Tag Archives: Cooking

Foodie Tuesday: Everything in Due Season, If You Happen to Have That Sort of Thing

Posted on by
12
photo

Don't you just love autumn, with its colors toasted by the long summer sun, its air wafting with spice and earth . . .

I am very fond of autumn, at least what I think of as autumn. It signals the waning of the full ripening cycle of living and fruiting things on the earth, an anticipatory time when wind should be sweeping out old leaves and old habits and letting in the last cracked-open windows and doors an air of things to come. I’m having a little trouble getting my personal clock synchronized to believe it’s autumn right now, though. Sliding ever so gradually out of a blast-furnace summer so that temperatures in the middle of the night are still too warm for a coat and the roses and cosmos decide they can finally get into bloom–in October–contradicts my sense of logic when juxtaposed with being back in the school-and-concert season. And don’t get me started on the two-week “winter” thing!

I don’t dislike the virtually perpetual bathing in sunlight, no, you’re never going to hear a serious complaint from a SAD-sack like me about too much light, but I find the whole thing just a little confusing. I didn’t come from a land of perfectly defined, archetypal seasons, either, but there was a certain rhythm and temperature change that even in the temperate northwest tended to make me think seasonal thoughts with relative ease. So I could really get behind the whole logic of eating seasonally as well as locally. Up to a point. See, out there I had, admittedly, an overabundance of a whole range of foods available fresh and nearby for a bigger chunk of the calendar year than those living in more truly distinct seasonal climates could have. I might have to trade out one fish or vegetable for another, even one fruit for another, from month to month, but having a truckload of choices at all times spoils one for having to think very hard.

Here in Texas it seems there’s an even finer line between when you can and can’t get foods at their peak. So if I’m not getting clues from the outside temperature or the scent of the air, I’m having to rely more heavily on more artificial indicators of What It’s Time to Do, culinarily speaking. Frankly, it’s still picnic-and-popsicle weather around here when we’re practically hitting Midterms and the first big flurry of constant recitals and concerts of the year, and I feel, well, a little weird wearing sandals and short sleeves to attend those things. I’m almost grateful that most indoor events tend to be overenthusiastic with the air blowers so that the air conditioning requires my bundling up indoors, at least, even if I can’t do so outdoors yet.

Meanwhile, all of the food writers I love and all of the sitcoms and stores and advertisers are conspiring to tell me it’s long since time for pumpkins and braised lamb shanks and don’t forget, Talking Turkey, because as well all know, Thanksgiving has already happened in Canada and that means it’s headed our way! I just can’t quite reconcile the whole thing. It’s not that I don’t find pretty much everything not nailed down quite delicious regardless of time of day, month, or year if it’s available–sometimes it’s all about whether it seems right.

So I leaned ever so slightly off the summer chuckwagon when I made lunch the other day, because even if the weather refuses to cooperate with my sense of seasonal propriety, I’m darned well going to have a touch of autumn. I don’t suppose, when it comes right down to brass tacks, that there are limits to what tastes good at any given time, so if I can lay hands on it and it’s not so artificially shelf-stabilized as to have the half-life of radium, I guess I need to just make my own seasons here.

photo

Duck breast with wine sauce, carrot chips and bok choy

I kept the preparation simple both because it’s my M.O. and because anything more demanding would’ve taken enough time to kill off my urge for something a tad autumnal, as I’d break a very unladylike sweat in these temperatures if I got the least bit hyperactive in the kitchen. Duck breast sous vide is, I must say, a dandy and handy fix. I figured if the maximum time recommended for medium-rare duck breast s-v was about eight hours, the same temperature for a lot longer could bring it to the edge of confit, and so it was. All that remained by the time I’d put together a dish of quick steamed bok choy in light ginger-lime-soy-sesame dressing and reduced a handful of blackberries, a cup of Merlot and a knob of butter to a syrup and strained it and sweetened it up with a spoonful of Texas red plum jam was to sear the duck skin and plate it all up. As usual I took an exceedingly casual approach to the latter action (as you can see above), which was just as well because those pieces of duck hadn’t a hope of staying in neat perky little slices by the time they’d been virtually melted. In that condition, they would in fact make pretty fabulous tender shredded duck tacos, the direction I suspect I’ll take next time I lay hands on el pato fantástico. If it looks like a taco and quacks like a taco . . . .

