Book Cookin'

I went to the main library downtown last week. It is cookbook heaven. Aisles and aisles of nothing but food related volumes. It's amazing how all those authors feel that they have valuable input on the subject. True, food is one of the few common denominators we all have. Everyone has to eat, and everyone wants to eat well. Write a book about it - you have a built-in market. You are bound to get your share.

That being said - a lady recently sent me a cookbook to review. (Yeah I am willing to prostitute myself for my art - are you?) The book is "I Want My Dinner Now!" by Renee Pottle and is published by Hestia's Hearth Publishing and Design. The book is 144 pages long and is soft bound (aka paperback). It retails for $12.95 and can be purchased from their homepage or from Amazon.

While the cover touts this tome to be “Simple Meals for Busy Cooks”, it is really a beginner’s cookbook. It covers basic cooking tasks such as how to boil an egg or cook bacon. There are also pantry lists, discussions on basic spices and some unusual ingredients the average American may not be familiar with. The one thing that I thought was missing was a discussion of basic kitchen ware. If I am not familiar with cooking, how am I going to know what pots and pans to buy? Sure, you can buy a big set, but who needs a tiny skillet if you are feeding a family of six? (On the other hand, if you have a family of six, you are probably concentrating on something other than cooking.)

The recipes are fairly basic as well. While there are recipes such as Vegetable Curry and Paella, the recipes have been altered to fit American palates and pantries. For example, the Vegetable Curry calls for sour cream to be stirred in at the end. There is a heavy use of canned goods and dried herbs as befits a book that extols the virtues of a well stocked pantry. The one thing I found really disturbing is the use of dried garlic and onion in lot of the recipes. It only takes a couple minutes to peel and chop some onion and garlic, and those items are things that I was taught to always keep in my pantry. Plus, basic knife skills are always a good thing to practice. Just ask Jason Vorhees.

I do like how the recipes are formatted. Each one has measurements for 2 and 6 people. If you need to cook for 4 - just double the ingredients for 2 servings. Each recipe also spells out a grocery list, what items should be in your pantry and what you will have to buy at the store. It makes it easy to plan a week's worth of meals while leafing through the book.

So in all fairness, I should make something from the book to test it out. Problem is, most of the recipes held no real appeal for me. As an established cook, I have a repertoire of recipes and my dishes have been honed to meet my family's tastes and my cooking style. I just don't use canned mushrooms. Bleck. And I definitely don't put sour cream in my quick potato and chickpea curry. So I decided to let a member of my kitchen posse, Debbie, take a whack at producing some of these recipes.

Debbie chose to make Better Than a Burger Meatloaf. The description of the recipe says “The version of our favorite comfort food includes all the usual burger trimmings". I would amend that to say "everything but lettuce." I hear it doesn't do well in the oven.

When I was growing up – my mom would say to me, “Why don’t you like meatloaf? It’s just like a hamburger, but baked instead.” Well, my mom’s burgers were pretty dry and tasteless, and her meatloaf even worse. The title of the recipe did not really instill a whole bunch of confidence in me, but I trusted Debbie’s judgment.

There was my first mistake. Did I mention Debbie could cook? She does, and rather well at that. That is a problem though. An experienced cook can’t help but toss in a little of this and a little of that, improving and experimenting along the way. Debbie’s first attempt at the meatloaf was really good. But it wasn’t the recipe in the book.





Feeling a little guilty, Debbie made the recipe again the following week. This time she followed the recipe exactly. The recipe ended up rather bland and the texture was dry. Most meatloaf recipes call for some type of vegetation, such as onions, that will exude moisture into the mix as it cooks and help replace the fat lost during baking. I mean it wasn’t as bad as my mom’s meatloaf (nothing could be that bad), but it wasn’t all that great either.

If I were a student in college or a widower just learning how to cook, I would have been impressed with my first attempt at meatloaf following the recipe. But as an experienced cook, it left a lot to be desired. Of course, top anything with enough ketchup…

Over all, "I Want My Dinner Now!" is a good book for a novice cook. It contains basic recipes with easy to follow instructions, ingredient lists and variable serving sizes. Will it be coming off of my cookbook shelf any time soon? Nope, but that is because I am experienced cook, not because the cookbook is bad. However, when my daughter goes off to college in three years, this book will find its way into her household, because she is going to need all the help she can get.

P.S. I have attached a pdf of the recipe to this review so that you can see the formatting of the book as well as the recipe.

P.P.S. The side dish that Debbie made to go with the meatloaf was peas and artichokes from a Greek cookbook her sister in Chicago gave her. It was fantastic. I will have to wrestle the recipe from her soon...

Amuse this!

Ok - I tend to be a pretty down to earth gal. I tend to call ‘em like I see ‘em and sometimes – just occasionally- I get tired of all the hoity toity terms used in food circles.

Take my most recent pet peeve – amuse bouche. I was over at The Restaurant Widow’s joint. She talked about the wonderful radishes she got and how she paired them up with bread and butter to make an amuse bouche. Ya know – when I was growing up – that was called a pre-dinner snack. It’s the kind of thing my mom would give to the starving children so they wouldn’t waste away before dinner hit the table in twenty minutes.

If I were dining at the French Laundry – I might expect to get something called an amuse bouche. Hell, for $210 per person, it should be a freaking hysterical bouche. It better be a “front row seat at my favorite comedien” bouche or “The kid in 5th grade who always made me laugh so hard milk shot out my nose” bouche.

Next thing ya know - they will be offering amuse bouche at your local Mickey D’s. I mean they got oranges and fresh soy beans in their new salads – why not grab onto a new buzzword as well. “Hello, Welcome to McDonald’s. Would you like to try one of our new McBouches?”

So, to keep my taste buds amused, I am pleased to say that I have been snacking on fresh radishes from the garden – pretty damn tasty. Plus some fresh baby spinach…that I am going to use in a pasta dish tomorrow night – I might even post pictures if it tickles my fancy.

Tonight, however, I decided to warp a recipe from Bourdain’s book – Frisee aux Lardons. (It’s ok for me to use French words here – it’s a French dish.) Basically, it is what my mom would have called a wilted salad, which she adored. It takes frisee – more commonly know as curly endive - and tosses it with crispy fried bacon bit and shallots, and topped off with chicken liver vinaigrette that has been warmed in the same skillet that was used to fry the bacon. It is served with toasted baguette rounds smeared with a nice strong blue cheese. Excuse me – bleu cheese.

Not having chicken liver vinaigrette hanging around the kitchen, Mr. Bourdain will have to forgive me for substituting in a nice red wine vinegar and olive oil vinaigrette instead. I also added two poached eggs on top (having picked up some fresh eggs from the farmer’s market this morning) which mixed nicely with the bitter greens and vinaigrette. Pared with a crusty roll, it was an awesome dinner. And my mouth was laughing all the way.

Rosie’s Frisee aux Lardon (or Wilted Salad with Bacon and Eggs)

Two medium heads of curly endive or frisee
Half pound of bacon, cut into coarse dice
½ cup of thinly sliced sweet onion
¾ cup red wine vinaigrette (homemade using the basic ratio 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 oil)
4 eggs, poached

Clean the endive. Wash well and tear into bite size pieces. Dry and place into large bowl. Add the thinly sliced onions to the bowl.

Brown off the bacon until crisp. Put aside. Do not sample while making rest of recipe. Drain all but two tablespoons of bacon fat from the pan. Add the vinaigrette to the pan and bring to a boil. Take off heat and immediately pour hot dressing over salad. Toss to distribute evenly.

