The only way out is through, apparently. When we were kids, we liked to think that we could figure out workarounds, shortcuts, ways of gaining experience without working so hard. Like playing the piano. Kids, large and small alike, like to have party pieces at the ready, usually simplified or semi-learned versions of popular songs or pieces or video game themes etc. As we get older, we learn that many folks do this only to find out that if you’re gonna do it right, you gotta put in the effort. This is one of the constant lessons of life.
There’s another thing too- The more we read and study a subject, the longer we realize it will take to truly master that skill or craft or whatever. Such is the case with the wok.
I had a somewhat humbling realization while trying to show someone else how to use a wok earlier this week: Every success I have had with a wok has been pure luck, and I whereas I have a seasoned wok, I don’t have a seasoned wok technique.
I went to a friend who has recently come into possession of a stainless steel wok, and having heard talk at length about my wok, wanted me to show him how to use it. I choose a recipe from Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok because it was a stir fry that included basil, along with the chicken breast we had on hand. It was a Thai-style stir fry with fish sauce, soy sauce, basil, that kind a thing.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad at all, it’s just that I am not ready to have a free hand with condiments in Asian cooking. For instance, when I am making any kind of “American” dish, I know by finger feel and eyeballing how salty and/or peppery I am making something. Same with most Western herbs and spices. Not so with say, fish sauce, or soy sauce. All this to say the dish was a little salty. Nevermind, it was good, we ate, we had fun, and we learned something.
Still, it has been on my mind, in a philosophical way I suppose. We want to be good at things, we want to make people happy, we want to feel confident in the things we do. It was nice in a way to be humbled by the wok. It is more than cooking, it is somehow a spiritual discipline. Take on step toward the wok……
At any rate, two images from the week past:
The leaves have begun to change around Lake Merritt. Fall is on its way. The first pumpkins and gourds with twisty, knotty necks have begun to appear at the farmers markets. Yet, the tomatoes are still very much in, as are peaches and berries. Life is good and full and abundant.
To celebrate the change of season, two dishes I made for myself this week:
Pan Roasted Lamb Shanks with a variety of mushrooms and potatoes, and an old family favorite, tortellini soup with Italian sausage and garbanzos. I have no photos of the latter, but got a great video of the mushrooms stewing in their ragout. Unfortunately, this platform doesn’t support mp4s. Harsh harsh world.
These dishes I made for myself and have grazed on over the week. It’s fine and wonderful and all, but it has been several weeks since I hosted. I love having company over to eat the food. OK folks, let’s look forward, fall is here, and Sunday dinners must resume. I vow to find new and interesting recipes, menus, I vow to follow through and cook everything I say I’m gonna cook. I’m going to invite people in a timely manner. I am going to up my game and see what happens. See what happens.
There is a wonderful lyric by the late, great Fred Ebb:
Familiar things,
the thing about familiar things, is how you keep imagining they never go away. They’ve always been there, they’re nothing special, and so you never can appreciate familiar things.
But here I am, again among familiar things and finding what they mean to me, the evidence is clear-
our lives are filled with strings, connected to familiar things, and all of mine are here.
Last week, the grocery store down the street, Duc Loi, closed after eighteen years. Now, this wasn’t necessarily the best grocery or cleanest or most affordable grocery in the whole wide neighborhood, but it was the only corner store I’ve ever known at that corner. It’s been there as long as I’ve been here, and when it goes away, what does that mean? Anything? It has been a slightly strange time for San Francisco with regards to our long standing food and drink traditions. For those whose salad days were spent inventing start ups at the wooden tables of the original Philz Coffee, its recent closing must have felt like a generational turning of the page. For those who are a hundred and twenty-six years old, the folding of Anchor Steam Beer must have really stung. That last one really sucks, I especially loved, adored, their Christmas Ale. It was the only one I’d drink, honestly.
Still kickin. No sooner had Duc Loi gone (and its sweet Touch Me Tender sign above, as well as their famous Re-Grand Opening! banner) than they were replaced by the International Produce Market, destined to be the birthplace of many memories for years to come. Who knows, maybe they’ll even bring back Anchor Steam. I’ve known the owner, Amanda, for years and the other night I had a dream that she came up to me in the canned food aisle and wanted to give me a hug and thank me for being such a wonderful customer. I’m sure she hasn’t given a single thought to me in real life, it doesn’t work that way.
