Saturday, February 28, 2009

NO damn cat, no damn cradle, no damn Italian, no damn wedding

Does anyone remember that line, "No damn cat and no damn cradle?" It's from Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Cat's Cradle." I spent a lot of time reading Vonnegut in high school, trying to "get him." I never did. Everyone else was absolutely enthralled by his novels. I just didn't see it. Give me J. D. Salinger any day (admit it too: how many of you have identified with Holden Caufield in "The Catcher in the Rye?" How many wanted to be Franny or Zooey? And how many of you felt that the last story in "Nine Stories," was really about you? C'mon you literate bunch out there, start talking).
Well, I was thinking about that line when I was reading Ina Garten's new cookbook, "Back to Basics." I met her several years ago, in Chez Panisse, where we were both having dinner with our partners. She could NOT have been nicer. Insisted that I call her by her first name, asked how I change her recipes AND TOOK NOTES!!!! I think she's a beautiful woman, and she's even more beautiful in person. If you get a chance to meet her, do not turn it down.
Well, her new book has gotten some criticism from people as to being "not as good as the others," and "repetitious of other books." Frankly, I beg to differ. I have ALL of her books. The simplicity and directness with which she presents her food, and the clarity of her writing makes it all easy for you. Get the book. Get ALL of the books.
One of the recipes she includes is one for "Italian wedding soup." Now, I love this soup. But I had no idea what it had to do with Italian weddings. I've been to my share of them. It's never been served. I never had it growing up. I couldn't find a single version of it in any of my Italian cookbooks.
A bit of research helped. There is a soup, an OLD soup in Italy, called "minestra maritata," or "married soup." The point of the name is that there is a marriage of meat and vegetables in the soup. This is not common in Italian soups. You might have a meat and pasta soup, or a vegetable soup, but including both meat and vegetables in equal quantities is not seen. So the "marriage" idea works. Still, I find it interesting that none of the books I have - and I have many - talk about "minestra maritata."
Anyway, I have always loved the soup. Little tiny meatballs, orzo pasta, greens, in a slightly salty broth. I could eat bowls of it. But I didn't know how to make it. So when I found Ina's recipe, I was off and running.
I did, of course, change it. You knew I would, didn't you? I will tell you where I do. Forewarned: this makes a LOT of soup. A LOT OF SOUP. Either be ready to share it, or you'll be eating it for a while.

The meatballs are a bit time consuming but not difficult, and they can stand alone as little snacks. You need a pound of ground chicken, and then a half pound of some form of chicken sausage. Use whatever you like. Half a pound is usually four small sausages. Cut the casings and squeeze out the meat, and combine it with the ground meat. Then add a teaspoon of salt.

Ok, now you have to be brave and taste this. You're going to have to season this mix, and you won't know what to put in, until you taste it. When I tasted mine, I wasn't quite happy, so I added a large tablespoon of my favorite Italian seasoning mix (from Penzey's), and there we were. Now, you add half a cup of bread crumbs (Ina suggests fresh white ones, but I used flavored Italian crumbs, because that's what I had), and an egg, together with about three tablespoons of milk. Mix this all up with your hands, and taste it again. Ina includes two chopped cloves of garlic, but I wasn't really persauded by this. I DID add about a third of a cup of grated romano cheese, and a third of parmesan, which is what she calls for, but in greater quantities (Ina says a quarter cup each, I used the larger amount). Mix this all up, and form SMALL meatballs. You want to get about 35-40 of them. Line them up on a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet, and bake these for 30 minutes. They'll give off a bit of fat, brown, and firm up. You can eat these at this point, but please go on with the soup.

While the meatballs are baking, chop up one onion, three carrots and two stalks of celery. I did it in a food processor. Also, get a cup of small pasta. You can use something like "stelline," or "tubettini," or anything that you'll see advertised as "soup pasta." Orzo is really on the big size for this. There is a pasta called "semi," or "seeds" which will work. I used mini alphabets. Finally, your greens. Ina calls for 3/4 pound of baby spinach. I had the spinach on hand, but I also had some other, wonderful greens, including a bunch of dandelion greens, and a bunch of chard. If I didn't use the chard, I was going to lose it. The dandelions, I bought at the farmers market today . (they were from a green house). I chopped the dandelion greens and the chard, off of their stems. I augmened with spinach. I'd say there were about ten cups of greens. Don't worry. This will shrink markedly.

When the meatballs are done, get a very big pot, and cover it with olive oil. Add the chopped onion/carrot/celery mix and cook it, stirring, for about five minutes. I added a teaspoon of salt at this point. When the veggies are nice and soft, add 2 quarts of stock, and two cups of water (Ina suggests ten cups of stock). Also, add half a cup of white wine.

Now, let me address this wine issue, because I have a number of friends who won't touch it. I don't know if all the alcohol burns off, but it doesn't really matter what I think. I tasted the soup, and I believe the wine is there to give a slight acid edge to the soup. In fact, I remember having it with a kick of lemon juice and peel. I think the soup needs it, so if you're "off the sauce," add more water or stock, and squeeze in a l emon, and perhaps grate the peel into it.

Lower the heat, and add the pasta. Cook it for about six minutes, and the add the meatballs, and cook for a minute. Finally, stir in all of the greens. They will cook down and almost disappear in about a minute. Taste it for seasoning and fix it.

AND YOU ARE DONE. I got 13 cups of soup from this recipe. Think about that. Thirteen cups. I started with ten cups of stock, lots of greens - another ten cups - plus the pasta and the meatballs. So the greens clearly DID shrink down. That's a lot of soup for two people, but we know lots of hungry people.

When you serve this, it is suggested that you grate more cheese over it. I suppose that's ok, but I'm going to eat mine plain.

Thank you Ina. You gave me something I've been wanting for a long time. I'm coming back to this recipe, and I 'm going to serve your meatballs as snacks as well. Get out your notebook.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

For one of the Matts: Cauliflower soup

Way back when I was starting this blog, in November of 2007 (WOW), I wrote a piece on cauliflower. I talked about how it was important to cook it in lots of water, how it made great soup, and how my favorite way of making it was a wonderful soft puree.
Well, I never gave any of you my cauliflower soup recipe, did I? What a shame. I was thinking about that recipe last night, and this morning, following an email chat with one of the amazing 20 somethings, who also happens to be one of the amazing Matts.
It sometimes seems to me that there are really only three or four gay names these days. Everyone seems to be named Justin or Jason. Or Brad. Or David. Or... MATT. In the last three or four years, I have met so many Matts that I can't refer to "Matt" anymore. They all have to have some "nickname" or "code," or I just have to use their last name, which is absolutely not fair. Way too much reminiscent of boarding school (if you went), or the military (if you served), or so many other things that tend to dehumanize us. Buddha only knows there's enough of those. So I try not to use the last name method of identifying people. Instead I assign nicknames, or use a given nickname. Or, in the case of one Matt, I just decided he should be named Trevor, and called him that for six months.

"The Matt in question" is not Trevor. In fact the nickname I gave him is "ciglio" because that is the word in Italian, for eyelash, and "the Matt in question " has the most beautiful eyelashes that I've ever seen. There is much about "the Matt in question" that could be called "the most beautiful," and in private, I shall do just that. For now, however, let's just refer to him as Ciglio .

Anyway, I made some cauliflower soup and had a portion left over. So I sent it off to Ciglio, and he wrote back this morning asking me to "break to him gently how much cream it had in it."

