This Is For Zack

What kind of greetings do you say on Memorial Day? "Have a good one!"? "Happy, happy!"?
I still think about my nephew, who died in Afghanistan, all the time. I loved him. It's hard to be happy.
We will always remember, but remembering doesn't make things well.

Soup Salad

This is going to gross out a lot of you, so just admit you're wimps and bail. The rest of you can stick around to read about slimy salad.
Oh, it was good. It came about because we had one of the best, most gelatinous batches of chicken stock, ever. Bones bashed with a cleaver. Slow extraction on low heat for four hours. Tons of flavor. And, expectedly, vivid liveliness. Chilled. Sturdy gellaciousness.
So, the salad was just baby romaine with hacked radishes and chopped roast chicken. Tossed with a mild oil and vinegar. Salted and peppered.
Then, brilliant brain thought kicked in. "This would taste really good with some of that chicken stock."
Chicken stock is not part of salad dressing, is it? (Tell me, if you know.)
The rich soup, in its coagulated state, would be so fun, so funny, spooned over a salad. Little cold spoonfuls. Bites of slippery umami. Mouthfuls of jiggly yum. That's what I thought.
That's what I think.

Succumbing to Sucky Weather

I had all kinds of flitty, pretty ideas for using the rest of the roast chicken. High on the list was something salad-y, breezy, airy, with mint (and, shh, there's still a little chicken left so it might happen).
BUT. The incessant gloom. Coldy, rainy, windy.
This is my birthday month! It's supposed to be spring!
I will confess that my mood is seriously dumped.
And in this state of disillusion, I'm realizing that you don't just make chicken soup because it's winter. You make it because your mood needs it. Right now, in late May. Please.
Warm, deep, restorative.
And. Hah! Made with fresh English peas, because it's spring, and the peas are in.

Twinkie Tacos

Don't you always think of Mexican food as más macho? Lumpy, fierce, crazy-quilts of color and flavor?
We had some tender, beautiful bits of roasted chicken left over, and Cranky wanted to make tacos. He suggested beans (No!). Salsa. Cheese (No!).
The chicken was gentle and moist and soft and sweet (seriously). It didn't want to play rough with the boys. It wanted a feminine treatment, something tasty and mild and sneakily Drop Dead Awesome. That's the way girls are.
I got a pack of miniature corn tortillas from the local bodega, still warm and steamy. That was just cute enough, all by itself, to set the girlie stage.
Chicken: heated and torn up. Cilantro: just leaves. Salsa: something from the commercial hot sauce cupboard, stirred into yogurt to make it nice and pink and nice! And pink! A little squirt of lime for you sour boys. (I loved it too.)

This is not a recipe. It is a way to think.

Synthetic Cell Block

When these babies get up and start walking around... No, wait. This is food, not synthetic cells.
We had some lovely roasted chicken left over, and we wanted to do something Completely Different with it.
The chicken was so good, it didn't want to be buried in a tortilla casserole. It was too innocent.
So. Quick! What does the essential essence of honest food want?
We decided on the Garden of Eden. Natural, pure, unadulterated flavors. (If Adam and Eve, the poster children of synthetic cells, had a stove.)
Kudzu had forwarded me a recipe from David Lebovitz, a sort of salad with fried beans. Yes, you cook the beans, and then you fry them until crispy brown in fat. Irresistible; I was a goner. Though, of course, I didn't follow the recipe; I merely stole the bean idea.
Next natural, pure flavor: Artichoke bottoms. We had a couple, because the 'chokes we've been buying from Iacoppi are too big to finish in one meal.
Now this, I swear, is the total dish: Chicken, crisp beans and artichoke bottoms. Basta. Complete. The flavors of creation.
I'm sure I'll get the beans better next time; these were cooked at perhaps too low a heat (I was scared) for too long. I'd prefer browner skins and creamier interiors.
Upon removing the beans, we left the fat in the pan to sear the artichoke cubes, and then all the fat (butter and olive oil) and vegetables went into a bowl with the chicken bits, a good squirt of lemon, and salt and pepper.
A most affirming dish. The heart of life. Honest, naive.
Not synthetic.

