There’s a lot going on here. We are in the midst of a bomb cyclone, which sounds fun till you go to take the trash out. Ankle deep water, it is impossible to get to the grocery store even. Good thing I am nestled safely in my home, surrounded by piles of garbage. The above photo is the groaning board of ingredients. You got your fennel, you got your egg (just one!) your mushrooms. What is that on the stove you don’t ask? Or that mysterious bright light over the sink? Is that a bright light over the sink? On such a rainy and cold day as this, not even hot soup will cheer our drooping sprites. No! We need the miracle that is Sauce Bechamel, and her gentle lovers. Tonight, a thick Sauce Veloute, thick with a wonderful Spanish sheep’s cheese, will enrobe the royal crepes, which themselves will be pregnant with creamed spinach and duxelles.
I pulled out the table for the first time this season, I’ve made space for the tree, we’re using cloth napkins, the whole thing is coming together, sir.
First, I am still on my arugula salad kick. Tonight, arugula, pomegranate, pumpkin seeds, fennel, apple, champagne vinaigrette. An oldie, but a goodie.
Oh my goodness, these crepes are so delicious. I used Julia’s method, to blend it in the blender. The pancakes are so light and fluffy, you can’t even tell they are light and fluffy. All you get is a warm solid bite of butter and salt, with a little toast thrown in.
The wind doth howl, and the rain doth blow, our first atmospheric river of the season. I’ve had a few off dishes lately. Things that should have worked but didn’t. More mushy rice. Why can I not get this right on a consistent basis? I know exactly what I am doing, but something goes amiss. It’s like if it’s even slightly off, good-bye. To make matter worse, I tried to make fried rice with. Double disappointment!!
A cornbread that went South. Now, this one is a real mystery. The only reasonable explanation is that oven thermometer has gone all goofy-da-kattywompus. The cornbread was burned to a crisp in under twenty minutes. It would have been tasty. OK, let it go, Benji. Breathe deeply. These things happen.
These little things are so annoying. Like potatoes cooking unevenly. Has this happened to you? The potatoes are about the same size and type, they are all cooking at the same rate (or so it would seem to the naked eye), yet some potatoes make be more chunky than others. And are these just excuses for my carelessness? Slow inhale. Slow exhale.
Today, a joyful soup for the rainy season that has just begun. Sweet Italian sausage. Hot Italian sausage. Red wine, tomatoes, duck stock, garbanzo beans, onion, celery, carrot, four cheese tortellini. An old family favorite. Delicious. It pairs well with this old flick by Doris Day and James Garner. It’s amusing, and boy, is she terrific. They don’t make hairdos like that anymore.
Soup, when other voices die. It’s wild, the wind hitting the side of the building and all the attendant creaking and cracking and rattling of windows.
Having been asked earlier about peelers, I have developed the following treatise. I’ll call it The Spirit of the Peeler. The peeler is in my case a Trinity three peels in one, one in three. They are stuck together through the magnetic power of magnets. One is smooth, one is serrated, one is a shredder. The smooth one is used for things that are easy to peel like potatoes, broccoli, apples. The serrated one is for tender things like tomatoes, peaches, grapes. blueberries. Just kidding. Have you ever tried to peel a blueberry? The shredder is wonderful for getting bite sized tidbits for salad, garnish, or stir-fry. Shredded carrots. Just right. It’s actually super handy because your guests with think you’ve got mad knife skills when you don’t.
It can be a lot of fun to peel things. But be sure that the peeled is comfortable with the peel feel. All we have is feelins, feelins about peelins. These feelings require verse.
I like to peel apples, sure.
I like to peel pears.
The half-peel cucumber’s allure.
and shave the peaches’ hairs.
The shy bell pepper removes her gown
and celery is freed.
The kiwi is no longer brown,
but green and full of seed.
Asparagus so delicate
you may chop off her leg
And no matter dear how deft with that
you cannot peel an egg.
I peel and peel with all my might
I peel until I’m sore
I peel the fruit and veg all night
and then I peel some more.
Ribbons of peel fly through space
Ribbons of peel fill the air.
Ribbons of peel all over the place
Fruit and Veg peel everywhere!!