AH. The miracle of the "vegetable creams." There are a few veggies which, if cooked to the point of absolute tenderness, when pureed, will impart a quality to a soup or sauce that will CONVINCE you that there is cream in the dish. In fact, most veggies will do this. The problem with almost all of them, however, is that if you cook them to that point of softness, they either lose all flavor, or pick up a flavor that is decidedly not delicious. The three exceptions I know of are potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower. Potatoes and cauliflower, of course, have that white color that will convince you that there is milk, or cream, in what you're eating. But you can get away with using NO dairy in this soup. In fact, I suggest you do not. Dairy products will dilute the natural flavor of a soup. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes it's not. I like the taste of cauliflower in soup, so I don't dilute it with dairy. And I DO love the pure white color it brings to things. To preserve that, you have to be a bit careful, but it's doable. Here's how I do it.

Now, to review, the "holy trinity" of soup making are onions, carrots and celery. But there are exceptions to every rule. So, for cauliflower soup, where I'm looking for absolute whiteness, we substitute leeks for onions. The reason for this is that onions brown very easily in fat, and we're going to use some of that here, but not a lot. We're also going to leave out the carrots here. Usually, carrots are added to give a "backbone" to the soup, as well as some sweetness. We're going to cook the cauliflower to the point where the sugars in the vegetable are released. We WILL keep the celery, because the verdant "vegetableness" of the celery brings out that part of the cauliflower's complex flavors.

Chop up about 2/3 of a cup of each of the vegetables. You don't have to be religious about the size. You also need a BIG head of cauliflower. Break up the florettes until they're nice and small. The smaller they are, the faster the soup will cook.

Melt two tablespoons of butter with a tablespoon of olive oil in a big pot, and add the leeks and celery. Add a teaspoon or so of salt at this point as well. Saute' them gently, until you see the leeks begin to soften a bit. Then add a quart of stock, and two cups of water, plus all of the cauliflower. Let this come to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer.

DONT COVER THE POT. If you review anything I've written about the cruciferous vegetables, you'll know that covering the pot on them is the best way to make your house stink. Lots of air, lots of liquid, and you'll be fine.

Let that cauliflower cook until it's ridiculously soft. Try puncturing it with a knife. When you have no resistance whatsoever, you're there.

Let this cool, and then puree it in a blender , trying to use equal amounts of solids and liquid as you go along. You'll wind up with a very thick, pure white, creamy soup. You can now adjust this by adding salt.

I would leave it alone. You can float garnishes on it for color. Black truffle paste sounds good, as does a bit of tomato puree, or even a bit of bacon. Sometimes, though, a simple, pure white soup is really appealing.

Ciglio, this is for you, compadre. Waiting anxiously for you to move to the neighborhood, and we'll do it together.

SIGH. "White trash fudge"

Well, yesterday, I posted my recipe for the secret artichoke dip. And in passing I mentioned "white trash fudge" . And that's what you folks want to hear about , huh? Ok.

I found this recipe some years ago, when I was going through some recipes from King Arthur Flour. The woman who wrote it fessed up that "we really shouldn't make this, and we're ashamed of it." She added "but boy is it GOOD."

Honestly, I'm not all that fond of it. Neither is my good buddy Keith, and it's yet another reason why I adore him so much. Having said that, I repeat that I could make TONS of this, and there is a large sector of my buddies who would not miss another type of cookie as long as they could have this. "DUDE. Got anymore of that fudge stuff?" Yup, that's what I hear.

Strictly speaking, this is not a fudge. It's actually a toffee. When butter is added to sugar and cooked to a high enough temperature, you get a thick syrup that is technically toffee. If you leave out the butter, you have caramel. Fudge has a much different process for manufacture, but I guess the high amount of chocolate in the original recipe is what leads people to call it fudge.

Call it whatever you want. I call it sweet, over the top, and one of the most popular things I make.

I STRONGLY suggest you get a good thermometer for making this. You're going to be cooking sugar to what is called the "hard crack" stage. No jokes, please. "Hard crack" is 300 degrees. That is hot. That is hot enough to burn you REALLY badly. I had a burn from this once that did not heal for two months. So you're working with something very dangerous, and the least you can do is make sure that the temperature is right. If you cook it too hard, you will get black soot. If you cook it too low, it will not set. If you dont' have a thermometer, what you are reduced to doing is having a glass of water beside the pot, and dropping teaspoons of syrup into it. The syrup balls up, and then you have to determine - I'm not kidding you - is it hard, and can I crack it ? Do you REALLY want to do that?

Ok, here we go. First, you need two cups of non-chocolate "stuff." In the "classy" version of it that I make, you use good quality, roasted nuts. You can use tinned nuts, candied cherries (I can't believe I just recommended that), mini marshmallows, peppermint candies, just about anything. If you use more than one thing, mix the things up, and separate them into two equal piles.

You will also need a pound of chocolate chips, or a pound of a mix of chocolate chips and other stuff. I usually use bittersweet chips when I make the high quality stuff, but I have made this with butterscotch chips, with white chocolate, and with milk chocolate. You can cut the quantity of this in half and add other stuff, but you need a pound.

You also need a baking sheet. If you happen to have a jelly roll pan, which is smaller, that is ideal. A regular sheet is fine though. Put a piece of parchment down on it, and grease the paper. You can use one of those sprays here, they work fine. Then put half the chocolate mixture down, and then half of the other mixture.

In a deep saucepan , i.e, one that will hold at least four times as much material as you're adding, melt two sticks of unsalted butter. Then add 1.5 cups of sugar, 3 tablespoons of water, and a tablespoon of light corn syrup if you have it. The corn syrup will help the pouring of the product at the end. Stir this once, and then DONT STIR IT ANYMORE. If you do, you may find crystals falling out like rain and spoiling all of your work. Heat the mixture over a medium flame. You'll see an interesting gradation of colors: it will start out pale, almost invisibly yellow, and then begin bubbling and go to darker yellow, then gold, and then it will start to brown. This is when you have to watch the temperature, because it can go from brownish gold to black in seconds. Have the thermometer ready, and as soon as you reach 300, cover your hand with a mitt or cloth, pick up the pan, and pour it QUICKLY over the goodies on the sheet. With a lightly greased spatula, spread it out as well as you can, because it's going to harden fast. Then, get the remaining goodies, pour them over the candy and press them down with the spatula (I confess that I usually use my hand, which is fairly seasoned at this point. Don't you do that if you aren't somewhat callused - PHYSICALLY).

You are done. This is allowed to cool at room temperature, however, in my experience, it needs a couple of hours in the fridge to really firm up. Else, the chocolate remains fairly liquid and messy.

When you take it out of the fridge, you get to do what is my favorite part of it: crack it into irregular pieces. You can do that by hitting it with a blunt object, or just picking the sheet off of the paper and smacking it down. You will get irregular pieces, but so what? Some will powder, and you can put that over ice cream or do something like that.

This candy lasts forever. Put it in a metal tin, don't let it get wet, and you can eat it as long as you have it, which won't be long. And play around with different combinations because you ARE going to be asked to make it again.

OK, you asked for it, you have it. Don't sue Annalena if you lose a filling.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

"The secret recipe"

Every cook acquires a reputation for certain recipes over his or her lifetime. "So and so makes the best chicken," or "You MUST taste so and so's chocolate cake," and whatnot. As a cook who can point to several items that people ask for, all the time (lately, people want the meatballs, as fast as I can roll them, and my newly discovered banana pudding recipe has acolytes coming out of the corners), I can say that it's flattering. BUT... I can also say that it's a bit of a hassle. EVERYBODY wants these dishes, over and over again. If you dont' make them, someone wonders "are you ok," or "don't you like me?" Well, keep on asking for these things and I'll reconsider my position ....