Chicken in an Oxygen Tent

I'll bet you would never do this yourself, at home, in your kitchen.
Roast a chicken in a plastic bag.
I never would either, until this newfangled "weblog" fad changed my mind.
I've made friends with a blogger in Australia, and she recently roasted a chicken in a plastic bag. Said her mother did it all the time. It's a commercial, food-grade roasting bag, and it's supposed to be safe. (A little more BPA drippin's, honey? Mm.)
I don't want any lectures. I only tried it because I CAN'T successfully roast a chicken, and I was willing to grovel at the Chicken Failure Clinic.
It came out superlatively fantastic. Browned, crisp skin and moist meat, even the breasts. A beautiful collection of juices, pooled right in the bag. Code Damn Good.
I stuffed a few herb sprigs in the bird's cavity, with half a lemon, then salted the skin generously all over, before puncturing the plastic with a knife in six places and tying the bag shut with a bag-shut-tie. Thing.
Here's the way cool part of the directions: You have to throw a spoonful of flour into the bag before you put the chicken in. "So the bag doesn't explode." I don't get the science, but those are the kinds of rules I follow.
So would I do it again? How do you say "yes" in Stupid? YES. Too beyond delicious and tender to worry about a little errant petroleum pollution in my meal. Besides, you could say I'm doing my part in the Gulf oil spill cleanup.

OK, let the lectures begin.

But Was It Frankenfood? Maybe.

I discovered Staub pots at the Napa restaurant, Ubuntu. The chefs have run away from Ubuntu, but I don't know if the dish ran away with the spoon. They may still be serving food in these adorable little vessels there, but who's cooking?
Doesn't matter; I've got a pair of baby Staubs at home, and I'm finding they actually change the way I put meals together.
Sometime back I made deconstructed stuffed cabbage, not rolled up at all, in the pots. It was a breakthrough.
Now, I love little folded-up packets of food probably more than anyone, so I'm not quitting leaf rollage.
But the Staubs came to the rescue, once again, saving a near-impossible leaf dish: Grape leaves from our yard.
They are delicate and tiny; too small, frankly, for stuffing with any "hospital-corners" success.
So I just destemmed the leaves and gave them a quick, insouciant chop. (I know the first rule of Knife Skills is "Never be insouciant." Hey, it's my blood! I'll shed it however insouciantly I wish.)
The rest of the recipe is simple, Simon. Take a couple of tiny lamb chops and finely chop. In a bowl, stir the lamb with an itty dab of raw rice (it doesn't take much; look at a cookbook), some chopped onions and garlic, and the seasonings of your choice. I used Greeky herbs, salt, pepper. Now, stir in your chopped, fresh (not cooked) grape leaves. Just wing 'em through; nice hodge-podgey.
Divide between two jaunty iron pots, pour a nice meat broth over, cover and bake. We let them go too long in the oven, but you couldn't really find fault. The flavor of unprocessed grape leaves is like sunshine.
OK: This might sound icky, and to tell the truth, it's why I'm running the photo as a sepia tone. We spooned "avocadolemono" sauce over the meaty, fragrant food. No eggs in the mix, at all. It's a fabulous substitute, but it's scary green. Scary.

Dog Sads

I've made a lot of friends because of this blog. One of them is Chilebrown, whose World's Best Dog has passed away.
I never met Mojo, but I should have. Total essence of dogginess, if you ask me.
I know Chilebrown and Ms. Goofy must be sideswiped, shellshocked, stungunned. And Oscar, too, dammit, Mojo's best pal.
I wish them a peaceful recovery.
Huddle, family. Hunker down. I send hugs.

Where I Been?

Food's been somewhat of a bore chez nous. Nutritious and satisfying, but honestly, another photo of minestrone?
I have something I'm dying to write about, but it's warm-weather eating. These days, we're hunkered down in puffy coats, not particularly interested in a confection from the freezer. So that'll have to wait.
Ah, but. I always have my other preoccupation. The puppy.
She has been growing and maturing, and bit by bit, I find my equilibrium returning. We've spent nearly seven months training the demons out of this doggie! She was never evil by nature, but she was always jumpy and feisty and chewy and jumpy. Not really barky; we were lucky. But we had to teach her how not to run herself into a helpless frenzy. How not to eat every stick in the yard. How not to stand on our chests, with those sharp, hard little paws digging into our ribs, while she looked imploringly into our eyes. I'd ask her, What Do You Want? I will do whatever you want. Tell me, please.
But little puppies find it hard to talk with humans. Sometimes a jab in the chest means "poop" and sometimes it means "I don't frigging know; I'm a puppy."
Well, things are coming along. Today I found myself saying, "This is the dog I want." I feel that she has developed and learned, and she's a fine dog, indeed. Maybe not finished yet, but doing very well.
Suddenly, jeepers! I thought: "She's not wiggling! She's holding still! I can take a picture!"

