Whole Foods: Why, Whether... and How

The Pollan-Mackey smackdown last night was good entertainment. It was not a conversation that will solve the world's food problems.
Both sides were well prepared, but there can be no argument that Michael Pollan controlled the evening, and even manipulated things. He's got more presence as a speaker (and a more mellifluous voice; wait, was Mackey's microphone sabotaged?), so he seized the leading-star role.
John Mackey was rumored to have been quite nervous going into this debate, but I found him to be humorous, intelligent, and game.
Quick aside here, if you haven't been following: Michael Pollan attacked Mackey's Whole Foods company in the book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Mackey, CEO of the chain, has instigated some impressive changes in response. Story still unfolding.
BUT: Here was my favorite remark of the evening, regarding whether an organic, local diet was within economic reach of most eaters, wherever you do your shopping.
Mackey said, "If you cook, you can do it."
He meant no take-out, no icky prepared deli meals, no granola bars. Just fresh, or bulk, or sensible. Apply water, a pan, a little fat, some heat. Presto, you got a good, inexpensive meal.
I recommend it.
If you've got time to waste in front of the television, surely you can spend a few gratifying moments banging around in the kitchen. It's good for you, and you can afford it.

Intentional Accidents of Nature

I bought a juice extractor last year, and pulverized some local apples with the intention of letting the liquid ferment into hard cider.
I must have looked the other way for a few extra days, though, because when I got back to it, it was already vinegar.
Really good vinegar. Complex, fruity, pleasantly acidic. Wow, what a trick.
It got used up pretty fast, so I bought more apples for juicing this past summer. I set the juice out in the open air, in glasses covered with cheesecloth, just as I had done the spring before.
But it didn't work. I got mold.
So in the fall I decided to just buy some cider already pressed from the Sebastopol apple guy (sorry, don't know the orchard), and I told him what I wanted to do. He said to do nothing. Easy, that I can do. He said the wild yeasts I wanted to "catch" in the cider were probably already present in the juice. I simply peeled off the foil liners inside the caps, returned the caps, and watched vinegar happen.
It worked this time, but not as acidic and not as complex.
Funny thing, nature. I'm so clearly not in control.
Back when I was experimenting with my juice extractor, I juiced a couple of raw beets. Wouldn't that make the most amazing vinegar, I thought.
But, no. I left the bloody ooze out for weeks, and it just turned syrupy, and eventually kind of vile. The juice was way too thick. Haven't worked out the bugs yet.
Still, I couldn't stop thinking about beet vinegar.
A couple of weeks ago I roasted some beets (unpeeled, in a covered casserole with a splash of water). The interior of the casserole came out a fantastic smear of baked-on fuchsia, so I poured in a little water to soak overnight.
Next day, the beet smear had all dissolved into a beautiful pink puddle, and it reminded me of my failed beet vinegar project. On a whim, I stuck my finger in and tasted it. Vinegar.
Magic! In just one day, some rogue fungus that had probably been lodged on the beet skin turned the rosy water into a lovely, gentle vinegar.
It was too small an amount to bother with, but... Wait. There's a little headroom in one of those cider vinegar bottles.
Ah, yes. In it goes.

Why Do I Even Try?

Cranky took this picture.
He was watching me snap shots of everything on the table, hoping for a good composition. He casually mentioned, "The sunlight is coming through the lime on my side."
I handed him the camera and he took a single exposure. One.
Click.
Damn. I'm quitting this gig.
He also happened to take the single best picture (the bottom one) from when I first upgraded to my DSLR.
I don't have issues about this. I really don't.

Shout Out to Kraut

You ever take a dish to a pot luck party and try to hoard it all yourself?
I invariably fall in love with what I make, and have a hard time sharing. The only reason I'm still allowed to go to pot luck parties is because yes, I want to taste what you made, and you, and you, and you. So I will put small dabs of everything on my plate first, and only then will I allow myself to put a spoonful of my own contribution on my plate, where I've left a tiny hole.
See? I'm in control. Help yourself to some of my lovely offering; there's plenty for all.
Now, maybe sauerkraut is not exactly the type of thing you'd get all swoony over, but I would. I love sour stuff. So when Cranky and I were invited to feast on roasted goose with a couple dozen other epicures, I volunteered to bring sauerkraut as a side dish.
I did not ferment my own cabbage, though I would have liked to; there just wasn't enough time. Instead, I bought two large jars of pretty good stuff and tinkered with flavors and long, slow baking to come up with a meltingly caramelized mess. The only problem was that the kraut began to shrink, only partly due to evaporation; more likely due to the cabbage's cell structure breaking down in the heat.
Alas, I ended up toting a rather skimpy-looking quantity to the party, where I wanted it all to myself... but everybody was well-mannered and we shared.
I sampled lots of yummy dishes at the party; I'm so glad I didn't fill up on my own contribution.