In the meantime, I kept myself busy in the kitchen this week. Simple simple simple simple.
For the first time in my entire life, I was wondering what to have for dinner, and there was a cooking show on in the background, I overheard it, went into the living room, watched it, realized I had all the ingredients and prepared the dish while the cooking show was still on. Funny huh? That never happens.
The show? Milk Street? The dish Aglio e Olio, ie. spaghetti with garlic and oil. Only this time, we spice it up with basil and tomatoes, and of course, cheese. Above, before, below after.
Believe it or not, there were still plenty of tomatoes and basil left after the pasta was gone. So, I chopped up the basil real good and made a vinaigrette that made a super Caprese Salad.
Now this was fabulous and finished off the tomatoes and mozzarella, but left me with plenty of vinaigrette for another salad, which was last night’s dinner:
A cute, little top round steak salad. Some things didn’t get pictures, like the sausage with bell peppers, rich chicken noodle soup, or the minestrone that is simmering on the stovetop right now. From one trip to the farmer’s market, I’ve made twenty-four meals and still counting. Good times.
It was a day much like any other. I had spent the morning shopping for food, the afternoon planning dinner, going to the gym, and all the good things. I made my way to the life circus that is the Heart of the City Farmers Market at Civic Center, a Wednesday thing. Folks from all walks and runs of life gather at this festive marketplace for locally grown fruits and vegetables. It is also conveniently located right near our finest open-air drug markets and largest outdoor camping sites I think is the nicest thing to call them. I came into great bounty of produce goodness. Golden ears of corn, solid red early girls, peppers, onions, strawberries, blueberries, and tons of basil, Italian and Thai alike. And beautiful green beans. Home I went, ready and eager to cook and eat.
The task before me was a simple one- Stir-fried beef and green beans, boiled rice, corn on the cob with Five-Spice butter, peach and Thai basil granita with muddled raspberries. The granita I made before the gym, as well as the marinade for the meat-soy, rice wine, sugar, salt, ginger, garlic, cornstarch, and the compound butter.
This was a not at all complicated meal, perfect for a Wednesday night slightly higher elevation dinner, and everything was delicious. Well, almost everything. In my merry, devil-may-care state of mind yesterday afternoon I believe I skipped a vital step in the preparation of, of all things, the boiled rice, which ruined it. I did it the same way as always, except, except, except, except, except……I forgot to rinse it.
The helpful comment I received from my dinner guests, after the observation that the rice was horrible, was that its texture was both mushy and undercooked at the same time. With my morning coffee, I realized what the mistake was. Now, this was not a rookie mistake. I have made rice many times before and like many of you, had to become good at cooking rice, it really didn’t come naturally. It was the rinsing, the rinsing my friends. I didn’t rinse, so the starch stayed on the outside of the grain, forming a glutinous mush when boiled. I didn’t rinse the starch off the grains. Added to that the fact that the rice was undercooked, thus the crunchy kernel at the center of the mush, and you got yourself a real mess from which nothing can be saved.
The beef was delicious, and those green beans, culled fresh from the earth only yesterday morning (let us imagine), all triumphs. I must say, if you haven’t already done so, please buy some corn on the cob, boil it, and treat yourself to a little Chinese Five-Spice butter. It is out of this world and into the next good. You mix butter with salt and Chinese Five-Spice. That’s how ya come up with Chinese Five-Spice butter.
Anyway, I forgive myself, and I will pick up the shattered pieces of my life today, right after The Price is Right. Yeah, so that’s another thing. It is cold, windy, cloudy in the big bad city. Perfect weather for a hot bowl of chowder and a warm blanket, maybe watch a movie or start a series. It was summer yesterday morning, when I got all these fresh salad fixings. Raw fruit and iced tea, that was the way it was going to be. Now I can’t even have the windows open for gosh sakes.