So at last I’ve started edging my way toward eating something that at least sounds more autumnal to me than all of the stuff I’ve felt right eating up to now. Perhaps feeding my sense of the season by the forkful will have a better chance of getting me in an autumn frame of mind than what the relentlessly summery weather has managed to do so far. Otherwise, I’ll wait too long and it’ll be winter I’m having to invent, so I’d best get moving on this or I’ll hardly have myself ready for all of the necessary delights awaiting me.

photo

All seasons have their gifts . . .

Foodie Tuesday: Beauty is in the Tastebuds of the Beholder

Posted on by
8
photo

Zest for life, zest for food, zest for art: all "customized" by our own tastes . . .

I give myself credit for being a tolerably decent cook. Once in a blue moon I even fuss with fancy-schmancy cookery or baking, but less often with every passing year. As it is, I’m mostly far too impatient to get to the actual eating to consider fooling around with any processes that delay that significantly. For a visual artist, I’m shockingly laissez-faire about plating and presentation, and depend on the goodwill and patience of those at table with me to get me past that part of the meal to the part where I get to play human forklift.

Now, I have great admiration for those who are serious and artful chefs, and I certainly prefer to feast upon delicious, rather than fit-only-for-subsistence, foods. And if those foods are a feast for the other senses as well, why that’s nigh unto nirvana. But mostly that happens at other people’s hands, others’ tables. I’m too busy concentrating on not eating the entire meal while preparing it to devote much attention to subtleties of composition. When I’m a guest in another’s dining room, it’s everything a piggy like me can do to feign manners enough to keep from leaning over my dessert with a maniacal tooth-baring slaver that belies the need for utensils while I wait for the host to take that first bite. A picture comes to my mind of our former neighbor Everett, so in love with both carpentry and helping out, that when he knew a project was afoot at our place across the street he would place his lawn chair at the front of his open garage and perch on the edge of it in runner’s-starting-block position, gripping his favorite Sawzall® at the ready, for the moment when he might be summoned to join in the party.

Likewise, I never have much in the way of photo documentation of any culinary successes I have, because those are usually dived into and massacred unceremoniously even as the last sprig of fresh herbs or the final flourish of confectioners’ sugar is drifting down to alight upon them. Yes, I have made heaps of glistening handmade pork jiao-zi, a mountainous mocha Intercontinental torte, delicate Norwegian-style fishcakes with dainty potetkaker (fat mini-lefse potato cakes) dripping with butter on the side, steamed zucchini blossoms stuffed with scented couscous, homemade rosemary pasta with wild mushroom cream sauce, and many more such dishes and meals over the years. I have fussed and fiddled with sauces and garnishes meant to make a sultan sigh with admiration. But dang it, when the perfume gets too heady and the urgency to get this stuff on the board gets too intense, well, how can anyone blame a poor ordinary cook and unbridled scarfer-of-foods if the comestibles get hustled to table and everybody just puts his head down, knife up, and plunges in?

There is the additional problem of what some foods look like in the first place. I’m not talking about the delightfully horror-movie appearance of a freshly caught monkfish or that sort of thing, but about the kinds of delicious dishes that resist being prettied up. Food stylists and top-flight chefs find ways around this all the time, but in truth, there’s not much point in gussying up a mousse. It is what it is.

photo

Two words. Peaches. Cream. That is all.

