Thinking Zen in the kitchen: squid

When you study Zen, one of the things that is stressed is the illusory nature of things. There is one classic example that I have always remembered. It deals with a traveler, who is lost in the mountains. He's hot, he's tired, it's getting cold, and he's hungry and thirsty. He wanders into a cave, and because it's late, there's not enough light to see. But he finds a pile of rocks to sit down against, where he can fall asleep. As he does so, he stretches out his arm, and his hand touches water. Being as thirsty as he is, he scoops up a bit of it, and drinks. And he finds it the sweetest water he ever tasted. So he continues, and then, while still hungry, his thirst is slaked, and he goes to sleep.

When he wakes up the next morning, the cave is lit up, and he sees that the water he's been drinking has been coming from a hollow, human skull. Which of course raises the question: would he have drunk the water if he had seen the skull? Most of want to say yes, but I think the answer is that most of us would not.

This is an elaborate lead in to a dish that many people immediately avoid: squid. Well, for the most part. Most people will eat fried calamari, but as one person put it, most people would eat their own big toe if it were fried (I'm not sure about that, but anyway)... But confronting people with a squid that looks like a squid, and is not fried, immediately produces an attack of the skeeves. Indeed, my friend Rich, who will try just about anything (there is a story of him having eaten honey ants in Texas and Mexico. By the way: they're good), just will not eat squid. I once got him to eat a few pieces of it, in a complex fish stew, by threatening to withhold ice cream from him at dessert. So he bravely dug in, took two pieces, ate them and then said "I can't. That's it. No more."

He got extra ice cream for that willingness to cross his boundaries.

But on squid, it's one of those things where I think: if people did not see what they were eating, they would enjoy it, IF it were cooked properly. Because it is very easy to cook squid BADLY. The "bottom line" on squid is that given its muscular composition, either you have to "flash" cook it (like the fried calamari), or cook it for fairly long and slow, so it's tender. Anything in between produces a product that will remind you of a big ugly rubber band. Tonight, we're eating squid. It's good. We should eat it more because it's inexpensive, its sustainable, and: did you know that it is the number one "crop" out of the oceans in the tristate area? Seriously, there is more squid harvested in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut than any other fish. Clearly, it's all going abroad, since no one here is eating it. Let's try to change that.

What follows is a VERY easy recipe from the hand of Lidia Bastianich, with my addition to it. You have to look at this this way: if for some reason you just can't handle the squid, you can always make a plate of pasta. The squid isn't that expensive, so give it a try. Please.

You'll need to start with about two pounds of squid (you can cut down the number of them, by the way, but don't cut down the other ingredients). Layer these in a baking dish that you can then put on the stove, or in a big skillet, or something, where they can lay in a single layer. Then add 4 peeled cloves of garlic (you can slice the garlic if you like, but the dish will be stronger, and squid does taste very delicate), and then add 1/4 cup of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Stir this all up. Now, cover the pan with aluminum foil, put it in a preheated, 375 degree oven, and let it bake for 20 minutes. (While that is happening, you can of course make contingency plans in case you don't like it).

After twenty minutes, take off the tin foil, and add 1/4 cup of clam juice if you have it, or 1/4 cup of fish stock if you have that instead, or, in fact, 1/4 cup of chicken stock. Normally, I would say you could use a dry white wine, but not here. I think it would be too strong and too acidic and throw off the balance of the dish. Bake this for another 1o or 15 minutes, without the foil on top. Check the doneness of the squid by poking it with a skewer, or a toothpick, something like that. You want to have it slide in and out easily.

Now cover your hand with a mitt or a napkin or something, and move the pan to the stovetop. Cook this at high heat until your liquid becomes syrupy, and you're done.

What I do at this point is add a bit of chopped, preserved lemon. You don't have to do it. But you might consider something other than the traditional parsley garnish. Perhaps a fresh lemon is floating your boats that night. Or maybe olives? (careful with that. Don't use too many). Perhaps a little crispy pancetta?

I think that if you give this dish a try, you may find you really DON'T hate squid. Much of what he "hate" is illusory, if you think about it. And it of course changes. So try it. I plan to make it over pasta, so you know, if you try to do the same thing, you'll have your pasta ready, so if you want to have a pot of sauce ready in the wings, "just in case," don't let me stop you.

Jumping for joy in the kitchen

My good friend Andrew has his own blog: www.andrewaltenburg.com, and I encourage everyone to read it. His perspective on things is honest, and he's a good writer. And from time to time, he encourages reader participation. Last year, he had one where he asked people to write in with what makes them "jump for joy." It was wonderful. So many different perspectives on what makes people just forget they're adults and literally "jump for joy." I remember I wrote about how much seeing newborn baby animals makes me jump for joy. Still does.

Well, he's asked us to do it again. And this time, my answer was a little deeper.

Cooking makes me jump for joy. Or, more precisely, cooking for the people I love makes me jump for joy. I quote MFK Fisher a lot, and one of my favorite of her quotes is "there is more than a communion of bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk."

Mrs. Fisher GOT IT. And if you read her works (and if you haven't, you should start immediately), you see it all over everything she ever wrote. She's an idol. And when she died, I think I wept for a week. She understood that, when you get past all the anthropology of blackmail and reward with cooking and feeding people, ultimately, cooking is an act of love, it's an act of unification, it's an act of saying "thank you." As I wrote in my blog for Andrew, when I cook a meal for people, if you look up, sometimes, you will see me just put my fork down and look at the table, taking in the picture of my friends enjoying each others' company, my company, and ultimately, the food. When that happens, the food actually becomes quite incidental to what is going on: the making of a "community," however temporary that may be. Sometimes, the "community" of that meal goes on. New friendships are forged. Old ones are strengthened. And sometimes it's just for those few hours. But it's all good. If you can make people smile, and enjoy themselves for a little bit of time (because let's face it. Living is a tough job), you've done the ultimate good deed.

And yes, I DO jump for joy. I don't do it in public because I would get embarrassed. But again, if you hear a thud sometimes, it's me in the kitchen. Or the bathroom, literally jumping in the air, and pumping a fist, because "IT WORKED. They're talking to each other, they like the food, everything is good."

Sometimes it happens easier than others, and sometimes it doesn't happen. But it usually does. And it will if you go into it with an open mind and a willingness to accept that this is your role: people who cook are in a sense "clowns," because clowns can make people really feel good. And that's what we do as cooks. Whether it's for ourselves, for one special person, or for a whole bunch. Knowing you have the ability, the power, to change the way people look at things for a little while, is a very frightening, awesome (in the true sense of the word), realization that you have to get.

Treat the power with respect, but also treat it with joy and love. JUMP about it, sing about it, get someone else to cook. Spread the joy. There isn't enough of it around.

Bit by bit, putting it together

I probably need to turn in my gay card. I know that's from a Stephen Sondheim song. More than that, I don't. That's bad. That's really, REALLY bad. I mean, one of the questions on the entrance exam (there IS one you know. Every one of us passed it) is to repeat the lyrics from three published, and one unpublished Sondheim song with no errors. There's no partial credit on that question. I think I missed that one, but probably got extra credit on the quiche recipe one to make up for it.

Ok, enough foolishnes. What does that title refer to? Well, it has to do with how I sometimes put together a recipe. When we had our cooking class last week, Michael asked me why we go out to eat, if I enjoy cooking that much. The answer is pretty easy. First, I don't like to cook every night. I get tired. Second, I go to restaurants for inspiration. What are my favorite cooks making? Can I copy it? Can I get an idea? For example, at Savoy on Friday, I had sorrel ice cream. It was terrific. I don't know if I'll ever make it, but it's in my mind.

Ciruitously, I came to a recipe I made this morning. Zuni cafe, in San Francisco, makes a specialty of their sheeps milk ricotta gnocchi. I have that recipe. I have tried it several times. And I have failed every single time. It's a very delicate recipe, with no flour, as far as I can tell, and limited eggs. I suspect that when it's on the menu there is a dedicated line chef who does nothing but, scooping the delicate stuff into simmering water to order. That is something I simply cannot do.

But gnocchi fascinate me, and not potato gnocchi, although I do love them. Italians make gnocchi out of anything starchy. One of my favorites is made with butternut squash and amaretto cookie crumbs, and that's from Maryanne Esposito. There is another one, made with semolina flour and lots of milk, that is called "Roman gnocchi." Both are absolutely wonderful. So, gnocchi are in there, in my mind, a lot.

At the aforementioned Savoy this past week, I ate a bowl of soup that was an onion broth, with ramp "dumplings." These were really gnocchi. And I began thinking. Hmmmm. Time to try again.
Was it Edison or Einstein who wrote "chance favors the prepared mind?" My mind was "prepared " for gnocchi, and then a few things came together. One of the sheep cheese vendors had ricotta for the first time this weekend. They can only make ricotta when the lambs are weaning, and their dams have too much milk. So there was a pound of that in the fridge. Of course, after a spring veggie run at the big farmers' market, I came home with nettles, and too many other greens. And no plans.

Then, last night at another favorite restaurant, Cookshop, it seemed like it was a salute to what they could find. There were ramp dishes all over the menu. And I came close to having one. But I was extremely intrigued by a pasta dish of nettle pesto with mascarpone and ricotta. As with everthing there, it was wonderful. And I was thinking of making that pesto this morning. BUT.... it fought with the idea of the gnocchi, and the gnocchi won out.

I am going to warn you ahead of time: this is a tricky recipe. I am not at all sure I have it right. But it's good, and it's worth playing with things.

I started with two bunches of nettles. I cut them right at the point where their tough stems became tender (you can see this very easily). Then I dumped that into salted, boiling water, and cooked for about five minutes. I drained that, and then ran cold water over it, because when you're making gnocchi, you need things cold, and you need them DRY. So, by having the greens cold, I could take them in small handfuls and squeeze the water out of them. Then I chopped them fine and let them sit on paper for a few minutes, while I got other things together.

The "other things" were the pound of ricotta, an egg, and eventually, a third of a cup of flour. If I were not doing this "on the fly," I would have let the ricotta sit, overnight, in a strainer, to let all of the l iquid dissipate. I didn't do that here, and that may be why I needed the flour. So what I did was I dumped the cheese, the egg, and the greens onto my workboard, and mixed them together. This is a sticky mass. Thinking the egg would be enough to bind things, I pinched off a little bit of the stuff and put it into a pot of simmering water, to see what would happen.

