More Ugly Food! (Ma Buono)

This is so hideous-looking, it needs a whole new name. Other than "corn pudding," which is what it is.
Made with fresh kernels shaved from a cob or two, and your basic milk-eggs-grated cheese. Seasonings, natch.
But then you gotta ugly it up. A big scoop of cooked black beans (drained well so you don't get gray streaks). Stir them in, bake, have a good laugh at this freckled mess.
It's not a side dish anymore.
Eat.
You will not laugh.
Well, maybe a little snicker. (And don't try shoving any beans up your nose! Not funny.)
Darn, I should have created a smiley face with the black beans. That might have been cuter.
Nah. Still ugly.

Meatloaf

It's just butt ugly, isn't it?
It might have been prettier with a baked-on squiggle of ketchup, but I banned commercial ketchup from my kitchen a long time ago. Can't stand the flavorings.
I don't even crave meatloaf; probably haven't eaten any in 30 years.
But I had the makings. A lump of good ground beef, and a spicy Italian sausage. Peel the casing off the sausage and mingle the meats with breadcrumbs, an egg, some chopped onion and any seasonings that appeal to you. I didn't use a recipe. It just came together, and I was pleased with it.
A side of mashed potatoes, and we're in Cozy Comfort Cavern!
Best of all, there are leftovers, and I'm making meatloaf hash. I only heard of meatloaf hash for the first time a week or so ago, but if you Google it, it exists, in plenitude.
I'm really looking forward to meatloaf hash.
(Good thing I didn't put any ketchup on it.)

Do You Have a Sauer Tooth?

As soon as Chilebrown mentioned the smoked jalapeño sauerkraut, I had to have some.
It could have been a disaster, but it's not. It's wonderful. A little smoky, but not creepy. A little hot, but not a lot. Bits of carrot and onion in with the cabbage. Good sour.
So, this is summer, right? (Though you wouldn't know it around here; I'm wearing a fleece jacket and thrifty socks.) Instead of eating the sauerkraut in some warming dish (which I should have, but there's still some left), I whipped up a sauerkraut salad.
If you haven't heard of sauerkraut salad, that probably sounds weird. Until you think about it: vegetables and pickley juices. Mm!
I just augmented it with copious shavings of gently cooked corn, and a nicely diced tomato. Oh, and for color, a handful of chopped leaves from the purslane weed that is providing about the only edible food so far in my garden. A good splash of olive oil.
Wow. OK? Wow.

Yard Soup

If I had an avocado tree, this would be entirely Yard Soup. I know it's possible to have a productive avo tree in Northern California, but it takes years and... well, maybe as soon as the pear tree dies (it's sick, and there will be a hole in the landscaping).
Everything else, with a few exceptions that I'm growing myself but haven't become ripe yet so I got substitutes at the market, is from the Terra Linda Terroir. Oh, and I don't grow buttermilk, so...
So what you have here — what I had — is a casual raw green soup.
I'm not pursuing a raw food diet, but I don't see a single thing wrong with eating raw food if it works. This worked.
Recipe: Go into the yard. Pick anything that's ripe and would taste good raw, mixed with the other things you pick.
This is but one suggestion. I hope to vary it wildly next time, and I hope you are inspired to be inspired, too.
I went for a "green gazpacho," even sneaking one red-orange paste tomato into the blender. The rest was sorrel leaves, cilantro leaves, a green cayenne pepper (that got knocked off the bush during a vigorous lawn grooming) — seeds removed. A couple of scallions. A handful of purslane leaves (the weed, not the domesticated plant). Also, an avocado, two peeled cucumbers (the little Persian kind; mine aren't ready yet), and a generous glug of buttermilk. Salt, no pepper needed. A splash of water, because pureed avocado can really thicken up, and you don't want to eat a bowl of guacamole. Don't be afraid to thin the soup; it'll be more pleasant to eat.
Blend, hard. No chunks allowed, and the leaves must almost disappear. When it's smooth and pretty, pop it into the fridge for an hour or more. It should be cold. It's really good cold.
It's really good.

