Sometimes, it doesn't work

This is a tale of a dish that had everything going for it, and should have worked. But it didn't. Why not? Who knows? It certainly was edible, but it SHOULD have been better. I have some ideas as to why it didn't work, but nothing concrete. It proves that SOMETIMES, it's best to leave things alone. I remember something Fran Lebovitz wrote many years ago, that is apt: "people have been cooking for over 3000 years. So if you ever find yourself wondering 'why didn't anyone ever think of' there's probably a reason."

I had found a very interesting , very easy recipe for mushrooms. Something new. Cremini mushrooms in a balsamic glaze, and I'm going to present that recipe below. I realized, when I read it, that while Guy and I both love mushrooms, I almost never cook them. Why? I don't really know. So I made the recipe over the weekend. Very easy, very fast. The recipe suggested them as a side dish, and I was going to serve them with our veal stew earlier in the week. Instead, I decided to combine them with some left over ricotta for a pasta sauce.

BAD MOVE. I can identify one mistake. I heated up the mushrooms, which caused them to give up their liquid, so that when I added the ricotta, the sauce just got way too liquidy. But not heating the mushrooms would not have saved things. Sitting in their glaze for several days, the mushrooms picked up a sweetness which, while not unpleasant, just amplified the "low level" sweetness in the ricotta, and made the sauce something I wouldn' t make again. The mushrooms tasted not at all like they did when I took them off the stove originally. Those were GOOD.

So, here's the recipe for a mushroom SIDE DISH. Cook them when you're going to eat them (it doesn't take long), and whatever you do, don't repeat my mistake.

If, however, you play with them and come up with something wonderful, I wanna know.

What you'll need is a pound of cremini mushrooms. You could probably use plain white ones too, if that's all you have. Sometimes, the mushrooms are somewhat big. Half them, or quarter them, whatever produces a piece that is bite sized. Put those aside, and then get your other ingredients together. Those are a mix of a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar (NOT the good stuff), 2 teaspoons of brown sugar (dark is what I used, but you could use the light stuff if that's what you have), and a tablespoon of water. Set that aside. Get a big, wide saute or frying pan, and add a tablespoon of unsalted butter, and two tablespoons of olive oil. Turn on the heat on the high side of medium. When the butter melts, toss in the mushrooms, and just under a teaspoon of salt. Stir these with a spoon, until you see no more fat. It won't take long. Mushrooms are the sponge of the vegetable world (so are eggplants), and SLURP goes the oil. Once that happens, stop stiring, and turn the heat up. Cook the mushrooms for two minutes, stir and repeat this, two or three times. Watch the mushrooms. They will begin to give up their water, wrinkle, and some will take on a nice golden brown color. It should take about six minutes. Then turn the heat to low, and add the rest of the butter. Wait twenty seconds, and then add two minced cloves of garlic, and let these cook for 15 seconds. That's all. Just smell. The garlic is amazing. Now, add the liquid, stir it into the mushrooms, and cook for twenty seconds .

Yes, we are talking seconds here, not minutes. The liquid will reduce to a glaze, and then you just want to take them out, season them with salt and pepper and eat them right away.

So there's a recipe that takes all of ten minutes to cook, and probably about five minutes to prepare. Next time, I'll make my pasta with just plain ricotta and salt and pepper, and serve the mushrooms at the side. Or, hmmmm. There are pork chops in the freezer.

I'll fix this darn thing yet. Stay tuned

Intimidation

Today, I got my act together, gathered what little courage I have, and did something that is very, VERY intimidating to me: I went to a men's special clothier, and bought a custom made suit.

We all have things that set us off: I have many, and this is one of them. It isn't a question of hating to go shopping. I actually like shopping. But I always feel as if somehow, I'm inadequate or the sales clerks are laughing at me, etc, etc, etc. Naturally, none of this is true, and none of this is logical. But it is.

When it was done, I was exhausted, exhilirated, and I needed to talk about it. So I did. One person I spoke to was my "sorority sister," Dave. He sent me an email that started "Intimidated? YOU? I don't believe that." I thought he was being sarcastic, but no, he was serious. And that caused me to start thinking about many things and one of them was the whole concept of intimidation. There is one place where I never feel it: it's the kitchen. And interestingly enough, just like Dave was amazed when I 'fessed up about being intimidated about the designer suit, there are many people who suffer intimidation, to various degrees, in the kitchen.

I'm wondering why that is. And I'm hoping that those of you who do read this blog, will perhaps think about these questions: if being in the kitchen intimidates you, what part of it does? And if it's one part of cooking that does, tell me what that is. I'm very curious.

I'm even more curious now, because tonight, my friend "Huck" came over for a cooking lesson. He thought he was going to be here for a while, but we were done in less than an hour . We made french potato/leek soup (I am NOT going to start trying to write French again), a dish from Southeastern Italy, called "gamberi all buongiusta," which I'll explain below, and then zabaglione for dessert. All of these were new dishes for Michael. At the end , he said he would make the soup, and he would make the shrimp, but he had real doubts about the dessert.

And that's the one that seems to test people the most. There is something about dessert making: baking, custard making, and so forth, that really seems to scare people. And I would like to know why you think that is. At this point, I'm not going to try to talk anyone out of it: having experienced it first hand today, I have new respect for it. But I want to try to provide a framework for people to get less "freaked out" if you will over the cooking process. Help me here friends. We can all learn together.

No one needs to be intimidated by this recipe. It's from a book by Anna Teresa Callen called "The Cooking of the Abruzzo" When I first made this recipe, I had my doubts about its authenticity. Chef Callen admits when a recipe is one of her own "takes" on traditional cooking. My friend Andy, who was born there, however , says that yes, this is authentic. I suspect that Chef Callen has made some modifications for the American palate, like shelling the shrimp, and I keep them.

This really is a fifteen minute recipe. It's good enough for company. It makes a lot. One thing it's not, is cheap. But make it. It will make you feel very good, and if I tell you that zabaglione is no harder than this dish, maybe you'll believe me???

You'll need a pound and a half of shelled shrimp. The smaller ones are fine here. Now, just about all the shrimp you will find, regardless of where you buy it, is farmed. There ARE wild shrimp available, but the price is normally 2 or 3 times the prices of the farmed stuff. Maine shrimp are available early in the year, but they are so tiny, that shelling them for the recipe would leave you two tablespoons of usable meat. So, buy the 'large' shrimp (like canned olives, it seems the smallest size of shrimp is "large." ), and use those. Try to make sure that , while farmed, they were grown domestically. You stand more of a chance of getting a fresher product. You will also need a plastic bag, with a quarter cup of flour, and a generous teaspoon of salt in it. Also, 1/4 cup of olive oil (that's four tablespoons. Don't get nervous). You will also need a big tablespoon of tomato paste. I use the stuff in a tubeFinally, 3/4 cup of dry marsala wine.

Take the shrimp and put them in the bag, and then just shake them up to get a little coating on all of them. Don't overdue it. Some will get fully covered, and some won't. Then separate the shrimp from excess flour. I do it by just pouring the whole mess into a colander. The flour goes through the slots, the shrimp stay.

Heat the olive oil in a big, flat pan, and when it's hot, put in your shrimp. You'll get a "hiss" and the shrimp will begin to color. Leave them alone for about three minutes, then turn them to cook the other side, for another two. Then, take them out of the pan, and leave them at the side for a minute.

Put your tomato paste into the pan, and let it sizzle for a minute or two. Now, take the pan off the heat, and add the marsala. You'll get clouds of smoke and a nice big sizzle. Whatever you do, DONT DO IT WHILE THE PAN IS ON THE FIRE. You could get badly burned. After the wine has stopped bubbling furiously, get it back on the flame, and add the shrimp. Cook the shrimp in the wine for three minutes or so. The flour on the shrimp will thicken the wine dramatically. It will almost look like winy ketchup. This is precisely what you want. You're done now, but if you want to add one more element, tear up some fresh sage leaves, say three or four, and toss them in with the shrimp. Make sure you smell it before you move away.

This is a really, REALLY good recipe. I hope you think it's easy, and I hope you try it. Like many of these recipes, a pound and a half of shrimp is a lot of food. Share it. Next time, maybe you can teach someone how to make it.

And we'll all work on getting over our fears together.

The First One

No, not THAT first one. Geez, if you folks don't get by now that I write titillating titles that have nothing to do with sex, well. You want those stories? Martinis, and more martinis.

No, this is about the first cake. The first fancy cake I ever made, in a real oven, with a long digression on what made me remember it. It starts with a simple word: Bob.

A few weeks ago, I went to see Matt, the Squash King, make his debut as a stand up comedian. He was more than good. He was great. But before he went up and performed, the hostess came out and announced "the comic stylings of BOB......." And when Bob came out on stage, I went back in time nearly 30 years.

Bob and I went to college together. We met in our senior year. People have good and bad stories and memories of dorm living, as do I. But senior year, on 5 Furnald, was one of those points in time when you really think that some benign spirit was looking down and decided to reward everyone with some of the most pleasant company they'd ever have in their lives. It was very hard to leave the dorm at the end of senior year, something I can't say about my other three years. And sometimes, I think that I've been trying to re-create that experience since then. And I'm getting close.

Bob was part of that. Now, I must say, right up front, that in my world then, as is also true today, I would never have imagined Bob and I to become friends. I judge. I judge a LOT. And I honestly thought Bob would NEVER want to have anything to do with me. I always tell people that I have peasant hips. It's true. I have the look of a true, blue collar southern Italian. Always have, always will. And there was Bob, built a lot like a whippet, with his long legs, his big, BIG smile, the ironed oxford shirts, and the stovepipe jeans with the penny loafers. No, Bob was definitely out of my league.

Good thing no one ever told Bob that. He sure didn't act it. And we became very good friends. Bob was also out. He wasn't the first gay person I had met, but he was the first one who actually seemed to be happy. All the time. Always with the big smile, like I said, always singing, always a joke that could break you up, if his vocal imitations of whomever didn't. I have been copying his Paul Lynde imitation for over 25 years.

Well, if Bob weren't memorable for all of that, he would be for one discussion, one night, just before graduation, when I came out to him and told him I was confused. "Oh, Norm, we ALL are. And it isn't going to stop, I'm afraid to say." This from a 22 year old. 22 going on 50, I'd say. Later in the conversation, before he went off to his dorm room, he said "you know, you have to be very brave to do this, it isn't easy. It's never going to be. But you'll be fine."