Divide the salad into serving bowls and top with bacon.

Poach eggs over simmering water. Remove from pan with slotted spoon and allow to drain before placing on salad. Top with salt and freshly grated pepper.

To Eat: Break eggs and mix with dressing before eating. Use crusty bread to wipe up last of dressing.

So - watcha doing?

Well, I have tons of half finished entries and a serious lack of time. After giving me my dream schedule for a whole two weeks, my manager asked me to switch to one that would work better for the other person in my department – effectively killing a new series of columns I was going to write. Damn damn damn.

Next, I have been working on my garden. A friend of a friend called me up last February and said, “Will you help me plant a garden this spring? My yard looks really empty. I think it’s a nesting instinct or something.” I will tell you, starting a garden from scratch is one of those things – that if you knew just how much work it was going to involve – you would just as soon tell the person who suggested the idea to go to hell. Being ignorant, I said, “Sure!”

How much work was it you ask? Well, let’s just say that when I had to get a hatchet to take out the 5” diameter tree roots, I knew I was in over my head.

Now that all the prep work has been done, it’s not too bad. I planted green beans, hot pepper plants, tomatoes, herbs, spinach and a few more misc. tasty treats. I just finished pulling up radishes. They are good – but I want tomatoes now dammit!! Salsa, fried egg and tomato sandwiches – hell, just fresh off the vine. Who do I have to kill for a ripe tomato!!??

Here is a picture of some of my plants – exciting isn’t it?! They are all...ummm….green and stuff…

So while I have been “working hard”, I do still find time to read other people’s blogs. My favorite post of late is on Cuban Bread from Raspil over at Bluecad. I am sorry that her archive of posts recently disappeared - as she had some great step by step instructions on things like veal stock and ummmm – how to make porn bread - and a lot of other interesting things.

Another bit of interesting news and then I will let you go back to wandering the net aimlessly - I recently auctioned off my chocolate cheesecake for the March of Dimes fundraiser at work. My cake has become legendary among the staff and a bidding war ensued. The final tally: Forty greenback to help ‘lil tiny babies. The gal who lost out at the last minute was kinda upset at being outbid, so I told her I would make her one too, provided she matched the winning bid. So forty more dollars for the lil babies!! Overall - our staff of 22 people raised just over $2,000.00. Sorry there isn’t a picture of the cheesecake, but they disappeared in less time than it took me to make them. Next year, I will hire guards to keep the pack of hungry scavengers at bay until I can get my camera out!

So cross your fingers for me - I want to make some tasty food for my buddies this weekend. I just invested in an electric griddle and the world has become a cornicopia of wonderful junk food I can make for my friends ...

Triple Threat - TSIR #2

I recently met a gentleman who was appalled that I had eaten very little from my ethnic food background when growing up. My mother was of Polish decent and my father’s family was German. However, most of the foods that I ate were very middle of the road “American”. Bean soup, meatloaf, pot roast, liver and onions…you know, all the stuff that most people eat every time they pull their chair up to the dinner table. (Well maybe not the liver – I hated the liver, but loved the gravy…but more on that another time…)

By and large, traditional American cooking uses ginger, cinnamon and anise as “sweet” spices. Cookies, cakes and breads – they reflect a certain Northern European sensibility that demands that every spice be kept in it proper place. My house was no different. My mom would have blanched at using cinnamon in a meat sauce or allspice in a barbeque rub… Those spices are for sweet stuff! Heresy!

I will never forget the first time I had cinnamon is a savory dish. When I was a kid, I accidentally grabbed a tin of cinnamon out of the cupboard and sprinkled it over my over easy eggs instead of black pepper. The rule in my house was - you make it, you eat it. With Mom standing over my shoulder, I had to follow the rule. It was freakin’ nasty. I do not recommend it.

Since I have moved out into the wide world, my palate has expanded quite a bit. Indian, Ethiopian, Moroccan – you name it, I like eating it. And being the culinary heretic that I am, the use of “sweet” spices in a savory dish doesn’t bother me in the least. Sorry Mom!

So that being said, my pick for TSIR #2: Sweet or Savory is Cinnamon Beef. I had this dish in Vegas a few years ago, and fell in love with the flavor combination. It is a variation on a “red-cooked” dish from China that combines cinnamon, ginger and anise (“sweet” spices from my childhood) with soy sauce, chilies, garlic and onion to make a melting rich meat sauce to be served over noodles topped with sautéed spinach. Every so often I get an immense craving for the dish. This time, Barbara woke up my taste buds when she posted this event. All I could think of was this dish – yummy! Thanks Barabara!

So here you have it: Cinnamon Beef. The best thing about this dish is that it tastes better every time you heat it up. It freezes well too – if you have any left!

Cinnamon Beef Noodles

6 Servings

1 teaspoon safflower or corn oil

Chile-Cinnamon Seasonings:

6 scallions, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2-inch sections, and smashed lightly with the flat side of a knife

6 cloves garlic, peeled, smashed lightly with the flat side of a cleaver, and thinly sliced

4 slices fresh ginger (about the size of a quarter), smashed lightly with the flat side of a knife

1 1/2 teaspoons hot chile paste

2 cinnamon sticks

1 small piece star anise

8 1/2 cups water

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 pounds chuck or beef stew meat, trimmed of fat and gristle, and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes

10-ounces spinach, trimmed, rinsed, and drained

1/2 pound flat Chinese wheat-flour noodles, udon, or other flat noodles, such as fettuccine, cooked until just tender, rinsed under warm water, and drained

3 tablespoons minced scallions

1. Heat a large pot or casserole over medium-high heat. Add the oil and heat until hot, about 30 seconds. Add the chile-cinnamon seasonings and stir-fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Add the water and soy sauce and bring to a boil. Add the beef and bring back to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, or until the beef is very tender. Skim the surface to remove any impurities or fat. Remove the ginger slices, anise and cinnamon sticks and discard. Sauté spinach briefly in a small amount of oil with some garlic, until wilted.

2. Divide the noodles among six soup bowls. Ladle the meat and broth over the noodles and top with the sautéed spinach. Sprinkle with the scallions. Serve.

I've been canonized!

A lady customer told my boss that I was a saint. I think she mistook exhaustion for patience and understanding. I just stared and smiled the whole fourty five minutes I was dealing with her - as coma patients often will. The weekend cannot get here fast enough...

BTW I got roped into having a home decorating party - don't think I mentioned that before - if I did, sorry. The gals from work and I are going to drink sangria and look at craptastic crap made in China. It looks like the stuff my elderly aunt used to have in her house. I am going to ask the sales lady if they have any display cases for my Hellraiser figures. I think I will bring them for show and tell. There - take that, you blackmailing bitch! I think I am going to have a hangover this Sunday morning too.

Dinner last night? Long John Silver's. I've hit the bottom of the barrel. Did I eat it? Hell yes. There is some tasty stuff in the bottom of that barrel.

Bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan. Yes I do feel better. Thank you.

Me? Busy? Nah...

So it is now Wednesday Morning - I have 27 hours racked up at work as of 8pm last night. While my paycheck will look great, it means I have been eating whatever can come out of the fridge and into my mouth with a minimum of effort. Yummmmmm leftover roast beef sandwiches...

IMBB - what's that? Oh yeah - another opportunity missed dammit.

With any luck, I will be footloose and fancy free this coming Friday so I can tempt you with my favorite foods...

And a big thanks to fluffygurl for saying I was one of her favorite food blogs.

See ya all later!

