The Life of Johnston: An Eater's Autobiography

Woman Seeking Beef Seeks Similar

2010-01-04T16:08:00.001-08:00

I've decided that my ambition to own a steer my not be totally realistic. So I just placed an ad on the Craig's List personals under "Strictly Platonic" asking if someone wants to go in on it with me. Probably this will be eagerly interpreted as some kind of extreme fetish, as most of the ads in "strictly platonic" appear to be for prostitutes.

I think my lard guy (soon to be my beef guy) is getting tired of me. I always show up with a few bucks and say, "Oh my goodness, I only have six dollars left--gosh darn it--well what can I get for that?" And then he gives me a deal. But last time he said, "Why don't you come here first? We'll hold it for you while you shop." So I asked him to about buying a steer, mostly to butter him up, but now I think I may actually do it.

You don't have to buy a whole steer. You can just buy a lot of meat all at once, and get an okay deal. Like 50 pounds (various cuts) for $300. But that's still six bucks a pound, a lot more than I want to spend. He said the more you buy the better deal you get. That's why I'm looking for partners.

The lead attorney on the murder trial gave me a recipe for Chicken Paprikas that is totally wonderful. He's a great defense attorney, a bass player and a good cook. Also frighteningly good looking. Beef works just as well in this recipe.

Chicken Paprikas* (just the basics)

Ingredients: (serves 4-6)
3 tblspns. bacon fat
1 onion (diced)
2 cloves garlic (diced)
1 whole cut up chicken/skinned
2 tblspns. Hungarian Paprika (Szeged brand)
1 tsp of which can be Szeged hot paprika
½ tsp caraway seeds
pepper (to taste)
salt (to taste–careful to account for salt in bacon fat and broth)
1 cup chicken broth (depending on amount of water in chicken and potatoes)
3 medium sized potatoes, cut into 2 inch chunks

Cooking: (use med-large cooking pot)
1– heat oil and saute onions and garlic
2– add the paprika and caraway seeds to onions, stir;
3– toss meat in, brown;
4– toss in the potatoes and briefly brown them as well;
5– add chicken broth (should just cover the meat and potatoes–not more);
6– cover and cook on low heat for 1 to 1 ½ hours;**

Serve:
There will be ample sauce/broth depending how generous you were with your
liquids. The starch in the potatoes should thicken things up a bit. Use a little
potato flower if too runny. Serve in large soup bowl and sop up the sauce with
your choice of bread (that’s why you want some sauce instead of a thick gravy)
*recommend Hungarian cucumber salad as side dish
** cooking time: once the leg muscle starts pulling away from the bone, you’re
about done and don’t let the potatoes get too mushy

My note: it's much better the next day. And the next week.

Final Tip: When making the Jim Lahey slow rise bread, if you have no bran or cornmeal to keep it from sticking, grits work just fine. (Uncooked grits, to state the obvious.)

Pie for Breakfast

2009-11-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

The best thing about Thanksgiving is the leftovers. Especially the pie.

I'm in the middle of a murder trial, and even though I'm not the lead attorney, it is a bit distracting. So our Thanksgiving was a simple one. And I like every part about that except--not enough leftovers!

(About being a lawyer. I've always hated responsibility, and I still don't like that part. But I remember from all the crap jobs I've had how demoralizing it was to screw up at things that weren't supposed to be that hard. Like here I am with my Master of Fine Arts cleaning the shit off the walls of the group home for retarded girls--and I'm doing a shitty job at this shitty job. So I went to law school, and if I do screw up at least it's at something hard. And I try really hard not to.)

Back to our Thanksgiving. I made the Jim Lahey bread the night before and cooked turkey thighs in the slow cooker overnight. Enzo and I made Welsh Tea cakes with dried cranberries instead of currants. We used my beautiful lard and my beautiful griddle. So we had a picnic of turkey sandwiches, grandma's stuffed celery, Lay's potato chips (a food that can't be improved on--I marvel at them every time), sparkling cranapple juice, and cranberry tea cakes. I also got a bottle of slightly nicer than usual red wine. We were at the park by ten, played till lunchtime, and I did not get arrested for my open container. (Discretion is key, as I constantly try to explain to my clients.)

When we got home, Enzo and Teresa took naps and I made apple pie. And my dear, I can lie down in my grave with some degree of complacency. I have done it. It was the perfect crust--you know it by the shattering of the top crust at first slice.

Here is my annoying half weight, half volume recipe. (From the cookbook Fat.)

500 g flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/3 tsp salt
125 g unsalted cold butter
125 g. leaf lard
2/3 c ice water.

Cut the butter into the flour first, then the lard. Use pastry cutter and/or cold fingers. You know the rest. And if you don't, go read Fanny Farmer. This makes three very generous crusts, or four skimpy ones.

So I've been eating pie for breakfast, and now it's almost gone. Normal life looms.

I want to include the recipe for Cousin Jack Cookies, which my mom emailed to me when she knew I had lard. My mom said she got the recipe from a neighbor, and then when grandma Clara tried them, she said, "Cousin Jack Cookies!" (Cousin Jack is lang for Cornish--or maybe Welsh--who knows.)

1/2 c lard
1/2 cup butter (probably salted)
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg, beated
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
currants (or finely chopped raisins?) (or dried cranberries? adds Kate)

Sift together the flour, salt, spice. Cream lard, butter, sugar. Add beaten egg to fat/sugar. Blend in the flour mixture and the currents.Roll 3/8 inch thick and cut out with a round (scalloped is nice) cutter. Cook on a dry griddle-both sides until toasty looking. (Works better with baking parchment on the griddle, adds Kate.)

Getting By:

Pie Postmortem & Other Matters

2009-11-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

The lard pie crust turned out great--tender, flaky, tasty, and pretty easy to work with too. I made pumpkin pie. Enzo helped with the whipped cream. He likes using the hand mixer. To him it's just a fabulous power tool that you get to lick afterward.

Of course no pie postmortem would be complete without some cavil, which is that the flavor wasn't quite as good as butter. Next time I'm going to try half butter half lard. Also, I want to make a pie with a top crust, so there's more crust to enjoy--apple, I think. It's all just a reason to make another pie.

I brought a piece of pie to my lard guy today. He called me a beautiful lady. I think we might have crushes on each other. I read online that he once fired an employee for yelling at the pigs and slapping them. Don't you just love him? He is semi-famous, it turns out.

I owed him $16 from last time, and I reminded him of that but pretended that I didn't remember the amount. He said just to give him $5. I should add that I gave him the pie after money part. It wasn't a pie bribe. It was a pie thank you. We bought a lamb chop. I am thinking about buying a steer.

The steer. Right. My plan goes like this: Buy high speed scanner. Scan all the closed case files that now fill our basement making it impossible to move or find anything. Buy deep freeze and put in basement. Buy steer and put in deep freeze. (Have steer slaughtered first for ease of insertion in deep freeze.)

If I had a steer in my basement, I would fear nothing. Except maybe power failures.

Lard Balls

2009-11-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

I wasn't sure how much lard the lard man intended to bring me. It seemed presumptuous to ask for a lot, since he was giving it to me for free. I could bring a five quart Tupperware, but what if he only brought me a couple of cups of lard? It would look as if I'd been expecting more. An ungracious beginning.

So I brought a large ziplock bag and Enzo's old insulated lunch box to keep it cold. When we got there, the lard man heaved this giant thick plastic bag over the table, filled with strangely folded white stuff. It looked like a brain--perhaps a whale brain. Fifteen pounds of of pure pork fat, the good stuff from around the kidneys, which apparently is called leaf lard, even though you still have to render it to make usable lard. He charge me for it too--ten bucks, which is fine. He also, I couldn't help noticing, did not render the lard. Also fine. Better in fact. I think.

The only trouble was that we happen to have the smallest refrigerator you can buy. Our house has an adorable alcove in the kitchen for the icebox, which is what people had when the house was built. Only one fridge at Sears fits in our alcove. It is very small.

Normally I adore being deprived of all choice. I hate standing in the toothpaste aisle frozen by the pros and cons of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda; wondering if my teeth qualify as sensitive or if they're just crappy; longing to live in a nice old-time communist block country with ONE fucking toothpaste. Given choice, I feel I have to make the right choice, and it's just a burden.

Buying our fridge was easy--only one option, hurrah, and it was the cheapest one too. But it is a tad small. This lard would fill the entire freezer or most of the big bottom shelf of the fridge. And I already knew Teresa would be totally grossed out. I was a little nonplussed myself. It was just so...animal. There was no denying the slaughterhouse. And so fat.

When we got home I heaved the bag onto the counter and cut it open. The folds of fat opened slightly, and the whole thing looked bigger than ever. If anyone needs motivation to lose fifteen pounds, try looking eye to eye with fifteen pounds of pure pork fat. It's a LOT. Clearly I would need a cauldron.

I read the Fat cookbook that I got from the library on how to render lard. You can do it on the stove top or in the oven. They key is low heat. Well obviously I would use the slow cooker. I started cutting the fat into one inch cubes. It took a very long time. I ended up freezing about ten pounds of cubed fat in ziplock bags. (It took up a lot less room once it was cubed and squeezed together in a ziplocks.) And I put three pounds of fat in the slow cooker with one cup of water on low for four hours. And I threw some of the fat away. I was weary of the whole project.

The fat warmed and melted. The smell was faintly industrial, yet animal--repulsive, in fact. And I don't repulse easily. Next time I'll run an extension cord and put the slow cooker outside. (My mom's suggestion for the slow cooker onion-eyes problem.)

But it did work. I strained it and cooled it, and now I think all my friends and family are getting lard for Christmas. I could use a melon-baller and give everyone exquisite little boxes of lard balls--waxy, white, slightly iridescent--a pearl among fats.

How to Julienne the Baby

2009-11-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Annie and Todd and Emmet visited for Halloween, and Annie showed me how you can fix the feed tube of the Cuisinart to julienne the baby. Hurrah! I take it all back about the narrow feed tube. (See blog entry of November 8, 2008.) Now all I can think about are various large objects that might need grating. A pound-plus dark chocolate bar from Trader Joe's, for instance. Or large russet potatoes for potato pancakes. Or a loaf of cheese.

Does this mean I can't let Enzo run the food processor by himself anymore? Oh, it'll be fine! Is he really likely to figure out how to change the feed tube if I didn't figure it out in the five years that I've had the Cuisinart? And I used to sell Cuisinarts, when I worked at Jordano's, the great cooking store, now defunct. I didn't do very well there, and we see why.

Annie and I went to see my lard guy. He didn't have it. Apparently it burned in the rendering process. I suggested that I just buy the pork fat and render it myself, but he was out of pork fat. I bought three vegan pork chops for eleven dollars, and we agreed to try again next week. Technically it's the pigs that are vegan, not the pork. Vegan in pig land, means no corn. Human vegans can eat corn, but pig vegans can't. It's complicated.

Annie and I made enchiladas together with sauteed onions and butternut squash and corn and cheese. No cumin because I only had whole cumin seeds, but no mortar and pestle and no spice grinder. Because I may actually be retarded.

The enchiladas turned out great, mostly because Annie brought about five dozen amazing fresh corn tortillas from the tortilleria in her town. She described how you buy them still warm, and you can eat them just like that, without anything else. And I can imagine hugging five dozen tortillas, warm and fresh and compact as a tightly swaddled baby. (A baby on a good day--say an easygoing three-month-old.) I'm sure we have something like this in Sacramento. I must find it.