After two minutes, the gnocchi exploded into bits and pieces. Not enough structure OK, so I needed flour. I added a third of a cup, and did the same thing with a bit. This time, I also turned down the heat, so that the water was hot, but not boiling. I could see that at three minutes, the thing did begin to disintegrate, so there was my cue: cook them for TWO minutes. (Incidentally, this stepwise testing of gnocchi is critical when you do them. NOTHING is more subject to the whims of weather, the air in your kitchen, and everything else, than gnocchi).

Now that I had my mix, I formed little balls of the stuff. I had about 32 of them, and I cooked them, eight at a time, for two minutes in that hot, not simmering water. This was the right decision, because I could tell when I went beyond two minutes that they did begin to fall apart. I pulled them out, with a slotted spoon, and drained them until they were cold.

Gnocchi should be frozen when you do something like this, and cooked, frozen, unthawed for about five or six minutes, in that barely simmering water (or stock, or whatever you like).

If you aren't sure about nettles, use spinach. And then add some nutmeg. Or use another green. You could use chard, or you could use kale, you could use whatever you like. Just make sure it's cool, and drained and dry. If you have the time for draining your ricotta, do that, too. DON"T use the stuff that ends with a Polly-O. It's ghastly. Buy some good stuff for this.

Honestly, I could eat that whole portion of the little guys, but eight is probably a really fair portion with a nice sauce of some kind, as a FIRST course. I don't like serving them as a main course, because too many start to make you feel very leaden and full, but don't let me stop you from pigging out on them.

As the fall comes back, we may have time to revisit butternut squash gnocchi, and maybe later this season, we'll visit the semolina kind. I have some ideas for a sauce other than the traditional butter and cheese. Stay tuned. In the meanwhile, eat your greens, but more than that, have fun with them.

How do you do it? For Michael and Eva

I get this question a lot: how do you decide what to cook? How do you come up with recipes? Why do you decide to do one thing and not another?

Well, there isn't one answer to these questions. Any of them. But one answer is : I decide to cook certain things, based on what I see in restaurants. Sometimes, it's a dish that Guy and I have eaten, and sometimes, it's not. This is a case where we did NOT eat the dish, even though we wanted to .

We were at one of our favorite restaurants (Savoy), and the first course list was so good we wanted them all. Of course, we COULD have eaten just off of that list (I've done it before), but then we would have missed the main dishes - and they sounded SO GOOD. So, one of the first courses we did not eat was "fresh angel hair pasta with ramp butter sauce, parmesan and black pepper."

Hmmmm. The owner of Savoy pioneered seasonal cooking in New York City, so I know what he was thinking: ramps are here, use them. The cheese and pepper combination is emblematic of one of the simplest, and most challenging of Italian pasta dishes: caciopepe, which is "Just" cacio cheese and black pepper tossed with fresh pasta. Easy, right? Go ahead and try it. The butter, I figured, was there because you have to cook the ramps.

So today, I got to work, and made this for lunch. I figured six ramps per person was plenty. I cut off the green leafy portion and sliced it, because it cooks faster than the long, tougher body. Then I took the little guys, and sliced them down the middle, lengthwise. I melted four tablespoons of butter in a big skillet and added the ramp bodies first, and cooked them at medium low heat for about two minutes. Then I added the greens, and cooked another two.
DONE.

Meanwhile, a pot of water was coming to a boil. When it did, in went a big tablespoon of salt, and then half a pound of tagliatelle, because that was the thinnest pasta I had. And while it cooked, I grated about two ounces of parmesan, and got my pepper mill ready.

When the pasta was just a touch too chewy, I pulled it out of the pot and dumped it into the skillet with the sauce. I added half a cup of the pasta water and then heated this all together. The way the starchy water and butter interacts never fails to fascinate me, and soon, the pasta fairly glistened with the butter that now stuck to it .

Off the heat, I added the parmesan and stirred everything together, and finished with the black pepper.

This was mighty fine eating for a seasonal lunch. It's not really "Italian," because Italy doesn't have ramps; however, they do have a wild hyacinth that is foraged, and if you happened to have those, you could probably use that instead.

So why is this for Michael and Eva? Well, a few nights ago, these folks came over for a cooking lesson. We were planning our actual dinner, and when they saw the ramps, and knew how seasonal and how limited their time was, they wanted them. And we cooked them with wild mustard greens, and the combination was really good. Both have "pledged" to get some ramps and use them. So, this post is for you folks. It's easy, it's tasty, and I bet you could double it without any trouble. You both have good knife skills, so the splitting of the ramps won't be any problem.

It's your dish now. Make it, eat it , enjoy it.

Adapting for a friend: this is yours, Ben

I have written in the past of my very smart, very sweet friend Ben, who just crosses the line of 30 and thus is not subject to the "don't trust anyone under" rule. We don't spend enough time chatting or together, but how many of you can say, honestly "I spend all the time I want with my friends and I don't want anymore?" It's kind of a commentary on how we live that we all seem to "miss" each other somewhat, all the time.

I crave the discussion with Ben about food taboos, and how we got to where we are, cooking and food wise. We both work. We both have lives outside of work, and moments are often "snatched" from something else. Gotta fix that.

So, with Ben on my mind lately, I have been playing with my meatball recipe, for a very simple reason: Ben can't eat my meatballs. They have pork in them, and Ben does not eat pork. And as I've said, a true friend respects that kind of proscription, and moves on.

BUT I WANT BEN TO TASTE MY MEATBALLS!!!! So, with that in mind, I have been playing with a modification, worthy of Ben, that I would be happy with.

Let me say at the start that the obvious, which is taking the pork out and making just beef meatballs, is not an option. I've done that. To me, the resulting meatballs are tough, too chewy, and just not good. The pork is really necessary there. And other combinations of meat add a strong flavor that one may like, and may not. Lamb, for example, makes an excellent meatball. Just ask Persians and Turks. But these are STRONG. So I turned to one of the items that has become a standby in homes across America, ground turkey.

I am not a real fan of ground turkey. To me, in and of itself, it is not that tasty, and because it is so lean, it's hard to cook it so that it's not rubbery, bland, and just plain YUCH. But hey, we're talking BEN here, so something has got to be done. And I did it.

Since the major issue for me with ground turkey is the lack of fat, and hence the lack of ability to carry flavor, I turned to that first. I always put eggs in my meatballs, and egg yolks are rich in fat. So, one more egg into the recipe. (More on fat below). Then, for flavor. Herbs come to mind right away. I use a strong "Italian blend" for my standard meatballs, but this just did not feel right with turkey. A bit of thought turned my mind to stuffings for turkey. Many of them use sage. And for reasons I can't explain, if I were to assign an herb to Ben, sage would be it.

I SAID I CAN'T EXPLAIN, SO DONT ASK. Fresh sage was at the market. So the meatballs were beginning to shape up: turkey, salt, 2 whole eggs , bread crumbs. Fresh sage.

Tomato sauce was out of the question. The inherent strength of the flavor of beef and pork can carry them in tomato sauces. Turkey doesn't have that. And you want to taste something REALLY nasty? Overcook sage in a tomato sauce.

BUT... remember the fat issue? Well, heavy cream comes to the rescue. And to add another layer of flavor, instead of poaching the meatballs in liquid, how about frying them?

FINALLY, at this point we're getting to a dish that is nutritionally atrocious, but has some great flavor. So, let's add some vegetables. Carrots and celery in cream sauce is a combination I've seen before. And there it was.

So, now it's time to construct the dish . Here's how I did it. I had 3 pounds of ground turkey, and I added a big tablespoon of salt to that, the two eggs, about a third of a cup of dry breadcrumbs, and a nice "shot" (about three tablespoons ) of olive oil (I know. YET MORE fat. Trust me. It needs it). Finally, seven or eight leaves of fresh sage got chopped up and tossed into the mix. Then I formed it all into balls. I got just over 60 from this mix, but remember, I make the meatballs small.

And like I said, I fried them. I filled a big skilled with olive oil to about 1/4 inch and when it was hot, I added the meatballs, 20 or so at a time. They browned up much faster than I thought they would, and in less than 5 minutes a batch, they were done. (As I took them out, I drained them on paper towels and replenished the oil). When all of the meatballs were finished, I drained off all but a couple of tablespoons of the oil, and added the vegetables, with a nice pinch of salt. Also two big sprigs of sage. The oil was so hot that the veggies cooked pretty quickly. Then I sprinkled the flour over them and stirred. Some stuck to the bottom of the pan, but that was okay. I wanted the browning.

Ok, brace yourselves, boys and girls. Now, in went the heavy cream. Three cups of it. Yup, you read right: 3 cups. It thickened more than a bit, but not to a viscous mess. When this was done, I dumped the sauce and the meatballs into a big pot (no skillet is big enough to hold 6o meatballs). I stirred gently, so that all of the meatballs were covered with sauce, and cooked for five minutes.

And there it is. This is very similar to other recipes I've seen, but I didn't consult any for this, so I'm treating it as mine. And Ben's. And I hope he likes them.

Pretty pink

Well, I am going to say it: it is officially, unquestionably spring. Winter is gone. It is HERE. Why can I say that? Well, the first local asparagus showed up at the green market today, and I bought too many. So did the first watercress, and I bought that. And red stem spinach. And ramps. And dandelion greens. And Franca and her mom Jan are back and we had a lovely little reunion.

The warnings have gone out to get the wintered over brocolli rabb and kale while you can, because they're almost gone. Fiddleheads are right around the corner. And... while no one has enough to sell yet, there are local strawberries. Sweet, tiny little morsels that make you forget all of the woolly, cottony balls that you ate during the winter. And it's a tease, the way spring is. Like I say, no one has enough of them yet to make "something" with them other than a snack. I haven't seen any rhubarb yet, but I suspect I'll find that tomorrow.

And that's the topic of today: those two pink fruits of spring: strawberries and rhubarb.

Writing about strawberries is challenging because I can think of few things to do with them. Why? Because I find their flavor so transparent and so fleeting, that cooking them seems to be a real crime. Once, and only once, I ate a dish of a baked rhubarb strawberry crumble from one of my favorite restaurants. A miss. A total, and complete, misguided miss. No strawberry flavor at all. So when you're working with strawberries, "keep it raw."

Of course, make sure you're getting good ones. Any good farmers market strawberry purveyor will let you taste a berry. Don't be greedy. Bite into it. Is it red all the way through and soft? That's what you want. You'll pay for this ripeness, because it doesn't come cheap. The berries have to stay on the plant longer, and if you're picking strawberries other than recreationally, this is brutally hard work. Doing it by machine almost inevitably damages most of the fruit, so you have to do it by hand. That means bending your back, at an unpleasant angle, for many hours at a time. It hurts. And if they're fully ripe, you can't just grab. You have to pick, carefully. You can crush them very easily (those are the ones I like the best). The folks who do this work almost never get paid properly, and if they did, you'd pay a LOT more. So treasure them.

