SEPTEMBER 2013
Sunday 2013.9.29
Maybe I'm a Little Greater Than I Thought I Was
In Wednesday's blog I denigrated myself a little by declaring I am not a great cook. Compared to the true greats out there—Gordon Ramsay, et al.—I saw myself as nothing more than a tiny sparkle in a star-studded sky. I received an encouraging email from someone who took issue with that. True, I might not be a culinary-school trained chef, but citing my recipe PDFs, my videos, TV shows, and web site, he believes I am an excellent cook. I plead no contest. I accept his assessment without reservation, and here is one reason why:
Something amusing happened this week. I heard from a TV station in Denmark. They are filming a cooking competition series and the day's challenge for the contestants was to make a cake using an alcoholic beverage as part of the recipe. The judges are professional confectioners. A well-known jazz musician won the challenge with my Quadruple Rum Cake. At the end of the program he gave credit for the recipe to me and my web site. How cool is that? Someone at the TV station visited my web site and then wrote to me to congratulate me on my accomplishments.
One of my friends said I should now name it my Award Winning Quadruple Rum Cake. I did make mention of the contest in the recipe and I created a new PDF for the Recipe Archive.
I accept the accolades. I remember someone saying in a documentary I saw many years ago, "It's not a big fame; it's a little fame, but it's still a fame."
Having received my master's degree in counseling psychology, my inclination is to look for a source for the behavior. Recently I started watching a series of videos by Gordon Ramsay. He is a genuine inspiration to the aspiring cook. But he is also a bar raised too high, or so it seems. It is easy to make comparisons and think, "I'll never be able to do what he does." True, but that doesn't mean I can't do anything at all. To prove that to myself, I started cooking some of his recipes from the videos. They work and they are delicious.
Thinking back to my days in art class when in high school, our teacher discussed the inevitable comparisons. We'll look at the work of other artists and wish we could do the same. But others will look at my artwork and wish the same. (The little camper trailer on my web site and recipes—I drew that in Adobe Illustrator.) When making those comparisons, he advised us not to discourage ourselves. Instead, use the comparisons for inspiration to become better. That works for me.
And so I continue to cook, stretching my abilities a little when I can. This week I baked whole wheat bread again, doing a video this time (to be uploaded here and to YouTube in coming weeks). At the end of the video I used the bread to make a sandwich—a BLT (bacon, lettuce, and tomato), but I fried prosciutto and pancetta instead of bacon, and I made my own mayonnaise from scratch.
I might not be the equivalent of Gordon Ramsay or Julia Child, but I am better than one former friend who stood in amazement as I steamed broccoli to have with our dinner. He had never heard of steaming broccoli. Really?
Wednesday 2013.9.25
I Am Not a Great Cook
I've been getting a lot of recognition lately. The clerk behind the counter at the post office recognized me from TV. The woman in Hawaii sent me Hawaiian print fabrics for my videos and I sent her three aprons—thus my reason for being at the post office. Then there was the shuttle driver at the car dealership.
I am not a chef. I have never attended culinary school (however, if somone gave me a fully paid scholarship and if I were able to complete the program entirely through distance learning—I could send them videos of my cooking—I'd sign up quickly.) Therefore, you'll never see me in a chef's jacket. Although there is no law against it here in California, I believe it is an unspoken rule that I cannot wear a chef's jacket unless I graduated from a culinary school. The most I can wear is an apron (and now I have three more added to my collection, thanks to Arla in Hawaii).
The truth is: There are a lot of people who can cook, many of whom are better cooks than I am. The difference is: I am a cook with a professional video camera. Also, I was in theatre when I was in college and therefore I am comfortable when in front of my camera. And I am good at everything else that goes into making a YouTube video or TV show. I have good computers. I have good video editing software. Once again, look at the list of credits at the end of my videos (well, not this week's feature video) and you'll see only one name—mine. I do everything without any assistance.
I'm not a phony or a poser, nor am I immodestly modest. That might seem like an odd term, immodestly modest, but I know people who would go to great lengths to appear humble, but they are so full of pride as to be unbearable in conversation. And I know at least two people who have almost nothing to be proud about, and yet they are full of themselves. Those two are former friends that I shed many months ago.
