Karen Downie Itinerant Cook

Entertaining Tips

2012-02-12T11:39:00.008-05:00

I like parties. Whether I am a host or a guest or a behind-the-scenes worker-bee, parties are often delightful occasions that the participants remember for years to come. It's also nice that they can be as unique as the spirit of the host...casual, formal, themed, thrown-together, over-the-top, under-the-radar...you name it. Done right, they are all a rollicking good time. But hosts often stress about the food. With 20-plus years of experience, both personally and professionally, I have a few entertaining tips that might help you plan your next house party adventure, no matter what style of event you choose:

1. YOU DON'T NEED MUCH SALAD. I rarely even offer it anymore, because you wind up throwing away over half of it, no matter how little you make. Even the strictest dieter is going to ease up a little at a party and choose something besides tossed lettuce. Sure, you'll "sell" a little of it, and you might feel obligated to offer it, but when you are in the grocery store, choose your greens and then put half of them back. Really. And the same goes for crudite or veggie platters.
2. WHEN YOU DO MAKE A VEGETABLE PLATTER, INCLUDE MORE CARROTS THAN ANYTHING ELSE. You'll get a couple celery, broccoli, and radish eaters. But not many.
3. OFFER SOMETHING "REAL" FOR VEGETARIANS. A "real" option for a vegetarian is something more than a potato and vegetable side dish. Consider including a colorful, veggie-loaded pasta dish or something with legumes. Your goal should be to make every guest feel really welcome, not a pain in your menu-planning side.
4. UNLESS YOU ARE USING A CATERER, MAKE BUFFET ITEMS THAT HOLD UP FOR HOURS. Salmon is good hot or cold. So is roast beef. But rice noodles get mushy after 30 minutes. Green beans start turning brown when left to wilt in a chafing dish. When you plan your menu, think about the shelf life of your proposed dishes. And on that note...
5. MAKE SURE YOU NEVER LEAVE POULTRY OR SHELLFISH OUT FOR VERY LONG. This is literally a get-it-while-it's-hot (or cold) type of item. These items can "turn" relatively quickly. So please be really conservative with poultry and shellfish. When I was young and didn't know much about food, I polished off a piece of chicken sausage during the final hours of a summertime barbeque (the sausages had been made much earlier at the event) and was put out of commission for the next 48 hours with a brutal case of food poisoning. Please don't let this happen at your party from your food.
6. HAVE LOTS OF NON-ENTREE ITEMS ON HAND. Little snack-like nibbles will get consumed throughout the night. Small bite/small plate items, especially those with a crunchy texture, will get eaten before, during, and after dinner. Guests love to enjoy olives, nuts, chips, and so on, especially if you are serving adult beverages, with which you should always offer food to slow down the rate of alcohol absorption.
7. GO AHEAD AND BE A LITTLE BAD. You might have the most regimented, health-conscious diet 364 days a year, but when you are entertaining, please understand that not everyone wants to be on your diet. If a milk-based dish tastes really does taste better with heavy cream than skim milk, then go ahead and do it "full-strength" this one time. If the recipe wants you to butter every sheet of phyllo dough, melt the whole pound of butter, my friend. You can absolutely offer some lighter fare, too, but give your guests a chance to let their hair down, dietetically-speaking, at your special event.
8. OFFER BOTTLED WATER AT THE BAR. This is easy to forget and I often forget it, myself. But sometimes, nothing refreshes like pure, clean water.
9. SEND GUESTS HOME WITH LEFTOVERS. If some poor child is sitting home with a babysitter while his parents are living it up at your house, maybe you can brighten the kid's day with a slice of cake you offer to his parents to take home for him. If you know that your eternal bachelor buddy is probably going to be eating canned soup for the rest of the week, make sure you don't let him out of the house without a giant doggy bag. These guest are your friends...take good care of them.
10. DON'T FREAK OUT. Don't fret if your souffle fell. Don't create a menu that would intimidate Ferran Adria, keeping you locked in the kitchen all night. Don't try to wash all the dishes while your guests are still there. Keep the carpet cleaner's number by the phone so you can really mean it when you tell your guest who knocked red wine on your white carpet that there is no need to worry about it. Don't look down your nose at the value-store pigs-in-a-blanket appetizer that your guest brought to "help" you. Life isn't perfect. Your party might not be either. All any of us ever needs to do is try to enjoy ourselves and the good people around us.

Paradoxes Solved

2012-02-03T07:28:00.004-05:00

Everyone has heard about the French Paradox---the French eat heaps of rich sauces and wash it down with wine and still manage to remain svelte and keep a lower incidence of heart disease. You may not have heard about the Asian Paradox. I just read about it this morning. It seems that the pervasive idea that grain-based carbohydrates are doing us all in, causing organ inflammation and stubbornly depositing themselves around our waistband area, does not seem to be a problem in traditional Asian cultures that eat a lot of rice. Per capita, Asians have a lower BMI and a lower incidence of heart disease than the western world, but they have plenty of carbs on their dinner plates.

So what gives? We have doctors and scientists preaching to us in books and magazines. We have dogmatic signage in health-food grocery stores reminding us what we should be doing. We have television weight-loss experts chiming in about the clear path to the body beautiful. Are we supposed to eat like the French? Are we supposed to eat like the Asians? What are we doing here? Chop, chop. Let's go. Answers please!

If you read closely the treatises on these diet paradoxes, you'll note that these "healthier" cultures seem to move around more. The French tend to live in towns or city centers that we would call "walkable". And so they walk. To the shops. To the park. To the restaurant that will serve them a dollop of cream sauce and a glass of Chateauneuf du Pape. Asians tend to use bicycles as their primary mode of transportation...they are moving around on their own steam.

Not a one of these arguably healthy cultures live in a gated community without sidewalks located 20 miles from commerce so they necessarily have to gas up the SUV to get to work or the shops. These arguably healthier cultures are not exercising because they want to look like they did the "Jillian Michaels 30 day shred", they are exercising because it is a means to an end, namely transportation. If they want to go somewhere, they take the shoe leather express, rain or shine. It's not a choice. There is no need to motivate to go to the gym. If you need something, anything, you have to go there on your own steam and get it. And while you do, you are secretly getting exercise.

I think the movement component is far more important than the minute details of their dietary intake.

That is not to say that I don't support healthy eating...because I do. But it matters little whether you want to be high-protein/low-carb, or high-plant-based/low animal protein, or if you don't want a designer diet at all and just want to eat what folks might call a "balanced diet", what matters is that you let that food be fuel for your movement. I DO hope you choose whole, unprocessed food irrespective of your dietary habits. So whether you like carbs or think they are fat pills, the stuff you eat should be as natural and un-chemicalized as possible. And then you should get off the couch.

Now, you might wonder, what can you do if the cards are stacked against you? Maybe you have a really long commute that must be done in a car, to your really high-pressure job, that must be done in a chair, that leaves you really stressed-out so you just can't motivate to work out... you just really want to go home, eat your dinner, and enjoy a movie with your family. Plus, the nearest gym kind of seems like a meat-market for dumb singles anyway. NOT your cup of tea. Really...what can you do?

Well...you can get a dog and commit to walking him two times a day. And don't get lazy, because a dog is a responsibility and he requires exercise. If you get the dog, you walk that puppy two times a day, rain or shine. You can plant a garden and deal with it yourself. YOU deadhead the flowers, YOU till it in the spring, YOU pull the weeds. If you pawn this off on a landscaper, you've achieved nothing. While you are at it, mow your own lawn, with a push mower if possible. Paint your own living room. Clean your own house. Walk your kids to school. Or at least to the bus stop. Do a sport on the weekends. Wash your own car. Put away the electric mixer, and whisk your own batter (free tricep workout!). Take the stairs, not the elevator. Park half a mile from your office door. The bottom line is DO SOMETHING.

If you are lazy, your health and your body shape will give you away. Is that what you want to telegraph to the public?

The Cleveland Food Co-op is Closed

2012-01-25T06:45:00.006-05:00

The Cleveland Food Co-op is closed. It has been closed since June, 2011 but sadly, I just noticed yesterday. I guess I was part of the demographic that did not provide them adequate patronage in the past few years.

That's not to say that I never provided them adequate patronage. At one time, they were my main squeeze, as far as grocery stores go. And I cannot begin to estimate how many hundreds of lunches, snacks, and light, on-the-go dinners I improvised and ate while sitting on the railroad ties that made up an elevated garden bed outside the Co-op's front door. As recently as within the last 2 years, I had a cooking client who preferred me to do all of her grocery shopping at the Co-op...and so I did.

Way back before anyone really cared about organic, or natural, or healthy, or vitamins, the Food Co-op did. Having been a vegetarian or near-vegetarian/pescatarian for some 12 years, the Co-op was really the only game in town for me back then, especially if I required a food item that was a deviation from the Standard American Diet. Plus, it was really the only full-service grocery near University Circle, Little Italy, and the western edge of East Cleveland. I guess the folks in those neighborhoods who are mobile must now drive elsewhere to shop, and those who are a little more landlocked must have to take the bus to the hit-or-miss Aldi on Euclid Ave., which hardly compares to the Co-op during its heyday.

It's too bad. The Co-op did healthy in Cleveland before Wild Oats, or Mustard Seed, or Whole Foods.

But to paraphrase a musician friend who wants to write a hit:

You don't want to be ahead-of-your-time, you want to be right-on-time.

So true, for any commercial endeavor. Farewell, Co-op...you were one of the good ones.

Is Coconut Oil (or anything else) Healthy?

2012-01-21T22:20:00.019-05:00

I saw a not-so accurate sign in the Beautiful People's Grocery Store (BPGS). You know the store I'm talking about. The place that has positioned itself as the arbiter of good health. They like to make it look like it is very difficult to live healthfully without using their products. They are amazing marketers and they sway you with their branding. I have to hand it to them, they do make better choices very convenient, but let's not be naive. We can do the "lets all live healthy" routine at less branded grocery chains. But the BPGS wins some of their business by suggesting that the rest of the world is just trying to pull an unhealthy fast one on the hapless, health-oriented consumer. And this influence is due at least in part to the helpful "factoids" they have on their signs and in their marketing material.

No, I'm not talking about the "2 for 1 stewed tomatoes" sign put on the wrong product shelf, I am talking about the giant banner ensuring something like "we abhor any and all hydrogenated fats and would never try to sell that garbage to you." OK, the sign wasn't worded exactly like that, but I forget the specific wording. Nevertheless, that was certainly the timbre of the banner. I walked by probably a hundred signs today and didn't pay much attention, but that one, I noticed. I noticed because my gut reaction was:

Oh, really!!? Really??!

Because on other visits, I have walked out of the BPGS with a bottle of pressed, refined coconut oil. Without a doubt, pressed, refined coconut oil counts as a partially hydrogenated fat.

I'm sure they meant well with that sign. I'm sure they meant that they are trying to give us the tools to lay off the Crisco and the margarine and the deep frying and all the fake, chemically, pre-packaged cookies and crackers, and I appreciate that. But this issue with the sign and the hydrogenated fats got me to thinking: that which makes up a healthy diet for one, can be a medical disaster for another.

And this partially hydrogenated coconut oil is the perfect example. Folks who have digestive or gut-bacteria issues may benefit from the use of coconut oil as it is thought to have a soothing and anti-microbial effect. But folks who have heart disease may want to avoid coconut oil like the plague as it is a highly saturated fat.

So...do you listen to the American Heart Association who suggests that coconut oil is a dangerously indulgent choice for a cooking fat/oil? Or do you listen to the latest alternative health proponents who suggest that coconut oil is a panacea?

The answer to that question is another question: What's your major malfunction?

Has heart disease taken every one of your grandparents and ancestors? Skip the coconut oil. Are you physically fit but suffer from leaky gut syndrome? Give coconut oil a try.

In fact, you should ask yourself "what's your major malfunction" when making any and all of your food choices. Look at your family health history and your own current health situation, then do a little reading, eat according to the recognized (read: non-quackery) guidelines to support or prevent the major health issue at hand, or the one likely to come down the pike in due time.

You cannot control for all things, so try to control for what matters. You might need to be gluten free. You might need to be vegetarian. You might need to eat a lot of animal protein. You might need to limit yourself to soft foods. You might need lots of raw foods and fibers. The definition of a healthy diet can vary. A LOT. So stop taking the signage or the cute nuggets of health info they send in their newsletter as holy gospel because there is no such thing as a one-size fits all "healthy" diet. For the real-deal healthy diet customized to YOUR needs, talk to your doc and listen to your body.

Oh--and my personal take on coconut oil? I think it makes a first-rate serum to combat dry winter skin, but it can come off as a little too rich and greasy in some recipes, so I usually keep it in the cosmetics cupboard!

New Website

2012-01-17T09:26:00.005-05:00

Check it out and tell a friend!

www.itinerahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifntcook.vpweb.com/

If the above link has difficulty, just cut and paste:

www.itinerantcook.vpweb.com

Eggs Florentine: My Adaptation

2012-01-15T07:13:00.004-05:00

I awoke too hungry for my usual breakfast of a simple handful of fresh fruit with a dollop of yogurt. My early dinner yesterday was light and the definite winter chill in the air had my stomach crying for substance even before my slippers shuffled into the kitchen.

So I put together an adaptation of Eggs Florentine and, let me tell you, I feel fine. Maybe you'll read this before breakfast and give it a try yourself.

EGGS FLORENTINE ADAPTATION (yield=1 hearty portion)

-1 heaping tablespoon of finely minced red onion
-1 cup of fresh spinach, wilted (For a quick wilt, just spritz it with water and microwave it 1-2 min)
-1 oz. of cheese, your choice (Asiago, gruyere, or pecorino romano would all be nice. I used raclette today)
-2 teaspoons of butter or oil
-2 eggs, well beaten
-pinch of salt
-scant tablespoon of mayonnaise
-2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice (or a light squeeze of 1/2 of a lemon)

Over medium heat, soften onion in butter. While the onions are cooking, mix together well the mayonnaise and lemon juice. Set aside. When the onion begins to look translucent, on the verge of turning golden, add eggs to the pan. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt and leave the eggs alone. Don't stir, don't flip. Just let them be. You may want to reduce the heat slightly...if you cook your eggs too quickly they will dry out. Disperse wilted spinach and cheese over the top of the eggs, as if you were putting toppings onto a pizza. Watch your eggs...when the center has just started to set, take a flexible metal spatula and insert it along the edges of the pan. Gently work the spatula inward, toward the center of the pan and allow it to fold over in half, locking your toppings inside. Gently release from pan onto a plate. Drizzle the lemon mayonnaise over the top and serve immediately.

Served with strong, black coffee, there may be no finer Sunday morning breakfast.

Trying to Give Back the Night

2012-01-13T06:54:00.006-05:00

Sometimes people don't always understand what I do for a living. The business of personal chef service is still relatively new, and often viewed as a luxury for only the most elite among us. (Given that I know my fees are roughly only 1/3 of the cost of similar services in other metropolitan areas, that is a definite misconception) In a nutshell, what I do is give back the night to over-stressed people who want to eat well. No, in fact, they need to eat well to keep up the break-neck pace they are expected to maintain.

Perhaps you can relate: you hit the back door half-starved and the simple act of even grilling a piece of chicken to put on top of a salad seems like too much. And then there's the matter of that clunky pan that will need washing. You have had enough. Dinner should have been 2 hours ago. You are tired and cranky and your stomach is making noises and you are definitely not in the mood for another chore. Nope. You are quite sure you had enough of those today already. You just don't have the heart to cook, even though Sunday night you swore yourself onto a health-kick regimen. So you microwave something that has an attractive, healthy-looking entree on the box and wolf it down. Although you've kicked your shoes off and you are technically fed, you are in no way satisfied. The dinner had about as much flavor as the cardboard box it came in. It certainly didn't taste as healthy as the picture looked...and what are these mystery items on the ingredients list? Evidently, the meal was rich in chemical compounds. You know you are full...but you still feel sort of empty. And you are still vaguely stressed.

I know that's a typical night for a lot of people and it shouldn't be. I can't control for all the elements that contribute to stress, but I can eliminate the need to worry about dinner, or (egads!) having to cook it. And I can make sure that what is in your refrigerator is additive-free and nutritionally designed to support the level of stress in your life. Oh, and I make sure that the flavor profiles will satisfy you (read: it will taste better than the cardboard-box-fare!). If you are satisfied, you can better unwind...which is of paramount importance.

If you have a family, you can sit down with them and enjoy yourself, and not grumble at them for being underfoot while you are trying to get something on the table after all you have to do all day long.

And isn't that how it should be? Shouldn't the night be yours for you and your family? Shouldn't your meals be healthful and satisfying? And if circumstances won't allow you enough hours to make that a regular occurrence, it should be a priority to find someone who will allow you to eat well and relax. And, of course, I'd love it if that person could be me!

It could simplify so much in your hectic schedule:

• I work with you to plan a menu.
• I pick up the groceries for your selected menu and put my catering and fine dining experience to work in your kitchen.
• I leave your refrigerator stocked with easy-to-heat specialties.
• I tidy up and disappear until you are ready for more!

I'm just trying to give back the night...one meal at a time.

How The Soul Food Croque Monsieur Was Born

2012-01-11T19:11:00.006-05:00

Originally, it was going to be an easy weeknight dinner: ham and cheese sandwiches with a side of kale to keep it healthy.

But when I got to the grocery store just before closing, they were sold out of kale. But they had plenty of gorgeous-looking mustard greens. Now, I haven't cooked mustard greens for probably 12 years, and when I last did them, I'm sure I braised the life out of them for hours, like a thousand Southern cooks have done for generations. Although many people eat their greens this way, I have grown to prefer a little "tooth" or texture in my vegetables. Plus I like the earthy flavor to come through, and I like to feel like I've cooked them so lightly that the wonderful powerhouse vitamins present in greens do not have a chance to dissolve and float away in the cooking liquid. So generally, I just steam or wilt my greens, or sometimes give them a flash in the saute pan with some garlic and oil. But everything is done quickly and the greens stay a lovely bright green and don't fade to that sad, army fatigues hue that can make anyone lose their appetite for vegetables.

There I was in the kitchen with my ham, cheese, and bread ready to go. It was time to wilt my mustard greens. Except you can't just lightly wilt mustard greens. They are too pungent. They need to be mellowed...like by braising all day in the Southern soul food tradition with the mollifying presence of a ham hock. But I jumped into this without thinking it through and there was no time for an all-day braise. All I could do was just steam those greens a bit more and then maybe...hmmm...let's see.... I could further wilt them in a cheese-infused white sauce! That kind of sauce would have that "mellowing" quality I was after. The fat and protein in the cheese would take the edge off of the sharp flavor of those still bright and pungent greens.

This white sauce, laced with mellow, nutty Gruyere, got me thinking as I whisked.... Doesn't the decadent French version of a ham and cheese sandwich, or Croque Monsieur, come doused in such a sauce? Hmmm...so why not fill this sandwich with the saucy mustard greens and make sure the whole thing is served hot, toasty, and crisp on the outside with all of this meltaway texture on the inside, just like a sort of overstuffed, soul food version of the Croque Monsieur??

So that's exactly what I did. And I made sure to have a side of jerked BBQ sauce for dipping.

The gentle flavor of the ham, with the creaminess of the cheese and sauce really did rein in the mustard greens. But those greens gave wonderful texture and earthiness to the sandwich and really helped balance it...greens have powerful phytonutrients that actually help bind cholesterol. The tangy hot sauce was the perfect acidic note to complete the medley of flavors.

WOW.

Despite any positive virtues bestowed on the sandwich by those healthful greens, the Soul Food Croque Monsieur tasted positively sinful. So much so that I'm going to hit the gym tomorrow on general principle!

The Turducken Has Landed

2012-01-07T17:28:00.006-05:00

The turducken. We all thought it was just an unusual recipe dreamed up by an especially carnivorous gourmet-type... but certainly not a real animal. Surely you've heard of the turducken. Every Thanksgiving, some overzealous culinarian stuffs a chicken into a duck which is then stuffed into a turkey. They roast the whole thing all day long and call it a "turducken", the finest delicacy for fowl aficionados. Folks like you and I all thought it was just a cumbersome name for a cumbersome recipe, that no such actual hybrid animal could exist in nature. Obviously, there is no such bird. Or, if there is, they must flutter among the unicorns in Brigadoon. So you can imagine my total shock and disbelief when I actually came across a real, live turducken while out walking today. I was ambling along the water's edge at the lagoon adjacent to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and so was this miraculous fowl. I spent some time looking at him with his bald turkey head and webbed duck feet as he made his way around the shore with an awkward chicken walk. I knew no one would ever believe I saw the rare and elusive turducken, so I snapped a photo with my phone:

Please don't send a thousand emails demanding that I join the Audubon Society and learn how to properly identify birds. I know it is actually a Muscovy Duck (albeit, also not a common sight around urban Cleveland, OH), but I get so much more pleasure in believing that for one unseasonably warm and sunny day in January that I was really in some Brigadoon with the turduckens fluttering around the unicorns.

And I hope you are having a good weekend, too.

All Things are Connected

2011-12-30T16:29:00.009-05:00

A long time ago, I had a folksy piece of painted slate with excerpts from a speech given by Chief Seattle in the 1800's. This was not my usual taste in decor items, but I found his words, "all things are connected" to be especially poignant and humbling, so I hung the slate up where I would see it every day. Seattle's entire speech is quite long, quite famous, and quite stirring, even though the translation with which we are familiar is of dubious origin. Indeed we cannot really know for certain if Chief Seattle truly uttered the following:

"I am a savage and do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be made more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive."

It doesn't seem such a stretch to imagine that Seattle didn't just abhor waste. He absolutely couldn't fathom it. Couldn't fathom it. Couldn't wrap his mind around it. Couldn't just play the devil's advocate on that one. It befuddled him. It shocked him. Why would you take a life for any reason beyond survival? And then he is practically an apologist for his own tribe's need to hunt. "Offing" an animal and not using it is shameful. It's plain wrong. And Seattle couldn't get why any reasonable person would be so, well, unreasonable, publicly flaunting some perverse, dark cruel streak.

Most of us are no longer in control of obtaining our food beyond going to the grocery store. Certainly a few people grow some pretty tomatoes or buy into a co-op that raises livestock for consumption, but few of us are truly "off the grid", so we have to be responsible in the simplest way; Just do not waste anything. Allow me to repeat: DO NOT WASTE ANYTHING. Please only buy what you need, meaning the necessities that your family can and will eat to maintain their health. Please use up everything you buy. Please freeze or share what you cannot finish. No molded-over cheese in the drawer because you bought 4 pounds of it on sale and everyone was sick of it after the first pound. No chicken bones in the trash when all you have to do is boil them up for a while for a first-class broth which can be frozen for the wicked head cold you get every year. No lovely steaks that you know deep down you will never make time to cook.

Committing to minimize waste will have an obvious effect on your wallet. If you are using what you have and not pitching stuff just to go buy more allows you to hang on to more dollars. Minimizing waste is also good for the environment. Even if you recycle (and thank you for that) just physically having less stuff to recycle is far kinder to the planet than having three gargantuan blue recycling bags on your curb every trash day. And you may not see it right away, but I think that committing to minimize waste will also eventually have an effect on your soul. I know it sounds a little hippy-dippy and laughable, but really, wouldn't it be better if no chicken died in vain and that you helped toward that end? OK...you might agree with me a little more if I talked in terms of veal....right? Nobody wants a cuddly, knock-kneed toddler of a cow to lose his short life for naught. So, even as we eat livestock, we can demonstrate some degree of respect, by making sure that their whole being has fortified the continuation of life, and not that they were wasted (like those buffalo shot from a passing train) by rotting in the way-back of the fridge because we're just not in the mood to eat that tonight. Seattle would be pleased if we all tried just a little bit harder.

And he was arguably prophetic when he pointed out:
"All things are connected."

And as a New Year is upon us, I hope we can remember this now and for all time.

Christmas Ham, Forever and Ever, Amen.

2011-12-24T12:47:00.004-05:00

The ham was a gift. A most generous gift for which mi esposo and I are deeply grateful. But in case you haven't visited a barnyard lately, allow me to tell you that a swine is a big creature. They are like ponies that kids can't ride. I mean, we're talking big here, people. So the gift of a half ham is almost an embarrassment of riches.

Ham, although cured, does have a shelf life, which meant that after it appeared on my kitchen counter, I had to decide what to do with it, pronto, else shamefully waste this most generous gift. But what to do? Other family members had already made arrangements for other entrees for the holiday, so, alas, the ham would not be Christmas dinner. I wondered, should I have a New Years Party and share the happiness of a big, glazed ham? Should I portion it out and freeze it, saving some of it in-house for those times when the grocery budget is lean and then also give away some of the ham to others who might benefit?

I mentioned my dilemma to my sister. She said, "You do know what the definition of eternity is, don't you??"

"No..." I took the bait.

"Two people and a ham."

Ooof. Thanks for the assistance, sis.

I ultimately decided to go with portioning it out to share and save. But my sister is right. If I kept every bit of that ham for just the two of us, we would have about 11+ weeks of ham, assuming one ham dinner and one ham lunch. The "plus" is the ham bone which would yield another few meals with a hearty soup or stew.

More than cameras, magazine subscriptions, or jokes of questionable taste, it's HAM!
HAM is the gift that keeps on giving!

A Philosophical Question at Breakfast

2011-12-17T09:05:00.004-05:00

Eggs are easy to screw up. That doesn't mean that they don't taste delicious or provide incredible nutrition, but everyone can think of examples like a runny quiche, a souffle that sank so much it looked like it self-imploded, or, more often, a broken omelet.

Omelets are sometimes used as cooking tests in restaurants. That's right, sometimes you don't just sit down with the chef and manager, tell them you'll work hard, and negotiate a wage. You actually have to prove that you are not going to burn the place down with your special brand of culinary chaos. So, sometimes they give you an hour on the hot line during a busy night. And sometimes they give you a test, like "Why don't you make us an omelet?"

An omelet sounds pretty easy, right? It should be, it's just some folded-up eggs. But you have to be comfortable with a pan in your hand. And it has to be any old pan, not a $400.00 perfectly-balanced, anodized specialty omelet pan from the gourmet shop. You have to be comfortable controlling the flame and heat on a gas range to get the temperature just right. You have to know how much beating of an egg nicely breaks down the protein bonds in the whites without over-whipping. You have to know how much butter or oil to put in the pan--if you don't use an adequate amount, your eggs will stick but if you use too much, your eggs get greasy. If you don't move your pan enough, your eggs will be too thin, and probably taste dry. If you move your pan too much, you'll break the uniformity and have plain old, garden-variety scrambled eggs. It certainly doesn't look like it, but there's a lot to making an omelet.

I only have a little bit of a problem admitting that I usually crank the heat too high on my range and wind up breaking my omelet. It's a little embarrassing, but I'm not alone in the I-Break-Omelets-Like-You-For-Breakfast Club

Still hazy with sleep and noticing a cold frosting of snow on the ground outside, I decided this morning would be a good one for eggs. So I pulled an old, warped Revereware pan from out of the cupboard, beat a couple eggs with a fork boasting crooked tines, and put the oiled pan over a low flame, though I was cognizant of the fact that I was using the wrong burner. (You know how some gas ranges have turbo-charged super powerful burner for boiling big cauldrons of pasta water and stuff? Well, that was the unforgiving burner I chose, because I wanted my French eggs middle-America FAST).

I swirled my pan a little bit, but not with any special attention since I was trying to load the dishwasher at the same time. I couldn't decide if a fork or an old pancake-turner was a better tool for lifting the edges of the egg in the pan, so I ditched them both in favor of an offset palette knife I use for frosting birthday cakes. With my groggy lack of care and lazy refusal to dig out better tools, I simply knew I was going to have my typical broken omelet.

But magically, it did not break. It folded over like a dream. It slid out of the pan like it could hardly wait to get onto my breakfast plate. The eggs were creamy and divine, definitely not overcooked and dried out. It was PERFECT.

But mi esposo was still sleeping and I'm not very good with food photography, so I did not snap any pictures. So, really, I have absolutely no way to prove that I am capable of the perfect omelet. None. Conversely, however, I have, over, the years, proven that I am all too capable of a broken one. *Sigh*

So, how will anyone know? I wondered this to myself and thought about the philosophical riddle: If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Really, that's not too far off from: If a cook executes a perfect omelet and there is no there to eat it, did it really happen?

You'll just have to take my word for it.

Understanding Why People Like Liver

2011-12-11T11:13:00.007-05:00

Liver.

The mere mention of the word gets the gag reflex going in lots of people. There are others whose eyes will light up a room if they start thinking about offal.

Me? I like liver in small doses. I usually make a pate once a year. Every once in a blue moon I'll make a braunschweiger sandwich. I probably WILL order the foie gras, if it's on the menu.

Before you accuse me of ill-informed gluttony, blithely noshing on potentially toxic filter organs while my cholesterol and uric acid counts go off the chart, just stop. Allow me to repeat myself. I like it in small doses. And those small doses usually only happen 2-3 times per year. So while I did enjoy a liver-based delicacy this week, please note that the rest of the week mi esposo complained bitterly that I was feeding him "rabbit food", so much in the mood for vegetarian entrees was I.

So...this gross, slimy, sponge-textured blob that might be full of trace toxins or growth hormones and potentially cultivated under a cloud of inhumanity...why in the world would anyone eat this liver stuff???