So, afternoon arrived, the clouds parted a bit, it didn’t get any warmer. So I did what only one could do with these beautiful ingredients in such circumstances-
I made pasta. This dish is traditionally called Aglio e Olio, garlic and olive oil, a little red pepper, then a large two handfuls of early girl grape tomatoes, and a big heapin’ bunch a basil. Parm of course. It was so incredibly simple and yummy and the fresh tomatoes and all that basil. The recipe is a simple riff on a recipe from one of the all-time greats of all time, Mary Ann Esposito. I have been a fan of Mary Ann (a Mary Fan, if you will) since I watched her on my mother’s little black and white (screen) TV that used to live on top of dad’s dresser in their bedroom. Rainy Saturdays often meant cooking something in the kitchen whilst watching cooking shows on PBS. A great practice then, a great practice now. This is where I met Julia Child, Justin Wilson, Graham Kerr among others. Mary Ann Esposito is the jolly, supportive, forever-young Italian momma who does everything and many things you’ve never heard of or thought of. She’s terrific. I believe that she is the longest female host in television history or perhaps PBS history. I’d bet that she is at least the shortest host in TV history, move over Merv. Anyhoo, check her out, eat her food, read her books, watch her shows, be more like Mary Ann.
There was a time not long ago when casserole for dinner would cause the heart to sink, and not just because it was weighed down with cheddar cheese, but also because it meant to the diner a warm, sludgy mess of indefinably overwhelming blandness. Salt without direction, searching for purpose. It meant opening freezer bags and cans. The familiar plop suction sound of a freshly opened can of cream of something concentrate going into a pile of cooked meat. The sloppity gloppity of shoveling the mess into the baking dish with a flimsy plastic spatula. The heavy dusting of bread crumbs, potato chips, tortillas, rice, or a thick blanket of mashed potatoes. They were feared, dreaded by many American households of a certain era. Leftover casserole, AGAIN?!?! Well, let me tell you brothers sisters and others, that era has passed.
Thar she blows, a SouthWestern style casserole for a kitchen warming party. Chicken, fresh corn, onion, bell peppa, pickled jalapenos, crushed tortilla chips, and of course, plenty and plenty of plenty of cheese. It’s clean, it’s wholesome, it’s simple. There ain’t no cans of nothing in this here casserole. Although I must say there is absolutely nothing wrong with frozen fruit or vegetables, I use them all the time. Canned tomatoes and canned beans (not green, but you know, kidney and black and the like) are good but other than that, I do not often eat canned food. Pureed pumpkin, sure.
Back to the title, a casserole is never something one eats alone. Or at least one shouldn’t. I’m not talking about a leftover piece, I’m talking about casseroles are community food, meant to feed a large number of people. They are best when served piping hot and even if they improve with a day’s rest, they are at least intended to be eaten at once. A healthy minded person does not make a casserole for just him/her/them self(ves). It’s intimidating to say the least. Imagine tucking into a 9 by 13 pan of god knows what intended to feed twelve, your little spoon in hand. It’s depressing. Before moving on, I wish to point to two irrefutable chunks of truth: 1. Casserole servings are often on the higher end of caloric density. 2. Casseroles contain many complex levels and features, yet frequently don’t feel truly seen or tasted because of the shameful cloak of Bechamel or Chicken Stock or cheesy sauce our society foists upon them in a push for conformity. Those who hunger for justice in our broken world would do well to study the example of the American Dinner Casserole, hiding in plain sight among us. The same, and yet, completely different.
Casseroles are for us. There is no I in casseroles. They are meant to be shared. You can eat a casserole and look someone in the eye. There are two ss’s in casserole. Remember that, you need more than one in order for it to be a casserole. A Kaiser Roll, now that can be enjoyed alone sure, but a casserole must be shared.
And so July becomes August. Cherries are over. Tomatoes and corn on the cob are here, and the glut of strawberries continues unabated. I finally got the oven fixed, and cleaned the kitchen so everything is in order to return to serious cooking. A couple of friends recently returned from a trip to Turkey and brought for me three bags of vacuum-sealed spice blends, and I simply couldn’t think of a better way to reopen the ole kitchen than to whip up an ole fashioned menu. In addition to this palava, with a separate pair of friends I’ve been listening to a young adult fantasy novel called The Dragon with the Chocolate Heart, which features vivid and lengthy descriptions of the making of various hot chocolates, chocolate creams, chile chocolate drinks, leaving all listeners craving chocolate like never before. Amazing. The way the reader says Chocolate, almost like it has five syllables. So, the dinner would be Roast Chicken with Turkish spices, a Syrian herb salad, Saffron rice, and Chocolate-Cardamom Tart. The trouble started almost immediately.
