Posted at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a very clear memory of sitting on the sunny floor of my parents’ living room about twenty years ago, leafing through a library copy of The Way To Cook, which had just been published. I was talking to my mom about a friend of hers who was hiking the Seven Summits. (He had also run the Death Valley marathon, but I digress already.) I was fascinated by cooking even then, but my skills were limited to a pretty good spaghetti, gray roasts, and some other basic dinner dishes. I wanted to learn to do more better and was already certain that you can learn anything from books.

But The Way to Cook terrified me. There was so much I didn’t know, so many unfamiliar ingredients, so many dishes my family would never eat. And the price! The first hardcover edition was $50 in 1989 dollars. (About $85 in pre-crash 2008 dollars, according to internet inflation calculators.) I made about $10 each week in allowance, as I recall, and $3.35 an hour for occasional filing gigs at the family business. I spent most of it on books, but I could not imagine spending that much money for one single book. I needed all the $3.99 Scholastic editions I could scrape together, coupled with whatever I carted home from the library in order to stay sane. So the big cookbook went back to the library and I forgot about it.

And I didn’t think all that much about Julia Child, either, even though I’ve baked from Baking With Julia for the past ten years. (I’m not much of a baker; my baking books only venture off the shelf once or twice a year, if that.) But about a month ago I picked up My Life in France, her memoir of 1950s Paris and its influence on her life, and discovered something: Julia was both a scholar and a punk, in the DIY, damn-the-torpedos sense of the term. Now I am fascinated.

So on Christmas Day it occurred to me to look for copies of The Way To Cook again, and I searched online while chatting away to Compatriot G. We were totally talking past each other, he about job stuff and me about cooking, since I refused to think about the job search on Christmas, but we were cheering each other on nonetheless. I found the reasonably-priced paperback edition right away, of course, but then it occurred to me to wonder what a signed edition would go for. Everything on ABE was far beyond my reach, and so was what I found other places — until I happened on a small seller who offered what he claimed was a Very Good signed copy for $65. He didn’t list the edition and noted that the jacket was wrinkled. Since a new hardcover is $40 on Amazon and his price was hundreds below the other signed editions I had found, and since we had canceled our holiday travel plans and I felt that some indulgence was due, I ordered it.

It showed up on New Years Eve while I was in an online meeting with George. (I love having a job where its often ok to excuse myself to answer my own doorbell.) After we finished up, I unwrapped layers and layers of packing to find what is easily a Fine/Near Fine copy. The jacket has a very minor wrinkle off to the side. Whoever owned it certainly never cooked with it. All that is quite enough to make me happy with this purchase.

But here’s the ridiculous luck: it’s from the first edition, fourth printing. It’s signed by both Julia and her longtime editor at Knopf, Judith Jones. And tucked away in its pages were two fading snapshots from the signing:

I like to think I’m not one for omens, but in reality I often am. This edition of the book showing up on my doorstep in this condition makes me hope that this year might really be an improvement over last year. And it also lends a reassuring sense of growth, since the text doesn’t intimidate me now. I know many (but not all) of the foods and techniques, enough to be intrigued rather than terrified. This is a book to work with, although I’m certainly not taking a signed first edition into the kitchen.

I’ll be damned if I make anything in an aspic, though. Foods under aspic always remind me of those paperweights with scorpions set in amber.

Posted at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

How do I begin any new venture? By buying books, of course.

Actually, I first read Kennedy’s canonical Essential Cuisines of Mexico sometime in my early teens alongside My Mexico. (I was a weird kid who passed the time during road trips by reading cookbooks from the library.) At the time, I was scarred by the latter volume’s account of cooking fresh pony snoots and thoroughly intimidated by the ingredient lists in either book. (Finding epazote in Little Rock in the late 80s? Not likely. Now it would be fairly easy to find this and more esoteric ingredients, given the Hispanic influx over the last 15 years.)

Well over a decade later, Mr. Husband began to introduce me to authentic Mexican through his recreation of SoCal taco truck cuisine. These little bundles of spicy meat, onions, and cilantro on two layers of griddled corn tortillas were a revelation after years of Old El Paso kits and hamburger mixed with “chili seasoning.” I finally bought the big blue book about six years ago as a gift for him, but it went largely unconsulted for awhile. It wasn’t until after we moved to Minnesota and discovered how limited the Mexican food options can be here that I started to work with this cookbook in a dilettante-ish way. And then sometime in the last year or so I got a little more serious about it.

Cuisines of Mexico is still a formidable book and so I've begun by cooking the dishes that are sort of familiar. Kennedy’s writing is impeccably clear, but there were quite a few entire sections where I couldn’t quite make the mental jump from reading to actually cooking. Supplementing the tome with her My Mexican Kitchen has helped increase my comfort level, because it has lots and lots of photos illustrating techniques. I also added in Rick Bayless’ Authentic Mexican and then promptly got irritated by it. The only way I know to describe it is patriarchal: Bayless presents all the recipes as Rick Bayless™ recipes that apparently sprang fully formed from his forehead during his time in Mexico, whereas Kennedy is careful to note that she learned a particular recipe for Senora So-and-So or from her maid or from a marketplace vendor. But his recipes do complement Kennedy’s and are relentlessly slanted toward an American audience that I am squarely in the middle of, despite my best efforts at denial. I am indeed a white Southern girl trying to learn Mexican cookery, and sometimes his devotion to audience enables me to really understand something that I just didn’t grok in the Kennedy. Sometimes I find a recipe elsewhere and use both of their books to triangulate a method or ingredients.

So far, I can reliably make guacamole picado, chile verde, pozole, huevos con chorizo burritos, chiles rellenos, salsa fresca, enchiladas verde, and frijoles refritos. Mr. Husband and I collaborate on various forms of tacos. I have failed (so far) at a few other dishes, most of which have mercifully been wiped from my memory. (The most recent was an underspiced chile colorado.) These are all easy dishes. I’ve yet to get adventurous, but I forgive myself for that because learning to make things that correlate to foods I’ve actually eaten has been a way in for me.

The Rancho Gordo blog has also been a way in over the past couple of years. Reading Steve’s accounts of how casually these things can be put together once you understand the general principles has helped me start to think of this food as something that can be part of the regular repertoire rather than Special Events Recipes. Heirloom Beans, which just came out this fall, is not devoted exclusively to Mexican or even New World preparations, but it does provide a hefty dose of them. And he’s done more than anyone else to (almost) assuage my fear of tackling nopales. My local supermarket usually has some nice-looking ones, and a nearby Asian grocery occasionally gets tunas, so I should be taking advantage of this while we live here.

So there’s the cactus initiative to contend with. I’m making tamales for New Year’s, I think, and want to learn more caldos and sopas this winter. Since this is a 50-before-50 list, I have at least 17 and 1/4 years to proceed with this project. Thank God.

Posted at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Julia Child, writing fifty years later about Monsieur Bugnard, her instructor at Le Cordon Bleu:

His eggs were always perfect, and although he must have made this dish several thousand times, he always took great pride and pleasure in this performance. Bugnard insisted that one pay attention, learn the correct technique, and that one enjoy one’s cooking—“Yes, Madame Scheeld, fun!” he’d say. “Joy!”

It was a remarkable lesson. No dish, not even the humble scrambled egg, was too much trouble for him. “You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,” he said. “Even after you eat it, it stays with you—always.”

— My Life in France, p.65

Posted at 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Three seasonal cakes, perfect for using up CSA or Farmer’s Market produce this time of year, and also good for the approaching holiday get-togethers that require you to whip up a little something-something. I’m not much of a baker, but I’ve never had any trouble throwing these together.

Cranberry Upside-Down Cake
Ginger Cake
Apple and Dried Cherries Cake

Posted at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I’ve read about fried squash blossoms for years and years, but never had them. The markets where I’ve lived generally don’t have them for sale, and I’ve never had the space to grow squash. But when C and I were wandering around the St. Paul market on Sunday, there was one huge bunch of blossoms resting over to the side of a vendor’s table, where it had been studiously ignored by the Minnesotans all morning*. We were prepared to shell out a bundle for it, but the farmer only wanted $2. We snatched them up, paid, and ran away fast before he could change his mind.

