When I was young and newly married we ate a lot of weeknight stir-fries. Simple. Fast. Good.
The other day I needed lunch in a hurry. Upon looking in the refrigerator I found a generous handful of baby Bok Choy, a quarter of an onion, and two small but thick slices of smoked pork butt. Cooked together with a bit of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil, it made for a very satisfying lunch.
We went through a period of Indian Summer, which I will admit was nice even though I really am ready for fall. I like the cool nights and the touch of chill in the morning air, when walking outside feels like taking a bite from a crisp fall apple.
But among the gifts brought by the warmer temperatures were tomatoes. I picked up a bag of tomatoes in my CSA share yesterday evening. I had one for breakfast this morning, drizzled with a little balsamic vinegar and a sprinking of fleur de sel. Even though we are well into fall, they tasted of summer. The eggs are also local, scrambled with local shiitake mushrooms and a lonely slice of serrano ham that had been languishing in my refrigerator. It was a sumptuous kick-off to what is usually the busiest day of my week.
I made a pot of coffee this morning.
Of course, there is nothing really remarkable about making a pot of coffee except that I haven't actually made a pot, even a small, half-pot, in a long time. I drink coffee. I like drinking coffee. But for a long time I would make a half-pot or so, and usually end up throwing part of it away. Then I realized, that I actually missed having someone to talk to while I drank my coffee. When I visit my mom, we will sit and drink coffee and chat. Even when George and I were both working, we would take the time to share a cup of coffee and a brief conversation about the day ahead before heading out into the hectic world.
So I stopped making a pot of coffee and started having espresso in the morning. I have one of those Nespresso pod espresso machines, and have been enjoying an afternoon espresso or two for years. An espresso in the morning with breakfast, while reading the papers, even when I am at my desk, is fine, and I'll often have several cups. And yet, if I made a pot, it would be thrown away.
So I wondered if it was just a question of volume, if a whole pot seemed daunting, but the idea of making a cup was easier. It does take me longer to go through a couple of cups of coffee, and even in an insulated carafe, the coffee gets stale and is not as enjoyable. So I tried a couple of those smaller coffee makers, the ones that make 4-6 cups, but none of them make coffee as good as my Technivorm does, and they all were purchased, used a couple of times, and donated. I'll drink less than stellar coffee when I am out, but don't want to make it at home.
So, on mornings I had to be out early, I would have an espresso at home, and pick up a cup of coffee at class, or wherever I was. And this almost worked except that I discovered, over time, that most other coffee didn't really sit well. It isn't that I buy particularly good or fancy coffee, but I do drink, almost exclusively, dark roast coffees at home. The only non-dark roast coffee in my house is decaf. I don't drink decaf and I don't drink light to medium roasts, so if you want one or the other, that is what you get.
Dark roast coffees are lower in caffeine than lighter roasts, but it is not the caffeine that bothers me; I drink enough of it I should know, and I can drink a lot of caffeine in other forms without getting either jittery or staying awake at night. Dark roast coffee is also far lower in acid than lighter roasts however, and there is evidence that lighter roast coffees cause more stomach-acid issues than darker roasts, which is a shame, considering how trendy light roasts are at the moment. There is also some thought, not rigorously confirmed, that the actual roasting process may also produce some stomach-calming chemicals, and that the darker the roast, the more of these chemicals are present, although the decaffination process removes them again. In my personal experience, it really has nothing to do with the caffeine, but the roast. I do know that when I drink lighter roast coffee I have more acid-stomach issues, and I am growing tired of it. An occasional cup of coffee is one thing, but I can't make grabbing a cup of coffee on the road a daily habit unless I go to one of the coffee shops that makes a good cup of dark roast.
Which led me to start thinking about one of those single-cup brewing systems. They make pods for dark roast coffees, even pods for some of my favorites. Perhaps I should invest in one of those and put the drip pot away and bring out only when I have company. But I question whether the coffee is as good as what I can already make, and single-cup system are more expensive mistakes than simple drip coffee makers. I also realized that a single-cup system would be good if I was out early every morning and I wanted a cup before leaving, or a mug for the road. But I am not out early every morning and I would just make multiple single-cup servings. Why not make a pot?
