Tag: recipe

How to scald milk after the Western fashion

April 23rd, 2024

23 April Tuesday

If music be the food of love, play on. Happy Birthday, Will! Oh that you were with us still. Here’s what I got today:

What Shakespeare was to play-writing, Elizabeth David was to cookery writing. She was just as British, too. One of her best books, Spices, Salt, and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, is the basis for this week’s menu. This book has a beautiful little section on kebabery. And boy did I find something fun.

I’ve always been excited by dishes that have poetic names or are named after people or occasions. The French and Italians enjoy naming things after famous people, like Crepes Suzette or Pizza Margarita. Every pasta shape has its own cute little name like orecchiette (little ears), farfalle (butterflies) and my favorite, Strozzapreti (priest strangler). Chicken Marengo. In Chinese cooking, there are wonderful names for dim sum and noodle dishes like Lion’s Head meatballs, Dragon Noodles, Dragon and Phoenix, a great dish of mushrooms and cabbage and sesame oil called Three Winters. I remember as a kid we’d go to the House of Hunan in Fairlawn Plaza (you can fill in the Midwestern suburb, American/Chinese restaurant, and mall/plaza/outlet that applies to you) someone would order Happy Family and I’d wonder why everyone didn’t eat it if makes the family happy. Some items have names that are meant to be funny like Nun’s Farts or Rocky Mountain Oysters. Nipples of Venus. The British really take the cake with hilarious names-Eton Mess, Bangers and Mash, Bubble and Squeak, Rumbledethumps, and that perennial giggle-giver, Spotted Dick. So, I’ve found three dishes in this great little book that I think will taste harmonious together and have clever names that have a nice rhythmic lilt. Here is the menu and a brief description.

Sassaties, Khichri, and Junket. That’s it. That’s it, my friends. Sound yummy? It could be the name of a law firm. Well, let’s investigate. So, Sassaties. What are they, where did they come from? Sassaties are South African kebabs made with lamb marinated in tamarind paste, curry powder, onion, lemon, and milk. After a day or so the marinated cubes of meat are threaded on kebab sticks and grilled. There is almost zero information on this recipe. There are only two in the database collection of over two and a half million recipes. There’s one with apricots in the Joy of Cooking, and this one. No other recipes for this dish, anywhere, zippo, zero, notta, nothin. Elizabeth David writes that she discovered the recipe in a cookery book from 1891 entitled Hilda’s Where is it? by Hildagonda Duckitt. So, I need to find out who Hildagonda is.

Well, put simply, Hildagonda was South Africa’s first celebrity chef. She is known for her two books Hilda’s Where is it? and Hilda’s Diary of a Cape Housekeeping. She is considered an important chronicler of daily life in Victorian South Africa. You knew it had to be someone. Anyway, I may need to find a copy of those books and check them out.

She doesn’t seem to be particularly interesting, life-wise speaking. She wasn’t thrown as an infant from a burning apartment building; she wasn’t raised by bears. She was just a grande dame of Capetown living, and she knew how to throw a party and write a couple of books about it. I like her look, though. Very Victorian-hip.

Now Khichri or more commonly spelled Khichdi is a familiar dish to many in South Asian cuisines, lentils and rice and all manner of spices. Earliest mention of it dates way back to good ole 305 BC. I think these two dishes will go well together even though they grew up so far away from each other.

I ate a large bowl of minestrone soup made with my own delirious turkey stock and realized I really needed to take a walk, get my butt movin and go to the local market and get some of that kebab stuff.

The Rite Spot, a delightful tavern in the Mission District, near Gus’s Community Market, a delightful grocery store in the same neighborhood. I passed it on my way home, leg of lamb in hand. I was not able to find certain other ingredients and decided to go to one of several local Produce Markets that carry large quantities of spices and other less usual things like Tamarind Pulp. Which I got.

Tamarind pulp comes from tamarind pods surprise surprise and is a popular ingredient in African and Asian food. It is also an essential food to the survival of the African ring-tailed lemur, so I hope it’s not too popular! Anyway, the pulp is for paste, and I’ll know how to prepare that in the coming days. It will be included in both the kebab marinade and the rice and lentil dish. OK, more to come. I can’t give it all away in one writing! You!
A little night music

April 15th, 2024

15 April Monday

The time was seven twenty three. The place, my kitchen. The food, a spinach, bacon, cheese quiche and a blueberry cobbler. A quick improvised dinner made from ingredients I had in the fridge.

First, a pie crust is easy to perfect and easy to make. It improves many things, and I am indebted to Erin McDowell for the formula for pie dough that I have adopted for myself and have memorized. I won’t share it here, because it is hers and she should get any credit, financial or symbolic, that she is due. I can only tell you this, that it works out beautifully every time. You know that.

Quiche thoughts:

Parbake the crust, roll it out only to fit the pan plus a little bit extra to make the rim. A quiche is a savory custard and thus should have more milk and cream than eggs. Eggs are there to bind. Do not brown the top except for a tiny bit maybe. The center should wobble when you take it from the oven. Just like a sweet custard pie. Parbaking means the crust will be brown and crisp all the way around, whereas the custard will still be smooth and silky, not rubbery over scrambled eggy.

I haven’t made a quiche since I lived in Atlanta. One day, I made this very dish, minus the spinach, and attempted to serve it to a southern friend, who announced “Real men don’t eat quiche”. Now, I don’ t know about you, but it seems to me that not only would real men eat quiche, real men would be particularly drawn to quiche. Now, what is a real man? I don’t know. But, I know what a real quiche is. It’s eggs! It’s bacon! It’s cheese! It’s buttery salty, crusty, crust. What is there for a man, a real man, not to love? Real men eat bacon and eggs every day, here they are in one, cheesy crust to eat right out of hand.

