local eating

This isn't the 1st time we've eaten a local or mostly local dinner, but it's the 1st of the One Local Summer dinners (cleverly instituted by Pocket Farm, for the 2nd year), and a good one, too.

Le Menu

Deer burgers (courtesy of D, from SE Ohio)

topped with raw milk cheddar and sauteed onions (both from the farmers mkt)

on locally made bread

Salad of several lettuces and greens (from my and D's father's gardens)

Strawberry ice cream (made by me from the u-pick strawberries and Hartzler's milk; so I guess it's really ice milk)

Everything excellent. The salad had, besides lettuce, tiny carrots thinned from the garden (not even as thick as a pencil), dill, mustard flowers, and mustard leaves. The ice cream was the star-- luridly pink--who needs food coloring when you have strawberries?--and intensely flavored. I sort of threw it together, so no recipe, but I plan to do some more experimenting.

The failure of the dinner: the hamburger buns, which raised half-heartedly, but then fell in the oven, so that they looked like large cookies. Actually, they didn't taste bad, and if I'd called them flatbread, they might have passed. But they were certainly not buns.

I've been reading Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, which is a history of the restaurant as well as of the woman--I like to think that Alice wouldn't have disdained our dinner, showing off our terroir as it did. (Maybe she'd have had some advice about those flattened buns.)

back from the novel: One Local Summer

All this time, I've been revising, and then polishing, and then dithering, and so on. But I'm done with it for a while now, so I'm ready to turn to food. Or rather to writing about it, since I've certainly eaten plenty since May, and cooked some, too.

Liz at Pocket Farm has brought One Local Summer to us for a 2nd year, and I'm planning to localize our food as much as possible, between our garden and D's father's garden and the farmers market.

Above, some of the strawberries D's father and I picked last weekend. He's 87, but he picked more than I did. Also, he didn't complain about how his back was hurting afterward. The woman in the next row and I agreed that picking your food should be mandated as part of serious diets: work your food off before you eat it.

I thought I was going to make jam, but I froze some and we've just been eating the rest, on ice cream, on cereal, on cottage cheese and yogurt, and by themselves. Maybe next time, if my back will stand it (I did complain).

writing, not cooking

D is top chef again--I'm in the throes of revision, the 3rd revision, cutting ruthlessly (it's easier to be ruthless the 3rd time around, I find--more distance).

But here is what happened yesterday--see picture above--a transformer, or something, blew up on the telephone pole by our driveway. Blew up with a loud crack, fell off, and burned merrily. And this is food-related, why? Because it happened when I was making lunch, in between Chapter 3, At Lily's House, and Chapter 4, Moonville. Happily, I had saved before we lost power. (I don't even want to think about the alternative.)

The fire department came in record time, the electric company, too. Amazingly, it was all fixed within an hour. If I was a poet, I'd write a panegyric to Cleveland Public Power--they not only fixed it with dispatch, they swept the burned and broken pieces up before they left.

Lunch: leftover rice, mustard leaves and basil from the garden, half an onion chopped, small cubes of smoked Mozzarella, olive oil, cider vinegar, sea salt--warmed slightly and tossed.

home-rolled crackers

D and I have decided that we want to reform our snacking behavior--not by stopping, for heaven's sake, but by buying or making healthier choices. Popcorn popped in olive oil: we've been doing that for a while (tastes fine). Ice cream: only the best, and only once in a while (sometimes a while is shorter than other times). Nuts: good fats!
But we both love crackers, and the crackers we love are transfatty. It's true that Ritz has come out with healthier crackers, but they're not the same, and if the crackers we eat aren't going to be the same, we decided they should be extremely not-the-same.
"We should make our own crackers," we said to each other all winter long, but like many self-improvement projects, it didn't happen. But the last time one of us said it--D--I had just read Heidi's post on crackers, which sounded good, and very doable.
D made the 1st batch, using Heidi's recipe for Spicy Polenta Cheese Crackers (which she got from Patricia Wells's book, Vegetable Harvest), changing the fat, and substituting brown rice flour for polenta, because of a dearth of the latter and just having bought the former (and using less, because we hadn't used brown rice flour before).
Spicy Brown Rice Cheese Crackers
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
3/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 1/2 tbs olive oil (substituted for butter)
Preheat oven to 375. Combine 1st six ingredients (Heidi used a food processor, D used a wooden spoon and one of those piecrust making things that have wire loops). Add the oil and mix further, much like you do for piecrust. Knead for a few seconds on a floured surface and let it rest for 15 minutes (although D forget this last part).
Roll it out as thin as you can--Heidi says to 1/16th of an inch--ours weren't that thin. Cut into rounds or strips or squares, put on ungreased baking sheet, bake for 12-15 minutes (our oven is hot, so we baked them for just over 10 minutes).
They just spicy enough, faintly cheesy, good with wine and cheese. They weren't crisp, except at the edges where they were thinner, so we're thinking next time we'll have to roll them out as thin as Heidi recommends. But they were very good, and they kept well for 4 days (which is as long as they lasted). Most important they were easy enough to adopt as a regular snack habit.
I made a 2nd batch substituting a different kind of cheese and teff flour which were not as successful--tasted great but were more like thin biscuits. But we're looking forward to more experiments.