Slackin' as usual

Ok – instead of going to my favorite secret place to eat this past week, I went to La Porte, Indiana instead. What is in La Porte, Indiana? Every year a friend of ours has a house party with a live band and a couple of kegs. Everyone attending reverted to about 1/3 of their true age and has a great time. This year the cops even showed up asking us to keep it down. Woohoo! Old people rock!

Here is our friend Mike (in the middle) playing with his band. I do not have any incrimating photos of him the next morning. No really, Mike - I don't. Honest. Well maybe just one....


I also cooked breakfast the following day, since there is no place that will feed twenty hung over people on a Sunday morning in La Porte. Did I take pictures of this grand feast? Hell no – I was busy turning flapjacks, cooking bacon and making coffee. And we went through a lot of coffee.

So a word of advice – four pounds of bacon, five dozen eggs, thirty pancakes and two pounds of coffee is not enough for twenty people with hangovers. Buy more. Lots more.

One of the best things about traveling the same route every year is that we get to eat at tiny places that no one has ever heard about. I am not talking about a hot new chef or food that is stacked up in little pyramids – this is gas station food.

See, in big cities, gas stations really don’t have much in the way of tasty food. When you get out in the boonies, gas stations usually double as a restaurant for the masses. No Micky D’s in your town? Head on down to JP’s Carry Out and get yourself a pizza or some fine broasted chicken! Wait - need something for that man sized appetite? Try a pork fritter sandwich!


Basically, it is a piece of pork loin, pounded thin, breaded and deep fried. Serve it up on a bun with all the fixins and it is a damn fine lunch break for a weary traveler. The one I ate this time-the pork was the size of a small plate. Hmmmmmmmmmmm…too bad I only get it once a year.


In other junk food news, I picked up twenty 2-liters of Kosher Coke. For those of us in the know, it is the yearly chance to buy mass quantities of our favorite beverage made with REAL SUGAR. Yes, no high fructose corn syrup in this product. Does it make a difference - you bet your sweet bippy it does! The cola is less viscous and has a cleaner finish on the palate. IT is just like Coke used to be. Don’t believe me? Check out this recording from NPR.

I am thinking of making my own syrups - I love ginger beer and it is hard as heck to find a brand that I like. My grandfather and his brother-in-law used to run a soda bottling works out of an outbuilding at ye olde family abode. I still have one of the original bottles and a business card. So it runs in the blood. If you want it done right - do it yourself!


Well, maybe this week I will settle down and stop teasing you with my wonderful food finds - time to get back in the kitchen and start cooking!

You can't have none! Its mine!

There are things you can afford to share with people because there is a lot of it to go around. If you make a big batch of cookies, you are probably willing to share. On the other hand, your sister comes back from France and brings you some creations from La Maison du Chocolat - are you gonna share those with the gals from work? Hell no! You hubby will be lucky if he even gets to sniff the empty box. That what I mean when I talk about things you are willing to share and things you are not.

Take McDonald’s - no one really shares the Golden Arches. They do just fine on their own. And what about that restaurant that serves great waffles just around the corner? Sure, you might be willing to share that with your friends and relatives. (Do not share with that creepy guy at work - don't ever tell him anything! He probably keeps a file on you at home.)

But what if you know that by sharing, you would cut into the availability of the goodies? Personally, I will usually keep those places to myself. Am I being selfish? Damn tootin’. By and large, the owners aren’t hurting, but they only make a small amount of goods every day and if you spill the beans, you KNOW you won’t get your part.

So today, I am going to be generous and share something with you. That means even if a ton of people stampede over to the store and buy up everything the shop owner has, she will have plenty for me when I roll out of bed at a leisurely 10 am and wander over to the store. If this were not the case, you would have to insert bamboo under my nails to get me to talk - and even that might not work!

See this?

That is a picture of one of the best cinnamon rolls I have ever eaten. The texture of the pastry is moist with just a little bit of chew, the cinnamon is balanced: not so strong that it overwhelms you, but not so subtle that you forget what you are eating. The topping is crunchy and sweet without the cloying, overly sweet icing most rolls seem to feature these days. Cinnabons? Fuey! Get thee behind me, Crap!

My hubby took one bite from his roll and made me go back and buy more – all for him. I realized if I wanted more – I would have to fight him for it. (The doctor says that the stitches will come out next week!)

This sexy creature came from Amy Lozier of Omega Artisan Baking in the North Market. You remember her from the last post. Not only were her cinnamon rolls to die for, her bread rocked as well. So get off your duff, into your car and down to the North Market. Tell her Rosie sent ya!

Here is one more sexy closeup for the road.

Next time - no more Mrs. Nice Rosie. I will talk about the best place to eat that I won’t share with you.

I love shopping, shopping, shopping - I love shopping for food!

I have always loved visiting grocery stores and peering at the boxes, bags and cans that represent the sustenance needed for our bodies. When I was in college, I loved getting on the bus and heading downtown to the North Market, into the decrepit Quansit hut that housed it at the time, and buying the fresh produce and wonderful meats and cheeses that I could only find there.

I was a little sad when the hut was torn down and the market moved into a newly renovated warehouse. Sure it was a little seedy, but that was part of the mystique. It seemed more real than the local grocery store. The food tasted better and you felt as though you were part of the chain of farmer to market to consumer. Sure some of the people were a little creepy – but a good loaf of bread will make me forgive a lot of failings in my fellow man.

I have only been down to the market about four times since the transfer. A lot of the old venders couldn’t afford to make the transition. It was like visiting your uncle after he had a sex change. He looked real pretty but he still wasn’t quite right.

So what dragged me down there this time? Well, part of it was to visit Curds and Whey, the best cheese shop in the city. Mike Kast, the owner, knows spoiled milk like no one else in the city, and the orgasmic cheese orgy that follows a trip to his fine establishment is worth any amount of pain and aggravation. This time, I asked Mike to suggest three cheeses that Tony and I could eat with the bread we had just purchased from the Omega Bakery. Living up to his reputation, he hooked us up with a pungent Bleu des Causses, a Taleggio Vero Cademartori and a nutty Gruyere. Hmmmmmm - my mouth started watering thinking about them – hang on, I am having cheese flashback. Cheese, Grommit!

I also had designs on picking up some baked goods while I was there, including the afformentioned Omega bakery and pasteries from Jurgen’s bakery. Jurgen’s is no longer in the market – I have no idea how long its been since they left, but it a loss. Their spot has been claimed by fairly uninteresting purveyors in new age somethings or others. Omega - well, that is a different story. Amy Lozier is the owner and damn girl! That is some fine baking.

As I wandered North along the aisle, I was drawn in by a display case of ravioli. They were striped. Well some of them were - others were pink! Just beautiful. The case belonged to Pastaria, who have been at the market about 18 month (if I recollect correctly). Turns out, Pastaria is the retail outlet for a local pasta maker who usually only sells to the trade. So if you are looking to buy some primo pasta - you now have a destination. I picked up a pound of their garlic green beans with pine nuts. The beans made my taste bud do a dance of joy.

Lastly, I picked up ten pounds of mixed chicken parts for stock at North Market Poultry. I did so well at the beef stock, I decided to put away some chick stock as well. Nothing like tasty backs, necks and wing tips to make a flavorful stock. I have included a picture of some nasty chicken bits for the faint of heart. I think there may be some chopped liver in my future!

Of course, these are the only places I stopped in on this trip. I want to go back soon and pick up some fine pasta and sauces from Pastaria, fish from Bob the Fish Guy and meat from Bluecreek Farms. I most likely will head down in April when their farmers’ market returns. I can’t wait.