Of course he was right. All the way. And you see, I remember all of that. So when Bob showed up at that comedy club, do you think for one minute I was going to let him go? NO chance. We're back in touch again. Yet again, a benign spirit is looking down and smiling (and when Bob reads this he's going to start singing "heaven must be missing an angel, because that's the way he is. Some things never change).

One of the things that we did during that magical year was have parties. Not "party," but have parties. Birthdays. "Getting into med school" parties. You name it, if there was an excuse for pizza, or Chinese food, and sugar, sugar sugar (Bob, please refrain from "honey honey" here. Thanks). We made our own cakes. In toaster ovens. Yup, in toaster ovens. I'm not kidding. With mixes. Duncan Hines. Pilsbury. Betty Crocker. Whatever flavor looked good. With those ghastly canned icing mixes. I smile when I think of those cakes. Some of them were as much as seven layers high. I would start baking at, say, 10 in the morning, go to class, come back, make some more layers, go back to class, finish up, frost the cake, and then oh, so carefully carry it to wherever we were partying. GOD, those cakes must have been AWFUL. But we were 22, and didn't know any better. Another song cue coming up : "It was so easy then," and as the song continues "And now we are old, with debts and regrets" (you remember that one Bob?).

Well, no regrets about catching up to Bob again. I missed him.

Those cakes were sort of the precursor to my baking "career." My first fancy cake, was a flourless chocolate torte that I found in the NY Times Sunday magazine section, back in 1980. Oh, how things have changed! I used to make it with bakers unsweetened chocolate, with standard, grocery store eggs, and I overcooked it. But we all loved it. I won my first cooking contest with it. And my second. But now I make it better. And soon, I'm gonna make it for Bob. He still needs to put some meat on his bones.

Here is the recipe. Don't wait 30 years to make it. The neat thing about it, is that the batter you make is both cake and frosting, so you have to make a decision early on: cake or frosting? For years, it was my standard chocolate cake when I needed one. I haven't made it in a while, but it's time to take it out of retirement.

I've changed a few things, to make it my own. Now, make it yours. But Bob, this one is for you, MONGO MAN.

You'll need 1/2 a pound of unsweetened, or bittersweet chocolate. I am not much of a fan of chocolate, but when I eat it, I eat bittersweet (says something about me, don't you think?). Get the best you can. Or the one you like the best. I love Scharffenberger. Chop it up nice and fine, and then put it in a pot with a half pound (two sticks) of unsalted butter, that you've cut into cubes. You don't have to have it at room temperature. If you're unsure of yourself when baking, put this pan in a bigger one, that's got about two inches of water in it. Then bring that water to a boil, and stir the chocolate and butter gently until it melts. Put it to the side to cool for a bit.

While it's cooling, separate 5, large eggs. Then, put an additional three egg yolks in with the five.

Finally , get some sugar (BOB!!!!). If you like things sweeter, use 1.25 cups, and if you prefer a stronger taste, just a cup. Beat the yolks and the sugar together until the mix has become very light and thick. Sometimes, cooks call this the "ribbon" phase. Screw that. Beat it until it's the color of a lemon. Then separately, beat the egg whites until you just begin to get firm peaks What's a firm peak? Pull the beater out of the egg whites. You'll get a little "peak" when you pull it out. If those peaks do not fall over, or bend, you have stiff peaks.

Now, the fun stuff. Mix the chocolate and egg yolk mixtures together and stir until the color is uniform. This is not as easy as it sounds. Then add the egg whites, a half at a time, combining them gently. This is the only structure you're going to get in the cake. There's no flour, remember?

Preheat your oven to 300 (the original recipe calls for 350 and 90 minutes of baking. That will give you a chocolate cinder. Trust me. I know). Get a nine inch pan of some kind, and butter it with the paper from your butter in the cake, and then put in a couple of tablespoons of sugar and shake it around to coat it.

Now, decision making time: you have to use at least half of the batter for the cake, but beyond that, the amount is up to you. Then, put the cake pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes (300 and 30). The cake may seem a bit underbaked to you, and that's fine for this cake. But if you want something firmer, bake for another 15 minutes.

Let that cake cool. Now, another decision. Do you want to flavor the frosting? I do. I usually add coffee, or rum, or my favorite of favorites, gran marnier. Just a tablespoon or so to make it nice and tasty. Spread it around on the cake, and refrigerate it, or serve it up the way it is. It's a lot like eating a big old chocolate candy kiss.

It's odd to think that this recipe is now "old fashioned" but it is. Nothing wrong about that. Like Bob and I "it's now an oldie, but it was a newie then."

Good to see you again Bob. Want some cake?

PASTA FAZOOL!!!!!

Yes, you know the expression, don't you? And you know all the bad things about it: it's supposed to give you gas, indigestion, and all that jazz. It's for poor people, it tastes terrible, blah blah blah.

Well, have you ever had it? Or have you ever made it? Hmmmmmm?????

C'mon now, Annalena and you, gentle reader , are gonna make this wonderful, soul restoring dish, that is really somewhere between liquid and solid, and you're going to find out that you love it.

This is another one of those dishes where there are many detours you can take: canned beans, dried beans, or fresh beans? (answer: yes). Stars, broken spaghetti, tubetti, ditalini, or what? (answer: yes). Meat or no meat? (answer: yes). What vegetables? What herbs? What liquid? Tomatoes, or no tomatoes (answer: yes).

At its most fundamental, pasta e fagioli (the "proper" spelling) is sauteed aromatic vegetables, beans, and pasta, with olive oil and black pepper as a finish, with perhaps some grated cheese. Tomatoes, bacon or pancetta or anything like that is optional. Herbs are too, but they are highly recommended. WATER no chicken stock, please. You have what is very much a delicate soup here, believe it or not, and chicken stock destroys the balance BUT - just like in minestrone, a really fine trick is to put a parmesan rind in when you're cooking the soup, if you have one.

The beans? Well, I don't like using canned beans. To me, they are too soft, too overcooked, and they fall apart in the cooking of the soup. I like the beans to retain their integrity and shape, so I almost always use fresh frozen shell beans, if I have them around, or dried beans. The plus for dried beans is that you always have them handy, and they never go bad. The minus is that you do have to soak them overnight. But really, this is a minor step. Before you go to bed, take a cup and a half of dried beans (use a dry measure), and cover them with three times the amount of water. Go to bed.

What kind of beans? Well, I'm a snob here and I use borlottis, or cranberry beans. You can use others. If you do, I would stay away from black beans, because the color makes this look "not right" to me, as well as kidney beans, because they get too soft. Use canellini beans, and you have a dish that is more Northern than Southern.

Now, the next day, before you make the soup, I want you to do something very, very important. And that's to cook your pasta separately. Get half a pound of whatever pasta you like: I DO prefer the baby stars: s telline. For some reason, the texture on the edges just makes me smile. But use whatever small pasta you have. If you still aren't sure, go to that good Italian grocery store and ask for a "soup pasta." If you're too intimidated, for heaven's sakes, get some spaghetti, break it up smaller than you think you should, and use that. Now, cooking the pasta separately is important, because if you cook it with the rest of the soup, it will soak up all of your broth, and you'll get a big, thick mess. A tasty mess, but a mess nonetheless. So cook pasta the way you normally would and then - I k now, shocking - drain it, and wash it with cold water. Put it aside.

Now, we're gonna get to work. We start with the vegetables and herbs. I've done this a lot of ways, and while a combination of carrots, celery, onion and garlic are the classic combination, I dispense with the carrots. They make the soup too sweet for me, but if you like that sweetness, by all means. You will want about a half a cup worth of celery and carrot if you're using it, and a cup of onion. I use a LOT of garlic. Six cloves. Sometimes I use pancetta, sometimes I don't. If you use it, chop it up with the rest of the vegetables and garlic you're using. A food processor is a really useful thing to have here, but if you don't have it, just get that knife out and chop, chop chop. This is a peasant soup, so don't feel compelled to reduce everything to even, anally retentive pieces.

Now the herbs. Here, I veer away from the standard again, which teaches you to chop up fresh herbs with the vegetables. I always use rosemary in this soup, and there simply is no way to avoid picking up a nasty rosemary needle when you chop it. So I take two big branches and combine them with the veggies and the pork, if I'm using it, and just mix it all together.

Put this aside now, and start cooking your beans. To do that, dump the water from the night before, and add an equal amount of new, cold water. Bring the pot to a boil, and simmer. DON'T ADD SALT (We're coming to that). Add a cheese rind, if you have it. After they've simmered for about ten minutes, put enough olive oil in the bottom of a pan to cover it, and add your vegetables and herbs and pork. Start sauteeing, and keep going for five minutes. I highly recommend tomatoes. Many recipes suggest just a bit, I like a lot: I use at least a 16 ounce can, that I've crushed with my fingers. Add the tomatoes to the vegetables, lower your heat, and cover the pan. Then cook for ten minutes. Add more salt to this than you think you'll need.

By now, your beans will have been cooking for about twenty minutes. Pull one out, run it under cold water (it's really hot), and taste it. Is it soft enough for you? If not, cook the beans for another ten minutes and keep going until you have them where you want them (nya ha ha. I've got you just where I want you Mr. Bean. Ok, ok, I'll stop).

You now have the three components of your soup: your vegetables, your beans in a water broth, and your pasta. Know what you do? Dump everything in the bean pot, stir it, take out the cheese rind, and taste it. You will probably need more salt, and then add some pepper too. Let this sit until it's cool enough to store, because this is a soup that improves immensely upon sitting for a day.

When you're ready to eat it, heat it up gently, and if you are so inclined (and yes, I always am so inclined), add a dribble of a good olive oil to it. You can also sprinkle some freshly grated cheese on it too. Then serve it forth, with salad and bread. And you have a classic, potentially vegetarian, potentially vegan soup that is really a meal in a bowl. Don't feel like salad? Don't eat it. Feeling you'll get logy from too many carbs ? Don't eat the bread (then have some fried polenta instead. OOPS. Am I giving away my allegiance to the carbohydrate goddess?).

Now, I will let you in on a secret. This is one of the dishes my grandmother would make a lot, and I would always refuse to eat it. And she'd stick a hand on her ample hip (sort of like I do today), point without shaking her finger (me too!), and through clenched teeth exclaim "One day, you will want to eat this soup every single meal."