odd restaurant behavior

Yesterday I went to Sergio's, a Brazilian-ish restaurant in University Circle, with a friend. This isn't a restaurant review, but I will say that we both had the Carioca Burger, with 2 sauces (one a kind of salsa, the other intensely green and pesto-like), and crispy fries which came with an amazing spiced ketchup for dipping. And we shared pistachio gelato for dessert, fighting politely over the crunchy nuts. Everything was very good (I guess that was a review, a mini one anyway).

But the odd thing that happened at the next table is still on my mind. We were seated on a banquette with several small tables spaced out along its length, and 2 women were at the next 2-table. I can't describe them (and probably shouldn't) because I didn't want to inspect them--it's hard to observe someone minutely and covertly who is only an arm's length away from you. With good restaurant etiquette, you are supposed, usually, to pretend that they are invisible, and that you can't hear their conversation.

But in fact, although I observe this convention of invisibility, I always eavesdrop if I can (I consider it my duty as a writer), and in the interstices of my own interesting conversation with Plan B (writing, MFAs, our bookish childhoods, etc.) I heard snips and bits of the talk at the next table--nothing startling, just 2 friends out for lunch.

But at one point, I heard one say to the other "isn't this good?" and I glanced over to see what they were talking about, for in restaurants, don't we all want to know what they're eating at the other tables? don't we all feel that we might have missed the best thing on the menu?

So I slid my eyes sideways: they were eating biscotti, and I began to lose interest, since I don't like biscotti (too hard, often flavorless). But then I remembered that there was no biscotti on the dessert menu (we had just looked at it). And when I looked back, I noticed that they seemed to have taken it out of a bag.

Our pistachio gelato arrived just then, and under the cover of our waiter's setting it on the table (marvelously pale green, in a martini glasses, the 2 spoons with their handles pointing in opposite directions, ready to be grasped by our opposing right hands), I saw that yes, it was a bag, partially hidden under a napkin. I could see but not read the printing on the bag, a small transparent bakery sort of a bag. They were eating at one of the best restaurants in town and had brought in their own food!

I wanted so much to say to Plan B--look at what they're doing! But our tables were so close (I could have broken off a piece of the biscotti without even straightening my arm all the way), that I refrained. And then I forgot about it in the flurry of our departure, both away to our respective offices.

But how odd. And why? Sergio's has other magnificent desserts besides gelato--their coconut cake is amazing, for instance. And isn't this a variety of high incivility? I've been in places (Arabica coffee houses) that have signs prohibiting people from bringing in and eating their own food, but I guess Sergio's didn't think they'd have to go this far.

don't mess with my chocolate

A rallying cry sent out by Cybele, of Candyblog. I heard her on NPR yesterday discussing the FDA's intention to allow chocolate to be adulterated with vegetable oils, etc., and still be called chocolate. There are such products around now, but they're called "chocolate-flavored" or some other such equivocation--they tend to be too sweet, often with some indefinably off taste.

According to Cybele yesterday, the FDA is of the opinion that consumers won't notice the difference: are they crazy?!? Maybe someone who, like D's father, loses his sense of taste (result of an antibiotic reaction, and happily, it's back). Or someone who has never tasted genuine, made-with-only-cocoa-butter chocolate.

Fran Gage, of Fran's Chocolates, also spoke on the program, which gave me a chocoholic's thrill, since I love her chocolates and caramels (see right).

For more info, read Cybele here. And if you want to complain to the FDA, today is the deadline (I wish I'd heard about it before). Here is the online comment form, and here is a tutorial, complete with a letter you can copy if you don't want to write your own (both courtesy of Cybele).

If there's a march through the streets with torches burning being planned, I'll let you know.

at last: the farmers' market

The Crocker-Basset branch of the North Union Farmers Market opened yesterday in its spring version--smaller than the many canopies and vendors of summer, but as friendly. Plus, there were lambs. I missed the sheep shearing, although there was a pile of wool to show it had been done--my sister stopped breathing as we went by to hold off an allergic sneeze.

Shopping list:

bread from Zoss bakery (rye and sourdough)

2 banana-chocolate chip scones from Olaf's Daughter (dreamy)

a bag of Empire apples from Woolf Farms (literary apples!); the young woman in the yellow t-shirt explained that these had been in normal storage and not cold storage, and so might not be quite as crisp (but they were as crispy as I could want). I should have asked what normal storage was, exactly. I imagine a loose pile of apples in a root cellar, with a shaft of sun coming in through a high-up window (but probably not).

some unfiltered honey; apparently it's a good thing if there are stray bee wings in your honey. We'll see.

cheese: mozzarella and raw-milk cheddar

There were ramps, but I'm not convinced that they are any better than the young garlic growing in my yard, so I passed (even though they looked lovely. I didn't buy any jewelry either, although I admired the display.