Now, to be honest, I am not without a little pride. I love to watch the other cooking shows on the TV channel where my shows are broadcast. I cringe with delight when those cooks open a can of this and a jar of that. Opening cans and jars is not cooking. Assembling and heating is about as far as they go. Watch Robert Irvine in the TV show Restaurants Impossible, or Gordon Ramsay in almost anything. They preach fresh ingredients.
Okay, there is something else. I can taste stuff and pair flavorings. This first became obvious the first time I cooked shallots. The flavor was disgusting. So I wondered what would happen if I caramelized them. The flavor made me think of clams. So I created my recipe for Linguine with Clam Sauce. (It also earned me the ire of a cooking instructor. After she learned that I could also create recipes from scratch, she made my time in the school kitchen pure hell. She wouldn't even use my real name; she called me Richard. I eventually quit her course.)
So I guess I've earned a little credit. I'm no slouch. But I am no genius either. Gordon Ramsay, Ina Garten, Alton Brown, Giada De Laurentiis, Bobby Flay—they are among the many shining luminaries around which we lesser satellites revolve. I don't create my own brightness; I reflect theirs, and I'm okay with that.
And, Finally, Something to Look Forward To:
Today I made two loaves of whole wheat bread and videoed the process. It will be a future featured recipe and video in coming weeks. Meanwhile, I'm off to the store to look for ingredients to make sandwiches with this bread.
Sunday 2013.9.22
First of All—Trailer Park Chicken?
I feel like no amount of words can explain this week's choice of a Feature Recipe—Trailer Park Chicken. Even my Minute Meals are more gourmet. I did, however, have a lot of fun with my web site and the video this week. (I am planning to make up for this lapse of common sense by uploading to YouTube my Roma Cheesecake video. It was only posted on Vimeo, never on YouTube, because YouTube had a time limit back then.)
First of all, that really is edible food. I've made it many times in the past, especially when there was leftover breast meat from a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I'm not fond of white meat; so this recipe was a way of not only making it more edible, it also makes it taste good. Other than the high salt content, I really do like this dish.
The idea for this week's recipe came from the number of comments I've received from people who said neither I nor my cooking qualifies as trailer park white trash food. True. Among my friends I am considered a gourmet cook. That has been true since my years after college when I lived in a really old mobile home that was parked behind a car wash. That was the ugliest place I ever lived, but the rent was free and I had plenty of privacy.
Nonetheless, I do know how to eat bad. I can't count the number of times I ate Kraft macaroni and cheese. Maybe some day I'll demonstrate how to use the Day-Glo orange cheese powder from those boxes and some sour cream and seasonings to make the Noodles Romanoff that used to be sold by Noodle-Roni. There was a time when many of my meals came out of a box.
I did have fun with this week's video, both when I made the video and when I edited it afterward. If you didn't take the time to read the video's ending credits, look at them again. Although it has been years since I ate that chicken and rice dish, making it again was an enjoyable trip down Memory Lane. I've done many Memory Lane recipes in the past, such as my Egg Rolls and Fried Rice, which I learned from a girlfriend back when I was in college. In fact, many of my recipes are from the past—either something I used to cook and eat or something my mother served us and which I improved upon in later years (some of her cooking was appalling).
And so this week's Feature Recipe was purely for fun, to prove I sometimes cook up something far from gourmet.
Aprons On Their Way
Toward the end of last week I heard from the woman in Hawaii who promised to send me some Hawaiian print fabrics for aprons. (See last Sunday's blog entry.) The material arrived yesterday afternoon. These will make excellent aprons to use in my videos. She found 60-inch (150cm) wide fabrics, which is enough to make two aprons per length. I'll send her one from each fabric and keep the other one for myself. Having a web site and a cooking channel on YouTube sometimes brings some pleasant and unexpected benefits.
Addendum:
I had to enter my web site to fix an error. I thought I'd add that the aprons will be done today, Monday. Look for them in my future videos.
