JUNE 2014

Sunday 2014.6.29

Real Italian

I try not to be too much of a snob about some things.

I am an American mutt, born in the USA. I do come from Italian parentage, at least on my mother's side. Both my mother's parents were Italian imigrants. On my father's side is everything else, well, actually, some German, Irish, British, French, and even some Native American — the Nipmuc tribe of Central Massachusetts.

I made plans this past week to make Calzones for a video. I don't usually attempt these recipes without doing plenty of research because there is always someone who'll have something critical to say. "I'm genuine (whatever) and we never make it that way. You should learn to do it the right way." As if…

There are some odd recipes out there. I found one calzone recipe that declared itself to be "real Italian." It uses cheddar cheese. My food encyclopedia says "the cheese originated from the village of Cheddar in the Somerset region of England." England is closer to Italy than Southern California; so maybe that counts — but probably not.

The recipe I am working from is from a restaurant trade journal — a magazine that typically goes only to restaurants, not to the magazine rack at your local grocery store. Although the recipe comes from a California restaurant, it seems like something that would be made in almost any New York pizzaria. There is Italian sausage, pepperoni, mozzarella, ricotta, etc. It's a real inside-out pizza, without the tomato sauce. The sauce is put in bowls on the side for dipping the calzone when eating.

As always, I make variations to these recipes. For one, the recipe makes one big calzone. I prefer to make smaller, individual serving sized calzones. They would be easier for dipping in the marinara sauce. Also, the recipe calls for 1 pound of frozen pizza dough. I'd prefer to make my own dough from scratch. And therein lies another challenge. To end up with one pound of raw dough, how much flour and water should I use?

I did a lot of research. I have a baking textbook and a commercial food industry textbook. They measure the flour and water by weight, not volumetrically. I prefer the weight method because the key to successful baking is accuracy when measuring. It turns out a good starting point for the ratio is 60/40. One pound of bread dough would be about 60% flour by weight and 40% water by weight. The ratio can change a little due to the performance of the flour, which differs from region to region, or for the desired consistency of the bread. For pizza dough, which I think should be a little dense, I chose a 64/36 ratio. I experimented with this, making a dough, and then tossing it in the trash when I was satisfied I got the ratio correct. I buy flour in the 25-pound bag for less that $8.00 per bag. I can afford to waste a little.

My parents and grandparents are long gone. I no longer have them as a resource. At times I wish my grandfather Carmine DiCostanzo was still alive, my Grampy. He lived with us when I was a child. I loved my Grampy more than my parents; but, alas, a heart attack took him away too soon.

So I contacted an Italian friend. Her parents and parents-in-law still live in Italy. If I need to know something about cooking, especially Italian, she is one of my best sources. In fact, I only need to mention something, like I'm thinking of making peach ice cream, and she'll send me a good recipe for peach gelato.

She had a lot to say about calzone in Italy. They differ throughout the country. According to her there are 20 regions and 109 provinces. Each area has its own customs. Basically, she said to keep them simple. They should not be be a pizza with everything on it, folded in half.

And so, armed with as much information I could hope to gather, I set about making the dough on Friday evening, letting it rise in the refrigerator overnight, and then I made the calzones yesterday morning, before the day became too warm. They were delicious and wonderfully easy to make. I was expecting to encounter a difficult challenge. But no, not at all. This is a deceptive treat. Tell your friends you are making calzones and they'll expect you'll be working in the kitchen all day. But they are almost as easy as making a grilled cheese sandwich.

Wednesday 2014.6.25

What Can and Cannot Be Taught

I had an interesting discussion with a cooking friend the other day. She was making jams with summer fruits and somehow had mixed up the recipes in her mind. When she started to add the sugar she thought, Uh-oh, something doesn't seem right. She went ahead, but decided to cut way back on the sugar. Later, when she tasted the jam, it was perfect.

I told her that was one thing I could not teach on a web site or in my YouTube videos. I can write recipes and add photographs to show how the food should look at each step in the preparation. I can demonstrate the techniques in a video. But I can't teach experience.

