stove jockey

Pot Luck!

2011-07-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ahh, so that's how to warm up Seattle. Just like it always rains when I wash my car, it always heats up when I look at the forecast, shrug at the July chill and bring home a nice big chuck roast. Mrs. Hal must have a hand in the sorcery. But I cracked the code - chuck that chuck in the oven on Friday to assure a nice weekend.

And would you look at that - it works!

Bingo. And all it took was a nice hunk of meat, some local beets, sweet onions and carrots and my garden thyme and rosemary. I browned the meat on all sides, sweated the veg, then tossed the lot into the pan with a splash of wine and stock. Tightly sealed with foil, it was ready to be Mrs. Hal's afternoon project.

While Mrs. Hal heated the kitchen, the sun heated the ground. Saturday warmed a tad further, and then Sunday - Sunday! - gave us a whole 273 minutes of summer! Good things.

Today it's back to chill, clouds and rain, but that's fine. We had an awesome weather appetizer with the promise of some pretty days to come. A steamed English pudding and a roast chicken this Friday should rack up another weekend, eh?

Do Yourself a Fava

2011-07-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

Much as I love my Kitchen Vacations, sometimes you just want to stay home. Especially now. Especially here. Seattle's high today of 69F with shaggy rain beats the hell out of the umpteenth day of 100 degrees in Oklahoma City and most of the right half of the US. So far, forecasters here say we've had a mere 78 minutes of summer, which they define as temps above 80F. Brrr. It's the talk of the "summer". But what it's not doing for the local mood, it sure is doing for the produce:

The fava beans at the farmer's market today couldn't be lovelier. Eating them in the car is a stringy, tannic mess, but what the heck. Every pod contains fabulous prizes!

Crisp, suede-like tannins and grassy bean flavor. Happy. It's hard to improve on them fresh, but Nigel Slater reminds us that hummus made from favas is a treat. A fava-rite, as it were.

He also says beans larger than a thumbnail should be peeled, but why? The peels on these babies are sweet and mild. Include them I do.

Not much of a yield here from 6 large cups of bean pods, but it's the perfect amount of hummus for a snack.

The juice of a lemon, some blanched mint from the garden and a splash of olive oil. So simple. Whirled together, well...hmmm. Yeah.

Now I see why there was no picture of this recipe in Tender. But spread on crusty bread with a crisp Gewurtztrauminer? A blindfold wasn't necessary because it was delish.

Half remained post-snack, so I whipped it with a little cream cheese and an egg and stuffed it in zucchini blossoms also from the market.

I'll spare you the after picture - one barfy shot per post is quite sufficient. Stuffed, then breaded and quickly fried and served with a grassy young Sauvignon Blanc, it was locavore heaven. That two layers of polar fleece were needed to shake off the chill of the wine was a blessing, right Easterners?

Blog Jam

2011-07-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

A glut of fruit from the farmer's market just begs to be stewed, jammified and bottled for posterity, no?

Those of you who've jammed know the difference between traditional cooked jam and freezer jam. Cooked jam tastes, well, cooked. Freezer jam, because it's uncooked, tastes vividly fresh (especially when made with berries or stone fruits) - what a thrill when it's dark and wintry. It's always worth saving a couple of jars for a dark February breakfast.

But it's "summer" in Seattle and thanks to one of the coldest and wettest springs in recorded history, those local berries haven't quite popped yet (and don't even talk to me about the peaches). Everything's late by about a month. But finally, finally, the skinny red ambassadors of spring have come out of hiding. I have farmer's market rhubarb stacked like firewood in my fridge. Time to get my jam on.

Authorities on preserving often characterize freezer jam as a good "beginner" project. Yes, it's less involved than making cooked jams and canning them, but that's no reason to abandon the freezer once you gain experience at the jam kettle. When you learn to bake bread you don't stop making toast, do you?

With rhubarb, though, you can't exactly get away with leaving it raw. So you do a hybrid of sorts - a cooked freezer jam. Purists, cover your eyes.

Take your finely diced rhubarb, add water just to cover, stir in a splash of vanilla and bring it slowly to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for ten minutes to yield a lovely pink sludge that begs to be jarred. Make it wait. Remove it from the heat and let it cool to room temperature before continuing.

In a separate bowl, stir together a little sugar (a cup per pound to pucker, two cups per pound to smacker) and freezer pectin (about one supermarket foil packet per pound. They vary- check the instructions on the back). Add the sugar mixture to the pink sludge and stir continuously for three solid minutes - no more, no less. Time yourself by singing The Fool on the Hill by the Beatles (who? Ask your granddad about them). Then spoon the jam (yes, you just made jam!) into some squeaky clean little jars (leaving half an inch for expansion), cap 'em gently and let them hang out on your kitchen counter for 24 hours. Admire them, enjoy them and point them out to all who pass by. Yes, they're pink, yes, they sparkle like jewels. Happy, pretty, yum.

Twenty-four hours later, tighten the caps, label the jars if you want and pop them in the freezer (keep one back in the fridge for immediate use or face reality and just go get yourself a spoon). Thaw the jars in the fridge and keep the jam refrigerated once opened. It won't last. You'll spoon it over ice cream, dot some on cookies before baking, add it to vinaigrettes and marinades and spread it on puff pastry to make tarts. You'll start making all kinds - mango, raspberry, strawberry, peach (oh, peach!)....

Making jam of spring fruit is a sure way to bring on summer. It's like when washing your car makes it rain. And guess what - suddenly it's warm in Seattle!

From Locavore to Brokeavore

2011-06-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, the bounty of the farmers' market. Even here where it's been chilly for 298 days and counting (cue the gentle sobbing), the produce stands are bursting. That cheers me up. That and vodka.

This week I had to restrain myself from buying out the whole market, knowing that I have a bulging fridge already. I mostly behaved. What did I get for 24 smackers? A little vibrantly fresh produce, bagels that almost made me miss the East Coast, decadent ice creams and some seriously spendy eggs.

onions and radishes $3.50

bagels - 4 $5.00

ice cream pints - 2 (Chocolate Chardonnay and Almond Vanilla) $10.00

eggs - 12 $6.00 (no kidding)

I know what you're saying - the supermarket's cheaper, right? Sort of. The veg were actually a screamin' deal, the bagels were twice the price but denser and more flavorful than supermarket bagels, the ice cream was the same price as boutique supermarket pints, but yes, the eggs blew the curve by a factor of four. My supermarket sells eggs for between $1.50 and 2.19 a dozen. I use between 12 and 18 eggs a week between baking and frequent Huevos Rancheros fests. These free-range organic fifty-cents-apiece eggs won't disappear into pancakes or cookies - they'll be "eating eggs". I can talk myself into just about anything.

Steeled by my decadence, I went back for more:

scallions, two bunches: $2.00

rhubarb, five pounds: $15.00

A mess o' potatoes and a bigass bundle of asparagus: $9.75

For those keeping count, that's $51.25. It slipped away so easily one vendor at a time.

Egg Bagels with Radish & Scallion Relish

with a side of Asparagus, Sweet Onion & Potato Hash

and for dessert Stewed Rhubarb and Ice Cream, anyone?

Dishing the Dirt

2011-05-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

Like a groggy bear (such as this one or this one or this one or this one) emerging from hibernation, I'm squinting at the light and sniffing around for real food after spending the never-ending winter sniffing around for mentions of it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I hope the search for sunlight won't prove as fruitless (or as veggieless).

As winter turns to something vaguely spring-ish (it's 55 and raining as I write...), I notice that my dirty pot and pan quota increases in the spring. Taking a stand against the chill and damp and impatient for Summer Mind, I scrubbed and serviced the grill about a month ago. Well, here's to outdoor cooking in polar fleece and raincoats. Grill baskets, cages, huge mixing bowls and half sheet pans now hit the suds along with the cutting boards, colanders and roasting pans of winter.

Not that I'm complaining. Into every busy kitchen some dirty dishes must fall. So why do so many people hate washing them? Google lists 396,000 results to the query, "hate to wash dishes". Yeesh. The biggest reason given? Because the cycle repeats itself relentlessly. But so do the cycles of sleep and eating and watching bad TV. Is it because we're standing up during dishwashing? Is it because many people lack a window over the sink? Is it because gunky pots require elbow grease? Dunno, because while I'm doing dishes I'm contentedly daydreaming my way to Sparkle City. I admit it - I like washing dishes.

From a simply practical standpoint, knowing they'll soon be done, tidy and back in service is immensely satisfying. What cook doesn't appreciate a certain degree of order? My sadly departed mother-in-law, a huge fan of order, made two lasting pronouncements on the matter of all things dishy. First, there is One Right Way to Load a Dishwasher. Second, Use the Right Tools. I respectfully disagree with the first rule, since each load of dirty dishes is a unique jigsaw puzzle all its own, but I get the spirit of it. I'm a huge proponent of the second rule, though - why have so many kitchen tools if we don't use them? Washing them afterwards is worth the aid they give us.

But being a philosopher's daughter, I can't just leave it there. There has to be a way to overthink dishes. Ah, got it. Like the much-quoted American Beat poet and self-effacing dharma teacher Gary Snyder said, this task is not a distraction from the path. In and of itself, it is the path. Whoa. If so much of life is full of mundane things, doesn't it make sense to celebrate them or at least recognize their place in the order of our lives? And isn't a stack of dirty pots evidence of abundance both of kitchen tools and the foods that soiled them? Sounds pretty good to me.

I've said it here before, but my goodness, aren't we fortunate? Edward Gibbon mentioned the value of emperors' kitchenware before the Roman Empire became the place where Euros went to die. How many more luxuries do we have than emperors did back then? Hot and cold running water, bad TV, the Internet, polar fleece (thank God!), and tidy little W.C.s, the likes of which would dazzle an emperor. Now if only they came with a self-cleaning option....

Kitchen Vacation - Dalmatia

2011-02-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

Do you know Wim Wenders' masterpiece of a film, Wings of Desire? In it, Peter Falk, playing himself, announces to the startled invisible angel at his side, "I can't see you, but I know you're there. Companero..." and he outstretches his hand for an impossible ectoplasmic handshake.

Just last week, astronomers at the University of Louisiana announced that they can't see a huge mass behind recently demoted Pluto (yes, five years this summer already), but they know it's there.....

Just yesterday, I announced to Vlad that I can't find the backup Christmas turkey breast I know I stashed in the freezer (which is cold and dark just like outer space...whoa...), but I know it's there....

Just this morning, I found both the errant bird and an exciting recipe for it from the lovely Dalmatian coast of Croatia, which is of course famous for its black and white spotted beach. Huh? Kidding.

Then, I surfed through my morning online reading and finally reviewed the results from Westminster, last week's big dog show. The Dalmatian was gorgeous, all earnest and floppy. His breed is a member of the Non-Sporting Dog class - an odd category for a group of dogs that hangs out with firefighters and can catch Frisbees like nobody's business. They seem like good sports to me.

And so did this recipe - it really played fair. It didn't send me out to the supermarket on a Saturday night - no, it sent me to the pantry. There are many times in life that we wish we had it all. Well, I looked down the ingredient list and won the jackpot. It helped that the ingredients were seriously basic:

we're just happy to help

Some flavoring veg, some tomatoes, a turkey breast deboned and diced in bite-sized pieces, some olives and a little olive oil. Simple, simple, simple.

Deboning the bird yielded nearly twice the required weight of meat. Turkeys must be really tiny in Dalmatia - the recipe called for a 1.2kg turkey. That's a mere 2.65 pounds. Yeesh. The breast meat alone weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces off the bone.

yeeek! Godzilla!

Dressing the pan with olive oil and tossing in the bay leaves and the chopped onions, garlic, olives, and rosemary was the work of seconds. Stirring in the diced meat, ditto. A gently preheated Mrs. Hal at 350 degrees and I was back to the work of a Saturday night - catching the best moments of Goodfellas as I set the table.

After a leisurely 20 minutes of shouting, "You tell em, Henry!" at the telly, I gave the pan a stir and added the tomatoes. Yum.

Vlad came out of his cave, sniffing the air like a hound. I resisted the urge to toss him a Frisbee and announced our fare for the evening. One spotted dog joke later and he was parked in front of Henry Hill and I was back in the kitchen shelling fresh chickpeas for a predinner snack.

Fresh! Chickpeas! In February! Nothing says winter can't last forever like these darling little reminders that spring springs anew. OK, so they were grown in Mexico - but the sun is working its way up here, right?

Yummy, grassy, starchy and sweet - the taste of spring. We can't see it, but we know it's there (well, right around the corner, anyway). And then dinner was ready. A healthy roast/braise with some very fresh little veggies and some great TV mayhem. What a nice midwinter pick-me-up. I couldn't see the beach stretching out in front of me, but I knew it was there.

Henny Penne

2011-01-24T12:23:00.000-08:00

One of the bright spots in these dreary economic times is the resurgence of home cooking. Even those who aren't happy about dining out less are finding pleasing recipes and creating new rituals to make it all fun: Stir-Fry & Fortune Cookie Night. Dinner and a Movie Night. Iron Chef cookoffs. The Weirdest Pizza Topping Challenge. It doesn't have to be all brussels sprouts casseroles, you know.

we're all in this together............

I guess you could call us Early Adopters. For years, Vlad's odd hours and my love of the stove (even if she is truly evil) have made the kitchen our default mealtime destination. It works for me. I'm never happier than when I'm feeding people - 2, 8, 100. Bring it on. It's a rare day when I'm not slaving over a hot stove.

But of course the downside of doing a lot of anything is that reruns inevitably arise and your audience tires of them. The daily pressure to make something flavorful, healthy, interesting, appealing to all comers and different from yesterday, the day before that and the day before that.....well, it can make even the most deeply committed foodie a little nuts. And all those 100 Ways With Chicken books aren't going to help when the cook is running frantic circles around herself.

There's a way out of this tunnel. I've said it before, but the first thing to do is to draw up a list of 20 or so recipes that rock at your house and tape it in a kitchen cupboard (you may not believe me, but your repertoire is larger than you think. Eat a big bar of chocolate while you brainstorm - the list will come together). You'll appreciate the crib notes when you're staring dully into the fridge at 5pm wondering, "What the heck do I do now?" If the ingredients are items you usually have on hand, problem solved.

And of course you can also play spin the wheel with the ingredients if you're short on some. If the recipe lists broccoli but you have cauliflower, sub it in. If you're supposed to use chicken strips but only have a beef roast, thinly slice off strips and sub it in. If you want a stirfry, have penne on hand but are out of glass noodles, and it's pouring rain and it's rush hour and your Inhaler needs to eat and get back out on the battlefield, sub it in. Remember, too, you can flip a recipe sideways by using all the ingredients but changing the method. Yes, you can. A tweak here and there makes a recipe fresh, more interesting, and more you.

That's precisely what I did for my dear marauder the other night. It was a tad too healthy and homey to be called Asian Fusion, but it was scrumptious, and it was a stirfry in name only.

I had on hand a pound of cooked penne (boiled, shocked, tossed with a little olive oil and refrigerated the day before - one of my regular have-on-hand items that solves many dinner quandaries). In a roasting pan I tossed together a dozen boneless skinless chicken thighs, a couple of peeled and quartered onions and a little olive oil and fresh ground black pepper. I also grabbed a bag of frozen veg and whipped up some Moby sauce.

see where I'm goin' with this?

Then I was just steps away from "Dinner's ready!"

1) I tossed the pan into a preheated Mrs.Hal and roasted the chicken and onions at 375F for 15 minutes.
2) I stirred the sauce into the chicken, folded in the whole bag of veg, covered the pan with foil and returned it to the oven for another 15 minutes.
3) There is no 3 - done! Simple, simple, simple - it practically cooked itself and served over reheated noodles it was celestial.

I think this would be a great weeknight bistro offering - Oven-Stir-Fried Sorta-Thai-Mobyish Penne. Or cut to the chase - Henny Penne. With a crisp Sauvignon Blanc - heavenly.

Eating in is the new eating out. For some, it's driven by the economy. For others, it's all about the palate. For home cooks, it's about the fact that there's never a 45-minute wait for a table at home, the fact that the dress code is decidedly casual (jammies for all) and the fact that the big-screen TV is but a few feet away and is tuned to your preferred station, not the bartender's. Downsides - minimal. Food cost - minimal. Time spent cooking - minimal. Time spent with family in a place where you don't have to shout - priceless.

Souped Up

2011-01-12T09:33:00.000-08:00

After a couple of chilly and dry days we got belted with a few inches of freezing rain and snow last night. I got home before the onslaught. I hope you did too! Today we all woke to warmer temps, rain and a slushy mess outside. But even though it's twenty degrees warmer this morning the damp still does me in. Thank heavens there's a solution. Nothing says winter warmer like soup!

Soup has so much going for it. It's a snap to make and can be customized to very quirky tastes. Want peanut and oyster soup? Go for it. Or liver and walnuts - okay then.....let me know how it turns out. Or do like me and take the opportunity to clean out the fridge with Kitchen Sink soup. Marry those leftovers in a savory stock and you'll have transformed them into an unexpected hug in a bowl.

In our house, veg practically take over the fridge. It's good to catch them before they start growling. Know that there are few pushy veg, though. They're the ones whose flavors dominate in soups - broccoli, turnips, anything from the cabbage family. Moderation is key.

To warm me, Vlad, the UPS guy, a neighbor who pops by now and then and anyone else who might stop by for a cup of warmth, I set a pot on the stove and assembled the usual suspects. I had some leftover pasta sauce, garlic and onions (of course), homemade stock (keep saving those bones!), rinsed cannellini beans and a mess of swiss chard. I washed the grit from the chard leaves, separated them from their stalks and chopped leaves and stalks into bite-sized pieces.

A nice warm bath of olive oil suited the garlic and onions just fine. I sweated them over low heat until they were soft and translucent, then added a dash of stock and all of the chard.

This before picture looks nutty, right? A nice saucepan of salad, please! Nope - with the stock and the moisture on the leaves, they cooked down to the bottom of the pot in a matter of minutes. I love the fragrance, so I left the lid off and added more stock as needed.

And then things got interesting. In went the beans, more stock and some simple seasonings (salt, pepper and the house specialty, chili flakes, mais oui).

Then the tomato sauce came into the picture and unified the flavors with its seasonings and tangy flavor, which pumped up what could have been a wooden mix of stock and beans.

Before you start thinking it looks like something I'd put on linguine, I'd better show you the after picture where it's clearly now a soup, in all its lovely warm and friendly soupy ways.

Comfort food is the idea here. A hug in a mug. To those who venture out in the slop today, I commend you. To those who need a little comfort, soup's on!

Shiny Happy Meals

2011-01-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

Vlad and I made a serious and formal decision yesterday - that we're seriously over formal holiday food. If I see another table like this soon, I'm gonna scream:

Nooooooooo! Give me chipped everyday plates and scruffy placemats. Reality - come baaaaaack!

It did. After a solid week (week!!) of graupel hanging around on the lawn, the air finally warmed, turned to rain and gave us back the green lawns we're accustomed to seeing in the winter. That shook Vlad and me out of our Christmas coma and set us back to rights. And by rights I mean "kid food".

Yay for being a kid at heart. I don't know about you, but I think being a grownup is overrated. I mean, my heavens - cholesterol, 401k planning, life insurance? Eeesh! At least as grownups we're free to balance our adult responsibilities with some seriously childish fare. But do we go to fast food restaurants for it? We do not. It's more fun and better for us to make it at home.

But what do we make at home? Think carefully, now. What is the diametric opposite of standing rib roasts, crown roasts, reduction sauces, roast turkey, cheese platters, china, crystal and really old wines? Yes, you're absolutely right - chicken nuggets and fries. A hole in one.