Good strawberries are also fragile. Plan on eating them no more than 2, MAYBE three days after you get them.

So if you're not going to just put them in a bowl, pick them out and eat them, or put them with some whipped cream, what do you do?

Glad I asked. Here are some ideas. One is the magical combination that results when strawberries are combined with balsamic vinegar. If you are lucky enough to have some of the old stuff, the really, REALLY good old stuff, be sparing with it, and use that. Just a tiny sprinkle over them will do. Let them sit for half hour like that, if you can wait. And then just eat them out of hand.

That's my favorite. But how else?

Well... how about sliced and sugared with some ricotta? That's going to be breakfast tomorrow, because Nevia gave me ONE container of them (all she could spare). We have some goat ricotta in the house, and that's where it will go. If you happen to be a good dessert maker and you can make some panna cotta, put the vinegared berries over that, and watch people marvel at the miraculous dessert you made out of almost nothing.

Onto rhubarb now. I think every person I know has grown up in a home where they grew rhubarb in the backyard. And everyone has stories of either loving or hating it. I didn't have rhubarb or a backyard, but I love it every which what way I can get it. I will write more about rhubarb in the immediate future, but for now, I want to pass on an amazingly simple, amazingly good recipe, that I got from the head chef at the restaurant called Jarnac. She did this recipe two years ago, and I want to talk her into doing it again. Try it.

What you need is rhubarb, a very sharp knife, sugar, and vanilla ice cream. That's it. Clean off your rhubarb. Sometimes it's dirty, and it sometimes shows a "beard" of yucky bits from when they harvested it. Try to get thin stalks for this. Then get your knife, and cut very thin slices, like celery half moons off of them. When you have a nice quantity, toss them in a bowl of sugar, just to coat them. The rhubarb will have a wet side from the cutting, and the slices will pick up the sugar nicely. Now just scoop out that ice cream, and put a big portion of the rhubarb on top of it.

DONE. And you have a dessert that not too many people have had. And I guarantee, you will be pleased with it.

And think about it: how much time did it take you to do it? I bet you could do the same thing if you are an obsessive cook and made flan, or panna cotta, or some other vanilla custardy type of dessert.

Go forth, find that early spring fruit, and get to work. The time they'll be here will not be long enough, and you should enjoy them when you can.

Spring greens

I've been chatting a bit lately, on this blog, on the arrival of spring, and the beginning of the much heralded crops of spring. And I've been getting stuff at the market that, for a cook is exciting. I found the first nettles of the year ( I will confess to being a snob and loving their Italian name, "ortica"), and also, wild mustard greens. Spinach is here, as are the wintered over greens, the ramps, the baby garlic that I love so much. Greens and spring, spring and greens. Oh, and I forgot dandelion greens as well.

One of the things that characterizes all of these early vegetables, is their sharpness. And that is something that a cook has to keep in mind. These are young plants. And as I understand the biology, what happens is they produce all of their sharper components, early in their life cycle, and they exhaust them as they get more mature, as they grow bigger , etc (some of you are thinking very piggy thoughts. SHAME ON YOU. I'm the only one who's allowed to do that). Bite into a leaf of wild mustard and first you'll taste "dark green." Then you'll get sharpness, and know right away that you're eating mustard. You'll get the same thing with sorrel, one of my favorite greens. Sorrel is filled with oxalic acid, which is the same component of rhubarb that makes it so tart. So, bite into a leaf of sorrel, and it won't surprise you that it's sometimes called "lemon plant" or "vinegar bush" (I do NOT make this stuff up folks. Deal with it). Even baby spinach is sharper than the more adult plants. Nettles, when they're young, haven't developed their "nettles" yet, but they have a dark, "good for you" kind of taste that many people just don't care for. The other thing about them is that, when you cook them, if they are a bit old, they will turn your water dark black. This is scary, but it's nothing to worry about. It's just a dye leaching out. Dandelion greens are known for their bitterness, and I'd best warn you ahead of time: I forget the French word, but they are called "piss plant" in France, because dandelion is a natural diuretic. If you eat them in moderation, you'll never notice the difference. Eat a large dandelion salad, and you will. Trust me on this.

So, what do you do with all of these greens? Well, that's why Annalena is here, kids. I want you to try them. I want you to try them ALL. And I want to advise you, early on, that some of them will be your favorites, and it is very possible that you will not like some of them at all. And it is quite likely that you will like some of them one way, and not another way. For example, I LOVE nettles when they are mixed with cheese. Or in a cream sauce. Plain boiled nettles turn me off. But conversely, if I have my mustard greens with anything other than olive oil, I'm not eating them. So you DO have to play around some. I would like to offer some general guidelines.

Remember what I said about that sharpness? Well, cooking is going to deaden it. How you cook the greens will determine how much. If you like the sharpness, what you should plan on is a simple sautee. Wash the greens (and you MUST do this, because in many cases, these plants have been gathered wild, they ARE dirty, and you need to at least get them clean). Shake them to get off the water, and then cut them into bite sized pieces. You may have to use your judgement here, on some of them. Take a look at the stems. Are they woody? If they are, you aren't going to be able to eat them, and toss them. If the stems turn soft at some point, use the soft part, and ditch the rest. I really can't tell you at what "point" on a plant this happens, because it varies. You have to eyeball it, but it shouldn't take long.

Once you've got the greens washed and chopped or cut, all you need to do is heat up some oil and add them. Stir them around and watch them wilt (this is good to remember. Always buy more greens than you think you'll need, because they shrink so much when they cook). Add some salt, and you're done. That's all you need to do. This will give you a sharper tasting green, probably best served against something else, rather than by itself. And again, you need to experiment. I love putting mustard greens up against pork, or like I say, nettles with a white cheese. Spinach can be used just about anywhere. I love the sharpness of dandelion greens and sorrel so much that I almost never serve them any other way but raw, in a salad. But again, our friend pork comes in to play here. You know the classic "dandelion greens with lardons" salad, yes? Well, if you don't want to deal with lardons, you can use pancetta, you can use bacon, you can use gunaciale if you have it, anything you want. Sorrel's lemony taste just seems to call out to me "use nuts." So I make salads of it where I add pistachios, or walnuts, and if I have some of that particular oil around, that's the basis of my dressing.

But what about a milder approach? Well, in this one, you need to do two things. First, boil those greens in salted water. Mustard greens will take longer. Nettles will collapse almost immediately. If you do cook dandelions, that is true for them as well, as it is for sorrel. (I really think you'll be sorry if you cook the sorrel. One thing that is REALLY good with it, however, is if you make a bland soup, like a potato soup, and add the sorrel at the end. Wakes it up. Serve it cold). After those greens are cooked, drain them, and do the same thing that you did for the sharper taste: olive oil and salt in a frying pan. When I do the greens this way, I find a bit of hot red pepper flakes really helps them taste superlative, but that's a judgement call (as are all decisions in the kitchen, when you get right down to it).

And let me make a final recommendation about these greens: you're going to be buying them from a farmer, and there are also going to be other people at the stands, buying them. Try not to be timid. Ask. Farmers, if asked politely, will always tell you what the best ways are to cook their produce. Remember, they want you to come back. And in NY, if someone is cooking with a new, interesting vegetable, you're going to make an interesting acquaintance. I cannot tell you how many times I have exchanged recipes with people, as we met over some good greens. You do the same. And if you mention my blog, and you're talking to me, I'll 'fess up.

"It's in the bag"

I am always interested in learning a new way to get food cooked quickly, but only if the resulting cooked food tastes GOOD. If I had a choice between satisfying my hunger, now, with a quick, tasteless meal, or waiting a few hours while something tasty bubbles away, I'll go for the latter. That's why I always try to have something in the fridge that I cooked over the weekend and can just warm up, or even better, the makings of a quick pasta dish.

Steaming is a way to cook things quickly. The problem with steaming, however, is that all the "good stuff" leaches into the steaming liquid. Think I'm kidding? Steam a piece of fish sometime. Taste it. Then taste the water you steamed it in. Game, set and match.

There IS a technique that gives you the speed of steaming, but allows you to really "up" the flavor of what you're cooking. In French, they call it cooking "en papillote," or in paper. In Italian, it's called "in cartoccio" or "in a bag." Whichever way you call it, what you do is enclose a slice of fish, or chicken (it doesn't work with red meats), with your choice of flavors, in parchment paper (classic), or foil (modern). When you do it in paper, you can crimp the edges like a calzone, or you can seal them with an egg white or just some water. With foil, you just fold it over.

What do you add? Well, it's really up to you. I like to use something acid, like the seville orange juice I used tonight, or wine, or something like that. You don't need a lot. Maybe three tablespoons. I also add some herbs, or a vegetable that will cook quickly. That may be chopped leeks, or thinly sliced carrots, or green beans, or even soy beans out of the shell. Stay away from tougher veggies, like broccoli. Salt and pepper your fish or chicken, put the flavorings in and add a touch of fat if you like. You don't need much. For a pound of fish, maybe a tablespoon of oil or butter is fine.

Now, seal that package tightly, and put it on a baking sheet. You need to do this because the fish or chicken is going to throw off a lot of liquid, and if your seal isn't good, well, you'll be announcing that you elected a new pope with the clouds of smoke that come out of your kitchen. Put the package into a preheated, 450 degree oven, for ten minutes or so. And you're done. You didn't even have time to make a pot of rice or some veggies, so do them first.

Now I said chicken or fish. Fish is better. Firm, white fish is best of all. We used tilefish , which has made a local appearance, tonight. You could use flounder, cod, haddock, or things like that. It works with salmon, and it works with shrimp and scallops too. I would stay away from tuna or swordfish , or the other "muscle" fish that you can cook real quickly on a hot grill.

For chicken, this is a case where boneless breast reign supreme. Steamed chicken skin is gross, and the thighs just don't really taste that good for me.

Sometimes I'll add a seasoning like freshly grated ginger, or orange peel, something like that, but not always.

I know people who cook this way 3 or 4 times a week. They say they like the control and the speed. Geez, you'd think they were driving a car.