The chicken, long dead, bathing in yogurt, saffron tea, a hearty handful of a red spice blend, I don’t what’s in it, except oregano buds, and mild pepper flavors. Just chillin’ on a summer’s day, waiting for his margarita. You see, a meal like this is a cinch if you begin two or three days before, a luxury I didn’t have this week. Every time I went to get ahead, the universe pushed the pause button.
The first casualty- the pie crust. It wasn’t merely time that wasn’t on my side. I recently did a wonderful cleaning of the pantry which had an unintended consequence of knocking the labels off two identical plastic containers of flour. One had bread flour, the other all-purpose. The flours looked too much the same for me to guess which one was which. As I have had accidents with using the wrong flour in the past, I decided not to risk it, though many opined that it wouldn’t make any damn difference. I cut the crust and settled on Chocolate Cardamom Pudding.
The second thing was the chicken. I should have mentioned this before, but a lot of the ideas and recipes came from Salt, Fat, Acid Heat, which is a great fantastic book that every person should read if they care about anything. I was going to Spatchcock the chicken, and author Samin Nosrat insisted that the skin needed to be seasoned the day before and the chicken I pulled from the freezer hadn’t fully thawed by the day before, so there goes that dream. Even more friends opined that it didn’t make a damn difference, even more that the flour thing. So, I decided I would roast the chicken in the normal way but first marinade for several hours in yogurt, saffron tea and etc.
There he is, deader than ever. The yogurt worked wonders, keeping the meat moist, tender, and lighter in color. The skin, as you can clearly see, got very dark and crisp. The flavor was and tender and mild like the holy infant, and I guess I wanted a wee bit o’ the devil last night.
Cherry tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, red onion, and full head each of parsley, cilantro, mint, and dill. In the bottom of the wooden salad bowl, juice of a lime, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, olive oil. Za’atar. Fantastic.
Saffron Rice. Above is a picture of the early stages of the cooking. The rice is cooked al dente in heavily salted water, mixed with a little yogurt mixed with saffron tea, and cooked in the pan till the bottom is deep brown and crunchy. Not crisp, but absolutely crunchy. It is heavenly delicious. The people were surprised to learn it had no butter or any other added fat. If you don’t make this dish, you should. It should be in your regular repertoire. Children love it, grown-ups too. Animals are known to be more docile and peaceable when this rice is sizzling on the stovetop.
Now, it is Saturday, and all is right with the world. James Cagney is dancing and singing his way to a Congressional Medal of Honor as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. A great work of American propaganda if ever there was one. Wow, now the film musical 1776, one of my least favorites of all time. Anyway, the guests enjoyed the dinner and all left in a state of blissed out tipsy tryptophan, even not having eaten the pudding. Huh, I didn’t know Blythe Danner was in this movie. Anyway.
While I was making the pudding, I dipped my cooking thermometer into the pudding and it (being digital) starting acting weird and going all over the place, an act that later turned out to be the death of an ion battery. I think I must have not gotten the temperature to where it needed to be because the pudding never set. Not after three hours, seven hours, fourteen hours. Finally, this afternoon, I took it out of the custard cups and reheated it, added a slurry of cornstarch and water, and thickened it a bit. Then, I put it back in the custard cups and popped it back in the fridge. Now I wait.
It occurred to me that I may have made another mistake with the pudding. The recipe called for three cups of half and half, and I only had two cups of half and half, the third cup was whole milk. You don’t think that would result in a too thin pudding do you? Do you? Sheesh, how I torture myself. Enough, it’s almost eight o’clock at night. Let’s look at that pudding. God, this movie is terrible, but the music is better than I remember. It’s like a made for TV movie from the late 70s.
Hmm, film musical 1776 and this chocolate pudding have something in common. It’s not as simple as saying both are terrible, but neither is pleasant though I want to like them both. I just can’t. And it looks like the pudding is still not setting up properly. It forces me to deliver my last confession. I didn’t use cornstarch, I used arrowroot, which until just yesterday I thought were interchangeable. I read somewhere today that arrowroot can create an unpleasant texture in preparations that contain dairy. The old adage holds, my darlings. Making fragile dishes you must use exactly the ingredients that the recipe calls for. I am holding out. I will give it one more hour to set up. That’s 9PM.