St. Joseph Art Society, Howard Street, San Francisco
A building in the Mid-Market neighborhood in SF with every single light on. I can only imagine they are doing this on purpose for some reason. Like public art, or some political statement. Unless it’s the same person forgetting to turn off every light in every room they walk in to.
And that’s it kids. Doris and James have been reunited, and the two little girls too! Aw, what a flick. What a night. What a life.
Hail, hail Freedonia, Land of the Brave and Free! Oh that Groucho would come back and make mockery of international diplomacy. Anyway, here we are. What does a man do? Well, last night we celebrated a friend’s birthday. Roast Five-Spice Honey glazed duck. It was lovely, with stir-fried vegetables and a less than perfect but tolerable fried rice. With what remained of the carcass and neck, carrots, spring onion, ginger, garlic, star anise, cinnamon, cloves, and 12 hours of cooking- a deep golden brown broth, glistening with tiny quivering bubbles of nutrient rich fat. It is so delicious, I will probably enjoy it alone in a mug. Just drink it. Something so delicious should not be wasted on others.
It also might be really nice to clarify it, a consomme, and put some very thinly sliced spring onion and carrot. How lovely can that be?
OK, now it’s time to talk about cakes. I made a beauty of a cake. In what has become an unintended, emergent theme of this season’s deserts, I made another cake with crumble topping. What made this cake so special? Some of it is technique-the butter must be well whipped and the sugar must be thoroughly dissolved in the butter. The eggs are added one at a time and whipped thoroughly into the butter. It should have a certain sound, I think. I’ve called it the clabberclabber. Once you hear that special clabberclabber, fold the flour and liquid in very gently, you’re done with the whipping.
I might have mentioned a moment ago that this is an improvised recipe, and I used yogurt as the liquid. When I added the last of the flour, it was too dry to be a batter. I paused and had a thought. WWJD? What would Julia do? Well, I have no clue. But, I remembered an old trick from a recipe for chocolate mousse. I mixed in three tablespoons of water, and whipped it on high speed for twenty seconds. It produced fluffy clouds of beautiful whipped batter. I tossed in many chunks of apples, poured it into the pan, baked it, and oh. Oh so lovely. A moist texture, a gentle crumb, a little cinnamon and the crunch of toasted pecans.
It’s time to move on. It’s time to dream of what may be. You know the iconic scene, where Groucho is not sure if he is looking a mirror or not, and Harpo is dressed just like him, mirroring his actions. It takes him awhile to figure out that it is indeed another person and not a mirror. Sometimes we look at things and can’t tell if they are real or not. This scene reminds us that everything is real, including the imagined. This will be important to remember in the coming months. In the meantime, Duck Soup.
Ok, Ok, we may all be a little stressed, and I find, when stressed, the taste buds are the first to go. I crave salt, sweets, fat, whatever, when I’m a little stressed only because I can’t taste more subtle flavors. When the stress lifts, so too the embargo on flavor. That’s what may have happened this week with my poor Persimmon pudding. They looked and smelled so wonderful, the persimmons giving gently to my tender yet unrelenting hand. The sweet amber jelly gave forth, lightly floral and sweet and Pacific and everything. It went into the pudding. Cinnamon, butter, lemon juice, zest, and the usual binders and leavening agents. It was almost burned and boring and had no flavor in particular whatsoever. It was sad, because the persimmons promised so much, yet fell short of the goal. Unlike the apples and cranberries that went into tonight’s crisp, a crisp worth remembering, and savoring for years, no decades, or centuries to come.
Fresh cranberry apple crisp with cinnamon, nutmeg, oats, flour, butter, salt, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and toasted almonds. Good times! What an exceptional little Fall trifle!
And, there’s a chicken soup on the stove, the night is chilly and the wind, well, it’s not strong, but it’s menacing.
There’s a special moment in the cooking: I am in the living room, with say, an Agatha Christie mystery about to pop on the screen, and my nostrils get a tingle of the thing that’s a’cookin. I have learned, in almost all circumstances, when I smell the food cooking in the living room, it’s almost ready. That was true in the case of this pizza.
It started with a full to bursting flat of cherry tomatoes, all shapes, sizes and colors, from ruby red to deep purple to pale green. They were gonna rot right there in front of me if I didn’t act fast. Just like that Poirot!