So last night I made fried squash blossoms, which turned out not to be as difficult as I'd always thought it might be. I mean, sure, you have to open the blossoms up and check for bugs, but that wasn’ so traumatic. I mixed some ricotta with fresh-milled black and white pepper, a wee bit of crushed red pepper, some garlic, and some olive oil. Next, I dumped all that into a ziploc, cut off a corner, and piped it into the blossoms. Then I twisted them shut, rolled them in egg, and then rolled them in flour that I mixed with a little salt and more pepper. Finally, I fried two batches in a couple of inches of smoking-hot oil.

When I bit into them, I did not see God, as promised in various written accounts of stuffed squash blossoms. But as I worked my way through the plate (Mr. Husband was having nothing to do with this), they grew on me. They’re very fresh tasting considering the fact that they're fried, and very mild — perfectly balanced with a mild cheese like ricotta that’s been spiced up a bit. Crunchy on the outside, creamy on the inside. I’m not dashing back out the door in search of more blossoms, but I might make them again sometime, particularly if I was having guests.

*One other table had local tomatillos, which you also don't see so often up here. The woman beside me was poking at them and asking the farmer, "But what are they?" Tomatillos. "But what do you do with them?" Make salsa. "What? How?" I loves the Minnesotans, but it seems to take quite a lot for them to step out of their usual habits when it comes to food.

This seems like a good a time as any for an inventory meme like the VGT Omnivore’s Hundred, found via Momo. Looks like I’ve been in my own food rut, since a lot of the missing items can be easily remedied in a couple of trips around town.

Continue reading "fried flowers" »

Posted at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

After a wonderful, winding conversation at dinner last night with Wilhelmina and Mister Husband, it dawned on me that I often give the impression that the only food eaten in our house is fresh, local, organic, carefully-prepared bits of artisinal goodness. I never really meant for that to happen — it’s that those things seem more interesting to write about, and it’s true that my food and beverage range has grown during grad school. We still maintain a steady supply of what can only be described as box food, though, and some evenings that's the only food I want because it’s so easy and comforting and full of ingredients I can’t possibly pronounce. It’s true that right now there’s a two-day batch of vanilla ice cream in process, made from real vanilla beans and due to be served with homemade cherry sauce, but it’s also true that it might be preceded by any of the following:

- fish sticks
- Ore Ida crinkle-cut fries
- Kraft mac-and-cheese
- Creamy Garlic Tuna Helper
- a variety of ramen flavors (which I occasionally make with broth and bits of real chopped up food, but just as often gets made with water and the packet flavoring)
- Life cereal
- Hormel chili (this is a Mr. Husband item)
- canned corned beef hash (referred to as snoot hash, because I bet that corned beef is mostly ground up snoot. Whatever, snoot’s good on a cold evening.)

One of the house specialties, eaten in phases and then forgotten for a year or so at a time, is the classic der Wienerschnitzel sandwich: pre-sliced provolone melted on pre-fab pumpernickel bread, coated in mustard, and filled with polish sausage halves, a dill pickle spear, and jarred sauerkraut. You could make this with all-local, organic stuff, but it would completely defeat the spirit of the dish.

So as usual, we are a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a conundrum. One Local Summer next to Tuna Helper. Local thick-cut pepper bacon and organic Farmer’s Market tomatoes with Hellman’s Mayo and store-bought bread. (Oh, the mayo-making experiment the other night! The entire kitchen ended up coated in eggs and oil, and the rest is too traumatic to recount. Let’s just say that two grown cooks were reduced to wailing and gnashing of teeth after multiple attempts.)

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I love coffee... It’s not about the caffeine. I have largely renounced caffeine. I say largely because I know that the decaf I now drink all day isn’t entirely caffeine-free. My attachment to coffee is about the taste, and the smell, and the gesture. ...

These days, no one is “always there” with a coffee cup in his hand; nor is there anyone around with a cigarette. No decent person keeps the coffee pot brewing all day. No one would dream of drinking that much caffeine. No one would dream of sitting still all day to schmooze.

The only people who would are perhaps just the sort who might sneak out into the garden to smoke an occasional cigarette when their kids aren’t looking. Appealing people, I might be tempted to say. People who live in the grip of their passions. But suspect.

Warner, 1/24/08 NYT

Posted at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I made a course design. The catalogue title is “Emergent Technologies in Scientific & Technical Communication,” but I’m calling it “Web 2.0 in STC.” We’re going to be planning, writing, and media re-visioning a wiki on scientific, technical, and social aspects of the 35W bridge collapse. As always, the topic and readings attrition was difficult, but I’m encouraged that all three people who’ve reviewed the syllabus have said, “I want to take this course!” Hell, I want to take the course, since it nicely dovetails with my research interests. (I am not so accustomed to this feeling, since I’ve been mostly graduate-instructing service courses for the past five years.) We’ll see if I’m the only one who still feels that way in a few months, or if the students are still along for the ride. My predictor feels a bit off this time, but I’m hopeful: I have four grad students and seven repeaters out of the 20 registered so far. Anyway, if you’re interested in such things, the syllabus is here.

I also made this apple cake, substituting dried cherries and golden raisins for the cranberries because I had them on hand. It turned out to be a rustic and fabulous recipe. Too fabulous, in fact. I’m foisting half of it off on the well-metabolized Compatriot G so I won’t finish the whole thing. I’m sitting across from him right now in a coffee shop, and he has no idea that I have half a cake in my backpack. (Or that I’m blogging when I’m supposed to be Being Scholarly. But I am limbering up, dammit.) This fact amuses me inordinately.

I am also making a dissertation, as it turns out. All this time I’ve been feeling distinctly un-started. Thoroughly convinced that I’m unstarted, in fact. Then last week one of my chairs nicely said what amounted to, “Send me something NOW.” After silently panicking and hearing my internal voice squeal, “But I have nothing! Nothing!” I looked around and realized that I have 80 pages. There is no mathematical way in which 80 pages = Unstarted. Let that be a lesson unto me.

Posted at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Thursday night: gambas al ajillo with 14 cloves of garlic. Plus artichoke ravioli in pesto and a side of tiny tomatoes.

Friday night: arroz con pollo with 6 cloves of garlic.

Saturday: making beef broth with 6 cloves of garlic, which will become stew that might involve more garlic.

Ai yi yi. I am drinking lots of mint tea. And eyeing recipes for chicken with 40 cloves of garlic.

Posted at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I told a friend awhile back that I cook the way other people knit, and I notice more and more that it’s true. I’ve always cooked for a variety of reasons, but a shift has happened in the year since I’ve finished my exams: the cooking has become more important than the eating. Last week in Arkansas, when my parents and I finally arrived home after dealing with Grandpa’s ashes, I unthinkingly wandered straight to the kitchen, did the dishes, shooed away my mother, re-organized all of her canned goods, and then whomped up a pot of cream of tomato soup and three different kinds of melty sandwiches according to everyone’s specifications. When Mister Husband picked me up at the airport last Saturday, he asked me where I wanted to go from there. I just wanted to go home, and once there I cooked a huge breakfast of potatoes-and-onions, soy sausage, biscuits, and eggs over easy. Being busy in the kitchen is my way of being still. Quiet, useful motion stills the mind. And it’s a way of being together, of engaging with the larger world. All week, we’ve been trading off two-night dinner shifts, since both of us have so many ideas for meals right now. At Mister Husband’s suggestion, we’re trying to move away from the American model of food hoarding, instead shopping daily or every other day for the freshest items for that night’s dinner.

Cooking-as-a-way-of-communing also seems to have seeped into my friendships. C. ( a longtime foodie) and I have spent many Saturdays scavenging our ways through the cities’ Farmer’s Markets and specialty stores. And I’ve developed a habit of showing up at G’s house at 7 am on our writing days, long knives in tow, and elbowing my way into his kitchen. (He’s the crepe and granola king, though. I wouldn’t even presume.) It’s also how I kill time. Wandering around the airport while waiting, I drifted into a bookstore and back out with the new Bourdain and Pollan. I didn’t notice until later that all I had bought was food books. Before, some other nonfiction would have snuck in. Not this time, evidently.

I’m not a particularly fancy cook. I just putter along with whatever I think is interesting. It’s meditation and it's chemistry. Lately there have been a hundred pots of soup in the house, made by both of us: beef stew, posole, dairy-free butternut squash. We were talking yesterday about how soup is marvelous because of the building process: browning, sweating, boiling, simmering. You get to chop things in four different ways. You get to extract essences to make stock. On certain days, you get to blow stuff up. Whatever it is that I’m making, there’s a certain point where I start to wonder what would happen if I do THIS. Or THAT.