At home, a farmers market lunch: raw milk cheddar on rye bread, sprinkled with chives from my garden. Heavenly.

pasta primavera: eat spring

Primavera means spring in Italian, I believe, and is also the name of Botticelli's painting, which hangs in the Uffizi in Florence, where I saw it when I was very tired. There are no elevators in the Uffizi, or at least none that an able-bodied but exhausted tourist could take. But even so, even though my feet hurt all the way up to my knees after walking the cobblestones of Florence for days, it's still a hell of a painting.

In it, Venus watches the 3 Graces dancing, and she looks serenely content. Possibly, she had just had some pasta beforehand? Pasta Primavera is certainly good enough for a goddess.
Traditionally, PP is pasta served with sauteed vegetables and a cream sauce. I often make it with a sort of bechamel though, because I have the ingredients for that always at hand. This one is a hybrid--it has a flour-thickened sauce, but also a bit of cream.

Pasta Primavera

3 cups pasta

3 tbs olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 shallots, chopped

8-10 baby portabella mushrooms, sliced

1/2 tsp tarragon

pinch of fennel seeds
bunch of asparagus, sliced on the diagonal
1 broccoli crown, separated into florets
2 small zucchini, sliced (not too thin)
handful of fresh peas (although frozen would be fine)
2 tbs flour
2 cups chicken broth (could use vegetable broth to make it vegetarian)
splash of wine
2 tbs cream
1/2 cup sour cream (I used low-fat)
about 3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

I sauteed the onions and shallots in 2 tbs of the oil, and when they had started to soften, added the mushrooms, fennel, and tarragon. While the pasta was cooking, I cut up the vegetables; when the pasta was done, I scooped it out of the pot with a slotted spoon, and then used the pasta water to cook the vegetables, one kind at a time (so each would be just tender).

When the mushroom mixture was done, I spooned it out, added a little more oil to the pan, and then the flour, mixing it up well. Then in with the wine and the broth--I stirred it around, smashing flour lumps with the back of the spoon, until it started to thicken. I added the 2 creams and stirred them in, then the grated cheese, then stirred in the mushroom mixture.

Finally, everything into a bowl--the pasta, the vegetables, and the sauce folded together so that everything was well combined.

I served it with additional grated cheese (although D and I agreed that it didn't need any) and orange sections that had been sprinkled with pomegranite vinegar and rose petal cardamom syrup. An excellent dinner to remind us that it's really spring, even though there's still a considerable amount of snow in the back yard.

(I owe this dinner in large part to Whole Foods, where I bought the vegetables on my 1st visit to the Cleveland area's new store, which is fabulous!)

it's so easy

which is what my mother used to say about some fabulous dish she'd just served--and it wasn't always true. Sometimes there was a lot of folding, chopping, mincing, kneading, etc. in her it's-so-easy. I found myself saying it about the cheesecake I made for company on Friday, but in this case, it was true. Easy, uncomplicated, didn't take long, came out perfect.
This was the Inaugural Cheesecake: 1st cheesecake I've ever made, and 1st time using my lovely new springform pan (offered to me when I whined on this blog about not having one: thanks MB; fittingly, she was one of the guests for whom the cheesecake was made).
Cheesecake was one of those things I put off trying, like yeast doughs, or handmade pasta, or Beef Wellington, because I thought it would be hard. I'm not sure why; maybe just because it often requires a springform pan? Something that is baked in a pan with a mechanism--how can that be easy?

I used the most basic recipe I could find, the Joy of Cooking's Cheesecake Cockaigne. And I went against my tinkering inclination and didn't change anything because of my fear of cheesecake (well-maybe 2 things).

The Feared Cheesecake Which Yet Turned Out to be Not Only Beneficent but Luscious

Prepare a crumb crust (I used Joy's--graham crackers, sugar, melted butter, adding a pinch of ginger; but any crumb crust would be fine), and press into a springform pan.
Beat until creamy 24 oz cream cheese. Joy suggested that this would only take 30 seconds, but it took more like a minute. Beat in 1 cup sugar and 1 tsp vanilla or 1/4 tsp almond extract (I used vanilla). Beat in 3 eggs, one at a time, just until incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl and beaters after each. I added the zest of one lemon, an ingredient borrowed from the New York style cheesecake that was on the same page of Joy. Put into pan, smooth the top lovingly, bake at 300 degrees 45 to 55 minutes. Joy said to put the pan on a cookie sheet, which I forgot to do, but luckily there weren't any leaks.
Combine 1 cup sour cream, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tbs vanilla, 1/4 tsp salt and spread on the cooled cheesecake. And that is it--you've got your cheesecake.
I used my mother's Kitchen-Aid, which is getting along in years (it's avocado-colored, if that tells you anything), but still works fine. I worried when the cream cheese all got stuck inside the whisk attachment, but it worked itself loose as more things were added.

