Tag Archives: Cooking

Foodie Tuesday: Love is an Everyday Thing

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photoOh, yes, Ladies and Gentlemen all, it is Valentine’s Day. At least, here in the good old US of A, where we constantly rebel against being told what to do and how to live our lives but are terrible sticklers for traditions that may or may not even suit our beliefs and needs. Now, celebrating the life–and, let’s face it, not-so-charming-to-celebrate death, since 14 February recognizes the officially accepted date of the martyrdom of St. Valentine by clubbing and beheading–of a possible whole group of Christian martyrs, who all have become conflated in the popular mind as one really nice guy who pitied and assisted the lovelorn, all of that is a matter of personal belief and taste, to be sure. Celebrating the highly adapted holiday of Valentine’s Day is one as well: as it’s been popularized, it’s a day for telling people we love them, filling them up with romantic food and drink and notions, showering them with flowers and sparkly gifts, and paying homage to our love in generally showier ways than usual.

There, my friends, is the rub where this stubborn old lady is concerned. I’m not really as curmudgeonly as all of this sounds however arguable my crankiness is on other topics. It’s just that I feel mighty strongly that if the love isn’t expressed on a fairly constant basis, in (as one might say) thought, word and deed, it means nothing whatsoever on Valentine’s Day, an anniversary, a birthday, or any other celebratory occasion no matter how the gifts and gooey treats are piled up and the lyrical words flow. It’s got to be the real, the every single day sort of deal, or it’s so much useless fluff.

photoThat said, I am among the biggest mush-meisters inhabiting the supposed real world, never tiring of being madly in love with the one person who’s crazy and silly enough to love me back in equal extremity. When we’re sitting at our respective desks down the hall from each other–which we have positioned conveniently so we can see each other across the way while working and maybe sneak a wink for no better reason than that after more than 16 years we still have a school-kid crush on each other–we are both inclined to chirp I Love Yous back and forth at intervals just because we actually do. He cheers me up when I’m feeling low and cheers me on when I’m flagging, chauffeurs me because I’m not fond of driving, works long hours to keep our accounts balanced, and tells me I’m smart and pretty like he really believes it.

So I am delighted to make a favorite dinner for him on Valentine’s Day. Appropriately enough, I can operate on the K.I.S.S. [Keep It Simple, Stupid] principal on this day of romantic silliness, because he likes things unfussy. So all he gets is a slab of tender, untrimmed Texas filet mignon, skillet seared in butter with salt and pepper (my blend of black, white, green and pink peppercorns and whole cloves) and a pinch of ground coriander, a handful of fresh-cut Romaine lettuce and some juicy tomato pieces and a few ripe strawberries, a flute of South African bubbly, and a piece of dark chocolate with toasted almond bits and crunchy salt in it. Couldn’t be easier. No recipes, no muss, no fuss, and because I made big steaks, we both have enough left over for steak and eggs in the morning.photoBecause romance is not a one-day deal, and expressing love should be the most important practice of the everyday. Bon appetit!

Foodie Tuesday: My Salad Days are Not Behind Me

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Is it salad or crudites when it's deconstructed? Do I care, or am I just *really* hungry? Is salad so hard to eat unabashedly that it must be disguised as something else to pass muster? Is Vilma secretly seeing Ernesto at his nightclub El Gallo Llorón while she thinks Juan Maria is away on vineyard business?

Sometimes I think that Salad has a little bit of a stigma in the popular mind, even though ‘some of my best friends eat salads’. There’s just a hint that if one is too obviously fond of salads one must be (a) stuck in the 1970s–don’t get me started on alfalfa sprouts–(2) trying to lose weight and hopelessly clueless about all of the better miracle diets out there, or (lastly) some sort of chlorophyll-blooded alien. Despite the widespread knowledge that there are endless kinds and combinations of foods that can be classified as salads and that the vast majority of them are both rather tasty and potentially nutritious, there’s always some naysayer out there who thinks that there’s something just a tiny bit off about people who embrace frequent salad-eating.

I would find it seriously boring to eat salad often, too, if all salads were born alike, but that is far from the case. There are all sorts of recipes and inspirations available from every quarter, and definitions galore of what constitutes a salad. The origin of the salad construct is arguably that of a simple collation of a dish or meal, in antique times, consisting simply of raw, fresh vegetal matter seasoned with salt (the ‘sal‘ of salad), and occasionally, with vinegar and oil. The idea has expanded over the centuries gradually to include cheeses, meats, fish, eggs and nuts, and at some point probably around the latter nineteenth to regularly include mixtures of warm ingredients and often grains, legumes, and their offspring of breads and pastas as well. If you can’t figure out how to keep a salad interesting then you are as sadly unimaginative as the average politician and probably deserve to go hungry for a while to contemplate your sins.

All the same, I have no objection to a rather staid and standard sort of salad, a plain bit of greens or greens with a few ‘classic’ add-ins–juicy sweet tomato; a bit of diced avocado, perhaps–and maybe a splash of good dressing, either as a light meal or a side dish. The much-maligned ordinariness of even a wedge of supposedly flavorless iceberg lettuce can sometimes add an exceedingly welcome and refreshing bit of mild crunch and hydration to offset an otherwise heavy or over-the-top sort of meal. There’s a perfectly good reason the ‘Wedge Salad’ has remained wedged onto the menu of virtually every standard American steakhouse for so very long, in between the slabs of highly seasoned beef and the creamed This and butter-slathered That and deep-fried Other, all quite delicious indeed but occasionally in want of one coy kiss of contrast or brightness in some fashion.

