotto with Veal Sauce; or at least I think it was risotto. For some reason I always forget what risotto is, and I may have it confused with something else. Sort of like arugula and that other thing. But anyway, it was very good! And the waitress was absolutely adorable (maybe about the little daughter’s age? I am a terrible judge of such things) and discussed in depth the terroir of the available by-the-glass wines, and the composition of the various sauces, and so on, at the slightest prompting.

M and I had a nice light red; the little daughter had a somewhat heavier Primitivo. Since it was her 21st birthday, we all noted that this was her first taste of alcohol, and then laughed uproariously (since she’s been in college for three years and all). We skipped dessert at Peasant, and stopped at Zero’s Grand Central (we’d checked on the way in and determined that they’d be open until 2am, which was far later than we needed them), and picked up a small red velvet cake (mmmmm) and a little fruit tart, and when we got home, happy but exhausted, we used our last dregs of energy to sing Happy Birthday and have cake and take pictures of candles being blown out and all.

I am not posting any pictures for some reason, but M has posted a number of historical little daughter pictures in her lovely and much less ironic-sounding post about the birthday.

A great time was had by all, and we are very proud and extremely astonished by this grownup that we have somehow produced. It will be very restful now that she will be taking care of all of her own affairs, although we hope she will allow us to give her little bits of advice and aid now and then.

hee hee.