The most difficult part of this was deciding when it was done. The directions suggested that it should still have a bit of a wiggle in the center when it was time to take it out. But how much of a wiggle? D and I consulted over the degree of wiggliness--I needed the support, for I have a tendency to want to put things back in the oven if there's the least bit of doubt.
And it was beautiful (top picture). The Joy said it should be cooled on a rack for an hour, and then after the topping was added, should be refrigerated for 3 hours or preferably 24 before serving, which part of the directions I hadn't bothered to read until I was starting to put it together at 4:00 pm (company coming at 6:30). I compromised by cooling it on the rack for 30 minutes; putting on the topping; and putting the whole thing in the refrigerator on a rack for about 45 minutes. It was fine--not totally chilled, but cool and creamy, and it didn't, as I feared it might, fail to come out of the springform neatly, and it also didn't lose its firmness once it was out.
I think it might have been the best cheesecake I've ever eaten--light, sweet with a small tartness from the sour cream and the lemon zest, the filling creamy over the crunch of the crust. I regret to say that everyone except for D had 2 pieces, with Margaritas, to celebrate spring. And the next day I had 2 more. Needless to say it's quite gone now. But I'm already planning the next one: chocolate? marbled? strawberry-topped? cashew-caramel?

summer in a jar

A breakfast of peaches canned from D's father's trees, with raspberries picked at Rosby's Farm and frozen: this bowl is the reason we'll be canning again this year, even though it was hot and sweaty and sticky work.

supernaturally good granola

I've gotten a nice haul of cookbooks in the last few weeks--some for my birthday, and some as presents from me to me--so I'm planning to try a few new things out here over the next weeks.

Last week I got Heidi Swanson's new cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. I've been following her blog, 101 Cookbooks, almost since I started reading blogs (how did I live in that pre-blog darkness?) and I bought this as soon as I could. It's a beautiful book, wonderful colors, great photographs (Heidi is her own photographer), and the recipes are the kind I like best, that is, they are recipes that quest and explore.

So far I've mostly been reading it, dipping in here and there, making note of things I want to try (Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake! hibiscus-flavored Agua de Jamaica! a healthy version of Thin Mints!). But yesterday I wanted to get my hands into one of those recipes, and I chose something simple to start: Heidi's Grain-ola. I changed her recipe a little, partly to downsize it by half, partly to suit my cupboards.

Grain-ola, mostly from Super Natural Foods

2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup hulled pumpkin seeds (a sub for sunflower seeds)
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts
grated zest of 1 orange
1/3 cup of maple syrup, plus 3 tbs of honey (Heidi used all honey, but I was almost out)
1/8 cup peanut oil (sub for coconut which I didn't have)
about a cup of assorted dried fruits (I used raisins, cranberries, and chopped apricots)
(I also left out coconut, again because I was without, and I have promised to try it with the coconut and the coconut oil.)

Heat sweeteners and oil until warm, and pour over the other ingredients, combined in a big bowl. Spread out on a cookie sheet (I lined mine with foil to save clean-up) and bake at 300 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Mine came out a little darker than Heidi's, because I couldn't decide if it was done and left it in about 10 minutes longer--not a terrible mistake, because it has a nice darkly caramelized flavor. Altogether, as fine a granola as I've had, right up to my former high watermark of granolas, the kind they make for Vermont College's cafeteria (which is catered by a culinary institute): crispy, chewy, with the nice toothy softness of the dried fruits--good as a dry snack, and ambrosial in a bowl of milk.


One of the appeals of Super Natural Foods, for me, is its focus on unprocessed or minimally processed food, and on unfamiliar grains. Under Heidi's tutelage, I'm hoping to get to know teff and wheat berries in the most intimate and delicious ways.
For Amy Sherman's (of Cooking with Amy) interview with Heidi, check here.