In the case of this mousse from last week, I didn’t even bother to fool much with the fineness of the puree, since I like the slightly chunky chew of the peaches that emerges in each spoonful of otherwise creamy texture. Okay, I went so far as to put the dessert in tall stemmed glasses and even powder the top of the servings with a bit of good ground cinnamon, so that the scent of them would be that much closer to the diners’ noses in case the odd brownish-orange color and irregular texture were a teeny bit suspect. But I wouldn’t necessarily trade in for a prettier appearance the simple richness of peaches caramelized deeply in vanilla and cinnamon and  butter and then pulverized to blend with lightly sweetened heavy cream. That’s just my set of priorities, you see.

photo

I'm told it's all about the quality of the ingredients, anyway . . .

I have eaten and heard described plenty of dishes that start out with individual ingredients that simply oughtn’t to have been invited to the same party, so there’s a certain incompleteness to the general rule of ingredient-quality = finished-dish-quality, but the converse is so definitively true that it’s best to rely on this side of the equation. The most elaborate and skillful preparation of kæstur hákarl (the classic rotten shark preparation) is still going to taste like rotten shark, so either get with the Icelandic program and learn to enjoy it on its own merits or don’t be serving it in puff pastry with sugarcrafted butterflies on it. (Sheesh, at least you could put sugarcrafted arctic foxes on it.) Even I with my limited-experience palate and low tolerance for foods not appreciated outside of their native cultural circles will know something’s just not right.

I’ll take a slightly sloppy looking plateful of hearty and unpretentious homemade goodness any day. Especially if the singular parts of it are fabulous ingredients and haven’t been ridiculously tortured in the process. Then the only danger is if you get in the way of my ninja-like attack on the dish with my gleaming cutlery. I can only keep up the guise of manners for so long, my dears.

Foodie Tuesday: Currying Favor

Posted on by
8
graphite drawing

Everybody's curry is a unique and distinctive creature; the joy of curry is in its endless possibilities and the multi-layered adventure of its making and eating . . .

The request was in last evening: curry for dinner today. It’s perfectly understandable to me why so many people in so many cultures have embraced so many versions of this wildly versatile and varied ‘something-in-a-sauce’ meal, centered on a highly personalized and customized blend of spices. I’m pretty sure I’ve never met a curry I didn’t like, from spicy vegetarian to earthy goat to sweet prawn or fruited chicken. I like curries as soups, with bread or noodles or rice, or as lashings of a more restrained saucing version over nearly any tasty food, sweet or savory or both.

I make the world’s easiest and most flexible version of a curry meal, because I’m notorious for never being able to do the same thing the same way twice, and because of my equally well-known laziness. Our household version is pretty bulletproof. Two ingredients: masala and coconut milk. Throw together in a pot and simmer and mellow the sauce until it’s ready, adding whatever I see fit to combine for the day’s version of goodness. It’s handy that a curry concoction can easily be assembled on the fly, using what’s available in pantry and fridge, if (as today) the rest of the day gets a bit cluttered with Doings. There’s not much food that doesn’t play nicely with curry if given half a chance.

The heart and soul of any curry is the masala, the spice blend, and there are countless good pre-made versions on the market. I’m fortunate to have a grand recipe I can whizz up myself, thanks to the good kitchen sense and generosity of my parents’ late friend Q (who really did go by his first initial). The curry powder recipe he shared with us is one of those that requires a fairly lengthy list of spices, some a little less easily found in the average grocery but all well worth the hunt. Once you’ve laid hands on all the ingredients, all you really have to do is grind them together (I use a dedicated little coffee grinder), and you get about a cup and a half of pure 24k turmeric-colored gold.

photo

Q's famous Kincurry--hide your stash when the foodie marauders head into the kitchen!

This is a sweet curry base–it takes a fair quantity to get it hot-spicy, though it can be about as spicy as you want to make it with that sort of adjustment. It goes mighty well with any meat or seafood or vegetable goodness, and is plenty tasty with sweeter things, from fruits to desserts, too. And it stains like boy-howdy, but hey, a good curry is certainly worth losing a good shirt over, if it comes to that.

