Our beautiful cassoulet, after its 2nd cooking. That was not the end of it. It finally looked like this:
There is magic in this dish. There is something about breaking up the crust and having some of the liquid bubble up, seep through the cracks and become its own crisp layer. The what do you call it? Sauce? juice? soup? That thick liquid made of disintegrated beans and deeply braised meat spewing up like lava that cools and hardens as it rests.
Everyone enjoyed. Bringing the cauldron to the table, it really is an impressive looking dish. The texture was so smooth and creamy, with the occasional bite of roasted duck leg. The crisp crust layer. Yes.
Would I, will I make this again? I think yes, perhaps when I am older. It is the perfect dish if we had been snowed in for several days like the folks back East is doing. This is most definitely not California food. But it made us all dream. The other thing is it does take a lot of time, which is not bad, you just need a good amount of it, and you must choose to use it making the cassoulet. It was interesting to watch what in its uncooked forms looked like a modest bowl of beans next to a large pile of assorted meats become a bean stew with judicious bits of meat in it. It was a total reversal.
Still and all, it is wonderfully, gloriously rich. I would maybe serve it earlier in the day and take a long walk after eating. Or perhaps before. Or maybe both. The day after I had that sad feeling that I often do when I finish a major musical project, I had developed some kind of relationship to this recipe and this dish. It was an adventure in its own little way. Another iconic French recipe that i had once not made, I have made. I am a little more experienced that I was three weeks ago. What do we do now? We keep going.
How did we get there from here, Mr. Bachmann? Well, I’ll tell you. Three days and four grocery stores later, behold!- the fully assembled cassoulet.
There are two types of cooking adventure. The first is when you take very simple everyday ingredients and do some technical wizardry and Voila-puff pastry, for instance. The other, like this here cassoulet, is not technically difficult, but require days of cooking, resting, and perhaps most adventurely, obtaining the right ingredients. First, get the meat.
The 55 bus took us out to the Dogpatch, a neighborhood which didn’t exist in name when I moved here. It was always there but didn’t become popular until the City by the Bay starting living closer to it in by filling in the old warehouse district into a young urbanite’s paradise. This includes wonderful restaurants, coffee shops, boutiquey food places, and an absolutely wonderf French butchery called Olivier’s.
Duck legs, ready for confiting? Check! Toulouse style sausages? Check! Cute young butchers with long white aprons, handlebar mustaches, eager to please? Check! This place had everything. Those beautiful duck legs pictured above were subject to a quick confit for the cassoulet which included nutmeg, allspice, gin, and plenty of salt. It needed to brine for a day, and the beans needed to soak overnight to soften.
Day One. Oh yes, and I cooked the ham and pork shoulder to tenderness in water, which became stock. That too. I’d forgotten, or perhaps not put together in my mind in the first place, that I would be at work all day on Thursday and not able to do anything with the cassoulet unless I got up very early in the morning and worked constantly until the very moment that I had to rush out the door and catch BART. Which is exactly what I did. I roasted the duck confit for two and a half hours, I seared the sausages, I simmered the beans in the pork stock with onion garlic, onion, carrot, and herbs for an hour. For you see, every element of this dish is cooked separately before cooling, resting, processing, reassembling, and then recooking. That’s where I started to get worried that three days wasn’t enough, and dish wouldn’t happen. Well, when I pulled the duck legs out of the oven, I sighed with relief.
I am serving the cassoulet this evening. It is in the oven now with its mixture of breadcrumbs and walnut oil on the top. I tasted the bean in their liquor yesterday and they were absolutely wonderful. The scent in the house right now-ham, garlic, allspice, walnut, gin, savory meat. It is other worldly. I imagine it is what elves make in their little hovels at the base of the old oak tree. It is the food in fairy tales.
