Does My Blog Look Tacky in This?

DMBLTIT?


Office Surprise
A delicious peach cobbler with a surprise ingredient perfect for those end-of-the-year tax season blues.

Megan of I Heart Bacon and Eliz/Deepfry of YUM are hosting a virtual dinner party based on dishes from the 40s through the 70s. As part of her post Megan listed these links to photographs from cookbooks from the period:

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards/czarina.html
http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/knudsen2/1.html

A couple of years ago one of my cooking friends found some similar links and several of us vied to see who could come up with the most ridiculous food photos.

So I suggested to Megan that as an adjunct to their virtual dinner party we hold a contest for tackiest food photo -- hence Does My Blog Look Tacky in This?



If you want to participate, here's the way it works. Take a really tacky photograph of your contribution to Megan's and Eliz's party and come up with a suitable caption. Send me a copy of the photo with:

Your name:
The name of the dish (may be ficticious):
A description of the dish (may be ficticious):
A link to your actual contribution to the dinner party:

You don't need to publish the tacky photo on your blog unless you want to.

Megan, Eliz, and I will judge the entries based on:

How unappetizing the photo is
Cleverness (inappropriateness) of props
Cleverness (inappropriateness) of name and description

Entries are due by or on Aug. 13. The winner will receive a cookbook (yet to be determined) published during the period in question.

Read more...

Cornish Pastie

A Pint & A Pastie



I've been meaning to post this recipe for some time and when someone in eGullet asked for picnic ideas it was clearly time to do so.

Cornish Pasty
Pastry -- see below
**** filling ****
3/4 lb chuck roast -- ground
1 c potatoes -- diced
2 ea carrots -- small, shredded
1 c yellow onions -- diced fine
2 tsps dried thyme
1 tsp mustard powder
2 tsps dried sage
2 tsps red wine vinegar
1/2 c beef broth
**** glaze ****
1 ea egg yolk
1 tbsp milk

Pastry:
Use your favorite recipe for a two-crust pie. If it calls for sugar, leave it out. Add 2 teaspoons of dried sage to the dry ingredients before cutting in the shortening. Also, for a traditional (and exceptionally good) pastry, use cold lard for the shortening.

Filling:
Heat oven to 375F.

Put diced potatoes and 1/2 inch of water in a covered microwave dish and cook in microwave until potatoes are just tender - seven to eight minutes. Drain potatoes and dump into a large bowl. Mash coarsely with a fork.

Place chuck in food processor and pulse until meat is coarsely ground (err on the side of under-processing.) Add ground beef and all remaining ingredients to the potatoes and mix thoroughly.

Roll the pastry out to a 1/8 inch thickness on a lightly floured board. Using a five inch round plate as a template, cut as many circles as you can. The scraps can be combined and rolled out one more time. You should have ten rounds.

Moisten half the edge of a pastry round and place about 1/2 cup of the filling in the center. Fold the round over the filling and press the edges to seal. Repeat for remaining pastry and filling. Arrange pasties on a pair of foil covered baking sheets.

Glaze:
Mix egg yolk and milk together and brush glaze over pasties. Cut two one inch slits in the top of each pastie and bake for 30 minutes or until golden.

These are also wonderful for supper on a cold winter night served with potato chowder, boiled cabbage, and beer. If you're going to eat them hot then place a slice of cheddar cheese on top of each pasty that will be eaten that night about ten minutes before
the pasties are done.

They're as good at room temperature as they are hot, so they also make great picnic fare.

Read more...

50 Ways to Love Your Food

50 Ways to Love Your Food



Owen at Tomatillo was inspired, brilliantly, by a column by Nigel Slater entitled "The top 50 things every foodie should do." It was an interesting list, but a bit too specific and, so, impractical in many cases. For instance, "Eat lunch at Le Grand Véfour" in Paris may be a great idea but it's doubtful I'll ever have the opportunity.

Owen's stroke of brilliance was in suggesting that readers of his food blog contribute to a more practical list. The result is posted here.

It seems to me that you can't truly appreciate something you don't understand. Both Slater's and Owen's lists begin with, "Make Toast." A simple enough thing, but it has the advantage of demonstrating clearly how much there is to understanding.

