use real butter

Recipe: taiwanese beef noodle soup

Our house sprung a leak. We don’t know when it happened because it’s somewhat of a slow leak, but when Jeremy discovered it Friday night in the ceiling of our ground floor, it had soaked four shelves’ worth of backpacking, ski, and mountaineering gear, as well as drywall. We pitched tents, spread out sleeping bags, poured water from boots, unraveled ropes, removed crampons and bindings from sopping wet boxes. This gear is meant to get wet, after all. Jeremy isolated the cause of the leak and our plumber is coming on Monday.

I kept thinking I should be really upset, but it didn’t dampen (ha ha! pun!) our spirits one bit. Freaking out adds nothing. Say NO to Drama, folks. Too many people self-destruct under the weight of their own drama. Energies are better spent on positive things like:

playing with puppies in the snow

baking carrot cake for your neighbors (and another for yourself)

…or sitting down to a bowl of beef noodle soup after ski touring the backcountry with your sweetheart. I’m not talking about western beef noodle soup. That’s not even on my radar. No, I am referring to the ultimate beef noodle soup – Taiwanese beef noodle soup. This is the noodle soup of my people.

beef shank, beef marrow bones, green onions, ginger, garlic, thai bird chiles

soy sauce, soy paste, dark soy sauce, chili black bean sauce, fermented bean curd, tomato paste

brown sugar, star anise, cinnamon sticks, dried orange peel, bay leaves, fennel seeds, cinnamon bark, sichuan peppercorns, black peppercorns

I’ve had a variety of homemade and restaurant versions of this beloved soup. I’ve flipped through many recipes and never found one that really called to me, until the other day when Carolyn posted a link to Chef Hou Chun-sheng’s winning spicy beef noodle soup recipe. Winning, because Chef Hou dusted his competitors at the Taipei International Beef Noodle Festival in 2011. I had most of the spices, but for those in short supply or those I didn’t have, I knew where to go.

got some more fennel seeds, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, and picked up cassia bark

from savory spice shop, of course

chinese herb bags: cinnamon stick, cinnamon bark, orange peel, anise, fennel seeds, sichuan peppercorns

Savory Spice Shop in Boulder always has what I’m looking for. However, there were two items that I think are pretty specific to Chinese herbal medicine stores: the cassia buds and the angelica root. They didn’t have them (although they looked them up and told me what they were) and I decided it wasn’t worth the scavenger hunt at the Asian markets. My parents hadn’t heard of those either and my dad suggested I omit them. I don’t know if this is kosher or not, but I dried my own organic orange peel. I got beef marrow bones because the butcher said it would lend a deeper flavor to the broth. This soup is ALL about the broth. It costs more, but I am convinced it is worth it. As for beef shank, I rarely find whole beef shank anywhere but in the Asian markets, so I picked up a few pounds of the bone-in cut beef shank.

make broth from the bones

aromatics: green onions, ginger, garlic, thai bird chiles

adding soy sauce, brown sugar, and hot bean paste to the sautéed aromatics

Now, you can make this in one longish day or you can make this over the course of two days. It really depends on a couple of factors: 1) if you use a conventional stock pot or if you use a pressure cooker and 2) if you defat the broth and sauce (at all, the quick way, or the slow way). Personally, I feel the pressure cooker is the better choice because it is so much faster, more energy efficient, and achieves a tenderness in the beef that is effortless. Physics. It is totally your BFF.

let the sauce cook for a minute

then pour it into the beef stock

add fermented tofu, tomato paste, herb bag, bay leaf, and black peppercorns to the broth

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: albóndigas soup

With the arrival of each new month, I have a little routine of running through the house flipping all of our calendars. We have several calendars just like we have several clocks, because I’m all time-conscious. I could have sworn it was just yesterday that I flipped to November. Is this what happens when you get old?! December is going to be a good month, because I say so. We already have an inch of highly-anticipated snow on the deck as I type. I am hoping December will make up for what November was lacking in blessed frozen precipitation. And then I have my schedule of handmade gifts for those people that have been very good to us like Kaweah’s Camp Crazy, our Subaru service team, the local post office (yes, even the ornery employee), Jeremy’s administrative staff, our vets, and my oncologist (the best one in the whole wide world). It just so happens that we’ll have new toys of our own to break in this month.

(left to right) my waxless touring skis, my teles, jeremy’s teles

While I’m ridiculously excited to have all of this new gear, I’m also grateful that we only upgrade our skis every four to five years because we’re having bread and water for the next 12 months. Actually, it’s been 13 years since we upgraded our waxless touring skis and let me just say, technology can be a beautiful thing when you wait a decade.

So earlier this week I was sitting at my desk one morning, typing emails in a horrible posture when Jeremy said, “Come look at these birds in the yard!” I jumped up from my seat and *twang*. My back has been recovering rather quickly. Although it feels slow as hell to me, I recognize that going from being unable to stand to being able to ride my bike in 48 hours is definite improvement. This has happened before in the past, so I know what works. Ice is my friend. Say it with me, everyone. I ice my back a couple of times a day, lying with my back on the floor, legs bent at 90 degrees and calves resting on a chair. I lay a quilt and pillow on the floor, then go to the freezer to get my ice pack. And without fail, upon my return there is a little occupy movement going on. Every. Single. Time.

hey, thanks for setting this up for me!