Now that it’s cooking, I seem to have forgotten any anxiety about getting to this point. Finding the all the ingredients, meat aside, were trickier to find than I thought. The beans for instance. It wasn’t the type of bean, Great Northern Beans were easy to find in cans. But finding big dry ones didn’t happen until grocery store number three. The walnut oil was worse, that was shop number four. When I’m making something as big and complicated as this I really want to make it to the letter of the recipe, and when I get into a situation where I may have to substitute ingredients, well, look out. I can get really grumpy. Same with timing, if I run out of town and I start to feel that I have trim minutes from the process, then you got some serious trouble. But, here we are. Everything is going to be fine, good even. And the pizza man is still just a phone call away.
Friendly reminder- I can no longer edit or change anything on this platform so this is all basically raw, unedited stream of whatever writing. For instance, in that last paragraph I wrote “if I run out of town”, when of course I meant “run out of time”. Ya know, that kinda thing. OK, more to come.
Is it OK to use cassoulet as a verb? I am going to cassoulet this weekend. Well, maybe not, but perhaps I’ll make a case to use it as a verb after I make it. That’s right, friends, I am going to make cassoulet this week. It’s like so many storied French dishes that everyone must make at least once. I have done souffles, quiches, Coq au Vin, all sorts of daubes, soups, you name it. But never the legendary cassoulet. And, like other iconic recipes, the French people insist that there is one, true, authoritative recipe that must be adhered to the letter of the law or it simply isn’t this dish, then have no consensus as to what that recipe contains and how it is to be cooked.
Something new- I am currently taking requests for menus or at least dishes that friends want me to make. I am happy and excited to do this as I need to be pushed a little bit these days, at least with regards to making new to me recipes. Cassoulet is the first one requested and will be the first big cooking project of 2026. I knew it would take a good deal of time, but other than that I thought it would be simple.
The first thing I should mention to the reader at home is that this has not happened yet. I can not tell you how it tasted, I have not tasted it yet. There is nothing to taste yet, you see. I scoured my cookbook collection, and in the database that use, there are no fewer than forty seven recipes for cassoulet. Each recipe has several things in common and several things that are very different. I will tell you which recipe I decided to go with, and why, but I’m not going into any huge comparison or anything like that.
First and foremost, cassoulet is a dish of slow cooked beans. It really is French pork and beans. Now, I don’t know if you are the kind of person that A. doesn’t eat beans, B. has only ever opened a can of beans, microwaved that and eaten it, or C. has opened a can of beans in liquid, tarted it up with some spices and cooked it in the oven, you may not know the glory that is the slow cooked New England baked beans. This is a dish that is cooked low and slow until the beans are so creamy and juicy and savory, that, well, I don’t know, something special happens. Point is, American baked beans like this are very much like Cassoulet.
This was not true of all the recipes, but most of the forty seven recipes in my collection finish with a layer of fresh bread crumbs spread on top of the cassoulet before the final cooking. Frequently the bread crumbs are tossed in walnut oil before scattering on top of the beans. Now, that sounds fun, huh?
A third and final similarity: Each recipe called for at least three, often four, sometimes five or six, types of meat. Some of the recipes were revolting to read-pork shoulder, ham hock, bacon, pork belly, fresh duck, fresh goose, duck confit, goose confit, lamb shoulder, kielbasa, garlic sausage, pork skin, cracklings, everything really except chicken or beef, make their way into the cassoulets. Honestly, I would be reading these recipes and I swear I could smell cooked meat smell oozing out of my own skin. It was horrible! So, I had to find a recipe that didn’t make me feel this way.
I found a recipe from a wonderful book that I have used many times call My Paris Kitchen by David Lebovitz. David I’ll call him, though I don’t know him, is a sometime San Francisco resident who, unsurprisingly, spends most of his time these days living in Paris, and I for one hope that he is very happy. He is a friend of Judy Kasinsky, owner of the building that has housed until recently Cookin’ a used cookware shop here, and Judy is the famed cantankerous proprietor. Another story for another day. I always mention him when I am in the store, and she regales me with some tale of her friend David, and some recipe she tried and how she fixed it when it didn’t work out. Well, the shop is closed now, and so I won’t be able to talk to her about my cassoulet.