Of course she was right. And if you make it, I bet you'll want to, too.

So give it a try. Make some variations on it. Tell me about them. Or better yet, make some and invite me over for a bowl of it. I'll bring the red wine.

Stories from my first kitchen

Not many days ago, I had emailed my friend Andrew, of the bingo and meatballs, with a tale from the days when I actually DID do a cooking class. Andrew loved the story and wondered why it hadn't been posted here. A very good question. I guess I have been focusing more on recipes and stories of my family, but those early, "formative" days in my first kitchen are indeed a part of what and who I am. So I will post that story, some day. But today, I'm going to post another one from that kitchen. I think it's more revealing than many things I could write. And the mood just seems right.

The kitchen in question is one I shared with three roommates during my last two years of law school. The first of those years was way better than the second, and this story is from that period.

I lived with two law students, Brian and Steve, and an MBA student named Chad. Yes, there were Chads before they were hanging. I think of all of us, Chad has kept his youthful idealism much more than the rest. No question about it. He actually teaches business ethics. Thank heavens someone does. I remember the stand he took when he wouldn't take a summer internship with a company that had a big presence in the meat packing industry because he didn't eat meat. And he had wonderful parents who supported his decision every bit of the way. When I finally met mom (Ardith), it was love at first sight. Well, Chad features in this story, a bit later. And if you stick with this one, you'll know why I wanted you to have that introduction.

I was in law school from 1979-1982. Much happened in all of our lives during that period of time. And one thing that happened, and it was a BAD thing - a very bad thing - was John Lennon being killed. He was shot the day before Brian, Steve and I had to take our final exam in constitutional law. For those of you who do not share the law school experience, the final in "con law," as we called it, was akin to things like rabbinical certification, circumcision, and anything along those lines you can imagine. So we were all pretty wired, and trying to forget all of it by watching Monday night football. Chad, kind soul that he was, and is, was watching it with us, although he was a rugby and squash kinda guy, for whom football bore no interest whatsoever. The news broadcast interrupted the game, and we all listened. But the three law students were all so caught up in the intricacies of due process and equal protection analysis, that it just didn't register - or so it seemed. We studied as late as we could, and went to bed, nervous, but as confident as three students could be, for the four hour exam we had the next day.

It wasn't pretty. I remember wondering why I had so much time after I had answered the third question, and why was there another page in my exam book? OOPS. There was question number 4. And I had thirty minutes to write an anawer. My next door seat mate, Steve N, recalls me just laughing helplessly as I tried to outline the pros and cons of Roe v Wade as it applied to basic constitutional law. Yeah, try doing that in half an hour.

When I have an exam, or a difficult task in front of me that requires careful concentration or presentation, it's like a balloon: the minute it's done, it "pops." I remember none of it. And then, what has been held at bay comes out. And it hit me : John Lennon had been shot. I remember it was cold, I was tired, and I went back to our apartment, really at a loss of what to do.

We had the progressive rock station on, and of course, it was filled with remembrances of John Lennon. Interviews, recordings, the whole nine yards. And as I listened, I did what I always do when I'm glum: I wandered into the kitchen. I pulled out chocolate. Eggs . Butter. Flour. Sugar. And I got to work. Brownies. Chocolate cake. Cup cakes. I went out to the store for more. Chocolate pudding. And I wasn't done. The chocolate chip cookies were up next. Tray, after tray after tray. Somehow, by cooking, I fought off the blues. For a while. Somewhere about tray number six, they played someone doing in improvisation on "Imagine," and then John Lennon's recording of it. That song always slays me. Has there ever been a more beautiful statement of what things COULD be like ? Well, it got to me. And after four or five hours of holding it back, I broke. And I just started sobbing. Not crying, mind you. Just big, deep, wrenching sobs, like I didn't know I had in me (I still wonder how salty that batch of cookies tasted). I didn't turn around, I was too distraught. And the next thing I remember was Chad's arms around me. Chad was, and is straight. And he knew I was gay. And it didn't matter. He was taking care of a f riend. Doing nothing , just holding me, his head on my shoulder, not holding tight, just holding me and letting me sob. Not saying a word, just being there.

I still remember that warmth. And I still remember saying "it's ok, I'll be alright," and Chad saying "Yeah, you'll be alright, but it will never be ok again. Everything changed today. But now, we have to figure out what to do What do we do with this cake?"

Well, four guys in their twenties can make a good dent in sweets, but we had a LOT to do. So, since it was exams for both of us, and everyone needs sugar during these long exams in business school and law school, what we did for the next few days, is we brought the goodies to our schools, and gave them away. Yes, we could have sold them, and we thought about that, but decided that John Lennon would not have wanted it that way.

To this day, when something truly traumatic happens, I head to the kitchen, and I cook. I cook big. I've gotten a lot more leery of people touching me, and I'm not sure if what Chad did would have the same impact, but I will never forget that moment in the kitchen when I felt like someone was protecting me, someone was watching over me, and I didn't have to be afraid.

Chad and I have very much fallen out of touch, simply by the "slings and arrows" that control our lives. I'm going to try to find him and send him this little story.

So, thank you Andrew, for waking that memory up again, and thank you Chad, for doing what you always did, and I suspect still do, so well. We used to call Chad the doctor, the patcher, the fixer in the apartment. I bet he still is.

And I still make chocolate chip cookies. Chad, you want some? I realize I owe you. Let me know where to send them

"Sure. Easy for you."

I was describing a recipe to my bud Keith about a week ago, and I said that it was very easy and he should try it. He laughed and said "Well, sweetie, you're applying YOUR standard to it, so be careful about calling it easy."

Well, anytime Keith calls me sweetie, I melt a little, but I really was resolute. When I say that something is easy to cook, I mean it. There ARE dishes that I make that are complicated and require a fair amount of skill. But just about everything I cook is about getting something really tasty on the table that isn't too hard.

Now, that does NOT mean that what I cook doesn't take a long time. Some of my braises take four or five hours to finish. But this is unsupervised time, where I'm doing something like reading a book, writing, pretending to be busy, that kind of thing. But the actual "work" is done. The dish cooks itself.

I'm going to write today about two dishes I made this morning/early afternoon. And to see just how much trouble they were, I set a timer. I set it at 99 minutes ( the biggest number it allowed me to use), and checked how much time was left at the end. I finished in an hour, and then needed ten minutes at the end to finish things off. And what did I make? Well, I made a wonderful sweet potato soup, and a veal stew in cream. I'm gonna lead you through these, step by step, to show you how easy this is. I WILL make reference to equipment, and one of the most important things you can do is get good tools for the kitchen. It will make your job easier.

The soup, first. This is a slight adaptation of a recipe from a wonderful cook, Sue Torres. I'll tell you where I vary from what she does. First, I peeled and diced a yellow onion. You need a good, sharp knife that is bigger than the onion to do this, and you should have one. Sue calls for half of a white onion, but I didn't have one, and any time I have half an onion around, I never use it. So I chopped up that small yellow onion, and put it aside. Two cloves of garlic were smashed, and I got rid of the peels. Then, with my rasp grater, a teaspoon or so of fresh ginger. I thought about leaving this out. I'm glad I didn't. The house smelled wonderful, and the soup is better for it. I had a small bit of celery left, and chopped it all up, rather than the one rib that Sue calls for. Then, I had two pounds of garnet yams, and I peeled them and chopped them (Sue calls for sweet potatoes, and 1.75 pounds of them, thinly sliced). Finally, I peeled and chopped two apples. I THINK they were winesaps. Sue called for Galas, and I'm sure I didn't have those.

Now, this may sound like a lot of peeling and chopping. It's not. Try it. Do one at a time, take your time. It won't take you more than fifteen minutes and at this point, your work is really done.

I brought two tablespoons of vegetable oil up to the point where the oil was shimmering in the pot (much Mexican sauteeing calls for this step and it's really fascinating to see the oil ripple ). I put the onions, the garlic, and the ginger in and lowered the heat right away. The "blast" of ginger your nose gets will amaze you and you'll watch how beautifully the onions begin to cook.

Now, Sue doesn't call for the next step, but I think it's essential. Toss in a little salt. And stir this for about five minutes. Then, toss in the apple and celery, and cook for about five minutes.

Next, I added a step and I'll explain why, below. I squeezed about a tablespoon of tomato paste into the pot, and let it "fry" for a minute, before I tossed it into the veggies. This is a trick that Lidia Bastianich suggests. It's a good one. Then, the potatoes went in, and I stirred them with the oil and other veggies, and let it cook for five minutes . By this point, the apples had fallen apart, which is a good thing. Then, a quart of chicken stock and three cups of water went in, again with a bit more salt.

Here's the big change. Sue calls for a chipotle chili in adobo sauce. These come in a can, and there's way more than one. And they're spicy and hot. VERY spicy and hot. Once you use one of them , what do you do with the rest? If you're like me, you put it in the back of the fridge until you get a science experiment. I've seen all kinds of tricks for what to do with them, and I'll pass. Instead, I tossed in two dried chipotle peppers. Now you know why I had the tomato paste in there. I covered the pot, turned up the heat, and when it began to boil, I lowered the heat and let it bubble away, for thirty minutes.

So if you want to do just one dish, go back and add up how much time you've spent. There's the chopping and peeling time, so ten minutes if you're slow, and maybe fifteen minutes of active cooking. So, for 25 minutes of work, you're going to get a big pot of 2.5 quarts of soup.

I let this sit and when it was cool, I tossed one of the chipotles, and then pureed the rest. It needed a bit more salt, but that was it.

Not too hard.

while the soup was going , I made the stew. And this one is also easy. I had two pounds of cubed veal left over from the ossobuco feast, but you can buy veal stew meat. I had that ready, while I got the other ingredients together: a chopped onion (two tablespoons are called for, I'm not going to bother with that), and two branches of fresh sage and one of thyme (Marcella wants 18 dried sage leaves. I had fresh, so I used it), 2/3 cup of white wine, a generous 1/3 cup of heavy cream, a tablepoon of vegetable oil, and 1.5 tablespoons of vegetable oil. And in a plastic bag, a cup of flower and a tablespoon of salt.

