Desperation Sauce

Since I am on the West Coast and most of my co-workers are in the Eastern time zone, our calls inevitably end up being right in the middle of the day - usually during the lunch hour.

Thus, one needs something to stave off the hunger demons until lunch can be had. It's usually a Clif or LaraBar, but the other day, in a fit of creative fridge-purging, I brought a cold artichoke.

The only problem was that I forgot the mayo, and an artichoke without sauce is almost not worth eating, a pale green imitation of itself. I had thought I could skip down to the company cafeteria, but time ran short.

With the clock ticking toward the start of the call, I knew I had to think fast. Desperation set in.

I raided the condiment package stash we keep over by the coffee pot.

Mmmm...no mayo, but there was mustard from the sub shop...soy sauce from Chinese takeout...parmesan cheese and those little dried peppers from a pizza run.

A dash of fake maple syrup from the last time we had Frozen Waffle Tuesday, and I was good to go.

(What, you don't have Frozen Waffle Tuesday? A package of Eggos, some syrup, a toaster and suddenly EVERYONE is happy. Try it sometime.)

I mixed it up and voila! Black, salty, tangy, spicy, tasty sauce! Well-balanced. Even piquant. Whatever "piquant" means.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. In fact, if someone served it to me in a restaurant as "dipping sauce," I would have been very, very happy. I don't know if this says more about my terrible palate or about my amazing kitchen alchemy skills. Check it out.

Chestnut Flour - Strangle, Fart, or both?

I cleaned out the cabinets recently. This brought up some interesting questions:

Why do I buy so many packages of golden raisins when I obviously never actually eat golden raisins?

What does "Best by August 2006" mean, anyway? I mean, it may not be best anymore...but it's still good, right?

Are whole grains helping my health just by sitting there in little storage containers? Because I am sure not cooking and eating them.

I also found a package of chestnut flour that I had purchased at Corti Bros. on my trip to Sacramento in January. I thought I had probably better use it some time this year and looked up recipes on google.

The first one sounded great: Chestnut Flour Gnocchi. Mmmm gnocchi. Then I read the description:

How long until they are cooked? There lies the rub. For after the 20-minutes-or-so recommended...they certainly weren't cooked through. Nor after 40 minutes. At some point a man has go to eat, so when you can't wait anymore, take them out and serve on a hot plate with shreds of cheese and pepper.

These certainly could be called priest-stranglers or strangleanyones.

Ok. Maybe not.

Moving on, I found a recipe for a chestnut flour cake with pine nuts and rosemary...mmmm, intriguing. No mention of strangling here, but this charming warning set me back a bit:

Chestnut flour is completely unknown in some provinces of Italy, and I doubt that anyone's ever tried to introduce it, despite it's being an inexpensive, healthy, and nutritious food suited for the poor and those unafraid of wind*.
Re wind: Chestnuts rival beans in this respect.

Strangle or fart? It's up to you. The second recipe also warns against using chestnut flour that isn't "perfectly fresh." In this case I may be glad that my flour is probably past its "best by" date.

Updated to add
I chose "Fart" since I had a fresh supply of Bean-o on hand and figured I could stave off any ozone-layer-destroying results.

The Migliaccio chestnut cake is odd. It looks a bit...ok, a lot, like something unfortunate.


Both light-textured but very hearty. The oil I drizzled on top STAYED on top, so I poked some holes in the top to get it to ooze down. It seems entirely cooked in some spots and entirely uncooked in others. I can't say I give it a thumbs-up. If I ever get my hands on some more chestnut flour, I will try a different recipe.