So today seemed like a good time to start; as it is raining and expected to rain most of they day. It is a good coffee day. So I made a half-pot which is about 2 large mugs. I am just finishing the second mug and I think I will make another pot. Maybe I'll start making a pot of coffee more often; I think I am ready for that. Perhaps I should dig out my old travel mug while I'm puttering about the house today.
Perhaps I just needed time to settle into my new life.
Lunch:
Much more clear-headed this week and I am catching up on a lot of administrative work while other projects are on hold. This is the last post for this week as I will be away, and internet connectivity is questionable.
Driving home from Florida, we stopped in North Carolina and bought apples. We had been discussing applesauce, and although I hadn't actually made applesauce since I left New York state, I was game, so we split a half-bushel of Cortlands.
A large part of yesterday's general busywork revolved around tasks in the kitchen. I made a pot of chicken soup, which was pretty much a guaranteed success. Then there were my experiments: applesauce and lemon meringue pie.
I ended up with a little over 3 quarts of applesauce with enough leftover apples for a pie. I am freezing the pie filling for future use, as I plan some experimentation to perfect my gluten-free crust. The applesauce is being frozen in pint jars, although I only had 3 on hand, so the rest of the applesauce is in a bowl in the refrigerator, waiting for me to pick up more jars this afternoon. That is, if I manage to avoid eating it before I get the jars in the house. I hadn't forgotten how superior homemade applesauce is to the store-bought stuff, but I guess I had forgotten how utterly delicious it really is.
Even using only one kind of apple in this batch, I was impressed with the depth of flavor in the finished applesauce as well as the subtle sweetness (I added spices but no sugar). My applesauce is darker than some because I simply wash and quarter the apples before cooking. I am a lazy cook and I'd rather run the cooked apples through a food mill than peel and core the apples, especially considering that these apples were on the small side. The skins enhance the flavor and even though my apple skins were not deeply red, they still added depth to the color of the finished applesauce.
The lemon meringue pie was a less successful experiment. I used to make this pie all the time but I had never really written down the adaptations I had made to the original recipe to make it successfully gluten-free. I knew I used a cookie crumb crust, made from ready-made gingersnaps, but I had not written down the proportions and a few other details. I was hoping to make the pie again this weekend for a dinner party, but thought a test run was in order since it has been about 4 or 5 years since I have made this pie.
The pie looked beautiful although I knew there were a few issues even before the first cut was made. First of all, I had the proportion of butter to cookie crumb wrong. Butter melted all over the oven while the pie baked and made a mess. The resulting cookie crust was too dense and a little oily, although the flavor was good. Since the dripping butter made a lot of smoke, I took the pie out of the oven too early. This wasn't evident until I cut into it, when it became apparent that the center was still just a touch too soft; another 5 to 8 minutes of cooking time would do the trick.
The bigger problem is my own ambivalence. It is not really a question of taste, the lemon part of the pie is nicely tart and lemony and it sets off the sweetness of the meringue nicely. Even so, the pie was just too sweet for me. This surprised me. I've been plagued with a sweet tooth all my life. It was a good thing my mother didn't keep sweets and desserts in the house when I was a child because I would have been sneaking around stealing them. I always had a stash of candy under my bed. In 7th grade I took my lunch money and bought a hot-fudge sunday for lunch every day for at least half the year. Even 4 years ago, although I ate sweets rarely, once I started I couldn't stop.
Now, it is not that I never crave something sweet; I do, but a small piece was enough. A small piece of this pie however was too much. I always assumed I would bake things for others if not for myself. Now I wonder. I wonder even if I want to make dessert for Sunday. Perhaps store-bought cookes and ice cream would be enough. Personally I would probably prefer some cheese, a little fruit, and some coffee or dessert wine. I wonder how that would go over. What is the worst thing that could happen? People would think I am weird and not come back?
I think I need to reconsider my menu.
My CSA this week included these adorable little caraflex cabbages.
Although cabbage is not new to me, these are, and I am excited to be able to try them. It is also wonderful that they are small enough that I can experiment in the kitchen without being tied to eating cabbage for a week.