Ok, here the only "work" you have to do is measure, and chop an onion. The only other thing you're going to do is pat the meat dry, and then put it in the bag of flour and shake. Make sure the meat is well covered with flour. Then, take your biggest pan, and put the fats in. Heat them up.When the butter melts, get the meat in. You should be able to get all of it in a 12 inch pan, and you SHOULD have a twelve inch pan. Brown the meat, and here, you take your time, but it won't take you more than about five minutes. Really. Take out the meat, and if there is no oil left (there probably won't be), add some more and add the onions, and the spices and sautee for about three minutes. Put the meat back in, and add the wine. Stir a bit, because there will be brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Now, lower the heat, and cover the pot. You should also keep a half cup of water on hand. You're gonna need it.

After fifteen minutes, check. You may see the wine all gone and the meat sticking. This is a GOOD thing. Pour in 1/3 of your water and stir up the meat and the brown bits. VOILA. You'll wind up with a lovely gravy. Your meat is not finished yet, so cover the pot, and come back in another fifteen minutes. do the same thing with the water, and then, do this one more time. After the third time, stir in the cream, lower the heat a little more, again, cover the pot, and let this cook for thirty minutes.

Again, go back and work through that recipe, and see how much work you were doing. Not a whole helluva lot. And once you've made it, know what? You've got the technique for beef stroganoff, for pork with posole stew, for lamb stew with vegetables, and a whole lot of other really good braises that you do on the top of the stove.

So , IF you wanted to, you could serve the soup as a first course, and then the stew, perhaps on a bed of noodles or pasta, or just by itself. What we will do is have them as meals on two different nights. The veal stew is DEFINITELY a company dish, and I wouldn't blink an eye about serving the soup to guests either.

You have plenty of food here, and really, while it took a bit over an hour to get everything finished, you really didn't spend too much time working.

Don't believe me? Come visit. We'll make soup together.

Keith, that means you. And if you call me sweetie while we're making it, you may see me blush as read as my beet soup and glow like a hunk of kryptonite.

And Mark, you sweet blond asparagus you, of course you can take out the chicken stock and use vegetable stock and eat it all yourself. And you can call me sweetie too.

But the two of you doing it together? Gee, don't know if I can handle that. My sensors may just fuse.

Cooking as Remembrance

As a culture, we have developed a very elaborate, and frequently lovely, and heartfelt, system to remember people we love who are no longer with us. Even the way I wrote that, instead of "we have ways to remember people who died," is part of that system. If you're critical of this kind of thing, you will say, rightfully, that it's all a way of softening what is ultimately not a very pleasant time. Death and dying is ugly. No matter what anyone says, it's UGLY. There is no other way to describe it. And I think almost universally, painful. Everyone tries to avoid the truly painful and truly ugly.

So we do things like adorn remembrances with flowers, or we write music. We have elaborate pictures of our loved ones, showing them when they were "good." Dressed in their best clothes, smiling, hugging the kids (when, probably , ten minutes later, those kids were getting a good smack, desesrved or not). It's who we are.

One way we remember is with food related "events." The open house after the service, where people bring a "covered dish," or the wake, where there IS food as well as drink, the banquet I went to when my mentor Oscar died, and so forth. Somehow, food factors into what we do at those times.

I have a bit of a unique way of trying to remember those I love who have gone on. It was inspired by reading an essay that a woman who's hobby was baking wrote in one of my food magazines. She wrote about having to speak at her aunt's funeral. She had prepared her remarks for weeks. Her aunt was the person who had taught her how to cook and how to bake. And when she stood up to speak, she looked at her hands and "realized that every bit of skill that was in them had come from my aunt, and I just couldn't use what I wrote, and through tears, I talked about how much she had taught me about what I love to do."

Good for her. I had her in mind when I started doing what I do: when someone I love dies, I develop a recipe. If I love them, I know what they liked to eat the best, and I try as hard as I can to do something that I can repeat when I REALLY need them. Sometimes it is NOT easy. Every holiday season I make a type of cookie that I developed after my big tomcat, Sasha, died. I can feel him prowling around the kitchen, with his throaty purr going at full volume, when I make them. All the emotions of the holidays come up as well.

The first one I ever developed was for Nana. When I look at my big hands, I remember Tati for their size. And when I watch how, sometimes, without even knowing HOW I know how to do something in the kitchen, I remember Nana. It's over ten years that she's gone, but her touch is in every pot of red sauce, every fried eggplant slice, and everything else that comes out of that kitchen.

For someone who cooked as much as Nana did, her favorite food was something she never made: bread. We used to see Nana, after she had cooked POUNDS of food for all of us, sitting in the kitchen, slicing semolina bread, or Italian bread, and eating slice after slice of it (that's not really what she did. She would rip hunks off and eat them, and then even it off, the way I do). We all thought it was Nana just making sure everyone had enough to eat. It was only later that I realized that she really preferred this. More than her wonderful veal cutlets or her meatballs, she loved to take bread, dip it into that sauce or the remains of a salad, and just eat that. So, there was no question that a bread was in order.

Nana also loved strong flavors. If it was salty, spicy and strong, that's what she ate. She wouldn't cook corned beef and cabbage, but she loved sauerkraut. She loved spicy Chinese food, and especially the condiments. She had no patience for the "French" cheeses we were getting in the sixties, but roquefort was always on her plate if we had it. So it had to be something strong and cheesy. And I thought, and thought and thought, and finally, after about three weeks, I came up with provolone and black pepper bread.

What I'm going to give you is a modification of the original recipe. Nana had no problem with picking her teeth, during a meal, to take out seeds, bits of stem, etc, but most people do. So instead of cracked pepper, which is what the original called for, I used coarse ground here. If you can't find semolina flour, use all unbleached white flour. She loved both kinds of bread. And finall, if you're going to use cold cut provolone, don't bother. Get the good stuff. The older, and stinkier, and most brittle you can find.

How would Nana have reacted to this bread? She wasn't a good gift recipient, to be honest. She'd probably taste a slice in front of me and then put it away. The next day it would be gone and she'd shrug her shoulder and complain about the mice in the house.

The hardest part of this recipe is cutting the provolone into small chunks. You realy don't want them much bigger than about 1/4 of an inch cubes. Bigger than that and they'll melt into the bread and you'll get big holes when it's finished. Grated is fine, but you will lose the "feel" of the thing that so says "Nana," but if you can't handle the cubing, grate a cup of the stuff nice and fine. If you can cube, use two cups of the cubes.

For the bread itself, you need 2 teaspoons of yeast (you can use a tablespoon, which will get the job done faster, but it won't taste as good), and 1.5 cups of water. Use stuff that's cold, or that doesn't make you feel at all like it's "warm" when you touch it. Mix those together, and then add 1.5 teaspoons of salt, and if you feel bold about 3/4 teaspoons of freshly grated pepper (this is the interesting part: I don't think it makes much of an impact, but other people take a bit and recognize pepper, first of all. If you like the tastt of pepper, go up to a teaspoon or drop it to half a teaspoon if you're just trying it out). Then add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. You will also need four cups of flour. Either use all unbleached white, or a mix of 3 cups with one of semolina (this is best for beginners, because semolina is hard to mix), or 2 and 2. If you're using the two flours, mix them together, and then add two cups of it to the liquid and stir. You'll get a very soft mass. Then add all of the cheese chunks, and finally, the rest of the flour.

If you feel up to being old fashioned, do this all by hand, and be advised you're in for ten minutes of hand kneading. You can break this up just as long as you give it those ten minutes of work. You can find pictures and illustrations of how to do the "envelope fold" technique for kneading by hand on the web. Me? I got the arthritis in my fingers the way Nana did, so I cheat and use the mixer.

When you have something nice and smooth (don't worry about the cheese chunks sticking through the bread), put the lump into a bowl, and cover it, and go away for 1.5 to 2 hours. That time depends on how much yeast you use. The lesser amount of yeast means the higher length of time. When it's done, punch it down, divide it in two and shape two loaves. For "traditional"
"pane della Nana" you shape these into fat torpedos, about 10 inches long . If you prefer round loaves, by all means, use that shape. It doesn't matter. Put the loaves on a parchment covered baking sheet, and leave them alone, covered, to rise for thirty minutes. During that thirty minutes , preheat your oven to 375.

Now, Nana would never approve of the 'waste' here, but it's pretty. You can take an egg white, mix it with two teaspoons of water, and then brush it over the top. Your loaves will come out shiny instead of a duller, rougher color and texture, but that's up to you. I don't do it.

Slide the pan into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes. During this time, the cheese will melt, and some will carmelize and you will get a smell like something is burning. That's just fine. Nana loved BURNED grilled cheeses. When it's done, after those thirty minutes, let it cool on a rack.

Again, Nana would rip right into hot bread, sometimes when it was SO hot I couldn't imagine how her mouth could handle it (I got that kind of asbestos palette from her, too), but it's best if you let it cool awhile.

So, that's one way I remember Nana. I have others. This one takes a lot out of me, so I don't make it as often as I like.

Dinners and wakes and remembrance parties come and go, but a recipe is forever. Try to keep your loved ones with you forever. And also try to make sure that the next "generation" remembers them too. A recipe is a good way to do it.

There's no such thing as improvisation

One of the things I harp on when I'm teaching someone the rudiments of cooking is , like boy scouts, to "be prepared." In the kitchen, that means if you are planning to make a particular dish, be sure you have all the ingredients you'll need. I get on my soap box and stress, over and over again: what if you find you don't have it when you need it?

I should learn to practice what I preach.

Although, sometimes, when you're forced to work without a net, good things come of it. And the funny t hing about the improv session I'm writing a bout is that, at the end, when I thought I had come up with something new and interesting and innovative, on reflection I found I had reinvented the wheel. To paraphrase the very funny Fran Lebowitz: "people have been cooking for 3000 years, there is nothing new."

Well, yes and no. Anyway, here's the story.

I had planned to make a baked fish dish, using a mayonnaise cooking sauce. Using mayonnaise to coat fish is something I learned from our late friend Bill Campbell. He used to dredge flounder or cod in it, then bread it, and bake it. The mayonnaise would melt into the fish in the baking, leaving behind a noticeable tang, but no "globs" of the stuff on the fish. Eventually, I learned that this method is not uncommon in New England, especially if you're baking an especially thick piece of fish. The mayonnaise needs time to get into the fish, so it works really well with something thick, so that the fish doesn't in fact overcook.

