I'm Mad and I Don't Eat

I am so tired of food blogging. I don't know whether I want to officially resign, or just talk about a mix of things now and then, sometimes food.
I'm eating soup today, and it's canned soup. Not very interesting. But I'm not allowed to chew, doctor's orders, because half my face is still numb from having two lower molars ground down this morning. My mouth tastes like plastic and glue right now, and any good cooking would just be a waste.
I go back tomorrow for the coronation.

Wonderland

You fall through a rabbit hole, and everything's magical, mysterious, but still as real as can be.
You come upon this glowing bowl of soup with a sign on it that says "Eat Me," and you eat it.
Your head starts to spin, in a nice gentle way. You are happier than you've ever felt. Have you been drugged?
No, you have tasted Tuscan Garlic and Bean Soup.
I have to laugh whenever a recipe, or a style of patio furniture, or your roofing tiles is called "Tuscan." What, am I suddenly wearing wrought iron and terra cotta? Should I purchase a palazzo to renovate and fall in love with a hunky Italian guy? That's somewhat dreamy, but I'm afraid the real Tuscany has become overrun with fever-dreaming American ex-pats. Speaking bad Italian, if at all.
Back to the rabbit hole (which is my dream, actually, especially if it has WiFi and I can swipe recipes like this one). There's no point in linking to the recipe, because the version I read was already a departure from a previous recipe... And who knows how original that was?
Cook some white beans. A cup of dried. I will not tell you it's OK to use canned. Drain, saving the liquid, and reserve the beans.
Cut up two cloves of garlic and one plump shallot (these quantities serve two generously). Cook the alliums in oil until tender, and then pour in two cups of well-seasoned chicken stock. Add most of the beans, and hit this mess with an immersion blender. Want more beans in there? It's nice to have some whole. You decide. Do you need more liquid? Splash in a little of the bean water. Oh, seasonings. Gah. I always cook beans with a bay leaf, and our chicken stock is already deeply herby. Check for salt. Here comes the Mad Hatter. You are going to glug in a decent amount of cream.
You have been drugged.

Chez Gallery

I found another painting in my house! This one was in the garage, high up on a shelf.
Although there are similarities with the first one I found, the style is different in this piece, bolder and simpler. Still, I would guess they are both by the same artist.
This is kind of exciting. I wonder why the pictures never showed up until now. And what other places are there to look? Should I look, or just wait for my Friday good luck?
Let's see, crawl space, closets, maybe even some forbidden spaces outdoors.
I think I'll just wait and see if I get lucky.

Gringo Lasagna

Tiresome, repetitive, cheerful food for lunch.
Tortilla pie again. This is so simple, and it packs such a wallop of satisfaction, no wonder it's in heavy rotation on the menu.
Just make sure you have tomato sauce in your freezer. Oh, it's the dead of summer where you live? Then cut up a couple of tomatoes (one big one might do) and give them a preliminary roast in a squirt of olive oil. What would be even easier is fetching a bag of cut-up, roasted tomatoes from last summer out of the freezer.
OK, that was the hard part. Do you have leftover roast chicken? No? But that's why we're making this dish! Never mind. You can skip the meat. What's essential is some chopped onion and chopped mild green chile (Anaheim or poblano), sautéed briefly in oil. (Oil makes this dish magic, by the way. The oil and tomato juices infiltrate the corn tortillas and you end up with candy. What I call candy, anyway.) And some cheese. Feta makes a dandy substitute for Mexican cheese. Just for once, because there were fresh specimens in the house, we added the cut-off kernels (uncooked) of one ear of corn. OMG.
Now, layer all this ambrosia. Some smarty pants topped today's version with slices of fresh tomato; so pretty. If all the tomato were raw it might be a little too juicy, but it is definitely good to have some juice.
Bake. Moderate oven. Half an hour.
Lather, rinse. Repeat.

Cheesetopia

I'll spare you the history of cheesemaking in my area. There are century-old companies still in business. There are classy start-ups.
It seemed like a long, dry spell in the 80s and 90s, though. Cheese was not interesting. Not ambitious. (Somebody come and tell me I'm wrong; I don't mind being corrected.)
But lately we've had an unbelievable spate of newcomers. I mentioned the flurry of new cheesemaking from an established (but not old) company recently. I'm not a cheese historian, so I'm probably botching the story here anyway.
And then, all of a sudden, there's Weirauch Farm and Creamery, making wonderful cow's milk cheeses, and promising sheep's milk cheeses once their herd is sufficiently established and the season is right.
They showed up at the local farmers market last week, and Cranky grabbed this Tomme Fraiche.
I don't speak professional cheese. Let me just say it's semi-firm (a texture my mouth loves), riddled with little eyeholes, and tasting salty and tangy. It's mild (and not stinky) but it makes its presence known. A very adaptable cheese. We adapted it to a picnic. The rind is edible, and a little goes a long way.
It may be made in America, but this is not American cheese.
I'm so happy to be living in my little European pocket of America.