It's never too wintry to make oven fries. Let's do it! Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F (if you have a Mrs. Hal for an oven, make it a gentler 375F - she'll split the difference). Then get out your trusty yard sale Veg-O-Matic or a really sharp knife and, for a generous "serves 4 unless Vlad's invited" recipe, slice 5 peeled (or just carefully scrubbed; I like peeled) Russet or Idaho potatoes into fries and pile 'em in a middling-sized bowl.

Then spread a clean dish towel out on the counter, sprinkle the cut fries in a single layer and cover them with a second clean towel. Go back and wipe dry the bowl you had 'em in. Rub and press the towels together to dry the fries' surfaces as much as possible. Put the dried fries back into the bowl and toss them with a small amount of oil - a couple Tablespoons for every 5 large potatoes or so- and any seasonings you want, like chili powder, Chinese five spice, Provencal blends, garam masala, whatever. Arrange the fries in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast them on your oven's middle shelf at 400 F for 20 minutes.

But wait - don't run off! During that 20 minute window, take a couple of 1 1/2 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts and cut them into five pieces or so each, and then further divide the pieces into dainty little strips:

I'd swear these were really pterodactyl breasts - one and a half pounds each? (Oh, the jokes....resist! Resist!!!). My yield from two breasts was, ahem, 36 "nuggets" (oh, the giggling hurts!).

Watching the oven fry clock, you too had better recover from the giggles and pick up the pace. Grease a large baking sheet and prepare three medium mixing bowls. The first holds a shy cup of all-purpose flour, the next gets two beaten eggs (gilded with a dash of Tabasco, if you're like me) and the last holds 3/4 cup of homemade breadcrumbs tossed with homegrown chopped thyme, rosemary, Kosher salt and (optional) chili flakes.

I'll take Door #3, Bob..............

A quick, orderly bath in each of the three bowls for each of the 36 nuggets and their tray will be loaded and ready to join the fries.

Move the fries to the highest shelf in the oven and put the chicken on the middle shelf. The two will cook along companiably at 400F for another 15 minutes.

And then, yuh-hum. No glaring lights, plastic seats or canned music, just fast food at home where, like at our house where Vlad doesn't have to check his pickaxe (although I wish he would), you've got fast food in a slow environment. Yes, here it is - domestic and culinary bliss without having to "drive through, please!" Sweet, huh?

So that's it. We're back to reality - to ordinary meals that are high on the comfort scale and low on formality (although they seem to generate the same amount of dirty dishes...). Reality bites? I sure hope so.

What's a Girl to Stew??

2011-01-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

One evening last week about 9ish we heard a rumble of thunder (which would be weird enough in summer here, but in winter? Two words - biz-arre!) and then the skies opened up. It was a half degree above freezing, so our rain arrived as thundergraupel:

In our house, we don't call these little Dippin' Dots(TM) of hail "thundergraupel" - we coined the term skystreusel. They put a nice crunchy crust on everything and mooshed down to a slippery glaze on our street. The poor FedEx guy the next morning...

So here we are six days later and thanks to a steady flow of cold air from Canada ("ALL of it?" shouts Vlad behind me), we still have a pretty streusel crust on our lawn and shady sidewalks. What a great reason to stay the heck in and eat. You'd think the holidays would have us up to here with food, but Vlad in particular is always game for a rematch. No more crown roasts or turkeys, though. It's time to get back to stayin' in & hangin' out food: stew.

Now I'm sure you don't need a recipe for stew, but here's my template:

1. Cut up lotsa stuff. Here the star of the show is a chuck roast cut into bite-sized pieces (which really can be bite-sized if you do your own cutting; the huge supermarket stewing beef chunks would choke a cheetah). I also chopped up a couple of celery stalks, a couple of medium tomatoes, a couple of sweet onions, three cloves of garlic, some rosemary and thyme from my summer garden stash, three medium carrots and six large russet potatoes.

2. In a large stew pot, I warmed some olive oil and sweated the onions, garlic and celery over low heat until they were soft and translucent.

3. I tossed in the herbs and the meat. I let the meat cubes brown without my help - poke at them too much and they get all grey and grumpy (hey, just like me!).

4. I added the tomatoes and a couple of cups of thawed stock (beef or chicken - doesn't matter. Add a splash of red wine if your chicken stock is too mild. Don't add too much stock - the veg will give off their own water).

5. I brought the lot just to the boil and then reduced the heat to low so that the dish simmered slowly.

6. For a "serves 6" portion like you see here, I always check after 30 minutes. If the veg are softening nicely (and they were), I add the carrots and potatoes and simmer 20 -30 minutes more.

7. Then the fun part: checking for doneness - tender veg? Check. Savory rich stock? Yup. Meat that melts like butter on your tongue? That's the fun one - filch a meat chunk from the pot and blow on it a bit - protect your precious tastebuds! Tender and awesome? I bet it is.

Now sane people like you would just sit down with a loaf of bread, a bowl of stew and some football on the telly, right? Well people like me go instead into squirrel mode.

I always knew I'd find a use for the 4-foot tall sleeve of takeout boxes I bought for $5 at my local restaurant supply. Yup - freezer stew bricks!

Apologies - again my "food = barf" proclivities appear above. Believe me - this stew was far tastier than it looks. It was rich and homey and comforting and had no cranberry sauce, stuffing or gravy anywhere near it - thank heavens! It was a nice plain January dish, and will suit February well too, when the bricks emerge from the freezer. Now we only have to hope that Seattle emerges from its freezer, and pronto!

Clement Moore Redux

2010-12-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Knife!

Oh, and Peas on Earth, Good Swill for Men
(sorry - gotta million of 'em).
See you in 2011!

The Twelve Pounds of Christmas

2010-12-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I received the kindest and most touching email chain letter ever written. It urged me to run like hell from any holiday party buffet consisting of carrots and salad, and instead to remember the point of the whole thing and hunt down gravy, eggnog and fruitcake (which I thought I was alone in loving - hurrah!). Of course, I respect the need of those with health concerns to eat sensibly whether it's the holidays or not (here, you folks can have my carrots). But for me? So far so good. This is my season (and many others') to revel in everything deeply extravagant. We've all earned it. For many it's been a grim year.

But will I diet in January? Probably not. We have 45 seconds of sunlight daily here in January. You try eating salads in the dark. Nope, it's time to succumb to dreamland - this month and the next. My only holiday hope is to eat lots of sugar to keep me awake. And this time of year, that means cookies.

Wanna join me? I know you all are busy with jobs (yay for those who have them, hang in there (!) for those who don't), commutes and kids, but you too can get into this nuttiness (or lemoniness or chocolatiness, whatever you like). Don't stress about piped decorations, cookie cutters or fancy jammy fillings. A cheap and basic sugar cookie dough can be tweaked a million ways to make very simple, sturdy, pretty timesaving yuh-hums. Bring 'em to the office (and be loved forever), and wrap some in cellophane, tie with ribbon and give treats to neighbors or party hosts.

Any ordinary sugar cookie recipe will do. Prepare a batch that offers a yield of 24 ordinary cookies and you can easily stretch it to 48 or 60 teeny Christmas nibbles. And then the fun starts - customize your dough. Add a 1/2 cup of cornmeal, the zest of a couple of lemons and a Tablespoon of lemon juice to a batch to make Lemon Drops. Or split the batter in two, knead cocoa into one half and orange zest and a drop of food coloring into the other half and make Choc-Orange Drops.

I just happen to have made a batch of those today. Here in the "before" picture you see the dough ready for the oven. The lower discs are nuggets of dough rolled to the size of a cherry and flattened with a teaspoon. The upper pieces are nuggets of dough rolled to the size of a peanut and gently pressed onto the rounds. Voila:

And then the "after" picture ("after I ate a dozen or so to test them", I mean):

Or go nuts with the sugar cookie dough. Stir in 1/2 cup of ground almonds and a teaspoon of almond extract. Roll nuggets of dough the size of a cherry and place on a lined baking sheet. Press a whole almond into the middle. Yuh-freakin-hum:

If you do nothing else to mark the ceremony, at least line up your baked bounty at the end of the day and get a good look at it. You worked hard to make so many treats for your lovely family and friends. You also worked up an appetite. Have at it - you've got another hour before they get home.

Apologies for spitting crumbs, but I have one last thing to add. I wish you, my dears, a peaceful and delicious holiday time with your family, pals and pets. May there be many more such happy occasions for us all!

Get Stuffed

2010-12-08T16:05:00.000-08:00

Whether you call 45 degrees and rain "winter" or not (I admit I still hesitate), I tell ya, it's comfort food season here in Seattle. The darkness and the rain tapering to showers, ramping up to soaking rain, rain and more rain, and then a change to rain falling, misting, drizzling, endless, endless rain...well, it drives most plaid-shirted cavemen to the pasta pot for a nice cosy mound of carbs - nature's sleeping pill. I'm with them. Wake me when it's over.

Being who I am though, I want a festive dreamland send-off. I'm not always happy with just a box of Ronzoni - even in my grogged-out state, I wanna cook. And that means fresh pasta. But it's cold and the Inhaler needs serious nosh to stay warm and conscious for battle. And that, my friends, means fresh ravioli.

There is no greater kitchen high than making your own pasta. Pie crust? Done to death. Bread? It rises by itself, for pete's sake. Puff pastry? Not worth the tedium in a home kitchen and not worth the labor cost in a restaurant setting. Frozen puff pastry is fabulous - so why bother? But ravioli? Awesome.

When I decided to do this, the book I immediately turned to was a dog-eared, disintegrating favorite of mine, La Cucina di Pasquale: Italian Gourmet Cooking by Pasquale Carpino and Judith Drynan. If you grew up in Southern Ontario in the late 70s and early 80s, you knew Chef Pasquale as the Singing Chef, a Calabrese opera singer who came to Canada, opened a restaurant and quickly garnered fame and TV deals (first cable access, then network) to spread his joy of Italian cooking. And man, that man could cook. I bought his book in my early 20s when I made my first wobbly steps toward eating in the grand Italian style. Many, many books have flowed through my hands over the years, but this one has never once flirted with the cull pile. It's been halfway across the world and looks it. Thank you, Chef P.

He's always had it going on in the ravioli filling department. The three classics are all here: meat, cheese and spinach with ricotta. With an Inhaler in the house I give you one guess about which I chose. Yup. Mooooooo.

A pound of browned ground beef, olive oil, garlic, onions, a couple of eggs, lots of fresh parsley, a splash of Sauvignon Blanc, some homemade soft breadcrumbs (which are covering the meat here) and a smidge of freshly-grated Parm - heaven. I assembled it and tossed it in the fridge to firm up while I made the fresh pasta.

You don't need any gadgets to make fresh pasta, but I like 'em. A lot. Instructions abound for mixtures blended with a wooden spoon, rolled with a rolling pin and cut with a knife. How romantic. A First Nations woman I knew a long time ago told me that I, "have the arms of a bird, eh?" and she wasn't kidding. The wooden spoon and rolling pin jobs here are better left to the burly strong arms of my KitchenAid mixer. Heck, if ya gottem, why not usem?

And why not also use the recipe developed for the mixer? I've used Chef P's recipe for years (I used to recite it in my head to distract me from air sickness) but a glance at this new recipe sold me. You can find it in the most recent little KitchenAid Pasta Maker booklet, available in PDF format here. What's so great about this recipe? For starters, it's been retested and revised over the years. The original recipe in the big stand mixer manual contained 4 eggs and had only oblique instructions. This new one saves you an egg and is much more precise about the balance of eggs to water (and has some superb advice about flour sifting on the previous page). A double recipe of this and Vlad would be amply fuelled for some serious sparring. Game on, I say.

I took great pains to ensure that I had exactly a double recipe's worth of eggs and water:

I added the sifted flour to the mixer bowl and gradually added the egg mixture:

Again my penchant for making puke-like food appears. But wait! There's more!

From gunk:

To gorgeous in three minutes:

After the dough ball snoozed for 25 minutes (I got caught on the phone), it was ready for the guillotine. I attached the pasta maker (yay, bird arms!) and fired 'er up.

Steady feeding of walnut-sized pieces into the grinder body resulted in an even flow of dough.

As the dough emerged, I supported it lightly from beneath to keep it from compressing in a wrinkled mess like plastic wrap does.

Once the pieces were about 12" long, I stopped the machine and cut them off at the extruder. I lovingly draped the pieces on parchment to allow them to dry some and to cool off a bit. The extruder is one hot puppy and makes these babies warm to the touch like fresh prints from the copier.

My full double recipe netted 25 feet of pasta, enough for 140 postage-sized ravioli pieces. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the Raviolamp:

He's another survivor of many moves and kitchen culls and is about as old as my Pasquale cookbook. I love this little guy. His cutting lines are sharp and firm and he's so smooth that he doesn't need flouring. I did it once here for old time's sake and then stopped bothering. What a joy this pan is to use. I put him straight to work:

Two pasta sheets "glued" together with a light brushing of egg wash (beaten egg applied lightly with a clean paintbrush - yay edible glue) made the base. Then I gently pressed the dough into each of the pockets in the pan:

Then I did the work of fairies, sweet bluebirds and wee mice - stuffing cups the size of flipping postage stamps:

The trick to this is to keep the filling level with the top of the pan. No overfilling, no mounds, or you've got mess everywhere when you try to seal them or - worse - when they simmer in the saucepan. Level, level, level. They just look really small - you really will be able to taste that pinch of meat, promise!

Then I applied a second egg wash for luck all around the fillings, brushed on like I was cleaning tile grout (this is way more fun). Horizontal and vertical stripes, no globby egg bits, just a smooth sheen.

And then the top hat went on:

I spread two more overlapping pasta sheets along the pan to cover the filling and edges completely, then lightly went over the whole pan with a rolling pin (a real one, not the dollhouse one that comes with the Raviolamp. That I redeployed that as a cocktail muddler years ago). You need the weight of a real rolling pin and its big handles to keep your knuckles from scarring the pasta as you go.

I flipped the pan over on the cutting board, trimmed one short and both long edges flush with the pan, and then lifted the pan up at a 45 degree angle from the cutting board. Pulling gently on the remaining short pasta edge up in the air, I carefully pried the first row from the mold. As each row slowly released I eased them down to the cutting board until I had freed the whole solid sheet.

Voila! Holy choirs sang! The belly gods were well pleased. I cut the ravioli into individual little pieces and then went back through the entire process five more times. Thatza lotta pasta!

Aren't they darling? They're not too cute to eat, though....

Simmered in stock and wine for 10 minutes (and gently removed singly with a slotted spoon) and napped with practically any sauce (here you see my homemade tomato sauce) makes these abso-flippin-lutely celestial. Dinner is served.

And whatta lotta leftovers! These little guys darken or speckle within 24 hours in the fridge, so freeze uncooked extras for another fab dinner (when you won't be tired from making them all day - bonus!). They're quite filling, so count on no more than 5-7 per person for a first course and maybe a dozen or so as a main. Even Vlad can't eat 140 of these babies. What a delight to find these in your freezer.

Wine pairings? Doesn't matter. Side dishes? Doesn't matter. Dessert choice? Doesn't matter. All that matters is that the ravioli was delicioso and that it took our minds off the rain for an entire meal. The three hypnotic hours of ravioli prep also made me ready for a good long winter's nap. With these little birdy arms dreaming about flying's gonna be as close as I get to rising above the rain.

Get the Lead Out

2010-12-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

Lately I haven't been that sharp. Searching for my dang keys, putting the mail in the freezer, and trying to think of good old watzisname's title in that movie, you remember the one - oh crap, it'll come to me....have all been little dance steps in the waltzing rite de passage of my middle years.

I just know they're around here somewhere....

Now absentmindedness is merely evidence of an aging (well, thank you very much) brain, right? And writer's block is an absolute prerequisite of a fuzzy brain, yes? Dunno. It's true that I'm not 20 anymore, and that although I sure haven't been suffering from eater's block (hell, no), the pen has indeed been remarkably still. I'm jess' gettin' old, right? Not so fast. And I just might be coming out of it anyway.

With what little brain spark I've got, I had enough firepower to solve a bit of the puzzle yesterday. It was the old jumper-cables-to-the-pilot-light-in-the-brain trick courtesy of the small print on this bottle of half-finished Californian balsamic vinegar in my pantry:

Whoa. And that's not even the punchline. When I leapt to the computer and started to type, "lead in balsamic vinegar" into Google, the site auto-completed the phrase before I could get to the "l" in balsamic. Darlings, have you heard about this? Do you expect to see the same kinds of warnings on food that you see tied to extension cords? Hell, do you know what lead can do to brains? That's the smoking gun here. Apparently my vinegar might be contributing to my colossal failures at Mad Libs. Apparently a lead-induced "rusty brain" looks a lot like age-related brain fade. Whoa Nelly.

What a thrill to discover that a soggy brain can still panic:

How did the lead get there?
Is there lead in the other vinegar brands in the supermarket or do they contain it but get in under the radar because they contain a smidge less or because they're bottled in states that don't require a warning on the label?
Is California's threshold for the acceptable level of lead really low? Or really high?
Why vinegar? And what else are we eating that contains noticeable levels of lead?

Let's start with the last question because I've already forgotten the first three. Turns out - lead's in practically everything (well, I feel better now, don't you?). I guess that makes sense, since lead is present in most soil where, of course, veg are grown and yummy animals graze. And from what I've read, it's truly difficult to find lead-free soil, which begs the question about the purity of organic produce. I know, I know - it's a feather-ruffler. It's not a lost cause, though - check out the great gardening advice on soil augmentation at the bottom of this page from the Health Department in Omaha, Nebraska.

And on the subject of dirt, I would add that when I was a kid in Canada, we and everyone we knew removed our shoes when coming inside from the great and dirty outdoors. Make all the snow jokes you like - it turns out that we also had healthier homes because the lead in the dirt on the soles of our shoes didn't migrate around the house. The Washington Toxics Coalition confirms the value of doing this here. (Hey, it's one thing you can do something about, right? It gives, "Eat my dust," a whole new meaning and gives you less crap to inhale, leaving more room for some balsamic vinegar, I guess...).

But man cannot live on air alone. Sometimes you just gotta eat. And how much lead in food is safe? The powers that be say the answer had better be a little because it's so hard to escape. Is it possible to have a lead-free diet? The same powers say, "Unlikely."

Besides contact with soil, lead gets into food in some pretty freaky ways. The ominously named Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (a division of the US Centers for Disease Control) has lots of useful info here. The short version is that your food can become "leaded" during its production (as we know for example, when it was grown in soil containing lead), its packaging (from pigments on wrappers, eeuuu) or its storage (like in, say, that crystal decanter Auntie Margie gave you as a wedding gift). It's a jungle out there. So drink that wine the day you decant it - if it turns into vinegar that'll be the least of your worries (See? All roads lead to vinegar).

And while we're still obsessing about vinegar - yes, it's likely that other vinegar brands not so labelled are possibly "leaded" from contact with soil or from barrel aging (although neither's been conclusively proven). We just don't know. Here in Washington State, for example, the Department of Ecology has lead limits for building construction (so don't eat nails or pressure-treated lumber), but makes only an oblique reference to lead in food here. Many states have no standards of their own at all but depend on the Feds to lead the pack (sorry, couldn't resist). A bit of Googling seems to prove that only California restricts "edible lead" more fervently than the Feds do. Yikes. California voters approved Proposition 65 back in 1986, which required disclosure from companies selling any kind of product containing any chemical that the state govt had put on the Prop 65 list (which is updated yearly - there are nearly 800 chemical nasties listed today). You can see the full list here, but don't blame me if you have nightmares. Those Californians deserve their sunny days - they give us so much useful information.