Try it. Try different combinations. Especially you, Laura. Both of you. :)

Oh, I'm versatile

Now THAT got some of your attentions, didn't it? Not that long ago, a good friend asked "do you mind if I ask a personal question?" Now, you KNOW that when that one comes up, there's no way to say NO. He's gonna ask it, one way or the other. So I said ok, and the question had to do, basically, with my preferred sexual position. I'm not going to answer that question here: if you don't know, it'll keep ya guessing. But for those of you who need a review, the "positions" are top, bottom and "versatile." All of these have endless connotations and variations, with some of us saying that "versatile" just means a bottom who won't admit it.

There. I said it. OK? Now can we move on?

In cooking, there are items that are "versatile" in the truest sense of the word (one way or the other, THIS one is gonna get me in trouble). If you like, they can serve as the "bottom" of a dish, or as the "top" of it (I CANNOT believe I am writing this stuff . What does it say about our society? NOTHING). What I'm presenting here is one of those lovely items you can use any way you like. I'm using it tonight as a "top", that is on top of a pizza. You could use it to "Top" a baked potato, or to "top" pasta, but you could also put it underneath a nice grilled piece of meat (OH GOD. What AM I getting myself into here?), or fish (I can hear Huck laughing now), whatever.

It was inspired by the beginning bounties of spring. The tiniest of onions, still purple, still with fragrant green leaves came in this week. And green garlic is here, those wonderful shoots of baby garlic that I love so much. And there were olives in the fridge begging to be used. So here it comes. Use it as you like. In fact, spread it on... someone... and lap it up.

You'll need equal amounts of chopped green garlic and spring onions. I used a bunch of the onions, which came to about 3/4 of a cup, and about five green garlic bulbs, which I chopped all the way up to where the garlic greens were getting tough. I didn't use the roots. Then, I pitted about an equal amount of small, green olives. To do this, all you do is press your knife down on the olive and the pit pops out. Sort of like.

God, now it's even gotten to me.

Ok, so heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a big pan, and toss in all of the ingredients at once. Careful with the salt here, because olives are salty. Your veggie will sizzle right away, and you want to cook them for about five minutes. The sizzle will stop , and the pan will look dry. Add a few more spoons of olive oil, stir everything together, and you're done.

When it's cooled down, taste it for seasoning, and perhaps add more salt if you like it.

This can go on top of a piece of toast for a crudite, just as it is. Better if you mix it with some fresh good quality ricotta. Or, you can put it on pizza and maybe, ahem "top" it when the pizza comes out of the oven, with some slices of prosciutto. You might also stir it into soup, especially a mild soup like potato, or mushroom.

It will keep a long time, probably longer than the spring onions will be around. So make BATCHES of it. Hey, while we're all looking for the perfect bottom, or top, isn't it nice to have something around that is versatile and tasty?

You CAN'T recapture the past: but you can try. School cookies

But sometimes you can get a little piece of it. The end of the week was difficult for me. Every year, there's a ceremony, up at my undergraduate institution, celebrating my old, best bud Oscar. This year , more than any other, was quite traumatic. I think I realized, for the first time, that Oscar is NOT coming back, there will NOT BE another Oscar, and that while it will never be the right time to let go of Oscar, it IS time to let go of the idea that someone will come along and replace him. Right now, objectively, I'm trying to get my arms around the unreasonable position I have put people in, consciously or unconciously, as I labeled them "the new Oscar." But until I can get my "emotional" arms around the fact that it IS time to let go, I can't really get to the objective part. This is very much like the opera "die Tode Stadt" in many ways, except Paul had someone to help him. I'm doing this alone. It ain't easy. Oh well...

But with thoughts of the past in mind, I went into the kitchen to try to make myself a bit happy and to recapture a bit of it. I have written about my lack of enthusiasm about chocolate chip cookies, but how it's important to be able to make them, because they DO seem to be everyone's favorites.

Maybe that's changing. I have a number of friends who have told me that gingersnaps are theirs, and I make REALLY good gingersnaps. And if I remember school correctly, the cookie we WERE allowed to take, as part of lunch, was the oatmeal cookie. And I have always loved them.

I think that, perhaps, whomever took care of your food needs when you were young, had bought into the advertising campaigns that Quaker had mounted for their oatmeal (I'm told that this was the first mass market advertising campaign for a food product. Perhaps). So, with the campaign working, and people buying oats, there had to be something to do with them. And oaks do bake well. Scots use oats in just about all of the baked products, for a very simple reason: that's what grows in Scotland. Wheat has to be imported and it's expensive. So oats is what it was. Scones, or more properly, "bannocks," were first made with oats. Sweet, soft cakes that sometimes have some richness from fat added to them, bannocks are very tasty. Well, given American ingenuity, out came the oatmeal cookie. I like them better.

So we had all these mothers, for the most part, trying to get nutrition into their kids, and thinking "well an oatmeal cookie is good for him/her. I can get some oats and some fruit into them." So we all got them in our lunchbox. Is that why we love them? Who knows. The fact is, we do.

There are a tremendous number of variants on oatmeal cookies. But they mostly break down into the soft and crispy variety. I like the crispy ones better, and that's the recipe I'm going to give you here.

This recipe, which is from King Arthur Flour, makes 48 or so cookies. They are small cookies, but they are rich. You can leave out the raisins, or the nut, or both. But if you do, you'll get a smaller yield.

You'll also see that I add shortening (Crisco) to the cookies. I'm not happy about this, but yes, you need it for a crispy cookie. So look the other way, and go for it. Again, this is something you'll be glad you know how to make, and so will your friends.

You start with 3/4 cup each of brown sugar, and white sugar. And you also need a stick of unsalted butter, and also 1/2 cup of that shortening (sigh). Get this all stirred together. I use my mixer, but this is easy enough to do with a spoon, by hand. Then add a teaspoon of baking powder, and a teaspoon of salt. Now, you add some spices, if you like. In traditional "oatmeal school cookies" you will leave this out, but for adults, put in a nice big teaspoon of whatever spices you like. For me, that's half cinnamon and half allspice. Nutmeg is good too, as is clove. Ginger might be nice, and would make things brighter. Maybe even cardamom if you're feeling frisky. Mix that in with the stuff you have already, and then add one egg, and a tablespoon of vanilla and combine that. Now, stir in three full cups of oats and feel noble about it. Add a cup of flour too, and then a cup each of raisins, and chopped nuts. Walnuts or pecans seem inevitable. I would like to try it sometime with sesame seeds.

You need to preheat your oven to 325. This is a slow bake, and a long one for cookies, and that's usual with crispy ones. I line my baking sheets with parchment, and then put out scant tablespoons of the dough. You can get about a dozen, maybe more, on the sheet, because these cookies do not spread very much. If you want a flatter cookie, you have to press the dough down before you bake it. Otherwise, you'll get a fat little ball of a guy, which is fine with me.

I bake them two sheets at a time, and I rotate the top and bottom trays after ten minutes. Then I bake for another full ten minutes, and let the guys cool completely before I put them in a tin.

You'll get 48 cookies or so, from this, like I said. If you want to (and I don't know why you would), you can dip them in chocolate, or frost them. There is something about an oatmeal cookie that says "leave me alone and enjoy me the way I am." Hmmmm. Could that be why I like them so much?

Are they good for you? Wellll..... No. Each cookie is 115 calories. Try to eat less than four. And of that 115 calories, 54 come from fat, and there's a whopping one gram of fiber in each cookie.

Well, what can I tell you? After all, they ARe cookies, and we're all entitled to that taste of a simpler time, when things like trying to recapture the past , or counting calories, were not part of our everyday lives and anxieties.

Make up a batch. I think you'll see, it's really very easy. And you may even convert a chocolate chip lover along the way.

Me? I have to try to release the ghosts of the past. Just another simple project

Too much of a good thing

I'm one of those people who actually think that you can NEVER have too much of a good thing, whatever that "good thing" is. Of course, this leads to complications in the kitchen, like the time I brought back eight quarts of strawberries from the farmers' market (I don't even remember what I did with them), or with people who find a six pound jar of honey "on sale," and bring that home.

I'd like to say I don't fall into the "flat of strawberries" problem anymore, but sometimes I do. I get carried away, and then at the end of the week I'm looking at bags of wilted letuces, or sad looking chard, or peaches that look like they've been in fist fights, and I vow to do better.

I never do. Sometimes, though , it REALLY isn't my fault. No , seriously, there are times when I'm not to blame.

You can stop laughing now, and read on. Or you can examine your own conscience and see if you are free from guilt (hey, the Pope is here. I can get on my soapbox if he can ride in his popemobile). One of my favorite purveyors had morel mushrooms, and as you know from one of the earlier blogs, I LOVE mushrooms. They were a good price too. There was just one catch: the smallest amount you could buy was three pounds.

NO PROBLEM. I was having lunch with a favorite friend, who has now retired. She, too, loves morels. So I could split them with her!

Then she cancelled. Now, is that MY fault? Hmmmmm? So I was left with three pounds of these beauties. I knew where my half were going, but now....

Well, one of my rules: when in doubt, make soup. So I made morel mushroom soup. And it's good. REAL good.

I will say that mushroom soups are one of those places where I can't help myself, and I use dairy. REAL dairy. Half and half, or heavy cream, as I did here. And it's something that maybe you don't want to use, but I like it.

This is a really easy soup. The longest step is cutting a pound and a half of morels into bite sized pieces. Then, you chop up about 3/4 cup of celery, and the same amount of carrots.

Here, you would add an equal amount of onions to your soffrito, normally. But if morels are around, so, too, is baby green garlic. And you should get some of that. Use it ALL, top to bottom, except for the roots, and chop it up about the same size (If you cant find the green garlic, use an onion. Scallions would probably be better. And you could use leeks, or ramps. Mix them up, too.

Cover your pan with half vegetable oil, and half butter (remember what I said about butter and mushrooms), and add your soffrito veggies. Let them cook at medium high heat ,undisturbed, for about five minutes, while you measure out a quarter cup of flour, and get your dairy, preferably heavy cream and at least half a cup of it. Sprinkle some salt over the veggies, and then add your mushrooms. Leave them alone, until you hear the change in sound to a crackle, from a sizzle. When you get there, stir them, and then add your flour, and stir it up. It will probably soak up all of the fat, and look lumpy. That's fine. Now add the heavy cream and stir the whole mass. You'll get a very thick, creamy mess that will remind you a bit of bad creamed spinach. This is what you want though. Add a quart of chicken stock to it and stir. The stock will break up the clogs, and you'll get a smooth, delicious looking soup. Lower the heat a bit, and cook this just until it begins to bubble on the perimeter of the soup.