First, the bread must be fresh and thick and have body and character and crumb -- even better if you make the bread (another item on Owen's list). Then you gain an understanding of the living nature of bread and the simplicity of its ingredients. You learn how the living body of bread smells and feels. You see it grow before your eyes as thousands of tiny plants eat and digest and produce waste and reproduce. At the end you bake the bread, killing the yeast and setting the final form and your house smells better than it ever has or will until you bake bread again. It transforms your abode from house to home.

If you're like me, you'll wait no more than 30 or so minutes before cutting off a slice and tasting it -- even though you know it will taste better later.

The next morning you cut a second slice and toast it. The exterior gradually turns a rich caramel brown as Maillard reactions occur. Flavors become more complex and richer heightening the bread's savor while the interior remains golden, and sweet. Perhaps you're lucky enough to toast the bread over wood and gain that unique flavor element. But however you toast it, the bread's flavor changes -- and so does it tactile characteristics.

The interior remains soft, but the exterior becomes crisp offering a pleasant contrast in the mouth. And then, ideally, you spread a bit of fresh butter on one side and things become even more complicated.

You have a crisp, dry side; a soft interior; and a crisp, oily side. You have the rich savor of the exterior and the sweetness of the interior. You have the unctuousness of the butter and perhaps some saltiness. This is what a piece of basic white-bread toast offers you. This is genuinely a simple crust of bread. How extraordinary!

Of the 50 items on Owen's list I can cross off 24 as definitely "done." Then there's one I'm unsure of. Have I ever tasted wine out of a barrel? Probably, I've been to a lot of vineyards and not always as a tourist. But I'm inclined to think that if I'm unsure of doing it then it didn't count because I clearly wasn't focused on the experience.

A couple of others simply don't interest me. I'm not a chocolate fan so I couldn't care less about 25, 31, and 36. And No. 38 -- create a cake recipe -- is primarily interesting from a food science POV. Then there are those that require I give up bachelorhood: 20 and 48. I realize there are thousands of women dying to share a mango in bed with me but they're simply going to have to live with their disappointment.

So that leaves 15 items to accomplish. And doing so really appeals to me. I've been thinking about making cheese of some sort for awhile now. Grilling a pizza sounds like fun. I've no place to build an oven at the moment -- but that could change. And volunteering in a soup kitchen is just a good idea.

So, Owen, thanks a bunch for bringing us this idea and thanks to everyone who contributed an idea for something I haven't done yet.

Read more...

Quiche

Gang aft Agley



I got an urge for quiche last week and thought it was a great opportunity to take advantage of local suppliers in support of the Eat Local Challenge. I had some local smoked bacon in the freezer and figured that Saturday morning I'd cruise by the farmer's market for fresh eggs and then the Horn of Plenty market for local cream and butter.

The only local cheese available is a cheddar that's not very good, but my friend, Q Correll, makes the lightest quiche I've ever eaten using imported Cheshire and I thought it would be particularly good with the smoked bacon. I could tell this was going to be a kick-ass quiche.

So Saturday Morning I started the bacon thawing and headed for the market. Neither of the two egg suppliers was there. Major let down.

Then the Horn of Plenty only had buttermilk -- no cream or whole milk -- and was also out of butter. Suddenly the wonderful quiche using super-fresh local ingredients I'd been anticipating had become just another very good quiche.

As I said, the Cheshire makes a surprisingly light quiche and the smoked bacon was, indeed, an excellent match. I wrote yesterday about pie crusts and that post was prompted by the pastry I made for this quiche. Although I had to use half and half and butter from the supermarket that didn't hurt (it just didn't help). To the pastry I added dried thyme and, on a hunch, grated parmesan. I could have skipped the filling and just eaten crust for supper.

Quiche
Recipe by Q Correll

1 1/2 c Cheshire cheese -- shredded
8 slices smoked bacon -- cooked and coarsely chopped
1 ea small onion -- diced and sauteed until translucent
1 1/2 c half and half
3 ea eggs
1/2 tsp powdered mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
dash of cayenne
9" pie crust

Heat oven to 375F.

