And the Sky Is Gray

Oh, it is just hell shitty out there. Rained this morning, and never really cleared up. The long-term forecast says we will have rain next Wednesday. A week off (and some in between). Rain in June, and May sucked.
OK, take it easy on me. It RIPS my mood. I am sensitive.
Today we made a pot of beans for lunch, because that works.
Tomorrow I'm making avgolemono soup, with my own Meyer lemons. Because that should help, too. Bright, snappy.
Whaah.
{*gently rocking*}

Remembering

I think I can tie this post to Memorial Day.
Today we grilled chicken teriyaki skewers and peach halves. The flavor of the teriyaki sauce yanked me immediately back to Hawaii, where I used to buy teriyaki sticks for a quarter whenever the Navy guys were grilling on the beach for a party or something.
"Dad, can I have another one?"
"OK, here's a quarter."
Loved that stuff, even though it was always overcooked and rather skimpy.
Today we made some teriyaki sauce ourselves and marinated chicken breast strips in it. Then we threaded the meat on skewers and grilled them, to uproarious, insane, happy-dance success. Tender! Is that possible? And the grilled peaches. Peaches don't taste like this! Just slightly singed and warmed, juicy and insane. I gotta get another bag of mesquite. Tasted like pure Hawaii.
Here's the Memorial Day part. We lived on Ford Island, a tiny navy base/airstrip nestled inside Pearl Harbor. The base was so small there were no schools on the island, and I had to take a boat to Oahu to learn my three Rs. (There's a bridge now to the "mainland." A bridge!)
Every school day we would pass right by the sunken USS Arizona, which was felled right next to Ford Island. It was just there, and we all knew it. We even knew people who knew people who had survived. Or died.
But it was not a monument then. It was a sunken navy ship. I would think about the skeletons still down there. I was pretty young, so I wasn't having patriotic thoughts, but I sure knew it was there.
Now it's a Memorial, all architected up. Fine. Good.
But there was another sunken ship, right off my shore of the island, outside my front door. The USS Utah. Never heard of it, huh? It has a memorial, too, but it's not all splashy-fancy.
There was also the USS Oklahoma, on the other side of the island. Battleship Row. I didn't pay too much attention to it because it was on... hah... the other side of the island.
Whatever. I was pretty young.
But I sure knew those ships were there and that men had died on them.

The New Food Profile

I don't know if it's the atmospheric climate or the economic climate, but I have noticed a shift in food.
Food presentation. Food combination.
Food is nowadays a bowl or a plate of foodlets, mingled together. Not tethered with sauces. Not roasted stand-alone meats.
You got your farro salad. Your chunky, random pasta. Your beans and veg.
All just strewn across a plate or huddled in a bowl.
Gone, it seems for now, are the sculpted confections, the engineered arrangements, the precious, tedious plating.
What a way to eat. Pressure's off. Cook your nice ingredients, and then eat them. Together.
This was a "potato salad," inspired by Heidi's new book (the picture showed there were peas; we didn't follow the recipe but peas sounded good).
There's a Japanese deli in the San Francisco Ferry Building. I've cruised the cases there a couple of times, but always ended up feeling urpy when I came upon the mashed potatoes with vegetables punctuating it. All the rest of the food looks good; random minglings of foodlets. The reason my potato salad doesn't look urpy is because it's not mashed.
Ideas: Just throw in chopped pickled eggs, cooked peas, chopped celery, sliced leeks (raw), olives... Whoa, I didn't even add all that. Vinaigrette, then toss and serve.
I really like easy, messy, aggregate food! Recipe completely optional.

Gray Skies Had Better Clear Up

Today I heard that a local farmer who services CSAs and attends several farmers markets nearby (but not mine) was unhappy about our recent, dark weather. It's not tomato weather, he said in so many words.
Now, I've been moaning for weeks about the absence of tomato weather in my backyard, where my contribution to the economy is zero and my dependence on crops to make a living is also zero.
Suddenly I feel puny. Like a selfish suburban whiner who wants to garden, but Mother Nature has other plans. Whaah, whaah.
How do you think this farmer feels? Probably a little bit panicked. Disappointed like me, sure, but more kinda worried.
For the three past summers, the growing season has been late, and it's really getting to me. I'm losing my mojo and putting in fewer and fewer plants. It's discouraging. Sometimes I hardly want to go outdoors and pull weeds, because it's rainy and miserable.
(Please refrain from preaching about tornado victims here, thank you.)
Well, that farmer does not get to go all delicate on us, no matter what is coming down from the sky. Cats, dogs, locusts, rain, meatballs. He's got a financial commitment to the earth, and he must soldier on. Farmer on, whatever.
Weather or not, though, I am still a tomato ranchin' bum, and there are always a lot of 'maters out there, if I have to pick them green and roast them in November.
Even so (and allow me one last sniffle), it's hard to put on a happy face. Let me try.
I raise a toast to the whiners and the farmers. Spread sunshine all over the place!

