DECEMBER 2011
Wednesday 2011.12.28
Last Blog of 2011
Having made it through another Christmas without cooking, I can't resist telling you about the most ludicrous Christmas feast in which I ever participated. It was two years ago and the host and I are no longer friends; so maybe it is safe to blog about it now.
I was asked to prepare my famous Pesto Lamb for the dinner, something I was very willing to do because I love lamb, it's delicious, and I certainly didn't mind sharing it with friends. That I was asked to make two seemed a little excessive, but I was sure there must be some wisdom that eluded me.
Per my recipe, I did the advance preparation the evening before. The following day, Christmas day, I arrived with the two legs of lamb ready for the oven. I also brought two of my probe digital thermometers so that I could assure the meat would be roasted to perfection.
Meanwhile, as we all waited for dinner (all five of us—two legs of lamb?—really?) the host brought out a huge tray of sumptuous appetizers. "Just a little something I made up for the occasion." We tucked in. After a while, another tray, equally huge and equally lavish, was presented. We guests looked at each other questioningly, wondering what was going on. After we had picked at that one for a while, another huge tray came out. This was becoming absurd. In all, there were six large trays of hors d'oeuvres before dinner—for five of us. I am not exaggerating. By the fourth tray we were taking only one tidbit, the smallest we could find on the tray, simply to be polite.
Meanwhile, the host offered somewhat of an apology, with a self-gratifying, affected titter. "I always prepare too much. I am simply too generous." Anyone with a thinking mind would realize that all these beautiful trays were prepared for the presentation value only, as works of art, to focus attention on the host, without any thought given to the amount of food five people were expected to consume.
Dinner was a joke. There we sat, already stuffed to the eyeballs with hors d'oeuvres, trying to politely eat a robust meal. "No, please, only half a slice, and paper thin, if you can manage it." I was a little perturbed—especially having spent nearly $100 on lamb, pine nuts, basil, etc.—and I spoke a barbed aside at one point, aimed squarely at the host. "Kind of defeats the whole purpose of a meal, doesn't it?"
Having a master's degree in counseling psychology, and being the best diagnostician in my class, I could go into the clinical details of what happened that day, and why, but I won't. Suffice to say that I brought a whole roast home, which I portioned for my Minute Meals, leaving most of the other roast behind for the host. I have not been invited to Christmas dinner at that home since.
Sunday 2011.12.25— Christmas Day
Glad Tidings
How do you celebrate the season? Every year I always read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, starting five days before Christmas so that I can read the last Stave on Christmas Day. I looked back at last December's blog and I mentioned the book last year as well. And, just like last year, I read it on my Nook Color ebook reader-tablet.
Like last year I also was not called upon to cook anything this year. Another relaxing holiday. Word evidently spread that I am happily retired and enjoying my leisure time.
This week I cooked something very Italian for myself. I'd been wanting to try this for years. Baked Bisceglie Pasta. I videoed the process, staring the evening before when I made the ragù in advance. Tomato sauce is always better the next day anyway. The following day I made the meatballs in the morning, went out to lunch with friends, and during the afternoon I assembled and baked the pasta.
Rarely do I make something the flavor of which I would describe as Magnificent! l really enjoy most of the foods I cook and consider them delicious. But this recipe had the most flavorful ragù I have ever prepared. This ragù will definitely be my first choice recipe for future Italian dishes that require a chunky tomato sauce.
What made this dish especially enjoyable, besides the magnificent flavor, was that it came from the most problematic cookbook in my library, Jo Bettoja's Southern Italian Cooking. Many of the recipes, mostly those that require a baking formula (such a pastry dough or pie crust) have inaccurate ratios of wet and dry ingredients. I have enough experience that I can usually spot the errors and make adjustments. The simpler dishes that require an assembly of ingredients and cooking, without the chemistry of baking, are more reliable. The Baked Bisceglie Pasta was a genuine surprise. I didn't imagine it would taste so good. The recipe and video will be added to this site in future weeks.
And speaking of future weeks: Another advantage of living in retirement is that I have been building up my library of future recipes and videos. I have enough videos and recipes written and edited to cover every update through the end of February. I continue to prepare some traditional recipes, such as Spanacopita and Baklava, but I also delve into the exoitic—Moroccan Lamb and Prune Tagine—and create some unique recipes of my own invention. You have much to anticipate for the coming new year.
Wednesday 2011.12.21
Patience
If you can read this, consider yourself lucky. My web site has been down more than up the last few days. The small local company that hosts my pages has been trying to block Denial of Service attacks lately. I haven't gotten reliable statistics during this time, and I am reliant on stats to know how this site is doing.
