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:
The clouds of malady lifted. The restorative gift of sleep. Water. Food. In convalescence, reconnection. Quietness, stillness, eating slowly, feeling our own body heal. I had some pain and discomfort during the week which abated by Friday.
Saturday morning was somewhat unusual. First, we had an cold snap with measurable rain fall, a first that I can remember in August in the Bay Area. I went out during a break in the morning rain, and made my way up 18th St. As I approached Church St., I saw a beautiful gold with black spots butterfly. As I walked under her, she seemed to flutter and falter until, suddenly, she was perched on the tip of my right index finger. It was like Snow White. I walked carefully over to a little bay tree and set her on a branch. She folded and opened her wings slowly, like she’s waving. An interesting little moment.
And so begins another week. Fresh peaches and figs and raspberries on the counter. OOh, here’s something delicious I tried: Whole Foods Forbidden Rice Bread. Absolutely amazing! eat. I used it to make breakfast skillet. See, if I ever had a diner, I would make this a sort of centerpiece, Breakfast skillet, a Midwestern type of deal. Three strips of bacon at the bottom of a small cast iron skillet. Cook it, remove it, turn up the heat to smokin, put in a slice of that bread and sizzle for 1 minute a side. Take the pan off the heat and let is sit for one minute. Toss in a couple of eggs. When they’re done sizzlin, get rid of the remaining fat in the skillet, put the toast in, eggs on top and surround with bacon. That’s basic. Then, you can add all sorts of other toppings like grilled vegetables, hash browns, baked apples, pico de gallo, turkey tetrazini, hot fudge, Newman’s Own salad dressing, fingernail clippings, you name it. And now, another product endorsement, I’m not ashamed.
Shopping for eggs can be hard. Not as hard as laying them yourself of course, but still. They are expensive, you don’t want to break any, yet you realize you can’t break any eggs without eating an omelette. I don’t want to go into the details, but the highest quality eggs I find in the grocery store are Vital Farms Eggs. They are the freshest, the have the darkest yolks, and the firmest whites of any store bought egg. There you go, good information, end of preaching.
I recently saw a video of presidential candidate Kamala Harris cracking an egg with one hand. Of course, she said, something to the effect of, I told you I was a serious cook. Before I went to bed that evening, I looked in the mirror. I thought I was a serious cook, yet I can’t crack an egg with one hand, what does that mean? Since then, every egg crack attempt has been a one handed one. Ultimately, the other hand did have to swoop in and save the day, so it is a work in progress. I think it’ll be one of those skills that once you get, you’ll never unget. I can’t wait for that to happen to me.
In a tale so boring and off-topic it would be only insulting to you, faithful audience, I find myself laid up in bed with illness. That’s why I’m not in the kitchen chopping veggies and whistling a merry tune. But, like so many times when the body doesn’t feel great, the spirit gets all the more restless.
In case I’m like Pepys and people read this way in the future, I’ll remind y’all that tonight we the people watched Michelle Obama begin a new era in American History on tv. It was very exciting. Then, I watched a man butcher and dress an ostrich (I suppose I should add for future readers this didn’t happen at the Democratic National Convention, I’m watching another program now), immerse it in a plastic garbage can filled with salty water and spices, build a clay oven, gather sticks, shake down a lemon tree, pull carrots and turnips from the earth, cut milky kernels of corn off the cob with a little scythe, and well, I’m all riled up. He does it all on his farm in Azerbaijan, a backdrop of majestic tree covered mountains, a sweet flowing river with natural springs. Chickens, geese, grouse, guinea hens, pea hens, and at least one ostrich.
OK, so he dug a well-type deep oven, tons of crackling and logs and got her all ablaze, set in an enormous pot of rice and vegetables, that put the ostrich on a rack on top of that, covered in foil. And oh, now it’s beautiful thick chunks of fatty-skin ostrich meat, coarsely hacked, and thrown into the rice.
I got a burrito.
OK, next day, it is now the 21st. I forgot to mention that last night I de-iced the freezer, which was thrilling. A fun project when you have a “walking” disease. Tonight, I got nothing. Wiped out, watching the Democratic National Convention seems to be the thing. But still, a man needs to eat. I found in the fridge a large pot filled with chicken broth, so I made chicken noodle soup, nothing exciting. The kind of thing you make and eat when you’re not feeling super.