Tonight for dinner we're having an actual meal. (As opposed to last night, when we had canned sardines, canned olives, avocado and watermelon.) Tonight: vegan, liberally educated pork chops; chunky apple and pear sauce (I make it with no water and lots of butter and just a little maple syrup and Trader Joe's pumpkin pie spice, which is really good, with cardamom and a bit of lemon peel; potato and parsnip pancakes--grated in the new, large feed tube. Because I can.

Unidentified Fishy Objects

2009-10-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

By the time I’m done cultivating my lard connection I’ll have spent so much on organic grass-fed, grass-finished meat that it would have been cheaper to have the lard airlifted to my doorstep in tank of liquid nitrogen (sort of like how we got Enzo).

We went to the Farmer’s Market, and I talked to my lard guy. Did he get my message last week that I had the flu? No, but someone else took the lard. No harm done. Will he take me back? Can I call him again? Of course. So we’re set for next Sunday. I call Wednesday to confirm.

Then I was so flustered and grateful that I spent twelve dollars on two lamb chops. I was scanning the price list desperately for something I could afford, nothing, nothing, and it was all lamb. So I asked for the lamb chops, and then I saw the separate price list for pork. But I was too flummoxed to make the change.

We also bought tiny fish that may be sardines and may be anchovies. And shell fish that look like tiny conch. I have no idea who to cook any of this. I think I’ll start by chopping off the fish heads and taking out their guts. As for the conch, I’ll steam and hope and dip them in melted butter with garlic, and that covers a multitude of sins.

Last week when I was sick I had no interest in food. Is this how men feel when they stop thinking about sex all the time? It was liberating--and boring.

I didn’t even want chocolate. Ordinarily, for me, chocolate in the house is an itch unscratched. Enzo can carry around two M & M’s all afternoon and not eat them. He puts them in the back of a dump truck, picks them up again, carries them around, puts them on a train, carries them around again. And I feel like prying them out of his plump little fists and devouring them on the spot.

While I was sick, I read like a Turk—Survival In Auschwitz, The Drowned and the Saved, The Reawakening, all in a row. I was going to write that it’s hard to feel too sorry for yourself while you’re reading about the holocaust. But I didn’t have any trouble. Sensation is sensation. Misery is misery. Some is worse than others. The flu was mine. And mixed in with the flu misery was the intense pleasure of reading those books again.

Enzo was almost named Primo after Primo Levi—but we concluded that most people would think of the Mexican beer, not the Italian writer. So we stopped ourselves in time. Not that there’s anything wrong with Mexican beer—god forbid.

Post script on the fish drama. Definitely anchovies. I picked their finicky little guts out. The bones came out easily, spine and all. I sauteed them very quickly in butter and garlic and parsley—lemon at the end. And they were okay—but very, very fishy. I like fish. But this was a bit much. They needed capers or more lemon or good rough bread with lots of butter. Or maybe just a large pizza underneath them.

The conch were sweet and briny--and a bit rubbery, but in a good way.

Tomorrow, lamb chops.

Triscuits & Tapwater

2009-10-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

We are brought low.

Enzo had swine flu and came through it in a week, hearty as a little bull. But he watched a lot of TV in that week, and now he thinks that’s what his life should be like all the time. Sounds good to me.

When he was sick he fell asleep in my arms at night, just like when he was a baby. After I'd read just a couple of books his eyes would start to close, and he'd turn around and sort of nestle down against my chest and fall asleep--the most delicious feeling.

Less delicious was when I accidentally ate one of his loogeys. He was eating breakfast and gave a great sneeze. I ran for Kleenex, but then I couldn't find any snot--not on his hands, his face, or his plate. A few minutes later I took a bite of his untouched English muffin. And then I saw glistening on the buttery muffin--the loogey.

Now Teresa and I have the flu. We are old and tired. I’m hiding out in Teresa’s studio with a trial transcript and a bunch of trashy magazines. Enzo thinks I’m gone, which is the only way I can get any work done (or any trashy magazines read). I have a box of Triscuits and some water. Every few hours I heave myself up and squat over a Revere Ware saucepan to take a pee. I am a mature professional woman.

When Enzo was sick he ate almost nothing for a week. Now he looks a little thin. So I’m feeling completely miserable and also guilty that Teresa has to do the hard work while I just be a lawyer, and at the same time some part of me is thinking cheerfully, “Oh goody, maybe I’ll get thin.” And I just had a delicious fantasy about ending up in the hospital and getting all my trials continued and being extremely brave and interesting. So there are consolations.

The refrigerator is crammed full of rotting food. As far as I can tell, we have nothing to eat except fish sticks and popsicles. So this morning I dragged myself to Safeway and got the stuff to make chicken soup. Jewish Penicillin Grandma Clara called it, to everyone’s intense embarrassment. Chicken, salt, water, whole carrots and celery (don’t bother to wash, who fucking cares) an onion and a head of garlic (don’t bother to peel), put it all in the slow cooker on high for three of four hours. Ladle out some broth and chicken. Make toast.

Hubris Pie

2009-10-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

I told Teresa, "This is going to be my best quiche yet."

I'm eating a piece right now, and it's awful. I think there are Greek myths about this, and they don't end well. The gods don't like it when you fly too close to the sun. And then there's the one about rolling the stone up the hill, and it always fucking rolls back down. And let's not forget the one about the guy who was totally hungry and thirsty--with ambrosia just out of reach.

I think those Greeks were on to something. Maybe they were trying to make butter pie crusts.

I tried to stop. I really did. But my I didn't call my lard guy in time for him to render the lard for the Sunday Farmer's Market. And then I had an idea, which I still think is a good one. The idea is: used chilled browned butter. The high water content in butter makes the crust tough. But in browned butter all the water is cooked off, and the milk solids that make butter so tasty are left and even enhanced by the browning. It's a seriously good idea.

The execution, however, was flawed. I didn't have any sweet butter, so I used salted butter but forgot to reduce the salt to compensate, so the crust came out over-salted. And it takes a lot of salt to make me say that. Also there was too much butter. And it takes a lot of butter to make me say that. Butter crusts usually call for a higher proportion of fat than lard or shortening crusts in order to compensate for the fact that butter is part water. But I cooked off all the water, so I should have reduced the fat as well. There are a lot of greasy, salty foods that I totally adore, but pie crust isn't one of them.

For those who want to try this at home--though why would you?--I followed the recipe in the most recent Fine Cooking (volume 101), substituting browned butter for regular butter.

The filling of the quiche was pretty bad too, but I don't care much about that. I warmed the egg/milk mixture in the microwave so it would cook faster. And it set up so fast that the cheese didn't have time to melt, so there are hard cheese chunks in the filling. And I decided to use almost burned onions that are so good in Middle Eastern cooking, but not so good in quiche Lorraine it turns out.

Look, it's edible. And let's face it, I'm just trying to survive.

Maybe I should make it a burnt offering. And then maybe, just maybe, next weekend when I try it all again with sweet butter and less fat I'll ascend into paradise.

Easy As Pie My Ass

2009-10-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

My mom taught me how to make pie crust, and I always understood that it was hard and that it turns out a little different each time, so that part of eating pie is the crust post mortem. Tender or tough? Flaky or leaden? And what about the flavor? Butter probably gives the best flavor, but I've never made a butter crust that wasn't like very tasty cardboard. Lard is best for flavor and texture, but there's something unappealing about all those strange ingredients--deodorizers and stabilizers and preservatives. Shouldn't the only ingredient be: pig fat?

When my mom first learned to make pie, her mom called in a neighbor who was known to make good crusts. And my grandma Maxine was and is a great cook. It's just that crust prowess is rare, and so my mom was apprenticed.

My mom taught me the classic one cup shortening, three cups flour, one teaspoon salt, one cup ice water, though you know you won't use the whole cup of water. She taught me to use a pastry blender, but I've long since abandoned that. It takes too long, and quickness and lightness are everything when it comes to pie. I use my fingers. The purpose of the pastry cutter is to keep the fat cold while you cut it into the flour to make those fatty-flour granules that end up puffing into a thousand pockets of light flaky deliciousness. It turns out I can do that better with my fingers.

I developed my finger technique at the dude ranch where I worked as an assistant cook after college. There was no time for a pastry cutter there. I would make seven or eight pies before breakfast. And make breakfast. It was cold at night, even in the summer, and the water came out of the tap icy cold. I would wash my hands and then hold them under the cold running water as long as I could stand it, then dry my hands really well and use my freezing fingers to cut the fat into the flour, quick, quick and careless. It's caring too much that usually ruins a batch of pie crust. It makes you try too hard, and before you know it you've overworked the dough.

Cold and quick. That is pie crust. I remember an article in The New Yorker from many years ago about driving around America eating pie, and the author included a recipe for pie crust that included oil and boiling water. It was disturbing. I don't remember who wrote it, but it wasn't Calvin Trillin. That lovely man would never perpetuate such crude misinformation. And where was their fact checking department? This is not a subject on which reasonable minds can differ. Whatever that woman was making, it wasn't pie. Maybe it was wallpaper paste. My faith in the printed word was shaken.

Pretty pie crusts are usually shitty pie crusts. That's because to make dough that doesn't tear and crimps neatly at the edges, you have to overwork it and use too much water. I like an ugly patched together crust that tastes as it should. I've decided to give up crimping altogether and make what I think is called a fladen--a sort of rustic partly folded over itself crust, usually with apple filling or something else sufficiently solid. And I'm going to find good lard--honest perishable pig fat.

I just googled "lard connection Sacramento" and came up with nothing except a strong impression that I'm not the only one on a lard quest. And I learned on Wikipedia that the best fat is from around the kidneys. Goodie.

(Next day) There are subjects on which I cannot be educated. I simply can't believe anything bad about butter, no matter how much evidence to the contrary I create. I made a pumpkin pie with real pumpkin (as in not canned, though there's nothing wrong with canned) and a butter crust. And it was a failure. That means it was delicious by any reasonable standard--but not what I had in mind. The crust was flaky and crisp, and the flavor was wonderful. But it was tough. Enzo and Teresa don't understand this. They don't speak pie.

Why don't I just make tri-tip or brownies or something else that's impossible to make badly? Because pie is better. And where would be the drama? I can buy a brownie at Starbucks that's probably better than anything I could make. And what's the point of making homemade cookies when Oreos exist? But pie is indispensable, and the only good pies I remember eating were baked by my mom or myself. Sorry, world, we happen to rule.

The good news is that we went to the Farmer's Market this morning, and I asked the guy at the pork stand if he sells leaf lard. He said no, but he'd be happy to give me some. Just call the week before, and he'll make some for me. Hurrah! I am connected.

I'm going to include a recipe for Shaker Lemon Pie because because it's so strange and so good. To make this pie you need either a Meyer lemon tree or a connection. I have both, but since I'm the only woman in California who can't bring a lemon to harvest, I rely on my connection--a neighbor lady with a harvest from one tree that fills grocery bags.

2 large lemons with thin rinds (Jeanne note: it takes about 6 Meyer lemons-they don’t come in ‘large’ The pie should not have heaped filling. The flavor is too intense if overfilled.)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs

Slice lemons paper thin, rind and all; flick away any seeds. Combine the lemon slices with the sugar and mix well. Let stand 2 –12 hours, blending occasionally. This is rather pretty stuff when the sun shines on it. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Beat the eggs and add the lemon mixture. Turn into a 9” pie shell, arranging the slices evenly. Cover with a top crust and crimp along the edges. Cut several slits near the center. Bake at 450F for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 375F and bake for about 20 minutes (Jeanne note: maybe longer) or until a knife inserted near the edge comes out clean. Cool before serving.

My mom emailed me that recipe. She also made the pies (pineapple pies--who knew?) in the picture at the beginning of this entry. They are beautiful. I don't trust them a bit.