Sprinkle cheese, bacon, and onion in pie shell. Whisk together remaining ingredients and pour into pie shell. Cook on middle rack of oven for 45 minutes or until center is set. Serves 6.

All in all a very good meal (the cakes in the photo are actually fried green tomatoes), even if my plans did go astray. And I'll get another chance to do it with fresh eggs and cream.

Read more...

Pie Crust

All American



Pastry. Pâte. Fond de tarte. Pie crust. Masa de hojaldre. Crosta. All of these words refer to roughly the same thing: A mixture of flour, shortening, and water flattened and used as a shell for holding other ingredients. There are often additions to the basic recipe including sugar, spices, herbs, and eggs, depending on the nature of the filling. And there are variations in the technique for mixing the ingredients. My favorite variation in technique is the one that produces the American flaky pie crust.

A perfect American flaky pie crust consists of thousands of small, individual flakes of shortening-infused flour held one to the other with a breath and a promise. It is light in the same way and for the same reason a croissant or Viennese pastry is light, but there is little or no development of gluten and so it will nearly melt on your tongue. And yet there is somehow enough strength to it mostly hold its shape when a piece of pie is lifted from the plate. It is supremely and simply delicious.

The best pie crust defies mass production and is made by mixing the shortening and flour together with the tips of one's fingers. Some days the flour and shortening want a tad more pressure to mix properly, some days a bit less. Some days the mixture wants a tad more water to bind, some days a bit less. You can make a very good crust using a food processor or even a hand mixer (if you have the right touch). But you can't make one purely by slavish adherence to a recipe nor in large quantities.

All of that said, making an excellent pie crust is easy. I won't provide a recipe as there are plenty of good ones already published. My favorite is in Chris Kimball's The Cook's Bible and I like it because its instructions for using a food processor are dead on. I will add a comment, though, from my own experience. Most recipes call for chilling the dough before rolling it out but I find I like the results better if I roll it out, line the pie plate, and then chill it.

Unless you've made your own, you've probably never experienced a perfect American pie crust. You've never found yourself in the odd circumstance of breaking off bits and pieces of pastry from the edges to eat because the crust itself is irresistible. You're unaware that a pastry can be almost as good after spending a night in the refrigerator as it was fresh from the oven. You've never had pastry almost literally melt on your tongue. You've no idea just how ineffable a bit of flour, butter, salt, and water can be.

Read more...

Chicken Piccata

All That Jazz



I've been trying, but for the life of me I can't remember when I first had Chicken Picata nor where. But it seems like it's been a standard in my recipe repertoire forever. And "repertoire" with its allusions to music strikes me as a particularly good choice of words in this case.

Think jazz. Imagine a small combo: Bass, piano, guitar, drums, flute. Pick a simple tune -- a lively old standard such as Blue Skies or Elephant Dance. Lay down a bass line. Get the feets tappin' and fingers snappin'. A chicken breast from a free-range bird will work.

Dredge the breast in flour and Parmigiano seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika enhancing the bass with brush and snare. Now brown it in a hot piano and the melody will flood your senses.

The sauce is last. Wine and capers for the guitar, and instead of flute, lemon juice calls to mind a fife -- high, tart, pure, and just a bit painful.

Chicken Piccata

2 ea 6 oz chicken breast filets
1/4 c flour
2 tbsp finely grated Parmigiano or other dry cheese
1 lg lemon -- juiced
2 tbsp white wine
1 tbsp capers
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cold butter
salt and pepper
1 tsp paprika

Place a breast between two sheets of moistened plastic wrap and pound to 1/4" thick. Repeat for remaining breast[s].

Lightly season chicken with salt, pepper, and paprika. Dust with Parmigiano and pat lightly to make it adhere to the chicken. Dredge in flour.

Heat oil in 10" skillet over medium heat until hot. Moisten chicken breasts with water and dredge in flour mixture. Allow to rest about two minutes and dredge again. Add to hot oil and cook for about one minute until oil side is golden brown. Turn and repeat for other side. Place breasts on a plate in oven to keep warm.

Add wine, lemon juice, and capers to skillet — scraping up fond — and reduce. Remove from heat and swirl in butter. Plate breasts and drizzle with sauce. Serves 2.

