I Still Miss Him

I know it's not weird to miss my recently departed dog.
I'm even getting a little better.
I wonder when I'll stop missing him.
I hope I never do.

Cherry Baby

We spent a little time roasting down tomatoes yesterday for the freezer. One pan of tomatoes consisted largely of shriveled cherry Tiny Tims (useless plant; never again unless I need a six-inch specimen for a bitty pot — cute gift). After roasting, they were, of course, even more shriveled. It did not look good for running them through the food mill to extract sauce from this pan of hot tomaisins.
But, ooh, they smelled good. Not the sort of thing you'd just chuck onto the compost pile. And I said, "Why would I even want to scrape off the lovely skins and seeds? This is food."
Sometimes when the house smells insanely delicious and the roasted baby tomatoes look adorable and edible, you can't be bothered to think in an orderly, recipe-like fashion.
We slapped this stuff into a pile of pasta shells with nothing more than a couple of gratings of various cheeses. We forgot all about herbs. Salt wasn't necessary. It was just... food.
Times like that, I really like food.

I Am a Pot Head

No sooner had I bought the petite Staub cast-iron pots than I was already ordering my next Staub pot, the 3/4-quart size.
I am such a whore! I feel like I don't even love the 1/4-quart pots anymore. But Cranky reminded me that I do love them, and that I have a dandy idea for food to roast in them, soon. Sort of a deconstructed stuffed cabbage, but Shh. We'll talk about that later.
This new pot, the 3/4-quart? OMG, it is gorgeous. The diameter is only five and a quarter inches, to give you an idea how tidy and natty it is. It is the perfect size for two SANE appetites. A little, teensy bit more than you might need to eat, but two loving bowlfuls nonetheless that will not activate a review by the obesity panel.
Look here: Cranky made an impromptu cassoulet. We have gotten very brave, insouciant almost, in faking cassoulets. This was Cranky's first fake, and he was a little nervous, but he nailed it — if not nailing it is nailing it, because cassoulet without a slavish recipe is the goal, and he scored.
White marrow beans, cooked with bay leaves, other herbs, bacon fat and salt. Half a Merguez sausage, which is African and not traditional, but there are lots of Africans in France now, and the sausage is so tasty and made from lamb, which is very cassoulet. A thigh of duck confit. A few halves of ripe tomatoes. A good glug of chicken stock. Some bread crumbs. More herbs.
See, not a recipe. An approximation, and next time it will probably be different (because there is a Toulouse sausage in the freezer).
The thrill, for us both, was cooking our bean stew in the new metal pot. Lid on part of the time, then off.
Well, no, I think the cassoulet was the thrill.
Or maybe the pot.

What I've Been Doing

Not much. I haven't been doing much.
I am, I will feebly confess, still in a state over the unexpected loss of my pet. It just pops up on you. You move your legs in the bed and think, "Don't knock the doggie off!" You shut down the computer and expect the pooch to jump up and run out of the room with you (because he could always tell when it was shutting down, application by application until the final FOOM. He could tell). I miss him.
Trying to move on, however. I did a lot, a LOT of nothing recently that added up to a huge fall harvest of preserved fruit.
I know. I do this every year, and it's not interesting anymore, except it is to me.
I dried a whole tree of plums. First, I used the previous years' technique of leaving the fruit in perforated laundry bags, outside in the sun. Then, oh my, I discovered a new trick.
You know how hot your car gets in the sun? And the minute you open it up, you can't wait for the heat to dissipate? NO.
Save the sun. Dry your fruit in the car.
I've already had friends laugh at me for this, but jeez, how very ECO. Park the car in the driveway or on the street, load your fruit into trays or laundry bags atop towels or newspapers to catch drips, and just wait. Just you wait.
We're calling our Subaru the Prunaru now.