With that in mind, I was intrigued by a recipe I found, for mayonnaise glazed halibut. Instead of breading, you were called upon to paint the fish with the mayonnaise, to which you had added chopped garlic. Then, the fish was cooked at 450 for only 15 minutes. T his was rather different from how Bill showed me how to make it, and how I had modified it. Bill baked his fish at 350, for THIRTY MINUTES. Eventually, I settled on 325 for twenty, but this new one, without the breadcrumbs, and at the high heat, was intriguing. Over the weekend, I planned on it for Tuesday dinner.

Tuesday DAY was a horror of disorganization, bad connections, a case of the "oopsies" as I dropped one thing after another - you know the deal - so after I had prepped vegetables and pasta to go with the fish, had preheated the oven, and got set to do my monkfish, it probably shouldn't have surprised me that I didn't have any mayonnaise. Nope. Had used it all at New Year's for the artichoke dip, and hand never replaced it.

OOPS.

I really wasn't in a frame of mind to start making mayonnaise fresh. Therapy, a probably misfire in my ongoing attempt to fix burned bridges, stress from a meeting at work that didn't happen, the whole nine yards said "No, no mayonnaise making tonight."

But what to do? Well... I thought about the components of mayonnaise: acid and oil and the garlic, and it sounded okay to me. So what I did was to get out the processor (I COULD have done this by hand, but I was feeling really stressed and lazy), and chopped three cloves of garlic. I had a small bottle of lemon juice, a left over from a cake that needed the rind of four lemons in the fridge, and of course, there was olive oil. I dumped the garlic in the processor, and added a hefty two tablespoons of juice and four of olive oil and juice went to work until it looked a bit thick. I added a pinch of salt to that.

I was working with monkfish, and it was a big, thick piece that I cut into slices. I put a bit of the sauce on the bottom of the pan, laid the fish on top of it, and then the rest of the sauce, and baked at that 450 for fifteen minutes.

Damn if it wasn't good. Probably better than if I had used mayonnaise. I was feeling pleased .

I remain pleased, but I realized last night that I had, essentially remade a classic of southern Italy, "salmoriglio sauce." Sicilians use this on tuna or sword fish, and while there are variants all over the place, like Greek skordalia, or vinaigrette, at its base the sauce is olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. Most use oregano as well, some use parsley, some leave out the garlic, but at base, what I did was what Sicilians have been doing for hundreds , perhaps thousands of years.

Oh well. But as far as I know, they've never used it on white fish like monkfish. And for all of my love of Italian cooking, one of the "rules" is that if you don't have the ingredients, you don't make the dish. So maybe we can call this "Salmoriglio, Annalena style?'

Have you tried it?

Generally, I try to stay away from buying "green house" food. It's a dilemma at this time of year. Local lettuces and things like that are available, but they are grown under greenhouse conditions. So they're local, and they're organic, but how do they taste, and do they meet all the criteria of sustainability? It's very hard to reach a satisfactory conclusion here. Buy stuff from a NY state green house, or a California farm? Would that everyone's problems were as minimal as that one.

So this is by way of introducing "green garlic." For folks who follow crops, the garlic cycle is very interesting. The stuff that we're all used to using as hard, sometimes too hard, too dry, bulbs, starts as a green plant, not unlike a spring onion. It forms a bulb, and it has a green shoot, and eventually, it forms the cloves that we're accustomed to. Then it's dried, and that's how we get it. Early on, it's very tender, and sort of like a cross between an onion and garlic. And you can use all of it. There is no "skin" to speak of really, and you can chop everything all the way up to the top and use it for all kinds of things.

One of the farms we patronize , the D'attolico farm, is essentially a greenhouse. They are completely organic. And one of the things they grow in that greenhouse is garlic. It seems to be one of those "things." Garlic grown indoors never forms the common type of bulb we know. It goes to the "green" stage, and just stops. So, during the winter, they have what is really a treat of mid/late spring: green garlic.

This year, they introduced green "elephant" garlic. Some years ago, these huge bulbs and cloves were introduced as "garlic without attitude," and indeed, when dried, the cloves have almost none of the bite that garlic does.

So, what's the point? I won't use them. But the idea of these big, green garlic bulbs was very appealing and I brought a bunch of them home this past weekend. Yesterday, I put them to use.

It was a long, holiday weekend, and on Sunday, we had prepared, and shared, a wonderful, party dinner with a group of friends. One of the best we had ever had, on all fronts. So we had eaten well, no question about it. So, "standard" wisdom tells us that, after a day of excess, you should be eating things like steamed vegetables and salads.

Well, I've read a few articles lately that take issue with that. They don't disagree that you have to turn down the calories, but they suggest a tapering. So, if you've had what is probably a 10,000 calorie dinner (maybe a slight exaggeration, but only slight) on one night, don't follow it with a 400 calorie one the next day. Something in between is called for.

So we were sitting at home, hungry. I was thinking of ordering in Chinese food for lunch, but it was also freezing out. The wind chill factor said 2-4 degrees. One of the idiosyncracies I have is that I don't want to force people out in weather that I won't go out in. So I wouldn't do the Chinese food thing. I went into the kitchen to see what I could do. We had some left over ricotta from the party (we had a ricotta tasting: buffalo, sheep and goat. Buffalo won, hands down, with yours truly in dissent). Ricotta and pasta are a match made in heaven. I started by chopping up the three big heads of garlic that I had. As I did it, I was thinking that leeks would work, but would taste different . Use em if you got em. I sauteed the leeks in butter, because the plan I had called for soft cheese, and cream, and olive oil didn't seem right. That was a right decision, I think. After I had sauteed the garlic in a little butter, until it just got soft, I added about a quarter cup. Ok a third of a cup of heavy cream. In the heat, the cream cooked right away. Then, off the heat, I added about a cup of mixed ricotta, and some salt. You should always add cheese OFF the heat. It's already been cooked, and the second "cook" could force it to separate into curds and whey. So, now I had a wonderful white, creamy delicious sauce, that I mixed into half a pound of tagliarini and I served it forth.

A pretty good lunch, in fifteen minutes I would say.

You will find green garlic in the spring at farmer's markets everywhere. If you can't get D'attolico's, then use leeks. But try this. I bet you're gonna like it.

And it's not 10,000 calories

Eat your greens

Remember that line when you were a kid? How many of us hae stared at a plate of "something" that was supposed to be good for us. The problem was, that usually, it didn't look "green." Probably somewhere around brown, or black, or grey, or some other color that just disgusted you to look at it. "And Mom wants me to eat that?"

Again, I wonder how many people never learned to cook because of incidents like that. And I wonder how many parents just discretely pushed their "greens" off their plate, or invoked the "when you're old enough to vote you can decide what you eat" logic (that was the one I got for everything: be it liver, overcooked greens, frozen meatballs, whatever. "when you can vote you can pick what you eat. " What did you get told?).

Well, one thing that I have learned in many years, is that kids are usually right. If the food looks disgusting, it probably is. And nothing is more disgusting than overcooked, boiled, nasty greens. And it has spoiled a really good experience for many people, because the minute they see a "green" of any kind: chard, kale, escarole, spinach, collards, beet greens, you name it, the "YUCH" reaction sets in, and the plate gets pushed away. So, about half of the vegetables you can eat just get marked as "not an option," mentally, and you stick to the old faithfuls, if you eat any vegetable at all (some day, look up the average per capita consumption of vegetables. It is very, very sad).

But I am optimistic. As people have looked at other cultures, or went back to their own, and studied where recipes and techniques have come from, "greens are back." Europeans, who always seem to be right about food, have never had a problem with them. In fact, one of the things I hear from talking to Europeans with children, who move to the United States, is that the kids ate the stuff gladly back home, and now, they just won't touch it.

Well, let's all start eating our greens. Last night, at a dinner party, with some misgivings, I served up plates of escarole, cooked the way I just about always cook greens. I wasn't sure how the vegetable was going to go over. We had a LOT of food to get through, and it WAS greens.

Let me say this at the start: I feel so overwhelmed by my friends at times, and how open they are, how honest they are, and all that. It was a wonderful dinner party, and everyone ate their greens. Now, this was with a substantial plate of ossobuco and risotto, after a little plate of scallops and fennel (and yes, they ate the fennel too), so not only was it gratifying, it was inspiring. Now, I know I can keep on cooking them.

So here it is. I do this with just about every green during the winter, and in fact, during the summer too. Wash the greens. Do not assume that they are clean. Greens grow in bunches, and the dirt can get in "there" and be hard to get out. Washing them is good, too, because the water will help you when you cook them.

After you've washed the green you're using, take a "stem check" By that I mean, is the stem of the plant tender enough to eat (you need to do this on things like chard, and kale, where it frequently is not). If the answer is no, then pull the leaves off of the stem, or if it's a stem that starts tender but gets tough, cut away the tough part. You'll have to do this with things like spinach, and dinosaur kale. You won't have to do it at all for things like escarole. Then, take what you have left, and chop it into bite sized pieces. You will have a lot - or so you will think. Wait until you see how this stuff shrinks.

Get a wide pot or pan, and put in two inches or so of water, and bring it to a boil. When it comes to the boil, add a few teaspoons of salt. Then add some of your greens. Don't overfill the pot, just let them cook down, and add more. Keep on doing that until you've cooked them all. You'll have collapsed the volume by at least 70 percent. Dump them out and let them cool enough so that you can squeeze out the water. It won't take long.

While they're cooling, I get a pan and heat up some olive oil, and add a few cloves (okay, okay, a LOT of cloves), of chopped garlic. I only cook it for a few minutes and then, I'm done. I take that off the heat, and when the greens have been dried, toss them with the oil, and garlic, heating it up if I have to. And you're done. Or are you?

Or are you? because you can add a lot of other things to that hot olive oil. One of my favorites, if we're eating alone, is some red hot pepper. Not a lot, but some. Last night, we ate the greens "Alla siciliana," which means I added pine nuts, soaked salt cured capers, and raisins to the oil. Not a lot of any of them, just enough to make their presence known. Honestly, if you were trying to make this a main dish, you could add some shrimp to that oil (hmmm. That sounds good. it may be a future dish here at home. I like that idea).

Anyway, the message is clear. Eat your greens. You'll feel better about yourself, you may even feel better because they ARE good for you, and you can help to push that per capita up.