I get the internal call to eat liver usually when it is cold outside and when we are all virtually trapped indoors during cold and flu season. Perhaps I crave it because of the incredibly high levels of Vitamin A, which is a powerful immune-booster. I also fancy it served with avocado or real mayonnaise. Perhaps my body is calling out for some omega 3 fatty acids that will help me absorb the many members of the B complex vitamins therein. I may crave those B vitamins especially because I do like vegetarian entrees so much: while veg selections are so wonderfully healthful in a myriad of ways, they are totally devoid of vitamin B12. Liver also contains trace minerals like copper, which can do incredible free-radical-fighting work for your skin and connective tissues. So liver keeps you loose and lovely! Finally, liver is a delicacy that usually has minimal impact on the food cost budget (read: it's cheap).

So that's why some people like liver.

I don't recommend you start eating it if your doctor advises against it and I don't recommend you start eating it if you cannot overcome some bad childhood memory of the stuff. But it you are inclined to indulge, doing so just a few times a year can be a most pleasurable way of taking in a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals.

Ratatouille Around the Tree

2011-12-09T19:31:00.009-05:00

I've been making ratatouille, or caponata, or vegetable ragout, or some variation thereof all week long and finally, I just cracked. It had smelled so delicious, looked so rich, that I had to simply had to have some for myself, too. So, no worse for the wear after a long December work week, I broke out the cast iron dutch oven crock and simmered a batch of this soul-warming goodness this evening.

I think I shall add it to my holiday favorites, along with chocolate-covered bourbon balls, sledding in a restaurant bus tub, the smell of frankincense at midnight mass, bugle calls at dawn (my sister and I had to wake up the parents somehow so we could hurry up and see if Santa came), bread pudding at Nighttown on Christmas Night (when every other place in town is closed), cardinals on the snow-covered rhododendron, a gaggle of new toys for the dogs (all shredded to ribbons by nightfall), a long and lonely trespass on a closed-for-the-season golf course, and a never-ending loop of Run DMC's carol for 80's, "Christmas in Hollis".

Yep, that stuff makes a perfect holiday for me. I had my delicious ratatouille. I watched red birds flitting about for seed today. The dogs seem to know something is afoot. YouTube helped me with Run DMC. It snowed just a bit today. Now...if I can just get my hands on a bus tub, my joy will be complete!

O. M. G.

2011-11-29T19:06:00.004-05:00

High-heat Mahi Mahi with lemon dill butter, brown and wild rice and bacon-roasted Brussels Sprouts.

To be continued....

UPDATE:
OK. It was, indeed, good. You can do this. I'm going to assume there are two of you. Adjust UP, family people:

First, start the rice when you hit the back door. 1/2 Cup rice to 1 Cup of water. Bring it to a boil then turn the heat way low, put the lid on. Take about 6 slices of bacon and throw them onto a cookie sheet and into a 400 degree oven. Now, quickly, get upstairs and get out of that monkey suit they made you wear at the office.

All changed? Great.

You can pour yourself a beverage if you wish. While you sip, pull about 2" of butter out of the fridge. I guess that's 2 tablespoons. Nuke it in the microwave for 7 seconds. While the microwave is beeping at you to remind you about the butter, chop some dill. About 2 tablespoons-worth chopped is plenty. Look at your bacon. Does it look crispy? Really crispy? Okay, then you can take it out of the oven and set it aside on a plate. Just leave the greasy cookie sheet right there.

Back to your dill. Get the soft-ish butter out of the microwave. Throw the dill onto it. Add a smidge of salt. Squeeze 1/2 a lemon over it. Mush it altogether with a fork. This is called a "Compound Butter". It means" "butter mushed together with some stuff".

Now . Take about 6-8 Brussels sprouts out of the fridge. You have 6-8 Brussels sprouts, DON'T YOU??? Cut those buggers in half, then in half again, so you have little Brussels wedges. Throw them on your old bacon sheet. Crank the heat on your oven to 450 and toss them in for 10-15 minutes. You want those suckers to get golden outer edges, but not to burn. And if the whole house smells like cabbage, you let them go for too long. SO CHECK THEM.

Keep sipping that beverage, you are almost done.

When the Brussels sprouts come out, squeeze about 1/2 tablespoon of honey over them, and crumble up all that bacon and toss them in a bowl.

DON'T WASH THAT PAN YET!!!

...Because your fish will go right on it. Take 2 Mahi Mahi filets and plop them down on your bacon-Brussels sprouts-cookie sheet. Divide your dill butter in half and put a blob of that on top of each piece of fish. Put this in your HOT 450-degree oven for like 7 minutes, then serve everything.

It IS easy. I only went into play-by-play detail to help you first-timers out there.

Mi esposo, who swears up and down that he hates Brussels sprouts ate every last one off his plate.

Have fun! I know you'll have an amazing meal.

"There are Only Eight Notes, Karen"

2011-11-27T19:28:00.007-05:00

I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, think that I am especially musically inclined. It's no secret, however, that I love music. I made it a point, from a very young age, to hear as much live music as I possibly could. At many times, I surrounded myself with musical types who understood far more about the craft than I ever will. In doing these things, I began, after a time, to hear subtleties I used to miss. I started to pick up some things from them. I'll likely never be a musician, but I can at least claim to be somewhat of an academic listener. I like to think I get it.

Not too long ago, I had a piano lesson during which I was to work on a specific phrase the instructor assigned to me. I thought I was oh-so-clever when I made the observation aloud that the melody he had me working on was made up of the same notes of another very well known tune...only the timing was slightly different. I suppose I secretly wanted to be congratulated on having "gotten it", but instead, the experienced and world-weary instructor just sighed and said, "There are only eight notes, Karen", meaning, over time, with all of the music that has been written and will continue to be written, we are bound to repeat some phrasing. Like, DUH, Karen.

And so it is with cooking.

I made a dish called Zweibel Rostbraten this evening. You might guess that this recipe hails from the Germanic part of the world and you might be right. Thin steaks are flash-seared with aromatic fried onions and accented with a tangy sauce. As I really looked hard at the recipe just before commencing my prep work, I thought to myself that this looked a lot like Steak Diane, sans mushrooms.

The finished Zweibel Rostbraten did, in fact, also taste a lot like Steak Diane. I have now been working with food just long enough to see that cooking is a lot like music. There are only so many notes. Recipes, like songs, are bound to be similar, even derivative at times.

I am not saying this in a spirit of mourning. On the contrary, in both crafts, music and cooking, the finished product can still be artful and wonderful, even if it has a close cousin you might recognize. Furthermore, how it is played, or how it is made, can make all the difference. If you've ever heard the fifth grade recorder orchestra play Flight of the Bumblebee and then heard a world class symphony do the same piece, then you know what I am talking about. Whether you see it as "God is in the details" or "the devil is in the details", it is tough to dispute that the details do, indeed, matter.

And don't our ears jump for joy when there is some new song that just grabs us??
And don't we rave to anyone who will listen when we try some new dish that is a wonderfully delicious surprise?

Deep down, we know we can do a lot with a little and that is what makes us seek out, and appreciate the really good stuff.

Thanksgiving Turkey: Try Everything

2011-11-22T19:16:00.006-05:00

Roast your bird.
Toast your bird.
Brine your bird.
Baste your bird.
Dry-cure your bird.
Deep-fry your bird.
Stuff your bird.
Truss your bird.
Lard your bird.
Bard your bird.
Spatchcock your bird.
Roulade your bird.
Smoke your bird.
Oven-bag your bird.
Grill your bird.
Microwave your bird.
Pressure-cook your bird.
Crock Pot your bird.
Butter your bird.
Kabob your bird.
Beer-can your bird.
Rack your bird.
High heat your bird.
Slow and low your bird.
Frozen-cook your bird.
Turducken your bird.
Tofurkey your un-bird.
Mississipi Trash Bag your bird.
Jerk your bird.
BBQ your bird.
Bread and flour your bird.
Make reservations for your bird.
Pit-bury your bird.
Quarter and saute your bird.

OK...I'll stop with the many methods of cooking a Thanksgiving turkey (although it is likely I've missed a few). Everybody swears their method is the best. And once they've tried a strange-sounding alternative method, they swear even more vociferously that they will never go back to roasting the old fashioned way.

The truth is, every method can be really delicious. So please, please, please do not stress about whether or not you are doing it the right way. You are doing it the right way, whichever way you choose. In fact, why not try ALL the methods? I have tried a few of these methods but certainly not all of them. I think (I hope!) I have a few more Thanksgivings left in me so I can try some more techniques. I have formulated my own opinions, but you should do the same. Don't kowtow to the "experts". Keep in mind that two of the most highly-acclaimed and equally-esteemed chefs, Jacques Pepin and Julia Child, were always at odds on how to prepare the Thanksgiving bird over the years. Both chefs were incredible cooks and had good reasoning behind their recommended methods. Both chefs made an amazing feast, I am sure (even if they cooked their birds a little differently). These days, you have everyone from Martha Stewart to Ina Garten to Paula Deen telling you the "right" way to cook your holiday dinner. I say, if the experts cannot agree, there is nothing left to do but try everything and see what you think.

If it's your first bird, just try roasting it the good old fashioned way--in which you sprinkle some salt and pepper on the bird, throw it in the oven, and forget about it for a few hours while you make mashed potatoes and other sundries. You can follow any cookbook recipe or the directions that come on the wrapper of your poultry for this method. Those oven bags certainly seem to be big sellers...this seems like another solid method for a neophyte. If you've done a couple birds without incident, go ahead and work another idea from the list. And keep in mind, tradition-lovers, just because you cooked the poultry in a non-traditional manner does not by any stretch mean that it tastes any less traditionally delicious. Good is good, people, and that's all there is to it.

Try fresh poultry. Try frozen poultry. Try local. Try big farms. Yes, I did just say that out loud. Why am I not championing Old Heirloom Poultry Joe's at the corner of rural routes eleventy and oneteen?? Just like you good foodies out there, I also want Old Heirloom Poultry Joe to do well and I may support him too, but if we mindlessly follow the au courant trend to look down our noses at the big poultry vendors, we are forgetting the compelling point that if some of these companies make 90% of their annual profit from Thanksgiving turkeys, they are very sensitive to the fact that they had better deliver a perfect and perfectly safe product. That's not so hateful. But do make up your own mind after investigating every avenue. So...do try fresh. Try frozen. Try local. Try big. Try all the methods in that list. TRY EVERYTHING.

You'll never know what you are or are not missing until you've tried it.

The Trouble with Cooking

2011-11-20T18:25:00.005-05:00

The trouble with cooking is not slicing, dicing, or julienne-ing. The trouble with cooking is not the mountain of dirty dishes. The trouble with cooking is not the extra time required to plan a menu. The trouble with cooking is not sourcing quality ingredients. The trouble with cooking is not even really the physical work that goes into it. The trouble with cooking is not that it is dead, like Harry. (Go rent a bunch of Alfred Hitchcock movies if you missed that reference.)

The trouble with cooking is that it spoils you for mediocrity. Once you have had a perfect salad dressing that is little more than a squeeze of a ripe lemon with some fresh garlic and good olive oil, you have no tolerance for Paul Newman's greasy chemicals. Once you have baked your own bread, or become accustomed to the products of your local artisan baker, then that fluffy, cake-like garbage the grocery stores try to pass off in the "bread" aisle is anathema to you. And unless they really put in their own special touch, you'd just rather make your own pizza. The real trouble with cooking is, in fact, that it makes you an insufferable food snob.

You can likely well imagine that the days preceding holidays can be busy ones for a cook, and I am one gratefully busy bee this week. I was busy enough that I thought we'd just have to have some sub-standard dinners for a couple nights this week...you know, a frozen this, an instant that--I hardly ever let us eat like that, but there are only so many hours in a day and most of them are already spoken for!

But there I was, walking down the frozen food aisle of my local grocer, and I just choked. Nope. I KNOW those entrees are a disappointment. Nope. Those over there are so unhealthy it's frightening. Ooof! Look at that! Who buys some of this stuff?!!

Insufferable food snob that I am, I just couldn't do it.

Crap. I'll just have to cook.

I DID cheat a little and used some store-bought bread dough for our weekly bread. The loaf is still cooling, and I'm sure it will be just fine, but *sigh*...it doesn't look like it has my crispy crust.

Tonight's dinner was a bit of a "pantry dump" (you know, when I look for whatever is on hand and "invent" an entree) Although it was born out of necessity and convenience, the savory garlic-chicken cheesecake I came up with may have to go into the regular rotation.

I just can't eat that Taco Hell, or increasingly, I can't eat anything that wasn't made with some degree of care and focus.

So the trouble with cooking is that you have to keep doing it!

Challenge Yourself (I'm talking to YOU, Starbuck)

2011-11-17T21:40:00.003-05:00

I quit drinking coffee 2 weeks ago. My reasons for ditching the old Cuppa Joe were somewhat frivolous, so I won't embarrass myself with them here, but I am still in shock that I am enjoying life so much more without it.

Before I get into that, allow me to tell you how much I love coffee. I loved coffee before it was chic to love coffee. I loved coffee before Starbucks was a chain. I loved coffee even when it was my Dad's old instant Nescafe. I loved coffee so much I saw it as a character defect if someone diluted the exquisite bitterness with cream, or worse, with sugar. I loved coffee so much I would drink the grounds from my Turkish coffee.

There was a period of time in my young life where I drank coffee like a champ, pot after pot. When I got some ugly side effects from this excessive consumption, I curtailed my coffee consumption to a modest 2 cups a day. No, that's not a lot, but I was utterly dependent on those 2 cups to jump start my day and to prevent the dreaded lack-of-caffeine-migraine that would plague me if I skipped my morning ritual.

But I decided to stop drinking it. I was sure I would be bedridden with an awful headache for a few days. I just knew I'd be difficult and edgy for a week. I was certain I'd be an absolute bear in the morning for the rest of my life. I was positive that I WOULD HATE EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

For some reason, the lack-of-caffeine-migraine never showed up this time. I wasn't moody. My mornings were no worse than usual. Additionally, I felt less stressed throughout the day. My voracious evening appetite became more normalized. My insomnia ceased to be. The grocery bill is a little less. And inexplicably, I lost four pounds.

I have become quite skeptical that the benefit I was hoping for by forgoing coffee will never actually materialize, but I still don't think I'll go back. I love the lowered stress level. I love sleeping through the night. And if four more pounds would like to follow the earlier "vanguard four", I will become positively evangelical about it!

You can quit coffee if you want...or not. My point really is that we believe these little fictions we tell ourselves:
-"I have to have coffee."
-"I've been a vegetarian so long that if I were to eat animal-based protein, my body would violently reject it."
-"I gag on broccoli."

I'm not talking about legitimate food allergies, nor am I talking about physiological conditions like celiac disease or diabetes, nor I am I talking about food choices to maintain religious observances, I am talking about self-styled edicts that have their basis in nothing but ego. We are all guilty of them.

But challenge yourself to break one of your own self-styled edicts. See what happens. If you don't like it, you can go back to your old ways. But there is a chance you might glean some health benefit you never counted on...because you had been doing things another way for so long you aren't even sure what benefits there might be.

I've found a sense of calm, a good night's sleep, and a looser waistband.

Shrimp Gumbo and Your Frenemy, the Internet

2011-11-05T20:54:00.008-04:00

I decided I felt like making Shrimp Gumbo for dinner. I never really had the occasion to make it, so I didn't have my own recipe on hand, but I had a pretty good idea of what should be in it. All the same, I did a quick scan of some recipes on the internet to see if I could sort of cherry-pick the best of the best gumbo ideas.

When I do an internet recipe roundup, I am looking for common ingredients, common techniques, common themes as well as special diversions that might take a classic to a higher level. I let my memory take a snapshot, and then I head to the kitchen without any of these recipes in hand, actually, just to see what I can do on my own. I admit, my ways are not for everyone, and in my first days of cooking I had to throw a lot of my concoctions into the rubbish. But now that I get the big picture (I hope), I enjoy doing things in this shoot-from-the-hip manner because it allows me to put my own spin on the theme at hand.

Regardless of whether my technique sounds intriguing or potentially dangerous, I had a revelation while perusing recipes today. A substantial proportion of internet recipes are not worth the virtual paper they are written on. I counted three recipes that were so devoid of proportion and technique that they were sure to result in disaster. If you know your way around a kitchen, you may be able to read between the lines, but what about the hapless first-timer who really, really wants to learn, wants to enjoy the creative side of food, and is basically being led into failure? That makes me very sad. Too many would-be cooks give up: "I just don't have the knack", they think. YES, YOU DO!! YOU JUST NEED MORE EXPERIENCE TO SEE HOW AND WHERE THE BAD RECIPES ARE TRICKING YOU INTO FAILURE!!

Once these first-timers become seasoned vets, they can read these pathos-inspiring internet recipes and figure out what they are really supposed to do. Or...you, dear cooking friend, can buy them a cookbook from a lower-ranking celebrity TV chef.

What??!!?? Why? If they want to cook like Thomas Keller, shouldn't I get them a Thomas Keller cookbook?

Nope. As much as Thomas Keller and contemporaries of his ilk may have tried to dumb-down their kitchen alchemy for the average Joe, it might still be too much information. I am instead referring to Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, Marth Stewart, Alton Brown and other recognizable TV faces with fun shows that may or may not be very chef-like. These TV stars generally have fantastic cookbooks, in my opinion. The recipes may not be lofty, but they are well-explained, and, even better, they are tested to within an inch of their lives. You see, they make a lot of money if America thinks they are kitchen geniuses, so they cannot afford to let down their guard. Every recipe they are hocking must be tested multiple times so they all come out tasting fantastic. They cannot have everyone in America saying things like, "Ooof. That Paula Deen calls herself a Southern cook? Her pecan pie tastes like a learning-impaired Yankee wrote the recipe 15 minutes after Richmond fell." I mean, they have to be really good. And these recipes can't have esoteric, inefficient steps in them. Suzy Single Mom needs to be able to get this done posthaste before she or her kids have a meltdown. In protecting their brand, these lower-ranking TV chefs set up the average cook for brilliant success. And that gets people excited about cooking and eating whole food (rather than nukable junk-in-the-box)

I suppose it's not even fair of me to use labels like "lower-ranking"...I mean, who am I, right? But in the world of food, you begin to become beholden to groundbreaking eccentrics with restaurants that most mere mortals cannot afford or understand, so in a spirit of (false?) deference, you let them know that they are truly the favorite son and NOT that loud and spiky-haired Fieri fellow from the Food Network.

Ooof. I've bought into the culture, I suppose.

Nevertheless, I want your gumbo to be brilliant, so please make sure you set yourself up for success. If you are a new cook and unsure what constitutes a good recipe and a so-so one, then you must pull yourself away from the computer, however convenient it is, and get yourself into a real-live physical bookstore (if there are any hanging on via life support) and buy yourself a good celebrity chef cookbook. You will win, I promise you.

The internet, though it's right there in the den and appears to have everything you need to make a brilliant dinner, WILL let you down if you are a new cook. Yes, even thought the recipe has 4 stars indicating a favorable review, it is your frenemy, smiling to your face and then stabbing you in the back...with non-essential ingredients, incorrect proportions, and unexplained techniques. Do you know what a mireppoix is? Do you have to have kaffir lime leaves for the soup to turn out and why doesn't Giant Eagle carry them? What is the ball stage and do you have to worry about your 9-year old baseball fan going through it anytime soon?

See what I mean? Skip the internet and skip to the bookstore or the library. I want you to win.

And by the way, I'm glad I ignored the mediocre gumbo recipes on the internet... in doing so, tonight's dinner turned out to everyone's liking!

Healthy Inspiration from a Howling in the Night

2011-10-23T11:21:00.008-04:00

I live in an urbanized inner-ring suburb, but am lucky enough to be in a tract of land between 2 creeks. Creeks make wonderful local migration routes for wild animals: if the waterway is not in culvert, the immediate land is often not developed commercially and the animals have a constant water supply, so creatures can make their homes nearby these creeks and travel from points south all the way up to Lake Erie. Indeed, I often see deer, fox, groundhog, and more on my daily walks.

But my favorite sighting is usually a rare one for me. I love coyotes. I usually see one or a pair of them once a year, but they are (rightfully) wary of humans and usually find a way to keep themselves hidden. I haven't had a clear view of a coyote is over 9 months, but last night, at two separate times, I could hear them yipping and howling somewhere in the green space about 1/16th of a mile from my house. Ah! The howling of a wild dog! There is no more beautiful music to my ears. Even as the temperatures have plummeted into the forties at nightfall, I still flung open all the windows to better hear them calling in the night.

I cringe at the fear-based attitude of the timid who get hysterical with worry and claim we are all going to be overrun with unpredictable predators. This under-informed crowd is sure that their teenagers will be mauled while taking out the trash if we don't hire sharpshooters to cull the packs of wild canids threatening the American Way.

Bah. The coyotes won't eat you. They will avoid you. It's fine if you'd like to bring your overweight and elderly cat inside at night, but you will most certainly not have to fight off rabid packs of coyotes with firearms and blowtorches. These dog-like creatures just want to pounce on some rodents, track some deer, keep watch over the woods. And we should all feel privileged that we might have the opportunity to witness the pure poetry of their long legs running. We should all feel comforted that in spite of our failed housing tracts, drive-up strip malls, and hissing highways, that the health and power of the natural order somehow prevails.

This natural order extends to all things. So as we worry over childhood obesity and growing concerns about our national health, we can still allow ourselves the quiet reassurance that nature wants us all to be fit and strong and to succeed in our place within the natural world. So, some of us will succeed in good health despite cultural odds stacked against us. Nature wants each of us, coyote or Costco shopper, to thrive in the habitat set before us.

And I will eat well toward that end.

Thanks, Awesome Grovewood Kitchen!

2011-10-09T16:15:00.005-04:00

Friday night's dinner, at the cozy and consistently satisfying Grovewood Tavern, was an accidental mish-mosh. But oh, what a mish-mosh it was, and I will be using it as a point of inspiration for hundreds of meals to come. I owe their patient chefs a heartfelt thanks for letting me invent my own dinner.

In my mind, I had already selected an entree when the waitress came to give us the specials. The protein courses didn't really capture my imagination, but 2 of the sides, paired with 2 different entrees, did make my ears prick up a little (OK, a lot). My heart was still committed to the luscious portobello mushroom cap I had already been thinking about, but oh! Those 2 sides sounded like they were put on the menu just for me. (Incidentally, the 2 sides were butternut risotto and garlicky Swiss chard). So I asked them if they could just toss a grilled portobello on top of those 2 sides. The waitress, in fact, stopped a chef on his way back to the prep kitchen to restock a quarter-pan to ask if we could do this. I was all apologies, letting him know if it's a real pain to break their routine, he did NOT have to oblige me. I've worked in restaurants and I understand any resistance to indulge my selfish flavor-driven fantasy.

You see, contrary to what you read in diet books or the latest high-falutin' culinary rag you may subscribe to, most chefs are NOT happy to oblige you when you order off the menu. They say that they are happy to work with you just so they can maintain good PR, but the truth is, if you order off the menu, the line cooks hate your guts. You completely ruin their flow and routine. In a worst case scenario, a poor sport on the line could do something the health board would not approve of. In a best case scenario, your meal will not be made with any degree of focus or carefulness. Ultimately, you'll get what you ordered, but it just won't be that good.

You can argue that that worldview is wrongheaded, that you, the almighty patron, are essentially underwriting their wages and they should reach for the moon just for you, every single time, because they owe you that much. I will not say you are wrong, but I will advise you of a fact you already may be aware of: that reality does not always match the way it should be. Not even close.

But I approached that cook with an attitude of deference, and I could see that Friday's business might be a little sluggish (meaning the kitchen wasn't already swamped), so I figured I'd roll the dice.

Well, I won that toss of the dice. My goodness, that was the best dinner out I've had in a very long time. I will remember it for a long time. As I mentioned, I will duplicate it any chance I get (In fact, I'm doing a variation of it tonight, for mi esposo)

And I remain grateful to a really great establishment that didn't blow a gasket when I wanted to play with ideas and create my own self-indulgent creation. Four Stars! Bravo! Two thumbs up! Etc! Etc!

A Long Ramble about the Food Chain, while thinking of Nirvana

2011-09-24T20:32:00.011-04:00

This morning an article on the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's album "Nevermind" caught my eye and I read it with great interest, since that pivotal album came out exactly at a time that was, in some way, pivotal in my own life. I can clearly recall minutia from episodes in 1991 when I hear that album...the music conjures up the clearest images for me.

And the lyrics have moments of poetic poignancy, too...words that stick with me over the years.

It was a fine Saturday for a walk, so I took one. While standing on the bridge at the end of the lower lake in the Shaker Lakes park, I stopped, leaning over the railing, to watch the school of giant carp moving through the water. The school of giant carp stopped, brought their whiskered faces to the surface, and watched me hovering above them.

They were looking for food. And I thought, that if I were a hungry fisherman who liked carp, they would look like a pretty good smorgasbord to me.

With that in mind, as well as the Nirvana article fresh in my memory, I thought of the lyrics to the song "Something in the Way" in which singer Kurt Cobain lazily croons the secret mantra of guilt-ridden semi-vegetarians everywhere, "it's okay to eat fish 'cause they don't have any feelings."

As they inquisitively looked up at me above them on that bridge, I thought that these fish probably did have feelings: hunger, curiosity, territoriality, maybe even boredom.

I won't start a philosophical blow-out on the morality of being an omnivore. And I'm pretty certain that Cobain's lyric was loaded with his trademark sardonic wit.

I liked those fish, in an I-appreciate-the-animal-world-and-the-cycle-of-life kind of way. And I liked the Double Crested Cormorant who was probably eating those fishes' cousins 20 feet away. And I've liked a fish dinner here and there in my time. Yes, I like it all, but I don't like that I can't make peace with the cruelty of the food chain, but I'm somehow no longer a vegetarian.

I don't remember if the members of Nirvana actually ate fish or if they were vegetarians. But I'm sure they were not vegans...I remember butter was part of their food vernacular. I was hired as local day-labor in 1993 to assist the band's traveling caterer when they passed through NE Ohio and one of my duties was to bake the boys an apple pie. I distinctly remember cutting butter into the dough for the crust. Of course a butter crust usually makes a darn good (albeit non-vegan) pie.

And it was a darn good pie. The manager came up to the room we were using as a makeshift kitchen because Cobain wanted the kitchen labor to know how much he had enjoyed the apple pie. I still get a nice feeling from that compliment.

Cobain may or may not have believed that fish have feelings, but he knew that flunkies did, no matter where we were on the food chain of the entertainment business.

The Linen Dish Towel

2011-09-21T20:11:00.013-04:00

I have dozens of dish towels. In a single morning, I use more dish towels than most people use all week. This means that during the course of a week, I have to launder more dish towels than most people wash all week.

I have favorite dish towels. Some of them make great pot holders. Some of them dry the most delicate glasses with nary a streak. Some of them hang nicely from my apron ties, not too cumbersome or bulky. And when I am caught in the tedious chore of folding them after a tumble in the dryer, I put them in an order that suits me, as I know how I will later be grabbing them from the stack while I am working.

While folding dish towels this evening. I stopped to consider the best one of all. It has had quite a journey. You see, my most favorite dish towel was never meant to be a dish towel. It really is too noble of birth to be wiping down damp pots and pans, but it does the job so beautifully that I just can't let it go. This favorite dish towel started life as a interior decorator's flat-fold sample. A flat-fold, as an FYI, is a really large piece of fabric that a decorator can use to swath the back of Mrs. So-and-So's ho-hum sofa and exclaim, "See?!! Won't this be fabulous with the Cowtan and Tout wallpaper ?!" Mrs. So-and-So then can see how the interior is going to be stunningly transformed. Hopefully so much so that Mr. So-and-So won't grumble too much when the decorator's bill arrives.

If that sounds like a rarefied ritual, it probably is. It is certainly rarefied enough that not every flat-fold sample earns its keep. Many of them have to be retired with wasteful regularity.

This poor dish towel that I love so much never made it to the upholsterer's workbench to make over a sofa. Nor did it provide inspiration for a dramatic set of draperies. And it's a little sad, really, because it really is a glorious piece of fabric.

It is a wonderful linen. It wrinkles enough to let you know it's linen, but not so much as to look disheveled. It is woven, not just printed, with the most cheerful subject matter: a gaggle of tropical birds (cockatiels to myna-birds) gaze happily upon the lush fruits of the branches in which they are perched (papayas to pomegranates). Lest this sound like a blindingly tacky explosion of color, let me inform you that the whole thing is on the most understated warm brown background. If some great lady were to decorate her husband's study in their Florida home, where she wanted a whimsical celebration of Floridian motifs and he just wanted a masculine room where he could read the Journal in peace, thank you very much, then this is the fabric they would absolutely have to have.

But the Floridian couple never called, and the study never got made over.

And so the beautiful flat-fold sample became a dish-towel. (All of us, even flat-folds, have to do something for a living.) When I lay the dish towel out on a counter, to catch stray splashes from the sink, its bold pattern pleases my eye. I am grateful that it takes the abuse of being wadded-up, to buff the inside of a stock pot. I can hardly believe that despite being washed a couple of times a week for the last three years, the only real wear I see is a frayed edge, from where I had to tear off the fabric manufacturer's label when I gave the old flat-fold a new lease on life as a dish towel.

I don't really know if I am weaving (ouch...I know, but an unavoidable pun!) a sad tale or a happy one, but the jist of it is that this genteel decorator fabric has become a common kitchen rag. Riches to rags, quite literally. But how I love that flat-fold sample as a kitchen rag. And there have been folks with an eye for detail who have seen it laying on a counter and have complimented it...so obviously superior in both beauty and function it is.

How lucky am I to have this lovely linen dish towel?

Southern Comfort: Shrimp and Grits

2011-09-17T19:48:00.008-04:00

My sister, who lives in the South, once asked me how I got so interested in Southern cooking. Until her query, I never knew I was interested in Southern cooking. I also don't think I've had (for a typical Northerner) an above-average exposure to it. But somewhere along the line, I managed to taste pulled pork, okra and oysters, tangy green tomatoes, catfish and coleslaw, greens and hot sauce, and things of that ilk, and I find all of the above to be deeply delicious culinary treats that I get genuinely excited about.