The drill around my stove is: mix a copious amount of good coconut milk with however much of my precious curry masala I’m in the mood to use, and let it steep for as long as I wish with whatever I’m hungry to add. I am, by the way, fussy about the coconut milk, but not in the way you might think. While I have great admiration for those dedicated folk who make their own exquisitely crafted coconutty deliciousness by bisecting a fresh coconut and processing its innards carefully into perfect homemade coconut milk, I find there are plenty of things I’m quite content to let others fuss over to make my kitchen time easier, thank you very much. My prejudice is for a particular brand of canned coconut milk (nope, I’m not a paid promoter), Chaokoh. Ever since my Thai college roommate introduced me to this elixir I’ve found no other that compared. And yes, folks, I use it straight and undiluted from the tin. If you think your need for “good fats” doesn’t include this indulgence, I think you’re wrong. But go ahead and cheat yourself if you must. The only way I’ve been known to adulterate the stuff in the way of ‘thinning’ it is with homemade chicken broth. Which I do skim, but geez, if you take all of the schmalz out of it you take too away many of the good fats and nutrients, not to mention any genuine Jewish Penicillin in there.

Meanwhile, back at the cooker, there’s a saucy slurry just waiting for everybody to get in the hot tub. Today it was sliced celery, roughly chopped red capsicum, brown mushrooms, and cubed chicken breast and beefsteak, all having been browned first in the cast iron skillet with plenty of ghee, then deglazed with just enough water to grab all of that fabulous fond before diving together into the waiting curry. I didn’t have a lot of time to let it brew today because of the afternoon’s appointments and chores elsewhere, so I had let the coconut milk-curry masala hang about together over low heat beforehand and hoped the quick browning of the solids with a little grey salt and black pepper would bring enough caramelized nuance to the party that the quick coming together would suffice. All of that got scooped onto brown buttered Basmati rice at the table and finished with however much anybody wanted of sliced almonds and a batch of sweetened shredded coconut I’d toasted this afternoon with lots of sesame seeds and a little ground cardamom.

photo with wooden spoon

Sweet garniture . . .

I do like the simplicity of a one-dish meal, even if it’s got a few side components in the way of toppings and pickles and chutneys and garnishes and assorted whatnots. I don’t think anyone left the table starved. Just to be safe I did pass around a few homemade chocolate nut truffles for dessert. I make them in a very homely knife-cut style, but I think of them as the proverbial Smart Girl in the Class: maybe not as universally popular for her unconventional looks as the stereotypical hottie cheerleaders, but wins out on brains and talent and outstanding sense of humor every time. We geeky girls do have our ways. I’m going to assume that our houseguest’s cheerful accusation that I’m a temptress says that dinner went okay, anyway. It sure wasn’t the t-shirt, jeans and mules I potted around in for a weekday of work and errands that inspired the remark. Yup, must be the curry talking!

Foodie Tuesday: She’s Completely Nutbar, but isn’t She Sweet?

Posted on by
6
photo closeup

Won't You be My Baby, Oh, Honeycomb . . .

There’s little that can’t be improved by the addition of a sticky slick of raw local honey. I’ll concede that there might be something, but it doesn’t come to mind immediately. I could contentedly eat spoonfuls until comatose if it weren’t for the smidgen of good manners and even smaller atom of good sense preventing it.

Today’s supper was one of the times I restrained my sugar-rush inclinations, since I was making R’s favorite coleslaw and, with him persevering toward complete blood sugar control without the aid of medications, who am I to stand in the way of such valor? So I made the slaw with a natural non-sugar sweetener. But I still slipped just a hint of sugar into the mix, because the salad wouldn’t be entirely his favorite without his favorite add-in. It’s about the easiest ‘dish’ to throw together, if you can actually call something so ridiculously simple a dish. I’m no purist, so if you have strong Feelings about everything being homemade, organic, locally sourced, and so forth, you’ll probably want to squint a little during the next section to avoid unnecessary annoyance and then revise as needed to meet your needs.