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In our hearts, we're all kind of plain, but is being ordinary a *bad* thing? Or is it mostly just comforting? Is a salad comprising only common uncooked vegetables and dressed abstemiously with a squeeze of lemon juice and a slurp of olive oil anathema, or can it be loved for its pure, taste-able simplicity? Honey, do deer eat salad in the woods? (Or just salal?)

I suppose I could be said to be more fond of or partial to salads that take the trouble to stand out from the crowd just a little bit, or at least less likely to become jaded by them since they vary the input on the palate. Why not jazz up the greens with a bit of roasted vegetable or bright fruit, with some shredded or crumbled cheese, some toasted nuts? Give the dressing a little boost of unexpected flavor. Make it a meal by putting some handsome protein in that invitingly verdant nest. But let’s not get crazy here! At some point, a concoction too complicated ceases to be a salad and becomes either a circus sideshow not very enticing as actual sustenance or more about ideas than about taste, and I find that tiresome in any part of a meal. If food is entertaining, great, but if entertainment is inedible, don’t try to tell me it’s dinner.

For that’s what it all means to me, finally: does what I’m serving genuinely satisfy hunger? Does it actually taste good? Does it express hospitality by being sensitive to the tastes and health of guests at the table? If it doesn’t meet those criteria, all of the artful towers of constructivist salad art and all of the impressive molecular gastronomist foams and gels and powders, the foodie-swooning truffles and caviar and smoked duck ravioli and balsamic-martini dressings in the world won’t save it from death-by-silliness. Let’s hear it instead for a thoughtful, pleasurable combination of flavor, texture, color, scent and sensibility that balances the needs of the diners and plays nicely with whatever else is brought to the feast.

Lately, my salads have been fairly basic again, combining the wonderfully homely base of romaine lettuce leaves or shredded cabbage with whatever array of old-fashioned but still tasty partners I happen to have on hand and be hungry to devour and topped with a lick of some complementary dressing for the big, if unsurprising, finish. I’ll be hungry soon enough for a hit of pizzazz in some part of the salad equation, whether it’s a whole new salad or just a garnish I’ve not enjoyed in a while. Because I’d hate for the old-familiar to become dull and unappealing. That is the very definition of being too far gone to recapture one’s salad days.

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A salad certainly needn't be fussy, only friendly, to enhance the dining experience; it's more important to balance the other characteristics of the meal than to show off what wild and weird tricks a salad can be made to perform. Unless you happen to know how to, say, make yellow tomatoes turn into red tomatoes when you put the dressing on the salad or how to make origami swans out of butter lettuce leaves.

Being beautiful, after all, is more about attitude than pedigree, so I’m more concerned that my salads be composed of flavorful fresh ingredients, play a proper supporting role to the stars of the meal (the people, first, and then the entrée), and in true Coco Chanel style, always be appropriately dressed. Even Coco, I feel certain, would admit that certain occasions require tasteful nudity, but she would know better than anyone that most events are best served by a well-designed and appropriate ensemble and careful accessorizing. With that, I scratch out here a couple of my thoughts about salad dressings, which like salads themselves seldom require an actual recipe–if they need one, they may have gotten too complicated for their own good.

I think of salad dressing as a marvelous way to distinguish the beauties of a particular salad. Something astringent works better with salad than with nearly any other course of the typical meal, so if the meal needs a little flash, that’s a great place to create it. For milder needs, despite my love affair with heavy cream, I know that creaminess in salad dressings is rarely best accomplished by incorporating actual dairy cream. A better partner with salads is an emulsion, generally two liquids that want to hate each other being brought into détente by mechanical means. Typical examples would be an acid ingredient like vinegar or citrus juice and a fat-centric goodie like oil or egg yolk, the two ingredients being beaten into submission by gradually incorporating the fat into the acid with a vigorous, airy, steady whisking. Sort of like a cranky teacher putting the harsh reality of thoughts into my fat head by forceful means. Not that any of my own teachers was ever like that. (Cough! Mrs. Finley!) Once I have (or a persnickety teacher-like person has) made the dressing’s basic parts behave properly together, there are endless sorts of herbal, spicy or other flavors that can be invited to play along with them for individuation and to better suit all of the dinner’s other ingredients.

Here’s a little combination to try: 1 part ginger juice (freshly grated ginger root will do, if you don’t have bottled juice), 1 part soy sauce, 2 parts maple syrup or raw honey, 2-3 parts lime juice, 2-4 parts macadamia or coconut oil (or any mild flavored oil you like). Put them all together in a tightly lidded jar or bottle and shake vigorously. Adjust to taste. Dress the salad just before serving or let guests dress their own salads. Fitting add-ins or add-ons for this sort of dressing are toasted or black sesame seeds, ground black pepper, toasted sliced almonds or pine nuts. Well suited to mixed green salads with sweet orange segments, diced dried apricot, ripe avocado, grated myzithra cheese, kale, thinly sliced jicama or daikon or sweet radish, or . . .

What? You can’t hear me over the crunching? Well, then, grab your salad fork and join me. I won’t tell anyone you’re one of those, you know, salad eaters.

