Okay, here it is: cabernet sauvignon blackberry sorbet

Boy is this sentence going to sound pretentious: cooking is an art of accretion. Now, I can see a few faces crinkling up and saying "WHA?" I know, I know, but it's the best I can do, and you already got two recipes today, so calm down y'all.

This is what I mean by that: if you cook, you sort of collect recipes and ideas, and then one day : BOOM. You come up with your own dish. Sometimes it's ok. Sometimes it's not successful, and sometimes, well.... you hit the home run.

This recipe is one such dish, and Annalena shall explain what she means by accretion. If you look back to twi weeks ago, you will see a recipe for rose' raspberry sorbet. Annalena found this recipe by chance, when looking for another one, in David Lebovitz' wonderful book on ice cream. It's a winner.

Now, jump forward a week: Annalena is in a Sicilian restaurant ( a new find), tasting the Guyman's dessert, which includes "cabernet sauvignon blackberry sorbet." This is NOT a Sicilian dessert. Perhaps it is "neo" Sicilian, but whatever it is, it was downright tasty. Wheels began to turn in Annalena's head.

Take another bit of culinary information from years ago: Annalena is eating dinner at "Foreign Cinema" in San Francisco, and is eating a bowl of blackberries for dessert. There is an unusual flavor there, that she recognizes. She goes to the cook and asks "did you put rose geranium leaves in the berries." Said cook stops, eyes widen and there's a big smile. 'WOW. You're the first one to get it right."

Rose geraniums are all over Northern California cooking, as I have said before, in talking about rose geranium pound cake. That rosy flavor matches well with blackberries (in fact, I THINK, but am not sure, that roses and blackberries are somewhat related, botanically. You can get a nasty scratch from blackberry brambles the way you can from roses, that's for sure). In any event, it's a good match. So, Annalena began thinking: what about the leaves in a sorbet? Hell, the worst that could happen is that it's not so good, and while blackberries are not cheap, they are at their cheapest right now, at peak season, and they are GOOD. We have bottles of cabernet sauvignon that we will not drink, but is too good to throw away. And my new rose geranium plant is leafing away in our extra bedroom. The only issue: enough to taste, but not enough to overpower the other flavors. Well, remember the "rule" in cooking: you can add, but you can't take away. So, Annalena decided to start with two leaves. It turned out to be the right amount.

Here comes the recipe. I will bet that if I ask for a show of hands, no one will say they have a rose geranium plant. GET ONE. They will revolutionize your cooking, and you will feel like an old fashioned gal, using something that was used in colonial America. If you really are not up to shopping for one, make the sorbet anyway, it'll be good, but not as unique.

The recipe pretty much follows the raspberry rose' sorbet recipe. For a quart, you need two cups of cabernet sauvignon, 2/3 cup of sugar, and 3 clam shells of blackberries. You heat the wine with the sugar until the sugar melts, and then add the blackberries, off the heat. When the mixture cools down, put the rose geranium leaves in, and then puree the stuff in a blender.

Blackberries have really big seeds, so I decided to filter this one. It was the right choice. I still had about a quart of sorbet base. It's heady, sweet, and with a really complex flavor.

I would imagine that, if you want that "extra note" and don't have the rose geranium, you might get a nice flavor with lemon verbena, or maybe a mint. The brave amongst you might try lemon thyme. Who knows? Do your experiments, and report back to Professor Annalena. She wants to know.

Yet ANOTHER salad with fruit: watermelon, purslane and ricotta salata

This has been the year that Annalena discovered purslane. It's been in the farmers markets for some time, and her usual approach has been to buy some, put it in the fridge, forget about it, and then throw out a muck bag four weeks later saying "oh CRAP. That was the purslane."

During all this time, she was eating salad after salad of it at restaurants, and always thinking there's some secret to making this stuff, because I have no business using it.

As with many things in her life, the key that turned for Annalena and purslane came from an unexpected source. This time, it was her chef friend Sue Torres, who put down a post that said something along the lines of "if I don't stop eating the organic purslane I'm going to have to take it off the menu tonight."

AH, thought the Italian which. "She's eating it raw." As Annalena had started her seasaon of buying purslane to throw it out four weeks later, she went into the kitchen, pulled out a stalk and bit into it.

It was good. It was tender. Just a bit acid, and very refreshing. So... she had convinced herself that all these folks were putting in tremendous effort in getting the purslane onto her plate, when all they were doing was..."

Annalena gets that way sometime. Well, with this epiphany, she began using the stuff in salads. For some people, they politely hid it, or pushed it out of the way (that means you big red Ken). Others embraced it. Well, embraced it metaphorically speaking. There was no love fest of hugging like at a men's retreat at the salad bowl. Maybe I should just say others enjoyed eating it. And the experimenting began.

Now we come to strand two in this braided story: it is now watermelon season in NY. The Guyman and I LIKE watermelon, we don't LOVE watermelon, so it's rarely in the house. A slice here and there is nice, but let's face it. If you're two people, unless you are willing to take a chance and buy the precut stuff, a watermelon is too big a commitment.

Well, agriculture got there first. You can buy mini watermelons, with cute and ridiculous names like "Sugar baby. " You can buy them in red, yellow and now, I believe, orange, seeded or unseeded. Just know this: you will NEVER know, from looking at the melon, whether it is seeded or not, and what color the flesh will be. Anyone who tells you they can tell is lying. If you realize, however, that it all really tastes the same, you're ok.

Actually, the way they CAN tell is if they grow the critters separately, and keep them separate all the way to the market. There are some farmers who have that organizational streak and can do it, but if you buy what you think is a yellow watermelon and it turns out to be red, do not do a designer hissy fit. Just eat it.

Ok, to the salad. Remember when I wrote about the spring of strawberry arugula salads in San Francisco? Well right now, NYC seems to be in the throes of a watermelon salad craze. I have seen it on the last four restaurant menus I have seen. This is somewhat unusual in NY restaurants, but you know, go with it. And Annalena has, and she has come up with this take on a salad.

This fed the two of us lavishly, it probably better serves four. You need half of one of those mini melons. Peel it (I used the same peeler I use to peel carrots and potatoes), and then cut it into bite sized chunks. Add it to your salad bowl, together with about a third of a pound of purslane, cut or broken into manageable lengths (some purslane can be a foot long. That is NOT manageable). Now add two diced, kirby cucumbers, and... the final touch and a necessary one, about a thir of a pound of crumbled ricotta salata cheese. Toss this all together and make a dressing of half balsamic vinegar, half champagne vinegar, salt, and olive oil. Dress the mix and serve it forth.

This was an experiment, and we're going to have it again.

Variations? Well, yes, of course. Feta would be good here, maybe even beter, with its sharpness. Maybe aged goat cheese too. You could leave out the cucumbers, and put in something else crunchy. Maybe cabbage, or celery? Don't have purslane? Hmmm. You could use whatever green you have, but try to find the purslane, if you can. Among other things, this is one of the "invasive species" we are now all supposed to embrace (I used that word twice in this entry, didn't I?) to try to control it from taking over the planet.

KEN THAT MEANS YOU. If you want to ensure the survival of your precious beets in the future, EAT YOUR PURSLANE.

Learning a canonical dish: eggplant tian

Annalena loves eggplant, but... well, she realized a few weeks ago that her acquaintance with this vegetable was somewhat limited. She is proud of her eggplant parmagiana, and has found few caponatas that compare to hers. Also, a bowl of baba ghanouj is always welcome, but she feels that that is more about the tahini than the eggplant. Fried eggplant slices? Well, yes, thank you very much.Ratatatatatouille (and not the mouse). yes. And then.... As Hamlet said 'the rest is silence."

Something needed to be done about this, and that is why you have the wonderful potato eggplant stew of last week. And we pressed on.

For years, Annalena has heard of a classic, southern French dish called a "tian." Like "clafouti," this is probably a dialectical word that has now become "French." Most times Annalena heard of it, it involved eggplant. So, she set out to find a recipe, thinking how hard could this be?

It was like the search for a cassoulet recipe. I think I found about a dozen of them, all different. Also, it seems that some cooks don't want to call it a "tian," and call it a gratin, which it certainly is NOT (no cheese in this, if you make it classically). So, after much hunting and searching, and watching a video (more on that below), Annalena found her tian recipe. It is presented here, but with the note that given what is out there, you can do this many different ways. I shall try to summarize some of them for you as we go along, but it is up to you.

Essentially, the required elements for a tian are eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil, and fresh herbs. It is a baked casserole, using slices of the relevant vegetables. Always, these include the tomatoes and the eggplant. Sometimes, the onions are sliced, and sometimes, zucchini is also used. Mine uses just the eggplant and tomatoes. You need about equal amounts of these: let's say 2.5 pounds of each. For your eggplants, try to get smaller ones, because you are going to be doing overlapping slices, with the tomatoes, and you don't want slices much bigger than a tomato slice. If you want, you can also use the onions, as indicated, in sliced form. Then you will need equal amounts of all three and, if using zucchini, the four.

For my version, slice the eggplant and the tomatoes thickly, but do not skin the eggplant. You do have to cook it beforehand, and here's where another variation comes in. Many recipes call for you to either bake it or broil it. Annalena fried hers in a little oil, after salting it. Do know that eggplant is the sponge of the vegetable world, so there's a challenging balance of putting in enough oil to cook it, but not too little. Interestingly, if there is too little oil, eggplant will suck it up. If you use plenty, it will not. Anyway, fry the slices in oil that is really hot, for about two minutes on a side. You just want some color. Put them aside while you do the next step.

In some recipes, including the video where onion slices were cooked just like the eggplant, the cook rubbed ONE MEASLY CLOVE of garlic over the baking dish. Annalena had none of this. Other versions chop the onion and garlic together, and saute' them to softness. That is what I did. Two large onions, chopped with no regard to surgical precision, and four cloves of finely chopped garlic. You can use the olive oil from the eggplant, and, since the order of cooking, doesn't matter, you can also cook the onions first, and the use that oil for the eggplant. In either case, you are probably going to need to augment what's in the pan, when you get to the second vegetable.

