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WEDNESDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2002
There's an article today in the SF Chronicle food section about how chefs deal with leftovers. My old boss Tom always said that the secret to running a successful restaurant (that means one that actually turns a profit!) was proper leftover management. He's the one that taught me never to throw anything away.
I take that back. My mom taught me to never throw anything away; Tom gave me lots of good ideas about what to do with those things.
I keep everything, even if it's only a little bit of something. Any leftover vegetable can be thrown into an omelette or a frittata. Or used as a topping for a pizza. Or turned into soup. Today for breakfast I had a tortilla with leftover escarole, onions, and cheese, toasted in the broiler. And dinner tonight used up last night's leftover roast lamb, mixed with pasta, cottage cheese, sauteéd cabbage and onions, and baked with some fresh mozzarella on top.
Anyway, the article had some good ideas, and is definitely worth a read.
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TUESDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2002
Sorry, folks - I didn't realize it had been so long since I've posted anything! I went away for the weekend and I've sbeen involved in a spring-cleaning marathon that isn't yet over...
However, the perfect break from cleaning is a chocolate-banana ice cream sandwich. Use the ice cream recipe from the last entry, but add 3 incredibly ripe bananas, mashed to a pulp, and freeze as usual. When the ice cream is finished, put a scoop between two Famous Chocolate Wafers. Squeeze gently so just a little ice cream comes out the edges, then roll the edges in chopped almonds. Make a lot. Put them on a cookie sheet and freeze until the ice cream is hard. Wrap individually in parchment paper or plastic wrap.
Eat in the driveway, sitting in the sun, saying hello to the neighbors going to the beach with their dogs.
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WEDNESDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2002
Yesterday's rain has turned into a sunny day today. I ate lunch outside and then sat there in the sun for a little while, hoping that the ice cream truck would drive by. After reading this article, though, I decided maybe it was a good thing that the truck never came.
I don't eat very many processed foods - as part of my regular everyday eating, anyway; KFC three times a year hardly counts! If you need another reason to take processed foods out of your diet, trans fat is a good reason. Read the article, be scared, vow to cook actual food instead of something from a box. Go to the farmer's market! Buy organic produce! Buy organic meat! Eat dinner at the table!
That's my lecture for the day.
In return for letting me vent a little, here is the easiest recipe for ice cream that you'll ever find:
1 pint half-and-half (Can you get Straus? It's the best!)
1/3 c. sugar
1 pinch salt
1 t. vanilla
Mix until sugar is dissolved, then freeze in an ice cream freezer according to manufacturer's instructions.
I know that not everyone will have an ice-cream freezer, but it is one gadget that I have not regretted buying. I probably make ice cream two or three times a month, and I love knowing that the ingredients are healthy. Nothing fake, no chemicals. Yay!
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TUESDAY 19 FEBRUARY 2002
I just got back from a long weekend visit with my family. After three days surrounded by people, this house seems very quiet. (Catherine is with her family until Thursday.) The rain is making the whole neighborhood quiet, too - no kids playing in the street, none of the neighbors are chatting in their driveways, not even any barking dogs.
It could be a bit eerie, but instead the silence is made cozy by the cat sitting in my lap as I type. Absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder - she's not always this affectionate! It's the kind of afternoon to drink tea and read a book while soup simmers on the stove.
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THURSDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2002
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
We got ourselves a new coffee maker for Valentine's Day -hooray! It has an automatic timer, which makes me very happy, because I'm always the first one up and now I'll be greeted by fresh coffee. And it has a thermal pot, which makes Catherine very happy. The heating element on our old coffee maker burned the coffee, so I always turned the pot off as soon as the coffee was brewed. Catherine will now have fresh coffee instead of microwaved coffee. And it was 20% off, which makes both of us happy.