It is currently Saturday. The serve date of the cassoulet is next Friday, six days from now. The dish is already in the making, here’s what I got so far.
David’s recipe calls for unsmoked ham hock, an ingredient I was unable to find even in our foodie city. I could find smoked ham hock, or unsmoked ham that is not the hock. He clearly doesn’t want that smoky flavor in the dish, so I will use a cured but not smoked piece of ham. I also couldn’t find duck leg confit for sale in a grocery store, I’m sure there must be some in town, but David actually gives a recipe for a quick homemade confit that sounds really great, so I got fresh duck legs and we’ll do that. Exciting!
One great adventure-I’ve found an amazing new-to-me butchery in town, Olivier’s Butchery in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. It not only has all the meats that need (including making the duck legs “confit ready”) but also the Toulouse sausages that most “authentic” recipes call for. So, the meat totals for this dish will be: Pork belly, pork butt, duck confit, and sausage. Four types of meat, that’s plenty. And the beans. And the breadcrumbs. OK, more to come, I pick up the meat on Wednesday.
Also, I know there are mistakes. I am only to write things once, I am no longer allowed to delete or edit anything on this platform, which I am still looking for a new one, btw. If you use WordPress and know something about this, please share it. It’s annoying. OK, love and best wishes to you all.
Is it astonishing that, even when we know our own pitfalls and shortcomings, it is impossible to avoid them, at least occasionally? How many times have I told me, how many times have I written basic rules when preparing food that must be adhered to with religious fervor? A lot. And is it not a thorough schooling when you pull a variation of your own character flaws, half baked, out of the oven. A meal that looked much better than it tasted.
The menu-Pumpkin soup, in the pumpkin
-Stuffed cabbage rolls
-Pears poached in red wine
Sounds wonderfully autumnal, doesn’t it? All things I’ve made before. I was not lacking in attention or care. I allowed enough time, and was enthusiastic about the project. Everything was in good order, except for some reason (or maybe none) I had some anxiety which made its way into the food in a number of surprising ways (or maybe none).
The first thing I did, which I knew not to do, I altered the recipes and some of these alterations resulted in cutting corners. Now look, read, and learn, my friends and see how one decision sets off a cascade of regrets.
For the cabbage rolls, I decided that I would make a version with ground beef and a meatless one. It was ok, because everything else in the preparation is vegan. It starts with a tomato sauce, cooked rice, and of course, the cabbage leaves. So, I’m boppin a long, boiling the leaves, poaching the pears, and I go to make the tomato sauce. I open the fridge and notice a package of bacon I had opened earlier in the week with a few strips left in. I grab it, open it, chop the strips us, and toss them in the pan. I later added the tomatoes and seasoning. A first derivation that meant the sauce was no longer vegetarian. Why did I do this? What possessed me to grab that bacon in the first place? Silly, because now, I had to make another tomato sauce entirely for the vegetarian version. No biggie, but my anxiety spiked when I subsequently approached the pumpkin.
Now this pumpkin was enormous, deep orange, and perfectly globular. A perfect specimen for jack-o-lantering. Painful reminder: the perfect looking pumpkin for jack-o-lantering means it was not bred for its flesh, which was very pulpy and and flavorless, and there wasn’t much of it. So, that. Now, I’ve made this soup before, with stock, cream, and sage. Because I felt weirdly guilty about having put bacon in the cabbage roll tomato sauce, I decided I couldn’t put stock in the soup. Also, I was out of cream, but had a little milk. And I was out of sage, so I substituted it with nothing. Why didn’t I just run to the store and get some? I have no excuse to offer. So, I put in the flavorings, put in the milk which didn’t make it one third of the way up the wall of the pumpkin. So I added. I added……water. Yes, I know. A terrible, terrible idea.
After an hour’s baking. this. Because there was little pumpkin flesh and it was only watered down milk on the inside, this soup was so thin, it broke my heart. It also had the flavor of water. Everything about it was truly disappointing to me. I ate only a couple of bites, and let it go.