Well, not quite. I need something a little extra today. A little something sweet. For tonight’s rally, I will enjoy some homemade dark chocolate chunk cookies with a glass of milk. Yes, I am doing this. I made these with melted butter, which will supposedly make them chewy.
OH I am so looking forward to my little piece of heaven. Watching ABC news heartthrob David Muir talk about what Michelle and Barak said last night, me licking hot molten chocolate from my beard.
And I forgot to mention that I got a new little cookie scoop that made the cookies uniform. I had no idea of course, they would spread quite so much.
But spread they did. And they are absolutely delicious. This is a great one-bowl chocolate chip cookie when you need cookies impulsively. A lot of what slows cookies down is letting the butter come to room temperature, then creaming with the sugar. This recipe has us whisk the sugars together with melted butter. That, plus only one egg and a little baking soda, and bang!! you got yourself a flat, spread, super chewy cookie in your mouth. I used whole chocolate bars from Ghirardelli, dark chocolate, 80 something cacao. It’s a good cookie.
I feel like I’m fourteen years old!! I’m eating chocolate chip cookies, watching Bill Clinton talk on TV! I hope they don’t pre-empt Seinfeld. Oh wow, now Oprah.
In fact, I think most revolutions happen in an instant, it’s just the aftermath that takes so long. No sooner had I hit publish on the last post, I began my beloved shopping list. I love making shopping lists. It runs in our family.
I did a pantry regroup. I knew I needed star anise, but what else? I looked at the large bulky spice racks and thought, you all need another purpose. I took all the little bottles off and arranged them differently, first putting them at unusual angles, like a modern sculpture garden you see in Europe so I could still see all the bottles and read their labels. I kept one rack, the revolving one. I put all my curry spices on it and dubbed it the Curry Whirl. Isn’t that clever?
The Garden of Spice
Curry Whirl
I was shocked, in a word, that I have so much curry powder. I have two Indian blends, one a Garam Masala, the other a fiery curry blend one can use for many different things, including chili. And lots of Japanese curry powder. I think I’ll give a try to Chicken Katsu Curry.
A thought about our Halibut party- serving Ceviche and Caddy Ganty at the same meal is not a great idea. I’m leaning more toward Ceviche, Mexican grilled corn with a few salads and tortilla chips, and Caddy for another time, perhaps Friday. Sorry, Caddy.
Ceviche (halibut, lime juice, olive oil, purple onion, cilantro), elotes (corn on the cob, lime juice, cotija cheese, , chili powder), and Mexican chopped salad (Romaine, black beans, cherry tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, lime cilantro dressing) Tortilla chips. Dinner. A guest is bringing dessert, and I haven’t asked what it is. I like surprises sometimes.
Sunset at Land’s End. How must the first Easterners, having traveled through deep river valleys, wind swept prairies, daunting snow-capped mountains, and sweltering arid deserts, have felt beholding the sea, the journey’s end. I’m glad they did it and not me, it takes twenty minutes in a Lyft from my apartment.
The last few weeks have been staple repertoire, nothing new that you haven’t read about before, assuming you read this little blog at all. I made a ham and spinach quiche, a cheesy cornbread casserole, polenta with poached eggs, Tomato Basil soup with grilled cheese. Oh yes, there it is.
One of the things I am not so great at as a home cook is repeating recipes to the same standard as the first time. It’s like somehow because I’ve done it once it magically doesn’t require as much effort or attention. Both things are wrong. I am making an effort to not cut corners or be careless. So, have I learned anything as a result of these repeats? Yes. What?
I came up with this one myself, I think. At least, I hope. I’d love to get just one good quote into the mainstream culture, maybe this is the one. Ready?
“Simmering is not the beginning of boiling, it is the end of heating.”
Now, think about that. “Simmering is not the beginning of boiling, it is the end of heating.” That could be my big quote, right? Or my first big quote. I mean, it will need some time to catch on, and you could be a big help in that area. You could work it into a few conversations with various friends, and really get something started. I recommend you begin several conversations about poaching eggs. You can do that, right? It’s not hard.
It’s also true, and a great think to have in one’s mind just before one adds a shelled raw egg to simmering water to be poached. The white should be so delicate and tender, holding its mass yet undulating as it is tilted from the spoon.
Soak polenta in cold water for a while before heating the whole pan with the original water when cooking. I never see this step in Italian cookbooks, so maybe it is sacrilege. Whisk the polenta vigorously to make it softer and well emulsified. Add butter, then cheese, then salt. For some reason, adding salt earlier gives the polenta a slightly gray color.