And you're done. Unless you want to stir in a spoonful or two of marsala (dry marsala here), or perhaps a drop or two of white wine.

This makes two quarts of some of the best soup you will ever eat. I'm going to offer some to my friend Keith, who is moving into his own place and needs , I think, some comfort food to remind him that his friends, or at least this friend, loves him a lot. Find someone you love a lot, and share the soup with them, too. They will appreciate you even more, and you'll feel really good about sharing, and proud of your delicious soup.

Take your passion(fruit) and make it happen (for Chris)

Occasionally, you'll see these kind of dull looking, purple eggs in the fruit section of the supermarket. You may think they're plums, until you pick one up and see how light it is. And then when you see what they cost, you'll think they're the most expensive plums in the world.

Well, they ain't. What you got in your hand is a passionfruit. Or, in Hawaiian, a lilikoi (and I think Chris should think of changing his name to Lilikoi. It may very well suit).

I love working with passion fruit. They're interesting because you can't use them until they look like they're rotten. If you take a perfectly smooth, beautiful passionfruit and cut into it and eat the pulp, you'll probably spit it out and try to brush your teeth about seven times. Even when they're nice and wrinkled and collapsed, you ain't gonna experience any kind of sweetness. These guys are TART.

Theoretically, they get their name because the flowers of the vine on which they grow is reminiscent of Christ's passion. Ok, fine. I've seen the flowers and I don't get it, even though it's been explained to me a zillion times. I keep on asking "can you fry the flowers?' and I get a look like I've just challenged the primacy of the Pope (who's visiting NY this week. I think I saw him in Saks an hour or so ago, buying a hat. Not really. )

So, anyway, what do you do with them? Well, they are indigenous to Australia and for a very proper and correct pavlova, that wonderful dessert of sweetened meringues and fruit, you finish by cutting open a passion fruit and pouring the pulp (which is orange yellow) and the seeds (which are dark purple and plentiful), over the whole thing. The sweetness of the meringue plays against the sour of the passion fruit, and it works beautifully.

I used them to make souffles. Remember my rant about souffles? Well, this dessert came out of that rant. Having gotten on my soap box and yelled about how easy souffles are, I thought I'd best put my money where my passion fruit is. (Careful guys). And it worked. The recipe is an adaptation of one from Alice Waters, and it's pretty easy. Hope you like it. This is the proportions for eight. Change them as you need to.

First, if you try to get enough passion fruit pulp to make this from whole fruit, you will be ready to kill me. You can buy passion fruit pulp. Do it for this. You'll need 3/4 of a cup of it, which you mix with 1/2 cup of sugar, and then four egg yolks. Mix this all up and put it aside. In fact, you could do this a day ahead of time, and save the whites, which you're going to use as well, together with three other whites (you're going to use the three extra yolks to make something else. Be patient).

Okay, so you've mixed up the passion fruit stuff. Now, you're gonna get ready to make the souffles. First, get eight ramekins. They should hold five or six ounces, no more than that. In a step that at first sounds counterintuitive to souffle making, butter them thoroughly. BUT... (hee hee), now coat them completely with granulated sugar. The easiest way to do this is to get a deep bowl of sugar and just dip the ramekins in, and then pour the sugar back out. Put these on a baking sheet, and start preheating your oven to 450.

Get a big sturdy mixer ready. Combine a tablespoon of cornstarch, a teaspoon of cream of tartar, if you have it, and a dash of salt , with your seven egg whites. Begin beating, and have half a cup of sugar handy. When the egg whites begin to get frothy, increase the speed, and start adding the sugar, gradually. Keep on adding it until you've added it all, andthen increase the speed to very high. Keep on beating until you get fairly stiff peaks. This may take a while, perhaps five minutes. When that's done, fold the passion fruit mixture in. Be gentle, and try not to deflate the egg whites too much.

Divide the mix amongst the eight ramekins. Now, the most important step of the recipe. Run your finger around the rim of the ramekins to make them clean. Why? Because if you don't, they will bake unevenly, and the souffle won't rise. Put the tray into the oven and bake for nine minutes.

NO PEEKING. I'm very serious about this. And after nine minutes, you will be rewarded with these marvelously puffy, slightly brown, miracles. You'll want to serve these right away.

If you want to gild the lilly, serve these with creme anglaise. Creme anglaise is basically melted or unfrozen ice cream. The basic recipe "is what it is," and I'm going to present it here with the orange variation I made. You can figure out other ways to do it.

Heat up two cups of milk with a quarter cup of sugar. Have those three extra egg yolks ready. When the milk is warm, pour a bit of it into the egg yolks and mix, and then pour everything back into your pot, and cook until the milk and eggs thicken. It happens pretty quickly, and it's very clear when it does, but if you really need assurance, get a thermometer and cook, stirring, to 175.

What I do at this point is to add the peel, in big pieces of one orange. Then I cover the pot and let it steep for twenty minutes before I refrigerate it. I leave the peels in to intensify the orange flavor, but I pull it out before I pour it into small bowls to serve along side the souffle. You break into the souffle and pour in the creme, and you've got dessert.

I will say this: I always watch and listen when people eat my desserts. There was total silence, and total concentration over this one.

You can substitute other purees here. I'm looking ahead to summer and apricots, and I'm beginning to wonder if I can pull this off with strawberries and rhubarb. Stay tuned.

And Chris, this is for you, for calling it out as your new favorite dessert. Love you lots. Hope I get to make it for you again.

The fungus among us

Well, this has been a very busy week, with very little cooking going on. And what I have been doing has been things that I've already written about for the most part. But the advent of spring (sort of a contradictory phrase, isn't it? Advent happens in the fall), has brought a few things to the table that are inspiring. One of those is the first morels of the season. And in thinking about morels, I was thinking of mushrooms generally. I had cooked some portabellos for a pizza earlier in the week, and I have three pounds of those wonderfully crinkly funghi to work with, and my thoughts have turned to these critters, which I will admit are not to everyone's taste. This being my blog, however, you'll just have to deal with it.

When I was very young - yes THAT long ago - mushrooms came one way: in a can, as "buttons" that were preserved in some ghastly butter flavored "juice". No wonder it took me a while to get to like them. Now, the variety that you can get is absolutely staggering. And the seasonality of mushrooms has pretty much disappeared. We always used to consider mushrooms fall produce, except for some of the more delicate and elusive spring time guys, like morels and chanterelles. Well, advances in science now allow cultivation of mushrooms, year round, and while there are mushrooms that have defied the science - like morels and chanterelles- the fact that there is a "season" for them somewhere, all the time, and people are willing to pay enormous prices for them has eliminated that bit of seasonality as well. Still, I do not find myself looking for wild mushrooms out of their normal season. We don't eat morels past mid summer, and don't eat chanterelles before that. The others, however, I treat as kitchen staples. (Please note that I'm leaving out talk of dried mushrooms here. That's a whole 'nother essay).

You can spend a fortune on mushrooms. The morels I have cost me about 30 bucks a pound. Chanterelles are a little less, but there are other varieties that will make you shriek when you see the numbers. Are they worth it? That's a decision you have to make yourself. I don't really find things like matsutakes (pine mushrooms, that go for about 100 a pound) to be worth it. But I DO love my morels and my chanterelles. And I cook them, and all mushrooms just about the same way. I'm gonna discuss that here.

First, let's start with debunking a "mushroom myth" In many cookbooks, you'll see instructions to get "fresh crisp tightly closed mushrooms." They're talking about the head meeting the stem, and they want you to use mushrooms that show no spores.

That's because they want the good ones for themselves. See, mushrooms are LOADED with water, as you'll find when you cook them. If the cap is tight to the stem, the water is still in there. If they've opened, the water has begun to evaporate, and you get more "mushroom" for your money. Of course, you don't want mushrooms that are leathery and dry feeling, but don't turn away a portobello or a cremini (which is a teenage portobello, by the way), because the cap is open. With morels, which look like little sponges, or chanterelles, which look like, well, chanterelles, you have to go more on texture and "heft."

Sometimes a mushroom needs to be cleaned. You need to take a look and see if it's dirty. Try to brush the dirt off, because the last thing you want to do is add more water to the guys. If you can't brush them off, well, time to improve your surgical skills and cut away as little as possible. You paid a lot for them, so take the time. I find that normally, about an eighth of an inch at the base of a chanterelle, a porcini, or one of the exotics, is all you need to do. Farmed crops, like portobellos and creminis probably won't need cleaning at all.

The way I cook mushrooms has evolved over the years. What that means, to me, is that my technique has gotten simpler. I don't use herbs anymore, or garlic, and I don't get too fancy. Essentially, I cut the mushrooms to a size where they can be eaten in one mouthful. For a big mushroom, like a portobello, that's a lot of cutting. Morels get halved, and so on, and so forth. I cook them in half butter and half oil. Butter is the best friend a mushroom can have, but it burns. So cut it with oil. I'm going out on a limb here and telling you to use vegetable oil, because I really like olive oil, but it can mask the delicate flavor of these guys.

Here's the most important thing you need to know about cooking mushrooms. You can't load your pan too much. If you do, the water they generate will cause them to steam, and that's not what you want. So put a tablespoon or two of each of your fats into a pan. Melt the butter, and when it's just about soft, put in mushrooms to cover the bottom of the pan. NO MORE THAN THAT. If your pan is hot enough, you'll hear a sizzle. Sprinkle in some salt, and lower the heat to medium.

Your hearing is your best sense with mushrooms. As they cook and the water disappears, the sizzle will turn to a decided CRACKLE. That's when you stir them. And when you do, you'll see how much they've shrunk. If you're confident that you can keep things cooking evenly, you can add more raw ones here. If not, do a couple of batches. After stirring, when you hear the crackle again, you're done. All in all, it will probably take you about fifteen minutes to cook a pound of mushrooms of any variety using this technique.

Generally, "that is that" for me when I cook em. Sometimes, with morels, I add a spoon or two of heavy cream, and with portobellos, a few of balsamic vinegar (the cheap stuff). You can also add a little white wine to any mushroom prep. I actually prefer vermouth, because the herbal quality seems to compliment the mushrooms, but again, this is all optional.

How much per person? Oh, that's a good question. I can put away half a pound of the guys at a sitting, other people can't. You have to measure appetites.

OH. One last thing. You'll see a lot of recipes that call on you to use "a variety of mushrooms, mixed " DONT DO THAT. If you want to make a mix of mushrooms for your meal, cook them separately and then combine them. But try them, variety by variety on their own first. You're going to learn which ones you like better, and which ones you don't

I think you'll find a new friend. That's never a bad thing

Adding flavor by roasting

You know, one of the things that you hear people say about dishes they have at restaurants is that it never tastes the same way at home.