You never can tell....

Last week, in emailing back and forth with my friend Andrew, I told him the story of how I had led a cooking class many years ago. He thought it was a great story and I should post it here.

And I will. But not today. See, I have another story, without a recipe, that came back to me because of what I was cooking. It involves, as I said to someone, sex, cooking and fame. Now how can that miss?

I was making osso buco. My recipe is very much out of a cookbook - a cookbook you've heard of - so I'm not going to post it here. But the cookbook was written by someone I met once, in one of those "only in NY " set of circumstances.

It was back in '83, when I was a young, single gay man. People told me I needed to get out more , and I was doing that. I was having a lot of fun, and not "getting a lot of action," as they say. One of the things I began to realize was that I was hanging out at the wrong places. To be honest, the men my own age, were boring me. I was finding it very hard to find anything in common with them, and , dare I admit it, physically, the "twang" wasn't there, know what I mean? So I began to do some investigating. There was a bar in my old neighborhood on the Upper East Side. NOT THE ONE YOU PIGS ARE THINKING OF. This was one that was actually - I swear - connected to a woman's clothing store and a cafe. You could walk through the cafe, to the clothing store, and then into the bar , which was only opened at night. It was a fun place, and I guess that, given the circumstances, it drew an older crowd. DO keep in mind that in '83 I was 26 years old. So just about any group was an "older" crowd.

Anyway, I was there one night.... AND THERE HE WAS. Attraction, even for a short time, is never explanable. As I remember him, perhaps it will make more sense. Prematurely salt and pepper. Great skin. Eyes as blue as mine, and a big, BIG smile. And he was checking me out. Now, I can stare down just about anyone, but this guy had me beat. Staring and smiling. And then, he clinched the deal. He was clean shaven, but when he rubbed his hand on his chin, I saw the stubble. A major weakness here, beard stubble. Both on me and on another guy. That was it. If he asked me to walk on fiery coals, I would have. Anyway, he got up and I saw that he basically had painted on pants, a well tailored shirt, and all I wanted to do was rip off his clothes.

OK THAT'S ALL YOU PERVS ARE GONNA GET. YOU WANT MORE? BUY ME A MARTINI VERY DRY, GIN , OLIVES AND I'LL TALK.

We went back to his place and had a REALLY good night. And a REALLY good early morning. And on Sunday, at about 7, there was a pounding on his ceiling.

"OH SHIT. There she goes again" He moaned, not in a good way. I asked what he was talking about. He said there was an older woman, a "real witch" who lived above him, who cooked. And when she cooked, she was noisy. Like she was now.

I asked him why he didn't ask her to stop. I remember seeing real fear in his eyes. "I did. She scares me. She scares me big time." Well, with all the pride of my 26 years, my law degree, and my, ahem "accomplishments" of the prior evening and morning, I threw on some clothes and said "I'll take care of this." I smiled and said "And when I come back, I'll take care of you again."

Remember, I was 26. He didn't look convinced.

I went up one flight of stairs and started banging on the door of the woman's apartment. I could hear a string of very vulgar Italian as she came to the door. Cigarette in hand, kitchen implement in another, a head of gray hair, she did, in fact, look quite formidable as she looked at me and said, in a voice deeper than my date's "what do you want?"

I said to her "look, I'm downstairs visiting a friend and we're trying to sleep. Could you be more quiet please." She laughed. "Visiting a friend. Sleeping. So that's what you're doing, eh?" She shook her head and for the second time in 12 hours, someone outstared me. '

"Uh, yeah, well, sort of. But seriously, it's very noisy. Can't you be quiet."

Again I got the stare "Listen, what I'm doing is very important. I'm cooking for a party, you are, shall we say, entertaining one person. SO no, I will not."

It looked like we were at an impasse. But then I saw her mind working and she asked a question.


"My English isn't perfect, but even I know this is a ridiculous question Mister, but how are you at pounding meat?"

I SWEAR. I may not remember everything else precisely, but I do remember that.

I was truly embarrassed. "Well, I never have." Again, I got a laugh. "Right. Look. I have two extra seats tonight, my hand hurts me and I could use some help in pounding my meat. Call the friend you're visiting," (she began to chuckle at that). If you do it right, you can stay for dinner with my party.

I used her phone, and called my date. "DId you get her to stop?" he asked "Well, not exactly. She'd like to invite us for dinner." He paused. "She'd WHAT? Do you know who that is?" He told me and I honestly did not. I didn't even hear the phone go down, but I did hear his voice behind me as he introduced himself. Without a minute's pause, we were in aprons, with pounders in our hands, at work at veal cutlets for scallopine.

Since that day, I've learned more about that woman. Her legendary temper. It's true. Her smoking like a chimney. Also true. But MAN, the bitch could COOK. Between hacking through her cigarettes, she had us do everything. We made a batch of semolina gnocchi. "FASTER FASTER FASTER Like you can't wait to express yourself anymore," was what she told me as I was stirring it (she had a way with English that I hope I never hear again as long as I live." Then there was the scallopine. "YOU CALL THAT POUNDING MEAT? NO WONDER YOU'RE LONELY " (Yup, another one from her), and escarole, and green beans. Then salad. "NO, you can NOT make the salad. That is for a professional and you are just, shall we say, inexperienced." I didn't even get pissed off when my friend shook his head yes. Dessert was fruit. The best strawberries I believe I have ever had. In balsamic vinegar.

There were about 2o people there that night. Maybe four or five other gay guys. "Yes, gay men appreciate me. Women don't. They tell me that I remind them of an Italian Barbara Stanwyck. Who is she anyway? What does she cook?" I remember my friend saying "Men for breakfast." Lacking a command of idiom, our cook friend looked at him and said "Do I seem like a cannibal?"

Yes, it was that kind of night. There was lots of wine, but nothing else.

So, filled with the lady's wonderful meal, my friend and I kissed goodnight, and promised to call each other. But we never did. A year or so later, when I was very involved in church work, he walked into my church one day. When he saw me, he left. I've never seen or heard from him again.

In talking about this afterwards, with non cooking friends, no one ever mentioned our hostess. Rather all I got was "OH MY GOD I NEVER KNEW YOU HAD A DADDY FETISH." Neither did I.

Time passes, and I guess now I'm one of the "daddies' I used to fetish about, according to my friends. I guess I still have it, too, who knows. He's gone, but she lives on, and I refer to her constantly.

Figure it out yet? If you haven't, okay. Marcella, you're golden. When all else fails, I turn to you and I get what I need. If you're reading this, in Florida, I hope you still teach young guys how to properly pound their meat. God knows they need it.

Ciao. And if you want the osso buco recipe, consult her. And I'll tell you how I modify it, which isn't by much (just don't tell her)

Can you eat those? Jerusalem artichokes

One of the standbys for farmers market cooks during this part of the year is jerusalem artichokes. These tubers are not artichokes. In fact, they have nothing to do with artichokes whatsoever.

My understanding is that they are the root of a sunflower varieity. And that makes sense. In most romance languages, the word for sunflower is something like "girasole" which means "turning toward the sun" (and once I made that connection, I could remember an Italian verb, "girare," to turn, which I just kept on forgetting. Now, it's like "turn turn turn," or "gira gira gira" whenever I write. Now if I could remember that guidare is "to drive, " and not "to lead," I could get there from here. ) Okay, enough digression.

Anyway, these guys seem to come in two different types. One is very gnarly and twisted, and always reminds me of some complicated geometric pattern. I tend not to use these, because the other variety looks like a cross between a ginger root and a fingerling potato to me. These are much easier to peel, and peel them you must, because the skin is not too savory.

You can slice them and fry them like chips, or you can boil them and mash them like potatoes, but the way I like to use them most of all, is - big surprise here -in soup. I love the creamy texture they bring to things, and their unusual flavor. Sometimes, however, I find their flavor TOO unusual.

To me, underlying the base flavor of the jerusalem artichokes is an almost "burnt" after taste. It's not unpleasant, but a little of that goes a long way. I've not heard anyone else describe the flavor like that, and they do show up on very fine menus, so maybe it is in fact just my set of taste buds. But in any event, trying to mediate that taste, without killing it, led me to this soup. As did another inspiration.

I love restaurants which post their menus on line, especially if they are menus that change frequently. It's inspiring to me, when I see what cooks are doing elsewhere. Sometimes, I can't do it, because what they have available simply hasn't come around in the Northeast yet. But I can make a mental note of "Hmmm. That's a good way to cook asparagus." or "I never thought of putting that together with peas," and so forth. So in looking over recipes one day, I saw that Chez Panisse was serving what they called "Alice's artichoke and jerusalem artichoke soup." I never saw them serve it again, and of course they didn't post a recipe, but with the idea of using the two of them, I went forward. And I like the soup. Although they aren't related, it seems to me that the flavors compliment each other. Here it is.

Now, first, let me 'fess up that I do in fact use a convenience food here: frozen artichoke hearts. In the Northeast, whole artichokes are expensive. And of course the work involved in cleaning an artichoke down to the heart is not a small investment in time. So I buy frozen artichoke hearts. Okay, okay, hang me, stop reading the blog, assail me in public, do what you like. But before you do, try the soup, huh? Then come back and tell me that I'm a traitor to localism and fresh food everywhere.

First, you will need your soup "base." I use my standard trio of an onion, a carrot, and some celery. I try to chop up about half a cup of each of them. I stay away from herbs, because they don't seem to work real well in this soup. Artichokes are a difficult marriage with other food. Citrus works well with them, but not in soup. So I simply put olive oil into my pot, enough to cover the bottom nicely, and add my chopped veggies and a pinch of salt. I let these cook, until the onion goes translucent, and the crackle begins.

Prior to this, however, I will have peeled, and cut a pound of jerusalem artichokes into coins. You don't HAVE to peel them, if you're going to use a food mill. But if you aren't, and many of you don't have a food mill, peel them. I add the coins together with two boxes of frozen artichoke hearts to the pot, and wait a few minutes (I don't bother thawing the artichokes. The cooking process is more than sufficient). My usual quart of chicken stock goes in, I taste the mix for salt and adjust it to what I like, and then, when the pot comes to the boil, I lower the heat and cover.

Remember the rule of thumb I told you with the other soups? If it grows underground, cover the pot, if not, don't? Well, here we have two major ingredients where one is, and the other is not, an underground veggie. When that happens, I cover the pot (Gee, it sounds like I'm reciting a cooking version of the song "The Name Game," don't I?)