Note: To fancy-up the dish, pare the skin and pith from a lemon and cut out segments (these are called "supremes"). Add them to the skillet and cook about one minute before sauce is finished.

Note: When fixing this for more than four I find it best to use two skillets.

Read more...

A propos

A perfect cartoon.

Read more...

Eat Local Challenge

Enlightenment



Back in May of this year I posted an entry here entitled "Just Picked" that was a rant (albeit a mild one, for me) about the difficulty in finding local ingredients to cook with. The piece ended with:

"I've got to figure out something to do about the food situation here in Knoxville. The community is relatively affluent and well-educated and should be able to support a decent farmers' market on the weekend. And I've got to do something to help the only butcher shop in town survive."

So I spent a month or so thinking and planning and eventually registered a new domain and started the Earth & Hearth blog. If you think keeping one blog going is work, try two.

Earth & Hearth is still very much a work-in-progress. But it has engendered a lot of interest from vendors (as you would expect) and from those intended readers who have managed to find it. Ideally I hope that most content will be contributed and my role will devolve to editor and evangelist.

A couple of weeks ago Jen at life begins at 30 and Locavores announced something called the Eat Local Challenge, which is very much in the spirit of what I'm attempting with Earth & Hearth. Jen has posted some guidelines for the challenge that I'll get to in a moment, but they beg the central question participants should be asking themselves, "Why 'eat local'?"

First, I think it's important to distinguish between "local" and "indigenous." You can't get much more local than raising your own chickens, but, ancestrally, chicken is from the Indian sub-continent. Turkey is indigenous. Rosemary isn't indigenous, sassafras is. Beets aren't indigenous, potatoes are.

This distinction matters because there is nothing inherently noble in the sense of preserving the natural environment in choosing to eat local food-stuffs. Neither is "local" a synonym for "organic." And local doesn't necessarily mean being in tune with the seasons either. Corn isn't best (more flavorful or healthier) when it's "in season," corn is best when it's just picked. Same with almost everything else we eat.

When we eat local foods we are often encouraging small producers and that often has positive effects on the environment. Agri-business is a significant producer of point pollution (witness the North Carolina hog farms) whereas small farms -- even those using products like herbicides or antibiotics -- use smaller quantities spread over a greater range. This ameliorates the effects.

Eating locally also concentrates our dollars in the area where it will do us, as individuals, the most good. Buy a sandwich at Subway and part of your dollar goes to corporate headquarters. Buy a sandwich at Mancino's (a local sub shop) and more of your money stays here -- and the sandwich is better anyway.

Which brings us to the most selfish of reasons for eating locally: the food's usually better. It's fresher. It was harvested at closer to its peak of flavor. It wasn't beaten up in transit. It might even be more varied. Then again, it might not.

Producing variety requires resources: land, labor, money, knowledge. Many small producers lack two or more of these resources. The result is a half dozen local farmers that sell the same tomato species. It's dependable, well-known, and they can diversify in type of vegetables rather than species -- a much safer bet when land is limited.

But local producers can also translate to more input from you concerning what's available. Last year one farmer had a single lemon cucumber plant. This year he planted several and perhaps next year there will be two farmers selling lemon cukes.

So buying locally reduces pollution, stimulates the local economy, encourages better products, and promotes better service. Often the only cost for these advantages is driving a bit out of your way.

And don't limit yourself to local produce. Many of the same advantages noted above apply to restaurants, kitchen supply stores, and even maid services or drug stores.

-------------------
So here are Jen's guidelines for Eat Local.

1) What's your definition of local for this challenge?
Local is as close to home as I can get for any given thing. I grow most of my own herbs. I bake bread instead of buying it. I buy produce from local farms. I buy imported kitchen gadgets from local stores. I won't change my diet to eat local food stuffs, but I will continue to prefer such products over those that originated further away. This is a philosophy of eating that applies 365 days a year as opposed to a single month.

2) What exemptions will you claim?
My answer to question 1 pretty much covers exemptions with one additional caveat. I will not compromise my preference for excellent food in pursuit of an arbitrary restriction. For example, I'll continue to buy an imported Irish butter for eating purposes because it's better than the locally-available regionally-made Amish butter and the US-made Land O'Lakes.