The experienced cook thinks and makes adjustments on the fly as the preparation proceeds. That is why many of the recipes in Jo Bettoja's cookbook, Southern Italian Cooking: Family Recipes from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, fail. She sat down with family cooks in Italy as they recited some of their favorite recipes to her. She wrote them down and published them in a cookbook, without testing anything. What Bettoja never saw were the many little adjustments those family cooks made as they prepared their favorite recipes in a kitchen.

I remember a time when my mother asked her mother to teach her how to cook something. As my grandmother added some flour, my mother asked, "How much flour?" My grandmother answered, "Enough." "How much is enough?" my mother asked. "What do you mean how much is enough? Enough is enough!" That's when the yelling started. They were Italian.

I will say that videos help. Not everyone pays attention. I get questions like, "When did you add the salt?" Sometimes I respond, "At 2 minutes 18 seconds I say, 'Add 2 teaspoons of salt' as I add them."

Usually I just ignore the question. I get far more comments from people who followed the recipe/video and enjoyed an excellent meal afterward. One regular correspondent had never baked bread. Now he bakes bread regularly. I do get some criticism for long videos. "Make them only 5 to 6 minutes, at most." You can't teach cooking in 5 to 6 minutes. Most of my cooking videos are also TV shows. The station wants me to fill a time slot of 28 to 30 minutes. When I have a short video, I combine two into a show.

Experience can only be gained through practice, through trial and error. Maybe the flour in your region acts a little differently than the flour here in Southern California. I live near the ocean, but this area used to be mostly desert. The summertime humidity is lower than where I grew up in New England. In winter it is more moist because we often get winter rains (when not in a drought) and in New England the heat was on all winter, drying out the house.

Only experience can teach you how to cook where you live. I can provide the recipes and teach a few procedures, but to be a good cook you need to practice and gain experience.

And Duracell Strikes Again

I thought I had eliminated all Duracell batteries from every electronic device I own. Collect enough devices and you're bound to miss something. The other day I stepped onto the digital scale in the bathroom and the display stayed dark. I looked underneath and there is a battery case. Uh-oh.

Sure enough. When I removed the battery cover there were Duracell batteries inside, three AAAs. All had leaked, even though the expiration date on the batteries was March 2015. It took a while to clean out all the white and green powder, but I got the scale working again. Hopefully it will stay that way.

Do yourself a favor. Go through everything you own — battery operated clocks, remote controls, flashlights and radios (devices you might need in an emergency), MP3 players, calculators, smoke detectors, even the little light you attach to your book when you read in bed at night — and remove any Duracells. I like Energizer. They seem to never leak. Even better, stock up on those rechargeable NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride, also Ni-MH) batteries, such as Eneloop. I have more than 50 of those. I can't tell you how many times I charged them. I never kept count. And so far not even one has ever leaked.

Sunday 2014.6.22

Maybe Cooking Again Soon

When you start looking at the TV Guide web site each morning to see if there might be anything interesting to watch on daytime TV, you know you've got too much time on your hands. I did a few more minor projects around the house. I've got one more to go, and then I'll have more free time in which I won't have much of anything to do.

On July 5th this year the Tour de France cycling race will begin — 21 days of cycling across mostly France. This year it will begin in England. To watch the race live here in California is nearly impossible. Coverage begins at 3:00 in the morning. During the day the coverage is re-broadcast and then highlights of the day's events are covered in an abbreviated program in the evening. That is one of my joys of retirement. I can watch as much of the race as I want each day.

Knowing when to turn on the TV can be tricky. If the re-broadcast begins immediately after the live coverage, I don't want to tune in too soon because I don't want to know who won the stage before the program begins. And if the stage doesn't end exactly at the end of the hour, the overlap could mean tuning in before the end of the live coverage.

There are some rest days along the way. During those days the TV coverage is usually devoted to highlights of the previous days. I even watch those. And I've been waiting to see when the preview programming will begin. They typically arrange some sort of documentary coving the history of the Tour de France as a lead up to the beginning of the race.