Damn you, Tony Bourdain!

I received Tony Bourdain’s book, Les Halles Cookbook, as part of the Amateur Gourment’s Secret Santa book exchange. I wish I could remember the name of the gal who sent it to me, but being dim-witted, I can no longer find my notes. It is actually one of my favorite books in my collection and I am sorry I cannot thank my kind Secret Santa pal appropriately.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Tony Bourdain pisses some people off. He is pretty socially unacceptable. Drinkin’, smokin’, cussin’ and getting’ stoned does not make him the best role model in the world. But it works for him - and it definitely works for me. I like him because he reminds me of all the hard partying cooks I met during my short stint as a fish cutter at a now defunct high end restaurant. That job made me admire a crew that could crank out 500 meals in a night and still have the energy to party afterwards. It also let me know that I do not have what it really takes to be a good cook in a restaurant environment. I love food, but it’s the love of a home cook who likes to cook according to her own whim, not the whim of 500 other hungry souls and a demanding chef.

Food TV, I think, regrets their brief, yet violent association with Mr. Bourdain. He was just a little to “on edge” for the white bread, goody two shoes image they like to promote. I think the best thing about A Cook’s Tour was reading the accompanying book. While the national food media may be editing him for prime time, he pulls no punches in his writing. I respect that. He may be a whore, but he is a whore with principles. (He probably doesn’t do Golden Showers either. I’ll make a point to ask if I ever meet him.)

The good news is, while Food TV was a little to pansy for him, he seems to have found a good home on the Travel Channel. I mean they renewed his series “No Reservations” for another season. I have to wonder if they made him promise not to write a book about it…hmmmm…

So, Tony Bourdain, thanks for making me want to be a better cook. You bastard.

Today- I tackled making brown stock. I had always avoided it. Why? The raft. To clarify a stock, you have to put this god-awful mess of eggs whites and ground meat and other stuff on top and simmer the stock until it gets all nice and clear. Plus, I never really had a good place to store it. Tony (the hubby, not the chef) bought me a chest freezer to store my frozen goods in. So with the advent of the freezer and a lot of verbal abuse from Tony Bourdain (via Les Halles Cookbook) – I grabbed the bull by the horns and made some beef stock.

Bourdain says up front this stock will not get me a position in a four star kitchen anytime soon, but it will make some killer food on the home front. That’s all I can really ask.

The basics are very simple - browned bones, browned mire pox, water, peppercorns, thyme and bay leaves. Put in a pot and simmer. Skim. Strain. Enjoy. If you want to know Tony’s exact instructions, grab a copy of the book and read. I just hope your ego is up to a good pounding.

Give that back! It's mine!

Well once again I missed all the cool monthly blogging events - I swear I am gonna start doing them two weeks ahead. Of course I say that now – but you know I am fibbing!

So instead of blogging, I have been thinking. (Pauses while the jokes fly – no, there is not smoke coming from my ears - and you can’t hear the gears grinding! hardee har har.) I recently read this post on The Fellowship of FSFE. The summation (for those of you who hate page hopping) is that a German chef living in Rome is asking for a cookyright on his food creations. In this case, every time you cook one of his dishes, you must attribute the recipe to him.

It reminded me of magic - magicians are very concerned about who gets credit for what trick. When you publish an effect you should document your influences, references and sources if you can. And if you don’t, there will be hell to pay with the fellow members of the community. Lord forbid if someone else published a similar effect in a magazine 50 years ago and you did not remember reading it 20 years back. (The technical term “effect” is used by some magi instead of “tricks”. Makes it sound more technical and less like a practical joke, I guess. Or maybe it makes them sound more like performers instead of prostitutes. Your call.)

I book marked this page and let everything percolate. It was an interesting concept. How could you “copyright” food? I mean, pasta is pasta; tomato sauce is tomato sauce. Can what one chef do to the base recipe be so different that it deserves to be attributed to him alone? Even if a person puts together ingredients in what he believes is a novel fashion, what is to say that other people are not using the same ingredients to create foods in a similar vein?

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I remember a lecture from an anthropology class. It was about the dissemination of technology among cultures. One theory held that all technology was developed by one group of people and then was spread through contact with other groups. Kind of like a venereal disease or something. Another theory held that people who were exposed to similar problems would come up with similar solutions without any contact with each other.

Cooking is really a type of technology. It takes raw ingredients and using existing processes, produces a final composite product. Originally, we learned those technologies from those around us – extended family and neighbors. People who traveled would bring back information from outside sources and that information was incorporated into the local “vocabulary”, but by and large, each isolated group created food that fit the locale that they lived in using what was on hand and in season.

The advent of modern means of idea transmission, starting with the printing press, has broken down the walls of isolation that separate these small pockets of cooks. The internet has accelerated these processes even more. How many of us own woks? I do. And I know my mother didn’t or my grandmother. I also know that if I want to learn all about Indian vegetarian cooking, I can just hop on over to Indira’s site and read away. When my mother was a young woman, there was almost no information about real Indian cooking here in the States. The closest she could come to the real McCoy were things like tinned curried powders which people incorporated into recipes, but usually in a very Western manner - things like curried chicken salad or Country Captain.

Now that everyone has access to the same database of ideas and influences, how can anyone say that they invented a way of cooking that may have been developed independently by some other person on the other side of the globe? Look at the telephone; Al Bell may have won the patent, but Elisha Gray was working on the same thing at the same time. If he had been a little quicker, we may all be talking about “Pa Grey” instead of “Ma Bell”.

How can you even assume that something such as “cookyright” could be established much less enforced? Ideas that have been forgotten are constantly being recreated. Old techniques are being revived and new applications being found. How about the science experiment with frozen nitrogen ice cream? That “fun” idea has spawned everything from Dippin’ Dots to high end cuisine. So who came up with the original idea for the ice cream? Do we see him credited when someone is talking about their use of the idea? No.
I have tons of recipes in my file, all written on stained 3 x 5 index cards that were collected from years of church recipe swaps. If I take one of those recipes, modify it and then publish it on my blog - how can I give proper credit? I have no idea if that original recipe was created by the person who gave me the card or if she got it from some lady’s magazine 30 years ago.

Now, I want you to go take a gander at Food Hacking. The gentleman who runs this blog sites sources and influences, but does not claim that he is the sole owner of the ideas. He says those ideas are public domain.

Is food more of a meme than an idea that can be categorized, quantified and claimed? Cooking and food preparation are central to our every day lives. That is why we obsess on it, why we worry about what we are cooking for dinner or the quality of the last restaurant experience. Every book and magazine we read, every television show we watch, every meal we eat leaves a lasting impression that effects how we approach our next meal. When we create a “new” recipe, we are standing on the shoulders of those that came before us.

To our German friend, I’ll grant you a “cookyright” as long as you credit every single cook that worked on the recipe before you - from the person who invented pasta to the sous chef who tasted it and recommended a pinch more salt. Get crackin’ dude – you have your work cut out for you!

A bit of bone from my man

One of the best things about being married is sharing the things you love with the person you love most. Tony and I have been married fifteen years now and we still get to share new things every day.

Take a few months ago, for example. Tony and I were camped out on the couch watching Tony Bourdain’s Cook’s Tour. It was the episode where he goes to St. John restaurant headed up by Fergus Henderson. The restaurant is dedicated to eating foods that are no longer socially acceptable like pig trotters, tongue and tripe. As a starter, Tony Bourdain gets a serving of bone marrow with parsley salad. My hubby looks over at me and says, “You know, I really love marrow. I haven’t had any in twenty years. It’s really hard to find now unless you order it special.”