Sigh - in a perfect world we'd all wear organic cotton, the air would be fresh and clean, all of our food would be free of chemicals and pesticides and we'd have no use for those funny filter things on our faucets that trap pollutants from tap water (how fortunate are we that we can improve our already impeccably clean water when there are 884 million people worldwide without clean drinking water at all?). In the real world, we eat organic veg when it's on special and then go jogging down streets inhaling car exhaust. We cook with a "safe" balsamic vinegar and then get a nice dose of lead from fresh produce. Yes, it's a mess, but we're still sitting pretty, for all of it.

I'll probably toss the vinegar and give the others in my pantry the side-eye, but I'll take that caution with a huge grain of equally unhealthy salt. I sure do appreciate modern times. In 1900, American men and women of most races could expect to make it to their mid-30s or late 40s, max. Today the new average is about 75, even with leaded balsamic vinegar floating about. In this complicated world we sure have more risks to dodge, but we also have fun things like cars, central heating and really bad television. How lucky can we be? And anyway, it seems eating a balanced diet may help filter a bit of lead (see here, bottom of section 1.7). That's encouraging, but more than anything I bet that losing the worry will go a longer way to improving our lives. And whaddaya know, worrying is linked to memory loss. Maybe humming "Don't Worry, Be Happy" will help me find that frozen credit card bill.....

I'll Huff and I'll Puff

2010-11-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Here's your word for the day: puffery. Vlad navigated the murky waters of puffery (defined as: exaggerated praise or vague assertions) in his former life in packaged goods. Puffery might not be something you want in your ad copy, but it sure is something you want on your plate.

I'm talking, of course, of cream puffs, those dinky pastry pillows of eggy goodness. When's the last time you had a cream puff? I bet it's been way too long. In this tech-obsessed gourmet world, cream puffs are practically an endangered species, spotted only in the wilds of your grocer's freezer or high-end restaurant menus. I think that's a shame. Has everyone forgotten what a cheap and simple farmhouse dessert this is? Golly - check any of the homemaking heavyweights. You'll find cream puffs in them all:

You can see it on the covers, can't you? Yes, it was a simpler time. When your chickens got overambitious, you used up the egg glut in cream puffs. When your chickens were uninspired, you dreamed of a glut of cream puffs.You learned to make them at your Mother's or Gran's side. They taught you the simple tricks of cream puffery - especially those about timing the addition of ingredients and testing batter consistency. Those two simple tricks ensure delish results. Note that I said "simple" tricks. They really are simple. Your Grandma knew it!

But now? Everyone thinks they're hard to make because they've never made them or seen them made. Four different people I emailed today think only dessert manufacturing facilities or pro chefs can make them. How did we get so far off track? We have so much to learn from the past!

Thank heavens, the past is becoming cool again. To the folks who are now raising backyard chickens, as Seattleites are now permitted to do, I say congratulations! Flannery O'Connor would be so proud of you. I think she'd also approve of the project I have for you. Go on and save up those eggs until you have 6 or 8 (and 4 to 8 more if you want to make pastry cream to fill the puffs). Condo-fresh eggs, wow! You'll want to hug each of your dotty birds. They're going to give you a great dessert and a cheap and easy peace offering for the neighbors they're driving crazy.

Even if you're birdless, go on and give this one a shot. Don't be put off by the length of my instructions. The recipes I work from are just as succinct as the ones you use. What makes this column long is the addition of hints, tricks and tidbits you'd get in a real live cooking class. Still not convinced? How about if I tell you that this is like the little black dress of the dessert world. How so? Well, you can fill the puffs with anything you want - for example....

pumpkin cream filling and maple syrup topping
almond cream filling and applesauce topping
whipping cream filling and white chocolate sauce
ice cream filling and cherry sauce
the classic: creme patisserie (a.k.a. vanilla pudding) and chocolate sauce

...and the kicker? The puffs are unsweetened, so you can turn them into savory cocktail snacks by filling them with things like chicken salad, salmon mousse or, wow, caviar stirred into creme fraiche for some serious lily-gilding. How's that for versatile?

If that doesn't sell you, how 'bout this? Of the three components, you can also cheat with the filling and frosting if you're pressed for time. If you like 'em, pudding mix and bottled dessert sauces will do in a pinch. I won't tell, promise.

So have I got you? Good. All cream puff recipes are essentially the same, so go and choose one from a book you trust. Read the recipe and my hints below completely first, then put together the following mise:

oven preheated to 425 degrees F (do not let your oven heat any higher or wander around - your parchment pan liners are paper, and if Ray Bradbury has taught us nothing else, we know from him that paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The contents of your fire extinguisher might look like powdered sugar, but the resemblance ends there)
3 or 4 rimmed baking sheets that are greased, lined with parchment paper and greased again (ideally greased with veg oil. Butter has such a low smoke/burn point that you could unwittingly invite Guy Montag to your kitchen)
cooling rack set up and ready
stick thermometer (optional certainly but useful if you have it)
large saucepan and heavy wooden spoon
stand mixer if you have one, with beater attachment
two clean teaspoons (the ones you stir your coffee with, not measuring spoons)
optional, so don't worry: a piping bag and two tips, one large plain (about Ateco #8 or #800) and one small plain (Ateco #4 or #400)
food-safe paintbrush

And of course your ingredients in order of appearance:

water
salt
butter
flour
eggs (crack them one by one into a small bowl, inspect them for freshness, then decant the good ones together into a biggish measuring cup for ease of pouring)

Here we go!

1. Put the large saucepan on a cold burner on your stove. Into the large saucepan, pour the required amount of water and salt. Cut the butter up into little pieces and toss it in too.

2. Turn the heat under the pan to low and allow the butter to melt completely, as you see below. Do not let the water boil - not yet.

3. Have ready the required amount of flour and your wooden spoon. When you have them ready beside you at the stove, increase the heat under the saucepan and bring the butter mixture to the boil.

4. Immediately when the mixture begins to boil (at "first froth" as you see below), stir in all of the flour at once and keep stirring vigorously for 30 seconds. Yes, it's sweaty work, but don't stop!

5. Move the saucepan off the heat and keep stirring for another minute. Reduce the burner heat to low and return the saucepan to it. Stir the dough ball constantly for 30 seconds more to dry it out a little.

6. Turn off the burner and remove the saucepan from it. If you have a stand mixer, transfer the dough ball to the mixer bowl and set the beater to stir it constantly (this will speed the cooling process). If you're making this by hand (nice biceps, by the way), keep stirring. Periodically check the temperature of the dough ball. You want it to cool at least to 150F before you add the eggs. If you don't have a thermometer, wait until you can rub the outer bottom of the bowl without shrieking. Once it cools to a point that it just feels really warm, you're in business.

7. When the dough ball is cool enough to accept the eggs, add one egg at a time, stirring steadily until it is evenly combined. When the egg first mixes with the dough, the mixture will get all glossy and slick and will break the dough into gooey lumps like you see below. Never mind- keep stirring.

8. Your egg is fully incorporated when the batter smooths out again and looks batter-like just like this picture below. At this point, scrape the bowl down and add another egg. Repeat steps 7 and 8 until you have one egg left over in the measuring cup.

9. Now here's where your baker's instinct is required. The batter may not need the last egg (or the last two if you doubled the recipe, etc.etc.). How do you know? It's not because your arms are tired! If you scoop out a teaspoon of batter it should stay firm and not spread in the spoon. The batter should also look subtlely glossy, not dripping wet. It's decision time. If you decide you don't need the egg, you're ready to move onto step #10. If you decide you need it, incorporate it into the batter and separately crack another egg into the measuring cup for use in step #10.

10. Beat the leftover or newly cracked egg in its measuring cup until completely uniform, then stir in a teaspoon of milk. This is the egg wash you'll lightly brush onto your puffs before baking to make them golden brown.

11. So then you have your choice - pipe the batter onto the prepared pans with a piping bag or scoop it like your Grandma did with teaspoons. The result is the same regardless, so don't sweat this step. A half-full spoon deposited on the pan will bake up to the size of a golf ball. Space them 3 inches apart on the baking sheets to give them room to puff.

12. Once you've loaded your pan, dip your brush in the egg wash and scrape as much excess off as possible. Gently brush the surface of the puffs without flattening them. Smooth out any "cowlicks" on the surface and also be sure to wipe away any visible yellow eggy clumps.

13. Pop the sheet in the preheated oven and do the happy dance. Oh, joy! About 20 minutes later, your puffs will be puffed. Move them to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely. Many books will tell you to cut them in half while hot and scrape out any gooey insides, but I say why waste 'em? Cooled and later chilled, any gooeyness will firm up and add substance and structure to your puffs.

14. Now for the other two components - sauce and filling. I have no recipe for my sauce - I just melt a couple of big bars of dark chocolate with two pints of of whipping cream over very low heat. Voila - painless and delish. When cool I decant it into a dollar store squeeze bottle. Done. For the filling I usually make creme patisserie from this lovely English recipe here (to which I always add a pinch of saffron to liven up the color). You'll find a practically identical recipe in your Joy of Cooking, but as I say, you're free to fill these with anything that works for you. If women can wear a suit from Target with Prada shoes, you can feel totally free to put Jell-O pudding into your puffs. Dessert should be happiness made edible!

15. If you do have a piping bag and a very small plain tip, it's useful to use them to poke a small hole in each puff (at a top crease or on the underside) and pipe the filling/pudding into them. A teaspoon will also work just fine if you gently pry the top open at a crease and tip the goo in. Whatever works, you know?

Here it is - it's all been leading up to this. Happy, happy cream puff world! Life is good.

At the risk of resorting to puffery, I firmly believe that you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't love cream puffs with a passion. Maybe you'd better call City Hall and see about that chicken permit!

Kitchen Hacks

2010-10-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

An impressive flu recently took hold of me. It forced me to miss your company while I hacked up several body parts (the coughing kind of hacking, to be clear, not the ax-wielding kind). Thank heavens that's over. It's good to have clearance from mission control to reenter cyberspace. I hope and pray, my dears, that none of you catch this evil bug. Wash your hands and cover your cough! Remember - no matter how much you identify with your computer, its anti-virus software doesn't protect you!

Luckily, my flu was only a part-time malady which left me relatively free to expand my feverish mind. I think I used my down time wisely. I read (Gogol's Dead Souls, how apt) and dabbled in a little bad TV (a beloved sick bed tradition), but mostly I Thought About Food. I came to some powerful conclusions.

First of all, the old adage, "Feed a cold and starve a fever," is hooey. Under all circumstances, feeding is key. You need fuel to power the recovery machine.

Second, even if you have a doting partner, you never know when he'll be called away to lay siege to a city. You should always be able to look after yourself even when you're sick.

Third, when you're sick, your motivation and appetite just won't be there for you. You'll have to force yourself to cook and eat a little (see #1).

Fourth, if you lean too heavily on canned and packaged stuff, you'll take longer to recover. Have you seen the sodium content in those canned chicken soups? I promise you - those cold remedies you're taking are already making jerky of your insides. You're thirsty enough already, so skip the extra salt wherever you find it.

Fifth, if you must force yourself to cook a little and to eat, you must do so gently. You need a small, at-the-ready repertoire of very simple, quick and healthy snacks that you can stand to make when you can barely make it to standing. They must have only a few ingredients that you usually have on hand - if you can barely make it to the stove you're sure as hell not going to make it to the supermarket. They should also have only a couple of prep steps so you can get back to being horizontal asap.

Sixth, you know you'll get sick again someday, so while you're on your game now, it's smart to devise a list of Plague Ship Snack Hacks that you'd actually look forward to while huddled feverishly on the couch blinking redly over Tissue Mountain.

"Huh? Gimme a fer instance," you say. Can do. How about:

Baked Apple: Wash the apple, cut it in half and remove the core. Place the halves in a small baking dish and sprinkle them with a little brown sugar and cinnamon. Cover the dish with foil and put it in a preheated 350 degree F oven. Set a timer and go lie down for 20 minutes. When the bell dings, drag yourself upright (you have to hit the loo anyway) and go remove foil and bake for 10 minutes more.
Thermos Oatmeal: In a large wide-mouth Thermos, combine 1/2 cup dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, whatever), 1/2 cup of large flake or steel-cut oats, 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, a Tablespoon of brown sugar, a teensy pinch of salt and 1 1/2 cups of boiling water. Close the jar, get 8-10 hours of really good sleep and wake up to a nourishing little meal.
Chicken Soup: In a medium saucepan melt a 4-cup brick of your frozen chicken stock. Bring it to the boil and add a handful of short pasta noodles like macaroni. Reduce the heat and simmer until the pasta is tender, about 10 minutes. During this time if you're feeling energetic, dice a tomato and toss it in too. Any fresh herbs you have would be a great addition, too. If you have leftover roast chicken (which you probably don't, but wouldn't it be nice?), toss bite-sized shreds into the soup too.
Pear Sandwich: Not as weird as it sounds. Slice a bagel, butter the halves lightly and place them on a baking sheet. Put a large pear slice on each bagel half and top with a slice of Cheddar or Italian Fontina. Toast for 5 minutes in a 350 degree oven until the bagel is lightly browned and the cheese is melted.

How's that for a kickoff? Got ideas for your own sickbed foods? Having a list of them tucked away somewhere memorable might seem like a goofy plan to have in place but I promise you that the next time you're miserably snuffling and hacking away, Sick You will be comforted to know that Well You's got your back, in sickness and in health, and that you have the key to self-reboot.

Look Sharp

2010-10-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

As stew season is upon us, I find I'm getting lots of alone time with my knives chopping, dicing, slicing and julienning. Boy, that makes me happy. A large, sharp blade is a joy to wield, isn't it? Vlad might prefer an ax, but I'm a knife girl.

My three favorite knives have long served me well. The santoku knife at the top of this picture was a Christmas Day hostess gift from pals a few years ago. The Michael Graves knife in the middle came from Target for $9 on clearance well over a decade ago. It was meant to be a stop-gap knife for me to use until our movers brought our stuff from the other side of the continent, but it had such heft and cuts so true that I still use it constantly. Its sharp point is outstanding for dicing garlic or chives, and its heavy heel is great for julienning carrots (do you know your knife anatomy, by the way? There's a super diagram here). The filleting/boning knife at the bottom started off as a chef school necessity but morphed into an essential Seattle fish prep tool. I'm surprised they don't give them out free with every new driver's licence, I use mine so much.

The Internet is bursting with articles and videos on proper knife use. Here's a page I recommend: this video series from Taunton Press' Fine Cooking magazine. Think of a food, any food - they probably cut it up here. If you love sharp objects, this is must-see stuff.

As fun as knives are to use, they're almost more fun to sharpen. You can try to do the whole job with a steel (that blunt, ribbed 'sword' you stole for Pirate Day when you were a kid) but it can take some practice and care not to scratch or bend (yes, bend) your knives unless you know what you're doing. Novices can do a number on their knife blades with a steel. The careful novice would do better to use the steel only after first using the tabletop sharpener:

The thing to remember about blades is that they're sharp on two sides, not just along the edge of the blade. Because of this, you don't just steady the sharpener on the counter and pull the knife straight through toward you, you tilt the blade so that it hugs one side of the inner sharpener wall and pull it through thus two or three times. You then tilt the blade to hug the other side of the inner sharpener wall and pull it through twice or thrice again. You pull slowly and steadily, pressing down lightly on the knife handle to keep the full length of the blade in contact with the sharpening discs. You should not hear any graty, grindy sounds, just a smooth ting of metal. Got it? If it helps, imagine that you've wedged a matchbook in there with your knife to make it hug the opposite sharpening wall and that you move it to the other side to sharpen it also, as I illustrate here. Don't actually do it, though, or I promise you your blade'll be toast as you chase the matchbook around the counter. Your fingers might become endangered too! Be careful - playing with knives requires your devoted attention.

Done gingerly, this gentle angle results in sharp sides that meet down at the edge, making the blade a sharp "V" shape when looked at straight on (but don't, for heavens' sake, look at a knife blade straight on if you have pets, kids, or practical joker spouses around. Home injuries are on the rise!).

When you know the coast is clear and no family member is going to put you in the emergency room, a quick wipe along the sides and edge of the blade with a very thick dishtowel readies the knife for the steel (yes, I know steels are magnetic, but they can get grimy with metal shavings after a fashion).

Now grasp your knife in the hand you write with and place the heel of the blade across the top of the steel. With that matchbook angle tilt again, draw the knife in a curved motion downwards so that the steel rubs against the full length of the blade from heel to tip. Do this smoothly and steadily two or three times, then hold the knife under the steel and draw the other side of the blade across it thrice again. A quick look around for hazards young, jokey or furry and you've got your window to wipe the blade and steel down with a dishtowel.

You're almost in business now but not quite. Do I have to mention that the knife now needs a wash? Microscopic metal filings should not be welcome in your food!

At the risk of sounding like Disaster Lady or Cleaver Crank, let me leave you with the knife rules I adhere to in my kitchen. I saw some spectacular injuries in chef school and want you, darlings, to learn from them without seeing the horror movies that they were. Even if you cook alone, these rules will protect you! Take your knives seriously and they'll never turn on you. But make sure they know you're in charge.

THE STOVE JOCKEY'S FIVE IMMUTABLE KNIFE LAWS

NEVER put a dirty knife in a sink of hot soapy water.You may forget it's in the sink and cut your hand badly, or forget to tell your companions and injure them instead.. Neither is preferable. Instead, set the knife aside to wash later. When you wash it, immediately dry it and put it away.
NEVER store your knives loose in a drawer or you're asking to get sliced as you rummage for your meat thermometer. If you're handy, sew thick cases for them. If not, wrap them thickly in brightly colored dishtowels or thick manila envelopes. If you don't have pets or tots, put a knife block on your wish list - there's something wonderfully Attila the Hunnish about having all your weapons out there, gleaming and ready.
NEVER wash your knives in the dishwasher. The rough washing may chip the blades and make them unsafe to use. You spent too much on these to give them the car wash treatment, anyway.
NEVER gesture with a knife or hold it blade up and out. Remember your Mom saying someone could lose an eye? My classmate lost an earlobe and half the class lost their lunch.
NEVER walk around with a knife unless you carry it at your side, sharp edge facing behind you and knife tip pointing down. Take especial care going around corners - who's on the other side and who's at knife height? If you're in school, "Knife!" is the accepted warning cry. Those who forget to shout it may discover that a sharp enough knife will slice through denim (another image you don't want in your head). Remember, few people wear Kevlar clothing. Especially tots! At home, don't ever, ever carry the dang thing around near kids or pets.
NEVER cut food on a slippery cutting board unless the emergency room doctor on call tonight's really cute. Prevention is so simple - wring out a wet paper towel and place it lying flat under your cutting board. Voila - now everything sticks like glue and you don't need a bandage, tourniquet or worse.

Like yer Ma, I say this because I care about you. An injured foodie is a sorry sight and I can't bear the thought of you getting benched by something like this and your family mournfully choking down cold pizza. Your home is your castle, but is also your bistro, and your knives are your essential tools. If stew is on the menu, look both ways, sharpen your knives and get chopping!

Dietetic and Poetic

2010-10-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Boy, it's good to be back. How've you been? I hope you've been happy and eating well. I've been snowed under with projects but finally have all my Muscovy ducks in a row - for the next thirty seconds, anyway.

One of the most enjoyable assignments I've had this week was producing a stack of writing samples for a group critique I'll be attending soon. To warm up to write them, I played a word game.

You can play too, if you like. Grab a cookbook that you really like - go on, I'll wait. Now flip through it 'til you find a recipe that's a roaring success at your house. Now the fun part - let's see if you can turn it into a guest check haiku. Proper haiku poems have a specific structure. They're only three lines long: the first line is 5 syllables in length, the second 7 syllables, the last 5 syllables. Simple, right?