Cute, not Garbage

If it's fried, it's food! Plus, all those vegetables (two, not counting the omelet, but it's hard to tell because of the frying).
A while ago I took Cranky to a really nice steakhouse, run by an ambitious and well-known chef (though he's seldom there), and pleasant enough to dress casually for and still feel like a million. Well, half a million.
See, he needed the meat. There's never beef in this house, except for that hulking roast we get for Christmas. I figured a steak was a good treat for my pookie, since he's been doing all the heavy lifting in the garden this summer, AND bringing me a cup of tea in bed every morning.
I had a very nice steak, too, and between us both, there was enough meat to bring home for some snazzy Asian salad or something (though we ended up eating the steak as god intended: like steak).
Ah, but into the leftovers box I also poinked our "used" baked potato skins. I had an IDEA.
OK, the idea: Brush the empty tater skins with oil. Salt, if you like, and place on a baking sheet. Cook at 350-ish until everything looks brown and crisp.
Meanwhile, or simultaneously, cut up a pattypan squash into cute, thin chips (or planks, or Scrabble tiles...) "Cute," remember. Salt them, place them on a baking sheet, not touching, and give them a good swizzle of nice olive oil. You know what? You can flavor them with a sprinkling of cumin powder and probably some cayenne, as long as everything is cute. Bake the little planks until they look brown and crisp. (I can just see my first cookbook now: "Cook until everything looks brown and crisp. And cute.")
Then assemble your Easter baskets: Fill the crisp tater skins with the crisp pattypan planks. Serve and eat, cutely.
We served ours with a healthy omelet (if eggs and cheese are transformed to health by the addition of spinach; plus, the garlic might help).
I was gonna call this dish Five-Second-Rule Potatoes, but I realized they'd never actually fallen on the floor. Their only sin was being almost garbage.
So I call them George Costanza Almost Eclair Taters.

Farewell, Baby

I have no appetite. My doggie got terribly sick and the vet saw no good prognosis for him. He was in such a terrible state, we are actually relieved to let him go.
I don't know what to do. I don't know how to feel.
There are small toys all over the house; I guess I'll load them into a basket.

Is This Summer Food?

We have just under a couple of weeks until summer ends in the Northern Hemisphere, and I'm trying to use up as many tomatoes as possible.
In years past, that usually meant raw tomatoes in salads with feta cheese, cucumbers and onions. Or gazpacho.
For some reason, my mentality has recently allowed cooked tomatoes as a summer meal.
Look: a tomato torte. I can't even remember where I cruised across this recipe. As usual, I memorized the roughish idea, but not the proportions. It was based on bread crumbs stirred with a little olive oil. I thought it would be nice to incorporate some greenish herbs. Next layer was ricotta cheese mixed with a couple of eggs (and garlic and more herbs... and red chile pepper flakes... and salt, and black pepper). Top layer was slices of garden tomatoes.
Bake for about 45 minutes. I used a spring-form pan that doesn't see much kitchen duty; I was so tickled to be giving it a workout.
You might think this would be a meaningless pot of unrelated layers, but it all cohered. The tomatoes gave off a little juice that apparently migrated down to the breadcrumbs, and created a nice crust. The eggs and cheese transformed into a cheesecake-like layer of puffy scrumptiousness. Hell, I don't use the word "scrumptiousness." Call it "scrum." And the tomato slices firmed up into just what you wanted to eat, believe me.

Un-Rusty Staub

I love this little dish!
Am I talking about A) the food; B) the antique green bowl; or C) the cast-iron Staub mini pot?
All three, of course.
But today I'm especially kookoo about the Staub pot. I've been meaning to buy a pair of them ever since my first visit to Ubuntu in Napa, where I reveled in the cauliflower concoction and vowed to make it myself at home.
No, I still haven't attempted the cauliflower (but you could argue I'm a lot closer now that I have the pots).
This dish (that word!) was a casual layering of un-cased, sauteed Merguez sausage, some tomatoey/garlicky "cowboy caviar" made from homegrown eggplant, gently parboiled potato slices, and a topping of yogurt with a dash of allspice. I don't know what effect I was going for here; vaguely "Bazaar" (as in the marketplace, not the ladies' magazine).
It was a hit. These little pots (they come with lids) are the perfect size for one serving, and I am not lying when I say that I intend to eat lots and lots of un-rusty pots full of comfort food this fall and winter.
Imagine, already looking forward to winter.