I make her move, but only enough for me to lie down next to her. Kaweah loves it when people get on the floor because she thinks they’re going to play. We had to establish that there was no playing going on while I iced my back. She settles for resting her head on my stomach and cuddling, periodically raising her head and sniffing around to check for treats (I know, she’s crazy – she is food obsessed 24/7). She’s become incredibly sweet in her old age.

We are having a lot of soups and stews in this house and it is without a doubt very absolutely awesome amazing. I load them with vegetables, they serve us for several meals, and the cooking warms the house with wonderful savory aromas. I had a batch of navy bean soup on the stove this evening as the sun dropped below the Continental Divide. There were nice clouds that I expected to light up on the bellies, but they were duds – gray, lifeless. I stood at the windows tapping my foot on the ground and scrunched my mouth to one side. Back to the soup… But you know, there is a reward for patience. Most of the time, it is a fizzle, but I kept checking every 20 minutes and after nearly an hour past local sunset, I started to see a yellow glow. This was a good sign. I took my photo equipment out onto the deck. I set up my gear while watching pale yellows become golds which touched off oranges, pinks, and reds that painted these textured cloudscapes. Kaweah ambled about the deck checking the grill for any overlooked goodies. The clouds were not high, they hugged the horizon but stretched from east to west (as far as I could see). Even though most people think they need a wide angle lens to capture something big, I find I use my telephoto zoom as much as my wides if not more so.

seven image pano stitch

like fire

eerie patterns to the south

sunset rainbow of colors

You can find the entire set on my photoblog.

Now back to the soups. I’ve had this one in a couple of Mexican restaurants when I lived in Southern California. It was a simple meatball soup, albóndigas soup. Usually the broth was thin and there were swirls of cabbage, carrot, and onion floating about with a grain of rice here and there alongside three small meatballs. I found it comforting despite how plain it was and how cheaply it was made. I didn’t know it was cheaply made, I just thought they were all this way. At some point my mother-in-law gifted me this terrific New Mexican cookbook – The Border Cookbook, which I didn’t really cook from until my in-laws moved from New Mexico to Colorado and my supply of good New Mexican fare was cut off. When we moved to Colorado, I began to tag recipes until the book looked like it was growing a thick lawn of bright pink post-it tabs out the top. I had albóndigas soup marked forever and I finally made it this week.

soup base: carrots, zucchini, onion, cumin, oregano, rice, salt, garlic, chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, tomatoes

everything is chopped, shredded, ground, or minced

adding broth, tomatoes, carrots, chiles to the sautéed onions, garlic, and spices

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chicken fried steak with cream gravy

Wow, thank you for all of the warm and kind birthday wishes! I hope you had your own happy birthdays as well. It was one heck of a long weekend, but in the best way possible. The recon trip turned into a shooting trip because the leaves flipped like a switch. They are really good this year (I know this because they were pretty crappy last year). The colors are coming in rich and vibrant in the higher elevations because of our late and wet spring (big snowpack) and also due to the current hot days and cold nights that snap those leaves into the reds, golds, and oranges we love. There is plenty of green, but I’ve never seen it change so quickly.

we encountered a lot of road construction on the way out

and early colors off the highways in drive-by (photo) shootings

Our first stop was Crested Butte, a town with which we’ve pretty much fallen in love. My thinking was that it would be early and there wouldn’t be much to shoot. I planned to just take notes as to when peak colors would probably occur and then we would hike and mountain bike the rest of the time there. We did manage a few rides, but most of the time was spent hunting gold. Here are some snappies from the trip (I won’t be able to look at my real photos until later).

approaching storm behind a sunlit stand

rainbow from the storm reflected in an oxbow

enjoying the colors

pot of gold at the other end of the rainbow (it lasted over an hour!)

jeremy’s favorite place for coffee: camp 4

one view from the town of mount crested butte

After a few days in Crested Butte, we moseyed across to Aspen. The two towns are practically within spitting distance of one another, separated by the glorious Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. To get to one from the other by car requires a more circuitous route. Aspen is a completely different vibe from Crested Butte, but we weren’t there for the town – we were there for the surrounding mountains and they delivered with some great colors. Over Independence Pass to Mount Elbert were probably the best stands of aspen I’ve seen this season so far.

sad to see some leaves falling already

sampling an heirloom tomato salad at matsuhisa’s in aspen

excellent color on the slopes of mount elbert

Now it’s time to head home, regroup, and get ready for the next shoot. This was a long weekend birthday recon getaway, but the rest is work. There is no rule that says you can’t love your work though. I get to frolic with snakes, hawks, horses, sheep, foxes, countless chipmunks and squirrels, and cattle. Many of the roads leading to good aspen or views wind their way through Colorado ranch land. It’s not uncommon for me to be shooting in a stand and have a a cow wander past me. I don’t mind their company at all, but the other day my thoughts turned to… chicken fried steak.

steak, salt and pepper, buttermilk, eggs, flour

tenderize the steak

Do you ever think of something you want to make while you’re in the grocery store, but have no idea how to make it or what you need to buy, and then you whip out the smartphone and look up a recipe? I have been doing that more and more lately (well okay, ever since I switched to Verizon from AT&T). So that’s what happened a few weeks ago when I had a hankering, nay, a craving for chicken fried steak. I asked Jeremy to do a search and he began reading off the sources. When he said “Homesick Texan” I shouted from the dairy cases “THAT ONE!” We all know that girl knows her chicken fried steak.

mix salt and pepper with the flour

whisk the buttermilk and eggs together

**Jump for more butter**