Fifteen years, and I never knew. I was devastated. When I got married, I learned to cook dishes I knew my hubby loved: pot roast, lentil soup and fried rice among others. But not once did he ever mention that he loved marrow. So I picked up a copy of Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson and learned to make marrow bones.

My only drawback was finding marrow bones. Schuman’s does not carry marrow bones. I finally was able to find them through Meijer’s. Turns out that they get them precut and vacuum packed, so I had to take what I could get. I am in the process of finding someone who can customer cut the bones for me. In the meantime, the precut bones will have to do.

It’s funny that it is so hard to find bones in the butcher shops, considering every animal is full of them. We slaughter about 27 million cattle every year, but you hardly ever see bones in the meat case or on the dinner plate. I have to wonder how much of the “boneless meat syndrome” is a result of the Great Depression and WWII. I know, I know, you think this is some hair brained notion by some wacko.

But consider this – my parents both grew up during the Great Depression. My mother endured rationing during the war. They both went to great lengths to make sure that their children would not have to endure the hardships that they did. We only got the best of everything. It was the same with all the other kids who had parents from that generation – most never had to raise animals for meat or home can vegetables and fruit. The Baby Boomers were removed from the nasty dirty world of food production.

Also, with women entering the work force during the war and in ever increasing numbers afterwards, there was a need for quick cooking protein sources. Women who were working outside the home no longer had the time to cook large cuts of meat. Boneless cuts cook more quickly and eventually, the Boomers and their offspring became accustomed to seeing boneless or nearly boneless meat on the dinner table. Thanks to convenient prepackaged foods and boneless cuts, Gen X became even more detached from what a real dead animal looked like. Unless it was road kill - and that didn’t do anything to improve the image.

Some food writers seem mystified by the fact that most of the American population is turned off by the thought of boney meat. It is what we have become accustomed to. It is what we grew up eating, as right or wrong as that may be. Think of it like music - if you are used to listening to music from Europe based on diatonic scales and then suddenly had to listen to music from China, which is based on pentatonic-diatonic scales- you would say to yourself “what kind of crazy stuff is this?” You can’t just throw boney meat back on the market and expect it to be embraced by a culture that has not been taught how to appreciate it.

Ok, let me put the soap box away and talk about some yummy food.

So anyhow – Tony announced that he really really loved marrow and wanted to have some - some day….and looked at me with those big sad puppy eyes. And off I went on my quest for the rarest thing in meatdom – marrow bones.



Fergus Henderson calls for 3 inch bones and roasting them for 20 minutes. Because my bones were so thin – I just broiled them. I toasted some good bread and made up Henderson’s parsley salad. Tony had misgivings about the salad, but it the perfect way to cut the richness of the fatty marrow. Needless to say - the spark is still in our marriage after fifteen years, with the help of a little bit of bone and some parsley.

I am not going to give you the recipe – mostly because I want you to go get the book and read it. Fergus (yes, I am on a first name basis with him now.) says things like “…lightly chop your parsley, just enough to discipline it…” and “…when you smell it, it will smell quite umpfy.” It’s a great read and an even better eat.

Hot Java Jive

I used freelance for a local coffee roaster. The company required me to work out of their offices which were attached to the coffee roasting facilities. The best perk: every time the roasters got a new batch of green coffee, they were required to roast a small batch and everyone in the office got to taste it for “comparison”. I am telling ya folks, nothing beats fresh roasted, fresh brewed coffee. Before my job at the roaster, I used to be happy just drinking coffee out of the vat at work. Now, Maxwell House just don’t get it for this girl.

So, when I can afford it, I like to stop by my local coffee roasters and pick up a batch of really good beans, grind them fresh and brew myself up a mess of fine coffee. The problem is – I had a drip style pot a la Mr. Coffee. True, it’s a far cry for the percolator but it still does not brew a great cup of java. I then went to a French press, which I found to be tasty but it always seemed to have some “sediment” in the bottom of cup when I finished. I do not want to look at sludge in the morning. Its bad enough I have to look at myself in the mirror, much less “mud” in my morning cup o joe.

I figured I would be doomed to the morning sludge when I came across a new type of coffee pot. It didn’t require me to plug it in. It wasn’t made out of fragile glass. It’s called the AeroPress. The press is made by Aerobie,Inc. in Palo Alto, CA. Are they manufactures of food paraphernalia you ask? No, they make items like flying discs. The inventor behind the company is Alan Adler, an engineering instructor from Stanford University. Take a look at this thing - it looks like something that a techie would come up with. I’m cool with that being a geek myself. Function over form anytime baby!

Let me just briefly describe the workings of the Aeropress. The main body of the press consists of a tube with a disposable microfilter on the business end. The grounds are measured with a provided scoop and placed into the body of the press. (One scoop equals one serving of espresso.) A handy funnel is provided to facilitate this and prevent grounds from scattering all over your counter. The other important part is the plunger. It consists of a hollow tube with a neoprene seal on the bottom. (The plunger can also double as a measuring cup for heating your water in the microwave - in case you don’t have access to a stove! Very nice thinking, Alan.)

Procedure: Water must be heated to a temperature between 165 and 175 degrees. Do not boil. The grounds are measured into the body with the handy scoop and funnel. Once the water has reached the proper temperature you pour the hot water over the grounds, stir with the handy provided stirring implement, insert the plunger and compress the grounds to extract all the coffee goodness. Of course this is a very skimpy description - but you can download the actual instructions for the procedure from the company website.

So how is this different from the French Press? First, the filter is much finer. A French press does not get all the sediment filtered out. Even when you use a coarse ground coffee from a burr grinder, you still end up with very fine particles in the cup. With a French press, if you do not drink everything right away, the remaining coffee sits in the pot and “steeps” the grounds, which can make the brew bitter. In the Aeropress method, the liquid passes through the grounds makes a kind of coffee concentrate. What comes out of the working end into the glass is strong. Espresso strong. This is good because you can then dilute it to the desired strength. My hubby likes his coffee to put hair on his chest while I like a traditional cup of Americano Now, we both get our way with only one procedure. You can even make the “coffee base” ahead and add hot water to it, kind of like the toddy method.

I found this product very easy to use. The key to success is preparation and consistency. You only have a few seconds to get the heated water into the press once it hits the right temperature. I actually started using an instant read thermometer to make sure I got the temperature just right, because once I let it get higher than 175, I could taste the bitterness that crept into the brew. As far as consistency, I had to make quite a few batches of coffee before I found the right formula of coffee to water. If you use an espresso roast and grind, you will get different results than if you were using a city roast with a drip grind. If you are not a thinker first thing in the morning, you might want to consider the making the concentrate the night before and adding hot water to it for that first wake-me-up cup. Since I had my new toy, I wanted to see what other people would think about the coffee it produced. That called for a party. Well, a small one. Actually, I just got together with Debbie and Gail for a coffee clache. Gail invited one of her neighbors, Lillian, to join us. Gail, Debbie and I used this as a chance to try out some new recipes. Gail contributed crepes filled with scrambled eggs, bacon and cheese sauce plus some killer cinnamon rolls. Debbie brought some almond pound cake. She confessed that she cheated by using a mix. (Tsk, tsk Debbie!) It was still good, but the almond flavor was just a tad artificial. Me-I’ve been playing with yeast doughs from my 1946 Joy of Cooking and made a yeast coffee cake topped with apples and walnuts. It was good, but it still needs a lot of work before I share the recipe.