I’ve always imagined that if I ever had to say, spend a weekend where Jessica Fletcher or Hercules Poirot were some how involved, I’d stay the hell away from them. These two are way too observant for their own good, like it’s their responsibility to know everyone’s relationship before the murder takes place! Has anyone been privy to more murders than these two? Miss Marple? At any rate, October is on the wane and the tomatoes aren’t gonna improve with the passage of time. At least, not in this form.
First, I made a tomato, basil pie with goat cheese in a cormealish crust in a cast iron skillet. OK, very good. Then, a giant pot of cherry tomato sauce, which I simmered down and simmered down until it was smooth, creamy, and oh so tangy; it was such an amazingly alive sauce with incredible intense tomato flavor. It made me wince and pucker, a little pinch of sugar calmed it down. Then it came into its own and tasted great on pasta with a fresh scandal of cheese.
On the bargain table at the farmer’s market: gypsy peppers. The time of the gypsy pepper is come! I love these little guys, and I got a big bag of ’em for only one whole American dollar! Like the tomatoes, they are small and pigmentaly varied. Earlier, I stuffed and baked many of them, a wonderful thing to do to a pepper. Cream cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds, a little smoked paprika, salt. They were real, they were yummy. The remainder were chopped, mixed with the darling sauce, and scatter swept across the surface of this pizza dough.
I was hoping to tell you that it was the best pizza dough I’ve ever made, but that would be a little fib. I have made better ones. Better tasting ones, but maybe not better texture and whatever they call it, dough feel. It is representative of many of the doughs that I’ve made over the years and you know he knows, right? Hercules? He knows you’re lying lady, he knows you’re lying. He saw you talking to the recently violently deceased elderly gal out by the horse stalls, and he saw you yell at her about your gambling debt and, oh, I’m sorry, I’m writing this with the damn show on. This blog is about food, and by golly, I’m sticking to it. Nothing can stop me now. I’ll stick to my dough from now on. OK, so the dough was representative meaning that I used bread flour, used as little as possible to keep the dough tender and lightly spongy, I only kneaded it very briefly (but thoroughly, goofy!!), and made sure there was plenty of olive oil in the pan. Now I’ll admit, this dough maybe a little stickier than you’d like, or at least tackier than normal, but stick to this method, and you’ll be making pizzas worth stickin around for, kiddo! When I poured it out of the bowl after the first rise, it rolled away from me in thousands of little spider string tendrils holding onto the side of the bowl. Our little yeast brothers and sisters, trying to climb up the side and escape with dough on their back, tethering them. For a brief moment, they believe that they can attain freedom from being an indentured leavener. They struggle up the side of the bowl in the futile first rise. We punch them down mightily. They try again. We cook and eat them. Their ultimate defeat is our glory in the bakery. Thank you, yeast, for your sacrifice.
It rose beautifully, it was filled with wonderful air pockets, it was fun to play around with. It spread easily, It baked beautifully, crisp all along the bottom, I had reduced the sauce down, so it wasn’t liquidy, and I put just the right blend of Parmesan, Mozzarella, and some interesting other kind of cheese like Gruyere. Gruyere adjacent. It baked till I smelled it, walked into the kitchen and OOOHHH, I know he did it, he was the one with access to the blow dart the whole time. He hated the old lady, he hated her. And rightly so, she threatened to spill the beans on, you know what? I’m sorry. I feel at this point you must be worthy of an apology. I will admit, that this blog is important, and my attention is divided. That’s Christie’s fault, really isn’t it?
OK, back to reality. All is great and grand and good. I enhanced the sauce with fennel, oregano, garlic, the usual.
It’s almost Halloween, and that means it’s time to think about Thanksgiving and what fun adventures we may pursue. At present, I have a duck, two entire racks of St. Louis-style ribs, and chicken bones for stock in the freezer. They’re gonna have to make room for our Tom Turkey!! Wow, is it time? Yes, it’s time. The holidays. Holidays.
Oh, and that ended up being the wrong murderer, and now they’re talking to someone else, who is going to turn out to be the right murderer or knows the right murderer. Shoot, I’m sorry gang, they gonna do a big reveal, I need to put down the pen.