some links, and kitchen news

Here's the best thing I read about the Oscars (1st saw it at Foodgoat); I was also thrilled that Helen Mirren won.
Some people are gardening already--I have seedling envy. My garden still looks pretty much like this, although some of the snow has melted.
Some other people (well, only one) have lost 1/2 their weight, which makes feel like a slacker for not being able to lose 10.
March 1 was National Pig Day, which I didn't know--but I'm planning on eating bacon this week anyway, in belated remembrance, perhaps in this tempting recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini, which is basically mac and cheese with hazelnuts and bacon: mmmm. (Clothilde's cookbook is coming out in May!)
I was looking for something quite different the other day (can't remember what it was), and found a site with Czech and Slovak recipes, which reminded me that I want to explore my native cuisine (one of them: I'm a mongrel). The only ones I recognized were klobasa (which we knew as kielbasi)--the beloved smoked sausage of many Eastern European countries; and palacinky, which the site described as "sweet stuffed crepes." I felt almost offended by the name--I could feel my dormant Slovakness rising up: a French name for one of the only Slovak dishes my mother made for us? Quel horreur!
But I guess they are crepes, we just didn't know it. To us they were a seldom, special treat, and everything about them was lit with magic: the way the batter gaily spread in the pan to make the thinnest of (pancakes) (crepes) palacinky, the red gleam of the jelly spread on the finished product, the powdered sugar dusted on the rolled palacinky, the squidginess of the roll under the fork, the separate tastes of egginess, jelly, sugar in the mouth.
Sometimes Mom would say, "my mother used to make these for us," for her and her 10 brothers and sisters, and that would make them taste even better, imagining my grandmother making them on the farm, and maybe even back in what we then called "the old country." Food from the past, from Europe, from where our grandfather worked as a forester, like something in a fairy tale.
Here's the best picture I could find of palacinky--it appears to be a mix for palacinky. Ours were never served with whipped cream or berries, although I wouldn't say no.

News: the kitchen is almost, almost finished. See D, left, putting a coat of primer on the ugly redness. There is a stage and a half left: the half is the refinishing of the cupboard doors, which we decided to do separately from the cupboards themselves, since it's going to involve paint remover which we'd rather do outside. The whole stage is the floor, which will be no doubt involved and awful in ways we can't even imagine, but which we won't think about before we have to.
So this weekend, my daughters and their families will come to visit and we'll be able to cook something for them in an attractive kitchen (if you don't look at the floor), free of its plastic veil--I am elated. And I can make palacinky--possibly on Saturday I'll be pouring batter, spreading jelly, dusting sugar. Can't wait.

February is a cold month

We are still in the kitchen, meaning still working on it. Currently, it's the inside of the cupboards, which are painted a hideous shade of drying-blood red, robustly chipped (we always check for paint chips if we get out a little-used dish or bowl), which is not only unattractive but probably lead-based and therefore toxic.
Even so, we haven't mostly relied on frozen dinners, because we got so sick of them during the plastering part of the work. Some things are more easily prepared in a partially functional kitchen. Anthing that uses too many spices will cause grief, because the spices and dried herbs are dispersed far and wide, some in a blue basket, some in a giant dough-rising bowl, some in a box along with the deer's skull that used to hang between the windows (found, not shot).
Also it's not wise to embark on anything that uses too many pans, because there's sure to be cursing and banging of the available pots when you can't find the top of the double boiler, or the springform pan, or the top of the glass casserole dish. (Actually, I don't have a springform pan. I did have one, but I decided I wasn't using it and gave it away, and then became convinced that my life wasn't worth living unless I made cheesecake. So I'll probably buy another.)

Some things that have worked well:
Macaroni and cheese--of course--so simple: macaroni, milk, flour, oil or butter, cheese. The flour canister is easy to find because it's big enough to hold a five-pound bag.
Omelets: everything's in the fridge, which has not so far been renovated.
Chili: this was one of the 1st things we made after the kitchen became functional, and because we like it so much, I grouped the necessary spices/herbs on the window sill for easy access. If I want to use dried beans there's a minor problem, since there are several kinds and they're widely distributed: a giant bag of kidney beans in the cooler, along with the giant bag of rice; pinto beans in an attractive glass jar I got at a house sale; lentils in a plastic container on the dining room window seat next to our record collection; black beans in their original bag in a box on top of the fridge.
Soup: because it is so forgiving. As long as you have stock, bought or homemade and frozen, some vegetables, onions and garlic (almost always essential), meat (optional)--you're in business. One of our recent successful soups was a black bean soup with rice and corn, sensibly spicy--so simple as not to need a recipe: black beans, chicken broth, onion and garlic chopped, corn, extra veg (diced carrots this time), one potato cut up, a cup of leftover rice, a dash of hot sauce, a pinch of ancho pepper (one of the gathered chili spices), another of kosher salt. Serve with grated cheese on top (in this case, smoked cheddar).
Thank heaven for canned crushed tomatoes--a convenience food worth standing up for. And speaking of convenience foods, if you need a reason not to buy Hamburger Helper, check out Erin O'Brien's hilarious post on her HH experiment.

a winter meal

Winter calls, of course, for comfort food. For a dish baked in the oven, the warmth and smell of it permating the house. For blankets of creamy cheese sauce. For turkey and broccoli, which is the family name for this heavenly dish, sometimes known elsewhere as Something or another Divan. Why divan? isn't this anothe name for sofa/couch? Why does divan equal cheese sauce? I don't know. I could Google it right now, but it's winter, and I'm conserving body heat and energy, so I'm going to rest in my ignorance.