Cook the onions and garlic with some salt and a few sprigs of thyme (my choice. You could use other herbs, or leave them out. Put the sauteed onion mix on the bottom of a 9x13 inch non metallic baking dish . Now, get those eggplants and tomatoes and have some fun: lay them out in rows, overlapping about half to 2/3 of the first slice with the second one, and so on and so forth. Alternate eggplant and tomato, until you fill the pan. I put some more fresh herbs on top of this (more thyme and some basil). Some would have you add more olive oil, but I don't think this is necessary. Cover the baking dish with foil, put it in a preheated oven at 375 for 45 minutes, and then take off the foil and bake for another 15.

This may look very watery when it comes out of the oven. Patience. It will "congeal" very nicely.

Now, if you want to "gratinize" this, then add some cheese and pop it under the broiler. There are other versions which add a custard, like a saffron custard to it, and bake some more. To Annalena's taste, this is about the vegetables, so I will leave it as it is.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Not a whole lot of work, and very tasty.

And those of you waiting for the cabernet sauvignon sorbet, will just have to wait a bit longer...

Three less than common vegetables: radicchio, dragon tongue beans, and amaranth greens

Annalena loves it when she takes a walk through the farmers market, and finds something new, or "sort of" new. It gives her a chance to talk to the farmers, learn something new, and perhaps come up with new culinary ideas. If you see something at the market that you don't know, ask, bring some home, and cook with it. It's a pleasure that you shouldn't be denying yourself, and if you wait, you may not get the chance for another year, if at all.

And if you don't know what to do with the ingredient, think about similar ingredients, or get on the web. That's what today is all about: 3 vegetables that you may not know (Annalena did not know the fresh dragon tongue beans), and how to address them.

The beans first. One of my favorite farmers is "Dave." I don't know him by any other name. He's authentic, and that's the highest praise Annalena can pay to someone. He has a small farm, I only see him on Saturdays, and I make it a point to stop there and buy "something." IF he will let me buy something. See, Dave is one of the folks we feed, and he often will not take money. That's how things work at these markets you know.

Anyway, last week, he had fresh dragon tongue beans. Annalena knew them from their dried form, but had never seen them fresh.
I think they are named as they are, because the mottling on the pods, which are brown, with deeper brown "mottles," look a lot like lizard tongues. But who knows? When I held one between my fingers, I could tell that they were a little bit tougher than green beans, but the pods were certainly edible. A check on the internet when I came back home proved this out. Well, Dave did not know them in dried form, so we both learned something (Of course, Nevia, the goddess of vegetables, knew them).
I knew that I would be cooking them in the way I cook Roma beans - those big, flat green beans you see sometime. They would need a bit more time than regular green beans, but not nearly the time that a dried bean would take. And that proved to be correct. Here's how they were done: simply, but SO good: take a pound of fresh beans (and you can get other varieties besides dragon tongue: trust your senses, and ASK YOUR FARMER), and put them into about an inch of salted, boiling water. Let them cook until they feel done, to your touch (we all have different approaches to what is a "cooked" bean. It's your call). While that's happening, chop up about four cloves of garlic, real fine, and if you have some fresh basil, get a few leaves of that, too. When the beans are done, drain them, and in the pot with the heat off (the heat from the pot is sufficient), add the garlic, the basil, and about four tablespoons of your best olive oil.
These were terrific the first night, and even better as a left over. Lest I forget, the beans lose the mottling in cooking, and cook to this gorgeous ecru color. Quite pretty on the plate.

Now, to amaranth. You've seen amaranth grain, and you've probably seen the big, heavy red flower heads. If you bring the flowers home, you'd best put a big sheet of paper underneath the vase, because they will start dropping seeds, and if you walk around barefoot, like Annalena does, your tootsies will be very angry at you after a while. The greens for amaranth, are beautiful. The leaves are heart shaped, and have a sort of rosy center that explodes out over the leaf. Do a google on the word, and you'll see what I mean.
I brought home a couple of bunches of the stuff, and noticed that the stems were tougher than say, spinach, but not as tough as something like chard. What that means to me, as a cook, is that I use the stems, but I'm going to need to adapt my cooking, and do a classic sear/braise. Here's what this means: clean off any part of the plant that looks and feels too tough to eat, and if you have any doubts, well.. test it. I'm serious about that. If you are wondering with a green, take a stem, put it between your teeth. If you're going to have to act like a cross between a beaver and an elephant to eat it, the stem is too tough. Many greens that have stems that are edible, do have portions that are not. Think broccoli raab, for example.
Ok, having determined and gotten rid of what is not edible, put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a big pan, and when it's hot, add your greens. The leaves will cook down almost immediately, but the stems....
Well, to fix that, now put a quarter cup of water into the pan, cover it, and lower the heat to medium. The leaves will be ok, and the stems will cook to the point where they're plenty edible. This is a strong tasting green, so I finished them with sesame oil. You should pick the flavoring you like.

Now, to radicchio. You are probably thinking something along the lines of "get real, this is NOT an unusual vegetable". Well, it is if you think outside of the salad bowl, and that's what we're going to do here.
I have commented before, and if you've tasted it, you know whereof I speak, of the surprising bitterness of radicchio. That bitterness disappears, and becomes a sweetness, if you cook it. You can grill it if you have an outdoor grill, but for those of us who don't....
Quarter your heads of radicchio, and then get them, cut side down, into a pan which has a few tablespoons of olive oil in it. Don't add garlic here, unless you want to. The vegetable will lose its vibrant purple color and become a little brown, which is fine. At the very end of the cooking , step back and add a few tablespoons of regular balsamic vinegar (not the expensive stuff) or, if you have it, blueberry gastrique (go back and look at the entry on that). Or, anything that has a sweet/sour combination that you have in the house. Honey with lime juice might work, for example, or if you have that bottle of fig vinegar that someone gave you at Xmas that you don't know what to do with.

This is wonderful with some grilled chops, or even on its own over some pasta, with some cheese added on top.

Spread your wings a little. Don't fall into a farmers market rut. You'll make some good friends along the way, as you ask the farmers "what do I do with..."

Annalena diversifies: Eggplant and Potato Stew

As a good Italian woman, Annalena loves her eggplant. This summer, though, she became aware of something: she was sticking to the same, three recipes, over and over for this vegetable: her eggplant parmagiana (which is a very popular item on this blog), caponata (which is not), and baba ghanouj (which isn't even here). For a recipe about which Michael Franks once sang "my baby cooks her eggplant about 47 ways/sometimes I even eat it cold with mayonnaise," this is pretty sorry statistics.

No, I am NOT going to advocate eating eggplant with mayonnaise, although a cold fried eggplant sandwich with mayonnaise is a good thing.

Anyway, when looking for recipes for vegetables, Annalena checks her trove of cookbooks. Her "go to" books let her down this time, so she went a bit deeper and found a trove of recipes in the cookbooks that come out of "Greens" restaurant, in San Francisco.

If you are in the city by the bay and you have opportunity, go to Greens. Go for lunch, or go for dinner. The view is unspeakably gorgeous. The location is quintessentially San Francisco, and the food will make you forget any bad memories you have had of vegetarian food.

This dish has notes of Mexican cooking in it (from the cumin and green sauce), and India (from the tomatoes and ginger in combination), but ultimately, it says CALIFORNIA CUISINE. You'll see what I mean as we go through it.

As Lidia would say "first, let's address the eggplant." You can get a scazillion different varieties of eggplants at your farmers market. For this recipe, you want the big, plump Italian ones. One cooking teacher said "a good eggplant should make you think of a woman in a dress, where you wonder how she fit into it."

Yes, indeed. Plump, firm, no wrinkles. Get big ones, about a pound each, maybe a little more. If you can get a 2 pound critter, you probably shouldn't. It will be very, very seedy. Purple or striped, or white, doesn't much matter. You will also need about a pound and a half of potatoes. Again, go for larger ones. I had three potatoes, and if you don't have a pound and a half, don't worry. The original recipe called for russets, but you're going to be eating the skins here, so I stuck to my favorite yukon golds.

Get four cloves of garlic, peel it, and slice it. Make cuts all around the eggplant, and stud it with the garlic, just like a leg of lamb. This is not the easiest thing in the world to do, let me warn you ahead of time. Then, put the eggplants and the potatoes on a baking sheet, and get them into a 375 oven for about an hour. You want the eggplant to shrivel up, and the potatoes to get soft, but still firm. A knife into the biggest one should give you resistance.

While the veggies are baking, get your other ingredients together. You'll need a bay leaf, and a teaspoon of each of ground cumin, and whole cumin seeds. The whole cumin is a garnish, so if you don't have it, don't sweat. Don't omit the ground stuff. You will also want to chop a large onion into squares. No surgical precision necessary. Grate a tablespoon of fresh ginger (don't leave this out), and then chop up about a pound's worth of tomatoes, any kind. You are also going to want, for later, about half a cup of water, a half cup of some kind of dairy (creme fraiche, yogurt, buttermilk), and either cilantro or some kind of green sauce.

When the vegetables are finished baking, they will be very, VERY hot. Leave them alone to cool, and don't think it's going to happen quickly. You will probably need about an hour or so until you can handle them (so as you can see, this is a make ahead kind of dish). When they are in fact cool enough to handle, chop the potatoes into big cubes. Scrape the pulp from the eggplant, and combine them. I did this the night before, and did all the other veggie prep the day of dinner.

Now, when you're ready to cook, put about four tablespoons of vegetable oil (you'll be tempted, but don't use olive oil) into a pan. Add the bayleaf, and simmer until it crisps up, then get rid of it. Add the onion, the cumin and the ginger, and cook this stuff over a medium flame, until the onion softens. Now add the eggplant, the tomatoes, the potatoes, the ground cumin and your liquid. Turn the veggies, getting them nice and warm, or hot, as you see fit. You should now go for your salt and add it generously. These veggies take a LOT of salt. Taste to see if you like it. If you want things spicier, you can, of course doctor this with jalapenos, or anything you like, but do pay heed to the salt. And when you have it where you like it, take it off the heat, stir in the dairy and the cilantro or the sauce, and...VOILA.

The eggplant sort of becomes a sauce for the potatoes, and it's a velvety one, that tastes like it has more fat in it than it does. It is surprisingly mild for a dish that looks like it should be Indian or Mexican in nature.

As written, this was suggested to be served with rice.