Now, while I do admit that I make greens at home on a not-infrequent basis, I cannot, for a second, say I am devoted to Southern cuisine exclusively. I'm too curious about (and hungry for!) what the other bajillion regions of the world have to offer from their kitchens.

After a really great day outdoors today, I felt like cozy-ing up for an evening at home with some home cooking. But I didn't feel like an outing to the grocery store, so, it was a use-whatever-happens-to-be-on-hand kind of night. (I call this a "pantry dump") That which happened to be on hand in the pantry really wasn't much. There was half a bag of frozen shrimp in the back of the freezer, some almost-sad-looking veggies and garlic that needed to be used SOON, and not much in the way of a starch. Wait. Don't I have some cornmeal...or...wait...grits up in the cupboard somewhere???

That's Shrimp and Grits, people! That is Southern food at its best!

Sloppy, gloppy, rich, decadent Shrimp and Grits! A meal of Shrimp and Grits is a Southern classic if there ever was one. Many Northern types have never tried it, or worse, think it sounds weirdly wrong. Oh, my Yankee brethren, I am here to tell you that Shrimp and Grits is weirdly right.

You take the creamiest version of grits that you can make, fortify them with cheese and the rounded depth of some vegetables, and then complement all of that richness with the sweet flavor (and the firm yet yielding texture) of perfectly-cooked shrimp. Personally, I also then like to gild the lily with some zesty hot sauce and/or freshly-squeezed lemon.

I would normally be glad to supply my personal recipe du jour, but, as I mentioned, this was a "pantry dump" meal, so I simply shot from the hip with some things I had on hand. I am quite certain, however, that if you were to Google "shrimp and grits" you would glean an encyclopedic number of not-too-shabby recipes. I know I used a cup of grits, about 4oz of cheese, 1/2 stick of butter, about 1/2 pound of shrimp, a healthy tablespoon of minced garlic, some asparagus tips, a little dry sherry, and I was more than happy with my off-the-cuff creation.

As the summer fades to fall and everyone is talking about the herculean effort that is a clambake, I think I'd be just as happy with a slapdash bowl of pure Southern comfort...Shrimp and Grits...ahhhhhhh!!!!

Life Beyond the Table: Railing Against the Foodies

2011-09-04T11:28:00.004-04:00

I really appreciate good food. And I generally enjoy making it. And that's about it.

WHAT?!!! Is food not your passion?? Don't you define yourself as a foodie?! Don't you harvest your own fresh eggs from the urban chicken coop you keep behind your garage? Doesn't everyone at the farmers market/Williams-Sonoma/specialty butcher shop/etc. etc. know you by name? Don't you buy your ducks still un-plucked from back alley place because they are so much better that way?

Not exactly. You see, I just really appreciate good food. And I generally enjoy making it. And that's about it. Isn't that enough?

I watched what turned out to be a real "yawner" of a Julia Roberts movie last night: Eat, Pray, Love. The first part of the movie really focused on Roberts' character enjoying the culinary delicacies of Italy...ad nauseum. This food focus just felt gratuitous ("oh, you simply MUST celebrate the culinary heritage of Italians whenever you talk about Italy")and kind of pornographic, in the worst way. As I mentioned earlier, I really appreciate good food, but I do not need to have the camera pan in on Julia Roberts' mouth while she slurps in a too-big-mouthful of spaghetti pasta. I don't need to watch her tilt her head sensuously while she wraps her lips around a piece of soggy pizza. It's kind of gluttonous and gross.

Obviously, the director was trying to illustrate the primal enjoyment we get out of good food, but he absolutely just beat the viewer over the head with it. And the pleasures of the table really seems to be all anyone wants to talk about these days.

I agree that food is a pleasure. I agree that everyone should be aware of which elements constitute "good food" so we can all make more healthful meal choices and enhance our dining and living experience. After we recognize that food is a pleasure and that we should be making good choices, I think we should pipe down about it.

Honestly, foodies are kind of tedious. All they want to do is talk about the genius thing they made, or the genius chef they met, or the genius magic ingredient that peons like you cannot get at the regular grocery store. It's self aggrandizement: "My culinary pleasures are better than your culinary pleasures. Nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyaaaah!!"

So what am I really asking with this rant? I am imploring everybody to learn which foods are healthful and delicious for them to make and share with friends and family, and then just be quiet about it. Don't drone on about it or give us a graphic play-by-play of how you savored every creamy spoonful of that creme brulee.
Get a hobby. Help a kid. Walk a dog. Call a lonely friend. There's a lot to life beyond the table. So fuel yourself well at the table so you can energetically push back from the buffet and do more.

Don't selfishly consume like some low-rent Bacchus and then bore everyone to tears with the details. There is life beyond the table.

A Few of My Favorite Things...Condiments

2011-08-28T13:06:00.003-04:00

Dining out yesterday, I had the most lackluster piece of salmon. Good fish doesn't need much, but it needs SOMETHING. Maybe some salt to bring out the sweetness of the flesh. Maybe some citrus to combat the richness of all those Omega-3's. At any rate, this restaurant decided plain-Jane style was good enough. I found some hot sauce on the table and did my own seasoning, because I prefer a lot of flavor.

Getting a lot of flavor isn't that hard. In fact, you can probably do it with items you already have in your pantry. I've thrown together a list of my can't-do-without spices and condiments. Used alone, or in combinations with one another, you can create a whole lot of flavor with relative ease and economy.

Here's my personal pantheon of the flavor gods:

1. HAIN IODIZED SEA SALT: I love this stuff because it has a delicious saltiness (I love that a little goes a long way) and it has a very fine texture, dissolving easily into whatever you are cooking.
2. FRANK'S RED HOT SAUCE: Spicy without being too hot, Frank's has the most incredible piquant flavor and pairs well with so many things.
3. NATURAL NUT BUTTER: My default is sugar free peanut butter, but I do change things up with tree nut butters from time to time. Calorie and nutrition dense, nut butter can actually double as a meal replacement. Gives the most interesting flavor to exotic sauces.
4. GARLIC POWDER: The foodie elite, chopping their fresh cloves of garlic, collectively gasp, "Garlic Powder?!!!" I love fresh garlic, too...but the fine powder is more effective as a pre-cooking sprinkle. I love it on roasted veggies. Easy enough to sprinkle on meats when you are just too lazy to chop whole cloves of the stuff.
5. LEMONS/LIMES: The juice, the zest...the appeal! I love the light, bright flavor of citrus in so many things from cocktails to osso buco.
6. AGAVE NECTAR: Healthier than cane sugar (your body metabolizes it more slowly so your pancreas doesn't flip out) and less-assertive than honey. This is a nice, mellow sweetener to have on hand.
7. DIJON MUSTARD: Great straight as a condiment on meats and cheese or emulsified into sauces and dressings, I consider Dijon to be a very important staple.
8. CUMIN, CORIANDER, CRUSHED RED PEPPER: The three "C's" of the spice drawer. Cumin gives complexity, coriander gives freshness, and crushed red pepper gives heat. Yum....
9. SOY SAUCE: I actually don't much like soy sauce straight. I find it heavy and salty. But a drop of soy into another sauce, (lots and lots of UN-Asian sauces, too!) lends real depth.
10. FIVE SPICE POWDER: "What IS that flavor?" I like this seasoning because it is different. It takes plain meals and gives them an unusual taste. Slightly sweet, it's wonderful with a little lime zest on grilled fish.

How about you? What are your favorite flavor staples??

Old School Lunches in the New School Lunch Room

2011-08-15T20:25:00.007-04:00

I hope to heaven that Jamie Oliver, Michelle Obama, Rachael Ray, and whoever else is involved all have great success re-vamping the school lunch philosophy because I don't want any kid to go through what I went through.

I grew up in a different time where kids walked unsupervised to elementary schools, and often walked home for a luxuriously long hour-long lunch break. Tres Francais, n'est pas? The kids who had impossibly long walks, working moms, or took the bus found it more practical to stay at school and have a brown bag lunch on neato-keen picnic tables they set up in the auditorium. When the corny, old, nonsensical joke: "do you walk to school or carry your lunch?" was first posed to me in jest, I didn't get it. What? I walked to school. The kids who took the bus or got dropped off carried their lunches. What?! I was definitely in the "walk to school" demographic, as my house was literally across the street from my primary school, BUT, from time to time I wanted to hang out with my pals who carried their lunches and ate at school, so I started brown bagging it, too.

Well, I did it for a short while anyway.

You see, my mother and grandmother were very involved in making sure I had a nutritious and, dare I say it, sophisticated lunch. They didn't call it "foie gras", rather just plain old "goose liver", but the super-fatted liver of some delectable creature was a frequent lunch staple, dressed with spinach between two pieces of dense-as-deep-space brown bread. There was usually some fruit or leftover cobbler as dessert.

Awesome, right?!!

Not when you are eight years old.

Oh, the insufferable ridicule I was forced to endure by the glamourous types with one piece of a malnutritous Kraft American single between two pieces of Wonder Bread (no condiments, EVER!) coupled with an Oreo dessert. I also caught hell from the PB&J set who got Twinkies for dessert in their lunch box. My lunch was, um, weird. Everyone else, it seemed, had a "cool" All-American lunch. I had the scary stuff of Eurasian peasants. Ooof.

I gave up, after a while, and just walked across the street where I could eat my foie gras in peace while enjoying the added benefit of black and white "Gomer Pyle" re-runs in the comfort and privacy of my own home.

Meanwhile, at another school, not 2 miles away, a pair of sisters, first generation German-Americans, and now among my best friends, suffered a similar fate. Oma's "braunschweiger" had them ostracized to the far corner of the lunch room. We connected on this point years after the fact, but I took great comfort in knowing that I was not alone in being ridiculed for eating something slightly more advanced that the garden-variety All-American junk of the day. These gals of good German stock are my soul sisters in more ways than this, but I'll be honest, this lunchtime ostracism continues to stick out in my mind as an important connection.

I've heard similar stories from Italian-heritage kids, Greek-heritage kids, and Lebanese-heritage kids whose parents took the time to give them nutritious lunch-box delicacies only to be met with abject social grief at the communal table, where "crap" is the norm.

I sincerely hope things are changing. Not everyone can slink across the street like I did, so I hope a healthy lunch now looks "cool".

Please, parents: start a movement. Make no child squirm like my German friends and I did. Talk about the movement, stretch your children's taste buds, embrace your culinary heritage, and pack the things your grandmother would have packed for you. Remind your kids that those addictive junk items lead to the obesity problem that WILL get them picked last for the kickball game. Remind them that we are pushing through to a new era..by eating old-school stuff in the new-school lunch room.

Slammin' Salmon Salad

2011-08-04T19:33:00.007-04:00

I thought I would be dining alone. It's been a long day and, in terms of a magical dinner, the only rabbit I felt I could successfully pull out of my hat was going to be Salmon Salad. Of course mi esposo would complain bitterly. Of course he would demand more substantive protein. Of course he would bemoan the light eating that the humid weather is calling for.

So I was utterly chagrined when he loved my Salmon Salad.

He said it was good! Coming from him, this is a glowing endorsement.

The Salmon Salad was pretty slammin', if I do say so myself. It was far from fancy (remember, I didn't feel like cooking and this brainchild was concocted out of the dregs of my cupboards), and yet I defiantly challenge any salmon afficianado to dislike it...especially on a hot, humid, summer evening.

I had mine on baby spinach and accompanied it with sauvignon blanc and a mild, white strawberry chardonnay cheese. My better half made a sandwich on whole grain ciabatta and chose milk and some cheddar as pairings, but the entire household is now sated and resting comfortably.

You probably have most of this stuff on hand and can make it in 5 minutes flat:

SALMON SALAD (for two or three):

-15 oz of canned, wild Alaskan salmon, drained (save fresh fish for grilling or poaching, not drowning in condiments)
-3 stalks of celery, peeled and chopped
-1 t white wine or lemon juice
-1 tablespoon of mayonnaise or "vegenaise" (more if you like it gloppy)
-1 tablespoon of dried dill weed

Mix all ingredients well. Canned salmon is canned with salt. It is unlikely that even the most jaded tastebuds will require any additional seasoning.

For such a naive culinary attempt, it's mind-bogglingly good.

You can thank me later....

Too Hot to Handle (Food)

2011-07-31T10:30:00.003-04:00

I don't know where you are, but it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk in Cleveland, except the last thing I feel like doing is frying eggs...because it just generates more heat. The truth is, I don't feel much like hot food lately. I know the hot weather prompts many people to default to grilling outdoors, but heck, I don't even feel much like doing that, either. I have a feeling that I'm not alone in my summertime ennui, so I've compiled a list of easy, cold meals to sustain you through the dog days of the season:

-Spring Rolls
-Chicken Salad
-Greek Pasta Salad
-BLT and raw broccoli delight salad
-Salad Nicoise
-Hummus, Vegetables, and Pita
-Bruschetta (or Caponata or Muffaletta) en croute
-Poached Salmon with steamed asparagus
-Chilled Hungarian Cherry Soup with wheat chips
-Nut Butter and Peach Smoothie

If you turn off the oven and retire to the veranda with one of the above-mentioned ideas, you just might make it through the heat wave without melting.

Make it with Love: Dobosh Torte

2011-07-22T20:37:00.009-04:00

The Dobosh (or Dobos or Dobosz) Torte is sort of a holy grail for me. More elaborate than its French cousin the mille feuile, it is a 7 to 12 layer cake with loads of light chocolate buttercream and a topping rich caramel. My grandmother used to make it for special occasions. If it's on the menu in a Hungarian restaurant, I will usually order two...one to inhale and one to taste. It's impossibly decadent and it looks impossibly difficult to make...which is probably why I've never attempted one.

But two very special friends just got hitched and they are throwing a casual celebration. I offered to bring a dessert to the party, to ease the hostess's mind and the caterer's workload.

But let's be clear on one thing: Pastry is not my strong suit. I admit it. Pastry takes a more careful and scientific type of cook. I'm a "shoot-first-ask-questions-later" type of cook.

But I offered a dessert. And I don't want it to look (or taste!) like a home economics class project.

So, naturally, I decided to make a Dobosh Torte. On the eve of the party. Without a recipe. In the 95 degree heat. What could go wrong?

A lot could go wrong. I am only 3/4 of the way through the assembly and decoration, so there is still time for a royal screw up. But it won't go wrong. It's impossible. Although I already know my layers are too thick for a textbook-correct creation; although I wish I had added more of a hint of espresso flavor to the chocolate buttercream; although we've been experiencing power outages and refrigeration failures all day long, my Dobosh Torte will be perfect.

Why?

I made it with love.

My first cooking job had me cooking under a young, carefree chef named Dorothy. Dorothy had a special way about her, and of teaching others. It would go something like this:

DOROTHY: Karen, go make a tomato vinaigrette for the salad.
KAREN: I've never done a tomato vinaigrette. How do I do it?
DOROTHY: Do it with love.
KAREN: (blank stare)
DOROTHY: No, really. If you do it with love, it will always turn out, no matter what the ratios and proportions of ingredients.

In other words, Dorothy made me figure it out on my own, but I liked her hippy-trippy philosophy. Yes, I know that it's a useless ideology from a practical standpoint, but I still like it.

And that hippy-trippy philosophy has finally pushed me past the intimidation factor to try my hand at what I think is the finest pastry under the sun. I will not be starring on "Cake Boss" anytime soon, but I'll betcha my torte is going to be pretty hard to beat. Because I am truly making this one with love.

Congratulations, best wishes, and a million delicious confections to you!

All You Need to Eat Well

2011-07-18T18:47:00.008-04:00

I cooked all vacation long. You might even call it a bus-man's holiday of sorts. The reasons were several, some of them circumstantial, some of them by choice, but I cooked every single meal.

Whether I thought all that vacation cooking was heavenly or horrid is the topic of another post on another day. But I can share with you the emphatic insistence that cooking healthful, well-crafted meals can be done with even the most makeshift cookery equipment just by tapping into your own personal resourcefulness.

What am I talking about? Our cottage kitchen left a lot to be desired. But recognizing that it usually takes more energy to complain than it takes to make-do, I made do. And I'm not too bashful to say it worked out pretty well.

Let me share with you some dinner menus enjoyed during our cottage vacation:

-Grass-Fed Burgers on the grill with all the fixings, roasted sweet corn, and salad
-Chicken Fajitas with grilled peppers and fresh guacamole
-Landlocked Salmon of mustard with carrot batons and salad
-Pasta tossed with grilled shrimp and asparagus with a tarragon creme sauce
-Steamed Brown Trout with walnuts, lentil-rice pilaf, and green beans
-Turkey Patties with lentils, corn, and wilted greens
(Oh...and although we were on vacation, I more or less adhered to our ridiculously low grocery budget...but some of that sounds perfectly high-falutin', though, right??)

Now let me share with you the limitations of our cottage kitchen:

-Although there was running water, the cottage sink took a full 24 hours to drain. Needless to say, dish-washing was impractical in most cases. Most items had to be made without the use of a traditional cooking vessel. Skewers, aluminum foil, and foil pans were jury-rigged to duplicate the function of fine cookware.
-The oven worked, but looked like a fire hazard. The only apparently safe heat source was a Weber kettle grill.
-The only grocery store was many miles away in a rural, Mennonite village. There was no point in looking for exotic ingredients. And tough luck if you forgot anything...the journey over bumpy, un-lit dirt roads was not an easy one you'd want to make twice in the same day.
-The refrigerator didn't really refrigerate. It merely took the edge off the summer heat. Whatever perishables were purchased really needed to be cooked and consumed that same day.

Our cottage kitchen wasn't quite as primitive as camping and cooking over a campfire, but it ran a close second. But I think we ate really well and quite healthfully, all things considered. We could have had a (gag) wienie-roast all week...I'm sure many cottage-visitors do...except I have these irritating little things I call standards which forced me to think creatively about our meals.

Our great grandmothers cooked better, on average, than many of us do today with our "gourmet" tastes. And those old gals did it all in kitchens we would now laugh at or call dysfunctional. More than a handful of amazing restaurants have difficult kitchens that most of us would scream about working in. Oh, and if anyone out there has ever worked in a restaurant, they can attest that almost every piece of equipment is damaged or broken in some way or another at all times. And yet they serve 200 people a night. This socio-political trend to eat local means that if people/cooks really want to live this credo, they will have to get creative and make intelligent substitutions in their recipes. If rhubarb is not in season in Ohio during the third week of January and you were dreaming of Aunt Tilly's "Rhubarb Surprise", then you'd best start your creative gears a-turning...what else besides rhubarb can you use for a reasonable (and delicious) facsimile???

Mi esposo and I ate like veritable royalty from that joke of a kitchen and a grocery store that could have been called "Old Mother Hubbard's Place". You do not need 50,000 BTUs on a 50,000 dollar commercial-grade range. You do not need a Whole Foods within a 5-mile radius of your house. You don't need a grocery budget that rivals the national debt. Heck, you don't even need a working sink, as I found out. All you need to eat well is the will to do so, some creativity, and a little drive.

Let me repeat myself.

All you need to eat well is the will to do so, some creativity, and a little drive

Questioning the Authority of a Venerated Institution While Considering (big) Bottom

2011-06-30T22:42:00.018-04:00

There is a restaurant in suburban Cleveland that is probably exactly the same age as I am. (That's a long time for a restaurant, and no comments from the peanut gallery, thank you very much). This place came into existence during the downward slide of the hippie heyday and is still popular with the hippie crowd, as well as families, healthy eaters, milkshake aficionados, and Cleveland East Siders.

I'm not in the restaurant review business, so I won't name names...but some readers will surely figure out which restaurant I am referring to through context clues.

The above-mentioned restaurant is considered by many to be pretty special. It has survived fires, floods, and riots. There is always a wait to get a table. It is an INSTITUTION.

Despite the fact that this institution gave me food poisoning back in the late 1980's with some out-of-date bleu cheese dressing, I brushed my food-borne suffering off to the admission that accidents happen to the best of us, and so have been willing to return to their hallowed halls.

In fact, have been there twice in the last week, mostly at the request of visiting out-of-towners who sorely miss this Cleveland institution. (I wonder if the servers think I'm a regular...?)

Though there is meat on the encyclopedic menu, "Institution Restaurante" specializes in egg and dairy-friendly vegetarian fare. Having been such an ovo-lacto vegetarian for a substantial chunk of my formative years, I look upon vegetarian entrees as a sort of comfort food. I know it's chic for some chefs to lambast vegetarians for their lack of adventure in culinary affairs, but I happen to have never met a vegetable I didn't like, so I'll gladly make a meal of them, even though I cannot count myself among the ranks of the vegetarian elite.

And I made a meal of some vegetables tonight. Actually, I selected a vegan entree. But the mix of brown rice, kale, broccoli, carrots, and mushrooms sounded so substantial without being an overly-heavy gut-buster, that I thought it would be right up my alley.

Well, kids... the entree was in my neighborhood, but it weren't up my alley. Uh unh. I slowed down and tasted, tried really hard to figure out why I didn't love what I thought, for certain, would hit the spot.

Now, I already knew that "Institution Restaurante" doesn't salt their food. This is another cardinal sin among chefly types, but whatever...I can get over it. Just give me a saltshaker at the table and I'll forgive you that you failed to release precious flavor via this magical mineral during the cooking process. I won't bother to tell them that the low-sodium health rules don't apply to folks whose adrenals tick like mine. It's really a waste of words when I can augment the situation table-side.

It wasn't the no-salt issue...so, what was wrong with my entree?? I tasted. I tasted again. I added hot sauce. I tasted again. Vinegar? Nope...

Oh. My. Sweet. Savior.

I figured it out...There was not even the tiniest mince of garlic in my dinner. Nor was there any onion or shallot. There was not a trace of depth to my meal!

As a music fan, I have come to realize the importance of bass within the underlying rhythm of a song, especially within popular or rhythm-and-blues styles. The old dudes call it "bottom". Bass, or bottom, rounds out a song. It makes it resonate full and round. Bottom can prevent a tune that should not be a thin aria from turning into a thin aria. BOTTOM IS VERY IMPORTANT.

I consider pungent elements like garlic, onion, and shallot to be "bottom" to the composition of my meal. Unless it's the light aria of a dessert or palate-cleansing course, I want it there, rounding everything out...making the flavor experience full. I can even deal with a delicate cook, who uses these elements judiciously for a subtle effect. Subtlety is fine, but please, for the love of all that is holy... GIVE ME SOME FLAVOR!

This shakes my faith in my fellow man. How can we have made this restaurant an institution while they snub their nose at an essential note in the flavor symphony? Is the ambiance in this casual joint really that great?? Are they resting on the laurels of a reputation for "healthful" cuisine...a fact which seems so important to our national health right now? Is location a more important factor in a restaurant's success than actual cuisine?

I am reminded of a quote that I will surely botch (and I cannot tell you who said it) but it was something along the lines of:

"Two things always look better in the movies: War and Institutions"

So, next time I'll rent the movie.

And enjoy my vegetables with a pungent garlic dip.

The White Wine "X Files"

2011-06-18T18:43:00.003-04:00

I am not a wine connoisseur. On the contrary, I am a broke-as-a-joke cook who sometimes picks up a bottle at the grocery to complement(??? I hope!) my dinner selection for the evening.

Since I don't know what I am doing but am not yet ready to commit to wine-tasting courses or throw myself into the hands of my local merchant who needs a buck as badly as I do, I thought I'd confer with friends...in an organized sort of way.

So, I made up a basic, writable word file and e-mailed it to some friends who seem to appreciate adult grape juice, and included 3 basic rules:

-Give us your name (so we know whose comments we are reading)
-Just give us info ONLY on the wine you are drinking tonight (or drank last night), so we can be assured that the info is fresh in your memory and not some clouded rendition of a memorable evening 2 weeks ago. This also keeps us from having an unwieldy laundry-list of only one person's selections.
-Give us pertinent info...winery name, vintage, region, price, varietal, etc.

That's it...that's all. Can't wait for the advice to start pouring in.

Breakfast of Champions: Blendo Mendo

2011-06-11T12:54:00.009-04:00

Mi esposo once recounted that as a child, left to his own devices one day to find an after-school snack, he settled on the idea of a big glass of chocolate milk. He wondered, however, what would happen if he mixed his Nestle Quick and milk in the blender instead of stirring it up in the glass with a spoon. To his delight, the result was a light, frothy concoction, far superior to the in-glass mix-up. He began calling his creation: "Blendo Mendo".

I've recently adapted esposo's Blendo Mendo technique to suit my own tastes.

My variation on the Blendo Mendo gives me a shot of nutrition as a snack, as a light lunch, or most usually, as a breakfast that takes 5 seconds to prepare yet leaves me feeling light, totally satisfied, and ready to go kick the day in the cajones.

So, what exactly do I put in this Blendo Mendo that is inspiring me to wax so celebratory over it?

It's a scoop of whey protein powder, a couple of ice cubes, 6 oz. of water, some fresh fruit, and if I am under the spell of a powerful sweet tooth, a scant tablespoon of low-sugar preserves. I drop it all into a very UN-fancy, 1960's-era Osterizer blender that I probably found at a garage sale in my early twenties, give everything a whirl. According to my research, even my most decadent creation, with preserves and even some nut butter for a thicker texture, tops out at a paltry 225 calories and is brimming with easily-assimilated protein and vitamins. Truly, if that's not a "breakfast of champions", then I don't know what is.

"Wait a minute," you might be thinking, "isn't this Blendo Mendo concept really just a smoothie?"

Well, yeah. But you are not allowed to call my awesome breakfast of champions a "smoothie". Puh-lease! I have fought the whole smoothie concept for a long time. I hated the name..."smoothie" sounds cloying and precious to me. I hated that it was trendy. I hated the fact that most commercial smoothies, billed as healthful because they have some fruit, are so laden with sugar that you may as well drink a 64oz. jumbo soda, as far as caloric intake is concerned. But mostly, it was the name. I just didn't like it.

Now, Blendo Mendo...that I like. I like that mi esposo gets a kick out of the fact that I have co-opted one of his culinary discoveries. I like the fact I can get myself some healthy nourishment without having to heat up or mess up the kitchen during the hot and lazy summer season. I like the fact that I am getting nearly 1/3 of my daily requirement for protein, nearly 100% of my B vitamins, and a good little infusion of vitamin C for a paltry sum of calories. Oh, yeah...low-fat, too, by the way. And it's fast, easy, tasty, and filling.

I don't know many people who don't have a blender lurking in the dark recesses of a cupboard somewhere. Why don't you use it for a Blendo Mendo breakfast of champions? If you are going to complain about cleaning the blender (no one's favorite chore), just get a cheap bottle-brush washer and literally give it a quick hit the second you are done blending. Honestly, it's faster and easier than loading breakfast dishes into the dishwasher.

Seriously...c'mon everybody...Blendo Mendo.

A Day Like Today

2011-06-05T16:29:00.005-04:00

When I pull up ancient, dusty memories from the deepest recesses of my mind, most of them are memories of summertime. I think I cherish and hold on to these great warm weather memories because I just love everything about summer in Cleveland, Ohio...although I'll grant that the season is far too brief.

Today has all the makings of a perfect summer Sunday. I hiked with one of the dogs in a quiet woodland setting wearing short shorts and shirtsleeves. I tended to the riotous flower garden in the back, hoping that with enough water, it will display some beauty amid the chaos in the coming weeks. I poured myself a frosty-cold brew in the late afternoon. I threw a brisket onto the grill, hoping it will slowly meld into a barbecued delight over the next several hours. I have all the components of a veggie-rich caponata on my kitchen counter. Every window in the house is flung wide open. The flag out front is swaying on a not-too-humid breeze. The children next door are playing the radio... so moments of energetic music waft over the fence. I absolutely live for days like this.

Even without central air conditioning, I make it a point to rarely complain about the heat. This season is otherwise too perfect and altogether too fleeting at this northern latitude.

I hope you'll fire up your grill or dare to don your short shorts, or report to your local ice-cream stand and just try to squeeze every bit of awesomeness out of a day like today.

ISO: Our Next Favorite Pizza Pie

2011-05-27T19:31:00.004-04:00

Mi esposo and I, weary of substandard pizzas, have started a fun Friday night challenge: to find the best pizza joint within a 20 minute radius of our home.

We've just had too many pizzas that were soggy, sauce-less, wearing wilted toppings, and festooned with some fake soya stand-in for cheese that we decided that if the cook (ahem...that's me) was to be given a night off for an occasional carryout pizza, it had better be a damned good pie. And if we were ever going to find a damned good pie, we had to be methodological about it.

So began The Great Friday Night Pizza Challenge.

Here are the rough outlines of the game:

-Every Friday, mi esposo and I take turns selecting a different pizza joint.
-The Pizza-Orderer of the week gets to decide the establishment as well as the toppings.
-To be deemed "good", the pizza must meet the following requirements:
1. Pizza must be well-sauced (we like a sauce-y pie).
2. The sauce must have discernible, if not powerful, flavor. (I will never order from a place again if I can taste sugar in the sauce. I think adding sugar to tomato sauce is tantamount to cheating.)
3. The crust, whether thin or thick, must never be quasi-raw, doughy, glutenous mush.
4. The pizza establishment must be a reasonable commute from our inner-ring, east side home.
5. The cheese must be actual cheese, crafted from the milk of cows, sheep, or goats.
6. The toppings must be fresh, visually appealing, and as-described on the menu.

Sounds easy, right?

Ugh. I can tell you tales of horror about hair in my pizza, puddling grease pockets on my pizza, pizza with hardly a whisper of sauce, pizza sauce so heavily sugared it could have been a dessert, pizza that was so doughy I felt bloated for days, pizza with toppings the dogs refused, and more.

