So here is a pizza I baked yesterday.
Forgive me for the sound track. It is the very first attempt in my life of composing music. It will get better, I promise.
These steamed dumplings have a glorious glutinous skin made from tapioca flour. The filling has
The dressing is just a simple scallion oil.
A tostada – the kind I’ve enjoyed in Central Mexico – is a thing of beauty. The fried tortilla is small, light, crispy, with just enough structural integrity to support the toppings most of the way through eating. You will end up with tostada all over your hands at some point – maybe 2/3 of the way in. The toppings are used in moderation, even sparingly, for a harmony of contrasting flavors, textures, and temperatures. Here is how I make mine:
The hardest part is the tortilla. If it is too fried, the sharp edges can gouge out the roof of your mouth. Too soft and soggy will make it more of a taco than a tostada. I’ve tried using stale tortilla, fresh ones, thick, thin, dipping in water before frying, low temp oil, high temp oil, different oils and fats…… Not very “Extreme Cook” of me, but I now just buy the already-fried ones from the market. I place them in a hot oven for a few minutes before using to refresh them.
I avoid canned beans at all costs. Usually, I put a few cups of pintos in the pressure cooker with a spoonful of lard, a smashed garlic clove or two, and a half of an onion. After they are cooked, I mash them, boil them down, and season them. A little juice from a can of pickled jalapeños is the secret ingredient.
I like chicken – a few thighs seasoned and roasted, then cooled and shredded and mixed with the pan juices.
Whew. That was intense, but I was anxious to take advantage of this harvest, the first in 4 or 5 years. IIRC, Here is the tally
Pretty good from a single, small tree under avian assault. The image I have in my mind right now is of me at the table with my wife on a cold and snowy winter day, enjoying a piece of freshly-baked bread, slathered with cultured butter and some of this cherry jam and wondering how our owl friends are faring outside. The guys you see in the photo above offered to make sure nothing untoward would befall our cherries. They did a great job!
Tart cherries from our garden have all been picked and I’m working on ways of using them aside from the traditional and terrific pies, cobblers, etc. These are from a Paula Wolfert recipe for an accompaniment to be used with pâtés, confits, braised meat, etc. They are supposed to pickle for 3 months in a cool place; I’ll try the wine cooler. They are said to be ready to eat when they lose their bright color. To me, they taste ready to eat! Stay tuned.
I learned how to make the pork version of this dish almost 40 years ago from Joyce Chen. My palate has come a long way since those days, but I still love this clichéd American version. I do cut way back on the quantity of sauce and also make it a little less sweet and a little less sour than I used to. Rather than use the original flour/corn starch batter, this I time I marinated the shelled-shrimp in egg whites and salt and then breaded them in water chestnut flour.
The only other person I know who owns this special cookbook is Deborah Madison. Although my official list of favorite books in my collection is in constant flux, this one is ALWAYS near the top of the list. To the best of my recollection, this is the second cookbook I bought (the first was one of Graham Kerr’s). Back in 1971, I had little interest or knowledge of French cooking. This book was on a clearance table at the COOP for something like $1. At 763 pages, this seemed like the best value in terms of weight.
How fortunate for me since this cookbook has been the source of so many excellent meals over the years. What separates this book from so many others of the same genre is the simplicity. That is, this is not 763 pages of long, involved recipes. Almost all are very simple and short recipes with just a few ingredients and steps. At 2-3 recipes per page, this book is a comprehensive collection of 1500 recipes – every French dish you could ever imagine. It was written in 1964 by the Countess of Toulouse-Lautrec who gained fame in France as food writer after WWII. This quote from the into says it all:
… There could no longer be any question of the haute cuisine which had been practised in my parents’ home: that it required too much expense, too many difficulties, and too much time spent over a hot stove. Now what was necessary was to adapt that wonderful cooking to our times when all women work either in their homes or outside, and when domestic service is rare and expensive”
OK, so the part about “women” is not relevant for our times. But what is relevant is the way Mapie has reduced classic French haute cuisine into simple preparations that really work for everyday cooking. The dishes I make from this book are, by far, the ones that guests most ask me for the recipes. A quick Google search will find used copies are readily available. Try it. You’ll thank me.
The cherry tree is still pumping out delicious tart cherries. Today I made a clafoutis using a recipe from Paula Wolfert’s terrific Cooking of Southwest France. A shot of Armagnac makes a world of difference. I used an ancient cast-iron skillet that I think I bought at a garage sale in a previous life.
Nigella Lawson is not a writer that seems to get as much attention as the celebrity chefs. But her words and recipes most appeal to me, resonate within me, and inspire me more than any other. I guess if I had a fraction of the talent of Jacques Pepin, I would aspire to his level of artistic greatness. But Nigella totally lacks any kind of cheffy (is that a word?) pretense. It is all about simple recipes to deliver as much pleasure and satisfaction to the people we care about.
Based on one of her recipes, today we had a simple, but deeply satisfying, lunch using the leftover brick-oven chicken from yesterday. Spaghetti, chicken, raisins, toasted pine nuts, rosemary, parsley. NO CHEESE. The light smokiness of the chicken added a wonderful additional layer of flavor.
Many of my favorite dishes are based on her recipes. I’ll cover them in future blog posts.
I hope I learned my lesson. Last year by the time I noticed my tomato plants were infested with horned caterpillars, quite a bit of damage had been done. So this year I’m applying BT every week, just in case.
The year before, an enormous June hailstorm ripped many blossoms and leaves off the plants, so now I have screens over the containers.
I wonder what disaster is awaits this year? No! Wrong attitude. Farmers have to be optimists.