5 June Wednesday

Let me tell you kids, it’s another scorcher by the bay. There is a pleasant breeze off the coast and the sun is at her blazing best. The sky is so perfectly cloudless I think I can see into deep space. It is a good time to be and do the simple. It is Wednesday, my special day to feel like a French woman, to saunter around the farmers market and be dismayed that the peaches are not quite ripe or the tomatoes have no scent.

This week has been a parade of yummy foods and happy meals. Fresh strawberry banana smoothies, baked chicken swaddled in cream and tangy mustard, fresh cherry tomato dressing, crisp salad greens, risotto. Rice in fact, a few times. Asparagus, height of season. All sorts of lemony things.

I must tell you I have always hated the word smoothie. It is a horrible word for a wonderful food stuff. Smoothie is a word that, to me, describes a con artist, or some young man that courts rich elderly widows.

Ha! I just looked it up. In British English a smoothie refers to a person who is polite and persuasive. Also, that He’s A Smoothie was the name of some kind of award-winning Canadian horse. In other words, it doesn’t uniquely describe a food, and these nifty not-just-for-breakfast drinks deserve one!

What could we call a smoothie instead? Something two syllables does seem appropriate. One syllable is too short, too sharp for the silken texture of the thing, like Slump or Grunt or Oat or Loaf- another horrible word. Too many syllables make it seem less serious, portmanteau that are almost as bad as smoothie. Fruigurtwhirlly. Yogwhispies. Fruipwhirls is OK. Yogswhirls? That’s better. Or just Yogu or Guyog or Gooyug. Go You! You Go, Gurl!! I guess smoothie is OK. I doubt even if I came up with a good name that anyone would start using it. I would need like, at least several million more subscribers and faithful readers to coin a new term, no?

Another classic from another time: James Beard’s amazing recipe for chicken breast baked with mushrooms, parsley, and dijon mustard. A naughty splash of cream, a little lemon juice at the end, and you got yourself one tasty dish there. Add some fluffy “dirty rice”. I put that in quotes cause it is really only partially dirtied.

Dirty rice, as it is called in Cajun cooking, is rice that is cooked in various organ meats and vegetables and of course, stock, and don’t forget the hot sauce! My dirty rice was meant to accompany a highly and singularly flavored dish with Dijon Mustard, and I didn’t want anything to interfere with that taste. In fact, in my original source material (The New James Beard 1981) the author specifically wrote that the chicken should be served with only plain boiled rice. Thing was, I already had a couple o’cups of chicken stock with some giblets I intended to make a gravy with a few nights before. The gravy never got made, in a story too boring to even mention. So, it was dirty in just that one way, like Uncle Gary.

Freshly boiled green beans, frantically tossed in black pepper and butter and lemon juice and a very interesting Cyprian lemon zest sea salt type thing make for a lovely salad. If Beethoven says “only the pure of heart can make a soup” then I’d assert that only the truly nervous can make a salad. It inspired me to write this poem:

I’ll tell you what June means to me,

She means green beans.

I means to tell you what me June,

this afternoon.

Again, the ole Forty-Nine bus whisked me off to civic center. Today, pretty standard fare. Fresh young golden potatoes, big fat leeks, perfect for the soup. Beautiful, tight heads of broccoli for a beef stir fry. Two enormous heads of Romaine, spring onions, garlic, and the amazing cherry tomatoes i found last time. I didn’t get any strawberries, I didn’t want to tempt fate with the bus on this particularly hot day. You know what heat does to strawberries? With people, it’s even worse! And another thing-the Civic Center Farmer’s Market is in the middle of an open area with absolutely no trees. Even at 8:30 in the morning when I was there it was full sun exposure. Merciless.

My Apartment has basically a north- south orientation, with the rest of my building to the east and the building next door to the west. This means that I get interesting slivers of sunlight both in my parlor (morning) and kitchen (afternoon) but that everything in-between is in permanent twilight or gets no sun at all, like my hallway. It’s nice to lie down on the floor there on really hot day like today.

Oh the heavenly scent of leeks cooking in butter! Is there anything better? I feel another poem coming on:

Amidst the fevered foodie freaks,

and even grander gourmet geeks,

Some Italians, many Greeks

humble peasants, fancy sheiks,

could expound for weeks and weeks

about undying love of leeks.

So, if your heart is feeling weak,

and your figure’s less than sleek,

and the prospect’s pretty bleak,

and your life-style needs a tweak.

Here’s the answer that you seek:

I suggest you eat a leek.

The first recipe in Mastering the Art of French cooking is for Leek and Potato Soup, or as the French call it, Potage Parmentier. Dear Julia explained that this dish is everything wonderful about French cuisine. Very few, simple ingredients cooked carefully to velvet emulsion with butter. It is so delicious that is surprises people when they ask what’s in it. Leeks, potatoes, water, butter, salt, pepper.

Here are some fun leek facts you can share with your family and friends. You could even make a fun leek trivia.

What do the French call leeks, informally? Because leeks grow plentifully in damp soil and swamps, it was called asperges du pauvre, asparagus of the poor.

Where does the word leek come from? It is an old English word that originally meant garlic.

What is the only vegetable that has a major city named for it? The leek.

What city is it? Chicago, an Algonquin word meaning striped onion or wild leek, which once grew in the enormous swamp on which the city is built.

Enough. Play the game, eat the soup, have a good time.

Now, listen here, you little sneak,

I’ll give you a little peek,

I’ll not break my winnning streak

of rhymes or of Potato Leek.