Alright now, the show’s over. The dentist did it. Of course, the dentist. Any ole whodidlywoo, some in the community have been clammering for Turducken, which is an interesting idea, as I already have the duck. I think that’s in part what caused the clammering. I have already boned several turkeys in my time, I’m sure a duck and a chicken can’t be that much harder, right? Yeah?
Oh my good god. That looks challenging on many levels. I wonder if I am psychologically prepared to take on a project like this. Indeed, if I am emotionally mature enough for the patience and respect these dead birds deserve. It’s a lot of raw meat, animal bones, sharp knives flying around everywhere. I’d like to add that this is a stock image of a Turducken chosen from a panoply of images. I looked at many before I chose this one. I do not urge you to do the same. I have to looked at too many. I am desensitized.
On my kitchen counter there are three heavily pregnant persimmons. I have taken them to limit of ripeness, and we are all on borrowed time. At some point near to this one, the tired and stretched skin of the of fruit will give, and it will sigh forth a gush of orange red sweet and sticky innards that will ooze across the counter and dribble onto the floor, discovered in the morning by my right sock and consequent foot while the rest of me is trying to make coffee. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll be making persimmon pudding to go with that coffee!
Waiter, there’s a duck in my freezer. Yes, friends, fall finally arrived in the City by the Bay, or at least in my rent controlled kitchen. A large pot of minestrone to start the week, chock full of all the vegetables that wanted to simmer together. Wait, no. Go back.
First, a trip to Colorado, where the world looks like this:
Now, I know you’re probably hopin’ for a ripping yarn about how I bagged me one a them reindeer and ate all the juicy meat. Well, I didn’t. But I did eat a lot of meat. That happens in Colorado. My aunt made a wonderful and sustaining soup co-starring cauliflower, which I forget how much I enjoy. I made sure to toss a head into my minestrone.
Incidentally, did you know that the word minestrone comes from a Latin root, “to serve forth, or that which is served”, the same root as our English words administrate and all its cousins. Ain’t that something?
OK, back to San Francisco and a punishing heat wave. Having promised to prepare a German-style pot roast with potatoes and sauerkraut for an Oktoberfest of sorts, I woke at 5 in the morning to prepare the food before it reached a hellacious 92 degrees F in my home. Despite the unseasonal weather and more inappropriate menu, the food was consumed with almost primordial abandon, sweating beasts tearing singed flesh with the same canine teeth as our ancestors. Not exactly the same, but you know what I’m saying. About evolution, and how close we are to cavemen. At any rate, the temperature eventually fell and fall finally arrived.
I throw myself into my life’s passion: watching B Horror movies on a channel chillingly called Watch Movies! while I sort of pay attention to a very ambitious cooking project. Now, I have seen some bad movies in my day, kids, but few are as abjectly horrible as 1959’s Alligator People. This movie is so poorly made, complete with rubber alligators and B-role of old nature movies, it’s a scream. It’s also filled with despicable people that you really enjoy watching become alligator shit. I almost didn’t have the bandwidth to focus on my project:
Egg noodle dough, for egg noodles. I am trying my hand at Ravioli, something I’ve done several times over the years with mixed results. I pull out the ole Kitchen Aid Pasta rolling attachment and set to my work. Everything was going fine, honest, till I decided to brush of some of excess flour off the top of attachment with a couple of paper towels, accidentally hit the on switch which immediately pulls the too-thick paper towels into the pasta roller, instantly destroying the mechanism on the pasta attachment. So, no more pasta attachment. I was a little angry and a little bummed, with too much pumpkin goat cheese filling and not enough homemade pasta. But as the late, great, Dr. Morgan Forden-Felder once said “too much ham makes the blood salty.” And he’s right, that’s why there’s no ham in the sauce. I improvised.
I had some ready-to-put-in-the-oven lasagna sheets. I grabbed a loaf pan, opened a can of tomatoes, mushed em up with a little salt, and poured a little bit in the bottom of the pan. Next, a noodle. Then, a heaping helping of pumpkin filling, and a scandalous full fist of grated Pecorino-Romano cheese. Repeat, repeat, repeat, till all the stuff is gone. Then get one of them baseball sized mozzarella balls, crush it in your thick strong hands, and cover that baby with all the white strings. Bake for an hour. Parsley, fresh basil. Eat.