Briefly, here's how it goes, with quantities per 25-oz. jar: Drain sauerkraut (and save the juice; you'll think of something to do with it in a day or so). Rinse half the sauerkraut to remove saltiness, but keep the other half salty; press out extra liquid.
Dice two or three strips of bacon and cook them until just nicely brown; dump the bacon AND THE FAT into a baking dish or casserole.
Cut an onion into thin, thin slices or half-moons. Stir the onion and sauerkraut into the bacon. Give it a nice crack of black pepper.
Here comes the good part (as if the bacon wasn't the good part). Squeeze the juice of at least two blood oranges into the sauerkraut mixture. Don't get it all soggy, but you definitely want to see some color and taste some citrus.
Cover the dish and bake at 250ºF for at least two hours.
Remove the cover, try a bite and see if you'd like more orange juice. With cover off, continue baking for another hour.
I took this to the party in a CrockPot, where it sat warming on the low setting for another hour before we dug in.

We've made another batch for ourselves already.
Yesterday I got the bright idea of chopping up a teensy tail end of leftover andouille sausage and stirring it into some of the sauerkraut, and putting this on rye bread with mustard and "Thousand Island" sauce (ketchup plus mayonnaise), then grating Emmental cheese over it, and grilling it in butter. A Reuben sandwich without corned beef! Cranky calls it "Reubenesque."

It's Not Easy Eating Greens

How hard is it to make a decent salad?
Restaurant owners must not think it's very difficult, because they so often hire inexperienced cooks to assemble them. I may be wrong, but it's my impression that the salad maker is one of the lowest positions in a kitchen, just slightly above dishwasher.
Which is crazy, because salad is often the first thing in a diner's mouth.
Look at this picture of a deplorable salad, served at an upscale (although not high-end) place in Marin County. Absolutely no pride of presentation. Just a wet tangle of foliage tossed with a few chunks of avocado and some white beans.
It tasted terrible. Really terrible. Bitter!
I know radicchio is bitter. I know blue cheese can be bitter. But they should have been mitigated by the sweet crispness of the Romaine, the plump mealiness of the beans, the smooth butteriness of the avocado.
Nope. Just bitter.
And ugly.
What a waste of ingredients.
Stand-out salads — and I'm only talking about leaf-lettuce salads, not any other creation made from fruits and root vegetables and all — are such a rarity in restaurants that I can remember only a handful, going back a couple of decades.
I'm thinking of one now: It was on Martha's Vineyard back in the '80s, a plate of perfect limestone lettuce leaves dressed with a slightly garlicky emulsion of lemon juice and olive oil. Couldn't have been simpler, and it certainly wasn't trying to be fancy, but it was just right. I tried to find that restaurant again just so I could taste the salad one more time, but the place had closed.
I'm not asking for much. Please, I don't need the candied nuts in my salad, and I'll forego the croutons, too. Festive colors are not necessary, so leave out the carrot shavings. You might skip the frisee, too, because I can't stand the feeling of a scrubbing pad in my mouth.
All I want is pristine lettuce (I can't believe restaurants actually send out slimy black leaves, but they do) and a balanced dressing. Taste it! The one in the photo tasted like a can of scouring powder got tipped into the mix.
I also wouldn't mind if the salad was temptingly arranged on the plate, instead of looking like it was flung with a ladle.
I'm gonna go all girlie here: Listen up, restaurants. Ladies (and that might be half of your paying customers) like salads. Good ones.

Tooth Day

I'm Sad and I Can't Eat.
Dining will resume as soon as the numbness subsides. Wouldn't want to chew a hole in my cheek.

Gung Hay Fat Tuesday!

It's a culture collision in my mouth: a little Year of the Pig (in the form of sausage), some fine white rice, a handful of fresh shrimp and some shrimp stock, some distinctly Chinese vegetables (onion, green pepper, celery), and...
Roux.
Nope, it's N'Awleans in my mouth, through and through. Gumbo, baby.
I had forgotten how easy it is to throw this together. One of the secrets is using very good andouille sausage, which imparts loads of its own flavor to your doings.
Another secret is the kamikaze roux: Cook it fast, Paul Prudhomme-style, until it's the color of wood (he recommends mahogany; I chickened out at about cherrywood).
You stop the cooking of the roux by dumping in your diced vegetables; then, when the vegetables have cooked a few minutes, you pour in your stock.
Sausage next; shrimp last. Oh, wait, somewhere in there you toss in dried spices. Gotta be dried, 'cause that's the way they do it in the Big Easy.
Happy Mardi Gras.