There is also a bounty of 'slenderette' green beans. Summer salads beckon.
I have to say that during the two months that I was mostly flat on my back I was extremely lucky. People brought me food. People brought groceries. Some people cooked, others brought prepared meals, and still others would come by and see that food actually travelled from my refrigerator to me so that I was able to eat. There were some surprising advantages to this ad hoc system. I learned which stores have a good rotisserie chicken, and conversly, which ones I will never buy. Granted I usually prefer to roast my own; it is not difficult and I have found a network of local farmers who provide organic pasture-raised chickens which are much healthier and better tasting than the average grocery-store chicken. That said, there are times where instant gratification is the orderof the day, and now I know where best to satisfy that particular craving, as well as where to find the best and freshest salad on those occasions it is inconvenient to assemble my own.
Still, I cannot deny that as soon as I was up and about following surgery, I was in the kitchen. I was truly eager to be able to cook for myself. I was ready to eat just what I wanted, just the way I wanted it prepared. This is the curse of being a cook I suppose, that I like my own cooking. It has certainly been one of the letdowns of Knoxville; that I have found precious little in the local dining establishments that I couldn't make better myself, and the two restaurants that seemed to have potential both closed….so that although I love to meet friends over a meal, the draw is the fellowship more than the food, and I am not likely to eat out for convenience. Of course that could change, although, as I've said before, I recognize that when it comes to food, I am terribly spoiled. Spoiled and blessed, because although although I love to cook something special and occasionally even complex, I can also be completely satisfied with simple, very simple. Food doesn't need to be complex to be good, but it needs to be good to nourish body and soul.
That first day in the kitchen I was so happy to be cooking, so eager to make something, and yet also so easily tired. I made a stew and a stir-fry. The stew was excellent but a bit of a mistake. I learned very quickly that I needed more balance. The freezer was full, and I wanted to use up the contents, but I couldn't bear eating stew every day. I needed fresh foods, easily cooked foods, but also a few good standbys that I could cook on a good day and have available to heat up on those days I was just so tired that if it weren't for leftovers I wouldn't eat.
It has been fun to explore cooking again: a simple roast chicken, a steak, a curry, or yes, even a roast or a stew. Happiness is in variety even though I can happily eat a monster salad every day, or even a simple plate of cold vegetables with chicken, hardboiled eggs or a bit of salmon. So the trick seems to be balance. Balance has never come easily to me, but it is the challenge I set for myself now. It is worth repeating: Balance. I need to balance my cravings for simple and fresh, for kitchen play and cooking, and for sharing food with friends, both out at local establishments, and eventually, when I don't tire out so easily, at home.
In the meantime, I've made this stir-fry a couple of times, usually in smaller quantities than here. Really it is best freshly made. It is not as complex as it seems. I've made it with coconut oil and lard, although I like the hint of sweetness in the coconut oil. You can use whatever fat you prefer.
Stir-Fried Shrimp with Bok Choy
The air has become humid this past week; welcome to summer in full. The screened porch continues to be delightfully breezy and cool however, a haven in the late afternoon, but the early mornings are my favorite time on the porch. I love the soft rustle of the trees in the morning breeze, the quiet symphony of bird song, and with luck, baby bunnies frollicking on the lawn.
Inspired by a beautiful bunch of French Breakfast Radishes, one morning this week everything seemed to align perfectly into one of those fleetingly precious moments which are greater than the sum of their parts. Radis au beurre, hardboiled eggs, coffee, memory, dreams of how the people we love shape the people we become, and the promise of spring and early morning. It is hard to put my finger on it, and yet it was perfect.
I never ate radis au beurre growing up; it was George's memory not mine. He would reminisce about the year his mother, his sister, and he spent in Paris before coming to America, about the American School where his mother was hoping he would get a head start in English. It was at school he first had radis au beurre. He would tell me about thick baguette's spread with sweet butter and topped with thinly sliced radishes, how he had never had anything so comforting and yet exotic at the same time. Radis au beurre symbolized a moment of joy hidden within the turmoil of the time before and after, between leaving Vienna and getting settled in America, a time of promise.