Well, it won't. There are three main reasons for that. Two are reasons that may make you reconsider dining out (but I doubt it). The third is one you have in your control.

If you were ever to watch a restaurant cook make your dinner, you would be startled, first, by how much salt goes into it. Amounts of salt that you would NEVER add to a dish at home. Then, when you watch the free hand with the olive oil, or butter, you will again say "OH MY GOD. I would NEVER do that at home." Well, if you won't, then you won't get that taste. It's as simple as that.

But the third factor that you CAN control somewhat, is heat. Restaurants cook your food at extremely high heat. Heat that you have to have patience with at home, because let's face it : your oven isn't on all day (even mine isn't). So if you have to preheat your oven to 500, and keep it there for twenty minutes before you can put your ingredients in, you just lost a good half hour, maybe more. When you're trying to rush dinner or lunch or any meal through, this is a problem.

But if you have some patience, you can get that seared/roasted flavor into things. I'm going to give you an example. This weekend, I'm serving carrot and ginger soup as a first course for our dinner party. I make extremely good carrot soup, if I do say so myself (and I do). But I wanted to try something new.

A few months ago, I had a dish of wood oven roasted carrots at one of my favorite restaurants. They were charred on the outside, and the texture had changed, to something like a sweet potato. The sugars in the carrots had come out more than in a raw carrot, and the entire effect was very pleasing and "mouth filling" if you know what I mean. I probably paid a buck a carrot for that plate, and I didn't mind one bit.

Well, I don't have a wood burning oven. But I CAN get my oven up to 550. I didn't want it that hot, so I preheated it to 425, while I went about doing other things (Here's a hint: when you KNOW you're going to use your oven, start it first, and then go about your business. It's time you'll save. Then, I took three pounds of organic carrots, and rubbed them thoroughly with olive oil. I did use a lot. Perhaps a third of a cup for all of them . (I was making three quarts of soup). Then I laid the carrots out on a baking sheet, and put them in the oven. After a while, I heard the "sizzle," meaning that they were in fact roasting. After fifteen minutes, I rolled them over, and roasted for another fifteen minutes. Then I did it one more time.

After the 45 minutes, the carrots had begun to take on a brown color in spots, and they had gone from orange to orange red. And they were soft, just like a baked potato. I let them cool so I could work with them a bit later, and prepared my soup vegetables. A cup of diced onions, and a cup of diced celery, and a good third of a cup of ginger, peeled and chopped. This is a LOT of ginger. You can use less, but I think that if you're making this much soup you'll want it. That was my "soffrito" for this soup. You'll notice that I left the carrots out of my normal soffrito. I think you can figure out why. I sauteed the celery, onions and ginger in a quarter cup of vegetable oil and while they cooked, I chopped the carrots into rough chunks. Notice that I did NOT peel them. The roasting process took care of any "nasties" on the skins, and the skins do add flavor. Since they were already soft, it didn't take much time for the carrots to get to the point where I could puree them. Maybe fifteen minutes? I cooked it in two quarts of chicken stock.

I let this cool for a while, say twenty minutes, and then pureed it. I had a v ery lovely dark orange puree, with a distinct ginger taste in the back. The carrots had in fact maintained a flavor somewhere between a sweet potato and a carrot. I would have been hard pressed to identify the vegetable, if I didn't know what it was.

This will be served today, hot, with a scoop of creme fraiche in the middle. You could serve it cold, perhaps with a swirl of peanut oil, or sesame oil, as I will do for one guest who does not want the dairy element.

Yes, it took a bit more time, but think about the "work" you did. As compared to regular soup making, all you did was rub oil over your vegetables and roast them. And you got something very different, with a very distinct flavor.

In any event, here's the menu for tonight's dinner:

We'll be finishing up my annual citrus wine with champagne, and we'll have that with veal tenderloin on toasted, homemade bread, with some black truffle puree (sort of a poor man's veal tournedos), and some provolone gougeres.

We move on to the soup I describe above, and that will be followed with

The pork roast in milk that I wrote about previously, with some oven roasted potatoes, and room temperature asparagus with a shot of meyer lemon

That will be followed by what I hope will be a great salad, with pea shoots, early lettuces and broccoli rabb flowers, in a champagne vinaigrette.

Then we'll have cheeses: five of them, all local, with comb honey and old balsamic vinegar, and some walnut bread I made last week and toasted for the plate.

finally, dessert is passion fruit souffle, which I'll make "a minute" with an orange creme anglaise to pour into the souffle, and some ginger snaps.

We'll probably skip the "frisandes" plate I usually serve at the end of the dinner, because we'll be eating so much.

Next time I write, I'll tell you how it goes.

Food taboos

This is a sensitive subject, one that interests me deeply, as a would be anthropologist, but one that can get you into a LOT of trouble, in so many ways.
First, there's the issue of what exactly is a "taboo?" I THOUGHT I could consider it something that an organized body that someone belongs to forbids. But has that become too restrictive a definition? Yes, there are the kosher rules, for example, about not combining meat and dairy. And there's another one about not eating pork. Muslims have their food taboos, so do Hindus. Do Catholics? Hmmmm. That's where we start getting into these issues of what is and isn't a taboo. I can't think of anything that I was told was an absolute NO (except of course human flesh, and that's not an inconsequential exclusion). But then we get into things that people won't eat, for whatever reason. There are folks who won't drink alcohol, for example, for various good reasons. Is that a taboo? I mean, if they CHOOSE not to drink it, or if for health reasons they can't metabolize it, is it a taboo? How about vegetarians? Or vegans? When does a personal point of view become so strong that it becomes a verifiable taboo?

I've been thinking about this because I've been thinking a lot about my friend Ben. I know few people who respect food as a whole as much as Ben does. He knows a lot. More than I did when I was his age ( a LONG time ago....). And he laughs about how he's not religious but he holds onto certain things and won't eat them. And he told me that, on a very basic level, his soul shudders , NOT at the thought of other people eating these things, but at HIM eating them.

It's a very open mind that says "do what you want, it's not for me" and leaves it at that. And it makes me think very hard about a smart guy who feels so strongly about these things that he JUST CAN'T. I come away with more than curiosity. I come away with a need - that will go unfulfilled, becasue these things CANNOT be explained - to understand how one comes to and keeps such a strong position.

Anyway, this is all by way of something that I want to urge everyone to keep in mind when you're cooking for your friends: respect them. Yes, you will have "difficult" friends who will eat chicken, but only if it's organic, or who will eat walnuts in a salad, but won't eat them in a cake, and they will drive you crazy with their pettiness. But when you have a friend who says politely
"I don't eat...." it really is never your place to ask "well, why not? " If s/he wants to tell you, fine. But if not, don't push.

This weekend I'm cooking food for a dinner party, and the featured main course is a pork roast cooked in milk. It's a compromise dish: one guest didn't eat lamb (and I was planning on leg of lamb), and another guest didn't eat tomato soup (my original first course), and I just had to throw out the first menu completely and redo it. Yes, I was frustrated. VERY frustrated. But if you love your friends, then you take a deep breath and realize it's not about you. So IF Ben were coming over, and IF the guy who doesn't eat lamb were still coming over, I'd move onto something else. That's what friends do. There are more than 60,000 recipes in the canon of Italian cooking, surely you can find something. And so it goes.

But anyway, Ben ISN'T coming over, so we're having this absolutely succulent dish, which is so easy to make it isn't funny. "Maiale al latte" is what it's called in Italian. When I learned it ala Marcella Hazan, I did it on the stovetop. Very nice, beautiful dish, but a pain in the neck. Now, I do it in the oven. There are lots of options for making it, and I'll lay them out for you, if you can eat it. If you can't then make something else. There's so much that you can cook, whether it's a taboo, a dislike, whatever, leave it alone.

You need a pork shoulder roast for this - a big one. Five pounds is about the minimum size. You can have it boned and tied, but I really like it better with the bone in it, and not tied. I think there's more flavor, because there's more exposure of the meat to the other ingredients, and I think that a bone adds flavor always. You'll also need about 1/4 cup of olive oil, some salt, and three cups of whole milk. Optionally, you may want half a cup of a good white wine, like a sauvignon blanc or a non woody chardonnay, and a handful of spices. Rosemary is good, so are juniper berries . Bay is mighty fine, and so is thyme. Just don't use them all.

Ok, turn your oven on to 350, and get it preheated while you do the rest. Pat your pork roast dry, and salt it well (you know, when you salt meat before you put it in a pan, be generous. You're going to lose a lot of it in moving it). Get your olive oil hot in a pot that is big and heavy. Brown the meat thoroughly on all sides. Don't skimp on this step. In fact, don't EVER skimp on the browning portion of cooking meat. You'll never regret the extra time. When the meat is finished browning, drain off as much of the fat as you can. Add your spices, if you're using them (and I almost never use anything but a few juniper berries), then pour in three cups of the milk, and if you're using it half a cup of wine (I don't use it). Cover the pot tightly, and move it into the oven. You're going to let this go for about three hours. Every 3/4 of an hour or so, if you remember, go in and turn the meat with some tongs.

After three hours or so, the milk will have cooked into what some people feel is a disgusting mess, and others like myself think is one of the more amazing things in cooking. The liquids in the milk will have penetrated the meat, and the solids, left behind, will have curdled in the heat. Then they brown from the heat.

If you're a true Italian, what you do is take out the meat and cut it into slices after it's rested for about twenty minutes, and then you gently stir that sauce and break up the milk curds. You pour that all over the meat and serve it forth, preferably with some potatoes and some green vegetables. But if you get the skeeves when you see what looks like curdled milk (because it is curdled milk), then strain it out of the sauce. You can let it sit so that the rendered fat separates out, but again, you don't have to. And then use that.

If you think you're going to want to strain the sauce, I would go with more spices to get more flavor into the dish.

You'll have leftovers unless you're cooking for a lot of people, and this makes a truly great sandwich.

So, sorry Ben, I understand that this is one you'll pass, but I got others. We'll eat again soon.

The RAMParts of Spring

There are "harbingers" (I DO love that word) of every season: the things that let you know: ITS HERE!!!! And they change from place to place. Here in NYC, for example, the flowering of the street pear trees is a biggy. So is the flowering of the occasional cherry tree. We DO have them. And my favorite, the magnolia trees. These old birds (magnolias are prehistoric ya know) just sort of strike me as "arboreal flamingos," with their brash pinks and shocking whites. And other places have others. For example, as I began to write this, I heard a very disturbing story. This weekend, there will be an open rattlesnake hunt in a city in Texas. The three people who shoot and kill the most rattlesnakes qualify for a "rattler olympics" later in the year, with an award of a gold, silver and bronze rattle.