One thing I noticed is that the total views of my YouTube channel, which are nearing 28,000, are slowing down. Also, most of the hits to the web site are during the middle of the day. Those two details combined tells me that people are viewing my web site and videos at their job, and as this is the week before Christmas, many are not at work. Ergo: The numbers would be down anyway and maybe I don't want to see the stats.
I had to take alternate measures to make my latest recipe PDF, Goose Isabel, available by other means. I created that recipe just for Christmas. Those who have bookmarked this site's Facebook fan page (there is a Facebook badge at the bottom of the left column of the home page) have been able to access the recipe from another source while this site was down. I uploaded the PDF to Google Docs and put a link on Facebook. Similarly, I added a link on the Google+ fan page as well.
I put two more videos "in the vault" earlier this week. Once again I ventured into Jo Bettoja's incomprehensibly inaccurate cookbook, Southern Italian Cooking, and once again I found that her formula, this time for the Béchamel sauce in the Arancini recipe (page 143), was terribly wrong. Three tablespoons of flour with one cup of milk, with butter and seasoning. Bring it to a boil and what have you got? A lump of white modeling clay, not a sauce. What I like about the cookbook is that the flavors are excellent, after you correct the recipes for errors.
Hopefully the hosting service will have all their problems sorted out by Sunday. I am scheduled to publish my recipe for Veal Involtini. Now that the warehouse store is stocking veal, I am experimenting with it. The involtini are rich and savory.
So, given the issues with my site's hosting service, and Jo Bettoja, I've had to exercise a little more patience than usual. I haven't been good at it, but I'm trying.
Sunday 2011.12.18
Practice Makes Perfect
Recently someone asked me where I learned to cook. Answer: In my own kitchen. I taught myself to cook and I've been practicing my own cooking skills for more than 40 years.
Food is entertainment, in a grander way than some might think. I watch cooking shows on TV. Most cooking shows are fantasy. In fact, they are as much fantasy as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or How to Train Your Dragon. The only thing missing is the dragon. In a really entertaining cooking show, such as Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef series, you have three essential components:
- An accomplished chef who is culinary-school trained and who worked as a chef in a restaurant until s/he established their own restaurant(s).
- Fantastic recipes that you might never attempt at home, except in moments of delusional grandeur. (A friend of mine reminded me that in these difficult economic times delusion is actually a good thing.)
- People sitting around the dinner table having more fun than you ever imagined anyone could enjoy in a single lifetime.
Many dining room tables are arenas for heated argument and possibly a violent act or two, if people eat at the table at all. When I was a child, all meals were eaten at the table. These days, I have to stop my guests from moving their plate from the table to the living room and turning on the TV.
But, back to the fantasy of food television. We envision ourselves making those incredibly delicious meals and presenting them to our anticipating guests. If you want to get an honest assessment of the eating/cooking public watch Emeril Live on the Food Network. There are three ingredients the audience always applauds, every time: Garlic, hot sauce, and booze. That’s all they know. Their entire cooking repertoire includes only garlic, hot sauce, and liquor. What does that tell you about their ability as cooks? Ergo: They only fantasize about cooking.
If you want to be a cook that entertains guests with fantastic dishes of incredibly good food you must learn to cook. Fantasizing won't put food on the table. Cooking is a practical skill and like any skill, practice is needed. Learn to cook by cooking. Your kitchen is your school. Cook often and repeat dishes until you get them right. Make mistakes and fix them. That's how I learned to cook.
Wednesday 2011.12.14
Lunch With Friends
For being someone who cooks, and loves to cook, I sometimes am amazed with myself that I don't do more entertaining. The truth is: I rarely cook unless it is to do a video (and more on that in a moment). Almost every meal is a Minute Meal. Heat and eat, then to wash the fork.
That's not to say I never cook for my friends. Usually is feed them experimentally, testing something on them. They are more than willing to serve as my laboratory rats because they typically don't get something until I am satisfied it is delicious. My Genovese Savory Pastries are a good example. I don't remember how many times I made those before I was satisfied they were good enough to serve to guests. I do remember how many times I made Custard Pie before I was satisfied with the recipe; ten times. My Smoked Salmon Quiche also went through sever iterations before I got it right. But those experiments aren't gatherings for casual association over food.
Today I joined friends again for lunch at a local Chinese buffet. I'll be complaining about Chinese food causing my body to retain water come Saturday when I post my average weight for the week, and admit how many pounds I gained. Ugh, but it is so delicious. I love Chinese food.
Conversation always turns to politics. The prediction this week is that Ron Paul will win the Iowa republican primary. I don't participate in politics, but I love to watch events unfold. The last president I voted for was Richard Nixon. That was enough to poison anyone. He did get us out of Vietnam though.