Once we were all filled up, we turned to the taste test. Here is how I set up the experiment. First, I bought fresh roasted coffee from a local purveyor. I chose a medium roast Costa Rica and bought three different forms: whole bean, drip grind and coarse grind (for the French press).

Next, Gail procured some bottled water so that we would not have any off flavors from the local water supply.

The three methods of brewing were: Automatic Drip, French Press and Aeropress. For the Automatic Drip machine and the Aeropress, I used pre-ground coffee. For the French Press, I used the Coarse ground coffee. I made the brew according to the instructions for the respective equipment and poured the liquids into numbered cups. I also provided a glass of water for each taster. The tasters did not know which brew was in what numbered cup.

The tasters first sniffed the cups to assess the aroma.

• Cup 1-all tasters agreed that this sample had little aroma
• Cup 2- all tasters agreed that this sample had a strong aroma
• Cup 3- all tasters agreed that this sample had a strong aroma.

Next, each taster sipped some of the coffee without any additives. I asked them to take a sip of water before tasting the next cup.

Cup 1:

• Debbie –the coffee was bitter and a little too hot
• Gail –the coffee was a too hot and was “flat”
• Lillian – Coffee too warm and was “heavy”

Cup 2:

• Debbie – the coffee has a nice flavor without bitterness
• Gail- the coffee had a good flavor, very light body (almost too light)
• Lillian – the coffee tasted good but was a little cooler than she liked

Cup 3:

• Debbie – the coffee has a good flavor with mild bitterness
• Gail- the coffee tasted good, but had too much sediment
• Lillian – the coffee had a good flavor, but she did not like the sediment in the bottom of the cup

The results?

• Cup 1 was the Automatic Drip
• Cup 2 was the Aeropress
• Cup 3 was the French Press

The auto drip machine was a newer machine that Gail received as a present from one of her sons. She uses it every morning to get her engine started. However, it produced a brew that was bitter and the hot plate kept the coffee at a higher temperature which may have contributed to the bitterness by continuing to “cook” the brew for a few minutes while I was preparing the other two coffees.

The Aeropress was voted the most liked coffee by show of hands before I revealed which cup contained which coffee. The brew had a deep aroma and flavorful while lacking any of the usual bitterness found in the other brewing methods. The only real complaint was that the coffee was a little “cooler” than the other two brews. Because the Aeropress starts off with a lower water temperature, it seems to be important to drink the coffee as soon as possible if you like a hot cup of java.

The French Press came in second. The coffee had a deep aroma and only mild bitterness. It also had a heavier body than the Aeropress, but that may have been due to the suspended grounds rather than the extraction method. None of the tasters liked the residue that was left in the bottom of the cup. Lillian described it as “muddy”.

So will the gals cough up the $30.00 to buy an Aeropress? Well…Debbie is the only coffee drinker in her house and has a single serve Melita that she swears by. While she loved the Aeropress, I don’t think she will be running out to spend the money unless I sneak in and steal her current coffee maker. Gail and Lillian love their low maintenance Mr.Coffees. While it isn’t the best cup of coffee, the automatic drip machines do offer convenience and a heating element to keep their caffeine fix warm. Me – I like the Aeropress a lot. It is fun and easy to use, and makes a killer cup of coffee. I am a convert and use it to make my morning cuppa.

So what are you waiting for?? Go out and get one!

A note to let you know I am not dead...yet.

Well, I have tons of stuff I need to write up - but one of my coworkers had his lung collapse and he is stuck in the hospital until given a clean bill of health. Meanwhile, back at the ranch,we had a stampede of cattle - I mean, we had a lot of customers placing large orders, so my personal time has been sparse. I should have my coffee maker review up by the end of the week - so stay tumed for another installment of "How the Stomach Turns".

So whats we gonna be eatin' tonight?

Well, Kit of Mango & Ginger tapped me to tell you all about my top 10 favorite foods. The problem has been not what foods to include but what foods to eliminate from the list. Of course, I had to retest some of them to make sure I really like them enough to make the cut.

1. Bacon- The though of eating wonderful smoky, salty fat makes me feel a ‘lil faint. I love thick cut slab bacon fried up crisp. I love the though of bacon rind cooked up with greens. I love how the salt cuts through the overpowering sweetness of syrup or pumps up the ripeness of summer tomatoes. Tony claims that he has heard me murmuring sweet nothings to bacon in my sleep. Bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon - now I know how that dog feels!


2. Salt – There are days when I could eat a big old spoonful without blinking. Those are the days when men should stay out of range. Hell - women, children and small household pets too!


3. Cheese – Yes. All of it. From Cheese in a Spray Can to runny ripe Brie, cheese has won my heart. It was a favorite after school snack when I was a kid, cheese sandwiches saved my life in college and now that I am a woman of wealth (comparatively speaking) I love buying new and exciting cheese to try. Curds and Whey in the North Market and Whole Foods have a siren call that I cannot resist. Cheese, cheese, cheese - put some bacon with it and you can have your whey with me.


4. Pasta Puttanesca – Let me start off by saying that I hate all jarred pasta sauces. Sure, sure, sure…I know you will tell me that such and such a brand is very good and I will have to spit in your eye. When compared to a real sauce made at home, they all pale. So about 14 years ago, I picked up a book on pasta at the library and saw a recipe for pasta puttanesca. I never turned back. In our house, the dish is known as “Good Woman Pasta”, as the word puttanesca was too hard for our daughter to say and “Whore’s pasta” just sounds wrong coming out of the mouth of a six year old.


5. French Toast – My love affair with “Pain Perdu” began when I was a kid, like so many others of my favorites. My mom would make French toast for me and my brother on snow days. I remember the Blizzard of ’78 especially well – we ate a lot of French toast that winter. The big difference between my French toast and my mom’s is that I use denser bread and soak it for a little bit. Mom used stale Wonderbread. It was a way of transforming the mundane into something special. Anytime you can perform culinary magic like that – you know you have a winner.


6. Biscuits – I owe my biscuit making savvy to my ex-mother-in-law. (Yes I was married before – but that is a story that needs to be told over lots and lots of alcohol.) Glenna was a nice Southern lady who had grown up making biscuits and cornbread every day of her life. She used a coffee cup to measure out the self rising flour and always had buttermilk in her refrigerator. I make decent biscuits. They are acceptable, but they cannot even hold a candle to Glenna’s. I do not miss my ex, but I sure miss his mom’s cooking.


7. Chicken Livers – Ok, I know I heard several of you make retching noises. Shame, shame. You just never had liver prepared correctly. My favorite way is lightly dusted with seasoned flour and fried in bacon grease. (Hmmmm – back to bacon, are we?) They come out crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside. With some cornbread and greens -damn fine eatin’!


8. Mashed Potatoes – Mashed potatoes are essentially four ingredients: Taters, milk, butter and salt. Who would have thought those four basic items could create the food of the gods? I’ve been known just to make mashed potatoes as a snack - but I love them best with number 9 on my list.


9. REALLY GOOD Gravy!- I think it’s a shame that its been such a long time since I’ve eaten gravy (other than my own) that had been made from scratch. Sorry folks, really good gravy can’t be had from a bottle, can or powder. You have to brown meat, you have to roast meat, use the fond and the juices from the meat. So simple, yet done wrong too often! It’s time for a gravy revolution brothers and sisters! More meat! More good gravy!