The Great Friday Night Pizza Challenge has been great fun. It lets me try all kinds of pie from around the area. It encourages mi esposo, normally a NON-foodie, to slow down and analyze flavors and textures. And it lets everyone have a turn picking dinner: for example, he likes a traditional pie while I go in for the ones with "out-there" toppings and combinations. This way, everyone gets a chance, and everyone gets to give their opinion.

If we're lucky, we may unearth the best pizza this side of the Cuyahoga.

What about YOU? (We'll take suggestions!) What's your favorite pizza pie on the east side of Cleveland???

An Extreme Waste of Time

2011-05-22T14:23:00.004-04:00

It started as a joke between mi esposo and me. The Learning Channel's new progam, "Extreme Couponing" had caught our attention. The show documents thrifty shoppers, armed with itemized lists and binders full of savings coupons, racking up grocery totals in the thousands, then skating out of the store only having given up a few bucks.

"Honey, I want you to be an extreme couponer," he'd say, with a twinkle in his eye.
"Yeah, right. Go take a hike," was my typical response.

I have never been much into couponing. Having been self-employed for a goodly portion of my adult life, and having been in some other businesses in which I had to manage some very tight job budgets, I think I've gotten reasonably facile with intelligent purchasing habits. Add to the equation the fact that I use old-school French techniques when I cook at home (that is, nothing is to be wasted...EVER) and you wind up with a household whose members eat a sophisticated and nutritious diet for a surprisingly low cost.

This morning, as mi esposo was heading out the door for a cup of coffee, I asked if he wouldn't mind bringing me back a Sunday New York Times. 20 minutes later, he was back with the Times...and six other regional papers!

"Oh, Jeez," my heart sank when he came through the door, "is this for coupons?"
"Yep!" He just beamed at me cheerfully.

OK, fine. I'd try the coupon experiment to see how it went. Never mind that many of the "extreme couponers" on the television show are grossly overweight. Never mind that they buy (in bulk) a bevy of products so laden with chemicals that I would shun them as a deadly poison. Never mind that the stock of items they purchase on the show makes their storage rooms look like a crowded bodega. Never mind, never mind...I'm a good sport and I had to do some grocery shopping anyway. I'd give this couponing thing a whirl.

The first strike against couponing is that it is the big, factory-styled food manufacturers that typically issue coupons. I often prefer to go with smaller-name companies because they are often lower in unhealthy fillers and frequently less expensive than the big-brand counterpart, even WITH a coupon.

The second strike against couponing is that the system is designed to make people spend more, with big savings if you buy 2 or more. I have a small household, a small kitchen, and small storage cupboards. I don't want 2 or more.

The third strike against couponing is that it made me deviate from my menu plan for the week, in order to get these "savings". As I mentioned, I believe in the French no-waste system. Before I go to the store I look to see what I already have on hand and build my menu around that, so I use up what I have in a reasonable amount of time (even dry goods are perishable, people!) and buy fewer items at the store, i.e. there's no need to buy rice for a "dirty rice" meal if I already have half a bag of it at home.

But, never mind...I'm a good sport.

I jaunted off to the grocery store with my modified list and a stack of coupons in my pocket, willing to see what would happen.

Folks, I hated the whole experience:
-It took me longer to get through the store, fumbling through coupons.
-I bought larger quantities than I need because the brands with coupons seem to come in quasi-"supersize" packages.
-It made me forget a couple key items, again, because my focus was on those darned newspaper clippings in my pocket.
-It encouraged me to buy brands that are not my first choice.
-Finally, and this is the clincher, IT MADE ME GO OVER MY PLANNED BUDGET.

Yes, I had a nice double-digit "savings" listed at the end of my receipt, but this experience was not a celebration of life, living, and the artistry of food and cookery. This was an idiot's game of being mesmerized by the pretty pictures on the side of a box issued by a factory food processor and thinking that I was beating their hand. I didn't beat them. They beat me. I spent more money, for pete's sake! And I'm a little sore about it, too.

Sore as I am, I must use my cutting honesty to get in some harsher reasons to avoid the extreme coupon life. Mi esposo and I have both noticed that a good number of these extreme couponers on television are undeniably overweight. I guess if you've just bought 75 boxes of microwave popcorn for pennies on the dollar, there's not enough of a compelling argument to keep you from overeating the contents therein. Similarly, I bristle at anything that smacks of hoarding behavior, and a larder that looks like a convenience store sure looks like hoarding to me. I even feel like it's kind of morally wrong, as in, why should I have an abundance when someone else in my community may have none at all? It really is "an embarrassment of riches". I also wonder if these extreme couponers who have figured out all the angles in order to work couponing to within an inch of its life are causing me (and you!) to pay more at the register. Do the big food manufacturers figure out a way to bury extra charges for every transaction so that Little Miss Cheapskate can get away with a zero-balance grocery bill?

The whole business of extreme couponing is an ugly waste of time to me.

Food is a beautiful, enjoyable facet of life and I'd like to make shopping for it a somewhat celebratory affair. If I take too long at the store, I want it to be because I was ogling some beautiful cheeses or comparing the varieties of ripe tomatoes, NOT because I was sifting through coupons. Good, well-planned, well-prepared, wholesome food makes me feel like I am eating like royalty. Buy One/Get One Instant Mashed Potatoes remind me how far in life I have not gotten. If I go over my planned budget, I want it to be because I indulged in something special, not because I felt obligated to stock up on plastic wrap.

It's so sad to me. Food should be joyous.

There are so many more joyful (and more healthful) ways to save at the register besides extreme couponing. Incidently, they also take less of your free time than the 30+ hours per week that the extreme couponers say they must devote to their shopping method. To save (a lot!) you could: bake your own bread, make your own pasta sauce, plant a vegetable garden in your yard, plant a fruit tree in your yard, buy larger cuts of meat and portion them out for freezing, experiment with plant-based proteins in your diet, split a farmshare with a neighbor, learn to "doctor up" your leftovers, etc. etc.

Yes, it may take you some time to learn some new cooking techniques to experience grocery savings with the above-mentioned techniques. Keep in mind that your time spent learning cooking techniques in order to be frugal are lifelong skills that give some people real pleasure. I guess I have to grant that the time spent learning strategic spreadsheet skills in order to get an almost-unusable bulk quantity of near-junk-food for mere pennies may give some people some kind of pleasure, but I guess I'm not one of those people. And they couldn't pay me enough (in coupons!) to do it their way ever again.

Tahini for Calcium

2011-05-19T19:43:00.003-04:00

I just don't like milk.

I'll admit that I'll gladly have a sip of it if there are some double-dark chocolate brownies onsite, but I really do mean that I'll have a "sip"... as in, like, a tablespoon-ful. It just doesn't appeal to me. When I was a child, my mother was nonplussed by my aversion to milk. She said I was the only kid in town who wouldn't drink the stuff. The only thing that reassured her was the fact that I actually liked leafy greens and broccoli, which do contain scant amounts of calcium.

But the stuff of sustenance for infant cows...? Not so much.

Well, here I am, a woman of a certain age (almost!) who is, on a daily basis, barraged with entreaties to take in enough calcium or ELSE! Or else risk a dowager's hump or shattering bones or a wheelchair or a nursing home or worse...all before the crow's feet are even set in my face.

But there was this bottle of tahini in my fridge, left over from a recent batch of hummus (which is about all I ever use the stuff for). I wanted a light vegetarian dinner, so I steamed some fresh vegetables, but knew I needed some more "ooomph" if I wanted to avoid raiding the cookie jar at 10pm. There were no beans. Butter or olive oil sounded too fatty. But tahini...hmmm...that could be a right nice (and hearty) dressing for my broccoli and associated veggies.

And it WAS a right nice dressing! Don't read the fat content on the label or you will fall over in shock. (Plus, it's the "good" kind of fat...HONEST!) But the calcium, content, ounce for ounce, is about one hundred and thirty times that of lowfat milk. Not bad!

I'll have some fruit and yogurt for breakfast and I think I should be standing upright for a while....

Competitive Cooking with High-Falutin' Chai-Smoked Chicken and Hot Apricot Sauce

2011-05-14T18:16:00.008-04:00

Last weekend, mi esposo and I managed to get out of the house for a nice dinner on the town. We went to a well-lauded establishment and had a lovely, lovely meal, but as I read the menu, I wasn't gripped with that urgent, excited feeling of "OH! I've got to try that!" In fact, everything on the menu was pretty much standard fare that I've had before. Again, it was delicious, but, well, I kind of wanted to be dazzled with something I've never tried before. Take, "tea-smoking", for example.

I've heard of tea-smoking, or cooking meats at a high temperature over tea leaves, but I heretofore have never had the opportunity to try it. Maybe I need to try some more high-falutin' places on a more regular basis. But there's no reason that yours truly can't try her hand at things that sound high-falutin'. And I wanted to do better than that last memorable meal.

Fast forward to earlier today, when I was reading a food article on tea-smoked ribs. The author gave a detailed account of how to mimic the smoky flavor of an outdoor barbecue in any old plain-Jane residential oven. The article grabbed me. Here was my chance to make up for last weekend, to dazzle myself. Why in the world couldn't I jury-rig some kind of high-falutin' tea-smoked entree with whatever I had on hand?

There were no ribs in my fridge, but there were some chicken breasts in the freezer. I didn't have any smoky Chinese tea like Lapsang Suchong, but there was a box of seldom-used Chai. Chai-smoked chicken was sounding really good to me and it got my gears turning...Of course, I'd need a sauce. Wouldn't some kind of hot and spicy, apricot-y thing be fabulous with Chai? And I had some couscous and pine nuts...I could turn up the texture volume on that with the addition of some heavy cream. I was sure that if I added some steamed asparagus I could "ruin" (my competitive term for out-doing) the chef who made last weekend's dinner. A plan was in place.

Now, chicken breasts, the ubiquitous boneless, skinless variety, tend to cook very quickly. They can literally be a flash in the pan if you saute them, or a really quick dinner in the oven. Overcooking chicken breasts leads to the undesirable dry "rubber chicken effect" that seasoned palates bemoan endlessly. With the high heat required to get my tea leaves to smoke, how in the world was I going to avoid the rubber chicken effect?

Well, I never really thawed those frozen breasts. I softened the exterior slightly on the microwave's "thaw" setting for just a few minutes and threw my chicken briquettes on a rack over a roasting pan that had five tea bags opened and scattered across the bottom, plus a little chicken stock. I don't know if the stock was really necessary, but I feared a flash fire of tea confetti if they didn't heat up gradually. I covered the whole shootin' match with some foil and threw it into a 450-degree oven for about 35 minutes.

The flavor was very subtle, but so nice. I amplified it slightly by brewing a scant amount of super-brisk Chai tea, combining that with apricot preserves and hot sauce that I reduced to a slightly thick consistency for a complimentary sauce. The couscous, cooked in heavy cream and scattered with pine nuts was a great, rich counterpoint.

I did it. I "ruined" that chef from last weekend and made my own dazzling, high-falutin' dinner. I will definitely work this into the rotation on a regular basis.

Mothers' Day Brunch

2011-05-07T10:08:00.002-04:00

The girls are coming over tomorrow. I have to confess that this might be the first brunch I've hosted in a looong time (I think I co-hosted a bridal shower back in 1992...yikes!)

It won't be too over-the-top, but it will be a lovely morning. If the weatherman decides to come around, we may even sit under the lilacs on the patio.

-Apricot Filled Pastry (not making this...someone else does pastry better than I do and I can accept that)
-Prosciutto-wrapped Asparagus Spears with a Bearnaise Drizzle
-Quiche Lorraine (using Mom's recipe, of course!)
-Grapefruit and Avocado Salad
-Ben and Jerry's (all Downie family events include ice cream... even brunch!)
-Coffee and Fresh Juices

Mi Esposo will pick up a flowering plant for the girls to take home.

I am so glad we don't have to accept a sub-par reservation time for a cold and wilted buffet somewhere!

The Beautiful People

2011-04-29T19:06:00.006-04:00

The Beautiful People are at Whole Foods tonight. It's Friday night in Cleveland and everyone with good shoes and perfect highlights is at the corner of Warrensville and Cedar in University Heights.

I had just run in there, on my way home, for a brief moment to grab a few things and was flabbergasted that I had to elbow a boatload of yuppies to get to my rapini.

As a recovering lone wolf, I was, at first, totally annoyed. "Who are these people and what do they think they are doing milling about and getting in my way?!" The huddling (albeit good-looking) masses had plastic wine glasses and were eating pretty things off of festooned toothpicks. Evidently, Whole Foods does these tasting events every Friday evening.

I had no choice but to say "excuse me" a lot and work around the crowd. Visibly irritated, I do-see-do'd with them in Produce. Noticing their Adrienne Vittadini loafers, I dodged them in Cheese and Wine. By the time I managed to power-through their 40-deep line with help from a hippie senior citizen with a big grocery cart and an even bigger attitude somewhere near the Humane Meat Department, my sour-puss attitude was melting away. I was almost ready to whistle a different tune.

I mean, these people were having FUN. They were tasting good, natural, well-prepared food. They were connecting with friendly faces. They were letting their hair down in a healthy way after a long week. Who did I think I was to deny their joy in the arrival of Friday night just because I'm in a (perpetual) big hurry? Plus, if I got myself out of these frumpy yoga pants and Dansko work clogs and into some lipstick and a scarf, I might actually like sharing a laugh and a plate with these folks.

"THAT SETTLES IT. I WANT TO HAVE FUN, TOO!" I thought to myself.

Yes, I admit that I bellyache about food politics and the folks who applaud themselves endlessly for engaging in them. (Quit talking about it and just DO it!) Yes, I admit I've called Whole Foods the Wal-Mart of of the healthy-eating lifestyle. Yes, I roll my eyes at anything that is overtly milquetoast. Yes, yes, yes...I'm pretty much Walter Matthau in a skirt.

But I can walk it off. I like Friday night. I LOOOOVE good food. I like talking to people...even the "beautiful people" at the UH Whole Foods.

So, maybe I'll see you next week. My hair will be out of the work-week tie-back. The Danskos will have been shelved in favor of some pumps. I will dig out the Estee Lauder "Fuschia NOW" lip gloss. I will wax philosophical about Nieman Ranch pork farms. I will have as much fun as a food person can possibly have.

I mean, why NOT??!!

I Heart Ovens

2011-04-24T18:27:00.007-04:00

Is there any cooking tool greater than the oven? Oh, sure...every die-hard cook out there goes ga-ga for a good knife (as well they should)...BUT as far as a vehicle for the transformative process that is cookery, I ask again: Really... is there any cooking tool greater than the oven?

The oven is a magic box. What goes in as a messy/soupy glop, comes out as a beautiful cake. What goes in as a hunk of raw, possibly bacteria-laden meat, comes out as a richly nutritious, life-sustaining protein entree. What goes is as an overly-fibrous, not-terribly appetizing vegetable comes out as a caramelized treat that truly enhances the diner's meal.

What's even better is that these transformations take absolutely no effort on the cook's part. Sure you can toss your vegetables in a light coating of oil. Of course you can season or brown your meat first. It helps your bakery if you've greased and floured your baking tins. But you don't have to do any of this. Your oven will kindly forgive your oversight and still turn out something lovely to look at and delightful to dine upon.

This Easter weekend, although happy and filled with family, turned out to be more harried than anyone would prefer. We were not planning on an elaborate dinner, but...well..we DO have to eat something.
The trouble was that some unexpected events took place and doing much cooking at all was beginning to look like a stretch.

Thank God for a working oven. I was at least able to carve out enough time to wave some seasonings over a chicken, in a barely-there effort to make it extra-good. And with that absolutely minimal, minimal act of preparation, I still know I'll have an excellent meal. Sitting one room away as that bird roasts, I can smell the wonderful aroma of what will be crispy skin, moist and tender meat, and hot steam rising from every forkful. All of this wonderfulness and I practically didn't have to do a thing. The oven did it for me.

While teaching a "Healthy Cooking" class recently, a participant asked me what my favorite thing to cook was. I thought about toeing the healthy-cooking-party line, but I'm an awful liar, so I blurted out the God's honest truth:

"Pot Roast"

Yep. I told everyone that you put it in the oven and forget about it and it turns out perfect every time. It's another dish where the oven does all the work.

OK, I back-peddled and told the healthy-cooking folks I do like a steamed fish taco like nobody's business, which is also true...and sounds much healthier. (In moderation, ultra-rich proteins do have their place for many folks in otherwise decent health, but I wasn't supposed to be encouraging such a decadent cut of meat at this class)

Ooof. It's the oven, I swear it! I just couldn't lie. The oven is so easy and make so many things turn out amazing. I just love the magic of the oven's alchemy. Even (or especially) upon a pot roast.

Re-Inventing the Pizza Wheel

2011-04-22T19:49:00.005-04:00

No, I'm not re-inventing the little wheel-style pizza cutter tool. I'm re-inventing the great wheel that is the institution of PIZZA.

I've never been to Italy (YET!) but we Americans love us some pizza pie. The average American eats about 23 pounds of it per year, per person. That comes out to something like 50 slices.

Me? Not so much.

I like pizza, don't get me wrong. But 2 full years of my college days were spent living in a roach-infested apartment above a pizzaria. The aroma of pepperoni was forever in the air. It broke me. Now, I can take it or leave it.

But when I do partake in a pizza pie, I often like to have fun with it. I like to go beyond pepperoni and mozzarella. This started in earnest during my days at the Italian restaurant.

I would prep in the kitchen by day, then do a change of clothes and greet patrons in the dining room by night. When the dinner rush was over, I'd go to the pizza oven area and help my friend, Richie, portion dough. And often I'd make a pizza. I'd do weird things. With weird toppings. And non-traditional pizza cheeses. Sometimes my inventions were awful. Sometimes they were awesome.

I like to do that, from time to time, at work, and even at home. Customers seem to love my adaptation of a sweet potato pizza, with crispy pancetta and oregano on a whole grain pie shell. I think my Thai-inspired Asian chicken pizza is kind of neat.

Tonight, I took a night off from the oven. I ordered a pizza...but I let myself go: roasted red pepper sauce, asiago cheese, spicy capicola, and lots of fresh basil. I know I cook a lot, but I don't know everything (good God! Not at ALL!) I only have some idea of what I'm doing: the rest is a roll of the dice.

But! I rolled good numbers tonight!

You can, too! Get off the sausage and pepperoni merry-go-round. What have you got to lose? I mean, really...what's a pizza?...15.95 at the most? Can't you roll the dice for once? Play around a little? Give the kids a chance to have some fun? Come up with some never-before combination? Even if it's awful, you'll still eat it (mark my words!) So there's nothing wasted.

And...nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Are You Ready for the Summer? Are You Ready for the Good Times?

2011-04-12T19:40:00.003-04:00

Some readers of a certain age may recognize the title of this post as lyrics from the theme song to the movie "Meatballs", a coming-of-age-B-Movie-late-night-comedy-classic.

Bill Murray may have starred. He's wonderful, but I hardly care. I want to talk MEATBALLS.

Ah, meatballs. I love them whether they are Swedish, Italian, or Turkish. I dated a guy who requested I put meatballs on his birthday cake. How that relationship went south, I'll never know.... Meatballs? Birthday cake? WAS HE READING MY MIND???

But I digress. You see, there was a time when I chopped vegetables and made meatballs for an Italian restaurant. I made meatballs 30 and 40 POUNDS at a time. I hated making those meatballs. I also pulled some front-of-the-house (FOH) shifts. One night, when the dinner rush had died down, and the responsibilities of the FOH staff was not much more than watching the clock until closing time, I realized it had been hours since the staff meal. I was really hungry. I went to the line, asked Julio to throw a meatball and some vegetables in my bowl. Then I walked right past the marinara and helped myself to a ladle of buerre blanc to go over the whole shootin' match.

Save for the buerre blanc, a strange detour from marinara, the meatball's usual sidekick, this was not a fancy meal. But oh, my word! Was it good!

I ate my meatball, veggies, and buerre blanc every night shift I worked for the next 3 years. It remains a favorite meal.

While I got a lot of comments and squinting at my choice of sauce for the meatball, I never felt the need to defend the buerre blanc. Lemon-y and wine-y, it's tart zing was a nice counterpoint to the the richness of the meatball. In short, it was just GOOD, that's all.

I didn't explain that when I plunked some generous meatballs, some al dente veggies, and a heaping spoonful of buerre blanc down in front of mi esposo at dinner tonight. And he didn't ask.

After eating he leaned back and said:

"I'm officially full. And that was officially good."

I felt vindicated. The humble meatball, when aimed properly, never misses the mark!

The Lazy (Healthy!) Dinner that ABSOLUTELY KILLED

2011-04-09T19:08:00.010-04:00

I lost steam at about 5:30pm. After 5 hours of paperwork-related "festivities", including doing taxes, plus a solid 2 hour hike, the thought of making myself presentable for a dinner out on the town quickly became a repugnant one.

Mi esposo wanted to order a take-out pizza. Commercial pizza is sometimes just too much yeasty, doughy glop for me to handle, and tonight was one of those times.

But he's a good kid, that esposo of mine, and I wanted him to be happy, so I told him to go on ahead with a small pizza for himself while I improvised with stuff on hand for the grill. The ever-present Alberta Clipper winds blowing cold misery over the Great Lakes Region apparently finally got the message to go on spring break, and with the warming temps outside, it seemed like a downright fine idea to fire up the grill.

The pickin's were slim around here, but I had some ground turkey on hand. There was also an eggplant lurking at the bottom of the produce drawer. Turkey Burgers with a Grilled Eggplant "Bun"??? Why not? After all, the less adventurous eater in this household had his pizza coming....

I love grilled eggplant. I know, I know...probably a good 4 out of 5 people say they hate eggplant, but they've probably eaten it either undercooked or poorly prepared. Thinly sliced, marinated, grilled eggplant is as indulgent an umami flavor experience as a perfectly-seared portobello in the finest restaurant in town. LOVE IT. Ground turkey, on the other hand, is about as lean and bland a protein as you can imagine. The burgers would need some jazzing up.

Scanning the almost-bare cupboards, my gaze landed upon some chickpeas. Rich and fibrous...they might give some life to the ground turkey. That, along with some sage, and a good, finely minced sweet onion...dinner was beginning to take shape.

The eggplant was marinated in some homemade balsamic vinaigrette left over from a recent salad, while the impromptu turkey-garbanzo burgers were formed. The eggplant was grilled on high...the burgers were grilled on medium...and some mayonnaise made the scene as a final condiment at serving time (cholesterol-watchers could substitute some Vegenaise)

Well, my ad hoc I'm-just-too-lazy-to-dress-for-dinner dinner was so damned delicious that I feel a little braggadocio telling you so. But it was. My poor, poor esposo seemed happy enough with his mushy pizza...although the crust looked undercooked and overly glutenous from where I was sitting...but I was happy enough to NOT share my awesome invention. I don't think anything could have beaten my dinner, excepting maybe some Pat LaFrieda beef at some fancy-schmancy-celebrity-cheffy place, but we've already established that nothing was getting me out of my hiking duds and into the LBD (that's "little black dress" for all of you readers who have let your Cosmo subscription lapse).

Interestingly enough, my dinner was cooked AND the grill was cleaned in the same amount of time it took mi espsoso to drive out and pick up his takeout.

And did I happen to mention that these off-the-cuff turkey burgers absolutely slayed me with their deliciousness?? The chickpeas did, indeed, make them feel rich and indulgent while the minced onion rounded the flavor out with their gentle pungency. The big, bright flavor of the grilled eggplant "bun" was the perfect counterweight in the overall flavor combination.

Everything else notwithstanding...why don't you see what you can invent with the scant remains of what's in your pantry the next time you are too lazy to venture out to dinner? You just might surprise yourself with how much more amazing the "something" you create out of "nothing" can be versus some doughy, derivative carryout crud.

Spring Break 2011: Kant Gone Wild

2011-03-31T22:54:00.004-04:00

I believe it was the great philosopher Immanuel Kant who never got much further than 10 miles from his place of birth, yet he held the whole world in his mind and managed an intellectual and social life so rewarding that the rest of us, though arguably better traveled, would undoubtedly envy it.

I am thinking of Kant lately because I took some time off from work recently and was, for a number of reasons, unable to travel very far for a traditional American “spring break”.

While there weren’t suntans and just-caught shellfish in the cards for me on this particular spring break, I feel that, like Kant, I have had the whole world in my head and have managed a pretty rewarding social life. This has been a week of meals with friends: Friends no longer present, celebrated in memoriam. Friends who haven’t been seen in 20 years, here again before my overjoyed and disbelieving eyes. Old friends and coffee, catching up without skipping a beat. New friends and the breaking of bread, not being afraid of the real scatter-fests most of us are underneath the façade.

These meals with friends have been fantastic but I think most people would speed on by the venues we’ve chosen. None of the restaurants we selected this week have been particularly chic.

I cook for a living and I love, love, love great meals. It’s great fun to sample the handiwork of a well-publicized chef. But great meals, for me, go way beyond the stuff on my plate. Really, I don’t care if a restaurant has five stars or no stars. I don’t care if they publicize their intelligent and sensitive food politics on the menu. I don’t care if they charge a week’s salary for an entrée or just a few humble bucks. I don’t care who decorated the place, who contributed to the menu, or what rising star worked the hot line that night…the most important factor that defines a great meal is one’s dining companions. Food is never better than when it is shared with a friend.

Just give me real ingredients (however simple and humbly prepared), shared with real people (simple and humble are fine with me here, too) and you have just given me manna in some faraway pantheon.

Ah, but here I am, not 10 miles out of Cleveland, and even my thoughts on food are sort of Kantian: it is impossible, really, to be truly objective at the table when the totality of the moment is so influenced by the others that are so much the center of the experience.

And I am grateful for that skew in my world view. Friends and family, I love you so and am glad to be here with you.

I Dunno...Pho?

2011-03-22T19:17:00.002-04:00

I'm on a Pho kick. I've been making lots of Pho-style soups both at work and at home. I can't get enough of the stuff. "Pho" (pronounced "fuh") is a Vietnamese soup/stew meal chock full of rice noodles, raw veggies, and often, rare beef. Of course, my Pho is far from traditional. I'm not much in a beef mood lately, so I'm riffing it as I please (with whatever vegetables are on hand, whatever noodles are on hand, tofu, poultry, even smoked turkey stock), but my goodness, the concept of Pho makes a delicious and healthful meal.

Here's more or less what I did for an outstanding Pho-esque experience this evening. Again, it's a bit off from traditional, but nobody at the table seemed to mind:

TURKEY PHO (8-10 servings)

4 cups of vegetable stock
4 cups of diluted turkey stock or light chicken broth
12 oz of brown rice noodles, spaghetti style
3/4 to 1 pound of thin turkey cutlets, sliced into narrow strips
2 T soy sauce or fish sauce
1 t sea salt
1/2 C thin-sliced radishes
1 bunch of scallions, cut crosswise
1 C sugar snap peas
small can of bamboo shoots, drained
1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
2 eggs, beaten
juice of 2 limes
1 T hot sauce (I used Frank's Red Hot)
1/4 C of rough chopped cilantro (or to taste)

Bring the stocks to a gentle boil. Break the noodles in half or in thirds (for more manageable slurping when you dine) and add to the stocks. Also add the turkey. When noodles are just about done (10 minutes or so), add the sugar snaps along with ginger, salt, soy or fish sauce, lime juice, and hot sauce. Cook another minute or so. Add the egg and bamboo shoots and cook for 30 seconds to a minute. Add the scallions, radish, and cilantro just as you are serving, so they still have that fresh snap.

Happy Padraig (War is Over)

2011-03-17T19:39:00.004-04:00

This winter in Cleveland has been especially difficult. There was more snow than we've seen in years. Winter started earlier than usual. And winter seemed to want to end later than usual. The annual "January Thaw" was a bit of a joke. The good attitude I strive to maintain during the cabin fever months had to be burned away, just to keep the heat on in this old place.

Today looked a little like Old Man Winter got his backside handed to him by Good St. Pat. He drove the snakes out of Ireland and he drove the winter out of Cleveland. It was 60 degrees and sunny today.

I was jubilant. I jogged. I baked. I baked whole wheat bread. As long as St. Patrick, or Dick Goddard, or Mother Nature or whomever controls the weather in this town looks favorably upon us, I swear I will live like an almost unbearable health nut. I am reminded of some passage, now fuzzy from all these years since my last reading of it, from Russian literature, where everyone turns out into the St. Petersburg streets, near-manic with joy, when the warm sunshine finally returns after a wretched, cold winter.

But I do have this renewed enthusiasm, to make every food decision flawless, to celebrate everything that is fresh and light, to stretch my muscles, to breathe in deeply all that is good and clean.

Strangely, I cannot get John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Christmas song, "War is Over" out of my head. Though the season is wrong, metaphorically, it feels right today:

"War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now...."

Winter is over. Oh, how I want it. Now...to life!

Heinen's Irish Soda Bread

2011-03-14T07:47:00.002-04:00

I've had flour, yeast and a mixing bowl sitting out on my counter for 2 weeks. Mind you, I'm a neatnik. I don't just leave things out. But I've been trying to remind myself that I need to bake bread. NEED to. Not want to. There is not a carb in the house. But I've had a truly challenging couple of weeks and though baking bread is not hard to do, I just haven't been able to get to it.

So, when I ran into Heinen's yesterday to pick up a few things and saw a table of Irish Soda Bread on display for St. Paddy's Day, I scooped up a loaf.

Yes, there's some Irish heritage in my background, but no one ever rallied around the Irish-ness enough for me to be intimately familiar with all the cultures and traditions of that warm and gregarious people. I did spend 3 days in Dublin once and learned, in 3 days, that Ireland is pretty darn awesome and I could easily get used to it.