Nuclear Winter Descends on the Kitchen

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I am so not that blogger. You know, the one who makes stupendous, dazzling, dream-fulfilling, frenzied dance inducing deliciousness every time I enter the temple of cookery and take skillet in hand. The artiste-de-cuisine whose documentation of each morsel of impending salivary serenity is preened and primped into further gleaming gloriousness and photographed more glossily than a phalanx of supermodels in swimsuit season. The doyenne of dining, the poet of pumpernickel, the queen of quenelles, writing elated paeans to the plate that stimulate the appetite and soothe the spirit simultaneously, every word a twinkling, perfectly faceted gem of gustatory wisdom and love.photoSee, what my heart is cooking and what my hands and brains are genuinely capable of producing are not necessarily identical in nature, not wholly synchronous. I start out with a perfectly innocent yellow capiscum, intending nothing more sinister than to slice it into tidy segments and give it a friendly saute in a spot of sweet butter, and I think to myself, Why, that’s a mighty pretty bit of golden sunshine! I really ought to take its portrait. And sometimes it cooperates moderately well, and at other times it becomes something of an extended exercise in abstract thinking to even discern that the resulting portraiture is indeed of a sweet pepper, and a rather tasty one. It refuses to be anything other than a poor defenseless bell pepper mauled malevolently by bad knifework and lying listless, awaiting its ultimate destruction in a frying pan. I mean well, really I do.photoThere was, for example, an incident the other day involving an attempt to make (for the first time in a verrrrrry long time, mind you) crepes for supper. I wanted to make them without flour, since I’m making a sincere effort to battle an addiction to wheat and offset the unkindness it seems to do to my stomach. So to the eggs I added only a splash of cream to thin them a bit, a pinch of salt and a touch of vanilla for depth of flavor. So far, so good. But of course, not having made crepes in eons, I made the first one so far too thick that it morphed quickly into a leather-thick omelette of unwieldy proportions and promptly subdivided into continental shapes and semi-detached crevasses when I attempted to force it to wrap around the roast-chicken chunks anyway. The second was more successful, but given that the crepes were already going to be fairly huge and there were only two of us coming to the table, I’d only made enough batter for two crepes, so one remained a geographical disaster area when plated.

It’s hardly the worst sin I’ve committed in the cooking realm, but even the vegetable-mushroom medley in herbed tomato cream sauce being lapped over the top and sprinkled with shredded mozzarella to melt couldn’t exactly disguise the rocky profile of the crude assemblage underneath. Ah, well! It tasted fine enough that (given the huge portions) chopping up the remainder in a little casserole with some added tomatoes and more sprinkled mozz and cheddar to melt in made a perfectly serviceable (and actually, prettier) pseudo-lasagna for brunch the next day. I keep reminding myself that aroma and flavor, not good looks, must always remain the chief arbiters for the biters of the dish.

photoBut I can’t help but judge a dish on its beauty, still, and neither do any others unless they’re genuinely starving. Christmas Day’s standing rib roast of beef (above) was as tender and juicy and flavorful as any I’ve made, and in fact the gravy was a delicious simple reduction of beef juices and Cabernet finished with a bit of butter, but they didn’t impress with their devilishly handsome appearance as much as they might have done if I’d more intelligently plated the meat on top of the sauce, especially in the company of such homely looking side dishes as sweet coleslaw and brown-butter mashed potatoes. Presentation remains elusive, and capturing it on camera even more so. I must continue to learn!

Meanwhile, back at the oven, there are more serious disasters, ones that if compounded one with another and another as they were last week for some infernal reason beyond my ken, verge on apocalyptic. The centerpiece of one such Perfect Storm of kitchen failures was the day in which I managed to mis-set two crucial cooking elements at once. The end result of the first was that the wrongly timed egg boiling created not the expected hard-boiled eggs (a simple enough thing!), not even soft-boiled eggs mind you, but implosive mutant mush that was unsalvageable and decidedly unpalatable and went straight from kettle to compost in a trice. I was relieved that the Dutch oven finishing its long time in the sauna at least held a nice batch of broth that had been simmering overnight–that would cheer me up–relieved, that is, until I discovered that I had apparently jostled the lid out of place the night before and left just enough gap that not only did the liquid all vanish in a beautiful cloud, it left behind such a blackened, smoking pile of bones and charred vegetables and meat bits that I not only had to chisel out what I could and soak the pot for two days, continuing the excavations until I could scrub it back to a recognizable enamel surface, but I could also literally not photograph it at all. It was the perfectly even black of deep outer space, offering not a single change in surface that could reflect the light required by a camera lens for recognition. The smoke released when I opened the pot took days to clear from the house, and the only upside I can think of is that the pot was too tough to die despite its trial by fire.photoSo any time you are feeling a little blue, a little inadequate as a chef or depressed as a foodie, take heart. I have not only managed in spite of myself to keep self and fellow diners alive and un-poisoned for all of these years, even without resorting to the antique cure-all elixir waiting on the apothecary shelf, but have even occasionally risen above my faults and produced some memorably tasty, yes, even prettily presented, treats that people who didn’t even owe me money complimented. I’d show you the best of them and preen a little, but documentation still remains my weakest suit, and of course there’s that perpetual problem where the really good stuff gets eaten before you can say Photo Op! and dash for the camera. Later, perhaps. Dig in!