The economy, especially here in California, space exploration, the drug war, and food of course, were all topics of conversation. I got to share some of my favorite recent email. One man wrote to ask if my videos could be downloaded from my web site because every time his 74 year old mother comes to visit she makes him take her onto the Internet to watch my latest YouTube video. I have at least one adoring fan, and I'm thankful.
I began the morning running around trying to find prosciutto after a very brief visit with my oral surgeon. He just wanted to look at my jaw to make certain the implant was still well. He said everything looks perfect. It is odd how difficult prosciutto is to buy in this town. The grocery store down the street usually sells it, but they were out. Several stores discontinued it in their deli section. I could buy it sliced, at a very high price, but I need a thick piece to cube for a video I plan to do tomorrow. I finally ended up driving all the way into the city to find some, and paid $14.99 per pound. Locally it is $12.99 per pound.
So that is the video I will do next. Arancini. It is a Sicilian dish and supposedly nearly every household in Sicily has their favorite recipe for this appetizer (although it is sometimes served as a main course). I had never heard of it. The recipe intrigues me; so tomorrow I'll prepare it. Although it is in the most problematic cookbook on my bookshelves, I can't foresee anything going wrong. This recipe involves no chemistry, like baking. Just assemble and cook. I shall see…
Sunday 2011.12.11
A Week of Baklava
Many years ago I worked in a department where the director was a big lover of his staff. They were like family. Almost every day he walked around the offices, poking his head in the door to say hello, sometimes stopping to chat for a few minutes. We all loved him dearly. Our department was famous for having the lowest staff turnover. We were the envy of the division. This might be difficult to believe, but as a thank you gift for having saved the department thousands of dollars from incorrect IT billing, he had cable TV installed in my office. I had cable! It's true!
He didn't stay with us for long, but it was the best five or six years that department ever enjoyed. We still reminisce about him. Unfortunately, times change, and not always for the best. Since that director's departure the department has endured three despicable directors who have been among some of the most loathed personnel ever employed. Very few people remain from the original staff, and many have come and gone since.
During our heyday, however, we enjoyed some fun times. Like many departments, there were slow periods and busy times. Early summer, from about May through July, was the slowest and one of the pastimes we enjoyed was gathering together outside at the barbecue or in the staff lounge to learn how to cook from one another. Someone would send around a memo announcing his or her favorite recipe, a list of ingredients to bring, and the day and time of the cooking class. We gathered to cook together. It was loads of laughs, lots of fun.
One of the recipes from those times was for baklava. That was more than 20 years ago. I kept the recipe, but many of the details were lost from memory. For one: The recipe calls for finely chopped walnuts, but there was no explanation of how fine the finely was. This past week I made the baklava, twice, having learned the first time that my fine wasn't fine enough. The second batch came out perfect and it is that recipe, with pictures and a video, that will be published on this web site in coming weeks.
Meanwhile, there have been several plates of baklava on the kitchen counter and on the dining room table, waiting for delivery. I brought one to a neighbor who loves baklava. Another went to the office where I worked before retiring. Yet another went to a friend. A fourth plate went to the staff in the office of my oral surgeon. The largest plate was supposed to be picked up by a friend, but he evidently forgot, which seems odd because he expressed an interest in having some when I told him about it. He left town for the holidays, to be away for almost a month, leaving his baklava behind. Hopefully he won't read this blog. His portion ended up in the trash. I held it for a week for him, until it was too old to be given away to anyone.
Other than trashing a plate of baklava, the entire experience was a lot of fun, all the more so because it brought back wonderful memories of one of the best jobs in which I ever enjoyed working. Really! I had cable TV in my office! C'mon. You can't do much better than that.
Wednesday 2011.12.07
Mise En Place
This is a French term that means having all your ingredients assembled in one place and ready to use in your recipe. Julia Child did this. In one of her French Chef cooking shows on WGBH Boston she talked about the usefulness of assembling all the ingredients on a tray and then removing them from the tray as they are used. A quick look at the tray during the preparation told her how many ingredients she had yet to use and, more importantly, whether or not she forgot to add something.
I heard from someone who was using my French Bread recipe. After the loaves went into the oven she discovered that she forgot to add salt. The bread would still turn out okay, but it would taste a little flat. This I know from experience. I had forgotten the salt many times in the past. It wasn't until I learned to assemble my mise en place in advance that I started to become more proficient at making certain every necessary ingredient made it into the food.
This is why you see my assembled ingredients toward the beginning of each of my videos. The first picture in the Step-by-Step photographs that I include in every recipe PDF is my mise en place.