Skeletons in My Closet

Mary, the spicy Jalapeño Girl, tagged me for the Five Things meme. I've already participated, but I told her it would be fun to think of five more things.
Besides, I'm out of ideas for other blog posts, so thanks, Mary.

6. I have lived at at least 25 addresses, not counting college housing. Having a father in the Navy accounts for much of that, but once you've got home-hoppping in your blood, it's hard to give it up. There may be a move in my near future.
7. I still don't know where everything is in the house I live in now. I'll open door after door in the kitchen, and finally concede that the missing item is on a shelf out in the garage. Which it's not; it's just behind the cabinet door I haven't opened yet. I blogged about a really cute kitchen item a while back, and today I simply can't find it. Cute, but missing.
8. I gave away so-o-o many shoes when we moved two years ago, yet I still have an Imelda problem. There's a big box of shoes I haven't even unpacked, shoved into the back of a closet. So what do I wear on a daily basis? Some dumpy black clogs or a pair of suspiciously new-looking Converse All-Stars.
9. I really like Will Ferrell movies. Well, not Zoolander.
10. Cranky and I have been cooking for each other since our first date. We have a "family anecdote," you know, the type of tale that gets tiresomely trotted out at gatherings, about The Time Cranky Used Too Much Garlic.

I won't be tagging anyone else, since I've already bothered people, but I have enjoyed reading all your sordid little secrets.

Lunch Today

It's been just one year since the great Cheese Sandwich blog blow-up. We were supposed to be ashamed of talking about what we ate. Even though we were food bloggers.
Well, we're still not ashamed. We're proud.
Here's what I had for lunch today: smoked salmon, nice olive bread, all the right trimmings.
Everything for about $10, for the two of us. You wouldn't get that in a yupporiffic restaurant.
I think it's something worth bragging about. Even if I do sound like a horrible recluse.
Tomorrow I'm having a non-recluse dinner with a bunch of cheese-sandwich bloggers. Yeah.
But the menu's not cheese sandwiches.
That's for later. And forever.
Yeah.

It's Beer, Mate

It's the weekend.
The temperature's up.
Good.

Not Dessert

Sorry about the heart, a day late and all. And for you Valentine haters, extra sorry.
This came out so good I really have to share it. (You don't have to make it in a heart shape!)
You might think this is "Coeur à la Crème" but it's not a sugared confection. My version was made from blue cheese, crème fraîche and beets. Hey, you like that combo in salads, don't you?
Now, this is not (repeat after me) a recipe blog, but here's how it goes:
I used one of those cute porcelain heart-shaped molds with tiny perforations in the bottom that allow excess moisture to drain out. My mold was the small kind, about 4 or 5 inches across, for two snackers.
What you do is take a guess at how much blue cheese would fill the mold about 3/4 full. Set it aside.
Then, this is the killer app part: Heat some crème fraîche over low heat and gently simmer a few fresh sage leaves and bay leaves. If you don't have fresh bay leaves, use some other fresh herb you like; you want to extract the fragrant oils from the leaves. (And if you do have fresh bay leaves, score their surfaces lightly with a knife.) I overcooked mine to the point that the crème fraîche turned into ghee, but the aroma was superb.
Take out the leaves and stir the flavored crème into the blue cheese. Stir until very smooth. I needed to stir in a spoonful or two of sour cream as well at this point because my mixture was too skimpy for the mold; it was a lucky move, probably, because the result was so-o-o tender.
Dampen a length of cheesecloth (a single layer is fine); wring out and line the mold. Pack the cheese into the mold, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate over a dish to catch drips, overnight.
Next day. Did you remember to cook the beets yesterday? Oh.
Take two or three tiny cooked, peeled beets, toss into the blender with salt, pepper, a small drizzle of olive oil, and probably more water than you'd think (you can do this in stages if you're uncertain). Blend until you get a smooth, spoonable goop. I might make mine thinner next time, but a little thick is good insurance against dribbling on your carpet.
Decorate your plate; you can slather the beet goop over or under the cheese.
Spread dablets on baguette slices.
It's... sweet!