Uh... Hmm. Potatoes and rice. Well, on the one hand, but on the other, no. Annalena served this with sauteed amaranth greens, and it reminded her of a story from Greens, with a difficult customer, and a substitution of couscous for greens, but that is left for another day.

Carry on, ragazzi. You will be seeing more "alternative" eggplant recipes as their season continues

Tossing around a salad: arugula, beets, avocado and... blueberries

I think there may be only one salad "recipe" on this blog. Way back when it started, I wrote something about how the simple green salad is far from simple, and how I thought that, in many ways, it is the hardest thing for a cook to make. I stand by that: you can almost always get away with food that isn't perfect, but a salad will stand up and announce its flaws in a loud, strident voice. It is easy to do it wrong.

The Guyman and I probably eat more salad than any other dish. We have one every night at dinner. I plan them, very much around what else we're eating: a richer salad if the dinner is lighter, a plainer one if it's rich. So, if we're having a steak, I'm not going to put out a salad with chunks of blue cheese and nuts in it. That salad will be all vegetables, maybe even nothing but "greens." On the other hand, if the meal centers around pasta in a red sauce with some cheese grated on it, the salad will be more involved. My salads almost, but not always, have greens in them, and then one, maybe two, other vegetable ingredients, and then "something extra," like nuts, or cheese. One thing that they never included, was fruit.

Until recently.

Two years ago, it seemed to be the spring of strawberries and arugula in San Francisco. I love eating in San Francisco, but the truth is, after the first four meals, you know what ingredients you're going to be eating, and the question is no longer "what kind of fish will they have," but "how are they going to cook the halibut/salmon/bass." That year, EVERY SINGLE RESTAURANT served a salad that involved arugula and strawberries. I have to say, it's a good combination. And I enjoyed it the first four times. After that, the game was "what other salads do they have?" I think the combination of the sweet fruit, with the slightly bitter greens, was what I enjoyed... the first four times. I had never thought of combining fruit with a salad before, although I know there are things out there like waldorf salad, with its apples, and salads with pear and nuts and cheese in them. They just have not been in my mindframe.

Just last weekend, the Guyman and I had dinner at a restaurant we literally "discovered" one night after the ballet. It was late, we were hungry, and this place was opened. It used to be a diner, and I had a feeling that's what we were going to be eating: diner food.

Nope. The restaurant, called Eolo (the Sicilian form of "Aeolus," who is supposed to have lived on Sicily), is a truly Sicilian restaurant. We hit it off with the folks that night, and had a somewhat simple meal. We had one of our full dinners on Friday and one item on the menu was a salad based on celery, cucumbers, and strawberries.

Well, to be honest, this is "Siciliano nuovo." It is not a combination out of classical Sicilian cooking, but that's ok. I ordered it, tried it, and it was SO DAMN GOOD. And my salad based brain cells started thinking of fruit in salad.

So, last night, we were having fish for dinner, with a sauce based on nuts. My own way of cooking tells me not to repeat things like nuts in two courses, so nuts were not going in the salad. I had some baby arugula that was beginning to give me what my friend Nora calls "the stink eye," so that was going to be the basis of the salad. To my taste, arugula always goes well with beets, and we always have cooked beets in the house, usually in both yellow and red (in separate containers). Avocados were ripening on the sideboard, and there were the makings of the salad.

And then... the half container of blueberries. Not enough for lunch, but... and they were GOOD blueberries too, from Lisa, the queen of farmers market berries. I was using the golden beets, and the color combination just seemed to say: USE ME. And use them I did.

Let's just stop for a minute and review how to cook beets, because it's easy. Fill a non-iron baking dish with about a third of an inch of water. Put the beet roots, with a bit of stem on them, into the water. Tightly (and I mean TIGHTLY), cover the container with foil, and bake in a 350-400 degree oven for at least half an hour, for small beets, and much longer, for bigger ones. Test after half an hour to see if a fork pierces them. If it does, you're ready. If not, re-cover the pan, and bake longer.

Let them cool until they're easy to handle, and then run them under water, rubbing off the skin. It will come off easily, and then store the peeled beets for a week/two weeks.

SO our salad was a bed of baby arugula, golden beets sliced as big, round coins, and avocado sliced into thin slices.

Now, let me speak on avocados too and explain why they're here: Annalena is a seasonal, local cook; however, she breaks from that mode when there is a food that is not grown locally, and is at its prime. If she didn't, there would be no olive oil, no parmesan, no oranges, no pineapples, no coffee. So, the avocados were sliced and put onto the salad with the beets, and then the blueberries, just strewn over the top.

Then, the dressing. Ah, the dressing. Remember I said we were having fish? And you all remember Annalena's diatribe about dairy and fish? So our dressing was a dairy base. Champagne vinaigrette, first. One part. A sprinkle of salt. Then 1/4 part of dijon mustard. Then, two parts creme fraiche. Shaken up. Finally, three parts olive oil. Taste. Add more salt, and taste again.

And there you had it. A salad that will make you proud. Fruits, vegetables, all sorts of good things.

If you are afraid of salad, get over it. Lettuces are not especially good for you, but have some fun, put something in the salad that IS good for you, and have a good end of the meal experience. You may not even want dessert.

Meeting the challenge: striped bass

There are many fish recipes in this blog, but I doubt that there is one for striped bass, and there is a reason for that.
Annalena is terrified of cooking this fish. In some respects, that fear is irrational, but ultimately, I leave it to the experts to figure out when fear is and is not "rational." It's a sliding scale, isn't it, and to use the same word that is used in much more dire circumstances seems a bit extreme.
So call it what you want: I should be cooking thsi fish more, but I don't. This weekend, I decided to change that, and in so doing, I got closer to understanding what the fear is all about.
When we speak of fish, at least as far as I could see, we speak of three classes: the "white fishes," like flounder, cod, monkfish, and so on. they are flaky when cooked, and not at all like meat. Then we have the "red" fishes like tuna, swordfish and, dare I say it, shark. Those deep divers with muscles, vasculature, and so forth, of which you can honestly say you ate a "fish steak." (Annalena does not include salmon here, because she will not eat salmon on the East Coast). Finally, we have the oily fishes, like bluefish, mackerel, whiting, etc, which really need to be prepared, in Annalena's view, the day you catch it, grilled, and served with acid. I do not cook these fish very often, and do not much care for them.

When I addressed my striped bass tonight, I realized that the "issue" is that striped bass essentially straddles all categories. When you cook it, it looks like a white fish would look, BUT... it has a musculature that says red fish. And... there is a layer of fat between the skin and meat that says, and smells "oily fish."

So, what do you do? Perhaps you can understand my reluctance to cook it, even though I love eating it in restaurants.

One of the benefits of the Internet is that information gets put in front of you so fast that if, say, you have a piece of striped bass, it's 4 o'clock, and you need to start dinner at 6, you can come up with a recipe.

Just sayin'.. And it worked. And here's mine. And I have some pointers for making striped bass.

Here are your ingredients: a pound of fresh striped bass fillets. Also, butter, hazelnuts, and parsley, and the usual, pepper and salt. Oh, and some white wine.

Beginning to sound like an Annalena recipe, huh? Incidentally, the white wine is optional, but not really.

Now, a digression. People ask me all the time "How do you put those dishes together? Do you ever leave the kitchen?"

Well, of course I do, but... sometimes, I'm smart about my kitchen work. For example, for this recipe, I needed toasted hazelnuts. I had them. And why did I have them? Well, some few weeks ago, I had a recipe that called for toasted walnuts. They occupied 1/4 of my baking sheet. So I toasted the walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts, all on the same baking sheet. Try to think that way when you're cooking. And, if you didn't have hazelnuts, use almonds for this dish. Or pistachios. I do not think walnuts would work, but you might want to try.

Here we go. If you get your fish in a one pound piece, cut it into three or four pieces. Pat them dry and then sprinkle them a bit lavishly with salt and pepper. Get your nuts and put them in a bag, and crush 1/2 cup of them roughly. Put them aside. Get yourself a small piece of parsley and chop it. Put THAT aside as well.

Use a nonstick pan. ALWAYS use a nonstick pan with fish, and melt a healthy tablespoon of butter in it. When it's sizzling, put the fish in, skin side up, and cook them for 3 minutes. This is important. Keep an eye on the clock. When the three minutes are up, turn them. You won't be perfect here, and that's ok.

Now , here's where Annalena learned something. Her recipe said to cook the fish for another three minutes. After one minute, the fish began to give off the "here, kitty kitty " smell. You all know what I'm talking about. That's fat melting, and that means your fish is done. So, I took it off and put it on a plate. I then added the hazelnuts, and cooked them for about a minute. In went three tablespoons of butter, just melted into the nuts, and a medium slug of white wine, that immediately cooked off.

Pour this over your fish. Then, take your parsley, chop it, and put it over the nuts and you know what? You have dinner.

I've mentioned using almonds in place of the hazelnuts. I think you could use tarragon in place of the parsley, or frankly, most green herbs. I would avoid rosemary, and basil, as they are real strong.

We ate this with some dragon's tongue beans, a lovely new addition to the pantry which we will look at in due course. BUT... tomorrow, I'm going to talk about salads, something I almost never talk about. Specifically, we will look at fruit and vegetables, joined, in a salad.

A little mixing of culture: creme fraiche curry with cauliflower

Well, Annalena had a very uneventful weekend, notwithstanding the marriages that took place. Many years ago, when Annalena was a young law student, she proposed an article to her law review editor entitled "is there a right to same sex marriage?" Said editor laughed at Annalena and said "Here's the answer. No. Now write something about the Haitians," because the Haitian boat people were the current crisis in our time. Thirty years later, Annalena gets to say NYAHHH.

Ok, now I shall step off of my soapbox, and turn to recipes and cooking. And, today, we are going to look at something that you would not associate with summer cooking: cauliflower. You should.

Here is the deal, ragazzi. You know those big, beautiful, huge heads of cauliflower we get in the fall? Well, they only happen if the farmers go out and assiduously cut back the seedlings in their fields. For a large plant to grow, it needs room. And that means the surrounding, smaller ones, have to go. This principle has many applications. It's why we get squash blossoms to fry, and why we get Chinese baby corn (here, the farmer is taking items off of one plant, so that the remaining items can grow big and strong. In other cases, like peashoots, or the cauliflower mentioned above, the fields are "thinned" or gleaned. Now, as a farmer, you can compost them, or you can feed them to animals.