What the hell. Cleaning up isn’t what hard and I rarely have to throw things out. The problem is what to do with all the food. Two people can only eat so much, especially since we don’t always both like the same foods. And so I am already becoming an old Southern cook like my grandma, giving food away to friends and neighbors. I don’t know anyone else who does this anymore, but I’ve been foisting apple butter on everybody, taking the CSA turnips to my neighbor, hauling containers of soup down the street.

I like this. It suits me. And it’s becoming part of my larger process in ways I can’t quite explain yet. This weekend is a collaborative beef stew, two days in the making. I’m thawing bones to build the stock today, which I’ll turn over to Mister Husband. I cannot wait.

Posted at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

1. Procure some morsels of candied ginger covered in dark chocolate.
2. Pop one into your mouth. Crunch just a bit, then savor.
3. Appreciate. Swallow. Linger.
4. Take a sip of dark-roasted Mexican coffee, possibly au lait.
5. Oh my.

Posted at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Back in the spring, C. and I decided to split a share of veggie and fruit boxes from Harmony Valley Farms. It was a cost-effective choice — much less than buying an equivalent amount of completely organic produce from a store — and we both wanted to support local, sustainable agriculture. I also figured that having a box of mixed produce automatically show up every week could only improve my eating habits.

The fruit box, which is filled with items from an organic fruit co-op that seems to span the continent, has been an unqualified success. It’s amazing stuff, and we both fear that it’s turned us into total fruit snobs. C waxed rapturous on her blog (which seems to have no permalinks):

The pears were creamy and luscious, only slightly grainy. The grapefruit, perfectly pink, sweeter and less bitter. The pluots sweet and firm. The oranges the epitome of citrus sweetness. Everything was SO VERY RIPE, I felt as if I had tasted fruit for the first time. And then TODAY. Today is when I ate the last of my melons, a personal-sized watermelon. I cut it open---and---yes, it was a yellow watermelon, and likely the sweetest, most flavorful watermelon I've ever tasted.

The veggie box is more of a mixed bag for us. The produce is high-quality, and the farm obviously puts a lot of effort into producing lovely specimens. They also put a fair amount of thought into growing new and different things each year. I’m a fairly adventurous cook, and I’ve mostly enjoyed the challenge of figuring out what to do with unfamiliar foods. (I know now that I like black radish, for instance.) But C. hasn’t been feeling quite as up to it, which is understandable. She has a high-pressure job, and isn’t always in the mood to figure out how to cook some strange thing after a long day of logistics and text wrangling. I’m tired of trying to like certain things, and of feeling guilty about the beets and turnips that go bad because there’s nobody in this house that will go near them.

The other problem for everyone involved is the massive flooding that happened recently in Southern Wisconsin. The farm suffered major crop and topsoil loss as well as structure and equipment damage. They’ve had to lay off workers because of the lost income, which in turn means that things can’t be cleaned up and repaired as quickly because of the lost manpower. It’s a terrible time for small farmers in this part of the country right now. In spite of that, the farm newsletter reports that quite a few jerks wrote or called to cancel their shares because they “would not accept anything less than bounty.” We’ve kept our share, because we figure that when you buy into a farm you’re in for better or for worse. But the boxes are smaller. And shortly after the box pick-up the week after the storm, an email was sent out notifying everyone that some of the produce was likely contaminated by unsanitary flood waters. I ended up throwing everything out that week, and now I’m increasingly paranoid about washing food.

We’ve decided that we’ll continue the fruit box next year, but not the veggie box. Instead, C and I will resume our weekly trip to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, where everything is local and small-farm but not necessarily organic. We’ll buy the things we want and only as much of them as we need, which will result in less waste. And it’ll be a chance to walk and talk together outside, which is something that picking up a box just doesn’t encourage.

Posted at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I attempted homemade chiles rellenos for dinner, and it turns out they’re not all that hard to make. I ran poblanos under the broiler to blacken, stuck them in a bag for a few minutes, and removed the skin. Then I cut a slit, stripped the seed heads out (from the inside — you want to keep the stems), and stuffed the remains with queso blanco. I dipped them in this batter* and fried them up. (The batter is persnickety, since the egg whites deflate fast. Be quick.) Do them in whatever size batch fits your pan and keep them in a hot oven while you're frying the rest.

The sauce is two dried chiles nuevo mexico, reconstituted and whirled around with some of the soaking water, a small onion, and half a tomato. When the rellenos are almost done, fry the sauce in a bit of olive oil. Then plate everything. Serve with hot flour tortillas on the side.

I sort of doubted that there was any way to make these outside of a restaurant, but they turned out pretty well. I’ll definitely make them again.

*The rest of the recipe is just silly, but the batter works and the comments do a lot to rehabilitate the recipe itself.

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I didn’t go to the Farmer’s Market once in July. I got so in the habit of going with C. that when she was out of town, I forgot take myself over there. The deeper meaning of this is that I missed an entire month of tomatoes, a month I'll never get back. And I am a woman who spent all spring longing and waiting for the first tomatoes so show up, who occasionally caved and bought stupid $5 greenhouse heirloom tomatoes because she just couldn’t stand it. The only thing left to do is try to make up for lost time.

So I went downtown this morning and hauled back a pint of cherry and pear tomatoes, two pounds of yellow tomatoes, and quite a few pounds of romas. And fresh bread. And two bunches of basil.

As I was buying the yellow tomatoes, a woman next to me asked what they tasted like. My best answer is golden, lower-acid and more mellow than reds, but still unmistakenly tomatoes. My Sainted Grandma started growing them when I was very small, and I’ve loved them ever since. I turned one of these into a tomato sandwich the second I got home, and then set to work converting the romas into marinara sauce. Onions and olive oil into the pot, then eventually half a head of garlic, then the tomatoes. And then I got out the mezzaluna.

I rarely use the mezzaluna, but it does a great job on herbs. I get sentimental whenever I have it in my hands, since it was one of the first things Mister Husband and I bought together when we decided to set up housekeeping. Rocking the blade across the wood, I can’t help but remember those early shopping trips, which were all about kitchens and hope. That’s what this post was really about, although I felt the need to be more oblique at the time.

The world begins and ends at the table, in the kitchen. And maybe love begins there, too.

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Years ago, my old work-friend Melissa taught me to make potato salad sandwiches. I don’t make them very often, or even every year, but yesterday the refrigerator happened to contain homemade potato salad, CSA greens mix, pumpernickel bread, and some coarse-ground mustard. It was a sign unto me that a sandwich was imminent. It was good, and very summertime.

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Lotsa chiles.

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About a year ago, Jen opened her own artisinal food business. I ordered a pot of damson butter from her posthaste, because I knew that something made by someone who loves food so much and writes so well could not possibly be bad. When it arrived (along with an impeccable sheet of relevant scientific/technical copy that I should have saved as an example for my students), it went straight into the pantry. I’m the only jam-eater in my house, and I was already working my way through a jar of muscadine jelly and a pot of fig jam. It’s taken me awhile to finish those off.

Today is rainy and dark, perfect for biscuits. And it was finally time to open a new pot of something sweet and preserved. This damson butter is magic — deep and complex, perfectly textured. Jen is an absolute master. I wish this could be an advertisement for Bakerina Kitchens, but the enterprise is shuttered. (With good reason: the profit margins were slender and the Bakerina is plotting to go to law school.) She’ll be brilliant at it, but I hope she eventually finds a way to return to her weekend chefery and food blogging. My day has been improved by it, and so will every other day that this pot of damson butter makes an appearance. (Thankfully, I eat preserves slowly. That means quite a few days for quite awhile to come.)

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If you are a fan of Anthony Bourdain, you’ll want to click right over to ruhlman. It would appear that His Highnass is guest-blogging now.

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Cabbage, potatoes, and kielbasa braised in porter and beef broth. Perfect freezing February food, were it not for the fact that our apartment is subtropical on the lowest possible setting. (The building’s hot water heat is overly sufficient.)

I also made this roasted squash puree with apple and ginger the other night. Yummy bachelorette-night food, and very filling.

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As everyone knows, I’m from Arkansas. Mister Husband is Oklahoman by way of California. You would think we would have fairly similar food backgrounds, especially given the fact that my in-laws are straight-up Oklahomans. But no. In more than four years, we have still not managed to resolve the issue of cornbread. We disagree on several key aspects:

1. Basic Geometry: Where I come from (my grandma’s kitchen), cornbread is round. Always. She made hers in a pie plate, but cast iron skillets really do give a better crust. It is sliced like pie, so that you end up with wedges. Cornbread may also come in the form of muffins, which are, of course, round.