Well, it turns out, not necessarily. You may find that you can pull off the 5-7-5 routine, but I must admit that I worked better with a 7-5-7 scale. Since I reserve the right to exert editorial licence with the recipes I make, I decided that tweaking an ancient poetic form is ok too (you purists can avert your eyes) . But what to call my new creations? Pseudo-ku is too close to sudoku (which is too mathish anyway). What about quasi-haiku, or more poetically - quasiku? Good enough.

These recipes can become poems, but can these poems be used as recipes? I doubt it, but then I never really intended them to be functional. They're just for sport. Experimentation on paper is nearly as fun as kitchen experiments (but the paper tastes awful).

I'm no Basho, but here's what I came up with:

ROAST CHICKEN

chicken cut in two pieces

toss with thyme and salt

bake three two five for one hour

POUND CAKE

flour, butter and sugar

each one level cup

greased tin, hot oven, one hour

POT OF RICE

dab of butter, cup of rice

stir, two cups water

cover, cook twenty minutes

BEEF STEW

browned beef cubes, herbs, stock in pot

celery, carrots

add potatoes, simmer, yum

BROWNIES

butter, eggs and chocolate

sugar, vanilla

stir in flour, bake and smile

QUICHE

get pie crust ready

bacon, eggs, cream and diced chives

serve hot or cold, yum

Did you get the hang of it? Are you inspired and ready to create a teensy masterpiece of your own? Me, I'm ready for a snack. I'd go for some chicken and beef rice quiche stew with a pound cake brownie for dessert right about now, but I can't for the life of me figure out why I'd want all that.........

Never Let Me Sew

2010-09-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

All the buzz about the new film Never Let Me Go brought to mind yesterday the film of another Kazuo Ishiguro book, The Remains of the Day. What a story. It's got it all - a little intrigue, some nasty politics, a subtle shade of kind-of almost maybe sorta romance (!) and a beautiful setting, the glorious Badminton House in Gloucester, UK. You wouldn't expect less from a film directed and produced by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. They made some of the loveliest costume dramas on screen including A Room With a View and Howard's End.

now you see where I'm going with this

As lavish as they are, though, Merchant Ivory films have never really made me hungry. It's ironic, considering that Ismail Merchant was a renowned cook, party-thrower and all-round gourmet. Thank goodness that what the films lack, Mr. M made up for in his cookbooks.

On a related note, even though Vlad and I had hit England already on a Kitchen Vacation, I decided that it merited a return trip. Since we hadn't officially taken our kitchen to India either (Mrs. Hal's luggage was just too dang heavy), I felt it was time to get on with that, too. How to combine the two? Well, who better to give us a little London and Mumbai than the sadly departed Ismail Merchant himself, who had homes in both places?

On location, Mr. Merchant clearly wasn't dependent on the craft services table. He threw the best dinner parties anyone in his circle ever attended. He also had decades-long friendships with novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who wrote many of his screenplays) and with the patron saint of happy cooking, Madhur Jaffrey. That's all I needed to hear back in the early 90s when I started cooking from his book, Ismail Merchant's Indian Cuisine. The recipes were so flavorful and lively that I didn't even mind when in 1994 he reprinted many of its recipes in his new book, Ismail Merchant's Passionate Meals. No book jam-packed with movie stills is all bad, right? I generally distrust books with authors prominently pictured on the cover, but I'll always be a sucker for Ismail Merchant's friendly beaming face.

Vlad, being the friendly beaming eater that he is, cheerfully waved an ax yesterday in support of revisiting the Raj et al and of chicken for dinner again. Hey, we're middle-aged, alright? We need all the low-fat protein we can get. At our age steaks'll kill us (if Vlad doesn't kill them first). So on the menu I put Ismail Merchant's Yogurt Chicken II (Dahi Murgh II), Stewed Eggplant (Baygan ka Bharta) and Savory Onion Rice (Bhuni Piyaz ke Chaaval). I had hoped to make just one simple simmering dish that would give me some sewing time (I'm behind on my effing pinning), but the belly wants what it wants. Mrs. Hal won the toss - sorry Bernie!

Ahh, the eggplant. This is the eggplant recipe that convinces everyone from polite skeptics to Firm Haters that all is forgiven. I think it's because the tannic peel is removed and the bite-sized chunks look better than benign - they look downright appetizing. Oh, and they're delish. That helps.

It's also a very simple recipe. In a deep pot you cook a finely diced onion and a few bay leaves in some veg oil until the onion is soft and translucent. Then you toss in the eggplant chunks, a couple of seeded and chopped tomatoes, a little cayenne, S&P, caraway seeds if you've got them (but leave them out if eggplant's already a hard sell in your house), a little red wine vinegar and some lemon juice and let the lot simmer until the eggplant chunks are tender but still intact. It's earthy, chewy, tangy and subtly spicy all at once - a nice room-temp pickle to serve before dinner (and to have cold with crackers and a cocktail at your next happy hour). Yuh-hum.

The chicken recipe is equally simple. Again, oil, onions (sliced in thin half-rings) and bay leaves go into the pot. You then add skinned chicken thighs and a steady rain of cumin seeds until the meat is speckled. Some thinned plain yogurt mixed with some cayenne, S&P and a chopped tomato makes for a golden-orange simmer sauce that's not really a tomato sauce, but is tangy and faintly coffee-like from the cumin and bay. Heavenly. Sorry that it looks like mucus, but you know my penchant for barfy-looking (but delicious) meals.

you didn't get my good side, did you?

Of course a nice pilaf is essential to sop up all the creamy sauce. Mr. Merchant obliges with his Savory Onion Rice. I had to make a couple of substitutions here but no harm done. For the long-grain rice I subbed in some marvelous white basmati that I'm falling down with because I only buy it in 10 pound reusable tote bags and I can never remember how much is left so I always overbuy. I also didn't have any black cardamon pods on hand (for shame) so I made do with the green ones, which smelled sweet and floral, almost powdery.

Into the pot went a goodly amount of butter (wonderful), a couple of very finely diced onions, and the just good enough cardamon pods. After a few minutes over low heat, I added the basmati, gave it a vigorous buttery stir, added the last of my thawed chicken stock (remind me to make more) and brought it to the boil for a short simmer. Since I had already washed the basmati in seven changes of cold water (until it ran clear - seven is invariably the right number. I don't know why) and soaked it for an additional 30 minutes, the cooking took only ten minutes. The long nutty grains of rice fluffed like a pillow, and the subtle funk of the onions gave the dish an almost vanilla-like roundness.

We had a little of the warm eggplant for apps, and then it was a showtime as good as any costume drama. It wasn't dinner & a movie - it was more like dinner as a movie. We had it all. Vlad hunted for his missing phone (a little intrigue), we talked about a pending liquor sales initiative slated for the Washington state fall ballot (some nasty politics), Vlad complimented me on the meal (a little romance), and while we ate we enjoyed a particularly pinkish sunset from our big dining room window (a beautiful setting). Now if only I could get that effing pinning done I'd have a fine costume for dinner tomorrow.

A New Dinner Jacket

2010-09-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

Unless I'm dragging myself sniffling and fluey to the kitchen to cook dinner for the Inhaler, there aren't many occasions in this house when I "dress for dinner." That's just fine with me - who needs the formality? There's a time and place for track pants, and at my table it's pretty much anytime. My only requirement is you wear a tad more than Adam and Eve did. If you're warm enough, I'm fine with it.

Still, there are times when food and clothes compete for my attention. Besides the days I'm dealing with Mount Laundry (sherpa wanted, inquire within), those events usually include Mrs. Hal and her stylish counterpart Ms. Bernie, my pastel green sewing machine that's much older than all you lot. She's better mannered than Mrs. H (aka Hal on Earth), and even sounds like she's purring when she runs. Gotta love that Swiss movement.

does this hat make me look fat?

Delegating a proper roast to Mrs. Hal so that I can tackle a sewing project is usually a risky undertaking. While Chef Maurice de Cochon hands me pins, I usually bounce between my project at the dining room table and Mrs. Hal, nervously waiting for the smoke alarm to announce a change of plans.

My fall sewing project, a duffle coat, requires a fair bit of concentration, so this time I chose something Mrs. H couldn't destroy without serious effort- pot roast. What a treat. Really, is there anything more suburban or domestic than the wafting Sunday afternoony scent of really, really fatty meat getting those nice crusty, caramely bits? Yuh-hum.

It's the original no-brainer production. You don't really need a recipe, do you? Meat, veg, stock, herbs, roasting pan and you're in business. Oh, you want details? Simple. Chop up a stalk of celery, a carrot or two (shredded carrots will do) and a medium onion. Sprinkle them in a roasting pan with whatever fragrant fresh herbs you have on hand. I had thyme and rosemary. Rub some salt and pepper into the meat. Plop the roast(s) into the pan, pour over a cup or so of your thawed homemade stock (seriously - you've gotta start making stock to save yourself from the icky sodium-laced canned crap) and a cup of a nice drinkable red - I poured a nice Washington Cabernet, very vin ordinaire, but a wonderful flavor boost for the meat.

Cover the pan tightly with foil and pop it in a slow oven (about 325F). It'll burble away happily for three hours. Now you can stroll through the house and announce, "Look everyone, I'm cooking!" You can go have a nap, watch a really long movie, prune all the hedges, go clean your guns, whatever. Or you can sew.

Easier said than done. Do you need a break from pulling your hair out trying to understand the cryptic German pattern cutting instructions? Me too. There are plenty of opportunities to take a break from the effing pinning and swing by the kitchen. Go ahead - pull out the pan and say hello to the roast every half hour. Or, if you're into tough love, ignore it altogether for the duration and keep effing pinning. When the three hours are up and the timer finally dings, toss in five or six peeled, chopped potatoes and let them ride along for another 45 minutes.

Ahh, meat. Roughly four hours later - Sunday roast. Meah-heah-heat! Earthy, meaty potatoes, too. Yup, you gotcher potatoes that taste like meat here. Life doesn't get better than this. A meal that cooks itself, is screamingly cheap and perfumes the house with cosy, domestic smells is a warm and friendly reminder to enjoy home, hearth and beef-scented German sewing patterns, if you can effing stand them. Don a nice scruffy pair of North American track pants and cover up the sewing machine - it's dinner time!

Kitchen Witchery

2010-09-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

It's a full eight weeks to Halloween, but with the cooler nights and murky drizzle, there's already something in the air. Everyone's scurrying for cover. Even the neighborhood cats are heading in early. Are they wanting to nab the good spot on the couch before their shows start? I doubt it. I think they're dodging the witches. You see, the autumn veg are popping up all over so I'm betting the witches are back.

In recent centuries, many vegetables have been associated with witches, werewolves or just plain evil, but the nightshade vegetables have gotten an especially bad rap. Which are they? They're the ones in the Solanacaea (So-lan-nuh-SEE-uh) family. They include the everyday tomato, potato, eggplant and pepper (the veg, not the spice) but also include tobacco, belladonna (a.k.a. deadly nightshade - note the "deadly") and the spooky screaming mandrake root, all of which which have starred in many a gruesome folk remedy, incantation or local myth.

Everyone's been spooked by the veggies in this group at some point, and I'm not just talking about their controversial connection to autoimmune disorders. In translation the tomato has been called the "wolf peach" in German. Many Euros (including the Italians who looked at artichokes for heaven's sake and thought, "Hmm. that looks appetizing,") freaked out and called the yummy, yummy eggplant, "the mad apple". The Russians even called potatoes "devil's apples". Some of the truly poisonous plants in the family might have deserved such criticism, but really, the T in BLT? The star of Moussaka? The sine qua non of french fries? Yikes.

Well, a dozen cats can't be entirely wrong, so I decided it was time to whip up a delish simmered tomato and pepper sauce and have a little pre-Halloween showdown with the spooks. In the spirit of brave rebellion, I used it to make another deeply disputed food - Chicken Parmagiana.

Really, what could be wrong with the beloved CP? Everything if you're a historian or purist. Chicken Parm, like pizza, is not an enduring Italian recipe, but is an American invention. Ooooh, horrors! So what? That doesn't make it any less legitimate - it just makes it more recent. Besides, who doesn't love it? It's a friendly quick-to-fix fall meal that fuels up an Inhaler for an early night's work and a Mrs. Inhaler for a late night's ax scrubbing.

Of course, it not being genuinely Italian, Chicken Parmagiana isn't mentioned in the first edition of Elizabeth David's stern treatise on Italian Food. She does, however, make a grudging connection between it and its great-grandfather, Costolette Milanese (Milanese Veal Cutlets) in later editions of her book. A cutlet's a cutlet, right?

The CIA's Pro Chef text clearly explains the best way to bread a cutlet - toss with flour, dip in egg wash, then roll in breadcrumbs. Got it?

From that building block the permutations are endless - you can toss some seasonings into the flour (I add salt and pepper here), or say, Tabasco sauce into the eggs, and can add whatever seasonings you like to the breadcrumbs (I added dried basil, chili flakes - of course - and my ground-up dried homegrown thyme). Yuh-hum. Here's the play by play:

STEP ONE: A floury coat dries off the chicken cutlet and readies it for the sticky stuff - the eggs. I always give the cutlet a couple of gentle thwaps over the bowl to beat off the excess. You don't want extra flour gumming up your eggs and making subsequent cutlets gluey.

STEP TWO: A light swish in the egg wash (beaten eggs with or without a little milk - I vote for "without") is all you need. Be sure to cover it completely or you'll have bare spots with no breadcrumbs in the end. I always hold the cutlet up and let it drain until the drips completely stop before proceeding. You don't want eggy lumps in your breadcrumbs, do you?

STEP THREE: A quick swish in the breadcrumbs and the cutlet is coated. I make sure that all nooks and crannies are covered so that the cutlets are nice and dry on the outside and won't stick to the sheet pan.

A greased pan and a hot oven (about 425F is good) and you're off to the races. This race is a sprint, though -you'd better have that sauce ready!

The sauce got an afternoon-long headstart. A dozen chopped tomatoes (with skins, seeds, the lot) and six red peppers (stemmed, seeded and chopped) made the witches proud and burbled away all potion-like with some olive oil, diced garlic, finely chopped onions, red wine, a small handful of grated carrots (now that's old-school Italian) and some fresh basil. It was neon lava by the time Mrs. Hal met the chicken.

And speaking of which, she was gentle with it. After about 10 minutes at an unusually consistent 425F, I flipped the cutlets and dressed them with the sauce and coarsely grated Parmagiana and Mozzarella. They got a couple more minutes in Mrs. Hal to heat the sauce and melt the cheese. The Inhaler household was in business.

With some hot buttered noodles (werewolf lassos) it was a nice light meal to keep Vlad clear-headed on the battlefield or to fire him up to nab his favorite spot on the couch before his shows came on. I didn't see which he did - I was too busy cleaning the axes.

Cool School Fuel

2010-08-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

Well, that's it for summer, eh? September flutters in. Can you feel it? Here come cooler evenings, shorter days and those big yellow buses to cart the kidlets back to school. It feels more like a new year than New Year's. Half of the fun, of course, is the prep. Even now, all it takes is a crisp September morning to make me want to buy crayons, notebooks and ill-fitting socks.

For a month always so geared to the future September always takes me back. Hoo-wee - just the sight of those buses. In my grade school you were a walker or a buser. Because we lived a mere half mile from our school and it was the simple, dreamy 70s when all towns were safe, creeps didn't stalk kids from vans and families did everything together, my sister and I were walkers. Today we'd be called "transportation disadvantaged" or even "SUV deprived" and would be rolling our eyes and getting on our cellphones to call the car service, but back in the 70s kids got around on foot. Nobody's folks drove them to school. You either walked to school or to a school bus stop - period. It never occurred to us to complain. We accepted our half- mile trudge to school in the morning, then the same back home for lunch, then the same back out to school by 1 o'clock, then the same back home at the end of the day. A daily two mile walk and recess. No wonder we were always hungry.

I knew Vlad's skill as an Inhaler seemed awfully familiar. It never felt like we ate at the speed of fast food, but I realize now in doing the math that my sister and I had barely twenty minutes to inhale lunch at home. Somehow, though, it never felt rushed. I think it had a lot to do with the happy, happy cartoons we watched while we ate. Only one channel of the nine available offered kids' programming over the lunch hour. The Flintstones, Gilligan's Island, whatever was on was a pleasant respite from the 3-times tables.

The lunches themselves were easily half of the fun. It was back in the Dark Ages before we all feared sodium, cholesterol and fat. If Wheaties cereal was the breakfast of champions, anything canned was the lunch. For me, the best lunch was a bubbling bowl of Alphaghetti and four pieces of dripping, buttery toasted Wonder bread. The runner-up was a bowl of steaming Campbell's chicken noodle soup and a whole sleeve of saltines (but I could never figure out why I was so thirsty....). For all our excesses, we didn't have dessert or sodas or any of the lily-gilding additions in kids' lunches today. This was, after all, before the advent of the juice box or precut baby carrots. Heck, it was even before Walkman radios or VCRs (what are those, eh?). Primitive times.

Another thing we didn't have was mac & cheese. Ever. My childhood passed utterly KD-less. I don't mean to say it didn't exist - it did of course. It just didn't land in Mum's shopping cart. I don't remember noticing at the time and anyway today I see the logic. Although it was a screamin' deal, there was insufficient time for us to whip it up at lunch, and in any case my sister was allergic to it (really, aren't we all? That neon orange stuff makes me feel stuffed up and spacey now. I think my sister was on to something).

True scratch mac & cheese would of course have been celestial, but with all that stirring I would have missed seeing Gilligan becoming a radio thanks to his loose dental fillings. And why weep for the past anyway when there's lunch to be made today? One of the joys of being a grownup (and of being enough of a kid inside to call myself a "grownup" instead of an "AD-dult") is to make what the heck I want for lunch. Time to get on that yellow bus and give those tired dawgies a rest - it's M&C time.

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart...

To make the quintessential North American kids' hot lunch you need the quintessential North American recipe. Where else to look but in the Rombauer bible? Every edition from the first in 1931 to the most recent in 2006 offers two mac recipes - Boiled Macaroni with Cheese and Baked Macaroni. I'm no fan of the controversial 1997 edition, but its debut of Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese has proven itself in my kitchen (and in the Rombauer Becker family, it would appear, since they let it stay put in the 2006 printing). Why's the recipe so special? One word - eggs.....

Yikes!! Eggs!! Did I say eggs? In this day and age? What about the massive American egg recall? I know, I know, it's not 1970 anymore - food is dangerous! Rubbish. There are a few reassuring things you should know, courtesy of the Washington State Food & Beverage Worker's Manual. First, if you heat eggs in a recipe to 145 degrees F for at least 15 seconds (but go crazy just for me and do it for a whole minute, won't you?) you'll kill the nasties but keep the sauce cool enough to stay creamy and prevent curdling. Further, if you keep the egg dish hot at serving time, cool it through the Danger Zone (40F- 140F) quickly and refrigerate leftovers immediately, your risk of illness is minimal. Further, if you always reheat leftovers quickly, you'll continue to be fine. Further, if you're between the ages of 5 and 65, or not preggers or already ill, you aren't as vulnerable to those nasties as some. But you do what's right for you. Like everything else, it's a personal choice. Me, I love egg-thickened sauces and happily take the necessary care to pig out safely.

This modern Joy Mac is a good one and comes with everything you see here (some assembly required). It has everything you'd expect - macaroni noodles, cheese (duh), a smidge of mustard (too much and it dominates, too little and the pasta's bland so it's best to add to taste), two beaten eggs (oooh, horrors!), oil instead of butter (I'm not on a suicide mission, after all), equal parts milk and full-fat plain yogurt (my personal substitution for a can of evaporated milk - yeccch), chili flakes (optional at your house, required at mine) and a smidge of salt and pepper.