Or, you can invent "mini cauliflower" and so forth, and sell the minivegetables at a premium to consumers. Don't ever say that farmers are dumb.

When you buy the vegetables you associate with autumn in the summer, you will find that they have a very different flavor. The sulfurs of these cruciferous vegetables (like cabbage, and cauliflower), have not yet had a chance to develop, so the vegetables are sweeter. And, be honest. It's nice to be able to break up a routine with something that you like, but is officially "out of season," once in a while.

So, Annalena saw these wonderful baby yellow cauliflowers, and brought home a pound of them. For me, curry is a natural partner for cauliflower in the way tomatoes and eggplant go together. So, curry was on the menu, but I wanted something different.

ATtentive readers will recall my foray into Thai curry with coconut milk and curry paste. I wanted something similar, but not exactly, and that is how this dish was born.

Bottled curry paste is something that I use because, while I COULD make it, it is so time consuming that the difference in quality is just not worth it to me. I bring this up because the discussion point has come up now, and as I spoke quite strongly in favor of heirloom beans, I speak equally strongly in favor of these sauces. If you are inclined to make your own curry paste, by all means do so, let me know and if you want to sell me some, I will open my purse. For now, though, I use them.

I used green curry paste here, because I find it both fruity and spicy. Yellow curry would have worked, but I think red would have struck the wrong note. Try what you like, see how it works, and let us all know. Ultimately, the most important part of this recipe, is the cooking of the cauliflower.

If you don't have baby cauliflower, use the full sized monsters, and cut them into florets. That's about the size you're looking for, even with the baby ones. That will be one, maybe two cuts, or halving or quartering the babies. Whatever your cauliflower source, get them into rapidly boiling salted water, and cook them to "al dente." For vegetables, especially for cauliflower, this means you want them to be harder than you would like if you were eating them right out of the pot. Drain them, and get a grill pan, or frying pan good and hot, with a thin layer of vegetable oil on it.

When the oil is almost smoking, add the vegetables, cut side down. Be patient, and let them cook until they char. You can do this for another side, or all sides, of the vegetables if you like. While that's happening, get about a quarter cup of creme fraiche (more on this below), and a couple tablespoons of the curry paste and mix it together. Taste it. Is it too your liking? Not strong enough? Add more curry. Too strong? Add more creme fraiche. When you have it where you want it, put it in a bowl, toss in the vegetables, and toss them all around.

If you are a vegetarian, you have close to a complete meal, with a nice bowl of rice and perhaps some lentils. Or, as with us, you have a side dish to a plate of lamb. You will figure out how to serve it, now that you know how to make it, and make it you should.

On Creme fraiche: yes, Annalena does make this herself. Here's how you do it: get a pint of heavy cream, and make sure it's not ultrapasteurized. Mix it with two heaping tablespoons of yogurt, in a large jar. Shake it, and put it on a tabletop, unrefrigerated, for at least 48 hours. The longer you leave it out, the tarter it will be.

To me, this is worth the "effort," and the creme fraiche is superior. But if you don't want to do it, there are many reputable suppliers of good quality creme fraiche. Buy the best, and make yourself a little curry today.

The forgotten recipe: lemon verbena ice cream, and some thoughts on elitism

Annalena tries not to repeat herself in these blog entries. She succeeds most of the time, but not always. Today, after making a batch of lemon verbena ice cream, she checked to see if she had posted it and, to her surprise, she did not. Rather, back in 2008, in September, she wrote of a berry soup with lemon verbena ice cream and wrote "I shall not present the lemon verbena ice cream recipe here."

Good heavens, what was I thinking? You MUST have this recipe and I shall present it.

Even though some of you are going to deem it elitist. I am going to address this first.

Annalena's blog has come in for some criticism lately, which she feels is unfair. The underlying tone of it, is that the blog and the recipes are elitist. The reasons are somewhat odd, and I shall go into them, after some general remarks.

Those of you who feel this is an elitist blog, are right. If looking for the best food, cooking sustainably and seasonally, and being willing to spend more on certain foods than is usual makes one elitist, this is an elitist blog.

No one winces more than Annalena does when she pays more for antibiotic free, organic meat. But it is NOT about the fact that she is paying that price. She winces because, the mother of six, living on food stamps, SHOULD be able to give this food to her children. And she can't, because it's too expensive. The meat at the supermarket, treated heaven knows how, is 1/4 the price of the stuff Annalena buys.

There is something wrong there. In Annalena's mind, it is downright criminal, and our government plays along. Subsidies to larger farms make it possible for them to charge as little as they do. Go to Europe. See what food costs.
It is horrific to Annalena that, if you put up a greenhouse in Washington state, you are given a tax break, because you are making more food available at a bad time of year to people. If you do that in New York, your property is reassessed and your tax basis goes up as do the taxes you pay.

Meanwhile, children are eating junk food and soda for lunch because the vegetables are not available or too expensive? HUH?

But these are bigger issues. Let me approach the personal ones. I use heirloom beans. I use them because they are better, period. You can find them at a farmers market, or you can buy them via the internet. This blog, if you read its purpose, is about seasonality and the farmers market. Yes, you can choose to buy and use the standard store variety beans... or ricotta... or milk, and argue "after all, other people who know better use them." Well, Annalena has spoken to those people "who know better," and you know what? IF they had access to the stuff to which Annalena has access, they would use it. When they are told "well, it's a subway ride away," they shrug their shoulders and say "I'll go to the supermarket."

But Annalena is an elitist.

One of my recipes came in for criticism recently, because it called for cooking too much of an ingredient than was going to be used in the recipe and most cooks wouldn't want to do that.
Au contraire. It's called leftovers. Let me see a show of hands: who makes enough meatloaf for one meal? Who buys a Thanksgiving turkey just big enough to feed people without leftovers? And while there are pie pans available that will make enough pie for two (or one) serving, how many of you have those?

Do I make my point? On the issue of cost, again, let me see a show of hands: how many of you buy the fancy drinks at Starbucks? How much are they? 3/4 dollars? how many of you drink more than one of them a day?

Ok, s o you spent six bucks on coffee. Paying 4 bucks a pound for beans is too much? Well, if you filled a thermos with coffee from your home one day a week...

See what I mean?

I hope I have made my point. Criticism to a point is valid. Think about your criticism before you voice it though. Annalena bites back.

A recipe for homemade ice cream is probably elitist per se. Not everyone has an ice cream maker. As I have said before: buy one. They cost 40 dollars. How much was the last pair of shoes you didn't need, even if you got them on special. This recipe calls for lemon verbena. You won't find it at the grocery store. You will find it at the farmers market. Get on the train and go. Or, ask a cook at a restaurant. You can find it. If you have a garden... GROW IT. I regret not being able to do so. I wish I could. And when you make your own ice cream, such as this one, here is the list of ingredients: cream, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon verbena. Take a look at the label on even "all natural" ice cream. Do you ever wonder what "natural flavors" means? I do and I know. Move to organic ice cream. Taste it.

No, it is NOT as good as the other ones. So, yes, if eating well is elitism, call me an elitist. Buy me a button with a big "E" on it. And I will continue to eat well, cook well, and smile while I'm doing it.

To make this ice cream, you need 2 cups of heavy cream, a cup of milk, a cup of fresh lemon verbena leaves, packed loosely. You also need four egg yolks, and a cup of sugar. The cup of sugar may be too much for some, and cut back if you like.

Combine the milk, cream and lemon verbena in a pot. Bring the liquids just to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pot and leave it alone for half an hour. Come back and taste it. If it is tasting close to being as strong as you would like it, you're ready to continue. All you need do is add your sugar, and the egg yolks, and stir, constantly, over low heat, until you have a thickened product. It should coat your spoon. Let this cool, with the lemon verbena in the custard. When it comes to room temperature, remove the herbs, and let the custard cool. Then, use your ice cream maker to finish it off.

This is best with other things: cooked blueberries for example , or nectarines, or other, fruit based ice creams or sorbets. I really like it with nectarine ice cream, or sour cherry sorbet.

So, ragazzi, if the diatribe above offends, I apologize somewhat. I do try to limit the blog to cooking and only cooking, but issues have come up. We can certainl chat about them, if the comments are not offensive. If they are, as administratrix, Annalena shall remove them post haste.

Back to basics: room temperature rice and beans

We are in the midst of what some are saying is NYC's worst heat wave ever. I can believe it. While Annalena should be and NEEDS to be on the treadmill, huffing and puffing, her asthma is a bar to doing so when the temperature is above 100. And it IS above 100. I feel like I want to change clothes at least twice a day, because of the sweat. Not "perspiration," SWEAT. We hairy Italian gals SWEAT. Gets our moustaches wet and everything.

Now, by way of all this heat, I want all of you who are NOT cooks to remember something: when you want "something cool" to eat, while this is understandable, remember that someone has gone into the kitchen and cooked that dish, so that it could cook and become "something cool." That wonderful dish of ice cold creamy ice cream started with someone cooking a custard over some pretty high heat. The cold beef tenderloin (hmmmm..) had to be roasted at a high temperature. No self respecting cook is going to cook if s/he doesn't want to, all Annalena is saying here, is pay some respect and show some gratitude to the person who does the cooking for you. Or... do it yourself.


To our recipe: I sometimes sense that there is a prejudice against rice and beans. If you don't care for it, taste wise, fine and dandy, but if you are avoiding it because it's "common," or "it gives me gas," well, I think you better get over it and get some well cooked rice and beans. When the dish is made right, there is absolutely nothing common about it, and as far as the "musical fruit" issue goes, Annalena's sense is that this comes from poorly cooked beans, or a tendency to overeat them. There is a science behind the development of sufficient amounts of enzymes in your gut to process this stuff, and I will explain that in a private email if anyone is so interested. This is not the place for it.

Annalena believes that the prejudice against the dish comes from two areas, both centering on the same point: people are afraid to cook beans, or don't know how, or assume that it takes a long time to cook them.

I am NOT going to advocate using canned beans. They have their place, but not really in Annalena's kitchen. Yes, dried beans take time to cook, but it's untended time, and it's NOT THAT BIG A DEAL. What IS a big deal is tracking down good quality dried beans. I get them from "Rancho Gordo" out in California, from which this recipe derives. There is also a good source at the Union Square Farmer's Market, where you can also get some amazing tortillas.