   It will not surprise you to hear that Mister Husband makes square cornbread. Rectangular, actually, which is then cut into squares.

2. Dimensions: When making round cornbread, one makes a lot. There should be enough batter to mostly fill the pie plate or skillet. Once it rises, the baking dish will be filled completely. When all is said and done, the result is a thick wedge of cornbread 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick. This is diametrically opposed to Mister Husband’s theory of thickness, wherein the cornbread must be thin so as to maximize the ratio of crust to breadiness.


3. Bisecting and Final Form: When served a hot wedge (or square) of cornbread, one slices it in half and butters it. This we agree upon. I feel strongly that the two slices must remain separate for individual delectation. He puts them back together and eats them that way. This difference is directly related to individual philosophies of dimensionality: a thick piece is too thick to eat unless cut in half, and a thin piece is too delicate to pick up unless it’s mushed together.

Continue reading "culture clash" »

Posted at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It’s like this outside.

So I let some boneless short ribs simmer all afternoon with some onion, garlic, and chiles.

Then I built a soup and made some cornbread. It’s just about ready now.

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Every year since I was old enough to cook, I’ve instigated a big ol’ traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Not this year, though. Exams have taken too much out of me. Today we’re having the meal I usually make for New Year’s: ham, scalloped potatoes, brussel sprouts, rolls. I tacked on homemade cranberry sauce and a pumpkin pie (frozen crust, homemade filling.)

I’ll make a turkey and stuffing and whatnot for Christmas, I think. And then on New Year’s, if I’m feeling brave, I’ll attempt tamales. If less brave, then perhaps more pozole.

I’m in a strange mood today. My exams are not completed, since I was ill on Tuesday, which is when I was supposed to write the last 24-hour one. I teach MWF at noon this semester, so it couldn’t be done on Wednesday. My class and I had pizza, though, and talked through several videos and spoken word performances, looking for what we could learn about cadence and movement. Then Mister Husband and I took off exploring across the city. Today is devoted to cooking and hanging out. Tomorrow I’ll finish that damned exam.

I’m thankful to be very nearly done with writtens. Thankful for a wonderful family, excellent friends, and supportive colleagues. Health and hope, books and blogs. This world is such an interesting place, and there’s always something amazing around the corner. Yesterday I found myself face to face with three African lungfish (in a fish store, where else?). They looked sleepy, and content not to have to worry about breathing air. We have fifty or so baby corys, all less than three weeks old. I’ve never watched fish hatch and grow up before, so I’m fascinated.

I’m not sure where all that is going, so I’ll end it here. I’ll go be thankful in the living room for awhile.

Update:: I managed to create only one load of dishes in the course of making dinner. I sort of wondered if I could (since I often don’t manage it even in the course of a normal weekday dinner.) And something was up with the oven: the dial was set to 325 (and the thermometer read 350, as per usual), but everything took longer to cook. The potatoes took nearly an hour and 45 minutes, and the rolls took nearly twice as long as usual. The whole thing reminded me of the story about Tori Amos cooking for Trent Reznor in the house the Manson murders occurred in, cooking the chicken that refused to ever be done.

Posted at 1:00 PM | Permalink

I’ve been a fan of Stash Tea’s Double Bergamot Earl Grey for quite awhile, but I trembled a bit when I bought a box of Double Spice Chai the other day. Double cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon sounds like a lot, but it turned out to be just about perfect, especially with a sprinkling of raw sugar. It makes sense that I like it, really, since I’m one of those people for whom too much is just barely enough. If you’re a fan of robust chais and don’t mind bagged tea, give it a try.

Posted at 2:12 PM | Permalink

I made pozole for the first time last night. Wasn’t hard, and turned out mighty good. Since I was always too worried about authenticity before to attempt it, I thought I’d put the recipe for White Girl Pozole here.

First, you get some pork. If we were Really Authentic we’d get a pig’s head, but since we’re white girls we’ll just go to Super Target. Vaguely Authentic would mean short ribs, but god forbid Target have anything so un-yuppie. I settled for loin roast.

Then you whack it up into fist-sized chunks. All the serious Mexican soups I’ve had demanded a knife and fork, and I wanted to preserve at least that part of it. One must resist the white girl urge to dice. Or cube. Or mince. (Oh, how we love to mince.) I cut a 2.2 pound roast into six chunks.

Then I browned it in two batches, deglazed the pan, and covered the whole thing with water. I sliced up half a head of garlic, threw it in there, added some oregano (in place of epazote) and a can of chicken broth, and let the whole thing boil for an hour and a half. If it foams, skim it.

While that’s going on, cover a couple of chiles nuevo mexico with boiling water. (You might also use anchos or guajillos if you have them, but I didn’t.) Cover and soak for a half an hour or whenever you remember them. Then put on some gloves to cut off the stems and de-seed. Roughly chop and put in a food processor. Roughly chop half an onion and put it in there too. Whir with however much of the soaking liquid you need.

Add as much of the results to the soup pot as you like. When the pork is about half an hour away from being fall-apart tender, cut some potatoes in half and stick them in there too, along with a couple cans of hominy. I also added some shredded cabbage, but I think it’s more traditional to add that straight to the bowls.

Dice a tomatillo, chop an avacado and some cilantro, quarter a lime. Let everyone dress their own bowls. Pozole will cure what ails ya, which is good because we’ve both got colds. And it reheats very nicely.

Posted at 6:55 PM | Permalink

C. showed up on my doorstep last night, fresh from a weekend trip to North Dakota. Her grandparents had transformed her sedan into a produce truck, and she bestowed much bounty upon us. Pumpkins, cantaloupes, watermelons, gourds. Tomatoes, fresh, canned, and juiced. Salsa and cherry jam. Homemade pumpkin pie made from her grandma’s pumpkins. Peppers both hot and mild. Freshly dug red potatoes. Leeks complete with full stalks, roots, and dirt. We hauled a huge tote bag and a full garbage bag of stuff up the stairs to my kitchen.

Today I had pie for breakfast and set to making leek and potato soup. I make it several times each year, but it’s been awhile since I’ve worked with whole, entire leeks. I sheared off the tops and the hanging roots last night and then mopped the dirt off the counters and floors. Today I pared more from the bottom and tops, rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, and then chopped them up. All the while, I kept thinking of my grandparents’ leek patch back in Arkansas.

I doubt it exists anymore, since grandpa moved out years ago. It was underneath a gumball tree that bordered the back field, and it was somehow very mysterious. I’m not sure why, but when I was small I could never remember what was planted there. Grandma would always look at me funny and say, “You know that’s leeks.” She would haul the huge, filthy things up to the patio for trimming, and then inside for soup. The trimmings always went into the compost piles. The soup did not go into Kristas, even though it was offered every time. “You used to like this,” she said. “We would make it for you and bring it over in a thermos when you were sick. Some days it was the only thing you would eat.” When you were sick meant when you had meningitis. I barely remember anything from the months after I came home from the hospital, but I do remember her coming by often with my great-grandmother. I did not eat leeks after that. I didn’t eat many things I associated with being that ill.

It wasn’t until long after both of them passed on that I was paging through a cookbook looking for something different to make and happened upon a recipe for leek and potato soup. I had forgotten that she made it for me, forgotten what it tasted like, forgotten that I refused it all those years after. I made it and gave some to Mom. It was good. I keep making it, sometimes from different recipes but most often freehand. I refine it, trying to find the essence of the leeks. If I try hard enough, perhaps I’ll also uncover the essence of grandma, a middle-aged woman preparing a cure the best way she knew how, bottling soup and crossing the river to me.

Posted at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I bought these tiny pattypans at the Farmer’s Market recently. (That's a quarter there with them, for scale.) Problem is, I have no idea how to cook them. Almost all the recipes I’ve found are for stuffed pattypans, but that doesn’t seem feasible for such little ones. Should I just steam them? Anybody?

Posted at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For most of my life, I wasn’t at all fond of any sort of peppers. (Loved spices, though, including those that incorporated peppers. But any actually evident pepper was verboten.) Then I started working with a bunch of restauranteurs who had a chile pepper fixation, and so I learned to enjoy jalepenos and anaheims and poblanos and (sometimes, a little) habaneros. Went through a phase of chile rellenos for breakfast. Learned that while I really liked to have those tiny red Thai chiles in dishes, it’s best not to actually eat them. Got accustomed to having a big bag of dried chiles nuevo mexico in the cabinet for various purposes. Got curious enough to try whatever other types I came across. So yeah, me and the chiles were good.