It was a very nice day. Catherine went surfing, and Spec and I walked down to the beach to watch and to play - Spec likes to jump for seaweed. I got to see dolphins! jumping in the air! I love to see dolphins - they were swimming in the same direction I was walking, so I got to watch them all the way on my walk along the cliff. And there were otters, and pelicans, and little birds that flew just above the surface of the water in groups of ten or so. Plovers? Pipers? Anyway, it was a perfectly lovely Santa Cruz afternoon. I hope everyone else had an equally nice Valentine's Day!
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WEDNESDAY 13 FEBRUARY 2002
In her weblog, Erica mentioned watching Jacques Torres make a champagne bottle out of chocolate. The Food Channel is having a chocolate marathon all week long, and I watched Jacques Torres this week, too. Last night's episode was possibly even more amazing than the champagne bottle episode. A chocolate-framed painting: He used cocoa butter paints on a white-chocolate canvas. For the frame he took wood moulding, pressed it into a tray of flour to make a mold, then filled the mold with melted chocolate. He made chocolate brushes and white chocolate palettes, complete with dabs of cocoa butter paint. Pretty incredible!
The most incredible thing, however, was the lack of mess. I have worked with chocolate before, and it is extremely messy. Jacques uses disposable pastry bags to pipe the melted chocolate into molds or to make shapes. But he never seems to dribble when he's filling the bags. If I were making what he made last night, I'd have chocolate all over my hands, spread across the counter, covering my apron, probably on my face and in my hair. The only thing that he had chocolate on was the towel tucked into his apron. Now, THAT'S amazing.
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MONDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2002
I saw my mom last weekend, who dropped a few hints that it's getting to be time to return the borrowed crockpot. So, I've gone into a flurry of crockpot cooking, trying to decide whether or not I should buy one of my own. The meatballs turned out great, although I thought the artichokes were a little overcooked. (I was afraid they weren't going to be cooked enough, so I sauteéd them before I put them in. Next time I'll know better.) Then on Saturday I made kielbasa and cabbage, and today I built on the leftover cabbage and made borscht.
It does take up cabinet space, but I think it's worth it. The only other problem I have is that so many crockpot recipes call for things like cream of mushroom soup. I'm not finding a lot of recipes that just use regular ingredients. (Although I've only looked on the web; I haven't looked at any of the cookbooks that are out there.) But it just means a little trial and error until I figure out how to use the crockpot for the kinds of things I usually cook.
I think that the crockpot verdict is yes, especially because of that slogan: "Cooks all day while the cook's away." I do love to cook, but the implication of "Free yourself from the shackles of the kitchen!" is still compelling. I read all day on Saturday. REALLY all day - I started at 9:30 in the morning and didn't stop until I finished my book at 11 pm. But we still had dinner! And the house smelled good! "Cooks all day while the cook sits in the sun and reads escapist literature" isn't quite as catchy, but doesn't it sound nice?
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FRIDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2002
I'm making dinner for some friends tonight, and I think it's going to be a good one. I'm making Paul Bertolli's meatballs with artichokes, olives, and sage, which I've made about a hundred times and which are absolutely delicious. I can't have a dinner party without a worry, though, so I've decided to make them in the crockpot, which I've never done. All the helpful-advice cookbooks say that you should never experiment with a new dish for a dinner party. I've never had a dinner party where I didn't experiment with a new dish. Where's the fun without that constant underlying panic about whether or not something is going to turn out right? Will the meatballs cook? Am I going to give everyone food poisoning? Will the artichokes still be crunchy?
My solution to the worry is to always make dessert. Everyone loves dessert, and it comes last, to make up for any possible mistakes.
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THURSDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2002
Accident-prone people shouldn't be in the kitchen. People who are having an accident-prone day should try to be careful.
It was one of those days today. I started off by catching my breakfast on fire. I had a tortilla under the broiler and when I opened up the door to flip it over, it was burning. By this, I do not mean that it was starting to get black. Nope, I mean that there were shooting flames - it looked like a campfire in my oven.