It's odd to say something like this, but try to find out how old your dried beans are. There are "fresh" dried beans, and "old" dried beans, and if the beans are very old, you can cook them forever and nothing will happen. That is the main reason, I think, that people do not cook them. Heaven knows how long the beans have sat on a Supermarket shelf. There's a reason they're only 70 cents a pound. You get what you pay for, because even at a higher price, beans are not expensive.

So you've got your beans, now what should you do? Annalena has cooked her fair share of dried beans, and there are a million different sets of instructions for how to do it. SHe has never had any luck with the method that says "Bring dried beans to a boil for two minutes, and let them cool for an hour in the hot liquid. Uh, no. She's "old school" here. Put your beans under cold water and let them sit overnight.

IF the dried beans are "fresh" they will absorb a lot of the water, so make sure you use plenty: at least four times what you have in volume for dried beans. Just let them sit. Again, if they are fresh, you will get something the next day that looks like "ferment" on the top of the beans. That's just the starch and again, the fact that it's there is a sign you've got 'fresh' dried beans.

Pour off all that water, and cover the beans again, again with at least four times the volume of water. I put an onion, cut in half, a bulb of garlic, also cut in half , and a roughly cut carrot into my pot of beans. Also, contrary to what I was taught when I was first cooking, I do add salt. Not at first, but about halfway through the cooking, say after 45 minutes. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, uncovered.

How long should you cook? This is a very open question and it depends on how soft you like your beans, and how old they are. It will probably take at least an hour, probably closer to 1.5 hours for "al dente" beans, if they are fresh. That's why I add my salt after 45 minutes. Taste along the way. If the bean is creamy and soft enough for your taste, they're done. If you're going to use them for something like a puree, you need to cook them longer. If they're going into a salad, firmer is fine. When they're done to your liking, drain them.

Please note that you can change what you put in the bean water at your pleasure. The vegetables I listed are what I like. Some add bay leaves, some add epizote, and so on, and so forth. Try different things.

While those beans are cooking, prepare a mixture of a "crunchy vegetable." The Rancho Gordo folk suggested a green mango. I almost never see these, so I used cucumbers. I also used a spring onion. You will want to use different things, and you should. I also used a half cup of homemeade salsa verde, rather than the bunch of chopped cilantro they recommended. That's because the Guyman is not a fan of the flavor of a lot of cilantro. Anyway, make a vegetable "mix," almost a small salad, and stir this into the beans. I also added lots of lime juice: 3-4 limes. Some would say it's not enough. Again, your call.

We're not done yet. If you like, while the beans are cooking, prepare your rice. This is another item that frustrates people to no end: cooking rice properly. Well, this is how Annalena does it, for white and brown. I prefer using Texmati rice, because it's available, inexpensive, and good quality. For white Texmati, I use 1.5 times the volume of water. For brown, 2.25-2.5. The variation results from how I'm going to use the rice. Usually, I use the smaller amount because I want something firm. You dont' have to use water either: you can use a broth of whatever persuasion you like. For a cup of dry rice, I would say use a scant teaspoon of salt, and then double it if you make more. I find it easier to make more rice than less rice, so I never start with less than two cups of dry. It stores well, and it also freezes (bet you didn't know that).

Here's a little secret: rice tends to boil over, and Annalena learned that if you run the rim of your rice pot with some butter (you can put some in the pot too, if you like), the boil over doesn't happen very much. So she does this all the time. For white rice, I usually find 15 minutes is fine. For brown, 30-45 minutes. Again, you have to check. Look for the water to be gone, and little "holes" forming in the rice, from the gas escaping. If some of it burns at the bottom, save it for yourself.

Ok, you've got your rice, and you've got your beans. Let the rice cool. Now what do you do?

For Annalena, it was the secret ingredient: coconut oil. THis is a new ingredient to Annalena, and she'll be using it more often. Let's be honest: coconut oil is a saturated fat, so it ain't all that good for you. It's vegetable, but... oil is oil is fat is fat. Calorically, you ain't doing yourself any favors, but you aren't getting any cholesterol. Put it into the beans by the TEASPOON until you get a flavor you like (The aroma is wonderful by the way). Stir it all up and put it on the plate with some of the rice (we used brown), and know what? Not only have you got a good meal, but you've got a second meal. If you start with two cups of dry rice, and two cups of dried beans, you probably have enough for at least six hearty appetitites.

I suggest you try this with coconut oil, if you can find it. If you can't, use a really good quality olive oil, or a nut oil of some kind. I have a bottle of roasted pistachio oil on my counter than needs to be opened, and so it shall be.

If you consider rice and beans "peasant food," well, consider this the "dressed up" version. If you think of "peasant food" in a bad way, shame on you.

Now go and cook a pot of beans. Make your own mix, and let Annalena know how it turns out.

Transforming a recipe into a "nesting doll" Baby chicken with cumin marinade and pomegranate glaze or...

A lot of other things. One of the ways you evolve as a cook, is to be able to look at a recipe and know when you can change it, and more importantly, HOW. Actually, I need to refine that: you can always change a recipe. What you develop is: when does a change make sense, and when will it be good? Let me give you an example of when it doesn't work, and then we'll follow with the "real thing." Many years ago, when Annalena's hair was still brown, she gave a recipe to a school friend. It involved roasted cashews, butter, cream, and cheese (we were young, remember). Two weeks later, she got a call "I made your recipe but it didn't work." My response "Oh, I'm sorry. Tell me what happened." "Well, I did everything you said, except I made just a few exchanges."

"Oh? Tell me what they were."
"Well, I didn't have cashews so I used unroasted peanuts."
"I see." (after a pause).
"And I didn't have cream, so I used skim milk."
(Longer Pause). "Ah."
"Oh, and instead of butter I used margarine"
"Of course you did."
"And I didn't want to make it too fatty, so I left out the cheese."

If any of you say or think "well, I don't know why that recipe wouldn't work" you shouldn't be reading this blog. You see Annalena's point.

Now, you can of course look at a recipe and see EXACTLY where you can change it. I have been posting recipes, for example, where I've been talking about the substitutibility of squid/shrimp/scallops. You can almost always exchange ripe mangos for ripe peaches, and vice versa. I've gone on at great length about substituting onion family members for each other.

And here's another one. This recipe appeared in the NY Times under the by line of my favorite Melissa Clark. It called for chicken thighs on the bone, one of my favorite things.
Except I had poussins (baby chickens). Structurally, the thighs of chickens are somewhat similar to a baby chicken, they are just smaller. So, you adjust the cooking time. Had I quail, I would have made that substitution. Probably, I could have used pork chops too, since the meat texture is somewhat similar and mild. You see what I mean?

The marinade for the dish called for cumin , paprika and allspice. These are all aggressive seasonings, so I left out the allspice, since I don't much care for it in chicken. I did use the pomegranate molasses that the recipe calls for, but you could use something else. Honey, for example, or molasses, or any kind of fruit syrup. My lovely Australian friend June Taylor makes wonderful herbaceous and fruit syrups that would go splendidly on a dish like this. In fact, I may try it again with her stuff.

I am going to give you the recipe as I made it, with two poussins which had been boned out. If you get these (you can get them as "rock cornish game hens too), and they are whole, cut out the backbone, and flatten it. This, as I have written before, is called "spatch cocking," and you may get some of your friends excited when you tell them you were spatch cocking in the kitchen." So, too, with quail. If you use quail, you will want to double the number of birds. A poussin weighs just under a pound, a quail, just under half a pound. See how it works.

Ok, now let's get to work. You need somewhere between 2.5-3 pounds of poultry, on the bone, with skin, and stick to stuff that is not a chicken breast. Wash the stuff and pat it dry. Put it aside, while you combine 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, 1 teaspoon of pimenton dulce (sweet paprika. You can use hot if you like. You can also use something other than cumin, but use something strong and spicy, rather than sweet. FOr example, I could see coriander in this recipe, but I could not see cardamom). Also get a big handful of thyme, maybe 6-8 branches, and chop it. Chop a whole bunch of garlic (I used a complete head of new garlic. You will want to use anywhere from 4-8 cloves), and two tablespoons of olive oil. Mix this all up in a bowl, put the birds in, and let this marinate, preferably overnight.

When you're ready for dinner, heat up a stove top grill pan (I have one of those ridged ones, and I brush olive oil on it before I start heating). When it's nice and hot, put the birds, breast side down on the grill pan. Cook them for about four minutes, and then flip them for another three. You'll see the beautiful brown carmelization you're getting here. Then, put them in a preheated, 375 degree oven, for 4-5 minutes and let them cook away. If you remember, flip them once during the cooking in the oven, but no great loss if you don't.

PROTECT YOUR HANDS, and get them out of the oven. While they're still on the grill pan, but not with fire under it, brush a total of about two tablespoons of your favorite syrup (like pomegranate molasses, or honey, or molasses, etc), on them. Both sides.

And you're done. According to Ms. Clark, eight chicken thighs will feed four people.

I think she's cooking for hobbits. I would say that makes for two. Measure your appetite and decide, and if you have to double, then do so.

Really good food, really easy. When great with some macque choux and a zucchini salad. Look up the choux. It's in here...

Easy and versatile: pasta with chorizo and squid (or...)

Some years ago, Annalena and the Guyman used to frequent a Portuguese restaurant in their neighborhood, the wonderful Alfama. The only thing more wonderful than the restaurant were the owners: Miguel and Tarcizio. Let it not be denied that both of us had mancrushes on both of them, in different ways. For the details of that, you'll have to ask Annalena personally. Let us just say that Tarcizio's smile could melt you and Miguel's voice could do so as well.
As is so often the case with the NY restaurant scene, they lost their lease, and were gone for a good two years. The good news is: they're back. Bad news is, they're not in the neighborhood, so it's not that easy to say, anymore, "oh, let's just visit the boys." It calls for a trip and we will make that trip soon. Maybe as soon as the awful heat that is crushing NYC right now has abated.

Eating at Alfama introduced Annalena to Portuguese food, a cuisine she did not know beyond the Portuguese bread called "broa," and the ubiquitous "vinho verde" which, Miguel taught her quickly, was NOT where Portuguese wine began and ended. Discussing the learning curve on Portuguese cheeses is another story all together. Today, the subject is the very unkosher combinationa of pork, and shellfish, which Annalena learned about eating there.