Behind the soup in the picture above, you can see the cabbage rolls, which turned out much better, though I only ate one bite because I was tortured by the soup. This is an old family favorite, and I just ate some leftovers for lunch, and they taste better today than yesterday. So, there is some happiness there. I won’t do the bacon again because with the seasoning (which included allspice) made it taste a little bit like Worcestershire sauce.
The pears were fine. I poached them in red wine, cinnamon, and sugar. They turned a beautiful red color like this-
but I don’t remember them tasting too much like pears. I reduced the poaching liquid and poured it over them like a glaze, except then it slid off the pears and candied on the bottom of the dish. So, that.
The pear recipe comes from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food which is a classic cookbook if ever there was one. But I remember a piece of advice that was given in a review of the book many years ago. I paraphrase. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean that it is easy. The ingredients are simple, maybe the techniques are simple, and the flavors may be fresh and honest and whatever, but with food of this nature the devil is very much in the details. If the onion isn’t evenly diced, or the proportions are not correct, it can throw the whole dish off. The pears were successful in this case, but the same rule applies to the pumpkin soup.
Maybe these were good lessons to learn again again, before the holidays descend on us. I promise I will not cut corners. I promise I will not add ingredients just because they are in the fridge. I will not be consumed by fleeting feelings of panic when all I need to do is breathe deeply, keep moving, and for the sake of all things holy, stick to the plan. Yes, we’re gonna stick to the plan.
It was an evening much like any other. We were strolling around the grocery store, not knowing what we’d have for dinner. I guess because they were on sale and we were getting tired, we settled on flank steak and broccoli for a stir fry. Beef and Broccoli, Broccoli Beef. We’ve done this before, there is nothing to it. Home we go.
Still in the stage of my Chinese cooking where I need to know the proportions of sauces and flavorings, I hied me to the library and found several recipes. Of course, this is not a really complicated formula, it’s the usual combinations of ginger, garlic, soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, Sesame oil, and spring onions. The only difference really is how and when the ingredients are added. I decided on the one in The Wok by Kenji Lopez-Alt.
This Broccoli Beef begins with a technique of aggressively rinsing the beef in cold water and squeezing it tightly to get all the water out of it. Then, cornstarch is worked in with the hands, then a marinade is poured over. The water is boiled, the broccoli blanched, the peanut oil swirled into the hot wok, the beef added, then broccoli, then sauce, then serve.
Now there were a few little oversights which didn’t contribute to a great dish but certainly an edible one. Maybe the wok wasn’t quite hot enough and maybe the broccoli was a little crunchy. It was something we got right that I didn’t like. It was the washing the beef and working the cornstarch in. It made the beef tender, disturbingly so. I have had this texture before in Chinese restaurants, and I have to confess, I don’t think I like it. It takes a lot of the flavor out of the beef and it’s too soft. It isn’t slices of steak, like we’d have in a steak salad. That’s tender, it’s just tender for beef. Perhaps it was because the wok was a little cool that the beef ended up being super soft on the outside and super chewy on the inside which made it extra revolting, but I wasn’t happy. We need a redo.
As it happens, I bought enough flank steak to do this again if we wanted. Honestly, I didn’t really want to, I’m a little beefed out, but whatever. I would choose another recipe, I thought, and we can compare.
The photo on top is the first one, the one I didn’t particularly like. The one below is the recipe from Stir Frying to the Sky’s Edge by Grace Young. Her recipe was very much the same as Lopez-Alt’s except with the addition of Black Bean paste and the subtraction of the beef washing and cornstarch. There is cornstarch in Young’s, she uses it as a thickener for the sauce, not to tenderize the meat. I LOVED this one, and it will be my go-to whenever I make Broccoli Beef. The beef was steaky just like I like it, or like we like it. Strangely, it seemed more, well, what’s the word, American?