I am afraid I thought the combination of butter and radishes sounded weird and not at all appealing, strange considering that I grew up eating a lot of things some of my school friends would have thought odd to say the least. But eventually radis au beurre became our tradition as well, an early spring treat celebrating the first bunch of those lovely French breakfast radishes. But those traditions were long gone and I hadn't thought about it for years until these radishes appeared in my CSA bag.
There is no baguette in my version of course. Instead I used toasted Udi's gluten-free bread, the deli version that I buy at Jason's, which seems fresher than the frozen grocery-store variety, toasted because gluten-free bread is better toasted. There is still sweet cream butter, and thinly sliced radishes, and they form the perfect combination of soft crunch of bread, creamy butter, slight piquancy of the radishes: crisp and soft, chewy with a touch of crunch, like the soft morning breezes and the crisp air of dawn, a perfect combination.
I realized that somewhere in the process I had made my own tradition of welcoming spring, morning, rebirth. Like the combination of toast, butter, and radishes, traditions that were separate from me have been melded into my own traditions, just as people who have shaped my past live stil in my heart and guide my future. Each morning is something new, crisp with promise and yet soft with the warmth of history and love.
I cannot fully express the joy and sense of accomplishment I feel being at able to occasionally prepare a simple meal for myself. My happiness is unbounded and worth the resultant exhaustion. Even though I remain only able to get up for 5 or maybe 6 minutes at a time, which limits me to simple things that allow me to stagger the preparation over a period of time, the sense of freedom gained is immense. Being able to make a salad, or a very simple meal, even it takes an hour, is the difference between being completely dependent on others and being independent.
First I made the buttered spinach recipe I wrote about from The Nourished Kitchen. It was simple. I let the spinach sweat over low heat, and this allowed me to rest, then I forced the extra moisture from the spinach, sauteed it in some butter, seasoned to taste, and added finely minced hardboiled egg. It was a lovely combination, although I changed the proportions a bit, since I was making it for myself and planned to eat the entire thing for breakfast. I had 8 ounces of tender spring spinach, a little under half the recipe, with two hard-boiled eggs (the full recipe amount). It made for an excellent repast, which is not surprising since I love spinach mixed into scrambled eggs. It is possilbe that I like hard-boiled eggs mixed into a bowl of spinach even better, and a strong possibility this may become a standard. It is easy to toss the spinach in the pot and do other things, like make coffee and toast, chop the eggs and feed the cats, while the spinach steams. Then it is a simple task to toss everything together and eat. Of couse this implies that I have boiled the eggs previously, but that is not hard, and hard-boiled eggs are a good staple to have in the house for those times when I am rushed and need a bit of protein to tide me over.
I've been reading Deborah Madison's Vegetable Lieracy over the past week or so and of course it has further fueled my desire to be up and in the kitchen. I am not quite finished reading it but I've read enough to know that it will indeed see frequent use. The book is divided into 12 sections representing 12 families of vegetables, and the author has some thought provoking observations on how the vegetables under consideration in each section work together. Actually, although there is no dearth of practical information in the book, it is really more personal and anecdotal than strictly educational in approach, and that is one of the things I like about it. The recipes sound wonderful, and given my experience with Madison's previous books, I have no doubt that they are excellent.
Last night I made Tuscan Kale with Garlic-Anchovy Dressing for dinner. It was incredible. The recipe deems this a side dish for 3 or 4, and it would be an excellent side dish. I love a large meal-sized salad however, and four cups of Kale also made an excellent, and generous, dinner for me, although I did use only about a quarter cup of croutons, and slightly less olive oil than called for. Truthfully, although the croutons were good in the salad, and added a nice crunchy counterpoint, Tuscan kale retains enough crunch and texture that I could happily eat the salad without croutons, if I were making it just for me again. But don't go thinking that I left any croutons behind either, I enjoyed every last one. I can only recommend this recipe for those who enjoy anchovies and garlic as the olive-oil-garlic-anchovy dressing is noticably pungent. I felt the anchovies complemented the kale well. In fact I enjoyed it so much, I could use this dish as a reward for good behavior, an earned treat, and it would work, as I found this far more indulgent and satisfying than any junk food or pastry I can recall.