Well, I don't know about you, but that rattles me. Whether you love snakes (I do), or don't, doesn't that kind of make you feel sick, and sorry for the people who do it? It's very unkind, but I hope one of them gets bitten. HARD.

Ok, back to food harbingers. Spring is officially here in NY, but the first true "field crops" won't be around for a while. One of the earliest ones is ramps, or wild leeks. These little tiny guys strike me as a cross between a cultivated leek, and a lilly of the valley plant. Their aroma, which is wickedly pungent, and almost fecal, is intoxicating to me. I'm not sure if they grow in the west, although I have eaten them there. I think that this is something that California actually flies in from the East Coast. Like I said, it's a wild food. It does not cultivate, so any that we get are foraged.

Interestingly enough, there is what foragers call a "leek line." The first ones show up in the Carolinas, and then they gradually make their way north. I understand from someone, from whom I just bought a bunch, that the "line" is currently in West Virginia. I think that means probably another two or three weeks before we see the local ones, but with their being available, it's time to use them.

If you find them, you can substitute ramps just about anyway you would use regular leeks. You may want to use a smaller quantity, though, because they are very pungent. They take well to "softening" flavors, like in the recipe I give you here. The one thing you DO have to watch for is the outer skins. Even small, little guys like these have a tough, very indigestable skin. They slip off easily, but you do have to do it. It looks a lot like a tiny onion skin.

This is one of my favorite recipes for leeks, and it gives me a chance to discourse about "pestos" generally. We all know the standard basil pesto, right? Well, when summer is at its peak, I'll teach you how to make it really really well, but right now, I wouldn't pay a penny for the basil in the market. "Pesto", however, simply means "paste." So you can make a pesto out of just about anything. One of my favorites is sage mixed with parsley (sage is too strong to use all on its own). You can also do one with sundried tomatoes, one with mushrooms, oh, there are dozens of possibilities.

This is basically a ramp pesto. Sometimes I add some toasted walnuts to the mix, and sometimes I don't. It comes down to who I'm cooking for. For Guy and myself, there's no need for the walnuts. If you have a more timid group, cut the flavor with walnuts or something else. Here it comes.

You'll need half a pound of leeks. That's a lot of them, at least about 30. Get a big pot of water ready and bring it to a boil, and add some salt. While the water is coming to temperature, slip those outer skins off of your ramps. Then be ready to move fast because you're going to put in the ramps, and cook them... for three seconds.

Why? Okay, I'll tell you. The three seconds breaks up the fibers just enough so that they will puree well, and it also takes just a bit of the edge off of the flavor. You will want that, I promise. So pull them out after three seconds (and with that little bit of time, you can do it in batches), and when you're done, chop them coarsely. Then, dump them into a blender, with some lemon zest that you've grated (I use a lot: maybe the zest of a whole lemon), as well as 1/4 cup of olive oil. Have more of this handy. Take half a cup of the water from the pot, and put that into the blender too. Then puree. You may find this too thick. If you do, add another quarter cup of oil, and if it's still too thick, take some more of the pasta water - up to a cup, and add it gradually until you have the texture you want. If you ultimately decide it's too thin, then you may want to thicken it with some ground walnuts. Taste it. It won't be as strong as you thought it will be, and it will need salt, and perhaps you'll want a splash of lemon juice. Both good.

Now, look at that color. Just like the asparagus soup, it's got that "essence of green" that seems to call out "LOOK MA. IT'S SPRING."

Yes, to me the colors of spring are bright green: the green of asparagus, snap peas, ramps, shelling peas, and the bright, almost shocking pinks of magnolias, peach and cherry blossoms, rhubarb and strawberries. I cannot honestly say that spring is my favorite season - that honor goes to autumn, but the colors of spring are my favorite. It's almost as if Nature is offering you a reward for getting through the greys, the blacks, the whites of winter with a blaze of bright, pure, sensual colors.

Enjoy them. Soon, these sharp, strong pastels will give way to the majestic dark colors of summer, and you'll have to wait another year. Eat em while you got em.

SNAP peas

Ok, another blog today because I'm not keeping up with my promise to blog ya once a day. My bad. I've been having trouble sleeping again, and haven't been doing my homeworks, and just been behind, badly.

Snap peas or, more correctly "sugar snap peas" are one of the first of the spring veggies, alongside of asparagus. They appear before the English peas do.

This is a vegetable we didn't have when I was a kid, because they didn't exist. I am told that they resulted from a cross between English peas, and the Asian snow peas. That sounds right, because they have an edible pod, and a softer quality than do English peas, which they resemble somewhat.

If you buy them from your farmer's market, you will probably have to prep them by pulling the string that runs along their horizontal line. If some of them split when you do that, that's fine. The strings really are nasty. Lately, I've been buying California snap peas, and it seems that it's been done already. My local farmer's markets won't be doing it.

In reviewing recipes for cooking these guys, I have determined that just about every written source does not do them justice. I have seen cooking times ranging from 12 minutes down to five minutes. Five minutes will overcook the peas and you will lose their delicate delightful flavor and wonder what the fuss is about. Here's how I cook mine. I get a big pot of water ready with some salt, and just before the thing comes to a boil, I toss in the peas. I count to forty five (don't ask), and dump them out. DONE. These are a vegetable that SHOULD taste "GREEEEEEEEN" and they do when you do them this way.

I really enjoy these guys just plain boiled like that, but a nice pat of butter has never done anything wrong to peas. Olive oil is okay too, but on its own, I find that it overwhelms their flavor.

Now, I've given you the simple version. But here's something more involved and interesting. It's based on a salad I had at Union Square Cafe a year ago. They then published the recipe, and I modified it, for reasons that will be clear.

After you have cooked the snap peas the way I described, run them under cold water and dry them really well. In the Union Square Cafe recipe, you now julienne slice them.

Union Square has lots of kitchen help. I have me. There will be no julienning of snap peas in my house. I cut them on the bias into thirds. Put them aside, while you make a dressing. That should be SHERRY vinegar (and no other), in a 1:3 ratio with olive oil, or, if you happen to have it, walnut oil which would be better. Of course, put some salt in this. Whisk it up and add a teaspoon of honey mustard. You'll have to decide how much dressing, but you don't want too much. You don't want your peas sopping in the stuff.

You can just dress the peas with this, but want to go TRULY over the top the way they did at Union Square Cafe? Now crumble some blue cheese over the peas and add a handful of toasted walnuts (how do you toast them? Glad you asked. Spread them on a baking sheet, put that in a 350 oven, and bake for 8 minutes. Take em out and cool.

So, go simple, or go complex. Look at what else you're serving. For example, if you were making a simple roast chicken, I'd go with the more complex one. Last night, we were having macaroni and cheese, which is rich and sticky and filling, so we went with the simple version.

Play with these recipes. Make your changes. And tell me what you do. I can always use a good recipe.

Wanna see my mussel?

This was another week where, confronted with the choices of fish that were available, I found myself getting rather bored. This can be a problem this time of year. It's still rather cold out there in the water, and the species of fish that are in fact available, is limited. I guess the number is limited any time of year, but it seems that we haven't had much of a change in a while, because of the cold and the habits of fish. But I had been seeing mussels on menus for a while, ordering them occasionally, and felt "you know, I haven't made them in a while. It's time." And I should be doing that more.

Mussels are one of the true bargains in the seafood counter. They'll set you back about 2 bucks a pound, and a pound is a nice, big main dish portion. They CAN take a little bit of work, as I explain below, but usually, they don't.

You can read about "how to buy" mussels anywhere, and it's really rather intuitive. You don't want opened ones. If they're opened, and they don't close when you tap them, probably best to move on. What I do is if the fish monger isn't looking, I test to see how hard it would be for me to open one of them with just my fingers. A dead mussel opens easily a live one does not.

Of course, they do need to be opened before you can eat them, and we're going to get to that. But first, onto cleaning. In old cookbooks, you will see instructions on how to "debeard" the critters. Newer cookbooks tell you "that was true when mussels were gathered wild. All mussels are farmed now, and you don't have to worry about that. Just wash them."

Well, when I took my two pounds out of my bag, and I saw the "beards," I thought "oh well. Good thing I'm old enough to know better (about these guys). See, when mussels grow in the wild, they attach themselves to columns, piers , anything stable (which explains why there are none on my legs). That attachment is the product of internal secretions (gross you out yet?), that hardens in water. When the mussels are harvested, that goes with them, and it hangs from the tip, like a little "beard" It's easy to take off. You just grab it and pull. Of course, it can take a while if you have a lot of them, but each individual mussle cleans quickly, and not all of them will show it.

So, now you have "Samsonized" your mussels (and if you don't get the joke, shame on you). NOW what do you do? Well, there is a world of possibilities. What you need is a big pot, and some kind of flavored liquid base to cook them in. This can be as simple as salted water. Usually, though, you want a little more flavor. The way I do it is to chop up LOTS of garlic. For two pounds, six cloves is barely enough but you may want less. I also chop up a small bulb of fennel, if I have it, or celery to make about 3/4 of a cup, if I have that instead. I put those two elements together with some fresh herbs (thyme is nice here), into some hot oil and just stir them around for a couple of minutes. You can add some sausage meat here, and it's really good if you do. Chorizo is nice. You can also add some corn. Then, I pour in the mussels, together with half a cup of a dry white wine. You don't have to use wine. You can use stock, you can use tomato sauce, you can use cream or milk. If you use the dairy, be careful in the next step.

After you've added your liquids, cover the pot. Really, you should keep the pot tightly closed and lower the heat. With dairy products, there is going to be a fair amount of foaming, however, and you will want to have a "vent" to let the gas get out, so that you don't spill hot dairy all over your stove, put out the pilot light, burn milk sugar onto the surface and wind up having the place smell like mussels for weeks . (I'm NOT saying that ever happened to me).

The mussels will start opening almost immediately. It would behoove you to have a bowl ready and remove them, with a slotted spoon, as they do. Otherwise, they will overcook and taste like pencil erasers when you're done. After you get them all out, or - and this is important - you've gotten out all the ones that will open, you can start reducing a s auce a little if you like. IF some of the mussels don't open, what I do is see if they will open if I press a fingernail against them. I do this holding the hot shellfish in a napkin, to protect my hand. If they open, fine. If they don't dump them.