OK, now onward to new and bright things! First a sneak preview of this week’s offerings from Chez Me:
That’s right kids, it’s local wild caught halibut season. This week, we’ll be “having our way with Halibut”, featuring fresh ceviche followed by a quick culinary trip to Alaska for a heapin helpin of Caddy Ganty. What? WHO? What in the world is Caddy Ganty?
Well, it turns out Caddy Ganty was the wife of some guy, Mr. Ganty I guess, who got sick and tired and just fed up, literally, with dry halibut. Did she give up? Did she sit in the corner and sulk? Did she scream into a pillow? Well, maybe, there is no historical record of that. But she did come up with a dish for our noble friend the Halibut, and ensured her niche in history by naming it after herself. Thing is, it sounds delicious. Halibut marinaded in wine, covered in a mixture of sour cream, mayonaise, dill, lemon, paprika, topped with breadcrumbs and baked in the oven. I will serve it with herb rice.
Thar she blows! It’s Caddy Ganty, and boy, is she thrilled with her catch!
That’s a Halibut. They are huge, ugly, and have strong teeth to bite you with, so let’s be happy about killing and eating them.
Wednesday, we Go East, young man! with Salt and Pepper Fried Chicken Wings, Garlic and Ginger braised Broccoli. It will also be Farmer’s Market Day, so hopefully Peach Pie too! Also, Chicken stock making day.
First, it is 6 months to the day to Christmas, and that’s not too early to begin thinking about what we may like to do. In fact, I should really start the pudding today if I intend to serve on Christmas Day. Well, a day or two won’t hurt. Will it?
What is your first memory of Pho? I think I remember mine. I say think because it seems that Pho exploded, metaphorically, on the scene, whatever that is, world wide at around the same time. Or, I encountered it twice in a short period of time in two different cities. The first Pho I remember eating was in London. I was with a couple of friends on a rainy evening, we’d spent a few long hours at the public house, we were hungry. London must be the best city in the world for late night dining. So many streets, so many choices. Have I had Pho? What? Pho? Oh, we must go you will love it. It’s noodle soup!
We ducked in to a lively, well lit open floor restaurant, with large glass topped round tables and tanks filled with little fish. We were enthusiastically seated and handed heavy, plastic matted menus. There is only one thing to get here for sure, I am told. Beef Pho. There was a lazy Susan on the center of the table, which had dishes of mung beans, Thai basil, lime wedges, and hot peppers. I ordered the soup. Thinly sliced beef, broth, spring onion, and the additions from the Susan. Heavenly beyond description, yet I must describe it. Could there be any place in San Francisco that serves such a dish?
It turned out there were many places. Some of the were great. Some of them were meh. I’ve never had a truly awful one, but. But……
Last week, my whole family came for a visit. One night, we decided to have a chicken version of Pho. I got home from a day of pounding tunes on the piano, arms full of chicken backs and tootsies for the broth. Next, oven roasted onions and ginger fingers, two cinnamon sticks, six star anise, ten cardamom pods, a small palm full of black peppercorns, salt. Simmer and simmer and simmer, but not as long as you’d think. Maybe two hours, three, allowing the house to fill with the nourishing scent. Tenderly chop some chicken bits and Gai Lon, which I describe as a mostly spinach like green, with a little nod to broccoli or broccolini. Strain the stock, throw in the bits, stir for about twenty minutes and spoon over some cooked rice noodles with lots of broth in there. Get that broth in there! Lots of crunchy mung beans, the lime juice. Oh, the wonderful tastes and textures.
Now, when I eat Pho, I make it at home.
A little note: This morning, I finished off the Pho. There were no more noodles, a few greens, and a few little bits of now dried out chicken. I ate the greens and few bits of chicken. Then, I strained it again into a large coffee mug. I drank deep into that mug of the most healthy and healing substance on this whole earth, brothers and sisters etc. Drink deep at dawn, and you will be rewarded with a most pleasant morning.
Sounds like the title of a great comedy of manners, from the early 1930’s say. The son of a wealthy railroad magnate falls for a girl from the other side of the tracks. He manages to hide this fact from his folks until a festive society breakfast when she orders her eggs in a way not recommended at finishing school. Gasps are heard, pearls are clutched. Hilarity and mis-identities happen until the last five minutes of the film when suddenly and for no other reason a man in a pith hat appears and announces that our gal is actually a direct descendant of the House of Hanover, she’s worth billions and the problem is over.