But I still didn’t like milder peppers, right up until about a month ago. I might buy one to put in a dish that called for it, but I would certainly never consider them a major component of a meal. And eating one by itself? Never ever ever. Ew.

Then my friend C. came over and made a big pot of vegetarian chili that had about eleventy-seven kinds of peppers in it, including green, red, and yellow bells. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I ate it out of politeness. And it was pretty good. And then I ate a ton of mild-ish peppers in Chicago. This week bell peppers went on sale at the grocery store, so I bought a pound of them and just sort of looked at them for a week, thinking I’d make a pepper soup recipe I’d found. But I’d seen so many recipes that called for roasted peppers, and I’d never done that before, and I knew I liked them since I just ate a passel of them on our trip. So I fired up the broiler and roasted them up. Cooled them in a bag, scraped off the skin.

I’ve been eating them off the plate and putting them on naan with a bit of hummus. Mister Husband cooked them into omelets last night. I’m thinking that when they show up at the Farmer’s Market, I’m going to keep roasted pepper salad around.

All of that would have been implausible for me a month ago. So thank you, C., for making that crazy pot of chili.

Posted at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It’s been far too long since there’s been an Apartment Gardening update, don’t you agree? OK, perhaps not. But I feel like sharing anyway.

I was pretty successful with growing basil from seedlings I bought at the nursery last year, and thought I'd just do that again. I never had much luck with seeds before, although my grandparents started flats and flats of herbs and veggies early every year when I was little.

A few weeks ago, one of my Sci/Tech Presentations students, L., did her demonstrative presentation on How To Start Plants From Seed. And then I wandered by a 99-cent rack of seeds at the supermarket and thought, “Why the hell not?” I followed L.’s instructions and then went off to Chicago and when I got back, poof, basil seedlings! And now I’m thinking that if it’s really this easy, then I’m going to grow basil all year in the window. That little packet of seeds will last me for several more rounds — far more economically efficient than buying seedlings or buying basil at the store. Plus, this way is much more fun.

Posted at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Seems like an unlikely title for a blog post, but someone just wrote and asked me about the stew beef in this recipe. The writer complains of it being tough. My houseguest, who is actually a much more competent and adventurous cook than I, also had a run-in with it lately. So it seems like a post on stew beef is needed. This isn’t the only way to do it, but it’s the way I do it.

The main thing you need to know is that you cannot just go buy a package of stew beef, dump it in something, and then dish it up a short amount of time later. Well, you can, but it will indeed be tough. Stew beef cannot just be used. It must be dealt with. Plan on enough time to go through the process.

So first, you get out your cutting board and a knife you like that has a fairly sharp blade. Trim all the beef in your package. This means that you cut off all the bits that aren’t meat — connective tissue, fat, whatever. While you’re at it, cut the hunks in half if they’re too big to be bite sized.

Then, get out your heavy-bottomed skillet* and heat it fairly hot. Brown the meat in small batches. If you put it all in there at once, you’ll stew it, not brown it. In between batches, deglaze the pan. Dump the results (and the beef) into your stew pot. This is important for two reasons: if you don’t deglaze, you’ll end up with a bunch of burnt crap all over your nice heavy pan. And loosening all the brown bits with the liquid gives whatever you’re making that much more flavor.

OK. You’ve browned and deglazed and browned and deglazed and kept on going until you’re done. Good job. Add the rest of liquid (stock, vegetable juice, whatever) to your stew pot. Dice up an onion and a bunch of garlic and toss them in there, too. Add spices (remembering that you can always adjust their levels later.) Put on a lid and let the whole thing simmer — not boil — for two or three hours. Then add in the rest of your ingredients according to cooking times.

Voila. Beef stew made with tender stew beef. Serve with a festive adult beverage. You deserve it.

*You do own a heavy ass skillet, don’t you? If not, get one. Cast iron, even, if you’re willing to deal with the seasoning process. Here’s the rule of thumb: if you couldn’t kill someone with the pan, or at least inflict serious damage, then it’s not worth having.

Posted at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back in my late teens and early 20s, I was a vegetarian.

Then I wasn’t anymore.

I became steadily more carnivorous.

These past few years, I have eaten many, many steaks and roasts.

Lately, I’ve tired of it, mostly because of the way it makes my body feel. Mister Husband and I struck a deal, and balance meatless meals with meatcentric ones.

Some days, I don’t eat any meat at all. Some days I don’t eat it until dinner time. Some days I eat it every meal. Whatever feels right.

The other night I felt like salmon. Steak for him and salmon for me. I broiled mine up with mustard, lemon, and dill. It was truly lovely.

I ate part of it. The rest looked like Rumble Fish. I let it sit in the fridge for two days until I threw it away.

I’m not sure where all of this is taking me at the moment.

Posted at 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

1. Procure a smallish butternut squash, or a largish one if you have more people. I used a smallish one.
2. Hose baking dish down with non-stick spray. Whack squash in half length-wise and scrape out the seeds. Bake at 350 until squooshy. Remove, cool, and scrape innards off of skin.
3. Select a leek, a shallot, and as much garlic as suits you. Bigger squash = more of this stuff. Choppety-chop.
4. Sauteé the aforementioned in the best olive oil you can afford. Shallots, then leeks, then garlic.
5. Dump in squash. Moosh it all up with the back of your stirring spoon.
6. Add between a half and a whole cup of milk, depending on how much dairy you want. Or you can use no dairy at all.
7. Dump in some chicken stock (or veggie stock, if you want to be vegan about it.) Whir with immersion blender.
8. Repeat until you reach the consistency you want.
9. Taste. Season with powdered ginger and Hungarian paprika. Or nutmeg. Or white pepper or black pepper and sea salt.
10. Taste again.
11. Taste again.
12. Decant portion into suitably colored bowl. (I used dark blue.) Consume.

Posted at 11:38 AM | Permalink

I made Chinese Chicken Noodle Soup with Sesame and Green Onions for dinner, and it was pretty good. Needs straw mushrooms next time, I think.

Also watching King Kong LIves, and finally realizing that I really don’t handle Kong films well at all. I’m more upset by this than I was by Million Dollar Baby, which we finally got around to last night. That script is a fixed fight. Kong, on the other hand... Monkey just want to be. People should leave the monkey alone.

This news story about a mouse who got revenge on the man who tried to kill him by burning down his house makes me feel a little better.

Posted at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sometimes what’s needed is a cookie that is beautiful in its simplicity. A perfectly buttery sugar cookie, perhaps. A simple chocolate cookie made with deep dark dutch-processed cocoa. Peanut butter, with nothing else stirred in there.

These are so not that sort of cookie. They’re for the times when you need a fabulously junked-up cookie with all kinds of stuff baked in. They may also become my official New Year’s cookie, because they’re very, very good — and even better if you can manage not to overcook them. The recipe comes from Cook’s, which is written by the most anal-retentive food writers in the business. If you want to know what works in a recipe and what doesn’t and why, then this is your magazine. (It’s even better if someone who loves you sends you a gift subscription. Thanks Mom.)

Continue reading "oatmeal pecan chocolate cherry cookies" »

Posted at 9:21 AM | Permalink

Posted at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my late teens, when I was cooking and wanted to be a cook, I read M.F.K. Fisher on nights when the restaurant was slow. I lingered over the five books in The Art of Eating, particularly How to Cook a Wolf and Serve It Forth.

We are in the midst of a two-day winter storm. I am eating clementines, and thinking of those dark Southern nights.

...It was then that I discovered little dried sections of tangerine. My pleasure in them is subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable. I can only write how they are prepared.

In the morning, in the soft sultry chamber, sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently; do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent. If you find the Kiss, the secret section, save it for Al.

Listen to the chambermaid thumping up the pillows, and murmur encouragement to her thick Alsatian tales of l'intérieure. That is Paris, the interior, Paris or anywhere west of Strasbourg or maybe the Vosges. While she mutters of seduction and French bicyclists who ride more than wheels, tear delicately from the soft pile of sections each velvet string. You know those white pulpy strings that hold tangerines into their skins? Tear them off. Be careful. Take yesterday's paper (when we were in Strasbourg L'Ami du Peuple was best, because when it got hot the ink stayed on it) and spread it on top of the radiator. The maid has gone, of course - it might be hard to ignore her belligerent Alsatian glare of astonishment.