3) What is your personal goal for the month?
None. See 1 above.

My long-term goal for eating locally is to eat better food, more often, at a reasonable price. I consider it enlightened self-interest.

Read more...

Gazpacho

Liquid Summer



I don't recall the first time I tasted gazpacho. My mother has been making it since I was a kid in the 60s -- and perhaps longer than that. Neither do I have any idea how many versions of it I've had, but it's almost always at least good whatever the recipe. I've also had a cold tomato soup that, although delicious, was definitely not gazpacho. I'm still unsure what it was that made the cold tomato soup so distinctly different from gazpacho.

I had gazpacho twice when I was in Spain and the two versions couldn't have been more different -- although both were good. The origin of the soup does seem to have some general agreement. The original soup was a common base for many modern dishes found throughout Europe. It likely consisted of stale bread, mixed with oil, vinegar, and vegetables. Gazpacho, though, seems somewhat unusual in its evolution because it's uncooked and it's a soup instead of a salad.

The best gazpachos are made of vegetables picked and used at the height of the season. And, served immediately, they are very good. But I think the best gazpachos, although made with absolutely fresh ingredients, are even better when allowed to age for at least 24 hours to enable those incredibly fresh flavors to meld and to take on some of the flavor of the bread. With good bread the soup has a hint of yeastiness adding depth and complexity to the flavor. That yeastiness requires some age to develop.

Many recipes call for stock, but (and this is regarded by many as my worst offense) I like using V8 Juice as the base liquid.

One last comment: please use a Spanish olive oil. It really makes a difference.

Gazpacho

6 ea fresh tomatoes -- peeled, seeded, & diced
1 ea green pepper -- diced
1 bunch green onions -- cut into 1/2" lengths, white and 1/2 greens
2 cloves garlic -- crushed
1 ea medium cucumber -- peeled, seeded, & diced
1 ea lemon -- juiced
8 ea large basil leaves -- chopped
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c red wine vinegar
6 c V-8
1 c fresh breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp anchovy paste
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
salt to taste

Place half the veggies, half the crackers, half the olive oil, and one and a half cups of V8 juice in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Pour into a large bowl. Repeat for remaining veggies.

Add all remaining ingredients and chill for at least six hours. Adjust the seasonings.

Read more...

Tuscan Chicken

Etruscan Feast



I spent a week at a villa outside of Rome back in 1999. We spent a day in Rome, but our goal was to explore the Etruscan tombs -- oft-overlooked predecessors to the more magnificent works. So each day we'd tear along the roads (doing our best impression of Italian driving) in our little Fiat passing the prostitutes standing by the roadside on our way to one stunning tomb site or another. At the end of the day we'd return to the villa, stopping at the market to pick up something to fix for dinner.

I must confess that, as much as I enjoyed driving around the countryside and seeing the tombs (and prostitutes), I most enjoyed shopping and then cooking at the end of each day.

Like most rental properties, the villa was ill-equipped for cooking but there were a couple of cookbooks. I'm sure they would have been more helpful if I knew Italian, but I did manage to cadge a few ideas including this one that apparently originated in Tuscany.

Tuscan Chicken

3 lb boneless chicken breasts (or tenders)
1 c white wine
1/4 c olive oil
2 ea lemons -- juiced
sprigs fresh thyme and rosemary
2 cloves garlic -- crushed
salt and pepper

If using whole breasts, cut into strips. Mix all ingredients in a plastic bag and refrigerate for eight hours.

Drain marinade from chicken, strain, and cook over medium heat until reduced by half.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook chicken strips on both sides until done. Deglaze pan with additional wine and add to reduced marinade. Serve chicken drizzled with sauce.

I made a mushroom pilaf to accompany the chicken using dried cepes that I rehydrated in chicken stock (that I then cooked the rice in) and fresh mushrooms that I browned with fresh thyme.

Read more...

BLT

…and the living is easy



Smoked bacon from a local smoke house. Locally-grown Green Ice lettuce and Burbank tomatoes. Homemade bread. Could life be better?

Read more...