My own fact checking department (My Mother) has informed me that The New Yorker article I was remembering was The Great American Pie Expedition by Sue Hubbell, New Yorker, March 27, 1989. This was also the source of the Shaker Lemon Pie recipe. A useful reminder that the sublime and the horrible are often found together.

Grandma Clara

2009-09-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Every afternoon Grandma Clara used to sit down for her Four O’clock Fix: a cup of black coffee and a cookie. The coffee was weak and very hot—real Midwest coffee. The cookie was usually one of her homemade cream cheese cookies. She would sit and rest and quietly enjoy this. Can you even imagine being that sane?

She smoked exactly one cigarette every day, in the morning with with the L.A. Times Crossword.

She ate watermelon with a knife and fork and a bit of salt.

She said that when she first came out from Michigan to California she ate half a cantaloupe with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle. And you had the impression that’s why she decided to stay and marry my grandpa.

When she first got married she didn’t know how to cook. She made pea soup, but she didn’t know it was supposed to be thick, so she made a clear broth with peas floating in it. “This is pea water,” said my grandpa. And she cried. By the time she was telling us the story we were eating her wonderful thick creamy pea soup, cooked with a big ham hock.

She made the best Santa Maria style barbecue—barbecued tri-tip, pinquito beans simmered long and low with a big ham hock, potato salad and garlic bread. That was her signature meal. There were no recipes. The food was in her head and her hands.

I’ll leave out the meat, since my Grandpa did that. Barbecue some tri-tip--that’s the recipe. I’m sure there is some high art to this, but I don’t know what it is, and it’s hard to make tri-tip taste anything but great.

The potato salad. I happen to make great potato salad, and she did some things that I think are wrong—like peal the potatoes before boiling them instead of afterward. But this is the way she did it, as well as I can remember. Peel and boil some russet potatoes. While they’re still warm, cut them into large chunks, sprinkle with salt and apple cider vinegar. Mix together mayonnaise, mustard powder, salt, pepper, and chopped green onions. Add the potatoes and mix it all together, trying not to break up the potatoes. Chill. Were there hardboiled eggs in there? I’m almost sure there weren’t. I wish I could call and ask. Her number is still in my phone.

The Beans. Soak some pinquito beans. Cook slowly with ham hock, , onion, garlic, and a small can of Las Palmas chili sauce.

The garlic bread. Make garlic butter with softened butter and mashed garlic. Get a loaf of grocery store type French bread—not sourdough, not artisanal, just soft white French bread in a plastic bag. Cut it lengthwise and spread the garlic butter. Toast under the broiler. Don’t burn.

Here are a few more of her recipes.

Cream Cheese Cookies

Cream together:
1 cup butter
3 oz cream cheese
one cup sugar
one egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Sift or just mix together:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt.

Then mix everything together and (this is not in her written recipe, but she told me) don't over mix. Shape into rolls and refrigerate for at least three hours. Slice and bake for 16 minutes. Yes, that is correct, there is no baking soda or baking powder.

White Fruitcake

This is a big recipe because she gave it away for Christmas. It was the fruitcake that you actually liked to get.

Cream together:
3 cubes margarine or butter
3 cups sugar

Add, one at a time, beating between each one:
3 eggs

Mix together:
5 cups of sifted flour
1 tablespoon baking powder

Add 1 1/2 cups milk to the butter/egg mixture, alternating with the flour until it's all combined.

Mix in:
One package coconut
1 cup walnuts
12 ounces each red and green glace cherries
12 ounces candied pineapple
1 ounce brandy.

Bake in small loaf pans for about an hour. I think she lined the pans with baking parchment. Not a bad idea.

Open & Notorious

2009-09-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

There's a dead end alley behind our house blocked by a big dumpster about thirty feet from the dead end, leaving a wild, unclaimed patch of weeds where no one drives and no one goes. We're kitty-corner from the weed patch, so that it would be easy to run a hose, or even a drip line from our house.

It took about thirty seconds for my thoughts to go from Community Garden to...Real Estate Scheme. I could see the raised beds, the neatly mulched rows, the neighbors meeting by chance to exchange gossip and produce. And then a voice from my real property law class went though my head: open, notorious, hostile, adverse, under claim of right...the elements of Adverse Possession. I couldn't remember how long you have to occupy the land to get it for yourself, but probably seven years. Geez, if I'd started this when we moved here, it would be ours by now. In fact, MINE.

I could fence it, run drip line, build a gate in our back fence, or maybe even a short corridor from our yard to the garden. I could plant a small orchard--figs! Maybe instead of a fence, espaliered apples and pears. Raised beds, of course. Drip irrigation on a timer. Goats, chickens. Perhaps a small vineyard. A picnic table. A shed. A worm box. Hell, a gazebo. Enzo could make a fort.

Objections crowded in. You have to pay the taxes to adversely possess land. And I doubt you can adversely possess against the city. And the small patch of sunlit vegetable garden in our own yard is a weed-infested ruin. The only things I can grow are tomatoes and arugula--which have been wonderful. Those two crops can take you a long way. But how would I satisfy the open and notorious part if the lot still looks like a weed patch? And how much arugula can three people eat?

And then, it's the secret, untamed wildness that attracted me to the lot in the first place. I remember an apricot tree near the house where I grew up. It was in a vacant sliver of land between an abandoned road and the new road, surrounded by weeds and dry grass, unwatered, unpruned and unobtrusive. The apricots were small, rosy-speckled, sweet and firm--and free in every way. Free because I was free and exploring and found them myself. Free because they were a secret.

Operation Ass Wipe & Other Miscellaneous

2009-09-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

Enzo is into apple juice popsicles. He also loves plums. So when I got a mother lode of plums from a friend, I pitted and pureed them and made popsicles with plum, yogurt, apple juice and honey. And he refuses to taste them. He wants what he’s used to. He wants the apple juice.

That’s what’s wrong with children. (One of the many things.) They are so fucking conservative. Also contrary, perverse, uncultured and ungrateful.

Plus now that he’s into peeing standing up, he keeps peeing on my Moroccan mint, spraying around with great glee.

Enzo’s starting pre-school in a few weeks. We knew he had to be potty trained, and he’s been that for a long time. But Teresa learned at the orientation that he also has to wipe his own ass. So Operation Ass Wipe has begun.

When he poops he usually kicks off his shorts and underwear completely. You hand him the wipe, and he just shoves it between his cheeks and then runs off with the wipe waving bravely behind, as in flag football. We chase. We wipe. He is delighted with himself.

You'll be relieved to know there is no food component to this story.

My ancestors left Norway about thirty seconds before oil was discovered in the North Sea. They were poor and so was Norway. Then Norway was rich, and they were still poor, but they were American poor, which is supposed to be temporary.

Anyway, I decided to reclaim my Norwegian heritage, and since I can't afford one of those fabulous sweaters, I bought a rutabaga. I put it on the counter and watched it for a while. My grandma always made mashed rutabaga for Thanksgiving. And how about a meat pie with lots of onion and rutabaga? That sounded great but also like a lot of work. So I ended up chopping it into a large dice, drizzling with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasting it all very hot for about forty minutes. It was delicious--nutty and sweet with a little radish-like bite.

There are so many foods--like rutabaga--that I like a lot but never think to cook. And they're not hard. I just forget about them. Like I used to eat fennel all the time, and now I can't remember the last time I had fennel. And soon I'll be lying in my grave, thinking, "Fennel!"

One small advantage to having Enzo around is he makes me try new things. He usually doesn't try them (see above) but the hope that he might makes me try things that I otherwise wouldn't. Like he used to love those calamari rings from Trader Joe's. You pour them frozen, straight from the bag into a pan with garlic and olive oil, and they're done in about three minutes. And they're cheap, too.

Then Trader Joe's stopped carrying them. Calamari costs a fortune at Safeway, so I decided to get whole squid, guts and all at the Farmer's Market. But the first time we went to the fish stand I saw this strange pure white squid-like fish next to the calamari--cuttle fish. I bought one big one and left the calamari for next week. And it was delicious--white flesh, delicate firm texture (less rubbery than calamari) and tasting cleanly of the sea. I'd heard of risotto with cuttle fish ink. What I bought appeared to be ink-less. Why? Never mind. It was delicious sauteed very quickly in olive oil then tossed with lime juice and a little mint and parsley. (Enzo didn't eat it. See above.)

The next week I got plain calamari. Enzo loved the guts and eyeballs part. He inspected them carefully. "Where's his mouth?" I showed him the strange beak-like mouth at the base of the tentacles. "Where did his eyes go?" I found the eyes,which had somehow receded into the body, and popped them out again. I managed to clean and cut them up and and cook them. And now Enzo doesn't like calamari anymore. These were big squid. Too big for calamari rings. And he likes the rings. They're what he's used to (see above).

(A week later)

Enzo and I want to the Farmer's Market this morning. "What do you want to get?" I said.

"Fish!"

"What kind of fish?"

"Big ones."

"What other kind?"

"Tiny ones."

"What other kind?"

"All of them!" But the fish stand was closed.

Crawdad Capers

2009-09-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I committed the sin of buying and cooking and eating something only to write about it.

And I paid.

We went to the Farmer’s Market, where Enzo became entranced with the live crawdads. We hung out for a long time watching them.

“Crabs?” said Enzo.

“Crawdads,” I said. “They’re like tiny lobsters.” And then we bought some. I had the guy tie an extra bag around them because they’d have to ride home in the bike trailer with Enzo, and I didn’t want them escaping and crawling on him, though I suspect he wouldn’t mind.

We made it home and showed Teresa. She was horrified. "I’m not even going to be in the house when you eat those. I’ll be outside eating a bowl of cereal--nice, dead cereal.”

I poured the seething, clicking mass into a big stock pot, clapped the lid on it and put it all in the fridge. I promised Enzo we would look at them again after his nap.

I was already beginning to dread the whole ordeal. What if Enzo starting thinking of them two pounds of adorable pets? Should we set them free? But where? And what if they set off some exotic species type ecological disaster? Though surely they must be a native species, since they’re here in my house and still alive. I mean you wouldn’t fly in live crawdads from Asia for the farmer’s market. Or would you? The fish stand has frozen fish with Chinese characters on the packaging.

We were stuck with each other. I opened the fridge and stared at the pot. You could hear them moving--a faint clicking. There was something so repulsive and cruel about the mass of them all crammed together, fighting for air and escape and probably at this point eating each other. I thought this was going to be so Annie Hall, and it felt like The Killing Fields. I closed the fridge and left the house. Teresa and Enzo napped.

When Enzo woke up we got out the crawdads. Enzo ran to get his chair, pulled it up to the counter, climbed up and peered into it. “We cook them?” he said.

I poured the crawdads into a big bowl and filled the stock pot with water, garlic and salt. Enzo had his elbows on the counter, chin in hands, peering at the crawdads, which were moving even more now that they were warming up. He poked one.

“Be careful,” I said.

“They bite me?”

“No, but they can pinch you with their claws.” I showed him how to pick them up, by the body. He tried that. Then we put one on the counter and studied it. They are beautiful creatures. It lifted up both claws to the sky in what seemed like a desperate, defensive fighting motion.

Enzo picked it up and put it in my grandma’s bean pot, which was standing by, mostly as a prop. (Too small for cooking crawdads.) “Enzo’s a good helper today?” he said. I said he was a very good helper. I was still dreading the moment when the seething mass went into the stock pot. Then I had an idea. I filled a plastic tub with water and poured the crawdads in so they could move about in the water.