But the problems are just beginning. After the reels are back in the can, Mr. and Mrs. will share a lifetime of awkward breakfast orders. Now since the permissive 60s, people can order their eggs any style, without shame. So, I can ask this question without hesitation, How do you like your eggs?
Most people who make eggs at home scramble them. Many take the position that if you destroy the yolks on purpose, it will save the heartbreak of watching them break on accident later. For some reason, I am very picky about the quality of scrambled eggs. First, they must be a uniform pale yellow. If you can see the lines of white and yolk separately, it means the preparer is weak and apathetic. If the eggs are overcooked and bounce on the plate, the preparer is worrisome and apathetic at the same time. If some of the eggs are overcooked and some of them are raw, the preparer is not interested in cooking and is trying to teach you you’re not worth it. You are worth it, and all of the above can hit the road. We can learn a lot of subtly annoying things about our partners, families, and friends by the way they screw up their eggs. Paradoxically, scrambled eggs are easy to goof up in the cooking, whereas another technique that is regarded as “difficult” is actually hard to get wrong. I am talking about poaching.
I have even been to diners here in the city of San Francisco where they will not allow you to order poached eggs because the cook doesn’t make them. Is that nuts? There are all sorts of gadgets and tools meant to help you poach easier which I don’t understand because making poached eggs is one of the easiest things to do. In addition, it is the most healthy way to eat eggs as there is no added fat in the cooking process. Hard boiled eggs I don’t consider eggs in a way, not like you know, breakfast eggs.
Too much, much too much in fact, is made of egg poaching technique. It’s simple. A pan of simmering water, a slotted spoon, an egg. Crack the egg into the slotted spoon to get rid of the excess water, tip the spoon into the simmering water about three minutes, then remove.
There are two poached eggs cooked exactly as I described, peppered with pepper atop a glistening mound of polenta. It’s funny, the line of polenta between the eggs looks like a little nose. If this were on a menu, I’d called it Martian’s bowl.
It was really meant to be a joke, a little excuse to get together on a Thursday. An invitation-come over, we’ll watch the debate, have a drink, have a nibble, roll our eyes have a laugh. Order pizza? Nah, I’ll make something easy and fun and bring it over. OK, how bout this? I’ll make one dish for each of the candidates. It’ll be a riff on their names or their eating habits or something silly goose like that. Hmm…….There are numerous puns and plays for Joe, like a cup of Jo, Jojos, and of course, Sloppy Joes. For the other debater, I had a harder time. I did some careful thinking, avoiding fast-food related dishes and full-out low brow mockery. I allowed my mind to wander, and I reflected on colors and shapes, themes and ideas that characterize the other debater.
Dough Gods. A perfect metaphor for the other debater. The color on this snapshot is a little muted, but they were deep orange. They were amorphous and rotund. They were loaded with cheese. They were essentially cornmeal and cheese biscuits from Sally Schmitt’s Six California Kitchens, and describe their resemblance to dough gods, which is an euphemism for a pile of cow shit. Again, perfect.
So, there it was. Sloppy Joes, Dough Gods, and as I described it, a green salad will tomato and herb vinaigrette for healing, hope, and peace.
It’s been a long time since I had a sloppy joe. My combo: ground beef, onion, celery, green pepper, ketchup, Worcestershire, Tabasco, salt and pepper. Simmered, served on a bun. Little did we know just how apt my choices would be.
Bullshit and cheese. Sloppy meat sandwiches. Yes. Well, this is not a political blog, it’s about food. This will be important to remember in the next several months. Something that brings friends together to have good food can’t be all bad can it? Maybe next time, we’ll do it in a fallout shelter.
Come on now kids, up at at ’em, a brand new summer just begun, just for you and me. Feeling relaxed, feeling renewed, feeling inspired, dreams are pursued. Let me take a little time and tell you a few things I’ve either learned or re-learned in the last two weeks kitchen-wise speaking, just in time for summer:
Chop your onions, chop your herbs.
Clean them well and chop with care. The shape, the size and the moisture of the herbs can change a dish, and ultimately, your life. It says a lot about one, really. Don’t use herb processing as an expression for your dormant rage, wildly hacking them to a pulp. Herbs lose their flavor this way and taste like grass clippings. Save your rage for mowing the lawn. Rinse and dry your parsley and cilantro thoroughly, and again, as soon as you get them safely home. Rinse, and I like to take them outside and shake vigorously and let em sit out for a bit. This time of year, everything is parsley and basil, tarragon and savory. How much spring onion is too much spring onion scattered on a dish? Has anyone ever discovered the answer to this question? This is the best time of year for fresh garlic too.