It's a truly simple recipe. Boil the pasta until al dente, then drain it, return it to the pot and throw all the ingredients in to join it. Over very low heat, stir constantly risotto-style until the cheese melts and the sauce thickens noticeably. It's about a ten-minute stir-o-rama, so you can almost count that as a bit of exercise before the feast.

A sprinkle of breadcrumbs is the just the beginning. Kids after my own heart would love a can of diced tomatoes and chilis stirred in. They might also groove to fresh crabmeat (hey, if they like tuna, why not?). You can even clean out the fridge and toss in leftover diced roast chicken, crumbled cauliflower (if you choose a funky cheese they may never know they're eating vegetables), or even leftover bacon (but who ever has leftover bacon?). It's a bowl fulla smiles, I promise you.

So that's it. It's cheap, festive and incredibly filling. It's not low-fat but that's OK - you can always go all retro on us and walk somewhere afterwards, even if it's a school night. Just be sure to get inside before the street lights come on or I'm telling.

Kitchen Vacation - Pakistan

2010-08-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

Think about the worst day you've had recently. Did you get a speeding ticket? Lose your keys? Argue with a coworker? Yeah, that sucks, but aren't you lucky? You are, you know. Your worst day is nowhere near as ugly as some folks' worst days.

Imagine for a moment that a fifth of your country is underwater. Imagine that you and 20 million of your neighbors are suddenly homeless, injured, hungry and sick. Imagine that your country's been struggling with this for a month. Sounds miserable, doesn't it? Well, welcome to Pakistan. Now if you're lucky, go home.

While you're here, though, let me tell you - Pakistan's been around forever and has been through a lot. Any land this old is going to have some scars. On the bright side, though, it's also going to have evidence of a lot of family dinners. There's proof that the first man who walked upright had some seriously good meals here. Later Stone Age guys really got into gardening here, too. Fast forward to the late 1940s, when India and Pakistan both said toodle-loo to Mother England (see the incredible film Gandhi to learn a smidge about it) and the locals were still cooking great meals. On their way out, smart Brits took home tea and spice souvenirs to wake up their mild home cooking. They're still at it. All those British takeout shops can't be wrong.

That's good, because eating Pakistani food elsewhere will have to do for now. Even under better circumstances, Pakistan's had its problems. It's a turbulent place that's probably not on the top of your vacation list. But a Kitchen Vacation? Absolutely. Pack your bags and your life jacket - we're going to Lahore.

Pakistani cookbooks don't exactly abound. This little book by A.Nisa Bhatti of Lahore is the only one in my collection. I'm glad to have the genuine article, although it looks like I could have faked it with an Indian book. The similarities to Indian cooking are obvious, as Pakistan is both India's cousin and neighbor, Partition notwithstanding.

This sweet little book is a beginning home cook's guide to the ways of Pakistani kitchen life in 1964. In the spirit of The Joy of Cooking, it has an introduction that briefs the novice in the correct layout of the kitchen ("Modern kitchens are also equipped with a radio set as an amusement for the housewife..."), the safe use of the pressure cooker ("some foods tend to froth and sputter....") and oil stove ("If constant care is taken, the food will always be tasty and sweet...."). It also expounds on the discerning selection of perishables ("If meat is clammy, it is not fresh...") and has a wonderful "English-to-Local Name" glossary of veg, fruit and spices, which I'm tickled to say frequently contradicts many of the recipe ingredient lists. I'm fine with that. Cooking should be a lively sport.

As should feeding Vlad be. Still not sick of chicken, I found him a couple of wonderful if familiar recipes for Pakistani Chicken Night - Stewed Chicken (alas, no "Local Name" given) and Moong Khichri (that's more like it) a mung bean and rice pudding a bit like risotto.

Beans take longer than birds to cook, so the mung beans were up first. While they soaked I read a little bit about Khichri, or Kedgeree as the English spelled it during The Raj. The origin of this porridge-like savory pudding is as muddy as its ingredients, but no one argues that it isn't ancient.

A cool soak for an hour readied the beans for the pot. The basmati rice soaked alongside them for a shorter time.

Then a quick sizzle of butter with a few cloves, whole cardamon pods and cumin seeds and the rice and beans met up for a good burble in a saucepan for 45 minutes.

In the home stretch, the beans and rice soaked up the water and the mixture became more like risotto. It was time to stir constantly and add water as needed until the beans were soft and the rice was tender. Yuh-hum.

Thank heavens for the chicken dish. Busying myself with it kept me from inhaling the whole pot of Khichri. Stop me if you've heard this one. The ingredients were: a cut-up chicken, diced potatoes, chopped tomatoes, onions, butter, and black pepper, cardamon and chili flakes. Yup - it's a small world kitchen after all (at least at my house).

Unlike modern recipes with many prep steps, this recipe was a "dump meal" with one instruction - to put all of the ingredients in a roasting pan, tightly cover it and bake for 45 minutes. To calm my craving to pre-brown the chicken or at least to saute the onions, I put the recipe in the context of its time (Betty Crocker, how are ya?) and did what I was told. My only deviation was to remove the foil cover for the last 10 minutes to brown the bird and perfume the kitchen.

From the heavenly spicy and oniony smells of the chicken to the spicy toasty flavor of the khichri, our kitchen practically oozed comfort. How much we wish we could comfort the suffering Pakistanis. I'm sure not going to complain about losing my keys.

Having Your Cake and Heating it Too

2010-08-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

Our beleaguered weatherman is finally off the hook. After a four day heatwave, we're now floating on a comfortable 71 Fahrenheit. I don't really miss the sizzly blast yet; in fact I actually wish the cool breeze had fluttered in sooner. Why? Because baking a cake yesterday morning in a 91 degree kitchen was no picnic. Why didn't I wait to bake the cake today, you say? You're right, that woulda been great, but yesterday was the birthday of one of my dearest friends. She invited us over for a pizza dinner (yay!) and said that maybe next weekend we could get around to having a cake.

Huh? Nuthin' doin'. Birthday cake, candles, wishes, the whole package - I think it's an essential part of the celebration. I'm all for the idea that a party can be a moveable feast (Birthday, Observed), but I think the best surprises happen on The Day.

My friend's favorite cake flavor is coconut, so I decided to surprise her with a Puerto Rican Coconut Cake. The inimitable Dolores Casella obliged with a terrific recipe that contains an astonishing number of leaveners -creamed butter and sugar and added baking powder and stiffy whipped egg whites. Wow. They should make lifejackets from this stuff.

For all the dance steps, though, it was pretty straightforward:

Cake flour (or 2 Tbsp cornstarch added to a 7/8 cup of all-purpose flour) sifted with baking powder and salt and set aside.
Butter creamed gradually with most of the sugar and set aside.
Milk, coconut and vanilla extracts stirred together and set aside.
Egg whites stiffly whipped with the last of the sugar and set aside.
The butter mixture (#2) then gently blended with the four evenly divided portions of the flour mixture (#1) alternating with three even portions of the milk mixture (#3).

6. Then the fun part - the resulting batter from Step #5 folded into the egg white mixture from Step #4.

7. Batter then scraped into three greased and parchment-lined 9" round pans (I couldn't find the 8"s) and baked for a quick 20 minutes at 350F.

Here you see them cooled (although how could I tell in 91 degrees?) and ready for frosting. I've made you look at enough beige so I won't bore you with the frosting-making pics. Suffice it to say that I creamed together a half-pound of cream cheese and a quarter pound of butter. I added a splash of vanilla and coconut extracts, a tablespoon or two of milk and a couple of cups of powdered sugar. To gild the lily and add crunch I added a half pound of unsweetened coconut flakes.

And that wasn't even the fun part. Then I put a decorative cardboard cake circle on my cake decorating wheel, and swiped a dollop of frosting onto the middle of the card to glue the bottom cake layer to it. Wheee!

Then down to business. To prep each cake layer I carefully peeled off the parchment sheets and rubbed lightly around the edge of each layer with the heel of my hand. This removed the stray crumbs - the old frosting stress-saver trick. Then, as I was taught, I spread the frosting only in a forward motion to prevent crumb migration. I applied extra to the top of the cake and massaged it over the edges, then with the spatula tip, smoothed the sides as I rotated the stand.

A little toasted and cooled coconut (which I sprinkled on a sheet pan and toasted at 325 for 6-8 minutes and removed immediately when some of it browned) made a pretty hat for the top.

Then - quick!- into the fridge for the afternoon to get ready for its closeup.

It was a terrific evening. The birthday girl loved her cake. Success! I was pleased too. It was moist, creamy and crunchy. The texture was exceptional - fluffy with a tender crumb. That sold me. I'm going to watch for more multi-leavened cake recipes (if you enjoy dirtying lots of mixing bowls, you should too. I heartily recommend starting with a copy of A World of Baking).

The heat even receded enough to have dessert out on the deck. The fresh breeze was welcome after the hot afternoon, but I wasn't complaining. Birthdays, observed or actual, are the best reason to turn your whole kitchen into an oven.

Sage Advice

2010-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Seattle's wild summer rollercoaster continues on now even though our guests already made a run for it. It's been an odd few days. One day we're all shivering, scarfing steaming chili and huddling by the fire, the next we're all listlessly munching snow peas and hiding in the basement from the heat.

but it's a dry heat...........

As you can see, chili was not in the cards this last weekend. Watching our garden grow (or get eaten by our resident coffee-colored wabbit) sure was though, from a coolish basement window, anyway.

it's not easy not being green.......

Despite the heat, my dreadful lack of agricultural skill, and furry little Microchip's appetite for thyme (who knew?), the yard is booming. I know why. The secret is to choose plants that thrive on neglect, and about that let's just say I'm a motivated expert. Want to become one too? Great! You too can grow edible plants, be they herbs, veg or flowers. There are lots of easy ones. Check with your local garden center for advice that suits your region and under the plant listings in reference books look for the notation, "drought-hardy", which is code for "even Clodagh can grow these"! It's worth the modest gamble. The payoff is huge, and the savings are shocking. My local market charges $4 for a blister pack of rosemary the size of the young plant in the "before" picture below. After a good growing year I could harvest maybe 20 times that from the growler it becomes.

But then what? For the devoted sloth, even harvesting is no big deal. It gets you away from the TV for maybe as much as an hour in the fall. You shaker jar fans will love using your own dried herbs through the winter and you needn't stop there. Check out this comprehensive PDF from Cooperative Extension in Illinois. It's chock full of harvesting ideas. Besides the classic "freeze or dry" methods, the authors suggest making herb butters, vinegars, and potpourri. They also offer a list of instructions by specific herb. Easy, eh?

For little money or effort, I really scored in my yard (although maybe not as much as Microchip did - he loves the salad bar). Here's my late summer garden update:

EXHIBIT A: TEA PLANT (Camellia sinensis)

The before picture, spring 2010

The after picture, August 2010

That may look pretty modest, but these little guys are slow out of the gate. It holds great promise for tea next summer.

The rosemary is a more dramatic example. It started off small and innocent, but now, yoikes! I'm considering a fence around it to keep my neighbors safe.

EXHIBIT B: ROSEMARY "GORIZIA" (Rosemarinus officinalis "Gorizia")

On planting day in May 2009

Crapdoodles - stand back, he bites! Here he is today, a mere 15 months later. I kid you not, I've watered him only four times since he hit the ground.

The chocolate mint has fared remarkably well too. It grows so quickly that I corralled it in a planter this spring. Vlad had taught it his marauding ways, which made me fear for the hapless juniper nearby.

EXHIBIT C: CHOCOLATE MINT (Mentha x piperita)

At planting, May 2009

Brace yourself! August 2010

Finally, the lavender and lime thyme have also fared incredibly well.

EXHIBIT D:

HIDCOTE ENGLISH LAVENDER (Lavandula angustifolia "Hidcote"),

MUNSTEAD ENGLISH LAVENDER (Lavandula angustifolia "Munstead"),

& LIME THYME (Thymus vulgaris)

At planting, spring 2009

Proving once and for all that these are the best "Ignore me, I'm fine" plants, photographed today:

Have I convinced you? Whether you put your herbs in a container in a window or straight into the ground, I promise you'll have a blast watching them do their thing. It's also a simple way to give your neighbors a giggle (what's she doing in the yard???) and to dazzle them when you casually hand them a grocery bag of clippings in the fall and lazily say, "I have too much. Can you use these?" Furry Microchips notwithstanding, you can turn your yard into a booming plantation. Don't let being a couch potato stop you! For maybe a couple hours' work a season, you'll pump up the flavor in your kitchen all year. Just plant enough for the wabbits too, eh?

Stove Jockey Unplugged

2010-08-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

Seasons are a funny thing in the virtual world. It's pretty quiet here in cyberspace, but that's because in the Northern hemisphere y'all are so busy. I've gotten the nicest mail from many of you Northerners describing vacations, family reunions, picnics and gardening projects. And thank heavens, few of you have Wi-Fi in the backyard. Good. Put that dang phone thing down and get out there while it's glorious (and the rest of you, the Southerners, enjoy your winter and stick around - I'll be cooking my way to you shortly).

Vlad and I will be out in the sunshine for the next little while too. We have more houseguests coming soon to enjoy the end of the mild and cool Seattle summer. We'll put that whack of rosemary to work as swordfish skewers and will try to put a dent in the growling (not a typo) chocolate mint bush by making many Mojitos. Ahh, summer. It goes so quickly.

Happy cooking, gardening, camping, mountain biking, birdwatching, whatever. We'll raise a Mojito and toast to your health! Back in a flash!

Kitchen Vacation - Russia & Georgia

2010-08-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

OK, I know...enough with the Ray Charles jokes. But seriously, Georgia On My Mind is just too easy. The only catch - the great Mr. Charles was thinking of the land of peaches, not the former Soviet republic. The food is good in the former (if you go be sure to order the turnip greens at any endearingly cheesy Cracker Barrel up or down the Interstate 75), but simply outstanding in the latter. I've got two great cooks who agree with me - Anne Volokh and Darra Goldstein.

To thank them it seemed only fair that I make a recipe from each book. In the Volokh book, the Potato Salad (Taganrogskii Kartofelnyi Salat) caught my eye, endorsed as it was by Russian uber-playwright Anton Chekhov. It was duly simple, elegant and poetic- boiled, cooled and sliced potatoes, gently tossed with scallions, black olives, parsley, golden olive oil, tarragon vinegar, sugar, and salt and pepper. I made it a few hours ahead so that the flavors would deepen. It was tangy and delicious, a summery counterpoint to the Georgian chicken.

Chicken again? I like to think that I choose diverse enough recipes that Vlad doesn't notice when we've had, say, chicken a few nights running. This one only added to the myth. There was not one peep from the Inhaler, not even right after having had the Moroccan chicken tagine. Not only did he not sigh heavily, but he made steady yum sounds as he tucked in. He also got a kick out of the recipe's back story.

Me too. It seems that once upon a time in Georgia, girls of "marriagiable age" were given the ingredients, told to make Chicken Chakhokhbili ("CHECK-oh-billy", sorta), properly known as Chakhokhbili Iz Kur, and then were evaluated on the results. The girl's skill in cutting the bird into 17 exact and specific serving pieces was a big part of the "Can I please start dating now?" test. Apparently I would have flunked wholesale, as I had only half a chicken in the freezer from my last cleaver rampage. How could I cut it into 8 1/2 pieces? And isn't a half a piece still a piece? So many questions. Sometimes there's a downside to being a philosopher's daughter. However, sometimes there's an upside to being a middle-aged wife. The race has been run, as it were.

But away from the mirror - those crows feet aren't going anywhere. Better just to get cooking, eh? A dry rub of fresh garden thyme ground into salt and pepper flavored the bird as I chopped the mise.

It's a pity the young girls didn't get points for other items chopped - there was quite a bit to do. I chopped three onions, four cloves of garlic, four tomatoes, a huge handful of parsley and a lemon. I also dug out some bay leaves and a little white wine.

After browning the bird in oil, I added the veg, covered the pan and bunged it in a medium oven (if Mrs. Hal can ever be considered a medium anything) to bake for an hour.

When the timer dinged, I removed the lid and gave the chicken a few minutes of browning time. Voila. Yum.

Some lily gilding beans and the tangy potatoes were an excellent match for the lemony, funky chicken. All I needed was a side of I-75 turnip greens and the world would have been perfect, a new night cream notwithstanding. But why cover up the laugh lines when there's so much fun left to be had? Feeding Vlad's always good for a laugh, and when you've got Chekhov and Dating Test Chicken you've got some fine material.

Kitchen Vacation - Morocco

2010-08-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

You know what I'm going to say, right? Yup, Morocco's an ancient place. Seriously, though, it is! It's literally been open for business for at least a millennium. As I've said before, all that human movement makes for vibrant cuisine. So does the creative, smoldering mind of an artist, especially one who shone in the 70s. Put the two together and you've got a magic carpet ride to the dinner table that you won't soon forget.

Just as the 70s were wild and woolly, so is this book, the only Moroccan cookbook in print in the US at the time: Alchemist's Cookbook: Moroccan Scientific Cuisine by Ahmed Yacoubi. Lavish, enthusiastic reviews on the back cover by William Burroughs (you can hear his creaky, cranky voice), Allen Ginsberg (uncharacteristically succinct) and novelist Paul Bowles (want truly award-winning nightmares? Read The Sheltering Sky...) should give you an idea about what's coming. Yup - pot, and lots of it, but tucked in the back as a giggly afterthought in the baking section (Gertrude Stein, eat your heart out).

Now, that's not my bag, baby, and I was really here anyway just for the chicken. One of Mr. Yacoubi's chicken recipes really rocks. Except for one teensy, weensy detail....

Well, my goodness. You know by now that I frequently take liberties with recipes depending on what time or ingredients I have on hand. While I might indeed have had some blood on hand (or in hand), I'm still mighty squeamish. Besides that, even Inhalers don't really want to mix business with pleasure.

So in the "let's nod and say we did" department, I took the chance that I'd bear the wrath of the ghosts of Yacoubi, Bowles, Ginsberg and Burroughs and skipped right past the icky part.

To busy myself with thoughts other than those of sticking myself with a pin, I made up a batch of Ras-al-Hanout, the Moroccan spice blend that makes Chicken Tagine sing. Mr. Yacoubi's recipe for the mix had too much 1970 in it (gumbo file? really?) so I looked to fellow world citizen Marcus Samuelsson for a more classic formula.

Into a little mason jar I put ground cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, freshly ground nutmeg, cardamom and cloves. It never seems like much, but wow, what flavor.

And then back to Mr. Yacoubi's magical mystery stew:

As the oil in the saucepan heated with the Ras-al-Hanout, it subtly shifted the spice blend like sand in the desert. How apt. How beautiful. How fragrant!

Then to work - browning the chicken pieces (I used boneless thighs), and adding onions, raisins, almonds, diced apples, honey, saffron and lots of parsley.

The steam muddies it here, but it was rich, vibrant, colorful and heavenly smelling - chickeny, oniony, cinnamony and subtlely curry-like. Of course, for authenticity I should have made it in a tagine, that funny elf-hat clay pot common in North Africa, but we've already established that here authenticity is optional. Besides, I doubt that Mr. Yacoubi would object - he was clearly a live and let live kind of guy. How else could he be with recipes like Soup To Cure Jealousy, Leftovers Delicious, How To Be Gentle To Your Brains (he could have opened with that one), Heart Food, If You're 64, Kingfish Dish of a Wish and Pep-Up Drink? I think he would have been a fascinating dinner guest.

And so would Marcus Samuelsson be. I bet he's got some good stories. He was born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden and now lives in the US. That makes us neck and neck for passports. His recipe for Mango Couscous (made with Washington's finest Pence Peaches instead because 'tis the season) was a flavorful match to the chicken.

