Thursday: fake parm
Sep. 29th, 2022 09:19 amI am looking at some corn on the cob, and I have a Chinese eggplant in the fridge, all from Siena Farms. I have things I want to try that involve fake parm. And — my regular readers know what is coming next — I don’t want to go to the store to buy anything else.
So I went looking for fake parm recipes, which I have never made any of, despite at one point owning a cookbook that relied heavily upon homemade fake parm (eventually got rid of the cookbook, because it was clear to me I wasn’t ever going to cook anything out of that cookbook anyway). The principle seems simple enough and I own nooch and R. has a stash of cashews, so at this point it’s just a matter of figuring out what mechanical device I could use to processor the two without committing to an insane amount of the stuff. I pulled out the coffee grinder that we use for spices. It was pretty clean, but I cleaned it more, and then ran the cashews through it. I had to regrind the bits that were missed, because if I hadn’t pulled the rest out first I was going to wind up with cashew butter (not a _bad_ thing but not my goal in this particular instance). So, I now have cashew meal mixed with nooch and a little salt, so I’m well on my way.
Next up: entirely fake-y esquites or eggplant parm? Hmmmm. Perhaps a Both / And moment. I do have half a lime AND I have some red sauce. The downside here is that I do not have a jalapeno or cilantro. I do have parsley, and I do have some dried peppers (from the grind all the aging dried peppers project a couple months ago). I’ll probably make something and call it, “Inspired by but please do not blame any of this on esquites”; I don’t feel quite as strong a need to be abjectly apologetic about the eggplant dish.
So I went looking for fake parm recipes, which I have never made any of, despite at one point owning a cookbook that relied heavily upon homemade fake parm (eventually got rid of the cookbook, because it was clear to me I wasn’t ever going to cook anything out of that cookbook anyway). The principle seems simple enough and I own nooch and R. has a stash of cashews, so at this point it’s just a matter of figuring out what mechanical device I could use to processor the two without committing to an insane amount of the stuff. I pulled out the coffee grinder that we use for spices. It was pretty clean, but I cleaned it more, and then ran the cashews through it. I had to regrind the bits that were missed, because if I hadn’t pulled the rest out first I was going to wind up with cashew butter (not a _bad_ thing but not my goal in this particular instance). So, I now have cashew meal mixed with nooch and a little salt, so I’m well on my way.
Next up: entirely fake-y esquites or eggplant parm? Hmmmm. Perhaps a Both / And moment. I do have half a lime AND I have some red sauce. The downside here is that I do not have a jalapeno or cilantro. I do have parsley, and I do have some dried peppers (from the grind all the aging dried peppers project a couple months ago). I’ll probably make something and call it, “Inspired by but please do not blame any of this on esquites”; I don’t feel quite as strong a need to be abjectly apologetic about the eggplant dish.