Somehow, this poor young man had been shamed. Someone once, and I assume this person was equally misguided, told him that men don’t eat quiche. Have you ever heard something so inexplicably random? Real gals don’t wear black socks on days that end with the number two! If you do, you’re hell bound, lady! Or maybe you’re just not real.

Anyway, I served my quiche as a registered voter, a real American. I served my quiche without pride or shame. This is a little night music. A wonderful and simple done in a moment food that ticks every box. Real men eat quiche. Other men? What do they eat?

Cream biscuits, plopped on top of blueberries macerated in sugar and lemon juice. Sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. Cooked in cast iron. Enough.
Signs of life

March 18th, 2024

18 March Monday

One of the most looked forward to of foodstuffs, Irish Soda Bread. If ever I were to teach baking, I would begin with Irish Soda Bread. It may be the single easiest recipe in the world. And the effect it has on people! It is thick, dense, sturdy, slightly tangy, craggy, chewy. It is amazing dipped in the drippings, makes great toast, amazing grilled sandwiches. Every time I make and eat it, I wonder why I don’t make it more frequently. Then I forget about it till next year.

The soda bread made a wonderful bed fellow of Irish Stew; a warm duvet sopping up the au jus of melted lamb shoulder, potatoes, carrots, onions, and thyme. A little dinner conversation revealed that I’d used a recipe which had the ingredients stacked in a specific order, the liquid added without disturbing the order of the contents. It is never stirred, or indeed disturbed in anyway. So, is it a stew or a braise? I think technically a braise. The liquid added (water!) didn’t reach an inch of the way up the pan. It was the low, slow cooking, the meat giving its essence, the vegetables releasing their water. Heavenly. It braised on Saturday night, I left it in the turned off oven overnight, and when I got home from work on Sunday, turned the oven back on for another hour until it was piping, gently bubbly hot. Supremo.

Both of these foods seem in every way to be authentic. The stew tastes only of its components, there are no flavor surprises. We taste the lamb, and each vegetable holds on to its own flavor. Which is surprising. Things that are so simple, guests nod and their eyebrows go up (both of them, at the same time) when you tell them what isn’t in it.

Another batch of hot cross buns, with raisins, currants, homemade candied citrus peel, allspice, cinnamon, glazed with well, glaze. You can clearly see I am not so into the cross. It’s actually a nice looking design-a pastry intended to remind one of public execution. Kinda fun. At the same time, it is exactly the correct amount of icing these buns need. Thank you, Jesus.

Finally, on my morning walk, I beheld them. Local, fresh from the farm, standing tall and proud-the might Californian Asparagus. The asparagi of other places are thin and tender, but these west coast babies are the Sequoias of the vegetable world. That means spring onions, green garlic, salmon, chicken, lamb, and other springy things are springing into spring. Everywhere I look, signs of life.
Everything is food

January 9th, 2024

9 January 2024 Tuesday

And like that, the holidays commence, reign, and end. I put the decorations away today, having gotten back from my whirlwind tour of the Northeast, specifically Cleveland, Akron, and New York City. It was a wonderful time. And food.

Most of the cooking was done for me in Ohio, a real treat of ham, salmon, roast pork, sauerkraut (for New Years) and a great upside chocolate orange cake for my birthday.

Here’s a photo of Brandywine Falls. A well-earned picture considering I slipped in the mud right on my butt about seven times before I took it.

A time to slow down, a time to be at peace. Everything, in fact, felt peaceful this trip, including NYC, even Times Square seemed to be moving slowly, hoping that Christmas will never end. Indeed, when I left the city on the morning of 8 January, the city was still fully decked out in boughs of holly and etc.

While in New York, I stayed with a dear friend and her family in Brooklyn. She hosts a cookbook club that meets once a month, and for January I was invited to cook a dish or two from one of the nominated cookbooks. The featured book this month was Craig Claiborne’s Herb and Spice Cookbook from 1963. The book is divided by the featured herb and/or spice, and by some strange coincidence, some divine providence, a number of us were drawn to the fennel chapter.

Perhaps, after all that Christmas feasting and cookies and candies, we were craving a palate cleanse, something earthy and sweet, yet fresh and digestive. Fennel it is.

Remember Popeye the Movie? There was a song, Everything is food. It has a weird lyric that I can’t exactly remember, but I sing it every time I make a recipe like Claiborne’s Fennel Flavored Spaghetti Sauce. Yes, there was a lot of fennel in it and everyone tasted it, but the chief ingredient was meat. Meat meat meat meat meat meat. I felt like my skin smelled of cooked meat afterwords. It still might.

First, none of the above listed meats was used in my Fennel sauce. But it did have lots of meat in it. My friend and I went to the meat district of her neighborhood and stood on line (New York!!) for forty five minutes in order to purchase the most beautiful ground lamb, ground pork, ground beef, sweet Italian sausages, hot Italian sausages I’ve ever seen.

These recipes from the early 1960s show America at its most devil-may-care when it comes to food and ingredients. This dish, supposedly Fennel forward is most note worthy because of its flagrant, wanton use of dead animals. Lots of animal meat. It was heavenly, especially I imagine for the dead livestock. Everything is meat, meat, meat. Everything is food and chow. Everything is food. We enjoyed seconds for breakfast the next day.

If music be the food of love, play on. I went to New York to see a couple of shows, Here We Are and Merrily We Roll Along, both with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. I wouldn’t mention this in my food and cooking writing, expect to say this was a cathartic experience in my life. Like the greatest meal I’ve ever had, but I had it with my ears and eyes. Thank you, Sondheim for giving us more to see.

BTW, I am moving away from photographing the food itself in favor of using photos of the environment I was in that inspired the food. Pictures of food are horrible, and I hate them. End of sermon.