While I was there, they fed me a most welcome cup of decent black coffee (welcome because I was previously in England where I couldn't get a potable cup of coffee to save my life) and a piece of dense brown bread at breakfast. I assumed the brown bread was this "soda bread" the Irish are famous for. Anyway, it was a most likable breakfast.

The soda bread I got at Heinen's and the soda bread I see pictures of on the internet are nothing like the heavy brown bread I had for my Dublin breakfasts, but whatever recipe the Heinen's bakery is working from needs to be gilded and saved for posterity.

Wow, is it good.

It is light in color, has the satisfying tang of buttermilk, feels as rich as a pastry, and is speckled with a constellation of plump little raisins. Again, I've heard raisins aren't purely traditional, but I don't know what the absolute pure version of soda bread should look like.

All I know is ALL bread should taste like this. Every bit as satisfying as my brown bread in Dublin and a whole heap tastier. If you live in Cleveland, you'd do yourself a favor to run out and buy a loaf before they put away all the St. Patrick's Day merchandise.

I'm feeling a wee bit luckier, even, and I'm off to face the day, happy and well-breakfasted.

Mr. Bojangles, Freddie, and an Indomitable Constitution

2011-03-08T18:18:00.003-05:00

There's a pretty big demographic out there who will instantly call to mind the big pop hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when I mention the title "Mr. Bojangles". The song was a folksy ballad about an over-the-hill, has-been, oft-drunk vaudevillian tap dancer. If you listen hard and get really invested, the song is a classic tear-jerker. For pity's sake, they sing about the title character losing his dog, which is enough to send me over the edge every time.

However, the longer I live, and the more jaded I get after being bilked by sad-sack stories similar to Mr. Bojangles, I half-wonder if the old coot was nothing more than a bullshot (sic, mine) artist.

But the longer I live, the more I see that every bullshot artist can provide some kernels of truth that will serve towards my personal edification.

Maybe Mr. Bonjangles wasn't quite as famed on the vaudevillian circuit as his liquor-induced tales would have you believe. But the guy could still dance better than you or I. Maybe my first boyfriend out of college wasn't really on the farm team for the Kansas City Royals, but he could still swing at a 65 mile per hour pitch better than anyone else in town. Did my pal in Chicago really share a daily bus ride with artist Henry Darger for a long-running number of years? I doubt it, but I did get to learn a lot about an important "outsider" artist.

I've finally learned to not throw the baby out with the bathwater: your garden variety, bullshotting grifter might really have something valuable to say. He just doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously...so he invents them. He hopes you'll understand that the underlying message is what's important.

Fast forward to Freddie. Freddie had connections to everyone who was important, all the way back to George Washington and Bruce Lee. Freddie was a martial arts instructor. Again, I don't know where the bullshot ends and the truth begins, but if you ever wanted anyone to teach you how to be an invulnerable warrior, well, you wanted Freddie to teach you. The important thing was to stop with your nosy questions and just listen to Freddie's underlying message.

Let's move back to nutrition (this is a food blog, isn't it?) When I was training with Freddie in my mid to late 20's, I was probably even more of a stickler for pure, clean eating than I am now. Freddie thought that was fine...to a degree.

"Every once in a while, you have to have some KFC, or a Big Mac", he'd instruct.

Say WHAT???

Freddie was completely serious. He explained that the human body occasionally needed to be challenged in order to keep one's constitution and immune system strong. You WANT your body to be able to handle the occasional pollutant, not to fall over in gastrointestinal distress if you failed to have organic vegan everything. It's not dissimilar to an immunizing vaccination: we take in just a little bit of a disease, so when the big one comes around, our bodies are prepared to handle it.

Do we believe Freddie, or is he another bullshot artist?

I don't know, but Freddie is in better shape than most of us can ever hope to be. And I've never seen him with so much as a case of the sniffles....

Wall of Sound for Foodies

2011-03-05T20:52:00.015-05:00

Never mind that I lopped off a fingertip while belting out the ballad "Angie" while distractedly doing a fast-action, pre-service basil chop at a restaurant shift some years some years ago... listening to music and cooking are a favorite combination of mine.

Today I have been obsessed with Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. C'mon, you must know that big, resonant sound on every Motown hit of the 1960's.... Well, I happened to set up an old microphone at the far end of my living room this afternoon while I hammered on my piano. (I wanted to hear myself play to best know what to work on) Little did I know that the positioning of the mic along with the combination of hard and soft surfaces in my living room would mimic the sound engineering of the legendary Golden Studios where Spector often engineered brilliant pop hits. "Lightning in a Bottle", they called the magical effect.

The creative process is beautiful. Although it leaves a staggering mess in its wake, we are able to forgive it. The revelation of the finished product atones for everything. While the sleep-deprived musicians leave ashtrays overflowing with disgusting cigarette butts and the pot-hurling cooks leave a horrifying sink full of dirty dishes, somehow that glimmering moment when we hear the perfect chord transition within the perfect measure, or when we tilt our heads back and savor that that first taste of a perfectly-balanced sauce....all the ugly chaos is forgiven. After all, it was in the name of some other-worldly alchemy.

Please, someone reading this, turn on some music loud enough to scare your spouse or housemates, pull out some mixing bowls and something really, really messy and just let it flow out like first love. Good music and fine food...THESE are the things to pursue with reckless abandon.

Dear John Letter to Melt Bar and Grilled

2011-02-26T21:37:00.010-05:00

I'm breaking up with Melt.

Most Clevelanders between the ages of 18 and 45 are familiar with Melt Bar and Grilled, even if they have not eaten there. Melt boasts 2 locations that serve up specialty grilled cheese sandwiches on steroids. Every plate looks like it has been ordered with the works...we're talking Dagwood Bumstead-style sandwiches. And every plate is delivered to your table by a young hipster who would probably seem downright cherubic if it weren't for the scrawls of body ink Jackson Pollack'ed across their forearms.

It's young. It's fun. It's relaxed. It's tasty. It's a reasonably accurate snapshot of Cleveland. And it's no good for me.

Let's rewind. When Melt first opened its west side location some 5 years ago, I visited the restaurant from time to time. It was a convenient and enjoyable place to meet friends who lived on that side of town. If we could get a table (the wait times are mind-bogglingly long for a city whose population is steadily declining), we'd get a sandwich that really stuck to our ribs. It all went along swimmingly, and without incident.

Until Melt opened the east side location. Melt's newest branch is minutes from my house, so it became even easier to meet friends for a brew and a sandwich in a casual setting... except I now seem to be unreasonably crippled by the experience.

Every time I go to Melt, I have a great time. I love the sassy, friendly, heavily tattooed servers. I love the selection of specialty beers. I like the devil(and diet)-may-care attitude about food. Melt seems to be saying, "Yeah, we're fattening. So What?" As you look around the room, not a body on the staff seems to weigh over a buck thirty, so you buy in. The whole Melt concept is pretty appealing, so you let the night be a mockery of your dietary values.

Your dedicated regimen of eating light now completely down the toilet, you decide to order a triple decker grilled cheese stuffed with an unholy combination of savory starches and proteins that is blanketed in a thick coating of beer batter and thrown into the deep fryer, plated up with seasoned french fries. And wow. It's GOOD. It's so good in fact, you also forget your usual self-control and moderate appetite and darn near finish the plate. You are having so much fun. Your server is telling gripping tales of adventures in Amsterdam youth hostels. The limited edition micro brew is going down easy. Everyone is laughing. So you order dessert. You've gone this far, you may as well try the deep fried Twinkies topped with fresh berry compote. You're still laughing and giddy with a zest for life as you hug your dining companions goodnight in the vestibule. "We really need to come here more often," you all agree.

And then somewhere between the vestibule and your mattress, you realize that you kind of feel like you ate a bag of fast-setting concrete. Or maybe you had some plans to get a couple things done after dinner and before bed...except now...the...food...coma......cannot......be.........reckoned.........with. In any case you lay down, feeling not unlike a beached whale, and wait for sleep to relieve you from your shame.

At least, that's how my last couple visits have been. And it hurts my heart nearly as much as my tum-tum. Why can't it work out between me and Melt??

I mean, Melt is casual weekend material tailor-made for a gal like me...I like the energetic atmosphere. I like the unapologetic Cleveland comfort food concept. I like the kitschy rock and roll menus. The whole thing is such a good time that I want to believe that my metabolism would forgive me the occasional dietary indiscretion at Melt.

But, alas...it is not to be so. I guess I've crossed some invisible line. I can't sit next to the amplifiers at a concert. I can't stay up past my bedtime. And I can't eat dinner at Melt.

Perhaps it's time for me to trade in my grilled cheese for molecular gastronomy, my triple-deckers for "small plates".

Everyone endures some heartache. Remember your first case of I loved him/her, but the love just wasn't returned? You were stuck in denial for a while, making phone calls you shouldn't have, driving past to see if the lights were on, and other such sad demonstrations of an unwillingness to move on until one day you finally woke up free, unchained, and able to move on to someone better.

Melt...I really loved you, but you never loved me. I'm finally waking up and I think it's time for me to move on to someone better.

Whaddya Gonna Do?

2011-02-25T15:15:00.003-05:00

Gert Buchbinder worked closely with me throughout my first cooking job. She was the senior citizen mother of one of the company's owners. I loved Gert. She wouldn't chop onions, eat fruit, drive after 5pm or in the rain. She taught me a handful of useful Yiddish phrases. She also taught me the futility of control through her favorite, and oft-muttered phrase: "Meh. Whaddya gonna do?"

Most professional cooks are control freaks (present company included, I'm sorry to say) You HAVE to be a little controlling to be a decent cook. You have to control the flame on your burner to get the right sear on your meat. You have to control the salt to bring out the flavor in your sauce without overwhelming it. You have to control your knife to work quickly and accurately. You have to control all the elements of your recipe, preferably by having a good mise en place. You have to control your urge to let a string of bad words fly when you get burned.

Gertie, though, had seen it all and was well aware that there were some things that were simply beyond anyone's control. You might never be able to please a diner with tastes that run counter to your style of cooking. The pineapples might come in green all week long. You might get stuck in another task and leave the cheesecake in the oven too long, rendering it drier than you like. At times like those, Gert would just shrug and say, "Meh. Whaddya gonna do?"

What ARE you going to do? Go home crying because someone didn't love your cooking? Or shake them by the lapels and tell them to develop a real palate? Go into litigation with Dole for shipping fruit too early? Make another 3-hour cheesecake when the event is in an hour and a half?
Throw a saucepot at the wall?

In her experience, Gert knew there wasn't a darn thing you could do. You just get up every day and try your best. Sometimes it works out. The lights turn green before you hit the intersection. The souffles rise and never fall. The customers think you have a gift. Other times, everything goes wrong. You wake up late and everything is behind schedule. Someone bumps into the temperature knob on the oven and turns your tender braise into a hockey puck. A customer lets you know, in no uncertain terms, that you swung and missed. In any case, it begs the question: "Meh. Whaddya gonna do?"

We can't control for everything. Not in cooking, nor in life. You just get up every day and try your best.

There's no reason to hoch mier en chinik...it wouldn't do any good anyway.

Give Me Life on the Road

2011-02-18T20:45:00.006-05:00

Solitude has gone missing.

I have a hard time turning off the computer when I am home. If I am not working in someone else's kitchen, my cell phone is never far away, and (*sigh*) I'm often on it. Whether I am literally with others, or just electronically tethered, I feel like I am never alone.

Reassuring, perhaps. Exhausting, definitely.

I think I might take up a life on the road.

Running, for me, is the most blessed solitude. I ran, in my younger days, because it was the only means I had to work out an almost unbearable restlessness. The first two weeks of getting your legs and lungs into some kind of regimen are sheer hell. And then, running is sheer joy. And running brings that missing solitude right back. You can't run and be on a cell phone. You can't run and email. Or run and Facebook.

You can only run. And breathe. And be. In a perfect sort of solitude.

Many years ago, I ran a marathon. I ran it slowly... poorly, even... if you looked at my atrociously slow time. But I ran it. And during the 3 months I trained, I ran 6 days a week, sometimes staying out on the roads alone for hours.

Throughout those 3 training months, I cleared an awful lot of cobwebs out of my young mind, lost my youthful interest in overdoing beer and chips, educated myself about health and nutrition, and found an inner resolve that allowed me to accomplish my business goals.

Running alone was powerful stuff. Oh, and I liked the way it made my jeans fit, too, even as I ordered thirds on Bete Noir. (Oh, yes I did!) I was together, fit, and eating my weight in flourless chocolate torte.

Despite the tendinitis in my foot, despite the already surgically-altered right knee, and despite the fact that we could see more weeks of damp and penetrating cold, I think it's time I hit the road.

The blessed solitude of running is, I think, the nicest way to rebel against the Facebook generation. So restorative, when little else is these days.

And then there's that matter of extra dessert...

Eating Clean, Fast-and-Dirty-Style

2011-02-13T10:21:00.008-05:00

My last post about Lupercalia as an inspiration to give my diet a good "spring cleaning" has gotten me thinking about eating clean, and why we, as busy Americans, so frequently fall short of this goal.

What IS "clean" eating?
-Using the freshest, most natural produce and meats available. This can often include organic or local selections.
-Not eating chemicals. If it comes in a box or a can or a bag, you'd be well-advised to read that ingredient label twice. If it looks like your tenth grade chemistry final, then don't eat it.
-Increasing whole grain, less-processed starches, i.e. brown rice instead of white rice.
-Limiting sugar
-Limiting alcohol
-Staying adequately hydrated

Even the most stuck-in-his-ways, unadventurous eater of the Standard American Diet can review those basic guidelines and agree that they are pretty reasonable and totally attainable.

So...why do we all fall so short of the mark so often?

We're busy.

We leave work after a rough day, harried and exhausted. All we want to do is change out of the monkey suit and sit down in our own space. We're also traveling home with a growling stomach. We're starving. And we definitely don't feel like starting an elaborate cooking project. We want to pick something up on the way home, or nuke something that will be done in 4 minutes. So we buy packaged, processed foods. Or stop at drive-throughs as a desperate act of re-fueling. Or eat out at places where their sources and cooking methods are at best, unknown... at worst, totally suspect. Or we eat a bowl of sugared cereal or microwave popcorn in front of the TV.

I've done it, too.

But I HATE it. I don't think it's natural or right on any level. And I know for certain it makes us chubby or sluggish or both. We can all do better.

There is no shortage of information on how-to. The world is rife with "20-minute meal" cookbooks. Those cooking shows on TV lead us by the hand through the process of easy meals. Your local grocer might even give the occasional free demonstration/sample in the hopes that you'll buy the product he's promoting.

You can do it. I manage it. And I'll be honest, after cooking all day, I really have zero interest in cooking and cleaning up again when I get home. But I do have an interest in being healthy. So I dig deep and I pull it off. And I'm able to pull it off because I keep the preparations really short and uncomplicated (which, coincidentally, makes most "clean-eating" meals taste best!)

I humbly submit to you, my planned menu for the week, with estimated prep/cooking times (I am not counting inactive time where something is cooking in the background with zero effort on your part). I hope it gives you some inspiration. You don't even have to cook every night. If you think you can pull off just one or two of these in your busy week, you will reap dividends in your sense of well being. Just ONE...or two, if you're really motivated. Pick one, any one...! The only special equipment you need is a cast iron pan, available everywhere from fancy cooking stores to your local hardware store. They cook good food FAST and hot.

-Petit Filets of Beef with Raw Broccoli salad. Season the beef and sear in a hot cast iron pan (or on a hot griddle or grill) approximately 5 minutes a side. While the beef rests, chop a head of broccoli and an onion and toss with some dried fruit in slaw dressing. Elapsed work time: 15 minutes
-Whole Grain Pasta with Tomato-Raisin Sauce and Mixed Green Salad. Boil a pot of water for the pasta noodles. You can change clothes, return phone calls, whatever, while your water comes to a boil. Cook noodles for approximately 9 minutes. While they are cooking, open a bottle of high-quality, sugar-free pasta sauce and warm in a sauce pan. Toss in some raisins and capers. Throw some greens into a salad bowl and dash with olive oil, balsalmic vinegar, and some salt. Elapsed work time: 11 minutes
-Seared Coriander Tuna served with Lime Mayonnaise and Haricots Verts. Pat the tuna steaks dry, then liberally sprinkle with salt and ground coriander. Let that sit for a moment and boil some water for the haricots verts (skinny, pre-trimmed green beans). You don't need a humongous pot of water. Wipe a tablespoon of oil in a pan and get the pan good and hot. Drop tuna steaks in and cook 4 minutes a side. Meanwhile, drop your beans in the boiling water and let them go for 1-2 minutes, depending how al dente you like them. Squeeze half a lime into 3 tablespoons of mayo. Elapsed work time: 11 minutes
-Flank Steak with Brown Rice and Asian Slaw Follow the directions on the box or bag and start some brown rice in a pan as soon as you get home. Also, mix some lime juice, sesame oil, salt, and just a pinch of sugar and nuke in the microwave 1-2 minutes until warm. Drag your flank steak through this marinade and leave it out for a couple minutes while you change, return phone calls, whatever. Come back to the kitchen, grab a big bowl and toss some shredded cabbage with a half a can of coconut milk and a spritz of lime. Plop the flank steak in a lightly oiled, very hot cast iron pan and cook 4 minutes a side. Slice flank steak into thin strips to serve. Elapsed work time: 23 minutes
-Roast Chicken Breast with Apples and Garlic over Pureed Sweet Potatoes In your lightly oiled cast iron pan, drop a bone-in chicken breast skin-side down and cook on medium high for about 5 minutes or until skin is brown. Flip it over, skin side up, and toss a couple cloves of garlic and a chopped apple over the chicken. Put in a 400 degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes. (It's done when you prick it with the tip of a knife and the juice that runs out is totally clear, not pink) While it cooks, do your thing, answer some emails, and open a can of no-additive peeled, cooked sweet potatoes (you can boil them yourself, but I'm saving you time) and mash with a fork or whiz through a food processor. Add salt and dried oregano to taste. Elapsed work time: 11 minutes
-Baked Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese and Steamed Asparagus Beat 3 whole eggs. Add a cup of milk, some crumbled goat cheese, and some smoked salmon you've cut into little strips. Add some salt and onion powder to the mix. Pour this mix into your lightly-oiled cast iron pan and bake at 425 for 20 minutes or until fluffy and golden. While it bakes, cut the tough ends off some asparagus and drop it into a microwave safe dish with a lid. Pour a quarter cup of water over this, salt, put the lid on and nuke for 3 minutes.
Elapsed work time: 10 minutes

I hope these ideas get you thinking that you, too, can do a little better than average. They are so very do-able...really...and you deserve it. Remember that you could be waiting in a drive-through line for 11 minutes. Remember it will take the pizza delivery guy every bit of 20 minutes to show up. If you put a small amount of effort into those idle moments, you can achieve the goal of eating clean, even if you are doing it fast and dirty.

Lupercalia: Please, Honey...Not the Chocolates this Year

2011-02-10T19:51:00.009-05:00

It's often asserted that the early Christians made sure to have their holidays fall at close to the same time as previously-existing pagan holidays. That way, converts wouldn't feel so bad about missing out on their favorite feasts from days of yore that were now discredited by their new religion. Missing your wintertime festival of Saturnalia? No problem, we'll make sure Christmas is around the same time. Worried about a depressing spring without a big fete for the vernal equinox? Hold on, we'll make sure we observe the resurrection at about that same time.

I know my tone is casual, but my point is not to disrespect to anyone's faith. Of course I think it is important that people are free to joyfully uphold their spirituality through the observation of sacred events.

But back to the synchronicity of dates: The Feast of Saint Valentine coincides with Lupercalia, an ancient pagan celebration which was partially in honor of Lupa, the fertile, life-giving mother-wolf. The rituals around the celebration of Lupercalia were sort of like a spiritual spring cleaning. This newly clean state, then, might restore fertility to the world, literally, or at least ensure a lush and verdant spring. We can also see that promoting romantic love might also restore fertility to the world, which is why the early Christians got no argument putting this love-and-marriage-promoting saint's day on the calendar at this time of year.

This is a lot of introduction to tell you that I love the idea of the Lupercalian spring-cleaning. After a long holiday season of rich, braised meats, hearty drinks, and flourless chocolate tortes, I am ready to practice some more discipline, especially if that restores a little "spring" in my step!

I've gotten a head-start on my Lupercalian spring-cleaning. I had just been feeling draggy and a little TOO well-fed lately. So, I've been reining it in...cleaning house, if you will. I'm putting the buttered bagels away for the moment and leaning towards the tangy citrus. I'm drinking more water. The ultra-light grilled chicken pitas with tzatziki I made for dinner tonight really hit the spot.

St. Valentine would probably understand my enthusiasm for Lupercalia. After all he must know that being/feeling healthy and vibrant puts far more love in our hearts than an almost-expired box of Russell Stover from the corner drug store.

On Groundhogs and Rhubarb

2011-02-02T20:09:00.003-05:00

Today, I succumbed to the warnings of the Chicken Little Meteorology Team running the Greater Cleveland weather report and took a snow day, which I regretted all day long when the storm of the century didn't come. Ooof. Note to Self: Keep your own counsel, even on matters of weather.

But the threatening skies, covered in a dense blanket of clouds extended well into Pennsylvania...into Punxatawney, PA, to be exact...and Phil, the season-predicting groundhog, did not see his shadow. According to legend, this means we will have an early spring.

I can't really remember the last early spring we had around here, but if it is to be so, I am not going to interfere.

I love spring. And I love spring food. I love lamb, and duck, and ramps, and rhubarb, and horseradish, and edible flowers, and mushrooms. I love the Cleveland restaurateurs who open the patio promptly and permanently come April 1, despite the fact that everyone knows it often snows (sometimes mercilessly) in April in Cleveland.

Hang in there, kids. And the second you see rhubarb in the produce aisle at your grocer's, make this sauce. It's excellent on roast chicken, pork loin, or polenta.
And when you taste it, you'll be encouraged that summer's sunny bounty is only a few short weeks away:

Rhubarb-Herb Sauce:

-1 small yellow onion, diced small
-1 stalk of rhubarb, cut up
-3 T butter or good olive oil
-2 T sugar
-2 t flour
-salt, to taste
-1 T fresh marjoram or sorrel, chopped
-1/2 C chicken stock

In a saucepan over medium, heat, soften onion and rhubarb in butter or oil, add sugar, salt, flour and herbs until well blended. Add chicken stock, whisking well, and bring to a soft boil, then immediately lower heat to a simmer. Simmer for a few minutes or until reduced slightly. Adjust salt and sugar to taste.

Fish Tacos. Can I Get an Amen?

2011-01-27T18:53:00.002-05:00

My first fish taco was in Santa Monica, California...because what good, middle-class girl from Cleveland, Ohio had ever heard of a fish taco? My sister, who lived in Los Angeles, drove me straight from the airport to some boardwalk stand, with a line a mile long, and made me try me try this culinary oddity.

I was skeptical. Tacos were GROUND BEEF...jeez, everyone knows that. Putting fish into a taco was weird. Possibly wrong. Potentially gross.

But, on the contrary! Fish tacos are delightful. They are light and slightly sweet. They smell like a perfect afternoon at the ocean-side. They are enhanced, but not outdone, by sour cream, salsa verde, or guacamole.

I had some very sad-looking frozen pollack fillets in my freezer. I had tried to dress them up as Dover Sole and Trout Amandine on other occasions, but I finally gave up. I bought pollack specifically because it is not over-fished, not farmed, and generally responsibly marketed, which attracted the responsible omnivore in me, but it is a totally boring fish varietal, which saddens the aspiring gourmand in me.

I decided to put the last two fillets to rest by making fish tacos. I didn't have a recipe. I didn't even have very much motivation. I just had some fish, some cabbage, and some tortillas.

And Great Scott! You can make an awesome dinner with not much more than those pathos-inspiring ingredients. Scour the internet. Bobby Flay has a good-looking recipe. As does Martha Stewart. My methods were slapdash at best, and if I can achieve such greatness without much effort, imagine what might come together if you actually try, under the direction of a bona fide TV expert??

The tacos are light. I steamed my fish, so I felt no guilt about having 3. Fish tacos often include cabbage which is a "superfood"...the high fiber, high-vitamin, high-mineral, low-calorie stuff practically guaranteed to make you live one hundred years. I paired mine with full-strength Greek yogurt, which tastes an awful lot like sour cream, but it's a little less fattening and has all of those beneficial bacterias that are supposed to cure all your ills.

Tell me a fish taco story if you've got a family-friendly one. 'Cause boy-howdy, are they good and I want to know about everyone's favorite.

In Your (Cold and Rosy) Face!

2011-01-26T19:50:00.008-05:00

The February edition of "Food and Wine" magazine is on my kitchen table, opened to an article about winter food. The article highlights wonderful cold-weather dinner ideas done up by a Madison, Wisconsin chef. There are the expected gorgeous photographs, lovingly crafted by talented photo stylists, of fennel and grapefruit, pork and pears, burnished endive and.... lovely rosy-cheeked girls eating plates of this fare in the great (Wisconsin) outdoors on a blanket-covered block of ice.

Say what?!

Oh, sure...they are wearing hats, gloves, and thick woolen stockings, but still....

Now I've done a few brave and outdoorsy things in my time:

I've skied off a cliff, because I thought I could "land it".
I've tried to catch my own crayfish dinner by hand in a remote mountain stream.
I walked the "Cave of the Winds" north of Buffalo on a blustery Christmas night. I think a good half of Niagara Falls blew back onto me.
I've sailed a boat on an ice-floe-laden Lake Michigan in December.
I've even had cocktails in the middle of an African plain, surrounded by hungry hyenas.

But I've never had the guts to dine al fresco in the middle of a Cleveland winter.(I am not counting the times I wolfed down a Polish Boy on a snowy Euclid Avenue while running to the Terminal Tower to make the 5:15 rapid transit.)

I know the "Food and Wine" photos are for effect. They are rather charming in a Norman Rockwell/Winter Wonderland kind of way. But the photos got me thinking. I have never plated up a really nice dinner, then plunked my fanny down on a snowbank to sup. The hyenas were kind of adorable, looking on with baleful eyes. Jack Frost, on the other hand, is a dangerous animal. I feel...well, challenged.

I hear about these polar swimmers, who celebrate the New Year, or a birthday, or whatever, with a dip in Lake Erie's mid-winter icy depths. So who am I to whine about the cold? I always claim that everything tastes better al fresco, plus, I am guilty of falling into the bad cultural habit of eating too fast, so it won't kill me. It might be fun. It might pass the time on these dreadfully long and boring winter nights. It might make me tough...like an Inuit or a Laplander. (Right now, Cleveland is about as cold as their native stomping grounds, anyway). Plus, no wimpy magazine editors are going to out-do ME.

I bought some gorgeous beef to stew for a weekend supper. I think I'll eat it a steaming bowl of homemade stew outside. In the snow. So I can say I did it. In your face, "Food and Wine"!

Stay tuned.

When Life Hands You Lemons

2011-01-19T21:21:00.003-05:00

I know you know that irritatingly chipper little maxim: "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!" Yeah, yeah, yeah...see the good in your present situation, make do with what you've got, blah, blah, blah.

While it's cloying life-advice, it's actually excellent kitchen-advice.

Most folks who have had anything to do with a restaurant can tell you a funny-now-but-not-so-funny-then story about an irreversible food order gone wrong, where the staff is suddenly the proud owners of a mountain of green beans, or calamari tentacles, or even lettuce. I remember unloading one produce order and scratching my head wondering where the kitchen manager thought all of these ravenous salad eaters were suddenly going to come from.

When you are suddenly stuck with something, you can either pitch it (SO horribly wasteful and wrong) or get creative and find something to make with it. This is a wonderful way to be less wasteful, more sustainable, and make your food budget go a lot farther.

-Don't throw away the bones from the roast chicken. Boil them and you have soup. You just got another free meal out of the same chicken.
-Is your bread getting a little dried out? Don't trash the end of the loaf. Cut it into little squares and bake them in a low oven. Now you don't have to buy croutons for your next salad.
-You ordered a ham that was too big? Well, be grateful because you've just hit the jackpot: Quiche Lorraine, ham and eggs, split pea soup, collard greens, navy bean soup, or minced up with cheese or mayo for ham salad sandwiches.
-Fruit is looking a little bruised? Throw it in the blender for a smoothie base.
-Leaf lettuce on its last breath? It's really good poached in soup (The Italians put escarole in their Wedding Soup, don't they?)

If you don't have a thrifty grandmother on call to tell you what to do with everything, scour the internet and you'll get lots of ideas about how to be a more responsible member of the top of the food chain.

I got all fired up to write this after I started to proof some yeast to make a pizza crust and found I already had one made up. Throwing away my yeasty primordial soup would not have been a big deal and would have wasted all of about a cup and a half of water and .25 cents worth of yeast.

But it would take me very little effort to throw some flour in the bowl, mix it up, let it rise while I ate dinner, then throw it in the still-hot oven as I washed the dishes. So I did. And I am so glad I did, as I sit here inhaling the heavenly aroma of fresh-baked bread. The aroma reminds me that I will have an excellent reason to leap out of bed tomorrow morning (SO good toasted with my first cup of coffee!) as well as an excellent reason to sleep soundly tonight...knowing I did not waste my day today.

Doritos: Then and Now

2011-01-14T19:07:00.004-05:00

I was just reading a blurb in "Food and Wine" magazine about a Portuguese-born chef taking London by storm. The article asks this young star, Nuno Mendes, about his earliest memory of food.