Happy Heart-Shaped Food Day

Not everything we eat today will be in the shape of a Valentine, but we've got a few gastro-cardio items on the menu.
To start, I've made a coeur à la crème. Yes, to start. Ordinarily coeur à la crème is made from sweetened cream cheese packed into a heart-shaped mold, and drizzled with raspberries or strawberries. Well I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I do have a heart-shaped mold (with the little perforations in the bottom). So I blended some Point Reyes Farmstead Blue Cheese with a little Cowgirl Creamery crème fraîche. In order to ratchet up the flavor, I briefly heated some fresh sage and bay leaves in the crème fraîche first, and let it cool. The drizzle will be made from red beets. Cranky is baking crackers today (his first try), although we will not be using a heart-shaped cracker cutter. No.
Our next hearty nibble will be steak tartare, shaped into a heart (ohgod, how tedious), and probably served with more of those crackers. Maybe decorated with a cute little arrow made from capers.
Then we'll move on to this pie-cake thingie from Emporio Rulli. I believe it's filled with hazelnuts and cream, and possibly chocolate too.
I've been told there are also more oysters in the fridge. For dessert. That's just the way I am.

Orange Is Not the Only Soup*

A couple of weeks ago, I came to the conclusion that winter soups are orange, and summer soups are green.
A small discussion ensued, and I admitted that sometimes summer soups are red and winter soups are white...
And today — my winter soup was green.
I'm going to share a secret many of you probably already know. I learned this from Mollie Katzen, cutely and earth-mommily demonstrating her technique on some long-forgotten TV show. (And Mollie, if you read blogs, I met you once and I was smitten.)
The trick is silken tofu. Cook your vegetable. Cook it in broth or cook it in water. Season it with onions, spices, whatever. Allow it to cool somewhat.
Then throw it all in the blender with silken tofu, and give it a serious spin.
You will get creamy, healthful soup. I had some for lunch, and I'm still full.
Today's was made with a lone tree of broccoli, a small portion of diced shallot, half of a green jalapeño pepper, a couple of twigs of ancho cress, some chicken broth, and several silly squirts of fish sauce.

*This title is a throwback to one of Sam's collaborations with Andrew, just over a year ago, for a project called Foodography. The project has expired, and I miss it, even though I was only a sporadic contributor.

Consider Not Ruining the Oyster

Valentine's Day is gaining on us, and I'm trying to stay ahead of the voluptuous curve.
So today Cranky and I opened the bivalventines.
A little early, sure, but why delay the pleasure? I've been known to celebrate my birthday for an entire month; certainly I can worship Cupid for at least a week.
Therefore, a dozen Beausoleil oysters from Canada. Courtesy of my favorite butcher, Bryan. I have other butchers I adore, but Bryan is so all-purpose, even if he couldn't get me some pig ears. (I might have other sources.)
The special anointment, the fillip, the taste de resistance, was inspired by Ilva of Lucullian Delights. Ilva had made some blood orange-ginger jellies in the shape of hearts.
I thought: Why hasn't anyone ever served oysters with jellies? Maybe they have. But I like to believe I thought of this myself. Savory jellies with shucked raw oysters.
Go visit Ilva for her recipe. And then, keep in mind that for my version, I used no sugar, and added a pinch of salt and a sprinkling of cayenne.

Flavors

I'm in love with my small dishes.
Which is not the same as "small dishes," although I currently have two cookbooks out from the library on that subject, and I think I may buy at least one of them. (They are Amuse-Bouche by Rick Tramonto — adorable! — and Big Small Plates by Cindy Pawlcyn, which I haven't thumbed through yet.)
No, what I mean is cooking in little cups, bowls, mini-casseroles. Cranky calls it "portion control" but I just think it's fun.
Definitely more photogenic, in the case of homely things like bread pudding, macaroni and cheese, or shepherd's pie.
And guess what: I can legitimately call this shepherd's pie, because there's lamb in it. Beef too, but you take what you get. And in this case, what we got was a leftover shawerma sandwich from the Falafel Hut. Unrolled the lavosh wrapper, scraped out the vegetables, and chopped up the meat.
But that's the funny part. Even though I constructed these pies from homemade meat drippings, sautéed vegetables from the farmers market and mashed potatoes (ditto), the finished dish had the flavor of "Somebody Else's Cooking." I expect that in a restaurant, but it always shocks me at home.