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them. Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of quetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. You are sorry, but -

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

All afternoon you can sit, then, looking down on the corner. Afternoon papers are delivered to the kiosk. Children come home from school just as three lovely whores mince smartly into the pension's chic tearoom. A basketful of Dutch tulips stations itself by the tram-stop, ready to tempt tired clerks at six o'clock. Finally the soldiers stump back from the Rhine. It is dark.

The sections of the tangerine are gone, and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.

There must be someone, though, who understands what I mean. Probably everyone does, because of his own secret eatings.

“Borderlands,” Serve It Forth

Posted at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This time of the semester, “quick” is the basic culinary watchword around here. This means frozen stir-fries, refrigerated pastas, crock-pot meat, and, on occasion, take-out and Helper. As in Tuna Helper, Hamburger Helper, etc. We are careful to maintain some laughable semblance of standards, using ground sirloin and solid white albacore in the Helper. In the course of being a grad student, I’ve managed to develop a relationship with Creamy Garlic Tuna Helper, particularly in cold, cold weather.

So yesterday I arrived home from teaching with take-out lunch in hand only to find Mister Husband at the stove whipping up a batch of tuna and noodles. We decided to put it in the fridge and eat what I’d brought home for lunch. Mister Husband muttered something about the tuna having black flecks in it, and I thought it did look suspicious. He had drained it into the sink and then thrown the can in the trash, and by late afternoon it smelled like three-day old tuna in the kitchen. We ran a bunch of hot water down the pipes, took out the trash, and went off to our evening seminar.

This morning, the kitchen reeked. Mister Husband teaches on Wednesday morning, so I just spent thirty minutes of my copious spare time executing the following:

• cleaned the drains with baking soda and vinegar
• followed that with about a zillion gallons of hot water
• scrubbed the sink out with Comet With Bleach
• threw away the sponge
• threw away the Tuna Helper in the fridge, bleached the pan, and put it in the dishwasher
• Lysol’d the garbage can and put in a fresh liner
• hosed the kitchen and adjoining living room down with Oust and Febreeze
• hiked the trash out to the garbage cans, through the snow and 5 degree air

Posted at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Since I was about 11 and got my hands on a copy of Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen, I have been in the habit of adding sugar to cornbread. I don’t really believe in unsweetened cornbread as a matter of course. The day before Thanksgiving is the exception to this rule, because that’s when I make a big pan of unsweetened cornbread to use in the stuffing.

This morning, casting about for an unextravagant breakfast before stuffing the bird, it occurred to me that one other person in my life used to keep unsweetened cornbread around: my maternal grandma. And she would serve those leftovers with the last summer’s muscadine jelly. And I happened to have an open jar of muscadine jelly in the fridge.

This morning I am home for breakfast.

Posted at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Still no snow yet, but now the forecast is for 4-5 inches tomorrow night with more to come later in the week. Today was grey and wet with a steadily dropping temperature. Weather like this must mean soup.

I made the first soup of this winter last weekend, an old standby from my grandma. I had leftover cabbage from that, as well as some ham that needed to come out of the freezer, and the result was this cabbage and white bean soup. It turned out quite tasty, but I had to cook the beans way longer than the recipe suggests.

By the way, I heart Epicurious, because you can type in the main ingredients and what sort of dish you want in the search terms and it usually gives you something quite usable. (I found the above recipe by searching for “cabbage ham soup.”) The user ratings are also usually spot-on.

Posted at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I’ve written before (I think), I’ve developed a tea fixation over the past year or so. This has resulted in the gradual accumulation of an unseemly amount of tea (both bagged and loose) as well as accoutrement: tea pot for stove, porcelain pot for brewing, tea scoop, tea strainer, tea etcetera. It really is a reasonably affordable fetish for a grad student, though — more so than the equivalent connoisseurship of coffee or tobacco, say.

The problem is that it is cold here, and I am the only tea drinker in the house. It takes me awhile to drink a pot of tea, and it chills quickly. Therefore, I find myself in need of a tea cozy. The thing is, most cozies are positively revolting — ribbons and lace and twee little patterns. What I want is either a ridiculously badass one (pinups! skulls!), or a madhatter one. (I’m not sure what that would mean — I’m thinking some crazy victorian lady in the attic sort of thing.)

I ended up ordering one from Stash that is only mostly repugnant — black and white line drawings of kitties with the words "purr" and "ooh" written in cursive. Because dammit, my tea was getting cold. But if some crafty person were to make a decently cool cozy, I’d be one of the happiest little grad students on the planet.

Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I picked up a pound of local cranberries at the Farmer’s Market last weekend, and finally got around to baking part of them into a cake this evening. I’ve been using Profgrrrl’s recipe for the past year, and it never fails. I’m going to paste it in over here so I won’t have to root through my links and her archives every time I want to make it.

1 tablespoon margarine, melted
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 cups cranberries
1/4 cup stick margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350°.
Pour 1 tablespoon melted margarine in the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Combine brown sugar and cranberries; arrange in a single layer over margarine.

Cream 1/4 cup margarine and 1 cup sugar, beating at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended. Add eggs, one at time, beating well after each addition; add vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder, and cinnamon; stir well. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.

Spoon batter evenly over cranberries. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Invert cake onto a serving platter

Posted at 6:39 PM | Permalink

Or nearly all-cream, anyway. A new friend and I had been planning to cook for each other for awhile, and so we decided that we would each make heritage food from scratch. She made a German main course, side, and dessert, and I made two Southern sides and a dessert. This is what that translated to:

• German cream chicken
• Mashed potatoes with sour cream
• Cream gravy
• Cream pickles (new to me, and very good)
• Black-eyed peas, cooked with bacon
• Collard, turnip, and mustard greens, all cooked with bacon and then doused with butter
• Blueberry kuchen with cream crust and cream in the filling
• Banana cream pie made with half-and-half and whole milk and then topped with whipped cream

Posted at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is a rather lovely recipe for lemon-poppyseed pound cake. It’s extra bright tasting because of the final lemon syrup that goes on after it comes out of the oven.

Posted at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Again with the wheat. Dough came together fine and rose well. Two rises, then into a 450 degree oven for ten minutes, then 30 minutes at 350. Nice dome, great crust, great crumb. Not funny looking. Very tasty.

You’ll notice they are still in the bread pans. This is because they will.not.come.out. I used olive oil instead of butter to grease the pans, and now I know what happens when you do that.

Posted at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

These are the results of last weekend’s bake*, which represent my second attempt at bread baking and my first attempt at wheat. I let it go through three rises so we could go erranding that afternoon, and the final rise before the cold start was insufficient, I think. Also, I’m using the wrong flour. Also, the shaping went less well this time. They’re edible, but denser than I’d like. And funny looking.

Further attempts tomorrow, perhaps.

*Delayed reportage due to funky network issues that have spontaneously healed themselves.

Posted at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It turned out pretty well, I think. Especially for a first effort. No nice round domes, obviously, but they’re not bricks, either. Nice crust, nice flavor, decent texture. Not fluffy, but not too dense. (I wonder if I didn’t knead the dough enough?) Definitely better than store-bought, and it really doesn’t take that much time, especially if you’re in the house for the duration anyway. The process was quite a lot of fun. I had forgotten how alive the dough looks while you’re working with it. And, of course, the smells and all they trigger — one whiff and bam, I was five years old and sitting in my grandma’s kitchen on a hot afternoon made hotter by the oven.

I’ll definitely do it again.

Posted at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I determined that I would learn to bake during the summer I was 18, which would be 11 years ago now. Since then, I’ve become reasonably competent. I’m good with cookies and cakes and have little fear of pies and galettes, although I could use more practice with them. Cheesecakes are fine. I’ve never tried hardcore pastries, mostly for fear of my waistline (such as it is). Tarts remain on the list.

The thing that has always struck terror into my little cook’s heart, though, are breads. Anything yeast-based, really. My great-grandmother and grandma were yeast masters, and their kitchen was always full of wonderful smells and breads and rolls. My mom isn’t too shabby either, and she went through a bread phase a few years back. Me, on the other hand... Every other year or so, I decide that I’m going to tackle bread. And every time, I wuss out before I even start the first loaf.