Seriously, I make it out to be more of a hassle than it is, but you just wonder. I cook with a lot of seasonal, natural, hopefully organic ingredients. But one of the Christmas treats that everyone wants is "white trash fudge." It's got canned, salted nuts, marshmallows, chocolate chips and other things in it that just make me wince. But if I made ten pounds of it, it wouldn't be enough.

I'm going to give you one of those recipes today, thinking about my new friend Anthony.
Anthony is one of those people who, when you first meet them you think "I have GOT to know this guy better." That's what I thought, and then, like most people, I did absolutely NOTHING to get to know this guy better. Anthony, of course, had no idea that I wanted to be better friends, since I didn't say anything, and I waited two months.

So, not too long ago, we had lunch. If you ever wonder what two gay Italian guys talk about when they hang out, rest assured that cooking is one of them. And Anthony was talking about one of his specialties , which is an artichoke dip. Well, I've got one of those too.

Years ago, Guy and I used to stay at a place in San Francisco called "Le Petit Auberge." It was part of a group of hotels called "the Four Sisters Inn," because there were, literally, four sisters running four different hotels. At this one, they would have tea at 4, every day. Rather informal, with tea, sherry, and always a fresh baked sweet and a savory. One of the savories was artichoke dip. Every day we'd ask if artichoke dip was going to be served that afternoon. If it was, we would, literally, plan our day around coming back to the hotel to have tea. It was THAT good.

Eventually, I got the recipe from them. It was in a book of recipes that was available only at the hotel. The book is now long out of print, but I want to give you all the recipe for the artichoke dip. Maybe you'll make it. I hope you do.

This makes great party food, but you know when it's even better? When there's leftovers, and the next day you pile it on bread for a sandwich. I must admit that I shouldn't love this as much as I do, but I do. So THERE. And I usually triple the recipe.

You will need three cans of artichokes. Doesn't much matter whether you use hearts, or bottoms, whatever you have. Drain them, and chop them coarsely. I usually do it these days by dumping them into a food processor and pulsing four or five times, but keep in mind, I'm usually working with 9-12 cans of this stuff.

You also need a half pound or so of Jahrslberg cheese. Grate it on the teardrop portion of a three sided grater (and if it's too soft, put it in the freezer for ten minutes. It's a great trick for grating soft cheese). Finally, you will need 1 cup of mayonnaise. Don't bother with the good homemade stuff but use Hellman's. There's a tang to it that the other brands just don't have. AND DONT USE THE LOW FAT STUFF. If you feel fancy, grate about half a cup of parmesan as well. I never do.

Mix all the stuff up in a bowl and then dump it in a baking dish and bake it at 350 for about twenty minutes, or until it gets bubbly.

You can cover it with slivered almonds for a retro look, but with everyone being allergic to nuts these days, you may want to reconsider that. Serve it warm, with slices of toasted Italian bread, or crackers, and a spoon. Save a big spoon in the kitchen for yourself because you deserve the leftovers.

I make this at New Year's every year. And every year I think of not making it. Then I remember the ONE year I didn't. SIGH. I don't want that kind of hassle ever again.

Enjoy it folks. Double it and have a party.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Easy ad good: Nigella's fried shrimp balls

There's a myth about frying food. It's supposed to be difficult, dangerous, not healthy for you. Wait, that's three, I guess, huh?
Well, all of them CAN be true if you do it incorrectly. Fried things are never going to be something that a doctor recommends for a diet (although, you know, if you can train yourself to eat a little of something like that, and then stay away from other stuff. Annalena does not have that restraint). Dangerous, yes, if you aren't careful, but what kitchen action , what action in general is not dangerous if you aren't careful? Difficult? Again, yes, if you do it wrong. But if you are mindful of what you're doing, frying things can make delicious food, without much work. And you'll be very happy with the result.
In preparation for a dinner party , I was looking for a "cocktail snack" kind of food. I had shrimp in the freezer, and I was remembering Asian style fried shrimp balls. As you are thinking now, I was considering that they HAD to be difficult. I started searching for recipes and, whilst I did not wind up with an Asian recipe, I did wind up with something really easy and really good.
I have written about Nigella Lawson before. She is one of my favorite TV cooks. She never pretends to be a chef, and what is clear is how "HONEST" she is about her food. She gets her hands into it, she makes a bit of a mess of the food and herself, but her enjoyment at all phases of cooking and eating is palpable. There is almost a childlike quality about her work, and that's a compliment. I said "childlike," not childish. I think we should all be aspiring to be more childlike, to get back a sense of simplicity and wonder that we've lost.
I found her recipe for fried shrimp balls. She said it took five minutes to make, and she was right. Sort of... As you'll see in the recipe which follows, there's a wait period of an hour, but in that hour, you can do something else. And, honestly, given her recipe and my experience, I don't think you need that hour.

You start with a pound of shelled shrimp. Please be careful when you are buying shrimp. Ask. Just about all shrimp that you buy today is farmed, some of it using practices that are extremely harmful to the environment. It's very unlikely you're going to find wild shrimp and if you do, don't use them for this recipe. Serve them as they are. And when you buy the shrimp, buy the medium sized ones. Shrimp are not inexpensive, and we're going to chop them up, so getting the big ones, which really don't taste that good anyway, is a waste of your time. So get the medium ones. You can probably get them shelled and deveined too. Save yourself the time.

You need to chop these. I used the pulser on my food processor, but if you have a big knife and you're handy, you can use that, too. You'll probably get a nice, uneven texture, that brings you back to homemade.

What you'll find, in this process, is that the proteins released by this action are somewhat glutinous and gummy and that allows you to do something great: you don't have to add eggs to this recipe. What you WILL have to do is season it. A big pitfall of cooking seafood, in my opinion, is people assume that, because the product came from salt water, it's seasoned already. Actually, most of these critters have less salt in them than land food does. Very few things can live with an internal saline environment for very long, so the filtration system on fish and shellfish is a thing of engineering beauty, and their salt content is very low (Can you tell I used to be a biologist?). So season this stuff. At this point, you should add what spices you want . Nigella's recipe was pushing it toward a mediterranean type of dish, which is fine. I had fresh ginger in the fridge, though, so I grated about a tablespoon of it and added it, with salt, to the shrimp.

Now, here's the part where I'm just not sure. You add and mix together a cup of flour and the shrimp stuff. This gives you a very stiff sticky product that is going to be very easy to fry. I'm not sure that flour is necessary and I may try this recipe again without it, and see how it works. Once you do this, season everything again. Now, let it sit for an hour. As I said above, I'm not sure you need to do this.

When you're ready to cook, get about an inch of oil in a big frying pan. Nigella was using olive oil, but since I was moving away from mediterranean, I stuck to plain old vegetable oil. With a spoon, an ice cream scoop, or your hands, make small balls of the stuff, about a heaping tablespoons worth. You WILL get sticky hands and you will probably have to wet them. Try one shrimp ball to see if your oil is hot enough. You'll know from the hissing. If your oil is hot enough and the balls are small enough, one minute on a side is sufficient time. It really is. Turn them for another minute, then scoop them out and let them drain.

