Stir-Fried Beef With Snow Peas & Red Peppers

Stolen from Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, pp. 143-144. I doubled the recipe given I had unpacked two packages of T-bone steaks (what I had in the freezer, defrosted under water until stiff but not completely melted). Deboned and defatted (mostly on the latter), it amounted to 1 lb. 6 oz, about double what this calls for.

Sauce

• 1/2 c. low-sodium chicken broth
• 1/4 c. oyster sauce
• 2 tbsp. dry sherry
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. cornstarch

Beef stir-fry

• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 (12 oz.) flank steak, trimmed and sliced thin across the grain on a slight bias. (As mentioned above, I used t-bone steak, but I expect this recipe can tolerate considerably cheaper cuts.)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced. Highly dependent on size, and I would recommend assuming smaller cloves. Also, whenever someone says “minced”, I just run it through my Rösle press.
• 1 tbsp. grated fresh ginger. I had none, and so substituted 1/4 tsp. powdered ginger.
• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 12 oz. snap peas (I used whole snow peas)
• 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 1/4” slices
• 2 tbsp. water
• FOR THE SAUCE: Whisk all the ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.
• FOR THE STIR-FRY: Combine soy sauce and sugar in a mediu bowl. Add beef, toss well, and marinate for at least 10 minutes, or up to one hour, stirring once. (I opted for 30 minutes.) Meanwhile, combine garlic, ginger, and 1 tsp. oil in a small bowl.
• Drain beef and discard liquid. Heat 1 tsp. oil ... HA HA HA, however much you need to coat the wok. Heat until oil is smoking. Lay the beef one layer thick, and allow to cook for 1 minute uninterrupted. Stir and cook another 1-2 minutes until browned.
• Add any remaining oil to the wok and heat until just smoking. Add pea and bell pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables begin to brown, 3-5 minutes. Add water and continue to cook until vegetables are crisp-tender, 1-2 minutes longer. Clear center of skillet, add garlic-ginger mixture and cook, mashing mixture into pan, until fragrant, 15-20 seconds. Stir mixture into vegetables. Return beef and any juices to skillet and stir to combine. Whisk sauce to recombine, add to skillet and cook, stirring constantly until thickened, about 30 seconds. Serve.

13-Bean Soup

As with so many things in the kitchen, I find myself interpolating between recipes in order to make better use of the hardware I have. This is a good example of taking one thing from column A and another from column B and merging the two, in this case, the 13-bean soup recipes from Pressure Cooker Perfection (an America's Test Kitchen title) and the recipe from the Bob's Red Mill 13-bean soup label.

• 2 cups 13-bean soup mix. You can buy this in the Bob's package, or Sprouts actually sells a 10-bean bulk mix that's very similar.
• 2 quarts of chicken stock.
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 tsp. minced fresh thyme, or 1/4 tsp. dried thyme
  
• 1 pint tomato sauce
• 4 cloves garlic, pressed. Any time a recipe calls for minced garlic, I always press it as it's faster and easier, plus more flavorful (IMO).
• 1 lb. sweet Italian sausage. I use chicken sausage as it's lower fat.
• Enough olive/vegetable oil to cover a frying pan and the base of the pressure cooker (4 tbsp.?)
  
• 2 bay leaves
• 8 ounces Swiss chard
• Salt and pepper

Measure out two cups of the soup mix, and then pick through for bad beans, stones, and the like. At this point, you may wish to soak overnight, but the received wisdom is that overnight soaking is not necessary. That's especially true with pressure cookers.

Edit 2016-10-29: Use this quick pre-soak method:

• 8 cups water
• 2 tsps. salt
• oil

Rinse the bean mix in a colander and add to the empty pressure cooker. Add the water, salt, and oil; run for two minutes, and do a quick release, periodically stopping the release if foam comes out.

Coat a skillet and your pressure cooker with olive oil, and set both to high heat until the oil smokes a bit. Add the sausage in the skillet, and the chopped carrot and onion in the pressure cooker. Cook the sausage until brown on all sides (about 2 minutes), then set aside. Cook the carrots and onions until soft, about five minutes. Add the garlic and thyme to the pressure cooker, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add broth, tomato sauce, bay leaves, and sausage to the pressure cooker, adding any residual juices from the sausage.

Lock the pressure cooker lid and set on high for 70 minutes (1:10). Quick release pressure. Extract the bay leaves and discard. Remove the sausages and cut in 1/2" thick slices, and return to the soup. Add the chard, and cook an additional five minutes, until the chard is tender. Add salt and pepper to taste.

For non-pressure cookers:

For cooking at atmospheric, the cooking time is 2:30 (two and a half hours).

Flu-Buster Soup

Given to Helen from a friend at the Copper Well spa, and something I’m gonna try making tonight or tomorrow.

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 stalk of ginger, peeled and chopped
• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 3 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped
• 1 zucchini, peeled and chopped
• Juice of 1 lemon, 2-4 tablespoons
• 2 cups of vegetable stock
• 1/2-1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• Salt and pepper to taste.

I used an instant pot but you can do it on the stove too. (Multiply times by about two for cooking at atmospheric.)

Saute garlic, onions, and ginger in olive oil until onions are translucent.

Add the rest of the ingredients and pressure cook for 40 minutes.

Use immersion blender to blend or cool and use blender. Return to pot and heat through.

Optional things to serve with is sour cream, Greek yogurt, or coconut cream. Crispy bacon or crisped tofu are great too.

I’ll probably dial back or eliminate the cayenne because Helen can tolerate very little nowadays.