A salad too. I came up with this one on my own. Arugula. Pomegranate. Fuyu persimmons. Granny Smith apple. pumpkin seeds. Champagne vinaigrette.
Now, what about that duck? Another fun fact- the word duck, meaning to hide or seek cover came first, to describe the activity that was required to shoot the animal out of the sky. They (whoever they may be) decided to call the bird duck, cause that’s what they do when they kill it. Ain’t that something too? They probably weren’t shooting them with guns. It was probably a rock in a sling shot or an arrow or something from the olden times.
Anyway, if the weather stays this good, I will thaw our little friend, roast her up Chinese style (complete with pouring boiling water over the raw skin to get it to blister and release fat), and service it forth (administrate it, if you will) with scallions sliced on the bias, Hoisin sauce, and those cute little fluffy white pancakes. I remember this amazing dish from the Chinese restaurants in Queensway, London. Call me what you will, I still think London has some of the best Chinese restaurants anywhere, and I should know. I’m from Ohio.
First, the best hot cocoa perhaps in the universe. 4 cups of milk. Heat and steep one whole dried Ancho chili, six cinnamon sticks for a half hour or so. Oh, and about half a cup of sugar. Then, I melt two entire dark chocolate bars into the mix and whisk in some heavy cream. It is so dreamy delicious, slightly spicy and richly chocolatey (duh). You know what it is? It’s honest, and I know that because I’m watching the SF Mayoral candidate debates and listening to these acidic blubber bags pontificate on our fair city’s woes, this elixir is the soothing balm, bringing me back to center. Geez, if this dude says “downtown” one more time.
The view from above. A short flourish, an extemporization. A casual bagatelle at the tale end of summer. A full head of lettuce, leaves separated, cleaned, dried, and fanned out on a large platter. A base for a variety of fillings. On the far left, the empty dish will soon hold Beef Bulgogi. Clockwise from there, Coronation Chicken, Tuscan White Bean and Tuna Salad, Caprese Salad.
I wasn’t “in the mood” for salad. I wanted to do something different with the beautiful, big, broad leaves. Lettuce wraps, though I think we should call them something else. I read someone call them lettuce sandwiches. Horrible! Sandwiches involve slices of bread, period. Wraps generally involve a flat and flexible bread like tortillas, pita, or lavash, the thin bread described as “Caucasian” often used in making shwarmas. So, when you make a finger food whose delivery system is lettuce, be it endive, be it Romaine, be it whatever we oughta call them………..we oughta call ’em,……….call ’em…………..leaves, cups. What about Green Nymphs?
Green Nymphs have been around for at least 10,000 years, originating in Southeast Asia. The most popular ones in Asia generally feature a rich, spicy, meat dish. A lot of Thai dishes like larb, or Vietnamese Imperial Rolls are typically served with slivered carrot, cucumber, spring onion, and cilantro, the rich meat item all in a large lettuce leaf, and down the hatch! I chose the popular South Korean dish, Bulgogi. Bulgogi literally means fire meat, and describes an ancient dish of at least originally grilled marinated thinly sliced beef. I had flank steak. Sidebar, is there a better cut for stir-frys, and things of this nature? Cutting across the grain, the meat is so sweetly tender. It has been sopped for hours in a scandalous concoction of tons of juicy ginger, creamy garlic, sesame seeds, roasted sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, sugar, black pepper, and an almost revolting amount of soy sauce. Almost, but not quite. Once the beef has taken on this flavor, I toss the whole kit and kaboodle into the searing hot wok. Sizzle and serve.
Two cookie people, after an unfortunate encounter with a steamroller. A platter of biscochitos. They are actually the official cookie of the state of New Mexico, one of only two states with such a thing as an official cookie. I’m not going to tell you what the other state is. Look it up, poindexter. What I will tell you about Biscochitos is that they allegedly date back to the Battle of the Puebla in 1862, a battle that is recalled on the holiday Cinco de Mayo. These cookies are usually served then and Christmas. What about these cookies made me happy? Well, first they include my homemade candied orange peel, which I made in February. It sparkles away in these cookies, rich with anise seed and cinnamon. They are typically served with Coffee, I chose to have mine with the rich spicy cocoa I mentioned at the start. Dark chocolate, orange peel, cinnamon, chili, anise, butter, cream. Perfect on a cold windy night like this. Yes, my friends, the world has moved, the weather is unsettled, the skies have turned, and the winds of change are swirling all around.