Pass the Butter, Pass the Peas

A few years ago I learned the perfect method for cooking asparagus. A slow slog through a skillet of hot butter. It's fabulous.
You think I tried this method on any other vegetables? No, because I'm unimaginative. I know how to cook peas, and the way I cook them is how I cook them. M'kay?
(I've checked my archive and I see I am wrong. I also once used this method to cook baby carrots. Oooh.)
But. Mollie at Orangette was channeling an Italian recipe for English peas cooked slow in butter. A new way, to me. But familiar, because of the asparagus. It sounded good.
I may be unimaginative, but I'm a good thief. I immediately got a sack of peas and a little stack of sliced prosciutto. Garlic and scallion, already in the house. Butter. Spoons and spoons of butter.
You melt half the butter and cook the allium in it, then throw in the peas and the rest of the butter. Stir, coating the green orbs with unguent urgency (yeah). Keep cooking, for 10 minutes. It's not too long. The peas will be soft, but what's not to like? Salt and pepper, to taste.
Now, tear up your prosciutto and strew it over the peas. Cover the pan, heat off, and let it go for another five minutes. The prosciutto gets a little curly and (surprise) slightly crisp.
We ate a huge pile of this ambrosia for lunch. That's all we had. It hit on all the necessary food groups: round green things, butter, cured meat. It's really yummy. Especially with the La Quercia Prosciutto Piccante, which is flavored with a whirlwind of gentle (not hot) spices.
I will definitely have this again.
In the meantime, I think I might try a slow slog in butter with halved artichokes from my front yard. It could work.

Should We Talk About Buttermilk?

I love buttermilk. Really, I drink it.
When I was about 5 years old, I saw my mother drinking a glass of something unusual; it came from a milk carton but the carton was colored green, not like the blue and white carton of my childhood "normal."
She was shaking salt into her glass between sips. What? Why? This was so new to me, and I seriously wondered why I was not included in this degustation. Didn't I eat or drink everything else that crossed our kitchen table? And this was off-limits to me?
"You wouldn't like it," said mom.
Well, can I try?!
OK, sure. She let me have a few sips, and even without the salt (or especially), I knew I loved buttermilk. The rich texture, the sweet tartness, the... oddness! I drink buttermilk!
Most people, I think, take buttermilk as an ingredient. For biscuit dough, or for soaking chicken before frying. And most people don't really get finished with a quart of buttermilk before their recipes peter out.
"It keeps fine in the refrigerator for months," wrote one blogger.
Or: "How can you tell when it's gone bad? It already tastes sour."
Take it from me, the buttermilk drinker. It goes bad after its sell-by date. If you want proof, taste some rotten milk. That's not just sour you're tasting, it's garbage. And so with buttermilk; it's already tart, but rotten buttermilk tastes rotten.
OK, back to fresh buttermilk. I often have a glass of it in the morning; a quick, delicious breakfast.
Sometimes I include fruit, and that's when synergy begins.
You get the taste of creamy dairy and juicy, sweet nature.
You could go farther with this (and I will; I have a dessert I want to tell you about soon), but just buttermilk and fruit is dreamy.
The one I love to drink is Berkeley Farms Bulgarian Cultured Buttermilk. It's local to me, and I've had all the other locals. It's my favorite, so if you can get some, try it.
My point, and I have one, is: Try buttermilk.
It will completely jazz up the taste of fresh fruit in your mouth. It will make fruit popsicles. It will, of course, bathe chicken before breading and frying. And then (yawn) there are all those baking recipes that use a half cup of buttermilk, and you let the rest rot and you try tasting it and you're not sure if that's how it's supposed to taste, and it's NOT.

Tzatziki the Great

Is it a sauce? A dip?
We called it a salad and ate it for lunch, with pita bread and a plate of sliced tomatoes.
You will all have your own favorite recipes for this Greek refreshment of yogurt, cucumbers and seasonings.
All I want to do today is tell you my excellent new way (I just blurted it in my brain this morning) of cutting the cukes.
You want peeled, seeded cukes. Diced. Sigh. All that trimming.
Here's the short cut: Peel the cukes with your vegetable peeler. (Put the peels in your compost container, of course.) Now, just continue shaving the cucumber with the peeler, into thin ribbons, all the way down the length of the thing, turning to get all sides, but stopping before you run into the seedy core. You will then have a tube of seedy material. (We saved ours, cut it up, and used it to flavor cold water for drinking.)
Now you have a bit of a mess of cucumber ribbons. Take a knife and hack them into lengths that please you. Cranky liked little squares; I might have liked drapier pieces but I was not in charge. I did, however, clean my plate (and I loved the little squares).
They are so beautiful, they add a whole new tactile pleasure to the tzatziki.
I don't know how to say much in Greek, so I will say Zorba!