Definitely Not Counterfeit

Nobody blogs on Fridays, so I thought I'd just share this picture of a painting we found in the attic.
First of all, this house is pretty old, born in 1963. So the painting could be, oh, mid-century-ish. That's hot, right?
And the image is clearly nonrepresentational, unless you count that fish-like figure in the corner. In which case, it's abstract. (Your art lesson for today.)
We think we've got something valuable here.
We think it's a Maticasso.

Happy Birthdayish

My little chocolate bonbon is "this many" (holds up two claws) this week.
We don't know the exact date of her birth, but she arrived at the Humane Society as a newborn on the 19th of August.
Doesn't matter. We celebrate Birthday Month around here. We just bought a cache of dog toys to dribble out to her, over time. She is already cuckoo-wahwah for the monkey with the braided body (good for chewing) and its big fluffy head with a squeaker inside (good for chewing). She loves it so much, she nearly "kissed" its face wide open.
I haven't written about Bartlett for a while, but that's mainly because there's no news. This is a good dog! She seems to adore Cranky and me equally, even though he's the one who always feeds her and picks up those special treasures she drops on the lawn. (They must be special, because he gathers them up with a napkin, slides them into a pretty blue plastic bag, and carries them off to the garage, where... Who knows? Special.)
Bartlett has learned lots of words. We don't try to teach them, necessarily, but she picks them up. Hoo, boy, don't say "outside" unless you are definitely opening that door.
She has calmed down considerably around dogs (she loves them, but just a little too much). The back yard is surrounded on all three sides by families with dogs, and Bartlett no longer does the shameful and embarrassing Wiggle Dance With Whimpering up against the fence.
She has learned the value of a good nap.
And, funny that this behavior came with her maturing a bit, but she is now a nuzzle puppy. Face kissing, ear skritching, neck rubbing... All good, now, all allowed.
We wish you many more happy birthdays, Ms. B.

The Colossus of Rhode Island

It looks like bangers and mash, but it's breakfast sausages and mash.
I found it a bit startling to pile the sausages right on top of the taters, but that's the way Cranky's mum always did it, and she was born of English immigrants. She used those little dinky link breakfast sausages, and arranged them artistically over the spuds. So he says.
Our breakfast sausages came from Chris Cosentino's Boccalone, and Chris credits his Rhode Island mother for the recipe, fragrant with orange zest.
Cranky spent much of his youth in Rhode Island, maybe even eating his own mother's loving creation there a time or three.
So there's a Rhode Island mothers links link.
We could have dressed it up with a little gravy, or at least a side of peas. (Nobody wanted to shell the peas.)
But it was really fun to eat. Especially fun with those juicy, squirty sausages making little bursts in your mouth with each bite.
Mainly, though, I'm just wild about the picture. It's such a naive, earnest plate of food. And Cranky did the arranging.

Sausage Is Flavor

We have a bunch of Spanish chorizo in the freezer. The plan was to cook a paella outdoors on the grill.
It will still happen, but Cranky was itching to taste the chorizo.
I suggested white beans with herbs and garlic. Slightly soupy. Diced bits of sausage for flavor and color, and then handfuls of spinach leaves stirred through, just because.
Couldn't be easier. We cook beans a lot in this house, so that's never daunting. And these tender white beans cook up quickly.
Results? It was really good, but.
I hate to complain, and I ate a big bowlful.
I checked this out with Cranky, and...
It tasted like somebody else's food!
The seasonings in the chorizo came from a parallel universe: competent but not what I would have gone for. I don't know what spices were used, and I can hardly guess what I would have done differently.
That's the risk when you cook with sausage as an ingredient. Somebody else is in charge of the flavor.
OK. That seems petty.
I'll get over it, because we have a bunch of chorizo in the freezer. Paella coming up.

Watermelons in the Mist

Somebody I follow on Twitter recently confessed that she had never really liked watermelon.
She had lots of sympathizers. I despised the stuff as a kid, and simply avoided it as an adult.
Who wants a submarine-sized "fruit" full of seeds, hopelessly mushy, and watery to boot? Oh, and no flavor.
Well, that was the old days.
I wasn't necessarily jonesing for watermelon to eat, but the blogosphere was riddled with swanky watermelon cocktails. That's what I wanted.
Cranky found a small, round specimen, and it happened to be seedless. OH! And it happened to be very tasty and crisp. We cut little wedges off, and almost couldn't stop eating.
No, this watermelon is to be absorbed by straw, I proclaimed. I don't "eat" watermelon. Koko the signing gorilla famously called watermelon "drink fruit," and I was going to drink it. Because I take orders from signing gorillas.
OK, so Cranky carved chunks and whacked off the rinds, and (girly sigh) squeezed the watermelon with his bare hands! My ape man.
Then we decided to get jiggy wid it. We squeezed juice from both Meyer lemons and Summer Navel oranges, and added that to the watermelon juice.
Would the fantastic flavor be drowned out?
No, it was still very watermelon, with a hint of mild citrus. Really good. So nice! That newfangled watermelon sure tastes great.
I might eat some.