Foodie Tuesday: Nothing Freaky about Frikadeller

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Kjøttkaker, as they’re known in my Norwegian-descended (and oh, how far we can descend!) family, or frikadeller, as the Danes and some other ‘cousins’ of ours call them, are simply and literally seasoned ground (minced) meat cakes. My husband finds them strange because they aren’t cozied up inside a hamburger bun, since that’s pretty much what the patties are, though usually on a slightly smaller scale. He finds it equally strange to serve them without a nice tomato-based sauce over the top of some beautiful fresh pasta, since again, they’re pretty much meatballs too, though usually on a slightly larger scale. And they certainly aren’t meatloaves, being far too teensy to serve sliced to anyone without smirking at the sheer silliness of it, though it might be worth it just to watch their expressions, while you counted out five peas per person alongside the meat and baked one fingerling potato for each. In any case, it’s really no surprise that these little dandies should suffer an identity crisis on this side of the pond.

Truth be told, said spouse isn’t a huge fan of ground meats outside of some favorite places where they commonly lurk, as in the previously mentioned hamburgers, or as meatballs in pasta sauce, or in a nicely spicy taco filling. The texture isn’t all that appealing to him without some distracting vehicle or accompaniment. I will have to continue on my search for some other alternatives or just know that any kjøttkaker cooked up around here are all mine for the munching. Hmm, was I thinking there was anything wrong with that scenario? How ridiculous!

Because I do like a nice chopped meat treat of one sort or another occasionally. So I made up a batch the other day. These are no more than a lightly-mixed blend of equal parts ground beef, veal and pork (about a half pound each, I suppose) with a couple of eggs to bind them and boost their nutrients a bit, some salt, black pepper, smoked paprika, ground coriander and a nice toss of shredded Parmesan for a touch of textural variety. I oven-baked them (in bacon fat, because I’m a flavor-holic), having made a big enough batch to freeze a bunch and have a few left in the fridge for weekday meals in the short term. Then I stuck the ones headed for supper into the skillet where the side-dishes were waiting, so all would arrive together hot at the table.photoWhile the patties were roasting, I’d cooked up a nice big batch of crimini mushrooms in butter and my homemade bone broth, set them aside and lightly cooked some nice thin green beans in the fat of the pan, and then layered it all back up together. While the vegetable portion of the program rested a moment, I’d taken the meat patties out of the oven, poured off the fat and scooped up all of those nice meaty drippings into a little container where I whipped them up with some heavy cream. The drippings were already plenty well seasoned and nicely condensed by their medieval-hot-tub adventures in the oven, so I had Instant Gravy of a kind you’re not likely to find in a packet of powdered whatsis on your grocery’s shelf. Which is to say, rich and flavorsome enough even for the likes of me.photoAll I added at table were some nice little fresh tomatoes to add a bit of color both to the plating and to the palate, a brightener welcome alongside the warmth and savory goodness of the rest. A little shot of sunshine is always welcome, whether in the kitchen or on the grinning face of someone happily gobbling up what’s served for supper.photo

Foodie Tuesday: Keeping the Tank Full Makes Me Thankful

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Let’s just say I’m not the most compliant or enthusiastic when it comes to trying to eat what I think I ought to eat. It’s not that I don’t love eating practically everything–it’s that I do–limiting my choices to what’s right at the moment seems amazingly hard to manage when I’d rather just eat what I feel like eating, in the largest possible quantities and whenever I’m so moved. Sadly, this is what gradually moves me toward the zaftig and less ‘peep show’ sexy than that of a Marshmallow Peep. While its High Season of springtime is ever nearer on the calendar, I don’t really fancy being the latter shape no matter how popular the treat is with other people as sweet-toothed as I am. In fact, I’d have nightmares about being chased around by lust crazed Sugar Zombies in a yellow snowstorm. The very thought!

So I’m going to see if I can’t reduce my carbohydrate footprint, so to speak, and eat things that stay with me in a more kindly manner, that is, in the form of longer-lasting energy and higher nutritive value and deeper savory satisfaction. Frankly, I’m not as worried about fats as I am about the quantity and quality of sugars I’m capable of packing away and have no real need of, nutritionally. So pardon me while I butter myself up, as long as I can learn to more nearly kick the carb habit.

Today I went for an easy start: steak and eggs, Tex-Mex style. I put a couple of cuts of steak in the Sous Vide cooker last night just before bedtime, and when we got going (at our respective times) today, each of us had a piece of medium-rare beef to sear off in the skillet when we were ready to eat. I browned mine in butter and while it rested momentarily on the plate, deglazed the skillet with some of the bone broth from the last batch, handily waiting for the summons from the fridge, and while the broth cooked down to a thin gravy I poached an egg in it. I topped it with a little gussied up salsa: I often buy a jar of Pace Picante Chunky salsa–a pretty mild type–and stick-blend part of it with a (yes, one) chipotle en Adobo, mixing all together for a slightly smoky kick. Then a spoonful of sour cream (didn’t have real crema on hand) and a spiff each of smoked paprika and some lovely crunchy Maldon sea salt flakes, and immediately stuck my fork in and got to work.

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I'm just a Steak and Egg sort of cowgirl, I guess . . .

Thankfully, such a hearty brunch (I won’t lie to you about when I got up) holds up well when it comes to that Work thing, so I’m contentedly looking toward a 7 pm supper with nary a twitch. Well, okay, there is that completely hunger-unrelated humming in my candy molars . . .

Foodie Tuesday: The Element of Surprise

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One of the particularly attractive things about learning of a new cuisine or recipe is the way that it can introduce unexpected ingredients to mind and palate. Things that seemed commonplace or familiar are suddenly tinged with mystery, filled with puzzles and questions never before imagined. So much recombinant mischief can be made when a new ingredient–or a new use for one I thought I’d known–comes into play.