Fave Rave

Sometimes you just have to go to a diner.
This one has real wooden tables and ancient checkered linoleum floor tiles. A long counter with stools. One very special alcove with a big table crammed into it, where shady deals are surely hatched.
It is right here in toney Marin, as anachronistic as all-get-out and very, very busy.
I ordered biscuits and gravy. I've been systematically sampling the biscuits and gravy whenever I see it on menus in Marin, and I'm almost always disappointed.
Yesterday I was very happy. These biscuits and gravy come with two eggs, any style, on top of the biscuits and smothered with the sausage gravy. Mmmph!
I had been thinking about keeping this place all to myself, but I realize it fits perfectly with Chubbypanda's Save Our Faves meme. It's a chance to give proper props to places we'd hate to see go out of business.
You might not like this place, but I've described it well enough that you should be able to judge for yourself.
It's called Lundy's. It's on Fourth Street in downtown San Rafael.

Eleven Pounds of Sauce

I saw my dentist yesterday.
It had been a while. Quite a while, but as I understand it, my saliva is magic and my teeth don't collect much build-up of tartar over time. My gums are healthy, too. I am lucky.
The only bad news is — well, ta-dah! It's good news: I'm going to be a princess. I'm getting a crown.
I have to buy it myself, though. Since I lost my job I don't have dental insurance.
My dentist asked me what I've been doing since my forced retirement, and whenever she took her latex-gloved fingers out of my mouth, I was able to answer in snippets.
"I'm spending some time on a blog."
(Scrape, scrape, scrape. Squirt, suck.)
"It's a food blog."
(Dig, dig, dig. Scrape, squirt.)
"I take pictures."
(Poke, poke. Jiggle, wiggle, uh-oh, X-rays; bite, ow.)
Finally, when the major excavations were finished, she told me she'd been out to dinner a few nights earlier, and the waiter announced that among the specials that evening was Sole with Eleven Pounds of Sauce.
"Sole with Eleven Pounds of Sauce?" cried my dentist, aghast. Well, you would be too.
No, said the waiter.
Sole with a Lemon Ponzu Sauce.
Oh.

February Already?

But I'm not finished with December.
By some freak of nature, or the peculiar preservative properties of candied fruit and butter, the half of a panettone that has been sitting on a cake plate since 2006 was still semi-tender and un-moldy.
The bowl of persimmons, while softening daily, still retained enough edible — succulent, really — fruit pulp to be useable.
And, as usual, there was milk and eggs in the fridge.
So I whipped up a quick batch of individual bread puddings.
I discovered the panettone is so dense and moist already, that I used too much milk and had to pour some of it off. In fact, I decided to cut up some extra Italian bread into small chunks to help suck up some of the soppiness, as well as to introduce some structure (read: air bubbles) to the pudding.
I expected the baking time to be considerably reduced since I was using small cups instead of a large dish. But the toothpick test told me no; the little cups needed the full dose of oven time to get warm and bubbly and golden.
Well, these little guys won't be around long, and then we can get on with the business of February.
Valentine's Day already?
Sigh.

Inspiration

Bean Sprout has been singled out by Ms Cellania as one very good reason to visit I'm Mad and I Eat. Never mind all that pseudo-political carping or the occasional lame food posts that show up here from time to time.
I'm a little burned out on those topics anyway. But the doggie never fails to amuse. In this picture, the Sprout is waiting in his dapper sweater for mom and dad to finish their tea. We had just been prowling in two very worthy stores: one, a thrift shop to benefit a good cause, and the other an "antique" shop with surprisingly great stuff at good prices.
No, I am not telling you where. No! Stop asking.
The purpose of the shopping trip was food-blog oriented: It was to locate fun props for photo styling. I have been systematically spending the Christmas money my mom and dad sent me on old dishes.
At first, I couldn't resist buying two of everything, so Cranky and I could actually eat off of them together. But now I'm just shepherding the remainder of my funds and picking out the odd this and that.
Bean Sprout and Cranky waited outside one of the shops, but this magnetic doggie caught the eye of someone who volunteers for the store, and he was invited inside. He cruised the merchandise, safely ensconced in his new tote bag on Cranky's shoulder, both being perfect gentlemen and not knocking over any candlesticks.

Right There, Right When?

