Month: February 2007

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The Art of Food, Part I

This morning as I am contemplating calabasa soup, or perhaps cauliflower, but have no definite food activity to report, might be a good time to discuss food philosophy in general. Or general philosophy in general.

Cooking is art deploying science. I’m grateful for those folks who test and test recipes until they’re “perfect” (blessings upon you, Cooks Illustrated!). But then there are so many variables you face in the kitchen: you run out of, or have never heard of, anchiote chili powder; you live in the sticks, where if you asked for lemongrass the clerk would send you to the garden section of your local Wal-Mart; the recipe calls for pork but the store has fresh lamb for the first time in ages. There is much beauty and possibility in all this unpredictability.

Fred says that when he paints he has to turn off his inner critic, which allows him to try new things. This is how I approach food, despite the fact that I have that Southern inability to put a dish on the table without saying something like, “Well, I don’t know if this will be any good because I think I let the onions get too brown,” or the classic, “Oh, it’s nothing fancy–I just threw it together.”

That’s not how I approach writing, which I agonize over and edit and nitpick till it’s dead sometimes. That’s the other reason for this blog. It would be nice to write a bit more like I cook–freely, with a little less of the inner critic and a little more sense of fun.

Two of my happiest cooking moments occurred when I had to make dinner for a large group of people using only the leftovers available in the kitchen. In some ways this is how I approach grocery shopping, only instead of looking for leftovers (my goodness! the canned spinach is on sale!) I’m looking for the prettiest seasonal vegetables, the freshest-looking fish, the plumpest pork and tastiest cheese. When you’re confined to recipes you can’t do this–you want to make peach Melba in December; the store has just gotten some wild sockeye salmon that costs as much as a new pair of shoes but won’t be there as long and will taste much better; you get home with the chicken but realize you forgot to pick up the celery.

Fred and I now have to go to church–a friend of ours is being ordained. Just one more factor that keeps us from being bohemian.

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Satan’s Computer and Poached Perch

Due to various extenuating circumstances, such as the Satan-possessed technology in our house that was miraculously recovered through the noble efforts of Linksys Wireless and BellSouth Tech Support, staffed by Marvin I-sound-like-the-Paranoid-Android and a very nice man I know only as Charlie, the following post has been delayed until just now. In the interim all hope of calabasa soup was abandoned in favor of dinner out, which consisted of a martini, wine, and some food. Fred’s art show was also put up and looks great. Now he just needs to sell everything in it to make less than a convenience store manager. But we are not bitter.

Moving along . . . .

Fred and I went to the Farmer’s Market yesterday to lay in our supply of vittles for the week. In passing I should add that the Farmer’s Market is not what you think. There are no overall-clad, wizened men in baseball caps sitting outdoors on the backs of their pickup trucks, or farmers of varied national origin sitting in booths behind piles of carrots, corn, and tomatoes. I have yet to see a single farmerly person there. It’s basically a warehouse with vegetables, meat, bread, dairy, wine, and beer, but no household products (toilet paper, dishwashing liquid, hair spray, etc.). The Market’s motto is “Bringing the World of People and Food Together,” and certainly it has brought me in contact with many foods I had never met before.

Friday’s new acquaintance was calabasa, which is a pumpkin-like squash with a green rind from the Caribbean/Mexico. I’m going to make a soup with it with some hot Italian sausage—we’ll see how it goes.

When we got home I scooped the seeds and flesh out of the calabasa (it was already halved), put some olive oil in it, and stuck it in the oven at 350 (which in my oddly slow oven means 400) for what probably should have been about 30 minutes to an hour but which ended up being closer to 3 after Fred and I started watching a Bob Newhart DVD and lost track of time and I started to notice a smell from the kitchen.

Luckily calabasa appears to be quite a hardy or perhaps hard to cook food, so I still don’t know how long you should really allow to prepare it. But after 3 hours in the oven it was soft, with only a little burned juice that had leaked out around the edges, and it tasted pretty good—like pumpkin—so I scooped out the cooked flesh and put it in the fridge for later.

I also washed the flesh off the seeds and roasted them this morning, but that experiment did not end so happily. I have a yummy recipe for spiced nuts and thought it might be good to use the spice mix for the calabasa seeds—oil, cumin, cayenne, sugar, and salt. It seems, though, that to get the oven hot enough to roast the seeds you end up with blackened sugar. Next time I’ll just use salt and olive oil to roast and add the spice mix afterward.