Stupid-Easy Sweet Cole Slaw

Throw together everything ‘to taste’: Shredded cabbage (yeah, I’m often wonderfully lazy and use the pre-shredded slaw mix with red and green cabbage and carrots); lime juice, sweetener (honey is, of course, wonderful–or dark agave syrup, or sugar of any kind, whatever floats your cabbage-eating boat); a spoonful of mayonnaise (I’m still fond of good ol’ Hellman’s classic artery-hardener); add-ins.

So: cabbage, lime juice, sweetness, mayo and Fun Stuff.

The add-in of choice in this house is minced pickled sushi ginger.

Other goodies sometimes join the party: sesame seeds, toasted sliced almonds, chopped apple . . . whatever fun yummy junk is on hand, pretty much. It’s the ginger that I think of as the personality of the House Slaw, and anything that complements that is welcome along for the ride. But most of the time, it’s just the basic ingredients chez nous.

It was the other day that I got my honey fix. The day I went Nutbar. When the man of the house is away at any of his various work-related salt mines, I indulge in both foods that Mr Supertaster can’t or won’t eat and also in a bit of sugary madness. I made some chewy granola-style bars that work pretty nicely as a breakfast or brunch munch, especially with a nice spoonful of thick Greek yogurt drizzled with the aforementioned lovely honey and a toss of crispy carrot chips.

You’re going to sense a trend here: I’m all about the lazy approach. I love to eat what tastes delicious to me, but I have to really be in a certain rare mood to get into the groove of fixing super elaborate and labor intensive foods. More often I’m pleased to spend a day or two of heavy lifting in the kitchen in order to ‘put up’ a big, divisible, freeze-able batch of something that we can dig into at will over the next however-long. A slow cooker loaded with broth fixings is a common enough happening, mainly because I can use the resulting broth so many different ways, and also because it takes so little effort in total to throw a batch of prepared bones, roughly chopped mirepoix, herbs and spices and the like into the cooker and let it go for a long, slow simmer. I’ve got the straining thing down to a science, having learned to line a big pasta-strainer pot with a clean flour sack dish towel, spoon the skeletal remains out of the broth with a big sturdy spider, and dump the rest of the crock into the lined pot. Then all I have to do is hoist the pasta strainer high enough to lift out the dish towel by its corners, give that a quick squeeze to get the rest of the soupy goodness to flow through, empty the grisly remains in the trash, and pour up my broth for cooling. Lots of mileage off of a very humble process and the unfussiest of ingredients.

About those Nutbars. Again, easy-peasy. Simple contents, very simply prepared, not difficult to store, and quick-as-a-bunny to grab and nibble.

nutbars, yogurt & honey, carrot chips

. . . and you thought I was referring to my sanity when I said "Nutbar".

Going Nutbar

Ingredients: nuts, seeds, dried fruits, butter, spices, whey protein powder and gelatin, sweetening and salt.

I filled my trusty Tupperware 8-cup measuring pitcher with about 6 cups of mixed almonds (whole, raw), roasted/lightly salted macadamia nuts, dried dates and figs and apricots, and a handful of candied ginger, and filled in the gaps between all of them with about 3 good scoops of vanilla whey protein powder, a handful of raw sesame seeds, and a healthy dose of cinnamon with hints of cardamom, mace and cloves. I pulsed all of that mix in the blender in batches until it was all pretty well reduced to a chunky flour. Then I just mixed in as though for a very dense dough: 3 big tablespoons of gelatin melted in water (you can just leave this out or use agar agar if you’re vegetarian, but I like the chew and the added nutrients available in either of the add-ins), a little sweetener (I used a splash of sugar-free hazelnut syrup that I have around, just for the flavor), about 3 tablespoons of melted butter, and a bit of Maldon sea salt. All almost quicker to do than to record here.

The rest is finishing: line a cake pan (I used my ca. 10×14 Pyrex baking dish) with wax paper or plastic wrap, press the “dough” into it evenly, cover with more of the wrap, and (if you’re a little shaggy on the pat-in like I am) give a quick flattening treatment with a jar or can as your pan-sized rolling pin. Stick the pan in the refrigerator overnight and slice the bars up for storage next day. I cut them in granola bar configuration since that’s what they resemble a little. The bit of butter means they don’t stick together very badly, so I laid the bars on edge right next to each other with wax paper between layers. Some are lying in wait in the freezer, and the rest are being gradually eaten out of the fridge, with or without yogurt, honey, carrots . . . .