Last year's race started off with intensity on the first day. Minutes before the end of the race a team bus got stuck under the gantry over the finish line. The organizers decided to move the finish three kilometers up the road so that the cyclists wouldn't crash into the bus. But how were they to know? Then the bus was freed and the race could end normally. I was excited about that ending because it was a sprinters' stage. For the first time in many years one of the sprinters — Mark Cavendish, Peter Sagan, etc. — might get to wear the yellow jersey for a day. Then André Greipel ruined it for them by being too reckless near the end and causing a major accident. All of the best sprinters crashed into the pavement. There was some justice — Greipel lost his bike's rear derailer in the collision. Marcel Kittel, a good overall athlete, won the stage.

Controversy already surrounds this year's race. Sir Bradley Wiggins won the Tour in 2012. Last year the winner was Chris Froome. They are both on the same team and it is no secret that they don't get along. Froome will be in this year's Tour, maybe, having suffered a painful crash near the end of the Criterium du Dauphiné earlier this month, which took him out of the yellow jersey. There has been talk that Team Sky won't put Wiggins in the Tour this year, but that is not final. He's a tour winner and belongs in the race, but he crashed toward the end of the Tour of Switzerland last week and withdrew, suffering a knee injury. Who will make the team? I won't know until July 5th.

In between, maybe I'll do some cooking. I saw a TV show in which Cornish game hens were butterflied by cutting out the back bone with poultry shears, then the rib bones and thigh bones were removed so that the chicken could be fried flat, like a steak, on a grill. It reduced the cooking time to minutes and it looked so easy. I want to try that. Maybe make up some stuffing that only needs to be heated, no baking, for an easy meal.

I am enjoying my hiatus, but I'm not giving up the cooking videos altogether.

Wednesday 2014.6.18

Time Off For Projects

My hiatus from cooking for this web site hasn't been going to waste, so far. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll remember that I blogged about having a new shed built in my back yard in March. The door to the new shed doesn't line up with the walkway that led to my old shed, which was much smaller. So during the past several days I've been digging up all the old border bricks, paving bricks, and the river rock that made up the old walkway. It has been more work than I anticipated.

I learned something new this week. Don't try to dig up the ground when it is bone dry and hard as concrete. I struggled for a day, gave up, and then had an "Ah-hah!" moment. Run the garden hose on a slow trickle for an hour or so and soak the ground with water. Let it sit for a day or two. The dirt becomes soft, easy to dig, and the task is much easier. It was still a lot of work, but I'm retired and I can do a little each day.

I set down the paving bricks temporarily to get an idea for how I would ultimately place them. The next step was to set down a layer of leveling sand. Then set the bricks in place and fill in all the blank spaces around them with the river rock I sifted out of the dirt.

I finished the walkway this morning. It might look like an amateur did it, but that's okay with me. It's functional and it's finished.

As for cooking, I'm eating mostly my Minute Meals. They are perfect on a day when I feel tired from working outside and I don't want to devote much time to putting a plate of food in front of me. Another goal I set for myself during this hiatus is to eat down the freezer. There is a lot of food in there, and some of it has been in there for quite a while — not years, but enough months that I feel the need to eat it before it gets too old.

When I'm not eating Minute Meals for lunch or dinner, I've been making Chicken Soup with the stock I have in the freezer. During the fall I stocked up on homemade chicken stock, preparing to enjoy bowls of hot soup on days when it was cold and rainy outside. Almost everyone has heard by now that California is in a severe drought situation. There was almost no rain this past winter. I like to joke about Southern California. We have only two seasons — summer and sort of summer. This past year we only had summer. Meteorologists are still predicting an El Niño cycle this coming winter. No guarantee of rains, but the El Niño usually brings rain with it, heavy rains. I'm hoping.

And, finally, the cookbook did finally become available. It took some correspondence with tech support, and had something to do with MIME thingies, but ultimately the problem was resolved and people began downloading the cookbook for free. I added a "Free Cookbook" button to the button panel on the left of some pages. It will link to the cookbook page, from which the ebook can be downloaded. I will leave it there indefinitely. Feel free to download a free copy.

So the break is going well so far.

Sunday 2014.6.15 — Happy Father's Day

Cookbook

Nearly Four Years in the Making! Well, sort of. I started this web site nearly four years ago to make my recipes available to others who might want them, mostly at the urging of my friends here. The cookbook, The Mobile Home Gourmet, is a compilation of all 200 recipes published on this site.