The question captured my imagination...I wondered if I could recall my earliest food memory. I am quite certain my earliest food memory was one of the divine coddled eggs my mother used to make me when I was getting on to solid food as a tot, but I also quite vividly remember Doritos.

This was the early seventies and Doritos were relatively new on the snack food scene, having been introduced in the mid-1960's. Someone bought or brought Doritos to one of my parent's parties and I saw my older sister munching on them. I wanted to copy my big sis, and took one myself. I remember asking what these crispy things were, so foreign were they to my young palate. They were like kiddie crack, and I was probably on the verge of shoveling too many in my mouth at one time when my mother took them away. "That's enough," my mother said. I don't think I saw Doritos again until my teenage years, when all the kids had them at parties or barbecues.

My mom did not buy Doritos. Or soda pop. Or cereal with sugar. Potato chips were only ever on the premises for big parties. Peanut butter was a rare condiment, not a sandwich staple. Chicken nuggets either had not been invented or they were not allowed. Going to McDonald's was a semi-annual event to be savored like Christmas morning. Even pizza was a very rare treat, a very special delicacy reserved especially for sleepover parties.

And...get this...we were not health nuts. Good heavens, no. We didn't take chewable vitamins. Or sprinkle things with Brewer's yeast. Or (gasp!)embrace vegetarianism. We were just forbidden CRAP. When someone (often a parent) had gone to the trouble of creating a reasonably wholesome meal, it was an unforgivable insult to fill up on junk instead.

I am certain that most of my school friends' parents had similar standards. Due to those relatively healthy standards and the execution of the 1970's mother's mantra ("Go play outside, will you?") most of my school friends had the lean, muscular legs of first-year racehorses.

Fast forward to the present: childhood obesity is a national health crisis.

I think the difference is that kids have Doritos all the time now. Sugared cereal is many people's idea of "a good breakfast" (it says 'fortified' on the box, doesn't it??) Peanut butter (or Sunbutter) is the only sandwich many children know. Chicken Nuggets are considered a childhood classic. Pizza and the drive-through fall into many families' schedules at least once a week.

Many of us who are of parental age DO remember different health/food standards. I implore everyone to think of some creative ways to return to those arguably better standards.
We are busier than we used to be. It is really hard. But this is the national health of an entire generation. It is, quite literally, the future.

Wouldn't it be nice if your kids could remember Doritos as a one-off special treat rather than the regular snack they munched on every day after school before retiring to the Wii???

Looking Ahead...A Resolution of Sorts

2011-01-02T01:03:00.004-05:00

I didn't cook on this first evening of 2011. I was able to enjoy an inspired dinner out on the town made by someone else's talented hand.

The wonderful meal got my gears turning for the New Year...I plan on spending lots of time "in the lab", trying recipes and concocting new ones. I might not be able to reinvent the wheel, but I can put new treads on the tires, can't I?

In all things, we generally progress very slowly, almost imperceptibly, until there is a breakthrough and we are propelled forward, as if by jets, into a totally different place.

I want to go to a different place with food in this 2011th year and I want cooking to take me there. And I have a good feeling about it, too.

Decadent Fruit-Filled Turnovers

2010-12-31T20:01:00.006-05:00

Out of nowhere today, I got a sudden and unforeseen craving for dessert (perhaps I am hoping for a sweet New Year???) so I had to wing it with what was in the pantry, which wasn't much. I did get some lovely preserves for Christmas, and found a lone sheet of puff pastry lurking in the freezer. This took just a few minutes and was outstanding...like French pastry shop outstanding.

FRUIT FILLED TURNOVERS (serves 2)

-1 sheet of puff pastry (thawed to room temperature, if using the frozen variety)
-4 Tablespoons of fruit preserves (I prefer the all-fruit/no sugar added variety)
-scant tablespoon of canola oil or spray PAM (egg wash OK, too)

Preheat oven to 425. Cut the puff pastry sheet in half vertically so you have 2 long rectangles. Do not stretch the dough or roll it out. Brush or spray a little oil along the outside edge of each rectangle. Spoon 2 tablespoons of preserves into the center of each rectangle. With each one, fold half of the long-end of a rectangle halfway up to cover the preserves, then crimp and roll the sides inwardly toward the center. Repeat with the other end of the rectangle. Crimp those short sides as best you can...if you have a little opening on the sides, your preserves will leak out and may burn. Flip your little dough envelope over, seam side down, onto a baking sheet. Brush or spray the top with a little oil. Repeat with your other rectangle and remaining preserves. Bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and flaky. Allow it to cool and serve.

When serving, you can gild the lily with ice cream, whipped cream, sour cream, or heavy Greek yogurt....

Happy New Year!

READ THIS BOOK!

2010-12-26T19:21:00.010-05:00

When I was a kid, I was a voracious reader. I studied the back of the cereal box at breakfast. I eschewed play-dates in favor of an afternoon with Nancy Drew. I picked up our (incomplete) home copy of the World Book Encyclopedia just for grins. And when I had depleted my own resources, I'd raid my parents' bookcase for interesting titles. I clearly remember the day I stumbled upon my mother's copy of Peg Bracken's classic, "The I Hate to Cook Book". Even at my tender age, the humor in the title was not lost on me: I thought it was hilarious.

Having been banned, however, from all extracurricular kitchen activity after some bizarre curried soups and a concoction involving peanut butter and maple syrup, reading cookbooks was just not at all a practical reading pursuit for young Karen. So, Peg Bracken stayed on my mom's shelf.

But now...a dear and thoughtful friend thought I'd get a kick out of this tome at this point in my life, and set a copy, expertly wrapped, underneath my Christmas tree.

You might find this a little unlikely. I cook for a living after all...why on earth would I enjoy a copy of "The 'I Hate to Cook' Cookbook"??

Well, friends, I'm sorry to tell you that there are some evenings, after having cooked for 9 or more hours straight, that I just don't feel like starting all over again when I get home. But I really DO abhor packaged frozen foods. And I really DON'T want to lose my good health to the fast-food drive-thru. So, cook I do, whether I like it or not.

That being said, I know plenty of tricks now. I know how to cut unnecessary steps out of a recipe. I know which dishes can handle a shortcut, and which must be attended to like a feverish child. So I DO put a delicious and healthful home-cooked meal on the table most nights, though anyone from Auguste Escoffier to Michael Ruhlman would probably blanch if they saw some of my slapdash weeknight home methods.

BUT, Peg Bracken (bless her heart) did it first, and she put it all down in black and white for the edification of the rest of us.

Make no mistake, her cookbook is not a how-to-microwave-a-Swanson's-frozen-pot-pie...there IS some actual cooking. Mrs. Bracken has just compiled a collection of recipes that require minimal effort for maximal taste...and they are all reasonably healthy (my definition of the word "healthy" is any food that has not been commercially over-processed and/or destroyed by chemical additives). So, yeah, while there are some recipes calling for thinned-down cream of mushroom soup as a sauce base, I staunchly uphold my theory that it is still better for body and soul than carryout. Largely, it is a huge improvement over what some of us eat on a regular basis.

Mostly, it's just fun. It goes without saying that the book is a riot. I am so thoroughly enjoying it! I have found myself laughing out loud at sentences like, "let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink". Bracken goes on to encourage readers to hum "Gloomy Sunday" while prepping dinner. LOVE IT!

If you love a busy woman, be it your mom, sister, daughter, cousin, or friend, RUN OUT RIGHT NOW AND BUY THIS BOOK!

We CAN work a full day and get a decent dinner on the table, though we're bone-tired. We CAN return to family meals together and a better standard of nutrition, though our heads are swimming with convenience options. WE CAN COOK, though we fight it half of the time. In a way, Peg Bracken wrote a feminist manifesto of sorts whose time has really come now, in the age of busy-ness and obesity.

Please read! Laugh! Learn! And for Pete's sake...COOK!!!

Stress for Success?

2010-12-20T20:12:00.004-05:00

My mother has called a lot in the previous weeks, trying to enlist my help in planning Christmas dinner. She's curious about innovative ideas, but fears that breaking with tradition may unravel the specialness of the holiday.

I like to mix things up sometimes, so I guess I'm the wrong person to ask....

Despite my offers to help, she wants to take the helm in the kitchen. I guess I cannot begrudge a night off, but I hate to see her so worked up about the menu:
"Will it be Christmas-y enough?!?!!"
"I just want everything to be right!"

As much as I love good food and think that fabulous memories can be made over fabulous meals, I also believe that if we don't over-think what's going to be on our table, we just might look a little harder at the other elements that help to create a beautiful holiday...like the wonderful people around us.

Who cares if you burn the roast and have to order Chinese? Who cares if the turkey is dry? Who cares if Aunt Mabel always brings that sickening side dish with marshmallows and corn flakes on top? Really, in the big scheme of things,...thank God we get anything at all.

This thought brings to mind an Easter many years ago. I went to visit my sister who had been working so much that getting arrangements together for a traditional Easter supper was going to be an impossible feat. So, we hoofed it to Kentucky Fried Chicken and split a bucket of extra crispy on a blanket next to a fish pond, just laughing the day away and enjoying each other's company in the springtime sun. It was my favorite holiday meal of all time.

So, please, please, please don't worry about Christmas dinner.

The opportunity to gather at a table with anyone at all, with anything at all on that table, is enough to make it a glorious holiday, don'tcha think?

Meatless Mondays

2010-12-11T11:29:00.003-05:00

Have you heard about "Meatless Mondays"? It is a movement started by Johns Hopkins University to simultaneously improve public health AND the health of the planet.

The daily procedures at factory farms and major fisheries would probably put a lot of people off of animal protein if they saw them up-close-and-personal-like. It's a lot of blood, mud, waste, and machines. It DOES ruin our appetites, so we usually don't think about it, or we try to get to the farmers market and buy locally from people who tell us they are doing everything humanely and safely.

But Meatless Mondays is compelling because it's not trying to shock us into a major life overhaul with pictures of suffering...whether it's our own (nutritionally controllable diseases and/or obesity) or others (the treatment of the fallen cow at the slaughterhouse), it's asking us to do the do-able: Just work in ONE MORE vegetarian meal a week, because your waistline and health will thank you and the planet will thank you.

Even conservative folks who think that vegetarianism is weird and cultish, don't mind a plate of spaghetti with marinara sauce. Or hearty homemade vegetable soup with crusty bread. Or creamy hummus with crispy chips and carrot sticks. Or a really rich corn chowder. Or a zesty Mexican bean burrito. The more adventurous eaters might like "dal" and "nan" (Indian split-pea porridge and crispy flatbread) or a good French ratatouille. Veg Chili can be so hearty you'll never miss the meat. The point is, there are so many plant-based meals out there to try.

The Meatless Monday movement is not asking the world to go vegan. It's not asking us to stop celebrating special occasions with a steak dinner. It's not asking farmers and fishermen to quit their jobs. It's not asking us to become rabble-rousing political activists. It's not asking us to become freakish health nuts.
It's asking us to try ONE vegetable meal a week. ONE.

Even with my passion for pot roasts and lamb shanks, I am totally on board with Meatless Mondays. Even as I find most people who mix food and politics to be tedious and pedantic, I am totally on board with Meatless Mondays. Even as I was raised in a world that embraced hunting and fishing, I am totally on board with Meatless Mondays.

I think it's good for us: it's good for our health, it's good for our figures, it's good for our food budget/pocketbook, it's good for our farmers growing veggies and grains, it's good for our over-fished oceans, it's good for our sense of discipline, it's good for reducing production waste, it's good for the ozone and the breath we take(factory farms produce a lot of air pollution, believe it or not!), and it's good for stretching our imagination and sense of adventure in the kitchen.

I hope you'll give it a try:
http://www.meatlessmonday.com/

The Care and Feeding of Your Sick Vegetarian

2010-12-06T22:25:00.003-05:00

'Tis the season for colds and flu. No fewer than 5 of my acquaintances have reported coming down with something or other within the last 72 hours.

We've all learned, whether through the wisdom of doting grandparents, or the empirical evidence of medical science, that taking in plenty of warm fluids is crucial to keeping the immune system fueled to get off the ropes and to keep fighting once it's taken that first, unceremonious sucker-punch from a virus.

Many people swear by chicken soup as the best immune-boosting warm fluid. It's tasty, available in a can, rehydrates cold-sufferers, and provides sustenance when someone simply is not feeling well enough for solid food.

But what about vegetarians? As soon as they are well enough to get out of bed, they'll come hunt you down if you try to pass off chicken stock as vegetable broth.
But does that pallid vegetable broth they sell at the grocery store have enough muscle to nutritionally intimidate a really rotten virus?

When I was a practicing vegetarian, I came up with a soup recipe in which every ingredient had (at least I thought) a nutritionally valid reason for being included. I always felt like this particular recipe truly helped put me on the mend. Whether this recipe is a cold and flu panacea for vegetarians is debatable, but it IS a nice change from the bland choices in the can at the grocery. It's good for omnivores, too.

"GET WELL SOON SOUP"

-2 Tablespoons of oil
-1 small onion, diced
-4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
-2 large carrots (use 3 or 4 if small) cut into dice or bite-sized half-moons
-28 oz can tomato puree (not stwed, not diced, not sauce, just plain pureed tomatoes)
-2 cups of vegetable broth (not high-sodium boullion cubes, if you can avoid it)
-1/4 cup of finely chopped parsley
-tiny pinch of turmeric
-tiny pinch of cloves
-salt to taste (may not need any at all)

In a stockpot, saute onion and carrots in oil over medium heat until onion softens and looks translucent. Add garlic and saute just a minute or so more (don't let the garlic brown). Add tomato puree and stir or whisk well to incorporate all the oil. When blended, add vegetable broth and spices and stir well again. Bring just to a boil, then immediately reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add parsley and serve.

I will reiterate that I am not a nutritionist, but I there are some generally-accepted reasons behind each ingredient:
Onions and Garlic: These ingredients are both members of the allium plant family. Test tube studies have suggested that alliums have anti-bacterial properties.
Carrots: Carrots are chock full of beta carotene, the building block for Vitamin A. It has been suggested that Vitamin A acts as an anti-oxidant and fights infection.
Oil: Beta Carotene is more easily absorbed by the body when taken with a fat (fat-soluble vitamin)
Tomato Puree: Tomatoes have lots of Vitamin C and the macrobiotic-diet folks say they are good for restoring the acid balance in your system.
Vegetable Broth: The vegetable broth takes the ragout-like tomato puree down to a thinner consistency, making it easier to eat when you're not feeling well.
Turmeric: Anti-inflammatory spice.
Cloves: Another spice that brings out something magical in the flavor of the tomatoes.
Parsley: More Vitamin C and Vitamin A...and it looks pretty in the soup.

I may make a batch of this again in the coming weeks. It will keep in the freezer and it's nice to have on hand to ward off sniffles and sneezes.

Stay well and enjoy!

Your Diet is a Process

2010-11-27T22:46:00.010-05:00

Your diet is a continually evolving process. I'm not necessarily talking about a weight-loss diet, although a good, healthy way of eating should put you close to where you need to be on the scale.

Your diet is customized to your frame, your genetic make-up, and your lifestyle. Your diet must evolve because your body and the hormones that control its peak performance change over time. You'd never feed infant formula to a teenager and neither can a senior citizen eat like a teenager.

Your diet is a process but none of us wants it to be a process. Everybody wants it to be a pat, universal set of absolute laws: You HAVE to do the Mediterranean Diet to be really healthy. You HAVE to go low carb. You HAVE TO shun red meat. You HAVE TO do raw foods as often as possible. You HAVE TO go vegetarian...or better yet...vegan. You HAVE to go gluten-free. You HAVE TO, you have to, you have to.

Depending on your body and your physiological needs, you may be compelled to do one of the above-mentioned "have-to's". Then again, you might not.

We're all wired a little differently. Some people can eat pot roast all week long and never feel sluggish or see a spike in their cholesterol. Some people feel positively polluted unless they are eating a vegetarian diet. Some people cannot metabolize any sugar at all, not even fruit. But drop-dead gorgeous Dylan Lauren (fashion designer Ralph Lauren's daughter) practically eats candy for a living promoting her candy store chain, "Dylan's Candy Bar", yet she somehow stays as healthy and lovely as one of her pop's models.

The contradictions are dizzying. So how do you begin to figure out your optimum diet?

Obviously, if a food item makes you break out in hives, upsets your stomach, bloats you, causes you to belch, or interferes with your sleep, you need to severely limit your intake of that item. If you are honest about listening to your body's response signals, you may be disappointed. There are going to be items that you love that just don't love you.

People who are trying to figure out if they have a food sensitivity, separate food into groups and eat only those items in a particular group for one day, while taking notes about how they felt. For example, they'll only do fruits one day, only dairy products another day, only wheat and grains for a day, and so on. This takes a lot of work, but things that don't fully work for you show up pretty readily in this process of elimination.

When you think you've got it...when you are finally eating the way that makes you feel like a well-tuned machine, enjoy your optimum diet to the fullest but do continue to pay close attention. You may cross an invisible threshold in the growth/aging process and what worked for you in your eating habits last year might not work for you this year. Get involved in your own health regimen and never let anyone sell you a bill of (absolute) goods.

Now THAT'S Fancy Cookin'

2010-11-26T17:29:00.009-05:00

Sophisticated. In terms of food, the word "sophisticated" conjures up images of impossibly glamorous people going to black tie affairs and teasing their sensitive palates with delicate French food and wines that have veritable pedigrees.

As the American public continues to enjoy a revolution in food, it is fair to say that many of us now have more sophisticated tastes than we did, say, twenty years ago. Maybe you now insist on organic produce. Or grass-fed beef. Maybe you insist on local foods. You might be hard-pressed to think of a world cuisine you have not fully explored. Maybe your friends think that you, too would be an Iron Chef, if it weren't for that pesky day job holding you back.

All of this sophistication regarding our culture of food can be considered fun, exciting, nutritionally beneficial, and inspiring. There is something magical about really well-crafted food...just think about your grandmother's pies, or your anniversary dinner, or something else that literally takes you on a mental and spiritual journey every time you call to mind the flavors associated with it. Those insufferable "foodies" are really doing wonderful things for all of us.

But this sophistication also intimidates the hell out of a lot of other people. So much so, they are willing to dig in their heels and never try anything new because it's weird or the stuff of snobs. And the people who feel intimidated by sophisticated food are not necessarily a bunch of backwoods bumpkins. They exist across every class and social line. They may simply be the conservative sort who'd rather be faced with a devil they know at the table versus a devil they don't.

I wish I could explain that most "fancy cookin'" ain't all that fancy. Because the cooking world owes a huge debt of gratitude to the French (and other Europeans) for their inventive culinary ideas, they often put a difficult handle on a realtively easy technique. The cooking shows on TV, fine food magazines, cookbooks, and more are filled with fearsome terms for easy concepts. For example:

REDUCTION SAUCE: You boil a liquid for a long time so that the flavor gets concentrated.
COMPOUND BUTTER: Softened butter with stuff mixed into it.
FOND: The junk that sticks to the bottom of the pan. You can loosen it up with some liquid if you want...puts some more flavor into your sauce.
CARAMELIZED: When food turns brown...it's on the verge of burning, but never crosses the "burnt" line.
BLANCH: Boil something for less than a minute.
MIREPOIX: A bunch of minced veggies that gives a soup or sauce some flavor. You know how homemade soups always seem to have bits of cut-up carrot, celery, and onion? That's "mirepoix"
MISE EN PLACE: Preparing parts of your recipe and setting them aside ahead of time so they are all ready for you when you are ready to throw them into a hot pan.
To SWEAT an onion: Saute an onion until it gets soft.
SAUTE: To cook in a pan with just a little oil or liquid.
BEURRE BLANC: Butter sauce
BEURRE NOISETTE: Browned butter sauce
POT DE CREME: Pudding.
STOCK: Really good, strong broth.
FOIE GRAS: Goose liver.
EVOO: Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Cookbooks love to throw this one around. Most of the time it doesn't matter if you use "extra virgin" or not. It sometimes doesn't even matter if you use olive oil (some other variety may do)
PATE: Special French meatloaf (ok ok...with special meats, but the concept is there)

You see, it's all pretty much jargon. To be sure, it's lovely, useful jargon with subtle nuances, but the jargon nevertheless points to some item or concept that most people over the age of twelve can readily understand...or accomplish on their own. If you can learn some of the wording, you can learn all of the concepts, and no cuisine will ever be too sophisticated for you.

The Easiest Luxury

2010-11-20T17:42:00.004-05:00

I've been really busy since August. In a manner of speaking, this means that the shoemaker's children sometimes go without shoes. I still do a lot of scratch cooking at home, but sometimes I need to coast in order to catch my breath. The need for a break has caused me to present the occasional uninspired dinner here at home. Hey, I'm not a machine.

My imagination had decided that tonight would be a night on the town, complete with fancy dinner. Mi esposo , however, has been working a lot of weekends and working quite hard, I might add. I can tell that his well-being would benefit more from a night on the pillow rather than a night on the town. That's OK...the "town" is not going anywhere. I'll catch up later.

Keep in mind I had a craving for top-notch food. Keep in mind I have to start tomorrow for a short but grueling week of Thanksgiving preparation for (literally) scores of people. The Cliffs Note version is: "I want it all and I want it easy".

This means quiche.

I know there is a school of thought that insists that quiche is a temperamental egg custard that fails as often as it succeeds. Perhaps I break a rule or two (you will never tell by taste) but quiche is my fail-safe entree. Forgive me for boasting, but I once was hired for a hard-to-get cooking job by making the boss a quiche on the fly for my cooking test.

And...(shhhh!!!) I think it's so flippin' easy.

Pie Crust. Check!
Eggs. Check!
Good Cheese. Check!
Onion or other aromatic. Check!
Maybe some meat. Check!
Optional Veg. Check or uncheck.

Throw it all together and put it in a hot oven for 25 minutes and it tastes like the food of the gods.

Remember the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" that was so popular in the early 1980's? Well, I've never met a real man who has much power over a savory pie with fillings like creamy eggs, crispy bacon, and robust cheese and onion. And the girls like it, too (envision a proper luncheon)...including yours truly.

And in the 20 minutes it took me to write this, my drop-dead gorgeous quiche got done. And honey, I don't much care that we didn't go out to the land of the white tablecloth...'cause with a little salad of baby spinach, I'd be hard-pressed to find a better dinner anywhere. So little effort and esposo went back for seconds. :)

xo

Oz and Steak Tartare

2010-11-12T20:07:00.008-05:00

When I was in college, I was friends with a guy we all called Oz. "Oz" was a shortened version of some other name that the average Midwesterner could not pronounce. Oz was from somewhere far away. His home land wasn't really a country, he explained. It was a "No Man's Land"...the mountain range between Uzbekistan and...??? Turkmenistan? Russia? Exactly where, I cannot quite recall. But he would glaze over with reverie when talking about home and riding horses in the mountains.

Oz was incredibly striking... almost in a fear-inspiring way. He was very tall, and had long hair, black as pitch, waving down to the center of his back. His skin was not white but neither was it brown. You couldn't really discern any particular ethnicity when you looked at him. And he liked to troll through town in tall boots and sweeping military coats, with that long black hair blowing behind him in the frigid Chicago wind. Oz was very quiet, yet quick to smile.

I mention Oz because he represents the fantastic picture I have in my mind about marauding Eurasian horsemen. Just say "Khan" or "Visigoth" to me and my mind's eye sees Oz galloping in his tall boots through the mountains of Blah-blah-blah-zikstan. Don't you remember being in school and learning about the the Goths, the Voguls, the Huns, and so on and so on? They galloped through Asia, Turkey, the Middle East, Russia, and Eastern Europe putting fear into the hearts of meeker folk.

Legend has it that one of the most feared tribes was the Tatars. The Tatars had many conquests under the leadership of Genghis Khan's grandson, Batu Khan. It is said that when the Tatars descended on a region, the soon-to-be-conquered people could hear the hoofbeats of the Tatar warhorses thundering from miles away..."Tatrrrr! Tatrrrr!"

All that marauding didn't leave a whole lot of time for cooking. The legend explains that Tatars would hunt what they could, throw the meat under their saddles to tenderize during long rides, and they would chop it up finely and just eat it raw in the evenings, on their way to the next pillage. Eating raw beef later became known as "Steak Tartare" (a bastardization of "Tatar")

Is this where we really got our culinary classic Steak Tartare? Honestly, I have no idea. But it is certainly more romantic than some French chef who didn't feel like cooking a nice cut of beef so instead served it raw. For this reason alone, I am going with the legend.

So swept up in the legend was I that I decided to make Steak Tartare tonight. Let me preface this by telling you that I was a vegetarian for 12 years. I have an embarassingly sensitive system and get foodborne illnesses easier than most people, but life is for the living, so I decided to live a little...raw food style.

I started with the butcher at my favorite grocery store:
ME: "Hi there. It doesn't have to be tenderloin, but it could be...but what's the absolute freshest cut of good beef you have? I want to make Steak Tartare."
He gave me something he had pulled off the truck 10 minutes ago and was just cutting into filets. For your reference, I think it was a Delmonico, or rib steak.

I took this home, salted it, sliced it as thin as I could, and then gave it a brief pulse in the food processor. Minced meat in seconds flat. I then formed the meat into a little patty, seasoned with pepper, squeezed half a lemon over it, and just waved some olive oil over the top. For condiments, I chopped a sweet onion, emptied a bottle of good capers, pulled a couple gherkins from a bottle, shaved some fresh parmesan razor-thin, AND put a raw egg yolk on top of the meat (OK. I admit it. I used a pasteurized egg. Chickens are dirty birds.) I pulled out an appetizer knife and some crostini and called mi esposo to come be my witness as I started to sample this uncooked food of the Barbarians.

Raw meat. Raw egg. It's a little scary, right? I bolstered myself with the fact that the Tatars took over A LOT of villages on this diet. That thought gave me some courage and I dug right in.

Oh, my word. Eat more raw beef, brothers and sisters. If it is possible to feel high on food. I did. It was better than any expensive wine or ultra dark chocolate I've ever had. I may have to indulge in this a couple times a month.

I feel fantastic. I loved this meal. I am soaring with the eagles, images of Eurasian horsemen in my head.

Oz, it is said, dropped out of college suddenly after being called back home by family to his mysterious fatherland. I hope Oz (my mental image of the great Tatars) and I still have some kind of strange kinship. Life is funny. Maybe we will cross paths again. I'll gladly put together some Steak Tartare for my old friend...see if it resonates for him as it did for me....

Stopping by (a wood-paneled room) On a Snowy Evening

2010-11-06T11:04:00.006-04:00

It's snowing in Cleveland. I LOVE IT.

I hardly ski anymore these days, I am somewhat naturally cold and need far more layers than most people to maintain a comfortable body temperature, shoveling hurts my back, and I start to wilt when we've gone months without sunshine (and we DO go months without sunshine in Cleveland.)

But I love winter for all of the fabulous moments indoors with good food and drink.

The first year the Great Lakes Brewing Co. opened, a date took me there in a blinding blizzard. We were the only patrons out on such a dreadful night. Perhaps as a thank you for our bravery or foolhardiness, the bartender gave us an extended and fascinating history of the location and one Elliot Ness (a one-time resident of that Cleveland neighborhood). It was like a private history lesson in the warm room with glowing brass kettles and gleaming bartops.

I think of all the wonderful Christmases, a night when most restaurants are closed, when I have gone to Nighttown (a veritable Cleveland Heights institution) for a sample of their warm bread pudding to round out a cold Christmas night. I think about the warm spoonfuls of that delightful confection while enjoying the view outside the front windows of the normally traffic-logged Cedar Road hill, now looking like a Currier and Ives picture in all of its snowy quietude.

I think about adult sledding expeditions, laughing at how utterly ridiculous it must look for grown folks to be giggling their way down some steep decline, never properly dressed for the occasion. I think about the divine smell of Beef Bourguignon, or Cassoulet, or Osso Buco filling the house on a snowy afternoon.

Last night I had the pleasure of reuniting with a friend who has lived away from Cleveland for many years. We met up in some cozy paneled room downtown where the music is too loud. Someone brought chocolate cookies to share. As we laughed the night away, sometimes the front door would stick open and you'd feel the cold wind whipping in from off of Lake Erie. I kept my stocking cap on the whole night. And to misquote Robert Frost..."and that made all the difference."

Guerilla Cooking

2010-10-28T20:20:00.006-04:00

When people find out I cook, they frequently ask, "What's your specialty? What do you like to cook at home?"

Generally, I respond to this question with a deer-in-the-headlights look on my face because I somehow know they want me to give them a very lofty/highbrow answer...
-"Well, you know that truffle mustard trend you keep hearing about? I started that."
-or: "Once a week, I import skate wing from the North Sea and prepare it in a light beurre noisette with rare root vegetables from East Africa"
-or: "Really, I'm a master sommelier and I simply create something that will enhance my vin du jour."

All of that sounds great, but it just ain't true for me.

I feel funny telling them that what I really like to do is to take the cheapest piece meat at the grocery store and try to make something fantastic out of it. And I just know they'll turn up their nose if I tell them that I've found that the mushrooms that are half-price now, because they look like they'll be rancid tomorrow, have the richest flavor when they are cooked. They'll probably just feel sorry for me if I tell them the only reason I'm any good at terrines is because I'm too frugal to throw those scary bits away. They'll laugh at my concept of "turbo ramen", or cheap noodles jazzed up with winning vegetable combinations. I learned how to make caramel not because I was inspired by some heady French confection, but because one day I had a killer sweet tooth, and the only thing my pantry held was butter and sugar...so, what the heck can you do with THAT??!! (Answer=caramel!)

So, I guess my specialty is Guerrilla Cooking. That's too rebellious a concept to impress anyone over the age of 22, but it HAS been useful and fulfilling. Some of this stuff is a tough sell. I mean, really... "Let me show you what I can do with a pound of chicken livers and some cheap brandy" has a limited customer base.