Your total cooking time here IS about five minutes and again, add up the work time. It ain't much.

Now, there are some of you out there who are probably thinking "where's the sauce?" and yes, you do want one here. Mine was homemade mayonnaise with jalapeno peppers chopped into it. Tartar sauce would work, so would soy sauce, and I was looking very hard at a cranberry mustard I have on the countertop. Play with it. Shrimp have a very amenable flavor.

Nigella had suggested making these as a dinner for four people. (Her recipe was actually half of this, and served two). I put them out with drinks for snacks. I got 28 of them from the recipe. Alright, I'll fess up. I got 31, but I ate three in the kitchen. It's great finger food, and I'm sure that it would make a lovely dinner with rice and vegetables, but this is the kind of thing that just yells to me that you should serve it with cocktails. You make the call. I bet you'll like them

Sunday, February 15, 2009

And back to the season: winter minestrone

What is minestrone? Ask a lot of people, and you'll get a lot of different answers. Which one is correct? ALL of them. Well, ALMOST all of them.
When we speak of minestrone, we are speaking more of an idea, or a concept, than a "fixed" recipe. There are two words in Italian for soup: "minestra " and "Zuppa." I can never remember what word means what . There are arguments over one is thick and one is thin , one has starch and one does not, but let's get back to this issue as we make the soup. So "minestra" for soup. When a word in Italian ends in -one, it means 'big" "Panettone," is big bread. "crostone," is a large toast. You can think of others, sometimes not so clean, sometimes fine. But all "minestrone" means, is "big soup."
Why "big?" One of the hallmarks of Italian cooking is its simplicity. Most recipes do not involve a whole lot of ingredients. But minestrone does. This is , what my Nana used to call "garbage can soup," because of what you can find in it. Frankly, I hate that idea. It means you can just do things at random, and if you do that, you will have a bad soup. But you CAN have some leeway here.

Just about every minestrone I've had has had tomatoes in it. But this one doesn't. And everyone I've had, has had beans in it. And this one does, too. Most have had a starch of some kind: usually pasta, sometime rice. Not so, here. One thing that DOES characterize a good minestrone though, is that you do NOT use stock: you use water. I talked, in my very first blog, about the use of cheese rinds in making the "stock" for minestrone, and that's what you're going to use: water and cheese rinds.

Winter minestrone means what it sounds like: you're going to use what produce you can find, to make a good soup. What I have in mine are frozen shell beans (more on that below), cabbage, carrots, turnips, leeks, and celery. And lots of them. I did have other options. Greens, like kale, are wonderful. I could have added some kind of squash, but that would make the soup too sweet for my taste. Fennel? Sure, but you best like a licorice type flavor. Potatoes? Naturally.

To make up your minestrone, you have to use a very rough approximation: you should use as much water as you have vegetables. Don't be scientifically rigourous here, but if it looks like you can fill your quart measuring cup with vegetables, twice, when you're finished cutting, then use two quarts of water. Very easy.

It's nice to get some flavor of olive oil into this soup, too, so when I do it, I start with a few tablespoons of olive oil, and whatever firmer vegetables I have. For this, if you look above, just about everything is a firm vegetble except the cabbage. And that being the case, I added everything to hot olive oil and stirred, just to combine things, together with a teaspoon and a half of salt, and pieces of parmesan rind. When the sizzling had died down a bit, I added my water, and stirred everything together. I tasted, and found that more salt was going to be needed. No question about it.

When you put things like this into a pot together, you need to take a guess at what is going to take the longest to cook. In my case, it was the shell beans. I had frozen these over the autumn (still cleaning the freezer. See?), and they were going to take about twenty minutes. When the item that takes the longest to cook is soft to your taste, then add the greens, like the cabbage, or the kale, or what have you . These will collapse almost immediately, and your soup is, essentially done.

Remember how I've been writing about those flavor secrets in the last few blogs? Well... here they come. If you are a smart cook, you made pesto during the summer and you have some to take out of the freezer and toss into your soup. If you don't, do it this summer. You could substitute chopped sundried tomatoes, or some other heartily flavored vegetable. Something preserved and salty is best. Stay away from anchovies, as you want this to stay a vegetarian soup. That is part of its wonder. When the pesto dissolves, your soup is done, unless you taste it and need more salt.

If you don't happen to have shell beans around, start your soup the day before, by soaking dried beans, and cooking them ahead of time. Don't use the water you cooked the beans in in the soup. Too many undigestable carbs are in there, and only your really good friends will want to be around you.

Now again, go through this recipe and look at how much work it was, and how many calories there are? There really aren't that many, for what is a mighty soup, and a mighty amount of it. I got well over 2.5 quarts of soup out of my mix, and I thought about diluting it. Guy talked me out of it. It's good for you, it's filling, and again, you can share it.

As the season changes, use this "protocol" to vary your soup and make late winter/early spring/spring/late spring/summer minestrone. Trust me. This is a soup that is ALWAYS welcome

Saturday, February 14, 2009

EMPTY THAT FREEZER: Green pea soup

Yes, the great spring/winter cleanout continues. As I probe the depths of our freezer, I either remember what something is, and keep it, OR, if my reaction is 'what the hell is that' or, 'oh yeah, I put that in there in 2006' (it DID happen), then out it goes. Cleaning a freezer, for a cook, can be as therapeutic as a good closet cleaning can be for anyone. You DO have to be in the right mood, and you WILL find your will softening at some things. For example, I KNOW I'm never going to crack those apricot pits and make noyau custard or ice cream, but there they stay. On the other hand, the pork chop that had picked up more than double its weight in ice, that went. And so it goes .

Ok, so where is this rant going? Glad you asked. One of the vegetables that freezes best, is green peas. And they happen to be one of Guy's favorite veggies. So, during the late spring/early summer, we have them a lot, and freeze more. This year, I guess I froze way more than I thought. As I was digging stuff out, I found bag after bag after bag of them. Maybe as many as we had fava beans. So my thoughts turned to that wonderful way to use up vegetables, soup. Let's face it, this is the time of year where soup is always welcome. ANY soup. But wouldn't you like something that is a little springlike, to remind you that, really, it IS just around the corner? And there's where the peas come in .

You can find TONS of recipes for split pea soup, or soup using dried peas. There isn't so much "literature" on fresh green peas in soup. I recall that there is a French term for such soups, named after a city, but I do not recall it. I DO remember making it and thinking it wasn't so good. The one I made today, however, was really good. And I want you to make it. Either in the version that I found, or my version, which I liked better.

To make this, you will need six cups of frozen green peas. If you don't have them in your freezer from the farmers market heyday, then buy some. But PLEASE read the package. You'd be stunned at what goes into frozen vegetables. Get the organic ones, if you must. And since you need six cups, read the portion size on the side. It will tell you how many servings there are, and how big the serving is. Do the math, to make sure you have enough. You will also need half of a stick of unsalted butter, two onions, a quart of chicken stock and a cup of water (or, five cups of stock if you don't mind having an opened container around). In the original version, you will need a cup and a half of buttermilk too. In my version, you will need a pound of shelled shrimp. (I'm giving two versions because I'm thinking of a friend who doesn't eat shellfish - hi Ben, and a friend who will eat shellfish but won't use chicken stock - hi Jeremy. J, you can use all water in this if you want, or a simple vegetable stock. In the summer, I'll teach you how to make pea stock, how's that?).