Oh, yum. Steamed couscous tossed with olive oil, garlic, diced peaches, chili flakes, raisins, a diced tomato, lime juice, cilantro and parsley - a true summer fridge cleanout! It was so colorful, fruity, chili-hot and sweet - a perfect match.

As Kitchen Vacations go, it was a great trip. No virtual airports, lost luggage, or delayed flights, just a virtual magic carpet -wheeeeeee!- and some delicious artsy chicken. Just one question, though - which came first - the chicken or the Fez?

Stove Jockey Stays Home

2010-08-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

On his deathbed, Kit Carson, the famous Southwestern American frontiersman, is alleged to have said, "Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili." Now, Vlad and I are in perfectly good health, but a couple of days ago we both felt strongly Carsonesque about the official state food of Texas.

As you know, we've been roaming the virtual world for weeks. Stopping home to rest up before our Kitchen Vacations to Morocco and Georgia (yup, the other one) and "eatin' local" really appealed. Here local means American. And what's more American than chili and cornbread?

To bring it home, as it were, I chose recipes from the most unapologetically suburban American books:

It doesn't get better than this. Lila Perl, noted children's author (she wrote this book for 1970s grownups), provided the best chili recipe I've made in a long time. Betty Crocker was no slouch in the cornbread department, either. For a chilly Seattle summer day (yes, we're back to that), it was just the thing - a cosy bowl of warmth, comfort and hotter-than-hell chilis.

You don't really need the play-by-play here, do you? It's a no-brainer one-pot simmer. In order of appearance here's whatcha need for a "serves 6 or 2 if Vlad's invited" meal: a dash of olive oil, a couple of diced cloves of garlic, two medium roughly chopped onions, a couple of generous Tablespoons of chili powder (I love the Pedro Lopez brand that a pal brings me regularly from Topeka, Kansas), three diced fresh chilis (wear gloves!), four diced fresh tomatoes, one can each of drained low-sodium black and cannellini beans, and a pound of ground beef, all stirred in a large saucepan and allowed to simmer for an hour, until the tomatoes practically disappear and the Sparky Index returns to normal.....huh? Oh, right - I should explain. Our neighbor's black cat Sparky frequently sits under our kitchen deck to ambush the sparrows (grrrr), but always squints, snorts and vamooses at the first whiff of jalapenos wafting from our window. When the tear gas subsides he slithers back to his serial killer post. Eeeesh. I bought the birds a little time, at least.

While the cat repellent simmered, I made the cornbread. I followed Betty's recipe to the letter except for one thing - this is not 1969 and we know now that shortening'll kill ya. I substituted 4 Tbsp of olive oil for the 1/4 cup of shortening. It worked like a charm (which is a cliche, yes, but so is the union of chili and cornbread. What of it? Cliches rock!).

The bread's all very well, but it's the dipping it in the chili that makes it really something - that nutty, toasty crunchy corn with the creamy flaming hot moist beef and earthy beans. Yuh-hum. Some fresh cilantro and grated cheese and you've got something worth adding to your Living Will.

While we're on the subject of the most final of wishes, I conclude by wishing you bon appetit. You likely do have time for one more bowl of chili - and isn't that terrific? Kit Carson would approve.

Kitchen Vacation - Armenia

2010-07-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

Gold stars if you know where Armenia is.........ahhhh, I love the sound of crickets.

You got nuthin'? Lemme help. You can find it here wedged under Georgia (not the one on your mind - the other one) and between Turkey and Iran on the left and Azerbaijan on the right. Remember talking about Asia Minor in middle school geography? That's it. Within Asia Minor, Armenia is part of the Caucasus region, a group of countries fraught with political turmoil on and off - but mostly on - for thousands of years. Armenia's been invaded, conquered, settled, unsettled and resettled over and over, just like many of its neighbors. It's still going on today.

Turbulent as it is, the Caucasus region is something of a ideological dividing line between Russia and adjacent Asian countries. Of course, human nature being what it is, lines on the ground don't entirely define people's culture, history or native cuisine. Armenia may not be the safest place on earth, but it's a fascinating hybrid of cuisine and customs. Not surprisingly, the locals take that with them wherever they go. As a "for instance", I dare you to look at this list of Armenian restaurants in Los Angeles and not find one that also serves Greek or "Middle Eastern" or "Asian" (boy, that's broad) entrees. Armenia pretty much defines "melting pot".

Meanwhile, back in Asia Minor, resident Armenians are growing citrus fruits and tea (my kinda people). The locals eat lots of what we think of as Middle Eastern foods - kebabs, Kalamata olives, baklava, and such, but they also like the Russian beet soup borscht, and a stuffed meat roll much like the bready Russian pirozhki.

So did I pick Armenia as our next Kitchen Vacation because I get misty-eyed about us all holding hands around the big blue marble? Nope - I just had too much leftover rice. Remember the grape leaf stuffing I made last week? I froze a big bag of leftover filling and cast about to find a good use for it. I decided today that it would nicely suit the cultural fusion of Armenian Koftas and a green bean salad, both from The Cuisine of Armenia by Sonia Uvezian. Yes, I know - fried ground beef patties are deeply unoriginal, and I've thrown at least a couple of green bean and tomato pics at you already this summer, but these are as much a pleasure for your eyes as they were for our palates. True to his name, Vlad inhaled this meal with the satisfied grunts he usually reserves for swinging an ax in battle. Not surprisingly, he has a thing for meatballs.

There's something very comforting in knowing that almost every cuisine has a meatball. Koftas are made the world over. The Armenians make Chamanov (Kimionov) Keufteh, or Cumin Fingers. Do you see the Russian influence in the name? Everything about these screams Middle East, though - ground lamb, parsley and cumin are the stars of the show.

It's a simple recipe, really - diced onions and parsley, fresh breadcrumbs, salt and pepper and a little optional curry powder (which the author suggests in a footnote). Tossed with the meat, then folded gently together with the beaten egg, these look and behave just like the burgers we inhale at this house.

However, unlike our huge burgers and kotlety, Russia's teeny meatloaves, these are shaped into small ovals - "fingers", the author calls them. Ms. Uvezian is very specific. She says we must: "Form into fingers 2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide..." So I did.

I shallow-fried these to reduce the fat a tad, even though the recipe said to deep-fry. Creative license may save our lives, eh?

As they cooked I reheated the rice and prepared the Green Beans (Tzitayoughov Ganach Lupia). I'm sure that by now you can imagine the veg mise, so I won't subject you to any prep pics. Suffice it to say that I chopped green beans, a seeded tomato, a couple of cloves of garlic and a small sweet onion and tossed the lot together for a quick saute and covered simmer. Ms. Uvezian wanted me to cook the lot for about 40 minutes, but the beans were so fresh, green and vibrant that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

For a cool evening in Seattle Minor it was just the thing - we had half of the world on a plate. It was a nice fusion dinner - a little basmati rice pilaf (with Indian rice and Turkish flair), little meat "fingers" (with Indian curry and Middle Eastern and Russian flair) and a universal green bean recipe that would be equally welcome in Armenia, India or at a Church potluck in Lincoln, Nebraska. You know where that is, right? I find geography lessons are so much easier over a plate of meatballs.

Kitchen Vacation: A Paean to the Aegean

2010-07-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

Seattle and I are suddenly having a terrific summer. It's warm, dry and sunny - we'll take it! These are the halcyon days of which we dream all the damp, chilly year.

Warm is good, yes, but it can even get a tad hot here. Yesterday flickered into the 90s for a time, but with no humidity it felt gloriously like the heat that touches your face when you put a cake in the oven - warm, dry and pleasant. It was the perfect day for a patio potluck with girlfriends - no Vlads allowed.

It being so warm, I chose my offerings from the sunny Aegean with apps from Greece and Turkey, chosen in the hope that if they can play nicely at our table they can see their way to get along about Cyprus. Hey, breaking bread can start - or end - revolutions, and even Pollyanna has to eat.

But first, Pollyanna has to cook:

Wait, what's Madhur Jaffrey doing here? Two things - her sunny personality would melt any Mediterranean politician's heart, and her technique for cooking basmati rice has no peer. When you want a sweet, nutty rice for stuffed grape leaves, you could do worse than to cheat a bit and add some fluffy basmati.

From the wonderful The Famous Turkish Cookery by Minyatur Yayinlari comes a recipe for the nicest stuffed grape leaves (Etli Yaprak Dolmasi) I've ever had. Ms. Yayinlari has us put in rice, finely chopped onions, pine nuts (I was out - sunflower seeds sufficed), raisins, and mint. My garden-grown chocolate mint might have seemed a bit odd in the mixture, but the subtle cocoa notes nicely rounded out the lot.

As I set up my mise en place, two things surprised me about this brand of grape leaves. First, the humongous leaf roll cigar was much harder to disentangle than others I've used. These leaves were thinner and terribly fragile (these are not the leaves with which to start your rolling career - stick with spring rolls for starters and work up to these). Second, in addition to the usual mild vinegar and water solution in the jar, there was a colossal amount of added salt. No variety I've ever bought before was salted, so it didn't occur to me to check the label. I ended up rinsing every paper-thin leaf before filling, but they still noticeably salty after baking. Good thing I made the filling pretty mild. The rolls were still quite pleasant and palatable, but they sure drove us down into our Champagne flutes from thirst.

But that was later. First I had to make the dang things. The assembly process is, as you can imagine, much like spring rolls. These might even be a tad trickier because of the shape of the lobes and the deep peninsulas between them.

STEP ONE: You know the drill, right? Start by putting a couple of teaspoons of filling in the middle of the leaf.

STEP TWO: Fold the bottom left lobe up and over the filling.

STEP THREE: Fold the bottom right lobe up and over the bottom left lobe.

STEP FOUR: Fold the left and right middle lobes over the bottom lobes, tucking tightly as you wrap.

STEP FIVE: Fold the left and right sides of the leaf top over each other, creating a smooth point at the very top.

STEP SIX: Pressing firmly, roll the bundle away from you, towards the top of the leaf.

STEP SEVEN: The completed roll should be be snug. The top of the leaf (the "seam") should be underneath it to prevent it from unrolling.

STEP EIGHT: Snugly pack the completed rolls together, seam side down, in a baking dish. Leaves being what they are, the rolls will vary greatly in length and circumference. Don't be daunted - just wedge them in tightly together and keep going until you run out of leaves.

STEP NINE: Add 1/2- 3/4 cup of water, cover the pan tightly with foil and bake in a well-behaved 350F oven for 45-60 minutes or until the water has been absorbed by the rolls. Remove them from the oven and cool them for an hour.

STEP TEN: Tightly wrap the roll dish in plastic and refrigerate until serving. It is ideal to make these a day before serving so they have plenty of time to chill. Making the filling, rolling, baking, cooling and refrigerating these babies take a few leisurely hours, so plan ahead.

It's not customary to serve these with a dip, but I did anyway. It was just the perfect day for Theonie Mark's Yogurt Dip, which I'd recently discovered on our Greek Kitchen Vacation.

A small ladle and wee ramekins for each diner made a nice accent on our apps plates and let me discreetly scarf down a couple of bowls of this garlicky yogurt pudding. Delish.

And what could be simpler to complete the trifecta than an eggplant dip based on Theonie Mark's Melintzanosalata? Our luminous lady directed me to bake eggplant wedges with diced onions and lots of olive oil, and then to cool it and serve. She stopped there; I kept going. I diced two eggplants into 1" cubes, tossed them with the other ingredients, baked and cooled them, but then pureed the lot to make a fluffy, ice cold grassy-tasting spread that was terrific with little pita wedges and Champagne.

Hot weather calls for cold and light food that helps you save room for all that Champagne and Riesling, don't you think?

I resisted the urge to break into "It's a Small World After All," but the feeling was there. Sunshine, good food, good friends and a little culinary detente. Pollyanna rules!

Mi Casa es Su Casa

2010-07-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Hoooo-weee, what a busy week. Weeding (grrrr), cleaning, cooking, baking, dusting.....all for a good cause. Vlad and I are expecting one of my dear girlfriends to visit and attend a birthday par-tay with us at a friend's, and then we'll host beloved houseguests from Vlad's childhood (in Transylvania, my dears...) for a week or so. We can't wait. Vlad in particular is ready for new blood. Turns out people are fulla blood. And would you look at that, they're coming in droves.

Must be the nice weather. When you have a house with no air conditioning for summer (because why would it get hot in Seattle, for heaven's sake?) or insulation for winter (because why would it get cold in Seattle, for heaven's sake?), savvy guests try to thread the needle and visit during a Temperate Time. Well, they've hit the jackpot - we've got it - 72 degrees and sorta sunnyish for the foreseeable future. Sweet.

Miss me, won't you? I'll be around as much as poss but may be scarce, what with ferrying pals to business appointments, cocktail parties and getting them "sightseen up real good". The friends, the fun, the food - isn't that what summer should be?

From our back deck sunsets to our frequent rainbows (yay for being in a Convergence Zone), we're the place to be. From our back deck to yours, Happy Summer! Back soon!

Kitchen Vacation - Brazil

2010-07-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

The poor, dear Brazilians - they were closing in on World Cup glory but were squashed by the Dutch, who obviously had a terrific team this year. I still can't make sense of it. Brazil lives and breathes soccer like Americans live and breathe baseball. And the Dutch? They live and breathe banking & insurance. It's just not fair. South American soccer has a romance to it that no Northern Euro country could ever match, even when triumphant (Wasn't that final game something? I knew elephants and octopi could be trusted.).

Passionate, dejected Brazil will recover, of course. It has a long history of surviving other cultures when they came knocking. Over the centuries it has made room for the Portuguese, the Moors (North Africans), African slaves and indigenous peoples. Sometimes it went well, and sometimes not. Injustices abound. A very small percentage of the country is very, very rich. The country's poor are some of the poorest in the world. It's a messy, colorful, breathtaking mishmash of a place. And like the Greeks and Chinese and folks everywhere for that matter, the Brazilians are, on the whole, just getting on with life. Nowhere is that more evident than in their kitchens, which have also been influenced by the tides of history. Check out the menu for a local Brazilian grill to get a sense for the country's flavors.

Were it not cold and raining on Brazil Night, Vlad and I might have ventured out there for dinner. But....meh. When you have a fridge full of food and a Roku player, who wants to go out? Besides, I'd been dreaming all week of the Brazilian stuffed pork loin I've alluded to here before - Lombo de Porco Recheado, and a surprisingly suburban cauliflower recipe - Couve Flor Assado. And, in spite of the weatherman's most optimistic waverings, 60 degrees just doesn't cut it. Nope - it was good weather for a nice kitchen-warming roast, and, I admit, a nice break from 100-degree weather.

Like the Nepalese and Peruvians, the Brazilians are in no hurry. Good thing I actually read the recipe this time (unlike my Peruvian Humitas adventure which ended with Vlad practically wilting from hunger). An overnight marinade was the first order of business here. The Vinha d'Alho mix of garlic cloves, salt and pepper, one clove, celery, onion, parsley, carrot, white wine and vinegar made an eye-watering marinade which I poured into a zipper bag before adding the meat. Then beddy-byes for the meat and the Stove Jockey.

The following evening I set off to Rio and got to making the most unusual stuffing. First, I made a 5-egg omelette - seriously. I followed the directions carefully - it needed to be dense (no added milk or cream) and lightly browned on both sides. When it cooled I diced it into 1/4 inch cubes, a fair number of which I must admit I inhaled for quality control purposes.

It looks a little more stuffingish now, eh? Here's the stuffing before mixing: a slice of bread diced and soaked in milk, a few diced black olives, a thick slice of fresh deli ham diced in little cubes, some chopped rosemary and a whack of those little diced omelette chunks.

Stirred together and pressed onto one half of the pork loin, the stuffing seemed to be both weird and to make complete sense. Breakfast for dinner, anyone?

Topped with the upper pork piece and butcher-tied, it looked downright respectable.

I gingerly lowered it onto the rack in the roasting pan and poured the remaining marinade over it. At 350F for a bit more than an hour, Mrs. Hal took surprisingly good care of it, even if she let the marinade bloom in a tear-gassy mist each time I checked on the meat.

To distract me from my tears, I turned my attention to the last of the gargantuan cauliflower in the fridge. A simple veg gratin that could share space with the pork would make good use of the oven heat.

After par-boiling, draining and setting aside the cauliflower florets, I made the sauce. A little butter made for a flavorful fry-up of onions, parsley, and seeded and diced tomatoes. A little flour sprinkled over the lot and cooked for a minute made a sorta-roux. A little thawed and warmed beef stock added gradually made a creamy sauce.

All of it stirred together in a baking dish made for heavenly smells - nutty, meaty and oniony. A quick shake of breadcrumbs and grated cheese (which I was surprised to see called-for in this exotic book) and into the oven it went to join the meat.

Even though we "eat with our eyes" as my Mother-in-Law used to say, we also eat with our taste buds. I wish you could have tasted this! Especially since even on the plate, my selections still appeared barfy. They tasted so much better than they looked!

The meat was juicy, tender and tangy, the stuffing tasted like a great breakfast dish and the cauliflower tasted like it came from a Betty Crocker box in the 70s (God forgive me, but it did - and I'm not complaining). For a cold and rainy "summer" night, it was the perfect comfort food. I hope gloomy Brazilian soccer fans all over could hold it together long enough to make a similar meal and to enjoy Spain's triumph. Aiiiiiieeee, Brasilia!

Kitchen Vacation - Spain

2010-07-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that it's been a bit chilly in Seattle of late? Yeah, I know - I've grumbled enough for everyone. All I wanted was a little warm sunshine. Well, in the "be careful what you wish for" department, Mother Nature obliged:

I'm melting, I'm melting........

Yup, you read that right - almost 100 outside, and a toasty 79 inside. Sitting still and sweating is always a surprise in Seattle in the summer.

To celebrate (read: come to terms with...) the baking heat, I did what any wilting soul would do - I went to my shelf and found a Spanish cookbook. They know all about hot weather food, the Spaniards - they use lots of vegetables and eggs, not too much meat, not too much spice, and their simple recipes are easily cooked by a swaying, muggy-brained cook. Not to mention you've gotta love a country that calls a dish of deep-fried eggplant a salad. My kinda people.

Spain's economy is up next on the Euro chopping block, but right now they've got more important concerns. They'll be going after the Dutch in the World Cup final game on Sunday. If you trust elephants (I do) and octopi (and why not?), they're likely to prevail. I like their odds.

I also like the nice folks at the Spanish Industrial and Trade Association for the Export of Olive Oil (ASOLIVA). They came out with this nice promo cookbook in 1988. I've wanted to make a few of these recipes for some time. What better time than on a hot day before the soccer finals? There was only one small catch - did I want to heat the house up with Mrs. Hal on this day of all days?

Mrs. Hal, the sadist she is, burst out laughing when I told her I was going to spend the morning frying stuff. The kitchen was already in the mid-80s as it's far removed from our portable Little Air Conditioner That Couldn't. So? Restaurant kitchens today would be something Dante would get a kick out of. Why shouldn't I sweat along with my fellow men?

I chose three tapas dishes that would suit the heat, would save me from venturing out into the sizzle to shop, and would use up some leftovers. My choices? Sweet Red Pepper Salad, Tiny Potato Omelets, and Eggplant Salad in a Tart Sauce with Cured Ham. Yuh-hum.

First, the peppers. I braved the direct sun on the deck and grilled the peppers until they (and I) were charred. I brought them back in to what felt like a cool kitchen - not a good sign. Beet red and wilting, I peeled them and got on with the frying.

A little olive oil, some diced and seeded tomatoes, a couple cloves of garlic, some cumin, salt and pepper and I was away. A half hour simmer really steamed up the room, but the smells were worth it. Chilled, these were gonna be exceptional.