10. PIE! All things PIE! – Some people love ice cream, some love cake, but I love pie. Pie in the sky and pie in your eye! The dessert of comedy! No one ever got hit in the face with Crème Brule! Fruit pies, cream pies, custard pies – put that filling in a flakey crust and you have my love forever. As a child, the yearly church picnic would send my heart into palpitations as I surveyed the dessert table with its spread of tarts and meringues. My contribution? Need you ask? Banana cream pie, of course.

So there they are my favorite foods laid out for your perusal. Surprised that chocolate wasn’t on the list? Well, to make it up to myself, I am gonna make a chocolate cream pie this weekend. Who says I can’t have my chocolate pie and eat it too?

Since we are playing tag, I am tagging Sher of What Did You Eat? for the Ten Favorite Foods meme. And to prove the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished, Kit of Mango and Ginger gets tagged for the Ten Random Facts meme. Good luck ladies! I look forward to reading your entries.

I writ at random, very doubtfully.

Wow – Ten Random Facts about Myself. Hmmmmmm what deep dark secrets should I reveal? Sarah of Dining with the Headhunter tagged me - so if you can’t sleep tonight, blame it all on her!

So here we go:

1. I am an illustrator and graphic designer for magic instructional textbooks. Not that kinda magic - the sleight of hand, pick a card any card kind. Don’t believe me? Check out Lee Asher’s website. I did Three Stylin’ for him! Honest! He’ll vouch for me!
2. I am collecting as many versions of the song “Junko Partner” as I can locate. The fascination all started with a recording my hubby made in New Orleans of James Booker, a jazz pianist. I have since located three other recordings of the same song by Booker - each one is totally different being dependent on what kind of mood he was in that night (or more likely, what kind of drugs he was on). I have about six other versions from various artists.
3. I have a mutant stomach. It is shaped like a “J” instead of the normal “kidney bean”. I found this out a while back when I was having digestive problems and they looked down into the maw of hell during an esophagogastroduodenoscopy. The best thing about the whole procedure - they give you great drugs. As I was coming out of the twilight sleep, the doctor told me about my malformed stomach. I looked at my hubby and said “You always suspected you married a mutant – now you know for sure!”
4. I threw myself into Buckeye Lake when I was five years old. I was tossing bread into the water for the ducks and tossed one piece just a lil too hard - in I went! My dad jumped in and pulled me out, soaking wet and scared but unharmed. My uncle, who had the cabin on the lake, would tease me about “feeding yourself to the ducks” for years afterwards.
5. I play board games every other Friday night. Not Monopoly, Sorry or any of those plebian games, but hard core Euro games, like Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Tigris and Euphrates. We meet in the back room of the local gaming shop and battle it out all night. It’s a great excuse to eat crappy junk food, stay up until 3am in the morning and gloat when your friends lose to you. It is a toss up as to whether I spent more money on cooking equipment or board games last year. And before you say it - Yes, I am a geek.
6. My favorite snack when I was a kid was Cheese Wiz on toasted cracked wheat bread.
7. I love Terry Pratchett’s books. I think he is the best humor fantasy writer ever. Yeah, that’s what I said. You wanna fight about it? Put 'em up, put 'em up! I can fight you with one paw tied behind my back. I can fight you standing on one foot. I can fight you with my eyes closed. Sneakin’ up on me huh?!
8. I would rather watch an old movie like The Gay Falcon or a movie serial like Daredevils of the Red Circle than most of the drivel that passes for entertainment on cable tv. I really love going to movie conventions like Cinevent, sitting in the dark on uncomfortable chairs for 4 days and watching movies I can’t see anywhere else. Now that’s entertainment!
9. I buy really ugly Pyrex to use in my kitchen. The best deal so far: two large bowls in avocado green and harvest gold both for .$25. Yup, two bits. For two really ugly bowls. They hold a boatload of potato salad though.
10. I like to collect Godzilla toys. My daughter used to get mad when she was little because I wouldn’t let her play with them. She once said, “You have more toys than me! That’s not fair!” It’s not, but now she has her own collection of Neopets that I’m not allowed to touch. So there!

So there it is! Ten Random things you would have been better off not knowing!

I am still thinking about who to torture - I mean tag for this meme - stay tuned for updates!

BBM4

YEAH! My box of goodies is here! My secret food buddy was Tami from Running with Tweezers and she sent me up a box of southern goodies.


First off is some green tomato relish from South Carolina – I served this with some smothered pork chops tonight. It was damned tasty! Another recipe for me to figure out, darn it.

Next creamed honey from Georgia- it was very tasty in my morning tea.

A Sangria scented castle – the only way to get lit without drinking the real thing! One of Tami’s friends makes these candles. Go check out her website: www.plain-n-simple.com. Personally, I think that stress relief candle would be a good thing too - after I am done with my Sangria that is.


A Lavender Chocolate bar – ok, I can’t decide if I like this or not. It’s chocolate, but it’s got flowers in it. I kept eating it to see if I could make up my mind. Now, I need to buy some more to finish the decision making process.

Some homemade five-spice, cinnamon ginger shortbread cookies – these were great. I snacked on them with my after dinner coffee. Very subtle. Definitely a keeper Tami!


Flavors magazine-an Atlanta based magazine about food and restaurants. This could come in handy, as we have a friend who is trying to convince us to go with him to Dragoncon down in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend.

And lastly, an awesome CD of music that Tami calls “The Bake Mix”.

Thanks a ton Tami! You were a great food buddy!

HERE's your 30 minute meal! Now bugger off!

Wow - what a crazy two weeks! Things have been going haywire, and I hope it settles down so I can get some serious eating done!

I have been remiss in my blogging duties. I have missed Is My Blog Burning 22, Weekend Cookbook Challenge #2, and SHF #16. However, I did get to participate in Blog By Mail 4. My secret food buddy was Maya of The Town Tart who lives in Venice, CA. Head on over to her blog and check out the trials and tribulations of her kitchen remodel. I have serious oven envy now. Six ovens. Some people have all the luck!! I am still waiting on my package from my secret food buddy, but I still have high hopes that it will be here soon!

I have been tagged for two meme also. One from my buddy Sarah at Cooking with the Headhunter (10 Random Facts About Yourself) and one from Kit at Mango and Ginger (Top 10 Favorite Foods). The Random Fact meme is giving me fits, mostly because my whole life is random and the ten favorite food meme - don’t even get me started! How the heck can I narrow it down to ten?! Maybe ten categories? You know - like Sweet, Salty etc…that might give me a fighting chance.

So foodwise – our household has been put on quick meal notice because of my crazy work schedule. When I get home from work, the food has to be on the table in 45 minutes or less. On the way home Wednesday night, I stopped and performed my mid-week perusal of the local produce section. This week’s foray yielded a head of bok-choy for $1.00. With my well stocked pantry, I came up with Mom’s Lo Mein. The hubby said it was more like Chinese Spaghetti, since I used dried linguini for the pasta.

Chinese Spaghetti (as this dish will now be known) is one of those dishes you can create as long as you understand the basic principles of the type of food you are attempting to make. Of course, I am not lucky enough to have a high BTU burner in my kitchen, so this isn’t really like Lo Mein but considering that I ended up with six servings for about $1.50 each, my checking account and my tummy were happy!

I always carry the following in my kitchen:

• Dried Pasta of various types
• Soy sauce
• Black Bean and Garlic Sauce
• Vietnamese Chili Sauce
• Broth
• Carrots
• Ginger (frozen)
• Garlic
• Onions
• Mushrooms
• Fake Crab (frozen)

Here is the procedure in a loosely described fashion.