HA! So, at 9:06PM, I pulled a pudding from the fridge and decided to taste it. The pudding has still not set and I don’t think it ever will. It is delicious. Wonderful. It’s like melted ice cream. Wonderful. It coincides with one of the most delightfully awful scenes I have ever seen in any film in my entire life. Some hot, 20-something stud playing Thomas Jefferson in a horrible orange wig that doesn’t fit in a pique of frustration at not being inspired to write the Declaration of Independence picks up a violin and begins wildly improvising in the worst imitation of a person playing a musical instrument in film history and while the music coming from the fiddle sounds like Bela Bartok going mad in a Yugoslavian Satanic Orgy Tom stands there slowly sawing the bow back and forth a good two inches above the bridge while the other hand strangles the neck to death like a duck. The pudding is vastly superior to the movie at this point as the one got better while the other was getting worse.
OK, kids that all the news from the Willows. More to come soon. Oh God, the singing in this movie. Wretched, just twisted, sick, horrible.
I took a nice long trip, and now I am back. It was great, and if this were a travel blog, boy you´d be in for a real treat. As it is, I try to stay on topic as much as possible, which is cooking. That means that I stay true to myself by not talking about eating in restaurants, which is what traveling people do a lot. Then, everything blends together. Returning from travel, Pride, 4th of July and here we are. In San Francisco, it is good stew weather-cold, foggy, windy.
I have been making some favorites for the season like Sumi salad, grilled salmon, mushroom risotto, and I actually got some good tasting strawberries yesterday. So, let´s get excited about life.
Can you tell I´m not too excited? Well, I´m not. I should say, the spirit is willing where the flesh is weak. Is that how it goes? Could it be because my oven isn´t working again? Could it be that I am just enjoying making ordinary meals for ordinary evenings that aren´t really events per se, and perhaps I´ve already written about them and don´t have much to comment on that is fresh, new, and witty? Hmm…I think I may be getting warmer.
Summer solstice in Northeast Ohio.
So, perhaps it´s ok to enjoy the summer, the surprise dinners. Friends sit around with a bottle of wine. Finally someone says, do you have anything to eat? I have lettuce in the fridge. I can make a dressing. Fresh chicken stock? Rice? Vegetables? a little Parm? Dinner!!
I guess it´s like the weather in the city. If I plan on making pot roast with mashed potatoes and hot apple pie, it will suddenly be 95 degrees outside. Sometimes, it´s better not to plan. We can surprise ourselves. Look at these kids:
Oh the excitement of a trifle, waiting to be destroyed. That´s my nephew on the left, and grandma´s trifle in the center. More to come.
If you live in San Francisco, you´re familiar with that phenomena known as Gray May. It immediately precedes June Gloom, two months basically of chilly, foggy days where we may see the sun occasionally. It is a great time for soups, stews, baking, that kinda thing. It started last week, when he had a brief warm spell. Great, I thought, I just decided to make split pea soup, and it´s getting hot and sunny and summer is coming and etc. Well, no sooner had the soup cooked then the fog blew in from the coast and all was well. The soup lasted until this morning, ten meals. It never got old.
Split pea soup could not be easier, and is so heavenly, and it improves with age. With my time and budget, I´ve settled into a nice cooking routine. I make a large pot of soup, sandwich stuff, salad fixings, and there is lunch everyday and maybe a third of my dinners. Done. Make a chicken, or something a little more fancy.
Smoked ham shank is best because it is very strange to try to eat without simmering it, but there is a lot of beautiful meat on it at strange angles with a little gristly fat and tendons or whatever. It all disintegrates into the soup, making it thick, and smoky, salty. The dried, sweet peas melt into the ham and hot water, finely diced carrot, celery, onion, and garlic. Cook and cook and cook and cook. Add water as necessary and stir so the peas don´t cake and burn at the bottom.
Between the soup and the rhubarb strawberry cake, that took care of a lot of meals. Eating well, but not cooking much. It´s OK. It´s better than that. Now, I have a little project.