I wonder if that is a bad sign or a good sign. What kind of person craves kale with anchovies and olive oil instead of dessert or french fries? Perhaps I've finally crossed some line, gone over to the dark side…. I've partially lost the sweet tooth that has plagued me since childhood. I still love a sweet. I still love a really good pastry or piece of chocolate, an excellent dessert, even an occasional french fry. I don't completely avoid these things, but when I do want to indulge, I rarely want more than a small amount. But I could certainly eat a whole bowl of Kale with Anchovy-Garlic dressing without regret. The recipe is generous enough with the olive oil that I can't justify eating and entire bowl of it every day, but at the same time, with 4 cups of kale, I can't exactly call it junk food either.
Aside from cooking and reading cookbooks, I can't say that I have been very ambitious this week. I've basically been filling my time, between cooking attempts and doctor's visits, with light escapist reading.
BMBG recommended that I try Lawrence Block's The Burglar in the Library and I took her advice, although, as I was only familiar with Block's darker novels, I had trouble imagining Block as the author of laugh-out-loud mysteries. Obviously I knew nothing of the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels. With nods to Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett, skill and tremendous imagination, Block's humerous mystery had me rolling on more than one occasion.
I enjoyed the book so much that, feeling not particularly focused on more thoughtful literature and non-fiction, I went back to the first book, Burglars Can't Be Choosers, and have been working my way through the series. Block is a good writer; he is also a writer with a great sense of humor and a wicked wit who brings a light touch and a certain brash outrageousness to the most clichéd plot devices. In fact the clichés are part of the point and part of the fun; Block never forgets his reader and never seems to doubt the reader's intelligence. The books do build on each other and are worth reading in sequence but I enjoyed the first book I read, which is not the first of the series, immensly anyway. And the Burglar series, although light and deliciously humerous, hold up to being read in quick succession, no easy feat. I'll probably finish off the series over the rest of this week, or through the weekend, and they are books I would probably enjoy coming back to for a quick escapist bit of fun.
It's about time to catch up on reading again, although I have actually read very few books of late, only 3 since the last post. What can I say? I am too easily distracted? I can't do anything consistently week after week without change? Well, yes; it seems I am all to prone to human foibles.
But first I will distract you with yesterday's mid-afternoon snack: toasted Udi's bread, homemade ricotta made from local organic grass fed milk, cucumbers, and pickled red onion.
It is the pickled red onion that is important here because it represent my first tiny foray into the kitchen. Truly I was desperate to make something myself and this recipe, from here, seemed easy enough. Unfortunately my red onion was too large, so it was only half pickled by the time I was so ravenous I could wait no longer. I eventually had to add a little rice wine vinegar and now my pickled red onions are also bright pink throughout. But those half-pickled onions were surprisingly tasty.
I probably won't be expanding my repertoire very rapidly, sliceing the onions and mixing them together pretty much exhausted the limits of the time I could spend on my feet before resting, a new record yesterday, at 4 1/2 minutes per session. Baby steps, it is true, but progress nonetheless, and a small achievement. Of both I am very proud.
But back to those three books. They could not be more different.
First, I spent a good part of one day perusing The Nourished Kitchen by Jennifer McGruther who writes a blog of the same name. Both the blog and the book are based on the traditional foods movement and the research of the Weston A. Price foundation. As such, the book, some sections more than others, will not appeal to everyone. I've been eating primarily locally raised pastured poultry and meat for quite some time, I buy a significant amount of what I eat at farmer's markets, and don't really worry about the other stuff. Although I haven't cooked anything from the book (see above about the limits on my cooking) a good proportion of the recipes are for the kinds of food I already love and I am looking forward to trying them out, but there are also many things that are new to me, including a section on fermenting vegetables. I do keep a small selection of fermented foods, and think it would be fun to try my hand at making my own. At any rate, the book is filled with good information and was a lovely read, the photographs are gorgeous, and it left me hoping that I can get back to my kitchen soon. I'm thinking that the recipes for Blistered Radishes with Parsley and Buttered Spinach might be manageable with my current limitations, that is if I can keep myself from eating all the new spring radishes raw.