So, the Democratic National Committee met yesterday in Washington to discuss Very Important Stuff.
When this cycle's crop of presidential candidates spoke, they each got to choose which moldy old song would accompany their apperances.
I remember when Bill Clinton was running for president back in 1992, and his campaign theme song was "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)," a 1977 hit for Fleetwood Mac. Not bad; the song was only 15 years old by then; the message was pretty positive. Still. Eww. Icky pseudo-grooviness.
Barbara Boxer ran for the Senate the same year, and came up with a much hipper tune: Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now," which was only a year old then. Good message (sample: "watching the world wake up from history" — it was "The Year of the Woman," after all), and irresistably less mainstream than the frumpy songs all the other folks were using. Of course, we all suspected that Boxer's daughter Nicole, then in her early 20s, might have suggested the musical choice for her mom. Fine. Oh, and romantic footnote: Nicole went on to marry Bill Clinton's brother-in-law — right, that would be Hillary's brother, Tony Rodham. Whatever. The marriage didn't last.
Fast forward to 2007, and the uber-cool (ow, crap, I just stuck my tongue right through my cheek; no, seriously, I'm bleeding) Hillary Clinton has pressed her jukebox buttons for her DNC appearance. And the winner was (envelope, please) "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones.
Jesus. Gimmeabreak. You can't tell me she doesn't know Boxer already used that one as a campaign song. Sure, it doesn't matter at all in the greater scheme of things (I mean, how many politicos stride onto the platform to the tune of "Happy Days Are Here Again," for instance), but it's just a creepy sign of things to come.
Maybe things could be worse. John Edwards appeared to the jingle from a car ad, "Our Country" by John Mellencamp.
Maybe things could be better! Barack Obama decided not to use music at all, to stress his no-foolin' attitude.
Alas, things could be worstest. I must add that Hillary Clinton chose two songs for her appearance yesterday. The other one was "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive (1974), and b-b-b-baby, are you as horrified as I am?

At a Loss for Words... And Then...

Apart from a brief mention on Ethicurean, I don't know if anybody else has blogged this bit of sad news. Last week, Sharon Tyler Herbst, author of The Food Lover's Companion, died.
You probably already know about this fantastically useful dictionary that teaches you hundreds and hundreds of things such as the names of all those crazy pasta shapes, or what a bain-marie is (but it doesn't tell you why it's called that, darn).
You may own a copy of the book yourself. And perhaps you know that it's available to browse online, free, via Epicurious.com.
Herbst and her husband wrote other food and wine books, too, but I don't want this to turn into one of those long obituary-type tributes. I just wanted to say how pained I was by the news of her passing, partly because she and I had chatted on the phone a few times five years ago, when she still lived in Marin County. I had something to do with assigning stories back then, and I had arranged for a freelancer to do a little profile on her, complete with a cute photo. She was cute. (The piece is not available online, sorry.)
I'm trying for a happy ending here, folks, really I am.
OK. So then yesterday I spotted a new dictionary about food terms. DairyQueen, at Ethicurean (she loves some tasty wordplay, yes she does), pointed me toward The Devil's Food Dictionary, an incipient site (seriously, I think he's still working on it) by one Barry Foy for some very funny, smirky, snarky definitions. (E.g.: "shad — past tense of shid." Or, "tuna — Excellent raw, cooked in any way, or canned, this sleek, majestic, powerful animal is so delicious that we have decided not to waste any of it on future generations.")
I am just kicking myself that he beat me to this project. Well, no. I'm just kicking myself that I didn't think of that title first. It's a perfect culinary spin on the old Ambrose Bierce book of wry definitions, The Devil's Dictionary, and Foy seems to be following in Bierce's literary footprints with cunning precision.
That cheers me up a bit.

Photo credit: sharontylerherbst.com

Squash Soup Plus Tomato

I make a lot of green soups in the summer (peas, avocados, zucchini, stuff like that), but it hadn't really occurred to me that in the winter, soups are orange.
This one was made from two types of winter squash (delicata and a little acorn squash that had gotten so old, it really needed to be eaten), some homemade vegetable broth, a shallot sautéed in butter, some cumin and cayenne and salt, and a nice dab of crème fraîche. And since I had a little homemade tomato sauce in the fridge, that went in, too. What a neat trick. Good enough to actually think of thawing some tomato sauce for the next time I want orange soup.

Technique: Cut squashes in halves, remove seeds, and microwave, face-down, in a covered glass dish to which you've added a sprinkle of water, for 10 minutes or until easily pierced. Meanwhile, sauté sliced shallot in butter until tender. When squash is cool enough to handle, scrape the flesh into a soup pot and add the shallots. Pour in the tomato sauce, vegetable broth and your seasonings, and mix it all together, breaking up the squash chunks. Now dump this all into the blender and give it a hearty whirl until everything is very smooth. Wipe out the soup pot and pour the puréed mix in, along with some crème fraîche. Stir well. Heat the soup, check the seasonings, and take a picture.