Then they started killing each other. The water was a boiling, thrashing mass. And I realized that now I couldn’t just pour them into the stock pot. The cold water would cool down the pot. And I didn’t have a colander big enough to pour them into—I’d have to take them out one by one, by hand--or with tong, yes, tongs, thank god for tongs. Then I remembered the big salad spinner insert. I poured them into that.

By this time two very good things had happened. Enzo had lost interest and wandered off and the water was boiling. I poured the crawdads into the pot, hating them by now, which made it easier. Four spilled onto the stove top. I picked them up with oven-mitted hands and popped them in the pot, slammed the lid on and set the timer for six minutes.

When I poured them out they were bright red, extraordinarily beautiful. I liked them so much better dead. Two of them went into the sink, halfway down the drain, and while I was frantically looking for the tongs, they went down into the garbage disposal.

The problem with tongs is that it’s hard to open them to grab something when they’re thrust down a drain. I finally got a purchase on one crawdad and brought it up, slowly, slowly so that it wouldn't break apart. And then I got the other.

Enzo came back and helped me pick them apart. He picked one up and looked at it closely.

“Eyes see in the dark?”

Hell if I know.

We pulled the tails off and then prized them apart to get the meat out.

Is there a consensus on whether you eat the crawdad crap? I mean the stuff in their guts that looks like baby poop--yellowish-brown and liquidy. I tasted it, and it tasted like nothing, but I still decided to rinse off as much as the crap as I could. By the end of all this we had two small handfuls of crawdad meat. Enzo tried a bite.

“What does it taste like?” I said.

“Cai,” he said, which means calamari.

I tasted one. It tasted like pond water. We slid the carcasses into the trash.

Never again.

Who's Your Daddy?

2009-08-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on the light rail, Enzo asked Teresa, “Is that my daddy?” pointing to a big black guy across the aisle. (Enzo’s anonymous sperm donor-dad is Chinese, and I am white.)

The guy gave Teresa a look like, who me?

Teresa said, “No, that’s not your daddy.”

“Who is my daddy?”

“Let’s ask mama Kate when she gets home.”

When I got home we conferred. I said we could tell him his daddy is a really nice man that we don’t happen to know personally but someday when Enzo’s grown up, he will know him. (Enzo’s donor is “identity-release” meaning that when Enzo turns eighteen, he can find who he his and get in touch with him.) Teresa said that’s way too complicated. Let’s just tell him some people have two mommies and some people have a daddy and a mommy and some people have two daddies. Thank god we live in a place where that is actually true. Besides, Enzo’s sperm donor isn’t really his daddy. Enzo doesn’t have a daddy. There are going to be times when he is incredibly sad about that. Guilt, guilt.

See, that’s what I like about food. It’s simple—I mean morally simple. You get hungry, you figure out what to do about it. Here’s an egg. Here’s piece of bread. Scrambled eggs with toast are good. Or you could add milk to the egg and make French toast. Or you could boil the egg and make an egg salad sandwich. And what about English muffins? It’s all wonderfully practical and (unlike child rearing) you’re unlikely to do anyone lasting harm.

But then there’s that awful book—you know the one I mean, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, about how every time you buy a porkchop at Safeway, you’re feeding an agricultural industrial complex based on corn that makes half the world die of terminal fat while the rest die of starvation. Oh, and the whole thing takes so much fossil fuel that you might as well just kill yourself right now. And I’m thinking, “But it’s only a porkchop.”

In a fit of rebellion against that book--which I haven’t even read, but it’s gotten so much media attention that I feel as if I have—I went out and bought a Twinkie. He heard the author, Michael Pollan, on the radio saying mean things about Twinkies. He called them An Edible Food-Like Substance. I hadn’t had a Twinkie in about thirty years, but I remembered them as perfect. So I bought a Twinkie, and it was awful. Twinkies are one of those childhood memories that should be left undisturbed.

So I made a plan to bake the perfect Twinkie. It’s a sponge cake, right? It says so right on the package. An extra sweet, extra salty, extra junky sponge cake. I found something in The Cake Bible that looked perfect, and here it is:

Bert Green’s Special Sponge Cake, from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Orange Juice 2 tablespoons

Grated lemon zest 2 teaspoons

Vanilla ½ teaspoon

Superfine sugar 1 cup + 7 tablespoons

Sifted cake flour 1 cup

Eggs 5

Egg whites 3

Cream of tartar 1 teaspoon

[The directions for this are not obvious to me, and I doubt they are too others, so I’ll put them in too, though it’s a lot of typing.]

Preheat oven to 350. Get out one ungreased 10-inch two-piece tub pan, and preheat it for at least 5 minutes.
In a small bowl combine the orange juice, lemon zest and vanilla.
Remove 2 tablespoons of the sugar and reserve to sprinkle on to raw batter.
Remove 3 more tablespoons of the sugar and whisk together with the flour.
Rinse a large mixing bowl with hot water and wrap the sides with a hot towel. (If using a hand mixer, place the bowl in a sink partially filled with hot water.)
Beat the yolks, gradually adding the remaining 1 cup sugar, on high speed for 5 minutes or until the mixture is very thick and ribbons when dropped from the beater. Lower the speed and gradually add the orange juice mixture. Increase the speed and beat for 30 seconds. Sift the flour mixture over the yolk mixture without mixing in and set aside.

Beat the whites until foamy, add the cream of tartar, and continue to beat until soft peaks form when the beater is raised. Gradually beat in the 2 tablespoons of reserved sugar, beating until very stiff peaks form when the beater is raised slowly. Ad 1/3 of the whites to the yolk mixture and with a large skimmer or rubber spatula fold until incorporated. Gently fold in the remaining whites in 2 batches.

Pour the batter into the hot pan. (It will be a little more than ½ full.) Sprinkle the top evenly with the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake 35-40 minutes or until golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean when inserted in the center. Invert the pan, placing the tube opening over the neck of a soda or wine bottle to suspend it well about the counter, and cool the case completely in the pan (this takes about 1 hour).

Loosen the sides with a long meal spatula and remove the center core of the pan from the sides. (To keep the sides attractive, press the spatula against the sides of the pan and avoid any up–and-down motion.) Dislodge the bottom and center core with a spatula or thin, sharp knife. (A wire cake tester works well around the core.) Invert onto a greased wire rack and re-invert onto a serving plate. Wrap airtight.

Understanding: One of the secrets of this cake’s exceptional moistness and tenderness is using 1/3 cup less flour than classic sponge cask and a very high proportion of sugar (almost ½ cup more). For additional volume, Bert applies heat while beating the yolks and uses 3, sometimes ever 4, extra egg whites to compensate for structure usually provided by a higher quantity of flour. To ensure that the cake will not collapse during baking, he preheats the empty pan so that the batter starts to expand and set immediately.

Rose says that the cake is sweet enough that you don’t really need anything extra, but no creamy filling would totally defeat the purpose, so I thought quite a bit about whether to use stabilized whipped cream or vanilla butter cream. And I decided the creamy filling really needed to be inside, not on top, to recreate the Twinkie experience, so I decided to use the same batter to make cupcakes and then fill them with a pastry bag, so that the cream filling would be inside but also peep out of the top.

And then I realized I’d have to buy a pastry bag and superfine sugar and cake flour and all new clothes. And the conversion to cupcake form might not be foolproof—how to invert them? And the hopelessness of trying to recreate childhood memories dawned on me again. It might be wonderful, but it still wouldn’t be the Twinkie I remember. So I never made my homemade protest Twinkies, and it’s very sad. I have to be content with writing about thinking about it--a completely unsatisfying substitute.

I just had an overwrought fantasy about Enzo’s donor reading this entry and somehow figuring out that he’s our guy. Then he made the Twinkie cupcakes, following the recipe above. Or better yet he owns The Cake Bible--that’s the kind of guy he is--so he bakes it right out of the book. And then he leaves a comment on my blog with his name and phone number.

If that actually happened, I’d be completely freaked out, but in the fantasy it was perfect. We got together. He was adorable. We ate cake. Enzo loved it.

P.S. If you’re out there, I think the stabilized whipped cream would be better than the buttercream. But either one would be fine. Also don’t forget to put a little extra salt in the cake. Twinkies are pretty salty.

My Inheritance

2009-08-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school I had a boyfriend whose mom hated to cook, and she did it every night, and it tasted like oppression. My boyfriend turned out to be dangerously mentally ill. I think it was the food.

I like cooking (which really means I like eating) but I can’t imagine how anyone can cook every single night. I think about food all the time, but most nights I can’t think of a thing to fix for dinner. Last night Teresa had nothing, I had a bowl of tomato slices with olive oil, salt and mozzarella cheese, Enzo had Stouffer’s Swedish meatballs and frozen red/yellow/and green bell peppers straight from the bag, crunch, crunch. You can’t fault it for nutrition (or at least it could be a lot worse), but thinking about eating as nutrition is like thinking about reading as education or sex as procreation—a grim doctrine if there ever was one.

My mom always liked cooking (which really means she liked eating). Me too. I remember her showing me how to cut cold shortening into flour for piecrust, how to beat egg whites so they’re fluffy but not dry and how to fold them gently into the pancake batter. I helped her make enchiladas, taking my place in the assembly line, stuffing the tortillas with cheese and the onion-cumin-olive mixture. She taught me how to make pesto and bread and hummus and how to roast and peel eggplant for baba ganoush. She showed me about how much salt to put in the pasta water. She let me make awful and complicated salad dressings in the blender.

My mom taught me—or I absorbed—that pretty much everything starts with sautéd onions. They’re the demi-plie, the simple fist step from which you can go anywhere. She never told me this, certainly not in those words. But you absorb patterns and do what works. So it’s a sad commentary that at this moment I have no onions in the house. Of course I also have no clean underwear.

It’s a piece of luck that my mom and I both liked to eat. And when you’re a kid you just absorb things. You don’t even know you’re learning to cook or learning each other. I picked up not just how to cook particular dishes (that you can get from a book) but how to think about food, how things go together, how things don’t have to be perfect to be good. And how to use a recipe in a strictly advisory capacity.

I don’t know if Enzo and I will have anything like that. He likes trucks, and I just don’t. He likes hacking at things in the kitchen, but I think he’s just humoring me. We both like books, but his taste is terrible.

He likes eating, though. That we have in common.

My Birthday Cakes

2009-07-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

It all started because I went to a bakery in Pasadena and ate a salted chocolate French macaroon that was so good that I almost started crying. And I’ve been obsessed with salt and chocolate ever since.

What a good time for my birthday to come around.

Ideas. Well, the main idea is to bake something wonderful in itself and then, when it’s almost finished baking, sprinkle it with that absurdly expensive coarse French mineral sea salt. I have never owned this salt. But now I’m going to get some for my birthday.

The great charm of the macaroon was the way the salt was partly dissolved into it, making a sort of sweet-salty crunchy crust. I think to do this you can’t salt it before baking because the salt would dissolve completely, but you can’t wait until it’s completely baked because the salt would just roll off. So you pick your moment and sprinkle and hope.

So, some ideas…

Salted truffle brownies.
Margarita Tart. (Salted lemon bars cooked in a tart pan. Substitute Grand Marnier for some of the lemon juice.)
Salted truffle brownies, cooked as cupcakes, with a sea salt caramel I the middle.

I went to Taylor’s Market, where you can get things like organic veal shanks and chocolate/rose gelato and jewel-like produce. It’s within walking distance, but I never go because of the prices. Of course they had the French sea salt, but it was fourteen dollars for a small jar. I couldn’t do it, not even for my birthday. And I remembered seeing some pretty nifty salt an Ono’s, the Japanese market, which is where I dragged Enzo last Saturday.