Sláinte and Pucker Up

I saw a picture of President Obama swigging a pint of Guinness in his ancenstral town of Moneygall, Ireland, and it reminded me I had to check on my alegar.

al·egar (al′ə gər, ā′lə-)
noun
a vinegar resulting from the fermentation of ale; sour ale
Origin: ME alegre < ale (see ale) + egre, sour < OFr aigre: see vinegar al·e·gar (ălˈĭ-gər, āˈlĭ-) noun Vinegar produced by the fermentation of ale. Origin: Middle English, blend of ale, ale; see ale, and vinegar, vinegar; see vinegar.
from YourDictionary.com

How simple! Ferment some beer until it turns sour, and you get alegar, which is sort of like "vinegar," but made from ale. And, I'll bet you've already figured out that the "vine-" in vinegar comes from vine, i.e., grapes, or more precisely, vin, as in wine.
You wanna know what else is simple, besides etymology? Making alegar. I just took a bottle of Guinness, flipped off the cap, and made a loose helmet from aluminum foil (it needs air, but not dust or spores). The bottle has been sitting on a dark windowsill (oxymoron?) for several weeks.
You can do it too. Just don't touch the opening of the bottle with your fingers or your lips. No contamination. When you want to taste to see how it's developing, lift off the foil and slide a clean knife into the bottle. Taste the alegar from the knife.
It will be exciting. Deep and malty, with what I felt were two jolts of sour: a sweet one at first taste, and a sharp one at the finish.
I've decided it's not as ready as it could get, but even so, I'd use it in a minute right now. That good.
Thanks for reminding me, O'Bama.

Time of Year for Green Soups

I have too many cookbooks. I won't tell you how many I've never even cooked a single recipe from. I do get ideas, though, so that's good.
But I have one cookbook I could happily eat my way through. It's no longer "new" and it has never been hot or trendy. It's a book of delicious, homemade foods. Soup to nuts (and I've used recipes in the book for both nuts and soup).
It used to be called the Good Fat Cookbook by Fran McCullough, but then in subsequent printings, Dr. Barry Sears horned in and claimed co-authorship (he wrote the introduction). I think everything is back in balance now; the current edition has Fran as the rightful author.
Ms. McCullough used to edit Deborah Madison's books. She knows her way around a recipe, and likes to keep them simple and tasty. Here's my point: Everything always works. This is a book to USE.
So I have been loving her chilled, grated cucumber soup with buttermilk, onion, dijon mustard and sour cream. Made it a zillion times.
Today, though, I dared a little departure. There were fresh English peas in the fridge. Wouldn't they be so CUTE in this summery soup?
Bang, we shelled and lightly cooked a handful and stirred them in. Honestly, I was just going for cute. Didn't know how it would taste.
Tasted great. Sweet, springy, perfect.
Fran, I dicked with one of your recipes. Still friends?

Rapture Barbie

Man, if I'm going to be Left Behind™, I want the shoes.
Not just any shoes. They must be small and pink and stoopid.
Where should I position myself on Saturday to await my shoefall? Outside Toys R Us? A whole lotta naked, flying Barbies, on their way to the hereafter. That'll be cool.
And I get the shoes.

The Camels Are Coming

You ate Campbell's soup growing up, right? Admit it.
It was completely NORMAL in my house. Mom could make some nice soups from scratch, sure, but the larder always had several red and white cans.
I sampled lots and lots of flavors of Campbell's soup, but my two favorites were cream of mushroom, and then bean with bacon. (Later I adored the black bean soup, but that was a transitional time and I've transited out of it.)
Bean with bacon. That was the hands-down winner. For a little kid, it wasn't too sweet, too salty, too creepy. I liked it.
A little ashamed to say it's still a benchmark soup for me, even if I'm cooking from pure, robust ingredients at home. My mom liked to make Navy bean soup (probably because my dad was in the Navy and it beefed up his credentials). But the Campbell's bean soup was a little pinker, a little more complex.
Today's lunch was bean with ham soup. That looks like a mega-blob of meat in the spoon, but there was probably no more than an ounce or two of ham in four servings. They just all ganged up for the photo.
You don't need a lot of meat. Whiz it with your immersion blender to get a greater meat-to-liquid distribution. If it's really tasty ham, the whole pot of soup will be adequately perfumed. More than that and you've just got a mouthful of smoky protein, ya doof.
But the secret, the way to get that nostalgic Campbell's allure, is to squirt some tomato paste in there. A little. And while you're at it, grab the anchovy paste tube, too. Umami it up. Check carefully for salt. Homemade, good food is sweet. You might need a little salt. We actually used Thai fish sauce! Not too much, you're not going for cartoon food, just a mysterious salt/umami.
I was having a childish, needy day. This fixed it.