Another advantage of assembling your ingredients this way is that you can easily determine whether or not you have all the necessary components, and in the necessary amounts, in your kitchen. Perhaps you have experienced the frustration of reaching into the cupboard for your bag of crushed walnuts only to find you have half a pound and the recipe calls for a full pound. You then rush to the grocery store to buy more.
Yet another advantage, and one that is a little ugly, is that assembling you mise en place also provides an opportunity to make certain your ingredients are good enough to use. Recently I made banana corn bread and I hadn't used my corn meal in a long time. I suspected it might be buggy. A quick examination with a magnifying glass revealed little creeping things crawling around. The corn meal went into the trash and the glass jar was washed and bleached before I drove to the store to buy more. When making Bailey's Irish Cream I found that the little jar of instant coffee, which had been sitting in the cupboard for many months, was moldy. In that case I substituted with some very strong coffee made from fresh ground coffee beans.
Like Julia Child, I also use a tray. It is actually a "quarter-sheet" baking sheet. A few years ago I bought at the warehouse store a set of baking sheets that included two half-sheets, a quarter-sheet, and a cooling rack. The warehouse store typically stocks them before Thanksgiving because this is the time of year when home cooks usually do a lot of baking. They disappear after New Years. This year the package was not as good. It still comprised four pieces, but instead of two half-sheets it included only one half-sheet and a plastic cover. The quarter-sheet isn't very useful; so I use mine as a tray that I usually set on the stove. When I'm doing a video at the stove and ingredients are brought in from the right, they are being taken off my tray.
Assembling a mise en place, especially for a complicated recipe that uses many ingredients, is a useful habit to develop. It will save frustration and make recipe preparation more organized and efficient.
Sunday 2011.12.04
Mom's Italian Christmas Cookies
This week's recipe and video are files that I've kept "in the vault" for many months. In fact, this is the only remaining unpublished video that I made with my friend's camera. I bought my own video camera in June. I looked at the video clip files and I actually shot this video last year, the day after Christmas.
My mother was born in the USA, of Italian immigrant parents. My grandmother was from Naples. I don't know where my grandfather lived in Italy. He died when I was five years old. He lived with us the last few years of his life and sometimes I think he loved me more than my parents did. My parents were good parents, but they didn't know how to show affection. I often refer to my mother as the C.E.O. of our family. Family life was like business.
Every Christmas she made her Italian Christmas Cookies from a recipe she learned from her mother. We children always helped. At first we sprinkled on the colored nonpareils after she frosted the cookies. As we got older we were allowed to frost the cookies and then, later, shape some of the dough into cookies before they were baked. It was like playing with modeling clay.
My mother's cookies had one problem that always perplexed me. A few days after they were baked they became hard as rocks. I joke about them, saying "We weren't allowed to throw them in the house." They tasted okay, but chewing them became an ordeal. The dog liked them.
It never occurred to me to come up with a recipe for my mother's cookies. I had no interest. Then, last December apparently, I took up the challenge of trying to correct my mother's Christmas cookie recipe.
I did a little research and very quickly the problem became apparent. Most cookie recipes use butter. I don't remember my mother ever putting butter in her cookies. We didn't have butter in the house. It was too expensive. I grew up with margarine. If you're not familiar with it, unsaturated fats from vegetable oils are blasted with hydrogen to convert them from liquid to solid, a process that turns healthy polyunsaturated oil into cholesterol-inducing, artery-clogging saturated fats, or trans fats, destroying the health benefits. It is no wonder that my mother, who was also very obese, died of a heart attack (as did her father) before she reached retirement age.
My Italian grandmother arrived in this country before the Great Depression. My mother told us stories of having to put folded up newspaper in the bottom of their shoes to cover the holes. My grandmother was evidently deeply affected by the Depression; she remained hopelessly frugal to the end of her life. We sometimes referred to her meatballs as bread balls.
Water being an economical substitute for butter in my grandmother's, and mother's, mind, their Christmas cookies were made with very little fat. After the initial moisture dried out, they became hard as rocks. (Although, I remember my grandmother's cookies staying softer a lot longer. Maybe she added a little margarine.)
Last Christmas season I made a batch of my mother's Christmas cookies using a typical amount of butter for most cookies. When they came out of the oven they were soft and crumbly, and they remained that way. I even left one sitting unwrapped on the table for more than a week to see how it might change. Other than becoming stale, it remained soft and crumbly. So, the mystery is solved. Use butter, not water, when baking cookies.
These cookies are not overly sweet, like many cookies sold here in the USA. They do contain sugar, but only a moderate amount. If you like your cookies overflowing with sugar, you'll want to adjust the recipe accordingly. I believe the recipe is more typical of the cookies made in Italy.