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Tomatillos

I’ve long known the delights of tomatillos. Salsa verde is a pleasurable variant of that endlessly flexible family of Mexican sauces best known in their tomato form, hot or cold. Usually made with chopped or pureed tomatillos in combination with onion, jalapeños, chiles, cilantro and whatever additional spices or lime juice the maker uses for her trademark blend, salsa verde brings a slightly lemony brightness of flavor and a zing of lively green to the plating of whatever magnificent assemblage of Mexican cuisine is in hand. As I love putting fruits of various kinds into my salsa cruda (or pico de gallo, the rough-cut raw and chunky form of salsa) for the bright, colorful, juicy and distinctive twists they can introduce to the party. Fruits are such glorious foils for spicy and savory foods that their addition has been popular for far too long for even a venerable geezer like me to credibly claim credit for pretty much any such combination. This is certainly a great reason to love tomatillos in spicy salsas.

The big surprise, for me (again, blame it on my innocence; blame it on my lack of smarts; blame it on the bossa nova) is that it turns out green is not the only color in which tomatillos ripen. So I bought these seeds for purple tomatillos, too, in high hopes of having an eventual opportunity for making some groovy purple salsa cruda. So cool! Unfortunately, the weather fairies of Texas had a little different slant, this summer, on the whole project and the poor little tomatillo plants, purple and green, couldn’t quite make it to full ripeness while being simultaneously strangled by drought. Pity. But one day I will make it happen. Then you can look for me to side my grilled salmon with a nice salsa cruda compounded of purple tomatillo, fresh peach, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice and jots of salt, pepper, cumin, cinnamon. Fingers crossed!

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How nutty is it that I didn't know people could make and use acorn flour!

There are so many other magical goodies around in the meantime, things not so seasonally sensitive perhaps, that there’s no worry about going hungry while waiting. Flours, for one. Asian, Native American and other foodies have already known for eons that acorns can be a source of jellies, cooking and baking, not to mention much-needed nutrition in times of scarcity. Me, I had no idea that acorn flour is useful for so much in the non-squirrel kitchen. But now I’ve acquired a small stash of the stuff so I can remedy my ignorance soon. Yes, acquired–bought–I have no intention of being so marvelously industrious as is required for the long and involved process of soaking out the tannins and preparing the acorns for consumption when I don’t even know how successfully I’ll use the flour, let alone how compellingly palatable the results will be. Time and experimentation will tell. Promise I’ll keep you posted!

On the heels of that particular discovery, of course, I went off on an alternative-flour tangent and hunted for others of interest. I’ve done a bit of baking with almond flour before (almonds ground up, but not so far as to be turning into almond butter, a whole other sort of ingredient altogether and tasty and useful in its own right) and coconut flour as well, and both are godsend finds for one who’s wanting to reduce or eliminate grain-based flours for any reason in cooking and baking. I certainly like that they’re both mild enough in flavor to work for innumerable purposes and are able to be adapted to a large number of functions in different recipes. The next surprise flour that popped up on my radar was mesquite. Say, what??? Making flour from the leguminous seeds of the nearly unkillable weed tree that drives ranchers ’round the bend with its tire-puncturing spines and water-hogging monster tap-root? Well, proponents say mesquite meal has a nutty, “sweet, earthy taste with notes of cinnamon, molasses, and caramel”—hard to argue with the allure of that. Needless to say, I look forward to seeing what can come of such a distinctive sounding ingredient.

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A rose is a rose is a remarkable herb . . .

Consider the rose: what has long been one of the most favored flowers, universally admired for its varied beauty, perfume, and rather astonishing adaptability to climate and environs is being celebrated as the herb of the year this very year. Rose water, candied rose petals, rose hip tea, rose petal preserves, classic Turkish Delight–the list of rose-based foods has been building over centuries and only adds to the popularity of this queen of flowers. But most of that sort of thing was far outside the ken of a girl growing up in modest middle-class America, and didn’t really attract my attention until I was well into adulthood. Even then, I learned that as delicious as the rose is, a little can go a long way. So as I was contemplating my angle for this post and thinking about how fascinating it could be to yet discover previously unimagined ways to invite the rose to the dining table and began to contemplate what numinous form that idea might take. What did I do? Like any culinary detective-wannabe of the modern age, I Googled, of course. I typed in “rose as herb” and there before my very eyes appeared a handy page trumpeting the rose as Herb of the Year 2012. You call it lazy detective work, I call it kismet. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. –Say, wouldn’t sweet potatoes be interesting prepared with a faint infusion of rosewater, some white pepper and a bit of fresh goat cheese whipped in? Or is that all old hat and I’m just showing off my ignorant bumpkin-osity once again? Never mind, I’m going to get me some of that Herb of the Year and have some fun. Ladies and gentlemen, spoons up . . .

Foodie Tuesday: Some Assembly Required

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The way to maintain my vegetative state of bliss is to keep dissimilar food parts from dangerous intermingling . . .