This year is an even year in the cycle, which means that it’s time for me to consider the subject again. I woke up this morning and thought, “I shall bake bread.” Then I dragged out all my baking books and looked at the bread pr0n pictures and read about how simple it is, like I always do. Then I ran my mouth to Mister Boyfriend, and that was where I made my mistake. He has a baking history that includes brioches and all kinds of tasty whatnots (from before my tenure with him, sadly), and he still makes a mean loaf of bread-machine bread. He didn’t let me back out after my usual case of Bread Fear set in. So it has come to pass that I have a dough for simple white loaves making its first rise in the kitchen.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Posted at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Since regaining my ability to stand, I’ve been cooking like mad. Nothing particularly special, just food. Chicken with Penzey’s Bicentennial Rub. Dill potato salad with creole mustard and lots of celery. Buttermilk coffee cake. Oatmeal pancakes. Brussels sprouts. Salad. Steamed broccoli. Buttermilk biscuits. Miscellaneous fritattas.

This has led into some experimentation with common foods that I really should know what to do with but don’t. Last night was baked trout with lemon and rosemary. Good, but should have done a bit of time under the broiler to crisp up just a tad. I also finally got around to rhubarb, which I’ve been meaning to do ever since I first really noticed it at a market in Edinburgh five years ago. I don’t remember seeing it so much in Arkansas, but I’m not sure if it really isn’t so available there because the heat sets in so early or if I just wasn’t paying attention. Whatever, it exists up here, and I made a rhubarb and strawberry compote a few days back. Lovely over yoghurt. I bought more of it today to play with, since the season is so short.

What else? There’s the Adventures in Grains Initiative. I’ve generally bought reasonably healthy breakfast cereals, but lately got irked by the costs and the oils and sweeteners on the ingredient lists. And then I got my hands on a copy of Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Cafe — not a book I would ever have bought on my own, but Bakerina recommended it, and I’ve already made about five things from it in the two weeks since it arrived. There’s an extensive section on breakfast grains. The great thing about most of them is that you can make a large batch, refrigerate it, and then heat up portions in the morning. (This is the only way I can make this whole-grain thing work, since there’s no way I can bring myself to cook a pot of something for an hour or so on any morning.) So far I’ve finished off my box of steel-cut oats, done several days of polenta, and am now in the midst of anooshavoor, a barley and apricot porridge sweetened with apple juice.

What else? We’re working on spring cleaning, which involves more clearing than usual since the house got so out of sorts while I was stuck in bed and Mister Boyfriend was spending all his non-school time taking care of me. I repotted all the carnivores today (with the exception of the cobra lily). The flytrap has its own pot now so it can hibernate in a closet next winter. The one original round-leaved sundew had eight surviving babies before it died, which I have repotted in two pots in the hope of finally getting some sundews to my mother. My other sundews*, which came in a two-inch pot last fall, have now subdivided into four plants that take up an eight-inch oblong pot. They’re blooming their lavendar blooms, which are so pretty that I hate to lop them off even though I know they’re draining the plant.

What else? Rainy. 50's. Chili on the stove. The ankle is better every day.

*Not round-leaved. Not king sundews. I haven’t figured out what they are, but I know what they’re not.

Posted at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This house is composed of adults who go on eating jags, as previously noted. Really, when you happen across something good you should eat it daily, right? Currently, we are all about homemade burritos and frittatas. For burritos, Mister Boyfriend cooks up a batch of Mexican beef, which involves browning a batch of stew beef and then throwing in onions, garlic, chiles nuevo mexico, plus random salsa and hot sauce. Then he adds a can of beef broth and cooks it down until all the liquid is absorbed/reduced/boiled away. I whomp up a batch of spiced rice (the spicing of which is a continuing experiment) and some beans. One round of all that makes about three days worth of two-person lunches, and all you need to go with it are fresh cilantro, tortillas, and salsa.

Frittatas are also perfect, since even a grad student kitchen always contains some eggs, some potatoes, and some meat or veggies that need to be used up. I saute some onions and garlic and whatever else needs to be sauteed and set it aside. Then I cube and brown the potatoes, whisk the eggs, and combine everything. Let it sit on the burner for a bit to develop a bottom crust. Top with cheese if you want and then run the whole thing under the broiler. Serve alone or with salad. Et voila.

But tonight we are having neither of these things, although Mister Boyfriend did pick up more beef and cilantro during his after-class grocery run. I had been planning on pancakes for dinner. He brought home some lovely looking shrimp. So we looked at each other and figured “Why not?” No, not shrimp pancakes. But definitely a first course of shrimp cocktails followed by a main course of pancakes and real maple syrup. Not usual, but strangely compelling.

Posted at 6:57 PM | Permalink

I made ginger cake yesterday from this recipe. You make something resembling an oil slick from a cup of sugar, a cup of oil, and a cup of molasses, and then you add a big wad of fresh grated ginger, a teaspoon of black pepper, and a bunch of more typical ingredients to it. You also get to dump baking soda into boiling water, which is kinda fun. It came out very well, but they aren’t kidding when they say to use parchment in the pan.

Completely unrelated:
Not being a math or biology person, the pragmatic physical issues involved with scaling people and monsters up and down in B-movies never really occurred to me. Pharyngula points out The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, which is quite the fascinating examination of the subject.

Posted at 1:54 PM | Permalink

Apparently I‛m going to the Profgrrrl School of Baking during this break. I‛m eating warm cranberry upside down cake, which is quite delightful, and contemplating cranberries in general. (Nothing cosmic - just their proliferation in my kitchen over the past month or so.) I made the recipe pretty much as suggested, except I managed to pulverize the ginger while grating and so just mixed it into the batter. Yum. I‛ll make it again sometime, probably with a drizzle of honey on the brown sugar-cranberry mix. Maybe more ginger. I also think it would also be good as cranberry-pineapple cake.

I find that I like filing recipes here on the blog. It keeps them all in one place, and it feels good to pass them and ideas about them along. And I think people actually use them, judging from the number of recent searches for cranberry mouse.

Posted at 4:58 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I made my first ham, and it turned out quite well if I do say so myself. (Good thing, too - an eight pound ham leaves a lot of leftovers for two people.) I used this recipe minus the cloves and cherries to suit household tastes. I also made scalloped potatoes and brussels sprouts, and altogether it was quite enough.

Posted at 2:59 PM | Permalink

I just made a batch of the cranberry scones Profgrrrl blogged a few weeks ago. I‛ve never made scones before. Lots of cakes and cookies and pie/cobblers/galettes, but no scones. And now I want to know where scones have been all my life, because they're incredibly easy to make and quite wonderful to eat. Sweet but not too sweet, sort of like an excuse to eat shortbread out of hand. These scones very much remind me of the shortbread my grandmother used to make to go with the first tiny, tart strawberries in May.

*I think that for my own tastes, I'll increase the cranberries and orange peel slightly next time.

Posted at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made this out of sheer curiosity, since it seems so counterintuitive to pour a bunch of boiling water over a mixture before it goes into the oven. It works well, just as promised. I don‛t like dates, so I substituted dried mission figs. It was okay, but the seeds in the figs slightly skew the texture. I‛m thinking apricots next time. Or the quite obvious raisins.

Continue reading "Easy Sticky Toffee Dessert" »

Posted at 8:14 AM | Permalink

I‛ve written before about my lifelong interest in cooking, and about how food is life. What I haven‛t written about is the fact that I‛ve had the kitchen equivalent of writer‛s block (cook‛s block?) for nearly two years. I spent my late teens and the first half of my twenties cooking up wonderful things, plating beautiful food, gleefully accepting compliments and encouragement to return to the restaurant business. I became arrogant enough about it - and it became sacred enough to me - that I made a point of only cooking for people I loved or was quite close to. Then I quit my job, started my masters, and met Mister Boyfriend, who quickly became someone who I wanted to cook things for. It was a combination of wanting to give a gift and having a few tricks up my sleeve, since I was very accustomed to wooing through cooking.

And then I lost my mojo. Completely. It started with the dumpling pixie. Things began to turn out ... okay. Wonderful things like pork loin stuffed with breadcrumbs, portabellas and bleu cheese came out ... not bad. Spaghetti sauce was edible. A triple-chocolate cheesecake was pretty good. And then things became dismal. I remember making an apple pie from scratch that was carefully spiced and spiked with applejack that, when cut into, barely even tasted like apple. Roasted chicken came out of the oven with a slightly greenish tint. After six months of this I quit doing any real cooking. When it was my turn in the kitchen we had frozen pizza or Stouffer‛s lasagna or ramen. And lots of sandwiches. I was devastated to have suddenly lost something that constituted such a large part of my identity.