For a party of musicians, I´ve been tasked with appetizers. I thought I would include the favorite foods of musicians, but couldn´t find enough material. So, I pulled out a little book of Appetizers, called creatively, A Book of Appetizers, and sought recipes that include the favorite ingredients of musicians of the past. I´ve come up with a creative list of fun sounding things. I´ll make a little quiz to help the guests figure whose favorite ingredient we are eating. So, here it is. I´ll give you a few hints when necessary. I don´t know that I will make all of them, mind you, but I´ll do as many as I can. Some of them are exactly the dish that our tune smiths loved, some are a bit of a stretch. I´ll indicate the favored ingredient by using a pair of parentheses on either side of the ingredient. Clever, huh?
Josefinas! Where have these been all this time? This book is from 1958, and a quick Googlerama of Josefinas led to a few identical recipes and really not very much else. It should be more popular, I think. Baguette slice, buttered, mayonnaised, heap a tablespoon of finely minced roasted chile pepper and garlic on top, top with shredded jack cheese, broil till it swells, bubbles, browned. It has roots in early 20th Century Kansas. (Cheese).
Cut now, two days later, and I´ve kinda given up on the whole thing. I mean, of course I´m going to make some things. Part of the reason for this is I have decided to make Sumi Salad. What musician´s favorite food is Sumi Salad? Nobody, that´s who. So, how can I say all the recipes are inspired by musicians favorite foods if that is not true? You don´t just throw in another dish in there for no reason, especially something strange like a cabbage salad.
What is Sumi Salad? Thinly shaved napa cabbage, toasted almond slivers and sesame seeds, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil. Yumbo jumbo. I found a recipe for it in one of those old spiral-bound books I got down in Santa Barbara. Remember that? More to come.
Strawberry rhubarb pudding cake. It wasn’t really any of those things, but it was nice. Nice. The rhubarb had been dully spayed and neutered, the strawberries had nothing to offer in the first place, the pudding got too hard, and the cake was too soft. However, it was/is yummy. It is particularly good heated. It is a breakfast slightly wet coffee cake.
It has been a quiet week. Like, flavorless strawberries was the nadir. For lunch today, tuna melt. It’s hard, because it is not very interesting but perfecting a sandwich is important to a man. I do have ideas. Why not butter the pan? Some people, not mentioning Jacques Pepin, butter the bread before putting it in the pan. Silly. Melt the butter gently in the pan, then add the bread and swirl it round and round until all the butter is absorbed. Add a little shredded cheddar on each piece of bread and toast for about three minutes, keep it gentle. After three minutes, dollop three tablespoons of celery rich tuna salad onto the center, the center, of one of the toasts. Sing one chorus of Amazing Grace at 89 to the quarter note then flip the toast that does not have tuna salad onto the one that does.
The next step is crucial, that’s why I started another paragraph. You should have in the pan one slice of buttered toasted with melted cheese and a plop of tuna salad topped by another slice of melted cheese toast. Do not, repeat, do not flatten the sandwich with a spatula causing the tuna salad to burst out the side and cook and turn gray and rubbery and taste like cooked tuna fish. Take the spatula, and carefully, carefully, flip the sandwich over without smashing it down. Turn off the heat, and allow the cheese on the higher end of the sandwich to drape over the tuna salad. It is finished.
The celery is crisp, the tuna, robed in mayonnaise and Dijon mustard, is soft and piquant. The toast is crisp, the cheese is weeping. The pepper is vivacious and persnickety, the pickle downright wanton. I don’t have pictures, it was too good, too fleeting.
You may know that because of the heavy rainy season we´ve had in California, the receding waters have left a new exposure of gold. That´s right, partner, there´s still gold in them hills, I intend to get me some. According to someone, gold is currently valued at $2400 oz. That means if I find a big rock, which I intend, I will get a lot of money!!
In the meantime, I will have to settle, though settle is a disgraceful word, for Dough Gods. Dough Gods is a term apparently meant to refer to giant piles of mule-stool, more disgrace. In food terms, this means large drop biscuits with golden flecks of cheddar cheese. These are so heavenly delicious and so easy to make, that you´d be a fool not to whip up a batch right now.