It's not available yet. I uploaded it to my web site and added a link to the homepage, but when I tested it I received a 404 code (file unavailable) from the server. I put in a request to the support people to ask how I might accomplish this. Meanwhile…

I used the Sigil software program to create the ebook. I'm comfortable with Sigil, having used it to convert or modify dozens of ebooks to read on my Nook Color tablet. Therefore, the cookbook is in EPUB format, the primary format for the Nook and the format used by Sigil.

I am not making the ebook available in other formats because I don't have the tablets on which to test the ebook in those formats. If someone wanted to buy me a Kindle Fire HDX, an Apple iBook Retina, the Sony Xperia, and the Samsung Galaxy (the 64GB models please), I'd experiment with Calibre (an ebook coverter) to see if the cookbook can be made to work on those tablets as well. If I were making lots of money from my web site, I'd buy the tablets myself. As it is, I make nothing. Ergo: EPUB will be the only format available, even if other formats are requested.

The ebook is optimized for the Nook, which has a screen size of 576 by 869 pixels; therefore, I sized all the photos to a width of 576 pixels. EPUB is like HTML and it makes use of a CSS (cascading style sheet) file to control styles the same as this web site does. Links work the same way. You can think of an EPUB document as a web site self-contained inside an ebook.

The cookbook is being offered for free download here because to charge money for it (accept and process credit card payments or payments through PayPal) would be cost prohibitive. I'd need to change my web site to a commerical site and the cost per month would become very expensive. There might be a way around this, but I don't want to be bothered. How much could I make from the book anyway? I'm not famous like Gordon Ramsay or Giada DeLaurentiis. I'm just me. Besides, it's not like I need the money.

For me, personally, the book is fun. I use it on my Nook when I want to conveniently look up something I'm cooking in the kitchen. My tablet is in a leather case/easle, which makes it easy to prop up in a reading position on the kitchen counter. And, it will be fun to share with my friends.

A few people have seen it, on my Nook, but I haven't given it to anyone. I wanted to test and test and test to make certain all the links are working. No doubt some errors will be found. If you think something isn't right and if you don't mind telling me about it, feel free to use the "Contact" button on the left. But, please, don't feel as if you need to proofread my book. I'll continue to read and correct errors, if I find them.

When I started this web site nearly four years ago, one fantasy of mine was to, maybe someday, have my name on a cookbook. I don't want to write a paper book because bookstores have hundreds of cookbooks, if not thousands. When Borders bookstores existed, I used to visit the local one often and look at the cookbooks. I had to know in advance the name of the book I wanted; otherwise, I'd be browsing for hours. I don't want to write a book that would be lost among the bountiful offerings. Here, my book stands alone.

As for cooking, I'm going to slow down a little. I won't quit entirely. I already have two recipes and videos "in the vault" for eventual upload here and one friend won't give up on the idea of roasting a saddle of lamb. I've started avoiding the phone when he calls.

As for what I'll be doing instead of cooking for this web site: There are some neglected home projects that need attention. The outdoor shed was finished back in March, but I never got around to putting in the walkway of paving stones and river rock leading to the door. I started working on that this past week. I'd like to paint my ceilings and maybe do some finishing work to spruce up the mobile home a little — lots of little probjects — maybe paint the kitchen again.

Wednesday 2014.6.11

YouTube Snob

I try not to be a YouTube snob, but sometimes that ain't easy. Some people might find it odd that I've created and uploaded more than 200 videos to YouTube, but I've watched only about 10 or 15. I subscribed to only one YouTube channel, videos made by the head cook/chef in a restaurant. I subscribed because the restaurant is in New London, Connecticut.

I grew up in Mystic, Connecticut, part of New London county, and for a while I worked in Waterford, which is next to New London. When my grandmother would visit, she usually arrived by train. We picked her up at the station in New London. I knew the city well — where to find the best parking or how to avoid the traffic around State Street (most of which was eventually closed off to make a pedestrian mall).