Continue reading "Writing and Cooking" »

Posted at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last week I had a bowl full of tangerines that were about to turn and was in a pudding mood, so I made Tangerine Pudding from the recipe on page 224 of November's Gourmet. It turned out pretty well - very bright in flavor, good for approximating sunshine when the ground is covered in snow. And reasonably healthy too, if you leave the whipped cream off.

Maybe I'll get around to baking soon. Profgrrrl's got me totally curious about making scones.

Continue reading "tangerine pudding" »

Posted at 5:47 AM | Permalink

I made pumpkin bread yesterday from this recipe, with the addition of walnuts and zante currants. It tastes exactly like something that starts off with three cups of sugar, three eggs and a cup of oil should taste. Very holiday. I'd make it again, but not too often. And I'll cut back on the sugar the next time (as several commenters on the recipe suggest) - three cups is just too much sweetness.

Posted at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lately I�ve been thinking about the foods my maternal grandma cooked a lot when I was small. I haven�t had any of them in years, since I wasn�t able to visit her regularly after the age of 11 and she passed away the day after I turned 20. She was always a big one for clipping recipes from newspapers and magazines and tinkering with them. One summer when I was 8 or 9, she tired of sifting through all of her clippings and decided that she would hand-copy all of them onto lined notebook paper and keep everything in a three ring binder. She worked on it for weeks, and she let me copy a few as long as I promised to use my very best penmanship. The result was a two-inch binder crammed full of recipes that mom inherited last year when grandpa finally sold the house.

When the weather turned cold up here, I started thinking about some of the recipes that I particularly remembered. Enough time has passed, I guess, that I can begin to cook these dishes. So I called home and mom got the big binder and rummaged around in it. I copied the recipes down as she read them over the phone. It would have been more efficient to scan and email them, but it somehow seemed more right to do it slowly, by voice and pen, over the phone.

Last night I made the first one, Cabbage Patch Soup, tinkering all the while to adapt it to my spicier tastes. It came out very well. With the big pan of cornbread I made to go alongside it, it�ll last for a few days. Here�s the recipe, in case you�re wondering.

1 � 2 pounds stew beef*
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large anaheim pepper, chopped*
3-4 cloves garlic, minced*
� cup celery, chopped

Brown the above in an appropriate amount of olive oil. I browned the beef separately in two batches, deglazed the pan with stock, and dumped the results into the soup pot. Then add:

4 cans beef stock*
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can kidney beans with liquid
1 can chili beans with liquid
2 cups cabbage, shredded
fresh-ground pepper*
sea salt*
Hungarian paprika*
Chili powder*

I drained the liquid from the beans, added it along with the stock, tomatoes and seasoning, and let the whole thing simmer for a couple of hours. Then I added the beans about an hour and the cabbage about a half-hour before serving. It's a good winter soup, full-flavored and hearty.

*The original recipe calls for ground beef instead of stew beef, bell pepper instead of anaheim, pre-ground pepper, iodized salt, and doesn�t include beef broth, garlic, paprika or chili powder. There was a time in my life when I would have made my own stock and then soaked and cooked the beans from scratch, but now is not that time. Plus, being that purist would have ruined the spirit of a recipe clipped from the newspaper, I think.

Posted at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We've had a powerful hankering for meatloaf lately, but we're not so sure about eating ground cow these days. However, life without meatloaf (and meatloaf sandwiches) really isn't worth living. So a couple of nights ago, I made one from a pound of ground lamb, a pound of ground pork, onion, a lot (a very lot) of garlic, red pepper, white pepper, black pepper, two eggs, ketchup, and rolled oats. Turned out beautifully, and I just had a meatloaf sandwich with lots of Zatarain's Creole Mustard for lunch. If you're a meat person and looking for a substitute for ground beef, I highly recommend ground lamb.

Posted at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

"[�] I think that in order to really care about food, you have to have experienced depression, or at least great difficulties. This is not to say that everyone who's depressed is a gourmet, of course. But most of the people I know who really, sincerely happy most of the time are also profoundly uninterested in food. Food for them is just fuel to get them through the next day at the beach. Whereas people who've experienced great pain, either self-inflicted or not, sometimes come to the preparation and eating of great food as both a comfort and an affirmation of life, sometimes much needed and hard to find. Or then again, maybe everybody's fucking miserable, and some of them also like to eat."

You know, I hadn't thought about it all that much before, but I think Julie's got a point. I've cooked since I was old enough to stand on a step stool and boil water for Jello, but I didn't start to get really interested in it until my late teens, when I entered a rather deep depression that lasted several years. Right about the same time it started, I developed an obsession with fresh produce, with the right way to fry chicken, and with teaching myself to bake. (Never did make extraordinary progress with that last one, but I can make a mean apple galette.) It was a way to hold on to life in the middle of a chemical sea whose tides had gone wonky. A friend of mine mentioned the same thing a while back - during one of the worst periods of his life, he taught himself to bake bread, and stacked brioches all over the place as a way to hang on.

I've never let go of cooking, even though the depression has long since receeded. It's what I do on the weekends to relax and to remind myself that I'm alive. It's what I do when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. When I want to connect with other people, I cook for them and with them. I'm always thinking about what to get at the store, what's in season, what to make tonight and the next night. I can't imagine not living this way, which is why I'm never comfortable around people who claim, "Oh, food is just fuel for me. I never think about it." I don't know what to say to that, or to anyone who would think such a thing. I would never weed my friends along such criteria, but I can't think of anyone close to me who has this attitude - probably because I keep feeding them all too much for them to think that way.

Posted at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have devoted bits of time this week to trying to understand the concept of Marmite. My research reveals that it is yeast extract, and that you put it on toast and other things. And there are such things as Marmite-flavoured crisps.

Over here, we put sweet things on toast and savory things on crisps, which are chips. I'm having a difficult time imagining something that would be a good flavor for both. So I emailed my New Zealand friend who's been living in London for a few years and asked her what it tastes like, and she is strangely silent. Either a) she doesn't know, b) Marmite is too personal to discuss or c) it is a secret to be kept from Americans.

Only I could develop an intense curiosity about Marmite during finals week. Go figure. Possibly a visit International Foods will be in order tomorrow.

Posted at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I spontaneously went to the grocery store at 10:00 last night, and came away with the following:

Cranberry-Mango Juice
White Cranberry-Apple Juice
Spicy Chicken Pizza
Pickled Okra
Sliced Jalepenos
Pickled Peppers in Vinegar
Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie/Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough 2 Twisted Ice Cream
Extra-strength Midol

And I was utterly convinced at the time that this constituted successful grocery shopping. I am less sure of this assertion today.

UPDATE: ice cream clarification per reader request.

Posted at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It�s been snow and ice here for the past few days, so I�ve been cooking winter comfort food. First was beans and rice with spicy chicken sausage, which came out rather excellently if I do say so myself.

Flush from that success, I decided to take on chicken and dumplings, which I hadn't made in almost ten years. Not just any dumplings, but (you guessed it) rosemary dumplings. It was quite a production. Family members were dispatched to the store for celery and cream. I browned three pounds of chicken, chopped onions and shallots and garlic, chopped carrots, chopped the celery when it showed up. Whacked up the chicken after it cooled and put it back in the pot. Poured in homemade chicken stock and then assembled the entire thing and let it cook for a while.

Then it came time for the dumplings. The batter was no problem to make: very straightforward concoction of flour, baking powder, salt, rosemary and milk. The recipe said to simmer them for 20 minutes. I didn�t want to boil the cream after I added it to the chicken, so I thought I�d cook the dumplings for about 17 minutes and then gently push them aside to stir in the cream and peas.* The dumplings were puffy and happily bobbing on top of the mixture when I added the final ingredients and put the lid on for another few minutes to let everything heat evenly.

I called everyone to the kitchen for dinner and, ladle in hand, proudly lifted the lid. There were no dumplings anywhere. Not floating on top, not lurking in the bottom. All gone. Does cream dissolve dumplings? Did the peas sabotage them? I can�t see that either of those hypotheses is likely. The only possible conclusion is that the dumpling pixie stole them.

*I generally disapprove of peas in just about anything on the grounds that they are somehow fundamentally wrong. But rhetoricians know that audience is everything, and my dinner audience demanded peas.

Posted at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)