Dennis Lehane's The Given Day really surprised me. I thought it was a good novel and I got completely wrapped up in the story and the characters. Well, truthfully there are only two characters who are fully developed, Danny Coughlin, and Luther Lawrence, with everyone else basically acting as set pieces needed to fill in the narrative or illustrate certain points. So basically to like this book you have to like Danny and Luther, or you have to get wrapped up in the historical aspects of the novel, which is set in Boston immediately following WWI, between the influenza epidemic and the policemen's union strike. I liked both the history and the main characters, who I found quite compelling. Perhaps I've known too many young men just like them, and I could hear their words in my mind, superimposing the characters in the novel with other people I've known. Both men start out as rather shallow, happy-go-lucky young men, who glide through life, both try to do the right thing but learn that knowing what the right thing is far more complicated than it would seem. Lehane handled the complexities and the subtleties of both men's struggles well, and I thought he also dealt well with the idea of family, and the unfortunate truth that we often start out thinking of our families with a hazy glow, wanting what is best, but woefully unprepared for the repurcussions when life doesn't turn out quite the way we imagined it. Lehane has a gift for capturing the cadence of a speaker, and many times the voices would ring in my haad, so that even a simple dialog could be filled with meaning.
I also loved the sense of history: the details of time and place and a period of history I don't know enough about. The book seems to be well researched but it is quite dense, as it seems this was a very dense and volatile period. There were sections that dragged, almost as if there was just too much in to the story, and yet I would say that most of the detail and various plots were important to the development of the characters and the conclusion of the story. Reading about the influenza epidemic was powerful, and reading about young police officer Danny dragging bodies out of buildings reminded me of a story we read in fifth grade, where a girl was describing looking out her window onto the bodies stacked on the sidewalk, waiting to be picked up and carted away, something I am sure I had not thought of once in the intervening 45 years. The rather long section leading up to the strike, and Danny's infiltration and exploration of the various labor groups and leftist organizations, as long as the rather paranoid reactions of the people in power were tedious at times, but were important for Danny's growing understanding that the world was more complicated than the world as seen from his parent's house. Danny was a character of great hope and naiveté, and yet possessed of a great inner strength (not just physical strength which is played up in the book).
There are also some minor sections that are profoundly powerful. Eddie McKenna is one of the polarizing characters of the book, and I feel his presence is necessary. Near the end when he is speaking to Luther, telling him that he can never be an American, never be as much of an American as he (Eddie), the first reaction is to pull back from the appalling violence and racism of his statement. Of course many felt the same way. But upon thinking further, you realize that Luther's family had been in this country for generations even though they were originally brought to this country as slaves, and Eddie had come to America as a boy, trying to escape a kind of slavery, the bleak prospects and lack of promise of his lot in Ireland. Not only did Eddie embrace America as a place for those who would change their lives, as he did, and embrace it with a proud love, in this scene Eddie also reminds of the dark side of an emotion that exists in all of us. We see it all the time. Another extreme example is the rich New Yorker I knew, who upon buying and restoring an old run down estate in an economically downtrodden town, became obsessed with buying up small properties near his house, partly because he wanted more land, but partly because he didn't want to see their mobile homes or run down houses, when he drove up his driveway. The presence of a poorer population violated his sense of how the world should be, so his response, much like Eddie's, was to make it go away.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel, I can't say that it left me feeling like it is something I want to read again. It was not a novel that brought new insights or understanding, Well, it left me with a profound dislike of Calvin Coolidge.
Lastly I read a Kindle Single called Planet Carnivore by Alex Renton. The book seems to be fairly clear-headed, well-researched, and not particularly polemical. Renton begins with the latest meat scare du jour and then uses that as a starting off point to discuss modern meat production and the true cost of the cheap meat we have grown so used to in western industrial nations and its environmental and health impact. He also reviews thoughts and suggestions concerning a more sustainable future from other authors as well as ideas of his own. I would quibble about a few things, but they are really secondary, not about his main thesis. Recommended But then I am inclined to believe we should think more and take less for granted.