We only had this when there was leftover turkey, which meant after Thanksgiving or after Christmas, which were the only times we had turkey. My mother would never have dreamed of making turkey just so there would be leftovers (as we have sometimes done), so it was a rare treat, remembered fondly and yearned for.

There were dozens of recipes for this or dishes like it floating around in the '50s, I think, but my mother got hers from a restaurant, now forgotten. She liked what she'd ordered so much (and probably it was called Turkey Divan), that she asked the waiter if the chef might give her the recipe. He told her that the chef was stingy with his recipes, but that it was really easy, and he described what went into it, my mother scribbling it down on the back of an envelope: sliced turkey, broccoli spears, a white sauce enriched with cheese.

My version is only a little different from hers--I don't use frozen broccoli, and I don't used Kraft's Olde English Cheese. But otherwise, it's the same, and it produces a dish where the whole is immeasurably more than the parts.

Jo's Turkey and Broccoli

2 tbs butter or olive oil

2 tbs flour

1.5 cups milk

1.5 cups grated cheese of your choice

pinch of salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2-3 broccoli crowns

a cup or cup and a half of leftover turkey

paprika

Melt butter in a saucepan, and add the flour to it (or to the oil), stirring over the heat until it's absorbed. Stir in the milk and continue stirring until it thickens into its white-sauceness. (This time, I was doing 2 other things at the same time, and I let it start to boil, which you are never supposed to do to white sauce, but you know--it turned out fine.) When it's thickened, add salt and nutmeg and grated cheese, stirring until it melts in. (I mostly use cheddar, but I add other cheese to it, depending on what's in the fridge.)

Cook broccoli until just starting to become tender, and slice or separate the florets--you don't want anything to be so big that it will stick up and mar the cheese-sauce blanket. Slice or chop the turkey. Put the broccoli in one layer in an 8-inch baking pan, and the turkey over it. Pour cheese sauce--it will probably be thick, so spread it to the edges and corners. Sprinkle lightly with paprika.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbling around the edges and the top browns slightly. Eat with moans of pleasure.

I always think of my mother when we have this, of her wonderful cooking, her curiosity. I can see her talking to the waiter, her eager friendliness, maybe almost flirting a little (she was a very attractive woman), my father looking on benevolently--because for him, everything she did was right.

snowed-in valentines

Big storm, as you probably know if you're a midwesterner. We're not really truly snowed in--we could get out if we had to. But there's enough snow that we're happy we don't have to--about a foot, I'm guessing, although there are drifts that are much bigger.

We're having a make-do Valentine's day, since both of us were planning last-minute heart-shaped shopping. D gave me a chocolate heart made from a Cadbury bar melted down and poured into an ancient high-sided, heart-shaped cookie cutter.

I'm making him a bread pudding in heart-shaped ramekins with what's around the house: I'm thinking chestnuts, apricots, caramel--I'll let you know how it turns out.

this + this, but not that + that

I do have a kitchen again, although there are still 2 more stages to the renovating: the upper cupboards and the floor (see left, the paint job). And D and I have been cooking--how I missed those beloved ordinary meals that were so unattainable when the kitchen was full of ladders and plastic tarps: shrimp stir fry, meatloaf, baked potatoes with various toppings, etc. etc.
I'm not quite ready to post about the actual cooking yet though--I'm easing my way in by food contemplation: imagine me with chin leaning on one hand, a cartoon balloon over my head that has a picture of a cake in it, or maybe a steaming pot of stock, or some handmade pasta (one of my food resolutions).
Today I was thinking about things going with other things: sometimes they do and sometimes not. So I've started a small meme, a version of the fives: list 5 food pairings that you've discovered go very well together (maybe against expectations); and 5 that you really don't like at all.

Here are mine:
5 delicious partners
1. Ginger snaps and cheddar cheese--the snaps should be very gingery, the cheddar sharpish. This is an idea I got from a good friend, Susan of Bluffton, a late-night snack invention when she was getting her Ph.D. in creative writing. When I was visiting her several years ago, she brought out the gingersnaps and cheddar for one of our food and talk fests. "You'll love this," she said, and I was an immediate convert.
2. Potato chips and ice cream. Unflavored chips, of an unsurpassed crispiness and saltiness, and any kind of ice cream, although I like them best with chocolate. Salty and sweet--very classic; also crunchy and creamy. There's so much going on you won't be able to hold a sensible conversation. The first time I ate chips and ice cream together it was to gross out one of my squeamish cousins. I scooped the ice cream up like dip while she squealed in horror. Now I just eat them sedately from side-by-side bowls, which is just as good.
3. Cherry tomatoes and kalamata olives. They can be eaten together casually and promiscuously out of a bowl for lunch, or skewered jauntily on decorative toothpicks. Each makes the other taste more so--more sweetly tomatoish, more bitingly, piquantly olivish.
4. Saltine crackers with butter. This takes your snack life up a notch without noticeably increasing prep time. Open box of crackers, spread butter thinly. Make a stack so you don't have to go back to make more when you've gotten to a good place in the book you're reading and you don't want to stop and go back to the kitchen. I prefer unsalted butter, but if you're a saltlover go for the double dose.
5. Hardboiled eggs and French dressing. I usually make my own salad dressing now, but if it's going to be on a halved hardboiled egg, it has to be Kraft French Deluxe. The taste is important, but also the brilliant (some say lurid) color.

