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WEDNESDAY 18 JULY 2001
WHAT TO HAVE FOR DINNER
This is what I'm having later tonight; you have it, too. Put some salted water on to boil. Cut some bacon into small pieces and fry in a pan until it's crispy. Take it out of the pan but leave a goodish amount of the fat. Salt and pepper a piece of salmon and slip in to the hot bacon fat. While the fish is cooking, drop some green beans into that water that should be boiling by now. Put some arugula onto a plate (I bought the already washed kind this week) and slice some tomatoes and put them on the plate, too. Don't forget to turn the fish! Drain those beans and add them to your plate. When the fish is done to your liking, put it on top of the arugula and make a dressing. Add a little olive oil to the fish/bacon pan. Quickly slice a little red onion and put that in there, too. Some mustard, some lemon juice - a LOT of lemon juice - and some sugar. Put the cooked bacon back in and let it warm up. Give it all a stir, have a taste, season as necessary and then pour the warm dressing all over the crispy salmon and lovely arugula, green beans and tomatoes. Yum! Now go cook and tomorrow you can write me and let me know how it was.
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TUESDAY 17 JULY 2001
It was a remarkably good night for FoodTV last night. There's a show called "Unwrapped" that I watched for the first time. This particular episone was about cereal - the history of cereal, th marketing of cereal, lots and lots of cereal trivia. The best part was the segment on how they made cereal - grinding the corn or wheat, mixing it into a batter, putting the dough through extruders and ovens and flash-driers and cutters and then into the boxes. Miles of conveyor belts all through the factory.*
After it was over, I flipped to Great Chefs of the World. First of all, the narrator's voice. I love it - I don't think she's changed at all from the orginal series that I remeber watching when I was twelve. Last night was Roger Vergé cooking chicken. Amazing how much you can learn in ten minutes of watching someone who is very good at what they do.
*My favorite clip of all time from Sesame Street is the mini-movie about how they make gum. There's no narration, only music, so you don't know what it is they're making. I can remember clearly the white stuff in the mixer then being rolled by giant rollers, and trying to figure out what it would be. By the time they show the foil wrapping, you're pretty sure, and then at the end, a girl unwraps a stick and puts it into her mouth, chewing and smiling, and you pracitaccly shout "Gum!" I wish I could have a "best of" Sesame Street tape that included that episode. Goes to show that my taste in television hasn't changed much.
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MONDAY 16 JULY 2001
Another foggy morning but I'm keeping my hands warm around a mug of broccoli-asiago soup. Soup is my favorite breakfast food. (I should say my second favorite. My favorite breakfast is really rice and gravy, especially my mom's fried chicken gravy, but I don't have it very often.) Soup is such a nice thing to eat in the morning- warm, smooth, comforting. I know I can't be the only one who thinks so!
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SATURDAY 14 JULY 2001
Everyone has their guilty pleasures. Someone who may, for the most part, believe in buying organic food, supporting sustainable agriculture, eating foods that are healthy and free of chemicals- someone like me, for instance- probably secretly harbors a love for Nalley's Chili or Diet Coke or Slim Jim Meat Stix or something equally as vile and delicious. For me it's Kentucky Fried Chicken. I love it. I crave it. I think about it every time I drive by on the way to work. And twice a year I give in to temptation. I don't want to know what's in it, I don't care what kind of fat they fry it in, I don't care to hear any stories about commercial poultry processing plants, thank you very much. I just know that it tastes GOOD and that it makes me very very happy.
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WEDNESDAY 11 JULY 2001
My favorite lunch was one I had at Zuni six or seven years ago. Cabbage and gruyere panade, with poached eggs and braised oxtails. I love oxtails. I never cook them, but only because I don't usually see them. (I was surprised to see organic oxtails at the store a couple of months ago and asked if they had them often. Of course, the answer was yes; of course, they haven't had them since.)
So last night for dinner I made something very similar. Panade with escarole and onions and some kind of cheese. I can't remember the name (it's the first time I've tried it) but it's from Denmark and it's delicious-- like a gouda, but stronger. Homemade chicken stock, which I've been trying to make more often. Also had short ribs braised in red wine with sage and rosemary, and a green bean and tomato salad. I'm having the leftovers for lunch today and I'm already hungry.
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TUESDAY 10 JULY 2001
So I read an article somewhere, probably Sunset magazine or someplace like that, about growing herbs in pots. It had pictures of these impressive pots overflowing with mixed herbs; the author advised that herbs grow well if you mix them up and even if you crowd them a little. I've decided, based on my own recent experience, that the author of the article was either lucky or just plain wrong.
I have two big terra cotta pots. One has silver thyme, tarragon, oregano and garlic chives. The other has rosemary, variegated sage, lemon thyme and regular chives. They do OK, but not great. I've had to buy herbs from the farmer's market, which shows that the ones I grow have kind of been limping along for a couple of years. Last November we were at the Boonville Hotel, and they have huge tubs with only a single herb in each, and the plants are gigantic and bushy. So two months ago I bought another sage plant, the regular kind, in a 4-inch container. The plant had maybe five leaves. I gave it a pot of it's own. Now it's at least four times the size of its variegated neighbor--maybe 18 inches high and a foot across-- and it's more than I could ever use in the kitchen. I won't have to buy sage anymore, that's for sure. I think I'm going to spend some time next weekend repotting everything else.
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MONDAY 9 JULY 2001
The weather in Santa Cruz can be very confusing. I was at the market this weekend and bought eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes. Peaches, nectarines, blackberries. Basil, parsley and savory. Lovely summery sunny produce. But for the last two days it's been foggy and dark, and I feel like sitting wrapped up in a blanket, drinking tea and eating cookies, warming up the house by roasting squash and braising lamb. No wonder I get that mid-summer yearning for Christmas music.
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THURSDAY 5 JULY 2001
4th of July BBQ last night, with pie, which reminded me... I used to have a friend that made something called Banana Caramel Pie. It involved taking a can of Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk and boiling the whole UNOPENED can in a pot of water for three hours. This always seemed incredibly dangerous to me (milk on the ceiling! blinded from tin shrapnel hitting me in the eye! third degree burns from the explosion!), but nothing ever happened. When you opened the can, it was filled with an extremely sweet, thick, creamy caramel. This got spread into a crust made from crushed ginger snaps and butter, and then covered with sliced bananas and whipped cream. I've always wanted to make it for my dad. He and my grandma would love it-- they've both got that Southern sweet tooth.
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TUESDAY 3 JULY 2001
Had an off night the other night. The whole dinner felt jinxed. I had forgotten to put the ice cream canister back into the freezer, and I guess 8 hours isn't long enough. The cream got very very cold, but it sure didn't turn into ice cream! When Monika & Bill got there, nothing was ready, so I turned the oven up 50 degrees-- and I dried out my chicken. The beets never cooked, I should have chopped the eggplant by hand, because the blender made it too thin. . . it was just one of those nights, I guess, but still. . . Have I forgotten how to cook?
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