Get your mise en place together first. Chop the onion, garlic and ginger and place together. Cut the carrots into matchsticks if you have time, if not, just cut into uniform pieces so it all cooks evenly. Same with the mushrooms. Bok-choy - well there is a special case. I usually cut off the green parts and slice them into shreds, then dice the lower white portion. Keep the two parts separate, you’ll see why later. If your bok-choy is a little limp - and we all have known how terrible it is to have a limp bok-choy in our life at one time or another – you can soak it in some nice ice water to perk it up. Have nappa cabbage? Use that. I once even used romaine lettuce in a stir fry. It wasn’t bad - but I don’t know if I would do it again. If I could have found it on sale, I would have grabbed a bag of the broccoli slaw stuff. That would have been perfect noodle fodder! I ended up with about 8 cups of veggies all told, including the bok-choy, which is going to shrink down a lot. The more veggies the better!

Do the same with your meats. If you are using raw meats, slice them as you would for stir fry. I also had a little bit of shrimp left over from a party I had thrown the previous weekend (that’s the topic of another post, once I reconstruct my memory). You could also throw in leftover chicken or pork. Just add the already cooked meats last in the process so they are just warmed through. I had about a pound of shrimp and fake crab.

Once all your veggies and meats are prepped, now you get to make “the sauce”. For one pound of pasta, I did one cup of sauce. It kinda went like this: 1/2 cup of broth, ¼ - 1/3 cup of soy sauce, and black bean sauce and chili sauce so that everything equals one cup. You may be saying to yourself: Isn’t this going to be too salty? The answer is no. The noodles are bland, the veggies are bland, and they need all the salt they can get to taste good. Especially the noodles - they are a neutral starch. Don’t have black bean and garlic sauce? Use hoisin or oyster. Don’t have any of the above? Just use soy sauce. Trust me, it’s gonna be ok.

Put your water on to boil for the pasta. I did not salt the water. Actually, you can do that before you start your slicin’ and dicein’. (I told you, this is a freeform recipe thingy.) Any pasta will do as long as it has some heft to it. Spaghetti, fettuccini, linguini - if you have wide rice noodles you probably could use those. Cook them until done, drain, set aside.

Now you get to stir fry your fixins’. If you are using raw meat, do that first. Add a tablespoon of oil to the wok, a little of your onion, garlic and ginger to the oil. Stir fry the meat until done. Remove and set aside. Next, the veggies. They need to be added so that the ones that require more cooking go in first. Add a little more oil to the wok, then the rest of the onion, garlic and ginger. Then the carrots, cook a couple of minutes, then the bok-choy stems, cook a couple of minutes, then the mushrooms, repeat the cooking procedure. You should have a big mélange of veggies all cooked about the same amount now. Add the bok-choy leaves. Toss until the leaves are wilted.

Add the noodles. They may have congealed into a big mass of starch, but it’s ok. They will separate. Dump your sauce over top of the noodles and toss. The noodles should come apart. Well, they did when I did it. (If it bothers you, you could always rinse them in cold water when you drain them to prevent sticking.) Toss the noodles and veggies around until the noodles have absorbed a good amount of the sauce. Now add in the meat, either left over or freshly cooked. Toss. I added a little black pepper at this point and the last of a bottle of Chinese sesame oil. Pour your crazy noodle dish into a large bowl and serve. I pulled out some chopstick and some fun bowls to put everything in.

Like everything of this nature, it’s even better the next day. Annie even took some in her lunch, the true hallmark of a well cooked dish.

Half the fun of cooking is the challenge of making something tasty on short notice. You can’t be afraid to try something off the wall. Trust me - my family will let me know when I make something inedible. Think of this as jazz cooking - taking what is available and creating some new harmonies with a little syncopated rhythm. Jazz not to your liking? Try a little Salsa. Got some canned sardines around? They work great in noodle dishes. Despite what your mom said, play with your food. You’ll enjoy it more!

Hmmm hmmm good....hmmm hmmm good...

Adam, The Amateur Gourmet, make me laugh. Today, I read and loved his poem about his misadventures with peanut brittle. He ended up with a batch of peanut brittle soup. Now, 500 miles away, I was in my kitchen making brittle as well. Ironically, I was using the very same recipe and it turned out brilliantly. Take a gander at my food porn, baby!



The recipe in question came from Craft of Cooking by Tom Collichio. Adam found it vague and confusing, hence his pan of soup. I had no problems understanding exactly how the recipe should turn out in the end, hence my tasty, hip hugging treat. Was it the recipe or was it the cooks?
Let’s take a look at the recipe:

Peanut Brittle

2 c sugar
¼ pound unsalted butter
6 T corn syrup
¾ pound dry-roasted, salted peanuts
1 ½ t salt

Line a rimmed baking sheet with a non-stick baking pad (or lightly but completely oil the sheet.) Combine sugar, butter, corn syrup and 1 1/3 cups of water in a large pot. Heat over high until the sugar melts and the caramel turns amber. Stir in the baking soda, then remove the pot from the heat and add the peanuts and salt. Mix well, then, using a metal spatula, quickly and evenly spread out the mixture out on the baking sheet. Allow the brittle to cool and harden. Break the brittle into pieces and serve, or store in a covered container.

I think the answer is: a little bit of both.

Unless you have made candy every year since you were a kid, you probably would never understand “Heat over high until the sugar melts and the caramel turns amber.” Most candy recipes give you temperatures and stages, maybe even nice photo illustrations showing what color “amber” is. Shame on the author for assuming that everyone reading the recipe would be clairvoyant.

Now that we’ve taken the recipe to task, let’s look at why an old fat chick got the recipe to work and sexy, young Adam did not.

I shall start with my candy making background. I was a source of slave labor every Christmas when my mother would make candy to give away to the multitudes that descended upon our household during the holidays. Guess whose job it was to watch the caramel while my mother was off punishing my wayward brother? You got it! Somehow, I have a feeling that Adam’s mom never forced him to watch boiling pots of sugar, instead allowing him to run free… to express those creative urges that allow him to amuse us even to this day. Which, of course, explains his remarkable kitchen chops. At least when it comes to peanut brittle.

So some tips to remember when you are looking for recipes that venture into uncharted territory. Read the recipe through twice, maybe even three times. If there are ANY doubts about how the recipe should proceed, look up similar recipes from reliable sources and compare. When tackling something like candy, find a good reference that will give you the basic science behind the process. By educating yourself on how the chemistry works, you increase your chances of success. This doesn’t mean you will not end up with a bowl of peanut brittle soup, but hey – you did your best!

PS. Adam, if you REALLY need that peanut brittle fix, I will be more than glad to send you some of mine!

Where the hell did THAT come from?

I like to get up in the morning and read the news feeds. It puts perspective into my world view: the frailties of man, the oddities of everyday life and so on. Possibly, it is the only thing that keeps me from killing strangers on the way to work in the morning. I thought I would share with you a couple of articles from today’s news since I find it so enlightening...

Yum! Yum! Personally, I am partial to the Louisiana Back-Bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise. Da-roool, da-rooool.


I just want you to know - the next time you hit a deer and total your car – you are supporting our boys in Iraq.


My daughter recently introduced me to Google Video. In case you don’t know what that is just head on over to http://video.google.com/ . It is pretty self-explainatory. In compliance with Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of it is crap but the bit that is good is a blast to watch. These were two things I found while wandering aimlessly this morning.

Critics annoying you while you are cooking?


Kid tested – mother approved!


Alright – I PROMISE I will have more interesting food items soon. Really. Honest. I'll have BBM 4, some adventures in bread baking, pies, more meat and a product review. In the meantime, amuse yourselves. Eat some pudding or something....