Meatless Monday, Magical Mouth

Yeah, I know it's Tuesday. But this was yesterday's supper. Yesterday, if you recall, really was Monday.
I have created a vegetarian cook, and his name is Chef Cranky! All I had to do was say, "Gee, we haven't eaten a tortilla pie in a while."
Somebody's juices got flowing, because within a few extracurricular (shopping) moments, we had corn tortillas, orange cheddar cheese, fresh chile peppers and a bunch of cilantro in the kitchen. Tomato and onion were already on hand.
The funny thing is, chicken did not appear. I usually make tortilla pie with leftover turkey or chicken. It didn't even OCCUR to Cranky to buy meat.
He used canned refried beans.
Fine! Fine with me!
You don't wanna know how to assemble this silly dish (layers in a little casserole, moistened with vegetable broth here and there, that's basically it, and baked for half an hour). But every time I've eaten it in recent years, it has tasted like candy. My taste buds are so extensively recalibrated that good food tastes like candy. Not in a sickly way, no. Good, sweet, natural.
I'm going to say something dippy here. I love having recalibrated taste buds. I can eat canned beans now and then (and even gummi bears), and my mouth is still full of magical flavors from a newly sensitive palate. A little cheating won't hurt.
If you're interested, I'd say stop using sugar in your food. That's a good beginning.

Again With the Recipes!

Look. This is the dish from the cover of Heidi Swanson's new book, Super Natural Every Day. I'm slightly aware that a zillion copies of the book made their way into the hands of compatible bloggers, for the inevitable good reviews that would result. I am not on the A List, though, and bought the book myself, with real money.
Really happy about it!
It's so interesting to explore the culinary habits of another cook. Heidi goes for browned, crisp, deep flavors. Perhaps it's a make-up for no meat (she's a vegetarian). But browned beans? New to me.
It was simple, filling (oof) and tasty. Cabbage, potatoes, onions, beans. Some cheese. At this point you hardly need a recipe. Stir fry, that's about it. I think it needs the addition of some vegetable broth for moistness.
But I loved it, because I've never had beans with cabbage. I think. And potatoes in there? Wonderful. We jiggered with it by adding a tiny dash of sherry vinegar, but might skip that next time.
Next time, I'm making it without a recipe.

Homemade Junky Snack Food, But Not Junky

You must have noticed all the fried, roasted, crisped garbanzos pinging around the food-o-sphere.
I knew I would eventually try them. Sooner than later.
But it took a double-whammy to get it to happen. Kalyn posted about a salad made from roasted chickpeas. That got my juices flowing. The chickpeas weren't crunchy, though (and I supposed crunchy chickpeas would make a creepy salad, unless they were the croutons). It turns out Kalyn had posted about exactly the crunchy beans I was looking for, a few years earlier, but I missed it.
So I googled roasted garbanzos, and was led to Steamy Kitchen. Oh, yeah! I remember that post. That's the recipe I followed.
It turns out that Cranky was jonesing for some, having seen the sensual picture of a plate of golden legumes in Heidi Swanson's new book, Super Natural Every Day. It's not the recipe I followed, but I'll take a look at it next time.
The point is simple. You oil and roast some dried-off (cooked) beans. You are going for total Corn Nuts crisp, although the end product is more tender than a Corn Nut. No mush in the middle allowed (but they can burn, so beware). You season them to your liking (I used garlic powder, salt, cumin and hot smoked paprika).
And you get this bowl of SNACK. Perfect tapa if you are snorting the cava, or even just a glass of sparkling water.
Jaden at Steamy Kitchen advises using two cans of beans, these are so addictive. They make your tummy growl.
But they are protein bombs. I mean it, really filling.
Cranky and I were wishing we had made more, and then we couldn't even finish the one batch.
We'll make another batch soon. Cranky just went and bought four cans of garbanzos.