Did I mention honey? Guess I’m just a sucker for sweet things. Must be why I love you so.

Foodie Tuesday: You KNOW I’m Just a Big Marshmallow

Posted on by
4
s'mores brownies photo

With a heart full of darkness (chocolate, that is) . . .

. . . and if you think I am capable of eating strictly on the basis of survival and good health, you’re seriously deluded. Oh, wait–your impressionability is why I like you so much anyway, isn’t it!

However, I’m not utterly irredeemable. At least, not in the way of All Things Ingested (ooh, a good companion program to All Things Considered?). F’r’instance, while I found the above-pictured S’mores Brownies (simply a then-favored brownie recipe topped with marshmallow fluff and lightly oven-toasted, as I had no twig substantial enough to hold the entire 9×13 pan inverted over my campfire for full authenticity) perfectly edible and acceptable, I have since realized that I’m not as willing at my age to trade those moments of indulgent bliss for the mean-spirited monkey-wrenching that wheat seems, increasingly, to give my internal clockworks. So I have sauntered through a slew of my favorite cookery books and foodie websites and learned how to make a damn tasty brownie with almond flour rather than wheat (take that, grass meanies!). So far it’s such a fragile and airy brownie–unless smashed into fudginess with a fork, a style of eating to which I am not averse myself but others might find a bit less than perfect as tea-with-the-Queen manners go–that I will still have to tweak the recipe to discover a perfect lightly crisp outside, dense chocolaty inside brownie to meet my exacting standards. Or I’ll just pre-squash the entire pan of almond-flour brownies, if that’s what it takes.

Revise? Sure! Eschew the chew? Erm, unlikely. Never been much in the way of abstemious.

Meanwhile, back at the table, I can also lay claim to being broad-minded (and -beamed) enough to happily eat the great majority of things put in front of me. While I have tailored my cooking, and therefore my everyday eating, to better suit the tastes and needs of my partner in life and dining, I still enjoy eating stuff he’ll never touch, so there are divergences on our plates from time to time.

I gladly eat my vegetables. I like all kinds of “good-for-you” stuff. Though there may be few things that in middling-to-large quantities aren’t a bad dietary idea, there are even fewer that I won’t willingly overindulge in when my self-restraint gauge is on Low. So I’m trying over the years to get smarter and fill up that particular tank with the more permissible and sustaining pleasures of less processed and fresher and more carefully produced foods to at least divert attention from, if not lessen the lust for, those things I’d otherwise dive into in my full fressing gear. I am no ascetic and am not planning to become that one almost universally feared at table, the person whose foodly preferences go far beyond anaphylactic necessity into the territory of requiring that I be hand-fed a peeled butter lettuce leaf wrapped around a single organic and humanely free-range raised haunch of butterfly with a drop of steam-distilled chive water in a room spiritually cleansed of tomato effluvia by two shamans and a fruit bat.

Hey, I’ve even been known to eat and drink those relatively few things I really don’t like if I think it’s diplomatically appropriate or just good guest behavior. I’m not a complete jerk.

But no matter how eagerly I’ll scarf down the eggplant and brussels sprouts and gladly chomp my choppers on tasty roasted what-have-you, there will always be room for the perfect lard-crisped carnitas (available, by the way, at Tacos Guaymas on 38th and 72nd Streets in Tacoma, Washington: http://www.tacosguaymas.com/tacostacoma/menu-broadway.html) and rich fat salmon oven roasted in Jack Daniel’s, and homemade ice cream and cardamom butter cookies and yes, probably even brownies made with wheat flour. Definitely brownies made with almond flour, and I do plan to get those down to a science someday–though I’m doing just fine for now, eating the current version with a spoon.