The girasole roots will take a while to get tender, and the artichokes will cook quickly. It's actually okay. I've found that artichoke hearts don't seem to mind the longer cooking, which is really overcooking. But if you do, then wait until the girasoles are beginning to get soft, and add the artichoke hearts at that point. It's really your call.

When they're nice and soft, well.. if you've been reading the soup recipes in this blog, you know what to do: cool and puree. Or cool and mill, if you've got the skins of the girasoles to deal with. Then taste.

This is a soup where, if things are too thick, I would stay away from dairy. I would go with more chicken stock, or water if you feel that the taste is too strong. Garnish? Well, I wouldn't say no to garlic croutons here, but I think that would be about it.

You can find these jerusalem artichokes at farmer's markets. They keep well, but make sure you don't forget about them in your fridge. Once, I did, and they got a little damp, and then began sprouting! I had visions of sunflowers dancing in the air of our extra room, and planted them, but alas, nothing ever came of them. Maybe I'll try it again this year. So much has changed, that perhaps my brown thumb is turning green. I'll let you all know, later in the year

Want to try making the hardest dish you'll ever cook?

Don't get nervous, because the recipe, which is NOT mine, is very easy. It's almost counterintuitive, and it's something you probably love to eat.

It's roast chicken. Really. Think about it for a minute. When was the last time you had a really good roast chicken? Bet it hasn't been in a while.

Roast chicken is one of those foods that people remember fondly, but usually, I find that they are remembering the good things that happened around the food, rather than the food itself. If you sit there and think about it, you probably don't order it in restaurants, because you figure it's going to be just "so-so" (and you're usually right), or bad (also often true), not as good as you had it when you were growing up ( I won't go there), but more than anything else... I bet you don't make it at home. And I want to know: why not?

You probably have some idea that this is a weekend meal, something that takes enormous amounts of time and labor, with basting, and all kinds of other steps that are just way too complicated to do.

Well, let me say a few things here. First, one of the true tests of a restaurant - a GOOD one - is how good is there simple roast chicken. As a matter of fact, if you want to determine how committed a restaurant is to good cooking, this is what you should order: green salad with vinaigrette, roast chicken, and fresh fruit (or the closest dessert the restaurant has to fresh fruit). Before you say "Oh the hell with that, I could make that at home," I'll say you're right. Then why don't you? Back to that nasty time element huh?

Some years ago, Judy Rodgers, the head chef and owner of "Zuni Cafe" published her recipe for roast chicken. At Zuni, they serve over 100 roast chickens a night, even though they have a wonderful, superb seasonal menu. They roast to order, which means an hour wait for dinner. And in food crazy San Francisco, people wait. And it's worth it. Village Restaurant in NY makes superb roast chicken (the best in NYC, in my view), but Zuni's is better. Way better. It costs more, and you have to be in San Francisco, and you have to order a whole chicken (best to serve for two or more), but it's all worth it. I make her recipe all the time. You should too. We don't have wood burning ovens like Judy does, but this is darn close.

You DO have to do some preparation . First, you have to buy the best chicken you can find. That means Farmers' Market, or an organic one, or however best you can do. Don't use a supermarket chicken here. Second, you shouldn't buy one much over three pounds. 2.5-3 pounds is best, but the recipe can go up to 3.5 pounds if that's all you have. Finally, you need to do something the night before. You have to take the chicken out of its packaging, wash it inside and out, dry it, and then rub about a heaping teaspoon of salt all over the bird. Then, put it on a plate and refrigerate it, UNCOVERED overnight. The reason you're doing this is to dry the skin out, so that it gets nice and crispy when you roast it. What will happen is that the salt will draw out some of the juices , but then the bird will pull the salty flavor back in, in effect "brining" your bird without the need for a bucket or any of that nonsense. If you happen to have some cheesecloth, or something that you can wrap the bird in and throw out when you're done (think salmonella here, folks), do wrap it, but it's not necessary.

When you're ready to cook, preheat your oven to 475 degrees. Yup, 475. And let it stay there for about ten minutes. Then, get a pan that is oven safe ready. Ideally, the pan you use should be just big enough to hold your bird, but many of us don't have pans that are a perfect size. Use what you have. Heat the pan, without oil, for five minutes, at medium heat.

Now, fearlessly, take your chicken and put it, breast side up, into the pan. You're going to hear massive, noisy hissing and spitting, but you won't get burned. Remember, there's no fat in this preparation. Now move the whole pan into the oven, and let it roast away for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes (after twenty or so, you'll begin smelling that wonderful smell of chicken), carefully take out the pan, and with tongues or whatever you have on hand, turn the bird breast side down and put it back in the oven for fifteen minutes. It may very well stick, and that's okay. The skin will be torn a little, but read on. It's not necessarily a bad thing. You'll do this one more time, turning it back breast side up, for ten, if the clucker is 3 pounds or less, fifteen if more.

Carefully take out the pan and move the chicken to a plate to rest for ten minutes. Now look at the good stuff you got in there, maybe even some very crispy skin. Add some liquid- chicken stock if you're being abstemious, white wine or vemouth if you're not, let it sizzle for a minute, turn on the heat and as they always say "stir up those lovely brown bits to make a tasty pan sauce."

Okay, so now you have a roasted bird, and some pan drippings. What do you do? Well, you have to carve the beast. Remember: let the knife do the work for you. There will be obvious places to cut. For example, the breast bone of a chicken is actually very soft, and a good, solid knife will cut right through and give you two halves. But before you do that, deal with the legs. Pull the tip of the drumstick away from the bird, and you'll see a joint, right above the thigh. Start there. Insert your knife and move it around. You'll find the socket, and just press down. The leg will come away. Of course, you'll do this twice, and then cut the breast down the middle with one thrust. If you feel more comfortable with a poultry shears or other big scissor, that will do it too.

This is delicious with some baked potatoes (which you can bake while the bird is roasting, on a second rack of your oven). You can feel guilt free about the chicken: remember, you didn't add any fat - so if you want some butter on your potato, go right ahead (although you may want to consider a few drops of a really nice olive oil instead). Make a salad too. And eat some fruit for dessert. something fresh and seasonal.

Who says you can't cook like the best restaurant cook?

Now, you're done

People who cook...

are the most generous people you'll meet. I don't necessarily mean that on an economic level, although that can be true too. The fact of making something for someone else to eat, when you think about it, is a brave, and generous act. It's sharing, in a very basic sense.

But cooks do more than that. They share of themselves. Very little defines a cook more than his or her recipes. And I can think of very few cooks who will not share recipes with people who simply ask. I think the stories about chefs with tight lips, who say no, are apocraphyl. I've never gotten a no from any cook whom I've asked about a recipe. There have been times when I've had to cut down proportions from sixty portions to six, or had to buy a French/Croatian/Portuguese dictionary, but that's been because that's what the particular cook used or had . And there have been times when I've gotten "oh, it's this and that and this and that...." (with the particulars, ) but no measurements. Those are usually home cooks, like my Nana. A typical question and answer session with Nana would go something like

"Then you cook the pasta"
"For how long do you cook it Nana"
"You see."
"Oh."
"Then brown your meat, but don't make it too brown."
"How brown is too brown, Nana?"
"You see."

You see? That's how she operated. She wasn't concealing anything, this is how she operated. If anyone gave her a recipe, written down, she immediately threw it out and said "BAH. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, mushrooms, pork. Who needs a recipe?" And she never did.

Now, this is all by way of another story about my friend Huck. That's what I'm going to start calling Michael, because it's easier than writing out "my huckleberry friend" everytime. Huck is cooking a dinner party this weekend. He's a brave, gutsy man. Cooking for people is always unnerving. Trust me. If you knew how unwound I get before every dinner party, you'd swear that I put valium in my portion of the first course. By the time I sit down, I'm usually ok, but there's always that sense of nerves, regardless of how many times you do it.

Anyway, Huck ran his menu past me, and we were talking about first courses. We settled on soup. And then I began thinking: you know, when I started doing dinner parties, how much I wished I had an extra pair of hands. So I offered to make the soup. Not because Huck can't make the soup himself. The menu he's making shows that something as simple as a vegetable puree is well within his grasp. But who needs to "stretch," when really, you're trying to be the cook, a guest, the host, and probably put the make on someone. (This IS Huck we're talking about).

So we settled on celery root soup, after I put on my bossy boots (A new expression I learned: British slang for a domineering person. A dominatrix in a cook's suit. Hmmm). Here's the recipe. Make it for yourself, but better yet if you do what I keep on preaching: you make one thing, have someone else make a second thing, and have someone else make a dessert, and then share.

First, you'll need two good sized celery roots. These are UGLY vegetables, like I wrote about before. Cut away the brown, nasty looking outsides, and you get a big lump of whitish gray flesh, like a thick potato. Cut this into cubes and then put it under water to keep it from browning while you get the rest of the vegetables ready.

Your soup base here is onion (a large one, diced), and one or two carrots, also diced. If you like things sweeter, use two. When they're diced, put them in a soup pot that you've covered with olive oil, and cook them slowly, until the onion goes translucent. When that happens, drain your celery root, and add it to the pot with a quart of chicken stock (if you're lucky enough to know Dave, use his homemade stuff, but a good canned one will be fine). Add a big teaspoon of salt. Bring this to a boil, then lower the heat, and cover the pot and let it cook away for about thirty minutes (a good rule of thumb, but not perfect, for veggies, is if it grows underground, cover it when you cook it. If it doesn't, don't).

While this is going on, melt about two tablespoons of butter in a frying pan, and peel ,core and slice one large, or two small apples. Use eating apples, like granny smiths, or something like that. Don't use "cooking apples here. Brown them in the butter until they just get some golden color. Take them off the heat.

Check the celery root and, if it's soft enough to pierce easily with a knife, you're ready. Let everything cool down if you're going to use a blender, or don't bother if you use a food mill. One way or the other, add the apples to the celery root, and then puree everything. The mixer will give you a smoother puree, the food mill, a more rustic one. Take a look at it: is it too thick for you? Then add water, or stock, or milk. Use milk after you taste it if you think it's too strong. When you taste it, add more salt if you think it needs it. And you're done.