Basque Tuna & Potatoes

Feigning Interest



I'm still not over the culinary burnout I mentioned in my last post. But I ran across a Basque recipe for tuna a few days ago and I've wanted to try some Basque cooking for awhile, so this evening I pretended I felt like cooking and fixed Marmitako.

I liked it well enough, but I wasn't really impressed with it because the other ingredients completely overwhelmed the tuna. And I'm not sure what you could do to enhance the tuna flavor and still maintain the spirit of the recipe. If anything occurs to you, please let me know.

Basque Tuna And Potato Casserole (Marmitako)

1 lb fresh tuna or bonito -- cut into 3/4" cubes
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 ea onion -- diced
2 ea garlic cloves -- coarsley chopped
1 ea green pepper -- diced
1 ea large tomatoes -- diced
1 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
salt and pepper
1 lb potatoes -- cut into 1/4" slices
1 c white wine
water

Heat the olive oil in a large earthenware casserole dish over medium-low heat. Add onion, garlic, pepper, and tomato and cook 5 minutes. Add the paprika, and salt and pepper and cook for another 5 minutes before adding the potatoes.

Add wine and enough water to cover vegetables and cook until the potatoes are nearly done.

Add the fish and cook for 15 minutes more.

Note: be generous with the salt.

Tomorrow I'm going to cook ribs. To hell with all this damned foreign cooking.

Read more...

Lasagna

Fast Food?



As much as I love experimenting with new dishes and variations on older dishes, sometimes I get burned out on the entire process. I get tired of Googling for a new way to fix salmon, or leafing through magazines for a different take on kohlrabi, or scanning food blogs for a fresh approach to pork tenderloin, or thumbing cookbooks for something Thai or Moroccan or Brazilian. Sometimes cooking, and even eating, just becomes a chore. More work than fun, more duty than pleasure.

Unfortunately this condition is a form of apathy and the trouble with apathy is you don't feel like doing anything about it.

When these moods come upon me I turn to old standbys. These are often also comfort foods, but their purpose in this case isn't to provide comfort, but rather to provide a good meal requiring little or no thought -- a homemade equivalent of fast food. One of my standbys is lasagna.

This works because I usually have almost everything I need to make a simple and satisfying lasagna on hand -- noodles, mozzarella, Parmigiano, eggs, Italian sausage, and even tomato sauce in the freezer. I don't usually have ricotta in the fridge, but that's a very quick trip to the store. It takes me about 30 minutes to make from the time the pasta water goes on the stove until the completed dish goes in the oven.

Basic Lasagna

6 ea lasagna noodles (I prefer the kind you need to boil first)
1/2 lb Italian sausage
1 c ricotta
1/2 lb shredded mozzarella (if you have provolone on hand, I like a mixture of half and half mozzarella and provolone)
1/2 oz shredded Parmigiano
1 ea egg
3 c tomato sauce

Heat oven to 375F.

Cook noodles according to package directions, drain, and pat dry

Remove casing from Italian sausage, crumble, and cook in a skillet until done. Drain.

Mix ricotta, egg, and 1/4 cup Parmigiano in a small bowl.

Spoon a thin layer of sauce in bottom of casserole dish. Place a layer of noodles on sauce and trim to fit dish if needed. Spread half of ricotta mixture on noodles. Sprinkle half of sausage over ricotta. Spoon half of remaining tomato sauce on layer. Sprinkle with half of mozzarella.

Repeat layering with remaining ingredients but reserve remaining mozarrella. Cover with foil and cook on middle rack for 20 minutes. Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and Parmigiano. Continue cooking until cheese browns.

Read more...

Tomato Sauce

For All Seasons



I tend to be a bit fanatical about fresh, locally-grown tomatoes. So much so that I refuse to eat tomatoes out of season -- I'd rather eat cardboard. But there's an exception to my fanaticism. I have no objection to long-cooked tomato sauces made with canned tomatoes. This may seem contradictory but in fact it’s not.

Canned tomatoes are picked at the height of freshness and seldom shipped more than a few miles before they're canned. So despite the fact they're canned they're much closer to fresh than some poor misbegotten fruit that was picked green, doused in ethylene gas to turn it red, and then spent two weeks in warehouses and trucks on it's way to a grocery store here. And if you're going to cook the tomatoes more than briefly anyway, then canned tomatoes are a perfectly delicious alternative.