5 food hostilities
1. Prunes and chocolate. I like prunes, I like chocolate, but they just don't go together for me. Hopeful, I try them out again every once in a while, but--nope. Even as I'm typing this though, I had a vision of prune chocolate chunk muffins, so who knows? (Chocolate and apricots are fast friends though.)
2. Champagne and beer. Probably no one needs to be told this, but champagne and beer do not go well together. Especially not when they're mixed because you don't have a lot of champagne, and you think that beer (which you have a lot more of) will make it go farther when you're celebrating New Year's Eve at the home of one of your friends whose parents are spending the weekend in Las Vegas. I don't like to admit whose idea it was.
3. Coconut milk and pumpkin. One of the worst soups I ever made was a pumpkin soup made with coconut milk. It's true that I was not following the recipe, so it was my my own fault, but it was awful. The only time I've ever thrown something away (usually if things go bad, I put it in the fridge and pretend that I'm going to eat it later, until it grows a coat of mold and then I throw it away).
4. Sausage and gravy, as in sausage gravy. I've given sausage gravy many chances, because I ought to like it--I like them when they're decorously apart, but when they come together I draw back in horror. Maybe it's because I don't think gravy should be white? I know it's not because it's high in fat.

5. Celery stuffed with peanut butter. Who is responsible for this? I don't like the way it tastes, I don't like the way the peanut butter stickies up the crispness of the celery, and I don't like the way it looks--green and brown, not attractive. The only thing celery should be stuffed with is cream cheese mixed with a dollop of horseradish and a squeeze of lemon juice--a sanctified and beloved hors d'ouevre in our family.

I'm tagging Plan B, Madame X, Pen in Hand, Book of Marvels, No Feeling of Falling, and I'm hoping that Alternate Side Parking will take some time from the pressing business of moving her car from one side of the street to the other as well.

wishful cooking

The kitchen is coming along. It has gone from its mutilated state (left) ; then the stove served up an assortment of strange chemical dishes, right; and now it's assuming a bridal-white coat of primer below right).

But cooking is once again suspended, and we've eaten more TV dinner type food than I like. The Boston Market chicken pot pie is not that great, in case you're interested; Marie Callendar's is far superior (although a little too salty).

In the meantime, I'm reading cookbooks and blogs and marking recipes I want to try when my stove has lost its plastic drapery, and the cupboards are full of food and dishes instead of paint thinner and sandpaper.




There have been a lot of winter vegetable posts lately, enough to make a menu. Here is my dream wintery menu:

Appetizers:
Puree of Celery Root Soup, from Orangette
Winter Salad with Fennel, Pear, Orange, and Pecan, from the passionate cook
Entree:
Simple Butternut Squash Tart, from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks

with side vegetable:
Roasted Parsnips, from Maureen at No Feeling of Falling
and for dessert,
Dark Chocolate and Beet Brownies, from La Tartine Gourmand

In the meantime, the contents of my kitchen cupboards are all over the place. Is the oatmeal on the dining table or in the corner of the living room? Where is the cinnamon? Did we eat all the walnuts, or are they in a box next to the couch?

Our tentative date of cook-ability is January 25: here's hoping.

culinary resolutions

It's still January, still fair to be making resolutions. So here are mine:
1. Make pasta from scratch. I'll have 2 good step-by-step blog posts to guide me, here and here.
2. Finally finish renovating the kitchen. I want to have all my spices in one place again!
3. Try making dishes from a new-to-me ethnic cuisine. Thai? Moroccan? or maybe explore my own culinary roots--Slovak/Eastern European. (I also have Scottish roots, but I'm not sure I want to make a haggis.)
4. Make pierogies from scratch (my ethnic roots!).
5. Utilize my cookbook collection more. I have a tendency to covet and collect and then just hoard things--so maybe I ought to make a recipe a week from one or another of them.
6. Make an effort to shop, cook, and eat more adventurously. Find out what galangal is. Buy a quince or some kumquats. Make some pickled turnips!
7. Collect the family recipes, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time and haven't.
8. Make a kitchen inventory: do I really want to do this? or is it just a fantasy, like the one where all my books are alphabetized and ordered by genre and subject?
9. Stop eating things I don't like, or don't like much, and eat only things I love. No more of those muffins from Starbucks. No more processed cheese or stale doughnuts at work functions. (Make my own doughnuts! if I make pompkushki, it will be more of the ethnic roots thing.)
For some other posts on food-related resolutions and plans, see Food and Thoughts and Hooked on Heat; and for a great retrospective list of her favorite 2006 recipes, see La Tartine Gourmande.