Okay, you dice the two onions and you cook them in the half stick of butter (for some reason, peas seem to work better with butter than olive oil. So even though you're pushing up the cholesterol, go for it. You're going to have a lot of soup when this is done), and when they soften, add the peas, all at once, and the stock. Bring this to the boil, and then simmer, and cook it for about seven minutes. Just until the peas soften.

If you're smart, you now wait until this cools down. If you're foolhardy, like me, you don't. You get a blender, or a food mill, or whatever your preferred method of pureeing things might be, and in no more than three cup units, start pureeing. I did each one for thirty seconds. Then, you have to make a choice. At this point, you have a very textured soup. You can strain this through a colander and pull out the larger pieces and get something very refined. I don't think that is a good idea, because you wind up throwing away flavor. So I don't strain.

You are going to have about two quarts worth of soup here, and you're not done. Uh uh. If you've cooled the soup, warm it up again. Just to the point where it begins to bubble. When that's done, either add the buttermilk, off the heat (buttermilk WILL break, unlike cream, so you can' t heat it too hard), or with the heat low, add your shrimp. Just cook them through. The heat will continue to cook the shrimp.

If you use the buttermilk , you will get a beautiful pale, green colored product that reminds me of a lunar moth's wings. If you use the shrimp, the green color is, of course darker, but you get those pink color dots throughout the soup. Pink and green always remind me of spring, as does that pale green color that you associate with new leaves. So, if you are of a poetic bent, you can pour yourself out a bowl of this and think about how much fun you had last spring, or how much fun you'll have this spring.

Whatever you do, promise Annalena your thoughts will not turn to 'OH HELL SPRING IS AROUND THE CORNER AND I'M TOO FAT." What the hell is the point of that? Annalena likes her men with meat on their bones anyway, and 'fess up, so do you....

Incidentally, if you counted the time to do this soup, you may have noticed it took less than half an hour. Plenty of time to get to the gym if you insist.

Friday, February 13, 2009

So nice, you cook it twice

Yesterday, I wrote about the possibilities that present themselves to you when you walk into the kitchen, and have a supply of tasty ingredients on hand. If you looked at it, you saw how a couple of boneless chicken breasts and some other simple ingredients can turn into a number of different dishes. (Incidentally, I made it with cream sauce and mustard and BOY, was it GOOD. I made enough for four and we probably ate enough for three).

Well, let's extend that idea a little, and now work with vegetables. When vegetables are local, in season, and fresh, my working "m.o" is to do as little as possible. Boil the greens, add some olive oil, and serve them forth, perhaps with a sprinkle of garlic. Steam the broccoli, add some lemon peel, and move on. Well, these days, with many of the vegetables we have in NY coming from far off parts, it is simply not possible to have vegetables of the quality you get "in season."

I was working yesterday with a pound of haricots verts. I bought them because, my on line grocery supplier, has started advising as to what vegetables they have on hand are the best in quality. These had four stars.

Well, ratings are relative, of course. I didn't really think they were that terrific, when I tasted a raw one, but if this is the best that you have, that's what you work with.

When you're confronted with vegetables like this, you need to think a bit "outside of the box." By all means, go ahead and boil them or steam them. But you have to add flavor back to them, that you've lost, given age, travel, handling, whatever. That's where twice cooking comes in.

I first learned this technique from Chinese cooking. It is not at all uncommon in this style of cooking to take something like green beans, and steam them first. Then, you toss them into hot fat. Since they are already tender, there is a magic that happens, as the oil "fries" a soft, wet vegetable. Carmelization happens, and you get a vegetable that isn't quite what you imagine of simple steamed greens, but a complexity of flavor that is caused by those chemical reactions.

I'm going to tell you how to do it with green beans, but you should try this with any FIRM green vegetable, like broccoli, asparagus, squash, and so forth. It's not so useful with leafy greens, but it DOES work.

Boil your vegetables in plenty of salted water, and cook them just short of where you would want them if you were serving them simply boiled. Drain them as well as you can. Then, get a big frying pan - one big enough to hold all of the vegetables in it. Put in a few tablespoons of a good oil - for me, that is almost always olive oil, but you can use what you like.

Before you start heating it up, however, look around at your other flavor components and ask yourself: what would taste good with this vegetable? Sun dried tomatoes? Yes, indeed. Olives? Uh huh. Lemon? Of course (what vegetable does NOT taste good with lemon?). Truffle paste? NOW we're getting fancy. But... my favorite for this type of prep is nuts, and I especially love pistachio nuts. Get about a quarter cup or a third of a cup of them, for a pound of veggies.

Now heat the oil, and add the veggies. They'll begin to sizzle. Here, you have a judgment call: the longer you let them cook like that, the more carmelized they will be, and the "darker" they will taste. I happen to prefer a lighter carmelization to a heavier one, but again, this is your call. You know that carmelization is happening when the sizzle begins to abate. When that happens, stir them and cook the sides that didn't hit the oil and the heat, and toss in your nuts. They will toast up a little at this point. Cook them for just about five more minutes.

This is really almost like jazz music again: I've just given you a theme: firm vegetable, boil and fry, add a flavor component. Now, it's up to you to improvise. My improv was beans with pistachio nuts. You do your own. Or follow mine. But have some fun. It's hard enough to cook with what we got during the winter, so let's enjoy ourselves, and make something really good.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

How a "recipe" develops, or Annalena cooks with chicken breasts

One of the things that I hope everyone develops over time, is an ability to work "without a net" in the kitchen. In other words, without recipes. Everyone does, but the ability to do that, and to produce something that you like, each and every time, is a difficult proposition. Let's face it: we are ALL taught, at some point, that we need "teaching" in a particular area in order to be good at it. And then the degree of teaching varies. Some of us take more of it than others. Others revolt and go on with little training.
I am reminded of a dinner that my friend Keith cooked for me last September. He had wanted to cook for Guy and I, and of course, had no idea what was in our refrigerator. Actually, neither did I . I had been on a vacation, and couldn't recall what was there.
When he came over, he found lamb sausage, greens, and pasta. He remembered how a sausage/beans/greens dish could be made in soup form, and "just" substituted pasta for the beans and the liquid. It was a wonderful, late summer dish. And making that substitution is not an immediate one. It comes with confidence (and, if I can take some pride of place, a bit of teaching from yours truly. ).

So, here's an example of how you "roll with the punches" so to speak. Guy and I have been eating a lot of red meat this week, including a lamb feast last night. Neither one of our systems can handle any really serious, heavy protein for tonight, so it was going to be boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The easy solution, which I had in mind, was to coat them in an egg wash, bread them, pan fry them, and serve them with some beautiful haricots verts, and some pasta.

Wait.... Is that REALLY a good idea? Well, yes it is. But Annalena being the sort she is, cannot leave things alone. So as I sit here I am l ooking at different things to do.

Yes, I have those chicken breasts in the fridge, pounded thin, and salted. And I also have cream, tomato sauce, mustard, sun dried tomatoes, dried mushrooms, and a whole bunch of other condiments. I also have lemons , white wine, garlic, and the usual things that a kitchen should have (You don't need to have all of these, but you should have some of them).

So, here's what I will do. ONE of these options. I will sear those chicken breasts at a very high temperature and very quickly, in a mix of vegetable oil and butter. I will NOT cook them all the way through, and here's why. I'm gonna make a sauce.