My dinner table usually resembles an early automobile factory, or at least the aftermath of an IKEA shopping spree. I’ve gotten in the habit, over years of feeding guests with allergies and dietary needs that are unpredictable and widely varied across the board, as well as supertasters like my husband, of presenting the various parts of a meal as separately as possible. In many cases, the segregation extends to dividing the ingredients of a single dish into many serving containers so that salad becomes a salad bar and entrees become DIY designer projects to be customized on every plate. I don’t mind helping people put their food together or serving it to them to order, but I have long since learned that one dish does not suit all eaters and it’s silly and wasteful to force the issue. It may seem like a foolish extreme, but it’s become comfortable for me. Two year olds should, in fact, also like dining chez moi. And since I’m often prone to thinking rather like a two year old, I suspect any such event could be quite the adventure all ’round.

Thus, whether we all work our way through a buffet line and create our culinary variations on our own plates as we go, or we sit at table with an assemblage of small containers sprinkled around like so many car or furniture parts in every available spot, everybody had better be hungry enough to fend for themselves, or get a helping hand from someone else who’s able to build them their ideal dishes from the bits provided there. It makes for a whole lot more dishing-and-passing of a whole lot more little bowls, plates, platters and jars, but then–well, being at table with me is bound to be something of a project, anyway.

Last night’s dinner was somewhat typical in that way. Small parts of the meal like side dishes and condiments are so easily omitted when one is serving oneself that I never fear to go ahead and serve them as-is. So we have haricots vert already slathered in beurre noisette, a relish of ground cranberries and mandarins in maple syrup, bakery croissants and butter all ready for the taking. Or yes, for the ignoring. I made up last evening’s main dish as a whole before putting it out to serve, because it has so few ingredients the removal of any of them would amount quite nearly to asking the diners to make the whole meal themselves. Which I am not in the least averse to doing, in principle, but didn’t feel was necessary in this case.

So the pasta–wide egg noodles–emerged from the kitchen fully dressed in their cream, lemon juice and zest, pepper and smoked salmon. Mom and Dad S having shipped us a succulent Washington Christmas present early, we thought it prudent to dive right into those tender, moist pieces of Sockeye and pink salmon before they tortured and tantalized us for too long. Since our guests brought us a bottle of superb champagne, this was clearly the destined dish to accompany it! Also, as it goes almost without saying, it’s one of the world’s simplest entrees to make, and therefore a favorite in the arsenal of the Kath of Least Resistance at any time when such great smoked salmon is available. I did go so far as to serve the garnish of fried sage leaves separately, knowing my spouse’s disdain for “Green Stuff”; he’d be quite happy if all herbs just disappeared from the face of the earth, or would be at least until he realized that some of his favorite foods actually do rely on them for their distinctive flavors.

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. . . no offense to you Green vegetables and ((shudder!)) Herbs!

It was the salad’s turn, as is often the case, to be divided and conquered by the individual diners last night. In keeping with my fetish for combinations sweet and savory, I chose to accompany a bowl of freshly torn romaine lettuce with the following, from which everyone could pick and choose their proprietary blends: a bowl of cubed red Bartlett pear and super-sweet mandarin oranges–the seediest, by the way, that I’ve chopped up in years, but as fresh and bright and juicy and candy-like as any I’ve ever had, to make up for the inconvenience; toasted pine nuts; diced and candied orange peel; crumbled feta cheese. The dressing, also to be added or bypassed at will, was an easy blend of two parts of blood orange infused olive oil (fabulous stuff from Stonehouse) with one part each of mixed mandarin/lemon juice (leftovers from the salad fruit and pasta sauce), soy sauce and maple syrup, plus a healthy shot of fresh ginger juice. Easy peasy.

Now, lest you imagine that I am some sort of cruel beast that would make all of my guests take care of themselves completely . . . oh, wait, I am. My idea of being in a hospitable environment is someone else’s idea of being left alone.

I am quite happy to spend time with friends and family, as long as they are tolerant of my not being an attentive hostess in the any sort of normal waiting-on-you-hand-and-foot mode and know that I crave large quantities of time to spend not honing my admittedly limited set of social skills. I keep strict private ‘office hours’ between bedtime and late morning so that most people needn’t be exposed to my internal dragon lady, she who rules whenever I should be recharging my emotional batteries in silence. At bedtime, I’ll gladly show y’all where to find any breakfast groceries, pots and pans, clean linens and spare toiletries in the house, have my husband train you how to use the TV remote, hand you the house key and the garage door opener, load up your bookshelf, keep the newspaper out for you on the kitchen table and the coffeemaker stocked on the counter, hunt you up a crossword puzzle collection or a pack of playing cards for solitaire, and give you my spare coat, hat and gloves to borrow for a cool-weather walk, but please wait until I emerge from my cave before attempting any interaction.

And know that I’m just not very good at reading minds when it comes to culinary preferences. Even if I know you’re a vegan or keep Kosher or are deathly allergic to whole grain toast, I don’t necessarily know what you really love or hate to eat or how you like it served. If you can choose your own food and manage assembling your own meal out of the provided parts, we’ll get along swimmingly. Even the Generalissimo, the Duchess and the Dalai Lama would have to fend for themselves at my table. I bet you’ll do well enough too.

Let Out the Waistband a Little, Wontcha

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photoBig as All Outdoors

Though she’s partial to the taste

Of homely things, she would not shun

A lobster tail or truffle, waste

Fine wine, or insult anyone

Who’s made the effort to provide

Her with the best the fecund earth

Produces, so she opens wide,

And so maintains her striking girth

garphite drawingMy paternal grandfather was a fabulous person, a super-grandpa. He was also a well-rounded man. He used to tell us kids he had a ‘watermelon’ stashed under his belt, and we had little reason to doubt it. Clearly a man so full of joie de vivre could have no worse burden than being shaped like the centerpiece of a summer picnic. Unfortunately in combination with an imperfectly functioning ticker this particular element of his physique probably led down a fairly direct path to his early death. But honestly, I can’t say it’s likely he’d’ve traded for more years of life if it meant giving up any serious amount of the good food he adored. He didn’t seem too distressed when laughingly relating his trip to a clothier where he’d been rather imperiously informed by the tailor that he was Portly and would require a bit of special attention to be well fitted.