Recipe Blogging: Black Bean Chili For The Instant Pot

Facebook has decided to annihilate their Notes feature, the one place on that site where you could post formatted text. (They pulled the plug on new notes some time last year, while retaining anything you had previously written.) Forthwith, I will start posting some recipes here that I previously published there, in instances where I had somehow retained a link (as by bit.ly):

"You Owe Me Your Opinion", She-Hulk: Attorney At Law Edition

 Women being angry at things appear to be an unlimited vein of ore for certain genre cultural artifacts, as evidenced by my favorite hobby horse in this space, Paul Feig's 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, less objectionably Xena: Warrior Princess. Despite generally favorable ratings at Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing, 87% fresh from the critics, 74% audience score), the preemptive kvetching from outlets that can be counted on to tell us What We Need To Think — e.g. ScreenRant — are busying themselves letting certain audience reviewers Have Wrong Opinions. In particular, they have a beef with IMDB's audience score, currently at 5.2/10 stars.

...[A]s exposed by the review bombs of She-Hulk and other recent projects, IMDb’s intent to offer a credible index of genuine audience reviews has been massively undermined by one of its own rules and by the site’s rise in popularity. The rise in bad-faith IMDb reviews, particularly for projects led by women and/or BIPOC, threatens to render the site’s scores meaningless if the problem is not addressed.

Well, maybe if so much of the film biz (including flacks at places like ScreenRant) weren't aimed at sliming large parts of the potential audience as racists and sexists, this might not happen so much? Regardless of the cheap attempt at mind-reading, De'Vion Hinton has a valid point: IMDB shouldn't allow reviews for products not yet in circulation. But that doesn't mean anybody has to actually like it, either.  He (?) doesn't attempt to break this down by date of review, but the statistics IMDB themselves publish show a certain, um, pattern here:

The plurality of low ratings come from teenage boys. Wow, hoocoodanode? I expect next a soulfully argued piece coming out against calling neighborhood bars and looking for Amanda Hugginkiss.

Public Health Reticence To Call Monkeypox A Sexually-Transmitted Disease Meets New Evidence

 One of the most baffling things about the recent monkeypox outbreak is the nearly unanimous refusal of public health agencies to declare it a sexually transmitted disease. On the one hand, monkeypox is above the break at the CDC's sexually transmitted disease page — along with COVID-19:

On the other, it doesn't make the big list at the bottom. Moreover, the CDC continues to insist that "anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, who has been in close, personal contact with someone who has monkeypox is at risk." The WHO website is even worse on the subject of transmission, saying, "While close physical contact is a well-known risk factor for transmission, it is unclear at this time if monkeypox can be transmitted specifically through sexual transmission routes."

Careful researchers will always need to make sure they aren't fooling themselves, it's true, but a CNBC news story today highlights exactly how illusory is the politically-motivated desire of public health officials to omit gay male sexual behavior as the primary mode of transmission:

In recent weeks, a growing body of scientific evidence — including a trio of studies published in peer-reviewed journals, as well as reports from national, regional and global health authorities — has suggested that experts may have framed monkeypox’s typical transmission route precisely backward. 
…

“A growing body of evidence supports that sexual transmission, particularly through seminal fluids, is occurring with the current MPX outbreak,” said Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, medical director of the University of Chicago Sexual Wellness Clinic, referring to monkeypox and to recent studies that found the virus in semen.

Consequently, scientists told NBC News that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities should update their monkeypox communication strategies to more strongly emphasize the centrality of intercourse among gay and bisexual men, who comprise nearly all U.S. cases, to the virus’ spread.

It will likely take a while for this to pervade the CDC et al., because their cosmology does not admit that gay male promiscuity never entirely went away, even after after the AIDS crisis, and is loathe to criticize LGBT+ individuals for any reason. While it may be true that a comparative minority of gay men are promiscuous in this way, young gay men especially are more likely to have multiple partners than either older gay men or straight people of either sex. The lessons of AIDS have been frequently forgotten by the current generation.

The Kansas Abortion Referendum: The Gap Between Activism And Governing

 The Bulwark positions themselves as a centrist organ, "focuse[d] on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices". Charlie Sykes today published a piece about the failure of yesterday's abortion ban referendum in Kansas and what it means going forward in the ongoing politics of abortion. The important points:

• Pro-choice advocates stuck to messaging about government medical mandates, linking them to unpopular mask and vaccine mandates.
• They also stayed away from the crazier "men can get abortions, too" nonsense, avoiding "scratch[ing] their ideological id."
• They mentioned that abortion is already highly regulated in Kansas.
• The measure lost even in some counties that voted for Trump in 2020.

Pro-choice people will have to model this messaging going forward, though the details will differ depending on locale. It probably helped immensely that the bill was a radical measure that would ban abortion under all circumstances, which is a consequence of conception personhood. It really highlights just how unpopular conception personhood really is once people consider its logical conclusions: under this rubric, abortion has the same valence as first-degree homicide (laying in wait). This underpinning ideology is fine if you need to get activists worked up, but it's a positive hindrance if you need to speak to people outside your tribe, i.e. if you need to actually govern. In that vein, it's pretty significant that the measure's advocates felt the need to use confusing language to hide what a "yes" or "no" vote actually meant.

 With Roe v. Wade now a matter for the history books, latitude for sweeping, polarizing gestures politicians don't have to worry about because, Supreme Court, has suddenly collapsed. San Clemente might try to make their city a "sanctuary for life", but did anyone actually ask people living there what their opinions on the matter might be?