I'm not so much of a snob that I believe I won't learn anything by watching videos from fellow cooks. I have. I remember one video in which the cook, standing in front of a bright uncovered window and therefore reduced to a black silhouette by the harsh back lighting, tried to describe sautéing vegetables in a skillet. She put a large and heavy cast iron skillet on the stove and heated it well. Then she poured extra virgin olive oil into it. Billows of white smoke ascended from the pan as she ruined her expensive oil. I learned something that day.

The following day I went to the store and bought safflower oil. I know many of the register clerks, and among my favorites are Geri (she tells people about my TV shows), Ward (as predictable as the sunrise), and Aaron (always greets me like a friend). However, this day there was a cashier I hadn't seen before. "Safflower oil?" he asked, as if wondering what I was using it for. "It has the highest smoke point of all the cooking oils," I said. He then launched into an appreciation of how few people understand the need to cook with oils that have the correct smoke point for the task. Evidently he cooks.

In my videos I often sauté with pure (refined) olive oil and I say, "Save the extra virgin for flavoring." I like eating sautéed Brussels sprouts. After cooking them, I sprinkle them lightly with extra virgin olive oil. I like to drizzle homemade pizza with extra virgin olive oil before it goes into the oven. Although the oven is at 450°F (246°F), well above the smoke point of the oil (375°F/191°C), the oil doesn't burn because the pizza doesn't get that hot. If it did, it would be black when it came out of the oven. I grill with safflower oil because its smoke point is 510°F (266°C). But I digress.

This week a fan of my web site and videos sent me a link to a YouTube video. He wanted me to understand why he thinks my videos are so good and others are so awful. The man in the video (we never see his face) is seasoning country style pork ribs for the grill. The sound from a TV can be heard in the background. The lighting was good though, for a while. He only seasons the meat with garlic salt and paprika. No marinade, no rub. Then the video changes to his grill outside. It's nighttime. The surface of the grill is barely visible. Finally he finishes back in the kitchen's good lighting again, cutting up the pork into bite-sized pieces for dinner. The editing was good.

When I watch such cooking videos, I usually ask, "What is special about this recipe? What sets it apart from others?" Watch the cooks on TV and the answer is clear. Either the food is something gourmet from the "old country," or destined to be delicious with only the freshest ingredients (sometimes we see the cook buying the fish or chicken at the local market), or created to be a quick means of getting a healthy meal onto the table at the end of a busy day.

Not all of my meals are special. In a couple weeks I'll be uploading a video of me making Beef Burritos. There is nothing gourmet about those burritos. For me, big burritos are vast quantities of satisfying comfort food. I love them, but I don't eat them often. That video was purely for my own pleasure.

I do try, however, to make my videos correctly. I had the benefit of a friend who studied cinematography in college. We designed the lighting together. We collaborated when I bought my lavalier microphone, camera, and tripod. I spent about $12,000 on all my gear. That alone could make me a snob.

When I was in college I studied theater. I was a stage actor. I am comfortable in front of an audience. That training gives me a likeable presence in front of the camera. And, finally, I do try to pick recipes that will have something unique about them, at least most of the time. My New England Clam Cakes are hardly gourmet, but they are unique to parts of New England. There is nothing special about spaghetti, but with Salmon Meatballs or with Shrimp and Artichoke Pesto, the meal becomes special.

With all those elements combined, yes, my YouTube videos do rank above the average. I'm not at the top, maybe not near it even, but I think I've accomplished enough to, at least, recognize the quality of my own work. Maybe I'm not a snob at all; maybe I'm just proud of what I do.

Sunday 2014.6.8

An Interesting Chain of Events

One of the recurring themes I thought about as I proofread the cookbook was the process of making a custard. I use it in several recipes. I always use a double boiler, which is nothing more than two saucepans, one a little larger than the other. Into the larger pan you heat about a cup of water to boiling. Assemble the custard ingredients in the smaller pan and nest it in the larger one. Cook the custard over the boiling water because, unlike the flame on a stove, the boiling water under the custard will not exceed 212°F (100°C). This protects the gentle custard.

I also use a double boiler to heat egg yolks, such as for a hollandaise sauce, because — as I always warn — overheating the yolks can cook them into a scrambled mess. However, is that always true? Some mixtures might prevent the yolks from cooking to a solid. I decided to find out.