Wednesday 2013.9.18
Being Neighborly
I subscribe to Cook's Illustrated magazine. Besides the welcome lack of any advertisements and the tested recipes each month, one of the pleasures is reading the editorial written by founder and editor-in-chief, Christopher Kimball. Although the America's Test Kitchen (ATK) facility is supposedly located in Brookline, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, Kimball often writes about life in Vermont. I grew up in Connecticut; so I am more than a little familiar with the New England culture.
While reading Kimball's editorials, one can almost envision horse-drawn wagons, laden with barrels of maple syrup, trundling down the main street and stopping as they meet so that the drivers can tip their hat to each other and say, "Nice day, if it don't rain." The images contrapose in stark contrast to the interior of ATK, bright with modern kitchens equipped with the most technologically advanced and luxurious appliances, big and small.
California, too, has its funny ways, especially along the coast. When I cook for friends I try to choose something I can finish with the final cooking steps just as they arrive. If I say dinner at 5:30, 6:00 might be hopeful, whereas 6:30, even 6:45 might be more realistic with some of my friends. I recall a time when one friend practically begged me to make one of my infamous pizzas. I told him dinner at 5:00. I knew better, but I also wanted to teach him a lesson. At 5:00 the pizza came out of the oven. After letting it rest for a few minutes, I started eating. I ate half the pizza (which was another coup because he always wolfs down his food so that he can get to more food quickly—he'll eat two thirds of any meal I prepare).
At about 6:20, as I expected, he arrived, with excuses. Meanwhile, the remaining half of the pizza sat on the kitchen counter, uncovered, cooling down and drying out. I pointed to the pizza and told him to help himself. I didn't even offer to heat it for him. He ate it cold, thankful, at least, to have something to fill his belly, even though it wasn't the gourmet delight he was expecting.
There's another frame of mind that I've noticed: A lack on interest in caring for neighbors among some people I know. They seem too busy leading their private lives to notice when a neighbor falls into a bit of bad luck. They'll listen to hear about a fire engine and ambulance arriving to take someone to the hospital. They'll talk about the blood, the seizures, the unconscious state, the nearly dying, especially if there is plenty of sensationalism to season the story. But they don't do much.
Not to pat myself on the back or to get any kind of gratitude, but I am from New England. We do stuff for neighbors, when we can. On Monday morning I got up early to roast some butternut squash. Meanwhile, I cooked onions and then added six cups of frozen homemade chicken stock to the pot, let that melt, and then brought it to a boil. Add the roasted squash and some artichoke hearts, let it simmer a while, then purée with an immersion blender. Season with salt, strain, and then package it all up, still hot, in a large jar. I walked this up to a neighbor who just came home from the hospital. His girlfriend told me he can eat soft, liquid foods, like soup.
I don't count on my Californian neighbors to help me out when I'm down—they never have—but I was brought up in New England and I therefore do things a little differently. Even if people don't ask for help, there is more good than harm done by simply offering them a pot of warm soup made from scratch. Caring is one of the best ingredients to add to any food.
Sunday 2013.9.15
Cooking, with Benefits
Having my own web site and YouTube cooking channel really is its own best reward. I stay active, keep my mind alert, even though I might not maintain my youthful figure. Occasionally, however, some additional blessings arise, for which I am thankful.
A fan of the videos, who lives in Hawaii, asked about my collection of kitchen aprons, where I buy them, etc. Actually, several people have. I tailor my own. When I was in college I performed in several theater productions and we were asked to work part of the time in the various technical disciplines of theater—lighting, run crew, scene shop, and costume shop. I also did some design work and won an American College Theatre Festival award for my costume designs for a production of Edward Albee's Seascape. My designs were displayed for a while at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Although the scene shop was my favorite—what guy doesn't enjoy building things with power tools?—I did enough time in the costume shop to learn how to run a sewing machine skillfully. During one summer I helped costume a summer stock production for no money, but the directors gave me an old 1920s industrial Singer sewing machine that I was able to fix up. Parts are still available. It's a huge floor standing machine with a 1/3 horsepower motor—another power tool. Google "Singer 31-15" to see what they look like.