As for last night, we had Poached Perch. The idea came from a very briefly viewed Internet recipe for poaching mackerel. My only memory was that it had garlic and lime juice and that it was vaguely foreign. When I started cooking it last night the garlic and lime juice made me think, “Mexican,” which then led to thoughts of adding chipotle peppers that were mercifully ended by the sudden recollection that GINGER was the big thing involved in the Internet version. So I went Asian with the whole thing. Here’s the recipe:

  1. Saute 1 medium chopped onion in about 1 tbsp olive oil in a large non-iron skillet with a cover
  2. Mince 4 cloves garlic.
  3. Salt and pepper fish in casserole dish. (We had 4 perch filets, but any white fish would do.
  4. Mix in a bowl (oh, lessons learned—do not just start dumping things on the fish but mix first) about ¼ cup fresh lime juice, garlic, red pepper flakes to taste, grated ginger (2 tbsp??—I use the “fresh” grated ginger you get in a jar, not the dried stuff, as if there is some real food snobbery in that), and a few dashes of soy sauce. Make a little more than you think you’ll need and save a teaspoon or so for the salad dressing below.
  5. Put a little water to cover the bottom of the pan (maybe about ¼ inch) and bring to boil. Nestle fish in the bottom, turn to simmer, cover and cook until a knife placed on the fish goes down into the fish without much pressure—maybe 5 – 10 minutes. (I do remember the knife tip from the Internet recipe.)

I served this with a light salad consisting of Boston red lettuce and a dressing consisting of about 2-3 tbsp sesame oil and about a tsp of the above mix. I salted the lettuce after dressing it.

Fred and I were quite happy with this and ate two filets each while watching Bob Newhart.

I’m rightfully disturbed that I am now over 40 and spending Friday nights watching 1970s TV.

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Nuttiness

I’m going to start all this with kale, chicken, and wild rice soup. I have been married just over one month and am enjoying a wonderfully creative time in the kitchen. My husband does not cook—unless you count broiling steaks or opening cans of sardines to eat with mustard, crackers, and beer—but he will eat anything except Brussels sprouts and rutabaga. So he’s the perfect guinea pig/victim for these culinary experiments.

I feel I need to precede this with a little bit about myself and what I’m up to. My husband Fred and I are embarking on this marriage adventure a bit late in life—I’m 41 and he’s 46, and neither of us has been married before. One day when Fred sells his paintings for a lot of money I’ll quit my day job and cook all day, but until then I’m hanging on to my medical insurance and retirement account.

But back to the kale. I wanted to start this blog because I wanted to chronicle our first year of married life in food. Nearly every night I cook something new and because I almost never use a recipe, and when I do I always change it, I can’t remember some good things I’ve made lately. So I want a record somewhere, and on the Internet seems safer than inside the demonic innards of this evil Being that pretends to be a computer but was clearly spawned in the pit of Hell.

Anyway, on Thursday I had some chicken thighs and wanted to make a soup because it was chilly here in Atlanta (i.e., below 60). So here’s what I came up with:

–Cook wild rice according to directions, enough to make 2 cups cooked rice
–Sauté 2 medium or 1 large onion in olive oil
–While onion is sautéing, coarsely chop 4 stalks chopped celery. Once onion has sautéed, add celery and sauté a little longer
–Mince 4-5 cloves garlic and chop 6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs into bite-size pieces.
–Once onions and celery are tender, sauté everything until chicken thighs are lightly cooked—white on the outside but not brown
–Add about 1 quart stock (I used turkey stock frozen from Thanksgiving. I am lazy so I thaw it by putting it in the microwave on high for five minutes then dump the semi-frozen result directly into the pot.)
–Add salt, pepper, sage, and bay leaf.
–Cover and simmer until your frozen stock has melted and the chicken is done—10 to 15 minutes.
–In the meantime, remove stems and chop the kale—not too fine, maybe 1-2 inch pieces.
–Add cooked rice and kale. Stir up just so that kale has wilted and you’re done.

I served this with grated Parmesan cheese but it did not melt well into the soup. I would either use a very coarser grater or a very fine one next time, or perhaps try a cheese that melts a little better, or leave it off.

Although the whole thing sounds horribly healthy, it was actually pretty good. The wild rice and kale together had a nice nutty flavor.