Ono’s is modern and swank and expensive. Everything is small and exquisitely packaged, and all the product information is in Japanese characters, beautifully abstract to the unreading eye. We found thirteen kinds of salt including The Salt, Practical Edition in a small hexagonal box tied with a red ribbon and stating in English “Three years stored solar salt of tidal flat.” That cost six dollars, and we bought it. There was also an impractical edition, which cost more than the French salt at Taylor’s, simply called The Salt.

(A few days later)

Forget the salt. I’ve decided on carrot almond cake and chocolate amaretto cake, both from Marcella's Italian Kitchen. Since I’m about to be in my forties, instead of just forty, I think I’m mature enough to handle two cakes. Besides, I’ve wanted to try both cakes for years, and the years are passing. And as a midlife crisis type gesture, two cakes seems pretty tame. It’s better than two girlfriends.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and my first present is that Enzo and Teresa are doing to clear out of the house this afternoon, so that I can come home early and bake and listen to music and maybe have a glass of wine. Hurrah!

(next day)

I forgot what it was like to cook ALONE, alone, beautifully alone, licking both beaters all by myself, thank you, and without Enzo running to get his snow plow truck to drive through the flour. I went over the recipe a few times, made a few changes: more chocolate, more salt. (The recipe had no salt, obviously a clerical error, and yes I used my three years stored solar salt of tidal flat.) I considered adding baking powder, because I’ve never made a cake leavened only by egg whites, but I decided to trust Marcella on that one.

Anyway, here’s the recipe. My variations are in parenthesis.

½ pound butter softened to room temperature, plus 1 tablespoon for smearing the baking pan
1 cup granulated sugar
A bowl for beating egg whites—preferably, but not indispensably, a copper bowl washed with vinegar and salt, rinsed thoroughly, and dried. (Yeah right.)
5 eggs (also at room temperature)
½ cup flour
4 ounces amaretti ground to a powder in the flood processor
2 (3 or even more) ounces semisweet baking chocolate, grated fine
(¾ teaspoon salt—less if using salted butter.)
(1 tablespoon Amaretto liqueur plus a little overflow)

I don’t have to put in all the directions, do I? You know how to make a butter cake, which is all this is: cream the butter and sugar, separate the eggs and add the egg yolks one at a time, beating each one in; combine all the dry stuff and add it to the butter-egg yolk mixture a little at a time, beat the egg whites, fold them in. Bake.

The cake was a little burned, so I trimmed off the edges, and if the test of a great cake is that even the burned edges are delicious, then this is a great cake. I frosted it with whipped chocolate ganache from The Cake Bible, which is pretty much bittersweet chocolate whipped cream.

It’s a dense, low-lying cake, and covered with messy light brown whipped cream, it looked like a cow paddy, according to Teresa. But it did not taste like a cow paddy. Almondy and chocolatey and buttery and not too sweet and just salty enough, and the frosting was chocolate on legs.

I didn’t have time to make the carrot cake. Next year. Or maybe next week.

Happy birthday to me.

Popsicles: It's What's For Dinner

2009-07-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

My butt is getting bigger and bigger, and pretty soon it is going to explode.
Boom!
There, that’s over with. Now what’s for dinner?

*

Yesterday Teresa made quesadillas, and I cut up red bell pepper and pitted some fabulous cherries. When we sat down to eat Enzo took one look at all this and pointed to the freezer, crying out, “Vegetables! Vegetables!” So I got him what he likes, frozen mixed vegetables. Not heated up, not even thawed. They’re like little crunchy vegetable popsicles. He likes the mushrooms and corn the best. Afterward he had an actual popsicle. And then he had another.

*

Our garden. It exists. That’s something.

Enzo loves arugula. He knows how to say it, and he knows the difference between arugula and baby romaine and oak leaf. I will make him gay yet, by god. Pass the goat cheese!

The tomatoes are coming on strong now, and at first it was like hunting Easter eggs to find a red one among all the green. Now there are so many red ones that the thrill isn’t there anymore. But they’re still good to eat. Enzo insists on setting the bowl of tomatoes on the back of his flatbed truck. “I farmer,” he says and then makes revving noises.

We also have basil and mint and parsley and baby leaks (sort of like chives). We are mocked by our cucumbers which are plentiful and terrible. They’re bitter though and through.

I made a gaspacho-like thing with store bought cucumbers, yellow peppers, sweet onion (soaked in salt water and then rinsed), olive oil, lime juice, salt, mint and Thai basil. I think there was Greek yogurt in there too. If there wasn’t there should have been. I made croutons and put them on top along with halved cherry tomatoes.

Enzo ran the food processor with great natural authority and helped me toss things down the feed tube. It ended up a puree, which wasn’t my plan, but it was good that way.

Enzo didn’t like it. Maybe I should try freezing it into popsicles next time.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

2009-04-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve always liked markets. When I was a baby, the only way I wouldn’t be cranky after my nap was if my mom popped me and my sister into the stroller while I was still almost asleep and took us to the market. This was Beirut, 1969. We would get a drink called Bone Juice and buy food.

I don’t remember any of this. It’s family legend. And I’ve always pictured Bone Juice as a brightly colored sugary drink in a little bone-shaped carton or plastic bottle. Why not? Enzo’s gummy vitamins are shaped like bones.

But as I was writing this in my head a few nights ago, it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t Bone Juice but Bon Jus, as in Good Juice, as in French. Somehow Bone Juice had lodged in some pocket of my mind and lasted forty years. We must all have these childhood scraps and misapprehensions, tucked away, untouched by time.

That makes me wonder what Enzo’s will be. Whenever I help him put on his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack we say together, "Backpack! Shark Attack! Easy-Isy-Over!" What do backpacks have to do with sharks? Nothing! I just made it up. But in his mind the two will be linked forever. (Maybe.) And whenever we fart we say, with great glee, “Gas Tax!” The other day we drove by a gas station, and I told him that that’s where you could actually pay your gas tax. And the hopelessness of ever explaining anything dawned on me for about the hundredth time. And yet kids do learn the world. They’re amazing at it.

But back to markets. I still like them—even boring old Safeway. They’re packed with life and possibility. And in Sacramento you can step into so many other worlds: The Red Sea Market on Florin (five gallon tins of olive oil from the West Bank, crates of dates, halal game hens, Bulgarian feta at incredible prices, Al Jazeera playing on the TV) to the Esperanza Mercado on Franklin (four kinds of bananas, brown sugar in a huge cone-shaped lumps, pig’s feet and cow’s feet and octopus). And then there’s the Asian Farmer’s Market on Sundays, set up in an abandoned gas station, where you can buy live chickens and roosters or fresh soy milk and where oranges and sweet potatoes are about half the price they charge at the regular farmer’s market, a few blocks down and over. And the Asian grocery a few blocks down has these beautiful ancient oak chests behind the counter where they store medicinal herbs. You can get huge pieces of curled cinnamon bark about a foot long. I don’t know what to do with a foot a cinnamon, but just knowing it’s out there makes me feel alive with possibility.

Grocery Goddess

2009-03-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

Ideally you’d be at the Farmer’s Market yourself with no plans, no recipes, no lists--ready to be inspired by whatever is fresh and cheap, but who’s got the fucking time? So I give Teresa a grocery list for Safeway full of arcane instructions and contingency plans.

• Apples—Fujis, but only if cheap. And not from Chile

• Lettuce--romaine or oak leaf, whichever is cheap and looks good

• One bunch of celery—not in a bag. Get the kind with just a little plastic around the bottom and lots of leaves on the top.

• One pork shoulder roast--around five pounds, but only if still on sale, should be $1.99 a pound

• Jack or cheddar cheese--only if on sale and NOT pre-grated, unless the pre-grated is super-cheap.

• Green enchilada sauce--but cancel if you don’t get the cheese.

• Corn tortillas--three dozen if you get the cheese and enchilada sauce; one dozen if not.

• Flour tortillas--be careful not to get the supposedly butter-flavored ones, also NOT low-fat.

• Coriander—not from spice section, get from Mexican section in little envelope. Also, whole seeds, not ground.

• Cumin--same as above

• Olive oil--cancel if going to Trader Joe’s anytime soon, because it’s cheaper there.

• Red wine (Shiraz, second to cheapest bottle you can find.)

• All the usual: eggs, milk, frozen things you need

I know that shopping with Enzo is pretty much like having an unexploded bomb in the cart. An unexploded bomb that says, "Cookie, cookie, cookie." Translation: tick tick tick. He is only going to stay there so long, and it’s almost impossible to comparison shop or change plans or even follow complex instructions. You’ve got to move.

So I get out of court and check my messages:

Hello, this is your family. What’s cheap for lettuce? And how am I supposed to know if it looks good? Call us!

Hello, this is your family again. [Enzo in background, “cookie! banana!”] How can you tell if the apples come from Chile—do they have a sticker or something? Why don’t you answer your stupid phone? And what’s the matter with Chile anyway?

Hello, this is the last time I’m calling you. The pork roast says it’s still on sale, but it’s not $1.99 a pound, it’s $2.50. Do you still want it? Never mind! We’re getting it.

Okay, this is last time. They don’t have whole cumin in the Mexican section. Do you want me to get whole cumin from the regular spice section or ground cumin from the Mexican section? Never mind, you don’t get cumin. Deal with it. Or answer your phone.

It’s us again. Do you think we’re mature enough to get Nutter Butters? They’re on sale. Remember The Debauch?

That last message refers to one time when we ate a hole package of Nutter Butters at a sitting, while playing chess. That was pre-Enzo, of course. We still talk about it fondly as The Nutter Butter Debauch.

I think most of our life together is like this—messages in writing and then on answering machines, a few emails, an occasional debauch. It’s like an epistolary novel of domestic life. And the plot goes like this: muddling through somehow–more of the same–Nutter Butters—answer your phone!—Cookie, cookie!–Check Mate.

Recipe Rebellion

2009-03-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

Every few months I buy tofu. Meat is expensive. Also sort of disgusting, but only when you think about it, which I don’t. I adore charred flesh far too much to think about it.

Tofu seems like the perfect food—clean and cheap and easy and nutritionally excellent--if only it didn’t taste like pencil erasers. But time passes and I forget how hopeless it is, and I buy tofu again thinking this time I’ll marinate it, rub it with spices, or perhaps massage it and then light it on fire. My latest attempt sprang from the recognition that tofu is pretty much a vegetable, and almost all vegetables are wonderful coarsely chopped, drizzled in olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in the oven for about an hour. So I did this and ended up with something that had not just the taste but also the texture of pencil erasers—a tough, bouncy resilience.

Why not try a recipe? I obviously have no intuitive tofu-sense. Oh, all right. I’ll get back to you on that in a few months. I have to wait for my tofu hopes to rise again.

Meanwhile, the honeymoon is over with Marcella. The bloom is off the rose, baby. Last week I made cauliflower with raisins and pine nuts and fricasseed chicken with onions and cognac.

The cauliflower. What is the point of first boiling the cauliflower until it’s tender and then breaking it up and sautéing it with the raisins and pine nuts? Do I look like I have time to wash extra pots and pans? Surely you could break up the cauliflower raw, sauté it with the raisins and pine nuts and then put in a splash of orange juice or water or broth, cover it and cook until tender. Basically braise it. And why are there no onions in this recipe? Was this a clerical error?