The fan from Hawaii offered to send me Hawaiian print fabrics to add to my apron collection. We communicated back and forth and I told her that a 60-inch wide piece of fabric, 1¼ yards long, would yield two aprons—one for me and one for her. Everyone likes a good win-win situation. I get new aprons to use in my videos; she gets unique aprons to give as gifts. What could be better?
Most of the time my cooking projects provide only delicious food and some recreation, and occasionally a little hard work, but sometimes they provide some extra benefits.
And speaking of cooking projects, this week I experimented with a delicious soup that I am going to call Surf and Turf Meatball Soup. The little meatballs contain some shrimp meat. The soup base is made with a little fish sauce and oyster sauce. It was so delicious, I had to invite a friend to dinner. He brought a loaf of ciabatta, which I toasted. We then spread the toasted bread with a little brie and then topped it with some fresh pesto I had made. To complete the meal, I opened a bottle of wine. All combined, it was a delicious meal.
One thing i can say about that friend: He has a mind for food. Sometimes we get together and bounce ideas off each other. He gave me the idea for pecan praline ice cream, which will appear here in coming weeks. I used the idea of oven-roasted pecans to substitute for the pine nuts in the pest. I came up with the idea of ciabatta with brie and pesto. It's good to have a friend who thinks creatively about food, rather than just eat.
Wednesday 2013.9.11
Learning From the Masters
I love to watch professional cooks cook. Some of it is the same everywhere. There is little difference between how one chef or another poaches an egg. It's the kitchen techniques I like to see. There is always something new to learn.
I watched a couple episodes of the Gordon Ramsey Ultimate Cookery Course. To peel all the cloves in a bulb (he calls it a head) of garlic, he breaks up the bulb, dumps everything into a box, and gives it a good shake. The bouncing around loosens the skin from the cloves. I didn't need an entire bulb, but I needed about seven or eight cloves for a pesto I made with roasted pecans instead of pine nuts (which are expensive and don't taste as good). I put the cloves in a jar because there were so few of them. I shook the jar briskly and, sure enough, the skins of the cloves loosened enough to be easily removed. On some cloves, the skin was completely removed in jar.
Gordon Ramsey is not the only master, of course, but there are other masters that some people might not think about. I'm thinking of the cinematographers, editors, directors, etc. I studied the opening sequence of Ramsey's video and it gave me ideas for my own videos. Rather than the static white screen with the drawing of the camper trailer, what if I were to do a montage of me in the kitchen, talking to the camera, mixed with several clips of me cooking, cutting an onion, deboning a chicken, tasting something? You get the idea. It would be an action opening rather than a static opening—hopefully something that would draw the viewer into the video. And then, at the end of the montage, fade into the white camper screen so that I can display the name of the dish I plan to make while I begin talking about it.
I searched through about half a dozen of my more recent videos to find usable clips. They only needed to be two or three seconds, just enough to capture what I was doing at the time. For example, in one tasting clip I am tasting my fish & chips and the only part I used was when I said, "Mmm, that's good." In another I'm spooning ice cream into a dish.
I'm still doing some tweaking, and I want my cinematographer friend to see it. He has some ideas of his own; so we might shoot some additional clips to give the sequence more of an artsy appearance. For example, he wants to shoot a clip of me dicing an onion, but with a shallow depth of field. I've shot photographs with that technique, but can my video camera do that? It's not a still camera.
I experimented on my own. Even with the iris open all the way and a neutral density filter used to normalize the light, the depth of field is really deep. Something six feet away starts to fade into soft focus. With my Nikon and my 50mm lens, I can narrow the depth of field down to only a few millimeters. If I had one of those really expensive cameras, the ones costing tens of thousands of dollars for the body alone, and some really expensive video lenses, also costing tens of thousands of dollars each (supposedly some lenses can cost more than two million dollars each!), I might get the effect he wants. My camera wasn't cheap, but it doesn't have the capabilities of the high-end studio cameras.