Then onto the wonderful and decidedly weird fried eggplant salad. I floured and fried the eggplant slices (and ate about one for every four I cooked), diced the ham, hardboiled and sliced two eggs, and sweated a couple of diced cloves of garlic over low heat in olive oil. I also had the melty fun of making what I can only describe as a fried vinaigrette.

In a small pan I combined olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, crumbled bay leaves, a little chopped oregano and parsley, salt and pepper and an unusual grating of nutmeg. I simmered (fried?) it for five minutes, then strained it into a jar until serving time, when all the cooled ingredients would be layered in the serving dish. Weird and wonderful.

Then onto the little potato omelets. I could see making these as very cute party snacks.

Again, a simple lot of ingredients - eggs, finely diced leftover potatoes (from roast chicken night last week - was it ever cold enough outside to make roast chicken? I'm woozy at the thought), olive oil, diced scallions, paprika and salt and pepper.

Following directions, I put half the diced scallions in a little dish and covered them with olive oil. I sprinkled in salt and pepper, as this was meant to be a garnish for the cooked snacks.

Then it was the third and final time to fry - whew! I stirred together the beaten eggs, the potatoes, the rest of the scallions and some salt and pepper, then dropped the mixture by tablespoons into a hot frying pan. I couldn't resist that little taste test above - the little omelets dusted with paprika and sprinkled with the oiled scallions. Deee-freakin-vine!

Of course the downside is that hot weather can really kill your appetite, but Vlad and I waited until late to eat. Heat didn't stop us from celebrating Spain! Go, Spain, go - gooooooooooaaaaal!

Kitchen Vacation - Syria & USA, seriously

2010-07-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

It's been said in as many ways as there are languages that food brings people together. As cliche as that may sound, it's true. I had a greeting-card moment myself a couple of days ago.

I was in the supermarket stocking up on ingredients for a All-American Fourth of July cookout. I love grocery shopping this time of year. Is there anything better than the early summer arrival of green beans, corn, tomatoes, nectarines and cherries? I can go a little crazy in the produce section. Well, apparently I was going visibly crazy stuffing greedy handfuls of green beans in a bag, because as I was doing so I felt a light tap on the shoulder. I turned from my gluttonous haze to see a stylish, 50-something woman giggling at me.

"Good, yes?" she said in heavily accented English, gesturing towards my bag.

Quite automatically I hugged the bag to my heart and exclaimed, "Yeah! I love this time of year!"

She laughed. " You know how I make of these?" I shook my head. "I toss little olive oil, salt, pepper, the garlic, onion, fry with tomato and spice you don't know."

"What spice don't I know?'

"A blend called zhuhhtthhuh from my country," she said as clearly as she could.

"What country?"

"Syria."

"Say the spice again?"

"Zhut-huh."

The light came on. I flipped over my grocery list and wrote, 'Za'atar'. "Is that the spice blend you mean? I have some of that."

She looked at me with astonishment. "Yes!! That's Zhut-huh. Where you buy Zhut-huh?"

"The little Middle Eastern grocery off Main Street - Neda Grocery."

She looked even more boggled. "But that's my brother's store!"

We both laughed and shook our heads in amazement. I thanked her warmly for her green bean recipe and told her I would serve it with our Fourth of July meal. She looked pleased.

So as a delightful accompaniment to All- American steaks, corn and nectarine cake (the cake adapted from Jacques Pepin's plum cake recipe in Sweet Simplicity), we had Syrian "Neda Green Beans" as we will now call them. A couple of minutes of hunting turned up a very similar recipe in the Tess Mallos classic, The Complete Middle East Cookbook. It also called for the spice blend, Za'atar, which, if you haven't come across it before, is typically a mix of finely ground dried thyme and oregano with a small amount of white sesame seeds, salt and a touch of sumac, a ground resinous dried berry that tastes astonishingly like lemons. I like the Californian brand Sadaf of sumac and za'atar, both of which are readily available in small ethnic groceries like Neda. Yum. Try that on your fried eggs next time.

While I very much like the Mallos book for its comprehensive collection of recipes sorted by country, if you're talking about Syria, I have a much softer spot for the Helen Corey book shown up top. Her family pics of her brother, cousin, cute little niece and Mum humanize the book with its detailed history of Orthodox Catholics of the region. I also very much like her photo series showing the production of Kibbeh (a meat and wheat patty) and Khobaz Arabee (Syrian flat bread). On my return Kitchen Vacation to Syria, remind me to make those, eh?

As the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped, I got to work on Neda Green Beans. Above, the before picture. Below, the after:

Flippin' yum. It made up for the miserable weather. Around the time I was going to light the grill, it started to mist. Then the rain began in earnest. The temperature, which had barely cracked 60 all day, started to dive. Was I hardcore enough to grill?

Turns out - not. I wimped out and pan fried the steaks instead. I served them with boiled new potatoes and sweet white corn. They were fine but not worth fireworks. The cake made it feel a little like summer at least.

So in the cold and rain, Vlad and I had a great Almost-American melting pot meal. Syrian-American relations are fragile at best. Maybe a little culinary detente could help? Recipes traded in the supermarket are one small and necessary step for man, I think.

Kitchen Vacation - England, sort of

2010-07-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

Before you gleefully rub your hands together thinking that I'm about to trash English food, let me stop you there. English food is goooood! The list of adventuresome and innovative Brit chefs is huge - check out one here.

Thing is, though, that an elegant pan-seared trout with a cherry confit on a bed of Puy lentils, delicious as it may be, isn't classic British food for an authentic Kitchen Vacation. And while roasts and chops and puddings are truly English, they don't feel like summer food for here and now (not that it feels like summer at all today - will I get used to shivering in "summer"?). When in doubt, I like to turn to a culinary giant - in this case, I checked into the work of English cooking icon Jane Grigson:

The cover sets the stage, doesn't it - these are old, solemn, weighty, traditional recipes. After eating my weight in pork ribs, I'm ready for a big dish of serious vegetables. A massive cauliflower in the fridge is ready for its closeup, I think.

But a bit of back story first. England's got an amazing back story. One of my London cousins tells the story of losing phone service for a couple of weeks about a decade ago as the phone company fought with the municipal government to get permission to install new underground lines. Sounds weird, right? The problem was that the telecom needed to run the lines through a modern city street that stood a mere couple of feet above an ancient Roman archaeological treasure trove of coins, pots and dishes (and probably four or so feet above some nice Viking souvenirs). The city said absolutely not. The phone company ended up rerouting the lines while archaeologists hooted with glee and ran out to stock up on those little paint brushes. "Call before you dig" takes on a whole new meaning in a country that's had visitors for millennia.

Since Ancient Rome and more specifically the hedonistic emperor Nero were great influences on cuisine (you knew that right? Nero is thought to have developed the very first rotating restaurant -hey, at least he didn't come up with Chuck-E-Cheese), I dug through the Grigson book to find a recipe with a nod to their part in British culinary history. In the cauliflower chapter, Ms. G had the requisite English cream soups, salads, several gratins and a quirky Moussaka-like dish....sigh. No show for the Romans, or so I thought. And then - voila! I caught a little note about "Red Hot Cauliflower" which I had missed. Sounds a bit lively for this book, eh? It's a super recipe - the white veg substitutes for broccoli in an Ancient Roman recipe. Bingo! Was I pleased! And chilis! Only I could find the one British recipe in existence containing chilis.

The mise was simple - chilis (yeehaw!), traditional olive oil or Jane Grigson's brilliant suggestion of walnut oil (I used both to enhance the nuttiness of the veg), and salt and pepper.

So after simmering the cauliflower florets in salted water until just tender, I drained them, set them aside and added the rest of the ingredients to the pot.

Over very low heat I simmered the chilis in the oil for a few minutes, then gently stirred in the cauliflower.

Not very photogenic, eh? But it was delish - nutty and spicy and salty. Hot, it was a nice side dish with leftovers. Cold, it was a lovely little appetizer with a cocktail the next day. The juxtaposition of cold temps and hot spices was a pleasure. So was the fusion of British veg and Roman methods.

Nobody's going to be digging up anything spectacular around here any time soon, unless they start growing cauliflower. Hmmm...maybe I'll put it on my garden list for next spring.

Kitchen Vacation - Vietnam

2010-07-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

In this North American world of shopping malls and super highways, I sometimes get hungry for a place with more color. Not that Seattle's colorless - you could say there's a bit of green around. Hell, you gotta love green to live here what with the trees and more trees, the rampant and growling moss and the murky twilight. We get many beautiful shades of green here, no question, but today I need more.

I've decided I need Vietnam - the vivid rice plantations, the colorful clothing, the vibrant vegetables, all of it. National Geographic has a great slide show to make you restless for their colors, too. Check it out and zip on back - I can wait. Then go make a nice cup of tea (one of my favorite Vietnamese exports) and bathe in the colors of these happy, happy spring rolls.

Spring roll-making heralds the joyous return here of Binh Duong's indispensable book, Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking. It's a regular player in my kitchen. Mrs. Hal likes it so much that she's never burned a single thing from it. I gave her little chance today. She had only a little stovetop work to do on one of the four dipping sauces. The other three stirred together in a snap and I skipped the frying step for the spring rolls altogether. May I point out that this vacation from the oven also makes spring rolls an exceptional hot weather "get me outta the kitchen" item? Yum. Like you even need another reason to fall in love with these.

So much to love - four simple sauces and some raw veg in a wrap. Sounds light, eh? Maybe. It depends on how much sauce you manage to score. I serve these with colorful little ramekins so guests can try all the sauces and can double dip to their hearts' content. That requires a fired-up sauce factory:

First up, Ginger Sauce (Nuoc Mam Gung): peeled and sectioned limes, diced ginger and garlic, all pounded with mortar and pestle into sugar, chilis (yay) and a little fish sauce. It's very hot and spicy, and colorful, too. Kinda looks like a sinister orange marmalade:

Next up, Soy Vinaigrette (Nuoc Xi Dau Giam) for a milder dipping option: minced garlic and ginger, sugar, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, a splash of Marsala, black pepper and canola oil - stirred, not shaken (quite a change in this house).

Then, a sorta-homemade Hoisin Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Cham Tuong): I was out of hoisin sauce, so I first simmered diced carrots and dates with soy sauce, molasses and a little balsamic vinegar. That took about ten minutes. I then pureed it into something Hoisinish and proceeded with Duong's recipe - I sauteed chopped leeks in oil, then added my Pseudo-Hoisin and a splash of Marsala to liven it up but keep it mild.

Finally, a fresh batch of Moby's beloved dipping sauce (which in this house we put on everything but corn flakes). It completed a nice selection of colorful and vibrantly flavorful sauces. The Sorta- Hoisin sauce isn't shown here because it took the picture, giggle.

Then onto the assembly of the spring rolls (Cha Gio Chay). First, the mise:

Ahhh, fresh, cold and colorful - of course you can put anything you like in a spring roll - leftover diced meats, herbs, sliced fruit, whatever. I stuck to Mr. Duong's list to keep it salady - cilantro, diced deep-fried tofu (which I fried the day before, then pressed, sliced and chilled overnight), cucumber sticks, cole slaw mix, grated carrots and sliced scallions. Oh, and a whack of spring roll wrappers:

Putting these together is a simple process that's great for daydreamers as it's quiet, repetitive and downright meditative. If you do it, be sure to wear comfy shoes - it's a lotta standing. And be gentle with the wrappers - they're brittle and breakable when dry and easy to tear when wet. Just go slowly, hum softly and you'll get in the groove in no time.

Start by filling two rimmed dinner plates with water (you'll have a long wait between assembled rolls if you only soften one at a time). Carefully submerge a spring roll wrapper in each plate and poke at them gently every 20 seconds until they become transparent and feel soft and pliable (like wet tissue paper) which takes about a minute and a half or so (or less - don't wander off!). When one of them is ready, grasp it gently at "ten and two" like a steering wheel, lift it out of the water and drain excess water back into the dish. Drape the wrapper carefully onto a clean cutting board, minimizing wrinkles. Take care not to tear it.

I've left the wrinkles in the one above so you can actually see it - pretty invisible, eh? Now pop a new wrapper into the empty water dish and get on with filling the one on the cutting board.

A generous pinch of each veg, in pieces of reasonably even length and arranged in a little parallel stack, will wrap neatly and is less likely to tear the wrapper during folding.

Fold the wrappers like you do grape leaves or corn husks - in four steps. As shown above, start from the bottom, rolling tightly upwards one half-turn.

Then secondly and thirdly, fold the left and right sides together to meet in the middle. Yours should look tighter than this - you'll have kept one hand on it at all times to keep the folds snug.

Then finally, firmly roll the package away from you, pressing gently, as shown above.

Place the roll, seam side down, on a chilled plate and go on to the one in the second soaking plate. Remove it to the cutting board, add a fresh one to the plate and wrap away. Then on to next one, and the next one, and the next one....

Try not to eat them all. Make it easy on yourself - keep your pretty, colorful dipping sauces in the fridge. If they're out on the counter near your pretty, colorful rolls, you'll come a pretty, colorful cropper. You'll stumble, stuffed and blurry-eyed, out to greet your guests later with one lonely roll on a gargantuan platter. Sad for them, but yay for you wanting to eat your vegetables.

Simple and elegant? Yes, and also crunchy, healthy, portable, make-aheadable, picnicable, customizable, potluckable and full of vegetables. Gotta love that. Funny how much green is in them, though, eh? Must have been a subliminal thing.

Kitchen Vacation - China

2010-06-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

And I thought Seattle was on ark-builders' watch. Nah - we've had it easy. A huge swath of southwest China and its people have been buried under a mudslide. Shanghai's withstood a deluge too in the last couple of days. Parts of their subway system flooded and visitors have had to slog through puddles at the Shanghai World Expo. What a mess. But the people aren't daunted. Napoleon was on the money calling China "the sleeping dragon." Dragons are powerful. They just bat problems aside and get on with it. So just like their Greek counterparts, the Chinese locals are getting on with life - offering language classes, renting swanky furnished apartments and trading timeshares. Oh, and they're cookin'.

So am I. Inspired by a brief dryish spell in the last couple of days, I gave Mrs. Hal another night off and brought Shanghai to our grill.

Welcome to the World of Richard Wong (and his fantastic little book, Modern Asian Flavors: A Taste of Shanghai). Born in Shanghai and raised in the US, Mr. Wong is hardwired to know what the Western world wants from a Chinese dinner plate. Every single flipping recipe I've made from this book (a gift from my savvy sister) has resulted in wide-eyed wows from my dinner companions. Vlad practically tap-dances when he sees it out. Sadly, this terrific little book is out of print, but it's not impossible to find. You're gonna want this one, and for more than the heady, sloppy ribs recipe. Check out the incredible fennelly Tea Eggs - 1000 Year Eggs for the modern turbo cook - ready in hours, no retirement plan needed to wait out their transformation; the lipsmacking Tangy Ginger Bananas and the showstopping Black Bean-Grilled Flank Steak.

But back to the ribs. It being grilling season (well, on paper, anyway) and this being a nest of burbs, every supermarket in town has had pork ribs on special over the last few days. Jackpot! Time for Barbecued Pork Ribs in a Sweet Scallion Sauce.

First, a double recipe of the sauce in which to marinate the yuh-huh-hummy ribs:

In one bowl, sugar (yes, quite a bit of sugar), salt, pepper and lime zest (to sub for the called-for lemons) and in the other, finely diced scallions and ginger. The whole lot went together into a small saucepan to simmer very slowly in veg oil, but I liked dishing them up in two mise bowls- the colors were so pretty.

Could I resist making an editorial decision and adding chili flakes? I could not. The sauce was fragrant and flavorful without them, but Vlad and I like the heat. Why not make a recipe suit you?

After a gentle 10-minute simmer I set the sauce aside to cool and cut apart the rib rack. I skipped Mr. Wong's brief simmer of the ribs as these were tender and dark red - I didn't think they'd need extra help with tenderizing. They didn't.

Oh, heavenly citrusy ginger and garlic smells, even at this point! A couple of hours chilling and they gladly leapt into the grill basket for a nice cookout.

It only rained for a few minutes during the 15 minute grill time (after holding off all day and then stopping altogether afterwards, of course). No worries. This was one recipe worth getting drenched for. I took periodic shelter in the kitchen anyway, where I reheated the marinade to a rolling boil for a couple of minutes so I could serve it as a dipping sauce. I also raided the fridge and made a quick "leftover salad" - some broccoli and chopped tomatoes, a little Moby peanut sauce and some whole wheat noodles. It was a nice spicy accompaniment.

And the ribs? Ohhhhhhh. Moist, fragrant and tender. Yuh-hum. Two sticky thumbs up from the Vampire.

There you have it - summer on a plate, made by a cook wearing three sweaters and keeping the umbrella near, just in case.

Kitchen Vacation - Greece

2010-06-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, one of my very excellent Euro cousins got married on a Greek Island. Yeah! Were it not for a million commitments we needed to keep here, Vlad and I would have been there in a heartbeat - a slow and rather drawn-out heartbeat, I expect, what with the milk-run stops in New York and Athens before finally hitting the island, jet-lagged senseless but ready to party.

Greece deserves a party to cheer it up these days, doesn't it? If I asked you my standard Kitchen Vacation question - "What do you know about Greece?", I bet that the first thing you'd say is, "It's broke." Correct! Ancient shipwreck coins, drachmas, Euros... all are running low. Austerity is the new normal. It's ironic, really, that the word "austerity" has its origins in Greek: "austeros" means "harsh, severe." Considering today's people v. government street clashes, that sounds about right.

How can such a startlingly beautiful place have such troubles? Likely not enough was learned from past mistakes. Some historians also suggest that while ancient faiths and cultures promoted the concept of relentless progress, that Grecian philosopher Plato had a better idea (that was mostly ignored, alas): that we lower our expectations and just live, for pete's sake. Why weren't modern leaders thinking this way at least a little in the last few decades? In a word, greed. You know the rest - the world economy now joins the ancient cities in ruin. Writer Ferdinand Mount, in his new and controversial book (that I'm itching to get) saw this coming and postulates that we are more like the Ancient Greeks than we'd care to admit in our obsessions with food, cleanliness, fitness, progress, celebrity, prosperity and so on. Yikes.

Are we really the Ancients 2.0? Maybe not. We are a lot like modern Greeks, anyway. It's easy to forget that its citizens are going about their everyday lives just as we are. That's why I like online newspapers so much. The folks in the amazing ancient city of Athens are looking today through the classifieds for jobs, puppies and houses for sale just like you are here. They're revamping city parks and improving the trolley system. They're enjoying the World Cup, even if they were knocked out of the running last week.

And the Greeks, like us, share a luh-huh-huv of food. Greek food is fresh and simple - lots of meats, veg, herbs and some fruits. Not a lot of spices here. If the picky eaters in your family refuse to share my passion for Nepalese curries, I bet I'll get them on board with Ornitha tis Sharas me Yaourti (Grilled Chicken with Yogurt Sauce) and Fasoulakia Freska Salata (Green Bean and Lemon Salad). From the 70s classic, Greek Islands Cooking, by the luminous PBS cooking show host Theonie Mark (the era's answer to Giada De Laurentiis today) come two classics that make a great summer dinner / cousin wedding tribute.

Each component is child's play - the chicken marinade, the yogurt sauce, the lemon vinaigrette, the beans, the birds. All of it.

It took a whopping two minutes to make the marinade for the chicken: I just stirred together some olive oil, lemon juice and peel, minced garlic, peppercorns, thyme and diced scallions. What chicken wouldn't like a swim in this?

These boneless, skinless drumsticks were just the ticket - no waste, assertive flavor and so moist on the grill. They got cosy with the marinade as I got the rest going.

While the chicken bathed, the yogurt sauce was a one-minute job:

It was truly painless - just a quick stir-up of yogurt, minced garlic, black pepper and olive oil (a really smooth oil here makes the sauce taste buttery). I had to jam the tub in the back of the fridge to save me from inhaling the whole thing before dinner.