I began to wonder which of these recipes was more authentic Chinese. Then I wondered why I cared which one was more authentic. Then I wondered what other people would think if I told them that I liked the recipe that was less authentic. Then I wondered why I cared if people thought I was plebian for liking inauthentic Chinese food. And why is it important?
For the last couple of centuries, new cultures and cuisines have made their way to the USA and became part of our national cuisine. Think Chop Suey, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Pizza, Tamales. All these foods have roots in the flavors of the countries they come from, but they were all Americanized, and some of these became “types” of cuisine on their own, think “Jersey Italian” or “Tex-Mex”. After World War II, people began coming more from Non-European countries like India and Japan, there was more access to ingredients from around the world, and eating became more of a pleasurable pastime for more people. Hell, even mom got in on taco night. Thai restaurants and sushi became very popular and that was it, people were interested in food the way it is eaten in the country of origin. It even became a social taboo to like less than authentic versions of dishes. This was particularly true of Chinese food. Who eats Chop Suey or Egg Foo Young now?
So I did a little research, and found that indeed, it is “authentic” to wash the beef, and only beef, by the way, this should NOT be done with chicken apparently. I usually don’t eat beef at Chinese restaurants, and I would be open to cooking it again the washed way, but I must say, as a Westerner, I am accustomed to enjoying my beef a certain way, and I probably will always prefer that chewy, American steak in Chinese flavored sauce.
Now I feel guilty for having written that. Now I feel like everyone will think less of me for not having kept that to myself. Now I feel horrible for writing that I feel horrible because I’m worried what you’ll think of me now that I’ve shared that with you. Now I feel really awkward because I am thinking that you may have been liking this little essay until this part when I started feeling really self-conscious about how i come across in writing and how you may be judging me for coming across that way, which is not my intention. I just wanted to eat dinner.
Like the opening of the baseball season, which also happened this week: Hot Cross Buns. Now, you all know I love these babies, and I make them every year without fail. I am completely pleased with this recipe, which I have developed over the years. A mix of bread flour and AP flour, allspice, cinnamon, cardamom, raisins, currants, candied orange peel. Bun wash after baking. Cross made with icing drizzled on after cooling. Bingo bango bongo, there are many ways to bake a bun.
There are the freshly baked rye loaves from Friday.
I don’t say this enough, but I love things smothered in seeds, in this case, caraway. Hmm, these loaves were dense, bitter, tangy, and really yummy.
There is a little of the rye bread left, and that puts me in mind of a bread pudding. A savory one, perhaps with eggs, cheese and sausage. Spinach, bell peppers. Hmm. A strata. Now, you’d think somethin’ with a fancy pants name like Strata would come from Europe or some fancy place. But apparently, strati are kind of an American thing. Now, of course, dishes like this were originally a way to dispose of stale bread, like French toast (poor Knights of Windsor), Pan Perdu. Or Panade, which was stale bread soaked in water with salt. If you were lucky, there was an onion in that water. If you were really lucky there was a beef bone with that onion and salt in that water with that stale bread. Thus, French Onion Soup.
In what ways, is a strata different from a frittata? The principal ingredient in strata is bread, whereas a frittata is a strange cross between an omelette and a quiche. OK, my strata is in the oven. eggs, milk, stale rye, sausage, onion, green bell pepper. Muenster cheese. Let’s see.
Looks gorgeous, doesn’t it? Well, it didn’t taste that way. It was too bready, not seasoned enough. I am going to keep until tomorrow, and cook it with braise lamb shank in tomato sauce. That should make it great.
It’s good to let go of things sometimes. I have too many books always, and have practiced the art of giving away ones I care about to others, to open the door for a new opportunity, a new slice of life for me and the books. I always tell myself that if I ever want to see that book again, it’s always at the library or book store. Generally, when I get rid of a cookbook, I forget about, never giving it another thought. Sometimes, I am delighted to get rid of a book. I remember one cookbook that was meant to be “healthy” and every recipe was a total dud, not one thing worked. I don’t miss that one. There was another book, by a famous chef I shall not name as Jacques Pepin, and it too was low-fat, low-sugar, low-everything, low-flavor, low-joy. Every recipe I tried tasted the same, like nothing. I remember one egg white pudding with blueberry syrup, which, according to Pepin, was blueberries soaked in water. Jacques, please!!! Licking stamps is more flavorful.