2. Little tomatoes are here.
Find a new way to dress them. Getting a salad dressing right really makes me feel like a man in a way few other things do, and my new favorite right is Miso dressing. Mirin, neutral oil, miso paste, sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds, white pepper. Oh and yes, a little pinch of sugar. I was recently complimented on my salad dressings, and I was surprised how deeply I was moved by the words. I spent several minutes in silence.
3. Straighten up and fry right.
It’s the details in our work that can make a huge difference. This is my new thinking about deep frying. For thousands of years and across many different cultures and for many different reasons, grandmothers have been feeding their loved ones fried foods, like the salt and pepper chicken wings pictured above.
It is widely known now that deep frying is a unhealthy way of eating., which doesn’t sit well in the stomach with the notion that grandma’s cooking ways were best. Why did grandma do this? She hate us? Did she have a choice? Was there a way of frying that minimized the health downsides? Do yummy things just kill us quicker and that’s all there is to it? And what isn’t killing us, ultimately? Is it twisted logic to remind that more people have been killed across time from drinking water than from Nana’s Fritto Misto?
As far as I can tell, and this is not an academic paper, the fear of deep-fried foods corresponds with their presence in our every day lives vis-a-vis fast food and its numerous kissing cousins. Cheaper oils cooked at lower temps tossed in salt but never dried and tightened up caused many to lose their daddies earlier to early morning driveway heart attacks. So, naturally, bad. Cooking the materials at a higher temperature keeps the food from absorbing the oil, and drying on paper towels or some such thing after words removes any oil from the surface.
I toasted my spice mix, which is a personal variation of Kenji Lopez-Alt’s from The Wok cookbook. You can look that up yourself, but I’ll tell you I increase the amount of Sichuan pepper and cloves, and that’s basically my variation. I toasted them with the other ingredients (look it up) in a dry wok and carefully, so no one went running into the streets with burning eyes, you had to be there. Good times!
The temperature of the oil is paramount, and keeping the oil at the ideal temp is not something you can’t pay attention to. You can, you must. Don’t crowd the pan, cook a minute or two longer than you think you should. The food should be a dark golden brown. Then, dry it off with paper towels completely thoroughly. It tastes so good and has no grease on the outside, it’s dry and light crisp and salty spicy.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
4. Make the most of everything while we may.
I’d cooked a chicken and saved the carcass. I wrapped it in plastic, popped it in the fridge, and promptly forgot about it. When I noticed it was there too many days later, it was horribly useless, like an ancient rotting barn of dry grey planks you see from the highway. There’s no saving you baby!
So when I made my weekly chicken several days ago, I didn’t wait. I put it in the stock pot while my guests were still here! Next, I came into a glut of fresh summer basil that was clearly not going to survive the night. So, I made several jars of fresh pesto. Last night, dinnertime arrives, the wolves are gathering in the tummy. I heat some of the stock and I swirl in several tablespoons of pesto. This dish is profoundly delicious, maybe one of the most wonderful things I ever tasted.
It was the summer solstice. Windy cold grey in the outside. I took a warm bath, drank a large bowl of this deeply satisfying soup, and decided to pop on a movie. My app recommended in its featured classics, Don’t Look Now, starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, who died yesterday. It is one of the most creepy strange movies I’ve ever seen, and I think for the time being at least, I won’t be able to eat pesto without thinking about this film. Most of the film takes place in Venice, so it was fitting that I had something Italianate on the tongue.
A really nifty cake from a really nifty gal called Grandma Rose, who had a cafe in Portland Oregon in the 60s-80s I guess, and she put out a couple of cookbooks that are real dandies. I made the Fresh Plum Sour Cream Cake with Streusel topping, which was more desserty than breakfasty type-a coffee cakey type-a thingy. It was served with a thick whip of creme fraiche. The only word that I could describe that wonderful consistency of creme fraiche is clabber. Clabber clabber clabber it’s the sound of the cream and sour cream slippity slopping around the bowl until it comes together in a noble emulsion of strength, gentility, extravagance, and humility all at once. This lightly tart cream on top of the sturdy cake, tart fruit, and toasted cinnamon caramel streusel made for real good eating. OK kids, stay cool out there, and remember, if you get hungry, eat something.
BingoFest 