You can garnish this with your favorite, crispy pork product. Huck is serving a Mexican dessert, and I would tell him how to make chiciarones, but that's for another day. Crispy bac0n, a slice of sausage, some chopped prosciutto, or crispy pancetta, are all good.

This will make about two quarts, maybe more. That's plenty for eight people as a first course.

"In bocca di lupo, Huck." (It's how we Eyetalians say good luck). But you're gonna be fine. And next time you're gonna make it for me.

Officially, you're done now.

"Ducking" back in

I don't know what it is about that poor bird, but I can't help but make bad puns when I'm writing about cooking duck. Ah well. Perhaps the recipe will make up for it.

Previously, I wrote about the wonders of duck breast, and how it cooks so quickly, eats like a steak, and makes a wonderful meal. I talked about how fifteen minutes after you start, you can have a wonderful dish in front of you.

Well, that's not true for the legs. And if you think about it, it makes sense. Ducks "paddle" all day long, moving themselves through the water. If you think about how tired you get after a good swim, you'll realize that muscles are being worked, hard. So duck legs are much tougher than those large, tender breasts that we talked about previously.

When you're trying to figure out what to do with a cut of meat, you have to try to imagine where it came from on the animal. And then figure out if that muscle is a working muscle. For example, shanks of any animal are going to have tougher, more muscular meat. So you will need to braise them. They simply will tighten up and get tough and inedible if you try to cook them the way you cook the breast, or the filet mignon, or the ribeye, or anything like that. So when you're working with duck legs, think s.....l......o.....w. And think delicious. The recipe I'm going to give you here is stolen shamelessly from one of my favorite other blogs, www.davidlebovitz.com. You should all be reading his posts, and his books. David is one of the best cooks around. He bills himself as a pastry and dessert man, but anyone who can provide a recipe like this knows what he's doing period. I believe that he would shrug his shoulders and say "this isn't rocket science you know," but basically, cooking is hardly rocket science.

David gave the recipe for raw duck legs, but you could also use it with duck confit. I have done it with both. The only thing that changes is the wine. For me, the combination of duck confit and zinfandel is a magic match. If I don't have zin around, I'll look for something fruity, besides myself. For the regular duck legs, I like something with more tannin, maybe even a young cabernet sauvignon. But my fall back wine for this always seems to be pinot noir. That may be because there's always a lot of it in the house, and I follow the prescript "if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it."

Okay, here's what you need. You need four whole duck legs, either fresh ones, or confit. You will also need about a pound of prunes. Don't stop reading, c'mon. You really do like them. Remember when they tried to have us all call them "dried plums?" Mother of Mercy, save us. What is wrong with calling a prune a prune? G EEZ. Spend your money on good ones. Don't get the delmonte ones. Go to a health food store, or go online and order some, but get the good stuff. The duck deserves it. Finally, you will of course need your bottle of wine, and while it's optional, I cannot think of doing this without putting about six sprigs of fresh thyme and a big piece of orange rind into the dish.

Put your oven up to 325, and while that's happening, deal with your duck legs. Remember when I told you to put the duck breasts in the pan cold? Well, not here. Here, what you are going to do is, first of all, cut the legs into the components, i.e, the thigh and the "drumstick." This isn't as easy as it sounds. Even if you're used to cutting chicken legs into pieces, ducks have a slightly different anatomy. But be patient. There's an old saying about letting the knife do your work for you, and it's true here. Let the knife find the place where the joints meet, and push down. The first one will take a bit of time, the next three will be a breeze, you'll have a new skill, and you'll feel very pleased with yourself. I promise.

IF you are better organized than I am, you will have done the cutting of the legs, a day or two ahead of time, so that they can sit in the fridge with a good teaspoon of salt having been rubbed into them. But if you aren't, do it when you're cooking the dish.

You want to brown the legs well. No oil in the pot again. Just put them down, but please don't crowd your pot . I use a big Le Creuset. Listen to them cook. Engage your senses. When you hear a distinct change, something like a change from a sizzle to a crackle, turn them over and do the same thing, and keep on doing this until you have finished with all of them. Do it this way with the confit too, if you're using it.

When everything is browned, carefully pour off the fat, into a dry container. One that's heat insensitive (once I did this in a plastic measuring cup and had modern art and a floor of duck grease when I was done. Use a metal bowl). Put the duck back in and, off the flame, pour in a bottle of wine. Then add the orange and the thyme. Cover the pot, put it into your oven, and let it just bubble away for about 2 1/2 hours. Then, open the oven, uncover the pot (wear a glove), and add the prunes. Now, here's something important. Prunes with the pit in them will give you more flavor. But think of who you're cooking for. Will they be able to deal with it, or are you going to be on Judge Judy paying arguing over dental bills? If you use the ones with pits, make sure you tell people, otherwise Judge Judy will smite you, and who wants that?

Let the thing cook away for another half hour or so. The prunes will become very soft, and unctious, almost like a thick, fruit jelly.

Now when this is done (I don't think David does this, but I do), take out the pot. Again, wear gloves, and take all the solids out and put them to the side, in some kind of bowl (not the one with the fat in it). I turn up the heat way high and boil this stuff down to about a cup and a half/two cups, and then put the solids back in. I try not to serve it the same day, because it tastes better when it sits, as all braises do, but if you must, then go right ahead.

I will confess that I waste the duck fat. Other people, like my friend Jane, would find a way to use it, even if she rubbed it all over her body and swam the English Channel, but I cannot get The Guymeister to eat potatoes cooked in duck fat. (So maybe while he's away, I'll invite Jane over and we'll eat them. Ya up for it sweetie?).

You need something nice and starchy to go with this. Noodles strike me as the right thing, or if you're fortunate enough to know how to make spaetzle (we'll get to that sometime in the future), that would be even better.

This is a nice dish to do on a lazy weekend, although who has one of those anymore? But try it anyway, I think it's a really nice, hearty dish, something we all need come the cold winds of February and March. To beg to differ with T S Eliot, in terms of cooking, I think that March is the cruelest month.

So now, you can use everything , or almost everything in the duck. I WOULD post a recipe for duck liver mousse, but not too many people are gonna deal with that. For the feet, check with your local Chinese Nana.

Enjoy

Something to go with that soup?

When I wrote the blog about French potato leek soup (sorry, I am not going near spelling the word correctly), I talked about putting some kind of protein out there with it. Well, what?


This was something I had to give some thought to. See, Guy and I normally eat something like a pizza, or a big piece of quiche, or maybe savory bread pudding, with the soup we eat on Monday night. But given the high potato content in this soup, something starchy wasn't going to cut it. Maybe it's a sign of my increasing age that, while ten years ago I probably could have eaten a pizza with a bowl of this soup, I can't do it anymore.

So I turned to something that I really should make more often. Whether you call it frittata, or tortilla, or something else (there is a version in Japanese cooking and I can't remember what it is), there is a sort of culinary "universal" in a cake of eggs, and leftovers.

Now, let's get one term right here. I did write "tortilla," and I meant it. We all know Mexican corn and wheat tortillas as breads. But in Iberia, a tortilla is an egg dish, usually served at room temperature, and almost always based on wonderful fried potatoes. A well made tortilla is a thing of joy. It's a wonderful snack or meal, and since it is not served cold, or even hot, you can make it, and leave it alone. Italians have their frittata, and again, it's one of those things where, if you ask 100 Italian cooks how they make it, you'll probably get 100 different answers. Potatoes are NOT a "must" in Italian frittate, but there's usually some kind of vegetable, maybe some meat, and it's sometimes thinner than a tortilla, and sometimes not.

The whole point is, we're talking a thick, egg based kind of cake here. Thick, as contrasted to the thin omelets and crepes that we know from French cooking. One of the differences is that, when cooking a tortilla or frittata, you are not going to move the eggs around. They cook slowly, with heat coming up from the bottom to cook the top, and maybe finishing with a quick second or two under the burner.

Traditionally, you need at least six eggs to make one of these, but we're just going to make a small one, for two people, so I'll use four in this recipe. What you do is break four, large eggs, at room temperature (helps with the cooking), into a bowl, and stir them until they're broken up. You don't want to put too much air into this. Thickness counts in this kind of dish. Add a bit of salt, and any dry spices or herbs you might like. What they are very much depends on what you feel like and what you have around. I grew up eating peppers and eggs, and so mine has peppers in it: pickled spicy peppers that I bought from a Farmers' Market vendor, called "Ricks Picks" The sample they gave me convinced me to try them. Some cheese element is also good in these. I had mozzarella around, so I cubed some of this. Use TINY cubes. Dice them nicely. Otherwise, you will get big globs of YUCK when it's done. You can also use an onion element, and I normally would, but for the leeks in the soup. I also took one small chorizo sausage, and sliced it thinly. All of this gets mixed directly with the eggs.

Then pour all of this into a well oiled pan. For me, a non-stick is essential with this, for reasons that will be clear as we go on. More professional cooks may not need the non-stick, but I do. You cook this, at medium low heat while you bring your oven broiler up high. Watch the eggs. You'll see a decided change, as they go from liquid, to semi solid, to just about firm. That's where you want 'em. Eggs continue to cook off the heat, and if you cook them too hard, they will turn very rubbery. Who needs that?

Now, what you'll do is take that pan, and put it under your broiler for no more than about fifteen seconds, to just brown the top of it. Pull it out of the oven, and if you want to add a sprinkling of parmesan to the top, don't let me stop you.

Now, comes a moment where you have to be patient, and also be careful. That pan just came out of a very hot oven. You could get burned badly, given what you need to do next. So, let it sit for five, maybe ten minutes. Then get a plate bigger than your pan, cover the pan and put one hand on the middle of the plate. Protect your second hand with an oven mitt, or a towel, and grab the handle. Now, fearlessly, turn the whole thing upside down. If the eggs don't 'plop' out immediately, shake the pan a bit, and if it still doesn't work, oh well, get in there with a paddle or spatula and get them loose on the plate.

And there you have it. Something a little different from your standard egg dish, and good with something starchy, like our soup. We eat ours with an argula salad to round out the meal.

This is a good thing to have in your repertoire. You can, for example, put something substantial like crab or shrimp into the eggs, cook it up, and then when it's cool, cut it into small pieces and serve it as cocktail food. Or use it in a sandwich. It's good and substantial, and it gives you a chance to use up odds and ends in the fridge.

Give it a try. I think you'll like it.