One of the things that separates cream from other dairy products, apart from its wonderful flavor, is the fact that it does not "break," i.e, separate, when it's heated. So it's an idea vehicle for sauces. I'll remove the chicken from the pan, and then pour in some cream. How much? Who knows. And sometime between now and dinner, I'll decide whether it's going to be sundried tomatoes, or mustard. I lean toward sundried tomatoes, because we had a mustard based crust on the lamb last night. But a mustard cream sauce on plain chicken is a thing of glory. All you have to do in either case is have your cream in that skillet, heating up. If you use the mustard, a few squirts into the cream, until you get the flavor you like , is all you need. For the tomatoes, taste them. They may be very salty, even if they are "sottolio," or "in oil." If they are, soak them in water a bit to clear the salt. Then chop them up and add them to the cream.
Instant sauce. In less than five minutes.

In the alternative, get some white wine and a lemon. Pour half a cup or so of white wine into the pan OFF THE HEAT (remember the alcohol), and dissolve the browned bits. Then squeeze in the lemon and you're done.

Finally, the tomato sauce option. Well, what needs to be said about that? Heat up the tomato sauce. Period.

Whatever option, you then add the chicken, preferably cut into smaller pieces, but not necessarily and heat it through until it's cooked. It won't take long.

So, look at that. With just some staples in the house, you've taken a standard ingredient, a boneless , skinless, chicken breast, and you have, oh, I guess four different dishes. Change the vegetable, change the starch, change whether the chicken is sliced, or left in one piece, and you probably have more variations.

And the creative amongst you will realize you can certainly use turkey. You can use fish. You could probably do something with tofu as well. So, how many dishes do you have here? A whole lot.

Now, promise Annalena you'll cook some of them. I'll be very happy if you do.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Let's look at bread again

Way back when, when Annalena was somewhat younger, and somewhat less scarred than now, this blog started. The second essay was on baking bread and my adventures in learning how to do it, and why. And I never went back to yeast bread again. In over 300 entries, you've not seen anymore.

Well, people have been asking "why are you writing less?" Ah, children, doesn't life have a funny way of getting in the way of things. You see that item about being scarred? Oh yes. These months have not been easy for Annalena. I would like to say that she is somewhat phoenixlike and will arise, more resplendent than ever, from the ashes. Undoubtedly, she will arise. More resplendent, is of course, a question to be considered.

But we digress. Back to bread. I have hesitated to write about making it, because bread seems to be one of the "deal breakers" for people. They are willing to try to cook savories, or even to bak sweets. Bread possesses an inherent ability to provoke anxiety. That is not without good reason. Think of all the historical associations with bread. People rioted for bread. Think of all the sayings, the prayers, etc, that invoke this most sacred of foods. Indeed, I think there is a certain fear that somehow, by making bad bread, we have "sinned".

Well, there is no need to fear that you will make bad bread. There are rules, and some breads will turn out better than others. But ultimately, it is not hard. You need a few ingredients, and time and patience. The last is, of course, for yours truly, the hardest one. And as a form of mental discipline to develop patience, I bake bread.

Or, more to the point, I bake EUROPEAN style breads. See, there are in fact two unique approaches to bread making. You may recall when I wrote about American biscotti and Italian biscotti, and the approaches variances. Both are valid, but both are different. So, too, with bread. For "American style" bread, you use a lot more yeast, and a lot more "stuff." Cheese, vegetables, all kinds of things go into these breads. They are richer, sweeter, and really sometimes start to cross the line into cake type products. European breads CAN be rich - think "panettone," which means "big bread," but at their core, most European style breads are austere, designed to be eaten with more savory foods. Having said that, I will also tell you that a simple slice of a well made European style bread can do just fine on itself.

Perhaps the key ingredient in European breads is what we will call a "starter," and here is where patience is necessary. A "starter" is the equivalent of yeast, but it's different. You make it before you make your bread, and it's got a minimal amount of yeast in it. You add flour and water, and let it sit for at least a day, until you get this lively, bubbling mass. That is what you will use, ultimately, to make your bread.

Using a starter has a few advantages. Traditionally, because it used so little yeast, you didn't have to buy what was an expensive, taxed product. You also could always have it around, because "starter" was ultimately a bit of unbaked dough from a prior batch of bread. The fact that it had sat out overnight, or more than overnight, led to it being called "sourdough," because it was, literally, dough that had gone "sour."

See how Annalena educates you gently? Sourdoughs have different qualities, different flavors. It depends on the environment in which they're raised. When you have an exposed bowl of fermenting flour and water, the beasties in the air cannot help but settle in. Good beasties make a tasty sour. Bad beasties, well... Fortunately, just about all of the critters of a microbe nature in the air ultimately have a good flavor. In the US, we are of course familiar with San Francisco sourdough. The Lactobacillus bacteria that flourish in the Bay Area add a tangy note, with a somewhat sly undertone of dairy flavor to the breads. The large amount of acid also makes a bread with a distinct texture.

DON'T try to replicate this flavor . You can buy San Francisco sourdough powders. They simply don't have it. I think that you really need the environment: the air, the sense of place, that kind of thing to make it work.

European sourdoughs are much more subtle in their flavor, which is not really surprising. Again, it is a difference in European versus American tastes . We're going to make a classic European sourdough today, and I ask you to try it. I think you will really enjoy it, and if you can relax enough - or learn to relax enough - to make it, you will be well rewarded.

The day before you want to bake your bread, make your starter. Here it comes. It's very easy. This is an Italian style starter. You combine 1/4 teaspoon of yeast, and then a cup of cold water. Then add 2.25 cups of unbleached white flour and stir this together. Then cover the bowl and put it aside, overnight, or as long as 24 hours.

This is going to give you about two cups of starter- enough to make four loaves of bread.

The day that you want to bake, take half of that starter and put it in a bowl. Add 2 cups of cold water and a teaspoon more of dry yeast. You are going to need, as well, 2.5 teaspoons of salt, and about 5.5 to 6 cups of flour. This can vary. The one I made used a mix of five cups of unbleached white flour, half a cup of rye flour and half a cup of semolina. I'm told that the small amount of rye flour is required in baguettes in France. Only the French would legislate bread, but more power to them.

In any event, get your flour together, and stir half of it into the water mix, and then add the salt. Then, start adding the rest of the flour. If you're using a mixer, as I do, you start with the paddle, and switch to the dough hook at this point. If you do it by hand, it is at this point that you dump it out of the bowl, onto the rest of the flour and start folding to incorporate flour. Using the mixer will get more flour into the stuff, by hand, not so much. Still, you should shoot for at least five cups to get incorporated. The mixer will take about 8 minutes, by hand , 15-20.

Put the kneaded dough into a bowl, cover it, and go away for 3 hours. (Told you you'll learn patience). You will be amazed at how much it rises, from so little yeast. That's because it's not so little yeast. Overnight, that quarter teaspoon of yeast has been doing the nasty in the bowl, and you've got lots of leavening agent there. So after three hours, punch that dough down and then form two, round loaves, or one big one. I prefer to do small ones so that I can share, but if you have a large brood and you can use it, by all means, do a big one. Put it on a paper lined baking sheet, cover it, and let it sit for another hour and a half. (Still learning patience here). At some point in the first half of that hour and a half, turn on your oven to 400.

After the second rise, you are going to have a big, beautiful loaf, ready for the oven. Be gentle. Bread at this point is somewhat fragile. If you make one big loaf, plan on about 45-50 minutes of baking. Two loaves will be done in 35-40.

When they come out of the oven, you will be amazed at how hard and crispy the crust is. That will soften a little, but it will still be a workout for your teeth. Get it off of the baking sheet to a rack so that moisture can go off of the bread in all directions.