There is one cookbook that I gave back to the world many years ago that I have thought about and thought about and always said to myself that if I ever found it in a 2nd hand book shop, where I buy most of my books, I would get it again. Cut to ten years minus one week later, and I saw a pristine hard covered copy of the book on the shelf at Community Thrift. It’s A Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden. It’s a thoroughly researched history of the evolution and dissemination of the foods of this (these) culture(s). It divides into two main sections: The Ashkenazy cuisine that originated in Eastern Europe, and Sephardic cuisine which has its origins in the middle-east.
I made two loaves of Rye bread, which was deliciously tangy and bitter. I didn’t make the dough the day before, which would have made it more sourdoughy, but i did make it in the morning. I put in a can of peanut butter stout beer, which is the perfect use of the stuff. It went beautifully with the mushroom soup I served next. Mushrooms, a potato, water, parsley, lemon juice. So yummy.
Amazing and mind numbingly simple red cabbage and apples: Let them soak and stew in red wine, apple cider vinegar, SandP. then steam it on up. So so good.
And Chicken Paprikash. Oh, boy, yet another dish mired in saucy controversy, and I do mean sauce. People go bonkers, the paprika must be Hungarian, it must not have tomatoes in it, it must have tomatoes in it, there is no fresh pepper in it, it must have fresh pepper in it. And why must everything Hungarian have sour cream in it? If I think about it, it might be the most divisive issue in the world today. Well, here’s something wack-a-doodle, the recipe in this book has both fresh tomatoes and fresh pepper, and NO SORU
No sour cream. Forgive the strange typo above, which I am unable to delete for some reason. Anyway, no sour cream. Actually, no dairy of any kind. Absolutely delish. Here’s a tip when cooking from cookbooks of other cultures, I think I’ve written this before: You usually want to triple the amount of spice in almost anything. So, 4 heaping tablespoons of paprika at least, at least, to get a good taste on that.
Now, a large pot of chili is simmering on the stove top. And on PBS, speak of the devil, Jacques Pepin is cooking salmon in water. I don’t really understand him, honestly. He clearly knows how to cook, and he must have a very sensitive palette his is food is so lacking in flavor. Not like my chili.
It was purely coincidence that this chili ended up clearing a pantry. I bought a freshly ground pound of beef chuck, and the meat man asked if I wanted another pound for free. Why yes, Mr. Meat Man, I would love more meat at no cost. But wait a minute!! What’s the catch? Well, Mr. Meat Man said that is was the tray of meat that he’d taken out of the window only a moment ago, and that it had lost its pink, youthful color and had grayed. No one would buy it, Meat Man saith. I will take the rejected meat and provide a home for it, I said.
Come on now, this is exactly what I mean. Jacques just put these strange little strips of salmon into a dry non-stick skillet with no seasoning or anything. It just looks so weirdly unsatisfying. With sorrel leaves soaked in light cream. blah.
OK, back to the chili! Having secured a large envelope of surplus beef and, having walked it home, gently, I was now in a position to decide what to cook with it. I’ve been “in the mood” for lasagna lately, but chili won. So, more beef=more spices needed to give it the good flavor. I pulled my signature blend: lots of cumin, lots of Italian seasoning, lots of smoked paprika (it’s a real paprika fest around here lately!), lots of red pepper flake, medium amounts of cayenne, medium amounts of garlic powder ( I like this sometimes because it has a little toasty flavor distinct from fresh garlic), black pepper, salt, and i think that’s it. I ended using up all of most of the above things. I know have a small army of empty spice jars. Spring cleaning means eating out the spice rack. It is not a cemetery, the spice jars are not tombstones. And Colorado Green Chile!! I’ve written about this before, the greatest of all chili blends. What a dish. What a day.