So, okay, I can't get as artsy as maybe I'd like. I'll let my friend experiment and see what he comes up with. Meanwhile, I'll continue tweaking what I have for the best sequence I can get. If all goes well, the new opening sequence will be on all my future cooking videos. More and more, they are looking like real TV shows.
Sunday 2013.9.8
Thrift Store or Bougie Antique Shoppe?
For a long time, maybe several years, I've been thinking of buying a good cast iron skillet. I've had a Lodge Logic 12-inch (30cm) skillet on my wish list at Amazon. It has been there for a while because I never got around to making the commitment to buy it.
Several months ago my friend Marylinn, who gave me the white ceramic saucepans you might see in some of my videos, tipped me off about a small 8-inch (20cm) skillet that came into the Catholic Charities Resale Shop where she volunteers some of her time. I mentioned it in a past blog. It was caked with a layer of burnt plastic guck on the outside, as though it might have caught fire and was moved onto a nylon or polyester towel. The inside was caked with black gunk, probably from the fire. I restored the pan and now I use it often, almost everyday. In fact, it sits on my stove more than it hangs from the skillet rack above my kitchen sink.
In the meantime, I've been poking around in thrift stores, hoping to find a good deal on a larger pan. On Friday I felt like going for a drive; so I made another foray into the local thrift stores. One of the Alpha Thrift Stores had several cast iron skillets, which looked like they might have been there for a long time. No wonder. Their asking price is $29.99 each. I'm not kidding. A thrift store selling a used cast iron skillet in need of restoration for $30! That 8-inch skillet cost me only 50¢ at the Catholic charity shop.
That's how some thrift stores are. The sign above the door might say "Thrift," but the prices inside say bougie antique shoppe.
All this thinking about a cast iron skillet came about because this past week I received a collection of Gordon Ramsay videos. They are from his Ultimate Cookery Course, 20 episodes in all. I have the ebook on my Nook, so the videos were a welcome addition to my cooking library. Gordon Ramsay is an inspiration to watch. Not only does he make the recipes look easy, he has such a passion about food. He makes cooking look like a gift from the gods, not just a means to nutrition.
He often cooks in very hot pans, bringing the temperature of the oil to its smoke point. It takes a good pan to do that. I have some decent pans, and I treat them carefully, lest I damage the non-stick coating inside. With a properly seasoned cast iron skillet, I can toss caution to the wind—get the sucker smoking hot and toss in some pork chops.
A friend and I watched one of the Ultimate Cookery episodes together. He has the same passion and fascination with cooking as I do, and he's pretty good. He gives me useful ideas and challenges that typically turn out well. He might come up with a concept and then he turns it over to me to come up with the procedure. We both agreed that it would be worthwhile to make everything we see in the Gordon Ramsay videos. For that I felt like I needed to own a good cast iron skillet.
And thus I wandered into Alpha Thrift and wondered at their sticker price of $30 for an old used pan in need of restoration. It wasn't even a Griswold collectible. I drove home and ordered the 12-inch skillet from Amazon. It was $18.97, new. I added another item to bring the total price up to the level for free shipping. In fact, the added item became free and I still saved $3. Shipping on the pan alone would have been $10.99. Adding a $7.99 item qualified the purchase for free shipping.
My advice: Shop around.
Wednesday 2013.9.4
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Summer is paying attention to the verse of Dylan Thomas. So far, at least here in Southern California, summer is not passing gently into the oblivion of history. The weather is hotter than it has been all summer. Talk about going out with a fight!
I just checked the latest forecast. Daytime temperatures are projected to be 89°F (32°C) for the remainder of the week. Although I live near the coast where the days are milder, it is usually warmer here than forecast, and indoor temperatures can be 10° hotter.
I am wondering whether it would be wiser to open all the windows all day or shut them, except for one, and run the swamp box (evaporative) cooler. It depends on the humidity. It needs to be below 50%. I ran the swamp box cooler yesterday. It helped, but it didn't do much good. The humidity was too high. As I write this, it's 73%.
I like to check Death Valley. It helps me feel better about where I live. The temperatures there are projected to reach 113°F (45°C). The only place hotter on earth is that London UK street below the building they call the Walkie-Talkie. I did fill six ice cube trays with water and put them in the freezer this morning. I go through a lot of ice when it's hot. I love iced coffee.