There were once three tomatoes. They were planted in three different beds on three different farms entirely separate from one another. Now these three tomatoes, having not ever seen each other weren’t aware of each others existence, but they all found their way off of vines, into crates, onto trucks, and into the farmers markets. A young man was gifted one of these tomatoes by a dear neighbor who knew that he loved them. The other two he’d purchased himself from two different vendors. Suddenly, there they sat, three stranger tomatoes, on one kitchen counter.
The young man, having absolutely nothing else going on in his life, decided to taste the three tomatoes separately to see if he could tell a difference between them. He took a sharp paring knife in his hand and swiveled out the stem of each tomato. He sliced each almost perfectly globe round deep red dry farmed Early Girl into thick slices and dropped a few grains of salt on each. He picked up the first slice, the one that had been the gift.
The flavor was so unsettling, the young man suddenly wondered if there weren’t something wrong with his tongue. For, unless he was mistaken, he could have sworn that he’d just licked the inside of a public swimming pool. It tasted so strong of chlorine, he had to spit it out, which he did as a projectile, into the sink for all to see. Horrible and horrified, the young man poured himself a glass of water, swirled and spat a few times before trying the next tomato.
Puzzled and dismayed, our young hero picked up the slice of the second tomato. He cautiously took a bite. It, too, tasted like chlorine, though less so. It was really bad. At this point, the young man worries that something is off with his palette. He tries the third tomato. It didn’t taste like chlorine, but definitely had the aftertaste of cabbage. The young man turned to his neighbor and asked to try the tomato slices. The neighbor confirms that yes, the tomatoes taste off and overly vegetal. Yes, a little chemically. Well, this won’t do. Why do these three tomatoes taste so bad in the same way? What was our poor young super hero to do?
He made Tomato Basil soup, which tasted really good and there was nothing wrong with it at all.
What’s the moral of the story? I don’t know, I guess there isn’t one.
On the morning of 3 January 1960, Constance Spry, co-operator of the Cordon Bleu school at Wakefield Place in Berkshire, England slipped on the stairs going in, breaking God knows what and dying about an hour later. She died after having become the most famous florist in the world by decorating Westminster Abbey and the entire Coronation parade route. She also opened the Cordon Bleu school mentioned above with her friend Rosemary Hume. There they were commissioned to create a special dish for a luncheon given for foreign dignitaries at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth on 2 June 1953. So the teachers and the students got their heads together, toiled morning, noon, and night to come up with something new and special. The dish was Coronation Chicken. It is an amazing concoction, an eye-wateringly piquant, almost revolting sauce, which, when cooled, is blended with yogurt or mayonnaise and whipped cream and apricot preserves. The sauce is a mixture of wine, curry powder, onion, and tomato puree. It is heavenly delicious.
I have a new favorite way to make chicken for salads. Very slow grilling. I have gently poached a number of times, but don’t always like the texture. So, oiling, seasoning, and grilling on medium low heat, it will only have faint brown grill lines on it, but beautiful. Cool completely before cutting it into pieces for the chicken salad. It stays extremely moist and soft in the center. I made a batch of Coronation Chicken. And, I had a lovely couple of cups of leftover mashed potatoes which I baked into these:
Sesame, buttermilk, mashed potato rolls. Chewy, spongy, tangy. They made a sturdy delivery system for the Coronation Chicken. And there were many leftover.
I imagine Constance Spry at the base of the icy stairs, head resting in the lap of one her cooking disciples, a torn bag of groceries on the sidewalk, delirious and in the gasping throes of death, looking into the eyes of the students and uttering her final utterance: “Someone else can arrange this”. Then, well, she died.
I went on a walk. Pictured above is one of the things I saw when I was walking. After the walk, I tucked into a local tavern. Sully’s Marina Lounge, where its wonderful proprietor, Sully alerted me to the local butcher shop. Right down the block. Now, Sully’s is great. A real bar for real people. Wooden stools and chairs. A pool table in the back. After a beer and nice chat, I am in that meat market, in the market for meat. Lamb and beef. Home. Onion, carrot, celery, meat, salt and pepper. Simmer in the pan. Several potato rolls, ground in the food processor with a healthy handful of cheddar cheese, hand mixed with the remaining mashed potatoes from the day before, pressed like a crust on top of the meat mixture, baked in the oven and Voila, Shepherd’s Pie. Delicious and rich. Salty sweet meaty juices brown crispy topped tender crust of love.