Me, I can’t say I’d find it easy to choose differently than he did. Because food is a grand part of my joie de vivre as well. I’m more likely to reenact his slightly sheepish yet cheery confession when Grandma caught him almost literally with his hand in the cookie jar and he told her “I only ate fourteen.” Or I’ll quote his favorite refrain about virtually anything edible: “Wouldn’t this be great with some chocolate ice cream!”

photoWhether the menu du jour is old-school comfort food like lemony shellfish over butter-steamed beet greens, a cheeseburger-meatloaf or an egg salad sandwich, or is some fantastic concoction full of exotic ingredients (probably made by more skilled hands than mine, in that case), count on me jumping into the buffet line right away. Hey, I give myself aerobic credit for the jumping, for starters. The exercise’ll help improve my odds, right Grandpa? I’m always going to have a little Grandpa-angel on my shoulder, of course, reminding me to be moderate when I can stand to be, so I won’t follow too exactly in his genetic footsteps, but if I can keep up with the total-immersion happiness he seemed to find in sitting down to a great meal with his loved ones I’ll be glad to consistently have that aspect of my role model in mind too. Just thinking of our many fantastic times with Grandpa makes the food taste that much better, as it is. Hey, you over there, sneak another scoop of that Tillamook Mudslide ice cream into my dish while I go change into my elastic-waist stretch pants, all right?

graphite drawing

Foodie Tuesday: Drinking Flowers and Eating Dirt

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When you can't afford to drink stars, why not drink flowers?

Molecular gastronomists amaze me. Their mastery of elaborate concoctions and decoctions, deep-frozen and spherized and powdered and atomized into unprecedented works of art is impressive, often–I’m told–just as extravagantly delicious (though few can afford to find out), and almost always results in an astounding display of visual artistry of one sort or another. Many practitioners are also preparing and presenting highly refined acts of theatre. I stand in awe of and sometimes deeply moved by the concept of what the molecular gastronome does. And think that perhaps no kind of cook is as deserving of a “gnomic” title as the mad scientist of the kitchen.

Yet both because so few people can stretch our pockets to carry large enough quantities of that other essential dining ingredient, dough–in its vernacular definition as money–and because trendy palates are so easily jaded, the stage for molecular gastronomy’s expression is necessarily a very narrow niche apart from its conversational appeal. I hear that many of the most famed practitioners of this very art are indeed delving into a new branch of the kitchen sciences, or more accurately, going back to the attics and cellars of it, by reexamining antique cookery of all sorts. No matter how much we hybridize and transmogrify the ingredients or tweak, deconstruct and reassemble them, there is and always will be a relatively limited palette of possible foods we can use for the culinary practice. For every pallet of russet potatoes shipped to the kitchens of the world, there are only so many truly new things we’re likely to be able to do with them and still result in an edible item, let alone one we want to eat.

The beauty of revisiting and rethinking traditions and successes of the past is that there are so many forgotten treasures that deserve to be enjoyed yet again. But far more than that, it’s because it takes us back to where we came from as families, as cultures, as homo sapiens, and allows us to understand better how we fit in the world. Think, for example, of the people that first took up and swallowed a handful of their native clay, not knowing but evidently instinctively sensing that it offered essential minerals and nutrients that the plants and animals in their usual diet could not provide. Imagine being the very first person to taste a mint leaf, an oyster, a strawberry. To eat honey, of all things. These intrepid adventurers advanced human existence immeasurably. Imagine, even, your own first taste of any kind of food–what a revelation, a revolution, for good or ill that was!

And so much of the origin of any culture’s cuisine is full of wonders and delicious things that we should be loath to forget and lose. While I would never be one to turn down a good glass of champagne or sparkling wine, there have been many discoveries to equal the joys of Dom Pérignon‘s possibly apocryphal but nonetheless fitting sensation that in such a quaff he was tasting the stars. One of my own favorites is the drink that has been a standard from farm to fancy-dress for uncounted generations, an elderflower cordial. It’s like a light lemonade with great floral top-notes. A classic home brew in the British Isles and Scandinavia and probably elsewhere as well, it’s both delicate and distinctive in its light and heady sweetness. My sister, who lives in Norway and has nice elders growing near her house, makes fabulous elderflower cordial with the technique she learned there. I’m neither so skilled nor so patient, but am not ashamed to rely on well-made commercial cordial, whether in syrup form as in the kind I buy off the grocery shelf when in Stockholm or at IKEA when here, or as sparkling pressé like that produced by the charming Belvoir Fruit Farms (nope, not getting any sort of payment for sharing this personal endorsement with you! But you should go visit their humorous and quirky and refreshing website just for fun even if you think “flower soda” sounds appalling).