A-Mezze-Ing

There has been a cathartic liberation in not having to go to work.
I can think about food all the time, and I can actually concoct the fruits of my fevered dreams if I wish, since there are no tedious meetings to attend, no rude toll-booth attendants to grimace at, no strict limitations on my randomness.
I do have incursions on my freedom, though. There is that plum tree. It's burping produce, and not at an agreeable rate. You either deal with it all at once, or you... deal with it.
We are pruning the plums (not trimming — drying!), though we're happy to eat fresh ones too.
OK, that's too much prelude. What I really want to talk about is rice pudding.
Segue!
But seriously, I had bought a new cookbook (OMG, me following recipes?) and I was smitten by a Turkish rice pudding fragrant with flavors of lemon rind (I used orange), cinnamon and rose water. I had a quart of goat milk I really wanted to use, and... yep.
Oh, this was beautiful. Ugly, only in that it looks like wet rice sludge. But stunning in aroma, texture and taste.
I had time to make this dish. You stand over the stove stirring the ingredients for a long time. Then you decide what you want to do with it. We ate some of it warm, but the rest went into the fridge to firm up.
Next day, we composed a platter with dried plums (are ya with me, California Dried Plum Board? — prunes is now a dirty, laxative word, I guess; my mom won't even eat 'em anymore for fear she'll be bathroom bound).
We accompanied the feast with grapes, almonds and fresh plums. Oh, and the rice pudding, of course.
It sounds sweet, but I cut the sugar in the rice pudding by half, and I have absolutely no objections to the sugar that Mother Nature chooses to grow in my backyard.
And we ate in a most leisurely fashion. Because I have time.

Electric Prunes

Are green gage plums suddenly fashionable? Weren't they just a fusty old antique?
All of a sudden I keep hearing tweets from my foodinista friends, from all over the world, about these little sugar bombs.
I have a scrawny tree in the backyard. This is the third year I've been acquainted with the tree, and this is the first time it has been burdened with a complete, heavy harvest of fruit.
As if on cue last month, the tree dropped most of the plums over a two-day period. We saved many in the refrigerator, but others were already turning brown and wrinkled, so we left them outside in the sun to complete mummification. I mean prunification.
We like the prunes better than the fresh fruit, so this is very convenient. The prunes are creamy, fudgy, sweet and chewy. You can stop the dehydration just when they get to the perfect stage. Dip them (in a strainer) into a pot of boiling water for a minute to remove germs, dry them thoroughly, and then just store in plastic bags in the refrigerator for year-round snacking.
Yesterday we had a sweet mezze for lunch. It included prunes. It's for a later post, so shhh.
It was really good. I had too much to dream last night.

This Will FILL You Up

Tomato Soup and Toast, basically. But homemade (and free of wheat products).
This is our first gazpacho of the year. Last week I came across a recipe that advised grating halved raw tomatoes on the large holes of a box grater, until all you have left is the thin tomato skin in your hand. It really works! You get the skin off, and you get nice, smooth little pieces of tomato.
I have an antique grater made of aluminum (the only icky part) which consists of a grating surface — a lid, essentially — and a dish that it sits over. You grate anything, and it falls into the dish. Perfect for tomatoes. I got into a sort of trance, grating tomatoes outside on the patio table, and pretty much filled up that grater dish.
Next, I grated a couple of raw jalapeños. Not much heat in those babies, if any. It was mostly for flavor and color.
Speaking of flavor and color, then I grated some cucumber. And some onion (well, not much color there).
This mush all went into a bowl with a glug of olive oil, a spurt of Spanish sherry vinegar, and a shake of salt. A little sitting time for flavors to develop...
And here comes the secret ingredient: Cranky ground up some raw almonds into a fine dust. He didn't even bother blanching them. They had a nice, toasty color and a slight granular texture that subbed perfectly for the slice of bread we usually blend into gazpacho. Also, almonds are part of the historic, original white gazpacho from Spain. They say. So this was a clever, anachronistic, if unconventional addition.
THAT IS IT. I couldn't even tinker with flavors, because I had already splurted the oil and vinegar into the bowl, leaving the bottles inside the house, and I wasn't going back for them. I wanted to eat.
Cranky dashed out with a batch of socca, fresh from the griddle. He cooked them a lot more like pancakes this time, not relying on the oven so much. As you might remember, soccas are made from chickpea flour, and are stunningly nutritious. You will be stuffed with bean protein.
And with the garden-flavored soup with its wallop of nut protein,
we
didn't
even
want
supper.