Well, today is Wednesday, and you know what THAT means!
I am curious about the evolution of pasta cookery on this planet in the last quarter century. As a youth, I spent many a many a rainy Saturday afternoon watching cooking shows on PBS, many of which you probably know. Julia of course, and a little Graham Kerr. But, also Justin “tell ya what i’m gonna did” Wilson of Creole cookin fame. Mary Ann Esposito, about whom I’ve written in the past. The ever puzzling Jeff Smith-the Frugal Gourmet, and countless others. Invariably, pasta was cooked on all these programs, and you could see a sort of evolution in the best practice of pasta cooking from that time to this.
The so-called traditional method of cooking pasta goes as follows. Factory pasta is boiled in massive quantities of heavily salted boiling water until desired al dente (I guess it depends on the tooth), then drain thoroughly, and toss with sauce. Sound familiar? Big deal, right? But wait, do you all remember the short time in the late 80s when it became OK to toss the noodles in oil or butter before saucing? Well, I do, and none other Lidia Bastianich led the charge against that nonsense. Never, never, never, never, never add oil to the cooked pasta, she’d say.
But the bigger change regards pasta water. Suddenly, I hear chefs and TV cooks calling it liquid gold which must never be thrown out, but actually used to enrich and thicken the pasta sauce. Well, what do you know about that? What happened to vigorously shaking the pasta dry so there is not a drop of liquid on it? So, we went through a phase of slurping the sopping wet pasta into the overly thick sauce to loosen and bind it altogether. In fact, we’re still there.
Then, Martha Stewart did something remarkable. Now, maybe someone else did this before but I saw her do it first, so she is my Thomas Edison, and I have been curious ever since. It is a one-dish wonder. All the sauce ingredients are put into a cold saucepan. Then, a cup or two of water are added. Then, the raw pasta is added. Then, the whole thing is either cooked on the stovetop or in the oven for 45 minutes. It is so easy and the pasta texture is perfect. So, we’ve come full circle as it were. We went from cooking the noodles in tons of water to cooking it in almost no water at all.
Anyway, it’s a great dish and so easy to do on a week night or whatever who cares I don’t have kids.
What time is it in your heart? Is it always a Friday, early afternoon with winter twilight peaking through the curtains, a house so silent we hear the clock ticking downstairs, the fridge humming, the sudden gust of wind through the birch trees? Is it the quiet moment before anything happens? Is that the most precious time of all, the wonder moment right before? Above, gently seasoned and grilled chicken breast, peach chutney atop, and cilantro atop atop. Mashed potato and boiled green beans. Dinner rolls too, from scratch. The only thing we should ever worry about is if we’ve eked every drop of joy and good fun out of the moments we’ve been together. Isn’t it sad that anyone would have to worry about anything else?
Do we eat enough mashed potatoes? Are there not a million variations, all of them magic? I’ve done butter-choked, cream-swaddled, half-and-half-logged, plain, garlic, parmesan, rosemary, thyme, and sour cream. This one is made with heaping tablespoons of creme fraiche. I’m eating mashed potatoes in August, and I think, we don’t we eat these a little more often?
Dessert- a raspberry, fig tart. I didn’t have as many raspberries or figs as I thought, so the presentation is a little motley, but there it is. The custard is a simple mix of egg yolks, creme fraiche, sugar. The crust is a Pate Sucree, the simplest of all pie crusts. I wish I knew how to add the various accents used frequently in other languages, but I haven’t figured it out in WordPress. I bet it’s easier than pie, and the writing looks better, it makes people think I’m smarter, and it’s technically correct.
I have made this type of tart several times, it’s really wonderful. The consistency is very much like Chinese Egg Custard Tarts, they almost shatter in your hand they are so delicate. Light, gently quivering custard, tangy too, not sweet, except for the crust which is basically a sugar cookie pressed into a pie tin. Two more shots:
BingoFest 