A mighty tasty lunch or supper treat that’s different from the usual for me but is extremely simple to prepare and satisfies both my sweet and savory hankerings is fried cheese with a dipping sauce. I love the crumb-crusted and deep fried cheese with a tzatziki-like sour cream dip that we get at Bistro Praha, a very favorite haunt in Edmonton for innumerable delectable and delightful reasons from the uniformly fabulous central-European cookery to the marvelous people running the place. But again, limited in resources to get to Edmonton whenever I wish or, barring that, to get quite the right ingredients and find time to bread and fry and sauce it all up properly, I can do a variant here that’s also wonderfully satisfying. I find a nice slab of Halloumi or Queso Ranchero or (as here) Juustoleipä or some similar “heatproof” cheese and fry it on medium heat in my cast iron skillet with just enough butter or olive oil to keep it from sticking (this time the skillet was conveniently still seasoned just fine with duck fat from last week’s lunch) and just warm it through until nicely browned on the outside, melty inside. I had this with a cup of last week’s beef bone broth on the side, so between the two savories, both a bit on the salty side as I prefer them, I wanted the dipping sauce for the cheese lusciousness to be sweet and a tiny bit spicy to offset that. I mixed plum jam and ginger preserves and warmed them with a little minced fresh mint, and that did the trick perfectly for my tastes. Jam, cheese, broth: all slow foods in their initial preparation, but once in the larder or fridge, they become almost instant throw-together happiness. And there is a decidedly old-fashioned appeal to such a meal that makes me glad so many of our illustrious ancestors were venturesome gastronauts in their own right.

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A simple repast is not a thing of the past, but it needn't be dull as dusty history either . . .

Foodie Tuesday: Bechamel Mucho (Songs for a Saucy Character)

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photocollage + textI love sauce. Saucing a great dish properly is a little bit like creating the right music to shape a fine piece of text: suddenly this new dimension brings out a whole range of new and beautiful textures and nuances that were lying there in wait all along but are awakened by the new partnership into something even deeper and lovelier. Words and music. Food and sauce.

Sing along with me, if you will. Bésame Mucho! Glorious things happen in the kitchen, love is brought to light, when the sauce is a-simmer. It’s enough to make a clodhopper like me sing and dance. (Sensitive readers, please avert your eyes, or you’ll end up wanting to evert them.)

One of the best things about saucing is that it doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult to have a great impact on a dish. The prime example of this, natürlich, is a simple deglaze–one additional ingredient that brings a lot of happiness to the dinner party. It’s nothing more than a way to rinse the pan with any fitting liquid that will loosen all of the good fond, or browned goodies and drippings, left in the pan in which the dish’s main ingredients were cooked. It can be kept nice and thin and loose or further reduced to thicken, either easy without adding a single other ingredient, or it can form the friendly base for yet more monkeying around. All good!

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Sometimes all it takes is a nice loose juice to deglaze the pan . . .

Which brings me to another great and lovable thing about sauces. There are such an enormous number of possible combinations of ingredients, proportions, and techniques that I’d bet any cook worth her salt (never mind all of the other ingredients) could cook her way through a long and delicious life without ever repeating a single sauce precisely. Almost frightening, that, but really quite exciting and encouraging in its way. A restaurant chef’s career depends on just the opposite, that she be able to reproduce to a virtually molecular level the same sauce over and over, meal by meal, dish by dish, once it’s on the menu. Patrons will rebel if given any surprises or disappointments. But the home cook, if his family is the least bit adventuresome or just plain ravenous, has the possibility of playing with his food and, if he’s lucky, discovering in the process the next world’s favorite. Or at least his wife’s.

Even the classic sauces offer incredible opportunity for invention, if you can master the basic form. Bechamel, salsa verde, Bolognese, hoisin, barbecue sauce, mole, tartar sauce. Me, I’m not such a master of basics. But I eventually figure my way around things, with enough expert guidance from my various kitchen muses in person or through recipes and other forms of fabulous foodie folklore. I try a whole bunch of different versions and variations and mess around, I read up, I lick the spoon, I experiment on all of my friends and loved ones (and I sincerely apologize for whatever culinary atrocities I may have perpetrated over the years against any undeserving parties), and I work my way around to sauces that I’m willing to try repeating, or that I even get asked for again. Sometimes it’s a long, puzzling path of kitchen adventure that leads to a complex and subtle sauce. Sometimes it’s just the joyful re-creation of a straightforward childhood favorite, and no less welcome on the plate or on the tongue.

So in closing today, I commend to you my very favorite variation on perhaps my very favorite sauce. I am mad for Hollandaise. In particular, my lifelong love is the Hollandaise version I learned from my mother, who learned it long ago from Queen Betty Crocker. It’s not an old-school French version with vinegar or white wine, it’s purely eggs, lemon juice and butter. I’m such a down-home bumpkin that I like it best made with [really top quality] butter that is <horrors!> salted. I’ve even learned that I like it quite well if I just hot up a cup of butter with two tablespoons of lemon juice until nice and sizzly, pour it into a blender, and spin it while I drop a couple of pretty whole farm fresh eggs right in, and watch it whiz while it quickly cooks the eggs just enough to thicken into a ridiculously delicious “instant” whole-egg Hollandaise that I will happily eat on fish, on pasta, on pork, on sautéed greens, on (sure!) Eggs Benedict, on sweet fresh fruit, on a shortbread, on a spoon. What can I say, I have a lemony Hollandaise <ahem!> problem. Thankfully, there’s not yet a twelve-step program to cure me, so I can keep on indulging my addiction as long as I like.

That, my friends, is sweet music to my ears.

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Sing along with me again . . . shall we have a little Monteverdi this time?