This is cold sandwich weather. I recently baked two loaves of marbled rye bread. One loaf went into the freezer. I moved that loaf to the kitchen counter yesterday to thaw. I also bicycled to the warehouse store to buy a package of pastrami. It's my favorite sandwich meat. I have been mixing up some harissa flavored mayonnaise as needed. If I could open a sandwich shop I would probably make a small fortune using "our secret formula" for the sandwich spread. Really. Try it. Mix some harissa (there is a recipe in the Recipe Archive, under Basics) with some mayonnaise and spread it on the bread for a meat sandwich. Unless your life revolves around mustard, you'll probably change to the harissa mayonnaise, at least some of the time.
A friend did give me a good idea for making ice cream—pecan praline ice cream. While he was on the phone (typically talking for 30 to 45 minutes while I just say "hmm," "yeah," "true," and other monosyllabic words like that, which is all there is room for—he gets it from his mother) I put the cannister of my ice cream maker in the freezer. The plan, if the heat doesn't get to me first, is to make that ice cream later this week. I think it's perfect ice cream weather. Of course, by the time the video makes it to YouTube or onto TV, it will be January or February. and most of the country will be digging itself out of yet another blizzard. The idea, however, seems good right now.
By the weekend the temperatures are supposed to start declining again. Next week they are projected to be in the mid-70s again. Maybe this week will be summer's last stand.
Sunday 2013.9.1
Bread Again
This past week things have been kind of prolific in the kitchen. My friend Eric went to Southeast Asia for four weeks. Having sampled much of the local food, he returned with plenty of ideas.
The one that most intrigued me was a sauce he tasted. It had some similarity to mayonnaise, but it was heavily flavored. The only comparison he could make was mayonnaise flavored with harissa. While he was explaining it on the phone, I went into my kitchen, pulled out my jar of mayo, and the jar of harissa I had made a while ago. I spooned some mayo into a little bowl, added some harissa, mixed it well, and tasted it. It was delicious. The flavor is a little like brown mustard, but less sharp, and with plenty of other flavors. I could detect a little celery salt in it, although the original recipe doesn't use that flavoring. That same evening I shared some with another friend, Darcy, and she said it tasted a little sweet. There is no sugar in it.
Meanwhile, Eric and I had tossed some video ideas back and forth. I told him I wanted to add a sandwich suggestion to the end of each future bread video. A fan who watched me make a sandwich at the end of the ciabatta video wrote: "Please. More sandwiches." Others liked the idea as well.
I thought about pastrami and Swiss cheese. Eric suggested a marbled rye bread. It is assembled with two bread doughs, one made with light rye flour and the other with dark rye flour. Adding a little unsweetened cocoa powder will darken the color of the dark rye dough without giving the bread a chocolate flavor. You can also use instant coffee. You shape the doughs into flat sheets and then roll them up into a loaf. When sliced after baking, the bread has a spiral swirl on the inside.
I made the bread this past week, although I had to substitute whole wheat flour for the light rye flour because the store didn't have any. You can buy it online though. Once again, the art of baking bread at home was very satisfying. The loaves turned out well, beautiful in fact. After they cooled I finished the video with clips of me making the harissa mayo and the pastrami sandwich, and then tasting it. I knew it would taste good. Prior to the video I made a sandwich for myself and then I later made one for Darcy. I used whole wheat bread for that test. The marbled rye bread was even better.
That puts several bread recipes "in the vault"—Hawaiian sweet bread, Portuguese sweet bread, whole wheat bread, and now marbled rye bread. If I continue with the TV show (I'll probably make up my mind in October), I'll have two bread shows done, maybe three. Some bread recipes can't fill a half hour show, but with the sandwich added I might reach 28 minutes, the minimum wanted by the TV station.
Finally, I'm glad i bought a 2-pound (907g) package of sliced pastrami at the warehouse store. I'll have enough to keep me fed for a while. I love the flavor of these sandwiches.