But Guerilla Cooking puts me at peace with any vegetable, any cut of meat, any fat, any lack of fat, and on and on and on. I think the best things happen when you are forced to make them happen for yourself with the resources you have at hand, however limited. It forces you to be creative. It forces you to use logic. It forces you to take chances. Guerilla Cooking has been my real-world education, never having had the opportunity to do a formal, long term curriculum at a culinary school. It's not fancy, but Lord! Is it ever fun!

So when people apologize to me for cramping my style with a restrictive diet, I tell them I don't mind. I don't. I enjoy the challenge. And I'm quite certain that the magic of food will continue to let us make something out of virtually nothing if we keep trying.

Please Don't Eat the Sunblock

2010-10-23T12:45:00.009-04:00

If you look through the annals of political history, starvation usually accompanies revolution. Basically, it has to get pretty bad on a very personal level for the masses before they will band together in an uprising to make a change. I remember learning in school that Marie Antoinette's (in)famous quip was illustrative of her total lack of understanding that the regular folk were starving to death...they didn't even have a crust of bread. Hence, "let them eat cake" endures in the jaw-dropping, I-can't-even-believe-you-just-said-that category.

In many ways, we are starving right here in modern America. I am not talking about the growing number of American poor, which is a serious issue. I am talking about our entire American society, on every class level. We are starving because we are not eating real food often enough.

Sure, you may watch the Food Network and love to dine in fine restaurants when you have the opportunity. But I'll bet you've had a "Hot Pocket" or some such ready-to-nuke abomination. Maybe you even have a couple of them each week. I think that's a serious problem.

I had such a packaged frozen meal last night. Yes...I cook for a living, yes...I claim to absolutely abhor that commercial gar-bahge, but I had a moment of weakness and took a shortcut. I had limited time and needed to throw something down fast. So, for a night, I pretty much let my life be mockery of my values.

As I shamefully finished this totally unsatisfying excuse for a dinner, I read the box. My meal was complete with sodium erythorbate, hydrochloride, aluminum phosphate, maltodextrin, and...and...and titanium dioxide.

I ate this periodical chart because I felt like I had no time. Being starved for time is a huge problem that we all just kind of accept. Whether for work or family or sheer survival, we have all been made to run, non-stop. We feel like we sometimes just cannot carve out enough time and consequently take shortcuts with our meals. But that list of additives is something a real home cook or decent restaurant cook would NEVER put in their food. Isn't titanium dioxide non-water-soluble? Isn't it sunblock? That's like lapping up a nice spoonful of SPF 15. If eating sunblock isn't symptomatic of starvation, then I don't know what is.

I'm sure the food companies are not trying to harm us. They have to do things on a massive scale for national distribution. They have to make the product hold up on a shelf for a long time. They have to make things maintain an appetizing color. They are just trying to give us a convenient product that appeals to us.

But, oh! That salt, that sugar, that chemical (or possibly metallic) compound that these manufacturers use to expedite the product and allow it to appear fresher for a longer period of time builds up in our systems when we eat it every day. I am not a doctor but I have some instinct that eating chemicals instead of food has contributed to the mounting problem of nutrition-related health issues like obesity and diabetes.

If there is to be a revolution because we are starving for real food (as opposed to a chemical goulash), then this revolution will be in terms of TIME. Seize back your time, however you must, and get some real food into your life on a regular basis. And hold the sunblock on mine, please.

Note to Self (And Anyone Else Who Needs a Reminder)

2010-10-14T13:37:00.010-04:00

I'm a little "exhausterated", or run-down, in common parlance. I just sort of expired yesterday after work. I have been quite busy, personally and professionally, since July and this past month was a REAL whirlwind. So I put myself to bed before 10pm last night and vowed to recapture a higher energy level.

Fortunately, I had a light workload today and am able to keep my word to myself. I'm still feeling a little beat, and I noticed that the scale has decided it wants to creep up just a bit from its regular number. So, I am taking it easy today and reminding myself, and anyone else who is of a like mind, some of the guidelines that I think help to keep us in "gran' champeen" (sic.... "grand champion") health.

Ahem...Please Note...I am NOT a doctor and I am NOT a nutritionist. I am a reasonably healthy person with an interest in good food and good living and adhering to these points makes me feel like I am doing something right. So I am really just prattling on and patting myself on the back for having figured it all out(yawn). Really, what do I know? Read this for your own amusement and then talk to someone smarter than I (like your MD) for real advice customized to your needs:

1. SLEEP: Nothing is better for your immune system or your complexion than quality, uninterrupted slumber. Take it from me, I am a recovering insomniac, and I know a thing or two about sleep deprivation. Figure out how many hours you need and be greedy about getting that much sleep, every night. My problem is I get lost in music or some project and then realize I've missed my bedtime when it's already too late.
2. DON'T EAT A LOT: Eat regularly...all 3 meals. Eat well...do not skimp on quality. But don't eat a lot. Gluttony shows up on your frame and eventually on your doctor bill. I really have to remind myself to take my own advice on this, especially as the seasons change and we spend more time indoors.
3. LISTEN TO THE WACKOS WITHOUT BECOMING ONE: In my early twenties I read every quasi-hippie-ish book on nutrition I could get my hands on. There are some way-out diets out there that you'd never want to follow to the letter, but many of them have important kernels of truth. I'm convinced that the acid/alkaline balance that the macrobiotic people talk about, does, in fact exist. I'm certain some foods encourage inflammation of your internal organs. Some people should probably avoid meat or at least make it an infrequent treat. Ditto glutenous grains. Ditto alcohol.
4. MANUFACTURED SUGAR MAKES YOU SICK AND UGLY: Fortunately, I don't have a health condition that forces me to read every label all the time, but I can tell a piece of junk when I see it, and I like to give it a wide berth (i.e. soda pop, candy, packaged convenience foods). Sugar makes you fat. Sugar contributes to illnesses. Sugar puffs you out, including the tissue in your face, making you look doughy. It will be a tedious and short-lived exercise to avoid it completely unless you are a diabetic or an especially iron-willed individual, but don't go looking for trouble.
5. ONE IS MEDICINE, TWO IS POISON: My father often repeats that phrase in regards to alcohol, and I'm sure he's right. There are some health benefits to moderate drinking, if you are able to do so, but moderate means MODERATE...as in, ONE. Maybe two if you are a 6'3" 200 pound man. You don't get better resveratrol levels in your system if you kill the whole bottle of shiraz. You just get more sugar. Please re-read Point No. 4 about the doughy, puffy look.
6. YOU HAVE TO HAVE SOME FUN: Don't swear off dessert. But only have it once or twice a week. And make it a darn good one. Or have a half portion and eat so slowly that you think it's bigger. Don't ruin Thanksgiving by only picking at the green beans and insulting your grandmother who created this feast just for you. Don't be rude, just give in and eat. But freeze or give away the leftovers, don't keep feasting for 4 days straight.
7. MOVE IT OR LOSE IT: Move it or lose what, you ask? Well, lose your health, lose your flexibility, lose your properly-proportioned physique. I don't go to a gym. Yoga upsets me ("Quit telling me to breathe, you bossy guru-wannabe!"). But I walk everyday. Cooking is a somewhat physical endeavor (When I grate over a pound of cheese by hand, I get sore triceps! Really!) I try to hike every weekend. Could I be doing more? Sure. But I am doing stuff I can stick with every single day and not feel over-burdened by. I think that's the key...find something, anything that's not a burden on your life, even if it's not perfect, and do it regularly. And up the ante every once in a while. My lazy fanny is due for a more challenging hike this weekend.
8. STRESS IS THE ENEMY: Don't like your job? Quit! Worried about money? Don't live so fancy. OK...I am not great at controlling my own stress, I am a card-carrying natural worrier, but stress messes you up in more ways than you realize. You already know about the heart-disease connection, but stress also keeps you from losing weight (cortisol, the stress hormone makes your body hold onto fat), makes you crave more food, makes you crave junk food, and puts lines in your face. I have no medical training or evidence to bolster my point, but I'm personally convinced that excessive stress so messes up your insides it confuses your cells and contributes to cancer. Plus, it often makes people surly and inconsiderate. So maybe we should all quit our jobs and not live so fancy.

Oven-Baked Eggplant Parmesan

2010-10-12T19:58:00.005-04:00

The eggplant and tomatoes were staring me down. I have been on the receiving end of a family member's CSA farmshare program and the eggplant and tomatoes just won't stop. Previously, I was on a caponata bender, but I just got bored making the same thing over and over. I was also tired from a long day, and not much in the mood for researching some more creative eggplant recipes, so I decided to do a variation on the classic Italian Eggplant Parmesan.

In the traditional Eggplant "Parm", thin slices of eggplant are treated to an egg wash and a coating of breadcrumbs before hitting a hot saute pan with oil. That sounded a like a spattery mess I'd be in no mood to clean up after dinner.

Well, they "oven-fry" chicken, don't they? So why couldn't I oven-bake Eggplant Parm?

Just like the original recipe, I dipped my thin eggplant slices in egg wash, but I included some dry, grated parmesan cheese in the crumbs to increase the likelihood of a crispy, golden crust. I put my breadcrumb cheese mixture in a big plastic bag and coated the eggplant slices in the bag. Ha! No dredging pan to wash! After my eggplant was nicely coated, I lightly oiled a baking sheet with canola oil, laid my slices down, brushed their tops gently with just a little more canola, covered the pan with aluminum foil and baked at 350 for 45 minutes.

They were coming along nicely this way, but at the 45 minute mark, I topped each eggplant slice with a little prosciutto and some fresh, grated mozzarella and baked uncovered for an additional 10 minutes. The prosciutto could certainly be omitted for a vegetarian-friendly recipe.

I know all that cheese may have canceled out some of the health benefits of not sauteing the eggplant in a puddle of oil, but I think the flavor was worth it. And I was not at all heavy-handed with the cheese...just a little bit made it attractive and flavorful.

I served this over spaghetti with homemade marinara sauce (from that endless supply of tomatoes) that I enhanced with some oven-roasted cherry tomatoes I had made last month and frozen. (Oven-roasted tomatoes are slow-cooked for flavor concentration...much like sun-dried tomatoes but way lighter).

It was a satisfying meal and so psychologically satisfying to wave goodbye to that last eggplant lurking in the vegetable drawer. The big bonus was that I didn't have to babysit a saute pan...got some other things accomplished while the oven did my work...AND it was an absolute cinch to clean up.

Oh, and mi esposo, who used to claim he DETESTED eggplant got a big, fat "Clean Plate Club" award tonight. You should try it, too. (It's easy, dahling) If you need more convincing, go online and learn how eggplant will kick the hindquarters of any free radical all the way down to the end of your block.

Childhood Favorites

2010-10-06T20:43:00.002-04:00

While working today, head of broccoli in my hand, I mused that I actually really liked broccoli as a child. (Mom often dressed it in bernaise sauce which helped. C'mon...it was the 1970's...the lowfat craze hadn't started yet!!) Then I tried to remember the foodstuffs I loved and hated as a child. It was an entertaining mental journey, thinking about how I was the one kid on the block who couldn't get enough creamed spinach.

Here's what I loved:
-Goose Liver ("foie gras" to all you gourmets out there) in my lunchbox until all the other PB&J toting kids at school made fun of me. I have some friends whose Oma (grandmother) packed their lunch and know exactly what I'm talking about!
-Beef of all kinds: steak, brisket, and beef bourguignon.
-Vegetables cooked until soft: Creamed spinach, dilled zucchini, and glazed carrots were favorites.

Here's what I hated:
-Bread and buns: Starchy and flavorless, I thought
-Raw vegetables: While I could eat about 6 cups of cooked spinach, I would not touch a spinach salad with a 10 foot pole
-Toad-in-the-Hole: English sausages in a baked pudding. Oof. It still doesn't sound very appetizing to me.
-Milk: I was the only kid in town who hated milk. Never touched the stuff. But I ate cheese so my growth wasn't stunted.

I look at that list and think I quite literally could have been a poster child for the Atkins Diet, with my love of red meat, vegetables, and the occassional piece of fruit. I disliked most starches. I vividly remember pulling hamburgers off of the bun and leaving that doughy breadstuff for the rubbish bin.

What about you? What did you like and hate? I'd love to hear about it, especially if it deviates from the realm of chicken fingers and pizza pockets.

No Recipe Bread

2010-09-28T20:03:00.004-04:00

A dedicated pastry chef or artisal baker will tell you that unless you are an expert that you must follow a baking recipe with exact precision, or else you are doomed for failure. Baking is as much science and chemistry as it is artistry, and no one wants to serve a science experiment gone wrong. Many of us have pulled out a special occasion cake that failed to rise and vowed to never again disobey this cooking commandment.

If you are having the boss over for dinner, go ahead and stick to the recipe. But if you want to explore new territory, don't weigh yourself down with exactitudes.

More specifically, I'm talking about delicious bread here, people.

Bread. The staff of life. The human race was barely beyond caveman status and our ancestors were making it over an open fire. Or in a hot pit they dug underground. I can't believe that most of them had anything resembling a measuring cup. These people sustained themselves. Some of them thrived and produced legendary cultures (Greeks! Romans! Mesopotamians!) on their no-cookbook bread.

While I dutifully followed my French baguette recipe to the letter for years, I recently met a woman whose extensive dietary restrictions inspired her to come up with a bread recipe of her own invention. She has hired me to make this recipe for her from time to time, when she is unable to get to it on her own. I'll tell you right now, the batter is as ugly and unappealing as any bread dough can possibly be, but it bakes up gorgeously, and when she shares it with friends, they rave about it for days.

When I was little more than a child, living in one of my first rentals, working for a catering company, trying to be an uber-healthy health nut, I would "invent" some recipes for healthy baked goods. I'd tell my mother my invented recipe over the phone and she would snort...didn't sound like anything she had ever made, and for chrissakes, Karen...don't you need some leavening? That's going to be awfully dense.

Well, I had some lovely, hearty scones for a week. Tough luck if no one would try them. It just meant there was more for me.

I continue to cook for a growing population of folks with an extensive list of dietary restrictions. You can't just bake them a "normal" bread recipe. I have to cobble together many recipes or just create one. But I can bake for them. They do not have to give up bread.

What are the rules for no-recipe bread?
-You need a flour...a ground grain or dried legume. You can use gluten free flours for special diets.
-You need a fat...often not much. A little butter, oil, or egg.
-You need a flavor...salt, cinnamon, vanilla, anything really.
-You need a leavening...yeast, baking soda, baking powder, or even your egg will cause your grains to rise. Experiment. If your selected leavening is unsuccessful, the worst that can happen is you get to enjoy a flatbread
-You need some liquid...water, milk, pureed fruit or veggies (really! high water content!)

That's it. Mix it all up until it looks like thick cake batter. Put it in the oven and watch it 30 minutes or so at 350 to 425 is usually fine. (WE"RE EXPERIMENTING HERE!)

Go for it.

Five Easy Pieces

2010-09-25T19:36:00.002-04:00

I love young Jack Nicholson. I love the piano. And last but not least, I love to cook dinner.

In regards to the first two assertions in the above paragraph, I highly suggest that you rent the flick, "Five Easy Pieces", in case you are not already familiar with it. As an inveterate Gen-X-er, I have a predilection for the bittersweet sensation one has when witnessing the underlying beauty of squandered talent, which is what that movie is all about.

As for the third assertion, I do love to cook dinner, but I took a week off. During the past week, my schedule was unusually hectic, especially during the hours when I am usually preparing a decent meal here at home.

But, I'd rather poach some old leather shoes than eat a terrible, chemical-laden, MSG-infused, flavorless frozen packaged dinner. I stock my freezer with homemade stuff for weeks like this, but I know that many other people are unable to do so. Still, I am confident that anyone can have an awesome, almost-homemade dinner on the table in 15 minutes with minimal effort. How? Well, here's five easy pieces for you. In all of these examples, you can add low-fat options or whole grain selections and make it really healthy. Try these five easy pieces on the next mind-bogglingly busy week and see if you are not more satisfied with these selections than you would be with a TV dinner:

-GRILLED SAUSAGE AND CORN ON THE COB: Pick up a package of sausages and buns: Italian, Chorizo, Chicken Sausage...it really doesn't matter. Fire up the grill...or the broiler if you don't own a grill. Dunk some corn in boiling water for 6-7 minutes. Char your sausages and make sure they are not scary-pink in the middle. Season. Add condiments. Done.
-CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD: Buy some chopped romaine. Buy a pre-grilled chicken breast from the prepared foods counter at a decent grocer. Buy lots of cherry tomatoes. Buy whole grain croutons. Buy Cardini's Caesar Dressing (no other bottled dressing will do) Assemble and eat.
-SMOKED SALMON WITH PASTA: Buy some chopped red onion. Buy a bottle of capers. Buy some smoked salmon or lox. Boil some noodles. Toss all with Greek yogurt and salt. Done.
-BLACK BEAN BURRITOS: Chop a green pepper and some cilantro. Open a can of black beans and some shredded cheddar. Wrap up in a flour burrito. Spritz with canned canola oil. Bake at 400 for 5 to 10 minutes until golden. Enjoy.
-MOCK HOT TURKEY CLUB PANINI: Buy a turkey sandwich at the deli. Buy some prepared coleslaw. Throw some slaw on the sandwich. Spritz with canned canola oil. Fire up the Foreman grill and toast.

You've had a reasonably good, reasonable wholesome dinner that took 15 minutes or less. (Junky frozen food in the microwave would have taken nearly as long) Now you have time to go relax and enjoy a good Jack Nicholson movie.

XO

Stuffed Cabbage and the Love of the Meatball

2010-09-12T20:31:00.007-04:00

I may be on a Hungarian-style culinary bender or it may be the fact that the farmshare bounty that keeps arriving on my doorstep (courtesy of a truly generous mother-in-law) contains more cabbage per week than most people see all year, but I decided to make stuffed cabbage for dinner.

Stuffed Cabbage was probably my favorite food as a child. I hardly noticed that a vegetable was as much a star of the dish as the protein. It was so good, I probably wouldn't have cared.

I love to make it as an adult because of the meatball. (Well, stuffed cabbage is really not much more than a softened cabbage leaf that steams a meatball of sorts enclosed inside.) Anyone who has worked with me knows I love to make meatballs.

Meatballs, you see, were the bane of my existence during a moment of my restaurant career. I had to make meatballs 20, 30, even 50 pounds at a time for a high-volume Italian restaurant. Each meatball had to be rolled to perfection by hand. When your prep list is 3 pages long, seeing 30 pounds of meatballs on your worksheet can be a real downer if you don't have the right frame of mind, because it is so labor-intensive it is most definitely going to slow you down. When you are still working your prep list after dinner hour has started you are really sunk...but a big batch of meatballs can put you in that awful predicament.

But I learned to love the meatball...by eating a perfect one. I don't even know now who made it, but it was seasoned correctly, shaped perfectly, and cooked to just the right tenderness. It was, in fact, a revelation, however humble its origins. I thought to myself: "My God...this is worth all the measuring and forming and rolling and shaping." I made it my quest to give everyone the same meatball experience I had. And with a little focus and love, I could make those meatballs faster and better than I ever thought I could. I was getting out of work on time to boot!

I know this sounds a little ridiculous, but it's true. If there is anything I put my soul into when I cook, it's a meatball. I want anyone I am serving to feel what I felt with that perfect meatball.

Back to stuffed cabbage.

I had some bastardized version of my mother's or grandmother's recipe the first time I made stuffed cabbage and my results were so-so at best. I was crestfallen. How could I fall short on my favorite childhood entree?? I HAD to get this right.

So I started looking at the stuffed cabbage as a trumped up meatball. I put some additional ingredients in that I feel are essential to an outstanding meatball experience. I streamlined the stuffed cabbage cooking liquid to include things that are really compatible with the flavor of a good meatball. I wrapped those meatballs in the cabbage with the same love a mother swaddles a new babe. Honestly.

And now I am quite sure my stuffed cabbage would make my grandmother proud, though it's just a little different from her version.

So much of good cooking is nothing more than focus and love. And there's not much I love more than a good childhood memory and a good meatball.

Nick Drake and Tokany

2010-09-08T14:26:00.003-04:00

The face of the sky is totally covered by a pale--almost platinum--curtain of clouds, Lake Erie is the color of gunmetal, and the coolness in the breeze verges on uncomfortable. THIS is autumn in Cleveland, Ohio.

I was driving home from work under all the Cleveland clouds, listening to a soft English voice sing along with a wistful chord progression on a solitary acoustic guitar. It was Nick Drake! He was one of those brilliant-before-his-time and sadly-plucked-from-our-midst-too-soon kind of songwriters. The disc jockey came on the air and said, "It's just a Nick Drake kind of day out there."

And so it is. It's also a "warm my brittle bones with comfort food" kind of day out there. When I made some Beef Bourguignon for a family yesterday, it got my gears turning towards hearty, meaty braises. Then my mind wandered to thoughts of my mother's veal paprikash, and Hungarian fare seems just right for this chilly early fall weather, so I pulled my grandmother's beat-to-death Hungarian cookbook from the shelf. I love this cookbook: The Cuisine of Hungary by George Lang. It contains absolutely no frills, no pictures, no luxe ingredients, but no bad advice, either. (The author cautions against the trend of trying to "Frenchify" recipes by indiscriminantly adding wine. "Frenchify"! I LOVE the total absence of pretense!) The author also claims that many of these recipes can be traced to sources reaching back to the 1600's or earlier.

One such ancient recipe must certainly by Tokany, which I think I will try tonight, if only for the appeal of the cooking method, which is referred to as "Mongolian waterless braising". (In other words, the meat stews in its own juices, but what a wonderfully exotic way to describe it). The essence of the recipe is beef shoulder, onion, and marjoram.

I'll give you the full report and a more complete recipe outline for Tokany later. But the general plan is to put Nick Drake's last album "Pink Moon" on in the background, find a scratchy sweater, tsk-tsk at the dogs vying for scraps, and enjoy the evening, in spite of the dark and gathering cold.

Phrasing and Food (I Want to be Good at Both)

2010-09-04T09:53:00.011-04:00

I cannot tell you how many times I've been talking to music-minded acquaintances about something I always called "feel", then looked over at the clock and realized it was so late, well-beyond time to go home. I could just go on and on about that certain something that just sets some artists apart. The other day, while at a piano lesson, I learned that this ineffable quality in music that I always referred to as "feel", actually exists. The technical term for "feel" is phrasing..

Phrasing is, very simply put, how YOU do it. Sure, anyone who reads notes and has some facility with an instrument can play a piece of music. The question is, can they make it sound like something? The musicians you love the best must have an instinctive way of putting an accent here, holding a pause for an extra split-second there. They must know how the dynamics of volume might affect the mood of the piece. Musicians who phrase well (or at least to your tastes), can practically break your heart with a piece of music because they can reach some part of you that is so otherwise hard to get to. Conversely, musicians who do not phrase well can cause you to leave the auditorium after the first movement, because it's so boring it almost hurts.

This concept of phrasing is a revelation to me. It answers a lot of questions. At one of the restaurants where I once worked, we always wondered how different cooks could slavishly follow the exact same recipe (we were even required to measure everything in exact proportions using a calibrated food scale for consistency) and still achieve different results? For example, I could never get my cheesecakes as beautiful as Josie's, but no one, not even Josie, could come close to my lemon custard, even though we worked from the same recipes.

One of my customers is a medical professional (and a formidable cook herself when she has the time) who has noticed the same thing: give two different cooks the same exact recipe and get two vastly different dishes. Her quasi-medical theory for the difference in cooking results is that the bacteria that is permanently on our skin--the benign stuff that cannot be washed off-- somehow telegraphs some magic into the food. I am somewhat compelled by her interesting theory, and would be fascinated if someone actually did a scientific investigation of her hypothesis, but I suspect that what it really comes down to is phrasing.

The concept of phrasing tells me that maybe when YOU stir the risotto a few more times with the unique weight of your hand, you make it just a little creamier than someone else. Maybe when you add the salt at a certain moment, pinching it between YOUR two fingers which are sized like no one elses, you release a little more flavor into the sauce. Certainly, careful culinary school grads may have paid attention to the science behind the secrets, but others are capable of this magic by instinct alone. Your unique phrasing in the kitchen is what matters.

And I think about how I hear two notes on a dotted quarter note...and it's not really wrong for me to play the extra note I hear in my imagination. The overall piece remains the same, but one version is uniquely mine.

I cannot begin to describe how much the concept of phrasing knocks me out in both music and cooking. It tells me that everyone really IS an original and can make something transcendently beautiful when given the right skills and freedoms.

FYI on the Egg Problem

2010-08-24T11:07:00.003-04:00

The massive salmonella outbreak associated with eggs is very real and potentially more far reaching than has yet been reported. In case you don't already know, certain markets DO carry pasteurized eggs that have been "flash heated" at a high temperature to eradicate any bacterium. Pasteurized eggs are approximately three times costlier than regular eggs, but it is a relatively small price to pay to avoid a foodborne illness.

September Song

2010-08-22T14:23:00.003-04:00

It was still hot and humid when my father and I started singing "September Song" to each other over the phone about a week ago:

"Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few--
September...November
And these few precious days, I'll spend with you"

Today, there is a definite coolness on the breeze. September is on the way, and we saw it coming.

You see, fall makes me sad. The riot of colors is thrilling, but I secretly hate the changing leaves. I hate to say goodbye to the long days of languishing in the summer sun and say hello to collars turned up against the dark and chilly winds. I miss the happy chatter of the goldfinches, now drowned out by the cacophony of honking geese as they soar overhead.

You can go on and on about the wonders of the autumn season but you'll never sell me. I have the Back-to-School Blues forever programmed into the circadian i-pod of my mind.

I do adjust, though, and learn to love something about every season. (Have to! No amount of heaving sighs ever helps anything, anyway) And I've found that cooking and enjoying the bounty of the harvest season is actually a great help in my adjustment. Drinking dark beer and eating heavy cheese outdoors at Oktoberfest can be jolly and romantic. The cool smokiness of a clambake holds definite appeal. Lovingly watching over a pot of chicken stock on a lazy afternoon helps to pass an otherwise gray day. Finding apples on a forgotten tree in the park makes for a sweet little secret.

So even as I slept too late this morning due to the chill in the air and haven't had my usual spirit of adventure catapulting me through the weekend, I know that as sure as I can get myself to the grocery store to pick up some provisions and put on a great piece of music (just as loud as my poor esposo can tolerate), I can be put right back on top of the world with some flying flour and browning butter.

"And these few precious days I'll spend with you."

Kim Chee Update

2010-08-16T14:56:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I pulled the Kim Chee from the cool room in the basement where I had it fermenting at just below room temperature.

The results? Well, I would caution abitious Kim Chee makers out there to be judicious with your spices because the cabbage seems to absorb any spicy heat as it ages. I tend to season liberally, and I did when preparing my Kim Chee the other day, and this batch is a zesty one, to say the least. It's tasty, but I have a higher-than-normal tolerance for spicy heat. I probably cannot serve this to others without the mellowing effect of a protein. That being said, this would make an awesome condiment for pork barbeque.

One of my seasonings was horseradish root. While I associate Kim Chee with ginger, I happened not to have any ginger root on hand the other day when I was preparing this. But I did have another spicy root...horseradish. The horseradish imparted a nice enough zest, but I still prefer ginger.

Kim Chee was easy enough to do, but one head of cabbage makes enough of it to feed a small army, so don't hesitate to try this, but plan on sharing (unless you're working one of those cabbage diets that go in and out of vogue).

Oh, and I know this link below pertains to sauerkraut, but sauerkraut is just another variation on fermented cabbage. Do check it out. Evidently, if you eat enough Kim Chee or sauerkraut, you'll be an unstoppable force of glowing health.

http://www.sauerkraut.com/benefits.htm

Kim Chee in the Morning, Then Just Walk Away

2010-08-13T08:52:00.002-04:00

Cabbage keeps showing up in my refrigerator. Sometimes I buy it, sometimes I am "gifted" with it, as it seems to be a staple in many farm-share programs. I quite like cabbage, but have had so much of it, I have nearly exhausted my repertoire for preparations. So the cabbage I was most recently given just sat in the fridge for a few days. I was so bored with all of the standard ways to prepare it.

My mother stopped by a few days ago bearing a cookbook she saw at a garage sale. It featured some rather "exotic" (for the time) menus for entertaining. This was a cookbook for REALLY ambitious 1950's housewives. I leafed through it, thinking it might be just this side of worthless, but then I stumbled on a Kim Chee recipe. I like Kim Chee. For whatever reason, I've never had the occasion to prepare it.

Kim Chee is a Korean salad of sorts made with fermented cabbage. It has a refreshing sweet and sour balance. It always tastes very "clean" to me.

That poor cabbage was not going to make it another day in the fridge, so I got my motivation up and started the 1950's housewife Kim Chee recipe early this morning.

Only after I started the process did I compare my Betty Crocker-esque recipe to some authentic Korean ones. The "authentic" recipes and the one I used differ substantially, but the proof, as they always say, is in the pudding. Kim Chee takes a number of days to ferment, so I will update you on the finished product when it happens.

Stay tuned.

Sour Vinegar Sweetens the Season

2010-08-11T13:04:00.006-04:00

I like to think I have an open mind, but I must confess that there are A LOT of things I discovered late in life. Meat. Sushi. Eggplant. Mussels. Beets.

I'm sure I was carrying some childhood prejudices, but am ultimately glad didn’t swear off these items with an absolute refusal: “No way… I don’t like that”. I was willing to try again. I suppose I had some instinct that life is all about discovery and re-discovery. I must have guessed it would be worth it to keep myself open to things that weren’t quite my cup of tea, because sometimes the timing is right and the whole thing gets reinvented. Everything is contantly changing. Even our taste buds change over time (it’s a scientific fact!)…so what you hated at age 8 might be pure manna at age 38.