I've gotten in the habit of making larger batches of tomato sauce than I need and freezing the extra sauce. It can be thawed quickly in the microwave and it's far better than anything I've ever had from a store. When fresh tomatoes are in season I take advantage of their freshness and seldom do anything more violent than a quick sauté.

Canned Tomato Sauce

1 can tomatoes -- 28 oz can, diced
1 ea carrot -- peeled and diced
1 ea celery stalk -- peeled and diced
1 ea sm. onion -- diced
4 ea garlic cloves -- peeled and chopped
2 tsp dried Italian herb mix
2 ea bay leaves
3 tbsps olive oil
1/2 c white wine
2 tbsp anchovy paste
3 tbsp tomato paste
salt and pepper

Heat olive oil over medium low heat. Add carrot, celery, onion, garlic, bay, Italian herbs, salt, and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is translucent -- about ten minutes.

Increase heat to medium, add wine, and reduce by half. Add tomatoes, anchovy paste, and tomato paste and simmer, partially covered, for 1 hour -- stirring occasionally. Taste and adjust seasonings. (If too sweet, add a bit of sherry vinegar, if too acid add a bit of sugar.)

Allow sauce to cool and then puree in a blender.

Read more...

The Cook Next Door

The Cook Next Door



I've been tagged with the Cook Next Door meme. Which means I'm required to talk about myself. So, despite my innate modesty and self-effacing nature I have bowed to the blandishments of the inestimable Miz D (the tagger) and her elusive and reputedly domesticated chef chopper Dave (the co-tagger) and agreed to regale readers with snippets of my culinary life (the taggee).

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?
I've no idea. What I do recall is around the age of seven or eight I collected my first two recipes. One was for a peanut butter candy served in the school cafeteria (I got the recipe from one of the cafeteria ladies) and the other was for something called Indian Pudding -- a cornmeal-type porridge as I recall -- that was in a book on Thanksgiving. My mother says that I made both recipes, but I have no memory of doing so.

Who had the most influence on your cooking?
It depends on the definition of influence. My mother insisted that my younger siblings and I learn to cook and encouraged us to do so from a very early age. She also served an eclectic menu so we were exposed to all manner of food from around the world. She also came up with bribes, I mean motivations, for cooking that pretty much guaranteed our long-term interest in the subject.

On the other hand, my cooking style has been most influenced by the three Silver Palate cookbooks by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. Although not necessarily simple, their recipes are straightforward to prepare and offer clear satisfying flavors. The recipes were also a great source of ideas to use as jumping off points for recipes of my own. (Following recipes is not one of my strong points.)

Do you have an old photo as “evidence” of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?
My father probably does, but I don't. The photo above is current. I'm making lamb stuffed with mint and Roquefort for Christmas.

Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?
I'm terrified of cooking phobias. Would that be co-mageiricophobia?

Actually, the answer's no. I love mastering complicated dishes and techniques -- although I will confess that I've never quite got the hang of making pie crust with a food processor. Sometimes it turns out great, other times not. If I make it by hand it's always perfect.

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?
I have a no-name Spanish chef's knife that I can't imagine living without. Nor can I imagine living without my cast iron skillet -- the first cooking vessel I ever bought.

I can't think of a letdown.

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like - and probably no one else!
Ages ago I used to make Lipton French Onion Soup using about a quarter of the water called for and then sop it up with bread. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it now.

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don’t want to live without?
Macaroni and cheese
Bacon
Fresh tomatoes (although I can tolerate only eating them in-season, in fact I can only tolerate eating them in-season)

Added by Nicky of Delicious Days... Do you have a signature dish?
Savory soufflés

Added by Moira of Who Wants Seconds... What is your biggest kitchen pet peeve?
Someone else putting things away in my kitchen.

Added by me... Who would you most like to have dinner with?
M.F.K. Fisher

To continue the meme I tag:
Danno at New Orleans Cuisine

For a complete list of participants and their responses go to Delicious Days.

Read more...