The chicken. And here’s the problem with recipes. There’s always one expensive ingredient that you don’t have on hand and will never use again. In this case, cognac—two tablespoons of cognac. I put it on the grocery list, and Teresa refused to buy it because they only had big bottles at Safeway. So I ended up walking to the corner store with Enzo to buy the stupid cognac. Enzo had a cold. Earlier that day he had knocked his head hard against my cheekbone, and I had a pretty bad black eye. It was raining. Enzo wore his cute slicker, and I wore my homeless-looking Carhart jacket. We found the smallest flask of cognac and got in line. We bought nothing else. Of course there was a young mom in line in front of us with two small children buying a quart of milk. I clutched my flask and my crusty-nosed child. I felt like saying, “It’s for a recipe. It’s Italian. Northern Italian.”

Another problem with the chicken recipe is you had to cut up a whole chicken. I usually just get thighs for braising type recipes, but the Marcella said cut up a whole chicken and I was by-god following the recipe. I haven’t cut up a chicken in years. I do not own poultry shears. It’s a grisly task. Also, the breasts cook faster than the thighs and legs, so doesn’t it make sense to choose one or the other? I have to admit, both recipes turned out pretty good, and I ate them for lunch all week.

But what to do with a flask of cognac? I called my mom ask about what we always called The Brandy Show. It’s basically pepper steak (but made with hamburgers for kids) and you deglaze the pan with butter, lemon, Worschester sauce and brandy or cognac and set it on fire. I thought Enzo might like that. So I got to the flambé part, and told him mama was going to do a magic show. He looked noncommittal. I turned off the lights and lit a match pausing for a moment to heighten the drama, then touched it to the pan. Blue and yellow flames sprang up, and Enzo ran out of the room. I couldn’t follow him. There was a fire to deal with. But in moments he was back looking extremely serious and carrying a big plastic fire truck. It was pretty fucking adorable.

Ave Marcella

2009-02-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

Near the beginning of Marcella's Italian Cooking there's a section titled: The Taste of Italian Cooking: Elementary Rules. And then there's one page of short, direct, axiomatic principles. Many of them I will never follow. But I love reading them, knowing what they are, wishing to follow them and relishing the few that describe what I'm already doing anyway, such as: "Do not clarify butter" or "Do not esteem so-called fresh pasta more than the dry, factory made variety." There's something bracing about all that natural authority fit onto one page. It's like The Elements of Style, the United States Constitution or the Decalogue--brevity and authority in close relationship.

Anyway, here they are:

Use no Parmesan that is not parmigiano-reggiano. (See the discussion of parmigiano-reggiano on page 11.)
Never buy grated cheese of any kind; grate cheese fresh when ready to use it.
With exceedingly rare exceptions, do not add grated Parmesan to pasta whose sauce has been cooked with olive oil.
Use only extra virgin olive oil (Please see Olive Oil on page 7-10.)
Dress salads with no other oil but olive
Do not use prepared salad dressings, even if prepared at home. Mix the condiments into the salad when you are tossing it. Toss salads just before serving.
Use herbs and spices sparingly. Think of them as a halo, not a club.
Do not confuse stock with meat broth. Meat broth ( 73) is what goes into Italian cooking.
When ripe, fresh tomatoes are in season, do not use the canned. (Out of season, see the recommendation on page 12-13.)
Abstain from using frozen vegetables, except for frozen leaf spinach, which can be substituted for fresh in making green pasta.
Do not overcook pasta
Do not precook pasta
Do not esteem so-called fresh pasta more than the dry, factory-made variety. (Please see discussion of homemade and factory-made pasta on pages 90-6)
Match the sauce to the pasta, taking into account the shape and texture of pasta.
Do not buy prepared pasta salads, pre-cooked or frozen pasta, or stuffed pasta.
Do not turn heavy cream into a warm bath for pasta or for anything else. Reduce it, reduce it, reduce it.
Vegetables and beans are, on occasion, passed through a food mill. Do not process them to a cream. It Italian cooking there is no cream of anything soup.
Do not serve fowl rare. Italian birds are cooked through and through.
Do not clarify butter. (See Cooking with Butter at High Temperature, page 16.)
When making risotto, use only Italian varieties grown for that purpose. (Please see Risotto, pages 153-5.)
Find a butcher who will cut scaloppine across the grain from the top round.
Unless you are on a medically prescribed diet, do not shrink from using what salt is necessary to draw out the flavor of food.

Of course I can't afford to use no Parmesan that is not parmigianno-reggiano. It costs $23 a pound, and that’s more than shoes. Still, there's something wonderfully emphatic about the double-negative, no Parmesan that it not. I feel like saluting when I hear that. But I still buy second rate cheese. And yes I usually grate my own, but sometimes I buy the pre-grated in the plastic tub, feeling mildly furtive and ashamed. And as for no Parmesan with olive oil sauces--why not?

My favorite rules describe what I'm already doing anyway. They're like praise without the embarrassment. "Unless you are on a medically prescribed diet, do not shrink from using what salt is necessary to draw out the flavor of food." Three cheers for that advice. And I like the word 'shrink.' People are such cowards about a little salt. They have no idea how much salt is in the store-bought foods they're used to eating, so they get all timid about salting the pasta water, sprinkling in a few useless grains. I salt everything, even hot chocolate (you should try it).

The rule about dressing salads is smart because it encourages simplicity. I used to shake-shake-shake the dressing in a little jar. Or use a whisk and slow-poured olive oil, straining for an emulsion, which always separated. Now my favorite dressing is olive oil, salt and pepper, right on the leaves. Maybe a touch of balsamic or lemon. Maybe.

But I don’t think I’ve got across why Marcella’s so great. Back when I was an English major I thought the perfect paper would be just my favorite parts of the book, typed, with a big Amen at the end. In that spirit, here is what Marcella says in a section called Cooking: A Language

All that really matters in food is its flavor. It matters not that it be novel, that it look picture-pretty, that it be made with unusual or costly or currently fashionable ingredients, that it be served by candlelight, that it display intricacy of execution, that it be invested with the glory of a celebrated name. Such incidentals may add circumstantial interest to the business of eating, but they add nothing to taste and signify nothing when taste is lacking.

Taste is produced by the expressive use of the cuisines that have come down to us. One becomes fluent in a cuisine as in a language: Expression must be vigorous, clear, concise. There can be no unnecessary ingredient or unnecessary step. A dish may indeed be complicated, but in terms of taste every component, every procedure must count.

Do not strain for originality. It ought never to be a goal, but it can be a consequence of your intuitions. [I love that.] If the purpose of flavor is to arouse a special kind of emotions, that flavor must emerge from genuine feelings about the materials you are handling. What you are, you cook.

Do not arbitrarily shuffle the vocabulary of one cuisine with that of another in an attempt to make your cooking “new.” There is no more use for such a hybrid than there is for Esperanto. The cuisines available to us have all the flexibility we can handle with felicity, and more variety than our invention can exhaust.

I am not suggesting that one must cook in pedantic submission to unalterable formulas. I hope the recipes in this book demonstrate that I do not. I am suggesting that the discipline of a cuisine’s syntax, cadence, native idiom can make invention and improvisation eloquent rather than contrived.

My New Year’s Resolution was going to be: Follow recipes. More or Less. Now and Then. Because I think my fault in cooking is a lack of discipline. I’m addicted to improvisation, and I hate measuring. In my life cookbooks are for reading, not for cooking. But, as with all New Year’s Resolutions, there was a reason you weren’t doing that in the first place—you don’t want to!

So instead I will devote myself to Marcella for a year or so, actually cooking the recipes, not slavishly, mind you, but pretty close. And I think I'll start with cauliflower with pinenuts and raisins, page 256. It’s occurring to me only this moment that discipline and disciple are more or less the same word. And since I already worship Marcella, what could be more natural?

But I want to say more about authority. I’m a lawyer, so I run into unearned authority all the time--judges, stuck up on that pedestal, just as foolish as the rest of us and so few of them know it, god help them. And how true authority is instantly recognizable, whatever the subject.

Marcella teaches you not just how to eat but how to live. But mostly how to eat.

Onion Obsession

2009-02-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been listening to this weight loss self-hypnosis CD that I ordered online. I’m incredibly embarrassed about this in real life but writing is not quite real life, so I don’t mind talking about it here. In real life humiliation is just humiliation. In writing it’s material.

The soothing voice on the CD says I will be amazed to discover that after eating less than half my meal, I am completely satisfied. It says that every time I eat, before I eat, I will ask myself, is this what a healthy person eats to lose weight? And it says to picture a mirror that says: MY FUTURE IN CONTROL, and then see in the mirror an image of myself at my ideal weight, looking happy and fulfilled. And through it all my mind keeps wandering away to things like: butter--don’t forget to buy--sweet or salted?--both--maybe make bread--whole wheat--try with quinoa--raisins too?

The CD says hypnosis can’t make you do anything that you don’t really want to do. And so I’ve concluded that I don’t really want to stop thinking about food all the time. And besides, what else is there?

Which brings me to the Super Bowl. We had hotdog magic, caramelized onion dip, Fritos (the big ones) and potato chips (the wavy ones). Also other assorted dips. The hotdog magic recipe was from one of my grandma’s handwritten recipe cards, a family heirloom in faded pencil. So we buy the hotdogs and cheese and crescent rolls in a tube, and there on the Pillsbury crescent roll package is the same exact recipe. Not much to it: wrap hotdogs and cheese in a crescent roll and bake. The highlight is really when you peal the paper off the crescent roll package and it goes, POP! and the dough starts to ooze out. Enzo liked that part. Of course he wanted to do it again and again, and it’s sort of a one-off thing. He got over the disappointment by beating on his allotted crescent roll dough with some metal tongs. He’s been into tongs lately.

But the true star of the Super bowl is the dip. Enzo and I made the caramelized onions the day before. Slicing five pounds of onions with a sharp knife is not an ideal kitchen chore for a two-year-old, so I prepped them in advance by pealing off the dry outer layers and them cutting into quarters, or even smaller. Then I adjusted my swim goggles to fit Enzo, and let him run the food processor while I fed the onions through that ridiculous little feed tube.

The goggles didn’t work that well, and he and I both started to cry. I explained how onions hurt your eyes, but it would go away, and for the rest of the day he kept rubbing his eyes and saying, “Onion eyes! Onion eyes!” and looking sad and dramatic.

But the onions turned out great: about ten yellow onions, a cube of butter, a sprinkle of brown sugar, salt of course. Cook on low in the slow cooker for about seven hours. Stir it a few times. Oh, and no lid because you have to let all the onion juice cook off. For the first five hours it perfumes the whole house with raw onion, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be anything but raw onion slush. (Come to think of it, maybe Enzo really did have onion eyes all day, and it wasn’t just drama.) But gradually the onions get golden and soft and syrupy.

And here’s the genius part. When the slow cooker is done with whatever time you’ve set it for, it automatically switches to the warm setting. So I accidentally left the onions on warm overnight, and they got darker and sweeter and more fabulous. I think I must have cooked them almost 24 hours total, using the warm setting for most of it, and by the end they were dark chunky brown sludge, like industrial waste, only delicious. We may all die of botulism, but god they were great. And easy. The dip part is—mix caramelized onions with equal parts sour cream and cream cheese.

We had a lot of onions left over, so I keep thinking of more things to eat with caramelized onions. Caramelized onions and hotdogs (obvious but fabulous); caramelized onions, black beans and scrambled eggs; peanut butter and caramelized onion sandwich; and what about risotto?

Also, variations on the onions themselves. Next time I’m going to add some nice hot peppers or maybe fresh ginger to the onions just to add a little kick to that sweetness. Any why not try frozen pearl onions? It would be so easy, and maybe even pretty.

Is this how teenage boys are with sex, thinking about it all the time with endless interest and variation? And what about caramelized onion upside down cake? Hmmmm... .

Laziness Is Next To Godliness

2008-12-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

I want to write something about luck and laziness and the openness to possibility that comes with true sloth.