Breaking Rules and Taking Names

I'm calling it sushi. You can't tell me it's not sushi, even if the rice component of our preparation is smashed flat and baked. Crackers, yeah, baby.
Which makes the sushi easier to eat and a lot of fun to boot. Who doesn't like cracker snax?
I am sad to say the raw tuna on my "sushi" might be wrong, wrong, wrong. There it was in the fishmonger's case, petite and fresh and ruby red, and somebody — not me — bought it. Oh, wait! It was line-caught ahi from Hawaii, and that's fine. Thank goodness for local grocery stores with greeniness.
So here's the deal. Rice crackers (these were basted in soy sauce and studded liberally with sesame seeds). Little dab of ahi, smoodged with some wasabi. (This wasabi came in a plastic tube; I think it's adulterated with starch, hence the creepy sheen. But it has romantic connotations, having been purchased in Kauai.) Wrap this contraption with a strip of nori (the Korean kind is particularly crisp and fragile). Serve with soy sauce, in case you need extra sodium.
Okay, I relent. I'm not calling it sushi. I'm calling it munchi.

Feliz el Stinko

We wanted something celebratory. But the Cinco de Mayo is about as fake a holiday as there is. So fake food would suffice.
We started by thinking we'd want some goopy, corny, traditional meal. Fish tacos. Chilaquiles. Nachos.
WAIT. How traditional are those dishes? Fakey. Don't answer, I don't want to be enlightened. Fake is fine, but we didn't want godawful.
So here's the deal. We wanted Mexican flavors, in a somewhat Mexican format. But we wanted freedom. ¡Libertad!
A simple quesadilla came to mind. It would be embellished. Tainted. Gringo-ed. (It's known as "nouveau.")
Saute some maitake mushrooms with sliced scallions in olive oil. Remove from pan. Lay in two flour tortillas, folded in halves. Line the bottom half of each with grated cheese. Add back the scallions and mushrooms. Cook until pretty goldy-brown spots appear, and then flip with tongs, until pretty goldy-brown spots appear.
NOW! Serve, topped with cooked black beans, some Martian salsa (tomatoes are not ripe in this hemisphere yet, though our plants are going in the ground tomorrow), sliced avocados, and cilantro leaves.
It was crybaby good. I'm still crying.
This was dessert. Hot. Hot. Hot.

The Magic Tree

How can this be? There are simultaneously ripe oranges and orange blossoms on the tree.
The oranges grew large late last year, but they don't get really delicious until the weather gets warmer.
Just because the skin of the orange is orange, that doesn't mean it's ready to eat. The color changes due to some climate shift, but the sweetness takes its own sweet time to develop.
I feel like an oafish greedhead: Oranges for the picking, now, while the pretty tree slogs onward toward its next crop. I'm picking as fast as I can!
Yesterday we ate orange segments in a "Chinese" chicken salad. (Why "Chinese"? I guess it's to distinguish from "regular" chicken salad, which everybody knows is mayonnaisey. Oh, and there's a touch of soy sauce, but the soy sauce I used comes from Hawaii, not China.)
I've also been making a fabulous frozen concoction with oranges. Fabulous! I must photo it, soon. You'll see. And then you'll want to make it too.
There will be ripe oranges for the plucking all the way through July, if they last.
Magic tree.

Happy Me Day

May Second. I love this day. It's my birthday.
This morning Cranky unloaded a most unexpected gift on me, while I was still in bed.
It was a selection of fabulous Heath ceramics. A few weeks ago, I had drooled over these pale blue items, in all permutations. Cranky got all the permutations, the loveable lug. Wow.
Even better, this morning's New York Times is emblazoned "May 2, 2010." My birthday! I love when that happens. AND, in the "T" magazine (if you get the print edition at all; this didn't seem to show up on line), there's a cool suggestion for what would be a fabulous Heath giftie, and I already got mine! Very same thing.
Neat vase in retro colors. Picks up nicely on a blue theme that's been going through our house. Plus those jaunty swipes of contrasting colors.
I drool.
I am having a most happy day.