Stepping back from things a little, the combination of pork, especially smoked or cured pork products, and shellfish, makes sense. The cured pork is ultimately a food of necessity: there's a lot of meat on a pig, and after it's been slaughtered, what do you do? Preservation was necessary, and because there is so much of it, it was not expensive. Shellfish, ultimately is "free food" if you live along a coast line. Clams, mussels, oysters, even scallops and, to some extent, lobster, either are or were there for the taking. So you would combine the two, simply to make something to eat.

Of course, there are religious rules against this combination, and this is not the place to discuss whether they are right or wrong. Food taboos go deep, and Annalena respects them, but politely demurs and says "if you don't want to eat the dish, don't eat it."

Food taboos are not the same as food dislikes. I know how many of you feel about .. squid (EWWWWWWW). I suspect that comes from having eaten it badly prepared. If you like to cook, I would really suggest you make this the first time, with the squid. If you don't like it, you can pull it out and still eat a good meal. I think you might like it though. THis is inspired by thoughts of Miguel and Tarcizio, although I doubt severely if one could call this "Portuguese."

You will need one pound of chorizo sausage, one pound of small squid, with the tentacles, and a half pound of a pasta that has a blocky shape to it. I used fusilli, but rigatoni, shells, anything along those lines would probably work beautifully.

Most chorizos come in a skin that is not edible. To get rid of it, simply cut the tip off of one end of a sausage, run your knife down the length of the sausage, and then peel it off. Once you've done that, cut the sausage into rounds, and don't worry if it falls apart a bit. That's fine.
Chorizo is Spanish rather than Portuguese. There IS a Portuguese sausage that is wonderful, and use that if you can find it, or use any type of sausage you like. This time around, though, I ask you NOT to use chicken or turkey sausages as I don't think they will give you the depth of flavor you want.

You need not cut the squid tentacles, but you should slice the bodies into rounds, no bigger than half an inch across. And if squid are skeeving you, then use scallops. Or shrimps. Or clams. Or mussels. For the latter two, pay attention to the variation in cooking I discuss below. If you use the squid, wash them in cold water and shake off as much as you can. If clams or mussels, wash them if they seem sandy (Best way to wash them is to put them in a large bowl, cover with water, and then pull out the shellfish. The sand will stay behind.)

Now, get a big pan and put about two tablespoons of olive oil in it. Also, fill a pot with about 6 quarts of water, and start heating it, while you start heating the olive oil (this will all be done really quickly. ). When the oil is hot, add the chorizo. Don't move it around too much. You'll see the oil take on a red color from the spices in the sausage, and when the meat is beginning to brown, just a little, take out about half of it, and put it aside, and also, if it looks too oily to you, pour out some of that. (The reason you've cooked it all is because you need the amount of flavoring that it gives the oil. Use the left over sausage for something tasty like rice and beans, or eggs, or a sandwich or snacks)

If your water hasn't come to a boil yet, and you haven't put in your pasta and started cooking, then stop cooking for now, with anything but the clams and mussels. If you're using those, put the shellfish into the pan, raise the heat and cover the pan. Mussels will open faster, clams will take longer, but keep your eye on them.

For the softer shellfish, after you have cooked the pasta for about five minutes, turn the heat up and add the squid/shrimp/scallops. It will take no more than two minutes to cook to translucence, and that's all you want. When your pasta is al dente, drain it, and then combine it with your wonderful sauce.

There's no need to add seasonings here, because you've got plenty from the chorizo. If you use a milder sausage though, you may want to consider something like fennel, or basil, or rosemary, but keep in mind that your shellfish has a delicate taste, so don't overdo it.

It will take you less time to make this dish than it took you to read this post, from start to finish. You will have a very happy tummy when you're done. If you feel like putting vinho verde out with this, by all means, but to Annalena's pallete, this calls for zinfandel.

Enjoy ragazzi. And track down Alfama, and learn what Portuguese food is REALLY like.

A rose is not a rose, is not a rose: Rose Geranium poundcake

We end this little miniseries today, with a luscious cake that relies on a once common, now admittedly hard to find ingredient, that is, ultimately, optional: rose geranium leaves.
You all know geraniums: those big, red, ubiquitous flowers. When I was a kid, they always seemed to show up on the fourth of July, and they were always in windowboxes. Fancy ones too, with names like "Martha Washington." We all focused on the flowers, but never really paid much attention to the leaves.
Sometime, though, if you happen to be able to do so, grab a geranium leaf. Smell it. Then crush it between your fingers, and get that somewhat spicy, green fragrance. It's from a compound called "geraniol," surprise surprise. It's a major player in perfumes, and I believe that it has some insect repellant properties too.

Those are MODERN geraniums. In fact, the family of geraniums is HUGE, and most of them do not have those enormous flowers. Rather, they have very tiny, almost invisible lavender flowers. And big, fragrant leaves, with scents like nutmeg, lemon, citronella, and our subject today, rose.

In Northern California, these older geraniums grow to huge sizes. I have seen enormous, rose geranium BUSHES. Here in the Northeast, as is the case with most plants, we have to be content with the houseplant sized variety, and that's fine with me. I had a rose geranium plant last for me for twenty years before she (I somehow thing of geraniums as females. Don't ask me why) gave up the ghost, and I had to get a new one. I had it because these plants are culinarily useful. A bit of history here, with one of Annalena's trademark digressions.

We always have to remember that much of what we eat today and treat as "common" wasn't always. Sugar, for example, was once the property of only the rich (and Annalena strongly recommends the excellent book, by Norman Mintz, "Sweetness as Power," which is an admittedly Marxist, anthropological/historical study of how sugar went from elitist to cheap commodity). Some other items that we think of as expensive (vanilla beans, extra virgin olive oil), were once so rare, and so prohibitively expensive, that they were used on special occasions or medicinally, if at all. (We will be coming back to vanilla). In contrast, there are other foods that were once registered as "trash food" or "food for the poor" that are now ritzy: oysters. Lobster. Truffles. Saffron. Foie gras. I'm not kidding: all of this was food for the poor. Squab as well. How things change.

Well, let's jump back now to vanilla. It has been known for hundreds of years, and it was costly and rare. It had to be shipped from Madagascar at the time, and on boats. So, if you were, say, a housewife in colonial America, or 19th century America, you waited, and waited. And if the ship sunk, as it often did, you went without. For baking, flavorings other than vanilla were much more common. One was rose water, which we now regard as exotic. Roses, if extracted with hot water, under the right conditions, give you a flavoring agent which admittedly is not everyone's cup of tea. It was much cheaper to make than was vanilla, and it was the standard flavoring in desserts for hundreds of years. Many housewives kept home gardens, and rose geraniums, and other scented geraniums, were grown and used to flavor things.

I do not know why they have fallen out of favor. To my taste, there are certainly similiarities between rose water and rose geranium, but they are NOT interchangeable. For example, rose geranium and blackberries is one of those combinations which I think is a sign that the angels want us to eat well. I would NEVER put rose water into blackberries however. I could go on. In fact I frequently do.

The flavored geraniums have seen a bit of a comeback in Northern California. Sometimes, "Greens" restaurant has a sprig or two of them - with flower- on a dessert plate, and at several restaurants, you will see them in desserts, or taste them as part of desserts but not advertised as such. That is how I learned about blackberries and rose geraniums. I was eating a bowl of blackberries for dessert at "Foreign Cinema," and I tasted what I thought was rose geranium. The pastry chef smiled and told me I had a good tongue.

STOP IT RIGHT THERE ALL OF YOU!!!! Instead of doing that, get to a farmers market or look around, buy yourself a rose geranium plant, or any of the other scnets, and start doing some cooking. Even if you don't care for the flavor, you will have yourself a beautiful plant.

So here's our recipe for today: it's a pound cake. MOST DEFINITELY a pound cake. Dense, not too sweet, in need of something liquid to go with it. I remember learning that "pound cake " was so called because it required a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. Indeed, I have seen such recipes. Maybe. This one, from "Lindsey Shere's Chez Panisse Desserts," does not have those proportions. It does use both rose geranium leaves, and a spice that you probably don't have: mace. I think that every pound cake recipe I have ever seen, used mace. The only other place I have seen it used, is in Greek butter cookies. You should take a look at mace though, if only to be freaked out: mace is the "cover" of nutmeg. When you see nutmegs that have just been harvested, they have a dark reddish orange web on them. That's the mace. It has notes of nutmeg, but it's decidedly not. If you want a real, standard poundcake, you can make this recipe without the rose geranium leaves, but you can't leave out the mace. Get some, and do some experimenting. Now, let's get to work.

Set your oven to 325, while you collect your ingredients: you need about 18 rose geranium leaves. Also 2.5 sticks of unsalted butter, at room temperature. 1.5 cups of sugar. ABout a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of rose water (which you can leave out). A TABLESPOON of cognac (which you could also leave out, but please don'). You can combine those three flavorings in one container. Combine together a scant 3 cups of flour and a tablespoon of baking powder (I was surprised to see the Chez Panisse cookbook calling for cake flower, which is NEVER organic, and always bleached. I made the substitution above), and 1/4 teaspoon of mace (you can borrow some from me). Finally, 6 eggs.

Butter the bottom of a 9 inch cake pan. Mix the butter until it's very soft and light, almost white in color (I use my big mixer here, but a small one will do the trick if you have a big enough bowl). Now add the sugar and let it get nice and light again. Now the flavorings, and then teh eggs, one at a time. Sift in the flour, 1/4 at a time, and mix until each addition disappears. There's your batter

Butter the cake pan on the bottom and sides, and then put down the rose geranium leaves. A pattern is nice, but not really necessary. You do want to spread them out, so that the flavor gets in all over the cake.

Pour the batter in, gently, and then get it in the oven for at least an hour. Try the toothpick test. Mine was done after the hour, but you may need anywhere from 15 mintues to a half hour more to get to the point where the toothpick comes out dry.

Let it cool a bit, and unmold it. Don't refrigerate it, and try to keep your paws off of it for a day. Poundcakes always taste better with a bit of aging.