I made them mid-meal. Roast chicken with garlic, lemon, and spring onion. Roasted potatoes and carrots. Spinach au gratin. I was gonna make a nice dessert, but suddenly felt that these savory biscuits would be a better ending to the meal. I thought they would be nice with honey, but they were gone before I got to the pantry. I can´t give the recipe in full because it isn´t my own. I found this recipe, and there are many, in a book by Sally Schmitt, who started the French Laundry in St. Helena. Her family are many generations of Californians all of whom were what we´d call foodies today. Flour, half and half, salt, baking powder, butter, cheddar cheese. Go figure!
Cut to 1 May. Since the last time we ¨talked¨ I made a wonderful, splendid risotto with lemon and asparagus. Also, I have managed to perfect grilled salmon. The key is tons of olive oil, soak the salmon in it for an hour. And salt. And pepper. Put it in the hot grill pan, skin side down. Look at both of these dishes cooking!!
Well, now here we are again, 2 May. It poured rain here in San Francisco, quite unusual this late in the spring. I came home from work and thought about a glass of warm water with lemon for dinner. Don´t want to cook, don´t want to go out. Someone said something about soup today, and boy, did that sound good. Then, my trusty brain came through. I raked through the refrigerator in my mind. Broccoli, Carrot, and Cheddar soup with freshly made chicken stock. Here are a couple snappy snapshots, one with Saltines and one without if you don´t like your soup with crackers
OK enough. I saved my day yet again. Soup is yummy, and I have a feeling I am gonna hit the feathers early. Here´s something to wet the palate coming up this weekend- Arancini and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, together again!!
After an intense week of work followed by an intense week of play, I have returned. Where was I? Hawaii. It was lovely, not much to write about regarding food, because I was mostly eating out, and as you know this isn´t about restaurants and foods I eat, it´s the whole cooking thing you know that. I did actually cook on the worst range I have ever worked on. It was a rip-off of a high end range Wolf, but it didn´t have the logo on it. It just said Wolf. It couldn´t have been that one right? It was an induction range. After ¨unlocking¨ it so that I could push the buttons and adjust the heat, I put the pan with the uncooked bacon on medium. It didn´t glow red, the bacon didn´t sizzle even after ten minutes of sitting there. So I put it on full blast. After five minutes I saw the bacon weeping fat, but not because it was cooking. It was just coming to room temperature. Indeed, I was able to press my hand at the bottom of the pan and it was barely warm. The next day, I made Poor Knights of Windsor for breakfast. Also known as Lost Bread,(Pan Perdu), or French Toast. Basically the same thing happened, except this time it suddenly got very hot all the sudden, out of nowhere. Maybe it was saving up from the day before. It left one half of several pieces of the toast with a savage, black scar on them.
The loaf of bread was procured from Foodland, the Hawaii version of a Safeway minus ten hell hole. Imagine ice-chipped packages of purple, freezer-burned, chicken drumsticks, which looked like they´d been ripped off violently while the bird while was still alive. BTW, maybe you know this (who are you?), but Hawaii is awash in chickens, live, wild ones. They are beautiful.
It´s artichoke time at Rancho Canipto. I don´t know what I mean by that, but artichokes are in. It´s time, I´m in my forties, I can handle a whole raw artichoke now. I like the steamed leaves, dipped in a spicy sauce. Sure I like artichoke dip with spinach and cheese, or dazzling on a sausage pizza. Of course I love them fritto misto, and who doesn´t love eating them right out of the jar, swaddled in olive oil maybe dripping off a crisp Saltine? But what about stuffing them with stuffing? Setting a poached egg gently on a steamed bottom with a little Roasted Red Pepper Rouille? Tossing them recklessly with fettuccine, walnuts and mint?
I recently read an interesting Greek recipe for a braised beef stew of sorts with artichoke hearts and pine nuts. Sounds good. Have you ever had it? (who are you?) OK, a few more. Artichoke salad with prosciutto, broad beans, arugula, and lemon vinaigrette. Artichokes chopped into creamy mashed potatoes. I once made a salad of artichokes, grapefruit, and thinly sliced purple onion.
OK, that´s enough on the artichoke. Enough.
I´m going to the Farmer´s Market tomorrow after work, I´ll see what´s going on.
BingoFest 