I set up a double boiler and put five egg yolks in a smaller pan with about a quarter cup of sugar. Mix, mix, mix, then heat it over the boiling water. I monitored the temperature with a digital thermometer. At 158°F (70°C) yolks cook. I kept going, however, and I finally gave up at 200°F (93°C). I'm sure the yolks cooked, but they never turned into a lumpy mess. They remained a liquid. So, I was wrong. The sugar, evidently, does something to the yolks to prevent them from scrambling. I went through the cookbook and changed the text.

I didn't want to waste the yolks, so I used about half of the mixture with milk and vanilla to make some tapioca pudding. I like tapioca. It was good. I therefore put the remaining yolks, still in the pan, in the refrigerator to make tapioca another day. I never got around to it.

Friday is garbage pickup day and I decided to clean out the refrigerator. Some leftovers were trashed. Among the items tossed were condiments — mustard, relish, etc. — on which the "sell by" date had expired. The pan with the egg yolks was a problem. The mixture had dried and solidified in the bottom of the pan and wouldn't come out. It stuck like cement. What to do? I added some water to the pan and set it over a moderate flame. And then I forgot about it.

The smell of smoke alerted me. Uh-oh. The pan had boiled dry and the yolks were now a thick, solid mass of black crust, more stubborn in the pan than the concrete. I cooled the pan with water, drained it, and then brought out my oven cleaner spray. I like the kind with the obnoxious fumes. It works better. I sprayed the bottom of the pan heavily with cleaner (cough, cough) and put the lid on. Set aside and wait several hours.

I'm comfortable and confident with oven cleaner. I use it when I need to remove all the black coating from an old seasoned cast iron pan. The spray removes the seasoning after a few hours (wrap it in plastic) and then a good washing and then drying with paper towels prepares the pan for a new round of seasoning with flax oil. I recently seasoned my cast iron stove top grill/griddle and it came out so beautiful I'm reluctant to use it. So I knew the stainless steel pan could be recovered.

It required three treatments and about 24 hours, but all the burnt yolk mixture eventually lifted away from the metal and it is back to where it was before — clean and shiny. I even made some chicken soup in it and there was no burnt flavor in the soup. The pan is good again. So what started out as an experiment with yolks turned into a confirmation that I can restore a saucepan, no matter what I might burn into the bottom. These little kitchen tricks are good to keep in mind, because you never know when you might need them.

Wednesday 2014.6.4

I Think the Cookbook is Done

During the past several days I've been testing the ebook cookbook. Last week, as I worked through all the links and removed unneeded codes, I found some misdirected references. It was bound to happen. With more than 400 links to 200 recipes, a few errors can be expected. Every link was tested and the few errors were corrected. Each night before I fall asleep I check several of the Table of Contents references on my NookColor tablet to make certain they point to the correct page. So far so good.

I've learned a lot about creating ebooks in EPUB format. An EPUB ebook is like a web site. My web site is made up of HTML pages with various links to the pages. All the pages in an EPUB are likewise HTML or XHTML pages. The codes for BOLD or ITALICS are the same. This web site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting. The ebook has a similar style sheet that uses the same codes as CSS. Learn how to build a web site and the transition to EPUB ebook is fairly easy. It's just a matter of learning the software.

Once again I want to state some of the rules.

1. My ebook cookbook, The Mobile Home Gourmet, will only be available in EPUB format because that's what I know and I own a NookColor e-reader tablet, which uses the EPUB format. Don't ask for other formats. I don't know how and I don't want to put a lot of work into coding other formats when the ebook is available for free. This cookbook was nearly four years in the making. I can't devote more time to it unless someone is willing to pay me for my time.
2. The ebook is optimized for my tablet. The tablet's screen size is 576x869 pixels. I therefore set all of the photographs to a width of 576 pixels so that the width would just fill the page. The idea was to make full use of the available space. I have no way of knowing how the ebook will look on other platforms, other than a computer. Adobe offers free e-reader software for those who want to read EPUB ebooks on their computer.
3. And, finally, I hope people enjoy it. I do. My Nook is in a leather case with an easel back. I can prop it up on the kitchen counter when I'm working through a recipe.