Let this sit for a few hours to fully cool. When you use this bread, as you slice it, put the cut side down, either on a counter, or a plate or something. Whatever you do, don't put it in the fridge.

In cold weather, this can keep for about a week. Warmer more humid weather will mold it up eventually, but the absence of fat keeps it fairly free of mold.

What the lack of fat DOES do it make this bread more prone to go stale. "Stale" is a relative term. I like using stale bread, if it's not so stiff that it breaks when I slice it. And if it does go that far, well, that's fine because that's when you make croutons, something that everyone likes.

Go make some European style bread. You'll feel sophisticated, you'll eat well, and you'll probably find yourself feeling "closer to the earth" than you were before you did.

Monday, February 9, 2009

A new look at meatballs

Annalena is somewhat famous, or notorious, or well loved, or well liked, or all of the above, for her meatballs. Ah, and this is one of those things that, frankly Annalena both understands and does not. Yes, they are tasty. In fact, if I do say so myself (and I do), they are very tasty. But they are far from the best thing that I make. Yet, if you ask any of my friends who are not vegetarians for a list of their favorite things that I cook, you will find meatballs on that list, almost inevitably. So, as with red sauce, there is never a time that there aren't meatballs in the fridge.

And , as all obsessives are, I am obsessed with making the recipe for my meatballs better. Especially since, in my opinion, they are not in the top 10, and perhaps not even the top 20 things I make. So there is always a portion of my brain engaged in "meatball mania."

Some time ago, I wrote about how I had resurrected meatloaf, and made it for the first time in years. That meatloaf was GOOD. And I remember making some pretty awful meatloaves.

In many respects, meatloaf resembles meatballs. The spicing is different, but it is, at heart, ground meat, egg, some starchy binding ingredient, and spices. So when the meatloaf turned out so much better than I thought it would, and with the thoughts I have of my meatballs in my head, I began to think: "could this be adapted to meaballs?" The answer, after two forays into this, is yes.

You DO have to make some changes. For example, the spicing is very different in meatballs, as compared to meatloaf. And you dispense with the ketchup glaze, because you'll be cooking them in tomato sauce. The spicing change is the biggest one: all you will use is some Italian seasoning. And rather than the dry breadcrumbs I used to use with the meatballs, I now wet them, as I did with meatloaf. Here it comes.

Start with equal quantities of ground beef, pork and veal. (Let's not go over the veal issues again, shall we?). I make six pound batches of meatballs, and get about 65 out of it. You can cut this in half if you like, but you really shouldn't be thinking about less than 3 pounds at a time. Combine those meats, and get in there with your hands. They each have a different color and you need to combine them until they look uniform. Now, when doing this, be gentle. One of the key parts of meatball making is trying to keep things as loose as possible. After you've combined the meats, add one large egg for each three pounds of meat.

Let's go back for a minute. Let's get the breadcrumbs set up. For each 3 pound batch, use a third cup of dry , unflavored crumbs, and a good generous third of a cup of milk. Mix that in a bowl, and let it sit. The bread will absorb the milk. If it absorbs it all and looks dry, add some more. You want something that looks like thick oatmeal.

Now, add those soggy crumbs to the meat and egg mixture. Mix it all together. It's going to feel slightly wet. Add your dry spices as well as salt. I like to use over a tablespoon of each. You don't have to, but in order to tell if you've added enough of either, you do have to taste. If you have a "thing" about tasting raw meat, get over it. You eat sushi, don't you? And you don't need to taste a big piece of it. Just a small bit. Maybe half a teaspoon until you get the seasoning right.

Now, GENTLY roll these guys into balls. Mine are about the size of ping pong balls. If you are heavy handed, as I am, be as delicate as you can. If , on the other hand, you're one of those hateful people who can roll out a piecrust with three easy little flicks of the rolling pin without breaking a sweat, go make pie and leave the meatball makers alone. No, seriously, you folks who are heavy handed know who you are. What you're trying to do is avoid compacting the meat, because you're going to put these into sauce, and you want the sauce to penetrate. After you've rolled them, drop the meatballs into a big pot of simmering tomato sauce. I usually can do about 20 -24 of them at a time in my six quart Le Creuset, with two quarts of sauce in it. Keep the heat low and let them cook for about 15 minutes. Then, get a slotted spoon and pull em out. Let the tomato sauce drip off. Try to remember how many of them you put in, and get them all out. You WILL lose some meat to the sauce, which is not a bad thing, just as you are losing some sauce to the meatballs. Continue in this way until you've cooked all of the meat.

Store these fellas in plastic containers, covered with a big ladle of the red sauce. They freeze very well, and, unlike hamsters, which do not freeze well, they make wonderful little gift packages to your culinarily impaired friends, or anyone you're trying to seduce with your amazing abilities in the ... kitchen.

I'm serious about t his. You will get more "LOVE" from a potful of tasty meatballs, then just about anything else you make. I have a really good friend who loves my meatballs, and loves my ice creams. I would NEVER make him choose one over the other, but if I DID, I am CERTAIN he would pick the meatballs.

You know who you are, boy wonder... am I right?

Cleaning out the freezer: fava bean soup

So, last week, it was pointed out to me that I'm not w riting as much as I used to. Of course, my saying that's true is kinda redundant, isn't it? Fact is, when you cook and eat seasonally, once you go through one season, you sort of repeat yourself. I mean, if you like roasted jerusalem artichokes, and you eat them in season, unless you have a new "WOW" approach to them, you'll repeat your recipe. Nuthin wrong with that as a matter of cooking. There IS something wrong with repeating the text of that recipe, over and over and over again. So, that's the reason for my absence: if I don't have something new to give you, why do you want to hear about the nineteenth time I made meatballs (Actually, I have a new meatball recipe to give you. Patience. But here's a hint. If you go find the meatLOAF recipe), you're on your way.

Going back to eating seasonally, it is about this time of year THAT I GET BLOODY TIRED OF IT. This is when I start saying that if I eat one more tuber, one more beet salad, one more fried parsnip, I will positively lose it. Somewhere around mid March, you will see me looking, enviously, at Peruvian asparagus and wondering "How bad could it be?" Yes, Annalena admits her weaknesses. Usually, I can get through them, but sometimes, well, no.

Thank God for freezers. One of the lessons we learned from our predecessors is to "put food by" for when there isn't any. Now, of course, we are in an age of surfeit, where none of us really have a situation where there is no food (I speak generally here, fully aware of economics of food and those who don't get any , or don't get enough). But there are times when "what's readily available," just doesn't work. I am fully aware of that, and I know enough about putting food by that I freeze the things we like that will stand freezing. And when we get to mid February, with April and the first fresh things really not that far away, it's time to start using them.
In the realm of vegetables, the aforementioned asparagus do not freeze well. Forget it. In fact, there aren't that many that do. Industrially frozen spinach is, of course, available and a horror. So is broccoli and, for that matter, asparagus. Avoid them. Peas are good, freezing them yourself is better. So, too, with corn. Shell beans freeze well. And so do fava beans, and that's where we turn now.

Fava beans are a vegetable which I've written about before as being a test: you have to like them a LOT, because they are a LOT of work. They come in these big, soft pods that are completely unusable for anything but compost. And the beans themselves have a shell on them that is frequently inedible and has to be peeled off. One way to do it is to drop them in boiling water, for a minute or two, and then ice water. Then pop them out. BUT.... I do it by freezing them, thawing them, and then popping them out of the thawed beans. This works really well, and I learned that the great Paula Wolfert does this too. If she does it, how bad can it be?