It took another whole minute to whip up some sun in a jar - I refer of course to the simple lemon vinaigrette for the beans (olive oil, lemon juice, minced garlic, salt and pepper):

Then a quick boil of the chopped green beans, which were simmered only for a couple of minutes to retain their crunch and bright color, then quickly shocked under cold water, patted dry and tossed with that liquid sunshine:

The only "slow" part was preheating the grill. The birds took only 5 minutes per side over medium-high heat. There's nothing like the aroma of grilled chicken to bring your neighbors out into the yard. Good thing I made lots.

And so we celebrated my cousin's wedding, a mere 6400 miles and 7 time zones away, in a place 20 degrees cooler, in our yard surrounded by neighbors in an impromptu potluck. It was a great and simple celebration.

So, congrats, dear Cous! Vlad and I wish you a lifetime of love and laughter. We can't wait to meet Mrs. Cous and welcome her to the team. Stin Iyiamas!

Kitchen Vacation - Nepal

2010-06-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Those of you who've been coming with me on my Kitchen Vacations are surely seeing a pattern here. Except for Italy, I'm after food off the beaten egg, as it were. I say if you're gonna be a Stovetop Tourist, why not vacation in remote and turbulent places?

Which brings me to Nepal, a winner on both counts. You know it's remote, surely, but have you heard about its recent ups and downs? Stop me if you've heard this one before: former Maoist insurgents formed a government four years ago, but while ostensibly trying to write a constitution, they've managed to veto the opposition at every turn. The chief of the military was recently fired and rehired in a hiccup of a move, and the only candidate to be the next prime minister is the wildly unpopular current prime minister. The communists, trade unionists and opium farmers are all at odds (naturally). General strikes are the norm. Yoikes. Can you see why a virtual vacation is the ticket here? Even the State Department's worried. I know, I know.. people really do vacation in Nepal. I'd go but I'm waiting for Seattle's first 75 degree day of 2010. It's been 272 days since the last one (and counting...).

My couch potato instincts notwithstanding, I also think a virtual Nepal is better than none. Practically everything we think we know about Nepal defines "virtual". You likely think you know Nepal as the setting for the rugged tavern in Raiders of the Lost Ark in which our plucky heroine, Marion, triumphantly out-drinks a local (alas, it was a soundstage in England). Or maybe you get all misty-eyed remembering James Hilton's Lost Horizon, made into a dreamy if surreal tale by Frank Capra. Again, that's a near miss - it was set in Tibet and the mountain scenes were actually filmed on studio sets and in the Sierra Nevadas. So what do we know about Nepal? That's right - that it's not Tibet. If you want to see the real Nepal on screen, check out the glorious film Himalaya. Guess what you'll notice? That's right - it looks awfully like Tibet.

Nepal is used to being mixed up with Tibet, since they're such close neighbors. Their cuisine overlaps considerably, too, although Western influences have rooted there also - just check out this delightful restaurant review from their largest online newspaper (note the loving mentions of Martinis and Chet Baker - my kinda place) and this article from the same paper on the arrival of the Slow Food movement. Gosh, if even Nepal needs to put the brakes on its meals, we're screwed.

With a grudging nod to the idea of slowing down, I chose to celebrate Nepal by making a slow-cooked Kukhura Tandoori (Tandoori Chicken) and a Bhatmasko Curry (Bean Curry) from the little book shown above (the author's full name is Indra Majupuria, by the way. Wonky typesetting put us on a first name basis). I wasn't entirely in saunter mode, though - I compromised a tad on flavor by marinating the chicken for only an hour, rather than the 6-8 hours suggested. Vlad was hungry NOW! I also made a stylistic change. A note at the end of the chicken recipe suggested the use of a traditional "earthenware baking case". My Romertopf clay roaster was just the ticket.

While the clay roaster soaked for 30 minutes, I assembled my ingredients for the chicken:

"It comes with everything you see here": lemon juice and zest, yogurt, chili flakes, paprika, ground coriander, ground cumin, chopped ginger, chopped garlic, oil, cumin seeds, red dye (for that lurid Tandoori coating) and salt.

I ground the spices into a paste with a little liquid and added the yogurt and oil. What a flavorful marinade for the chicken! You can see I went a bit shy on the food dye. I know Tandoori Chicken is typically bright red - I just couldn't do it. Vlad didn't care, so I was fine.

(Yes, it would appear that I still have a penchant for choosing barfy-looking recipes. I apologize. Bear with me - this one has a happy ending.)

Meanwhile, as Mrs. Hal baked the chicken (425F - or so she said- for 50 minutes), I made the beans. The recipe wanted me to use soybeans, which I had in the freezer - those yummy edamame bar snacks that Vlad and I love - but the green beans I'd just bought were too lovely to leave in the fridge. My substitution paid off - they were celestial.

It was a simple saute - onion, garlic, ginger, diced tomatoes and spices: turmeric, cinnamon, chili flakes, cumin and mustard oil (which I was out of - I used English powdered mustard reconstituted with oil).

All of the spices and flavoring veg were sweated together, then when the chicken was out of the oven and resting in its heady perfume, I added the tomatoes and beans to the pan. A quick saute, a light simmer with the lid on for a couple of minutes and the beans were ready to welcome the chicken.

Did I learn anything about Nepal after it all? Yes - that Nepalis have excellent taste, that food dye dilutes to nothingness in a sauce, and that the Nepalese make a great Martini. I love 'em already.

And right on cue, the sun has come out here. The temperature today may reach 75 - finally some summer! Ironically, Kathmandu (also called Kantipur) is having roughly the same weather today, but with wilder thunderstorms. It's amazing what we all share, if you really dig.

Food Fables: Lab Rat

2010-06-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

Tuition had gotten so high that year that I took a part-time job as the filing and errand-running grunt for the Anthropology department. It generally kept me busy down in the Artifacts room in the basement, which was across the hall from Dr. Finley's office. Budget cuts spun as "streamlining" had wedged his research lab down among the arrowheads.

That day I loaded my cleaning trolley in the supply room and wheeled it down the hall to Artifacts. The cold terrazzo floor and the painted concrete walls amplified the squeak and clatter of my wheels. Dr. Finley must have heard me coming. He poked his head out of his lab door and mumbled, "Come in here a minute, would you?"

I parked the trolley in the hall and followed him in. I found him staring gloomily at the floor. He looked up and squinted at my name tag.

"Adele? That's you? Yes, well. Could you run down to the cafeteria and get me another muffin, please?" He pointed at the crumbled remains of a bran muffin scattered across the floor. "I knew those things were dry but I would never have guessed that they'd shatter. Well..." he mumbled something, turned on his heel and scuttled back into a dark little office.

I fetched my dust pan from the hall and started to sweep up the bits. I heard a rustle and a squeak behind me. I turned to see a large gray rat in a condo of a cage. He winked at me with shiny black eyes. I took a large muffin crumb from the dust pan and pushed it through the bars. He wriggled with obvious delight and gracefully set to the work of nibbling on my present.

"That's Harvey," said Dr. Finley, appearing at my elbow without warning. "He's not an experimental rat. We don't do animal testing here. He's my best friend. My landlady won't let me keep him at home. Oh, and here's money for the muffin." He pressed a grimy bill into my hand and scurried back into the office.

"So that's Doc, huh, Harvey?" I said to the rat. He ignored me, busy with his snack. "Guess I'm going on a munchie run. You need anything?"

I left the lab, the dustpan and my cart and walked down the hall to the cafeteria. I was almost there when something made me turn right instead of left. I headed instead for the staff room and went straight to my locker.

The lock jammed on the third number as it always did, then clicked open. I pulled out my lunch tote and dug into it. I removed a paper bag from it, replaced the tote, locked up and headed back to Dr. Finley.

I heard him shouting on the phone as I wove my way past Harvey's condo.

"No, I know that's the deadline, Dale! What do you expect me to do? We'll have the numbers tabulated well before the conference, I promise you! Dale? DALE! Could you turn the generator off? I can hardly hear you! DALE! Ahhhh, nuts!" He slammed the phone down in exasperation and rubbed his face hard with both hands. He looked up and saw me.

"Oh, you're back. Were there any muffins left?"

" I don't know, Doctor. I thought you might like this better." I handed him his money and the bag from my lunch. He accepted them with a skeptical look and cautiously opened the pouch. He peered inside, looking doubtful, but then his face softened. He smiled gently, closed his eyes, buried his nose in the bag and inhaled deeply.

"Ooooohhhh, chocolate."

"It's an experiment of mine." Dr. Finley perked up at the mention of an experiment. "It's a Nanaimo Bar Cupcake. It's a chocolate muffin with a cream cheese custard center, a graham cracker base and a chocolate glaze. It's not as good for you as the bran muffin, I know, but sometimes a treat is good. And if I may say so, I sense that you're due for a treat."

He beamed warmly at me, licked chocolate off his fingers and wriggled just like Harvey.

"I am due, Adele. Thank you. Ooooh, chocolate......"

STOVE JOCKEY'S NANAIMO BAR CUPCAKES

building a cupcake's easier with a blueprint...

Preheat the oven to 350F, line 24 muffin cups with paper liners and get to work from the bottom up:

1) GRAHAM CRACKER BASE

1/2 cup coarsely ground walnuts

1/2 cup unsweetened grated coconut

1 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 5 oz of ground crackers)

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs, at room temperature, beaten

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Stir cracker base ingredients together in a medium bowl and set aside.

2) CREAM CHEESE FILLING

8oz cream cheese, at room temperature

3 Tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 egg, at room temperature, beaten

Beat the cream cheese in a mixer bowl until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend until uniform.

3) CAKE BATTER

2 Tbsp cocoa

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature, beaten, to which 1 tsp vanilla has been added

2 oz milk chocolate, melted and cooled

3/4 cup milk, at room temperature

a) Sift the cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. Set aside.

b) Beat the butter until smooth. Add the sugar to the butter. Cream the mixture until fluffy, about 3 minutes.

c) Add the beaten egg in three portions to the butter mixture, beating for 1 minute after each addition and stopping after each addition to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat for 2 minutes more or until the mixture is pale yellow and fluffy.

d) Scrape the cooled chocolate into the egg mixture and stir steadily until uniform, about 30 seconds.

e) Into the chocolate batter, fold the flour mixture in 4 additions, alternating with 3 even portions of the milk.
f) Scrape down the sides of the bowl and stir gently to make uniform. The batter should look like a fluffy chocolate mousse.

4) CHOCOLATE TOPPING

4 oz milk chocolate

1/4 cup (2 oz) butter

a) Over very low heat, melt the chocolate and butter in a small saucepan. Stir periodically to prevent scorching.

b) Set aside and cool slightly.

Now, batter up!

CUPCAKE ASSEMBLY:

a) Into each paper-lined muffin cup, scoop 1 teaspoon of graham cracker crust. Using the base of a small juice glass or 1/4 cup measure (with broken-off handle like mine, which comes in handy here), firmly press the crust down in the cup:

b) Divide batter between the 24 cups, filling each about half-full, as the optimists say. Smooth the batter to cover the cracker base completely:

c) Scoop 1 large tablespoon of cream cheese filling over each cupcake:

d) Bake the cupcakes until a knife inserted in the cake comes out cleanly, about 18 minutes.

e) "Shoe-horn" the cupcakes out of the pans with two teaspoons to keep them upright. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes.

f) Scoop 1 teaspoon of cooled chocolate topping over each cupcake, then use the bowl of the spoon to spread the topping evenly.

g) Go make some harassed academic happy:

Mighty Yolks from Little Cake Corns Grow

2010-06-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

Those with an attentive eye and a mind for physics will have noticed that the other night I had far more corn filling for my Peruvian Humitas than I had room for in my roasting pan.

Ahhh, the glory of leftovers. As I was out of corn husks anyway, a half-hearted reheated Deja Vu Dinner was out of the question. No worries. I generally prefer to transform leftovers into Something Completely Different anyway (with or without Silly Walks - the latter makes it dinner theater, a welcome bonus).

So what do you do with leftover cooked corn seasoned with cayenne and cinnamon? Make fritters, of course. What a lovely accompaniment to grilled meat - and it's finally dry enough here to fire the grill up again.

In America, I think the best fritter recipes are those by the Creole cooks in and around New Orleans - their Beignets de Mais are right up my alley. The definitive recipe, I think, is found in the Picayune Creole Cook Book, first published by a local newspaper in New Orleans in 1901 and reprinted nine times before my copy was printed in 1947.

And looky here - I found the whole book scanned online for you to enjoy - how cool is that? I've even opened the book to the Corn Fritters recipe for you so you can read along (for those with aging eyes like mine, note the 'zoom' feature on the upper left corner). I'll forgive you if you want to wander about the book a bit first- it's marvelous, isn't it, to have the whole thing in front of you? Thank you, Open Library.

As long as I've been cooking I've been a fan of this book, but until the dawn of the Internet, I always giggled at the title. Who would use the word "picayune" to describe a cookbook, much less a newspaper? "Picayune" is not a compliment, as I'm sure you know - it means "contemptible, petty, insignificant". Yikes! It was always a head-scratcher, but then - mystery solved - the newspaper got the chance to explain itself online. When the paper debuted, it turns out, its newsstand price was one Spanish coin worth about 6 1/4 cents. The coin was called - guess what? - the picayune. Who knew? All I know is that this cookbook is by no means petty or insignificant - the recipes are foolproof and it's a perfect snapshot of 20th century New Orleanean traditions and appetites. Which brings me back to my own appetite. Corn Fritters, here we go!

The recipe calls for 6 ears of corn, husked. I had husked 8 for the Humitas and ended up with about half of that cooked corn puree left over, so I estimated 4 ears of corn "on hand" for the fritters. I also dropped the amount of milk in the fritter recipe a tad to reflect the equivalent of only 4 ears of corn. My corn puree was also thinner and wetter than straight corn kernels would be, so I added a spare egg yolk and used the full 1/2 cup of flour from the fritter ingredient list (incidentally, do you notice that in spite of the ingredient list, the directions only mention the use of a mere tablespoon of flour? I treated this as one of those "range of flour" deals like in breadmaking - in this case, wetter corn wants more flour, drier corn wants less. Like most cooking, it's one part gut feeling and one part Kitchen Witch).

With the addition of whisked eggs, a little melted butter and a splash of milk, the corn puree still looked pretty barfy, but we don't expect beauty from batters, do we?

Also, friends don't let friends deep fry. I made an executive decision and opted for the healthier route - a spritz of oil on a non-stick pan made for a decent compromise: silver dollar pancakes. Yum! I figure that since fritter comes from the French word, friture, which means "to fry", at least I was in keeping with the spirit of the thing.

What a pleasant result- little hot and spicy pancakes! What a great Happy Hour accompaniment, maybe with a salsa dip or shaved roast beef rolled up inside? Or as a side for a grilled pork chop? Or as a 21st Century blini with sour cream and ground pork? So many permutations, but all virtuous in their reuse of leftovers and in their influence on Peruvian-American relations, which might as well happen here since it isn't going to happen on the soccer pitch. Only one of the two countries is in the World Cup, and oddly, that one is the US. Silly walks, indeed.

Kitchen Vacation - Peru

2010-06-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

I know you're squirming in your seat. Gosh - if I asked you to expound on Uganda, what on earth am I going to ask you about Peru? S'okay. Very little - I can see you came here to eat.

Before we jump in the kitchen, though, let me tell you a few interesting things about my vacation spot. It's the home to the largest bird in the world, the Andean Condor (okay, there are a couple in Cleveland, but you get the picture). Also, the Andes Mountains are the longest mountain range in the world - neat, huh? Oh, and here's a good one. In 1990, Peruvian voters elected as president a first-generation native-born politician, Alberto Fujimori, (beating novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, of all people), then learned that he was still a Japanese national because his folks, Japanese nationals themselves, registered his birth at a consulate. The Peruvians demanded that Mr. Fujimori renounce his Japanese citizenship. He didn't, which came in handy in 2000 when he tried to escape to Tokyo when Peru charged him with human rights abuses (ordering death squads and such) during his presidency. And you think the US is in turmoil.

And of course if we fast forward to today, Peru's busy not being in the World Cup because of a long-standing feud that got them thrown out of all qualifying action since 2008. A sad state of affairs, really.

But as I always say, well, sure, that's all going on, but how's the food? Well, I'm here to tell you - delish.

In a deeply amateurish attempt to invoke warmer weather here in the rain barrel, I dug around in this little book to find something spicy, snacky and festively Friday Night-ish. I found it - Humitas. These are the South American version of tamales - those polenta-like steamed nibbles cooked in corn husks. Yum. It's a good recipe with nice simple ingredients that are a great showcase for what's turning out to be a terrific corn season.

For the puddingy paste, the ingredients are simple - corn, a tomato, cinnamon, a bit of sugar, some cayenne, a clove of garlic, a little canola oil (to substitute for the lard - I'm sacrificing authenticity for more days on this planet) and one large sweet onion.

For the inner filling, a half pound of pork, two hard-boiled eggs, some peanuts and a few black olives.

You can see that I read the ingredient list carefully and assembled my mise en place. What I didn't do was read the directions. I started at 3pm in that piece-of-cake way when you think you have hours and hours to get dinner on. Well, this recipe takes hours and hours. It was 730pm before I propped up Vlad at the dinner table and revived him with an evening meal.

What took so long? All of it (although I will admit that I wasn't exactly hustling and I did get three loads of laundry done at the same time). But here's the tally:

Hardboiling the eggs - 20 minutes.

Husking the corn - a half hour. Of course since you reuse the corn husks, you can't strip them away with gay abandon as you're accustomed to with corn. Noooo - you must peel each layer slowly and gingerly.

Cooking and cooling the corn kernels with the onion, tomato, garlic, cayenne, sugar and cinnamon - 45 minutes. It started like this:

And one load of whites later, looked like this:

Simmering the pork, cooling it and chopping it and the eggs and olives, and combining them with the peanuts - and hanging up a load of knits- 25 minutes.

And then came the wrapping. I don't wrap 18 parcels on Christmas Eve, much less in June. But I pulled it off - in 30 minutes, anyway.

I guess it's not that pretty. I wish you could smell it - the corn and pork and cayenne were heady.

Into each husk I put a small scoop of corn pudding, a middling scoop of meat and egg filling and a dash more corn for luck (since I looked at the clock and knew I needed it).

I then folded the firmer bottom edge up and, afterwards, folded down the top edge.

Then I placed the little parcel inside another husk.

I then folded the outer husk shut - left and right sides closed around the inner parcel.

Like so.

Then I played cat's cradle for a while. For each one - a bit of string, a parcel tie and placement in a roasting pan. Note that the corn husks are used as a shelf to raise the rack and to keep the parcels out of the boiling water we'll pour below to steam the little fellas. It was a pleasure to use every part of the corn for this meal.

Stuff, wrap, wrap, tie, repeat seventeen more times. Watch the clock tick past 630 and hear Vlad sigh. Sweat, but soldier on.

Knowing Vlad was fading, I preheated Mrs. Hal to 450F, knowing that she'd toss out 550F with zero effort. I boiled a kettle of water, carefully poured it into the pan beneath the parcels, covered the lot in foil, tossed it in the oven, said a quick prayer and poured myself a congratulatory Guinness.

An hour later, success! It was a great change of pace for us - less of a sit-down dinner and more of a bar snack kind of meal. It would make a great first course at a dinner party if you made the whole dang thing ahead of time.

The Guinness was cold and the Humitas were spicy, flavorful and filling. It almost felt like summer. Today is supposed to be 75 degrees - yeah! The first such temperature in nine months. Like Humitas, the warmth is worth the wait.