Organized people never get the satisfaction of lying on the couch reading, then wanting to write something and just reaching down into the couch cushions and finding a pen right there. Hurrah! It’s rare, but all the more wonderful for that.

They also don’t get to make the following discoveries:

Last weekend I threw out some garam masala that had been stored in a Tupperware for a few years. I washed the Tupperware, but not vigorously. A yellow tinge and scent of Indian spice clings to it. This morning, I put my oatmeal in it and took it to work. And so I discovered the complicated deliciousness of steelcut oatmeal with raisins, dried apples, almonds and a hint of garam masala.

Last month we visited friends. Their wonderfully civilized custom is he cooks, she cleans up the next morning. Or afternoon. For dinner one night he cooked an amazing couscous with fresh mint and lot of other stuff. The next morning I sliced up an apple for Enzo. I could have washed the knife and cutting board first. But I didn’t, and that’s how I discovered that apples with a touch of mint—just what was left on the knife and cutting board--are delicious together.

A couple of nights ago, Enzo and I were cooking together. He still sucks at it, but we both enjoy it. And it’s the only interest we share. I gave him a cooked Japanese sweet potato to hack at, but of course he wanted what I was hacking at: a red bell pepper. So I handed one over, partly cut, seeds still inside.

I was making fried sweet potatoes, which are pretty much a dessert. I invented this dish in my mind a long time ago, and finally I decided to cook it. We usually have cooked sweet potatoes on hand in the winter: two and a half hours in the slow cooker on low—no water, just wash them, put them in wet, and that’s plenty of moisture. Anyway, I sliced some cold cooked sweet potatoes, sauted them in a lot of butter, sprinkled them with salt and the spiced sugar that I use for toast. (Sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom—your basic fall baking spices.) Oh, and I put some walnuts in there too.

But back to Enzo and our discovery. Of course when he saw me sprinkling the spiced sugar from a little shaker thing, he wanted it. So I gave it to him, and he shook and shook and shook the spiced sugar into and around and on the red bell pepper. Then he mashed it in. I let him do it---let him complete the mess to its fullest, and when the sugar was gone that was the end of that project.

We ate dinner. The sweet potatoes were great—buttery crisp caramelized sugar on the outside, soft chestnut-like savory-sweet on the inside. I think blue cheese would have been good with that, now that I think about it.

We cleaned up. I cleaned up. Of course the red pepper was a mess, but I’m not about to throw away food because it’s been mashed around a bit. I rinsed the sugar-spice off and sliced it lengthwise for my lunch the next day. And it was wonderful—just a little sweeter than your usual bell pepper, still crisp, with a hint of winter spices.

Besides the luck of these combinations, what I learned from all this is that subtly isn’t all bad. My general philosophy is More is Better, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, God forbid. But it turns out that a tiny hint of garam masala is all you really want in your oatmeal. A whiff of leftover mint is enough for a fresh crisp apple. A remembrance of sugar and spice is all a red bell pepper needs.

As my yoga teacher used to say, back when I went to yoga: Do Less. I can only Do Less by accident, it seems. But just being open to accident is something. It’s a start. Oh happy Chance—my personal domestic goddess.

Wonder Bread

2008-11-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

Is there a Nobel Prize for baking? If not, why not? Splitting the atom was nice, but you can't eat it.

Since there probably isn’t a Nobel Prize for food, I nominate Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street bakery for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Also for the Nobel Peace Prize, which seems to go to whoever has most improved human existence in some tangible way. Move over Al Gore. This man is a hero and a national treasure.

In case you’ve been preoccupied with electioneering matters for the last two years, Jim Lahey is the guy who invented the famous no-knead slow-rise bread that has swept the globe. The recipe first came out in the New York Times two years ago. It has since been featured in Vogue and been re-printed in the food sections of most decent newspapers. It is on U-tube. It is easy as pie (way easier actually) and freakishly delicious. The original New York Times article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html.

Everyone knows that gluten is what makes good bread good. Gluten gives bread chewiness and texture and makes those big holes in the crumb possible. Conventional bread baking develops gluten mechanically, by kneading. Mr. Lahey figured out that you can skip the kneading and develop gluten chemically by letting the bread rise slowly, slowly for about 12-18 hours. I say “chemically” in the breeziest possible meaning of that word. The gluten molecule lengthens and strengthens and complicates itself in some marvelous way if you just leave it alone to rise slowly. Mr. Lahey’s recipe calls for just a pinch of yeast to slow the rising. His genius was to get out of the way and let nature do its work.

Then there’s the crust. Mr. Lahey’s dough is very wet. You put this wet, slowly risen dough in a ceramic or cast iron lidded pot pre-heated to about 450 degrees, and the wetness of the dough and the super-hotness of the pot create the crustiest, chewiest crust you ever saw or tasted. I’m sure there’s chemistry to that part too, but I don’t know what it is. I do know that it works. It is not just like the best old world artisan bread, it IS that.

The technique is radical. The product is classical. This bread is what Jesus ate. Make that Moses. It is ancient, basic, staff-of-life stuff. It’s as if someone discovered a simple and significant improvement in the design of the wheel. How surprising. How wonderful. It lights up the world a little bit.

(Photo credit, Todd Anderson; baking credit, Annie Anderson.)

New & Improved (NOT!)

2008-11-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

Remember the early Quisinart food processors? You could push a whole (small) russet potato through the feed tube and get thin, perfect rounds. You could also julienne your whole forearm. Those were the days. Now they’ve added so many safety features that the machine is useless for slicing and dicing. You pretty much have to julienne the carrot in advance just to fit it in the feed tube.

On the other hand, the safety features are so intense (you cannot turn the thing on until you’ve locked it down like a safe) that once I’ve got it set up, I let Enzo pretty much do what he wants with it. What he wants is to turn it on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off. Ooooooooon. Off! Ooooooooooooooooooooon. Off! He likes the pulse feature.

But the best cooking tools haven’t changed. Early Man (or Early Woman) braised mastadon shanks in a Le Creuset enameled cast iron pot. The design hasn’t changed since. I inherited my grandma’s, which we all think of as her bean pot, though she cooked many other things in it. The pot is persimmon colored, nine quart. The handle on the lid is a little melted, and in a few spots the enamel is almost worn through. How many millions of pink beans have simmered in that pot with onion, carrot, celery, and a big ham hock? Those beans are not complicated, but mine never turn out as tasty as hers. Maybe I’m over-complicating them. I can never resist adding coriander or forty cloves of garlic or some other innovation.

Speaking of over-complicating things: new and improved kitchen gadgets. They hold such promise, don’t they? The rocky path will be made smooth, the pits will practically jump out of the cherries, and you’ll conquer the world armed only with a mini-blow torch and a battery-powered vegetable peeler, as seen on Oprah. What a total lie. And yet I just went online to look for absurd and baroque gadgets to use as examples, and I almost bought an herb spinner. It was so adorable!

New cooking gadgets will not make your life easier. They will only clutter up the drawer and make it harder to find the tools you actually use. You don’t need a special gadget for making a perfect helix of citrus rind. You do need a wooden spoon, but you can’t find it because it’s buried under the helix gadget. You don’t need corn zipper, a tomato slicer or a mango pitter. You need a ten-inch chef knife. You don’t need an avocado masher or a fruit muddler. You need a two-year-old with a fork. You don’t need a Crockpot. You need my grandma’s bean pot on the back burner of a 1940’s O’Keefe and Merritt gas stove on low.

That brings me to my stove—that chrome curvaceous beauty. It’s older than I am and far more functional. It’s the opposite of a gadget. It’s more like a tank. When all the pilots are lit, it’s warm to the touch even when you’re not cooking anything. In the wintertime, before we had Enzo, I would toast my toes at the open oven door, as if it were a crackling fireplace. I would read about cooking and sometimes actually cook, and I would drink hot chocolate and be warm.

This winter I want to learn to make good beef stew. Mine never turns out right, I think because instead of browning the meat, I grey it. Maybe if I use grandma’s bean pot the patina of a thousand rich stews will rub off somehow and change my luck. Having that bean pot simmering on the back burner with rich meaty stew scenting the air seems like the definition of safe and warm.

When I launch Enzo into the world, I would like to send him with that bean pot. I hope he knows what to do with it. And I hope it keeps him safe and warm.

Food In Books

2008-11-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

Two of my favorite books are Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They’re full of hunger and weather and wonderful food. There seems to be something about being honestly physically hungry that goes with being young. And so nothing gives the feeling of young vital life in a book like food and a lot of it.

In Farmer Boy there’s that scene where mother makes pancakes, and on each pancake she puts butter and brown sugar and then stacks on another and another, and the melted butter and brown sugar drip down the sides. There are great slabs of ham and sausage. There are homemade donuts—simple twists, not those new-fangled circle-shaped kind. And then they have pie.

And in A Moveable Feast there’s that day when he stupidly tries to save money by not eating, and then he walks through the cold Paris streets and ends up having cold beer and potatoes and probably something else, but the part I remember is how he uses the potatoes to soak up the olive oil. And on another day he has oysters, the cheap Portuguese kind, with cold white wine. And what about the eau de vie at Gertrude Stein’s—liqueurs that are the essence or raspberry or pear.

The books I read as a kid are lodged in my mind in a way that feels biological. The trance-like reading of childhood is different from anything else. I read Farmer Boy many times. Our mom read it to us many times. I re-read it recently, and it was still good. I first read A Moveable Feast in college. It was assigned for a class, and I read it right through and then right through all over again. I was nineteen or twenty. Already it was rare for me to fall into a book the way I used to as a kid, and I fell into this one. It was wonderful.

I keep trying to say something about being young and how touching it is to look back on some parts of it. (I’d rather hang myself than actually be young again.) For me reading and eating are two things I did better then than I do now. I did both with true hunger, and I miss that.

I am writing this from memory. I haven’t looked up the food scenes in those books, and I probably got a few things wrong. But the food is what I remember best. In A Moveable Feast there’s such a strong feeling of memory and sadness—nostalgia, I guess. There’s that scene where Hemingway’s older artist friend asks him if food still tastes good. Hemingway says that it does, and you know that for his friend it doesn’t. The food all through the book seems to be remembered with such vividness and also sadness, as if he’s remembering when food still tasted good. It sort of breaks your heart, but in a good way.

Quesadillas

2008-11-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

One of my earliest memories is of a quesadilla. I am in the steep sloping back yard of our house in Guatemala. I am playing near a swing and eating a warm corn tortilla filled with cream cheese. That’s all. Nothing happens. I eat the quesadilla.

Another memory from that time: the tortilla lady, who I remember as enormous, but who probably wasn’t, comes to the house with a huge basket of freshly made corn tortillas on her head. The basket comes down. A transaction. My mom gives me one right away, and I eat it, plain, warm and wonderful.

Fast-forward about 37 years…

*

Every other month I get my Fine Cooking magazine in the mail. It resembles my real cooking life about as much as the models in Vogue resemble me, and I adore it.

In my real cooking life I have an outside-the-home job and a toddler, and I make a lot of quesadillas, which I love eating while reading about how to cook a crown roast of pork with Asian ginger glaze or how to braise a pear in marsala, honey and fresh thyme. It brings together my two favorite things, reading and eating, in the closest possible way.

Another advantage to reading about food: it’s highly interruptible. You’re not going to miss some crucial plot turn if you’re reading about how to get the lumps out of gravy. And let's face it, I only get to read for a few minutes at a time before HE needs or wants something. So I make and eat easy food and read about hard food, and it all works out pretty well.