I'm Not Crazy and I Eat

How do you feel about eating octopus? I've had little bits of sliced large octopus tentacles on nigiri sushi; not disgusting but it wouldn't be my first order at the bar.
I know it is a very lowly, common food along the coast of the Mediterranean, and every time I read about little pulpo vendors or restaurants that will cook your own catch if you bring it (and you'd better buy some Cava, señor), I am filled with yearning.
How would I ever stumble across that brisk, soft, slightly charred, not rubbery, cephalopod, served with a really good lemon-herb seasoning? Here in decidedly upscale Northern California where the climate is Tuscan and the restaurants are getting better and better?
Ha ha. I must be a fool. Have I even tried to stumble across it, or is it just a crazy dream tucked safely in the pages of glossy magazines?
Sincere apologies and a tip of the hat to my friend Brett, who runs Contigo in San Francisco. An octopus salad is on the menu there; I've only eaten there once (chagrin) and I must have missed it.
"Missed" it. I probably skipped it. I'm not all that brave.
I had a lovely meal at a private dinner upstairs at Emporio Armani in San Francisco many years ago, prepared by an Italian chef. He brought out small plates of thick six-inch lengths of octopus arms, seared and draped in greenery. I'm not sure what the seasoning was, because I refused to taste a single bite.
Bunch of American yahoos. There were a dozen or so of us, and almost everybody passed on the pulpo. The chef was visibly nonplussed, which is Italian for pissed off, when the plates of wasted food were cleared.
Suddenly, though, I'm ready to try everything. I'm up for tripe and sardines and, well, bring it and I will give it a fair and square bite. (I know where to get lamb tongue.)
I had lunch today with Cranky at the new Boca Pizzeria in Novato. I'm avoiding gluten, but I cheated and had a few slices of the excellent pizza. Not the best, compared with some of the other ovens in the region, but really, very good. 9 on a scale of 10, and you should be so lucky.
The menu has wonderful choices that don't include wheat. Baby Octopus Salad.
My eyes began to swim, and Capt. Ahab threw a harpoon at them. My eyes got out of the ocean.
I'm Having That. I could barely read on.
This is a new me. Embracing a sea-change in my appetite, I waded in (yet more aquatic metaphors), mouth wide open. I devoured the tender little seared florets in their lemon-herb sauce surrounded by walnutty-peppery leaves of arugula.
Then I toweled off and rode away with Old Spice Guy.
What had I been I waiting for?
It was better than pizza. It was better than good pizza.
And it did not predict the World Cup. It was just a plateful of babies. World Cup was probably over when they were born.

Seasonal Trivia

Been eating a lot of salads lately. And there's almost nothing new about me making Salade Niçoise — perfect summer vegetables and canned tuna.
Except it wasn't tuna.
My friend Zoomie turned me on to some California-caught sardines, canned in olive oil. Had to have some. We ate the first can with crackers and mustard, the way god intended.
We totally morphed this morning, when I came across some sap's Niçoise Salad. Sounded good, fine, but... Tuna? Sardines! Because I can't, in good conscience, eat tuna anymore. Another benefit of substituting sardines is that they're small fish, low on the mercury contamination scale. (And I wonder if there will be a time in my life when I can no longer eat fish at all.)
So, was this a pathetic compromise?
OMG, no. The traditional recipe adds anchovies to the tuna, for that fishy smack in the face. In my version, the sardines did it all by themselves, no tuna and no anchovies required.
The flavor of the brand of sardines we bought (Wild Planet) is clean, oceanic, bold. After just one tiny bite, you will be sold on this version of Niçoise Salad.
Of course, it helped a lot that the eggs, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce (whoops, no allium!) were all market-fabulous. The black olives were assertive, and the dressing was made with sturdy olive oil, white wine vinegar and Dijon mustard. Black pepper.
You might think about jazzing this thing up.
Don't.
With all the best ingredients, it is a happy meal. Don't mess with it.
UPDATE: No tarragon. M'kay?

Wings of Chicken, Blades of Glory

You might not be able to tell from this doctored photo that the teriyaki wings were a little drippy, a little greasy.
(Oh, hell, they look like they are sitting on an oil slick off Bobby Jindal's back yard.)
They weren't finished cooking.
Let me tell you a story about domestic harmony. When Cranky thinks the wings are done and I think they aren't, they are done. Even if they aren't. And they weren't. Cranky got his way, and then I got mine when the chicken went back into the oven. To finish cooking, because they weren't done, Cranky. Even if you were hungry!
They went back into the oven (Cranky had also decided he would lower the temperature for some reason), and they got better.
We ate a plateful of them, but there were leftovers (because Cranky thinks the proper amount of meat for a meal is too much).
Oh. Um. Snippy?
No, forgive me if I sound... snippy.
We ate the leftover wings today and they were superior. Better. Improved.
Whereas I was never going to eat this meal again, now I am.