We now move off of the rose petal path . I hope you've enjoyed this little trio of rose desserts. We are going to be moving back to savories in the next couple of days, including a take on summer cauliflower, which I think you will enjoy, and then Annalena's riff on a classic Portuguese dish, done Italian style.

Alla prossima, ragazzi.

roses rising: pink champagne gelee

My friend Bacchus, aka Frank, the Emperor of Titans, sells wine. If you listen to his business phone it ends, in his sexy Belgian accent "and remember.... ALWAYS drink good wine."

Frank taught the Guyman and I how to drink good wine. While it is not a regret, there is something you need to know: as you drink good wine, you cannot go back. You will begin to take mouthfulls of stuff and look for a way to spit it out, because folks, there is a LOT of bad wine out there. I'm not talking just about whole classes of wine, like white zinfandel (which has no reason to exist in Annalena's view), pink merlot (God save us) but also with all classes. There are bad chardonnays. There are bad pinots. And at some point, you will encounter them. I guarantee it. And there are degrees of bad. The TRULY awful stuff, you throw away. the stuff that you wouldn't drink, but is ok, you cook with. And that's across the boards, even with sparkling wines. For example, Annalena has a rule: she will not drink sparkling wine made in countries who's language possesess no vowels, or which permit words with six letters and no vowel. She has other rules too, but they all boil down to: do not settle for what is not good. And if it's borderline, cook with it. I keep some bottles for that very reason. And hence, this recipe, made not with champagne, but with "cremant" , another French sparkling wine.

I found this recipe when the thought of making a "gelee" for a dinner came to mind. I knew I had seen something in Claudia Fleming's wonderful book "The Last Course." Her recipe does in fact call for champagne, but I do not think she would mind.

I want to give all of you who are with me to this point a warning: this recipe is a bit complex and at the end of it you may very well be saying "I did all that work for..." Bear with me. Make the second recipe, which follows, for the peach sorbet. You'll have an absolutely beautiful dessert that deserves a photo. (In fact, I think I'm going to ask the Guyman to do that for this when we serve it).

Let's set out the ingredients. You need a bottle of pink sparkling wine of some sort. NOT sweet, but "brut" You will also need 2 cups of sugar, about a half dozen large sprigs of lemon verbena,about 8 peaches, white, yellow or mixed, and 5 teaspoons of gelatin.

Let's look at that last measurement again: it's a weird one, isn't it? You don't often hear of "5" of anything in a recipe. And, those who are mathematically inclined, will say "well, 6 teaspoons is two tablespoons, I'll use that."

DON'T. One of the challenges of cooking is getting gelatin right in desserts. Unless you want J E L L O (and some will), measure by the teaspoon, or measure a tablespoon and two teaspoons. You will be rewarded (Incidentally, did you know that Jello was once considered a sign that a family was wealthy? That's because for Jello to work, you need a refrigerator, and if you had a refrigerator, you were monied. Isn't that fascinating? Sort of like being able to buy canned orange juice).

Ok, enough sociological digression. Open the wine carefully, and pour it into a pot. Add a cup of water, the two cups of sugar, the lemon verbena, and bring it to a simmer. let it cook away for ten minutes, while you chop up the peaches. You don't need to peel them, and you don't need to use scientific precision, but do make sure you cut away the pit parts. Get them in the champagne mixture, crinkle up a piece of wet parchment paper and cover it, and let this cook for twenty minutes (you CAN cook the peaches whole if you like. Then you have material for another dessert if you like).

After the twenty minutes, fish out the lemon verbena and compost it. Fish out the peaches, and put them aside, together with half a cup of the liquid. If it looks cloudy, strain that liquid. In any event, put most of it aside. Take half a cup and mix it with the gelatin, and let it sit for five minutes. Now, heat it for about a minute to dissolve the gelatin.

Take that big pot of liquid and measure out four cups of it. Of that four cups, measure 3/4 cup into the hot liquid, to cool it a bit, then mix them all together.

That's an awful lot of intricate steps, isn't it? I warned you. You will also have left over liquid, of which Ms. Fleming tells you not what ato do. I would use it in a fruit soup or to poach some other fruit.

You now have four cups of liquid with the gelatin in it. You can pour this all into one big mold, or one large bowl, or as I did, eight small ramekins. Carefully put the stuff in the fridge, and let it chill overnight . (The original recipe said 4 hours. At four hours, I despaired of it every solidifying).

The result is a very pale, beautiful gelee which will look beautiful on a plate with the rose' raspberry sorbet, and...

the peach sorbet you can now make. You have 8 cooked peaches, with very soft skin, so you don't have to peel them. Puree them in a blender or food procesor with that liquid you saved. If you like things a little sweeter, add half a cup of syrup made from 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water. Taste and adjust however you like, and then when it's cool, put it into the ice cream maker, for a peach sorbet.

Now, think about the pretty plate: you have the very dark rose raspberry sorbet, the pale pink of the peach sorbet, and the mauve clarity of the gelee ("Mauve clarity?" Sounds like a drag name or a rock band name).

Christa, queen of pink, this is for you. Try it. Bet you're very happy with it.

And as everything CONTINUES to come up roses, we will be making rose geranium pound cake next time around.

I bet you can hardly wait.

Everything's coming up roses: roses: rose' raspberry sorbet

Before we get into cooking, Annalena has something to say. She finally figured out a whole lot about her blog.

Someone take a guess: how many viewings of the blog have there been, since it began? Readly for this?

OVER 9000! Isn't that amazing. The most popular one: Annalena's braciole recipe.

Now, you wanna know how many comments there are?

UNDER 100.

WHERE ARE ALL OF YOU? C'mon folks, this is supposed to be an interactive blog, with people chatting back and forth. 100 out of 9000? GUYS.... Come on, make Annalena proud.

That means you, Sue. And you, Laura. And the rest of you who I know. I do take attendance you know...

Ok, to the discussion of what is going to be a three, or maybe four part series, on rose' and roses general. We start with rose', Annalena's favorite summertime drink.

Actually, Annalena likes rose' any time of year, but it somehow seems more "right" in these warm days. Usually, the alcohol content is lower, and when the food does not involve complex, heavy flavors (like tomato sauce), rose' goes well with food, if it's one of the drier rose's. Annalena really has no patience for the sweet ones.

There are some things that rose' goes naturally well with. What comes to mind immediately, are strawberries. Sliced strawberries in a glass of cold rose' is really one of those "out there" things that taste so good. Recently, I saw my friend David cut a glass of a heavy red wine with some rose', which is apparently somewhat traditional in parts of Spain (and new to me).

Well, with rose' on her mind, Annalena was looking for a dessert. NOT a rose' based dessert, but she found one anyway. And it's good.

I turn again to one of my inestimable sources, David Lebovitz' book on ice cream "The Perfect Scoop." You will recall that I wrote about his fig ice cream (which is really a gelato), a few days ago. Well, on the page right before the fig ice cream recipe, was one for this truly amazing sorbet. Three ingredients, very little equipment, and a quart of fat free pleasure follows. Let's make it.

Here are the ingredients: 2 cups of a dry rose' wine; 2/3 cup of sugar, and 3 clamshells of raspberries (you know the containers I mean: they hold a cup. Annalena thinks they are more like scallop shells, but who's to argue with tradition here?). David says that you can use frozen raspberries to make this, and I suppose you could. What I will say is that the complexity of the flavor that came out of this simple triad of ingredients is something that I do not think would come forward with frozen fruit. So, as raspberry season is at its first peak (there will be another one in the fall), make it now.

It ain't hard. Put the two cups of wine and the sugar in a pot and heat it, stirring, until the sugar melts. When that happens, take it off the heat, and add the raspberries.

Now let it cool. When it has, puree this in a food processor or blender. Then, strain it through a colander or sieve or something. I am not adverse to the seeds, but there was an awful lot of "crap" in my mix when it was finished, and I was glad that I strained it.

You will have nearly a quart of sorbet base. Chill it, and freeze it in your ice cream maker (one thing Annalena would like to know is if she has inspired any of you to buy an ice cream maker and make your own).

Given the high content of alcohol here (it doesn't cook off), this will never harden to a truly "hard" form, but it will get past slushy, to a texture that literally does melt in your mouth.

This is going on the plate with the fig ice cream, with a white peach rose' champagne sorbet (here's a test: if I get enough comments, I'll post the sorbet recipe . If not, nope), and a lovely rose geranium cake.

"Honey, everything's coming up roses." Yeah, I know you fellow TQs know that one. So, let's all sing together, in big, robust voices: FOR ME! FOR ME! FOR ME!

She could give a fig: fig ice cream

Annalena loves figs. Period. There's nothing else to add to that statement. She loves figs. If there is an opportunity, she will eat them. Period. And there is plenty of opportunity right now.
I believe I have written this before, but I will again. Figs are one of the more unique fruits because their trees bear two crops. "True" afficionados will tell you that the ones that are available now, in mid summer, are not as good as the true late summer/early fall figs.

Whatever. I think they are all good. One of the "sad" things for New Yorkers is that, while you may find a friend or two who has a fig tree in his or her backyard, they are not really a viable commercial crop here. So, we have to accept what we can get from California.

Annalena is blessed with Citrus Bomb and the Artichoke Empress, who send her boxes of figs when they come into season. Then Annalena cooks them, eats them, and longs for more. Her alternative comes by way of the blessings for one, that are a curse for others.

When figs come in, they ALL come in: NOW. And they ripen . And once they ripen, you have a very short window during which you can sell them/eat them/use them. What this means, for shoppers, is that you can find them , frankly at a very cheap price. Not in supermarkets, please. They don't treat the figs right and most stores will not carry them, because a ripe fig is about as delicate as an egg. But here, in Manhattan, we have corner fruit vendors, who are currently awash in the critters, selling them for about 3 bucks a pound. Now, they don't sell them by the pound, they sell them by the package, but weigh that package. Yesterday, Annalena bought about 3.5 pounds of the beauties, and spent 11 dollars. That's less than you'll pay for cherries, for peaches, for just about anything in the fruit category.

To my taste, figs go in the category of fruits like apricots, cherries, blueberries, in that the cooked product is so different from the raw product, that I almost want to treat them as two, different fruits. A fresh fig "snaps" and fills your mouth with a gentle sweetness, and almost a refreshing bolt of juices. Cooked, even without a cookie, you get the sense of "fig newtons," and let's face it, there is NO ONE out there who does not like fig newtons.