In the middle of making dinner, I opened the cupboard door and my jar of bay leaves fell out, smashed into the (black ceramic) bowl of salt, which shattered into a million pieces. The ones on the floor were no big deal, but this crash happened right next to our dinner. The next ten minutes were spent examining that dinner very closely - is that pepper, or is that a piece of the bowl? what about that one? - and picking out anything that looked like it might cut us when we swallowed.
The faint of heart might have trashed it all and gone out for Chinese, but not us. I prefer to say "brave," rather than "foolhardy."
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TUESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2002
CATHERINE'S RECIPE FOR A ONE PAN BREAKFAST
First you must have some Duran’s* chile. Call them now and order a few jars. It costs about $14 for two jars, but it will be the best chile you’ve ever had. If you don’t like it, you can send the other jar to me.
Once you have your chile, get a small frying pan and put in more butter than you think is good for you. I’d say a tablespoon and a half. Let that pan get nice and hot and then turn down the heat a little. Turn on your oven and put in a Primavera tortilla, or if you don’t have those where you live, a regular corn tortilla will do. Crack two eggs into the pan and let them cook to your liking. I like mine over medium, so I let the eggs cook until the whites around the edges are not slimy looking. Then I loosen my eggs from the bottom of the pan and flip them over. I let them cook as I move from one side of the kitchen to the other to slip them into a bowl. After the flip I’d say this is about 5.5 seconds. Perfect eggs every time. Now, open the oven and flip over your tortilla. After you’ve done that, open that bottle of Duran’s chile and put some, a 1/2 cup or so, into your egg pan that still has a little butter. Heat the chile and put it over your eggs. Take out your tortilla and butter it well. Eat and be merry.
That is it. One pan...awesome breakfast.
*Duran's is in Albuquerque. They sell their red and green chile by mail order. You can order by calling 505.247.4141.
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MONDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2002
I love getting letters from readers. I'm always a little surprised to realize that I have any readers in the first place, so when they actually write to me, it's an extra treat. Here's an email I got this morning from Michel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She describes a favorite sandwich of hers that sounds like something I (and my mom) would love.
"Fry a couple of pieces of bacon until crisp. I get this thick cut kind with cracked pepper. Put a piece of Pepperidge Farm bread under the broiler just until it isn't soft anymore. Turn it over. Slice a couple of pieces of Velveeta cheese and put on bread...leave a border of bread showing. Spoon a couple of teaspoons of bacon grease over cheese and on bread. Broil until the borders are crispy and big dark brown bubbles burst on the cheese. If you have a really good tomato, put a slice on (my favorite is a thin slice of green tomato)...then crumble the bacon over it all. Still great without the tomato. A big glass of cold milk. Maybe some hot spicy bread-and butter-pickles. Then, even though you said you were just going to have one slice (since they aren't that good for you), make another one anyway."
I love anything that features bacon grease as an ingredient. That, or chicken fat. It's a good thing I've taken up jogging! What are the rest of you having for lunch today?
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FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2002
Last summer Catherine & I canned apricots. I dislike fresh apricots, I don't like their texture, but I love apricot jam and cobbler and pie. Catherine had never canned anything, and canning whole fruit is easier than making jam (less messy), so we started with that.
We were so organized about putting the finished jars of apricots away in their box so they wouldn't take up space in the cabinets. Unfortunately, we forgot they were there. I meant to give them away for Christmas - oh well!
We re-discovered them last week, and I've been eating them ever since. Apricots and ice cream, apricots and yogurt, apricots straight out of the jar. I saved the syrup, because I have a feeling that apricot syrup+rum+soda is going to be delicious.
If you've never canned anyhing before, and I think a lot of people haven't, you should try it this summer. It's not a big deal, there's nothing really tricky about it. You just have to follow the directions. Basic cookbooks like Fannie Farmer or the Joy of Cooking have recipes, and when you buy a box of Ball Jars, there are instructions in the box. It's very satisfying to look at rows of jars filled with fruit sitting on your kitchen counter. And having organic fruit on top of ice cream in February is pretty nice, too. I highly recommend it.
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