If you've done a tomato sauce base, you don't have to do any reducing. In fact, you don't have to do any reducing at all, regardless of your sauce. But if you feel you have too much liquid (the mussels will release theirs into your starter), then increase the heat to high and bubble off as much as you want. Then portion out the mussels and pour the liquid over them. And you're done. You have a really good meal in a very short length of time, and you didn't spend much money.

Now, you do have a meal with all that liquid. What do you serve with it? In many restaurants, they will serve you french fries, in the style of Belgium. I DO like this, but in rethinking the dish, I realize that I like the french fries "per se," and don't really think they help the mussels very much. I most like the mussels using a white wine kind of broth, and with big, thick slices of grilled garlic bread on the side. Others can disagree, but I'm right :). Seriously, if you've made them in a tomato sauce, there is nothing wrong, and everything right, with spending a bit more time and making some spaghetti and serving the mussels over that. Or, if you've decided to flavor your broth with chilis of some kind, and/or the chorizo, perhaps some cornbread will be where you go. While I love polenta, the thought of mussels on it gives me the skeeves, but if your sensibilities aren't offended, give it a try. And tell me how you like it.

So, there you have it. This is another wonderful thirty minute meal. You need to eat it with someone who isn't afraid to get his or her hands dirty, and/or to play with his or her food, because you're going to have to pick up the mussels and pull the meat out of the shells, and just suck it down. Have a bowl ready to toss the empties, maybe have some beer or cold white wine with it, and feel very smug about a good, solid, cheap, fast meal.

Good, solid, cheap and fast. You know, it sounds like someone I know's perfect boyfriend. But I wont' go there today....

making a stock

There are many recipes for soups in this blog. I have said, and I stand by it, that I use prepared chicken stock for my soups. And I'm proud of them.

Occasionally, though, I make a vegetable stock. There are three or four that I can think of. I'll save the one I'm using now, for last.

When you shuck peas, and you have that pile of empty pods sitting there, which is a mountain, and that little tiny bowlful of sweet peas, have you ever wished that you could do something with the pods? No? Oh.

Well, I have. And I've learned that there are some dishes where people do in fact eat some of the pods. I've been told that in England, one of the ways that people eat those wonderful first peas is to boil them, in the pod, and then to pour melted butter over them. Then they just run the whole pod through their teeth, taking peas and some pod skin with them. Now THAT sounds like something I would like to do. When I make risibisi (I know, I know. I promised. When the peas are here, I will), I cook the pods into the dish, when it's an informal dinner, like the two of us together. It's messy. No messier than dissecting an artichoke at the table, but messy. But perhaps the best thing to do is to make pea stock. And it's easy. You take a mound of pea pods, cover them with water. Bring this to the boil, and cook slowly for fifteen minutes at the most. Then drain it right away. You'll get a very pale, almost evanescently "pea-like" stock, that you can use for soup, for risotto, for any kind of grain that soaks up the liquid, and even, if you feel brave about it, for use in a vegetable based cocktail. It ain't half bad. Later in the year, when corn and peas are both in season, I'll combine some corn cobs with the pea pods, and make a variation. Or, I'll just boil up some corn cobs to make cornstock. My favorite variation on that is the corn cobs, and a stalk, with the stem, of basil. Basil, when it's boiled, develops a smoky flavor, and if you like the smokiness that chipotles bring to things, without the heat, you'll love that one.

But that's not what I did this week. This week, I made asparagus stock, because we were having asparagus soup.

I've written about how much I love asparagus. One of the things about asparagus, however, is that if they are cooked too much beyond their "al dente" point, you lose their lovely, delicate flavor and you get an awful texture. So I want to get as much flavor out of them as I can. This is how I do it.

When you look at an asparagus stalk, there is always a section, at the bottom, that you KNOW is going to be too tough to eat. It's woody, it's tough, it's nasty. Cut that off, and put it into a soup pot. Then, peel the asparagus, as if you were making just some simple steamed ones, and add that to the pot as well. Now, fill the pot with water, (if you're using three pounds of asparagus, two good quarts is what you want),and again, bring it to a low boil or a simmer, for fifteen minutes. Drain this.

It's really important that you don't cook these stocks for too long. The nice delicate flavor of the vegetables turns real nasty, real fast.

So, now you have a vegan substitute for chicken stock, which you'll use in making this soup.

You need a standard "soffrito" of equal amounts of celery, carrots , and onions. Maybe half a cup of each. Cook them in vegetable oil (olive oil is too pronounced a flavor here), for about three minutes.

Now, add a peeled, chopped potato (about six ounces). You will want this to give the soup some body. You can leave it out, and add cream or milk at the end, but honestly, if you want the vegetable flavor of a soup to stand out, stay away from dairy products. You'll cook the potato and other vegetables for about five minutes more, adding a sprinkling of salt to it all. Now add the stock, and cook all of this, for about fifteen minutes. While that's cooking, slice up your asparagus into pieces about an inch long. Some people prefer to keep the tips separate, and use them for garnish, but I disagree. And remember, we're using three pounds of the stuff here.

You add these after the cooking for about fifteen minutes, and cook the asparagus for another ten. You keep the cooking time short, because one of the things you want to retain is the lovely green color. The asparagus will be nice and tender, and you take the pot off of the heat, and let it cool, uncovered, until it's safe to puree. (If you cover the pot, you will lose that color).

You'll be amazed how smoothly this all purees. And how beautiful and springlike the color is. It's a green that really almost seems to be the Platonic form of green.

How do you dress this up? Well, you don't, at least in my eyes. There is almost nothing as good as the clean, clear flavor of this first soup of the spring. If you must, you can, of course add anything you want. Recently, I read an article where someone served them with saffron croutons. She took cubes of bread, and fried them in oil to which she had added a nice pinch of saffron. That actually sounds pretty good: the lovely golden orange of saffron against the green soup is really appealing. So do that, if you have the saffron (and if you don't, ask someone to give you some for a birthday present. It's a cheap birthday present, and you will LOVE having it in your kitchen).

You can have this soup hot, or cold. Asparagus stick around for several weeks, during a period of time when nights change from cold to hot, so you can eat your soup depending on how the weather is. I like mine right at room temperature, perhaps with some ricotta on toast along side of it.

Soup making is easy. Spring is here, let's see you do this. And you'll find that you don't miss the chicken stock, or the meat.

Proust can have his madelines, I'll take pasta

Many of you know about Proust's madelines. For those of you who don't, Marcel Proust wrote one of the longest (possibly one of the greatest, but definitely one of the longest) novels of all time, call "A la Recherche du temps perdu." I grew up, calling it "Rememberances of Times Past." These days, they tell us the translation is wrong, and it should be called "Recollections of Lost Time." Whatever. I can never seem to get past page 300 of a 3000 page novel. But in any event, for purposes of this piece, if you haven't gotten to page 50, after Proust sets out some of the characters, he writes about eating a madeline, one of those fluty French crosses of a cake and cookie, dipped in lime tisane and BAM. He recalls another 2950 pages of story.

I suspect there was more than sugar in that cake. I'm not much of a fan of madelines, but I DO like lime tisane. In any event, the combination of memories of specific events and food is a fascinating one. You eat a dish, you remember "OH YEAH. I first ate this when...." And sometimes it's the reverse. A friend asked me a question today, and it brought back to mind a favorite dish, that I used to cook, a lot, and which I haven't made in a while.

When I was very young, there were times when my grandmother would make a dish she called "pasta al moleek." And she cried every time she served it. As kids, we didn't know why. We loved it. It was pasta, usually a tube shaped one, with a "sauce" of breadcrumbs that had been toasted in olive oil and garlic, with parsley over it.

Today, I know why. "Moleek" is a dialectical word for "Mollica," which is a bread crumb. Bread crumbs take the place of grated cheese when you're so poor you don't even have a piece of parmesan to put on your pasta. So when we were eating that, we were flat broke. And it broke Nana's heart that she couldn't do better. Even though we loved the dish, she felt she should have been able to do better.

I also know now that the traditional dish has anchovies in it. Nana LOVED anchovies, but she never put them in. Why? Because the kids didn't like them. So she gave that up, so that we would eat it. She was like that.

Occasionally, you'll find it on the menu of an Italian restaurant. It goes in and out of popularity. These days, with carbs getting such a bad rap, you'd be fixed to make it yourself. It's really easy to do, and if you do it with good olive oil, well, it ain't cheap. And I'll tell you this. I make it at parties sometimes, and it's one of the first things to get eaten. Nana, are you reading this? Mine isn't as good as yours, but I try.

Anyway, the memory that spurred the recollection was a friend asking me about someone I dated over 20 years ago. Cooking is part of courtship for some of us. The guy I was dating is Italian, and a lover of good food, and we would, in fact, cook for each other. Young guys being competitive sorts, there was always a kind of "bet you don't know how to do THIS...." Well, Tony loved this dish. I still love it. Guy loves it. And I have to make it again. You make it too. Here it is.

For a pound of pasta, you'll need a cup of dried bread crumbs, a half cup of olive oil, four cloves of garlic, and a few tablespoons of chopped parsley. Also salt and pepper. The pasta should be something like rigatoni, or tubettoni, something of a macaroni type of shape. Start cooking that as always, in rapidly boiling, salted water. While it's cooking, pour the olive oil into a frying pan next to your pasta pot, and while it's heating, chop up the garlic nice and fine. Here , it IS important to do as fine a job as you can. Toss that garlic into the oil, with the bread crumbs. You'll get a sizzle, and the bread crumbs will almost immediately soak up all the oil. Don't worry. Just start stirring, until you can smell a nice kind of toastiness coming off of them. When that happens, take the pan off the heat, and finish the pasta. Save about 1/2 cup of water, and drain the pasta when it's cooked.

Toss the pasta and the water into the bread crumbs, and then stir them all together. Some of the breadcrumbs will break up into smaller pieces, and others will not. That's supposed to happen. When it's all done, toss in the parsley, add some salt and pepper, and also pour another "glug" or so of olive oil over the thing. Stir it all up, and sit down and smile at your unrepentant dispatching of this high carb delight.

You may note that I left out the anchovies. Put them in if you like. And you could also "bend" the rules and add some grated cheese. But I don't do that. When I make this , I want to remember Nana, and try to tell her, if she's listening that day (sometimes she is, and sometimes she isn't. She's busy. She has three other grandchildren), that I miss her everyday, and that I wish I could cook as well as she did.