People Are Strange

I had seen some nostalgia for Barbara Tropp's China Moon Cafe recently, so when Kudzu suggested I make her Strange-Flavor Eggplant, it seemed a natural. I had the book.
Strangely, though, I had never used a single recipe from it. It seems to be one of those snaky cookbooks that goes, "Three weeks ago, shoot an elk." I didn't shoot an elk three weeks ago! What will I do?
Nothing, yeah, that's easier.
Well, this time, Barbara allowed that I would be able to make and eat the food on the same day (even though she urged an overnight in the fridge before devouring).
The recipe looks complex, but it's because she's being careful to take you by the hand, stay with me, not scary.
And it came out great, great I tell you!
What is "strange" about it? I think "strange" is just a cute euphemism for "interesting." "Yummy." "Why didn't I think of this?" "Ha ha ha! 'Splosions in your mouth!"
The flavors are ginger, garlic, vinegar, chile peppers, brown sugar, scallion, soy sauce. The eggplant is roughly pureed with these seasonings, in an order that Tropp makes perfectly clear. It's easy.
Strange.
We served it with dark sesame crackers, which make for a terrible photo, but really good eating.
Not strange.

One Potato

It seems so obvious, but it was something I had never tried.
Roasted potatoes and olives.
If you Google it, it exists. Abounds. Varieties galore, I would imagine, but I didn't explore deeply. Just wanted confirmation.
This made-up version used garlicky (pitted) green olives. There were little garlic cloves bobbing about in the olive brine, and we roasted them too. I would call this important.
What else? Good olive oil and a shower of thyme leaves.
So easy. So good.

Adult Picnic

Maybe I AM the tapas queen, as a kind friend commented here earlier.
Ever since I discovered "small dishes" (or was it small plates?) at Fog City Diner a thousand years ago, I was liberated. That's how I want to eat! I like to order from the top of the menu.
It's easy, so easy at home, but it might take a little planning. If you think it would be easier to boil up a couple of plates of spaghetti when you get home from work, fine by me. All you will have is a plate of spaghetti, but again, fine.
If you always keep a stash of nice cheeses, toasted almonds, wonderful olives, and that sort of adult picnic fare, you might be able to pull off a tapas platter.
I know it's not a small dish! But it is small-dish eating.
Behold, then, pimientos de padron, in season now and more popular than ever. You used to be able to buy them from one vendor only, but I'm seeing more and more from other farmers.
You know the allure of padrons? You eat one or two, nice, mild, and then you get a firecracker! Fun, but hot. Russian roulette with capsaicin.
OK, well, ALL the peppers from this new vendor were hot. This old esophagus had to mostly avoid them.
But there were all those other nice flavors on the plate.

When Food Is Either-Or

I don't know whether this is old-fashioned ladies' lunch or some boundary-breaking new discovery that fills the void of El Bulli's closing.
Let's put it this way: it would satisfy either crowd.
It is embarrassingly summery. Sweet, savory. Filling, too. No mere ice pop here.
As soon as I tell you what it is (stalling for time,) you will not even need a recipe. That is, if you want to try this at home. Some of you more macho types will probably turn up your nose, although my live-in macho type liked it very much.
OK, I can't drag it out any longer.
It's cantaloupe chicken salad, with cucumbers, sweet onion, tiny smear of mayo with a dab of Dijon stirred in, salt, pepper and tarragon.
I know. That will either sound divine or squicky.
Take it or leave it. Fair warning, though: eat it and love it.

Kids, Do Try This at Home

You can't quite call them French fries; they're a little slab-like and not quite fluffy.
There's an education to be had here. The potatoes were not a flaky, Russet kind of variety. Almost impossible to find those at the farmers market in these parts.
Also the potatoes were on their last little potato legs, going sort of flabby. Pretty hard to resurrect with a spa treatment of hot grease, but one had hopes.
Finally, if the cuts had been more slender, there's a chance they might have crisped up better in the frying.
Oh, I forgot to tell you about the frying. Cranky used decidedly non-copious amounts of leaf lard (smoke 'em if you got 'em!). This was not deep frying at all. This was skillet fries. And when all the variables line up just right, you will get perfect French fries. I know. I've had some.
But I'm not here to talk about the fries. Well, obviously I am. Um, see that petite pale brown drizzle on the plate at about 5:00?
That's homemade malt vinegar, and it's fantastic.
I've made lots and lots of vinegars, and I love them all, but the malt is the best I've ever come up with, and it's easy as flipping the cap off a bottle of Guinness.
I added a teaspoon or so of some very active vinegar with a huge mother (couldn't get the mother out the neck of the bottle), topped the beer bottle with a loose foil lid (oxygen, good; spores and dust, bad), and left it out, unbothered, for four months, maybe five.
That's a long time to wait (good thing I have a pantry full of homemade vinegars), but it's worth it. The fermentation develops to a very sophisticated state, and minute amounts of evaporation are occurring so the resulting vinegar is a little bit concentrated.
The flavor, though. I have to thank Mr. Guinness for that.
I'm going to start a batch of new batches soon. Christmas is four months away!