The goal is to "publish" it here on June 15th (not that I was aiming specifically for Father's Day — they just happen to coincide). This Sunday will be my 200th recipe, as I said this past Sunday, after which I plan to take some time off. I've been thinking about, and blogging about it, for months. The free ebook cookbook is my way of saying Thank You to the fans who keep coming here week after week to read about the latest Feature Recipe. All 200 recipes will be in the cookbook. You're welcome.

That's not to say I won't do any cooking or make any videos. I'm already thinking about some burritos I ate often in college. I make them at home occasionally. It might be fun to do a video.

And a Short Follow-up:

Yesterday was the birthday picnic I mentioned in my Memorial Day blog. The guest of honor is a 43-year-old boy with Down Syndrome. Every year his mother arranges a birthday party so that neighbors will buy him presents (it saves her some money). Some people are tiring of the giving. This year there were only four of us, besides him, his mother, and the park manager. I went to the party with a small plate of New England Clam Cakes for him. He likes those.

Next up: The Fourth of July. I have a month to make my plans.

Sunday 2014.6.1

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

This week's recipe, Duck with Orange Sauce, is number 199. A week from today I will reach my goal. As I've said in previous blogs, my target was to write 200 recipes. That's done. Now what?

One project, which I've also mentioned previously, is the cookbook in ebook format. That's done too, other than some testing I need to do. I hope to have it ready for free download here by June 15th, the first week of my hiatus away from cooking.

I won't ignore cooking altogether. A guy has to eat. And I do have friends who also enjoy cooking and sometimes we do projects together. One that has been in discussion for a while has been roasted saddle of lamb.

I've written a lot about lamb. It is my preferred red meat. I rarely buy beef. Once a year I buy cubed stew beef for making Texas Chili, most of which I freeze in individual servings and enjoy in subsequent weeks. I also buy ground beef once or twice a year at the warehouse store and then divide it into half-pound portions for making Hamburgers or my Mom's American Chop Suey. The last portion of my last purchase is in the refrigerator right now, thawing for hamburgers.

One problem with lamb is that it doesn't lend itself to variety as easily as beef does. I can't imagine making my hamburgers with ground lamb rather than ground beef. Although I did a recipe for Lamb Bolognese, beef is the traditional meat for a Bolognese sauce (and I am surprised to find that I never did a recipe for classic Bolognese). Although not as versatile as chicken, beef is seen in far more recipes than lamb.

Saddle of lamb seems like a complicated cut of meat. It is the loin section between the ribs and leg of the animal. Think of a horse. It's the part you would sit on, or saddle, forward of the rump but backward of the rib cage. It is usually special ordered and it can be purchased as either a half-saddle (one side of the lamb) or a whole saddle. It is also very expensive because it contains the loin, a tender and succulent piece of meat.

I've bought expensive cuts of beef. My Beef Tenderloin with Mushroom Sauce or my Filet Oscar recipe (filet is the French spelling of fillet) are not economical recipes. You wouldn't top a cheap chuck steak with expensive king crab meat. However, in those instances I took advantage of a rebate check I received in the mail. Paying $60 for four little steaks isn't difficult when the money is from a small and unexpected windfall.

When it comes to very expensive cuts of meat, my sense of adventure flies out the kitchen window. I don't like taking risks with that much money. I also want to taste the value. If the cut costs four times more than an economical cut, it had better be four times more delicious. I have one friend whom I think more enjoys eating something expensive than something delicious. At least he doesn't ask me to pay for everything.

For the time being the saddle of lamb is on the back burner. Right now I want to concentrate on getting that ebook cookbook ready for download and then enjoy some time off. I'll announce here the hiatus, when it happens, and the link to the cookbook will be obvious and easy to find.

And Something Worth Sharing

A fan of the web site wrote to tell me he made my Chicken and Spinach Pie. He also sent pictures. I was amused all day to see a photo of one of my original recipes in someone's kitchen. He and his wife really enjoyed it. I was also impressed. The pie shell can be challenging, but he pulled it off magnificently. The pie looked fantastic. Now I want to make one myself.

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