Over the summer, I froze over five pounds of fava beans. And they are sitting there in the freezer, staring at me reproachfully, because if I don't use them now, comes the spring, they will be neglected. So, out came two pounds for soup.

I am told that if you live near a Middle Eastern or Greek neighborhood, you can buy frozen or canned peeled fava beans. If you have access to this, by all means, use them. If not, do what I do and freeze them. Then thaw them and pop them out of the shells. Yield wise, you will not get many. A heart two pounds of fava beans is going to yield about 2 heaping cups of useful vegetable. This, however, is the hardest work you're going to do in making what is a really great soup that will remind you of spring.

You'll need a vegetable "mirepoix," so let's review: mirepoix is two parts onion, to one part carrot, to one part celery. With fava beans, which work so well with garlic, add three nice sized, peeled cloves to that mixture and either chop em fine, or as I do, use your food processor. As Madonna said "that's what it's for."

Since favas are really a Meditteranean thing, use olive oil for this soup. Slick a pot with good olive oil, and then add that mirepoix to it. Add a big teaspoon of salt and stir it up. If you happen to have some rosemary or thyme around, feel free to add a little. Thyme is better if you have both. When you see the water going off, then add two quarts of liquid. Now, here you have a dilemma. I like chicken stock, and I dilute it, half and half , with water, for this soup. If you are going completely vegetarian, I would suggest using just water, and perhaps the "savior" of vegetable soups everywhere, the rind of a parmesan cheese piece. Commercial vegetable stocks, in my opinion, are just vile. Or, you could do a quick stock by boiling a carrot, a peeled onion cut in quaraters and a few stalks of celery in two quarts of water, with salt, for fifteen minutes. It's really your call.

Once y ou add your liquid, add your beans. Lower the heat and simmer for about twenty minutes. The beans will not take that long to soften, but you DO need that time, because they are very dense.

While this is happening, if you want a more substantial soup, cook about a cup of small dry pasta in a separate pot. I used orzo because I had a box I needed to finish. Stelline, tubettini, quadratini, or any soup pasta (ask your Italian grocer), will know what you need. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and put it in lots of cold water, to cut the cooking. Otherwise, you won't have soup, you'll have "sop," because the pasta will soak up all of the broth.

DONE. Now, if you want to present this as a full, but light Mediterranean meal, perhaps some bread and cheese will be enough, and a salad of fennel with some blood oranges.

Cooking a meal like this is really the essence of simplicity, and it teaches you: plan. The favas will be in seaons soon, and the work you put in , in June, will reward you in February when you are so tired of celery root (although I'm not.. yet), that you just can't look at that gnarly beast for a while.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Cooking with Jeremy: Halibut and orange salsa

Well, yes, I've been away, again. No excuses other than the standard one: life got in the way. When Annalena loses four pounds in a week, there is only one reason: stress. Ah, yes, that magical ingredient that we all hate and all love: stress. Yours truly could have used less of it as of late, but "it is what it is," as one is wont to say.
But I'm back. As resilient as an Ailanthus tree maybe (go and read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. You'll get it. I don't care what anyone says, it's not a children's book). Perhaps battered, definitely tired, but still standing.

Last night, I stood in the kitchen with one of the people who I don't spend enough time with or acknowledge: Jeremy. He's another one of the lads who has convinced me that my original position of not trusting anyone under the age of 30, was wrong, and that Anna Madrigal's advice "You don't have to keep up, you just have to keep open," is spot on. Jeremy and I met at a chorus rehearsal. I was there to make an announcement that should have been made a few days earlier, but wasn't. So, it was happenstance that I was there. As was the fact that it was a week when Jeremy, who loves to bake, was doing bakesale duty. Now, since yours truly was the Betty Crocker of bakesales for years, I don't miss a chance to give sass or grief. Jeremy took it all in, and gave it back. That is all Annalena needs to say "this one is a keeper." And he is. Last night, I got to know him a whole lot better. Yup, this here boy is a keeper Ma. For a lot of reasons. And if any of you single guy readers out there are interested in meeting a really charming young man with a lot of smarts and wit... YOU DAMN WELL BETTER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR HIM.

Ok, having said that, what did we cook? Jeremy is on a path that I have to respect: he's going vegetarian, because of his overall world view. He's not there yet, and eats fish as his source of animal protein, on doctor's orders. Whether the doctor's orders are valid or not, fish it is. Guy and I usually eat fish on Tuesdays anyway, so the timing was perfect.

So, too, was the appearance of a PERFECT recipe in a cooking magazine: the halibut above. I had planned to make it with a local white fish similar to halibut, like cod, or pollak or something like that. But the best laid plans of mice, men and Annalena sometimes go astray. Bad weather kept my fishermen from the farmers market, so I had to go to "plan B."

What IS plan B? Well, when you can't get local, think about what you know in terms of sustainability. The recipe DID call for halibut. There are two types of this fish: atlantic, which is endangered, and pacific, which has been properly harvested, and is not. So, although the recipe only specified "halibut," pacific is what is was going to be.

This is a very, V ERY easy recipe to make. I suggest strongly that you use a nonstick pan, and that you have your oven at the requisite 425 temperature before you start. Also, this is going to cook REALLY fast, so do the non fish stuff first. That's the making of this incredible salsa.

You start by juicing enough oranges to get 3/4 of a cup. I can't tell you how many that will be: I needed 2, plus their pulp (use the pulp, for heaven's sake. It's good for you). When you have that juice, pour it into a small sauce pan, and at medium heat, start reducing it to 1/4 cup. You don't have to be as precise as a gymnastics judge here, but DO eyeball it. You'll see when it goes down far enough. Get it off the heat.

Now, use some of winter's wonderful bounty: blood oranges. Yes, yes, YES!!!! One of the things I love about blood oranges is that, while they all have that red, ruddy color about them, the amount of pigmen varies from orange to orange, so you don't know what you're going to get. You're going to want three of them, that you peel. The way I peel them is to cut horizontally at the top and bottom, and then run my knife down the side, taking off the peel. I then cut the fruit into rough chunks and put it in a bowl, with the reduced juice, about a hefty teaspoon of salt, and then two chopped jalapeno peppers, without the seeds. You can cut these out completely and use something like cilantro, or you can add more, or you can add both. It's up to you. My lovely Guy does not much care for cilantro, so I left it out. Let your tongue guide you here (as it always should with cooking).

Get a big nonstick pan ready and pour a few tablespoons of vegetable oil into it. While its heating up, pat your fish dry, and salt and pepper it. Watch the oil. As oil heats, you can see a "ripple" form across it. That's how hot you want the oil for cooking. Take your fish - try to get pieces that are 6-8 ounces in size, with some skin on them. Put them, skin side down in the oil. If it's hot enough, it will start sizzling immediately. After two minutes or so, turn the fish with a spatula, and then put the whole pan into the oven for 5 minutes.

You are now done. Remove the fish to paper towels, let it drain, and then plate it with a big spoon of the salsa underneath and on top.

We ate this with fregola pasta, and broccoli rabb with garlic and olive oil, plus a great salad of fennel and endive. A great, healthy, light winter meal.

Now, this is a long entry but go back and read that recipe. Don't you think you could put this on the table in less than thirty minutes?

So what are you waiting for???