The Snobber They Come, The Harder They Fall

So, if you're me, you go through your culinary life learning the tricks, the secrets, the refinements. The Best, Only Way to Do Things.
Hah.
There really is no best, only way.
Cole slaw, for example. I spent years slicing the finest, featheriest strands of cabbage. No irregular shapes, no chunks, it had to be like mermaid hair. This could only be done with a knife.
Of course, I derided the industrial cole slaw made at the Dixie Pig. Those pigs ran their vegetables through the Hobart, and you ended up with a fluffy, puffy pile of mayonnaisey salad. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Very low-brow.
As if the cooks at the Dixie Pig could spare the time to hand slice the cabbage. What a snob you are, Cookiecrumb!
And I confess this because the other day I was making cole slaw and needed the food processor to make bitsy bits of carrot and onion. Oh, what the hell, I thought, once it was set up. I tossed in cabbage chunks, too. And mayonnaise!
(Brief diversion: I used to struggle with my cole slaw dressing. Buttermilk? Honey? Listen, just use the mayonnaise.)
What resulted was a fluffy, puffy pile of mayonnaisey salad.
I really liked it. I've now made it this way twice.
This is the best, only way.

I Don't Know How You Could Not Eat This

It was at least a week ago, maybe two, when @derricks tweeted his simple, homely, lovely dinner of potato salad with bacon and green beans.
OK, wait, right? You have NEVER thought of this meal. I know I hadn't.
I didn't need a recipe, I just needed hot water and vinegar. Oh, it gets better: the dressing is made with red wine vinegar and Bacon Grease!
Should I have cut the potato chunks smaller? Were the beans supposed to be in tinier slices?
Who cares?
This was manly salad. If such a thing exists. Ernest Hemingway would have loved it (but I think he had a "closet" problem, yome sane?). Salad for all. Heh.
I liked my manly girlie salad.

I Almost Have to Apologize

I will tell you a secret. I HATE Fourth of July desserts. I can't stand American Flag Cakes, made with berries and white frosting. So, uh... Are there any other Fourth of July desserts?
Against my better judgment, I made Fourth of July popsicles. The cherries were sweet enough, but the blueberries were downright dull. They're not really blue, people. Purple on the outside, green on the inside.
I thought I'd mince up the fruit and sweeten it, but then we'd just be getting a purple popsicle.
So I cowboyed up. This was only my second popsicle attempt, and I still seem to be stuck on buttermilk as a medium, but it's so fantastic. I sweetened the buttermilk; oversweetened it, actually, because some of the fruit was not sweet enough.
And. Um. That is the recipe. Freeze, eat.
Enjoy, really. Lots.

Wings and a Prayer

Ohmahgah. Chicken wings.
I have been seductified.
Tell the truth: You think chicken wings are Buffaloed. Don't you? Buttery, hot, red, sassy, delicious, and that crazy side dish of celery and blue cheese dressing.
Well, I love those, too. They're easy to make and good to eat.
But I'd been having this nagging idea about mustard chicken. And as sure as you know it, a couple of mustard chicken recipes popped up in my Internet prowlings during the past week. One of them was wet and saucy, and the other used bread crumbs. Not for me. Neither.
So I invented a terrific slather of mustard (lots, Dijon, no seeds), loosened with a tablespoon or so of buttermilk, stirred with grated parmesan cheese (a fair amount; you be the judge), loads of cracked black pepper, and a healthy sprinkling of dried dill (I am the world's worst dill farmer; apologies). No salt needed.
OK, slide your coated wings on a rack into a hot oven (425F), and then turn it down to 350F. This is probably not necessary, but we had heated the oven to 425 and then changed our minds. Heh. About 45 minutes. Use tongs to flip the wings halfway through.
Please try this. That is my prayer.

Popsicle Weather

I've had these popsicles in the freezer for weeks! We ate three of them when they were first made, despite the horrendously cool climate. We let the rest wait for sunnier days.
I think we're there.
All right, first of all, you do realize that homemade popsicles are the new cupcake? The new salted caramels? The new (insert sweet trend here)? Get yourself some molds and get creative.
These molds came from an expensive store. Cranky came home with this large, snooty shopping bag, and I nearly fainted. Then I looked inside and had to laugh. He had surely bought the best bargain at this emporium of ostentation.
For our initial attempt, we used the tried, true and familiar: orange juice from the tree, and buttermilk from the fridge. I sweetened the buttermilk a little, and poured it in first, about halfway. I could have frozen it at this point to keep the liquids from mixing, but I wanted the marbled look. So I just poured in that fantastic orange juice on top.
The popsicle kit comes with a stand that holds the molds in an upright position while they freeze. The handle that holds the popsicle is on an axis with the stick that goes inside to anchor it all. And, the "lid" (when you put it on in the vertical orientation, it caps the pops) is also a drip catcher when you devour the thing!
You'll want to experiment with flavors. I know some of you don't like creamsicles or even oranges in general. Too bad, but you're free to jigger your own recipe. Here are some ideas. Keep it simple, and brilliant (of course).
But do it.