14 September Wednesday

On this blog, as in life, I enjoy using recipes, discovering new flavors, dishes, and sharing my experience with you. Another great object of cooking is building a repertoire of recipes, things that go from book to brain to self, so that you can create many meals without looking at a book. My risotto, jojos, roast chicken, salsas, pancakes, pizza doughs, curries, stews, soups, pie dough, stir-frys are all things I do without looking in a cookbook. Learning basic techniques, cooking and baking, and foods of different cultures make the creative mind more elastic and can give birth to invention.

Keep a list of what you’ve made, what your lovelies loved, what was fun for you, what was expensive, whatever. This is how you determine what makes it in and what doesn’t. You will be a joyful gourmet!

If you are pressed for time generally but would like some homemade bread with dinner, I suggest you memorize any of the many easy recipes for Naan or Pita. Having these in your repertoire can really make use of the flours, yeasts, baking powders and sodas that are sitting in your cabinet, awaiting their moment on the great stage. Why not give them that moment? They want to be used by you. Sweet dreams are made of this.

If you have an interest in or knowledge of liturgical Christianity, you may know today as Feast of the Holy Cross. I only mention it because it has food implications. Because it is the alleged date that St. Helena discovered the “original cross” from which countless holy relics were widdled and sold, cross shaped foods and red (for blood!!) food is appropriate. What do you eat that is cross shaped? A misaligned hot dog, there’s one.

The herb that was found at the foot of the original cross was our beloved basil, which Italians had no problem with but Greeks, until the end of the 19th century, refrained from using the sacred herb in dishes. Well, what a difference a century makes! Now, basil is a suggested food for the feast. In fact, theological culinarians recommend eating sliced tomatoes (blood) with basil (the cross) and mozzarella (baptized souls) for a real treat. Very oddly, National Hot Cross Bun Day in the USA is the Sunday closest to Holy Cross Day, this year September 11. How are these things decided? The joke is, that when they put all of St. Helena’s relics of the original cross together, they discovered that Jesus was ten miles tall. That’s the joke. It’s in my rep.