good luck food

This probably should have gone in the end-of-2006 post--our New Year's Eve dinner, but I didn't get around to it, and then there was the mac & cheese thing, and so on. But I had to give it a post for 2 reasons--one is that my kielbasi photo looked so good, I didn't want to waste it. And two, I wondered about the good-luckness of pork and sauerkraut, which is the Slovak good-luck new-year's dinner of choice. I'm very fond of both, but why is it good luck to eat them at the end/beginning of the year? Living off the fat of the land? (pork) eating up the bitter/sour parts of life? (sauerkraut)
I'm passionately fond of sauerkraut, and would make it more often except that D is not as fond. I make it from my mother's recipe in a no-recipe way, but this year I made it with chicken broth because I forgot to buy beer and didn't want to go out again. And since I was changing the one thing I made another addition or two, which I hope my mother wouldn't hate (although she might find it faddish).
Sauerkraut for New Year's (or anytime)
1 bag sauerkraut, drained
a pork chop or a chunk of kielbasi
a good pinch of caraway seeds (about 1 tsp)
a smaller pinch of cumin seeds
a cup of beer or chicken broth
(if broth, also add a splash of vinegar)
1 small potato, grated
1 tsp diced lemon peel
Put sauerkraut in a saucepan with everything else but the lemon peel and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 30 minutes (while you're frying up the rest of the kielbasi in a skillet). In the last few minutes put in the lemon peel. Serve with kielbasi and plenty of horseradish, and follow (somewhat later) with champagne.
We added brownies with vanilla ice cream for dessert, and thought ourselves lucky to have found the brownies leftover in the freezer.

macaroni and cheese

This post is dedicated to my daughter S, who loves macaroni and cheese with a passion--I always try to make it for her if she visits (and once made it for her at her house; a small disaster because of the difference in our ovens). I must say it's a pleasure to know of something that will always delight her; if only my older daughter V had a favorite dish so I could do the same for her--if she has, she's not telling.
Kevin at Seriously Good has come up with a Mac-and-Cheese Off, and I had to post on mine, even though it is extremely ungourmet, not in any way tarted up, perhaps boring. We like it that way (although we don't agree that it's boring). I haven't used a recipe for years, although long ago I had it written out on an index card, one of the few dishes of my mother's that I carried into my first marriage. It's her recipe, possibly originally from the Joy of Cooking (although it's not quite the same) and all I've changed is the type of cheese (Mom was a fan of Kraft American).
Here it is--basic, homey, and delicious.
Sue Bee's Macaroni and Cheese
2 tbs butter (you can use oil if you want, although the taste will change)
2 tbs flour
2 cups milk (I've used skim, 2%, and whole--all work fine)
about 2 cups grated cheese
2 cups macaroni
Paprika
Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add flour and stir into a roux, cooking it gently for a half minute or so. 1 Add milk and stir constantly over low heat until the lumps dissolve (smash at them with your spoon if necessary). Continue cooking over lowish heat, 2 until the sauce thickens enough to coat the spoon a little. 3 Add the grated cheese 4 and stir until melted (you shouldn't need the stove here--the heat of the sauce should melt it).
In the meantime, if you're efficient, you'll have had water boiling for the macaroni. Sling it in and simmer it until it just starts to soften (I take one or two out and eat them to see how they're coming along). When they get there, drain and put in your preferred dish (I use a 9x13 pan), then pour the sauce over, mixing everything around until the cheesiness is nicely distributed.
As a last touch, sprinkle with paprika (this is more for aesthetics than flavor, but we can't do without it). Bake at 350 degrees for a while. I don't really time it any more, but I think it's supposed to go for about 25 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbling a little around the edges.
Serve right from the pan, because no one is interested in waiting any longer. It's good with vegetables like broccoli or green beans (also a nice color contrast), but we never put the vegetables into the mac and cheese in the interests of innovation or saving time as I've seen some recipes suggest.
mac and cheese footnotes:
1 When I first made this I had no idea what a roux was, but now I take pleasure in using the right word.
2 You're supposed to cook it over low heat, but I confess that I often turn up the heat after the lumps are gone, which works OK if you stir madly.
3 Knowing when this is partly a matter of experience, but I find that the feel of the spoon (I always use a wooden one) against the pan changes when the sauce starts to thicken--it moves against the pan bottom in a more silky way.
4 This particular mac and cheese had a mixture of two kinds of cheddar (an Irish cheese, I think, and Helluva Good Cheese Extra Sharp Cheddar), plus the end of a piece of Swiss. If I'm making it for S, it has to have a high proportion of yellow cheddar, since she disdains the white version. Confession: I once used a judicious mixture of yellow and red food coloring when I had only white cheese: no one guessed.