OOh, I just snuck into the kitchen for a taste of that chili. it sure is good. When I was a young fool, I would smother my chili in crackers and cheddar cheese, but now that I am an old fool, I think I like it plain. Which is, of course, not plain at all. OK, maybe a few crackers.
Finally, an editorial note before I hit publish. I always proofread this memo before sending it out and try to catch as many boo boos as I can. Lately, I’ve hit a problem: Word Press does not permit me to change anything after I’ve written it. So, the above text is completely unedited and I know there are mistakes. I regret not being able to change them. I might have even changed my phraseology or syntax and stuff. I was able, mercifully, to add this additional paragraph clarifying the reason for unaltered errata. Have a good day now.
In these strange and surreal, hold-your-breath, is this really happening, hellshit nightmare of bleak mid-winter, let’s pretend that we are not horribly distracted and exhausted by the realities of the world fresh in 2025. Some enthusiasms may need to be manufactured. Now, I will tell you, I’ve made some lovely things since last I wrote, but nothing of note. Until the other day.
Little dramas like this, I can handle. While at a friend’s for dinner recently, we all went down a YouTube hole of beef. Steaks, chucks, marbled, butchered, cuts of all kinds and shapes and preparations. Bloody aprons, sinew, fat, and bones flying through the air. It was wonderful. I don’t know, it put us in the mood for beef. And for me, far preferable than steak, is stew, or today, pot roast.
Now there are two types of beef stew I may get a hankerin’ for, when I get a hankerin’ for beef stew. The first is the French daube type, usually made with wine and thickened with Beurre Manie, or Old Fashioned All American Beef Stew, made with Beef, water, salt, carrots, potatoes, and that’s it. OK, maybe a little more fancy. Green Peas. Pearl Onions. And Parsnips.
Parsnips! Think of them as white, sweet carrots with a slight anise sort of flavor. You can do so many fun things with these little guys. They make good “fries”, soup, purees, and are great roasted with their friends, the carrot, turnip, and potato.
Parsnips! I exclaimed as we strolled through Whole Foods on that Tuesday mid-morning. “Parsnips are essential. Nature’s candy.” I said. “Really? Who is going to notice parsnips, and then appreciate them after noticing?” Well. We did find parsnips. They were tiny, withered, wobbly and miserable. I wondered if we happened upon a pod of partially decayed alien babies. I grabbed a giant handful, and threw them into the basket. There is no way I am making a beef stew this week without these little horrors. And what a cool funky taste that goes so well with beef, especially beefy beef. I love a good Beefy piece of beef. I cook that baby low and slow. Low and slow, for say, 5 hours, at 300F. I know it sounds nuts, but I think you can’t go wrong with low and slow. That is! if you love your beef absolutely fork tender beyond beyond. When you pull the lid off the pot, we beheld the beef undulating like jello, that’s just how tender it was. The knife slid effortlessly through the meat, which melted away in tender slices.
The guests assembled at the table. The dish of rich, sumptuous meat, surrounded by the noble sentry of vegetables, and enrobed in hearty jus was set forth to oohs and ahhs. The plates were passed, the cutlery clicking, and the wine glasses clanking. The knife tapping against the plate while the drink is slurped. Someone, swallowing, clearing the throat, made a HMM sound and asked, “Is there cinnamon in this?” I could have giggled with delight. “No,” I said. “But you have detected the magic ingredient.”
Parsnips! Parsnips! Everyone shouted in unison, and we all had a jolly laugh, raised a toast to the parsnip, grabbed the hands of the people next to us, and danced around the table till we all fell to the floor in a heap of rags!
Well, it didn’t really happen that way. I said “Oh, that’s parsnips” and everyone said “Oh.”
“Parsnips are good, you don’t always get them in things. They’re nice.”
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!
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.
BingoFest 