Coming Soon to a Backyard Near You

I've learned you can be a very lazy gardener and still get a good crop. Just start with some good animal poo stirred into your dirt. Plug in the plant. Cover the dirt with mulch, really pile it on. No weeding.
Keep it watered as needed, and hose the aphids off.
Voila.
Cannot wait.
Should I buy a blueberry bush? That will make five kinds of fruit out there... Yikes. Not too late.

So Damn Cute

What can I say?
This was pretty, whimsical, and fun to eat. It made you hungry. It was like... like an appetizer! It appetized.
Roll some really fat asparagus around in a pan of butter until they soften (we cut them in half, crosswise). Brown spots are encouraged. No salt, though.
Because once the spears are custard-tender, you're going to cut a lengthwise slit and fill the pocket with skinny slivers of Gruyere, and cheese is plenty-o-salty.
Also, you're going to wrap your confection in pieces of Lady Gaga's meat dress. No, edit that. Pieces of fantastic prosciutto, with so much flavor already in it, you don't need anything else.
Toothpicks.
Return to pan, but try to keep the slit side up so your cheese doesn't melt all over the pan.
Yep, just heat'n'serve. Simple, really. We laughed when we weren't groaning with pleasure.

Red, Not Blue

This spaghetti is sauced with uncooked tomatoes. They are fragrant with uncooked green garlic and sybaritic glugs of olive oil. Salt, pepper. An early version of this "recipe" included basil leaves, but I just can't fall in love with basil leaves. Out of season, anyway. There was a dab of arugula pesto from the freezer. (And the tomato was grown in a hothouse; shoot me.)
I told Cranky yesterday that it was the only sauce I ever wanted on spaghetti, forever.
Then today, I saw a sexy photo of spaghetti in cooked marinara sauce, all tangled through (pasta finished in the sugo, I suspect). And I wanted that.
I'm going through a sort of "me-time" state. Thank goodness the dog is such an adorable clown, and that Cranky is SO good with her.
I'd call it a spaghetti with red sauce period.

Mission Accomplished

I am not a spice wimp. I'm not chary about chiles, grossed out by garlic, negatory on nigella seeds.
But I just haven't been using spices much.
I think it's the good, local food we've been getting at the farmers market that has calmed down my need for added flavors. The fresh vegetables, meat, seafood just taste so good already.
I do like to use salt. I don't think I overuse it at all, and I'm not saying I like salty food. I just think salt works magic in cooking.
It's rare that I ever ransack the baking spices. You know, the warm, holiday-tasting ones like cinnamon, cloves, allspice. I think they're lovely, but so noticeable in food as to trump the native flavor of your essential eats. (And I think I'm off vanilla forever, but that's another story.) Maybe I am a spice wimp!
Herbs, yes, I do like herbs (both fresh and — gasp — dried).
I adore cumin and pepper, and I think I could cook with those two alone (plus salt) and never need another flavor.
But why?
It's like I was getting all Taliban about the additives. Loosen up, use judgment, give it a try. Go easy, have a little fun. Raid that compound!
So. Spiced rice.
There's really nothing to say here, except that this dish of rice is flavored with cracked, roasted almonds and chopped homegrown prunes. A handful of peas. Salt and pepper, of course, and cumin (of course!).
At the end, I stirred in a microscopic flick of allspice, and it went to another dimension. It was a bad mutha... (shut yo' mouth!).
I threw off that burka and reveled in a little spice.

M'aidez, M'aidez!

I am smacked on so many levels by this May Day salad.
It's the epitome of spring. It's pretty. It's surprisingly filling. And, pardon me, but it's rather original.
Ingredients (but no recipe): Fresh rose petals. Fresh parsley leaves. Fresh sorrel leaves, slightly chopped to match the size of the roses. Peas, cooked only al dente. Mandolined fennel bulb. Minced chives, and some of their pretty little blossoms.
The dressing was just backyard lemon juice with local olive oil, transformed slightly (and perhaps unnecessarily) by a few drops of pomegranate syrup. Salt and white pepper.
We have a stupid rose bush in the back yard, installed by the rube who "remodeled" his parents' old mid-century house and sold it to us. He had little taste, though the bathrooms look OK. The rose is a hybrid, meaning it has no fragrance. (I disagree with this official description of hybrid roses only a little; I think it smells like a rose, but not like rose perfume.)
I had a small bite of a rose petal yesterday, and bingo.
Cranky was only a TINY bit hard to sell on this. (Why? Too girly?) But I thought the petals tasted like food, and that's what I used them for.
It was a solid hit!
My birthday is tomorrow.