Enzo loves to help in the kitchen, but he has no sense of moderation.
You give him something to stir, and he stirs it onto the counter and
floor and himself, all with great joy. So the trick is to give him
something to do that doesn't involve liquids or sharp knives, and then
cook dinner really fast while he's occupied with his own project.

So I'll give him a butter knife and a cooked whole sweet potato, and he
cuts it up. 'Cuts' is a generous description. 'Hacks' might be more
accurate. There's also a lot of mashing. Sometimes we eat the results.
Sometimes I secretly throw them away.

Meanwhile I'm cooking whatever we're actually going to eat, usually
quesadillas. Cheddar, flour tortillas and butter pretty much do it
for us. But you can branch out: mozzarella, store-bought pesto and a touch of tomato paste = instant pizza. Goat cheese, leftover caramelized onions and halved cherry tomatoes are good in the summer. (I make caramelized onions in the slow cooker, which is the only way you can possibly do it in my circumstances.) Feta, some other meltier cheese, and chopped kalmata olives make a sort of Greek quesadilla, especially if you dip it in yogurt-lemon-garlic-mayo-dill sauce. And of course you can put cooked chicken with pretty much any cheese, and it works.

A few months ago, or maybe years, Fine Cooking actually had an article on quesadillas. The premise of the article was, anything with melted cheese in a tortilla counts, so use your imagination. There was a recipe for four-cheese quesadillas fried in garlic butter and for fontina and mushroom quesadillas fried in parmesan butter. Of course it feels good to have what you’re already doing described officially in a magazine. You feel less a slut when your endless quesadillas get this kind of dignified treatment. You also feel like they stole your ideas, but of course there is no originality in cooking. All recipes are just variations and reminders of good things to eat. (I just looked up the issue, July of 2006, which predates my own quesadilla jag. This means I have been stealing from them, not the other way around.)

Anyway, Enzo and I both really like quesadillas. It’s one of the few things we agree on. When I’m cooking, I sometimes pause for a moment and watch him hacking at his sweet potato with such pure concentration, and I wonder if his first memory will be a food memory. It seems likely. I hope it’s a good one.

Food and Fat

2008-10-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

Food & Fat

You know that book French Women Don't Get Fat? Well I know a French woman, and she is fat. So there. I also know an American woman who is thin. She eats nothing but cigarettes, and she looks wonderful in clothes. Where does that leave the rest of us? I have no idea.

These thoughts are brought on by the fact that I turned 40 and instantly gained ten pounds. It's not like a had fun doing it. It's not like I ate a bunch of great food and had to pay the price. It was just age. And I realized that I could spend the second half of my life in bunker mode eating hard boiled eggs and fiber pellets and maybe stay my usual size. Or I could cook and eat and live life and be fat. Is there another way? I doubt it.

I went to the library and read Fight Fat After Forty. It's about three hundred pages, but I can get it down to six words: lift weights, eat fewer carbs, relax. The relax part comes from the notion that you overeat because you're stressed. For me the take away message was: nap. (The book recommends yoga and meditation, but yoga makes me anxious about whether I’m relaxed enough, and meditation is just torture.) So I started napping every day, and it’s wonderful, but I’m still fat. Then I started lifting weights twice a week, and it's the most boring thing I've ever done in my life. And I’m still fat. That leaves the carbs. Oh dear.

Of course I’ve been on the South Beach Diet—who hasn’t? At least I’ve done my personal variation of the South Beach Diet, which is pretty much what it says in the book (almost no carbs) but I add quite a bit of fat to cheer myself up. The real South Beach Diet has you eating a lot of non-fat ricotta and egg whites and ground turkey. I might as well go in the back yard and eat grass. It is just not going to happen. Instead I make fabulous little crustless quiches with sauted chard and onions and goat cheese. And I eat salmon and artichokes and leeks and eggplant, and deviled eggs and little roll-ups of ham and swiss cheese and crunchy lettuce. I eat steak. This costs a fortune, so it's a good thing that the longest I can stay on the diet is about three weeks. I usually lose about seven pounds. And yes, I gain the weight back, but it usually takes about six months, and I'd probably gain that weight anyway, so by losing the weight first, I break even.

The problem with any super-low carb diet is you can't do it from late spring to late fall or else you'd miss cherries in the spring, peaches and plums and tomatoes and corn in the summer, apples and chestnuts and acorn squash in the fall. And what about strawberries? It would be mocking Providence not to eat those things in season. You do not reject the gifts of the gods. But in mid-winter, you can go a few weeks without carbs without sinning against nature.

We’ve all heard the advice that you shouldn’t go on a diet, you should just start thinking like a thin person. How do thin people think? I suppose thin people can live with a bag of chocolate chips in the pantry for months on end and never eat them because it simply doesn’t occur to them. Are they brain dead? When I have treats in the house, there’s always a loop playing in my head that goes: chocolate chips, chocolate chips, chocolate chips, not right now, chocolate chips, not right now, chocolate chips, not right now, chocolate chips, CHOCOLATE CHIPS, RIGHT NOW. And then I eat half a bag of chocolate chips. And they’re wonderful.

So, like Chief Joseph, I will fight no more forever. And I will be a little fat. And right now I’ll go to the Farmer’s Market to get some Japanese sweet potatoes. They taste like a cross between yams and chestnuts. I’ll cook them in the slow cooker for two and a half hours while I’m at work. When I come home the house will smell warm even if it isn’t. Enzo will eat his plain, right out of his hand—they’re long and skinny, easy for a two-year-old to grip. I’ll eat mine sliced with walnuts and maybe dried cranberries, a touch of olive oil, a tiny splash of balsamic vinegar, a little salt and pepper. I’ll put a gob of peanut butter on Enzo’s plate, and he’ll mash the sweet potato into the peanut butter and eat it, and I will look proudly as his peanut-buttery face and think: he’s cooking!

Dreaming of Fall Food

2008-10-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

Dreaming of Fall Food

The real New Year begins in the fall, not on any specific date, but you know it when it's here. You know it from the cool nights and hot-but-not-too-hot days. You know it from kids going back to school and sample ballots and fall catalogs arriving in the mail. You know it from leaves turning and from apples and chestnuts and pomegranates and persimmons in the farmer's market. But you know it especially from the apples. There are so many kinds, and just so many, period. They speak of plenty.

My ritual fall harvest feast--which I have by myself--is the first perfect apple with cheddar cheese and red wine. I'm not particular about the wine, as long as it's cheap, because that's my rule. And you can substitute peanut butter for the cheese if you want. But the apple has to be just right, and in the fall it finally is--crisp and tart and sweet and crunchy, usually a golden delicious or, even better, a pink lady, queen of apples with her startling white flesh.

In the fall it’s suddenly no longer too hot to cook, and I realize that I'm starving. Not that I start actually cooking. But I start fantasizing about it.

For several falls in succession I've been fantasizing about a variation on pumpkin pie that I call pumpkin flan with piecrust cookies. It's a recipe born of a problem: to make a piecrust that stays in one piece you need to use enough water to make the dough stick together. But too much water makes the crust tough. My innovation--keep in mind this is all in my mind, we're not talking about actual cooking here--anyway my innovation is that you use and a little more fat and a little less water, and the dough rolls out all crazy and messy with tears and fissures, but it doesn't matter because once it's rolled out you just cut out little rectangles, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and bake them in a hot, hot oven for about seven minutes, and they're wonderful. That's the piecrust cookies part.

The pumpkin flan part is just pumpkin pie filling (follow the recipe on the Libby’s can) cooked in custard cups lined with caramelized sugar. You could give the caramelized sugar a ginger kick by boiling about half a cup of water with slices of fresh ginger, taking out the ginger, adding about two cups of sugar, then cooking until caramelized. Or you could put cardamom in the sugar. Anyway, you do the caramelized sugar however you want, swirl it in the custard cups, then add the pumpkin filling and cook in a water bath for about an hour. Then you eat the pumpkin flans with the piecrust cookies on the side. And you are completely happy.

I've been having this fantasy for so long that actually cooking it might ruin it. But since I've set out to write about my fantasy pumpkin flan, I think I also have to cook the darn thing. So I’ll do that and report back.

Results: Before I get into the actual results, I have to explain something about my history with piecrust. I used to make wonderful piecrust. My mom and I were piecrust cultists, horribly competitive. And now I don't know how to do it anymore. Perhaps it's age, the inevitable coarsening of character, the loss of a light touch--and a light touch is everything in piecrust. But that makes no sense because my mom still makes good piecrust. She wins.

Anyway, the piecrust cookies were awful. I used butter because that was what I had on hand. I no longer keep lard and Crisco around as staples, and it's very sad. Butter is wrong for piecrust. I know this. And I used it anyway. But the pumpkin flans were a little too sweet what with all the caramelized sugar. Next time I'll cut the sugar in the filling to balance out the sweetness in the caramel. Even so, the flans were pretty good. Almost as good as pumpkin pie.

Slow Food/Fast Food

2008-10-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

Slow Food/Fast Food

One Saturday last month I called my mom so she could tell me what to
cook for dinner. I was uninspired. I also had no food in the house
and no time to go to the grocery store. It was still hot, and all I
felt like eating was Cheerios, but we'd had Cheerios for breakfast. Also
possibly for lunch. And I have a two-year-old and all the nutrition
guilt that comes with that. So I called my mom, thinking she'd say
something like, “scrabbled eggs,” which I had the ingredients for and could
probably handle.

Anyway, I called, and my dad said she'd have to call me back--her hands
were full of chicken. Later she called and explained that she'd
been chopping the heads off chickens. I asked her what brought that on.

It turns out that my parents’ church is sponsoring a family of recent Iraqi immigrants. Lompoc, California has a very nice federal prison and an Air Force base, but no halal butcher, so this family has been eating vegetarian and longing for meat. They live in an apartment which has no slaughtering facilities. So my parents invited them over to butcher chickens in the proper way, and this project naturally blossomed into preparing a fabulous Iraqi feast. All this is incredibly admirable, and I'm really glad they're doing it and even more glad that I don't have to. I don’t want to look a fowl in the eye before eating him or her.

As far as I know this was my mom’s first slaughtering experience, but she was doing slow food before it was invented. When I was a kid she cured her own olives. She made goat cheese, and yes, they were our goats. She plucked grape leaves and stuffed them. She’d put a grenade in your lunch box before a Twinkie. We complained constantly.

And this brings me to the slow food movement—another example of something I totally admire and I’m really glad they’re doing it and even more glad that I don’t have to. I want to be the person that plants an assortment of gourmet lettuces and then at dinner time wanders out to the garden to pluck a few choice baby leaves, then washes them in several changes of cold water and finally eats them with extra virgin olive oil and just a sprinkling of the very best parmesan. I would like to have a smaller footprint. Also a smaller butt print. I would also like to have the goat or cow for the parmesan in my backyard. And I would like to live wherever you have to live to make real parmigiano reggiano cheese. I’ll bet it’s really nice there.

But I am an American. We work too hard. We indulge our children. We eat fast food. We also eat pre-washed lettuce from a bag, which I consider to be one of major advances of the 20th century, along with the wide availability of good bread. And where would we be without frozen orange juice and chicken pot pies? My whole family would have scurvy—that’s where we’d be.

I’m not sure where this fits into the fast food/slow food discussion, but I have a piece of salt pork in my refrigerator that is older than my son. It may outlive my son. That's the beauty of nitrates and sealed plastic packaging. There is something very comforting about having a few bags of dried beans and some salt pork on hand. Isn’t that the meal that won the West? We could eat that for a week if we really needed to—hunched in the attic while the flood waters rise, waiting for the rescue helicopter, eating our beans and salt pork—full of fear, full of hope, and full of beans.