I recently discovered that what I once dismissed as the sour battery acid of the culinary world actually works miracles in good cooking. This summer’s new discovery has been vinegar.

Yes, vinegar…humble, astringent vinegar.

It started with a shish-kabob recipe back when I was on a kabob kick earlier in the season. I was trying all kinds of marinades. Many of these marinades had exotic juices, booze, imported oils, and all kinds of sexy ingredients. But I chanced to stumble upon one recipe that wasn’t much more than distilled vinegar, salt, and chopped onions. It didn’t sound exciting, but the recipe was credited to a Middle Eastern woman who swore that this is what her parents used in the old country. I was interested in trying an “authentic” shish-kabob, so I made the marinade.

Much to my surprise, it was so good. Many people who know much more about the chemistry of food swear up and down that a marinade does little to tenderize the meat. Maybe they are technically right, but this shish-kabob was not only tender, it also had such a perfectly-balanced flavor…!! You could taste every bit of the sweet, earthy protein, but it was accented with a high piquant note.

Oh, my!

And then I tried Chimichurri.

“Chimichurri” is said to be a bastardized, made-up word that may or may not be a play on somebody’s name. Evidently, it’s an Argentine sauce. It sounds very exotic, but it's certainly not challenging to enjoy. It’s really just a lovely vinegar-herb sauce. I do mine with a healthy dose of cilantro and an eyedropper-full of honey, and find it so refreshing and summery-tasting. It’s great on grilled meat, on pasta, or as a dip for bread. Tomorrow, I think I’ll try it as a pizza sauce…maybe with some brie and a tiny dice of papaya??? It’s so incredibly inspiring and yet it’s so humble. It's not much more than some green stuff floating around in vinegar.

Of sourse I cannot discuss my "discovery" of vinegar in the summertime without recalling hand-cut potato wedges, crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, sprinkled liberally with big grains of salt and some malt vinegar.

Oh, my my my my my.

Is there a sunset over the water somewhere? Is there music in the air? Is there a carousel with painted horses? Because that, my friends, is the stuff of summer paradise.

French Toast Beef

2010-08-06T23:57:00.006-04:00

I am distracted by other things right now, namely music. A poor, homeless piano will be coming to live with us and I want nothing more than to give it a better world than the empty, lonely space it has been living in. So I am brushing up on all the tunes we might enjoy together soon.

However distracted I might be, dinner somehow still gets on the table around here. And since my mind is elsewhere, I am completely opened up to the possibility of happy accidents or complete disasters. To that point, when I started dinner, I noticed I had already used up all the homemade barbecue sauce on another dish earlier in the week, but it would have been so nice on the short ribs I was about to start. Darn. What else was in the cupboards? I found some curry paste and some port and threw it into the dutch oven with the meat. Fresh ginger would have been nice, but alas, there was none left. Hmmm...cinnamon? I DO love a hint of cinnamon with curry.

Distracted as I was, You-Tube-ing piano renditions of my favorite songs, I was a little heavy-handed with the cinnamon. Ooops. It was really no problem in the end, a good deal of the deep cinnamon earthiness cooked off after a 2+ hour braise in the oven. But a hint of something wonderful still subtly remained in the flavor. AND, the house smelled like heaven. Mi esposo walked in the kitchen door and wanted to know if I had made French Toast.

The "French Toast Beef", falling off the bone, was nestled into a whopping dollop of soft polenta. I like to fortify my polenta with heavy cream. (Mashed potatoes have got NOTHING on this dreamy starch!) The zucchini was about ready to bust the produce drawer in the fridge, so I cut a bunch of that up and just threw the veg into the Dutch oven, too...this is absent-minded cooking that actually works!

So, even when you are lost in a song, or a daydream, or a pet project, wonderful things are possible in the kitchen. And if you are given to frequent absent-mindedness, consider adding slow braises and roasts to your repertoire. You just stick them in the oven on a low heat with whatever you have on hand(even cinnamon works fine) and the next 2-3 hours are yours...to get lost in cloudland before you are coaxed back to the present by some divine aroma from the kitchen, reminding you to come back down and enjoy the moment.

Make it a Better Dinner through Unapologetic Snobbery

2010-08-01T19:35:00.004-04:00

I had a great night out yesterday evening with mi esposo and some friends. The night was great because of the company and the laughter, because if we had judged the evening on the food we consumed, it would have been an abysmal failure.

The “calamari” we started with was reconstituted fish product. Although it was deep fried like calamari often is, it was totally lacking in the usual character of fresh squid. The pizzas we ordered were under-flavored, did not feature anything close to a homemade sauce, and the pies were over-cooked to boot. Somebody distractedly slapped the pies together, threw 'em in the oven, and kind of forgot about them. I get all itchy when people over-use the word “passion’, but in this case, the food really did lack any semblance of passion.

Sigh.

I won’t bash the eating establishment because I vote with my wallet (read: I just won’t give them my food money ever again.)

I never thought I was a food snob. Why not? Well, I like some really humble stuff. After all, my guilty pleasure is an occasional greasy burger. I never met a Buffalo wing I didn’t like. And “the cheaper the cut, the sweeter the meat” might as well be my motto when cooking in my own home. Furthermore, my un-glamorous home kitchen and paltry selection of fine cookware has always been a little too primitive to allow me to consider myself a food snob. And please don’t tell on me, but sometimes I think the hoity-toity farmers’ market is an inconvenient pain in my neck, so I just wind up buying regular produce at the grocery store around the corner.

But I DO appreciate quality. It doesn’t take very long after upgrading your diet to really fresh stuff to make the over-processed and less-than-fresh alternatives that so many fellow Americans eat on a regular basis totally unpalatable. Fake calamari?? Come ON! At least have the courtesy to re-name it “squid fritters” or something.

I cannot underscore enough how NOT fancy my diet is, generally speaking. Sure, I love to indulge in the elegant and exotic from time to time, but most of what I whip up at home or at work can be concocted in less than an hour with basic ingredients from a regular grocery store. I love to do it, too. Maybe I have a passion for it or maybe I’ve found that fresh stuff made with some degree of focus is simply a joy to eat. Life is hard enough. Why can’t this eating thing be our pleasure?

This way of looking at food has utterly ruined me for over-priced rubbish. I’m so grateful we’re in the middle of a national food revolution. My wish for you is that you will be ruined, too. I hope you and the people you care about get so accustomed to “fresh”, “whole”, and “real” food made with some care that your taste buds reject the rubbish as scornfully as do mine.

Top 3 Fresh Fish Myths

2010-07-28T12:29:00.009-04:00

1. "I always buy my fish fresh from (insert reputable purveyor name here), so I know I'm getting the best."

2. "I never buy the frozen fish in those bags or vacuum packs. I don't think it's any good."

3. "I buy the freshest fish possible then freeze it at home until I'm ready to cook it"

Believing any of these myths may be doing you a disservice, costing you more money, or even putting you at risk for a foodborne illness. How?

--MYTH NUMBER ONE: "I always buy my fish fresh from (insert reputable purveyor name here), so I know I'm getting the best."
I know most good grocery stores and reputable markets have a beautiful fish counter laid out with a wide variety of un-frozen fish and shellfish held on a pristine bed of ice. Sometimes they even post a promotional/informational sign like "Flown in from the coast every morning!" This seafood is generally of an excellent quality, may be flown in daily, can reflect a high market price, and...was absolutely frozen rock-solid a few hours ago if your grocer is in accordance with the Ohio Department of Health Uniform Code which reads "Fish...may be offered for sale or service if
they are obtained from a supplier that freezes the fish as specified...." That's right, it has ALL been frozen. It has to be to ensure that the fish stays fresh and free of spoilage while in transit. In fact, most fishing operations have "flash freezing" facilities right on the boats, to lock in the freshness moments after the catch. The fish counter at the grocer's is there for your convenience...you can see the product more closely, you can compare it to other offerings, you can specify how large of a cut/portion you want, you can sometimes get some unusual or seasonal offerings, and you don't have to thaw it when you bring it home.

--MYTH NUMBER TWO: "I never buy the frozen fish in those bags or vacuum packs. I don't think it's any good."
Since we know that it has ALL been frozen, you do not necessarily need to side-step the frozen offerings. Do check the package for any "sell-by" dates, though. You can get some very nice frozen fish that is already cut and portioned (which is a real bonus for folks who are not confident with their filletting skills)

--MYTH NUMBER THREE: "I buy the freshest fish possible then freeze it at home until I'm ready to cook it"
Do NOT buy the already-thawed product at the fish counter and then re-freeze it at home. Re-freezing food increases the liklihood of food-borne illness and fish and seafood are so delicate and sensitive that this practice carries some risks. Try to cook the fish you've purchased within 24 hours. If you might not get to cooking it for, say, more like 48 hours, fill a pan with ice cubes, lay your fish on top, sprinkle it with more ice cubes, and hold it in the refrigerator. Laying it on ice does not re-freeze it, but it does keep it super-cold and allows it to hold the fresh flavor longer.

With some awareness about what's at the market and how it's presented, you can make decisions on what's best for YOUR dining needs.

En Francais...What Can I Say?

2010-07-19T19:46:00.004-04:00

I own no less than five books on the subject of "The French Paradox". Surely you've heard of the French Paradox...the people of France (as well as some other Mediterranean nations) manage to eat butter, red meat, chocolate, and pastries, while washing it all down with red wine and still somehow manage to maintain figures like Sophie Marceau's and keep their national rate of heart disease and diabetes at an enviable level. The books decribe how the paradox is the result of "lifestyle" choices. We hear that rhetoric all the time, but what does it really mean?

So many people have a quick, dismissive answer:
-"Well, they smoke all the time. How healthy is that?"
-"Those poor French people don't have cars and they have to walk everywhere."
-"French women only eat once a day."
-"It's the red wine" (like that's a silver bullet)
-"It's the olive oil" (like that's a silver bullet)

I'm sure that you have noticed that there are plenty of fat, American smokers...so, cigarettes are not the answer. You must have a "power walker" in your neighborhood who, despite the long, exerting walks she takes every day, never seems to look any trimmer. And I'm sure some French women only eat once a day. Some American women eat once a day. Americans are still heavier, per capita. The red wine? My own personal experience is that daily alcohol consumption bloats one's midriff almost as effectively as daily bearclaw consumption. Then it must be the olive oil, right? I'm not a registered dietician so I cannot speak effectively about the metabolism of HDL and LDL, but I can tell you that when it comes to calories...a fat is a fat is a fat.

So, why do the French seem to get away with murder while we pitiable Americans indulge in a weekend dinner out on the town and find the scale has crept up 4 pounds by Monday morning?

I have the answer. And don't take my word for it. It's not my answer. I got this from a gracious, lithe French woman I sometimes have the privelege to cook for. She said the French are thinner and often healthier because...

IN THEIR LIFESTYLE, THE FRENCH TAKE PORTIONS THAT ARE SMALL BY OUR AMERICAN LIFESTYLE STANDARDS

This lady explained that at a buffet dinner, the French would take 1 slice of meat, while the Americans would take 2 or 3 slices.

This made me think of a simile...you know when you go to a really "fancy" restaurant and you get a teensy-weensy little plate with a flourish of chopped parsley sprinkled on top as a garnish and you feel cheated because you have to pay 32.00 for this appetizer-sized nothing of an entree???!!!. Well, that's probably a portion size closer to an average French-sized portion. If you think that's not enough to nourish you with your demanding life, think about the famous French artists, athletes, actors, scientists, and heads of state who seem to do just fine on less quantity at the dinner table.

This French acquaintance of mine also noticed that Americans often indulge in second helpings. If the stew was particularly good, we might have a second half-bowl. How many Thanksgivings have you gone back for just a little bit more stuffing? She tells me that the French rarely take second helpings because if you take one item, you must take all of them. Good manners dictates that you must make a complete plate or you have been totally rude to your host. (It's probably tantamount to, say, chewing with your mouth wide open or eating off of someone else's plate) Even if you have room for another slice of the divine roast...you must pass on second helpings if you think you'll be unable to also eat the starch and the vegetables. The French lifestyle and sense of etiquette says that "cherry-picking" second helpings is selfish and makes you look like a bumpkin.

While I was aware that French portions were smaller, I did not know that they usually declined second helpings. I find this insight, however small, to be incredibly informative. How many times do we lament our physiques, but have one more dollop of mashed potatoes after a long, hard day? How many times do we eat another half-serving of rice while cleaning up because it hardly seems like enough to save but it would also be a shame to waste...and then we cannot understand how our favorite pants keep "shrinking in the dryer"?

I don't want to discount the potential benefits of walking/exercising more, choosing healthful/non-saturated fats, having the occasional antioxidant-rich beverage, and so on, but when it comes to losing the spare tire, it's less about WHAT you are eating and more about HOW MUCH you are eating.

Try to do more on less.

That should be our new American lifestyle credo.

Kifli, Kolache, and Rugelach

2010-07-18T10:14:00.004-04:00

Kifli, Kolache, and Rugelach... come again, please??

They are all cookie-sized pastry treats, Eastern-European in origin (Hungarian, Czech, Polish/Yiddish), usually crescent-shaped, filled with sweetened nuts or fruit preserves. Sometimes kolaches are made in the shape of what my mother would call a "thumb print cookie"...small, circular, and with a central depression holding gleaming preserves.

I loved these as a child. My old-world grandmother, who did many wonderful things in the kitchen, also baked from scratch every single day of her adult life. (Well, you have to have dessert, don't you?) She would often make kifli, which she called "horns". They were one of my favorite cookies. I loved the shape, as well as the fresh preserve filling (which she made regularly from the bounty of the big garden on their property).

I was recently asked to make some kolaches, so I set about finding or developing a recipe. I often start this process by talking to my mom, since she has a lot of my grandmother's old-style recipes which are hard to beat. Then, I scour the internet and a battery of cookbooks to compare and contrast subtleties in ingredients, ratios, and so on. Finally, I use all this information to draft my own interpretation of an item.

My mom's recipe seemed to have an unnecessary step, so I omitted that. Another recipe I found required the patience and gentle touch of a seasoned pastry professional, which was going to drive me and my spontaneous streak up the wall. After a fair amount of research, I found two variations of this pastry that I felt worthy of a test run.

The first variation included cream cheese as one of the fats that comprise the pastry dough. This is fairly common in rugelach recipes. It sounded like it would make a rich-tasting, yet tender-textured dough, so I got a batch of that going. The second variation just had butter and egg yolk (no cream cheese) in the dough, and appeared among sources I really trust, so that recipe was worth a go. I also shaped these cookies both as crescents and as "thumb-prints".

I had a more challenging time working with the cream cheese dough. It was very fragile. It had to be kept very cool while working it, which was not easy during this summer heat wave, and required an exacting touch when spooning out the preserves and creating crescent shapes. The butter dough was more forgiving. I feared, however, that it would somehow be lackluster or run-of-the mill...lacking in complexity. But it was considerably easier to work this dough to the appropriate thickness to allow for the right amount of overlap when making the crescent shaped cookies.

During the baking process, the cream cheese dough wanted to expand a little bit (the dairy ingredients give the dough a little puffiness), which made some of the crescents strain their horn-shape and come undone. There was nothing really wrong with them, but they looked sort of homespun. The thumb-prints fared well, though. The butter dough more or less stayed put...in the way that a pie crust would. The butter dough crescents, therefore, looked more attractive, like something you'd buy at a pastry shop.

The final taste-test surprised me. I thought the cream cheese dough would be superior. The cream cheese dough had a nice, tender texture, to be sure, but it also had a very slight aftertaste. My hypothesis is that with a substantial amount of a dairy product in the dough, you can discern the lactic acid, which is a little sour. Side-by-side with the butter dough, which tasted rich but neutral, and had a totally acceptable level of flakiness, I felt that the butter dough came out the victor.

Keep this in mind if you bake, or if you get called upon to do one of those dreaded Christmas-cookie exchanges. When making kifli, kolache, rugelach, or some similar pastry/cookie, you'll want to remember that for ease of manipulation and superior taste, butter dough wins out (unless you have a sentimental attachment to cream cheese dough because your Grandma Mildred always did it that way). And if you are not the patient or dexterous type, do make the thumb-print variation. They taste just as lovely and require less skill and handling (read: you'll be done in half the time).

Turkish(?) Coffee

2010-07-10T10:16:00.003-04:00

I love Turkish coffee. It is strong, bitter, and feels like a treat in the same way that a morsel of really good, really dark chocolate does. It also kick-starts your energy level like nothing else I know. So some mornings, when I really want to get up and go, I make myself a cup.

At least, I think I am making myself a cup of Turkish coffee. I learned the technique from a Serb, not a Turk. When Yugoslavia was torn apart by civil war in the early 1990's, I met a young Serbian refugee at a wild party that featured bowling down a long apartment hallway (Ooof...I pity the building's superintendent). I was pals with Vladimir for a whole Cleveland winter before he headed to a warmer state to settle down in. Vladimir took me to a Greek Orthodox Christmas dinner, taught me how to say unrepeatable things in his native tongue, and taught me how to make Turkish coffee. The housewives in Serbia, he said, drank cup after cup of the stuff all day long. Now that's a "kaffee klatch"!

It really couldn't be easier to make a good, strong cup of coffee:

-Take one and a half times the amount of water you need and put in a saucepan. For example, if you want to finish with 2 cups of Turkish coffee, start with 5 cups of water.
-Add to this DOUBLE the amount of coffee you would use for a standard brew.
-Add 1-2 scant teaspoons of sugar. Please note that this doesn't really sweeten the coffee in a substantial way. It just takes the edge off the bitterness and adds some complexity.
-Bring this to a boil, whisking frequently to incorporate the coffee grounds with the water.
-When it looks well-mixed and it's going at a roiling boil, pull off the heat and pour through a fine mesh strainer directly into a coffee cup. (I do this over the sink because sometimes pouring out of a saucepan is awkward and messy)
-Enjoy your hot, strong coffee

I have no idea if this is exactly what they do in the exotic cafes of Istanbul, but it certainly is an easy way to make a powerful cup of coffee. And after you have finished your cup, it's fun to pretend you can read your coffee grounds just like a gypsy fortune-teller, and make sure to predict that you will have a dynamic and lucky day after enjoying this delightful rocket-fuel!

Did James Bond's Gadget Man, "Q", Stock Your Kitchen?

2010-07-06T19:17:00.009-04:00

I admit it, I'm a Luddite. The Downies were the last family in America to get color TV when I was a wee lass, and the die was cast. I try to be progressive, but really, I think that we, as a people, can do a lot more with a lot less. (This from the woman who once pulled out her aging cell phone during the dawn of the i-pod and got a guffaw and the comment: "Is that one of those old steam-powered cell phones?!") But I stand fast and contine to hold the opinion that we can do more with less regarding our kitchen appointments as well.

While I hold a certain fondness for some ridiculous kitchen gadgets (it amuses me to think of British Royals using their sterling silver asparagus holders), I have little sympathy for the chump who spends his hard-earned dollar on others (a Salad Shooter? Really??!) The all-American entrepreneur/capitalist is always looking out for a new tool to sell the public, and we are only too eager to buy, however questionable its practicality.

Will kitchen gadgets make you a better cook? Make cooking easier for you? Maybe, but probably not. The mere act of cooking more often will make you a better cook AND will reveal shortcuts that ultimately make cooking easier for you.

And now I will tell you the biggest kitchen equipment secret out there. (And please note that this is absolute HERESY) You do not need top-of-the-line/restaurant-quality in every piece of equipment you own.

Don't bake all that often? Great. You don't need a stand mixer.
Don't prep for 15 every day? Terrific. Try one of the less-expensive food processors.
The only thing you use your range for is scrambled eggs? OK...Then why are you looking at the pro model with 20,000 BTU's?

I'm not trying to bring our economy to a screeching halt. You can still buy stuff for the kitchen. How about 3 really good knives? They cost a hundred bucks a pop because they stay sharp. Any Boy Scout leader and any good cook will tell you that a sharp knife is a safe knife...and way more pleasurable to work with. You can also buy a great cutting board. You'll get my seal of approval on a few decent pots and pans. They don't have to be the most expensive or prettiest ones in the store...just good, solid conductors of heat. Don't forget one good cast iron pan. It doubles as a grill and a bread-maker. Properly taken care of, it will outlive your grandchildren. It will be the best $35 you've ever spent at the hardware store (but you can go to a fancy cooking store for the ambience, if you'd like). If you want to spend some big bucks, a good gas range with a properly-vented hood is quite nice.

If you still want to buy more gadgets, you'll get my approval on a cheap food processor. You probably don't need the restaurant-grade Robot Coupe when the Sears version will last you 10-15 years for regular home cooking. Get a good grater or microplane and enjoy it. Splurge on an immersion blender and vow to do pureed soups all winter long. A double-mesh strainer helps make lovely sauces, if you take the time to do that. Dutch Ovens are expensive, but oh! What a lovely roast they make! I personally don't use slow-cookers very often but they are useful to many cooks I respect, so enjoy one if you are so inclined. I want to hate the fondue pot for its relative cost-to-use ratio, but if you have an annual fondue party, nothing works better. If you are trying to keep your husband home on the local watering hole's "wing night", do invest in a small deep fryer and make your Buffalo-style chicken wings. Foreman-style grills look contemptible, but they do make a decent panini. A mandoline can be handy. (But even so, a good cook with a good knife can do nearly as well.)

I can't quite see the logic in so many other things. I've already mentioned the salad shooter. I hate the mini-chopper. (The knive has already been invented.) No self-respecting artisanal baker owns a bread machine. Cake turntable. (I just turn the cake round by hand. Works every time). Egg Poacher. (You can poach an egg in almost any vessel that will receive heat)

I don't want to rain on your parade. I'd just rather see you spend your discretionary cash on a nice vacation rather than on a quasi-useless kitchen gadget. But DO keep cooking and take inspiration from your grandparents and great-grandparents...who turned out flaky strudel with a rolling pin on the dining room table...who made perfect Thanksgiving turkeys with the "wrong" kind of roaster...who peeled apples and vegetables with a good little paring knife and not a fancy ceramic peeler with the ergonomic handle color-coordinated to their granite countertops. *sigh*

Tortilla de Patatas

2010-06-29T20:27:00.007-04:00

It was cool today. I did a lot of hard, physical work and did not so much as muster up a "glow", let alone a bead of perspiration. After I showered and stepped outside to look at my funny-looking flower garden I was, well, a little cold, actually.

We know there are wonderful dinners for cold winter nights (sauerbraten, beef stew, coq au vin) and there are wonderful dinners for hot summer nights (poached salmon, chicken salad, grilled meats and vegetables), but is there something right for a cold, SUMMER night? (Mark Twain, what did you eat in San Francisco?!!)

I improvised with a Spanish Tortilla de Patatas. A Spanish Tortilla is not a bag of corn chips meant to impolitely double-dipped into a jar of store-bought salsa. A Spanish Tortilla is a light, yet hearty omelette of sorts, featuring savory onions and potatoes. Spanish Tortillas are true Cucina de Povera, or the not-so-fancy cooking of regular European folks. And Cucina de Povera is the kind of stuff I live for at the dinner table... simple and delicious.

I start my Tortilla de Patatas with onions, salted and sweated in a cast iron pan. I then add razor-thin potato slices and about a cup of vegetable broth. I sort of saute/boil the potatoes for about 7 minutes until they are soft and the broth is gone. Add a half dozen beaten eggs, a smidge of cheese if you want, and finish the eggs to the consistency you like. Rumor has it, the Spaniards like it runny. I actually bake the whole shootin' match for a couple minutes, frittata-style, to make a more uniformly puffy, yet firm finish.

I served this just above room temperature with a lovely green salad and it was perfect for a cool summer evening. It was hearty, yet felt light. Even mi esposo, who looks askance at entrees that do not feature meat-based protein, went back for second helpings. What a lovely, simple dinner. It was a pleasure to make and a pleasure to enjoy in the chilly, fading light.

Eat it or Freeze it

2010-06-28T07:30:00.002-04:00

This US Department of Agriculture link was provided to me via a social networking site. I am often asked how long food can be kept. My general rule of thumb fits right in with these guidelines: if you are not going to eat it within the next few days, put the item in the freezer. Exceptions include previously-frozen food that you've already thawed in anticipation of cooking or re-heating (never re-freeze something), seafood you bought "fresh" here in Ohio (newsflash: almost ALL of our seafood here in Cleveland has been previously-frozen), and uncooked vegetables (they require parcooking before being frozen). Letting food items linger in the fridge is not necessarily high-risk, but there can be a risk, especially if you have an older refrigerator unit or you do not keep it at an ultra-cold temperature. So although the risk might not be imminent, getting food poisoning, even once, is so miserable, and potentially dangerous, that it is just not worth playing Russian Roulette with your carryout from a few nights ago. REALLY. You do not have to be wasteful or throw away an abundance of food, just wrap your items well and place them in the freezer if you cannot get to them within 3 days or so. Once frozen, most items will keep for months.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/how-long-can-you-refrigerate-or-freeze-food-1753460/

At the Base of Mount Euclid

2010-06-26T14:12:00.004-04:00

Finally, the bum tendon in my foot seems to have recovered enough to allow me to resume my hiking pastime. My dog (my best hiking buddy) is also recovered enough from a winter surgery to handle a good, long trek through the woods. So off we went.

My dog is an excellent hiker. Even in the fall, when the trails disappear under piles of fallen leaves, he can pick out the way to go, leading us safely onward. I'm sure he does some of this by sense of smell, but I've learned to see what he sees and I've gotten better at picking out overgrown, under-used trails, that still lead to some wonderful Brigadoon.

With his uncanny sense of finding the way, we've made the best discoveries...a ruin from a long-gone pioneer settlement, a breathtaking (and walkable) ridge between two deep gulches, a secret clearing that only the deer seem to know about, and the way to the top of Mount Euclid.

If you look on a map, there is no such place as "Mount Euclid." Although I'm sure I didn't discover it, my dog and I count ourselves among the very few visitors to its summit. It is hard to reach. Mount Euclid is a sheer, vertical wall of shale rising straight up for about 100 to 150 feet above the Euclid Creek. You cannot reach it directly, as it would be an impossible face of rock to climb: too soft and too dangerous. Topside, it is bound by private property, so there is no way to drive up , walk around, and just wander on over.

Last fall, we found a way to the top. You have to start your ascent from the side of the monolith, maybe from a half a mile or so away. It is challenging terrain and the last 10 feet are extremely difficult. Those last few feet are really like modified climbing. I still cannot believe that my dog can make it up there, but somehow he can.

At the top, you are treated to a gorgeous clearing dotted with thin pines, lichen-type plants, wildflowers, soaring hawks you can practically reach out and touch, as well as a breathtaking view of the surrounding area. I felt so accomplished the first time I made it up there, that I took regular expeditions there, each time trying to find new ways to the summit. My dog accompanied me on every ascent, and handled each with aplomb.

Not wanting to over-stress my tendon or the dog's recently-healed joint, we merely stood at the base today, looking up at Mount Euclid. We both wanted to climb. My dog was looking up, then looking back at me, then looking up again, as if to say, "Ready, Mom? Ready to go up? Let's go up!" But this was our first challenging hike of the season. Prudence demands that we recondition ourselves...limber up a bit before we can do the more rigorous terrain. Even as we sadly turned back on the trail together, my dog found another derelict path...another possible way to the top. I've filed this in my memory for next time.

So, what does this have to do with food and cooking?

I took today's hike to strike some equilibrium with my caloric intake. We have a busy weekend of family celebrations and special treats that are hard to turn down, and harder still to sample in moderation. What a miraculous blessing that one wonderful pursuit (hiking) enables me to more fully experience another (cooking/eating).

And the ambitious feeling I had stirring in me today at the base of Mount Euclid tells me that I am going to continue doing both for as long as physically possible.

The Breakfast Before Fathers Day

2010-06-19T23:18:00.007-04:00

This wasn't a bad week by any stretch of the imagination, but I am somehow run-down in body, mind, and spirit. And Father's Day is tomorrow. I need a lift and a plan...I'd like to be re-energized so I can give my father (truly one of my best friends on this green earth) a great day.

To get back on track, I think the best thing might be to wake up late and have a good breakfast of broiled grapefruit and sweetened ricotta outside, with the dogs lolling in the morning sun, and let the inspiration come so I can be on my way to show my love and respect for the greatest guy I've ever known.

Chef Jam 2010

2010-06-13T23:18:00.003-04:00

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum hosted a Chef Jam tonight...local chefs offered samples of their wares, each with some rock-and-roll inspiration. It was just really simple, casual food done en masse, but it was FUN.

It was fun because it was so social. I saw some friends from the music world. I saw some friends from the food world. And it was a real treat. Eating well is lovliest when it's a social activity. You can have the best meal in the world set before you but it loses an awful lot of flavor if you are shoveling it in, solitary confinement style, in front of the TV.

If you have a family, put a Dinner Hour rule into effect at least a few times a week. Sit down and talk to each other while you are eating. If you have friends you love to see, invite them over for dinner. You could even make it a potluck if you can't handle all the preparations. If you get wrapped up in your routine (like me)and never seem to go out to dinner...then force yourself to get out of the house a couple times a month. You'll see people and sometimes you soak up the nicest feelings from being around others. And I will swear up and down that the positive presence of others enhances whatever is on your plate, be it chicken wings or skate wings.

Michael Herschman of Menu 6 was selling these great T-shirts at tonight's event that read: "Tune In, Turn On, Eat Out". Excellent advice. Call a friend...share a meal...enjoy the evening.

xoxoxo