Where is this all leading or is Annalena back on one of her mindless rambles? Well, she is, but it's leading somewhere. To ice cream. (and I'm leaving out a whole lot of my stories about figs, but I will just leave you with a wonderful Italian saying: fichi rubati soni i piu dolci," or "stolen figs are the sweetest. Use it as a metaphor, don't steal them).

I had been trying, for years, to come up with a fig ice cream and not a single one tasted any good. I was missing the boat, and that elusive fig flavor just wasn't there.

Some years ago, on a fall trip to San Francisco, blond goddess Dana served me some fig ice cream in her restaurant. It was AMAZING. At the end of the meal, I explained my fig plight to her and she smiled, laughed, and said "you have the recipe, it's in David Lebovitz' book"

Yup, I did. As Jenny, the mad ice cream making dyke from Brooklyn will attest, and I have attested to before, this book RULES. Mr. Lebovitz (or, David), put together a list of ice cream recipes that are a bit off the radar: green pea or avocado, for example. And most of his recipes do not require a cooked custard. Every time I look at A recipe, I find another one I want to make. Such was the case when I made this one. Checking the recipe, I found a recipe for raspberry/rose' wine sorbet. Put it on the list.

Let's make some fig ice cream. I told you you weren't going to need to make a custard, and you're not. So, if you don't have an ice cream maker, buy one and make it. It's worth the expenditure.

You'll need two pounds of fresh figs. Do yourself a favor and overbuy them from a street vendor, and eat the rest. They're good for you too. Let's just say they will "loosen you up," ok? :) . Cut off the little nasty tips, and then chop the figs very roughly. Put them in a big pot with a cup of water, cover it, and then turn your heat to low.

Ripe figs will cook down in about 8 minutes. You should stir them a bit every now and then to keep them from sticking and burning. No big deal. While they're cooking, measure out your sugar. I used plain white sugar. I think vanilla sugar is wrong here, because to my taste, figs have a vanilla undertone. You might want to try some brown sugar. I was tempted to use some palm sugar I had in the cupboard, but stepped back from it. Jenny from Brooklyn will probably think of putting honey in here, and I think that would work too. Jenny, your lavender honey jones should be employed in this one. If you use honey, however, proceed with caution as it is, volume wise, sweeter than sugar. You'll need anywhere from 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar. Turn to Ms. J for honey directions. It will all depend on your taste buds, and how sweet your figs are. Pour the sweetener into the cooked figs, stir it, and cook for about five minutes more. You're looking for a "jammy" consistency, and remember that the stuff will "jam" more as it cools.

After cooking it, let it cool down, and then put it all in the food processor if you have one, or get out the food mill and puree the stuff. Then, add one cup of heavy cream.

Know what? You're done except for the freezing, and you've got better than a quart of lusciousness.

Some variations: in addition to the sweetener changes, David Lebovitz suggests lemon peel. I have not been able to get the right balance, so I leave it out. I think a bit of cinnamon is nice. If I were making it for me and my gal pal Jane, we'd put a tablespoon of green chartreuse in. Port would work too. And... if you want to get REAL fancy, swirl a tablespoon or so of raspberry puree into it.

Ice cream without pain, and without tears. Stolen figs may be sweetest, but these are pretty sweet to me.

The cook's progress: post 600: Accessorized Espresso Mousse

Well, we come to a significant milestone here, folks (isn't that redundant? Aren't milestones per se "significant?"). This is Annalena's 600th posting. She saw it coming for a while, and had been giving it much thought, including presenting one that had no recipe in it at all, but addressed her friend Bobby's request, long ago, but not forgotten, for a post on how to achieve serenity in the kitchen.

An interesting question indeed. Annalena's first response was that if you are looking for serenity, go anyplace but the kitchen. Bobby's request, however, resonated for a while. Perhaps this answer will be seen as a cop out, but it is true: my serenity begins when I enter the kitchen. It is not always apparent. In fact, it usually is NOT apparent, but the serenity comes, from my process: the cook's process, before I go into the kitchen. When it works, the serenity is wonderful, internal, and cannot be shared. That happens with some frequency, but not always. There have been a few times, when the level of serenity has been so high that it has crossed into bliss, and Annalena feels as if she is not really in the kitchen. That is one experience which also, cannot be shared, and Annalena wonders if there is something akin to "runner's high," which happens to cooks.

That level of serentiy, should not be confused with the cook's happiness or satisfaction, which occurs when s/he sees people enjoy the food prepared - sometimes - and sometimes happens whether anyone eats the food or not, just from the successful completion of what the process was all about.

I know that much of this is sounding very high fallutin and incomprehensible. I would like to offer an example, with a recipe, by way of showing THIS cooks' process.

I had found a recipe, on Lidia's blog, for espresso mousse. It looked like a good, simple, delicious recipe. I passed it on to my friend Keith (you've met him before, yes?), as almost "food porn teasing." I send Keith recipes, he sends back comments. I cannot reprint many of them. I sent this one, thinking that it would be a good dessert, but thinking that, given the coffee, he would not want it for dinner, as it would keep him awake.

Came back the answer "are you high Clarice?" or some variation. OF COURSE I should make it. We were set.

Except... in Annalena's world view, coffee is a flavor reserved for cold weather desserts. Now when the heat index is crossing 100, and the market is bursting with summer fruit, Annalena just feels that dessert must involve fruit. The thought processes began, and all led to tropical fruits. Bananas, mangos, and so forth. All well and good.

Except.... Annalena treats these as fruit to be used during the winter, when she's gotten fed up with apples, quinces and pears. So the thought processes continued.

They spun away from fruit, because mousse is soft, and Annalena wanted something crunchy in the dish.

What goes with coffee? COOKIES! Espresso is Italian, and is there any cookie more Italian than an amaretti cookie? Annalena happened to have a large box of them on hand. So, the dessert would include crumbs of amaretti cookies.

Now, the process gets more interesting. Most people believe that amaretti are made from almonds. Not true. Classically, they are made from BITTER almonds; however, bitter almond products are not permitted in the United States, as they are viewed as toxic. So, know what most amaretti are made of? Noyaux. What are noyaux? GLAD YOU ASKED. You know how, when you eat a peach, sometimes the pit splits and there's this little tiny almond shaped pit inside? That, ragazzi, is a noyaux. And it looks like an almond because the stone fruits are all members of the same family as is the almond.

You're beginning to see where I'm going , aren't you? With this connection in mind, the fruit became easy. The key was NOT to try to link it to the coffee, but since there was an almond flavor in the dish, link it through the crumbs. So, there it was. And since the dessert was cold, something warm or room temperature, and it became roasted stone fruit: apricots, sweet cherries, and the most almondy tasting of all fruits, sour cherries. A dessert was born. And consumed. In mass quantities.

That is Annalena's process, one of dogged effort to get to serenity. If you cook, you have another one, I'm sure you do. Let us all know what yours is. Hope you enjoy mine. And now, the recipe.

Let's do the easy stuff first. Slice about half a pound of apricots into thin slices and toss them with 1/4 cup of sugar. Roast them at 350 for six minutes and then add a half pound combination of pitted sweet and sour cherries, also tossed with a quarter cup of sugar, for six minutes. The apricots will have baked for 12 minutes, the cherries for six. After they've cooled, combine them. Put them in a small container, and store them out of the refrigerator.

To Lidia's mousse. You need a tablespoon of unflavored gelatin. Ragazzi, a tip here: the packets will say they contain a tablespoon. They almost never do, adn with gelatin, you must be precise. So, measure. Open a second packet if you have to. Sprinkle it over 1/4 cup of cold water, and leave it alone.

Make some caramel. Do this by combining a cup of sugar with 1/4 cup of water (for reasons unclear to me, Lidia adds 3 drops of lemon juice). Put this in a deep pot, and heat it, over medium heat. Don't stir it, and don't go away. Keep an eye on it. YOu want it to go to a dark brown, but this stuff can go from dark brown to burned in seconds. Part of the challenge of working with caramel, is playing the game between cooked and burned. Some, including Annalena, like a slightly burned flavor. In this preparation, you can get away with it. You can't with all of them.

Anyway, while that is happening, "scald" a cup of milk in another part. What is scalding? Scalding is when the milk just begins to bubble along the sides. When that happens, turn it off. Leave it for a minute, because first, you're going to pour 3/4 cup of heavy cream into that caramel. Try to keep your face away from it. You'll get a facial or worse, because the caramel will sputter and steam will come up. Whisk them together. You will get clumps, and that's ok. Now stir in the milk. Try to get this as smooth as possible.

Put it aside for another minute, and separate three eggs. Put the egg yolks in a largish bowl, because you're going to temper them. Annalena almost never bothers with this step, but the caramel is so hot that you really need to do it otherwise you will scramble your eggs. To temper, beat the egg yolks thoroughly, and then pour in about 1/4 of the cream mixture. Pour it all back into the pot, and cook, at medium low heat, with a constant whisking action, until you can "see" (and you will see), a custard form. According to Lidia, this will take nine minutes or so. It took me four. Keep your eyes open.

Take this off the heat, and stir in the gelatin, until it's completely combined. Now, add 1/2 cup of espresso. I made espresso for this preparation, from beans, but if you had to, you could use the espresso powder. Don't substitute regular coffee. It's not strong enough.

Chill this custard for a couple of hours, and then...

Whip up a cup of heavy cream. No need to add sugar. Get it stiff. In a separate bowl, whip up the three egg whites until they're stiff. Fold the egg whites into the custard, and then the whipped cream. You'll need a large bowl. If you taste the dessert at this point, you will find it very strong, almost burnt tasting. That will disappear (remember I told you about pushing the caramel?). Refrigerate this overnight.

What you have is what I would call a "bavarian cream," rather than a mousse, but call it what you like. You will call it good. To serve this up, put some of the roasted fruit in a circle around the center of a bowl. Put in a nice serving of the mousse, and then about half of a crumbled amaretti cookie on top.

THERE. We have a composed, lovely dessert, that carries through on a lot of different ideas, and also continues our theme of "accessorizing" a basic dish.

All good, all wonderful.

600 posts. I hope that you can point to some that you really enjoy.